Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Art
MARCH, 1914
A Letter . John Margaret Arthur Galsworthy C. Anderson Davison Fiche 3 5 5 8 10 11 13 14 18 23 25 32 38 29 34 24 42 . . . . 20 43
" T h e Dark F l o w e r " and the " M o r a l i s t e " . Five Japanese Prints A Remarkable Nietzschean Drama The Lost Joy Paderewski and the N e w Gods
DeWitt
The Major Symphony The Prophet of a N e w Culture H o w a Little Girl Danced The N e w Note Rahel Varnhagen: Feminist Tagore as a Dynamic The Meaning of Bergsonism Rupert Brooke's Poetry Ethel Sidgwick's "Succession" Letters of William Vaughn Moody Emerson's Journals The Critics' Critic N e w Y o r k Letter
George Burman Foster Nicholas Vachel Lindsay Anderson Currey Soule Jones
Sherwood
Volume 1 Number 1
copyright. 1914.
by
2$
Margaret
C.
Anderson
Second Nights
By A R T H U R R U H L , author of
' ' The Other A m e r i c a n s , ' ' etc. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.64 A p e r f e c t l y c h a r m i n g chron icle o f the chief features and phases o f the metropolitan theater within the p a s t f e w years. T h e p o i n t o f view is wholly unprofessional, and the text, unweighted b y the re sponsibilities o f the first-night critic, is intimate and familiar.
Illustrated, age
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T h i s is the continuation o f the account, in " A Small B o y and Others," o f the early years o f W i l l i a m and H e n r y J a m e s and their brothers, with much a b o u t their father and their friends. The story o f the life in Switzerland and Geneva, and later on in N e w p o r t and Cambridge, tells n o t o n l y their o w n experiences b u t a g r e a t deal a b o u t such men as J o h n LaFarge, Hunt, Professor Nor ton, P r o f e s s o r Childs, and Ralph W a l d o Emerson, who w a s a close friend o f H e n r y James, Senior. T h e description o f the Civil W a r time and o f W i l k i n son J a m e s ' s experiences with Colonel S h a w ' s colored regi ment are particularly interest i n g . T h e illustrations are f r o m drawings made b y William J a m e s in the early p a r t o f his career when he was studying t o b e a painter.
With a Biographical and Critical Introduction by Edith Wharton. Translated by A. C. Bahlmann. $1.00 net; postage extra This love story o f Swiss peas ant l i f e w h o s e title conveys the character o f its plotis generally regarded as the finest and most representative pro duction o f the great Swiss novelist. B u t i t has a still further element o f interest b e y o n d that which necessarily attaches to so fine a p i e c e o f writing-the singularly modern spirit which actuates the char acters and inspires the writer.
The Fugitive:
A Play in Four Acts
By JOHN GALSWORTHY
60 cents net;
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S e c o n d Series
Shallow Soil
By KNUT HAMSUN
T h i s is the t r a g i c story o f a woman w h o tries t o escape from the b o n d a g e o f social con ventions. Clare, the heroine, strikes the key-note o f the whole p l a y when, in the last act, she says t o the y o u n g man she has never seen b e f o r e : " Y o u see: I ' m t o o fine, a n d not fine e n o u g h ! M y best friend said that. T o o fine, and n o t fine enough. I c o u l d n ' t b e a saint a n d martyr, and I w o u l d n ' t b e a soulless doll Neither one thing nor the o t h e r t h a t ' s the t r a g e d y . " I t has a deep significance when taken in connection with the feminist m o v e m e n t o f to day.
Translated from the Norwe gian by Carl Chr. Hyllested $1.35 net; postage extra Introduces t o the Englishspeaking world a writer already a classic not only in his own country b u t throughout conti nental E u r o p e . The publication o f " S h a l l o w S o i l " is a c c o r d i n g l y a literary event o f the first magnitude in the sphere o f fiction. H a m s u n i s the greatest living Scandina vian novelist and his work alone justifies his fame. I t is a social picture o f Christiania, and in deed o f generally modern life.
" T h e New System" " T h e Gauntlet" " B e y o n d Our P o w e r " Translated from the Norwe gian, with an Introduction, by Edwin BjrJcman. Front ispiece. $1.50 net; by mail $1.65
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' ' The entire v o l u m e shows clearness o f thought, careful analysis o f the t o p i c s discussed and a f a c i l i t y o f expression that is seldom f o u n d in b o o k s written b y men o f action rather than w o r d s . I t s perusal will r e p a y any one o f c u l t u r e . " The American Architect.
T H E L I T T L E REVIEW
M A R C H , 1914
Announcement
"The realm o f art is p r o d i g i o u s ; next to life itself the vastest realm o f m a n ' s e x p e r i e n c e . "
P P R E C I A T I O N has its outlet in art ; and art ( t o complete the circle and the figure) has its source in owes its whole current to appreciation. That is, the tides o f art would cease to ebb and flow were it not f o r the sun and moon o f appreciation. This function o f the sun and moon is known as criticism. But criticism as an art has not flourished in this coun try. W e live t o o swiftly to have time to be appreciative ; and criticism, after all, has only one synonym : appreciation. In a world whose high splendor is our chief preoccupation the quality o f our appreciation is the important thing. Life is a glorious performance: quite apart from its setting, in spite of the kind o f " part " one gets, everybody is given at least his chance to act. We may do our simple best with the roles we receive : we may change our " lines " if we're inventive enough to think of something better; we may alter our " b u s i n e s s " to get our personalities across more effectively : or we may boldly accost the stage manager, hand back the part he'd cast us for, and prove our right to be starred. T h e player who merely holds madame's cloak may do it with dignity and g r a c e ; and he who changes his role, with a fine freedom and courage, discovers that he's not acting but living his part ! For this
reason we feel that we needn't be accused o f an unthinking " all's-right-with-thew o r l d " attitude when we assert that life is glorious. And close to Life so close, from our point o f view, that it keeps treading on Life's heels is this eager, panting Art who shows us the wonder o f the way as we rush along. W e may as well acknowledge right here that we've never had a friend ( e x c e p t in one or two rare instances) who hasn't shaken his head at us paternally about this atti tude toward art. " It's purely transi tional," he says, tolerantly ; " life is so much more interesting, you see, that you're bound to substitute people for art, eventually. It really doesn't matter so much that Alice Meynell wrote ' Renouncement ' as that Mrs. Jones next d o o r has left her husband." Well, he's w r o n g ; at least, he can't speak for us. Wells said to save the kitten and let the Mona Lisa burn ; who would con sider anything else? W e think it's rather silly in our paternal friend to argue with us so heatedly-beside the point ! It's not a question as to which is more important " Renouncement " or Mrs. Jones. W e ' r e merely trying to say that we're intensely interested in Mrs. Jones, but that Mrs. Meynell has made our lives more wonderful permanently.
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Feminism? A clear-thinking mag azine can have o n l y one a t t i t u d e ; the degree of ours is a r d e n t ! F i n a l l y , since T H E L I T T L E R E V I E W , which is neither d i r e c t l y n o r i n d i r e c t l y connected i n a n y way w i t h any o r g a n i z a t i o n , society, c o m p a n y , cult or move ment, is the personal enterprise o f the editor, i t shall enjoy that untrammelled l i b e r t y which is the life o f A r t . A n d now that we've made o u r f o r m a l bow we may say confidentially that w e take a certain j o y o u s p r i d e i n confessing o u r y o u t h , our p e r f e c t l y inexpressible enthusiasm, a n d our courage i n the face o f a serious u n d e r t a k i n g ; f o r those qualities mean freshness, reverence, a n d v i c t o r y ! A t least we have g o t to the age when we realize that a l l b e a u t i f u l things make a place f o r themselves sooner or later i n the w o r l d . A n d w e hope to be v e r y b e a u t i f u l ! I f you've ever read p o e t r y w i t h a f e e l i n g that it was y o u r r e l i g i o n , y o u r v e r y l i f e ; i f y o u ' v e ever come suddenly u p o n the whiteness o f a Venus i n a d i m , deep r o o m ; i f y o u ' v e ever felt music r e p l a c i n g y o u r shabby soul w i t h a new one o f s h i n i n g g o l d ; i f , i n the early m o r n i n g , y o u ' v e Watched a b i r d w i t h g r e a t white w i n g s fly f r o m the edge o f the sea s t r a i g h t u p into the rose-colored sun i f these things have happened to y o u a n d continue to h a p p e n t i l l y o u ' r e left quite speechless w i t h the wonder o f it a l l , then y o u ' l l understand our hope to b r i n g them nearer to the common e x perience of the people who read us.
T H E L I T T L E R E V I E W means to reflect this attitude t o w a r d life and art. Its ambitious aim is to produce criticism o f books, music, art, drama, and life that shall be fresh a n d constructive, a n d i n t e l l i g e n t f r o m the artist's p o i n t o f view. F o r the instinct o f the artist to distrust c r i t i c i s m is as well founded as the mother's t o w a r d the sterile woman. M o r e so, p e r h a p s ; f o r a l l women have some sort o f instinct f o r motherhood, a n d a l l critics haven't a n instinct f o r art. C r i t i c i s m t h a t is creative t h a t is o u r h i g h g o a l . A n d criticism is never a merely interpretative f u n c t i o n ; i t is c r e a t i o n : i t gives b i r t h ! It's not neces sary to cite the time-worn i l l u s t r a t i o n o f D a V i n c i a n d P a t e r to prove i t .
B o o k s register the ideas o f an a g e ; this is perhaps their chief claim to i m mortality. B u t m u c h that passes f o r criticism ignores this aspect o f the case and deals merely w i t h a question o f l i t erary values. T o be r e a l l y interpretative let alone c r e a t i v e - c r i t i c i s m must be a blend o f p h i l o s o p h y and p o e t r y . We shall t r y v e r y h a r d to achieve this diffi cult combination. A l s o , we mean to p r i n t articles, poems, stories that seem to us definitely interesting, or to use a much-abused adjective v i t a l . O u r p o i n t o f view shall not be r e s t r i c t i v e ; we m a y present the several j u d g m e n t s o f o u r v a r i o u s enthusiastic contributors on one subject i n the same issue. T h e net effect we hope w i l l be s t i m u l a t i n g and what we like to call releasing.
The more I see of academicism, the more I distrust it. I f I had approached painting as I have approached book-writing and music, that is to say, by beginning at once to do what I wanted . . . I should have been a l l right.
Poetry is i n Nature just as much as carbon is.Emerson's Journals (1856-1863). L i f e is like music; i t must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.The
Butler.
Note-Boohs
of Samuel
Butler.
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23, 1 9 1 4 .
Y o u ask me to bid your magazine g o o d speed ; and so far as I have any right, I do indeed. It seems you are setting out to watch the street o f Life from a high balcony, where at all events the air should be fresh and sunrise some times visible. I hope y o u will decide to sleep out there under the stars, for what kills most literary effort is the hothouse air o f temples, clubs, and coteries, that, never changed, breeds in us by turn febrility and torpor. Enthusiasms are more convincing from those who have not told their loves t o o often. And criticism more poignant from one who has been u p at dawn, seen for himself and put down his impression before he goes on 'Change. There is a saying o f de Maupassant about a writer sitting down before an object until he has seen
it in the way that he alone can see it, seen it with the part o f him which makes him This man and not That. F o r the creative artist and the creative critic there is no rule, I think, so golden. A n d I did seem to notice in America that there was a g o o d deal o f space and not much time ; and that without t o o much danger o f becoming " Y o g i s " p e o p l e might perhaps sit down a little longer in front o f things than they seemed to do. But I noticed too a great energy and hope. These will be y o u r servants to carry through what will not, surely, be just an exploit or adventure, but a true and l o n g comradeship with effort that is worth befriending. So all g o o d fortune ! Very faithfully yours,
JOHN GALSWORTHY.
KIYONOBU SPEAKS
T h e actor on his little stage Struts with a mimic r a g e . Across my p a g e M y passion in his form shall tower from age to a g e . W h a t he so crudely dreams In vague and fitful gleams, T h e crowd esteems. W e l l ! let the future j u d g e , i f his or mine this seems This calm Titanic mould Stalking in colours bold F o l d upon fold This lord o f dark, this dream I dreamed o f o l d !
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MASANOBU
B Y OKUMURA
G a r b e d i n flowing folds o f l i g h t , A z u r e , emerald, rose, and white, W a t c h e s t t h o u across the n i g h t . C r o w n e d with splendor is thine h e a d : A l l the princes g r e a t and dead R o u n d t h y limbs t h e i r state have shed C a l m , immutable to stand G r a c i o u s head and poised handO'er the years that flow like sand.
III
PILLAR-PRINT B Y KIYOMITSU
A place f o r g i a n t heads to take t h e i r rest Seems her pale breast. H e r sweeping robe trails like the cloud a n d w i n d Storms leave behind. T h e ice o f the year, a n d its A p r i l i a n p a r t , Sleep i n her heart. W h e r e f o r e , small m a r v e l that her footsteps be L i k e strides o f D e s t i n y !
IV
PILLAR-PRINT B Y TOYONOBU
O l a d y o f the l o n g robes, the slow folds flowing L a d y o f the white breast, the d a r k and l o f t y head Dwells there any wonder, the way that t h o u art g o i n g O r goest thou t o w a r d the dead? So calm t h y solemn steps, so slow the l o n g lines sweeping O f garments pale and g h o s t l y , o f limbs as grave as sleep I know not i f t h o u , spectre, hast love o r death i n k e e p i n g , O r goest t o w a r d which deep. T h o u layest t h y robes aside with gesture large and flowing Is i t f o r love or sleep is i t f o r life o r death? I would m y feet m i g h t follow the p a t h that t h o u art g o i n g , . A n d t h y breath be m y breath.
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PILLAR-PRINT BY HARUNOBU
From an infinite distance, the ghostly music ! Few and slender the tones, o f delicate silver, As stars are broidered on the veil o f evening. . . . H e passes b y , the flute and the dreaming player Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast ; His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing. Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly music Returns in slender tones o f delicate silver, As stars are broidered on the veil o f evening.
