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diff --git a/78461-0.txt b/78461-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..63635f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/78461-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9551 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78461 *** + + + THE AMERICAN NOVEL + TO-DAY + + A Social and Psychological Study + + BY RÉGIS MICHAUD + + + BOSTON ~ 1928 + LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY + + + Copyright, 1928, + By Little, Brown, and Company + + All rights reserved + + Published January, 1928 + + + Printed in the United States of America + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENT + + +The author wishes to express his indebtedness to the publishers who +have so kindly granted him permission to reprint extended quotations +from novels used in the chapters of this book. These include Robert +M. McBride & Company, publishers of “Jurgen,” “Figures of Earth,” +“Domnei” and “The Cream of the Jest” by James Branch Cabell; Houghton +Mifflin Company, publishers of “My Antonia” by Willa Cather; Boni & +Liveright, publishers of “An American Tragedy,” “A Hoosier Holiday,” +“The Genius,” “Sister Carrie,” “The Financier” and “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub” +by Theodore Dreiser and “Dark Laughter” by Sherwood Anderson; The +Viking Press, publishers of “Marching Men,” “The Triumph of the Egg,” +“A Story Teller’s Story,” “Windy McPherson’s Son” and “Many Marriages” +by Sherwood Anderson; and D. Appleton & Company, publishers of “Miss +Lulu Bett” by Zona Gale. + + + + +FOREWORD + + +This book grew out of a series of lectures given by the author at the +Sorbonne during the year 1926. These lectures were later published in +a volume which was awarded the Montyon prize by the French Academy. +The author’s first task is to apologize to the American reader for his +audacity in attempting to transcribe it into English, and to seek his +indulgence by reminding him that this is “an essay from a French pen,” +to quote our former ambassador, M. Jusserand. It is only fair that the +writer should warn his readers that the field of his investigation has +been limited. His purpose was not to write a complete history of the +American novel, although the principal masters of modern fiction have +been included in the book; nor was it his intention that this should be +purely a piece of literary criticism. + +No one can open an American novel without being impressed by the +earnestness and the unanimity which the authors display in discussing +moral and social questions. Their books constitute a vast satire of +present-day American civilization, a defense of the rights of man +against the pressure of obsolete ideals and traditions. From this +standpoint, they constitute a homologous group while each retains his +full measure of originality. + +Realism is not a new factor in American fiction. From Edward Eggleston +to Theodore Dreiser, the American novel has tended more and more to +become a precise account of American society. However, realism has +never been as prevalent and as outspoken as it is to-day. As the United +States increased in number and in population, the conflict between the +ideals of the individual and those of the mass became more and more +acute. Meanwhile the progress of experimental psychology afforded the +American novelist a new means of explaining and revealing the motives +of the individual. + +In my book I have made reference to psychoanalysis in particular. +Current literary criticism cannot afford to ignore Doctor Freud. Some +masters of American literature, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel +Hawthorne, Henry James, Margaret Fuller and Amy Lowell have lately been +subjected to a successful psychoanalysis. The new psychology permits a +more exact diagnosis of several important phases of our consciousness +which have their origin in the deepest recesses of our soul, and which, +though not literary in themselves, are often manifest in literature. +Freudian psychology is the natural ally of the sociologist. It shifts +the largest part of the responsibility for many of the moral diseases +and idiosyncrasies of the individual upon social institutions. By +presenting Puritanism as a form of moral inhibition it throws a new +light upon it. + +Moral and psychological duplicity have been the subjects of several +European investigations before the ascendancy of Doctor Freud. One +of the most suggestive was presented in a book called “Le Bovarysme” +by the French philosopher, Jules de Gaultier. He chose Flaubert’s +Madame Bovary as being the most typical case of romantic inhibition. +He showed that after all romanticism was nothing but a psychological +disease and the attempt of an individual under social pressure to +appear in a double light in his own eyes. A more pathetic example can +scarcely be conceived than that of Flaubert’s heroine, Emma Bovary, +and her attempt to lead an imaginary life as a compensation for her +monotonous environment. It is obvious from a perusal of American +novels of to-day that Emma Bovary has many brothers and sisters in +this country. A normal society cannot exist without normal people and +the latter cannot be imagined without a certain amount of personal +freedom and felicity. Standardization, the tyranny of public opinion +and morals, the leveling of the exceptional to the mass ideal, petty +persecutions, blue laws, Comstockery and so forth, had a part to play +in Emma Bovary’s slow but sure moral and spiritual starvation, and in +her ultimate suicide. Social welfare rests on a harmonious balance of +give and take between the upper and lower classes. An excess of freedom +produces anarchy; an excess of tyranny, inhibitions, despair and crime. +No life is worth living wherein action is not a sister to dreams to +some extent, to use Baudelaire’s saying. The plight of Flaubert’s +heroine and that of Carol Kennicott in “Main Street” are different +aspects of the same social and moral disease--undue moral repression. + +The author of this book is not a pessimist and he is well aware that +there are many American virtues; frankness, cordiality, buoyancy, +a love of life and a love of action, a craving for change, the +exaltation of youth, pure and triumphant, and the dynamism of national +life,--these are qualities which the Old World might envy the New. But +an outside observer might also have the right to point to the reverse +side of these qualities. What has become of ethical and intellectual +standards in the United States, a country so unmistakably prosperous +and happy from a material point of view? What is the present condition +of culture which exists behind the display of luxury and comfort? How +has America fared in the conflict of quality _versus_ quantity which +has swept the world? + +One thing strikes the European in these United States of to-day; it +is the contrast between the general prosperity and the individual +discontent. The average American, taken out of his natural +surroundings, appears like one who is sacrificed by being harnessed to +some huge task whose importance he cannot grasp with reference to his +personal satisfaction. He has helped to build a colossal structure, but +what has he succeeded in achieving for his own gratification? Has he +not sacrificed his best personal interests to the general welfare? The +average American is an optimist superficially, but many disappointments +lie buried in his heart. There seems to be some ungratified longing +in his life; neither Puritan asceticism nor material prosperity can +satisfy the new generation in America. The newcomers declare themselves +discontented; they have become frankly pessimistic. A proud and wealthy +nation, the proudest and wealthiest of all, the most eager and the +most successful in conquering the means of material welfare, America +does not seem to know how to make her children happy. They are in +revolt, they are questioning the ideals and institutions of their +fathers. In poetry, in drama, in the pulpit and in the press, pessimism +and criticism prevail. Only recently the élite of the American +intelligentsia declared that the civilization of the United States had +been a failure. + +What of all that? The author is not dismayed by these complaints. He +holds that art in its largest sense has always had pessimism as its +base and exaltation as its apogee. _Durch Leiden Freude!_ the great +Beethoven proclaimed. Better to have the blues of a Chatterton, an +Edgar Allan Poe, a Francis Thompson, than to have the banal optimism +of a Babbitt after a good meal. The present pessimism of the younger +generation in America is a good omen and an indication of a better +future. Young America is looking forward to more thrilling spiritual +adventures and it certainly will not be deceived in its high +expectations. + + RÉGIS MICHAUD + + + + + CONTENTS + + + Foreword vii + + I The Case Against the Puritans 3 + + II How Nathaniel Hawthorne Exorcised Hester Prynne 25 + + III Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells + and American Society on Parade 47 + + IV Theodore Dreiser as a Bio-Chemist 71 + + V Theodore Dreiser and the American Tragedy 102 + + VI Sinclair Lewis and the Average Man 128 + + VII Sherwood Anderson or When the Dreamer Awakes 154 + + VIII Sherwood Anderson on This Side of Freud 181 + + IX James Branch Cabell and the Escape to Poictesme 200 + + X James Branch Cabell on the High Place 221 + + XI Reinforcements: Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell, + Joseph Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank 238 + + XII Ulysses’ Companions: Robert McAlmon, Ben Hecht, + William Carlos Williams 257 + + Index 285 + + + + + THE AMERICAN NOVEL TO-DAY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +_The Case Against the Puritans_ + + +The last fifteen years have seen a complete revolution in old American +literary ideals. There has been a new efflorescence of poetry known +as the “new poetry” movement. On the stage, after the attempts of +William Vaughn Moody to renew the American drama, by fusing together +realism and symbolism, Eugene O’Neill appeared and showed originality +in his lyric dramatizations. In criticism, talents of the first order +were revealed. The din of battles, the eagerness of controversies +bear witness to the existence of an intensive, intellectual life in +the United States to-day. Romanticism _versus_ classicism, progress +_versus_ tradition, or, to speak the language of the country, +radicalism _versus_ conservatism, waged a strenuous battle for their +respective ideals. Messrs. Mencken, Van Doren, Rosenfeld, Van Wyck +Brooks, Frank Harris, on the left wing, Paul Elmer More, the late +Stuart P. Sherman, Irving Babbitt, W. C. Brownell, on the right, have +made a sport of intellectual polemics and appreciation. American +criticism is not content with gliding on the surface of authors or +problems. It goes straight to moral problems and shows a keen intuition +of technics. + +This spiritual effervescence is well worth our attention. The literary +nonconformist is a type not yet extinct in America. A revival of +the protestant spirit and of critical examination has taken place +in American literature. More faith and conviction have been spent +in literary production than in the pulpit of the churches. The late +Randolph Bourne was a typical example of the American literary radical, +and Mr. Henry Mencken continues the tradition among us. + +Even from the literary point of view, the American novel in the +nineteenth century envied the rest of the world nothing. It produced +excellent models of all kinds. The novel of adventure, the novel of +manners have been stamped by Cooper and Hawthorne with the authentic +seal of genius. More recently, Henry James showed himself a master +of the psychological novel and an unparalleled artist. The vogue in +America and abroad of the American “movies” could not be explained +without the writings of Jack London. The short story, since Edgar Poe, +had been a product copyrighted in America, while American humorists had +won a worldwide reputation. + +When all is told, if we make an inventory of the literary production +in the world, as compared with that of the United States, in prose +and verse, since, let us say, the advent of Baudelaire in France, we +see that America, a so-called utilitarian country, has set, in more +than one way, modern literary standards, with Poe, Whitman, Henry +James. Meanwhile, in the realm of thought, American philosophy and +psychology exerted a capital influence abroad. (A recent novel by M. +Paul Bourget[1] still takes for granted all the doctrines professed by +William James in his “Handbook of Psychology.”) + +Let this be said in way of prelude, to make the readers of this +volume well aware of the fact that the author does not accept without +reserve all the criticisms hurled against American literature by +modern American critics. The fertility and originality of American +literature, in a country without literary traditions or institutions, +are facts beyond all doubt. They fill one with optimism regarding the +intellectual future of this great nation. + +Yet, criticism is unleashed in the United States nowadays and it spares +nothing. If the French are critical by birth, one would say, judging +from the mass of evidence, that the modern American was born fussy. +In a country where the standards of life change overnight, critical +revaluations in literature are fatal. The American Hall of Fame could +not escape the law of perpetual transformation. Until recently, the +United States was the last country in the world which continued to take +for granted the optimism of the eighteenth-century encyclopedists. +Americans have not yet lost their faith in automatic progress. Despite +the “fundamentalists” they have evolution in their blood. May I +suggest, on the threshold of this book, that a European observer may be +better located, ideally speaking, to render American literature full +justice than even native critics? He has less illusions and also less +prejudices. He views the literary revolution in the recent years in +America as a result of the moral and social advance. + +In the last twenty years a new class of writers has invaded American +literature. The spirit of the pioneers never died in America. The +young writers wanted to conquer new fields in an entirely new way. +Their originality was a challenge to the old order. More than any +other country since the War, literary America has struggled to find +a new heaven and a new earth. Modern writers are conscientiously and +deliberately insurgents. They turn a cold shoulder to traditions. In +fact, they belong, socially, to a new class. Few of them are well-to-do +bourgeois educated in expensive colleges and depending for their +writing upon leisure and incomes. American literature is no longer the +monopoly of gentlemen and scholars. The great majority of American +writers to-day are self-made men, born from the people, without any +blue blood and entirely democratic in their lives if not in their +ideals. Most of them wear the chevrons not of the universities but of +journalism. A great many, and the most noted among them, were reporters +before becoming authors. This throws not a little light on their +literary achievements. Most of them adhere to no church. The American +literary “Who’s Who” includes indiscriminately all creeds, Protestants, +Catholics, Jews, and free thinkers. American literature has shunned +respectability. It jumped from the right to the left and even to the +extreme left. From aristocratic or bourgeois it became revolutionary +and proletarian. + +Even the geographical positions were altered. American literature had, +up to the most recent years, been largely manufactured in the eastern +States, a country conservative by tradition. As opportunities for +adventure became rare in the East, Boston, Philadelphia and even New +York ceased to be literary Meccas. The new literature developed in the +Middle West. This fact is not without its historical significance. + +It marked a return of the American mind to the natural line of American +migration, from frontier to frontier, across the continent. The writers +took the path of the missionaries, the pioneers and the captains of +industry, the path of the covered wagon. + +This was a challenge to the ideals of their predecessors. Classic +American writers leaned more on the East than on the West, more on +Europe than on their own country. Their literary taste and ideals, +if not always their programme, were European, or if you prefer, +Victorian. The new literature is strictly indigenous. It is crude and +in many ways primitive. It is no longer manufactured in drawing-rooms +or in studios, but in immediate contact with life. The great American +novel of the nineteenth century was exotic and retrospective. It +was sentimental and romantic. Its ethical and social background +was traditional. Sentimentality and romance, the search after the +picturesque, have gone by the boards. They have passed to the “movies” +or to the popular magazines, the latter almost as backward to-day as +they used to be fifty years ago and as harmless. The novel of adventure +has been extinct, as a _genre littéraire_ in America, since the death +of Jack London. Even the social novel has suffered a radical change. +It is no longer written from the outside, from the point of view of +society, as in the days of Frank Norris or Upton Sinclair. It is now +written from the inside, from the point of view of the individual. It +is more psychological than social. In fact, while the American novel +became more realistic, it also began to be beset by moral problems. +It ceased to be an epic to become a satire. From this point of view, +however, despite their cynicism, the new masters of American fiction +show themselves true to the old ideal. Their books are fraught with +idealism, with the spirit of reform and amelioration. Even when they +fight Puritanism, the American literary insurgents show themselves +more puritanic than the Puritans. They are haunted by the dream of a +better world and of a better humanity. + +The fact that the new literature in America is contemporary with the +wave of pessimism which has marked the last twenty years is not a mere +coincidence. The two events stand very much together in a relation +of effect to cause. Pessimism in the United States to-day has not +yet affected the external aspects of American life. It has not made +the average American less buoyant and confident. The sunny side of +American life is still there. And yet, it cannot be denied that the +age of jazz is more gloomy than the age of Roosevelt. There is a great +deal of dissatisfaction in America to-day. The restless trend of life, +the mad pursuit of material ease, the desertion of the home, the +speed mania, the get-rich-quick impulse, are no longer the privilege +of the grown-up. The contagion of material welfare and luxury has +reached the young. It has lured them and led them astray. Educators, +clergymen, sociologists, and, unfortunately too, criminologists, +are much worried by the spread of the new paganism, and the growth +of juvenile delinquency. American homes and colleges are swamped +to-day with precocious supermen and superwomen eager to live their +lives, as the saying is, without knowing how, except by aping their +elders, by procuring expensive motor cars and jewels, or by securing +for themselves road-house privileges. Juvenile criminality is on the +increase. There is an epidemic of suicide among the young and the +standards of morality are not much higher among the mature at large. No +wonder that the American élite should be clamoring for a revaluation of +standards. + +How can they win their fight? They are a handful in a mass of more +than one hundred million people, led, the vast majority of them, by +mob psychology and the tyranny of public opinion. This certainly is a +pathetic and vexing problem. For a European observer the fight in the +United States to-day is not so much that of good and evil, right and +wrong. The economic and material standards of the average American +are much higher than those in the Old World. The fight in America +to-day is, at the bottom, that of the élite against the masses, the +fight of quality _versus_ quantity. This problem lies far beyond +the power of statistics. It cannot be coped with by economists or +sociologists. It falls within the pale of the moralist, the mystic and +the philosopher. A big nation, like a big army, cannot exist without a +discipline and a strict subordination of the masses to their leaders. +How can this be possible without setting limits to the rights of +individual development? This problem is complicated in America by that +of standards. How are the demands of the masses going to be gratified +without a leveling down of the standards? Is not material comfort the +most obvious and most accessible value for the greater number? And what +has intellectual growth to do with material welfare? + +A type of civilization is not easily changed. Only a Chinese general or +a Nietzschean philosopher would dare to solve the problem of the masses +by applying the remedy suggested, a long time ago, by the benign R. W. +Emerson: + + Earth crowded, cries “Too many men.” + My counsel is kill nine in ten. + +More than ten millions have been killed, within the last ten years, in +Christian warfare, and _quality_ does not seem to have won yet over +quantity. The polemics around the War have not solved but intensified +the feud between the American élite and the masses. Immediately after +the armistice of 1918, American radicals undertook a revaluation of war +responsibilities. The American intelligentsia had never put its heart +into the struggle. Conscientious objectors swarmed on all sides. The +present economic, political and intellectual chaos through the world +is largely the work of American nonconformists. They spared nothing to +reverse the guilts, to confuse the origin and the issues of the war. +The result of their efforts was an immense disarray of the world’s +conscience. The actual misunderstandings about debts and reparations, +the aloofness of the United States and their retirement within a narrow +and obsolete Monroeism, the Americano-phobia abroad can be credited +mostly to the exertions of American radicals. After they had lost their +temper with Europe they began their intellectual civil war at home. +Their target-practicing became suicidal. The glories of the American +Hall of Fame were lampooned in broad daylight. American institutions +and ideals were challenged. There was an orgy of self-exterminating +criticism. While radical newspapers and magazines wasted much ink to +blacken the lamb and to bleach the wolf, in international relations, +critics at home, like Mr. Mencken, turned their ire against their own +country. The “Magnalia Christi Americana” of Cotton Mather became +the “Americana” of the _American Mercury_. In Mr. Mencken’s amusing +magazine American glories and reputations were mowed down like daisies +on a lawn. The churches, the colleges, the Federal Government were +dealt with, at first hand and without much respect, and then appeared +the indictment of American civilization as a whole by the thirty +intellectuals. The confidence of the world in the United States and +of the United States in themselves must still be very great, if one +judges by the quick and informal dismissal into oblivion of this bulky +indictment. + +As a result of all this, there seem to be two United States to-day +warring with each other. On the one hand we still have the “Land +of God,” a nation just as proud of itself to-day as it was in the +best days of the Roosevelt administration. And then there are the +discontented and self-criticizing United States, a land where every +article of the old creed is contradicted by self-disparaging critics. +Between the two, on a sort of No Man’s Land, wander not a few erratic +souls in quest of an ideal. The late Henry Adams was their model. + +The upheaval against optimism and conformity is pretty general to-day +among the thinking classes in the United States. Protests, inquiries +and criticisms appear on all sides. If we believe them, American +citizens have been cheated of their rights to happiness as promised in +the American Constitution. But the fight among them is not so much with +the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as with the official +scapegoat, Puritanism. + +As a collective and national state of mind, Puritanism can be traced +far back in American traditions and literature. Before indicting it, we +must not fail to see its good points, and it had many. Far from being +in itself adverse to all æsthetics, as its American critics would have +us believe, Puritanism was in the past a literary incentive of the +first order. Its tragic conception of life is much more artistic than +the dull optimism of the masses. No art is possible without pessimism. +Art in its essence is a challenge to life. Puritanism was the only +moral and religious system, outside Catholicism, which invented a +mythology and a symbolism in the modern times. It inspired the immortal +epic of Milton. It gave their quaint flavor even to Jonathan Edwards’ +sermons and the “Magnalia” of Cotton Mather. No true road to salvation +can ignore the pits of human wickedness. The fantastic elements in +Hawthorne and Poe were largely borrowed from the demonology of the +Puritan divines. Puritanism believed in the devil. It was a tremendous +source of religious emotions. It fed the sense of the supernatural +which is to-day practically extinct in the American churches. It +favored the growth of mysticism and of the poetic faculties. It +enhanced the love of solitude. It shunned comfort and emphasized the +military and rugged aspects of life. It was friendly to nature and +not adverse to the call of the wild. It pondered over the ominous +problems of life, death, grace and responsibility. It inclined toward +simple life, intimacy with the humble and familiar aspects of life. +This Puritan type of mind has been illustrated by some of the most +intellectual leaders of America, Emerson, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, +William Vaughn Moody, Robert Frost, Robinson. Puritanism was a synonym +for restraint, poverty, abnegation, depth of conscience and thought, +qualities sorely needed in our present state of civilization. We owe +to it the sense of the Infinite in the humblest objects and amidst the +most trivial circumstances of our life, what Maeterlinck called, after +Emerson, the sense of “the familiar sublime.” And let us not forget +those forms of inhibited irony which gave birth to American humor. + +On the other hand, it is true, the toll levied by Puritanism on human +happiness has been ominous. For the average mind it meant intellectual +consumption and asphyxiation. Puritan asceticism was an enemy of +everything beautiful. Puritan institutions, the Puritan spirit of +prohibition and constraint, have been justly denounced by modern +critics as the chief obstacle to a rational and acceptable conception +of life. Puritanism showed an admirable knowledge of the truest sides +of existence and of its responsibilities, but it did not see all its +sides. It perceived only and denounced flesh and the devil. It was +suspicious of all the happy instincts and denied some essential human +cravings. + +Hence the present revolt against it. The critics of Puritanism in +America to-day are legion. The anti-Puritan spirit forms the substratum +of contemporary American literature. It is only fair to Theodore +Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Cabell and +others to try to show, in way of preamble, that their plea against +Puritan hypocrisy is supported by most of the up-to-date critics who +handle a pen in the United States to-day. To review them all would be a +long task. I shall deal only in this chapter with the most noted, like +Messrs. Waldo Frank, Henry Mencken, Theodore Dreiser and a few others. + +Waldo Frank (in “Our America”) views Puritanism as a sort of moral and +mystic utilitarianism based on the repression of natural instincts. +As a religious and a practical expansionist (the one is not to be +separated from the other), the Puritan sacrificed moral growth to +physical hegemony. To conquer the continent and intensify his energies +he surrounded himself on all sides with restraints. Neurosis was the +result, but the Puritan charged it to the account of the Prince of +Darkness and the invisible powers. He wanted to reach salvation by a +short cut and did not hesitate to do violence to human nature. When +they attack Puritanism the new insurgents do not aim at windmills. +They see it as a practical influence still at work in American +society to-day. It gives them the key to American behavior. According +to them, the average American is a victim of puritanic repressions +since childhood. The system of American education is hostile to what +modern psychologists call “wish-fulfillment.” The American is active, +expansive, a progressionist and a doer in regard to matter. He shows +a virile conscience in his conduct toward the physical universe. On +the contrary, in regard to spiritual life, he dodges the facts and +shrinks within himself. His physical courage is undeniable, but he is +mentally and morally a coward. Read an American novel, attend a play +or a “movie.” All begins well. Human problems are not ignored but, at +the end, Puritan cowardice interferes to twist the facts and hide them +in an enforced “happy ending.” The American is a wonderful mechanical +engineer. When he cannot subdue reality by machinery, he resorts +to plots and schemes of his own. He tries to gamble and speculate. +Hence American ideology. When he has confused the issues the American +gives it up and he passes his problems to his church, his lodge, his +newspaper, or, preferably, to his wife, not to forget the mind reader +and the palmist. Optimism at all costs is a necessity for the business +man as well as for the pioneer. Expansion lives on assumptions, on +foregone conclusions and hopes supported by haphazard calculation. + +According to Waldo Frank, Puritanism was tantamount to a religious +decadence. It was essentially irreligious. Not the meek in spirit but +the shrewd and the valiant were the elect of Puritanism. From the very +beginnings of colonization in America, Puritan idealism and commercial +imperialism went hand in hand. The decadence began at the epoch of +the Reformation. While all Europe was advancing along intellectual, +artistic and literary paths, the Puritan bartered his soul for earthly +possessions. Spiritual energies turned material. Physical exertions +for power paralyzed higher aspirations. The individual as such no +longer counted. Expansion was all and the building of an empire. Even +the notion of a personal God disappeared. The _genius loci_ replaced +Providence. _Magnalia Christi_ became _Magnalia Christi Americana_.[2] + +That one of the most fervent forms of mysticism should have decayed +into being only a craving for material prosperity is the paradox and +the curse of Puritanism. America, we are told, is teeming to-day with +all the riches of this earth. From the top of a mountain the Tempter +would be proud to show it to Him who said that His kingdom did not +belong to this world. From the heights of the ideal, however, America +looks like a desert. Let her confess her sins, her emptiness, her +impurities. Let America repent and convert herself! Let her find a +way to salvation by giving up the Puritan ideals! Thus speaks the new +Zarathustra with an intensity of conviction and a zeal which betrays +the prophet and the idealist. Such an indictment takes us very far +away from the days of optimism, from Emerson, Whitman, William James +and Theodore Roosevelt. American idealism was buried in the grave of +the Transcendentalists. As for American energy it floundered in the +quagmire described by Theodore Dreiser in “An American Tragedy.” + +After Waldo Frank let us hear Mr. Henry Mencken, than whom no better +expert for smashing the Puritan can be found (in “Puritanism as a +Literary Force”). According to him, except in the course of brief +escapades, the average American translates all values and even beauty +in terms of right and wrong. He is at the bottom a policeman and a +judge, a fanatic of the law.[3] + +Americans do not hesitate to sacrifice beauty and passion to +respectability. If an American writer dared to follow the example of +either Zola or Balzac in their descriptions of American society, they +would be sent to the penitentiary for life. One of the most active +forces at work to keep up American civilization is a belief in the +universal presence of sin and the need of inquisition to uphold the +moral code. Readers familiar with Mr. Mencken’s writings will remember +with what fertility of imagination and keenness of wit he illustrated +his views on the subject. The richer the Puritan became the more +tyrannical he showed himself. His wealth made him intolerant and +oppressive. Now that he was assured of his salvation, he turned his +energies to convert the world outside by campaigns, crusades and so +forth. He tried to make the world safe for righteousness and morality +by compulsion, prohibitions and blue laws. + +As a disciple of Zola and Balzac, and an extreme realist in his +descriptions of American society, Theodore Dreiser has not yet been +jailed for life, so far as we know. However, he enjoyed enough +scraps with the censor to have personal reasons for venting his +feelings concerning the Puritan. The author of “Sister Carrie” is +not a professional humorist, and yet he can hardly control himself +when he contemplates the American scene as ordained by Puritanism. +I quote freely from his essay on “Life, Art in America,” in “Hey +Rub-a-Dub-Dub.” Theodore Dreiser cannot refrain from chuckling, he +tells us, when he sees more than one hundred millions of his countrymen +loaded with a wealth which passes the imagination of the most +enthusiastic miser and unable to count among themselves a sculptor, a +poet, a singer, a novelist, an actor, a musician of the first rank. +For two centuries America enjoyed an amazing prosperity. Her land +is stuffed with mines, with oil and coal. It is full of beautiful +mountains, of large valleys and rivers. There are facilities of all +sorts for trade and for travel. And yet, with all her prosperity, +America hardly counts an artist or a thinker of mark. Where are we to +find, leaving aside Emerson and William James,[4] the American Spencer, +Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, or Kant? Has America any historian to compare +with Macaulay, Grote or Gibbon? Has she any novelist like Maupassant +or Flaubert? Where is the American equivalent of Crooks, Roentgen, +Pasteur? Is there an American critic with the depth and forcibleness of +Taine, Sainte-Beuve or the De Goncourts? Has America a playwright like +Ibsen, Tchekhov, Shaw, Hauptmann or Brieux? Where are her Coquelins, +Sonnenthals, Forbes-Robertsons and Bernhardts? America has produced +only one poet since Whitman, Edgar Lee Masters. American painting can +marshal Whistler, Inness and Sargent, but two out of the three migrated +abroad. America has plenty of inventors, some of them remarkable, but +this has nothing to do with art and the freeing of the mind. + +Such is Theodore Dreiser’s arraignment of American culture. Puritanism +thwarted intellectual energies. It is its fault if this country of +wonderful technicians remained in a state of childhood in regard +to higher mental achievements. On one hand the American grasps the +physical world with the might of a Titan, on the other he revels in +platitudes about brotherly love, purity, virtue, truth, etc., and +under the cover of these platitudes he unleashes the Comstocks against +independent writers. + +There are some professional psychologists among the critics of +Puritanism to-day. In a recent book entitled “The American Mind +in Action” two of them[5] made a methodical study of puritanic +inhibitions. They selected, to illustrate their case, personalities +such as Emerson, Lincoln, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Comstock, +Barnum, Franklin, Longfellow and Margaret Fuller.[6] + +According to these authors the Puritan repression of natural instincts +is a danger and a failure. It breeds hypocrisy and poisons the soul. +Puritanism is responsible for most of the mental tortures which have +been dramatized by American novelists in particular. The scientific +name for these tortures is “floating anxiety” or “soul-fear.” They +explain the transformation of Puritanism into imperialistic expansion. +Everything is good for the Puritan if it takes him away from himself, +from his fears, and his remorses. Hence his worship for action, for +prosperity and success at all cost. American energy, viewed from this +angle, is nothing but a substitute for scruples. If we believe this +theory, the darings of the modern business man, his pluck, his boasting +spirit of enterprise are only means to get rid of fright. A business +man’s courage resembles that of the “Chocolate Soldier” in Bernard +Shaw’s comedy. It is a derivative of fear, a _flight_ straight ahead +toward the enemy, because there is no hope left behind. The American +continent was conquered by religious misanthropists who vented their +bad feelings by starting an onslaught on the Indians and other inferior +races. The wrath of Miles Standish when he finds himself rebuked by +Priscilla in his courtship and his subsequent offensive on the Redskin +explains this point of view.[7] How different America would be if +the Virginian Cavalier had won over the Puritan! But the contrary +happened. Natural conditions and economic forces made Puritanism the +sole form of national ethics in the United States. So much the worse! +This state of blind repression and of anxious insecurity have made +Puritanism the only form of thinking in America. Notwithstanding the +diversion of affairs or the relaxation of sports, travel and amusement, +soul-fear cannot be eschewed. + +The American worries about health, hygiene. He worries about success. +These are signs that the spiritual life is absent. Angry with himself, +and with others, the disillusioned Puritan becomes a raider and an +inquisitor. He wants to prohibit to others that happiness which is +denied to him. He fears his own fear; he distrusts his emotions. He is +afraid to surrender to nature which he regards as corrupt. And yet, +without emotions there is no art or literature possible. An example +of the Puritan inhibition, and of its effects on art, is Whistler +painting, with all his soul, the portrait of his mother and calling +it informally “Arrangement in black and white” for fear that he would +betray his inner feelings. False pride, _amour-propre_ and bluff are +the ransoms for Puritanism. + +Another American complex, if we believe our critics, is the “mother +complex,” the American complex _par excellence_. The sublimation of +instincts in the American woman produced the so-called “motherly +feeling.” It triumphs in American magazines and in the “movies.” The +sentimental appeal to the motherly feeling is the surest and shortest +way to arouse the emotions of the American crowds.[8] + +American idealism is largely manufactured by women. It is to women that +the average American owes his ideals and ethical or literary standards. +It is woman who inspires, supervises and censors art and literature in +the United States; it is she who makes them aseptic, consumptive and +tawdry.[9] + +In business the American is a real “he-man” but, when he must face +moral issues, he surrenders to his mate. He tamed the physical universe +with machinery and became a leader of material civilization. He can +well solve mechanical problems, but ethics, philosophy and gay science +are beyond his pale. And this is why the typical American to-day is +so idealistic, so practical too, so inventive and so little of a +philosopher and of an artist. He is anxious, restless, assured of +himself on the surface but, in reality, very sensitive to criticism. +Nobody is more able than he to attain the goal of his ambitions and +nobody is more unhappy and helpless when he has reached it.[10] + +Such is the survey of American ethics and psychology made by some of +the best-known American critics. In this book it is meant to compare +their views with those of the most noted among American novelists +to-day. Floating anxiety, soul fear, Freudian complexes and inhibitions +throw a great deal of light on the contemporary novel. The case against +the Puritan has been pressed by modern American novelists to the limit +of pathos. + +The massive, clumsy, but forcible and convincing Theodore Dreiser, the +genial and yet embittered Sinclair Lewis, the mystic and intuitive +Sherwood Anderson, the ironic and quixotic James Branch Cabell, +accompanied by a galaxy of talented writers like Willa Cather, Zona +Gale, Floyd Dell, Joseph Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank,--all of them, +since Hawthorne, through Henry James, William Dean Howells and +Edith Wharton, show themselves obsessed by the problems of Puritan +inhibitions and their influence on human conduct. More recently still, +a host of younger writers has appeared in American fiction, all of them +fascinated by the question of psychological behavior. The wanderings +of Ulysses, in James Joyce’s Freudian epic, through the mazes of +subconsciousness, had many American followers. Several of them have +been included in this volume. + +This book has no pretensions at being complete and it is not ashamed +of being systematic. It deals chiefly with those American writers who +explored the field of psychology and psychoanalysis and it happens to +include most of the greatest. All writers of American fiction to-day +could not be marshaled in line but the most famous are here. The author +is not a professional pessimist, but it is not his fault if the good +half-dozen of original talents to-day, in American literature, are +adepts in disillusion. There is no reason to be dismayed by this fact. +Great art has always been pessimistic; the more pessimistic, it seems, +the greater. The fact that an optimistic country like America has a +gloomy literature to-day must not be a deterrent. Art, in its highest +forms, is not a mere imitation of life. It is rather a reaction and a +protest against it. It lives and works in the sphere of aspirations. + +The later generation of American writers is bent toward introspection +and realism. In art these writers want truth. Between them and the +past there is a gap. The time seems past for descriptive and objective +literature. Subjectivism prevails. Novelists to-day want to share the +lives of their characters. This new method of literary expression has +been called in France _monologue intérieur_. The intimacy between +reality and fiction has never been closer than now. The new writers +also are revolutionists and iconoclasts. They swore allegiance to no +master. Among foreign influences the Russian seems to be particularly +prevalent with them. The American novel to-day would not be what it is +without Dostoievski, Andreiev or Tchekhov. Neither does it deny its +debt to Balzac, Flaubert, Zola or Marcel Proust. D. H. Lawrence and +James Joyce also sponsored it. + +In ethics and sociology the aloofness of the newcomers is complete. +Psychology, not morals, is their chief interest. They are indifferent +to rhetorics. The questions of style are alien to them. The password +nowadays is spontaneous and original expression. Any means to this end +is style. + +Let us now, from Hawthorne to James Branch Cabell and others, begin our +journey through the field of American fiction. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +_How Nathaniel Hawthorne Exorcised Hester Prynne_ + + +For twenty-five years America has been the classic country of +experimental psychology. The more vague and uncertain metaphysics +and ethics became in America, the more rigorous, exact and precise +became psychology. The Americans carried to the field of experimental +psychology their taste for statistics, formulæ and graphs. They set +about with a singular complacency, measuring and weighing with the +dynameter that human mind which their idealism had pictured, up to that +time, as so transcendental and intangible. Never was science carried +farther. Never was the thinking being submitted to such a test, gauged, +measured, weighed, counted. The results of experimental psychology +have passed into everyday practices. The psychological test and the +intelligence test are a part of the university program, and count +towards admission into the professions, the civil service and the army. +The American universities which are substituting psychological tests +for entrance examinations are becoming more and more numerous. + +This development of experimental psychology in America is interesting. +It explains the obsession which the psychological problem has acquired +in the eyes of contemporary novelists. In America, as in Europe, the +novel has abandoned ethics for psychology. One could not form a just +idea of the American novel of to-day without bearing in mind at least +the principal lines of the development of experimental psychology in +America since William James. + + * * * * * + +James was the great renovator and the pioneer of psychological +studies in the United States. He was in psychology a true realist. +Anti-intellectualist through both education and temperament, he brought +psychology from the clouds to the earth; object and subject into the +world of facts. He eliminated all scholasticism from the study of +the self. He refused to subject the powers of the mind to empirical +classifications. He conceived the spiritual life as a continuous +creation. He condemned the division of the mind into autonomous +faculties. The ego appeared to him to be, not a marquetry of powers, +but a cluster of energy, one living and inseparable force, a current, +a river, a “stream of consciousness.” Nor does James consent to the +separation and classification into distinct _genres_ of the activities +of the mind. Art, mysticism, philosophy, science, ethics were in his +eyes but aspects, different in appearance but in reality identical, of +a single force; a happy confusion which permitted him, in his fine book +on “The Varieties of Religious Experience” to bring into a new light +the mystic phenomena, and which suggested to him an original philosophy +of religions based on a new conception of conscious life. The +importance which he attached to the subconscious and the confidence, +carried even to credulity, which he accorded to psychical researches +are well known. + +From James, the contemporary psychologists borrowed a theory which +had a great success. I mean the studies on the dissociation of a +personality. The views on this subject of the author of the “Treatise +on Psychology” have their origin in his pragmatism. Desirous of +assuring to the mind the free and entire use of all its powers, James, +although a strong and confirmed realist, accorded but a representative +and symbolic character to spiritual events. They were epiphenomenal, +means chosen by the conscious activity to reach its ends and without +other than purely symbolic importance. He considered the facts of the +conscience not at all the equivalent of the facts of reality, but as +symbols representing much less things themselves than the interest we +take in them. Nothing can be more original than his hierarchy of the +“Selves.” His mistrust for abstraction had caused him to form a very +curious theory. He distinguished three orders of Self; the material +Self which he reduced to the sensations of our body, of our clothes and +of our surroundings; the social Self; and the spiritual Self. According +to him, every individual possesses several social Selves; in fact, +there are as many as there are groups which recognize them. Each one of +these Selves acts in its group like an independent personality. Each +has its own fashion of acting and reacting. In the same individual the +different Selves may oppose each other, according to the social groups +in which they develop. + +There we have the starting point of a theory which is now well known +and which Pirandello, James Joyce and Marcel Proust have illustrated +in literature. It has its origin in this principle: that, in order to +persevere in their being, individuals disguise themselves and present +to the exterior world surrogate creations of their ego. Inspired +by these doctrines, modern psychology has modified its consecrated +terminology. It has recently replaced the word “character,” a classic +and moralizing term, by a newer stamp--that of “personality picture.” +It gives of the Self an interpretation no longer moral but æsthetic. +According to this theory, the events of our inner life are fictions +that we play on ourselves and on others. Each one of us chooses a +personality, a character--or better, a travesty, a representation--and +we pass our life in furthering and defending it. According to the +surroundings and the different groups through which we pass, and in +accordance with the necessities of the moment, we modify this personal +portrait, deforming or attenuating it if we are weak, strengthening +and enriching it if we are strong. The normal individual paints his +personal portrait to suit the background of the external world; the +neurotic, on the contrary, attributes to his fiction an intrinsic value +independent of experience. In any case, we are essentially actors, +mimics and parodists. + +This Self of which we take possession is a veritable psychic creation. +It is a character which we spend our life in designing. It is our +personal portrait signed by our self, “a personality picture.” +According to a modern psychologist--Doctor Martin--every one of us +is an artist and spends his life in drawing an original portrait of +himself. Our actions write our autobiography which is, of course, a +fiction. But this fiction is necessary. The success or failure of our +lives depends on the way we draw our imaginary portrait. In other +words, they depend on how we succeed in making our existence a work of +art. + +Before approaching psychoanalysis, I shall say a word about a new +school of experimental psychology which is arousing interest at +present in America. It cannot be neglected because of the light which +it throws on the contemporary novel. It is called Behaviorism--the +science of action or conduct. This system is based on the theory of +stimulants and reactions or response. It takes back to empiricism and +to psychophysics (mind-and-body relationship). It makes a clear sweep +of our mental life, conscious or subconscious, and consents to know the +Self only through its relations and reactions to the exterior world. +Behaviorism appears in the form of a vast inquest, a sort of referendum +on the possible motives of human actions. It replaces the interior +observation of classical psychology and the Freudian divination by a +peculiar Socratic-like examination, a tight network of questions which +claim to capture in their meshes the secrets of the Self. Here are a +few examples of this method of investigation. They resemble strongly a +catechism,--what we call in college slang a “quiz.” + +This is the questionnaire proposed to diagnose the general emotional +aptitude of a subject. + +Does the subject manifest a normal amount of curiosity? Has he +initiative? What are his particular inclinations and hobbies? What is +the history of his sexual initiations; of his liaisons, etc? Are his +emotional reactions well balanced? + +To diagnose the disposition towards activity, the questionnaire is +modified as follows. Is the individual lazy or industrious? Is he +loquacious? Is he given to frequent laughter and to loud conversation? +Are his movements effectual or awkward? + +For social fitness the following questions are asked: + +How many intimate friends has the individual? What is the history of +his family relations? How easily does he form friendships? How much +loyalty has he? How much tact? Is his society sought by others? + +This is the method of behavioristic investigation. It appears very +summary. Its critics accuse it, not without reason, of letting escape, +through the gaps in its questions, that which is most worth knowing. +Do not the answers to the questions of the behavioristic catechism +consider already discovered the secret which one expects to obtain +from them, so that all this display of questions is only a _petitio +principii_? + +The attempt of behaviorism to construct our personality from without +and to wring from us, by our acts, the secret of our thoughts is, +however, interesting. It will help us to understand better the +psychological realism and the reporting methods of Theodore Dreiser, +for example. We shall bear it in mind for that reason. + + * * * * * + +I come now to psychoanalysis which is decidedly more attractive. +Psychoanalysis bases its investigations and its definitions on +the duplicity and hypocrisy inherent in individual and social +life. It shows us a psychic world of several degrees; at the top +and at the surface, the conscious universe: underneath, a sort of +semi-darkness--the preconscious; still lower, the unconscious. +Between these spheres the psychoanalyst pictures a moving, a +passing, a continuous rising and descending of expression and +repression, of desires and inhibitions. Between each compartment +he places antechambers, thresholds, turnstiles, wickets, censors, +a perfect clearing house, a central station for the receiving and +sorting of the events of our mental life. There seems to exist a +fore-established harmony between such a representation of conscious +facts and Puritanism; a harmony which has not escaped the critics +of psychoanalysis. According to a critic, “The comparative vogue +(Why _comparative_? Should not one say _excessive_?) of Freudism in +English-speaking countries is partly due to Protestant Puritanism. +The narrow restrictions which Puritan ethics impose upon sexual +satisfactions and the mystery in which they seek to envelop them would +prove, in the eyes of the English and American psychiatrists, certain +hypotheses of Freud and the supposed effect of Anglo-Saxon inhibitions +upon the production of neurosis.”[11] + +Freud gives us through his doctrine of complexes, inhibitions, +suppressions and repressions, a striking explanation of Puritanism as I +tried to describe it in the first chapter. He makes us understand very +well the causes of floating anxiety and soul-fear which psychically +characterize the Puritan. Suppression and censorship are certainly the +key to Hawthorne’s Puritan portraits which I shall present shortly. +The important rôle and the analytical descriptions given to sexual +obsession in such Dreiser novels as “The Genius” fit in perfectly +with the Freudian therapeutics, and the methods of Freud’s divination +resemble greatly the main phases of the novel as Sherwood Anderson +conceives it: seclusion, insinuation, confession, day dreams, dream +symbolism, secret symbolic language, all with a basis of pronounced +sexual obsession. Fiction and psychoanalysis agree perfectly in all +this. + +We must not forget the disquieting elements of Freudism, the manner in +which it reintroduces into the idea of Self the elementary, primitive, +crude and purely instinctive constituents. There are, on this point, +curious affinities between the “call of the wild” as understood by +Freud and by Jack London, for example. The Anglo-Saxon is, despite his +Puritanism, nearer true nature than the Latin, we are told. He is more +primitive, more elementary. The psychoanalyst would undoubtedly confirm +these views and this new manner of completing the portrait of the +Puritan. + + * * * * * + +After this introduction, of which, I hope, the readers will feel the +pertinence in the following chapters, I should like, still from the +point of view of psychological research and its influence on the +American novel of to-day, to study certain aspects, which I consider +very modern, of the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He is a great artist +and an armed psychologist, an able story-teller and, one might say, +the detective of the Puritan conscience. He is, in many respects, +very Freudian; what attracts him, from the moment he starts writing, +is the inmost life, the enigma in the depths of the conscience. He +feels that the world of appearances is false; that, being false, it +is tragic; that the human being is twofold; that under the outward +Self, the superimposed Self, is hidden a profounder, timid being or, +as one says to-day, repressed. Instead of denouncing moral duplicity, +like Carlyle or Mark Twain, Hawthorne transforms it into art. He loves +enigmas, mysteries, obscurity, secret retreats. He is the explorer of +the subterranean world, the Conan Doyle of the conscience. In that, +Hawthorne is assuredly a compatriot of Edgar Allan Poe. + +He lived a narrow existence in a monotonous and dismal New England +town, but one filled with dreams and memories. Solitude and disillusion +were his daily bread. His political ambitions were not fulfilled. He +secluded himself in Concord, in the unfriendly neighborhood of Emerson, +another repressed individual like himself. Heredity weighed heavily +upon him. There is no doubt that one must look into his genealogy for +the secret of his obsessions. All his life, Hawthorne was haunted by +the idea of crime, by the thought of the Inquisition, by dungeons and +tortures. Is not the crime which, in his “Marble Faun,” Donatello +commits because of the averted glance of the unfortunate Miriam, an +unconscious memory of that tragic duel suggested, we are told, to his +friend Cilley, by an involuntary gesture of Hawthorne? Nor could he +forget that one of his ancestors had been a witch burner. All that +explains Hawthorne’s complex, the vague sense of disquietude and the +mental fear which charge the atmosphere of his novels. + +One must note however, this said, that there is much more than a +tragic and lugubrious conception of existence in Hawthorne’s books. +The favorite and latent theme of his novels is paganism and the joy of +living, the love of love, the delight in voluptuousness. His characters +would willingly abandon themselves to it if the Evil One did not +prowl so near in the forest, and if the deacon, the alderman and the +constable did not lend a helping hand. It is impossible to be mistaken; +Hawthorne’s imagination was pagan. The two protagonists of “The +Scarlet Letter,” considered his most puritanical book, are thoroughly +immoral. They begin in anguish through the suppression of their desires +and end in happiness through their abandonment to the freed libido. +All of “The Marble Faun”--subject, characters and descriptions--is a +plea for natural and instinctive expansion, a pagan plea. Donatello is +an inspired symbol of this naturalistic conception of life. Donatello +is the Faun, the beast become man, the man of nature, by definition +good and happy until the awakening of his conscience. Hester Prynne, +Miriam and Zenobia of “The Blithedale Romance” are seductive women, +drawn without the slightest touch of hypocrisy or hesitation. Hawthorne +is very susceptible to the qualities of the feminine mind. He has +very sure, very penetrating, very profound intuitions about women, as +his portraits of young girls show--like little Pearl in “The Scarlet +Letter,” Phœbe in “The House of Seven Gables,” Hilda in “The Marble +Faun,” Priscilla in “The Blithedale Romance.” He makes them very naïve, +very sincere, in order, it would seem, to terrify them more by the +discovery of evil, the knowledge of which is brought to them through +the intermediation of one of their elders,--mother, sister or friend. + + * * * * * + +This man, who aspired so keenly to the joy of living, had a conscience +profoundly sensitive to evil. It is the susceptibility of check, the +Puritan repression of desire. We have no need to recall with what +inflexibility, what morbid obstinacy Hawthorne discussed the problem of +evil. Dostoievski was not more tragically, more persistently haunted by +the idea of crime and punishment than he. “The House of Seven Gables” +might just as well have been entitled “The House of Crime.” It is +composed upon the theme that one does not escape a sin committed; that +a misdeed is fatal in its results; that there is no redemption for +the sinner. There is only immanent justice, as Emerson said, “eternal +return”; according to Nietzsche, Fate, the authentic incarnation of the +Calvinist predestination. It is not the act itself which constitutes +sin, according to Hawthorne; it is the thought, the intention, and, +as there is not a single human being who has not sheltered some +criminal thought during the course of his life, it follows that we +are all criminals. That is what Hawthorne repeated to satiety and +what he wanted to prove in his books. But he went still farther, in a +direction in which his Puritanism, because of its harshness, becomes +sheer amorality. We think of Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” when we +read the numerous passages in which Hawthorne sustains the necessity +of evil and consequently of crime. He does not hide it, for example, +in connection with the two leading characters of “The Scarlet Letter.” +He tells us that Reverend Dimmesdale’s remorse was “exquisite” as well +as horrible. In “The Marble Faun” Donatello must commit a crime before +Miriam will love him and utter that stupendous cry, “How beautiful +he is!” Miriam holds that crime has lifted her poor Faun to a level +superior to innocence; that Adam’s sin, repeated by Donatello, has +brought his posterity to a higher, brighter level of happiness. It is +remorse, Miriam tells us, which has awakened and developed in the Faun +a thousand moral and intellectual faculties unknown till then. These +are some of the moral paradoxes of the “Puritan” Hawthorne. + +However interesting he may be as a moralist, he is still more so as a +psychologist. His moral sense was not without effect here. He is one +of the few American authors whose ethics are supported by the problem +of evil; he was led to explore the conscience and his diagnoses are +striking. They are in many respects very modern, as I shall try to show +from “The Scarlet Letter.” + +Critics and readers have often mistaken the true significance of +this book. It is vaunted as a masterpiece of story-telling, and a +masterpiece it is in its main lines, despite some awkwardness in the +development of the action, and if it is not judged too severely for +repetitions which mar especially the last part of the book. The great +mistake would consist in interpreting “The Scarlet Letter” as a plea +for Puritanism. It is, in my opinion, quite the contrary. Very few +critics have grasped the real viewpoint from which Hawthorne conceived +the characters of Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale. (Excepting D. H. +Lawrence, in a chapter of his imaginative but penetrating “Studies in +Classic American Literature.”)[12] + +I do not wish to introduce Doctor Freud everywhere, nor do I want to +exaggerate Hawthorne’s immoralism, but if there has ever been a piece +of literature written to prove the dangers of the famous Freudian +inhibition and to try to cure it, that work is certainly “The Scarlet +Letter.” + +The wealth of psychological intuition in this novel is remarkable. +It is the most human, the least moralizing (I was about to say the +most personal of Hawthorne’s novels), excepting of course the ending, +edifying and conventional as could be desired, but which is neither +better nor worse than all Hawthorne’s endings. We will remember the +tragic story of Hester Prynne, the beautiful Puritan seduced by the +Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester gave everything to love. She was put in the +stocks and condemned to wear embroidered on her blouse the letter A +(adultery), an ignominious insignia which her heroic coquetry succeeded +in converting into a bit of finery. Note well--Hester Prynne has no +shame, no remorse for her sin. She is proud of it. The world has +condemned her but she does not cease to love, no matter how cowardly +Dimmesdale behaves. From the beginning to the very end of the book, +Hester Prynne saw love only. If this is not the last word as it would +probably be on the screen of the “movies,” especially the American +“movies,” it is not far from being so and is the fault of neither +Hester Prynne nor Dimmesdale but of Hawthorne himself, grown, as often +happens with him, too timorous at the end of the book. Hawthorne is +very canny in attributing to the Puritan Hester a rich, a voluptuous +and almost “oriental” temperament. There does not exist, to my +knowledge, even in Zola’s famous description of the Paradou (in “La +Faute de l’abbé Mouret”) a more impetuous and eloquent burst of passion +than the ending of “The Scarlet Letter,” particularly the scene in the +forest between the spirited Hester and the timid Dimmesdale whom she +rescues from his hysterical inhibitions by her impassioned declarations. + +An example of Hawthorne’s psychological realism, still more +characteristic than this case of Freudian evasion so exactly described, +is the method which he used to wring from Hester’s lover his secret. +Dimmesdale’s character is a masterpiece of intuition. He is a hypocrite +but only through timidity, and in all, a tragic and pathetic figure, +one of those weak and incomplete beings who have not even the courage +to lie. Hawthorne dealt several times, and very successfully, with +the study of warped or incompletely developed personalities. Clyfford +Pyncheon in “The House of the Seven Gables,” and Donatello in “The +Marble Faun,” are examples, and one might add to these the young +women--so numerous in his novels--emotionally distressed in the face of +evil. A victim, like Hester, of social conventions, but less courageous +than she, less sure of himself in passion, Dimmesdale lacks very +little to become the American Tartuffe. But he is saved by Hester, +who exorcises him at the end, and rescues him from repression. The +minister’s open confession on the pillory is an admirable scene. It +has its counterpart in “The Marble Faun” in which the candid Hilda, +unable to bear any longer the secret of the crime of which she was +an involuntary witness, enters a confessional at St. Peter’s and, +regardless of her Puritan heritage, reveals everything to a priest. +Dimmesdale’s puritanical confession on the pillory is of the same +nature. It is an explosion of craving and of repressed passion. From +the viewpoint of modern psychology this scene is natural and scientific. + +But the most striking is the fashion in which Hawthorne endeavors +to surprise Dimmesdale’s secret. For that purpose he invented a +very curious secondary character, Doctor Chillingworth. He is in +many respects a melodramatic villain worthy of a serial by Eugene +Süe. He is Hester Prynne’s deceived husband. Once acquainted with +Chillingworth, we become very indulgent of poor Hester’s sin. More than +half necromancer, Chillingworth passed a large part of his life among +the Indians, who taught him their magic; that is the fantastic side of +his character. From the psychological point of view Chillingworth is +Suppressed Hatred. The readers of “The Scarlet Letter” will remember +the diabolic plan for vengeance formed by the necromancer-doctor who +suspects Dimmesdale of having been his wife’s lover. Little by little +he attaches himself to the unfortunate minister under the cover of +friendship. He tortures him by besieging him with insidious questions. +During the course of these searching examinations, Hawthorne shows +himself again a very subtle psychologist and a precursor and pioneer +of psychoanalysis. All the conditions in these scenes are so worked +out that Dimmesdale’s resistance takes on a truly Freudian aspect. +Dimmesdale will release his secret for no consideration. In fact, to +the very end, Chillingworth gets no further for all his trouble, but +the cross-examination to which he subjects the Reverend is curious, and +Dimmesdale has a narrow escape. + +Here are, for example, a few remarks made by the novelist himself on +these examinations: + + A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy + of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a + nameless something more, let us call it intuition; if he show no + intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of + his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to + bring his mind into such affinity with his patient’s that this + last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to + have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and + acknowledged not so often by silence, an inarticulate breath, and + here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if + to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages + afforded by his recognized character as a physician; then, at some + inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, + and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its + mysteries into the daylight. + +Dimmesdale’s mind had become so familiar to Chillingworth that, +Hawthorne tells us, his whole “stream of consciousness,” as William +James would say, passed before the physician’s eyes. + +Chillingworth became, in his researches, a true adept of Freud. +After having begun the study of Dimmesdale objectively, he ended by +becoming passionately absorbed in his case. Chillingworth experienced a +veritable fascination, we are told: + + He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching + for gold; or rather like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in + quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but + likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. + +It is again as a true disciple of Freud that Chillingworth scented +in his victim the hidden _libido_, which he calls a “strong animal +nature,” inherited from his father and mother. Here is another bit +of dialogue which is very modern in the same way. Chillingworth is +speaking, + + “He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open knoweth + oftentimes but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. + A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within + itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the + spiritual part. Your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give + the shadow of offence. You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are + he whose body is the closest conjoined and imbued and identified, + so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument.” + + “Then I need ask no further;” said the clergyman, somewhat hastily + rising from his chair. “You deal not, I take it, in medicine for + the soul.” + +Upon which Dimmesdale rebels. He will not unveil his soul to the doctor +of his body. To the suggestions of his enemy he opposes a curious and +optimistic philosophy concerning the discovery of secret thoughts. No +power, according to him, excepting the divine power, could force a +human being to betray his inmost self, whether with words, signs of +writing or emblems. + +On Judgment Day it will be otherwise, but that day the reading of the +secret thoughts will be expiatory and, for that reason, not painful but +pleasant. According to Dimmesdale, who is fully aware of his condition, +there are two kinds of repressed individuals, the timid ones whose +weakness forbids confession, and the moralists, the fatalists--we +should say the “pragmatists”--who consider silence, hypocrisy, as +socially more salutary than avowal. Dimmesdale, from this point of +view, is, until his conversion in the forest and at the pillory, what +we should call to-day a complete simulator. + +However Freudian these diagnoses may appear in form, they are hardly +so intentionally. The treatment to which Chillingworth submits his +patient is conceived to be a torture and not a cure; Chillingworth, an +able practitioner perhaps, is a very poor psychologist. Without in the +least suspecting it, he works against his own ends. He never suspects +that the day when Dimmesdale will reveal his secret to him will find +him not punished but relieved, and in reality cured, according to +Freud, and that he, Chillingworth, will have lost his time and pains +as a psychoanalyst. This is exactly what happens. Once freed from +repression and anxiety, Dimmesdale reveals himself to be a new man, a +man in the full sense of the word for the first time, and now he cares +neither for his fears nor for Chillingworth who has exploited them. The +true healer of Dimmesdale is not Chillingworth, it is Hester Prynne. + + * * * * * + +I have already told what admiration I hold for this ending of “The +Scarlet Letter.” Hawthorne reveals himself here to be not only a +profound psychologist and audacious moralist but a great poet. I want +to quote at length the scene in the forest where repressions and +inhibitions are drowned in “a flood of sunshine”: + + Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and + anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! She had not + known the weight until she felt the freedom! By another impulse + she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it + fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and + a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to + her features. There played around her mouth and beamed out of her + eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very + heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that + had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness + of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, + and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope and a happiness + before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if + the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these + two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as + with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring + a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, + transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the + gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow + hitherto embodied the brightness now. The course of the little + brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart + of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy. + + Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature of the + forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher + truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly + born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create a + sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows + upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom it + would have been bright in Hester’s eyes and bright in Arthur + Dimmesdale’s. + +This liberation of her passion made of Hester a different woman. + + She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; + as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the + gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide + their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in + desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in + his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point + of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators + had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than + the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the + pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. + +Thus, insists Hawthorne, Hester’s misfortunes liberated her. The +scarlet letter (that is, if we judge her sin rightly) served her now +as a passport with which to penetrate into regions where women scarcely +dared go: “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers--stern +and wild ones--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” + +Dimmesdale, too, reaches the same result. The basis of his optimism +since Hester rescued him from his neuroses is amoral (should one say +immoral!) as that of the woman he loves: + + His decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its + flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the + exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon + of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an + unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. + +At that moment Dimmesdale’s spirit “rose, as it were, with a bound, and +attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery +which had kept him grovelling on the earth.” + +It is with good reason that the minister, upon issuing from the forest +hurled a defy at his former parishioners: + + I am not the man for whom you take me. I left him yonder in the + forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk and + near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his + emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled + brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment. + +The transformation, the conversion of Dimmesdale freed from repression, +is complete. It overthrows his whole philosophy of life. It makes of +him an amoralist and a Nietzschean. Listen to Hawthorne: + + Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home his inner man gave him other + evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In + truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code + in that interior kingdom was adequate to account for the impulses + now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At + every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing + or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and + intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder + self than that which opposed the impulse. + +Such I believe to be the basic meaning of this masterpiece, spoiled +again, unfortunately, by an edifying ending. Hawthorne was one of the +novelists best acquainted with man’s conscience. + +Less fecund than many, he had the wisdom and talent to concentrate his +genius and thought upon the study of a preëminently human problem, that +of evil and responsibility. Besides the genius of intuition he had that +of symbolism. This realistic psychologist was a marvelous imagist. He +himself has given us a striking formula of his art. Art, according to +him, is the light of thought and imagination shining through what he +called “the opaque substance of days.” Like Emerson, he considered +wonder as an essential human faculty. Intuitive sympathy alone, he +believed, could solve the mysteries of existence. To come to truth one +must possess the innocent and naïve insight of a child. + +For the purpose of knowing better the external world, Hawthorne loved +to look at it through the symbols which his prolific imagination +presented to him. One may even find that he carried symbolization +to excess. Two of his novels, in particular “The House of the Seven +Gables” and “The Marble Faun,” are, in certain regards, veritable +allegories. He found everywhere affinities between man and things. He +gave a soul to inanimate objects and made of them a tangible extension +of our personality. In “The House of the Seven Gables,” everything, +from the cellar to the garret, even the chicken yard and the well, is +so imagined as to give us the impression of the curse which weighs on +the old abode. In its antique frame “The Marble Faun” is conceived in +the same manner. Portraits which are alive, human faces which seem +to reincarnate pictures and statues, the strange resemblance, for +instance, between Miriam in “The Marble Faun” and the portrait of +Beatrice Cenci, or the statue of Cleopatra, mirrors in whose depth +float ghost faces, mysteries of dusk and shadow, mysteries of human +voices--the symbolism of Hawthorne is as rich as that of Edgar Poe and +adds another charm to his novels. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +_Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells and American Society +on Parade_ + + +From Hawthorne to the present time, American fiction numbers many +masters. Preëminent among them stand Henry James, Edith Wharton and +William Dean Howells. They are a group apart. Their philosophy of life +and their æsthetics place them in the past more than in the present. +Each one of them, in his own original way, continued the tradition of +the novel of intrigue, the novel of character and that of manners. +Of the three, Henry James stands foremost as a psychologist and an +artist. His career was marked by a progressive alienation from his +native environment and culminated with a complete desertion of America +for England. James, with Edgar Allan Poe, was the sole example of an +artistic conscience in American letters. He represented in American +literature the longing for the European background. He confessed that +he could not do his work outside of aristocratic surroundings. This he +explicitly avowed in his essay on Hawthorne. He deplored the fact that +the New England novelist had to estrange himself from Europe where he +could have matured his talent and made it bear fruit. + +“The flower of art,” wrote he, “blooms only where the soil is deep.... +It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature ... +it needs a complex social machinery to set a writer in motion.” He +pleaded extenuating circumstances for what he called “the modest” and +provincial “nosegay” of Hawthorne: + + It takes so many things ... it takes such an accumulation of + history and custom, such a complexity of manners and types, to + form a fund of suggestion for a novelist.... The negative side of + the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative + saunterings and reveries, might, indeed, with a little ingenuity, + be made almost ludicrous; one might enumerate the items of high + civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent + from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder + to know what was left. No State, in the European sense of the + word, and indeed, barely a specific national name. No sovereign, + no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no + clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, + no palaces, no castles, no manors, nor old country-houses, nor + parsonages, nor thatched cottages, nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, + nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor + public schools--no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no + novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting + class--no Epson nor Ascot! + +For an English or French imagination there is something appalling in +this vast emptiness. The American is well aware that something remains +in his huge country to make up for these deficiencies, but when we +come to the question of knowing what it is that remains--“that is his +secret, his joke, as one might say.” + +American humor, according to James, was born from the bareness of the +American scene. It bobbed up in America for reasons analogous to those +which seventeenth-century savants assigned to the rising of the liquid +column in the barometer: “_la nature a horreur de vide_”; nature is +afraid of the vacuum and must find some compensations for it. Such was +the map of the great American desert drawn by Henry James. For Walt +Whitman, the United States were a cornucopia. They were a blank for +Henry James. He fled to Great Britain to forget the great Valley of +Death and the call-of-the-wild. To imagine Henry James and Jack London +as countrymen takes not a little imagination indeed. + +As a challenge to this unpatriotic programme, let the reader remember +the sarcasms heaped on European aristocracy, traditions and culture +by Mark Twain, in “Innocents Abroad” and “The Prince and the Pauper,” +which are contemporary with Henry James’ productions. Mark Twain voted +for American philistinism, and American literature to-day has also cast +its suffrage in favor of the democratic ideals. Puritanism was the +last form of aristocratic tradition in the United States. Henry James’ +indictment of his native country marked the parting of the ways between +the ancient and the modern, between tradition and evolution, culture +and spontaneity. A character in one of his early novels solved for us +the riddle of James’ exile. He told us that Americans are artistically +disinherited; that they are condemned to be superficial; that they +do not belong to the magic circle; that the substratum of American +perceptions is thin, barren, artificial; that, as follows, Americans +are bound to imperfection. To excel in anything they have ten times +more things to learn than a European. There is a certain deep sense +which they lack. They have neither taste, tact nor strength. How could +they have any? Their climate is harsh and violent, their past silent, +their present dizzying, their environment oppressive and without +charms. There is nothing in America to feed, stir and inspire an +artist. All aspiring souls become exiles. + +The pathos of Henry James’ career, the secret of his chiaro-oscuro +and of his twilight effects can be heard ringing in this quotation. +He never became truly reconciled to his solitude at Rye in Sussex. +He remained a Puritan at heart. For a Puritan conscience every ship +across the sea, west or east bound, is still and always will be the +_Mayflower_. He began by surveying the American scene. His first +novels, “The Madonna of the Future,” “Roderick Hudson,” “Daisy Miller,” +were very different in technique from his later productions. They were +straightforward, obvious and simple, with very little psychoanalysis, +and few literary detours or arabesques. They did not go round and +round. Still, James had already managed to force his favorite point +in favor of the American uprooted abroad and he had already procured +the American virgin a passport to European disillusions. As an expert +in the psychology of women, only Hawthorne had shown an equal sense +of innuendoes. Had James been a woman, he would have made an ideal +chaperone. How deftly and delicately he took his angels abroad to +comfort them and guide them in their exile! How he liked to use them as +what he called a reverberator in his stories! + +How he grilled them, coaxed them into a sort of psychological trance! +There was something mesmeric and Palladinian[13] in his approach to +women. In his books women are more ghostly than real. Has any one of +them ever had a real body of her own? They are all so pre-Raphaelite! +In place of a body they have a soul. Like Fra Angelico’s seraphs they +are encumbered with wings, “wings of the dove,” a poetic but a most +inefficient apparel for globe-trotters. James’ heroines could not flap +their wings in their crude utilitarian country. (Imagine one of his +angels lost in Dreiser’s “A Hoosier Holiday!”) And neither can they +adapt themselves to the Old World. Their transcendental ethics are so +out of keeping with real life that it unfits them for existence. How +pure they are, how idealistic, how naïve and shy! Daisy Miller, the +representative American virgin abroad, is a martyr added by James to +the Christian calendar. She is the Sainte Blandine of American fiction. +James brought her into the limelight to emphasize the tragic longing +of her sisters for Europe. She embodied the tragic conflict of Puritan +conscience and European paganism, the same conflict which Hawthorne +dramatized in “The Marble Faun.” Una, in Hawthorne’s novel, was a +foster-sister to Daisy in her fear of the flesh and of the devil. + +Lured away from their native and more primitive environment by art, +mysticism and culture, there is not enough real red blood in James’ +American maidens to follow the call to the last. They soon find +themselves waylaid and they stop midway. Several of them do not survive +their disillusions. They die of despair before reaching the mystic +Grail (the “golden bowl”) unless they are rescued _in extremis_ by some +“ambassadors” from the “land of God.” Soul-fear and floating anxiety +paralyzed their wings. And yet, how ardent and eager they are to +discover the world in an intimate relation to themselves! They take the +soul of the adventurers and the pioneers to the conquest of intuition. +They would fain clasp to their bosom all that is beautiful in the +world, if their Puritan consciences allowed. The art galleries, the +romantic landscapes, the ancient monuments, the old churches are their +familiar hunting ground. How they clutch at spiritual adventures! Their +passion for sentimental expansion, their craving for introspection, +know no limits. As Milly Theale exclaims in “The Wings of the Dove,” +they want to be _abysmal_. They want “something to find out,” something +which calls for “the vigil of searching criticism” through many and +many hundred pages. There is something morbid in this bend toward +self-analysis and always thinking of one’s self. Henry James even took +children to that school of unlimited moral curiosity. “What Maisie +Knew” is a wonderful and almost frightful example of instinctive +detection of grown-up passions by a child. + +When all is said, the case of Henry James had much to do with +psychological duplicity. His novels were a first-hand contribution to +the study of inhibitions. As has been justly remarked, the main object +of his books was “emotional starvation.” His psychology revolved around +“the Puritan blindness of the senses or the atrophy of emotions.” James +himself “wrote his fiction under heavy inhibitions, the result both of +personal shyness and of the peculiar timidity of his race and day.” His +chief object in writing novels was to denounce “the undervitality of +Americans.”[14] + +In regard to æsthetics, Henry James won the day for the tactics +of the new writers. He anticipated Marcel Proust in his method of +journeying at random, wherever it pleased his fancy, through the +maze of psychology. He substituted what he called _appreciation for_ +the old-fashioned process of dramatization. He could not dramatize +and he proved a failure on the stage. He preferred to ramble and to +meander. Modern fiction, thanks to him, cut loose from superficial +realism. He originated the _monologue intérieur_. He did not rely on +episodes to build up a novel. He had enough imagination to do without +reality. Sharp and keen as he was in analysis, he was artistic in a +synthetic way. His ambition was to display beautifully _the whole +thing_ before our eyes. He prospected the depth of our hearts without +ever losing his artistic control and his presence of mind. In this +respect the distance is slight between the disquisitions of “The Wings +of the Dove,” “The Golden Bowl” or “The Ambassadors,” and the modern +effusions of either Sherwood Anderson or James Joyce. Both are the +products of similar intellectual and artistic tactics. Immediate data +of his conscience James projected into the pages of his books through +an original kaleidoscope. His process was oblique and centrifugal. He +composed _from the center outward_, in order to give his writings their +dreamlike effect. At the end of his life he used to rave aloud, Hamlet +fashion, while dictating his novels. With such a method we are not +surprised to hear him condemn the realistic French writers who followed +Flaubert, and whom nevertheless he admired greatly, at a time when he +had not yet been able to make up his mind as to whether he could do +his work in Paris or in London. How could his atavistic Puritanism +allow him to swallow Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Loti, without +qualifications?[15] According to him the French had only “a sensuous +conscience.” + +As an artist, Henry James possessed the American taste for prodigality. +He liked flourishes. He needed a superabundance of materials. If +the materials failed him, he made up for them with a prodigality of +disquisitions and arabesques. He could be deep and he could also be +sophisticated. In several of his novels a superfluity of the trimmings +hardly compensates for a thinness of the substance. His writings were +the result of what he called _saturation_. He was creative enough to +be convinced that art was not and cannot be an imitation of reality. +He who writes adds something to what he writes about. He reproached +William Dean Howells for sacrificing creative imagination to reality. +He declared himself unable to observe, even if it were possible for him +to do so, and at the same time to imagine. All perception to him was +a vision, something to soar above after going round and round it. The +transcendentalist and the detective, those two chief attitudes of the +American mind, were innate with him. His father was a Swedenborgian +and his brother William an adept of psychical research. American +undervitality redeemed itself in Henry James’ novels by a flight into +the transcendental and the introspective, along a road discovered and +traveled already by Ralph Waldo Emerson. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Wharton specialized in the society novel. The author of “The House +of Mirth,” “The Fruit of the Tree,” “The Reef,” “The Age of Innocence” +is an excellent craftsman. Like Henry James, she draws from and caters +to the élite. She imported the novel of manners to America and gave to +it an original turn. It would have been impossible for her to write +or for us to read them as they are without constant reference to the +aristocratic and cultural background which Henry James insisted upon +in his novels. She draws portraits and studies environments with an +objectivity verging on indifference and even on cruelty. Her field is +limited and even narrow but it is her own and she has conscientiously +explored it. Her writings have a touch of cutting and elegant +precision. She brings everything to the surface. Her Muse is curiosity +for curiosity’s sake. In studying American high life she used about the +same process which Paul Bourget applied in French fiction to the happy +few of the Boulevard Saint Germain, that most aristocratic citadel. She +preserved the fossils of American gentry for posterity. + +There is nothing telepathic in her delineations. Her characters live +on the ground floor of consciousness. Her novels are as clear and as +unmysterious as Fifth Avenue on a Sunday morning after church. Contrary +to Henry James, she dramatizes more than she appreciates. She is very +deft in constructing a plot. Her method is classical and seems somewhat +old-fashioned to-day. She is a realist in the old sense of the word. +She praised Marcel Proust recently for knowing the art of incidents and +the compliment may be returned to her. At a time when, in America as in +Europe, fiction ceased to be rational to become instinctive, and when +the novelists gave up the plot for introspection, she chose to travel +the old road. Modern critics point to her flimsy psychology. They are +shocked by her indifference to social or political problems. She sticks +to high life at an epoch when historical developments take us back to +primitive and almost paleolithic humanity. Fifth Avenue and “The House +of Mirth,” with their flirts and divorcées, shrink to Lilliputian +dimensions in comparison with our chaotic world since the War. Who +cares about mésalliances or unhappy marriages when the universe looks +like a big city after an earthquake or a flood? What do we care to know +to-day how Mme. de Treymes will reconcile her faith to her unfaithful +French husband with her longing for her American fiancé? In a similar +manner the casuistry in “The Fruit of the Tree,” or “The Reef” seems +almost antediluvian. + +In “The Custom of the Country,” “The Age of Innocence” and her four +novelettes on Old New York, we cannot so easily dismiss Mrs. Wharton’s +satire of American life and society at large.[16] + +Undine Spragg in “The Custom of the Country” is an impressive type +of American adventuress. She is drawn from life and set against a +suggestive American background. The three successive husbands of Undine +embody the characteristic aspects of American society extremely well. +The old, and now decrepit aristocracy, is represented by Ralph Marvell, +an “undervitalized” scion of the New York gentry. Moffat stands for +the advent of the masses, while Marquis de Chelles voices the protest +of the Old World against the standards of the New. The Spragg family +and Moffat would not be out of place in a novel by Theodore Dreiser or +Sinclair Lewis. As a psychologist Mrs. Wharton made a very impressive +study of a double personality in Ralph Marvell. + +“The Age of Innocence” has a much narrower range but it cuts deeper +into life. The book is a direct arraignment of Puritan respectability. +Irene Olenska, the heroine, married a European husband, like Mme. de +Treymes, and found him unfaithful. She returned to her native land to +live, too late. She developed a new soul abroad and she found herself +totally alienated from her native surroundings. Europe made her natural +and instinctive and American respectability rises up in arms against +her. America is no longer a place for her to grow in. So poor Irene +exits and lets the Puritans have the right of way. + +Mrs. Wharton’s literary method is far from being Freudian. To pass +from her novels to those of Sherwood Anderson is like traveling to a +different hemisphere. She chose for herself the rule of clearness and +objectivity at any cost. And yet, she contributed a great deal to the +exploration of the American conscience. She was the first to complain +about the spiritual and moral indigence of her own characters. People +in her novels can be divided into two different classes. We meet +the behaviorists and the Freudians, those whose whole life develops +on the surface and those whose secret actions remain buried in the +subconscious. Her books are particularly rich in remarks on the sexual +complex which, according to her, makes women in America superior, +intellectually and morally, to men. She discusses at length the +problem of American happiness. She indicts behaviorism in practice. +She denounces the reduction of American ethics to a mere science of +external actions and reactions. She shows her characters deprived of +foresight or consistency in conduct. Calculation is their only standard +of behavior. _Libido_ and _ambitio_, love and greed, sum up their +elementary psychology. People in her books live without a real moral +background. She tells us that they ignore the divinities which, under +the surface of our passions, forge for the dead fatal weapons. Morally +speaking, they are uprooted. They improvise their life. They make a +quick response to external _stimuli_ and drift on the eddying surface +of existence without knowing where to cling. Of Lily Bart, the heroine +of “The House of Mirth,” we are told that she had grown without having +any tie on earth dearer to her than another. She ignored traditions and +could draw from them neither strength for herself nor tenderness for +others. The past had not crystallized slowly into the very drops of +her blood. No image of an ancient house full of memories lingered in +her eyes. She had no idea of another house, of a _maison_ built not by +hands but by hereditary devotions. She was not aware of the fact that +only the past could broaden and deepen our individual lives by tying +them mysteriously to all the accumulated human efforts. + +She never knew true solidarity, outside of the brief and useless +flirtations in which she wasted her energies in an uneven struggle +against her brilliant but flimsy surroundings. All the people she +knew were like her. They resembled some atoms blown away in a frantic +whirlwind. + +After all, the characters in Mrs. Wharton’s novels show themselves to +be victims of impulse. They react quickly but superficially to the +challenge of existence. They pride themselves on being practical, +self-reliant and self-controlled. They may be so in business, but not +in ethics. To borrow a practical comparison, they are not _insured_ +on life and no agency which knew them well would issue to them an +insurance policy. Mrs. Wharton agrees with the majority of critics on +this point. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Wharton’s psychological insight revealed itself principally in +“The House of Mirth.” Lily Bart revives Daisy Miller. She is another +instance of inhibited and repressed womanhood. Endowed with a Freudian +soul and a multiple personality, on the surface she is only a flirt, +the “moth” of Victorian novelists, the “salamander” of the American +satirists. To-day she would appear as a most courted “flapper.” But if +we read her truly, Lily Bart is much more tragic. She is a saint on the +wrong track. Hers is a romantic soul. All her life she has longed for +the knight-errant who would rescue her from herself; he never came, +because she was poor. Despite numerous escapades Lily is as pure as +her name. Suicide, at the end of her short career, is a protection _in +extremis_ against the world and against herself. It is a desperate +means to reconcile by destruction her dual person. + +Mrs. Wharton has thrown a great deal of new light on the American +complex regarding the sexes. She made a special study of the ill +adaptation between man and woman in American society. If we believe +her, Americans, and especially women, are the victims of an environment +where all the romantic values of life have been upset and denied. Moral +energies have turned to the outside entirely. + +Thus Mrs. Wharton goes relentlessly on. She puts the responsibility +for this lack of balance upon the American man and his ignorance of +the true values of life. Luxury and comfort are the only standards he +can imagine, and he cannot conceive of any other gifts. The American +Lancelot comes to his Guinevere with jewels, dresses or a motor car, +but he ignores the true surrender of himself. Women are too deeply +intuitive; they come too close to nature to be easily deceived by that +elementary form of chivalry. There is a more romantic allurement which +their mate cannot offer because it cannot be procured with money. +Hence the divorce between the sexes. Crystallization, proclaimed +Stendhal-Beyle, is impossible in the United States. According to that +arch cynic and admirable psychologist, attention seems to be entirely +turned toward external agreements in an attempt to do away with +practical inconveniences. When the time comes to cash in (I beg Henri +Beyle’s pardon for this crude American neologism) on so much care, so +much caution and so many reasonable arrangements, “there is not enough +life left to enjoy it.” + +“Summer” and “Ethan Frome” are of a much broader human appeal. This +time Mrs. Wharton ventures into almost technical psychoanalysis. +“Summer” is one of the most frankly pagan books written in America +since “The Scarlet Letter.” The gloom in the book is of the very same +brand as that found in Dreiser’s “American Tragedy,” or in Eugene +O’Neill’s drama. North Dormer, the little rotten New England borough, +is a dungeon for all aspiring souls. Lawyer Royall is a _raté_, a +social failure. Charity Royall, his daughter, has gipsy blood in her +veins. She is a fawn and a worthy sister of Hawthorne’s Donatello +(in “The Marble Faun”). Natural desires, passions and instincts +carry everything away in “Summer” as they do in the story of Hester +Prynne, while Mrs. Wharton herself plays the part of Chillingworth, +the Freudian detective. The hereditary complex cancels the censure. +Paganism triumphs on Puritan soil once more. The sensuous symbolism +of the novel adds to its Freudian appeal. It is one of the most +pathetic cases of dramatized inhibition. And so is “Ethan Frome.” This +suggestive tale is written like a piece of classic literature. It is +deliberately objective, and yet it is entirely built on repression. A +jealous woman, two human beings instinctively mated and groping toward +each other through fears and moral anxieties, the surrender of their +whole being to the commands of the _libido_, the tragic sublimation of +their desires and the new climax of inhibition at the end for the three +participants of the drama,--all this gives a Dantesque glamor to “Ethan +Frome.”[17] + + * * * * * + +There was something truly Balzacian in Howells. He could tell a story; +he was not without ideas of his own; his psychology was superficial, +but not more so than that of the average man or woman whom he +portrayed. He was an expert conversationalist. His novels are spiced +with humor and geniality. How could such a ferocious moralist hide +under such a gentle smile? While American writers, like Henry James and +Jack London, took refuge against the invading dullness by a flight into +“the golden bowl” or the wilds of Alaska, or while they evaded boredom +by sarcasms, like Mark Twain, Howells courted American democracy and +accepted it _en bloc_. He adopted Babbittry. He claimed that fiction +did not need adventure, romanticism or legend, and that Life was +enough. He was a realist and hugged the commonplace to his bosom. + +Howells had excellent intentions which, unfortunately, he was unable +to fulfill. As a psychologist and a moralist he does not come up to +Hawthorne’s level. In the first place his realism is limited. The same +man who declared that the artist’s business was to be “a colorless +medium through which the reader clearly sees the right and wrong” +confined himself in the description of what he called the most smiling +aspects of life, _i.e._, the most American. + +He tagged as poison the art and literature which flattered the +passions, and, in order not to flatter the passions, he denied to +himself and others the right to describe them. He forced upon the +reader of his books self-appointed ghostly confessors and directors +of conscience,--clergymen, lawyers, professors, artists. He was +impassionate but he was not impartial. His ethics are abominable. +Hawthorne did not ignore the grandeur of sin. He found sinners and +blackguards interesting or made them so. Middle-class morality did +not seem to him poetic. He carefully kept his saints in contact +with evil so that they could be more pathetic and human. Howells’ +Puritanism was of a very different brand. It belonged to another +period in the development of American culture. Puritanism had changed +since Hawthorne. It had become permeated with Emersonian optimism. +The worship for respectability evinced the strong convictions of +former days. Hawthorne bowed to the devil. Howells was afraid of him. +Hawthorne saw the duplicity of man himself. Howells needed a rosier +view of life, so he divided society into two entirely opposite classes. +Instead of presenting man double within himself, as he is, and of +using human duplicity as a source of pathos, he put aside the elect, +entirely and hopelessly good, and, in opposition to them, he placed the +wicked--the _a priori_ foredoomed wicked. This was bad psychology and +still worse stagecraft. + + * * * * * + +Howells kept idealism close to the ground, creeping. He never soared +and his saints were clipped of all wings. The elect in his books showed +very little inclination for leaving their earthly comfort to join Fra +Angelico’s mystic band in Heaven. Virtue for Howells’ happy few was an +insurance on life. They made rich marriages. They were perfect fathers +and mothers, dutiful children, model husbands and wives, prosperous +and respectable business people. Golden mediocrity, if not fortune, +was the reward of their good behavior. The sinners, on the contrary, +were branded from birth by Howells. They went from bad to worse and +were denied all redemption and atonement. The “flood of sunshine,” as +Hawthorne called the scene in the forest between Hester Prynne and +Dimmesdale, and their ecstasy of gratified emotion, must have been a +shock to Howells when he read “The Scarlet Letter.” From the start +his philosophy of life vitiated his novels. It did hide from him the +veritable aspects of existence. It limited his psychology and made +it almost childish. Mr. Firkins, who had the courage to undertake a +sentimental journey with the Puritan novelist through several hundred +pages of a bulky biography, measured his limitations as follows. +Howells never represented adultery. He handled the question of divorce +only once and with utmost caution. Only once did he dare to deal with +the troubles of marital life. Only once, and very cautiously again, did +he approach the problem of crime, which Hawthorne discussed so freely, +before Dostoievski and Theodore Dreiser. Politics, religion, science +were expurgated from his books in order not to disturb the serenity of +the good people whom he chaperoned in literature. + +It is impossible to read the novels of Howells and not to feel +the iniquity of his moral system. Puritanism made him hit upon +disconcerting paradoxes and, in particular, upon that of mistaking +ethics for bourgeois respectability. Virtue in his books is the +exclusive monopoly of the well-to-do. Morality is an effort on their +part to secure for themselves the absolute monopoly of a “personality +picture” without blemish. The slightest move to alter their Puritan +identity and to mar the show which they make before the world is +denounced by them as a crime. The saints and the sinners live carefully +apart in his novels, or, if they mix, it is only through the good +offices of some charity monger or preacher of morals. He wraps his +saints in isinglass as carefully as a prophylactic toothbrush. +He protects them from all contacts. He tells us frankly that the +lawlessness of the sinners has no importance, but that the sins of a +gentleman and of a well-educated person fall upon the entire caste and +imperil the whole social order. + +Let us hear these strange morals from the mouth of one of Howells’ +_raisonneurs_, lawyer Atherton in “A Modern Instance.” Ben Halleck, one +of the characters in the book, has committed a crime which the Puritan +novelist could never forgive him. He loved and coveted platonically +Marcia Hubbard, when Marcia’s husband was still faithful to her. Since +then Hubbard (whom Howells foredoomed to evil) has become a degenerate +and met with a tragic end. Marcia is free. Halleck still loves her. He +can marry her and rescue her at last from her wretched existence. She +deserves it. But Howells forbids it. Between the two lovers he raises +the shadow of Halleck’s platonic aspirations. If he married Marcia, we +are told that the world would come to its end. Halleck must remain a +bachelor and abandon poor Marcia to her fate, in order to soothe the +Puritan conscience of the author. Let us hear lawyer Atherton state Ben +Halleck’s case: + + If a man like Ben Halleck goes astray it’s calamitous; it confounds + the human conscience, as Victor Hugo says. All that careful + nurture in the right since he could speak, all that life-long + decency of thought and act, that noble ideal of unselfishness and + respectability to others, trampled under foot and spit upon, it’s + horrible. + +We are served after this with reflections upon the true nature of good +and evil according to the code of Puritan respectability: + + The natural goodness does not count. The natural man is a wild + beast, and his natural goodness is the amiability of a beast + basking in the sun when his stomach is full.... No, it’s the + implanted goodness that saves--the seed of righteousness treasured + from generation to generation and carefully watched and tended + by disciplined fathers and mothers in the hearts where they have + dropped it, it is what we call civilization. + +Meanwhile lawyer Atherton sips a cup of Souchong tea sweetened and +tempered with Jersey cream which William Dean Howells guarantees pure. +(With how many lumps of sugar, however, he does not say.) Atherton’s +wife is also a Puritan and yet she finds the indictment just. How +can one pass judgment upon his fellow mortals when he is so snug and +comfortable at home? Atherton is not taken aback by the rejoinder of +his wife. The fact, he replies, that there are saints and sinners, +Athertons and Hubbards, is a piece of divine ordinance. I am not sure +that Howells ever read Voltaire’s “Candide” and still less that he +enjoyed it, but Atherton speaks exactly like Doctor Pangloss. Effects, +according to him, always follow causes; sinners are responsible for the +consequences of their sins; we have been foreordained by our parents +to go to heaven or hell; hell is an euphemism for the hereditary +disorders in our will; in the long run, even the fate of the wicked +will prove equitable. Such was the moral dungeon in which William Dean +Howells imprisoned his characters and this is what became of Calvin’s +predestination after having been blended in the _chiaro-oscuro_, of +the Puritan conscience, with Emerson’s compensations and scientific +heredity. + + * * * * * + +Howells tried to confine in a prison of the same sort the chief +character of “The Landlord at Lion’s Head,” one of his most interesting +novels, and also one of the most repulsive for its morals. The hero of +the book is also a foredoomed sinner. His name is Jeff Durgin. Jeff +is the son of the innkeeper at Lion’s Head. He is not perfect. He is +a born teaser and has an irritable temper. He likes to play tricks on +people. While a student at Harvard he remains waterproof to “college +spirit.” His personality is too strong. He approaches society but +behaves in it like a bull in a china shop. His conduct is not above +reproach. He does not show himself a perfect gentleman according to +Boston standards. And yet, when all is told, he is not so bad as that. +But Howells needed him to teach a moral lesson and he gave him the +third degree for that. To make Jeff atone he invented one of the most +virtuous villains of his novels, the painter Westover. How Howells +could fail to detect the hypocrisy of such a character is beyond +comprehension. Jeff’s crime consisted of shaking the branches of a New +England apple tree loaded with fruits over the head of vindictive and +priggish Westover. Was it necessary for that to reserve a seat in hell +for Jeff Durgin? Was there any proportion between Jeff’s venial offence +and the wrath of the virtuous Westover in branding Jeff with this +terrible indictment: “What you are you will remain forever”? Howells +seems not to have heeded Westover’s hypocrisy when, at the end of the +book, he wins away by his sermons the girl whom Jeff had loved all +his life. _Summum jus, summa injuria._ Such sophisticated and twisted +notions of right and wrong could enter only a diseased conscience. + + * * * * * + +Had Howells at least succeeded in making his saints as interesting as +his sinners! But this was not the case. His ideals were those of the +average and banal humanity, of the sentimental middle classes against +which American literature is now in revolt. Babbitt himself would have +proved too modern, too genial, too “peppy” for Howells. Main Street +would be his paradise without Carol Kennicott for a neighbor. Carol +was much too progressive and natural for “the Supreme Court of Appeal +of American Literature,” as Mark Twain liked to call the author of +“The Lady of the Aroostook.” Howells’ ideal people were the Laphams +and the Kentons, the dull couples whose lives were wasted in pursuit +of commonplace felicity and comfort without any higher ambition than +to brood under their wings (if they had any), sons and daughters as +dull as they were themselves. Howells’ characters do not worry much +about subconsciousness. They ran no danger of becoming patients of +Doctor Freud. They were much too “normal” for that. A plunge into +subconsciousness would have made them unhappy. It would have revealed +to them the inanity of their ethics and the lies of their petty +lives. They had better ignore it, and follow Colonel Silas Lapham’s +advice. One day Colonel Lapham had taken the boat to go to his country +residence. He is a typical American bourgeois. According to the legend, +when the ostrich wants to ignore the storm, she buries her head in the +sand. Thus did Colonel Lapham bury his head in the newspapers. When +he was through with the news, he felt an immense boredom. But why not +observe the people around him, and try to find, as a solace, what there +was in their minds? Here is the Colonel’s answer: + + “Well,” said the Colonel, “I don’t suppose it was meant we should + know what was in each other’s minds. It would take a man out of + his own hands. As long as he is in his own hands, there is some + hopes of his doing something with himself; but, if a fellow has + been found out--even if he has not been found out to be so very + bad--it’s pretty much all up with him. _No, sir, I don’t want to + know people through and through._” + +Howells was true to his word. He did not want to be a true realist. +Optimism and respectability made him take the side of hypocrisy +against truth at any cost. To better defend the bourgeois standards +he volunteered, early in his career, as the sponsor and knight in +attendance of the _jeune fille_, as the protector of the unamended +marital institutions and the irreconcilable enemy of divorce. He became +in particular the advocate of the _motherly feeling_ which modern +critics regard justly as the American _complex par excellence_. He +viewed life as a blind alley, and matrimony as a chamber of torture +which reminds one of Edgar Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” + +_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ché entrate!_ + +What would Howells have said, if he had read the chapter on “The Virgin +and the Dynamo” in the book of Henry Adams’ education? He regarded love +as a short cut to marriage and marriage as a penitentiary for life. How +disillusioned a moralist the Puritan novelist must have been when he +resorted to a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument in favor of matrimony, +like the following: + + The silken texture of the marriage tie bears a strain of wrong and + insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without + lesion; and sometimes (Howells has not counted how often) the + strength that knits society together might appear to the eye of the + faltering faith the curse of those immediately bound by it. Two + people by no means reckless of each other’s rights and feelings, + but even tender of them for the most part, may tear each other’s + heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; though if + they were any other two they would not speak or look at each other + again after the outrages they exchange. It is certainly a curious + spectacle, _and doubtless it ought to convince an observer of the + divinity of the institution_. + +It certainly does, and also of the monstrous paradoxes to which Puritan +rigorism lead Howells. The wedding ring, the hoop skirt and the +hearse,--such was his romantic outlook of life. William Dean Howells +was anything but a Greek. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +_Theodore Dreiser as a Bio-Chemist_ + + +Few books have been subjected to more discussion and criticism than +those of Theodore Dreiser. As a novelist, a short-story writer, an +essayist and a playwright, he never has coaxed his readers. Far from +this; he has even chosen to tire them out. He impersonates a radical +and an almost trivial realism. Critics in sympathy with his writings +ask us to place him in his own time, in order that we may understand +him. He is the historian of a disillusioned America, of an America +which sits anxious among its heaps of riches, an America which has +lost the romantic faith in itself. It is a country of ever-increasing +material comfort and luxury, of quick gains and of tremendous affairs, +a land where the dollar is as rapidly lost as earned. Philanthropy +abroad and merciless competition at home, “an eye for an eye, a tooth +for a tooth,” sensational criminal trials, scandals and panics,--in +brief, the most stupendous utilitarian civilization that the world has +ever seen, a Babel of towers scraping the sky to make it rain more +money: such is America in Theodore Dreiser’s massive and conscientious +“The Financier,” “The Titan,” “An American Tragedy.” However, it would +be a grave mistake from the start if we catalogued him among the social +novelists, in the same class with Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair or Jack +London. He never tried to reform society by his writings. + +His social studies are always viewed from an individual angle. He can +picture the American scene with the matter-of-fact precision of an +expert reporter, a reporter almost entirely devoid of imagination, but +with a love for scrutinizing the human heart. He is less interested +in America at large than in the Americans, and less in the Americans +than in humanity as such. This gives him a large outlook despite his +apparent narrowness. One of his familiar points is the disintegration +of a character under the pressure of the environment. Even when he +stages a social tragedy, as he did in “The Financier” and “The Titan,” +he locates it within an individual conscience. + +Let us get at Dreiser’s pedigree by the same biographical method which +he applies to the characters in his books. He was born in a small +Indiana town in 1871. His father was an emigrant from the Rhineland +who came to America to escape conscription. Though a nonconformist in +politics, he was a strict adherent of Roman Catholicism. He did not +make a success of his life and may be taken as a prototype of what his +son calls the “undermen.” He had nothing Nietzschean in him. There were +thirteen children in the family, and Theodore came next to the last, +an offspring of that mysterious biological evolution with which, as +an author, he was going to be so much concerned. One of his brothers, +Paul, had an artistic temperament and was not without literary talent. +Theodore has drawn his portrait in “Twelve Men.” Paul Dreiser, or +Dresser, was a seductive Bohemian, a sort of Rameau’s nephew, several +of whose popular songs are still remembered. Of his sisters Theodore +Dreiser tells us that, like the Jennie Gerhardts and Sister Carries +of his novels, several of them eloped early from home in order to +escape utter poverty. Theodore himself had to set to menial work to +make a living at an early age. He took up odd jobs and after a hurried +flight through college, he began as a reporter wandering from city to +city, from Saint Louis to Chicago and then to Pittsburgh and New York. +He always felt an instinctive craving for living close to everyday +life and for observing things and people around him with a keen and +circumstantiated attention, which never excluded a sort of underground +and subdued pity. Never a sentimentalist, Dreiser was however always +deeply human. He completed his apprenticeship as a writer in the midst +of an intimate contact with life, collecting the material for his books +at first hand. While running errands as a reporter he would brood over +his impressions, in the company of a few enthusiastic friends, after +feverishly reading Balzac and Émile Zola. His friends encouraged him to +write about people just as he found them around him. + +In these early days of his career Dreiser applied himself to the task +of hunting for news with the cunning and pluck of a real detective. +He had the gift of finding romance in everyday existence, and when +the time came to apply a meaning and a philosophy to what he saw, +he turned to Herbert Spencer for guidance. In 1900 appeared “Sister +Carrie,” which the censors vetoed immediately after its publication. +Then appeared in slow succession “Jennie Gerhardt,” “The Financier,” +the first volume of an unfinished trilogy, the second part of which +was called “The Titan.” In 1915 Dreiser published “The Genius” and ten +years later “An American Tragedy,” the history of a crime recounted +in two huge volumes. Let us not forget Dreiser’s short stories, +“Twelve Men,” “Free and Other Stories,” and “Chains.” From an artistic +standpoint these are the best things that he has ever written. And then +we have the autobiography of the author, “A Traveller at Forty,” and “A +Book about Myself,” two self-drawn portraits of first importance to the +study of Dreiser as an artist and as a man. His complete philosophy is +to be found in “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub” and also in many pages of “A Hoosier +Holiday.” + +It may well be doubted whether any other modern writer has ever +succeeded in carrying the doctrine of realism as far as Dreiser has. +It was a heroic effort on his part. He himself tells that, when he +began to write, it was impossible to write realistic novels in this +country. Around 1900 idealistic America was nestled too snugly in its +mid-Victorian sentimentality, not to show its teeth at an American +Maupassant intent upon depicting life as it is. As Dreiser ironically +puts it, people were not accustomed, in those days, to “calling a +spade a spade.” They wanted shock absorbers and pillows all around +them. Their minds as well as their houses were all painted pink, +and woe to the fanatic who tried to besmirch them with drab hues. +Theoretically Americans pretended to admire Tolstoi, Flaubert, Balzac +and Maupassant from a safe distance, and yet their bookshelves were +loaded with the books of the mid-Victorian writers bound to match the +furniture. Dreiser does not deny that the mid-Victorians had something +to say about life, but they were afraid of saying too much. The great +English writers of the middle nineteenth century were well aware of +the vanities and lies of human existence, but they had pledged their +word of honor to themselves and to the public that they would never +reveal what they knew. Idealism spread a veil over it. The result was +that, like William Dean Howells, American authors displayed existence +only in its most smiling aspects of existence. This was the safest way +not to discourage optimism. Christian people could thus be happy. They +could lead quiet and respectable lives at home, rear their children in +the fear of God, go to church on Sundays and ignore trouble, provided, +adds Dreiser, that thieves, cheats and dogs gave them permission to +do so. In the books of the period men appear only as heroes. If their +daughters met with any mishaps, they were charged to some _ex professo_ +scapegoats. Otherwise things in general look as if our first parents +had never committed the original sin. It was the duty of the writer, +the preacher and the politician to confirm people in this optimism and +to promise them felicity in this world and the world hereafter. + +As for Dreiser, he was of a different type of mind. He called himself +an independent. He also was in favor of progress but he refused to +believe that it could be achieved without having a scientific view +of things. He refused to stand by any creed. He declared that Truth, +Beauty and Love were only vital lies and capitalized nonentities. Did +he believe in the ideal or did he deny it? One thing he knew, namely, +that man and the world are a fifty-fifty mixture of good and evil. This +was the creed of a realist and Dreiser has never adhered to any other. + +He shows a real enthusiasm for facts. He can distil beauty from the +most trivial heap of junk. He himself has told us many times that he +owes his passion for the trivial to his experience as a journalist. +As a true journalist, and as a typical American, he is much more +interested in the news than in the editorials. This explains why +there is a complete absence of ethics and metaphysics in his books. +He rarely comments upon the actual achievements of his heroes. The +editorial rooms of a newspaper, we are told, are an incubator of lies +where ready-made notions are concocted to be swallowed at one gulp. +Humanity, progress, character, morality, the sanctity of the home, and +so forth,--these bribes for the fools come out of the editorial rooms. +A reporter, on the contrary, is only concerned with things and people +as they are. He does not wear gloves to write. He is after what happens +and not what should happen; not after an ideal but after truth. The +rule for the reporter is to get at the news and by the quickest route. +Let him report anything he wants to, provided that he can do it faster +and better than any of his competitors. The public must be served. The +public clamors for news. They must have it. + +When he speaks of the reporter, Dreiser gives up all the ethical +standards. Truth alone matters. He knows that a good reporter shows +no scruples. He must get at the facts and to do this all means are +justified, even the trickiest ones. + +With all his faults Dreiser prefers journalists to philosophers: +journalists, according to him, are free of what he calls the +“moralistic mush.” After having been through the journalistic mill +for some time they cannot be sentimental, and leave to other people +the ranting about patriotism, justice, truth and the like. They know +the fanatic for what he is, a man ready to make people swallow fairy +tales, and to draw personal profits from his hypocrisy. As for the +politicians, the journalists see them in their true light, selfish +intriguers who gamble with popular ignorance and passions. Even judges +stand to him just for what they are, _i.e._, men lucky enough to secure +good positions and careful to steer their boat in the wind of public +opinion. + +Once Dreiser called on an editor and while he was waiting he looked +about him at the suggestive inscriptions which a mysterious hand had +written in unmistakable characters upon the walls. In true American +fashion those characters flashed for the members of the staff the +decalogue of their profession. EXACTITUDE! EXACTITUDE! EXACTITUDE! +WHO? WHAT? WHERE? HOW? THE FACTS! THE COLOR! THE FACTS! But Dreiser +fails to tell us that that day he found the essentials of his literary +programme. Not imagination, but attention--microscopic attention--is +his muse. No realistic writer has been truer to Locke’s aphorism +according to which there is nothing in our minds which has not come to +them through the senses. He owes to journalistic tactics not only his +literary processes, but most of the content of his novels. They are +borrowed in a lump from what the French call _faits divers_, _i.e._, +from the news columns. His great social novels, “The Financier” and +“The Genius,” are dramatized pieces of muck-raking. They leave very +little, if anything, to the imagination. They deal with a then recent +scandal involving a Philadelphia magnate. Dreiser did not have to +invent the story. He went to the spot to gather information and, as a +reporter does, he got his man. To build up his Cowperwood, Dreiser did +not need to use even one tenth of the imagination which Cuvier showed +in reconstructing the dynosaur. Dreiser is not a novelist. He is an +historian. Were it only for his sake, the word fiction as applied to +a presentation of real life under an assumed name and in an anonymous +setting, should be effaced from the English dictionary. Why invent and +imagine when reality is teeming with surprise, and why buy the “Arabian +Nights” when we have the daily paper and the last news? Dreiser never +had any trouble in passing from the composition room to the desk of +the novelist. He never went far for subjects. Let others go to the +South Seas, to Alaska, to Europe or the East, to find their heroes and +heroines. Dreiser sets his camera in the middle of the street. And--by +the way--who is the greatest idealist, the fictitious writer who needs +castles in Spain for romance, or the unflinching and intuitive observer +who can perceive an epic in the most trivial events of every week day? +Dreiser does not hunt for romance; he waits for it at home. The daily +paper brings him more material than he wants. He has listed for us some +of those thrillers that he can buy ready-made for a few cents. Here are +a few of them, fresh from the printing-press. + +I. A young girl is in love with a young man whom her father dislikes. +The girl and the boy have been drawn toward each other by that vital +force which acts as a _deus ex machina_ in Dreiser’s novels (Dreiser +calls _bio-chemistry_ what Goethe named _elective affinities_ and G. +B. Shaw the _vital force_). Despite the father’s opposition the young +couple marry in secret. The groom’s parent is furious when he hears of +it. In a fit of drunkenness he kills his son. Only his daughter, by +telling a lie, can save him at court. _What will she do?