At a time when Shklovsky in Russia and Lubbock in Great Britain were successfully banning metaphysics from literary criticism, Lukács' Theory of the Novel appeared as a late and stubborn attempt to reconstruct the most characteristic genre of modern literature from pure thought. To young Lukács, the theory of any genre coincides with its history, which, in true German fashion, he believes begins with the inimitable art of Greece…. Lukács does not tolerate any history of the mind before that of Greece; the Greeks are the nation whose inevitable destiny in the intellectual development of mankind it was to give birth to the great "forms" of the creative mind: the epic, tragedy, and philosophy. In the dawn of history we perceive the absolute immanence of the heroic age of Homer; as time progresses, however, integral substance withers (entweicht) more and more until, finally, the irremediable development toward philosophical alienation results in the most rigid opposition of meaning and being confirmed by the unfortunate transcendence of Platonic thought.

Tragedy, according to young Lukács, develops precisely between the time of the great epic and Plato. While the epic is still fortunate enough to be able to deal with the magnificent essence of life, tragedy (in a moment of progressive alienation) has no other chance but to question reality. "The great epic gives form to the extensive totality of life; the drama to the intensive totality of essence." From these assumptions Lukács derives a closed ontology of the epic and tragic genres; unavoidably, the epic is empirical because it aims at the particular, at the given condition of the world; drama, on the other hand, lives in the world of what ought to be, in a tension toward the future. (pp. 201-02)

After the epic and tragedy developed, Greek thought ossified in the harsh opposition of idea and being of Platonic philosophy. A great divide is reached; now art, to use Schiller's terminology, constitutes a "created totality" that, detached from real being, must create an illusion to mask its fall from grace. In this "sentimentive" epoch, the novel, as a second possibility of the epic mode, takes the place of the genuine, resplendent genre. But it is by no means the psychology of the individual writers, asserts Lukács, that is responsible for the change in form; in his bitter aversion to a merely psychological explication of literature (to be continued throughout his Stalinist period), young Lukács insists that the change of form is not determined by a metamorphosis of "individual intentions" but rather by the succession of suprapersonal and, as it were, objective "events in the history of philosophy." The epic, as the incarnation of a harmonious life, formed a self-contained totality; in the moment after the great disenchantment it is the task and the cursed fate of the novel that it must go searching for lost integrity.

Unfortunately, the novel, as a late product of the mind, seems more liable to degradation than any other genre. Lukács builds his defense of the "genuine" novel, as well as his condemnation of the "empty" novel, completely upon philosophical criteria of content and ignores literary standards…. In elevating philosophy to the position of supreme judge of art it hardly occurs to Lukács that the wise judge may be incompetent in this particular case; a fundamental decision has been reached, and although in Lukács' later development the judges will change, the incompetent court remains in session.

But by formulating a philosophical justification of the novel Lukács suggests an inner structure that in principle separates the disharmonious novel from the felicitous integrity of the epic. As a reflection of harmonious life, the epic had "organic continuity," whereas the novel, as an expression of metaphysical tension, merely offers a "heterogeneous, contingent disjunct (Diskretum)." In spite of these abstract obsessions, young Lukács does arrive at important insights into the technique of the novel; the elements of the novel, in contrast to the epic, must have a strictly architectonic function whether as a reflection of the theme or as an anticipation of hidden motives important for the conclusion. The way is open to a judicious interpretation of the literary expedients of the novel, but philosophical theory once again insists upon its privileges. Because the novel cannot represent anything but the search for totality, Lukács stresses that "the external form of the novel is essentially biographical"; and thus the novel as such is falsely equated with one of its particular forms, the novel of development and education (Bildungsroman) that occurs so prominently in German literature. (pp. 202-04)

Lukács cannot avoid the question of how the particular individual whose career appears in the novel can have universal meaning; he derives his answer, as is to be expected, from German idealism. The individual, in the sense of Hegel (and Taine) symbolically represents and incarnates an important moment in the philosophy of history and receives an ontological blessing from a power far beyond individuality. Inevitably, Lukács has touched upon the question of the representative type that will turn into one of the central issues of his middle period. (p. 204)