B O O K that has beauty as it's given to few books to achieve it has been the innocent cause o f more ignorant, naive, and stupid condemnation than anything published for a long time. Even the English critics who usually avoid these shallows in several cases hit the rocks with awful force. A n d all because a man with the soul o f the old gods chose to tell, quite simply and with inexpressible beauty, the truth about an artist. The Dark Flower was everybody's opportunity to deepen his vision, but nearly everybody decided to look upon it as an emotional redundancy. Perhaps this doesn't d o some o f them justice: I believe a g o o d many o f them considered it positively dangerous ! M y quite spontaneous tribute to Galsworthy's Mark Lennan before I'd heard anyone discuss him was that here was a man a woman would be glad to trust her soul to. And, in view o f how silly it is f o r a woman to trust her soul to anyone but herself, I still insisted that one could do it with Mark Lennan : because he'd not take charge o f anyone's
soul ! his wife's least o f all. Of course, to love a man o f his sort would mean unhappiness ; but women who face life with any show o f bravery face unhappiness as part of the day's work. It remains to decide whether one will reach high and break a bone or two over something worth having, or play safe and take a pale j o y in one's unscarred condition. W i t h Mark Lennan a woman would have had la Browning her perfect moment; and such things are rare enough to pay well for, if necessary. All o f which is making a very personal issue o f The Dark Flower; but it's the kind o f book you've g o t to be personal about; y o u revise your list o f friends on a basis of their attitude toward Galsworthy. After I'd finished The Dark Flower and it had never occurred to my nave mind that anyone would disagree with me about it various persons began to tell me how wrong I was. Mark Lennan was a cad and a weakling decidedly the kind o f person to be kept out o f a g o o d novel. T h e very beauty o f the
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poetry o f prose writing ; there's an in evitability about its choice o f beautiful and simple words that makes them seem a part o f the nature they describe. F o r instance, to choose at random from a multitude o f exquisite things : " . . . under the stars o f this warm Southern night, burning its incense of trees and flowers" ; or, " A n d he sat for a l o n g time that evening under a large lime-tree on a knoll above the Serpentine. There was very little breeze, just enough to keep alive a kind o f whispering. W h a t if men and women, when they had lived their gusty lives, became trees! What if someone who had burned and ached were now spreading over him this leafy peace this blue-black shadow against the stars? Or were the stars, perhaps, the souls o f men and women escaped for ever from love and l o n g i n g ? . . . I f only for a moment he could desert his own heart, and rest with the trees and stars!" W i t h a single clause like " f o r ever part o f the stillness and the passion o f a summer night " Galsworthy gets effects that some poets need three or four verses for. In one place he defines f o r all time a Chopin mazurka as " a little dancing dirge o f summer" ; in another gives you with one stroke an impression o f his hero that it's impossible to f o r g e t : " H e looks as if he were seeing sands and lions." In the third place, Galsworthy's psy chology is profound impregnable. One simple characterization will serve to illustrate: he describes a man's face as having the candour o f one at heart a child " t h a t simple candour o f those who have never known how to seek ad ventures o f the mind, and have always sought adventures o f the b o d y . " A s to the lesson o f The Dark Flower its philosophy, its " m o r a l " I can only say that it hasn't any such thing; that is, while it's full to the brim o f philosophy, it doesn's attempt to force
book made it insidious, someone said; such art expended in defense o f immoral ity would soon tend to confuse our stand ards. Someone else remarked patroniz ingly : " Oh, The Dark Flower may be well done and all that, but personally I've always had a passion f o r the nor mal ! " But, most maddening o f all, I think, were those readers o f thrillers, o f sweet, sentimental stories those per sons who patronize comic opera exclu sively because they " see enough tragedy in life to avoid it in the theater" who asked earnestly : " But, after all, what's the use o f such books? W h a t possible good do they do? " On another p a g e o f this review such questions are answered with a poignancy I dare not compete with. I want to try, instead, to tell why The Dark Flower seems to me an altogether extraordinary piece o f work. In the first place, constructively. T h e story covers three episodes o f a man's love l i f e : Spring, with its awakening; Summer, with its deep passion ; and Autumn, with its desperate longing f o r another Spring. But the handling o f the episodes is so unepisodic that you feel y o u ' v e been given the man's whole life, day by day, from Oxford to that final g o i n g down the years sans youth, sans spring, sans beauty, sans passion ; sans everything save that " faint, glim mering light far out there beyond. . . ." This effect o f completeness is achieved, I think, by the remarkable in tensity o f the writing, by the clever (and by no means easy) method o f sometimes allowing the characters the author's pre rogative o f addressing the audience di rectly. H i g h l y subjective in everything that he does, Galsworthy has reached a climax o f subjectivity here: The Dark Flower is as personal in its medium as music. In the second place the great mat ter o f style. Every page shows the very
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a philosophy upon y o u . It offers y o u the truth about a human being and lets it g o at that which seems to be the manner o f not a few who have written greatly. F o r the other sort o f thing, g o to any second-rate novelist you happen to admire ; he'll give you characters who have a hard time o f it and tell you just where they're right and where they're wrong. I can see how y o u feel you're getting more for your money.
I can't help feeling that everything Galsworthy has done has had its special function in making The Dark Flower possible. T h e sociology o f Fraternity, the passionate pleading o f Justice and Strife, the incomparable emotional ex periments o f A Commentary, the intel lectuality o f The Patrician all these have contributed to the noble simplici ties and the noble beauty o f The Dark Flower.
T h e Garden
M y heart shall be thy garden. Come, m y own, Into thy g a r d e n ; thine b e h a p p y hours Among From root to my fairest thoughts, thine my tallest flowers, c r o w n i n g petal alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown U p to the sky enclosed, with all its showers. B u t ah, the birds, the b i r d s ! W h o shall build bowers T o keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.
For
as these come a n d g o , and quit our pine T o follow the sweet season, or, new-comers, Sing one song only from our alder-trees, heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine, F l i t to the silent world and other summers, W i t h w i n g s that dip b e y o n d the silver seas. Alice Meynell's Poems. (Charles S c r i b n e r ' s Sons.)
My
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A Remarkable Nietzschean
DEWITT Mr. Faust, C. WING b y A r t h u r Davison F i c k e .
Drama
( M i t c h e l l Kennerley, N e w Y o r k . )
H a v e y o u thought there could b e but a single Supreme? There can b e any number o f Supremes.Whitman.
R . F A U S T is the embodiment o f the Nietzschean attitude toward the universe. This characterization con sciously ignores the legendary Faust o f Goethe as having no vital kinship with his namesake. There is o f course a skeletal likeness one to the other, but the hero in M r . Ficke's drama is incarnated with modern flesh and endued with a supreme will. His unconquerable spirit is not that o f Goethe's Faust but o f Frederich Nietzsche. Incidentally and singularly it is the spirit o f Whitman. A n d these two men, more than any other two or twenty in the realm o f literature, represent the undying g o d Pan, or the spirit o f Youth. Nietzsche and W h i t man are the understanding comrades o f the young-hearted and open-minded. Mr. Faust's creator may have no con scious knowledge o f Whitman's poetry, which is a matter of no moment, but he has read Nietzsche, and that is moment o u s indispensable in relation to this splendid result o f white-heat intellection. I say intellection because Mr. Faust is not so much a work o f art as a remark able example o f reproduction. I know that, although the thought and feeling o f the work rise in places to the power o f an inspiration wholly personal to the author, never " Thus Spake Zarathu stra." F o r that is an original, authentic voice which, like everything else in nature, has no substitute or duplicate. I can fancy a strong, healthy, organ ically cultured y o u n g man, j u s t begin ning t o feel his way into the realities that lie outside the American cornbelt, by chance taking a peep into one o f
Nietzsche's great books, and, fascinated and quickened by that marvelously con tagious g o d , leaping to new heights o f his own manhood. I should guess that in this instance the y o u n g man, who happens to be a lawyer, thirty-one years old, living at Davenport, Ia., was tem porarily Christianized by bad luck, illness or something o f the sort, and in this extremity, kicked b y Nietzsche, experi enced the feeling o f personal adequacy to which M r . Faust gives utterance. Recovering himself, he avowed his own godhood, even to the last ditch ! A n d that is the triumphant Y o u t h the Nietzsche o f the thing. A day or two subsequent to the ap pearance o f M r . Ficke's book upon the market I had the pleasure o f hearing it read, with well-nigh perfect sympathy and appreciation, b y the foremost Nietz schean expositor in this country. Like other listeners I was amazed, charmed and aroused. W e r e these results refer able to the play alone or in part to the reader, or to both? T o what extent, I was compelled to ask, was the effect illusory or hypnotic? I had read some o f Ficke's verse, which had given no intimation o f anything in its author so heroically Nietzschean as Mr. Faust. I had consequently tabbed Ficke as p r o b ably a poetic possibility, provided he lived a dozen years in an involuntary hell, undergoing a new birth. Enter taining the doubts indicated by my ques tions, I read Mr. Faust to myself, trying it in my fashion by the trees, the stars and the lake. Subjected to this test the play did not have the ring and lift which
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I had heard and felt when it was read perhaps I should say given an added vitality by a Nietzschean philosopher. It now impressed me as an extraordinary tour de force, reaching in some o f its passages a species o f accidental trans Nietzscheanism. Written in blank verse, the superior quality o f which is admirably sustained, the style o f the drama is undeniably poetical, as Edwin Bjorkman, the editor o f Mr. Kennerley's Modern Drama Se ries, states in an interesting biograph ical sketch : but where there is so much consciousness o f w o r k m a n s h i p so much preoccupation with an imported idea instead of sweeping control by an inner, personal urge like that, f o r ex ample, which produced Thus Spake Zarathustra poetry is not to be ex pected. What surprises me is that, de spite this restriction, M r . Ficke strides upward in many lines to the borderland of the gods. In the first three acts he writes as one possessed - as an intellec tualist furiously interested in Amer icanizing, if y o u please, the racial implications o f the philosophy o f a superhumanity which will always be as sociated with the name o f his temporary master, Nietzsche. In these acts there is a deal o f amazing revealment o f insight ; o f aspiration for transcendent g o a l s ; o f the spiritual insatiability o f man. And there is a cold humor. Underneath the whole thing lies its own b y - p r o d u c t : social dynamite! I think that Mr. Ficke finished his play in three acts, but he added two more to make it five, I was about to say, but in the fifth he achieves a meas urable justification, for the last sentence, " T o u c h me across the dusk," is poetry the wonderful words o f the dying Faust, addressed to Midge, the only person who understood him. Near the middle o f the opening act, Faust, roused by an inquiring mind to
That is poetical ; it is cosmic in its feel ing. L o o k i n g at a bust o f Washington, he enviously no, compassionately remarks, . . . N o t a star
In all the vaults o r heaven could trouble y o u W i t h whisperings o f more transcendent goals.
A t this juncture Satan appears, gains recognition by recalling an incident in volving Faust with a blackmailing woman in a college during his youth, and thereafter tempts him into empty, unsatisfying paradises. In his wander ing and winding pilgrimage through the world Faust makes the footprints that we recognize as those o f our own human ity, seeking its way somewhither. H e is offered but rejects peace, happiness, salvation and all the rest o f their related consolations, knowing that none o f them could satisfy his restless heart. T o his uncomprehending friends he is lost, and Satan himself, to whom in such circum stances he is obviously resigned by society, fails to claim him. But Midge, the heroine, knew him; she could touch him across the dusk, which was his kind o f immortality. A n d so Faust, with a vague consciousness o f his own godhood, a sense o f his own supremacy, an un shakable faith in one thing himself passed from the earthly freedom of his will into the great release. It is altogether too early in the morn ing o f humanity to expect to see this play o r one like it on the stage. That it should be written by a y o u n g Amer ican and published b y a y o u n g English man is enough to satisfy those who would enjoy its presentation, and those to whom it would be Greek or " unpleas ant," whether they saw it or read it, must wait f o r its truth through their chil dren across the dusk!
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T h e Lost Joy
FLOYD DELL
H E R E was once a lady ( I forget her name) who said that love was f o r women one o f the most important things in the world. She made the re mark and let it g o at that. She did not write a book about it. I f she had con sidered it necessary she would doubtless have written such a book. Consider the possibility a book enti tled Woman and Love, a book p r o v i n g with logic and eloquence that woman ought to love, and that, unless she loved, the highest self-development was impos sible to her and to the race ! It is not entirely absurd. Such a b o o k might have been necessary. I f half o f all womankind, through some change in our social and ethical arrangements, re frained from love as something at once disagreeable and ungenteel, and if the other half loved under conditions disas trous to health and spirit, then there might have been need for a book preach ing to women the gospel o f love. It would have been time to urge that, hate ful as the conditions might be, love was f o r women, nevertheless, a g o o d thing, a fine thing, a wonderful and necessary thing. It would have been time to break down the prejudice which made one-half of womankind lead incomplete and futile lives, and to raise love itself to its proper dignity. Well, we are in a condition like that today, only it is not love, it is work that has lost its dignity in the lives o f women. It is not love, it is work from which one-half o f womankind refrains as from something at once disagreeable and un genteel, while the other half o f woman kind performs it under conditions disas trous to health and spirit.
There is need today f o r a book preach ing to women the gospel o f work. It is time to break down the prejudice which makes one-half o f womankind lead incomplete and futile, because idle, lives. W e need a book to show women what work should mean to them. A n d , curiously enough,"The book ex ists. It is Olive Schreiner's Woman and Labor. It is a wise book and a beautiful book. There are statistics in it, but there is eloquence naming on every page. It is a book o f the j o y and the significance o f work for women. W h e n Olive Schreiner says " w o r k , " she means it. She does not refer to the makeshifts which masquerade under the term o f " social usefulness." She means work done with the hands and the brain, work done f o r money, work that sets the individual free from dependence on any other individual. It is a theme worth all her eloquence. F o r work and love, and not either o f them alone, are the most important things in the world the supremest expressions o f individ ual life.
H . G . W e l l s on America
I came to A m e r i c a balancing between hope and skepticism. The European w o r l d is full o f the criticism o f A m e r i c a ; and, f o r the mat ter o f that, A m e r i c a , t o o , is full o f i t ; hostil ity and depreciation prevailovermuch; for, in spite o f rawness and vehemence and a scum o f blatant, o h ! quite asinine, folly, the United States o f A m e r i c a remains the greatest coun try in the world and the living hope o f man kind. I t is the supreme break with the old tra dition ; it is the freshest and most valiant beginning that has ever been made in human life. The Passionate Friends.
