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reject naturalism in philosophy will also object to its namesake
in literature. But it seems to me that when faced with a problem
such as that of naturalist fiction, the critic will do well not to mix
in ontological maneuvres. From the standpoint of critical method
it is impermissible to replace a concrete literary analysis with
arguments derived from some general theory of the real. For
it
is plainly a case of the critic not being able to afford metaphysical
commitments if he is to apply himself without preconceived ideas
to the works of art that constitute his material. The art.object
is from first to last the one certain datum at his disposal; and in
succumbing to metaphysical leanings-either of the spiritualist
or materialist variety-he runs the risk of freezing his insights
in some kind of ideational schema the relevance of which to the
task in hand is hardly more than speculative. The act of critical
evaluation is best performed in a state of
ideal aloofness
from
abstract systems. Its practitioner is not concerned with making
up his mind about the ultimate character of reality but with
observing and measuring its actual proportions and combinations
within a given form. The presence of the real affects him directly,
with an immediate force contingent upon the degree of interest,
concreteness, and intensity in the impression of life conveyed by
the literary artist. The philosopher can take such impressions or
leave them, but luckily the critic has no such choice.
Imaginative writing cannot include fixed and systematic
definitions of reality without violating its own existential character.
Yet in any imaginative effort that which we mean by the real
remains the basic criterion of viability, the crucial test of rele–
vance, even if its specific features can hardly be determined in
advance but must be
felt anew
in each given instance. And so
far as the medium of fiction is concerned, one cannot but agree
with Henry James that it gains its "air of reality"-which he
considers to be its "supreme virtue"-through "its immense and
exquisite correspondence with life." Note that James's formula–
tion allows both for analogical and realistic techniques of repre–
sentation. He speaks not of copies or reports or transcripts of
life but of relations of equivalence, of a "correspondence" which
he identifies with the "illusion of life." The ability to produce
this illusion he regards as the storyteller's inalienable gift, "the
merit on which all other merits . . . helplessly and submissively
