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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/6106.txt b/6106.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd4d838 --- /dev/null +++ b/6106.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7949 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Definitions, by Henry Seidel Canby + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Definitions + +Author: Henry Seidel Canby + +Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6106] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 6, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DEFINITIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Ralph Zimmerman, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +DEFINITIONS + +ESSAYS IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM + +BY + +HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, Ph.D. + +Editor of _The Literary Review_ of _The New York Evening Post_, and a +member of the English Department of Yale University. + +NEW YORK + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + + +The author wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of _The Atlantic +Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The Century Magazine, The Literary +Review of The New York Evening Post, The Bookman, The Nation, and +The North American Review_ for permission to reprint such of +these essays as have appeared in their columns. + + + + +PREFACE + + +The unity of this book is to be sought in the point of view of the +writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single +theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a +civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated +and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and +so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social +background, and is so much a question of life as well as of art, +that many doors have to be opened before one begins to approach an +understanding. The method of informal definition which I have +followed in all these essays is an attempt to open doors through +which both writer and reader may enter into a better comprehension +of what novelists, poets, and critics have done or are trying to +accomplish. More than an entrance upon many a vexed controversy +and hidden meaning I cannot expect to have achieved in this book; +but where the door would not swing wide I have at least tried to +put one foot in the crack. The sympathetic reader may find his own +way further; or may be stirred by my endeavor to a deeper +appreciation, interest, and insight. That is my hope. + +New York, April, 1922. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PREFACE + +I. ON FICTION + +SENTIMENTAL AMERICA +FREE FICTION +A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION TOWARD FICTION +THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY + +II. ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION + +THE AMERICAN TRADITION +BACK TO NATURE +THANKS TO THE ARTISTS +TO-DAY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ADDRESSED TO THE BRITISH TIME'S MIRROR +THE FAMILY MAGAZINE + +III. THE NEW GENERATION + +THE YOUNG ROMANTICS +PURITANS ALL +THE OLDER GENERATION +A LITERATURE OF PROTEST +BARBARIANS A LA MODE + +IV. THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS + +A PROSPECTUS FOR CRITICISM +THE RACE OF REVIEWERS +THE SINS OF REVIEWING +MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE" +MR. HERGESHEIMER'S "CYTHEREA" + +V. PHILISTINES AND DILETTANTE + +POETRY FOR THE UNPOETICAL EYE, EAR, AND MIND +OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE +FLAT PROSE + +VI. MEN AND THEIR BOOKS + +CONRAD AND MELVILLE +THE NOVELIST OF PITY +HENRY JAMES THE SATIRIC +RAGE OF BUTLER + +CONCLUSION + +DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE + + + + +I + +ON FICTION + +SENTIMENTAL AMERICA + + +The Oriental may be inscrutable, but he is no more puzzling than +the average American. We admit that we are hard, keen, practical, +--the adjectives that every casual European applies to us,--and yet +any book-store window or railway news-stand will show that we +prefer sentimental magazines and books. Why should a hard race--if +we are hard--read soft books? + +By soft books, by sentimental books, I do not mean only the kind +of literature best described by the word "squashy." I doubt +whether we write or read more novels and short stories of the +tear-dripped or hyper-emotional variety than other nations. +Germany is--or was--full of such soft stuff. It is highly popular +in France, although the excellent taste of French criticism keeps +it in check. Italian popular literature exudes sentiment; and the +sale of "squashy" fiction in England is said to be threatened only +by an occasional importation of an American "best-seller." We have +no bad eminence here. Sentimentalists with enlarged hearts are +international in habitat, although, it must be admitted, +especially popular in America. + +When a critic, after a course in American novels and magazines, +declares that life, as it appears on the printed page here, is +fundamentally sentimentalized, he goes much deeper than +"mushiness" with his charge. He means, I think, that there is an +alarming tendency in American fiction to dodge the facts of life-- +or to pervert them. He means that in most popular books only red- +blooded, optimistic people are welcome. He means that material +success, physical soundness, and the gratification of the emotions +have the right of way. He means that men and women (except the +comic figures) shall be presented, not as they are, but as we +should like to have them, according to a judgment tempered by +nothing more searching than our experience with an unusually +comfortable, safe, and prosperous mode of living. Every one +succeeds in American plays and stories--if not by good thinking, +why then by good looks or good luck. A curious society the +research student of a later date might make of it--an upper world +of the colorless successful, illustrated by chance-saved collar +advertisements and magazine covers; an underworld of grotesque +scamps, clowns, and hyphenates drawn from the comic supplement; +and all--red-blooded hero and modern gargoyle alike--always in +good humor. + +I am not touching in this picture merely to attack it. It has been +abundantly attacked; what it needs is definition. For there is +much in this bourgeois, good-humored American literature of ours +which rings true, which is as honest an expression of our +individuality as was the more austere product of antebellum New +England. If American sentimentality does invite criticism, +American sentiment deserves defense. + +Sentiment--the response of the emotions to the appeal of human +nature--is cheap, but so are many other good things. The best of +the ancients were rich in it. Homer's chieftains wept easily. So +did Shakespeare's heroes. Adam and Eve shed "some natural tears" +when they left the Paradise which Milton imagined for them. A +heart accessible to pathos, to natural beauty, to religion, was a +chief requisite for the protagonist of Victorian literature. Even +Becky Sharp was touched--once--by Amelia's moving distress. + +Americans, to be sure, do not weep easily; but if they make +equivalent responses to sentiment, that should not be held against +them. If we like "sweet" stories, or "strong"--which means +emotional--stories, our taste is not thereby proved to be +hopeless, or our national character bad. It is better to be +creatures of even sentimental sentiment with the author of "The +Rosary," than to see the world _only_ as it is portrayed by the pens +of Bernard Shaw and Anatole France. The first is deplorable; the +second is dangerous. I should deeply regret the day when a simple +story of honest American manhood winning a million and a sparkling, +piquant sweetheart lost all power to lull my critical faculty and warm +my heart. I doubt whether any literature has ever had too much of +honest sentiment. + +Good Heavens! Because some among us insist that the mystic rose of +the emotions shall be painted a brighter pink than nature allows, +are the rest to forego glamour? Or because, to view the matter +differently, psychology has shown what happens in the brain when a +man falls in love, and anthropology has traced marriage to a care +for property rights, are we to suspect the idyllic in literature +wherever we find it? Life is full of the idyllic; and no +anthropologist will ever persuade the reasonably romantic youth +that the sweet and chivalrous passion which leads him to mingle +reverence with desire for the object of his affections, is nothing +but an idealized property sense. Origins explain very little, +after all. The bilious critics of sentiment in literature have not +even honest science behind them. + +I have no quarrel with traffickers in simple emotion--with such +writers as James Lane Allen and James Whitcomb Riley, for example. +But the average American is not content with such sentiment as +theirs. He wishes a more intoxicating brew, he desires to be +persuaded that, once you step beyond your own experience, feeling +rules the world. He wishes--I judge by what he reads--to make +sentiment at least ninety per cent efficient, even if a dream- +America, superficially resemblant to the real, but far different +in tone, must be created by the obedient writer in order to +satisfy him. His sentiment has frequently to be sentimentalized +before he will pay for it. And to this fault, which he shares with +other modern races, he adds the other heinous sin of +sentimentalism, the refusal to face the facts. + +This sentimentalizing of reality is far more dangerous than the +romantic sentimentalizing of the "squashy" variety. It is to be +found in sex-stories which carefully observe decency of word and +deed, where the conclusion is always in accord with conventional +morality, yet whose characters are clearly immoral, indecent, and +would so display themselves if the tale were truly told. It is to +be found in stories of "big business" where trickery and rascality +are made virtuous at the end by sentimental baptism. If I choose +for the hero of my novel a director in an American trust; if I +make him an accomplice in certain acts of ruthless economic +tyranny; if I make it clear that at first he is merely subservient +to a stronger will; and that the acts he approves are in complete +disaccord with his private moral code--why then, if the facts +should be dragged to the light, if he is made to realize the exact +nature of his career, how can I end my story? It is evident that +my hero possesses little insight and less firmness of character. +He is not a hero; he is merely a tool. In, let us say, eight cases +out of ten, his curve is already plotted. It leads downward--not +necessarily along the villain's path, but toward moral +insignificance. + +And yet, I cannot end my story that way for Americans. There _must_ be +a grand moral revolt. There must be resistance, triumph, and not only +spiritual, but also financial recovery. And this, likewise, is +sentimentality. Even Booth Tarkington, in his excellent "Turmoil," had +to dodge the logical issue of his story; had to make his hero exchange +a practical literary idealism for a very impractical, even though a +commercial, utopianism, in order to emerge apparently successful at +the end of the book. A story such as the Danish Nexo's "Pelle the +Conqueror," where pathos and the idyllic, each intense, each +beautiful, are made convincing by an undeviating truth to experience, +would seem to be almost impossible of production just now in America. + +It is not enough to rail at this false fiction. The chief duty of +criticism is to explain. The best corrective of bad writing is a +knowledge of why it is bad. We get the fiction we deserve, +precisely as we get the government we deserve--or perhaps, in each +case, a little better. Why are we sentimental? When that question +is answered, it is easier to understand the defects and the +virtues of American fiction. And the answer lies in the +traditional American philosophy of life. + +To say that the American is an idealist is to commit a +thoroughgoing platitude. Like most platitudes, the statement is +annoying because from one point of view it is indisputably just, +while from another it does not seem to fit the facts. With regard +to our tradition, it is indisputable. Of the immigrants who since +the seventeenth century have been pouring into this continent a +proportion large in number, larger still in influence, has been +possessed of motives which in part at least were idealistic. If it +was not the desire for religious freedom that urged them, it was +the desire for personal freedom; if not political liberty, why +then economic liberty (for this too is idealism), and the +opportunity to raise the standard of life. And of course all these +motives were strongest in that earlier immigration which has done +most to fix the state of mind and body which we call being +American. I need not labor the argument. Our political and social +history support it; our best literature demonstrates it, for no +men have been more idealistic than the American writers whom we +have consented to call great. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, +Whitman--was idealism ever more thoroughly incarnate than in them? + +And this idealism--to risk again a platitude--has been in the air of +America. It has permeated our religious sects, and created +several of them. It has given tone to our thinking, and even more +to our feeling. I do not say that it has always, or even usually, +determined our actions, although the Civil War is proof of its +power. Again and again it has gone aground roughly when the ideal +met a condition of living--a fact that will provide the +explanation for which I seek. But optimism, "boosting," muck- +raking (not all of its manifestations are pretty), social service, +religious, municipal, democratic reform, indeed the "uplift" +generally, is evidence of the vigor, the bumptiousness of the +inherited American tendency to pursue the ideal. No one can doubt +that in 1918 we believed, at least, in idealism. +Nevertheless, so far as the average individual is concerned, with +just his share and no more of the race-tendency, this idealism +has been suppressed, and in some measure perverted. It is this +which explains, I think, American sentimentalism. + +Consider, for example, the ethics of conventional American +society. The American ethical tradition is perfectly definite and +tremendously powerful. It belongs, furthermore, to a population +far larger than the "old American" stock, for it has been +laboriously inculcated in our schools and churches, and +impressively driven home by newspaper, magazine, and book. I shall +not presume to analyze it save where it touches literature. There +it maintains a definite attitude toward all sex-problems: the +Victorian, which is not necessarily, or even probably, a bad one. +Man should be chaste, and proud of his chastity. Woman must be so. +It is the ethical duty of the American to hate, or at least to +despise, all deviations, and to pretend--for the greater prestige +of the law--that such sinning is exceptional, at least in America. +And this is the public morality he believes in, whatever may be +his private experience in actual living. In business, it is the +ethical tradition of the American, inherited from a rigorous +Protestant morality, to be square, to play the game without +trickery, to fight hard but never meanly. Over-reaching is +justifiable when the other fellow has equal opportunities to be +"smart"; lying, tyranny--never. And though the opposites of all +these laudable practices come to pass, he must frown on them in +public, deny their rightness even to the last cock-crow-- +especially in the public press. + +American political history is a long record of idealistic +tendencies toward democracy working painfully through a net of +graft, pettiness, sectionalism, and bravado, with constant +disappointment for the idealist who believes, traditionally, in +the intelligence of the crowd. American social history is a +glaring instance of how the theory of equal dignity for all men +can entangle itself with caste distinctions, snobbery, and the +power of wealth. American economic history betrays the pioneer +helping to kick down the ladder which he himself had raised toward +equal opportunity for all. American literary history--especially +contemporary literary history--reflects the result of all this for +the American mind. The sentimental in our literature is a direct +consequence. + +The disease is easily acquired. Mr. Smith, a broker, finds himself +in an environment of "schemes" and "deals" in which the quality of +mercy is strained, and the wind is decidedly not tempered to the +shorn lamb. After all, business is business. He shrugs his +shoulders and takes his part. But his unexpended fund of native +idealism--if, as is most probable, he has his share--seeks its +due satisfaction. He cannot use it in business; so he takes it out +in a novel or a play where, quite contrary to his observed +experience, ordinary people like himself act nobly, with a success +that is all the more agreeable for being unexpected. His wife, a +woman with strange stirrings about her heart, with motions toward +beauty, and desires for a significant life and rich, satisfying +experience, exists in day-long pettiness, gossips, frivols, +scolds, with money enough to do what she pleases, and nothing +vital to do. She also relieves her pent-up idealism in plays or +books--in high-wrought, "strong" novels, not in adventures in +society such as the kitchen admires, but in stories with violent +moral and emotional crises, whose characters, no matter how +unlifelike, have "strong" thoughts, and make vital decisions; +succeed or fail significantly. Her brother, the head of a +wholesale dry-goods firm, listens to the stories the drummers +bring home of night life on the road, laughs, says to himself +regretfully that the world has to be like that; and then, in +logical reaction, demands purity and nothing but aggressive purity +in the books of the public library. + +The hard man goes in for philanthropy (never before so frequently +as in America); the one-time "boss" takes to picture-collecting; +the railroad wrecker gathers rare editions of the Bible; and tens +of thousands of humbler Americans carry their inherited idealism +into the necessarily sordid experiences of life in an imperfectly +organized country, suppress it for fear of being thought "cranky" +or "soft," and then, in their imagination and all that feeds their +imagination, give it vent. You may watch the process any evening +at the "movies" or the melodrama, on the trolley-car or in the +easy chair at home. + +This philosophy of living which I have called American idealism +is in its own nature sound, as is proved in a hundred directions +where it has had full play. Suppressed idealism, like any other +suppressed desire, becomes unsound. And here lies the ultimate +cause of the taste for sentimentalism in the American _bourgeoisie._ +An undue insistence upon happy endings, regardless of the premises of +the story, and a craving for optimism everywhere, anyhow, are sure +signs of a "morbid complex," and to be compared with some justice to +the craving for drugs in an alcoholic deprived of liquor. No one can +doubt the effect of the suppression by the Puritan discipline of that +instinctive love of pleasure and liberal experience common to us all. +Its unhealthy reaction is visible in every old American community. No +one who faces the facts can deny the result of the suppression by +commercial, bourgeois, prosperous America of our native idealism. +The student of society may find its dire effects in politics, in +religion, and in social intercourse. The critic cannot overlook +them in literature; for it is in the realm of the imagination that +idealism, direct or perverted, does its best or its worst. + +Sentiment is not perverted idealism. Sentiment _is_ idealism, +of a mild and not too masculine variety. If it has sins, they are +sins of omission, not commission. Our fondness for sentiment +proves that our idealism, if a little loose in the waist-band and +puffy in the cheeks, is still hearty, still capable of active +mobilization, like those comfortable French husbands whose plump +and smiling faces, careless of glory, careless of everything but +thrift and good living, one used to see figured on a page whose +superscription read, "Dead on the field of honor." + +The novels, the plays, the short stories, of sentiment may prefer +sweetness, perhaps, to truth, the feminine to the masculine +virtues, but we waste ammunition in attacking them. There never +was, I suppose, a great literature of sentiment, for not even "The +Sentimental Journey" is truly great. But no one can make a diet +exclusively of "noble" literature; the charming has its own cozy +corner across from the tragic (and a much bigger corner at that). +Our uncounted amorists of tail-piece song and illustrated story +provide the readiest means of escape from the somewhat uninspiring +life that most men and women are living just now in America. + +The sentimental, however,--whether because of an excess of +sentiment softening into "slush," or of a morbid optimism, or of a +weak-eyed distortion of the facts of life,--is perverted. It needs +to be cured, and its cure is more truth. But this cure, I very +much fear, is not entirely, or even chiefly, in the power of the +"regular practitioner," the honest writer. He can be honest; but +if he is much more honest than his readers, they will not read +him. As Professor Lounsbury once said, a language grows corrupt +only when its speakers grow corrupt, and mends, strengthens, and +becomes pure with them. So with literature. We shall have less +sentimentality in American literature when our accumulated store +of idealism disappears in a laxer generation; or when it finds due +vent in a more responsible, less narrow, less monotonously +prosperous life than is lived by the average reader of fiction in +America. I would rather see our literary taste damned forever than +have the first alternative become--as it has not yet--a fact. The +second, in these years rests upon the knees of the gods. + +All this must not be taken in too absolute a sense. There are +medicines, and good ones, in the hands of writers and of critics, +to abate, if not to heal, this plague of sentimentalism. I have +stated ultimate causes only. They are enough to keep the mass of +Americans reading sentimentalized fiction until some fundamental +change has come, not strong enough to hold back the van of +American writing, which is steadily moving toward restraint, +sanity, and truth. Every honest composition is a step forward in +the cause; and every clear-minded criticism. + +But one must doubt the efficacy, and one must doubt the +healthiness, of reaction into cynicism and sophisticated +cleverness. There are curious signs, especially in what we may +call the literature of New York, of a growing sophistication that +sneers at sentiment and the sentimental alike. "Magazines of +cleverness" have this for their keynote, although as yet the +satire is not always well aimed. There are abundant signs that the +generation just coming forward will rejoice in such a pose. It is +observable now in the colleges, where the young literati turn up +their noses at everything American,--magazines, best-sellers, or +one-hundred-night plays,--and resort for inspiration to the +English school of anti-Victorians: to Remy de Gourmont, to Anatole +France. Their pose is not altogether to be blamed, and the men to +whom they resort are models of much that is admirable; but there +is little promise for American literature in exotic imitation. To +see ourselves prevailingly as others see us may be good for +modesty, but does not lead to a self-confident native art. And it +is a dangerous way for Americans to travel. We cannot afford such +sophistication yet. The English wits experimented with cynicism in +the court of Charles II, laughed at blundering Puritan morality, +laughed at country manners, and were whiffed away because the +ideals they laughed at were better than their own. Idealism is not +funny, however censurable its excesses. As a race we have too much +sentiment to be frightened out of the sentimental by a blase +cynicism. + +At first glance the flood of moral literature now upon us--social- +conscience stories, scientific plays, platitudinous "moralities" +that tell us how to live--may seem to be another protest against +sentimentalism. And that the French and English examples have been +so warmly welcomed here may seem another indication of a reaction +on our part. I refer especially to "hard" stories, full of +vengeful wrath, full of warnings for the race that dodges the +facts of life. H. G. Wells is the great exemplar, with his +sociological studies wrapped in description and tied with a plot. +In a sense, such stories are certainly to be regarded as a protest +against truth-dodging, against cheap optimism, against "slacking," +whether in literature or in life. But it would be equally just to +call them another result of suppressed idealism, and to regard +their popularity in America as proof of the argument which I have +advanced in this essay. Excessively didactic literature is often a +little unhealthy. In fresh periods, when life runs strong and both +ideals and passions find ready issue into life, literature has no +burdensome moral to carry. It digests its moral. Homer digested +his morals. They transfuse his epics. So did Shakespeare. + +Not so with the writers of the social-conscience school. They are +in a rage over wicked, wasteful man. Their novels are bursted +notebooks--sometimes neat and orderly notebooks, like Mr. +Galsworthy's or our own Ernest Poole's, sometimes haphazard ones, +like those of Mr. Wells, but always explosive with reform. These +gentlemen know very well what they are about, especially Mr. +Wells, the lesser artist, perhaps, as compared with Galsworthy, +but the shrewder and possibly the greater man. The very +sentimentalists, who go to novels to exercise the idealism which +they cannot use in life, will read these unsentimental stories, +although their lazy impulses would never spur them on toward any +truth not sweetened by a tale. + +And yet, one feels that the social attack might have been more +convincing if free from its compulsory service to fiction; that +these novels and plays might have been better literature if the +authors did not study life in order that they might be better able +to preach. Wells and Galsworthy also have suffered from suppressed +idealism, although it would be unfair to say that perversion was +the result. So have our muck-rakers, who, very characteristically, +exhibit the disorder in a more complex and a much more serious +form, since to a distortion of facts they have often enough added +hypocrisy and commercialism. It is part of the price we pay for +being sentimental. + +If I am correct in my analysis, we are suffering here in America, +not from a plague of bad taste merely, nor only from a lack of +real education among our myriads of readers, nor from decadence-- +least of all, this last. It is a disease of our own particular +virtue which has infected us--idealism, suppressed and perverted. +A less commercial, more responsible America, perhaps a less +prosperous and more spiritual America, will hold fast to its +sentiment, but be weaned from its sentimentality. + + + + +FREE FICTION + + +What impresses me most in the contemporary short story as I find +it in American magazines, is its curious sophistication. Its bloom +is gone. I have read through dozens of periodicals without finding +one with fresh feeling and the easy touch of the writer who writes +because his story urges him. And when with relief I do encounter a +narrative that is not conventional in structure and mechanical in +its effects, the name of the author is almost invariably that of a +newcomer, or of one of our few uncorrupted masters of the art. +Still more remarkable, the good short stories that I meet with in +my reading are the trivial ones,--the sketchy, the anecdotal, the +merely adventurous or merely picturesque; as they mount toward +literature they seem to increase in artificiality and constraint; +when they propose to interpret life they become machines, and +nothing more, for the discharge of sensation, sentiment, or +romance. And this is true, so far as I can discover, of the +stories which most critics and more editors believe to be +successful, the stories which are most characteristic of magazine +narrative and of the output of American fiction in our times. + +I can take my text from any magazine, from the most literary to +the least. In the stories selected by all of them I find the +resemblances greater than the differences, and the latter seldom +amount to more than a greater or a less excellence of workmanship +and style. The "literary" magazines, it is true, more frequently +surprise one by a story told with original and consummate art; but +then the "popular" magazines balance this merit by their more +frequent escape from mere prettiness. In both kinds, the majority +of the stories come from the same mill, even though the minds that +shape them may differ in refinement and in taste. Their range is +narrow, and, what is more damning, their art seems constantly to +verge upon artificiality. + +These made-to-order stories (and this is certainly not too strong +a term for the majority of them) are not interesting to a critical +reader. He sticks to the novel, or, more frequently, goes to +France, to Russia, or to England for his fiction, as the sales- +list of any progressive publisher will show. And I do not believe +that they are deeply interesting to an uncritical reader. He reads +them to pass the time; and, to judge from the magazines +themselves, gives his more serious attention to the "write-ups" of +politics, current events, new discoveries, and men in the public +eye,--to reality, in other words, written as if it were fiction, +and more interesting than the fiction that accompanies it, +because, in spite of its enlivening garb, it is guaranteed by +writer and editor to be true. I am not impressed by the perfervid +letters published by the editor in praise of somebody's story as a +"soul-cure," or the greatest of the decade. They were written, I +suppose, but they are not typical. They do not insult the +intelligence as do the ridiculous puffs which it is now the +fashion to place like a sickly limelight at the head of a story; +but they do not convince me of the story's success with the +public. Actually, men and women, discussing these magazines, +seldom speak of the stories. They have been interested,--in a +measure. The "formula," as I shall show later, is bound to get +that result. But they have dismissed the characters and forgotten +the plots. + +I do not deny that this supposedly successful short story is easy +to read. It is--fatally easy. And here precisely is the trouble. +To borrow a term from dramatic criticism, it is "well made," and +that is what makes it so thin, so bloodless, and so unprofitable +to remember, in spite of its easy narrative and its "punch." Its +success as literature, curiously enough for a new literature and a +new race like ours, is limited, not by crudity, or +inexpressiveness, but by form, by the very rigidity of its +carefully perfected form. Like other patent medicines, it is +constructed by formula. + +It is not difficult to construct an outline of the "formula" by +which thousands of current narratives are being whipped into +shape. Indeed, by turning to the nearest textbook on "Selling the +Short Story," I could find one ready-made. (There could be no +clearer symptom of the disease I wish to diagnose than these many +"practical" textbooks, with their over-emphasis upon technique and +their under-estimate of all else that makes literature.) The story +_must_ begin, it appears, with action or with dialogue. A mother packs +her son's trunk while she gives him unheeded advice mingled with +questions about shirts and socks; a corrupt and infuriated director +pounds on the mahogany table at his board meeting, and curses the +honest fool (hero of the story) who has got in his way; or, "'Where +did Mary Worden get that curious gown?' inquired Mrs. Van Deming, +glancing across the sparkling glass and silver of the hotel terrace." +Any one of these will serve as instance of the break-neck beginning +which Kipling made obligatory. Once started, the narrative must move, +move, move furiously, each action and every speech pointing directly +toward the unknown climax. A pause is a confession of weakness. This +Poe taught for a special kind of story; and this a later generation, +with a servility which would have amazed that sturdy fighter, +requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must neatly, +quickly, and definitely end the action for all time, either by a +solution you have been urged to hope for by the wily author in +every preceding paragraph, or in a way which is logically correct +but never, never suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue +of the latter of these two alternatives,--and the strain of living +up to his inventiveness has been frightful. Finally comes a last +suspiration, usually in the advertising pages. Sometimes it is a +beautiful descriptive sentence charged with sentiment, sometimes a +smart epigram, according to the style of story, or the "line" +expected of the author. Try this, as the advertisements say, on +your favorite magazine. This formula, with variations which +readers can supply for themselves or draw from textbooks on the +short story, is not a wholly bad method of writing fiction. It is, +I venture to assert, a very good one,--if you desire merely +effective story-telling. It is probably the best way of making the +short story a thoroughly efficient tool for the presentation of +modern life. And there lies, I believe, the whole trouble. The +short story, its course plotted and its form prescribed, has +become too efficient. Now efficiency is all that we ask of a +railroad, efficiency is half at least of what we ask of +journalism; but efficiency is not the most, it is perhaps the +least, important among the undoubted elements of good literature. + +In order to make the short story efficient, the dialogue, the +setting, the plot, the character development, have been squeezed +and whittled and moulded until the means of telling the story fit +the ends of the story-telling as neatly as hook fits eye. As one +writer on how to manufacture short stories tells us in discussing +character development, the aspirant must-- + +"Eliminate every trait or deed which does not help peculiarly to +make the character's part in the particular story either +intelligible or open to such sympathy as it merits; + +"Paint in only the 'high lights,' that is...never qualify or +elaborate a trait or episode, merely for the sake of preserving +the effect of the character's full reality." And thus the story +is to be subdued to the service of the climax as the body of man +to his brain. But what these writers upon the short story do not +tell us is that efficiency of this order works backward as well as +forward. If means are to correspond with ends, why then ends must +be adjusted to means. Not only must the devices of the story- +teller be directed with sincerity toward the tremendous effect he +wishes to make with his climax upon you and me, his readers; but +the interesting life which it is or should be his purpose to write +about for our delectation must be maneuvered, or must be chosen or +rejected, not according to the limitation which small space +imposes, but with its suitability to the "formula" in mind. In +brief, if we are to have complete efficiency, the right kind of +life and no other must be put into the short-story hopper. Nothing +which cannot be told rapidly must be dropped in, lest it clog the +smoothly spinning wheels. If it is a story of slowly developing +incongruity in married life, the action must be speeded beyond +probability, like a film in the moving pictures, before it is +ready to be made into a short story. If it is a tale of +disillusionment on a prairie farm, with the world and life +flattening out together, some sharp climax must be provided +nevertheless, because that is the only way in which to tell a +story. Indeed it is easy to see the dangers which arise from +sacrificing truth to a formula in the interests of efficiency. + +This is the limitation by form; the limitation by subject is quite +as annoying. American writers from Poe down have been fertile in +plots. Especially since O. Henry took the place of Kipling as a +literary master, ingenuity, inventiveness, cleverness in its +American sense, have been squandered upon the short story. But +plots do not make variety. Themes make variety. Human nature +regarded in its multitudinous phases makes variety. There are only +a few themes in current American short stories,--the sentimental +theme from which breed ten thousand narratives; the theme of +intellectual analysis and of moral psychology favored by the +"literary" magazines; the "big-business" theme; the theme of +American effrontery; the social-contrast theme; the theme of +successful crime. Add a few more, and you will have them all. Read +a hundred examples, and you will see how infallibly the authors-- +always excepting our few masters--limit themselves to conventional +aspects of even these conventional themes. Reflect, and you will +see how the first--the theme of sentiment--has overflowed its +banks and washed over all the rest, so that, whatever else a story +may be, it must somewhere, somehow, make the honest American heart +beat more softly. + +There is an obvious cause for this in the taste of the American +public, which I do not propose to neglect. But here too we are in +the grip of the "formula," of the idea that there is only one way +to construct a short story--a swift succession of climaxes rising +precipitously to a giddy eminence. For the formula is rigid, not +plastic as life is plastic. It fails to grasp innumerable stories +which break the surface of American life day by day and disappear +uncaught. Stories of quiet homely life, events significant for +themselves that never reach a burning climax, situations that end +in irony, or doubt, or aspiration, it mars in the telling. The +method which makes story-telling easy, itself limits our variety. + +Nothing brings home the artificiality and the narrowness of this +American fiction so clearly as a comparison, for better and for +worse, with the Russian short story. I have in mind the works of +Anton Tchekoff, whose short stories have now been translated into +excellent English. Fresh from a reading of these books, one feels, +it is true, quite as inclined to criticize as to praise. Why are +the characters therein depicted so persistently disagreeable, even +in the lighter stories? Why are the women always freckled, the men +predominantly red and watery in the eye? Why is the country so +flat, so foggy, so desolate; and why are the peasants so lumpish +and miserable? Russia before the Revolution could not have been so +dreary as this; the prevailing grimness must be due to some mental +obfuscation of her writers. I do not refer to the gloomy, powerful +realism of the stories of hopeless misery. There, if one +criticizes, it must be only the advisability of the choice of such +subjects. One does not doubt the truth of the picture. I mean the +needless dinginess of much of Russian fiction, and of many of +these powerful short stories. + +Nevertheless, when one has said his worst, and particularly when +he has eliminated the dingier stories of the collection, he +returns with an admiration, almost passionate, to the truth, the +variety, above all to the freedom of these stories. I do not know +Russia or the Russians, and yet I am as sure of the absolute truth +of that unfortunate doctor in "La Cigale," who builds up his +heroic life of self-sacrifice while his wife seeks selfishly +elsewhere for a hero, as I am convinced of the essential +unreality, except in dialect and manners, of the detectives, the +"dope-fiends," the hard business men, the heroic boys and lovely +girls that people most American short stories. As for variety,-- +the Russian does not handle numerous themes. He is obsessed with +the dreariness of life, and his obsession is only occasionally +lifted; he has no room to wander widely through human nature. And +yet his work gives an impression of variety that the American +magazine never attains. He is free to be various. When the mood of +gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with +consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that +readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as +unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of +the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any +manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves +freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even +when his Russian prepossessions lead him far away from our Western +moods. + +Freedom. That is the word here, and also in his method of telling +these stories. No one seems to have said to Tchekoff, "Your +stories must move, move, move." Sometimes, indeed, he pauses +outright, as life pauses; sometimes he seems to turn aside, as +life turns aside before its progress is resumed. No one has ever +made clear to him that every word from the first of the story must +point unerringly toward the solution and the effect of the plot. +His paragraphs spring from the characters and the situation. They +are led on to the climax by the story itself. They do not drag the +panting reader down a rapid action, to fling him breathless upon +the "I told you so" of a conclusion prepared in advance. + +I have in mind especially a story of Tchekoff's called "The Night +Before Easter." It is a very interesting story; it is a very +admirable story, conveying in a few pages much of Russian +spirituality and more of universal human nature; but I believe +that all, or nearly all, of our American magazines would refuse +it; not because it lacks picturesqueness, or narrative suspense, +or vivid characterization--all of these it has in large measure. +They would reject it because it does not seem to move rapidly, or +because it lacks a vigorous climax. The Goltva swollen in flood +lies under the Easter stars. As the monk Jerome ferries the +traveler over to where fire and cannon-shot and rocket announce +the rising of Christ to the riotous monastery, he asks, "Can you +tell me, kind master, why it is that even in the presence of great +happiness a man cannot forget his grief?" Deacon Nicholas is dead, +who alone in the monastery could write prayers that touched the +heart. And of them all, only Jerome read his "akaphists." "He used +to open the door of his cell and make me sit by him, and we used +to read....His face was compassionate and tender--" In the +monastery the countryside is crowding to hear the Easter service. +The choir sings "Lift up thine eyes, O Zion, and behold." But +Nicholas is dead, and there is none to penetrate the meaning of +the Easter canon, except Jerome who toils all night on the ferry +because they had forgotten him. In the morning, the traveler +recrosses the Goltva. Jerome is still on the ferry. He rests his +dim, timid eyes upon them all, and then fixes his gaze on the rosy +face of a merchant's wife. There is little of the man in that long +gaze. He is seeking in the woman's face the sweet and gentle +features of his lost friend. + +The American editor refuses such a story. There is no plot here, +he says, and no "punch." He is wrong, although an imperfect +abstract like mine cannot convict him. For the narrative presents +an unforgettable portrait of wistful hero-worship, set in the dim +mists of a Russian river against the barbaric splendor of an +Easter midnight mass. To force a climax upon this poignant story +would be to spoil it. And when it appears, as it will, in reprint, +in some periodical anthology of current fiction, it will not fail +to impress American readers. + +But the American editor must have a climax which drives home what +he thinks the public wants. If it is not true, so much the worse +for truth. If it falsifies the story, well, a lying story with a +"punch" is better than a true one that lacks a fire-spitting +climax. The audience which judge a play by the effect of its +"curtain," will not complain of a trifling illogicality in +narrative, or a little juggling with what might happen if the +story were life. Of what the editor wants I find a typical example +in a recent number of a popular magazine. The story is well +written; it is interesting until it begins to lie; moreover it is +"featured" as one of the best short stories of the year. An +American girl, brought up in luxury, has fed her heart with +romantic sentiment. The world is a Christmas tree. If you are good +and pretty and "nice," you have only to wait until you get big +enough to shake it, and then down will come some present--respect +from one's friends and family, perhaps a lover. And then she wakes +up. Her father points out that she is pinching him by her +extravagance. Nobody seems to want her kind of "nice-ness"; which +indeed does no one much good. There is nothing that she can do +that is useful in the world, for she has never learned. She begins +to doubt the Christmas tree. There enters a man--a young +electrical engineer, highly trained, highly ambitious, but caught +in the wheels of a great corporation where he is merely a cog; +wanting to live, wanting to love, wanting to be married, yet +condemned to labor for many years more upon a salary which perhaps +would little more than pay for her clothes. By an ingenious device +they are thrown together in a bit of wild country near town, and +are made to exchange confidences. So far, no one can complain of +the truth of this story; and furthermore it is well told. Here are +two products of our social machine, both true to type. Suppose +they want to marry? What can we do about it? The story-teller has +posed his question with a force not to be denied. + +But I wish we had had a Tchekoff to answer it. As for this author, +he leads his characters to a conveniently deserted house, lights a +fire on the hearth, sets water boiling for tea, and in a few pages +of charming romance would persuade us that with a few economies in +this rural residence, true love may have its course and a +successful marriage crown the morning's adventure. Thus in one +dazzling sweep, the greatest and most sugary plum of all drops +from the very tip of the Christmas tree into the lap of the lady, +who had just learned that happiness in the real world comes in no +such haphazard and undeserved a fashion. Really! have we +degenerated from Lincoln's day? Is it easy now to fool all of us +all of the time, so that a tale-teller dares to expose silly +romance at the beginning of his story, and yet dose us with it at +the end? Not that one objects to romance. It is as necessary as +food, and almost as valuable. But romance that pretends to be +realism, realism that fizzles out into sentimental romance--is +there any excuse for that? Even if it provides "heart interest" +and an effective climax? + +The truth is, of course, that the Russian stories are based upon +life; the typical stories of the American magazines, for all their +realistic details, are too often studied, not from American life +but from literary convention. Even when their substance is fresh, +their unfoldings and above all their solutions are second-hand. If +the Russian authors could write American stories I believe that +their work would be more truly popular than what we are now +getting. They would be free to be interesting in any direction and +by any method. The writer of the American short story is not free. + +I should like to leave the subject here with a comparison that +any reader can make for himself. But American pride recalls the +past glory of our short story, and common knowledge indicates the +present reality of a few authors--several of them women--who are +writing fiction of which any race might be proud. The optimist +cannot resist meditating on the way out for our enslaved short +story. + +The ultimate responsibility for its present position must fall, I +suppose, upon our American taste, which, when taken by and large, +is unquestionably crude, easily satisfied, and not sensitive to +good things. American taste does not rebel against the "formula." +If interest is pricked it does not inquire too curiously into the +nature of the goad. American taste is partial to sentiment, and +antagonistic to themes that fail to present the American in the +light of optimistic romance. But our defects in taste are slowly +but certainly being remedied. The schools are at work upon them; +journalism, for all its noisy vulgarity, is at work upon them. Our +taste in art, our taste in poetry, our taste in architecture, our +taste in music go up, as our taste in magazine fiction seems to go +down. + +But what are the writers of short stories and what are the editors +and publishers doing to help taste improve itself until, as Henry +James says, it acquires a keener relish than ever before? + +It profits nothing to attack the American writer. He does, it may +fairly be assumed, what he can, and I do not wish to discuss here +the responsibility of the public for his deficiencies. The editor +and the publisher, however, stand in a somewhat different +relationship to the American short story. They may assert with +much justice that they are public servants merely; nevertheless +they _do_ control the organs of literary expression, and it is through +them that any positive influence on the side of restriction or +proscription must be exerted, whatever may be its ultimate source. If +a lack of freedom in method and in choice of subject is one reason for +the sophistication of our short story, then the editorial policy of +American magazines is a legitimate field for speculation. + +I can reason only from the evidence of the product and the +testimony of authors, successful and unsuccessful. Yet one +conclusion springs to the eye, and is enough in itself to justify +investigation. The critical basis upon which the American editor +professes to build his magazine is of doubtful validity. I believe +that it is unsound. His policy, as stated in "editorial +announcements" and confirmed by his advertisements of the material +he selects, is first to find out what the public wants, and next +to supply it. This is reasonable in appearance. It would seem to +be good commercially, and, as a policy, I should consider it good +for art, which must consult the popular taste or lose its +vitality. But a pitfall lies between this theory of editorial +selection and its successful practice. The editor must really know +what the public wants. If he does not, he becomes a dogmatic +critic of a very dangerous school. + +Those who know the theater and its playwrights, are agreed that +the dramatic manager, at least in America, is a very poor judge of +what the public desires. The percentage of bad guesses in every +metropolitan season is said to be very high. Is the editor more +competent? It would seem that he is, to judge from the stability +of our popular magazines. But that he follows the public taste +with any certainty of judgment is rendered unlikely, not only by +inherent improbability, but also by three specific facts: the +tiresome succession of like stories which follow unendingly in the +wake of every popular success; the palpable fear of the editor to +attempt innovation, experiment, or leadership; and the general +complaint against "magazine stories." In truth, the American +editor plays safe, constantly and from conviction; and playing +safe in the short story means the adoption of the "formula," which +is sure to be somewhat successful; it means restriction to a few +safe themes. He swings from the detective story to the tale of the +alien, from the "heart-interest" story to the narrative of "big +business." When, as has happened recently, a magazine experimented +with eroticism, and found it successful, the initiative of itseditor +was felt to be worthy of general remark. + +If one reduces this imperfect sketch of existing conditions to +terms of literary criticism, the result is interesting. There are +two great schools of criticism: the judicial and the +impressionistic. The judicial critic--a Boileau, a Matthew +Arnold--bases his criticism upon fundamental principles. The +impressionistic critic follows the now hackneyed advice of Anatole +France, to let his soul adventure among masterpieces, and seeks +the reaction for good or bad of a given work upon his own finely +strung mind. The first group must be sure of the breadth, the +soundness, and the just application of their principles. The +second group must depend upon their own good taste. + +The American editor has flung aside as archaic the fundamental +principles of criticism upon which judicial critics have based +their opinions. And yet he has chosen to be dogmatic. He has +transformed his guess as to what the public wants into a fundamental +principle, and acted upon it with the confidence of an Aristotle. He +asserts freely and frankly that, in his private capacity, such and +such a story pleases _him_, is _good_ (privately he is an impressionist +and holds opinions far more valid than his editorial judgment, since +they are founded upon taste and not upon intuition merely); but that +"the public will not like it," or "in our rivalry with seventy other +magazines we cannot afford to print this excellent work." He is +frequently right. He is also frequently wrong. + +I speak not from personal experience, since other reasons in my +own case have usually, though not always, led me to agree with the +editor's verdict, when it has been unfavorable; but from the +broader testimony of many writers, the indisputable evidence of +works thus rejected which have later attained success, and the +failure of American short fiction to impress permanently the +reading public. Based upon an intuition of the public mind, +changing with the wind,--always after, never before it,--such +editorial judgment, indeed, must be of doubtful validity; must +lead in many instances to unwise and unprofitable restrictions +upon originality in fiction. + +I am well aware that it is useless to consider current American +literature without regard to the multitude of readers who, being, +like all multitude, mediocre, demand the mediocre in literature. +And I know that it is equally foolish to neglect the popular +elements in the developing American genius--that genius which is +so colloquial now, and yet so inventive; so vulgar sometimes, and +yet, when sophistication is not forced upon it, so fresh. I have +no wish to evade the necessity for consulting the wishes and the +taste of the public, which good sense and commercial necessity +alike impose upon the editor. I would not have the American editor +less practical, less sensitive to the popular wave; I would have +him more so. But I would have him less dogmatic. All forms of +dogmatism are dangerous for men whose business it is to publish, +not to criticize, contemporary literature. But an unsound and +arbitrary dogmatism is the worst. If the editor is to give the +people what they want instead of what they have wanted, he must +have more confidence in himself, and more belief in their capacity +for liking the good. He should be dogmatic only where he can be +sure. Elsewhere let him follow the method of science, and +experiment. He should trust to his taste in practice as well as in +private theory, and let the results of such criticism sometimes, +at least, dominate his choice. + +In both our "popular" and our "literary" magazines, freer fiction +would follow upon better criticism. The readers of the "literary" +magazines are already seeking foreign-made narratives, and +neglecting the American short story built for them according to +the standardized model. The readers of the "popular" magazines +want chiefly journalism (an utterly different thing from +literature); and that they are getting in good measure in the non- +fiction and part-fiction sections of the magazines. But they also +seek, as all men seek, some literature. If, instead of imposing +the "formula" (which is, after all, a journalistic mechanism--and +a good one--adapted for speedy and evanescent effects), if, +instead of imposing the "formula" upon all the subjects they +propose to have turned into fiction, the editors of these +magazines should also experiment, should release some subjects +from the tyranny of the "formula," and admit others which its cult +has kept out, the result might be surprising. It is true that the +masses have no taste for literature,--as a steady diet; it is +still more certain that not even the most mediocre of multitudes +can be permanently hoodwinked by formula. + +But the magazines can take care of themselves; it is the short +story in which I am chiefly interested. Better criticism and +greater freedom for fiction might vitalize our overabundant, +unoriginal, unreal, unversatile,--everything but unformed short +story. Its artifice might again become art. Even the more careful, +the more artistic work leaves one with the impression that these +stories have sought a "line," and found an acceptable formula. And +when one thinks of the multitudinous situations, impressions, +incidents in this fascinating whirl of modern life, incapable +perhaps of presentation in a novel because of their very +impermanence, admirably adapted to the short story because of +their vividness and their deep if narrow significance, the voice +of protest must go up against any artificial, arbitrary +limitations upon the art. Freedom to make his appeal to the public +with any subject not morbid or indecent, is all the writer can +ask. Freedom to publish sometimes what the editor likes and the +public may like, instead of what the editor approves because the +public has liked it, is all that he needs. There is plenty of +blood in the American short story yet, though I have read through +whole magazines without finding a drop of it. + +When we give literature in America the same opportunity to invent, +to experiment, that we have already given journalism, there will +be more legitimate successors to Irving, to Hawthorne, to Poe and +Bret Harte. There will be more writers, like O. Henry, who write +stories to please themselves, and thus please the majority. There +will be fewer writers, like O. Henry, who stop short of the final +touch of perfection because American taste (and the American +editor) puts no premium upon artistic work. There will be fewer +stories, I trust, where sentiment is no longer a part, but the +whole of life. Most of all, form, _the_ form, the _formula,_ will +relax its grip upon the short story, will cease its endless tapping +upon the door of interest, and its smug content when some underling +(while the brain sleeps) answers its stereotyped appeal. And we may +get more narratives like Mrs. Wharton's "Ethan Frome," to make us feel +that now as much as ever there is literary genius waiting in America. + + + + +A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION TOWARD FICTION + + +If only the reader of novels would say what he thinks about +fiction! If only the dead hand of hereditary opinion did not grasp +and distort what he feels! But he exercises a judgment that is not +independent. Books, like persons, he estimates as much by the +traditional reputation of the families they happen to be born in +as by the merits they may themselves possess, and the traditional +reputation of the novel in English has been bad. + +Poetry has a most respectable tradition. Even now, when the +realistic capering of free verse has emboldened the ordinary man +to speak his mind freely, a reviewer hesitates to apply even to +bad poetry so undignified a word as trash. The essay family is +equally respectable, to be noticed, when noticed at all, with some +of the reverence due to an ancient and dignified art. The sermon +family, still numerous to a degree incredible to those who do not +study the lists of new books, is so eminently respectable that few +dare to abuse even its most futile members. But the novel was +given a bad name in its youth that has overshadowed its successful +maturity. + +Our ancestors are much to blame. For centuries they held the novel +suspect as a kind of bastard literature, probably immoral, and +certainly dangerous to intellectual health. But they are no more +deeply responsible for our suppressed contempt of fiction than +weak-kneed novelists who for many generations have striven to +persuade the English reader that a good story was really a sermon, +or a lecture on ethics, or a tract on economics or moral +psychology, in disguise. Bernard Shaw, in his prefaces to the +fiction that he succeeds in making dramatic, is carrying on a +tradition that Chaucer practised before him: + + And ye that holden this tale a folye,-- + As of a fox, or of a cok and hen,-- + Taketh the moralite, good men. + +And that was the way they went at it for centuries, always +pretending, always driven to pretend, that a good story was not +good enough to be worth telling for itself alone, but must convey +a moral or a satire or an awful lesson, or anything that might +separate it from the "just fiction" that only the immoral and the +frivolous among their contemporaries read or wrote. Today we pay +the price. + +William Painter, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's clerk of ordnance +in the Tower, is an excellent instance. Stricken by a moral panic, +he advertised that from his delectable "Palace of Pleasure" the +young might "learne how to avoyde the ruine, overthrow, +inconvenience and displeasure, that lascivious desire and wanton +evil doth bring to their suters and pursuers"--a disingenuous sop +to the Puritans. His contemporary, + +Geoffrey Fenton, who also turned to story-making, opines that in +histories "the dignitye of vertue and fowelenes of vice appereth +muche more lyvelye then in any morall teachynge," although he knew +that his "histories" were the sheerest, if not the purest, of +fiction, with any moral purpose that might exist chiefly of his +own creating. A century and more later Eliza Haywood, the +ambiguous author of many ambiguous novels of the eighteenth +century, prefaces her "Life's Progress Through the Passions" (an +ambiguous title) with like hypocrisy: "I am enemy to all romances, +novels, and whatever carries the air of them. . . . It is a +_real_, not a _fictitious_ character I am about to present"--which is +merely another instance of fiction disguising itself, this time, I +regret to say, as immorality in real life. And so they all go, forever +implying that fiction is frivolous or immoral or worthless, until it +is not surprising that, as Mr. Bradsher has reminded us, the elder +Timothy Dwight of Yale College was able to assert, "Between the Bible +and novels there is a gulf fixed which few novel-readers are willing +to pass." Richardson was forced to defend himself, so was Sterne, so +was Fielding, so was Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson was evidently making +concessions when he advised romances as reading for youth. Jeffrey, +the critic and tyrant of the next century, summed it all up when he +wrote that novels are "generally regarded as among the lower +productions of our literature." And this is the reputation that the +novel family has brought with it even down to our day. + +The nineteenth century was worse, if anything, than earlier +periods, for it furthered what might be called the evangelistic +slant toward novel-reading, the attitude that neatly classified +this form of self-indulgence with dancing, card-playing, hard +drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that +the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this +prejudice. Walter Scott had made novel-reading common among the +well-read; but the narrower sectarians in England, the people of +the back country and the small towns in America, learned to regard +the novel as unprofitable, if not positively leading toward +ungodliness, and their unnumbered descendants make up the vast +army of uncritical readers for which Grub Street strives and +sweats to-day. They no longer abstain and condemn; instead, they +patronize and distrust. + +All this--and far more, for I have merely sketched in a long and +painful history--is the background seldom remembered when we +wonder at the easy condescension of the American toward his +innumerable novels. + +The fact of his condescension is not so well recognized as it +deserves to be. Indeed, condescension may not seem to be an +appropriate term for the passionate devouring of romance that one +can see going on any day in the trolley-cars, or the tense +seriousness with which some readers regard certain novelists whose +pages have a message for the world. True, the term will not +stretch thus far. But it is condescension that has made the +trouble, as I shall try to prove; for all of us, even the tense +ones, do patronize that creative instinct playing upon life as it +is which in all times and everywhere is the very essence of +fiction. + +How absurd that here in America we should condescend toward our +fiction! How ridiculous in a country even yet so weak and poor and +crude in the arts, which has contributed so little to the world's +store of all that makes fine living for the mind! What a laughable +parallel of the cock and the gem he found and left upon the dung- +heap, if we could be proved not to be proud of American fiction! +For if the novel and the short story should be left out of +America's slender contribution to world literature, the offering +would be a small one. Some poetry of Whitman's and of Poe's, some +essays of Emerson, a little Thoreau, and what important besides? +Hawthorne would be left from the count, the best exemplar of the +fine art of moral narrative in any language; Henry James would be +left out, the master of them all in psychological character +analysis; Poe the story-teller would be missing, and the art of +the modern short story, which in English sterns from him; Cooper +would be lost from our accounting, for all his crudities the best +historical novelist after Scott; Mark Twain, Howells, Bret Harte, +Irving! The attempt to exalt American literature is grateful if +one begins upon fiction. + +And how absurd to patronize, to treat with indifferent superiority +just because they are members of the novel family, books such as +these men have left us, books such as both men and women are +writing in America to-day! Is there finer workmanship in American +painting or American music or American architecture than can be +found in American novels by the reader willing to search and +discriminate? A contemporary poet confessed that he would have +rather written a certain sonnet (which accompanied the confession) +than have built Brooklyn Bridge. One may doubt the special case, +yet uphold the principle. Because a novel is meant to give +pleasure, because it deals with imagination rather than with facts +and appeals to the generality rather than to the merely literary +man or the specialist, because, in short, a novel is a novel, and +a modern American novel, is no excuse for priggish reserves in our +praise or blame. If there is anything worth criticizing in +contemporary American literature it is our fiction. + +Absurd as it may seem in theory, we have patronized and do +patronize our novels, even the best of them, following too surely, +though with a bias of our own, the Anglo-Saxon prejudice +traditional to the race. And if the curious frame of mind that +many reserve for fiction be analyzed and blame distributed, there +will be a multitude of readers, learned and unlearned, proud and +humble, critical and uncritical, who must admit their share. +Nevertheless, the righteous wrath inspired by the situation shall +not draw us into that dangerous and humorless thing, a general +indictment. There are readers aplenty who, to quote Painter once +more, find their novels "pleasant to avoyde the griefe of a +Winters night and length of Sommers day," and are duly +appreciative of that service. With such honest, if un-exacting, +readers I have no quarrel; nor with many more critical who +respect, while they criticize, the art of fiction. But with the +scholars who slight fiction, the critics who play with it, the +general reader who likes it contemptuously, and the social +enthusiast who neglects its better for its worser part, the issue +is direct. All are the victims of hereditary opinion; but some +should know better than to be thus beguiled. + +The Brahman among American readers of fiction is of course the +college professor of English. His attitude (I speak of the type; +there are individual variations of note) toward the novel is +curious and interesting. It is exhibited perhaps in the title by +which such courses in the novel as the college permits are usually +listed. "Prose fiction" seems to be the favorite description, a +label designed to recall the existence of an undeniably +respectable fiction in verse that may justify a study of the baser +prose. By such means is so dubious a term as novel or short story +kept out of the college catalogue! + +Yet even more curious is the academic attitude toward the novel +itself. Whether the normal professor reads many or few is not the +question, nor even how much he enjoys or dislikes them. It is what +he permits himself to say that is significant. Behind every assent +to excellence one feels a reservation: yes, it is good enough for +a novel! Behind every criticism of untruth, of bad workmanship, of +mediocrity (alas! so often deserved in America!) is a sneering +implication: but, after all, it is only a novel. Not thus does he +treat the stodgy play in stodgier verse, the merits of which, +after all, may amount to this, that in appearance it is literary; +not thus the critical essay or investigation that too often is +like the parasite whose sustaining life comes from the greater +life on which it feeds. In the eyes of such a critic the author of +an indifferent essay upon Poe has more distinguished himself than +if he had written a better than indifferent short story. Fiction, +he feels, is the plaything of the populace. The novel is "among +the lower productions of our literature." It is plebeian, it is +successful, it is multitudinous; the Greeks in their best period +did not practise it (but here he may be wrong); any one can read +it; let us keep it down, brethren, while we may. Many not +professors so phrase their inmost thoughts of fiction and the +novel. + +And in all this the college professor is profoundly justified by +tradition, if not always by common sense. To him belongs that +custody of the classical in literature which his profession +inherited from the monasteries, and more remotely from the +rhetoricians of Rome. And there is small place for fiction, and +none at all for the novel and the short story as we know them, in +what has been preserved of classic literature. The early +Renaissance, with its Sidney for spokesman, attacked the rising +Elizabethan drama because it was unclassical. The later +Renaissance, by the pen of Addison (who would have made an +admirable college professor), sneered at pure fiction, directly +and by implication, because it was unclassical. To-day we have +lost our veneration for Latin and Greek as languages, we no longer +deprecate an English work because it happens to be in English; +nevertheless the tradition still grips us, especially if we happen +to be Brahmanic. Our college professors, and many less excusable, +still doubt the artistic validity of work in a form never +dignified by the practice of the ancients, never hallowed, like +much of English literature besides, by a long line of native +productions adapting classic forms to new ages and a new speech. +The epic, the lyric, the pastoral, the comedy, the tragedy, the +elegy, the satire, the myth, even the fable, have been classic, +have usually been literature. But the novel has never been a +preserve for the learned, although it came perilously near to that +fate in the days of Shakespeare; has ever been written for cash or +for popular success rather than for scholarly reputation; has +never been studied for grammar, for style, for its "beauties"; has +since its genesis spawned into millions that no man can classify, +and produced a hundred thousand pages of mediocrity for one +masterpiece. All this (and in addition prejudices unexpressed and +a residuum of hereditary bias) lies behind the failure of most +professors of English to give the good modern novel its due. Their +obstinacy is unfortunate; for, if they praised at all, they would +not, like many hurried reviewers, praise the worst best. + +I will not say that more harm has been done to the cause of the +novel in America by feeble reviewing than by any other +circumstance, for that would not be true; bad reading has been +more responsible for the light estimation in which our novel is +held. Nevertheless it is certain that the ill effects of a +doubtful literary reputation are more sadly displayed in current +criticism of the novel than elsewhere. An enormous effusion of +writing about novels, especially in the daily papers, most of it +casual and conventional, much of it with neither discrimination +nor constraint, drowns the few manful voices raised to a pitch of +honest concern. The criticism of fiction, taken by and large, is +not so good as the criticism of our acted drama, not so good as +our musical criticism, not so good as current reviewing of poetry +and of published plays. + +Are reviewers bewildered by the coveys of novels that wing into +editorial offices by every mail? Is the reviewing of novels left +to the novice as a mere rhetorical exercise in which, a subject +being afforded, he can practise the display of words? Or is it +because a novel is only a novel, only so many, many novels, for +which the same hurried criticism must do, whether they be bad or +mediocre or best? The reviewing page of the standard newspaper +fills me with unutterable depression. There seem to be so many +stories about which the same things can be said. There seems to be +so much fiction that is "workmanlike," that is "fascinating," that +"nobly grasps contemporary America," that will "become a part of +permanent literature," that "lays bare the burning heart of the +race." Of course the need of the journalist to make everything +"strong" is behind much of this mockery; but not all. Hereditary +disrespect for fiction has more to do with this flood of bad +criticism than appears at first sight. + +Far more depressing, however, is the rarity of real criticism of +the novel anywhere. As Henry James, one of the few great critics +who have been willing to take the novel seriously, remarked in a +now famous essay, the most notable thing about the modern novel in +English is its appearance of never having been criticized at all. +A paragraph or so under "novels of the day" is all the novelist +may expect until he is famous, and more in quantity, but not much +more in quality, then. As for critical essays devoted to his work, +discriminating studies that pick out the few good books from the +many bad, how few they are (and how welcome, now that they are +increasing in number), how deplorably few in comparison with the +quantity of novels, in comparison with the quality of the best +novels! + +And what of the general public, that last arbiter in a democracy, +whose referendum, for a year at least, confirms or renders null +and void all critical legislation good or bad? The general public +is apparently on the side of the novelist; to borrow a slang term +expressive here, it is "crazy" about fiction. It reads so much +fiction that hundreds of magazines and dozens of publishers live +by nothing else. It reads so much fiction that public libraries +have to bait their serious books with novels in order to get them +read. It is so avid for fiction that the trades whose business it +is to cultivate public favor, journalism and advertising, use +almost as much fiction as the novel itself. A news article or an +interview or a Sunday write-up nowadays has character, background, +and a plot precisely like a short story. Its climax is carefully +prepared for in the best manner of Edgar Allan Poe, and truth is +rigorously subordinated (I do not say eliminated) in the interest +of a vivid impression. Advertising has become half narrative and +half familiar dialogue. Household goods are sold by anecdotes, +ready-made clothes figure in episodes illustrated by short-story +artists, and novelettes, distributed free, conduct us through an +interesting fiction to the grand climax, where all plot +complexities are untangled by the installation of an automatic +water-heater. I am not criticizing the tendency--it has made the +pursuit of material comfort easier and more interesting,--but what +a light it throws upon our mania for reading stories! + +Alas! the novel needs protection from its friends. This vast +appetite for fiction is highly uncritical. It will swallow +anything that interests, regardless of the make-up of the dish. +Only the inexperienced think that it is easy to write an +interesting story; but it is evident that if a writer can be +interesting he may lack every other virtue and yet succeed. He can +be a bad workman, he can be untrue, he can be sentimental, he can +be salacious, and yet succeed. + +No one need excite himself over this circumstance. It is +inevitable in a day when whole classes that never read before begin +to read. The danger lies in the attitude of these new +readers, and many old ones, toward their fiction. For they, too, +condescend even when most hungry for stories. They, too, share the +inherited opinion that a novel is only a novel, after all, to be +read, but not to be respected, to be squeezed for its juices, then +dropped like a grape-skin and forgotten. Perhaps the Elizabethan +mob felt much the same way about the plays they crowded to see; +but their respect, the critics' respect, Shakespeare's respect, +for the language of noble poesy, for noble words and deeds +enshrined in poetry, is not paralleled to-day by an appreciation +of the fine art of imaginative character representation as it +appears in our novel and in all good fiction. + +Is it necessary to prove this public disrespect? The terms in +which novels are described by their sponsors is proof enough in +itself. Seemingly, everything that is reputable must be claimed +for every novel--good workmanship, vitality, moral excellence, +relative superiority, absolute greatness--in order to secure for +it any deference whatsoever. Or, from another angle, how many +readers buy novels, and buy them to keep? How many modern novels +does one find well bound, and placed on the shelves devoted to +"standard reading"? In these Olympian fields a mediocre biography, +a volume of second-rate poems, a rehash of history, will find +their way before the novels that in the last decade have equaled, +if not outranked, the rest of our creative literature. + +If more proof were needed, the curious predilections of the +serious-minded among our novel-readers would supply it. For not +all Americans take the novel too lightly; some take it as heavily +as death. To the school that tosses off and away the latest comer +is opposed the school which, despising all frivolous stories +written for pleasure merely, speaks in tense, devoted breath of +those narratives wherein fiction is weighted with facts, and +pinned by a moral to the sober side of life. It is significant +that the novels most highly respected in America are studies of +social conditions, reflexes of politics, or tales where the +criticism of morals overshadows the narrative. Here the novel is +an admirable agent. Its use as a purveyor of miscellaneous ideas +upon things in general is no more objectionable than the cutting +of young spruces to serve as Christmas-trees. For such a function +they were not created, but they make a good end, nevertheless. The +important inference is rather that American readers who do pretend +to take the novel seriously are moved not so much by the fiction +in their narratives as by the sociology, philosophy, or politics +imaginatively portrayed. They respect a story with such a content +because it comes as near as the novel can to not being fiction at +all. And this, I imagine, is an unconscious throw-back to the old +days when serious-minded readers chose Hannah More for the place +of honor, because her stories taught the moralist how to live and +die. + +The historically minded will probably remark upon these general +conclusions that a certain condescension toward some form of +literature has ever been predictable of the general reader; the +practically minded may add that no lasting harm to the mind of man +and the pursuit of happiness seems to have come of it. The first I +freely admit; the second I gravely doubt for the present and +distrust for the future. Under conditions as we have them and will +increasingly have them here in America, under democratic +conditions, condescension toward fiction, the most democratic of +literary arts, is certainly dangerous. It is dangerous because it +discourages good writing. In this reading society that we have +made for ourselves here and in western Europe, where much +inspiration, more knowledge, and a fair share of the joy of living +come from the printed page, good writing is clearly more valuable +than ever before in the history of the race. I do not agree with +the pessimists who think that a democratic civilization is +necessarily an enemy to fine writing for the public. Such critics +underrate the challenge which these millions of minds to be +reached and souls to be touched must possess for the courageous +author; they forget that writers, like actors, are inspired by a +crowded house. But the thought and the labor and the pain that lie +behind good writing are doubly difficult in an atmosphere of easy +tolerance and good-natured condescension on the part of the +readers of the completed work. + +The novel is the test case for democratic literature. We cannot +afford to pay its practitioners with cash merely, for cash +discriminates in quantity and little more. Saul and David were +judged by the numbers of their thousands slain; but the test was a +crude one for them and cruder still for fiction. We cannot afford +to patronize these novelists as our ancestors did before us. Not +prizes or endowments or coterie worship or, certainly, more +advertising is what the American novelist requires, but a greater +respect for his craft. The Elizabethan playwright was frequently +despised of the learned world, and, if a favorite with the vulgar, +not always a respected one. Strange that learned and vulgar alike +should repeat the fallacy in dispraising the preeminently popular +art of our own times! To Sir Francis Bacon "Hamlet" was presumably +only a playactor's play. If the great American story should arrive +at last, would we not call it "only a novel"? + + + +THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY + + +You might suppose that popular literature was a modern invention. +Cultivated shoulders shrug at the mention of "best sellers" with +that air of "the world is going to the devil" which just now is +annoyingly familiar. Serious minded people write of _The Saturday +Evening Post_ as if it represented some new fanaticism destined to +wreck civilization. The excessive popularity of so many modern novels +is felt to be a mystery. + +Of course there are new elements in literary popularity. The wave +of interest used to move more slowly. Now thousands, and sometimes +millions, read the popular story almost simultaneously, and see +it, just a little later on the films. Millions, also, of the class +which never used to read at all are accessible to print and have +the moving pictures to help them. + +But popularity has not changed its fundamental characteristics. +The sweep of one man's idea or fancy through other minds, kindling +them to interest, has been typical since communication began. The +Greek romances of Heliodorus may be analyzed for their popular +elements quite as readily as "If Winter Comes." "Pilgrim's +Progress" and "The Thousand and One Nights" could serve as models +for success, and the question, What makes popularity in fiction? +be answered from them with close, if not complete, reference to +the present. However, the results of an inquiry into popularity +will be surer if we stick to modern literature, not forgetting its +historical background. Human nature, which changes its essence so +slowly through the centuries, nevertheless shows rapid alterations +of phase. The question I propose, therefore, is, What makes a +novel popular in our time? + +I do not ask it for sordid reasons. What makes a novel sell +100,000 copies, or a short story bring $1000? may seem the same +query; but it does not get the same answer, or, apparently, any +answer valuable for criticism. A cloud descends upon the eyes of +those who try to teach how to make money out of literature and +blinds them. Their books go wrong from the start, and most of them +are nearly worthless. They propose to teach the sources of +popularity, yet instead of dealing with those fundamental +qualities of emotion and idea which (as I hope to show) make +popularity, their tale is all of emphasis, suspense, beginnings +and endings, the relativity of characters, dialogue, setting-- +useful points for the artisan but not the secret of popularity, +nor, it may be added, of greatness in literature. Technique is +well enough, in fact some technique is indispensable for a book +that is to be popular, but it is the workaday factor in +literature, of itself it accomplishes nothing. + +But technique can be taught. That is the explanation of the +hundred books upon it, and their justification. You cannot teach +observation, or sympathy, or the background of knowledge which +makes possible the interpretation and selection of experience--not +at least in a lesson a week for nine months. Hence literary +advisers who must teach something and teach it quickly are drawn, +sometimes against their better judgment, to write books on +technique by which criticism profits little. Technical perfection +becomes their equivalent for excellence and for popularity. It is +not an equivalent. More than a mason is required for the making of +a statue. + +I disclaim any attempt to teach how to be popular in this essay, +although deductions may be made. I am interested in popularity as +a problem for criticism. I am interested in appraising the +pleasure to be got from such popular novels as "The Age of +Innocence," "Miss Lulu Bett," "If Winter Comes," or "The Turmoil" +--and the not infrequent disappointments from others equally +popular. I am especially interested in the attempt to estimate +real excellence, an attempt which requires that the momentarily +popular shall be separated from the permanently good; which +requires that a distinction be made between what must have some +excellence because so many people like it, and what is good in a +book whether many people like it or not. Such discrimination may +not help the young novelist to make money, but it can refine +judgment and deepen appreciation. + +As for the popularity and its meaning, there need be no quarrel +over that term. Let us rule out such accidents as when a weak book +becomes widely known because it is supposed to be indecent, or +because it is the first to embody popular propaganda, or because +its hero is identified with an important figure of real life, or +for any other casual reason. If a novel, because of the intrinsic +interest of its story, or on account of the contagion of the idea +it contains, is widely read by many kinds of readers, and if these +readers on their own initiative recommend the book they have read +to others, that is popularity, and a sufficient definition. + +Perfection of form is not enough to make a book popular. A story +has to move or few will read it, but it is doubtful whether a +greater technical achievement than this is required for +popularity. "Samson Agonistes" is technically perfect, but was +never popular, while, to pass from the sublime to its opposite, +"This Side of Paradise" was most crudely put together, and yet was +popular. The best-built short stories of the past decade have not +been the most popular, have not even been the best. No popular +writer but could have been (so I profoundly believe) more popular +if he had written better. But good writing is not a specific for +unpopularity. The excellent writing of Howells could not give him +Mark Twain's audience. The weak and tedious construction of +Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," the flat style of Harold +Bell Wright's narratives, has not prevented them from being liked. +Form is only a first step toward popularity. + +Far more important is an appeal to the emotions, which good +technique can only make more strong. But what is an appeal to the +emotions? "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appealed to the emotions, and so +does "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford." To what emotions does the +popular book appeal? What makes "Treasure Island" popular? Why did +"Main Street" have such an unexpected and still reverberating +success? + +"Treasure Island" is popular because it stirs and satisfies two +instinctive cravings of mankind, the love of romantic adventure, +and the desire for sudden wealth. This is not true, or rather it +is not the whole, or even the important, truth, in "Main Street." +There the chief appeal is to an idea not an instinct. We left the +war nationally self-conscious as perhaps never before, acutely +conscious of the contrasts between our habits, our thinking, our +pleasures, our beliefs, and those of Europe. When the soldiers +oversea talked generalities at all it was usually of such topics. +The millions that never went abroad were plucked from their Main +Streets, and herded through great cities to the mingled +companionship of the camps. "Main Street," when it came to be +written, found an awakened consciousness of provincialism, and a +detached view of the home town such as had never before been +shared by many. Seeing home from without was so general as to +constitute, not a mere experience, but a mass emotion. And upon +this new conception, this prejudice against every man's Main +Street, the book grasped, and thrived. In like manner, "Uncle +Tom's Cabin" grew great upon its conception of slavery. "Robert +Elsmere" swept the country because of its exploitation of freedom +in religious thought. No one of these books could have been +written, or would have been popular if they had been written, +before their precise era; no one is likely long to survive it, +except as a social document which scholars will read and +historians quote. + +Roughly then, the appeal which makes for popularity is either to +the instinctive emotions permanent in all humanity, though +changing shape with circumstances, or to the fixed ideas of the +period, which may often and justly be called prejudice. A book may +gain its popularity either way, but the results of the first are +more likely to be enduring. "Paradise Lost," the least popular of +popular poems, still stirs the instinctive craving for heroic +revolt, and lives for that quite as much as for the splendors of +its verse. Dryden's "Hind and the Panther," which exploited the +prejudices of its times, and was popular then, is almost dead. + +What are these instinctive cravings that seek satisfaction in +fiction and, finding it, make both great and little books popular? +Let me list a few without attempting to be complete. + +First in importance probably is the desire to escape from reality +into a more interesting life. This is a foundation, of course, of +all romantic stories, and is part of the definition of the +romantic, but it applies to much in literature that is not usually +regarded as romance. A more interesting life than yours or mine +does not mean one we should wish actually to live, otherwise it +would be difficult to account for the taste for detective stories +of many sedentary bank presidents; nor does it mean necessarily a +beautiful, a wild, a romantic life. No, we wish to escape to any +imagined life that will satisfy desires suppressed by +circumstance, or incapable of development in any attainable +reality. + +This desire to escape is eternal, the variety differs with the +individual and still more with the period. While youthful love, or +romantic adventure as in "Treasure Island," has been an acceptable +mode for literature at least as far back as the papyrus tales of +the Egyptians, more precise means of delivery from the intolerable +weight of real life appear and disappear in popular books. In the +early eighteen hundreds, men and women longed to be blighted in +love, to be in lonely revolt against the prosaic well-being of a +world of little men. Byron was popular. In the Augustan age of +England, classic antiquity was a refuge for the dreaming spirit; +in Shakespeare's day, Italy; in the fifteenth century, Arthurian +romance. Just at present, and in America, the popularity of a +series of novels like "The Beautiful and Damned," "The Wasted +Generation," "Erik Dorn," and "Cytherea," seems to indicate that +many middle-aged readers wish to experience vicariously the +alcoholic irresponsibility of a society of "flappers," young +graduates, and country club rakes, who threw the pilot overboard +as soon as they left the war zone and have been cruising wildly +ever since. We remember that for a brief period in the England of +Charles II, James II, and William and Mary, rakishness in the +plays of Wycherley and Congreve had a glamour of romance upon it +and was popular. Indeed, the novel or drama that gives to a +generation the escape it desires will always be popular. Test +Harold Bell Wright or Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling or Walter Scott, +by this maxim, and it will further define itself, and ring true. +Another human craving is the desire to satisfy the impulses of +sex. This is much more difficult to define than the first because +it spreads in one phase or another through all cravings. Romance +of course has its large sex element, and so have the other +attributes to be spoken of later. However, there is a direct and +concentrated interest in the relations between the sexes which, in +its finer manifestations, seeks for a vivid contrast of +personalities in love; in its cruder forms desires raw passion; in +its pathological state craves the indecent. A thousand popular +novels illustrate the first phase; many more, of which the cave- +man story, the desert island romance, "The Sheik" and its +companions are examples, represent the second; the ever-surging +undercurrent of pornography springs to satisfy the third. + +Many sex stories are popular simply because they satisfy +curiosity, but curiosity in a broader sense is a human craving +which deserves a separate category. Popular novels seldom depend +upon it entirely, but they profit by it, sometimes hugely. A novel +like Dos Passos's "Three Soldiers," or Mrs. Wharton's "Age of +Innocence," or Mrs. Atherton's "Sleeping Fires," makes its first, +though not usually its strongest, appeal to our curiosity as to +how others live or were living. This was the strength of the +innumerable New England, Creole, mountaineer, Pennsylvania Dutch +stories in the flourishing days of local color. It is a prop of +the historical novel and a strong right arm for the picture +melodrama of the underworld or the West. Indeed, the pictures, by +supplying a photographic background of real scenes inaccessible to +the audience have gained a point upon the written story. + +Curiosity is a changeable factor, a sure play for immediate +popularity, but not to be depended upon for long life. It waxes +and wanes and changes its object. Just now we are curious about +Russia, the South Sea Islanders, and night life on Broadway; to- +morrow it may be New Zealand and Australia, the Argentine +millionaire, and quite certainly the Chinese and China. Books +appealing to the craving for escape have a longer life, for a +story that takes a generation out of itself into fairyland keeps +some of its power for the next. Nevertheless, the writer who +guesses where curious minds are reaching and gives them what they +want, puts money in his purse. + +A fourth craving, which is as general as fingers and toes, is for +revenge. We laugh now at the plays of revenge before "Hamlet," +where the stage ran blood, and even the movie audience no longer +enjoys a story the single motive of which is physical revenge. +Blood for blood means to us either crime or rowdyism. And yet +revenge is just as popular in literature now as in the sixteenth +century. Only its aspect has changed. Our fathers are not +butchered in feuds, our sons are not sold into slavery, and except +in war or in street robberies we are not insulted by brute +physical force. Nevertheless we are cheated by scoundrels, +oppressed by financial tyranny, wounded by injustice, suppressed +by self-sufficiency, rasped by harsh tempers, annoyed by snobbery, +and often ruined by unconscious selfishness. We long to strike +back at the human traits which have wronged us, and the satiric +depiction of hateful characters whose seeming virtues are turned +upside down to expose their impossible hearts feeds our craving +for vicarious revenge. We dote upon vinegarish old maids, self- +righteous men, and canting women when they are exposed by +narrative art, and especially when poetic justice wrecks them. The +books that contain them bid for popularity. It happens that in +rapid succession we have seen three novels in which this element +of popular success was strong: Miss Sinclair's "Mr. Waddington of +Wyck," "Vera," by the author of "Elizabeth in Her German Garden," and +Mr. Hutchinson's "If Winter Comes." The first two books focus +upon this quality, and their admirable unity gives them superior +force; but it is noteworthy that "If Winter Comes," which adds +other popular elements in large measure to its release of hate, +has been financially the most successful of the three. + +To these deep cravings of the heart must be added another of major +importance. I mean aspiration, the deep desire of all human +without exception sometimes to be better, nobler, finer, truer. +Stories of daring in the face of unconquerable odds, stories of +devotion, above all stories of self-sacrifice are made to gratify +this emotion. They are purges for the restless soul. Some critic +of our short story discovered not long ago that the bulk of the +narratives chosen for reprinting had self-sacrifice as theme. This +is precisely what one would expect of comfortable, ease-loving +peoples, like the Germans before the empire and the Americans of +our generation. When no real sacrifice of goods, of energy, of +love, or of life is necessary, then the craving for stories of men +who give up all and women who efface themselves is particularly +active. The hard, individualistic stories of selfish characters-- +Ben Hecht's for example, and Scott Fitzgerald's--have been written +after a war period of enforced self-sacrifice and by young men who +were familiar with suffering for a cause. But most American +readers of our generation live easily and have always lived +easily, and that undoubtedly accounts for the extraordinary +popularity here of aspiring books. Reading of a fictitious hero +who suffers for others is a tonic for our conscience, and like +massage takes the place of exercise. By a twist in the same +argument, it may be seen that the cheerful optimist in fiction, +who Pollyannawise believes all is for the best, satisfies the +craving to justify our well-being. I do not, however, mean to +disparage this element of popularity. It is after all the +essential quality of tragedy where the soul rises above +misfortune. It is a factor in noble literature as well as in +popular success. + +So much for some of the typical and instinctive cravings which cry +for satisfaction and are the causes of popularity. To them may be +added others of course, notably the desire for sudden wealth, +which is a factor in "Treasure Island" as in all treasure stories, +and the prime cause of success in the most popular of all plots, +the tale of Cinderella, which, after passing through feudal +societies with a prince's hand as reward, changed its sloven +sister for a shopgirl and King Cophetua into a millionaire, and +swept the American stage. To this may also be added simpler +stimulants of instinctive emotion, humor stirring to pleasant +laughter, pathos that exercises sympathy, the happy ending that +makes for joy. Stories which succeed because they stir and satisfy +in this fashion are like opera in a foreign tongue, which moves us +even when we do not fully understand the reason for our emotion. +They differ from another kind of popular story, in which a popular +idea rather than an instinctive emotion is crystallized, and which +now must be considered. + +Each generation has its fixed ideas. A few are inherited intact by +the generation that follows, a few are passed on with slight +transformation, but most crumble or change into different versions +of the old half-truths. Among the most enduring of prejudices is +the fallacy of the good old times. Upon that formula nine-tenths +of the successful historical romances are built. That American +wives suffer from foreign husbands, that capital is ruthless, that +youth is right and age wrong, that energy wins over intellect, +that virtue is always rewarded, are American conceptions of some +endurance that have given short but lofty flights to thousands of +native stories. + +More important, however, in the history of fiction are those wide +and slow moving currents of opinion, for which prejudice is +perhaps too narrow a name, which flow so imperceptibly through the +minds of a generation or a whole century that there is little +realization of their novelty. Such a slow-moving current was the +humanitarianism which found such vigorous expression in Dickens, +the belief in industrial democracy which is being picked up as a +theme by novelist after novelist to-day, or the sense of the value +of personality and human experience which so intensely +characterizes the literature of the early Renaissance. + +If a novel draws up into itself one of these ideas, filling it +with emotion, it gains perhaps its greatest assurance of immediate +popularity. If the idea is of vast social importance, this +popularity may continue. But if it is born of immediate +circumstance, like the hatred of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," +or if it is still more transient, say, the novelty of a new +invention, like the airplane or wireless, then the book grows +stale with its theme. The like is true of a story that teaches a +lesson a generation are willing to be taught--it lives as long as +the lesson. What has become of Charles Kingsley's novels, of the +apologues of Maria Edgeworth? "Main Street" is such a story; so +was "Mr. Britling Sees It Through"; so probably "A Doll's House." +Decay is already at their hearts. Only the student knows how many +like tales that preached fierily a text for the times have died in +the past. But I am writing of popularity not of permanence. In +four popular novels out of five, even in those where the appeal to +the instinctive emotions is dominant, suspect some prejudice of +the times embodied and usually exploited. It is the most potent of +lures for that ever increasing public which has partly trained +intelligence as well as emotions. + +Perhaps it is already clear that most popular novels combine many +elements of popularity, although usually one is dominant. Among +the stories, for instance, which I have mentioned most frequently, +"Main Street" depends upon a popular idea, but makes use also of +the revenge motive. It is not at all, as many hasty critics said, +an appeal to curiosity. We know our Main Streets well enough +already. And therefore in England, which also was not curious +about Main Streets, and where the popular idea that Sinclair Lewis +seized upon was not prevalent, the book has had only a moderate +success. "If Winter Comes" combines the revenge motive with +aspiration. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel made its strong appeal +to curiosity. We had heard of the wild younger generation and were +curious. His second book depends largely upon the craving for sex +experience, in which it resembles Mr. Hergesheimer's "Cytherea," +but also plays heavily upon the motive of escape, and upon sheer +curiosity. "Miss Lulu Bett" was a story of revenge. Booth +Tarkington's "Alice Adams"--to bring in a new title--is a good +illustration of a story where for once a popular novelist slurred +over the popular elements in order to concentrate upon a study of +character. His book received tardy recognition but it disappointed +his less critical admirers. Mr. White's "Andivius Hedulio" depends +for its popularity upon curiosity and escape. + +The popular story, then, the financially successful, the +immediately notorious story, should appeal to the instinctive +emotions and may be built upon popular prejudice. What is the +moral for the writer? Is he to lay out the possible fields of +emotion as a surveyor prepares for his blue print? By no means. +Unless he follows his own instinct in the plan, or narrates +because of his own excited thinking he will produce a thinly clad +formula rather than a successful story. There is no moral for the +writer, only some rays of light thrown upon the nature of his +achievement. The way to accomplish popularity, if that is what you +want, is to write for the people, and let formula, once it is +understood, take care of itself. As an editor, wise in popularity, +once said to me, "Oppenheim and the rest are popular because they +think like the people not for them." + +What is the moral of this discussion for the critical reader? A +great one, for if he does not wish to be tricked constantly by his +own emotions into supposing that what is timely is therefore fine, +and what moves him is therefore great, he must distinguish between +the elements of popularity and the essence of greatness. It is +evident, I think, from the argument that every element of +popularity described above may be made effective upon our weak +human nature with only an approximation to truth. The craving for +escape may be, and usually is, answered by sentimental romance, +where every emotion, from patriotism to amorousness, is mawkish +and unreal. Every craving may be played upon in the same fashion +just because it is a craving, and the result be often more popular +for the exaggeration. Also it is notorious that a prejudice--or a +popular idea, if you prefer the term--which is seized upon for +fiction, almost inevitably is strained beyond logic and beyond +truth, so much so that in rapid years, like those of 1916 to 1920 +which swept us into propaganda and out again, the emphatic falsity +of a book's central thesis may be recognized before the first +editions are exhausted. It would be interesting to run off, in the +midst of a 1922 performance, some of the war films that stirred +audiences of 1918. It will be interesting to reread some of the +cheaper and more popular war stories that carried even you, O +judicious reader, off your even balance not five years ago to-day! + +We have always known, of course, that a novel can be highly +popular without being truly excellent. Nevertheless, it is a +valuable discipline to specify the reasons. And it is good +discipline also in estimating the intrinsic value of a novel to +eliminate as far as is possible the temporal and the accidental; +and in particular the especial appeal it may have to your own +private craving--for each of us has his soft spot where the pen +can pierce. On the contrary, if the highly speculative business of +guessing the probable circulation of a novel ever becomes yours, +then you must doubly emphasize the importance of these very +qualities; search for them, analyze them out of the narrative, +equate them with the tendencies of the times, the new emotions +stirring, the new interests, new thoughts abroad, and then pick +best sellers in advance. + +Yet in eliminating the accidental in the search for real +excellence, it would be disastrous to eliminate all causes of +popularity with it. That would be to assume that the good story +cannot be popular, which is nonsense. The best books are nearly +always popular, if not in a year, certainly in a decade or a +century. Often they spread more slowly than less solid +achievements for the same reason that dear things sell less +rapidly than cheap. The best books cost more to read because they +contain more, and to get much out the reader must always put much +in. Nevertheless, the good novel will always contain one or more +of the elements of popularity in great intensity. I make but one +exception, and that for those creations of the sheer intellect, +like the delicate analyses of Henry James, where the appeal is to +the subtle mind, and the emotion aroused an intellectual emotion. +Such novels are on the heights, but they are never at the summit +of literary art. They are limited by the partiality of their +appeal, just as they are exalted by the perfection of their +accomplishment. They cannot be popular, and are not. + +The "best seller" therefore may be great but does not need to be. +It is usually a weak book, no matter how readable, because +ordinarily it has only the elements of popularity to go on, and +succeeds by their number and timeliness instead of by fineness and +truth. A second-rate man can compound a best seller if his sense +for the popular is first-rate. In his books the instinctive +emotions are excited over a broad area, and arise rapidly to sink +again. No better examples can be found than in the sword-and- +buckler romance of our 'nineties which set us all for a while +thinking feudal thoughts and talking shallow gallantry. Now it is +dead, stone dead. Not even the movies can revive it. The emotions +it aroused went flat over night. Much the same is true of books +that trade in prejudice, like the white slave stories of a decade +ago. For a moment we were stirred to the depths. We swallowed the +concept whole and raged with a furious indigestion of horrible +fact. And then it proved to be colic only. + +With such a light ballast of prejudice or sentiment can the +profitable ship popularity be kept upright for a little voyage, +and this, prevailingly, is all her cargo. But the wise writer, if +he is able, as Scott, and Dickens, and Clemens were able, freights +her more deeply. As for the good reader, he will go below to +investigate before the voyage commences; or, if in midcourse he +likes not his carrier, take off in his mental airplane and seek +another book. + + + + +II + +ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION + +THE AMERICAN TRADITION + + +I remember a talk in Dublin with an Irish writer whose English +prose has adorned our period. It was 1918, and the eve of forced +conscription, and his indignation with English policy was intense. +"I will give up their language," he said, "all except Shakespeare. +I will write only Gaelic." Unfortunately, he could read Gaelic +much better than he could write it. In his heart, indeed, he knew +how mad he would have been to give up the only literary tradition +which, thanks to language, could be his own; and in a calmer mood +since he has enriched that tradition with admirable translations +from the Irish. He was suffering from a mild case of Anglomania. + +Who is the real Anglomaniac in America? Not the now sufficiently +discredited individual with a monocle and a pseudo-Oxford accent, +who tries to be more English than the English. Not the more subtly +dangerous American who refers his tastes, his enthusiasms, his +culture, and the prestige of his compatriots to an English test +before he dare assert them. The real Anglomaniac is the American +who tries to be less English than his own American tradition. He +is the man who is obsessed with the fear of "Anglo-Saxon +domination." + +How many Anglomaniacs by this definition are at large in America +each reader may judge for himself. Personally, I find them +extraordinarily numerous, and of so many varieties, from the mere +borrower of opinions to the deeply convinced zealot, that it seems +wiser to analyze Anglomania than to discuss the various types that +possess it. And in this analysis let us exclude from the beginning +such very real, but temporary, grievances against the English as +spring from Irish oppressions, trade rivalries, or the +provocations which always arise between allies in war. All such +causes of anti-English and anti-"Anglo-Saxon" sentiment belong in +a different category from the underlying motives which I propose +to discuss. + +These new Anglomaniacs, with their talk of Anglo-Saxon domination, +cannot mean English domination. That would be absurd, although +even absurdities are current coin in restless years like these. +At least one Irishman of my acquaintance _knows_ that King George +cabled Wilson to bring America into the war, and that until that cable +came Wilson dared not act. I can conceive of an English influence upon +literature that is worth attacking, and also worth defending. I can +conceive of a far less important English influence upon our social +customs. But in neither case, domination. That England dominates our +finance, our industry, our politics, is just now, especially, the +suspicion of a paranoiac, or the idea of an ignoramus. + +"Anglo-Saxon domination," even in an anti-British meeting, cannot +and does not mean English domination; it can mean only control of +America by the so-called Anglo-Saxon element in our population. +The quarrel is local, not international. The "Anglo-Saxon" three +thousand miles away who cannot hit back is a scapegoat, a whipping +boy for the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" American at home. + +What is an "Anglo-Saxon" American? Presumably he is the person +familiar in "want" advertisements: "American family wants boarder +for the summer. References exchanged." But this does not help us +much. He is certainly not English. Nothing is better established +than the admixture of bloods since the earliest days of our +nationality. That I, myself, for example, have ancestral portions +of French, German, Welsh, and Scotch, as well as English blood in +my veins, makes me, by any historical test, characteristically +more rather than less American. Race, indeed, within very broad +limits, is utterly different from nationality, and it is usually +many, many centuries before the two become even approximately +identical. The culture I have inherited, the political ideals I +live by, the literature which is my own, most of all the language +that I speak, are far more important than the ultimate race or +races I stem from, obviously more important, since in thousands of +good Americans it is impossible to determine what races have gone +to their making. There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon +American--and so few English Americans that they are nationally +insignificant. + +An American with a strong national individuality there certainly +is, and it is true that his traditions, irrespective of the race +of his forbears, are mainly English; from England he drew his +political and social habits, his moral ideas, his literature, and +his language. This does not make him a "slave to England," as our +most recent propagandists would have it; it does not put him in +England's debt. We owe no debt to England. Great Britain, Canada, +Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and ourselves are deeply in +debt to our intellectual, our spiritual, our aesthetic ancestors +who were the molders of English history and English thought, the +interpreters of English emotion, the masters of the developing +English _mores_ that became our _mores_, and have since continued +evolution with a difference. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and +Milton, Wycliffe, Bunyan, Fox, and Wesley, Elizabeth, Cromwell, and +the great Whigs, these made the only tradition that can be called +Anglo-Saxon, and if we have an American tradition, as we assuredly +have, here are its roots. This is our "Anglo-Saxon domination." + +But if the roots of this tradition are English, its trunk is +thoroughly American, seasoned and developed through two centuries +of specifically American history. As we know it to-day it is no +longer "Anglo-Saxon," it is as American as our cities, our soil, +our accent upon English. If we are going to discuss "domination" +let us be accurate and speak of the domination of American +tradition. It is against the American tradition that the new +Anglomaniac actually protests. + +Dominating this American tradition is, dominating, almost +tyrannical, for one reason only, but that a strong one, a fact not +a convention, a factor, not a mere influence--dominating because +of the English language. + +In our century language has become once again as powerful as in +the Roman Empire--and its effects, thanks to printing and easy +transportation, are far more quickly attained. Hordes from all +over Europe have swarmed into the domain of English. They have +come to a country where the new language was indispensable. They +have learned it, or their children have learned it. English has +become their means of communication with their neighbors, with +business, with the state. Sooner or later even the news of Europe +has come to them through English, and sometimes unwillingly, but +more often unconsciously, they have come under the American, the +real "Anglo-Saxon" domination. + +For a language, of course, is more than words. It is a body of +literature, it is a method of thinking, it is a definition of +emotions, it is the exponent and the symbol of a civilization. You +cannot adopt English without adapting yourself in some measure to +the English, or the Anglo-American tradition. You cannot adopt +English political words, English literary words, English religious +words, the terms of sport or ethics, without in some measure +remaking your mind on a new model. If you fail or refuse, your +child will not. He is forcibly made an American, in ideas at +least, and chiefly by language. + +I submit that it is impossible for an alien _thoroughly_ to absorb and +understand Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech or Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" +without working a slight but perceptible transformation in the brain, +without making himself an heir of a measure of English tradition. And +the impact of English as a spoken tongue, and the influence of its +literature as the only read literature, are great beyond ordinary +conception. Communities where a foreign language is read or spoken +only delay the process, they cannot stop it. + +The foreigner, it is true, has modified the English language +precisely as he has modified the American tradition. Continental +Europe is audible in the American tongue, as it is evident in the +American mind; but it is like the English or the Spanish touch +upon the Gothic style in architecture--there is modification, but +not fundamental change. + +Many a foreign-born American has been restless under this +domination. The letters and memoirs of the French immigrants from +revolutionary France express discomfort freely. The Germans of +'48, themselves the bearers of a high civilization, have often +confessed an unwilling assimilation. The Germans of earlier +migrations herded apart like the later Scandinavians, in part to +avoid the tyranny of tongue. + +Imagine a German coming here in early manhood. His tradition is +not English; he owes nothing to a contemporary England that he but +dimly knows. Speaking English, perhaps only English, he grows +impatient with a tongue every concept of which has an English +coloring. The dominance of the language, and especially of its +literature, irks him. He no longer wants to think as a German; he +wants to think as an American; but the medium of his thought must +be English. His anger often enough goes out against English +history, English literature. He is easily irritated by England. +But it is the American past that binds and is converting him. Such +consciousness of the power of environment is perhaps rare, but the +fact is common. In our few centuries of history millions have been +broken into English, with all that implies. Millions have +experienced the inevitable discomfort of a foreign tradition which +makes alien their fatherlands, and strangers of their children. +This is an "Anglo-Saxon" domination. But it is useless to struggle +against it. + +There is a similar discomfort among certain American authors, +especially just now, when, for the first time since the Civil War +and the materialism that succeeded it, we are finding our national +self once again in literature. Mr. Mencken and Mr. Dreiser have +vigorously expressed this annoyance with American tradition. They +wish to break with it--at least Mr. Dreiser does--break with it +morally, spiritually, aesthetically. Let the dotards, he says, bury +their dead. + +Mr. Mencken wishes to drive us out of Colonialism. He says that +Longfellow has had his day, and that it is time to stop imitating +Addison, time to be ashamed of aping Stevenson, Kipling, or John +Masefield. He is right. + +But when it comes to disowning English literature and the past of +American literature (as many a writer directly or by implication +would have us) in order to become 100 per cent American, let us +first take breath long enough to reflect that, first, such a +madcap career is eminently undesirable, and, second, utterly +impossible. It is a literature which by general admission is now +the richest and most liberal in the world of living speech. +English is a tongue less sonorous than Italian, less fine than +French, less homely than German, but more expressive, more +flexible, than these and all others. Its syntax imposes no +burdens, its traditions are weighty only upon the vulgar and the +bizarre. Without its literary history, American literature in +general, and usually in particular, is not to be understood. That +we have sprung from a Puritanical loin, and been nourished in the +past from the breast of Victorianism, is obvious. In this we have +been not too much, but too narrowly, English. We have read +Tennyson when it might have been better to have read Shakespeare +or Chaucer. But to wish to break with English literature in order +to become altogether American is like desiring to invent an +entirely new kind of clothes. I shall not give up trousers because +my fourth great-grandfather, who was a Yorkshireman, wore them, +and his pattern no longer fits my different contour. I shall make +me a pair better suiting my own shanks--yet they shall still be +trousers. But in any case, language binds us. + +Indeed, in this welter of newcomers here in America, whose children +learn, read, write only English, the tradition of Anglo- +American literature is all that holds us by a thread above chaos. +If we could all be made to speak German, or Italian, or Spanish, +there would be cause, but no excuse, for an attempted revolution. +But English is dominant here and will remain so. Could we hope to +make an American literary language without dependence on English +literature, a protective tariff on home-made writing, or an +embargo against books more than a year old, or imported from +across the Atlantic, would be worth trying; but the attempts so +far are not encouraging. This has not been the way in the past by +which original literatures have been made. They have sucked +nourishment where it could best be found, and grown great from the +strength that good food gave them. + +One can sympathize with the desire to nationalize our literature +at all costs; and can understand lashings out at the tyranny of +literary prestige which England still exercises. But the real +question is: shall the English of Americans be good English or bad +English; shall a good tradition safeguard change and experiment, +or shall we have chaotic vulgarity like the Low Latin of the late +Roman Empire? + +The truth is that our language is tradition, for it holds +tradition in solution like iron in wine. And here lie the secret +and the power of American, "Anglo-Saxon" domination. + +What is to be done about it? Shall anything be done about it? The +Anglomaniac is helpless before the fact of language. The most he +can do is to attack, and uproot if he can, the American tradition. + +There is nothing sacrosanct in this American tradition. Like all +traditions it is stiff, it will clasp, if we allow it, the future +in the dead hand of precedent. It can be used by the designing to +block progress. But as traditions go it is not conservative. +Radicalism, indeed, is its child. Political and religious +radicalism brought the Pilgrims to New England, the Quakers to +Pennsylvania; political and economic radicalism made the +Revolution against the will of American conservatives; political +and social radicalism made the Civil War inevitable and gave it +moral earnestness. Radicalism, whether you like it or not, is much +more American than what some people mean by "Americanism" to-day. +And its bitterest opponents in our times would quite certainly +have become Nova Scotian exiles if they had been alive and +likeminded in 1783. + +Nor is this American tradition impeccable in the political ideas, +the literary ideals, the social customs it has given us. We must +admit a rampant individualism in our political practices which is +in the very best Anglo-American tradition, and yet by no means +favorable to cooperative government. We admit also more Puritanism +in our standard literature than art can well digest; and more +sentiment than is good for us; nor is it probable that the +traditions and the conventions which govern American family life +are superior to their European equivalents. We should welcome (I +do not say that we do) liberalizing, broadening, enriching +influences from other traditions. And whether we have welcomed +them or not, they have come, and to our great benefit. But to +graft upon the plant is different from trying to pull up the +roots. + +We want better arguments than the fear of Anglo-Saxon domination +before the root pulling begins. We wish to know what is to be +planted. We desire to be convinced that the virtue has gone out of +the old stock. We want examples of civilized nations that have +profited by borrowing traditions wholesale, or by inventing them. +We wish to know if a cultural, a literary sans-culottism is +possible, except with chaos as a goal. Most of all, we expect to +fight for and to hold our Anglo-American heritage. + +It is not surprising that discontent with our own ultimately +English tradition has expressed itself by a kind of Freudian +transformation in anti-English sentiment. Every vigorous nation +strains and struggles with its tradition, like a growing boy with +his clothes, and this is particularly true of new nations with old +traditions behind them. Our pains are growing pains--a malady we +have suffered from since the early eighteenth century at the +latest. Tradition, our own tradition, pinches us; but you cannot +punch tradition for pinching you, or call it names to its face, +especially if it proves to be your father's tradition, or your +next-door neighbor's. Therefore, since that now dim day when the +Colonies acquired a self-consciousness of their own, many good +Americans have chosen England and the English to symbolize +whatever irked them in their own tradition. It is from England and +the English that we have felt ourselves growing away, from which +we had to grow away in order to be ourselves and not a shadow-- +imitators, second-bests, Colonials. England and the English have +had our vituperation whenever the need to be American has been +greatest. And when an English government like Palmerston's, or +Salisbury's, or Lloyd George's, offends some group or race among +us, a lurking need to assert our individuality, or prove that we +are not Colonials, leads thousands more to join in giving the +lion's tail an extra twist. + +This may be unfortunate, but it argues curiously enough respect +and affection rather than the reverse, and it is very human. It is +a fact, like growing, and is likely to continue until we are fully +grown. It will reassert itself vehemently until upon our English +tradition we shall have built an American civilization as +definitely crystallized, a literature as rich and self-sufficing, +as that of France and England to-day. Three-quarters of our +national genius went into the creating of our political system. +Three-quarters of our national genius since has gone into the +erecting of our economic system. Here we are independent--and +thick skinned. But a national civilization and a national +literature take more time to complete. + +Cool minds were prepared for a little tail-twisting after the +great war, even though they could not foresee the unfortunate +Irish situation in which a British government seemed determined to +make itself as un-English as possible. If there had not been the +patriotic urge to assert our essential Americanism more strongly +than ever, there still would have been a reaction against all the +pledging and the handshaking, the pother about blood and water, +the purple patches in every newspaper asserting Anglo-Saxonism +against the world. I remember my own nervousness when, in 1918, +after the best part of a year in England, in England's darkest +days, I came back full of admiration for the pluck of all England +and the enlightenment of her best minds in the great struggle, to +hear men who knew little of England orating of enduring +friendship, and to read writers who had merely read of England, +descanting of her virtues. I felt, and many felt, that excess of +ignorant laudation which spells certain reaction into ignorant +dispraise. No wonder that Americans whose parents happened to be +Germans, Italians, Jews, or Irish grew weary of hearing of the +essential virtues of the Anglo-Saxon race. There never was such a +race. It was not even English blood, but English institutions that +created America; but Liberty Loan orators had no time to make fine +distinctions of that kind. They talked, and even while the cheers +were ringing and the money rolled in dissent raised its tiny head. + +Dissent was to be expected; antagonism against a tradition made by +English minds and perpetuated in English was natural after a war +in which not merely nationalism, but also every racial instinct, +has been quickened and made sensitive. But _tout comprendre, c'est +tout pardonner_, is only partly true in this instance. We should +understand, and be tolerant with, the strainings against tradition of +folk to whom it is still partly alien; we should diagnose our own +growing pains and not take them too seriously. Nevertheless, the +better more violent movements of race and national prejudice are +understood, the less readily can they be pardoned, if by pardon one +means easy tolerance. + +It is not inconceivable that we shall have to face squarely a +split between those who prefer the American tradition and those +who do not, although where the cleavage line would run, whether +between races or classes, is past guessing. There are among us +apparently men and women who would risk wars, external or +internal, in order to hasten the discordant day; although just +what they expect as a result, whether an Irish-German state +organized by German efficiency and officered by graduates of +Tammany Hall, or a pseudo-Russian communism, is not yet clear. In +any case, the time is near when whoever calls himself American +will have to take his stand and do more thinking, perhaps, than +was necessary in 1917. He will need to know what tradition is, +what his own consists of, and what he would do without it. He will +need especially to rid himself of such simple and fallacious ideas +as that what was good enough for his grandfather is good enough +for him; or that, as some of our more reputable newspapers profess +to think, the Constitution has taken the place once held by the +Bible, and contains the whole duty of man and all that is +necessary for his welfare. He will need to think less of 100 +percent Americanism, which, as it is commonly used means not to +think at all, and more of how he himself is molding American +tradition for the generation that is to follow. If he is not to be +a pawn merely in the struggle for American unity, he must think +more clearly and deeply than has been his habit in the past. + +But whatever happens in America (and after the sad experiences of +prophets in the period of war and reconstruction, who would +prophesy), let us cease abusing England whenever we have +indigestion in our own body politic. It is seemingly inevitable +that the writers of vindictive editorials should know little more +of England as she is to-day than of Russia or the Chinese +Republic; inevitable, apparently, that for them the Irish policy +of the Tory group in Parliament, Indian unrest, and Lloyd George, +are all that one needs to known about a country whose liberal +experiments in industrial democracy since the war, and whose +courage in reconstruction, may well make us hesitate in dispraise. +But it is not inevitable that Americans who are neither headline +and editorial writers, nor impassioned orators, regardless of +facts, should continue to damn the English because their ancestors +and ours founded America. + + + +BACK TO NATURE + +No one tendency in life as we live it in America to-day is more +characteristic than the impulse, as recurrent as summer, to take +to the woods. Sometimes it disguises itself under the name of +science; sometimes it is mingled with hunting and the desire to +kill; often it is sentimentalized and leads strings of gaping +"students" bird-hunting through the wood lot; and again it +perilously resembles a desire to get back from civilization and go +"on the loose." Say your worst of it, still the fact remains that +more Americans go back to nature for one reason or another +annually than any civilized men before them. And more Americans, I +fancy, are studying nature in clubs or public schools--or, in +summer camps and the Boy Scouts, imitating nature's creatures, the +Indian and the pioneer--than even statistics could make +believable. + +What is the cause? In life, it is perhaps some survival of the +pioneering instinct, spending itself upon fishing, or bird- +hunting, or trail hiking, much as the fight instinct leads us to +football, or the hunt instinct sends every dog sniffing at dawn +through the streets of his town. Not every one is thus atavistic, +if this be atavism; not every American is sensitive to spruce +spires, or the hermit thrush's chant, or white water in a forest +gorge, or the meadow lark across the frosted fields. Naturally. +The surprising fact is that in a bourgeois civilization like ours, +so many are affected. + +And yet what a criterion nature love or nature indifference is. It +seems that if I can try a man by a silent minute in the pines, the +view of a jay pirating through the bushes, spring odors, or +December flush on evening snow, I can classify him by his +reactions. Just where I do not know; for certainly I do not put +him beyond the pale if his response is not as mine. And yet he +will differ, I feel sure, in more significant matters. He is not +altogether of my world. Nor does he enter into this essay. There +are enough without him, and of every class. In the West, the very +day laborer pitches his camp in the mountains for his two weeks' +holiday. In the East and Middle West, every pond with a fringe of +hemlocks, or hill view by a trolley line, or strip of ocean beach, +has its cluster of bungalows where the proletariat perform their +_villeggiatura_ as the Italian aristocracy did in the days of +the Renaissance. Patently the impulse exists, and counts for +something here in America. + +It counts for something, too, in American literature. Since our +writing ceased being colonial English and began to reflect a race +in the making, the note of woods-longing has been so insistent +that one wonders whether here is not to be found at last the +characteristic "trait" that we have all been patriotically +seeking. + +I do not limit myself in this statement to the professed "nature +writers" of whom we have bred far more than any other race with +which I am familiar. In the list--which I shall not attempt--of +the greatest American writers, one cannot fail to include Emerson, +Hawthorne, Thoreau, Cooper, Lowell, and Whitman. And every one of +these men was vitally concerned with nature, and some were +obsessed by it. Lowell was a scholar and man of the world, urban +therefore; but his poetry is more enriched by its homely New +England background than by its European polish. Cooper's ladies +and gentlemen are puppets merely, his plots melodrama; it is the +woods he knew, and the creatures of the woods, Deerslayer and +Chingachgook, that preserve his books. Whitman made little +distinction between nature and human nature, perhaps too little. +But read "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" or "The Song of the +Redwood-Tree," and see how keen and how vital was his instinct for +native soil. As for Hawthorne, you could make a text-book on +nature study from his "Note-Books." He was an imaginative moralist +first of all; but he worked out his visions in terms of New +England woods and hills. So did Emerson. The day was "not wholly +profane" for him when he had "given heed to some natural object." +Thoreau needs no proving. He is at the forefront of all field and +forest lovers in all languages and times. + +These are the greater names. The lesser are as leaves in the +forest: Audubon, Burroughs, Muir, Clarence King, Lanier, Robert +Frost, and many more--the stream broadening and shallowing +through literary scientists and earnest forest lovers to romantic +"nature fakers," literary sportsmen, amiable students, and tens of +thousands of teachers inculcating this American tendency in +another generation. The phenomenon asks for an explanation. It is +more than a category of American literature that I am presenting; +it _is_ an American trait. + +The explanation I wish to proffer in this essay may sound +fantastical; most explanations that explain anything usually do-- +at first. I believe that this vast rush of nature into American +literature is more than a mere reflection of a liking for the +woods. It represents a search for a tradition, and its capture. + +Good books, like well-built houses, must have tradition behind +them. The Homers and Shakespeares and Goethes spring from rich +soil left by dead centuries; they are like native trees that grow +so well nowhere else. The little writers--hacks who sentimentalize +to the latest order, and display their plot novelties like +bargains on an advertising page--are just as traditional. The only +difference is that their tradition goes back to books instead of +life. Middle-sized authors--the very good and the probably +enduring--are successful largely because they have gripped a +tradition and followed it through to contemporary life. This is +what Thackeray did in "Vanity Fair," Howells in "The Rise of Silas +Lapham," and Mrs. Wharton in "The House of Mirth." But the back- +to-nature books--both the sound ones and those shameless exposures +of the private emotions of ground hogs and turtles that call +themselves nature books--are the most traditional of all. For they +plunge directly into what might be called the adventures of the +American sub-consciousness. + +It is the sub-consciousness that carries tradition into +literature. That curious reservoir where forgotten experiences lie +waiting in every man's mind, as vivid as on the day of first +impression, is the chief concern of psychologists nowadays. But it +has never yet had due recognition from literary criticism. If the +sub-consciousness is well stocked, a man writes truly, his +imagination is vibrant with human experience, he sets his own +humble observation against a background of all he has learned and +known and forgotten of civilization. If it is under-populated, if +he has done little, felt little, known little of the traditional +experiences of the intellect, he writes thinly. He can report what +he sees, but it is hard for him to create. It was Chaucer's rich +sub-consciousness that turned his simple little story of +Chauntecleer into a comment upon humanity. Other men had told that +story--and made it scarcely more than trivial. It is the +promptings of forgotten memories in the sub-consciousness that +give to a simple statement the force of old, unhappy things, that +keep thoughts true to experience, and test fancy by life. The sub- +consciousness is the governor of the waking brain. Tradition-- +which is just man's memory of man--flows through it like an +underground river from which rise the springs of every-day +thinking. If there is anything remarkable about a book, look to +the sub-consciousness of the writer and study the racial tradition +that it bears. + +Now, I am far from proposing to analyze the American sub- +consciousness. No man can define it. But of this much I am +certain. The American habit of going "back to nature" means that +in our sub-consciousness nature is peculiarly active. We react to +nature as does no other race. We are the descendants of pioneers-- +all of us. And if we have not inherited a memory of pioneering +experiences, at least we possess inherited tendencies and desires. +The impulse that drove Boone westward may nowadays do no more than +send some young Boone canoeing on Temagami, or push him up Marcy +or Shasta to inexplicable happiness on the top. But the drive is +there. And furthermore, nature is still strange in America. Even +now the wilderness is far from no American city. Birds, plants, +trees, even animals have not, as in Europe, been absorbed into the +common knowledge of the race. There are discoveries everywhere for +those who can make them. Nature, indeed, is vivid in a surprising +number of American brain cells, marking them with a deep and endurable +impress. And our flood of nature books has served to +increase her power. + +It was never so with the European traditions that we brought to +America with us. That is why no one reads early American books. +They are pallid, ill-nourished, because their traditions are +pallid. They drew upon the least active portion of the American +sub-consciousness, and reflect memories not of experience, +contact, live thought, but of books. Even Washington Irving, our +first great author, is not free from this indictment. If, +responding to some obscure drift of his race towards humor and the +short story, he had not ripened his Augustan inheritance upon an +American hillside, he, too, would by now seem juiceless, withered, +like a thousand cuttings from English stock planted in forgotten +pages of his period. It was not until the end of our colonial age +and the rise of democracy towards Jackson's day, that the rupture +with our English background became sufficiently complete to make +us fortify pale memories of home by a search for fresher, more +vigorous tradition. + +We have been searching ever since, and many eminent critics think +that we have still failed to establish American literature upon +American soil. The old traditions, of course, were essential. Not +even the most self-sufficient American hopes to establish a brand- +new culture. The problem has been to domesticate Europe, not to +get rid of her. But the old stock needed a graft, just as an old +fruit tree needs a graft. It requires a new tradition. We found a +tradition in New England; and then New England was given over to +the alien and her traditions became local or historical merely. We +found another in border life; and then the Wild West reached the +Pacific and vanished. Time and again we have been flung back upon +our English sources, and forced to imitate a literature sprung +from a riper soil. Of course, this criticism, as it stands, is too +sweeping. It neglects Mark Twain and the tradition of the American +boy; it neglects Walt Whitman and the literature of free and +turbulent democracy; it neglects Longfellow and Poe and that +romantic tradition of love and beauty common to all Western races. +But, at least, it makes one understand why the American writer has +passionately sought anything that would put an American quality +into his transplanted style. + +He has been very successful in local color. But then local color +is _local_. It is a minor art. In the field of human nature he has +fought a doubtful battle. An occasional novel has broken through into +regions where it is possible to be utterly American even while writing +English. Poems too have followed. But here lie our great failures. I +do not speak of the "great American novel," yet to come. I refer to +the absence of a school of American fiction, or poetry, or drama, that +has linked itself to any tradition broader than the romance of the +colonies, New England of the 'forties, or the East Side of New York. +The men who most often write for all America are mediocre. They strike +no deeper than a week-old interest in current activity. They aim to +hit the minute because they are shrewd enough to see that for "all +America" there is very little continuity just now between one minute +and the next. The America they write for is contemptuous of tradition, +although worshipping convention, which is the tradition of the +ignorant. The men who write for a fit audience though few are too +often local or archaic, narrow or European, by necessity if not by +choice. + +And ever since we began to incur the condescension of foreigners +by trying to be American, we have been conscious of this weak- +rootedness in our literature and trying to remedy it. This is why +our flood of nature books for a century is so significant. They +may seem peculiar instruments for probing tradition--particularly +the sentimental ones. The critic has not yet admitted some of the +heartiest among them--Audubon's sketches of pioneer life, for +example--into literature at all. And yet, unless I am mightily +mistaken, they are signs of convalescence as clearly as they are +symptoms of our disease. These United States, of course, are +infinitely more important than the plot of mother earth upon which +they have been erected. The intellectual background that we have +inherited from Europe is more significant than the moving spirit +of woods and soil and waters here. The graft, in truth, is less +valuable than the tree upon which it is grafted. Yet it determines +the fruit. So with the books of our nature lovers. They represent +a passionate attempt to acclimatize the breed. Thoreau has been +one of our most original writers. He and his multitudinous +followers, wise and foolish, have helped establish us in our new +soil. + +I may seem to exaggerate the services of a group of writers who, +after all, can show but one great name, Thoreau's. I do not think +so, for if the heart of the nature lover is sometimes more active +than his head, the earth intimacies he gives us are vital to +literature in a very practical sense. Thanks to the modern science +of geography, we are beginning to understand the profound and +powerful influence of physical environment upon men. The +geographer can tell you why Charleston was aristocratic, why New +York is hurried and nervous, why Chicago is self-confident. He can +guess at least why in old communities, like Hardy's Wessex or the +North of France, the inhabitants of villages not ten miles apart +will differ in temperament and often in temper, hill town varying +from lowland village beneath it sometimes more than Kansas City +from Minneapolis. He knows that the old elemental forces--wind, +water, fire, and earth--still mold men's thoughts and lives a +hundred times more than they guess, even when pavements, electric +lights, tight roofs, and artificial heat seem to make nature only +a name. He knows that the sights and sounds and smells about us, +clouds, songs, and wind murmurings, rain-washed earth, and fruit +trees blossoming, enter into our sub-consciousness with a power +but seldom appraised. Prison life, factory service long continued, +a clerk's stool, a housewife's day-long duties--these things stunt +and transform the human animal as nothing else, because of all +experiences they most restrict, most impoverish the natural +environment. And it is the especial function of nature books to +make vivid and warm and sympathetic our background of nature. They +make conscious our sub-conscious dependence upon earth that bore +us. They do not merely inform (there the scientist may transcend +them), they enrich the subtle relationship between us and our +environment. Move a civilization and its literature from one +hemisphere to another, and their adapting, adjusting services +become most valuable. Men like Thoreau are worth more than we have +ever guessed. + +No one has ever written more honest books than Thoreau's "Walden," +his "Autumn," "Summer," and the rest. There is not one literary +flourish in the whole of them, although they are done with +consummate literary care; nothing but honest, if not always +accurate, observation of the world of hill-slopes, waves, flowers, +birds, and beasts, and honest, shrewd philosophizing as to what it +all meant for him, an American. Here is a man content to take a +walk, fill his mind with observation, and then come home to think. +Repeat the walk, repeat or vary the observation, change or expand +the thought, and you have Thoreau. No wonder he brought his first +edition home, not seriously depleted, and made his library of it! +Thoreau needs excerpting to be popular. Most nature books do. But +not to be valuable! + +For see what this queer genius was doing. Lovingly, laboriously, +and sometimes a little tediously, he was studying his environment. +For some generations his ancestors had lived on a new soil, too +busy in squeezing life from it to be practically aware of its +differences. They and the rest had altered Massachusetts. +Massachusetts had altered them. Why? To what? The answer is not +yet ready. But here is one descendant who will know at least what +Massachusetts _is_--wave, wind, soil, and the life therein and +thereon. He begins humbly with the little things; but humanly, not +as the out-and-out scientist goes to work, to classify or to +study the narrower laws of organic development; or romantically as +the sentimentalist, who intones his "Ah!" at the sight of dying +leaves or the cocoon becoming moth. It is all human, and yet all +intensely practical with Thoreau. He envies the Indian not because +he is "wild," or "free," or any such nonsense, but for his +instinctive adaptations to his background,--because nature has +become traditional, stimulative with him. And simply, almost +naively, he sets down what he has discovered. The land I live in +is like this or that; such and such life lives in it; and this is +what it all means for me, the transplanted European, for us, +Americans, who have souls to shape and characters to mold in a new +environment, under influences subtler than we guess. "I make it my +business to extract from Nature whatever nutriment she can furnish +me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and +the earth." And again: "Surely it is a defect in our Bible that it +is not truly ours, but a Hebrew Bible. The most pertinent +illustrations for us are to be drawn not from Egypt or Babylonia, +but from New England. Natural objects and phenomena are the +original symbols or types which express our thoughts and feelings. +Yet American scholars, having little or no root in the soil, +commonly strive with all their might to confine themselves to the +imported symbols alone. All the true growth and experience, the +living speech, they would fain reject as 'Americanisms.' It is the +old error which the church, the state, the school, ever commit, +choosing darkness rather than light, holding fast to the old and +to tradition. When I really know that our river pursues a +serpentine course to the Merrimac, shall I continue to describe it +by referring to some other river, no older than itself, which is +like it, and call it a meander? It is no more meandering than the +Meander is musketaquiding." + +This for Thoreau was going back to nature. Our historians of +literature who cite him as an example of how to be American +without being strenuous, as an instance of leisure nobly earned, +are quite wrong. If any man has striven to make us at home in +America, it is Thoreau. He gave his life to it; and in some +measure it is thanks to him that with most Americans you reach +intimacy most quickly by talking about "the woods." + +Thoreau gave to this American tendency the touch of genius and the +depth of real thought. After his day the "back-to-nature" idea +became more popular and perhaps more picturesque. Our literature +becomes more and more aware of an American background. Bobolinks +and thrushes take the place of skylarks; sumach and cedar begin to +be as familiar as heather and gorse; forests, prairies, a clear, +high sky, a snowy winter, a summer of thunderstorms, drive out the +misty England which, since the days of Cynewulf, our ancestors had +seen in the mind's eye while they were writing. Nature literature +becomes a category. Men make their reputations by means of it. + +No one has yet catalogued--so far as I am aware--the vast +collection of back-to-nature books that followed Thoreau. No one +has ever seriously criticized it, except Mr. Roosevelt, who with +characteristic vigor of phrase, stamped "nature-faking" on its +worser half. But every one reads in it. Indeed, the popularity of +such writing has been so great as to make us distrust its serious +literary value. And yet, viewed internationally, there are few +achievements in American literature so original. I will not say +that John Muir and John Burroughs, upon whom Thoreau's mantle +fell, have written great books. Probably not. Certainly it is too +soon to say. But when you have gathered the names of Gilbert +White, Jeffries, Fabre, Maeterlinck, and in slightly different +_genres_, Izaak Walton, Hudson, and Kipling from various literatures +you will find few others abroad to list with ours. Nor do our men owe +one jot or title of their inspiration to individuals on the other side +of the water. + +Locally, too, these books are more noteworthy than may at first +appear. They are curiously passionate, and passion in American +literature since the Civil War is rare. I do not mean sentiment, +or romance, or eroticism. I mean such passion as Wordsworth felt +for his lakes, Byron (even when most Byronic) for the ocean, the +author of "The Song of Roland" for his Franks. Muir loved the +Yosemite as a man might love a woman. Every word he wrote of the +Sierras is touched with intensity. Hear him after a day on Alaskan +peaks: "Dancing down the mountain to camp, my mind glowing like +the sunbeaten glaciers, I found the Indians seated around a good +fire, entirely happy now that the farthest point of the journey +was safely reached and the long, dark storm was cleared away. How +hopefully, peacefully bright that night were the stars in the +frosty sky, and how impressive was the thunder of icebergs, +rolling, swelling, reverberating through the solemn stillness! I +was too happy to sleep." + +Such passion, and often such style, is to be found in all these +books when they are good books. Compare a paragraph or two of the +early Burroughs on his birch-clad lake country, or Thoreau upon +Concord pines, with the "natural history paragraph" that English +magazines used to publish, and you will feel it. + +Compare any of the lesser nature books of the mid-nineteenth +century--Clarence King's "Mountaineering in the Sierras," for +example--with the current novel writing of the period and you will +feel the greater sincerity. A passion for nature! Except the New +England passion for ideals, Whitman's passion for democracy, and +Poe's lonely devotion to beauty, I sometimes think that this is +the only great passion that has found its way into American +literature. + +Hence the "nature fakers." The passion of one generation becomes +the sentiment of the next. And sentiment is easily capitalized. +The individual can be stirred by nature as she is. A hermit thrush +singing in moonlight above a Catskill clove will move him. But the +populace will require something more sensational. To the sparkling +water of truth must be added the syrup of sentiment and the cream +of romance. Mr. Kipling, following ancient traditions of the +Orient, gave personalities to his animals so that stories might be +made from them. Mr. Long, Mr. Roberts, Mr. London, Mr. Thompson- +Seton, and the rest, have told stories about animals so that the +American interest in nature might be exploited. The difference is +essential. If the "Jungle Books" teach anything it is the moral +ideals of the British Empire. But our nature romancers--a fairer +term than "fakers," since they do not willingly "fake"--teach the +background and tradition of our soil. In the process they inject +sentiment, giving us the noble desperation of the stag, the +startling wolf-longings of the dog, and the picturesque outlawry +of the ground hog,--and get a hundred readers where Thoreau got +one. + +This is the same indictment as that so often brought against the +stock American novel, that it prefers the gloss of easy sentiment +to the rough, true fact, that it does not grapple direct with +things as they are in America, but looks at them through +optimist's glasses that obscure and soften the scene. +Nevertheless, I very much prefer the sentimentalized animal story +to the sentimentalized man story. The first, as narrative, may be +romantic bosh, but it does give one a loving, faithful study of +background that is worth the price that it costs in illusion. It +reaches my emotions as a novelist who splashed