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I S H A L L keep always, as m y most unforgettable memory, the t h o u g h t of a certain afternoon d u r i n g Paderewski's t o u r this year when he walked quietly back across the stage, i n response to an encore, and p l a y e d Schumann's Warum. I t was somehow heart-breaking. I t was a more p o i g n a n t q u e s t i o n i n g to me, than A r n o l d ' s
"unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain Say, will it never h e a l ? "
N o t h i n g that I have ever heard or seen has g i v e n me so v i v i d a sense o f b e i n g in the presence o f an art that is i m mortal. I t seems to have become hideously " p o p u l a r " to love Paderewski. The critics w i l l tell y o u that it's only done in A m e r i c a ; that E u r o p e a n s have any number of idols they p u t before h i m ; and that we who persist i n c a l l i n g h i m " t h e g r e a t e s t " are simply under the spell o f an o l d h y p n o t i s m . T h e r e was a time, t h e y ' l l concede, when he came like a conqueror, r o y a l l y deserving the flowers we strewed. B u t now there's B a u e r , there's G o d o w s k y , and H o f m a n , and G a n s , and B u s o n i ! One local c r i t i c has even gone to the l e n g t h o f s a y i n g that since the A m e r i c a n p u b l i c has sat at the feet o f these men and learned sanity in piano p l a y i n g it has no enthusiasm f o r Paderewski's " n e u r o t i c , disordered, i n c o h e r e n t " m u s i c " h i s woeful e x a g gerations o f sentiment and hysterical r h a p s o d y . " I should say some u n p u b l i s h able things to that critic i f we should ever discuss the subject. T h e three most interesting human faces I know are Forbes-Robertson's, K r e i s l e r ' s , and Paderewski's. I n the E n g l i s h actor's there is a meeting o f
strength and s p i r i t u a l i t y ( n o t the anae mic " s p i r i t u a l i t y " o f certain new cults, but a q u a l i t y o f soul that makes him " a prince, a philosopher, a lover, a soldier, a sad humorist," a l l i n the limits o f one p e r s o n a l i t y ) that means utter nobility. I t can be as cold as a graven image, or as hot with f e e l i n g as a poet's. D e p t h u p o n depth o f subtlety p l a y s across it not the h y p n o t i c subtlety o f the O r i e n t a l ist, but the austere subtlety o f an E n g lish scholar and a great gentleman. I n Kreisler's there is a meeting o f strength and sensuousness that means utter fasci nation to the artist who would p a i n t h i m u t t e r revealment to the musician who would analyze his art. F o r the secret o f K r e i s l e r ' s personality and his music lies in that finely balanced combination o f qualities: a sensuousness that would be a little o v e r p o w e r i n g , a little d r u g g i n g , without the g i g a n t i c strength that seems to hold it i n leash. T h a t balance makes possible his little air of m i l i t a r y j a u n t i ness, o f sad V i e n n a g a y e t y ; it gives him that huge effect o f power that always makes me feel I ' m w a t c h i n g the k i n g of the forest stride t h r o u g h his k i n g d o m . You need never expect emotionalism from this m u s i c i a n ; he's too s t r o n g to give y o u a n y t h i n g but passion. In Paderewski's face there is a meeting o f strength and two other predominant qualities: sentience, I t h i n k , and suffer ing. It's difficult to express his great, interesting head in a series o f nouns; but there are some that come near to i t : mys t e r y , melancholy, weariness, a sort o f shattering s o r r o w ; always the sense o f s t r u g g l e and p a i n , and always the final releasement i n music. F o r while y o u can conceive a Forbes-Robertson away from the stage, and a K r e i s l e r apart from
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the t o p height by the mere fraction o f a mood, the simple lack o f a temperament ; or, as O. H e n r y might have explained it, b y the unfortunate encumbrance o f a forty-two-inch belt. Hofman has an im patience with his medium, apparently, that leaves his hearer unsatisfied with the piano ; while Paderewski, though he tran scends the instrument, does so because o f his love f o r the piano as a medium, and forces his hearer to agree with him that it's the supreme one. Godowsky forces things into the piano pushes them in and makes them stay there; Paderewski draws things out, always, and fills the world with them. I can think o f no comparison from which he doesn't emerge unscathed. I f I were a musical reactionary, this j u d g ment would have no value here; but I'm not. Classical perfection is no longer interesting ; Beethoven seems no longer to comprehend all music in fact, the people who have no rebellions about the sterility o f the old symphonies are quite beyond my range o f understanding. But Paderewski plays the old music in a new way, gives it such vitality o f meaning that y o u feel it's just been born or, better, perhaps, that its composers have been triumphantly revalued, rejustified in their claim for eternal life. His Beethoven is as full o f color as his Chopin ; and who, by the way, ever started the popular nonsense about D e Pachmann or anyone else being the supreme Chopin exponent? N o one has ever played Chopin like Paderewski; no one has ever made such simple, haunting melodies o f the nocturnes; no one has ever struck such ringing Polish music out o f the polonaises, or such wind swept cadences from the Berceuse; no one has ever played the Funeral March so like a cosmic procession - the mighty moving o f humanity from birth to death and new life; no one has ever so visual ized those " orchestras o f butterflies that
his violin, y o u can never f o r a moment think o f Paderewski without his piano. N o t that he's less o f a man, but that he's the most sensitized human instru ment that ever dedicated itself to an art. T o resort to the most overworked phrase in the language, Paderewski has a temperament. Somebody has said that no fat person ever possessed o n e ; and after you've speculated about this till y o u begin to wonder what temperament really is, y o u can come back to Paderew ski as the most adequate illustration. Ysaye is the best example I know o f the opposite. W h e n strength turns to fat . . . well, we'll not g o into that ; but to make my point and there's certainly nothing o f personal maliciousness in it it's necessary to reflect that obesity has some insidious influence upon artistic utterance. (Schumann-Heink is an art ist in the best meaning o f the word ; but no one ever talked o f her and tempera ment in the same breath, so she doesn't negate the issue.) But Ysaye's tepid, wingless, uninspired music his utterly sweet but fat music that appears to attract thousands o f people, is as lazily inadequate as its creator would be in a marathon. It's as though his visio n had dropped slowly away with every added pound o f avoirdupois. Or perhaps it's because vision has a fashion o f d r o p p i n g away with age. . . . Ah ! but Paderewski has the years, t o o , now, and his p l a y i n g is as virile, as flaming, as it ever was. A n artist with a temperament d o e s n ' t get old, any more than Peter Pan does. Paderew ski's furrowed face shows the artist's eternal striving ; his music shows his eter nal youth, his faithfulness to the vision that furnishes his answer to the eternal "Warum?" This is the secret o f Paderewski's white magic. He's still the supreme g o d ! Bauer plays perfectly within the rules exquisitely and powerfully and misses
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played to C h o p i n in the s u n . " I have still one great wish in the w o r l d : that sonic time I may hear P a d e rewski p l a y on a M a s o n and H a m l i n that piano of unutterable depth and richness. T h e fact that he's never used it is the one flaw i n his performances, f o r no other instrument that I've heard gives y o u the same sense o f d r o w n i n g in great waves o f warm sound. T h e com
bination would convince even the f o l lowers o f the new gods. B u t , old or new, and even on his cold Steinway, no one has ever d r a w n from the piano the same q u a l i t y o f golden tone or dared such s i m p l i c i t y o f s i n g i n g as Paderewski. T o p u t his genius into a sentence: no one has ever built so s t r o n g a bridge across the g u l f that yawns between vision and accomplishment.
T h e Major Symphony
GEORGE SOULE
R o u n d splendor o f the harp's entoned g o l d T h r o b b i n g beneath the p l e a d i n g violins T h a t h u n d r e d - c h o i r i n g voice that wins and wins T o over-filling s o n g ; the b r i g h t a n d bold C l a m o r o f t r u m p e t s ; 'cellos that enfold R i c h l y the flutes; a n d basses that like djinns T h u n d e r their clumsy threatening, as begins T h e oboe's mystic p l a i n t o f sorrows o l d : A r e these the s y m p h o n y ? N o , it is w i l l I n passion s t r i v i n g to surmount the w o r l d , G r o w i n g in sensuous dalliance, sudden whirled T o ecstasies o f s h i v e r i n g j o y , and still M a r c h i n g and mastering, s i n g i n g m i g h t i l y , Consummate when the silence makes it free.
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P R O F O U N D unrest tortures the heart o f the modern man. The world, slaughtering the innocents, is meaningless; life, bruised and bewil dered, is worthless such is the melan choly mood o f modernity. T o d a y life is a burden to many to whom it was once a j o y . Decadents, they call themselves, who rediscover the elements o f their most personal life in everything that is weary and ailing. W e are all more or less in fected with this weariness and ennui. T h e blows which the spirit experiences from o p p o s i n g sides today are so power ful that no one is in a position to endure them with equanimity. T h e forces resi dent within the soul no longer suffice to give support and stability to life. Hence our culture has lost faith in itself. Our civilization is played out. W h a t the Germans call Weltschmerz has come over us. Philosophers have fashioned it into systems ; singers, into song the sad but not sweet music o f humanity ; suffer ers all, into a sharp cry f o r redemption. Deniers o f the malady must have their eyes opened by physicians, scurrying around curatively in this humanity. First o f all, there are those who bor row their panacea from religion. T h e y demand a reform o f the ecclesiastical life according to the sense and spirit o f prim itive Christianity. T h e y propose to re cover the religion o f Jesus, and to find in it healing f o r all the diseases o f the times. But this remedy is so compli cated that it reveals rather than heals the whole disunity and distraction o f our present life. It was Tolstoi, in garb o f desert prophet, who would restore orig inal Christianity. H e preached a radical reversal o f our cultural life a monastic asceticism, a warfare against all life's
impulses, on whose development our cul ture is founded. A n d ecclesiastical lib erals would d o virtually the same thing when they try to extract from the relig ion o f Jesus a food that shall be pala table to modern taste, and then call their ragout, compounded according to their own recipe, " original " Christianity. There are other voices, noisier and more numerous. These hold Christianity in all its forms to be the hereditary evil o f humanity, and see the salvation o f the world only in a purification o f life from every Christian memory. Owing to the brisk international interchange o f ideas today, Buddhism has awakened a momen tary hope, as if from the religion o f faroff India a purer spiritual atmosphere might be wafted to us, in which we could convalesce from the Christian malady. N o w , what shall we say o f all these strivings to heal the hurt o f the modern mind ? All o f them have one adverse thing in common : T h e y would tear up an old tree by its roots, and put in its place another tree equally as old and equally as rotten. There is something reaction ary in all o f them. T h e y want to cure the present b y the past. It is precisely this that cannot be done. I f Christianity was once original, spontaneous, creative, it is so no more. W e cannot lead an age back to Jesus, which has grown out be yond him. A n d the Buddha-religion is no more youthful and life-giving than the Jesus-religion. It is indicative o f the depth o f the disgust and the extent o f the confusion on the part o f the man o f today that such a hoary thing as Bud dhism can make so great an impression upon him. A revived, renascent heathen ism, even as compared with Christianity,
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would mean a reactionary and outlived form o f life. That men o f moral en deavor and scientific vision could hope for a substitute f o r Christianity, a con quest over Christianity, in a rebirth o f paganism, is a new riddle of the Sphinx. One way only remains out o f the ab erration and dividedness of our present life: not backward, but forward! N o winning o f a religious view o f the world in any other way ! N o pursuit o f the tasks o f the moral life by those who seek a real part and place in the modern world, in any other way ! Hence, a man is coming to be leader a man who, as no other, embodies in himself all the pain and all the pleasure, all the sickness and all the convalescence, all the age and all the youth, o f our tumultuous and tortured times : Friedrich Nietzsche! I do not know how many o f you know the poet o f Zarathustra. But if y o u do not know him, if you have never even heard his name, yet y o u do know him, for a part o f him is in y o u r own heart and hope. I f y o u have ever thought seriously about yourself, if you have even tried to think seriously about your self, you have taken up into yourself a part o f Nietzsche as y o u have so thought. Even without your knowledge or inten tion, y o u have passed into the world o f thought f o r which the name o f Nietzsche stands. It has been only now and then, in quite significant turning points in human history, and only in the case of the rarest o f men, that such an influence has gone forth as from this man. Once in the horizon o f his power, and you are held there as by magic. A n d yet not in centuries has a name been so reviled and blasphemed as his. Anathematized from the pulpit, ridiculed from the stage, de molished by any champion o f blatant and blind bourgeoisie, refuted regularly by pedants, he is still Friedrich Nietzsche, and, unlike most preachers, his congre-
gation grows from year to year. News papers, a l w a y s sensitive to the pulse-beat o f mediocrity, tell us that " t h e man is dead " ; that he belongs to the past ; that he is already forgotten. But he is more alive, now that he is dead, than he was when he was living. Dead in the flesh, he is alive in the spirit, as is so often the case. Superficial misunderstandings, transient externals, regrettable excres c e n c e s these were interred with his bones. T h e real and true Nietzsche lives, and has the keys o f death and o f hell. W h o has the youth has the future and this is why the future belongs to Nietzsche ; f o r no contemporary so gath ers the youth under his shining banner. And it is because the moral seething o f our time, our struggle with questions o f the moral life, are recapitulated and epit omized in Nietzsche, that he stands out, like an Alpine apocalypse, as the new prophet o f our new day. T h e mysterious need o f a man to find himself in another, another in himself, as deep calls unto deep or star shines unto star, is met in the resources o f the great personality o f Nietzsche. The new day whose billows bear us afar began with doubt. First, a doubt of the Church and its divine authority. A violent, devastating storm swept over popular life. T h e storm was speedily exorcised. Again
' ' The sea o f faith W a s once, t o o , at the full, and round e a r t h ' s shore L a y like the f o l d s o f a b r i g h t girdle furled."
A new faith emerged from the old doubt, like sweet waters in a bitter sea, and kept man a living soul.
" T h e sea is calm t o n i g h t ; The tide is f u l l . "
But the calm proves to be treacherous. T h e tide o f the new faith now in the bible, and in the doctrine derived from
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morals-are not these perhaps a blun der o f history, an old hereditary woe with which humanity is weighted down? This doubt long and ominously ma turing throughout the spiritual evolu tion o f our new time finds its most radical, most conscious, and most elo quent expression in Friedrich Nietzsche. H e launches this doubt not only against all that has been believed and thought and done, but against all that men be lieve and think and do today. H e shakes every position which men have held to be unshakable. A n irresistible, diabolical curiosity impels him to transvalue all values with which men have reckoned, and to inquire whether they are values at all ; whether " g o o d " must not be called evil, " t r u t h " error. As Nietzsche ven tures upon this experiment o f his curios ity, as he advances farther and farther with it, suddenly he laughs with an ironic, uproarious laughter. The experi ment is a success ! In the new illumina tion all the colors o f life change. Light is dark, dark is light. W h a t men had appraised as f o o d , as medicine, evinced itself to be dangerous poison, miserably encompassing their doom. A n d since men believed that all the forces present, dying, poisoned culture, were resident in their " morals " and their " Christian ity," it was necessary to smash the tables o f these old values. In full conscious ness o f his calling as destroyer o f these old tables, Nietzsche called himself the immoralist, the anti-Christ. Morals and Christianity signified to him the most dangerous maladies with which men were suffering. H e considered it to be his high calling as savior to heal men o f these maladies. H e sprang into the breach as anti-Christ. Like Voltaire, he was the apostle and genius o f disrespect respectability was the only disgrace, popularity the only perdition. Nietzsche the Immoralist, Nietzsche the Antichrist ! Dare we write his name
T h e human spirit urged a new, mightier protest against the " It is written," which was said to put an end to all doubt. T h e new doubt, as free inquiry, as protestant science, flung down the gauntlet to the bible faith. N o p a g e of the sacred book remained untouched. Only one certainty sprang from this new doubt-the cer tainty that the sacred book was a human book. Therefore it had no right to rule over man. Man was its j u d g e ; it was not man's j u d g e . It must be measured by man's truth, man's conscience. H o w , now, should the timorous heart o f man be quieted in the presence o f this new doubt? A t once new props were offered him truth and the state. W h a t science recognized as " true," what mor als and bourgeoise customs and civil law sanctioned as " g o o d "- these were now proffered man, that he might brace up his tottering life thereby. " T r u s t the light o f science, and you shall indeed have the light o f life ; do what is ' g o o d , ' and y o u shall be crowned with the crown o f life." This was the watchword. Then there stirred in the womb o f present-day humanity the last, ultimate, uncanniest doubt. I f we doubt the Church, why not doubt the state, t o o ? I f we doubt faith, why not doubt science, t o o ? I f we doubt the bible, why not doubt reason, doubt knowledge, doubt morality? Even if what we call " true " be really true, can it make us h a p p y ? Can the men who have all the knowledge o f our time at their disposal, can the scholars, can the cultivated, really become fit leaders o f humanity through life's little day? Is not that which is called " g o o d " grievous impediment in our pilgrimage? Law,
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and name his writings without c a l l i n g down upon our much-pelted heads the wrath o f the gods? Does he not blas pheme what is sacred, and must we not, then, give him a wide berth? There are the f a m i l i a r words c o n c e r n i n g false prophets i n sheep's c l o t h i n g , but raven i n g wolves w i t h i n . Such wolves there are smooth, sleek men, paragons o f " v i r tue," and " m o r a l s , " and " f a i t h , " but r e v o l t i n g enough i n their inner rawness as soon as y o u get a glimpse o f their true disposition. Conversely, m i g h t there not be men who come to us i n wolves' c l o t h i n g , but whose hearts are tender and r i c h and intimate w i t h a pure and noble h u m a n i t y ? W e know such men. F r i e d rich Nietzsche was one o f them. H e was a true prophet. A l l his transvaluations dealt deadly blows at the o l d , false, manp o i s o n i n g prophetism. W h a t i f more morals matured i n this immoralist, more C h r i s t i a n i t y i n this a n t i - C h r i s t , more d i v i n i t y i n this atheist, than i n a l l the p r o nouncements of a l l those who today still are so swift to despise and damn what they do not understand? E v e n C h r i s t i a n i t y , at its o r i g i n , i n its y o u n g and heroic m i l i t a n c y , was not so amiable and harmless as we are wont to think. It, too, was born of the doubt o f that whole old c u l t u r e ; of the most r a d
ical protest a g a i n status quo. It, too, leagued with a l l the revolutionary spirits of h u m a n i t y . A n d it, too, revalued a l l the values o f " f a i t h " and " m o r a l s . " W h a t i f this new Nietzschean s p i r i t o f life's universal r e f o r m , this creative, f o r w a r d - s t r i v i n g genius o f h u m a n i t y , be once yet a g a i n embodiment and repre sentative o f life's essential element o f rejuvenescence and g r o w t h ? What if true prophets are always men o f Sturm und Drang, men o f divine discontent, fellow-conspirators with the Future? A n t i - C h r i s t s ? These are they who blas pheme the h o l y spirit o f h u m a n i t y . I m moralists? These are they who say that life is g o o d as i t is, and therefore should stay as it " i s " forever. F a i t h ? T h i s is directed, not to the past, but to the f u t u r e ; not to the certain, but to the uncertain. F a i t h is the venturesomeness o f m o r a l k n i g h t h o o d . Nietzsche was a K n i g h t o f the F u t u r e . W h y , then, should not a magazine o f the F u t u r e interpret Nietzsche the prophet o f a new culture? M a n as the g o a l , beauty as the f o r m , life as the law, eternity as the content o f our new d a y this is Nietzsche's message to the modern man. I n such an interpretation, M a n and Superman should be the subject o f the next article.
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Being a Reminiscence
of Certain Private
Theatricals
Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer Whose eyes have not looked On the feasts that are vain. I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Whose soul has no bond W i t h the beasts o f the plain: Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, W i t h foot like the snow And with step like the rain. Oh, thrice-painted dancer, Vaudeville dancer, Sad in y o u r spangles, W i t h soul all astrain : I know a dancer, I know a dancer, Whose laughter and weeping A r e spiritual gain ; A pure-hearted, high-hearted Maiden evangel With strength the dark cynical Earth to disdain. Flowers o f bright Broadway ! Y o u o f the chorus W h o sing in the hope Of forgetting your pain : I turn to a sister Of sainted Cecelia, A white bird escaping The earth's tangled skein ! T h e music o f God In her innermost brooding ! T h e whispering angels H e r footsteps sustain!
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Oh, proud Russian dancer: Praise f o r your dancing! N o clean human passion M y rhyme would arraign. Y o u dance f o r Apollo W i t h noble devotion : A high-cleansing revel T o make the heart sane. But Judith the dancer Prays to a spirit M o r e white than Apollo And all o f his train. I know a dancer W h o finds the true God-head ; W h o bends o'er a brazier In Heaven's clear plain. I know a dancer, I know a dancer, W h o lifts us toward peace From this Earth that is vain : Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer, With foot like the snow, And with step like the rain.
T h e Dream of the
The children awoke in their
Children
dreaming
W h i l e earth lay dewy and still: They followed the rill in its gleaming T o the heart-light o f the hill. F r o m their feet as they strayed in the m e a d o w I t led through caverned aisles, Filled with purple and green light and shadow F o r mystic miles on miles. From A. E.'s Collected Poems.
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O y o u read Arthur Guiterman's rhymed reviews? T h e y are not to be taken too seriously, o f course, though they are generally sane; but in the one on The Dark Flower he asks if such things don't tend to weaken our moral fiber ! W o w ! Probably Homer might be said to do the same t h i n g ; we'd better take it out o f the schools, hadn't we? There's an episode I recall about a fe male person named Helen, who was torn from her adoring husband, etc., etc. Y o u know I don't believe in weakening moral fiber, but beauty is beauty. A l l I could think of, in reading The Dark Flower, was Greek classics. D o y o u re member that exquisite thing ( is it Eurip ides?)
"This Cyprian things;
J o y t o revive or wasted youth repair, I ' l l n o t bedim the lovely flame in thee N o r sully the sad splendor that we wear. Great be the love, i f with the lover dies Our greatness past r e c a l l ; A n d nobler f o r the f a d i n g o f those eyes The w o r l d seen once f o r all."
Swinburne's
' ' F r o m too much love o f living, F r o m hope and fear set f r e e "
She is a million, million c h a n g i n g She brings more j o y than any g o d , She b r i n g s M o r e pain.
I cannot j u d g e h e r ; m a y it b e
Galsworthy's hero was just a Greek, swayed by Aphrodite. There's no ques tion o f morals. A n d besides, he behaved pretty well f o r a man !
T H E CASE OF R U P E R T B R O O K E
I can't share T H E L I T T L E R E V I E W ' S estimate of Rupert Brooke. I'm re minded immediately o f something I found not l o n g a g o by Herbert T r e n c h :
" C o m e , let us make love deathless, thou and I, Seeing that our f o o t i n g on the earth is brief, Seeing that her multitudes sweep out t o die M o c k i n g at all that passes their belief. F o r standard o f our love n o t theirs we take I f w e g o hence t o d a y Fill the high cup that is so soon to break W i t h richer wine than they.
I like better so far as the music o f it is concerned; and fully as well, perhaps, as far as ideas g o . There is something rather conscious and posing in M r . Trench's effort. A n d you see why I think o f him when I read Rupert Brooke. There is the same memento mori, the same hope lessness o f outlook. It seems a pity to me, when a man can write as well as Brooke does in The Hill and in that ex quisite sonnet beginning " Oh ! Death will find me, l o n g before I tire o f watch ing y o u , " that he should waste his time on stupid, unpleasant cynicisms like Wagner and that Channel Passage, in which he doesn't know which pain to choose nausea or memory. I believe an Englishman can't achieve just the right degree o f mockery and brutality necessary f o r such an effort. Take Heine, if y o u w i l l ( I ' m a Heine enthu siast) ; he could do it with supreme ar tistry. D o y o u remember the sea poems especially the one where he looks into the depths o f the sea, catches sight o f buried cities and sees his lost love ( " e i n armes, vergessenes K i n d " ) ? It finishes with the captain pulling him in by the heels, crying, " Doktor, sind Sie des Teufels?" Heine can touch filth and offer it to y o u , and y o u are rather amused as at a child. But English-
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men are t o o self-conscious for anything o f that sort. Y o u are shocked and ashamed when they try it, feeling in a way defiled yourself by reading. It irri tates me, and I wish M r . Brooke would stop it, right away. He's too worth while to waste himself.
T H E F E M I N I S T DISCUSSIONS
the one the writer o f this particular prov erb acclaims. I have heard it used as a text so often, and have had it grounded into the very framework of my being so consistently, that it seems almost strange and irreverent to regard it with an alien and critical eye. And yet just see what is expected o f the p o o r thing: She
Seeketh w o o l and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. Bringeth her f o o d from afar. Kiseth while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household ; Considereth a field, and buyeth i t ; with fruit o f her hands planteth a vineyard. H e r candle goeth not out b y night. the
D o you know the story o f the man, elected by some political pull to a j u d g e ship in Indiana, who, after listening to the argument for the plaintiff, refused to hear anything further. " T h a t feller wins," he said decisively. On being told that it was customary and necessary to hear the defendant's side also, he duly lis tened, with growing amazement. " D o n ' t it beat a l l ? " he said, pathetically, at the close ; " now the other feller wins." In much the same frame o f mind I read the articles that are appearing in the current magazines on the subject o f feminism and militancy. Edna Kenton's in The Century is the only one that is content to give one side o f the case. Decidedly, y o u will say on reading it, " That feller wins." The Atlantic prints an admirable article b y W . L . George on Feminist Intentions, and follows it hasti ly with a rebuttal by E . S. Martin (Much Ado About Women), fearing, I imagine, lest it would seem to be bow ing its venerable head before new, p r o fane altars. Life gets out a really excel lent suffrage number, sane and logical and reasonable, and has followed it u p ever since with all the flings it can collect against suffrage, militancy, or feminism in any form. A recent amusing instance o f this is a letter b y one Thomas H . Lipscomb, who signs himself, alack! A Modern Man, and adds that his name is legion. J u d g i n g b y the terror in the communication M r . Lipscomb's modern ity goes back as far as the Old Testa ment Proverbs, and the womanly ideal he so passionately upholds is in all respects
She
Layeth her hands t o the spindle; distaff. . . . and her
Maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
together with a few other airy trifles such as bearing and rearing children, I suppose. But most significant o f all
H e r husband is known in the gates where he sitteth a m o n g the elders o f the land.
I should think so indeed ! There seems to be little else left f o r him to d o . I can almost hear the writer smacking his lips over this description, which no doubt tallies closely with M r . Lipscomb's own notions. For all this she is to
Receive o f the fruit o f her own hands, her own works shall praise her. and
Possibly women have tired a little o f let ting their own works praise them and nothing else ! But I am taking the letter too seriously. T o g o back to The Atlantic, I find Mr. George, who is in full sympathy with the movement of which he writes, classifying the demands o f the feminists as follows : Economically, they intend to
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feminist movement is trying to bring them. It is men ! T h a t is why he is so particular to tell us o f the careful solici tude o f a father f o r his daughters. Men, right along, have procured all happiness for women; or, if not men exactly, at least a sort o f Zeit Geist I believe he calls it " necessity." A n d the p o o r de luded feminists are simply the little boys running along by the side o f the proces sion and hollering. T h e procession is made u p o f vague forces, " working now adays f o r the enlargement and better ment o f life f o r w o m e n " f o r c e s , he quaintly complains, that are " making things g o too fast their way already." So we must take all credit from Luther and K n o x and Calvin and the reformers of all times and give it to the Zeit Geist. T h e y , t o o , are little boys, I suppose, who ran along and hollered. A t least they hollered lustily and well, and the femi nists are in g o o d company. A n d the peroration every true w o man will appreciate this : " W h a t a hus band sees in forty years, maybe, o f the g o o d and bad o f life f o r a w o m a n ; . what a father sees in his daughters and the conditions o f modern life as they affect girls those are the things which count in forming or changing the con victions o f men about woman's errand in this current world." Well ! However far the Zeit Geist has progressed in other directions, it is plain that it has not made inroads on M r . Mar tin's consciousness o f the present state o f affairs. W h o has given men the power and right to decide about woman's er rand in the world? F o r lo ! these many years we have been letting husbands, fathers, and brothers decide f o r us just what it were best for us to d o ; and if the new idea has any significance at all it is just this: that we feel able to decide for ourselves what we most want and need. M . H . P.
open every occupation to women ; they intend to level the wages o f women ; in general, they wish to change the attitude o f those who regard women's present inferiority to men (they frankly admit that there is inferiority in many re spects) as inherent and insuperable, b y demonstrating that it is due merely t o l o n g lack o f thorough t r a i n i n g ( a n old friend, apparently, in a new dress!) T h e y wish also gradually to modify and change existing marriage laws so that they will be equally fair to both sexes. A careful re-reading o f M r . Martin's article fails to reveal much in the way o f counter argument to M r . George's forci ble appeal. There's a great deal o f courteous agreement and some rather g o o d satire, but against the specific counts o f the feminists' intentions M r . Martin raises no telling argument. W e hear that whereas fathers wish all earthly blessings for their daughters, mothers do not, as women are jealous o f women: also that mothers fear the modern woman on account o f their sons, f o r whom they in turn wish all possible g o o d : the mod ern woman will not make a g o o d wife ! Angels and ministers o f grace defend us ! In a double quality as daughter to a devoted and loving mother, and as a de voted and loving mother to a most pre cious daughter, I throw down my glove. I am sure M r . Martin has never acted in either o f these capacities, so precious little he knows about it ! Besides, I do want my son to have everything that the world provides in the way o f blessings and happiness, so I want him to have as a wife a thoroughly modern woman with an awakened soul and a high ideal, to finish the g o o d work in him which I have at least endeavored to begin. As I read further, however, the cat begins to poke a cautious head out o f the bag. W o m e n , M r . Martin argues, are not responsible for the blessings the
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H E new note in the craft o f writing is in danger, as are all new and beautiful things born into the world, o f being talked to death in the cradle. A l ready a cult o f the new has sprung up, and doddering old fellows, yellow with their sins, run here and there crying out that they are true prophets o f the new, just as, following last year's exhibit, every age-sick American painter began hastily to inject into his own work some thing clutched out o f the seething mass of new forms and new effects scrawled upon the canvases by the living y o u n g cubists and futurists. Confused by the voices, they raised also their voices, mul tiplying the din. Forgetting the soul o f the workman, they grasped at lines and solids, getting nothing. In the trade o f writing the so-called new note is as old as the world. Simply stated, it is a cry for the reinjection o f truth and honesty into the craft ; it is an appeal from the standards set up by money-making magazine and book pub lishers in Europe and America to the older, sweeter standards o f the craft it self ; it is the voice o f the new man, come into a new world, proclaiming his right to speak out o f the body and soul o f youth, rather than through the bodies and souls o f the master craftsmen who are gone. In all the world there is no such thing as an old sunrise, an old wind upon the cheeks, or an old kiss from the lips o f your beloved ; and in the craft o f writing there can be no such thing as age in the souls o f the y o u n g poets and novelists who demand for themselves the right to stand up and be counted among the sol diers o f the new. That there are such youths is brother to the fact that there
are ardent y o u n g cubists and futurists, anarchists, socialists, and feminists ; it is the promise o f a perpetual sweet new birth o f the world ; it is as a strong wind come out o f the virgin west. One does not talk o f his beloved even among the friends o f his beloved; and so the talk o f the new note in writing will be heard coming from the mouths o f the aged and from the lips o f oily ones who do not know o f what they talk, but run about in circles, making noise and clamor. D o not be confused by them. T h e y but follow the customs o f their kind. T h e y are the stript priests o f the falling tem ples, piling stone on stone to build a new temple, that they may exact tribute as before. Something has happened in the world of men. Old standards and old ideas tumble about our heads. In the dust and confusion o f the falling o f the timbers o f the temple many voices are raised. A m o n g the voices o f the old priests who weep are raised also the voices o f the many who cry, " L o o k at us ! W e are the new ! W e are the prophets ; follow us ! " Something has happened in the world o f men. Temples have been wrecked be fore only to be rebuilt, and destroying youth has danced only to become in turn a builder and in time a priest, muttering old words. Nothing in all o f this new is new except this that beside the youth dancing in the dust o f the falling tim bers is a maiden also dancing and p r o claiming herself. " W e will have a world not half new but all new ! " cry the youth and the maiden, dancing together. D o not be led aside by the many voices crying o f the new. Be ready to accept hardship f o r the sake o f y o u r craft in America that is craft love.
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S H A L L never forget how, at six teen, I read Stevenson's letters and thought them the most beautiful things in the world. I shall never forget simi lar experiences with Keats and Brown ing, and finally with Meredith ; ' and now comes another volume o f letters by the man who might be called the American Henley ( t h o u g h that only does him half justice) to keep one up at night and teach him unforgettable things. People have been saying that this collection doesn't represent the best letters M o o d y wrote. Certainly if he wrote more in teresting ones the world ought to be allowed to see them, f o r these are val uable enough to become an American tradition. T h e following is t y p i c a l :
To Daniel
DEAR DAN:
Gregory
Mason.
I have j u s t heard from your sister-in-law o f your e n f o r c e d furlough. I am n o t g o i n g t o help y o u curse y o u r luck, k n o w i n g y o u r native capabilities in that direction to b e p e r f e c t l y adequate, b u t m y Methodist training urges me to give y o u an epistolary hand-shake, the pur p o r t o f which is "Keep your sand." I could say other things, not utterly pharisaical. I could say what I have often said t o myself, with a rather reedy tremolo perhaps, b u t swell i n g sometimes into a respectable diapason. ' ' The dark cellar ripens the wine. ' ' A n d mean while, after o n e ' s eyes g e t used to the d i r t y light, and o n e ' s feet to the mildew, a cellar has its compensations. I have f o u n d beetles o f the most interesting proclivities, mice al together c o m r a d e l y and persuadable, and for gotten potatoes that sprouted toward the crack o f sunshine with a wan maiden grace not seen above. I d o n ' t want to pose as resourceful, b u t I have seen what I have seen. T h e metaphor is however happily inexact in your case, with M i l t o n to retire to and Cam b r i d g e humming melodiously on the horizon. I f y o u can only throttle y o u r Daemon, or make
him f o r g o e his leonine admonition ' ' A c c o m plish, " and roar y o u as any sucking dove the sweet vocable ' ' B e " y o u o u g h t to live. I have g o t mine trained to that, p a r d e e ! and his voice grows not untunable. I p i c k u p shreds o f c o m f o r t out o f this or that one o f G o d ' s ashbarrels. Y e s t e r d a y I was skating on a patch o f ice in the park, under a poverty stricken sky flying a pitiful r a g o f sunset. Some little muckers were g u y i n g a slim raw-boned Irish girl o f fifteen, who circled and darted under their banter with complete unconcern. She was in the fledgling stage, all legs and arms, tall and a d o r a b l y awkward, with a huge hat full o f rusty feathers, thin skirts tucked up a b o v e spindling ankles, and a g a y a p l o m b and swing in the b o d y that was ravishing. W e caught hands in midflight, and skated f o r an hour, almost alone and quite silent, while the r a g o f sunset rotted to pieces. I have had f e w sensa tions in life that I would exchange f o r the warmth o f her hand through the r a g g e d glove, and the pathetic curve o f the half-formed breast where the b a c k o f m y wrist touched her body. I came a w a y mystically shaken and elate. I t is thus the angels converse. She was something absolutely authentic, new, and inexpressible, something which only nature could mix f o r the h e a r t ' s intoxication, a com p o u n d o f ragamuffin, pal, mistress, nun, sister, harlequin, outcast, and b i r d o f G o d , with something else bafflingly suffused, something ridiculous and frail and savage and tender. W i t h a w o r l d offering such rencontres, such aery strifes and adventures, who would not live a thousand years stone d u m b ? I would, f o r one until m y m o o d changes and I come to think on the shut lid and granite lip o f him who has h a d done with sunsets and skating, and has turned away his f a c e from all manner o f Irish. I am supported b y a conviction that at an auc tion on the steps o f the great white throne, I should b r i n g more in the first m o o d than the second b y several harps and a stray dulci mer. I thoroughly envy y o u y o u r stay at Milton wrist, Daemon, and all. Y o u must send me a lengthy account o f the state o f things at Cam bridge. . . . I f the wrist f o r b i d s writing, employ a typewriter o f the most fashionable tint I will p a y all expenses and stand the
The
breakage. I stipulate that y o u shall blonds, however, they are fragile.
WILLIAM VAUGHN
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MOODY.
There are over a hundred letters here, written to Mr. Mason, Percy M a c K a y e , Richard Watson Gilder, Josephine Pres ton Peabody, Edmund Clarence Sted man, Henry Miller, Robert Morss Lovett, Ferdinand Schevill, and others ; and every one o f them shows M o o d y ' s remarkable gift o f metaphor, his con stant striving to " w i n for language some new swiftness, some rare compres sion," his belief in the positive accept ance o f life, his paganism, " d e e p l y
spiritual, and as far as possible removed from the sensualism the thoughtless have found in it." Mr. Mason furnishes an introduction that is masterly ; and the first and final drafts o f Heart's Wild Flower are included, proving vividly how this poet disciplined his rich imag inative gifts, training away from a na tive tendency to the rococo to the high, pure dignity that marks his finished verse. This volume is invaluable. Cer tainly with two such authentic voices to boast o f as Whitman's and M o o d y ' s this y o u n g country o f ours has reason to be proud. M . C. A .
O R certain distinctive women Rahel Varnhagen lived ; f o r the same women Ellen K e y has written this ap preciation o f Rahel. B y the woman to whom fine freedom o f living and fear lessness and directness o f thought are the only possible terms on which she may deal with the social situation in which she finds herself this book will be read and re-read, and pencil-marked along the margins o f its pages. The rare woman, here and there, who worships simple, direct thinking (which, after all, takes the most c o u r a g e ) will know how to value Rahel. Always she thought truthfully. The woman who has been filled with j o y f u l new amaze ment on finding that her only reliance is on herself that she may not depend upon this person or that convention to preserve her happiness will know how to value her. Just so far as any woman o f today has become interested in her
own thoughts and work, is the originator o f ideas, and knows the j o y o f making or doing something that more than all else in the world she wants to make or d o , so far she is nearer to becoming o f the size o f this great woman. Such a woman will share with Rahel Varnhagen the certainty that higher morality is reached only through higher liberty ; such a woman must demand, as did Rahel, periods o f that recuperative and strengthening solitude, both o f thought and mode o f living, which only the self-reliant and fearless can endure. She knows that she herself, not conven tion, must furnish the answer to ques tions o f right and wrong by earnest, free inquiry and by testing every experience. T h e acceptance o f no convention was inevitable to Rahel, as she thought o f it. She put it to the best o f scrutiny. W h a t value was there in it? It was not violat ing conventions which she set out to d o ,
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the important things in life made her detect at once those people and things that were original and valuable in them selves. " Rahel's most comprehensive signifi cance," writes Ellen K e y , " lay in aug menting the productiveness, humanity and culture o f her time by herself every where seeking and teaching others to seek the truth ; by everywhere encourag ing them to manifest their own culture; by imparting to others her profound way o f looking at religion, men and women, literature and art; by j u d g i n g everything according to its intrinsic value, not according to its deficiencies ; by everywhere understanding, because she loved, and g i v i n g life, because she believed in liberty." Think always, ceaselessly ! this was Rahel's cry. This, she said, is the only duty, the only happiness. T o a y o u n g friend she wrote, b e g g i n g that he keep p l o u g h i n g through things afresh, tell ing him that he " must always have the courage to hurt himself with questioning and doubts ; to destroy the most com fortable and beautiful edifice o f thought one that might have stood for life if honesty demands it." A n d so, having thought out things in the most utter freedom, unhampered by old preconcep tions, and finally unafraid o f the stark ness o f the truths which she faced, she let nothing prescribed be her unchal lenged guide or stand as a substitute f o r her own vigor and hardness o f think ing. This is why she said that she was revived by downright brutality, after being wearied by insincerity. A virtue, so called, had to give a very g o o d accounting o f itself to Rahel. She demanded that it answer a certain test before it could be called a piece o f g o o d ness. F o r instance, in many cases she recognized in " performance o f duty " mere acquiescence a laziness o f mind which does not bestir itself to ask what
but meeting them with a quiet, sincere inquiry o f the reason and truth they con tained. Rahel Varnhagen lived in Berlin a hundred years a g o and was probably the most beloved and much-visited woman o f those whose salons attracted the notable men o f the day Fichte, H e g e l , Prince Louis Ferdinand, Fouqu, the Hum boldts, the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, and other giants o f the time. Rahel was a woman the lamentable rarity o f them ! whose influence was not through her literary work (her letters to friends are all that we have o f her w r i t i n g ) , not through brilliancy o f speech alone, nor through her munificent patronage o f the artists and literary men o f her day (she was not rich, and we read o f the garret in which she entertained her friends), but through the richness o f her personal ity, the g l o w i n g warmth o f her sympa thy, her understanding, and the wisdom of her heart. A n d the value o f Rahel to us lies in the calm directness, the " innocence," as she herself calls it, o f her thinking. T o her went the acclaimed wise men o f the day f o r the comfort o f her fearlessness and simplicity o f thought upon their questions. She was said to be brilliant. She was not brilliant in the sense o f being learned, or o f being capable o f mere intellectual j u g g l e r y and fantastic adroitness o f thinking ; she was brilliant in the crystal clearness and the sure rapidity o f her thinking. T h e unex pectedness and strangeness o f the simple truth she spoke bewildered people. F o r this reason she could say, " I am as much alone o f my kind as the greatest mani festation here on earth. T h e greatest artist, philosopher, or poet is not above me." This passion for truth in her own thinking was the origin o f her social value. Its stimulus to others was imme diate, and her recognition through it o f
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right this duty has to impose itself. Patience to her was often lack o f cour age to seize upon a situation and change it to suit the imperative demand to ex press oneself. " T h e more I see and meditate upon the strivings o f this world," wrote Rahel, " the more insane it appears to me day by day not to live according to one's inmost heart. T o do so has such a bad name, because simulacra o f it are in circulation." O f these " simu lacra " we are familiar in every age the amazing antics o f certain self-styled " radicals," the unaccountable manifesta tions o f those who, while professing lib erality o f view, seem to have no standards o f values in their extravagances o f liv ing. Rahel could understand every nature except the insincere and unnat ural. While we mourn or exult over the eager efforts o f women in our day to evolve completely human personalities, it is interesting to read Rahel's sum ming-up o f the feminist movement: " Has it been proved by her organiza tion that a woman cannot think and ex press her ideas? I f such were the case, it would nevertheless be her duty to re new the attempt continually." "And how," exclaims Ellen K e y , " would Rahel have abhorred the tyrannical treatment o f each other's opinions, the cramping narrow-mindedness, the envious jostling, the petty importance o f nobodies, which the woman's cause now exhibits every where, since, from being a movement f o r liberty in great women's souls, like Rahel's own, it has become a movement o f leagues and unions, in which the small souls take the lead." Since it is reality and not appearance that alone could stand before Rahel's devastating scrutiny o f human things, and since to her the highest personal morality consisted in being true, coercive
marriage seemed to her the great social lie. H o w could one o f her simple clarity of thinking be anything but outraged by the vulgarities o f an average mar riage? " I s not an intimacy without charm or transport more indecent than ecstasy o f what kind so e v e r ? " she de mands. " Is not a state o f things in which truth, amenity, and innocence are impossible, to be rejected f o r these rea sons a l o n e ? " Of the evils in Europe she cries, " Slavery, war, marriage and they g o on wondering and patching and m e n d i n g ! " Rahel believed that in the existing institution o f marriage it was almost impossible to find a union in which full, clear truth and mutual love pre vailed. Of Rahel's nature, warm, richly exu berant with a healthy sensuousness and desire for sunlight, Jean Paul's letter to her gives us the essence. " Winged one in every sense " he wrote, " you treat life poetically and consequently life treats y o u in the same way. Y o u bring the lofty freedom o f poetry into the sphere o f reality, and expect to find again the same beauties here as there." Biographical facts are negligible here. Even comment on the interpretive in sight o f Ellen K e y seems not to be essen tial, though without it this book could not be. It is the personality o f Rahel V a m h a g e n that matters, and the influ ence o f that personality on the men o f her day. Rahel is distinctive as a challenger o f the worn-out social and ethical b a g g a g e that somehow, in all its shabbiness, has been reverently, with ritual and with authority, given into our keeping by those who were as oppressed by it as we in turn are expected to be. With the simplicity o f her questioning the hon esty o f these conventions, Rahel has made worship o f some o f them less inevitable.
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H E I N E s a i d : " I should wear a d o g collar i n s c r i b e d : ' I belong to F r a u Varnhagen.'" Rahel's power over the b r i l l i a n t minds o f her day l a y i n her own wonderful personality. She was unique, knew it and g l o r i e d i n it. She wrote to V a r n hagen, her husband and l o v e r : " Y o u w i l l not soon see m y like a g a i n . " She understood t h o r o u g h l y the limitations o f her s e x . " T h e y are so s u r p r i s i n g l y feeble," she s a y s ; " a l m o s t imbecile from lack o f coherence. T h e y lie, too, since they are often obliged to, and since the t r u t h demands intelligence." . . . " I know women: what is noble i n their com position keeps together s t u p i d i t y or mad ness." . . . A n d she speaks o f their " c l u m s y , terrible s t u p i d i t y i n l y i n g . " B u t , despite R a h e l ' s o p i n i o n o f women, or because o f her u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f their needs, she was a true feminist and looked toward their liberation t h r o u g h develop ment and self-expression. E l l e n K e y writes: " H o w R a h e l , w i t h her l u c i d i t y o f t h o u g h t , w o u l d have ex posed the modern superstition that it is in outward departments o f work that woman gives expression to her human ' i n d i v i d u a l i t y . ' She says b y true econ omy ' n a t u r e keeps woman nearer to the p l a n t ' ! T h i s ' e c o n o m y ' is easily under stood ; i t is because the tender life is woman's creation and because that life requires t r a n q u i l l i t y f o r its genesis and g r o w t h ; because a woman taken u p by the problems o f external life . . . no longer possesses the p s y c h o l o g i c a l q u a l ifications which are indispensable i n order that a child's soul may g r o w i n peace and j o y ; because, in other words, children
need mothers, not o n l y f o r their p h y s i c a l b i r t h but f o r their human b r i n g i n g - u p . R a h e l hits the v e r y center o f the s p i r i t u a l task o f motherhood when she says that i f she had a child she w o u l d help it to learn to listen to its own inmost e g o ; e v e r y t h i n g else she would sacrifice to this. . . . T h e progress o r r u i n o f humanity depends, i n R a h e l ' s p r o p h e t i c view, u p o n the capacity o f the mothers f o r p e r f o r m i n g their task." H o w R a h e l had listened to her own inmost ego is shown b y the f o l l o w i n g characterization b y E l l e n K e y . " R a h e l p r o b a b l y d i d not know a single date i n the h i s t o r y o f Greece, but she read H o m e r i n Voss's t r a n s l a t i o n ; it made her declare that ' t h e Odyssey seems to me so b e a u t i f u l that it is positively p a i n f u l , ' and she discovered that H o m e r is always great when he speaks o f water, as Goethe is when he speaks o f the stars. P r o b a b l y she could not enumerate the rivers o f S p a i n , but she knew Don Quixote. In a w o r d , she was the v e r y opposite o f the k i n d o f talent that passes b r i l l i a n t exam inations and is capable o f c a r r y i n g ' c o m pletely undigested sentences i n its head.' W h a t R a h e l could not t r a n s f o r m into blood o f her blood d i d not concern her at a l l . T h e r e was such an indestructible ' c o n n e c t i o n between her abilities,' such and intimate ' c o - o p e r a t i o n between her temperament and her intelligence,' that there was no room i n her f o r a l l the u n o r i g i n a l ballast o f w h i c h the views and opinions o f most other people are made u p : she could o n l y keep and o n l y give what was her o w n . " W h a t Rahel's power over her contem poraries was we m a y gather f r o m what
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they say o f her who was " Rahel and nothing more : " Heine describes her as " the most in spired woman in the universe." T . Mundt calls her " the sympathetic nerve o f the time." T h e Austrian dramatist, Grill parger, relates : " Varnhagen went home with me. A s we passed his house, it o c curred to him to introduce me to his wife, the afterwards so celebrated Rahel, o f whom I then knew nothing. I had been strolling about all day and felt tired to death, and was, therefore, heartily glad when we were told that Frau Varnhagen was not at home. But as we came down
the stairs, she met us and I submitted to my fate. But now the lady, elderly, perhaps never handsomer, shriveled by illness, reminding me rather o f a fairy, not to say a witch, began to talk, and I was altogether enchanted. M y weari ness disappeared, or perhaps, rather, gave way to intoxication. She talked and talked till nearly midnight, and I don't know whether they turned me out or whether I went away o f my own ac cord. Never in my life have I heard anyone talk more interestingly. Un fortunately it was near the end o f my stay, and I could not repeat the visit."
T h e unusual thing about Rupert Brooke the y o u n g Oxford don whose poetry is just finding its way in this country is that he has graduated from the French school without having taken a course in decadence. T h e result is a type o f English poetry minus those qualities we think o f as typical o f " the British mind " and plus those that stand as the highest expression o f the French spirit. There is nothing o f self-con scious reserve about M r . Brooke ; and yet it is not so obvious a quality as his frank, unashamed revealment that places him definitely with the French type. It is rather a matter o f form that quality o f saying a thing in the most economic way it can be said, o f finding the simple and the inevitable word. M r . Brooke stands very happily between a poet like Alfred Noyes, in whom one rarely finds that careful selection, and the esthetes whose a g o n y in that direction becomes
There are about eighteen words in this one sonnet chosen with infinite pains ; and yet the effect o f the whole is quite
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T h e simplicity o f that last line but what a picture it is! T h e important things about M r . Brooke, however and o f course this should have been said in the first para g r a p h are his sense o f life and his feeling for nature. Of the first it might be said that he is strong and radiant and sure and at the same time rever ently impotent. The Hill, which I like better than anything in this collection, will illustrate:
Breathless, Laughed grass. Y o u said, pass; W i n d , sun, and still, W h e n we are old, are old. . . we die A l l ' s over that is o u r s ; and life burns on T h r o u g h other lovers, other l i p s , " said I, " H e a r t o f m y heart, our heaven is n o w , is won ! ' ' " " A n d when earth remain, the birds sing "Through g l o r y and ecstasy w e we flung us on the windy hill, in the sun, and kissed the lovely
unlabored an effect o f spontaneity re duced to its simplest terms. Perhaps the point can be made more emphatically by a miscellaneous quota tion o f single lines, because the p o i g nancy o f Rupert Brooke's phrasing leaves me in a torment o f inexpressive ness, forced to quote him rather than talk about him. Here are a f e w : " L i k e hills at noon or sunlight on a tree " ; " And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky ; " " T h e soft moan o f any grey-eyed lute-player " ; " Some gaunt eventual limit o f our light " ; " Red darkness o f the heart o f roses " ; " A n d long noon in the hot calm places " ; " M y wild sick blasphemous prayer " ; " Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming " ; " Against the black and muttering trees " ; " A n d quietness crept up the hill " ; " When y o u r swift hair is quiet in death " ; " S a v a g e forgotten drowsy h y m n s " ; " A n d dance as dust before the sun " ; " T h e swift whir o f terrible wings " ; " Like flies on the cold flesh " ; " Clear against the unheeding sky " ; " So high a beauty in the air " ; " Amazed with sorrow"; " H a g g a r d with virtue"; " Frozen smoke " ; " Mist-garlanded," and a thousand other things that some how have a fashion o f striking twelve. There's a l o n g poem about a fish, be ginning
In a cool curving world he lies
' ' W e are E a r t h ' s best, that learnt her here. L i f e is our cry. said ;
lesson
' ' W e shall g o down with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness ! " . . . Proud we were, A n d laughed, that had such brave true things to And say. y o u suddenly cried, and turned then away.
that flashes through every tone o f the stream's "drowned c o l o u r " from " b l u e brilliant from dead starless skies" to " the myriad hues that lie between dark ness and darkness." And there's one about Menelaus and Helen containing this description :
H i g h sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
H e had not remembered that she was so fair, A n d that her neck curved down in such a w a y ;
Everything in it with the exception o f "kissed the lovely grass," which might easily be spared is fine; "with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness ! " is vivid with beauty ; and when the simple dignity o f " such brave true things to say " has swung y o u to its great height, the drop in that sudden last line comes with the most moving wistfulness. There are several poems, t o o l o n g to quote here, which show M r . Brooke's affinity with the outdoors ; but
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the quality of Bocklin's. That first son net can be imagined in the same tone values as Bocklin's wonderful Isle of the Dead, and the closing lines o f Victory need the same medium :
D o w n the supernal Rank upon rank, unbridled, roads, flung, unforgiving,
N o t long a g o I asked a poet in whose judgment I have a profound belief, to read these poems o f Rupert Brooke's and give me his opinion. After look ing at two or three he said he was afraid he wasn't g o i n g to like them, but the next day he reported that he wished to retract, making the magnificent conces sion that " some o f Brooke's moods are healthy ! " Of course there is a number o f things in this volume that can easily be interpreted as unhealthy or repulsive, like the Wagner:
Creeps in half wanton, half asleep, One with a f a t wide hairless f a c e . H e likes love music that is cheap ; Likes women in a crowded p l a c e ; A n d wants to hear the noise t h e y ' r e making. H i s heavy eyelids d r o o p half-over, Great pouches swing beneath his eyes. H e listens, thinks himself the lover, Heaves from his stomach wheezy s i g h s ; H e likes to feel his h e a r t ' s a-breaking. The music swells. H i s gross legs quiver. H i s little lips are bright with slime. The music swells. The women shiver, A n d all the while, in perfect time H i s pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking.
Seaside Dabo :
needs
an
artist
like Leon
Swiftly out f r o m the friendly lilt o f the band, The c r o w d ' s g o o d laughter, the loved eyes o f men, I am drawn n i g h t w a r d ; I must turn again Where, down b e y o n d the low untrodden strand, There curves and glimmers outward to the unknown The old unquiet ocean. A l l the shade Is rife with m a g i c and movement. I stray alone Here on the edge o f silence, half afraid, W a i t i n g a sign. In the deep heart o f me
The sullen waters swell towards the moon, A n d all m y tides set seaward. F r o m inland L e a p s a g a y fragment sand, A n d dies between the seawall and the sea. o f some m o c k i n g tune, and fades along the T h a t tinkles and laughs
H o w perfect those last three lines are! H o w skilful, in painting the sea, to con centrate upon something from inland, making the ocean twice as old and vast and unquiet because o f that little tink ling tune. One will find in Rupert Brooke vari ous kinds o f things, but never attitu dinizing and never insincerity. H e is one o f the most important o f those y o u n g Englishmen who are doing so much f o r modern poetry. H e is essen tially a poet's poet, and yet his feet are deep in the common soil. Swinburne would have liked him, but the signifi cant thing is that Whitman would, too. There are several poems I have not men tioned that Whitman would have loved.
But it seems something more than that to me. As an attack on German emo tionalism however unjustly, from my point of view, through W a g n e r the poem struck me as an exercise o f ex traordinary cleverness. I don't know that anyone has ever said so effectively the things that ought be said about that type o f emotion which feeds not upon life but, inversely, upon emotion. Mr. Brooke's pictures have much o f
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Tagore A s a Dynamic
GEORGE SOULE [ W e do not agree that T a g o r e is a d y n a m i c ; we find him a p o e t whose music is more impor tant than his thinking. B u t we are glad to p r i n t this interesting analysis.]
N The Crescent Moon, with its ravish ing beauty o f childhood, in The Gardener, with its passion o f love, and especially in Gitanjali and Sadhana ( M a c m i l l a n ) , with their life universal and all-permeating, we have found the poet T a g o r e and been grateful. It re mains to ask : W h a t has T a g o r e done to us? W h a t is he likely to do f o r the future? W h a t has been his answer to the promise and the challenge o f the world? Religions have provided one answer. In his zeal o f affirmation the prophet has declared that the individual lives after death ; that in some unseen world com pletion shall be attained. Y e t increasing millions find this explanation fading into unreality. I f one living organism is perpetuated after its physical dissolu tion, why not another? W e can account for every particle o f life which the blos som loses b y its death. Some has passed to the seed ; the rest finds its chemical re action, which in turn produces other forms o f life in entirely new individ uals. T o assert that the original blossom lives in an unseen form outside the realm o f thought is preposterous. W h y should it? Its function has been accomplished. T h e sentimentality behind this thinking is a weak p r o p for a vigorous mind. A n d exactly the same reasoning applies to all living organisms, including man. The more intelligent part o f mankind has also outgrown the conception o f a definite heaven. It is impossible to imag ing a satisfactory heaven for the indi vidual. A place where there is no strife, where everything is perfection and com
p l e t i o n what j o y is to be found there? T h e essence o f life as we know it is growth and survival ; its happiness comes from the exercise o f a function. Growth and survival postulate extinction ; in heaven an individual would evaporate. Some thinkers have made a substitute " religion o f humanity." T h e y find solace in action tending to make the world a better p l a c e ; they have been gratified b y an imaginative conception o f a future heaven on earth. A s a re ligion o f morality and action this is mag nificent. Y e t its dogma does not satisfy. A heaven on earth is no more conceiv able than a heaven anywhere else. I f we find our happiness in action, how shall our descendants find happiness when there are no more evils to conquer? T h o u g h a static condition o f blessed ness be the goal o f humanitarian en deavor, it is the progress toward it which furnishes the j o y . The Oriental thinker has looked for his answer in a different direction. T h o u g h the individual is partial and unsuccessful, life as a whole is always triumphant. Cannot the individual by contemplation identify himself with the world-soul? Can he not tack himself on to this all-inclusive life by denial and forgetfulness o f himself? Brahmin saints have done so imaginatively. But such an answer is no answer. W e are individuals, after all, and thinking o f Nirvana will not rob us o f our separate bodies and minds. Contemplation is not a substitute for living. T h e doctrine o f transmigration is equally unsatisfying. I f an individual
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never succeeds in any single life, in numerable chances will be mere repeti tions o f tragedy. T h e only hope o f such a process would be a final " heaven on earth,'' which is just as inconceiv able as that o f the humanitarians. W e cannot now be satisfied with theo logical answers. N o r will the world ever find an answer permanently satisfactory. Is not this as it should be? A fixed sys tem o f thought which answers every spir itual craving must be a shell around the individual, preventing growth. It finally ceases to be a dynamic and becomes a wall in the way o f the feelers which man kind is constantly sending into his spir itual environment. It forces him to rest. It eventually turns all his expansion into the lower planes o f life. It is deaden ing, suffocating, as soon as he reaches its limits. Of what nature, then, must be the re ligion o f the modern man and woman? First o f all, it must not be imposed from without: it must grow through the per sonality and find its being there. It must not only square with every known fact o f science and thought ; it must stimu late to a fervent desire for new under standing. It must not deny or de stroy life: it must be life's essence. It must ring with a call to the indi vidual to assume his proper dignity o f life. It must harmonize with the laughter o f children and with the bitter beauty o f a winter sea. It must flame with emotion, yet be keen and hard as a sword. A n d it must be not a self-con stituted standard with which every other thing is arbitrarily compared, but a principle o f growth making necessary
in us vision, strength, freedom, and fear lessness. It is my f e e l i n g that T a g o r e will sug gest to the modern man such a religion. H e gives expression, though not, o f course, perfect expression, to a synthesis of many latent instincts o f the modern mind. H e glories in understanding, not only facts and truth, but emotions and all manifestations o f life. H e calls us to see vivid beauty wherever it is found. H e acclaims the aid o f science in extend ing man's personality throughout the universe. H e sees the oneness o f all life, and bids man stand erect on account o f this eternal and timeless force coursing through him. H e sees the oneness o f humanity, and the necessity o f perfect ing human relations. H e depicts purity without asceticism, vigor without bru tality. H e emphasizes j o y and action. H e does not blink the fact o f death, but robs it o f horror by showing it as the natural end o f a victorious life. While he encourages by the idea o f an ultimate goal, he inspires by the conception o f a real connection with infinity here and now. Revering the universal life, he sees that it finds expression only in individ uals, and that the law o f our being must be to live as completely as possible. Many before T a g o r e have said these things partially. But it remained f o r a poet who combines the intelligence o f the Orient with that o f the Occident to say them all, and to say them with such beauty and simplicity that a large part o f the world listens. I f he succeeds in making us conscious o f such a religion, he will have quickened life and made it potent as few artists can.
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T H E L S I D G W I C K is the world's next great woman novelist. T h o u g h I confess eagerly that I enjoy her novels more than any novels I've ever read I mean it literally it isn't on so personal a basis that I offer the judgment. But I'm confident that within ten years the critical perspective will show her on this pinnacle. Since George Eliot and the Bronts, I can think o f no woman who has focused art and life so intensely into novel writing though even as I say this Ethan Frome looms u p and leaves me a little uncomfortable. But the im portant thing is that Ethel Sidgwick is g o i n g to count enormously. People who aren't yet aware o f her (and there seems to be a lot o f them) can be easily explained as that body o f the public that neglects a masterpiece until it has become the fashion to acclaim it. But Ethel Sidgwick has written a novel that's more important than any number of our traditional masterpieces. For instance, it's a much more important story than Vanity Fair; just as Jean Christophe is more valuable than Ivanhoe. T h e novel o f manners has its de lightful place, and so has the historical romance ; but the novel that chronicles with subtlety the intellectual or artistic temper o f an age is as much more impor tant than these as Greek drama is than the moving picture show. I know there are people who'll read Succession and continue to prefer T h a c k eray's geniality to Miss Sidgwick's bril liant seriousness and her humor that's not at all genial but rapid, sophisti cated, impatient o f comedy in the ac
cepted sense. Ethel Sidgwick might write a radiant tragedy, or a wistful sat ire, or a sad comedy; I can never imag ine her being anything so obvious as merely comic or genial! She doesn't l a u g h ; she couldn't chuckle; she has just the flash o f a smile, and then she hurries on dazzlingly, as though things were too important to be anything but passionate about. She doesn't " warm the cockles o f y o u r heart"-or whatever that silly phrase is ; and she doesn't do crude, raw things t o show you that she " knows life." She goes down into the darkness rose-crowned, in Rupert Brooke's g o r geous phrase ; when she goes into the sunlight it is always with something o f remembered a g o n y . That's the fine qual ity o f her vitalism. She's too strong to be hard, too steel-like to be robust. She's like fire and keen air to borrow an other poet's phrase. She reflects life through the mirror o f a vivid personality -which is one way o f being an impor tant artist. She assumes that you're also vivid, and quick, and subtle, and this gives her writing the most beautiful quality o f nervousness the kind y o u mean when you're not talking about nerves. In short, Ethel Sidgwick is the most definitely magnetic personality I've ever felt through a book's pages. Succession, though complete in itself, is really a sequel to Promise, published a year a g o . T h e sub-title presents the idea, and can be concretely expanded in a sentence : Antoine, child-wonder violin ist, and the youngest o f the celebrated Lemaures, revolts against the musical ideas o f his grandfather. Here it is
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again the battle o f youth and age, made particularly interesting because it's a purely intellectual warfare, and par ticularly charming because its partici pants are such delightful people. T h e first glimpse o f Antoine is irre sistible. After a series o f concerts in England, he is being taken b y his uncle to their home in France. M . Lucien Lemaure has chosen the l o n g route be cause his nephew has an odd habit o f sleeping better on the water than in any house or hotel on shore ; and while he doesn't understand this nephew, he has vital reasons f o r considering him: f o r upon Antoine's delicate shoulders rests the musical honor o f the family.
"Sleep well, mon p e t i t , " he said, in the tiny cabin. " W e are g o i n g h o m e . "
' ' Y e s , ' ' said the b o y . " I t is an awful thing, but I played it. I had to have some thing real that n i g h t . " " Y o u imply m y f a t h e r ' s composition is not real?" ' ' Oh, do not, ' ' said the b o y , under his breath. ' ' I have remembered he is your father now. ' ' " T o b e s u r e , ' ' said M . Lucien, with stateliness. ' ' A n d have y o u n o duty t o him as well?" " I shall see him soon. I shall remember then." A n t o i n e diverted his eyes, to his u n c l e ' s private relief. ' ' D o y o u think I do not want to remember, after t h a t ? " " I should think y o u would b e a s h a m e d , " said Lucien, b y w a y o f the last w o r d in argu ment, and retired to his paper. " Y o u like me to be a s h a m e d , " said A n toine, snatching the last w o r d f r o m him, though still with a manner o f extreme languor. " G o o d , then, I have been. I t is n o t " h e watched the trees o f N o r m a n d y sleepily' ' a very nice feeling. ' ' ' ' I am g l a d y o u know what it is like, at l e a s t , " growled his uncle into the paper. " D o n ' t y o u ? " said his nephew. " W h a t it is like, is to make y o u feel rather sick all the time especially while y o u are p l a y i n g it." "What?" ' ' The thing y o u are ashamed o f . ' '
Antoine, who had no immediate intention o f sleeping, was staring out o f the dim porthole o f a fascinating space o f the unknown. " That is home to y o u ? " he asked vaguely. "To After b e sure. an My first passed youth was passed spent in a vain there, like t h i n e . " interval effort to imagine his uncle with no hair on his face, A n t o i n e g a v e it up and recurred t o the window. " I wish I lived on the sea, " he murmured.
In the train, flying toward Paris, L u cien refers to the last London recital, when Antoine had made both his uncle's and his conductor's lives a burden by his indifferent rehearsal o f his grandfather's latest composition. Antoine's outburst had outraged Lucien, to whom faith in his father's character and genius had, all his life, amounted to a religion.
