gotthold ephraim lessing 1729–1781 - St. Francis Xavier University

508 / GERMAINE NECKER DE STAËL
such truths, but the authors of books producing sweet emotions or illusions
have also done useful work for humanity. Metaphysical precision cannot be
applied to man’s affections and remain compatible with his nature. Beginnings
are all we have on this earth— there is no limit. Virtue is actual and
real, but happiness floats in space; anyone who tries to examine happiness
inappropriately will destroy it, as we dissolve the brilliant images of the mist
if we walk straight through them. And yet the advantage of fictions is not the
plea sure they bring. If fictions please nothing but the eye, they do nothing
but amuse; but if they touch our hearts, they can have a great influence on
all our moral ideas. This talent may be the most powerful way there is of
controlling behavior and enlightening the mind. Man has only two distinct
faculties: reason and imagination. All the others, even feeling, are simply
results or combinations of these two. The realm of fiction, like that of imagination,
is therefore vast. Fictions do not find obstacles in passions: they
make use of them. Philosophy may be the invisible power in control of fictions,
but if she is the first to show herself, she will destroy all their magic.
When I talk about fictions, I will therefore be considering them from two
perspectives of content and charm: this kind of writing may contain pleasure
without useful purpose, but never vice versa. Fictions are meant to
attract us; the more moral or philosophical the result one is trying to
achieve, the more they have to be decked out with things to move us, leading
us to the goal without advance warning. In mythological fictions I will
consider only the poet’s talent; these fictions could well be examined in the
light of their religious influence, but such a point of view is absolutely foreign
to my subject. I will be discussing the writings of the ancients according
to the impression they create in our times, so my concern must be with
their literary talent rather than their religious beliefs.
Fictions can be divided into three groups: (1) marvelous and allegorical
fictions, (2) historical fictions, (3) fictions in which everything is both invented
and imitated, where nothing is true and everything is likely. 2
This topic should really be discussed in an extensive treatise including most
existing literary works and involving thoughts on almost every topic, since
the complete exposition of any one idea is connected to the whole chain of
ideas. But I am only trying to prove that the most useful kind of fiction will
be novels taking life as it is, with delicacy, eloquence, depth, and morality,
and I have excluded everything irrelevant to that goal from this essay.
III
The third and last part of this essay must deal with the usefulness of natural
fictions, as I call them, where everything is both invented and imitated, so
that nothing is true but everything looks true to life. Tragedies with completely
imaginary subjects will not be included here; they portray a more
lofty nature, an extraordinary situation at an extraordinary level. The verisimilitude
of such plays depends on events that are extremely rare, and morally
applicable to very few people. Comedies and other dramas are in the
theater what novels are to other fiction: their plots are taken from private
life and natural circumstances. However, the conventions of the theater
2. That is, realist novels, discussed under heading III.