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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Literary Discipline - -Author: John Erskine - -Release Date: August 21, 2020 [EBook #62991] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE *** - - - - -Produced by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - -THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE - - - - -OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN ERSKINE - - - THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE INTELLIGENT AND OTHER ESSAYS - - THE KINDS OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS - - DEMOCRACY AND IDEALS - - GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS (With W. P. Trent) - -_POETRY_ - - ACTÆON AND OTHER POEMS - - THE SHADOWED HOUR - - HEARTS ENDURING - - _A Play in one Scene_ - - COLLECTED POEMS 1907-1922 - - - - - THE - LITERARY DISCIPLINE - - BY - JOHN ERSKINE - _Professor of English at Columbia University_ - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - DUFFIELD & COMPANY - 1923 - - Copyright, 1922, by the - NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW - - Copyright, 1923, by - DUFFIELD & COMPANY - - _Printed in U. S. A._ - - - - -TO GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - PREFACE ix - - I. DECENCY IN LITERATURE 3 - - II. ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE 47 - - III. THE CULT OF THE NATURAL 91 - - IV. THE CULT OF THE CONTEMPORARY 137 - - V. THE CHARACTERS PROPER TO LITERATURE 187 - - - - -PREFACE - - -The following chapters were first published serially in _The North -American Review_, from November, 1922, to March, 1923. For their -reappearance in this volume I have made slight changes in them all, and -have inserted in the fourth chapter a few paragraphs written for _The -Bookman_ of July, 1922. The editors of both magazines have my thanks for -permission to reprint. - -The title of the book will disclose at once the critical theory -underlying these essays; they are studies in the discipline which -literature imposes on those who cultivate it as an art, and their -doctrine is that language as a medium of expression has certain -limitations which the writer must respect, and that the psychology of -his audience limits him also in what he may say, if he would gain a wide -hearing and keep it. To know what can be said in words, and what effect -it will have on your readers, is the inward art of writing, much more -important even than the management of a sentence or the shaping of a -paragraph. - -I write here of literature as an art. Since I mean to exclude, as not -art, many books of undoubted importance and of wide appeal, I must -attempt at least to defend a distinction that to certain readers will -seem arbitrary. A book may tell us of a life we already know about, or -of a life we as yet do not know; the pleasure it gives us will be of -recognition or of curiosity satisfied. Of course no books fall absolutely -into one or the other of such extremes, but it is fairly accurate to say -that every successful book does give us information, a new experience, or -brings back an old experience to recognize. Though both kinds of books -may be equally well written, we are inclined to ask only instruction -from the one kind, but permanent enjoyment from the other. One is a -document in history or sociology, in ethics or psychology; the other, -as I understand it, is a work of art. If our country has not proved a -favorable birth-place for literary works of art, the reason probably -lies in our history rather than in lack of able writers. Ours has always -been, and still is, an unknown land; the reader of American works has -primarily been looking for information about America. The early visitors -from Europe wrote us up for the enlightenment of their friends at home, -and since our world has changed rapidly, we still write up ourselves, -for our own enlightenment. The too brief flourishing of literature as an -art in New England was possible only because life there for one moment -in our history was so stable that a considerable body of readers had -much experience in common; having had their curiosity satisfied as to -their own life, they could recognize it and reflect upon the literary -portrait of it. But the New England moment in our literature proved an -exception, and we are so accustomed now to read novels and poems, not as -art, but as bulletins of information from the west, the northwest, the -middle west or the south, that we are losing the sense of living art in -the New England writers themselves, and are considering them more and -more as documents in a past civilization. Since we have so great need of -documents, I realize that I prejudice myself with many readers when I say -that my chief interest is in literature as art—in the books which reflect -the unchanging aspects of human experience, rather than in the reports of -our temporary condition. - -If literature in our country has suffered from our passion for -information, I believe it has also been damaged in our day by a bad -philosophy of esthetics which has encouraged the writer to think much of -himself and little of his audience. Literature is an art of expression, -we say in the old phrase, and it expresses life. But whose life? The -writer’s, of course, replies the philosophy I happen not to like. No; if -a book ever becomes famous, it is because it expresses the experience of -the reader. The writer’s personality will pervade it, but we must be able -to recognize ourselves in it before we can admit that it portrays life -truly. - -The function of criticism, as I understand it, is to