" W h a t will y o u tell him t h e n ? " said A n toine, turning his dark eyes without deranging his languid attitude along the seat. "Just that I said some ' sottises, ' the same as al ways?" " H e is n o t a child, " thought Lucien in stantly. " H e is clever, maddening. O f course, m y action will have to b e explained. I shall say, " he said aloud, with deliberation, " that we differed about the concerto. That y o u were difficult and headstrong over that, which is certainly true. Y o u have admitted since that it was too much f o r y o u , e h ? "
But the first glimpse o f M . Lemaure, the grandfather, is reassuring. In fact, he's almost as irresistible as Antoine, making y o u realize immediately that the battle is g o i n g to be a subtle one, and that it may be difficult to know which side to take, after all. T h e old musician asks about the last recital.
"I was not at the last o r c h e s t r a l , " Lucien ' ' I left him in W u r s t ' s charge, and answers.
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went to the country, . . . easily desert me. He
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can't hold a reader through six hundred pages with the story o f a fourteen-yearold boy. But Miss Sidgwick's holding power is well, I read Succession during a brief trip to Boston, and much as I longed to absorb Concord and all its charms, I found I only had half my capacity with me ; the rest was with A n toine, and it stayed there till in despera tion I shut myself up in a hotel room and saw him safely off to America with his nice, wholesome, inartistic father. Then came the awful realization that I'd have to wait a whole year f o r the next volume for surely Miss Sidgwick in tends to make a trilogy. T h e explanation- o f this absorption is simply that Antoine is so interesting. His professional life is dramatic; but even in the commonest experiences o f every day his world is as vivid as it can only be to a dramatic nature. F o r instance, in this little scene with his brother :
" T h e r e was a little thing on l e g s , " he an nounced, " t h a t went under the carpet j u s t now. I t was rather horrible, and I have not looked f o r i t . " " A blackbeetle, I p r e s u m e , " said P h i l i p . ' ' I t was not black, ' ' said A n t o i n e . ' ' I t was pink a not-clean pink, y o u understand. I f o u n d it ' ' a pause ' ' disagreeable. ' ' ' ' H o w could y o u find it when y o u had not looked f o r i t ? " said P h i l i p . A n o t h e r pause, A n t o i n e considering the point, which was an old one. " Y o u will catch i t , " he suggested, shooting a soft glance at his brother. "Why perfectly should I ? " harmless." said P h i l i p . "They're
I should
which I never thought in a condition to per H e m o c k e d himself o f my o b j e c t i o n s , me, eluded finger me, and twisted at rehearsals. ' ' H e has Rus com contradicted "And sian
t i o n a r y tendencies f r o m the
them took the last concert so completely out o f m y hands that i t seemed fruitless to ' ' Bb uation forgot himself, ' ' him of Lemaure, still quite at ease. so reminded when?" will not revive it, ' ' said Lucien. . . . hood that he longed to laugh. say, and ' ' We pronounced Antoine's
" W h e n he came to his senses, he a p o l o g i z e d sufficiently. P e r h a p s he was not well when is the first engagement Sunday ? ' ' ' ' L e t him b e f o r a time. Lucien grunted. There is no harm. ' ' ' ' I shall not disturb him
while he is seasick, i f that is what y o u mean. I t would do him no harm to play scales all the week. ' ' ' ' Scales as y o u will, but not persons. D m i t r i Tschedin, I mean, nor even m e . current o f A n t o i n e ' s p h i l o s o p h y . " ' ' Father ! ' ' But I individuality H o w absurd. ' ' it. H i s own fights the alien matter, and it is W u r s t and his Rus plunging into the have l o n g remarked Not It is
n o t till he has either rejected it or absorbed that he is steady again. For me," said M. sians have excited him nothing more natural. Lemaure, memory, as he stood b y his s o n ' s side at window, " a t i t held flat Duchtel. ' ' "Antoine cien. " Bon ! " adores Duchtel" fighting remarked Lu ' ' There is no there. ' ' ' ' Heresy So long hearing."
his age, the realm o f music did heresy, like that o f Sorbier and
on the hearth then, i f it must be so. as he does not play the stuff in my
" I shall dream o f i t , " said A n t o i n e , shut t i n g his eyes. ' ' I t was too long, do y o u see, and pink as w e l l . " H i s b r o w contracted, and he finished with gentle conviction. " I f it comes upon my b e d in the night, I shall be sick."
There are over six hundred pages in the story, and they cover just a year and a half o f Antoine's life. This appears to be an impossible literary feat; any orthodox novelist will tell you that you
Of course, most interesting o f all is his musical development, in which are involved several personalities o f striking character : Duchtel, the revolutionary, more a son, after the French fashion,
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than a man or a musician; Savigny, the celebrated alienist, who treats the child hypnotically in his severe illnesses; Le monski, a rival child wonder, who is like a p i g , and vulgar which it is silly to say, because he is a beautiful artist, ac cording to Antoine; Reuss, the great German conductor, and the boy's staunch friend, who hates " t h e cursed French training" o f making life weigh so heav ily on its y o u t h ; Jacques Charretteur, the vagabond violinist, " a man to play French music in F r a n c e " ; Ccile, the aunt, who has the perception to under stand the little genius with the dark eyes, whose "expression was so beautiful that she could hardly bear it " ; and Ribi era, the famous Spanish pianist, who " warms " the piano, in Antoine's words, and calls the boy an intelligent ape, by way of. expressing his admiration. All these people are drawn with consummate skill. I think one o f the most poignant pas sages in the book, to me, is Antoine's description o f how he had rat the solo at a London concert. It was at the end o f the season, and he had been harassed by a thousand needless frictions:
' ' The first part had gone pretty well, though I did not like how the Duchtel sounded. I thought that was the violin, perhaps and a new room. I t was a b a d room, pretty, but stupid f o r the sound. I heard much t o o much, so I was sure they were not hearing properly. They were extremely still, and made a little clapping at the end. I did not find it a g o o d concert, but W u r s t in the interval said it was very well, and I should not excite myself. So when I did not, then I was tired, and it seemed stupider than b e f o r e . A n d at last that thing came, the Mirski ' Caprice, ' which y o u know how detestable. The passages are hard in that thing, but I know them. E v e r y morn ing I played them to Moricz, so now I do not trouble. . . . A n d then, in the middle o f it, I heard Peter A x e l p l a y i n g wrong. . . . A n d I was frightened horribly. . . . A n d I made him an awful frown f o r f o r g e t t i n g it, and Peter was looking at me. H i s face was not happy like it generally is. I t was like one
o f those worst dreams. A n d , o f course, I stopped playing, because it cannot be like that. A n d Peter said ' G o b a c k , ' very quietly, mak ing a lot o f little passages and returning for me to find, do y o u s e e ? " ' ' H e g a v e y o u a chance to pick up, eh ? " said Philip. " A n d y o u c o u l d n ' t . " ' ' C o u l d n ' t ! I would not. I was furious awful. . . . I said a rude thing to A x e l in passing, and went off the estrade. A n d they all clapped together down there, bah ! though they knew it was not finished. They were sorry I had stopped because they were people who like a difficult Caprice, to b e amused b y it. But I was not amused. N o r Peter, very m u c h . " H e laughed sharply. ' ' D o n ' t , I say, ' ' said Philip. " I t ' s all over now. It d o e s n ' t matter, really. Everybody forgets, now and then " . . . ' ' I do not, ' ' said A n t o i n e . " I do not know how it is to f o r g e t . I know that thing I know all the little notes, long a g o , b e f o r e M o r i c z since years. I t is not possible to for get a little concert piece that y o u know. . . . ' ' D i d y o u g o on again ? ' ' ' ' Y e s . A f t e r W u r s t had finished talking, I had to. I should not have f o r my uncle, but I had to f o r him. H e was violent, W u r s t . He said it was indigne and loche i f I stopped, and a lot o f other w o r d s . H e was like a little d o g barking. A man like W u r s t does not ' rater. ' H e does not know how that is done. H i s head has all the b i g scores inside . . . H e did not see how it was f o r me to stand up on the estrade again, with quantities o f beautiful peo ple l o o k i n g kind. I t would have been so better i f they had siffli, like here in Paris. ' '
T h e book closes on an unexpected and suggestive note. Antoine, who had always realized that his grandfather couldn't bear his being " d i f f e r e n t " in music, had taken quietly to composing the kind o f things he loved. H e " made " a quintet in which Ribiera was given a brilliant piano part, and which he thought beautiful-extremely. But when they played it for him, though he was moved to cry, he found its " i d e a s " not so g o o d as he had thought. Where upon he plans to produce better ones in his new overture. Succession is a masterpiece o f art, and Antoine is the most lovable and interest ing character in new fiction.
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E R G S O N ' S philosophy is the antith esis o f the natural-science view of the universe as mechanism. In that view the laws o f nature are fixed sequences controlling matter, or energy, and the more complicated and faultless the mech anism the higher the life. Just how this mechanism became conscious o f the fact that it was a mechanism caught itself at itself, so to speak, and announced the laws o f its own being -- is a question as puzzling as the old theological one o f the aseity o f God--which is simply a Latinized way o f asking how the deity could, being infinite, turn himself inside out in such a manner as to become aware o f his own existence and attributes. In fact, the two questions are one and the same. According to Bergson, mechanism not only cannot explain consciousness, but it is the very antithesis o f conscious life. Behind mechanism he places an inextinguishable but not uncheckable vital urge with endless potentialities and with no fixed goal. T h e progress o f this " elan vital " is through resistance to matter, which is simply the reversal o f its own movement. T h e onward urge is what Bergson calls " pure duration " or motion, and its collision with its own re verse movement is what appears to us as space. T h e actual situation o f life at any given time is simply a modus vivendi between this spiritual activity striving to be free, and the reverse movement. W e know, o f course, that the physical universe is simply energy running down. Just as a glass o f water cools off, so the sun dissipates its heat, and so, we are learning, the elements break up into sim pler forms, giving off their contained energy in the forms o f heat and electric ity as they do so. But on the other hand
the plant takes unto itself that energy of the sun, and with it builds u p again the inorganic salts from its soil into higher forms with a greater content o f stored energy. W h a t the plant does, says Bergson, is typical and symbolical o f what all life does at all times: sets up a reverse current to the running-down tendency o f the universe o f matter. Life cannot do this easily, but has to adapt itself to the resistance o f the down ward flow. It does this through its motor reactions, its sense organs, and above all through its intelligence when that is evolved. T h e evolution o f these things gives us our ideas o f space. T h e in sect cuts up its environment into spatial forms easy f o r it to deal with. Man with different sense organs probably lives in a different space world. As " a thing is where it acts," it is obvious that the boundaries o f things in the material realm would be quite different if we had, for example, some sort o f sense organ adapted to identify things by their elec trical properties. But this identifying o f things by spatial and material con c e p t s the mathematical order is in strumental to the ends o f action, and the original consciousness o f life, while it ineluded the potentialities o f intellectual knowledge, was instinctive. Instinct, ac cording to Bergson, is first-hand knowl edge, but knowledge incapable o f con ceptual extension. It is therefore no use in the practical affairs o f life, but certain and immediate in its apprehension o f the actual flow o f life itself. In its broad ened form o f intuition it is responsible for all the valid and original insights o f the philosophers and poets. T h e struc tural and dialectic forms in which phi losophies have been given to the world
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are simply the intellectualizing process which philosophers have used to buttress and which they have often thought produced-the insight which was prior to and independent o f the system. Bergson's doctrine has been seized upon by apologists f o r every creed and for every iconoclasm. Bergson has been accused o f every intellectual crime, from being the intellectual father o f syndi calism to being the last rich relative o f struggling obscurantism. T h e protest ant theologians talk glibly o f Bergson's idea o f God, and use him as a stick with which to beat the hated materialist. Bergson himself would never apply his philosophy to the uses o f the syndicalists. T h e argument o f the syndicalists them selves is simply an ingenious parody o f the Bergsonian philosophy, as it is so far developed. A s mechanism and the math ematical order, they say, do not repre sent life, we cannot by the means o f natural and sociological sciences predict in advance what life will do, and what forms it will take. W e cannot base rev olutionary action, for instance, along Marxian lines, because the whole M a r x ist philosophy rests upon the assumption that life is the slave o f material forces chemical firstly, and economical in the human drama-and that it will there fore follow along predetermined lines. I f life is an "elan vital," breaking its path as it goes, and only able to think in terms o f the past, then revolutionary activity must cut loose from the reac tionary intellect, and trust itself to its instincts; fight its way to that freedom which is impossible in the mathematically determined intellectual realm, and which is equally impossible o f achievement by mere intellectual foresight. So the syn dicalist in the name o f Bergson cuts loose from all theories o f the future he wishes to bring in, preaches the " general strike" for its stimulating effect on the emotions o f the proletarian constituents
of his social "elan vital"quite care less o f whether it would ever be a prac tical success or not and deliberately cuts loose from all forms o f " bourgeoise culture." But the anti-revolutionists point out that Bergson does believe in the intellect as a guide to the practical affairs o f life; and industry and p r o d u c t i o n t h e field of the syndicalist are far more me chanical than they are vital. In man's industrial relations he has to approxi mate himself as much to the machine as possible, and for Bergson's anti-intel lectualism to be applied to this particular realm o f life is as great a calamity as could happen to the doctrine. And then these conservatives proceed, less justifi ably perhaps, to train the captured gun o f intuition upon the syndicalists. T h e racial intuitions, they say, are older than the race's newly-found intellectual con ceptions. F o r generations the race has lived by certain instinctive rules o f con duct. Religion, custom, and patriotism, these are all sacred because they are extra-intellectual, and they dare us to disturb these sacred things. It is a strange sight this most revolutionary philosophical doctrine being used to sup port all the prejudices that the ages have handed down but we cannot deny that it is a plausible use o f intuitionism, and a more legitimate use than that to which Sorel and his followers have put the teachings emanating from the College o f France. Perhaps the most detailed application that Bergson has yet made o f his phi losophy to the affairs o f life is his appli cation o f its principles to the puzzling aesthetic problem o f laughter and the comic. His theory is that laughter is a social corrective directed against the man who allows the d o g g i n g steps o f mecha nism to overtake him and imprison his spirit in a web o f meaningless action. The man who is walking along the street
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simist, he is not a religious pessimist. Of religion he has not yet spoken, except incidentally. Obviously so l o n g as he uses the scientific method in his philoso phy, proceeding from facts to their sub ordination in a picture whose values are given by intuitions, he cannot present a systematic philosophy. But in spite o f the fact that pessimism not only in ethics but in his view o f the content o f personality and its relations with the uni verse- is charged against him, Bergson means to be decidedly optimistic in his treatment o f personality. In his article in The Hibbert Journal f o r October, 1 9 1 1 , occur these remarkable words:
If then, in every province, the triumph o f
should be going* in a determinate direc tion with a determinate end in view, and with the ability to get there in spite o f reasonable obstacles. So says society. When he becomes abstracted, walks me chanically, and in consequence falls over a brick, we laugh at him. H e has per mitted himself to become a machine for the nonce instead o f a self-conscious spirit, and society cannot afford to have its interests jeopardized in that way. The International Journal of Ethics for January 1914-, contains an article by J. W . Scott, who accuses Bergson o f ethical pessimism on the grounds o f his view o f the comic. H e points out that the psychology of comic action, as B e r g son works it out, is precisely that o f moral action. F o r in moral action, too, a man does what is habitual, what is against his own self-conscious impulse, what is mechanical in that it is a fixed course o f conduct pursued without ref erence to the favor or disfavor o f the environment. T h e life impulse must be, he convicts Bergson o f saying, adaptable to its circumstances ; it must insert itself between the determinisms o f matter; it must pursue the crooked path where the straight path is t o o difficult. It cannot follow its moral ideal without making itself ridiculous, as indeed in real life moral people are always doing. This criticism hangs on the acceptance o f a moral ideal, and if we must have an ideal in the sense o f a goal beckoning us from the future, then the criticism is well founded and Bergson is an ethical pessimist. But systematic ethics have been denied by other philosophers before Bergson, and most people o f modern temperament are quite willing to let the whole question o f a priori ethics drop. T h e y might not be willing to exchange it for the very unpoetic utilitarianism which has so often been offered in its place, but Bergson offers something more than that. I f he be an ethical pes
life is expressed b y creation o u g h t we n o t to think that the ultimate reason o f human life is a creation which, in distinction from that o f the artist or man the creation o f science, can b e pursued I of self by self, the at every moment and b y all men alike? enrichment o f personality . b y elements . . mean which to
continual causes
I f we admit
that with man consciousness has finally left the tunnel; that everywhere else consciousness has remained i m p r i s o n e d ; that every other species corresponds to the arrest o f something which in man succeeded in o v e r c o m i n g resistance in expanding almost freely, thus itself in true personalities and displaying
capable o f remem
bering all and willing all and controlling their past and their future, we shall have no repug nance in a d m i t t i n g that in man, though haps in man alone, consciousness pursues path b e y o n d this earthly life. per its
On the other suppositions o f B e r g son's philosophy this is b y no means so far-fetched as are most theories o f im mortality. F o r the consciousness which cuts out the patterns o f our spatial life here could easily cut out others in the beyond, like enough to our present ones to carry on the continuity of our active existence. T h e idea o f survival, or an idea that may be applied to transmun dane survival, is suggested by Laurence
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This is quoted not only because it repre sents the poetical realization o f B e r g son's message, but because it points to one reason why the charge o f pessimism
has been brought against Bergson even in this connection. I f only progress is our home, if there be no stability, how is that permanence of values to be achieved which Hoffding declares to be the essential axiom o f re ligion? W e may love our faithful d o g , but according to Bergson it represents an evolutionary blind alley. W e may create as we will, but we shall survive our creations. Here, after all, is at the best a tempered optimism. N o reunions are promised in the Bergsonian paradise. Only a perpetual streaming that does not, so far as Bergson has yet told us (and that is an important p o i n t ) ever wind safely home to sea.
