diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487-8.txt | 6177 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 141961 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 154849 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487-h/38487-h.htm | 7401 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487-h/images/logo.jpg | bin | 0 -> 6850 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487.txt | 6177 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 38487.zip | bin | 0 -> 141910 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
10 files changed, 19771 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/38487-8.txt b/38487-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddb5e01 --- /dev/null +++ b/38487-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6177 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Critical Game + + +Author: John Albert Macy + + + +Release Date: January 3, 2012 [eBook #38487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/criticalgame00macy + + + + + +THE CRITICAL GAME + +by + +JOHN MACY + +Author of "The Spirit of American Literature," etc. + + + + + + + +Boni and Liveright +Publishers New York + +Copyright, 1922, by +Boni and Liveright, Inc. + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + + +To + +ROGER IRVING LEE + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Page + +The Critical Game 11 + +Dante in English 31 + +Dante's Political Philosophy 43 + +Nietzsche 55 + +Tolstoy 65 + +Maeterlinck's Essays 95 + +Joseph Conrad 105 + +A Conrad Miscellany 123 + +Strindberg 135 + +Tagore 145 + +Remy de Gourmont 153 + +Swift's Relations with Women 163 + +William James, Man of Letters 175 + +Biographies of Poe 193 + +Biographies of Whitman 203 + +George E. Woodberry 215 + +Abraham Cahan 227 + +Thomas Hardy 237 + +George Borrow 247 + +Shelley 259 + +H. G. Wells and Utopia 269 + +John Masefield 279 + +Shakespeare and the Scribes 289 + +George Moore and Other Irish Writers 305 + +James Joyce 317 + +D. H. Lawrence 325 + + + + +THE CRITICAL GAME + + +Criticism is one form of the game of writing. It differs from other +forms only as whist differs from poker and as tennis differs from +golf. The motives are the same, the exercise of the player's brain and +muscles, and the entertainment of the spectators, from whom, if the +player be successful, he derives profit, livelihood, applause, and +fame. The function of criticism at the present time, and at all times, +is the function of all literature, to be wise, witty, eloquent, +instructive, humourous, original, graceful, beautiful, provocative, +irritating, persuasive. That is, it must possess some of the many +merits that can be found in any type of literature; it must in some +way be good writing. There is no other sound principle to be +discovered in the treatises on the art of criticism or in fine +examples of the art. Whether Charles Lamb writes about Shakespeare or +Christ's Hospital or ears is of relatively slight importance compared +with the question whether in one essay or another Lamb is at one of +his incomparable best moments of inspiration. + +Remy de Gourmont says, apropos Brunetière's views of Renan: + + Contre l'opinion commune, la critique est peut-être le plus + subjectif de tous les genres littéraires; c'est une confession + perpétuelle; en croyant analyser les oeuvres d'autrui, c'est + soi-même que l'on dévoile et que l'on expose au public ... voulant + expliquer et contredire Renan, M. Brunetière s'est une fois de + plus confessé publiquement. + +That is true, except that it may be doubted whether one type of +literature is more subjective than another, since all types are +subjective. Even a work that belongs, according to De Quincey's +definition, to the literature of information as distinguished from the +literature of power, even an article in an encyclopædia, an article, +say, on Patagonia, has a man behind it; it cannot be quite objective +and impersonal. + +Criticism should not be set off too sharply from other forms of +literary expression. It has no special rights, privileges, and +authority; and at the same time it has no special disabilities that +consign it to a secondary place in the divisions of literature. In any +unit of art, a sonnet or an epic, a short story or a novel, a little +review or a history of æsthetics, a man is trying to say something. +And the value of what he says must, of course, depend partly on the +essential interest of his subject; but it depends to a greater extent +on the skill with which he puts words together, creates interest in +himself. Arnold's essay on Keats is less Keats than Arnold. It could +not have been if Keats had not existed. But the beauty of that +sequence of words, that essay in criticism, is due to the genius of +Arnold. Francis Thompson on Shelley adds no cubit to the stature of +Shelley, but Thompson's interpretation is a marvellous piece of poetic +prose which cannot be deducted without enormous loss from the works of +Thompson, from English criticism. We read Pater on Coleridge, not for +Coleridge but for Pater, and we read Coleridge for Coleridge, not for +Shakespeare. Thackeray's lecture on Swift, which is full of animosity +and miscomprehension, is a well-written revelation of Thackeray. +Trollope's book on Thackeray, which is full of friendship and +admiration, is an ill-written revelation of Trollope. + +Some men of great ability, like Trollope, who have written good books +themselves, lack the faculty, whatever it may be, of writing in an +entertaining fashion about the books of other men. Swinburne is a +striking example. His knowledge of literature was immense, and he had +the enthusiasms and contempts that make the critical impulse; but +except when the poet in him seized the pen and made a passage of +lyrical prose, his excursions into criticism are bewildering and +difficult to read. His sonnets on Dickens, Lamb, and the Elizabethans +are worth more than all his prose. On the other hand, Lamb, who wrote +like an angel about the Elizabethan dramatists, failed completely as a +dramatist. + +Every man who plays with literature at all must be ambitious to +succeed in some form of art that may be called "creative," as distinct +from critical--a distinction which, since Arnold taught us our lesson, +we know does not exist. The reason for this ambition is plain enough. +A novel or a play reaches a wider audience than a volume of essays, +however admirable; it has a more obvious claim to originality, and it +brings the author a greater degree of practical satisfaction. A few +doubly or trebly gifted men, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe, Arnold, Pater, +Henley, Stevenson, Henry James, could do first-rate work in more than +one _genre_, including criticism. And a good case could be made out to +prove that a man who knows how to handle words in many ways is on the +whole the best qualified to comment on the art of handling words. +However that may be, it is certain that in English literature a critic +who is only a critic seldom wins a conspicuous position. Even Johnson +was something more than a critic, and he was, with all due respect, +somewhat less than a good one. And Hazlitt, who was a good one, wrote +on many subjects besides books and art. + +Because so many little people went into the business of reviewing and +presumed to sit in judgment on their betters, criticism early got a +bad name in English literature, and not all the dignified work of +Arnold and others has yet succeeded in restoring the reputation of the +word or the art. Criticism came to mean censure, a connotation which +persists in current speech. The degeneration had already taken place +in Dryden's time, and he protested that "they wholly mistake the +nature of criticism who think that its business is principally to find +fault." Authors of imaginative works became resentful and felt that +the critic was an enemy, a nasty and incompetent enemy, as indeed he +often was. An interesting compilation could be made--and probably +Saintsbury or somebody else has done it--of the retorts and +counter-attacks made by writers of other things than criticism against +the whole critical crew. Here are a few examples: + +Gentle Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey" amusingly defends her +heroine's habit of reading novels: + + I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common + with novel writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, + the very performances to the number of which they are themselves + adding ... if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the + heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and + regard?... Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such + effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to + talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now + groans. + +That sounds as if Miss Austen's pride in her craft had been wounded. I +know of no record that anybody ever spoke ill of her while she was +living. + +Scott, whose generous soul was hurt by the harsh squabbles of the +Scottish reviewers, took a shot at the tribe in the letter which +appears in the introductory note to "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in +the Cambridge edition: + + As to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much + attention to them for, as they do not understand what I call + poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many + of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, + unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for _menders_ of them, + and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. + +The idea that the critic is a secondary fellow who cannot make +first-hand literature goes back to Dryden, the champion and exemplar +of sound criticism, who wrote in "The Conquest of Granada": + + They who write ill and they who ne'er durst write + Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite. + +Landor repeats the idea in a "Conversation" between Southey and +Porson, in which Porson says: "Those who have failed as writers turn +reviewers." + +Writers and other artists are usually sensitive and often vain. Some +have taken critics too seriously, have given them too much importance +while pretending to despise them, and have allowed themselves to be +stung instead of brushing the flies off. Thanks to Shelley, the idea +became current that the "viperous murderer," the critic, killed Keats. +It was not so. Keats died of tuberculosis. Though he was, like all +poets, delicately organized, he was an unusually sane and self-reliant +man, quite sure of the value of his work. Moreover, in a day when +rough criticism was the fashion, the critics were, though stupid, not +especially rough on Keats. Shelley's "_J'accuse_" is flaming poetry, +but--it is not good criticism. Byron had the right idea. With his +superior wit and vigour he gave the reviewers ten blows for one and +used his opponents as the occasion of a delightful exhibition of +boxing. The reviewers were knocked out in the second round. "English +Bards and Scottish Reviewers" is still in the ring, as I have +pleasantly discovered by re-reading it. + +The notion that the critic will, or can, do damage to the artist +persisted long after Shelley and is perhaps still believed. In 1876, +Sidney Lanier, a man of good sense and great bravery, whom the flies, +or the "vipers," had but lightly nipped, wrote in a letter to his +father: + + What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to + respect--that criticism which crucified Jesus, stoned Stephen, + hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured + Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, drove Dante into a hell of + exile, made Shakespeare write the sonnet, "When in disgrace of + fortune and men's eyes," gave Milton £5 for "Paradise Lost," kept + Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, + reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on + Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so + many other impious follies and stupidities? + +Lanier's charges are not all quite true. He mixed up the sins of +criticism with the sins of politics, economics, and other dreadful +affairs. But his outburst is a good illustration of the quarrel +between the "author" and the "critic." Especially when the author has +for the moment lost his sense of humour. + +The best treatment of the critic by the author, as also, perhaps, of +the author by the critic, is humourous. In "One of Our Conquerors," +Meredith lays out the art critics: + + He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics; who + are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are + fatal. + +Washington Irving, in a delightful little paper called "Desultory +Thoughts on Criticism," quietly places the reviewer in the low seat +where he belongs. I shall not quote from the essay, but merely refer +the reader to it and especially to the introductory quotation from +Buckingham's "Rehearsal," in which the critic is set in a still lower +seat. + +Finally--for these quotations--Dr. Holmes, who lived all his life +surrounded by praise and comfort, puts his finger gently on the +parasitism of the critic. The passage is in "The Poet at the Breakfast +Table": + + Our _epizoic_ literature is becoming so extensive that nobody is + safe from its _ad infinitum_ progeny. A man writes a book of + criticisms. A _Quarterly Review_ criticises the critic. A _Monthly + Magazine_ takes up the critic's critic. A _Weekly Journal_ + criticizes the critic of the critic's critic, and a daily paper + favours us with some critical remarks on the performance of the + writer in the _Weekly_, who has criticised the critical notice in + the _Monthly_ of the critical essay in the _Quarterly_ on the + critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea + "has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself + cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. + +To what extent is the critic parasitic? To this extent: he is dealing +with ideas already expressed, with cooked and predigested food. It is +easier for any mind to think of something to say about an idea that +has already gone through cerebral processes than it is to take the raw +material of life and make something. You may sit on a bench in the +park and watch the people and never, for the life of you, conceive a +good story. Then O. Henry comes along and makes twenty stories. After +he has done it, you can write something very brilliant about what O. +Henry saw from the same bench that you sat on. And you can make neat +remarks about the resemblances and differences between O. Henry, +Boccaccio, and H. C. Bunner. That may be worth doing, if your remarks +are really neat. For then you may be readable. + +And that is the function of the critic, to be readable, to make +literature of a sort. The critic is always playing his own game, +selfish, egotistical, expressive of his own will, and no more +disinterested than was Arnold himself when he took his pen in hand to +slay a Philistine or to sign a contract with his manager for a lecture +tour in America. In playing his own game the critic may help the game +of another author by crying him up and advertising him. But a hundred +critics, clamouring in the fatal unanimity at which Meredith pokes +fun, cannot make the fortunes of a book or influence at the creative +source the work of a man sufficiently strong and original to be worth +reading. And the same hundred critics with lofty hatred of bad writing +cannot prevent bad books from being written and read. George Eliot +made it a rule not to read criticisms of her work because she found it +necessary to be preserved "from that discouragement as an artist which +ill-judged praise no less than ill-judged blame tends to produce in +me." The implication that criticism, favorable or unfavorable, is +ill-judged gives us an addition to our notes on what authors think of +critics. I doubt whether, if that strong-minded woman had read +everything that was written about her before and after her death, she +would have altered a single sentence. Did Hardy stop writing novels +because of the ignorant attacks on "Jude"? I would not accept without +question Hardy's own word for it. I suspect that it was his own inward +impulse, not determined by the opinions of the other people, that +turned his energy to that stupendous epic, "The Dynasts." + +To what extent can the critic play the game of the reader, be guide +and teacher, maintain standards, elevate taste, make the best ideas +prevail? Not to a very great extent. Criticism, good or bad, is read +only by the sophisticated, by people whose tastes are formed and who +can take care of themselves in matters literary and intellectual. Who +that had not already looked into Shakespeare and Plato ever heard of +Pater? The journals that print intelligent articles about literature +and art have a small circulation; they are missionaries to the +converted; their controversial discussions of general principles or of +the merits of an individual are only family feuds. Critics play with +each other in a professional game. The few amateurs who sit as +spectators are a select minority who have seen the game before and +who, though not in the professional class, are instructed, cultivated, +have some knowledge of the plays. The critical game is enjoyed by +those who are themselves critical and least in need of enlightenment. + +Nevertheless, it is a great game--when it is played well. + +The author of a book on golf illustrates it with the stances and +swings of better players than himself; he makes an anthology. A +collection of essays by various authors would illustrate the game +better than the plays of a single critic, a much more competent critic +than I. I do not pretend that the essays in this book are first-rate +specimens of how the strokes should be made. But even a small fellow +may flatter himself that he has an individual way of looking at things +which may give unity of interest to a collection of papers. At any +rate he has a right to exhibit his methods, and nobody is obliged to +watch him or play with him. + +Most of these papers have been published in reviews and magazines, +_The Freeman_, _The Dial_, _The New Republic_, the _Boston Herald_, +the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Literary Review_ of the _New York Evening +Post_, the _New York Tribune_. + +The essay on Joseph Conrad appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in +1906. I am proud only of the date. Sixteen years ago Conrad was not +universally recognized; some of his best work had not been done; and +many finer essays than mine had not yet been written. If I was not the +first American critic to pursue that mysterious mariner across +enchanted seas, at least I can swear before the critical court of +admiralty that the waters were not crowded with little craft like +mine. It is a pleasure to read again a few letters which hail me for +hailing Conrad and which make me believe that I did introduce the +master to a few readers. If so, I have not lived in vain. + +But my pride is somewhat reduced by the consideration that any reader +intelligent enough to look at a literary essay in the _Atlantic +Monthly_ must sooner or later have discovered Conrad for himself +without the assistance of a critic. However, I hug with amusement the +memory of a Harvard professor who threw up his hands and said: "My +God! I had no idea there was a man living who could write like that!" +To the professorial mind in those days English literature stopped +officially with the death of Browning or, at the latest, with the +deaths of Stevenson and Pater. The essay itself is a little +professorial, enfeebled by a sort of Boston-Harvard timidity, utterly +failing to express the wild joy which I felt. The second paper on +Conrad, written fifteen years later, is not so hesitant. It is +interesting to look again at the bibliographical footnote to the first +essay and see how Conrad's few books were scattered among the +publishers. I could not find "An Outcast of the Islands" except in the +Tauchnitz edition. Today his work is collected. There is a handsome +subscription edition. And Mr. Doubleday tells me that a new book by +Conrad has an assured immediate sale of twenty to thirty thousand. +Perhaps, after all, we who cheered long ago when it was not the +fashion to cheer have justified our miserable existence as critics. + +The essay on Tolstoy was written in the two months immediately after +his death. Mr. Ellery Sedgwick asked me to write it for the _Atlantic +Monthly_ and then rejected it. It was published in the _New York +Call_. I bear no bitter grudge against Mr. Sedgwick for returning an +article that he had ordered. But I am convinced, as I read the +article over again, that he is an incompetent critic of criticism. +Sometimes editors and publishers, whose business it is to provide the +arena and assemble the spectators, play their part of the game +stupidly. But on the whole I think they are more than generous to +second-rate performers. If I owned a magazine I should be very +grudging of the space I gave to literary chatter--except my own. + +A critical friend--we critics suffer from each other--admonishes me +that in the foregoing remarks I have treated an important art in a +flippant manner. Certainly I am not so foolish as to take my essays +very seriously, and I believe that much modern criticism is too +solemn, that if we fooled with literature in a lighter spirit we +should enjoy it more and be happier. + +Charles Lamb was not afraid to kick up his heels, and yet nobody will +accuse him of being a trivial clown. Oscar Wilde was a man of wit, +sometimes a buffoon, and he could puncture a stupid piece of work with +ridicule. But the prevailing tone of his best essays is one of dignity +and sobriety. + +Good criticism is as important as anything that man can put on paper. +Moreover, certain subjects must be treated by the critic with the +utmost gravity. It would be owlishly humourless, uncritical, not to +take Tolstoy seriously. Essays about the greater men of genius and the +deeper problems of art must be substantial, solid, or they are +inappropriate, out of key. + +But it is possible to be sane and erudite without being leaden, to +approach a noble subject earnestly without striking an attitude of +priestly austerity. Some of our sincerest contemporaries, both the +academic and the rebellious, seem to me to worry about literature, as +if it were an invalid that needed nursing or a dead man about whom the +last word must be said before next Thursday afternoon. They do not get +enough fun out of it. They forget that Pater, who was not a mad wag +and not a dilettante, could sometimes see the gaiety of things and was +willing to be inconclusive. + +Criticism is important. The best contemporaneous English criticism is +not good enough. And even in France, where we have been taught to look +for sound critics, Flaubert thought as late as 1869 that criticism was +still in its infancy. He wrote to George Sand: "You speak of criticism +in your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I +think, on the contrary, that it is, at most only dawning.... When will +they (critics) be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where do +you know a criticism? Who is there who is anxious about the work in +itself, in an intense way?... The _unconscious_ poetic expression? +Where it comes from? its composition, its style? The point of view of +the author? Never. That criticism would require great imagination and +great sympathy." To which George Sand replied with good sense: "The +artist is too much occupied with his own work to forget himself in +estimating that of others." + +Since then France has had a generation of critics, some of whom were +artists. If Hennequin, who thought he was a scientific critic, was not +an artist, if De Gourmont, who smiled wisely at the whole game, was +not an artist, then the word means nothing. In England and America +criticism has not made much progress since Pater died. I know that I +am punctuating literature in the manner of the academic fogies. But +one of the humours of this sport is that you sometimes do things which +are fouls when your opponent is guilty of them. + +I come back gladly to the analogy of the game. We have, I believe, +made progress in one direction. In the direction of fair play. We +cannot write like Hazlitt, but we will not hit below the belt as he +did sometimes. We cannot write like Arnold, and his combination of +literary charm and scholarship makes us feel desperately small, but in +our descent from his altitude we have freed ourselves from his major +vice, his dogmatic snobbery, his bigoted liberalism. The +pulpit-pounder still thrives in religion and politics; in criticism he +is becoming obsolete. I am sure, or at least hopeful, that this is +true in America. I think I see a slight but appreciable improvement in +candour, simplicity, generosity, geniality, and fairness in attack. On +the whole we are a little more sportsmanlike than some of our elders. +That is all that I claim for us. Our real consolation is that the +ancient and honorable game is still young, still to be played. + + + + +DANTE IN ENGLISH + + +I am tempted to call the following remarks "Reading Dante for Fun." +The most austere of poets should not be treated with levity. But, +after all, poetry, even poetry of profound ethical and religious +import, is to be enjoyed. And the simple point that I wish to make, as +a mere reader with but a stumbling knowledge of Italian and almost no +knowledge of the vast library of Dante scholarship, is that Dante is +accessible in English. His book of magic is at least half open even to +one who must forever remain partly blind and deaf to the beauty of the +original. It is a great pleasure to read the convenient little volumes +of the Temple Classics with the Italian text on the left-hand page and +the English on the right, to read idly or study deeply, according to +mood and temperament. At any rate, let us not be overcome by the +solemnity of the occasion or discouraged by the difficulties, some of +which the commentators have cleared away and some of which they have +made more difficult. + +Dr. Toynbee[1] finds that since 1802 the _Commedia_ as a whole has +been translated into English about once every four years. And he +excludes from his record American translators and critics. Why did Dr. +Toynbee or the British Academy make this commemorative volume so +narrowly insular? English and American scholarship is one institution. +And American Dantists have done good work. Though it is the fashion to +scorn the Yankee bards and seers, Lowell's essay and the translations +by Longfellow, Norton, and Parsons are important in the history of +Dante in English, not British, literature. They had literary gifts, +they knew Italian, and they were able to appreciate a universal mind. +For all their provinciality their shades can afford to smile at their +young countryman, Mr. Mencken, who writes: "If I have to go to hell +for it, I must here set down my conviction that much of the 'Divine +Comedy' is piffle." Well, he ought to go to hell--to Dante's hell, +which is an entertaining and hospitable place. In the cold prose of +Norton or John Carlyle, where the melody is necessarily lost, there +may be some passages in which an alert modern reader cannot find great +interest, but the number of lines of "piffle" is exactly none. + + [1] Britain's Tribute To Dante in Literature and Art. A + Chronological Record of 540 Years. By Paget Toynbee. London: + Published for the British Academy, 1921. + +It is not to be expected that all men, even all literary men, will +respond to Dante. Horace Walpole called him "extravagant, absurd, +disgusting; in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam." This is amusing, +even refreshing, in view of the too pious devotion of some later +Englishmen. But the eighteenth century was not the time for English +appreciation of Dante, and Walpole, witty _prosateur_, was not the man +to enjoy him. Dante was known, of course, to Chaucer and to the +Elizabethans and Milton, and his influence on English poetry was +perhaps even greater than Dr. Toynbee's record makes evident. But it +is with the nineteenth century, which, _bien entendu_, was born +intellectually a few years before its numerical date, that Dante +becomes a power in English literature. He is, indeed, a part of the +revival of English romanticism. The translations of Boyd and Cary +appeared early in the century, and from then on Dante belonged to +English literature, as well acclimated as any other foreign classic. +The index of Dr. Toynbee's record contains the names of almost all the +important English poets from Scott to Francis Thompson. + +And it contains hundreds of other names, not perhaps of great +importance in literature, but important in this respect, that they +show the appeal of Dante to a great variety of minds, of minds not +mediæval, not Catholic, not Italian. Nobody can dip into him, however +superficially, without getting something. He has so much that +everybody can be happy, from the Pope to the most pagan young poet. +Though the true Dantist will insist that the greatest of poets must be +understood, or accepted, entire, like his own God and his own +universe, I propose that the anthological view of him is proper and +delightful. If he is so rich and structurally perfect that no side of +him can be neglected, then he is so rich and so strong that any side +of him can be neglected. You can sit under a tree on the side of a +mountain without comprehending the mountain, but deriving much +happiness from the tree, the altitude, and the view. + +The interpreters of Dante's stupendous unity are all true to Dante, in +that they try to find some complete explanation of him and will +tolerate no neglect of his least detail. Dante himself, for all his +mystery and multiple meanings, is quite explicit about the +indivisibility, the integrity, of his work. So that the episodic, +incomplete view of him, which I recommend to other casual readers, is +unphilosophic and amateurish. Let us concede that and at the same time +let us reserve the right to be cheerfully weary of systems where the +"benumbed conceiving soars." Ruskin speaks the indubitable truth: "The +central man of all the world, as representing the imaginative, moral, +and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante." But such +a genius is too awful to contemplate, and it is more comfortable to +keep this side idolatry. + +Moreover, the interpreters, seeking to comprehend Dante's vast +totality, do not discover complete unity among themselves. Mr. Walter +Arensberg[2] thinks that he has unlocked the mystery, and I think that +he has. But as I had a little to do with filing that key I will not +say how well I think it turns in the wards of the lock; I will leave +him to the mercies of other critics and merely note that six centuries +after Dante's death we have a novel interpretation. + + [2] The Crytography of Dante. By Walter Arensberg. New York: + Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. + +And then comes Professor Courtney Langdon[3] with another. One of his +ideas seems to me just, though debatable--namely, that any modern man +has the right to find anything in Dante that he can find, to derive +the sort of joy and wisdom that suit him, the reader, whether or not +Dante would recognize that reader's meaning. The poet exists for our +benefit and, like the Bible, does not forbid but justifies the +multitude of sects and individual expositors. That idea alone is worth +Professor Langdon's labor, and it will be interesting to see how he +develops it. Unfortunately, his translation is worse than useless. He +simply has not the gift of English verse. His own verses, prefixed to +the several canticles, are absurd doggerel; they remind one of +Longfellow's lovely sonnets (the best poems he ever wrote) only by +their position of naïve rivalry with the splendor that follows. And, +what is more strange, Professor Langdon writes abominable prose, such +assaults upon the ear as "verse's rhythm" and "Divine Comedy's last +part." If the poet exists for us, in English or Italian, one of the +things to learn from him is how to write. + + [3] The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text + with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary. + By Courtney Langdon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 3 + vols. + +The poet exists for us. That is an excellent idea. It is our privilege +to take what we enjoy and reject what we do not like or understand. I +cannot be interested in Dante's ethics, which interested him so +profoundly and is the bone of his thought. His "stern indignant +moral," as Carlyle called it, is for me no part of the beauty of the +"mystic song." I cannot regard without suspicion, even in a New +Englander, Norton's statement to Dr. Dinsmore that the quality of the +_Commedia_, other than its beauty, which attracted him to Dante was +"his powerful exposition of moral penalties and rewards." Other than +its beauty? What does that mean? If the qualities of the _Commedia_ +can be separated (Dante happened to believe that they can not be), let +us throw the ethics, the penalties, and rewards to the four winds. Let +us keep as much as we can grasp of the beauty of the episodes, the +images, the phrases, the structure, whatever gives delight. + +The beauty of the fifth canto of _Inferno_ does not depend on the +ethical fact that the carnal sinners are punished, but on the poetic +fact that their pathetic loves on earth are recalled and that their +punishment is vividly, physically dramatized. The tragic pity and +terror of it break through the baldest translation stripped of the +enchantment of the original verse. Many English poets have been +tempted to try to render that famous fifth canto. Mr. Arensberg has +made the best version that I have seen. His version is in the _terza +rima_, a difficult thing to manage in English, and he succeeds in +making a good English poem, a shade finer than a mere _tour de force_. +I doubt whether he or any other poet can so well translate the entire +_Commedia_ in the same form, though the attempt has been made. The +_terza rima_ has never been quite naturalized in our language. Even +such a master as Shelley can not turn it perfectly. We imported the +sonnet as easily as the apple and we made some French forms grow +thriftily in our hardy garden. The _terza rima_ remains artificial and +foreign, peculiarly Italian and more peculiarly Dante; he made it his +own and moved at ease in its exacting rigidities. He was in thought +and form a diabolical magician. + +In order to show the _terza rima_ in English and to suggest (not to +solve!) the problem of translation, let us look at three versions of +the last ten lines of the fifth canto of _Inferno_, the story of Paolo +and Francesca. Francesca is speaking and tells how she and her lover +read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere--romance within romance! +First, Norton's clear, deliberately uninspired prose: + + "When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed by such a + lover, this one, who never shall be divided from me, kissed my + mouth all trembling. Gallehaut was the book, and he wrote it. That + day we read no farther in it!" + + While the one spirit said this, the other was so weeping that + through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead + body falls. + +Then Longfellow in traditional blank verse (and it is good verse; he +knew his business): + + "When as we read of the much longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, + Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein." + And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + And fell, even as a dead body falls. + +Finally, Arensberg in _terza rima_: + + "When we had read how one so amorous + Had kissed the smile that he was longing for, + This one, who always must be by me thus, + + Kissed me upon the mouth, trembling all o'er; + Galeot the book, and he 'twas written by! + Upon that day in it we read no more." + + So sorely did the other spirit cry, + While the one spoke, that for the very dread + I swooned as if I were about to die, + And I fell down even as a man falls dead. + +Those versions, I submit, are all good; and I risked the tedium of +repeating the same idea of Dante in the English of three different +translators. Because my simple point is that Dante in English is +interesting--to anybody who cares for English literature. + + + + +DANTE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY + + +Dante's _De Monarchia_ is usually treated by the commentators as a +mere footnote to the _Commedia_; and this subordination is justifiable +because the poet in Dante overwhelms all other expressions of his +genius and also because the _Commedia_ contains much political +philosophy, some of which _De Monarchia_ elucidates. But _De +Monarchia_, considered by itself, is a work of great importance. Even +if by some unthinkable accident the _Commedia_ had been lost and _De +Monarchia_ had survived, it would remain a significant treatise on the +state and the papacy and would deserve to be regarded as we regard the +political writings of philosophers from Plato to Hobbes. To be sure, +the chief interest of the work for us lies in the fact that Dante +wrote it, and it would lose some of its value if it were isolated from +the rest of his thought; the amazing unity of his mind and the +coherence of his purpose make a piecemeal view of any part of him +essentially false. His vision of earth and heaven has a thousand +aspects but no fragments. Even the unfinished works, _Il Convivio_ and +_De Vulgari Eloquentia_, are not fragments but are rather to be read +as partial manifestations of a singular and consistent plan. + +_De Monarchia_ is a vision of earthly well-being. It is an argument, +prosaic and heavy in the English translations and very difficult in +the original, I should suppose, even to an excellent Latin scholar. +But the argument embodies a dream of the greatest of dreamers. The +first part sets forth the necessity of empire. Only under a single +world-governing monarch are possible the solidarity of mankind and the +fullest possible development of the human spirit. In unity man can +find peace and justice. Man is made in the image of God, and God is +one; wherefore man in imitation of God must make the secular world +conform to the universe and set up a unique earthly dominion. In the +nature of things empire is divinely ordained and this is further +proved by the fact that Christ willed to be born under the Emperor +Augustus. + +The second part seeks to show that the Roman empire was appointed by +God to rule the world. It was established by the aid of miracles, +which confirm it as especially created by the will of God. Christ died +under the empire; if the empire had not been the rightful temporal +authority, Christ would have been punished by the agent of an unjust +power, his suffering would have been unlawful and therefore the sin of +Adam would not have been duly expiated. Rome was born to command, +because it did, in point of fact, conquer the world, and also because +the histories of its many heroes and patriots show that the Roman +citizen loved right and justice. + +The third part is an argument for the separation of church and state, +which are independent authorities both deriving directly from God. +Many false arguments for the temporal power of the church are refuted. +Though the emperor, as a man, is the first son of the church and +should obey it like other Christians, yet as emperor he owes +allegiance only to God, whom he represents on earth in temporal +matters as the pope represents God in spiritual matters. The very +nature of the church, its essential spiritual function, forbids it the +possession of temporal power. + +Have we here, then, nothing but a defence of an empire that has been +dust these many centuries, and stale scholastic arguments for the +separation of church and state, a long settled question in theoretic +politics and practically settled in most countries? There is much more +than that in _De Monarchia_ even for the most confident modern +democrat, who may regard emperor and pope as twin tyrants and for whom +the word "mediæval" has derogatory connotations. It is true that the +empire under which Dante actually lived is dead as the empire of the +Caesars and that the empire of Dante's dream was never realized in the +workaday world. As a political pamphlet _De Monarchia_ is obsolete +without even the persistent contemporaneity of some eighteenth century +tracts. In a sense Dante's treatise died at birth. Bryce, who gives an +excellent summary of it in his "Holy Roman Empire," shows that this +plea for empire, conceived by the supreme mind of the age, was the +epitaph of the existing empire. It was, indeed, a swan-song, not of +the author, who was still to take us to Paradise and put his dream in +lovelier form, but of empire in the Catholic Christian sense of +"holy." The empire that persisted after the thirteenth century grew +further and further away not only from a poet's dream but from any +practical possibility of united political authority. The solidarity of +mankind was not to be achieved through Rome or Christ, and Dante was +not, as he thought, announcing a new era, but summing up a passing +era. + +But the truth of a dream inheres in the dream itself and is measured +only in a secondary way by the course of events. _De Monarchia_ has +for us at least the value of a pacifist tract, the noble core of which +is not obscured by the strangeness of some of the reasoning or by the +destruction of Dante's political milieu. Like some other pacifist +documents it is the work of an aggressive militant mind. Dante had +lived and suffered in a world continuously at war. The contesting +powers, great and small, were so complicated that the historian has +difficulty in keeping them clear. To the major quarrels between church +and state and the strife of the city-republics with one or the other +or both were added an internal warfare between economic classes and +feuds between castes and families, all hopelessly intricate. + +In this bloody confusion Dante had played the part not of closet +philosopher _au-dessus de la mêlée_, but of soldier and civil official. +And to the last he was temperamentally a fighter, though forced by +circumstances to drop the sword for the pen. He was not in the eyes of +his contemporaries what he has become for us, the supreme solitary +genius exiled by an ungrateful city, but was simply one of a thousand +members of a beaten party. He was not a pathetic, unappreciated poet +but a pertinacious partisan who happened to be on the losing side. He +knew war and misery and defeat. Yet his plea for peace is by no means +that of a weary belligerent; it is that of a bellicose champion of +certain principles. And so, though those principles do not appeal to us +and though the expression of them is laborious, even turgid, _De +Monarchia_ is still hot with conviction. + +The instrument of peace was the one form of government that Dante +knew, the empire. Even if his genius had taken the form of +vaticination (he was indeed, as it turned out, a poor prophet), he +naturally could not in his time have made himself familiar with +leagues of nations and Wellsian "world-states." He had to ride on a +horse, not in a motor-car. And he rode, as a worldly rider, to a fall. +The tragedy of the fall has in it a large element of dramatic irony +because he was so splendidly sure of his ideas at exactly the moment +when they were least secure. + +Dante's conception of an ideal empire had nothing in common with what +we now call imperialism, which is mere commercial conquest and can be +led by Kaiser or democratic prime minister with equally disastrous +results. Dante believed in an imperial headship for the good of all +humanity. The ruler of the world was to be the servant of the world, +not its master and exploiter; a supreme monarch was to be protected by +his lonely authority from the temptations that beset a weak man +clothed with limited and contentious authority; aloof from strife and +cupidity, having all and so being beyond pride and ambition, he could +be a disinterested and just administrator. + +The aim of empire is universal peace--Dante begins his argument almost +in the terms of Burke and with something like Burke's combination of +generosity and elaborate futility--peace, "the best of those things +that are ordained for our beatitude." For on peace depends the destiny +of mankind to realize the full power of the human mind in thought and +deed. Dante's world state is Utopia, compounded, as all Utopias must +be, of wisdom and utter impossibilities, of sublime faith and facts +half-understood. While he dreamed he did not believe himself a +dreamer, any more than did Shelley. He believed intensely in the +practical value of his vision, in its originality and its finality as +a solution of the problems of the political world. He says that +knowledge of monarchy has been shunned because it has no direct +relation to profit, and that he will be the first to bring it from +obscurity to light for the good of the world and for his own glory. +The humble servant and the arrogant doctor at the bedside of the +patient! It is one of the most consistent contradictions of proud +souls. The reformer has found a new and sure cure and cries "Eureka!" + +In spite of the practical failure of his dream, which in a sense +defeats him, I do not believe that Dante's pell-mell acceptance of all +stories about the greatness of Rome, with no apparent discrimination, +is proof that he did not know what he was about. He was making a +special plea and he pillaged history and legend to get material for +the purposes of his argument. He is a dialectician animated, like all +reformers, by unselfish motives, but willing to score a point if he +can. We may be fairly sure that Dante was not a credulous person with +a childish view of history, but a sophisticated controversialist +handling his evidence for effect. Though he mingles fact and fiction +and though his documentary resources were more limited than ours, yet +he knew perfectly what he was trying to do, and modern attempts to +gloss him in a patronizing and apologetic manner are generally +mistaken. + +There is a grim humour in the fate that overtakes the works of wise +men. The treatise which Dante believed would bring peace to a vexed +world became a matter of strife. Later Ghibellines used his argument, +unfairly, of course, to support the supremacy of the empire over the +church, and ecclesiastical authority retorted by condemning the book +and even threatening the repose of Dante's bones. A somewhat similar +quarrel arose over Hobbes's "Leviathan" three centuries later. Seeking +to unite all men, the political philosopher is attacked from both +sides, and if he lives he finds that he has poured oil not on troubled +waters but on a fire. + +Though _De Monarchia_ is much more than a footnote to the _Commedia_ +and is worth study for its own sake, yet the unity which it seeks in +the world is closely allied to the unity of Dante's celestial vision +by which he tried to lead mankind to God. Mankind refused to be cured +of its political pains by _De Monarchia_ and even ignored it in spite +of Dante's secure and growing fame (there was no English translation +until the late nineteenth century). But mankind also never accepted +and never will accept the supreme vision of the _Commedia_. It is a +beautiful poem enjoyed by the literary, and even in Italy it is +valued, quite properly, as a mere work of art. The world has never +paid much attention to Dante's declared purpose to bring mankind +through art to God. So that in one way of regarding him, which may +perhaps be his way, he failed in the _Commedia_ as he did in _De +Monarchia_. The world of thinking and acting men, whose salvation +Dante believed he could work by verse and prose, remains disunited and +contentious, weaponed with such bitterness of heart and methods of +destruction as the dreamer of _Inferno_ never dreamed. + + + + +NIETZSCHE + + +It is more than thirty years since Nietzsche's work was finished and +darkness fell upon that mighty intellect. In 1917, Mr. W. M. Salter, +who certainly knows the bibliography of Nietzsche, wrote: + + I can not make out that his influence is appreciable now--at least + in English-speaking countries.... He has, indeed given a phrase + and perhaps an idea or two to Mr. Bernard Shaw, a few scattering + scholars have got track of him (I know of but two or three in + America), the great newspaper and magazine-writing and reading + world has picked up a few of his phrases, which it does not + understand. + +The preface of Frau Foerster-Nietzsche's edition of her brother's +correspondence with Wagner is dated, Weimar, 1914, and the English +translation was published in 1921. Dr. Oscar Levy's preface to his +selection from the five volumes of Nietzsche's correspondence,[1] +published in Germany between the years 1900-1909, is dated August, +1921. + + [1] "Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche." Edited by Dr. + Oscar Levy. Authorized Translation by Anthony M. Ludovico. + New York: Doubleday Page & Co. + +So, although Nietzsche's works are now all, or nearly all, to be read +in English, he is not quite an old story which every literate child +should know. Professional students of philosophy seemed to have missed +him or to have tardily recognized him, and the mere casual reader of +philosophy may quietly dodge Mr. Mencken's bludgeon: "Only blockheads +to-day know nothing of them [Nietzsche's ideas] and only fools are +unshaken by them." That sort of aggressiveness on the part of a +champion of Nietzsche will not help the master's ideas to prevail; +though it may seem to be a disciple's repetition of Nietzsche's superb +arrogance, it is really not true to his spirit. For Nietzsche attacked +thoughts and thinkers, quarrelled with opponents who were somewhere +near his size, ignored the opinions of the brainless multitude, and +was content to wait for time and the slow-moving world to find him +out. + +Certainly he can not be jammed down our throat, and quite as certainly +his stimulating and cathartic doses can not be snatched from our lips +by moralistic prohibitionists. It is possible, of course, for a doctor +to take advantage of one's innocence and ignorance and put one to +sleep with drugs. That was my own experience. Dr. Paul Elmer More +stole up on me in the dark with a soporific little book, the first I +had ever read about Nietzsche. When I came to, the world was at war. A +wild German philosopher, who had been quoted by a brutal German +general named Bernhardi, was responsible for the violation of Belgian +women. This was manifestly absurd, but there was no time to +investigate and explain, even for one's private satisfaction, the +causes of this ridiculous misunderstanding not only of an individual +philosopher but of the relation of book-philosophy to appallingly +unphilosophic crimes. + +It is amazing to find that the absurdity persists, that it is +necessary for Dr. Levy to try to prove in 1921 that Nietzsche did not +incite the Germans to a war of conquest! Has not the hysteria +sufficiently subsided for wise men to quit wasting their energies in a +contest with spooks? It was part of Nietzsche's work to ridicule +ghosts and blow away myths, and that he should have become a myth +himself is an irony that he might have enjoyed. He gloried in being +misunderstood. The true philosopher has always been in lonely +opposition to the dominant ideals of his time. It is in a tone not of +resentment or complaint but of haughty satisfaction that he writes to +Georg Brandes, in the last year of his intellectual life: + + Your opinion of present-day Germans is more favourable than mine + ... all profound events escape them. Take, for example, my "Beyond + Good and Evil." What bewilderment it has caused them. I have not + heard of a single intelligent utterance about it, much less of an + intelligent sentiment. I believe that it has not dawned on the + most well-intentioned of my readers that here is the outcome of a + sane philosophic sensibility, and not a medley of a hundred + outworn paradoxes and heterodoxes. Not a soul has ever experienced + the same sort of thing that I have. I never meet anyone who has + been through a thousandth part of the same passionate struggle. + +Nietzsche's philosophic solitude accounts in part for the excellence +of his letters. In his struggles with the world, and his wilful +alienation from it, he clung passionately to the few who were allied +to him by the ties of blood, friendship, or intellectual sympathy. The +letters contain no philosophic ideas which he did not express again +and again in his professional writings. They do contain something +else, however, moods, emotions, pleasures and private difficulties, +intimacies which are never quite apart from the incessant battle of +thought yet belong to moments of comparative ease when the soldier is +off duty. This philosopher, whose work is so intensely personal, who +says that he wrote his books with his whole body and life, did not +completely express himself in his books. He poured his soul into them +and was honestly naked and unashamed. But for all his autobiographical +candor, his work is not a promiscuous confession. He labored over his +paragraphs like an artist, calculated their effect, and made them +personal only in so far as suited his philosophic purpose. There +remains a sensitive and reticent Nietzsche who revealed himself to his +friends alone. + +He was fortunate in his friends. When he writes in the preface of +"Human, All-Too-Human," that he has evolved an as yet non-existent +company of free spirits, because he needs them and because they are +some compensation for lack of friends, he is posing in a philosophic +attitude which is quite justified by his experience as a thinker and +writer but which is not quite true to the private history of Friedrich +Nietzsche. He never lacked friends, and his isolation was in great +measure self-imposed. The most distinguished friend he lost was +Wagner; the break came late in the older man's life, and it seems to +have been the younger man who disrupted the friendship. + +Even without Wagner, Nietzsche's correspondents are numerous and +varied, as many and of as many kinds as a wise man needs, if he +chooses to make the most of them. The lonely philosopher was not +neglected as man and brother. He preferred to flock by himself. His +ill health rather than the animosity of his countrymen drove him out +of Germany; and he was happiest, as close as he ever came to +happiness, when he concentrated his energy in his work. He makes a +philosophic virtue of necessity, affects to despise what he can not +have, laments his solitude and is proud of it. To his sister he writes: + + You can not think how lonely and out of it I always feel when I am + in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom + you call 'good,' and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who + is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster, but of + course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods.... Oh, this + infernal solitude! + +A few months later, when this aged philosopher is forty, he writes to +an old friend that all the people he loves belong to the past and +regard him with merely merciful indulgence. + + We see each other, we talk in order to avoid being silent--we + still write each other in order to avoid being silent. Truth, + however, glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it + well enough): 'Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!' + + That's what I have lived and fought for! + +The last sentence may be taken in two ways. It may mean that Nietzsche +strove for isolation, or it may be interpreted bitterly: "So _that's_ +what I get from my friends for all my labor and struggle!" Perhaps +both meanings are there. The letter ends: "Ah, dear friend, what an +absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much alone! So +'childless'! Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you." That sounds +like a not too human cry of hunger for affection. The man who prefers +demi-gods and is confident that he would be worthy of their +companionship is not immune from the pangs of ordinary mortals. + +Nietzsche had a self-critical knowledge of his own needs and nature, +and, so far as circumstances permitted, he followed the course that +pleased him. He sometimes groaned but he never whined. In a letter to +his sister, who had evidently suggested the possibility of marriage, +he says that he cheerfully accepts the disadvantages of independence. +The list of requirements that he lays down are enough to make us +congratulate the impossible she whom he wisely refrained from +marrying. "I know the women folk of half Europe," he writes, "and +wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed +a sort of gradual decline as the result." That is one of the +philosopher's amusing errors. He did not know women folk at all; the +most fatuous, almost the only fatuous, passages in his works and his +letters are those about the ladies, and his letters to ladies are the +declarations of a free spirit shying off from something "agreeable +though perhaps a trifle dangerous." + +Nietzsche is at his best, of course, when he writes to distinguished +men, the few who recognized his genius and made him glow in his cold +solitude. Nietzsche craved recognition; his contempt for fame was +largely a contempt for sour grapes. Brandes and Strindberg put wreaths +on his head, and he was proud of them. He writes to Strindberg: + + I am the most powerful intellect of the age, condemned to fulfill + a stupendous mission.... It is possible that I have explored more + terrible and more questionable worlds of thought than anyone else, + but simply because it is in my nature to love the silent + backwater. I reckon cheerfulness among the proofs of my + philosophy. + +A man who can write like that of himself is the happiest of mortals, +for he knows that he belongs among the immortals. + + + + +TOLSTOY + + +I. + +Tolstoy closes the second part of "Sevastopol" with these words: "The +hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I +have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and ever +will be beautiful, is Truth." That sentence was written when Tolstoy +was twenty-seven. For fifty years, in novels, tales, essays, and +exhortations, he celebrated his hero with unflagging devotion. The +deeds and lineaments of the hero are not always as other men have seen +them, but the identity, the character of the hero is never in doubt. +The hero changes and utters conflicting wisdom, not because of the +worshiper's inconstancy, but because Tolstoy develops, because he +outgrows and disavows his previous selves and violates consistency +between one book and another in his zeal to find consistency between +his next book and Truth. + +In ceaseless pursuit of Truth, Tolstoy is led through the most +stirring intellectual and moral experiences which modern man has +undergone. He is part of all that we have met; from the remotest of +European countries, from a moment in the world's thought that is +already well behind us, his messages have encircled the globe and +modify the living ideas of today. He touched all departments of +thought and left none as it had been. + +He plunged into the nineteenth century warfare of religion and +science, found that both parties were priest-ridden and arrogant, and +wrested from both the right of the individual to a simple faith and to +knowledge free from the cant of the laboratory. The increasing grumble +of the contest between privilege and labor--the most portentous war +the world has seen and not yet at its crisis--assaulted his ears; he +hearkened while most other members of the narrow circle of culture +were deaf or indifferent, and he took his stand on the side of the +workers against his own rank and kin. He laid bare the motives of war, +in which he had drawn a guilty sword, and became a militant champion +of peace. The unholy alliance of culture, religion, and civil +authority he strove to dissolve by broadsides against each member of +the triune tyranny, and so he conceived a new theory of art, a new +reading of the gospels, and an anarchism so individual that it +excludes most other anarchists. Under the solemnity of marriage and +the thin poetry of romance he discerned the cloven hoof of +self-indulgence, and he shocked the world with a virile puritanism, so +powerful in its terms, so subversive of our timid codes that bashful +Morality shrank from her bravest defender. + +All the main thoroughfares of nineteenth century thought crossed +before the doorway of Tolstoy's house. He trafficked with all the +passengers, but joined no special group. Even his own disciples he +allowed to go their own way; he took no part in their organization and +left them to make their own interpretation and their own application +of his teachings. Loving all mankind, having sympathetic knowledge of +all sorts and conditions of men, he was nevertheless strangely +solitary. At the end of his life his devotion to his ideas alienated +from his family this most tender, home-loving man.[1] The young +idealists of the world left him behind, for they broke out new +highways of thought which he could not travel; young Russia sees in +him a splendid survival of an elder age of storm and struggle, calls +him master but not leader. + + [1] As this book goes to press, Madam Tolstoy's + "Autobiography" is being published in _The Freeman_. + Her views of the great man should be illuminating, + especially if she does not try to minimize his defects. + +He justified in his own life his theoretic individualism, because he +was great and strong enough to stand alone. The spirit of irony can +not but deal gently with the sincerest, bravest of men. Yet may she +note under the gray garment of humility a mien incorrigibly +aristocratic and domineering. The most powerful mind in the world +proclaimed self-submersion as the perfect virtue, because it is the +most difficult virtue for a daring and vigorous spirit to attain. The +foe of privilege, preaching that all men are brothers in love and +alike before the Lord as they should be before the law of man, enjoyed +a unique privilege--he was almost the only man in Russia who could +with impunity say what he thought. He won this right because he was an +aristocrat with friends at court and because the Russian government +dared not disregard the admiration of the world which had made Tolstoy +an international hero. He warned the mighty to walk in the fear of +God, but they walked in the fear of Leo Tolstoy. + +To remind ourselves of the titles of some of his books and the order +in which they appeared, we may divide his work into seven parts. The +first part includes military tales and autobiographic sketches: +"Sevastopol," "Two Hussars," "The Raid," "The Cossacks," "Childhood," +"Boyhood," "Youth." The second part, beginning in 1861, embraces his +experience as school teacher, his discourses on education, school +books, and stories for children and peasants. The third part, from +1864 to 1878, comprises "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." The +fourth part begins with his religious conversion in 1878, and is +devoted to theological, ethical and sociological essays: "My +Confession," "Union and Translation of the Four Gospels," "My +Religion," "What, Then, Must We Do?" The subjects treated in these +books he expounds over and over for the rest of his life. Because it +is salient from his other work we may say that the "Kreutzer Sonata" +(1889) constitutes a fifth part. "What is Art?" and "Resurrection" may +be thought of as a sixth part. Then follows the concluding decade of +warfare in pamphlets, essays, letters, upon civil and ecclesiastical +authority and other powers of darkness. + +Any such partition of Tolstoy's work is untrue to its organic +continuity, its massive unity. His books are embedded in his life. +Though each novel stands alone in self-sustaining integrity, +intelligible to all the world, yet each gains in clearness and power +for being understood in relation to the mind that produced it. This +colossus of solitary protest, rising rough and volcanic above the +flats of modern thought, is vaster when seen close to his intellectual +base. Viewed from a distance some sides of him, some contours, are +blurred and deceptive. No part of his work can be wholly apprehended +unless all parts are brought into the range of vision. + +On the day of his death he was the most famous man of letters in the +world. From the first report of his final illness bulletins flew over +the cables in hourly succession. Yet for several weeks after his +death, repeated inquiry among the dealers in English and foreign books +in Boston (reputed center of culture and high thinking) showed that +there never had been much demand for Tolstoy's books, except his +novels, and that the momentary rise of interest caused by his death +had not disturbed the dust on such books as "What, Then, Must We Do?" +and "My Confession." + +This seems to indicate that not all the articles and sermons which +followed the ultimate news from Russia were grounded upon first-hand +knowledge of Tolstoy. The truth is that his opinions have trickled +through to us Westerners in diluted streams. He is already a +tradition, and it is the habit of tradition to weaken as it spreads, +to lose the effect which a drinker at the sources feels in their +concentration, in their full and proportioned measure of ingredients. +Tolstoy is abroad in the world; he has permeated the thought of the +best minds and tinged the currents of our present beliefs. But few +Westerners know him in his overwhelming entirety. This man who laid +open his whole mind and heart with prodigal frankness is borne +westward on the winds of rumor as a mythical prodigy. The outlines of +his thought are misty and wavering to many of those who call him +great. He spared no pains to clarify his beliefs; he expounded the +same principle many times with undiminished force and ever new +transparency; he gave sweeping permission to the world to translate +and print his books. Yet there is no complete authorized edition of +his works in any language, even in Russian, thanks to the censors and +his own indifference to practical concerns.[2] + + [2] This is no longer true in the troubled year of grace, + 1922. Every scrap of Tolstoy is published in Russia. And + probably before long there will be complete translations in + many modern languages. + +Thus for the moment a partial chaos has descended upon the work of +Tolstoy, a coherent luminous body of work, which left his hand as free +from ambiguity as his extraordinary skill and industry could make it, +but which has been scattered in transmission. It will take some years +for his loyal followers in England and America to give us a complete +and adequate translation; and in spite of Matthew Arnold's naive +confidence in the French, the most patient collator will have +difficulty in finding Tolstoy's work or recognizing even the titles, +in the books which the Parisian publishers have sent forth under his +name. One who has assembled such of his books as are procurable in +French and English would say with all emphasis possible: + +"Withhold judgment about any particular belief expressed or supposed +to have been expressed by Tolstoy until you have read as many of his +books as you can get--and do not fail to read them." He is the one +noble speaker who has happened in our time, "who may be named and +stand as the mark and acme" of modern literature. + +A little knowledge of Tolstoy is more than proverbially dangerous. He +laid his vigorous hand upon every problem that vexes and strengthens +the soul. His utterance on each problem is intense and aggressive. He +boldly pursues an idea whither it leads, or drives it with passionate +conviction to a foreseen conclusion, and stays not for the beliefs of +any majority or minority of men. His magnitude overflows the accepted +area of such an adjective as intolerant. Yet approached for the first +time by a reader accustomed to the persuasive amenities of other +saints and sages, he seems to bristle with outrageous denial; some of +his opinions, isolated from the rest, stand as repellant outposts, +forbidding many minds which, entering from another side, would go +straight to the heart of him. For example, our traditional reverence +for Shakespeare is wounded by his downright statement that Shakespeare +was not an artist; the offended judgment retorts that thereby Tolstoy +proves that he is himself no artist, or that in crotchety old age he +outgrew the poetry of his virile years. It must be understood that the +essay on Shakespeare is in the nature of an appendix to his essay, +"What Is Art?" That in turn is closely related to his ethical and +social teachings. Those again are inseparably bound with his tales and +novels. And his fiction, finally, is rooted in Russian life, not only +because, as is obvious, it deals with Russian people, but because +during Tolstoy's prime, there was, as we shall presently see, an +attitude toward the novel and all literary art which was peculiar to +intellectual Russians. + +Happily for English readers the foundation for complete understanding +of Tolstoy has been laid by Mr. Aylmer Maude in his "Life," the second +volume of which appeared a few days before his master's death. Mr. +Maude has entire knowledge of his subject and perfect sympathy; he is +a sane and independent thinker, and his work is admirable for its +balance, its candor, its sturdy devotion, which, however, admits no +surrender of the biographer's private beliefs. To the reader who cares +merely for an interesting story Tolstoy's career offers more than that +of most men of letters. It is laid amid the plots and counterplots of +bloody Russia, the most melodramatic background of modern history. The +man is spectacular, compelling, in all violation of his own doctrines +of self-abasement. The peasant's smock, which he wore as symbol of his +unity with common man, served only to make him the more picturesque. +This ascetic religious philosopher was a master of thrilling war +stories. He knew equally well the heart of a lady in the high life of +Moscow, and the soul of a peasant woman. He was of athletic stature, +and his huge hand was sensitive to the finger tips; with it he gripped +a scythe, played the piano, wrote a tirade against modern music, and +indited an exposition of the gospel of love which estranged some of +his best friends! It is no wonder that his fiction bears the seal of +reality, that it has the abundance, the variety, the jostling +contrasts of life itself. + + +II. + +In Russia prose fiction has been for a century the vehicle of the +soberest reflections upon contemporary problems. It was dangerous for +a Russian radical to express his beliefs directly in essays and +expositions; what he was not allowed to utter in editorial and +parliamentary debate he set forth indirectly through the novel, which +thus became a sort of realistic parable. Suppression increased his +emotional intensity. Feeling himself a member of a down-trodden class, +he became the champion of other down-trodden classes. When Tolstoy +began to write, the novel was already a tempered weapon against abuse, +the skilful handling of it was a tradition among the literati, and +there were masters to coach and encourage the beginner. The Russian +novel records the deepest motives of Russian history. Tourgenef voiced +the philosophic resignation and scepticism of the educated Russian and +the evils of serfdom. Tolstoy portrayed the vices of the educated +Russian and the evils of wage-slavery which followed the emancipation +of the serfs. Russian fiction is great, because it treats the gravest +struggles of life and because its authors have trained themselves in +the art of expounding ideas in the form of fiction without +transgressing the laws of narrative; they have learned to be the +mouthpiece of life and to let life preach the sermons. To Tolstoy and +other Russians the greatest American book is "Uncle Tom's Cabin," +because it is the chronicle of a bleeding issue; I have seen many +references to that book by Russian writers but scarcely a mention of +Hawthorne. + +Mr. Maude quotes a letter to Tolstoy from Drouzhinin, critic, +novelist, and translator of Shakespeare: "An Englishman or an +American," he says, "may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely +men of thirty, but gray-haired owners of 2,000 serfs sweat over +stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are +devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole +day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, +you cannot explain it merely by art. What in other lands is a matter +of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another +affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story--the most +frivolous and insignificant form of literature--becomes one of two +things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of a leader +sounding through the empire." + +Tolstoy's realism is, then, the result both of his own temperamental +passion for truth and of a theory of art which prevailed in his +literary circle. There were, to be sure, silly novelists in Russia; +there, as everywhere, only the best minds regarded fiction as a vital +matter. But there were enough such serious minds to welcome Tolstoy +and encourage him. Nekrasof, editor of _The Contemporary_, found in +Tolstoy's first work, "the truth--the truth, of which, since Gogol's +death, so little has remained in Russian literature." Tourgenef +repeatedly called Tolstoy the greatest of Russians, and on his +deathbed pencilled the pathetic letter in which he pleaded with +Tolstoy to return to his art. "I am glad," he said, "to have been your +contemporary." Had he lived sixteen years longer, "Resurrection" might +have made him happy. + +In Tolstoy's discourses on religion appear many times the words "sense +of life"--religion is the sense of life, the principle upon which the +details of the moral world are ordered and by which they are to be +interpreted. In a slightly different meaning "the sense of life" +expresses the total effect of Tolstoy's fiction. He wrote to a young +disciple: "Do not bend to your purpose the events in the story, but +follow them wherever they lead you.... Lack of symmetry and the +apparent haphazardness of events is a chief sign of life." + +In "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" there are many plots. The unity +is that of the loose-jointed English novel rather than that of the +French, which travels on a straight track. Tolstoy's stories move like +a river with many tributaries; he explores now one, now another of the +branch streams, but the course of the main current is continuous, and +runs in one general direction, as if the slope of the country had been +determined before the recorder came upon the scene to measure and +report. + +"War and Peace" is greater than a novel; it is an epic, it is +nation-wide and long as the growth from childhood to maturity. We see +from a peak of the face of eastern Europe and the swarming of peoples +and armies. The sensation of vastness, of humanity surging and flowing +in obedience to obscure collective interests is produced by only one +other modern book that I know, Hardy's "The Dynasts." From the high +pinnacles of omniscience the imagination descends by swift unperceived +transitions to the intimacies of a house in Moscow--to the heart of +the girl Natacha--to the mind of Pierre saturated with alcohol +plotting to assassinate Napoleon. The adventures and purposes of the +characters cross and conflict, interweave and unite, but each goes as +it must and there is no confusion in the telling. + +In "Anna Karenina," the story of Levin is but loosely related to the +principal tragedy, and the story of Levin's brother is an excursion +from the highway of Levin's career. One can see that after the book is +done. During its course the reader has no sense that any part is not +precisely placed. The illusion of inevitability is perfect. Levin's +brother is related to him by natural ties in life; it is natural, +then, that he should appear in Levin's story. + +The illusion of inevitability springs from Tolstoy's all-encircling +comprehension of events, from his justice to each character and from +his extraordinary physical vividness. He writes with his five senses. +A critic warned him early that he was in danger of making a man's +thigh feel like going on a journey to India. + +But his recognition of physical sensations and his power to convey +them (they traverse bodily the stylistic obstacles of translation) +take the story off the flat page and give it three dimensional +reality. The acrid smell of an old man's breath, the coldness of a +man's hand when he is in mental distress, the cracking of Karenin's +knuckles when he clasps his hands in moral satisfaction or the anguish +of wounded pride--such details cling to the mind, and the memory of +them recalls the whole story. + +Tolstoy's conception of human character is at once relentlessly +analytic and profoundly pitiful and kind. The whole content of his +thought from its bold surface to its deepest depth is instinct with +compassion. Once when he was walking with Tourgenef they came to an +old broken-down horse in a pasture. Tolstoy went up to it, stroked it, +and uttered its thoughts and sufferings with such moving tenderness +that Tourgenef cried: "You must once have been a horse yourself." + +In "Master and Man," a beautiful story of two men lost in a snowstorm, +the horse is a third character--an animal character, be it understood, +for Tolstoy is antipodal to nature-faking. He has confidence that +nature and man will tell their own story and disclose their inherent +lessons. Dogmatic and uncompromising in his private ethical beliefs, +he never sacrifices humanity even upon the altars where he tried to +immolate himself. Valid morality springs spontaneously from his +narrative, and is thereby a hundredfold more impressive than teachings +forced from artificially moulded events. Even in his rewriting of +traditional myths and parables he restores inorganic sermons to life, +creates a living thing in which the ethical intention is assimilated +and vitalized. He told these stories to the peasants, listened with +delight to their retelling of them, and incorporated their racial +turns of phrase. To an old peasant woman with a native gift for +narrative, he said: "You are a real master, Anisya; thank you for +teaching me to speak Russian and to think Russian." + +He learned from life and he trusted life to teach the reader. Anna +Karenina commits suicide, not because she is a naughty woman whom the +novelist as guardian of morals must punish for the satisfaction of a +virtuous world, but because the society that surrounds her, the +everyday life of visiting and tea-drinking, inexorably forbids her to +be happy. Tolstoy is a champion of the poor, and he began his career +at a time when, as Mr. Cahan tells us, "the idealization of the +peasant" was one of the staple phrases in essays and editorials. But +in Tolstoy's stories there is no false sublimation of the peasant. He +does not cry, like Dickens, or the professional charity-monger: "Pity +these poor starved brothers." He simply recites their lives. Sometimes +he chronicles the most terrible things in a grim restrained +matter-of-fact tone, more moving than any passionate appeal to the +reader's sympathy. He is, of course, a master of argument and +exhortation, but all that is found in his other books, not in his +fiction. + +A critic, whose democracy is too narrowly partisan, complains that in +"War and Peace" all the important characters are aristocrats, and that +the story fails to reveal the motives of the people, of those +inarticulate millions who Tolstoy himself says are the real makers of +history. But this apparent fault is an instance of Tolstoy's +integrity. When he wrote "War and Peace" he knew only aristocrats, or +was chiefly interested in them. He had already begun to discern the +relations between the multitude and the leaders whom history +signalizes; but he had not lived close to peasants and workmen; he had +approached them as lord and master, not yet as brother and +interpreter. Moreover, if there be a moral hero in "War and Peace" +whom the author seems to favor, it is Karataief, the illiterate +soldier, whose simple faith dawns as a regenerative light upon Pierre, +a rich man of the world who has met all philosophies and found them +heartless. + +Tolstoy could not write what he did not know or did not feel. His +stories, though not autobiographic in the usual sense of the world, +are the quintessence of his adventures and experiences, accurately +recalled and profoundly meditated. When the manuscript of the +"Kreutzer Sonata" was read in his house to a company of friends, +Tolstoy said in answer to some objections: + +"In a work of art it is indispensable that the artist should have +something new, of his own. It is not how it is written that really +matters. People will read the 'Kreutzer Sonata' and say, 'Ah, that is +the way to write!' The indispensable thing is to go beyond what others +have done, to pick off even a very small fresh bit. But it won't do to +be like my friend Fet, who at sixteen wrote, 'The spring bubbles, the +moon shines, and she loves me,' and who went on writing and writing, +and at sixty wrote: 'She loves me, and the spring bubbles, and the +moon shines.'" + +It was impossible for Tolstoy, the novelist, to write of people whom +he did not know, merely because he happened to have sympathy with some +of their ideals and habits. It was impossible for him to violate human +nature when he portrayed characters that he did know. Hating +professional psychology and all other sciences and quasi-sciences, he +is the greatest of so-called psychological novelists; his psychology +was made before text-books, and it used to be called "truth to human +nature." You cannot suggest, as you read a novel by Tolstoy, anything +a character ought have done which was not done, any emotion he should +have felt which Tolstoy has not suggested at exactly the right moment. +He penetrates the characters of living men and the characters of +history and romance. The pseudo-psychology of the critics of "Hamlet," +does not deceive him. Napoleon, mythical monster and genius +unapproachable, fails to over-awe him; Tolstoy draws him, man size, +amid events that dwarf heroes. + +In "Resurrection," Nekhludof is represented as holding social theories +which in point of fact Tolstoy held. Nekhludof reads Henry George and +tries to give his land to the peasants as communal property. Tolstoy, +the social reformer, would admit no obstacle to the justice and the +practicability of the plan; a lesser artist would have yielded to the +reformer, the plan would have worked and the story would have proved +the theory. But Tolstoy, the novelist, confronts Nekhludof with the +suspicion, the ignorant shrewdness of the peasants; the plan +encounters all the difficulties, legal and psychological, which life +would offer. + +"Resurrection" is the crowning proof of Tolstoy's artistic power. For +twenty years he had developed theories about every problem of life; he +held his opinions tenaciously; hugging them in resolute defiance he +strode roughshod through the domains of church, state and family. His +convictions were strong enough to silence him as an artist, and for +years he obeyed the mandate of conscience that forbade him to write +novels at all. But when, to raise money for the Doukhobors, he +consented to write "Resurrection," his artistic sense was stronger +than the rest of him (if, indeed, there was any antagonism between the +two sides of his nature), and theories powerful enough to disrupt the +universe were kept in bounds by his sense of proportion, his sense of +life. + +The feeling that Tolstoy, the artist, and Tolstoy, the reformer, are +in any true sense engaged in struggle is largely due to the false +dialectic of traditional criticism, which he by precept and practice +has confuted. His great moral principles are the sure foundation of +his greatness in art. For us Westerners modern realism--Hardy and Zola +come first to mind--is associated with a godless though very humane +scepticism. Religious sentiment has been left in the weak hands of +romance, and the longer it has been left there the more false it has +become. From the beginning, even before his religious conversion, +Tolstoy had a sound ethical outlook. At the age of forty he wrote of +Tourgenef's "Smoke": "The strength of poetry lies in love, and the +direction of that strength depends on character. Without strength of +love there is no poetry. In 'Smoke' there is hardly any love of +anything and very little poetry. There is only love of a light and +playful adultery, and therefore the poetry of that novel is +repulsive." The spirit in that criticism is the guiding spirit in +"Anna Karenina," and it is the same spirit which dictated this passage +in the magnificent sermon on the Russian-Japanese war: "The great +struggle of our time ... is not the struggle in which men engage with +mines, bombs and bullets; it is the spiritual struggle which goes on +incessantly, which is going on now, between the enlightened conscience +of humanity, about to be made manifest, and the shadows and oppression +which surround it and crush it." + + +III. + +To western liberals Tolstoy's assaults on church and state seem too +vehement, partly because the tyranny he attacked is more obviously +brutal than that from which we suffer, partly because we are +complacently blind to facts which he revealed, facts which are present +at our doors. Our mild meliorations delude us. We wave an idle hand +and say: "Ah, yes, Russia is a savage country, but we are not like +that."[3] And all the while the coldest labor statistics, if we dared +to open them, show that in the exploitation of workmen, women and +children, ours is as barbarous a country as any in the world. Our +horrors and injustices are smoothed over by a disingenuous press, +which is owned or indirectly controlled by the powers that be. +American philanthropy steals with one hand and builds universities +with the other. We have no kings and no dukes, but America is the +sport of capital; it lies abjectly prostrate before a power-drunk +bourgeoisie. We celebrate Tolstoy in harmless little magazine articles +and wear shirts woven by children. We think we need no school like the +one Tolstoy conducted for poor, backward Russian peasants, because we +have our public schools and compulsory education laws--in some states. +Hundreds of our children are at work; they have succeeded, thanks to +the glorious free competition of business, in taking their fathers' +places at the machines. The children that are in school wave the flag +and read about George Washington. + + [3] And we are still saying it, 1922! + +Tolstoy's teachings can not at present shake the somnolent conscience +of America. He believed in his innocence that our industrial masters +have reached the outrageous limits of exploitation, and that America +must be the first country to rise and throw off its parasites. But +that is a foreigner's opinion and not to be taken seriously in the +land of the free and the home of the National Civic Federation. His +indictment of our civilization is only nine-tenths true, and we shall +take advantage of the one-tenth that is overstatement to throw his +indictment out of court. He sees that every government is a commercial +agency by means of which a privileged minority conducts its business +at the expense of the majority. We are ashamed to believe that that +can be true of our Congress and our irreproachable Supreme Court. It +is easier to dismiss Tolstoy, because he is "eccentric" and "goes too +far." Did he not sweepingly assert that there is no such thing as a +virtuous statesman? That absurdity permits us to ignore the book in +which it appears. + +Besides, it is more "optimistic" to read articles about the "history +of achievement in the United States," to take democratic short cuts to +superficial knowledge, than to read disconcerting books. Our +healthy-minded confidence in American morals bids us be content with a +little gossip about Carlyle and his wife, and not trouble ourselves +with such a difficult book as "Past and Present." In like fashion we +shall understand Tolstoy's ideals without reading "What, Then, Must We +Do?" or "The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You." Sufficient for us a few +newspaper discussions about "Why Tolstoy Left the Countess and the +Relations Between Family Life and Anarchism." For Tolstoy was an +anarchist, and that disposes of him! We know all about anarchists; +they live in Paterson, N.J., and in the imaginations of journalists, +home secretaries, and framers of immigration laws. + +Yet despite our republican wisdom, we cannot quite understand Tolstoy +until we know the true meanings of such words as labor, capital, +exploitation, rent, property, interest, and proletariat. In Russia +these words are understood by many people, also in Germany. But we +Americans, though highly cultivated, are not well informed about +contemporary facts and current philosophies. We have still to be +taught that the Russian revolution is our revolution, that it is part +of a mighty economic change which is in process all over the world. A +study of Tolstoy and his critics will help to instruct us--some +day--about these momentous relations. + +The present status of the revolution is more confused in Russia than +in any other country.[4] The repressive measures of the government +forced a temporary alliance between all types of revolutionaries. It +was this alliance which isolated Tolstoy from other reformers and made +him a retarding force, almost a reactionary, against the progress of +the Social Democracy, that party of orderly Marxians under German +tutelage which was the hope of young Russia. The Czar's government, +which was no respecter of principles, grouped him with all the +malcontents and libertarians. And he returned the compliment. Because +he despised all economics, he could not join a "scientific" party. +Failing to distinguish between the peaceful and the militant +revolutionists, he charged them all with murder and grouped them with +the government. And thus he stood alone, distrustful of peaceful +anarchists because they were not religious, and distrustful of most +religions because they were organized on a property basis. He stood +alone. Yet all liberal men, antithetical to each other as are the +socialists and the anarchists, united in loving him as they united in +hatred of the government. They applauded his terrific indictment of +the society under which we live, though they disagreed from various +points of view with his solution. It was said of him on his eightieth +birthday that whatever conflict there might be between his beliefs and +those of other reformers, the foes of liberty were his foes and the +friends of liberty were his friends. + + [4] This refers, of course, to the revolution before the + Great War. I wonder now, 1922, just what Lenin, Trotsky, + Chicherin, et. al., think of Tolstoy, and what he would have + thought of them! + +Tolstoy's solution for our ills is Christian anarchy, a voluntary +communism allied with the teachings of Jesus, or with Tolstoy's +interpretation of them. He taught that all violence is wrong, all +government is robbery, and that the only possible moral order is +founded on love of man and renunciation of legal rights. That he +should have been a champion of Henry Georgeism, a plan that depends on +organized government, is one of his many inconsistencies; what drew +him to the single-tax theory was probably not so much the economic +principles as George's arraignment of landlordism. + +It is Tolstoy's own arraignment of our so-called civilization rather +than his proposed remedies which will quicken the conscience of the +world.[5] His individualism, his doctrine of private goodness, looks +backward and not forward. He is, like Carlyle, the voice of a bygone +time. + + [5] Will it? I am not so confident as I was once. + +He had lived through the failures of many political revolutions, and +he abhorred anything that pretended to be scientific. He turned his +eyes from the science of men to their souls. In his magnificent self +he justified his individualism, but were we a billion Tolstoys, +saintly and self-disciplined, we must work in organization, or we +cannot work effectively. The world is religious, but religion is a +matter of opinion. The world is also economic, and economics is not a +matter of opinion, but of unavoidable facts over which the individual +has little control.[6] Like Ruskin, Tolstoy rejected economics because +most professorial economists do not tell the truth. He blamed the +dismal science for the dismal facts and for the inadequacies of its +classic expounders. Had he understood the economic structure of +society (which nobody does understand), he would have seen the +futility of trying to abandon his estates. His singular abnegation +could not put an end to the evils of landlordism, even to the extent +of his own plot of ground. He could not make the burden of landless +people one ounce lighter by dismounting in his own person from their +backs. Nothing can be done until an effective majority of men agree to +abolish private ownership of land and establish communal ownership. + + [6] That sounds like good sense. Some of Tolstoy's + countrymen at Genoa seem to have proved it. + +Tolstoy preached with splendid fervor the power of the individual +soul. But his practice is proof of our impotent severalty. It was +disorganization that caused the famine which he labored to relieve, +and it was his efficient organization that kept the hungry from +starving. That our greatest man of letters should sweat behind a +prehistoric plow is good for his soul and for ours; but, even if we +should all grow perfect in spirit and eager for our share of manual +labor, we should still feed ourselves better by communal use of steam +plows. Tolstoy's belated Proudhonism is not the solution for the evils +of property. It is his negative teaching that has positive value. He +is an abolitionist, not a constructive philosopher. But to say that is +not to answer him, not to deny him. He remains unanswered as long as +the labor of this world is done at the behest of the few and for their +profit. His work is not done, his books cannot be outgrown, until +every man of us looks at the facts honestly and cries with him: "It is +impossible to live so! It is impossible to live so!" + + + + +MAETERLINCK'S ESSAYS + + +If we had to lose one part or the other of Maeterlinck's work, I think +we should less reluctantly surrender the plays than the essays. The +essays are richer in substance than the dramas and they are as truly +poetic. The sunny garden, where the poet lives with his bees and +flowers, is a more splendid domain than moonlit pseudo-mediæval +empires, peopled with the wraiths of women. And the little bull-pup of +the essay is a truer dog than the one in "The Blue Bird." + +Some years ago, when the essay on the dog was first published in +English, I read it aloud to a woman who owned a Boston terrier, and I +gave it to a professional breeder of dogs. Both liked it. It is an +essay that any one can understand; it illuminates a ground where all +kinds of people meet. Even Bill Sikes would have liked it. Maeterlinck +says what almost everybody thinks, and says it as it has not been said +before, not in "Rab and His Friends." The simple eloquence, the +sincerity, the affectionate humor are the positive virtues of the +essay; and its negative virtue is freedom from a kind of rhetorical +artificiality in which Maeterlinck indulges when he gets away from the +solid realities of life. + +Maeterlinck is an amateur botanist and bee-keeper and a professional +poet. He knows, or seems to know, the facts, and he sees them with an +imaginative vision, wondering at them like a child, in the very act of +giving quite lucid "scientific" explanations. He hovers often on the +enchanted borderland between knowledge and fancy, and plays to and fro +between regions which, though adjacent parts of the same universe, +have different habits of thought. I am acquainted with an American +poet and philosopher who does not know the common kinds of dogs such +as any boy of ten knows. I also knew and argued with an eminent +biologist who objected to Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," on the +ground that the poetic phrasing falsified the facts. True, he +conceded, the queen-bee does fly and the strongest male overtakes and +fertilizes her. But for Maeterlinck to poetize the fact as a "nuptial +flight" seemed to the man of science not only untruth to nature, but a +blasphemy against the sacred love of man and woman. + +My friend, the biologist, and my acquaintance, the American poet and +philosopher, both seem to be unfortunately incomplete human beings. +The poet and philosopher does not know what any duffer knows, what +anybody who cares not only for animals but for ordinary folks that own +dogs cannot refrain from knowing. He is a man of cosmopolitan +experience and has surely been in the _Bois_ more than once. In +the Garden of Acclimatation is a wonderful kennel; there are at least +fifteen kinds of dogs, each with his specific or sub-specific name +hung on his cage. If you had never seen a dog you could not walk about +that kennel five minutes without learning the names of a half-dozen +varieties (and without discovering in yourself a highly moral desire +to steal one or two of those beautifully kept beasts). Some ignorance +is unpardonable, and some philosophy and some poetry would be more +vital for a little plain back-yard knowledge. On the other hand, what +a pity it is that any man's sense of fact should be so strait as to +forbid entrance to his soul of a honey bee which Maeterlinck sends +forth equipped with these gorgeous unentomological wings of words: +"The yellow fairies of the honey." It's as bad as a democrat who +should object to the phrase "queen-bee." + +Maeterlinck has knowledge of nature, not only such knowledge as +Wordsworth had, but a fair acquaintance with contemporaneous science. +He has learned lessons from Fabre, whom he admires. He has studied his +own garden in the light of what botanists have told him and in the +other light, which is not hostile to botany, but is different, the +light of poetry. He loves to speculate about unsettled questions. And +his speculations have a very great intellectual merit. He is, on the +whole, content to be uncertain about uncertain things and to express +his inclinations toward one or another conclusion in a persuasive, +wistful manner. Like many other poets, he leans toward the belief that +nature, which includes us, knows more than we do, and that to ascribe +intelligence, in a restricting way, to man alone is probably to leave +out a good deal of the magic of growing things, and to omit some +potential explanations of their mystery, their mystery in the poet's +sense and in the stern truth seeker's sense. The essay on "The +Intelligence of Flowers" revivifies the old moot question about what +knowledge is, what instinct is. It's a very fine question, and it +becomes hottest when the men of imagination and the men of science +(happily they are not mutually exclusive) argue about whether a dog +knows that he loves you. A British poet began a verse to a dog: + + The curate says you have no soul-- + I know that he has none. + +That is good; but it is spiteful. Let us admit the curate. For the dog +would. A dog does not care a wag of his tail whether a man is curate +or editor of a newspaper. Therein the dog is our superior. + +Maeterlinck, though overtaken by the wan doubt of our times, is a +true believer in other kinds of intelligence than ours. He holds that +"nature, when she wishes to be beautiful, to please, to delight and +to prove herself happy, does almost what we should do had we her +treasures at our disposal." There, you see, he begs the whole +question and ascribes to "nature" wishes, desires, intentions. He +does the trick that poets always do; he answers the question that he +asks and that he pretends to be discussing. "All that we observe +within ourselves," he says, "is rightly open to suspicion; we are at +once litigant and judge, and we have too great an interest in +peopling our world with magnificent illusions and hopes. But let the +least external indication be dear and precious to us." + +In this the poet says all, while, on another page, the man of science, +with firm integrity, minimizes evidence and refuses to be convinced. +There is a region where the poet knows almost everything worth +knowing. There is a region where the man of science knows, not +everything worth knowing, but all that is known. There is a misty +mid-region where a full-minded, large-hearted man can live happily. He +gets the message going and coming. He receives what the poet has to +say and what the man of fact has to say and he constructs his world +from the fragmentary contributions of both regions. Maeterlinck +himself in "Our Eternity," dwells on this central ground. Shakespeare +and Isaiah are on his right hand. On his left hand are William James +and other psychological students of the evidence of spooks. + +Poets are enamored of death. Nine-tenths of all the imaginative +literature of the world is concerned with love and death, the begetter +and the extinguisher. The sweetest lines in Shakespeare deal with +love; the stateliest lines, Hamlet's and Macbeth's, are upon death. +The chief interest of life is in dying. We get our highest emotions +from some other person's death, and we adapt our entire course, from +the cradle to the grave, with a view to the fact that we are going to +quit in some year determined by fate or God or other power not quite +understood, a year carefully figured out by the actuaries of the life +insurance companies. + +Man is a perfect coward in the face of death, his own or that of +somebody he loves. The believer and the unbeliever alike bewail the +great adventure. The tears shed by the believer in immortality and by +the disbeliever are the same hot, saline, human drops. Everybody wants +an answer, and only the adherents of certain sects receive an answer +that satisfies them. Those answers do not satisfy me or you, not +because there is anything wrong in the answers, but because the people +that hold the answers behave as all the rest of us do in the presence +of death. Maeterlinck, on the basis of modern evidence, argues for +two-hundred and fifty-eight pages that we do not know what happens +when we die. "In any case, I would not wish my worst enemy, were his +understanding a thousand-fold loftier and a thousand-fold mightier +than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he +had surprised an essential secret and of which, as a man, he had begun +to grasp an atom." + +Amen! That leaves us where we started. But the fact, the cold, +interesting, magnificent fact, is that we are alive, and some of us +are working and some are playing. Maeterlinck is a great child playing +with flowers and with words. He is also a competent workman, and he is +assisted by another skilful craftsman to whom English readers owe +much, Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, who translates Maeterlinck +into English. He is a fine artist. Following faithfully the run of our +English idiom, he succeeds in keeping for our Anglo-Saxon eyes and +ears the color, tone, or whatever it is, of Maeterlinck's beautiful +style. + + + + +JOSEPH CONRAD + + +To the newest generation of adult readers the dawn of a literary light +is a rare experience. It is as if the courses of our literature were +Arctic in their slowness, as if the day came at long intervals, and +then without warmth or brilliance. Our fathers knew the joy of +welcoming the latest novel of Dickens or a new volume of essays by +Carlyle. The only[1] great day whose beginning young men have +witnessed is the day of Kipling; his light mounted rapidly to a high +noon, and if the afternoon shadows have begun to deepen prematurely, +that sun is still beautiful and strong. Other lights have kindled in +the last fifteen years, and have gone out before they had fairly +dislodged the darkness, or have continued to burn dimly. + + [1] I ask the reader to remember that this was written in + 1906. + +Eyes accustomed only to darkness and uncertain lights are in condition +to be deluded by the phantoms of false dawn; it is therefore unwise to +greet with too much enthusiasm the arrival of Mr. Joseph Conrad. Even +if the dawn is real, it is certainly overcast with heavy clouds, and +it has not proved bright enough to startle the world. Nevertheless, +his light is of unique beauty in contemporary literature, and the +story of its kindling makes interesting biography. + +Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski was born fifty years ago in Poland. His +father, a critic and poet, and his mother, who was exiled to Siberia, +were engaged in revolutionary journalism. At nineteen Conrad left +home, to escape an unsettled life, and also, it is fair to assume, to +satisfy his love of adventure. He found work on English vessels, and +this fact gave to contemporary English letters a man who might +otherwise have written in French. To-day he appears in hand-books of +biography as Master in the British Merchant Service, and Author. At +nineteen he had not mastered English; at thirty-eight he had published +no book. Since then he has published about a volume a year. In +preparation for his books he sailed as able seaman, mate, and master, +for twenty years, on steam and sailing craft, and meanwhile he was +reading deep in French and English literature,--all, we are told, with +no intent to become a writer. Indeed it was a period of ill health +resulting in an enforced idleness from the familiar sea that gave him +opportunity to put some of his adventures into words. Perhaps he is a +lesser illustration of a theory of Thoreau's that a word well said +"must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by +some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive +knight, after all." However that may be, the intellectual and physical +adventures of Conrad's life were abundant, and they reappear, +discernible though transfigured, in the substance and the qualities of +his work. + +His ten books are for the most part concerned with the waters of the +earth, and the men that sail on the face of the waters, and with +lands, far from English readers, to be reached only by long journeying +in ships.[2] His first book, "Almayer's Folly," tells the story of a +disappointed Dutch trader in Borneo, whose half-caste daughter runs +away with a Malay chief. His second book, "An Outcast of the Islands," +deals further with the career of Almayer and with that of another +exiled Dutchman. "Nostromo," has for its scene an imaginary South +American state, and its heroes are an Englishman and an Italian. "The +Nigger of the Narcissus" (published in America as "The Children of the +Sea") and "Typhoon" are each the chronicle of a voyage. "Lord Jim" is +the story of a young mate who disgraces himself by one unseamanlike +act, and becomes a wanderer in the eastern islands, and finally a kind +of king in a village of savages. "Tales of Unrest" contains five +stories, two of which are about Malays, and another about white +traders in an African station. The hero of "Falk"--the title story of +a volume of three pieces--is a Scandinavian sailor who has been a +cannibal, and who wins the daughter of a German ship captain in an +Eastern port. "Youth," the first story in a volume of three, is the +memory of a young mate's voyage in an unseaworthy ship, which burns +and leaves the crew to seek an Eastern seaport in the boats. The +second story, "The Heart of Darkness," is an account of a journey into +the Belgian Congo State and a curious study of the effect of solitude +and the jungle and savagery on a white trader. The third piece in the +volume is the story of a ship-captain who steers his ship with the +help of a Malay servant and lets no one guess until the end that he is +blind. Of two books written in collaboration with Mr. Ford M. Hueffer, +the only one worth considering, "Romance," comes the nearest to being +the kind of fiction that the advertisements announce as "full of heart +interest, love, and the glamor of a charming hero and heroine." It +begins with a smuggler's escapade in England, and ends in an elopement +in the West Indies; the best parts, probably Mr. Conrad's share in the +work, are those about the sea and all that on it is, fogs, ships, and +bearded pirates. In these books are men and women of all civilized +nations, the acquaintance of a globe-trotter, and there are, besides, +enough Malays, Chinamen, and Negroes to make the choruses of several +comic operas. But in Conrad they are serious people, every Malay with +a soul and a tragedy; even the Nigger of the Narcissus is equipped +with psychological machinery. + + [2] Almayer's Folly. The Macmillan Co. 1895. + An Outcast of the Islands. Tauchnitz. 1896. + The Nigger of the Narcissus (Children of the Sea). Dodd, + Mead & Co. 1897. + Tales of Unrest. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1898. + Lord Jim. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1899. + The Inheritors (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. + 1901. + Typhoon. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1902. + Falk. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903. + Youth. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903. + Romance (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. 1904. + Nostromo. Harper & Brothers. 1904. + +Conrad's subject-matter, the secretion of experience, is rich enough +and of sufficiently strange and romantic quality to endow a writer of +popular fiction; and his style,--that is, the use of words for their +melody, power, and charm,--is fit for a king of literature. Stevenson, +who found so little sheer good writing among his contemporaries, would +have welcomed Conrad and have lamented that he could not or would not +tell his stories in more brief, steady, and continuous fashion. + +For there is the rub. Conrad is not instinctively a story-teller. Many +a writer of less genius surpasses him in method. He has no gift of +what Lamb calls a bare narrative. + +There are writers with magnificent power of language who do not attain +that combination of literary and human qualities which is +readableness, and there are others who interest many people in many +generations, and yet do not write well. To most readers Dickens is as +delightful when he writes slovenly sentences as when he writes at his +best. Scott, the demigod, pours out his great romances in an +inexpressive fluid. On the other hand, Walter Pater writes infallibly +well. These illustrations are intended to suggest a difference which +is a fact in literature, and are not to be carried to any conclusive +comparison. The difference exists and it is not a strange fact. It is +strange, however, that Conrad, who spins yarns about the sea, master +of a kind of subject-matter that would make his books as popular as +"Robinson Crusoe" and "Treasure Island," should be one of those who +can write but cannot make an inevitably attractive and winning book +for the multitude. + +Either he knows his fault and can not help it, or he wills it and +does not consider it a fault. There is evidence on this question. +Several of his stories are put in the mouth of Marlow, an eloquent, +reflective, world-worn man. In one place Conrad says, "We knew that +we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of +Marlow's _inconclusive_ experiences." The story Marlow tells is no +more inconclusive and rambling than most of the other stories, so +that one is forced to conclude that Marlow's character as narrator is +Conrad's concession to his own self-observed habit of mind. In +another place Conrad says: "The yarns of seamen have a direct +simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a +cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin +yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not +inside a kernel, but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it +out as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these +misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral +illumination of moonshine." Evidently Conrad prefers or pretends to +prefer the haze to the kernel. + +In an essay on Henry James he openly scorns the methods usual to +fiction of "solution by rewards and punishments, by crowned love, by +fortune, by a broken leg or sudden death," and says: "Why the reading +public, which as a body has never laid upon the story-teller the +command to be an artist, should demand from him this sham of divine +omnipotence is utterly incomprehensible." Thus Mr. Conrad flings down +the gauntlet to those demands of readers which greater men than he and +Mr. James have been happy to satisfy without sacrifice of wisdom and +reality. + +A further announcement of his literary creed he made in a kind of +artistic confession published a few years ago. "His (the prose +writer's) answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks +for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, +amused, who demand to be promptly improved or encouraged, or +frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: 'My task which I am +trying to achieve is by the power of the written word to make you +hear, to make you feel--it is before all to make you see.... If I +succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, +encouragement, consolation, fear, charm--all you demand; perhaps also +that glimpse of truth[3] for which you have forgotten to ask." + + [3] These Slavs (see above on Tolstoy) are all for Truth, + but they are not Chadbandians. They are artists. And so was + the Anglo-Saxon who made Chadband. + +A writer with ideals so high and strongly felt commits himself for +trial by exacting standards. It is necessary to remind Mr. Conrad that +if a reader is to feel, he must first understand; if he is to hear, he +must hear distinctly; and if he is to see, his eye must be drawn by +interest in the object, and it can look only in one direction at once. +"Nostromo" is told forward and backward in the first half of the book, +and the preliminary history of the silver mine is out of all +proportion to the story of Nostromo, the alleged hero of the book. +"Lord Jim" is confused.[4] The first few chapters are narrated in the +third person by the author. Then for three hundred pages Marlow, a +more or less intimate spectator of Jim's career, tells the story as an +after-dinner yarn. It would have taken three evenings for Marlow to +get through the talk, and that talk in print involves quotation within +quotation beyond the legitimate uses of punctuation marks. In other +stories the point of view fails. In "The Nigger of the Narcissus" are +conferences between two people in private which no third person could +overhear, yet the narrative seems to be told in the first person by +one of the crew. In "Typhoon," where a steamer with deck almost +vertical is plunging through a storm, we are on the bridge beside the +simple dogged captain while he shouts orders down to the engine-room +through the tube. Without warning we are down in the engine-room, +hearing the captain's voice from above, and as suddenly we are back on +the bridge again. A man crawls across the deck in a tempest so black +that he cannot see whose legs he is groping at. We are immediately +informed that he is a man of fifty, with coarse hair, of immense +strength, with great lumpy hands, a hoarse voice, easy-going and +good-natured,--as if the man were visible at all, except as a blot in +the darkness! + + [4] No, it is not. It is clear as daylight. + +Conrad has a mania for description. When anything is mentioned in the +course of narrative, though it be a thousand miles from the present +scene, it must be described. Each description creates a new scene, and +when descriptions of different and separated places appear on the same +page, the illusion of events happening before the eye is destroyed. If +a writer is to transport us instantaneously from one quarter of the +globe to another he should at least apprise us that we are on the +magic rug, and even then the space-o'erleaping imagination resents +being bundled off on hurried and inconsequential journeys. Often when +Conrad's descriptions are logically in course, they are too long; the +current of narrative vanishes under a mountain (a mountain of gold, +perhaps, but difficult to the feet of him who would follow the +stream); and when the subterranean river emerges again, it is +frequently obstructed by inopportune, though subtle, exposition. + +Conrad's propensity for exposition is allied, no doubt, with his +admiration for Mr. Henry James, of whom he has written an extremely +"literary" appreciation. Too much interest in masters like Flaubert +and Mr. James is not gentlemanly in a sailor, and it cannot help a +sailor turned writer, who pilots a ship through a magnificent struggle +with a typhoon, leads us into the bewitching terror of the African +jungle, and guides us to Malay lands where the days are full of savage +love, intrigue, suicide, murder, piracy, and all forms of picturesque +and terrific death. Mr. Conrad finds that there are "adventures in +which only choice souls are involved, and Mr. James records them with +a fearless and insistent fidelity to the _péripéties_ of the contest +and the feelings of the combatants." That is true and fine, no doubt, +but the price which Mr. Conrad pays for his ability to discover it is +the fact that hundreds of thousands of readers of good masculine +romance are not reading "Lord Jim," or finding new "Youth" in a young +mate's wondrous vision of the East, or welcoming a new hero in Captain +Whalley. A man who can conceive the mournful tale of Karain and the +fight between the half crazy white men at an African trading post has +a kind of adventure better, as adventure, than the experiences of Mr. +James's choice souls. Stevenson knew all about Mr. James and his +"péripéties," but he could stow that knowledge on one side of his +head, and from the other side spin "Treasure Island" and "The +Wrecker". "The Sacred Fount" never could have befuddled the chronicle +of the amiable John Silver, but in Mr. Conrad's "An Outcast of the +Islands," where it seems to be a question which white man will kill +the other, after a dramatic meet-in the presence of a Malay heroine, +each man stands still before our eyes and radiates states of mind. + +The lover who finds fault with his sweetheart because he is so proud +of her is perfectly human and also perfectly logical. So my reason for +dwelling on Mr. Conrad's shortcomings is because his books are +thoroughly worth consideration. His advent is really important. More +than any other new writer he is master of the ancient eloquence of +English style; no one since Stevenson has surpassed in fiction the +cadence and distinction of his prose. Never has an English sailor +written so beautifully, never has artist had such full and +authoritative knowledge of the sea, not even Pierre Loti. Stevenson +and Kipling are but observant landsmen after all. Marryat and Clark +Russell never write well, though they tell absorbing tales. There was +promise in Jack London, but he was not a seaman at heart. Herman +Melville's eccentric genius, greater than any of these, never led him +to construct a work of art, for all his amazing power of thought and +language. Conrad stands alone with his two gifts of sea experience and +cultivation of style. He has lived on the sea, loved it, fought it, +believed in it, been baffled by it, body and mind. To know its ways, +to be master of the science of its winds and waves and the ships that +brave it, to have seen men and events and the lands and waters of the +earth with the eye of a sailor, the heart of a poet, the mind of a +psychologist--artist and ship-captain in one--here is a combination +through which Fate has conspired to produce a new writer about the +most wonderful of all things, the sea and the mysterious lands beyond +it. + +If we grant that he is not master of the larger units of style, that +is, of construction, we can assert that in the lesser units, sentence +for sentence, he is a master of the English tongue. There is a story +that he learned English first from the Bible, and his vigorous primal +usages of words, his racial idioms and ancient rich metaphors warrant +the idea that he came to us along the old highway of English speech +and thought, the King James version. His sentences, however, are not +biblical as Stevenson's and Kipling's often are, but show a modern +sophistication and intellectual deliberateness. He frequently reminds +us that he is a Slav who learned French along with his native tongue, +that he has read Flaubert and Maupassant and Henry James. Approaching +our language as an adult foreigner, he goes deep to the derivative +meanings of words, their powerful first intentions, which familiarity +has disguised from most of us native-born to English. He has achieved +that ring and fluency which he has declared should be the artist's +aim. Conrad's prose lifts to passages of great poetic beauty, in which +the color of the sea, its emotional aspects, its desolation and its +blitheness, are mingled with its meaning for the men who sail it, its +"austere servitude," its friendliness and its treachery. + +"The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and +swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in +an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, +ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always +imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with +life, appeared far off,--disappeared, intent on its own destiny.... +The august loneliness of her path lent dignity to the sordid +inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as +if guided by the courage of a high endeavor. The smiling greatness of +the sea dwarfed the extent of time." + +No fairer temptation can be offered to a reader who does not know +Conrad than to quote a passage from the end of "Youth," and no more +honest praise can be offered to Conrad than to say that it is a +selected, but by no means unique, specimen of his genius. + +A crew that have left a burning ship in boats find an Eastern port at +night. The weary men tie to the jetty and go to sleep. This is the +young mate's narrative years after, the narrative of the reflective +and eloquent Marlow: "I was lying in a flood of light, and the sky had +never looked so far, so high, before. I opened my eyes and lay without +moving. And then I saw the men of the East--they were looking at me. +The whole length of the jetty was full of people. I saw brown, bronze, +yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the color of an Eastern +crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without a sigh, +without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men +who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved. The fronds +of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the +shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green +foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like +leaves forged of heavy metal. This was the East of the navigators, so +old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full +of danger and promise.... I have known its fascinations since: I have +seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown +nations, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so +many of the conquering race, who are proud of their wisdom, of their +knowledge, of their strength. But for me all the East is contained in +that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my +young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea--and I was +young--and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that it left of it! +Only a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour, of youth!" + + + + +A CONRAD MISCELLANY + + +Nothing that Joseph Conrad writes is negligible; he is one of few +living writers whom we must have complete to the last, or the latest, +published word. Readers who care only for the yarn-spinner will not +find much in his volume of essays, "Notes on Life and Letters," but +even they will find something. And for those to whom Conrad is more +than a story teller, an incomparable magician, these small bits from +his laboratory will have much of the charm of the larger pieces, if +only the reminiscent charm that brings any book of his, the least read +or read longest ago, swiftly to the surface of memory. If a mere +landlubber may hazard the similitude, the captain will always show his +qualities whether he is on the bridge of a liner or in a rowboat. + +The essays on books are unpretentious notes--eight pages on Henry +James, seven on Maupassant, twelve on Anatole France, short excursions +in criticism made between the longer voyages to the islands of the +blessed. Like most criticism written by men of genius, these papers +are interesting for what they say about another man of genius and also +for what they say about the critic. One of the most satisfactory +essays in what it reveals of Conrad is least satisfactory as objective +criticism--the one about Marryat and Cooper, in which there is a +declaration of descent in terms of surrender. To be sure, since the +elder men are seamen and writers of the sea, Conrad's delight in them +is understandable and not to be denied. But there are some things that +must be denied even by a critic who gets seasick a mile off shore. One +is Conrad's reiterated judgment that the greatness of Marryat "is +undeniable." If Marryat is great, then so is Oliver Optic. And when +Conrad speaks of the "sureness and felicity of effect" of the prose of +Cooper--Cooper, whose style grates on the ear and who drags us by the +sheer power of his story through his verbal infelicities--then I jump +overboard and leave these literary sailors to fight it out. + +When we get back on land to another of Conrad's masters, Guy de +Maupassant, I feel less shaky. In "Tales of Unrest" are two stories, +"The Return" and "The Idiots," in which I long ago thought I +discovered the right kind of influence from the French master--what +Conrad praises as Maupassant's austere fidelity to fact. Yet one is +puzzled by the implied praise in the very dubious statement that "this +creative artist [Maupassant] has the true imagination; he never +condescends to invent anything." Just what does that mean? If "A Piece +of String" and "The Necklace" are not diabolically ingenious +inventions, then the word invention means nothing as applied to +fiction. In point of invention how far apart are the story of the +girls in "La Maison Tellier" and the story of the girl in the pathetic +troupe in "Victory"? Both stories are equally invented, equally true +to nature, equally free from "the miserable vanity of a catching +phrase." But what is a catching phrase? I suppose that a Frenchman +gets somewhat the same shiver of delight from fine rhythms in +Maupassant's prose that we get from fine rhythms in Conrad. Both +men--I could quote many examples--strike out amazing metaphors, the +poetry of prose, which are not decorations hung on the outside but are +the unremovable intestines of their story. Such metaphors in rhythm +are surely "catching phrases," but they are not miserable vanities. I +wonder if Conrad has a moment now and then when he distrusts his own +eloquence--an eloquence which has brought against him from more than +one critic the charge of being a phrase maker. + +Conrad's prose is not so hard and compact as Maupassant's, and except +the two short stories I have mentioned I recall nothing in Conrad +which in manner or substance obviously illustrates his own statement +that he has been "inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with +the work" of Maupassant. His greatest short stories, "Youth" and "The +Heart of Darkness," seem worlds away from the French master. But +inspiration, the influence of one artist on another, does not mean +imitation in method or any visible resemblance in effect. It may mean +a fundamental similarity in artistic attitude. The elements of +similarity between the French writer and the British are the plain +virtues, honesty and courage, which Conrad rightly ascribes to +Maupassant; for these are the central virtues in the creed which +Conrad announced many years ago and to which he has loyally adhered in +the remotest strange seas of romance. + +Another of Conrad's masters, acknowledged in the phrase "twenty years +of attentive acquaintance" (and the phrase was written in 1905) is +Henry James. This seems a curious discipleship if we consider only the +material: James static, land-bound, class-bound; Conrad adventurous, +errant, familiar with all breeds and degrees of men. But much the same +thing happens to both kinds of material. For in the first place the +material is not essentially different; it is the history of a +two-legged animal staggering on land or aboard ship. And in the second +place what happens is simply (though it is not so simple) that an +artist tries to put this animal steady on its feet and make it give a +reasonable account of itself--through himself. It gets transmitted +through an intelligence, a personality, a style, into something more +interesting than the actual poor creature who wabbles along the street +or on the deck of a steamer. The courageous interpreters make their +fellow men stand up, and the real hero of a romance is the romancer. + +This is one of the paradoxes of fiction which the mere reader of +fiction and of criticism written by masters of fiction can enjoy, that +the modern self-conscious story tellers, forever proclaiming their +devotion to an objective reality, to the naked fact, and even, like +Conrad, pretending scorn of the phrase, are wilful persons who distort +life into a new reality. There is something almost naïve in the honest +belief of Tolstoy, James, Conrad, that nature, human nature, is +something outside the artist, lying _over there_, and that the artist +standing _over here_ observes it, renders it, "mirrors" it. James +himself, a most sophisticated realist, was not always so insistent as +Conrad seems to think on the function of the novelist as historian; +some years later than Conrad's essay, James found fault with the +younger novelists because their work was too undigested, because it +was not sufficiently remade, transformed by an individual +interpreter--that is, though he did not say it so harshly, the younger +men were not interesting individuals, not men of first-rate +imagination. + +But we must not get too far away from Conrad and his particular +relation to James. He has a generously envious admiration for James's +inconclusiveness, for the novel that stops but does not end because +life does not end; it seems to be, like his admiration for +Maupassant's accuracy and directness, a declaration of something that +he has striven for and not always accomplished. Conrad winds his own +stories up pretty sharply, wipes out his people with annihilation more +desolating than the conventional piling of corpses at the end of +"Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet." Recall the obliterating finality of +"Lord Jim," of "Victory," which ends with the blank word "nothing." +Or, where death does not conclude it all but the character lives on, +remember the abrupt inevitable termination of "The Rescue": "Steer +north!" Another relation which I have suggested and which Conrad as +critic does not hint is this: Conrad's material, though superficially +it is made up of adventure, wreck, blood, piracy, mystery, and +Stevensonian yo-heave-ho, is, as he treats it, often as static as +anything in James; it is stationary, concerned with the moods of men, +analytic, psychological (that tiresome word has to do for it), even +while the storm rages; and this is one of the reasons why readers with +a taste for ripping yarns have not welcomed him with the unanimous +popularity which they accorded to Stevenson and Kipling, to name fine +artists and not, of course, to mention cheap favorites. If we really +understood Conrad's fiction we have no difficulty in understanding his +filial relation to Henry James. Begin with the paragraph on page 13 of +"Notes on Life and Letters:" "Action in its essence, the creative art +of the writer of fiction," etc., and see if the rest that follows is +not, with a change or two, as good an account of Joseph Conrad as of +Henry James--better, indeed, since one master of fiction writing of +another speaks with two voices or with a voice proceeding from a +two-fold authority and wisdom. + +Joseph Conrad, novelist, child of English and Continental literature, +is not more unaccountable than any other literary genius. But how to +explain, or even remember at all, that the head of living English men +of letters, next to Hardy, is a Pole named Korzeniowski? It is fair to +remember that and be inquisitive about it because in "Notes on Life +and Letters" he pretends to write autobiography, and reminds us of his +origin in a paper called "Poland Revisited." It is a baffling +narrative, even more baffling than the vague book which he chose to +call "A Personal Record." Conrad in quest of his youth never gets back +to Poland at all except as a British tourist. The paper consists of +thirty-two pages. Mr. Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski reaches Cracow on the +twenty-fourth page. There are two or three pages of reminiscence, +chiefly about his father's death. Then war is declared (this is in +1914), and the British subject, with the assistance of the American +Ambassador, escapes from Poland and amid the booming of distant guns +in Flanders sails safely back through the Downs "thick with the +memories of my sea-life." + +Mr. Conrad is the least patriotic of Poles and the most patriotic of +Englishmen. His political opinions, which he was evidently invited to +express by some English editor who remembered the fading fact of +Korzeniowski and appreciated the luminous fact of Joseph Conrad, the +writer, are no better and no worse than any competent journalist might +have delivered. His hatred of Russia, expressed long before his +adopted country became the ally of the Czar, may have its origin in +some boyhood bitterness. But it is an Englishman who speaks, not a +Pole. His prophecy of the downfall of Russian autocracy and of the +menace of Prussianism shoots into the future with as true an aim as +any man could have had in 1905, and a prophet is to be excused for +having said at that time that there was in Russia "no ground ready for +a revolution." "Conrad political" is less interesting than "Conrad +controversial," since his controversial utterances were provoked by +the sinking of the Titanic, the question of the safety of ships, and +the stupidity of marine officials on land, subjects which he can +discuss with the cool knowledge of the expert and the vehemence of an +offended master of ships and words. + +But the true men of the four into which in his preface he divides +himself are "Conrad literary" and "Conrad reminiscent." The +reminiscence is not of a dimly, even indifferently, remembered Poland, +but of England and the sea. On the twenty-four-page journey to the +five-page sojourn in Cracow what happens? London, flashed on you in a +few sentences with an original vividness as if Englishmen had never +described it before, realized in brief transit, an immense solid +thing, compared to which Cracow is an insubstantial dream. He cannot +recapture his boyhood, but he gives you instantly the London of to-day +and the London of his youth when the British-Polish apprentice was +looking for a berth. And then the voyage across the North Sea. Here we +are at home. "The same old thing," he says. "A grey-green expanse of +smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-ridges, and over +all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of wet blotting +paper." + +"The same old thing!" The sea is the same old thing, water deep and +shoal, storm and calm, fog and clear weather, light and darkness, +starshine and sunshine. It is understandable that from time to time a +new poet should be born, Byron, Tennyson, Swinburne, Whitman, Conrad, +Masefield, who, being a different man from all the rest, should phrase +some mood of the sea in words that no other poet in centuries had +used. But Conrad has written fifteen volumes mostly about the sea, +many pages necessarily about some aspect which he has treated more +than once. His treatment is so unmistakably his own that you could +recognize any passage as his if you saw it on a piece of torn paper +blown from nowhere. Yet it is truer of him than of Shakespeare that he +never repeats, has no _clichés_, no pet phrases, but in each book +finds astonishing new images, as if he himself had not written before. +How does he do it? + + + + +STRINDBERG + + +Some men of genius at forty or fifty arrive at a view of life, an +attitude toward the human comedy, as inclusive and definite as it is +possible for them to conceive. Hardy at seventy is quite recognizable +the man that he was at forty. The Meredith of 1860 is the Meredith of +1890. They grow, they improve or change their artistic methods. But +their natures do not undergo violent revolutions. Other men, Tolstoy +for example, experience a catastrophic annihilation of some part of +themselves and emerge from the confusion, remade, fired with new +beliefs. Tolstoy had one great battle with himself which divided his +life into two main periods, and after the struggle his philosophy, +whatever its worth, was fairly settled, and he knew how to express it +clearly over and over again. + +Strindberg seems to have been continuously at war with Strindberg; and +the peace that he found was but the death-bed repentance of a man +whose forces were spent. He went through many phases. "The Growth of a +Soul", which is autobiographical, might better be called "The +Conflicts of a Soul". It seethes with ideas, ends in a half-formed +philosophy, and is only a section of Strindberg's intellectual +adventures. He was ten men at ten different times, and he was ten men +all the time. He expressed every aspect of himself. His manifold +genius was master of all forms of literature. As Emerson said of +Swedenborg, in whom Strindberg found all the light that his dark soul +ever knew, he lies abroad on his times, leviathan-like. Undoubtedly to +know him, one must know him entire, and I do not pretend to complete +knowledge of his life and works. + +Some fragments of his total artistic expression are not intelligible +when they are read apart from his other books. "The Inferno" is a +confused and murky nightmare which takes on form and purpose only when +the light of biography is turned on it. Other works of Strindberg, +read by themselves, are clear and shapely. + +"By the Open Sea" is an intensely powerful study of an overcultivated +man and a primitively passionate woman. It is, moreover, the work of a +poet who loves the sea. The passage in which the ichthyologist +observes through his telescope the wonder-world beneath the surface of +the water is rich with the essential poetry of natural fact. The +translator, Ellie Schleussner, would probably say, as Strindberg's +admirers all say, that his resonant poetic prose cannot be rendered in +another language. Yet the things that he sees in nature and his +interpretations of them are in their naked substance the imaginative +stuff which is poetry. This Titan was not content to be poet, +novelist, dramatist, essayist, philosopher. He was also a man of +science, no mean rival, they say, of the professional student of +biology and chemistry. The eye that looks through Borg's telescope has +been trained in a laboratory and can also roll with a fine frenzy: + +"The blenny, which has developed a pair of oars in front, but is too +heavy in the stern and reminds one of first attempts at boat building, +raised its architectural stone head, adorned with the moustachios of a +Croat, above the heraldic foliage among which it had lain, and lifted +itself for a short moment out of the mud only to sink back into it the +next instant. + +"The lump-fish with its seven backs stuck up its keel; the whole fish +was nothing but an enormous nose, scenting out food and females; it +illuminated for a second the bluish-green water with its rosy belly, +surrounding itself with a faint aureole in the deep darkness; but +before long its sucker again held safely to a stone, there to wait the +lapse of the million years which shall bring delivery to the laggards +on the endless road of evolution." + +Strindberg has been called both misogamist and misogynist. Yet it is +not possible to collect and compress within the bounds of such +definite words a man whose ideas on any one subject fly far apart as +the poles. If he sometimes, often, expresses virulent detestation of +women and all their ways, he is not more tender toward men. He is not +a caresser of life. He hangs the whole human race. But he analyzes; +tries it before the twelve-minded jury in himself before he pronounces +sentence. Point by point, detail for detail, he is just in perception +of character and motive. His final view is simply not final, but +contradictory as life itself. He thinks that woman is a snare to the +feet of a man who would walk upright and accomplish something in the +world. Yet he believes in the freedom of woman, would give her the +vote, and emancipate her from economic bondage to the man. He even +champions the liberty of the child, condemns "the family as a social +institution which does not permit the child to become an individual at +the proper time," and draws both parents as victims of "the same +unfortunate conditions which are honored by the sacred name of law." + +"Marriage" contains twenty short stories of married life, so many +variations of Strindberg's thesis against the institution. So +regarded, the book leaves one rather sore than enlightened. But these +stories are stories, not tracts. Strindberg is a great, if rough and +savage, artist. His opinions, whatever they are, do not devitalize his +fiction. His short narratives are as skilful as Maupassant's in at +least one respect, compression, sinewy economy. He can put in ten +pages the domestic tragedy of a lifetime. He is a fine or, rather, a +firm craftsman, and though the man rages, the artist has the artist's +restraint and every other literary virtue short of ultimate beauty. He +sets down terrible things with a cool succinctness. One story ends +thus: "The children had become burdens and the once beloved wife a +secret enemy despised and despising him. And the cause of all this +unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the large storehouses of the +new world were breaking down under the weight of an over-abundant +supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions! The manner in which +bread was distributed must be at fault. Science, which has replaced +religion, has no answer to give; it merely states facts and allows the +children to die of hunger and the parents of thirst." + +"The Red Room" is a satire on life in Stockholm, on life everywhere. +The pathetic struggle of the artistic and literary career, its follies +and pretenses, the fatuity of politics, the dishonesty of journalism, +the disillusion that awaits the aspiring actor, all these things run +riot through the lively pages. Strindberg's satire is severe, it is +sometimes hard, but it is not mean. He has a large if rather distant +sympathy for the poor fellows whose aspirations, failures, +dissipations, and friendships he portrays. Of two young critics he +says: "And they wrote of human merit and human unworthiness and broke +hearts as if they were breaking egg-shells." He writes of their +unconscious inhumanity and blindness in a way that reveals his own +clearness of vision and fundamental humanity. The laughter of a somber +humorist has in it a tenderness unknown to merry natures. + +The dramatic and literary critic may profitably read the chapter +called "Checkmate," in which the young journalist is made to say: "The +public does not want to have an opinion, it wants to satisfy its +passions. If I praise your enemy you writhe like a worm and tell me +that I have no judgment; if I praise your friend, you tell me that I +have. Take that last piece of the Dramatic Theatre, Fatty, which has +just been published in book form.... It's quite safe to say that there +isn't enough action in it: that's a phrase the public knows well; +laugh a little at the 'beautiful language'; that's good, old +disparaging praise; then attack the management for having accepted +such a play and point out that the moral teaching is doubtful--a very +safe thing to say about most things." + +Strindberg's imagination visualized and dramatized everything. He made +plays of an astonishing variety of ideas ranging from wild poetic +fantasy to grim realism--a range as great as Ibsen's and greater than +Hauptmann's. + +Glance at those in the third volume of Mr. Björkman's translations, +not to analyze them but merely to note their diversity. "Swanwhite" is +a fairy fantasy of love, confessedly inspired by Maeterlinck, yet in +no sense an imitation of him. "Advent" is a Christmas miracle play, +which embodies a gentle sermon on the forgiveness of sins--a strange +sermon from the man who wrote the last chapter of "By the Open Sea!" +"Debit and Credit" is a realistic sketch portraying the man who +succeeds at the expense of other people. "The Thunderstorm" plays upon +an old theme, one that Strindberg knew by experience, the failure of +marriage between an elderly man and a young woman. It ends rather +serenely for Strindberg, whose last years were not peaceful: "It's +getting dark, but then comes reason to light us with its bull's-eyes, +so that we don't go astray.... Close the windows and pull down the +shades so that all memories can lie down and sleep in peace of old +age." + +In "After the Fire" the vanity and dishonesty of petty people are +ruthlessly exposed. The Stranger who finds all reputations to have +been based on sham and all pride founded on wind, is said to be +Strindberg himself. "Vanity, vanity.... You tiny earth; you, the +densest and heaviest of all planets--that's what makes everything on +you so heavy--so heavy to breathe, so heavy to carry. The cross is +your symbol, but it might just as well have been a fool's cap or a +strait-jacket--you world of delusions and deluded!" + + + + +TAGORE + + +Sometimes the world, or a section of it, goes wildly cheering after a +prophet; and a stranger, watching the multitude, wonders wherein lies +the greatness of the great man. The sceptic may be too ignorant to +understand or he may be too clear-sighted to be deceived. Not many +years ago the tom-tom of the Nobel Prize beat before the tent of the +modest and inoffensive Hindoo poet, Rabindranath Tagore. English +critics and poets of first-rate authority have called him wonderful. +For all I know he may be wonderful, for I have not read all his work +in English and I am not well acquainted with Bengali. But I submit +that in "The Crescent Moon" and "The Gardener," there is not one great +line, not one poem that is arresting, compelling, memorable. Moreover, +there is much that is false and weak. + + O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! + O Farthest End, O the keen call of thy flute! + +Now that may do in India, but in our part of the world it is feeble +orchestration. The poets of the Bible and English poets since the days +of the Elizabethan translation have equipped the celestial choirs with +more sounding instruments. One cannot without a smile consider the far +end of the cosmos playing a flute or a piccolo. Harken to how a +supreme poet makes music worthy of the wide spaces: + + But thou dost set in statelier pageantry, + Lauded with tumults of the firmament; + Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky, + Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident, + Thou dost thy dying so triumphally; + I see the crimson blaring of thy shawms. + +This is from Francis Thompson's "Ode to the Setting Sun." You see the +difference. Thompson's lines are poetry. Tagore's simply are not. + +Miss May Sinclair, herself a distinguished artist, says that Mr. +Tagore's translation of his Bengali poetry into English "preserves, +not only all that is essential and eternal in his poetry, but much of +the strange music." That may be so, but how does Miss Sinclair know +that? Does she understand Bengali? Does she read it and speak it well +enough to be sure that Mr. Tagore has translated himself adequately? +Is not she affording an instance of criticism that in an excess of +enthusiasm runs beyond its own knowledge? Some of Tagore's lines are +mildly sweet, and there are some pretty fancies in the Child-Poems. +The poem in "The Gardener," which begins: + + Why do you whisper so faintly in my ears, O + Death, my Death? + +would be faintly impressive if Walt Whitman had never lived. + +Not only are Tagore's lines not great but some of his lines are +foolish: + + Under the banyan tree you were milking the cow with your hands, + tender and fresh as butter. + +Perhaps Mr. Tagore did not know that in English "butter fingers" +greasily signifies manual ineptitude. I can not take that line +seriously, nor understand how Tagore has become one of England's +acknowledged poets. He distorts nature with pathetic fallacies which +have not verbal splendor to carry them, as the verbal splendor of +Shakespeare, Shelley, and Thompson often carries a metaphor that, so +to speak, will not hold water. + + I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was + hiding its last gold like a miser. + +The sunset is not in the least like a miser; and a true lover and +observer of nature would not allow himself such a niggardly fallacious +image. Are not our friends, the poets and critics, victims of the +spell which odd things out of the East put on our occidental minds, +the spell that makes some people run after queer preachers and +philosophers who talk religion through their turbans? + +One is reminded that Mr., or Sir Owen Seaman has in his delicious book +of parodies, "The Battle of the Bays", an Edwin-Arnoldy thing that +runs like this: + + The bulbul hummeth like a book + Upon the pooh-pooh tree, + And now and then he takes a look + At you and me, + At me and you. + Kuchi! Kuchoo! + +It is, I confess, sheer perversity that made that stanza come into my +head while I was reading Tagore. Tagore does not rhyme; he puts his +verses into simple prose, most of which is pleasant enough, but none +of which is rich in thought or magnificent in phrase. + +Tagore is a faker in the English sense of the word. I do not know what +he is in Hindoo. He gives lectures in America to audiences that are, +of course, mostly women. Then when he has got all the money he can get +from them (for his schools; he is not selfish) he tells them as a +Parthian shot that they are idle. If they were not, the poor ignorant +dears, he would not have had any audiences or any money. It is caddish +to kick the cow that gives the milk. I should rejoice if he took +millions from the idle ladies of America to help the ladies of India +and to free India from the British murderer and thief. Spoiling the +Egyptians is a good game. But it is not playing the game like a man +and a philosopher to bite the hand that feeds you. + +And it is not manly or philosophic to kiss the hand that strikes you. +Tagore with a feeble gesture relinquishes his British title as a +protest against British crime in India. If he had been a real +philosopher and a true patriot he would not have accepted the title in +the first place. The lost leader who sticks a riband in his coat does +not recover leadership by throwing the riband away. The political and +social beliefs of poets, even of Dante and Shelley and Hugo, are of +less importance than their sense of beauty. But there is a connection, +not quite impertinent to a purely literary discussion, between the +quality of a poet's work and his character as it is expressed when he +descends from Parnassus and uses the prose of politicians. It is not +surprising that Tagore, who babbles to American chautauquas and allows +an English king to tap him on the shoulder, should be a weak and +stammering poet. That voice from the east is not impressive. If it is +the best that modern India can do, then India is done for +intellectually as well as economically. + + + + +REMY DE GOURMONT + + +In "Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas,"[1] Mr. +William Aspenwall Bradley has made an excellent selection from the +work of Remy de Gourmont; one only regrets that space did not permit +him to give us more. He has a gift unfortunately rare among +translators: he knows his original and he knows how to write the +language into which he translates. He even corrects his master in one +place: where de Gourmont, stumbling in a language which he has not +quite mastered, writes that the English words, "sweet," and "sweat," +are _mots de prononciation identique_, Mr. Bradley gently wipes out +the blunder with "words which resemble each other." Not that de +Gourmont, with his enormous knowledge, made many such mistakes! I +merely note the care and delicacy of the translator. + + [1] Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas. Remy + de Gourmont. Translated by William Aspenwall Bradley. New + York: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1921. + +Without pretending too much to the wisdom which should have ensued, I +remember like a shock of light, as if a blind man had suddenly gained +his vision, my introduction, a few years ago, to the work of de +Gourmont (for which my thanks are due to Mr. Martin Loeffler, who is a +distinguished musician and only potentially a man of letters). If you +wish to have your darkness illuminated, associate with the wise. If +you are groping in a foreign literature, the first man to meet is +the critic. The little I know about France of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries I owe to having clung to the broad and often +elusive coat-tails of Sainte-Beuve. As a guide to the nineteenth +century and much else beside--back to Rome and Greece--the most +stimulating cicerone is Remy de Gourmont. + +When he was born, the gods went crazy and put into one person an elf +and a sage, Ariel and Prospero, Morgan and Merlin. It is no uncommon +thing when you are reading a French book, by an author with whose work +you are not familiar, to find facing the title-page a list of books +_du même auteur_ and to discover that he has published something +in all the main divisions of imaginative literature, plays, poems, +romances, criticism. It takes a Frenchman to box the literary compass. +He assumes that the business of a writer is to write, and he learns +and practises all the forms, with varying degrees of success, to be +sure, just as a musician, trying all forms, may be at his best in +songs or quartettes for strings or symphonies or operas. + +De Gourmont played every instrument in the band and played it well. +His range and versatility are remarkable even for a Frenchman. He took +all knowledge for his province. In spreading his interests wide he +never became thin; even when he played on the surface of an idea he +somehow, in a page or two, showed the depth of mind and matter +underneath. He was, as his American publishers say, poet, critic, +dramatist, scholar, biologist, philosopher, novelist, philologist, and +grammarian. He was an experimenter and explorer. When he died, just +under sixty, he was still looking round with his keen roaming eye, and +he was looking sadly, for the war, according to his brother Jean, who +writes not sentimentally but like a de Gourmont, killed him. + +Even the colossal, universal genius, the Hugo, the Goethe, can not be +supreme in every realm of thought, in every type of literary +expression. De Gourmont's poetry, to my ignorant alien ear, is not +among the best in that prolific and still living period of French +poetry which he as critic did so much to encourage. As for de +Gourmont's fiction, "Une Nuit au Luxembourg," which he might have +tossed with a wink into the lap of Anatole France, does not greatly +enrich French fiction, which is already rich in similar achievements. +"Couleurs" consists of delightful twittings on ideas, and surely is +not greatly important in a nation where one man of letters out of four +has mastered the art of the _conte_. + +De Gourmont is supremely the critic, the man who digests, interprets, +reorganizes the thoughts of other men and in the process adds to those +thoughts. His favorite method of reorganization is disorganization, +"dissociation" (and by the way, that word is good in English, as in +French, and better than Mr. Bradley's "disassociation"). He pulls +ideas to pieces and skilfully puts them together again. He is an +analyst, a dissector. But the flowers of the garden are not all +plucked to shreds and scattered on the paths, nor are they all taken +to the laboratory and subjected to the microscope. De Gourmont is +interested in things living and in propagating life. "_Toutes nos +fleurs sont fraîches, jeunes et pleines d'amour._" He surveys +wildernesses and lays out gardens. No other man was ever blessed with +such a combination of the safe, sane, intellectually comfortable and +the restless, daring, venturesome. + +He loves paradoxes because life is full of contradictions, and his +paradoxes are often elucidations and conciliations of conflicting +ideas, never the cheap and facile paradoxes of a Chesterton. Is +Mallarmé obscure? There is never absolute, literal obscurity in an +honestly written work. Besides, there are too few obscure writers in +French. This from a Frenchman whose own writing is a marvel of clarity +even when he is handling subtle and difficult ideas! Moreover, de +Gourmont's essays on language and style are studies in precision, in +definition. + +De Gourmont is a wise man, who, like Socrates and William James, is +not afraid to joke, and some of his perversities are uttered with his +ironic tongue in his cheek. Like all fine humorists he is profoundly +serious, and the delicate play of his fingers is backed by terrific +muscular scholarship. His method is to appear to be casual, to make +the review of a book "_une occasion de parler un peu_" and then +to pack into six pages the reading of a lifetime. He manipulates +Brunetière into the corner and annihilates him before you have time to +realize that there is no button on the rapier. + +For all his tolerant smile and sceptical shrug, de Gourmont is +fighting valiantly for ideas. He wants ideas liberated but not loose, +and in the very act of freeing them he defines and fixes them. He +divides long-mated notions in order to reassemble them according to +his private logic. For he is the most wilful and individual of +critics. The journalistic multiplicity of his subjects is unified by a +great personality. The "dissociator" of ideas is a constructive +thinker, one of the greatest of critics in a nation of critics and +sufficient in himself to stand as smiling refutation of Croce's dictum +that "French criticism is notably weak whenever the fundamentals of +art are concerned." If there is a fundamental of art that de Gourmont +missed, I doubt whether it is to be discovered in any German or +Italian book. For de Gourmont's reading embraced the literature of +Europe, and he was especially alert to philosophic criticism. He was +forever in search of principles; but the result of his quest is not a +massive disquisition. The solidity of his learning and the systematic +coherence of his ideas are concealed from the unwary reader by the +lightness of his tone and also by his brevity, the gift, which belongs +to the race of Montaigne and Voltaire, of saying everything in a few +sentences. His essays are light as a feather and yet they carry tons +of information. The aeroplane looks like a bird but it is a heavy and +elaborate piece of machinery. + +De Gourmont lived in an ivory tower, the tower of a wizard who +combined the knowledge of an ancient necromancer with that of a modern +chemist. He was much alone, for only in solitude can a man read as +much as de Gourmont read and write about it in serene meditation. +Nevertheless, he was in and of the world of writers; he was an active +and friendly editor; he made the _Mercure de France_; he encouraged +the youngest and bravest of his day; many of his notes record +conversations with the finest men of his time. He spent his days with +_la jeunesse_ and his nights with aged wisdom. When he retired to his +ivory tower he carried under one arm a volume of mediæval Latin, to +add to his enormous library, already neatly stowed in his head, and +under the other arm the manuscript of the youngest French poet. + +In one of his essays de Gourmont plays charmingly with the reviewer's +too facile use of "great"; "great writer," "very great writer." +Despite that delightful warning I dare say that de Gourmont is a +_très grand écrivain_, not a great poet nor a great novelist, but +the greatest critic that has been born, even in France where critics +are wont to be born. + + + + +SWIFT'S RELATIONS WITH WOMEN + + +"Controversy," says the editor of the Swift-Vanessa letters,[1] "might +have been more moderate in tone and more fruitful of result, if +writers had always remembered that, though grounds of conjecture are +abundant, the data for forming a judgment are manifestly incomplete." +Leslie Stephen, a shrewd and cautious biographer, with a lawyer's gift +for handling evidence, says "This is one of those cases in which we +feel that even biographers are not omniscient; and I must leave it to +my readers to choose their own theory, only suggesting that readers, +too, are fallible." + + [1] Vanessa and Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift. + Letters edited for the first time from originals. With an + introduction by A. Martin Freeman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin + Co. + +I propose an explanation of Swift, but propose it only as a +conjecture, an hypothesis. I shall not even argue it up to the point +of positive belief; certainly I shall not push it beyond the line +where belief borders knowledge. Conjecture is good if it remains +clearly in the realm of conjecture, an honest area of thought, and +does not try to sneak over into the land of things proved. + +All of Swift's relations with women, and much else in his life, may be +accounted for by the supposition that early he discovered or suspected +that he was insane, that he believed his insanity might be +transmissible, that he was consequently afraid to have children, that +he was honest and strong enough to keep himself in check, that the +resulting suppression made him irascible and bitter, that he was a +vigorous and passionate man, that his quick shifts from tender fooling +to savage satire, his friendly and brutal moods, his strutting +arrogance that amazed the coffee houses, were not due to any +tom-foolery of politics or thwarted ambition in the petty matter of +advancement in the church but were due to a conflict, honorably won by +Swift, in the place where a man lives. The "early" in this supposition +is important. Leslie Stephen, quoting the familiar dark prophecy of +Swift at the age of fifty: "I shall be like that tree; I shall die at +the top," justly observes that "a man haunted perpetually by such +forebodings might well think that marriage was not for him." But +Stephen is dealing with Swift in middle age and offering an +explanation of why, assuming that Swift was not already married to +Stella, he did not marry Vanessa. Let us place the beginning of the +perpetual foreboding early in Swift's life and see if the main facts, +so far as we know them, will lie upon this supposition. + +Swift's attacks of vertigo began in his youth. He attributed his +illness to an over-consumption of fruit when he was twenty-one. Swift +knew better than that. Even if we assume that medical science in the +eighteenth century was stupid and backward, Swift was too intelligent +to believe that an early period of indigestion accounted for the +suffering which afflicted him all his life. He knew, or suspected and +feared, what was the matter with him. In 1699, when he was thirty-two, +he wrote some resolutions, headed "when I come to be old." Among them +is this: "Not to be fond of children or let them come near me hardly." +Stephen quotes a friendly commentator as saying: "We do not fortify +ourselves with resolutions against what we dislike but against what we +feel in our weakness we have reason to believe we are really inclined +to." That friendly commentator was right and understood human nature, +though he had never lived (Stephen does not name him) to hear about +libido, suppression, defence, inversion, and other wise words now +current. + +Stephen goes wrong, it seems to me, in his following friendly +commentation: "Yet it is strange that a man should regard the purest +and kindliest of feelings as a weakness to which he was too much +inclined." I have not space to quote the rest, which is on page 31 of +Stephen in the English Men of Letters. Swift was not fighting against +a weakness, he was fighting against a strength. He resolves "not to +marry a young woman." In a letter he calls a woman's children her +"litter," and that has been quoted by some critics as an example of +his brutality. He loves Tom, Dick, and Harry but he hates mankind. Is +it not clear? He can not have what he wants, and what he wants is what +normally results in children, in more mankind. His resolution, +superficially harsh and misanthropic, is a masked, or inverted, +expression of desire. Such expression is not, of course, peculiar to +literary satirists, but it should be remembered that Swift had +supremely the ironic trick of thought, the gift of saying a thing by +saying exactly the opposite. + +The resolution should be read in the light of the fact that Stella was +eighteen years old, a grown and comely woman. But the interpretation +of it depends much more closely on the termination of Swift's affair +with Varina. The date, 1699, suggests this. He had proposed to Varina, +Miss Waring, in 1696, in a letter which is passionate enough, and had +been rejected, at least provisionally, on the score of her ill health +and his poverty. Four years later, after he had received the living at +Laracor and seemed to be on the way to other preferments, she wished +to hold him to his word, and he jilted her. There are three +explanations. One is that he had fallen in love with Stella and so out +of love with the other woman. The second explanation, Leslie +Stephen's, is that his ambitions had not been realized, his +advancement had not been brilliant, and marriage would have kept his +nose to the grind-stone in an obscure living. That explanation is not +good, for, though Swift always had an eye to the main chance and was +worried about money, power, and position, it is only men of cool blood +or men who have extra-marital opportunities to gratify their desires +who are ever deterred by considerations of thrift and economy from +marrying the beloved woman. Swift was not cold but passionate. And it +is inconceivable that he, a clergyman in a small parish, was finding +his pleasure in illicit intercourse. + +The third explanation, which I venture to suggest, is that between his +proposal to Varina in 1696 and his insulting rejection of her in 1700, +between his twenty-ninth and thirty-third years, he had discovered a +reason why he must not live with a woman. His resolutions, remember, +not to marry a young woman and not to be fond of children were written +in 1699. How could Stephen believe that those resolutions, with others +"pithy and sensible," were "for behavior in a distant future?" Swift's +heading, "when I come to be old," means nothing; he is writing from +the misery of the moment. Why is the letter in which Swift puts an end +to poor Varina so brutal and insulting that, in Stephen's words, no +one with a grain of self-respect could accept the conditions of +marriage which he lays down? Because he could not tell her the real +reason, a reason based on fear rather than on physiological certainty. +It is an honestly dishonest letter. It is a perfect example of that +perplexing contradiction which appears everywhere in his life and +writings, that he was brutally honest, saw through the postures and +masks of everybody else, and yet postured, attitudinized, and lied +himself. He carried his secret agony with fortitude and alternately +raged against the world and fooled with it. In relation to the Varina +episode Stephen misses the point, though what he says is true enough: +"Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But when +anyone tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings, +the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and +brought out the most brutal side of his imperious nature." Though a +man has but one heart, yet his relations with his friends are quite +different from his passions for women. A proud, ferocious and +imperious nature is not the whole story of Swift. It does not give us +the real foundation of the story of Varina, of Stella, of Vanessa and +the man they loved. + +On the foundation which I propose the story of Stella will rest +securely, intelligibly. If Swift was married secretly to Stella in +1716--the evidence is not conclusive--the marriage was only a legal +ceremony performed perhaps for the purpose of securing her in case her +fortunes went wrong or gossip or other circumstances made necessary +the protection of his name. Almost certainly there was no physical +marriage, no union legal or illegal. Why? He was free and she was +free. She was, by his own account, a charming person who would have +been quite presentable to his friends and in all ways helpful to a man +in middle age who is supposed to need a woman to take care of him. The +answer is simply that Swift feared to propagate his tainted stock, +that he refrained and suffered. And the "Journal to Stella" is a +record of suffering, of passion disguised and writhing. A busy man, +with other things to write, does not write that much to a woman he +does not love, and he does not write that way to a woman he openly and +avowedly loves. The "little language," the silliness, the foolings, +the avoidance of direct declaration of love, the semi-paternal +injunctions, the gossip about big people, much of it whimsical chatter +in which we get only by implication the serious view of Swift and his +times that has made it an important historical document, the two or +three hintful promises of felicity which commit Swift to nothing, the +passages of melancholy and half-humorous old man's grouch--all this is +a veiled love letter. It is tingling and nervous and alert and full of +pain, not the idle recreation of a tired man of affairs entertaining a +child, but the heartbreak of a powerful man of forty-five expressed +by indirections to a woman of thirty. Perhaps she understood his +spleen and his complaints of ill-health. We may be on the way +to understanding them now. Certainly Stephen is off the track +when he says that there are "grounds for holding that Swift was +constitutionally indisposed to the passion of love." Unless he means +by that that Swift knew that there was something in his constitution +which made the ultimate realization of love impossible. And Stephen +does not mean that, for he speaks of the absence of traces of passion +from writings "conspicuous for their amazing sincerity." An amazing +example of a sincere biographer missing the trace! Swift's insistence +on his "coldness" and his assertion that he did not understand love +are precisely an affirmation of what the words deny. + +Now enters the third woman of record--there may have been more--in +Swift's unhappy sexual life, Vanessa, Esther Vanhomrigh. At the same +time that he is writing his long love letter, the "Journal to Stella," +he is seeing Vanessa. Of course. It is all explicable. The man can not +have the woman he wants and is tantalized by another woman who wants +him. He plays and he won't play. He is tormented by the same restraint +that keeps him out of Stella's bed. He is handsome, virile, and +distinguished. The woman is crazy about him. He is unable to keep away +from her, but he is fighting, for reasons known to him, against the +impulse to possess her. He plays again, as with Stella, a game which, +viewed superficially, is fraudulent and unfair. He is teacher, guide, +philosopher, and Dutch uncle. But she is not a docile, gentle girl +like Stella. Mr. Freeman, who handles his documents admirably and is +not slanted from the truth by moralistic concern for hero or heroine, +is, nevertheless, naïve and blind to the facts which he has so +carefully considered. He says: "The tragedy, then, was inevitable from +the day when Vanessa attempted to arouse in him a love of which he was +incapable. It might have been hastened, or its form might have been +different, if he had sternly broken with Vanessa as soon as he +discovered the nature of her desires." Swift was not incapable, in +that sense, and he knew the nature of her desires, for he was not a +fool. What he knew also was the nature of his own desires and their +possible consequences. That is, I conjecture, the heart of the story +of Swift's heart. + + + + +WILLIAM JAMES, MAN OF LETTERS + + +I. + +The letters of a philosopher usually have the primary, if not +exclusive, interest of elucidating and extending in an informal way +the ideas expounded in his professional writings. It is for this +interest that one would turn to the letters of a thinker who was +nothing but a thinker, such as Kant (if, indeed, there is a collection +of Kant's letters), and to the correspondence of such a philosopher as +Nietzsche, who, aside from his technical contributions to human +wisdom, presents fascinating problems in human character, personality, +biography. The letters of Williams James[1] have two distinct values. +They appeared at the same moment with his "Collected Essays and +Reviews"[2] and the two publications, taken together, complete the +intellectual record of the man. Though master and man can not be +separated, yet, as good disciples of James's pluralism, we may be +permitted to divide an individual into two "aspects." First let us +enjoy the letters, simply as the letters of a man who was, +incidentally, a philosopher. + + [1] The Letters of William James. Edited by his son Henry + James. Two Vols. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press. + + [2] Collected Essays and Reviews. William James. New York; + Longmans, Green and Co. + +And what letters! The letters of Lamb, of Edward Fitzgerald, are not +more delightful. The easiest and pleasantest way to prove that would +be to fill the rest of this essay with quotations, and that way would +be in consonance with the whimsical spirit of James, who wrote to his +youngest son: "Your Ma thinks you'll grow up into a filosofer like me +and write books. It is easy enough, all but the writing. You just get +it out of other books and write it down." To write a jolly letter to a +child, to ridicule yourself and your profession and at the same time +to defend an idea with vigor and determination, to poke fun at +colleagues and heartily respect them, to be dignified in mental shirt +sleeves, to wink one eye and keep two keen eyes on the page or the +fact that has to be studied, to fling words with apparent carelessness +and never for a moment to lose control of words or thought--all this +means a great character and a fine literary artist. + +James says of Duveneck, the painter: "I have seen very little of him. +The professor is an oppressor of the artist, I fear." It may be that +the professor, which James was and officially had to be, oppressed the +artist in him. But the artist would not down. If all the philosophic +work of James were wiped out by an act of God or by the arguments of +philosophers, James, the man of letters, would still survive. I +believe that part of the success of James as philosopher was due to +his ability to say what he meant not only with logical clarity but +with charm, with the skill of the literary artist. Technical +Philosophy may immortalize or bury his work. The man, the startling, +original person must be imperishable. No matter what subject he +touches, his way of saying things is superb. He had an artist's +interest in the art of writing. Of a volume of his essays he says: "I +am sure of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents. But I +am afraid that what you will never appreciate is their wonderful +English style! Shakespeare is a little street-boy in comparison!" The +wise man has his tongue in his cheek, of course, but there is a +serious idea behind the fooling. Of a correspondent's "strictures on +my English" he writes: "I have a tendency towards too great +colloquiality." What sort of laborious philosopher was it who worried +James about his style, his fluent, accurate, imaginative vehicle of +thought? It may be that some of James's philosophic ideas are quite +wrong. But there is a presumption in favor of the truth of an idea +which is well expressed. + +James argues somewhere that a style as thick as Hegel's can not be the +"authentic mother-tongue of reason." If that is unfair to Hegel, it is +a fair revelation of the mind of James. He was an advocate and an +exemplar of lucidity of expression, and was always putting to himself +and other philosophers the plain question: "Just what do you mean?" +But his sharpness of mind, though often aggressive, was never +offensive. He seems at times to have dulled the edge of his wit in +order not to hurt the other fellow. The editor of the letters has, +perhaps wisely, "not included letters that are wholly technical or +polemic." Probably the ideas expressed in the technical letters are +repeated in James's books. But I should like to see the polemic +letters. The editor himself in the act of withholding them has defined +their merits: "He rejoiced openly in the controversies which he +provoked and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that +were the essence of his genius." The touches of polemic writing which +appear in the correspondence that is given us reveal this good humor +and vigor and make one hungry for more. He was staunch and dexterous +in argument and never yielded an inch, but he could stop and laugh at +his opponent and at himself. He objected to Huxley's somewhat solemn +devotion to "Truth," yet he had a kind of skill in argument that was +not unlike Huxley's. He could give a man a smashing blow in the ribs, +and even show a quite human irritation, but his exquisite courtesy +never failed. His letters to Godkin, of the _Nation_, protesting +against unfair criticism of the work of the elder Henry James, are a +lesson for critics, and no doubt Godkin's reply was a model of +magnanimous contrition. + +James had an immense variety of interests outside philosophy, though +perhaps it is unphilosophical to imply that anything can lie outside +the range of a true philosopher's vision. His letters are written to +many different kinds of persons; the best of them, naturally, are to +philosophers and men of letters, who evoked from him an amazing +multiplicity of ideas and to whom he let fly a delicious compound of +sound reason and jocularity. In characterizing other men he +characterized himself. For example, what he says about Royce embraces +both men perfectly: "that unique mixture of erudition, originality, +profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness." He was +fortunate in his human and intellectual contacts. An early and +abidingly fortunate contact was that with his father, who was also a +"filosofer." His last letter to his father is beautiful. It brings +tears, of which the most stoical philosopher need not be ashamed; +indeed, one might rather be ashamed if the tears did not come. No one +outside the family and a few friends has a right to read that letter, +but print has extended the privilege. If Mr. E. V. Lucas or any other +anthologist makes a new collection of examples of "the gentlest art," +the letter from James to his father should be included. In it two men +are portrayed, father and son, both magnificently; if either man had +been less than great the letter could not have been written. + +James was born a philosopher; philosophy was in the blood and in the +very air of the household. There is no better instance of the heredity +of genius and of predestination to a career. Yet James did not find +himself immediately; he floundered about in the world of thought long +after the age at which most men have hung out shingles. He was thirty +when he was appointed instructor in physiology at Harvard, and his +tardiness in establishing himself as a bread-winning citizen fretted +him. Lesser men who feel that the expression of their talents has been +thwarted or postponed may take comfort from the fact that James's +first printed book, the "Psychology," appeared in 1890, when he was +forty-eight years old. + +The fact that James was an intellectual roamer and did not proceed +docilely from a doctor's degree to a position as teacher, in a groove +forever, accounts, in part, for the flexibility and variety of his +thought. His "dribbling," as he calls it, during years when he +suffered from physical illness and a depressing sense of impotence, +was not altogether bad for the man or for the philosopher. He wandered +about Europe, became bilingual, if not trilingual (he was never quite +happy in German speech or German philosophy). His learning was +enriched with odds and ends of information such as belong rather to +the man of the world than to the professor. If he had lived all his +life in Königsberg or Cambridge he would have been neither Kant nor +James. To him philosophy was never an affair of remote abstract +heavens or of little dusty class rooms. He served academic interests +faithfully and did more than any other man to make the department of +philosophy at Harvard the finest thing in American university life. +But he was in constant rebellion against the academic world and, +indeed, against all institutionalism. He wrote to Thomas Davidson: +"Why is it that everything in this world is offered to us on no medium +terms between either having too much of it or too little? You pine for +a professorship. I pine for your leisure to write and study." Yet he +had more leisure and freedom than most men. He went abroad whenever he +wanted to go, and never knew what it was to be down to his last +dollar. + +His lateness in finding himself professionally and philosophically is, +perhaps, related to his perpetual youth, his eagerness for new ideas, +his inability to be fixed and settled. He sometimes grasped at ideas +too hastily and welcomed such new arrivals as Wells and Chesterton +with a heartiness which, perhaps, they did not quite deserve. But that +was the fault of his enthusiastic catholicity. He hated shut minds and +shut doors of thought and feared nothing except that some possibly +valuable inquiry might be hindered or stopped by stupidity and +prejudice. His colleague, Professor Palmer, called him "the finest +critical mind of our time." Let the philosophers decide whether that +is excessive praise. We mere laymen can know him and enjoy him as he +reveals himself in his letters, a vivacious, humorous, affectionate +man. + + +II. + +The supreme service of William James to philosophy is the restoration +of philosophy to the uses of life. At least that is the tendency of +his philosophy. Even though much wisdom still remains shut up in a +tower, indifferent to life, and though life may often be ungrateful to +and suspicious of such wisdom as is offered to it, nevertheless +James's attempt to bring about a _rapprochement_ was his finest +contribution and is expressed in some of his most glowing pages. He +came at the right time and illustrated in himself one of his hearty +beliefs that Humanity will produce all the types of thinker that it +needs. At the moment when he entered the realm of philosophy, the +physical sciences had arrogantly assumed, if not all wisdom, the +possession of the correct method of searching for wisdom. On the other +hand, the transcendental philosophers held themselves aloof from the +physical sciences and ignored psychology. This division of interest in +a world which James himself tried to keep manageably split up and +pluralistic, was his first philosophic perplexity and, in his +treatment of the problem, he committed himself to inconsistencies and +self-contradictions, which were partly inherent in the situation and +partly due to his temperament. + +Through all his writings, from one of his earliest papers (that on +Renan's "Dialogues," republished in "Collected Essays and Reviews") to +the last chapters of "The Meaning of Truth," James saw philosophers as +so many individuals, each fighting under his own banner of truth, and +he was puzzled because they would not be reconciled and fight together +against the powers of darkness which must be conquered if philosophy +is ever to be worth anything, and if there is ever to be any reason +why there should be philosophers to sit in comfortably endowed chairs. +No critic took more keenly humorous delight than James did in the +disputes of the schools, or stirred up with more lively argument the +factions whose lack of solidarity he deplored. + +Take two examples. While James was young and still under the influence +of his laboratory studies he made out a good case for psychology as a +natural science, admitting that in its present stage of development it +is rather a loose subject, but demanding for its best interests an +application of the scientific method. Then he saw that he had gone +counter to his own belief in the unity of knowledge, or the unity of +study. It occurred to him that something valuable might be lost to +psychology if metaphysical and epistemological inquiries were +debarred. So in an address to the American Psychological Association, +he openly renounced his first position, adding, however, as a +half-smiling reservation, that metaphysics should give up some of its +nonsense as a condition of admission. + +In one of his last papers, that on "Bradley or Bergson," James takes a +shrewd pleasure in tracing their resemblances as far as they go, and +then laments that they diverge, because if they had kept together they +could between them have buried post-Kantian rationalism. For a +complexity of partisanship in unity that can not be surpassed! But +James's willingness to be pallbearer at the funeral of a philosophic +idea was not inconsonant with his determination that some other ideas +of doubtful character should be allowed to grow up and thrive. For the +old idea had had its say. The new ideas might be strangled in infancy. +Let each new idea have its time and opportunity. Let everything be +tried. It is better to be credulous than bigoted, but to be +excessively one or the other is not befitting a philosopher. + +Aside from certain technical problems, James's philosophic attitude +was always determined by his answer to the question: On which side +lies the greater force and fullness of life, the possibility of +richness, novelty, adventure? In 1895, at the height of his power as a +man--though perhaps he grew wiser as he grew older--he ends a paper on +"Degeneration and Genius" thus: "The real lesson of the genius-books +is that we should welcome sensibilities, impulses, and obsessions if +we have them, as long as by their means the field of our experience +grows deeper and we contribute the better to the race's stores; that +we should broaden our notion of health instead of narrowing it; that +we should regard no single element of weakness as fatal--in short, +that we should _not be afraid of life_." The italics are his. If +that is not good psychological argument, then there is something the +matter with the science of psychology. It is only just such good sense +as this that a common man can understand, and the humanity and +eloquence of it are better than argument. + +Can a common man understand philosophy? James believed that he can +both understand it and express it. Two or three times he quotes the +saying of his friend the carpenter: "There is very little difference +between one man and another, but what little difference there is is +very important." He has a hot contempt for Renan's cool contempt for +_l'homme vulgaire_, and he admires Clifford's "lavishly generous +confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all +the truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the +few but a cold riddle to the many"--and the possession of which by +James made him a greater teacher of youth. + +He was an instinctive democrat and was always on the side of what, in +his social environment, was the unpopular minority. Like Whitman, of +whom he often speaks with admiration, he was a born individual +aristocrat, with no delusions about the intelligence of the herd but +an immense faith in its possibilities. His generosity towards the +delusions of common men was warmer than towards the delusions of +philosophers, because philosophers have opportunities for study--and +should know better. He had only one fear, which sometimes took a +belligerent form (there is something in his book on psychology about +the relation between belligerency and fear); and that fear was lest he +or some other philosopher should try to interfere with a possibly good +idea, to put sand, not on the tracks, but in the machinery. The +vaguely comforting fatalistic belief that good ideas will prevail and +bad ones die he regarded as untrue to the history of human thought, +and not good for people whose business it is to express thought. James +held that it did make a real difference in the world that a saint or a +monster, St. Paul or Bonaparte, did not die in his cradle. It does +make a difference--the one illustration that James would have laughed +at--that James lived to be a philosopher. Ideas do sometimes seem just +to happen, to grow without human guidance, but the precious ideas have +to be fought for. Matthew Arnold's idea, that it is our duty to make +the best ideas prevail, may seem priggish and dictatorial, yet +fundamentally James had the same idea. Pluralism, he says, is not for +sick souls but for those in whom the fighting-spirit is alive. +Philosophy does not flourish by accident. Men make it. + +Therefore, philosophy begins in the human mind, and is the history of +the action of mind on experience. James was from the very beginning a +student of the human mind. He began in epistemology and he ended +there. One of his earliest essays is a rather too easy slipping of his +knife into the "operose ineptitude" of Spencer's definition of mind, +and his last word about a philosophic puzzle was: "We shall not +understand these alterations of consciousness either in this +generation or the next." + +The right self-contradiction consists not in turning in obedience to +others, but in going against the wind from whichever direction it +blows. James attacked the too-much in any philosophy, even his own. To +the over-credulous he preached caution; to the over-sceptical, faith. +This sort of antagonism between two ideas is not contradiction but +balance of mind. Apropos Professor Schiller and others he demands an +"all-round statement in classic style," and, himself the jolliest +joker that ever was in philosophy, he recommends that Mr. Schiller +"tone down a little the exuberance of his polemic wit." But to the too +sober he says, "Our errors are not such awfully solemn things. A +certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive +nervousness in their behalf." + +As a philosopher, James had to use the terms peculiar to his craft, +but he so strongly sustained those terms in a structure of words which +can be found in a pocket-dictionary that the peculiar terms of the +craft become intelligible to simple literate men, and it may be that +thereby they become more intelligible as mere philosophic terms. Like +Bergson he is a poet and a humorist in his analogies and +illustrations. When we read that "the feeling of 'q' knows whatever +reality it resembles," many of us, including the philosophers, I +suspect, are lost in the dark. But when we read that "the Kilkenny +cats of fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their undevoured +tails, but the Kilkenny cats of existence as it appears in the pages +of Hegel are all-devouring, and leave no residuum"--then we begin to +believe that philosophy may be a human and amusing study and that to +be great in philosophy it is not necessary always to be thinking of +the other side of the moon. + + + + +BIOGRAPHIES OF POE + + +The biography of Poe got a wrong start immediately after his death +when Griswold slandered him or at least put a false emphasis on +certain aspects of his character. Since then, every book about Poe has +had an argumentative tone, a defensive spirit, which in a way is as +unfair to Poe as was the first misrepresentation. One sometimes feels +like crying: "For heaven's sake read his work and let the man alone!" +Yet it is not possible to let Poe alone if you have once looked into +his life; his story is one of the fascinating chapters of literary +history. Professor Smith says that his book, "Edgar Allen Poe, How to +Know Him," "is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the real Poe, +to suggest at least the diversity of his interests, his +future-mindedness, his sanity, and his humanity." On the whole, +Professor Smith's attempt is successful and he does help us to realize +Poe's personality, "that co-ordination of thought and mood and +conduct, of social action and reaction, of daily interest and aim," +which Professor Smith justly says, "finds no portrayal in the +biographies of Poe." + +It is an odd fact that after Griswold two of the more authoritative +biographers of Poe did not like him. One was Richard Henry Stoddard; +the other, Mr. George E. Woodberry. Neither one, I suspect, chose Poe +as a congenial, or even as an interesting subject. The task of writing +his biography seems to have fallen to both men as a literary chore; to +Stoddard as an official critic who knew Poe, and to Mr. Woodberry as a +rising young man of literary talent who thirty years ago was selected +by the editor of the "American Men of Letters" to write the life of +Poe. Of course, Mr. Woodberry is a competent workman. When, in the +year of Poe's centennial, he enlarged his "Life" to two volumes, he +put together in a judicial, objective style probably all the facts +that we need to know. But his æsthetic judgments are at best +unsympathetic. It may be that the lyric "To Helen" has been +overpraised, though it is difficult to understand how there can be too +much praise for a masterpiece. And when Mr. Woodberry says of our +American writers that they were concerned "not with the transitory, +but the eternal; and, excepting Poe, they were all artists of the +beautiful," we seem to have an example of that sort of moralistic +æsthetics which sounds lofty but is only bosh. "If Poe was not an +artist of the beautiful," Professor Smith asks, "what was he an artist +of?" + +That is a good, sensible question and Professor Smith's answer, if not +as eloquent as some things that have been written by Poe's European +admirers, is sound and appreciative. If it be an American tendency to +overrate our national men of genius, we have certainly not displayed +that tendency in relation to the American writer who more than any +other has captured the imagination of Europeans, for undoubtedly the +finest criticism of Poe has come from our brethren overseas. Stoddard +had but a grudging sense of Poe's merits and ends his account with a +remark which contains a partial truth but which, although it is quoted +from Dr. Johnson, is a flat anti-climax: "All that can be told with +certainty is that he was poor." There seems to be a good deal more to +tell than that, and, indeed, the implications of Poe's poverty, as it +affected the artist, are better expressed by Stoddard himself when he +says that Poe "wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too +much above the popular level to be well paid." + +American criticism of Poe is thick with moralisms. Thus Lowell wrote: +"As a critic Mr. Poe was æsthetically deficient ... he seemed wanting +in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art." But, we +may well ask, what is "the profounder ethics of art," and who, except +a New England preacher, wants to be bothered with it in lyric poetry? +Poe always focused his attention on beauty, on excellence of +workmanship, both in the work of other craftsmen and in his own. The +Scottish critic, Mr. John M. Robertson, seems to be nearer the truth +than Lowell when he says that Poe "has left a body of widely various +criticism which, as such, will better stand critical examination +to-day than any similar work produced in England or America in his +time." I am glad to see that Professor Smith regards Mr. Robertson's +essay on Poe as "the ablest brief treatment in any language." The only +exception, which Mr. Robertson himself would be the first to make, is +the essay by the French critic Emile Hennequin. + +But Professor Smith does not quite escape American moralism in his +effort to accentuate Poe's virtues. He makes too much of Poe's +interest in religion, which was surely nothing but a purely +intellectual and critical interest, and his recurrent emphasis on +Poe's Americanism is too tiresomely patriotic even for a professor in +the United States Naval Academy. Poe was keen for the best interests +of American literature, zealous in searching out any note of promise +in a new poet and in pointing to the weak spots in men of acknowledged +talent. He sometimes exhibits a kind of local Southern patriotism +which does not much interest us now. But on the whole, he was detached +from the issues of politics, an unlocalized, almost disembodied genius +whose apparition in the United States of America is still an endless +wonder to European critics. + +One possible influence of Poe's environment on his art Professor Smith +is, so far as I know, the first to point out; and it is a very +valuable suggestion, even if it can not be thoroughly proved. In +Virginia, more than in any other American State, the English and Scots +ballads survive by oral tradition. It is possible that as a child Poe +heard these ballads recited or sung, and from them derived his sense +of refrain and repetition. To the influence of the ballad Professor +Smith adds the possible influence of plantation melodies as +"subsidiary sources of Poe's lyrical technique." He is certainly right +in thinking that Poe's originality consists not in the contribution of +a new form to poetry but in his individual development of forms +already established. His charm resides in the color of his words +rather than in the shape of his stanzas. But of course the two things +are inseparable and whoever tries to analyse them is hopelessly +baffled. Poe's own attempt to explain how the trick is done is far +from explaining it, and if he could not expound in prose the secret of +poetry, nobody can. + +For Poe was first and always a critic, inquisitive of methods, and +making his effects with cool calculation. Even if his tales of horror +no longer give us the creeps, they will always give to any one who +cares about writing, that shiver of pleasure which comes when we watch +a dexterous craftsman at work. Professor Smith calls Poe the "father +of the short story," but he came too late to be credited with such +paternity. After all, Boccaccio and whoever made "The Arabian Nights" +lived long before Poe and in Poe's stories are evident traces of old +tales of magic and mystery. What Poe did was to rationalize the short +story so highly, in some cases, as to sacrifice the illusion of +spontaneity which is one of the merits of a tale that seems to tell +itself. + +With the purpose of suggesting the range of Poe's intellectual +interest and of classifying some of his miscellaneous work that does +not fall into certain obvious groups, Professor Smith has adopted the +term "frontiersman." The image evoked by that word somehow does not +fit Poe. He was, in a sense, an explorer of ideas, and he had a +genuine gift for philosophy which he did not live to develop. We could +spare many of his short stories rather than lose "Eureka." If it is +not profound philosophy and if it does not solve the riddle of the +universe, it is profound in its beauty, a prose poem. Poe's science is +obsolete, no doubt, and even in the science of his day he was little +more than an amateur. But the mark of a great intellect is on every +page. An amazing mind! He succeeded in all forms of literary art which +he tried. If the poet or the critic or the short-story writer should +be obliterated, there would still remain a man of genius. + +Critics and biographers of Poe, like Poe himself, cannot let his drink +alone. They deny or blame or pity without understanding. The question +of Poe and alcohol seems to have been finally answered by a California +physician, John W. Robertson, in a book which I have not seen but +which I know only through reviewers' accounts of it. This physician +finds from the evidence that Poe was a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania is not +drunkenness nor riotous dissipation; it is a disease. Poe, like other +victims of the disease, had to have periodic bouts with the demon, got +fearfully sick, and when he recovered stayed cold sober until his next +attack. This accounts for Poe's written anathemas against alcohol, +which puzzled Remy de Gourmont. De Gourmont says: "_Il ne pouvait +plus travailler que dans l'hallucination de l'ivresse._" Quite the +contrary is the case. Poe could not do a stroke of work under the +inspiration of whiskey; he was not one of those mad geniuses who +conceive masterpieces in a tavern or with a bottle beside the ink-pot. +That is proved, or indicated, by his critical clarity, the almost +passionless rationality of his tales and poems, and even by the +physical perfection of his manuscripts. He worked between his joyless +debauches, and he worked hard. His melancholy and love of terror, his +preoccupation with defects of will and remorse, whatever "morbidity" +there is in his writings, may have some relation to his disease. But +as an artist he achieved his dark effects by sheer force of intellect +in hours of clear-eyed sobriety. Only in a literary sense is he the +author of "MS. Found in a Bottle." + + + + +BIOGRAPHIES OF WHITMAN + + +The one fault that can be found with Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in +Camden" is that there is too much of it. But that is a fault easily +remedied without blotting a line of the record. Books that contain too +little may cheat us of desired knowledge, whereas books that contain +too much can do no harm; every reader has the privilege of not reading +at all or of dipping into a book here and there. Traubel's method is +admirable; it is that of a documentary historian. He set down +Whitman's talk and such impressions and facts as the biographer +recorded at the moment, and he reproduced the letters in the order in +which Whitman gave them to him. He did not presume to select from +Whitman's conversation what now seems most interesting or most to +Whitman's credit, but he gave you all that he had for you to enjoy or +ignore and for other biographers and historians to make use of as they +will. + +Traubel made no concessions to the fact that readers have to catch +trains and read other books, and he ignored, perhaps to his personal +disadvantage, certain exigencies of publication, such as the +publisher's obvious need to interest as many people as possible with +the least possible expenditure. Traubel's method is simple from an +artistic point of view, requiring nothing but accuracy, courage and +industry. Yet the method is a great strain on all concerned. Traubel +could stand it. Evidently the publishers thought they could stand it. +The reader can stand it, because, as I have said, he can take as much +or as little as suits him. The real question is whether Whitman can +stand it. And the amazing man _can_ stand it. Consider that in +the years when Traubel knew him Whitman was an invalid, broken by his +services as nurse and brother of soldiers during the war. He was a +garrulous old man talking to men who loved him and who, though no +servile worshippers of him or anyone else, encouraged him to +reminiscence and the utterance of offhand opinion. Now that is a +severe test. Not many old men, even men of great achievement in action +or art, could last for more than a small volume. Whitman is worth +these hundreds and hundreds of pages. For he was a great talker, full +of experience and endowed with the gift of speech. Almost every day, +according to Traubel's record, he hit off an interesting idea and +turned it in a Whitmanese way. He repeats himself. He makes remarks +that do not amount to much. But he is never a bore. Line by line he +and Traubel, egotists both, but honest, thoughtful, artfully +inartistic, have drawn a portrait, the like of which is not to be +found. For once a literary man is as big as his literary work. Traubel +was a very happy biographer, for he had a sort of monopoly of a great +subject, and he had not the slightest temptation to omit or defend. + +An admirer has called Traubel's work "the most truthful biography in +the language." To use the informal mode of Walt Whitman and of his +biographer, that ain't exactly so. It ain't the most truthful +biography; it's simply a true biography. + +"Lincoln," said Whitman, "don't need adorers, worshippers--he needs +friends.... The great danger with Lincoln for the next fifty years +will be that he will be overdone, over-explained, over-exploited--made +a good deal too much of--gather about himself a rather mythical +aureole." From such danger Traubel did his best to protect Whitman; +the biographer's multitudinous veracity preserves a real man and is a +heavy impediment to the critic and literary historian of the future +who may try to disobey Whitman's injunction not to "prettify" him. If +that impossible and tedious universe, the "whole" truth, is not +comprehended in these prolific pages, the errors and omissions are due +not to the biographer, but to Whitman himself, who had a silent as +well as a loquacious side; he had unexplained depths which probably he +did not understand himself. When he spoke he tried to say what he +thought, but often he did not speak at all, and at least once he said +to Traubel: "I don't care to talk about that." + +The writer of fiction may invent substance to fit an artistic scheme. +The compiler of facts may, under certain conditions, disregard +literary form. The biographer or the historian who will have his work +read must play skilfully between the double restriction of substance +and form. He must be at once man of science and artist. Because of its +very great difficulties, because of the high demands it makes upon the +writer, biography is rarely well done. One can name few masterpieces +of biography in English. Perhaps the only masterpiece that everybody +will name is Boswell's Johnson, that extraordinary performance which +heaved literary history out of shape and keeps it in a permanent state +of distortion. For Johnson was not a first-rate man of letters; he +wrote little that is even tolerable to read; his letter to +Chesterfield and the preface to the Dictionary are his most vital +productions. Moreover, Boswell was a foreordained nonentity. Yet he +was a great artist and Johnson was a great person, and the two of them +made a great book; it is a puzzle which makes one fall back, +outwitted, to the last ditch of adjectives. + +Whitman's opinion of Johnson is interesting, if only in relation to +his own biographer's methods. Johnson knew that Boswell was making +notes. Traubel, whose word is infallibly good, says that Whitman did +not know that his biographer was keeping a record. Whitman did know +that Traubel would write about him and he selected the letters and +other documents for the "archives." But he was not aware that Traubel +was making a diary. Therefore when he talked he was free at least from +the constraint imposed on a man who knows that his spoken words are to +appear in print. + +When Whitman was 69 years old he began to read Boswell; he refers to +him a dozen times in the course of the year, thereby showing that +Boswell interested him, for when Whitman was not interested in a book +he simply forgot it. He thought that Johnson "talked for +effect--seemed rather inclined to bark men down, like the biggest +dog--indeed, a spice of dishonesty palpably possessed him. Johnson +tried rather to impress than to be true." "He was on stilts always--he +belongs to the self-conscious literary class, who live in a house of +rules and never get into the open air." However, note this significant +confession: "I read it through, looked it through, rather--persisted +in spite of fifty temptations to throw it down. I don't know who tried +me most--Johnson or Boswell. The book lasts--it seems to have elements +of life--but I will do nothing to pass it on." There is the comment of +the lion on the bear. No, these zoölogical metaphors are quite false. +Benevolent and burly male persons are not, even by Whitmanian +identifications, to be named with the brutes. + +Some day a biographer with the right talent and in possession of all +Traubel's material, cognizant of social ideals and facts and sensitive +to poetry, will write a good life of Whitman. So far as I know, there +is no satisfactory biography of our one magnificent American poet. +Traubel was not able to do it. He was properly employed in gathering +and publishing the fundamental record. Moreover, his style, perfectly +fitted to short hand notes, is, in continuous composition, abominable. +I loved him with all my Whitmanian heart and read him, because of +every four of his sentences one says something worth while. But ten +sentences of his in a row hurt like a corduroy road. I have to get out +and walk and rub myself. + +Several literary men have tried to write Whitman's life and they have +failed. Professor Bliss Perry's book is fatuous. He had no excuse to +write about Whitman at all, except in so far forth as a publisher's +request to an alleged literary man to do a book for an established +series furnishes a practical excuse. + +The critical study of Whitman by Mr. Basil De Selincourt is +sympathetic and discerning as regards what may be called the purely +literary side. He understands what Whitman says and takes him for +granted as one of the world's supreme poets. He conceives the +essential unity of Whitman's thought, a unity that should be obvious +but evidently is not to some readers and critics who treat Whitman as +a collection of more or less impressive fragments. Mr. De Selincourt's +analysis of Whitman's form is instructive, appreciative, though a +trifle academic, not wholly emancipated from schoolroom rules of +prosody. If you will read Whitman aloud, pronouncing the words as they +are pronounced in prose, and emphasizing them according to the sense, +the scansion will take care of itself. When a line is bad (and +Whitman, like most of the other great poets, wrote bad lines) it won't +work by any effort of elocution. The good lines, if you have an ear in +your head and a tongue in your mouth, chant themselves, and you can +forget all about iambics and hexameters. + +Where Mr. De Selincourt fails is in his account of Whitman's notions +of liberty, democracy, America, the future. Book-people do not +understand these things, especially English book-people, who assume +that America produced Whitman because it was a land of liberty. It was +not. It was, like the rest of the world, a land of plutocracy, +convention, servility. It is complimentary to us but unhappily not +true to say that "America stands for the passionate re-assertion of +certain beliefs which life, to those who look back upon it, seems +always to stultify, but which, to those who can look forward, appears +as the very spirit and power of life itself--'the urge, the ardour, +the unconquerable will'." + +As a matter of fact, America does not stand for any such thing and +Whitman does not stand for America. He is a revolutionist in revolt +against the American fact and celebrating a possible American future. +Official America tried to throttle him. Conventional America ignored +him. Literary and revolutionary spirits in England and America +welcomed him, for they are free spirits, intellectually free, under +any economic conditions and in any part of the world. Whitman himself +did not understand why he was acclaimed in England by more men and +better men than in America. It was simply because English thinkers, +writers, poets, with minds capable of appreciating him, outnumbered +their American brothers ten to one. + +Two American ladies once called on Tennyson. He asked them whether +they knew Walt Whitman. They confessed that they did not. "Then," said +he, "you do not know the greatest man in America." + + + + +GEORGE E. WOODBERRY + + +A man's place in the generations of mankind is not wholly determined +by the date of his birth. If William James were alive he would be +eighty years old; but he belongs to us, to the living present. Mr. +George Edward Woodberry is only sixty-seven; yet he already seems like +the last figure in a tradition which has come to an end--so far as any +period in literature may truly be said to end. James was aware of +something like this twenty years ago. He gave Mr. Woodberry the praise +that is his due, but expressed at the same time his essential +weakness. Of "The Heart of Man" James wrote in a letter: + + The essays are grave and noble in the extreme. I hail another + American author. They can't be popular, and for cause. The respect + of him for the Queen's English, the classic leisureliness and + explicitness, which give so rare a dignity to his style, also take + from it that which our generation seems to need, the sudden word, + the unmeditated transition, the flash of perception that makes + reasonings unnecessary. Poor Woodberry, so high, so true, so good, + so original in his total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you + take him spot-wise--and therefore so ineffective. + +Mr. Woodberry is not out of date in a mere journalistic sense or in +the hasty judgment of an irreverent generation which affects a trivial +contemporaneity and regards even the end of the last century as old +fogy. He is out of date because he did not gear with his own times, +but remained aloof and backward-looking and so became the last of the +Lowells instead of the first of the Woodberrys. It could not have been +a conscious or servile emulation on his part, for he has a spirit of +his own. But his surroundings and his education were too strong for +his fine talent. He was brought up in the twilight of the New England +demigods. They handed him the "torch," and he has carried it with +pious devotion. To younger men as docile as himself, he became, almost +officially, the representative in the flesh of the elders over whose +graves he prayed. His publishers announce with pride, with no sense of +the depressing implications of what they are saying, that there is a +Woodberry Society, "probably the only organization in America +dedicated to a living writer." Thus the anachronism is fulfilled. Mr. +Woodberry was old when he was young, and he is an institution before +he is dead. Some books are epoch making; other books, even great and +original books, lie comfortably in their times without being either +innovative or conclusive; Mr. Woodberry's six solid volumes[1] are +epoch closing, a collection of such words as will not be written again +by a man of genuine talent and wisdom. + + [1] Collected Essays of George Edward Woodberry. 6 vols. New + York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1921. + +The feeling that Mr. Woodberry is a voice from the past that +immediately preceded him comes over me most heavily when I read his +essays on Lowell's Addresses, on Democracy, and on Wendell Phillips. +It may be only the essayist's strict fidelity to Lowell's ideas--no +doubt a merit--which leaves the impression that the essayist knows +only what Lowell knew and no more, that the pupil has not moved a step +beyond the master. It is Lowell over again without the slightest +addition from the lessons of time. The London _Nation_ has said +of Mr. Woodberry's essays that most of them have "a unity and life +that make many of Lowell's seem those of a shrewd but old-fashioned +amateur." Yet Lowell was at least a vivid amateur, who expressed +something that belonged to the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies; and +he had an old gentleman's right to be old in the 'eighties. It is not +to be expected that a critic should begin where Lowell leaves +off--only a thinker of real genius makes such long strides. But the +critic following Lowell in time and not moving half a step ahead of +him seems older than Lowell himself. + +The same thing is true of the address on Wendell Phillips, "The Faith +of an American." It is fine, even eloquent, but it is abstract and +curiously old-fashioned. Phillips in his own utterances is more of +to-day and of to-morrow than is his eulogist who was a child in +Beverley when Phillips was in mid-career. The reason, of course, is +that Phillips was a fighter, hot with real issues, and it is not the +critic's business to fight but to examine the ideas of the fighter. +These ideas necessarily become somewhat abstract when a critic quotes +or rephrases them, especially since Phillips was an orator and flung +at his audiences sweeping generalities which in a less inspired man +are mere tall talk. But Mr. Woodberry devitalizes Phillips, especially +the later Phillips who went on from one issue to the next until he +dropped. Mr. Woodberry has not a single clear, plain word about one of +Phillips' last fights, that for the Labor party. Mr. Woodberry stops +with the actual Phillips before Phillips stopped, and the end of the +address fades out in vagueness and platitude. There is something +rather touching about Mr. Woodberry's declaration: "I know that what I +have said to-night is heavy with risk." One looks in vain to discover +the risk. Surely in 1911, when the address was delivered, a man might +talk in Mr. Woodberry's mild way every night in the week and invite no +more severe punishment than a scolding from Dr. Nicholas Murray +Butler. + +Mr. Woodberry's ideas and his expressions are all gentle, though not +timid nor emasculate. His general faith in "Democracy" is too serenely +above the tumult to disturb anybody or provoke a riot call in the +quietude of Beverley. I do not know what he means by "Democracy," +whether such actual democracy as existed in America in 1899, or some +beautiful dream of the future. If democracy is a dream, an unrealized +dream, then any beautiful thing a poet says about it is true. But Mr. +Woodberry seems to be talking about something actually existing, +something already realized in considerable part if not completely, for +he says: "Democracy has its great career, for the first time, in our +national being, and exhibits here most purely its formative powers, +and unfolds destiny on the grand scale." That was not true twenty +years ago, and it is certainly not true now. It is the sort of thing +that Emerson and Lowell could say with rousing conviction, but twenty +years ago it was as obsolete as a beaver hat except in newspaper +editorials and political speeches, where it is still going +strong--even if not quite so strong as it used to be. + +Mr. Woodberry seems to imply that he is somewhat more of a realist +than Lowell. But he is in fact less of a realist than Lowell; for +Lowell in his time did grapple with the facts of politics. In poetry +it is not necessary, it is better not, to be a realist. But in dealing +with politics and contemporaneous history the true citizen must be a +realist and leave it to the politicians to fly with the eagle. No +wisdom is to be derived from such a statement as this: "There is +always an ideality of the human spirit in all its [Democracy's] works, +if one will search them out." Or this: "Democracy is a mode of dealing +with souls." Or this: "Not that other governments have not had regard +to the soul, but in democracy, it is spirituality that gives the law +and rules the issue." It is, alas, not true that "education, high +education even, is more respected and counts for more in a democracy +than under the older systems," or that "the law becomes the embodied +persuasion of the community," or that "all these blessings [aversion +to war, devotion to public duty and many other enumerated virtues] +unconfined as the element, belong to all our people." + +Mr. Woodberry's democracy simply does not exist and never did exist. +Yet there is one existent glory of my country which I believe I +appreciate better than he does. He says: "It behooves us, especially, +to be modest, for our magnificent America has never yet produced a +poet even of the rank of Gray." That was written fourteen years after +the death of Whitman. Mr. Woodberry's democracy had not yet come +along, but one of its great poets had arrived and departed leaving Mr. +Woodberry none the wiser. There is another glory of my country which I +appreciate better than Mr. Woodberry does--Poe, whose poetry Mr. +Woodberry has never understood, though he has written what is +altogether the best biography of the man! To save the six best lyrics +of Poe, I would, if such a sacrifice were necessary, cheerfully sink +Gray in the deepest sea of oblivion, "Elegy," letters and all. But +that is only a slight difference of judgment, and there is no more +futile business than to draw up minor poets in grades and ranks. +Whitman is another matter; the critic who misses him in this day of +the world is simply incompetent. The excuse for Mr. Woodberry is that +he does not belong to this day of the world. + +There is something pathetic about Mr. Woodberry's patriotism. He +sincerely believes that "America's title to glory is her service to +human liberty." He has never been delivered from the superstition that +"the sense of justice is the bedrock of the Puritan soul"--the Puritan +soul, narrow, despotic, cruelly unjust! But when Mr. Woodberry leaves +politics and patriotism and religion and returns to art and literature +where he is at home, he puts his finger ruefully on the real rock of +the Puritan soul, recalling the Puritan's hostility to the theatre and +regretting "the American inhibition" "which rejects the nude in +sculpture and painting, not only forfeiting thereby the supreme of +Greek genius and sanity, but to the prejudice, also, of human +dignity." Mr. Woodberry is himself a Puritan, yearning to be free but +chained to New England granite, and since he can not get free on this +planet he looks up to the heavens where the God of his fathers used to +dwell, but where he can find only abstract and vague ideas. Mr. +Woodberry's tendency to abstract phrases, which on pressure yield +nothing, vitiates his literary essays, the essays in which a +professional critic ought to be most concrete, definite, and +nourishing. The trouble may be that his views are too high and too +broad for the limited vision of a common man; but I think his trouble +is that he has not the true philosopher's power to make a long idea, +bridging time and space, stand up under its own weight; there is a +lack of solid timber and concrete. His best essays are those on +individual authors in which he has the selected specific substance of +another man's thought to work on. As ought to happen to a sensitive +critic, it sometimes happens that Mr. Woodberry's style takes the very +tone of his subject. He is whimsical in his charming little essay on +Pepys, an adequate trifle; he is grave and quiet when he writes about +Gray; and Swinburne so stirs him that his prose awakes and sparkles +with metaphor. Even in this essay, however, he can not help +demoralizing poetry by moralizing it into pseudo-philosophic prose. +"The imagery (of 'Laus Veneris') has more affinity with modes of +sacerdotal art, with symbolism and the attributive in imaginative +power than it has with the free vitality that is more properly the +sphere of poetry." What does that mean? What is the sphere of poetry? +The essays on the older poets would make first-rate introductions to +school texts, and I think some of them have been so used. They suffer +from the fact that in Mr. Woodberry's time--and since--so many +standard essays on Milton, Shakespeare, and the rest were written and +rewritten, that unless a critic has a fresh point of view, as Mr. +Woodberry has not, another essay is simply another essay. + +It must be pleasant to meditate on the great men of letters and from +time to time write an essay on Virgil or Montaigne or Matthew Arnold. +Some leisure is necessary, for the conscientious critic must read +much, and much reading takes time. It may be that in our nervous age, +in this country, the scholarly critic with a true taste for letters +has disappeared, to return perhaps in a day when Democracy or +something better shall have dawned. The comfortable old tradition is +dead or dying, and since its good works are extant in print, we need +no more contributions to it. As Mr. Woodberry says in an essay called +"Culture of the Old School": "The _Gentleman's Magazine_--both the +name and the thing belong to a bygone time." + + + + +ABRAHAM CAHAN + + +Toward the end of the last century there appeared in the magazines +some remarkable stories of the East Side of New York by Abraham Cahan. +They were not of the crudely comic type of Potash and Perlmutter, nor +were they in the somewhat finer mood of sentimental humor which made +Myra Kelly deservedly popular. They were humorous and pathetic in a +quiet, compelling way, with a gentle austerity of tone even less +familiar to American readers then than it is in the days of the +Russian invasion. Mr. Howells praised these stories and he and others +in editorial authority encouraged the author to write more. A career +in the pleasant art of fiction was open to Mr. Cahan. But he withdrew +from it and, so far as I know, he wrote no more stories for at least +ten years. He has devoted his energy to building up the great +_Jewish Daily Forward_, which is not only the voice of the East +Side, but a powerful vehicle of social and political ideals that have +not yet penetrated the sanctums of Times Square and of the older +newspaper world near City Hall and Civic Virtue. + +Then, as he approached sixty, Mr. Cahan gave us "The Rise of David +Levinsky", a solid mature novel, into which are compacted the +reflections of a lifetime. The publisher's notice called it "a story +of success in the turmoil of American life." Probably the writer of +those words intended to help the book by the appeal which "success" +makes to the American mind, for no reader, not even a publisher's +clerk, could miss the immense irony of the story. It is indeed the +story of a failure. The vanity of great riches was never set forth +with more searching sincerity. The helplessness of the individual, +even the strong and prosperous, in the economic whirlpool, the +loneliness and disillusionment only partly assuaged by pride in +commercial achievement, the sacrifice of the intellectual life to the +practical, these are the fundamental themes of the book. Levinsky, +with the instincts of a scholar and a desire for the finest things in +life, is swept into business by circumstances which he hardly +understands himself and against which he is powerless; once in the +game he makes the most of his abilities, but he never ceases to regard +his visible good fortune as poor compensation for the invisible things +he has missed. His wealth forces him to associate with all that is +vulgar and acquisitive in Jewry and isolates him from all that is +idealistic. He finds that he cannot even speak the language of the +woman he most admires. Worse still, he is out of sympathy with the +aspirations of millions of poor Jews from whose ranks he has sprung. +He has no sympathy with those who would break the game up or make new +rules, yet he sees that the game is hardly worth playing, even for the +winner. "Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess of the +hour. Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy splendors. +Newspapers, magazines, and public speeches were full of her glory, and +he who found favor in her eyes found favor in the eyes of man." + +The portrait of David Levinsky is a portrait of society, not simply of +the Jewish section of it, or of New York, but of American business. +And business is business whether done by Jew or Gentile. If Levinsky +is a triumphant failure, he is so because American business, which +shaped him to its ends, is, viewed from any decent regard for +humanity, a miserable monster of success. Not that Levinsky is an +abstraction, or that the novelist is forcing a thesis. Far from it. +The personality of Levinsky is as sharply individualized as the hero +of Meredith's "One of Our Conquerors," though with a different kind of +subtlety, the subtlety not of detached analysis, but of naïvely simple +self-revelation, which of course is not so simple as it sounds. + +Mr. Cahan knows how to think through his characters, by letting them +do the thinking, as if it were their affair and not his. At the same +time he does not perform (nor does any other artist) that foolish and +meaningless operation, as expressed by a great poet through a young +critic, of holding "the mirror up to nature." Nature in a mirror is +just nature, not nature thought out, excogitated, turned to human +uses, interpreted in human words. And this is the place to say that +Mr. Cahan knows how to use words. There are no great phrases in this +book. A simple and (intellectually) honest business man writing his +autobiography would not use a great phrase; such a phrase might issue +from some enviable person in that intellectual life from which +Levinsky was excluded. But there is no banal or inept phrase. Such a +man as Mr. Cahan intends Levinsky to be, a man trained in the Talmud, +which means verbal sense, and hammered by the facts of life, which +means a sense of reality, and a wistful failure, which means +imaginative retrospection, says things in a direct, firm, accurate +style. + +There is no lack of emotion; strong feeling, expressed or implied, +runs through the book from beginning to end. But there is a complete +absence of eloquence, a deliberate refraining from emphasis, an even +manner of setting forth ideas and events impartially for the value +inherent in them, an admirable method, the method of a philosophic +artist. Here is life, some of it is good, some of it is bad; it is all +somewhat pitiable, to be laughed at rather than cried over; nobody is +deserving of indignant blame or abuse. It is our business to +understand it as well as we can; and though we never can see it in its +entirety or with complete clearness, if we make an honest effort to +record events and delineate personalities, the events will arrange +themselves in a more or less intelligible sequence, and the +personalities will be their own commentary upon themselves. An obvious +method, but you will read many a book to find one skilful application +of it. + +It seems to me the method most often employed and carried to the +highest degree of perfection by the great Russians. I am driven to the +timidity of "seems" because we do much talking about Russian novels +without having read many of them or understanding what we have read. +But better-informed critics than I have noted that one characteristic +of the Russian novel is a benevolent impartiality in its treatment of +all kinds of people and a calm contemplation of events horrible, gay, +sad, comic. A revolutionist can portray, in fiction, a commissioner of +police, whom in real life he would be willing to kill, with a fairness +that is more than fair, with a combination of Olympian serenity and +human sympathy. He can be a virulent propagandist when he is writing +pamphlets, and when he writes fiction he can forget his propaganda or +subdue it to art, that is, to a balanced sense of life. + +When I say that Mr. Cahan's novel sounds like a good translation of a +Russian novel, and that he is a disciple of the Russian novelists, I +accuse him of the crime of being an artist and a seer. As a matter of +biography, he is a child of Russian literature. And that is why his +novel, written in faultless English, is a singular and solitary +performance in American fiction. If that strange demand for "the" or +"a great American novel," a demand which is at once foolish and the +expression of a justifiably proud feeling that a big country ought to +have big books, is to be satisfied, perhaps we shall have to ask an +East Side Jew to write it for us. That would be an interesting +phenomenon for some future Professor Wendell to deal with in a History +of American Literature. And by the way, Mr. Cahan is a competent +critic. I hope he will give us not only more novels, but a study of +Russian literature for the enlightenment of the American mind. I +remember with gratitude an article of his which I read when I was even +more ignorant than I am now, on the modern successors to the group of +Titans, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. He put Maxim Gorky in his place +and told us (this was before the Russian invasion) about Andreyev and +Chekhov. If Mr. Cahan will write a book on Russian literature, I will +do my best to establish him in his merited place in American +literature. + + + + +THOMAS HARDY + + +Mr. Bernard Shaw says, apropos Samuel Butler, that the English people +do not deserve to have a genius. Butler himself in a note remarks that +America, even America, will probably have men of genius, has indeed, +already had one, Walt Whitman, but that he cannot imagine any country +where a genius would have more unfortunate surroundings than in +America. Mr. Arnold Bennett sends a shot from the same gun in +"Milestones," when he makes the millionaire shipbuilder puff his chest +and say that there is no greater honor to English character than the +way we treat our geniuses. Egad! The unworthiness of the British and +American nations to have artists born to them was never more +shamefully manifested than by the reception accorded thirty years ago +to Hardy's "Jude, the Obscure." Harper's Magazine, which seems to have +begun printing the story before the editors had seen the complete +manuscript, fell into temporary disfavor with some outraged readers. +One British journal distinguished itself by reviewing the book under +the caption, "Jude, the Obscene." + +It is inconceivable that any nation on the continent of Europe could, +through its critics or through any considerable number of readers, so +dishonor a masterpiece. For "Jude" is a masterpiece; if it is not +Hardy's greatest novel, it is one of his three or four greatest, and +that means one of a score of supreme works of prose fiction in the +language. If profundity of substance and skill in narrative are both +considered, Hardy is without rival among British novelists. His is the +crowning achievement in the century of fiction that began with Jane +Austen and, happily, has not yet terminated with Joseph Conrad. In his +hands the English novel assumed a form which, perhaps without good +critical reason, one thinks of as French. Despite the racy localism of +scene and character, Hardy's work seems alien to the Anglo-Saxon +temperament; it has less in common with the spacious days of great +Victoria than with a younger time, whose living masters, Mr. Conrad +and Mr. Galsworthy, for example, have taken lessons in art across the +channel. + +In a prefatory note to "Desperate Remedies," dated February, 1896, +Hardy lets fall a casual phrase which indicates that he and others had +noted his kinship to the French, but that he was not disposed to +acknowledge it fully. He seems to say, with that kind of modest pride +which distinguishes him, that he found his method for himself, played +the game alone. "As it happened," runs the note, "that certain +characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story +['Jude'?] were present in this my first--published in 1871, when there +was no French name for them--it has seemed best to let them stand +unaltered." What characteristics does he intend? And was there no +French name for them in 1871? Or had not the British critics begun to +use the French name? Are these characteristics his candor, his logic, +his classic finish of phrase, a certain cool stateliness of manner, an +impersonal, distant way of treating most tender and poignant subjects, +a lucid, ironic view of life, perfect proportion, large intellectual +pity and freedom from cant, from sentimentality? These are some of his +virtues and they are the virtues of several modern French novelists +and some of the Russian pupils of the French. + +If the ill reception of "Jude" caused Mr. Hardy to foreswear fiction, +then the fools have in a way done us harm by cheating us of two or +three great novels. Yet genius takes its revenge on a dull world, +especially if it is prosperous genius, too well established to be +starved out by the stupidity of an inartistic people. If Hardy had +been encouraged to write more novels perhaps we should not have had +"The Dynasts." And by and by we shall discover what a loss that would +have been. It is the greatest epic that we have been privileged to +read since Tolstoy's "War and Peace." And it is the best long poem in +English since Morris's "The Earthly Paradise." Though it is cast in +scenes and acts it is not a drama except in a vast untechnical sense +of the word. But epic it is, creation of an enormous imagination which +sweeps the universe and manages a cosmic panorama as commandingly as +the same imagination dominates a rural kingdom of farms and desolate +heaths. If "The Dynasts" and Hardy's shorter poems lack one thing, +that one thing is the magical and haunting line, that concatenation of +words which is everlastingly beautiful in the context or detached from +it. Morris knew that magic. He was born with it, and no reader of +Morris, except a critic, will be deceived by his own denial of his +divinity when he said in his honest, off-hand way, sensible as Anthony +Trollope, that inspiration is nonsense and verse is easy to write. + +"The Dynasts" is an extraordinary poem. It is not French, it is not +Greek, it is not like anything else in English. Hardy has discarded +Christian mythology. He is not childish enough to revert to the Greek. +He has invented a new one. His celestial machinery is as strange an +apparition in the heavens as the first aeroplane. His hero, Napoleon, +rises above the human stature by which the realistic novelist measures +man and becomes not only a tool of destiny but a demigod who seems to +understand destiny and share the secrets of that impersonal goddess. +Those who are curious about Hardy's philosophy (we like his art; his +philosophy may lie down and die on the shelf with the other +philosophies) will find the closing chorus of "The Dynasts" +significant: + + But--a stirring thrills the air + Like to sounds of joyance there + That the rages + Of the ages + Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, + Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair! + +Such is the ultimate word of this artist who so keenly loves beauty, +yet, like some neo-Puritan and latter-day ascetic, cannot draw a +lovely woman without reminding you that the skull under the cheeks and +behind the passionate eyes is not pretty and will probably endure a +long time under ground. Is he of like mind with his chorus at last, +and does he believe that the Will is going to grow intelligent and +make all things fair? + +Perhaps Hardy's proneness to dwell on the skeletonic grin of life is +due to his exceeding sensitiveness to beauty. Like Poe and other +poets, he cannot abide the ugliness that is in the world, and so he +insists on The Conqueror Worm, as a man cannot refrain from thrusting +his tongue into the sore tooth. Perhaps Hardy is a reaction against +the saccharine optimism of his contemporaries and of those just before +his time. They falsified life in their fictions by making everything +come out nicely, thank you, on the last page. He leans over backward +from that kind of untruth and comes dangerously near to being as +false. As between falsity in one direction and falsity in the other, +there is no choice, except that we have had so much of the sweet kind +that Hardy is refreshing. He tends to restore the balance. + +Ask any man, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, how life has gone +with him, and, if he is honest, he will tell you that life did not go +definitely one way or the other. Things sometimes came out well and +sometimes not. Hardy is biased in favor of the things that do not come +out well. "Life's Little Ironies" is a good title, but it is a title +that implies a thesis, an attitude from which humanity is surveyed. +The stories are perfection and they sound true. Hardy is a logician +and he will back any tale of his with evidence, even the first story +in "Wessex Tales," in the preface of which the authority of physicians +is invoked. But when you take all his stories together you find nine +failures out of ten human careers, and life has a better batting +average than that. No one doubts that the "Fellowtownsmen" got into +such horrid confusion, that things happened as they shouldn't, that +every shot at happiness was a miss. And "The Waiting Supper" is so +convincing that you cannot escape. But the two stories together, +regarded for the moment not as the excellent works of art which they +are, but as a view of human destiny, weaken each other. One convinces +you. The two together make you ask questions about the author. + +In "The Waiting Supper" there is one line that is as great a pathetic +fallacy as the more familiar and cheery kind which represents nature +as smiling upon the lovers. Hardy's lovers have to submit to this: +"Thus the sad autumn afternoon waned, while the waterfall hissed +sarcastically of the inevitableness of the unpleasant." Did you ever +hear a waterfall like that? The only waterfalls I have heard quote +Darwin and discuss the election returns. I know that the happy poet is +a liar when he says that the nightingale is celebrating my love for +Mamie, for the nightingale is concerned with other matters. But as +between a nightingale who is sympathetic with my emotions and a +sarcastic waterfall, I prefer the nightingale. And I do not like +either in realistic fiction. + +Thomas Hardy, the idol of the younger realists and the liberator of +British fiction from the Victorian hoopskirt and the happy ending, is +not a realist. He is a great romantic, with a taste for pretty girls, +moonlight, heroes and dragoons. He is incurably superstitious. He is +pained by many modern things, especially by modern restorations of +ancient buildings. He takes Tess to the Druidical stones on Salisbury +Plain because he dearly likes that kind of moonlit antiquity. His +pronominal substitution of It for He does not achieve a revolution in +theology. He manages the destinies of human folk as arbitrarily as any +maker of fiction that ever lived. But he never made a story in which +he did not convince you that life is overwhelmingly interesting and +that nature, girls, and dragoons are beautiful if sad things to +contemplate. + + + + +GEORGE BORROW + + +Any book about George Borrow is worth reading. The two volumes by Dr. +Knapp are forbiddingly dense with documentary minutiæ, yet it is a +pleasure to loaf through them at least once. Borrow's burly +personality makes itself felt in the driest philological note and +vitalizes the pages even of a commonplace critic, as, indeed, it +vitalizes many flatly ordinary pages in his extraordinary books. Mr. +Clement K. Shorter's "George Borrow and His Circle" is interesting +because it is about Borrow and not in the least because it is by Mr. +Shorter. Mr. Shorter's declared ambition was to write a book that +should appeal not to "Borrovians," but to "a wider public which knows +not Borrow." + +Every book about the fighting scholar, every moderately competent +article about him must invite new immigrants into Borrow's kingdom. +But Mr. Shorter is not an introductory critic, not one who by his own +skill and charm summons strangers to make the acquaintance of a great +man. He is an inept critic who thrives by attaching his name to great +reputations. Fancy a man of any trifling literary experience, with the +least enthusiasm for literature, writing about style in a style like +this: "Borrow, in common with many other great English authors whose +work will live, was not uniformly a good stylist. He has many +lamentable fallings away from the ideals of the stylist. But he will, +by virtue of a wonderful individuality, outlive many a good stylist." +It is a sin so to "style" in a chapter about Edward FitzGerald, who at +the sound of such sentences would have clapped his hands to his ears. + +Borrow describes himself in that pugnacious defence of Lavengro which +forms the appendix to "The Romany Rye." "Though he may become +religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very +precise and straitlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, +with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for +the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain +gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a +little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, +with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as may well be--ale at +least two years old--with the aforesaid friend--when the diversion is +over." + +Is not that an irresistible man? Shouldn't you think that there would +have been among his contemporaries two or three hundred thousand good +sports, rooters, heelers, literary and non-literary bookmakers who +would bet on him and back him in any enterprise in which his +adventurous spirit elected to engage? Yet it was not so. He enjoyed +only a short period of popularity after the publication of "The Bible +in Spain." When he died at a ripe old age in 1881, he was not well +known. During his life the only highly distinguished man of letters +who knew and appreciated him was FitzGerald, the exquisite poet and +critic--FitzGerald, whose literary habits were as distant as possible +from Borrow's, whose fine-edged rapier seems utterly alien to Borrow's +short arm jab or his overhand wallop. FitzGerald had a curious +accuracy in spotting what was worth while in his time and in dodging +certain celebrated things that other people thought worth while, and +there is nothing inconsistent in his knowing that Borrow wrote good +English. But looking over Borrow's shoulder at his contemporaries, and +remembering Borrow's ungainly verses, one is amused to find that the +only real literary man facing one with a wink in his eye is +FitzGerald. The others have their backs turned. + +Consider also Borrow's posthumous fame. His first biographer is Dr. +Knapp, an American professor of philology. And the modern critics who +praise him are not open-air men, but bookish, library men, whose names +do not suggest the robustly adventurous, Lionel Johnson, Mr. +Watts-Dunton, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Seccombe. + +Most literary critics praise him in terms laudatory enough to atone +for the sins of their professional predecessors, whom Borrow held up +to "show the creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from their +broken jaws." His four important books are published in Everyman's +Library; Mr. Birrell says that "we are all Borrovians now"; within +twenty years have appeared three biographical studies, besides Mr. +Shorter's. Yet Dr. Knapp's fundamental biography which was published +in 1898 is out of print; that mysterious and reprehensible entity +known as the public has not demanded a new edition. It is all +consistent with the Borrovian inconsistency. Borrow was proud of being +a gentleman and a scholar, and he was both in all true senses of the +words; but he hated gentility and wrote a hammer-and-tongs chapter +against the genteel; no revolutionist despising the "bourgeois" ever +punched their smug faces with such violent verbal fisticuffs. + +He boasts of his fondness for gypsies and prize-fighters and quite +simply asks, "If he had not associated with prize-fighters, how could +he have used his fists?" However, he is an aristocrat and has no +sympathy with radical weavers. Despite his hatred of cant, some +sentences in "The Bible in Spain" have a missionary twang. He drifts +naturally away from the Church of England, yet when he attacks other +ecclesiastical institutions he holds up the Church of England as the +exemplar of religious truth. He scorns all deviation from fact, yet +his biographers have not wholly succeeded in separating what he did +from what he invented. + +He was undoubtedly a polyglot, he made metrical translations from +thirty languages, wrote a version of the Gospel of St. Luke in Spanish +Gypsy (the first book ever attempted in any Gypsy dialect), supervised +the printing of the Bible in Manchu-Tartar, made translations from the +English into Manchu-Tartar, Russian and Turkish in good style, as any +of us who has read them can testify. In the person of Lavengro he lost +the stalwart Isopel Berners because he insisted on giving her lessons +in Armenian! For all that, he made mistakes and so gave the scholars +evidence that he was no scholar. He was not. He had an instinct for +language, especially for that language which he knew, as we know it, +probably better than he knew Manchu-Tartar. In his English narratives +we can follow him and praise him or censure him without violating the +severe rule which he laid down: "Critics, when they review books, +ought to have a competent knowledge of the subjects which those books +discuss." + +The four books of Borrow which belong to English literature are "The +Bible in Spain," "Lavengro," "The Romany Rye" and "Wild Wales." "The +Bible in Spain" is one of those books that grow out of circumstances; +it was to a large extent thought out and phrased on the scene, amid +the adventures which it narrates; later it was cast into book form. It +grew out of experience, but an artist shaped its growth. Borrow was +sent by the Bible Society to distribute Spanish versions of the Bible. +He encountered the opposition of allied church and government, was +arrested, put in prison for three weeks, and liberated through the +influence of British officials. + +It is not, however, the Bible or his mission that stimulates Borrow's +imagination. Cities and people, meetings on the road, scraps of talk, +sometimes rather long conversations, monologues by Borrow, the +mischances, dangers and excitements of a country at once wild and +anciently civilized, Borrow's opinions about languages, characters, +landscapes and anything else under the Spanish skies--such is the +substance of the book; and the substance is transmitted through a +style that gives little heed to elegance, that walks along like a +healthy man on a tramp. The most eccentric of men, full of strange +languages and odd ideas, Borrow writes English as naturally as he +drinks English ale. There is not a touch of eloquence, not a great +phrase; his descriptions are rather literal records of what was in +front of him and how he liked it than "word-paintings." The dominant +writers of his time were super-eloquent. Borrow does not speak their +language. Perhaps that is why he did not rival them in popular favor, +and also why he seems to us so refreshingly downright. + +Borrow, like his master Defoe, has the art of setting all things forth +as if they were matters of fact. Even when his characters talk of +unusual matters, nay, especially when they harangue and gossip about +queer things, their conversation sounds like a transcription from life +and not like invention. + +"Lavengro" and its sequel, "The Romany Rye," are properly classified +in Everyman's Library under fiction, and "The Bible in Spain" is +classified as "Travel and Topography." In what proportion +autobiography and fiction are admixed is a question which does not +effect the merits of the books. They all follow about the same method, +and so, too, does "Wild Wales." The episodes are inconsequential, and +the looseness of organization not only permits Borrow unlimited +latitude of subject, but strengthens the Defoe-like illusion of truth; +he never loses the tone of the veracious chronicler who puts things +down in the order of nature and not according to the design of art. +Between adventures and more or less pertinently to them, Borrow +becomes itinerant schoolmaster and gives us instruction in language, +philology, comparative literature, ethics and religion. He is not a +pedant, but a humanist: "It has been said, I believe, that the more +languages a man speaks, the more a man he is; which is very true, +provided he acquires languages as a medium for becoming acquainted +with the thoughts and feelings of the various sections into which the +human race is divided; but in that case he should rather be termed a +philosopher than a philologist." + +Borrow need not be read continuously; if he enters upon a discourse +that promises not to interest you, you can turn the pages rapidly +until the eye strikes something more attractive. In his wide variety +is something for everybody. The conversations with the old apple woman +who had read the story of "Blessed Mary Flanders"; the chapters on +pugilism; the talks with tinkers and publicans; the old man who knew +Chinese but could not tell time by the clock; the outrageous attack +upon Walter Scott; the theological arguments with the man in +black--these are some of the choice fragments of what Borrow was +pleased to call a "dream." The general atmosphere is less that of +dreamland than of the broad highway in full sunlight. Since Borrow +died the cult of the open air has increased, and to that as much as to +anything is due the revival of interest in him. He is a great person, +a colossal egotist who in his journeyings takes up the whole road. It +is healthy for a man to be an egotist--especially if he is a colossal +one. + + + + +SHELLEY + + +In his "Defence of Poetry" Shelley says that the imagination is the +moral instrument. To be greatly good a man must imagine intensely and +comprehensively. Poetry serves morality not by what it explicitly +teaches, but by its power to awaken and enlarge the mind, to render it +"the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought." +Since poetry strengthens the imagination, which is the organ of the +moral nature of man, "a poet would do ill to embody his own +conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his time +and place, in his poetical creations which participate in neither." A +remarkable book could be made of the best things said in prose by +English poets about poetry. Perhaps one book would not hold so much. A +narrower yet great and imaginative book could be made of what Shelley +said about poetry and what English poets have said about him. Such a +book would explain and exhibit the theory of poetry and the art of +criticism. The very good edition of Shelley in the Regent Library, +(edited by Roger Ingpen) contains some brief "Testimonia" which invite +one to the essays from which they are taken, by Browning, Swinburne, +Francis Thompson. + +It is significant that Mr. Ingpen has not quoted from Arnold. If it is +the function of poetry to expand the imagination and make the mind +aware of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought, how did it +happen that Arnold, a genuine poet, missed Shelley utterly? Arnold was +not satisfied with his essay and intended to return to the subject. +That he could do a better thing is proved by his essay on Keats, +which, after he has done with his droning, schoolmasterly defence of +Keats's