his sentiment with +equal profusion never could. My share of the race mind is willing +even to be tricked into sympathy with its environment. I would +rather believe that the sparrow on my telephone wire is swearing +at the robin on my lawn than never to notice either of them! + +How curiously complete and effective is the service of these +nature books, when all is considered. There is no better instance, +I imagine, of how literature and life act and react upon one +another. The plain American takes to the woods because he wants +to, he does not know why. The writing American puts the woods into +his books, also because he wants to, although I suspect that +sometimes he knows very well why. Nevertheless, the same general +tendency, the same impulse, lie behind both. But reading nature +books makes us crave more nature, and every gratification of +curiosity marks itself upon the sub-consciousness. Thus the clear, +vigorous tradition of the soil passes through us to our books, and +from our books to us. It is the soundest, the sweetest, if not the +greatest and deepest inspiration of American literature. In the +confusion that attends the meeting here of all the races it is +something to cling to; it is our own. + + + + +THANKS TO THE ARTISTS + + +It would be a wise American town that gave up paying "boosters" +and began to support its artists. A country is just so much +country until it has been talked about, painted, or put into +literature. A town is just so many brick and wood squares, +inhabited by human animals, until some one's creative and +interpretative mind has given it "atmosphere," by which we mean +significance. + +America was not mere wild land to the early colonists: it was a +country that had already been seen through the eyes of +enthusiastic explorers and daring adventurers, whose airs were +sweeter than Europe's, whose fruits were richer, where forest and +game, and even the savage inhabitant, guaranteed a more exciting +life, full of chance for the future. + +New England was not just so much stony acre and fishing village +for the men of the 'twenties and 'forties. It was a land haloed by +the hopes and sufferings of forefathers, where every town had its +record of struggle known to all by word of mouth or book. +And when the New Englanders pushed westward, it was to a +wilderness which already had its literature, along trails of which +they had read, and into regions familiar to them in imagination. + +Say what you please, and it is easy to say too much, of the +imitativeness of American literature as Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, +Longfellow, Thoreau, Twain, and Howells wrote it, nevertheless, it +was more than justified by the human significance it gave to mere +land in America; and it is richer and more valuable than much +later writing just because of this attempt. Without Hawthorne and +Thoreau, New England would have lost its past; without Cooper and +Parkman the word "frontier" would mean no more than "boundary" to +most of us. + +It is foolish to lay a burden on art, and to say, for example, +that American novelists must accept the same obligation to cities +and country to-day. But we may justly praise and thank them when +they do enrich this somewhat monotonous America that has been +planed over by the movies, the _Saturday Evening Post_, quick +transportation, and the newspaper with its syndicated features, +until it is as repetitive as a tom-tom. + +After the Civil War every one began to move in America, and the +immigrants, moving in, moved also, so that roots were pulled up +everywhere and the town one lived in became as impersonal as a +hotel, the farm no more human than a seed-bed. Literature of the +time shows this in two ways: the rarity of books that give a local +habitation and a name to the familiar, contemporary scene; and a +romantic interest, as of the half-starved, in local color stories +of remote districts where history and tradition still meant +something in the lives of the inhabitants. + +It is encouraging to see how rapidly all this is changing. In +poetry the Middle West and New England have been made again to +figure in the imagination. Rural New Hampshire and Illinois are +alive to-day for those who have read Masters, Lindsay, and Frost. +In prose Chicago, New York, New Haven, Richmond, Detroit, San +Francisco, and the ubiquitous Main Street of a hundred Gopher +Prairies have become wayfares for the memory of the reader, as +well as congeries of amusement and trade. In particular our +universities, which in the 'eighties and 'nineties were darkly lit +by a few flaring torches of mawkish romance, have been illumined +for the imagination by a series of stories that already begin to +make the undergraduate comprehend his place in one of the richest +streams of history, and graduates to understand their youth. +Poole's "The Harbor" (which served both college and city), Owen +Johnson's "Stover at Yale," Norris's "Salt," Fitzgerald's "This +Side of Paradise," Stephen Benet's "The Beginning of Wisdom"-- +these books and many others have, like the opening chapters of +Compton Mackenzie's English "Sinister Street," given depth, color, +and significance to the college, which may not increase its +immediate and measurable efficiency but certainly strengthen its +grip upon the imagination, and therefore upon life. + +Planners, builders, laborers, schemers, executives make a city, a +county, a university habitable, give them their bones and their +blood. Poets and novelists make us appreciate the life we live in +them, give them their souls. The best "boosters" are artists, +because their boosting lasts. + + + +TO-DAY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ADDRESSED TO THE BRITISH + + +[Footnote: This lecture was, in fact, delivered in the summer of +1918 at Cambridge University as part of a summer session devoted +to the United States of America. It is reprinted in lecture form +in order that the point of view may carry its own explanation.] + +The analysis of conditions and tendencies in contemporary American +literature which I wish to present in this lecture, requires +historical background, detailed criticism, and a study of +development. I have time for reference to none of these, and can +only summarize the end of the process. If, therefore, I seem to +generalize unduly, I hope that my deficiencies may be charged +against the exigencies of the occasion. But I generalize the more +boldly because I am speaking, after all, of an English literature; +not in a Roman-Greek relationship of unnaturalized borrowings (for +we Americans imitate less and less), but English by common +cultural inheritance, by identical language, and by deeply +resembling character. Nevertheless, the more American literature +diverges from British (and that divergence is already wide) the +more truly English, the less colonial does it become. A Briton +should not take unkindly assertions of independence, even such +ruffled independence as Lowell expressed in "The Biglow Papers": + + I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles + 'Thout no _gret_ helpin' from the British Isles, + An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff + Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff; + I han't no patience with such swelling fellers ez + Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses. + +I desire neither to apologize for American literature, nor to +boast of it. No apology is necessary now, whatever Sydney Smith +may have thought in earlier days: and it is decidedly not the time +to boast, for so far literature has usually been a by-product in +the development of American aptitudes. But it may be useful to +state broadly at the beginning some of the difficulties and the +closely related advantages that condition the making of literature +in the United States. + +The critic of American literature usually begins in this fashion: +America, in somewhat over a century, has built up a political and +social organization admittedly great. She has not produced, +however, a great literature: great writers she has produced, but +not a great literature. The reason is, that so much energy has +been employed in developing the resources of a great country, that +little has been left to expend in creative imagination. The +currents of genius have flowed toward trade, agriculture, and +manufacturing, not aesthetics. + +This explanation is easy to understand, and is therefore +plausible, but I do not believe that it is accurate. It is not +true that American energy has been absorbed by business. Politics, +and politics of a creative character, has never lacked good blood +in the United States. Organization, and organization of a kind +requiring the creative intellect, has drawn enormously upon our +energies, especially since the Civil War, and by no means all of +it has been business organization. Consider our systems of +education and philanthropy, erected for vast needs. And I venture +to guess that more varieties of religious experience have arisen +in America than elsewhere in the same period. After all, why +expect a century and a half of semi-independent intellectual +existence to result in a great national literature? Can other +countries, other times, show such a phenomenon? + +No, if we have been slow in finding ourselves in literature, in +creating a school of expression like the Elizabethan or the +Augustan, the difficulties are to be sought elsewhere than in a +lack of energy. + +Seek them first of all in a weakening of literary tradition. The +sky changes, not the mind, said Horace, but this is true only of +the essentials of being. The great writers of our common English +tradition--Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and many others--are as +good for us as they are good for you. It is even whispered that +our language is more faithful to their diction than is yours. But +the conditions of life in a new environment bring a multitude of +minor changes with them. To begin with little things, our climate, +our birds, our trees, our daily contact with nature, are all +different. Your mellow fluting blackbird, your wise thrush that +sings each song twice over, your high-fluttering larks we do not +know. Our blackbird creaks discordantly, our plaintive lark sings +from the meadow tussock, our thrush chimes his heavenly bell from +forest dimness. And this accounts, may I suggest in passing, for +the insistence upon nature in American writing, from Thoreau down. +Our social and economic experience has been widely different also; +and all this, plus the results of a break in space and time with +the home country of our language, weakened that traditional +influence which is so essential for the production of a national +literature. It had to be; good will come of it; but for a time we +vacillated, and we still vacillate, like a new satellite finding +its course. + +Again, the constant shift of location within America has been a +strong delaying factor. Moving-day has come at least once a +generation for most American families since the days of William +Penn or _The Mayflower_, The president of a Western university, who +himself, as a baby, had been carried across the Alleghenies in a +sling, once told me the history of his family. It settled in Virginia +in the seventeenth century, and moved westward regularly each +generation, until his father, the sixth or seventh in line, had +reached California. On the return journey he had got as far as +Illinois, and his son was moving to New York! The disturbing effect +upon literature of this constant change of soils and environment is +best proved by negatives. Wherever there has been a settled community +in the United States--in New England of the 'forties and again in the +'nineties, in the Middle West and California to-day--one is sure to +find a literature with some depth and solidity to it. The New England +civilization of the early nineteenth century, now materially altered, +was a definable culture, with five generations behind it, and strong +roots in the old world. From it came the most mature school of +American literature that so far we have possessed. + +Still another difficulty must be added. The social. Pessimists, +who see in our Eastern states a mere congeries of all the white +races, and some not white, bewail the impossibility of a real +nation in America. But the racial problem has always been with us, +nor has it by any means always been unsolved. Before the +Revolution, we were English, Scottish, Welsh, Low German, +Huguenot, Dutch, and Swedish. Before the Civil War, we were the +same plus the Irish and the Germans of '48. And now we add Slavs, +Jews, Greeks, and Italians. I do not minimize the danger. But let +it be understood that while our civilization has always been +British (if that term is used in its broadest sense) our blood has +always been mixed, even in Virginia and New England. This has made +it hard for us to feel entirely at home in the only literary +tradition we possessed and cared to possess. We have been like the +man with a ready-made suit. The cloth is right, but the cut must +be altered before the clothes will fit him. + +And finally, America has always been decentralized intellectually. +It is true that most of the books and magazines are published in +New York, and have always been published there, or in Boston or +Philadelphia. But they have been written all over a vast country +by men and women who frequently never see each other in the flesh. +There has been no center like London, where writers can rub elbows +half-a-dozen times a year. Boston was such a capital once; only, +however, for New England. New York is a clearing-house of +literature now; but the writing is, most of it, done elsewhere. It +is curious to speculate what might have happened if the capital of +the United States had been fixed at New York instead of +Washington! + +From this decentralization there results a lack of literary self- +confidence that is one of the most important factors in the +intellectual life of America. The writer in Tucson or Minneapolis +or Bangor is dependent upon his neighbors to a degree impossible +in Manchester or Glasgow or York. He is marooned there, separated +in space and time, if not in mind, from men and women who believe, +as he may believe, in the worth of literary standards, in the +necessity of making not the most easily readable book, but the +best. Here is one cause of the feebleness of many American +"literary" books. + +Nevertheless, this very decentralization may have, when we reach +literary maturity, its great advantages. It is difficult to over- +estimate the color, the variety, the _verve_ of American life. And +much of this comes not from the push and "hustle" and energy of +America--for energy is just energy all the world over--but is rather +to be found in the new adjustments of race and environment which are +multiplying infinitely all over the United States. It is true that +American civilization seems to be monotonous--that one sees the same +magazines and books, the same moving-picture shows, the same drug- +stores, trolley cars, and hotels on a New York model, hears the same +slang and much the same general conversation from New Haven to Los +Angeles. But this monotony is superficial. Beneath the surface there +are infinite strainings and divergences--the peasant immigrant working +toward, the well-established provincial holding to, the wide-ranging +mind of the intellectual working away from, this dead level of +conventional standards. Where we are going, it is not yet possible +to say. Quite certainly not toward an un-British culture. Most +certainly not toward a culture merely neo-English. But in any +case, it is because San Francisco and Indianapolis and Chicago and +Philadelphia have literary republics of their own, sovereign like +our states, yet highly federalized also in a common bond of +American taste and ideals which the war made stronger--it is this +fact that makes it possible to record, as American writers are +already recording, the multifarious, confused development of +racial instincts working into a national consciousness. +Localization is our difficulty; it is also the only means by which +literature can keep touch with life in so huge a congeries as +America. If we can escape provincialism and yet remain local, all +will be well. + +So far I have been merely defining the terms upon which literature +has been written in America. Let me add to these terms a +classification. If one stretches the meaning of literature to +cover all writing in prose or verse that is not simply +informative, then four categories will include all literary +writing in America that is in any way significant. We have an +aristocratic and a democratic literature; we have a dilettante +and a vast bourgeois literature. + +In using the term aristocratic literature I have in mind an +intellectual rather than a social category. I mean all writing +addressed to specially trained intelligence, essays that imply a +rich background of knowledge and taste, stories dependent upon +psychological analysis, poetry which is austere in content or +complex in form. I mean Henry James and Sherwood Anderson, Mr. +Cabell, Mr. Hergesheimer, and Mrs. Wharton, Agnes Repplier, Mr. +Crothers, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. Colby. + +By democratic literature I mean all honest writing, whether crude +or carefully wrought, that endeavors to interpret the American +scene in typical aspects for all who care to read. I mean Walt +Whitman and Edgar Lee Masters; I mean a hundred writers of short +stories who, lacking perhaps the final touch of art, have +nevertheless put a new world and a new people momentarily upon the +stage. I mean the addresses of Lincoln and of President Wilson. + +With dilettante literature I come to a very different and less +important classification: the vast company--how vast few even +among natives suspect--of would-be writers, who in every town and +county of the United States are writing, writing, writing what +they hope to be literature, what is usually but a pallid imitation +of worn-out literary forms. More people seem to be engaged in +occasional production of poetry and fiction--and especially of +poetry--in America, than in any single money-making enterprise +characteristic of a great industrial nation. The flood pours +through every editorial office in the land, trickles into the +corners of country newspapers, makes short-lived dilettante +magazines, and runs back, most of it, to its makers. It is not +literature, for the bulk is bloodless, sentimental, or cheap, but +it is significant of the now passionate American desire to express +our nascent soul. + +My chief difficulty is to explain what I mean by bourgeois +literature. The flood of dilettante writing is subterranean; it is +bourgeois literature that makes the visible rivers and oceans of +American writing. And these fluid areas are like the lakes on maps +of Central Asia--bounds cannot be set to them. One finds magazines +(and pray remember that the magazine is as great a literary force +as the book in America), one finds magazines whose entire function +is to be admirably bourgeois for their two million odd of readers. +And in the more truly literary and "aristocratic" periodicals, in +the books published for the discriminating, the bourgeois creeps +in and often is dominant. The bourgeois in American literature is +a special variety that must not be too quickly identified with the +literary product that bears the same name in more static +civilizations. It is nearly always clever. Witness our short +stories, which even when calculated not to puzzle the least +intelligence nor to transcend the most modest limitations of +taste, must be carefully constructed and told with facility or +they will never see the light. And this literature is nearly +always true to the superficies of life, to which, indeed, it +confines itself. Wild melodrama is more and more being relegated +to the "movies," soft sentimentality still has its place in the +novel, but is losing ground in the people's library, the +magazines. Life as the American believes he is living it, is the +subject of bourgeois literature. But the sad limitation upon this +vast output is that, whether poetry, criticism, or fiction, it +does not interpret, it merely pictures; and this is the inevitable +failure of pages that must be written always for a million or more +of readers. It is standardized literature; and good literature, +like the best airplanes, cannot be standardized. + +Now the error made by most English critics in endeavoring to +estimate the potentialities or the actualities of American +literature, is to judge under the influence of this crushing +weight of clever, mediocre writing. They feel, quite justly, its +enormous energy and its terrible cramping power. They see that the +best of our democratic writers belong on its fringe; see also that +our makers of aristocratic literature and our dilettante escape +its weight only when they cut themselves off from the life beat of +the nation. And therefore, as a distinguished English poet +recently said, America is doomed to a hopeless and ever-spreading +mediocrity. + +With this view I wish to take immediate issue upon grounds that +are both actual and theoretical. There is a fallacy here to begin +with, a fallacious analogy. It is true, I believe, in Great +Britain, and also in France, that there are two separate publics; +that the readers who purchase from the news stands are often as +completely unaware of literary books for literary people as if +these bore the imprint of the moon. But even in England the +distinction is by no means sharp; and in America it is not a +question of distinctions at all, but of gradations. In our better +magazines are to be found all the categories of which I have +written--even the dilettante; and it is a bold critic who will +assert that pages one to twenty are read only by one group, and +pages twenty to forty only by another. We are the most careless +readers in the world; but also the most voracious and the most +catholic. + +And next, let us make up our minds once for all that a bourgeois +literature--by which, let me repeat, I mean a literature that is +good without being very good, true without being utterly true, +clever without being fine--is a necessity for a vast population +moving upward from generation to generation in the intellectual +scale, toward a level that must be relatively low in order to be +attainable. Let us say that such a literature cannot be real +literature. I am content with that statement. But it must exist, +and good may come of it. + +This is the critical point toward which I have been moving in this +lecture, and it is here that the hopeful influence of the American +spirit, as I interpret it today, assumes its importance. That +spirit is both idealistic and democratic. Idealistic in the sense +that there is a profound and often foolishly optimistic belief in +America that every son can be better than his father, better in +education, better in taste, better in the power to accomplish and +understand. Democratic in this sense, that with less political +democracy than one finds in Great Britain, there is again a +fundamental belief that every tendency, every taste, every +capacity, like every man, should have its chance somehow, +somewhere, to get a hearing, to secure its deservings, to make, to +have, to learn what seems the best. + +A vague desire, you say, resulting in confusion and mediocrity. +This is true and will be true for some time longer; but instead of +arguing in generalities let me illustrate these results by the +literature I have been discussing. + +When brought to bear upon the category of the dilettante, it is +precisely this desire for "general improvement" that has +encouraged such a curious outpouring from mediocre though +sensitive hearts. The absence of strong literary tradition, the +lack of deep literary soil, has been responsible for the +insipidity of the product. The habit of reference to the taste of +the majority has prevented us from taking this product too +seriously. Without that instinctive distrust of the merely +literary common to all bourgeois communities, we might well be +presenting to you as typical American literature a gentle weakling +whose manners, when he has them, have been formed abroad. + +Aristocratic literature has suffered in one respect from the +restraints of democracy and the compulsions of democratic +idealism. It has lacked the self-confidence and therefore the +vigor of its parallels in the old world. Emerson and Thoreau rose +above these restrictions, and so did Hawthorne and Poe. But in +later generations especially, our intellectual poetry and +intellectual prose is too frequently though by no means always +less excellent than yours. Nevertheless, thanks to the influence +of this bourgeois spirit upon the intellects that in American +towns must live with, if not share it; thanks, also, to the +magazines through which our finer minds must appeal to the public +rather than to a circle or a clique, the nerves of transfer +between the community at large and the intellectuals are active, +the tendons that unite them strong. I argue much from this. + +Now theoretically, where you find an instinctive and therefore an +honest passion for the ideals of democracy, you should find a +great literature expressing and interpreting the democracy. I have +given already some reasons why in practice this has not yet become +an actuality in America. Let me add, in discussing the bearing of +this argument upon the third category of American literature, the +democratic, one more. + +I doubt whether we yet know precisely what is meant by a great +democratic literature. Democracy has been in transition at least +since the French Revolution; it is in rapid transition now. The +works which we call democratic are many of them expressive of +phases merely of the popular life, just as so much American +literature is expressive of localities and groups in America. + +And usually the works of genius that we do possess have been +written by converted aristocrats, like Tolstoy, and have a little +of the fanaticism and over-emphasis of the convert. Or they +represent and share the turgidity of the minds they interpret, +like some of the work of Walt Whitman. All this is true, and yet a +careful reader of American literature must be more impressed by +such prose as Lincoln's, by such poems as Whitman's, such fiction as +Mark Twain's at his best, than by many more elegant works of +polite literature. For these--and I could add to them dozens of +later stories and poems, ephemeral perhaps but showing what may be +done when we burst the bourgeois chain--for these are discoveries +in the vigor, the poignancy, the color of our democratic national +life. + +I have already hinted at what seems to me the way out and up for +American literature. It will not be by fine writing that borrows +or adapts foreign models, even English models which are not +foreign to us. It will not come through geniuses of the backwoods, +adopted by some coterie, and succeeding, when they do succeed, by +their strangeness rather than the value of the life they depict. +That might have happened in the romantic decades of the early +nineteenth century; but our English literary tradition was a +saving influence which kept us from _gaucherie_, even if it set limits +upon our strength. Our expectation, so I think, is in the slowly +mounting level of the vast bourgeois literature that fills not +excellently, but certainly not discreditably, our books +and magazines. There, and not in coteries, is our school of +writing. When originality wearies of stereotypes and conventions, +when energy and ability force the editorial hand, and appeal to +the desire of Americans to know themselves, we shall begin a new +era in American literature. Our problem is not chiefly to expose +and attack and discredit the flat conventionality of popular +writing. It is rather to crack the smooth and monotonous surface +and stir the fire beneath it, until the lava of new and true +imaginings can pour through. And this is, historically, the +probable course of evolution. It was the Elizabethan fashion. The +popular forms took life and fire then. The advice of the +classicists, who wished to ignore the crude drama beloved of the +public, was not heeded; it will not be heeded now. Our task is to +make a bourgeois democracy fruitful. We must work with what we have. + +Much has been said of the advantage for us, and perhaps for the +world, which has come from the separation of the American colonies +from Great Britain. Two systems of closely related political +thinking, two national characters, have developed and been +successful instead of one. Your ancestors opened the door of +departure for mine, somewhat brusquely it is true, but with the +same result, if not the same reason, as with the boys they sent +away to school--they made men of us. + +So it is with literature. American literature will never, as some +critics would persuade us, be a child without a parent. In its +fundamental character it is, and will remain, British, because at +bottom the American character, whatever its blood mixture, is formed +upon customs and ideals that have the same origin and a +parallel development with yours. But this literature, like our +political institutions, will not duplicate; like the seedling, it +will make another tree and not another branch. In literature we +are still pioneers. I think that it may be reserved for us to +discover a literature for the new democracy of English-speaking +peoples that is coming--a literature for the common people who do +not wish to stay common. Like Lincoln's, it will not be vulgar; +like Whitman's, never tawdry; like Mark Twain's, not empty of +penetrating thought; like Shakespeare's it will be popular. If +this should happen, as I believe it may, it would be a just return +upon our share of a great inheritance. + + + +TIME'S MIRROR + + +What is the use of criticizing modern literature unless you are +willing to criticize modern life? And how many Americans are +willing to criticize it with eyes wide open? + +The outstanding fact in mass civilization as it exists in America +and Western Europe to-day is that it moves with confidence in only +one direction. The workers, after their escape from the industrial +slavery of the last century, have only one plan for the future +upon which they can unite, a greater share in material benefits. +The possessors of capital have only one program upon which they +agree, a further exploitation of material resources, for the +greater comfort of the community and themselves. The professional +classes have only one professional instinct in common, to discover +new methods by which man's comfort may be made secure. + +In this way of life, as the Buddhist might have called it, all our +really effective energy discharges itself. Even the church is most +active in social service, and philosophy is accounted most +original when it accounts for behavior. Theology has become a +stagnant science, and, to prove the rule by contraries, the main +problem of man's spiritual relation to the universe, his end in +living, and the secret of real happiness is left to a sentimental +idealism in which reason, as the Greeks knew it, has less and less +place, and primitive instinct, as the anthropologists define it, +and the Freudian psychologists explain it, is given more and more +control. + +The flat truth is that, as a civilization, we are less sure of +where we are going, where we want to go, how and for what we wish +to live, than at any intelligent period of which we have full +record. This is not pessimism. It is merely a fact, which is +dependent upon our failure to digest the problems that democracy, +machinery, feminism, and the destruction of our working dogmas by +scientific discovery, have presented to us. All these things are +more likely to be good than bad, all bear promise for the future, +but all tend to confuse contemporary men. New power over nature +has been given them and they are engaged in seizing it. New means +of testing preconceived opinion are theirs, and they are using +them. The numbers which can be called intelligent are tremendously +augmented and the race to secure material comforts has become a +mass movement which will not cease until the objective is won. + +In the meantime, there is only one road which is clear--the road +of material progress, and whether its end lies in the new +barbarism of a mechanistic state where the mental and physical +faculties will decline in proportion to the means discovered for +healing their ills, or whether it is merely a path where the +privileged leaders must mark step for a while until the +unprivileged masses catch up with them in material welfare, no one +knows and few that are really competent care to inquire. + +Now this obsession with material welfare is the underlying premise +with which all discussion of contemporary literature, and +particularly American literature, must begin. Ours is a literature +of an age without dogma, which is to say without a theory of +living; the literature of an inductive, an experimental period, +where the really vital attempt is to subdue physical environment +(for the first time in history) to the needs of the common man. It +is an age, therefore, interested and legitimately interested in +behavior rather than character, in matter and its laws rather than +in the control of matter for the purposes of fine living. + +Therefore, our vital literature is behavioristic, naturalistic, +experimental--rightly so I think--and must be so until we seek +another way. That search cannot be long deferred. One expects its +beginning at any moment, precisely as one expects, and with +reason, a reaction against the lawless thinking and unrestrained +impulses which have followed the war. One hopes that it will not +be to Puritanism, unless it be that stoic state of mind which lay +behind Puritanism, for no old solution will serve. The neo- +Puritans to-day abuse the rebels, young and old, because they have +thrown over dogma and discipline. The rebels accuse Puritanism for +preserving the dogma that cramps instead of frees. It is neither +return to the old nor the destruction thereof that we must seek, +but a new religion, a new discipline, a new hope, and a new end +which can give more significance to living than dwellers in our +industrial civilization are now finding. + +In the meantime, those who seek literary consolation are by no +means to be urged away from their own literature, which contains a +perfect picture of our feverish times, and has implicit within it +the medicine for our ills, if they are curable. But they may be +advised to go again and more often than is now the fashion to the +writings of those men who found for their own time, a real +significance, who could formulate a saving doctrine, and who could +give to literature what it chiefly lacks to-day, a core of ethical +conviction and a view of man in his world _sub specie aeternitatis_. +It is the appointed time in which to read Dante and Milton, +Shakespeare, and Goethe, above all Plato and the great tragedies of +Greece. Our laughter would be sweeter if there were more depth of +thought and emotion to our serious moods. + + + + +THE FAMILY MAGAZINE + + +Readers who like magazines will be pleased, those who do not like +them perhaps distressed, to learn, if they are not already aware +of it, that the magazine as we know it to-day is distinctly an +American creation. They may stir, or soothe, their aroused +emotions by considering that the magazine which began in England +literally as a storehouse of miscellanies attained in mid- +nineteenth century United States a dignity, a harmony, and a +format which gave it preeminence among periodicals. _Harper's_ and +_The Century_ in particular shared with Mark Twain and the sewing +machine the honor of making America familiarly known abroad. + +I do not wish to overburden this essay with history, but one of +the reasons for the appearance of such a dominating medium in a +comparatively unliterary country is relevant to the discussion to +follow. The magazine of those days was vigorous. It was vigorous +because, unlike other American publications, it was not oppressed +by competition. Until the laws of international copyright were +completed, the latest novels of the Victorians, then at their +prime, could be rushed from a steamer, and distributed in editions +which were cheap because no royalties had to be paid. Thackeray +and Dickens could be sold at a discount, where American authors of +less reputation had to meet full charges. And the like was true of +poetry. But the magazine, like the newspaper, was not +international; it was national at least in its entirety, and for +it British periodicals could not be substituted. Furthermore, it +could, and did, especially in its earlier years, steal +unmercifully from England, so that a subscriber got both homebrew +and imported for a single payment. Thus the magazine flourished in +the mid-century while the American novel declined. +A notable instance of this vigor was the effect of the growing +magazine upon the infant short story. Our American magazine made +the development of the American short story possible by creating a +need for good short fiction. The rise of our short story, after a +transitional period when the earliest periodicals and the +illustrated Annuals sought good short stories and could not get +them, coincides with the rise of the family magazine. It was such +a demand that called forth the powers in prose of the poet, Poe. +And as our magazine has become the best of its kind, so in the +short story, and in the short story alone, does American +literature rival the more fecund literatures of England and +Europe. + +That a strong and native tendency made the American magazine is +indicated by the effect of our atmosphere upon the periodical +which the English have always called a review. Import that form, +as was done for _The North American_, _The Atlantic Monthly_, _The +Forum_, or _The Yale Review_, and immediately the new American +periodical begins to be a little more of a magazine, a little more +miscellaneous in its content, a little less of a critical survey. +Critical articles give place to memoirs and sketches, fiction or near +fiction creeps in. There is always a tendency to lose type and be +absorbed into the form that the mid-century had made so successful: a +periodical, handsomely illustrated, with much fiction, some +description, a little serious comment on affairs written for the +general reader, occasional poetry, and enough humor to guarantee +diversion. This is our national medium for literary expression--an +admirable medium for a nation of long-distance commuters. And it is +this "family magazine" I wish to discuss in its literary aspects. + +The dominance of the family magazine as a purveyor of general +literature in America has continued, but in our own time the +species (like other strong organisms) has divided into two genres, +which are more different than, on the surface, they appear. The +illustrated _literary magazine_ (the family magazine _par +excellence_) must now be differentiated from the illustrated +_journalistic_ magazine, but both are as American in origin +as the review and the critical weekly are English. + +It was the native vigor of the family magazine that led to the +Great Divergence of the 'nineties, which older readers will +remember well. The literary historian of that period usually gives +a different explanation. He is accustomed to say that the old-time +"quality" magazines, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, and the rest, were +growing moribund when, by an effort of editorial genius, Mr. McClure +created a new and rebellious type of magazine, which was rapidly +imitated. We called it, as I remember, for want of a better title, the +fifteen-cent magazine. In the wake of _McClure's_, came _Collier's_, +_The Saturday Evening Post_, _The Ladies Home Journal_, and all the +long and profitable train which adapted the McClurean discovery to +special needs and circumstances. + +I do not believe that this is a true statement of what happened in +the fruitful 'nineties. _McClure's_ was not, speaking biologically, a +new species at all; it was only a mutation in which the recessive +traits of the old magazine became dominant while the invaluable type +was preserved. To speak more plainly, the literary magazine, as +America knew it, had always printed news, matured news, often stale +news, but still journalism. Read any number of _Harper's_ in the +'seventies for proof. And, _pari passu_, American journalism was +eagerly trying to discover some outlet for its finer products, a +medium where good pictures, sober afterthoughts, and the finish that +comes from careful writing were possible. _Harper's Weekly_ in Civil +War days, and later, was its creation. + +And now it was happily discovered that the family magazine had a +potential popularity far greater than its limited circulation. +With its month-long period of incubation, its elastic form, in +which story, special article, poetry, picture, humor, could all be +harmoniously combined, only a redistribution of emphasis was +necessary in order to make broader its appeal. Mr. McClure +journalized the family magazine. He introduced financial and +economic news in the form of sensational investigations, he bid +for stories more lively, more immediate in their interest, more +journalistic than we were accustomed to read (Kipling's journalistic +stories for example, were first published in America in _McClure's_). +He accepted pictures in which certainty of hitting the public eye was +substituted for a guarantee of art. And yet, with a month to prepare +his number, and only twelve issues a year, he could pay for +excellence, and insure it, as no newspaper had ever been able to do. +And he was freed from the incubus of "local news" and day-by-day +reports. In brief, under his midwifery, the literary magazine gave +birth to a super-newspaper. + +Needless to say, the great increase in the number of American +readers and the corresponding decline in the average intelligence +and discrimination of the reading public had much to do with the +success of the journalistic magazine. Yet it may be stated, with +equal truth, that the rapid advance in the average intelligence of +the American public as a whole made a market for a super-newspaper +in which nothing was hurried and everything well done. The +contributions to literature through this new journalism have been +at least as great during the period of its existence as from the +"quality" magazine, the contributions toward the support of +American authors much greater. Like all good journalism, it has +included real literature when it could get and "get away with it." + +Birth, however, in the literary as in the animal world, is +exhausting and often leaves the parent in a debility which may +lead to death. The periodical essay of the eighteenth century bore +the novel of character, and died; the Gothic tale of a later date +perished of the short story to which it gave its heart blood. The +family magazine of the literary order has been debile, so radical +critics charge, since its journalistic offspring began to sweep +America. Shall it die? + +By no means. An America without the illustrated literary magazine, +dignified, respectable, certain to contain something that a reader +of taste can peruse with pleasure, would be an unfamiliar America. +And it would be a barer America. In spite of our brood of special +magazines for the _literati_ and the advanced, which Mr. Ford +Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with +the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a +recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family +magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be +reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary +virility in the country; indeed there has probably not been so +much literary energy in the country since the 'forties as now--not +nearly so much. Nor is it due to a lack of good readers. Nor, in +my opinion, to the competition of the journalistic magazine. The +literary magazine does not compete, or at least ought not to +compete, with its offspring, for it appeals either to a different +audience or to different tastes. + +Roughly stated, the trouble is that the public for these excellent +magazines has changed, and they have not. Their public always was, +and is, the so-called "refined" home public. Homes have changed, +especially "refined" homes, and a new home means a new public. + +The refined home nowadays has been to college. (There are a +million college graduates now in the United States.) Forty years +ago only scattered members had gone beyond the school. I do not +propose to exaggerate the influence upon intelligence of a college +education. It is possible, nay, it is common, to go through +college and come out in any real sense uneducated. But it is not +possible to pass through college, even as a professional amateur +in athletics or as an inveterate flapper, without rubbing off the +insulation here and there, without knowing what thought is +stirring, what emotions are poignant, what ideas are dominant +among the fraction of humanity that leads us. Refined homes may +not be better or happier than they used to be, but if they are +intellectual at all, they are more vigorously intellectual. + +This means at the simplest that home readers of the kind I have +been describing want stimulating food, not what our grandfathers +used to call "slops." Sometimes they feed exclusively upon highly +spiced journalism, but if they are literary in their tastes they +will be less content with merely literary stories, with articles +that are too solid to be good journalism, yet too popular to be +profound, less content, in short, with dignity as a substitute for +force. + +What should be done about it specifically is a question for +editors to answer. But this may be said. If the old literary +omnibus is to continue, as it deserves, to hold the center of the +roadway, then it must be driven with some vigor of the intellect +to match the vigor of news which has carried its cheaper +contemporary fast and far. By definition it cannot embrace a cause +or a thesis, like the weeklies, and thank Heaven for that! It is +clearly unsafe to stand upon mere dignity, respectability, or +cost. That way lies decadence--such as overcame the old +Quarterlies, the Annuals, and the periodical essayists. Vigor it +must get, of a kind naturally belonging to its species, not +violent, not raucous, not premature. It must recapture its public, +and this is especially the "old American" (which does _not_ +mean the Anglo-Saxon) element in our mingled nation. + +These old Americans are not moribund by any means, and it is +ridiculous to suppose, as some recent importations in criticism +do, that a merely respectable magazine will represent them. A good +many of them, to be sure, regard magazines as table decorations, +and for such a clientele some one some day will publish a monthly +so ornamental that it will be unnecessary to read it in order to +share its beneficent influences. The remainder are intellectualized, +and many of them are emancipated from the conventions of the last +generation, if not from those of their own. These demand a new +vitality of brain, emotion, and spirit in their literary magazine, and +it must be given to them. + +No better proof of all this could be sought than the renaissance +in our own times of the reviews and the weeklies, probably the +most remarkable phenomenon in the history of American publishing +since the birth of yellow journalism. By the weeklies I do not +mean journals like _The Outlook_, _The Independent_, _Vanity Fair_, +which are merely special varieties of the typically American magazine. +I refer, of course, to _The New Republic_, _The Nation_, _The +Freeman_, _The Weekly Review_ in its original form, periodicals formed +upon an old English model, devoted to the spreading of opinion, and +consecrated to the propagation of intelligence. The success of +these weeklies has been out of proportion to their circulation. +Like the old _Nation_, which in a less specialized form was +their predecessor, they have distinctly affected American +thinking, and may yet affect our action in politics, education, +and social relations generally. They are pioneers, with the faults +of intellectual pioneers, over-seriousness, over-emphasis, +dogmatism, and intolerance. Yet it may be said fairly that their +chief duty, as with the editorial pages of newspapers, is to be +consistently partisan. At least they have proved that the American +will take thinking when he can get it. And by inference, one +assumes that he will take strong feeling and vigorous truth in his +literary magazines. + +The reviews also show how the wind is blowing. The review, so- +called, is a periodical presenting articles of some length, and +usually critical in character, upon the political, social, and +literary problems of the day. The distinction of the review is +that its sober form and not too frequent appearance enable it to +give matured opinion with space enough to develop it. + +Clearly a successful review must depend upon a clientele with time +and inclination to be seriously interested in discussion, and that +is why the review, until recently, has best flourished in England +where it was the organ of a governing class. In America, an +intellectual class who felt themselves politically and socially +responsible, has been harder to discover. We had one in the early +days of the Republic, when _The North American Review_ was founded. It +is noteworthy that we are developing another now and have seen _The +Yale Review_, the late lamented _Unpartisan Review_, and others join +_The North American_, fringed, so to speak, by magazines of excerpt +(of which much might be written), such as _The Review of Reviews_, +_Current Opinion_, and _The Literary Digest_, in which the function +of the review is discharged for the great community that insists +upon reading hastily. + +The review has come to its own with the war and reconstruction; +which, considering its handicaps, is another argument that the +family magazine should heed the sharpening of the American +intellect. But, except for the strongest members of the family, it +is still struggling, and still dependent for long life upon +cheapness of production rather than breadth of appeal. + +The difficulty is not so much with the readers as the writers. The +review must largely depend upon the specialist writer (who alone +has the equipment for specialist writing), and the American +specialist cannot usually write well enough to command general +intelligent attention. This is particularly noticeable in the +minor reviews where contributions are not paid for and most of the +writing is, in a sense, amateur, but it holds good in the +magazines and the national reviews also. The specialist knows his +politics, his biology, or his finance as well as his English or +French contemporary, but he cannot digest his subject into words +--he can think into it, but not out of it, and so cannot write +acceptably for publication. Hence in science particularly, but +also in biography, in literary criticism, and less often in +history, we have to depend frequently upon English pens for our +illumination. + +The reasons for this very serious deficiency, much more serious +from every point of view than the specialists realize, are well +known to all but the specialists, and I do not propose to enter +into them here. My point is that this very defect, which has made +it so difficult to edit a valid and interesting review (and so +creditable to succeed as we have in several instances succeeded), +is a brake also upon the family magazine in its attempt to regain +virility. The newspaper magazines have cornered the market for +clever reporters who tap the reservoirs of special knowledge and +then spray it acceptably upon the public. This is good as far as +it goes, but does not go far. The scholars must serve us +themselves--and are too often incapable. + +Editorial embarrassments are increased, however, by the difficulty +of finding these intellectualized old Americans who have drifted +away from the old magazines and are being painfully collected in +driblets by the weeklies and the reviews. They do not, +unfortunately for circulation, all live in a London, or Paris. +They are scattered in towns, cities, university communities, +lonely plantations, all over a vast country. Probably that +intellectualized public upon which all good magazines as well as +all good reviews must depend, has not yet become so stratified and +homogeneous after the upheavals of our generation that a +commercial success