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小说在1850年到1925年之间登上了顶峰,它向人们证明它能代替史诗、抒情诗、讲演、戏剧和政论。在这些年代里小说在每一个欧洲国家和美国生活中所起的作用是如此重要,以至如果没有小说,他们的历史就无法理解。小说对19世纪社会的重要性表现在两个方面:就其较高的成就来说,它探讨了个人和集体生活中如何更恰当地适应真理的问题;就其较低的水平来看,它作为一种约束剂,对整个社会大众一视同仁地传播了新思想,坚定地反抗少数人集团的背离倾向。作为大众的消遣工具,小说现在已被无线电、电影和电视所排挤。小说彻底跨了,它竟发掘不出一个主要的传统。小说糟糕的原因是表面性。作家想向读者传达某些事情,为此他使他的人物说话和行动。但自始至终双方都很清楚人物只不过是符号。唯一真正的人是表达思想的作者和吸收思想的读者。现在小说的垄断地位已被打破,戏剧正在重新组织力量试图夺回失去的观众;诗歌正从相当僵化的局面中挣脱出来;无线电演说代替了印刷的散文;电视独幕剧侵占了杂志上短篇小说的地位。最后,我认为英国文学中的主要危险不在于文学的各种形式之间的相互竞争,而在于要使大众相信想象的文学竟然能够存在是愈来愈难了。但希望还是很大的,只要作家记住自己是作家,不要被迫充当记者或政治宣传家,那末文学形式之间的竞争总的说来对文学的健康发展仍是有贡献的。
The novel peaked between 1850 and 1925, proving that it could replace epic, lyric, lectures, plays, and politics. The role that novels play in every European country and American life in these years is so important that even without fiction, their history can not be understood. The novel’s importance to the nineteenth century society is manifested in two aspects: in its higher achievement it explores how to adapt more appropriately to the truth in both personal and collective life; at its lower level, it As a binding agent, it spread the new thought equally to the entire community and firmly opposed the tendency of the minority groups to deviate. As a pastime for the public, novels are now being pushed aside by radio, movies and television. Completely cross the novel, it actually could not find a major tradition. The reason why the novel is bad is superficiality. The writer wants to convey something to the reader, for which he makes his character talk and act. But from beginning to end it is clear to everyone that the characters are just symbols. The only true person is the author who expressed his thoughts and the reader who absorbed his thoughts. Now that the novel’s monopoly has been broken, the theater is reorganizing its forces to recapture the lost spectators; poetry is being freed from rather rigid circumstances; radio speeches supersede printed prose; and television-only play takes over the magazine’s short story. Finally, I think the main danger in British literature lies not in the competition between the various forms of literature, but in the more difficult it is for the general public to believe that imagined literature can exist. But hope is still great. As long as writers remember that they are writers and are not forced to act as journalists or political propagandists, the competition between literary forms, in general, still contributes to the healthy development of literature.