naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon
science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on
imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern
life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a
new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb
before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the
ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would
arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious
and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at
each development of the theory of the new art and its universal
applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any
one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an
explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing--as well drink
the dregs of yesterday's champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I
glance through the pages listlessly I say, "Only the simple crude
statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision."

Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was
to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author,
and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little
doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be
for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven,
only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the
simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen,
sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to
whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had
declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly
naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so
important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible
he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least