French and German Realism of the 19th Century - Essay Example

Compare and contrast the Italian, French and German realism of the 19th century using representative narrative texts. This essay will compare the various was in which Italian, French and German writers of the 19th century deal with issues related to realism. It will consider the so-called versimo of Verga’s I Malavoglia, the French realism of Balzac’s Old Goriot and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and finally elements of realism contained within Fontane’s Effi Briest and Storm’s The Dykemaster. Although realism has come to be recognised as a literary movement and is a useful catch-all term to apply to these works, it is in fact clear that realism manifests it in very different ways both between authors of the same nationality, and between literary works of different nationalities. This essay will attempt to pin down the common ground between all these works, whilst also highlighting the at times very different approaches which the authors have to realism. Verga, in his most famous novel I Malavoglia, is concerned with the representation of life in rural Sicily. This focus on rural life is a hallmark of Italian realism, which manifested itself in the specific guise of verismo or ‘truism’. Verismo considers country life as the most simple, honest and true representation of life and it is for this reason that the whole of the south of Italy, the most rural part of the country, was rediscovered by novelists during the nineteenth century. Verga brings the characters to life by focusing on the language they use. He mentions that ‘Padron Ntoni was in the habit of using certain proverbs and sayings of old times, for, said he, the sayings of the ancients never lie: ‘Without a pilot the boat won’t go;’ ‘To be Pope one must begin by being sacristan;’ or ‘stick to the trade you know, somehow you’ll manage to go’....therefore the house by the medlar was prosperous and Padron ‘Ntoni passed for one of the weighty men of the village.’ This focus on Sicilian dialect, and in particular a continued reliance on ancient modes of though, is typical of Italian realism. Verga also paints intricate portraits of the people, such as the intellectual druggists ‘who got the paper every day, and read it too’ or ‘Gossip Grazia Goosefoot’. This amusing look at the characters of the town reflects the simplicity of thought of the people there. Just buying the newspaper was enough to take on the label of educated. However, Verga is not laughing at these people. Rather, he is representing a simpler time and a truer way of life. The French novels stand in stark contrast to Verga’s work since they are concerned with the city, wealth and the French middle classes. Madame Bovary represents for Flaubert a much more gritty, serious and direct account than other of his novels. It is a deliberate abandonment of the more fantastical elements of his work and instead is a representation of life from street level through descriptions created from a deliberate and painstaking emersion in all necessary aspects of life on the part of the author. The work, therefore, bears the hallmarks of realism in that it is totally concerned with the real world. Flaubert’s reasons for writing such a novel stem from a distaste for contemporary society. However, interestingly, the writer himself claimed a hatred for realism. Flaubert does not, therefore attempt to create an exact mirror image of the world in his writing, not does he urge an interpretation of the world based on appearance. Rather, his purpose is to reflect the worst of society in such a way as to almost detach the story from any sort of widely recognised reality of the time. However, the ending to the novel relates the book firmly to the here and now, and urges that the reader face things for what they are, however unpleasant they may be. The closing lines repeatedly use the present tense which, although a light-hearted ending to the novel, force the reader to accept the devastating picture of bourgeois France which Flaubert has created. Honore de Balzac’s Old Goriot has a similar purpose in attempting to represent life without, however acting as a direct mirror to it. Rather, through the complexities of plot present in the novel, it seeks to mimic the complex nature of life itself. However, Balzac the novelist is far more willing to accept this role he has made for himself and does not share Flaubert’s hatred of realism. In fact, Old Goriot acts almost as a manifesto for realism, starting as it does with the declaration ‘all is true’. The author skilfully mixes real life fact with invented fictions so that they blend seamlessly into the tapestry of his novel while it is Balzac’s observation of the minutiae of life are what make his novel so compelling. He, like Flaubert, is disdainful of Parisians as the following passage shows; ‘Now the resident and daily borders dropped in one after another, exchanging greetings and the meaningless remarks that pass for wit among certain classes of Parisians. Silliness is their basic ingredient and their whole point consists in the way they are said or the gestures that accompany them.’ This acute observation of little details is a hallmark of Balzac’s brand of realism. Further, this passage is a classic indictment of hollow social mores. The German realist mode of Storm and Fontane concerns itself with the nature of Verga, the modern world of the French realists and, crucially, the conflict between these two. In Storm’s The Dykemaster the conflict between the peasants and the modern irrigation techniques of the shunned engineer confronts nature with modernity in a series of dramatic scenes. Storm does not, however, renounce the fantastic genre as completely as Flaubert. As the Dykemaster is riding along in a storm he experiences what seems to him at first seems to be a spirit rider on a horse. He recounts the story thus; ‘I saw in the polder below me, close by the side of the dyke, the gleaming water of the Wehle – the name they give here to craters that are gouged into the ground by the rush of water through a breach in a dyke and then mostly remain as small but very deep pools. The surface of the water...was unruffled; the rider could not have disturbed it’. This passage shows a strong contrast between the almost encyclopaedic and highly rational description of the Wehle and the mystery of the undisturbed water. This reflects the tension between the irrationality of traditional superstition and the clearly defined rationality of modernity. A similar contrast is present in Fontane’s Effi Briest. Effi can be seen to represent nature, while Innstetten represents the serious world of lawyers and the professionals. His bland, almost robotic appreciation of Italian works of art stands in contrast to Effi’s fantastical view of the world. This comment on the contrast between education and learning and a much more simple view of the world is essentially what underpins the realism of all the novelists. Realism, therefore, clearly manifests itself in different ways. However, a single concept can be seen to underpin all the works considered – the contrast between past and present. The emphasis on these two factors varies greatly from author to author. However, it is clear that Flaubert’s distaste for middle class France is fuelled by the same sentiment as Verga’s depiction of life in rural Sicily. Education, refinement, wealth and social grace and irrelevant trivialities into which modern man has fallen. They are not essential to existence, nor do they represent the essence of man. It is, rather, the peasant who is still dependent on his land and who continues to respect the knowledge essential to his survival, not learnt from books but passed down through generations, who continues to represent an actual truth. The tension between these two modes of living is what defines the realist author’s purpose and what allows each of these at times diverse novels to be considered realist literature. References Balzac, Honore de (1951) Old Goriot. Trans. Ayton Crawford, Marion, London: Penguin Classics Flaubert, Gustave (2005) Madame Bovary: provincial manners. Trans. Mauldon, Margaret Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics Fontane, Theodor (1995) Effi Briest. Trans. Chambers, Helen & Rorrison, Hugh. London: Penguin Classics Storm, Theodor (2007) The Dykemaster. Trans. Almon, Muriel. New York: Mondial Verga, Giovanni (2005) The House by the Medlar Tree. Trans. Craig, Mary A., London: Kessinger Read More