The Movement of Modern Literature – 1 115dispositions and shades of natural truth in order to arrive at a
conspicuous vividness. In the same movement it falsifies the true
measure of the ideal, which is a part of the totality of human life
and nature, by bringing the idealism in man down to the level
of his normal daily littlenesses; in attempting to show it as one
strand in his average humanity, it reduces it to a pretension and
figment; it ignores the justification of the idealistic element in
art which is that the truth of the ideal consists essentially in its
aspiration beyond the limitations of immediate actuality, in what
our strain towards self-exceeding figures and not in the moment’s
failure to accomplish. Realism on both those sides, in what it
ignores and what it attempts, lies open to the reproach aimed
at romanticism; its stumbling-block is a falsity which pursues
both its idea and its method. Nevertheless this movement too
behind its crudities has brought in new elements and motives.
It has done very considerable work in fiction and prose drama;
in poetry, even, it has brought in some new strains and greater
powers, but here it cannot dominate without risking to bring
about the death of the very spirit of poetry whose breath of life
is the exceeding of outward reality. Realism is still with us, but
has already evolved out of itself another creative power whose
advent announces its own passing.