Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Problem of Realism in Modern Drama
The Problem of Realism in Modern Drama
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to New Literary History
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Problem of Realism in Modem Drama
Jovan Hristid
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
312 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE PROBLEM OF REALISM IN MODERN DRAMA 313
As soon as the absent fourth wall of the theatre became only a transparent attic from
Lesage's "Le Diable briteux," drama ceased to become really dramatic. For the individ-
ual viewing drama does not accidentally participate in some sort of accidental event
taken from life, does not observe through some key-hole the private life of his fellow-
men, but on the contrary that which is presented to him, in its most profound content
and in its essential form, must be a public event. The difficulty of a modern dramatic
writer's work lies just in finding such topics in life and in subjecting these topics to an
internal dramatic transformation so that, in their entirety, and in the sense previously
referred to, they can satisfy the public. And here a modem dramatic writer must fight
against not only the live material of modern society in the external sense, but also
against his own living feelings which originate in the roots of that society.
Only what is meant by "public"? Is it only an event which is not private, that
is to say, which does not limit itself to the space of one room in a house into
which only those are allowed who are invited? No doubt we live in times of
privacy, when everything most important in man's life takes place in his house
or in his room, out of reach of those who are not directly involved in the events
in question. On the other hand, the idea of what is public has degenerated to
what we read in newspapers or see on television. And just because of that
degeneration, drama finds itself in a rather paradoxical situation: by its most
profound nature, drama is a public art, but an ever smaller circle of truly
serious and meaningful events is public today. That which is public is in fact
only the visible result of what is to us an inaccessible and concealed mise-en-
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
314 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE PROBLEM OF REALISM IN MODERN DRAMA 315
In any case, the problem is not only that realistic drama-as T. S. Eliot
thinks-lacks firm conventions which would hold it "within the limitations of
art," or (as Fergusson says) that realistic drama is "paradoxical theater, which
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
316 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE PROBLEM OF REALISM IN MODERN DRAMA 317
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
318 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
FACULTY OF DRAM
BELGRADE
This content downloaded from 78.184.194.99 on Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:53:33 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms