*Online Etymology Dictionary
From: Invătământ, Cercetare, Creatie Vol. 8 No. 1 – 2022, The laboratory theater and the man-actor ideal, by Anca-Daniela MIHUT, Profesor univ.dr. habil. of the „Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy, Cluj-Napoca:
“…it is appropriate to recall the fact that two inaccuracies are linked to that famous phrase – “tranche de vie” -, attributed to the naturalistic representation of real life. First of all, although attributed to the director André Antoine (1858-1943), the phrase actually belongs to the French playwright Jean Jullien (1854-1919). On the other hand, taken over by André Antoine, it is often reproduced incompletely. This is because André Antoine is not only saying that “theater is a slice of life”, but that “theater is a slice of life staged with art”. This second part of the definition – “staged with art” – is particularly important, because it contains the essence of the process of stage interpretation. Similarly to Stanislavski’s formula, it indicates that the interpretation is not limited to mere imitation. The interpretation involves filtering and elaborating the contents of a play through the psycho-emotional processes of the actor and with the help of the acting techniques used by them. On the other hand, this “staging with art” helps us to understand that naturalistic aesthetics, often viewed as very critical and reductive, did not reduce the stage representation to the mere photographic imitation of reality…”
From: Barrish P. Realism and naturalism. In: McWhirter D, ed. Henry James in Context. Literature in Context. Cambridge University Press; 2010:292-300:
“Summary
More consistently and more explicitly than any of his contemporaries, American or European, Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) recognized literary realism as the attempt not to reproduce the real directly, but rather to create an impression of it – to evoke for readers the ‘sense’, the ‘air’, ‘the odour’, the ‘strange, irregular rhythm’ of reality (LC-1, 52–3, 58). Realism, for James, was an art like any other. As such, it was never separable from imagination and, just as important, from matters of style, method and form. Writing in 1914 about ‘the younger generation’ of modern novelists, James insisted that, no matter how apparently unshaped by conventional ideas of narrative the so-called ‘slice of life’ offered by the ‘new novel’ might be, that slice could not be conceived outside the artist’s ‘question of where and how to cut it’. Where and how to cut is ‘the office of method, the idea of choice and comparison’. Indeed, ‘there can be no such thing as an amorphous slice’ of life because a slice is ‘born of naught else but measured excision . . . It has been tainted from too far back with the hard liability to form, and thus carries in its very breast the hapless contradiction of its sturdy claim to have none’ (LC-1, 144–5)…”
“…Realism seeks to present life as it is, while naturalism endeavours to dissect life’s complexities with scientific rigour… Naturalism is often said to be driven by Darwinism and its view of humans as behavioural creatures shaped by heredity and environment…” (Wikipedia)
This recollection is reprinted in Thomas Glick, What about Darwin? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2010:
“The ‘young Yankee’ and the Darwin family
Peter Lucas
Henry James’s youthful visit to Down House on the first stage of his first (adult) European tour marked the beginning of an enduring link with the Darwin family. His own brief reference to the visit is enriched by the rare glimpse of the aspiring novelist seen through the eyes of another acute observer, Darwin’s daughter Henrietta. ‘This autumn was one of unusual sociability’, she wrote of 1868, ‘we also had much intercourse with Charles [Eliot] Norton, of Cambridge, Mass., and his family, who were staying for some time at Keston Rectory, a neighbouring parish to Down. A warm friendship sprang up between the two families, and this intimacy led to my brother William’s marriage many years later to Mrs Norton’s sister, Sara Sedgwick’ (Litchfield 1915 II: 191-192). In the following spring her mother’s diary recorded for 27 March 1869, ‘Mrs C Norton & Mr James’ (CUL-DAR242.33). On the following day, ‘Easter Sunday’, Henrietta gave an account of the occasion to her brother George:
We meanwhile had a lunz party – Mrs Charles Norton asked leave to bring a young Yankee who had a great wish to have a sight of Father & hear him emit one roar – They were very modest & said half an hour would amply serve their purpose – but of course we said come to lunz – The Yank was a v. nice man – m. easier & m. talkable than most Englishers – perf at his ease & straightforward – He is quite young & has already crossed the Atlantic 7 times but he says that is nothing’ (CUL-DAR245:292; a transcription in CUL-DAR251:336).”
Maev Kennedy wrote for The Guardian of 6 Apr 2018:
“On 23 September 1832 a young naturalist, thousands of miles from home and frequently seasick and homesick, found the fossil of an enormous skull embedded in soft rock. It took Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) three hours to chip it out of the cliff face at Punta Alta in Argentina, and hours more to lug it back to base. He arrived with it long after dark at the ship which became the most famous in the history of natural science, the Beagle.
Darwin was only 24, a college dropout from his medical degree who had done a crash course in geology in order to join the voyage. He was wild with excitement about the chase, writing in a letter to a friend: “I have just got scent of some fossil bones of a Mammoth, what they may be I do not know, but if gold or galloping will get them, they shall be mine”.
Darwin’s treasures, brought on board after every shore trip to the exasperation of the crew of the small cramped ship, and sent back to England whenever he came upon a vessel making the return journey, were all meticulously recorded in his journals, and labelled according to a four-colour system he devised himself using printed labels he had brought from England.
His fossils, much less famous now in the history of how he came to publish his theory of evolution by natural selection than his observations of wildlife, are among the treasures of the Natural History Museum in London…
…As they arrived back in England, Darwin’s fossils were already becoming famous and making his reputation, when he still had years of the voyage ahead. One batch contained a missing section of a skeleton which had already been sent back by another collector – the creature whose skull Darwin had chipped out of the cliff face. They were the remains of Megatherium, a ground dwelling relative of modern tree dwelling sloths – but Megatherium was the size of a car, the largest and heaviest land mammal ever to live in South America. After the fossils were displayed at a science event in London, one friend wrote to Darwin: “From sending home the much desired bones of Megatherium your name is likely to be immortalised.” In fact, Megatherium and its relationship to modern animals was one of the observations which would set Darwin’s mind on the course which would make his name immortal, and the publication decades later of his great book…
…Most came to (the British Museum (Natural History)) after the second world war from the Royal College of Surgeons – which in the 19th century had the best comparative anatomy collection, while Darwin was scathing about the British Museum’s displays of its natural history specimens. The huge skull remains with the RCS, and others went to Harvard in the 19th century with a Swiss scientist, a correspondent of Darwin’s. The missing slice of the skull which Darwin chipped out of the Argentinian cliff in 1832 turned up in his own home, Down House, now a museum run by English Heritage….”
Julia Upton 