_ And do we +need to go to Shakespeare or Corneille to find a thrill? What have +capitalized abstractions, like Duty, Law, Justice, to do with this +blunt, brutal and yet highly dramatic alternative? + +II. A man is born with a passion for business. If he can make a merger +of several independent firms, he will be able to manufacture and +sell to the public, at low cost, a product which will make him rich. +But, in order to do this, he must face either one of the following +possibilities: (_a_) He can form a stock company with equal rights +for all of its members; (_b_) he can manufacture the article without +personal profit or loss; (_c_) he can share the risks and profits +of the venture with a few associates and strangle the competitors; +(_d_) or stand pat. Attitudes (_b_) and (_c_) are called moral. If, +on the contrary, the business man decides in favor of (_a_) or (_d_) +he declares war on society. What will an intelligent and aggressive +personality do and, once more, what have capitalized abstractions +to do with such a mighty instinct when it is confronted by adverse +circumstances? + +III. A young man has committed a crime. His father realizes that the +crime of his son is his own fault since he failed to give the youth the +right sort of education. The law expects the father to surrender his +child, whom he loves with all his heart and for whose crime he feels +responsible. What will the father do? + +There is nothing romantic about all this, declares Dreiser. This is not +romance, it is truth such as can be found at any time in the dailies. +Dreiser is satisfied with this kind of material. There is more than a +fortuitous resemblance between story Number II and “The Financier.” +The last-mentioned episode reads very much like “An American Tragedy.” +With his imagination of facts the novelist has been able to unravel in +many hundred pages all the possibilities contained in a few newspaper +headlines. This confession about his sources will save many scholars, +in years to come the trouble they have to face when they try to +identify Père Grandet or Emma Bovary. Only a romantic writer can think +of hiding what he borrows from life. The true realist, Dreiser or +Zola, is not ashamed of being caught, his camera in hand. The closer +the resemblance between the original and the copy, the greater the art +which produced it. + + * * * * * + +As a philosopher, as well as an artist, Dreiser still remains a +journalist. His novels are no more or no less immoral than a newspaper. +Why should we grant the newspaperman the right to record coolly and +without comment a crime or a scandal, and yet brand the novelist as +immoral when he chooses to do the same? Dreiser does not comment in +his novels; he reports. His philosophy is not ready-made; it has not +been elaborated in a study or in a pulpit. It was born in the realm of +chance and of current events, from incidents and accidents, close to +the morgue, the charnel house, the brothel, the slum, the hospital, the +police station, where Dreiser used to report. There wisdom came to him +as it did to Hamlet in the churchyard. Life is the text and our actions +are the comments. A loyal and sincere seeker of truth, Theodore Dreiser +never interposes his own personality between his characters and the +reader. In this respect he is still more objective than his master, +Balzac. He preaches no sermon. He shows things and people as they are. +If there is somewhere a conscience, it must be in the heart of him or +her who reads through the book. + +Dreiser is a moralist, but he preaches his morals outside of his +novels. With one hand he composes his massive, clumsy and realistic +narratives, deliberately objective and amoral. With the other he holds +the pen of the traveler, the philosopher and the essayist. Read, for +instance, his admirable essay on “The Inevitable Equation.” It is +as clear an elucidation of the writer’s mind as could be expected. +This sort of double-dealing with his readers came out of the author’s +loyalty toward others and himself. A conscientious and skilful +journalist will not make the mistake of confusing the news with the +editorial matter. Philosophy and facts belong to two different orders. +The one is the order of the mind, the other that of nature. Better keep +them apart than to see one giving the lie to the other. + +_Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas._ + +Outside of his novels Theodore Dreiser has often shown himself an +original thinker, and, even when his philosophy has lacked originality, +he has made up for it by the strength of his convictions. His outlook +on life is as little cheerful as that of Voltaire in “Candide” or +Anatole France in “Penguin Island.” The true realist, like a true +psychologist, is a born pessimist. Only the ignorant can be blind to +the human tragedy. Let us praise Dreiser for seeing the ugly side of +life without altogether losing faith in it. Experience has taught +him many a bitter lesson as to the place of man in the universe. One +cannot be a reporter and still sing every day Browning’s famous hymn to +optimism: + + The year is at the spring, + The day is at the morn, + God’s in his heaven; + All’s right with the world. + +Even a self-satisfied poet, at ease under the beautiful Italian sky, +can forget himself now and then and blaspheme. Not so Theodore Dreiser. +This is a sober and gloomy portrait of life, such as Lucretius used to +paint it: + + Common dust swept into our atmosphere makes our beautiful sunsets + and blue sky. Sidereal space, as we know it, is said to be one + welter of strangely flowing streams of rock and dust, a wretched + mass made attractive only by some vast compulsory coalition into + a star. Stars clash and blaze, and the whole great complicated + system seems one erosive, chaffering, bickering effort, with + here and there a tendency to stillness and petrification. This + world, as we know it, the human race and the accompanying welter + of animals and insects, do they not, aside from momentary phases + of delight and beauty, often strike you as dull, aimless, cruel, + useless? Are not the processes by which they are produced or those + by which they live (the Chicago slaughter-houses, for instance), + stark, relentless, brutal, shameful even?--life living on life, + the preying of one on another, the compulsory ageing of all, the + hungers, thirsts, destroying losses and pains.[18] + +Dreiser’s philosophy may not be very cheerful, but it is genuine and +far more original than could be expected from a writer of fiction. +Spencer and Huxley--not to forget Nietzsche--robbed Dreiser of his +religious beliefs and left him in a quandary of philosophical nihilism. +A summary of his creed may be set forth about as follows: There are +only facts. The moral and religious interpretations of life are +erroneous. They fail to cope with reality. Dreiser is a self-confessed +agnostic. The key to the riddles of human destiny will be found, not +in metaphysics, but in bio-chemistry. Idealism is a lie. Dreiser +has called himself a man longing for poetry and at the same time a +materialist ardently enamored with life. He doubts, on the other +hand--to use his own words--whether a human being, no matter how poetic +of material he may have been, has ever thrown over the scenes of this +world, material or spiritual, a glance more avid and covetous than his +own. His challenge to idealism rests upon the feeling that there exists +a gap between reality as it can be observed and its interpretation +at the hand of the professional philosophers. He is ready to adhere +to principles and to accept interpretations, provided that they be +in accord with facts as scientifically determined. Meanwhile he sees +little proportion between the world such as it is, and the creeds +or systems imagined on its account. Our systems of thought belie +experience. Ethics contradict bio-chemistry. There are people whose +particular interest seems to be to disfigure things as they are, and to +present man to himself as being different from what he is in reality. +This is hypocrisy. Life is not a harmony but a struggle. Our existence +is a tragic conflict of forces, aspirations, passions and energies, +all excellent in themselves, but perverted by irrational repressions. +Let us admire Dreiser’s frankness on this point. Man, to him, is not +a pre-Raphaelite seraph dressed with wings, but a being of blood and +flesh. Like Whitman and Jack London, Dreiser is full of an orgiastic +enthusiasm for the human body. He cannot help reducing the moral to the +physical, the soul to the body, and translating psychology in terms of +bio-chemistry: + + In spite of all the so-called laws and prophets, there is + apparently in Nature no such thing as the right to do or the right + not to do, if you reach the place where the significance of the + social chain in which you find yourself is not satisfactory. The + murderer has under the written law no right to murder anybody. It + is perfectly plain that he has the right if he is willing to pay + the penalty, or if he can evade it. Conscience, this thing called + conscience, to which people repeatedly appeal, is, as I have + pointed out elsewhere, little more than a built-up net of social + acceptances and agreements in regard to society or the agreed + state of facts in which we all find ourselves when we arrive here; + in other words, all the things which we wish to do and be, or + avoid.[19] + +In this unromantic universe Dreiser moves with admiration and delight. +At the bottom of his philosophy there is a calm and serene--but +disenchanted--individualism, very much like that which took Nietzsche +beyond evil and good. Dreiser accepts the struggle for survival like a +convinced Darwinian. He views life as a chaos of blind and amorphous +energies roused by mysterious and ominous ferments. The game of life +is that of the great individuals against the masses. Great men tending +to self-expression and self-expansion find themselves blocked by the +overwhelming numbers of elementary and gregarious humanity. Hence the +war between society and the élite of supermen. Dreiser’s evolutionism, +however, does not in the least imply an idea of progress. Change there +is, eternal change, mutation, compensation, and, in the last analysis +eternal return. + +Thus Dreiser’s evolutionism is purely organic and static. It is +strictly realistic. The fact that a few great individuals emerge +from the mass does not justify higher expectations for the future +of mankind. Besides, they do not always emerge. Many dynosaurs and +superhuman giants fail pitifully and are buried alive in the mud. +Geology and anthropology endorse Dreiser’s pessimism on the subject of +man’s fight with the blind forces of nature. + +Life is a struggle, but not necessarily a struggle toward the better, +as the idealists imagine. Though a fairly good Darwinian, Dreiser would +fain believe in the survival of the fittest. War does not ever make for +better. It slaughters blindly left and right, and the bravest, the most +daring and courageous are always the first to die, as the World War +proved not long ago. Dreiser’s supermen are a product of change, human +machines moved by vices and passions, greed and lust. They may win over +their fellow mortals, but they have to cope with Nature, Nature without +an Emersonian Oversoul, and all of them surrender finally to its blind +dictates. The man who wrote “The Titan,” “The Financier,” “The Genius” +hit the hardest blow to American idealism. He might well be nicknamed +the Homer of the heroes who fail, the Balzac of moral and physiological +failures. But an artist does not much care to know where the world +goes; he is chiefly concerned with life and motion. Where there is +struggle there is life and motion and rhythm, and this it is which +makes the world artistically interesting and attractive, and it does +this for Dreiser. Even from the utilitarian point of view (when it is +told), there is compensation in the existence of the giants. It would +of course be folly on our part to try to block the way of the lion and +the tiger. We had better carefully keep at a safe distance: + + My own guess would be that we, or rather the race, are going on + to a greater individuality, plus a greater weakness as to its + component and clinging atoms, providing it does not suffer an + endless dark age of mass control or total extinction in some form + or other. Nietzsche appeared preaching individuality, greater + individuality for everybody who could achieve it, and to a certain + extent he was right. Greater individuality than the world has + yet seen will certainly be achieved by some.... If to have a + Woolworth Building, a transcontinental railroad, a Panama Canal, a + flying machine, to say nothing of literature and art, means that + we must endure a man who is dull, greedy, vain, ridiculous in + many ways or even an advocate of every conceivable vice in order + to twist his brain into some strange phantasmagorical tendency, + the result of which will be some one of these things, there + are many who would enthusiastically say, “Then let us have him + along with all his lacks or vices, in order that this other may + be.”... For my part I am convinced that so-called vice or crime + and destruction and so-called evil, are as fully a part of the + universal creative process as are all the so-called virtues, and do + as much good--providing, as they do, for one thing, the religionist + and the moralist with their reasons for existing. At best, ethics + and religion are but one face of a shield which is essentially + irreligious and ethical as to its other face, or the first would + not exist.[20] + +Imagination has never been Theodore Dreiser’s forte, at least, not +the kind of imagination which soars beyond memory and adds fancy to +experience. Yet the essential of his philosophy will be found in +the first pages of “The Financier,” in the disguise of an allegory. +He tells us how, when still a child, Cowperwood began to doubt the +story of the origins of mankind as it is told in the book of Genesis. +The Bible did not give him a satisfactory interpretation of human +actions, so he turned to a fishmonger near his home. The fishmonger +had tubs full of fish. They gave him his first lesson in philosophy. +I cannot help quoting the whole anecdote as a faithful summary and an +illustration of the struggle for existence. The battle between the +lobster and the squid was indeed a natural prelude to introduce the +readers to the exploits of what is commonly called among mortals a +“shark,” and Cowperwood is one of the first brand: + + The lobster lay at the bottom of the clear glass tank on the yellow + sand, apparently seeing nothing. You could not tell in which way + his beady, black button eyes were looking--but apparently they + were never off the body of the squid. The latter, pale and waxy in + texture, looking very much like pork fat or jade, was moving about + in torpedo fashion; but his movements were apparently never out of + the eyes of his enemy, for by degrees small portions of his body + began to disappear, snapped off by the relentless claws of his + pursuer. The latter, as young Cowperwood was one day a witness, + would leap like a catapult to where the squid was apparently idly + dreaming, and the squid, very alert, would dart away, shooting out + at the same time a cloud of ink, behind which it would disappear. + It was not always completely successful, however. Some small + portions of its body or its tail were frequently left in the claws + of the monster below. Days passed, and, now fascinated by the + drama, young Cowperwood came daily.[21] + +The size of the squid’s body decreased day after day and he wasted +all his ink ammunitions. The battle now was too uneven to last. One +evening, when Frank came back to watch it, he saw a crowd around the +tub. The lobster was still squinting in his corner and close to him +lay the squid or, at least the little that was left of him. Young +Cowperwood felt aggrieved. He had come too late to enjoy the most +thrilling part of the fight, but he did not miss its lesson. Such was +life! Lobsters and squids fought and finally one was bound to devour +the other. The lobsters fed on the squids, men fed on the lobsters +and--who fed on men? For days and weeks, says Dreiser, young Cowperwood +could think of nothing but lobsters and squids. This was a true picture +of life and of what it had in store for an ambitious young man ready to +start on his career. It filled him with courage and anxiety. + +Dreiser will never forget the tub where the lobster got the best +of the squid, despite its camouflage. There at last you had a true +lesson in behaviorism and on the art of _stimuli_ and responses, an +ethics construed out of automatic actions. Henceforth human beings in +Dreiser’s books will be easily divided into two classes, those which +eat and those which are eaten, the lobsters and the squids. Crude and +elementary as this classification may well seem, it is based upon an +honest attempt to study life at close quarters. + + * * * * * + +Such an unsophisticated view of this world did not inspire the novelist +with much indulgence in dealing with his own country. Darwinism made +him rather harsh with democratic institutions. He is too fond of the +trivial and the commonplace not to cherish the United States. “A +Hoosier Holiday” is a faithful and, on the whole, an eulogious and +sometimes lyrical survey of America. This masterpiece of indifference +to the laws of literary perspective is, taken altogether, the most +suggestive collection of _Reisebilder_. Here is the American Middle +West photographed from life, an easy-going, happy-go-lucky country, +half modern, half patriarchal with his cornucopias teeming with corn +and cattle, half savage, half civilized, half awake, half vegetative, +more remote from Europe than the cannibals in Typee’s island. Dreiser, +the satirist, the philosopher and the artist, keeps a harmonious copy +all through the book for our delight. “A Hoosier Holiday” is a pleasant +medley of sketches, cartoons, soliloquies and lyrical outbursts. It is +the best book which Dreiser has written. + +It is apparent that America is very dear to the heart of Theodore +Dreiser, although he does not spare her his criticisms. He loves her, +pets her and scolds her, as he would a child: + + Dear, crude, asinine, illusioned Americans! How I love them! And + the great fields from the Atlantic to the Pacific holding them + all, and their dreams! How they rise, how they hurry, how they run + under the sun! Here they are building a viaduct, there a great + road, yonder plowing fields or sowing grain, their faces lit with + eternal, futile hope of happiness. You can see them religiously + tending store, religiously running a small-town country hotel, + religiously mowing the grass, religiously driving shrewd bargains + or thinking that much praying will carry them to heaven--the dear + things!--and then among them are the bad men, the loafers, the + people who chew tobacco and swear and go to the cities Saturday + nights and “cut up” and don’t save their money! + + Dear, dear, darling Yankee land--“my country ’tis”--when I think of + you and all your ills and all your dreams and all your courage and + your faith--I could cry over you, wringing my hands.[22] + +And yet he prefers America to Europe: + + And why? Well, because of a certain indefinable something--either + of hope or courage or youth or vigor or illusion, what you will, + but the average American, or the average European transplanted to + America, is a better or at least a more dynamic person than the + average European at home, even the Frenchman. He has more grit, + verve, humor, or a lackadaisical slapdash method which is at once + efficient, self-sustaining, comforting. His soul, in spite of all + the chains wherewith the ruling giants are seeking to fetter him, + is free. + + As yet, regardless of what is or may be, he does not appear to + realize that he is not free or that he is in any way oppressed. + There are no ruling classes, to him. He sings, whistles, jests, + laughs boisterously; matches everybody for cigars, beers, meals; + chews tobacco, spits freely, smokes, swears, rolls to and fro, + cocks his hat on one side of his head, and altogether by and large + is a regular “hell of a feller.” He does not know anything about + history, or very little, and doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t know + anything about art,--but, my God, who with the eternal hills and + all nature for a background cannot live without representative + art? His food is not extraordinarily good, though plentiful, his + clothes are made by Stein-Bloch, or Hart, Schaffner and Marx, and + altogether he is a noisy, blatant, contented mess--but, oh, the + gay, self-sufficient soul of him! No moans! No tears! Into the + teeth of destiny he marches, whistling “Yankee Doodle” or “Turkey + in the Straw.” In the parlance of his own streets, “Can you beat + him?”[23] + +And yet-- + + At other times, viewing the upstanding middle class American + with his vivid suit, yellow shoes, flaring tie and conspicuous + money roll, I want to compose an ode in praise of the final + enfranchisement of the common soul. How much better these + millions, I ask you, with their derby and fedora hats, their + ready-made suits, their flaring jewelry, automobiles and a general + sense of well-being, and even perfection, if you will, than a race + of slaves or serfs, dominated by grand dukes, barons, beperfumed + and beribboned counts, daimios, and lords and ladies, however + cultivated and artistic these may appear! True, the latter would + act more gracefully, but would they be any the more desirable + for that, actually? I hear a thousand patrician-minded souls + exclaiming, “Yes, of course,” and I hear a million lovers of + democracy insisting “No.” Personally, I would take a few giants in + every field, well curbed, and then a great and comfortable mass + such as I see about me in these restaurants, for instance, well + curbed also. Then I would let them mix and mingle. + +Dreiser’s patriotism is not blind. The future of his country fills him +with worry and anxiety. Looking forward as a philosopher, he looks upon +American civilization as upon a brilliant phase, though not a final +one, in the world’s evolution. Bossuet, in his discourse on universal +history, viewed nations and empires as many toys in the hands of a +divine Providence. Dreiser considers them as the playthings of Chance. +A faithful believer in the law of change, he has little illusion left +on the subject of the rights of men, brotherhood, freedom. Life is a +dream, and this great American Commonwealth, whose achievements fill +him with pride and enthusiasm, may well be also another dream: + + Happy, happy people! Yet for the dream’s sake, as I told myself + at this time, and as against an illimitable background of natural + chance and craft, I would like to see this and the other sections + with which it is so closely allied, this vast Republic, live on. + It is so splendid, so tireless. Its people, in spite of their + defects and limitations, sing so at their tasks. There are dark + places, but there are splendid points of light, too. One is their + innocence, complete and enduring; another is their faith in ideals + and the Republic. A third is their optimism and buoyancy of soul, + their courage to get up in the morning and go up and down the + world, whistling and singing. Oh, the whistling, singing American, + with his jest and his sound heart and that light of humorous + apprehension in his eyes! How wonderful it all is! It isn’t + English, or French, or German, or Spanish, or Russian, or Swedish, + or Greek. It’s American, “Good Old United States,”--and for that + reason I liked this region and all these other portions of America + that I have ever seen. New England is not so kindly, the South not + so hopeful, the Far West more so, but they have something of these + characteristics which I have been describing. + + And for these reasons I would have this tremendous, bubbling + Republic live on, as a protest perhaps against the apparently too + unbreakable rule that democracy, equality, or the illusion of it, + is destined to end in disaster. It cannot survive ultimately, I + think. In the vast, universal sea of motion, where change and decay + are laws, and individual power is almost always uppermost, it must + go under--but until then-- + + We are all such pathetic victims of chance, anyhow. We are born, + we struggle, we plan, and chance blows all our dreams away. If, + therefore, one country, one State dares to dream the impossible, + why cast it down before its ultimate hour? Why not dream with it? + It is so gloriously, so truly a poetic land. We were conceived in + ecstasy and born in dreams. + + And so, were I one of sufficient import to be able to speak to my + native land, the galaxy of States of which it is composed, I would + say: Dream on. Believe. Perhaps it is unwise, foolish, childlike, + but dream anyhow. Disillusionment is destined to appear. You may + vanish as have other great dreams, but even so, what a glorious, an + imperishable memory! + + “Once,” will say those historians of far distant nations of times + yet unborn, perchance, “once there was a great republic. And its + domain lay between a sea and a sea--a great continent. In its youth + and strength it dared assert that men were free and equal, endowed + with certain inalienable rights. Then came the black storms of + life--individual passions and envies, treasons, stratagems, spoils. + The very gods, seeing it young, dreamful, of great cheer, were + filled with envy. They smote and it fell. But, oh, the wondrous + memory of it! For in those days men were free, _because they + imagined they were free_.” Of dreams and the memory of them is life + compounded.[24] + +This loyal citizen of democratic America is too good a Darwinian to +believe in equality. He sees the United States like the lobster and the +squid in the tub, as a land of bitter conflicts scarcely concealed by +humanitarianism, a land where the strongest coaxes the weak in order +to stifle him more effectively. As a philosopher Dreiser shows little +respect for the masses, although they delight his artistic sense. He +has little or no confidence in them. If any change for the better +happens in human conditions, we must attribute it to the supermen, +who are acting as Providence first for their own profit, but also +indirectly for that of the greater mass of mortals. Great men are the +sole palliation offered by Nature to the average mediocrity of the +human race. Dreiser’s partiality for the supermen has gone as far as +praising as the most wonderful of all books Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” +that bible of crafty and cynical statesmen. He praised Alexander, +Caesar, Hannibal and Napoleon like another Carlyle. These were men of +prey, sharks and vultures, but the energy of Nature was seething within +them with its most virulent ferments. As a masterpiece of bio-chemistry +they stand out preëminently among the _homoculi_. Of course the fight +with the giants and the dwarfs is unequal. The masses do not give the +supermen their chance. Dreiser bemoans that plight. Turning to his +country he waves to the captains of industry as the true reincarnations +of Alexander and Bonaparte. During a visit to the Vatican galleries he +was impressed, he tells us, by a striking air of resemblance between +certain American magnates and the proconsuls or the emperors of Rome! + +This hero worship explains to us why Theodore Dreiser cannot refrain +from feeling some admiration even for such authentic villains as his +Frank Cowperwood. Biology and ethics play at the tug-of-war in his +novels. He cannot accept the criminal, but neither can he condemn him +without a mixed feeling of aversion and awe in the presence of his +strength. The call-of-the-wild lures him as strongly as it does Jack +London. He adores sheer force as an athlete does the sight of a perfect +figure, without any admixture of moral responsibility. He adores life +as what may be called the muscular display of passions. Without greed +and lust he gives us to understand that there would be no dramatic +pathos left in existence. So he wrote the epic of appetites unleashed. +In his novels Society arrayed with moral codes, judges, policemen, +jails and executioners plays the part of the Myrmidons in Homer. The +men of pluck and daring, the grafters, the forgers, and the like, stand +out like as many Achilles and Hectors. Passions and appetites, even +those condemned by the code, are the keys to human life. The truest +moments of life, although they may be the most tragic, are those +athrill with a great passion. Life is a perpetually self-renovating +process, the gushing-out of infinite forces hurled against all +barriers.[24] + +This love of life as it is, along with Dreiser’s preference for the +bio-chemical point of view, must also account for the treatment of the +sexual problems in his books. Dreiser’s apparent cynicism on this point +is again that of the biologist. To detect the mysteries of sex he does +not need to turn to Doctor Freud. He brings everything to the surface. +Like Whitman, he sings a pæan to life in all its works. His pagan odes +to Life need only rhymes to be formal poems. Here is a hymn to the +Vital Force which betrays the true poet: + + Life will not be boxed in boxes. It will not be wrapped and tied + up with strings and set aside on a shelf to await a particular + religious or moral use. As yet we do not understand life, we do not + know what it is, what the laws are that govern it. At best we see + ourselves hobbling along, responding to this dream and that lust + and unable to compel ourselves to gainsay the fires and appetites + and desires of our bodies and minds. Some of these, in some of us, + strangely enough (and purely accidentally, of that I am convinced) + conform to the current needs or beliefs of a given society; and if + we should be so fortunate as to find ourselves in that society, + we are by reason of these ideals, favorites, statesmen, children + of fortune, poets of the race. On the other hand, others of us + who do not and cannot conform (who are left-over phases of ancient + streams, perhaps, or portentous striae of new forces coming into + play) are looked upon as horrific, and to be stabilized, or + standardized, and brought into the normal systole-diastole of + things.[25] + + Those of us endowed with these things in mind and blood are truly + terrible to the mass--pariahs, failures, shams, disgraces. Yet life + is no better than its worst elements, no worse than its best. Its + perfections are changing temporalities, illusions of perfection + that will be something very different to-morrow. + + Again I say, we do not know what life is--not nearly enough to + set forth a fixed code of any kind, religious or otherwise. But + we do know that it sings and stings, that it has perfections, + entrancements, shames--each according to his blood flux and its + chemical character. Life is rich, gorgeous, an opium-eater’s dream + of something paradisiacal--but it is never the thin thing that thin + blood and a weak, ill-nourished, poorly responding brain would make + it, and that is where the majority of our religions, morals, rules + and safeguards come from. From thin, petered-out blood, and poor, + nervous, non-commanding, weak brains. + + Life is greater than anything we know. + + It is stronger. + + It is wilder. + + It is more horrible. + + It is more beautiful. + + We need not stop and think we have found a solution. We have + not even found a beginning. We do not know. And my patriotic + father wanted us all to believe in the Catholic Church and the + Infallibility of the Pope and confession and communion! + + Great Pan of the Greeks, and you, Isis of the Egyptians, save me! + These moderns are all insane![26] + +Thus speaks the American Zarathustra. + +Theodore Dreiser was not satisfied with lyrical statements of his +philosophy. “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub” is a direct and almost _ex professo_ +comment on the subject of life and conduct. Important qualifications +of his pessimism will be found in particular in an important essay +of that book, called “The Inevitable Equation.” Yes, Dreiser is a +moralist; may I say an Emersonian moralist? “The Inevitable Equation” +recalls to our mind Emerson’s famous essay on “Compensation.” Crimes, +monstrosities, lust and greed, the rascalities of Frank Cowperwood or +the crimes of Clyde Griffiths do not disturb the novelist’s serenity. +He does not feel the need, like Zola, of calling society to the rescue, +or like Dostoievski to resort to mysticism to make the world better. He +remains a positivist. Life is Life. _C’est la guerre!_ Call it God, the +Oversoul or the Vital Force, the ruling energies of Nature are blind +and indifferent. Never did Nature listen to a course in philosophy. +What does Dreiser care how the Vital Force will call itself? It is +enough for him that he can wonder daily at its wonderful display. +A volcano or a cyclone are not moral, but they are impressive and +thrilling. A world without dangers would not be an interesting world. +Moreover there is an automatic (or call it, if you like, providential) +Westinghouse brake somewhere in the worst furies of the monster. Nature +is a self-regulated energy. It manages alone to keep a balance in the +midst of its turmoil. The individuals and the masses counterbalance +each other rather harmoniously and this probably explains why the +cosmos has not yet been wrecked. Saints and poets compensate for +the greedy and the lusty. Saint Francis of Assisi atones for Frank +Cowperwood. This belief in compensation, or, as Dreiser prefers to say, +in equation, is the only trace of ethics to be found in his books, but +it was already Emerson’s ethics.[27] + +Pity plays no part in Dreiser’s stories. His outlook on life is +entirely devoid of that quality. Yet he is less cruel in his essays. +An unmistakable undercurrent of tenderness and indulgence toward +mankind is present in them. The author of “An American Tragedy” is the +same one who wrote “Twelve Men,” a most touching, human and, yes, a +truly Christian book. Optimism is not absent either from “A Traveller +at Forty” and “A Book About Myself.” Outside the reporter’s office +Theodore Dreiser can be truly human. Then he gives up objectivity +and he does not mind helping his readers solve the riddles of this +world. After all, even in his gloomiest moments he does not deal +with the satanic phases of life with more complacency than, for +instance, Jonathan Edwards used to do. His impartiality does not +exclude convictions; much to the contrary. It is that of a judge who +suspends the sentence until the criminal has been proven guilty. His +indictment is then left to the jury, _i.e._, to the readers of his +books on the conscience of whom he relies. Few writers have known like +him the somber art of penning us in through hundreds or thousands of +pages without one single ray of hope apparent, and few could operate +a guillotine with the _sang-froid_ found in the execution of Clyde +Griffiths. Again, however, Dreiser’s pessimism is not without an appeal. + +He has suggested in the same essays two solutions of the ethical +problem. In our fight with Nature there is first the alternative of +complete surrender, abandonment and acceptance. This is the choice of +the saints and the sages. The other alternative is to fight the fight +for its own sake, and to challenge the world on its own ground. If we +refuse to serve Nature we may well try to surpass it, and disprove +it. Dreiser seems very much in favor of those Promethean ethics. The +universal forces may well overtake us and beat us at the game. What +of that? If we cannot win, let us, at least, know that we tried. Here +Dreiser once more points out a moral, not of conscience but of science. +He revives Socrates’ dictum “Know thyself” and the world along with +you. This may be the best road to victory when all is told. Surrounded +on all sides by superhuman energies let us prove ourselves supermen to +meet them, and if we are ominously assailed, let us at least find out +the name of our assailant. If we suffer, let us gladly, proudly confess +it. As for Theodore Dreiser himself, he declares that a nook beside the +giant Prometheus on the rock would please him more than a seat in the +orchestra of Fra Angelico’s winged seraphs. This ethics does not lack +generosity and heroism. + +When all is said, Dreiser the philosopher and Dreiser the artist go +hand in hand. He accepts the world as it is. Let it be good or evil, +a means toward an end or an end in itself, a providential purpose +or such stuff as dreams are made of, this huge mystery is in itself +something worth meditating and writing upon. What do evolution, +melioration and progress matter? When Dreiser returns after twenty +years to his native Hoosier village he is concerned with only one +question. Have his countrymen succeeded in enriching their sensuous +experience and developing their perceptive capacity, or shall we admit +that since the days of King Solomon, or Euripides or Shakespeare man’s +faculty to enjoy the world has not made any progress? Euripides’ +“Medea,” the “Canticle of Canticles,” “Macbeth,” are just as true and +beautiful to-day as they were centuries ago. Have we moderns found +anything superior to the sensuous delight which these works of the +past allow us to enjoy? Can anything beyond be imagined? What have +time and space to do with the enjoyment of life? No mechanical device +can accelerate spiritual progress. Theodore Dreiser cannot be imposed +upon by the conquest of the air or of the asphalt. The Big Bertha +and the asphyxiating gas are not signs to him of human supremacy. At +present man does not any more understand the tremendous forces which he +commands than he did in his primitive days, although he can conceive of +still more tremendous energies than those which he sees at play around +him. Our response to the stimuli of Nature has improved very little. +There seems to be a maximum limit of sensations beyond which we cannot +pass. Who can quote a writer able to feel more keenly than Homer? When +Medea speaks in Euripides’ tragedy, who can speak better than she, +and who can say that her words are ancient or modern instead of being +simply and beautifully human? + +In “A Traveller at Forty,” Dreiser devotes several interesting pages +to the Dutch painters. He recognized himself in these unsophisticated +artists, who found beauty everywhere around them. Nothing, according +to him, is easier than to soar into metaphysics, sentimentality or +mysticism. We ought to be grateful to those who can love life as it is +and make us love it without concealing its imperfections. + +He praises the Dutch painters for giving us the most perfect expression +of common and everyday beauty. They were not romantic but human. +Theodore Dreiser envies those unassuming artists who were content to +paint the arrival of a courier, an evening school, a skating party, +a dance of rustics, a flock of wild ducks, the cows at milking time, +a game of backgammon, a woman knitting socks, a cat playing with her +kittens, etc. Still more interesting than the homeliness of the Dutch +masters was the exquisite finesse of their sensations, the marvelous +temperament through which even the commonplace became idealized.[28] + +_Life seen through a temperament_,--this is art, according to Dreiser, +who has not forgotten the lesson of Maupassant and Zola. He defines art +as _an emotional and intellectual reflection of intuition through life_. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +_Theodore Dreiser and the American Tragedy_ + + +In the preceding chapter I presented the general philosophy of Theodore +Dreiser. Let us now survey his novels in their respective order of +publication. The first in date was “Sister Carrie” (1900). We are told +that the author had to curtail a great deal of the material of this +book--a feat very unfamiliar to him--and this very likely explains why +his first novel, one of the most interesting ever written by him, is +the most in keeping with the ordinary canon of literary proportions. +Every reader will remember Sister Carrie’s story. Being a poor American +girl, she left her family to earn a living and started for Chicago with +scarcely a penny. On the train she met a smart “drummer” of flirtatious +disposition. Carrie stopped for a while with her relatives, but she +could not endure the misery very long. She looked vainly for congenial +work and finally sought her drummer again. He rented an apartment for +her and she became his mistress. She soon tired of him and became +acquainted with the manager of a bar, a middle-aged man with wife and +children, who left everything for her sake. This man was honestly +in love with Carrie and devoted to her to the point of committing a +theft, of which Carrie herself knew nothing. They go to Canada and +thence to New York, where Carrie’s lover proves a failure. The book +ends tragically and almost cynically by the man committing suicide +and Carrie going on alone to make a triumphant career on the stage. +The story, like most of Dreiser’s stories, is rather monotonous and +bleak. There is in it, however, an undercurrent of deep human pathos +and an admirable sense of human frailty. The author was clever enough +to make Carrie’s seducer sympathetic. The book is well composed. The +story is consistent throughout, and the plot dramatic from beginning to +end, which is rarely the case with Dreiser. The dialogues are true to +life and the environment very deftly suggested. Drouet, the “drummer” +is a fascinating “booster,” a George Babbitt _avant la lettre_. Like +most of Dreiser’s characters, he is a well balanced mixture of good and +evil. (A true villain does not exist in Dreiser’s novels, because he +does not probably exist in reality. His most monstrous characters show +now and then some good inclination or other. This is true psychology.) +A bluffer, an adventurer and a good fellow at heart, he is drawn +from life. Carrie, the central character, is much less sympathetic. +The heartless way in which she gives up the man who has sacrificed +everything for her is not very chivalrous. Once more we see in her +case Dreiser’s preference of the truly human to the imaginary and +the romantic. The real pathos of the book rests upon Hurstwood, the +“traveler at forty” led to his ruin by sex, as was Eugene Witla, the +hero of “The Genius.” It is Hurstwood who fills the dramatic center of +the book. He is the first specimen of moral disintegration presented by +Theodore Dreiser. + +In this first novel of his the author had not yet given himself +entirely up to strict objectivity and he was kind enough to draw for +the reader the moral lesson implied in “Sister Carrie”: + + Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward, + onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether + it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o’er some quiet landscape, + or the glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in + some passing eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It + is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and + the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor + content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you + long alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream + such happiness as you may never fear. + +“Sister Carrie” is the tragedy of the thwarting of human aspirations. +It presents Dreiser’s favorite philosophy concerning the conflict of +society and the individual, the opposition of social and individual +ethics. Our instincts are good of themselves but they may prove harmful +to society. + +“Jennie Gerhardt” was published in 1911. This novel follows more +closely than the preceding the rigid standards of objectivity set by +the French realists. Again it tells the tale of an abandoned woman, +but of a woman who does not possess the grit of Sister Carrie. Jennie +Gerhardt is a purely instinctive woman, and she pays dearly for her +surrender to the male. Like most of the women heroines in Dreiser’s +novels, she embodies the mysterious cravings of Nature. Poor Jennie is +not a superwoman, like Carrie, and the survival of the fittest does not +work in her favor. Like Sister Carrie she was born poor, an easy prey +to temptation. Her first lover died and left her alone with a child. +She became the chambermaid of a wealthy family and surrendered to the +entreaties of a young member of the household. The two lovers were +honestly fond of each other. The young man would have married Jennie if +society allowed. But this is not the case and Jennie is the first to +suggest that her lover give her up. He does so against his will, and +marries a woman of his own caste. Jennie remains alone. Her lover dies, +still faithful to her, and she keeps his memory all her life. That is +all. This simple drama is none the less heart-rending in its banality. +It was told by Dreiser with a sort of tragic naïveté like that of +Flaubert in “Un Cœur Simple.” + +“Jennie Gerhardt” is a beautiful and most pathetic book. It is cleverly +written in a sort of monochromatic atmosphere, a _grisaille_ admirably +in keeping with the portrait in the center. Jennie’s father is, +psychologically, one of the truest and most human portraits drawn by +the novelist. Bio-chemistry had not yet blurred his critical sense. + +In “The Financier” and “The Titan” Dreiser widened the scope of his +vision to a large extent. They both display a _tableau de mœurs_ about +a central character. These books tax the patience of the reader. +They are too long, too clumsy, too detailed, and yet they reveal an +unquestionable master. Cowperwood is a magnificent rascal, one whom +Balzac would have been proud to capture for his gallery of rogues. +It is Vautrin in a Tuxedo and behind a mahogany desk. Cowperwood is +a Spencerian animal of authentic pedigree, a superb plesiosaurus, a +Dreiserian superman _par excellence_. The reader of this book has not +forgotten how his vocation was revealed to him before the tub where +the lobster fought the squid. Cowperwood has no conscience. He is ruled +by tyrannical instincts. He has no more sense of responsibility than +a cyclone. Indeed, he has so little of it that he quickly becomes as +monotonous as an automaton performing on the stage under the disguise +of a real man. He was born to harm as the shark is born with teeth. +From the very first pages of the book until the end, he appears as an +indomitable energy, let loose on this planet. He comes from the same +zoo as most of the heroes of Jack London. Fate lets him be born in +Philadelphia and he mistakes the stock exchange in that city for the +wilds of Alaska or the South Seas. He knows of only one law, that of +the jungle, and in regard to ethics he is a perfect vacuum, the most +completely amoral person in the whole history of the American novel. + +“The Financier” starts Frank Cowperwood on his adventurous career. +He wants to get rich quick and by any means. He steals the public +chest of his native city and, in doing so, comments Dreiser, he shows +himself neither better nor worse than the majority of his political and +financial opponents. Unfortunately for him, he is caught with his hand +in the bag, and sentenced to four years in jail. The energy of the man +shows itself in the course of this episode. Cowperwood’s stoicism is +worthy of a better cause, and it is, in his case, not the product of an +excess, but of an entire lack of conscience. He personifies the triumph +of bio-chemistry. We are given to understand that his misfortunes are +the natural lot of all those who revolt against what Nietzsche called +the ethics of the herd. Of course, when society jailed Cowperwood it +acted for its best interests. To cage a tiger is always moral. Prisons +have been providentially designed to give Cowperwood and his like +time to think. He is not at all surprised to find himself behind the +bars. The only thing which worries him is to know how he can get out. +He has lost everything in the fray, but he stands invincible on the +ruins of his own universe, ready to begin all over again without any +redemption or expiation, and certainly without any conversion. In fact, +“The Financier” is only the first volume of an unfinished trilogy, and +several hundred pages in volume number two will hardly suffice Dreiser +to complete the story of his rascalities. + +“The Financier” is a powerful book. Dreiser gave free rein in it to his +passion for collecting statistics, and for making an impression on the +reader by arranging a mosaic of characteristic odds and ends. He piles +up evidence as a reporter or a coroner, without wanting to enliven +the testimony by any flare of wit or emotion. As a writer, he abjured +all rhetoric. If most of the time his novels prove indigestible, it +is due to the fact that he never inserts anything in them which can +divert one from facts. He writes in a lump, so to speak. He serves +us a heavy meal without any spices or gravy. His style is entirely +amorphous. It is ponderous and, one might say, elephantine. See how +Zola succeeded in putting zest and interest into his dreariest and most +objective narratives; how Flaubert and Maupassant added the human and +artistic touch even to their most matter-of-fact cartoons. EXACTITUDE! +EXACTITUDE! THE FACTS! THE FACTS! HOW? WHY? WHEN? Has not Dreiser as an +artist been misled by those mechanical suggestions? + +And yet, Frank Cowperwood stands alive before our eyes; the whole +society of his time can be felt swarming around him,--politics, +finance, love, art, the criminal court, the prison. They are alike, +not as they would be in Balzac or in Shakespeare, in a great surge of +lyricism or pathos, but in a sort of vacuum ordered for them by the +indifference of the author. They are painted on the surface of the +canvas without any perspective and no play of light to animate them. +William Dean Howells knew better than this. + + * * * * * + +The second part of the trilogy is called “The Titan,” an ironic +title since, at the end of the book, Cowperwood proves a failure, at +least for the time being. We find him out of jail and established in +Chicago just after the big fire. His energies have not abated and +his financial career begins triumphant. We become involved in his +minutest rascalities. We learn from him how to bribe the politicians, +buy franchises, strangle all competitors, monopolize public utilities +to our own selfish advantage. Meanwhile, as an intermission, we are +lavishly served with the story of Cowperwood’s adulteries and liaisons, +until his boat is shipwrecked on the rock of a municipal election which +takes away from him the profits of his grafts. Cowperwood is now a +wounded giant but not a dead one. The novelist still foresees for him a +brilliant career and like the witches he sends him with his blessing to +a new destiny: + + Rushing like a great comet to the zenith, his path a blazing trail, + Cowperwood did for the hour illuminate the terrors and wonders of + individuality. But for him also the eternal equation--the pathos + of the discovery that even giants are but pygmies, and that an + ultimate balance must be struck.... And this giant himself, + rushing on to new struggles and new difficulties in an older land, + forever suffering the goad of a restless heart--for him was no + ultimate peace, no real understanding, but only hunger and thirst + and wonder. Wealth, wealth, wealth! A new grasp of a new great + problem and its eventual solution. Anew the old urgent thirst for + life, and only its partial quenchment. In Dresden one palace for + one woman, in Rome a second for another. In London a third for his + beloved Berenice, the lure of beauty ever in his eye. The lives + of two women wrecked, a score of victims despoiled.... And he + resigned, and yet not--loving, understanding, doubting--caught at + last by the drug of a personality which he could not gainsay. + +Cowperwood certainly breaks the record of human endurance and +obduration as a rascal. There must be no break in his career as a +buccaneer of finance, and neither must there be any conversion. +Tolstoi, Dostoievski or Zola would not have waited so long to restore +to Cowperwood at least the semblance of a conscience, were it only to +relieve the strain on the reader. Not so with Theodore Dreiser. None +ever proved more inexorable. + +Bio-chemistry proves to be a more inhuman ethics than the ancient +_Fatum_ or Calvinistic predestination. The secret of our destiny is +written in our blood. We can resist neither our temperament nor our +instincts: + + Each according to his temperament--that something which he has not + made and cannot always subdue, and which may not always be subdued + by others for him. Who plans the steps that lead lives on to + splendid glories, or twist them into gnarled sacrifices, or make of + them dark, disdainful, contentious tragedies? The soul within? And + whence comes it? Of God? + +A dynosaur, we are told, possesses no more conscience than a lobster or +a squid: + + That thing _conscience_, which obsesses and rides some people to + destruction, did not trouble him (Cowperwood) at all. He had no + consciousness of what is currently known as sin.[29] He never gave + a thought to the vast palaver concerning evil which is constantly + going on. There were just two faces to the shield of life--strength + and weakness. Right and wrong? He did not know about those. They + were bound up in metaphysical abstrusities about which he did not + care to bother. Good and evil? Those were toys of clerics, by which + they made money. Morality and immorality? He never considered them. + But strength and weakness--oh yes! If you had strength you could + protect yourself always and be something. If you were weak--pass + quickly to the rear and get out of the range of the guns. He was + strong, and he knew it; and somehow he always believed in his star. + +This elementary psychology takes us back to that familiar gospel which +we used to hear from Jack London’s sea rovers. It is Nietzsche for +beginners. The human being would be too easy a riddle to decipher if +it were actuated only by lust and greed. Man in this case would not +be more interesting than, let us say, a Robot or a Ford motor car. +_Summum jus, summa injuria._ Dreiser’s psychology falls short. Frank +Cowperwood may be curious as an automaton; he is not interesting, even +as a rascal, despite his amorous adventures. Casanova was an artist in +philandering. Cowperwood was a machine, or, if you prefer, an animal. +Love is once more a branch of bio-chemistry for Dreiser. It is a blind +and purely animal impulse. It is good in itself like all impulses: + + Whether we will or no, theory or no theory, the large basic facts + of chemistry and physics remain. Like is drawn to like. Changes + in temperament bring changes in relationship. Dogma may bind + some minds; fear, others. But there are always those in whom the + chemistry and physics of life are large, and in whom neither dogma + nor fear is operative. Society lifts its hands in horror; but + from age to age the Helens, the Messalinas, the Du Barrys, the + Pompadours, the Maintenons, and the Nell Gwynns flourish and point + a subtler basis of relationship than we have yet been able to + square with our lives. + +This is outspoken enough and needs no comment. In “Man and Superman,” +G. B. Shaw also tried to sacrifice Don Juan to the Vital Force, but he +did it with a bit of salt and a few flowers. In the case of Dreiser, +this cynical outlook is without any irony, poetry or appeal. It is very +likely erroneous, but much less so than Puritan sophisms, and may serve +as an antidote against the romantic falsifications of sex appeal. + + * * * * * + +“The Genius,” published in 1915, is the most direct and important +contribution of the author to the study of sex psychology. The reading +of this enormous book is disappointing. The title is evidently +sarcastic, since the hero, Eugene Witla, blunders in life from the +beginning to end. A self-made man, an artist, a business man, and +above all a self-appointed superman and notorious erotomaniac, Eugene +is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of Dreiser’s theories concerning the +irresistible impulses of one’s temperament. Eugene has the soul of +an idealist. He craves for beauty and possesses a fine talent. His +paintings have made a great impression on a French art dealer, M. +Charles, and I cannot help quoting from the catalogue of his exposition +a passage which throws a great deal of light on Dreiser’s own realism. +The following is supposed to be taken from a criticism of Eugene +Witla’s paintings. Somebody had dared to compare Eugene with Millet. +This the alleged critic cannot admit: + + The brutal exaggeration of that painter’s art would probably + testify to him of his own merit. He is mistaken. The great + Frenchman was a lover of humanity, a reformer in spirit, a master + of drawing and composition. There was nothing of this cheap desire + to startle and offend by what he did. If we are to have ash cans + and engines and broken-down bus-horses thrust down our throats + as art, Heaven preserve us. We had better turn to commonplace + photography at once, and be done with it. Broken windows, shutters, + dirty pavements, half frozen ash cart drivers, overdrawn, heavily + exaggerated figures of policemen, tenement harridans, beggars, + panhandlers, sandwich-men--of such is Art according to Eugene Witla. + +M. Charles, on the contrary, is quite enthusiastic about Eugene. He is +not afraid of his painting of a + + great hulking, ungainly negro, a positively animal man, with a + red flannel shawl around his ears, and his arms and legs looking + “as though he might have on two or three pairs of trousers and as + many vests.” What a debauch of color! “Raw reds, raw greens, dirty + grey paving stones--such faces! Why, this thing fairly shouted + its facts. It seemed to say: ‘I’m dirty, I am commonplace, I am + grim, I am shabby, but I am life.’ And there was no apologizing + for anything in it, no glossing anything over. Bang! Smash! Crack! + came the facts one after another, with a bitter, brutal insistence + on their so-ness. Why ... he had seen somewhere a street that + looked like this, and there it was--dirty, sad, slovenly, immoral, + drunken,--anything, everything, but here it was.” + +Another critic saw beauty through it all. He found in Eugene’s works + + a true sense of the pathetic, a true sense of the dramatic, the + ability to endow color--not with its photographic value ...