Lukács bases the literary norm of his doctrinaire period on a crude motif from Lenin's epistemology. Like Lenin in his conflict with the philosopher Ernst Mach, Lukács insists upon a fundamental dualism of objective, real, external, and internal worlds that together form a unified and knowable universe. In this dualism, all consciousness of the external world arises as a "reflection of reality that exists independently of our consciousness." Art presents images of being; in order to give an interpretation of artistic processes, Lukács must necessarily revive the age-old metaphor of the mirror, which thus continues to enjoy a latter-day resurrection in Marxist aesthetics. But Lukács does not hesitate in the least to admit that the image of the work of art as a mirror derives from Platonic idealism; the trouble is that in his aesthetics the function of the mirror as well as the range of the mirrored reality is not less restricted a priori than in the Renaissance. Genuine literature results only when the mirror reflects a circumscribed segment of reality; the decision between what is too little and what is too much is unfortunately made not by the artist himself but by the socially committed philosopher. Whenever the reflection shows too much of the unformed expanse of reality, "naturalism" threatens; when the mirror fulfils only its technical function and irresponsibly neglects external reality for the sake of its own egotistic glory, art degenerates into "formalism." (p. 207)

Lukács' characterization of the false extremes of artistic practice—"naturalism" and "formalism"—derives methodically from German classical philosophy and possesses a certain relevance outside his thought as well. "Naturalism," as Lukács understands it, corresponds to the predominance of the material over the idea that should inform and permeate it; his concept of "formalism" refers to the completely dematerialized idea that seeks vainly for the sensory mode in which it is to be made visible. "Naturalism" is blind because it lacks intellectual form; "formalism" empty because it lacks material appeal to the senses. Most of Lukács' questionable value judgments derive from this axiom. (pp. 207-08)

Lukács continues to assert that the work of art is an intermediate phenomenon (Mittelding) in the truest sense of the word; standing equidistant from a conglomeration of mere materials and an empty idea, it strives "for the specifically artistic reflection of reality in a dialectical way." Unfortunately, the criteria of the "specifically artistic" as well as of the "dialectic" are beyond rational control; being inaccessible to further analysis, they merely conceal the absolute demand that the artist must aim for the typical—not the typical that appears on the surface of transient things but "in the elements and tendencies of reality that recur according to regular laws, although changing with the changing circumstances." The type in literature is by no means identical with the mere hero; literary heroes only turn into genuine types when they correspond to a series of philosophical stipulations. According to Lukács, the literary type is to be defined by the four criteria of breadth (Breite), essentiality (Wesentlichkeit), enhancement (Steigerung), and self-awareness (Selbstbewusstheit).

Lukács defines breadth as the "formed connection between Weltanschauung and the personal being of the character." This means that the writer must equip his hero with a number of tangible details and specific character traits…. For Lukács, exactly as for Hegel and his disciple Friedrich Engels, the literary type must be a Dieser, that is, a richly determined individual whose development takes place while remaining constantly rooted in the soil of history. (pp. 208-09)

In order to be essential, the literary type must, in its individuation, substantially represent the dominant forces of changing society. The type has universality as well as singularity; it is, exactly as a German idealist would demand, the literary form of the concrete universal. The danger lies in the potential degradation of what is "essential"; here the substantial idea is no longer defined by an enthusiast of the divine like Schelling or by a believer in the absolutely free Weltgeist like Hegel. Lukács quite intolerantly defines the essential out of the political postulates of a narrow power group in a temporary situation of conflict. His massive and unrefined idea of the essential clearly emerges in his criticism of Döblin's brilliant novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and in his polemic against the liberal authors of the German emigration (1933). Franz Biberkopf, Döblin's hero, can make no claim to be a type, for, asks Lukács, "what has … the psychological fate of such a character [a pimp and criminal] to do with the fate of the German working class in the post-war period and through it with that of the German people of this period?" (p. 209)

By means of the criteria of enhancement and self-awareness, the concept of the literary type is bound even more tightly to the political apriority. Literary enhancement appears as an "amplification of individual dimensions" or as the "perceptible unfolding of [those] … dormant possibilities" that in real life appear only in incomplete form. This concept of the type does not attempt to capture ordinary or average phenomena near at hand, but rather the potential or latent character of a situation that has not yet developed and is only remotely suggested in present reality. By requiring an anticipation of what is going to happen, Lukács' concept of the type—like that of Engels—rejoins the theological tradition….

