Equal
fidelity to the narrative text we do undoubtedly find in either case; the
same fidelity we assuredly do not find. The one is a typical example of
prosaic realism, the other of poetic reality. Light from darkness or
truth from falsehood is not more infallibly discernible. The fidelity in
the one case is exactly, as I have already indicated, the fidelity of a
reporter to his notes. The fidelity in the other case is exactly the
fidelity of Shakespeare in his Roman plays to the text of Plutarch. It
is a fidelity which admits--I had almost written, which requires--the
fullest play of the highest imagination. No more than the most realistic
of reporters will it omit or falsify any necessary or even admissible
detail; but the indefinable quality which it adds to the lowest as to the
highest of these is (as Lamb says of passion) "the all in all in poetry."
Turning again for illustration to one of the highest names in imaginative
literature--a name sometimes most improperly and absurdly inscribed on
the register of the realistic school, {137} we may say that the
difference on this point is not the difference between Balzac and Dumas,
but the distinction between Balzac and M.
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