--but + with its higher spiritual significance; the ability to indict life + with its own grossness ... in order that mayhap it may heal itself; + the ability to see wherein is beauty--even in shame and pathos and + degradation. + +This passage is important in that it shows us the author himself trying +to draw his own portrait through Eugene Witla, remarkably resembling a +portrait for better or for worse. + +To come back to “The Genius,” we follow Eugene Witla along his artistic +career, as we accompany him to Chicago and New York,--and Dreiser +gives us very deft sketches of these cities. Eugene of course is going +to fall in love. After a bio-chemical courtship he marries Angela, a +purely instinctive woman like Jennie Gerhardt and the mistresses of +Frank Cowperwood. He won’t be faithful to her very long. Eugene is a +born polygamist and pretty soon his sexual excesses will jeopardize his +career and seriously threaten his health. Lust is a serious obstacle +to art. Dreiser’s narrative becomes disconcerting at this point. We +took the book so far as a dramatic demonstration of the dangers of sex +experience for an artist. We felt ourselves brought to a climax when +Eugene was going to be shipwrecked on the rocks of eroticism. What was +he going to do between sheer lust and “genius”? The conflict promised +to be truly dramatic and instructive morally and psychologically. +Hurstwood in “Sister Carrie” had fallen into a similar pitfall and +shown Eugene the way to perdition. But no, Eugene does not go to the +dogs. Dreiser is too indifferent to dramatization and too honest an +artist to bring his books to such a climax. “The Genius” is not a +sermon. Eugene recovers and we find him at the dénouement reading +Herbert Spencer and Christian Science in the company of his daughter. +How could the American Comstocks find fault with such a moral and +happy ending, and how could they miss the epical lesson of the book, +as literally emphasized by the author himself? Eugene Witla made a +mistake, we are told, when he failed to see the danger which eroticism +caused his “genius.” Love-making may be a spiritual incentive for an +artist but it can paralyze his physical energies: + + He did not realize ... that he was, aside from his art, living a + life which might rob talent of its finest flavor, discolor the + aspect of the world for himself, take scope from imagination and + hamper effort with nervous irritation, and make accomplishment + impossible. He had no knowledge of the effect of one’s sexual + life upon one’s work, nor what such a life, when badly arranged, + can do to a perfect art--how it can distort the sense of color, + weaken that balanced judgment of character which is so essential + to a normal interpretation of life, make all striving hopeless, + take from art its most joyous conception, make life itself seem + unimportant and death a relief. + +This sounds like rather commonplace ethics and not worth a thousand +pages of demonstration, but it constitutes on the part of the author a +formal moral commitment. It must again be quoted to show that Theodore +Dreiser is much less amoral than he seems to be. The fact that he +failed once more in dramatizing his point is due to a flaw in his +philosophy. The doctrine of the _inevitable equation_ is, so to speak, +anti-catastrophic, and certainly it is anti-dramatic. Where there is +no place for conscience, remorse and conversion, there is no place for +climax and anticlimax, and consequently none for the drama. Dreiser’s +philosophy of positivism is responsible for this lack of dynamism which +mars his books. His art, like his point of view, can only be strictly +static. Hence the tediousness of his novels and particularly that of +“The Genius.” + + * * * * * + +This again largely accounts for the qualities and the defects of “An +American Tragedy,” Dreiser’s latest novel. The title of the book +remains enigmatic,--or is it too obvious? What has America to do with +Clyde Griffiths’ murder, and if it has, why not denounce it more +specifically? This last novel is the story of a crime and a criminal +strung out into two volumes. It was not the first contribution of the +author to criminology. The problem of crime had already been on his +mind. He dealt with it in his play called “The Hand of the Potter.” + +Crime, we might well say, constitutes an integral part of Dreiser’s +metaphysics. It occurs as a natural episode in the history of the +individual man asserting his will against society. The truth of the +aphorism that “might is right” cannot be proved without it. Crime and +the repressions which accompany it are the fatal results of the revolt +of temperament against its environment. After what we know of Dreiser’s +bio-chemical convictions, we may easily foresee that his philosophy +of crime and the criminal will give no part to responsibility. The +criminal, like the buccaneer of finance, of the “genius,” will be +a machine set in motion by blind and irresistible laws. Dreiser’s +determinism eliminates free will and along with it the criminal +himself. For this reason we must not expect the pathetic appeals +to conscience from him which are found in Victor Hugo, Dostoievski +and Tolstoi. Crime, according to Dreiser, has nothing to do with +conscience, since conscience does not exist, but it may have something +to do with science. In his ethical system there is no room for pity, +expiation and remorse. The days of “The Scarlet Letter” are gone. In +the light of bio-chemistry a criminal has no more or less importance +than a rattlesnake, a shark or the microbe of cancer. This determinism +in regard to crime was arraigned forty years ago in M. Paul Bourget’s +“The Disciple,” and it was cynically illustrated by Julien Sorel in +Stendhal’s “Le rouge et le noir.” Clyde Griffiths, like Robert Greslou +in “The Disciple,” has placed himself beyond evil and good. Let us hear +from Theodore Dreiser himself the story of Clyde Griffiths. It will +save many readers the trouble of plodding tediously along in the morass +of the most instructive and also the most monotonous book ever written +by the novelist. + +Clyde Griffiths is the son of more or less abnormal parents. His +father and mother are religious fanatics. Clyde is ambitious and +dreams of a bright future. He begins as a bell boy of a hotel in +Kansas City. An uncle of his, a wealthy manufacturer, gives him a +start. He falls in love with the girl Roberta. He has a bio-chemical +idyll with her. Just at the moment that she becomes pregnant he finds +a new and more promising affinity in the person of a rich heiress. +The world is his if he marries her. But there is Roberta and her +trouble. What will Griffiths do with her? He deliberately plans to +get rid of her. He takes her to a pond and drowns her. He is caught, +tried, convicted and sent to the electric chair. _The Inevitable +Equation_ acts as mathematically and objectively in his case as a +guillotine. Bio-chemical predestination leaves no hope from the start. +The presentation of the case, the climax, the anticlimax, and the +_dénouement_ follow each other as the conclusions of a theorem. Nothing +is left to chance, providence or imagination. Griffiths acts thus and +thus, he wants this and this, and he gets what he deserves. + +Dreiser’s matter-of-fact method of reporting helped him to indict Clyde +Griffiths as only an expert criminal lawyer could do it. His technique +in the presentation of the case is perfect. It makes us wonder if he +did not miss his vocation when he bartered the bar for the writing +desk of a novelist. But the psychology of the book is still more +interesting than its knowledge of the code. “An American Tragedy” is a +most original attempt to detect the instillation of a criminal thought +into a man’s brain. Did anybody ever give a more exact, penetrating +and dramatic account of how the idea of crime can invade a mind and +gradually anesthetize the whole moral system of the criminal? Dreiser +shows himself an expert and an explorer of the field of abnormal +psychology by the way he marshals what may be called instinctive +logics, the logics of our blood and flesh, against rational logic, and +by the way he detects the obscure sophistications of the inhibited and +repressed, to find motives which come to their selfish ends. Freud and +the psychoanalysts are beaten at their own game. The scenes of the +book which show us the plan of the crime brewing in Clyde Griffiths’ +mind are tantamount to magic divination. Those pages on the function +of the will must be recommended to professional psychologists and +criminologists. If Dreiser’s views on the subject were accepted, our +whole system of criminal legislation ought to be amended. + +The criminal for Dreiser is like God for Renan. He is not in the +_esse_ but in the _fieri_. He is not a fact but only a possibility. +Crime for Dreiser is something which cannot be indicted because it +cannot be weighed. The allegory of Justice as a figure bearing a +pair of scales is a lie. To define better, Dreiser dissociates. His +unflinching analysis leaves very little room for fully deliberate +intention on the part of the criminal. According to this new diagnostic +of the criminal mind, a criminal thought operates like a microbe and +it follows an homeopathic process. It never becomes obvious, clear or +exclusive enough to allow the use of the word “responsibility” in its +current acceptance. Responsibility for a crime supposes a conception +of the human mind and will which bio-chemistry contradicts. Such is +Theodore Dreiser’s attitude in regard to the problem of crime. It is +no longer for him, as it was for Hawthorne, a question of conscience +but of nerves; not a problem of psychology but of physiology. He gave a +most dramatic support to these views in several scenes of “An American +Tragedy,” and in particular in the scene of Roberta’s drowning. Was +the drowning the result of premeditation on the part of Griffiths, or +was it not purely accidental? Who can tell? His conduct as a criminal +is a series of gropings through the dark, of hesitations, of advance +and retreat in the half-voluntary direction of an act in way of +accomplishment, without much self-control and still less deliberate +intention. Griffiths lives in a kind of pathological _aura_ which +dulls and poisons one by one his mental powers. There is enough of +this to puzzle jury and judge. Remember, for instance, the episode +when Clyde sits in the boat with Roberta. We had the impression that +he had foreseen everything, and yet, when the time comes to act, his +will power deserts him. The tragedy, none the less, develops itself +automatically, as if he were out of it, were not concerned with it. The +boat capsizes. Roberta’s head is hit by Griffiths’ camera. She falls +into the water and he does not make a move to save her. He is arrested, +tried and condemned. All this happens as automatically as the firing of +a Winchester rifle. + +Again in the case of “An American Tragedy” as in that of his other +novels, it would be unfair to take Theodore Dreiser for a cynic. +There is a lesson between the lines if we know how to read it. What +proportion is there between man’s deeds and his judgments? What is +there in common between the dark and mysterious moves of our minds +and the clumsy machinery devised to indict and to punish? Detectives, +judges, lawyers, laws, jails and executioners. Does not the living +mind of a criminal make light of all this, and if so, how can he be +sentenced and electrocuted? I consider the scene at the end of the +book between Clyde Griffiths, the murderer, and Reverend McMillan, +his confessor, as one of the most dramatic in American literature. The +priest has called upon the murderer and he wants him to make “a clean +breast.” Much to his amazement he finds himself confronted with doubts. +Here is this scene worthy of Dostoievski: + + The Reverend McMillan, hearing all this--and never in his life + before having heard or having had passed to him so intricate and + elusive and strange a problem--and because of Clyde’s faith in + and regard for him, was enormously impressed. And now sitting + before him quite still and pondering most deeply, sadly and even + nervously--so serious and important was this request for an + opinion--something which, as he knew, Clyde was counting on to give + him earthly and spiritual peace. But, none-the-less, the Reverend + McMillan was himself too puzzled to answer so quickly. + + “Up to the time you went in that boat with her, Clyde, you had not + changed in your mood toward her--your intention to--to ...” + + The Reverend McMillan’s face was gray and drawn. His eyes were + sad. He had been listening, as he now felt, to a sad and terrible + story--an evil and cruel self-torturing and destroying story. This + young boy--really...! His hot, restless heart which plainly for + the lack of so many things which he, the Reverend McMillan, had + never wanted for, had rebelled. And because of that rebellion had + sinned mortally and was condemned to die. Indeed his reason was as + intensely troubled as his heart was moved. + + “No, I had not.” + + “You were, as you say, angry with yourself for being so weak as not + to be able to do what you had planned to do.” + + “In a way it was like that, yes. But then I was sorry too, you see. + And maybe afraid. I’m not exactly sure now. Maybe not, either.” + + The Reverend McMillan shook his head. So strange! So evasive! So + evil! and yet ... + + “But at the same time, as you say, you were angry with her for + having driven you to that point.” + + “Yes.” + + “Where you were compelled to wrestle with so terrible a problem?” + + “Yes.” + + “Tst! Tst! Tst! And so you thought of striking her.” + + “Yes, I did.” + + “But you could not.” + + “No.” + + “Praised be the mercy of God. Yet in the blow that you did + strike--unintentionally, as you say--there was still some anger + against her. That was why the blow was so--so severe. You did not + want her to come near you.” + + “No, I didn’t. I think I didn’t, anyhow. I am not quite sure. + It may be that I wasn’t quite right. Anyhow--all worked up, I + guess--sick almost. I--I ...” In his uniform--his hair cropped so + close, Clyde sat there, trying honestly now to think how it really + was (exactly) and greatly troubled by his inability to demonstrate + to himself even--either his guilt or his lack of guilt. Was he--or + was he not? And the Reverend McMillan--himself intensely strained, + muttering: “Wide is the gate and broad the way that leadeth to + destruction.” And yet finally adding: “But you did rise to save + her.” + + “Yes, afterwards, I got up. I meant to catch her after she fell + back. That was what upset the boat.” + + “And you did really want to catch her?” + + “I don’t know. At the moment I guess I did. Anyhow I felt sorry, I + think.” + + “But can you say now truly and positively, as your Creator sees + you, that you were sorry--or that you wanted to save her then?” + + “It all happened so quick, you see,” began Clyde + nervously--hopelessly, almost, “that I’m not just sure. No, I + don’t know that I was so sorry. No. I really don’t know, you see, + now. Sometimes I think maybe I was, a little, sometimes not, + maybe. But after she was gone and I was on shore, I felt sorry--a + little. But I was sort of glad, too, you know, to be free, and yet + frightened, too ... You see ...” + + “Yes, I know. You were going to that Miss X. But out there, when + she was in the water...?” + + “No.” + + “You did not want to go to her rescue?” + + “No.” + + “Tst! Tst! Tst! You felt no sorrow? No shame? Then?” + + “Yes, shame, maybe. Maybe sorrow, too, a little. I knew it was + terrible. I felt that it was, of course. But still--you see ...” + + “Yes, I know. That Miss X. You wanted to get away.” + + “Yes--but mostly I was frightened, and I didn’t want to help her.” + + “Yes! Yes! Tst! Tst! Tst! If she drowned you could go to that Miss + X. You thought of that?” The Reverend McMillan’s lips were tightly + and sadly compressed. + + “Yes.” + + “My son! My son! In your heart was murder then.” + + “Yes, yes,” Clyde said reflectively. “I have thought since it must + have been that way.” + + The Reverend McMillan paused and to hearten himself for this task + began to pray--but silently--and to himself: “Our Father who art + in Heaven--Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be + done--on earth as it is in Heaven.” + +This admirable scene is an excellent example of Theodore Dreiser’s +realism at his best. There is enough of suffused emotion in it to make +it human and artistically impressive. + +Such is the work of Theodore Dreiser as a novelist. He is harsh and +pessimistic. He takes away from us all our illusions. He makes us pay +for truth at any cost with what we hold most interesting in ordinary +fiction--sentiment, pathos, irony--but he does it in good faith. And +he is quite as often harsh, honest, painstaking, vigorous and often +mighty. Yes, his philosophy is without illusions but it is certainly +not his fault: + + It is strange, but life is constantly presenting these pathetic + paradoxes--these astounding blunders which temperament and blood + moods bring about and reason and circumstance and convention + condemn. The dreams of man are one thing--his capacity to realize + them another. At either pole are the accidents of supreme failure + and supreme success--the supreme failure of Abelard for instance, + the supreme success of a Napoleon, enthroned at Paris. But, oh, the + endless failures for one success. + +Balzac at least, in the preface to his “Comédie humaine,” did not +completely despair of man. Was he good or bad, he surely did not know, +but he ushered in the priest and the physician to make him better, if +need be. Theodore Dreiser leaves us very little hope of the reformation +of the fallen angel. He writes: + + It is a question whether the human will, of itself alone, ever has + cured or ever can cure any human weakness. Tendencies are subtle + things. They are involved in the chemistry of one’s being, and + those who delve in the mysteries of biology frequently find that + curious anomaly, a form of minute animal life--chemically and + physically attracted to its own disaster. + +Then we learn, to our delight, the beautiful names of some of the +Cowperwoods, Hurstwoods, Jennie Gerhardts and Eugene Witlas of +biology. They are called the “paramecium,” “the vorticella,” “the +actinobolus” and the “halteria grandinella.” + +Biological fatalism is, when all is told, the heart of Theodore +Dreiser’s philosophy and the background of his work as an artist. When +not suffused with some human appeal it opens only a blind alley to an +artist. As a philosophical creed it even tends to exclude art entirely, +because it forbids freedom. Art is the product of mind at play with +the world. Why should the artist enjoy a liberty which he denies +his characters and what is left to beauty in a blind and an absurd +universe? Let us sum up Dreiser’s decalogue: + + 1. Our will cannot prevail over our temperament. + + 2. Instinct is the enemy of reason. + + 3. The law of our instincts is diametrically opposed to the social + code. + + 4. It is through his instincts that man is most completely and most + dangerously what he really is. + + 5. Once given a temperament it can never be changed. There is no + moral progress, no conversion possible from evil to good. + + 6. Biology controls our body and contradicts social ethics. + + 7. Consequently our social organization, ethics, politics (and + why not the whole of our civilization?) are biologically and + chemically false. + + 8. All principles and institutions which ignore bio-chemical man + and which are not deeply rooted in instincts and physiological + necessities are false. + +_Also spake Zarathustra!_ Auguste Comte, before Dreiser, had given +biology as a required foundation of social ethics but he finally +felt the necessity to build a moral and religious roof upon the +house. All the hounds of materialism and romanticism unleashed can +be heard howling in the decalogue of Dreiser. Rousseau before him, +with Helvetius and _tutti quanti_ among the eighteenth-century +encyclopedists, had raised before him the law of nature against the law +of the mind. The result, as Thomas Carlyle proved, was the guillotine +and Armageddon. Are we going to deny all the efforts of the saints, +the ascetics, the heroes, the philosophers, the artists, to undo the +patient and painful and slow uprising of mankind out of the primitive +slime, to save Clyde Griffiths from the electric chair and restore the +Dinoceras? Society may be wrong in forcing golf upon mankind for a +substitute to the _vie dangereuse_ or in finding a reservation for the +Apaches in prison, but who will seriously complain? Let us bless the +good Providence who gave us a chance to learn football and baseball as +a catharsis to soothe and purge our temperament. To follow Dreiser’s +ethics would be very much like courting cosmic suicide, and let us +wish that the rattlesnake and the shark will last not as a rule but as +exceptions among us, so that we ourselves may also have a chance to +express our temperament and a chance to survive. All of us can safely +enjoy the sight of wild beasts at the zoo or in the “movies.” + +It is hardly necessary to point to the difference between Dreiser’s +morals and those of the Puritans. Puritan ethics, like all ethics, +rested upon the preference given to the social over the individual +motives of action. It opposed social and moral man to instinctive +man and it destroyed the Indian because he was too elementary and +bio-chemical. It brought about moral improvement by a system of +restraints, as all Christian, Buddhist and even pagan ethics have done. +One may well criticize the results of those experiments without wishing +to annihilate the whole edifice at one stroke. It seems as unscientific +to give everything to instinct as to deny it all. Is not art, in +defect of religion, the ideal means to harmonize body and mind, the +physical and the spiritual? Art shows a way out of chaos; it dispels +the nightmare of Dreiser’s primitive world. Greed and lust are not yet, +thank God! the only incentives left to man to give a meaning to life. +There certainly exists something better, somewhere. + +And yet, comparing Dreiser’s pessimistic portraits of man as he is +realistically to the “most smiling aspects of life” in, let us say, +William Dean Howells, one cannot help finding them at least virile. +Truth above all! And let us have all the truth. Remember the saying +of Pascal that _qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête_. Dreiser’s +dissociations have at least the courage of truth. He wanted to defy +the sentimentalists and restore the carnal man in his rights. As a +hero or as a victim? This is not easy to say. Where Eugene Witla and +Clyde Griffiths flounder, Frank Cowperwood almost succeeds. Dreiser’s +objectivity leaves us in the lurch concerning moral issues. There are +still many among us who prefer life among the mid-Victorians to that +among the plesiosauri. Dreiser’s challenge to our vital lies is too +one-sided. He is not mid-Victorian enough. He atones for Howells’ +sentimentalism and at the same time makes us long for the Kentons and +the Laphams. Call it cowardice, if you want, or call it art. Such a +starvation of the best human emotions is dangerous for an artist who +wants to force a lesson upon his readers. It would indeed prove a +mighty stroke of the cosmic irony if the realistic novels of such an +honest seeker after truth as Theodore Dreiser served only to win the +reader to the side of the sentimental writers. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +_Sinclair Lewis and the Average Man_ + + +In the novels of Sinclair Lewis the Middle West has made another +contribution to American literature. He was born in 1885 in Minnesota. +It was in this country that he located Gopher Prairie. His father was a +physician like Kennicott, Carol’s husband in “Main Street.” Lewis holds +a degree from Yale and did not forget academic life in his stories. +He too made his début in journalism, where he had a chance to learn +something about the advertising methods which he parodies in his books, +at first hand. Then he became an enthusiastic motorist, traveling +through the different States of the Union. In one of his first novels, +“Free Air,” he recounts an automobile romance, lasting all the way from +New York to Seattle. Many “slices of life” graphically reproduced and +spiced with delightful humor, show already the hand of a master. The +hero, Milton Daggett, is a typical Lewis character, sympathetic and +full of an exuberant vitality. Milton owns a garage. On his way west +he meets a beautiful heiress whom he escorts and, of course, finally +marries. + +“Mantrap,” a more recent novel, is the story of a trip through the +Canadian wilds. It shows much the same dynamism. The author, at that +time, had not yet sacrificed the pleasure of telling a story to +characterization and satire. However, he already showed himself a keen +observer of men and women, when he published “Our Mr. Wrenn” in 1916. +The book is intensely alive. It revealed Lewis’ talent to mimic people +and make them talk as if we had overheard them. + +The scene is laid in a New York boarding house and the book recalls +Dickens’ descriptions of the life of the bourgeois. Lewis displays +the same humor, the same pathos and a similar deftness in drawing +characters. Wrenn is an elder brother of George Babbitt. He is +good-humored, a trifle sentimental and shows an almost morbid craving +for friendship. Like Babbitt he was born gregarious. He is shy and +almost obsequious with women. He longs to be loved and to tell some one +that he loves her, but he does not know how to conduct a flirtation. We +can very well imagine him playing a minor rôle in Flaubert’s “Bouvard +and Pecuchet,” that epic of commonplace romanticism. The scene where +Our Mr. Wrenn bids farewell to the setting sun reveals an unmistakable +touch of Flaubert’s sympathetic irony. Wrenn is too ignorant and too +modest to vent his feelings by trying to imitate the effusions of the +great romantic writers at twilight. And yet he can hardly control +himself on a fall evening as he sees the sun setting beyond the +Manhattan skyscrapers. He rarely looks at the sky, and prefers not +to, because, when he sees it, he takes it for an impossible road to +Mandalay, and it makes him blue. This particular evening, the sunset +has made Wrenn sad. To comfort himself he goes to a delicatessen store, +and learns a new recipe for cooking eggs. Never mind the setting sun, +after all! Wrenn is going to spend the evening with his friend Nellie, +whom he adores in silence and to whom he reads the newspapers! As he +thinks of it, he forgets the setting sun and he goes home hugging +against his bosom the little tin of potato salad which he bought for +his supper--let the chilly autumn wind moan around him if it wants. + +More optimistic and ironic than Theodore Dreiser, Lewis has none the +less devoted himself to the satire of American society. The feeling +of the conflict between social and individual ethics, between the +state of the _mores_ in America and the real needs of the individual +citizen, inspired his work. “Main Street,” “Babbitt,” “Arrowsmith” +and “Elmer Gantry” present the same plea. Let it not be said that the +conflict between what the private man would like to do and what the +social standards permit him to do is not peculiar to the United States. +Doubtless there is nowhere a civilization without a society, and a +society without suppression of some sort. But, if the criticisms which +I have attempted to interpret impartially in these studies are true, it +seems evident that the conflict in question is more tragic in America +than anywhere else. Of all current social systems, that of the United +States puts the greatest check on the individual as opposed to social +expansion.[30] + +Sinclair Lewis is by far the most optimistic of all contemporary +American novelists, at least in his first novels. And yet the sting +of the bee is there, and, the more he progresses in his career, the +more disillusioned he seems to become concerning the things and people +around him. What sort of United States does he show us? First of all, +an immense country, prosperous, comfortable and self-satisfied on the +surface, and in which more than one hundred million human beings live a +sort of vegetative life. This indeed is surprising to the traveler from +abroad, who visits the American shores. He sees optimism and joy all +around him. Joy is the product of action and the only incentive to it. +Neither action nor joy are possible without optimism. That Puritanism +should permit Americans to remain gay sounds paradoxical, but Americans +are not all Puritans and their joviality as a people is indisputable. +Optimism and contentment are the daily colors of American life. Europe +is a gloomy country in comparison with America. “Smile and be happy!” +could never be a motto for the Old World. How could the average +American help being content? To confine ourselves to “Babbitt” and +“Main Street,” Americans in Sinclair Lewis’ novels are happy people. +They enjoy material comfort, sociability, confidence in what the future +has in store for them. Anybody who has had the privilege of living in +America knows well what that means. Comfort and material ease first. +There is in the United States a striking unanimity of contentment. In +no other country has the average man so many practical reasons for +believing in material success. Success is the rule in America for the +average person with an average intelligence. Not everybody makes a +fortune, many vegetate, a great many fail, but, materially speaking, +the United States is the land of plenty. There are comparatively few +paupers. Nearly every one is assured of a fair minimum of comfort and +ease. Large or small, the average American has a home, a hearth, a +house which is, as a rule, more comfortable than the average European +dwelling. Clean, neat and freshly painted, the American bungalow or +cottage is not necessarily artistic, but it is agreeable. Friendly and +yet distant from the neighbors, it is the image of its owner. Each +house is isolated, and yet sufficiently near another to facilitate +neighborliness. It is surrounded by a lawn carefully and almost +religiously mowed. Inside, there is a furnace heater, one or several +bathrooms, electric lighting, an icebox, not to forget the phonograph +and the radio. And who in America has not a garage, were it only for +a “Ford”? Living is simple, as is the furniture--and in still greater +degree, the cooking. + +When the average American deserts his home--and he does it often, +on business or pleasure--innumerable refuges take care of him. He +is never left alone. Every good American is affiliated with one or +more associations. Masonic lodges in particular abound. There, he is +able to create many contacts. The spirit of solidarity, what he calls +“service,” is very strong in him. In his lodge or his club, the average +American (let us call him Babbitt with Sinclair Lewis) finds many +practical advantages. If he wants to borrow, sue somebody, or invest +money, be advanced in politics, he finds there a platform and a market. +Even the welfare of his family is attended to when he dies. A Mystic +Shriner, a Rotarian, an Elk, a Kiwanian, an Odd Fellow, a Forester, +or what not, every average American is subject to sudden mobilization +for a convention or a parade. He is the prisoner--a happy prisoner, +we must believe--of his clan. A quiet, and even a shy person at home, +he is spontaneously transformed into a rather frolicsome person among +his friends. Then he likes noise, demonstrations and escapades. He no +longer conceals his passion for eccentricities of all kinds. The French +proverb that _le ridicule tue_ does not apply to the average American +when he parades, several thousand strong, through the streets of a big +city disguised as a Turk, an admiral or a Spanish bullfighter, among +the din of brass bands. This sociable spirit follows him in business. +Nobody knows better than he how to make friends with a banker, an +insurance agent, a broker and the innumerable agents and peddlers who +continuously besiege him to insure him and to improve his well-being. +Then, if he is in quest of an education for his sons and daughters, +he can find around him a myriad of educational opportunities, +universities, colleges, schools, libraries, agencies of all sorts. +If he must “work his way through college,” the simple and democratic +character of American life is such that he can do so without loss of +self-respect. + +From the religious point of view, the American scene is not less +attractive. Spirituality has become so attenuated in the United States +that the most hard-boiled agnostic may go to almost any church. No +sect, outside the Catholic Church, bothers much about the four final +ends of man nowadays, and the churches are too busy with this world to +pay much attention to the hereafter. American theology has exorcized +the devil long ago. Prophylaxy, citizenship and hygiene have just about +replaced the teaching of the Bible. The Church has become an annex to +the home, the university and the club. It is, first of all, a center +of social and moral action. + +To explain American optimism the material organization of life +must also be taken into consideration. Basing itself on the use of +a continually improved machinery, this organization is perfect. +American prowess has adjusted machinery to life. Innumerable means +of transportation insure the maximum of comfort. Machines, large and +small, help the American to solve the servant problem. Elevators, +typewriters, telephones, calculating machines, motor cars, steam, +electric or automatic engines have been invented to save human labor +and exemplify the axiom that “time is money.” The Middle Ages expressed +their religious faith in the cathedrals. American comfort displays +itself in the Pullman car and the hotel palace. + +In politics the average American has every reason for believing that he +is the best governed citizen in the world. Sovereignty lies entirely +in his hands, for better, for worse. American politics has its defects +and even its vices (incompetence, graft, bossism, etc.), and yet, when +all is told, the system of American government appears as the most +convenient appliance ever invented to answer the direct needs of the +governed. Taxes are paid and furnish a good revenue. Two big parties, +and only two, divide the country about equally and without serious +strife. There are cliques, and, perhaps, more than elsewhere, graft. +But the American voter is an optimist. He looks straight before him +and fulfills his functions as a citizen with an almost sacramental +solemnity. There are politically discontented people in the United +States, and their number is increasing, but they are still a small +minority. In spite of several incidents which cannot be ignored (see +Upton Sinclair’s novels on strikes, bribes and socialistic riots), the +United States is the only country where socialism has a small chance +of succeeding, and the only one where it is not yet in power. The +reason for this is that America is the country where man suffers least +and where he is least exploited. Labor is well paid and it is wisely +regulated. Competition is free and the distance between capital and +labor smaller than in other lands. + +And yet Babbitt, the representative average American, is not happy. +Upon his discontent we should make a few reservations. First and above +all, let us remark it, the current pessimism to-day in the United +States is not a pessimism of the masses but of the élite. The case of +Sinclair Lewis and the people he puts on the stage in his novels is +remarkable on this point. To make him a pessimist without qualification +would be inaccurate. + +Carol Kennicott represents the average American woman, Babbitt the +average American man. Both of them experience tragic moments, but, all +in all, they never despair, and return to the fold with, seemingly, the +approval and blessing of the author. After this preamble, I come to the +analysis of Sinclair Lewis’ novels. + + * * * * * + +“Main Street” is the moving picture of a small American town and the +portrait of a representative individual. Gopher Prairie is the typical +American settlement as there are hundreds of them in the United States, +east and west. Yet the difference in longitude has its importance. +As I have already pointed out, it is in the Middle West that one has +a chance to study the purest forms of American life to-day. That is +due to isolation and to the absence of aristocratic or unassimilated +foreign elements. It is there that Lewis studied his typical Americans. +Gopher Prairie is a little burg of about three thousand souls, not +a very large field for observation. Carol, the heroine, belongs to +a good family. She has been well brought up. She holds a University +degree and marries a doctor. Kennicott is an average man and a good +soul. He is neither very refined nor very cultured, but he is a kind +and reliable man, courteous, clean and disinterested. He is strongly +marked psychologically by what Freud calls the “mother complex.” He +has besides, like most Americans, a morbid sense of sociability and an +unqualified respect for public opinion. + +In Kennicott the novelist has shown well the conflict of individual +initiative with the tyranny of accepted standards. Individual +initiative in the book is personified by his wife, Carol, a +semi-pathetic character but one whom Lewis was careful enough not to +turn into a Hedda Gabler. Her main virtue is zeal and her pet defect +restlessness. She is pretty, even a bit coquettish within the bounds +of respectability, a “womanly woman” rather than a feminist. She knows +several languages, art and literature, and is not satisfied with +all that. Like most American women she would like to reform society +and make the world better, let the world will it or not. Of course, +Gopher Prairie opposes her plans and refuses to be reformed. Carol is +bitterly disappointed, and so are we. She means so well, she is so +eager and sincere! And yet, when we think it over, we come pretty near +to agreeing with Sinclair Lewis that Carol overdoes it, and that a +reformed Gopher Prairie, with three thousand reformers in petticoats, +would hardly do to keep the place fit to live in. Lewis is certainly +not for the commonplace Gopherprairians. Is he more decidedly for +Carol? This is difficult to say, because he made her half a Joan of Arc +and half a Tartarin in skirts. + +Carol stands as a living protest against the morons who surround her +thick as bats in a cellar. And yet when the end comes, she capitulates +and reënters Philistia willingly. It is difficult to know what to make +out of her. Flaubert, at least, was consistent in “Madame Bovary.” +Emma preferred death to capitulation. Suicide was for her the only +dignified solution of her problems. Imagine a Bovary converted to the +standards of her village with Doctor Rouault for her lord, and M. +Homais or Abbé Bournisien for her company until death! Sinclair Lewis’ +attitude towards Carol is not clear. One dreams of her and of George +Babbitt as faithful in their revolt; of a Carol who should never return +to her commonplace country doctor or to the stagnant pools of Gopher +Prairie; of a Babbitt who should enlist with the I.W.W. and not leave +the responsibility for a happier future to his son. But this would be +pessimism and bolshevism _à la_ Tolstoi or _à la_ Romain Rolland. This +is an impossibility in America. So “Main Street” ends as quietly and +edifyingly as, let us say, “The Awakening of Helena Ritchie.” + +Carol Kennicott, in any case, incarnates two characteristic American +traits,--on one hand the craving for independence, on the other +the almost morbid zeal for reform and apostolicism. She is a born +missionary. When she denounces the pettiness and vulgarity of Gopher +Prairie, it is doubtless Sinclair Lewis who speaks through her. But +when she pretends to destroy the world and to rebuild it in three days, +the novelist turns against her as against a Don Quixote in skirts. +Idealism in America, especially feminine idealism, is too easily turned +into intolerance and witch burning. + + * * * * * + +The case of Carol Kennicott recalls to mind that of Emma Bovary in +Flaubert’s novel, but there is a difference due to the fact that Carol +was born in America. Carol’s life is much less gloomy than Emma’s. +Doctor Kennicott is a better and more interesting man than Emma’s +husband. Gopher Prairie, in spite of all its shortcomings, is a more +cheerful place to live in than Mme. Bovary’s Normandy village. Who +knows whether Emma, had she migrated to the United States, would not +have ended by getting reconciled to a world where the thrills of the +movies, the automobile and the radio would have cured her of her +blues? As a member of a women’s club, and a social worker, she might +have taken a new interest in existence. Carol and Emma were, in many +respects, twin sisters. Both liked to read fiction and to mistake what +they read for reality. Both were married to commonplace and unromantic +country doctors. Both liked to build castles in Spain. Both shocked the +world around them by their adventures and escapades. As an artist, it +is true, Lewis does not come up to Flaubert’s level. Flaubert’s style +is plastic, something for the eye, as well as for the ear, to enjoy. +Lewis is almost exclusively oral, but he excels Flaubert in making +things and people move, breathe and speak in a lifelike way. + +There is, according to the novelist, a double legend concerning the +American small town. The first is sentimental. According to it: + + The American village remains the sure abode of friendship, honesty, + and clean, sweet, marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed + in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary + of smart women, return to their native town, assert that cities + are vicious, marry their childhood sweethearts and, presumably, + joyously abide in those towns until death.[31] + +Then there is the “roughing it” legend: + + The other tradition is that the significant features of all + villages are whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks, checkers, + jars of gilded cat-tails, and shrewd comic old men who are known as + “hicks” and who ejaculate “Waal, I swan.” This altogether admirable + tradition rules the vaudeville stage, factious illustrators, and + syndicate newspaper humor, but out of actual life it passed forty + years ago. Carol’s small town thinks not in horse-swapping but in + cheap motor cars, telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, + kodaks, phonographs, leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge + prizes, oil-stocks, motion-pictures, land-deals, unread sets of + Mark Twain, and a chaste version of national politics.[32] + +In such a town, we are told, for every two contented people there are +hundreds, especially among the young, who are not. That is why the +intelligent and the well-to-do travel and leave for the big cities from +which they hope never to return. Even in the West the elder people +emigrate. They go to California to die. + +The reason of these migrations is told by Carol’s story. It is the +necessity to escape from puritanical and provincial boredom. How dull +the little town in spite of his Morris chairs, his bridge parties and +his phonographs! Nothing left to imagination; heavy speech and heavy +manner; free thinking smothered under respectability: + + It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness + of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire + to appear respectable. It is contentment ... the contentment of + the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless + walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It + is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery, self-thought and + self-defended. It is dullness made God. + + A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, + coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane + decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical + things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing + themselves as the greatest race in the world. + +Carol Kennicott did not lack critical sense. She tried to explain to +herself the triumph of mediocrity around her. She was frightened by its +irresistible contagion. She saw the stupendous effects of the melting +process on the immigrants from Europe who, at that time, still flooded +the Middle West. How quickly they forgot their traditions, their +folklore and picturesque costumes. Take the Norwegian women of Gopher +Prairie. How light-heartedly they exchanged their red tunics, their +pearl necklaces, their black chemisettes lined with blue, their green +and gray aprons, their stiff capes (so well designed to enhance their +fresh little faces) for icy-white American blouses! How quickly their +home cooking was replaced by the national pork cutlets! Americanized, +standardized and commonplace, they lost their identity and charm +within a generation. Their sons, with ready-made clothes and ready-made +college talk, soon assumed a respectable air. The environment made of +these picturesque strangers is a banal replica of the world around them. + +Doubtless all small towns are alike, and have always been in all +countries and climes. Isolation causes that. But the worst was that +Gopher Prairie wanted to set standards of mediocrity for the whole +world, or at least for one hundred and more million Americans: + + It is a force seeking to dominate the earth, to drain the hills and + sea of color, to set Dante at boosting Gopher Prairie, and to dress + the high gods in Klassy Kollege Klothes. Sure of itself, it bullies + other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby + conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes + over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius. + + Such a society functions admirably in the large production of + cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is + not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end + of a joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make + advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit + talking, not of love and courage, but of the convenience of safety + razors. + +The end of “Main Street” is disappointing. Carol Kennicott’s generous +plans for the reformation of Gopher Prairie failed and she confessed +herself helpless. She lost all hope in social improvement and bowed to +accepted standards without renouncing entirely critical sense. After +all, an intelligent and zealous woman can devote herself to many useful +tasks, even in a retrograde community. There is the home, the church, +the bank, the school. If things cannot be changed, they can at least be +studied. Carol decided to try to understand what she could not reform. +Her career ends in a compromise. She goes “round-about,” like Ibsen’s +button-molder. It is suicide by sociology. This is pathetic when one +remembers the romantic longings of the heroine of “Main Street.” A +poet was asleep in her and tried in vain to flap his wings. She had +a quick imagination and an inborn sense of the beautiful, like all +romantic characters. When, for instance, she presided over the meetings +of the Campfire girls of Gopher Prairie, she could hardly help wishing +to change her “personality picture.” Her imagination soared and she +believed herself among the Indians. Those common-looking girls on Main +Street became transfigured to her eyes, as soon as they had put on +their Sioux costumes. As Carol looked at them dancing and performing +the rites of the Redskin she felt as if she were one herself.[33] + +Let him who doubts Carol’s kinship with Emma Bovary read the pages of +the book where she practices landscape gardening at the little station +of Gopher Prairie and Sinclair Lewis’ comments on her experiment: + + She felt that she was scrubbing a temple deserted by the gods and + empty even of incense and the sound of chanting. Passengers looking + from trains saw her as a village woman of fading prettiness, + incorruptible virtue, and no abnormalities; the baggageman heard + her say, “Oh, yes, I do think it will be a good example for the + children”; and all the while she saw herself running garlanded + through the streets of Babylon. + + Planting led her to botanizing. She never got much farther than + recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she discovered + Hugh (her son). “What does the buttercup say, mummy?” he cried, his + hands full of straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She + knelt to embrace him; she affirmed that he made life more full; she + was altogether reconciled ... for an hour. + + But she woke at night to hovering death. She crept away from the + bump of bedding that was Kennicott, tiptoed into the bathroom and, + by the mirror in the door of the medicine-cabinet, examined her + pallid face. + + Wasn’t she growing visibly older in ratio as Vida grew plumper + and younger? Wasn’t her nose sharper? Wasn’t her neck granulated? + She stared and choked. She was only thirty. But the five years + since her marriage--had they not gone by as hastily and stupidly + as though she had been under ether? Would time not slink past till + death? She pounded her fist on the cool enameled rim of the bathtub + and raged mutely against the indifference of the gods: + + “I don’t care! I won’t endure it! They lie so ..., they tell me I + ought to be satisfied with Hugh and a good home and planting seven + nasturtiums in a station garden! I am I! When I die the world will + be annihilated, as far as I am concerned. I am I! I am not content + to leave the sea and the ivory towers to others. I want them for + me! Damn all of them! Do they think they can make me believe that + a display of potatoes at Howland and Gould’s is enough beauty and + strangeness?” + +The last words of this romantic soliloquy show too well, alas! by their +triviality that Carol is only a Middle Western Bovary, but the tone +and the pathos of the piece are worthy of the best pages in Flaubert. +Salammbô, praying to the moon on her Carthaginian terrace, Emma giving +way to her blues in her boudoir, would have understood the melancholy +Carol dreaming of Babylon in a Gopher Prairie garden. + + * * * * * + +I now turn to “Babbitt.” The author’s literary tactics have changed +since he wrote “Free Air” and “Our Mr. Wrenn.” Plots have now given +way almost entirely to portraits, anecdotes to characters. Sinclair +Lewis’ tactics consist in heaping together the minutest details which +will help him to put a vital person before us. His first novels were +organic, the latter are merely episodic. “Babbitt” is almost plotless. +It is, at the same time, the picture of a man and that of a profession. +Babbitt is not a fancy. He is the _homo americanus par excellence_, +the representative average American. He recalls Molière’s “tradesman +turned a gentleman.” He makes us think of M. Jourdain as an immigrant +in America, parvenu, with a Packard and an up-to-date house full of the +most modern appliances. How proud M. Jourdain would be to-day of his +motor car, his telephone, his bathroom, his typewriter and his radio! +But M. Jourdain was an exception in seventeenth-century France and +George Babbitt, we are told--though this well may be pure calumny--is +the rule in twentieth-century America. Like Carol Kennicott, Babbitt +has a double personality. + +First and foremost, he is a very caustic and live person. He is +married, possessed of children belonging to the species _enfants +terribles_. He lives in a rather expensive house in Zenith, a city +as famous to-day as Tarascon or the kingdom of Poictesme. He is very +concrete and very individualistic. On the other hand, taken as a +general type, he may be called _Monsieur tout-le-monde_. He is the man +of the crowds. Sinclair Lewis has gathered with a stroke of genius, and +incarnated in him, all the gestures, all the poses, all the hobbies, +all the colloquialisms of the average American. He likes to work and +do business on a large scale. He is fond of his home, fond of living +in it, and fond of leaving it too, once in a while. There is a dormant +romanticism in him, but it is harmless and unheroic. When Tartarin de +Tarascon had the blues, he went to hunt the lions in the suburbs of +Algiers. The call-of-the-wild takes George Babbitt away for fishing +parties into the wilds of Maine. He loves his wife, he loves his +children, but, oftentimes, civilization bores him and he would rather +love something else. He is a realtor by profession, neither more nor +less honest than his colleagues. For him, as for most of us, “business +is simply other people’s money,” as the French playwright puts it. And +George knows how to make money. He has his flirtations and perhaps +his passions. The imprisonment of a friend who killed his wife hit a +serious blow at his optimism, but his good humor survived. Finally, +like Carol, he makes an edifying end and returns to the fold, wishing +for his son a more cheerful world to live in. + +Babbitt, as a representative man, is possible only in America. His +gestures, his foibles, his words and phrases, are explained by the +country where millions of human beings are cut on the same pattern, +made in series like automobiles or harvesters, because it cannot be +done otherwise. Quantity _versus_ quality, the masses against the +individual,--this is the great American problem and George Babbitt +is the half-sarcastic, half-tragic example of it. He is conformism +incarnate. The family, the school, the church, the thousand and one +associations which he must join manufacture for him his thoughts, his +feelings and his speech. They have made him an automaton, leaving him +very little personality. A democracy of more than one million citizens +produces Babbitts naturally, as apple trees their apples. Babbittry is +the inevitable ransom of some of the highest American virtues. A people +ceaselessly active, moving and advancing, needs discipline as much as a +professional army. Before being an individual, Babbitt is a private in +Democracy’s regiment. He wears a uniform; he performs certain duties; +he recites from a drill-book. Never mind if he left the best of himself +behind. Somebody else will pick it up for him. The triumph of the +greater number cannot be insured without the sacrifice of the minority. +Hence the tragedy of exceptional people in America, the agony of Poe, +the isolation of Whitman, the ordeal of Mark Twain, the exile of Henry +James, the sarcasms of Henry Adams. Hence the floating anxiety and +soul-fear of the man in the crowd. + +It was advisedly, I believe, that Sinclair Lewis made Babbitt a +real-estate man, or, as he pompously calls him, in Western fashion, +a “realtor.” The profession is typically American. Since the closing +of the frontier the staking out of one’s claim to a “lot” has been +the last romantic adventure left to the pioneer and the conquistador. +Speculation is ingrained in Americans and advertising goes along +with it. The widespread use of publicity in the United States is +interesting, not only to the economist but to the psychologist. +Advertising is second nature with Babbitt. Advertising was born +in America out of industrial growth, market monopolization, the +standardization of products, not to forget competition. In a democratic +country where the market is swamped with goods and with manufacturers +eager to force their products upon the public, the megaphone and +amplifier methods are the only chances of success. But advertising is +not only a way of making a fortune in America. It is the most popular +form of American self-assertion. The average American has a genius for +hyperbole. His country is the land of the superlative. Advertising in +the United States is the safest business method, and everything there +relies more and more on publicity. The churches, the government, the +universities, art, literature and even philanthropy, can no longer do +without it. + +The satire of publicity in “Babbitt” was timely. Lewis denounced its +brutal and tragic aspects. He showed it as a dangerous charlatanism, +an invasion of private life, a violation of free choice, an insult to +common sense. Unbridled publicity, as it is sometimes practised in the +United States, presupposes in its victims brains which have been dulled +to the point of apathy. One cannot very well imagine the American +methods of advertising as exposed in “Babbitt” succeeding in a nation +as traditionally ironical and free-minded as France, for instance, +where the average man is imbued with the Cartesian spirit and refuses +to accept as true anything which does not appear evident--even if it +were offered to him in a gold spoon. + +Yet the American surrenders to publicity without much ado, with +resignation rather than with enthusiasm. I do not believe that he +is blind to the tricks of the advertisers. But he is busy and he +uses publicity as a convenience. The commercial “ad” is a machine +to simplify existence. “Time is money.” It spares one the bother of +choosing. It leads directly towards a goal. It facilitates shopping +which Americans, especially women, cultivate as one of their favorite +outdoor sports. + +Babbitt is publicity personified, and the most curious characters in +the book are inveterate publicity maniacs. + + * * * * * + +“Arrowsmith” is a bitter and an almost tragic book. It takes up again +the case of advertising and its evil influence in the higher spheres. +In this novel we find the same verve, the same satirical genius, +the same humor of the preceding books. Yet the humor is darker and +decidedly more pessimistic. There is no happy ending and no compromise +in “Arrowsmith.” The equivocal attitude of the author towards his +characters has disappeared. Antagonisms are well defined and Lewis +does not straddle both issues at the same time. On one side stand the +charlatans, on the other the true and disinterested scientists. The +contrast between them is sharply and tragically emphasized. To make it +more so, the author brought reinforcements to the central characters. +Arrowsmith is not alone--like Carol or Babbitt. He has an escort of +devoted friends. Science is represented and defended by two or three +representative men, the Nietzschean Gottlieb, the heroic Sondelius and +the mystical Wicket. In the enemy’s camp there is Doctor Pickerbaugh +and this is enough. He is unique as a mountebank. + +Sinclair Lewis has satirized medical fakes with as much gusto as +Molière, that sworn enemy of all quacks. The trail was good. The +charlatan of drugs and patent medicines, the chiropractors and the +mind readers swarm in the United States. The medical profession is +being besieged by counterfeits of all kinds. The sentimental campaigns +against vivisection, the drives against vaccination are parts of the +current events in America. In “Arrowsmith” Lewis avenged the common +sense of the American people. Let me summarize rapidly the plot of the +book. + +It tells how young Arrowsmith took up his medical studies in a big +Western university, how he felt inspired by the teaching of his +misunderstood master Gottlieb, how he married and slowly made his way +in the world as a country doctor, then of his career in a drug factory +where he refused to barter his professional honor, how he joined a +great scientific institute, how he discovered antitoxins, how he went +to fight an epidemic of plague in the West Indies where he lost his +wife, how he was tempted to market his growing reputation, how he +married a rich woman and how finally he escaped and gave up everything +for the sake of disinterested science. I have too much respect for +the memory of the great William James to drag him from his grave +among the quacks, and yet, if there is a name well fitted to brand +what the novelist denounces in “Arrowsmith,” it certainly is that of +“pragmatism.” The truth for which Arrowsmith stands heroically to the +end, is the truth “which does not pay.” “Arrowsmith” is the work of an +idealist, a plea for science sought for its own sake. Such a manifesto +does honor to the ideals of the new American literature. + +As to Sinclair Lewis as an artist, I have already noted along the +way many of his merits and his defects. He lacks consistency and +balance in composition. His books seem to come not out of a deliberate +and well-matured design, but of a blind and fervid vital impulse. +“Arrowsmith,” like “Elmer Gantry,” is written haphazardly. They are +not plastic, but show a rare gift of verbal effusion. There is a mimic +in every word which Lewis writes. From this point of view his only +rival is Dickens. By what name should we call this peculiar sense of +his which enables him to catch, as by a spontaneous contagion, the +words such as they are spoken, and to reproduce them with the accuracy +of a vitaphone? The average American in his novels may look like an +automaton when he thinks or acts, but, in speech, he is life itself. +Lewis’ facility for verbal invention is prodigious. I have no authority +to comment upon American linguistics. But I have already alluded to Mr. +Mencken’s book “The American Language.” I hope that he will not forget +George Babbitt and his friends as contributors to the next enlarged +edition of his volume. Where could we look for a more spontaneous +and fruitful eloquence? The American vernacular in “Babbitt” is as +nimble, “snappy,” cheerful and nervous as the American himself. Has +anybody ever more skilfully aped the living dynamism of the American +language?[34] + + * * * * * + +“Elmer Gantry” marks a new progress toward satire and a deepening of +Lewis’ social pessimism. It is still more bitter and more acrimonious +than “Arrowsmith.” It was not written to please. The author has +unmasked his batteries at last and thrown himself in open sedition +against the church. The book is one of the mightiest strokes ever hit +at hypocrisy since the days of “Tartuffe.” Hypocrisy takes a dangerous +and frankly criminal aspect in “Elmer Gantry,” a Barnum of religion. +America is not a country of hypocrites. Everybody there lives in the +open. If hypocrisy exists it is not individual but collective. The +old-fashioned hypocrite in European literature was interesting as an +exception. He might be called a hypocrite by defect. Gantry, on the +contrary, is a hypocrite by excess, and, one might say, by hyperbole. +He is always beyond truth, not under it. He is a hypocrite by ambitions +and anticipation, like Mark Twain’s Colonel Sellers. And yet Gantry +is even more repugnant than Tartuffe. He is a scoundrel, a debauché +and a cheat. Sinclair Lewis has drawn his portrait at length from the +day when he entered the ministry as one joins a baseball team, until +his triumph as an evangelist in his big church at Zenith. The scene +in the beginning of the book, where he abandons the woman whom he has +compromised and passes her to a rival with a lie, is enough to brand +him. Let the reader remember also the raid in the red-light districts, +where Gantry acts as a bully. But the triumph of his venom will be +found in the final prayer where he asks the Lord to make his country as +good and moral as he! Beware of a humorist! There is a sting behind his +smiles. + +American critics have been unanimous in finding “Elmer Gantry” +overdone. Tartuffe’s rascality was qualified and it remained +accidental. He broke into M. Orgon’s house, as a thief who steals a +watch and then retires. Elmer Gantry is a hypocrite in broad daylight +and triumphant to the end. Such an obduration in crime and success in +mischief read like impossibilities. By unduly stressing the rascality +of Gantry, it may well be that Lewis intended to kill two birds with +one stone. “Elmer Gantry” is no less an indictment of a hypocrite than +a courageous study of the decline of religious ideals in America. +Religion, as everything else, has become automatic. Mysticism has been +replaced by respectability. The American churches failed to raise the +people to their high level, and, in order to make themselves popular, +they brought their ideals down to earth. To make up for the absence of +the really faithful they relied more and more on the larger number. +They were seized with the spirit of greed and material comfort, and +betrayed the teachings of Him who said that His kingdom was not of +this world. They courted money and, to keep the congregations, they +resorted to the advertising methods of the “realtors.” A display of +riches and material splendor outside, and within the walls everything +except Christianity. Hygiene, sport, eugenics, prophylaxy, domestic and +political economy, entertainments and very little Bible. Churches vied +with one another to see which could present the most gorgeous façade. +Cathedrals were erected, cathedrals of stone and not of faith. The +church became fashionable, a club, a school, a hotel, a parlor. Elmer +Gantry had no difficulty in investing his lust and greed in such a +temple. It repaid him well. + +Around Gantry, the novelist has marshalled in complete array the forces +of the Protestant clergy in America. We are told that he managed to +peep through the doors of the temple before he satirized it. No wonder +the clergy rose in arms against him, and there is no doubt that he +did not render full justice to them. A great many noble souls were +not included in the parade. However, in the long run, one sees no +reasons why “Elmer Gantry” should prove more harmful to the clerical +profession than “Arrowsmith” to the medical one. To expose the faker +_manu militari_ now and then may prove after all a profitable operation +for the true servants of the temple. + +From a literary point of view, “Elmer Gantry” shows the author in the +process of broadening his scope, while he intensifies the virulence +of his attacks. After the village idealist, the inhibited realtor; +the doctors, and then the clergymen. Who next? And yet through all +these avatars Sinclair Lewis has drawn always the same man. Good or +bad, he is the same. Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry were born the +same day, of the same parent. They all share in what seems to be, on +the part of the novelist, an excess of vitality. The large majority +of the characters in the American novels had been up to then anæmic. +Sinclair Lewis’ characters suffer from high blood pressure. It would +be a great loss to American literature if he should forget art for +muck-raking. Let him remember the lesson of Balzac and Flaubert. Those +great realists never lost sight of human passions, but they contrived +to hold art for its own sake far above the surge of their emotions. +They believed that, after all, our foibles, our defects or vices were +much less interesting and important than the view which the artist can +take of them in cold blood. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +_Sherwood Anderson or When the Dreamer Awakes_ + + +Few American authors, since Whitman, have taken literature as seriously +or have conceived it as being on so high a level of mysticism as +Sherwood Anderson. I mention Whitman advisedly in connection with +Anderson. His influence over the younger American writers is manifest. +Was he not the first to emphasize the bio-chemical element, and to find +lyrical inspiration in it? Dreiser’s hymns to the Vital Force, his +pæans to physiology, as well as his tragic sense of everyday life bear +Whitman’s imprint unmistakably. Sherwood Anderson owes him still more. +Sensualism and mysticism blend in his prose as they do in Whitman’s +poems. In the words of both of them we hear simultaneously the whispers +of heavenly death and the somber droning of the _Erdgeist_. Both of +them have given heed to what Emerson called the _demonic_. Both have +brought the soul and the body into magic and sensuous contact. The +poetry of the one and the poetic prose of the other seem to come from +an embrace in which the spiritual and the material still coalesce. +Modern as they are in many respects, the stamp of primitivism is on +them. In Anderson’s novels, man, like the cosmos in “Leaves of Grass,” +has not yet been disengaged from that amorphous clay kneaded by the +gods. He still finds himself in a nebulous state, halfway between +himself and animal.[35] + +“Mid-American Chants” are authentic grafts budding from “Leaves of +Grass.” + +To call Sherwood Anderson an _ex professo_ writer or an _homme de +lettres_ would be amiss. Fiction and song are only an outlet for his +spiritual longings. Writing is for him a groping toward the Unknown, a +mystic ejaculation of a mind in quest of itself. His works give us a +chance to catch the creative spirit in process of formation. + +Like Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson is a product of the Middle West. He was +born in Camden, Ohio, in 1872. He also is an offspring of the prairie. +Taine has long been dead and his theory of _la race, le milieu, le +moment_ is to-day as dead as he. And yet, there is a great temptation +to revive it to help us link Anderson’s primitivism to his environment. +In fact, Anderson saved us that trouble recently when he published +“Tar,” an autobiography redolent with the smack of the crude land where +corn, cattle and people grow together, in torrid atmosphere, over the +huge plains swept by torrents of heat and light. The boy in “Tar” was +not made out of the common clay, but of the tepid dark loam on the +shores of the giant Mississippi. Only amidst the Russian steppes, or in +the valleys of the Ganges, could we find to-day as crude and primitive +a setting for a writer. In this respect “Tar” strikes an almost savage +note. One would wonder how such wild phases of life could appear in a +modern country like the United States, if one ignored the fact that +geography has not kept pace with history in the growth of America. The +land is still, in many parts, as crude as it was in the days of the +Indian. The primitivism of Anderson and Whitman is still written in +the expanse of their country, a country as large and as wild to-day, +here and there, as the African jungle. The real wonder is not the +resemblance between the American people and their surroundings, but the +fact that art of any sort can grow in such primitive parts. + +The autobiographical element plays a large rôle in Sherwood Anderson’s +books. If there is anybody who seems to have taken upon himself the +task to prove and justify the theories of the psychoanalysts, it is +certainly he. Day-dreaming, double personality, the comedies which the +individual plays to himself,[36] the defense and enrichment of one’s +“personality picture,”--all those are the essential themes of his +novels. Anderson is the Freudian novelist _par excellence_. Personally, +he is an uprooted man with a complex heredity. He betrayed some of it +in Windy McPherson, an assumed portrait of his own father (in “Windy +McPherson’s Son”). Windy is a Don Quixote with a mania for disguising +himself. He cannot write novels but he lives and enacts them. It is +difficult to say, in his case, where reality ends and fiction begins. +A veteran of the Civil War, Windy McPherson’s imagination has become +hypertrophied. He has been shell-shocked and the trauma has left him +more than half crazy. Windy is a village Tartarin, a drunkard, a loafer +and a megalomaniac. Here is an example of his tragi-comical exploits. +One day, his small town has organized a commemorative pageant. A +trumpeter is in demand. Windy McPherson does not hesitate to offer +himself. For a long time he had been leading fictitious assaults in the +imaginative narrations of his prowess. The Bovaryism in his case is in +an acute stage. The thought of parading through Main Street astride a +fine horse, blowing a bugle before the whole assembly, fills him with +pride. Then the great day arrives. A procession is being formed. All +are waiting for the signal to start. Windy McPherson is there on his +charger as trumpeter. All of a sudden the most lamentable wheeze issues +forth from the cavalry trumpet which he wields. How far the ideal from +the reality! Windy’s son will never forget the pitiful venture, nor how +he blushed before his assembled countrymen. + +There is but little filial respect left in Anderson’s tales.[37] One +of the most tragic episodes in his novels is the one in the same book +where Sam’s mother is about to die of ill treatment and misery. Windy +has come home drunk, as usual. He is crouching over a table, fussing +and mumbling. Suddenly Sam gets up. He marches toward his father, takes +him by the collar and throws him out of the room. The scuffle was harsh +and the boy rushes out for help, thinking that he may have killed +his father. Unfortunately for all concerned, such was not the case. +When Sam returns with the neighbors, still trembling lest he may have +strangled his father, he finds Windy comfortably settled in a saloon. +He could no more die of a blow than of shame, nor could he make a good +tragic hero. + +On his mother’s side there is some Latin blood in Sherwood Anderson. +He has retained a touching memory of his mother, a native of Italy, +dark-complexioned, imaginative, fiery and herself the daughter of a +spirited woman. Despite his nostalgia for the Italian Renaissance and +his admiration for some of the sixteenth-century supermen, Anderson +shows very little Latinity as a thinker and an artist. He is far too +nebulous for that and refutes Boileau’s aphorism that what is clearly +conceived must needs be clearly expressed. + +At the age of twelve or thirteen, young Anderson launched himself +upon the discovery of the world. For many years he had to earn his +bread by the sweat of his brow as a mechanic apprentice, a factory +hand and stable boy; he tramped among “men and horses” without much +discrimination between them. We find him in Chicago, at the age of +seventeen, without a cent in his pocket. The great metropolis of the +Middle West was to be his headquarters until he reached literary fame. +He used it for the background of the stories collected under the title +“Winesburg, Ohio.” + +The modest workman of the Chicago docks and yards had a higher ambition +than merely a material livelihood. We recognize him and his dreams in +these sons of proletarians who, in his first novels, suddenly rise +by the strength of their fists to the highest positions and marry +millionaire heiresses, in order to renounce their good fortune suddenly +and go in quest of what they call Truth. This is the theme of his first +two books, “Windy McPherson’s Son” and “Marching Men.” The heroes of +these books are young and ambitious, without any faith or any law, but +not without any ideals. We see in them Anderson himself, incapable of +distinguishing fact from fiction, dream from daily existence, and with +a pathetic longing toward the Unknown. + +In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he enlisted in the American +army mobilized against Spain. He was careful himself to strip this +decision of all heroics and to insist upon passing on to posterity +for what he precisely was, a well-meaning “chocolate soldier.” Small, +stout, near-sighted and still more absent-minded, Sherwood Anderson is +modest enough to confess that he never seriously thought of conquering +Cuba or enlisting in the Rough Riders. He was satisfied with regaining +his health in the open air of the camps and in enjoying the big parade +of the marching troops, an enjoyment which he would have shared with +Walt Whitman and which has probably inspired in him both the idea and +the title of “Marching Men.” + + * * * * * + +Anderson came to literary composition slowly, or perhaps we should +believe him when he says that he was never out of it. The boy Giotto +began to paint while he was still a boy tending his sheep. Sherwood +Anderson never ceased to dream and to write his dreams, and he began +to do so very early. He had dreamt (and imagined things) for a long +while. That, he tells us, was always for him the real, the only way to +live. Before writing his books he had enacted, all alone, magnificent +and tragic novels in a barn, the favorite “hang-out” of his childhood +days. Sprawling among the warm hay, how many times had he given way to +dreaming! Listen to the dreamer: + + To the imaginative man in the modern world something becomes, from + the first, sharply defined. Life splits itself into two sections + and, no matter how long one may live or where one may live, the two + ends continue to dangle, fluttering about in the empty air. + + To which of the two lives, lived within the one body, are you to + give yourself? There is, after all, some little freedom of choice. + + There is the life of fancy. In it one sometimes moved with an + ordered purpose through ordered days, or at least through ordered + hours. In the life of fancy there is no such thing as good or bad. + There are no Puritans in that life. The dry sisters of Philistia + do not come in at the door. They cannot breathe in the life of the + fancy. The Puritan, the reformer who scolds at the Puritans, the + dry intellectuals, all who desire to uplift, to remake life on some + definite plan conceived within the human brain, die of a disease + of the lungs. They would do better to stay in the world of fact to + spend their energy in catching bootleggers, inventing new machines, + helping humanity--the best they can--in its no doubt laudable + ambition to hurl bodies through the air at the rate of five hundred + miles an hour. + + In the world of the fancy, life separates itself with slow + movements and with many graduations into the ugly and the + beautiful. What is alive is opposed to what is dead. Is the air of + the room in which we live sweet to the nostrils or is it poisoned + with weariness? In the end it must become one thing or the other. + + All morality then becomes a purely æsthetic matter. What is + beautiful must bring æsthetic joy; what is ugly must bring æsthetic + sadness and suffering. + + Or one may become, as so many younger Americans do, a mere + smart-aleck, without humbleness before the possibilities of + life, one sure of himself--and thus one may remain to the end, + blind, deaf and dumb, feeling and seeing nothing. Many of our + intellectuals find this is the more comfortable road to travel. + + In the world of fancy, you must understand, no man is ugly. Man is + ugly in fact only. Ah, there is the difficulty![38] + +The whole Anderson shows himself in these remarks. With what glee he +lived in dreamland! Was not he himself that shy and frightened youth +whom he describes as stalking through the streets of his native village +with his eyes downcast as if he lived in another world? In a world +deliberately made ugly by utilitarianism, among people who think of +nothing but of getting rich quick, Anderson cast his lot with the +proletarians. The only beings for whom he shows any tender feelings are +the small craftsmen--now a vanishing caste--who used to be possessed +with a sensuous passion for fine surfaces and beautiful materials. +Without this craving for work beautifully done he sees no possible +civilization. Alas! the sense of beauty is gone. Comfort and speed have +replaced refinement and art: + + Speed, hurried workmanship, cheap automobiles for cheap men, cheap + chairs in cheap houses, city apartment houses with shining bathroom + floors, the Ford, the Twentieth Century Limited, the World War, the + jazz, the movies. + + The modern American youth is going forth to walk at evening in + the midst of these. New and more terrible nerve tension, speed. + Something vibrant in the air about us all. + +How is it possible to preserve a sense of the beautiful in a world such +as this? We might still find a new interest in life by learning how to +feel the beautiful finish of a perfect surface, a sensation which used +to bring an æsthetic emotion to the tip of the craftsman’s fingers. +Why not heed John Ruskin’s and William Morris’ advice and, through +the superficial amusements of our modern civilization, revive for the +arts and crafts a passion, since they have been the foundation of +civilization? + +To love, to feel, to dream! That is the question. How joyfully Anderson +surrenders himself to fancy! + + And what a world that fanciful one--how grotesque, how strange, how + teeming with strange life! Could one ever bring order into that + world?... + + There are so many people in that land of whom I should like to tell + you. I should like to take you with me through the gate into the + land, let you wander there with me. There are people there with + whom I should like you to talk. There is the old woman accompanied + by the gigantic dogs who died alone in a wood on a winter day,[39] + the stout man with the gray eyes and with the pack on his back, who + stands talking to the beautiful woman as she sits in her carriage, + the little dark woman with the boyish husband who lives in a small + frame house by a dusty road far out, in the country. + +Such was the world to which his imagination gave life, a fictitious +world, of course, but in which art, allied to sympathetic intuition is +rendered beautiful enough to make one wish that it were real. _Kennst +du das Land...?_ And how can we call a writer with this trend of mind a +realist? For him only that is real which has been first imagined. + +In his attic the future author of “Dark Laughter” does not only evoke +familiar faces. He opens up wide the gates of fantasy. Soon the walls +of the barn vanish and a pageant passes before his eyes: + + A narrow beam of yellow light against the satin surface of purplish + gray wood, wood become soft of texture, touched with these delicate + shades of color. The light from above falls straight down the + face of a great heavy beam of the wood. Or is it marble rather + than wood, marble touched also by the delicate hand of time? I am + perhaps dead in my grave. No, it cannot be a grave. Would it not + be wonderful if I had died and been buried in a marble sepulchre, + say on the summit of a high hill above a city in which live many + beautiful men and women? It is a grand notion and I entertain it + for a time. What have I done to be buried so splendidly? Well, + never mind that. I have always been one who wanted a great deal + of love, admiration and respect from others without having to go + to all the trouble of deserving it. I am buried magnificently in + a marble sepulchre cut into the side of a large hill, near the + top. On a certain day my body was brought hither with great pomp. + Music played, women and children wept and strong men bowed their + heads. Now on feast days young men and women come up the hillside + of my burial place. It must be through the opening the yellow light + comes. The young men who come up the hillside are wishing they + could be like me, and the young and beautiful women are all wishing + I were still alive and that I might be their lover. + +And lo! the dream extended. What had this king of yore done to deserve +so much honor? Had he come to the rescue of a beleaguered city? Had he +slain the dragon of Saint George, rid the country of monstrous snakes, +or found the millennium? Imagination soared afield and the little barn, +in the small Middle West town, was magically transfigured. Let the +dreamer take us along in his flight with him. We are now in Chartres +with the Virgin so dear to the heart of sceptical Henry Adams. But this +must be an illusion. He who dreams is an American and there are no +cathedrals in his land. There are no ancient monuments there except the +walls of some Grand Canyon or the towers erected by American finance on +the promontories of Manhattan: + + I cannot be in the cathedral at Chartres or buried splendidly in + a marble sepulchre on a hillside above a magnificent city.... + It cannot be I am in the presence of the Virgin. Americans do + not believe in either Virgins or Venuses. Americans believe in + themselves. There is no need of gods now, but if the need arises + Americans will manufacture many millions of them, all alike. They + will label them “Keep Smiling” or “Safety First,” and go on their + way, and as for the woman, the Virgin, she is the enemy of our + race. Her purpose is not our purpose. Away with her! + +Whereupon the dreamer awoke. We know now Sherwood Anderson’s _faculté +maitresse_, imagination, and the familiar form which it takes in his +books, _i.e._, evocation through dreams. His characters are so deeply +absorbed in dreaming that the author himself never quite succeeds in +waking them from their hypnotic trance. + + * * * * * + +If we are to believe the confessions of his autobiography, Anderson +was led to become a writer by a tyrannical impulse. He felt a physical +craving for dotting the white surface of a sheet of paper with ink or +pencil. Like that friend of his who was so fond of cigars that he took +a trunkful of them to Havana, he pleads guilty to not being able to go +to a distant city without taking his stationery along with him. The +sight of a ream of white paper thrills him to the tips of his fingers. +It calls for something to be put on it. The average man crosses the +street and sees houses and people, a child at a window, a woman with a +babe in her arms, a drowsy workman passing by. He wonders what is the +matter with these people. Lo! the white page is there and the writer +will photograph the whole thing for him. “You don’t know, but _I_ +know!” exclaims the writer. “Just wait a minute and I shall tell you. +I have felt it. Now I no longer exist by myself. I only live in these +other people.” Then he rushes to his rooms; he lights the lamp and +behold! the pageant passes. Words are to the writer what colors are to +the artist. They each have a color and a taste. They are tangible.[40] + +It seems to him that words are something that even his fingers can +touch “as one touches the cheeks of a child.” Here are the white sheets +of paper taunting the author to write. But like a true lover he wants +to postpone his pleasure. He must wait a day or two to take up the +challenge daringly, baldly. His worship of the white sheet is such +that he excuses the manufacturers of writing paper from his general +excommunication of capitalists. Not only does he grant them economic +privileges, but he goes as far as to put them among the saints on the +calendar: + + Makers of paper, I exclude you from all the curses I have heaped + upon manufacturers when I have walked in the street breathing coal + dust and smoke. I have heard your industry kills fish in rivers. + Let them be killed. Fishermen are, in any event, noisy, lying + brutes. Last night I dreamed I had been made Pope and that I + issued a bill, excommunicating all owners of factories, consigning + them to burn everlastingly in hell, but ah, I left you out of my + curses, you busy makers of paper. Those who made paper at a low + price and in vast quantities somewhere up in the forests of Canada, + I sainted. There was one man--I invented him--named Saint John P. + Belger, who furnished paper to indigent writers of prose free of + charge. For virtue I put him, in my dream, almost on a level with + Saint Francis of Assisi. + +Such was the physical side of Sherwood Anderson’s literary calling. The +son of an artisan, brought up among craftsmen, a craftsman himself, +he went in for writing as others do for book-binding, engraving, or +gilding, out of sheer love for the beautiful materials to be handled +and whose lure he could not resist. He confesses to being unable to +remember a period in his life when he did not have a hankering for +scrawling something in black and white. When he was in business, buying +and selling did not interest him as such. He spent his days in writing +“ads” which were profitable to his patrons. But as soon as he was at +home, the magic spell of the white sheets returned and he could not +resist any longer.[41] + +Fiction seems to be nearer to fact in the United States than anywhere +else in the world. America is the land of possibilities. The life of +Sherwood Anderson, self-made man, laborer, tramp, novelist and poet, +reads like a true novel. It recalls to our mind Jack London’s “Martin +Eden.” Like Eden, Anderson attained literary fame by the sweat of his +brow and not without an athletic display of muscles. America has never +spoiled her writers. Murger’s “Vie de Bohême” tells of no hardships +comparable to those which a Theodore Dreiser or Sherwood Anderson +(not to mention Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman) had to go through +before they rose to fame. Thanks to this harsh apprenticeship, Anderson +himself has learned to be indifferent to comfort. He can write, he +tells us, anywhere, and at any time, in a factory room, on a tree stump +on the highway, in a railroad station, in the lobby of a hotel and be +perfectly unconscious of what is going on around him. He composed parts +of “Poor White” in a dingy saloon in Mobile, while next to him three +drunken sailors were discussing the divinity of Christ. He wrote the +story of Elsie Leander (included in “The Triumph of the Egg”) in the +station at Detroit. And that day, he tells us that of course he missed +the train. + +His inborn absent-mindedness could not make him a very prosperous +business man, and yet he stuck to manufacturing paint for more than ten +years. The way in which he quit his job is characteristic of the man. +One day, he tells us, he was in his office dictating letters. Suddenly, +and quite unconsciously, instead of proceeding with his dictation, he +happened to utter automatically the following words: “And then, he went +into the river bed ..., and then he went into the river bed, and then +...” Thereupon Anderson got up. His stenographer thought him insane. +He went out never to return, except on one occasion, when he wanted to +ascertain what had become of his factory. Even that night he had no +luck, for the night watchman mistook him for a burglar and came very +near shooting him. + +Let us not forget Anderson’s escape. There will be many similar flights +in his books. The unpardonable sin, according to the novelist, is +automatism, petrification on the surface, routine. He insists on an +incessant renewal of life, on change and migration as the essential +condition of moral progress. “Leave all and follow me!” says the Voice +which all his heroes obey. + + * * * * * + +One day Anderson found himself free at last, free to seek Truth. +His literary début dates from his arrival in Chicago in 1910. Since +the World Exposition of 1892, the metropolis of the Middle West had +become a first-rate artistic and literary center. Anderson found +friends, advisers and critics there. In contact with the young writers, +especially Theodore Dreiser, he became self-conscious as an artist. I +shall not go into detail of his works, or what he is pleased to call +his “scribblings” at this period. He found in Chicago materials for +verse and prose, and he began to write short stories and novels. “Windy +McPherson’s Son” appeared in 1916, not without some misfortunes of +its own. The critics were unfair to the book. According to the author +himself it was full of reminiscences of Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Jack +London and Zola. But the real Sherwood Anderson was there too. It was +invaluable as a piece of autobiography. It tells the pathetic story of +an ill-born youth who is forced to inhibit the best part of himself. +A deep and, at times, lyrical feeling for human miseries pervaded the +novel. It heralded the advent of an American Dostoievski. + +The sad idyll of Sam and Mary Underwood, the gloomy atmosphere and the +semi-consciousness through which the protagonists of this book move +and seek themselves, foreshadow his novels of a later date. At the +end of the story, Sam McPherson withdraws himself from the world, he +becomes converted and makes up his mind to seek Truth and not earthly +ambitions. Sam was born of poor parents and had to rise painfully by +his own means.[42] + +He tore himself away from his early environment. He got into the good +graces of a wealthy manufacturer in Chicago. Upon getting rich, he +married his employer’s daughter. The plot is developed through episodes +which would seem incredible had we not read similar ones in Upton +Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser. Sam begins as a superman, _à la_ Frank +Cowperwood, which means that all the roads to success seem fair ones +to him. He is at first a conscienceless “bounder,” to use Anderson’s +own phraseology. He does not believe in the sweet and Christian ethics +of failure. Then suddenly, at the end, he drops everything to become a +socialist. Up to this point this story reads very much like a book by +Upton Sinclair. But Anderson is more of a mystic than of a socialist. +He does not much trust the proletariat helping moral progress. Sam is +converted. He redeems himself, not by following the path of social +justice but that of Love and Pity. The book is particularly interesting +from the angle of psychoanalysis. It discusses a case of the +dissociation and reunification of the self, a problem which was soon +to become an obsession with the author. The whole story is based upon +Sam McPherson’s efforts to disentangle his true “personality picture” +from his adventures. Later on Anderson refuses to help his characters +out of the depths of the subconscious. He lets them flounder in the +darkness of their conscience. But he had not reached that stage yet, at +the time of which I am now speaking. Then he did not neglect to answer +the S.O.S. of his characters in distress. Here is the portrait of Sam +McPherson as a representative American: + + Sam McPherson is a living American. He is a rich man, but his + money, that he spent so many years and so much of his energy + acquiring, does not mean much to him. What is true of him is true + of more wealthy Americans than is commonly believed. Something has + happened to him that has happened to the others also, to how many + of the others? Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, + men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had + thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing + weary, they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have + leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a + little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying. + + “_It is only when you are torn from your mooring and drift like a + rudderless ship that I am able to come near you._” + + The banner has been carried forward by a strong, daring man, filled + with determination. + + What is inscribed on it? + + It would perhaps be dangerous to inquire too closely. We Americans + have believed that life must have point and purpose. We have + called ourselves Christians but the sweet Christian philosophy + of failure has been unknown among us. To say of one of us that he + has failed, is to take life and courage away. For so long we have + to push blindly forward. Roads had to be cut through our forests, + great towns must be built. What in Europe has been slowly building + itself out of the fibre of the generations we must build now, in a + lifetime. + + In our father’s day, at night in the forests of Michigan, Ohio, + Kentucky, and on the wide prairies, wolves howled. There was fear + in our fathers and mothers, pushing their way forward, making the + new land. When the land was conquered fear remained, the fear of + failure. Deep in our American souls the wolves still howl. + +Sam McPherson represents the two states of the American conscience, +the Christian and the primitive. Half of his life was spent like that +of Theodore Dreiser’s realistic heroes. He succeeded practically; that +is, he failed morally and spiritually. Finally the angel in him got the +best of the beast. He found salvation in humility and renouncement, +like another Saint Francis. The mystic longings of Sherwood Anderson +have left an unmistakable imprint on this early work. He was not +content to draw his characters in unconsciousness. He counselled them, +comforted them, and acted to them as a good Samaritan. + + * * * * * + +“Marching Men,” an epic in three parts, is also a fine book, although +sociology and mysticism are blended in it to the point of confusion. +It reads very much like Zola’s “Germinal.” The hero of the book, Beaut +McGregor, is the son of a Pennsylvania miner, who was buried alive in +a mine. The book is full of these soberly drawn and semi-allegorical +portraits in which the author excels: the oculist, the hunchback, the +violin maker, the philosophical barber, the poor milliner. Robert Frost +alone can be a match to Anderson in this kind of telepathic sketches. +Beaut McGregor is searching for the imponderable values of life, yet he +finds drunkenness, sex and hunger as the sole incentives of most men’s +existence. + +Anderson’s imagination is pessimistic. He sees the world in black and +white. He is quite veracious in saying that there is something Russian +in him. His artistic sense and his philanthropic Christian heart +connive to comprehend the most pathetic aspects of life with sympathy. +He has cast his lot with the proletarian, the poor, the desperate, the +lonely, in the sooty suburbs of the big cities or the twilight of some +village. He is pessimistic, but his pessimism is religious and moral. +Man does not live by bread alone but by whatever word issues from the +mouth of God. Anderson is a disciple of Tolstoi. The social problem, as +he conceives it, is a moral problem. Social anarchy is but a sign of +the chaos within us. We may, through true insight, arrive at the source +of our troubles: + + In the heart of all men lies sleeping the love of order. How + to achieve order out of our strange jumble of forms, out of + democracies and monarchies, dreams and endeavors, is the riddle + of the Universe; and the thing that in the artist is called the + passion for form, and for which he also will laugh in the face of + death, is in all men. By grasping that fact, Caesar, Alexander, + Napoleon and our own Grant have made heroes of the dullest clods + that walk, and not a man of all the thousands who marched with + Sherman to the sea, but lived the rest of his life with a something + sweeter, braver and finer, sleeping in his soul than will ever be + produced by the reformer scolding of brotherhood from a soapbox. + The long march, the burning of the throat and the stinging of the + dust in the nostrils, the touch of shoulder against shoulder, the + quick bond of a common, unquestioned, instinctive passion that + bursts in the orgasm of battle, the forgetting of words and the + doing of the thing, be it winning battles or destroying ugliness, + the passionate massing of men for accomplishment--these are the + signs, if they ever awake in our land, by which you may know you + have come to the days of the making of men. + +Anderson is not dazzled by the sumptuous façade of American prosperity. +He sees the reverse of the stage setting, the slums, the mines, the +factories, the jails and the asylums. Listen to Beaut McGregor, the +hero of “Marching Men,” as he stands on the hills above the dark +valleys where the sordid cottages of the miners are nested: + + The long, black valley, with its dense shroud of smoke that rose + and fell and formed itself into fantastic shapes in the moonlight, + the poor little houses clinging to the hillside, the occasional cry + of a woman being beaten by a drunken husband, the glare of the coke + fires and the rumble of coal cars being pushed along the railroad + tracks, all of these made a grim and rather inspiring impression on + the young man’s mind, so that although he hated the mines and the + miners, he sometimes paused in his night-wanderings and stood with + his great shoulders lifted, breathing deeply, and feeling things he + had no words in him to express. + +Sherwood Anderson entertains no illusions regarding our much +vaunted modern civilization. He sees the modern man in a state of +disintegration and moral collapse, due to greed and lust. The surface +gives an illusion of grandeur, but there is a bog underlying the +structure. To prove his point, the writer bids us accompany him +in a walk around Chicago. We are supposed to escort a well-meaning +American business man through the city. He is a well-balanced and +kindly person, inclined to take a rosy view of life. Let us follow +him in his walk. In front of a house a man is seen mowing the lawn. +There is something pleasant in the screech of the lawn-mower. A little +farther up the street the wanderer peeps through a window and perceives +pictures hanging on a wall. A woman in white plays the piano. How +sweet and quiet life is! The wanderer lights a cigar. Everything seems +so beautiful and fresh, and, lo! by the light of a street lamp he +sees a man staggering against the wall. Never mind! The wanderer has +enjoyed a good dinner at the hotel. He remains optimistic. Drunkards +are prodigal sons. Wine and song are incentives to work. Let us pass +on! The wanderer can have no grudge against his time and country. Let +the I.W.W. howl, if they want. All of a sudden two men come out of +a saloon and palaver on the curb. Now one of them jumps and, with a +rapid thrust forward of his whole body, knocks his friend down in the +gutter. Sinister and smoky buildings all around look like accomplices. +At the end of the street an enormous crane erects its snout against +the sky. The wanderer has thrown away his cigar. Somebody walks in +front of him and raises his fist to heaven. He notices with a start the +movement of the man’s lips, his large and ugly face in the glare of +the street lamp. But he keeps on going, and hurries among pawnshops, +saloons and what not. He has a nightmare.... He sees a burglar looking +over the walls of a garden where children are at play,--the wanderer’s +own garden and own children. It is getting late. A suspicious looking +woman comes down a stair, with bleached face. A police wagon rattles +by. A child kicks dirty newspapers along the street. His piercing +voice dominates the din of the street-cars and the siren of the police +patrol. The wanderer hastens to board a car to return to his hotel. + +Life, after all, is not as rosy as he thought. His good humor has +disappeared. He is irritated at having wasted a fine evening. He is +no longer so content with his affairs, as he goes to bed with the din +of the city still in his ears. He sees the head of a red man bending +toward him in his sleep.... This is the way Sherwood Anderson tells his +apologues and dramatizes what he calls the failure of American life. + +At the end of the novel Beaut McGregor has become a famous and +militant lawyer. His mother, Nance, is dead and he himself has buried +her upon the hill. The description of Nance’s funeral is truly epic +and resembles the strike in Zola’s “Germinal.” “Marching Men” ends +on a sharp turn. Beaut McGregor courted two women, one poor and the +other rich. He marries a shy, self-effacing milliner, to commemorate, +perhaps, in his own fashion, the wedding of the Saint of Assisi with +the Lady Poverty. + + * * * * * + +Anderson will not write such books again. The psychoanalyst will soon +win over the mystic, but we know him pretty well now, from these first +books, as a sensual and a mystic lover of Truth, as the detective of +our hidden thoughts and of double hearts, as a man enamoured chiefly +with dreams. There are several scenes in “Marching Men” characteristic +of Sherwood Anderson at his best as an artist. He belongs among the +novelists of the proletariat, nearer Dostoievski and Tolstoi than +Victor Hugo or Émile Zola, because of his mysticism. I select the +narrative of the death of Beaut McGregor’s mother, Nance, as an example +of his talent to blend the here below with the far beyond. Nance dies +of utter misery on a fine evening. She kept a little bakery. Since the +death of her husband in the mine, she lived in complete seclusion, +respected and feared by the miners: + + In the middle of the night the conviction came to her that she + would die. Death seemed moving about in the room and waiting for + her. In the street two drunken men stood talking, their voices + concerned with their own human affairs coming in through the window + and making life seem very near and dear to the dying woman. “I’ve + been everywhere,” said one of the men. “I’ve been in towns and + cities I don’t even remember the names of. You ask Alex Fielder who + keeps a saloon in Denver. Ask him if Gus Lamont has been there.” + + The other man laughed. “You’ve been in Jake’s drinking too much + beer,” he jeered. + + Nance heard the two men stumble off down the street, the traveller + protesting against the unbelief of his friend. It seemed to her + that life with all of its color, sound and meaning was running + away from her presence. The exhaust of the engine over at the mine + rang in her ears. She thought of the mine as a great monster lying + asleep below the ground, its huge nose stuck into the air, its + mouth open to eat men. In the darkness of the room her coat, flung + over the back of a chair, took the shape and outline of a face, + huge and grotesque, staring silently past her into the sky. + + Nance McGregor gasped and struggled for breath. She clutched the + bedclothes with her hands and fought grimly and silently. She did + not think of the place to which she might go after death. She + was trying hard not to go there. It had been her habit of life to + fight, not to dream dreams. + + Nance thought of her father, drunk and throwing his money about, + in the old days before her marriage, of the walks she, as a + young girl, had taken with her lover on Sunday afternoons, and + of the times when they had gone together to sit on the hillside + overlooking the farming country. As in a vision, the dying woman + saw the broad fertile land spread out before her, and blamed + herself that she had not done more toward helping her man in the + fulfillment of the plans she and he had made to go there and live. + Then she thought of the night when her boy came, and of how, when + they went to bring her man from the mine, they found him apparently + dead under the fallen timbers so that she thought life and death + had visited her hand in hand in one night. + + Nance sat stiffly up in bed. She thought she heard the sound of + heavy feet on the stairs. “That will be Beaut coming up from the + shop,” she muttered, and fell back upon the pillow, dead. + +Sherwood Anderson does not dwell on surfaces. His characters come +out of the Unconscious. They move deep into a region where words can +scarcely penetrate. As an instance of his understatements, I quote +another scene from “Marching Men.” Beaut McGregor has climbed the +hill to dream alone. He likes to go to the high places to pray. Three +women come to him. Beaut has gotten over his timidity and consents to +sit down with one of them, who is looked upon as a coquette. Here is +a suggestive bit of Andersonian dialogue with little said and much +understood: + + On the eminence Beaut and the tall woman sat and looked down into + the valley. “I wonder why we don’t go there, mother and I,” he + said. “When I see it I’m filled with the notion. I think I want to + be a farmer and work in the fields. Instead of that, mother and I + sit and plan of the city. I’m going to be a lawyer. That’s all we + talk about. Then I come up here and it seems as though this is the + place for me.” + + The tall woman laughed. “I can see you coming home at night from + the fields,” she said. “It might be to that white house there with + the windmill. You would be a big man and would have dust in your + red hair and perhaps a red beard growing on your chin. And a woman + with a baby in her arms would come out of the kitchen door to stand + leaning on the fence waiting for you. When you came up she would + put her arm around your neck and kiss you on the lips. The beard + would tickle her cheek. Your mouth is so big.” + + A strange new feeling shot through Beaut. He wondered why she had + said that, and wanted to take hold of her hand and kiss her then + and there. He got up and looked at the sun going down behind the + hill far away at the other end of the valley. “We’d better be + getting along back,” he said. + + The woman remained seated on the log. “Sit down,” she said, “I’ll + tell you something--something it’s good for you to hear. You’re so + big and red you tempt a girl to bother you. First, though, you tell + me why you go along the street looking into the gutter when I stand + in the stairway in the evening.” + + Beaut sat down again upon the log, and thought of what the + black-haired boy had told him of her. “Then it was true--what he + said about you?” he asked. + + “No! No!” she cried, jumping up in her turn and beginning to pin on + her hat. “Let’s be going.” + + Beaut sat stolidly on the log. “What’s the use bothering each + other,” he said. “Let’s sit here until the sun goes down. We can + get home before dark.” + + They sat down and she began talking, boasting of herself as he had + boasted of his father. + + “I’m too old for that boy,” she said; “I’m older than you by a good + many years. I know what boys talk about and what they say about + women. I do pretty well. I don’t have anyone to talk to except + father, and he sits all evening reading a paper and going to sleep + in his chair. If I let boys come and sit with me in the evening or + stand talking with me in the stairway it’s because I’m lonesome. + There isn’t a man in town I’d marry--not one.” + + The speech sounded discordant and harsh to Beaut. He wished his + father were there rubbing his hands together and muttering rather + than this pale woman who stirred him up and then talked harshly + like the women at the back doors in Coal Creek. He thought again, + as he had thought before, that he preferred the black-faced miners, + drunk and silent, to their pale, talkative wives. On an impulse he + told her that, saying it crudely, so that it hurt. + + Their companionship was spoiled. They got up and began to climb the + hill, going toward home. Again she put her hand to her side, and + again he wished to put his hand at her back and push her up the + hill. Instead he walked beside her in silence, again hating the + town. + + Halfway down the hill the tall woman stopped by the roadside. + Darkness was coming on and the glow of the coke ovens lighted the + sky. “One living up here and never going down there might think it + rather grand and big,” he said. Again the hatred came. “They might + think the men who lived down there knew something instead of being + just a lot of cattle.” + + A smile came into the face of the tall woman and a gentler look + stole into her eyes. “We get at one another,” she said, “we + can’t let one another alone. I wish we hadn’t quarrelled. We + might be friends if we tried. You have got something in you. You + attract women. I’ve heard others say that. Your father was that + way. Most of the women here would rather have been the wife of + Cracked McGregor, ugly as he was, than to have stayed with their + own husbands. I heard my mother say that to father when he lay + quarrelling in bed at night and I lay listening.” + + The boy was overcome with the thought of a woman talking to him so + frankly. He looked at her and said what was in his mind. “I don’t + like the women,” he said, “but I liked you, seeing you standing + in the stairway and thinking you had been doing as you pleased. + I thought maybe you amounted to something. I don’t know why you + should be bothered by what I think. I don’t know why any woman + should be bothered by what any man thinks. I should think you would + go right on doing what you want to do, like mother and me about my + being a lawyer.” + + He sat on a log beside the road near where he had met her and + watched her go down the hill. + + “I’m quite a fellow to have talked to her all afternoon like that,” + he thought, and pride in his growing manhood crept over him. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +_Sherwood Anderson on This Side of Freud_ + + +“Poor White,” published in 1920, marked a new turn in Sherwood +Anderson’s career and the transition toward a new style. It is now +characterized by the obsession of the subconscious and the study +of morbid psychology. “Poor White” tells once more the story of a +proletarian youth struggling against adverse surroundings. Like +“Marching Men” this novel is autobiographical to a large extent. With +Hugh McVey, the poor white, the experiments which Anderson’s previous +books had described start all over again. Uprooted and revolving +against his native environment, he too seeks to find an impossible +felicity in the gratification of his passions. Hugh McVey has grown, +like wild grass, on the shores of the Mississippi once haunted by the +ghost of Huckleberry Finn, in days when boys were more addicted to +“roughing it” than to brooding over their secret thoughts. The huge +river inspires Hugh with a longing for a life of abundance and ease. +Like all the characters in Anderson’s novels, he is the victim of +inhibitions. He vegetates in the sultry atmosphere of his small town. +Automatism and routine are ready to swallow him up. Luckily, he was +born a craftsman and he is saved by work. He is intelligent and wilful, +and turns out to be an inventor. A fortuitous circumstance takes him +beyond his narrow horizon. One day, he sees people busy planting +cabbages by hand. Why not build and patent a cabbage-setting machine? +Hugh carries out his plans successfully and he soon finds himself at +the head of a prosperous stock company; but he is dissatisfied. He +has not fulfilled his spiritual longings. He denounces machinery and +commercialism. He arraigns socialism because it cannot exist without +them. He sees salvation only in self-reliance and in sincerity to +oneself and to others. He thinks and acts, in fact, like a man who has +read and appropriated to himself R. W. Emerson’s essays. Hugh marries a +frigid woman who deserts him. At the end of the book we find him alone +on the road to Truth. All in all, “Poor White” is painfully composed +and rather badly written. Its value resides in the Freudian sketches +aside from the main plot, and in the analysis of the pathological forms +of sensibility. + +It did not greatly increase the novelist’s reputation. The previous +year he had published his famous collection of short stories, +“Winesburg, Ohio.” This is a first-rate psychological document. +Anderson has now definitely given up sociology to become a psychologist +and a specialist in the study of dual personalities. “Winesburg, Ohio,” +is entirely in harmony with the most recent contributions of American +literature to psychoanalysis. It is as rich and original in intuition +as the books of Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters and Eugene O’Neill. +Winesburg is a sort of Main Street, not in breadth but in depth. Each +one of these stories is a masterpiece of dramatized insight. They stage +the tragedy of moral failure. The real drama is not enacted in the open +but in the gloom of what the author names “the well,” deep under the +surface of existence. It is the tragedy of evasion. The scene is the +provincial United States of half a century ago, somewhere in and around +Chicago. The novelist ascribes the neurasthenia of his characters, +their errantry and their inconsistency in thought and action to the +shock of too sudden a transition from the old order to the new. Mystic +Anderson once more denounces our times as the most materialistic in +the history of the world, as an epoch where wars are fought without +patriotism, when men substitute their vague ethics to the worship of +the living God, when the will-to-power replaces the will-to-serve, +when beauty has been almost entirely forgotten in the terrible race +for money. But the stories of “Winesburg, Ohio” cannot be limited +to the American scene. Their appeal is broadly human and universal. +Admirable as studies of morbid psychology, they are still more so as +dramatizations of our secret thoughts. Within their limited bounds they +contain the most suggestive portraits. + +The eccentrics, the maniacs, the daydreamers and the half-insane +whom, up to now, have been relegated to the background of Anderson’s +books, occupy the center of the stage. The novelist has most skilfully +succeeded in grouping the different anecdotes and in giving to all his +people a family air of resemblance. He has individualized the morbid +states of sensibility, with something akin to genius. His psychology is +utterly pessimistic, as every true psychology must be. It is based on +the observation of distortions and abortions caused by moral restraint. +Anderson introduces us to human beings condemned to intellectual and +moral decrepitude. The surrounding mediocrity has atrophied their +moral life, without killing their elementary instincts. All these +half-insane and these maniacs are dual personalities for themselves and +for others. Winesburg is the city of hypocrites, or, as we prefer to +call them to-day, the city of the inhibited.[43] + +As we watch this parade of lunatics of both sexes, we cannot think of a +stranger Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.[44] + +Anderson’s rogues’ gallery shelters the most fantastic medley of moral +outcasts, the libidinous, the perverse, the sly, the morbid. All of +them suffer particularly from soul-fear and floating anxiety, as +described by the experimental psychologists. These abnormalities are +caused chiefly by an erotic obsession. As their energy is no longer +able to express itself in acts, it loses itself in nightmares and +incoherent actions. This explains the verbal _psittacism_ upon which +Anderson has made some curious remarks. Let us enter this Musée Grevin +of the psychologically abnormal. + +Here is a man whose hands are incessantly shaken by a suspicious +automatism. He is fond of caressing children. One day he is accused +of having taken advantage of one of them and he is expelled from the +village. Here is an hysterical woman who married an old doctor. The +doctor has a mania for stuffing his pockets with slips of paper on +which he has written maxims which he forces everybody to read. Here +comes a professional simulator who has lived a thousand imaginary +lives. He wants to make us believe that he is Christ and that he has +been made to die upon a cross. This rich landowner lost his mind from +brooding over the Bible. One day he went into the woods to kill his +grandson, as Abraham did to Isaac. Another Winesburgher, a woman, was +seized with an erotic fit which made her run out into the streets all +naked on a rainy day. Let us not forget the hypocritical minister who +had seen a naked woman through a crack in the window of his church. +The wretched man had forgotten prayer and could no longer expel the +temptation from his mind. He became half insane and was about to end up +badly. But one day he again saw the naked woman praying in her room and +he conceived a new and happier idea of life. Never has the human mind +been subjected to more crucial dissections and been denounced as such a +mad and dangerous machine. + +There is a moral attached to these tales. Anderson’s philosophy, as +well as his mysticism, centers upon what may be called the problem of +deliverance. It is based upon a tragic feeling of the complexities of +the human self, on the necessity and difficulty of extracting from the +subconscious labyrinth our real personality. It slumbers, deep within +us, buried under formalism. A city filled with millions of living +people can be, in reality, a necropolis for the dead. + +And quite truly, from the spiritual and moral point of view, the live +are dead in Winesburg. No matter if they do go about their daily tasks, +if they play at being born, at marrying, at having children, at making +money, at voting, at going to church, at talking of the weather or +the approaching elections. This is not life. Spiritually and morally, +the Winesburghers are as dead as the corpses whose epitaphs Edgar Lee +Masters collected in the “Spoon River Anthology.” At most, Sherwood +Anderson accords to the inhabitants of Winesburg a larval existence, +a life of sleepwalkers and daydreamers. Of the various selves which +William James classified in his treatise on psychology, and which he +called the _material_, the _social_ and the _spiritual_ selves, the +living dead of Winesburg possess only the most elementary, _i.e._, the +material. Their social and their spiritual selves are illusory. Instead +of actions they know only manias; instead of ambitions, velleities; +instead of achievements, dreams. Let the professional psychiatrist read +these tales. He will find in them all the forms of psychic degeneracy. +The embryonic and larval life of Winesburg defies even the slow-motion +process of photographic reproduction. Still life and twilight sleep +prevail here as the characteristic phases of existence. + +How strange a paradox that the land of the _strenuous life_ should +shelter such moral mummies.[45] In “Winesburg, Ohio,” Sherwood Anderson +closed without hope the gates of the mystic evasion through which the +characters of his early novels used to escape. “Abandon hope, all ye +who enter here!” Dante’s Inferno is an Eden compared to this American +abode of unescapable gloom. + + * * * * * + +In almost every case the great issue of suppressed sensibilities +in Anderson’s stories is eroticism. This is the central pivot of +the lives of his larvæ. The male wants to be rich quick. He has not +time to love; he simply flirts. The female, on the contrary, is like +Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, in Racine’s tragedy, _toute entière à +sa proie attachée_, all intent upon securing the gratification of her +instinctive impulses. Man makes up for his erotic disillusions by +irony, work or drink.[46] Woman simply surrenders to the _libido_. +Inhibitions and repressions make an agony of her life. Anderson +suggests that she come out of the “well” for the sake of health, +happiness and moral progress. Surrendering to nature and not asceticism +is the cure of morbidity. He sides with Hawthorne on this point, and +he proves it in one of the best tales of “Winesburg, Ohio.” We see the +Reverend Hartman released from the nightmares of his cell by facing +life as it is and discovering that religion and beauty can very well +go together. Evasion, it is true, is not within the reach of every one +in Anderson’s books. It is reserved to the elect. Many try to lift the +lid of the “well” and are drowned. The most pathetic case of evasion +is that of Elsie in “The Triumph of The Egg.” The story is called “The +New Englander.” Elsie is an uprooted girl from the East. She dies +of moral dearth and inhibited desires, somewhere on a lonely farm in +the Middle West. One day homesickness and longing make her run away +in the corn-fields with the same pagan fury which took Hester Prynne +to the primitive forest. The scene is literarily beautiful and almost +technically Freudian: + + In the month of August, when it is very hot, the corn in Iowa + fields grows until the corn stalks resemble young trees. The + corn-fields become forests. The time for the cultivating of the + corn has passed and weeds grow thick between the corn rows. The men + with their giant horses have gone away. Over the immense fields + silence broods. + + When the time of the laying-by of the crop came that first summer + after Elsie’s arrival in the West, her mind, partially awakened by + the strangeness of the railroad trip, awakened again. She did not + feel like a staid, thin woman with a back like the back of a drill + sergeant, but like something new and as strange as the new land + into which she had come to live. For a time she did not know what + was the matter. In the field the corn had grown so high that she + could not see into the distance. The corn was like a wall and the + little bare spot on which her father’s house stood was like a house + built behind the walls of a prison. For a time she was depressed, + thinking that she had come west into a wide open country, only to + find herself locked up more closely than ever. + + An impulse came to her. She arose and going down three or four + steps seated herself almost on a level with the ground. + + Immediately she got a sense of release. She could not see over the + corn but she could see under it. The corn had long wide leaves + that met over the rows. The rows became long tunnels running away + into infinity. Out of the black ground grew weeds that made a soft + carpet of green. From above light sifted down. The corn rows were + mysteriously beautiful. They were warm passageways running out + into life. She got up from the steps, and, walking timidly to the + wire fence that separated her from the field, put her hand between + the wires and took hold of one of the corn stalks. For some reason + after she had touched the strong young stalk and had held it for a + moment firmly in her hand, she grew afraid. Running quickly back to + the step she sat down and covered her face with her hands. Her body + trembled. She tried to imagine herself crawling through the fence + and wandering along one of the passageways. The thought of trying + the experiment fascinated, but at the same time terrified. She got + quickly up and went into the house. + +But the temptation proved too strong. Elsie could not resist the lure +of the broad fields: + + Elsie ran into the vastness of the corn-fields filled with but one + desire. She wanted to get out of her life and into some new and + sweeter life she felt must be hidden away somewhere in the fields. + After she had run a long way she came to a wire fence and crawled + over. Her hair became unloosened and fell down over her shoulders. + Her cheeks became flushed and for the moment she looked like a + young girl. When she climbed over the fence she tore a great hole + in the front of her dress. For a moment her tiny breasts were + exposed, and then her hand clutched and held nervously the sides + of the tear. In the distance she could hear the voices of the boys + and the barking of the dogs. A summer storm had been threatening + for days, and now black clouds had begun to spread themselves over + the sky. As she ran nervously forward, stopping to listen and then + running on again, the dry corn blades brushed against her shoulders + and a fine shower of yellow dust from the corn tassels fell on her + hair. A continued crackling noise accompanied her progress. The + dust made a golden crown about her head. From the sky overhead a + low rumbling sound, like the growling of giant dogs, came to her + ears. + + Sharp pains shot through her body. Presently she was compelled to + stop and sit on the ground. For a long time she sat with closed + eyes. Her dress became soiled. Little insects that live in the + ground under the corn, came out of their holes and crawled over her + legs. + + Following some obscure impulse the tired woman threw herself on + her back and lay still with closed eyes. Her fright passed. It was + warm and close in the roomlike tunnels. The pain in her side went + away. She opened her eyes and between the wide green corn blades + could see patches of a black threatening sky. She did not want to + be alarmed and so closed her eyes again. Her thin hand no longer + gripped the tear in her dress and her little breasts were exposed. + They expanded and contracted in spasmodic jerks. She threw her + hands back over her head and lay still. + + It seemed to Elsie that hours passed as she lay thus, quiet and + passive under the corn. Deep within her there was a feeling that + something was about to happen, something that would lift her out of + herself, that would tear her away from her past and the past of her + people. Her thoughts were not definite. She lay still and waited as + she had waited for days and months by the rock at the back of the + orchard on the Vermont farm when she was a girl. A deep grumbling + noise went on in the sky overhead, but the sky and everything she + had ever known seemed very far away, no part of herself.... + + Elsie followed, creeping on her hands and knees like a little + animal, and when she had come within sight of the fence surrounding + the house she sat on the ground and put her hands over her face. + Something within herself was being twisted and whirled about as + the tops of the corn stalks were now being twisted and whirled by + the wind. She sat so that she did not look toward the house and + when she opened her eyes, she could again see along the long, + mysterious aisles.... The storm that had been threatening broke + with a roar. Broad sheets of water swept over the corn-fields. + Sheets of water swept over the woman’s body. The storm that had + for years been gathering in her also broke. Sobs arose out of her + throat. She abandoned herself to a storm of grief that was only + partially grief. Tears ran out of her eyes and made little furrows + through the dust on her face. In the lulls that occasionally came + in the storm she raised her head and heard, through the tangled + mass of wet hair that covered her ears and above the sound of + millions of raindrops that alighted on the earthen floor inside the + house of the corn, the thin voices of her mother and father calling + to her out of the Leander house. + +The tortures of inhibition have rarely been so dramatically and +scientifically described. + + * * * * * + +From now on, the problem of sexual inhibition was going to haunt +Sherwood Anderson. He was soon to devote to it a strange and, for +the average reader, a most shocking book which we must examine with +the same candor which the author has shown in writing it. It is +called “Many Marriages.” In order to be entirely just to it, I shall +again warn the reader of what I have already suggested. Eroticism +and mysticism go hand in hand for Anderson. Having discovered sexual +inhibition to be the main cause of social hypocrisy, he preaches the +gospel of absolute sexual sincerity as a _sine qua non_ condition +of moral progress. To understand the author’s point of view, let us +not forget that his stories take place in a Puritan country. Let us +remember Theodore Dreiser’s sayings about the primordial importance of +the sexual question in a pioneer land where the woman remained, for +a long time, as the only luxury allowed to men, and the only object +of art offered to their dreams. “Many Marriages” is a confession, a +soliloquy, which continues uninterrupted for nearly three hundred +pages.