Certain traits are presented as if they were
the whole man. We get the typical comic figures of the novel and drama;
the physician who is only a physician; the lawyer who injects the legal
point of view into every circumstance of life; the lover or the miser
who is just love or greed; the people who, as in Dickens, meet every
situation with the same phrase or attitude, This, too, looks like a
plain falsification of human nature, because, however strong be the
professional bias or however overmastering the ruling passion, real
people are always more complex and many-sided, having other modifying
and counteracting elements of character which prevent their speech and
actions from being completely monotonous and mechanical. Nevertheless,
we can again acquit the comic writer of falsification, because we
understand the method which he is employing, the trick of his trade.
He deceives no one. On the contrary, he enables us to perceive the
logic of certain elementary springs of character. Following the method
of the experimentalist, he selects certain aspects from the total
complexity of a phenomenon and shows how they work when isolated from
the rest. And, like the man of science, he provides insight into the
normal, because we can accept his results as at least partially or
approximately true. Art of this kind is abstract and therefore less
valuable than the portrayal of the concrete; yet only the dogmatist
who insists on the restriction of art to the individual can reject it.
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