morals, is eloquent, serene and restrainedly emotional. +Shelley phrased many of the revolutionary ideas that were current in +his time. Arnold's timid school-bred culture was impervious to any +sort of revolutionary idea. Shelley's ideas did not impress him; he +thought Shelley a wonderful singer, but a singer without a solid body +of thought. Now, Shelley was the most full-minded poet of his time. He +knew more about what ought to be done with the world than any of his +contemporaries. That he failed to free Ireland and that the French +revolution was a disaster are a reflection on other people's +intelligence, not on his. It is not at all derogatory to a man's ideas +that for centuries and centuries after him the world fails to come up +to his teachings. If an angel is ineffectual that is not the angel's +fault. Indeed a too readily effectual angel would be rather a +journalist than a seer. + +That the bulk of mankind is ages behind the best of its poets and +seers might possibly be explained by the fact that the bulk of mankind +simply has not met their thoughts. But how shall one explain the fact +that artistic children of culture, who have had opportunity to read, +who respond to the beauty of seers and poets, remain at the tail of +the intellectual procession, are not abreast of long dead poets like +Shelley, and let the leaders of their own day sweep past them +unapprehended, unguessed? The thing that makes one impatient of the +privilege of culture is that many of those who have enjoyed it do not +lead; they drag mankind back. In "Winds of Doctrine," by Mr. George +Santayana, the mind of the present age is likened to "a philosopher at +sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail." When you +make a generality about the mind of today, you are perfectly safe, for +nobody can dispute you. Nobody knows what the mind of today is doing. +It is doing so many things that no one of us can keep track of it. But +when a man writes himself down in a book, you can tell what his mind +is doing--in that book. I should liken Mr. Santayana to a philosopher +who, really wanting to sail, had forgot to cast off and was still +lashed to the dock with a spanking wind blowing out to sea. + +It is no wonder that Whitman, revolutionary in substance and form, +perplexes the genteel and the cloistered. But it is a wonder that +Shelley, whose form is classic and whom a century has transformed from +demon to angel, does not reach them. A striking example of critical +and philosophic blindness is Mr. Santayana's essay on Shelley. Mr. +Santayana is a poet, and in this essay he says beautiful poetic +things. He is not stupid as Arnold was, for once in his life. But he +misses Shelley. He understands what Shelley was related to before +Shelley, for example, Plato, but he does not know the relation of +Shelley to his time or to the world since Shelley. What Mr. Santayana +says is lucid in phrase but quite hopelessly confused in thought. He +says that Shelley was "a finished child of nature, not a joint +product, like most of us, of nature, history and society." That is not +true of Shelley or any other human being in recorded history. It is +worse biography than Dowden's, and it seems that so old a critic as +Taine might have saved a man from writing such nonsense in the year +1912. Mr. Santayana says that "Shelley was not left standing aghast, +like a Philistine, before the destruction of the traditional order." +That is naïve. Of course Shelley was not left standing aghast; he was +trying his best to destroy the traditional order; he was butting his +beautiful head against it. He did not budge the traditional order. One +reason is that most people have impoverished imaginations, that the +world can't do what Tolstoy thought would save it, stop and think for +five minutes. Another little reason is that there are too many +conservatives like Mr. Santayana teaching the young men of the world. +Yet Mr. Santayana says that Shelley was "unteachable"! + +Shelley believed that a man would do ill to embody his own conceptions +of right and wrong in his poetry. Yet every man, poet or not, who +writes at all and is not a hypocrite, embodies his conceptions of +right and wrong in all his utterances. Shelley was intensely personal +in his poetry. His sky-larking, star-sweeping way of expressing +himself takes us out of range of his individual opinions. He spoke +heart-near things in splendid distances and tried to pull the far +skies down into sodden British hearts. The revolt, the defeated revolt +of his own times, near to him as the news of the daily papers, he +allegorized as the rebellion of a mythological Islam, and he flung the +stars reeling through Spenserian stanzas. No essayist has risen fully +to Shelley's poetic stature and comprehended him except another great +poet, Francis Thompson. Speaking his own convictions, as every man, +poet, critic, or even an academic voice of reason must and should +speak his convictions, Thompson begins his essay by pleading for a +reunion between his church and the art of poetry. So much of his essay +seems to me interesting but not closely relevant to Shelley. After +this introduction Thompson soars into the greatest essay that has ever +been written on an English poet by an English poet. + +Most poets, with their wonderful ears, of course write good prose. +Francis Thompson has a fine essay on the prose of poets. Even +Browning, who wrote little prose except the extraordinary +parenthetical letters, was so clarified by Shelley that in his essay +he discovered a fairly fluent and readable style. + +Shelley is primarily neither philosopher nor revolutionist, but lyric +poet. Yet to treat him only as a lyric poet is to forget his great +drama, "The Cenci," which can hold up its head undiminished beside the +Elizabethans. That idiotic British officialdom does not, or did not at +last accounts, allow its performance on the regular stage, is perhaps +only one more proof of how little impression Shelley's austere +anarchism made on practical British morality. "The Cenci" is austere; +for Shelley, it is athletically economical. The last speech of +Beatrice is an unexcelled emotional climax. Yet even in this play we +find that "intensely personal" note of Shelley; it speaks all his +heart against all injustice. The play learned many lessons from the +Elizabethans. It is not far wrong to call these lines Shakespearean: + + My wife and children sleep; + They are now living in unmeaning dreams; + But I must wake, still doubting if that deed + Be just which was most necessary. O, + Thou replenished lamp! whose narrow fire + Is shaken by the wind and on whose edge + Devouring darkness hovers! + + + + +H. G. WELLS AND UTOPIA + + +Utopias fall into two classes, the local and the chronological. That +is, some are removed from present fact by geographical transition to a +country apart from us in space, a magic island, a realm undiscovered +until the romancer found it and assumed it to be extant in the +romancer's year of grace; others are sundered from present fact by +being thrown forward into the future or backward into a time that +precedes recorded history. The desirable land within the limits of +present time and the known surficial limits of the globe is obviously +not convincing. One fears that it may be rediscovered and invaded by +an imperial fleet or an inquisitive scientific expedition. Crusoe's +island is no longer remote. The geographers have plotted the planet +and have snared every conceivable no-man's-land in the meshes of +realistic lines of latitude and longitude. + +The ideal civilization which plays ducks and drakes, not with space, +but with time, is safer. Nothing can dislodge it or disprove it or in +any wise proceed against it--except by force of superior imagination. +For nobody knows what may happen in the future. That is why all the +theological heavens are sublimely ramparted against attack. + +Bellamy placed his ideal civilization within the impregnable security +of a time as yet unborn. His conception was original and in its way +was more realistic than the timeless abstraction of Plato and More, +and the Nowhere from which Morris sent news. The fundamental scheme of +portraying a future upon this earth was so fascinating that Bellamy's +book enjoyed a success out of all proportion to its literary skill or +its sociological insight. He had a first-rate plan, but with what +unfanciful and rigidly precise lines he filled it in! His style is +stiff and his future is ossified. + +Mr. H. G. Wells took the idea of describing an imagined tomorrow and +made of it a stimulating romance. In saying that he took the idea one +does not mean to imply that he borrowed the scheme of "Looking +Backward" or of any other book. The notion of criticizing today from +the height of a postulated tomorrow was probably born and raised +before Bellamy. My bibliography is imperfect, but I seem to remember +that an Assyrian conceived the notion and inscribed his reflections on +a ton of brick. The important thing is the kind of future a man +imagines and the way he gets there and the justice of his backlook on +the world as it is. Wells's "The World Set Free" is the most +vision-expanding book of its kind--if there be a kind--that I have +ever quarrelled with and been delighted by. It justifies the last word +of its title. It does not cramp the growth of the race between a set +of rules. It spreads the lines of development out at a generously wide +angle. It bids humanity spring from what it is. It makes no +desperately impossible demands upon our common nature. Indeed, with a +cunning hidden plea, not evident at first glance, Mr. Wells draws the +world council, which gathered together the shattered nations and gave +them the first good government they had ever known, as a collection of +ordinary men, with only one or two inspiring geniuses. The idea--a +very important idea--is that any of us duffers could do it if we had +to, and if we were only jolted out of a few little private interests +and superstitions. + +The value of a Utopia is not so much the description of a desirable +and convincingly attainable state as in the reflex description of an +undesirable state--the state in which we live. To show how the "new +civilization" was unhampered by political intrigue and financial +considerations is to show how obstructive is the present system of +politics and ownership. "Man the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the +bickering aspects of life, pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, +man the curious learner and man the creative artist, come forward to +replace these barbaric aspects of existence by a less ignoble +adventure." In "those" times, that is the present seen from the year +2000, many of the homes were entirely "horrible, uniform, square, +squat, ugly, hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some +respects quite filthy; only people in complete despair of anything +better could have lived in them." In "our" time, that is about 2000, +the last stupid capitalist who wanted millions for an invention he had +stolen was laughed out of court. People do not struggle to get, +because they do not run the risk of starvation and wage slavery; they +produce as artists, because man likes to do things with his head and +his hands. In our times we understand that Bismarck, to take a salient +example, was not an admirable man but a gross person, and that the age +that produced him, made him a ruler, and paid him respect, was a dull, +stupefied, vicious age. The time when people were taking pills for all +kinds of ailments, were being killed by the slow process of the slum +or the swift process of the ill-managed railroads, is past the +imagination of "our" time to conceive. + +From such a past the world is set free. The people of that past day +might have set themselves free, but they were too stupid; the workmen +were debased, timid and without imagination, the capitalists had to be +intent on property and dividends lest they fall to the unpropertied +condition of workmen; lawyers, clergymen, popular novelists like Mr. +Wells, editors, journalists, and other professional parasites did not +dare utter even such vision as they had, or did it for money under +convenient restrictions. It was an unthinkably rotten period in the +history of the world. Only a few kickers knew how rotten it was, or +had courage to express their sense of the prevalent putrescence. + +The account of what used to be is just enough, and the account of +what "is" does not strain the intelligence even of one who sees +things from the point of view of 1914. The only unconvincing part of +Mr. Wells's history is that which narrates how we ceased to be what +we were and became what we are. He wipes the old world out with an +atomic bomb, so destructive that it annihilates all the capitals of +the earth, makes war impossible and compels mankind to federate. Mr. +Wells has a penchant for "fishy" science. He knows a good deal about +chemistry, biology, mechanics, and he knows that novel readers know +less, as a rule, than he knows. So with the finest air of conviction +he shatters the world with a new explosive, which has a kind of +laboratory-veracity not claimed for the comet whose tail brushed us +to revolution in an earlier of his engaging romances. The clever man +secures plausibility by rather cheekily dedicating the book to +"Frederick Soddy's interpretation of radium," to which this story +"owes long passages." Neat, isn't it? It inspires in the ignorant +reader a confidence that those atomic bombs are approved by the most +advanced science--though, of course, Mr. Wells does not say so. The +cataclysmic revolution is splendidly narrated, and is even better +than Mr. Wells's earlier mechanical and astronomical romances. The +trouble with it is that it is not a fitting transition from a state +of society which is seriously conceived to a better state of society +which is described with all the earnestness of a sociologist. The two +things are discordant. If we are to be taken from one civilization to +another we must move along a social highway. The atomic bombs are out +of key with the prelude and the last two chapters. + +Mr. Wells is fond of mixing fake chemistry and social reality. He has +succeeded in two kinds of fiction, which he should keep distinct, the +Jules Verne romance and the novel of present-day life. He persists in +putting the two in the same book, and they simply will not blend even +under his skilful stirring-spoon. In "Tono-Bungay" he gave us a good +picture of a quack millionaire, full of the spirit of the living age. +It was set in a realistic scene and was true to life. Then for no +reason at all he sent his hero in search of a mysterious metal called +"quap," which does not exist and so never burnt the bottom out of the +ship. "Quap" destroys the illusion of the book. About the time that +quap begins to do its work, the book ceases to be a novel. "Marriage" +almost ceases to be a novel when the couple go to Labrador. The +introduction of love business into the comet story is an impertinence, +as Mr. Bernard Shaw has complained. Mr. Wells's incurable taste for +romantic adventure on a plane removed from life--usually an aeroplane +that does what no aeroplane has done yet--vitiates his realism; and +his concessions to the "love interest" do not help his experiments in +scientific "futurism." He is best when he keeps separate the two sides +of his genius. + +On the other hand, his extraordinary skill in feathering social truth +with romance, and his equally extraordinary skill in making a monster +of romance eat real hay are the virtues of his vices. His tracts read +like novels, and his novels often carry shrewdly concealed tracts. He +is, next to Bernard Shaw, the most irritating and the most widely read +revolutionary economist who writes our language. Like Mr. Shaw, he is +a rather tame revolutionist; he has never got free from the +middle-class, emancipated clerk view of life, and his romantic sense +sometimes corrupts his sense of social fact as it does his sense of +scientific fact. But he always thinks in ambush behind his most +trivial narrative. And when he comes forth avowedly as a thinker and +theorist, he has the vivacity of phrase, the sparkle of manner which +serve him when he is making fiction. Moreover, in spite of his intense +modernity and his contempt for ancient elegancies and traditional +beauties, he can write fine, rhythmic, luminously visual prose; like +all imaginative men who deal in words, he is a bit of a poet. His +account of "the last war" has in it something of the quality of the +epic: "Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like +archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely +the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding +of Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, beside +this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong swoop +to death?" + + + + +JOHN MASEFIELD + + +The first version of Mr. Masefield's "Pompey the Great" was published +before "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The Widow of the Bye Street," +those virile narratives that made us wake to find him famous. "Pompey" +is vigorous and dramatic, yet it lacks the note that announces a new +poet. The earlier poems, "Salt Water Ballads" are good, but do not +rise above the chorus of minor lyrists. The short stories in "A +Mainsail Haul" do not distinguish Masefield from a score of sturdy +spinners of sea yarns. It was "The Widow in the Bye Street" that told +us that a great new ship was in port. After that splendid arrival came +"The Daffodil Fields" and "Dauber." Meanwhile the man who had found, +if not created, a form of poetry so individual as to invite the final +tribute of parody, showed himself in "The Tragedy of Nan," master of +dramatic realism. + +It is likely and logical, even if the dates do not fall into line, +that "Pompey" is the work of a young ambitious literary man who in the +hour of conceiving the work had not yet discovered his course. He had +to a large extent discovered his style and his attitude toward life +and the speech of men. He makes the Romans talk in a sharp bold +staccato, which is good English and excellent Masefield; as for its +Latinity, well, the Romans are dead and we do not know just how they +talked. Pompey says: "We were happy there, that year." Cornelia +answers: "Very happy. And that day the doves came, picking the spilled +grain. And at night there was a moon." Pompey's next speech is: "All +the quiet valley. And the owls were calling. Those little grey owls. +Make eight bells, captain." + +It is a question whether a modern dramatist is not misdirecting his +genius when he makes plays of Greek or Roman legends and characters. +To be sure, a man of genius is not to be limited in his subjects or +his style. He is free by virtue of his genius. He may make an Iliad if +it pleases him to try it. Mr. Bernard Shaw put a new wrinkle in the +stiffened parchment of Caesar's biography. Ibsen at the age of 43, +after he had hit upon his "later" manner, that is after he had made +the simple discovery that universal tragedy grins in the small houses +of small people in small Norwegian towns, produced his "Julian the +Apostate." Poets of all nations during the last three hundred years +have retold Greek and Roman stories and made new poetry of them. But +on the whole the Greeks and Romans handled their own subjects, their +own lives and legends fairly well. The task of the modern is to render +our times or to interpret timeless and spaceless subjects from our +point of view. The widow who lived in the bye street and the painter +who was killed at sea are not as important persons as the Hon. Cneius +Pompeius Magnus, but Mr. Masefield's poems about living (or recently +killed) obscure folk are more important than his drama about the +ancient illustrious dead. + +"Pompey" is a good play, that is, it is good to read; I do not know +whether it has been acted. It has one characteristic of Mr. +Masefield's other work, a direct incisive speech, poetry of the naked +fact, the brief metaphor which might come out in any man's talk and +which has the "unliterary" flavor of reality--a cunningly literary +mode of writing. Mr. Masefield makes Pompey say: "Five minutes ago I +had Rome's future in my hand. She was wax to my seal. I was going to +free her. Now is the time to free her. You can tear the scales and the +chains from her." Did the Romans talk in this clipped hurried fashion? +Probably they did when they were excited, for it is human to talk in +short sentences; even Germans do it. + +The business of the dramatist is to make you believe, with an arrested +compelled attention, in the speech and action of persons in clearly +defined circumstances. It makes no great difference whether the scene +is in a Norwegian house or on the necromantic island of Shakespeare's +"Tempest." Sometimes it seems a more wonderful achievement to make the +Norwegian house interesting because it is so terribly like the one we +live in. Mr. Masefield's Nan seems to me worth ten of Mr. Masefield's +Cornelias, and the peculiar style and habit of thought of Mr. +Masefield seem more fitted to the modern subject. One of his +metrically ingenious stanzas, with all the artifice of meter and +rhyme, is nearer to life than his vivaciously realistic sentences put +into the mouth of a Roman. "Back your port oars. Shove off. Give way +together. Go on there. Man your halliards. Take the turns off. Stretch +it along. Softly now. Stand by." Was such the dialect of Roman sea +captains? Nobody knows. All that I argue is that Mr. Masefield's +punching abruptness is more wonderfully real, more effective on the +lips of modern people whom we do know. + + O God, O God, what pretty ways she had. + He's kissing all her skin, so soft and white. + She's kissing back. I think I'm going mad. + Like rutting rattens in the apple loft. + She held that light she carried high aloft + Full in my eyes for him to hit me by, + I had the light all dazzling in my eye. + +Every poet is limited to his idiom, and though he may make broad +differentiations, may change his structural form from sonnet to ode, +from ode to dramatic scene, may adapt his style to a character to the +extent of making clown and king unlike in their turn of phrase, yet +when he is earnestly poetic he writes his own kind of poetry. Mr. +Masefield vocalizes Masefield sentences with the breath of Romans. So +Browning's characters all have the Browning abundance of telescoped +metaphor. Shakespeare's English kings and Italian dukes trumpet +Elizabethan blank verse. The identity of flavor and idiom and of +metaphor between Shakespeare's English characters and Roman characters +and Italian characters will never be perceived by the male and female +Mrs. Jamesons, who write essays about Shakespeare's "characters," but +cannot hear verse. To be sure, Shakespeare and all other great +dramatists make the persons of the play adapt their substance to the +situation; naturally Othello in a jealous fit does not talk about +having lost his ducats and his daughter or order a cup of sack. But +within the specific situation and the rather loose limits of character +Shakespeare equips his person with a style of blank verse that is +primarily Elizabethan, secondarily Shakespearean, and only in a +tertiary and wholly subordinate sense Caesarean or Macbethean. +D'Annunzio writes magnificent D'Annunzio, with a recognizable fondness +for certain words and sonorities, no matter who is alleged to be +talking. A poet is at his best when his singular power of phrase and +his substance are most happily fused. + +Masefield's instrument plays best upon modern themes, upon the tragedy +of obscure people in English fields or upon the seven seas. It is his +distinction to have taken the lives of the humble and to have involved +those lives in the revolution of the stars and the expanses of sea. He +has lifted coarse words into literature (the Elizabethans did that, +too); he has related the large elements to little elemental lives; he +has elevated obvious simplicities to grand complexities. + +The resemblance between the austerely tender pathos of "The Daffodil +Fields" and Wordsworth's "Michael" is a genuine resemblance honorable +to the younger poet; and the pointing to the resemblance is not, I +trust, an example of the critic's weak habit of referring one poet +back to another. Mr. Quiller-Couch has said that "neither in the +telling did, or could, 'Enoch Arden' come near the artistic truth of +'The Daffodil Fields'." Now, if one is to compare poets, for the sake +of praising them or for the better understanding of them, it is well +to make comparisons that refer the new and unknown to the known in +illuminating conjunction. To say that "Enoch Arden" does not approach +the artistic truth of "The Daffodil Fields" is to make an inept +comparison, to associate the weak with the strong, even though the +comparison is negative. "Enoch Arden" is the flimsiest kind of +romantic fraud in Tennyson's worst manner. It is a sob poem that sends +only the tiniest lace handkerchiefs to the laundry. "The Daffodil +Fields," for all its conscious artistry and the adroit manipulation of +the verses, is terrifically sincere. If its substance has any +allegiance to another English poet, we must look for a poet who had a +realistic sense of the furrowed field and a visionary sense of the +stars, that is Wordsworth. And if one's odious liking for comparison +is not satisfied with that, one may ask readers of poetry to compare +the opening stanza of "The Widow in the Bye Street" with Chaucer, and +think of such merits as plainness of phrase, simplicity and ease of +narrative, and soundness of verse structure. + + Down Bye street, in a little Shropshire town, + There lived a widow with her only son: + She had no wealth nor title to renown, + Nor any joyous hours, never one. + +Is there not here a note that suggests the opening of "The Nonne +Preestes Tale," even though the story which follows is quite unlike +Chaucer's? Or is it only the "widow" that makes me associate the two? +At any rate it is pleasant to think that Mr. Masefield in a strong, +not an imitative or servile, sense, is heir to the oldest master of +English narrative verse. + +Then if our habit of judging new poets by old ones still dominates us, +let us take any passage describing the sea in "Dauber" and put it +beside any of the thousand years of English sea poetry. + + Denser it grew, until the ship was lost. + The elemental hid her: she was merged + In mufflings of dark death, like a man's ghost, + New to the change of death, yet hither urged. + Then from the hidden waters something surged-- + Mournful, despairing, great, greater than speech, + A noise like one slow wave on a still beach. + +After that, if only for the pleasure of quoting them, recall +Swinburne's lines: + + Where beyond the extreme sea-wall and between the remote + sea-gates, + Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death + waits. + +The wonder of our English tongue is never more resounding than when +English poets echo the tumult of the sea. Mr. Masefield is not so much +an innovator as an initiate into a great poetic tradition, the +tradition of a race of sailors and chantey-makers who began with "The +Seafarer" or long before that, and shall not end with "Dauber." The +sea is in Masefield's blood and in his personal experience. Who but an +English poet would have ended "The Tragedy of Pompey the Great" with a +chantey to the tune of "Hanging Johnny"? + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND THE SCRIBES + + +In his sensible little book, "Literary Taste: How to Form It," Mr. +Arnold Bennett says: "In attending a university extension lecture on +the sources of Shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of +George Saintsbury into the origins of English prosody, or in weighing +the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was a +scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for." + +Of the vast library of scholarly research, the most fatuous section, +if one is to judge from the few specimens one happens to have seen, is +that which deals with the most important division of literature--poetry; +and probably the poet who has suffered the most voluminous maltreatment +from two centuries of English, German and American scholarship is +Shakespeare. I have been going in an idle way over the notes in "The +Tragedie of Jvlivs Caesar," edited by Horace Howard Furness, Jr., +and "The Tragedie of Cymbeline," edited by the elder Dr. Furness. And +I have looked into other volumes of this laborious work, "A New +Varorium Edition of Shakespeare." From an enormous mass of commentary, +criticism, word-worrying, text-marring and learned guesswork, the +editor has chosen what seem to him the best notes. The sanity of his +introductions and the good sense of some of his own notes lead one to +suppose that he has selected with discrimination from the notes of +others. His work is a model of patience, industry and judgment. He +plays well in this game of scholarship. But what is the game worth? +What is the result? + +Here is a volume of nearly 500 large pages containing only one play! +The text is a literal reprint of the first folio, or whatever is +supposed to be the earliest printed version. The clear stream of +poetry runs along the tops of the pages. Under that is a deposit of +textual emendations full of clam-shells and lost anchors and tin cans. +Under that is a mud bottom two centuries deep. It consists of (a) what +scholars said Shakespeare said; (b) what scholars said Shakespeare +meant; (c) what scholars said about what other scholars said; (d) what +scholars said about the morality and character of the personages, as +(1) they are in Shakespeare's play, and as (2) they are in other +historical and fictitious writings; (e) what scholars said about how +other people used the words that Shakespeare used; (f) what scholars +said could be done to Shakespeare's text to make him a better poet. I +have not read all these notes and I never shall read them. Life is too +short and too interesting. + +All the time that I was trying to read the notes, so that I could know +enough about them to write this article, my mind kept swimming up out +of the mud into that clear river of text. It is an almost perfectly +clear river. Some of the obscurities that scholars say are there are +simply not obscure, except as poetry ought to have a kind of obscurity +in some turbulent passages. Many of the obscurities the scholars put +there in their innocence and stupidity, and those obscurities you can +eliminate by ignoring them. + +The really valuable note is the etymological. Etymology reveals the +essential metaphors of words. The modern reader will find that beyond +his intellectual front door stand three or four wire entanglements of +connotation; by the time a word gets to him it is bruised and ragged. +The etymologist clears all those fences for you and delivers a word +fresh into your hands. He shows you how other poets have used it. He +enriches it with other connotations. He shows it to be even wealthier +than it was in the mind of the man who wrote the Shakespearian line. +One of the most exciting and poetic books is the Oxford Dictionary. +The dated illustrative history of a word, past milestone after +milestone of use, is an intellectual epic. The word is root-deep and +branch-high with poetry, with the imaginative habits of the race. The +etymological note not only clarifies Shakespeare, but spreads behind +him (and other poets) a sort of verbal-cosmic background. Etymology +brightens the color of words, deepens their significance. That the +etymologist is often a duffer, who, in the very act of resolving a +word into new chords, writes stiff and stodgy prose, is a perplexing +thing in human nature and a very perplexing problem in that appalling +institution, Scholarship. + +It is impossible for even a vivacious, humorous man like Dr. Furness, +an enthusiastic amateur in love with his task, to live in a library of +Shakespearian scholarship and not be infected by its diseases. Dr. +Furness knows, for example, precisely when "Cymbeline" was written. +Shakespeare was forty-six years old. Now, "Cymbeline" is a foolish +play; Dr. Johnson said so. And there must be a reason for +Shakespeare's deterioration, for Shakespeare, unlike other poets, is +not to be allowed to write bad plays and bad lines without a +satisfactory explanation. He did not explain himself, but the scholars +come to his rescue. Dr. Furness fancies that, though forty-six is not +an advanced age, Shakespeare was tired and disillusioned. "There may +have crept into Shakespeare's study of imagination a certain weariness +of soul in contemplating in review the vast throng of his dream +children.... A sufficing harvest of fame is his and honest wealth, +accompanied by honor, love, obedience and troops of friends." "I can +most reverently fancy that he is once more allured by the joy of +creation when by chance there falls in his way the old, old story of a +husband convinced, through villany, of his wife's infidelity." + +And there you are. Shakespeare at the age of forty-six is lured by the +restless joy of creation into writing "Cymbeline," which is a poor +play. It is not up to the mark which Shakespeare's previous +masterpieces have set. There is something a little wobbly about this +conjunction of surmises. But the scholar is never at a loss. He can +deliver immortal Will from his own errors, shield him from the +consequences of being at once a god in art and a human man, prone to +literary lapses and slovenly work. The masque in the fifth act "is +regarded by a large majority of editors and critics as an intrusive +insertion by some hand not Shakespeare's." When a large majority of +scholars and critics regard a thing as so, it is so. It gets into the +books that you have to read to pass college examinations. And if you +say that many of the scholars and critics whom you happen to have read +or listened to are chumps, when they deal with Shakespeare or any +other poet, you are a lost soul. + +Some of the notes of the various commentators are suggestive. But many +of the notes are sheer impertinences, especially those that attempt to +mend the lines. + + I would haue left it on the Boord, so soone + As I had made my Meale; and parted + With Pray'rs for the Prouider. + +There is nothing the matter with that. It sounds all right. But the +editors have to fill out the short second line, to make it scan. Dr. +Furness thinks, justly, that the line needs only "a very timid pause +after 'Meale.'" Of course, any reader, any good actor, with an ear on +the side of his head, reads all lines with pauses timid or bold as the +case requires, and does not make a fuss about it. It is only the +scholars that fuss, or poets like Pope, who are entirely out of touch +with Shakespeare's free metrical habits. + +It is almost inconceivable that grown men with enough interest in +poetry to spend their whole lives in Shakespeare's company could have +daubed him with such muddy nonsense as one finds in these notes, which +are not the worst of scholarly comment but the best, selected by a +discriminating man. What a colossal sham it all is!--erected not by +charlatans but by men working in good faith and with disinterested +devotion to their task. + +It is not merely the ignorant idler and the superficial player among +books who has got tired of the institution of Shakespeare Improved: +Fourteen Thousand Doctors of Philosophy in Session Day and Night, +Searching for a Serum to Prevent Spinal Meningitis in the Lines of +Shakespeare. Millions Needed to Continue This Humanitarian Work: Fifty +Thousand Students Under Instruction in the Art of How Not to Be Poets. +Against this amazing institution some of the more independent surgeons +have protested. One was the late John Churton Collins, a physician who +discovered that the Shakespearean metaphor was not a locally British +infection rising from the Avon river, but was brought by the verbal +mosquito from Rome and Greece. Collins had a vivid and audacious mind +that made him one of the most readable of modern Shakespeareans, and +he had, I assume, considerable learning. He says: "Dozens of +impertinent emendations have been introduced into Shakespeare's text, +because editors have not been aware that the custom of using the same +word in different senses in one line, or even twice in contiguous +lines, was deliberately affected by the Elizabethan poets." +Deliberately affected? Yes, and it came natural to them in a time when +language was a little looser and freer than it is after three +centuries of increased use and hardened definition both in prose and +poetry. + +One trouble with much Shakespearean scholarship lies in the assumption +that everything that left Shakespeare's hand must have been perfect. +Why, he probably used words carelessly and did all kinds of tricks +with them, as other geniuses do. Why should we assume that he always +wrote a good line? Some of his lines are bad, and it is not necessary +for Dr. Pumpernickell to knock out a couple of words or add a couple +just to make a line go metrically. These scholars have a split vision. +In one note they treat Shakespeare like a god who could not go wrong. +In the next note they treat him like a sophomore versifier whose lines +have to be corrected. Dr. Furness says that the earliest known text of +"Julius Caesar"--that of the First Folio, "is markedly free from +corruptions." What corruptions? The printers' or Shakespeare's? Dr. +Furness lugs in that tiresome phantom, a playhouse copy. "Our only +recourse is to accept the explanation given by Resch, viz., that these +words between Brutus and Messala are an interpolation from a MS. +addition which appeared first in a playhouse copy, and which, by +mistake, became incorporated in the text." Now, is not that a "soft, +downy, pink-cheeked peach of an idea" (Jonson's "Sejanus," act IV., +sc. 13, I, 23. Potter's edition: Oshkosh, Scholar and Sellum, 1913)? +Resch be hanged! What playhouse copy? When? Whose mistake? How +incorporated? A solid page and two-thirds of a page are devoted to +explaining a difficulty which does not exist. + +This is the true history of the passage in question. Shakespeare and +Bacon and Raleigh met in the Mermaid Tavern for the purpose of turning +out a few yards of Elizabethan blank verse in the post-Tennysonian +style of Mr. Alfred Noyes. It was a very difficult job and Will of +Stratford got roaring full. He went home on foot to Stratford, a long +journey, and found Anne with another pair of twins, one of whom was +the poet Davenant. This was very disturbing to Will. He did not know +until after his death which twin was Davenant. He was then in that +fateful year, 1599-1600, writing his play, "Julius Caesar", and making +extensive use of Suetonius's "The Lives of the Caesars" (Dr. Furness +thinks this doubtful, but if you are going to guess, why not guess +good and plenty?). Anne got on Will's nerves and he had a bad morning +head. That is why he made that slightly confused passage, which has +bothered the scholars ever since. + +The following example of how Shakespeare's biography is written is not +a parody. It appears in the New York _Nation_ of November 27, 1913, +page 513, in a review of Arthur S. Pier's "Story of Harvard." + +"Every good story has a prologue, and the story of Harvard has one +which by no means should be left out. In Stratford-on-Avon stands the +'Old House in the High Street,' identified by the most eminent of our +antiquaries, the late H. F. G. Waters, by certain documentary +evidence, as the early home of Katharine Rogers, mother of John +Harvard, from whom proceeded the little inheritance that first kindled +in the western hemisphere the torch of a liberal culture. For this we +have distinct contemporaneous chapter and verse. + +"At circumstantial evidence we look askance, but without pressing the +matter unduly this may be said--that the families of Rogers and +Shakespeare lived in close neighborhood and intimacy at Stratford +during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.; that the poet knew +Katharine Rogers well, as, on the other hand, he knew well Robert +Harvard, at length her husband, in his shop at Southwark, in London, +hard by the Globe Theatre. So far the conjunction would seem to be +inevitable. + +"Then looms up a possibility amounting perhaps to a likelihood, that +no other than Shakespeare was the intermediary who brought together +the Londoner and the fair, well-dowered maid in the remote midlands, +that he was a familiar guest in the home in Southwark which he had +helped to establish, and that he, the genial family friend, held on +his knee the little John Harvard, the first-born in the household. + +"Could this touch of their foster-father with the most illustrious +name in literature be fairly established (and who can say after the +feats of Mr. Waters what scraps may yet be found in the dust-heaps?), +Harvard men would indeed have a tradition to prize." + +Why not get down to brass tacks? We do not know much about +Shakespeare's life. We do not know anything about his manuscripts, or +the playhouse versions. We cannot even rely on the printed date of a +quarto. We do not know whether a corrupt line was corrupted by +Shakespeare or the printer or somebody else. Many emendations consist +largely in a kind of scholarly punning. For example: Shakespeare wrote +a line that every scholar remembers, for it is a causer of gray hairs +and a prodigal spender of the midnight taper: "The blind Rush hath +proclaimed his Bowells search." Johnson conjectures that four lines +have been omitted. Steev. conj.: For "blind rush," read "mind rush." +That is, the impetuousness of his thought makes one aware of how his +instinct is struggling for the solution of his difficulties. Malone +conj.: "Bowells lurch." Evidently referring to the sea-sickness of +Antony after the battle of Actium. Craik conj.: "Rowell's search, +meaning that his blind rush, that is headlong rush, is caused or +indicated by the speed of his horse into which he has thrust his +rowels." Cf. B. Jonson, "Every man out of His Humor"; "One of the +rowels catched hold of the ruffle of my boot." Oechelhauser +(_Einleitung_, p. 1185): But this must refer to the speed of the +intellect going through purely idealistic experiences. There is no +question here of either sea or land. Macbeth has not been near the sea +and Henry V. has not yet set sail for France. As for horses, it is now +well established that there were no horses in England; otherwise why +should Richard have cried, "My kingdom for a horse"? If there had been +horses, one could surely have bought one, especially a King, for 80 +marks, the then ruling price in Schleswig-Holstein; and even the +ecstasies of expression would not have made appropriate the offer of +an entire kingdom. + +So they go "conjing" and "conjing" through desolate miles of notes. +In spite of the fact that now and again a genuine bit of historic +information, a light of interpretative intuition flashing from a +scholar's note, does vivify and elucidate a puzzling line, or a line +that you might pass over in an oblivious mood, nevertheless, is it not +true that this whole institution of literary theology is a stupid +superstition? There are plenty of unsolved problems in Shakespeare, +fascinating questions of biography and interpretation to which +conjectural answers are legitimate. But for illuminating answers, or +partial answers, one has to go outside orthodox scholarship, to Walter +Begley, to "The Shakespeare Problem Restated," by George C. Greenwood, +to "Shakespeare's Mystery Play: A Study of The Tempest" by Colin +Still, and to other heretical inquirers whom the pundits dismiss as +cranks. + +The scholars do not confine their thick-headed learning to old poets +whose language is strange and who are made clearer by a note here and +there. For some stranger reason scholars are hired to edit the modern +poets in the popular series, those valuable and inexpensive reprints +which help to spread poetry over the face of the earth and make it +accessible to increasing numbers of readers. I pick up the "Selected +Poems of Christina Rossetti," edited with introduction and notes by +Charles Bell Burke, Ph.D., professor of English in the University of +Tennessee. The volume is in Macmillan's Pocket Classics. I come upon +"A Green Cornfield," a lovely lyric that must have made Shelley look +down with interest "from the abode where the eternal are." There is +reference to a note. I turn to it and find this: "An inverted simile? +Consult Genung's 'Working Principles of Rhetoric,' p. 79, 2, example." +I will not consult Genung. I will advise all the pupils in my school +never to consult Genung while they are reading poetry. + +I commend to those hard-working young men and women in the +universities who are now studying under editors of Shakespeare to fit +themselves to be editors of Shakespeare these sentences from Mr. Max +Eastman's "Enjoyment of Poetry": "A misfortune incident to all +education is the fact that those who elect to be teachers are +scholars. They esteem knowledge not for its use in attaining other +values, but as a value in itself; and hence they put an undue emphasis +upon what is formal and nice about it, leaving out what is less +pleasing to the instinct for classification but more needful to the +art of life. This misfortune is especially heavy in the study of +literature. Indeed the very rare separation of the study of literature +from that of the subjects it deals with suggests the barren and formal +character of it. As usually taught for three years to postgraduates in +our universities, it is not worth spending three weeks upon." + + + + +GEORGE MOORE AND OTHER IRISH WRITERS + + +"Though I may have lost the habit of reading," says Mr. Moore, "I have +acquired, perhaps more than any other human being, another habit, the +habit of thinking. I love my own thoughts." It must be a great +pleasure to be Mr. George Moore, to have confidence in one's +intellectual habits, to enjoy the memories and opinions that the mind +excogitates, and to be able to phrase them with beautiful precision. +The mind that honestly likes itself is sure to attract other minds and +to interest even those that are antipathetic. If Mr. Moore does not +persuade you that all his judgments are to be accepted, he provokes +you to examine your own. He is stimulant, irritant, but there is no +depressant reaction from him. One can stand a large dose of him, both +of his exquisite fiction and of his repetitive reminiscences, which +may or may not be fiction. + +There is a remark ascribed to Lady Gregory: "Some men kiss and do not +tell; George Moore does not kiss, but he tells." It is the business of +the writer of fiction to "tell," and it makes little difference to the +reader who reads for fun whether the gallant adventures are +biographical or not. Early in his literary career Mr. Moore tried the +confessional form of narrative and succeeded masterfully. The young +man who "confessed" twenty-five years ago grew older, and in "Memoirs +of My Dead Life" looked back upon his youth from the quiescence of +middle age. Mr. Moore says that "if the reader of 'Vale' be wishful to +know what happened at Orelay he can do so in a volume entitled +'Memoirs of My Dead Life,' but he need not read this novel to follow +adequately the story of 'Vale.'" So the "Memoirs" is fiction. What, +then, is "Hail and Farewell"? Simply an extension of the +autobiographic novel, it includes real persons living and dead and +calls them by their names, but it is as obviously a "made-up" book as +anything in literature. It is the work of an artist and critic, the +artist who gave us two masterpieces, "Esther Waters" and "Evelyn +Innes," and the critic, who, apropos books and pictures, writes, if +not with infallible judgment, ever with an unfailing sense of beauty. + +Mr. Moore's lady-loves have not, according to his own testimony, +direct and unconscious, been the most interesting affairs of his life. +He writes better about Manet than about an amatory encounter of +yesteryear. The women of his "regular" novels are more vivid than the +women who perturb his mature reminiscences. He says that the critics +complain that "instead of creating types of character like Esther +Waters," he is wasting his time describing his friends, "mere portrait +painting," and he asks an argumentative question: "In writing 'Esther +Waters' did I not think of one heroic woman?" + +For once the critics are on the right side. Lady Gregory is +interesting in her own person and her own work, but Mr. Moore can +never make her so interesting in a book as he has made Esther and +Evelyn. And the ladies of his experience are more alive when he uses +them as matter for fiction than when he sits behind a cigar dictating +memories. That in creating Esther he was thinking of an heroic woman +is his concern, not ours. His private kisses undoubtedly taught him +something of the art of making fictitious kisses public; they +furnished him, as such experiences furnish every author, with the +story which as an artist he was to "tell." But his purely personal +revelations are not startling. Ladies flit into his memory, receive +the most delicate literary treatment and flit out again. Nothing +unusual happens at Orelay or anywhere else, and what happens is +handled finely, timidly even, with what may have been audacity in +1890, but no longer strikes us as valiantly candid. The introduction +to "Memoirs of My Dead Life" now seems much ado over little; it is out +of proportion and is a wobbly piece of thinking such as Mr. Moore's +Irish born and French trained mind is seldom guilty of. The "Memoirs" +and "Hail and Farewell" are to be enjoyed and admired. Even an +Irishman ought not to find in them occasion for more than a contest of +wit. + +No page of "Hail and Farewell" is flat; no opinion of Mr. Moore's +leaves you quite indifferent. The most interesting pages, more +interesting than his portrait of himself as a lover in France or a +member of the landed gentry of county Mayo, are those which criticize +the personalities and the ideas of the so-called Celtic Revival. His +comments on Lady Gregory and "Willie" Yeats just miss being insults. +To say that "Lady Gregory has never been for me a very real person" is +gratuitous and not quite consonant with that honesty which Mr. Moore +advocates and for the most part practises. For in his portrait of her +and his comments on her he shows that she is a very real person to him +and a writer who compels his consideration. In the act of putting a +pin through the humbuggery of others he buzzes himself. + +However, his literary criticism of their work is delightful. Whether +it is true or not we Yankees have no sure means of judging. He says +that Lady Gregory's style which Mr. Yeats so highly values, the speech +that she learned from the people and puts into the mouths of her +characters, "consists of no more than a dozen turns of speech, dropped +into pages of English so ordinary, that redeemed from these phrases it +might appear in any newspaper without attracting attention." Well, is +not that true of the speech of the Irish or any province of England or +America? Our dialectic differences are few but important. The speech +of Lady Gregory's characters is effective, and more than that, the +humor and the pathos of them is deeper than their speech or any +peculiar turns of phrase. + +Doubtless (as would say Sir Sidney Lee, whom Mr. Moore despises), +doubtless Mr. Yeats makes too much of Lady Gregory's discovery of +dialect and of his own discovery of Lady Gregory. In the revised +version of "Red Hanrahan," he thanks Lady Gregory "who helped me to +rewrite The Stories of Red Hanrahan in the beautiful country speech of +Kiltartan, and nearer to the tradition of the people among whom he, or +some likeness of him, drifted and is remembered." It is little I care, +myself being a literary man, whether the metaphors and the syntax and +the sentence rhythms were contrived by Mr. Yeats or Lady Gregory or +the people of Kiltartan, or whether they are natural to the English +tongue of other times and other regions of the world. They are +impressive, they convey the story, and they give to the story the +strange color appropriate to it. Mr. Yeats plays with verbal color, +with lights and darkness in a way that should appeal to so sympathetic +a student of the French impressionists as Mr. Moore. + +To be sure, there is always the danger of affectation, and the +concluding sentences of Mr. Yeats's dedicatory letter to "AE" are +pretty close to buncombe. "Ireland, which is still predominantly +Celtic, has preserved, with some less excellent things, a gift of +vision which has died out among more hurried and more successful +nations; no shining candelabra have prevented us from looking into the +darkness, and when one looks into the darkness there is always +something there." Not always; there may not be anything there worth +talking about, not even a black cat. And the man of poetic vision may +be a citizen of a relatively successful nation. The eye does not +thrive in the dark, but is gradually atrophied. It was not by +scrutinizing the dark, but by using his ear and his wonderful visual +imagination that Mr. Yeats learned to write the verses in "Red +Hanrahan's Curse," verses the like of which no other man can write. + +In such verses lives and will live the real Yeats. That some of his +verses are obscure and weak does not matter. Greater poets than he +have failed at times. And the best of his later verse is his very +best; he grows and keeps young, for he has been dipped in some magic +well. That he has foibles a plenty is of little moment; greater poets +than he have allowed the fool to triumph over the genius sometimes. +The divine fool is one of the common themes in poetic legend. Later +criticism will assess the value of the "school" that he has founded +and appraise his influence in the literary history of Ireland. The +function of criticism at the present time is to proclaim the lyric +poet and persuade readers to subject themselves to the enchantment of +his songs. It is surprising that Mr. Moore, who preaches the gospel of +beauty with a fervor worthy of Keats, should not balance his witty +strictures with a little more hearty appreciation. He quotes one of +his friends as saying that Yeats "took his colleen to London and put +paint upon her cheeks and dye upon her hair and sent her up +Piccadilly." + +And another critic added that the hat and feathers were supplied by +Arthur Symons. That is funny enough and serves the purpose of +criticism by arousing interest. It also gives other critics +opportunity to remind their readers that Yeats's colleen, whether in +Sligo or London, is a lovely witch. + +One story that Mr. Moore tells of Mr. Yeats is beyond my un-Celtic +sense of humor. He represents Mr. Yeats as coming down to luncheon at +Lady Gregory's house and saying: "I have had a great morning. I have +written eight lines." Where is the joke? It does not seem to be at the +expense of the poet. Eight of his lines may seem a poor day's work to +so great a man as George Moore. But some of us who have not earned the +right to be patronizing would cheerfully devote a month of Sundays, if +we knew how, to making one line as good as the best of Yeats. These +Irish people rag each other delightfully, and it is more delightful to +poke fun than to admire too mutually; perhaps it is more Irish. + +Of living Irishmen the two most distinguished writers of prose are +George Moore and Bernard Shaw. They resemble each other in two or +three particulars. Both are out of sympathy with the modern movement +in Irish literature, with the "Celtic revival," with all that revolves +about the person of Mr. Yeats. In the introduction to "John Bull's +Other Island," Mr. Shaw says (I quote from memory) that he is an +old-fashioned Irishman who sees other Irishmen as they really are and +not as the young people of the Abbey Theatre imagine them to be. Mr. +Moore somewhat grudgingly concedes that Synge was a man of genius and +that Lady Gregory's plays, though inferior to the "Playboy" are all +meritorious. But he implies, if he does not directly say, that the +only man who really understands the diction of the Irish is George +Moore, Esq., of Moore Hall. Another point of resemblance between Shaw +and Moore is that both insist on calling themselves shameless; they +boast their independence and find satisfaction in contemplating their +difference from other people. It is amusing to think that the reading +world has long taken them for granted and is no longer shocked. Both +are masters of the English tongue, not of a new style full of strange +idioms, natural or artificial, but of the straightest sort of classic +English, firm as the best prose of the eighteenth century. + +It is that English which shall save these Celtic iconoclasts who are +now respectable old gentlemen. Irish to the back-bone, they took for +foster mother the finest prose of the race that betrayed their +country; they became favorite sons of an empire superior to the +political and racial divisions of the world. Mr. Moore thinks that the +English are a tired race and their weariness betrays itself in the +language. "God help the writer who puts pen to paper in fifty years' +time, for all that will be left of the language will be a dry +shank-bone that has been lying a long while on the dust-heap of +empire." A dismal prophecy which is cheerfully contradicted by the +facts of literary history. The political empire may be disrupted, +Ireland may be freed from English yoke and split in twain. But the +language is safe. Artists like Mr. Moore preserve its integrity and +renew its vitality. And we have not heard the last of James Joyce and +James Stephens, or of one or two young men who were born on the island +that lies east of Dublin. + + + + +JAMES JOYCE + + +In the preface of "Pendennis" Thackeray says: "Since the author of +'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been +permitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must drape him and +give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the +Natural in our Art." If Thackeray felt that, why did he not take his +reputation and his fortune in his hands and, defying the social +restrictions which he deplored, paint us a true portrait of a young +gentleman of his time? He might have done much for English art and +English honesty. As it was, he did as much as any writer of his +generation to fasten on English fiction the fetters of a hypocritical +reticence. It was only in the last generation that English and Irish +novelists, under the influence of French literature, freed themselves +from the cowardice of Victorian fiction and assumed that anything +human under the sun is proper subject-matter for art. If they have not +produced masterpieces (and I do not admit that they have not), they +have made a brave beginning. Such a book as "A Portrait of the Artist +as a Young Man" would have been impossible forty years ago. Far from +looking back with regret at the good old novelists of the nineteenth +century (whom, besides, we need never lose), I believe that our +fiction is in some respects freer[1] and richer than the fiction of +our immediate forefathers. + + [1] If it gets too free, as in Joyce's "Ulysses," it has an + official hand clapped on its mouth! + +Joyce's work is outspoken, vigorous, original, beautiful. Whether it +faithfully reflects Irish politics and the emotional conflicts of the +Catholic religion one who is neither Irish nor Catholic can not judge +with certainty. It seems, however, that the noisy controversies over +Parnell and the priests in which the boy's elders indulge have the +sound of living Irish voices; and the distracted boy's wrestlings with +his sins and his faith are so movingly human that they hold the +sympathy even of one who is indifferent to the religious arguments. I +am afraid that the religious questions and the political questions are +too roughly handled to please the incurably devout and patriotic. If +they ever put up a statue of Joyce in Dublin, it will not be during +his lifetime. For he is no respecter of anything except art and human +nature and language. + +There are some who, to turn his own imaginative phrase, will fret in +the shadow of his language. He makes boys talk as boys do, as they did +in your school and mine, except that we lacked the Irish imagery and +whimsicality. If the young hero is abnormal and precocious, that is +because he is not an ordinary boy but an artist, gifted with thoughts +and phrases above our common abilities. This is a portrait of an +artist, a literary artist of the finest quality. + +The style is a joy. "Cranly's speech," he writes, "had neither rare +phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned versions of Irish +idioms." In that Joyce has defined his own style. It is Elizabethan, +yet thoroughly modern; it is racily Irish, yet universal English. It +is unblushingly plain-spoken and richly fanciful, like Shakespeare and +Ben Jonson. The effect of complete possession of the traditional +resources of language is combined with an effect of complete +indifference to traditional methods of fiction. Episodes, sensations, +dreams, emotions trivial and tragic succeed each other neither +coherently nor incoherently; each is developed vividly for a moment, +then fades away into the next, with or without the mechanical devices +of chapter divisions or rows of stars. Life is so; a fellow is pandied +by the schoolmaster for no offense; the cricket bats strike the balls, +pick, pock, puck; there is a girl to dream about; and Byron was a +greater poet than Tennyson anyhow.... + +The sufferings of the poor little sinner are told with perfect +fidelity to his point of view. Since he is an artist his thoughts +appropriately find expression in phrases of maturer beauty than the +speech of ordinary boys. He is enamored of words, intrigued by their +mystery and color; wherefore the biographer plays through the boy's +thoughts with all manner of verbal loveliness. + + Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than + their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as + weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from + the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism + of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the + contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored + perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose? + +From the fading splendor of an evening beautifully described, he +tumbles into the sordid day of a house rich in pawn tickets. That is +life. "Welcome, O life!" he bids farewell to his young manhood. "I go +to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to +forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. +Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." + +The sketches in "Dubliners" are perfect, each in its own way, and all +in one way: they imply a vast deal that is not said. They are small as +the eye-glass of a telescope is small; you look through them to depths +and distances. They are a kind of short story almost unknown to the +American magazine if not to the American writer. An American editor +might read them for his private pleasure, but from his professional +point of view he would not see that there was any story there at all. +The American short story is explicit and thin as a moving-picture +film; it takes nothing for granted; it knows nothing of the art of the +hintful, the suggestive, the selected single detail which lodges +fertilely in the reader's mind, begetting ideas and emotions. America +is not the only offender (for patriotism is the fashion and bids +criticism relent); there is much professional Irish humor which is +funny enough but no more subtle than a shillalah. And English short +stories, such at least as we see in magazines, are obvious and +"express" rather than expressive. Joyce's power to disentangle a +single thread from the confusion of life and let you run briefly back +upon it until you encounter the confusion and are left to think about +it yourself--that is a power rare enough in any literature. + +Except one story, "A Painful Case," I could not tell the plot of any +of these sketches. Because there is no plot going from beginning to +end. The plot goes from the surface inward, from a near view away into +a background. A person appears for a moment--a priest, or a girl, or a +small boy, or a street-corner tough, or a drunken salesman--and does +and says things not extraordinary in themselves; and somehow you know +all about these people and feel that you could think out their entire +lives. Some are stupid, some are pathetic, some are funny in an +unhilarious way. The dominant mood is irony. The last story in the +book, "The Dead," is a masterpiece which will never be popular, +because it is all about living people; there is only one dead person +in it and he is not mentioned until near the end. That's the kind of +trick an Irishman like Synge or Joyce would play on us, and perhaps a +Frenchman or a Russian would do it; but we would not stand it from one +of our own writers. + + + + +D. H. LAWRENCE + + +Mr. Lawrence is a poet in prose and in verse. No writer of his +generation is more singular, more unmistakably individual, and no +other that I know is endowed with his great variety of gifts. He is as +dangerous to public morals as Meredith or Hardy. Readers who cannot +understand the tragedy of "Richard Feverel" or of "Jude the Obscure," +will not understand Mr. Lawrence or be interested to read a third of +the way through one of his books. The stupidity of the multitude is +sure protection against his insidious loveliness and essential +sadness. He and his admirers will, I hope, regard it as honorable to +him that he reminds this critic oftener of Meredith and Hardy than of +any of his contemporaries. I am not so fatuous as to suggest that his +independent and original work is in any unfavorable sense derivative. +It must be true that every young novelist learns his lessons from the +older novelists; but I cannot see that Mr. Lawrence is clearly the +disciple of any one master. I do feel simply that he is of the elder +stature of Meredith and Hardy, and I will suggest, in praise of him, +some resemblances that have struck me, without trying to analyze or +quote chapter and verse in tedious parallels. + +Mr. Lawrence is a lyric as well as a tragic poet. In this he is like +Meredith and Hardy, and I can think of no other young novelist who is +quite worthy of the company. Young people in love, or some other +difficulty, become entangled with stars and mountains and seas; they +are baffled and lost, seldom consoled, in cosmic immensities. +Novelists who happen also to be poets are enamoured of those +immensities. + +This is the end of "Sons and Lovers": + + "Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear + of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side + the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, + into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. + Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond + stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning + round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in the + darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. + So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core nothingness, and + yet not nothing." + +The concluding scenes of "Women in Love" are the Alps, "a silence of +dim, unrealized snow, of the invisible intervening between her and the +visible, between her and the flashing stars." I am reminded, by the +beauty of the phrasing and by the sense of the pathetic little human +being adrift in space, of the flight of the two young people through +the Alps, in "The Amazing Marriage," and of farmer Gabriel Oak +watching the westward flow of the stars. + +Sometimes, like Meredith, rather than like Hardy, whose style is +colder and more austere, Mr. Lawrence is almost too lyric and his +phrases threaten to overflow the rigid dikes of prose. I could pick +out a dozen rhapsodical passages which with little change might well +appear in his books of verse. + +But young people in love do not spend all their days and nights in +ecstatic flights to the clouds. And their flights are followed by +pathetic Icarian disasters. From luminous moments they plunge into +what Mr. Lawrence calls "the bitterness of ecstacy," and their pain +outweighs their joy many times over, as in Hardy, and as in the more +genial Meredith, whose rapturous digression played on a penny whistle +is a cruelly beautiful preparation for the agonies that ensue. It may +be that the emotional transports of Mr. Lawrence's young people are +more frequent and violent than the ordinary human soul can enjoy and +endure. The nervous tension is high and would break into hysteria if +Mr. Lawrence were not a philosopher as well as a poet, if he did not +know so accurately what goes on inside the human head, if he had not +an artist's ability to keep his balance at the very moment when a less +certain workman would lose it. + +There is firm ground under his feet and under the feet of his lovers; +it is the everyday life which consists of keeping shop and keeping +school and other commonplace activities in street, kitchen, and coal +mine. These diurnal details he studies with a fidelity not surpassed +by Mr. Bennett or any other of his contemporaries. The talk of his +people is always alive, both the dialect of the villagers and the +discussions of the more intellectual. Sometimes he puts into the +speech of his characters a little more of his own poetic fancy than +they might reasonably be supposed to be capable of. But if this is a +fault, from a realistic point of view, it is a merit from the point of +view of readability, and it makes for vivacity. At times--and is not +this like Meredith?--he seems to be less interested in the sheer +dramatic value of a situation he has created than in the opportunity +it offers of writing beautiful things around it. Not that his +situations fail to carry themselves or have not their proper place and +proportion. Mr. Lawrence knows how to handle his narrative and he has +an abundant invention and dramatic ingenuity. But he is above those +elementary things that any competent novelist knows. He has the +something else that makes the story teller the first rate literary +artist--style may be the word for it, but poetic imagination seems to +be the better and more inclusive term. Open "The Lost Girl" at page 57 +and read two pages. Without knowing what has preceded or whither the +story is bound, anybody who knows what literature is will feel at once +that that is it. + +"Women in Love" is a sequel to "The Rainbow," in that it carries on +the story of Ursula of the family of Brangwen. "The Rainbow" is the +stronger book; it has more of the tragic power, the deep social +implications of Mr. Lawrence's masterpiece, "Sons and Lovers". In +"Women in Love" are four young people, two men and two women, whose +chief interest, for them and for us, is in amatory relations. This is +indicated by the title of the story, one of those obvious titles which +only a man of imagination could hit upon, so simple that you wonder +why no novelist ever thought of it before. Now the erotic relations of +people, though a tremendous part of life, as all the great tragic +romances prove, are still only part of life. Nobody knows this better +than Mr. Lawrence. The first story of the Brangwen family is richer +than the second, not because of the proverbial falling off of sequels, +not because Mr. Lawrence's power declined--far from it!--but because +the first novel embraces a larger number of the manifold interests +that compose the fever called living. In it are not only young lovers, +but old people, old failures, the land, the town, the succession of +the generations rooted yet restless. Ursula emerges from immemorial +centuries of English life, touched with foreign blood out of Poland +(when an English novelist wishes to introduce variety and strangeness +into the dull solidity of an English town he imports a Pole, or an +Italian, or a Frenchman, somebody not English). + +Ursula's background is thus richer than all her emotional experience. +Her father, her grandfather, the family, the muddled tragicomedy of +little affairs and ambitions, the grim, gray colliery district, the +entire social situation, are the foundations and walls of the story, +and she is the slender spire that surmounts it all--and is struck by +lightning. In "The Rainbow" she goes to ashes, and in "Women in Love" +she revives, burns again, and finds in her new love new +dissatisfaction. + +It is impossible to write of Mr. Lawrence without discoursing in +symbols and reflecting, somewhat pallidly, his metaphors. For like all +genuine poets he is a symbolist. In "Aaron's Rod" he redoubles and +compounds symbolism in a manner baffling to readers and to critics who +like to have their prose prosaic and their poetry in lines and whose +sound stomachs refuse a mixed drink. I enjoy the mixture--in the +Bible, in Meredith, in Ruskin, in James, in Lawrence. + +It is stupid to explain symbols. Yet after all that is the dull +function of criticism, to explain something--as if the creator of a +work of art had not given all the necessary explanation in the very +act of creation. Whoever does not understand Lawrence on immediate +contact will not understand him better after the intervention of a +critic. But it is the pleasure and the privilege of a critic to have +his secondary imagination set on fire by the primary imagination of a +man of genius, to spread the fire if he can by the cold fluid of +critical exposition--as water carries burning oil. + +Well, then, Aaron's rod is doubly symbolic. His rod which, in the +Biblical phrase, bloomed, blossomed and yielded almonds, is a flute. +And the symbol is also phallic, as, indeed, it is in the Bible. +Aaron's flute, the musical instrument, is smashed in an accident which +is as irrational as life itself. The instrument in its other aspect is +broken by the supreme and only rationality--that of human character. + +In all his books, beginning with "Sons and Lovers," Mr. Lawrence has +shown relatively little interest in those mere sequences of external +events which novelists artificially pattern into plots. He throws some +matter-of-fact probabilities to the winds, as in "Aaron's Rod," when +he makes a man from the English collieries a master flautist and +alleges that he got a hearing in Italy, where there are more good +flautists to the square inch than in England to the square mile. + +But Aaron is an unusual person. "It is remarkable," says his creator, +"how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." Mr. +Lawrence has always been interested in slightly eccentric characters, +and so he stands apart from his contemporaries who call themselves +realists or naturalists because they deal with the commonplace or the +recognizably normal. + +After all, extraordinary persons in fiction, as in life, are better +worth knowing than ordinary persons. Mr. Lawrence does not make his +people so widely different from the general run of human beings as to +put a strain on credulity, and he studies them with a subtle and firm +understanding. Their talk sounds real. Their emotions are alive in his +bold and delicate prose. He has made amateurish excursions into +psychoanalysis, which may or may not be a fruitful subject for a +novelist to study. The real novelist has always been a psychologist in +an untechnical sense. + +Mr. Lawrence is too fine an artist to import into his art the dubious +lingo of psycho-analysis; he remains the poet, the dramatist, his +symbols and images uncorrupted by pseudo-science. Aaron's dream in the +last chapter--no modern novel is complete without at least one +dream--is easily "freuded" (cave, corridor, and water symbols), but +Mr. Lawrence refrains from analysis. + +Aaron's whole life, or as much as the author gives us of it, is a +dream, a dream unfulfilled in love or friendship or music. To what he +wakes, if he wakes at all, the conclusion leaves us guessing. That +will puzzle readers who demand that a story shall finish with a bang +or come to a definite point of rest. But life does not conclude; it +persists. + +When Aaron related his history and experiences to some friends, he +"told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at +that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things +in this life. Mixed." Though Aaron is a strange man, an individual, +yet the conflict that goes on in him, between his rebellion and his +indecision, his desire and his impotence, is not freakish; it is so +much like the struggle that every man knows, with special variations, +that it is true to universal human nature. Behind the symbolism are +the plain facts, solidly conceived. + +The other characters in the book are well drawn, notably Aaron's odd, +philosophic friend, Lilly, whose ideas are at once clear and cryptic. +There is a pitifully accurate portrait of a captain whose soul and +nerves had not recovered from the war. In a single chapter through one +man Mr. Lawrence suggests the disillusionment, the mental disaster, +that followed the armistice. "None of the glamour of returned heroes, +none of the romance of war ... the hot, seared burn of unbearable +experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not +to be relieved." + +In "The Lost Girl" and "Women in Love" the men are subordinate to the +women. In "Aaron's Rod" the women are of secondary interest; Aaron's +wife is rather indistinct and shadowy, and the Marchesa, the Cleopatra +whom he tried to love and couldn't, never quite comes alive, either +for Aaron or for the reader. Probably these women are just what Mr. +Lawrence intended them to be, as seen through Aaron's temperament. But +I do not feel that Mr. Lawrence has here made a very striking +contribution to the history of the everlasting warfare between the +sexes. Did Aaron miss because he happened not to meet the right woman? +Or was he the sort of man whom no woman could capture and satisfy? +Evidently Mr. Lawrence means to leave the eternal question unsettled +even for the man whom he has created. + +Like many other English poets, Mr. Lawrence is a lover of Italy, and +he takes his hero there, one suspects, for the sheer joy of the scene +and the atmosphere, which he realizes with vivid beauty. He is a +master of description, a master of words. His command ranges from the +baldest sort of every day conversation to prose harmonies that are as +near to verse as prose can go without breaking over. This is not +merely a command of style; it is more than that--it is a command of +ideas. Mr. Lawrence can pass with equal sureness from colliery to +cathedral and find the right word for every thing and person met on +the way, the right word, though often a perplexed and perplexing word. +Because life is like that. It is "mixed." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME*** + + +******* This file should be named 38487-8.txt or 38487-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/4/8/38487 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/38487-8.zip b/38487-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..39ada49 --- /dev/null +++ b/38487-8.zip diff --git a/38487-h.zip b/38487-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e660d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/38487-h.zip diff --git a/38487-h/38487-h.htm b/38487-h/38487-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9a57db --- /dev/null +++ b/38487-h/38487-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7401 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy</title> +<style type="text/css"> + + body {margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%;} + + p {text-indent: 0em; + text-align: justify; + margin-top: .85em; + margin-bottom: .85em; + line-height: 1.25em;} + + .ctr {text-align: center;} + + .part {text-align: center; + margin-bottom: .85em; + margin-top: 2em;} + + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .dedication {text-align: center; + line-height: 1.6em;} + + ul {list-style-type: none;} + li {margin-left: 4%;} + + .foot {margin-left: 4%; + margin-right: 4%; + text-align: justify; + text-indent: 0em; + font-size: 96%; + margin-top: .2em; + margin-bottom: .2em;} + + .section {margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2.5em; + text-align: center; + font-size: 108%;} + + .firstchapter {margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + text-align: center; + font-size: 115%; + font-weight: bold;} + + .chapter {margin-top: 5em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + text-align: center; + font-size: 115%; + font-weight: bold;} + + .blockquote {text-align: justify; + margin-left: 7%; + margin-right: 7%; + font-size: 98%; + margin-top: 1.6em; + margin-bottom: 1.6em;} + + h1 {text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + line-height: 1.3em; + letter-spacing: 4px;} + + h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + line-height: 1.3em;} + + hr.med {width: 65%; + height: 1px; + margin-top: 2.5em; + margin-bottom: 2.5em;} + + table {margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto;} + + td.txt {vertical-align: top; + text-align: left; + padding-right: 10px;} + + td.pg {vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; + text-decoration:none;} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; + text-decoration:none;} + + .poem {margin-left:12%; margin-right:4%; + margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 1.5em; text-align: left;} + .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem p {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem p.i2 {margin-left: 1em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin-left: 2em;} + .poem p.i8 {margin-left: 4em;} + + h1.prg { margin-top: 0em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + line-height: 1em; + letter-spacing: 0px;} + + h4.prg { margin-top: 0em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + line-height: 1em; } + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 85%;} +</style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="prg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Critical Game</p> +<p>Author: John Albert Macy</p> +<p>Release Date: January 3, 2012 [eBook #38487]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME***</p> +<br><br><center><h4 class="prg">E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell<br> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br> + from page images generously made available by<br> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4></center><br><br> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/criticalgame00macy"> + http://www.archive.org/details/criticalgame00macy</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full"> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1> +THE CRITICAL GAME +</h1> + +<br> +<h2> +<small>BY</small> +<br> +JOHN MACY +</h2> + +<h3> +Author of "The Spirit of American Literature," etc. +</h3> +<br> + +<p class="ctr"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="Logo" width="115" height="146"></p> + +<h4> +BONI <span class="sc">and</span> LIVERIGHT<br> +Publishers New York +</h4> + +<h4> +Copyright, 1922, by<br> +<span class="sc">Boni and Liveright, Inc.</span> +</h4> + +<h4> +Printed in the United States of America. +</h4> + + +<hr class="med"> + +<div class="dedication"> +<p class="ctr"> +To +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +ROGER IRVING LEE +</p> +</div> + +<hr class="med"> + +<p class="section"> +CONTENTS +</p> + +<table summary="Contents"> +<tr> +<td class="txt"> </td> +<td class="pg">Page</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">The Critical Game</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#1">11</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Dante in English</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#2">31</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Dante's Political Philosophy</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#3">43</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Nietzsche</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#4">55</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Tolstoy</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#5">65</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Maeterlinck's Essays</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#6">95</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Joseph Conrad</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#7">105</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">A Conrad Miscellany</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#8">123</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Strindberg</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#9">135</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Tagore</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#10">145</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Remy de Gourmont</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#11">153</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Swift's Relations with Women</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#12">163</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">William James, Man of Letters</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#13">175</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Biographies of Poe</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#14">193</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Biographies of Whitman</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#15">203</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">George E. Woodberry</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#16">215</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Abraham Cahan</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#17">227</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Thomas Hardy</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#18">237</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">George Borrow</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#19">247</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Shelley</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#20">259</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">H. G. Wells and Utopia</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#21">269</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">John Masefield</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#22">279</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">Shakespeare and the Scribes</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#23">289</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">George Moore and Other Irish Writers</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#24">305</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">James Joyce</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#25">317</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class="txt">D. H. Lawrence</td> +<td class="pg"><a href="#26">325</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<hr class="med"> + +<a name="1"> </a> +<p class="firstchapter"> +THE CRITICAL GAME +</p> + + +<p> +Criticism is one form of the game of writing. It differs from other +forms only as whist differs from poker and as tennis differs from +golf. The motives are the same, the exercise of the player's brain and +muscles, and the entertainment of the spectators, from whom, if the +player be successful, he derives profit, livelihood, applause, and +fame. The function of criticism at the present time, and at all times, +is the function of all literature, to be wise, witty, eloquent, +instructive, humourous, original, graceful, beautiful, provocative, +irritating, persuasive. That is, it must possess some of the many +merits that can be found in any type of literature; it must in some +way be good writing. There is no other sound principle to be +discovered in the treatises on the art of criticism or in fine +examples of the art. Whether Charles Lamb writes about Shakespeare or +Christ's Hospital or ears is of relatively slight importance compared +with the question whether in one essay or another Lamb is at one of +his incomparable best moments of inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +Remy de Gourmont says, apropos Brunetière's views of Renan: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Contre l'opinion commune, la critique est peut-être le plus + subjectif de tous les genres littéraires; c'est une confession + perpétuelle; en croyant analyser les œuvres d'autrui, c'est + soi-même que l'on dévoile et que l'on expose au public … voulant + expliquer et contredire Renan, M. Brunetière s'est une fois de + plus confessé publiquement. +</p></div> + +<p> +That is true, except that it may be doubted whether one type of +literature is more subjective than another, since all types are +subjective. Even a work that belongs, according to De Quincey's +definition, to the literature of information as distinguished from the +literature of power, even an article in an encyclopædia, an article, +say, on Patagonia, has a man behind it; it cannot be quite objective +and impersonal. +</p> + +<p> +Criticism should not be set off too sharply from other forms of +literary expression. It has no special rights, privileges, and +authority; and at the same time it has no special disabilities that +consign it to a secondary place in the divisions of literature. In any +unit of art, a sonnet or an epic, a short story or a novel, a little +review or a history of æsthetics, a man is trying to say something. +And the value of what he says must, of course, depend partly on the +essential interest of his subject; but it depends to a greater extent +on the skill with which he puts words together, creates interest in +himself. Arnold's essay on Keats is less Keats than Arnold. It could +not have been if Keats had not existed. But the beauty of that +sequence of words, that essay in criticism, is due to the genius of +Arnold. Francis Thompson on Shelley adds no cubit to the stature of +Shelley, but Thompson's interpretation is a marvellous piece of poetic +prose which cannot be deducted without enormous loss from the works of +Thompson, from English criticism. We read Pater on Coleridge, not for +Coleridge but for Pater, and we read Coleridge for Coleridge, not for +Shakespeare. Thackeray's lecture on Swift, which is full of animosity +and miscomprehension, is a well-written revelation of Thackeray. +Trollope's book on Thackeray, which is full of friendship and +admiration, is an ill-written revelation of Trollope. +</p> + +<p> +Some men of great ability, like Trollope, who have written good books +themselves, lack the faculty, whatever it may be, of writing in an +entertaining fashion about the books of other men. Swinburne is a +striking example. His knowledge of literature was immense, and he had +the enthusiasms and contempts that make the critical impulse; but +except when the poet in him seized the pen and made a passage of +lyrical prose, his excursions into criticism are bewildering and +difficult to read. His sonnets on Dickens, Lamb, and the Elizabethans +are worth more than all his prose. On the other hand, Lamb, who wrote +like an angel about the Elizabethan dramatists, failed completely as a +dramatist. +</p> + +<p> +Every man who plays with literature at all must be ambitious to +succeed in some form of art that may be called "creative," as distinct +from critical—a distinction which, since Arnold taught us our lesson, +we know does not exist. The reason for this ambition is plain enough. +A novel or a play reaches a wider audience than a volume of essays, +however admirable; it has a more obvious claim to originality, and it +brings the author a greater degree of practical satisfaction. A few +doubly or trebly gifted men, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe, Arnold, Pater, +Henley, Stevenson, Henry James, could do first-rate work in more than +one <i>genre</i>, including criticism. And a good case could be made +out to prove that a man who knows how to handle words in many ways is +on the whole the best qualified to comment on the art of handling +words. However that may be, it is certain that in English literature a +critic who is only a critic seldom wins a conspicuous position. Even +Johnson was something more than a critic, and he was, with all due +respect, somewhat less than a good one. And Hazlitt, who was a good +one, wrote on many subjects besides books and art. +</p> + +<p> +Because so many little people went into the business of reviewing and +presumed to sit in judgment on their betters, criticism early got a +bad name in English literature, and not all the dignified work of +Arnold and others has yet succeeded in restoring the reputation of the +word or the art. Criticism came to mean censure, a connotation which +persists in current speech. The degeneration had already taken place +in Dryden's time, and he protested that "they wholly mistake the +nature of criticism who think that its business is principally to find +fault." Authors of imaginative works became resentful and felt that +the critic was an enemy, a nasty and incompetent enemy, as indeed he +often was. An interesting compilation could be made—and probably +Saintsbury or somebody else has done it—of the retorts and +counter-attacks made by writers of other things than criticism against +the whole critical crew. Here are a few examples: +</p> + +<p> +Gentle Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey" amusingly defends her +heroine's habit of reading novels: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common + with novel writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, + the very performances to the number of which they are themselves + adding … if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the + heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and + regard?… Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such + effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to + talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now + groans. +</p></div> + +<p> +That sounds as if Miss Austen's pride in her craft had been wounded. I +know of no record that anybody ever spoke ill of her while she was +living. +</p> + +<p> +Scott, whose generous soul was hurt by the harsh squabbles of the +Scottish reviewers, took a shot at the tribe in the letter which +appears in the introductory note to "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in +the Cambridge edition: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + As to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much + attention to them for, as they do not understand what I call + poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many + of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, + unable to <i>make</i> pots and pans, set up for <i>menders</i> of + them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. +</p></div> + +<p> +The idea that the critic is a secondary fellow who cannot make +first-hand literature goes back to Dryden, the champion and exemplar +of sound criticism, who wrote in "The Conquest of Granada": +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>They who write ill and they who ne'er durst write</p> +<p>Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.</p></div></div> + +<p> +Landor repeats the idea in a "Conversation" between Southey and +Porson, in which Porson says: "Those who have failed as writers turn +reviewers." +</p> + +<p> +Writers and other artists are usually sensitive and often vain. Some +have taken critics too seriously, have given them too much importance +while pretending to despise them, and have allowed themselves to be +stung instead of brushing the flies off. Thanks to Shelley, the idea +became current that the "viperous murderer," the critic, killed Keats. +It was not so. Keats died of tuberculosis. Though he was, like all +poets, delicately organized, he was an unusually sane and self-reliant +man, quite sure of the value of his work. Moreover, in a day when +rough criticism was the fashion, the critics were, though stupid, not +especially rough on Keats. Shelley's "<i>J'accuse</i>" is flaming +poetry, but—it is not good criticism. Byron had the right idea. With +his superior wit and vigour he gave the reviewers ten blows for one +and used his opponents as the occasion of a delightful exhibition of +boxing. The reviewers were knocked out in the second round. "English +Bards and Scottish Reviewers" is still in the ring, as I have +pleasantly discovered by re-reading it. +</p> + +<p> +The notion that the critic will, or can, do damage to the artist +persisted long after Shelley and is perhaps still believed. In 1876, +Sidney Lanier, a man of good sense and great bravery, whom the flies, +or the "vipers," had but lightly nipped, wrote in a letter to his +father: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to + respect—that criticism which crucified Jesus, stoned Stephen, + hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured + Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, drove Dante into a hell of + exile, made Shakespeare write the sonnet, "When in disgrace of + fortune and men's eyes," gave Milton £5 for "Paradise Lost," kept + Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, + reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on + Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so + many other impious follies and stupidities? +</p></div> + +<p> +Lanier's charges are not all quite true. He mixed up the sins of +criticism with the sins of politics, economics, and other dreadful +affairs. But his outburst is a good illustration of the quarrel +between the "author" and the "critic." Especially when the author has +for the moment lost his sense of humour. +</p> + +<p> +The best treatment of the critic by the author, as also, perhaps, of +the author by the critic, is humourous. In "One of Our Conquerors," +Meredith lays out the art critics: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics; who + are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are + fatal. +</p></div> + +<p> +Washington Irving, in a delightful little paper called "Desultory +Thoughts on Criticism," quietly places the reviewer in the low seat +where he belongs. I shall not quote from the essay, but merely refer +the reader to it and especially to the introductory quotation from +Buckingham's "Rehearsal," in which the critic is set in a still lower +seat. +</p> + +<p> +Finally—for these quotations—Dr. Holmes, who lived all his life +surrounded by praise and comfort, puts his finger gently on the +parasitism of the critic. The passage is in "The Poet at the Breakfast +Table": +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Our <i>epizoic</i> literature is becoming so extensive that nobody + is safe from its <i>ad infinitum</i> progeny. A man writes a book + of criticisms. A <i>Quarterly Review</i> criticises the critic. A + <i>Monthly Magazine</i> takes up the critic's critic. A <i>Weekly + Journal</i> criticizes the critic of the critic's critic, and a + daily paper favours us with some critical remarks on the + performance of the writer in the <i>Weekly</i>, who has criticised + the critical notice in the <i>Monthly</i> of the critical essay in + the <i>Quarterly</i> on the critical work we started with. And + thus we see that as each flea "has smaller fleas that on him + prey," even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of + being bitten. +</p></div> + +<p> +To what extent is the critic parasitic? To this extent: he is dealing +with ideas already expressed, with cooked and predigested food. It is +easier for any mind to think of something to say about an idea that +has already gone through cerebral processes than it is to take the raw +material of life and make something. You may sit on a bench in the +park and watch the people and never, for the life of you, conceive a +good story. Then O. Henry comes along and makes twenty stories. After +he has done it, you can write something very brilliant about what O. +Henry saw from the same bench that you sat on. And you can make neat +remarks about the resemblances and differences between O. Henry, +Boccaccio, and H. C. Bunner. That may be worth doing, if your remarks +are really neat. For then you may be readable. +</p> + +<p> +And that is the function of the critic, to be readable, to make +literature of a sort. The critic is always playing his own game, +selfish, egotistical, expressive of his own will, and no more +disinterested than was Arnold himself when he took his pen in hand to +slay a Philistine or to sign a contract with his manager for a lecture +tour in America. In playing his own game the critic may help the game +of another author by crying him up and advertising him. But a hundred +critics, clamouring in the fatal unanimity at which Meredith pokes +fun, cannot make the fortunes of a book or influence at the creative +source the work of a man sufficiently strong and original to be worth +reading. And the same hundred critics with lofty hatred of bad writing +cannot prevent bad books from being written and read. George Eliot +made it a rule not to read criticisms of her work because she found it +necessary to be preserved "from that discouragement as an artist which +ill-judged praise no less than ill-judged blame tends to produce in +me." The implication that criticism, favorable or unfavorable, is +ill-judged gives us an addition to our notes on what authors think of +critics. I doubt whether, if that strong-minded woman had read +everything that was written about her before and after her death, she +would have altered a single sentence. Did Hardy stop writing novels +because of the ignorant attacks on "Jude"? I would not accept without +question Hardy's own word for it. I suspect that it was his own inward +impulse, not determined by the opinions of the other people, that +turned his energy to that stupendous epic, "The Dynasts." +</p> + +<p> +To what extent can the critic play the game of the reader, be guide +and teacher, maintain standards, elevate taste, make the best ideas +prevail? Not to a very great extent. Criticism, good or bad, is read +only by the sophisticated, by people whose tastes are formed and who +can take care of themselves in matters literary and intellectual. Who +that had not already looked into Shakespeare and Plato ever heard of +Pater? The journals that print intelligent articles about literature +and art have a small circulation; they are missionaries to the +converted; their controversial discussions of general principles or of +the merits of an individual are only family feuds. Critics play with +each other in a professional game. The few amateurs who sit as +spectators are a select minority who have seen the game before and +who, though not in the professional class, are instructed, cultivated, +have some knowledge of the plays. The critical game is enjoyed by +those who are themselves critical and least in need of enlightenment. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, it is a great game—when it is played well. +</p> + +<p> +The author of a book on golf illustrates it with the stances and +swings of better players than himself; he makes an anthology. A +collection of essays by various authors would illustrate the game +better than the plays of a single critic, a much more competent critic +than I. I do not pretend that the essays in this book are first-rate +specimens of how the strokes should be made. But even a small fellow +may flatter himself that he has an individual way of looking at things +which may give unity of interest to a collection of papers. At any +rate he has a right to exhibit his methods, and nobody is obliged to +watch him or play with him. +</p> + +<p> +Most of these papers have been published in reviews and magazines, +<i>The Freeman</i>, <i>The Dial</i>, <i>The New Republic</i>, the +<i>Boston Herald</i>, the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, the <i>Literary +Review</i> of the <i>New York Evening Post</i>, the <i>New York +Tribune</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The essay on Joseph Conrad appeared in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> in +1906. I am proud only of the date. Sixteen years ago Conrad was not +universally recognized; some of his best work had not been done; and +many finer essays than mine had not yet been written. If I was not the +first American critic to pursue that mysterious mariner across +enchanted seas, at least I can swear before the critical court of +admiralty that the waters were not crowded with little craft like +mine. It is a pleasure to read again a few letters which hail me for +hailing Conrad and which make me believe that I did introduce the +master to a few readers. If so, I have not lived in vain. +</p> + +<p> +But my pride is somewhat reduced by the consideration that any reader +intelligent enough to look at a literary essay in the <i>Atlantic +Monthly</i> must sooner or later have discovered Conrad for himself +without the assistance of a critic. However, I hug with amusement the +memory of a Harvard professor who threw up his hands and said: "My +God! I had no idea there was a man living who could write like that!" +To the professorial mind in those days English literature stopped +officially with the death of Browning or, at the latest, with the +deaths of Stevenson and Pater. The essay itself is a little +professorial, enfeebled by a sort of Boston-Harvard timidity, utterly +failing to express the wild joy which I felt. The second paper on +Conrad, written fifteen years later, is not so hesitant. It is +interesting to look again at the bibliographical footnote to the first +essay and see how Conrad's few books were scattered among the +publishers. I could not find "An Outcast of the Islands" except in the +Tauchnitz edition. Today his work is collected. There is a handsome +subscription edition. And Mr. Doubleday tells me that a new book by +Conrad has an assured immediate sale of twenty to thirty thousand. +Perhaps, after all, we who cheered long ago when it was not the +fashion to cheer have justified our miserable existence as critics. +</p> + +<p> +The essay on Tolstoy was written in the two months immediately after +his death. Mr. Ellery Sedgwick asked me to write it for the +<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> and then rejected it. It was published in the +<i>New York Call</i>. I bear no bitter grudge against Mr. Sedgwick for +returning an article that he had ordered. But I am convinced, as I +read the article over again, that he is an incompetent critic of +criticism. Sometimes editors and publishers, whose business it is to +provide the arena and assemble the spectators, play their part of the +game stupidly. But on the whole I think they are more than generous to +second-rate performers. If I owned a magazine I should be very +grudging of the space I gave to literary chatter—except my own. +</p> + +<p> +A critical friend—we critics suffer from each other—admonishes me +that in the foregoing remarks I have treated an important art in a +flippant manner. Certainly I am not so foolish as to take my essays +very seriously, and I believe that much modern criticism is too +solemn, that if we fooled with literature in a lighter spirit we +should enjoy it more and be happier. +</p> + +<p> +Charles Lamb was not afraid to kick up his heels, and yet nobody will +accuse him of being a trivial clown. Oscar Wilde was a man of wit, +sometimes a buffoon, and he could puncture a stupid piece of work with +ridicule. But the prevailing tone of his best essays is one of dignity +and sobriety. +</p> + +<p> +Good criticism is as important as anything that man can put on paper. +Moreover, certain subjects must be treated by the critic with the +utmost gravity. It would be owlishly humourless, uncritical, not to +take Tolstoy seriously. Essays about the greater men of genius and the +deeper problems of art must be substantial, solid, or they are +inappropriate, out of key. +</p> + +<p> +But it is possible to be sane and erudite without being leaden, to +approach a noble subject earnestly without striking an attitude of +priestly austerity. Some of our sincerest contemporaries, both the +academic and the rebellious, seem to me to worry about literature, as +if it were an invalid that needed nursing or a dead man about whom the +last word must be said before next Thursday afternoon. They do not get +enough fun out of it. They forget that Pater, who was not a mad wag +and not a dilettante, could sometimes see the gaiety of things and was +willing to be inconclusive. +</p> + +<p> +Criticism is important. The best contemporaneous English criticism is +not good enough. And even in France, where we have been taught to look +for sound critics, Flaubert thought as late as 1869 that criticism was +still in its infancy. He wrote to George Sand: "You speak of criticism +in your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I +think, on the contrary, that it is, at most only dawning…. When will +they (critics) be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where do +you know a criticism? Who is there who is anxious about the work in +itself, in an intense way?… The <i>unconscious</i> poetic +expression? Where it comes from? its composition, its style? The point +of view of the author? Never. That criticism would require great +imagination and great sympathy." To which George Sand replied with +good sense: "The artist is too much occupied with his own work to +forget himself in estimating that of others." +</p> + +<p> +Since then France has had a generation of critics, some of whom were +artists. If Hennequin, who thought he was a scientific critic, was not +an artist, if De Gourmont, who smiled wisely at the whole game, was +not an artist, then the word means nothing. In England and America +criticism has not made much progress since Pater died. I know that I +am punctuating literature in the manner of the academic fogies. But +one of the humours of this sport is that you sometimes do things which +are fouls when your opponent is guilty of them. +</p> + +<p> +I come back gladly to the analogy of the game. We have, I believe, +made progress in one direction. In the direction of fair play. We +cannot write like Hazlitt, but we will not hit below the belt as he +did sometimes. We cannot write like Arnold, and his combination of +literary charm and scholarship makes us feel desperately small, but in +our descent from his altitude we have freed ourselves from his major +vice, his dogmatic snobbery, his bigoted liberalism. The +pulpit-pounder still thrives in religion and politics; in criticism he +is becoming obsolete. I am sure, or at least hopeful, that this is +true in America. I think I see a slight but appreciable improvement in +candour, simplicity, generosity, geniality, and fairness in attack. On +the whole we are a little more sportsmanlike than some of our elders. +That is all that I claim for us. Our real consolation is that the +ancient and honorable game is still young, still to be played. +</p> + + + +<a name="2"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +DANTE IN ENGLISH +</p> + + +<p> +I am tempted to call the following remarks "Reading Dante for Fun." +The most austere of poets should not be treated with levity. But, +after all, poetry, even poetry of profound ethical and religious +import, is to be enjoyed. And the simple point that I wish to make, as +a mere reader with but a stumbling knowledge of Italian and almost no +knowledge of the vast library of Dante scholarship, is that Dante is +accessible in English. His book of magic is at least half open even to +one who must forever remain partly blind and deaf to the beauty of the +original. It is a great pleasure to read the convenient little volumes +of the Temple Classics with the Italian text on the left-hand page and +the English on the right, to read idly or study deeply, according to +mood and temperament. At any rate, let us not be overcome by the +solemnity of the occasion or discouraged by the difficulties, some of +which the commentators have cleared away and some of which they have +made more difficult. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Toynbee<a href="#note1_1" name="noteref1_1"> +<small>[1]</small></a> finds that since 1802 the <i>Commedia</i> as a whole +has been translated into English about once every four years. And he +excludes from his record American translators and critics. Why did Dr. +Toynbee or the British Academy make this commemorative volume so +narrowly insular? English and American scholarship is one institution. +And American Dantists have done good work. Though it is the fashion to +scorn the Yankee bards and seers, Lowell's essay and the translations +by Longfellow, Norton, and Parsons are important in the history of +Dante in English, not British, literature. They had literary gifts, +they knew Italian, and they were able to appreciate a universal mind. +For all their provinciality their shades can afford to smile at their +young countryman, Mr. Mencken, who writes: "If I have to go to hell +for it, I must here set down my conviction that much of the 'Divine +Comedy' is piffle." Well, he ought to go to hell—to Dante's hell, +which is an entertaining and hospitable place. In the cold prose of +Norton or John Carlyle, where the melody is necessarily lost, there +may be some passages in which an alert modern reader cannot find great +interest, but the number of lines of "piffle" is exactly none. +</p> + +<p> +It is not to be expected that all men, even all literary men, will +respond to Dante. Horace Walpole called him "extravagant, absurd, +disgusting; in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam." This is amusing, +even refreshing, in view of the too pious devotion of some later +Englishmen. But the eighteenth century was not the time for English +appreciation of Dante, and Walpole, witty <i>prosateur</i>, was not +the man to enjoy him. Dante was known, of course, to Chaucer and to +the Elizabethans and Milton, and his influence on English poetry was +perhaps even greater than Dr. Toynbee's record makes evident. But it +is with the nineteenth century, which, <i>bien entendu</i>, was born +intellectually a few years before its numerical date, that Dante +becomes a power in English literature. He is, indeed, a part of the +revival of English romanticism. The translations of Boyd and Cary +appeared early in the century, and from then on Dante belonged to +English literature, as well acclimated as any other foreign classic. +The index of Dr. Toynbee's record contains the names of almost all the +important English poets from Scott to Francis Thompson. +</p> + +<p> +And it contains hundreds of other names, not perhaps of great +importance in literature, but important in this respect, that they +show the appeal of Dante to a great variety of minds, of minds not +mediæval, not Catholic, not Italian. Nobody can dip into him, however +superficially, without getting something. He has so much that +everybody can be happy, from the Pope to the most pagan young poet. +Though the true Dantist will insist that the greatest of poets must be +understood, or accepted, entire, like his own God and his own +universe, I propose that the anthological view of him is proper and +delightful. If he is so rich and structurally perfect that no side of +him can be neglected, then he is so rich and so strong that any side +of him can be neglected. You can sit under a tree on the side of a +mountain without comprehending the mountain, but deriving much +happiness from the tree, the altitude, and the view. +</p> + +<p> +The interpreters of Dante's stupendous unity are all true to Dante, in +that they try to find some complete explanation of him and will +tolerate no neglect of his least detail. Dante himself, for all his +mystery and multiple meanings, is quite explicit about the +indivisibility, the integrity, of his work. So that the episodic, +incomplete view of him, which I recommend to other casual readers, is +unphilosophic and amateurish. Let us concede that and at the same time +let us reserve the right to be cheerfully weary of systems where the +"benumbed conceiving soars." Ruskin speaks the indubitable truth: "The +central man of all the world, as representing the imaginative, moral, +and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante." But such +a genius is too awful to contemplate, and it is more comfortable to +keep this side idolatry. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, the interpreters, seeking to comprehend Dante's vast +totality, do not discover complete unity among themselves. Mr. Walter +Arensberg<a href="#note2_1" name="noteref2_1"> +<small>[2]</small></a> thinks that he has unlocked the mystery, and I think that +he has. But as I had a little to do with filing that key I will not +say how well I think it turns in the wards of the lock; I will leave +him to the mercies of other critics and merely note that six centuries +after Dante's death we have a novel interpretation. +</p> + +<p> +And then comes Professor Courtney Langdon<a href="#note3_1" name="noteref3_1"> +<small>[3]</small></a> with another. One of his +ideas seems to me just, though debatable—namely, that any modern man +has the right to find anything in Dante that he can find, to derive +the sort of joy and wisdom that suit him, the reader, whether or not +Dante would recognize that reader's meaning. The poet exists for our +benefit and, like the Bible, does not forbid but justifies the +multitude of sects and individual expositors. That idea alone is worth +Professor Langdon's labor, and it will be interesting to see how he +develops it. Unfortunately, his translation is worse than useless. He +simply has not the gift of English verse. His own verses, prefixed to +the several canticles, are absurd doggerel; they remind one of +Longfellow's lovely sonnets (the best poems he ever wrote) only by +their position of naïve rivalry with the splendor that follows. And, +what is more strange, Professor Langdon writes abominable prose, such +assaults upon the ear as "verse's rhythm" and "Divine Comedy's last +part." If the poet exists for us, in English or Italian, one of the +things to learn from him is how to write. +</p> + +<p> +The poet exists for us. That is an excellent idea. It is our privilege +to take what we enjoy and reject what we do not like or understand. I +cannot be interested in Dante's ethics, which interested him so +profoundly and is the bone of his thought. His "stern indignant +moral," as Carlyle called it, is for me no part of the beauty of the +"mystic song." I cannot regard without suspicion, even in a New +Englander, Norton's statement to Dr. Dinsmore that the quality of the +<i>Commedia</i>, other than its beauty, which attracted him to Dante +was "his powerful exposition of moral penalties and rewards." Other +than its beauty? What does that mean? If the qualities of the +<i>Commedia</i> can be separated (Dante happened to believe that they +can not be), let us throw the ethics, the penalties, and rewards to +the four winds. Let us keep as much as we can grasp of the beauty of +the episodes, the images, the phrases, the structure, whatever gives +delight. +</p> + +<p> +The beauty of the fifth canto of <i>Inferno</i> does not depend on the +ethical fact that the carnal sinners are punished, but on the poetic +fact that their pathetic loves on earth are recalled and that their +punishment is vividly, physically dramatized. The tragic pity and +terror of it break through the baldest translation stripped of the +enchantment of the original verse. Many English poets have been +tempted to try to render that famous fifth canto. Mr. Arensberg has +made the best version that I have seen. His version is in the <i>terza +rima</i>, a difficult thing to manage in English, and he succeeds in +making a good English poem, a shade finer than a mere <i>tour de +force</i>. I doubt whether he or any other poet can so well translate +the entire <i>Commedia</i> in the same form, though the attempt has +been made. The <i>terza rima</i> has never been quite naturalized in +our language. Even such a master as Shelley can not turn it perfectly. +We imported the sonnet as easily as the apple and we made some French +forms grow thriftily in our hardy garden. The <i>terza rima</i> +remains artificial and foreign, peculiarly Italian and more peculiarly +Dante; he made it his own and moved at ease in its exacting +rigidities. He was in thought and form a diabolical magician. +</p> + +<p> +In order to show the <i>terza rima</i> in English and to suggest (not +to solve!) the problem of translation, let us look at three versions +of the last ten lines of the fifth canto of <i>Inferno</i>, the story +of Paolo and Francesca. Francesca is speaking and tells how she and +her lover read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere—romance within +romance! First, Norton's clear, deliberately uninspired prose: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + "When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed by such a + lover, this one, who never shall be divided from me, kissed my + mouth all trembling. Gallehaut was the book, and he wrote it. That + day we read no farther in it!" +</p> + +<p> + While the one spirit said this, the other was so weeping that + through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead + body falls. +</p></div> + +<p> +Then Longfellow in traditional blank verse (and it is good verse; he +knew his business): +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"When as we read of the much longed-for smile</p> +<p>Being by such a noble lover kissed,</p> +<p>This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided,</p> +<p>Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.</p> +<p>Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.</p> +<p>That day no farther did we read therein."</p> +<p>And all the while one spirit uttered this,</p> +<p>The other one did weep so that, for pity,</p> +<p>I swooned away as if I had been dying,</p> +<p>And fell, even as a dead body falls.</p></div></div> + +<p> +Finally, Arensberg in <i>terza rima</i>: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"When we had read how one so amorous</p> +<p class="i2">Had kissed the smile that he was longing for,</p> +<p>This one, who always must be by me thus,</p></div></div> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Kissed me upon the mouth, trembling all o'er;</p> +<p>Galeot the book, and he 'twas written by!</p> +<p class="i2">Upon that day in it we read no more."</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>So sorely did the other spirit cry,</p> +<p class="i2">While the one spoke, that for the very dread</p> +<p>I swooned as if I were about to die,</p> +<p class="i2">And I fell down even as a man falls dead.</p></div></div> + +<p> +Those versions, I submit, are all good; and I risked the tedium of +repeating the same idea of Dante in the English of three different +translators. Because my simple point is that Dante in English is +interesting—to anybody who cares for English literature. +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> + +<a name="note1_1"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_1">[1]</a> Britain's Tribute To Dante in Literature and Art. A +Chronological Record of 540 Years. By Paget Toynbee. London: Published +for the British Academy, 1921.</p> + +<a name="note2_1"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref2_1">[2]</a> The Crytography of Dante. By Walter Arensberg. New York: +Alfred A. Knopf, 1921.</p> + +<a name="note3_1"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref3_1">[3]</a> The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text +with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary. By +Courtney Langdon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 3 vols.