[47] + +The hero is a lunatic, an erotomaniac who parades naked before a +Madonna and a crucifix surrounded by burning tapers, in order to better +vent his feelings about sex, love and marriage to his daughter. His +name is John Webster. He was born in a small Wisconsin town and began +as a business man. One day, passing in front of his factory, he heard +his workingmen humming a hymn like this: + + And before I’d be a slave, + I’d be buried in my grave + And go home to my father and be saved. + +As has been already hinted, verbal automatism plays a large part in the +career of Anderson’s characters. The song heard by John Webster loosens +a new stream of consciousness in him. A married man with a grown-up +daughter, in charge of a business concern, John Webster suddenly feels +that he has missed his life. He immediately leaves everything to follow +the call. In fact, he had never been happy as a married man or as an +American citizen. He had never been able to express himself freely. +Above all, he had lived in complete ignorance of his body. Now he has +found the road to Damascus. Let him be erotically sincere. At last, +let him know the “house” of his body which he has inhabited so long as +a stranger, and let him visit what he calls other people’s “houses.” +Thereupon his mystic lubricity is let loose. The most shocking part +of the book is that in which the Wisconsin gymnosophist gives a +demonstration of erotic sincerity to his daughter, she herself being +hardly dressed. The pages where he tells her his misfortunes as a +married man and a lover are indeed amazing. The like can only be found +in Andreiev or Gorki. John Webster is insane, but he is also sincere +and pure, according to the author. More than this, he atones in his +person for all the inhibited inhabitants of Winesburg. This immoral +book is after all pure and candid from the writer’s point of view. +It was composed to keep a wager which Sherwood Anderson was careful +to explain in his preface. John Webster, he tells us, may be crazy, +as anybody would be who tried to act contrary to accepted standards +in public. At any rate courage is also a virtue, and John is not a +coward. Doubtless, a man who seeks love as directly as he does is +abnormal according to present standards, but he may be more moral than +many of us who refrain to follow his tracks only for fear of public +opinion. Better be a De Sade than a Tartuffe. “Many Marriages” is, at +the bottom, a plea in favor of individual renewal. It is the book of a +moralist and of a mystic. John Webster is a saint after a fashion. He +dares to uncover his most secret thoughts before others. The problem of +correlations between our thoughts and our actions has always proved to +be of a great interest to the author. One of the tales in “The Triumph +of The Egg” showed a father who was impelled by his longing for Truth +to reveal his secret life to his daughter, but he was a coward and +stopped short at the last minute. As for the denudation of the body at +the moment of intensive moral or religious crises, and as a symptom of +conversion, it is not unknown to hagiographers. Do not the Scriptures +speak of “shedding the old man?” The biography of Saint Francis of +Assisi tells a similar story with a very different purpose. Nakedness +in “Many Marriages” is ritual. It is equivalent to the white robe which +the neophytes of the primitive church used to don. + +This is said, not as a plea in favor of John Webster, but as an +analysis of some of the tortuous and yet well-meaning paths which +Anderson’s mind likes to travel. At any rate, he made no mystery of his +intentions or of the significance of his book. He tells us that, whilst +loving Natalie Schwartz, his mistress, John Webster never intended to +shut himself off from the possibility of loving another woman, or many +other women. Why should not a rich man marry many times? He was certain +that all the potentialities in wedlock had yet been hardly explored. He +wanted to be the Christopher Columbus of a new continent of inter-human +relations. In Webster’s mind something had opposed itself, up to then, +to a broad and human acceptation of life. Before loving one had to +know and accept himself and others. Sexual love is true only when it +comes as an inspiration, a miracle. Happy are those who follow the +call. But they are few. For most people life is a renunciation of their +best self. And that is why John Webster left his wife. She had never +forgiven him his primitive spontaneity and his brusque mode of attack +at their first meeting. “Leave all and follow me,” says the Voice. Love +must not be a bond but a token of freedom. Such was the meaning of the +refrain heard by John Webster one day. Let us break down the walls and +free the prisoners: + + If one kept the lid off the well of thinking within oneself, let + the well empty itself, let the mind consciously think any thoughts + that came to it, accepted all thinking, all imaginings, as one + accepted the flesh of people, animals, birds, trees, plants, one + might live a hundred or a thousand lives in one life. Then each one + of us could become “something more than just one individual man and + woman living one narrow circumscribed life.” One could tear down + all walls and fences and walk in and out many people. One might in + oneself become a whole town full of people, a city, a nation. + +This may be a generous dream, and one infinitely more attractive than +the inhibitions of Winesburg or Gopher Prairie, and yet one cannot help +seeing in John Webster’s gospel only the last challenge of romanticism +at bay. After Rousseau, Walt Whitman has tried the gospel of sexual +sincerity at all cost. He had attempted to call the universe to him +and hold it in his naked arms. “I Walt Whitman, a cosmos!” and it all +ended in failure. Theodore Dreiser in “The Genius” had answered John +Webster’s queries concerning sexual freedom. Sherwood Anderson himself +noted somewhere that humanism and not pantheism, concentration and not +expansion, could free and feed human hearts. Webster’s mystic orgies +have not only ethics but common sense against them. But Anderson is a +poet. Like Whitman he worships Life and the Vital Force. He wants us +to surrender to all beautiful instincts. Society denies us this right, +Life itself will build a bridge to greater freedom. Life, he proclaims, +will empty the prisons. It will raise the lid of the “well” where the +Freudian monsters are asleep, these monsters which the Puritan felt +groping within himself, and which he carefully and wisely held in +chains. Anderson wants to free the Hairy Ape and make an angel of him: + + There was a deep well within every man and woman, and when Life + came in at the door of the house, that was the body, it reached + down and tore the heavy iron lid off the well. Dark hidden + things, festering in the well, came out and found expression for + themselves, and the miracle was that, expressed, they became often + very beautiful. There was a cleansing, a strange sort of renewal + within the house of the man or woman when the god Life had come + in.[48] + +Anderson has dedicated himself once more to the task of raising the lid +of the “well.” In “Dark Laughter” it is again the story of a spiritual +evasion and the return to erotic sincerity. Psychological insight +and verbal lyricism are beautifully and musically blended in this +book. In it the author is felt to become more and more conscious and +to have acquired a greater mastery of his instruments of expression. +Lyrical outbursts, soliloquies and descriptions are brought into +perfect harmony. The hero of “Dark Laughter,” Bruce Dudley, alias John +Stockton, is another John Webster. He began his career as a reporter, +got a good position, married and ... ran away. He dropped his wife and +his job to become a tramp. He began anew earning a living by painting +carriage wheels in company with a comrade similar to those celebrated +by Walt Whitman. He then becomes a gardener and falls in love at first +sight with his employer’s wife. It is the inspiration, the miracle so +much looked for by John Webster. So Bruce and Aline wed sincerity and +elope.... But it would be a betrayal of Anderson to reduce the plots +of his books, especially this one, to such trivial incidents. For him +the orchestration is more important than the theme. The main charm of +“Dark Laughter” is its poetry and its music, the curious and clever +blending of thought, dream, color and song. It is a sort of _sotto +voce_ monologue with musical interludes. In several of Anderson’s books +there had already been an undertone of music echoing the thoughts of +the characters. He has perfected the process in “Dark Laughter.” + +The scene of the novel is laid upon the shores of the Ohio and of the +Mississippi. These gigantic American waterways, sung to the tune of +a Greek hymn by Monsieur de Chateaubriand and desecrated in modern +times by Mark Twain, become musical again through Sherwood Anderson’s +poetic prose. There is an orchestra of Negro minstrels on the shore +and on the deck of the boat which takes Bruce Dudley to New Orleans. +The writer looks to Negro music as to the symbol of free instinctive +expression. The humming of Negro spirituals accompanies the soliloquies +of Bruce Dudley like the tom-tom in “Emperor Jones.” The black man’s +songs in Anderson’s novels emphasize the return to nature. They are the +last avatars of romanticism in America, the protest of nature against +civilization, a challenge to social hypocrisy.[49] While the white +man broods at home over his woes, real or imaginary, the black sings +naturally in the open and vents his naïve soul in hymns and laughter, +with an occasional strain of melancholy, soothing itself as it is sung. +Anderson finds in these Negro chanteys what he calls “a way of getting +at the ultimate truth of things,” which is tantamount, almost, to a +system of metaphysics. + +The pages devoted to New Orleans in “Dark Laughter” are among the most +original ever written by the author. Here is the homecoming of Bruce +Dudley in the old creole city: + + The niggers were something for Bruce to look at, think about. So + many black men slowly growing brown. Then would come the light + brown, the velvet-browns, Caucasian features. The brown women + tending up to the job--getting the race lighter and lighter. Soft + Southern nights, warm dusky nights. Shadows flitting at the edge + of cotton fields, in dusky roads by saw-mill towns. Soft voices + laughing, laughing. + + Oh, ma banjo dog, + Oh, ho, ma banjo dog. + An’ I ain’t go’na give you + None of ma jelly roll. + + Niggers on the docks, niggers in the city streets, niggers + laughing. A slow dance always going on.... Clean ships, dirty tramp + ships, half-naked niggers--a shadow dance.... They dance south--out + of doors--white in a pavilion in one field, blacks, browns, high + browns, velvet-browns in a pavilion in the next field--but one ... + + Oh, ma banjo dog! + + ... Give us a song, Jack--a dance--the gumbo drift. Come, the night + is hot.... + + Nigger girls in the streets, nigger women, nigger men. There is + a brown cat lurking in the shadow of a building. “Come, brown + puss--come and get your cream.” The men who work on the docks + in New Orleans have slender flanks like running horses, broad + shoulders, loose, heavy lips hanging down--faces like old monkeys + sometimes--bodies like young gods--sometimes. On Sundays--when + they go to church, or to a bayou baptizing, the brown girls do + sure cut loose with the colors--gaudy nigger colors on nigger + women making the streets flame--deep purples, reds, yellows, green + like young corn-shoots coming up. They sweat. The skin colors + brown, golden yellow, reddish brown, purple brown. When the sweat + runs down high brown backs the colors come out and dance before + the eyes. Flash that up, you silly painters, catch it dancing. + Song-tones in words, music in words--in colors, too. Silly American + painters! They chase a Gauguin shadow to the South Seas. + +I shall not add any comments to this beautifully colored piece, +recalling, at once, both Gauguin, Matisse and Baudelaire, with the +addition of a jazz band. The man who wrote this is certainly one of the +greatest artists in words of American literature, if not the greatest +and the most modern. If young America succeeds in creating an art of +the New World, as original as that of the old one, she will owe it to +Sherwood Anderson, as to her truest literary pathfinder. He may not +be himself completely emancipated yet from his native loam. He looks +very much like a faun fighting to disentangle himself from his dual +nature, but as a colorist and a musician it is difficult to dispute him +the first rank. Consumptive American fiction owes to him at least real +flesh and blood. That he is a sensuous mystic can be concluded from +his very definition of art. He calls art “a perfume issuing from the +truth of things through the fingers of an humble man filled with love.” +Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarmé, the founders of modern +æsthetics, would certainly have endorsed this programme which gratifies +harmoniously both the body and the soul. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +_James Branch Cabell and the Escape to Poictesme_ + + +Amidst the triumph of realism, James Branch Cabell’s romantic works +seem at first almost phenomenal in contemporary American fiction. They +are interesting as an attempt to restore the imaginative element to +the American novel. Although the romantic novel has never been extinct +in America, there had been a very thin line drawn between realism and +fiction. The growth of the realistic novel had been a natural reaction +against sentimentalism.[50] + +As the puritanical tyranny became more strict and more imperious, the +distinction between the _genres_ was lost. Puritanism forbade the +painting of life as it is. Why should it be any more indulgent to +fiction? Based on a system of repression, it would seem _a priori_ +destined to accord well with romanticism, which is of itself based on +statements contrary to fact and opposed to an exact and scientific +presentation of life--a presentation full of threats for the victims +of scruples, of floating anxiety and soul-fear. As I have shown, it +is mainly in W. D. Howells’ work that this confusion between realism +and fiction occurred. Howells, and the popular novelists after him, so +thoroughly confused the issues that it became impossible to distinguish +between the two. The American novelists, unencumbered with imaginative +powers, and moralists above all, tried to succeed in the impossible +task of giving to reality the semblance of fiction. The result of +their efforts is a bastard _genre_, still triumphant to-day in +countless magazines and in the “movies.” Fictitious realism would be an +appropriate definition for the greater number of writers who pander to +public taste in America. + +The nearer we come to the present, the more we notice the inability +of American writers to imitate Hawthorne’s admirable realism in +psychology. It was James Branch Cabell’s ambition to restore +romanticism to its former rights, by ridding it of exaggerated realism +on the one hand, and of Puritanism on the other. From this point of +view his work is most significant. The attempt to give to American +literature a new romantic form of fiction could succeed only if +the ground were cleared. Cabell’s work presents itself in a double +aspect; first as a revolt against realism, secondly as an anti-Puritan +Declaration of Independence. + +This effort was doubly heroic and it has been amply compensated for by +its success. On one hand, it was necessary to defend and maintain the +rights of imagination in a period of overflowing realism, and on the +other to claim for that very imagination all the rights usurped by the +realists in a Puritan country. That, then, is what the novelist has +been able to accomplish. + +James Branch Cabell is of Southern origin. From an old local stock, he +was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1879. He was educated at William and +Mary College, where he taught Greek and French. Like most contemporary +American writers, he went through the journalistic mill and then began +doing literary work. He traveled in France, Ireland and England. Like +Anatole France, he is a genealogist and an antiquarian. His taste +for legends, for folklore and heraldry, turned him into an explorer +of archives. He began with short stories and poems, followed by two +or three novels whose scene is laid in his native land. Though his +first chronologically, these early books have been relegated to the +background by the author. He took them up again and revised them to +make them fit into the cycle of Dom Manuel and Jurgen, the most recent +form of epic cycles. + +Here is at last an American novelist with a culture and a style of +his own, a conscious artist and a man of letters. Most of the new +American fiction writers are indifferent to style. They write badly. +They are often incorrect, trivial and obscure. Their last worry is the +attainment of the beautiful in writing.[51] Cabell, on the contrary, is +an adept at artistic writing, the only prose writer in American fiction +who cultivates style for its own sake. That alone would be enough to +make him original and interesting for the reader who has just plodded +drearily through the desert of “An American Tragedy,” for instance. He +was fed on the English classics, especially those of the Renaissance. +At times he is a deft imitator and parodist of Spenser, to whom he +owes much of his flowery and savory style, and a great admirer of +the English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He +likes to call himself a classic, classic in style, though romantic in +inspiration. But, above all, his chief gift is imagination. At last we +are given a holiday from Theodore Dreiser’s triviality, Sinclair Lewis’ +truculence and Anderson’s mystic stammering. Cabell’s ideal is harmony, +clearness and grace. He moves within fiction as if it were a natural +element and not as in a quarry where he is painfully hewing out stones. +In an epoch when American writers hitched their wagons more and more to +matter-of-fact subjects, he cut the moorings and gave free play to his +fancy. + +Everything in his books is fictitious, the subject, the style, the +characters, the costumes and the settings. He has invented a new +folklore, a new mythology. He has discovered unknown countries, the +land of Poictesme, a fabulous kingdom well devised to puzzle us as it +is located, on a map of Cabell’s making, halfway between reality and +dream. As fictitious as Spenser’s, Shakespeare’s or Honoré d’Urfé’s +cosmography, the land of Poictesme, where Dom Manuel and Jurgen deport +themselves in sadness or glee, is none the less presented to us as a +real country somewhere in Southern France. Its half fictitious, half +real boundaries are, on the north, England of Arthurian times, on +the south, the vague Asia Minor of Guy de Lusignan and Melissinda, +princess of Tripoli. The novelist has been kind enough to design for +the ignorant a map of Dom Manuel’s domains. According to the map, +the land of Poictesme stretches along the Mediterranean, between +Aigues-Mortes and Cette. Its physical frontiers are, to the west, the +city of Nîmes, and to the east, the town of Castres in Languedoc. Let +the professional geographer challenge James Branch Cabell’s topography +if he wants. Poictesme includes under fictitious names the foot-hills +of the Cévennes, where we may recognize the haunts and “high places” +of Florian de Puysange. The author was not content with inventing a +new land. He crowned a dynasty, which until then was little known to +historians. He made up a genealogy which I shall not follow in all of +its ramifications, and which stretches from Sorrisonde in Poictesme to +Lichfield, Virginia (U. S. A.). A genealogist by taste and profession, +the author has taken visible pleasure in linking together all his +novels with the chain of a pedigree beginning with Dom Manuel the Great +and ending with Felix Kennaston. In consequence his work presents +itself like a huge _Comédie humaine_ or a new Rougon-Macquart epic +issuing forth from an ancestry of mixed French, English and American +blood, a startling and most romantic alliance. History and legend are +fused and confused in an amazing manner in Cabell’s books. He revived +medieval chivalry in a modern travesty full of piquant anachronisms.[52] + +It took all the erudition of a modern writer and the most refined humor +to brew folklore, legend and history together, and to embroil geography +and history with such an irreverent finesse. In the cycle of Dom Manuel +and Jurgen, the gods of ancient mythology, the saints of the Christian +calendar, the fairies, the magicians and the demons of the Fable, joust +pell-mell as in a masquerade. Cabell went even farther. Not content +with parodying legends he invented new ones to which his erudition +succeeded in giving all the signs of verisimilitude. + + * * * * * + +The inhabitants of Poictesme are medieval in garb and modern in +psychology. They went to school with Rabelais, Voltaire and Anatole +France. Here is at last an American writer who can think freely and who +does not ignore _gaie science_. Cabell’s philosophy is as attractive +and fanciful as the land of Poictesme but there is an acumen of truth +under his fancy. It is the philosophy of a man of imagination who +cannot digest truth without many bits of salt. It has been propounded +_ex professo_ in two suggestive books, “Beyond Life,” and “Straws and +Prayer-books.” Cabell does not lead a direct attack against Puritanism, +but he uses backhand Parthian arrows which are none the less deadly. He +leaves his visiting card in passing through Philistia and the Kingdom +of Mother Dunce. He speaks freely and little respectfully of Demagogy, +and makes frequent and transparent allusions to current events. + +This poet is a satirist. His warfare against Philistinism has taken the +form of a defense of fiction. + +He considers fiction as a semi-divine impulse, or what he calls a +_demi-urge_. In the invention of fiction he sees the starting point +of all human activities. According to him, civilization proceeded +from this impulse which makes us wish to dream and to create a world +more beautiful, more just, than, or at least different from, the one +in which we are living. In the name of this romantic instinct, he hit +simultaneously the Puritans and the realists, the former because they +fear and try to suppress fiction and imagination, the latter because +they limit them and their rights. This is an interesting reaction and a +timely one. It should be remembered by all those among us who feel that +realism has almost overdone itself and that a revival of imagination +would best serve the aims of art. Is not the coupling of the words +_realism_ and _fiction_ a contradiction in terms? Cabell suggests +that we take the novel back to its heroic and adventurous origins. He +refuses to believe in realism, in the first place because the romantic +instinct causes men to dislike life as it is, and to dream of it as +being different in an effort to escape from it. Furthermore, according +to him, the essential process of realistic fiction is in obvious +contradiction with facts. + +“You assume,” says Cabell to the veritists, “that any literature +worthy of the name must be faithful to reality and reproduce it +without any further increment. Yet you refuse to life one of its most +outstanding characteristics, the taste, the deep need of conceiving +itself different from what it is. Are you being _real_ and scientific +in grasping and reproducing only physical facts, in a world where +everything, even the reception of a letter or the arrangement of a +dinner, is subjective? There are no facts without an emotion around +them, no circumstances without a personal preference expressed on their +account. What is true of life is still truer of literature. Realism +in writing cannot exist and never existed. Take the most hardened and +the most convinced of all realists, Gustave Flaubert. His Emma Bovary +is minutely observed and that is just why she is unreal, as unreal as +was Flaubert’s perception of the outside world. The realists assume +the task of presenting to us, in a so-called objective and detached +manner the incidents of life as seen from the intellectual angle, but +there are no such incidents. Realism as a literary method is unreal. +Whilst trying to present our contemporaries as they are, it is far +from resembling real life. Life is more charitable than the realists. +It presents things and people to us as we wish that they might be. +Fiction is faithful to life because it does not accept it as it is. It +looks upon it with grave misgivings, as an extremely commonplace and +worthless event. Beauty can only be attained by an elimination of the +trivial. Life is such a bore! Imagination alone can give a value to the +world. The solution of the problem of life is not understanding, but +escape, and the more romantic the escape the better. Not to live, but +to dream, is the question. Fiction is the only source of those blessed +illusions which Ibsen called _vital lies_ and which he thought it his +duty as a realist to challenge.” + +It would be worth while to dwell on this original defense of fiction. +As I have attempted to show in the different chapters of this book, +romantic evasion plays a primordial part in the American novel to-day. +It is the natural result of the inhibitions which torture the Puritans. +Like the characters of Hawthorne, Dreiser, Anderson and Sinclair +Lewis, those of Cabell are runaways. The escape from moral and social +tyranny forms the chief theme of all his books. They contain a long +list of evasions. Dom Manuel, count of Poictesme, suffered from a fit +of self-conceit which caused him to spend his time giving life to +those figures of earth which he made in his own image. But, little by +little, an obscure instinct took him away from his selfish occupation. +He withdrew from his mistresses, his sorcerers, his family, and +finally tired of the government of his country. He gladly mounted +the black charger of Death and went to see if he could find at last +a true picture of himself in the water of the Styx. Perion de la +Forest, Demetrios and Ashaverus, took a similar flight in “Domnei.” +The three lovers of Melisande lost their faith in love and deserted +their dame to marry Freedom. Florian de Puysange, in “The High Place,” +obtained the favors of Melior, a fairy, at the peril of his life, but +he soon declared that all amorous gratifications were idle and died +disenchanted. The most famous evasion, since the days of Latude, was +that of Jurgen, the pawnbroker turned emperor and pope, and who finally +evades heaven and hell in order to return to his shrew and to his +pawnshop. Evasion through passion, or evasion through dreams, the one +bitter, the other a sham but a peace-bringer,--what else is there in +life, except routine? + +In spite of their disillusionments and their romantic failures, +Cabell’s heroes never repented their waking dreams. They would do it +all over again, if they could. They fail in their search but the thrill +was worth the trouble of the journey. They hug only ghosts in the dark, +but they went through the dark, and enjoyed the trip. + +The author of “Jurgen” connects this craving for fiction with a +primordial human instinct which he considers as being the same force +which actuates all life. The world in which his people move is not +a world for the Puritans. Everything in it is sensually refined and +steeped in voluptuousness. The Jurgens, the Dom Manuels and the +Florian de Puysanges are little troubled with their consciences. Does +not Jurgen go so far as to make of conscience an attribute of the +damned? Cabell opposes to the grim universe of the Puritans the land +of Courtesy, and what he calls the Utopia of Gallantry. This Cabellian +country resembles Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème whose door flashed with +the radiant motto “Do just as you please.” In this delectable country, +we are told: + + The wisest may well unbend occasionally, to give conscience a + half-holiday, and procure a passport to this delectable land. True, + there are, as always in travel, the custom-house regulations to + be observed: in this realm exist no conscientious scruples, no + probity, no religion, no pompous notions about altruism, not any + sacred tie of any sort, and such impedimenta will be confiscated at + the frontier. We are entering a territory wherein ethics and ideals + are equally contraband.... It is a carefree land, where life, + untrammeled by the restrictions of moral codes, untoward weather, + limited incomes or apprehension of the police, has no legitimate + object save the pursuit of progress and refinement. + +Let us now enter Cocaigne. + +The suzerain lord of the estate is the great sire Dom Manuel, count +of Poictesme. We find him enthroned on the threshold of the Cabellian +saga, in a book called “Figures of Earth.” It is difficult to summarize +Cabell’s novels. In epic fashion they are composed of a long string of +episodes and cantos. Before he became the lord of Poictesme, Manuel +began life as a plain herder of pigs. In his leisure moments he used +to model little clay figures. One day a stranger passed by and admired +Manuel’s handsome countenance. How could such a fine fellow be a pig +herder? Let him arise and march to adventure. Upon a mountain, guarded +by monsters, the magician Miramon Lluagor holds the princess Gisele +captive. She awaits a Saint George to free her and by loving her to +inherit the treasures of Miramon. So Manuel departs like another +Siegfried. He climbs the mountain, frees Gisele and ... does not marry +her. At the foot of the enchanted castle he had met the mysterious +Niafer who helped him to fight Miramon’s enchantments. He marries +Niafer instead of the beautiful princess. It is not easy to say why, +for Cabell’s allegories are often obscure, and I leave the trouble to +pick their precise meaning to scholars. Did the author want to suggest +that between what Emerson called _first_ and _second_ thoughts, between +_tuitions_ and _intuitions_, a wise man will “think twice” and choose +the latter, and so did Manuel? Whatever may be the case, Dom Manuel has +now started on his crusade. + +We follow him in wonderland among the most pleasant gambols of the +writer’s fancy. After being delayed at the foot of the mountain by +Miramon’s enchantments, they come to the magic castle on the top. And +then the tale tells how Manuel freed princess Gisele; how he gave her +up for his good companion Niafer; how selfish Manuel surrendered Niafer +to the rider of the Pale Horse; how he made Figures of Earth; how, in +order to give them life, he conquered the magician Freydis; how he +missed Niafer; how he brought her back to life with the help of the +Head of Misery; how he won back the kingdom of Poictesme; how he had a +daughter named Melisande; how he escaped the witchcraft of Alienor and +Freydis; and how he finally surrendered himself to Grandfather Death +who took him over to the river Styx on his black charger, that he might +see his real image in the water. + +The novelist never allows humor and parody to conceal his serious +purpose. Dom Manuel is a most dramatic and suggestive figure, half +fictitious, half real. He impersonates Cabell’s views on the conflict +between life and dreams. The last chapters of “Figures of Earth” recall +some of the most beautiful medieval allegories. I quote as an example +the scene where Grandfather Death calls on Dom Manuel to take him away +to the subterranean world: + + “It is strange,” says Dom Manuel, “to think that everything I am + seeing was mine a moment since, and it is queer too to think of + what a famous fellow was this Manuel the Redeemer, and of the fine + things he did, and it is appalling to wonder if all the other + applauded heroes of mankind are like him. Oh, certainly, Count + Manuel’s achievements were notable and such as were not known + anywhere before, and men will talk of them for a long while. Yet, + looking back--now that this famous Count of Poictesme means less + to me--why I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his + tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from + mystery to mystery, with pathetic makeshifts, not understanding + anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with + poltroonery. So in a secret place his youth was put away in + exchange for a prize that was hardly worth the having; and the fine + geas which his mother laid upon him was exchanged for the common + geas of what seems expected.” + + “Such notions,” replied Grandfather Death, “are entertained by many + of you humans in the lightheaded time of youth. Then common sense + arises like a light, formless cloud about your doings, and you half + forget these notions. Then I bring darkness.” + + “In that quiet dark, my friend, it may be I shall again become + the Manuel whom I remember, and I may get back again my own + undemonstrable ideas, in place of the ideas of other persons, to + entertain me in that darkness. So let us be going thither.” + + “Very willingly,” said Grandfather Death; and he started toward the + door. + + “Now pardon me,” says Manuel, “but in Poictesme the Count of + Poictesme goes first in any company. It may seem to you an affair + of no importance, but nowadays I concede the strength as well as + the foolishness of my accustomed habits, and all my life long I + have gone first. So do you ride a little way behind me, friend, and + carry this shroud and napkin, till I have need of them.” + + Then the Count armed and departed from Storisende, riding on the + black horse, in gold armor, and carrying before him his shield + whereon was blazoned the rampant and bridled stallion of Poictesme + and the motto _Mundus vult decipi_. Behind him was Grandfather + Death on the white horse, carrying the Count’s grave-clothes in a + neat bundle. They rode toward the sunset, and against the yellow + sunset each figure showed jet black. + +Dom Manuel is dead, but we shall meet his lineage in every hero of the +cycle. The head of the Poictesme dynasty will outlive himself in his +descendants. His daughter Melicent or Melisande, is the heroine of +the second part of the saga called “Domnei,” or “the Cult of Ladies.” +This is the most perfect collection of stories ever written by the +author. It is once more a fairy tale, a very fine legend embellished +with ironic traits. Rémy de Gourmont would have called it a masterpiece +of dissociation. The American novelist, like Anatole France, has the +talent of being at the same time ironic and naïve, and of dressing a +disillusioned wisdom in fairy garb. “Domnei,” like “Figures of Earth,” +tells of a great love ending in disappointment. + +Perion de la Forest is in love with Melisande. Both travel to far-away +countries in pursuit of adventure and they fight many fights in pagan +lands. Are these lands Byzantine or Saracenic; are we in Constantinople +or in Palestine; in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance? Who can +tell? Perion and Melisande recall to mind Geoffroy Rudel and Melissinde +in Edmond Rostand’s “Princesse Lointaine,” but “Domnei” ends in +sarcasms and not in romantic embraces. It is the story of three men, +a Christian, a pagan, and a Jew, all in love with the same woman, or +rather with the idea which they form of her. Each of them voluntarily +wrecks his chances of happiness as soon as he sees that he can attain +it. This again seems paradoxical and a little confusing. Had not the +author decisively taken the side of romance against everything else +in the world? Why should the romantic impulse thus abandon the three +lovers? And why should Cabell weave these beautiful legends just to +take pleasure in ruining them with his own hands? Doubtless evasion +is better than repression, but the artificial heavens created by the +author’s imagination are somewhat too attractive to be rejected with +such light-heartedness. Yet with what zest these heroes of his run away +from them! But let us return to Melisande and Perion de la Forest. +They have been made prisoners by the pagan consul Demetrios. Perion +is free, but Demetrios keeps Melisande. She bought Perion’s freedom +by giving herself to the pagan. She is to be Demetrios’ captive for +many long years. This Demetrios is not an altogether disagreeable +pagan. He really loves Melisande who tries her best to tame him. But +one day he tears himself away from her. Through a sudden intuition +he feels the uselessness of love-making, and goes away. Melisande +had a third lover, the Jew Ashaverus; he too is caught for a while by +the allurement of the Eternal Feminine, and he too, in the end, is +a runaway from love. Perion has won over his rivals. After a bloody +encounter he finds Melisande still faithful to his memory and both +try to love each other according to courtly etiquette. But, alas! how +little reality resembles dreams! Perion has found Melisande, but the +Faraway Princess has vanished to make place for the rather commonplace +woman whom Perion marries, because if you cannot have the entire ideal +you may just as well be content with a few crumbs. “Domnei” preaches +the same lesson that we find in “Jurgen.” + +“Domnei” is a book deep with meaning and very artistic in form. The +three lovers of Melisande make a very dramatic group. The narrative +never lags and spread through it are such charming bits of fantasy as +the following, which deals with Melisande’s gardens in a singing style, +mellow as the sound of a lute: + + Indeed the Women’s Garden on this morning lacked nothing to delight + each sense. Its hedges were of flowering jessamine; its walkways + were spread with new sawdust tinged with crocus and vermilion, + and with mica beaten into a powder: and the place was rich in + fruit-bearing trees and welling waters. The sun shone, and birds + chaunted merrily to the right hand and to the left. Dog-headed + apes, sacred to the moon, were chattering in the trees. There was + a statue in this place, carved out of black stone, in the likeness + of a woman, having enamelled eyes and three rows of breasts, with + the lower part of her body confined in a sheath; and upon the + glistening pedestal of this statue chameleons sunned themselves + with distended throats. Around about Melicent were nodding + armaments of roses and gillyflowers and narcissi and amaranths, + and many violets and white lilies, and other flowers of all kinds + and colors. + + To Melicent the world seemed very lovely. Here was a world created + by Eternal Love that people might serve love in it not at all + unworthily. Here were anguishes to be endured, and time and human + frailty and temporal hardship--all for love to mock at; a sea or + two for love to sever, a man-made law or so for love to override, + a shallow wisdom for love to deny, in exultance that these ills at + most were only corporal hindrance. This done, you have earned the + right to come--come hand-in-hand--to heaven whose liege-lord was + Eternal Love. + + Thus Melicent, who knew that Perion loved her. + + She sat on a stone bench. She combed her golden hair, not heeding + the more coarse gray hairs which here and there were apparent + nowadays. A peacock came, and watched her with bright, hard, small + eyes; and he craned his glistening neck this way and that way, as + though he were wondering at this other shining and gaily colored + creature, who seemed so happy. + + She did not dare to think of seeing Perion again. Instead, she made + because of him a little song, which had not any words, so that it + is not possible here to retail this song. + + Thus Melicent, who knew that Perion loved her. + +I now come to “Jurgen.” It is Cabell’s great book, published in +1919; it was censored almost immediately and eagerly sought by book +collectors. Jurgen was born in Poictesme in the time of Dom Manuel, but +the scene of the novel is laid in dreamland. It recalls the voyages of +Saint Brendan and Dante. I shall try my best to disentangle the real +from the fanciful in the book. “Jurgen” is the story of a youth of +Poictesme by that name. He was full of ambition. Everybody predicted +for him a career of great deeds and amorous exploits. Instead, Jurgen +settled down; he married dame Lisa, a matter-of-fact woman, and he +opened a pawnshop. One day dame Lisa disappeared and as he missed his +domestic comfort Jurgen made up his mind to go after her. He came to a +cave on Amneran Heath and here the fantastic story begins. + +It appears that dame Lisa was a witch, and Jurgen suspected the Devil +as being her kidnaper. Jurgen enters the cave and for several hundred +pages we follow him in the subterranean world. The author’s imagination +winds round and round. It is impossible to follow it in all its +meanderings. Led by the centaur Nessus, Jurgen travels in the nether +world. He is taken back to his heyday and, younger by twenty years, +he soon forgets dame Lisa to explore the land of the dead on his own +account. Loved by witches, vampires and queens, he marries a Hamadryad +and flirts with Helen of Troy. From escapade to escapade he finally +finds himself in hell, where he meets the shadow of his father. He +interviews Koshchei, the master “who made things as they are.” Quiet at +last after so many marvelous adventures, he comes back to his Penelope, +to his slippers and his hearth. + +“Jurgen” caused a scandal in America. It reads like the sixth book of +the “Æneid” adapted by Casanova. Eroticism dominates the book, but it +is so mingled with humor that it is inoffensive. There are lengthy +digressions, but the interest never flags. Jurgen is a most sympathetic +rogue. It is hard to see him surrender to the commonplace at the end of +his long journey, like an ordinary Carol Kennicott or a George Babbitt. +From being emperor and pope he descends to a pawnbroker again without +much ado. But let us judge Jurgen on his faith and not on his works. +When he finds dame Lisa he cannot believe that he ever dreamed. But +dream he did for a very long while and he will never forget it. Jurgen +had dreamed enough to find out that, after all, there was not such +great difference between dreaming and staying awake. In wonderland he +met with the same petty passions, cares and prejudices which mark this +world. Why go so far for so little? And yet, romance is better than +routine and who knows if Jurgen will not start again? + +The allegories in “Jurgen” are most suggestive, in particular those +which deal with Jurgen’s voyage to hell. Neither Voltaire nor Anatole +France could have surpassed Cabell in conveying a moral lesson through +a piquant anecdote. Jurgen has nothing of the Puritan in him. He is as +heathenish as Don Juan. He never loses his good humor or his temper +amidst his thousand and one adventures. His wit resembles Figaro’s. +The conclusion of the book, where Jurgen interviews both Satan and +Koshchei, is a pert satire on human frailty. + +Cabell’s poetic irony displayed itself best in “Jurgen.” As a +representative man, Jurgen embodies in his person both Don Quixote and +Sancho Panza. The romantic instincts are checked by his robust and +plebeian common sense, which he cannot help venting amidst his most +wonderful adventures. A Yankee afoot on Mount Parnassus, he may very +well be introduced, such as he is, in the episode where he launches on +his subterranean expedition astride the centaur Nessus: + + The cave stretched straight forward, and downward, and at the + far end was a glow of light. Jurgen went on and on, and so came + presently to a centaur: and this surprised him not a little, + because Jurgen knew that centaurs were imaginary creatures. + + Certainly they were curious to look at: for here was the body of a + fine bay horse, and rising from its shoulders, the sunburnt body of + a young fellow who regarded Jurgen with grave and not unfriendly + eyes. The Centaur was lying beside a fire of cedar and juniper + wood: near him was a platter containing a liquid with which he was + anointing his hoofs. This stuff, as the Centaur rubbed it in with + his fingers, turned the appearance of his hoofs to gold. + + “Hail, friend,” says Jurgen, “if you be the work of God.” + + “Your protasis is not good Greek,” observed the Centaur, “because + in Hellas we did not make such reservations. Besides, it is not so + much my origin as my destination which concerns you.” + + “Well, friend, and whither are you going?” + + “To the garden between dawn and sunrise, Jurgen.” + + “Surely, now, but that is a fine name for a garden! and it is a + place I would take joy in seeing.” + + “Up upon my back, Jurgen, and I will take you thither,” says the + Centaur, and heaved to his feet. Then said the Centaur, when the + pawnbroker hesitated: “Because, as you must understand, there is + no other way. For this garden does not exist, and never did exist, + in what men humorously called real life; so that of course only + imaginary creatures such as I can enter it.” + + “That sounds very reasonable,” Jurgen estimated: “but as it + happens, I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been + carried off by a devil, poor fellow!” + + And Jurgen began to explain to the Centaur what had befallen. + + The Centaur laughed. “It may be for that reason I am here. There + is, in any event, only one remedy in this matter. Above all + devils--and above all gods, they tell me, but certainly above all + centaurs--is the power of Koshchei the Deathless, who made things + as they are.” + + “It is not always wholesome,” Jurgen submitted, “to speak of + Koshchei. It seems especially undesirable in a dark place like + this.” + + “None the less, I suspect it is to him you must go for justice.” + + “I would prefer not doing that,” said Jurgen, with unaffected + candor. + + “You have my sympathy: but there is no question of preference + where Koshchei is concerned. Do you think, for example, that I am + frowzing in this underground place by my own choice? And knew your + name by accident?” + + Jurgen was frightened a little. “Well, well! but it is usually the + deuce and all, this doing of the manly thing. How, then, can I come + to Koshchei?” + + “Roundabout,” says the Centaur. “There is never any other way.” + + “And is the road to this garden roundabout?” + + “Oh, very much so, inasmuch as it circumvents both destiny and + common sense.” + + “Needs must, then,” says Jurgen: “at all events, I am willing to + taste any drink once.” + + “You will be chilled, though, traveling as you are. For you and I + are going a queer way, in search of justice, over the grave of a + dream and through the malice of time. So you had best put on this + shirt over your other clothing.” + + “Indeed it is a fine snug shining garment, with curious figures on + it. I accept such raiment gladly. And whom shall I be thanking for + this kindness, now?” + + “My name,” said the Centaur, “is Nessus.” + + “Well, then, friend Nessus, I am at your service.” And in a trice + Jurgen was on the Centaur’s back, and the two of them had somehow + come out of the cave, and were crossing Amneran Heath. So they + passed into a wooded place, where the light of sunset yet lingered, + rather unaccountably. Now the Centaur went westward. And now about + the pawnbroker’s shoulders and upon his breast and over his lean + arms glittered like a rainbow the many-colored shirt of Nessus. + +James Branch Cabell took a flight into _gaie science_ when he wrote +“Jurgen.” The world, according to him, is shaped by our thoughts. In +the course of his earthly, infernal and celestial pilgrimage, Jurgen +passed through several superimposed spheres: first that of reality from +which he escaped, then that of fancy and dreams, where he lingered a +long while. This upper world is not purely ideal, nor is it entirely +fictitious. It is still human, too human, as Nietzsche said. It is made +of the same stuff as our dreams. Above and below there are heaven and +hell. If I understand “Jurgen” aright, neither the one nor the other +is entirely unreal. Heaven and hell are man-made fictions. Hell is the +creation of our pride and of our scruples. When he meets his father in +the burning pit, Jurgen asks the demons why they torment the old man. +They tell him that they cannot help it because he insists on being +wicked and getting an appropriate punishment for his sins. Heaven also +is filled with our pride. It is the abode of our highest expectations, +a tribute of Koshchei to our high idea of ourselves. The only real +universe is that of Koshchei. It is the world of things as they are, +and Jurgen does not dwell very long in it. He needs his earthly +comfort, his warm flannels and his carefully prepared soup. So he falls +back into the world of common sense, the only one where the majority of +us mortals can live, because _gaie science_ is out of the common reach. +Once more the author seems to deny us the right to enter the land of +fiction, which, however, he shows us as the only interesting one to +live in. Let us see if the rôle which he assigned to art in his general +outlook of things cannot help us to clear the contradiction. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +_James Branch Cabell on the High Place_ + + +In James Branch Cabell, the genealogist is barely hidden by the +philosopher. The author of “Jurgen” is the only philosophical novelist +in the United States to-day. At first glance, he even seems somewhat +un-American. His fanciful characters dwell in a land as unreal as +themselves, Poictesme, bordering upon the Land of Cocaigne and the +Abbey of Thélème. (Who, previous to Cabell, had ever dared to raise an +Abbey of Thélème in the land of the Puritans?) It is not easy to find +the bonds of connection between the writer and his surroundings. His +work is very close to European and to French models, and evidences at +the same time a great knowledge of booklore as well as of humanity. + +It is necessary to have had a long contact with Cabell to realize his +true significance; at first, he seems to be rather fantastic, but, +after some frequentation, one discovers the deeper meaning of his +writings. His ambition was to sketch a sort of epic of human desire. +His characters, under their various masks, are attempts to draw and +depict men as conceived in utter liberty. Dom Manuel, Jurgen, and +their succeeding reincarnations, are not Puritan inventions. This +was not the first time that an inspired American had attempted to +paint a “personality picture” of man as such. A great many novelists +had essayed it and had wasted their efforts in the task. The +Transcendentalists of New England ascribed to the typical man every +attribute of moral perfection. Emerson, in his famous “Representative +Men,” tried to delineate the ideal man. He conceived him as a +contemplative sort of person. Emerson had sallies of “gay science.” +He did not accept the world as it is and tried many times to defeat +reality. He knew man well and was wary of accepting him as he was. Long +before Nietszche, he imagined the superman, whom he called the _homo +novus_, or the _plus-man_. A prudent man, rather shy and inhibited, +but capable of thinking daringly, Emerson had some of Dom Manuel’s and +Jurgen’s characteristics. According to him, the ideal man was much less +the active hero than the thinker climbing up the rarefied summits of +thought and taking his risks with the self-reliance of a conquistador. +Emerson, like Cabell, was a transcendental realist. He would have +sympathized with Koshchei, the God of Things-as-They-Are. But Emerson’s +sensibility was atrophied and suppressed. To a large extent he +conceived the superman in his own image, with a large brain and a very +small heart. On the other hand, he allowed a large place to dreams, to +the subconscious elements, and to what he called demonology. Dreams +played a large part in his philosophy; if there ever was a daydreamer +besides Hawthorne or Alcott in the romantic twilight of Concord, he +was the one. He was not unaware of the phenomena of dual personality, +trances and ecstasies. His philosophy of history and of the heroes +was decidedly “Bovaryistic.” Upon this point again the confidences +of his journals are most curious. He confessed to having experienced +trances of a mystic and orgiastic nature; at times he felt as though +he were being turned into another person. That sort of experience was +not infrequent in the Emerson family. His brother, Charles Emerson, +was also under the influence of such spells and his aunt, Mary Moody, +was a visionary and an authentic _clairvoyante_. The effects caused by +inhibition seem to have been quite prevalent among the Puritan writers +of New England. Take the life of Margaret Fuller, for instance. Was +there ever an example of greater suppression--and more heroic attempt +to evade it? Her desire for expatriation was paid for at the sacrifice +of her life. + +The number of Dom Manuels, of Jurgens, in American letters is +countless. Thoreau disguised himself as an Indian. Whitman went through +every possible form of cosmic avatar. Edgar Allan Poe was haunted by +the dead. A Southerner like Cabell, like him fanciful and fantastic, +but sad, obsessed by the memory of a dear, departed one, his whole life +was akin to a nightmare. A daydreamer and a somnambulist, he too lived +in Dreamland, on Fairy Island, and in the domain of Arnheim. Had Jurgen +been more crafty, had Dom Manuel been wiser, had Florian de Puysange +been less of the _roué_, they would all have felt at home in Edgar +Allan Poe’s imaginary fatherland. But Poe did not care for allegory. +He cultivated dreams for their own sake. The fusion between object and +subject, the real and the ideal, life and dreams, was complete in his +writings. He never woke up. + +The nearer we get to Cabell’s “Jurgen,” the more we see the +transformation and alteration of the “personality picture” or the ideal +man in America. The Civil War came. The great men of the day were +politicians and soldiers,--Grant, Lincoln. Then came the “dreadful +decade” followed by the advent of the realist, Theodore Roosevelt, +Edison, Carnegie, Wilson and now Henry Ford. Some of these idols were +to be blasted by Mark Twain’s vengeful irony. But Mark Twain himself +was destined to prove, through his books, that the man of dreams was +dead. He buried him himself without much respect, but not without +incidentally damning the whole race of man in his posthumous book, “The +Mysterious Stranger,” which is a veritable challenge to life and to the +impossibility of its ever bearing supermen. + +Praise be to the Lord, “Jurgen” was born in 1919, and the rights of +imagination were restored. Chivalry, the troubadours’ _gay saber_ came +back to life in America. + +The French eighteenth-century _conteurs_, Voltaire and Anatole France +to-day had somebody to talk to in the United States. + +“The High Place” shows unmistakable traces of Anatole France’s +influence. There are curious affinities between M. d’Astarac and +Florian de Puysange. Saint Hoprig seems to have been taken out bodily +from the “Revolt of the Angels,” after having drunk a dram or so in +the company of Jerôme Coignard. At last we have an American novelist +frankly going back to the source of art and free thought. + +The ideal man represented by Jurgen and Dom Manuel was reincarnated in +the person of Florian de Puysange. The book which deals with him is +less loaded with allegory than the previous one, and its philosophy +is more superficial. In atmosphere and tone it is very French, with +an eighteenth-century tang. It is a masterpiece of Cabellian irony. +Anglo-Saxon countries are richer in humorists than in ironists. Irony +comes with a certain mobility of the mind, a certain dilettantism, a +display of the ego with which Anglo-Saxons are not very familiar. They +are a practical and realistic race. Socially, and morally speaking, +irony is a dangerous weapon. Humor is amusing, but, even when it is +somber, it remains optimistic. It rests on an ethical background. +Irony comes with skepticism, and skepticism is not popular among +Anglo-Saxons. Add to this the pressure of public opinion and of social +constraint. From a certain point of view, irony is an equivocation and +a game ill tolerated by practical and respectable people; yet it is +irony which is James Branch Cabell’s forte. The story of Florian de +Puysange is a masterpiece on this score. + +“The High Place” may be connected with the saga of Dom Manuel and +Jurgen. Like “Jurgen,” it is again the triumph of a dream. + +The time is the sunset of the Roi Soleil. The scene is still the +mystical kingdom of Poictesme, located in the forest of Acaire between +the Mediterranean and the Cévennes. One afternoon the hero of the book, +a ten-year-old child, fell asleep in a beautiful garden while reading +the tales of M. Perrault. A vernal breeze was blowing in the park. +Florian de Puysange had a dream. All of Cabell’s novels begin thus with +a plunge into dreamland. The transition from consciousness to dream in +his books is operated through various means, usually magical. In this +case, Florian de Puysange was bewitched by a book, and fell asleep in +a beautiful garden. Florian was a scion of Jurgen’s line. He inherited +dreaming. In his dream he finds himself taken to a “high place.” The +dream is that of a beautiful woman asleep in an enchanted garden. +Florian at this time was only ten years old, but he was to live his +whole life in anticipation. Jurgen’s dreams had been retrospective. +Those of Florian de Puysange took place in the future. + +He climbed the slopes of a high mountain, atop of which the beautiful +Melior, guarded by the Saint Hoprig, awaited him. Saint Hoprig, who +would have done honor even to Anatole France, was a rather broad-minded +saint. Of course he accomplished miracles and aided Florian in +conquering Melior. Florian married the fairy. Let us interpret this +as signifying that Florian, freed by sleep from the necessities of +ordinary life, succeeded in marrying the ideal. The story of Florian’s +allegorical nuptials is in the author’s best manner. He goes back in +this to the erotic symbolism of “Jurgen.” Here is the marriage scene: + + Acaire was old and it had been a forest since there was a forest + anywhere: and all its denizens came now to do honor to the champion + who had released them from their long sleeping. The elves came in + their blue low-crowned hats; the gnomes, in red woolen clothes; + and the kobolds, in brown coats that were covered with chips and + sawdust. The dryads and other tree spirits of course went verdantly + appareled: and after these came fauns with pointed furry ears, + and the nixies with green teeth and very beautiful waxen hair, + and the duergar, whose loosely swinging arms touched the ground + when they walked, and the queer little rakhna, who were white and + semi-transparent like jelly, and the Bush Gods that were in Acaire + the oldest living creatures and had quite outlived their divinity. + From all times and all mythologies they came, and they made a + tremendous to-do over Florian and the might which had rescued them + from their centuries of sleeping under Melusine’s enchantment. + +From the top of the “high place” Florian can see all the country around +him: + + He saw the forests lying like dark flung-by scarves upon the paler + green of cleared fields; he saw the rivers as narrow shinings. + In one place, very far beneath them, a thunderstorm was passing + like--of all things of this blissful day,--a drifting bride’s + veil. Florian saw it twinkle with a yellow glow, then it was again + a floating small white veil. And everywhere the lands beneath in + graduations of vaporous indistinction. Poictesme seemed woven + of blue smokes and of green mists. It afforded no sharp outline + anywhere as his gazing passed outward toward the horizon. And there + all melted bafflingly into a pearl-colored sky: the eye might not + judge where, earth ending, heaven began in that bright and placid + radiancy. + +We shall leave it to Doctor Freud to translate these Cabellian symbols +literally. They are both erotic and poetic: + + First Melior and Florian were given an egg and a quince pear: he + handed her the fruit, which she ate, and the seeds of which she + spat out; he took from her the egg and broke it. Holy Hoprig, who + had tendered his resignation as the high-priest of Llaw Gyffes, + but whose successor had not yet been appointed, then asked the + bridegroom a whispered question. + + Florian was astonished, and showed it. But he answered, without + comment, “Well, let us say nine times.” + + Hoprig divided a cake into nine slices, and placed these upon + the altar. Afterward Hoprig cut the throat of a white hen, and + put a little of its blood upon the feet of Melior and Florian. + The trumpets sounded then, as King Helmas came forward, and gave + Florian a small key. + +I shall not tell all the romantic events which followed the nuptials +of Florian de Puysange with the fairy Melior. Florian was a _roué_. +Born during the reign of Louis XIV, his imaginary life took place by +anticipation during the Regency. No sooner was he married than he +forgot Melior. The only vestige of loyalty remaining in him was that +due to his caste. In order to obtain Melior, he had, like Faust, to +give something to the Devil and he had promised his first-born child. +To the Devil, who in this instance was Mr. Jennicot, he had also +dedicated as a sort of bonus into the bargain, the not very valuable +soul of Cardinal Dubois, but the Cardinal cheated the Devil. + +As a compensation the Marquis de Puysange poisoned the Duke of Orleans +in the course of an orgy most dramatically narrated in the book. +Florian now started on his career. A sort of Don Juan with a Bluebeard +complex, he got rid of a long string of women, and would have disposed +of Melior herself had not Saint Hoprig protected her. This protection, +as Florian soon found out, was of so intimate a nature that it allowed +him to forfeit his promise to the Devil without committing perjury. + +But all these incidents are merely a pretext. I should do injustice +to the author by dwelling upon the anecdotic side of his book. “The +High Place” is essentially notable for the philosophic fancy playing +through the background of incident. The sub-title, “a comedy of +disenchantement,” tells the moral to be drawn from it. Disenchanted by +reality, disenchanted by dreams, Florian is a typical Cabellian hero. +He is double within himself. No sooner has he satisfied his wishes than +he wishes something else. On this point he is no exception to the rule +of Dom Manuel and Jurgen. And yet he had married a fairy, though one +who had come down to earth to become his wife and was soon to be with +child. How could he help being tired of her? + +At the end of his trail, Florian tried to build a moral system based +on the conciliation of contrary elements. Just as there were two gods +in “Jurgen” (Satan and Koshchei), there are two in “The High Place.” +Melior went back to Fairyland whence she had been drawn by Florian’s +courting. Mr. Jennicot, the Devil, and St. Michael give us the key to +the whole story, and it is rather disconcerting. Florian’s two patrons, +the Devil and St. Michael, agree unanimously, in way of conclusion, +that life is worth only what our dreams make of it, and that all dreams +are rather inane. What then? _In vino veritas_, proclaims the Devil, +quoting his Rabelais, and the Archangel Michael does not disapprove. +Finally, Michael and Satan come so close to each other that their faces +are confused and that they end up by becoming one. Let us listen to the +Devil as Professor of Philosophy: + + Such men as he (Florian) continue to dream, and I confess such men + are dangerous: for they obstinately aspire toward a perfectibility + that does not exist, they will be content with nothing else; and + when your master and I do not satisfy the desire which is in their + dreams, they draw their appalling logical conclusions. To that + humiliation, such as it is, I answer Drink! For the Oracle of + Babcuc also--that oracle which the little curé of Meudon was not + alone in misunderstanding--that oracle speaks the true wonder word. + +The Archangel Michael wants to know what our dreams matter to the +angels and the demons: + + “They matter much to them,” answers Jennicot. “Men go enslaved by + this dream of beauty: but never yet have they sought to embody + it, whether in their wives or in their equally droll works of art, + without imperfect results, without results that were maddening + to the dreamer. Men are resolved to know that which they may + wholeheartedly worship. No, they are not bent upon emulating what + they worship: it is rather that holiness also is a dream which + allures mankind resistlessly.” + +Whereupon Saint Michael and Mr. Jennicot, in their perplexity, go back +to their cups. They have a great need of shaking off their thoughts. +Man’s dreaming is for both of them a topic of foremost importance. Are +not they produced by it? But to judge by dreamers’ pace in Cabell’s +novels, and by the wreckage of dreams strewing their path, what does +the future have in store for archangels and demons? Jennicot and St. +Michael console themselves by trying to reconcile their antinomies +_inter pocula_, among symbolic cups in which, according to the author, +life and death, reality and dreams, evil and wrong, god and devil, all +become mixed and lose their identity: + + “Meanwhile he does not drink, he merely dreams, this little + Florian,” observes M. Jennicot, who seems to be the favorite + interpreter of the novelist. “He dreams of beauty and of holiness + fetched back by him to an earth which everywhere fell short of + his wishes, fetched down by him intrepidly from that imagined + high place where men attain to their insane desires. He dreams of + aspiring and joy and color and suffering and unreason, and of those + quaint taboos which you and he call sin, as being separate things, + not seeing how all blends in one vast cup. Nor does he see, as yet, + that this blending is very beautiful, when properly regarded and + very holy when approached without human conceit.” + + Then the two faces which bent over Florian were somehow blended + into one face, and Florian knew that these two beings had melted + into one person, and that this person was prodding him very gently. + +Whereupon the dreamer awakes. He is still only ten years old and +he has lived until thirty in his dream. Now the dream is gone. His +father, the Comte de Puysange, wakes him up. But Florian is not yet +through with dreaming awake, in spite of the author’s final statement +that henceforward Florian de Puysange settled down, and like Jurgen, +descended from heaven to earth. + +Thus “The High Place” takes on at the end an authentic air of a novel +Doctor Faustus. But let us reach the last part of the cycle, “The Cream +of the Jest,” “a comedy of evasions.” + + * * * * * + +The principal character of the book, Felix Kennaston, is already known +to readers of Cabell; he was the ironist in one of his early works, +“The Eagle’s Shadow.” Kennaston had from remote descent authentic blood +of Dom Manuel and Jurgen in his veins. The book which portrays him is a +veritable treatise in romantic disguises. It harks back to the thesis +unfolded by the author in “Beyond Life.” Not satisfied with upholding +the rights of fiction, Cabell now shows us a writer of fiction at work. +Are we to see Cabell himself in Felix Kennaston? They look very much +alike. Kennaston too is writing an allegorical saga. One day, while +walking in his garden, he had stepped upon a little shining metal disc +which plays an important part in the book. (Each one of Cabell’s novels +has revolved around some talisman or charm.) + +Felix Kennaston’s imagination gave a life of its own to this piece +of metal. It became a magic seal, the Sigil of Scoteia, a Key to +Dreamland. Whenever light touched it, Kennaston fell into a trance +and dreamt curious dreams. Thanks to this sigil, he spent his whole +life dreaming and he was not alone in his dreams. Of course he too +flirted therein with a fairy, La Belle Ettare, beautiful, enchanting, +wonderfully accomplished, and of whom Kennaston’s wife became +reasonably jealous. The book is a novel of intrigue only incidentally. +The real subject is the study of Kennaston’s mind at work. Behind him +we see the author pointing an explanatory finger. + +Kennaston did not concern himself with fiction for its own sake, but +because it opened to him the gates of the Unknown. It was his road to +spiritual adventure. He is an authentic daydreamer. He is not unhappy. +He has every reason for being satisfied with life as it is. He is rich, +talented, successful as an author, married to an attractive woman; yet +he is bored. Bovaryism in his case is all the more striking because +it is gratuitous. Life weighs on his shoulders; like all of Cabell’s +heroes, he needs adventure, a written if not a real one. We find the +novelist and the adventurer united in his person. Kennaston represents +two things: first, the common run of man dissatisfied with reality and +instinctively seeking an escape through dreams, and then, the taking +to fiction, writing for more complete evasion. But let us listen to +Kennaston’s complaint against reality and his plea in favor of dreams. +It is he speaking through the mouth of the scribe Horvendile, his +double; we are reminded of the familiar grievances of Carol Kennicott, +Babbitt and the characters in Dreiser, Anderson and Sinclair Lewis: + + I find my country an inadequate place in which to live.... Oh, + many persons live there happily enough! or, at worst, they seem + to find the prizes and the applause of my country worth striving + for wholeheartedly. But there is that in some of us which gets no + exercise there; and we struggle blindly, with impotent yearning, + to gain outlet for great powers which we know that we possess, + even though we do not know their names. And so, we dreamers wander + at adventure to Storisende--oh, and into more perilous realms + sometimes!