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PARTISAN REVIEW
sorting into real-object-pictures or -descriptions and fictive-object–
pictures or -descriptions than I have set forth principles that effect
the sorting into centaur-pictures and unicorn-pictures.
In
both cases
the principles, the similarities and differences that matter, are to be
accounted for by the sortings rather than accounting for them.
Realism of the third kind, we are inclined to say, depends on
the nature of the subject-matter; but since pure fiction denotes
nothing, mustn't such realism depend upon features of the pictures
or story, not upon anything depicted or described? Although, speak–
ing strictly and literally, pure fiction tells of nothing, we can never–
theless distinguish between the telling and the told; that is, sorting of
fiction according to what is told differs from sorting according to how
it is told.
In
this somewhat oblique sense, the realism here in ques–
tion depends upon the subject-matter, upon the told rather than
upon the telling.
When I say that pure fiction denotes nothing, I am speaking of
its literal application. Taken literally,
Don Quixote
describes no
one - there never was or will be the Man of La Mancha - but taken
metaphorically,
Don Quixote
describes many of us who battle wind–
mills (or windbags). A fantastic allegory, though an unrealistic
fictive-person-story when read literally, may be a realistic real–
person-story when taken metaphorically.
Realism, like reality, is multiple and evanescent, and no one
account of it will do.