of journalistic magnitude is possible, but it +can and must be found. + +The success of _The Atlantic Monthly_ in finding a sizable and +homogeneous public through the country is interesting in just this +connection. It has, so it is generally understood, been very much a +question of _finding_--of going West after the departing New Englander +and his children, and hunting him out with the goods his soul desired. +One remembers the Yankee peddlers who in the old days penetrated the +frontier with the more material products of New England, pans, +almanacs, and soap. But an observer must also note a change in the +character of _The Atlantic_ itself, how it has gradually changed from +a literary and political review, to a literary and social magazine, +with every element of the familiar American type except illustrations +and a profusion of fiction; how in the attempt to become more +interesting without becoming journalistic it has extended its +operations to cover a wider and wider arc of human appeal. It has both +lost and gained in the transformation, but it has undoubtedly proved +itself adaptable and therefore alive. This is not an argument that the +reviews should become magazines and that the old-line magazine +should give up specializing in pictures and in fiction. Of course +not. It is simply more proof that vigor, adaptability, and a keen +sense of existing circumstances are the tonics they also need. The +weekly lacks balance, the review, professional skill in the +handling of serious subjects, the family magazine, a willingness +to follow the best public taste wherever it leads. + +It has been very difficult in this discussion, which I fear has +resembled a shot-gun charge rather than a rifle bullet, to keep +the single aim I have had in mind. The history of the periodical +in American literary thinking has not yet been written. The +history of American literature has but just been begun. My object +has been to put the spotlight for a moment upon the typical +American magazine, with just enough of its environment to make a +background. What is seen there can best be summarized by a +comparison. The American weekly is like the serious American play +of the period. It has an over-emphasis upon lesson, bias, thesis, +point. The review is like much American poetry. It is worthy, and +occasionally admirable, but as a type it is weakened by amateur +mediocrity in the art of writing. The family magazine is like the +American short story. It has conventionalized into an often +successful immobility. Both must move again, become flexible, +vigorous, or their date will be upon them. And the family +magazine, the illustrated literary magazine, is the most +interesting vehicle of human expression and interpretation that we +Americans have created. With a new and greater success, it will +draw all our other efforts with it. If it fails, hope for the +interesting review, the well-balanced weekly, is precarious. If +they all submerge, we who like to read with discrimination and +gusto will have to take to books as an exclusive diet, or make our +choice between boredom and journalism. + + + + +III + +THE NEW GENERATION + +THE YOUNG ROMANTICS + + +We have talked about the younger generation as if youth were a new +phenomenon that had to be named and described, like a strange +animal in the Garden of Eden. No wonder that our juniors have +become self-conscious and have begun to defend themselves. +Nevertheless, the generation born after the 'eighties has had an +experience unique in our era. It has been urged, first by men and +then by events, to discredit the statements of historians, the +pictures of poets and novelists, and it has accepted the +challenge. The result is a literature which speaks for the younger +writers better, perhaps, than they speak for themselves, and this +literature no reader whose brain is still flexible can afford to +neglect; for to pass by youth for maturity is sooner or later to +lose step with life. + +In recent decades the novel especially, but also poetry, has +drifted toward biography and autobiography. The older poets, who +yesterday were the younger poets, such men as Masters, Robinson, +Frost, Lindsay, have passed from lyric to biographic narrative; +the younger poets more and more write of themselves. In the novel +the trend is even more marked. An acute critic, Mr. Wilson +Follett, has recently noted that the novel of class or social +consciousness, which only ten years ago those who teach literature +were discussing as the latest of late developments, has already +given way to a vigorous rival. It has yielded room, if not given +place, to the novel of the discontented person. The young men, and +in a less degree the young women, especially in America, where the +youngest generation is, I believe, more vigorous than elsewhere, +have taken to biographical fiction. Furthermore, what began as +biography, usually of a youth trying to discover how to plan his +career, has drifted more and more toward autobiography--an +autobiography of discontent. + +There is, of course, nothing particularly new about biographical +fiction. There is nothing generically new about the particular +kind of demi-autobiographies that the advanced are writing just +now. The last two decades have been rich in stories that need only +a set of notes to reveal their approximate faithfulness to things +that actually happened. But there is an emphasis upon revolt and +disillusion and confusion in these latest novels that is new. They +are no longer on the defensive, no longer stories of boys +struggling to adapt themselves to a difficult world (men of forty- +odd still write such stories); their authors are on the offensive, +and with a reckless desire to accomplish their objectives, they +shower us with such a profusion of detail, desert the paths of use +and wont in fiction so freely, and so often disregard the comfort, +not to speak of the niceties, of the reader, that "the young +realists" has seemed a fair, although, as I think, a misleading +title, for their authors. To a critic they are most interesting, +for the novel of the alleged young realist is like a fresh country +boy on a football field, powerful, promising, and utterly wasteful +of its strength. + +Recent American literature has been especially rich in such +novels. There was, for example, Fitzgerald's ragged, but +brilliant, "This Side of Paradise," which conducted aimless and +expansive youth from childhood through college. There was the much +more impressive "Main Street," biographic in form, but with teeth +set on edge in revolt. There was the vivid and ill-controlled sex +novel "Erik Dorn," and Evelyn Scott's "The Narrow House," in which +the miseries of a young girl caught in the squalid and the +commonplace had their airing. There was Stephen Benet's "The +Beginning of Wisdom," where the revolt was a poet's, and the +realist's detail selected from beauty instead of from ugliness; +and Aikman's "Zell," in which youth rubs its sore shoulders +against city blocks instead of university quadrangles. There was +Dos Passos's "Three Soldiers," in which the boy hero is crushed by +the war machine his elders have made. These are type examples, +possibly not the best, certainly not the worst, drawn from the +workshops of the so-called young realists. + +What is the biography of this modern youth? His father, in the +romantic 'nineties, usually conquered the life of his elders, +seldom complained of it, never spurned it. His son-in-the-novel is +born into a world of intense sensation, usually disagreeable. +Instead of a "Peter Ibbetson" boyhood, he encounters disillusion +after disillusion. At the age of seven or thereabout he sees +through his parents and characterizes them in a phrase. At +fourteen he sees through his education and begins to dodge it. At +eighteen he sees through morality and steps over it. At twenty he +loses respect for his home town, and at twenty-one discovers that +our social and economic system is ridiculous. At twenty-three his +story ends because the author has run through society to date and +does not know what to do next. Life is ahead of the hero, and +presumably a new society of his own making. This latter, however, +does not appear in any of the books, and for good reasons. + +In brief, this literature of the youngest generation is a +literature of revolt, which is not surprising, but also a +literature characterized by a minute and painful examination of +environment. Youth, in the old days, when it rebelled, escaped to +romantic climes or adventurous experience from a world which some +one else had made for it. That is what the hacks of the movies and +the grown-up children who write certain kinds of novels are still +doing. But true youth is giving us this absorbed examination of +all possible experiences that can come to a boy or girl who does +not escape from every-day life, this unflattering picture of a +world that does not fit, worked out with as much evidence as if +each novel were to be part of a brief of youth against society. +Indeed, the implied argument is often more important than the +story, when there is a story. And the argument consists chiefly of +"_this_ happened to me," "I saw _this_ and did not like it," "I was +driven to _this_ or _that_," until the mass of circumstantial incident +and sensation reminds one of the works of Zola and the scientific +naturalists who half a century ago tried to put society as an organism +into fiction and art. + +No better example has been given us than Dos Passos's "Three +Soldiers," a book that would be tiresome (and is tiresome to many) +in its night after night and day after day crammed with every +possible unpleasant sensation and experience that three young men +could have had in the A. E. F. And that the experiences recorded +were unpleasant ones, forced upon youth, not chosen by its will, +is thoroughly characteristic. If it had not been for the +rebellious pacifism in this book, it is questionable whether +readers who had not been in France, and so could not relish the +vivid reality of the descriptions, would have read to the end of +the story. + +The cause of all this is interesting, more interesting than some +of the results. The full result we can scarcely judge yet, for +despite signs of power and beauty and originality, only one or two +of these books have reached artistic maturity; but we can prepare +to comprehend it. + +Here, roughly, is what I believe has happened, and if I confine my +conclusions to fiction, it is not because I fail to realize that +the effects are and will be far broader. + +The youths of our epoch were born and grew up in a period of +criticism and disintegration. They were children when the attack +upon orthodox conceptions of society succeeded the attack upon +orthodox conceptions of religion. We know how "the conflict +between religion and science" reverberated in nineteenth-century +literature and shaped its ends. The new attack was quite +different. Instead of scrutinizing a set of beliefs, it +scrutinized a method of living. Insensibly, the intelligent youth +became aware that the distribution of wealth and the means of +getting it were under attack; that questions were raised as to the +rights of property and the causes and necessity of war. Soon moral +concepts began to be shaken. He learned that prostitution might be +regarded as an economic evil. He found that sex morality was +regarded by some as a useful taboo; psychology taught him that +repression could be as harmful as excess; the collapse of the +Darwinian optimists, who believed that all curves were upward, +left him with the inner conviction that everything, including +principle, was in a state of flux. And his intellectual guides, +first Shaw, and then, when Shaw became _vieux jeu_, De Gourmont, +favored that conclusion. + +Then came the war, which at a stroke destroyed his sense of +security and with that his respect for the older generation that +had guaranteed his world. Propaganda first enlightened him as to +the evil meanings of imperialistic politics, and afterward left +him suspicious of all politics. Cruelty and violent change became +familiar. He had seen civilization disintegrate on the +battlefield, and was prepared to find it shaky at home. + +Then he resumed, or began, his reading and his writing. His +reading of fiction and poetry, especially when it dealt with +youth, irritated him. The pictures of life in Dickens, in "The +Idylls of the King," in the Henty books, in the popular romantic +novels and the conventional social studies, did not correspond +with his pictures. They in no sense corresponded with the +descriptions of society given by the new social thinkers whose +ideas had leaked through to him. They did not square with his own +experience. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" rang false to a +member of the 26th Division. Quiet stories of idyllic youth in New +England towns jarred upon the memories of a class-conscious +youngster in modern New York. Youth began to scrutinize its own +past, and then to write, with a passionate desire to tell the real +truth, all of it, pleasant, unpleasant, or dirty, regardless of +narrative relevance. + +The result was this new naturalism, a propaganda of the experience +of youth, where the fact that mother's face was ugly, not angelic, +is supremely important, more important than the story, just +because it was the truth. And as the surest way to get all the +truth is to tell your own story, every potential novelist wrote +his own story, enriching it, where sensation was thin, from the +biographies of his intimates. Rousseau was reborn without his +social philosophy. Defoe was reincarnated, but more anxious now to +describe precisely what happened to him than to tell an effective +tale. + +This is a very different kind of truth-telling from, let us say, +Mrs. Wharton's in "The Age of Innocence" or Zona Gale's in "Miss +Lulu Bett." It does not spring from a desire to tell the truth +about human nature. + +These asserters of youth are not much interested in any human +nature except their own, not much, indeed, in that, but only in +the friction between their ego and the world. It is passionate +truth, which is very different from cool truth; it is subjective, +not objective; romantic, not classical, to use the old terms which +few nowadays except Professor Babbitt's readers understand. Nor is +it the truth that Wells, let us say, or, to use a greater name, +Tolstoy was seeking. It is not didactic or even interpretative, +but only the truth about the difference between the world as it is +and the world as it was expected to be; an impressionistic truth; +in fact, the truth about _my_ experiences, which is very different +from what I may sometime think to be the truth about mankind. + +It will be strange if nothing very good comes from this impulse, +for the purpose to "tell the world" that my vision of America is +startlingly different from what I have read about America is +identical with that break with the past which has again and again +been prelude to a new era. I do not wish to discuss the alleged +new era. Like the younger generation, it has been discussed too +much and is becoming evidently self-conscious. But if the +autobiographical novel is to be regarded as its literary herald +(and they are all prophetic Declarations of Independence), then we +may ask what has the new generation given us so far in the way of +literary art. + +Apparently the novel and the short story, as we have known them, +are to be scrapped. Plot, which began to break down with the +Russians, has crumbled into a maze of incident. You can no longer +assume that the hero's encounter with a Gipsy in Chapter II is +preparation for a tragedy in Chapter XXIX. In all probability the +Gipsy will never be heard from again. She is irrelevant except as +a figment in the author's memory, as an incident in autobiography. +Setting, the old familiar background, put on the story like wall- +paper on a living-room, has suffered a sea change also. It comes +now by flashes, like a movie-film. What the ego remembers, that it +describes, whether the drip of a faucet or the pimple on the face +of a traffic policeman. As for character, there is usually but +one, the hero; for the others live only as he sees them, and fade +out when he looks away. If he is highly sexed, like Erik Dorn, the +other figures appear in terms of sex, just as certain rays of +light will bring out only one color in the objects they shine +against. + +The novel, in fact, has melted and run down into a diary, with +sometimes no unity except the personality whose sensations are +recorded. Many of us have wished to see the conventional story +forms broken to bits. It was getting so that the first sentence ofa +short story or the first chapter of a novel gave the whole show +away. We welcomed the English stories of a decade ago that began +to give the complexities of life instead of the conventions of a +plot. But this complete liquidation rather appals us. +The novels I have mentioned so far in this article have all +together not enough plot to set up one lively Victorian novel. +Benet, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald--the flood-gates of each mind have +been opened, and all that the years had dammed up bursts forth in +a deluge of waters, carrying flotsam and jetsam and good things +and mud. + +It is not surprising that, having given up plot, these writers +escape from other restraints also. The more energetic among them +revel in expression, and it seems to make little difference +whether it is the exquisite chiaroscuro of Chicago they are +describing, or spots on a greasy apron. The less enthusiastic are +content to be as full of gritty realistic facts as a fig of seeds; +but with all of them everything from end to beginning, from bottom +to top, must be said. + +And just here lies the explanation of the whole matter. As one +considers the excessive naturalism of the young realists and asks +just why they find it necessary to be so excessively, so +effusively realistic, the conviction is inborn that they are not +realists at all as Hardy, Howells, even James were realists; they +are romanticists of a deep, if not the deepest, dye, even the +heartiest lover of sordid incident among them all. + +I am aware, of course, that "romantic" is a dangerous word, more +overworked than any other in the vocabulary of criticism, and very +difficult to define. But in contrast with its opposites it can be +made to mean something definite. Now, the romanticism of the +juniors is not the opposite of realism; it sometimes embraces +realism too lovingly for the reader's comfort. But it is the +opposite of classicism. It is emotional expansiveness as +contrasted with the classic doctrine of measure and restraint. By +this, the older meaning of romanticism, we may put a tag upon the +new men that will help to identify them. Their desire is to free +their souls from the restraints of circumstance, to break through +rule and convention, to let their hearts expand. + +But they do not fly into Byronic melancholy or Wordsworthian +enthusiasm for the mysterious abstract; they are far more likely +to fly away from them. Byron and Wordsworth do not interest them, +and Tennyson they hate. Romantic in mood, they are realistic, +never classical, in their contact with experience. In poetry they +prefer free verse, in prose they eschew grand phrases and sonorous +words. It has been the hard realism of an unfriendly world that +has scraped them to the raw, and they retaliate by vividly +describing all the unpleasant things they remember. Taught by the +social philosophers and war's disillusions that Denmark is +decaying, they do not escape to Cathay or Bohemia, but stay at +home and passionately narrate what Denmark has done to them. +Romantic Zolas, they have stolen the weapons of realism to fight +the battle of their ego. And the fact that a few pause in their +naturalism to soar into idyllic description or the rapture of +beauty merely proves my point, that they are fundamentally +romantics seeking escape, and that autobiographical realism is +merely romanticism _a la mode_. + +Let us criticize it as such, remembering that we may be reading +the first characteristic work of a new literary era. Let us give +over being shocked. Those who were shocked by Byron, the apostle +of expansiveness, merely encouraged him to be more shocking. Nor +is it any use to sit upon the hydrant of this new expansiveness. +If a youth desires to tell the world what has happened to him, he +must be allowed to do so, provided he has skill and power enough +to make us listen. And these juniors have power even when skill +has not yet been granted them. What is needed is a hose to stop +the waste of literary energy, to conserve and direct it. Call for +a hose, then, as much as you please, but do not try to stop the +waters with your Moses's rod of conservative indignation. + + It is no crime to be a romantic,--it is a virtue, if that is the +impulse of the age,--but it is a shame to be a wasteful romantic. +Waste has always been the romantic vice--waste of emotion, waste +of words, the waste that comes from easy profusion of sentiment and +the formlessness that permits it. Think of "The Excursion," of +Southey, and of the early poems of Shelley, of Scott at his +wordiest. And these writers also are wasteful, in proportion to +their strength. + +They waste especially their imagination. Books like "The Three +Soldiers" spill over in all directions--spill into poetry, +philosophy, into endless conversation, and into everything +describable. Books like "The Beginning of Wisdom" are still more +wasteful. Here is the poignant biography of a boy who loves his +environment even when it slays him, plus a collection of prose +idylls, plus a group of poems, plus a good piece of special +reporting, plus an assortment of brilliant letters; and imbedded +in the mass, like a thread of gold in a tangle of yarn, as fresh +and exquisite a love-story as we have had in recent English. Of +course I do not mean that all these elements cannot be woven into, +made relevant to, a theme, a story. Stendhal, himself a romantic, +as these men are romantics, could do it. But our romantics do not +so weave them; they fling them out as contributions to life's +evidence, they fail to relate them to a single interpretation of +living, and half of the best incidents are waste, and clog the +slow-rolling wheels of the story. + +They waste their energy also. So keenly do they love their own +conception of true living that their imaginations dwell with a +kind of horrid fascination upon the ugly things that thwart them. +Hence in a novel like "Main Street," the interest slackens as one +begins to feel that the very vividness of the story comes from a +vision strained and aslant, unable to tear eyes from the things +that have cramped life instead of expanding it. The things that +these writers love in life often they never reach until the last +chapter, and about them they have little to say, being exhausted +by earlier virulence. + +Waste, of course, is a symptom of youth and vitality as well as of +unbridled romanticism, but that is no reason for praising a book +because it is disorderly. We do not praise young, vigorous states +for being disorderly. Life may not be orderly, but literature must +be. That is a platitude which it seems necessary to repeat. + +It is difficult to estimate absolute achievement except across +time, and the time has been too brief to judge of the merits of +the young romanticists. My guess is that some of them will go far. +But the diagnosis at present seems to show an inflammation of the +ego. The new generation is discovering its soul by the pain of its +bruises, as a baby is made aware of its body by pin-pricks and +chafes. It is explaining its dissatisfactions with more violence +than art. + +Therefore at present the satirists and the educators hold the best +cards, and most of them are elderly. No one of _les jeunes_ writes +with the skill, with the art, of Mrs. Wharton, Miss Sinclair, +Tarkington, Galsworthy, or Wells. It should not long be so in a +creative generation. In sheer emotion, in vivid protest that is not +merely didactic, the advantage is all with the youngsters. But they +waste it. They have learned to criticize their elders, but not +themselves. They have boycotted the books of writers who were young +just before themselves, but they have not learned to put a curb on +their own expansiveness. We readers suffer. We do not appreciate their +talents as we might, because we lose our bearings in hectic words or +undigested incident. We lose by the slow realization of their art. + +Youth is a disease that cures itself, though sometimes too late. +The criticism I have made, in so far as it refers to youthful +impetuosity, is merely the sort of thing that has to be said to +every generation, and very loudly to the romantic ones. But if +these autobiographians are, as I believe, expansive romanticists, +that is of deeper significance, and my hope is that the definition +may prove useful to them as well as to readers who with an amazed +affection persist in following them wherever they lead. + + + + +PURITANS ALL + + +When anything goes wrong in politics the American practice is to +charge it against the Administration. In literature all grievances +are attributed to the Puritans. If a well-written book does not +sell, it is because the Puritans warped our sense of beauty; if an +honest discussion of sex is attacked for indecency, it is the +fault of the Puritan inheritance; if the heroes and heroines of +new narratives in prose or verse jazz their way to destruction or +impotence, it is in protest against the Puritans. + +Who is this terrible Puritan? Apparently he is all America's +ancestor, and whether you were born in Delaware or in South +Carolina, in Montana or in Jugoslavia, you must adopt him as +great-great-grandfather or declare yourself alien. + +What was he, or rather, what did he stand for, and inflict upon +us, to-day? Here there is some confusion. According to one set of +critics he is not so much a hater of the arts as indifferent to +their charms, not so much a Milton scornful of easy beauty, as a +Philistine, deaf and blind to the aesthetic. But these writers have +apparently confounded Great-great-grandfather Puritan with Grandpa +Victorian, the Victorian that Matthew Arnold scolded and Shaw made +fun of. He is a type as different from the real Puritan as the +slum dweller from the primitive barbarian. "Milton, thou shouldst +be living at this hour" to flay such ignorant traducers of those +who knew at least the beauty of austerity and holiness. + +According to a less numerous but more clear-headed group of +enemies the Puritan is to be censured chiefly for the rigidity of +his conscience. He will not let us enjoy such "natural" pleasures +as mirth, love, drinking, and idleness without a bitter antidote +of remorse. He keeps books dull and reticent, makes plays +virtuously didactic, and irritates all but the meek and the godly +into revolt. + +I am not an uncritical admirer of the Puritan, although I believe +he is more nearly on the side of the angels than is his opposite. +I deprecate the smug virtuosity which his kind often favor, I +dislike a vinegar morality, and am repelled by the monstrous +egoism of the idea that redeeming one's soul is such a serious +matter that every moment spared from contemplating the sins of +others or the pieties of oneself is irretrievably wasted. + +But I object still more strongly to the anti-Puritans. Those +rebels who make unconventionality their only convention, with +their distrust of duty because they see no reason to be dutiful, +and their philosophic nihilism, which comes to this, that all +things having been proved false except their own desires, their +desires become a philosophy, those anti-Puritans, as one sees +them, especially in plays and on the stage, are an obstreperous, +denying folk that seldom know their own minds to the end of the +story. In fiction, distrusting what the Puritans call duty, they +are left gasping in the last chapter, wondering usually what they +are to do next; while the delightful lack of conscience that makes +the flappers audacious and the young men so unremorsefully naughty +leads to nothing at the end but a passionate desire to discover +some new reason for living (which I take to mean, a new +conscience) even if homes and social utility are wrecked in the +attempt. + +Why has duty become so unpopular in American literature? Is it +because she is, after all, just what that loftiest if not most +impeccable of Puritans called her, stern daughter of the voice of +God? Is there to be no more sternness in our morals now we +understand their psychology, no voice commanding us to do this or +not to do that because there is a gulf set between worth and +worthlessness? Is it true that because we are not to be damned for +playing golf on Sunday, nothing can damn us? That because the +rock-ribbed Vermont ancestor's idea of duty can never be ours, we +have no duty to acknowledge? Is it true that if we cease being +Puritans we can remain without principle, swayed only by impulse +and events? + +When these questions are answered to the hilt, we shall get +something more vital than anti-Puritanism in modern American +literature. + + + + +THE OLDER GENERATION + + +The American Academy of Arts and Letters says a word for the Older +Generation now and then by choosing new academicians from its +ranks. No one else for a long while now has been so poor as to do +it reverence. Indeed, the readers of some of our magazines must +have long since concluded that there are no fathers and mothers in +the modern literary world, but only self-created heralds of the +future who do not bother even to be rebellious against a +generation they condemn. + +The older generation is in a difficult situation, because, +apparently, no one knows precisely who and what it is. The younger +generation, of course, is made up of every one who dislikes +Tennyson, believes in realism, reads De Gourmont, and was not +responsible for the war. That is perfectly definite. We are +somewhat puzzled by the uncounted hordes of the youthful in +appearance who support the movies, are stolidly conservative in +the colleges, never heard of De Gourmont, and have forgotten the +war. But perhaps that is some other younger generation which no +one has taken the trouble to write about--yet. + +As for the older generation, what actually is it, and who in +reality are they? The general impression seems to be that they are +the Victorians, they are Howells and his contemporaries, they are +the men and women who created the family magazine, invented +morality, revived Puritanism, and tried to impose evolution on a +society that preferred devolution by international combat. But +these men are all dead, or have ceased writing. They are not +_our_ older generation. It is true that they are famous and so +convenient for reference, but it is not accurate nor fair to +drag them from their graves for purposes of argument. + +The true older generation, of which one seldom hears in current +criticism except in terms of abuse, remains to be discovered, and +we herewith announce its personnel, so that the next time the +youthful writer excoriates it in the abstract all may know just +whom he means. Among the older generation in American literature +are H. L. Mencken and Mrs. Edith Wharton, Booth Tarkington and +Stuart P. Sherman, Miss Amy Lowell and Mr. Frank Moore Colby, +Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson, Vachel Lindsay and Carl +Sandburg, Mrs. Gerould and Professor William Lyon Phelps, Edgar +Lee Masters, Joseph Hergesheimer, and most of the more radicaleditors +of New York. Here is this group of desiccated Victorians, +upholders of the ethics of Mr. Pickwick, and the artistic theories +of Bulwer-Lytton. Here are the bogies of outworn conservatism, +numbered like a football team. Mark their names, and know from now +on that most of the books that you have supposed were solid in +artistry and mature in thought, though perhaps novel in tone or in +method, were written by the older generation. + +Perhaps when the younger generation pretend to confuse their +immediate predecessors with Ruskin and Carlyle, with Browning, +Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Matthew Arnold, they are +merely strategic. For it is still dangerous to assault the +citadels of the great Victorians with no greater books than the +youthful volumes of 1918-1921, no matter how many breaches the war +has left in the walls of their philosophy. It is far easier to +assume that they are still alive in pallid survival, and to attack a +hypothetic older generation, which, representing nothing real, +can therefore not strike back. + +Let the younger generation go back to its muttons, let it attend +to its most pressing business, which is to create. It is vigorous, +prolific, and, to my judgment, full of promise, but so far has +done little or nothing not summarized in these words. It must pay +its debt to time before it grows much older, or go down among +expectations unrealized. It has few hours to waste upon attacking +an older generation which, as it is described, does not exist +except in youthful imagination, a generation actually of the +middle-aged which in the meantime is bearing the burden of +invention, creation, revolution in art while the youngsters are +talking. + +I should like to see less about the younger and more of this older +generation in literary criticism. It is a fresh subject, scarcely +touched by writers, and full of surprises. The jaded reader should +be told that, in spite of rumors to the contrary, the middle-aged +still exist. + + + + +A LITERATURE OF PROTEST + + +I have pursued the discussions of the new American realism through +university gatherings and literary inquests. Stripped of all +metaphysics and relieved of all subtlety the conclusion of the +matter is inescapable. It is not the realism of the realists, or +the freedom of free verse, or the radicalism of the radical that +in itself offends the critics, it is the growing ugliness of +American literature. The harsh and often vulgar lines of Masters +(so they say) seem to disdain beauty. Vachel Lindsay's shouted +raptures are raucous. Miss Lowell's polyphonies have intellectual +beauty, but the note is sharp, the splendors pyrotechnic. Robert +Frost's restrained rhythms are homely in the single line. The +"advanced" novelists, who win the prizes and stir up talk, are +flat in style when not muddy in their English. They do not lift. +An eighteenth century critic would call American literature ugly, +or at least homely, if he dipped into its realities, rococo if he +did not. + +This is the sum of a criticism so strongly felt that it raises a +barrier to appreciation, almost a gate shut against knowledge +between the good American readers and the progressives in our +literature. Sandburg and Lindsay between them will cause more +acrimony in a gathering of English teachers than even Harold Bell +Wright. Miss Lowell carries controversy with her, triumphantly +riding upon it. Their critics wish form as they have known form, +want beauty such as they possess in riper literatures, want +maturity, richness, suavity, grace, and the lift of noble +thinking, nobly expressed. It may be remarked, in passing, that +they also would like to live in English manors in gardened +landscapes and have French cathedrals rise above their perfect +towns! + +It ought to be clear that we shall never get beauty of this kind, +or of any absolute kind, in American writing until there is more +beauty in American life. Amidst the vulgarities of signboards, +cries of cheap newspapers, noisy hustle of trivial commercialism, +and the flatness of standardized living, it is hard to feel +spiritual qualities higher than optimism and reform. In general, +wherever we have touched America we have made it uglier, as a +necessary preliminary perhaps to making it anything at all, but +uglier nevertheless. There was more hardship perhaps but also more +clear beauty in Colonial days than in our own. More clear beauty, +we say, because the present has its own vigorous beauty, more +complex than what went before, but not yet clarified from the ugly +elements that are making it. The forests and the skyscrapers are +beautiful in America, but pretty much everything else below and +between is soiled or broken by progress and prosperity. + +And it is of the things in between, of America in the making, that +these new writers, whose lack of pure beauty we deplore, and whose +occasional gratuitous ugliness we dislike, are writing. They are +protesting against its sordidness and crudity far more effectively +than the cloistered reader who recites Shelley, saying "Why can't +they write as he does." Like all that is human they share the +qualities of their environment, like all fighters they acquire the +faults of the enemy. They hate, often enough, the ugliness which a +generation of progress has implanted in their own minds. They have +been educated, perhaps, by the movies, Main Street conversation, +formalized schools, and stale Methodism, and they hate their +education. Or like the poets mentioned above they are moved by the +pathos, the injustice, the confused beauty, the promise, not of +some land of the past, but of the country under their feet, and +write of what stirs them in terms that fit. + +It is only when one understands this new American writing to be a +literature of protest, that one begins to sympathize with its +purposes, admire its achievements, and be tolerant of its +limitations. For such a literature has very definite limitations. +It is preparative rather than ultimate. The spaciousness of great +imagination is seldom in it, and it lacks those grand and simple +conceptions which generalize upon the human race. It is cluttered +with descriptions of the enemy, it is nervous, or morbid, or +excited, or over-emphatic. That it strikes out occasional sparks +of vivid beauty, and has already produced masterpieces in poetry, +is to be wondered at and praised. + +But some one had to begin to write of the United States as it is. +We could not go on with sentimental novels and spineless lyrics +forever. Some writers had to refocus the instrument and look at +reality again. And what the honest saw was not beautiful as +Tennyson knew beauty, not grand, not even very pleasant. It is +their job to make beauty out of it, beauty of a new kind probably, +because it will accompany new truth; but they must have time. +Surprise, shock, experiment, come first. The new literature +deserves criticism, but it also deserves respect. Contempt for it +is misplaced, aversion is dangerous since it leads to ignorance, +wholesale condemnation such as one hears from professional +platforms and reads in newspaper editorials is as futile as the +undiscriminating praise of those who welcome novelty just because +it is new. + + + + +BARBARIANS A LA MODE + + +The liberal mind, which just now is out of a job in politics, +might very well have a look at the present state of literature. A +task is there ready for it. + +Our literature is being stretched and twisted or hacked and hewed +by dogmatists. Most of the critics are too busy gossiping about +plots and the private lives of authors to devote much attention to +principles. But the noble few who still can write about a book +without falling into it, or criticize an author's style without +dragging in his taste in summer resorts, are chiefly concerned +with classifications. Is our author conservative or radical? Are +his novels long or short skirted? Does he write for _Harper's_ +or _The Dial_? They have divided America chronologically into the old +and the new and geographically into East or West of the Alleghanies, +or North or South of Fourteenth Street in New York. Such creative +writers as have a definite philosophy of composition are equally +categorical. And both are calling upon liberal minds, who are supposed +to have no principles of their own, to umpire the controversy. + +The liberal mind, which I believe in, though I hesitate to define +it, has too much work before it to umpire in a dispute over the +relative taste of the decayed and the raw. In literature, as in +pretty much everything else, the central problem is not the +struggle of the old with the new; it is the endless combat of +civilization (which is old _and_ new) against barbarism. Under which +banner our writers are enlisting is the vital question. Whether they +are radical or conservative will always in the view of history be +interesting, but may be substantially unimportant. And the function of +the liberal mind, with its known power to dissolve illiberal +dogmatism, is to discover the barbarian wherever he raises his head, +and to convert or destroy him. + +The Greeks had a short way of defining the barbarian which we can +only envy. To them, all men not Greeks were barbarians. By this +they meant that only the Greeks had learned to desire measure in +all things, liberty safeguarded by law, and knowledge of the truth +about life. Men not desiring these things were barbarous, no +matter how noble, how rich, and how honest. The ancient and highly +conservative Egyptians were barbarous; the youthful and new- +fangled Gauls were barbarous. An Egyptian in nothing else +resembled a Gaul, but both in the eyes of the Greek were +barbarians. + +Evolution and devolution have intervened. The Gaul has become one +of the standards of civilization; the Egyptian has died of his +conservatism; but the problem of the barbarian remains the same. +There are neo-Gauls to-day and neo-Egyptians. + +These gentry do not belong to the welter of vulgar barbarism, the +curse of a half educated, half democratized age. They are found +among the upper classes of the intellect, and can rightly be +called by such names as conservative or radical, which show that +they are part of the minority that thinks. Indeed, they are not +barbarous at all in the harsh modern sense of the word; yet the +Greeks would have condemned them. + +The barbarism of the neo-Gaul is unrestraint ("punch" is the +nearest modern equivalent). The neo-Gaul is an innovator and this +is his vice. It is a byproduct of originality and a symptom of a +restless desire for change. The realist who makes a poem, not on +his lady's eyebrows but her intestines, is a good current example. +The novelist who shovels undistinguished humanity, just because it +is human, into his book is another. The versifier who twists and +breaks his rhythm solely in order to get new sounds is a third. A +fourth is the stylist who writes in disjointed phrases and +expletives, intended to represent the actual processes of the +mind. + +The realist poet, so the Greeks would have said, lacks measure. He +destroys the balance of his art by asking your attention for the +strangeness of his subject. It is as if a sculptor should make a +Venus of chewing gum. The novelist lacks self-restraint. Life +interests him so much that he devours without digesting it. The +result is like a moving picture run too fast. The versifier also +lacks measure. He is more anxious to be new than to be true, and +he seeks effects upon the reader rather than forms for his +thought. The bizarre stylist misses truth by straining too much to +achieve it. Words are only symbols. They never more than roughly +represent a picture of thought. A monologue like this, as the +heroine goes to shop: Chapel Street...the old hardware +shop...scissors, skates glittering, moonlight on the ice...old Dr. +Brown's head, like a rink. Rink...a queer word! Pigeons in the air +above the housetops--automobiles like elephants. Was her nose +properly powdered?... Had she cared to dance with him after all? is +not absolutely true: it is not the wordless images that float +through the idle mind, but only a symbol of them, more awkward and +less informative than the plain English of what the heroine felt +and thought. + +All these instances are barbarous in the Greek sense, and their +perpetrators, no matter how cultivated, how well-meaning, how +useful sometimes as pioneers and pathbreakers, are barbarians. +Some of them should be exposed; some chided; some labored with, +according to the magnitude and the nature of their offense. The +critics who uphold and approve them should be dealt with likewise. +And it is the reader with the liberal mind who is called to the +task. He is in sympathy, at least, with change, and knows that the +history of civilization has been a struggle to break away from +tradition and yet not go empty-handed; he can understand the +passion to express old things in a new and better way, or he is +not intellectually liberal. It takes a liberal mind to distinguish +between barbarism and progress. + +Next there is the _rigor mortis_ of the neo-Egyptians, the barbarism +of the dead hand, called by the unkind and the undiscriminating, +academic barbarism. + +Let us humor the Menckenites by so calling it, and then add that +it is by no means confined to the colleges, although it is a vice +more familiar in critics than in creative artists. A Ph.D. is +quite unnecessary in order to be academic in this sense, just as +one does not have to be a scholar in order to be pedantical. To +stand pat in one's thinking (and this is the neo-Egyptian fault) +is to be barbarous, whatever the profession of the thinker. True, +the victims of this hardening of the brain are precisely those men +and women most likely to fling taunts at the moderns, just those +who would rather be charged with immorality than barbarism. And +yet, to be bound to the past is as barbarous in the Greek sense as +to be wholly immersed in the present. The Egyptians for all their +learning were barbarians. + +Barbarian is not as rude a word as it sounds. Most of the great +romanticists had strains of the barbarous in them--the young +Shakespeare among them. Indeed, much may be said for sound +barbarian literature, until it becomes self-conscious, though not +much for barbarian criticism. Nevertheless, I do not intend in +this sally against the slavish barbarism of the merely academic +mind to hurl the epithet recklessly. Lusty conservatives who +attack free verse, free fiction, ultra realism, "jazzed" prose, +and the socialistic drama as the diseases of the period have my +respect and sympathy, when it is a disease and not change as +change that they are attacking. And, often enough, these +manifestations _are_ symptoms of disease, a plethoric disease +arising from too high blood pressure. Hard-hitting conservatives +were never more needed in literature than now, when any one can +print anything that is novel, and find some one to approve of it. +But there are too many respectable barbarians among our American +conservatives who write just what they wrote twenty years ago, and +like just what they liked twenty years ago, because that is their +nature. In 1600 they would have done the same for 1579. Without +question men were regretting in 1600 the genius of the youthful +Shakespeare of the '80's, later quenched by commercialism (see the +appeals to the pit and the topical references in "Hamlet"); and +good conservatives were certainly regretting the sad course of the +drama which, torn from the scholars and flung to the mob, had +become mad clowning. What we need in the Tory line is not such +ice-bound derelicts but men who are passionate about the past +because they find their inspiration there, men and women who +belabor the present not for its existence, but because it might +have been better if it had been wiser. + +They must, in short, be Greeks, not barbarians. It is the reverse +of barbarous to defend the old, but the man who can see no need, +no good, no hope in change is a barbarian. He flinches from the +truth physical and the truth spiritual that life is motion. I +particularly refer to the literary person who sneers at novels +because they are not epics, and condemns new poems or plays unread +if they deal with a phase of human evolution that does not please +him. I mean the critic who drags his victim back to Aristotle or +Matthew Arnold and slays him on a text whose application Aristotle +or Arnold would have been the first to deny. I mean the teacher +who by ironic thrust and visible contempt destroys the faith of +youth in the literary present without imparting more than a pallid +interest in the past. I mean the essayist who in 1911 described +Masefield as an unsound and dangerous radical in verse, and in +1921 accepts him as the standard "modern" poet by whom his +degenerate successors are to be measured. + +All this is barbarism because it is ignorance or denial of the +laws of growth. It belongs anthropologically with totemism, +sacerdotalism, neo-ritualism, and every other remnant of the +terrible shackles of use and wont which chained early man to his +past. It is Egyptian. Its high priests are sometimes learned but +their minds are frozen. Beware of them. + +In England, so far as I am able to judge, this variety of +barbarism shows itself usually in a rather snobbish intolerance of +anything not good form in literature. The universities still +protect it, but its home is in London, among the professional +middle class. + +In America its symptom is well-disguised fear. Some of us are +afraid of our literary future just as many of us are afraid of +democracy. Poetry and criticism (we feel) which used to be written +by classicists and gentlemen are now in the hands of the corn-fed +multitude, educated God knows how or where. Fiction, once a +profession, has become a trade, and so has the drama. The line +between journalism and literature is lost. Grub Street has become +an emporium. Any one, anything can get into a story or a +sonnet.... + +The Greek of to-day (as we venture to define him) views all this +with some regret, and more concern. He sees that fine traditions +are withering, that fine things are being marred by ignorant +handling. He fears debasement, he hates vulgarity, and his realist +soul admits the high probability of both in a society whose +standards are broader than they are high. But he also sees new +energies let loose and new resources discovered; he recognizes new +forms of expression, uncouth or colloquial perhaps, but capable of +vitality and truth, and not without beauty. He bends his mind +toward them, knowing that if he ignores them their authors will +ignore him and his kind. + +The Egyptian is afraid. He pulls his mantle closer about him and +walks by on the other side. + +Here again is work for the liberal mind. If it is really liberal-- +which means that training and disposition have made it free to +move through both the past and the present--it can cope with this +Egyptian barbarism; for liberal-minded lovers of literature, by +performing a very simple operation in psychoanalysis, can +understand how love for the good old times may cause fear lest we +lose their fruits, and how fear blinds the critic's eye, makes his +tongue harsh, and his judgment rigid as death. + +Liberalism in politics is sulking just now, like Achilles in his +tent, its aid having been invited too early, or too late. But the +liberal spirit can never rest, and we solicit its help in +literature. I have mentioned the Gauls and the Egyptians as the +enemies within the camp of the intellectual, but beyond them lie +the uncounted numbers of the outer barbarians, the mass of the +unillumined, to whom neither tradition nor revolt, nor anything +which moves and has its being in the intellect has any +significance. Here is the common enemy of all, who can be +conquered only by converting him. When the Gaul and the Egyptian +are liberalized, the real job begins. + +"If we compose well here, to Parthia." + + + + +IV + +THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS + +A PROSPECTUS FOR CRITICISM + + +Criticism, in one respect, is like science: there is pure science, +so-called, and applied science; there is pure criticism and +applied criticism, which latter is reviewing. In applied science, +principles established elsewhere are put to work; in reviewing, +critical principles are, or should be, put to work in the analysis +of books, but the books, if they are really important, often make +it necessary to erect new critical principles. In fact, it is +impossible to set a line where criticism ceases and reviewing +begins. Good criticism is generally applicable to all literature; +good reviewing is good criticism applied to a new book. I see no +other valid distinction. + +Reviewing in America has had a career by no means glorious. In the +early nineteenth century, at the time of our first considerable +productivity in literature, it was sporadic. The great guns-- +Lowell, Emerson--fired critical broadsides into the past; only +occasionally (as in "A Fable for Critics") were they drawn into +discussions