--in search of a life that will find employment for + every faculty we have. For life in my country does not engross us + utterly. We dreamers waste there at loose ends, waste futilely.... + Oh, yes! it may be that we are not sane; could we be sure of that, + it would be a comfort. But, as it is, we dreamers only know that + life in my country does not content us, and never can content + us. So we struggle, for a tiny dear-bought while, into other and + fairer-seeming lands in search of--we know not what! And after a + little, we must go back into my country and live there as best we + may. + +This is, in a nutshell, the plight of all the inhibited and repressed +people with whom we have met in the American _gesta_ told by the +American novelists of to-day. + +Such is the summary of Felix Kennaston’s adventures. We understand now +the failure of Cabell’s heroes to make their escape. So their return +to the land described by the scribe Horvendile occurs only after a +long circumnavigation. Disgusted with reality, a Kennaston will not +capitulate without having experienced every possible form of dream. +He has no illusions about life, as he tells La Belle Ettare, but he +is anxious to wreak a beautiful vengeance on it. If he cannot live as +he wants, he will live as he may. Sick of men, he will hobnob in the +company of great heroes. In a sequence of curious chapters, Kennaston, +besides holding familiar converse with his fictitious Egeria, thanks +to his magic seal, takes huge delight in imaginary reincarnations. We +find him at Whitehall chatting with Cromwell, at Vaux-le-Vicomte during +a fête given by Fouquet, at the Conciergerie where he is waiting to be +called to the guillotine: + + Nightly he went adventuring with Ettare: and they saw the cities + and manners of many men, to an extent undreamed-of by Ithaca’s + mundivagant king; and among them even those three persons who had + most potently influenced human life.... + + For once, in an elongated room with buff-colored walls--having + scarlet hangings over its windows, and seeming larger than it + was in reality, because of its many mirrors--they foregathered + with Napoleon; on the evening of his coronation: the emperor + of half-Europe was fretting over an awkward hitch in the day’s + ceremony, caused by his sisters’ attempt to avoid carrying the + Empress Josephine’s train; and he was grumbling because the old + French families continued to ignore him as a parvenu. + + In a neglected orchard sun-steeped and made drowsy by the murmur + of bees, they talked with Shakespeare; the playwright, his nerves + the worse for the preceding night’s potations, was peevishly + complaining of the meager success of his later comedies, worrying + over Lord Pembroke’s neglect of him, and trying to concoct a masque + in the style of fat Ben Jonson, since that was evidently what the + theater-patronizing public wanted. And they were with Pontius + Pilate in Jerusalem, on the evening of a day when the sky was black + and the earth had trembled; and Pilate, benevolent and replete with + supper, was explaining the latest theories concerning eclipses and + earthquakes to his little boy, and chuckling with fond pride in the + youngster’s intelligent questions. + +“The Cream of the Jest” is another treatise on day-dreaming and +absent-mindedness. One day, alas! Kennaston’s wife threw in the +wastebasket the magic disc which was his key to wonderland. That was +the death blow to his flights into romance and the end of his romantic +career. His wife, too, died in a mysterious manner, probably punished +by the fairies for being too prosaic. We learn at the end of the book +as a sort of consolation over the loss of the talisman and an assurance +as to its origin--a signal revenge of reality upon dreams--that the +sigil of Scoteia was but the cover of a pot of cold cream! + +Cabell buries Kennaston without much ceremony after calling him down +for his evasions. Yet the parting word is still in favor of dreams. +From the scientific point of view Kennaston is not hard to explain. His +was a case of auto-suggestion, but this explanation does not suffice +for the novelist. The case of Felix Kennaston was not an isolated one. +Felix was a representative man. He impersonated the conflict between +fiction and romance: To Kennaston + + the dream alone could matter--his proud assurance that life was + not a blind and aimless business, not all a hopeless waste and + confusion; and that he, this gross, weak animal, could be strong + and excellent and wise, and his existence a pageant of beauty and + nobility. To prove this dream was based on a delusion would be no + doubt an enjoyable retaliation for Kennaston’s being so unengaging + to the eye and so stupid to talk to; but it would make the dream no + whit less lovely or less dear to him--or to the rest of us either. + + For it occurred to me that his history was, in essentials, the + history of our race, thus far. All I advanced for or against + him, equally, was true of all men that ever lived.... For it is + in this inadequate flesh that each of us must serve his dream; + and so, must fail in the dream’s service, and must parody that + which he holds dearest. To this we seem condemned, being what we + are. Thus, one and all, we play false to the dream, and it evades + us, and we dwindle into responsible citizens. And yet always + thereafter--because of many abiding memories--we know, assuredly, + that the way of flesh is not a futile scurrying through dining + rooms and offices and shops and parlors, and thronged streets and + restaurants, “and so to bed” ... + + It was in appropriate silence, therefore, that I regarded Felix + Kennaston as a parable. The man was not merely very human; he was + humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in + human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them + come true. + +Such is the moral of “The Cream of the Jest,” a summarizing of Cabell’s +ironistic philosophy. It is decidedly Nietszchean. In a Puritan +land he conceives life as a work of art and sees in Art the highest +form of life to transcend itself. This he did with fine daring and +great poetic feeling in a chapter of the same book, “The Evolution +of a Vestryman.” In pages filled with a humor reminiscent of Samuel +Butler, Cabell eulogizes Chance. In a world of chance encounters, +Art alone reveals intentions and a goal to the human puppets. The +author, boldly unfolding his thesis, roundly scores the religions. He +reproaches them with postponing till the morrow what Art promises to +us _hic et nunc. Carpe diem!_ Cabell’s philosophy assumes an artistic +epicureanism midway between Anatole France and Walter Pater. Then +comes a paradoxical apology of Christianity, which Cabell forgives +for having falsified human perspectives because it has increased the +romantic interest of life. According to him, God did not die to redeem +us. Imagine a novelist dying for the marionettes he has paraded before +our eyes! God reincarnated himself and died to _express himself_ and +to teach us to do as much. What would the Puritans think of this new +theology? + + * * * * * + +I shall stop here with this rapid view of Cabell’s mind. I have +neglected his early works, although some of them were quite +significant. Some are even very attractive: “The Rivet in Grandfather’s +Neck” is the touching, beautiful and ironic story of an _amour +d’automne_ in the romantic background of a Virginia estate. Cabell is +a very subtle and delicate psychologist of the woman’s heart. “The +Eagle’s Shadow” is a suggestive sentimental “imbroglio.” + +“The Cords of Vanity, A Comedy of Cowardice,” portrays a modern +descendant of Jurgen experiencing in real life all the adventures which +had occurred to Jurgen only in dreams. He flirts with, seduces, and +abandons half a dozen ladies, victims of his disillusioned philosophy +of love. This book gave Cabell a chance to display a delicious bit of +_marivaudage_. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +_Reinforcements: Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell, Joseph +Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank_ + + +I have been up to this as objective as possible, sparing neither praise +nor criticism to the present-day American novelists. I confess that the +path I have followed has been rather arduous and not always leading +to gardens of pleasure. American realism does not provide on the road +artistic oases like Flaubert’s or Maupassant’s. The great Dreiserian +desert or the Andersonian jungle are hard enough to travel through. The +writers whom I have studied are more interesting for the subjects which +they treat than for their style. As artists they are imperfect, one +might be tempted to say uneducated. On the other hand, if I have been +at all sedulous in depicting them, the reader will be struck with the +unanimous character of their grievances. All of them almost ferociously +criticize the social man; all have of American life a somewhat tragic +opinion. The more optimistic among them feign to be ironical. Few show +either pity or resignation. + +It was reserved for the women to soften this realism with a grain +of human pathos. The novels of Miss Willa Cather and Zona Gale in +particular are characterized by a profound feeling of sympathy towards +the inhibited people of whom they write. Willa Cather, like James +Branch Cabell, is from Virginia. As an analyst, she can be pitiless +when occasion requires and she was so when she wrote “A Lost Lady.” +This novel once again portrays an American Emma Bovary, buried in +the grass of a small town. From adventure to adventure, from fall to +fall, the Lost Lady ends up by marrying one of her servants. This book +is rich in intuitions. Its gloomy atmosphere enhances the feeling +of the tragedy of suppressed lives and the ensuing moral decadence. +Disregarding the chronological order, this novel can be compared with +a more recent work by the same author, “The Professor’s House.” It +is again the story of a recluse. The composition of the book is not +perfect. Being concerned primarily with faithfully representing people +and their surroundings, the author deprived “The Professor’s House” +of almost any plot. She appears to have hesitated between telling a +story and drawing portraits. The book is interrupted in the middle by a +lengthy digression. But the hero of the novel, Professor Saint Pierre, +is an attractive figure. + +Saint Pierre would feel at home in one of Mr. Edouard Estaunié’s +books.[53] He is an ardent adept of the “secret life.” A very human +sort of man, with many prepossessing traits, Saint Pierre in his +home recalls King Lear among his daughters. The professor, who is a +historian, lives among comfortable surroundings. He likes his work and +is an enthusiastic student. All he needs is the solitude requisite to +bring his labors to an auspicious end. Unfortunately, he is the slave +to a shrewish woman, and plays the indulgent father to two coquettish +daughters, without mentioning the sons-in-law who are perfect +Philistines. This state of affairs is not conducive to serene living in +the academic groves. This is why the title of this novel is symbolic. + +It is an allusion to the existence of Saint Pierre, living in two +different houses, just as he is leading two highly dissimilar lives. +The first house, the real one, is the home where he is besieged by +practical cares and worries. Poor Saint Pierre has a hard time of it, +what with holding his own with a wife and family who do not understand +him, and pretending to be a scholar and a writer! But there is the +other house, the little dream house which Saint Pierre rigged up all +for himself and within whose threshold he becomes his real self. It is +a haven of dreams. From its windows the distant azure of Lake Michigan +may be seen. There Saint Pierre is happy in solitude. But family +demands are pitiless. They pursue him in his retreat like a beast +trapped in the woods. In the end, to loosen this stranglehold, Saint +Pierre tries to commit suicide, casually, as if to give the impression +that he did not do it on purpose. But he is not even allowed to commit +suicide. Like most of the inhibited characters of American fiction, he +capitulates and makes a virtue of necessity. His failure is all the +more pathetic. + + * * * * * + +The other novels which have contributed to Miss Cather’s reputation +are equally based on suppression. They include the “Song of the Lark,” +“My Antonia,” “One of Ours.” The heroine of the “Song of the Lark,” +Thea Kronburg, is the daughter of a village pastor. She grew up alone +in an indifferent and commonplace atmosphere. She fell in love with +her German music master, who was the choir leader in the church where +Thea played the organ on Sundays. Her soul vents itself through music, +like Corinne or Consuelo. She must have art and passion to be happy. +Thea’s music teacher is also her professor of philosophy, and this +philosophy is not puritanical but romantic. How small the world! How +petty, life in America! There is only one thing worth while, and that +is aspiration, romance. It is that at the bottom of our hearts which +gives its value to all things,--its redness to the rose, its azure +to the skies and love to man. Without it there is no art. Poor Thea +is only too easily converted to this creed. Thank goodness, she will +not be cheated from her happiness! She leaves her village and has a +magnificent artistic career, but she remains modest and sincere in +success. Art for Thea is not vanity; it is the realization of her +dearest and most intimate self, the whole-hearted expression of her +truest personality. + +Not all of the inhibited people portrayed by Miss Willa Cather have +been as fortunate as Thea Kronburg; witness the Lost Lady and Professor +Saint Pierre. In “My Antonia” the author has gone back to a less +optimistic theme. She has put into this novel the best of her art +and of her philosophy. The scene of the novel is far-away Nebraska. +Antonia is a Czech. “My Antonia” is what is called in America an +“immigrant” novel. Immigration has given to America a new exotic +background, and a new source of local color. In “My Antonia” Willa +Cather studies the immigrants with her usual sympathy. Antonia is a +portrait drawn from within. Her self-abnegation is rare. A hard worker, +devoted to children, betrayed yet ever faithful, she is a new edition +of Flaubert’s “Simple Heart.” She is the incarnation of the motherly +feeling. The sites of the Far West, the rustic rites of the seasons +form the background of this canvas painted with the simplicity and the +forcefulness of a master. + +It is difficult to find in “My Antonia” passages for an anthology. +Everything in it holds together. The tale is unfolded, “not as a thing +of which one thinks, but as conscience itself,” slowly, in sheer +duration. “My Antonia” is a little epic, the “Evangeline” of the Far +West. Here is a description of a Nebraska hamlet. It tells a lot as to +the nostalgia of its inhabitants. It is Jim, the hero of the story, who +is speaking: + + In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for diversion. There + lay the familiar streets, frozen with snow or liquid mud. They led + to the houses of good people who were putting the babies to bed, + or simply sitting still before the parlor stove, digesting their + supper. Black Hawk had two saloons. One of them was admitted, even + by the church people, to be as respectable as a saloon could be. + Handsome Anton Jelinek, who had rented his homestead and come to + town, was the proprietor. In his saloon there were long tables + where the Bohemian and German farmers could eat the lunches they + brought from home while they drank their beer. Jelinek kept rye + bread on hand, and smoked fish and strong imported cheeses to + please the foreign palate. I liked to drop into his bar-room and + listen to the talk. But one day he overtook me on the street and + clapped me on the shoulder. + + “Jim,” he said, “I am good friends with you and I always like to + see you. But you know how the church people think about saloons. + Your grandpa has always treated me fine, and I don’t like to have + you come into my place, because I know he don’t like it, and it + puts me in bad with him.” + + So I was shut out of that. + +Black Hawk is about as dead as Gopher Prairie or Winesburg, Ohio. Poor +Jim! There are very few distractions in this far Western village. There +is the druggist across his ice-cream and soda counter, the tobacconist +and the old German who stuffs birds, both of them great gossips. The +great thrill is going to see the night train fly by at the depot. At +the telegraph office, the idle clerk comforts himself in pinning on the +wall portraits of actors and actresses which he procured with cigarette +premiums. Then there is the station master who tries to forget the +death of his twins by fishing and writing letters to obtain a change of +residence: + + “These,” says Jim, “were the distractions I had to choose from. + There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o’clock. + On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold + streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, + with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy + shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle + porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. + + “Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and + unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on + in them seemed to be made up of evasions and negations; shifts to + save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate + the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like + living under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices, their very + glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, + every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep + in those houses, I thought, tried to live like mice in their own + kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the + surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and + cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, + consuming process of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl + Club danced; then there was a little stir in the streets, and here + and there one could see a lighted window until midnight. But the + next night all was dark again.” + +Thank God, even at Black Hawk there are a few compensations for a +refined sensibility. Antonia and Jim know how to see through things, +and they find beauty even in their monotonous surroundings. There are +the orchard, the hen yard, the stable and the charm of the rustic works +and days. There is the hay in the attic, the favorite nook of Antonia’s +brood. And then Christmas comes bringing the snow, the spiced cakes +made in true Bohemian fashion, then spring and the budding out of fresh +leaves and flowers. Jim is not blind to the familiar and simple beauty +around him. Let us follow him in Antonia’s wild garden: + + Alone, I should never have found the garden--except, perhaps, + for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their + withering vines--and I felt very little interest in it when I got + there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over + the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light + air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and + sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would + be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the + tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the + grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in + one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the + soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at + the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do. + + When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up + there in the garden awhile. + + She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Aren’t you afraid + of the snakes?” + + “A little,” I admitted, “but I’d like to stay anyhow.” + + “Well, if you see one, don’t have anything to do with him. The big + yellow and brown ones won’t hurt you; they’re bull-snakes and help + to keep the gophers down. Don’t be scared if you see anything look + out of that hole in the bank over there. That’s a badger hole. He’s + about as big as a big ’possum, and his face is striped, black and + white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won’t let the men + harm him. In a new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I + like to have him come out and watch me when I’m at work.” + + Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went + down the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the + windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she waved + at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of + lightness and content. + +The art of Miss Cather shows itself in these sketches of nature +faithfully and minutely observed, but pervaded too with a sympathetic +emotion. She herself has given us the key of her art, in an article +which she wrote when “The Professor’s House” was published. Her ideal +in writing, she tells us, would be to have people and things posing +before her as they would for painters of still life, like Rembrandt or +Chardin, omitting nothing from the background up to the surface. This +“still-life” painting is the most correct definition of Miss Cather’s +art. Her ambition is to treat style as secondary in respect to the +characters. She wants to omit what is only picturesque in order to let +people tell their own story, without any comment on her part. She takes +a green vase and a yellow orange and puts them side by side on a table. +She carefully avoids interfering and relies entirely on the objects +thus placed to produce an artistic effect. Let her make the reader +_see_ the green vase beside the orange. Nothing else matters. She +would like to have the style fused so completely with the object that +the reader would not even suspect the former’s existence. The people +for whom she writes are those whose chief interest is in the vase and +the orange as such, and in the way each lends it color to the other. + +Here is an original programme of static and intimate realism based +upon a scrupulous reproduction of the object, a realism which could +not exist without this gift of sympathetic intuition (the Germans call +it _Einfühlung_) characteristic of Miss Willa Cather. The art of an +Edmond Jaloux, an Edouard Estaunié or a Georges Bernanos would give to +a reader familiar with French literature a fairly good understanding of +her talent. _Les choses voient_, but they see only for those who can +_feel_ them. + + * * * * * + +This wilfully static realism explains at once the qualities and faults +of Miss Cather’s war novel, “One of Ours.” The American critics +have not been very benevolent towards this book. The first and +autobiographical part of it is excellent. Faithful to her philosophy of +art through reminiscence, the author describes the youth of a child of +the prairies, also a victim of Puritanism. Eugene Willer, the hero of +“One of Ours,” is one of those American youths whose restlessness is +increasingly preoccupying the moralists and the sociologists. His is a +soul filled with desire and easily wounded by the things which surround +him. Miss Cather has told, with her usual minute realism, the sad story +and tragic death of this misunderstood youth. A tender and loving boy, +Eugene expected too much of life, and was hurt in his first encounter +with it. He had married a frigid woman, a “crystal cup.”[54] His wife +slammed the door in his face on their wedding night. The unfortunate +youth had no taste left for life after that. Hear him exhaling his +dejection in the moonlight, like Salammbô on her high terrace, or Carol +Kennicott in her Gopher Prairie garden. The moon which illuminated the +romantic enthusiasms of yore is nothing more than a mirror for the +deceptions of this American René. How many agonies has this pale moon +of the prairies shone upon! + + Inside of living people, too, captives languished. Yes, inside of + people who talked and worked in the broad sun, there were captives + dwelling in darkness--never seen from birth to death. Into those + prisons the moon shone, and the prisoners crept to the windows and + looked out with mournful eyes at the white globe which betrayed + no secrets and comprehended all.... The people whose hearts were + set high needed such intercourse--whose wish was so beautiful that + there were no experiences in this world to satisfy it. And these + children of the moon, with their unappeased longings and futile + dreams, were a finer race than the children of the sun. This + conception flooded the boy’s heart like a second moonrise, flowed + through him indefinite and strong, while he lay deathly still for + fear of losing it. + +Thus lamented the hero of “One of Ours,” a true _Obermann_ of the +prairie, seeking an ideal and a reason for existence. + +Then came the war. How tragic is life, and how poor in resources is +the soul of man if it needs violent death to give it a meaning! The +American pacifists have shunned Miss Cather’s war novel. They have +not felt the bitter philosophy which exudes from it. Was it her +fault if those whom an army leader called “the élite of the best men +that ever were in America” went, in search of exaltation, to dye with +their blood the slopes of Belleau Wood? When are we going to have a +Freudian interpretation of the war as a supreme and tragic derivative +to inhibition?[55] + +I shall stop here with the review of Miss Cather’s works. All of them +stand high as literary achievements. She belongs to that small group of +novelists who honor American letters and who are specialists of what +may be called “optimistic realism”: Ellen Glasgow, Mary Austin, Dorothy +Canfield, and Zona Gale, of the latter of whom I shall speak now. + + * * * * * + +Zona Gale was born in Wisconsin. She began with journalism and +published short stories and novels. She is the chronicler of American +life in the small towns of the Middle West. Her art recalls that of +Willa Cather. For the critics there are two Zona Gales. There is the +author of popular tales, such as “The Village of Friendship,” “Mother +of Men,” “When I Was a Little Girl,” “The Neighbors”; but “Birth” and +“Miss Lulu Bett” are her true masterpieces. “Miss Lulu Bett” appeared +in 1920 and won the author a wide reputation. It had a sensational +vogue on the screen. It is a classic. But let me begin with “Birth.” +Before speaking of it I want to recall what I have already mentioned of +that sensibility peculiar to Americans. + +While the Frenchman, supposedly a domestic person, makes little of +family life on the stage and in his novels, the American idealizes +it. The father, the mother and the child, those are the corners +of his “eternal triangle.” Zona Gale has gratified the tastes of +that particular public. “Birth” is a work of original analysis, a +good psychological document for the study of certain maladies of +personality. The novel portrays a curious case of sentimental aphasia. +The hero of the book is a simple sort of soul. He married a woman his +superior in education. Awkward, _gauche_, even grotesque, he is at +bottom the best of men. His heart is paved with good intentions, but +unfortunately he knows not how to disclose them. Pitt--that is his +name--acts like a man, who knowing two languages, would be incapable +of translating one into the other. Failing to be able to express +himself, he buries himself in a sort of psychological twilight where he +vegetates and suffers in silence. Unable to express his sentiments to +others, he is reduced to acting for his own benefit what was meant for +them. His life is henceforward but a fiction, a novel which would never +have been read had not Zona Gale played the part of the publisher. +Pitt would make an excellent Pirandello character. Externally but a +grotesque clown, inside goodness and delicacy incarnate, he seemed to +come out of the shadows at the birth of his son. Pitt adores his child, +but as a father he continues to be a victim of Freudian inhibitions. +He feels every paternal sentiment, but he is unable to find the words +and gestures which correspond to his emotions. Little by little the +distance between father and child lengthens, and one day poor Pitt +disappears, misunderstood by his own child. + +The book was followed by “Miss Lulu Bett.” Zona Gale studied in it +again the effects of suppression, but with new methods of dramatic +simplification. Her style is lighter; her portraits are more strikingly +pathetic and resemblant. Lulu Bett is a scapegoat. A Cinderella at home +and a slavey, her life is that of an automaton, and yet she possesses a +romantic heart. We must admire the skill with which Zona Gale was able +to keep her before us halfway between tears and laughter. Every reader +remembers poor Lulu’s courtship by an adventurer who subsequently +abandoned her, her devotion to the members of the household, her +marriage to the village music-dealer, all incidents of a trivial +nature, but sympathetically brought out to reveal the kind-hearted +Lulu. Zona Gale’s pathos is direct and familiar, almost trivial, but +pervaded with delicate and deep emotions. + +All inhibited people are not necessarily Ophelias or Lady Macbeths. +There are many nuances to repression. Nevertheless, Lulu Bett is a +romantic heroine. Watch her at the piano. She can play with only one +finger and she is ignorant of real music, but the village piano-dealer +visited her, and Lulu, as the saying goes, puts herself out.... When +words fail, music is the natural interpreter of people who understand +one another, especially if they are lovers. Here is the charming +description of this timid concerto: + + Cornish was displaying his music. “Got up quite attractive,” he + said--it was his formula of praise for his music. + + “But we can’t try it over,” Lulu said, “if Di doesn’t come.” + + “Well, say,” said Cornish shyly, “you know I left that Album of Old + Favorites here. Some of them we know by heart.” + + Lulu looked. “I’ll tell you something,” she said, “there’s some of + these I can play with one hand--by ear. Maybe----” + + “Why sure!” said Cornish. + + Lulu sat at the piano. She had on the wool chally, long sacred to + the nights when she must combine her servant’s estate with the + quality of being Ina’s sister. She wore her coral beads and her + cameo cross. In her absence she had caught the trick of dressing + her hair so that it looked even more abundant--but she had not + dared to try it so until tonight, when Dwight was gone. Her + long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered + awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and stove to make + all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud pedal--the + blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played “How Can I + Leave Thee,” and they managed to sing it. So she played “Long, Long + Ago,” and “Little Nell of Narragansett Bay.” Beyond open doors Mrs. + Bett listened, sang, it may be, with them; for when the singers + ceased, her voice might be heard still humming a loud closing bar. + + “Well!” Cornish cried to Lulu; and then, in the formal village + phrase: “You’re quite a musician.” + + “Oh, no!” Lulu disclaimed it. She looked up, flushed, smiling. + “I’ve never done this in front of anybody,” she owned. “I don’t + know what Dwight and Ina’d say.” She drooped. + + They rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred + and quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of + its own, and poured this forth, even thus trampled. + + “I guess you could do ’most anything you set your hand to,” said + Cornish. + + “Oh, no,” Lulu said again. + + “Sing and play and cook----” + + “But I can’t earn anything. I’d like to earn something.” But this + she had not meant to say. She stopped, rather frightened. + +Then there is the tragi-comical scene of Lulu Bett’s marriage, a mock +marriage unfortunately. One day the brother-in-law of Lulu’s sister +arrived from the West. He started to court Lulu. To celebrate his +homecoming the whole household had adjourned to a restaurant. There +are Lulu, her brother-in-law Dwight, who fulfills in the village the +functions of dentist and justice of the peace, Lulu’s sister, Ina, +and Ninian, the newcomer. Excited by the dinner, and without being +apparently aware that he is uttering before competent witnesses words +that might bind him, Ninian declares that he takes Lulu for his lawful +wedded wife, and Lulu accepts the challenge. She learns soon enough +that Ninian is a bigamist: + + “Why not say the wedding service?” asked Ninian. + + In the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating + to Dwight, something of overwhelming humor. He shouted a derisive + endorsement of this proposal. + + “I shouldn’t object,” said Ninian. “Should you, Miss Lulu?” + + Lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. They were all looking + at her. She made an anguished effort to defend herself. + + “I don’t know it,” she said, “so I can’t say it.” Ninian leaned + toward her. + + “I, Ninian, take thee, Lulu, to be my wedded wife,” he pronounced. + “That’s the way it goes!” + + “Lulu daren’t say it!” cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that + those at the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her + wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to + think of Lulu that way.... + + Ninian laughed too. “Course she don’t dare to say it,” he + challenged. + + From within Lulu, the strange Lulu, that other Lulu who sometimes + fought her battles, suddenly spoke out: + + “I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my wedded husband.” + + “You will?” Ninian cried. + + “I will,” she said, laughing tremendously to prove that she too + could join in, could be as merry as the rest. + + “And I will. There, by Jove, now have we entertained you, or + haven’t we?” Ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table. + + “Oh, say, honestly!” Ina was shocked. “I don’t think you ought + to--holy things--what’s the _matter_, Dwightie?” + + Dwight Herbert Deacon’s eyes were staring and his face was scarlet. + + “Say, by George,” he said, “a civil wedding is binding in this + State.” + + “A civil wedding? Oh, well----” Ninian dismissed it. + + “But I,” said Dwight, “happen to be a magistrate.” + + They looked at one another foolishly. Dwight sprang up with the + indeterminate idea of inquiring something of someone, circled about + and returned. Ina had taken his chair and sat clasping Lulu’s hand. + Ninian continued to laugh ... + + “I never saw one so offhand,” said Dwight. “But what you’ve said is + all you have to say according to law. And there don’t have to be + witnesses ... say!” he said, and sat again. + +And so it happens that Lulu Bett is married to Ninian--not for long for +he deserts her right away and she comes back to her Cinderella’s duties +in her sister’s home. + +Unfortunately for Lulu, Ninian was but an adventurer. How could she +possibly miss reading it in that man’s eyes? Betrayed and abandoned, +she came back home to resume her former drudgery. Zona Gale showed +some pity for her at the end, a relative sort of pity, for she +abandoned Lulu Bett to the circumambient banality. + + * * * * * + +I lack the space to go through the entire list of American novelists +of to-day who have specialized, in their rôle of scrupulous realists, +in the critique of Puritanism and of the repressions which follow upon +it. Among them I should like to make a special place for Floyd Dell, +one of the most original writers of to-day, author of “Moon Calf,” “The +Briary Bush,” and more recently “The Runaway.” This last novel depicts +a pathetic case of evasion. It tells the story of a man who goes as +far away as China to forget his natal village and married life. He +comes back after several years transformed and unrecognizable, to find +himself a complete stranger, even to his own daughter. Unfortunately, +the book ends like a popular “movie.” + +Examples of dual personalities are not rare in the work of modern +American authors outside realism. I am thinking especially of the +novels of Joseph Hergesheimer and Waldo Frank, two notable artists. +Hergesheimer sticks to the purely romantic novel. He presented to us in +exotic or historic surroundings seductive personalities, half real and +half fantastic. The author of “Linda Condon,” of “Java Head,” is also +that of “Cytherea.” This last novel is very Freudian. It depicts the +explosion of a suppressed and tragic passion. The hero of “Cytherea,” +an adept of the “secret life,” is bewitched by the magical spell of +a fetish. He abandons his social rank, his wife, and his children, +and goes to Cuba to seek romantic exaltation. The woman he loves is +possessed like him of an irresistible desire. She is a magic doll, a +reincarnation of the goddess of Cytherea. The couple end sadly in the +tropics. She dies, and he finds himself alone in the world. + +In “Linda Condon,” and particularly in “Java Head,” Hergesheimer has +dealt with similar topics. The hero of “Java Head” is a Puritan let +loose. He brought back with him to Hawthorne’s old Salem a Manchu +princess whom he married, thereby greatly scandalizing his relatives. +The book is full of picturesque and tragic contrasts. “Linda Condon,” +is a case of moral duplicity. Linda, bearing the weight of a loaded +heredity, is a willful inhibitor. She leads two lives. Pure as a +lily among roués, she abandons her carnal self to her husband, while +devoting to a sculptor an ideal love wherein her real personality is +gratified. + +There is a great temptation to include Waldo Frank among the Freudians. +He is a master of the inner monologue. He has powerfully dramatized +in “Chalk Face” a morbid case of double personality. “Chalk Face” is +the story of a daydreamer, half insane, somewhat reminiscent of George +Duhamel’s Salavin. The insanity of this person is the result of a +divorce between his intentions and his will. His free will, lacking +balance, has gone over to the side of blind instincts and unconscious +desires. The hero of “Chalk Face” runs unconsciously to passionate +crime, and finally jumps into a lime kiln, in hallucination of his own +image. + +Waldo Frank is not a pure realist. He likes to transpose reality +into lyrical and musical variations. His novel “A Holiday” should be +compared with Sherwood Anderson’s “Dark Laughter.” There are in it many +profound intuitions of the Negro soul. + +“City Block” is a mysterious panorama, but yet a lyrical one, of a +modern city. The tableaux shown to us by the author appear through a +fantastic and subjective atmosphere recalling Edgar Poe. The author of +“Our America” is one of the most self-conscious artists of American +literature and a high-class critic, with no tender feelings towards the +Puritan tradition. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +_Ulysses’ Companions: Robert McAlmon, Ben Hecht, William Carlos +Williams_ + + +The American novelists that I have dealt with so far have been veterans +of letters, men and women who have had a long career. Few of the +younger writers do not owe them something as regards their conception +of life and of art. They have imposed upon the new generation their +realism, their choice of subjects and their style. Most of the writers +of America borrowed their pessimistic philosophy and their direct mode +of expression from Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. Idealism is quite +dead in the American novel of to-day, at any rate that traditional +idealism based on sentimentality. Even the disillusioned realism of the +masters whose work I have analyzed no longer satisfies the young. They +have substituted cynicism and utter crudity for it. The newcomers have +lost all faith, hope and charity. The prevalent pessimism of the last +fifteen years of American literature, particularly noticeable in the +novel, betrays a profound disturbance of the American conscience. It is +partly the result of the political and social events of the last few +years. + +When an ideal is shattered, when a faith dies out and when the sense +of a moral and social discipline is relaxed, apprehension, soul-fear +and anxiety prevail. This is precisely the case in the United +States to-day. American pessimism is the ransom of Puritanism. The +traditional idealism has failed. The young Americans are burning what +their fathers adored. Through their disenchantment they have sensed +the practical incapacities of the idealists. They sounded out the +transcendental vagueness of even as high a moral leader as Emerson, and +the democratic quixotism of Whitman made them smile. They relegated the +good Walt among those whom they ironically term “Chautauqua poets.” + +William James had tried to reconcile idealism with utilitarianism, +the philosophy of the past with that of to-day, but he failed in his +attempt. Realism in the novel is contemporaneous with the advent of a +new philosophical school hostile to idealism, and it too called itself +“realism.”[56] This school is in direct contradiction to the theories +of William James. Yet his pragmatism was responsible for exasperating +the practical sense of the younger generation. Their suspicion of +ideology dates from the time when they noticed, upon applying James’ +criterion, that it did not “pay.” What was the use of accumulating so +many transcendental vapors if our best energies were to be fed with +thin air? Doubtless, for those who can see, as Emerson said, the whole +world is contained in a drop of water, and our merest acts are rich in +heroic potentialities. But that is a personal point of view. The gift +of discovering the universe in an atom is not a general privilege. +One must needs be a Pascal, an Emerson or a Pasteur. What, in effect, +was developing in America under the cloak of transcendental idealism +(particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century) was the +most unrestrained sort of materialism and utilitarianism the world +had ever seen. It would seem that this transcendental idealism was +but a subterfuge actually favoring mercantilism. Other deceptions +were to follow. The pragmatic imperialism of Roosevelt and the mystic +imperialism of Woodrow Wilson also failed. What then was this idealism +which constantly appealed to Force and which applied the Scriptures +in terms of colonial annexations and commercial enterprises? So the +younger writers cast their lot, not with the tender, but with what +James called the tough-minded. + +The Great War came to the élite of American youth as the supreme +disillusion. It was much discussed before America went in, and it was +still more discussed after it had been waged and won, when America came +out of it. No sooner was the armistice signed than a change occurred. +Polemics, regrets, retractations, revisions, the story is too well +known to bear repetition. The practical difficulties which arose +between America and her former allies or associates are the tangible +result of the upsetting of values, and responsibilities perpetrated by +the intellectuals or, as they are called to-day, the “revisionists.” +The result was a great moral confusion among the young. Yet the social +structure had not changed. Ever indulgent towards revolutions, even +to the point of fostering them philosophically in her bosom, provided +bombs were thrown in foreign lands, America itself had not moved. The +Government, the Church, the University, and the general state of ideas +and customs remained the same. + +This is the paradox of American civilization. The individual seems +to evolve faster than the nation in the United States. Doubtless, +America has become more prosperous, materially speaking, but it is +precisely this purely material philosophy which is a scandal to the +young; they despair over it. Their country, rutted in self-complacency +and steeped in the illusions of 1776, gives them the impression of an +arrested civilization, of a multimillionaire who should have retired +from business. The disenchantment of peace followed that of war, and +intellectual and literary radicalism was born. Two Americans were +facing each other with drawn weapons. + +This restlessness is quite apparent among the youth of the land. +They are favored by the well-known indulgence and relaxation of +discipline at home and in the school. In a country without traditions, +intellectual instability is perforce great, as great as the restraint +upon the _mores_ is tight. That with which the American youth clash, +the “enemy,” is a rather vague entity. In Europe it would take a +concrete shape, that of a man, of a creed, or an idea, but in America +it is something much more impalpable and dangerous. It is the general +state of public opinion and customs, the pretension of imposing upon +the élite the blind and ready-made ideals of the masses. Thwarted +desires, restraints, evasions, capitulations of the conscience or +social revolt,--those are the result of standardization, of democratic +leveling; they are equally the source of the pessimism which pervades +American letters to-day. That is how it happens that the United States, +so obviously optimistic as a nation, have a literature which is +becoming increasingly depressed and tragic in tone. + +It is easy to imagine what a fertile soil such a state of mind affords +to the development of Freudian microbes, and to what excesses these +ardent and suppressed energies might go. It is for the criminologist +and the sociologist to tell that story--a heart-rending one, verily. A +great increase in criminality, especially among the young, the growth +of sadistic, erotic and eccentric impulses, the disintegration of the +family, neurasthenic and hysterical explosions, such is the other side +of the picture and the price which the United States is paying for its +material prosperity. Innumerable newspapers in search of new sensations +daily exploit these scandals upon which they thrive. The American +literature of to-day reflects this state of affairs faithfully. + +The Frenchman or Continental is quite prepared to understand that sort +of literature. The United States have not had the monopoly of moral +anarchy since the war. The same wave of emancipation and revolt which +brought up in France the works of Radiguet, Roger Martin du Gard, +Morand, Lacretelle, Schlumberger, Lucien Fabre and others, has given +to America its McAlmons, its Ben Hechts, its Floyd Dells, its Waldo +Franks. The young American is a natural-born rebel. He has always been +that, or at least since Mark Twain wrote “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry +Finn.” How could he help it? What adolescence is freer than his? +Where in the world could there be fonder parents and less tyrannical +teachers? Is not the American coming of age from the very time of his +early youth? Is not playing hookey his favorite diversion? See with +what zest he goes in for sports, with what joy he plays the umpire. And +the automobile, and jazz, or giving the lie to prohibition, and the +thousand and one diversions and eccentricities with which he enlivens +his existence? America is so vast, the call-of-the-wild so forceful! + +Numerous advanced American novelists have made themselves the +interpreters of suppressed youth. There has been great growth in the +“novel of adolescence” in America, as well as in France, in the last +ten years. I shall review in this chapter some of the more significant +ones. I begin with the novels of Robert McAlmon. + +Mr. McAlmon is only thirty years old. He was born in Kansas, the ninth +child of an itinerant pastor. He earned his living around the ranches +and as a tramp and professional hobo, cowboy, reporter, press agent, +lumberjack, model in New York studios, all of which did not prevent +him from completing his studies in Los Angeles at the University of +Southern California. In 1918 he promoted an aviation magazine. Later, +in Paris, he founded with William Carlos Williams, “Contact,” a +printing firm, to which we owe the publication (in France, Oh, Land of +Liberty!) of some of the most daring and original works of the young +American school. Mr. McAlmon is the author of several volumes of poems +and short stories. + +He is also the author of a novel called “Village.” This village is +named Wentworth. It recalls Sinclair Lewis’ Gopher Prairie and Sherwood +Anderson’s Winesburg. There is the same isolation, the same type of +shut-in lives, the identical tragic attempts at evasion and identical +suppression. Here is the panorama of Wentworth. It tells a lot as to +the nostalgia of its inhabitants: + + Beyond the outskirts of the village, Wentworth, _le vent + soufflait_, if not more boisterously than in the city proper, with + a sweep uninterrupted by dwelling houses, or other obstacles. + Already the gloss and dazzle of snow, which had fallen but two days + ago, was dulled by the dust, which whirlpools and hurricanes of + rash, rushing winds had swept across the land for over a day and + a half, after a three-foot fall of snow. In the afternoon a lull + occurred; now again, at ten o’clock in the evening, the gale was + up, tearing into the snow and throwing it into banks that left + between them spaces of ground upon which uncovered grey-white snow + lay scantily. _Musique fantastique de la neige_, snow-wind clamour, + shrill shriek of cold, whiteness shattered by a highmoaning + vermilion calliope wail. Where are the grey wolf packs? The herd of + bison that thundered in catapulting panic across the plains? + + Fifty miles away lay the Indian reservation, with its degenerating + remnants of a once wild and arrogant race. No evidence of will + or desire remains for the eye to observe. Apathy and dull + carelessness, without the consciousness of indifference, are all + that can be discerned. + + Few farmers can be coming into the village for the next few days. + Not till the snow has packed down so that horses can plow their + way through the covered roads; not till need or the daring of more + audacious souls has caused a few farmers to remake the roadways, + will many leave their farm homeside fires to come and market in + Wentworth. Salt pork and potatoes, salt pork and sauerkraut, + milk and soggy bread, will suffice as a diet for German, Polish, + Swedish, and unexpected farm families in these cold days surely, + when they have sufficed as their main food always. + + To be sure, though, there is little doubt that Ike Sorensen will + attempt to drive his faithful team to town from his ranch eight + miles out. It’s not to be thought that either wind or snow, or + cold, or rain, or heat, or hurricane, or blizzard, will keep old + Ike from crusading forth for his weekly drunk-on. He will have his + hard liquor though the world be crashing to its end. + +Such is the background of Mr. McAlmon’s sketches. “Village” is hardly +a novel. It is a collection of vivid impressions serving to complete +our knowledge of the tragedies of moral isolation in America. The +pictures drawn by the author possess neither Sinclair Lewis’ humor nor +Sherwood Anderson’s _chiaro-oscuro_. They are deliberately bare, with +a thorough-going objectivity and frankness, reminiscent of a pure, +undiluted Maupassant. I shall not tell in detail the plot of “Village.” +There is none, to tell the truth. It is merely a series of sketches and +youthful confessions. What Robert McAlmon is telling us with his cruel +and cold impartiality of his young Americans is very little edifying. +Snow storms and rains are not the only weapons Wentworth uses to fight +off the drought. Its church spire does not cast its shadow upon saints. +The youth of Wentworth literally have the devil in them. McAlmon is +less optimistic than Mark Twain. His Tom Sawyers are cynics, with their +own good reasons. They are stifled by their surroundings, they are +walled up alive. + +John Campbell, one of the characters of the book, is but a child. He +is being bored to death in the village. One day he runs out into the +fields, under the pretext of catching rabbits. He is brought home +bleeding. We surmise that he has committed suicide to escape paternal +corrections and reproof: + + John Campbell went past cornfields late autumn crisped. Their + leaves rasped and shuddered in the wind, and their stalks whined + from the frost that kept them brittly chilled. A sear chill was + within him too, a hard rebellion at life, rotted only some portion + of his heart where the weakness of despair was a warm fluid + dampening the hardness of his defiance to helplessness. + + Alternate waves of rage at, and indifferent understanding of, his + father, flowed through him. At moments he felt he could almost + sympathize with what life had made the older man. It was this very + sympathy that made him feel helpless himself in all of his outlook + on existence. At angry moments he could hatingly see his father’s + face within his mind, a face with waxen, shiny eyes, insistent with + neurotic rage. How dared he, having messed up his own life, as he + had, presume to dictate to anybody else what they should or should + not do, as though he had discovered a right way, and knew always + that what his son was doing was wrong. + + But at the ebb of an emotion he would understand again. Who could + retain temper or patience with the continual bickerings of family + life, and forever pressing economic needs? Often enough John felt + himself driven wild with the oppression of home life. What way was + there to smash down all the barriers and have a degree of freedom + to act, and if the impulses he had were sinful, who had made them + so? But what was he to do? He’d hate farm work; he’d hate office + work in the city, and despise the people working around him for + their clerkish acquiescence. What was life about? A sickness of it + was in his stomach, tiring him to complete non-resistance for the + time being. + +I shall stop here with the diagnosis of this precocious pessimism. +John Campbell is a representative young American. He is only a child, +but in his case, despair and cynicism have not waited for the years to +ripen. Alas! John Campbell is hardly a fiction. The readers of American +dailies could give him many brothers. Suicides and juvenile criminality +are not rare in the United States. Yet, poor little John’s pessimism +had not yet reached the purely conscious stage. That was left to his +elders. He had not suffered sufficiently or reflected enough upon his +distress to play the real Hamlet. He died while climbing a fence with +a loaded pistol in his hand, and it was never ascertained whether his +death was accidental or premeditated. + +Robert McAlmon also displays for our benefit more matured and more +self-conscious pessimists who ask again, like John Campbell, “What +about life?” + +Amazement before the mystery of existence, a sentiment of general +futility, misanthropy spreading from the family to the entire social +group, desire and hatred of women, lack of faith, despair and sarcasm, +such is the mental attitude of the young people we meet with in +“Village.” The last pages of the book are particularly symptomatic. +They recall the kind of talk heard in the yards of French Lycées, when +“Bel Ami,” “Nana,” “Against the Grain,” “Azyade,” and the “Garden of +Berenice,” first appeared. There was the same tone of cursing and irony +in Arthur Rimbaud’s “Illuminations.” In France doubtless they spoke +better and wrote better, but not any more sincerely, and at bottom the +sentiments and the pessimism were identical. Towards 1890 the young +Frenchmen were already _fin de siècle_. In 1926 the young Americans +are _commencement de siècle_, and they join forces with the French in +doubting life and upholding Shakespeare’s dictum about it: “a tale told +by an idiot and which hath no meaning.” + +Here is an example of a conversation between three youths of the +Middle West who were soon to go through the Arc de Triomphe with a +gun on their shoulders. Miss Willa Cather in “One of Ours,” and Mrs. +Wharton in “A Son at the Front” had pictured the war as a fight of +Providence occurring at the psychological moment to furnish an ideal to +the young and give them a chance to let some steam off. These rookies +in “Village” rather seem to belong in Barbusse’s “Squad.” They are +the musketeers of despair, but of an ironical despair. The War is +here, hurrah for the War! Little matter whether it be just or not, as +long as it drags us out of the tedium of our village! Listen to these +backsliding heroes exposing their philosophy of the great struggle: + + “You can stay out if we get in, if you will be that yellow-livered. + There’ll never be conscription in this country.” + + “Won’t there? Don’t you ever believe there won’t. But even if there + weren’t I’d have to go. Not because I couldn’t stand the gaff of + being called yellow-livered, but just because feeling it all about + me, and getting fed up with life anyway, I’d conclude what to hell, + and enlist some day, but without at all believing I was going to + serve any right cause by it, or that if we won that there would be + a great and gentle democracy throughout the world. I’d just go, and + kill Germans like the rest, because I’d get used to it being done; + but if I ever stopped to think I would think that maybe some of the + guys I killed were a hell of a lot more use in the world than I, or + than fellows around me. But there--well, life’s life. Let ’em die. + What’s useful anyway? Let’s talk of something else. I’m stalled.” + + “Say, boy, if you’d use your head on making dollars rather than on + theories, you’d be better off,” Lloyd Scott advised. “I won’t waste + my life in pessimism anyway.” + + “Neither will I; but I will live out my own temperament just + because I must; and also because it’s more interesting than letting + a set of social conventions which change with every generation and + with geographical situations, dictate one’s actions. Why limit + yourself?” + +McAlmon’s soldiers are very fond of their off-color vocabulary. Like +the youth of to-day they affect the use of slang. It is one aspect +of their revolt. But to go back to our heroes (?), the problem of +the World War is not the only one which preoccupies them. Their +conversation takes on a more general turn. It is the meaning of life +which they question. Peter Reynalds and Lloyd Scott, whom I have +already quoted, continue to exchange their impressions. They compare +their philosophies of life. “Enough!” says one of them. “It is still +better to be making money. Skepticism never made anyone rich.” “Yes,” +says the other, “but you have to act according to your temperament.” +(See Dreiser.) “That is more interesting than letting social +conventions which change with every generation dictate your actions. +Why should one limit oneself?” Whereupon Lloyd Scott ceases to follow +him and wonders what the deuce is the matter with him. Peter answers +this question in a thoroughly skeptical manner. Why choose a stand if +you are disgusted with every one of them beforehand? There is something +wrong with his will power: + + “It’s this. I’ve got to make a living for myself, and I’m damned if + there’s anything I like doing that pays. I tried newspaper work; + did sob stories for awhile and then couldn’t contemplate existence + any more; tried office work in a lumber concern and died with the + boredom of companionship about me. It’s the damned unrelated unrest + of an Irish temperament, I suppose. If the bloody war hadn’t come + on I’d have struck for Europe to see if living over there wasn’t + more gracious; aber mein gott. It’s this being an American; neither + a savage nor a civilized man. A roughneck, who’s a little too + refined.” + +Whereupon the Wentworth Hamlet says good-night to his friends. Before +the war these pessimistic dialogues used to end with a return to the +village where wine, gambling, practical joking, love-making, and now +and then a suicide or an escape, proved that there was no smoke without +fire and that even in America not everything was well with the best of +possible worlds. + + * * * * * + +In “The Portrait of a Generation” and “Post-Adolescence,” Robert +McAlmon has repeated himself. He has made himself the spokesman of the +pathetic nihilism in which young Americans are struggling to-day. “The +Portrait of a Generation” is a handbook of pessimism mitigated with +humor and fantasy. It is Leopardi disguised as one of Jean Cocteau’s +_parade_. Robert McAlmon has learnt the “Gay Savoir” at the school of +the French Sadists. The door of his Inferno might well bear the motto: +“Jazz here,” just like any American bar in Montmartre or Montparnasse. +But under this travesty the pessimism is nevertheless profound: + + Not in Europe or America are we at home, we, that ostracized + portion of degenerate mankind which lives on the continent + criticizing our home countries. The family of course is a decaying + institution. We don’t go in for dutifully pretended affections + now. What we want is an aristocracy of the intelligence. Not + the hard French face, so disillusioned. Not the wooden English + visage, prizing rudeness as a social asset.... Nothing left. There + is really nothing left for them or for the reckless American + flapper-impulsive need to keep rushing about space without + tradition or direction, swirled in the dynamic maelstrom, human + steel dust, lithe voiced electricity broadcast. The nation mourns + his honoured death. + +Then Mr. McAlmon shows us the younger generation carried away in the +maelstrom of modern dynamism like scraps of steel, like those wireless +waves “whose voice races nimbly throughout the whole world.” “Ah! let +America at least weep decently over her own demise!” + +The novels of youth published by American writers in the last few years +are quite numerous; I cannot review them all. The Parisian house of the +“Contact” editions whose president is Mr. McAlmon, has specialized in +realistic novels. It has published the most significant confessions of +these young writers, and among others the books of George Hemingway, +John Herrman, Emmanuel Carnevali, Gertrude Beasley, etc.