Julian the Apostate PDF
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Julian the Apostate By D. S. Mereshovski Translated by Charles Johnston Henry Altemus Philadelphia COPYRIGHT 1899,BYHENRYALTEMT INTRODUCTION. The present trend toward romantic fiction is the sign of a healthy reaction in literature. It sounds the death of the pseudo-realism so ram- pantly self-assertive during the last decade. Thatrealismdivideditselfinto two camps. The pornographists, like Zola, engaged in accurate but purely pathological studies of the hog that lies couchant in all humanity, and even after twenty centuries of Christianity is still rampant in many of us. Theygave us a portion of the truth. Now a portion can never be real. On the other side were the photographers, like Henry James, and W. D. Howells, who used their flashlights only upon man and woman in full-dress, smiling pleas- antly and with their company-manners assumed for the occasion. Of the infinite capacities of the human heart for good or for evil these writers gave us but the vaguest intimations. Henc.e they, also, saw but a portion of the truth. Hence they, also, were essentially unreal. But the advent of the new school of Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, and, greatest of all, Sienkiewicz and Mereshkovski, marks a return to the ever-new and ever-old, the historical and romantic fictionwhich pleased ourforefathersand mayhap will continue to please our descendants to the end. These novelists dare to take large canvases and paint upon them stirring and splen- did scenes,lit upbyhuman passion. They do not 3 2039640 4 Introduction. representmanasalldirt,norasadeity,butrender him in hisaspect ashe livedandlives: Halfdirt,halfdeity,untalike Tosoarorsink. They reproduce for us the actual heroes or vil- lains, inhighplacesand inlow,who have stormed across the past of the world, and they kin them to the present byshowing us more or less directly how they were actuated by the same mixture of noble and ignoble motives that rule the human breast ofto-day. I have mentioned Mereshkovski in the same breath with Sienkiewicz because he seems to me equal in the power of reproducing the pagan or semi-pagan past in its gorgeous decadence. His portrait of Julian the Apostate is well worthy a place besides the portrait of Nero in Quo Vadis, and I am not sure that it was not the more diffi- cult task. Julian, a much more complex char- acter than Nero, required infinitely more delicacy inthehigh-lights and inthe shading, more chiar- oscuro, a finer technique, in short, on the partof the artist. YetJulian in the one book stands out asboldly and intelligibly as Nero in the other. Julian the Apostate, in fact, is one of the most interesting characters in history. Notwithstand- inghis early death and the shortness of his reign it is with a start we remind ourselves that he Mras barely thirty when he died and had been Emperor for only a year and a half he made a mighty impress upon his time. Historians may callhimareactionaryengagedinahopeless strug- gle against destiny, sociologists an atavist, strug-
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