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T h e Jewels of a Lapidary
Emerson's Journals, V o l u m e I X , 1856-1863. ( H o u g h t o n Mifflin Company, B o s t o n . )
T least nine events o f permanent historic interest have occurred in American literature within the past few years : they are represented by the pub lication o f nine volumes o f Emerson's Journals. Those who are trying to achieve a personal religion, which ac knowledges God as an immanence in stead o f a proposition, hail with a quiet j o y every extraction from the great mine in which Emerson stored the jewels o f his life. I f we do not recognize them as lapidarious we must perceive them as the better metals o f ourselves, for this " f r i e n d and aider o f those who would live in the spirit" inhumed those spir itual values which all men at some time or another seek as their own. Emerson buoys us u p for our common struggles and makes us conscious of that aid which is the awakening o f latent power. H e composed the bricks which thousands o f builders have used in fashioning beau tiful personal temples. " I dot evermore in my endless j o u r n a l , " he wrote to Carlyle ; " . . . the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick-kiln instead o f a house." Speaking o f his philosoph ical work he confesses a "formidable tendency to the lapidary style," and adds, " I build my house o f boulders." Emerson's published journals are kilns and quarries from which the foundation materials for the edifice o f character have been obtained by countless builders. I f he could not construct a system o f philosophy, as Arnold alleges, he could and did provide the " b o u l d e r s " and indicate the pattern which others have used. H e is a part o f every well-read
American, and, chiefly through Carlyle, still lives in the land o f his forefathers. H e was an inspiration to Whitman, one o f whose " specimen days " closed with " a long and blessed evening with Emer son." Such evenings are as real now as in Whitman's time, and are more com monly experienced, f o r Emerson is west ward-bound. H e has traveled slowly in this direction : " boulders " are not car ried by exploiters and pioneers who build and live in a world not o f " the spirit " but o f the senses. W i t h the establishing o f easier communication between centers of thought and fields o f action in America, New England " boulders " were brought hither, to chink the crude walls o f western life; and it is a token of Emerson's vitality and spiritual uni versality that his " bricks " and " boul ders " are discoverable in all sorts o f shacks which men are trying to improve. Lumber decays, but " boulders " remain, and some o f them become talismanic. In reading and re-reading Emerson's Journals one is impressed with their re markable quotability, and in this mechan ical handiness o f his work we have a par tial explanation of the slowness with which it has been assimilated. " Boul ders " are fated to be knocked about be fore they are appreciated. W e throw them at one another with a sort o f phys ical dexterity until, burnished and trans formed, they are recognized as adapted to higher uses. W e do not flippantly quote or mention the authors who have become personal to us ; I quote Emer son's Journal as a blessed soliloquy. D . C. W .
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H E most interesting hours o f the last week I have spent in listening to discussions o f the futurists. Someone told o f a superb incident recently re ported o f a speech by Marinetti, the enunciator o f the futurist philosophy. Marinetti, after denouncing the past in his usual method, proceeded to elimi nate women from his world. "But," said someone, " how will you continue the human r a c e ? " " W e will not con tinue the human race," rejoined Mari netti, with superb clat. Daring and magnificent utterance! But, after all, perhaps he is the only sane one, and the norm o f human intelligence quite insane. That fits in well with the recently re ported discovery o f a Paris scientist, that all variations in the course o f evolution are the result o f disease, and that there would have been n o man had not some ape had a parasite in his thyroid gland. All o f which goes to show that I was right in my statement (which Chesterton probably has said before me) that all logical extremes are illogical, since the world is based on an eternal paradox. Really it is quite simple to follow the futurist line o f thought once you get the hang o f it. F o r instance two de velopments o f painting predicted at the Troubetzkoys. In the first, each plane in the cubist picture, instead o f being colored, is to be numbered, and the num bers printed in a catalogue opposite the names o f the colors for which they stand. Thus any approach to the vulgar intru sion o f realism would be avoided, and abstract beauty furthered. What chances for the imagination ! A n d think o f the subtle possibilities in the mathematics o f color ! One could surely express by some abstruse quadratic a color quite beyond
the realm o f visual possibility, and thus man by one gigantic t u g at his boot straps would pull his soul out o f its finite limitations. T h e second school was aptly named the auto-symbolists. In this school Niet szchean individualism attains its sublime extreme. T h e artist, instead o f express ing his spirit in the vulgar symbols understood by everybody, arbitrarily chooses a symbol known only to himself. I f he wishes to depict a determined man g o i n g up a mountain on a mule's back he may paint a mouse-trap. T o him the mouse-trap perfectly expresses the par ticular feeling he has when viewing his own mental image o f the picture he has decided to paint. W h a t matter about anybody else? I f y o u ask him cui bono? he will reply : why any bono at all ? A n d , o f course, he is perfectly logical. A n d the satisfying aristocratic aloofness o f his position ! I f people as they surely will-study his mouse-trap and discuss in vain what it portends, if they pay vast sums f o r his pictures and start a literature o f criticisms to guess his unguessable riddles, so much the better. H e can laugh at them with diabolical glee. Everybody is a fool but himself, and he can g o on creating in the seventh circle o f his own soul undisturbed by the barnyard cackle o f the world. Has the cubist literature o f Gertrude Stein awakened echoes in Chicago? I have read it without understanding be fore this. But one night my host a great, strong, humorous, intelligent hulk o f a man, himself a scoffer at cubism read part o f her essay on Matisse so that it was almost intelligible. His in flection and punctuation did it. Her chief characteristics seem to be an aver-
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W h y should he? Women in green and blue wigs have been seen in New Y o r k already. But, o f course, it would be senseless t o stop there : if one has an orange toup he should surely have a mauve face. Yellow complexions are worn with indigo hair. W e have long been accustomed to blue powdered noses on Fifth Avenue, and the setting o f diamonds in the teeth is an old story. T h e only trouble with this epoch-making idea is that it is old. Phncian women did it ! And wasn't it Edward Lear who wrote o f The Jumblies:
' ' Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, A n d they went to sea in a sieve ' ' ?
sion to personal pronouns and a strict adherence to simple declarative statements, untroubled by subordinate clauses or phrases o f any kind. H e r thought, therefore, resolves itself awkwardly in a four-square way. T h e multiplicity o f her planes becomes confusing after a page, but each plane stands alone. Thus ( I quote inaccurately) " Some ones knew this one to be expressing something being struggling. Some ones knew this one not to be expressing something being struggling. This one expressed something being struggling. This one did not express something being strugg l i n g . " W h i c h , o f course, is the cubist way o f saying that " Some thought he was trying to express struggle in an object, others thought the contrary. A s a matter o f fact, he sometimes did express struggle ; sometimes he did not." But it seems her early work is now getting too obvious, so she is in the throes o f a later phase. In her " Portrait o f Miss D o d g e " she has eliminated verbs and sentence structure entirely, flinging a succession o f image-nouns at the reader. One can surely not accuse her o f " prettiness." The craze f o r colored wigs of course, an outgrowth o f futurism. W h y should a man be any color except that which his will dictates? This has l o n g ( a few months) been the cry o f the painter, and the smart set has echoed :
O f course, if one doesn't believe in this new development o f art, but is naturalistic, he should be brave enough to chase his idea to its lair and act upon it, like Lady Constance Stewart Richardson, who is now tripping about the homes of the rich in New Y o r k with nothing at all on or worse than nothing. F o r g i v e my preposterosities ! But the ridiculous seriousness with which everything unfamiliar is taken b y a sensationsated haute monde is such a brilliant target for satire. I think with immense relief o f a wonderful bit o f sky, and a long stretch o f beach, and o f all things tangible and yes, though it may be bourgeois - healthy.
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T o a Lost Friend
EUNICE TIETJENS
Across the tide o f years you come to me, Y o u whom I knew so long ago. A poignant letter kept half carelessly, A faded likeness, dull and gray to see . . . A n d now I know. Strange that I knew not then, that when you stood In warm, sweet flesh beneath my hand, Y o u r soul tumultuous as a spring-time flood And life's new wonder pulsing in y o u r blood, I could not understand. I could not see y o u r soul like thin red fire Flash downward to my gaze, N o r guess the strange, half-understood desire, T h e tumult and the question and the ire Of those far days. I saw your soul stretch l o n g i n g arms to love In adolescent shyness bound, And passionately storm the gods above. Y e t , since my own y o u n g heart knew naught thereof, Y o u never found. It is t o o late now. Y o u have dropped away In formless silence from my ken, And youth's high hopes turn backward to decay. Y e t , oh, my heart were very fain to-day T o love you then !
Culture has one great passion-the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater!-the passion f o r making them - pre vail.Matthew A r n o l d in Culture and Anarchy.
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T h e Irish Players:
A small, low room with walls o f cool green-grey ; in the center an old brown fire-place with a great black chimney; on the hearth a light like a deep rasp b e r r y ; at each end a chair o f smudgy brown ; near the front a table toned with the walls ; on it two black mugs and a stein ; in one corner at the back,
A n Impression
piled against the green-grey, flour sacks the color o f dirty straw; and standing in the foreground, balanced as Whistler would have done it, a miller in a suit o f brown, a thin widow in rusty black, a fat widow with bustles in rusty black and dirty white. Somehow one planned beauty in that place.
T h e N o v e l of Manners
. . . A n d yet, even into M r s . W h a r t o n ' s work is creeping slowly a p a r t o f the tremen dous socializing spirit o f today-the realization that g r o u p b a c k g r o u n d s , unlighted b y a sense o f their relativity to other groups, and to life, do n o t amount to much m o r e than painted scenery. Over in E n g l a n d , Wells, with all his tremendous burden o f national b a c k g r o u n d and customs, manages, often with a desperate wrenching o f impedimenta, b u t always with a great resolve that c o m m a n d s admiration, to inject into his massive English settings a hu manized world atmosphere as well. Wells writes not o f Englishmen and E n g l a n d , b u t o f Englishmen and the world. A n d Galsworthy, his soul permeated b y this new social sense, writes down, in his English men and women, all humanity, with all the t r a g e d y and plaintive j o y s o f human life, with the desires and ham pered fruition o f the desires o f all living things, as his b a c k g r o u n d . N o t the world alone, but life, is the stage.Edna K e n t o n in The Bookman.
Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet
A l l m y life I seem to have been asking m y friends, those I loved best, those w h o valued the dearest, the kindest, the greatest, and the strongest, in our strange human life, to come with me and see Forbes-Eobertson die in H a m l e t . I asked them because, as that strange y o u n g dead king sat upon his throne, there was something, whatever it meant-death, life, im mortality, what y o u will o f a surpassing loneliness, something transfiguring the p o o r passing moment o f trivial, brutal murder into a beauty to which it was quite natural that that stern Northern warrior, with his w i n g e d helmet, should bend the knee. I would not exchange anything I have ever read or seen f o r ForbesEobertson as he sits there so still and starlit upon the throne o f Denmark.-Eichard L e Gal lienne in The Century.
T o feel, to d o , t o stride f o r w a r d in elation, chanting a poem o f triumphant l i f e ! J a m e s Stephens in The Crock of Gold.
A man should always obey the law with his b o d y and always disobey it with his mind. James Stephens in The Crock of Gold.
There are two great rules o f life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants i f he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the general rule. The Note-Books of Samuel Butler.
W h y is it that in some places there is such a feeling o f life b e i n g all o n e ; n o t merely a long picture-show f o r human eyes, b u t a sin gle breathing, glowing, g r o w i n g thing, o f which w e are no more important a p a r t than the swallows and magpies, the foals and sheep in the meadows, the sycamores and ash trees and flowers in the fields, the rocks and little b r i g h t streams, or even than the l o n g fleecy clouds and their soft-shouting drivers, the w i n d s ? John Galsworthy in The Atlantic Monthly.
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Take your ivory Christ a w a y : N o d y i n g g o d shall have m y knee, "While live g o d s breathe in this wild w i n d A n d shout from yonder dashing sea. O no, the old g o d s are not d e a d : I think that they will never d i e ; B u t I, who lie upon this bed I n mortal anguish-what am I ?
A wave that rises with a breath A b o v e the infinite watery plain, T o f o a m and sparkle in the sun A moment ere it sink again. T h e eternal A man, I N e x t life, a A daffodil undulation runs: d i e ; perchance to be, white-throat on the wind, on T e m p e ' s lea.
They lied who said that P a n was d e a d : L i f e was, life is, and life shall b e . So take a w a y your crucifix The ever-living g o d s f o r m e ! The Yale Review.
Notes of a Son and Brother, by Henry James. Collected Essays of Rudolph Eucken. The Fugitive, by John Galsworthy. Plays, b y Tchekoff and Andreyeff. Stories of Russian Life, by Tchekoff. Selected Essays of Alice Meynell. Second Nights, b y Arthur Ruhl. Scribner.
Stories of Red Hanrahan, by William Butler Yeats. The Tragedy of Pompey, by John Masefield. Chitra, b y Rabindranath T a g o r e . The Possessed, by Dostoevsky. The Flight and Other Poems, by George E. Woodberry. Macmillan.
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When Ghost Meets Ghost, by W i l l i a m De Morgan. Nowadays, by George Middleton. Angel Island, by Inez H a y n e s G i l l m o r e . Euripides and His Age, by G i l b e r t M u r ray. Social Insurance, by I . M . R u b i n o w . Holt. The World Set Free, by H . G . W e l l s . The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel B u t ler (new e d i t i o n ) . Wagner as Man and Artist, by E r n e s t Newman. The Philosophy of Ruskin, by A n d r e Chevrillon. Dutton. Little Essays in Literature and Life, by Richard Burton. Beaumont, the Dramatist, by Charles M . Gayley. Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures. Prostitution in Europe, by A b r a h a m Flexner. Century. The Poems of Francois Villon. Knave of Hearts, b y A r t h u r Symons. Essays of Francis Grierson (new edi tions). The Fortunate Youth, by W i l l i a m J . Locke. Lane. The Making of an Englishman, L . George. by W .
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