[57] In “My +First Thirty Years,” Miss Beasley is hardly more reassuring than Robert +McAlmon. Her book frankly tells the brutal story of a young woman +obsessed by evil instincts in the midst of her family circle. Contact +with reality has stripped her of all illusions. She curses life and +those who have given it to her without her consent. She wishes that she +had never been born. It sounds like the Book of Job. After cursing her +father and mother, the heroine turns against the country of her birth, +“America is the land of murderous institutions. To be sure they do not +kill the body, but they leave us, like Frankenstein’s monster, a being +without a soul.” + + Thirty years ago, I lay in the womb of a woman, conceived in a + sexual act of rape, being carried during the pre-natal period by + an unwilling and rebellious mother, finally bursting from the + womb only to be tormented in a family whose members I despised or + pitied, and brought into association with people whom I should + never have chosen. Sometimes I wish that, as I lay in the womb, + a pink, soft embryo, I had somehow thought, breathed or moved + and wrought destruction to the woman who bore me, and her eight + miserable children who preceded me, and the four round-faced + mediocrities who came after me, and her husband, a monstrously + cruel, Christlike, and handsome man with an animal appetite for + begetting children. + +A young novelist of the Middle West, Ben Hecht, has buried all the +illusions of those young people into two novels which even Stendhal +would not disown. In “Humpty-Dumpty” and in “Erik Dorn” realism is +pushed to the point of melodrama, but we perceive behind the veil of +cynicism a sadness and a moral confusion which are unmistakable. The +spiritual bankruptcies described by Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood +Anderson are idyls in comparison with the tableaux painted by Ben +Hecht. “Humpty-Dumpty” is the tragedy of the void. The hero of the +book is the catastrophic type of dual personality. He is a perverted +simulator playing his life instead of living it, and playing it +tragically, at the expense of others. A cruel sadist, he tortures +people just when he likes them most. Humpty-Dumpty, a sinister puppet, +is a moral, intellectual and social anarchist, as dangerous as a +roaming tiger, a tiger doubled with a dilettante letting his soul (for +he has a soul) wander among the flowers of decadent literature. + +“Erik Dorn” is not less cynical than “Humpty-Dumpty.” It is a challenge +to society made by a nihilist. The hero of this novel goes straight +before him in life as he would in the jungle. He believes in nothing, +not even in himself. He is in love, and likes to make others suffer. +The approaching war is but a pretext to rouse his dormant sadistic +impulses. Erik Dorn is a Julien Sorel overlooked by the guillotine. +The novel is the work of a man of great talent who shows himself to +be--in the last chapters of the book, which describe the Communist +Revolution in Bavaria--a real animator. Here is an example of Erik +Dorn’s meditations: + + A tawdry pantomime was life, a pouring of blood, a grappling with + shadows, a digging of graves. “Empty, empty,” his intelligence + whispered in its depths, “a make-believe of lusts. What else? + Nothing, nothing. Laws, ambitions, conventions--froth in an empty + glass. Tragedies, comedies--all a swarm of nothings. Dreams in the + hearts of men--thin fever outlines to which they clung in hope. + Nothing ... nothing ...” + +Nitchevo! Vacuum! This Chicago Hamlet consoles himself by reading +Huysmans, Rémy de Gourmont, Flaubert, Théophile Gautier and Walter +Pater. He goes in for literature without believing in it. It helps him +to take life “against the grain.” “Living had made him forget life,” +says Ben Hecht. Erik Dorn plunged into books to chloroform his passions: + + “Too much living has driven him from life,” Dorn thought, + “and killed his lusts. So he sits and reads books--the last + debauchery: strange, twisted phrases like idols, like totem + poles, like Polynesian masks. He sits contemplating them as he + once sat drunkenly watching the obscenities of black, white and + yellow-bodied women. Thus, the mania for the rouge of life, for the + grimace that lies beyond satiety, passes in him from bestiality to + asceticism and esthetics. Yesterday a bacchanal of flesh, to-day + a bacchanal of words ... the posturings of courtezans and the + posturings of ornate phrases become the same.” + +The heroine of this discouraging book resembles the hero. She too +is uncertain, lost, wandering through the maelstrom of life. Dorn, +according to the American critic who wrote the preface[58] is obviously +a rascal, but extenuating circumstances may be pleaded. If Dorn is +a rascal, we are told, that is the fault of Society. (America knows +its Rousseau well.) Dorn is “déclassé” through his own frankness as +regards himself and his fellow men; his “head is the parasite of his +heart.” (Should it not be the other way around?) Dorn is a sick man. +He can no longer react to external stimuli.[59] He lives on the margin +of life, in a mechanical fashion. He is a _dissociated_ being. He has +lost all conviction and become a sophist. Ideas are his amusements. +Words fascinate him. Experiences are for him but an excuse to displace +adjectives. He considers doctrines, dogmas and ideals as ridiculous +efforts to impose upon life, which is ever changing, little tags which +never vary. The sole reality for him is intelligence, and this is how +he defines it: + +“Intelligence is a faculty which enables man to glance at the chaos of +ideas--and end up nowhere at all.” + +Far be it from me to take these paradoxes for truths and to mistake +reality for those extreme views, _ab uno disce omnes_. One should be +wary of placing upon Young America the grimacing mask of a Middle +Western Faust. However, under all this melodramatic claptrap, we +perceive the unrest, the moral confusion, and the necessity for a +rejuvenation, characteristic of the younger generation. + + * * * * * + +Ben Hecht’s efforts to find in æsthetics a derivative and an issue +for suppressed energies are not isolated efforts. On all sides the +renaissance of ideas has made imperative the need for a revolution in +art and in literature. Those who have been disillusioned by life seek +a refuge in art, and bring with them their taste for originality and +eccentricity at any cost. The new American literature quickly acquired +a tone that was ironic, immoralistic and rebellious. The revolter +became Bohemian. Those who formerly inhibited now turned æsthetes, +somewhat later than the French whom they believed to be sincerely +following. America is young and naïve. + +The modern American æsthete has been masterfully portrayed by one of +the best-informed American essayists of to-day.[60] Let us examine him +as he is destined to go down to posterity in the wake of the dandy, +the fatal man, the “fin de siècle” and the flapper. The American +æsthete, model 1924, is a child of the twentieth century, according +to Mr. Boyd. The Yellow Nineties had flickered out in the delirium +of the Spanish-American War when his first gurgles rejoiced the ears +of his expectant parents. If Musset were more than a name to him, a +hazy recollection of French literature courses, he might adapt a line +from the author of _La Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle_ and declare: +“I came too late in a world too old.” The 1924 æsthete studied at +Princeton, Yale or Harvard, in the early years of the Woodrovian +epoch. At this time he was still “classical.” Between two escapades he +would go and worship at the tomb of William and Henry James. During +his careful education, American literature was revealed to him as a +pale and obedient provincial cousin, whose past contained occasional +indiscretions, such as Poe and Whitman, about whom the less said the +better. Then, the 1924 æsthete picked up a taste for Art after some +party in the red-plush drawing-rooms. He severed relations with the +rabble who preferred baseball and football to poetry. He was herded +into the intellectual fold, and borrowed his sociology and his ethics +from the advanced reviews. He discovered simultaneously Socialism +and French, or pseudo-French, literature. Then he floated in the +rarefied atmosphere of Advanced Thought. Came the War, and with it +disillusionment. The enthusiasm of the æsthetes was not to survive the +carping remarks of the critics and the pacifistic campaigns. By luck or +cunning, the æsthete succeeded in getting out of the actual trenches. +He edited his first paper.... Simultaneously with his plunge into arms +and letters he made his first venture into the refinements of sex, +thereby extending his French vocabulary and gaining that deep insight +into the intimate life of France which is still his proudest possession. + +When militarism was finally overthrown, democracy made safe, and a +permanent peace established by the victorious and united Allies, he +was ready to stay on a little longer in Paris, and to participate in +the joys of La Rotonde and Les Deux Magots. There for a brief spell +he breathed the same air as the Dadaists, met Picasso and Philippe +Soupault, and allowed Ezra Pound to convince him that the French nation +was aware of the existence of Jean Cocteau, Paul Morand, Jean Giraudoux +and Louis Aragon. From those who had nothing to say on the subject +when Marcel Proust published “Du Côté de Chez Swann” in 1913 he now +learned what a great man the author was, and formed those friendships +which caused him eventually to join in a tribute to Proust by a group +of English admirers who would have stoned Oscar Wilde had they been old +enough to do so when it was the right thing to do. + +The time was not ripe for his repatriation, and so, with the same +critical equipment in French as in English, but with a still imperfect +control of the language as a complication, the now complete æsthete +returned to New York and descended upon Greenwich Village. His poems of +disenchantment were in the press, his war novel was nearly finished.... +Both his prose and verse were remarkable chiefly for typographical +and syntactical eccentricities, and a high pressure of unidiomatic, +misprinted French to the square inch. His further contributions (if +any) to the art of prose narrative have consisted of a breathless +phallic symbolism--a sex obsession which sees the curves of a woman’s +body in every object not actually flat, including, I need hardly say, +the Earth, our great Mother.... Mr. Boyd is rather malignant, but the +portrait resembles the original. In the last analysis the æsthete may +be diagnosed as the literary counterpart of the traditional American +tourist in Paris. He is glamored by the gaudy spectacle of that most +provincial of great cities. Paris obsesses and holds the American +æsthete. He has learned all about “cineplastics” from the French +æsthetes. The faithful are called upon by a French expert to admire +the films of William S. Hart and Jack Pickford, and some one carefully +translates the poetic rhapsodies inspired in him by the contemplation +of their masterpieces. Two souls dwell in the breast of the æsthete, +and his allegiance is torn between the sales manager’s desk ... and the +esoteric editorial chair where experiments are made with stories which +discard the old binding of plot and narrative, the substitute being the +structural framework which appeals to us over and above the message of +the line. + + * * * * * + +This classical portrait of the latter-day American æsthete is being +modified under our very eyes. He is no longer in 1927 what he was in +1924. And of what will to-morrow be made? The American æsthete, model +1927, is much less bothered with erotica than his predecessor, and +like the husky child who beats his nurse, he is strong enough to shake +off the foreign yoke. Even in literature alliances have been broken, +if we are to believe Mr. William Carlos Williams, who published (in +France naturally and in a _de luxe_ edition) his delicious collection +of improvisations called “The Great American Novel.”[61] In the tone +of the inner monologue, and with a fanatic passion which does not +exclude humor, Mr. Williams makes a plea of “America for Americans” in +literature. + + Europe is nothing to us. Simply nothing. Their music is death to us. + + Do not imagine I do not see the necessity of learning from + Europe--or China, but we will learn what we will, and never what + they would teach us. America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a + sensitive plant ready to take whatever print you want to put on it. + We have no art, no manners, no intellect--we have nothing. We water + at the eyes at our own stupidity. We have only mass movement like a + sea. But we are not a sea. + + Europe we must--we have no words. Every word we get must be broken + off from the European mass. Every word we get placed over again by + some delicate hand. Piece by piece we must loosen what we want. + What we will have. Will they let it go? Hugh. + +But William Carlos Williams has faith in America. According to him, +the art of to-morrow, American art _par excellence_, will be of the +“flamboyant” type. America is seeking new openings for her aspirations. +Is she as much of a Philistine as she is supposed to be? The American +who lives a model and edifying life (three meals a day, breakfast in +bed, new paper on the walls), that American at times emigrates to the +circus _en masse_, as Whitman used to say, to watch men, women and +animals executing exquisitely impossible tricks. What could be more +“flamboyant” than the trapeze man being projected into the air, and the +tiger jumping through man-made hoops, or the elephant upholding his +full weight by balancing his front legs on bottles? What could be more +“flamboyant” than the painted clown, eternal symbol of the human race, +laughing in order not to cry, and grimacing while making a thousand +grim jokes with small men all around him accomplishing their marvelous +feats? + +Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in a green and orange dress, with her +red warpaint on, impossible riots of color in a world which abhors +gray! And the “movies”! They, too, deprived of all color, flaming +through the imagination of those watching them, a boundless flame of +romance, irrepressible humor, luxury, horror and great passion. Those +human souls which know not passion, which are able to create neither +romance nor splendor nor horror, those infinitely varied phases of +Beauty, those souls seek outside of themselves what they lack--a search +often futile, and how disastrous! + +But imagination will not capitulate. If it cannot express itself +through dance or song, then it will try protestations and clamors. If +it cannot be a great flame, it will be a deformity. If not Art, it +will be Crime. Men, women and children cannot possibly be content with +a humdrum life. Let imagination embellish it, even to the point of +exaggeration. Let it give to life a touch of splendor and of horror, +with infinite beauty and depth. To receive all this from the outside +is not enough. A mere acceptation does not suffice. Imagination, to +satisfy itself, needs creative energy. The “flamboyant” expresses faith +in this energy. It is a cry of joy, a declaration of richness. It is, +at any rate, the first principle of all art.[62] + +It was not without a purpose that I have quoted in the course of these +essays these confessions at some length. Behind the mask of fantasy +their accent is poignant at times. Let us remember particularly the +manner in which William Carlos Williams conceives art as a diversion to +and a remedy for inhibitions and dangerous living. I accept his views +readily. I do not want to pose as a sociologist or as a prophet, but I +venture to say that this æsthetic theory seems to be in perfect accord +with what the American novelists of to-day consider as the needs of +human nature. One fact is positive, if they have told the truth and +if my report has been accurate. A civilization, no matter how great +and prosperous, cannot rest upon the suppression of passions and the +restraint of human emotions. It cannot last without “Gay Science.” A +system of obstinate prohibitions opens the door to neurotic disorders, +crime and every form of eccentricity and perversion. + +To return to the domain of literature and the novel, it is fortunate +that in following its natural bent Young America should have +instinctively found this truth. It’s an ill wind that blows no good. +No matter how much of a rebel, of a skeptic, of a dilettante and of a +cynic Young America has been, it is much more earnest than it appears. +It is in quest of a new ideal. It does not believe in salvation through +restraint and puritanical resignation. It does not hope any more to +find its ideal in a system of repressions which is a negation of the +beautiful and the good in the human soul, nor yet in a philosophy, no +matter how transcendental, which forgets the man or the woman of flesh +and blood. Neither does it seek its ideal in the goods of this world. +Young America applies the dictum that man does not live by bread alone. +It says with Emerson that the value of this world is not measured in +bales of cotton or sacks of dollars. It tries to find its ideal in a +more felicitous, and in the last analysis, more artistic, conception +of life. It feels with justice that in art there is a profound +harmony which seizes us and which expresses us in the deepest part of +ourselves, a synthesis in which nothing is forgotten, a vast tolerance +founded upon a sense of real values. This ideal cannot serve for the +masses, but it can rejuvenate and humanize the schemes of the leaders. +Young America is making a slow, painful march towards this goal. +Awkward, and often violent in its efforts, it has already been rewarded +in its quest. It is impossible to doubt it after one glance at the +great crop of original works in prose and verse which it has gathered +in the last decade and a half. + + * * * * * + +I have arrived at the end of my labors. My one ambition has been to +present to the reader as complete and as faithful a panorama of the +modern American novel as possible. I have not said all, but I do not +think I have omitted anything essential. There remain to be cleared +up several points which are closely related to my subject. There is +the question of influences, especially of French influences. I have +alluded to the panegyric of Balzac by Theodore Dreiser. I could have +added that of Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourts, Huysmans, and especially +of Maupassant, who is still very popular in America. The American +novelists of to-day have not failed to acknowledge their debt to the +French realists, realizing that without them, they would not have been +what they are. An autonomous and autochthonous phenomenon as far as +origins and ends are concerned, the American novel has gone to France +to seek lessons in art and in frankness. From Balzac to Marcel Proust, +the American novelists know their French literature thoroughly. The +vogue in America of the French novelists has only been equalled by +the Russians, who are better able to play on the mystical chords +characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon. + +I have been able to make only rapid allusions to the bonds which tie +the American novel of to-day to the English novel, but what American +writer of the twentieth century is not conversant with the works of +Conrad, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce? + +There remains one stiff problem, that of documentation. In what measure +are we entitled to apply to the American novel and to the human types +which it presents to us the _ab uno disce omnes_? What is there in +common between the United States and its customs and the novels which +describe them? A difficult question, harking back to the problem of +literature conceived as the expression of society, the Taine’s problem +of the three factors. If I had had the time and the courage to front +it, I would have attempted to solve it by a _distinguo_ reminiscent +of Molière. We have society and society. The more liberal and varied +the morals, the less chance apparently for literature and manners to +correspond. On the other hand, the more stereotyped, conventional and +automatic the morals, the less chance that literature should differ +from them. And that seems to be the case in the United States, if +my studies are accurate. There has been such a development in the +unanimity of thoughts, feelings and aspirations, such a standardization +in America, that it has become impossible for the freest minds to +express themselves independently of their surroundings. This uniformity +having become tyrannical, the most liberal artists have only been able +to shake it off by studying it as a phenomenon in itself. To describe +it faithfully has become for them the best way of denouncing it. For +my own part, I think that there is a great resemblance between what +the American novelists have described and the actual facts. Even if +that were not so, there would remain this amazing unanimity in thinking +and in realistic observation. Even if Puritanism and repression, as +Hawthorne, Howells, Henry James, Mrs. Wharton, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, +Anderson, Cabell and others describe them, were a fiction, there would +be, in the universal character of this fiction, an evidence of a state +of mind capable of impressing a psychologist. Allowing that Puritanism +is a vice, a malady of the mind, an obsession, is it not remarkable +that we should meet with it among the most notable American novelists +of yesterday and to-day? How could such a general obsession be +fictitious and exist without corresponding to something which explains +and justifies it? But I am firmly convinced of the great value of the +modern American novel from a documentary, psychological, moral and +social standpoint. As one critic expresses it, “just like the American +skyscrapers, the American novel has sprung from the soil, awkward, +utilitarian, often amorphous, more agreeable to the eye than to the +intellect, queer, painfully searching for new modes of expression, with +almost no relation with the site upon which it is growing or with what +surrounds it.” From the point of view of art and ideas, there have +never been in American literature works so defiant of the accepted laws +of decorum, perspective and harmony. + + + + +INDEX + + + Adams, Henry, 11, 69. + + Advertising in America, 146, 147. + + Æsthete, the modern American, 274-277. + + “Age of Innocence, The,” 57. + + “Ambassadors, The,” 53. + + America, restlessness in, viii; + pessimism in, viii, ix, 8, 135; + considered an unromantic, 130 _n._; + sacrifice of the minority in, 146; + advertising in, 146-148; + the land of the superlative, 147; + crude conditions in parts of, 155, 156; + the land of the strenuous life, 186, 186 _n._; + conditions in, since the Great War, 259-261; + the modern novel as representative of conditions in, 282, 283; + standardization in, 282. + + American æsthete, the modern, 274-277. + + American background, the emptiness of, 48-50. + + American culture, an arraignment of, 17, 18. + + American language, 150. + + American literary ideals, revolution in, 3-6; + the new, 7. + + American literature, recent, pessimism in, viii, ix, 257, 260; + spirit of pioneers in, 5-7. + + _American Mercury_, the, 10. + + “American Tragedy, An,” 79, 110 _n._, 115-122. + + American writers, later generation of, characteristics of, 23, 24. + + Americans, optimism and contentment of, 13; + provided with comfort and material ease, 131, 132; + outside their homes, 132, 133; + their religion, 133; + the material organization of their life, 134; + in politics, 134, 135. + + Anderson, Sherwood, 22, 53, 57; + and Freudism, 31; + influence of Walt Whitman on, 154, 155; + his primitivism, 154, 155, 155 _n._, 156; + his writing a groping toward the Unknown, 155; + his career, 155, 158, 159, 166-168; + the Freudian novelist _par excellence_, 156; + his “Windy McPherson’s Son,” 156, 157, 168-171; + little filial respect in his tales, 157; + a dreamer, 159-161, 175; + his feeling for the small craftsmen, 161, 162; + his world of fancy, 162-164; + his itch for writing, 164, 166; + his sensitiveness to words, 165; + excludes manufacturers of paper from his curses, 165, 166; + his apprenticeship at writing, 167; + his indifference to comfort while writing, 167; + his “Marching Men,” 171-180; + as an artist, 176, 199; + his “Poor White,” 181, 182; + his “Winesburg, Ohio,” 182-187; + suppressed sensibilities in his stories, 187; + his description of the tortures of inhibition, 188-191; + engaged on problems of sexual inhibition, 191; + his “Many Marriages,” 191-196; + his “Dark Laughter,” 196-199; + Negro songs in his novels, 197; + on New Orleans, 198, 199; + his definition of art, 199. + + Andreiev, 23. + + “Arrowsmith,” a satire of medical fakes, 148, 149; + summarized, 149; + written haphazardly, 150; + the language of, 150. + + Art, shows a way out of chaos, 126; + and muck-raking, 153; + Anderson’s definition of, 199; + “flamboyant,” 278; + for art’s sake, 279 _n._; + the harmony in, 280, 281. + + Atherton, in “A Modern Instance,” 64-66. + + Atherton, Gertrude, 247 _n._ + + Austin, Mary, 248. + + + “Babbitt,” 144-148. + + Balzac, Honoré de, 23, 153, 281. + + Beach, Joseph Warren, his “The Outlook for American Prose,” 202 _n._ + + Beasley, Gertrude, 270, 271. + + Beaut McGregor, in “Marching Men,” 171-173, 174, 177-180. + + Behaviorism, 29, 30. + + Ben Halleck, in “A Modern Instance,” 64-66. + + Bernanos, Georges, 246. + + Bio-chemistry, human psychology in terms of, 78, 83, 84, 95, 106, + 109-118, 123. + + Biological fatalism, 124. + + “Birth,” 248, 249. + + “Blithedale Romance, The,” the women in, 34. + + “Book About Myself, A,” 98. + + Bourget, Paul, a novel of, 4; + his process, 55; + crime determinism arraigned by, 116. + + Bourne, Randolph, a literary radical, 4. + + Bovarysme. _See_ Emma Bovary. + + Boyd, Ernest, his “Portraits Real and Imaginary,” 274 _n._ + + Bruce Dudley (John Stockton), in “Dark Laughter,” 196-199. + + Business-man, the American, 21. + + + Cabell, James Branch, 22; + the double aspect of his work, 200, 201; + his style, 202, 203; + his land of Poictesme, 203, 204; + the inhabitants of his Poictesme, 204, 205; + his philosophy, 205; + his defense of fiction, 205-208; + his “Jurgen,” 208, 209, 215-220, 223, 224; + his “Figures of Earth,” 209-212; + his “Domnei,” 212-215; + aimed to sketch an epic of human desire, 221; + his “The High Place,” 224-231; + his “The Cream of the Jest,” 231-237; + his early works, 237. + + Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, moving picture, 184. + + “Call of the Wild,” 32, 94. + + Canfield, Dorothy, 248. + + “Captive, The,” 21 _n._ + + Carnevali, Emmanuel, 270. + + Carol Kennicott, in “Main Street,” 136-144. + + Cather, Willa, 22; + exhibits sympathy for her characters, 238; + her “A Lost Lady,” 239, 240; + her “My Antonia,” 241-245; + her art, 245, 246; + her “One of Ours,” 246-248; + her “My Mortal Enemy,” 248 _n._ + + Censorship, 20, 21 _n._ + + “Chalk Face,” 255. + + Charlatans, 148. + + Chautauqua poets, 258. + + Chicago, artistic and literary center, 168, 174. + + Chillingworth, Doctor, in “The Scarlet Letter,” 39-42. + + Churches, in America, 133; + attacked in “Elmer Gantry,” 150, 152. + + “City Block,” 256. + + Civilization, modern, 173-175. + + Clemenceau, Georges, 95 _n._ + + Clerical profession, fakes of, satirized in “Elmer Gantry,” 152, + 153. + + Clyde Griffith, in “An American Tragedy,” 115-122. + + Communion of Saints, 98 _n._ + + Comte, Auguste, 124. + + Conrad, Joseph, 282. + + Conscience, a theory of, 110, 110 _n._, 116. + + “Contact,” printing firm, 262, 270. + + Cooper, James F., wrote the novel of adventure, 4. + + “Cords of Vanity, The,” 237. + + Cowperwood, in “The Financier,” 86-88, 105-111. + + “Cream of the Jest, The,” 231-237. + + Crime, in Hawthorne, 34; + in “Elsie Venner,” 110 _n._; + in Dreiser, 115-119. + + Criminal responsibility, 110 _n._, 116, 118, 119. + + Criticism, in America, 3-5. + + “Crystal cup,” 247. + + Curel, François de, 156 _n._ + + “Custom of the Country, The,” 56. + + Cynicism, in recent novels, 257. + + “Cytherea,” 254, 255. + + + “Daisy Miller,” 50. + + “Dance before the Mirror,” 156 _n._ + + “Dark Laughter,” 196-199. + + Darwinism, and Theodore Dreiser, 84, 85, 88, 93, 95 _n._ + + Day-dreaming, 156. + + Decadence, 186 _n._ + + Degeneracy, 186 _n._ + + Deliverance, the problem of, 185. + + Dell, Floyd, 22, 254. + + Dickens, Charles, 147. + + Dickinson, Emily, a Puritan type of mind, 12. + + Dimmesdale, in “The Scarlet Letter,” 37-45. + + Dom Manuel, in “Figures of Earth,” 209-212. + + “Domnei,” 212-215. + + Donatello, in “The Marble Faun,” 38. + + Dostoievski, F. M., 23. + + Double personality, 156. + + Dreiser (or Dresser), Paul, 72. + + Dreiser, Theodore, his arraignment of American culture, 17, 18; + absorbed by the problems of Puritan inhibitions, 22; + and Freudism, 31; + the historian of a disillusioned America, 71; + views social studies from an individual angle, 72; + his career, 72, 73; + his books, 73, 74; + his realism, 74, 75; + his enthusiasm for facts, 75-77; + the contents of his novels borrowed from the news column, 77-80; + his use of term _bio-chemistry_, 78; + does not comment in his novels, 80; + his essays, 81; + his philosophy, 81-83; + translates psychology in terms of bio-chemistry, 83, 84, 95, 106, + 109-118, 123; + his evolutionism, 84, 85; + his supermen, 85, 93-95, 105, 111; + his blow to American idealism, 85, 86; + his illustration of the battle of life, 86-88; + his love for America, 88-93; + his “A Hoosier Holiday,” 88-93, 95-97; + his hero worship, 94; + his treatment of sexual problems, 95; + his Darwinian Philosophy, 95 _n._; + his hymn to the Vital Force, 95-97; + his belief in compensation (equation), 97, 98; + his pessimism and optimism, 98, 99; + suggests two solutions of the ethical problem, 99; + on spiritual progress, 100; + his liking for the Dutch painters, 101; + his definition of art, 101; + his “Sister Carrie,” 102-104; + his “Jennie Gerhardt,” 104, 105; + his “The Financier,” 105-108; + his “The Titan,” 108-111; + his “The Genius,” 111-115, 195; + his “An American Tragedy,” 115-122; + his theory of criminal responsibility, 116-119; + leaves little hope of reformation for the fallen, 123; + his biological fatalism, 124; + his decalogue, 124; + his ethics, 125, 126; + goes too far in starving the human emotions, 126, 127; + Walt Whitman’s influence on, 154; + on the primordial importance of the sexual question, 191. + + Drunkenness, in recent American fiction, 187 _n._ + + Dual personalities, 182, 184, 254, 271. + + Duhamel, George, 255. + + Dutch painters, the, 101. + + + “Eagle’s Shadow, The,” 237. + + Education, American, hostile to “wish-fulfillment,” 14. + + Edwards, Jonathan, his sermons, 12. + + Eggleston, Edward, and the Dutch painters, 101 _n._ + + Elite and masses, in America, the feud between, 9, 10. + + “Elmer Gantry,” 150-153. + + Elsie Leander, in “The Triumph of the Egg,” 167, 187-191. + + Emerson, Charles, 223. + + Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 17; + a Puritan type of mind, 12; + his ethics, 98; + tried in “Representative Men” to delineate the ideal man, 222; + a transcendental realist, 222; + made much of dreams in his philosophy, 222. + + Emma Bovary, in “Madame Bovary,” vii, 138, 142-144, 206. + + English novelists, 23, 282. + + “Erik Dorn,” 271-273. + + Eroticism, the great issue of suppressed sensibilities, 187; + and mysticism, 191. + _See_ Sex problems, Sexual inhibition. + + Estaunié, Edouard, 239, 246. + + “Ethan Frome,” 60, 61. + + Ethics, the Puritan, compared with those of Dreiser, 125; + conflict between social and individual, 130. + + Eugene Witla, in “The Genius,” 111-114. + + Evasions, 207, 208, 231, 254. + + + “False Dawn,” 56 _n._ + + Family life, in American plays and novels, 249. + + Fiction, confusion between, and realism, in Howells’ work, 200, 201; + Cabell’s defense of, 205-207; + the craving for, 208. + _See_ Novel. + + “Figures of Earth,” 209-212. + + “Financier, The,” 71-73, 77, 79, 86-88, 105-108. + + Firkins, Mr., 63. + + “Flamboyant,” 278, 279, 279 _n._ + + Flaubert, Gustave, 23; + his “Madame Bovary,” vi, vii, 137, 138, 142-144, 206; + his “Bouvard and Pecuchet,” 129; + never lost sight of art, 153; + his influence on the American Novel, 281. + + “Floating anxiety,” 19, 31, 146, 184. + + Florian de Puysange, in “The High Place,” 224-231. + + Frank, Waldo, 22; + Puritanism according to, 13-16; + dual personality in novels of, 254; + master of the minor dialogue, 255; + his novels, 255, 256. + + “Free Air,” 128. + + Free will, 116. + + French novel, influence of the, on American novel, 23, 281. + + Freud, Doctor, vi. + + Freudism, and Puritanism, 31; + disquieting elements of, 32; + in the novels of Anderson, 156, 182, 188; + a literary rendering to, 184 _n._ + + Frost, Robert, a Puritan type of mind, 12. + + “Fruit of the Tree, The,” 56. + + Fuller, Margaret, an experience of, 142 _n._; + an example of suppression, 223. + + + Gale, Zona, 22; + the chronicler of American life in the small towns, 248; + her “Birth,” 248, 249; + her “Miss Lulu Bett,” 250-254. + + Garland, Hamlin, on the case of realism _versus_ sentimentalism, 200 + _n._ + + Gaultier, Jules de, his “Le Bovarysme,” vi. + + “Gay Science,” 205, 220, 280. + + “Genius, The,” 73, 77, 111-115, 195. + + Glasgow, Ellen, 248. + + “Golden Bowl, The,” 53. + + Goncourts, the, influence of, on the American novel, 281. + + Gopher Prairie, 135-144. + + “Great American Novel, The,” 277. + + Great War, the, 259, 266, 267, 275. + + + “Hand of the Potter, the,” 115. + + “Happy ending,” the, 14. + + Hawthorne, Nathaniel, wrote the novel of manners, 4; + influence of Puritanism on, 12; + resemblances to Freudism in, 31, 32, 36-42; + attracted by problems of the inmost life, 32; + his life, 33; + his complex explained by his genealogy, 33; + the paganism of his imagination, 33, 34; + his women, 34, 38; + his conscience, 34; + haunted by the idea of crime and punishment, 34; + moral paradoxes of, 35; + as a psychologist, 36; + analysis of his “The Scarlet Letter,” 36-45; + his symbolism, 45, 46. + + Hecht, Ben, 271-274. + + Helvetius, 125. + + Hemingway, George, 270. + + Hergesheimer, Joseph, 22, 254. + + Herrman, John, 270, 270 _n._ + + Hester Prynne, in “The Scarlet Letter,” 37-45. + + “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub,” 74, 97; + quotations from, 82-86. + + “High Place, The,” 224-231. + + Hilda, in “The Marble Faun,” 34, 38. + + “Holiday, A,” 255. + + Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his “Elsie Venner,” 110 _n._ + + “Hoosier Holiday, A,” 74, 88-93, 95-97. + + “House of Mirth, The,” 58, 59. + + “House of the Seven Gables, The,” the character of Phœbe in, 34; + sin in, 34, 35; + the character of Clifford Pyncheon in, 38; + symbolism in, 45, 46. + + Howells, William Dean, 22, 54; + his realism, 61, 62, 69; + his limitations, 62, 64; + divides society into two opposite classes, 63; + his moral system, 64-67; + his “A Modern Instance,” 64-66; + his “The Landlord at Lion’s Head,” 66, 67; + his ideals those of the sentimental middle class, 67-70; + and Dreiser, 126, 127; + the descent from, to Sherwood Anderson, 169 _n._; + confusion between realism and fiction in, 201. + + Hugh McVey, in “Poor White,” 181, 182. + + Humor, American, 48; + and irony, 224, 225. + + “Humpty-Dumpty,” 271. + + Hurstwood, in “Sister Carrie,” 103. + + Huysmans, influence of, on the American novel, 281. + + + Idealism, American, buried in the grave of the Transcendentalists, + 16; + is largely manufactured by women, 21; + dead in the American novel of to-day, 257; + and utilitarianism, 258, 259; + transcendental, 258, 259. + + Imagination, the rights of, claimed and defended by Cabell, 200, + 201, + 206; + the expression of, 279. + + Imperialism, pragmatic, 259; + mystic, 259. + + Individual and social ethics, 124-127, 130, 136. + + “Inevitable Equation, The,” 81, 97. + + Inhibited, city of the, 184. + + Inhibition, the danger in, vii, 280; + the tortures of, described, 191; + the problem of sexual, 191; + effects caused by, prevalent among Puritan writers of New England, + 223; + in novels of Willa Cather, 238-248; + in novels of Zona Gale, 249, 250; + in novels of Floyd Dell, 254. + + Inness, George, 18. + + Instinct, as opposed to the social code, 124-127, 130, 136. + + Intelligence test, the, 25. + + Irene Olenska, in “The Age of Innocence,” 57. + + Irony and humor, 224, 225. + + + Jaloux, Edmond, 246. + + James, Henry, 22; + master of the psychological novel, 4, 47; + needed the European background, 47, 48; + his indictment of America, 48-50; + his first novels, 50; + his women, 50-52; + his novels a contribution to the study of inhibitions, 52; + in æsthetics, 53; + uses _appreciation_, 53; + invented the _monologue intérieur_, 53; + composed from the center outward, 53; + as an artist, 54. + + James, William, 4, 17, 149; + his psychological theories, 26, 27, 186; + his attempt to reconcile idealism with utilitarianism, 258. + + “Java Head,” 254, 255. + + Jazz, 197 _n._ + + Jeff Durgin, in “The Landlord at Lion’s Head,” 66, 67. + + Jennicot, in “The High Place,” 228-230. + + “Jennie Gerhardt,” 73, 104, 105. + + John Webster, in “Many Marriages,” 192-196. + + Joyce, James, 22, 23, 27, 53, 282. + + “Jurgen,” 208, 209, 215-220, 223, 224. + + + Kennaston, in “The Cream of the Jest,” 231-237. + + Kennicott, in “Main Street,” 136-144. + + “Kora in Hell,” 277 _n._ + + + “Landlord at Lion’s Head, The,” 66, 67. + + Lawrence, D. H., 23, 36, 282. + + Lewis, Sinclair, 22; + his career, 128; + his “Free Air,” 128; + his “Mantrap,” 128; + his “Our Mr. Wren,” 129, 130; + his works inspired by feeling of conflict between social and + individual ethics, 130; + his “Main Street,” 135-144; + his “Babbitt,” 144-148; + his “Arrowsmith,” 148-150; + as an artist, 149, 150; + his language, 150; + his “Elmer Gantry,” 150-153. + + Lily Bart, in “The House of Mirth,” 58, 59. + + “Linda Condon,” 254, 255. + + Lodge, Henry Cabot, 186 _n._ + + London, Jack, and “the movies,” 4; + his “Martin Eden,” 167; + (mentioned, 110). + + “Lost Lady, A,” 239. + + Love, as bio-chemistry, 111, 113, 117. + + + McAlmon, Robert, his career, 262; + his “Village,” 262-269; + his “The Portrait of a Generation,” 269. + + “Madonna of the Future, The,” 150. + + “Main Street,” 135-144. + + Mallarmé, Stephane, 166 _n._ + + “Mantrap,” 128. + + “Many Marriages,” 191-196. + + “Marble Faun, The,” paganism in, 34; + the character of Hilda in, 34, 38; + amorality in, 35; + the character of Donatello in, 38; + symbolism, 45, 46. + + “Marching Men,” 158, 159, 171-180. + + Marks, Percy, his “The Plastic Age,” 270 _n._ + + Martin, Doctor, psychologist, 28. + + Masses and élite, in America, the feud between, 9, 10. + + Masters, Edgar Lee, 18. + + Mather, Cotton, his _Magnalia_, 10, 12. + + Maupassant, Guy de, his influence on the American novel, 281. + + Medical profession, the fakes of, satirized in “Arrowsmith,” 148. + + Mencken, Henry, a literary radical, 4; + his magazine, 10; + his arraignment of Puritanism, 16; + his “The American Language,” 150. + + “Mid-American Chants,” 155. + + Middle West, 136. + + Mid-Victorians, the, 74, 75, 126. + + Milton, John, Puritanism the inspiration of his epic, 12. + + Milton Daggett, in “Free Air,” 128. + + “Miss Lulu Bett,” 250-254. + + Mississippi River, the, 197. + + “Modern Instance, A,” 64-66. + + Molière, J. B., his M. Jourdain, 144. + + _Monologue intérieur_, the, 53. + + Moody, Mary, Emerson’s aunt, a _clairvoyante_, 223. + + Moody, William Vaughn, a Puritan type of mind, 12. + + “Mother complex,” 20, 21, 21 _n._, 69, 136. + + “Movies,” 4, 14, 16 _n._, 20, 37; + psychoanalysis in, 184 _n._, 278. + + Murger, H., his “Vie de Bohême,” 167. + + “My Antonia,” 241-245. + + “My First Thirty Years,” 270, 271. + + “My Mortal Enemy,” 248 _n._ + + Myers, W. L., his “The Later Realism,” 258 _n._ + + Mysticism and eroticism, 191. + + + Nance McGregor, in “Marching Men,” 175-177. + + Negro music, 197. + + “New Englander, The,” 187-191. + + New Orleans, 198, 199. + + “New poetry,” 3. + + “New Year’s Day,” 61 _n._ + + Nonconformists, American, 10. + + Nordau, Max, his “Degeneracy,” 186 _n._ + + Novel, American, of the nineteenth century, 4, 7; + the recent change in, 7; + influence of the French novel on, 23, 281; + influence of the Russian novel on, 23, 281; + and the English novelists, 23, 282; + in 1900, 74; + drunkenness in, 187 _n._; + cynicism and crudity in, 257; + of adolescence, 262; + as a true representative of American conditions, 282, 283. + + + O’Higgins (Harvey) and Reede, their book on “The American Mind in + Action,” 18. + + Ohio River, the, 197. + + “Old Maid, The,” 61 _n._ + + “One of Ours,” 246-248. + + O’Neill, Eugene, his “Desire Under the Elms,” 21 _n._; + drunkenness in his plays, 187 _n._; + stages a continuous monologue, 192 _n._ + + “Our America,” 256. + + “Our Mr. Wren,” 129, 130. + + + Painting, the art of, 112, 113. + + Palladino, Eusebia, 50 _n._ + + Pearl, in “The Scarlet Letter,” 34. + + Personality, dissociation of, 27. + + “Personality picture,” 28, 142, 156, 170, 221, 223. + + Pessimism, in the United States, viii, ix, 8, 135; + in recent American literature, viii, ix, 257, 260. + + Pirandello, 27. + + Poe, Edgar Allan, the standard of the short story set by, 4; + the influence of Puritanism on, 12; + had an artistic conscience, 47; + haunted by the dead, 223. + + Poictesme, the land of, 203-205, 209, 215, 221, 225. + + Policeman, in the “movies,” 16 _n._ + + “Poor White,” 167, 181, 182. + + “Portrait of a Generation, The,” 269. + + “Post-Adolescence,” 269. + + Pragmatism, 27, 149. + + “Professor’s House, The,” 239, 240. + + Proust, Marcel, 23, 27, 53, 276, 281. + + Provincialism, 200 _n._ + + Psittacism, 184. + + Psychoanalysis, vi, 30-32, 156, 169, 170, 182-187. + + Psychology, experimental, study of, in America, 25. + + Psychology, studies of morbid, 182-187. + + Publicity in America, 146-148. + + Puritan ethics, and Dreiser’s, 125. + + Puritanism, the good points of, 11-13; + the bad points of, 13; + the revolt against, 13; + according to Waldo Frank, 13-16; + the decadence of, 15; + Mencken’s arraignment of, 16; + intellectual energies thwarted by, 18; + inhibitions of, 18-20, 22; + and psychoanalysis, 31; + and James Branch Cabell, 201. + _See_ Inhibition. + + + Radicalism, intellectual and literary, birth of, 260. + + Radicals, American, 10, 11. + + Rascoe, Burton, 273 _n._ + + Realism, of Howells, 61, 62, 201; + and fiction, confusion between, 200, 201; + _versus_ sentimentalism, 200 _n._; + fictitious, 201; + in psychology, 201; + revolt against, 201; + banned by Cabell, 206, 207; + of Willa Cather, 246; + static, 246; + optimistic, 248; + later, 258, 258 _n._, 270, 271. + + “Reef, The,” 56. + + Representative men, revaluation of, 19 _n._ + + Responsibility for Crime, 110 _n._, 116, 118, 119. + + “Revisionists,” 259. + + “Revolt against the village,” 200 _n._ + + Rimbaud, Arthur, 266. + + “Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck, The,” 237. + + Robinson, a Puritan type of mind, 12. + + “Roderick Hudson,” 50. + + Romantic evasion, 207. + + Romanticism, a psychological disease, vii; + M. Seillères, study of, 130 _n._; + and Puritanism, 200; + of Cabell, 205, 206. + + Rousseau, J. J., 125. + + “Runaway, The,” 254. + + Russian novelists, their vogue in America, 23, 281. + + + Saint Pierre, 239, 240. + + Sargent, John Singer, 18. + + “Scarlet Letter, The,” paganism in, 34; + the character of Pearl in, 34; + amorality in, 35; + the purpose of, 36; + analysis of, 37-45. + + Seillères, Eugene, his study of romanticism, 130 _n._ + + Self, the, 27-29; + dissociation and reunification of, 170. + + Selves, three, 127, 186. + + Sensibility, analysis of pathological forms of, 182-187. + + Sentimentalism, and the realistic novel, 200; + _versus_ realism, 200 _n._ + + Sex problems, 59, 60, 95, 102-105, 111-115. + + Sexual inhibition, the problem of, 191. + + Shaw, G. B., his “Man and Superman,” 111. + + Silas Lapham, 69, 70. + + Sin, in Hawthorne, 34, 35. + + “Sister Carrie,” 73, 102-104. + + Social code, and instinct, 124-127, 130, 136. + + Socialism, 135. + + “Song of the Lark,” 240, 241. + + “Soul-fear,” 19, 31, 146, 184. + + “Spark, The,” 56 _n._ + + Standardization, vii, 282. + + Standards, American, 9. + + Stein, Gertrude, 165 _n._ + + Stendhal, his “Le rouge et noir,” 116. + + “Story Teller’s Story, A,” quoted, 160, 161. + + Strenuous life, America the land of, 186, 186 _n._ + + Style, of American fiction writers, 202, 203. + + Subconscious, the, 26, 181. + + Suggestive language, the, 165 _n._ + + “Summer,” 60, 61. + + Superman, the, of Dreiser, 85, 93-95, 105, 111; + imagined by Emerson, 222. + + Suppression. _See_ Inhibition. + + + “Tar,” 155, 155 _n._, 157 _n._, 162 _n._ + + Tartuffe, 151 + + Tchekhov, A. P., 23. + + Thea Kronburg, in “Song of the Lark,” 240, 241. + + Thoreau, Henry David, a Puritan type of mind, 12; + disguises himself, 223. + + “Titan, The,” 71-73, 108-111. + + Transcendental idealism, 258, 259. + + Transcendentalists, the, 16, 222. + + “Traveller at Forty, A,” 98, 101. + + “Triumph of the Egg, The,” 167, 187-191, 193. + + Twain, Mark, 68, 261; + voted for American philistinism, 49; + and the Mississippi and the Ohio, 197; + his “The Mysterious Stranger,” 224. + + “Twelve Men,” 72, 74, 98. + + + Undine Spragg, in “The Custom of the Country,” 56. + + Utilitarianism, and idealism, 258, 259. + + + Vechten, Carl van, 279 _n._ + + Vildrac, Charles, his “Paquebot Tenacity,” 21 _n._ + + “Village,” 262-269. + + + Wendell, Barrett, 187 _n._ + + Wharton, Edith, 22; + specialized in the society novel, 54; + her process, 55; + not introspective, 55; + indifferent to social and political problems, 56; + her satire of American life and society, 56; + her “The Custom of the Country,” 56; + her “The Age of Innocence,” 57; + the spiritual and moral indigence of her characters, 57-59; + her psychological insight, 59; + on the relation of the sexes, 59, 60; + her psychoanalysis, 60, 61; + her “Summer” and “Ethan Frome,” 60, 61; + her article on “The Great American Novel,” 200 _n._ + + “What Maisie Knew,” 52. + + Whistler, J. A. M., 18. + + Whitman, Walt, a standard set by, 4; + the United States a cornucopia to, 49; + his influence on Dreiser, 154; + his influence on Anderson, 154, 155; + his “I Walt Whitman, a Cosmos,” 195; + his changes, 223. + + Will, function of the, 118. + + Williams, William Carlos, one of founders of “Contact,” 262; + his “The Great American Novel,” 277, 278; + his idea of American art of the future, 278; + on imagination, 279. + + Wilson, Edmund, on Henry James’ typical American virgin, 52 _n._ + + “Windy McPherson’s Son,” 156-158, 168-171. + + “Winesburg, Ohio,” 158, 182-187. + + “Wings of the Dove, The,” 52, 53. + + “Wish-fulfillment,” 14. + + Words, physical characteristics of, 165, 166, 166 _n._ + + + Young America, in quest of a new ideal, 280, 281. + + + Zola, Émile, 23; + essay by James on, 54 _n._; + his influence on the American novel, 281. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +[1] _Nos actes nous suivent._ + +[2] In this survey of the case against the Puritan the author does not +claim to adhere to a literal rendering of the views of the different +critics. Many of the comments and examples are his own. + +[3] A foreigner who goes to the American “movies” would not contradict +Mr. Mencken on this point. The policeman, as a _deus ex machina_, +to wind up a plot and bring in a happy ending, has no rival on the +American screen except perhaps the young girl, acting as Salvation +Nell. A squad of police rushing to the scene of a row or of an assault, +provided it arrives on the psychological moment, is sure to raise the +enthusiasm of the audience to the limit. Moral rescue by the police is +the most popular form of the Aristotelian _catharsis_ in America. + +[4] The “leavings aside” of Theodore Dreiser in this indictment are +frequent enough to call for a fairer balance of the whole account when +all is told. I refer the reader, for a retort on this point, to the +first pages of this chapter, where I take the liberty to be much more +optimistic concerning the intellectual capital of America. + +[5] Messrs. Harvey O’Higgins and Reede. + +[6] A revaluation of most of the great American representative men +and women has taken place in the United States recently, in the light +of _ex professo_ Freudism and psychoanalysis. See the books of Crutch +on Edgar Poe, Van Wyck Brooks on Mark Twain, Anthony on Margaret +Fuller, Wood on Amy Lowell, etc., etc. This is another aspect of the +intellectual revolt in America to-day. + +[7] This example is the author’s. + +[8] This mother complex is one of the most difficult American +idiosyncrasies for the European to understand. The sublimation of +instincts in America reaches its limits in married life when the wife +becomes in familiar appellation “mother.” This American complex has no +equivalent in the Old World. + +[9] The author of this book had a first-hand impression of the power +of the American woman as a censor when, in a certain city of the West, +an Association of Christian Mothers interfered to stop the production +of Charles Vildrac’s “Paquebot Tenacity.” Vildrac’s play, for the +un-Puritan critic, is a most moral play. It dramatizes the problem of +free will. It stages the conflict between a strong and a weak man, both +of them in the hands of Fate. The American “mothers” did not see these +moral issues. They were only concerned with a dialogue between one of +the characters and a maid around a bottle of champagne. The suppression +in New York City more recently of “The Captive,” a Freudian play of the +first order, marked another triumph for the “motherly complex.” Eugene +O’Neill’s Ibsenian drama “Desire under the Elms” was interdicted in Los +Angeles lately by the same “complex.” Meanwhile nude exhibitions which +could hardly be tolerated even in Montmartre are allowed to proceed +along every “gay White Way” throughout the United States. + +[10] Is not this a reason, among others, why the American business man +stays “at his desk” until a late age, when the average European has +gone into retirement a long time before? Work for the latter is only a +makeshift in order to enjoy life better. For the American it is life +itself. + +[11] J. Laumonnier, “Le Freudisme,” p. 8. Cf. _Ibid._, p. 113, an +essay on comparative psychology of peoples--based on Freudism. The +Anglo-Saxons are apparently distinguished by a particular aptitude for +inhibition and repression. + +[12] Since this was written there has been an important revival of +Hawthorne criticism like the chapter in Mrs. L. L. Hazard’s “The +Frontier in American Literature,” and the book of Lloyd Morris, “The +Rebellious Puritan: Portrait of Mr. Hawthorne”; “Nathaniel Hawthorne, +A Study in Solitude” by Herbert Gorman. These critical studies support +very well the interpretation of Hawthorne presented in this volume. + +[13] I take the liberty to coin this adjective in memory of Eusebia +Palladino, the famous medium. + +[14] Edmund Wilson in the _New Republic_, March 16, 1927. Sarcastic Mr. +Wilson sums up the spiritual failure and the sentimental starvation of +the typical American virgin in Henry James’ novels as follows: “She +goes on eating marrons glacés in a hotel parlor with her father and +sister, all her life,” a life fortunately short enough to bring to a +quick close this original form of Dantesque torture. + +[15] And yet Puritanism did not prevent Henry James from writing the +most sensible and most appreciative essay on Émile Zola in his “Notes +on Novelists.” + +[16] “The Old Maid,” “New Year’s Day,” “The Spark,” “False Dawn.” + +[17] “The Old Maid” and “New Year’s Day” by the same author go very +deep, too, in the analysis of subconscious emotions and their influence +on moral and social behavior. + +[18] “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub,” II. + +[19] “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub.” + +[20] “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub.” + +[21] “The Financier.” + +[22] “A Hoosier Holiday.” + +[23] “A Hoosier Holiday.” + +[24] This account of Dreiser’s Darwinian philosophy is being written +just at the moment when the great French statesman, Georges Clemenceau, +in the eighty-sixth year of his career, prints his “Au soir de la +pensée.” That this great man, who knew men and life as very few did, +can adhere to a philosophical creed literally in accord with that of +Theodore Dreiser as presented in these pages, may well lead the reader +to believe that, after all, there must be some truth in Darwinism as +a hypothesis to explain the essential features of our modern social +system. + +[25] A more awkward and clumsy way to express one’s self in writing +than this passage cannot be easily imagined, and there are, +unfortunately, too many passages like this one in Dreiser’s books. +This pseudo-scientific jargon could be endured in Haeckel but it is +difficult to be, at the same time, a bio-chemist and an artist. This +groping through mysticism, science or triviality, toward literary +expression seems to be the curse of the new American writers. + +[26] “A Hoosier Holiday.” + +[27] Did not the Catholic Church have something similar to say on the +subject, with its dogma of the Communion of Saints and the atonement +for the wicked by the good? + +[28] The lesson of the Dutch masters has been learned very early by +American realists. Thirty years ago, in his preface to “A Hoosier +Schoolmaster,” Edward Eggleston attributed his vocation as a novelist +to the reading of Taine’s book on Dutch painters. + +[29] This theory of conscience can prepare the reader for Dreiser’s +views on crime and the criminal in “An American Tragedy.” It took +bio-chemistry a long time to become a substitute for the Puritan +doctrine of responsibility in the American novel. The first step in +this direction after that of Hawthorne was taken by Oliver Wendell +Holmes in the sixteenth chapter of “Elsie Venner.” There, good Dr. +Holmes mobilized a college professor to demonstrate “the limitations +of human responsibilities” from a scientific standpoint and present +the criminal as a sick person not to be hanged or electrocuted, but +preached to and cured, if possible, if not pensioned. + +[30] The French philosopher and historian, M. Eugene Seillères, renewed +entirely the study of romanticism in Europe by viewing it as what he +calls _l’impérialisme mystique_, the imperialistic tendency toward +individual supremacy. If we applied his definition to America, this +country would stand as essentially unromantic, _i.e._, as the one which +gives the individual the least chance for self-expansion beyond certain +set limits. Hence the triumph of realism and middle-class standards in +American literature. In the last fifteen or twenty years, on the other +hand, the “revolt against the village” may well be interpreted as the +sign of a new romantic upheaval among us, if we accept Mr. Seillères’ +definitions. + +[31] “Main Street.” + +[32] _Ibid._ + +[33] Margaret Fuller in her “Memoirs” has told similar experiences, as +when she thought herself to be a whirling dervish and fell inanimate on +the floor after performing like one of them. + +[34] Let me refer the reader for instance to Jim Blausser’s speech to +his countrymen assembled to try to “boost” Gopher Prairie, and Doctor +Pickerbaugh’s orations in “Arrowsmith.” + +[35] Let the reader turn to “Tar” in particular for a vivid impression +of Anderson’s primitivism. Beauty and the Beast fight there at close +hand. One marvels how a would-be artist could save his soul from +disgrace out of such a muddy and zoölogical chaos. + +[36] The “dance before the mirror,” as the French playwright François +de Curel called it. + +[37] In fact very little respect of any sort. For the desecration in +particular of the myth of birth, I refer the reader to the orgiastic +chapters in “Tar,” contrasting the birth of the little pigs with that +of a human being. The scene is almost epic in its coarse nakedness. + +[38] “A Story Teller’s Story.” + +[39] Anderson has told her story in “Tar.” + +[40] A lesson which Anderson, as some of his critics tell, probably +learned from Gertrude Stein, a virtuoso of the suggestive language to +an extreme which the disciple has not yet followed, fortunately for us. +Miss Stein’s story of an American family is a quarry where many curious +gravels can be found, but no statues. + +[41] Stephane Mallarmé, a pioneer of modern æsthetics, was himself +a victim of a similar spell. At the end of his career he replaced +inspiration by throwing haphazard words in black on white. He +originated a new process of composition in which words produced their +effect by sheer magic, like those Japanese paper-balls which blossom +out into a display of flowers when placed in a glass of water. + +[42] Is not this proletarian appeal the main sign of difference between +the old and the new order of things in American literature? Passing +from William Dean Howells to Sherwood Anderson is like descending the +social ladder several rungs. No more well-to-do bourgeois, Laphams or +Kentons. Now Middle Western literature takes us down to the ground +floor and sometimes to the basement of democracy. + +[43] In French _les refoulés_. + +[44] This celebrated moving picture from the German studios has lately +put psychoanalysis on the screen and made it intelligible to the +masses. “Winesburg, Ohio” is not the only book of its kind which gives +a literary rendering to Freudism. It is contemporary of and well in +keeping with Pirandello’s plays, Eugene O’Neill’s drama and the newest +French plays by Lenormand, Sarment, Cromelynck, and others. + +[45] _L’énergie américaine, l’énergie anglo-saxonne_, such was for the +last half a century the slogan of almost all the French travelers to +the United States. Did not a French consul write, a few years before +the War, a book called “La supériorité des Anglo-Saxons,” based on +the same views? These critics knew only the surface of city life in +America. They ignored Winesburg and, of course, had not read Sherwood +Anderson. Decadence or, as Max Nordau called it in a sensational book +“Degeneracy,” has become a current topic in the books of the younger +American writers. Most of them could be inscribed with George Cabot +Lodge’s saying that: “We are a dying race, as every race must be of +which the men are, as men and not accumulators, third rate.” Such a +statement certainly calls for a serious qualification but it may prove +useful as a “damper” against the professional panegyrists abroad and +the megalomaniacs at home. + +[46] The part played by drunkenness in recent American fiction is +appalling. In the good old days drinking used to be poetic and it was +still Horatian in the way the late Barrett Wendell presented it in a +famous essay. Since prohibition, it has become a narcotic and a dope. +The triumph of drunkenness as a _deus ex machina_ in modern American +literature will be found in Eugene O’Neill’s plays, although the fact +that we pass our time on his stage mostly among sailors, may be taken +as an extenuating circumstance. + +[47] Eugene O’Neill, in “Emperor Jones,” succeeded in the _tour de +force_ of staging a continuous monologue, but he was clever enough +to use a tom-tom for a diversion from beginning to end. We miss this +diversion in “Many Marriages.” + +[48] “Many Marriages,” 217. + +[49] From Rousseau to jazz seems a very long way, and yet does not the +modern American, so fond of dancing to the tune of a Paul Whiteman +orchestra, in some gorgeous palace, unconsciously pay homage to the +primitive instincts so dear to the author of “Dark Laughter”? What a +piquant contrast, not only in shade but in ideals, that both the black +man and the Puritan should live within the same frontiers and that +the latter should borrow from the former one of his favorite forms of +self-expression. + +[50] Hamlin Garland, in his “Crumbling Idols” (1894) frankly put the +case of realism _versus_ sentimentalism before the public. He quoted +Mistral and the French Felibres, as well as Taine and the critic Veron +in support of his plea for what he called _provincialism_. Realism +triumphed in American fiction until Mrs. Wharton published her article +on “The Great American Novel” in the _Yale Review_ for July, 1927. +She protested against what she called the “twelve-mile limit” and the +narrow horizons of “the village pump.” That the “revolt against the +village” will lead to an entire change of orientation in present-day +American fiction and possibly to a new flight “beyond the horizon” in +the next few years may soon become an easy and necessary prophecy. + +[51] Let me refer the reader on this point to “The Outlook for American +Prose” by Joseph Warren Beach (The University of Chicago Press). + +[52] And needless to say, in an entirely different spirit from the +“Connecticut Yankee” by Mark Twain, who showed himself a gross +Philistine in regard to medieval lore. + +[53] Author of “La Vie secrète,” “Les Choses Voient,” etc. + +[54] We owe that expression to Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, a much talented +novelist and a specialist of women’s psychology in the United States. + +[55] In her latest short novel, “My Mortal Enemy,” Miss Cather has +brought the tragedy of moral repression to its most crucial point. She +tells the story of a woman who was looked upon as a rather peevish and +vain person by those who knew her and who, at the end, frees her truest +self in a pathetic prayer before going to die alone on a cliff above +the sea. + +[56] This “later realism” has been studied through modern English +fiction by Professor W. L. Myers in his book “The Later Realism” +(Chicago University Press), a masterpiece of searching criticism. + +[57] In his novel called “What Happens” John Herrman gives us a +pitiless and depressing document about the habits of college students +of both sexes. If this be a faithful painting, American youth would +then seem to have but two ideals--Vice and Alcohol. I leave the full +responsibility of this verdict to the author. A similar, but more +optimistic and moralizing representation, will be found in Mr. Percy +Marks’ novel, “The Plastic Age,” The Century Company, New York. + +[58] Mr. Burton Rascoe. + +[59] See in Chapter II my exposé of “behaviorism.” + +[60] Mr. Ernest Boyd in his “Portraits Real and Imaginary.” + +[61] To which we should add his amusing “Kora in Hell.” + +[62] The advent of “flamboyant” will be found in the books of Messrs. +Carl van Vechten, Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway who take their +revenge on dullness with firecrackers, bull fights and champagne. Out +of the gloom of realistic fiction the sun rises beyond the horizon of +the “village pump” through the pages of “Firecrackers,” “The Great +Gatsby,” and Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” The return to art for +art’s sake may free the American novel from the shackles of pessimism. +Let us hope so. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78461 *** |