ABSTRACT
As far as the novel is concerned it is difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between naturalism and decadence; the two movements merge. There are, however, distinguishing features of each. Naturalism implies sympathy for the working classes (Armeleutepoesie) and for outcasts of all sorts – prostitutes particularly, waitresses, factory workers, tramps, scamps; decadence is in the main the depiction of the artist as by his very nature misplaced in society and conventions, the hectic man of nerves, the seeker after sensations. Decadence is naturalistic in the sense that it claims to photograph real life; but it tends merely to photograph the inner life of exceptional beings, who as such are decadent, in a milieu either of drab reality or of Bohemian strange-ness represented as real. Where, as in the ‘artist novels’, this strange lighting is focused on the strange hero, we have technically not naturalism but impressionism; but even here the milieu is likely to be more or less naturalistic. The swathing of a sensitively visioned inner picture by folds of raw reality indeed continues through the succeeding schools of impressionism, expressionism, Neue Sachlichkeit, and Schollendichtung; by this alone we can measure the importance of naturalism, once established, as a necessary part of certain phases of literature, particularly of the novel. A term which approximately comprises all novels of these schools which have at least a base of realism is Milieuroman. ‘Experimental novel’ (Experimentalroman, experimenteller Roman) on the other hand fits only those novels of the eighties and nineties which are built up, according to Zola’s theory, by ‘documents humains’; that is, by the actual study or scientific observation, or (in Germany, at least) the pretence of such study or observation, of the characters and strata of society concerned. Roughly stated, the difference between naturalism and decadence is that between Zola on the one hand and Maupassant, Huysmans in his second period, and Oscar Wilde on the other hand. There is, however, another line of growth: if to be a decadent is to be a man of delicate artistic perceptions – ‘aesthete’ (Aesthet), man of nerves (Nervenmensch) – but weak will, then its true home is Vienna. 1 But Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, a Swiss patrician of Zurich, had the same incapacity to face the noise and hardness of life 2 ; and therefore, though Viennese writers through the ages tend to this shrinking softness, decadence is a matter (if it is real and not merely the fashion of the day) of individual mentality and physique: the problem of real decadence or of literary decadence meets us in the work of, say, Sudermann and Ompteda – both solid Germans with the stamina of cart-horses – contrasted with Heinz Tovote with his Parisian elegance and neurotic thrills.