Finally, the fourth category, which completes the philosophical definition of the literary type, is that of self-awareness. "The 'rank' of the main character [of a literary work]," asserts Lukács, "arises essentially from the degree of his consciousness of his fate, from his ability to consciously raise the personal and accidental quality of his fate to a definite, concrete level of generality." In other words, the type must clearly articulate his connection with the essential and make himself a sounding board for universal propositions. Again some dubious criteria for practical literary criticism are implied: Lukács unavoidably condemns all works whose heroes are slow-witted and inarticulate. (p. 210)

The connection Lukács establishes between the theory of reflection and the concept of the literary type must finally end in rationally insoluble contradictions. How can a work of art as a mirror reflect the present and the future simultaneously? How is the writer to find access to the required type? Lukács has no other choice but to stand the aesthetics of objective realism on its head (or, as he would say himself, on its feet). It is, Lukács asserts, primarily historical reality itself that leads the writer to the discovery of the essential, and as soon as the essential has been discovered and isolated, it must immediately be clothed in sensory detail in order to make the type apparent as "communicated directness" (vermittelte Unmittelbarkeit). However, this by no means resolves the original paradox but only sharpens it; it is still true that the work of art as a mirror must reflect "the currents hidden under the surface." (pp. 211-12)

In the historical movement of reality that reveals itself to the writer, the materialistic element of Marxism finally triumphs. Type and genre are torn away from the intent of the writer and declared to be a function of historical reality itself. It is history itself that immediately brings forth epic and drama out of epic situations and dramatic conflicts. (p. 212)

During the mid-fifties Lukács went through his own private "thaw." After Stalin had died and Khrushchev had criticized the "personality cult," the critics, too, joined those who reconsidered the experience of the past years and asked themselves whether they had not failed in insight and judgment. But the conservative Lukács found himself in a difficult position; while favoring a new latitude, he was clearly concerned with rescuing as much as possible of tradition. His little book Realism in Our Time (Wider den missverstandenen Realismus [1958]) constitutes a rearguard action against the desires of the younger generation; written a few months before the Hungarian uprising, it is an earnest plea for retaining traditional realism as the most productive middle course between the aberrations of "naturalism" (here related to Heidegger's Angst) and the degeneration of socialist realism into the schematic propaganda literature furthered by Zhdanov and his henchmen. Politically, Lukács tried to reformulate the pre-Stalinist Party line of 1925; collaboration with middle-class authors who at least forego active opposition to "socialism" should be welcomed and a new invitation to the European liberals and Neo-Marxists is issued to join the ranks of the victorious proletarian artists. (pp. 217-18)

These polemic ideas mark but the beginning of Lukács' private "thaw." After he had been a member of the Nagy government, deported, and some time later, permitted to return to his Budapest apartment, his change of mind emerged in his late and voluminous discussions of history and aesthetics. In his salad days in Florence and Berlin, Lukács wrote his essays on The Soul and the Forms (1911); as an old man, as fascinated as ever by the tension between the world and the "objective" forms of the mind, he rewrote his first essays. The early book grew into a systematic aesthetic whose most intimate problems are suggested in the revealing subtitle, The Particularity of the Aesthetic (Die Eigenart des Aesthetischen). The Aesthetik, still incomplete today, is the summing-up of an aging revoultionary traditionalist who defends a middle way against his comrades on the left as well as his most illustrious opponents of the right; his Marxism, finally relieved of official obligations, has come to rest in a persuasive syncretism of ideas that stresses the unifying elements of intellectual tradition rather than its contradictions, and tends to by-pass Hegel and Marx in the quest for an unexpected and belated alliance with Aristotle…. After making the customary obeisance to Marx and Engels one is permitted to prevail upon Aristotle for any justification of artistic efforts; and while talking less and less about substratum and superstructure one can rely on mimesis and catharsis as other traditional critics do.