of their contemporaries, and then, as in the Emerson- +Whitman affair, they sometimes regretted it. Reviewing was carried +on in small type, in the backs of certain magazines. Most of it +was verbose and much of it was worthless as criticism. The belated +recognition of the critical genius of Poe was due to the company +he kept. He was a sadly erratic reviewer, as often wrong, I +suppose, as right, but the most durable literary criticism of the +age came from his pen, and is to be found in a review, a review of +Hawthorne's short stories. + +After the Civil War the situation did not immediately improve. We +had perhaps better reviewing, certainly much better mediums of +criticism, such, for example, as _The Nation_, and, later, _The +Critic_, but not more really excellent criticism. The magazines and +newspapers improved, the weekly, as a medium of reviewing, established +itself, though it functioned imperfectly; the individuals of force and +insight who broke through current comment into criticism were more +plentiful, but not more eminent. + +The new era in reviewing, our era, began with two phenomena, of +which the first had obscure beginnings and the second can be +exactly dated. + +The first was modern journalism. Just when journalism became +personal, racy, and inclusive of all the interests of modern life, +I cannot say. Kipling exhibits its early effects upon literature, +but Kipling was an effect, not a cause. No matter when it began, +we have seen, in the decade or two behind us, reviewing made +journalistic, an item of news, but still more a means of +entertainment. + +The journalistic reviewer, who is still the commonest variety, had +one great merit. He was usually interesting. Naturally so, since +he wrote not to criticize the book that had been given him, but to +interest his readers. Yet by the very nature of the case he +labored under a disadvantage which forever barred him from calling +himself critic as well as reviewer. He was a specialist in +reporting, in making a story from the most unpromising material, +and also in the use of his mother tongue, but a specialist, +usually, in no other field whatsoever. Fiction, poetry, biography, +science, history, politics, theology--whatever came to his mill +was grist for the paper, and the less he knew of the subject and +the less he had read and thought, the more emphatic were his +opinions. + +The club and saber work of Pope's day and Christopher North's has +gone--advertising has made it an expensive luxury, and here at +least commercialism has been of service to literature. It was +wholesale and emphatic praise that became a trademark of +journalistic reviewing. First novels, or obscure novels, were +sometimes handled roughly by a reviewer whose duty was to prepare +a smart piece of copy. But when books by the well known came to +his desk it was safer to praise than to damn, because in damning +one had to give reasons, whereas indiscriminate praise needed +neither knowledge nor excuse. Furthermore, since the chief object +was to have one's review read, excessive praise had every +advantage over measured approval. Who would hesitate between two +articles, one headed "The Best Book of the Year," and the other, +"A New Novel Critically Considered"! + +Thus, journalism _per se_ has done little for the cause of +American reviewing, and directly or indirectly it has done much +harm, if only by encouraging publishers who found no competent +discussions of their wares to set up their own critics, who poured +out through the columns of an easy press commendations of the new +books which were often most intelligent, but never unbiased. + +The newspapers, however, have rendered one great service to +criticism. In spite of their attempts to make even the most +serious books newsy news, they, and they alone, have kept pace +with the growing swarm of published books. The literary +supplement, which proposed to review all books not strictly +technical or transient, was a newspaper creation. And the literary +supplement, which grew from the old book page, contained much +reviewing which was in no bad sense journalistic. Without it the +public would have had only the advertisements and the publishers' +announcements to classify, analyze, and in some measure describe +the regiment of books that marches in advance of our civilization. + +We were not to be dependent, however, upon the budding supplements +and the clever, ignorant reviewing, which, in spite of notable +exceptions, characterized the newspaper view of books. The +technical critic of technical books had long been practising, and +his ability increased with the advance in scholarship that marked +the end of the nineteenth century. The problem was how to make him +write for the general intelligent reader. For years the old _Nation_, +under the editorship of Garrison and of Godkin, carried on this +struggle almost single-handed. For a generation it was the only +American source from which an author might expect a competent review +of a serious, non-technical book. But the weight of the endeavor was +too much for it. Fiction it largely evaded, as the London _Times +Literary Supplement_ does to-day. And with all the serious books in +English awaiting attention in a few pages of a single weekly, it is no +wonder that the shelves of its editorial office held one of the best +modern libraries in New York! Or that Christmas, 1887, was the time +chosen to review a gift edition of 1886! The old _Dial_ had a like +struggle, and a resembling difficulty. + +It was in 1914 that _The New Republic_ applied a new solution to the +problem, and from its pages and from the other "intellectual weeklies" +which have joined it, has come not merely some of the best reviewing +that we have had, but also a distinct lift upwards in the standard of +our discussion of contemporary books of general interest. After 1914 +one could expect to find American reviews of certain kinds of books +which were as excellent as any criticisms from England or from France. + +But the solution applied was of such a character as to limit +definitely its application. _The New Republic_, the present _Nation_, +_The Freeman_, _The Weekly Review_, and, in a little different sense, +_The Dial_, were founded by groups held together, with the exception +of _The Dial_ coterie, not by any common attitude towards literature, +or by any specific interest in literature itself, but rather by a +common social philosophy. These journals, again with the one +exception, were devoted primarily to the application of their +respective social philosophies. Even when in reviews or articles there +was no direct social application, there was a clear irradiation from +within. When _The New Republic_ is humorous, it is a social-liberal +humor. When _The Freeman_ is ironic there is usually an indirect +reference to the Single Tax. And _The Dial_ will be modern or perish. + +As a result of all this the space given to books at large in the +social-political journals was small. And in that space one could +prophesy with some exactness the reviewing to be expected. Books +of social philosophy, novels with a thesis, poetry of radical +emotion, documented history, and the criticism of politics or +economic theory have had such expert reviewing as America has +never before provided in such quantity. But there was a certain +monotony in the conclusions reached. "Advanced" books had +"advanced" reviewers who approved of the author's ideas even if +they did not like his book. Conservative books were sure to be +attacked in one paragraph even if they were praised in another. +What was much more deplorable, good, old-fashioned books, that +were neither conservative nor radical, but just human, had an +excellent chance of interesting no one of these philosophical +editors and so of never being reviewed at all. Irving, Cooper of +the Leatherstocking Series, possibly Hawthorne, and quite +certainly the author of "Huckleberry Finn" would have turned over +pages for many a day without seeing their names at all. + +Thus the intellectual weekly gave us an upstanding, competentcriticism +of books with ideas in them--when the ideas seemed +important to the editors; a useful service, but not a +comprehensive one; the criticism of a trend rather than a +literature; of the products of a social group rather than the +outspeaking of a nation. Something more was needed. + +Something more was needed; and specifically literary mediums that +should be catholic in criticism, comprehensive in scope, sound, +stimulating, and accurate. + +To be catholic in criticism does not mean to be weak and +opinionless. A determination to discuss literature honestly and +with insight, letting conclusions be what they must, may be +regarded as a sufficient editorial stock in trade. It is +fundamental, but it is not sufficient. Just as there is +personality behind every government, so there should be a definite +set of personal convictions behind literary criticism, which is +not a science, though science may aid it. Sterilized, dehumanized +criticism is almost a contradiction in terms, except in those rare +cases where the weighing of evidential facts is all that is +required. But these cases are most rare. Even a study of the text +of Beowulf, or a history of Norman law, will be influenced by the +personal emotions of the investigator, and must be so criticized. +Men choose their philosophy according to their temperament; so do +writers write; and so must critics criticize. Which is by no means +to say that criticism is merely an affair of temperament, but +rather to assert that temperament must not be left out of account +in conducting or interpreting criticism. + +Ideally, then, the editors of a catholic review should have +definite convictions, if flexible minds, established principles, +if a wide latitude of application. But although a review may thus +be made catholic, it cannot thus attain comprehensiveness. There +are too many books; too many branches upon the luxuriant tree of +modern knowledge. No editorial group, no editorial staff, can +survey the field competently unless they strictly delimit it +by selection, and that means not to be comprehensive. Yet if the +experts are to be called in, the good critics, the good scholars, +the good scientists, until every book is reviewed by the writer +best qualified to review it, then we must hope to attain truth by +averages as the scientists do, rather than by dogmatic edict. For +if it is difficult to guarantee in a few that sympathy with all +earnest books which does not preclude rigid honesty in the +application of firmly held principles, it is more difficult with +the many. And if it is hard to exclude bias, inaccuracy, over- +statement, and inadequacy from the work even of a small and chosen +group, it is still harder to be certain of complete competence if +the net is thrown more widely. + +In fact, there is no absolute insurance against bad criticism +except the intelligence of the reader. He must discount where +discount is necessary, he must weigh the authority of the +reviewer, he must listen to the critic as the protestant to his +minister, willing to be instructed, but aware of the fallibility +of man. + +Hence, a journal of comprehensive criticism must first select its +reviewers with the greatest care and then print vouchers for their +opinions, which will be the names of the reviewers. Hence it must +open its columns to rebuttals or qualifications, so that the +reader may form his own conclusions as to the validity of the +criticism, and, after he has read the book, judge its critics. + +All this is a world away from the anonymous, dogmatic reviewing of +a century ago, But who shall say that in this respect our practice +is retrograde? + +It is a great and sprawling country, this America, with all manner +of men of all manners in it, and the days of patent medicines have +passed, when one bottle was supposed to contain a universal cure. +But in this matter of reading, which must be the chief concern of +those who support a critical journal, there is one disease common +to most of us that can be diagnosed with certainty, and one sure, +though slow-working, remedy, that can be applied. We are +uncritical readers. We like too readily, which is an amiable +fault; we dislike too readily, which is a misfortune. We accept +the cheap when we might have the costly book. We dislike the new, +the true, the accurate, and the beautiful, because we will not +seek, or cannot grasp, them. We are afflicted with that complex of +democracy--a distrust of the best. Nine out of ten magazines, nine +out of ten libraries, nine out of ten intelligent American minds +prove this accusation. + +And the cure is more civilization, more intellectuality, a finer +and stronger emotion? One might as well say that the cure for +being sick is to get well! This, indeed, is the cure; but the +remedy is a vigorous criticism. Call in the experts, let them name +themselves and their qualifications like ancient champions, and +then proceed to lay about with a will. Sometimes the maiden +literature, queen of the tournament, will be slain instead of the +Knight of Error, and often the spectators will be scratched by the +whir of a sword. Nevertheless, the fight is in the open, we know +the adversaries, and the final judgment, whether to salute a +victor or condemn an impostor, is ours. + +Thus, figuratively, one might describe the proper function in +criticism of a liberal journal of catholic criticism to-day. One +thing I have omitted, that its duty is not limited to criticism, +for if it is to be comprehensive, it must present also vast +quantities of accurate and indispensable facts, the news of +literature. And one prerequisite I have felt it unnecessary to +dwell upon. Unless its intent is honest, and its editors +independent of influence from any self-interested source, the +literary tournament of criticism becomes either a parade of the +virtues with banners for the favorites, or a melee where rivals +seek revenge. Venal criticism is the drug and dishonest criticism +the poison of literature. + + + + +THE RACE OF REVIEWERS + + +As a reviewer of books, my experience has been lengthy rather than +considerable. It is, indeed, precisely twenty-two years since I +wrote my first review, which ended, naturally, with the words "a +good book to read of a winter evening before a roaring fire." I +remember them because the publishers, who are lovers of +platitudes, quoted them, to my deep gratification, and perhaps +because I had seen them before. Since then I have reviewed at +least twice as many books as there are years in this record--about +as many, I suppose, as a book-page war-horse in racing trim could +do in a month, or a week. My credentials are not impressive in +this category, but perhaps they will suffice. + +As an author, my claim to enter upon this self-contained symposium +which I am about to present is somewhat stronger. Authors, of +course, read all the reviews of their books, even that common +American variety which runs like the telegraphic alphabet: quote-- +summarize--quote--quote--summarize--quote, and so on up to five +dollars' worth, space rates. I have read all the reviews of my +books except those which clipping bureaus seeking a subscription +or kind friends wishing to chastise vicariously have neglected to +send me. As an author I can speak with mingled feelings, but +widely, of reviews. + +Editorially my experience has been equally poignant. For ten years +I have read reviews, revised and unrevised, in proof and out of +it. I have cut reviews that needed cutting and meekly endured the +curses of the reviewer. I have printed conscientiously reviews +that had better been left unwritten, and held my head bloody but +unbowed up to the buffets of the infuriated authors. As an editor +I may say that I am at home, though not always happy, with +reviewing and reviewers. + +And now, when in one of those rare moments of meditation which +even New York permits I ask myself why does every man or woman +with the least stir of literature in them wish to review books, my +trinitarian self--critic, author, editor--holds high debate. For a +long time I have desired to fight it out, and find, if it can be +found, the answer. + +As an author, I have a strong distaste for reviewing. In the +creative mood of composition, or in weary relaxation, reviewing +seems the most ungrateful of tasks. Nothing comes whole to a +reviewer. Half of every book must elude him, and the other half he +must compress into snappy phrases. I watch him working upon that +corpus, which so lately was a thing of life and movement--my book-- +and see that he cannot lift it; that he must have some hand-hold +to grip it by--my style or my supposed interest in the Socialist +Party, or the fact that I am a professor or a Roman Catholic. +Unless he can get some phrase that will explain the characters of +my women, the length of my sentences, and the moral I so carefully +hid in the last chapter, he is helpless. Sometimes I find him +running for a column without finding a gate to my mind, and then +giving it up in mid-paragraph. Sometimes he gets inside, but +dashes for the exit sign and is out before I know what he thinks. +Sometimes he finds an idea to his liking, wraps up in it, and goes +to sleep. + +I recognize his usefulness. I take his hard raps meekly and even +remember them when next I begin to write. I do not hate him much +when he tells the public not to read me. There is always the +chance that he is right for _his_ public; not, thank heavens, +for mine. I am furious only when it is clear that he has not read +me himself. But I cannot envy him. It is so much more agreeable to +make points than to find them. It is so much easier, if you have a +little talent, to build some kind of an engine that will run than +to explain what precise fault prevents it from being the best. +When I am writing a book I cannot understand the mania for +criticism that seems to infect the majority of the literary kind. + +As a reviewer I must again confess, although as an editor I may +bitterly regret the confession, that the passion for reviewing is +almost inexplicable. Reviewing has the primal curse of hard labor +upon it. You must do two kinds of work at once, and be adequately +rewarded for neither. First you must digest another man's +conception, assimilate his ideas, absorb his imagination. It is +like eating a cold dinner on a full stomach. And then when you +have eaten and digested, you must tell how you feel about it-- +briefly, cogently, and in words that cannot be misunderstood. +Furthermore, your feelings must be typical, must represent what a +thousand stomachs will feel, or should feel, or could feel if they +felt at all, or instead of being hailed as a critic you will be +accused of dyspepsia. + +The mere mental labor of picking up the contents of a book as you +proceed with your criticism, and tucking them in here and there +where they fit, is so great that, speaking as a reviewer, I should +give up reviewing if there were no more compelling reasons than +requests to write criticism. There are, there must be; and still +speaking as a reviewer I begin to glimpse one or two of them. +Revenge is not one. Critics have written for revenge, quoting +gleefully, "O that mine enemy would write a book!" Pope is our +classic example. But publishers have made that form of literary +vendetta unprofitable nowadays, and I am glad they have done so. +Much wit, but little criticism, has been inspired by +revenge. Furthermore, I notice in my own case, and my editorial self +confirms the belief, that the reviewer craves books to extol, not +books to condemn. He is happiest when his author is sympathetic to +his own temperament. Antipathetic books must be forced upon him. + +Which leads me to the further conclusion that the prime motive for +reviewing is the creative instinct. We all of us have it, all of +the literary folk who make up a most surprising proportion of +every community in the United States. It works on us constantly. +Sometimes it comes to a head and then we do a story or a poem, an +essay or a book; but in the meantime it is constantly alive down +below, drawn toward every sympathetic manifestation without, +craving self-expression and, in default of that, expression by +others. If a book is in us we write; if it is not, we seize upon +another man's child, adopt it as ours, talk of it, learn to +understand it, let it go reluctantly with our blessing, and depart +vicariously satisfied. That is the hope, the ever-renewed hope, +with which the besotted reviewer takes up reviewing. + +The creative instinct indeed is sexed, like the human that +possesses it. It seeks a mystical union with the imaginings of +others. The poet, the novelist, the essayist, seek the mind of the +reader; the critic seeks the mind of the writer. That we get so +much bad reviewing is due to incompatibility of temperament or +gross discrepancy in the mating intellects. Yet reviewers (and +authors), like lovers, hope ever for the perfect match. + +I know one critic who tore his review in pieces because it +revealed the charlatanism of his beloved author. I know an author +who burnt his manuscript because his friend and critic had +misunderstood him. I see a thousand reviews (and have written +several of them) where book and reviewer muddle along together +like the partners of everyday marriages. But next time, one always +hopes, it will be different. + +As an editor, I confess that I view all this effusion with some +distrust. One plain fact stands high and dry above the discussion: +books are being published daily, and some one must tell the busy +and none too discriminating public what they are worth--not to +mention the librarians who are so engaged in making out triple +cards and bibliographies and fitting titles to vague recollections +that they have no time left to read. Furthermore, if reviewing is +a chore at worst, and at best a desire to gratify a craving for +the unappeasable, editing reviews is still more chorelike, and +seeking the unobtainable--a good review for every good book--is +quite as soul-exhausting as the creative instinct. + +And, again as an editor, the perfect marriage of well attuned +minds is well enough as an ideal, but as a practicable achievement +I find myself more often drawn toward what I should call the +liaison function of a reviewer. The desire to be useful (since we +have excluded the desire to make money as a major motive) is, I +believe, an impulse which very often moves the reviewer. The +instinct to teach, to reform, to explain, to improve lies close to +the heart of nine out of ten of us. It is commoner than the +creative instinct. When it combines with it, one gets a potential +reviewer. + +The reviewer as a liaison officer is a homelier description than +soul affinity or intellectual mate, but it is quite as honorable. +Books (to the editor) represent, each one of them, so much +experience, so much thought, so much imagination differently +compounded in a story, poem, tractate on science, history, or +play. Each is a man's most luminous self in words, ready for +others. Who wants it? Who can make use of it? Who will be dulled +by it? Who exalted? It is the reviewer's task to say. He grasps +the book, estimates it, calculates its audience. Then he makes the +liaison. He explains, he interprets, and in so doing necessarily +criticizes, abstracts, appreciates. The service is inestimable, +when properly rendered. It is essential for that growing +literature of knowledge which science and the work of specialists +in all fields have given us. Few readers can face alone and +unaided a shelf of books on radio-activity, evolution, psychology, +or sociology with any hope of selecting without guidance the best, +or with any assurance that they dare reject as worthless what they +do not understand. The house of the interpreter has become the +literary journal, and its usefulness will increase. + +A liaison of a different kind is quite as needful in works of +sheer imagination. Here the content is human, the subject the +heart, or life as one sees it. But reading, like writing, is a +fine art that few master. Only the most sensitive, whose minds are +as quick as their emotions are responsive, can go to the heart of +a poem or a story. They need an interpreter, a tactful +interpreter, who will give them the key and let them find their +own chamber. Or who will wave them away from the door, or advise a +brief sojourn. To an editor such an interpreter is an ideal +reviewer. He will desire to be useful, and passionately attempt +it. He will feel his responsibility first to art and next to the +public, and then to his author, and last (as an editor I whisper +it) to the publisher. Reviewers forget the author and the public. +Their mandate comes from art (whose representative in the flesh +is, or should be, the editor). But their highest service is to +make a liaison between the reader and his book. + +And the conclusion of this debate is, I think, a simple one. +Reviewing is a major sport, fascinating precisely because of +its difficulty, compelling precisely because it appeals to strong +instincts. For most of us it satisfies that desire to work for +some end which we ourselves approve, regardless of costs. The +editor, sardonically aware of a world that refuses to pay much for +what men do to please themselves or to reform others, sees here +his salvation, and is thankful. + + + + +THE SINS OF REVIEWING + + +I have known thousands of reviewers and liked most of them, except +when they sneered at my friends or at me. Their profession, in +which I have taken a humble share, has always seemed to me a +useful, and sometimes a noble one; and their contribution to the +civilizing of reading man, much greater than the credit they are +given for it. We divide them invidiously into hack reviewers and +critics, forgetting that a hack is just a reviewer overworked, and +a critic a reviewer with leisure to perform real criticism. A good +hack is more useful than a poor critic, and both belong to the same +profession as surely as William Shakespeare and the author of +a Broadway "show." + +The trouble is that the business of reviewing has not been +sufficiently recognized as a profession. Trades gain in power and +recognition in proportion as their members sink individuality in +the mass and form a union which stands as one man against the +world. Professions are different. They rise by decentralization, +and by specializing within the group. They gain distinction not +only by the achievements of their individual members but by a +curious splitting into subtypes of the species. Law and medicine +are admirable examples. Every time they develop a new kind of +specialist they gain in prestige and emolument. + +A reviewer, however (unless he publishes a collected edition and +becomes a critic), has so far remained in the eyes of the public +just a reviewer. In fiction we have been told (by the reviewers) +of romancers and realists, sociologists and ethicists, naturalists +and symbolists, objectivists and psychologists. Are there no +adjectives, no brevet titles of literary distinction for the men +and women who have made it possible to talk intelligently about +modern fiction without reading it? + +My experience with reviewers has led me to classify them by +temperament rather than by the theories they possess; and this is +not so unscientific as it sounds, for theories usually spring from +temperaments. No man whose eliminatory processes function +perfectly is ever a pessimist, except under the compulsion of hard +facts. No sluggish liver ever believes that joy of living is the +prime quality to be sought in literary art. And by the same +eternal principle, moody temperaments embrace one theory of +criticism; cold, logical minds another. I identify my classes of +reviewers by their habits, not their dogmas. + +But in order to clear the ground let me make first a larger +distinction, into mythical reviewers, bad but useful reviewers, +bad and not useful reviewers, and good reviewers. Like the +nineteenth century preacher I will dispose of the false, dwell +upon the wicked, and end (briefly) with that heaven of literary +criticism where all the authors are happy and all the reviewers +excellent. + +The reviewer I know best never, I profoundly believe, has existed, +and I fear never will exist. He is the familiar figure of English +novels--moderately young, a bachelor, with a just insufficient +income in stocks. Oxford or Cambridge is his background, and his +future is the death of a rich aunt or a handsome marriage. In the +meantime, there is always a pile of books waiting in his chambers +to be reviewed at "a guinea a page," when he has leisure, which is +apparently only once or twice a week. The urban pastoral thus +presented is one which Americans may well be envious of--_otium +cum dignitate_. But I have never encountered this reviewer in +London. I fear he exists only for the novelists, who created him +in order to have a literary person with enough time on his hands +to pursue the adventures required by the plot. Yet in so far as he +is intended as a portrait of a critic, he stands as an ideal of +the leisured view of books. There has been no leisured view of +books in America since Thoreau, or Washington Irving. Even Poe was +feverish. Our books are read on the subway, or after the theater, +and so I fear it is in London--in London as it is. + +Coldly, palpably real is the next critic of my acquaintance, the +academic reviewer. He does not write for the newspapers, for he +despises them, and they are rather scornful of his style, which is +usually lumbering, and his idea that 1921 is the proper time in +which to review the books of 1920. But you will find him in the +weeklies, and rampant in the technical journals. + +The academic reviewer is besotted by facts, or their absence. The +most precious part of the review to him is the last paragraph in +which he points out misspellings, bad punctuation, and +inaccuracies generally. Like a hound dog in a corn field, he never +sees his books as a whole, but snouts and burrows along the trail +he is following. If he knows the psychology of primitive man, +primitive psychology he will find and criticize, even in a book on +the making of gardens. If his specialty is French drama, French +drama he will find, even in a footnote, and root it out and nuzzle +it. I remember when a famous scholar devoted the whole of his +review of a two volume _magnum opus_ upon a great historical +period, to the criticism of the text of a Latin hymn cited in a +footnote! The academic reviewer (by which I do _not_ mean the +university reviewer, since many such are not academic in the bad +sense which I am giving to the word) demands an index. His reviews +usually end with, "There is no index," or, "There is an excellent +index." The reason is plain. The index is his sole guide to +reviewing. If he finds his pet topics there he can hunt them down +remorselessly. But if there is no index, he is cast adrift +helpless, knowing neither where to begin nor where to end his +review. I call him a bad reviewer, but useful, because, though +incapable of estimating philosophies or creations of the +imagination, he is our best guarantee that writers' facts are +facts. + +My acquaintance with the next bad, but occasionally useful, +reviewer is less extensive, but, by the circumstances of the case, +more intimate. I shall call him the ego-frisky reviewer. The term +(which I am quite aware is a barbarous compound) I am led to +invent in order to describe the phenomenon of a critic whose ego +frisks merrily over the corpus of his book. He is not so modern a +product as he himself believes. The vituperative critics of the +Quarterlies and, earlier still, of Grub Street, used their +enemies' books as a means of indulging their needs for self- +expression. But it was wrath, jealousy, vindictiveness, or +political enmity which they discharged while seated on the body of +the foe; whereas the ego-friskish critic has no such bile in him. + +He is in fact a product of the new advertising psychology, which +says, "Be human" (by which is meant "be personal") "first of all." +He regards his book (I know this, because he has often told me so) +as a text merely, for a discourse which must entertain the reader. +And his idea of entertainment is to write about himself, his +tastes, his moods, his reactions. Either he praises the book for +what it does to his ego, or damns it for what it did to his ego. +You will never catch him between these extremes, for moderation is +not his vice. + +The ego-frisky reviewer is not what the biologist would call a +pure form. He (or she) is usually a yellow journalist, adopting +criticism as a kind of protective coloration. The highly personal +critic, adventuring, or even frolicking among masterpieces, and +recording his experiences, is the true type, and it is he that the +ego-friskish imitate. Such a critic in the jovial person of Mr. +Chesterton, or Professor Phelps, or Heywood Broun, contributes +much to the vividness of our sense for books. But their imitators, +although they sometimes enliven, more often devastate reviewing. + +Alas, I am best acquainted among them all with the dull reviewer, +who is neither good nor useful. The excellent books he has +poisoned as though by opiates! The dull books he has made duller! +No one has cause to love him unless it be the authors of weak +books, who thank their dull critics for exposing them in reviews +so tedious that no one discovers what the criticism is about. + +The dull reviewer has two varieties: the stupid and the merely +dull. It is the stupid reviewer who exasperates beyond patience +the lover of good books. He is the man who gets a book wrong from +the start, and then plods on after his own conception, which has +no reference whatsoever to the author's. He is the man who takes +irony seriously, misses the symbolism when there is any, and +invariably guesses wrong as to the sources of the characters and +the plot. + +There are not many really stupid reviewers, for the most indolent +editor cleans house occasionally, and the stupid are the first to +go out the back door. But merely dull reviewers are as plentiful +as fountain pens. The dull reviewer, like Chaucer's drunken man, +knows where he wants to go but doesn't know how to get there. He +(or she) has three favorite paths that lead nowhere, all equally +devious. + +The first is by interminable narrative. "When Hilda was blown into +the arms of Harold Garth at the windy corner of the Woolworth +building, neither guessed at what was to follow. Beginning with +this amusing situation, the author of 'The Yellow Moon' develops a +very interesting plot. Garth was the nephew of Miles Harrison, +Mayor of New York. After graduating from Williams, etc., etc., +etc." This is what he calls summarizing the plot. + +Unfortunately, the art of summary is seldom mastered, and a bad +summary is the dullest thing in the world. Yet even a bad summary +of a novel or a book of essays is hard to do; so that when the +dull reviewer has finished, his sweaty brow and numbed fingers +persuade him that he has written a review. There is time for just +a word of quasi-criticism: "This book would have been better if it +had been shorter, and the plot is not always logical. +Nevertheless, 'The Yellow Moon' holds interest throughout." And +then, finis. This is botchery and sometimes butchery, not +reviewing. + +The dullest reviewers I have known, however, have been the long- +winded ones. A book is talk about life, and therefore talk about a +book is one remove more from the reality of experience. Talk about +talk must be good talk, and it must be sparing of words. A concise +style is nearly always an interesting style: even though it repel +by crudity it will never be dull. But conciseness is not the +quality I most often detect in reviewing. It is luxurious to be +concise when one is writing at space rates; and it is always harder +to say a thing briefly than at length, just as it is easier +for a woman to hit a nail at the third stroke than at the first. + +I once proposed a competition in a college class in English +composition. Each student was to clip a column newspaper article +of comment (not facts) and condense it to the limit of safety. +Then editorials gave up their gaseous matter in clouds, chatty +news stories boiled away to paragraphs, and articles shrank up to +their headlines. + +But the reviews suffered most. One, I remember, came down to "It +is a bad book," or to express it algebraically, it is a bad book. +Another disappeared entirely. On strict analysis it was discovered +that the reviewer had said nothing not canceled out by something +else. But most remained as a weak liquor of comment upon which +floated a hard cake of undigested narrative. One student found a +bit of closely reasoned criticism that argued from definite +evidences to a concrete conclusion. It was irreducible; but this +was a unique experience. + +The long-winded are the dullest of dull reviewers, but the most +pernicious are the wielders of cliches and platitudes. Is there +somewhere a reviewer's manual, like the manual of correct social +phrases which some one has recently published? I would believe it +from the evidence of a hundred reviews in which the same phrases, +differently arranged, are applied to fifty different books. I +would believe it, except for the known capacity of man to borrow +most of his thoughts and all of his phrases from his neighbor. I +know too well that writers may operate like the Federal Reserve +banks, except that in literature there is no limit to inflation. A +thousand thousand may use "a novel of daring adventure," "a poem +full of grace and beauty," or "shows the reaction of a thoughtful +mind to the facts of the universe," without exhausting the supply. +It is like the manufacture of paper money, and the effect on +credit is precisely the same. + +So much for the various types of reviewers who, however +interesting they may be critically, cannot be called good. The +good reviewers, let an uncharitable world say what it will, are, +thank heaven! more numerous. Their divisions, temperamental and +intellectual, present a curious picture of the difficulties and +the rewards of this profession. Yet I cannot enter upon them here, +and for good reasons. + +The good reviewer is like the good teacher and the good preacher. +He is not rare, but he is precious. He has qualities that almost +escape analysis and therefore deserve more than a complimentary +discussion. He must hold his book like a crystal ball in which he +sees not only its proper essence in perfect clarity, but also his +own mind mirrored. He must--... In other words, the good reviewer +deserves an essay of his own. He is a genius in a minor art, which +sometimes becomes major; a craftsman whose skill is often +exceptional. I will not put him in the same apartment with +reviewers who are arid, egoistic, or dull. + + + + +MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE" + + +America is the land of cherished illusions. Americans prefer to +believe that they are innocent, innocent of immorality after +marriage, innocent of dishonesty in business, innocent of +incompatibility between husbands and wives. Americans do not +like to admit the existence (in the family) of passion, of +unscrupulousness, of temperament. They have made a code for what +is to be done, and what is not to be done, and whatever differs is +un-American. If their right hands offend them they cut them off +rather than admit possession. They believed in international +morality when none existed, and when they were made to face the +disagreeable fact of war, cast off the nations of the earth, and +continued to believe in national morality. + +In America prostitution is tolerated in practice, but forbidden in +print. All homes are happy unless there is proof to the contrary, +and then they are un-American. In its wilful idealism America is +determined that at all costs we shall appear to be innocent. And a +novel which should begin with the leaders in social conformity, +who keep hard and clean the code, and should sweep through the +great middle classes that may escape its rigors themselves, but +exact them of others, might present the pageant, the social +history, the epic of America. + +Of course, Mrs. Wharton's novel does nothing of the sort. This is +how Tolstoy, or H. G. Wells, or Ernest Poole would have written +"The Age of Innocence." They would have been grandiose, epical; +their stories would have been histories of culture. It would have +been as easy to have called their books broad as it is to call +Mrs. Wharton's fine novel narrow. Tendencies, philosophies, +irrepressible outbursts would have served as their protagonists, +where hers are dwellers in Fifth Avenue or Waverly Place--a +cosmopolitan astray, a dowager, a clubman yearning for +intellectual sympathy. + +And yet in the long run it comes to much the same thing. The epic +novelists prefer the panorama: she the drawing-room canvas. They +deduce from vast philosophies and depict society. She gives us the +Mingotts, the Mansons, the Van der Luydens--society, in its little +brownstone New York of the '70's--and lets us formulate +inductively the code of America. A little canvas is enough for a +great picture if the painting is good. + +Indeed, the only objection I have ever heard urged against Mrs. +Wharton's fine art of narrative is that it is narrow--an art of +dress suit and sophistication. And this book is the answer. For, +of course, her art is narrow--like Jane Austen's, like Sheridan's, +like Pope's, like Maupassant's, like that of all writers who +prefer to study human nature in its most articulate instead of its +broadest manifestations. It is narrow because it is focussed, but +this does not mean that it is small. Although the story of "The +Age of Innocence" might have been set in a far broader background, +it is the circumstances of the New York society which Mrs. Wharton +knows so well that give it a piquancy, a reality that "epics" +lack. They are like the accidents of voice, eye, gesture which +determine individuality. Yet her subject is America. + +This treating of large themes by highly personal symbols makes +possible Mrs. Wharton's admirable perfection of technique. Hers is +the technique of sculpture rather than the technique of +architecture. It permits the fine play of a humor that has an eye +of irony in it, but is more human than irony. It makes possible an +approach to perfection. Behold Mrs. Manson Mingott, the +indomitable dowager, Catherine: + +The immense accretions of flesh which had descended on her in +middle life, like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed +her... into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon. +She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her +other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by +presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink +and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face +survived as if awaiting excavation.... Around and below, wave +after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious +armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the +surface of the billows. + +Her art is restrained, focussed upon those points where America, +in its normality and in its eccentricity, has become articulate. +Therefore it is sharp and convincing. + +Who is the central figure in this story where the leaven of +intellectual and emotional unrest works in a society that has +perfected its code and intends to live by it? Is it Newland +Archer, who bears the uncomfortable ferment within him? Is it his +wife, the lovely May, whose clear blue eyes will see only +innocence? Is it the Countess Olenska, the American who has seen +reality and suffered by it, and sacrifices her love for Newland in +order to preserve his innocence? No one of these is the center of +the story, but rather the idea of "the family," this American +"family," which is moral according to its lights, provincial, +narrow--but intensely determined that its world shall appear +upright, faithful, courageous, in despite of facts, and regardless +of how poor reality must be tortured until it conforms. And the +"family" as Mrs. Wharton describes it is just the bourgeois +Puritanism of nineteenth century America. + +Was May right when, with the might of innocence, she forced +Newland to give up life for mere living? Was the Countess right +when, in spite of her love for him, she aided and abetted her, +making him live up to the self-restraint that belonged to his +code? The story does not answer, being concerned with the +qualities of the "family," not with didacticism. + +It says that the insistent innocence of America had its rewards as +well as its penalties. It says, in so far as it states any +conclusion definitely, that a new and less trammeled generation +must answer whether it was the discipline of its parents that +saved the American family from anarchy, or the suppressions of its +parents that made it rebellious. And the answer is not yet. + +"The Age of Innocence" is a fine novel, beautifully written, "big" +in the best sense, which has nothing to do with size, a credit to +American literature--for if its author is cosmopolitan, this +novel, as much as her earlier "Ethan Frome," is a fruit of our +soil. + +November 6, 1920. + + + + +MR. HERGESHEIMER'S "CYTHEREA" + + +Mrs. Wharton found the age of innocence in the 1870's; Mr. +Hergesheimer discovers an age of no innocence in the 1920's. In +"The Age of Innocence," the lovely May, a creature of society's +conventions, loses her husband and then regains the dulled +personality left from the fire of passion. In "Cytherea" the less +lovely, but equally moral Fanny loses her Lee because she cannot +satisfy his longings and nags when she fails. But she does not +regain him when his love chase is over, because he is burned out. +Athene and Aphrodite, the graces of the mind, the seductions of +the person of the Countess Olenska, together draw Newland Archer, +husband of May; but it is Aphrodite only, Cytherean Aphrodite, +who, being sex incarnate, is more than mere temptations of the +flesh, that wrecks Fanny's home. + +In the '70's the poor innocents of society believed their code of +honor impregnable against sex. They dressed against sex, talked +against sex, kept sex below the surface. The suppression froze +some of them into rigidity and stiffened all. But they had their +compensations. By sacrificing freedom for personal desire they +gained much security. Good husbands required more than a lure of +the body to take them off. And when they gave up a great romance +for respectability, like Newland Archer, at least they remained +gentlemen. There was a tragedy of thwarted development, of +martyred love, of waste; but at least self-respect, however +misguided, remained. + +Not so with this trivial, lawless country club set of the 1920's, +drunk part of the time and reckless all of it, codeless, dutiless, +restless. For the virtuous among them Aphrodite, a vulgar, +shameless Aphrodite, was a nightly menace; for the weak among them +(such as Peyton Morris), a passion to be resisted only by fear; +for the wayward, like Lee, she was the only illusion worth +pursuing. To resist for a woman was to become "blasted and twisted +out of her purpose," to be "steeped in vinegar or filled with +tallow"; to resist for a man was to lose the integrity of his +personality. There were no moral compensations, for there is no +morality but self-development, at least in Mr. Hergesheimer's town +of Eastlake. There is no god for a man in love but Cytherea. + +And this is one way of describing Mr. Hergesheimer's study of love +in idleness in the 1920's. Another way would be to call it an +essay upon insecurity, although the word essay is too dry to use +in a story which is fairly awash with alcohol. The war, the story +seems to say, sapped our security of property and comfort and +life. But insecurity is an insidious disease that spreads, like +bacteria, where strength is relaxed. It infects the lives of those +who have lost their certainties and become doubtful of their +wills. In this relaxed society of the 1920's, where nothing seemed +certain but the need of money and a drink, insecurity spread into +married life. Not even the well-mated were secure in the general +decline of use and wont. A home wrecked by vague desires running +wild--that is the theme of "Cytherea." + +Or take a third view of this provocative book. The triangle we +have had tiresomely with us, but it is woman's love that is, +perversely, always the hero. Hergesheimer studies the man, studies +him not as will, or energy, or desire a-struggle with duty or +morality, but merely as sex. Man's sex in love, man's sex +dominated by Cytherea, is his theme. This is new, at least in +fiction, for there man is often swept away, but seldom dominated +by sex. And indeed Hergesheimer has to find his man in the relaxed +society to which I have referred, a society wearied by unchartered +freedom, where business is profitable but trivial, where duty and +religion exist only as a convention, disregarded by the honest, +upheld by the hypocritical, a society where Cytherea marks and +grips her own. Even so, it is an achievement. + +Cytherea in the story is a doll with a glamorous countenance, +bought and cherished by Lee Randon as a symbol of what he did not +find in his married life, what no man finds and keeps, because it +is an illusion. Cytherea is Lee Randon's longing for emotional +satisfaction, a satisfaction that is not to be of the body merely. +And when he meets Savina Grove, a pathological case, whose violent +sex emotions have been inhibited to the bursting point, he thinks +(and fears) that he has found his heart's desire. In the old, old +stories their elopement would have been their grand, their tragic +romance. In this cruel novel it is tragic, for she dies of it; but +she is not Cytherea; she is earthly merely; it is felt that she is +better dead. + +It is a cruel story, cruel in its depiction of an almost worthless +society with just enough of the charm of the Restoration to save +it from beastliness; cruel in its unsparing analyses of man's sex +impulses (by all odds the most valuable part of the story); cruel +particularly because the ruined Lee Randon is a good fellow, +honester than most, kinder than he knows to individuals, although +certain that there is no principle but selfishness, and that it is +folly to limit desire for the sake of absolutes, like +righteousness, or generalities, like the human race. It is a cruel +study of women, for Fanny, the model of the domestic virtues, has +lost her innocent certainties of the triumph of the right and at +the first conflict with Cytherea becomes a common scold; cruel to +Savina Grove, who, in spite of her exquisiteness, is only a +psychoanalyst's problem; cruel to us all in exposing so ruthlessly +how distressing it is to live by stale morality, yet how +devastating to act with no guide but illusory desire. + +All this is not new in outline. One can find the essence of this +story in monkish manuals. There the menace of Cytherea was not +evaded. There the weaknesses of man's sex were categoried with +less psychology but more force. What is new in Hergesheimer's book +is merely the environment in which his characters so disastrously +move and an insight into the mechanism of their psychology which +earlier writers lacked. I have called it a story of the age of no +innocence, but that would be the author's term, not mine; for +indeed his characters seem to display as naive an innocence as +Mrs. Wharton's of the laws of blood and will, and they know far +less of practical morality. The "Age of Moral Innocence" I should +rechristen Hergesheimer's book. + +Critics will raise, and properly, a question as to the worth of +his materials. He is not studying a "ripe" society, as was Mrs. +Wharton, but the froth of the war, the spume of country clubs, the +trivialities of the strenuous but unproductive rich. This is a +just criticism as far as it goes, and it lessens the solidity, the +enduring interest, of his achievement. True, it was in such a +society that he could best pursue the wiles of Cytherea. He has a +right to pitch his laboratory where he pleases, and out of some +very sordid earth he has contrived some beauty. Nevertheless, you +cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, skilled though you +may be. + +I should be more inclined, however, in a comparison with Mrs. Wharton, +to criticize his lack of detachment. That able novelist, +who is bounded so exclusively in her little social world, +nevertheless stands apart from it and sees it whole. Mr. +Hergesheimer has his feet still deep in the soil. He is too much a +part of his country club life. He means, perhaps, to be