Let us be honest: when we hear the word "realism", many of us think it simply means "things that look like real life". But if we look a little deeper, the story becomes more interesting. A long standing question in literary circles is this: is realism nothing more than a pleasant middle ground between the two great poles of classicism and romanticism? Or is it an independent pole in its own right, with no need for the other two?

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Let us first refresh our memory. Classicism (from Greece and Rome to the Neoclassicism of the 17th century) believed in reason, order, rules and an "idealised nature". Its heroes were noble and grand, and they were not supposed to sneeze on stage without Aristotle's permission. Romanticism, however, arrived in the late 18th century and said: "To hell with these rules! Feeling, imagination, the rebellious individual and wild nature are what matter." After these two intellectual storms came realism, which said: "Gentlemen, both of you are exaggerating. I want to show ordinary people's lives as they really are: not dressed up in classical makeup, not wearing romantic masks."

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Now to the main point: does this "as it really is" mean a combination of the two? Or is it a separate species?

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The First Theory: Realism as a Synthesis (The Hegelian Third Way)

A group of critics, especially Georg Lukács (the Hungarian Marxist philosopher), using Hegel's famous dialectic, argue as follows:

• Thesis: Classicism – objectivity, society, rules.

• Antithesis: Romanticism – subjectivity, the individual, emotions.

• Synthesis: Realism – which absorbs elements of both and raises them to a higher level.

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In his book The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, Lukács says that the realism of Balzac or Tolstoy achieves something that neither classicism nor romanticism could: on the one hand, it shows the individual within the complex web of social relations (like a classical sociologist), and on the other hand, it takes seriously the emotions, inner contradictions and freedom of choice of the individual (like a desperate romantic). This is what he calls a "synthesis" – not a simple average, but a creative combination that becomes something new.

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A simple example: In Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, you see both the detailed reality of Russian aristocratic life (inheritance, divorce, gossip, land management – classical elements of social precision) and the emotional storm of Anna, obsessive love, guilt and a romantic death. Tolstoy blends these two so skilfully that you can no longer draw a line between them. From this perspective, realism is the Silk Road connecting the two poles.

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The Second Theory: Realism as a Completely Independent Style

On the other side, names such as René Wellek, Austin Warren (in Theory of Literature) and Roman Jakobson (the Russian structuralist) say: "Wait, this dialectical game is attractive, but you are oversimplifying things."

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Their reasons:

1. Realism has a fundamental disagreement with classicism: Classicism still believed in "selecting the beautiful and ideal parts of nature" (like a painter taking a foot from one model and a hand from another). But realism says that even ugliness, vulgar details and seemingly trivial particulars must be included. Balzac describes a trader's pimple with the same precision that Michelangelo gives to David's muscles. This is different from the reason driven objectivity of classicism.

2. Realism shares some ground with romanticism, but their fundamental intentions differ: Both pay attention to the ordinary individual, but romanticism transforms that individual into an exceptional hero (like Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, who, though poor, is a superhuman). Realism says: "No, the simple waiter or the ordinary worker, without any halo, is worth narrating." Flaubert, in Madame Bovary, creates an epic out of a bored, middle class woman as if she were the Iliad – but this epic contains no giants or dragons.

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Roman Jakobson proposed an intriguing linguistic distinction: romanticism is based on metaphor (substitution, simile, identifying two unlike things), while realism is based on metonymy (contiguity, connected details, cause and effect relationships). For example:

• Romantic metaphor: "My heart rained like a spring cloud" (a semantic, distant connection).

• Realist metonymy: "Smoke rose from the factory, so the workers are at work, so lunchtime is near" (a chain of tangible contiguities).

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According to Jakobson, these are two completely different modes of language function, and one cannot be seen as a combination of the other.

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So Which One Is It?

The truth is that neither theory is entirely wrong nor entirely right. It depends on the angle from which you look.

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• From the historical perspective of stylistic evolution: Realism emerged precisely as a reaction to the excesses of romanticism, but it unconsciously revived some classical values (such as order, reason, objectivity). Lukács makes a beautiful point: "Realism is the point where the individual and society are no longer at war with each other, but their dialectical tension gives birth to a new artistic form." This leans toward "synthesis".

• From the perspective of an independent aesthetic system: Realism has its own specific rules (faithful representation, rejection of idealisation, use of detail as a narrative engine) that did not exist in this form in either of the previous two styles. Wellek and Warren say: "When Flaubert spends half a page describing the shape of Charles Bovary's hat, he is neither a classicist (because the hat is not beautiful or ideal) nor a romantic (because no poetic emotion emerges from it). He is simply a realist." This leans toward "independence".

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A Final Word

It seems that the best way forward is to say that realism in practice is often an "active synthesis", but in theory it is an "independent style". That is, when you read Tolstoy's War and Peace, Flaubert's Madame Bovary or Dickens's Great Expectations, you feel that the author has borrowed something from both worlds (classical order and romantic feeling), but has blended them so skilfully that the final product resembles neither. Yet if you ask a literary critic "What is the object of realism?", they will answer: "Everyday social reality, without a veil." And this definition is identical to neither of the two definitions of classicism (idealised reality) nor romanticism (emotional reality). As a French proverb (from the people who popularised realism) puts it: "The world as it is, not as it should be, nor as we wish it were." Realism may be the only style in which the power of art lies not in idealisation, but in the courage to see reality plainly.