</p> + + + +<a name="3"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +DANTE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY +</p> + + +<p> +Dante's <i>De Monarchia</i> is usually treated by the commentators as +a mere footnote to the <i>Commedia</i>; and this subordination is +justifiable because the poet in Dante overwhelms all other expressions +of his genius and also because the <i>Commedia</i> contains much +political philosophy, some of which <i>De Monarchia</i> elucidates. +But <i>De Monarchia</i>, considered by itself, is a work of great +importance. Even if by some unthinkable accident the <i>Commedia</i> +had been lost and <i>De Monarchia</i> had survived, it would remain a +significant treatise on the state and the papacy and would deserve to +be regarded as we regard the political writings of philosophers from +Plato to Hobbes. To be sure, the chief interest of the work for us +lies in the fact that Dante wrote it, and it would lose some of its +value if it were isolated from the rest of his thought; the amazing +unity of his mind and the coherence of his purpose make a piecemeal +view of any part of him essentially false. His vision of earth and +heaven has a thousand aspects but no fragments. Even the unfinished +works, <i>Il Convivio</i> and <i>De Vulgari Eloquentia</i>, are not +fragments but are rather to be read as partial manifestations of a +singular and consistent plan. +</p> + +<p> +<i>De Monarchia</i> is a vision of earthly well-being. It is an +argument, prosaic and heavy in the English translations and very +difficult in the original, I should suppose, even to an excellent +Latin scholar. But the argument embodies a dream of the greatest of +dreamers. The first part sets forth the necessity of empire. Only +under a single world-governing monarch are possible the solidarity of +mankind and the fullest possible development of the human spirit. In +unity man can find peace and justice. Man is made in the image of God, +and God is one; wherefore man in imitation of God must make the +secular world conform to the universe and set up a unique earthly +dominion. In the nature of things empire is divinely ordained and this +is further proved by the fact that Christ willed to be born under the +Emperor Augustus. +</p> + +<p> +The second part seeks to show that the Roman empire was appointed by +God to rule the world. It was established by the aid of miracles, +which confirm it as especially created by the will of God. Christ died +under the empire; if the empire had not been the rightful temporal +authority, Christ would have been punished by the agent of an unjust +power, his suffering would have been unlawful and therefore the sin of +Adam would not have been duly expiated. Rome was born to command, +because it did, in point of fact, conquer the world, and also because +the histories of its many heroes and patriots show that the Roman +citizen loved right and justice. +</p> + +<p> +The third part is an argument for the separation of church and state, +which are independent authorities both deriving directly from God. +Many false arguments for the temporal power of the church are refuted. +Though the emperor, as a man, is the first son of the church and +should obey it like other Christians, yet as emperor he owes +allegiance only to God, whom he represents on earth in temporal +matters as the pope represents God in spiritual matters. The very +nature of the church, its essential spiritual function, forbids it the +possession of temporal power. +</p> + +<p> +Have we here, then, nothing but a defence of an empire that has been +dust these many centuries, and stale scholastic arguments for the +separation of church and state, a long settled question in theoretic +politics and practically settled in most countries? There is much more +than that in <i>De Monarchia</i> even for the most confident modern +democrat, who may regard emperor and pope as twin tyrants and for whom +the word "mediæval" has derogatory connotations. It is true that the +empire under which Dante actually lived is dead as the empire of the +Caesars and that the empire of Dante's dream was never realized in the +workaday world. As a political pamphlet <i>De Monarchia</i> is +obsolete without even the persistent contemporaneity of some +eighteenth century tracts. In a sense Dante's treatise died at birth. +Bryce, who gives an excellent summary of it in his "Holy Roman +Empire," shows that this plea for empire, conceived by the supreme +mind of the age, was the epitaph of the existing empire. It was, +indeed, a swan-song, not of the author, who was still to take us to +Paradise and put his dream in lovelier form, but of empire in the +Catholic Christian sense of "holy." The empire that persisted after +the thirteenth century grew further and further away not only from a +poet's dream but from any practical possibility of united political +authority. The solidarity of mankind was not to be achieved through +Rome or Christ, and Dante was not, as he thought, announcing a new +era, but summing up a passing era. +</p> + +<p> +But the truth of a dream inheres in the dream itself and is measured +only in a secondary way by the course of events. <i>De Monarchia</i> +has for us at least the value of a pacifist tract, the noble core of +which is not obscured by the strangeness of some of the reasoning or +by the destruction of Dante's political milieu. Like some other +pacifist documents it is the work of an aggressive militant mind. +Dante had lived and suffered in a world continuously at war. The +contesting powers, great and small, were so complicated that the +historian has difficulty in keeping them clear. To the major quarrels +between church and state and the strife of the city-republics with one +or the other or both were added an internal warfare between economic +classes and feuds between castes and families, all hopelessly +intricate. +</p> + +<p> +In this bloody confusion Dante had played the part not of closet +philosopher <i>au-dessus de la mêlée</i>, but of soldier and civil +official. And to the last he was temperamentally a fighter, though +forced by circumstances to drop the sword for the pen. He was not in +the eyes of his contemporaries what he has become for us, the supreme +solitary genius exiled by an ungrateful city, but was simply one of a +thousand members of a beaten party. He was not a pathetic, +unappreciated poet but a pertinacious partisan who happened to be on +the losing side. He knew war and misery and defeat. Yet his plea for +peace is by no means that of a weary belligerent; it is that of a +bellicose champion of certain principles. And so, though those +principles do not appeal to us and though the expression of them is +laborious, even turgid, <i>De Monarchia</i> is still hot with +conviction. +</p> + +<p> +The instrument of peace was the one form of government that Dante +knew, the empire. Even if his genius had taken the form of +vaticination (he was indeed, as it turned out, a poor prophet), he +naturally could not in his time have made himself familiar with +leagues of nations and Wellsian "world-states." He had to ride on a +horse, not in a motor-car. And he rode, as a worldly rider, to a fall. +The tragedy of the fall has in it a large element of dramatic irony +because he was so splendidly sure of his ideas at exactly the moment +when they were least secure. +</p> + +<p> +Dante's conception of an ideal empire had nothing in common with what +we now call imperialism, which is mere commercial conquest and can be +led by Kaiser or democratic prime minister with equally disastrous +results. Dante believed in an imperial headship for the good of all +humanity. The ruler of the world was to be the servant of the world, +not its master and exploiter; a supreme monarch was to be protected by +his lonely authority from the temptations that beset a weak man +clothed with limited and contentious authority; aloof from strife and +cupidity, having all and so being beyond pride and ambition, he could +be a disinterested and just administrator. +</p> + +<p> +The aim of empire is universal peace—Dante begins his argument almost +in the terms of Burke and with something like Burke's combination of +generosity and elaborate futility—peace, "the best of those things +that are ordained for our beatitude." For on peace depends the destiny +of mankind to realize the full power of the human mind in thought and +deed. Dante's world state is Utopia, compounded, as all Utopias must +be, of wisdom and utter impossibilities, of sublime faith and facts +half-understood. While he dreamed he did not believe himself a +dreamer, any more than did Shelley. He believed intensely in the +practical value of his vision, in its originality and its finality as +a solution of the problems of the political world. He says that +knowledge of monarchy has been shunned because it has no direct +relation to profit, and that he will be the first to bring it from +obscurity to light for the good of the world and for his own glory. +The humble servant and the arrogant doctor at the bedside of the +patient! It is one of the most consistent contradictions of proud +souls. The reformer has found a new and sure cure and cries "Eureka!" +</p> + +<p> +In spite of the practical failure of his dream, which in a sense +defeats him, I do not believe that Dante's pell-mell acceptance of all +stories about the greatness of Rome, with no apparent discrimination, +is proof that he did not know what he was about. He was making a +special plea and he pillaged history and legend to get material for +the purposes of his argument. He is a dialectician animated, like all +reformers, by unselfish motives, but willing to score a point if he +can. We may be fairly sure that Dante was not a credulous person with +a childish view of history, but a sophisticated controversialist +handling his evidence for effect. Though he mingles fact and fiction +and though his documentary resources were more limited than ours, yet +he knew perfectly what he was trying to do, and modern attempts to +gloss him in a patronizing and apologetic manner are generally +mistaken. +</p> + +<p> +There is a grim humour in the fate that overtakes the works of wise +men. The treatise which Dante believed would bring peace to a vexed +world became a matter of strife. Later Ghibellines used his argument, +unfairly, of course, to support the supremacy of the empire over the +church, and ecclesiastical authority retorted by condemning the book +and even threatening the repose of Dante's bones. A somewhat similar +quarrel arose over Hobbes's "Leviathan" three centuries later. Seeking +to unite all men, the political philosopher is attacked from both +sides, and if he lives he finds that he has poured oil not on troubled +waters but on a fire. +</p> + +<p> +Though <i>De Monarchia</i> is much more than a footnote to the +<i>Commedia</i> and is worth study for its own sake, yet the unity +which it seeks in the world is closely allied to the unity of Dante's +celestial vision by which he tried to lead mankind to God. Mankind +refused to be cured of its political pains by <i>De Monarchia</i> and +even ignored it in spite of Dante's secure and growing fame (there was +no English translation until the late nineteenth century). But mankind +also never accepted and never will accept the supreme vision of the +<i>Commedia</i>. It is a beautiful poem enjoyed by the literary, and +even in Italy it is valued, quite properly, as a mere work of art. The +world has never paid much attention to Dante's declared purpose to +bring mankind through art to God. So that in one way of regarding him, +which may perhaps be his way, he failed in the <i>Commedia</i> as he +did in <i>De Monarchia</i>. The world of thinking and acting men, +whose salvation Dante believed he could work by verse and prose, +remains disunited and contentious, weaponed with such bitterness of +heart and methods of destruction as the dreamer of <i>Inferno</i> +never dreamed. +</p> + + + +<a name="4"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +NIETZSCHE +</p> + + +<p> +It is more than thirty years since Nietzsche's work was finished and +darkness fell upon that mighty intellect. In 1917, Mr. W. M. Salter, +who certainly knows the bibliography of Nietzsche, wrote: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + I can not make out that his influence is appreciable now—at least + in English-speaking countries…. He has, indeed given a phrase + and perhaps an idea or two to Mr. Bernard Shaw, a few scattering + scholars have got track of him (I know of but two or three in + America), the great newspaper and magazine-writing and reading + world has picked up a few of his phrases, which it does not + understand. +</p></div> + +<p> +The preface of Frau Foerster-Nietzsche's edition of her brother's +correspondence with Wagner is dated, Weimar, 1914, and the English +translation was published in 1921. Dr. Oscar Levy's preface to his +selection from the five volumes of Nietzsche's correspondence,<a href="#note1_2" name="noteref1_2"> +<small>[1]</small></a> +published in Germany between the years 1900-1909, is dated August, +1921. +</p> + +<p> +So, although Nietzsche's works are now all, or nearly all, to be read +in English, he is not quite an old story which every literate child +should know. Professional students of philosophy seemed to have missed +him or to have tardily recognized him, and the mere casual reader of +philosophy may quietly dodge Mr. Mencken's bludgeon: "Only blockheads +to-day know nothing of them [Nietzsche's ideas] and only fools are +unshaken by them." That sort of aggressiveness on the part of a +champion of Nietzsche will not help the master's ideas to prevail; +though it may seem to be a disciple's repetition of Nietzsche's superb +arrogance, it is really not true to his spirit. For Nietzsche attacked +thoughts and thinkers, quarrelled with opponents who were somewhere +near his size, ignored the opinions of the brainless multitude, and +was content to wait for time and the slow-moving world to find him +out. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly he can not be jammed down our throat, and quite as certainly +his stimulating and cathartic doses can not be snatched from our lips +by moralistic prohibitionists. It is possible, of course, for a doctor +to take advantage of one's innocence and ignorance and put one to +sleep with drugs. That was my own experience. Dr. Paul Elmer More +stole up on me in the dark with a soporific little book, the first I +had ever read about Nietzsche. When I came to, the world was at war. A +wild German philosopher, who had been quoted by a brutal German +general named Bernhardi, was responsible for the violation of Belgian +women. This was manifestly absurd, but there was no time to +investigate and explain, even for one's private satisfaction, the +causes of this ridiculous misunderstanding not only of an individual +philosopher but of the relation of book-philosophy to appallingly +unphilosophic crimes. +</p> + +<p> +It is amazing to find that the absurdity persists, that it is +necessary for Dr. Levy to try to prove in 1921 that Nietzsche did not +incite the Germans to a war of conquest! Has not the hysteria +sufficiently subsided for wise men to quit wasting their energies in a +contest with spooks? It was part of Nietzsche's work to ridicule +ghosts and blow away myths, and that he should have become a myth +himself is an irony that he might have enjoyed. He gloried in being +misunderstood. The true philosopher has always been in lonely +opposition to the dominant ideals of his time. It is in a tone not of +resentment or complaint but of haughty satisfaction that he writes to +Georg Brandes, in the last year of his intellectual life: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Your opinion of present-day Germans is more favourable than mine + … all profound events escape them. Take, for example, my "Beyond + Good and Evil." What bewilderment it has caused them. I have not + heard of a single intelligent utterance about it, much less of an + intelligent sentiment. I believe that it has not dawned on the + most well-intentioned of my readers that here is the outcome of a + sane philosophic sensibility, and not a medley of a hundred + outworn paradoxes and heterodoxes. Not a soul has ever experienced + the same sort of thing that I have. I never meet anyone who has + been through a thousandth part of the same passionate struggle. +</p></div> + +<p> +Nietzsche's philosophic solitude accounts in part for the excellence +of his letters. In his struggles with the world, and his wilful +alienation from it, he clung passionately to the few who were allied +to him by the ties of blood, friendship, or intellectual sympathy. The +letters contain no philosophic ideas which he did not express again +and again in his professional writings. They do contain something +else, however, moods, emotions, pleasures and private difficulties, +intimacies which are never quite apart from the incessant battle of +thought yet belong to moments of comparative ease when the soldier is +off duty. This philosopher, whose work is so intensely personal, who +says that he wrote his books with his whole body and life, did not +completely express himself in his books. He poured his soul into them +and was honestly naked and unashamed. But for all his autobiographical +candor, his work is not a promiscuous confession. He labored over his +paragraphs like an artist, calculated their effect, and made them +personal only in so far as suited his philosophic purpose. There +remains a sensitive and reticent Nietzsche who revealed himself to his +friends alone. +</p> + +<p> +He was fortunate in his friends. When he writes in the preface of +"Human, All-Too-Human," that he has evolved an as yet non-existent +company of free spirits, because he needs them and because they are +some compensation for lack of friends, he is posing in a philosophic +attitude which is quite justified by his experience as a thinker and +writer but which is not quite true to the private history of Friedrich +Nietzsche. He never lacked friends, and his isolation was in great +measure self-imposed. The most distinguished friend he lost was +Wagner; the break came late in the older man's life, and it seems to +have been the younger man who disrupted the friendship. +</p> + +<p> +Even without Wagner, Nietzsche's correspondents are numerous and +varied, as many and of as many kinds as a wise man needs, if he +chooses to make the most of them. The lonely philosopher was not +neglected as man and brother. He preferred to flock by himself. His +ill health rather than the animosity of his countrymen drove him out +of Germany; and he was happiest, as close as he ever came to +happiness, when he concentrated his energy in his work. He makes a +philosophic virtue of necessity, affects to despise what he can not +have, laments his solitude and is proud of it. To his sister he writes: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + You can not think how lonely and out of it I always feel when I am + in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom + you call 'good,' and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who + is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster, but of + course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods…. Oh, this + infernal solitude! +</p></div> + +<p> +A few months later, when this aged philosopher is forty, he writes to +an old friend that all the people he loves belong to the past and +regard him with merely merciful indulgence. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + We see each other, we talk in order to avoid being silent—we + still write each other in order to avoid being silent. Truth, + however, glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it + well enough): 'Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!' +</p> + +<p> + That's what I have lived and fought for! +</p></div> + +<p> +The last sentence may be taken in two ways. It may mean that Nietzsche +strove for isolation, or it may be interpreted bitterly: "So +<i>that's</i> what I get from my friends for all my labor and +struggle!" Perhaps both meanings are there. The letter ends: "Ah, dear +friend, what an absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much +alone! So 'childless'! Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you." +That sounds like a not too human cry of hunger for affection. The man +who prefers demi-gods and is confident that he would be worthy of +their companionship is not immune from the pangs of ordinary mortals. +</p> + +<p> +Nietzsche had a self-critical knowledge of his own needs and nature, +and, so far as circumstances permitted, he followed the course that +pleased him. He sometimes groaned but he never whined. In a letter to +his sister, who had evidently suggested the possibility of marriage, +he says that he cheerfully accepts the disadvantages of independence. +The list of requirements that he lays down are enough to make us +congratulate the impossible she whom he wisely refrained from +marrying. "I know the women folk of half Europe," he writes, "and +wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed +a sort of gradual decline as the result." That is one of the +philosopher's amusing errors. He did not know women folk at all; the +most fatuous, almost the only fatuous, passages in his works and his +letters are those about the ladies, and his letters to ladies are the +declarations of a free spirit shying off from something "agreeable +though perhaps a trifle dangerous." +</p> + +<p> +Nietzsche is at his best, of course, when he writes to distinguished +men, the few who recognized his genius and made him glow in his cold +solitude. Nietzsche craved recognition; his contempt for fame was +largely a contempt for sour grapes. Brandes and Strindberg put wreaths +on his head, and he was proud of them. He writes to Strindberg: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + I am the most powerful intellect of the age, condemned to fulfill + a stupendous mission…. It is possible that I have explored more + terrible and more questionable worlds of thought than anyone else, + but simply because it is in my nature to love the silent + backwater. I reckon cheerfulness among the proofs of my + philosophy. +</p></div> + +<p> +A man who can write like that of himself is the happiest of mortals, +for he knows that he belongs among the immortals. +</p> + +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_2"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_2">[1]</a> "Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche." +Edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. Authorized Translation by Anthony M. +Ludovico. New York: Doubleday Page & Co. +</p> + + + +<a name="5"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +TOLSTOY +</p> + + +<p class="part"> +I. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy closes the second part of "Sevastopol" with these words: "The +hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I +have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and ever +will be beautiful, is Truth." That sentence was written when Tolstoy +was twenty-seven. For fifty years, in novels, tales, essays, and +exhortations, he celebrated his hero with unflagging devotion. The +deeds and lineaments of the hero are not always as other men have seen +them, but the identity, the character of the hero is never in doubt. +The hero changes and utters conflicting wisdom, not because of the +worshiper's inconstancy, but because Tolstoy develops, because he +outgrows and disavows his previous selves and violates consistency +between one book and another in his zeal to find consistency between +his next book and Truth. +</p> + +<p> +In ceaseless pursuit of Truth, Tolstoy is led through the most +stirring intellectual and moral experiences which modern man has +undergone. He is part of all that we have met; from the remotest of +European countries, from a moment in the world's thought that is +already well behind us, his messages have encircled the globe and +modify the living ideas of today. He touched all departments of +thought and left none as it had been. +</p> + +<p> +He plunged into the nineteenth century warfare of religion and +science, found that both parties were priest-ridden and arrogant, and +wrested from both the right of the individual to a simple faith and to +knowledge free from the cant of the laboratory. The increasing grumble +of the contest between privilege and labor—the most portentous war +the world has seen and not yet at its crisis—assaulted his ears; he +hearkened while most other members of the narrow circle of culture +were deaf or indifferent, and he took his stand on the side of the +workers against his own rank and kin. He laid bare the motives of war, +in which he had drawn a guilty sword, and became a militant champion +of peace. The unholy alliance of culture, religion, and civil +authority he strove to dissolve by broadsides against each member of +the triune tyranny, and so he conceived a new theory of art, a new +reading of the gospels, and an anarchism so individual that it +excludes most other anarchists. Under the solemnity of marriage and +the thin poetry of romance he discerned the cloven hoof of +self-indulgence, and he shocked the world with a virile puritanism, so +powerful in its terms, so subversive of our timid codes that bashful +Morality shrank from her bravest defender. +</p> + +<p> +All the main thoroughfares of nineteenth century thought crossed +before the doorway of Tolstoy's house. He trafficked with all the +passengers, but joined no special group. Even his own disciples he +allowed to go their own way; he took no part in their organization and +left them to make their own interpretation and their own application +of his teachings. Loving all mankind, having sympathetic knowledge of +all sorts and conditions of men, he was nevertheless strangely +solitary. At the end of his life his devotion to his ideas alienated +from his family this most tender, home-loving man.<a href="#note1_3" name="noteref1_3"> +<small>[1]</small></a> The young +idealists of the world left him behind, for they broke out new +highways of thought which he could not travel; young Russia sees in +him a splendid survival of an elder age of storm and struggle, calls +him master but not leader. +</p> + +<p> +He justified in his own life his theoretic individualism, because he +was great and strong enough to stand alone. The spirit of irony can +not but deal gently with the sincerest, bravest of men. Yet may she +note under the gray garment of humility a mien incorrigibly +aristocratic and domineering. The most powerful mind in the world +proclaimed self-submersion as the perfect virtue, because it is the +most difficult virtue for a daring and vigorous spirit to attain. The +foe of privilege, preaching that all men are brothers in love and +alike before the Lord as they should be before the law of man, enjoyed +a unique privilege—he was almost the only man in Russia who could +with impunity say what he thought. He won this right because he was an +aristocrat with friends at court and because the Russian government +dared not disregard the admiration of the world which had made Tolstoy +an international hero. He warned the mighty to walk in the fear of +God, but they walked in the fear of Leo Tolstoy. +</p> + +<p> +To remind ourselves of the titles of some of his books and the order +in which they appeared, we may divide his work into seven parts. The +first part includes military tales and autobiographic sketches: +"Sevastopol," "Two Hussars," "The Raid," "The Cossacks," "Childhood," +"Boyhood," "Youth." The second part, beginning in 1861, embraces his +experience as school teacher, his discourses on education, school +books, and stories for children and peasants. The third part, from +1864 to 1878, comprises "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." The +fourth part begins with his religious conversion in 1878, and is +devoted to theological, ethical and sociological essays: "My +Confession," "Union and Translation of the Four Gospels," "My +Religion," "What, Then, Must We Do?" The subjects treated in these +books he expounds over and over for the rest of his life. Because it +is salient from his other work we may say that the "Kreutzer Sonata" +(1889) constitutes a fifth part. "What is Art?" and "Resurrection" may +be thought of as a sixth part. Then follows the concluding decade of +warfare in pamphlets, essays, letters, upon civil and ecclesiastical +authority and other powers of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +Any such partition of Tolstoy's work is untrue to its organic +continuity, its massive unity. His books are embedded in his life. +Though each novel stands alone in self-sustaining integrity, +intelligible to all the world, yet each gains in clearness and power +for being understood in relation to the mind that produced it. This +colossus of solitary protest, rising rough and volcanic above the +flats of modern thought, is vaster when seen close to his intellectual +base. Viewed from a distance some sides of him, some contours, are +blurred and deceptive. No part of his work can be wholly apprehended +unless all parts are brought into the range of vision. +</p> + +<p> +On the day of his death he was the most famous man of letters in the +world. From the first report of his final illness bulletins flew over +the cables in hourly succession. Yet for several weeks after his +death, repeated inquiry among the dealers in English and foreign books +in Boston (reputed center of culture and high thinking) showed that +there never had been much demand for Tolstoy's books, except his +novels, and that the momentary rise of interest caused by his death +had not disturbed the dust on such books as "What, Then, Must We Do?" +and "My Confession." +</p> + +<p> +This seems to indicate that not all the articles and sermons which +followed the ultimate news from Russia were grounded upon first-hand +knowledge of Tolstoy. The truth is that his opinions have trickled +through to us Westerners in diluted streams. He is already a +tradition, and it is the habit of tradition to weaken as it spreads, +to lose the effect which a drinker at the sources feels in their +concentration, in their full and proportioned measure of ingredients. +Tolstoy is abroad in the world; he has permeated the thought of the +best minds and tinged the currents of our present beliefs. But few +Westerners know him in his overwhelming entirety. This man who laid +open his whole mind and heart with prodigal frankness is borne +westward on the winds of rumor as a mythical prodigy. The outlines of +his thought are misty and wavering to many of those who call him +great. He spared no pains to clarify his beliefs; he expounded the +same principle many times with undiminished force and ever new +transparency; he gave sweeping permission to the world to translate +and print his books. Yet there is no complete authorized edition of +his works in any language, even in Russian, thanks to the censors and +his own indifference to practical concerns.<a href="#note2_2" name="noteref2_2"> +<small>[2]</small></a> +</p> + +<p> +Thus for the moment a partial chaos has descended upon the work of +Tolstoy, a coherent luminous body of work, which left his hand as free +from ambiguity as his extraordinary skill and industry could make it, +but which has been scattered in transmission. It will take some years +for his loyal followers in England and America to give us a complete +and adequate translation; and in spite of Matthew Arnold's naive +confidence in the French, the most patient collator will have +difficulty in finding Tolstoy's work or recognizing even the titles, +in the books which the Parisian publishers have sent forth under his +name. One who has assembled such of his books as are procurable in +French and English would say with all emphasis possible: +</p> + +<p> +"Withhold judgment about any particular belief expressed or supposed +to have been expressed by Tolstoy until you have read as many of his +books as you can get—and do not fail to read them." He is the one +noble speaker who has happened in our time, "who may be named and +stand as the mark and acme" of modern literature. +</p> + +<p> +A little knowledge of Tolstoy is more than proverbially dangerous. He +laid his vigorous hand upon every problem that vexes and strengthens +the soul. His utterance on each problem is intense and aggressive. He +boldly pursues an idea whither it leads, or drives it with passionate +conviction to a foreseen conclusion, and stays not for the beliefs of +any majority or minority of men. His magnitude overflows the accepted +area of such an adjective as intolerant. Yet approached for the first +time by a reader accustomed to the persuasive amenities of other +saints and sages, he seems to bristle with outrageous denial; some of +his opinions, isolated from the rest, stand as repellant outposts, +forbidding many minds which, entering from another side, would go +straight to the heart of him. For example, our traditional reverence +for Shakespeare is wounded by his downright statement that Shakespeare +was not an artist; the offended judgment retorts that thereby Tolstoy +proves that he is himself no artist, or that in crotchety old age he +outgrew the poetry of his virile years. It must be understood that the +essay on Shakespeare is in the nature of an appendix to his essay, +"What Is Art?" That in turn is closely related to his ethical and +social teachings. Those again are inseparably bound with his tales and +novels. And his fiction, finally, is rooted in Russian life, not only +because, as is obvious, it deals with Russian people, but because +during Tolstoy's prime, there was, as we shall presently see, an +attitude toward the novel and all literary art which was peculiar to +intellectual Russians. +</p> + +<p> +Happily for English readers the foundation for complete understanding +of Tolstoy has been laid by Mr. Aylmer Maude in his "Life," the second +volume of which appeared a few days before his master's death. Mr. +Maude has entire knowledge of his subject and perfect sympathy; he is +a sane and independent thinker, and his work is admirable for its +balance, its candor, its sturdy devotion, which, however, admits no +surrender of the biographer's private beliefs. To the reader who cares +merely for an interesting story Tolstoy's career offers more than that +of most men of letters. It is laid amid the plots and counterplots of +bloody Russia, the most melodramatic background of modern history. The +man is spectacular, compelling, in all violation of his own doctrines +of self-abasement. The peasant's smock, which he wore as symbol of his +unity with common man, served only to make him the more picturesque. +This ascetic religious philosopher was a master of thrilling war +stories. He knew equally well the heart of a lady in the high life of +Moscow, and the soul of a peasant woman. He was of athletic stature, +and his huge hand was sensitive to the finger tips; with it he gripped +a scythe, played the piano, wrote a tirade against modern music, and +indited an exposition of the gospel of love which estranged some of +his best friends! It is no wonder that his fiction bears the seal of +reality, that it has the abundance, the variety, the jostling +contrasts of life itself. +</p> + + +<p class="part"> +II. +</p> + +<p> +In Russia prose fiction has been for a century the vehicle of the +soberest reflections upon contemporary problems. It was dangerous for +a Russian radical to express his beliefs directly in essays and +expositions; what he was not allowed to utter in editorial and +parliamentary debate he set forth indirectly through the novel, which +thus became a sort of realistic parable. Suppression increased his +emotional intensity. Feeling himself a member of a down-trodden class, +he became the champion of other down-trodden classes. When Tolstoy +began to write, the novel was already a tempered weapon against abuse, +the skilful handling of it was a tradition among the literati, and +there were masters to coach and encourage the beginner. The Russian +novel records the deepest motives of Russian history. Tourgenef voiced +the philosophic resignation and scepticism of the educated Russian and +the evils of serfdom. Tolstoy portrayed the vices of the educated +Russian and the evils of wage-slavery which followed the emancipation +of the serfs. Russian fiction is great, because it treats the gravest +struggles of life and because its authors have trained themselves in +the art of expounding ideas in the form of fiction without +transgressing the laws of narrative; they have learned to be the +mouthpiece of life and to let life preach the sermons. To Tolstoy and +other Russians the greatest American book is "Uncle Tom's Cabin," +because it is the chronicle of a bleeding issue; I have seen many +references to that book by Russian writers but scarcely a mention of +Hawthorne. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Maude quotes a letter to Tolstoy from Drouzhinin, critic, +novelist, and translator of Shakespeare: "An Englishman or an +American," he says, "may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely +men of thirty, but gray-haired owners of 2,000 serfs sweat over +stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are +devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole +day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, +you cannot explain it merely by art. What in other lands is a matter +of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another +affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story—the most +frivolous and insignificant form of literature—becomes one of two +things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of a leader +sounding through the empire." +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy's realism is, then, the result both of his own temperamental +passion for truth and of a theory of art which prevailed in his +literary circle. There were, to be sure, silly novelists in Russia; +there, as everywhere, only the best minds regarded fiction as a vital +matter. But there were enough such serious minds to welcome Tolstoy +and encourage him. Nekrasof, editor of <i>The Contemporary</i>, found +in Tolstoy's first work, "the truth—the truth, of which, since +Gogol's death, so little has remained in Russian literature." +Tourgenef repeatedly called Tolstoy the greatest of Russians, and on +his deathbed pencilled the pathetic letter in which he pleaded with +Tolstoy to return to his art. "I am glad," he said, "to have been your +contemporary." Had he lived sixteen years longer, "Resurrection" might +have made him happy. +</p> + +<p> +In Tolstoy's discourses on religion appear many times the words "sense +of life"—religion is the sense of life, the principle upon which the +details of the moral world are ordered and by which they are to be +interpreted. In a slightly different meaning "the sense of life" +expresses the total effect of Tolstoy's fiction. He wrote to a young +disciple: "Do not bend to your purpose the events in the story, but +follow them wherever they lead you…. Lack of symmetry and the +apparent haphazardness of events is a chief sign of life." +</p> + +<p> +In "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" there are many plots. The unity +is that of the loose-jointed English novel rather than that of the +French, which travels on a straight track. Tolstoy's stories move like +a river with many tributaries; he explores now one, now another of the +branch streams, but the course of the main current is continuous, and +runs in one general direction, as if the slope of the country had been +determined before the recorder came upon the scene to measure and +report. +</p> + +<p> +"War and Peace" is greater than a novel; it is an epic, it is +nation-wide and long as the growth from childhood to maturity. We see +from a peak of the face of eastern Europe and the swarming of peoples +and armies. The sensation of vastness, of humanity surging and flowing +in obedience to obscure collective interests is produced by only one +other modern book that I know, Hardy's "The Dynasts." From the high +pinnacles of omniscience the imagination descends by swift unperceived +transitions to the intimacies of a house in Moscow—to the heart of +the girl Natacha—to the mind of Pierre saturated with alcohol +plotting to assassinate Napoleon. The adventures and purposes of the +characters cross and conflict, interweave and unite, but each goes as +it must and there is no confusion in the telling. +</p> + +<p> +In "Anna Karenina," the story of Levin is but loosely related to the +principal tragedy, and the story of Levin's brother is an excursion +from the highway of Levin's career. One can see that after the book is +done. During its course the reader has no sense that any part is not +precisely placed. The illusion of inevitability is perfect. Levin's +brother is related to him by natural ties in life; it is natural, +then, that he should appear in Levin's story. +</p> + +<p> +The illusion of inevitability springs from Tolstoy's all-encircling +comprehension of events, from his justice to each character and from +his extraordinary physical vividness. He writes with his five senses. +A critic warned him early that he was in danger of making a man's +thigh feel like going on a journey to India. +</p> + +<p> +But his recognition of physical sensations and his power to convey +them (they traverse bodily the stylistic obstacles of translation) +take the story off the flat page and give it three dimensional +reality. The acrid smell of an old man's breath, the coldness of a +man's hand when he is in mental distress, the cracking of Karenin's +knuckles when he clasps his hands in moral satisfaction or the anguish +of wounded pride—such details cling to the mind, and the memory of +them recalls the whole story. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy's conception of human character is at once relentlessly +analytic and profoundly pitiful and kind. The whole content of his +thought from its bold surface to its deepest depth is instinct with +compassion. Once when he was walking with Tourgenef they came to an +old broken-down horse in a pasture. Tolstoy went up to it, stroked it, +and uttered its thoughts and sufferings with such moving tenderness +that Tourgenef cried: "You must once have been a horse yourself." +</p> + +<p> +In "Master and Man," a beautiful story of two men lost in a snowstorm, +the horse is a third character—an animal character, be it understood, +for Tolstoy is antipodal to nature-faking. He has confidence that +nature and man will tell their own story and disclose their inherent +lessons. Dogmatic and uncompromising in his private ethical beliefs, +he never sacrifices humanity even upon the altars where he tried to +immolate himself. Valid morality springs spontaneously from his +narrative, and is thereby a hundredfold more impressive than teachings +forced from artificially moulded events. Even in his rewriting of +traditional myths and parables he restores inorganic sermons to life, +creates a living thing in which the ethical intention is assimilated +and vitalized. He told these stories to the peasants, listened with +delight to their retelling of them, and incorporated their racial +turns of phrase. To an old peasant woman with a native gift for +narrative, he said: "You are a real master, Anisya; thank you for +teaching me to speak Russian and to think Russian." +</p> + +<p> +He learned from life and he trusted life to teach the reader. Anna +Karenina commits suicide, not because she is a naughty woman whom the +novelist as guardian of morals must punish for the satisfaction of a +virtuous world, but because the society that surrounds her, the +everyday life of visiting and tea-drinking, inexorably forbids her to +be happy. Tolstoy is a champion of the poor, and he began his career +at a time when, as Mr. Cahan tells us, "the idealization of the +peasant" was one of the staple phrases in essays and editorials. But +in Tolstoy's stories there is no false sublimation of the peasant. He +does not cry, like Dickens, or the professional charity-monger: "Pity +these poor starved brothers." He simply recites their lives. Sometimes +he chronicles the most terrible things in a grim restrained +matter-of-fact tone, more moving than any passionate appeal to the +reader's sympathy. He is, of course, a master of argument and +exhortation, but all that is found in his other books, not in his +fiction. +</p> + +<p> +A critic, whose democracy is too narrowly partisan, complains that in +"War and Peace" all the important characters are aristocrats, and that +the story fails to reveal the motives of the people, of those +inarticulate millions who Tolstoy himself says are the real makers of +history. But this apparent fault is an instance of Tolstoy's +integrity. When he wrote "War and Peace" he knew only aristocrats, or +was chiefly interested in them. He had already begun to discern the +relations between the multitude and the leaders whom history +signalizes; but he had not lived close to peasants and workmen; he had +approached them as lord and master, not yet as brother and +interpreter. Moreover, if there be a moral hero in "War and Peace" +whom the author seems to favor, it is Karataief, the illiterate +soldier, whose simple faith dawns as a regenerative light upon Pierre, +a rich man of the world who has met all philosophies and found them +heartless. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy could not write what he did not know or did not feel. His +stories, though not autobiographic in the usual sense of the world, +are the quintessence of his adventures and experiences, accurately +recalled and profoundly meditated. When the manuscript of the +"Kreutzer Sonata" was read in his house to a company of friends, +Tolstoy said in answer to some objections: +</p> + +<p> +"In a work of art it is indispensable that the artist should have +something new, of his own. It is not how it is written that really +matters. People will read the 'Kreutzer Sonata' and say, 'Ah, that is +the way to write!' The indispensable thing is to go beyond what others +have done, to pick off even a very small fresh bit. But it won't do to +be like my friend Fet, who at sixteen wrote, 'The spring bubbles, the +moon shines, and she loves me,' and who went on writing and writing, +and at sixty wrote: 'She loves me, and the spring bubbles, and the +moon shines.'" +</p> + +<p> +It was impossible for Tolstoy, the novelist, to write of people whom +he did not know, merely because he happened to have sympathy with some +of their ideals and habits. It was impossible for him to violate human +nature when he portrayed characters that he did know. Hating +professional psychology and all other sciences and quasi-sciences, he +is the greatest of so-called psychological novelists; his psychology +was made before text-books, and it used to be called "truth to human +nature." You cannot suggest, as you read a novel by Tolstoy, anything +a character ought have done which was not done, any emotion he should +have felt which Tolstoy has not suggested at exactly the right moment. +He penetrates the characters of living men and the characters of +history and romance. The pseudo-psychology of the critics of "Hamlet," +does not deceive him. Napoleon, mythical monster and genius +unapproachable, fails to over-awe him; Tolstoy draws him, man size, +amid events that dwarf heroes. +</p> + +<p> +In "Resurrection," Nekhludof is represented as holding social theories +which in point of fact Tolstoy held. Nekhludof reads Henry George and +tries to give his land to the peasants as communal property. Tolstoy, +the social reformer, would admit no obstacle to the justice and the +practicability of the plan; a lesser artist would have yielded to the +reformer, the plan would have worked and the story would have proved +the theory. But Tolstoy, the novelist, confronts Nekhludof with the +suspicion, the ignorant shrewdness of the peasants; the plan +encounters all the difficulties, legal and psychological, which life +would offer. +</p> + +<p> +"Resurrection" is the crowning proof of Tolstoy's artistic power. For +twenty years he had developed theories about every problem of life; he +held his opinions tenaciously; hugging them in resolute defiance he +strode roughshod through the domains of church, state and family. His +convictions were strong enough to silence him as an artist, and for +years he obeyed the mandate of conscience that forbade him to write +novels at all. But when, to raise money for the Doukhobors, he +consented to write "Resurrection," his artistic sense was stronger +than the rest of him (if, indeed, there was any antagonism between the +two sides of his nature), and theories powerful enough to disrupt the +universe were kept in bounds by his sense of proportion, his sense of +life. +</p> + +<p> +The feeling that Tolstoy, the artist, and Tolstoy, the reformer, are +in any true sense engaged in struggle is largely due to the false +dialectic of traditional criticism, which he by precept and practice +has confuted. His great moral principles are the sure foundation of +his greatness in art. For us Westerners modern realism—Hardy and Zola +come first to mind—is associated with a godless though very humane +scepticism. Religious sentiment has been left in the weak hands of +romance, and the longer it has been left there the more false it has +become. From the beginning, even before his religious conversion, +Tolstoy had a sound ethical outlook. At the age of forty he wrote of +Tourgenef's "Smoke": "The strength of poetry lies in love, and the +direction of that strength depends on character. Without strength of +love there is no poetry. In 'Smoke' there is hardly any love of +anything and very little poetry. There is only love of a light and +playful adultery, and therefore the poetry of that novel is +repulsive." The spirit in that criticism is the guiding spirit in +"Anna Karenina," and it is the same spirit which dictated this passage +in the magnificent sermon on the Russian-Japanese war: "The great +struggle of our time … is not the struggle in which men engage with +mines, bombs and bullets; it is the spiritual struggle which goes on +incessantly, which is going on now, between the enlightened conscience +of humanity, about to be made manifest, and the shadows and oppression +which surround it and crush it." +</p> + + +<p class="part"> +III. +</p> + +<p> +To western liberals Tolstoy's assaults on church and state seem too +vehement, partly because the tyranny he attacked is more obviously +brutal than that from which we suffer, partly because we are +complacently blind to facts which he revealed, facts which are present +at our doors. Our mild meliorations delude us. We wave an idle hand +and say: "Ah, yes, Russia is a savage country, but we are not like +that."<a href="#note3_2" name="noteref3_2"> +<small>[3]</small></a> And all the while the coldest labor statistics, if we dared +to open them, show that in the exploitation of workmen, women and +children, ours is as barbarous a country as any in the world. Our +horrors and injustices are smoothed over by a disingenuous press, +which is owned or indirectly controlled by the powers that be. +American philanthropy steals with one hand and builds universities +with the other. We have no kings and no dukes, but America is the +sport of capital; it lies abjectly prostrate before a power-drunk +bourgeoisie. We celebrate Tolstoy in harmless little magazine articles +and wear shirts woven by children. We think we need no school like the +one Tolstoy conducted for poor, backward Russian peasants, because we +have our public schools and compulsory education laws—in some states. +Hundreds of our children are at work; they have succeeded, thanks to +the glorious free competition of business, in taking their fathers' +places at the machines. The children that are in school wave the flag +and read about George Washington. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy's teachings can not at present shake the somnolent conscience +of America. He believed in his innocence that our industrial masters +have reached the outrageous limits of exploitation, and that America +must be the first country to rise and throw off its parasites. But +that is a foreigner's opinion and not to be taken seriously in the +land of the free and the home of the National Civic Federation. His +indictment of our civilization is only nine-tenths true, and we shall +take advantage of the one-tenth that is overstatement to throw his +indictment out of court. He sees that every government is a commercial +agency by means of which a privileged minority conducts its business +at the expense of the majority. We are ashamed to believe that that +can be true of our Congress and our irreproachable Supreme Court. It +is easier to dismiss Tolstoy, because he is "eccentric" and "goes too +far." Did he not sweepingly assert that there is no such thing as a +virtuous statesman? That absurdity permits us to ignore the book in +which it appears. +</p> + +<p> +Besides, it is more "optimistic" to read articles about the "history +of achievement in the United States," to take democratic short cuts to +superficial knowledge, than to read disconcerting books. Our +healthy-minded confidence in American morals bids us be content with a +little gossip about Carlyle and his wife, and not trouble ourselves +with such a difficult book as "Past and Present." In like fashion we +shall understand Tolstoy's ideals without reading "What, Then, Must We +Do?" or "The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You." Sufficient for us a few +newspaper discussions about "Why Tolstoy Left the Countess and the +Relations Between Family Life and Anarchism." For Tolstoy was an +anarchist, and that disposes of him! We know all about anarchists; +they live in Paterson, N.J., and in the imaginations of journalists, +home secretaries, and framers of immigration laws. +</p> + +<p> +Yet despite our republican wisdom, we cannot quite understand Tolstoy +until we know the true meanings of such words as labor, capital, +exploitation, rent, property, interest, and proletariat. In Russia +these words are understood by many people, also in Germany. But we +Americans, though highly cultivated, are not well informed about +contemporary facts and current philosophies. We have still to be +taught that the Russian revolution is our revolution, that it is part +of a mighty economic change which is in process all over the world. A +study of Tolstoy and his critics will help to instruct us—some +day—about these momentous relations. +</p> + +<p> +The present status of the revolution is more confused in Russia than +in any other country.<a href="#note4_1" name="noteref4_1"> +<small>[4]</small></a> The repressive measures of the government +forced a temporary alliance between all types of revolutionaries. It +was this alliance which isolated Tolstoy from other reformers and made +him a retarding force, almost a reactionary, against the progress of +the Social Democracy, that party of orderly Marxians under German +tutelage which was the hope of young Russia. The Czar's government, +which was no respecter of principles, grouped him with all the +malcontents and libertarians. And he returned the compliment. Because +he despised all economics, he could not join a "scientific" party. +Failing to distinguish between the peaceful and the militant +revolutionists, he charged them all with murder and grouped them with +the government. And thus he stood alone, distrustful of peaceful +anarchists because they were not religious, and distrustful of most +religions because they were organized on a property basis. He stood +alone. Yet all liberal men, antithetical to each other as are the +socialists and the anarchists, united in loving him as they united in +hatred of the government. They applauded his terrific indictment of +the society under which we live, though they disagreed from various +points of view with his solution. It was said of him on his eightieth +birthday that whatever conflict there might be between his beliefs and +those of other reformers, the foes of liberty were his foes and the +friends of liberty were his friends. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy's solution for our ills is Christian anarchy, a voluntary +communism allied with the teachings of Jesus, or with Tolstoy's +interpretation of them. He taught that all violence is wrong, all +government is robbery, and that the only possible moral order is +founded on love of man and renunciation of legal rights. That he +should have been a champion of Henry Georgeism, a plan that depends on +organized government, is one of his many inconsistencies; what drew +him to the single-tax theory was probably not so much the economic +principles as George's arraignment of landlordism. +</p> + +<p> +It is Tolstoy's own arraignment of our so-called civilization rather +than his proposed remedies which will quicken the conscience of the +world.<a href="#note5" name="noteref5"> +<small>[5]</small></a> His individualism, his doctrine of private goodness, looks +backward and not forward. He is, like Carlyle, the voice of a bygone +time. +</p> + +<p> +He had lived through the failures of many political revolutions, and +he abhorred anything that pretended to be scientific. He turned his +eyes from the science of men to their souls. In his magnificent self +he justified his individualism, but were we a billion Tolstoys, +saintly and self-disciplined, we must work in organization, or we +cannot work effectively. The world is religious, but religion is a +matter of opinion. The world is also economic, and economics is not a +matter of opinion, but of unavoidable facts over which the individual +has little control.<a href="#note6" name="noteref6"> +<small>[6]</small></a> Like Ruskin, Tolstoy rejected economics because +most professorial economists do not tell the truth. He blamed the +dismal science for the dismal facts and for the inadequacies of its +classic expounders. Had he understood the economic structure of +society (which nobody does understand), he would have seen the +futility of trying to abandon his estates. His singular abnegation +could not put an end to the evils of landlordism, even to the extent +of his own plot of ground. He could not make the burden of landless +people one ounce lighter by dismounting in his own person from their +backs. Nothing can be done until an effective majority of men agree to +abolish private ownership of land and establish communal ownership. +</p> + +<p> +Tolstoy preached with splendid fervor the power of the individual +soul. But his practice is proof of our impotent severalty. It was +disorganization that caused the famine which he labored to relieve, +and it was his efficient organization that kept the hungry from +starving. That our greatest man of letters should sweat behind a +prehistoric plow is good for his soul and for ours; but, even if we +should all grow perfect in spirit and eager for our share of manual +labor, we should still feed ourselves better by communal use of steam +plows. Tolstoy's belated Proudhonism is not the solution for the evils +of property. It is his negative teaching that has positive value. He +is an abolitionist, not a constructive philosopher. But to say that is +not to answer him, not to deny him. He remains unanswered as long as +the labor of this world is done at the behest of the few and for their +profit. His work is not done, his books cannot be outgrown, until +every man of us looks at the facts honestly and cries with him: "It is +impossible to live so! It is impossible to live so!" +</p> + +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_3"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_3">[1]</a> As this book goes to press, Madam Tolstoy's +"Autobiography" is being published in <i>The Freeman</i>. Her views of +the great man should be illuminating, especially if she does not try +to minimize his defects.</p> + +<a name="note2_2"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref2_2">[2]</a> This is no longer true in the troubled year of grace, +1922. Every scrap of Tolstoy is published in Russia. And probably +before long there will be complete translations in many modern +languages.</p> + +<a name="note3_2"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref3_2">[3]</a> And we are still saying it, 1922!</p> + +<a name="note4_1"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref4_1">[4]</a> This refers, of course, to the revolution before the +Great War. I wonder now, 1922, just what Lenin, Trotsky, Chicherin, +et. al., think of Tolstoy, and what he would have thought of them!</p> + +<a name="note5"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref5">[5]</a> Will it? I am not so confident as I was once.</p> + +<a name="note6"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref6">[6]</a> That sounds like good sense. Some of Tolstoy's countrymen +at Genoa seem to have proved it.</p> + + +<a name="6"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +MAETERLINCK'S ESSAYS +</p> + + +<p> +If we had to lose one part or the other of Maeterlinck's work, I think +we should less reluctantly surrender the plays than the essays. The +essays are richer in substance than the dramas and they are as truly +poetic. The sunny garden, where the poet lives with his bees and +flowers, is a more splendid domain than moonlit pseudo-mediæval +empires, peopled with the wraiths of women. And the little bull-pup of +the essay is a truer dog than the one in "The Blue Bird." +</p> + +<p> +Some years ago, when the essay on the dog was first published in +English, I read it aloud to a woman who owned a Boston terrier, and I +gave it to a professional breeder of dogs. Both liked it. It is an +essay that any one can understand; it illuminates a ground where all +kinds of people meet. Even Bill Sikes would have liked it. Maeterlinck +says what almost everybody thinks, and says it as it has not been said +before, not in "Rab and His Friends." The simple eloquence, the +sincerity, the affectionate humor are the positive virtues of the +essay; and its negative virtue is freedom from a kind of rhetorical +artificiality in which Maeterlinck indulges when he gets away from the +solid realities of life. +</p> + +<p> +Maeterlinck is an amateur botanist and bee-keeper and a professional +poet. He knows, or seems to know, the facts, and he sees them with an +imaginative vision, wondering at them like a child, in the very act of +giving quite lucid "scientific" explanations. He hovers often on the +enchanted borderland between knowledge and fancy, and plays to and fro +between regions which, though adjacent parts of the same universe, +have different habits of thought. I am acquainted with an American +poet and philosopher who does not know the common kinds of dogs such +as any boy of ten knows. I also knew and argued with an eminent +biologist who objected to Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," on the +ground that the poetic phrasing falsified the facts. True, he +conceded, the queen-bee does fly and the strongest male overtakes and +fertilizes her. But for Maeterlinck to poetize the fact as a "nuptial +flight" seemed to the man of science not only untruth to nature, but a +blasphemy against the sacred love of man and woman. +</p> + +<p> +My friend, the biologist, and my acquaintance, the American poet and +philosopher, both seem to be unfortunately incomplete human beings. +The poet and philosopher does not know what any duffer knows, what +anybody who cares not only for animals but for ordinary folks that own +dogs cannot refrain from knowing. He is a man of cosmopolitan +experience and has surely been in the <i>Bois</i> more than once. In +the Garden of Acclimatation is a wonderful kennel; there are at least +fifteen kinds of dogs, each with his specific or sub-specific name +hung on his cage. If you had never seen a dog you could not walk about +that kennel five minutes without learning the names of a half-dozen +varieties (and without discovering in yourself a highly moral desire +to steal one or two of those beautifully kept beasts). Some ignorance +is unpardonable, and some philosophy and some poetry would be more +vital for a little plain back-yard knowledge. On the other hand, what +a pity it is that any man's sense of fact should be so strait as to +forbid entrance to his soul of a honey bee which Maeterlinck sends +forth equipped with these gorgeous unentomological wings of words: +"The yellow fairies of the honey." It's as bad as a democrat who +should object to the phrase "queen-bee." +</p> + +<p> +Maeterlinck has knowledge of nature, not only such knowledge as +Wordsworth had, but a fair acquaintance with contemporaneous science. +He has learned lessons from Fabre, whom he admires. He has studied his +own garden in the light of what botanists have told him and in the +other light, which is not hostile to botany, but is different, the +light of poetry. He loves to speculate about unsettled questions. And +his speculations have a very great intellectual merit. He is, on the +whole, content to be uncertain about uncertain things and to express +his inclinations toward one or another conclusion in a persuasive, +wistful manner. Like many other poets, he leans toward the belief that +nature, which includes us, knows more than we do, and that to ascribe +intelligence, in a restricting way, to man alone is probably to leave +out a good deal of the magic of growing things, and to omit some +potential explanations of their mystery, their mystery in the poet's +sense and in the stern truth seeker's sense. The essay on "The +Intelligence of Flowers" revivifies the old moot question about what +knowledge is, what instinct is. It's a very fine question, and it +becomes hottest when the men of imagination and the men of science +(happily they are not mutually exclusive) argue about whether a dog +knows that he loves you. A British poet began a verse to a dog: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The curate says you have no soul—.</p> +<p class="i2">I know that he has none.</p></div></div> + +<p> +That is good; but it is spiteful. Let us admit the curate. For the dog +would. A dog does not care a wag of his tail whether a man is curate +or editor of a newspaper. Therein the dog is our superior. +</p> + +<p> +Maeterlinck, though overtaken by the wan doubt of our times, is a +true believer in other kinds of intelligence than ours. He holds that +"nature, when she wishes to be beautiful, to please, to delight and +to prove herself happy, does almost what we should do had we her +treasures at our disposal." There, you see, he begs the whole +question and ascribes to "nature" wishes, desires, intentions. He +does the trick that poets always do; he answers the question that he +asks and that he pretends to be discussing. "All that we observe +within ourselves," he says, "is rightly open to suspicion; we are at +once litigant and judge, and we have too great an interest in +peopling our world with magnificent illusions and hopes. But let the +least external indication be dear and precious to us." +</p> + +<p> +In this the poet says all, while, on another page, the man of science, +with firm integrity, minimizes evidence and refuses to be convinced. +There is a region where the poet knows almost everything worth +knowing. There is a region where the man of science knows, not +everything worth knowing, but all that is known. There is a misty +mid-region where a full-minded, large-hearted man can live happily. He +gets the message going and coming. He receives what the poet has to +say and what the man of fact has to say and he constructs his world +from the fragmentary contributions of both regions. Maeterlinck +himself in "Our Eternity," dwells on this central ground. Shakespeare +and Isaiah are on his right hand. On his left hand are William James +and other psychological students of the evidence of spooks. +</p> + +<p> +Poets are enamored of death. Nine-tenths of all the imaginative +literature of the world is concerned with love and death, the begetter +and the extinguisher. The sweetest lines in Shakespeare deal with +love; the stateliest lines, Hamlet's and Macbeth's, are upon death. +The chief interest of life is in dying. We get our highest emotions +from some other person's death, and we adapt our entire course, from +the cradle to the grave, with a view to the fact that we are going to +quit in some year determined by fate or God or other power not quite +understood, a year carefully figured out by the actuaries of the life +insurance companies. +</p> + +<p> +Man is a perfect coward in the face of death, his own or that of +somebody he loves. The believer and the unbeliever alike bewail the +great adventure. The tears shed by the believer in immortality and by +the disbeliever are the same hot, saline, human drops. Everybody wants +an answer, and only the adherents of certain sects receive an answer +that satisfies them. Those answers do not satisfy me or you, not +because there is anything wrong in the answers, but because the people +that hold the answers behave as all the rest of us do in the presence +of death. Maeterlinck, on the basis of modern evidence, argues for +two-hundred and fifty-eight pages that we do not know what happens +when we die. "In any case, I would not wish my worst enemy, were his +understanding a thousand-fold loftier and a thousand-fold mightier +than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he +had surprised an essential secret and of which, as a man, he had begun +to grasp an atom." +</p> + +<p> +Amen! That leaves us where we started. But the fact, the cold, +interesting, magnificent fact, is that we are alive, and some of us +are working and some are playing. Maeterlinck is a great child playing +with flowers and with words. He is also a competent workman, and he is +assisted by another skilful craftsman to whom English readers owe +much, Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, who translates Maeterlinck +into English. He is a fine artist. Following faithfully the run of our +English idiom, he succeeds in keeping for our Anglo-Saxon eyes and +ears the color, tone, or whatever it is, of Maeterlinck's beautiful +style. +</p> + + + +<a name="7"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +JOSEPH CONRAD +</p> + + +<p> +To the newest generation of adult readers the dawn of a literary light +is a rare experience. It is as if the courses of our literature were +Arctic in their slowness, as if the day came at long intervals, and +then without warmth or brilliance. Our fathers knew the joy of +welcoming the latest novel of Dickens or a new volume of essays by +Carlyle. The only<a href="#note1_4" name="noteref1_4"> +<small>[1]</small></a> great day whose beginning young men have +witnessed is the day of Kipling; his light mounted rapidly to a high +noon, and if the afternoon shadows have begun to deepen prematurely, +that sun is still beautiful and strong. Other lights have kindled in +the last fifteen years, and have gone out before they had fairly +dislodged the darkness, or have continued to burn dimly. +</p> + +<p> +Eyes accustomed only to darkness and uncertain lights are in condition +to be deluded by the phantoms of false dawn; it is therefore unwise to +greet with too much enthusiasm the arrival of Mr. Joseph Conrad. Even +if the dawn is real, it is certainly overcast with heavy clouds, and +it has not proved bright enough to startle the world. Nevertheless, +his light is of unique beauty in contemporary literature, and the +story of its kindling makes interesting biography. +</p> + +<p> +Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski was born fifty years ago in Poland. His +father, a critic and poet, and his mother, who was exiled to Siberia, +were engaged in revolutionary journalism. At nineteen Conrad left +home, to escape an unsettled life, and also, it is fair to assume, to +satisfy his love of adventure. He found work on English vessels, and +this fact gave to contemporary English letters a man who might +otherwise have written in French. To-day he appears in hand-books of +biography as Master in the British Merchant Service, and Author. At +nineteen he had not mastered English; at thirty-eight he had published +no book. Since then he has published about a volume a year. In +preparation for his books he sailed as able seaman, mate, and master, +for twenty years, on steam and sailing craft, and meanwhile he was +reading deep in French and English literature,—all, we are told, with +no intent to become a writer. Indeed it was a period of ill health +resulting in an enforced idleness from the familiar sea that gave him +opportunity to put some of his adventures into words. Perhaps he is a +lesser illustration of a theory of Thoreau's that a word well said +"must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by +some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive +knight, after all." However that may be, the intellectual and physical +adventures of Conrad's life were abundant, and they reappear, +discernible though transfigured, in the substance and the qualities of +his work. +</p> + +<p> +His ten books are for the most part concerned with the waters of the +earth, and the men that sail on the face of the waters, and with +lands, far from English readers, to be reached only by long journeying +in ships.<a href="#note2_3" name="noteref2_3"> +<small>[2]</small></a> His first book, "Almayer's Folly," tells the story of a +disappointed Dutch trader in Borneo, whose half-caste daughter runs +away with a Malay chief. His second book, "An Outcast of the Islands," +deals further with the career of Almayer and with that of another +exiled Dutchman. "Nostromo," has for its scene an imaginary South +American state, and its heroes are an Englishman and an Italian. "The +Nigger of the Narcissus" (published in America as "The Children of the +Sea") and "Typhoon" are each the chronicle of a voyage. "Lord Jim" is +the story of a young mate who disgraces himself by one unseamanlike +act, and becomes a wanderer in the eastern islands, and finally a kind +of king in a village of savages. "Tales of Unrest" contains five +stories, two of which are about Malays, and another about white +traders in an African station. The hero of "Falk"—the title story of +a volume of three pieces—is a Scandinavian sailor who has been a +cannibal, and who wins the daughter of a German ship captain in an +Eastern port. "Youth," the first story in a volume of three, is the +memory of a young mate's voyage in an unseaworthy ship, which burns +and leaves the crew to seek an Eastern seaport in the boats. The +second story, "The Heart of Darkness," is an account of a journey into +the Belgian Congo State and a curious study of the effect of solitude +and the jungle and savagery on a white trader. The third piece in the +volume is the story of a ship-captain who steers his ship with the +help of a Malay servant and lets no one guess until the end that he is +blind. Of two books written in collaboration with Mr. Ford M. Hueffer, +the only one worth considering, "Romance," comes the nearest to being +the kind of fiction that the advertisements announce as "full of heart +interest, love, and the glamor of a charming hero and heroine." It +begins with a smuggler's escapade in England, and ends in an elopement +in the West Indies; the best parts, probably Mr. Conrad's share in the +work, are those about the sea and all that on it is, fogs, ships, and +bearded pirates. In these books are men and women of all civilized +nations, the acquaintance of a globe-trotter, and there are, besides, +enough Malays, Chinamen, and Negroes to make the choruses of several +comic operas. But in Conrad they are serious people, every Malay with +a soul and a tragedy; even the Nigger of the Narcissus is equipped +with psychological machinery. +</p> + +<p> +Conrad's subject-matter, the secretion of experience, is rich enough +and of sufficiently strange and romantic quality to endow a writer of +popular fiction; and his style,—that is, the use of words for their +melody, power, and charm,—is fit for a king of literature. Stevenson, +who found so little sheer good writing among his contemporaries, would +have welcomed Conrad and have lamented that he could not or would not +tell his stories in more brief, steady, and continuous fashion. +</p> + +<p> +For there is the rub. Conrad is not instinctively a story-teller. Many +a writer of less genius surpasses him in method. He has no gift of +what Lamb calls a bare narrative. +</p> + +<p> +There are writers with magnificent power of language who do not attain +that combination of literary and human qualities which is +readableness, and there are others who interest many people in many +generations, and yet do not write well. To most readers Dickens is as +delightful when he writes slovenly sentences as when he writes at his +best. Scott, the demigod, pours out his great romances in an +inexpressive fluid. On the other hand, Walter Pater writes infallibly +well. These illustrations are intended to suggest a difference which +is a fact in literature, and are not to be carried to any conclusive +comparison. The difference exists and it is not a strange fact. It is +strange, however, that Conrad, who spins yarns about the sea, master +of a kind of subject-matter that would make his books as popular as +"Robinson Crusoe" and "Treasure Island," should be one of those who +can write but cannot make an inevitably attractive and winning book +for the multitude. +</p> + +<p> +Either he knows his fault and can not help it, or he wills it and does +not consider it a fault. There is evidence on this question. Several +of his stories are put in the mouth of Marlow, an eloquent, +reflective, world-worn man. In one place Conrad says, "We knew that we +were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's +<i>inconclusive</i> experiences." The story Marlow tells is no more +inconclusive and rambling than most of the other stories, so that one +is forced to conclude that Marlow's character as narrator is Conrad's +concession to his own self-observed habit of mind. In another place +Conrad says: "The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole +meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow +was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to +him the meaning of an episode was not inside a kernel, but outside, +enveloping the tale which brought it out as a glow brings out a haze, +in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made +visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine." Evidently Conrad +prefers or pretends to prefer the haze to the kernel. +</p> + +<p> +In an essay on Henry James he openly scorns the methods usual to +fiction of "solution by rewards and punishments, by crowned love, by +fortune, by a broken leg or sudden death," and says: "Why the reading +public, which as a body has never laid upon the story-teller the +command to be an artist, should demand from him this sham of divine +omnipotence is utterly incomprehensible." Thus Mr. Conrad flings down +the gauntlet to those demands of readers which greater men than he and +Mr. James have been happy to satisfy without sacrifice of wisdom and +reality. +</p> + +<p> +A further announcement of his literary creed he made in a kind of +artistic confession published a few years ago. "His (the prose +writer's) answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks +for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, +amused, who demand to be promptly improved or encouraged, or +frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: 'My task which I am +trying to achieve is by the power of the written word to make you +hear, to make you feel—it is before all to make you see…. If I +succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, +encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand; perhaps also +that glimpse of truth<a href="#note3_3" name="noteref3_3"> +<small>[3]</small></a> for which you have forgotten to ask." +</p> + +<p> +A writer with ideals so high and strongly felt commits himself for +trial by exacting standards. It is necessary to remind Mr. Conrad that +if a reader is to feel, he must first understand; if he is to hear, he +must hear distinctly; and if he is to see, his eye must be drawn by +interest in the object, and it can look only in one direction at once. +"Nostromo" is told forward and backward in the first half of the book, +and the preliminary history of the silver mine is out of all +proportion to the story of Nostromo, the alleged hero of the book. +"Lord Jim" is confused.<a href="#note4_2" name="noteref4_2"> +<small>[4]</small></a> The first few chapters are narrated in the +third person by the author. Then for three hundred pages Marlow, a +more or less intimate spectator of Jim's career, tells the story as an +after-dinner yarn. It would have taken three evenings for Marlow to +get through the talk, and that talk in print involves quotation within +quotation beyond the legitimate uses of punctuation marks. In other +stories the point of view fails. In "The Nigger of the Narcissus" are +conferences between two people in private which no third person could +overhear, yet the narrative seems to be told in the first person by +one of the crew. In "Typhoon," where a steamer with deck almost +vertical is plunging through a storm, we are on the bridge beside the +simple dogged captain while he shouts orders down to the engine-room +through the tube. Without warning we are down in the engine-room, +hearing the captain's voice from above, and as suddenly we are back on +the bridge again. A man crawls across the deck in a tempest so black +that he cannot see whose legs he is groping at. We are immediately +informed that he is a man of fifty, with coarse hair, of immense +strength, with great lumpy hands, a hoarse voice, easy-going and +good-natured,—as if the man were visible at all, except as a blot in +the darkness! +</p> + +<p> +Conrad has a mania for description. When anything is mentioned in the +course of narrative, though it be a thousand miles from the present +scene, it must be described. Each description creates a new scene, and +when descriptions of different and separated places appear on the same +page, the illusion of events happening before the eye is destroyed. If +a writer is to transport us instantaneously from one quarter of the +globe to another he should at least apprise us that we are on the +magic rug, and even then the space-o'erleaping imagination resents +being bundled off on hurried and inconsequential journeys. Often when +Conrad's descriptions are logically in course, they are too long; the +current of narrative vanishes under a mountain (a mountain of gold, +perhaps, but difficult to the feet of him who would follow the +stream); and when the subterranean river emerges again, it is +frequently obstructed by inopportune, though subtle, exposition. +</p> + +<p> +Conrad's propensity for exposition is allied, no doubt, with his +admiration for Mr. Henry James, of whom he has written an extremely +"literary" appreciation. Too much interest in masters like Flaubert +and Mr. James is not gentlemanly in a sailor, and it cannot help a +sailor turned writer, who pilots a ship through a magnificent struggle +with a typhoon, leads us into the bewitching terror of the African +jungle, and guides us to Malay lands where the days are full of savage +love, intrigue, suicide, murder, piracy, and all forms of picturesque +and terrific death. Mr. Conrad finds that there are "adventures in +which only choice souls are involved, and Mr. James records them with +a fearless and insistent fidelity to the <i>péripéties</i> of the +contest and the feelings of the combatants." That is true and fine, no +doubt, but the price which Mr. Conrad pays for his ability to discover +it is the fact that hundreds of thousands of readers of good masculine +romance are not reading "Lord Jim," or finding new "Youth" in a young +mate's wondrous vision of the East, or welcoming a new hero in Captain +Whalley. A man who can conceive the mournful tale of Karain and the +fight between the half crazy white men at an African trading post has +a kind of adventure better, as adventure, than the experiences of Mr. +James's choice souls. Stevenson knew all about Mr. James and his +"péripéties," but he could stow that knowledge on one side of his +head, and from the other side spin "Treasure Island" and "The +Wrecker". "The Sacred Fount" never could have befuddled the chronicle +of the amiable John Silver, but in Mr. Conrad's "An Outcast of the +Islands," where it seems to be a question which white man will kill +the other, after a dramatic meet-in the presence of a Malay heroine, +each man stands still before our eyes and radiates states of mind. +</p> + +<p> +The lover who finds fault with his sweetheart because he is so proud +of her is perfectly human and also perfectly logical. So my reason for +dwelling on Mr. Conrad's shortcomings is because his books are +thoroughly worth consideration. His advent is really important. More +than any other new writer he is master of the ancient eloquence of +English style; no one since Stevenson has surpassed in fiction the +cadence and distinction of his prose. Never has an English sailor +written so beautifully, never has artist had such full and +authoritative knowledge of the sea, not even Pierre Loti. Stevenson +and Kipling are but observant landsmen after all. Marryat and Clark +Russell never write well, though they tell absorbing tales. There was +promise in Jack London, but he was not a seaman at heart. Herman +Melville's eccentric genius, greater than any of these, never led him +to construct a work of art, for all his amazing power of thought and +language. Conrad stands alone with his two gifts of sea experience and +cultivation of style. He has lived on the sea, loved it, fought it, +believed in it, been baffled by it, body and mind. To know its ways, +to be master of the science of its winds and waves and the ships that +brave it, to have seen men and events and the lands and waters of the +earth with the eye of a sailor, the heart of a poet, the mind of a +psychologist—artist and ship-captain in one—here is a combination +through which Fate has conspired to produce a new writer about the +most wonderful of all things, the sea and the mysterious lands beyond +it. +</p> + +<p> +If we grant that he is not master of the larger units of style, that +is, of construction, we can assert that in the lesser units, sentence +for sentence, he is a master of the English tongue. There is a story +that he learned English first from the Bible, and his vigorous primal +usages of words, his racial idioms and ancient rich metaphors warrant +the idea that he came to us along the old highway of English speech +and thought, the King James version. His sentences, however, are not +biblical as Stevenson's and Kipling's often are, but show a modern +sophistication and intellectual deliberateness. He frequently reminds +us that he is a Slav who learned French along with his native tongue, +that he has read Flaubert and Maupassant and Henry James. Approaching +our language as an adult foreigner, he goes deep to the derivative +meanings of words, their powerful first intentions, which familiarity +has disguised from most of us native-born to English. He has achieved +that ring and fluency which he has declared should be the artist's +aim. Conrad's prose lifts to passages of great poetic beauty, in which +the color of the sea, its emotional aspects, its desolation and its +blitheness, are mingled with its meaning for the men who sail it, its +"austere servitude," its friendliness and its treachery. +</p> + +<p> +"The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and +swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in +an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, +ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always +imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with +life, appeared far off,—disappeared, intent on its own destiny…. +The august loneliness of her path lent dignity to the sordid +inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as +if guided by the courage of a high endeavor. The smiling greatness of +the sea dwarfed the extent of time." +</p> + +<p> +No fairer temptation can be offered to a reader who does not know +Conrad than to quote a passage from the end of "Youth," and no more +honest praise can be offered to Conrad than to say that it is a +selected, but by no means unique, specimen of his genius. +</p> + +<p> +A crew that have left a burning ship in boats find an Eastern port at +night. The weary men tie to the jetty and go to sleep. This is the +young mate's narrative years after, the narrative of the reflective +and eloquent Marlow: "I was lying in a flood of light, and the sky had +never looked so far, so high, before. I opened my eyes and lay without +moving. And then I saw the men of the East—they were looking at me. +The whole length of the jetty was full of people. I saw brown, bronze, +yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the color of an Eastern +crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without a sigh, +without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men +who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved. The fronds +of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the +shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green +foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like +leaves forged of heavy metal. This was the East of the navigators, so +old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full +of danger and promise…. I have known its fascinations since: I have +seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown +nations, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so +many of the conquering race, who are proud of their wisdom, of their +knowledge, of their strength. But for me all the East is contained in +that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my +young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was +young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that it left of it! +Only a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour, of youth!" +</p> + +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> + +<a name="note1_4"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_4">[1]</a> I ask the reader to remember that this was written in +1906.</p> + +<a name="note2_3"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref2_3">[2]</a></p> +<ul> +<li>Almayer's Folly. The Macmillan Co. 1895.</li> +<li>An Outcast of the Islands. Tauchnitz. 1896.</li> +<li>The Nigger of the Narcissus (Children of the Sea). Dodd, Mead & Co. 1897.</li> +<li>Tales of Unrest. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1898.</li> +<li>Lord Jim. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1899.</li> +<li>The Inheritors (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. 1901.</li> +<li>Typhoon. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1902.</li> +<li>Falk. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903.</li> +<li>Youth. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903.</li> +<li>Romance (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. 1904.</li> +<li>Nostromo. Harper & Brothers. 1904.</li> +</ul> + +<a name="note3_3"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref3_3">[3]</a> These Slavs (see above on Tolstoy) are all for Truth, but +they are not Chadbandians. They are artists. And so was the +Anglo-Saxon who made Chadband.</p> + +<a name="note4_2"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref4_2">[4]</a> No, it is not. It is clear as daylight.</p> + + + +<a name="8"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +A CONRAD MISCELLANY +</p> + + +<p> +Nothing that Joseph Conrad writes is negligible; he is one of few +living writers whom we must have complete to the last, or the latest, +published word. Readers who care only for the yarn-spinner will not +find much in his volume of essays, "Notes on Life and Letters," but +even they will find something. And for those to whom Conrad is more +than a story teller, an incomparable magician, these small bits from +his laboratory will have much of the charm of the larger pieces, if +only the reminiscent charm that brings any book of his, the least read +or read longest ago, swiftly to the surface of memory. If a mere +landlubber may hazard the similitude, the captain will always show his +qualities whether he is on the bridge of a liner or in a rowboat. +</p> + +<p> +The essays on books are unpretentious notes—eight pages on Henry +James, seven on Maupassant, twelve on Anatole France, short excursions +in criticism made between the longer voyages to the islands of the +blessed. Like most criticism written by men of genius, these papers +are interesting for what they say about another man of genius and also +for what they say about the critic. One of the most satisfactory +essays in what it reveals of Conrad is least satisfactory as objective +criticism—the one about Marryat and Cooper, in which there is a +declaration of descent in terms of surrender. To be sure, since the +elder men are seamen and writers of the sea, Conrad's delight in them +is understandable and not to be denied. But there are some things that +must be denied even by a critic who gets seasick a mile off shore. One +is Conrad's reiterated judgment that the greatness of Marryat "is +undeniable." If Marryat is great, then so is Oliver Optic. And when +Conrad speaks of the "sureness and felicity of effect" of the prose of +Cooper—Cooper, whose style grates on the ear and who drags us by the +sheer power of his story through his verbal infelicities—then I jump +overboard and leave these literary sailors to fight it out. +</p> + +<p> +When we get back on land to another of Conrad's masters, Guy de +Maupassant, I feel less shaky. In "Tales of Unrest" are two stories, +"The Return" and "The Idiots," in which I long ago thought I +discovered the right kind of influence from the French master—what +Conrad praises as Maupassant's austere fidelity to fact. Yet one is +puzzled by the implied praise in the very dubious statement that "this +creative artist [Maupassant] has the true imagination; he never +condescends to invent anything." Just what does that mean? If "A Piece +of String" and "The Necklace" are not diabolically ingenious +inventions, then the word invention means nothing as applied to +fiction. In point of invention how far apart are the story of the +girls in "La Maison Tellier" and the story of the girl in the pathetic +troupe in "Victory"? Both stories are equally invented, equally true +to nature, equally free from "the miserable vanity of a catching +phrase." But what is a catching phrase? I suppose that a Frenchman +gets somewhat the same shiver of delight from fine rhythms in +Maupassant's prose that we get from fine rhythms in Conrad. Both +men—I could quote many examples—strike out amazing metaphors, the +poetry of prose, which are not decorations hung on the outside but are +the unremovable intestines of their story. Such metaphors in rhythm +are surely "catching phrases," but they are not miserable vanities. I +wonder if Conrad has a moment now and then when he distrusts his own +eloquence—an eloquence which has brought against him from more than +one critic the charge of being a phrase maker. +</p> + +<p> +Conrad's prose is not so hard and compact as Maupassant's, and except +the two short stories I have mentioned I recall nothing in Conrad +which in manner or substance obviously illustrates his own statement +that he has been "inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with +the work" of Maupassant. His greatest short stories, "Youth" and "The +Heart of Darkness," seem worlds away from the French master. But +inspiration, the influence of one artist on another, does not mean +imitation in method or any visible resemblance in effect. It may mean +a fundamental similarity in artistic attitude. The elements of +similarity between the French writer and the British are the plain +virtues, honesty and courage, which Conrad rightly ascribes to +Maupassant; for these are the central virtues in the creed which +Conrad announced many years ago and to which he has loyally adhered in +the remotest strange seas of romance. +</p> + +<p> +Another of Conrad's masters, acknowledged in the phrase "twenty years +of attentive acquaintance" (and the phrase was written in 1905) is +Henry James. This seems a curious discipleship if we consider only the +material: James static, land-bound, class-bound; Conrad adventurous, +errant, familiar with all breeds and degrees of men. But much the same +thing happens to both kinds of material. For in the first place the +material is not essentially different; it is the history of a +two-legged animal staggering on land or aboard ship. And in the second +place what happens is simply (though it is not so simple) that an +artist tries to put this animal steady on its feet and make it give a +reasonable account of itself—through himself. It gets transmitted +through an intelligence, a personality, a style, into something more +interesting than the actual poor creature who wabbles along the street +or on the deck of a steamer. The courageous interpreters make their +fellow men stand up, and the real hero of a romance is the romancer. +</p> + +<p> +This is one of the paradoxes of fiction which the mere reader of +fiction and of criticism written by masters of fiction can enjoy, that +the modern self-conscious story tellers, forever proclaiming their +devotion to an objective reality, to the naked fact, and even, like +Conrad, pretending scorn of the phrase, are wilful persons who distort +life into a new reality. There is something almost naïve in the honest +belief of Tolstoy, James, Conrad, that nature, human nature, is +something outside the artist, lying <i>over there</i>, and that the +artist standing <i>over here</i> observes it, renders it, "mirrors" +it. James himself, a most sophisticated realist, was not always so +insistent as Conrad seems to think on the function of the novelist as +historian; some years later than Conrad's essay, James found fault +with the younger novelists because their work was too undigested, +because it was not sufficiently remade, transformed by an individual +interpreter—that is, though he did not say it so harshly, the younger +men were not interesting individuals, not men of first-rate +imagination. +</p> + +<p> +But we must not get too far away from Conrad and his particular +relation to James. He has a generously envious admiration for James's +inconclusiveness, for the novel that stops but does not end because +life does not end; it seems to be, like his admiration for +Maupassant's accuracy and directness, a declaration of something that +he has striven for and not always accomplished. Conrad winds his own +stories up pretty sharply, wipes out his people with annihilation more +desolating than the conventional piling of corpses at the end of +"Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet." Recall the obliterating finality of +"Lord Jim," of "Victory," which ends with the blank word "nothing." +Or, where death does not conclude it all but the character lives on, +remember the abrupt inevitable termination of "The Rescue": "Steer +north!" Another relation which I have suggested and which Conrad as +critic does not hint is this: Conrad's material, though superficially +it is made up of adventure, wreck, blood, piracy, mystery, and +Stevensonian yo-heave-ho, is, as he treats it, often as static as +anything in James; it is stationary, concerned with the moods of men, +analytic, psychological (that tiresome word has to do for it), even +while the storm rages; and this is one of the reasons why readers with +a taste for ripping yarns have not welcomed him with the unanimous +popularity which they accorded to Stevenson and Kipling, to name fine +artists and not, of course, to mention cheap favorites. If we really +understood Conrad's fiction we have no difficulty in understanding his +filial relation to Henry James. Begin with the paragraph on page 13 of +"Notes on Life and Letters:" "Action in its essence, the creative art +of the writer of fiction," etc., and see if the rest that follows is +not, with a change or two, as good an account of Joseph Conrad as of +Henry James—better, indeed, since one master of fiction writing of +another speaks with two voices or with a voice proceeding from a +two-fold authority and wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +Joseph Conrad, novelist, child of English and Continental literature, +is not more unaccountable than any other literary genius. But how to +explain, or even remember at all, that the head of living English men +of letters, next to Hardy, is a Pole named Korzeniowski? It is fair to +remember that and be inquisitive about it because in "Notes on Life +and Letters" he pretends to write autobiography, and reminds us of his +origin in a paper called "Poland Revisited." It is a baffling +narrative, even more baffling than the vague book which he chose to +call "A Personal Record." Conrad in quest of his youth never gets back +to Poland at all except as a British tourist. The paper consists of +thirty-two pages. Mr. Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski reaches Cracow on the +twenty-fourth page. There are two or three pages of reminiscence, +chiefly about his father's death. Then war is declared (this is in +1914), and the British subject, with the assistance of the American +Ambassador, escapes from Poland and amid the booming of distant guns +in Flanders sails safely back through the Downs "thick with the +memories of my sea-life." +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Conrad is the least patriotic of Poles and the most patriotic of +Englishmen. His political opinions, which he was evidently invited to +express by some English editor who remembered the fading fact of +Korzeniowski and appreciated the luminous fact of Joseph Conrad, the +writer, are no better and no worse than any competent journalist might +have delivered. His hatred of Russia, expressed long before his +adopted country became the ally of the Czar, may have its origin in +some boyhood bitterness. But it is an Englishman who speaks, not a +Pole. His prophecy of the downfall of Russian autocracy and of the +menace of Prussianism shoots into the future with as true an aim as +any man could have had in 1905, and a prophet is to be excused for +having said at that time that there was in Russia "no ground ready for +a revolution." "Conrad political" is less interesting than "Conrad +controversial," since his controversial utterances were provoked by +the sinking of the Titanic, the question of the safety of ships, and +the stupidity of marine officials on land, subjects which he can +discuss with the cool knowledge of the expert and the vehemence of an +offended master of ships and words. +</p> + +<p> +But the true men of the four into which in his preface he divides +himself are "Conrad literary" and "Conrad reminiscent." The +reminiscence is not of a dimly, even indifferently, remembered Poland, +but of England and the sea. On the twenty-four-page journey to the +five-page sojourn in Cracow what happens? London, flashed on you in a +few sentences with an original vividness as if Englishmen had never +described it before, realized in brief transit, an immense solid +thing, compared to which Cracow is an insubstantial dream. He cannot +recapture his boyhood, but he gives you instantly the London of to-day +and the London of his youth when the British-Polish apprentice was +looking for a berth. And then the voyage across the North Sea. Here we +are at home. "The same old thing," he says. "A grey-green expanse of +smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-ridges, and over +all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of wet blotting +paper." +</p> + +<p> +"The same old thing!" The sea is the same old thing, water deep and +shoal, storm and calm, fog and clear weather, light and darkness, +starshine and sunshine. It is understandable that from time to time a +new poet should be born, Byron, Tennyson, Swinburne, Whitman, Conrad, +Masefield, who, being a different man from all the rest, should phrase +some mood of the sea in words that no other poet in centuries had +used. But Conrad has written fifteen volumes mostly about the sea, +many pages necessarily about some aspect which he has treated more +than once. His treatment is so unmistakably his own that you could +recognize any passage as his if you saw it on a piece of torn paper +blown from nowhere. Yet it is truer of him than of Shakespeare that he +never repeats, has no <i>clichés</i>, no pet phrases, but in each book +finds astonishing new images, as if he himself had not written before. +How does he do it? +</p> + + + +<a name="9"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +STRINDBERG +</p> + + +<p> +Some men of genius at forty or fifty arrive at a view of life, an +attitude toward the human comedy, as inclusive and definite as it is +possible for them to conceive. Hardy at seventy is quite recognizable +the man that he was at forty. The Meredith of 1860 is the Meredith of +1890. They grow, they improve or change their artistic methods. But +their natures do not undergo violent revolutions. Other men, Tolstoy +for example, experience a catastrophic annihilation of some part of +themselves and emerge from the confusion, remade, fired with new +beliefs. Tolstoy had one great battle with himself which divided his +life into two main periods, and after the struggle his philosophy, +whatever its worth, was fairly settled, and he knew how to express it +clearly over and over again. +</p> + +<p> +Strindberg seems to have been continuously at war with Strindberg; and +the peace that he found was but the death-bed repentance of a man +whose forces were spent. He went through many phases. "The Growth of a +Soul", which is autobiographical, might better be called "The +Conflicts of a Soul". It seethes with ideas, ends in a half-formed +philosophy, and is only a section of Strindberg's intellectual +adventures. He was ten men at ten different times, and he was ten men +all the time. He expressed every aspect of himself. His manifold +genius was master of all forms of literature. As Emerson said of +Swedenborg, in whom Strindberg found all the light that his dark soul +ever knew, he lies abroad on his times, leviathan-like. Undoubtedly to +know him, one must know him entire, and I do not pretend to complete +knowledge of his life and works. +</p> + +<p> +Some fragments of his total artistic expression are not intelligible +when they are read apart from his other books. "The Inferno" is a +confused and murky nightmare which takes on form and purpose only when +the light of biography is turned on it. Other works of Strindberg, +read by themselves, are clear and shapely. +</p> + +<p> +"By the Open Sea" is an intensely powerful study of an overcultivated +man and a primitively passionate woman. It is, moreover, the work of a +poet who loves the sea. The passage in which the ichthyologist +observes through his telescope the wonder-world beneath the surface of +the water is rich with the essential poetry of natural fact. The +translator, Ellie Schleussner, would probably say, as Strindberg's +admirers all say, that his resonant poetic prose cannot be rendered in +another language. Yet the things that he sees in nature and his +interpretations of them are in their naked substance the imaginative +stuff which is poetry. This Titan was not content to be poet, +novelist, dramatist, essayist, philosopher. He was also a man of +science, no mean rival, they say, of the professional student of +biology and chemistry. The eye that looks through Borg's telescope has +been trained in a laboratory and can also roll with a fine frenzy: +</p> + +<p> +"The blenny, which has developed a pair of oars in front, but is too +heavy in the stern and reminds one of first attempts at boat building, +raised its architectural stone head, adorned with the moustachios of a +Croat, above the heraldic foliage among which it had lain, and lifted +itself for a short moment out of the mud only to sink back into it the +next instant. +</p> + +<p> +"The lump-fish with its seven backs stuck up its keel; the whole fish +was nothing but an enormous nose, scenting out food and females; it +illuminated for a second the bluish-green water with its rosy belly, +surrounding itself with a faint aureole in the deep darkness; but +before long its sucker again held safely to a stone, there to wait the +lapse of the million years which shall bring delivery to the laggards +on the endless road of evolution." +</p> + +<p> +Strindberg has been called both misogamist and misogynist. Yet it is +not possible to collect and compress within the bounds of such +definite words a man whose ideas on any one subject fly far apart as +the poles. If he sometimes, often, expresses virulent detestation of +women and all their ways, he is not more tender toward men. He is not +a caresser of life. He hangs the whole human race. But he analyzes; +tries it before the twelve-minded jury in himself before he pronounces +sentence. Point by point, detail for detail, he is just in perception +of character and motive. His final view is simply not final, but +contradictory as life itself. He thinks that woman is a snare to the +feet of a man who would walk upright and accomplish something in the +world. Yet he believes in the freedom of woman, would give her the +vote, and emancipate her from economic bondage to the man. He even +champions the liberty of the child, condemns "the family as a social +institution which does not permit the child to become an individual at +the proper time," and draws both parents as victims of "the same +unfortunate conditions which are honored by the sacred name of law." +</p> + +<p> +"Marriage" contains twenty short stories of married life, so many +variations of Strindberg's thesis against the institution. So +regarded, the book leaves one rather sore than enlightened. But these +stories are stories, not tracts. Strindberg is a great, if rough and +savage, artist. His opinions, whatever they are, do not devitalize his +fiction. His short narratives are as skilful as Maupassant's in at +least one respect, compression, sinewy economy. He can put in ten +pages the domestic tragedy of a lifetime. He is a fine or, rather, a +firm craftsman, and though the man rages, the artist has the artist's +restraint and every other literary virtue short of ultimate beauty. He +sets down terrible things with a cool succinctness. One story ends +thus: "The children had become burdens and the once beloved wife a +secret enemy despised and despising him. And the cause of all this +unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the large storehouses of the +new world were breaking down under the weight of an over-abundant +supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions! The manner in which +bread was distributed must be at fault. Science, which has replaced +religion, has no answer to give; it merely states facts and allows the +children to die of hunger and the parents of thirst." +</p> + +<p> +"The Red Room" is a satire on life in Stockholm, on life everywhere. +The pathetic struggle of the artistic and literary career, its follies +and pretenses, the fatuity of politics, the dishonesty of journalism, +the disillusion that awaits the aspiring actor, all these things run +riot through the lively pages. Strindberg's satire is severe, it is +sometimes hard, but it is not mean. He has a large if rather distant +sympathy for the poor fellows whose aspirations, failures, +dissipations, and friendships he portrays. Of two young critics he +says: "And they wrote of human merit and human unworthiness and broke +hearts as if they were breaking egg-shells." He writes of their +unconscious inhumanity and blindness in a way that reveals his own +clearness of vision and fundamental humanity. The laughter of a somber +humorist has in it a tenderness unknown to merry natures. +</p> + +<p> +The dramatic and literary critic may profitably read the chapter +called "Checkmate," in which the young journalist is made to say: "The +public does not want to have an opinion, it wants to satisfy its +passions. If I praise your enemy you writhe like a worm and tell me +that I have no judgment; if I praise your friend, you tell me that I +have. Take that last piece of the Dramatic Theatre, Fatty, which has +just been published in book form…. It's quite safe to say that there +isn't enough action in it: that's a phrase the public knows well; +laugh a little at the 'beautiful language'; that's good, old +disparaging praise; then attack the management for having accepted +such a play and point out that the moral teaching is doubtful—a very +safe thing to say about most things." +</p> + +<p> +Strindberg's imagination visualized and dramatized everything. He made +plays of an astonishing variety of ideas ranging from wild poetic +fantasy to grim realism—a range as great as Ibsen's and greater than +Hauptmann's. +</p> + +<p> +Glance at those in the third volume of Mr. Björkman's translations, +not to analyze them but merely to note their diversity. "Swanwhite" is +a fairy fantasy of love, confessedly inspired by Maeterlinck, yet in +no sense an imitation of him. "Advent" is a Christmas miracle play, +which embodies a gentle sermon on the forgiveness of sins—a strange +sermon from the man who wrote the last chapter of "By the Open Sea!" +"Debit and Credit" is a realistic sketch portraying the man who +succeeds at the expense of other people. "The Thunderstorm" plays upon +an old theme, one that Strindberg knew by experience, the failure of +marriage between an elderly man and a young woman. It ends rather +serenely for Strindberg, whose last years were not peaceful: "It's +getting dark, but then comes reason to light us with its bull's-eyes, +so that we don't go astray…. Close the windows and pull down the +shades so that all memories can lie down and sleep in peace of old +age." +</p> + +<p> +In "After the Fire" the vanity and dishonesty of petty people are +ruthlessly exposed. The Stranger who finds all reputations to have +been based on sham and all pride founded on wind, is said to be +Strindberg himself. "Vanity, vanity…. You tiny earth; you, the +densest and heaviest of all planets—that's what makes everything on +you so heavy—so heavy to breathe, so heavy to carry. The cross is +your symbol, but it might just as well have been a fool's cap or a +strait-jacket—you world of delusions and deluded!" +</p> + + + +<a name="10"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +TAGORE +</p> + + +<p> +Sometimes the world, or a section of it, goes wildly cheering after a +prophet; and a stranger, watching the multitude, wonders wherein lies +the greatness of the great man. The sceptic may be too ignorant to +understand or he may be too clear-sighted to be deceived. Not many +years ago the tom-tom of the Nobel Prize beat before the tent of the +modest and inoffensive Hindoo poet, Rabindranath Tagore. English +critics and poets of first-rate authority have called him wonderful. +For all I know he may be wonderful, for I have not read all his work +in English and I am not well acquainted with Bengali. But I submit +that in "The Crescent Moon" and "The Gardener," there is not one great +line, not one poem that is arresting, compelling, memorable. Moreover, +there is much that is false and weak. +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!</p> +<p>O Farthest End, O the keen call of thy flute!</p></div></div> + +<p> +Now that may do in India, but in our part of the world it is feeble +orchestration. The poets of the Bible and English poets since the days +of the Elizabethan translation have equipped the celestial choirs with +more sounding instruments. One cannot without a smile consider the far +end of the cosmos playing a flute or a piccolo. Harken to how a +supreme poet makes music worthy of the wide spaces: +</p> + + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>But thou dost set in statelier pageantry,</p> +<p class="i2">Lauded with tumults of the firmament;</p> +<p>Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky,</p> +<p class="i2">Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident,</p> +<p>Thou dost thy dying so triumphally;</p> +<p class="i2">I see the crimson blaring of thy shawms.</p></div></div> + +<p> +This is from Francis Thompson's "Ode to the Setting Sun." You see the +difference. Thompson's lines are poetry. Tagore's simply are not. +</p> + +<p> +Miss May Sinclair, herself a distinguished artist, says that Mr. +Tagore's translation of his Bengali poetry into English "preserves, +not only all that is essential and eternal in his poetry, but much of +the strange music." That may be so, but how does Miss Sinclair know +that? Does she understand Bengali? Does she read it and speak it well +enough to be sure that Mr. Tagore has translated himself adequately? +Is not she affording an instance of criticism that in an excess of +enthusiasm runs beyond its own knowledge? Some of Tagore's lines are +mildly sweet, and there are some pretty fancies in the Child-Poems. +The poem in "The Gardener," which begins: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Why do you whisper so faintly in my ears, O + Death, my Death? +</p></div> + +<p> +would be faintly impressive if Walt Whitman had never lived. +</p> + +<p> +Not only are Tagore's lines not great but some of his lines are +foolish: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Under the banyan tree you were milking the cow with your hands, + tender and fresh as butter. +</p></div> + +<p> +Perhaps Mr. Tagore did not know that in English "butter fingers" +greasily signifies manual ineptitude. I can not take that line +seriously, nor understand how Tagore has become one of England's +acknowledged poets. He distorts nature with pathetic fallacies which +have not verbal splendor to carry them, as the verbal splendor of +Shakespeare, Shelley, and Thompson often carries a metaphor that, so +to speak, will not hold water. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was + hiding its last gold like a miser. +</p></div> + +<p> +The sunset is not in the least like a miser; and a true lover and +observer of nature would not allow himself such a niggardly fallacious +image. Are not our friends, the poets and critics, victims of the +spell which odd things out of the East put on our occidental minds, +the spell that makes some people run after queer preachers and +philosophers who talk religion through their turbans? +</p> + +<p> +One is reminded that Mr., or Sir Owen Seaman has in his delicious book +of parodies, "The Battle of the Bays", an Edwin-Arnoldy thing that +runs like this: +</p> + + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The bulbul hummeth like a book</p> +<p class="i2">Upon the pooh-pooh tree,</p> +<p>And now and then he takes a look</p> +<p class="i2">At you and me,</p> +<p>At me and you.</p> +<p class="i2">Kuchi! Kuchoo!</p></div></div> + +<p> +It is, I confess, sheer perversity that made that stanza come into my +head while I was reading Tagore. Tagore does not rhyme; he puts his +verses into simple prose, most of which is pleasant enough, but none +of which is rich in thought or magnificent in phrase. +</p> + +<p> +Tagore is a faker in the English sense of the word. I do not know what +he is in Hindoo. He gives lectures in America to audiences that are, +of course, mostly women. Then when he has got all the money he can get +from them (for his schools; he is not selfish) he tells them as a +Parthian shot that they are idle. If they were not, the poor ignorant +dears, he would not have had any audiences or any money. It is caddish +to kick the cow that gives the milk. I should rejoice if he took +millions from the idle ladies of America to help the ladies of India +and to free India from the British murderer and thief. Spoiling the +Egyptians is a good game. But it is not playing the game like a man +and a philosopher to bite the hand that feeds you. +</p> + +<p> +And it is not manly or philosophic to kiss the hand that strikes you. +Tagore with a feeble gesture relinquishes his British title as a +protest against British crime in India. If he had been a real +philosopher and a true patriot he would not have accepted the title in +the first place. The lost leader who sticks a riband in his coat does +not recover leadership by throwing the riband away. The political and +social beliefs of poets, even of Dante and Shelley and Hugo, are of +less importance than their sense of beauty. But there is a connection, +not quite impertinent to a purely literary discussion, between the +quality of a poet's work and his character as it is expressed when he +descends from Parnassus and uses the prose of politicians. It is not +surprising that Tagore, who babbles to American chautauquas and allows +an English king to tap him on the shoulder, should be a weak and +stammering poet. That voice from the east is not impressive. If it is +the best that modern India can do, then India is done for +intellectually as well as economically. +</p> + + + +<a name="11"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +REMY DE GOURMONT +</p> + + +<p> +In "Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas,"<a href="#note1_5" name="noteref1_5"> +<small>[1]</small></a> Mr. +William Aspenwall Bradley has made an excellent selection from the +work of Remy de Gourmont; one only regrets that space did not permit +him to give us more. He has a gift unfortunately rare among +translators: he knows his original and he knows how to write the +language into which he translates. He even corrects his master in one +place: where de Gourmont, stumbling in a language which he has not +quite mastered, writes that the English words, "sweet," and "sweat," +are <i>mots de prononciation identique</i>, Mr. Bradley gently wipes +out the blunder with "words which resemble each other." Not that de +Gourmont, with his enormous knowledge, made many such mistakes! I +merely note the care and delicacy of the translator. +</p> + +<p> +Without pretending too much to the wisdom which should have ensued, I +remember like a shock of light, as if a blind man had suddenly gained +his vision, my introduction, a few years ago, to the work of de +Gourmont (for which my thanks are due to Mr. Martin Loeffler, who is a +distinguished musician and only potentially a man of letters). If you +wish to have your darkness illuminated, associate with the wise. If +you are groping in a foreign literature, the first man to meet is the +critic. The little I know about France of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries I owe to having clung to the broad and often +elusive coat-tails of Sainte-Beuve. As a guide to the nineteenth +century and much else beside—back to Rome and Greece—the most +stimulating cicerone is Remy de Gourmont. +</p> + +<p> +When he was born, the gods went crazy and put into one person an elf +and a sage, Ariel and Prospero, Morgan and Merlin. It is no uncommon +thing when you are reading a French book, by an author with whose work +you are not familiar, to find facing the title-page a list of books +<i>du même auteur</i> and to discover that he has published something +in all the main divisions of imaginative literature, plays, poems, +romances, criticism. It takes a Frenchman to box the literary compass. +He assumes that the business of a writer is to write, and he learns +and practises all the forms, with varying degrees of success, to be +sure, just as a musician, trying all forms, may be at his best in +songs or quartettes for strings or symphonies or operas. +</p> + +<p> +De Gourmont played every instrument in the band and played it well. +His range and versatility are remarkable even for a Frenchman. He took +all knowledge for his province. In spreading his interests wide he +never became thin; even when he played on the surface of an idea he +somehow, in a page or two, showed the depth of mind and matter +underneath. He was, as his American publishers say, poet, critic, +dramatist, scholar, biologist, philosopher, novelist, philologist, and +grammarian. He was an experimenter and explorer. When he died, just +under sixty, he was still looking round with his keen roaming eye, and +he was looking sadly, for the war, according to his brother Jean, who +writes not sentimentally but like a de Gourmont, killed him. +</p> + +<p> +Even the colossal, universal genius, the Hugo, the Goethe, can not be +supreme in every realm of thought, in every type of literary +expression. De Gourmont's poetry, to my ignorant alien ear, is not +among the best in that prolific and still living period of French +poetry which he as critic did so much to encourage. As for de +Gourmont's fiction, "Une Nuit au Luxembourg," which he might have +tossed with a wink into the lap of Anatole France, does not greatly +enrich French fiction, which is already rich in similar achievements. +"Couleurs" consists of delightful twittings on ideas, and surely is +not greatly important in a nation where one man of letters out of four +has mastered the art of the <i>conte</i>. +</p> + +<p> +De Gourmont is supremely the critic, the man who digests, interprets, +reorganizes the thoughts of other men and in the process adds to those +thoughts. His favorite method of reorganization is disorganization, +"dissociation" (and by the way, that word is good in English, as in +French, and better than Mr. Bradley's "disassociation"). He pulls +ideas to pieces and skilfully puts them together again. He is an +analyst, a dissector. But the flowers of the garden are not all +plucked to shreds and scattered on the paths, nor are they all taken +to the laboratory and subjected to the microscope. De Gourmont is +interested in things living and in propagating life. "<i>Toutes nos +fleurs sont fraîches, jeunes et pleines d'amour.</i>" He surveys +wildernesses and lays out gardens. No other man was ever blessed with +such a combination of the safe, sane, intellectually comfortable and +the restless, daring, venturesome. +</p> + +<p> +He loves paradoxes because life is full of contradictions, and his +paradoxes are often elucidations and conciliations of conflicting +ideas, never the cheap and facile paradoxes of a Chesterton. Is +Mallarmé obscure? There is never absolute, literal obscurity in an +honestly written work. Besides, there are too few obscure writers in +French. This from a Frenchman whose own writing is a marvel of clarity +even when he is handling subtle and difficult ideas! Moreover, de +Gourmont's essays on language and style are studies in precision, in +definition. +</p> + +<p> +De Gourmont is a wise man, who, like Socrates and William James, is +not afraid to joke, and some of his perversities are uttered with his +ironic tongue in his cheek. Like all fine humorists he is profoundly +serious, and the delicate play of his fingers is backed by terrific +muscular scholarship. His method is to appear to be casual, to make +the review of a book "<i>une occasion de parler un peu</i>" and then +to pack into six pages the reading of a lifetime. He manipulates +Brunetière into the corner and annihilates him before you have time to +realize that there is no button on the rapier. +</p> + +<p> +For all his tolerant smile and sceptical shrug, de Gourmont is +fighting valiantly for ideas. He wants ideas liberated but not loose, +and in the very act of freeing them he defines and fixes them. He +divides long-mated notions in order to reassemble them according to +his private logic. For he is the most wilful and individual of +critics. The journalistic multiplicity of his subjects is unified by a +great personality. The "dissociator" of ideas is a constructive +thinker, one of the greatest of critics in a nation of critics and +sufficient in himself to stand as smiling refutation of Croce's dictum +that "French criticism is notably weak whenever the fundamentals of +art are concerned." If there is a fundamental of art that de Gourmont +missed, I doubt whether it is to be discovered in any German or +Italian book. For de Gourmont's reading embraced the literature of +Europe, and he was especially alert to philosophic criticism. He was +forever in search of principles; but the result of his quest is not a +massive disquisition. The solidity of his learning and the systematic +coherence of his ideas are concealed from the unwary reader by the +lightness of his tone and also by his brevity, the gift, which belongs +to the race of Montaigne and Voltaire, of saying everything in a few +sentences. His essays are light as a feather and yet they carry tons +of information. The aeroplane looks like a bird but it is a heavy and +elaborate piece of machinery. +</p> + +<p> +De Gourmont lived in an ivory tower, the tower of a wizard who +combined the knowledge of an ancient necromancer with that of a modern +chemist. He was much alone, for only in solitude can a man read as +much as de Gourmont read and write about it in serene meditation. +Nevertheless, he was in and of the world of writers; he was an active +and friendly editor; he made the <i>Mercure de France</i>; he +encouraged the youngest and bravest of his day; many of his notes +record conversations with the finest men of his time. He spent his +days with <i>la jeunesse</i> and his nights with aged wisdom. When he +retired to his ivory tower he carried under one arm a volume of +mediæval Latin, to add to his enormous library, already neatly stowed +in his head, and under the other arm the manuscript of the youngest +French poet. +</p> + +<p> +In one of his essays de Gourmont plays charmingly with the reviewer's +too facile use of "great"; "great writer," "very great writer." +Despite that delightful warning I dare say that de Gourmont is a +<i>très grand écrivain</i>, not a great poet nor a great novelist, but +the greatest critic that has been born, even in France where critics +are wont to be born. +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_5"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_5">[1]</a> Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas. Remy +de Gourmont. Translated by William Aspenwall Bradley. New York: +Harcourt Brace & Co. 1921.