ironical, +but in truth he is too sympathetic with the desires, emotional and +aesthetic, that he expresses to be ironical until the close. There +is a surprise, too sharp a surprise, at the end of his novel, when +one discovers that the moral is not "do and dare," but "all is +vanity." He is so much and so lusciously at home with cocktails, +legs, limousine parties, stair-sittings, intra-matrimonial +kissings (I mention the most frequent references) that one +distrusts the sudden sarcasm of his finale. It would have been +better almost if he had been a Count de Gramont throughout, for he +has a _flair_ for the surroundings of amorous adventure and +is seldom gross; better still to have seen, as Mrs. Wharton saw, +the picture in perspective from the first. His book will disgust +some and annoy others because its art is muddied by a lingering +naturalism and too highly colored by the predilections of the +artist. + +It is a skilful art, nevertheless, and "Cytherea" confirms a +judgment long held that Mr. Hergesheimer is one of the most +skilful craftsmen in English in our day. And this I say in spite +of his obvious failure to grasp inevitably the structure of the +English sentence. He is one of the most honest analysts of a +situation, also; one of the most fearless seekers of motives; one +of the ablest practisers of that transmutation of obscure emotion +into the visible detail of dress, habit, expression, which is the +real technique of the novelist. His fault is a defect in sympathy, +a lack of spiritual appreciation, if I may use and leave undefined +so old-fashioned a term. His virtue lies in the rich garment of +experience which careful observation and skilful writing enable +him to wrap about his imaginative conceptions. It is this which +makes his novels so readable for the discriminating at present, +and will make them useful historical records in the future. One +aspect of a troublesome period when the middle generation achieved +the irresponsibility without the earnestness of youth he has +caught in "Cytherea." It is unfortunate that it is a partial +portrait of important motives in people who themselves are of +little importance; and it is doubly unfortunate that he has been +too much a part of his muddy world to be as good an interpreter as +he is a witness of its life. + +January 21, 1922. + + + + +V + +PHILISTINES AND DILETTANTE + +POETRY FOR THE UNPOETICAL + + +I have looked through more essays upon poetry than I care to +remember without finding anywhere a discussion of poetry for the +unpoetical. A recent writer, it is true, has done much to show +that the general reader daily indulges in poetry of a kind without +knowing it. But the voluminous literature of poetics is well-nigh +all special. It is written for students of rhythm, for instinctive +lovers of poetry, for writers of verse, for critics. It does not +treat of the value of poetry for the average, the unpoetical man-- +it says little of his curious distaste for all that is not prose, +or of the share in all good poetry that belongs to him. + +By the average man, let me hasten to say, I mean in this instance +the average intelligent reader, who has passed through the usual +formal education in literature, who reads books as well as +newspapers and magazines, who, without calling himself a +litterateur, would be willing to assert that he was fairly well +read and reasonably fond of good reading. Your doctor, your +lawyer, the president of your bank, and any educated business man +who has not turned his brain into a machine, will fit my case. + +Among such excellent Americans, I find that there exists a double +standard as regards all literature, but especially poetry. Just as +the newspapers always write of clean politics with reverence-- +whatever may be the private opinions and practices of their +editorial writers--so intelligent, though unpoetic, readers are +accustomed to speak of poetry with very considerable respect. It +is not proper to say, "I hate poetry," even if one thinks it. To +admit ignorance of Tennyson or Milton or Shakespeare is bad form, +even if one skimmed through them in college and has never +disturbed the dust upon their covers since. I have heard a +whispered, sneering remark after dinner, "I don't believe he ever +_heard_ of Browning," by one who had penetrated about as far +into Browning's inner consciousness as a fly into the hickory-nut +it crawls over. I well remember seeing a lady of highly +respectable culture hold up her hands in horror before a college +graduate who did not know who Beowulf was. Neither did she, in any +true sense of knowing. But her code taught her that the "Beowulf," +like other "good poetry," should be upon one's list of +acquaintances. + +What these Americans really think is a very different matter. The +man in the trolley-car, the woman in the rocking-chair, the clerk, +the doctor, the manufacturer, most lawyers, and some ministers +would, if their hearts were opened, give simply a categorical +negative. They do not like poetry, or they think they do not like +it; in either case with the same result. The rhythm annoys them +(little wonder, since they usually read it as prose), the rhyme +seems needless, the inversions, the compressions perplex their +minds to no valuable end. Speaking honestly, they do not like +poetry. And if their reason is the old one, + + I do not like you, Dr. Fell; + The reason why I cannot tell, + +it is none the less effective. + +But the positive answers are no more reassuring. Here in America +especially, when we like poetry, we like it none too good. The +"old favorites" are almost all platitudinous in thought and +monotonous in rhythm. We prefer sentiment, and have a weakness for +slush. Pathos seems to us better than tragedy, anecdote than wit. +Longfellow was and is, except in metropolitan centres, our +favorite "classical" poet; the poetical corner and the daily poem +of the newspapers represent what most of us like when we do go in +for verse. The truth is that many of the intelligent in our +population skip poetry in their reading just because it _is_ +poetry. They read no poetry, or they read bad poetry occasionally, +or they read good poetry badly. + +This sorry state of affairs does not trouble the literary critic. +His usual comment is that either one loves poetry or one does not, +and that is all there is to be said about it. If the general +reader neglects poetry, why then he belongs to the Lost Tribes and +signifies nothing for Israel. + +I am sure that he is wrong. His assertion is based on the theory +that every man worthy of literary salvation must at all times love +and desire the best literature, which is poetry--and this is a +fallacy. It is as absurd as if he should ask most of us to dwell +in religious exaltation incessantly, or to live exclusively upon +mountain peaks, or to cultivate rapture during sixteen hours of +the twenty-four. The saints, the martyrs, the seers, the seekers, +and enthusiasts have profited nobly by such a regime, but not we +of common clay. To assume in advocating the reading of poetry that +one should substitute Pope for the daily paper, Francis Thompson +for the illustrated weekly, _The Ring and the Book_ for a +magazine, and read "The Golden Treasury" through instead of a +novel, needs only to be stated to be disproved. And yet this is +the implication of much literary criticism. + +But the sin of the general reader who refuses all poetry is much +more deadly, for it is due not to enthusiasm, but to ignorance. It +is true that the literary diet recommended by an aesthetic critic +would choke a healthy business man; but it is equally true that +for all men whose emotions are still alive within them, and whose +intelligence permits the reading of verse, poetry is quite as +valuable as fresh air and exercise. We do not need fresh air and +exercise constantly. We can get along very comfortably without +them. But if they are not essential commodities, they are +important ones, and so is poetry--a truth of which modern readers +seem to be as ignorant as was primitive man of fire until he +burned his hand in a blazing bush. + +I do not mean for an instant to propose that every one should read +poetry. The man whose imagination has never taken fire from +literature of any kind, whose brain is literal and dislikes any +embroidery upon the surface of plain fact, who is deaf to music, +unresponsive to ideas, and limited in his emotions--such a man in +my opinion is unfortunate, although he is often an excellent +citizen, lives happily, makes a good husband, and may save the +state. But he should not (no danger that he will) read poetry. And +for another class there is nothing in poetry. The emotionally +dying or dead; the men who have sunk themselves, their +personalities, their hopes, their happiness, in business or +scholarship or politics or sport--they, too, are often useful +citizens, and usually highly prosperous; but they would waste +their time upon literature of any variety, and especially upon +poetry. + +There are a dozen good arguments, however, to prove that the +reading of poetry is good for the right kind of general reader, +who is neither defective nor dead in his emotions; and this means, +after all, a very large percentage of all readers. If I had space +I should use them all, for I realize that the convention we have +adopted for poetry makes us skip, in our magazines, as naturally +from story to story over the verse between as from stone to stone +across the brook. However, I choose only two, which seem to me as +convincing for the unpoetical reader (the dead and defective +excepted) as the ethical grandeur of poetry, let us say, for the +moralist, its beauty for the aesthete, its packed knowledge for the +scholar. + +The first has often been urged before and far more often +overlooked. We everyday folk plod year after year through routine, +through fairly good or fairly bad, never quite realizing what we +are experiencing, never seeing life as a whole, or any part of it, +perhaps, in complete unity. Words, acts, sights, pass through our +experience hazily, suggesting meanings which we never fully grasp. +Grief and love, the most intense, perhaps, of sensations, we +seldom understand except by comparison with what has been said of +the grief and love of others. Happiness remains at best a diffused +emotion--felt, but not comprehended. Thought, if in some moment +of intense clarity it grasps our relationship to the stream of +life, in the next shreds into trivialities. Is this true? Test it +by any experience that is still fresh in memory. See how dull, by +comparison with the vivid colors of the scene itself, are even now +your ideas of what it meant to you, how obscure its relations to +your later life. The moment you fell in love, the hour after your +child had died, the instant when you reached the peak, the quarrel +that began a misunderstanding not yet ended, the subtle household +strain that pulls apart untiringly though it never sunders two who +love each other--all these I challenge you to define, to explain, +to lift into the light above the turbid sea of complex currents +which is life. + +And this, of course, is what good poetry does. It seizes the +moment, the situation, the thought; drags it palpitating from life +and flings it, quivering with its own rhythmic movement, into +expression. The thing cannot be done in mere prose, for there is +more than explanation to the process. The words themselves, in +their color and suggestiveness, the rhythms that carry them, +contribute to the sense, even as overtones help to make the music. + +All this may sound a little exalted to the comfortable general +reader, who does not often deal in such intense commodities as +death and love. And yet I have mentioned nothing that does not at +one time or another, and frequently rather than the opposite, come +into his life, and need, not constant, certainly, but at least +occasional, interpretation. Death and love, and also friendship, +jealousy, courage, self-sacrifice, hate--these cannot be avoided. +We must experience them. So do the animals, who gain from their +experiences blind, instinctive repulsions or unreasoning likes and +distrusts. There are many ways of escaping from such a bovine +acquiescence, content to have felt, not desirous to grasp and know +and relate. Poetry, which clears and intensifies like a glass held +upon a distant snowpeak, is one of the best. + +But there is another service that poetry, among all writing, best +renders to the general reader, _when he needs it_; a service +less obvious, but sometimes, I think, more important. Poetry +insures an extension of youth. + +Men and women vary in their emotional susceptibility. Some go +through life always clouded, always dull, like a piece of glass +cut in semblance of a gem, that refracts no colors and is empty of +light. Others are vivid, impressionable, reacting to every +experience. Some of us are most aroused by contact with one +another. Interest awakens at the sound of a voice; we are most +alive when most with our kind. Others, like Thoreau, respond best +in solitude. The very thrush singing dimly in the hemlocks at +twilight moves them more powerfully than a cheer. A deep meadow +awave with headed grass, a solemn hill shouldering the sky, a +clear blue air washing over the pasture slopes and down among the +tree-tops of the valley, thrills them more than all the men in all +the streets of the world. It makes no difference. To every one, +dull and vivid, social and solitary, age brings its changes. We +may understand better, but the vividness is less, the emotions are +tamer. They do not fully respond, as the bell in the deserted +house only half tinkles to our pulling. + + Si jeunesse savait, + Si vielliesse pouvait. + +But to be able comes before to know. We must react to experiences +before it is worth while to comprehend them. And after one is well +enmeshed in the routine of plodding life, after the freshness of +the emotions (and this is a definition of youth) is gone, it is +difficult to react. I can travel now, if I wish, to the coral +islands or the Spanish Main, but it is too late. + +Few willingly part with the fresh impressionability of youth. +Sometimes, as I have already suggested, the faculties of sensation +become atrophied, if indeed they ever existed. I know no more +dismal spectacle than a man talking shop on a moonlit hill in +August, a woman gossipping by the rail of a steamer plunging +through the sapphire of the Gulf Stream, or a couple perusing +advertisements throughout a Beethoven symphony. I will not advance +as typical a drummer I once saw read a cheap magazine from cover +to cover in the finest stretch of the Canadian Rockies. He was not +a man, but a sample-fed, word-emitting machine. These people, +emotionally speaking, are senile. They should not try to read +poetry. + +But most of us--even those who are outwardly commonplace, +practical, unenthusiastic, "solid," and not "sensitive"--lose our +youthful keenness with regret. And that is why poetry, except for +the hopelessly sodden, is a tonic worthy of a great price. For the +right poetry at the right time has the indubitable power to stir +the emotions that experience is no longer able to arouse. I cannot +give satisfactory instances, for the reaction is highly personal. +What with me stirs a brain cell long dormant to action will leave +another unmoved, and vice versa. However, to make clear my +meaning, let us take Romance, the kind that one capitalizes, that +belongs to Youth, also capitalized, and dwells in Granada or +Sicily or the Spanish Main. The middle-aged gentleman on a winter +cruise for his jaded nerves cannot expect a thrill from sights +alone. If it is not lost for him utterly, it is only because Keats +has kept it, in-- + + ... Magic casements, opening on the foam + Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn, q and Nashe in-- + + Brightness falls from the air; + Queens have died young and fair. + +Or consider the joy of travel renewed in Kipling's-- + + Then home, get her home, where the drunken rollers comb, + And the shouting seas drive by, + And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and + swing, + And the Southern Cross rides high! + Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass, + That blaze in the velvet blue. + +Or the multitudinous experiences of vivid life that crowd the +pages of men like Shakespeare, or Chaucer, who thanked God that he +had known his world as in his time. Even in these shopworn +quotations the power still remains. + +Somewhere in poetry, and best in poetry because there most +concentrated and most penetrative, lies crystallized experience at +hand for all who need it. It is not difficult to find, although no +one can find it for you. It is not necessarily exalted, romantic, +passionate; it may be comfortable, homely, gentle or hearty, +vigorous and cheerful; it may be anything but commonplace, for no +true emotion is ever commonplace. I have known men of one poet; +and yet that poet gave them the satisfaction they required. I know +others whose occasional dip into poetry leads to no rapture of +beauty, no throbbing vision into eternity; and yet without poetry +they would be less alive, their minds would be less young. As +children, most of us would have flushed before the beauty of a +sunrise on a tropic ocean, felt dimly if profoundly--and +forgotten. The poet--like the painter--has caught, has +interpreted, has preserved the experience, so that, like music, it +may be renewed. And he can perform that miracle for greater things +than sunrises. This, perhaps, is the best of all reasons why every +one except the emotionally senile should sometimes read poetry. + +I know at least one honest Philistine who, unlike many +Philistines, has traveled through the Promised Land--and does not +like it. When his emotional friends talk sentimentalism and call +it literature, or his aesthetic acquaintances erect affectations +and call them art, he has the proper word of irony that brings +them back to food, money, and other verities. His voice haunts me +now, suggesting that, in spite of the reasons I have advanced, the +general reader can scarcely be expected to read modern poetry, and +that therefore his habit of skipping must continue. He would say +that most modern poetry is unreadable, at least by the average +man. He would say that if the infinitely complex study of +emotional mind-states that lies behind the poetry of Edwin +Arlington Robinson, or the eerie otherworldliness of Yeats, or the +harsh virility of Sandburg is to be regarded as an intensification +and clarification of experience, he begs to be excused. He would +say that if the lyrics of subtle and passionate emotion and the +drab stories of sex experience that make up so many pages of +modern anthologies represent a renewal and extension of youth, it +was not _his_ youth. He prefers to be sanely old rather than +erotically young. He will stick to the daily paper and flat prose. + +Well, it is easy to answer him by ruling out modern poetry from +the argument. There was more good poetry, neither complex, nor +erotic, nor esoteric, written before our generation than even a +maker of anthologies is likely to read. But I am not willing to +dodge the issue so readily. There _is_ modern poetry for every reader +who is competent to read poetry at all. If there is none too much of +it, that is his own fault. If there is much that makes no appeal to +him, that is as it should be. + +It is true that a very large proportion of contemporary poetry is +well-nigh unintelligible to the gentleman whose reading, like his +experience, does not often venture beyond the primitive emotions. +Why should it not be? The modern lyric is untroubled by the social +conscience. It is highly individual, for it is written by men of +intense individuality for readers whose imaginations require an +intimate appeal. Such minds demand poetry prevailingly, just as +the average reader demands prose prevailingly. They profit by +prose now and then, just as, occasionally, he profits by poetry. +We talk so much of the enormous growth of the mass of average +readers in recent years that we forget the corresponding growth in +the number of individualities that are not average. Much modern +poetry is written for such readers, for men and women whose minds +are sensitive to intricate emotional experience, who can and do +respond to otherworldliness, to the subtly romantic, the finely +aesthetic, and the intricately ideal. They deserve whatever poetry +they may desire. + +The important point to note is that they do not get it. It is +they--far more than the Philistines--who complain that modern +poetry is insufficient for their needs. The highly personal lyric +is probably more perfected, more abundant, and more poignant in +its appeal to living minds now than ever before in the history of +our civilization. But it occupies only one province of poetry. A +lover of poetry desires, far more keenly than the general reader, +to have verse of his own day that is more Shakespearian, more +Miltonic, more Sophoclean than this. He wants poetry that lifts +spacious times into spacious verse, poetry that "enlumynes," like +Petrarch's "rhetorike sweete," a race and a civilization. He +desires, in addition to what he is already getting, precisely that +poetry so universal in its subject-matter and its appeal, which +the general reader thinks he would read if he found it instead of +"lyrical subtleties" in his pages. + +Well, they do not get it very abundantly to-day, let us admit the +fact freely. But the fault is not altogether the poets'. The fault +is in the intractable mediocrity of the age, which resists +transference into poetry as stiff clay resists the hoe of the +cultivator. The fault lies in the general reader himself, whose +very opposition to poetry because it _is_ poetry makes him a +difficult person to write for. Commercialized minds, given over to +convention, denying their sentiment and idealism, or wasting them +upon cheap and meretricious literature, do not make a good +audience. Our few poets in English who have possessed some +universality of appeal have had to make concessions. Kipling has +been the most popular among good English poets in our time; but he +has had to put journalism into much of his poetry in order to +succeed. And Kipling is not read so much as a certain American +writer who discovered that by writing verse in prose form he could +make the public forget their prejudice against poetry and indulge +their natural pleasure in rhythm and rime. + +A striking proof of all that I have been writing is to be found in +so-called magazine verse. Sneers at magazine poetry are unjust +because they are unintelligent. It is quite true that most of it +consists of the highly individualistic lyric of which I have +spoken above. But in comparison with the imaginative prose of the +typical popular magazine, it presents a most instructive contrast. +The prose is too frequently sensational or sentimental, vulgar or +smart. The verse, even though narrow in its appeal, and sometimes +slight, is at least excellent in art, admirable in execution, and +vigorous and unsentimental in tone. Regarded as literature, it is +very much more satisfactory than the bulk of magazine prose. +Indeed, there is less difference between the best and the worst of +our magazines than between the verse and the prose in any one of +them. + +And if this verse is too special in its subject-matter to be +altogether satisfactory, if so little of it appeals to the general +reader, is it not his fault? He neglects the poetry from habit +rather than from conviction based on experience. Because he skips +it, and has skipped it until habit has become a convention, much +of it has become by natural adaptation of supply to demand too +literary, too narrow, too subtle and complex for him now. The +vicious circle is complete. + +This circle may soon be broken. A ferment, which in the 'nineties +stirred in journalism, and a decade later transformed our drama, +is working now in verse. The poetical revival now upon us may be +richer so far in promise than in great poetry, but it is very +significant. For one thing, it is advertising poetry, and since +poetry is precisely what Shakespeare called it, caviare to the +general--a special commodity for occasional use--a little +advertising will be good for it. Again, the verse that has sprung +from the movement is much of it thoroughly interesting. Some of it +is as bizarre as the new art of the futurists and the vorticists; +some is merely vulgar, some merely affected, some hopelessly +obscure; but other poems, without convincing us of their +greatness, seem as original and creative as were Browning and +Whitman in their day. Probably, like the new painting, the +movement is more significant than the movers. + +Nevertheless, if one is willing to put aside prejudice, suspend +judgment, and look ahead, _vers libre_, even when more _libre_ than +_vers_, is full of meaning--poetic realism, even when more real than +poetry, charged with possibility. For with all its imperfections much +of this new poetry is trying to mean more than ever before to the +general reader. I am not sure that the democracy can be interpreted +for him in noble poetry and remain the democracy he knows. And yet I +think, and I believe, that, in his sub-consciousness at least, he +feels an intense longing to find the everyday life in which we all +live--so thrilling beneath the surface--interpreted, swung into that +rhythmic significance that will make it part of the vast and flowing +stream of all life. I can tolerate many short, rough words in poetry, +and much that we have been accustomed to regard as prose, on the way +to such a goal. + +For I honestly believe that it is better to read fantastic poetry, +coarse poetry, prosaic poetry--anything but vulgar and sentimental +poetry--than no poetry at all. To be susceptible to no revival of +the vivid emotions of youth, to be touched by no thoughts more +intense than our own, to be accessible to no imaginative +interpretation of the life we lead--this seems to me to be a heavy +misfortune. But to possess, as most of us do, our share of all +these qualities, and then at no time, in no fitting mood or +proffered opportunity, to read poetry--this can only be regarded +as deafness by habit and blindness from choice. + + + + +EYE, EAR, AND MIND + + +Our eyes are more civilized than our ears, and much more civilized +than our minds; that is the flat truth, and it accounts for a good +deal that puzzles worthy people who wish to reform literature. + +Consider the musical comedy of the kind that runs for a year and +costs the price of two books for a good seat. Its humor is either +good horseplay or vulgar farce, and its literary quality nil. Its +music is better, less banal than the words, and, sometimes, almost +excellent. But its setting, the costumes, the scenic effects, the +stage painting, and, most of all, the color schemes are always +artistic and sometimes exquisite. They intrigue the most +sophisticated taste, which is not surprising; yet, at the same +time, the multitude likes them, pays for them, stays away if they +are not right. Eye is an aesthete, ear is, at least, cultivated, +mind is a gross barbarian, unwilling to think, and desirous only +of a tickle or a prod. + +Or to localize the scene and change the angle a trifle, compare +the New York ear for music with the New York taste for reading. +The audiences who hear good concerts, good operas, good oratorios, +and thoroughly appreciate them, far outrun in number the readers +of equally artistic or intellectual books. Ear is more cultivated +than mind, musical appreciation keener than literary taste. A good +stage set on a first night in this same metropolis of the arts, +will get a round of applause, when not only often, but usually, +perfection of lines, or poignancy of thought in the dialogue, will +miss praise altogether. Eye detects sheer beauty instantly, mind +lags or is dull to it. + +This is a fact; the cause of it let psychologists explain, as they +can, of course, very readily. It is a rather encouraging fact, for +it seems to indicate that our members educate themselves one at a +time, and yet, as parts of a single body corporate, must help each +other's education. If we grow critical of the sped-up background +of a movie scene, we may grow critical of its sped-up plot. Eye +may teach the ear, ear lift the mind to more strenuous +intellectual efforts. + +And, of course, it explains why the literary reformers have such +difficulties with the multitude. Why, they say, do these women, +whose dress is admirably designed and colored, whose living rooms +are proportioned and furnished in taste, who know good music from +bad, and enjoy the former--why do they read novels without the +least distinction, without beauty or truth, barely raised above +vulgarity? Why, they say, does this man who cooperates with his +architect in the building of a country house which would have been +a credit to any period, who is a connoisseur in wine and cigars, +and unerring in his judgment of pictures, why does he definitely +prefer the commonplace in literature? Eye, ear, and tongue are +civilized; intellect remains a gross feeder still. Good reading +comes last among the arts of taste. + +This is not an essay in reform; it is content to be a question +mark; but one bit of preaching may slip in at the end. Why give +eye and ear all the fine experiences? Why not do something for +poor, slovenly mind? The truth is that we are lazy. In a stage +full of shimmering beauty, in a concert of chamber music, in a +fine building, or an admirable sketch, others do the work, we have +only to gaze or listen in order to pluck some, at least, of the +fruits of art. But fine novels take fine reading; fine essays take +fine thinking; fine poetry takes fine feeling. We balk at the +effort, and ask, like the audience at the movies, that eye should +take the easier way. And hence the American reader still faintly +suggests the Fiji Islander, who wears a silk hat and patent +leathers on a tattooed naked body. + +For all we can tell, that may be the direction of Progress. In +2021 New Yorkers may be gazing at a city beautiful, where even the +subways give forth sweet sounds; and reading novelized movies in +words of one syllable. Eye may win the race and starve out the +other members. It would be a bad future for publishers and +authors; and I am against it, even as a possibility. Hence my +energies will be devoted to poking, thrilling, energizing, +tonicking that lazy old organism, half asleep still--Mind. + + + + +OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE + + +A few years ago drums and trumpets in American magazines and +publishers' advertisements announced that the essay was coming to +its own again. We were to vary our diet of short stories with +pleasing disquisitions, to find in books of essays a substitute +for the volume of sermons grown obsolete, and to titillate our +finer senses by graceful prose that should teach us without +didacticism, and present contemporary life without the incumbrance +of a plot. + +The promise was welcome. American literature has been at its very +best in the essay. In the essay, with few exceptions, it has more +often than elsewhere attained world-wide estimation. Emerson, +Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes were primarily essayists. Hawthorne +and Irving were essayists as much as romancers. Franklin was a +common sense essayist. Jonathan Edwards will some day be presented +(by excerpt) as a moral essayist of a high order. And there was +Lowell. + +Have they had worthy successors? In the years after the Civil War +certainly none of equal eminence. But it is too early to say that +the trumpets and drums of the last decade were false heralds. The +brilliant epithets of Chesterton, the perfect sophistication of +Pearsall Smith (an American, but expatriated), the placid depth of +Hudson's nature studies, are not paralleled on this side of the +water, yet with Crothers, Gerould, Repplier, Colby, Morley, +Strunsky, we need not fear comparison in the critical genre, +unless it be with the incomparable Max Beerbohm. + +Two kinds of expository writing are natural for Americans. The +first is a hard-hitting statement, straight out of intense feeling +or labored thought. That was Emerson's way (in spite of his +expansiveness), and Thoreau's also. You read them by pithy +sentences, not paragraphs. They assail you by ideas, not by +insidious structures of thought. The second is an easy-going +comment on life, often slangy or colloquial and frequently so +undignified as not to seem literature. Mark Twain and Josh +Billings wrote that way; Ring Lardner writes so to-day. + +When the straight-from-the-shoulder American takes time to finish +his thought, to mold his sentences, to brain his reader with a +perfect expression of his tense emotion, then he makes literature. +And when the easy-going humorist, often nowadays a column conductor, +or a contributor to _The Saturday Evening Post_, takes time to deepen +his observation and to say it with real words instead of worn symbols, +he makes, and does make, literature. More are doing it than the +skeptical realize. The new epoch of the American essay is well under +way. + +But the desire to "make literature" in America is too often +wasted. The would-be essayist wastes it in pretty writing about +trivial things--neighbors' back yards, books I have read, the +idiosyncrasies of cats, humors of the streets--the sort of +dilettantish comment that older nations writing of more settled, +richer civilizations can do well--that Anatole France and occasional +essayists of _Punch_ or _The Spectator_ can do well and most of us do +indifferently. We are a humorous people, but not a playful one. Light +irony is not our forte. Strength and humorous exaggeration come more +readily to our pens than grace. We are better inspired by the follies +of the crowd, or the errors of humanity, than by the whims of culture +or aspects of pleasant leisure. And when we try to put on style in the +manner of Lamb or Hazlitt, Stevenson or Beerbohm, we seldom exceed the +second rate. + +When the newspaper and magazine humorists of democracy learn to +write better; when the moralists and reformers and critics of +American life learn to mature and perfect their thought until what +they write is as good as their intentions--then the trumpets and +drums may sound again, and with justification. Many have; may +others follow. + +And perhaps then we can scrap a mass of fine writing about nothing +in particular, that calls itself the American literary essay, and +yet is neither American in inspiration, native in style, nor good +for anything whatsoever, except exercise in words. Out with the +dilettantes. We are tired of the merely literary; we want real +literature in the essay as elsewhere. + + + + +FLAT PROSE + + +SOME time ago a writer protested against the taboo on "beautiful +prose." He asserted that the usual organs of publication, +especially in America, reject with deadly certainty all +contributions whose style suggests that melodious rhythm which De +Quincey and Ruskin made fashionable for their generations, and +Stevenson revived in the 'nineties. He complained that the writer +is no longer allowed to write as well as he can; that he must +abstract all unnecessary color of phrase, all warmth of +connotation and grace of rhythm from his style, lest he should +seem to be striving for "atmosphere," instead of going about his +proper business, which is to fill the greedy stomach of the public +with facts. + +Unfortunately, this timely fighter in a good cause was too +enamored of the art whose suppression he was bewailing. He so far +forgot himself as to make his own style "beautiful" in the old- +time fashion, and thus must have roused the prejudice of the +multitude, who had to study such style in college, and knew from +sad experience that it takes longer to read than the other kind. + +But there are other and safer ways of combating the taste for flat +prose. One might be to print parallel columns of "newspaper +English" (which they threaten now to teach in the schools) until +the eye sickened of its deadly monotony. This is a bad way. The +average reader would not see the point. Paragraphs from a dozen +American papers, all couched in the same utilitarian dialect,-- +simple but not always clear, concise yet seldom accurate, emphatic +but as ugly as the clank of an automobile chain,--why, we read +thousands of such lines daily! We think in such English; we talk +in it; to revolt from this style, to which the Associated Press +has given the largest circulation on record, would be like +protesting against the nitrogen in our air. + +Books and magazines require a different reckoning. The author is +still allowed to let himself go occasionally in books--especially +in sentimental books. But the magazines, with few exceptions, have +shut down the lid, and are keeping the stylistic afflatus under +strict compression. No use to show them what they might publish +if, with due exclusion of the merely pretty, the sing-song, and +the weakly ornate, they were willing to let a little style escape. +With complete cowardice, they will turn the general into the +particular, and insist that in any case they will not publish +_you_. Far better, it seems to me, to warn editors and the +"practical public" as to what apparently is going to happen if +ambitious authors are tied down much longer to flat prose. + +It is not generally known, I believe, that post-impressionism has +escaped from the field of pictorial art, and is running rampant in +literature. At present, Miss Gertrude Stein is the chief culprit. +Indeed, she may be called the founder of a coterie, if not of a +school. + +Her art has been defined recently by one of her admirers, who is +also the subject, or victim, of the word-portrait from which I +intend later to quote in illustration of my argument. "Gertrude +Stein," says Miss Dodge, "is doing with words what Picasso is +doing with paint. She is impelling language to induce new states +of consciousness, and in doing so language becomes with her a +creative art rather than a mirror of history." This, being written +in psychological and not in post-impressionist English, is fairly +intelligible. But it does not touch the root of the matter. Miss +Stein, the writer continues, uses "words that appeal to her as +having the meaning they _seem_ to have [that is, if "diuturnity" +suggests a tumble downstairs, it _means_ a tumble downstairs]. To +present her impressions she chooses words for their inherent quality +rather than their accepted meaning." + +Let us watch the creative artist at her toil. The title of this +particular word-picture is "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa +Curonia." As the portrait itself has a beginning, but no middle, +and only a faintly indicated end, I believe--though in my +ignorance of just what it all means I am not sure--that I can +quote at random without offense to the impressions derivable from +the text. + +Here then are a few paragraphs where the inherent quality of the +words is said to induce new states of consciousness:-- + +"Bargaining is something and there is not that success. The +intention is what if application has that accident results are +reappearing. They did not darken. That was not an adulteration.... +There is that particular half of directing that there is that +particular whole direction that is not all the measure of any +combination. Gliding is not heavily moving. Looking is not +vanishing. Laughing is not evaporation. + +"Praying has intention and relieving that situation is not solemn. +There comes that way. + +"There is all there is when there has all there has where there is +what there is. That is what is done when there is done what is +done and the union is won and the division is the explicit visit. +There is not all of any visit." + +After a hundred lines of this I wish to scream, I wish to burn the +book, I am in agony. It is not because I know that words +_cannot_ be torn loose from their meanings without insulting +the intellect. It is not because I see that this is a prime +example of the "confusion of the arts." No, my feeling is purely +physical. Some one has applied an egg-beater to my brain. + +But having calmed myself by a sedative of flat prose from the +paper, I realize that Miss Stein is more sinned against than +sinning. She is merely a red flag waved by the _Zeitgeist_. + +For this is the sort of thing we are bound to get if the lid is +kept down on the stylists much longer. Repression has always bred +revolt. Revolt breeds extravagance. And extravagance leads to +absurdity. And yet even in the absurd, a sympathetic observer may +detect a purpose which is honest and right. Miss Stein has +indubitably written nonsense, but she began with sense. For words +_have_ their sound-values as well as their sense-values, and +prose rhythms _do_ convey to the mind emotions that mere +denotation cannot give. Rewrite the solemn glory of Old Testament +diction in the flat colorless prose which just now is demanded, +and wonder at the difference. Translate "the multitudinous seas +incarnadine" into "making the ocean red,"--or, for more pertinent +instances, imagine a Carlyle, an Emerson, a Lamb forced to exclude +from his vocabulary every word not readily understood by the +multitude, to iron out all whimseys, all melodies from his +phrasing, and to plunk down his words one after the other in the +order of elementary thought! + +I am willing to fight to the last drop of ink against any attempt +to bring back "fine writing" and ornate rhetoric into +prose. "Expression is the dress of thought," and plain thinking and +plain facts look best in simple clothing. Nevertheless, if we must write +our stories, our essays, our novels, and (who knows) our poems in +the flat prose of the news column,--if the editors will sit on the +lid,--well, the public will get what it pays for, but sooner or +later the spirit of style will ferment, will work, will grow +violent under restraint. There will be reaction, explosion, +revolution. The public will get its flat prose, and--in addition-- +not one, but a hundred Gertrude Steins. + + + + +VI + +MEN AND THEIR BOOKS + +CONRAD AND MELVILLE + + +THE appearance of the definitive edition of Joseph Conrad, with +his interesting critical prefaces included, was a provocation to +read and reread his remarkable series of books, the most +remarkable contribution to English literature by an alien since +the language began. But is it a reason for writing more of an +author already more discussed than any English stylist of our +time? For myself, I answer, yes, because I have found no adequate +definition of the difference between Conrad and us to whom English +thinking is native, nor a definition of his place, historically +considered, in the modern scheme; no definition, that is, which +explains my own impressions of Conrad. And therefore I shall +proceed, as all readers should, to make my own. + +If you ask readers why they like Conrad, two out of three will +answer, because he is a great stylist, or because he writes of the +sea. I doubt the worth of such answers. Many buy books because +they are written by great stylists, but few read for just that +reason. They read because there is something in an author's work +which attracts them to his style, and that something may be study +of character, skill in narrative, or profundity in truth, of which +style is the perfect expression, but not the thing itself. Only +connoisseurs, and few of them, read for style. And, furthermore, I +very much doubt whether readers go to Conrad to learn about the +sea. They might learn as much from Cooper or Melville, but they +have not gone there much of late. And many an ardent lover of +Conrad would rather be whipped than go from New York to Liverpool +on a square-rigged ship. + +In any case, these answers, which make up the sum of most writing +about Conrad, do not define him. To say that an author is a +stylist is about as helpful as to say that he is a thinker. And +Conrad would have had his reputation if he had migrated to Kansas +instead of to the English sea. + +In point of fact, much may be said, and with justice, against +Conrad's style. It misses occasionally the English idiom, and +sometimes English grammar, which is a trivial criticism. It +offends more frequently against the literary virtues of +conciseness and economy, which is not a trivial criticism. Conrad, +like the writers of Elizabethan prose (whom he resembles in +ardency and in freshness), too often wraps you in words, stupefies +you with gorgeous repetition, goes about and about and about, +trailing phrases after him, while the procession of narrative +images halts. He can be as prolix in his brooding descriptions as +Meredith with his intellectual vaudeville. Indeed, many give him +lip service solely because they like to be intoxicated, to be +carried away, by words. A slight change of taste, such as that +which has come about since Meredith was on every one's tongue, +will make such defects manifest. Meredith lives in spite of his +prolixities, and so will Conrad, but neither because they are +perfect English stylists. + +I am sure also that Conrad, at his very best, is not so good as +Melville, at his best, in nautical narrative; as Melville in, say, +the first day of the final chase of Moby Dick; I question whether +he is as good in sea narrative as Cooper in the famous passage of +Paul Jones's ship through the shoals. Such comparisons are, of +course, rather futile. They differentiate among excellences, where +taste is a factor. Nevertheless, it is belittling to a man who, +above almost all others in our language, has brooded upon the +mysteries of the mind's action, to say that he is great because he +describes so well the sea. + +We must seek elsewhere for a definition of the peculiar qualities +of Conrad. And without a definition it is easy to admire but hard +to estimate and understand him. + +I believe, first of all, that Conrad has remained much more a Slav +than he, or any of us, have been willing to admit. A friend of +mine, married to a Slav, told me of her husband, how, with his cab +at the door, and dinner waiting somewhere, he would sit brooding +(so he said) over the wrongs of his race. It is dangerous to +generalize in racial characteristics, but no one will dispute a +tendency to brood as a characteristic of the Slav. The Russian +novels are full of characters who brood, and of brooding upon the +characters and their fates. The structure of the Russian story is +determined not by events so much as by the results of passionate +brooding upon the situation in which the imagined characters find +themselves. + +So it is with Conrad, always and everywhere. In "Nostromo" he +broods upon the destructive power of a fixed idea; in "The Rescue" +upon the result of flinging together elemental characters of the +kind that life keeps separate; in "Youth" upon the illusions, more +real than reality, of youth. No writer of our race had ever the +patience to sit like an Eastern mystic over his scene, letting his +eye fill with each slightest detail of it, feeling its contours +around and above and beneath, separating each detail of wind and +water, mood and emotion, memory and hope, and returning again and +again to the task of description, until every impression was +gathered, every strand of motive threaded to its source. + +Henry James, you will say, was even more patient. Yes, but James +did not brood. His work was active analysis, cutting finer and +finer until the atom was reached. His mind was Occidental. He +wished to know why the wheels went round. Conrad's, in this +respect, is Oriental. He wants to see what things essentially are. +Henry James refines but seldom repeats. Conrad, in such a story as +"Gaspar Ruiz" for example, or in "Chance," gives the impression of +not caring to understand if only he can fully picture the mind +that his brooding imagination draws further and further from its +sheath. It is incredible, to one who has not counted, how many +times he raises the same situation to the light--the Garibaldean +and Nostromo, Mrs. Travers marveling at her knowledge of Lingard's +heart--turns it, opens it a little further, and puts it back +while he broods on. Here is the explanation of Conrad's prolixity; +here the reason why among all living novelists he is least a slave +to incident, best able to let his story grow as slowly as life, and +still hold the reader's interest. As we read Conrad we also +brood; we read slowly where elsewhere we read fast. Turns of +style, felicities of description, as of the tropic ocean, or the +faces of women, have their chance. And, of course, the excellence, +the charm of Conrad's style is that in its nuances, its slow +winding paragraphs, its pausing sentences, and constant suggestion +of depths beyond depths, it is the perfect expression of the +brooding mind that grasps its meaning by the repetition of images +that drop like pebbles, now here, now there, in a fathomless pool. + +This is to define Conrad in space, but not in time. In time, he +may be Slav or English, but certainly is modern of the moderns. +The tribute of admiration and imitation from the youth of his own +period alone might prove this. But it is easier to prove than to +describe his modernity. To say that he takes the imagination +afield into the margins of the world, where life still escapes +standardization and there are fresh aspects of beauty, is to fail +to differentiate him from Kipling or Masefield. To say that he +strikes below the act and the will into realms of the sub- +conscious, and studies the mechanism as well as the results of +emotion, is but to place him, where indeed he belongs, among the +many writers who have learned of Henry James or moved in parallels +beside him. + +To get a better perspective of Conrad's essential modernity I +should like to propose a more cogent comparison, and a more +illuminating contrast, with a man whose achievements were in +Conrad's own province, who challenges and rewards comparison, +Herman Melville. + +It may be that others have set "Moby Dick" beside the works of +Conrad. Some one must have done it, so illuminating in both +directions is the result. Here are two dreamers who write of the +sea and strange men, of the wild elements and the mysterious in +man; two authors who, a half century apart, sail the same seas and +come home to write not so much of them as what they dream when +they remember their experiences. Each man, as he writes, +transcends the sea, sublimates it into a vapor of pure +imagination, in which he clothes his idea of man, and so doing +gives us not merely great literature, but sea narrative and +description unsurpassed: + +And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical seas, +among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding +rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full +terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wretched +hideousness of his jaw. + +Melville, writer of vivid descriptions of the South Seas, +"Typee," "Omoo," which were perfect of their kind, but still only +superlative travel books, distinguished in style but seldom +lifting beyond autobiography, began another reminiscent narrative +in "Moby Dick." In spite of his profound intellectual growth away +from the cool and humorous youth who paddled the Marquesan lake +with primitive beauties beside him, he seems to have meant in "The +White Whale" to go back to his earlier manner, to write an +accurate though highly personal account of the whaler's life, and +to that end had assembled a mass of information upon the sperm +whale to add to his own memories. Very literally the story begins +as an autobiography; even the elemental figure of the cannibal, +Queequeg, with his incongruous idol and harpoon in a New Bedford +lodging house, does not warn of what is to come. But even before +the _Pequod_ leaves sane Nantucket an undercurrent begins to +sweep through the narrative. This brooding captain, Ahab (for +Melville also broods, though with characteristic difference), and +his ivory leg, those warning voices in the mist, the strange crew +of all races and temperaments--the civilized, the barbarous, and +the savage--in their ship, which is a microcosm, hints that creep +in of the white whale whose nature is inimical to man and arouses +passions deeper than gain or revenge--all this prepares the reader +for something more than incident. From the mood of Defoe one +passes, by jerks and reversions, to the atmosphere of "The Ancient +Mariner" and of "Manfred." + +When Conrad could not manage his story he laid it aside, sometimes +for twenty years, as with "The Rescue." But Melville was a wilder +soul, a