But the descriptive insights of the pragmatic Greek and the grand visions of Hegelianism are not easily combined. The fundamentals of Lukács' late thought remain thoroughly German, but where more than a generation before it was the soul that generated intellectual forms, it is now the powerful, boundless, variegated, and irritating power of Life (with a capital L) that provokes different human needs to which, as differentiated answers, objectified forms of the human mind (arts and sciences) correspond. The philosophy of vitalism was not at all alien to the young Lukács, and his new concept of Life (more implied than defined) as well as his central metaphor are equally revealing. Science and the arts, the intellectual waters, he says, spring from the earth of comprehensive and luxuriant Life and gather in separate rivulets, currents, and streams until they return to Mother Earth in sudden activating falls urging on to new fulfilment and fertility. Lukács still believes, as did Plekhanov at the turn of the century, that work alone (not play) provokes the first objectifications of the human mind. Yet, in sharp contrast to Hegelian tradition, art and science no longer appear as historically sequential stages of the one stream in which the mind returns to itself; rather, they constitute two synchronous answers of the mind to two different (coexisting) needs of human existence. (pp. 218-20)

If in the thirties Lukács was concerned to derive reflection, as the substance of realism, from Lenin's naïve theory, he now tries to sanction reflection as mimesis in the Aristotelian sense; and the Greek term with its traditional translation as imitation (Nachagmung) replaces earlier terminology step by step. Imitation remains, as in Aristotle, "an elementary fact of every highly organized life"; but if Aristotle stresses the joy in the act of imitation …, Lukács is satisfied with its function "for the particular action"; he was never much interested in joy. Within the area of the mimetic Lukács grants a good deal of room to the organizing power of form; mimesis appears to be the "qualitative formation" of the "material of life, which attempts to raise the abundance of life into evocative effect," indeed, to sharpen "the human unity of the content by … constructing forms in an intensified unity." For long stretches the old principle of the typical coincides with form and formation, but it is clear that the connection is becoming increasingly loose. The reflected image, appearing in the arts, is no longer obligated to a localized moment of history (he who tests the historical exactitude of a work of art sees it merely from the outside, Lukács wisely remarks) but to the progressive development of all human history, or the ever-moving cause of humanity…. Both the disadvantages and the virtues of such an expanded concept of imitation are quickly obvious: the work of art is removed from the individual historical moment, and the critical judgment freed from the pressure of a particular hour and its immediate necessities; nevertheless, political interest in the work of art persists undiminished in "the long run." And who is to say, in the concrete case, what the causa nostra is that, with the blessing of the critic, is to be communicated to the audience? As far as Lukács' practice is concerned, the "cause," which was seldom ours, was unfortunately all too narrowly determined and, during the long winter of Stalinism, definitely opposed to the interests of humanity. (pp. 220-21)

It is form that separates the aesthetic reflection from life (art is art and life is life, the German realist Theodor Fontane once remarked in his dry way). But form also refines the reflection in a resolute dialectic so sharply and effectively that it actually enables the work of art to have a fruitful effect on life. We are approaching the core of Lukács' late thought; nowhere is he more illuminating, more passionately engaged, than in explicating aesthetic form as something separating and yet also unifying, as an "arrangement" that isolates the work from the stream of history and yet (because of the effectiveness of the form) successfully forces its way back into the historical flow and the practical affairs of men. As soon as Lukács touches upon the almost self-sustained work of art in the context of time, the tension of the "objectified" mind and time inspires him to brilliant flashes of insight; and because he now believes that the "separate" character of the form furthers its ethical function in changing society, he feels obliged to stress the particularity of the work of art more decisively than ever before. The work has its own cosmos; not only the individuality of the author but the law of the genre essentially contributes to its definite form; it is the genre that finally determines what aspects of the totality of the world are to be reflected in the epic, dramatic, or lyric mode. The work of art, Lukács occasionally asserts with the fervor of a New Critic, "[is] a qualitatively unique world containing a closed system of decisive determinants." This dialectic remains aware of the most attractive temptations of "formalism" but resolutely retracts, balances, and finally annihilates them because it does not cease to believe that form is something extremely useful in the complex process of making decisions of ethical relevance. The ultimate denial of form as form (independent of the social needs of mankind) again demonstrates that Lukács is constantly trying to proceed on two tracks at once; socialist realism and Aristotelian tradition turn out to be uncomfortable bedfellows…. The more significant the form, the Puritan Lukács hopes, the more effective will be its ethical intervention in the world; he, too, believes in Apollo Katharsios, the purifying God of art.

