Nothing is more false that the conventional opposition between “idealism” and “REALISM”, which insinuates in general that the “ideal” is not “real”, and inversely; as if an ideal situated outside reality had the smallest value, and as if reality were always situated on a lower level than what may be called an “ideal”. Anyone who holds this view is thinking in a quantitative and not in a qualitative mode. The current meaning of the terms is here in view, and not their specifically philosophical signification. (GTUFS: LightAW, The Ancient Worlds in Perspective)
Literary “REALISM” is truly subversive because it aims at reducing reality to the vilest contingencies of nature or chance, instead of leading it back to its archetypes and consequently to the divine intentions, in short, to the essential which any normal man should perceive without difficulty, and which any man perceives notably in love, or in connection with such phenomena as provoke admiration. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, To Have a Center)