greater man, and probably a greater artist, but a lesser +craftsman. He lost control of his book. He loaded his whaling +story with casks of natural history, deck loaded it with essays on +the moral nature of man, lashed to its sides dramatic dialogues on +the soul, built up a superstructure of symbolism and allegory, +until the tale foundered and went down, like the _Pequod_. +And then it emerged again a dream ship searching for a dream +whale, manned by fantastic and terrible dreams; and every now and +then, as dreams will, it takes on an appearance of reality more +vivid than anything in life, more real than anything in Conrad-- +the meeting with the _Rachel_ and her captain seeking his +drowned son, the rising of Moby Dick with the dead Parsee bound to +his terrible flank, the grim dialogues of Ahab.... + +In this bursting of bounds, in these epic grandeurs in the midst +of confusion, and vivid realities mingled with untrammeled +speculation, lies the secret of Melville's purpose, and, by +contrast, the explanation of Conrad's modern effect beside him. +Melville, friend of Hawthorne and transcendentalist philosopher on +his own account, sees nature as greater and more terrible than +man. He sees the will of man trying to control the universe, but +failing; crushed if uncowed by the unmeasured power of an evil +nature, which his little spirit, once it loses touch with the will +of God, vainly encounters. Give man eyes only in the top of his +head, looking heavenward, says Ahab, urging the blacksmith, who +makes him a new leg buckle, to forge a new creature complete. He +writes of man at the beginning of the age of science, aware of the +vast powers of material nature, fretting that his own body is part +of them, desirous to control them by mere will, fighting his own +moral nature as did Ahab in his insensate pursuit of Moby Dick, +and destroyed by his own ambitions, even as Ahab, the +_Pequod_, and all her crew went down before the lashings and +charges of the white whale. + +"Oh, Life," says Ahab, "here I am, proud as a Greek god, and yet +standing debtor to this blockhead [the carpenter] for a bone to +stand on!... I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with." And +yet as they approach the final waters "the old man's purpose +intensified itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vise; the +Delta of his forehead's veins swelled like overladen brooks; in +his very sleep his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull: +'Stern all! The white whale spouts thick blood!'" + +Conrad comes at the height of the age of science. The seas for him +are full of dark mysteries, but these mysteries are only the +reflections of man. Man dominates the earth and sea, man conquers +the typhoon, intelligent man subdues the savage wills of the +barbarians of the shallows, man has learned to master all but his +own heart. The center of gravity shifts from without to within. +The philosopher, reasoning of God and of nature, gives place to +the psychologist brooding over an organism that is seat of God and +master of the elements. Melville is centrifugal, Conrad +centripetal. Melville's theme is too great for him; it breaks his +story, but the fragments are magnificent. Conrad's task is easier +because it is more limited; his theme is always in control. He +broods over man in a world where nature has been conquered, +although the mind still remains inexplicable. The emphasis shifts +from external symbols of the immensities of good and evil to the +behavior of personality under stress. Melville is a moral +philosopher, Conrad a speculative psychologist. + +The essentially modern quality of Conrad lies in this transference +of wonder from nature to the behavior of man, the modern man for +whom lightning is only electricity and wind the relief of pressure +from hemisphere to hemisphere. Mystery lies in the personality +now, not in the blind forces that shape and are shaped by it. It +is the difference, in a sense, between Hawthorne, who saw the +world as shadow and illusion, symbolizing forces inimical to +humanity, and Hardy, who sees in external nature the grim +scientific fact of environment. It is a difference between eras +more marked in Conrad than in many of his contemporaries, because, +like Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe, he avoids the plain prose of +realism and sets his romantic heroes against the great powers of +nature--tempests, the earthquake, solitude, and grandeur. Thus +the contrast is marked by the very resemblance of romantic +setting. For Conrad's tempests blow only to beat upon the mind +whose behavior he is studying; his moral problems are raised only +that he may study their effect upon man. + +If, then, we are to estimate Conrad's work, let us begin by +defining him in these terms. He is a Slav who broods by racial +habit as well as by necessity of his theme. He is a modern who +accepts the growing control of physical forces by the intellect +and turns from the mystery of nature to brood upon personality. +From this personality he makes his stories. External nature bulks +large in them, because it is when beat upon by adversity, brought +face to face with the elemental powers, and driven into strange +efforts of will by the storms without that man's personality +reaches the tensest pitch. Plot of itself means little to Conrad +and that is why so few can tell with accuracy the stories of his +longer novels. His characters are concrete. They are not symbols +of the moral nature, like Melville's men, but they are +nevertheless phases of personality and therefore they shift and +dim from story to story, like lanterns in a wood. Knowing their +hearts to the uttermost, and even their gestures, one nevertheless +forgets sometimes their names, the ends to which they come, the +tales in which they appear. The same phase, indeed, appears under +different names in several stories. + +Melville crossed the shadow line in his pursuit of the secret of +man's relation to the universe; only magnificent fragments of his +imagination were salvaged for his books. Conrad sails on an open +sea, tamed by wireless and conquered by steel. Mystery for him +lies not beyond the horizon, but in his fellow passengers. On them +he broods. His achievement is more complete than Melville's; his +scope is less. When the physicists have resolved, as apparently +they soon will do, this earthy matter where now with our +implements and our machinery we are so much at home, into +mysterious force as intangible as will and moral desire, some new +transcendental novelist will assume Melville's task. The sea, +earth, and sky, and the creatures moving therein again will become +symbols, and the pursuit of Moby Dick be renewed. But now, for a +while, science has pushed back the unknown to the horizon and +given us a little space of light in the darkness of the universe. +There the ego is for a time the greatest mystery. It is an +opportunity for the psychologists and, while we are thinking less +of the soul, they have rushed to study the mechanics of the brain. +It was Conrad's opportunity also to brood upon the romance of +personality at the moment of man's greatest victory over dark +external force. + + + + +THE NOVELIST OF PITY + + +To those interested in the meaning of the generation that has now +left us quivering on the beach of after war, Thomas Hardy's books +are so engrossing that to write of them needs no pretext; yet the +recent publication of an anniversary edition with all his prefaces +included is a welcome excuse for what I propose to make, not so +much an essay as a record of a sudden understanding. Long +familiarity with Hardy's novels had led to an afternoon of +conversation with the author himself in the mildness of old age. +But he remained for me a still inexplicable figure, belonging to +an earlier century, yet in other respects so clearly abreast, if +not ahead, of the emotions of our own times, that at eighty he saw +the young men beginning to follow him. It was a reading of "The +Dynasts," in the tall, red volumes of the new edition, that +suddenly and unexpectedly seemed to give me a key. + +The danger, so I had thought and think, is that Hardy bids fair to +become a legendary figure with an attribute, as is the way with +such figures, better known than the man himself. "Hardy, oh, yes, +the pessimist" threatens to become all the schoolboy knows and all +he needs to know of him, and his alleged philosophy of gloom is +already overshadowing the man's intense interest in strong and +appealing life. It has been the fate of many a great artist to get +a nickname, like a boy, and never be rid of it. + +I do not wish by any ingenious fabrication to prove that Hardy was +not a pessimist. He is the father of the English school that +refuse to be either deists or moralists, and, like them, pushes +his stories to an end that is often bitter. His temperament is +cast in that brooding, reflective mood that concerns itself less +readily with jollity than with grief, and is therefore ever +slanting toward pessimism. This, even his style indicates. Like +the somber Hawthorne's, his style is brooding, adumbrative, rather +than incisive or brilliant, and it often limps among the facts of +his story like a man in pain. Indeed, Hardy is seldom a stylist, +except when his mood is somber; therefore it is by his sadder +passages that we remember him. Yet the most important fact about +Hardy is not that he is pessimistic. + +His manner of telling a story, however, helps to confirm the +popular impression. Hardy's plots are a series of accidents, by +which the doom of some lovely or aspiring spirit comes upon it by +the slow drift of misfortune. Tess, Grace, Eustacia, Jude--it is +clear enough to what joys and sorrows their natures make them +liable. But the master prepares for them trivial error, unhappy +coincidence, unnecessary misfortune, until it is not surprising if +the analytic mind insists that he is laboring some thesis of +pessimism to be worked out by concrete example. + +Nevertheless, this is incomplete definition, and it is annoying +that the dean of letters in our tongue should be subjected to a +sophomoric formula in which the emphasis is wrongly placed. The +critics, in general, have defined this pessimism, stopped there, +and said, this is Hardy. But youth that does not like pessimism +reads Hardy avidly. More light is needed. + +Mr. Hardy himself does not suggest the simple and melancholy +pessimist. A mild old man, gentleness is the first quality one +feels in him, but at eighty he still waxed his mustache tips, and +his eyes lit eagerly. I remember how earnestly he denied knowledge +of science, piqued, I suppose, by the omniscient who had declared +that his art consisted of applying the results of scientific +inquiry to the study of simple human nature. If his treatment of +nature was scientific, as I affirmed, his wife agreed, and he did +not deny, then, he implied, his knowledge came by intuition, not +by theory. The war was still on when I talked with him. It had +lifted him to poetry at first, but by 1918 no longer interested +him vitally. "It is too mechanical," he said. His novels, where +fate seems to operate mechanically sometimes, he was willing that +day to set aside as nil. Poetry, he thought, was the only proper +form of expression. The novel was too indirect; too wasteful of +time and space in its attempt to come at real issues. Yet these +real issues, it appeared as we talked, were not theories. Ideas, +he said, if emphasized, destroy art. Writers, he thought, in the +future would give up pure fiction (serious writers, I suppose he +meant). Poetry would be their shorthand; they would by intenser +language cut short to their end. + +What was _his_ end? Not mechanical, scientific theories, that +was clear. Not mere realistic description of life. He told me he +had little faith in mere observation, except for comic or quaint +characterization. He had seldom if ever studied a serious +character from a model. One woman he invented entirely (was it +Tess?) and she was thought to be his best. What, then, was this +essence which the novelist, growing old, would convey now in +concentrated form by poetry which to him, so he said, was story- +telling in verse. + +It is easier to understand what he meant if one thinks how +definitely Hardy belongs to his age, the latter nineteenth +century, in spite of his reachings forward. On the one hand, his +very gentleness is characteristic of a period that was above all +others humane, On the other, his somber moods sprang from a +generation that was the first to understand the implications of +the struggle for life in the animal world all about them. They, to +be sure, deduced from what they saw a vague theory of evolution in +which the best (who were themselves) somehow were to come out best +in the end. He, though gentle as they were, deduced nothing so +cheerful, saw rather the terrible discrepancies between fact and +theory, so that his very gentleness made him pessimistic, where +Browning was optimistic. Then, like Hawthorne in the generation +before him, Hardy went back to an earlier, simpler life than his +own, and there made his inquiries. Hawthorne, who did not accept +the theology of Puritanism, was yet strangely troubled by the +problem of sin. Hardy, accepting the implacability of evolution +without its easy optimism, was intensely moved to pity. This is +his open secret. + +The clearest statement is in his poetry, where again and again, in +our conversation that day, he seemed to be placing it--most of +all, I think, in "The Dynasts." + +"The Dynasts" was published too soon. We English speakers, in +1904-1906, were beginning to read plays again, under the stimulus +of a dramatic revival, and the plays we read were successful on +the stage. As I recollect the criticism of "The Dynasts," much of +it at least was busied with the form of the drama, its great +length and unwieldiness. We thought of it not as a dramatic epic, +but as a dramatized novel--a mistake. We thought that Hardy was +taking the long way around, when in truth he had found a short cut +to his issues. That "The Dynasts," considering the vastness of its +Napoleonic subject, was far more concise, more direct, clearer +than his novels, did not become manifest, although the sharper- +eyed may have seen it. + +In "The Dynasts" I find all of Hardy. The Immanent Will is God, as +Hardy conceives Him, neither rational nor entirely conscious, +frustrating His own seeming ends, without irony and without +compassion, and yet perhaps evolving like His world, clearing like +men's visions, moving towards consistency. The Sinister Angel and +the Ironic Angel are moods well known to Hardy, but not loved by +him. The Spirit of the Years that sees how poor human nature +collides with accident, or the inevitable, and is bruised, is +Hardy's reasoned philosophy. The Spirit of Pities (not always, as +he says, logical or consistent) is Hardy's own desire, his will, +his faint but deep-felt hope. I quote, from the very end of the +great spectacle, some lines in which the Spirits, who have watched +the confused tragedy of the Napoleonic age, sum up their thoughts: + + + + +AFTER SCENE + + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS + + Thus doth the Great Foresightless mechanize + Its blank entrancement now as evermore + Its ceaseless artistries in circumstance.... + Yet seems this vast and singular confection + Wherein our scenery glints of scantest size, + Inutile all--so far as reasonings tell. + +SPIRIT OF PITIES + + Thou arguest still the + Inadvertent Mind. + But, even so, shall blankness be for aye?... + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS + + What wouldst have hoped and had the + Will to be?... + +SEMI-CHORUS I OF THE PITIES + + Nay;--shall not + Its blindness break? + Yea, must not + Its heart awake, + Promptly tending + To its mending + In a genial germing purpose, + and for loving-kindness' sake? + +SEMI-CHORUS II + + Should It never + Curb or cure + Aught whatever + Those endure + + Whom It quickens, + Let them darkle + To extinction + Swift and sure, + +CHORUS + + But--a stirring thrills the air + Like to sounds of joyance there + That the rages + Of the ages + + Shall be cancelled, and + Deliverance offered + From the darts that were, + + Consciousness the + Will informing, till + It fashions all things fair! + +The Spirit of the Years (which is another name for Hardy's +reflections upon life and history) planned in sad conviction of +the "blank entrancement" of the Great Foresightless Will, those +sad narratives in which innocence, as in "Tess of the +d'Ubervilles," is crushed, or vivid personality frustrated, as in +"The Return of the Native." It is the Spirit of Pities in Hardy +which wrote the stories. Philosophy constructed them, but pity +worked them out. + +The characters that Hardy loved--Grace, Marty South, Jude, Tess-- +are life, brooding, intense, potential, and lovely, struggling +against a fate which they help to draw upon themselves, but which +is, nevertheless, not necessary, not rational. The cruelty of this +fate he assumes and depicts, but the stories are not told to +describe it. It is his creatures that get the color, the interest; +they are valuable to us, and would be to him, whatever the truth +of his philosophy. But because he loves life, the living thing, +even the lizard in the woods, he broods upon their frustrations. + +Pessimistic Hardy is, as any gentle heart would be who chose to +study misfortune; yet pessimist is not the right term for him. +Realist he is clearly, in the philosophic sense of one who is +willing to view things as they are without prejudice. I seek a +term for a mild spirit who sees clearly that the sufferer is more +intelligible than his fate, and so is pitiful even when most +ruthless in the depiction of misfortune. Pity for the individual, +not despair of the race, is his motive. And pity makes his gentle +style, pity makes him regardless of artifice, and gives his often +clumsy novels an undercurrent which sweeps them beyond technical +masterpieces whose only merit is sharpness of thought. It is +instructive to compare the relative fortunes of Hardy and +Meredith, once always bracketed--the apostle of pity in comparison +with the most subtle and brilliant mind of his time. Hardy has +outranked him. + +Already it begins to appear that the inconsistent, half-conscious +Will that was the sum and substance of Hardy's pessimism was given +certain attributes of gloom that scarcely belonged to it. The +ruthless struggle for life by which the fittest for the +circumstances of the moment, and by no means the best, survive at +the expense of the others is no longer conceived as the clear law +of human life. Science, with the rediscovery of Mendelism and its +insistence upon psychological factors has submitted important +qualifications to this deduction which Hardy, in common with +others intellectually honest of his age, was forced to make. But +it is not Hardy's philosophy, sound or unsound, that counts in his +art? except in so far as it casts the plan of his stories, or +sometimes, as in "Tess," or "The Woodlanders," gives too much play +to cruel accident, and therefore an air of unreality to the tenser +moments of the plots. Our critical emphasis in the past has been +wrong. It should, to follow Hardy's own words, be set not upon the +idea, the suggested explanation of misfortune, but upon the living +creatures in his novels and poems alike. It is the characters he +wrought in pity, and, it would appear, in hope, that make him a +great man in our modern world, although only once did he pass +beyond the bounds of his primitive Wessex. The novelist of pity +and its poet, not the spokesman for pessimism, is the title I +solicit for him. + + + + +HENRY JAMES + + +It has always surprised Europeans that Henry James, the most +intellectual of modern novelists, should have been an American; +for most Europeans believe, as does Lowes Dickinson, that we are +an intelligent but an unintellectual race. Was the fact so +surprising after all? The most thoroughgoing pessimists come from +optimistic communities. Henry James, considered as a literary +phenomenon, represented a sensitive mind's reaction against the +obviousness of the life that one finds in most American "best +sellers." I suppose that he reacted too far. I feel sure of it +when he is so unobvious that I cannot understand him. And yet +every American writer must feel a little proud that there was one +of our race who could make the great refusal of popularity, sever, +with those intricate pen strokes of his, the bonds of interest +that might have held the "general reader," and write just as well +as he knew how. + +Whether his novels and short stories gained by this heroic +"highbrowism," is another question. Certainly they did not always +do so. To get a million of readers is no sure sign of greatness; +but to find only thousands, as did Henry James in his later books, +is to be deplored. In "Daisy Miller" and "The Bostonians" he was +a popular novelist of the best kind, a novelist who drew the best +people to be his readers. But men read "The Golden Bowl" and "The +Wings of the Dove" because they were skilful rather than because +they were interesting. They were novelists' novels, like the +professional matinees that "stars" give on Tuesday afternoons for +the benefit of rivals and imitators in art. + +But to stop here would be to misunderstand totally the greatest +craftsman that has come out of America. The flat truth is that +Henry James was not a novelist at all, at least in the good, old- +fashioned sense that we usually give to the word. He was primarily +a critic; the greatest American critic since Poe. Sometimes he +criticized literature with supreme success, as in his "Notes on +Novelists" of 1914; but ordinarily he criticized life. His later +novels are one-fifth story, one-fifth character creation, and the +rest pure criticism of life. + +There is a curious passage in his "A Small Boy and Others"-the +biography of the youth of William James and himself-telling how as +a child in the hotels and resorts of Europe he spent his time in +looking on at what was happening about him. He never got into the +game very far, because he preferred to think about it. That is +what Henry James did all his life long. He looked on, thought +about life with that wonderfully keen, and subtle, and humorous +mind of his, turned it into criticism; then fitted the results +with enough plot to make them move,--and there was a so-called +novel. Every one knows how in his last edition he rewrote some of +his early stories to make them more subtle. It would have been +amusing if he had seen fit to rewrite them altogether as critical +essays upon international life! I wonder how much they would have +suffered by the change. + +This is why so many readers have been very proud of Henry James, +and yet unable to defend him successfully against critics who +pulled out handfuls of serpentine sentences from his latest novel, +asking, "Do you call this fiction?" It was not fiction, not +fiction at least as she used to be written; it was subtle, +graceful, cunning analysis of life. Fiction is synthesis-- +building up, making a Becky Sharp, inventing a Meg Merrilies, +constructing a plot. Criticism is analysis--taking down, Henry +James was not so good at putting together as at taking to pieces. +He was able in one art, but in the other he was great. + +The current tendency to make every new figure in world literature +conform to Greatness of a recognized variety or be dismissed, is +unfortunate and misleading. We are to be congratulated that the +greatness of Henry James was of a peculiar and irregular kind, a +keen, inventing greatness, American in this if in nothing else. +Unnumbered writers of the day, of whom Mr. Kipling is not the +least eminent, have profited by his influence, and learned from +him to give the final, subtle thought its final form. If that form +in his own case was tortuous, intricate, difficult, why so was the +thought. If it makes hard reading, his subject at least got hard +thinking. Before you condemn that curious style of his-so easy to +parody, so hard to imitate--ask whether such refinement of +thought as his could be much more simply expressed. Sometimes he +could have been simpler, undoubtedly; it was his fault that he did +not care to be; but that "plain American" would usually have +served his purpose, is certainly false. + +Henry James must yield first honors as a novelist, it may be, to +others of his century if not of his generation. As a writer, above +all as a writer of fine, imaginative criticism of the intellect as +it moves through the complexities of modern civilization, he +yields to no one of our time. Whether he has earned his +distinction as an American writer I do not know, although I am +inclined to believe that he is more American than the critics +suspect; but as a master of English, and as a great figure in the +broad sweep of international English literature, his place is +secure. + +Samuel Butler's "Erewhon" has passed safely into the earthly +paradise of the so-called classics. It has been recommended by +distinguished men of letters, reprinted and far more widely read +than on its first appearance; it has passed, by quotation and +reference, into contemporary literature, and been taught in +college classes. "Erewhon Revisited," written thirty years after +"Erewhon," is less well known. + +Mr. Moreby Acklom (whose name, let me assure the suspicious +reader, is his own and not an Erewhonian inversion), in a most +informing preface to a new edition, makes two assertions which may +serve as my excuse for again endeavoring to explain the +fascination for our generation of the work of Samuel Butler. +College professors, he avers, have an antipathy for Samuel Butler; +the chief interest of Butler, he further states, was in theology. +Now I am a college professor without antipathy to Samuel Butler, +with, on the contrary, the warmest admiration for his sardonic +genius. And furthermore Butler's antipathy for college professors, +which is supposed to have drawn their fire in return, is based +upon a ruling passion far deeper than his accidental interest in +theology, a passion that gives the tone and also the key to the +best of his writings and which brought him into conflict with the +"vested interests" of his times. It is his passion for honest +thinking. If Butler's mark had been theology merely, his books +would have passed with the interest in his target. He would be as +difficult reading to-day as Swift in his "Tale of a Tub." + +Like most of the great satirists of the world, Butler's saeva +indignatio was aroused by the daily conflicts between reason and +stupidity, between candor and disingenuousness, with all their +mutations of hypocrisy, guile, deceit, and sham. In "Erewhon" it +was human unreason, as a clever youth sees it, that he was +attacking. We remember vividly the beautiful Erewhonians, who knew +disease to be sin, but believed vice to be only disease. We +remember the "straighteners" who gave moral medicine to the +ethically unwell, the musical banks, the hypothetical language, +the machines that threatened to master men, as in the war of 1914- +1918 and in the industrial system of to-day they have mastered men +and made them their slaves. There was a youthful vigor in +"Erewhon," a joyous negligence as to where the blow should fall, a +sense of not being responsible for the world the author flicked +with his lash, which saved the book from the condemnation that +would have been its fate had the Victorians taken it seriously. It +was an uneven book, beginning with vivid narrative in the best +tradition of Defoe, losing itself finally in difficult argument, +and cut short in mid-career. + +"Erewhon Revisited" is much better constructed. The old craftsman +has profited by his years of labor in the British Museum. He has a +story to tell, and tells it, weighting it with satire judiciously, +as a fisherman weights his set line. If his tale becomes unreal it +is only when he knows the author is ready to hear the author in +person. If the Erewhon of his first visit does not fit his new +conception he ruthlessly changes it. One misses the satiric _tours de +force_ of the first "Erewhon." There is nothing so brilliant as the +chapters on disease and machines which for fifty years since life has +been illustrating. But "Erewhon Revisited" is a finished book; it has +artistic unity. + +And why does Butler revisit Erewhon? Not because he was trained as +a priest and must have an excuse to rediscuss theology, although +the story of the book suggests this explanation. Higgs, the +mysterious stranger of "Erewhon," who escaped by a balloon, has +become a subject for myth. In Erewhon he is declared the child of +the sun. Miracles gather about the supreme miracle of his air-born +departure. His "Sayings," a mixture of Biblical quotation and +homely philosophy, strained through Erewhonian intellects, become +a new ethics and a new theology. His clothes are adopted for +national wear (although through uncertainty as to how to put them +on one part of the kingdom goes with buttons and pockets behind). +Sunchildism becomes the state religion. The musical banks, which +had been trading in stale idealism, take it over and get new life; +and the professors of Bridgeford, the intellectuals of the +kingdom, capitalize it, as we say to-day, and thus tighten their +grip on the public's mind and purse. + +Butler's purpose is transparent. It is not, as Longmans, who +refused the work, believed, to attack Christianity. It is rather +to expose the ease with which a good man and his message (Higgs +brought with him to Erewhon evangelical Christianity) can become +miraculous, can become an instrument for politics and a cause of +sham. Indeed, Butler says in so many words to the Anglicans of his +day: "Hold fast to your Christianity, for false as it is it is better +than what its enemies would substitute; but go easy with +the miraculous, the mythical, the ritualistic. These 'tamper with +the one sure and everlasting word of God revealed to us by human +experience.'" + +All this is permanent enough, but I cannot believe, as most +commentators do, that it is the heart of the book; or if it is the +heart of the book, it is not its fire. The satiric rage of Butler, +who in the person of Higgs returns to Erewhon to find himself +deified, does not fall upon the fanatic worshipers of the +sunchild, nor even upon the musical banks who have grown strong +through his cult. It kindles for the ridiculous Hanky and Panky, +professors respectively of worldly wisdom and worldly unwisdom at +Bridgeford, and hence, according to Mr. Acklom, the antipathy +toward Butler of all college professors. + +But it is not because they are professors that Butler hates Hanky +and Panky; it is because they represent that guaranteed authority +which in every civilization can and does exploit the passions and +the weaknesses of human nature for its own material welfare. +Butler had been conducting a lifelong warfare against scholars who +defended the _status quo_ of the church and against scientists who +were consolidating a strategic (and remunerative) position for +themselves in the universities. He saw, or thought he saw, English +religion milked for the benefit of Oxford and Cambridge graduates +needful of "livings"; and Darwinism and the new sciences generally +being swept into the maw of the same professionally intellectual +class. A free lance himself, with a table in the British Museum, some +books and a deficit instead of an income from his intellectual labors, +he attacked the vested interests of his world. + +He exposed the dangers which wait upon all miraculous religions, +the shams which they give birth to. But not because he was +obsessed with theology. If he had lived in the nineteen hundreds +he would have studied, I think, sociology and economics instead of +theology and biology. He would have attacked, in England, the +House of Lords instead of Oxford, and had an eye for the +intellectuals who are beginning to sway the mighty power of the +labor unions. He would have been a Radical-Conservative and voted +against both the British Labor party and the Coalition. In America +he would have lashed the trusts, execrated the Anti-Saloon League, +admired and been exasperated by Mr. Wilson, hated the Republican +party, and probably have voted for it lest worse follow its +defeat. He would have been, in short, a liberal of a species very +much needed just now in America, a bad party man, destructive +rather than constructive, no leader, but a satirist when, God +knows, we need one for the clearing of our mental atmosphere. + +And unless I am wrong throughout this brief analysis, Samuel +Butler, who mentally and spiritually is essentially our +contemporary, would not, if he were writing now, concern himself +with theology at all, but with the shams and unreasons which are +the vested tyrannies set over us to-day. Erewhon, when we last +hear of it, is about to become a modern colonial state. Its +concern is with an army and with economics. Chow-Bok, the savage, +now become a missionary bishop, is about to administer its +ecclesiastical system. Its spiritual problems no longer center +upon the validity of miraculous tradition and the logic of a +theological code. But the vested interests (represented by Pocus, +the son of Hanky) remain. These Butler would attack in the needed +fashion. These remain the enemy. + + + + +VII + +CONCLUSION + +DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE + + +I am well aware that literature or even such an inconsiderable +part of literature as this gay book on my desk or the poem on the +printed page, as a whole is indefinable. Every critic of +literature from Aristotle down has let some of it slip between his +fingers. If he describes the cunning form of a play or a story, +then the passion in it, or the mood behind it, eludes him. If he +defines the personality of the writer, the art which makes all the +difference between feeling and expression escapes definition. No +ten philosophers yet agree as to whether beauty is an absolute +quality, or simply an attribute of form, whether a poem is +beautiful because it suggests and approaches an archetype, or +whether it is beautiful because it perfectly expresses its +subject. + +And yet when the ambition to explain and describe and define +everything is humbly set aside there remains a good honest job for +the maker of definitions, and it is a job that can be done. I may +not be able to tell what art is, but I can tell what it isn't. I +may fail to make a formula for literature, but I can try at least +to tell what Thomas Hardy has chiefly accomplished, define +Conrad's essential quality, point out the nature of romantic +naturalism, and distinguish between sentiment and sentimentality. +And if such things were ever worth doing they are worth doing now. + +Only a prophet dares say that we are at the beginning of a great +creative period in the United States, but any open-eyed observer +can see that an era of American literary criticism is well under +way. The war, which confused and afterward dulled our thinking, +stirred innumerable critical impulses, which are coming to the +surface, some like bubbles and others like boils, but some as new +creations of the American intellect. The new generation has shown +itself acrimoniously critical. It slaps tradition and names its +novels and poetry as Adam named the animals in the garden, out of +its own imagination. The war shook it loose from convention, and +like a boy sent away to college, its first impulse is to disown +the Main Street that bore it. Youth of the 90's admired its elders +and imitated them unsuccessfully. Youth of the nineteen twenties +imitates France and Russia of the 70's, and contemporary England. +It may eventually do more than the 90's did with America; in the +meantime, while it flounders in the attempt to create, it is at +least highly critical. Furthermore, the social unrest, beginning +before the war and likely to outlast our time, has made us all +more critical of literature. Mark Twain's "Yankee in King Arthur's +Court" turned the milk of Tennyson's aristocratic "Idylls" sour. +The deep drawn undercurrent of socialistic thinking urges us +toward a new consideration of all earlier writing, to see what may +be its social significance. The "churl," the "hind," the +"peasant," the "first servant" and "second countryman," who were +the mere transitions of earlier stories now are central in +literature. They come with a challenge, and when we read +Galsworthy, Wells, Sinclair, Dreiser, Hardy's "The Dynasts," +Bennett--we are conscious of criticizing life as we read. The pale +cast of thought has sicklied modern pages. The more serious works +of art are also literary criticism. Again, there is the mingling +of the peoples, greatest of course in America. Our aliens used to +be subservient to the national tradition. They went about becoming +rich Americans and regarded the Anglo-American culture as a +natural phenomenon, like the climate, to which after a while they +would accustom themselves. Their children were born in it. But now +it is different. The Jews particularly, who keep an Oriental +insistence upon logic even longer than a racial appearance, have +passed the acquisitive stage and begin to throw off numerous +intellectuals, as much at home in English as their fellow +Americans, but critical of the American emotions, and the American +way of thinking, as only a brain formed by different traditions +can be. Soon the Mediterranean races domiciled here will pass into +literary expressiveness. It is as impossible that we should not +have criticism of the national tradition expressed in our +literature as that an international congress should agree upon +questions of ethics or religion. + +And of course the new internationalism, which is far more vigorous +than appears on the surface, favors such criticism. The war +brought America and Europe two thousand miles closer, and the +habit of interest in what Europeans are thinking, once acquired, +is not likely to be lost. No American writer of promise can hope +now to escape comparison with the literatures of Western Europe, +and comparison means a new impulse to criticism. + +Fundamental, creative criticism--like Sainte-Beuve's, Matthew +Arnold's, Walter Pater's, like Dryden's, Brunetiere's, De +Gourmont's, or Croce's--will presumably come. The conditions, both +of publication and of audience, are ripe for it now in the United +States. But there is a good deal of spade work in the study of +literature to be done first, and still more education of the +reading American mind. One reason why Lowell was not a great +critic was because his scholarship was defective, or, to put it +more fairly, because the scholarship of his contemporaries, with +whose knowledge he might have buttressed his own, was incomplete. +And if a twentieth century Sainte-Beuve should begin to write for +general American readers, it is doubtful whether they would accept +his premises. Says the intellectual, why _should_ he write for the +general public? I answer that if he writes for coteries only, if he is +disdainful of the intelligent multitude, he will never understand +_them,_ and so will not comprehend the national literature which it is +his function to stimulate, interpret, and guide. + +The spade work of criticism is research, investigation into the +facts of literature and into its social background. The scholar is +sometimes, but not often, a critic. He finds out what happened, +and often why it happened. He analyzes, but he does not usually +make a synthesis. He writes history, but he cannot prophesy, and +criticism is prophecy implied or direct. Few outside the +universities realize the magnitude of American research into +literature, even into American literature, which has been +relatively neglected. A thousand spades have been at work for a +generation. We are getting the facts, or we are learning how to +get them. + +But before we may expect great criticism we must educate our +public, and ourselves, in that clear vision of what is and what is +not, which from Aristotle down has been the preliminary to +criticism. A humble, but a useful, way to begin is by definition. + +I use definition in no pedantic sense. I mean, in general, logical +definition where the class or _genus_ of the thing to be +described--whether best-selling novel or sentimental tendency--is +first made clear, and then its _differentia,_ its differences +from the type analyzed out and assorted. But this process in +literature cannot be as formal as logic. Good literature cannot be +bound by formulas. Yet when a poem charged with hot emotion, or a +story that strays into new margins of experience, is caught and +held until one can compare it with others, see the curve on which +it is moving, guess its origin and its aim, forever after it +becomes easier to understand, more capable of being thought about +and appreciated. And when the current of taste of some new +generation that overflows conventions and washes forward, or +backward, into regions long unlaved, is viewed as a current, its +direction plotted, its force estimated, its quality compared, why +that is definition, and some good will come of it. + +Some general definition of that intellectual emotion which we call +good reading is especially needed in America. Most of us, if we +are native born, have been educated by a set of literary +conventions arranged in convenient categories. That is more or +less true of all literary education, but it is particularly true +in the United States, where the formal teaching of English +literature _per se_ began, where, as nowhere else in the +world, there was a great and growing population eager to become +literate and with no literary traditions behind it. The student +from a bookless home learned to think of his literature as +primarily something to be studied; the teacher who had to teach +thousands like him was forced to reduce living literature to dead +categories in order that a little of it at least should be taught. +Thousands of Americans, therefore, of our generation emerged from +their training with a set of literary definitions which they +assumed to be true and supposed to be culture. Only true +definitions of what literature really is can break up such +fossilized defining. + +On the other hand, that large proportion of our best reading +population which is not native in its traditions offers a +different but equally important problem. How can the son of a +Russian Jew, whose father lived in a Russian town, who himself has +been brought up in clamorous New York, understand Thoreau, let us +say, or John Muir, or Burroughs, or Willa Cather, without some +defining of the nature of the American environment and the +relation between thought and the soil? How is an intelligent +German-American, whose cultural tradition has been thoroughly +Teutonic, to make himself at home in a literature whose general +character, like its language, is English, without some defining of +the Anglo-American tradition? Lincoln must be defined for him; +Milton must be defined for him; most of all perhaps Franklin must +be defined for him. I have chosen elementary examples, but my +meaning should be sufficiently clear. + +And the American critic--by which I mean you, O discriminating +reader, as well as the professional who puts pen to paper--is +equally in need of the art of definition. The books we read and +write are on different planes of absolute excellence or +unworthiness. There is--to take the novel--the story well +calculated to pass a pleasant hour but able to pass nothing else; +there is the story with a good idea in it and worth reading for +the idea only; there is the story worthless as art but usefully +catching some current phase of experience; and there is the fine +novel which will stand any test for insight, skill, and truth. Now +it is folly to apply a single standard to all these types of +story. It can be done, naturally, but it accomplishes nothing +except to eliminate all but the shining best. That is a task for +history. In the year in which we live--and it is sometimes +necessary to remind the austerer critic that we always live in the +present--there are a hundred books, of poetry, of essays, of +biography, of fiction, which are by no means of the first rank and +yet are highly important, if only as news of what the world, in +our present, is thinking and feeling. They cannot be judged, all +of them, on the top plane of perfect excellence; and if we judge +them all on any other plane, good, better, best get inextricably +mixed. + +For example, consider once more a novel which at the moment of +this writing is a best-seller, and which with reference to its +popularity I have discussed in an earlier essay. I mean Mr. +Hutchinson's "If Winter Comes." This book is essentially the +tragedy of a good and honest soul thrown by harsh circumstance +into an environment which is bound to crush him. He has the wrong +wife, he has the wrong business associates, the girl he loves +is separated from him by moral barriers. If he breaks through these +he injures irreparably his own sense of what is due to his God and +his fellow man. His instincts of charity, humor, and love rebound +upon him. He is too Christian for England, and too guileless for +life. This is a worthy theme, and yet if we judge this novel on +the highest plane it fails miserably. For Mr. Hutchinson stacks +the cards. He gives his hero his way and his salvation, after much +suffering, by a series of lucky accidents. He destroys the problem +he creates, by forging an answer. + +But this novel should not be finally judged on the highest plane. +It is not a tragedy, it is a romance. It belongs on the plane +below, the plane of stories told to meet the secret desires of +humanity, which have little to do with reality, and are quite +oblivious to fact. On this plane "If Winter Comes" ranks highly, +for it is poignantly told, there is life in its characters, and +truth in the best of its scenes. Definition saves us from calling +a good novel great; it spares us the unnecessary error of calling +a good and readable story bad because it is not a triumph of +consistent art. + +It is hard enough in all conscience to see that a given book is +good for _this_ but not good for _that;_ may be praised for its plot, +but certainly has not character enough to get long life. But when the +difficulty of adjusting standards is increased by the irresponsible +hullabaloo of commercial appreciation, no wonder that sensible people +estimate foolishly, and critics of standing are induced to write for +publication remarks that some day will (or should) make them sick. For +the publishers' "blurb" confuses all standards. Every book is +superlative in everything. And the hack reviewer, when he likes a +book, likes everything and applies Shakespearian adjectives and +Tolstoyan attributes to creatures of dust and tinsel, or blunders +helplessly into dispraise of scholarship, restraint, subtlety, taste, +originality--anything that he does not understand. + +There is no help except to set books upon their planes and assort +them into their categories--which is merely to define them before +beginning to criticize. This is elementary work as I have said, +which may lead the critic only so far as the threshold, and cannot +always give the reader that complete and sympathetic comprehension +of what he has read which is the final object of literary +criticism. However, in an age when overemphasis has been +commercialized, and where the powerful forces of print can be +mobilized and sent charging everywhere to bowl down contrary +opinions, it is indispensable. + +Scholarly books have been dispraised because they were not +exciting; fine novels have been sneered at because they were hard +to read; cheap stories have been proclaimed great because they +wore a pretense of seriousness; sentimentality has been welcomed +because it was warm hearted; indecency has been condemned for +immorality; immorality has slipped through as romance; daring has +been mistaken for novelty; painstaking dulness, for careful art; +self-revelation, for world knowledge; pretty writing, for +literature; violence, for strength; and warped and unhealthy +egoism for the wise sincerity which is the soul of literature. In +all such instances definition is the prophylactic, and often the +cure. + +Writers, most of all, need to define their tasks. I do not mean +their technical problems merely, although I cannot conceive that a +dramatist or playwright, who has his subject well in mind, can +possibly be hurt by thinking out his methods with the most +scrupulous care. Lubbock's recent book on "The Craft of Fiction" +has emphasized an art of approach and point of view in the great +novelists which was thoroughly conscious, even though they may +never have tried to formulate it in words. I mean particularly the +defining of their themes, their objectives. Many modern novels of +the better class, and a great many modern poems, seem to me awash +and wallowing like derelicts on the high seas. They are successful +enough in this, excellent in that, but they get nowhere, because +the writers had felt the emotion that made them, or suffered the +experience, but never defined it in terms of all emotion, all +experience, never considered its end. The three dots...of modern +literature are significant. We break off our efforts, partly no +doubt because we seek effects of impressionism, more often because +imagination went no further. Near things are sharp and expressed +with remarkable vividness, ultimate objectives are blurred, which +is to say, they lack definition. + +May the shades of Dr. Johnson, Charles Lamb, Emerson, and all +great individualists protect us from bad definitions, and +especially from rigid or formal ones! Bad definitions destroy +themselves, for if they are thoroughly bad no one believes them, +and if they contain those pleasing half truths which a generation +loves to suckle upon, why then after their vogue they will wither +into nothingness. Such definitions are of the letter, and die by +it, but stiff, clumsy definitions kill the spirit. To define a +great man by a rigid formula is to sink to the lowest practice of +the worst class rooms. To define a tendency so sharply that it +cannot flow without breaking the definition, is a lecturer's trick +for which audiences should stone him. Solemn generalizations which +squat upon a book like an ostrich on a goose egg and hatch out +vast moral philosophies are to be dreaded like the devil, as are, +equally, the critics with pet theories, who, having defined them, +make everything from a squib to an epic fit their definition. + +Definitions which classify without margins are a special evil: the +division into literature and journalism for example, with no +allowance for interlocking; or the confident separation of all +books into categories of good or bad. Wholesale definitions are +also objectionable, where having defined a poem as magazine verse, +or a collection of articles as a magazine, or a book as a sex +story, or a man as a journalist, or a tendency as erratic or +erotic, you think you have said something. May the muse of clear +thinking, and the little humorous gods who keep the sense of +proportion balancing, protect us from these also. + +It occurs to me that I have made but a lame attempt to define +definition. This, however, is as it should be. For definition, in +the sense in which I am using it, like literature, has much of the +indefinable. It is a tool merely, or better still, because +broader, a device by which the things we enjoy and that profit us +may be placed in perspective, ranged, compared, sorted, and +distinguished. It is what Arnold meant by seeing steadily and +seeing whole. It is the scientist's microscope that defines +relationship, and equally the painter's brush that by a touch +reveals the hidden shapes of nature and the blend of colors. It +is, like these instruments, a _means_ and not an _end._ May pedants, +scholiasters, formalists, and dilettantes take to heart this final +description of literary definition! + +Quite unconsciously for the most part, but occasionally with +purpose aforethought, the essays in this book have been written as +literary definitions. Its unity lies in the attempt, which at +least has been sincere, to grasp, turn, study in a serious, +humorous, ironical, anything but a flippant mood, the living forms +of literature as they have risen into consciousness and challenged +definition. + +THE END. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DEFINITIONS *** + +This file should be named 6106.txt or 6106.zip + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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