Lukács' idea of "purification," which turns up as a central motif in his late thought, has little more in common with its Aristotelian model than its name; the specific is dissolved and expanded into the universal. Lukács does not suffer from philological doubts; the age-old argument about the interpretation of the catharsis sentence and the difficulties with its genitive and its pronoun … do not bother him; and although he gratefully refers to Lessing's interpretation, he follows Lessing only in moral concern, not in philological involvement. The difficult concept is transformed into a colorful and kaleidoscopic idea; the term does not refer to particular passions or emotions, as does Aristotle's or Lessing's, but to a fundamental convulsion of the whole man. Catharsis occurs through an awareness of "the most extreme fulfilment of … definite human possibilities"; the experience thrusts man before "a mirror that shames him with its greatness, that shows his fragility, his superficiality, his incapacity for self-perfection"; faced with this image, man is inspired to "affirm what is essential in his own life" and to create "the earthly perfection of the human soul." The picture of the world becomes clearer, new perceptions crystallize…. Lukács may not have been well-disposed to expressionist art, but his idea of catharsis strangely corresponds to the dramatic transformations that the new Adam experienced on the German expressionist stage of the twenties. The individual surface crumbles away, and the ego begins to expand in the sphere of man and society…. (pp. 223-25)

But these ecstasies deeply satisfy the materialist and man of political affairs; the stream of art, alienated from its earthly sources, turns back to society once more—not immediately but "afterward," when man transformed by the catharsis, having, as it were, taken a moment's respite in the aesthetic realm, once more begins to communicate with his world. (p. 225)

Unfortunately, Lukács often continues to judge many works of art on the basis of their author's theories and dulls his sensitivity to the possibility that the work may contradict theoretic intent; it is certainly not sufficient to cite Flaubert's conversation with Maupassant to criticize Madame Bovary (the novel lacks "typicality"); Zola's Germinal remains, with or without the theory of naturalism, one of the great works of world literature. It is a sad sight to watch Lukács dress down the humanist Zola, the arch-republican, socialist, defender of Dreyfus, friend of the workingman. Zola was unable to create a single living character, Lukács disparagingly remarks, and it does not occur to him that Zola's Mère Maheu (in Germinal) might have more in common as an emblematic figure of stubborn life with Brecht's Mother Courage than his robust theory would ever suspect.

It is revealing that Lukács always takes great pains to elucidate Plato's ambivalent attitude toward the arts; it is part of his self-analysis. Lukács is at his best when he speaks about Scott, Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy in their context of social history; in other spheres of art, he is blinded by his ideological assumptions, decrees entire worlds of the imagination out of existence, and substantially misrepresents others; his is a sophisticated perception tuned to the massive narrative revealing historical developments rather than to the inaudible connotations of the text. There can be little doubt that Lukács is followed more in the western part of the world than in the country of his birth…. Because of his wide horizon, firm value judgments, and political passion, Lukács (if one chooses to disregard the darker side of his genius) proves to be an ally of stature and importance. It may be his hidden tragedy that the younger generation in the Communist countries continues to turn away from him…. (pp. 226-27)

Peter Demetz, "Georg Lukács As a Theoretician of Literature," in his Marx, Engels, and the Poets: Origins of Marxist Literary Criticism, translated by Jeffrey L. Sammons (reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press; copyright © 1967 by The University of Chicago), University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 199-227.