</p> + + + +<a name="12"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +SWIFT'S RELATIONS WITH WOMEN +</p> + + +<p> +"Controversy," says the editor of the Swift-Vanessa letters,<a href="#note1_6" name="noteref1_6"> +<small>[1]</small></a> "might +have been more moderate in tone and more fruitful of result, if +writers had always remembered that, though grounds of conjecture are +abundant, the data for forming a judgment are manifestly incomplete." +Leslie Stephen, a shrewd and cautious biographer, with a lawyer's gift +for handling evidence, says "This is one of those cases in which we +feel that even biographers are not omniscient; and I must leave it to +my readers to choose their own theory, only suggesting that readers, +too, are fallible." +</p> + +<p> +I propose an explanation of Swift, but propose it only as a +conjecture, an hypothesis. I shall not even argue it up to the point +of positive belief; certainly I shall not push it beyond the line +where belief borders knowledge. Conjecture is good if it remains +clearly in the realm of conjecture, an honest area of thought, and +does not try to sneak over into the land of things proved. +</p> + +<p> +All of Swift's relations with women, and much else in his life, may be +accounted for by the supposition that early he discovered or suspected +that he was insane, that he believed his insanity might be +transmissible, that he was consequently afraid to have children, that +he was honest and strong enough to keep himself in check, that the +resulting suppression made him irascible and bitter, that he was a +vigorous and passionate man, that his quick shifts from tender fooling +to savage satire, his friendly and brutal moods, his strutting +arrogance that amazed the coffee houses, were not due to any +tom-foolery of politics or thwarted ambition in the petty matter of +advancement in the church but were due to a conflict, honorably won by +Swift, in the place where a man lives. The "early" in this supposition +is important. Leslie Stephen, quoting the familiar dark prophecy of +Swift at the age of fifty: "I shall be like that tree; I shall die at +the top," justly observes that "a man haunted perpetually by such +forebodings might well think that marriage was not for him." But +Stephen is dealing with Swift in middle age and offering an +explanation of why, assuming that Swift was not already married to +Stella, he did not marry Vanessa. Let us place the beginning of the +perpetual foreboding early in Swift's life and see if the main facts, +so far as we know them, will lie upon this supposition. +</p> + +<p> +Swift's attacks of vertigo began in his youth. He attributed his +illness to an over-consumption of fruit when he was twenty-one. Swift +knew better than that. Even if we assume that medical science in the +eighteenth century was stupid and backward, Swift was too intelligent +to believe that an early period of indigestion accounted for the +suffering which afflicted him all his life. He knew, or suspected and +feared, what was the matter with him. In 1699, when he was thirty-two, +he wrote some resolutions, headed "when I come to be old." Among them +is this: "Not to be fond of children or let them come near me hardly." +Stephen quotes a friendly commentator as saying: "We do not fortify +ourselves with resolutions against what we dislike but against what we +feel in our weakness we have reason to believe we are really inclined +to." That friendly commentator was right and understood human nature, +though he had never lived (Stephen does not name him) to hear about +libido, suppression, defence, inversion, and other wise words now +current. +</p> + +<p> +Stephen goes wrong, it seems to me, in his following friendly +commentation: "Yet it is strange that a man should regard the purest +and kindliest of feelings as a weakness to which he was too much +inclined." I have not space to quote the rest, which is on page 31 of +Stephen in the English Men of Letters. Swift was not fighting against +a weakness, he was fighting against a strength. He resolves "not to +marry a young woman." In a letter he calls a woman's children her +"litter," and that has been quoted by some critics as an example of +his brutality. He loves Tom, Dick, and Harry but he hates mankind. Is +it not clear? He can not have what he wants, and what he wants is what +normally results in children, in more mankind. His resolution, +superficially harsh and misanthropic, is a masked, or inverted, +expression of desire. Such expression is not, of course, peculiar to +literary satirists, but it should be remembered that Swift had +supremely the ironic trick of thought, the gift of saying a thing by +saying exactly the opposite. +</p> + +<p> +The resolution should be read in the light of the fact that Stella was +eighteen years old, a grown and comely woman. But the interpretation +of it depends much more closely on the termination of Swift's affair +with Varina. The date, 1699, suggests this. He had proposed to Varina, +Miss Waring, in 1696, in a letter which is passionate enough, and had +been rejected, at least provisionally, on the score of her ill health +and his poverty. Four years later, after he had received the living at +Laracor and seemed to be on the way to other preferments, she wished +to hold him to his word, and he jilted her. There are three +explanations. One is that he had fallen in love with Stella and so out +of love with the other woman. The second explanation, Leslie +Stephen's, is that his ambitions had not been realized, his +advancement had not been brilliant, and marriage would have kept his +nose to the grind-stone in an obscure living. That explanation is not +good, for, though Swift always had an eye to the main chance and was +worried about money, power, and position, it is only men of cool blood +or men who have extra-marital opportunities to gratify their desires +who are ever deterred by considerations of thrift and economy from +marrying the beloved woman. Swift was not cold but passionate. And it +is inconceivable that he, a clergyman in a small parish, was finding +his pleasure in illicit intercourse. +</p> + +<p> +The third explanation, which I venture to suggest, is that between his +proposal to Varina in 1696 and his insulting rejection of her in 1700, +between his twenty-ninth and thirty-third years, he had discovered a +reason why he must not live with a woman. His resolutions, remember, +not to marry a young woman and not to be fond of children were written +in 1699. How could Stephen believe that those resolutions, with others +"pithy and sensible," were "for behavior in a distant future?" Swift's +heading, "when I come to be old," means nothing; he is writing from +the misery of the moment. Why is the letter in which Swift puts an end +to poor Varina so brutal and insulting that, in Stephen's words, no +one with a grain of self-respect could accept the conditions of +marriage which he lays down? Because he could not tell her the real +reason, a reason based on fear rather than on physiological certainty. +It is an honestly dishonest letter. It is a perfect example of that +perplexing contradiction which appears everywhere in his life and +writings, that he was brutally honest, saw through the postures and +masks of everybody else, and yet postured, attitudinized, and lied +himself. He carried his secret agony with fortitude and alternately +raged against the world and fooled with it. In relation to the Varina +episode Stephen misses the point, though what he says is true enough: +"Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But when +anyone tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings, +the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and +brought out the most brutal side of his imperious nature." Though a +man has but one heart, yet his relations with his friends are quite +different from his passions for women. A proud, ferocious and +imperious nature is not the whole story of Swift. It does not give us +the real foundation of the story of Varina, of Stella, of Vanessa and +the man they loved. +</p> + +<p> +On the foundation which I propose the story of Stella will rest +securely, intelligibly. If Swift was married secretly to Stella in +1716—the evidence is not conclusive—the marriage was only a legal +ceremony performed perhaps for the purpose of securing her in case her +fortunes went wrong or gossip or other circumstances made necessary +the protection of his name. Almost certainly there was no physical +marriage, no union legal or illegal. Why? He was free and she was +free. She was, by his own account, a charming person who would have +been quite presentable to his friends and in all ways helpful to a man +in middle age who is supposed to need a woman to take care of him. The +answer is simply that Swift feared to propagate his tainted stock, +that he refrained and suffered. And the "Journal to Stella" is a +record of suffering, of passion disguised and writhing. A busy man, +with other things to write, does not write that much to a woman he +does not love, and he does not write that way to a woman he openly and +avowedly loves. The "little language," the silliness, the foolings, +the avoidance of direct declaration of love, the semi-paternal +injunctions, the gossip about big people, much of it whimsical chatter +in which we get only by implication the serious view of Swift and his +times that has made it an important historical document, the two or +three hintful promises of felicity which commit Swift to nothing, the +passages of melancholy and half-humorous old man's grouch—all this is +a veiled love letter. It is tingling and nervous and alert and full of +pain, not the idle recreation of a tired man of affairs entertaining a +child, but the heartbreak of a powerful man of forty-five expressed by +indirections to a woman of thirty. Perhaps she understood his spleen +and his complaints of ill-health. We may be on the way to +understanding them now. Certainly Stephen is off the track when he +says that there are "grounds for holding that Swift was +constitutionally indisposed to the passion of love." Unless he means +by that that Swift knew that there was something in his constitution +which made the ultimate realization of love impossible. And Stephen +does not mean that, for he speaks of the absence of traces of passion +from writings "conspicuous for their amazing sincerity." An amazing +example of a sincere biographer missing the trace! Swift's insistence +on his "coldness" and his assertion that he did not understand love +are precisely an affirmation of what the words deny. +</p> + +<p> +Now enters the third woman of record—there may have been more—in +Swift's unhappy sexual life, Vanessa, Esther Vanhomrigh. At the same +time that he is writing his long love letter, the "Journal to Stella," +he is seeing Vanessa. Of course. It is all explicable. The man can not +have the woman he wants and is tantalized by another woman who wants +him. He plays and he won't play. He is tormented by the same restraint +that keeps him out of Stella's bed. He is handsome, virile, and +distinguished. The woman is crazy about him. He is unable to keep away +from her, but he is fighting, for reasons known to him, against the +impulse to possess her. He plays again, as with Stella, a game which, +viewed superficially, is fraudulent and unfair. He is teacher, guide, +philosopher, and Dutch uncle. But she is not a docile, gentle girl +like Stella. Mr. Freeman, who handles his documents admirably and is +not slanted from the truth by moralistic concern for hero or heroine, +is, nevertheless, naïve and blind to the facts which he has so +carefully considered. He says: "The tragedy, then, was inevitable from +the day when Vanessa attempted to arouse in him a love of which he was +incapable. It might have been hastened, or its form might have been +different, if he had sternly broken with Vanessa as soon as he +discovered the nature of her desires." Swift was not incapable, in +that sense, and he knew the nature of her desires, for he was not a +fool. What he knew also was the nature of his own desires and their +possible consequences. That is, I conjecture, the heart of the story +of Swift's heart. +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_6"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_6">[1]</a> Vanessa and Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift. +Letters edited for the first time from originals. With an introduction +by A. Martin Freeman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.</p> + + + +<a name="13"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +WILLIAM JAMES, MAN OF LETTERS +</p> + + +<p class="part"> +I. +</p> + +<p> +The letters of a philosopher usually have the primary, if not +exclusive, interest of elucidating and extending in an informal way +the ideas expounded in his professional writings. It is for this +interest that one would turn to the letters of a thinker who was +nothing but a thinker, such as Kant (if, indeed, there is a collection +of Kant's letters), and to the correspondence of such a philosopher as +Nietzsche, who, aside from his technical contributions to human +wisdom, presents fascinating problems in human character, personality, +biography. The letters of Williams James<a href="#note1_7" name="noteref1_7"> +<small>[1]</small></a> have two distinct values. +They appeared at the same moment with his "Collected Essays and +Reviews"<a href="#note2_4" name="noteref2_4"> +<small>[2]</small></a> and the two publications, taken together, complete the +intellectual record of the man. Though master and man can not be +separated, yet, as good disciples of James's pluralism, we may be +permitted to divide an individual into two "aspects." First let us +enjoy the letters, simply as the letters of a man who was, +incidentally, a philosopher. +</p> + +<p> +And what letters! The letters of Lamb, of Edward Fitzgerald, are not +more delightful. The easiest and pleasantest way to prove that would +be to fill the rest of this essay with quotations, and that way would +be in consonance with the whimsical spirit of James, who wrote to his +youngest son: "Your Ma thinks you'll grow up into a filosofer like me +and write books. It is easy enough, all but the writing. You just get +it out of other books and write it down." To write a jolly letter to a +child, to ridicule yourself and your profession and at the same time +to defend an idea with vigor and determination, to poke fun at +colleagues and heartily respect them, to be dignified in mental shirt +sleeves, to wink one eye and keep two keen eyes on the page or the +fact that has to be studied, to fling words with apparent carelessness +and never for a moment to lose control of words or thought—all this +means a great character and a fine literary artist. +</p> + +<p> +James says of Duveneck, the painter: "I have seen very little of him. +The professor is an oppressor of the artist, I fear." It may be that +the professor, which James was and officially had to be, oppressed the +artist in him. But the artist would not down. If all the philosophic +work of James were wiped out by an act of God or by the arguments of +philosophers, James, the man of letters, would still survive. I +believe that part of the success of James as philosopher was due to +his ability to say what he meant not only with logical clarity but +with charm, with the skill of the literary artist. Technical +Philosophy may immortalize or bury his work. The man, the startling, +original person must be imperishable. No matter what subject he +touches, his way of saying things is superb. He had an artist's +interest in the art of writing. Of a volume of his essays he says: "I +am sure of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents. But I +am afraid that what you will never appreciate is their wonderful +English style! Shakespeare is a little street-boy in comparison!" The +wise man has his tongue in his cheek, of course, but there is a +serious idea behind the fooling. Of a correspondent's "strictures on +my English" he writes: "I have a tendency towards too great +colloquiality." What sort of laborious philosopher was it who worried +James about his style, his fluent, accurate, imaginative vehicle of +thought? It may be that some of James's philosophic ideas are quite +wrong. But there is a presumption in favor of the truth of an idea +which is well expressed. +</p> + +<p> +James argues somewhere that a style as thick as Hegel's can not be the +"authentic mother-tongue of reason." If that is unfair to Hegel, it is +a fair revelation of the mind of James. He was an advocate and an +exemplar of lucidity of expression, and was always putting to himself +and other philosophers the plain question: "Just what do you mean?" +But his sharpness of mind, though often aggressive, was never +offensive. He seems at times to have dulled the edge of his wit in +order not to hurt the other fellow. The editor of the letters has, +perhaps wisely, "not included letters that are wholly technical or +polemic." Probably the ideas expressed in the technical letters are +repeated in James's books. But I should like to see the polemic +letters. The editor himself in the act of withholding them has defined +their merits: "He rejoiced openly in the controversies which he +provoked and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that +were the essence of his genius." The touches of polemic writing which +appear in the correspondence that is given us reveal this good humor +and vigor and make one hungry for more. He was staunch and dexterous +in argument and never yielded an inch, but he could stop and laugh at +his opponent and at himself. He objected to Huxley's somewhat solemn +devotion to "Truth," yet he had a kind of skill in argument that was +not unlike Huxley's. He could give a man a smashing blow in the ribs, +and even show a quite human irritation, but his exquisite courtesy +never failed. His letters to Godkin, of the <i>Nation</i>, protesting +against unfair criticism of the work of the elder Henry James, are a +lesson for critics, and no doubt Godkin's reply was a model of +magnanimous contrition. +</p> + +<p> +James had an immense variety of interests outside philosophy, though +perhaps it is unphilosophical to imply that anything can lie outside +the range of a true philosopher's vision. His letters are written to +many different kinds of persons; the best of them, naturally, are to +philosophers and men of letters, who evoked from him an amazing +multiplicity of ideas and to whom he let fly a delicious compound of +sound reason and jocularity. In characterizing other men he +characterized himself. For example, what he says about Royce embraces +both men perfectly: "that unique mixture of erudition, originality, +profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness." He was +fortunate in his human and intellectual contacts. An early and +abidingly fortunate contact was that with his father, who was also a +"filosofer." His last letter to his father is beautiful. It brings +tears, of which the most stoical philosopher need not be ashamed; +indeed, one might rather be ashamed if the tears did not come. No one +outside the family and a few friends has a right to read that letter, +but print has extended the privilege. If Mr. E. V. Lucas or any other +anthologist makes a new collection of examples of "the gentlest art," +the letter from James to his father should be included. In it two men +are portrayed, father and son, both magnificently; if either man had +been less than great the letter could not have been written. +</p> + +<p> +James was born a philosopher; philosophy was in the blood and in the +very air of the household. There is no better instance of the heredity +of genius and of predestination to a career. Yet James did not find +himself immediately; he floundered about in the world of thought long +after the age at which most men have hung out shingles. He was thirty +when he was appointed instructor in physiology at Harvard, and his +tardiness in establishing himself as a bread-winning citizen fretted +him. Lesser men who feel that the expression of their talents has been +thwarted or postponed may take comfort from the fact that James's +first printed book, the "Psychology," appeared in 1890, when he was +forty-eight years old. +</p> + +<p> +The fact that James was an intellectual roamer and did not proceed +docilely from a doctor's degree to a position as teacher, in a groove +forever, accounts, in part, for the flexibility and variety of his +thought. His "dribbling," as he calls it, during years when he +suffered from physical illness and a depressing sense of impotence, +was not altogether bad for the man or for the philosopher. He wandered +about Europe, became bilingual, if not trilingual (he was never quite +happy in German speech or German philosophy). His learning was +enriched with odds and ends of information such as belong rather to +the man of the world than to the professor. If he had lived all his +life in Königsberg or Cambridge he would have been neither Kant nor +James. To him philosophy was never an affair of remote abstract +heavens or of little dusty class rooms. He served academic interests +faithfully and did more than any other man to make the department of +philosophy at Harvard the finest thing in American university life. +But he was in constant rebellion against the academic world and, +indeed, against all institutionalism. He wrote to Thomas Davidson: +"Why is it that everything in this world is offered to us on no medium +terms between either having too much of it or too little? You pine for +a professorship. I pine for your leisure to write and study." Yet he +had more leisure and freedom than most men. He went abroad whenever he +wanted to go, and never knew what it was to be down to his last +dollar. +</p> + +<p> +His lateness in finding himself professionally and philosophically is, +perhaps, related to his perpetual youth, his eagerness for new ideas, +his inability to be fixed and settled. He sometimes grasped at ideas +too hastily and welcomed such new arrivals as Wells and Chesterton +with a heartiness which, perhaps, they did not quite deserve. But that +was the fault of his enthusiastic catholicity. He hated shut minds and +shut doors of thought and feared nothing except that some possibly +valuable inquiry might be hindered or stopped by stupidity and +prejudice. His colleague, Professor Palmer, called him "the finest +critical mind of our time." Let the philosophers decide whether that +is excessive praise. We mere laymen can know him and enjoy him as he +reveals himself in his letters, a vivacious, humorous, affectionate +man. +</p> + + +<p class="part"> +II. +</p> + +<p> +The supreme service of William James to philosophy is the restoration +of philosophy to the uses of life. At least that is the tendency of +his philosophy. Even though much wisdom still remains shut up in a +tower, indifferent to life, and though life may often be ungrateful to +and suspicious of such wisdom as is offered to it, nevertheless +James's attempt to bring about a <i>rapprochement</i> was his finest +contribution and is expressed in some of his most glowing pages. He +came at the right time and illustrated in himself one of his hearty +beliefs that Humanity will produce all the types of thinker that it +needs. At the moment when he entered the realm of philosophy, the +physical sciences had arrogantly assumed, if not all wisdom, the +possession of the correct method of searching for wisdom. On the other +hand, the transcendental philosophers held themselves aloof from the +physical sciences and ignored psychology. This division of interest in +a world which James himself tried to keep manageably split up and +pluralistic, was his first philosophic perplexity and, in his +treatment of the problem, he committed himself to inconsistencies and +self-contradictions, which were partly inherent in the situation and +partly due to his temperament. +</p> + +<p> +Through all his writings, from one of his earliest papers (that on +Renan's "Dialogues," republished in "Collected Essays and Reviews") to +the last chapters of "The Meaning of Truth," James saw philosophers as +so many individuals, each fighting under his own banner of truth, and +he was puzzled because they would not be reconciled and fight together +against the powers of darkness which must be conquered if philosophy +is ever to be worth anything, and if there is ever to be any reason +why there should be philosophers to sit in comfortably endowed chairs. +No critic took more keenly humorous delight than James did in the +disputes of the schools, or stirred up with more lively argument the +factions whose lack of solidarity he deplored. +</p> + +<p> +Take two examples. While James was young and still under the influence +of his laboratory studies he made out a good case for psychology as a +natural science, admitting that in its present stage of development it +is rather a loose subject, but demanding for its best interests an +application of the scientific method. Then he saw that he had gone +counter to his own belief in the unity of knowledge, or the unity of +study. It occurred to him that something valuable might be lost to +psychology if metaphysical and epistemological inquiries were +debarred. So in an address to the American Psychological Association, +he openly renounced his first position, adding, however, as a +half-smiling reservation, that metaphysics should give up some of its +nonsense as a condition of admission. +</p> + +<p> +In one of his last papers, that on "Bradley or Bergson," James takes a +shrewd pleasure in tracing their resemblances as far as they go, and +then laments that they diverge, because if they had kept together they +could between them have buried post-Kantian rationalism. For a +complexity of partisanship in unity that can not be surpassed! But +James's willingness to be pallbearer at the funeral of a philosophic +idea was not inconsonant with his determination that some other ideas +of doubtful character should be allowed to grow up and thrive. For the +old idea had had its say. The new ideas might be strangled in infancy. +Let each new idea have its time and opportunity. Let everything be +tried. It is better to be credulous than bigoted, but to be +excessively one or the other is not befitting a philosopher. +</p> + +<p> +Aside from certain technical problems, James's philosophic attitude +was always determined by his answer to the question: On which side +lies the greater force and fullness of life, the possibility of +richness, novelty, adventure? In 1895, at the height of his power as a +man—though perhaps he grew wiser as he grew older—he ends a paper on +"Degeneration and Genius" thus: "The real lesson of the genius-books +is that we should welcome sensibilities, impulses, and obsessions if +we have them, as long as by their means the field of our experience +grows deeper and we contribute the better to the race's stores; that +we should broaden our notion of health instead of narrowing it; that +we should regard no single element of weakness as fatal—in short, +that we should <i>not be afraid of life</i>." The italics are his. If +that is not good psychological argument, then there is something the +matter with the science of psychology. It is only just such good sense +as this that a common man can understand, and the humanity and +eloquence of it are better than argument. +</p> + +<p> +Can a common man understand philosophy? James believed that he can +both understand it and express it. Two or three times he quotes the +saying of his friend the carpenter: "There is very little difference +between one man and another, but what little difference there is is +very important." He has a hot contempt for Renan's cool contempt for +<i>l'homme vulgaire</i>, and he admires Clifford's "lavishly generous +confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all +the truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the +few but a cold riddle to the many"—and the possession of which by +James made him a greater teacher of youth. +</p> + +<p> +He was an instinctive democrat and was always on the side of what, in +his social environment, was the unpopular minority. Like Whitman, of +whom he often speaks with admiration, he was a born individual +aristocrat, with no delusions about the intelligence of the herd but +an immense faith in its possibilities. His generosity towards the +delusions of common men was warmer than towards the delusions of +philosophers, because philosophers have opportunities for study—and +should know better. He had only one fear, which sometimes took a +belligerent form (there is something in his book on psychology about +the relation between belligerency and fear); and that fear was lest he +or some other philosopher should try to interfere with a possibly good +idea, to put sand, not on the tracks, but in the machinery. The +vaguely comforting fatalistic belief that good ideas will prevail and +bad ones die he regarded as untrue to the history of human thought, +and not good for people whose business it is to express thought. James +held that it did make a real difference in the world that a saint or a +monster, St. Paul or Bonaparte, did not die in his cradle. It does +make a difference—the one illustration that James would have laughed +at—that James lived to be a philosopher. Ideas do sometimes seem just +to happen, to grow without human guidance, but the precious ideas have +to be fought for. Matthew Arnold's idea, that it is our duty to make +the best ideas prevail, may seem priggish and dictatorial, yet +fundamentally James had the same idea. Pluralism, he says, is not for +sick souls but for those in whom the fighting-spirit is alive. +Philosophy does not flourish by accident. Men make it. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore, philosophy begins in the human mind, and is the history of +the action of mind on experience. James was from the very beginning a +student of the human mind. He began in epistemology and he ended +there. One of his earliest essays is a rather too easy slipping of his +knife into the "operose ineptitude" of Spencer's definition of mind, +and his last word about a philosophic puzzle was: "We shall not +understand these alterations of consciousness either in this +generation or the next." +</p> + +<p> +The right self-contradiction consists not in turning in obedience to +others, but in going against the wind from whichever direction it +blows. James attacked the too-much in any philosophy, even his own. To +the over-credulous he preached caution; to the over-sceptical, faith. +This sort of antagonism between two ideas is not contradiction but +balance of mind. Apropos Professor Schiller and others he demands an +"all-round statement in classic style," and, himself the jolliest +joker that ever was in philosophy, he recommends that Mr. Schiller +"tone down a little the exuberance of his polemic wit." But to the too +sober he says, "Our errors are not such awfully solemn things. A +certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive +nervousness in their behalf." +</p> + +<p> +As a philosopher, James had to use the terms peculiar to his craft, +but he so strongly sustained those terms in a structure of words which +can be found in a pocket-dictionary that the peculiar terms of the +craft become intelligible to simple literate men, and it may be that +thereby they become more intelligible as mere philosophic terms. Like +Bergson he is a poet and a humorist in his analogies and +illustrations. When we read that "the feeling of 'q' knows whatever +reality it resembles," many of us, including the philosophers, I +suspect, are lost in the dark. But when we read that "the Kilkenny +cats of fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their undevoured +tails, but the Kilkenny cats of existence as it appears in the pages +of Hegel are all-devouring, and leave no residuum"—then we begin to +believe that philosophy may be a human and amusing study and that to +be great in philosophy it is not necessary always to be thinking of +the other side of the moon. +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> + + +<a name="note1_7"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_7">[1]</a> The Letters of William James. Edited by his son Henry +James. Two Vols. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press.</p> + + +<a name="note2_4"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref2_4">[2]</a> Collected Essays and Reviews. William James. New York; +Longmans, Green and Co.</p> + + + +<a name="14"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +BIOGRAPHIES OF POE +</p> + + +<p> +The biography of Poe got a wrong start immediately after his death +when Griswold slandered him or at least put a false emphasis on +certain aspects of his character. Since then, every book about Poe has +had an argumentative tone, a defensive spirit, which in a way is as +unfair to Poe as was the first misrepresentation. One sometimes feels +like crying: "For heaven's sake read his work and let the man alone!" +Yet it is not possible to let Poe alone if you have once looked into +his life; his story is one of the fascinating chapters of literary +history. Professor Smith says that his book, "Edgar Allen Poe, How to +Know Him," "is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the real Poe, +to suggest at least the diversity of his interests, his +future-mindedness, his sanity, and his humanity." On the whole, +Professor Smith's attempt is successful and he does help us to realize +Poe's personality, "that co-ordination of thought and mood and +conduct, of social action and reaction, of daily interest and aim," +which Professor Smith justly says, "finds no portrayal in the +biographies of Poe." +</p> + +<p> +It is an odd fact that after Griswold two of the more authoritative +biographers of Poe did not like him. One was Richard Henry Stoddard; +the other, Mr. George E. Woodberry. Neither one, I suspect, chose Poe +as a congenial, or even as an interesting subject. The task of writing +his biography seems to have fallen to both men as a literary chore; to +Stoddard as an official critic who knew Poe, and to Mr. Woodberry as a +rising young man of literary talent who thirty years ago was selected +by the editor of the "American Men of Letters" to write the life of +Poe. Of course, Mr. Woodberry is a competent workman. When, in the +year of Poe's centennial, he enlarged his "Life" to two volumes, he +put together in a judicial, objective style probably all the facts +that we need to know. But his æsthetic judgments are at best +unsympathetic. It may be that the lyric "To Helen" has been +overpraised, though it is difficult to understand how there can be too +much praise for a masterpiece. And when Mr. Woodberry says of our +American writers that they were concerned "not with the transitory, +but the eternal; and, excepting Poe, they were all artists of the +beautiful," we seem to have an example of that sort of moralistic +æsthetics which sounds lofty but is only bosh. "If Poe was not an +artist of the beautiful," Professor Smith asks, "what was he an artist +of?" +</p> + +<p> +That is a good, sensible question and Professor Smith's answer, if not +as eloquent as some things that have been written by Poe's European +admirers, is sound and appreciative. If it be an American tendency to +overrate our national men of genius, we have certainly not displayed +that tendency in relation to the American writer who more than any +other has captured the imagination of Europeans, for undoubtedly the +finest criticism of Poe has come from our brethren overseas. Stoddard +had but a grudging sense of Poe's merits and ends his account with a +remark which contains a partial truth but which, although it is quoted +from Dr. Johnson, is a flat anti-climax: "All that can be told with +certainty is that he was poor." There seems to be a good deal more to +tell than that, and, indeed, the implications of Poe's poverty, as it +affected the artist, are better expressed by Stoddard himself when he +says that Poe "wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too +much above the popular level to be well paid." +</p> + +<p> +American criticism of Poe is thick with moralisms. Thus Lowell wrote: +"As a critic Mr. Poe was æsthetically deficient … he seemed wanting +in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art." But, we +may well ask, what is "the profounder ethics of art," and who, except +a New England preacher, wants to be bothered with it in lyric poetry? +Poe always focused his attention on beauty, on excellence of +workmanship, both in the work of other craftsmen and in his own. The +Scottish critic, Mr. John M. Robertson, seems to be nearer the truth +than Lowell when he says that Poe "has left a body of widely various +criticism which, as such, will better stand critical examination +to-day than any similar work produced in England or America in his +time." I am glad to see that Professor Smith regards Mr. Robertson's +essay on Poe as "the ablest brief treatment in any language." The only +exception, which Mr. Robertson himself would be the first to make, is +the essay by the French critic Emile Hennequin. +</p> + +<p> +But Professor Smith does not quite escape American moralism in his +effort to accentuate Poe's virtues. He makes too much of Poe's +interest in religion, which was surely nothing but a purely +intellectual and critical interest, and his recurrent emphasis on +Poe's Americanism is too tiresomely patriotic even for a professor in +the United States Naval Academy. Poe was keen for the best interests +of American literature, zealous in searching out any note of promise +in a new poet and in pointing to the weak spots in men of acknowledged +talent. He sometimes exhibits a kind of local Southern patriotism +which does not much interest us now. But on the whole, he was detached +from the issues of politics, an unlocalized, almost disembodied genius +whose apparition in the United States of America is still an endless +wonder to European critics. +</p> + +<p> +One possible influence of Poe's environment on his art Professor Smith +is, so far as I know, the first to point out; and it is a very +valuable suggestion, even if it can not be thoroughly proved. In +Virginia, more than in any other American State, the English and Scots +ballads survive by oral tradition. It is possible that as a child Poe +heard these ballads recited or sung, and from them derived his sense +of refrain and repetition. To the influence of the ballad Professor +Smith adds the possible influence of plantation melodies as +"subsidiary sources of Poe's lyrical technique." He is certainly right +in thinking that Poe's originality consists not in the contribution of +a new form to poetry but in his individual development of forms +already established. His charm resides in the color of his words +rather than in the shape of his stanzas. But of course the two things +are inseparable and whoever tries to analyse them is hopelessly +baffled. Poe's own attempt to explain how the trick is done is far +from explaining it, and if he could not expound in prose the secret of +poetry, nobody can. +</p> + +<p> +For Poe was first and always a critic, inquisitive of methods, and +making his effects with cool calculation. Even if his tales of horror +no longer give us the creeps, they will always give to any one who +cares about writing, that shiver of pleasure which comes when we watch +a dexterous craftsman at work. Professor Smith calls Poe the "father +of the short story," but he came too late to be credited with such +paternity. After all, Boccaccio and whoever made "The Arabian Nights" +lived long before Poe and in Poe's stories are evident traces of old +tales of magic and mystery. What Poe did was to rationalize the short +story so highly, in some cases, as to sacrifice the illusion of +spontaneity which is one of the merits of a tale that seems to tell +itself. +</p> + +<p> +With the purpose of suggesting the range of Poe's intellectual +interest and of classifying some of his miscellaneous work that does +not fall into certain obvious groups, Professor Smith has adopted the +term "frontiersman." The image evoked by that word somehow does not +fit Poe. He was, in a sense, an explorer of ideas, and he had a +genuine gift for philosophy which he did not live to develop. We could +spare many of his short stories rather than lose "Eureka." If it is +not profound philosophy and if it does not solve the riddle of the +universe, it is profound in its beauty, a prose poem. Poe's science is +obsolete, no doubt, and even in the science of his day he was little +more than an amateur. But the mark of a great intellect is on every +page. An amazing mind! He succeeded in all forms of literary art which +he tried. If the poet or the critic or the short-story writer should +be obliterated, there would still remain a man of genius. +</p> + +<p> +Critics and biographers of Poe, like Poe himself, cannot let his drink +alone. They deny or blame or pity without understanding. The question +of Poe and alcohol seems to have been finally answered by a California +physician, John W. Robertson, in a book which I have not seen but +which I know only through reviewers' accounts of it. This physician +finds from the evidence that Poe was a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania is not +drunkenness nor riotous dissipation; it is a disease. Poe, like other +victims of the disease, had to have periodic bouts with the demon, got +fearfully sick, and when he recovered stayed cold sober until his next +attack. This accounts for Poe's written anathemas against alcohol, +which puzzled Remy de Gourmont. De Gourmont says: "<i>Il ne pouvait +plus travailler que dans l'hallucination de l'ivresse.</i>" Quite the +contrary is the case. Poe could not do a stroke of work under the +inspiration of whiskey; he was not one of those mad geniuses who +conceive masterpieces in a tavern or with a bottle beside the ink-pot. +That is proved, or indicated, by his critical clarity, the almost +passionless rationality of his tales and poems, and even by the +physical perfection of his manuscripts. He worked between his joyless +debauches, and he worked hard. His melancholy and love of terror, his +preoccupation with defects of will and remorse, whatever "morbidity" +there is in his writings, may have some relation to his disease. But +as an artist he achieved his dark effects by sheer force of intellect +in hours of clear-eyed sobriety. Only in a literary sense is he the +author of "MS. Found in a Bottle." +</p> + + + +<a name="15"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +BIOGRAPHIES OF WHITMAN +</p> + + +<p> +The one fault that can be found with Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in +Camden" is that there is too much of it. But that is a fault easily +remedied without blotting a line of the record. Books that contain too +little may cheat us of desired knowledge, whereas books that contain +too much can do no harm; every reader has the privilege of not reading +at all or of dipping into a book here and there. Traubel's method is +admirable; it is that of a documentary historian. He set down +Whitman's talk and such impressions and facts as the biographer +recorded at the moment, and he reproduced the letters in the order in +which Whitman gave them to him. He did not presume to select from +Whitman's conversation what now seems most interesting or most to +Whitman's credit, but he gave you all that he had for you to enjoy or +ignore and for other biographers and historians to make use of as they +will. +</p> + +<p> +Traubel made no concessions to the fact that readers have to catch +trains and read other books, and he ignored, perhaps to his personal +disadvantage, certain exigencies of publication, such as the +publisher's obvious need to interest as many people as possible with +the least possible expenditure. Traubel's method is simple from an +artistic point of view, requiring nothing but accuracy, courage and +industry. Yet the method is a great strain on all concerned. Traubel +could stand it. Evidently the publishers thought they could stand it. +The reader can stand it, because, as I have said, he can take as much +or as little as suits him. The real question is whether Whitman can +stand it. And the amazing man <i>can</i> stand it. Consider that in +the years when Traubel knew him Whitman was an invalid, broken by his +services as nurse and brother of soldiers during the war. He was a +garrulous old man talking to men who loved him and who, though no +servile worshippers of him or anyone else, encouraged him to +reminiscence and the utterance of offhand opinion. Now that is a +severe test. Not many old men, even men of great achievement in action +or art, could last for more than a small volume. Whitman is worth +these hundreds and hundreds of pages. For he was a great talker, full +of experience and endowed with the gift of speech. Almost every day, +according to Traubel's record, he hit off an interesting idea and +turned it in a Whitmanese way. He repeats himself. He makes remarks +that do not amount to much. But he is never a bore. Line by line he +and Traubel, egotists both, but honest, thoughtful, artfully +inartistic, have drawn a portrait, the like of which is not to be +found. For once a literary man is as big as his literary work. Traubel +was a very happy biographer, for he had a sort of monopoly of a great +subject, and he had not the slightest temptation to omit or defend. +</p> + +<p> +An admirer has called Traubel's work "the most truthful biography in +the language." To use the informal mode of Walt Whitman and of his +biographer, that ain't exactly so. It ain't the most truthful +biography; it's simply a true biography. +</p> + +<p> +"Lincoln," said Whitman, "don't need adorers, worshippers—he needs +friends…. The great danger with Lincoln for the next fifty years +will be that he will be overdone, over-explained, over-exploited—made +a good deal too much of—gather about himself a rather mythical +aureole." From such danger Traubel did his best to protect Whitman; +the biographer's multitudinous veracity preserves a real man and is a +heavy impediment to the critic and literary historian of the future +who may try to disobey Whitman's injunction not to "prettify" him. If +that impossible and tedious universe, the "whole" truth, is not +comprehended in these prolific pages, the errors and omissions are due +not to the biographer, but to Whitman himself, who had a silent as +well as a loquacious side; he had unexplained depths which probably he +did not understand himself. When he spoke he tried to say what he +thought, but often he did not speak at all, and at least once he said +to Traubel: "I don't care to talk about that." +</p> + +<p> +The writer of fiction may invent substance to fit an artistic scheme. +The compiler of facts may, under certain conditions, disregard +literary form. The biographer or the historian who will have his work +read must play skilfully between the double restriction of substance +and form. He must be at once man of science and artist. Because of its +very great difficulties, because of the high demands it makes upon the +writer, biography is rarely well done. One can name few masterpieces +of biography in English. Perhaps the only masterpiece that everybody +will name is Boswell's Johnson, that extraordinary performance which +heaved literary history out of shape and keeps it in a permanent state +of distortion. For Johnson was not a first-rate man of letters; he +wrote little that is even tolerable to read; his letter to +Chesterfield and the preface to the Dictionary are his most vital +productions. Moreover, Boswell was a foreordained nonentity. Yet he +was a great artist and Johnson was a great person, and the two of them +made a great book; it is a puzzle which makes one fall back, +outwitted, to the last ditch of adjectives. +</p> + +<p> +Whitman's opinion of Johnson is interesting, if only in relation to +his own biographer's methods. Johnson knew that Boswell was making +notes. Traubel, whose word is infallibly good, says that Whitman did +not know that his biographer was keeping a record. Whitman did know +that Traubel would write about him and he selected the letters and +other documents for the "archives." But he was not aware that Traubel +was making a diary. Therefore when he talked he was free at least from +the constraint imposed on a man who knows that his spoken words are to +appear in print. +</p> + +<p> +When Whitman was 69 years old he began to read Boswell; he refers to +him a dozen times in the course of the year, thereby showing that +Boswell interested him, for when Whitman was not interested in a book +he simply forgot it. He thought that Johnson "talked for +effect—seemed rather inclined to bark men down, like the biggest +dog—indeed, a spice of dishonesty palpably possessed him. Johnson +tried rather to impress than to be true." "He was on stilts always—he +belongs to the self-conscious literary class, who live in a house of +rules and never get into the open air." However, note this significant +confession: "I read it through, looked it through, rather—persisted +in spite of fifty temptations to throw it down. I don't know who tried +me most—Johnson or Boswell. The book lasts—it seems to have elements +of life—but I will do nothing to pass it on." There is the comment of +the lion on the bear. No, these zoölogical metaphors are quite false. +Benevolent and burly male persons are not, even by Whitmanian +identifications, to be named with the brutes. +</p> + +<p> +Some day a biographer with the right talent and in possession of all +Traubel's material, cognizant of social ideals and facts and sensitive +to poetry, will write a good life of Whitman. So far as I know, there +is no satisfactory biography of our one magnificent American poet. +Traubel was not able to do it. He was properly employed in gathering +and publishing the fundamental record. Moreover, his style, perfectly +fitted to short hand notes, is, in continuous composition, abominable. +I loved him with all my Whitmanian heart and read him, because of +every four of his sentences one says something worth while. But ten +sentences of his in a row hurt like a corduroy road. I have to get out +and walk and rub myself. +</p> + +<p> +Several literary men have tried to write Whitman's life and they have +failed. Professor Bliss Perry's book is fatuous. He had no excuse to +write about Whitman at all, except in so far forth as a publisher's +request to an alleged literary man to do a book for an established +series furnishes a practical excuse. +</p> + +<p> +The critical study of Whitman by Mr. Basil De Selincourt is +sympathetic and discerning as regards what may be called the purely +literary side. He understands what Whitman says and takes him for +granted as one of the world's supreme poets. He conceives the +essential unity of Whitman's thought, a unity that should be obvious +but evidently is not to some readers and critics who treat Whitman as +a collection of more or less impressive fragments. Mr. De Selincourt's +analysis of Whitman's form is instructive, appreciative, though a +trifle academic, not wholly emancipated from schoolroom rules of +prosody. If you will read Whitman aloud, pronouncing the words as they +are pronounced in prose, and emphasizing them according to the sense, +the scansion will take care of itself. When a line is bad (and +Whitman, like most of the other great poets, wrote bad lines) it won't +work by any effort of elocution. The good lines, if you have an ear in +your head and a tongue in your mouth, chant themselves, and you can +forget all about iambics and hexameters. +</p> + +<p> +Where Mr. De Selincourt fails is in his account of Whitman's notions +of liberty, democracy, America, the future. Book-people do not +understand these things, especially English book-people, who assume +that America produced Whitman because it was a land of liberty. It was +not. It was, like the rest of the world, a land of plutocracy, +convention, servility. It is complimentary to us but unhappily not +true to say that "America stands for the passionate re-assertion of +certain beliefs which life, to those who look back upon it, seems +always to stultify, but which, to those who can look forward, appears +as the very spirit and power of life itself—'the urge, the ardour, +the unconquerable will'." +</p> + +<p> +As a matter of fact, America does not stand for any such thing and +Whitman does not stand for America. He is a revolutionist in revolt +against the American fact and celebrating a possible American future. +Official America tried to throttle him. Conventional America ignored +him. Literary and revolutionary spirits in England and America +welcomed him, for they are free spirits, intellectually free, under +any economic conditions and in any part of the world. Whitman himself +did not understand why he was acclaimed in England by more men and +better men than in America. It was simply because English thinkers, +writers, poets, with minds capable of appreciating him, outnumbered +their American brothers ten to one. +</p> + +<p> +Two American ladies once called on Tennyson. He asked them whether +they knew Walt Whitman. They confessed that they did not. "Then," said +he, "you do not know the greatest man in America." +</p> + + + +<a name="16"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +GEORGE E. WOODBERRY +</p> + + +<p> +A man's place in the generations of mankind is not wholly determined +by the date of his birth. If William James were alive he would be +eighty years old; but he belongs to us, to the living present. Mr. +George Edward Woodberry is only sixty-seven; yet he already seems like +the last figure in a tradition which has come to an end—so far as any +period in literature may truly be said to end. James was aware of +something like this twenty years ago. He gave Mr. Woodberry the praise +that is his due, but expressed at the same time his essential +weakness. Of "The Heart of Man" James wrote in a letter: +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + The essays are grave and noble in the extreme. I hail another + American author. They can't be popular, and for cause. The respect + of him for the Queen's English, the classic leisureliness and + explicitness, which give so rare a dignity to his style, also take + from it that which our generation seems to need, the sudden word, + the unmeditated transition, the flash of perception that makes + reasonings unnecessary. Poor Woodberry, so high, so true, so good, + so original in his total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you + take him spot-wise—and therefore so ineffective. +</p></div> + +<p> +Mr. Woodberry is not out of date in a mere journalistic sense or in +the hasty judgment of an irreverent generation which affects a trivial +contemporaneity and regards even the end of the last century as old +fogy. He is out of date because he did not gear with his own times, +but remained aloof and backward-looking and so became the last of the +Lowells instead of the first of the Woodberrys. It could not have been +a conscious or servile emulation on his part, for he has a spirit of +his own. But his surroundings and his education were too strong for +his fine talent. He was brought up in the twilight of the New England +demigods. They handed him the "torch," and he has carried it with +pious devotion. To younger men as docile as himself, he became, almost +officially, the representative in the flesh of the elders over whose +graves he prayed. His publishers announce with pride, with no sense of +the depressing implications of what they are saying, that there is a +Woodberry Society, "probably the only organization in America +dedicated to a living writer." Thus the anachronism is fulfilled. Mr. +Woodberry was old when he was young, and he is an institution before +he is dead. Some books are epoch making; other books, even great and +original books, lie comfortably in their times without being either +innovative or conclusive; Mr. Woodberry's six solid volumes<a href="#note1_8" name="noteref1_8"> +<small>[1]</small></a> are +epoch closing, a collection of such words as will not be written again +by a man of genuine talent and wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +The feeling that Mr. Woodberry is a voice from the past that +immediately preceded him comes over me most heavily when I read his +essays on Lowell's Addresses, on Democracy, and on Wendell Phillips. +It may be only the essayist's strict fidelity to Lowell's ideas—no +doubt a merit—which leaves the impression that the essayist knows +only what Lowell knew and no more, that the pupil has not moved a step +beyond the master. It is Lowell over again without the slightest +addition from the lessons of time. The London <i>Nation</i> has said +of Mr. Woodberry's essays that most of them have "a unity and life +that make many of Lowell's seem those of a shrewd but old-fashioned +amateur." Yet Lowell was at least a vivid amateur, who expressed +something that belonged to the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies; and +he had an old gentleman's right to be old in the 'eighties. It is not +to be expected that a critic should begin where Lowell leaves +off—only a thinker of real genius makes such long strides. But the +critic following Lowell in time and not moving half a step ahead of +him seems older than Lowell himself. +</p> + +<p> +The same thing is true of the address on Wendell Phillips, "The Faith +of an American." It is fine, even eloquent, but it is abstract and +curiously old-fashioned. Phillips in his own utterances is more of +to-day and of to-morrow than is his eulogist who was a child in +Beverley when Phillips was in mid-career. The reason, of course, is +that Phillips was a fighter, hot with real issues, and it is not the +critic's business to fight but to examine the ideas of the fighter. +These ideas necessarily become somewhat abstract when a critic quotes +or rephrases them, especially since Phillips was an orator and flung +at his audiences sweeping generalities which in a less inspired man +are mere tall talk. But Mr. Woodberry devitalizes Phillips, especially +the later Phillips who went on from one issue to the next until he +dropped. Mr. Woodberry has not a single clear, plain word about one of +Phillips' last fights, that for the Labor party. Mr. Woodberry stops +with the actual Phillips before Phillips stopped, and the end of the +address fades out in vagueness and platitude. There is something +rather touching about Mr. Woodberry's declaration: "I know that what I +have said to-night is heavy with risk." One looks in vain to discover +the risk. Surely in 1911, when the address was delivered, a man might +talk in Mr. Woodberry's mild way every night in the week and invite no +more severe punishment than a scolding from Dr. Nicholas Murray +Butler. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Woodberry's ideas and his expressions are all gentle, though not +timid nor emasculate. His general faith in "Democracy" is too serenely +above the tumult to disturb anybody or provoke a riot call in the +quietude of Beverley. I do not know what he means by "Democracy," +whether such actual democracy as existed in America in 1899, or some +beautiful dream of the future. If democracy is a dream, an unrealized +dream, then any beautiful thing a poet says about it is true. But Mr. +Woodberry seems to be talking about something actually existing, +something already realized in considerable part if not completely, for +he says: "Democracy has its great career, for the first time, in our +national being, and exhibits here most purely its formative powers, +and unfolds destiny on the grand scale." That was not true twenty +years ago, and it is certainly not true now. It is the sort of thing +that Emerson and Lowell could say with rousing conviction, but twenty +years ago it was as obsolete as a beaver hat except in newspaper +editorials and political speeches, where it is still going +strong—even if not quite so strong as it used to be. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Woodberry seems to imply that he is somewhat more of a realist +than Lowell. But he is in fact less of a realist than Lowell; for +Lowell in his time did grapple with the facts of politics. In poetry +it is not necessary, it is better not, to be a realist. But in dealing +with politics and contemporaneous history the true citizen must be a +realist and leave it to the politicians to fly with the eagle. No +wisdom is to be derived from such a statement as this: "There is +always an ideality of the human spirit in all its [Democracy's] works, +if one will search them out." Or this: "Democracy is a mode of dealing +with souls." Or this: "Not that other governments have not had regard +to the soul, but in democracy, it is spirituality that gives the law +and rules the issue." It is, alas, not true that "education, high +education even, is more respected and counts for more in a democracy +than under the older systems," or that "the law becomes the embodied +persuasion of the community," or that "all these blessings [aversion +to war, devotion to public duty and many other enumerated virtues] +unconfined as the element, belong to all our people." +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Woodberry's democracy simply does not exist and never did exist. +Yet there is one existent glory of my country which I believe I +appreciate better than he does. He says: "It behooves us, especially, +to be modest, for our magnificent America has never yet produced a +poet even of the rank of Gray." That was written fourteen years after +the death of Whitman. Mr. Woodberry's democracy had not yet come +along, but one of its great poets had arrived and departed leaving Mr. +Woodberry none the wiser. There is another glory of my country which I +appreciate better than Mr. Woodberry does—Poe, whose poetry Mr. +Woodberry has never understood, though he has written what is +altogether the best biography of the man! To save the six best lyrics +of Poe, I would, if such a sacrifice were necessary, cheerfully sink +Gray in the deepest sea of oblivion, "Elegy," letters and all. But +that is only a slight difference of judgment, and there is no more +futile business than to draw up minor poets in grades and ranks. +Whitman is another matter; the critic who misses him in this day of +the world is simply incompetent. The excuse for Mr. Woodberry is that +he does not belong to this day of the world. +</p> + +<p> +There is something pathetic about Mr. Woodberry's patriotism. He +sincerely believes that "America's title to glory is her service to +human liberty." He has never been delivered from the superstition that +"the sense of justice is the bedrock of the Puritan soul"—the Puritan +soul, narrow, despotic, cruelly unjust! But when Mr. Woodberry leaves +politics and patriotism and religion and returns to art and literature +where he is at home, he puts his finger ruefully on the real rock of +the Puritan soul, recalling the Puritan's hostility to the theatre and +regretting "the American inhibition" "which rejects the nude in +sculpture and painting, not only forfeiting thereby the supreme of +Greek genius and sanity, but to the prejudice, also, of human +dignity." Mr. Woodberry is himself a Puritan, yearning to be free but +chained to New England granite, and since he can not get free on this +planet he looks up to the heavens where the God of his fathers used to +dwell, but where he can find only abstract and vague ideas. Mr. +Woodberry's tendency to abstract phrases, which on pressure yield +nothing, vitiates his literary essays, the essays in which a +professional critic ought to be most concrete, definite, and +nourishing. The trouble may be that his views are too high and too +broad for the limited vision of a common man; but I think his trouble +is that he has not the true philosopher's power to make a long idea, +bridging time and space, stand up under its own weight; there is a +lack of solid timber and concrete. His best essays are those on +individual authors in which he has the selected specific substance of +another man's thought to work on. As ought to happen to a sensitive +critic, it sometimes happens that Mr. Woodberry's style takes the very +tone of his subject. He is whimsical in his charming little essay on +Pepys, an adequate trifle; he is grave and quiet when he writes about +Gray; and Swinburne so stirs him that his prose awakes and sparkles +with metaphor. Even in this essay, however, he can not help +demoralizing poetry by moralizing it into pseudo-philosophic prose. +"The imagery (of 'Laus Veneris') has more affinity with modes of +sacerdotal art, with symbolism and the attributive in imaginative +power than it has with the free vitality that is more properly the +sphere of poetry." What does that mean? What is the sphere of poetry? +The essays on the older poets would make first-rate introductions to +school texts, and I think some of them have been so used. They suffer +from the fact that in Mr. Woodberry's time—and since—so many +standard essays on Milton, Shakespeare, and the rest were written and +rewritten, that unless a critic has a fresh point of view, as Mr. +Woodberry has not, another essay is simply another essay. +</p> + +<p> +It must be pleasant to meditate on the great men of letters and from +time to time write an essay on Virgil or Montaigne or Matthew Arnold. +Some leisure is necessary, for the conscientious critic must read +much, and much reading takes time. It may be that in our nervous age, +in this country, the scholarly critic with a true taste for letters +has disappeared, to return perhaps in a day when Democracy or +something better shall have dawned. The comfortable old tradition is +dead or dying, and since its good works are extant in print, we need +no more contributions to it. As Mr. Woodberry says in an essay called +"Culture of the Old School": "The <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>—both +the name and the thing belong to a bygone time." +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_8"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_8">[1]</a> Collected Essays of George Edward Woodberry. 6 vols. New +York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1921.</p> + + + +<a name="17"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +ABRAHAM CAHAN +</p> + + +<p> +Toward the end of the last century there appeared in the magazines +some remarkable stories of the East Side of New York by Abraham Cahan. +They were not of the crudely comic type of Potash and Perlmutter, nor +were they in the somewhat finer mood of sentimental humor which made +Myra Kelly deservedly popular. They were humorous and pathetic in a +quiet, compelling way, with a gentle austerity of tone even less +familiar to American readers then than it is in the days of the +Russian invasion. Mr. Howells praised these stories and he and others +in editorial authority encouraged the author to write more. A career +in the pleasant art of fiction was open to Mr. Cahan. But he withdrew +from it and, so far as I know, he wrote no more stories for at least +ten years. He has devoted his energy to building up the great +<i>Jewish Daily Forward</i>, which is not only the voice of the East +Side, but a powerful vehicle of social and political ideals that have +not yet penetrated the sanctums of Times Square and of the older +newspaper world near City Hall and Civic Virtue. +</p> + +<p> +Then, as he approached sixty, Mr. Cahan gave us "The Rise of David +Levinsky", a solid mature novel, into which are compacted the +reflections of a lifetime. The publisher's notice called it "a story +of success in the turmoil of American life." Probably the writer of +those words intended to help the book by the appeal which "success" +makes to the American mind, for no reader, not even a publisher's +clerk, could miss the immense irony of the story. It is indeed the +story of a failure. The vanity of great riches was never set forth +with more searching sincerity. The helplessness of the individual, +even the strong and prosperous, in the economic whirlpool, the +loneliness and disillusionment only partly assuaged by pride in +commercial achievement, the sacrifice of the intellectual life to the +practical, these are the fundamental themes of the book. Levinsky, +with the instincts of a scholar and a desire for the finest things in +life, is swept into business by circumstances which he hardly +understands himself and against which he is powerless; once in the +game he makes the most of his abilities, but he never ceases to regard +his visible good fortune as poor compensation for the invisible things +he has missed. His wealth forces him to associate with all that is +vulgar and acquisitive in Jewry and isolates him from all that is +idealistic. He finds that he cannot even speak the language of the +woman he most admires. Worse still, he is out of sympathy with the +aspirations of millions of poor Jews from whose ranks he has sprung. +He has no sympathy with those who would break the game up or make new +rules, yet he sees that the game is hardly worth playing, even for the +winner. "Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess of the +hour. Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy splendors. +Newspapers, magazines, and public speeches were full of her glory, and +he who found favor in her eyes found favor in the eyes of man." +</p> + +<p> +The portrait of David Levinsky is a portrait of society, not simply of +the Jewish section of it, or of New York, but of American business. +And business is business whether done by Jew or Gentile. If Levinsky +is a triumphant failure, he is so because American business, which +shaped him to its ends, is, viewed from any decent regard for +humanity, a miserable monster of success. Not that Levinsky is an +abstraction, or that the novelist is forcing a thesis. Far from it. +The personality of Levinsky is as sharply individualized as the hero +of Meredith's "One of Our Conquerors," though with a different kind of +subtlety, the subtlety not of detached analysis, but of naïvely simple +self-revelation, which of course is not so simple as it sounds. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Cahan knows how to think through his characters, by letting them +do the thinking, as if it were their affair and not his. At the same +time he does not perform (nor does any other artist) that foolish and +meaningless operation, as expressed by a great poet through a young +critic, of holding "the mirror up to nature." Nature in a mirror is +just nature, not nature thought out, excogitated, turned to human +uses, interpreted in human words. And this is the place to say that +Mr. Cahan knows how to use words. There are no great phrases in this +book. A simple and (intellectually) honest business man writing his +autobiography would not use a great phrase; such a phrase might issue +from some enviable person in that intellectual life from which +Levinsky was excluded. But there is no banal or inept phrase. Such a +man as Mr. Cahan intends Levinsky to be, a man trained in the Talmud, +which means verbal sense, and hammered by the facts of life, which +means a sense of reality, and a wistful failure, which means +imaginative retrospection, says things in a direct, firm, accurate +style. +</p> + +<p> +There is no lack of emotion; strong feeling, expressed or implied, +runs through the book from beginning to end. But there is a complete +absence of eloquence, a deliberate refraining from emphasis, an even +manner of setting forth ideas and events impartially for the value +inherent in them, an admirable method, the method of a philosophic +artist. Here is life, some of it is good, some of it is bad; it is all +somewhat pitiable, to be laughed at rather than cried over; nobody is +deserving of indignant blame or abuse. It is our business to +understand it as well as we can; and though we never can see it in its +entirety or with complete clearness, if we make an honest effort to +record events and delineate personalities, the events will arrange +themselves in a more or less intelligible sequence, and the +personalities will be their own commentary upon themselves. An obvious +method, but you will read many a book to find one skilful application +of it. +</p> + +<p> +It seems to me the method most often employed and carried to the +highest degree of perfection by the great Russians. I am driven to the +timidity of "seems" because we do much talking about Russian novels +without having read many of them or understanding what we have read. +But better-informed critics than I have noted that one characteristic +of the Russian novel is a benevolent impartiality in its treatment of +all kinds of people and a calm contemplation of events horrible, gay, +sad, comic. A revolutionist can portray, in fiction, a commissioner of +police, whom in real life he would be willing to kill, with a fairness +that is more than fair, with a combination of Olympian serenity and +human sympathy. He can be a virulent propagandist when he is writing +pamphlets, and when he writes fiction he can forget his propaganda or +subdue it to art, that is, to a balanced sense of life. +</p> + +<p> +When I say that Mr. Cahan's novel sounds like a good translation of a +Russian novel, and that he is a disciple of the Russian novelists, I +accuse him of the crime of being an artist and a seer. As a matter of +biography, he is a child of Russian literature. And that is why his +novel, written in faultless English, is a singular and solitary +performance in American fiction. If that strange demand for "the" or +"a great American novel," a demand which is at once foolish and the +expression of a justifiably proud feeling that a big country ought to +have big books, is to be satisfied, perhaps we shall have to ask an +East Side Jew to write it for us. That would be an interesting +phenomenon for some future Professor Wendell to deal with in a History +of American Literature. And by the way, Mr. Cahan is a competent +critic. I hope he will give us not only more novels, but a study of +Russian literature for the enlightenment of the American mind. I +remember with gratitude an article of his which I read when I was even +more ignorant than I am now, on the modern successors to the group of +Titans, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. He put Maxim Gorky in his place +and told us (this was before the Russian invasion) about Andreyev and +Chekhov. If Mr. Cahan will write a book on Russian literature, I will +do my best to establish him in his merited place in American +literature. +</p> + + + +<a name="18"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +THOMAS HARDY +</p> + + +<p> +Mr. Bernard Shaw says, apropos Samuel Butler, that the English people +do not deserve to have a genius. Butler himself in a note remarks that +America, even America, will probably have men of genius, has indeed, +already had one, Walt Whitman, but that he cannot imagine any country +where a genius would have more unfortunate surroundings than in +America. Mr. Arnold Bennett sends a shot from the same gun in +"Milestones," when he makes the millionaire shipbuilder puff his chest +and say that there is no greater honor to English character than the +way we treat our geniuses. Egad! The unworthiness of the British and +American nations to have artists born to them was never more +shamefully manifested than by the reception accorded thirty years ago +to Hardy's "Jude, the Obscure." Harper's Magazine, which seems to have +begun printing the story before the editors had seen the complete +manuscript, fell into temporary disfavor with some outraged readers. +One British journal distinguished itself by reviewing the book under +the caption, "Jude, the Obscene." +</p> + +<p> +It is inconceivable that any nation on the continent of Europe could, +through its critics or through any considerable number of readers, so +dishonor a masterpiece. For "Jude" is a masterpiece; if it is not +Hardy's greatest novel, it is one of his three or four greatest, and +that means one of a score of supreme works of prose fiction in the +language. If profundity of substance and skill in narrative are both +considered, Hardy is without rival among British novelists. His is the +crowning achievement in the century of fiction that began with Jane +Austen and, happily, has not yet terminated with Joseph Conrad. In his +hands the English novel assumed a form which, perhaps without good +critical reason, one thinks of as French. Despite the racy localism of +scene and character, Hardy's work seems alien to the Anglo-Saxon +temperament; it has less in common with the spacious days of great +Victoria than with a younger time, whose living masters, Mr. Conrad +and Mr. Galsworthy, for example, have taken lessons in art across the +channel. +</p> + +<p> +In a prefatory note to "Desperate Remedies," dated February, 1896, +Hardy lets fall a casual phrase which indicates that he and others had +noted his kinship to the French, but that he was not disposed to +acknowledge it fully. He seems to say, with that kind of modest pride +which distinguishes him, that he found his method for himself, played +the game alone. "As it happened," runs the note, "that certain +characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story +['Jude'?] were present in this my first—published in 1871, when there +was no French name for them—it has seemed best to let them stand +unaltered." What characteristics does he intend? And was there no +French name for them in 1871? Or had not the British critics begun to +use the French name? Are these characteristics his candor, his logic, +his classic finish of phrase, a certain cool stateliness of manner, an +impersonal, distant way of treating most tender and poignant subjects, +a lucid, ironic view of life, perfect proportion, large intellectual +pity and freedom from cant, from sentimentality? These are some of his +virtues and they are the virtues of several modern French novelists +and some of the Russian pupils of the French. +</p> + +<p> +If the ill reception of "Jude" caused Mr. Hardy to foreswear fiction, +then the fools have in a way done us harm by cheating us of two or +three great novels. Yet genius takes its revenge on a dull world, +especially if it is prosperous genius, too well established to be +starved out by the stupidity of an inartistic people. If Hardy had +been encouraged to write more novels perhaps we should not have had +"The Dynasts." And by and by we shall discover what a loss that would +have been. It is the greatest epic that we have been privileged to +read since Tolstoy's "War and Peace." And it is the best long poem in +English since Morris's "The Earthly Paradise." Though it is cast in +scenes and acts it is not a drama except in a vast untechnical sense +of the word. But epic it is, creation of an enormous imagination which +sweeps the universe and manages a cosmic panorama as commandingly as +the same imagination dominates a rural kingdom of farms and desolate +heaths. If "The Dynasts" and Hardy's shorter poems lack one thing, +that one thing is the magical and haunting line, that concatenation of +words which is everlastingly beautiful in the context or detached from +it. Morris knew that magic. He was born with it, and no reader of +Morris, except a critic, will be deceived by his own denial of his +divinity when he said in his honest, off-hand way, sensible as Anthony +Trollope, that inspiration is nonsense and verse is easy to write. +</p> + +<p> +"The Dynasts" is an extraordinary poem. It is not French, it is not +Greek, it is not like anything else in English. Hardy has discarded +Christian mythology. He is not childish enough to revert to the Greek. +He has invented a new one. His celestial machinery is as strange an +apparition in the heavens as the first aeroplane. His hero, Napoleon, +rises above the human stature by which the realistic novelist measures +man and becomes not only a tool of destiny but a demigod who seems to +understand destiny and share the secrets of that impersonal goddess. +Those who are curious about Hardy's philosophy (we like his art; his +philosophy may lie down and die on the shelf with the other +philosophies) will find the closing chorus of "The Dynasts" +significant: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">But—a stirring thrills the air</p> +<p class="i4">Like to sounds of joyance there</p> +<p class="i8">That the rages</p> +<p class="i8">Of the ages</p> +<p>Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were,</p> +<p>Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!</p></div></div> + +<p> +Such is the ultimate word of this artist who so keenly loves beauty, +yet, like some neo-Puritan and latter-day ascetic, cannot draw a +lovely woman without reminding you that the skull under the cheeks and +behind the passionate eyes is not pretty and will probably endure a +long time under ground. Is he of like mind with his chorus at last, +and does he believe that the Will is going to grow intelligent and +make all things fair? +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps Hardy's proneness to dwell on the skeletonic grin of life is +due to his exceeding sensitiveness to beauty. Like Poe and other +poets, he cannot abide the ugliness that is in the world, and so he +insists on The Conqueror Worm, as a man cannot refrain from thrusting +his tongue into the sore tooth. Perhaps Hardy is a reaction against +the saccharine optimism of his contemporaries and of those just before +his time. They falsified life in their fictions by making everything +come out nicely, thank you, on the last page. He leans over backward +from that kind of untruth and comes dangerously near to being as +false. As between falsity in one direction and falsity in the other, +there is no choice, except that we have had so much of the sweet kind +that Hardy is refreshing. He tends to restore the balance. +</p> + +<p> +Ask any man, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, how life has gone +with him, and, if he is honest, he will tell you that life did not go +definitely one way or the other. Things sometimes came out well and +sometimes not. Hardy is biased in favor of the things that do not come +out well. "Life's Little Ironies" is a good title, but it is a title +that implies a thesis, an attitude from which humanity is surveyed. +The stories are perfection and they sound true. Hardy is a logician +and he will back any tale of his with evidence, even the first story +in "Wessex Tales," in the preface of which the authority of physicians +is invoked. But when you take all his stories together you find nine +failures out of ten human careers, and life has a better batting +average than that. No one doubts that the "Fellowtownsmen" got into +such horrid confusion, that things happened as they shouldn't, that +every shot at happiness was a miss. And "The Waiting Supper" is so +convincing that you cannot escape. But the two stories together, +regarded for the moment not as the excellent works of art which they +are, but as a view of human destiny, weaken each other. One convinces +you. The two together make you ask questions about the author. +</p> + +<p> +In "The Waiting Supper" there is one line that is as great a pathetic +fallacy as the more familiar and cheery kind which represents nature +as smiling upon the lovers. Hardy's lovers have to submit to this: +"Thus the sad autumn afternoon waned, while the waterfall hissed +sarcastically of the inevitableness of the unpleasant." Did you ever +hear a waterfall like that? The only waterfalls I have heard quote +Darwin and discuss the election returns. I know that the happy poet is +a liar when he says that the nightingale is celebrating my love for +Mamie, for the nightingale is concerned with other matters. But as +between a nightingale who is sympathetic with my emotions and a +sarcastic waterfall, I prefer the nightingale. And I do not like +either in realistic fiction. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Hardy, the idol of the younger realists and the liberator of +British fiction from the Victorian hoopskirt and the happy ending, is +not a realist. He is a great romantic, with a taste for pretty girls, +moonlight, heroes and dragoons. He is incurably superstitious. He is +pained by many modern things, especially by modern restorations of +ancient buildings. He takes Tess to the Druidical stones on Salisbury +Plain because he dearly likes that kind of moonlit antiquity. His +pronominal substitution of It for He does not achieve a revolution in +theology. He manages the destinies of human folk as arbitrarily as any +maker of fiction that ever lived. But he never made a story in which +he did not convince you that life is overwhelmingly interesting and +that nature, girls, and dragoons are beautiful if sad things to +contemplate. +</p> + + + +<a name="19"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +GEORGE BORROW +</p> + + +<p> +Any book about George Borrow is worth reading. The two volumes by Dr. +Knapp are forbiddingly dense with documentary minutiæ, yet it is a +pleasure to loaf through them at least once. Borrow's burly +personality makes itself felt in the driest philological note and +vitalizes the pages even of a commonplace critic, as, indeed, it +vitalizes many flatly ordinary pages in his extraordinary books. Mr. +Clement K. Shorter's "George Borrow and His Circle" is interesting +because it is about Borrow and not in the least because it is by Mr. +Shorter. Mr. Shorter's declared ambition was to write a book that +should appeal not to "Borrovians," but to "a wider public which knows +not Borrow." +</p> + +<p> +Every book about the fighting scholar, every moderately competent +article about him must invite new immigrants into Borrow's kingdom. +But Mr. Shorter is not an introductory critic, not one who by his own +skill and charm summons strangers to make the acquaintance of a great +man. He is an inept critic who thrives by attaching his name to great +reputations. Fancy a man of any trifling literary experience, with the +least enthusiasm for literature, writing about style in a style like +this: "Borrow, in common with many other great English authors whose +work will live, was not uniformly a good stylist. He has many +lamentable fallings away from the ideals of the stylist. But he will, +by virtue of a wonderful individuality, outlive many a good stylist." +It is a sin so to "style" in a chapter about Edward FitzGerald, who at +the sound of such sentences would have clapped his hands to his ears. +</p> + +<p> +Borrow describes himself in that pugnacious defence of Lavengro which +forms the appendix to "The Romany Rye." "Though he may become +religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very +precise and straitlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, +with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for +the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain +gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a +little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, +with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as may well be—ale at +least two years old—with the aforesaid friend—when the diversion is +over." +</p> + +<p> +Is not that an irresistible man? Shouldn't you think that there would +have been among his contemporaries two or three hundred thousand good +sports, rooters, heelers, literary and non-literary bookmakers who +would bet on him and back him in any enterprise in which his +adventurous spirit elected to engage? Yet it was not so. He enjoyed +only a short period of popularity after the publication of "The Bible +in Spain." When he died at a ripe old age in 1881, he was not well +known. During his life the only highly distinguished man of letters +who knew and appreciated him was FitzGerald, the exquisite poet and +critic—FitzGerald, whose literary habits were as distant as possible +from Borrow's, whose fine-edged rapier seems utterly alien to Borrow's +short arm jab or his overhand wallop. FitzGerald had a curious +accuracy in spotting what was worth while in his time and in dodging +certain celebrated things that other people thought worth while, and +there is nothing inconsistent in his knowing that Borrow wrote good +English. But looking over Borrow's shoulder at his contemporaries, and +remembering Borrow's ungainly verses, one is amused to find that the +only real literary man facing one with a wink in his eye is +FitzGerald. The others have their backs turned. +</p> + +<p> +Consider also Borrow's posthumous fame. His first biographer is Dr. +Knapp, an American professor of philology. And the modern critics who +praise him are not open-air men, but bookish, library men, whose names +do not suggest the robustly adventurous, Lionel Johnson, Mr. +Watts-Dunton, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Seccombe. +</p> + +<p> +Most literary critics praise him in terms laudatory enough to atone +for the sins of their professional predecessors, whom Borrow held up +to "show the creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from their +broken jaws." His four important books are published in Everyman's +Library; Mr. Birrell says that "we are all Borrovians now"; within +twenty years have appeared three biographical studies, besides Mr. +Shorter's. Yet Dr. Knapp's fundamental biography which was published +in 1898 is out of print; that mysterious and reprehensible entity +known as the public has not demanded a new edition. It is all +consistent with the Borrovian inconsistency. Borrow was proud of being +a gentleman and a scholar, and he was both in all true senses of the +words; but he hated gentility and wrote a hammer-and-tongs chapter +against the genteel; no revolutionist despising the "bourgeois" ever +punched their smug faces with such violent verbal fisticuffs. +</p> + +<p> +He boasts of his fondness for gypsies and prize-fighters and quite +simply asks, "If he had not associated with prize-fighters, how could +he have used his fists?" However, he is an aristocrat and has no +sympathy with radical weavers. Despite his hatred of cant, some +sentences in "The Bible in Spain" have a missionary twang. He drifts +naturally away from the Church of England, yet when he attacks other +ecclesiastical institutions he holds up the Church of England as the +exemplar of religious truth. He scorns all deviation from fact, yet +his biographers have not wholly succeeded in separating what he did +from what he invented. +</p> + +<p> +He was undoubtedly a polyglot, he made metrical translations from +thirty languages, wrote a version of the Gospel of St. Luke in Spanish +Gypsy (the first book ever attempted in any Gypsy dialect), supervised +the printing of the Bible in Manchu-Tartar, made translations from the +English into Manchu-Tartar, Russian and Turkish in good style, as any +of us who has read them can testify. In the person of Lavengro he lost +the stalwart Isopel Berners because he insisted on giving her lessons +in Armenian! For all that, he made mistakes and so gave the scholars +evidence that he was no scholar. He was not. He had an instinct for +language, especially for that language which he knew, as we know it, +probably better than he knew Manchu-Tartar. In his English narratives +we can follow him and praise him or censure him without violating the +severe rule which he laid down: "Critics, when they review books, +ought to have a competent knowledge of the subjects which those books +discuss." +</p> + +<p> +The four books of Borrow which belong to English literature are "The +Bible in Spain," "Lavengro," "The Romany Rye" and "Wild Wales." "The +Bible in Spain" is one of those books that grow out of circumstances; +it was to a large extent thought out and phrased on the scene, amid +the adventures which it narrates; later it was cast into book form. It +grew out of experience, but an artist shaped its growth. Borrow was +sent by the Bible Society to distribute Spanish versions of the Bible. +He encountered the opposition of allied church and government, was +arrested, put in prison for three weeks, and liberated through the +influence of British officials. +</p> + +<p> +It is not, however, the Bible or his mission that stimulates Borrow's +imagination. Cities and people, meetings on the road, scraps of talk, +sometimes rather long conversations, monologues by Borrow, the +mischances, dangers and excitements of a country at once wild and +anciently civilized, Borrow's opinions about languages, characters, +landscapes and anything else under the Spanish skies—such is the +substance of the book; and the substance is transmitted through a +style that gives little heed to elegance, that walks along like a +healthy man on a tramp. The most eccentric of men, full of strange +languages and odd ideas, Borrow writes English as naturally as he +drinks English ale. There is not a touch of eloquence, not a great +phrase; his descriptions are rather literal records of what was in +front of him and how he liked it than "word-paintings." The dominant +writers of his time were super-eloquent. Borrow does not speak their +language. Perhaps that is why he did not rival them in popular favor, +and also why he seems to us so refreshingly downright. +</p> + +<p> +Borrow, like his master Defoe, has the art of setting all things forth +as if they were matters of fact. Even when his characters talk of +unusual matters, nay, especially when they harangue and gossip about +queer things, their conversation sounds like a transcription from life +and not like invention. +</p> + +<p> +"Lavengro" and its sequel, "The Romany Rye," are properly classified +in Everyman's Library under fiction, and "The Bible in Spain" is +classified as "Travel and Topography." In what proportion +autobiography and fiction are admixed is a question which does not +effect the merits of the books. They all follow about the same method, +and so, too, does "Wild Wales." The episodes are inconsequential, and +the looseness of organization not only permits Borrow unlimited +latitude of subject, but strengthens the Defoe-like illusion of truth; +he never loses the tone of the veracious chronicler who puts things +down in the order of nature and not according to the design of art. +Between adventures and more or less pertinently to them, Borrow +becomes itinerant schoolmaster and gives us instruction in language, +philology, comparative literature, ethics and religion. He is not a +pedant, but a humanist: "It has been said, I believe, that the more +languages a man speaks, the more a man he is; which is very true, +provided he acquires languages as a medium for becoming acquainted +with the thoughts and feelings of the various sections into which the +human race is divided; but in that case he should rather be termed a +philosopher than a philologist." +</p> + +<p> +Borrow need not be read continuously; if he enters upon a discourse +that promises not to interest you, you can turn the pages rapidly +until the eye strikes something more attractive. In his wide variety +is something for everybody. The conversations with the old apple woman +who had read the story of "Blessed Mary Flanders"; the chapters on +pugilism; the talks with tinkers and publicans; the old man who knew +Chinese but could not tell time by the clock; the outrageous attack +upon Walter Scott; the theological arguments with the man in +black—these are some of the choice fragments of what Borrow was +pleased to call a "dream." The general atmosphere is less that of +dreamland than of the broad highway in full sunlight. Since Borrow +died the cult of the open air has increased, and to that as much as to +anything is due the revival of interest in him. He is a great person, +a colossal egotist who in his journeyings takes up the whole road. It +is healthy for a man to be an egotist—especially if he is a colossal +one. +</p> + + + +<a name="20"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +SHELLEY +</p> + + +<p> +In his "Defence of Poetry" Shelley says that the imagination is the +moral instrument. To be greatly good a man must imagine intensely and +comprehensively. Poetry serves morality not by what it explicitly +teaches, but by its power to awaken and enlarge the mind, to render it +"the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought." +Since poetry strengthens the imagination, which is the organ of the +moral nature of man, "a poet would do ill to embody his own +conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his time +and place, in his poetical creations which participate in neither." A +remarkable book could be made of the best things said in prose by +English poets about poetry. Perhaps one book would not hold so much. A +narrower yet great and imaginative book could be made of what Shelley +said about poetry and what English poets have said about him. Such a +book would explain and exhibit the theory of poetry and the art of +criticism. The very good edition of Shelley in the Regent Library, +(edited by Roger Ingpen) contains some brief "Testimonia" which invite +one to the essays from which they are taken, by Browning, Swinburne, +Francis Thompson. +</p> + +<p> +It is significant that Mr. Ingpen has not quoted from Arnold. If it is +the function of poetry to expand the imagination and make the mind +aware of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought, how did it +happen that Arnold, a genuine poet, missed Shelley utterly? Arnold was +not satisfied with his essay and intended to return to the subject. +That he could do a better thing is proved by his essay on Keats, +which, after he has done with his droning, schoolmasterly defence of +Keats's morals, is eloquent, serene and restrainedly emotional. +Shelley phrased many of the revolutionary ideas that were current in +his time. Arnold's timid school-bred culture was impervious to any +sort of revolutionary idea. Shelley's ideas did not impress him; he +thought Shelley a wonderful singer, but a singer without a solid body +of thought. Now, Shelley was the most full-minded poet of his time. He +knew more about what ought to be done with the world than any of his +contemporaries. That he failed to free Ireland and that the French +revolution was a disaster are a reflection on other people's +intelligence, not on his. It is not at all derogatory to a man's ideas +that for centuries and centuries after him the world fails to come up +to his teachings. If an angel is ineffectual that is not the angel's +fault. Indeed a too readily effectual angel would be rather a +journalist than a seer. +</p> + +<p> +That the bulk of mankind is ages behind the best of its poets and +seers might possibly be explained by the fact that the bulk of mankind +simply has not met their thoughts. But how shall one explain the fact +that artistic children of culture, who have had opportunity to read, +who respond to the beauty of seers and poets, remain at the tail of +the intellectual procession, are not abreast of long dead poets like +Shelley, and let the leaders of their own day sweep past them +unapprehended, unguessed? The thing that makes one impatient of the +privilege of culture is that many of those who have enjoyed it do not +lead; they drag mankind back. In "Winds of Doctrine," by Mr. George +Santayana, the mind of the present age is likened to "a philosopher at +sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail." When you +make a generality about the mind of today, you are perfectly safe, for +nobody can dispute you. Nobody knows what the mind of today is doing. +It is doing so many things that no one of us can keep track of it. But +when a man writes himself down in a book, you can tell what his mind +is doing—in that book. I should liken Mr. Santayana to a philosopher +who, really wanting to sail, had forgot to cast off and was still +lashed to the dock with a spanking wind blowing out to sea. +</p> + +<p> +It is no wonder that Whitman, revolutionary in substance and form, +perplexes the genteel and the cloistered. But it is a wonder that +Shelley, whose form is classic and whom a century has transformed from +demon to angel, does not reach them. A striking example of critical +and philosophic blindness is Mr. Santayana's essay on Shelley. Mr. +Santayana is a poet, and in this essay he says beautiful poetic +things. He is not stupid as Arnold was, for once in his life. But he +misses Shelley. He understands what Shelley was related to before +Shelley, for example, Plato, but he does not know the relation of +Shelley to his time or to the world since Shelley. What Mr. Santayana +says is lucid in phrase but quite hopelessly confused in thought. He +says that Shelley was "a finished child of nature, not a joint +product, like most of us, of nature, history and society." That is not +true of Shelley or any other human being in recorded history. It is +worse biography than Dowden's, and it seems that so old a critic as +Taine might have saved a man from writing such nonsense in the year +1912. Mr. Santayana says that "Shelley was not left standing aghast, +like a Philistine, before the destruction of the traditional order." +That is naïve. Of course Shelley was not left standing aghast; he was +trying his best to destroy the traditional order; he was butting his +beautiful head against it. He did not budge the traditional order. One +reason is that most people have impoverished imaginations, that the +world can't do what Tolstoy thought would save it, stop and think for +five minutes. Another little reason is that there are too many +conservatives like Mr. Santayana teaching the young men of the world. +Yet Mr. Santayana says that Shelley was "unteachable"! +</p> + +<p> +Shelley believed that a man would do ill to embody his own conceptions +of right and wrong in his poetry. Yet every man, poet or not, who +writes at all and is not a hypocrite, embodies his conceptions of +right and wrong in all his utterances. Shelley was intensely personal +in his poetry. His sky-larking, star-sweeping way of expressing +himself takes us out of range of his individual opinions. He spoke +heart-near things in splendid distances and tried to pull the far +skies down into sodden British hearts. The revolt, the defeated revolt +of his own times, near to him as the news of the daily papers, he +allegorized as the rebellion of a mythological Islam, and he flung the +stars reeling through Spenserian stanzas. No essayist has risen fully +to Shelley's poetic stature and comprehended him except another great +poet, Francis Thompson. Speaking his own convictions, as every man, +poet, critic, or even an academic voice of reason must and should +speak his convictions, Thompson begins his essay by pleading for a +reunion between his church and the art of poetry. So much of his essay +seems to me interesting but not closely relevant to Shelley. After +this introduction Thompson soars into the greatest essay that has ever +been written on an English poet by an English poet. +</p> + +<p> +Most poets, with their wonderful ears, of course write good prose. +Francis Thompson has a fine essay on the prose of poets. Even +Browning, who wrote little prose except the extraordinary +parenthetical letters, was so clarified by Shelley that in his essay +he discovered a fairly fluent and readable style. +</p> + +<p> +Shelley is primarily neither philosopher nor revolutionist, but lyric +poet. Yet to treat him only as a lyric poet is to forget his great +drama, "The Cenci," which can hold up its head undiminished beside the +Elizabethans. That idiotic British officialdom does not, or did not at +last accounts, allow its performance on the regular stage, is perhaps +only one more proof of how little impression Shelley's austere +anarchism made on practical British morality. "The Cenci" is austere; +for Shelley, it is athletically economical. The last speech of +Beatrice is an unexcelled emotional climax. Yet even in this play we +find that "intensely personal" note of Shelley; it speaks all his +heart against all injustice. The play learned many lessons from the +Elizabethans. It is not far wrong to call these lines Shakespearean: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>My wife and children sleep;</p> +<p>They are now living in unmeaning dreams;</p> +<p>But I must wake, still doubting if that deed</p> +<p>Be just which was most necessary. O,</p> +<p>Thou replenished lamp! whose narrow fire</p> +<p>Is shaken by the wind and on whose edge</p> +<p>Devouring darkness hovers!</p></div></div> + + + +<a name="21"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +H. G. WELLS AND UTOPIA +</p> + + +<p> +Utopias fall into two classes, the local and the chronological. That +is, some are removed from present fact by geographical transition to a +country apart from us in space, a magic island, a realm undiscovered +until the romancer found it and assumed it to be extant in the +romancer's year of grace; others are sundered from present fact by +being thrown forward into the future or backward into a time that +precedes recorded history. The desirable land within the limits of +present time and the known surficial limits of the globe is obviously +not convincing. One fears that it may be rediscovered and invaded by +an imperial fleet or an inquisitive scientific expedition. Crusoe's +island is no longer remote. The geographers have plotted the planet +and have snared every conceivable no-man's-land in the meshes of +realistic lines of latitude and longitude. +</p> + +<p> +The ideal civilization which plays ducks and drakes, not with space, +but with time, is safer. Nothing can dislodge it or disprove it or in +any wise proceed against it—except by force of superior imagination. +For nobody knows what may happen in the future. That is why all the +theological heavens are sublimely ramparted against attack. +</p> + +<p> +Bellamy placed his ideal civilization within the impregnable security +of a time as yet unborn. His conception was original and in its way +was more realistic than the timeless abstraction of Plato and More, +and the Nowhere from which Morris sent news. The fundamental scheme of +portraying a future upon this earth was so fascinating that Bellamy's +book enjoyed a success out of all proportion to its literary skill or +its sociological insight. He had a first-rate plan, but with what +unfanciful and rigidly precise lines he filled it in! His style is +stiff and his future is ossified. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. H. G. Wells took the idea of describing an imagined tomorrow and +made of it a stimulating romance. In saying that he took the idea one +does not mean to imply that he borrowed the scheme of "Looking +Backward" or of any other book. The notion of criticizing today from +the height of a postulated tomorrow was probably born and raised +before Bellamy. My bibliography is imperfect, but I seem to remember +that an Assyrian conceived the notion and inscribed his reflections on +a ton of brick. The important thing is the kind of future a man +imagines and the way he gets there and the justice of his backlook on +the world as it is. Wells's "The World Set Free" is the most +vision-expanding book of its kind—if there be a kind—that I have +ever quarrelled with and been delighted by. It justifies the last word +of its title. It does not cramp the growth of the race between a set +of rules. It spreads the lines of development out at a generously wide +angle. It bids humanity spring from what it is. It makes no +desperately impossible demands upon our common nature. Indeed, with a +cunning hidden plea, not evident at first glance, Mr. Wells draws the +world council, which gathered together the shattered nations and gave +them the first good government they had ever known, as a collection of +ordinary men, with only one or two inspiring geniuses. The idea—a +very important idea—is that any of us duffers could do it if we had +to, and if we were only jolted out of a few little private interests +and superstitions. +</p> + +<p> +The value of a Utopia is not so much the description of a desirable +and convincingly attainable state as in the reflex description of an +undesirable state—the state in which we live. To show how the "new +civilization" was unhampered by political intrigue and financial +considerations is to show how obstructive is the present system of +politics and ownership. "Man the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the +bickering aspects of life, pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, +man the curious learner and man the creative artist, come forward to +replace these barbaric aspects of existence by a less ignoble +adventure." In "those" times, that is the present seen from the year +2000, many of the homes were entirely "horrible, uniform, square, +squat, ugly, hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some +respects quite filthy; only people in complete despair of anything +better could have lived in them." In "our" time, that is about 2000, +the last stupid capitalist who wanted millions for an invention he had +stolen was laughed out of court. People do not struggle to get, +because they do not run the risk of starvation and wage slavery; they +produce as artists, because man likes to do things with his head and +his hands. In our times we understand that Bismarck, to take a salient +example, was not an admirable man but a gross person, and that the age +that produced him, made him a ruler, and paid him respect, was a dull, +stupefied, vicious age. The time when people were taking pills for all +kinds of ailments, were being killed by the slow process of the slum +or the swift process of the ill-managed railroads, is past the +imagination of "our" time to conceive. +</p> + +<p> +From such a past the world is set free. The people of that past day +might have set themselves free, but they were too stupid; the workmen +were debased, timid and without imagination, the capitalists had to be +intent on property and dividends lest they fall to the unpropertied +condition of workmen; lawyers, clergymen, popular novelists like Mr. +Wells, editors, journalists, and other professional parasites did not +dare utter even such vision as they had, or did it for money under +convenient restrictions. It was an unthinkably rotten period in the +history of the world. Only a few kickers knew how rotten it was, or +had courage to express their sense of the prevalent putrescence. +</p> + +<p> +The account of what used to be is just enough, and the account of +what "is" does not strain the intelligence even of one who sees +things from the point of view of 1914. The only unconvincing part of +Mr. Wells's history is that which narrates how we ceased to be what +we were and became what we are. He wipes the old world out with an +atomic bomb, so destructive that it annihilates all the capitals of +the earth, makes war impossible and compels mankind to federate. Mr. +Wells has a penchant for "fishy" science. He knows a good deal about +chemistry, biology, mechanics, and he knows that novel readers know +less, as a rule, than he knows. So with the finest air of conviction +he shatters the world with a new explosive, which has a kind of +laboratory-veracity not claimed for the comet whose tail brushed us +to revolution in an earlier of his engaging romances. The clever man +secures plausibility by rather cheekily dedicating the book to +"Frederick Soddy's interpretation of radium," to which this story +"owes long passages." Neat, isn't it? It inspires in the ignorant +reader a confidence that those atomic bombs are approved by the most +advanced science—though, of course, Mr. Wells does not say so. The +cataclysmic revolution is splendidly narrated, and is even better +than Mr. Wells's earlier mechanical and astronomical romances. The +trouble with it is that it is not a fitting transition from a state +of society which is seriously conceived to a better state of society +which is described with all the earnestness of a sociologist. The two +things are discordant. If we are to be taken from one civilization to +another we must move along a social highway. The atomic bombs are out +of key with the prelude and the last two chapters. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Wells is fond of mixing fake chemistry and social reality. He has +succeeded in two kinds of fiction, which he should keep distinct, the +Jules Verne romance and the novel of present-day life. He persists in +putting the two in the same book, and they simply will not blend even +under his skilful stirring-spoon. In "Tono-Bungay" he gave us a good +picture of a quack millionaire, full of the spirit of the living age. +It was set in a realistic scene and was true to life. Then for no +reason at all he sent his hero in search of a mysterious metal called +"quap," which does not exist and so never burnt the bottom out of the +ship. "Quap" destroys the illusion of the book. About the time that +quap begins to do its work, the book ceases to be a novel. "Marriage" +almost ceases to be a novel when the couple go to Labrador. The +introduction of love business into the comet story is an impertinence, +as Mr. Bernard Shaw has complained. Mr. Wells's incurable taste for +romantic adventure on a plane removed from life—usually an aeroplane +that does what no aeroplane has done yet—vitiates his realism; and +his concessions to the "love interest" do not help his experiments in +scientific "futurism." He is best when he keeps separate the two sides +of his genius. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, his extraordinary skill in feathering social truth +with romance, and his equally extraordinary skill in making a monster +of romance eat real hay are the virtues of his vices. His tracts read +like novels, and his novels often carry shrewdly concealed tracts. He +is, next to Bernard Shaw, the most irritating and the most widely read +revolutionary economist who writes our language. Like Mr. Shaw, he is +a rather tame revolutionist; he has never got free from the +middle-class, emancipated clerk view of life, and his romantic sense +sometimes corrupts his sense of social fact as it does his sense of +scientific fact. But he always thinks in ambush behind his most +trivial narrative. And when he comes forth avowedly as a thinker and +theorist, he has the vivacity of phrase, the sparkle of manner which +serve him when he is making fiction. Moreover, in spite of his intense +modernity and his contempt for ancient elegancies and traditional +beauties, he can write fine, rhythmic, luminously visual prose; like +all imaginative men who deal in words, he is a bit of a poet. His +account of "the last war" has in it something of the quality of the +epic: "Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like +archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely +the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding +of Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, beside +this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong swoop +to death?" +</p> + + + +<a name="22"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +JOHN MASEFIELD +</p> + + +<p> +The first version of Mr. Masefield's "Pompey the Great" was published +before "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The Widow of the Bye Street," +those virile narratives that made us wake to find him famous. "Pompey" +is vigorous and dramatic, yet it lacks the note that announces a new +poet. The earlier poems, "Salt Water Ballads" are good, but do not +rise above the chorus of minor lyrists. The short stories in "A +Mainsail Haul" do not distinguish Masefield from a score of sturdy +spinners of sea yarns. It was "The Widow in the Bye Street" that told +us that a great new ship was in port. After that splendid arrival came +"The Daffodil Fields" and "Dauber." Meanwhile the man who had found, +if not created, a form of poetry so individual as to invite the final +tribute of parody, showed himself in "The Tragedy of Nan," master of +dramatic realism. +</p> + +<p> +It is likely and logical, even if the dates do not fall into line, +that "Pompey" is the work of a young ambitious literary man who in the +hour of conceiving the work had not yet discovered his course. He had +to a large extent discovered his style and his attitude toward life +and the speech of men. He makes the Romans talk in a sharp bold +staccato, which is good English and excellent Masefield; as for its +Latinity, well, the Romans are dead and we do not know just how they +talked. Pompey says: "We were happy there, that year." Cornelia +answers: "Very happy. And that day the doves came, picking the spilled +grain. And at night there was a moon." Pompey's next speech is: "All +the quiet valley. And the owls were calling. Those little grey owls. +Make eight bells, captain." +</p> + +<p> +It is a question whether a modern dramatist is not misdirecting his +genius when he makes plays of Greek or Roman legends and characters. +To be sure, a man of genius is not to be limited in his subjects or +his style. He is free by virtue of his genius. He may make an Iliad if +it pleases him to try it. Mr. Bernard Shaw put a new wrinkle in the +stiffened parchment of Caesar's biography. Ibsen at the age of 43, +after he had hit upon his "later" manner, that is after he had made +the simple discovery that universal tragedy grins in the small houses +of small people in small Norwegian towns, produced his "Julian the +Apostate." Poets of all nations during the last three hundred years +have retold Greek and Roman stories and made new poetry of them. But +on the whole the Greeks and Romans handled their own subjects, their +own lives and legends fairly well. The task of the modern is to render +our times or to interpret timeless and spaceless subjects from our +point of view. The widow who lived in the bye street and the painter +who was killed at sea are not as important persons as the Hon. Cneius +Pompeius Magnus, but Mr. Masefield's poems about living (or recently +killed) obscure folk are more important than his drama about the +ancient illustrious dead. +</p> + +<p> +"Pompey" is a good play, that is, it is good to read; I do not know +whether it has been acted. It has one characteristic of Mr. +Masefield's other work, a direct incisive speech, poetry of the naked +fact, the brief metaphor which might come out in any man's talk and +which has the "unliterary" flavor of reality—a cunningly literary +mode of writing. Mr. Masefield makes Pompey say: "Five minutes ago I +had Rome's future in my hand. She was wax to my seal. I was going to +free her. Now is the time to free her. You can tear the scales and the +chains from her." Did the Romans talk in this clipped hurried fashion? +Probably they did when they were excited, for it is human to talk in +short sentences; even Germans do it. +</p> + +<p> +The business of the dramatist is to make you believe, with an arrested +compelled attention, in the speech and action of persons in clearly +defined circumstances. It makes no great difference whether the scene +is in a Norwegian house or on the necromantic island of Shakespeare's +"Tempest." Sometimes it seems a more wonderful achievement to make the +Norwegian house interesting because it is so terribly like the one we +live in. Mr. Masefield's Nan seems to me worth ten of Mr. Masefield's +Cornelias, and the peculiar style and habit of thought of Mr. +Masefield seem more fitted to the modern subject. One of his +metrically ingenious stanzas, with all the artifice of meter and +rhyme, is nearer to life than his vivaciously realistic sentences put +into the mouth of a Roman. "Back your port oars. Shove off. Give way +together. Go on there. Man your halliards. Take the turns off. Stretch +it along. Softly now. Stand by." Was such the dialect of Roman sea +captains? Nobody knows. All that I argue is that Mr. Masefield's +punching abruptness is more wonderfully real, more effective on the +lips of modern people whom we do know. +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>O God, O God, what pretty ways she had.</p> +<p>He's kissing all her skin, so soft and white.</p> +<p>She's kissing back. I think I'm going mad.</p> +<p>Like rutting rattens in the apple loft.</p> +<p>She held that light she carried high aloft</p> +<p>Full in my eyes for him to hit me by,</p> +<p>I had the light all dazzling in my eye.</p></div></div> + +<p> +Every poet is limited to his idiom, and though he may make broad +differentiations, may change his structural form from sonnet to ode, +from ode to dramatic scene, may adapt his style to a character to the +extent of making clown and king unlike in their turn of phrase, yet +when he is earnestly poetic he writes his own kind of poetry. Mr. +Masefield vocalizes Masefield sentences with the breath of Romans. So +Browning's characters all have the Browning abundance of telescoped +metaphor. Shakespeare's English kings and Italian dukes trumpet +Elizabethan blank verse. The identity of flavor and idiom and of +metaphor between Shakespeare's English characters and Roman characters +and Italian characters will never be perceived by the male and female +Mrs. Jamesons, who write essays about Shakespeare's "characters," but +cannot hear verse. To be sure, Shakespeare and all other great +dramatists make the persons of the play adapt their substance to the +situation; naturally Othello in a jealous fit does not talk about +having lost his ducats and his daughter or order a cup of sack. But +within the specific situation and the rather loose limits of character +Shakespeare equips his person with a style of blank verse that is +primarily Elizabethan, secondarily Shakespearean, and only in a +tertiary and wholly subordinate sense Caesarean or Macbethean. +D'Annunzio writes magnificent D'Annunzio, with a recognizable fondness +for certain words and sonorities, no matter who is alleged to be +talking. A poet is at his best when his singular power of phrase and +his substance are most happily fused. +</p> + +<p> +Masefield's instrument plays best upon modern themes, upon the tragedy +of obscure people in English fields or upon the seven seas. It is his +distinction to have taken the lives of the humble and to have involved +those lives in the revolution of the stars and the expanses of sea. He +has lifted coarse words into literature (the Elizabethans did that, +too); he has related the large elements to little elemental lives; he +has elevated obvious simplicities to grand complexities. +</p> + +<p> +The resemblance between the austerely tender pathos of "The Daffodil +Fields" and Wordsworth's "Michael" is a genuine resemblance honorable +to the younger poet; and the pointing to the resemblance is not, I +trust, an example of the critic's weak habit of referring one poet +back to another. Mr. Quiller-Couch has said that "neither in the +telling did, or could, 'Enoch Arden' come near the artistic truth of +'The Daffodil Fields'." Now, if one is to compare poets, for the sake +of praising them or for the better understanding of them, it is well +to make comparisons that refer the new and unknown to the known in +illuminating conjunction. To say that "Enoch Arden" does not approach +the artistic truth of "The Daffodil Fields" is to make an inept +comparison, to associate the weak with the strong, even though the +comparison is negative. "Enoch Arden" is the flimsiest kind of +romantic fraud in Tennyson's worst manner. It is a sob poem that sends +only the tiniest lace handkerchiefs to the laundry. "The Daffodil +Fields," for all its conscious artistry and the adroit manipulation of +the verses, is terrifically sincere. If its substance has any +allegiance to another English poet, we must look for a poet who had a +realistic sense of the furrowed field and a visionary sense of the +stars, that is Wordsworth. And if one's odious liking for comparison +is not satisfied with that, one may ask readers of poetry to compare +the opening stanza of "The Widow in the Bye Street" with Chaucer, and +think of such merits as plainness of phrase, simplicity and ease of +narrative, and soundness of verse structure. +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Down Bye street, in a little Shropshire town,</p> +<p>There lived a widow with her only son:</p> +<p>She had no wealth nor title to renown,</p> +<p>Nor any joyous hours, never one.</p></div></div> + +<p> +Is there not here a note that suggests the opening of "The Nonne +Preestes Tale," even though the story which follows is quite unlike +Chaucer's? Or is it only the "widow" that makes me associate the two? +At any rate it is pleasant to think that Mr. Masefield in a strong, +not an imitative or servile, sense, is heir to the oldest master of +English narrative verse. +</p> + +<p> +Then if our habit of judging new poets by old ones still dominates us, +let us take any passage describing the sea in "Dauber" and put it +beside any of the thousand years of English sea poetry. +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Denser it grew, until the ship was lost.</p> +<p>The elemental hid her: she was merged</p> +<p>In mufflings of dark death, like a man's ghost,</p> +<p>New to the change of death, yet hither urged.</p> +<p>Then from the hidden waters something surged—</p> +<p>Mournful, despairing, great, greater than speech,</p> +<p>A noise like one slow wave on a still beach.</p></div></div> + +<p> +After that, if only for the pleasure of quoting them, recall +Swinburne's lines: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Where beyond the extreme sea-wall and between the remote sea-gates,</p> +<p>Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits.</p></div></div> + +<p> +The wonder of our English tongue is never more resounding than when +English poets echo the tumult of the sea. Mr. Masefield is not so much +an innovator as an initiate into a great poetic tradition, the +tradition of a race of sailors and chantey-makers who began with "The +Seafarer" or long before that, and shall not end with "Dauber." The +sea is in Masefield's blood and in his personal experience. Who but an +English poet would have ended "The Tragedy of Pompey the Great" with a +chantey to the tune of "Hanging Johnny"? +</p> + + + +<a name="23"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +SHAKESPEARE AND THE SCRIBES +</p> + + +<p> +In his sensible little book, "Literary Taste: How to Form It," Mr. +Arnold Bennett says: "In attending a university extension lecture on +the sources of Shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of +George Saintsbury into the origins of English prosody, or in weighing +the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was a +scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for." +</p> + +<p> +Of the vast library of scholarly research, the most fatuous section, +if one is to judge from the few specimens one happens to have seen, is +that which deals with the most important division of +literature—poetry; and probably the poet who has suffered the most +voluminous maltreatment from two centuries of English, German and +American scholarship is Shakespeare. I have been going in an idle way +over the notes in "The Tragedie of Jvlivs Caesar," edited by Horace +Howard Furness, Jr., and "The Tragedie of Cymbeline," edited by the +elder Dr. Furness. And I have looked into other volumes of this +laborious work, "A New Varorium Edition of Shakespeare." From an +enormous mass of commentary, criticism, word-worrying, text-marring +and learned guesswork, the editor has chosen what seem to him the best +notes. The sanity of his introductions and the good sense of some of +his own notes lead one to suppose that he has selected with +discrimination from the notes of others. His work is a model of +patience, industry and judgment. He plays well in this game of +scholarship. But what is the game worth? What is the result? +</p> + +<p> +Here is a volume of nearly 500 large pages containing only one play! +The text is a literal reprint of the first folio, or whatever is +supposed to be the earliest printed version. The clear stream of +poetry runs along the tops of the pages. Under that is a deposit of +textual emendations full of clam-shells and lost anchors and tin cans. +Under that is a mud bottom two centuries deep. It consists of (a) what +scholars said Shakespeare said; (b) what scholars said Shakespeare +meant; (c) what scholars said about what other scholars said; (d) what +scholars said about the morality and character of the personages, as +(1) they are in Shakespeare's play, and as (2) they are in other +historical and fictitious writings; (e) what scholars said about how +other people used the words that Shakespeare used; (f) what scholars +said could be done to Shakespeare's text to make him a better poet. I +have not read all these notes and I never shall read them. Life is too +short and too interesting. +</p> + +<p> +All the time that I was trying to read the notes, so that I could know +enough about them to write this article, my mind kept swimming up out +of the mud into that clear river of text. It is an almost perfectly +clear river. Some of the obscurities that scholars say are there are +simply not obscure, except as poetry ought to have a kind of obscurity +in some turbulent passages. Many of the obscurities the scholars put +there in their innocence and stupidity, and those obscurities you can +eliminate by ignoring them. +</p> + +<p> +The really valuable note is the etymological. Etymology reveals the +essential metaphors of words. The modern reader will find that beyond +his intellectual front door stand three or four wire entanglements of +connotation; by the time a word gets to him it is bruised and ragged. +The etymologist clears all those fences for you and delivers a word +fresh into your hands. He shows you how other poets have used it. He +enriches it with other connotations. He shows it to be even wealthier +than it was in the mind of the man who wrote the Shakespearian line. +One of the most exciting and poetic books is the Oxford Dictionary. +The dated illustrative history of a word, past milestone after +milestone of use, is an intellectual epic. The word is root-deep and +branch-high with poetry, with the imaginative habits of the race. The +etymological note not only clarifies Shakespeare, but spreads behind +him (and other poets) a sort of verbal-cosmic background. Etymology +brightens the color of words, deepens their significance. That the +etymologist is often a duffer, who, in the very act of resolving a +word into new chords, writes stiff and stodgy prose, is a perplexing +thing in human nature and a very perplexing problem in that appalling +institution, Scholarship. +</p> + +<p> +It is impossible for even a vivacious, humorous man like Dr. Furness, +an enthusiastic amateur in love with his task, to live in a library of +Shakespearian scholarship and not be infected by its diseases. Dr. +Furness knows, for example, precisely when "Cymbeline" was written. +Shakespeare was forty-six years old. Now, "Cymbeline" is a foolish +play; Dr. Johnson said so. And there must be a reason for +Shakespeare's deterioration, for Shakespeare, unlike other poets, is +not to be allowed to write bad plays and bad lines without a +satisfactory explanation. He did not explain himself, but the scholars +come to his rescue. Dr. Furness fancies that, though forty-six is not +an advanced age, Shakespeare was tired and disillusioned. "There may +have crept into Shakespeare's study of imagination a certain weariness +of soul in contemplating in review the vast throng of his dream +children…. A sufficing harvest of fame is his and honest wealth, +accompanied by honor, love, obedience and troops of friends." "I can +most reverently fancy that he is once more allured by the joy of +creation when by chance there falls in his way the old, old story of a +husband convinced, through villany, of his wife's infidelity." +</p> + +<p> +And there you are. Shakespeare at the age of forty-six is lured by the +restless joy of creation into writing "Cymbeline," which is a poor +play. It is not up to the mark which Shakespeare's previous +masterpieces have set. There is something a little wobbly about this +conjunction of surmises. But the scholar is never at a loss. He can +deliver immortal Will from his own errors, shield him from the +consequences of being at once a god in art and a human man, prone to +literary lapses and slovenly work. The masque in the fifth act "is +regarded by a large majority of editors and critics as an intrusive +insertion by some hand not Shakespeare's." When a large majority of +scholars and critics regard a thing as so, it is so. It gets into the +books that you have to read to pass college examinations. And if you +say that many of the scholars and critics whom you happen to have read +or listened to are chumps, when they deal with Shakespeare or any +other poet, you are a lost soul. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the notes of the various commentators are suggestive. But many +of the notes are sheer impertinences, especially those that attempt to +mend the lines. +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I would haue left it on the Boord, so soone</p> +<p>As I had made my Meale; and parted</p> +<p>With Pray'rs for the Prouider.</p></div></div> + +<p> +There is nothing the matter with that. It sounds all right. But the +editors have to fill out the short second line, to make it scan. Dr. +Furness thinks, justly, that the line needs only "a very timid pause +after 'Meale.'" Of course, any reader, any good actor, with an ear on +the side of his head, reads all lines with pauses timid or bold as the +case requires, and does not make a fuss about it. It is only the +scholars that fuss, or poets like Pope, who are entirely out of touch +with Shakespeare's free metrical habits. +</p> + +<p> +It is almost inconceivable that grown men with enough interest in +poetry to spend their whole lives in Shakespeare's company could have +daubed him with such muddy nonsense as one finds in these notes, which +are not the worst of scholarly comment but the best, selected by a +discriminating man. What a colossal sham it all is!—erected not by +charlatans but by men working in good faith and with disinterested +devotion to their task. +</p> + +<p> +It is not merely the ignorant idler and the superficial player among +books who has got tired of the institution of Shakespeare Improved: +Fourteen Thousand Doctors of Philosophy in Session Day and Night, +Searching for a Serum to Prevent Spinal Meningitis in the Lines of +Shakespeare. Millions Needed to Continue This Humanitarian Work: Fifty +Thousand Students Under Instruction in the Art of How Not to Be Poets. +Against this amazing institution some of the more independent surgeons +have protested. One was the late John Churton Collins, a physician who +discovered that the Shakespearean metaphor was not a locally British +infection rising from the Avon river, but was brought by the verbal +mosquito from Rome and Greece. Collins had a vivid and audacious mind +that made him one of the most readable of modern Shakespeareans, and +he had, I assume, considerable learning. He says: "Dozens of +impertinent emendations have been introduced into Shakespeare's text, +because editors have not been aware that the custom of using the same +word in different senses in one line, or even twice in contiguous +lines, was deliberately affected by the Elizabethan poets." +Deliberately affected? Yes, and it came natural to them in a time when +language was a little looser and freer than it is after three +centuries of increased use and hardened definition both in prose and +poetry. +</p> + +<p> +One trouble with much Shakespearean scholarship lies in the assumption +that everything that left Shakespeare's hand must have been perfect. +Why, he probably used words carelessly and did all kinds of tricks +with them, as other geniuses do. Why should we assume that he always +wrote a good line? Some of his lines are bad, and it is not necessary +for Dr. Pumpernickell to knock out a couple of words or add a couple +just to make a line go metrically. These scholars have a split vision. +In one note they treat Shakespeare like a god who could not go wrong. +In the next note they treat him like a sophomore versifier whose lines +have to be corrected. Dr. Furness says that the earliest known text of +"Julius Caesar"—that of the First Folio, "is markedly free from +corruptions." What corruptions? The printers' or Shakespeare's? Dr. +Furness lugs in that tiresome phantom, a playhouse copy. "Our only +recourse is to accept the explanation given by Resch, viz., that these +words between Brutus and Messala are an interpolation from a MS. +addition which appeared first in a playhouse copy, and which, by +mistake, became incorporated in the text." Now, is not that a "soft, +downy, pink-cheeked peach of an idea" (Jonson's "Sejanus," act IV., +sc. 13, I, 23. Potter's edition: Oshkosh, Scholar and Sellum, 1913)? +Resch be hanged! What playhouse copy? When? Whose mistake? How +incorporated? A solid page and two-thirds of a page are devoted to +explaining a difficulty which does not exist. +</p> + +<p> +This is the true history of the passage in question. Shakespeare and +Bacon and Raleigh met in the Mermaid Tavern for the purpose of turning +out a few yards of Elizabethan blank verse in the post-Tennysonian +style of Mr. Alfred Noyes. It was a very difficult job and Will of +Stratford got roaring full. He went home on foot to Stratford, a long +journey, and found Anne with another pair of twins, one of whom was +the poet Davenant. This was very disturbing to Will. He did not know +until after his death which twin was Davenant. He was then in that +fateful year, 1599-1600, writing his play, "Julius Caesar", and making +extensive use of Suetonius's "The Lives of the Caesars" (Dr. Furness +thinks this doubtful, but if you are going to guess, why not guess +good and plenty?). Anne got on Will's nerves and he had a bad morning +head. That is why he made that slightly confused passage, which has +bothered the scholars ever since. +</p> + +<p> +The following example of how Shakespeare's biography is written is not +a parody. It appears in the New York <i>Nation</i> of November 27, +1913, page 513, in a review of Arthur S. Pier's "Story of Harvard." +</p> + +<p> +"Every good story has a prologue, and the story of Harvard has one +which by no means should be left out. In Stratford-on-Avon stands the +'Old House in the High Street,' identified by the most eminent of our +antiquaries, the late H. F. G. Waters, by certain documentary +evidence, as the early home of Katharine Rogers, mother of John +Harvard, from whom proceeded the little inheritance that first kindled +in the western hemisphere the torch of a liberal culture. For this we +have distinct contemporaneous chapter and verse. +</p> + +<p> +"At circumstantial evidence we look askance, but without pressing the +matter unduly this may be said—that the families of Rogers and +Shakespeare lived in close neighborhood and intimacy at Stratford +during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.; that the poet knew +Katharine Rogers well, as, on the other hand, he knew well Robert +Harvard, at length her husband, in his shop at Southwark, in London, +hard by the Globe Theatre. So far the conjunction would seem to be +inevitable. +</p> + +<p> +"Then looms up a possibility amounting perhaps to a likelihood, that +no other than Shakespeare was the intermediary who brought together +the Londoner and the fair, well-dowered maid in the remote midlands, +that he was a familiar guest in the home in Southwark which he had +helped to establish, and that he, the genial family friend, held on +his knee the little John Harvard, the first-born in the household. +</p> + +<p> +"Could this touch of their foster-father with the most illustrious +name in literature be fairly established (and who can say after the +feats of Mr. Waters what scraps may yet be found in the dust-heaps?), +Harvard men would indeed have a tradition to prize." +</p> + +<p> +Why not get down to brass tacks? We do not know much about +Shakespeare's life. We do not know anything about his manuscripts, or +the playhouse versions. We cannot even rely on the printed date of a +quarto. We do not know whether a corrupt line was corrupted by +Shakespeare or the printer or somebody else. Many emendations consist +largely in a kind of scholarly punning. For example: Shakespeare wrote +a line that every scholar remembers, for it is a causer of gray hairs +and a prodigal spender of the midnight taper: "The blind Rush hath +proclaimed his Bowells search." Johnson conjectures that four lines +have been omitted. Steev. conj.: For "blind rush," read "mind rush." +That is, the impetuousness of his thought makes one aware of how his +instinct is struggling for the solution of his difficulties. Malone +conj.: "Bowells lurch." Evidently referring to the sea-sickness of +Antony after the battle of Actium. Craik conj.: "Rowell's search, +meaning that his blind rush, that is headlong rush, is caused or +indicated by the speed of his horse into which he has thrust his +rowels." Cf. B. Jonson, "Every man out of His Humor"; "One of the +rowels catched hold of the ruffle of my boot." Oechelhauser +(<i>Einleitung</i>, p. 1185): But this must refer to the speed of the +intellect going through purely idealistic experiences. There is no +question here of either sea or land. Macbeth has not been near the sea +and Henry V. has not yet set sail for France. As for horses, it is now +well established that there were no horses in England; otherwise why +should Richard have cried, "My kingdom for a horse"? If there had been +horses, one could surely have bought one, especially a King, for 80 +marks, the then ruling price in Schleswig-Holstein; and even the +ecstasies of expression would not have made appropriate the offer of +an entire kingdom. +</p> + +<p> +So they go "conjing" and "conjing" through desolate miles of notes. +In spite of the fact that now and again a genuine bit of historic +information, a light of interpretative intuition flashing from a +scholar's note, does vivify and elucidate a puzzling line, or a line +that you might pass over in an oblivious mood, nevertheless, is it not +true that this whole institution of literary theology is a stupid +superstition? There are plenty of unsolved problems in Shakespeare, +fascinating questions of biography and interpretation to which +conjectural answers are legitimate. But for illuminating answers, or +partial answers, one has to go outside orthodox scholarship, to Walter +Begley, to "The Shakespeare Problem Restated," by George C. Greenwood, +to "Shakespeare's Mystery Play: A Study of The Tempest" by Colin +Still, and to other heretical inquirers whom the pundits dismiss as +cranks. +</p> + +<p> +The scholars do not confine their thick-headed learning to old poets +whose language is strange and who are made clearer by a note here and +there. For some stranger reason scholars are hired to edit the modern +poets in the popular series, those valuable and inexpensive reprints +which help to spread poetry over the face of the earth and make it +accessible to increasing numbers of readers. I pick up the "Selected +Poems of Christina Rossetti," edited with introduction and notes by +Charles Bell Burke, Ph.D., professor of English in the University of +Tennessee. The volume is in Macmillan's Pocket Classics. I come upon +"A Green Cornfield," a lovely lyric that must have made Shelley look +down with interest "from the abode where the eternal are." There is +reference to a note. I turn to it and find this: "An inverted simile? +Consult Genung's 'Working Principles of Rhetoric,' p. 79, 2, example." +I will not consult Genung. I will advise all the pupils in my school +never to consult Genung while they are reading poetry. +</p> + +<p> +I commend to those hard-working young men and women in the +universities who are now studying under editors of Shakespeare to fit +themselves to be editors of Shakespeare these sentences from Mr. Max +Eastman's "Enjoyment of Poetry": "A misfortune incident to all +education is the fact that those who elect to be teachers are +scholars. They esteem knowledge not for its use in attaining other +values, but as a value in itself; and hence they put an undue emphasis +upon what is formal and nice about it, leaving out what is less +pleasing to the instinct for classification but more needful to the +art of life. This misfortune is especially heavy in the study of +literature. Indeed the very rare separation of the study of literature +from that of the subjects it deals with suggests the barren and formal +character of it. As usually taught for three years to postgraduates in +our universities, it is not worth spending three weeks upon." +</p> + + + +<a name="24"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +GEORGE MOORE AND OTHER IRISH WRITERS +</p> + + +<p> +"Though I may have lost the habit of reading," says Mr. Moore, "I have +acquired, perhaps more than any other human being, another habit, the +habit of thinking. I love my own thoughts." It must be a great +pleasure to be Mr. George Moore, to have confidence in one's +intellectual habits, to enjoy the memories and opinions that the mind +excogitates, and to be able to phrase them with beautiful precision. +The mind that honestly likes itself is sure to attract other minds and +to interest even those that are antipathetic. If Mr. Moore does not +persuade you that all his judgments are to be accepted, he provokes +you to examine your own. He is stimulant, irritant, but there is no +depressant reaction from him. One can stand a large dose of him, both +of his exquisite fiction and of his repetitive reminiscences, which +may or may not be fiction. +</p> + +<p> +There is a remark ascribed to Lady Gregory: "Some men kiss and do not +tell; George Moore does not kiss, but he tells." It is the business of +the writer of fiction to "tell," and it makes little difference to the +reader who reads for fun whether the gallant adventures are +biographical or not. Early in his literary career Mr. Moore tried the +confessional form of narrative and succeeded masterfully. The young +man who "confessed" twenty-five years ago grew older, and in "Memoirs +of My Dead Life" looked back upon his youth from the quiescence of +middle age. Mr. Moore says that "if the reader of 'Vale' be wishful to +know what happened at Orelay he can do so in a volume entitled +'Memoirs of My Dead Life,' but he need not read this novel to follow +adequately the story of 'Vale.'" So the "Memoirs" is fiction. What, +then, is "Hail and Farewell"? Simply an extension of the +autobiographic novel, it includes real persons living and dead and +calls them by their names, but it is as obviously a "made-up" book as +anything in literature. It is the work of an artist and critic, the +artist who gave us two masterpieces, "Esther Waters" and "Evelyn +Innes," and the critic, who, apropos books and pictures, writes, if +not with infallible judgment, ever with an unfailing sense of beauty. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Moore's lady-loves have not, according to his own testimony, +direct and unconscious, been the most interesting affairs of his life. +He writes better about Manet than about an amatory encounter of +yesteryear. The women of his "regular" novels are more vivid than the +women who perturb his mature reminiscences. He says that the critics +complain that "instead of creating types of character like Esther +Waters," he is wasting his time describing his friends, "mere portrait +painting," and he asks an argumentative question: "In writing 'Esther +Waters' did I not think of one heroic woman?" +</p> + +<p> +For once the critics are on the right side. Lady Gregory is +interesting in her own person and her own work, but Mr. Moore can +never make her so interesting in a book as he has made Esther and +Evelyn. And the ladies of his experience are more alive when he uses +them as matter for fiction than when he sits behind a cigar dictating +memories. That in creating Esther he was thinking of an heroic woman +is his concern, not ours. His private kisses undoubtedly taught him +something of the art of making fictitious kisses public; they +furnished him, as such experiences furnish every author, with the +story which as an artist he was to "tell." But his purely personal +revelations are not startling. Ladies flit into his memory, receive +the most delicate literary treatment and flit out again. Nothing +unusual happens at Orelay or anywhere else, and what happens is +handled finely, timidly even, with what may have been audacity in +1890, but no longer strikes us as valiantly candid. The introduction +to "Memoirs of My Dead Life" now seems much ado over little; it is out +of proportion and is a wobbly piece of thinking such as Mr. Moore's +Irish born and French trained mind is seldom guilty of. The "Memoirs" +and "Hail and Farewell" are to be enjoyed and admired. Even an +Irishman ought not to find in them occasion for more than a contest of +wit. +</p> + +<p> +No page of "Hail and Farewell" is flat; no opinion of Mr. Moore's +leaves you quite indifferent. The most interesting pages, more +interesting than his portrait of himself as a lover in France or a +member of the landed gentry of county Mayo, are those which criticize +the personalities and the ideas of the so-called Celtic Revival. His +comments on Lady Gregory and "Willie" Yeats just miss being insults. +To say that "Lady Gregory has never been for me a very real person" is +gratuitous and not quite consonant with that honesty which Mr. Moore +advocates and for the most part practises. For in his portrait of her +and his comments on her he shows that she is a very real person to him +and a writer who compels his consideration. In the act of putting a +pin through the humbuggery of others he buzzes himself. +</p> + +<p> +However, his literary criticism of their work is delightful. Whether +it is true or not we Yankees have no sure means of judging. He says +that Lady Gregory's style which Mr. Yeats so highly values, the speech +that she learned from the people and puts into the mouths of her +characters, "consists of no more than a dozen turns of speech, dropped +into pages of English so ordinary, that redeemed from these phrases it +might appear in any newspaper without attracting attention." Well, is +not that true of the speech of the Irish or any province of England or +America? Our dialectic differences are few but important. The speech +of Lady Gregory's characters is effective, and more than that, the +humor and the pathos of them is deeper than their speech or any +peculiar turns of phrase. +</p> + +<p> +Doubtless (as would say Sir Sidney Lee, whom Mr. Moore despises), +doubtless Mr. Yeats makes too much of Lady Gregory's discovery of +dialect and of his own discovery of Lady Gregory. In the revised +version of "Red Hanrahan," he thanks Lady Gregory "who helped me to +rewrite The Stories of Red Hanrahan in the beautiful country speech of +Kiltartan, and nearer to the tradition of the people among whom he, or +some likeness of him, drifted and is remembered." It is little I care, +myself being a literary man, whether the metaphors and the syntax and +the sentence rhythms were contrived by Mr. Yeats or Lady Gregory or +the people of Kiltartan, or whether they are natural to the English +tongue of other times and other regions of the world. They are +impressive, they convey the story, and they give to the story the +strange color appropriate to it. Mr. Yeats plays with verbal color, +with lights and darkness in a way that should appeal to so sympathetic +a student of the French impressionists as Mr. Moore. +</p> + +<p> +To be sure, there is always the danger of affectation, and the +concluding sentences of Mr. Yeats's dedicatory letter to "AE" are +pretty close to buncombe. "Ireland, which is still predominantly +Celtic, has preserved, with some less excellent things, a gift of +vision which has died out among more hurried and more successful +nations; no shining candelabra have prevented us from looking into the +darkness, and when one looks into the darkness there is always +something there." Not always; there may not be anything there worth +talking about, not even a black cat. And the man of poetic vision may +be a citizen of a relatively successful nation. The eye does not +thrive in the dark, but is gradually atrophied. It was not by +scrutinizing the dark, but by using his ear and his wonderful visual +imagination that Mr. Yeats learned to write the verses in "Red +Hanrahan's Curse," verses the like of which no other man can write. +</p> + +<p> +In such verses lives and will live the real Yeats. That some of his +verses are obscure and weak does not matter. Greater poets than he +have failed at times. And the best of his later verse is his very +best; he grows and keeps young, for he has been dipped in some magic +well. That he has foibles a plenty is of little moment; greater poets +than he have allowed the fool to triumph over the genius sometimes. +The divine fool is one of the common themes in poetic legend. Later +criticism will assess the value of the "school" that he has founded +and appraise his influence in the literary history of Ireland. The +function of criticism at the present time is to proclaim the lyric +poet and persuade readers to subject themselves to the enchantment of +his songs. It is surprising that Mr. Moore, who preaches the gospel of +beauty with a fervor worthy of Keats, should not balance his witty +strictures with a little more hearty appreciation. He quotes one of +his friends as saying that Yeats "took his colleen to London and put +paint upon her cheeks and dye upon her hair and sent her up +Piccadilly." +</p> + +<p> +And another critic added that the hat and feathers were supplied by +Arthur Symons. That is funny enough and serves the purpose of +criticism by arousing interest. It also gives other critics +opportunity to remind their readers that Yeats's colleen, whether in +Sligo or London, is a lovely witch. +</p> + +<p> +One story that Mr. Moore tells of Mr. Yeats is beyond my un-Celtic +sense of humor. He represents Mr. Yeats as coming down to luncheon at +Lady Gregory's house and saying: "I have had a great morning. I have +written eight lines." Where is the joke? It does not seem to be at the +expense of the poet. Eight of his lines may seem a poor day's work to +so great a man as George Moore. But some of us who have not earned the +right to be patronizing would cheerfully devote a month of Sundays, if +we knew how, to making one line as good as the best of Yeats. These +Irish people rag each other delightfully, and it is more delightful to +poke fun than to admire too mutually; perhaps it is more Irish. +</p> + +<p> +Of living Irishmen the two most distinguished writers of prose are +George Moore and Bernard Shaw. They resemble each other in two or +three particulars. Both are out of sympathy with the modern movement +in Irish literature, with the "Celtic revival," with all that revolves +about the person of Mr. Yeats. In the introduction to "John Bull's +Other Island," Mr. Shaw says (I quote from memory) that he is an +old-fashioned Irishman who sees other Irishmen as they really are and +not as the young people of the Abbey Theatre imagine them to be. Mr. +Moore somewhat grudgingly concedes that Synge was a man of genius and +that Lady Gregory's plays, though inferior to the "Playboy" are all +meritorious. But he implies, if he does not directly say, that the +only man who really understands the diction of the Irish is George +Moore, Esq., of Moore Hall. Another point of resemblance between Shaw +and Moore is that both insist on calling themselves shameless; they +boast their independence and find satisfaction in contemplating their +difference from other people. It is amusing to think that the reading +world has long taken them for granted and is no longer shocked. Both +are masters of the English tongue, not of a new style full of strange +idioms, natural or artificial, but of the straightest sort of classic +English, firm as the best prose of the eighteenth century. +</p> + +<p> +It is that English which shall save these Celtic iconoclasts who are +now respectable old gentlemen. Irish to the back-bone, they took for +foster mother the finest prose of the race that betrayed their +country; they became favorite sons of an empire superior to the +political and racial divisions of the world. Mr. Moore thinks that the +English are a tired race and their weariness betrays itself in the +language. "God help the writer who puts pen to paper in fifty years' +time, for all that will be left of the language will be a dry +shank-bone that has been lying a long while on the dust-heap of +empire." A dismal prophecy which is cheerfully contradicted by the +facts of literary history. The political empire may be disrupted, +Ireland may be freed from English yoke and split in twain. But the +language is safe. Artists like Mr. Moore preserve its integrity and +renew its vitality. And we have not heard the last of James Joyce and +James Stephens, or of one or two young men who were born on the island +that lies east of Dublin. +</p> + + + +<a name="25"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +JAMES JOYCE +</p> + + +<p> +In the preface of "Pendennis" Thackeray says: "Since the author of +'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been +permitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must drape him and +give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the +Natural in our Art." If Thackeray felt that, why did he not take his +reputation and his fortune in his hands and, defying the social +restrictions which he deplored, paint us a true portrait of a young +gentleman of his time? He might have done much for English art and +English honesty. As it was, he did as much as any writer of his +generation to fasten on English fiction the fetters of a hypocritical +reticence. It was only in the last generation that English and Irish +novelists, under the influence of French literature, freed themselves +from the cowardice of Victorian fiction and assumed that anything +human under the sun is proper subject-matter for art. If they have not +produced masterpieces (and I do not admit that they have not), they +have made a brave beginning. Such a book as "A Portrait of the Artist +as a Young Man" would have been impossible forty years ago. Far from +looking back with regret at the good old novelists of the nineteenth +century (whom, besides, we need never lose), I believe that our +fiction is in some respects freer<a href="#note1_9" name="noteref1_9"> +<small>[1]</small></a> and richer than the fiction of +our immediate forefathers. +</p> + +<p> +Joyce's work is outspoken, vigorous, original, beautiful. Whether it +faithfully reflects Irish politics and the emotional conflicts of the +Catholic religion one who is neither Irish nor Catholic can not judge +with certainty. It seems, however, that the noisy controversies over +Parnell and the priests in which the boy's elders indulge have the +sound of living Irish voices; and the distracted boy's wrestlings with +his sins and his faith are so movingly human that they hold the +sympathy even of one who is indifferent to the religious arguments. I +am afraid that the religious questions and the political questions are +too roughly handled to please the incurably devout and patriotic. If +they ever put up a statue of Joyce in Dublin, it will not be during +his lifetime. For he is no respecter of anything except art and human +nature and language. +</p> + +<p> +There are some who, to turn his own imaginative phrase, will fret in +the shadow of his language. He makes boys talk as boys do, as they did +in your school and mine, except that we lacked the Irish imagery and +whimsicality. If the young hero is abnormal and precocious, that is +because he is not an ordinary boy but an artist, gifted with thoughts +and phrases above our common abilities. This is a portrait of an +artist, a literary artist of the finest quality. +</p> + +<p> +The style is a joy. "Cranly's speech," he writes, "had neither rare +phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned versions of Irish +idioms." In that Joyce has defined his own style. It is Elizabethan, +yet thoroughly modern; it is racily Irish, yet universal English. It +is unblushingly plain-spoken and richly fanciful, like Shakespeare and +Ben Jonson. The effect of complete possession of the traditional +resources of language is combined with an effect of complete +indifference to traditional methods of fiction. Episodes, sensations, +dreams, emotions trivial and tragic succeed each other neither +coherently nor incoherently; each is developed vividly for a moment, +then fades away into the next, with or without the mechanical devices +of chapter divisions or rows of stars. Life is so; a fellow is pandied +by the schoolmaster for no offense; the cricket bats strike the balls, +pick, pock, puck; there is a girl to dream about; and Byron was a +greater poet than Tennyson anyhow…. +</p> + +<p> +The sufferings of the poor little sinner are told with perfect +fidelity to his point of view. Since he is an artist his thoughts +appropriately find expression in phrases of maturer beauty than the +speech of ordinary boys. He is enamored of words, intrigued by their +mystery and color; wherefore the biographer plays through the boy's +thoughts with all manner of verbal loveliness. +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than + their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as + weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from + the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism + of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the + contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored + perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose? +</p></div> + +<p> +From the fading splendor of an evening beautifully described, he +tumbles into the sordid day of a house rich in pawn tickets. That is +life. "Welcome, O life!" he bids farewell to his young manhood. "I go +to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to +forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. +Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." +</p> + +<p> +The sketches in "Dubliners" are perfect, each in its own way, and all +in one way: they imply a vast deal that is not said. They are small as +the eye-glass of a telescope is small; you look through them to depths +and distances. They are a kind of short story almost unknown to the +American magazine if not to the American writer. An American editor +might read them for his private pleasure, but from his professional +point of view he would not see that there was any story there at all. +The American short story is explicit and thin as a moving-picture +film; it takes nothing for granted; it knows nothing of the art of the +hintful, the suggestive, the selected single detail which lodges +fertilely in the reader's mind, begetting ideas and emotions. America +is not the only offender (for patriotism is the fashion and bids +criticism relent); there is much professional Irish humor which is +funny enough but no more subtle than a shillalah. And English short +stories, such at least as we see in magazines, are obvious and +"express" rather than expressive. Joyce's power to disentangle a +single thread from the confusion of life and let you run briefly back +upon it until you encounter the confusion and are left to think about +it yourself—that is a power rare enough in any literature. +</p> + +<p> +Except one story, "A Painful Case," I could not tell the plot of any +of these sketches. Because there is no plot going from beginning to +end. The plot goes from the surface inward, from a near view away into +a background. A person appears for a moment—a priest, or a girl, or a +small boy, or a street-corner tough, or a drunken salesman—and does +and says things not extraordinary in themselves; and somehow you know +all about these people and feel that you could think out their entire +lives. Some are stupid, some are pathetic, some are funny in an +unhilarious way. The dominant mood is irony. The last story in the +book, "The Dead," is a masterpiece which will never be popular, +because it is all about living people; there is only one dead person +in it and he is not mentioned until near the end. That's the kind of +trick an Irishman like Synge or Joyce would play on us, and perhaps a +Frenchman or a Russian would do it; but we would not stand it from one +of our own writers. +</p> +<br> +<hr align="left" noshade size="2" width="40%"> +<a name="note1_9"> </a> +<p class="foot"> +<a href="#noteref1_9">[1]</a> If it gets too free, as in Joyce's "Ulysses," it has an +official hand clapped on its mouth!</p> + + + +<a name="26"> </a> +<p class="chapter"> +D. H. LAWRENCE +</p> + + +<p> +Mr. Lawrence is a poet in prose and in verse. No writer of his +generation is more singular, more unmistakably individual, and no +other that I know is endowed with his great variety of gifts. He is as +dangerous to public morals as Meredith or Hardy. Readers who cannot +understand the tragedy of "Richard Feverel" or of "Jude the Obscure," +will not understand Mr. Lawrence or be interested to read a third of +the way through one of his books. The stupidity of the multitude is +sure protection against his insidious loveliness and essential +sadness. He and his admirers will, I hope, regard it as honorable to +him that he reminds this critic oftener of Meredith and Hardy than of +any of his contemporaries. I am not so fatuous as to suggest that his +independent and original work is in any unfavorable sense derivative. +It must be true that every young novelist learns his lessons from the +older novelists; but I cannot see that Mr. Lawrence is clearly the +disciple of any one master. I do feel simply that he is of the elder +stature of Meredith and Hardy, and I will suggest, in praise of him, +some resemblances that have struck me, without trying to analyze or +quote chapter and verse in tedious parallels. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lawrence is a lyric as well as a tragic poet. In this he is like +Meredith and Hardy, and I can think of no other young novelist who is +quite worthy of the company. Young people in love, or some other +difficulty, become entangled with stars and mountains and seas; they +are baffled and lost, seldom consoled, in cosmic immensities. +Novelists who happen also to be poets are enamoured of those +immensities. +</p> + +<p> +This is the end of "Sons and Lovers": +</p> + +<div class="blockquote"> +<p> + "Where was he?—one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear + of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side + the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, + into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. + Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond + stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning + round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in the + darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. + So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core nothingness, and + yet not nothing." +</p></div> + +<p> +The concluding scenes of "Women in Love" are the Alps, "a silence of +dim, unrealized snow, of the invisible intervening between her and the +visible, between her and the flashing stars." I am reminded, by the +beauty of the phrasing and by the sense of the pathetic little human +being adrift in space, of the flight of the two young people through +the Alps, in "The Amazing Marriage," and of farmer Gabriel Oak +watching the westward flow of the stars. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes, like Meredith, rather than like Hardy, whose style is +colder and more austere, Mr. Lawrence is almost too lyric and his +phrases threaten to overflow the rigid dikes of prose. I could pick +out a dozen rhapsodical passages which with little change might well +appear in his books of verse. +</p> + +<p> +But young people in love do not spend all their days and nights in +ecstatic flights to the clouds. And their flights are followed by +pathetic Icarian disasters. From luminous moments they plunge into +what Mr. Lawrence calls "the bitterness of ecstacy," and their pain +outweighs their joy many times over, as in Hardy, and as in the more +genial Meredith, whose rapturous digression played on a penny whistle +is a cruelly beautiful preparation for the agonies that ensue. It may +be that the emotional transports of Mr. Lawrence's young people are +more frequent and violent than the ordinary human soul can enjoy and +endure. The nervous tension is high and would break into hysteria if +Mr. Lawrence were not a philosopher as well as a poet, if he did not +know so accurately what goes on inside the human head, if he had not +an artist's ability to keep his balance at the very moment when a less +certain workman would lose it. +</p> + +<p> +There is firm ground under his feet and under the feet of his lovers; +it is the everyday life which consists of keeping shop and keeping +school and other commonplace activities in street, kitchen, and coal +mine. These diurnal details he studies with a fidelity not surpassed +by Mr. Bennett or any other of his contemporaries. The talk of his +people is always alive, both the dialect of the villagers and the +discussions of the more intellectual. Sometimes he puts into the +speech of his characters a little more of his own poetic fancy than +they might reasonably be supposed to be capable of. But if this is a +fault, from a realistic point of view, it is a merit from the point of +view of readability, and it makes for vivacity. At times—and is not +this like Meredith?—he seems to be less interested in the sheer +dramatic value of a situation he has created than in the opportunity +it offers of writing beautiful things around it. Not that his +situations fail to carry themselves or have not their proper place and +proportion. Mr. Lawrence knows how to handle his narrative and he has +an abundant invention and dramatic ingenuity. But he is above those +elementary things that any competent novelist knows. He has the +something else that makes the story teller the first rate literary +artist—style may be the word for it, but poetic imagination seems to +be the better and more inclusive term. Open "The Lost Girl" at page 57 +and read two pages. Without knowing what has preceded or whither the +story is bound, anybody who knows what literature is will feel at once +that that is it. +</p> + +<p> +"Women in Love" is a sequel to "The Rainbow," in that it carries on +the story of Ursula of the family of Brangwen. "The Rainbow" is the +stronger book; it has more of the tragic power, the deep social +implications of Mr. Lawrence's masterpiece, "Sons and Lovers". In +"Women in Love" are four young people, two men and two women, whose +chief interest, for them and for us, is in amatory relations. This is +indicated by the title of the story, one of those obvious titles which +only a man of imagination could hit upon, so simple that you wonder +why no novelist ever thought of it before. Now the erotic relations of +people, though a tremendous part of life, as all the great tragic +romances prove, are still only part of life. Nobody knows this better +than Mr. Lawrence. The first story of the Brangwen family is richer +than the second, not because of the proverbial falling off of sequels, +not because Mr. Lawrence's power declined—far from it!—but because +the first novel embraces a larger number of the manifold interests +that compose the fever called living. In it are not only young lovers, +but old people, old failures, the land, the town, the succession of +the generations rooted yet restless. Ursula emerges from immemorial +centuries of English life, touched with foreign blood out of Poland +(when an English novelist wishes to introduce variety and strangeness +into the dull solidity of an English town he imports a Pole, or an +Italian, or a Frenchman, somebody not English). +</p> + +<p> +Ursula's background is thus richer than all her emotional experience. +Her father, her grandfather, the family, the muddled tragicomedy of +little affairs and ambitions, the grim, gray colliery district, the +entire social situation, are the foundations and walls of the story, +and she is the slender spire that surmounts it all—and is struck by +lightning. In "The Rainbow" she goes to ashes, and in "Women in Love" +she revives, burns again, and finds in her new love new +dissatisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +It is impossible to write of Mr. Lawrence without discoursing in +symbols and reflecting, somewhat pallidly, his metaphors. For like all +genuine poets he is a symbolist. In "Aaron's Rod" he redoubles and +compounds symbolism in a manner baffling to readers and to critics who +like to have their prose prosaic and their poetry in lines and whose +sound stomachs refuse a mixed drink. I enjoy the mixture—in the +Bible, in Meredith, in Ruskin, in James, in Lawrence. +</p> + +<p> +It is stupid to explain symbols. Yet after all that is the dull +function of criticism, to explain something—as if the creator of a +work of art had not given all the necessary explanation in the very +act of creation. Whoever does not understand Lawrence on immediate +contact will not understand him better after the intervention of a +critic. But it is the pleasure and the privilege of a critic to have +his secondary imagination set on fire by the primary imagination of a +man of genius, to spread the fire if he can by the cold fluid of +critical exposition—as water carries burning oil. +</p> + +<p> +Well, then, Aaron's rod is doubly symbolic. His rod which, in the +Biblical phrase, bloomed, blossomed and yielded almonds, is a flute. +And the symbol is also phallic, as, indeed, it is in the Bible. +Aaron's flute, the musical instrument, is smashed in an accident which +is as irrational as life itself. The instrument in its other aspect is +broken by the supreme and only rationality—that of human character. +</p> + +<p> +In all his books, beginning with "Sons and Lovers," Mr. Lawrence has +shown relatively little interest in those mere sequences of external +events which novelists artificially pattern into plots. He throws some +matter-of-fact probabilities to the winds, as in "Aaron's Rod," when +he makes a man from the English collieries a master flautist and +alleges that he got a hearing in Italy, where there are more good +flautists to the square inch than in England to the square mile. +</p> + +<p> +But Aaron is an unusual person. "It is remarkable," says his creator, +"how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." Mr. +Lawrence has always been interested in slightly eccentric characters, +and so he stands apart from his contemporaries who call themselves +realists or naturalists because they deal with the commonplace or the +recognizably normal. +</p> + +<p> +After all, extraordinary persons in fiction, as in life, are better +worth knowing than ordinary persons. Mr. Lawrence does not make his +people so widely different from the general run of human beings as to +put a strain on credulity, and he studies them with a subtle and firm +understanding. Their talk sounds real. Their emotions are alive in his +bold and delicate prose. He has made amateurish excursions into +psychoanalysis, which may or may not be a fruitful subject for a +novelist to study. The real novelist has always been a psychologist in +an untechnical sense. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lawrence is too fine an artist to import into his art the dubious +lingo of psycho-analysis; he remains the poet, the dramatist, his +symbols and images uncorrupted by pseudo-science. Aaron's dream in the +last chapter—no modern novel is complete without at least one +dream—is easily "freuded" (cave, corridor, and water symbols), but +Mr. Lawrence refrains from analysis. +</p> + +<p> +Aaron's whole life, or as much as the author gives us of it, is a +dream, a dream unfulfilled in love or friendship or music. To what he +wakes, if he wakes at all, the conclusion leaves us guessing. That +will puzzle readers who demand that a story shall finish with a bang +or come to a definite point of rest. But life does not conclude; it +persists. +</p> + +<p> +When Aaron related his history and experiences to some friends, he +"told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at +that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things +in this life. Mixed." Though Aaron is a strange man, an individual, +yet the conflict that goes on in him, between his rebellion and his +indecision, his desire and his impotence, is not freakish; it is so +much like the struggle that every man knows, with special variations, +that it is true to universal human nature. Behind the symbolism are +the plain facts, solidly conceived. +</p> + +<p> +The other characters in the book are well drawn, notably Aaron's odd, +philosophic friend, Lilly, whose ideas are at once clear and cryptic. +There is a pitifully accurate portrait of a captain whose soul and +nerves had not recovered from the war. In a single chapter through one +man Mr. Lawrence suggests the disillusionment, the mental disaster, +that followed the armistice. "None of the glamour of returned heroes, +none of the romance of war … the hot, seared burn of unbearable +experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not +to be relieved." +</p> + +<p> +In "The Lost Girl" and "Women in Love" the men are subordinate to the +women. In "Aaron's Rod" the women are of secondary interest; Aaron's +wife is rather indistinct and shadowy, and the Marchesa, the Cleopatra +whom he tried to love and couldn't, never quite comes alive, either +for Aaron or for the reader. Probably these women are just what Mr. +Lawrence intended them to be, as seen through Aaron's temperament. But +I do not feel that Mr. Lawrence has here made a very striking +contribution to the history of the everlasting warfare between the +sexes. Did Aaron miss because he happened not to meet the right woman? +Or was he the sort of man whom no woman could capture and satisfy? +Evidently Mr. Lawrence means to leave the eternal question unsettled +even for the man whom he has created. +</p> + +<p> +Like many other English poets, Mr. Lawrence is a lover of Italy, and +he takes his hero there, one suspects, for the sheer joy of the scene +and the atmosphere, which he realizes with vivid beauty. He is a +master of description, a master of words. His command ranges from the +baldest sort of every day conversation to prose harmonies that are as +near to verse as prose can go without breaking over. This is not +merely a command of style; it is more than that—it is a command of +ideas. Mr. Lawrence can pass with equal sureness from colliery to +cathedral and find the right word for every thing and person met on +the way, the right word, though often a perplexed and perplexing word. +Because life is like that. It is "mixed." +</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full"> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 38487-h.txt or 38487-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/4/8/38487">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/4/8/38487</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution.</p> + + + +<pre> +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a> + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a> + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/38487-h/images/logo.jpg b/38487-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fb610c --- /dev/null +++ b/38487-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/38487.txt b/38487.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa220aa --- /dev/null +++ b/38487.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6177 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Critical Game, by John Albert Macy + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Critical Game + + +Author: John Albert Macy + + + +Release Date: January 3, 2012 [eBook #38487] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/criticalgame00macy + + + + + +THE CRITICAL GAME + +by + +JOHN MACY + +Author of "The Spirit of American Literature," etc. + + + + + + + +Boni and Liveright +Publishers New York + +Copyright, 1922, by +Boni and Liveright, Inc. + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + + +To + +ROGER IRVING LEE + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Page + +The Critical Game 11 + +Dante in English 31 + +Dante's Political Philosophy 43 + +Nietzsche 55 + +Tolstoy 65 + +Maeterlinck's Essays 95 + +Joseph Conrad 105 + +A Conrad Miscellany 123 + +Strindberg 135 + +Tagore 145 + +Remy de Gourmont 153 + +Swift's Relations with Women 163 + +William James, Man of Letters 175 + +Biographies of Poe 193 + +Biographies of Whitman 203 + +George E. Woodberry 215 + +Abraham Cahan 227 + +Thomas Hardy 237 + +George Borrow 247 + +Shelley 259 + +H. G. Wells and Utopia 269 + +John Masefield 279 + +Shakespeare and the Scribes 289 + +George Moore and Other Irish Writers 305 + +James Joyce 317 + +D. H. Lawrence 325 + + + + +THE CRITICAL GAME + + +Criticism is one form of the game of writing. It differs from other +forms only as whist differs from poker and as tennis differs from +golf. The motives are the same, the exercise of the player's brain and +muscles, and the entertainment of the spectators, from whom, if the +player be successful, he derives profit, livelihood, applause, and +fame. The function of criticism at the present time, and at all times, +is the function of all literature, to be wise, witty, eloquent, +instructive, humourous, original, graceful, beautiful, provocative, +irritating, persuasive. That is, it must possess some of the many +merits that can be found in any type of literature; it must in some +way be good writing. There is no other sound principle to be +discovered in the treatises on the art of criticism or in fine +examples of the art. Whether Charles Lamb writes about Shakespeare or +Christ's Hospital or ears is of relatively slight importance compared +with the question whether in one essay or another Lamb is at one of +his incomparable best moments of inspiration. + +Remy de Gourmont says, apropos Brunetiere's views of Renan: + + Contre l'opinion commune, la critique est peut-etre le plus + subjectif de tous les genres litteraires; c'est une confession + perpetuelle; en croyant analyser les oeuvres d'autrui, c'est + soi-meme que l'on devoile et que l'on expose au public ... voulant + expliquer et contredire Renan, M. Brunetiere s'est une fois de + plus confesse publiquement. + +That is true, except that it may be doubted whether one type of +literature is more subjective than another, since all types are +subjective. Even a work that belongs, according to De Quincey's +definition, to the literature of information as distinguished from the +literature of power, even an article in an encyclopaedia, an article, +say, on Patagonia, has a man behind it; it cannot be quite objective +and impersonal. + +Criticism should not be set off too sharply from other forms of +literary expression. It has no special rights, privileges, and +authority; and at the same time it has no special disabilities that +consign it to a secondary place in the divisions of literature. In any +unit of art, a sonnet or an epic, a short story or a novel, a little +review or a history of aesthetics, a man is trying to say something. +And the value of what he says must, of course, depend partly on the +essential interest of his subject; but it depends to a greater extent +on the skill with which he puts words together, creates interest in +himself. Arnold's essay on Keats is less Keats than Arnold. It could +not have been if Keats had not existed. But the beauty of that +sequence of words, that essay in criticism, is due to the genius of +Arnold. Francis Thompson on Shelley adds no cubit to the stature of +Shelley, but Thompson's interpretation is a marvellous piece of poetic +prose which cannot be deducted without enormous loss from the works of +Thompson, from English criticism. We read Pater on Coleridge, not for +Coleridge but for Pater, and we read Coleridge for Coleridge, not for +Shakespeare. Thackeray's lecture on Swift, which is full of animosity +and miscomprehension, is a well-written revelation of Thackeray. +Trollope's book on Thackeray, which is full of friendship and +admiration, is an ill-written revelation of Trollope. + +Some men of great ability, like Trollope, who have written good books +themselves, lack the faculty, whatever it may be, of writing in an +entertaining fashion about the books of other men. Swinburne is a +striking example. His knowledge of literature was immense, and he had +the enthusiasms and contempts that make the critical impulse; but +except when the poet in him seized the pen and made a passage of +lyrical prose, his excursions into criticism are bewildering and +difficult to read. His sonnets on Dickens, Lamb, and the Elizabethans +are worth more than all his prose. On the other hand, Lamb, who wrote +like an angel about the Elizabethan dramatists, failed completely as a +dramatist. + +Every man who plays with literature at all must be ambitious to +succeed in some form of art that may be called "creative," as distinct +from critical--a distinction which, since Arnold taught us our lesson, +we know does not exist. The reason for this ambition is plain enough. +A novel or a play reaches a wider audience than a volume of essays, +however admirable; it has a more obvious claim to originality, and it +brings the author a greater degree of practical satisfaction. A few +doubly or trebly gifted men, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe, Arnold, Pater, +Henley, Stevenson, Henry James, could do first-rate work in more than +one _genre_, including criticism. And a good case could be made out to +prove that a man who knows how to handle words in many ways is on the +whole the best qualified to comment on the art of handling words. +However that may be, it is certain that in English literature a critic +who is only a critic seldom wins a conspicuous position. Even Johnson +was something more than a critic, and he was, with all due respect, +somewhat less than a good one. And Hazlitt, who was a good one, wrote +on many subjects besides books and art. + +Because so many little people went into the business of reviewing and +presumed to sit in judgment on their betters, criticism early got a +bad name in English literature, and not all the dignified work of +Arnold and others has yet succeeded in restoring the reputation of the +word or the art. Criticism came to mean censure, a connotation which +persists in current speech. The degeneration had already taken place +in Dryden's time, and he protested that "they wholly mistake the +nature of criticism who think that its business is principally to find +fault." Authors of imaginative works became resentful and felt that +the critic was an enemy, a nasty and incompetent enemy, as indeed he +often was. An interesting compilation could be made--and probably +Saintsbury or somebody else has done it--of the retorts and +counter-attacks made by writers of other things than criticism against +the whole critical crew. Here are a few examples: + +Gentle Jane Austen in "Northanger Abbey" amusingly defends her +heroine's habit of reading novels: + + I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common + with novel writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, + the very performances to the number of which they are themselves + adding ... if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the + heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and + regard?... Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such + effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to + talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now + groans. + +That sounds as if Miss Austen's pride in her craft had been wounded. I +know of no record that anybody ever spoke ill of her while she was +living. + +Scott, whose generous soul was hurt by the harsh squabbles of the +Scottish reviewers, took a shot at the tribe in the letter which +appears in the introductory note to "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" in +the Cambridge edition: + + As to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much + attention to them for, as they do not understand what I call + poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many + of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, + unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for _menders_ of them, + and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. + +The idea that the critic is a secondary fellow who cannot make +first-hand literature goes back to Dryden, the champion and exemplar +of sound criticism, who wrote in "The Conquest of Granada": + + They who write ill and they who ne'er durst write + Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite. + +Landor repeats the idea in a "Conversation" between Southey and +Porson, in which Porson says: "Those who have failed as writers turn +reviewers." + +Writers and other artists are usually sensitive and often vain. Some +have taken critics too seriously, have given them too much importance +while pretending to despise them, and have allowed themselves to be +stung instead of brushing the flies off. Thanks to Shelley, the idea +became current that the "viperous murderer," the critic, killed Keats. +It was not so. Keats died of tuberculosis. Though he was, like all +poets, delicately organized, he was an unusually sane and self-reliant +man, quite sure of the value of his work. Moreover, in a day when +rough criticism was the fashion, the critics were, though stupid, not +especially rough on Keats. Shelley's "_J'accuse_" is flaming poetry, +but--it is not good criticism. Byron had the right idea. With his +superior wit and vigour he gave the reviewers ten blows for one and +used his opponents as the occasion of a delightful exhibition of +boxing. The reviewers were knocked out in the second round. "English +Bards and Scottish Reviewers" is still in the ring, as I have +pleasantly discovered by re-reading it. + +The notion that the critic will, or can, do damage to the artist +persisted long after Shelley and is perhaps still believed. In 1876, +Sidney Lanier, a man of good sense and great bravery, whom the flies, +or the "vipers," had but lightly nipped, wrote in a letter to his +father: + + What possible claim can contemporary criticism set up to + respect--that criticism which crucified Jesus, stoned Stephen, + hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured + Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, drove Dante into a hell of + exile, made Shakespeare write the sonnet, "When in disgrace of + fortune and men's eyes," gave Milton L5 for "Paradise Lost," kept + Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, + reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on + Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so + many other impious follies and stupidities? + +Lanier's charges are not all quite true. He mixed up the sins of +criticism with the sins of politics, economics, and other dreadful +affairs. But his outburst is a good illustration of the quarrel +between the "author" and the "critic." Especially when the author has +for the moment lost his sense of humour. + +The best treatment of the critic by the author, as also, perhaps, of +the author by the critic, is humourous. In "One of Our Conquerors," +Meredith lays out the art critics: + + He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics; who + are sometimes unanimous, and are then taken for guides, and are + fatal. + +Washington Irving, in a delightful little paper called "Desultory +Thoughts on Criticism," quietly places the reviewer in the low seat +where he belongs. I shall not quote from the essay, but merely refer +the reader to it and especially to the introductory quotation from +Buckingham's "Rehearsal," in which the critic is set in a still lower +seat. + +Finally--for these quotations--Dr. Holmes, who lived all his life +surrounded by praise and comfort, puts his finger gently on the +parasitism of the critic. The passage is in "The Poet at the Breakfast +Table": + + Our _epizoic_ literature is becoming so extensive that nobody is + safe from its _ad infinitum_ progeny. A man writes a book of + criticisms. A _Quarterly Review_ criticises the critic. A _Monthly + Magazine_ takes up the critic's critic. A _Weekly Journal_ + criticizes the critic of the critic's critic, and a daily paper + favours us with some critical remarks on the performance of the + writer in the _Weekly_, who has criticised the critical notice in + the _Monthly_ of the critical essay in the _Quarterly_ on the + critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea + "has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself + cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. + +To what extent is the critic parasitic? To this extent: he is dealing +with ideas already expressed, with cooked and predigested food. It is +easier for any mind to think of something to say about an idea that +has already gone through cerebral processes than it is to take the raw +material of life and make something. You may sit on a bench in the +park and watch the people and never, for the life of you, conceive a +good story. Then O. Henry comes along and makes twenty stories. After +he has done it, you can write something very brilliant about what O. +Henry saw from the same bench that you sat on. And you can make neat +remarks about the resemblances and differences between O. Henry, +Boccaccio, and H. C. Bunner. That may be worth doing, if your remarks +are really neat. For then you may be readable. + +And that is the function of the critic, to be readable, to make +literature of a sort. The critic is always playing his own game, +selfish, egotistical, expressive of his own will, and no more +disinterested than was Arnold himself when he took his pen in hand to +slay a Philistine or to sign a contract with his manager for a lecture +tour in America. In playing his own game the critic may help the game +of another author by crying him up and advertising him. But a hundred +critics, clamouring in the fatal unanimity at which Meredith pokes +fun, cannot make the fortunes of a book or influence at the creative +source the work of a man sufficiently strong and original to be worth +reading. And the same hundred critics with lofty hatred of bad writing +cannot prevent bad books from being written and read. George Eliot +made it a rule not to read criticisms of her work because she found it +necessary to be preserved "from that discouragement as an artist which +ill-judged praise no less than ill-judged blame tends to produce in +me." The implication that criticism, favorable or unfavorable, is +ill-judged gives us an addition to our notes on what authors think of +critics. I doubt whether, if that strong-minded woman had read +everything that was written about her before and after her death, she +would have altered a single sentence. Did Hardy stop writing novels +because of the ignorant attacks on "Jude"? I would not accept without +question Hardy's own word for it. I suspect that it was his own inward +impulse, not determined by the opinions of the other people, that +turned his energy to that stupendous epic, "The Dynasts." + +To what extent can the critic play the game of the reader, be guide +and teacher, maintain standards, elevate taste, make the best ideas +prevail? Not to a very great extent. Criticism, good or bad, is read +only by the sophisticated, by people whose tastes are formed and who +can take care of themselves in matters literary and intellectual. Who +that had not already looked into Shakespeare and Plato ever heard of +Pater? The journals that print intelligent articles about literature +and art have a small circulation; they are missionaries to the +converted; their controversial discussions of general principles or of +the merits of an individual are only family feuds. Critics play with +each other in a professional game. The few amateurs who sit as +spectators are a select minority who have seen the game before and +who, though not in the professional class, are instructed, cultivated, +have some knowledge of the plays. The critical game is enjoyed by +those who are themselves critical and least in need of enlightenment. + +Nevertheless, it is a great game--when it is played well. + +The author of a book on golf illustrates it with the stances and +swings of better players than himself; he makes an anthology. A +collection of essays by various authors would illustrate the game +better than the plays of a single critic, a much more competent critic +than I. I do not pretend that the essays in this book are first-rate +specimens of how the strokes should be made. But even a small fellow +may flatter himself that he has an individual way of looking at things +which may give unity of interest to a collection of papers. At any +rate he has a right to exhibit his methods, and nobody is obliged to +watch him or play with him. + +Most of these papers have been published in reviews and magazines, +_The Freeman_, _The Dial_, _The New Republic_, the _Boston Herald_, +the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Literary Review_ of the _New York Evening +Post_, the _New York Tribune_. + +The essay on Joseph Conrad appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in +1906. I am proud only of the date. Sixteen years ago Conrad was not +universally recognized; some of his best work had not been done; and +many finer essays than mine had not yet been written. If I was not the +first American critic to pursue that mysterious mariner across +enchanted seas, at least I can swear before the critical court of +admiralty that the waters were not crowded with little craft like +mine. It is a pleasure to read again a few letters which hail me for +hailing Conrad and which make me believe that I did introduce the +master to a few readers. If so, I have not lived in vain. + +But my pride is somewhat reduced by the consideration that any reader +intelligent enough to look at a literary essay in the _Atlantic +Monthly_ must sooner or later have discovered Conrad for himself +without the assistance of a critic. However, I hug with amusement the +memory of a Harvard professor who threw up his hands and said: "My +God! I had no idea there was a man living who could write like that!" +To the professorial mind in those days English literature stopped +officially with the death of Browning or, at the latest, with the +deaths of Stevenson and Pater. The essay itself is a little +professorial, enfeebled by a sort of Boston-Harvard timidity, utterly +failing to express the wild joy which I felt. The second paper on +Conrad, written fifteen years later, is not so hesitant. It is +interesting to look again at the bibliographical footnote to the first +essay and see how Conrad's few books were scattered among the +publishers. I could not find "An Outcast of the Islands" except in the +Tauchnitz edition. Today his work is collected. There is a handsome +subscription edition. And Mr. Doubleday tells me that a new book by +Conrad has an assured immediate sale of twenty to thirty thousand. +Perhaps, after all, we who cheered long ago when it was not the +fashion to cheer have justified our miserable existence as critics. + +The essay on Tolstoy was written in the two months immediately after +his death. Mr. Ellery Sedgwick asked me to write it for the _Atlantic +Monthly_ and then rejected it. It was published in the _New York +Call_. I bear no bitter grudge against Mr. Sedgwick for returning an +article that he had ordered. But I am convinced, as I read the +article over again, that he is an incompetent critic of criticism. +Sometimes editors and publishers, whose business it is to provide the +arena and assemble the spectators, play their part of the game +stupidly. But on the whole I think they are more than generous to +second-rate performers. If I owned a magazine I should be very +grudging of the space I gave to literary chatter--except my own. + +A critical friend--we critics suffer from each other--admonishes me +that in the foregoing remarks I have treated an important art in a +flippant manner. Certainly I am not so foolish as to take my essays +very seriously, and I believe that much modern criticism is too +solemn, that if we fooled with literature in a lighter spirit we +should enjoy it more and be happier. + +Charles Lamb was not afraid to kick up his heels, and yet nobody will +accuse him of being a trivial clown. Oscar Wilde was a man of wit, +sometimes a buffoon, and he could puncture a stupid piece of work with +ridicule. But the prevailing tone of his best essays is one of dignity +and sobriety. + +Good criticism is as important as anything that man can put on paper. +Moreover, certain subjects must be treated by the critic with the +utmost gravity. It would be owlishly humourless, uncritical, not to +take Tolstoy seriously. Essays about the greater men of genius and the +deeper problems of art must be substantial, solid, or they are +inappropriate, out of key. + +But it is possible to be sane and erudite without being leaden, to +approach a noble subject earnestly without striking an attitude of +priestly austerity. Some of our sincerest contemporaries, both the +academic and the rebellious, seem to me to worry about literature, as +if it were an invalid that needed nursing or a dead man about whom the +last word must be said before next Thursday afternoon. They do not get +enough fun out of it. They forget that Pater, who was not a mad wag +and not a dilettante, could sometimes see the gaiety of things and was +willing to be inconclusive. + +Criticism is important. The best contemporaneous English criticism is +not good enough. And even in France, where we have been taught to look +for sound critics, Flaubert thought as late as 1869 that criticism was +still in its infancy. He wrote to George Sand: "You speak of criticism +in your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I +think, on the contrary, that it is, at most only dawning.... When will +they (critics) be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where do +you know a criticism? Who is there who is anxious about the work in +itself, in an intense way?... The _unconscious_ poetic expression? +Where it comes from? its composition, its style? The point of view of +the author? Never. That criticism would require great imagination and +great sympathy." To which George Sand replied with good sense: "The +artist is too much occupied with his own work to forget himself in +estimating that of others." + +Since then France has had a generation of critics, some of whom were +artists. If Hennequin, who thought he was a scientific critic, was not +an artist, if De Gourmont, who smiled wisely at the whole game, was +not an artist, then the word means nothing. In England and America +criticism has not made much progress since Pater died. I know that I +am punctuating literature in the manner of the academic fogies. But +one of the humours of this sport is that you sometimes do things which +are fouls when your opponent is guilty of them. + +I come back gladly to the analogy of the game. We have, I believe, +made progress in one direction. In the direction of fair play. We +cannot write like Hazlitt, but we will not hit below the belt as he +did sometimes. We cannot write like Arnold, and his combination of +literary charm and scholarship makes us feel desperately small, but in +our descent from his altitude we have freed ourselves from his major +vice, his dogmatic snobbery, his bigoted liberalism. The +pulpit-pounder still thrives in religion and politics; in criticism he +is becoming obsolete. I am sure, or at least hopeful, that this is +true in America. I think I see a slight but appreciable improvement in +candour, simplicity, generosity, geniality, and fairness in attack. On +the whole we are a little more sportsmanlike than some of our elders. +That is all that I claim for us. Our real consolation is that the +ancient and honorable game is still young, still to be played. + + + + +DANTE IN ENGLISH + + +I am tempted to call the following remarks "Reading Dante for Fun." +The most austere of poets should not be treated with levity. But, +after all, poetry, even poetry of profound ethical and religious +import, is to be enjoyed. And the simple point that I wish to make, as +a mere reader with but a stumbling knowledge of Italian and almost no +knowledge of the vast library of Dante scholarship, is that Dante is +accessible in English. His book of magic is at least half open even to +one who must forever remain partly blind and deaf to the beauty of the +original. It is a great pleasure to read the convenient little volumes +of the Temple Classics with the Italian text on the left-hand page and +the English on the right, to read idly or study deeply, according to +mood and temperament. At any rate, let us not be overcome by the +solemnity of the occasion or discouraged by the difficulties, some of +which the commentators have cleared away and some of which they have +made more difficult. + +Dr. Toynbee[1] finds that since 1802 the _Commedia_ as a whole has +been translated into English about once every four years. And he +excludes from his record American translators and critics. Why did Dr. +Toynbee or the British Academy make this commemorative volume so +narrowly insular? English and American scholarship is one institution. +And American Dantists have done good work. Though it is the fashion to +scorn the Yankee bards and seers, Lowell's essay and the translations +by Longfellow, Norton, and Parsons are important in the history of +Dante in English, not British, literature. They had literary gifts, +they knew Italian, and they were able to appreciate a universal mind. +For all their provinciality their shades can afford to smile at their +young countryman, Mr. Mencken, who writes: "If I have to go to hell +for it, I must here set down my conviction that much of the 'Divine +Comedy' is piffle." Well, he ought to go to hell--to Dante's hell, +which is an entertaining and hospitable place. In the cold prose of +Norton or John Carlyle, where the melody is necessarily lost, there +may be some passages in which an alert modern reader cannot find great +interest, but the number of lines of "piffle" is exactly none. + + [1] Britain's Tribute To Dante in Literature and Art. A + Chronological Record of 540 Years. By Paget Toynbee. London: + Published for the British Academy, 1921. + +It is not to be expected that all men, even all literary men, will +respond to Dante. Horace Walpole called him "extravagant, absurd, +disgusting; in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam." This is amusing, +even refreshing, in view of the too pious devotion of some later +Englishmen. But the eighteenth century was not the time for English +appreciation of Dante, and Walpole, witty _prosateur_, was not the man +to enjoy him. Dante was known, of course, to Chaucer and to the +Elizabethans and Milton, and his influence on English poetry was +perhaps even greater than Dr. Toynbee's record makes evident. But it +is with the nineteenth century, which, _bien entendu_, was born +intellectually a few years before its numerical date, that Dante +becomes a power in English literature. He is, indeed, a part of the +revival of English romanticism. The translations of Boyd and Cary +appeared early in the century, and from then on Dante belonged to +English literature, as well acclimated as any other foreign classic. +The index of Dr. Toynbee's record contains the names of almost all the +important English poets from Scott to Francis Thompson. + +And it contains hundreds of other names, not perhaps of great +importance in literature, but important in this respect, that they +show the appeal of Dante to a great variety of minds, of minds not +mediaeval, not Catholic, not Italian. Nobody can dip into him, however +superficially, without getting something. He has so much that +everybody can be happy, from the Pope to the most pagan young poet. +Though the true Dantist will insist that the greatest of poets must be +understood, or accepted, entire, like his own God and his own +universe, I propose that the anthological view of him is proper and +delightful. If he is so rich and structurally perfect that no side of +him can be neglected, then he is so rich and so strong that any side +of him can be neglected. You can sit under a tree on the side of a +mountain without comprehending the mountain, but deriving much +happiness from the tree, the altitude, and the view. + +The interpreters of Dante's stupendous unity are all true to Dante, in +that they try to find some complete explanation of him and will +tolerate no neglect of his least detail. Dante himself, for all his +mystery and multiple meanings, is quite explicit about the +indivisibility, the integrity, of his work. So that the episodic, +incomplete view of him, which I recommend to other casual readers, is +unphilosophic and amateurish. Let us concede that and at the same time +let us reserve the right to be cheerfully weary of systems where the +"benumbed conceiving soars." Ruskin speaks the indubitable truth: "The +central man of all the world, as representing the imaginative, moral, +and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante." But such +a genius is too awful to contemplate, and it is more comfortable to +keep this side idolatry. + +Moreover, the interpreters, seeking to comprehend Dante's vast +totality, do not discover complete unity among themselves. Mr. Walter +Arensberg[2] thinks that he has unlocked the mystery, and I think that +he has. But as I had a little to do with filing that key I will not +say how well I think it turns in the wards of the lock; I will leave +him to the mercies of other critics and merely note that six centuries +after Dante's death we have a novel interpretation. + + [2] The Crytography of Dante. By Walter Arensberg. New York: + Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. + +And then comes Professor Courtney Langdon[3] with another. One of his +ideas seems to me just, though debatable--namely, that any modern man +has the right to find anything in Dante that he can find, to derive +the sort of joy and wisdom that suit him, the reader, whether or not +Dante would recognize that reader's meaning. The poet exists for our +benefit and, like the Bible, does not forbid but justifies the +multitude of sects and individual expositors. That idea alone is worth +Professor Langdon's labor, and it will be interesting to see how he +develops it. Unfortunately, his translation is worse than useless. He +simply has not the gift of English verse. His own verses, prefixed to +the several canticles, are absurd doggerel; they remind one of +Longfellow's lovely sonnets (the best poems he ever wrote) only by +their position of naive rivalry with the splendor that follows. And, +what is more strange, Professor Langdon writes abominable prose, such +assaults upon the ear as "verse's rhythm" and "Divine Comedy's last +part." If the poet exists for us, in English or Italian, one of the +things to learn from him is how to write. + + [3] The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text + with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary. + By Courtney Langdon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 3 + vols. + +The poet exists for us. That is an excellent idea. It is our privilege +to take what we enjoy and reject what we do not like or understand. I +cannot be interested in Dante's ethics, which interested him so +profoundly and is the bone of his thought. His "stern indignant +moral," as Carlyle called it, is for me no part of the beauty of the +"mystic song." I cannot regard without suspicion, even in a New +Englander, Norton's statement to Dr. Dinsmore that the quality of the +_Commedia_, other than its beauty, which attracted him to Dante was +"his powerful exposition of moral penalties and rewards." Other than +its beauty? What does that mean? If the qualities of the _Commedia_ +can be separated (Dante happened to believe that they can not be), let +us throw the ethics, the penalties, and rewards to the four winds. Let +us keep as much as we can grasp of the beauty of the episodes, the +images, the phrases, the structure, whatever gives delight. + +The beauty of the fifth canto of _Inferno_ does not depend on the +ethical fact that the carnal sinners are punished, but on the poetic +fact that their pathetic loves on earth are recalled and that their +punishment is vividly, physically dramatized. The tragic pity and +terror of it break through the baldest translation stripped of the +enchantment of the original verse. Many English poets have been +tempted to try to render that famous fifth canto. Mr. Arensberg has +made the best version that I have seen. His version is in the _terza +rima_, a difficult thing to manage in English, and he succeeds in +making a good English poem, a shade finer than a mere _tour de force_. +I doubt whether he or any other poet can so well translate the entire +_Commedia_ in the same form, though the attempt has been made. The +_terza rima_ has never been quite naturalized in our language. Even +such a master as Shelley can not turn it perfectly. We imported the +sonnet as easily as the apple and we made some French forms grow +thriftily in our hardy garden. The _terza rima_ remains artificial and +foreign, peculiarly Italian and more peculiarly Dante; he made it his +own and moved at ease in its exacting rigidities. He was in thought +and form a diabolical magician. + +In order to show the _terza rima_ in English and to suggest (not to +solve!) the problem of translation, let us look at three versions of +the last ten lines of the fifth canto of _Inferno_, the story of Paolo +and Francesca. Francesca is speaking and tells how she and her lover +read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere--romance within romance! +First, Norton's clear, deliberately uninspired prose: + + "When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed by such a + lover, this one, who never shall be divided from me, kissed my + mouth all trembling. Gallehaut was the book, and he wrote it. That + day we read no farther in it!" + + While the one spirit said this, the other was so weeping that + through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead + body falls. + +Then Longfellow in traditional blank verse (and it is good verse; he +knew his business): + + "When as we read of the much longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, + Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein." + And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + And fell, even as a dead body falls. + +Finally, Arensberg in _terza rima_: + + "When we had read how one so amorous + Had kissed the smile that he was longing for, + This one, who always must be by me thus, + + Kissed me upon the mouth, trembling all o'er; + Galeot the book, and he 'twas written by! + Upon that day in it we read no more." + + So sorely did the other spirit cry, + While the one spoke, that for the very dread + I swooned as if I were about to die, + And I fell down even as a man falls dead. + +Those versions, I submit, are all good; and I risked the tedium of +repeating the same idea of Dante in the English of three different +translators. Because my simple point is that Dante in English is +interesting--to anybody who cares for English literature. + + + + +DANTE'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY + + +Dante's _De Monarchia_ is usually treated by the commentators as a +mere footnote to the _Commedia_; and this subordination is justifiable +because the poet in Dante overwhelms all other expressions of his +genius and also because the _Commedia_ contains much political +philosophy, some of which _De Monarchia_ elucidates. But _De +Monarchia_, considered by itself, is a work of great importance. Even +if by some unthinkable accident the _Commedia_ had been lost and _De +Monarchia_ had survived, it would remain a significant treatise on the +state and the papacy and would deserve to be regarded as we regard the +political writings of philosophers from Plato to Hobbes. To be sure, +the chief interest of the work for us lies in the fact that Dante +wrote it, and it would lose some of its value if it were isolated from +the rest of his thought; the amazing unity of his mind and the +coherence of his purpose make a piecemeal view of any part of him +essentially false. His vision of earth and heaven has a thousand +aspects but no fragments. Even the unfinished works, _Il Convivio_ and +_De Vulgari Eloquentia_, are not fragments but are rather to be read +as partial manifestations of a singular and consistent plan. + +_De Monarchia_ is a vision of earthly well-being. It is an argument, +prosaic and heavy in the English translations and very difficult in +the original, I should suppose, even to an excellent Latin scholar. +But the argument embodies a dream of the greatest of dreamers. The +first part sets forth the necessity of empire. Only under a single +world-governing monarch are possible the solidarity of mankind and the +fullest possible development of the human spirit. In unity man can +find peace and justice. Man is made in the image of God, and God is +one; wherefore man in imitation of God must make the secular world +conform to the universe and set up a unique earthly dominion. In the +nature of things empire is divinely ordained and this is further +proved by the fact that Christ willed to be born under the Emperor +Augustus. + +The second part seeks to show that the Roman empire was appointed by +God to rule the world. It was established by the aid of miracles, +which confirm it as especially created by the will of God. Christ died +under the empire; if the empire had not been the rightful temporal +authority, Christ would have been punished by the agent of an unjust +power, his suffering would have been unlawful and therefore the sin of +Adam would not have been duly expiated. Rome was born to command, +because it did, in point of fact, conquer the world, and also because +the histories of its many heroes and patriots show that the Roman +citizen loved right and justice. + +The third part is an argument for the separation of church and state, +which are independent authorities both deriving directly from God. +Many false arguments for the temporal power of the church are refuted. +Though the emperor, as a man, is the first son of the church and +should obey it like other Christians, yet as emperor he owes +allegiance only to God, whom he represents on earth in temporal +matters as the pope represents God in spiritual matters. The very +nature of the church, its essential spiritual function, forbids it the +possession of temporal power. + +Have we here, then, nothing but a defence of an empire that has been +dust these many centuries, and stale scholastic arguments for the +separation of church and state, a long settled question in theoretic +politics and practically settled in most countries? There is much more +than that in _De Monarchia_ even for the most confident modern +democrat, who may regard emperor and pope as twin tyrants and for whom +the word "mediaeval" has derogatory connotations. It is true that the +empire under which Dante actually lived is dead as the empire of the +Caesars and that the empire of Dante's dream was never realized in the +workaday world. As a political pamphlet _De Monarchia_ is obsolete +without even the persistent contemporaneity of some eighteenth century +tracts. In a sense Dante's treatise died at birth. Bryce, who gives an +excellent summary of it in his "Holy Roman Empire," shows that this +plea for empire, conceived by the supreme mind of the age, was the +epitaph of the existing empire. It was, indeed, a swan-song, not of +the author, who was still to take us to Paradise and put his dream in +lovelier form, but of empire in the Catholic Christian sense of +"holy." The empire that persisted after the thirteenth century grew +further and further away not only from a poet's dream but from any +practical possibility of united political authority. The solidarity of +mankind was not to be achieved through Rome or Christ, and Dante was +not, as he thought, announcing a new era, but summing up a passing +era. + +But the truth of a dream inheres in the dream itself and is measured +only in a secondary way by the course of events. _De Monarchia_ has +for us at least the value of a pacifist tract, the noble core of which +is not obscured by the strangeness of some of the reasoning or by the +destruction of Dante's political milieu. Like some other pacifist +documents it is the work of an aggressive militant mind. Dante had +lived and suffered in a world continuously at war. The contesting +powers, great and small, were so complicated that the historian has +difficulty in keeping them clear. To the major quarrels between church +and state and the strife of the city-republics with one or the other +or both were added an internal warfare between economic classes and +feuds between castes and families, all hopelessly intricate. + +In this bloody confusion Dante had played the part not of closet +philosopher _au-dessus de la melee_, but of soldier and civil official. +And to the last he was temperamentally a fighter, though forced by +circumstances to drop the sword for the pen. He was not in the eyes of +his contemporaries what he has become for us, the supreme solitary +genius exiled by an ungrateful city, but was simply one of a thousand +members of a beaten party. He was not a pathetic, unappreciated poet +but a pertinacious partisan who happened to be on the losing side. He +knew war and misery and defeat. Yet his plea for peace is by no means +that of a weary belligerent; it is that of a bellicose champion of +certain principles. And so, though those principles do not appeal to us +and though the expression of them is laborious, even turgid, _De +Monarchia_ is still hot with conviction. + +The instrument of peace was the one form of government that Dante +knew, the empire. Even if his genius had taken the form of +vaticination (he was indeed, as it turned out, a poor prophet), he +naturally could not in his time have made himself familiar with +leagues of nations and Wellsian "world-states." He had to ride on a +horse, not in a motor-car. And he rode, as a worldly rider, to a fall. +The tragedy of the fall has in it a large element of dramatic irony +because he was so splendidly sure of his ideas at exactly the moment +when they were least secure. + +Dante's conception of an ideal empire had nothing in common with what +we now call imperialism, which is mere commercial conquest and can be +led by Kaiser or democratic prime minister with equally disastrous +results. Dante believed in an imperial headship for the good of all +humanity. The ruler of the world was to be the servant of the world, +not its master and exploiter; a supreme monarch was to be protected by +his lonely authority from the temptations that beset a weak man +clothed with limited and contentious authority; aloof from strife and +cupidity, having all and so being beyond pride and ambition, he could +be a disinterested and just administrator. + +The aim of empire is universal peace--Dante begins his argument almost +in the terms of Burke and with something like Burke's combination of +generosity and elaborate futility--peace, "the best of those things +that are ordained for our beatitude." For on peace depends the destiny +of mankind to realize the full power of the human mind in thought and +deed. Dante's world state is Utopia, compounded, as all Utopias must +be, of wisdom and utter impossibilities, of sublime faith and facts +half-understood. While he dreamed he did not believe himself a +dreamer, any more than did Shelley. He believed intensely in the +practical value of his vision, in its originality and its finality as +a solution of the problems of the political world. He says that +knowledge of monarchy has been shunned because it has no direct +relation to profit, and that he will be the first to bring it from +obscurity to light for the good of the world and for his own glory. +The humble servant and the arrogant doctor at the bedside of the +patient! It is one of the most consistent contradictions of proud +souls. The reformer has found a new and sure cure and cries "Eureka!" + +In spite of the practical failure of his dream, which in a sense +defeats him, I do not believe that Dante's pell-mell acceptance of all +stories about the greatness of Rome, with no apparent discrimination, +is proof that he did not know what he was about. He was making a +special plea and he pillaged history and legend to get material for +the purposes of his argument. He is a dialectician animated, like all +reformers, by unselfish motives, but willing to score a point if he +can. We may be fairly sure that Dante was not a credulous person with +a childish view of history, but a sophisticated controversialist +handling his evidence for effect. Though he mingles fact and fiction +and though his documentary resources were more limited than ours, yet +he knew perfectly what he was trying to do, and modern attempts to +gloss him in a patronizing and apologetic manner are generally +mistaken. + +There is a grim humour in the fate that overtakes the works of wise +men. The treatise which Dante believed would bring peace to a vexed +world became a matter of strife. Later Ghibellines used his argument, +unfairly, of course, to support the supremacy of the empire over the +church, and ecclesiastical authority retorted by condemning the book +and even threatening the repose of Dante's bones. A somewhat similar +quarrel arose over Hobbes's "Leviathan" three centuries later. Seeking +to unite all men, the political philosopher is attacked from both +sides, and if he lives he finds that he has poured oil not on troubled +waters but on a fire. + +Though _De Monarchia_ is much more than a footnote to the _Commedia_ +and is worth study for its own sake, yet the unity which it seeks in +the world is closely allied to the unity of Dante's celestial vision +by which he tried to lead mankind to God. Mankind refused to be cured +of its political pains by _De Monarchia_ and even ignored it in spite +of Dante's secure and growing fame (there was no English translation +until the late nineteenth century). But mankind also never accepted +and never will accept the supreme vision of the _Commedia_. It is a +beautiful poem enjoyed by the literary, and even in Italy it is +valued, quite properly, as a mere work of art. The world has never +paid much attention to Dante's declared purpose to bring mankind +through art to God. So that in one way of regarding him, which may +perhaps be his way, he failed in the _Commedia_ as he did in _De +Monarchia_. The world of thinking and acting men, whose salvation +Dante believed he could work by verse and prose, remains disunited and +contentious, weaponed with such bitterness of heart and methods of +destruction as the dreamer of _Inferno_ never dreamed. + + + + +NIETZSCHE + + +It is more than thirty years since Nietzsche's work was finished and +darkness fell upon that mighty intellect. In 1917, Mr. W. M. Salter, +who certainly knows the bibliography of Nietzsche, wrote: + + I can not make out that his influence is appreciable now--at least + in English-speaking countries.... He has, indeed given a phrase + and perhaps an idea or two to Mr. Bernard Shaw, a few scattering + scholars have got track of him (I know of but two or three in + America), the great newspaper and magazine-writing and reading + world has picked up a few of his phrases, which it does not + understand. + +The preface of Frau Foerster-Nietzsche's edition of her brother's +correspondence with Wagner is dated, Weimar, 1914, and the English +translation was published in 1921. Dr. Oscar Levy's preface to his +selection from the five volumes of Nietzsche's correspondence,[1] +published in Germany between the years 1900-1909, is dated August, +1921. + + [1] "Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche." Edited by Dr. + Oscar Levy. Authorized Translation by Anthony M. Ludovico. + New York: Doubleday Page & Co. + +So, although Nietzsche's works are now all, or nearly all, to be read +in English, he is not quite an old story which every literate child +should know. Professional students of philosophy seemed to have missed +him or to have tardily recognized him, and the mere casual reader of +philosophy may quietly dodge Mr. Mencken's bludgeon: "Only blockheads +to-day know nothing of them [Nietzsche's ideas] and only fools are +unshaken by them." That sort of aggressiveness on the part of a +champion of Nietzsche will not help the master's ideas to prevail; +though it may seem to be a disciple's repetition of Nietzsche's superb +arrogance, it is really not true to his spirit. For Nietzsche attacked +thoughts and thinkers, quarrelled with opponents who were somewhere +near his size, ignored the opinions of the brainless multitude, and +was content to wait for time and the slow-moving world to find him +out. + +Certainly he can not be jammed down our throat, and quite as certainly +his stimulating and cathartic doses can not be snatched from our lips +by moralistic prohibitionists. It is possible, of course, for a doctor +to take advantage of one's innocence and ignorance and put one to +sleep with drugs. That was my own experience. Dr. Paul Elmer More +stole up on me in the dark with a soporific little book, the first I +had ever read about Nietzsche. When I came to, the world was at war. A +wild German philosopher, who had been quoted by a brutal German +general named Bernhardi, was responsible for the violation of Belgian +women. This was manifestly absurd, but there was no time to +investigate and explain, even for one's private satisfaction, the +causes of this ridiculous misunderstanding not only of an individual +philosopher but of the relation of book-philosophy to appallingly +unphilosophic crimes. + +It is amazing to find that the absurdity persists, that it is +necessary for Dr. Levy to try to prove in 1921 that Nietzsche did not +incite the Germans to a war of conquest! Has not the hysteria +sufficiently subsided for wise men to quit wasting their energies in a +contest with spooks? It was part of Nietzsche's work to ridicule +ghosts and blow away myths, and that he should have become a myth +himself is an irony that he might have enjoyed. He gloried in being +misunderstood. The true philosopher has always been in lonely +opposition to the dominant ideals of his time. It is in a tone not of +resentment or complaint but of haughty satisfaction that he writes to +Georg Brandes, in the last year of his intellectual life: + + Your opinion of present-day Germans is more favourable than mine + ... all profound events escape them. Take, for example, my "Beyond + Good and Evil." What bewilderment it has caused them. I have not + heard of a single intelligent utterance about it, much less of an + intelligent sentiment. I believe that it has not dawned on the + most well-intentioned of my readers that here is the outcome of a + sane philosophic sensibility, and not a medley of a hundred + outworn paradoxes and heterodoxes. Not a soul has ever experienced + the same sort of thing that I have. I never meet anyone who has + been through a thousandth part of the same passionate struggle. + +Nietzsche's philosophic solitude accounts in part for the excellence +of his letters. In his struggles with the world, and his wilful +alienation from it, he clung passionately to the few who were allied +to him by the ties of blood, friendship, or intellectual sympathy. The +letters contain no philosophic ideas which he did not express again +and again in his professional writings. They do contain something +else, however, moods, emotions, pleasures and private difficulties, +intimacies which are never quite apart from the incessant battle of +thought yet belong to moments of comparative ease when the soldier is +off duty. This philosopher, whose work is so intensely personal, who +says that he wrote his books with his whole body and life, did not +completely express himself in his books. He poured his soul into them +and was honestly naked and unashamed. But for all his autobiographical +candor, his work is not a promiscuous confession. He labored over his +paragraphs like an artist, calculated their effect, and made them +personal only in so far as suited his philosophic purpose. There +remains a sensitive and reticent Nietzsche who revealed himself to his +friends alone. + +He was fortunate in his friends. When he writes in the preface of +"Human, All-Too-Human," that he has evolved an as yet non-existent +company of free spirits, because he needs them and because they are +some compensation for lack of friends, he is posing in a philosophic +attitude which is quite justified by his experience as a thinker and +writer but which is not quite true to the private history of Friedrich +Nietzsche. He never lacked friends, and his isolation was in great +measure self-imposed. The most distinguished friend he lost was +Wagner; the break came late in the older man's life, and it seems to +have been the younger man who disrupted the friendship. + +Even without Wagner, Nietzsche's correspondents are numerous and +varied, as many and of as many kinds as a wise man needs, if he +chooses to make the most of them. The lonely philosopher was not +neglected as man and brother. He preferred to flock by himself. His +ill health rather than the animosity of his countrymen drove him out +of Germany; and he was happiest, as close as he ever came to +happiness, when he concentrated his energy in his work. He makes a +philosophic virtue of necessity, affects to despise what he can not +have, laments his solitude and is proud of it. To his sister he writes: + + You can not think how lonely and out of it I always feel when I am + in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom + you call 'good,' and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who + is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster, but of + course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods.... Oh, this + infernal solitude! + +A few months later, when this aged philosopher is forty, he writes to +an old friend that all the people he loves belong to the past and +regard him with merely merciful indulgence. + + We see each other, we talk in order to avoid being silent--we + still write each other in order to avoid being silent. Truth, + however, glances from their eyes, and these tell me (I hear it + well enough): 'Friend Nietzsche, you are now quite alone!' + + That's what I have lived and fought for! + +The last sentence may be taken in two ways. It may mean that Nietzsche +strove for isolation, or it may be interpreted bitterly: "So _that's_ +what I get from my friends for all my labor and struggle!" Perhaps +both meanings are there. The letter ends: "Ah, dear friend, what an +absurdly silent life I lead! So much alone, so much alone! So +'childless'! Remain fond of me; I am truly fond of you." That sounds +like a not too human cry of hunger for affection. The man who prefers +demi-gods and is confident that he would be worthy of their +companionship is not immune from the pangs of ordinary mortals. + +Nietzsche had a self-critical knowledge of his own needs and nature, +and, so far as circumstances permitted, he followed the course that +pleased him. He sometimes groaned but he never whined. In a letter to +his sister, who had evidently suggested the possibility of marriage, +he says that he cheerfully accepts the disadvantages of independence. +The list of requirements that he lays down are enough to make us +congratulate the impossible she whom he wisely refrained from +marrying. "I know the women folk of half Europe," he writes, "and +wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed +a sort of gradual decline as the result." That is one of the +philosopher's amusing errors. He did not know women folk at all; the +most fatuous, almost the only fatuous, passages in his works and his +letters are those about the ladies, and his letters to ladies are the +declarations of a free spirit shying off from something "agreeable +though perhaps a trifle dangerous." + +Nietzsche is at his best, of course, when he writes to distinguished +men, the few who recognized his genius and made him glow in his cold +solitude. Nietzsche craved recognition; his contempt for fame was +largely a contempt for sour grapes. Brandes and Strindberg put wreaths +on his head, and he was proud of them. He writes to Strindberg: + + I am the most powerful intellect of the age, condemned to fulfill + a stupendous mission.... It is possible that I have explored more + terrible and more questionable worlds of thought than anyone else, + but simply because it is in my nature to love the silent + backwater. I reckon cheerfulness among the proofs of my + philosophy. + +A man who can write like that of himself is the happiest of mortals, +for he knows that he belongs among the immortals. + + + + +TOLSTOY + + +I. + +Tolstoy closes the second part of "Sevastopol" with these words: "The +hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I +have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and ever +will be beautiful, is Truth." That sentence was written when Tolstoy +was twenty-seven. For fifty years, in novels, tales, essays, and +exhortations, he celebrated his hero with unflagging devotion. The +deeds and lineaments of the hero are not always as other men have seen +them, but the identity, the character of the hero is never in doubt. +The hero changes and utters conflicting wisdom, not because of the +worshiper's inconstancy, but because Tolstoy develops, because he +outgrows and disavows his previous selves and violates consistency +between one book and another in his zeal to find consistency between +his next book and Truth. + +In ceaseless pursuit of Truth, Tolstoy is led through the most +stirring intellectual and moral experiences which modern man has +undergone. He is part of all that we have met; from the remotest of +European countries, from a moment in the world's thought that is +already well behind us, his messages have encircled the globe and +modify the living ideas of today. He touched all departments of +thought and left none as it had been. + +He plunged into the nineteenth century warfare of religion and +science, found that both parties were priest-ridden and arrogant, and +wrested from both the right of the individual to a simple faith and to +knowledge free from the cant of the laboratory. The increasing grumble +of the contest between privilege and labor--the most portentous war +the world has seen and not yet at its crisis--assaulted his ears; he +hearkened while most other members of the narrow circle of culture +were deaf or indifferent, and he took his stand on the side of the +workers against his own rank and kin. He laid bare the motives of war, +in which he had drawn a guilty sword, and became a militant champion +of peace. The unholy alliance of culture, religion, and civil +authority he strove to dissolve by broadsides against each member of +the triune tyranny, and so he conceived a new theory of art, a new +reading of the gospels, and an anarchism so individual that it +excludes most other anarchists. Under the solemnity of marriage and +the thin poetry of romance he discerned the cloven hoof of +self-indulgence, and he shocked the world with a virile puritanism, so +powerful in its terms, so subversive of our timid codes that bashful +Morality shrank from her bravest defender. + +All the main thoroughfares of nineteenth century thought crossed +before the doorway of Tolstoy's house. He trafficked with all the +passengers, but joined no special group. Even his own disciples he +allowed to go their own way; he took no part in their organization and +left them to make their own interpretation and their own application +of his teachings. Loving all mankind, having sympathetic knowledge of +all sorts and conditions of men, he was nevertheless strangely +solitary. At the end of his life his devotion to his ideas alienated +from his family this most tender, home-loving man.[1] The young +idealists of the world left him behind, for they broke out new +highways of thought which he could not travel; young Russia sees in +him a splendid survival of an elder age of storm and struggle, calls +him master but not leader. + + [1] As this book goes to press, Madam Tolstoy's + "Autobiography" is being published in _The Freeman_. + Her views of the great man should be illuminating, + especially if she does not try to minimize his defects. + +He justified in his own life his theoretic individualism, because he +was great and strong enough to stand alone. The spirit of irony can +not but deal gently with the sincerest, bravest of men. Yet may she +note under the gray garment of humility a mien incorrigibly +aristocratic and domineering. The most powerful mind in the world +proclaimed self-submersion as the perfect virtue, because it is the +most difficult virtue for a daring and vigorous spirit to attain. The +foe of privilege, preaching that all men are brothers in love and +alike before the Lord as they should be before the law of man, enjoyed +a unique privilege--he was almost the only man in Russia who could +with impunity say what he thought. He won this right because he was an +aristocrat with friends at court and because the Russian government +dared not disregard the admiration of the world which had made Tolstoy +an international hero. He warned the mighty to walk in the fear of +God, but they walked in the fear of Leo Tolstoy. + +To remind ourselves of the titles of some of his books and the order +in which they appeared, we may divide his work into seven parts. The +first part includes military tales and autobiographic sketches: +"Sevastopol," "Two Hussars," "The Raid," "The Cossacks," "Childhood," +"Boyhood," "Youth." The second part, beginning in 1861, embraces his +experience as school teacher, his discourses on education, school +books, and stories for children and peasants. The third part, from +1864 to 1878, comprises "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." The +fourth part begins with his religious conversion in 1878, and is +devoted to theological, ethical and sociological essays: "My +Confession," "Union and Translation of the Four Gospels," "My +Religion," "What, Then, Must We Do?" The subjects treated in these +books he expounds over and over for the rest of his life. Because it +is salient from his other work we may say that the "Kreutzer Sonata" +(1889) constitutes a fifth part. "What is Art?" and "Resurrection" may +be thought of as a sixth part. Then follows the concluding decade of +warfare in pamphlets, essays, letters, upon civil and ecclesiastical +authority and other powers of darkness. + +Any such partition of Tolstoy's work is untrue to its organic +continuity, its massive unity. His books are embedded in his life. +Though each novel stands alone in self-sustaining integrity, +intelligible to all the world, yet each gains in clearness and power +for being understood in relation to the mind that produced it. This +colossus of solitary protest, rising rough and volcanic above the +flats of modern thought, is vaster when seen close to his intellectual +base. Viewed from a distance some sides of him, some contours, are +blurred and deceptive. No part of his work can be wholly apprehended +unless all parts are brought into the range of vision. + +On the day of his death he was the most famous man of letters in the +world. From the first report of his final illness bulletins flew over +the cables in hourly succession. Yet for several weeks after his +death, repeated inquiry among the dealers in English and foreign books +in Boston (reputed center of culture and high thinking) showed that +there never had been much demand for Tolstoy's books, except his +novels, and that the momentary rise of interest caused by his death +had not disturbed the dust on such books as "What, Then, Must We Do?" +and "My Confession." + +This seems to indicate that not all the articles and sermons which +followed the ultimate news from Russia were grounded upon first-hand +knowledge of Tolstoy. The truth is that his opinions have trickled +through to us Westerners in diluted streams. He is already a +tradition, and it is the habit of tradition to weaken as it spreads, +to lose the effect which a drinker at the sources feels in their +concentration, in their full and proportioned measure of ingredients. +Tolstoy is abroad in the world; he has permeated the thought of the +best minds and tinged the currents of our present beliefs. But few +Westerners know him in his overwhelming entirety. This man who laid +open his whole mind and heart with prodigal frankness is borne +westward on the winds of rumor as a mythical prodigy. The outlines of +his thought are misty and wavering to many of those who call him +great. He spared no pains to clarify his beliefs; he expounded the +same principle many times with undiminished force and ever new +transparency; he gave sweeping permission to the world to translate +and print his books. Yet there is no complete authorized edition of +his works in any language, even in Russian, thanks to the censors and +his own indifference to practical concerns.[2] + + [2] This is no longer true in the troubled year of grace, + 1922. Every scrap of Tolstoy is published in Russia. And + probably before long there will be complete translations in + many modern languages. + +Thus for the moment a partial chaos has descended upon the work of +Tolstoy, a coherent luminous body of work, which left his hand as free +from ambiguity as his extraordinary skill and industry could make it, +but which has been scattered in transmission. It will take some years +for his loyal followers in England and America to give us a complete +and adequate translation; and in spite of Matthew Arnold's naive +confidence in the French, the most patient collator will have +difficulty in finding Tolstoy's work or recognizing even the titles, +in the books which the Parisian publishers have sent forth under his +name. One who has assembled such of his books as are procurable in +French and English would say with all emphasis possible: + +"Withhold judgment about any particular belief expressed or supposed +to have been expressed by Tolstoy until you have read as many of his +books as you can get--and do not fail to read them." He is the one +noble speaker who has happened in our time, "who may be named and +stand as the mark and acme" of modern literature. + +A little knowledge of Tolstoy is more than proverbially dangerous. He +laid his vigorous hand upon every problem that vexes and strengthens +the soul. His utterance on each problem is intense and aggressive. He +boldly pursues an idea whither it leads, or drives it with passionate +conviction to a foreseen conclusion, and stays not for the beliefs of +any majority or minority of men. His magnitude overflows the accepted +area of such an adjective as intolerant. Yet approached for the first +time by a reader accustomed to the persuasive amenities of other +saints and sages, he seems to bristle with outrageous denial; some of +his opinions, isolated from the rest, stand as repellant outposts, +forbidding many minds which, entering from another side, would go +straight to the heart of him. For example, our traditional reverence +for Shakespeare is wounded by his downright statement that Shakespeare +was not an artist; the offended judgment retorts that thereby Tolstoy +proves that he is himself no artist, or that in crotchety old age he +outgrew the poetry of his virile years. It must be understood that the +essay on Shakespeare is in the nature of an appendix to his essay, +"What Is Art?" That in turn is closely related to his ethical and +social teachings. Those again are inseparably bound with his tales and +novels. And his fiction, finally, is rooted in Russian life, not only +because, as is obvious, it deals with Russian people, but because +during Tolstoy's prime, there was, as we shall presently see, an +attitude toward the novel and all literary art which was peculiar to +intellectual Russians. + +Happily for English readers the foundation for complete understanding +of Tolstoy has been laid by Mr. Aylmer Maude in his "Life," the second +volume of which appeared a few days before his master's death. Mr. +Maude has entire knowledge of his subject and perfect sympathy; he is +a sane and independent thinker, and his work is admirable for its +balance, its candor, its sturdy devotion, which, however, admits no +surrender of the biographer's private beliefs. To the reader who cares +merely for an interesting story Tolstoy's career offers more than that +of most men of letters. It is laid amid the plots and counterplots of +bloody Russia, the most melodramatic background of modern history. The +man is spectacular, compelling, in all violation of his own doctrines +of self-abasement. The peasant's smock, which he wore as symbol of his +unity with common man, served only to make him the more picturesque. +This ascetic religious philosopher was a master of thrilling war +stories. He knew equally well the heart of a lady in the high life of +Moscow, and the soul of a peasant woman. He was of athletic stature, +and his huge hand was sensitive to the finger tips; with it he gripped +a scythe, played the piano, wrote a tirade against modern music, and +indited an exposition of the gospel of love which estranged some of +his best friends! It is no wonder that his fiction bears the seal of +reality, that it has the abundance, the variety, the jostling +contrasts of life itself. + + +II. + +In Russia prose fiction has been for a century the vehicle of the +soberest reflections upon contemporary problems. It was dangerous for +a Russian radical to express his beliefs directly in essays and +expositions; what he was not allowed to utter in editorial and +parliamentary debate he set forth indirectly through the novel, which +thus became a sort of realistic parable. Suppression increased his +emotional intensity. Feeling himself a member of a down-trodden class, +he became the champion of other down-trodden classes. When Tolstoy +began to write, the novel was already a tempered weapon against abuse, +the skilful handling of it was a tradition among the literati, and +there were masters to coach and encourage the beginner. The Russian +novel records the deepest motives of Russian history. Tourgenef voiced +the philosophic resignation and scepticism of the educated Russian and +the evils of serfdom. Tolstoy portrayed the vices of the educated +Russian and the evils of wage-slavery which followed the emancipation +of the serfs. Russian fiction is great, because it treats the gravest +struggles of life and because its authors have trained themselves in +the art of expounding ideas in the form of fiction without +transgressing the laws of narrative; they have learned to be the +mouthpiece of life and to let life preach the sermons. To Tolstoy and +other Russians the greatest American book is "Uncle Tom's Cabin," +because it is the chronicle of a bleeding issue; I have seen many +references to that book by Russian writers but scarcely a mention of +Hawthorne. + +Mr. Maude quotes a letter to Tolstoy from Drouzhinin, critic, +novelist, and translator of Shakespeare: "An Englishman or an +American," he says, "may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely +men of thirty, but gray-haired owners of 2,000 serfs sweat over +stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are +devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole +day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, +you cannot explain it merely by art. What in other lands is a matter +of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another +affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story--the most +frivolous and insignificant form of literature--becomes one of two +things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of a leader +sounding through the empire." + +Tolstoy's realism is, then, the result both of his own temperamental +passion for truth and of a theory of art which prevailed in his +literary circle. There were, to be sure, silly novelists in Russia; +there, as everywhere, only the best minds regarded fiction as a vital +matter. But there were enough such serious minds to welcome Tolstoy +and encourage him. Nekrasof, editor of _The Contemporary_, found in +Tolstoy's first work, "the truth--the truth, of which, since Gogol's +death, so little has remained in Russian literature." Tourgenef +repeatedly called Tolstoy the greatest of Russians, and on his +deathbed pencilled the pathetic letter in which he pleaded with +Tolstoy to return to his art. "I am glad," he said, "to have been your +contemporary." Had he lived sixteen years longer, "Resurrection" might +have made him happy. + +In Tolstoy's discourses on religion appear many times the words "sense +of life"--religion is the sense of life, the principle upon which the +details of the moral world are ordered and by which they are to be +interpreted. In a slightly different meaning "the sense of life" +expresses the total effect of Tolstoy's fiction. He wrote to a young +disciple: "Do not bend to your purpose the events in the story, but +follow them wherever they lead you.... Lack of symmetry and the +apparent haphazardness of events is a chief sign of life." + +In "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" there are many plots. The unity +is that of the loose-jointed English novel rather than that of the +French, which travels on a straight track. Tolstoy's stories move like +a river with many tributaries; he explores now one, now another of the +branch streams, but the course of the main current is continuous, and +runs in one general direction, as if the slope of the country had been +determined before the recorder came upon the scene to measure and +report. + +"War and Peace" is greater than a novel; it is an epic, it is +nation-wide and long as the growth from childhood to maturity. We see +from a peak of the face of eastern Europe and the swarming of peoples +and armies. The sensation of vastness, of humanity surging and flowing +in obedience to obscure collective interests is produced by only one +other modern book that I know, Hardy's "The Dynasts." From the high +pinnacles of omniscience the imagination descends by swift unperceived +transitions to the intimacies of a house in Moscow--to the heart of +the girl Natacha--to the mind of Pierre saturated with alcohol +plotting to assassinate Napoleon. The adventures and purposes of the +characters cross and conflict, interweave and unite, but each goes as +it must and there is no confusion in the telling. + +In "Anna Karenina," the story of Levin is but loosely related to the +principal tragedy, and the story of Levin's brother is an excursion +from the highway of Levin's career. One can see that after the book is +done. During its course the reader has no sense that any part is not +precisely placed. The illusion of inevitability is perfect. Levin's +brother is related to him by natural ties in life; it is natural, +then, that he should appear in Levin's story. + +The illusion of inevitability springs from Tolstoy's all-encircling +comprehension of events, from his justice to each character and from +his extraordinary physical vividness. He writes with his five senses. +A critic warned him early that he was in danger of making a man's +thigh feel like going on a journey to India. + +But his recognition of physical sensations and his power to convey +them (they traverse bodily the stylistic obstacles of translation) +take the story off the flat page and give it three dimensional +reality. The acrid smell of an old man's breath, the coldness of a +man's hand when he is in mental distress, the cracking of Karenin's +knuckles when he clasps his hands in moral satisfaction or the anguish +of wounded pride--such details cling to the mind, and the memory of +them recalls the whole story. + +Tolstoy's conception of human character is at once relentlessly +analytic and profoundly pitiful and kind. The whole content of his +thought from its bold surface to its deepest depth is instinct with +compassion. Once when he was walking with Tourgenef they came to an +old broken-down horse in a pasture. Tolstoy went up to it, stroked it, +and uttered its thoughts and sufferings with such moving tenderness +that Tourgenef cried: "You must once have been a horse yourself." + +In "Master and Man," a beautiful story of two men lost in a snowstorm, +the horse is a third character--an animal character, be it understood, +for Tolstoy is antipodal to nature-faking. He has confidence that +nature and man will tell their own story and disclose their inherent +lessons. Dogmatic and uncompromising in his private ethical beliefs, +he never sacrifices humanity even upon the altars where he tried to +immolate himself. Valid morality springs spontaneously from his +narrative, and is thereby a hundredfold more impressive than teachings +forced from artificially moulded events. Even in his rewriting of +traditional myths and parables he restores inorganic sermons to life, +creates a living thing in which the ethical intention is assimilated +and vitalized. He told these stories to the peasants, listened with +delight to their retelling of them, and incorporated their racial +turns of phrase. To an old peasant woman with a native gift for +narrative, he said: "You are a real master, Anisya; thank you for +teaching me to speak Russian and to think Russian." + +He learned from life and he trusted life to teach the reader. Anna +Karenina commits suicide, not because she is a naughty woman whom the +novelist as guardian of morals must punish for the satisfaction of a +virtuous world, but because the society that surrounds her, the +everyday life of visiting and tea-drinking, inexorably forbids her to +be happy. Tolstoy is a champion of the poor, and he began his career +at a time when, as Mr. Cahan tells us, "the idealization of the +peasant" was one of the staple phrases in essays and editorials. But +in Tolstoy's stories there is no false sublimation of the peasant. He +does not cry, like Dickens, or the professional charity-monger: "Pity +these poor starved brothers." He simply recites their lives. Sometimes +he chronicles the most terrible things in a grim restrained +matter-of-fact tone, more moving than any passionate appeal to the +reader's sympathy. He is, of course, a master of argument and +exhortation, but all that is found in his other books, not in his +fiction. + +A critic, whose democracy is too narrowly partisan, complains that in +"War and Peace" all the important characters are aristocrats, and that +the story fails to reveal the motives of the people, of those +inarticulate millions who Tolstoy himself says are the real makers of +history. But this apparent fault is an instance of Tolstoy's +integrity. When he wrote "War and Peace" he knew only aristocrats, or +was chiefly interested in them. He had already begun to discern the +relations between the multitude and the leaders whom history +signalizes; but he had not lived close to peasants and workmen; he had +approached them as lord and master, not yet as brother and +interpreter. Moreover, if there be a moral hero in "War and Peace" +whom the author seems to favor, it is Karataief, the illiterate +soldier, whose simple faith dawns as a regenerative light upon Pierre, +a rich man of the world who has met all philosophies and found them +heartless. + +Tolstoy could not write what he did not know or did not feel. His +stories, though not autobiographic in the usual sense of the world, +are the quintessence of his adventures and experiences, accurately +recalled and profoundly meditated. When the manuscript of the +"Kreutzer Sonata" was read in his house to a company of friends, +Tolstoy said in answer to some objections: + +"In a work of art it is indispensable that the artist should have +something new, of his own. It is not how it is written that really +matters. People will read the 'Kreutzer Sonata' and say, 'Ah, that is +the way to write!' The indispensable thing is to go beyond what others +have done, to pick off even a very small fresh bit. But it won't do to +be like my friend Fet, who at sixteen wrote, 'The spring bubbles, the +moon shines, and she loves me,' and who went on writing and writing, +and at sixty wrote: 'She loves me, and the spring bubbles, and the +moon shines.'" + +It was impossible for Tolstoy, the novelist, to write of people whom +he did not know, merely because he happened to have sympathy with some +of their ideals and habits. It was impossible for him to violate human +nature when he portrayed characters that he did know. Hating +professional psychology and all other sciences and quasi-sciences, he +is the greatest of so-called psychological novelists; his psychology +was made before text-books, and it used to be called "truth to human +nature." You cannot suggest, as you read a novel by Tolstoy, anything +a character ought have done which was not done, any emotion he should +have felt which Tolstoy has not suggested at exactly the right moment. +He penetrates the characters of living men and the characters of +history and romance. The pseudo-psychology of the critics of "Hamlet," +does not deceive him. Napoleon, mythical monster and genius +unapproachable, fails to over-awe him; Tolstoy draws him, man size, +amid events that dwarf heroes. + +In "Resurrection," Nekhludof is represented as holding social theories +which in point of fact Tolstoy held. Nekhludof reads Henry George and +tries to give his land to the peasants as communal property. Tolstoy, +the social reformer, would admit no obstacle to the justice and the +practicability of the plan; a lesser artist would have yielded to the +reformer, the plan would have worked and the story would have proved +the theory. But Tolstoy, the novelist, confronts Nekhludof with the +suspicion, the ignorant shrewdness of the peasants; the plan +encounters all the difficulties, legal and psychological, which life +would offer. + +"Resurrection" is the crowning proof of Tolstoy's artistic power. For +twenty years he had developed theories about every problem of life; he +held his opinions tenaciously; hugging them in resolute defiance he +strode roughshod through the domains of church, state and family. His +convictions were strong enough to silence him as an artist, and for +years he obeyed the mandate of conscience that forbade him to write +novels at all. But when, to raise money for the Doukhobors, he +consented to write "Resurrection," his artistic sense was stronger +than the rest of him (if, indeed, there was any antagonism between the +two sides of his nature), and theories powerful enough to disrupt the +universe were kept in bounds by his sense of proportion, his sense of +life. + +The feeling that Tolstoy, the artist, and Tolstoy, the reformer, are +in any true sense engaged in struggle is largely due to the false +dialectic of traditional criticism, which he by precept and practice +has confuted. His great moral principles are the sure foundation of +his greatness in art. For us Westerners modern realism--Hardy and Zola +come first to mind--is associated with a godless though very humane +scepticism. Religious sentiment has been left in the weak hands of +romance, and the longer it has been left there the more false it has +become. From the beginning, even before his religious conversion, +Tolstoy had a sound ethical outlook. At the age of forty he wrote of +Tourgenef's "Smoke": "The strength of poetry lies in love, and the +direction of that strength depends on character. Without strength of +love there is no poetry. In 'Smoke' there is hardly any love of +anything and very little poetry. There is only love of a light and +playful adultery, and therefore the poetry of that novel is +repulsive." The spirit in that criticism is the guiding spirit in +"Anna Karenina," and it is the same spirit which dictated this passage +in the magnificent sermon on the Russian-Japanese war: "The great +struggle of our time ... is not the struggle in which men engage with +mines, bombs and bullets; it is the spiritual struggle which goes on +incessantly, which is going on now, between the enlightened conscience +of humanity, about to be made manifest, and the shadows and oppression +which surround it and crush it." + + +III. + +To western liberals Tolstoy's assaults on church and state seem too +vehement, partly because the tyranny he attacked is more obviously +brutal than that from which we suffer, partly because we are +complacently blind to facts which he revealed, facts which are present +at our doors. Our mild meliorations delude us. We wave an idle hand +and say: "Ah, yes, Russia is a savage country, but we are not like +that."