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Night and Morning By: Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) |
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By Edward Bulwer Lytton
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1845. Much has been written by critics, especially by those in Germany (the
native land of criticism), upon the important question, whether to
please or to instruct should be the end of Fiction whether a moral
purpose is or is not in harmony with the undidactic spirit perceptible
in the higher works of the imagination. And the general result of the
discussion has been in favour of those who have contended that Moral
Design, rigidly so called, should be excluded from the aims of the Poet;
that his Art should regard only the Beautiful, and be contented with
the indirect moral tendencies, which can never fail the creation of the
Beautiful. Certainly, in fiction, to interest, to please, and sportively
to elevate to take man from the low passions, and the miserable
troubles of life, into a higher region, to beguile weary and selfish
pain, to excite a genuine sorrow at vicissitudes not his own, to raise
the passions into sympathy with heroic struggles and to admit the soul
into that serener atmosphere from which it rarely returns to ordinary
existence, without some memory or association which ought to enlarge the
domain of thought and exalt the motives of action; such, without
other moral result or object, may satisfy the Poet, and constitute the
highest and most universal morality he can effect. But subordinate to
this, which is not the duty, but the necessity, of all Fiction that
outlasts the hour, the writer of imagination may well permit to himself
other purposes and objects, taking care that they be not too sharply
defined, and too obviously meant to contract the Poet into the
Lecturer the Fiction into the Homily. The delight in Shylock is not
less vivid for the Humanity it latently but profoundly inculcates; the
healthful merriment of the Tartufe is not less enjoyed for the exposure
of the Hypocrisy it denounces. We need not demand from Shakespeare or
from Moliere other morality than that which Genius unconsciously throws
around it the natural light which it reflects; but if some great
principle which guides us practically in the daily intercourse with men
becomes in the general lustre more clear and more pronounced, we gain
doubly, by the general tendency and the particular result. [I use the word Poet in its proper sense, as applicable to any
writer, whether in verse or prose, who invents or creates.] Long since, in searching for new regions in the Art to which I am a
servant, it seemed to me that they might be found lying far, and rarely
trodden, beyond that range of conventional morality in which Novelist
after Novelist had entrenched himself amongst those subtle recesses in
the ethics of human life in which Truth and Falsehood dwell undisturbed
and unseparated. The vast and dark Poetry around us the Poetry of
Modern Civilisation and Daily Existence, is shut out from us in much,
by the shadowy giants of Prejudice and Fear. He who would arrive at the
Fairy Land must face the Phantoms. Betimes, I set myself to the task of
investigating the motley world to which our progress in humanity has
attained, caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what
hostility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth for the
foot tracks of Truth. In the pursuit of this object, I am, not vainly, conscious that I have
had my influence on my time that I have contributed, though humbly
and indirectly, to the benefits which Public Opinion has extorted from
Governments and Laws. While (to content myself with a single example)
the ignorant or malicious were decrying the moral of Paul Clifford, I
consoled myself with perceiving that its truths had stricken deep that
many, whom formal essays might not reach, were enlisted by the picture
and the popular force of Fiction into the service of that large and
Catholic Humanity which frankly examines into the causes of crime, which
ameliorates the ills of society by seeking to amend the circumstances
by which they are occasioned; and commences the great work of justice
to mankind by proportioning the punishment to the offence... Continue reading book >>
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