Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 1.djvu/29

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. Realism, as we are concerned with it, may be defined as the literary effect produced by the marshaling of details in their exactitude for the purpose of bringing out character. The fact that they may be ugly and vulgar, or the reverse, makes not the slightest difference. The modern realist contemplates the inanimate things which surround us with peculiar complaisance, and it is right that he should as these things exert upon us a constant and secret influence. The workings of the human mind, in complex civilizations, are by no means simple; they are involved and varied: our thoughts, our feelings, our wills, associate themselves with an infinite number of sensations and images which play one upon the other, and which individualize, in some measure, every action we commit, and stamp it. The merit of our modern realists lies in the fact that they have studied the things which surround us and our relations to them, and thus have they been able to make their creations conform to human experience. The ancients gave little attention to this; the man, with them, was the important thing, the environment the unimportant. There are, of course, exceptions; the interview between Ulysses and Nausiskaa is probably the most striking. From the standpoint of environ-