[3] And all the while the coldest labor statistics, if we dared +to open them, show that in the exploitation of workmen, women and +children, ours is as barbarous a country as any in the world. Our +horrors and injustices are smoothed over by a disingenuous press, +which is owned or indirectly controlled by the powers that be. +American philanthropy steals with one hand and builds universities +with the other. We have no kings and no dukes, but America is the +sport of capital; it lies abjectly prostrate before a power-drunk +bourgeoisie. We celebrate Tolstoy in harmless little magazine articles +and wear shirts woven by children. We think we need no school like the +one Tolstoy conducted for poor, backward Russian peasants, because we +have our public schools and compulsory education laws--in some states. +Hundreds of our children are at work; they have succeeded, thanks to +the glorious free competition of business, in taking their fathers' +places at the machines. The children that are in school wave the flag +and read about George Washington. + + [3] And we are still saying it, 1922! + +Tolstoy's teachings can not at present shake the somnolent conscience +of America. He believed in his innocence that our industrial masters +have reached the outrageous limits of exploitation, and that America +must be the first country to rise and throw off its parasites. But +that is a foreigner's opinion and not to be taken seriously in the +land of the free and the home of the National Civic Federation. His +indictment of our civilization is only nine-tenths true, and we shall +take advantage of the one-tenth that is overstatement to throw his +indictment out of court. He sees that every government is a commercial +agency by means of which a privileged minority conducts its business +at the expense of the majority. We are ashamed to believe that that +can be true of our Congress and our irreproachable Supreme Court. It +is easier to dismiss Tolstoy, because he is "eccentric" and "goes too +far." Did he not sweepingly assert that there is no such thing as a +virtuous statesman? That absurdity permits us to ignore the book in +which it appears. + +Besides, it is more "optimistic" to read articles about the "history +of achievement in the United States," to take democratic short cuts to +superficial knowledge, than to read disconcerting books. Our +healthy-minded confidence in American morals bids us be content with a +little gossip about Carlyle and his wife, and not trouble ourselves +with such a difficult book as "Past and Present." In like fashion we +shall understand Tolstoy's ideals without reading "What, Then, Must We +Do?" or "The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You." Sufficient for us a few +newspaper discussions about "Why Tolstoy Left the Countess and the +Relations Between Family Life and Anarchism." For Tolstoy was an +anarchist, and that disposes of him! We know all about anarchists; +they live in Paterson, N.J., and in the imaginations of journalists, +home secretaries, and framers of immigration laws. + +Yet despite our republican wisdom, we cannot quite understand Tolstoy +until we know the true meanings of such words as labor, capital, +exploitation, rent, property, interest, and proletariat. In Russia +these words are understood by many people, also in Germany. But we +Americans, though highly cultivated, are not well informed about +contemporary facts and current philosophies. We have still to be +taught that the Russian revolution is our revolution, that it is part +of a mighty economic change which is in process all over the world. A +study of Tolstoy and his critics will help to instruct us--some +day--about these momentous relations. + +The present status of the revolution is more confused in Russia than +in any other country.[4] The repressive measures of the government +forced a temporary alliance between all types of revolutionaries. It +was this alliance which isolated Tolstoy from other reformers and made +him a retarding force, almost a reactionary, against the progress of +the Social Democracy, that party of orderly Marxians under German +tutelage which was the hope of young Russia. The Czar's government, +which was no respecter of principles, grouped him with all the +malcontents and libertarians. And he returned the compliment. Because +he despised all economics, he could not join a "scientific" party. +Failing to distinguish between the peaceful and the militant +revolutionists, he charged them all with murder and grouped them with +the government. And thus he stood alone, distrustful of peaceful +anarchists because they were not religious, and distrustful of most +religions because they were organized on a property basis. He stood +alone. Yet all liberal men, antithetical to each other as are the +socialists and the anarchists, united in loving him as they united in +hatred of the government. They applauded his terrific indictment of +the society under which we live, though they disagreed from various +points of view with his solution. It was said of him on his eightieth +birthday that whatever conflict there might be between his beliefs and +those of other reformers, the foes of liberty were his foes and the +friends of liberty were his friends. + + [4] This refers, of course, to the revolution before the + Great War. I wonder now, 1922, just what Lenin, Trotsky, + Chicherin, et. al., think of Tolstoy, and what he would have + thought of them! + +Tolstoy's solution for our ills is Christian anarchy, a voluntary +communism allied with the teachings of Jesus, or with Tolstoy's +interpretation of them. He taught that all violence is wrong, all +government is robbery, and that the only possible moral order is +founded on love of man and renunciation of legal rights. That he +should have been a champion of Henry Georgeism, a plan that depends on +organized government, is one of his many inconsistencies; what drew +him to the single-tax theory was probably not so much the economic +principles as George's arraignment of landlordism. + +It is Tolstoy's own arraignment of our so-called civilization rather +than his proposed remedies which will quicken the conscience of the +world.[5] His individualism, his doctrine of private goodness, looks +backward and not forward. He is, like Carlyle, the voice of a bygone +time. + + [5] Will it? I am not so confident as I was once. + +He had lived through the failures of many political revolutions, and +he abhorred anything that pretended to be scientific. He turned his +eyes from the science of men to their souls. In his magnificent self +he justified his individualism, but were we a billion Tolstoys, +saintly and self-disciplined, we must work in organization, or we +cannot work effectively. The world is religious, but religion is a +matter of opinion. The world is also economic, and economics is not a +matter of opinion, but of unavoidable facts over which the individual +has little control.[6] Like Ruskin, Tolstoy rejected economics because +most professorial economists do not tell the truth. He blamed the +dismal science for the dismal facts and for the inadequacies of its +classic expounders. Had he understood the economic structure of +society (which nobody does understand), he would have seen the +futility of trying to abandon his estates. His singular abnegation +could not put an end to the evils of landlordism, even to the extent +of his own plot of ground. He could not make the burden of landless +people one ounce lighter by dismounting in his own person from their +backs. Nothing can be done until an effective majority of men agree to +abolish private ownership of land and establish communal ownership. + + [6] That sounds like good sense. Some of Tolstoy's + countrymen at Genoa seem to have proved it. + +Tolstoy preached with splendid fervor the power of the individual +soul. But his practice is proof of our impotent severalty. It was +disorganization that caused the famine which he labored to relieve, +and it was his efficient organization that kept the hungry from +starving. That our greatest man of letters should sweat behind a +prehistoric plow is good for his soul and for ours; but, even if we +should all grow perfect in spirit and eager for our share of manual +labor, we should still feed ourselves better by communal use of steam +plows. Tolstoy's belated Proudhonism is not the solution for the evils +of property. It is his negative teaching that has positive value. He +is an abolitionist, not a constructive philosopher. But to say that is +not to answer him, not to deny him. He remains unanswered as long as +the labor of this world is done at the behest of the few and for their +profit. His work is not done, his books cannot be outgrown, until +every man of us looks at the facts honestly and cries with him: "It is +impossible to live so! It is impossible to live so!" + + + + +MAETERLINCK'S ESSAYS + + +If we had to lose one part or the other of Maeterlinck's work, I think +we should less reluctantly surrender the plays than the essays. The +essays are richer in substance than the dramas and they are as truly +poetic. The sunny garden, where the poet lives with his bees and +flowers, is a more splendid domain than moonlit pseudo-mediaeval +empires, peopled with the wraiths of women. And the little bull-pup of +the essay is a truer dog than the one in "The Blue Bird." + +Some years ago, when the essay on the dog was first published in +English, I read it aloud to a woman who owned a Boston terrier, and I +gave it to a professional breeder of dogs. Both liked it. It is an +essay that any one can understand; it illuminates a ground where all +kinds of people meet. Even Bill Sikes would have liked it. Maeterlinck +says what almost everybody thinks, and says it as it has not been said +before, not in "Rab and His Friends." The simple eloquence, the +sincerity, the affectionate humor are the positive virtues of the +essay; and its negative virtue is freedom from a kind of rhetorical +artificiality in which Maeterlinck indulges when he gets away from the +solid realities of life. + +Maeterlinck is an amateur botanist and bee-keeper and a professional +poet. He knows, or seems to know, the facts, and he sees them with an +imaginative vision, wondering at them like a child, in the very act of +giving quite lucid "scientific" explanations. He hovers often on the +enchanted borderland between knowledge and fancy, and plays to and fro +between regions which, though adjacent parts of the same universe, +have different habits of thought. I am acquainted with an American +poet and philosopher who does not know the common kinds of dogs such +as any boy of ten knows. I also knew and argued with an eminent +biologist who objected to Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," on the +ground that the poetic phrasing falsified the facts. True, he +conceded, the queen-bee does fly and the strongest male overtakes and +fertilizes her. But for Maeterlinck to poetize the fact as a "nuptial +flight" seemed to the man of science not only untruth to nature, but a +blasphemy against the sacred love of man and woman. + +My friend, the biologist, and my acquaintance, the American poet and +philosopher, both seem to be unfortunately incomplete human beings. +The poet and philosopher does not know what any duffer knows, what +anybody who cares not only for animals but for ordinary folks that own +dogs cannot refrain from knowing. He is a man of cosmopolitan +experience and has surely been in the _Bois_ more than once. In +the Garden of Acclimatation is a wonderful kennel; there are at least +fifteen kinds of dogs, each with his specific or sub-specific name +hung on his cage. If you had never seen a dog you could not walk about +that kennel five minutes without learning the names of a half-dozen +varieties (and without discovering in yourself a highly moral desire +to steal one or two of those beautifully kept beasts). Some ignorance +is unpardonable, and some philosophy and some poetry would be more +vital for a little plain back-yard knowledge. On the other hand, what +a pity it is that any man's sense of fact should be so strait as to +forbid entrance to his soul of a honey bee which Maeterlinck sends +forth equipped with these gorgeous unentomological wings of words: +"The yellow fairies of the honey." It's as bad as a democrat who +should object to the phrase "queen-bee." + +Maeterlinck has knowledge of nature, not only such knowledge as +Wordsworth had, but a fair acquaintance with contemporaneous science. +He has learned lessons from Fabre, whom he admires. He has studied his +own garden in the light of what botanists have told him and in the +other light, which is not hostile to botany, but is different, the +light of poetry. He loves to speculate about unsettled questions. And +his speculations have a very great intellectual merit. He is, on the +whole, content to be uncertain about uncertain things and to express +his inclinations toward one or another conclusion in a persuasive, +wistful manner. Like many other poets, he leans toward the belief that +nature, which includes us, knows more than we do, and that to ascribe +intelligence, in a restricting way, to man alone is probably to leave +out a good deal of the magic of growing things, and to omit some +potential explanations of their mystery, their mystery in the poet's +sense and in the stern truth seeker's sense. The essay on "The +Intelligence of Flowers" revivifies the old moot question about what +knowledge is, what instinct is. It's a very fine question, and it +becomes hottest when the men of imagination and the men of science +(happily they are not mutually exclusive) argue about whether a dog +knows that he loves you. A British poet began a verse to a dog: + + The curate says you have no soul-- + I know that he has none. + +That is good; but it is spiteful. Let us admit the curate. For the dog +would. A dog does not care a wag of his tail whether a man is curate +or editor of a newspaper. Therein the dog is our superior. + +Maeterlinck, though overtaken by the wan doubt of our times, is a +true believer in other kinds of intelligence than ours. He holds that +"nature, when she wishes to be beautiful, to please, to delight and +to prove herself happy, does almost what we should do had we her +treasures at our disposal." There, you see, he begs the whole +question and ascribes to "nature" wishes, desires, intentions. He +does the trick that poets always do; he answers the question that he +asks and that he pretends to be discussing. "All that we observe +within ourselves," he says, "is rightly open to suspicion; we are at +once litigant and judge, and we have too great an interest in +peopling our world with magnificent illusions and hopes. But let the +least external indication be dear and precious to us." + +In this the poet says all, while, on another page, the man of science, +with firm integrity, minimizes evidence and refuses to be convinced. +There is a region where the poet knows almost everything worth +knowing. There is a region where the man of science knows, not +everything worth knowing, but all that is known. There is a misty +mid-region where a full-minded, large-hearted man can live happily. He +gets the message going and coming. He receives what the poet has to +say and what the man of fact has to say and he constructs his world +from the fragmentary contributions of both regions. Maeterlinck +himself in "Our Eternity," dwells on this central ground. Shakespeare +and Isaiah are on his right hand. On his left hand are William James +and other psychological students of the evidence of spooks. + +Poets are enamored of death. Nine-tenths of all the imaginative +literature of the world is concerned with love and death, the begetter +and the extinguisher. The sweetest lines in Shakespeare deal with +love; the stateliest lines, Hamlet's and Macbeth's, are upon death. +The chief interest of life is in dying. We get our highest emotions +from some other person's death, and we adapt our entire course, from +the cradle to the grave, with a view to the fact that we are going to +quit in some year determined by fate or God or other power not quite +understood, a year carefully figured out by the actuaries of the life +insurance companies. + +Man is a perfect coward in the face of death, his own or that of +somebody he loves. The believer and the unbeliever alike bewail the +great adventure. The tears shed by the believer in immortality and by +the disbeliever are the same hot, saline, human drops. Everybody wants +an answer, and only the adherents of certain sects receive an answer +that satisfies them. Those answers do not satisfy me or you, not +because there is anything wrong in the answers, but because the people +that hold the answers behave as all the rest of us do in the presence +of death. Maeterlinck, on the basis of modern evidence, argues for +two-hundred and fifty-eight pages that we do not know what happens +when we die. "In any case, I would not wish my worst enemy, were his +understanding a thousand-fold loftier and a thousand-fold mightier +than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he +had surprised an essential secret and of which, as a man, he had begun +to grasp an atom." + +Amen! That leaves us where we started. But the fact, the cold, +interesting, magnificent fact, is that we are alive, and some of us +are working and some are playing. Maeterlinck is a great child playing +with flowers and with words. He is also a competent workman, and he is +assisted by another skilful craftsman to whom English readers owe +much, Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, who translates Maeterlinck +into English. He is a fine artist. Following faithfully the run of our +English idiom, he succeeds in keeping for our Anglo-Saxon eyes and +ears the color, tone, or whatever it is, of Maeterlinck's beautiful +style. + + + + +JOSEPH CONRAD + + +To the newest generation of adult readers the dawn of a literary light +is a rare experience. It is as if the courses of our literature were +Arctic in their slowness, as if the day came at long intervals, and +then without warmth or brilliance. Our fathers knew the joy of +welcoming the latest novel of Dickens or a new volume of essays by +Carlyle. The only[1] great day whose beginning young men have +witnessed is the day of Kipling; his light mounted rapidly to a high +noon, and if the afternoon shadows have begun to deepen prematurely, +that sun is still beautiful and strong. Other lights have kindled in +the last fifteen years, and have gone out before they had fairly +dislodged the darkness, or have continued to burn dimly. + + [1] I ask the reader to remember that this was written in + 1906. + +Eyes accustomed only to darkness and uncertain lights are in condition +to be deluded by the phantoms of false dawn; it is therefore unwise to +greet with too much enthusiasm the arrival of Mr. Joseph Conrad. Even +if the dawn is real, it is certainly overcast with heavy clouds, and +it has not proved bright enough to startle the world. Nevertheless, +his light is of unique beauty in contemporary literature, and the +story of its kindling makes interesting biography. + +Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski was born fifty years ago in Poland. His +father, a critic and poet, and his mother, who was exiled to Siberia, +were engaged in revolutionary journalism. At nineteen Conrad left +home, to escape an unsettled life, and also, it is fair to assume, to +satisfy his love of adventure. He found work on English vessels, and +this fact gave to contemporary English letters a man who might +otherwise have written in French. To-day he appears in hand-books of +biography as Master in the British Merchant Service, and Author. At +nineteen he had not mastered English; at thirty-eight he had published +no book. Since then he has published about a volume a year. In +preparation for his books he sailed as able seaman, mate, and master, +for twenty years, on steam and sailing craft, and meanwhile he was +reading deep in French and English literature,--all, we are told, with +no intent to become a writer. Indeed it was a period of ill health +resulting in an enforced idleness from the familiar sea that gave him +opportunity to put some of his adventures into words. Perhaps he is a +lesser illustration of a theory of Thoreau's that a word well said +"must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by +some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive +knight, after all." However that may be, the intellectual and physical +adventures of Conrad's life were abundant, and they reappear, +discernible though transfigured, in the substance and the qualities of +his work. + +His ten books are for the most part concerned with the waters of the +earth, and the men that sail on the face of the waters, and with +lands, far from English readers, to be reached only by long journeying +in ships.[2] His first book, "Almayer's Folly," tells the story of a +disappointed Dutch trader in Borneo, whose half-caste daughter runs +away with a Malay chief. His second book, "An Outcast of the Islands," +deals further with the career of Almayer and with that of another +exiled Dutchman. "Nostromo," has for its scene an imaginary South +American state, and its heroes are an Englishman and an Italian. "The +Nigger of the Narcissus" (published in America as "The Children of the +Sea") and "Typhoon" are each the chronicle of a voyage. "Lord Jim" is +the story of a young mate who disgraces himself by one unseamanlike +act, and becomes a wanderer in the eastern islands, and finally a kind +of king in a village of savages. "Tales of Unrest" contains five +stories, two of which are about Malays, and another about white +traders in an African station. The hero of "Falk"--the title story of +a volume of three pieces--is a Scandinavian sailor who has been a +cannibal, and who wins the daughter of a German ship captain in an +Eastern port. "Youth," the first story in a volume of three, is the +memory of a young mate's voyage in an unseaworthy ship, which burns +and leaves the crew to seek an Eastern seaport in the boats. The +second story, "The Heart of Darkness," is an account of a journey into +the Belgian Congo State and a curious study of the effect of solitude +and the jungle and savagery on a white trader. The third piece in the +volume is the story of a ship-captain who steers his ship with the +help of a Malay servant and lets no one guess until the end that he is +blind. Of two books written in collaboration with Mr. Ford M. Hueffer, +the only one worth considering, "Romance," comes the nearest to being +the kind of fiction that the advertisements announce as "full of heart +interest, love, and the glamor of a charming hero and heroine." It +begins with a smuggler's escapade in England, and ends in an elopement +in the West Indies; the best parts, probably Mr. Conrad's share in the +work, are those about the sea and all that on it is, fogs, ships, and +bearded pirates. In these books are men and women of all civilized +nations, the acquaintance of a globe-trotter, and there are, besides, +enough Malays, Chinamen, and Negroes to make the choruses of several +comic operas. But in Conrad they are serious people, every Malay with +a soul and a tragedy; even the Nigger of the Narcissus is equipped +with psychological machinery. + + [2] Almayer's Folly. The Macmillan Co. 1895. + An Outcast of the Islands. Tauchnitz. 1896. + The Nigger of the Narcissus (Children of the Sea). Dodd, + Mead & Co. 1897. + Tales of Unrest. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1898. + Lord Jim. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1899. + The Inheritors (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. + 1901. + Typhoon. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1902. + Falk. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903. + Youth. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1903. + Romance (with F. M. Hueffer). McClure, Phillips & Co. 1904. + Nostromo. Harper & Brothers. 1904. + +Conrad's subject-matter, the secretion of experience, is rich enough +and of sufficiently strange and romantic quality to endow a writer of +popular fiction; and his style,--that is, the use of words for their +melody, power, and charm,--is fit for a king of literature. Stevenson, +who found so little sheer good writing among his contemporaries, would +have welcomed Conrad and have lamented that he could not or would not +tell his stories in more brief, steady, and continuous fashion. + +For there is the rub. Conrad is not instinctively a story-teller. Many +a writer of less genius surpasses him in method. He has no gift of +what Lamb calls a bare narrative. + +There are writers with magnificent power of language who do not attain +that combination of literary and human qualities which is +readableness, and there are others who interest many people in many +generations, and yet do not write well. To most readers Dickens is as +delightful when he writes slovenly sentences as when he writes at his +best. Scott, the demigod, pours out his great romances in an +inexpressive fluid. On the other hand, Walter Pater writes infallibly +well. These illustrations are intended to suggest a difference which +is a fact in literature, and are not to be carried to any conclusive +comparison. The difference exists and it is not a strange fact. It is +strange, however, that Conrad, who spins yarns about the sea, master +of a kind of subject-matter that would make his books as popular as +"Robinson Crusoe" and "Treasure Island," should be one of those who +can write but cannot make an inevitably attractive and winning book +for the multitude. + +Either he knows his fault and can not help it, or he wills it and +does not consider it a fault. There is evidence on this question. +Several of his stories are put in the mouth of Marlow, an eloquent, +reflective, world-worn man. In one place Conrad says, "We knew that +we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of +Marlow's _inconclusive_ experiences." The story Marlow tells is no +more inconclusive and rambling than most of the other stories, so +that one is forced to conclude that Marlow's character as narrator is +Conrad's concession to his own self-observed habit of mind. In +another place Conrad says: "The yarns of seamen have a direct +simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a +cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin +yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not +inside a kernel, but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it +out as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these +misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral +illumination of moonshine." Evidently Conrad prefers or pretends to +prefer the haze to the kernel. + +In an essay on Henry James he openly scorns the methods usual to +fiction of "solution by rewards and punishments, by crowned love, by +fortune, by a broken leg or sudden death," and says: "Why the reading +public, which as a body has never laid upon the story-teller the +command to be an artist, should demand from him this sham of divine +omnipotence is utterly incomprehensible." Thus Mr. Conrad flings down +the gauntlet to those demands of readers which greater men than he and +Mr. James have been happy to satisfy without sacrifice of wisdom and +reality. + +A further announcement of his literary creed he made in a kind of +artistic confession published a few years ago. "His (the prose +writer's) answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks +for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, +amused, who demand to be promptly improved or encouraged, or +frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: 'My task which I am +trying to achieve is by the power of the written word to make you +hear, to make you feel--it is before all to make you see.... If I +succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, +encouragement, consolation, fear, charm--all you demand; perhaps also +that glimpse of truth[3] for which you have forgotten to ask." + + [3] These Slavs (see above on Tolstoy) are all for Truth, + but they are not Chadbandians. They are artists. And so was + the Anglo-Saxon who made Chadband. + +A writer with ideals so high and strongly felt commits himself for +trial by exacting standards. It is necessary to remind Mr. Conrad that +if a reader is to feel, he must first understand; if he is to hear, he +must hear distinctly; and if he is to see, his eye must be drawn by +interest in the object, and it can look only in one direction at once. +"Nostromo" is told forward and backward in the first half of the book, +and the preliminary history of the silver mine is out of all +proportion to the story of Nostromo, the alleged hero of the book. +"Lord Jim" is confused.[4] The first few chapters are narrated in the +third person by the author. Then for three hundred pages Marlow, a +more or less intimate spectator of Jim's career, tells the story as an +after-dinner yarn. It would have taken three evenings for Marlow to +get through the talk, and that talk in print involves quotation within +quotation beyond the legitimate uses of punctuation marks. In other +stories the point of view fails. In "The Nigger of the Narcissus" are +conferences between two people in private which no third person could +overhear, yet the narrative seems to be told in the first person by +one of the crew. In "Typhoon," where a steamer with deck almost +vertical is plunging through a storm, we are on the bridge beside the +simple dogged captain while he shouts orders down to the engine-room +through the tube. Without warning we are down in the engine-room, +hearing the captain's voice from above, and as suddenly we are back on +the bridge again. A man crawls across the deck in a tempest so black +that he cannot see whose legs he is groping at. We are immediately +informed that he is a man of fifty, with coarse hair, of immense +strength, with great lumpy hands, a hoarse voice, easy-going and +good-natured,--as if the man were visible at all, except as a blot in +the darkness! + + [4] No, it is not. It is clear as daylight. + +Conrad has a mania for description. When anything is mentioned in the +course of narrative, though it be a thousand miles from the present +scene, it must be described. Each description creates a new scene, and +when descriptions of different and separated places appear on the same +page, the illusion of events happening before the eye is destroyed. If +a writer is to transport us instantaneously from one quarter of the +globe to another he should at least apprise us that we are on the +magic rug, and even then the space-o'erleaping imagination resents +being bundled off on hurried and inconsequential journeys. Often when +Conrad's descriptions are logically in course, they are too long; the +current of narrative vanishes under a mountain (a mountain of gold, +perhaps, but difficult to the feet of him who would follow the +stream); and when the subterranean river emerges again, it is +frequently obstructed by inopportune, though subtle, exposition. + +Conrad's propensity for exposition is allied, no doubt, with his +admiration for Mr. Henry James, of whom he has written an extremely +"literary" appreciation. Too much interest in masters like Flaubert +and Mr. James is not gentlemanly in a sailor, and it cannot help a +sailor turned writer, who pilots a ship through a magnificent struggle +with a typhoon, leads us into the bewitching terror of the African +jungle, and guides us to Malay lands where the days are full of savage +love, intrigue, suicide, murder, piracy, and all forms of picturesque +and terrific death. Mr. Conrad finds that there are "adventures in +which only choice souls are involved, and Mr. James records them with +a fearless and insistent fidelity to the _peripeties_ of the contest +and the feelings of the combatants." That is true and fine, no doubt, +but the price which Mr. Conrad pays for his ability to discover it is +the fact that hundreds of thousands of readers of good masculine +romance are not reading "Lord Jim," or finding new "Youth" in a young +mate's wondrous vision of the East, or welcoming a new hero in Captain +Whalley. A man who can conceive the mournful tale of Karain and the +fight between the half crazy white men at an African trading post has +a kind of adventure better, as adventure, than the experiences of Mr. +James's choice souls. Stevenson knew all about Mr. James and his +"peripeties," but he could stow that knowledge on one side of his +head, and from the other side spin "Treasure Island" and "The +Wrecker". "The Sacred Fount" never could have befuddled the chronicle +of the amiable John Silver, but in Mr. Conrad's "An Outcast of the +Islands," where it seems to be a question which white man will kill +the other, after a dramatic meet-in the presence of a Malay heroine, +each man stands still before our eyes and radiates states of mind. + +The lover who finds fault with his sweetheart because he is so proud +of her is perfectly human and also perfectly logical. So my reason for +dwelling on Mr. Conrad's shortcomings is because his books are +thoroughly worth consideration. His advent is really important. More +than any other new writer he is master of the ancient eloquence of +English style; no one since Stevenson has surpassed in fiction the +cadence and distinction of his prose. Never has an English sailor +written so beautifully, never has artist had such full and +authoritative knowledge of the sea, not even Pierre Loti. Stevenson +and Kipling are but observant landsmen after all. Marryat and Clark +Russell never write well, though they tell absorbing tales. There was +promise in Jack London, but he was not a seaman at heart. Herman +Melville's eccentric genius, greater than any of these, never led him +to construct a work of art, for all his amazing power of thought and +language. Conrad stands alone with his two gifts of sea experience and +cultivation of style. He has lived on the sea, loved it, fought it, +believed in it, been baffled by it, body and mind. To know its ways, +to be master of the science of its winds and waves and the ships that +brave it, to have seen men and events and the lands and waters of the +earth with the eye of a sailor, the heart of a poet, the mind of a +psychologist--artist and ship-captain in one--here is a combination +through which Fate has conspired to produce a new writer about the +most wonderful of all things, the sea and the mysterious lands beyond +it. + +If we grant that he is not master of the larger units of style, that +is, of construction, we can assert that in the lesser units, sentence +for sentence, he is a master of the English tongue. There is a story +that he learned English first from the Bible, and his vigorous primal +usages of words, his racial idioms and ancient rich metaphors warrant +the idea that he came to us along the old highway of English speech +and thought, the King James version. His sentences, however, are not +biblical as Stevenson's and Kipling's often are, but show a modern +sophistication and intellectual deliberateness. He frequently reminds +us that he is a Slav who learned French along with his native tongue, +that he has read Flaubert and Maupassant and Henry James. Approaching +our language as an adult foreigner, he goes deep to the derivative +meanings of words, their powerful first intentions, which familiarity +has disguised from most of us native-born to English. He has achieved +that ring and fluency which he has declared should be the artist's +aim. Conrad's prose lifts to passages of great poetic beauty, in which +the color of the sea, its emotional aspects, its desolation and its +blitheness, are mingled with its meaning for the men who sail it, its +"austere servitude," its friendliness and its treachery. + +"The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and +swift like a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in +an unattainable frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, +ever changing and ever the same, always monotonous and always +imposing. Now and then another wandering white speck, burdened with +life, appeared far off,--disappeared, intent on its own destiny.... +The august loneliness of her path lent dignity to the sordid +inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove foaming to the southward, as +if guided by the courage of a high endeavor. The smiling greatness of +the sea dwarfed the extent of time." + +No fairer temptation can be offered to a reader who does not know +Conrad than to quote a passage from the end of "Youth," and no more +honest praise can be offered to Conrad than to say that it is a +selected, but by no means unique, specimen of his genius. + +A crew that have left a burning ship in boats find an Eastern port at +night. The weary men tie to the jetty and go to sleep. This is the +young mate's narrative years after, the narrative of the reflective +and eloquent Marlow: "I was lying in a flood of light, and the sky had +never looked so far, so high, before. I opened my eyes and lay without +moving. And then I saw the men of the East--they were looking at me. +The whole length of the jetty was full of people. I saw brown, bronze, +yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the color of an Eastern +crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without a sigh, +without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men +who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved. The fronds +of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the +shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green +foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like +leaves forged of heavy metal. This was the East of the navigators, so +old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full +of danger and promise.... I have known its fascinations since: I have +seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown +nations, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so +many of the conquering race, who are proud of their wisdom, of their +knowledge, of their strength. But for me all the East is contained in +that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my +young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea--and I was +young--and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that it left of it! +Only a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour, of youth!" + + + + +A CONRAD MISCELLANY + + +Nothing that Joseph Conrad writes is negligible; he is one of few +living writers whom we must have complete to the last, or the latest, +published word. Readers who care only for the yarn-spinner will not +find much in his volume of essays, "Notes on Life and Letters," but +even they will find something. And for those to whom Conrad is more +than a story teller, an incomparable magician, these small bits from +his laboratory will have much of the charm of the larger pieces, if +only the reminiscent charm that brings any book of his, the least read +or read longest ago, swiftly to the surface of memory. If a mere +landlubber may hazard the similitude, the captain will always show his +qualities whether he is on the bridge of a liner or in a rowboat. + +The essays on books are unpretentious notes--eight pages on Henry +James, seven on Maupassant, twelve on Anatole France, short excursions +in criticism made between the longer voyages to the islands of the +blessed. Like most criticism written by men of genius, these papers +are interesting for what they say about another man of genius and also +for what they say about the critic. One of the most satisfactory +essays in what it reveals of Conrad is least satisfactory as objective +criticism--the one about Marryat and Cooper, in which there is a +declaration of descent in terms of surrender. To be sure, since the +elder men are seamen and writers of the sea, Conrad's delight in them +is understandable and not to be denied. But there are some things that +must be denied even by a critic who gets seasick a mile off shore. One +is Conrad's reiterated judgment that the greatness of Marryat "is +undeniable." If Marryat is great, then so is Oliver Optic. And when +Conrad speaks of the "sureness and felicity of effect" of the prose of +Cooper--Cooper, whose style grates on the ear and who drags us by the +sheer power of his story through his verbal infelicities--then I jump +overboard and leave these literary sailors to fight it out. + +When we get back on land to another of Conrad's masters, Guy de +Maupassant, I feel less shaky. In "Tales of Unrest" are two stories, +"The Return" and "The Idiots," in which I long ago thought I +discovered the right kind of influence from the French master--what +Conrad praises as Maupassant's austere fidelity to fact. Yet one is +puzzled by the implied praise in the very dubious statement that "this +creative artist [Maupassant] has the true imagination; he never +condescends to invent anything." Just what does that mean? If "A Piece +of String" and "The Necklace" are not diabolically ingenious +inventions, then the word invention means nothing as applied to +fiction. In point of invention how far apart are the story of the +girls in "La Maison Tellier" and the story of the girl in the pathetic +troupe in "Victory"? Both stories are equally invented, equally true +to nature, equally free from "the miserable vanity of a catching +phrase." But what is a catching phrase? I suppose that a Frenchman +gets somewhat the same shiver of delight from fine rhythms in +Maupassant's prose that we get from fine rhythms in Conrad. Both +men--I could quote many examples--strike out amazing metaphors, the +poetry of prose, which are not decorations hung on the outside but are +the unremovable intestines of their story. Such metaphors in rhythm +are surely "catching phrases," but they are not miserable vanities. I +wonder if Conrad has a moment now and then when he distrusts his own +eloquence--an eloquence which has brought against him from more than +one critic the charge of being a phrase maker. + +Conrad's prose is not so hard and compact as Maupassant's, and except +the two short stories I have mentioned I recall nothing in Conrad +which in manner or substance obviously illustrates his own statement +that he has been "inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with +the work" of Maupassant. His greatest short stories, "Youth" and "The +Heart of Darkness," seem worlds away from the French master. But +inspiration, the influence of one artist on another, does not mean +imitation in method or any visible resemblance in effect. It may mean +a fundamental similarity in artistic attitude. The elements of +similarity between the French writer and the British are the plain +virtues, honesty and courage, which Conrad rightly ascribes to +Maupassant; for these are the central virtues in the creed which +Conrad announced many years ago and to which he has loyally adhered in +the remotest strange seas of romance. + +Another of Conrad's masters, acknowledged in the phrase "twenty years +of attentive acquaintance" (and the phrase was written in 1905) is +Henry James. This seems a curious discipleship if we consider only the +material: James static, land-bound, class-bound; Conrad adventurous, +errant, familiar with all breeds and degrees of men. But much the same +thing happens to both kinds of material. For in the first place the +material is not essentially different; it is the history of a +two-legged animal staggering on land or aboard ship. And in the second +place what happens is simply (though it is not so simple) that an +artist tries to put this animal steady on its feet and make it give a +reasonable account of itself--through himself. It gets transmitted +through an intelligence, a personality, a style, into something more +interesting than the actual poor creature who wabbles along the street +or on the deck of a steamer. The courageous interpreters make their +fellow men stand up, and the real hero of a romance is the romancer. + +This is one of the paradoxes of fiction which the mere reader of +fiction and of criticism written by masters of fiction can enjoy, that +the modern self-conscious story tellers, forever proclaiming their +devotion to an objective reality, to the naked fact, and even, like +Conrad, pretending scorn of the phrase, are wilful persons who distort +life into a new reality. There is something almost naive in the honest +belief of Tolstoy, James, Conrad, that nature, human nature, is +something outside the artist, lying _over there_, and that the artist +standing _over here_ observes it, renders it, "mirrors" it. James +himself, a most sophisticated realist, was not always so insistent as +Conrad seems to think on the function of the novelist as historian; +some years later than Conrad's essay, James found fault with the +younger novelists because their work was too undigested, because it +was not sufficiently remade, transformed by an individual +interpreter--that is, though he did not say it so harshly, the younger +men were not interesting individuals, not men of first-rate +imagination. + +But we must not get too far away from Conrad and his particular +relation to James. He has a generously envious admiration for James's +inconclusiveness, for the novel that stops but does not end because +life does not end; it seems to be, like his admiration for +Maupassant's accuracy and directness, a declaration of something that +he has striven for and not always accomplished. Conrad winds his own +stories up pretty sharply, wipes out his people with annihilation more +desolating than the conventional piling of corpses at the end of +"Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet." Recall the obliterating finality of +"Lord Jim," of "Victory," which ends with the blank word "nothing." +Or, where death does not conclude it all but the character lives on, +remember the abrupt inevitable termination of "The Rescue": "Steer +north!" Another relation which I have suggested and which Conrad as +critic does not hint is this: Conrad's material, though superficially +it is made up of adventure, wreck, blood, piracy, mystery, and +Stevensonian yo-heave-ho, is, as he treats it, often as static as +anything in James; it is stationary, concerned with the moods of men, +analytic, psychological (that tiresome word has to do for it), even +while the storm rages; and this is one of the reasons why readers with +a taste for ripping yarns have not welcomed him with the unanimous +popularity which they accorded to Stevenson and Kipling, to name fine +artists and not, of course, to mention cheap favorites. If we really +understood Conrad's fiction we have no difficulty in understanding his +filial relation to Henry James. Begin with the paragraph on page 13 of +"Notes on Life and Letters:" "Action in its essence, the creative art +of the writer of fiction," etc., and see if the rest that follows is +not, with a change or two, as good an account of Joseph Conrad as of +Henry James--better, indeed, since one master of fiction writing of +another speaks with two voices or with a voice proceeding from a +two-fold authority and wisdom. + +Joseph Conrad, novelist, child of English and Continental literature, +is not more unaccountable than any other literary genius. But how to +explain, or even remember at all, that the head of living English men +of letters, next to Hardy, is a Pole named Korzeniowski? It is fair to +remember that and be inquisitive about it because in "Notes on Life +and Letters" he pretends to write autobiography, and reminds us of his +origin in a paper called "Poland Revisited." It is a baffling +narrative, even more baffling than the vague book which he chose to +call "A Personal Record." Conrad in quest of his youth never gets back +to Poland at all except as a British tourist. The paper consists of +thirty-two pages. Mr. Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski reaches Cracow on the +twenty-fourth page. There are two or three pages of reminiscence, +chiefly about his father's death. Then war is declared (this is in +1914), and the British subject, with the assistance of the American +Ambassador, escapes from Poland and amid the booming of distant guns +in Flanders sails safely back through the Downs "thick with the +memories of my sea-life." + +Mr. Conrad is the least patriotic of Poles and the most patriotic of +Englishmen. His political opinions, which he was evidently invited to +express by some English editor who remembered the fading fact of +Korzeniowski and appreciated the luminous fact of Joseph Conrad, the +writer, are no better and no worse than any competent journalist might +have delivered. His hatred of Russia, expressed long before his +adopted country became the ally of the Czar, may have its origin in +some boyhood bitterness. But it is an Englishman who speaks, not a +Pole. His prophecy of the downfall of Russian autocracy and of the +menace of Prussianism shoots into the future with as true an aim as +any man could have had in 1905, and a prophet is to be excused for +having said at that time that there was in Russia "no ground ready for +a revolution." "Conrad political" is less interesting than "Conrad +controversial," since his controversial utterances were provoked by +the sinking of the Titanic, the question of the safety of ships, and +the stupidity of marine officials on land, subjects which he can +discuss with the cool knowledge of the expert and the vehemence of an +offended master of ships and words. + +But the true men of the four into which in his preface he divides +himself are "Conrad literary" and "Conrad reminiscent." The +reminiscence is not of a dimly, even indifferently, remembered Poland, +but of England and the sea. On the twenty-four-page journey to the +five-page sojourn in Cracow what happens? London, flashed on you in a +few sentences with an original vividness as if Englishmen had never +described it before, realized in brief transit, an immense solid +thing, compared to which Cracow is an insubstantial dream. He cannot +recapture his boyhood, but he gives you instantly the London of to-day +and the London of his youth when the British-Polish apprentice was +looking for a berth. And then the voyage across the North Sea. Here we +are at home. "The same old thing," he says. "A grey-green expanse of +smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-ridges, and over +all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of wet blotting +paper." + +"The same old thing!" The sea is the same old thing, water deep and +shoal, storm and calm, fog and clear weather, light and darkness, +starshine and sunshine. It is understandable that from time to time a +new poet should be born, Byron, Tennyson, Swinburne, Whitman, Conrad, +Masefield, who, being a different man from all the rest, should phrase +some mood of the sea in words that no other poet in centuries had +used. But Conrad has written fifteen volumes mostly about the sea, +many pages necessarily about some aspect which he has treated more +than once. His treatment is so unmistakably his own that you could +recognize any passage as his if you saw it on a piece of torn paper +blown from nowhere. Yet it is truer of him than of Shakespeare that he +never repeats, has no _cliches_, no pet phrases, but in each book +finds astonishing new images, as if he himself had not written before. +How does he do it? + + + + +STRINDBERG + + +Some men of genius at forty or fifty arrive at a view of life, an +attitude toward the human comedy, as inclusive and definite as it is +possible for them to conceive. Hardy at seventy is quite recognizable +the man that he was at forty. The Meredith of 1860 is the Meredith of +1890. They grow, they improve or change their artistic methods. But +their natures do not undergo violent revolutions. Other men, Tolstoy +for example, experience a catastrophic annihilation of some part of +themselves and emerge from the confusion, remade, fired with new +beliefs. Tolstoy had one great battle with himself which divided his +life into two main periods, and after the struggle his philosophy, +whatever its worth, was fairly settled, and he knew how to express it +clearly over and over again. + +Strindberg seems to have been continuously at war with Strindberg; and +the peace that he found was but the death-bed repentance of a man +whose forces were spent. He went through many phases. "The Growth of a +Soul", which is autobiographical, might better be called "The +Conflicts of a Soul". It seethes with ideas, ends in a half-formed +philosophy, and is only a section of Strindberg's intellectual +adventures. He was ten men at ten different times, and he was ten men +all the time. He expressed every aspect of himself. His manifold +genius was master of all forms of literature. As Emerson said of +Swedenborg, in whom Strindberg found all the light that his dark soul +ever knew, he lies abroad on his times, leviathan-like. Undoubtedly to +know him, one must know him entire, and I do not pretend to complete +knowledge of his life and works. + +Some fragments of his total artistic expression are not intelligible +when they are read apart from his other books. "The Inferno" is a +confused and murky nightmare which takes on form and purpose only when +the light of biography is turned on it. Other works of Strindberg, +read by themselves, are clear and shapely. + +"By the Open Sea" is an intensely powerful study of an overcultivated +man and a primitively passionate woman. It is, moreover, the work of a +poet who loves the sea. The passage in which the ichthyologist +observes through his telescope the wonder-world beneath the surface of +the water is rich with the essential poetry of natural fact. The +translator, Ellie Schleussner, would probably say, as Strindberg's +admirers all say, that his resonant poetic prose cannot be rendered in +another language. Yet the things that he sees in nature and his +interpretations of them are in their naked substance the imaginative +stuff which is poetry. This Titan was not content to be poet, +novelist, dramatist, essayist, philosopher. He was also a man of +science, no mean rival, they say, of the professional student of +biology and chemistry. The eye that looks through Borg's telescope has +been trained in a laboratory and can also roll with a fine frenzy: + +"The blenny, which has developed a pair of oars in front, but is too +heavy in the stern and reminds one of first attempts at boat building, +raised its architectural stone head, adorned with the moustachios of a +Croat, above the heraldic foliage among which it had lain, and lifted +itself for a short moment out of the mud only to sink back into it the +next instant. + +"The lump-fish with its seven backs stuck up its keel; the whole fish +was nothing but an enormous nose, scenting out food and females; it +illuminated for a second the bluish-green water with its rosy belly, +surrounding itself with a faint aureole in the deep darkness; but +before long its sucker again held safely to a stone, there to wait the +lapse of the million years which shall bring delivery to the laggards +on the endless road of evolution." + +Strindberg has been called both misogamist and misogynist. Yet it is +not possible to collect and compress within the bounds of such +definite words a man whose ideas on any one subject fly far apart as +the poles. If he sometimes, often, expresses virulent detestation of +women and all their ways, he is not more tender toward men. He is not +a caresser of life. He hangs the whole human race. But he analyzes; +tries it before the twelve-minded jury in himself before he pronounces +sentence. Point by point, detail for detail, he is just in perception +of character and motive. His final view is simply not final, but +contradictory as life itself. He thinks that woman is a snare to the +feet of a man who would walk upright and accomplish something in the +world. Yet he believes in the freedom of woman, would give her the +vote, and emancipate her from economic bondage to the man. He even +champions the liberty of the child, condemns "the family as a social +institution which does not permit the child to become an individual at +the proper time," and draws both parents as victims of "the same +unfortunate conditions which are honored by the sacred name of law." + +"Marriage" contains twenty short stories of married life, so many +variations of Strindberg's thesis against the institution. So +regarded, the book leaves one rather sore than enlightened. But these +stories are stories, not tracts. Strindberg is a great, if rough and +savage, artist. His opinions, whatever they are, do not devitalize his +fiction. His short narratives are as skilful as Maupassant's in at +least one respect, compression, sinewy economy. He can put in ten +pages the domestic tragedy of a lifetime. He is a fine or, rather, a +firm craftsman, and though the man rages, the artist has the artist's +restraint and every other literary virtue short of ultimate beauty. He +sets down terrible things with a cool succinctness. One story ends +thus: "The children had become burdens and the once beloved wife a +secret enemy despised and despising him. And the cause of all this +unhappiness? The want of bread! And yet the large storehouses of the +new world were breaking down under the weight of an over-abundant +supply of wheat. What a world of contradictions! The manner in which +bread was distributed must be at fault. Science, which has replaced +religion, has no answer to give; it merely states facts and allows the +children to die of hunger and the parents of thirst." + +"The Red Room" is a satire on life in Stockholm, on life everywhere. +The pathetic struggle of the artistic and literary career, its follies +and pretenses, the fatuity of politics, the dishonesty of journalism, +the disillusion that awaits the aspiring actor, all these things run +riot through the lively pages. Strindberg's satire is severe, it is +sometimes hard, but it is not mean. He has a large if rather distant +sympathy for the poor fellows whose aspirations, failures, +dissipations, and friendships he portrays. Of two young critics he +says: "And they wrote of human merit and human unworthiness and broke +hearts as if they were breaking egg-shells." He writes of their +unconscious inhumanity and blindness in a way that reveals his own +clearness of vision and fundamental humanity. The laughter of a somber +humorist has in it a tenderness unknown to merry natures. + +The dramatic and literary critic may profitably read the chapter +called "Checkmate," in which the young journalist is made to say: "The +public does not want to have an opinion, it wants to satisfy its +passions. If I praise your enemy you writhe like a worm and tell me +that I have no judgment; if I praise your friend, you tell me that I +have. Take that last piece of the Dramatic Theatre, Fatty, which has +just been published in book form.... It's quite safe to say that there +isn't enough action in it: that's a phrase the public knows well; +laugh a little at the 'beautiful language'; that's good, old +disparaging praise; then attack the management for having accepted +such a play and point out that the moral teaching is doubtful--a very +safe thing to say about most things." + +Strindberg's imagination visualized and dramatized everything. He made +plays of an astonishing variety of ideas ranging from wild poetic +fantasy to grim realism--a range as great as Ibsen's and greater than +Hauptmann's. + +Glance at those in the third volume of Mr. Bjorkman's translations, +not to analyze them but merely to note their diversity. "Swanwhite" is +a fairy fantasy of love, confessedly inspired by Maeterlinck, yet in +no sense an imitation of him. "Advent" is a Christmas miracle play, +which embodies a gentle sermon on the forgiveness of sins--a strange +sermon from the man who wrote the last chapter of "By the Open Sea!" +"Debit and Credit" is a realistic sketch portraying the man who +succeeds at the expense of other people. "The Thunderstorm" plays upon +an old theme, one that Strindberg knew by experience, the failure of +marriage between an elderly man and a young woman. It ends rather +serenely for Strindberg, whose last years were not peaceful: "It's +getting dark, but then comes reason to light us with its bull's-eyes, +so that we don't go astray.... Close the windows and pull down the +shades so that all memories can lie down and sleep in peace of old +age." + +In "After the Fire" the vanity and dishonesty of petty people are +ruthlessly exposed. The Stranger who finds all reputations to have +been based on sham and all pride founded on wind, is said to be +Strindberg himself. "Vanity, vanity.... You tiny earth; you, the +densest and heaviest of all planets--that's what makes everything on +you so heavy--so heavy to breathe, so heavy to carry. The cross is +your symbol, but it might just as well have been a fool's cap or a +strait-jacket--you world of delusions and deluded!" + + + + +TAGORE + + +Sometimes the world, or a section of it, goes wildly cheering after a +prophet; and a stranger, watching the multitude, wonders wherein lies +the greatness of the great man. The sceptic may be too ignorant to +understand or he may be too clear-sighted to be deceived. Not many +years ago the tom-tom of the Nobel Prize beat before the tent of the +modest and inoffensive Hindoo poet, Rabindranath Tagore. English +critics and poets of first-rate authority have called him wonderful. +For all I know he may be wonderful, for I have not read all his work +in English and I am not well acquainted with Bengali. But I submit +that in "The Crescent Moon" and "The Gardener," there is not one great +line, not one poem that is arresting, compelling, memorable. Moreover, +there is much that is false and weak. + + O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! + O Farthest End, O the keen call of thy flute! + +Now that may do in India, but in our part of the world it is feeble +orchestration. The poets of the Bible and English poets since the days +of the Elizabethan translation have equipped the celestial choirs with +more sounding instruments. One cannot without a smile consider the far +end of the cosmos playing a flute or a piccolo. Harken to how a +supreme poet makes music worthy of the wide spaces: + + But thou dost set in statelier pageantry, + Lauded with tumults of the firmament; + Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky, + Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident, + Thou dost thy dying so triumphally; + I see the crimson blaring of thy shawms. + +This is from Francis Thompson's "Ode to the Setting Sun." You see the +difference. Thompson's lines are poetry. Tagore's simply are not. + +Miss May Sinclair, herself a distinguished artist, says that Mr. +Tagore's translation of his Bengali poetry into English "preserves, +not only all that is essential and eternal in his poetry, but much of +the strange music." That may be so, but how does Miss Sinclair know +that? Does she understand Bengali? Does she read it and speak it well +enough to be sure that Mr. Tagore has translated himself adequately? +Is not she affording an instance of criticism that in an excess of +enthusiasm runs beyond its own knowledge? Some of Tagore's lines are +mildly sweet, and there are some pretty fancies in the Child-Poems. +The poem in "The Gardener," which begins: + + Why do you whisper so faintly in my ears, O + Death, my Death? + +would be faintly impressive if Walt Whitman had never lived. + +Not only are Tagore's lines not great but some of his lines are +foolish: + + Under the banyan tree you were milking the cow with your hands, + tender and fresh as butter. + +Perhaps Mr. Tagore did not know that in English "butter fingers" +greasily signifies manual ineptitude. I can not take that line +seriously, nor understand how Tagore has become one of England's +acknowledged poets. He distorts nature with pathetic fallacies which +have not verbal splendor to carry them, as the verbal splendor of +Shakespeare, Shelley, and Thompson often carries a metaphor that, so +to speak, will not hold water. + + I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was + hiding its last gold like a miser. + +The sunset is not in the least like a miser; and a true lover and +observer of nature would not allow himself such a niggardly fallacious +image. Are not our friends, the poets and critics, victims of the +spell which odd things out of the East put on our occidental minds, +the spell that makes some people run after queer preachers and +philosophers who talk religion through their turbans? + +One is reminded that Mr., or Sir Owen Seaman has in his delicious book +of parodies, "The Battle of the Bays", an Edwin-Arnoldy thing that +runs like this: + + The bulbul hummeth like a book + Upon the pooh-pooh tree, + And now and then he takes a look + At you and me, + At me and you. + Kuchi! Kuchoo! + +It is, I confess, sheer perversity that made that stanza come into my +head while I was reading Tagore. Tagore does not rhyme; he puts his +verses into simple prose, most of which is pleasant enough, but none +of which is rich in thought or magnificent in phrase. + +Tagore is a faker in the English sense of the word. I do not know what +he is in Hindoo. He gives lectures in America to audiences that are, +of course, mostly women. Then when he has got all the money he can get +from them (for his schools; he is not selfish) he tells them as a +Parthian shot that they are idle. If they were not, the poor ignorant +dears, he would not have had any audiences or any money. It is caddish +to kick the cow that gives the milk. I should rejoice if he took +millions from the idle ladies of America to help the ladies of India +and to free India from the British murderer and thief. Spoiling the +Egyptians is a good game. But it is not playing the game like a man +and a philosopher to bite the hand that feeds you. + +And it is not manly or philosophic to kiss the hand that strikes you. +Tagore with a feeble gesture relinquishes his British title as a +protest against British crime in India. If he had been a real +philosopher and a true patriot he would not have accepted the title in +the first place. The lost leader who sticks a riband in his coat does +not recover leadership by throwing the riband away. The political and +social beliefs of poets, even of Dante and Shelley and Hugo, are of +less importance than their sense of beauty. But there is a connection, +not quite impertinent to a purely literary discussion, between the +quality of a poet's work and his character as it is expressed when he +descends from Parnassus and uses the prose of politicians. It is not +surprising that Tagore, who babbles to American chautauquas and allows +an English king to tap him on the shoulder, should be a weak and +stammering poet. That voice from the east is not impressive. If it is +the best that modern India can do, then India is done for +intellectually as well as economically. + + + + +REMY DE GOURMONT + + +In "Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas,"[1] Mr. +William Aspenwall Bradley has made an excellent selection from the +work of Remy de Gourmont; one only regrets that space did not permit +him to give us more. He has a gift unfortunately rare among +translators: he knows his original and he knows how to write the +language into which he translates. He even corrects his master in one +place: where de Gourmont, stumbling in a language which he has not +quite mastered, writes that the English words, "sweet," and "sweat," +are _mots de prononciation identique_, Mr. Bradley gently wipes out +the blunder with "words which resemble each other." Not that de +Gourmont, with his enormous knowledge, made many such mistakes! I +merely note the care and delicacy of the translator. + + [1] Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas. Remy + de Gourmont. Translated by William Aspenwall Bradley. New + York: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1921. + +Without pretending too much to the wisdom which should have ensued, I +remember like a shock of light, as if a blind man had suddenly gained +his vision, my introduction, a few years ago, to the work of de +Gourmont (for which my thanks are due to Mr. Martin Loeffler, who is a +distinguished musician and only potentially a man of letters). If you +wish to have your darkness illuminated, associate with the wise. If +you are groping in a foreign literature, the first man to meet is +the critic. The little I know about France of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries I owe to having clung to the broad and often +elusive coat-tails of Sainte-Beuve. As a guide to the nineteenth +century and much else beside--back to Rome and Greece--the most +stimulating cicerone is Remy de Gourmont. + +When he was born, the gods went crazy and put into one person an elf +and a sage, Ariel and Prospero, Morgan and Merlin. It is no uncommon +thing when you are reading a French book, by an author with whose work +you are not familiar, to find facing the title-page a list of books +_du meme auteur_ and to discover that he has published something +in all the main divisions of imaginative literature, plays, poems, +romances, criticism. It takes a Frenchman to box the literary compass. +He assumes that the business of a writer is to write, and he learns +and practises all the forms, with varying degrees of success, to be +sure, just as a musician, trying all forms, may be at his best in +songs or quartettes for strings or symphonies or operas. + +De Gourmont played every instrument in the band and played it well. +His range and versatility are remarkable even for a Frenchman. He took +all knowledge for his province. In spreading his interests wide he +never became thin; even when he played on the surface of an idea he +somehow, in a page or two, showed the depth of mind and matter +underneath. He was, as his American publishers say, poet, critic, +dramatist, scholar, biologist, philosopher, novelist, philologist, and +grammarian. He was an experimenter and explorer. When he died, just +under sixty, he was still looking round with his keen roaming eye, and +he was looking sadly, for the war, according to his brother Jean, who +writes not sentimentally but like a de Gourmont, killed him. + +Even the colossal, universal genius, the Hugo, the Goethe, can not be +supreme in every realm of thought, in every type of literary +expression. De Gourmont's poetry, to my ignorant alien ear, is not +among the best in that prolific and still living period of French +poetry which he as critic did so much to encourage. As for de +Gourmont's fiction, "Une Nuit au Luxembourg," which he might have +tossed with a wink into the lap of Anatole France, does not greatly +enrich French fiction, which is already rich in similar achievements. +"Couleurs" consists of delightful twittings on ideas, and surely is +not greatly important in a nation where one man of letters out of four +has mastered the art of the _conte_. + +De Gourmont is supremely the critic, the man who digests, interprets, +reorganizes the thoughts of other men and in the process adds to those +thoughts. His favorite method of reorganization is disorganization, +"dissociation" (and by the way, that word is good in English, as in +French, and better than Mr. Bradley's "disassociation"). He pulls +ideas to pieces and skilfully puts them together again. He is an +analyst, a dissector. But the flowers of the garden are not all +plucked to shreds and scattered on the paths, nor are they all taken +to the laboratory and subjected to the microscope. De Gourmont is +interested in things living and in propagating life. "_Toutes nos +fleurs sont fraiches, jeunes et pleines d'amour._" He surveys +wildernesses and lays out gardens. No other man was ever blessed with +such a combination of the safe, sane, intellectually comfortable and +the restless, daring, venturesome. + +He loves paradoxes because life is full of contradictions, and his +paradoxes are often elucidations and conciliations of conflicting +ideas, never the cheap and facile paradoxes of a Chesterton. Is +Mallarme obscure? There is never absolute, literal obscurity in an +honestly written work. Besides, there are too few obscure writers in +French. This from a Frenchman whose own writing is a marvel of clarity +even when he is handling subtle and difficult ideas! Moreover, de +Gourmont's essays on language and style are studies in precision, in +definition. + +De Gourmont is a wise man, who, like Socrates and William James, is +not afraid to joke, and some of his perversities are uttered with his +ironic tongue in his cheek. Like all fine humorists he is profoundly +serious, and the delicate play of his fingers is backed by terrific +muscular scholarship. His method is to appear to be casual, to make +the review of a book "_une occasion de parler un peu_" and then +to pack into six pages the reading of a lifetime. He manipulates +Brunetiere into the corner and annihilates him before you have time to +realize that there is no button on the rapier. + +For all his tolerant smile and sceptical shrug, de Gourmont is +fighting valiantly for ideas. He wants ideas liberated but not loose, +and in the very act of freeing them he defines and fixes them. He +divides long-mated notions in order to reassemble them according to +his private logic. For he is the most wilful and individual of +critics. The journalistic multiplicity of his subjects is unified by a +great personality. The "dissociator" of ideas is a constructive +thinker, one of the greatest of critics in a nation of critics and +sufficient in himself to stand as smiling refutation of Croce's dictum +that "French criticism is notably weak whenever the fundamentals of +art are concerned." If there is a fundamental of art that de Gourmont +missed, I doubt whether it is to be discovered in any German or +Italian book. For de Gourmont's reading embraced the literature of +Europe, and he was especially alert to philosophic criticism. He was +forever in search of principles; but the result of his quest is not a +massive disquisition. The solidity of his learning and the systematic +coherence of his ideas are concealed from the unwary reader by the +lightness of his tone and also by his brevity, the gift, which belongs +to the race of Montaigne and Voltaire, of saying everything in a few +sentences. His essays are light as a feather and yet they carry tons +of information. The aeroplane looks like a bird but it is a heavy and +elaborate piece of machinery. + +De Gourmont lived in an ivory tower, the tower of a wizard who +combined the knowledge of an ancient necromancer with that of a modern +chemist. He was much alone, for only in solitude can a man read as +much as de Gourmont read and write about it in serene meditation. +Nevertheless, he was in and of the world of writers; he was an active +and friendly editor; he made the _Mercure de France_; he encouraged +the youngest and bravest of his day; many of his notes record +conversations with the finest men of his time. He spent his days with +_la jeunesse_ and his nights with aged wisdom. When he retired to his +ivory tower he carried under one arm a volume of mediaeval Latin, to +add to his enormous library, already neatly stowed in his head, and +under the other arm the manuscript of the youngest French poet. + +In one of his essays de Gourmont plays charmingly with the reviewer's +too facile use of "great"; "great writer," "very great writer." +Despite that delightful warning I dare say that de Gourmont is a +_tres grand ecrivain_, not a great poet nor a great novelist, but +the greatest critic that has been born, even in France where critics +are wont to be born. + + + + +SWIFT'S RELATIONS WITH WOMEN + + +"Controversy," says the editor of the Swift-Vanessa letters,[1] "might +have been more moderate in tone and more fruitful of result, if +writers had always remembered that, though grounds of conjecture are +abundant, the data for forming a judgment are manifestly incomplete." +Leslie Stephen, a shrewd and cautious biographer, with a lawyer's gift +for handling evidence, says "This is one of those cases in which we +feel that even biographers are not omniscient; and I must leave it to +my readers to choose their own theory, only suggesting that readers, +too, are fallible." + + [1] Vanessa and Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift. + Letters edited for the first time from originals. With an + introduction by A. Martin Freeman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin + Co. + +I propose an explanation of Swift, but propose it only as a +conjecture, an hypothesis. I shall not even argue it up to the point +of positive belief; certainly I shall not push it beyond the line +where belief borders knowledge. Conjecture is good if it remains +clearly in the realm of conjecture, an honest area of thought, and +does not try to sneak over into the land of things proved. + +All of Swift's relations with women, and much else in his life, may be +accounted for by the supposition that early he discovered or suspected +that he was insane, that he believed his insanity might be +transmissible, that he was consequently afraid to have children, that +he was honest and strong enough to keep himself in check, that the +resulting suppression made him irascible and bitter, that he was a +vigorous and passionate man, that his quick shifts from tender fooling +to savage satire, his friendly and brutal moods, his strutting +arrogance that amazed the coffee houses, were not due to any +tom-foolery of politics or thwarted ambition in the petty matter of +advancement in the church but were due to a conflict, honorably won by +Swift, in the place where a man lives. The "early" in this supposition +is important. Leslie Stephen, quoting the familiar dark prophecy of +Swift at the age of fifty: "I shall be like that tree; I shall die at +the top," justly observes that "a man haunted perpetually by such +forebodings might well think that marriage was not for him." But +Stephen is dealing with Swift in middle age and offering an +explanation of why, assuming that Swift was not already married to +Stella, he did not marry Vanessa. Let us place the beginning of the +perpetual foreboding early in Swift's life and see if the main facts, +so far as we know them, will lie upon this supposition. + +Swift's attacks of vertigo began in his youth. He attributed his +illness to an over-consumption of fruit when he was twenty-one. Swift +knew better than that. Even if we assume that medical science in the +eighteenth century was stupid and backward, Swift was too intelligent +to believe that an early period of indigestion accounted for the +suffering which afflicted him all his life. He knew, or suspected and +feared, what was the matter with him. In 1699, when he was thirty-two, +he wrote some resolutions, headed "when I come to be old." Among them +is this: "Not to be fond of children or let them come near me hardly." +Stephen quotes a friendly commentator as saying: "We do not fortify +ourselves with resolutions against what we dislike but against what we +feel in our weakness we have reason to believe we are really inclined +to." That friendly commentator was right and understood human nature, +though he had never lived (Stephen does not name him) to hear about +libido, suppression, defence, inversion, and other wise words now +current. + +Stephen goes wrong, it seems to me, in his following friendly +commentation: "Yet it is strange that a man should regard the purest +and kindliest of feelings as a weakness to which he was too much +inclined." I have not space to quote the rest, which is on page 31 of +Stephen in the English Men of Letters. Swift was not fighting against +a weakness, he was fighting against a strength. He resolves "not to +marry a young woman." In a letter he calls a woman's children her +"litter," and that has been quoted by some critics as an example of +his brutality. He loves Tom, Dick, and Harry but he hates mankind. Is +it not clear? He can not have what he wants, and what he wants is what +normally results in children, in more mankind. His resolution, +superficially harsh and misanthropic, is a masked, or inverted, +expression of desire. Such expression is not, of course, peculiar to +literary satirists, but it should be remembered that Swift had +supremely the ironic trick of thought, the gift of saying a thing by +saying exactly the opposite. + +The resolution should be read in the light of the fact that Stella was +eighteen years old, a grown and comely woman. But the interpretation +of it depends much more closely on the termination of Swift's affair +with Varina. The date, 1699, suggests this. He had proposed to Varina, +Miss Waring, in 1696, in a letter which is passionate enough, and had +been rejected, at least provisionally, on the score of her ill health +and his poverty. Four years later, after he had received the living at +Laracor and seemed to be on the way to other preferments, she wished +to hold him to his word, and he jilted her. There are three +explanations. One is that he had fallen in love with Stella and so out +of love with the other woman. The second explanation, Leslie +Stephen's, is that his ambitions had not been realized, his +advancement had not been brilliant, and marriage would have kept his +nose to the grind-stone in an obscure living. That explanation is not +good, for, though Swift always had an eye to the main chance and was +worried about money, power, and position, it is only men of cool blood +or men who have extra-marital opportunities to gratify their desires +who are ever deterred by considerations of thrift and economy from +marrying the beloved woman. Swift was not cold but passionate. And it +is inconceivable that he, a clergyman in a small parish, was finding +his pleasure in illicit intercourse. + +The third explanation, which I venture to suggest, is that between his +proposal to Varina in 1696 and his insulting rejection of her in 1700, +between his twenty-ninth and thirty-third years, he had discovered a +reason why he must not live with a woman. His resolutions, remember, +not to marry a young woman and not to be fond of children were written +in 1699. How could Stephen believe that those resolutions, with others +"pithy and sensible," were "for behavior in a distant future?" Swift's +heading, "when I come to be old," means nothing; he is writing from +the misery of the moment. Why is the letter in which Swift puts an end +to poor Varina so brutal and insulting that, in Stephen's words, no +one with a grain of self-respect could accept the conditions of +marriage which he lays down? Because he could not tell her the real +reason, a reason based on fear rather than on physiological certainty. +It is an honestly dishonest letter. It is a perfect example of that +perplexing contradiction which appears everywhere in his life and +writings, that he was brutally honest, saw through the postures and +masks of everybody else, and yet postured, attitudinized, and lied +himself. He carried his secret agony with fortitude and alternately +raged against the world and fooled with it. In relation to the Varina +episode Stephen misses the point, though what he says is true enough: +"Swift could be the most persistent and ardent of friends. But when +anyone tried to enforce claims no longer congenial to his feelings, +the appeal to the galling obligation stung him into ferocity, and +brought out the most brutal side of his imperious nature." Though a +man has but one heart, yet his relations with his friends are quite +different from his passions for women. A proud, ferocious and +imperious nature is not the whole story of Swift. It does not give us +the real foundation of the story of Varina, of Stella, of Vanessa and +the man they loved. + +On the foundation which I propose the story of Stella will rest +securely, intelligibly. If Swift was married secretly to Stella in +1716--the evidence is not conclusive--the marriage was only a legal +ceremony performed perhaps for the purpose of securing her in case her +fortunes went wrong or gossip or other circumstances made necessary +the protection of his name. Almost certainly there was no physical +marriage, no union legal or illegal. Why? He was free and she was +free. She was, by his own account, a charming person who would have +been quite presentable to his friends and in all ways helpful to a man +in middle age who is supposed to need a woman to take care of him. The +answer is simply that Swift feared to propagate his tainted stock, +that he refrained and suffered. And the "Journal to Stella" is a +record of suffering, of passion disguised and writhing. A busy man, +with other things to write, does not write that much to a woman he +does not love, and he does not write that way to a woman he openly and +avowedly loves. The "little language," the silliness, the foolings, +the avoidance of direct declaration of love, the semi-paternal +injunctions, the gossip about big people, much of it whimsical chatter +in which we get only by implication the serious view of Swift and his +times that has made it an important historical document, the two or +three hintful promises of felicity which commit Swift to nothing, the +passages of melancholy and half-humorous old man's grouch--all this is +a veiled love letter. It is tingling and nervous and alert and full of +pain, not the idle recreation of a tired man of affairs entertaining a +child, but the heartbreak of a powerful man of forty-five expressed +by indirections to a woman of thirty. Perhaps she understood his +spleen and his complaints of ill-health. We may be on the way +to understanding them now. Certainly Stephen is off the track +when he says that there are "grounds for holding that Swift was +constitutionally indisposed to the passion of love." Unless he means +by that that Swift knew that there was something in his constitution +which made the ultimate realization of love impossible. And Stephen +does not mean that, for he speaks of the absence of traces of passion +from writings "conspicuous for their amazing sincerity." An amazing +example of a sincere biographer missing the trace! Swift's insistence +on his "coldness" and his assertion that he did not understand love +are precisely an affirmation of what the words deny. + +Now enters the third woman of record--there may have been more--in +Swift's unhappy sexual life, Vanessa, Esther Vanhomrigh. At the same +time that he is writing his long love letter, the "Journal to Stella," +he is seeing Vanessa. Of course. It is all explicable. The man can not +have the woman he wants and is tantalized by another woman who wants +him. He plays and he won't play. He is tormented by the same restraint +that keeps him out of Stella's bed. He is handsome, virile, and +distinguished. The woman is crazy about him. He is unable to keep away +from her, but he is fighting, for reasons known to him, against the +impulse to possess her. He plays again, as with Stella, a game which, +viewed superficially, is fraudulent and unfair. He is teacher, guide, +philosopher, and Dutch uncle. But she is not a docile, gentle girl +like Stella. Mr. Freeman, who handles his documents admirably and is +not slanted from the truth by moralistic concern for hero or heroine, +is, nevertheless, naive and blind to the facts which he has so +carefully considered. He says: "The tragedy, then, was inevitable from +the day when Vanessa attempted to arouse in him a love of which he was +incapable. It might have been hastened, or its form might have been +different, if he had sternly broken with Vanessa as soon as he +discovered the nature of her desires." Swift was not incapable, in +that sense, and he knew the nature of her desires, for he was not a +fool. What he knew also was the nature of his own desires and their +possible consequences. That is, I conjecture, the heart of the story +of Swift's heart. + + + + +WILLIAM JAMES, MAN OF LETTERS + + +I. + +The letters of a philosopher usually have the primary, if not +exclusive, interest of elucidating and extending in an informal way +the ideas expounded in his professional writings. It is for this +interest that one would turn to the letters of a thinker who was +nothing but a thinker, such as Kant (if, indeed, there is a collection +of Kant's letters), and to the correspondence of such a philosopher as +Nietzsche, who, aside from his technical contributions to human +wisdom, presents fascinating problems in human character, personality, +biography. The letters of Williams James[1] have two distinct values. +They appeared at the same moment with his "Collected Essays and +Reviews"[2] and the two publications, taken together, complete the +intellectual record of the man. Though master and man can not be +separated, yet, as good disciples of James's pluralism, we may be +permitted to divide an individual into two "aspects." First let us +enjoy the letters, simply as the letters of a man who was, +incidentally, a philosopher. + + [1] The Letters of William James. Edited by his son Henry + James. Two Vols. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press. + + [2] Collected Essays and Reviews. William James. New York; + Longmans, Green and Co. + +And what letters! The letters of Lamb, of Edward Fitzgerald, are not +more delightful. The easiest and pleasantest way to prove that would +be to fill the rest of this essay with quotations, and that way would +be in consonance with the whimsical spirit of James, who wrote to his +youngest son: "Your Ma thinks you'll grow up into a filosofer like me +and write books. It is easy enough, all but the writing. You just get +it out of other books and write it down." To write a jolly letter to a +child, to ridicule yourself and your profession and at the same time +to defend an idea with vigor and determination, to poke fun at +colleagues and heartily respect them, to be dignified in mental shirt +sleeves, to wink one eye and keep two keen eyes on the page or the +fact that has to be studied, to fling words with apparent carelessness +and never for a moment to lose control of words or thought--all this +means a great character and a fine literary artist. + +James says of Duveneck, the painter: "I have seen very little of him. +The professor is an oppressor of the artist, I fear." It may be that +the professor, which James was and officially had to be, oppressed the +artist in him. But the artist would not down. If all the philosophic +work of James were wiped out by an act of God or by the arguments of +philosophers, James, the man of letters, would still survive. I +believe that part of the success of James as philosopher was due to +his ability to say what he meant not only with logical clarity but +with charm, with the skill of the literary artist. Technical +Philosophy may immortalize or bury his work. The man, the startling, +original person must be imperishable. No matter what subject he +touches, his way of saying things is superb. He had an artist's +interest in the art of writing. Of a volume of his essays he says: "I +am sure of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents. But I +am afraid that what you will never appreciate is their wonderful +English style! Shakespeare is a little street-boy in comparison!" The +wise man has his tongue in his cheek, of course, but there is a +serious idea behind the fooling. Of a correspondent's "strictures on +my English" he writes: "I have a tendency towards too great +colloquiality." What sort of laborious philosopher was it who worried +James about his style, his fluent, accurate, imaginative vehicle of +thought? It may be that some of James's philosophic ideas are quite +wrong. But there is a presumption in favor of the truth of an idea +which is well expressed. + +James argues somewhere that a style as thick as Hegel's can not be the +"authentic mother-tongue of reason." If that is unfair to Hegel, it is +a fair revelation of the mind of James. He was an advocate and an +exemplar of lucidity of expression, and was always putting to himself +and other philosophers the plain question: "Just what do you mean?" +But his sharpness of mind, though often aggressive, was never +offensive. He seems at times to have dulled the edge of his wit in +order not to hurt the other fellow. The editor of the letters has, +perhaps wisely, "not included letters that are wholly technical or +polemic." Probably the ideas expressed in the technical letters are +repeated in James's books. But I should like to see the polemic +letters. The editor himself in the act of withholding them has defined +their merits: "He rejoiced openly in the controversies which he +provoked and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that +were the essence of his genius." The touches of polemic writing which +appear in the correspondence that is given us reveal this good humor +and vigor and make one hungry for more. He was staunch and dexterous +in argument and never yielded an inch, but he could stop and laugh at +his opponent and at himself. He objected to Huxley's somewhat solemn +devotion to "Truth," yet he had a kind of skill in argument that was +not unlike Huxley's. He could give a man a smashing blow in the ribs, +and even show a quite human irritation, but his exquisite courtesy +never failed. His letters to Godkin, of the _Nation_, protesting +against unfair criticism of the work of the elder Henry James, are a +lesson for critics, and no doubt Godkin's reply was a model of +magnanimous contrition. + +James had an immense variety of interests outside philosophy, though +perhaps it is unphilosophical to imply that anything can lie outside +the range of a true philosopher's vision. His letters are written to +many different kinds of persons; the best of them, naturally, are to +philosophers and men of letters, who evoked from him an amazing +multiplicity of ideas and to whom he let fly a delicious compound of +sound reason and jocularity. In characterizing other men he +characterized himself. For example, what he says about Royce embraces +both men perfectly: "that unique mixture of erudition, originality, +profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness." He was +fortunate in his human and intellectual contacts. An early and +abidingly fortunate contact was that with his father, who was also a +"filosofer." His last letter to his father is beautiful. It brings +tears, of which the most stoical philosopher need not be ashamed; +indeed, one might rather be ashamed if the tears did not come. No one +outside the family and a few friends has a right to read that letter, +but print has extended the privilege. If Mr. E. V. Lucas or any other +anthologist makes a new collection of examples of "the gentlest art," +the letter from James to his father should be included. In it two men +are portrayed, father and son, both magnificently; if either man had +been less than great the letter could not have been written. + +James was born a philosopher; philosophy was in the blood and in the +very air of the household. There is no better instance of the heredity +of genius and of predestination to a career. Yet James did not find +himself immediately; he floundered about in the world of thought long +after the age at which most men have hung out shingles. He was thirty +when he was appointed instructor in physiology at Harvard, and his +tardiness in establishing himself as a bread-winning citizen fretted +him. Lesser men who feel that the expression of their talents has been +thwarted or postponed may take comfort from the fact that James's +first printed book, the "Psychology," appeared in 1890, when he was +forty-eight years old. + +The fact that James was an intellectual roamer and did not proceed +docilely from a doctor's degree to a position as teacher, in a groove +forever, accounts, in part, for the flexibility and variety of his +thought. His "dribbling," as he calls it, during years when he +suffered from physical illness and a depressing sense of impotence, +was not altogether bad for the man or for the philosopher. He wandered +about Europe, became bilingual, if not trilingual (he was never quite +happy in German speech or German philosophy). His learning was +enriched with odds and ends of information such as belong rather to +the man of the world than to the professor. If he had lived all his +life in Koenigsberg or Cambridge he would have been neither Kant nor +James. To him philosophy was never an affair of remote abstract +heavens or of little dusty class rooms. He served academic interests +faithfully and did more than any other man to make the department of +philosophy at Harvard the finest thing in American university life. +But he was in constant rebellion against the academic world and, +indeed, against all institutionalism. He wrote to Thomas Davidson: +"Why is it that everything in this world is offered to us on no medium +terms between either having too much of it or too little? You pine for +a professorship. I pine for your leisure to write and study." Yet he +had more leisure and freedom than most men. He went abroad whenever he +wanted to go, and never knew what it was to be down to his last +dollar. + +His lateness in finding himself professionally and philosophically is, +perhaps, related to his perpetual youth, his eagerness for new ideas, +his inability to be fixed and settled. He sometimes grasped at ideas +too hastily and welcomed such new arrivals as Wells and Chesterton +with a heartiness which, perhaps, they did not quite deserve. But that +was the fault of his enthusiastic catholicity. He hated shut minds and +shut doors of thought and feared nothing except that some possibly +valuable inquiry might be hindered or stopped by stupidity and +prejudice. His colleague, Professor Palmer, called him "the finest +critical mind of our time." Let the philosophers decide whether that +is excessive praise. We mere laymen can know him and enjoy him as he +reveals himself in his letters, a vivacious, humorous, affectionate +man. + + +II. + +The supreme service of William James to philosophy is the restoration +of philosophy to the uses of life. At least that is the tendency of +his philosophy. Even though much wisdom still remains shut up in a +tower, indifferent to life, and though life may often be ungrateful to +and suspicious of such wisdom as is offered to it, nevertheless +James's attempt to bring about a _rapprochement_ was his finest +contribution and is expressed in some of his most glowing pages. He +came at the right time and illustrated in himself one of his hearty +beliefs that Humanity will produce all the types of thinker that it +needs. At the moment when he entered the realm of philosophy, the +physical sciences had arrogantly assumed, if not all wisdom, the +possession of the correct method of searching for wisdom. On the other +hand, the transcendental philosophers held themselves aloof from the +physical sciences and ignored psychology. This division of interest in +a world which James himself tried to keep manageably split up and +pluralistic, was his first philosophic perplexity and, in his +treatment of the problem, he committed himself to inconsistencies and +self-contradictions, which were partly inherent in the situation and +partly due to his temperament. + +Through all his writings, from one of his earliest papers (that on +Renan's "Dialogues," republished in "Collected Essays and Reviews") to +the last chapters of "The Meaning of Truth," James saw philosophers as +so many individuals, each fighting under his own banner of truth, and +he was puzzled because they would not be reconciled and fight together +against the powers of darkness which must be conquered if philosophy +is ever to be worth anything, and if there is ever to be any reason +why there should be philosophers to sit in comfortably endowed chairs. +No critic took more keenly humorous delight than James did in the +disputes of the schools, or stirred up with more lively argument the +factions whose lack of solidarity he deplored. + +Take two examples. While James was young and still under the influence +of his laboratory studies he made out a good case for psychology as a +natural science, admitting that in its present stage of development it +is rather a loose subject, but demanding for its best interests an +application of the scientific method. Then he saw that he had gone +counter to his own belief in the unity of knowledge, or the unity of +study. It occurred to him that something valuable might be lost to +psychology if metaphysical and epistemological inquiries were +debarred. So in an address to the American Psychological Association, +he openly renounced his first position, adding, however, as a +half-smiling reservation, that metaphysics should give up some of its +nonsense as a condition of admission. + +In one of his last papers, that on "Bradley or Bergson," James takes a +shrewd pleasure in tracing their resemblances as far as they go, and +then laments that they diverge, because if they had kept together they +could between them have buried post-Kantian rationalism. For a +complexity of partisanship in unity that can not be surpassed! But +James's willingness to be pallbearer at the funeral of a philosophic +idea was not inconsonant with his determination that some other ideas +of doubtful character should be allowed to grow up and thrive. For the +old idea had had its say. The new ideas might be strangled in infancy. +Let each new idea have its time and opportunity. Let everything be +tried. It is better to be credulous than bigoted, but to be +excessively one or the other is not befitting a philosopher. + +Aside from certain technical problems, James's philosophic attitude +was always determined by his answer to the question: On which side +lies the greater force and fullness of life, the possibility of +richness, novelty, adventure? In 1895, at the height of his power as a +man--though perhaps he grew wiser as he grew older--he ends a paper on +"Degeneration and Genius" thus: "The real lesson of the genius-books +is that we should welcome sensibilities, impulses, and obsessions if +we have them, as long as by their means the field of our experience +grows deeper and we contribute the better to the race's stores; that +we should broaden our notion of health instead of narrowing it; that +we should regard no single element of weakness as fatal--in short, +that we should _not be afraid of life_." The italics are his. If +that is not good psychological argument, then there is something the +matter with the science of psychology. It is only just such good sense +as this that a common man can understand, and the humanity and +eloquence of it are better than argument. + +Can a common man understand philosophy? James believed that he can +both understand it and express it. Two or three times he quotes the +saying of his friend the carpenter: "There is very little difference +between one man and another, but what little difference there is is +very important." He has a hot contempt for Renan's cool contempt for +_l'homme vulgaire_, and he admires Clifford's "lavishly generous +confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all +the truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the +few but a cold riddle to the many"--and the possession of which by +James made him a greater teacher of youth. + +He was an instinctive democrat and was always on the side of what, in +his social environment, was the unpopular minority. Like Whitman, of +whom he often speaks with admiration, he was a born individual +aristocrat, with no delusions about the intelligence of the herd but +an immense faith in its possibilities. His generosity towards the +delusions of common men was warmer than towards the delusions of +philosophers, because philosophers have opportunities for study--and +should know better. He had only one fear, which sometimes took a +belligerent form (there is something in his book on psychology about +the relation between belligerency and fear); and that fear was lest he +or some other philosopher should try to interfere with a possibly good +idea, to put sand, not on the tracks, but in the machinery. The +vaguely comforting fatalistic belief that good ideas will prevail and +bad ones die he regarded as untrue to the history of human thought, +and not good for people whose business it is to express thought. James +held that it did make a real difference in the world that a saint or a +monster, St. Paul or Bonaparte, did not die in his cradle. It does +make a difference--the one illustration that James would have laughed +at--that James lived to be a philosopher. Ideas do sometimes seem just +to happen, to grow without human guidance, but the precious ideas have +to be fought for. Matthew Arnold's idea, that it is our duty to make +the best ideas prevail, may seem priggish and dictatorial, yet +fundamentally James had the same idea. Pluralism, he says, is not for +sick souls but for those in whom the fighting-spirit is alive. +Philosophy does not flourish by accident. Men make it. + +Therefore, philosophy begins in the human mind, and is the history of +the action of mind on experience. James was from the very beginning a +student of the human mind. He began in epistemology and he ended +there. One of his earliest essays is a rather too easy slipping of his +knife into the "operose ineptitude" of Spencer's definition of mind, +and his last word about a philosophic puzzle was: "We shall not +understand these alterations of consciousness either in this +generation or the next." + +The right self-contradiction consists not in turning in obedience to +others, but in going against the wind from whichever direction it +blows. James attacked the too-much in any philosophy, even his own. To +the over-credulous he preached caution; to the over-sceptical, faith. +This sort of antagonism between two ideas is not contradiction but +balance of mind. Apropos Professor Schiller and others he demands an +"all-round statement in classic style," and, himself the jolliest +joker that ever was in philosophy, he recommends that Mr. Schiller +"tone down a little the exuberance of his polemic wit." But to the too +sober he says, "Our errors are not such awfully solemn things. A +certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive +nervousness in their behalf." + +As a philosopher, James had to use the terms peculiar to his craft, +but he so strongly sustained those terms in a structure of words which +can be found in a pocket-dictionary that the peculiar terms of the +craft become intelligible to simple literate men, and it may be that +thereby they become more intelligible as mere philosophic terms. Like +Bergson he is a poet and a humorist in his analogies and +illustrations. When we read that "the feeling of 'q' knows whatever +reality it resembles," many of us, including the philosophers, I +suspect, are lost in the dark. But when we read that "the Kilkenny +cats of fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their undevoured +tails, but the Kilkenny cats of existence as it appears in the pages +of Hegel are all-devouring, and leave no residuum"--then we begin to +believe that philosophy may be a human and amusing study and that to +be great in philosophy it is not necessary always to be thinking of +the other side of the moon. + + + + +BIOGRAPHIES OF POE + + +The biography of Poe got a wrong start immediately after his death +when Griswold slandered him or at least put a false emphasis on +certain aspects of his character. Since then, every book about Poe has +had an argumentative tone, a defensive spirit, which in a way is as +unfair to Poe as was the first misrepresentation. One sometimes feels +like crying: "For heaven's sake read his work and let the man alone!" +Yet it is not possible to let Poe alone if you have once looked into +his life; his story is one of the fascinating chapters of literary +history. Professor Smith says that his book, "Edgar Allen Poe, How to +Know Him," "is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the real Poe, +to suggest at least the diversity of his interests, his +future-mindedness, his sanity, and his humanity." On the whole, +Professor Smith's attempt is successful and he does help us to realize +Poe's personality, "that co-ordination of thought and mood and +conduct, of social action and reaction, of daily interest and aim," +which Professor Smith justly says, "finds no portrayal in the +biographies of Poe." + +It is an odd fact that after Griswold two of the more authoritative +biographers of Poe did not like him. One was Richard Henry Stoddard; +the other, Mr. George E. Woodberry. Neither one, I suspect, chose Poe +as a congenial, or even as an interesting subject. The task of writing +his biography seems to have fallen to both men as a literary chore; to +Stoddard as an official critic who knew Poe, and to Mr. Woodberry as a +rising young man of literary talent who thirty years ago was selected +by the editor of the "American Men of Letters" to write the life of +Poe. Of course, Mr. Woodberry is a competent workman. When, in the +year of Poe's centennial, he enlarged his "Life" to two volumes, he +put together in a judicial, objective style probably all the facts +that we need to know. But his aesthetic judgments are at best +unsympathetic. It may be that the lyric "To Helen" has been +overpraised, though it is difficult to understand how there can be too +much praise for a masterpiece. And when Mr. Woodberry says of our +American writers that they were concerned "not with the transitory, +but the eternal; and, excepting Poe, they were all artists of the +beautiful," we seem to have an example of that sort of moralistic +aesthetics which sounds lofty but is only bosh. "If Poe was not an +artist of the beautiful," Professor Smith asks, "what was he an artist +of?" + +That is a good, sensible question and Professor Smith's answer, if not +as eloquent as some things that have been written by Poe's European +admirers, is sound and appreciative. If it be an American tendency to +overrate our national men of genius, we have certainly not displayed +that tendency in relation to the American writer who more than any +other has captured the imagination of Europeans, for undoubtedly the +finest criticism of Poe has come from our brethren overseas. Stoddard +had but a grudging sense of Poe's merits and ends his account with a +remark which contains a partial truth but which, although it is quoted +from Dr. Johnson, is a flat anti-climax: "All that can be told with +certainty is that he was poor." There seems to be a good deal more to +tell than that, and, indeed, the implications of Poe's poverty, as it +affected the artist, are better expressed by Stoddard himself when he +says that Poe "wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too +much above the popular level to be well paid." + +American criticism of Poe is thick with moralisms. Thus Lowell wrote: +"As a critic Mr. Poe was aesthetically deficient ... he seemed wanting +in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art." But, we +may well ask, what is "the profounder ethics of art," and who, except +a New England preacher, wants to be bothered with it in lyric poetry? +Poe always focused his attention on beauty, on excellence of +workmanship, both in the work of other craftsmen and in his own. The +Scottish critic, Mr. John M. Robertson, seems to be nearer the truth +than Lowell when he says that Poe "has left a body of widely various +criticism which, as such, will better stand critical examination +to-day than any similar work produced in England or America in his +time." I am glad to see that Professor Smith regards Mr. Robertson's +essay on Poe as "the ablest brief treatment in any language." The only +exception, which Mr. Robertson himself would be the first to make, is +the essay by the French critic Emile Hennequin. + +But Professor Smith does not quite escape American moralism in his +effort to accentuate Poe's virtues. He makes too much of Poe's +interest in religion, which was surely nothing but a purely +intellectual and critical interest, and his recurrent emphasis on +Poe's Americanism is too tiresomely patriotic even for a professor in +the United States Naval Academy. Poe was keen for the best interests +of American literature, zealous in searching out any note of promise +in a new poet and in pointing to the weak spots in men of acknowledged +talent. He sometimes exhibits a kind of local Southern patriotism +which does not much interest us now. But on the whole, he was detached +from the issues of politics, an unlocalized, almost disembodied genius +whose apparition in the United States of America is still an endless +wonder to European critics. + +One possible influence of Poe's environment on his art Professor Smith +is, so far as I know, the first to point out; and it is a very +valuable suggestion, even if it can not be thoroughly proved. In +Virginia, more than in any other American State, the English and Scots +ballads survive by oral tradition. It is possible that as a child Poe +heard these ballads recited or sung, and from them derived his sense +of refrain and repetition. To the influence of the ballad Professor +Smith adds the possible influence of plantation melodies as +"subsidiary sources of Poe's lyrical technique." He is certainly right +in thinking that Poe's originality consists not in the contribution of +a new form to poetry but in his individual development of forms +already established. His charm resides in the color of his words +rather than in the shape of his stanzas. But of course the two things +are inseparable and whoever tries to analyse them is hopelessly +baffled. Poe's own attempt to explain how the trick is done is far +from explaining it, and if he could not expound in prose the secret of +poetry, nobody can. + +For Poe was first and always a critic, inquisitive of methods, and +making his effects with cool calculation. Even if his tales of horror +no longer give us the creeps, they will always give to any one who +cares about writing, that shiver of pleasure which comes when we watch +a dexterous craftsman at work. Professor Smith calls Poe the "father +of the short story," but he came too late to be credited with such +paternity. After all, Boccaccio and whoever made "The Arabian Nights" +lived long before Poe and in Poe's stories are evident traces of old +tales of magic and mystery. What Poe did was to rationalize the short +story so highly, in some cases, as to sacrifice the illusion of +spontaneity which is one of the merits of a tale that seems to tell +itself. + +With the purpose of suggesting the range of Poe's intellectual +interest and of classifying some of his miscellaneous work that does +not fall into certain obvious groups, Professor Smith has adopted the +term "frontiersman." The image evoked by that word somehow does not +fit Poe. He was, in a sense, an explorer of ideas, and he had a +genuine gift for philosophy which he did not live to develop. We could +spare many of his short stories rather than lose "Eureka." If it is +not profound philosophy and if it does not solve the riddle of the +universe, it is profound in its beauty, a prose poem. Poe's science is +obsolete, no doubt, and even in the science of his day he was little +more than an amateur. But the mark of a great intellect is on every +page. An amazing mind! He succeeded in all forms of literary art which +he tried. If the poet or the critic or the short-story writer should +be obliterated, there would still remain a man of genius. + +Critics and biographers of Poe, like Poe himself, cannot let his drink +alone. They deny or blame or pity without understanding. The question +of Poe and alcohol seems to have been finally answered by a California +physician, John W. Robertson, in a book which I have not seen but +which I know only through reviewers' accounts of it. This physician +finds from the evidence that Poe was a dipsomaniac. Dipsomania is not +drunkenness nor riotous dissipation; it is a disease. Poe, like other +victims of the disease, had to have periodic bouts with the demon, got +fearfully sick, and when he recovered stayed cold sober until his next +attack. This accounts for Poe's written anathemas against alcohol, +which puzzled Remy de Gourmont. De Gourmont says: "_Il ne pouvait +plus travailler que dans l'hallucination de l'ivresse._" Quite the +contrary is the case. Poe could not do a stroke of work under the +inspiration of whiskey; he was not one of those mad geniuses who +conceive masterpieces in a tavern or with a bottle beside the ink-pot. +That is proved, or indicated, by his critical clarity, the almost +passionless rationality of his tales and poems, and even by the +physical perfection of his manuscripts. He worked between his joyless +debauches, and he worked hard. His melancholy and love of terror, his +preoccupation with defects of will and remorse, whatever "morbidity" +there is in his writings, may have some relation to his disease. But +as an artist he achieved his dark effects by sheer force of intellect +in hours of clear-eyed sobriety. Only in a literary sense is he the +author of "MS. Found in a Bottle." + + + + +BIOGRAPHIES OF WHITMAN + + +The one fault that can be found with Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in +Camden" is that there is too much of it. But that is a fault easily +remedied without blotting a line of the record. Books that contain too +little may cheat us of desired knowledge, whereas books that contain +too much can do no harm; every reader has the privilege of not reading +at all or of dipping into a book here and there. Traubel's method is +admirable; it is that of a documentary historian. He set down +Whitman's talk and such impressions and facts as the biographer +recorded at the moment, and he reproduced the letters in the order in +which Whitman gave them to him. He did not presume to select from +Whitman's conversation what now seems most interesting or most to +Whitman's credit, but he gave you all that he had for you to enjoy or +ignore and for other biographers and historians to make use of as they +will. + +Traubel made no concessions to the fact that readers have to catch +trains and read other books, and he ignored, perhaps to his personal +disadvantage, certain exigencies of publication, such as the +publisher's obvious need to interest as many people as possible with +the least possible expenditure. Traubel's method is simple from an +artistic point of view, requiring nothing but accuracy, courage and +industry. Yet the method is a great strain on all concerned. Traubel +could stand it. Evidently the publishers thought they could stand it. +The reader can stand it, because, as I have said, he can take as much +or as little as suits him. The real question is whether Whitman can +stand it. And the amazing man _can_ stand it. Consider that in +the years when Traubel knew him Whitman was an invalid, broken by his +services as nurse and brother of soldiers during the war. He was a +garrulous old man talking to men who loved him and who, though no +servile worshippers of him or anyone else, encouraged him to +reminiscence and the utterance of offhand opinion. Now that is a +severe test. Not many old men, even men of great achievement in action +or art, could last for more than a small volume. Whitman is worth +these hundreds and hundreds of pages. For he was a great talker, full +of experience and endowed with the gift of speech. Almost every day, +according to Traubel's record, he hit off an interesting idea and +turned it in a Whitmanese way. He repeats himself. He makes remarks +that do not amount to much. But he is never a bore. Line by line he +and Traubel, egotists both, but honest, thoughtful, artfully +inartistic, have drawn a portrait, the like of which is not to be +found. For once a literary man is as big as his literary work. Traubel +was a very happy biographer, for he had a sort of monopoly of a great +subject, and he had not the slightest temptation to omit or defend. + +An admirer has called Traubel's work "the most truthful biography in +the language." To use the informal mode of Walt Whitman and of his +biographer, that ain't exactly so. It ain't the most truthful +biography; it's simply a true biography. + +"Lincoln," said Whitman, "don't need adorers, worshippers--he needs +friends.... The great danger with Lincoln for the next fifty years +will be that he will be overdone, over-explained, over-exploited--made +a good deal too much of--gather about himself a rather mythical +aureole." From such danger Traubel did his best to protect Whitman; +the biographer's multitudinous veracity preserves a real man and is a +heavy impediment to the critic and literary historian of the future +who may try to disobey Whitman's injunction not to "prettify" him. If +that impossible and tedious universe, the "whole" truth, is not +comprehended in these prolific pages, the errors and omissions are due +not to the biographer, but to Whitman himself, who had a silent as +well as a loquacious side; he had unexplained depths which probably he +did not understand himself. When he spoke he tried to say what he +thought, but often he did not speak at all, and at least once he said +to Traubel: "I don't care to talk about that." + +The writer of fiction may invent substance to fit an artistic scheme. +The compiler of facts may, under certain conditions, disregard +literary form. The biographer or the historian who will have his work +read must play skilfully between the double restriction of substance +and form. He must be at once man of science and artist. Because of its +very great difficulties, because of the high demands it makes upon the +writer, biography is rarely well done. One can name few masterpieces +of biography in English. Perhaps the only masterpiece that everybody +will name is Boswell's Johnson, that extraordinary performance which +heaved literary history out of shape and keeps it in a permanent state +of distortion. For Johnson was not a first-rate man of letters; he +wrote little that is even tolerable to read; his letter to +Chesterfield and the preface to the Dictionary are his most vital +productions. Moreover, Boswell was a foreordained nonentity. Yet he +was a great artist and Johnson was a great person, and the two of them +made a great book; it is a puzzle which makes one fall back, +outwitted, to the last ditch of adjectives. + +Whitman's opinion of Johnson is interesting, if only in relation to +his own biographer's methods. Johnson knew that Boswell was making +notes. Traubel, whose word is infallibly good, says that Whitman did +not know that his biographer was keeping a record. Whitman did know +that Traubel would write about him and he selected the letters and +other documents for the "archives." But he was not aware that Traubel +was making a diary. Therefore when he talked he was free at least from +the constraint imposed on a man who knows that his spoken words are to +appear in print. + +When Whitman was 69 years old he began to read Boswell; he refers to +him a dozen times in the course of the year, thereby showing that +Boswell interested him, for when Whitman was not interested in a book +he simply forgot it. He thought that Johnson "talked for +effect--seemed rather inclined to bark men down, like the biggest +dog--indeed, a spice of dishonesty palpably possessed him. Johnson +tried rather to impress than to be true." "He was on stilts always--he +belongs to the self-conscious literary class, who live in a house of +rules and never get into the open air." However, note this significant +confession: "I read it through, looked it through, rather--persisted +in spite of fifty temptations to throw it down. I don't know who tried +me most--Johnson or Boswell. The book lasts--it seems to have elements +of life--but I will do nothing to pass it on." There is the comment of +the lion on the bear. No, these zoological metaphors are quite false. +Benevolent and burly male persons are not, even by Whitmanian +identifications, to be named with the brutes. + +Some day a biographer with the right talent and in possession of all +Traubel's material, cognizant of social ideals and facts and sensitive +to poetry, will write a good life of Whitman. So far as I know, there +is no satisfactory biography of our one magnificent American poet. +Traubel was not able to do it. He was properly employed in gathering +and publishing the fundamental record. Moreover, his style, perfectly +fitted to short hand notes, is, in continuous composition, abominable. +I loved him with all my Whitmanian heart and read him, because of +every four of his sentences one says something worth while. But ten +sentences of his in a row hurt like a corduroy road. I have to get out +and walk and rub myself. + +Several literary men have tried to write Whitman's life and they have +failed. Professor Bliss Perry's book is fatuous. He had no excuse to +write about Whitman at all, except in so far forth as a publisher's +request to an alleged literary man to do a book for an established +series furnishes a practical excuse. + +The critical study of Whitman by Mr. Basil De Selincourt is +sympathetic and discerning as regards what may be called the purely +literary side. He understands what Whitman says and takes him for +granted as one of the world's supreme poets. He conceives the +essential unity of Whitman's thought, a unity that should be obvious +but evidently is not to some readers and critics who treat Whitman as +a collection of more or less impressive fragments. Mr. De Selincourt's +analysis of Whitman's form is instructive, appreciative, though a +trifle academic, not wholly emancipated from schoolroom rules of +prosody. If you will read Whitman aloud, pronouncing the words as they +are pronounced in prose, and emphasizing them according to the sense, +the scansion will take care of itself. When a line is bad (and +Whitman, like most of the other great poets, wrote bad lines) it won't +work by any effort of elocution. The good lines, if you have an ear in +your head and a tongue in your mouth, chant themselves, and you can +forget all about iambics and hexameters. + +Where Mr. De Selincourt fails is in his account of Whitman's notions +of liberty, democracy, America, the future. Book-people do not +understand these things, especially English book-people, who assume +that America produced Whitman because it was a land of liberty. It was +not. It was, like the rest of the world, a land of plutocracy, +convention, servility. It is complimentary to us but unhappily not +true to say that "America stands for the passionate re-assertion of +certain beliefs which life, to those who look back upon it, seems +always to stultify, but which, to those who can look forward, appears +as the very spirit and power of life itself--'the urge, the ardour, +the unconquerable will'." + +As a matter of fact, America does not stand for any such thing and +Whitman does not stand for America. He is a revolutionist in revolt +against the American fact and celebrating a possible American future. +Official America tried to throttle him. Conventional America ignored +him. Literary and revolutionary spirits in England and America +welcomed him, for they are free spirits, intellectually free, under +any economic conditions and in any part of the world. Whitman himself +did not understand why he was acclaimed in England by more men and +better men than in America. It was simply because English thinkers, +writers, poets, with minds capable of appreciating him, outnumbered +their American brothers ten to one. + +Two American ladies once called on Tennyson. He asked them whether +they knew Walt Whitman. They confessed that they did not. "Then," said +he, "you do not know the greatest man in America." + + + + +GEORGE E. WOODBERRY + + +A man's place in the generations of mankind is not wholly determined +by the date of his birth. If William James were alive he would be +eighty years old; but he belongs to us, to the living present. Mr. +George Edward Woodberry is only sixty-seven; yet he already seems like +the last figure in a tradition which has come to an end--so far as any +period in literature may truly be said to end. James was aware of +something like this twenty years ago. He gave Mr. Woodberry the praise +that is his due, but expressed at the same time his essential +weakness. Of "The Heart of Man" James wrote in a letter: + + The essays are grave and noble in the extreme. I hail another + American author. They can't be popular, and for cause. The respect + of him for the Queen's English, the classic leisureliness and + explicitness, which give so rare a dignity to his style, also take + from it that which our generation seems to need, the sudden word, + the unmeditated transition, the flash of perception that makes + reasonings unnecessary. Poor Woodberry, so high, so true, so good, + so original in his total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you + take him spot-wise--and therefore so ineffective. + +Mr. Woodberry is not out of date in a mere journalistic sense or in +the hasty judgment of an irreverent generation which affects a trivial +contemporaneity and regards even the end of the last century as old +fogy. He is out of date because he did not gear with his own times, +but remained aloof and backward-looking and so became the last of the +Lowells instead of the first of the Woodberrys. It could not have been +a conscious or servile emulation on his part, for he has a spirit of +his own. But his surroundings and his education were too strong for +his fine talent. He was brought up in the twilight of the New England +demigods. They handed him the "torch," and he has carried it with +pious devotion. To younger men as docile as himself, he became, almost +officially, the representative in the flesh of the elders over whose +graves he prayed. His publishers announce with pride, with no sense of +the depressing implications of what they are saying, that there is a +Woodberry Society, "probably the only organization in America +dedicated to a living writer." Thus the anachronism is fulfilled. Mr. +Woodberry was old when he was young, and he is an institution before +he is dead. Some books are epoch making; other books, even great and +original books, lie comfortably in their times without being either +innovative or conclusive; Mr. Woodberry's six solid volumes[1] are +epoch closing, a collection of such words as will not be written again +by a man of genuine talent and wisdom. + + [1] Collected Essays of George Edward Woodberry. 