On Lukacs's Realism

Regarding Lukacs'realistic literary theory, the most criticized aspect is its totalism. As Bloch comments:Lukacs's thought take for granted a closed and integrated reality that doe indeed exclude the subjectivity of idealism, but not the seamless "totality" which has always thriven best in idealist systems, including those of classical German philosophy. Indeed, in his discussion of the realistic literary theory, Lukacs repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of reflecting the objective reality from an organic and holistic view. However, while scholars continue to criticize this organic totalism from a post-modern position, one crucial fact has been neglected, that is Lukacs'totalism is precisely developed through criticizing a variety of "irrational"totalisms. According to Lukacs, the materialistic structure of the capitalist society is able to penetrate all fields of human life, and thus it is impossible for any criticism that is confined to the literary realm to effectively influence the capitalist society. Starting from the naturalistic literature, capitalist literature has been well aware of the oppression imposed onto human by the rational tradition of capitalism. However, they merely focus on the phenomenon of alienation in real life, and haven't paid much attention to the alienation itself. Therefore, they are still trapped in the irrational totalisms. Of course, when criticizing the naturalistic literature and modern literature, Lukacs does not completely deny these two literary genres. In his opinion, the most important contribution of these two literary forms is the fact that they clearly demonstrate the diversity of human life although they failed to offer convincing answers to the question of how to maintain it. Lukacs believes that, under the circumstance of the materialistic structure of the capitalism, a pluralistic criticism cannot be achieved, because this materialistic structure itself is based on the respect for the diversity of the existence of human being. While Lukacs repeatedly underscores that literature should criticize the capitalism, he does not totally agree with the socialist realism of Stalin's period. In his article "Narration and description", Lukacs indirectly criticizes the socialist literature through his criticism on the naturalistic literature.This article is mainly formed of five sections. The first section mainly focuses on the foundation of Lukacs'realistic theory which is the theory of reflection. Undeniably, the theory of reflection is the foundation of Lukacs'realistic theory, however, unlike the classical theory of reflection, he further historicalizes and specifies the theory of reflection. The second section discusses the totalism and the theory of model personalities in Lukacs'realistic theory. Totalism is closely related to the theory of model personalities in Lukacs'realistic theory. He believes that in order to picture the grand social historical reality, literature should resort to the creation of model personalities, however, these model personalities are not those figures that are strictly fixed into certain social class as represented in the Soviet socialist literature of 1930's. The third section focuses on Lukacs'criticism on the naturalistic literature, which can be found in "Narration and description". Lukacs argues that to reflect the grand social historical reality, the narration and description of a text should achieve the state of dialectical unity. And the reason why the naturalistic literature went bankrupt is precisely because it failed to achieve such a dialectical unity. The fourth section centers on Lukacs'comments on modern literature, which is closely associated with his comments on the naturalistic literature. According to Lukacs, the reason for the failure of modern literature can be attributed to the fact that their inner narration and description haven't formed a relation of dialectical unity. The fifth section of this article primarily examines Lukacs'human-oriented thoughts. As a matter of fact, Lukacs'realistic theory can be largely concluded with his human-oriented thoughts. Lukacs criticizes the naturalistic literature and modern literature primarily because their reflection on reality takes no account of the life of the masses, and in this sense, it is not surprising that he thinks highly of the classical realistic literature, as the classical realistic literature always relates its reflection on reality with the life of the masses.