Moreover, the folk-novelists, taken as a whole, represent a great school of realism in art, and in true realism they have surpassed all those writers who have been mentioned in the preceding chapters. Of course, Russian “realism,” as the reader of this book is already well aware, is something quite different from what was represented as “naturalism” and “realism” in France by Zola. As already remarked, Zola, notwithstanding his propaganda of realism, always remained an inveterate romantic in the conception of his leading characters, both of the “saint” and of the “villain” type; and no doubt because of this--perhaps feeling it himself--he gave, as a compensation, such an exaggerated importance to speculations about physiological heredity and to the accumulation of pretty descriptive details, many of which, especially amongst his repulsive types, might have been omitted without depriving the characters of any really significant feature. In Russia the “realism” of Zola has always been considered too superficial, too outward, and while our folk-novelists also have often indulged in an unnecessary profusion of detail--sometimes decidedly ethnographical--they have aimed nevertheless at that _inner_ realism which appears in the construction of such characters as are really representative of life taken as a whole. Their aim has been to represent life without distortion--whether that distortion consists in introducing petty details, which may be true, but are accidental, or in endowing heroes with virtues or vices which are indeed met with here and there, but ought not to be generalised. Several novelists, as will be seen presently, have objected even to the usual ways of describing _types_ and relating the individual dramas of a few typical heroes. They have made the extremely bold attempt of describing _life itself_, in its succession of petty actions, moving on amidst its grey and dull surroundings, introducing only that dramatic element which results from the endless succession of petty and depressing details and wonted circumstances; and it must be owned that they have not been quite unsuccessful in striking out this new line of art--perhaps the most tragical of all. Others, again, have introduced a new type of artistic representation of life, which occupies an intermediate position between the novel, properly so-called, and a demographic description of a given population. Thus, Gleb Uspénskiy knew how to intermingle artistic descriptions of typical village-people with discussions belonging to the domain of folk-psychology in so interesting a manner that the reader willingly pardons him these digressions; while others like Maxímoff succeeded in making out of their ethnographical descriptions real works of art, without in the least diminishing their scientific value. THE EARLY FOLK-NOVELISTS