6 vols. New + York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1921. + +The feeling that Mr. Woodberry is a voice from the past that +immediately preceded him comes over me most heavily when I read his +essays on Lowell's Addresses, on Democracy, and on Wendell Phillips. +It may be only the essayist's strict fidelity to Lowell's ideas--no +doubt a merit--which leaves the impression that the essayist knows +only what Lowell knew and no more, that the pupil has not moved a step +beyond the master. It is Lowell over again without the slightest +addition from the lessons of time. The London _Nation_ has said +of Mr. Woodberry's essays that most of them have "a unity and life +that make many of Lowell's seem those of a shrewd but old-fashioned +amateur." Yet Lowell was at least a vivid amateur, who expressed +something that belonged to the 'fifties, 'sixties and 'seventies; and +he had an old gentleman's right to be old in the 'eighties. It is not +to be expected that a critic should begin where Lowell leaves +off--only a thinker of real genius makes such long strides. But the +critic following Lowell in time and not moving half a step ahead of +him seems older than Lowell himself. + +The same thing is true of the address on Wendell Phillips, "The Faith +of an American." It is fine, even eloquent, but it is abstract and +curiously old-fashioned. Phillips in his own utterances is more of +to-day and of to-morrow than is his eulogist who was a child in +Beverley when Phillips was in mid-career. The reason, of course, is +that Phillips was a fighter, hot with real issues, and it is not the +critic's business to fight but to examine the ideas of the fighter. +These ideas necessarily become somewhat abstract when a critic quotes +or rephrases them, especially since Phillips was an orator and flung +at his audiences sweeping generalities which in a less inspired man +are mere tall talk. But Mr. Woodberry devitalizes Phillips, especially +the later Phillips who went on from one issue to the next until he +dropped. Mr. Woodberry has not a single clear, plain word about one of +Phillips' last fights, that for the Labor party. Mr. Woodberry stops +with the actual Phillips before Phillips stopped, and the end of the +address fades out in vagueness and platitude. There is something +rather touching about Mr. Woodberry's declaration: "I know that what I +have said to-night is heavy with risk." One looks in vain to discover +the risk. Surely in 1911, when the address was delivered, a man might +talk in Mr. Woodberry's mild way every night in the week and invite no +more severe punishment than a scolding from Dr. Nicholas Murray +Butler. + +Mr. Woodberry's ideas and his expressions are all gentle, though not +timid nor emasculate. His general faith in "Democracy" is too serenely +above the tumult to disturb anybody or provoke a riot call in the +quietude of Beverley. I do not know what he means by "Democracy," +whether such actual democracy as existed in America in 1899, or some +beautiful dream of the future. If democracy is a dream, an unrealized +dream, then any beautiful thing a poet says about it is true. But Mr. +Woodberry seems to be talking about something actually existing, +something already realized in considerable part if not completely, for +he says: "Democracy has its great career, for the first time, in our +national being, and exhibits here most purely its formative powers, +and unfolds destiny on the grand scale." That was not true twenty +years ago, and it is certainly not true now. It is the sort of thing +that Emerson and Lowell could say with rousing conviction, but twenty +years ago it was as obsolete as a beaver hat except in newspaper +editorials and political speeches, where it is still going +strong--even if not quite so strong as it used to be. + +Mr. Woodberry seems to imply that he is somewhat more of a realist +than Lowell. But he is in fact less of a realist than Lowell; for +Lowell in his time did grapple with the facts of politics. In poetry +it is not necessary, it is better not, to be a realist. But in dealing +with politics and contemporaneous history the true citizen must be a +realist and leave it to the politicians to fly with the eagle. No +wisdom is to be derived from such a statement as this: "There is +always an ideality of the human spirit in all its [Democracy's] works, +if one will search them out." Or this: "Democracy is a mode of dealing +with souls." Or this: "Not that other governments have not had regard +to the soul, but in democracy, it is spirituality that gives the law +and rules the issue." It is, alas, not true that "education, high +education even, is more respected and counts for more in a democracy +than under the older systems," or that "the law becomes the embodied +persuasion of the community," or that "all these blessings [aversion +to war, devotion to public duty and many other enumerated virtues] +unconfined as the element, belong to all our people." + +Mr. Woodberry's democracy simply does not exist and never did exist. +Yet there is one existent glory of my country which I believe I +appreciate better than he does. He says: "It behooves us, especially, +to be modest, for our magnificent America has never yet produced a +poet even of the rank of Gray." That was written fourteen years after +the death of Whitman. Mr. Woodberry's democracy had not yet come +along, but one of its great poets had arrived and departed leaving Mr. +Woodberry none the wiser. There is another glory of my country which I +appreciate better than Mr. Woodberry does--Poe, whose poetry Mr. +Woodberry has never understood, though he has written what is +altogether the best biography of the man! To save the six best lyrics +of Poe, I would, if such a sacrifice were necessary, cheerfully sink +Gray in the deepest sea of oblivion, "Elegy," letters and all. But +that is only a slight difference of judgment, and there is no more +futile business than to draw up minor poets in grades and ranks. +Whitman is another matter; the critic who misses him in this day of +the world is simply incompetent. The excuse for Mr. Woodberry is that +he does not belong to this day of the world. + +There is something pathetic about Mr. Woodberry's patriotism. He +sincerely believes that "America's title to glory is her service to +human liberty." He has never been delivered from the superstition that +"the sense of justice is the bedrock of the Puritan soul"--the Puritan +soul, narrow, despotic, cruelly unjust! But when Mr. Woodberry leaves +politics and patriotism and religion and returns to art and literature +where he is at home, he puts his finger ruefully on the real rock of +the Puritan soul, recalling the Puritan's hostility to the theatre and +regretting "the American inhibition" "which rejects the nude in +sculpture and painting, not only forfeiting thereby the supreme of +Greek genius and sanity, but to the prejudice, also, of human +dignity." Mr. Woodberry is himself a Puritan, yearning to be free but +chained to New England granite, and since he can not get free on this +planet he looks up to the heavens where the God of his fathers used to +dwell, but where he can find only abstract and vague ideas. Mr. +Woodberry's tendency to abstract phrases, which on pressure yield +nothing, vitiates his literary essays, the essays in which a +professional critic ought to be most concrete, definite, and +nourishing. The trouble may be that his views are too high and too +broad for the limited vision of a common man; but I think his trouble +is that he has not the true philosopher's power to make a long idea, +bridging time and space, stand up under its own weight; there is a +lack of solid timber and concrete. His best essays are those on +individual authors in which he has the selected specific substance of +another man's thought to work on. As ought to happen to a sensitive +critic, it sometimes happens that Mr. Woodberry's style takes the very +tone of his subject. He is whimsical in his charming little essay on +Pepys, an adequate trifle; he is grave and quiet when he writes about +Gray; and Swinburne so stirs him that his prose awakes and sparkles +with metaphor. Even in this essay, however, he can not help +demoralizing poetry by moralizing it into pseudo-philosophic prose. +"The imagery (of 'Laus Veneris') has more affinity with modes of +sacerdotal art, with symbolism and the attributive in imaginative +power than it has with the free vitality that is more properly the +sphere of poetry." What does that mean? What is the sphere of poetry? +The essays on the older poets would make first-rate introductions to +school texts, and I think some of them have been so used. They suffer +from the fact that in Mr. Woodberry's time--and since--so many +standard essays on Milton, Shakespeare, and the rest were written and +rewritten, that unless a critic has a fresh point of view, as Mr. +Woodberry has not, another essay is simply another essay. + +It must be pleasant to meditate on the great men of letters and from +time to time write an essay on Virgil or Montaigne or Matthew Arnold. +Some leisure is necessary, for the conscientious critic must read +much, and much reading takes time. It may be that in our nervous age, +in this country, the scholarly critic with a true taste for letters +has disappeared, to return perhaps in a day when Democracy or +something better shall have dawned. The comfortable old tradition is +dead or dying, and since its good works are extant in print, we need +no more contributions to it. As Mr. Woodberry says in an essay called +"Culture of the Old School": "The _Gentleman's Magazine_--both the +name and the thing belong to a bygone time." + + + + +ABRAHAM CAHAN + + +Toward the end of the last century there appeared in the magazines +some remarkable stories of the East Side of New York by Abraham Cahan. +They were not of the crudely comic type of Potash and Perlmutter, nor +were they in the somewhat finer mood of sentimental humor which made +Myra Kelly deservedly popular. They were humorous and pathetic in a +quiet, compelling way, with a gentle austerity of tone even less +familiar to American readers then than it is in the days of the +Russian invasion. Mr. Howells praised these stories and he and others +in editorial authority encouraged the author to write more. A career +in the pleasant art of fiction was open to Mr. Cahan. But he withdrew +from it and, so far as I know, he wrote no more stories for at least +ten years. He has devoted his energy to building up the great +_Jewish Daily Forward_, which is not only the voice of the East +Side, but a powerful vehicle of social and political ideals that have +not yet penetrated the sanctums of Times Square and of the older +newspaper world near City Hall and Civic Virtue. + +Then, as he approached sixty, Mr. Cahan gave us "The Rise of David +Levinsky", a solid mature novel, into which are compacted the +reflections of a lifetime. The publisher's notice called it "a story +of success in the turmoil of American life." Probably the writer of +those words intended to help the book by the appeal which "success" +makes to the American mind, for no reader, not even a publisher's +clerk, could miss the immense irony of the story. It is indeed the +story of a failure. The vanity of great riches was never set forth +with more searching sincerity. The helplessness of the individual, +even the strong and prosperous, in the economic whirlpool, the +loneliness and disillusionment only partly assuaged by pride in +commercial achievement, the sacrifice of the intellectual life to the +practical, these are the fundamental themes of the book. Levinsky, +with the instincts of a scholar and a desire for the finest things in +life, is swept into business by circumstances which he hardly +understands himself and against which he is powerless; once in the +game he makes the most of his abilities, but he never ceases to regard +his visible good fortune as poor compensation for the invisible things +he has missed. His wealth forces him to associate with all that is +vulgar and acquisitive in Jewry and isolates him from all that is +idealistic. He finds that he cannot even speak the language of the +woman he most admires. Worse still, he is out of sympathy with the +aspirations of millions of poor Jews from whose ranks he has sprung. +He has no sympathy with those who would break the game up or make new +rules, yet he sees that the game is hardly worth playing, even for the +winner. "Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess of the +hour. Thousands of new fortunes were advertising her gaudy splendors. +Newspapers, magazines, and public speeches were full of her glory, and +he who found favor in her eyes found favor in the eyes of man." + +The portrait of David Levinsky is a portrait of society, not simply of +the Jewish section of it, or of New York, but of American business. +And business is business whether done by Jew or Gentile. If Levinsky +is a triumphant failure, he is so because American business, which +shaped him to its ends, is, viewed from any decent regard for +humanity, a miserable monster of success. Not that Levinsky is an +abstraction, or that the novelist is forcing a thesis. Far from it. +The personality of Levinsky is as sharply individualized as the hero +of Meredith's "One of Our Conquerors," though with a different kind of +subtlety, the subtlety not of detached analysis, but of naively simple +self-revelation, which of course is not so simple as it sounds. + +Mr. Cahan knows how to think through his characters, by letting them +do the thinking, as if it were their affair and not his. At the same +time he does not perform (nor does any other artist) that foolish and +meaningless operation, as expressed by a great poet through a young +critic, of holding "the mirror up to nature." Nature in a mirror is +just nature, not nature thought out, excogitated, turned to human +uses, interpreted in human words. And this is the place to say that +Mr. Cahan knows how to use words. There are no great phrases in this +book. A simple and (intellectually) honest business man writing his +autobiography would not use a great phrase; such a phrase might issue +from some enviable person in that intellectual life from which +Levinsky was excluded. But there is no banal or inept phrase. Such a +man as Mr. Cahan intends Levinsky to be, a man trained in the Talmud, +which means verbal sense, and hammered by the facts of life, which +means a sense of reality, and a wistful failure, which means +imaginative retrospection, says things in a direct, firm, accurate +style. + +There is no lack of emotion; strong feeling, expressed or implied, +runs through the book from beginning to end. But there is a complete +absence of eloquence, a deliberate refraining from emphasis, an even +manner of setting forth ideas and events impartially for the value +inherent in them, an admirable method, the method of a philosophic +artist. Here is life, some of it is good, some of it is bad; it is all +somewhat pitiable, to be laughed at rather than cried over; nobody is +deserving of indignant blame or abuse. It is our business to +understand it as well as we can; and though we never can see it in its +entirety or with complete clearness, if we make an honest effort to +record events and delineate personalities, the events will arrange +themselves in a more or less intelligible sequence, and the +personalities will be their own commentary upon themselves. An obvious +method, but you will read many a book to find one skilful application +of it. + +It seems to me the method most often employed and carried to the +highest degree of perfection by the great Russians. I am driven to the +timidity of "seems" because we do much talking about Russian novels +without having read many of them or understanding what we have read. +But better-informed critics than I have noted that one characteristic +of the Russian novel is a benevolent impartiality in its treatment of +all kinds of people and a calm contemplation of events horrible, gay, +sad, comic. A revolutionist can portray, in fiction, a commissioner of +police, whom in real life he would be willing to kill, with a fairness +that is more than fair, with a combination of Olympian serenity and +human sympathy. He can be a virulent propagandist when he is writing +pamphlets, and when he writes fiction he can forget his propaganda or +subdue it to art, that is, to a balanced sense of life. + +When I say that Mr. Cahan's novel sounds like a good translation of a +Russian novel, and that he is a disciple of the Russian novelists, I +accuse him of the crime of being an artist and a seer. As a matter of +biography, he is a child of Russian literature. And that is why his +novel, written in faultless English, is a singular and solitary +performance in American fiction. If that strange demand for "the" or +"a great American novel," a demand which is at once foolish and the +expression of a justifiably proud feeling that a big country ought to +have big books, is to be satisfied, perhaps we shall have to ask an +East Side Jew to write it for us. That would be an interesting +phenomenon for some future Professor Wendell to deal with in a History +of American Literature. And by the way, Mr. Cahan is a competent +critic. I hope he will give us not only more novels, but a study of +Russian literature for the enlightenment of the American mind. I +remember with gratitude an article of his which I read when I was even +more ignorant than I am now, on the modern successors to the group of +Titans, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. He put Maxim Gorky in his place +and told us (this was before the Russian invasion) about Andreyev and +Chekhov. If Mr. Cahan will write a book on Russian literature, I will +do my best to establish him in his merited place in American +literature. + + + + +THOMAS HARDY + + +Mr. Bernard Shaw says, apropos Samuel Butler, that the English people +do not deserve to have a genius. Butler himself in a note remarks that +America, even America, will probably have men of genius, has indeed, +already had one, Walt Whitman, but that he cannot imagine any country +where a genius would have more unfortunate surroundings than in +America. Mr. Arnold Bennett sends a shot from the same gun in +"Milestones," when he makes the millionaire shipbuilder puff his chest +and say that there is no greater honor to English character than the +way we treat our geniuses. Egad! The unworthiness of the British and +American nations to have artists born to them was never more +shamefully manifested than by the reception accorded thirty years ago +to Hardy's "Jude, the Obscure." Harper's Magazine, which seems to have +begun printing the story before the editors had seen the complete +manuscript, fell into temporary disfavor with some outraged readers. +One British journal distinguished itself by reviewing the book under +the caption, "Jude, the Obscene." + +It is inconceivable that any nation on the continent of Europe could, +through its critics or through any considerable number of readers, so +dishonor a masterpiece. For "Jude" is a masterpiece; if it is not +Hardy's greatest novel, it is one of his three or four greatest, and +that means one of a score of supreme works of prose fiction in the +language. If profundity of substance and skill in narrative are both +considered, Hardy is without rival among British novelists. His is the +crowning achievement in the century of fiction that began with Jane +Austen and, happily, has not yet terminated with Joseph Conrad. In his +hands the English novel assumed a form which, perhaps without good +critical reason, one thinks of as French. Despite the racy localism of +scene and character, Hardy's work seems alien to the Anglo-Saxon +temperament; it has less in common with the spacious days of great +Victoria than with a younger time, whose living masters, Mr. Conrad +and Mr. Galsworthy, for example, have taken lessons in art across the +channel. + +In a prefatory note to "Desperate Remedies," dated February, 1896, +Hardy lets fall a casual phrase which indicates that he and others had +noted his kinship to the French, but that he was not disposed to +acknowledge it fully. He seems to say, with that kind of modest pride +which distinguishes him, that he found his method for himself, played +the game alone. "As it happened," runs the note, "that certain +characteristics which provoked most discussion in my latest story +['Jude'?] were present in this my first--published in 1871, when there +was no French name for them--it has seemed best to let them stand +unaltered." What characteristics does he intend? And was there no +French name for them in 1871? Or had not the British critics begun to +use the French name? Are these characteristics his candor, his logic, +his classic finish of phrase, a certain cool stateliness of manner, an +impersonal, distant way of treating most tender and poignant subjects, +a lucid, ironic view of life, perfect proportion, large intellectual +pity and freedom from cant, from sentimentality? These are some of his +virtues and they are the virtues of several modern French novelists +and some of the Russian pupils of the French. + +If the ill reception of "Jude" caused Mr. Hardy to foreswear fiction, +then the fools have in a way done us harm by cheating us of two or +three great novels. Yet genius takes its revenge on a dull world, +especially if it is prosperous genius, too well established to be +starved out by the stupidity of an inartistic people. If Hardy had +been encouraged to write more novels perhaps we should not have had +"The Dynasts." And by and by we shall discover what a loss that would +have been. It is the greatest epic that we have been privileged to +read since Tolstoy's "War and Peace." And it is the best long poem in +English since Morris's "The Earthly Paradise." Though it is cast in +scenes and acts it is not a drama except in a vast untechnical sense +of the word. But epic it is, creation of an enormous imagination which +sweeps the universe and manages a cosmic panorama as commandingly as +the same imagination dominates a rural kingdom of farms and desolate +heaths. If "The Dynasts" and Hardy's shorter poems lack one thing, +that one thing is the magical and haunting line, that concatenation of +words which is everlastingly beautiful in the context or detached from +it. Morris knew that magic. He was born with it, and no reader of +Morris, except a critic, will be deceived by his own denial of his +divinity when he said in his honest, off-hand way, sensible as Anthony +Trollope, that inspiration is nonsense and verse is easy to write. + +"The Dynasts" is an extraordinary poem. It is not French, it is not +Greek, it is not like anything else in English. Hardy has discarded +Christian mythology. He is not childish enough to revert to the Greek. +He has invented a new one. His celestial machinery is as strange an +apparition in the heavens as the first aeroplane. His hero, Napoleon, +rises above the human stature by which the realistic novelist measures +man and becomes not only a tool of destiny but a demigod who seems to +understand destiny and share the secrets of that impersonal goddess. +Those who are curious about Hardy's philosophy (we like his art; his +philosophy may lie down and die on the shelf with the other +philosophies) will find the closing chorus of "The Dynasts" +significant: + + But--a stirring thrills the air + Like to sounds of joyance there + That the rages + Of the ages + Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, + Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair! + +Such is the ultimate word of this artist who so keenly loves beauty, +yet, like some neo-Puritan and latter-day ascetic, cannot draw a +lovely woman without reminding you that the skull under the cheeks and +behind the passionate eyes is not pretty and will probably endure a +long time under ground. Is he of like mind with his chorus at last, +and does he believe that the Will is going to grow intelligent and +make all things fair? + +Perhaps Hardy's proneness to dwell on the skeletonic grin of life is +due to his exceeding sensitiveness to beauty. Like Poe and other +poets, he cannot abide the ugliness that is in the world, and so he +insists on The Conqueror Worm, as a man cannot refrain from thrusting +his tongue into the sore tooth. Perhaps Hardy is a reaction against +the saccharine optimism of his contemporaries and of those just before +his time. They falsified life in their fictions by making everything +come out nicely, thank you, on the last page. He leans over backward +from that kind of untruth and comes dangerously near to being as +false. As between falsity in one direction and falsity in the other, +there is no choice, except that we have had so much of the sweet kind +that Hardy is refreshing. He tends to restore the balance. + +Ask any man, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, how life has gone +with him, and, if he is honest, he will tell you that life did not go +definitely one way or the other. Things sometimes came out well and +sometimes not. Hardy is biased in favor of the things that do not come +out well. "Life's Little Ironies" is a good title, but it is a title +that implies a thesis, an attitude from which humanity is surveyed. +The stories are perfection and they sound true. Hardy is a logician +and he will back any tale of his with evidence, even the first story +in "Wessex Tales," in the preface of which the authority of physicians +is invoked. But when you take all his stories together you find nine +failures out of ten human careers, and life has a better batting +average than that. No one doubts that the "Fellowtownsmen" got into +such horrid confusion, that things happened as they shouldn't, that +every shot at happiness was a miss. And "The Waiting Supper" is so +convincing that you cannot escape. But the two stories together, +regarded for the moment not as the excellent works of art which they +are, but as a view of human destiny, weaken each other. One convinces +you. The two together make you ask questions about the author. + +In "The Waiting Supper" there is one line that is as great a pathetic +fallacy as the more familiar and cheery kind which represents nature +as smiling upon the lovers. Hardy's lovers have to submit to this: +"Thus the sad autumn afternoon waned, while the waterfall hissed +sarcastically of the inevitableness of the unpleasant." Did you ever +hear a waterfall like that? The only waterfalls I have heard quote +Darwin and discuss the election returns. I know that the happy poet is +a liar when he says that the nightingale is celebrating my love for +Mamie, for the nightingale is concerned with other matters. But as +between a nightingale who is sympathetic with my emotions and a +sarcastic waterfall, I prefer the nightingale. And I do not like +either in realistic fiction. + +Thomas Hardy, the idol of the younger realists and the liberator of +British fiction from the Victorian hoopskirt and the happy ending, is +not a realist. He is a great romantic, with a taste for pretty girls, +moonlight, heroes and dragoons. He is incurably superstitious. He is +pained by many modern things, especially by modern restorations of +ancient buildings. He takes Tess to the Druidical stones on Salisbury +Plain because he dearly likes that kind of moonlit antiquity. His +pronominal substitution of It for He does not achieve a revolution in +theology. He manages the destinies of human folk as arbitrarily as any +maker of fiction that ever lived. But he never made a story in which +he did not convince you that life is overwhelmingly interesting and +that nature, girls, and dragoons are beautiful if sad things to +contemplate. + + + + +GEORGE BORROW + + +Any book about George Borrow is worth reading. The two volumes by Dr. +Knapp are forbiddingly dense with documentary minutiae, yet it is a +pleasure to loaf through them at least once. Borrow's burly +personality makes itself felt in the driest philological note and +vitalizes the pages even of a commonplace critic, as, indeed, it +vitalizes many flatly ordinary pages in his extraordinary books. Mr. +Clement K. Shorter's "George Borrow and His Circle" is interesting +because it is about Borrow and not in the least because it is by Mr. +Shorter. Mr. Shorter's declared ambition was to write a book that +should appeal not to "Borrovians," but to "a wider public which knows +not Borrow." + +Every book about the fighting scholar, every moderately competent +article about him must invite new immigrants into Borrow's kingdom. +But Mr. Shorter is not an introductory critic, not one who by his own +skill and charm summons strangers to make the acquaintance of a great +man. He is an inept critic who thrives by attaching his name to great +reputations. Fancy a man of any trifling literary experience, with the +least enthusiasm for literature, writing about style in a style like +this: "Borrow, in common with many other great English authors whose +work will live, was not uniformly a good stylist. He has many +lamentable fallings away from the ideals of the stylist. But he will, +by virtue of a wonderful individuality, outlive many a good stylist." +It is a sin so to "style" in a chapter about Edward FitzGerald, who at +the sound of such sentences would have clapped his hands to his ears. + +Borrow describes himself in that pugnacious defence of Lavengro which +forms the appendix to "The Romany Rye." "Though he may become +religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very +precise and straitlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, +with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for +the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain +gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a +little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, +with plenty of malt in it, and as little hop as may well be--ale at +least two years old--with the aforesaid friend--when the diversion is +over." + +Is not that an irresistible man? Shouldn't you think that there would +have been among his contemporaries two or three hundred thousand good +sports, rooters, heelers, literary and non-literary bookmakers who +would bet on him and back him in any enterprise in which his +adventurous spirit elected to engage? Yet it was not so. He enjoyed +only a short period of popularity after the publication of "The Bible +in Spain." When he died at a ripe old age in 1881, he was not well +known. During his life the only highly distinguished man of letters +who knew and appreciated him was FitzGerald, the exquisite poet and +critic--FitzGerald, whose literary habits were as distant as possible +from Borrow's, whose fine-edged rapier seems utterly alien to Borrow's +short arm jab or his overhand wallop. FitzGerald had a curious +accuracy in spotting what was worth while in his time and in dodging +certain celebrated things that other people thought worth while, and +there is nothing inconsistent in his knowing that Borrow wrote good +English. But looking over Borrow's shoulder at his contemporaries, and +remembering Borrow's ungainly verses, one is amused to find that the +only real literary man facing one with a wink in his eye is +FitzGerald. The others have their backs turned. + +Consider also Borrow's posthumous fame. His first biographer is Dr. +Knapp, an American professor of philology. And the modern critics who +praise him are not open-air men, but bookish, library men, whose names +do not suggest the robustly adventurous, Lionel Johnson, Mr. +Watts-Dunton, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Seccombe. + +Most literary critics praise him in terms laudatory enough to atone +for the sins of their professional predecessors, whom Borrow held up +to "show the creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from their +broken jaws." His four important books are published in Everyman's +Library; Mr. Birrell says that "we are all Borrovians now"; within +twenty years have appeared three biographical studies, besides Mr. +Shorter's. Yet Dr. Knapp's fundamental biography which was published +in 1898 is out of print; that mysterious and reprehensible entity +known as the public has not demanded a new edition. It is all +consistent with the Borrovian inconsistency. Borrow was proud of being +a gentleman and a scholar, and he was both in all true senses of the +words; but he hated gentility and wrote a hammer-and-tongs chapter +against the genteel; no revolutionist despising the "bourgeois" ever +punched their smug faces with such violent verbal fisticuffs. + +He boasts of his fondness for gypsies and prize-fighters and quite +simply asks, "If he had not associated with prize-fighters, how could +he have used his fists?" However, he is an aristocrat and has no +sympathy with radical weavers. Despite his hatred of cant, some +sentences in "The Bible in Spain" have a missionary twang. He drifts +naturally away from the Church of England, yet when he attacks other +ecclesiastical institutions he holds up the Church of England as the +exemplar of religious truth. He scorns all deviation from fact, yet +his biographers have not wholly succeeded in separating what he did +from what he invented. + +He was undoubtedly a polyglot, he made metrical translations from +thirty languages, wrote a version of the Gospel of St. Luke in Spanish +Gypsy (the first book ever attempted in any Gypsy dialect), supervised +the printing of the Bible in Manchu-Tartar, made translations from the +English into Manchu-Tartar, Russian and Turkish in good style, as any +of us who has read them can testify. In the person of Lavengro he lost +the stalwart Isopel Berners because he insisted on giving her lessons +in Armenian! For all that, he made mistakes and so gave the scholars +evidence that he was no scholar. He was not. He had an instinct for +language, especially for that language which he knew, as we know it, +probably better than he knew Manchu-Tartar. In his English narratives +we can follow him and praise him or censure him without violating the +severe rule which he laid down: "Critics, when they review books, +ought to have a competent knowledge of the subjects which those books +discuss." + +The four books of Borrow which belong to English literature are "The +Bible in Spain," "Lavengro," "The Romany Rye" and "Wild Wales." "The +Bible in Spain" is one of those books that grow out of circumstances; +it was to a large extent thought out and phrased on the scene, amid +the adventures which it narrates; later it was cast into book form. It +grew out of experience, but an artist shaped its growth. Borrow was +sent by the Bible Society to distribute Spanish versions of the Bible. +He encountered the opposition of allied church and government, was +arrested, put in prison for three weeks, and liberated through the +influence of British officials. + +It is not, however, the Bible or his mission that stimulates Borrow's +imagination. Cities and people, meetings on the road, scraps of talk, +sometimes rather long conversations, monologues by Borrow, the +mischances, dangers and excitements of a country at once wild and +anciently civilized, Borrow's opinions about languages, characters, +landscapes and anything else under the Spanish skies--such is the +substance of the book; and the substance is transmitted through a +style that gives little heed to elegance, that walks along like a +healthy man on a tramp. The most eccentric of men, full of strange +languages and odd ideas, Borrow writes English as naturally as he +drinks English ale. There is not a touch of eloquence, not a great +phrase; his descriptions are rather literal records of what was in +front of him and how he liked it than "word-paintings." The dominant +writers of his time were super-eloquent. Borrow does not speak their +language. Perhaps that is why he did not rival them in popular favor, +and also why he seems to us so refreshingly downright. + +Borrow, like his master Defoe, has the art of setting all things forth +as if they were matters of fact. Even when his characters talk of +unusual matters, nay, especially when they harangue and gossip about +queer things, their conversation sounds like a transcription from life +and not like invention. + +"Lavengro" and its sequel, "The Romany Rye," are properly classified +in Everyman's Library under fiction, and "The Bible in Spain" is +classified as "Travel and Topography." In what proportion +autobiography and fiction are admixed is a question which does not +effect the merits of the books. They all follow about the same method, +and so, too, does "Wild Wales." The episodes are inconsequential, and +the looseness of organization not only permits Borrow unlimited +latitude of subject, but strengthens the Defoe-like illusion of truth; +he never loses the tone of the veracious chronicler who puts things +down in the order of nature and not according to the design of art. +Between adventures and more or less pertinently to them, Borrow +becomes itinerant schoolmaster and gives us instruction in language, +philology, comparative literature, ethics and religion. He is not a +pedant, but a humanist: "It has been said, I believe, that the more +languages a man speaks, the more a man he is; which is very true, +provided he acquires languages as a medium for becoming acquainted +with the thoughts and feelings of the various sections into which the +human race is divided; but in that case he should rather be termed a +philosopher than a philologist." + +Borrow need not be read continuously; if he enters upon a discourse +that promises not to interest you, you can turn the pages rapidly +until the eye strikes something more attractive. In his wide variety +is something for everybody. The conversations with the old apple woman +who had read the story of "Blessed Mary Flanders"; the chapters on +pugilism; the talks with tinkers and publicans; the old man who knew +Chinese but could not tell time by the clock; the outrageous attack +upon Walter Scott; the theological arguments with the man in +black--these are some of the choice fragments of what Borrow was +pleased to call a "dream." The general atmosphere is less that of +dreamland than of the broad highway in full sunlight. Since Borrow +died the cult of the open air has increased, and to that as much as to +anything is due the revival of interest in him. He is a great person, +a colossal egotist who in his journeyings takes up the whole road. It +is healthy for a man to be an egotist--especially if he is a colossal +one. + + + + +SHELLEY + + +In his "Defence of Poetry" Shelley says that the imagination is the +moral instrument. To be greatly good a man must imagine intensely and +comprehensively. Poetry serves morality not by what it explicitly +teaches, but by its power to awaken and enlarge the mind, to render it +"the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought." +Since poetry strengthens the imagination, which is the organ of the +moral nature of man, "a poet would do ill to embody his own +conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his time +and place, in his poetical creations which participate in neither." A +remarkable book could be made of the best things said in prose by +English poets about poetry. Perhaps one book would not hold so much. A +narrower yet great and imaginative book could be made of what Shelley +said about poetry and what English poets have said about him. Such a +book would explain and exhibit the theory of poetry and the art of +criticism. The very good edition of Shelley in the Regent Library, +(edited by Roger Ingpen) contains some brief "Testimonia" which invite +one to the essays from which they are taken, by Browning, Swinburne, +Francis Thompson. + +It is significant that Mr. Ingpen has not quoted from Arnold. If it is +the function of poetry to expand the imagination and make the mind +aware of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought, how did it +happen that Arnold, a genuine poet, missed Shelley utterly? Arnold was +not satisfied with his essay and intended to return to the subject. +That he could do a better thing is proved by his essay on Keats, +which, after he has done with his droning, schoolmasterly defence of +Keats's morals, is eloquent, serene and restrainedly emotional. +Shelley phrased many of the revolutionary ideas that were current in +his time. Arnold's timid school-bred culture was impervious to any +sort of revolutionary idea. Shelley's ideas did not impress him; he +thought Shelley a wonderful singer, but a singer without a solid body +of thought. Now, Shelley was the most full-minded poet of his time. He +knew more about what ought to be done with the world than any of his +contemporaries. That he failed to free Ireland and that the French +revolution was a disaster are a reflection on other people's +intelligence, not on his. It is not at all derogatory to a man's ideas +that for centuries and centuries after him the world fails to come up +to his teachings. If an angel is ineffectual that is not the angel's +fault. Indeed a too readily effectual angel would be rather a +journalist than a seer. + +That the bulk of mankind is ages behind the best of its poets and +seers might possibly be explained by the fact that the bulk of mankind +simply has not met their thoughts. But how shall one explain the fact +that artistic children of culture, who have had opportunity to read, +who respond to the beauty of seers and poets, remain at the tail of +the intellectual procession, are not abreast of long dead poets like +Shelley, and let the leaders of their own day sweep past them +unapprehended, unguessed? The thing that makes one impatient of the +privilege of culture is that many of those who have enjoyed it do not +lead; they drag mankind back. In "Winds of Doctrine," by Mr. George +Santayana, the mind of the present age is likened to "a philosopher at +sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail." When you +make a generality about the mind of today, you are perfectly safe, for +nobody can dispute you. Nobody knows what the mind of today is doing. +It is doing so many things that no one of us can keep track of it. But +when a man writes himself down in a book, you can tell what his mind +is doing--in that book. I should liken Mr. Santayana to a philosopher +who, really wanting to sail, had forgot to cast off and was still +lashed to the dock with a spanking wind blowing out to sea. + +It is no wonder that Whitman, revolutionary in substance and form, +perplexes the genteel and the cloistered. But it is a wonder that +Shelley, whose form is classic and whom a century has transformed from +demon to angel, does not reach them. A striking example of critical +and philosophic blindness is Mr. Santayana's essay on Shelley. Mr. +Santayana is a poet, and in this essay he says beautiful poetic +things. He is not stupid as Arnold was, for once in his life. But he +misses Shelley. He understands what Shelley was related to before +Shelley, for example, Plato, but he does not know the relation of +Shelley to his time or to the world since Shelley. What Mr. Santayana +says is lucid in phrase but quite hopelessly confused in thought. He +says that Shelley was "a finished child of nature, not a joint +product, like most of us, of nature, history and society." That is not +true of Shelley or any other human being in recorded history. It is +worse biography than Dowden's, and it seems that so old a critic as +Taine might have saved a man from writing such nonsense in the year +1912. Mr. Santayana says that "Shelley was not left standing aghast, +like a Philistine, before the destruction of the traditional order." +That is naive. Of course Shelley was not left standing aghast; he was +trying his best to destroy the traditional order; he was butting his +beautiful head against it. He did not budge the traditional order. One +reason is that most people have impoverished imaginations, that the +world can't do what Tolstoy thought would save it, stop and think for +five minutes. Another little reason is that there are too many +conservatives like Mr. Santayana teaching the young men of the world. +Yet Mr. Santayana says that Shelley was "unteachable"! + +Shelley believed that a man would do ill to embody his own conceptions +of right and wrong in his poetry. Yet every man, poet or not, who +writes at all and is not a hypocrite, embodies his conceptions of +right and wrong in all his utterances. Shelley was intensely personal +in his poetry. His sky-larking, star-sweeping way of expressing +himself takes us out of range of his individual opinions. He spoke +heart-near things in splendid distances and tried to pull the far +skies down into sodden British hearts. The revolt, the defeated revolt +of his own times, near to him as the news of the daily papers, he +allegorized as the rebellion of a mythological Islam, and he flung the +stars reeling through Spenserian stanzas. No essayist has risen fully +to Shelley's poetic stature and comprehended him except another great +poet, Francis Thompson. Speaking his own convictions, as every man, +poet, critic, or even an academic voice of reason must and should +speak his convictions, Thompson begins his essay by pleading for a +reunion between his church and the art of poetry. So much of his essay +seems to me interesting but not closely relevant to Shelley. After +this introduction Thompson soars into the greatest essay that has ever +been written on an English poet by an English poet. + +Most poets, with their wonderful ears, of course write good prose. +Francis Thompson has a fine essay on the prose of poets. Even +Browning, who wrote little prose except the extraordinary +parenthetical letters, was so clarified by Shelley that in his essay +he discovered a fairly fluent and readable style. + +Shelley is primarily neither philosopher nor revolutionist, but lyric +poet. Yet to treat him only as a lyric poet is to forget his great +drama, "The Cenci," which can hold up its head undiminished beside the +Elizabethans. That idiotic British officialdom does not, or did not at +last accounts, allow its performance on the regular stage, is perhaps +only one more proof of how little impression Shelley's austere +anarchism made on practical British morality. "The Cenci" is austere; +for Shelley, it is athletically economical. The last speech of +Beatrice is an unexcelled emotional climax. Yet even in this play we +find that "intensely personal" note of Shelley; it speaks all his +heart against all injustice. The play learned many lessons from the +Elizabethans. It is not far wrong to call these lines Shakespearean: + + My wife and children sleep; + They are now living in unmeaning dreams; + But I must wake, still doubting if that deed + Be just which was most necessary. O, + Thou replenished lamp! whose narrow fire + Is shaken by the wind and on whose edge + Devouring darkness hovers! + + + + +H. G. WELLS AND UTOPIA + + +Utopias fall into two classes, the local and the chronological. That +is, some are removed from present fact by geographical transition to a +country apart from us in space, a magic island, a realm undiscovered +until the romancer found it and assumed it to be extant in the +romancer's year of grace; others are sundered from present fact by +being thrown forward into the future or backward into a time that +precedes recorded history. The desirable land within the limits of +present time and the known surficial limits of the globe is obviously +not convincing. One fears that it may be rediscovered and invaded by +an imperial fleet or an inquisitive scientific expedition. Crusoe's +island is no longer remote. The geographers have plotted the planet +and have snared every conceivable no-man's-land in the meshes of +realistic lines of latitude and longitude. + +The ideal civilization which plays ducks and drakes, not with space, +but with time, is safer. Nothing can dislodge it or disprove it or in +any wise proceed against it--except by force of superior imagination. +For nobody knows what may happen in the future. That is why all the +theological heavens are sublimely ramparted against attack. + +Bellamy placed his ideal civilization within the impregnable security +of a time as yet unborn. His conception was original and in its way +was more realistic than the timeless abstraction of Plato and More, +and the Nowhere from which Morris sent news. The fundamental scheme of +portraying a future upon this earth was so fascinating that Bellamy's +book enjoyed a success out of all proportion to its literary skill or +its sociological insight. He had a first-rate plan, but with what +unfanciful and rigidly precise lines he filled it in! His style is +stiff and his future is ossified. + +Mr. H. G. Wells took the idea of describing an imagined tomorrow and +made of it a stimulating romance. In saying that he took the idea one +does not mean to imply that he borrowed the scheme of "Looking +Backward" or of any other book. The notion of criticizing today from +the height of a postulated tomorrow was probably born and raised +before Bellamy. My bibliography is imperfect, but I seem to remember +that an Assyrian conceived the notion and inscribed his reflections on +a ton of brick. The important thing is the kind of future a man +imagines and the way he gets there and the justice of his backlook on +the world as it is. Wells's "The World Set Free" is the most +vision-expanding book of its kind--if there be a kind--that I have +ever quarrelled with and been delighted by. It justifies the last word +of its title. It does not cramp the growth of the race between a set +of rules. It spreads the lines of development out at a generously wide +angle. It bids humanity spring from what it is. It makes no +desperately impossible demands upon our common nature. Indeed, with a +cunning hidden plea, not evident at first glance, Mr. Wells draws the +world council, which gathered together the shattered nations and gave +them the first good government they had ever known, as a collection of +ordinary men, with only one or two inspiring geniuses. The idea--a +very important idea--is that any of us duffers could do it if we had +to, and if we were only jolted out of a few little private interests +and superstitions. + +The value of a Utopia is not so much the description of a desirable +and convincingly attainable state as in the reflex description of an +undesirable state--the state in which we live. To show how the "new +civilization" was unhampered by political intrigue and financial +considerations is to show how obstructive is the present system of +politics and ownership. "Man the warrior, man the lawyer, and all the +bickering aspects of life, pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, +man the curious learner and man the creative artist, come forward to +replace these barbaric aspects of existence by a less ignoble +adventure." In "those" times, that is the present seen from the year +2000, many of the homes were entirely "horrible, uniform, square, +squat, ugly, hideously proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some +respects quite filthy; only people in complete despair of anything +better could have lived in them." In "our" time, that is about 2000, +the last stupid capitalist who wanted millions for an invention he had +stolen was laughed out of court. People do not struggle to get, +because they do not run the risk of starvation and wage slavery; they +produce as artists, because man likes to do things with his head and +his hands. In our times we understand that Bismarck, to take a salient +example, was not an admirable man but a gross person, and that the age +that produced him, made him a ruler, and paid him respect, was a dull, +stupefied, vicious age. The time when people were taking pills for all +kinds of ailments, were being killed by the slow process of the slum +or the swift process of the ill-managed railroads, is past the +imagination of "our" time to conceive. + +From such a past the world is set free. The people of that past day +might have set themselves free, but they were too stupid; the workmen +were debased, timid and without imagination, the capitalists had to be +intent on property and dividends lest they fall to the unpropertied +condition of workmen; lawyers, clergymen, popular novelists like Mr. +Wells, editors, journalists, and other professional parasites did not +dare utter even such vision as they had, or did it for money under +convenient restrictions. It was an unthinkably rotten period in the +history of the world. Only a few kickers knew how rotten it was, or +had courage to express their sense of the prevalent putrescence. + +The account of what used to be is just enough, and the account of +what "is" does not strain the intelligence even of one who sees +things from the point of view of 1914. The only unconvincing part of +Mr. Wells's history is that which narrates how we ceased to be what +we were and became what we are. He wipes the old world out with an +atomic bomb, so destructive that it annihilates all the capitals of +the earth, makes war impossible and compels mankind to federate. Mr. +Wells has a penchant for "fishy" science. He knows a good deal about +chemistry, biology, mechanics, and he knows that novel readers know +less, as a rule, than he knows. So with the finest air of conviction +he shatters the world with a new explosive, which has a kind of +laboratory-veracity not claimed for the comet whose tail brushed us +to revolution in an earlier of his engaging romances. The clever man +secures plausibility by rather cheekily dedicating the book to +"Frederick Soddy's interpretation of radium," to which this story +"owes long passages." Neat, isn't it? It inspires in the ignorant +reader a confidence that those atomic bombs are approved by the most +advanced science--though, of course, Mr. Wells does not say so. The +cataclysmic revolution is splendidly narrated, and is even better +than Mr. Wells's earlier mechanical and astronomical romances. The +trouble with it is that it is not a fitting transition from a state +of society which is seriously conceived to a better state of society +which is described with all the earnestness of a sociologist. The two +things are discordant. If we are to be taken from one civilization to +another we must move along a social highway. The atomic bombs are out +of key with the prelude and the last two chapters. + +Mr. Wells is fond of mixing fake chemistry and social reality. He has +succeeded in two kinds of fiction, which he should keep distinct, the +Jules Verne romance and the novel of present-day life. He persists in +putting the two in the same book, and they simply will not blend even +under his skilful stirring-spoon. In "Tono-Bungay" he gave us a good +picture of a quack millionaire, full of the spirit of the living age. +It was set in a realistic scene and was true to life. Then for no +reason at all he sent his hero in search of a mysterious metal called +"quap," which does not exist and so never burnt the bottom out of the +ship. "Quap" destroys the illusion of the book. About the time that +quap begins to do its work, the book ceases to be a novel. "Marriage" +almost ceases to be a novel when the couple go to Labrador. The +introduction of love business into the comet story is an impertinence, +as Mr. Bernard Shaw has complained. Mr. Wells's incurable taste for +romantic adventure on a plane removed from life--usually an aeroplane +that does what no aeroplane has done yet--vitiates his realism; and +his concessions to the "love interest" do not help his experiments in +scientific "futurism." He is best when he keeps separate the two sides +of his genius. + +On the other hand, his extraordinary skill in feathering social truth +with romance, and his equally extraordinary skill in making a monster +of romance eat real hay are the virtues of his vices. His tracts read +like novels, and his novels often carry shrewdly concealed tracts. He +is, next to Bernard Shaw, the most irritating and the most widely read +revolutionary economist who writes our language. Like Mr. Shaw, he is +a rather tame revolutionist; he has never got free from the +middle-class, emancipated clerk view of life, and his romantic sense +sometimes corrupts his sense of social fact as it does his sense of +scientific fact. But he always thinks in ambush behind his most +trivial narrative. And when he comes forth avowedly as a thinker and +theorist, he has the vivacity of phrase, the sparkle of manner which +serve him when he is making fiction. Moreover, in spite of his intense +modernity and his contempt for ancient elegancies and traditional +beauties, he can write fine, rhythmic, luminously visual prose; like +all imaginative men who deal in words, he is a bit of a poet. His +account of "the last war" has in it something of the quality of the +epic: "Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like +archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely +the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding +of Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, beside +this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong swoop +to death?" + + + + +JOHN MASEFIELD + + +The first version of Mr. Masefield's "Pompey the Great" was published +before "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The Widow of the Bye Street," +those virile narratives that made us wake to find him famous. "Pompey" +is vigorous and dramatic, yet it lacks the note that announces a new +poet. The earlier poems, "Salt Water Ballads" are good, but do not +rise above the chorus of minor lyrists. The short stories in "A +Mainsail Haul" do not distinguish Masefield from a score of sturdy +spinners of sea yarns. It was "The Widow in the Bye Street" that told +us that a great new ship was in port. After that splendid arrival came +"The Daffodil Fields" and "Dauber." Meanwhile the man who had found, +if not created, a form of poetry so individual as to invite the final +tribute of parody, showed himself in "The Tragedy of Nan," master of +dramatic realism. + +It is likely and logical, even if the dates do not fall into line, +that "Pompey" is the work of a young ambitious literary man who in the +hour of conceiving the work had not yet discovered his course. He had +to a large extent discovered his style and his attitude toward life +and the speech of men. He makes the Romans talk in a sharp bold +staccato, which is good English and excellent Masefield; as for its +Latinity, well, the Romans are dead and we do not know just how they +talked. Pompey says: "We were happy there, that year." Cornelia +answers: "Very happy. And that day the doves came, picking the spilled +grain. And at night there was a moon." Pompey's next speech is: "All +the quiet valley. And the owls were calling. Those little grey owls. +Make eight bells, captain." + +It is a question whether a modern dramatist is not misdirecting his +genius when he makes plays of Greek or Roman legends and characters. +To be sure, a man of genius is not to be limited in his subjects or +his style. He is free by virtue of his genius. He may make an Iliad if +it pleases him to try it. Mr. Bernard Shaw put a new wrinkle in the +stiffened parchment of Caesar's biography. Ibsen at the age of 43, +after he had hit upon his "later" manner, that is after he had made +the simple discovery that universal tragedy grins in the small houses +of small people in small Norwegian towns, produced his "Julian the +Apostate." Poets of all nations during the last three hundred years +have retold Greek and Roman stories and made new poetry of them. But +on the whole the Greeks and Romans handled their own subjects, their +own lives and legends fairly well. The task of the modern is to render +our times or to interpret timeless and spaceless subjects from our +point of view. The widow who lived in the bye street and the painter +who was killed at sea are not as important persons as the Hon. Cneius +Pompeius Magnus, but Mr. Masefield's poems about living (or recently +killed) obscure folk are more important than his drama about the +ancient illustrious dead. + +"Pompey" is a good play, that is, it is good to read; I do not know +whether it has been acted. It has one characteristic of Mr. +Masefield's other work, a direct incisive speech, poetry of the naked +fact, the brief metaphor which might come out in any man's talk and +which has the "unliterary" flavor of reality--a cunningly literary +mode of writing. Mr. Masefield makes Pompey say: "Five minutes ago I +had Rome's future in my hand. She was wax to my seal. I was going to +free her. Now is the time to free her. You can tear the scales and the +chains from her." Did the Romans talk in this clipped hurried fashion? +Probably they did when they were excited, for it is human to talk in +short sentences; even Germans do it. + +The business of the dramatist is to make you believe, with an arrested +compelled attention, in the speech and action of persons in clearly +defined circumstances. It makes no great difference whether the scene +is in a Norwegian house or on the necromantic island of Shakespeare's +"Tempest." Sometimes it seems a more wonderful achievement to make the +Norwegian house interesting because it is so terribly like the one we +live in. Mr. Masefield's Nan seems to me worth ten of Mr. Masefield's +Cornelias, and the peculiar style and habit of thought of Mr. +Masefield seem more fitted to the modern subject. One of his +metrically ingenious stanzas, with all the artifice of meter and +rhyme, is nearer to life than his vivaciously realistic sentences put +into the mouth of a Roman. "Back your port oars. Shove off. Give way +together. Go on there. Man your halliards. Take the turns off. Stretch +it along. Softly now. Stand by." Was such the dialect of Roman sea +captains? Nobody knows. All that I argue is that Mr. Masefield's +punching abruptness is more wonderfully real, more effective on the +lips of modern people whom we do know. + + O God, O God, what pretty ways she had. + He's kissing all her skin, so soft and white. + She's kissing back. I think I'm going mad. + Like rutting rattens in the apple loft. + She held that light she carried high aloft + Full in my eyes for him to hit me by, + I had the light all dazzling in my eye. + +Every poet is limited to his idiom, and though he may make broad +differentiations, may change his structural form from sonnet to ode, +from ode to dramatic scene, may adapt his style to a character to the +extent of making clown and king unlike in their turn of phrase, yet +when he is earnestly poetic he writes his own kind of poetry. Mr. +Masefield vocalizes Masefield sentences with the breath of Romans. So +Browning's characters all have the Browning abundance of telescoped +metaphor. Shakespeare's English kings and Italian dukes trumpet +Elizabethan blank verse. The identity of flavor and idiom and of +metaphor between Shakespeare's English characters and Roman characters +and Italian characters will never be perceived by the male and female +Mrs. Jamesons, who write essays about Shakespeare's "characters," but +cannot hear verse. To be sure, Shakespeare and all other great +dramatists make the persons of the play adapt their substance to the +situation; naturally Othello in a jealous fit does not talk about +having lost his ducats and his daughter or order a cup of sack. But +within the specific situation and the rather loose limits of character +Shakespeare equips his person with a style of blank verse that is +primarily Elizabethan, secondarily Shakespearean, and only in a +tertiary and wholly subordinate sense Caesarean or Macbethean. +D'Annunzio writes magnificent D'Annunzio, with a recognizable fondness +for certain words and sonorities, no matter who is alleged to be +talking. A poet is at his best when his singular power of phrase and +his substance are most happily fused. + +Masefield's instrument plays best upon modern themes, upon the tragedy +of obscure people in English fields or upon the seven seas. It is his +distinction to have taken the lives of the humble and to have involved +those lives in the revolution of the stars and the expanses of sea. He +has lifted coarse words into literature (the Elizabethans did that, +too); he has related the large elements to little elemental lives; he +has elevated obvious simplicities to grand complexities. + +The resemblance between the austerely tender pathos of "The Daffodil +Fields" and Wordsworth's "Michael" is a genuine resemblance honorable +to the younger poet; and the pointing to the resemblance is not, I +trust, an example of the critic's weak habit of referring one poet +back to another. Mr. Quiller-Couch has said that "neither in the +telling did, or could, 'Enoch Arden' come near the artistic truth of +'The Daffodil Fields'." Now, if one is to compare poets, for the sake +of praising them or for the better understanding of them, it is well +to make comparisons that refer the new and unknown to the known in +illuminating conjunction. To say that "Enoch Arden" does not approach +the artistic truth of "The Daffodil Fields" is to make an inept +comparison, to associate the weak with the strong, even though the +comparison is negative. "Enoch Arden" is the flimsiest kind of +romantic fraud in Tennyson's worst manner. It is a sob poem that sends +only the tiniest lace handkerchiefs to the laundry. "The Daffodil +Fields," for all its conscious artistry and the adroit manipulation of +the verses, is terrifically sincere. If its substance has any +allegiance to another English poet, we must look for a poet who had a +realistic sense of the furrowed field and a visionary sense of the +stars, that is Wordsworth. And if one's odious liking for comparison +is not satisfied with that, one may ask readers of poetry to compare +the opening stanza of "The Widow in the Bye Street" with Chaucer, and +think of such merits as plainness of phrase, simplicity and ease of +narrative, and soundness of verse structure. + + Down Bye street, in a little Shropshire town, + There lived a widow with her only son: + She had no wealth nor title to renown, + Nor any joyous hours, never one. + +Is there not here a note that suggests the opening of "The Nonne +Preestes Tale," even though the story which follows is quite unlike +Chaucer's? Or is it only the "widow" that makes me associate the two? +At any rate it is pleasant to think that Mr. Masefield in a strong, +not an imitative or servile, sense, is heir to the oldest master of +English narrative verse. + +Then if our habit of judging new poets by old ones still dominates us, +let us take any passage describing the sea in "Dauber" and put it +beside any of the thousand years of English sea poetry. + + Denser it grew, until the ship was lost. + The elemental hid her: she was merged + In mufflings of dark death, like a man's ghost, + New to the change of death, yet hither urged. + Then from the hidden waters something surged-- + Mournful, despairing, great, greater than speech, + A noise like one slow wave on a still beach. + +After that, if only for the pleasure of quoting them, recall +Swinburne's lines: + + Where beyond the extreme sea-wall and between the remote + sea-gates, + Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death + waits. + +The wonder of our English tongue is never more resounding than when +English poets echo the tumult of the sea. Mr. Masefield is not so much +an innovator as an initiate into a great poetic tradition, the +tradition of a race of sailors and chantey-makers who began with "The +Seafarer" or long before that, and shall not end with "Dauber." The +sea is in Masefield's blood and in his personal experience. Who but an +English poet would have ended "The Tragedy of Pompey the Great" with a +chantey to the tune of "Hanging Johnny"? + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND THE SCRIBES + + +In his sensible little book, "Literary Taste: How to Form It," Mr. +Arnold Bennett says: "In attending a university extension lecture on +the sources of Shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of +George Saintsbury into the origins of English prosody, or in weighing +the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was a +scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for." + +Of the vast library of scholarly research, the most fatuous section, +if one is to judge from the few specimens one happens to have seen, is +that which deals with the most important division of literature--poetry; +and probably the poet who has suffered the most voluminous maltreatment +from two centuries of English, German and American scholarship is +Shakespeare. I have been going in an idle way over the notes in "The +Tragedie of Jvlivs Caesar," edited by Horace Howard Furness, Jr., +and "The Tragedie of Cymbeline," edited by the elder Dr. Furness. And +I have looked into other volumes of this laborious work, "A New +Varorium Edition of Shakespeare." From an enormous mass of commentary, +criticism, word-worrying, text-marring and learned guesswork, the +editor has chosen what seem to him the best notes. The sanity of his +introductions and the good sense of some of his own notes lead one to +suppose that he has selected with discrimination from the notes of +others. His work is a model of patience, industry and judgment. He +plays well in this game of scholarship. But what is the game worth? +What is the result? + +Here is a volume of nearly 500 large pages containing only one play! +The text is a literal reprint of the first folio, or whatever is +supposed to be the earliest printed version. The clear stream of +poetry runs along the tops of the pages. Under that is a deposit of +textual emendations full of clam-shells and lost anchors and tin cans. +Under that is a mud bottom two centuries deep. It consists of (a) what +scholars said Shakespeare said; (b) what scholars said Shakespeare +meant; (c) what scholars said about what other scholars said; (d) what +scholars said about the morality and character of the personages, as +(1) they are in Shakespeare's play, and as (2) they are in other +historical and fictitious writings; (e) what scholars said about how +other people used the words that Shakespeare used; (f) what scholars +said could be done to Shakespeare's text to make him a better poet. I +have not read all these notes and I never shall read them. Life is too +short and too interesting. + +All the time that I was trying to read the notes, so that I could know +enough about them to write this article, my mind kept swimming up out +of the mud into that clear river of text. It is an almost perfectly +clear river. Some of the obscurities that scholars say are there are +simply not obscure, except as poetry ought to have a kind of obscurity +in some turbulent passages. Many of the obscurities the scholars put +there in their innocence and stupidity, and those obscurities you can +eliminate by ignoring them. + +The really valuable note is the etymological. Etymology reveals the +essential metaphors of words. The modern reader will find that beyond +his intellectual front door stand three or four wire entanglements of +connotation; by the time a word gets to him it is bruised and ragged. +The etymologist clears all those fences for you and delivers a word +fresh into your hands. He shows you how other poets have used it. He +enriches it with other connotations. He shows it to be even wealthier +than it was in the mind of the man who wrote the Shakespearian line. +One of the most exciting and poetic books is the Oxford Dictionary. +The dated illustrative history of a word, past milestone after +milestone of use, is an intellectual epic. The word is root-deep and +branch-high with poetry, with the imaginative habits of the race. The +etymological note not only clarifies Shakespeare, but spreads behind +him (and other poets) a sort of verbal-cosmic background. Etymology +brightens the color of words, deepens their significance. That the +etymologist is often a duffer, who, in the very act of resolving a +word into new chords, writes stiff and stodgy prose, is a perplexing +thing in human nature and a very perplexing problem in that appalling +institution, Scholarship. + +It is impossible for even a vivacious, humorous man like Dr. Furness, +an enthusiastic amateur in love with his task, to live in a library of +Shakespearian scholarship and not be infected by its diseases. Dr. +Furness knows, for example, precisely when "Cymbeline" was written. +Shakespeare was forty-six years old. Now, "Cymbeline" is a foolish +play; Dr. Johnson said so. And there must be a reason for +Shakespeare's deterioration, for Shakespeare, unlike other poets, is +not to be allowed to write bad plays and bad lines without a +satisfactory explanation. He did not explain himself, but the scholars +come to his rescue. Dr. Furness fancies that, though forty-six is not +an advanced age, Shakespeare was tired and disillusioned. "There may +have crept into Shakespeare's study of imagination a certain weariness +of soul in contemplating in review the vast throng of his dream +children.... A sufficing harvest of fame is his and honest wealth, +accompanied by honor, love, obedience and troops of friends." "I can +most reverently fancy that he is once more allured by the joy of +creation when by chance there falls in his way the old, old story of a +husband convinced, through villany, of his wife's infidelity." + +And there you are. Shakespeare at the age of forty-six is lured by the +restless joy of creation into writing "Cymbeline," which is a poor +play. It is not up to the mark which Shakespeare's previous +masterpieces have set. There is something a little wobbly about this +conjunction of surmises. But the scholar is never at a loss. He can +deliver immortal Will from his own errors, shield him from the +consequences of being at once a god in art and a human man, prone to +literary lapses and slovenly work. The masque in the fifth act "is +regarded by a large majority of editors and critics as an intrusive +insertion by some hand not Shakespeare's." When a large majority of +scholars and critics regard a thing as so, it is so. It gets into the +books that you have to read to pass college examinations. And if you +say that many of the scholars and critics whom you happen to have read +or listened to are chumps, when they deal with Shakespeare or any +other poet, you are a lost soul. + +Some of the notes of the various commentators are suggestive. But many +of the notes are sheer impertinences, especially those that attempt to +mend the lines. + + I would haue left it on the Boord, so soone + As I had made my Meale; and parted + With Pray'rs for the Prouider. + +There is nothing the matter with that. It sounds all right. But the +editors have to fill out the short second line, to make it scan. Dr. +Furness thinks, justly, that the line needs only "a very timid pause +after 'Meale.'" Of course, any reader, any good actor, with an ear on +the side of his head, reads all lines with pauses timid or bold as the +case requires, and does not make a fuss about it. It is only the +scholars that fuss, or poets like Pope, who are entirely out of touch +with Shakespeare's free metrical habits. + +It is almost inconceivable that grown men with enough interest in +poetry to spend their whole lives in Shakespeare's company could have +daubed him with such muddy nonsense as one finds in these notes, which +are not the worst of scholarly comment but the best, selected by a +discriminating man. What a colossal sham it all is!--erected not by +charlatans but by men working in good faith and with disinterested +devotion to their task. + +It is not merely the ignorant idler and the superficial player among +books who has got tired of the institution of Shakespeare Improved: +Fourteen Thousand Doctors of Philosophy in Session Day and Night, +Searching for a Serum to Prevent Spinal Meningitis in the Lines of +Shakespeare. Millions Needed to Continue This Humanitarian Work: Fifty +Thousand Students Under Instruction in the Art of How Not to Be Poets. +Against this amazing institution some of the more independent surgeons +have protested. One was the late John Churton Collins, a physician who +discovered that the Shakespearean metaphor was not a locally British +infection rising from the Avon river, but was brought by the verbal +mosquito from Rome and Greece. Collins had a vivid and audacious mind +that made him one of the most readable of modern Shakespeareans, and +he had, I assume, considerable learning. He says: "Dozens of +impertinent emendations have been introduced into Shakespeare's text, +because editors have not been aware that the custom of using the same +word in different senses in one line, or even twice in contiguous +lines, was deliberately affected by the Elizabethan poets." +Deliberately affected? Yes, and it came natural to them in a time when +language was a little looser and freer than it is after three +centuries of increased use and hardened definition both in prose and +poetry. + +One trouble with much Shakespearean scholarship lies in the assumption +that everything that left Shakespeare's hand must have been perfect. +Why, he probably used words carelessly and did all kinds of tricks +with them, as other geniuses do. Why should we assume that he always +wrote a good line? Some of his lines are bad, and it is not necessary +for Dr. Pumpernickell to knock out a couple of words or add a couple +just to make a line go metrically. These scholars have a split vision. +In one note they treat Shakespeare like a god who could not go wrong. +In the next note they treat him like a sophomore versifier whose lines +have to be corrected. Dr. Furness says that the earliest known text of +"Julius Caesar"--that of the First Folio, "is markedly free from +corruptions." What corruptions? The printers' or Shakespeare's? Dr. +Furness lugs in that tiresome phantom, a playhouse copy. "Our only +recourse is to accept the explanation given by Resch, viz., that these +words between Brutus and Messala are an interpolation from a MS. +addition which appeared first in a playhouse copy, and which, by +mistake, became incorporated in the text." Now, is not that a "soft, +downy, pink-cheeked peach of an idea" (Jonson's "Sejanus," act IV., +sc. 13, I, 23. Potter's edition: Oshkosh, Scholar and Sellum, 1913)? +Resch be hanged! What playhouse copy? When? Whose mistake? How +incorporated? A solid page and two-thirds of a page are devoted to +explaining a difficulty which does not exist. + +This is the true history of the passage in question. Shakespeare and +Bacon and Raleigh met in the Mermaid Tavern for the purpose of turning +out a few yards of Elizabethan blank verse in the post-Tennysonian +style of Mr. Alfred Noyes. It was a very difficult job and Will of +Stratford got roaring full. He went home on foot to Stratford, a long +journey, and found Anne with another pair of twins, one of whom was +the poet Davenant. This was very disturbing to Will. He did not know +until after his death which twin was Davenant. He was then in that +fateful year, 1599-1600, writing his play, "Julius Caesar", and making +extensive use of Suetonius's "The Lives of the Caesars" (Dr. Furness +thinks this doubtful, but if you are going to guess, why not guess +good and plenty?). Anne got on Will's nerves and he had a bad morning +head. That is why he made that slightly confused passage, which has +bothered the scholars ever since. + +The following example of how Shakespeare's biography is written is not +a parody. It appears in the New York _Nation_ of November 27, 1913, +page 513, in a review of Arthur S. Pier's "Story of Harvard." + +"Every good story has a prologue, and the story of Harvard has one +which by no means should be left out. In Stratford-on-Avon stands the +'Old House in the High Street,' identified by the most eminent of our +antiquaries, the late H. F. G. Waters, by certain documentary +evidence, as the early home of Katharine Rogers, mother of John +Harvard, from whom proceeded the little inheritance that first kindled +in the western hemisphere the torch of a liberal culture. For this we +have distinct contemporaneous chapter and verse. + +"At circumstantial evidence we look askance, but without pressing the +matter unduly this may be said--that the families of Rogers and +Shakespeare lived in close neighborhood and intimacy at Stratford +during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.; that the poet knew +Katharine Rogers well, as, on the other hand, he knew well Robert +Harvard, at length her husband, in his shop at Southwark, in London, +hard by the Globe Theatre. So far the conjunction would seem to be +inevitable. + +"Then looms up a possibility amounting perhaps to a likelihood, that +no other than Shakespeare was the intermediary who brought together +the Londoner and the fair, well-dowered maid in the remote midlands, +that he was a familiar guest in the home in Southwark which he had +helped to establish, and that he, the genial family friend, held on +his knee the little John Harvard, the first-born in the household. + +"Could this touch of their foster-father with the most illustrious +name in literature be fairly established (and who can say after the +feats of Mr. Waters what scraps may yet be found in the dust-heaps?), +Harvard men would indeed have a tradition to prize." + +Why not get down to brass tacks? We do not know much about +Shakespeare's life. We do not know anything about his manuscripts, or +the playhouse versions. We cannot even rely on the printed date of a +quarto. We do not know whether a corrupt line was corrupted by +Shakespeare or the printer or somebody else. Many emendations consist +largely in a kind of scholarly punning. For example: Shakespeare wrote +a line that every scholar remembers, for it is a causer of gray hairs +and a prodigal spender of the midnight taper: "The blind Rush hath +proclaimed his Bowells search." Johnson conjectures that four lines +have been omitted. Steev. conj.: For "blind rush," read "mind rush." +That is, the impetuousness of his thought makes one aware of how his +instinct is struggling for the solution of his difficulties. Malone +conj.: "Bowells lurch." Evidently referring to the sea-sickness of +Antony after the battle of Actium. Craik conj.: "Rowell's search, +meaning that his blind rush, that is headlong rush, is caused or +indicated by the speed of his horse into which he has thrust his +rowels." Cf. B. Jonson, "Every man out of His Humor"; "One of the +rowels catched hold of the ruffle of my boot." Oechelhauser +(_Einleitung_, p. 1185): But this must refer to the speed of the +intellect going through purely idealistic experiences. There is no +question here of either sea or land. Macbeth has not been near the sea +and Henry V. has not yet set sail for France. As for horses, it is now +well established that there were no horses in England; otherwise why +should Richard have cried, "My kingdom for a horse"? If there had been +horses, one could surely have bought one, especially a King, for 80 +marks, the then ruling price in Schleswig-Holstein; and even the +ecstasies of expression would not have made appropriate the offer of +an entire kingdom. + +So they go "conjing" and "conjing" through desolate miles of notes. +In spite of the fact that now and again a genuine bit of historic +information, a light of interpretative intuition flashing from a +scholar's note, does vivify and elucidate a puzzling line, or a line +that you might pass over in an oblivious mood, nevertheless, is it not +true that this whole institution of literary theology is a stupid +superstition? There are plenty of unsolved problems in Shakespeare, +fascinating questions of biography and interpretation to which +conjectural answers are legitimate. But for illuminating answers, or +partial answers, one has to go outside orthodox scholarship, to Walter +Begley, to "The Shakespeare Problem Restated," by George C. Greenwood, +to "Shakespeare's Mystery Play: A Study of The Tempest" by Colin +Still, and to other heretical inquirers whom the pundits dismiss as +cranks. + +The scholars do not confine their thick-headed learning to old poets +whose language is strange and who are made clearer by a note here and +there. For some stranger reason scholars are hired to edit the modern +poets in the popular series, those valuable and inexpensive reprints +which help to spread poetry over the face of the earth and make it +accessible to increasing numbers of readers. I pick up the "Selected +Poems of Christina Rossetti," edited with introduction and notes by +Charles Bell Burke, Ph.D., professor of English in the University of +Tennessee. The volume is in Macmillan's Pocket Classics. I come upon +"A Green Cornfield," a lovely lyric that must have made Shelley look +down with interest "from the abode where the eternal are." There is +reference to a note. I turn to it and find this: "An inverted simile? +Consult Genung's 'Working Principles of Rhetoric,' p. 79, 2, example." +I will not consult Genung. I will advise all the pupils in my school +never to consult Genung while they are reading poetry. + +I commend to those hard-working young men and women in the +universities who are now studying under editors of Shakespeare to fit +themselves to be editors of Shakespeare these sentences from Mr. Max +Eastman's "Enjoyment of Poetry": "A misfortune incident to all +education is the fact that those who elect to be teachers are +scholars. They esteem knowledge not for its use in attaining other +values, but as a value in itself; and hence they put an undue emphasis +upon what is formal and nice about it, leaving out what is less +pleasing to the instinct for classification but more needful to the +art of life. This misfortune is especially heavy in the study of +literature. Indeed the very rare separation of the study of literature +from that of the subjects it deals with suggests the barren and formal +character of it. As usually taught for three years to postgraduates in +our universities, it is not worth spending three weeks upon." + + + + +GEORGE MOORE AND OTHER IRISH WRITERS + + +"Though I may have lost the habit of reading," says Mr. Moore, "I have +acquired, perhaps more than any other human being, another habit, the +habit of thinking. I love my own thoughts." It must be a great +pleasure to be Mr. George Moore, to have confidence in one's +intellectual habits, to enjoy the memories and opinions that the mind +excogitates, and to be able to phrase them with beautiful precision. +The mind that honestly likes itself is sure to attract other minds and +to interest even those that are antipathetic. If Mr. Moore does not +persuade you that all his judgments are to be accepted, he provokes +you to examine your own. He is stimulant, irritant, but there is no +depressant reaction from him. One can stand a large dose of him, both +of his exquisite fiction and of his repetitive reminiscences, which +may or may not be fiction. + +There is a remark ascribed to Lady Gregory: "Some men kiss and do not +tell; George Moore does not kiss, but he tells." It is the business of +the writer of fiction to "tell," and it makes little difference to the +reader who reads for fun whether the gallant adventures are +biographical or not. Early in his literary career Mr. Moore tried the +confessional form of narrative and succeeded masterfully. The young +man who "confessed" twenty-five years ago grew older, and in "Memoirs +of My Dead Life" looked back upon his youth from the quiescence of +middle age. Mr. Moore says that "if the reader of 'Vale' be wishful to +know what happened at Orelay he can do so in a volume entitled +'Memoirs of My Dead Life,' but he need not read this novel to follow +adequately the story of 'Vale.'" So the "Memoirs" is fiction. What, +then, is "Hail and Farewell"? Simply an extension of the +autobiographic novel, it includes real persons living and dead and +calls them by their names, but it is as obviously a "made-up" book as +anything in literature. It is the work of an artist and critic, the +artist who gave us two masterpieces, "Esther Waters" and "Evelyn +Innes," and the critic, who, apropos books and pictures, writes, if +not with infallible judgment, ever with an unfailing sense of beauty. + +Mr. Moore's lady-loves have not, according to his own testimony, +direct and unconscious, been the most interesting affairs of his life. +He writes better about Manet than about an amatory encounter of +yesteryear. The women of his "regular" novels are more vivid than the +women who perturb his mature reminiscences. He says that the critics +complain that "instead of creating types of character like Esther +Waters," he is wasting his time describing his friends, "mere portrait +painting," and he asks an argumentative question: "In writing 'Esther +Waters' did I not think of one heroic woman?" + +For once the critics are on the right side. Lady Gregory is +interesting in her own person and her own work, but Mr. Moore can +never make her so interesting in a book as he has made Esther and +Evelyn. And the ladies of his experience are more alive when he uses +them as matter for fiction than when he sits behind a cigar dictating +memories. That in creating Esther he was thinking of an heroic woman +is his concern, not ours. His private kisses undoubtedly taught him +something of the art of making fictitious kisses public; they +furnished him, as such experiences furnish every author, with the +story which as an artist he was to "tell." But his purely personal +revelations are not startling. Ladies flit into his memory, receive +the most delicate literary treatment and flit out again. Nothing +unusual happens at Orelay or anywhere else, and what happens is +handled finely, timidly even, with what may have been audacity in +1890, but no longer strikes us as valiantly candid. The introduction +to "Memoirs of My Dead Life" now seems much ado over little; it is out +of proportion and is a wobbly piece of thinking such as Mr. Moore's +Irish born and French trained mind is seldom guilty of. The "Memoirs" +and "Hail and Farewell" are to be enjoyed and admired. Even an +Irishman ought not to find in them occasion for more than a contest of +wit. + +No page of "Hail and Farewell" is flat; no opinion of Mr. Moore's +leaves you quite indifferent. The most interesting pages, more +interesting than his portrait of himself as a lover in France or a +member of the landed gentry of county Mayo, are those which criticize +the personalities and the ideas of the so-called Celtic Revival. His +comments on Lady Gregory and "Willie" Yeats just miss being insults. +To say that "Lady Gregory has never been for me a very real person" is +gratuitous and not quite consonant with that honesty which Mr. Moore +advocates and for the most part practises. For in his portrait of her +and his comments on her he shows that she is a very real person to him +and a writer who compels his consideration. In the act of putting a +pin through the humbuggery of others he buzzes himself. + +However, his literary criticism of their work is delightful. Whether +it is true or not we Yankees have no sure means of judging. He says +that Lady Gregory's style which Mr. Yeats so highly values, the speech +that she learned from the people and puts into the mouths of her +characters, "consists of no more than a dozen turns of speech, dropped +into pages of English so ordinary, that redeemed from these phrases it +might appear in any newspaper without attracting attention." Well, is +not that true of the speech of the Irish or any province of England or +America? Our dialectic differences are few but important. The speech +of Lady Gregory's characters is effective, and more than that, the +humor and the pathos of them is deeper than their speech or any +peculiar turns of phrase. + +Doubtless (as would say Sir Sidney Lee, whom Mr. Moore despises), +doubtless Mr. Yeats makes too much of Lady Gregory's discovery of +dialect and of his own discovery of Lady Gregory. In the revised +version of "Red Hanrahan," he thanks Lady Gregory "who helped me to +rewrite The Stories of Red Hanrahan in the beautiful country speech of +Kiltartan, and nearer to the tradition of the people among whom he, or +some likeness of him, drifted and is remembered." It is little I care, +myself being a literary man, whether the metaphors and the syntax and +the sentence rhythms were contrived by Mr. Yeats or Lady Gregory or +the people of Kiltartan, or whether they are natural to the English +tongue of other times and other regions of the world. They are +impressive, they convey the story, and they give to the story the +strange color appropriate to it. Mr. Yeats plays with verbal color, +with lights and darkness in a way that should appeal to so sympathetic +a student of the French impressionists as Mr. Moore. + +To be sure, there is always the danger of affectation, and the +concluding sentences of Mr. Yeats's dedicatory letter to "AE" are +pretty close to buncombe. "Ireland, which is still predominantly +Celtic, has preserved, with some less excellent things, a gift of +vision which has died out among more hurried and more successful +nations; no shining candelabra have prevented us from looking into the +darkness, and when one looks into the darkness there is always +something there." Not always; there may not be anything there worth +talking about, not even a black cat. And the man of poetic vision may +be a citizen of a relatively successful nation. The eye does not +thrive in the dark, but is gradually atrophied. It was not by +scrutinizing the dark, but by using his ear and his wonderful visual +imagination that Mr. Yeats learned to write the verses in "Red +Hanrahan's Curse," verses the like of which no other man can write. + +In such verses lives and will live the real Yeats. That some of his +verses are obscure and weak does not matter. Greater poets than he +have failed at times. And the best of his later verse is his very +best; he grows and keeps young, for he has been dipped in some magic +well. That he has foibles a plenty is of little moment; greater poets +than he have allowed the fool to triumph over the genius sometimes. +The divine fool is one of the common themes in poetic legend. Later +criticism will assess the value of the "school" that he has founded +and appraise his influence in the literary history of Ireland. The +function of criticism at the present time is to proclaim the lyric +poet and persuade readers to subject themselves to the enchantment of +his songs. It is surprising that Mr. Moore, who preaches the gospel of +beauty with a fervor worthy of Keats, should not balance his witty +strictures with a little more hearty appreciation. He quotes one of +his friends as saying that Yeats "took his colleen to London and put +paint upon her cheeks and dye upon her hair and sent her up +Piccadilly." + +And another critic added that the hat and feathers were supplied by +Arthur Symons. That is funny enough and serves the purpose of +criticism by arousing interest. It also gives other critics +opportunity to remind their readers that Yeats's colleen, whether in +Sligo or London, is a lovely witch. + +One story that Mr. Moore tells of Mr. Yeats is beyond my un-Celtic +sense of humor. He represents Mr. Yeats as coming down to luncheon at +Lady Gregory's house and saying: "I have had a great morning. I have +written eight lines." Where is the joke? It does not seem to be at the +expense of the poet. Eight of his lines may seem a poor day's work to +so great a man as George Moore. But some of us who have not earned the +right to be patronizing would cheerfully devote a month of Sundays, if +we knew how, to making one line as good as the best of Yeats. These +Irish people rag each other delightfully, and it is more delightful to +poke fun than to admire too mutually; perhaps it is more Irish. + +Of living Irishmen the two most distinguished writers of prose are +George Moore and Bernard Shaw. They resemble each other in two or +three particulars. Both are out of sympathy with the modern movement +in Irish literature, with the "Celtic revival," with all that revolves +about the person of Mr. Yeats. In the introduction to "John Bull's +Other Island," Mr. Shaw says (I quote from memory) that he is an +old-fashioned Irishman who sees other Irishmen as they really are and +not as the young people of the Abbey Theatre imagine them to be. Mr. +Moore somewhat grudgingly concedes that Synge was a man of genius and +that Lady Gregory's plays, though inferior to the "Playboy" are all +meritorious. But he implies, if he does not directly say, that the +only man who really understands the diction of the Irish is George +Moore, Esq., of Moore Hall. Another point of resemblance between Shaw +and Moore is that both insist on calling themselves shameless; they +boast their independence and find satisfaction in contemplating their +difference from other people. It is amusing to think that the reading +world has long taken them for granted and is no longer shocked. Both +are masters of the English tongue, not of a new style full of strange +idioms, natural or artificial, but of the straightest sort of classic +English, firm as the best prose of the eighteenth century. + +It is that English which shall save these Celtic iconoclasts who are +now respectable old gentlemen. Irish to the back-bone, they took for +foster mother the finest prose of the race that betrayed their +country; they became favorite sons of an empire superior to the +political and racial divisions of the world. Mr. Moore thinks that the +English are a tired race and their weariness betrays itself in the +language. "God help the writer who puts pen to paper in fifty years' +time, for all that will be left of the language will be a dry +shank-bone that has been lying a long while on the dust-heap of +empire." A dismal prophecy which is cheerfully contradicted by the +facts of literary history. The political empire may be disrupted, +Ireland may be freed from English yoke and split in twain. But the +language is safe. Artists like Mr. Moore preserve its integrity and +renew its vitality. And we have not heard the last of James Joyce and +James Stephens, or of one or two young men who were born on the island +that lies east of Dublin. + + + + +JAMES JOYCE + + +In the preface of "Pendennis" Thackeray says: "Since the author of +'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been +permitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must drape him and +give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the +Natural in our Art." If Thackeray felt that, why did he not take his +reputation and his fortune in his hands and, defying the social +restrictions which he deplored, paint us a true portrait of a young +gentleman of his time? He might have done much for English art and +English honesty. As it was, he did as much as any writer of his +generation to fasten on English fiction the fetters of a hypocritical +reticence. It was only in the last generation that English and Irish +novelists, under the influence of French literature, freed themselves +from the cowardice of Victorian fiction and assumed that anything +human under the sun is proper subject-matter for art. If they have not +produced masterpieces (and I do not admit that they have not), they +have made a brave beginning. Such a book as "A Portrait of the Artist +as a Young Man" would have been impossible forty years ago. Far from +looking back with regret at the good old novelists of the nineteenth +century (whom, besides, we need never lose), I believe that our +fiction is in some respects freer[1] and richer than the fiction of +our immediate forefathers. + + [1] If it gets too free, as in Joyce's "Ulysses," it has an + official hand clapped on its mouth! + +Joyce's work is outspoken, vigorous, original, beautiful. Whether it +faithfully reflects Irish politics and the emotional conflicts of the +Catholic religion one who is neither Irish nor Catholic can not judge +with certainty. It seems, however, that the noisy controversies over +Parnell and the priests in which the boy's elders indulge have the +sound of living Irish voices; and the distracted boy's wrestlings with +his sins and his faith are so movingly human that they hold the +sympathy even of one who is indifferent to the religious arguments. I +am afraid that the religious questions and the political questions are +too roughly handled to please the incurably devout and patriotic. If +they ever put up a statue of Joyce in Dublin, it will not be during +his lifetime. For he is no respecter of anything except art and human +nature and language. + +There are some who, to turn his own imaginative phrase, will fret in +the shadow of his language. He makes boys talk as boys do, as they did +in your school and mine, except that we lacked the Irish imagery and +whimsicality. If the young hero is abnormal and precocious, that is +because he is not an ordinary boy but an artist, gifted with thoughts +and phrases above our common abilities. This is a portrait of an +artist, a literary artist of the finest quality. + +The style is a joy. "Cranly's speech," he writes, "had neither rare +phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned versions of Irish +idioms." In that Joyce has defined his own style. It is Elizabethan, +yet thoroughly modern; it is racily Irish, yet universal English. It +is unblushingly plain-spoken and richly fanciful, like Shakespeare and +Ben Jonson. The effect of complete possession of the traditional +resources of language is combined with an effect of complete +indifference to traditional methods of fiction. Episodes, sensations, +dreams, emotions trivial and tragic succeed each other neither +coherently nor incoherently; each is developed vividly for a moment, +then fades away into the next, with or without the mechanical devices +of chapter divisions or rows of stars. Life is so; a fellow is pandied +by the schoolmaster for no offense; the cricket bats strike the balls, +pick, pock, puck; there is a girl to dream about; and Byron was a +greater poet than Tennyson anyhow.... + +The sufferings of the poor little sinner are told with perfect +fidelity to his point of view. Since he is an artist his thoughts +appropriately find expression in phrases of maturer beauty than the +speech of ordinary boys. He is enamored of words, intrigued by their +mystery and color; wherefore the biographer plays through the boy's +thoughts with all manner of verbal loveliness. + + Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than + their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as + weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from + the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism + of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the + contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored + perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose? + +From the fading splendor of an evening beautifully described, he +tumbles into the sordid day of a house rich in pawn tickets. That is +life. "Welcome, O life!" he bids farewell to his young manhood. "I go +to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to +forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. +Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." + +The sketches in "Dubliners" are perfect, each in its own way, and all +in one way: they imply a vast deal that is not said. They are small as +the eye-glass of a telescope is small; you look through them to depths +and distances. They are a kind of short story almost unknown to the +American magazine if not to the American writer. An American editor +might read them for his private pleasure, but from his professional +point of view he would not see that there was any story there at all. +The American short story is explicit and thin as a moving-picture +film; it takes nothing for granted; it knows nothing of the art of the +hintful, the suggestive, the selected single detail which lodges +fertilely in the reader's mind, begetting ideas and emotions. America +is not the only offender (for patriotism is the fashion and bids +criticism relent); there is much professional Irish humor which is +funny enough but no more subtle than a shillalah. And English short +stories, such at least as we see in magazines, are obvious and +"express" rather than expressive. Joyce's power to disentangle a +single thread from the confusion of life and let you run briefly back +upon it until you encounter the confusion and are left to think about +it yourself--that is a power rare enough in any literature. + +Except one story, "A Painful Case," I could not tell the plot of any +of these sketches. Because there is no plot going from beginning to +end. The plot goes from the surface inward, from a near view away into +a background. A person appears for a moment--a priest, or a girl, or a +small boy, or a street-corner tough, or a drunken salesman--and does +and says things not extraordinary in themselves; and somehow you know +all about these people and feel that you could think out their entire +lives. Some are stupid, some are pathetic, some are funny in an +unhilarious way. The dominant mood is irony. The last story in the +book, "The Dead," is a masterpiece which will never be popular, +because it is all about living people; there is only one dead person +in it and he is not mentioned until near the end. That's the kind of +trick an Irishman like Synge or Joyce would play on us, and perhaps a +Frenchman or a Russian would do it; but we would not stand it from one +of our own writers. + + + + +D. H. LAWRENCE + + +Mr. Lawrence is a poet in prose and in verse. No writer of his +generation is more singular, more unmistakably individual, and no +other that I know is endowed with his great variety of gifts. He is as +dangerous to public morals as Meredith or Hardy. Readers who cannot +understand the tragedy of "Richard Feverel" or of "Jude the Obscure," +will not understand Mr. Lawrence or be interested to read a third of +the way through one of his books. The stupidity of the multitude is +sure protection against his insidious loveliness and essential +sadness. He and his admirers will, I hope, regard it as honorable to +him that he reminds this critic oftener of Meredith and Hardy than of +any of his contemporaries. I am not so fatuous as to suggest that his +independent and original work is in any unfavorable sense derivative. +It must be true that every young novelist learns his lessons from the +older novelists; but I cannot see that Mr. Lawrence is clearly the +disciple of any one master. I do feel simply that he is of the elder +stature of Meredith and Hardy, and I will suggest, in praise of him, +some resemblances that have struck me, without trying to analyze or +quote chapter and verse in tedious parallels. + +Mr. Lawrence is a lyric as well as a tragic poet. In this he is like +Meredith and Hardy, and I can think of no other young novelist who is +quite worthy of the company. Young people in love, or some other +difficulty, become entangled with stars and mountains and seas; they +are baffled and lost, seldom consoled, in cosmic immensities. +Novelists who happen also to be poets are enamoured of those +immensities. + +This is the end of "Sons and Lovers": + + "Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear + of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side + the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, + into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. + Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond + stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning + round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in the + darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. + So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core nothingness, and + yet not nothing." + +The concluding scenes of "Women in Love" are the Alps, "a silence of +dim, unrealized snow, of the invisible intervening between her and the +visible, between her and the flashing stars." I am reminded, by the +beauty of the phrasing and by the sense of the pathetic little human +being adrift in space, of the flight of the two young people through +the Alps, in "The Amazing Marriage," and of farmer Gabriel Oak +watching the westward flow of the stars. + +Sometimes, like Meredith, rather than like Hardy, whose style is +colder and more austere, Mr. Lawrence is almost too lyric and his +phrases threaten to overflow the rigid dikes of prose. I could pick +out a dozen rhapsodical passages which with little change might well +appear in his books of verse. + +But young people in love do not spend all their days and nights in +ecstatic flights to the clouds. And their flights are followed by +pathetic Icarian disasters. From luminous moments they plunge into +what Mr. Lawrence calls "the bitterness of ecstacy," and their pain +outweighs their joy many times over, as in Hardy, and as in the more +genial Meredith, whose rapturous digression played on a penny whistle +is a cruelly beautiful preparation for the agonies that ensue. It may +be that the emotional transports of Mr. Lawrence's young people are +more frequent and violent than the ordinary human soul can enjoy and +endure. The nervous tension is high and would break into hysteria if +Mr. Lawrence were not a philosopher as well as a poet, if he did not +know so accurately what goes on inside the human head, if he had not +an artist's ability to keep his balance at the very moment when a less +certain workman would lose it. + +There is firm ground under his feet and under the feet of his lovers; +it is the everyday life which consists of keeping shop and keeping +school and other commonplace activities in street, kitchen, and coal +mine. These diurnal details he studies with a fidelity not surpassed +by Mr. Bennett or any other of his contemporaries. The talk of his +people is always alive, both the dialect of the villagers and the +discussions of the more intellectual. Sometimes he puts into the +speech of his characters a little more of his own poetic fancy than +they might reasonably be supposed to be capable of. But if this is a +fault, from a realistic point of view, it is a merit from the point of +view of readability, and it makes for vivacity. At times--and is not +this like Meredith?--he seems to be less interested in the sheer +dramatic value of a situation he has created than in the opportunity +it offers of writing beautiful things around it. Not that his +situations fail to carry themselves or have not their proper place and +proportion. Mr. Lawrence knows how to handle his narrative and he has +an abundant invention and dramatic ingenuity. But he is above those +elementary things that any competent novelist knows. He has the +something else that makes the story teller the first rate literary +artist--style may be the word for it, but poetic imagination seems to +be the better and more inclusive term. Open "The Lost Girl" at page 57 +and read two pages. Without knowing what has preceded or whither the +story is bound, anybody who knows what literature is will feel at once +that that is it. + +"Women in Love" is a sequel to "The Rainbow," in that it carries on +the story of Ursula of the family of Brangwen. "The Rainbow" is the +stronger book; it has more of the tragic power, the deep social +implications of Mr. Lawrence's masterpiece, "Sons and Lovers". In +"Women in Love" are four young people, two men and two women, whose +chief interest, for them and for us, is in amatory relations. This is +indicated by the title of the story, one of those obvious titles which +only a man of imagination could hit upon, so simple that you wonder +why no novelist ever thought of it before. Now the erotic relations of +people, though a tremendous part of life, as all the great tragic +romances prove, are still only part of life. Nobody knows this better +than Mr. Lawrence. The first story of the Brangwen family is richer +than the second, not because of the proverbial falling off of sequels, +not because Mr. Lawrence's power declined--far from it!--but because +the first novel embraces a larger number of the manifold interests +that compose the fever called living. In it are not only young lovers, +but old people, old failures, the land, the town, the succession of +the generations rooted yet restless. Ursula emerges from immemorial +centuries of English life, touched with foreign blood out of Poland +(when an English novelist wishes to introduce variety and strangeness +into the dull solidity of an English town he imports a Pole, or an +Italian, or a Frenchman, somebody not English). + +Ursula's background is thus richer than all her emotional experience. +Her father, her grandfather, the family, the muddled tragicomedy of +little affairs and ambitions, the grim, gray colliery district, the +entire social situation, are the foundations and walls of the story, +and she is the slender spire that surmounts it all--and is struck by +lightning. In "The Rainbow" she goes to ashes, and in "Women in Love" +she revives, burns again, and finds in her new love new +dissatisfaction. + +It is impossible to write of Mr. Lawrence without discoursing in +symbols and reflecting, somewhat pallidly, his metaphors. For like all +genuine poets he is a symbolist. In "Aaron's Rod" he redoubles and +compounds symbolism in a manner baffling to readers and to critics who +like to have their prose prosaic and their poetry in lines and whose +sound stomachs refuse a mixed drink. I enjoy the mixture--in the +Bible, in Meredith, in Ruskin, in James, in Lawrence. + +It is stupid to explain symbols. Yet after all that is the dull +function of criticism, to explain something--as if the creator of a +work of art had not given all the necessary explanation in the very +act of creation. Whoever does not understand Lawrence on immediate +contact will not understand him better after the intervention of a +critic. But it is the pleasure and the privilege of a critic to have +his secondary imagination set on fire by the primary imagination of a +man of genius, to spread the fire if he can by the cold fluid of +critical exposition--as water carries burning oil. + +Well, then, Aaron's rod is doubly symbolic. His rod which, in the +Biblical phrase, bloomed, blossomed and yielded almonds, is a flute. +And the symbol is also phallic, as, indeed, it is in the Bible. +Aaron's flute, the musical instrument, is smashed in an accident which +is as irrational as life itself. The instrument in its other aspect is +broken by the supreme and only rationality--that of human character. + +In all his books, beginning with "Sons and Lovers," Mr. Lawrence has +shown relatively little interest in those mere sequences of external +events which novelists artificially pattern into plots. He throws some +matter-of-fact probabilities to the winds, as in "Aaron's Rod," when +he makes a man from the English collieries a master flautist and +alleges that he got a hearing in Italy, where there are more good +flautists to the square inch than in England to the square mile. + +But Aaron is an unusual person. "It is remarkable," says his creator, +"how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." Mr. +Lawrence has always been interested in slightly eccentric characters, +and so he stands apart from his contemporaries who call themselves +realists or naturalists because they deal with the commonplace or the +recognizably normal. + +After all, extraordinary persons in fiction, as in life, are better +worth knowing than ordinary persons. Mr. Lawrence does not make his +people so widely different from the general run of human beings as to +put a strain on credulity, and he studies them with a subtle and firm +understanding. Their talk sounds real. Their emotions are alive in his +bold and delicate prose. He has made amateurish excursions into +psychoanalysis, which may or may not be a fruitful subject for a +novelist to study. The real novelist has always been a psychologist in +an untechnical sense. + +Mr. Lawrence is too fine an artist to import into his art the dubious +lingo of psycho-analysis; he remains the poet, the dramatist, his +symbols and images uncorrupted by pseudo-science. Aaron's dream in the +last chapter--no modern novel is complete without at least one +dream--is easily "freuded" (cave, corridor, and water symbols), but +Mr. Lawrence refrains from analysis. + +Aaron's whole life, or as much as the author gives us of it, is a +dream, a dream unfulfilled in love or friendship or music. To what he +wakes, if he wakes at all, the conclusion leaves us guessing. That +will puzzle readers who demand that a story shall finish with a bang +or come to a definite point of rest. But life does not conclude; it +persists. + +When Aaron related his history and experiences to some friends, he +"told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at +that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things +in this life. Mixed." Though Aaron is a strange man, an individual, +yet the conflict that goes on in him, between his rebellion and his +indecision, his desire and his impotence, is not freakish; it is so +much like the struggle that every man knows, with special variations, +that it is true to universal human nature. Behind the symbolism are +the plain facts, solidly conceived. + +The other characters in the book are well drawn, notably Aaron's odd, +philosophic friend, Lilly, whose ideas are at once clear and cryptic. +There is a pitifully accurate portrait of a captain whose soul and +nerves had not recovered from the war. In a single chapter through one +man Mr. Lawrence suggests the disillusionment, the mental disaster, +that followed the armistice. "None of the glamour of returned heroes, +none of the romance of war ... the hot, seared burn of unbearable +experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not +to be relieved." + +In "The Lost Girl" and "Women in Love" the men are subordinate to the +women. In "Aaron's Rod" the women are of secondary interest; Aaron's +wife is rather indistinct and shadowy, and the Marchesa, the Cleopatra +whom he tried to love and couldn't, never quite comes alive, either +for Aaron or for the reader. Probably these women are just what Mr. +Lawrence intended them to be, as seen through Aaron's temperament. But +I do not feel that Mr. Lawrence has here made a very striking +contribution to the history of the everlasting warfare between the +sexes. Did Aaron miss because he happened not to meet the right woman? +Or was he the sort of man whom no woman could capture and satisfy? +Evidently Mr. Lawrence means to leave the eternal question unsettled +even for the man whom he has created. + +Like many other English poets, Mr. Lawrence is a lover of Italy, and +he takes his hero there, one suspects, for the sheer joy of the scene +and the atmosphere, which he realizes with vivid beauty. He is a +master of description, a master of words. His command ranges from the +baldest sort of every day conversation to prose harmonies that are as +near to verse as prose can go without breaking over. This is not +merely a command of style; it is more than that--it is a command of +ideas. Mr. Lawrence can pass with equal sureness from colliery to +cathedral and find the right word for every thing and person met on +the way, the right word, though often a perplexed and perplexing word. +Because life is like that. It is "mixed." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRITICAL GAME*** + + +******* This file should be named 38487.txt or 38487.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/4/8/38487 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/38487.zip b/38487.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6451f14 --- /dev/null +++ b/38487.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ced045c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #38487 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38487) |