discover, in the -past experience of the race, what books have won a secure place in men’s -affections, and to find out if possible why men have been permanently -fond of them. A great critic would be a scientist, observing the -behavior of the reader in the presence of certain stories or poems, -and recording the kind of effect produced by various arrangements of -character and plot, or by different employments of language. Such a -critic was Aristotle in the _Poetics_. The art of literature has never -had an observer more accurate or more penetrating, and those who return -constantly to his wise pages will understand why I have quoted him so -often, and often have drawn upon him for aid when I have not used his -name. - -I must record my gratitude to two living philosophers also, towers of -strength to those of us who love books as works of art—George Santayana -and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. The first has taught me through his -books—are any books more beautiful than his written in English today? The -second has enriched me with his daily companionship and with those spoken -words, grave or gay but always wise, which his friends and disciples -learn to save up for remembrance. - -And I have offered this book in my dedication to our one poet-critic -in America who has spent his genius in the service of literature as -art, and as art alone. I do not know whether what I have written will -be altogether acceptable to him, and if I put his honored name in the -forefront of my pages, it is not to shield me from deserved criticism. -But writing on this theme, I must bear witness to his leadership among -all in this country who in my lifetime have known how to prize the -immortal things in great books—imagination, ideal humanity, beauty, and -the kind of truth that is beauty. In a day when literary criticism has -been contentious and personal, more like a political campaign in a tough -ward than anything that Spenser or Sidney or Shelley would recognize as -a pilgrimage to wisdom, Mr. Woodberry has written nothing ungenerous or -harsh of new arrivals less scholarly, less gifted, less accomplished and -less chivalrous than himself. He has - - Let the younger and unskilled go by - To win his honour and to make his name. - -Indeed, more than anyone else among us, he has kept his faith that -youth, given time enough, will discover art as it will find out other -incarnations of beauty, and will achieve new miracles in its worship. -Twenty-five years ago he taught us to love the masters in poetry—no -easier thing to do for boys then than it is now. We have still to acquire -his hospitality toward the future, to look on with his good humor and -sympathy while the immature in the world of art, as elsewhere, try to -rearrange the universe, not knowing that it has been here for some time -and is set in its ways. - - J. E. - - - - -THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE - - - - -I - -DECENCY IN LITERATURE - - -I - -The quarrel with indecent art is an old one, and the present discussion -of improper books, with threats of censorship, begins to rally itself -in two familiar camps—on one side the moralists, showing in the heat of -debate less understanding of art than they probably have, and on the -other side the writers, showing in the same heat somewhat less concern -for morals than it is to be hoped they feel. The censorious seem disposed -to suppress on the ground of indecency almost any kind of book they -happen not to like; the writers seem at times to argue that all books -are equally good, or, at least, should be free and equal. These are the -old exaggerations of the quarrel. Yet in two important respects the -present discussion is quite novel and more than usually interesting; for -one thing, the attack now is less on obscenity, about which there are -no two opinions, than on indecency, of which we have at the moment no -adequate definition; for another thing, the writers themselves, perhaps -for the first time in history, have no definition of literary decency to -offer, and seem not greatly interested in forming one. - -Censorships are usually exercised for the protection of religious or -political doctrine, and whatever may be said against the method, at -least in the field of religion or politics the censor knows clearly -what he wishes to protect. But if we now would protect decency, we must -first define the term. It is not enough to have a moral conviction on -the subject; we must have also some principle outside of our emotional -prejudices, based on something more lasting than fashion. In the present -welter of contradictions and opprobrium it is sometimes thought indecent -to wear bobbed hair or short skirts; for the morals of the school, -teachers have been dismissed who rolled their stockings below the knee. -Obviously, these are not great faults in decency, if faults at all; a -good deal of camel must have been swallowed before justice could be done -to these gnats. Some of our neighbors wish to suppress certain plays; -others wish to suppress the theatre. Some wish to suppress Swinburne -and Baudelaire, with one hand as it were, while distributing with the -other copies of the Bible containing the _Song of Songs_. A minister of -this type, earnest in his work for decency and quite muddled as to what -it is, told me that he could not give his approval to the _Spoon River -Anthology_, brilliant though it was; he could approve of no book that -portrayed fornication. Yet he must have read the story of Lot’s daughters -and their behavior with their father. He approved of the Bible, and -he would probably not call it indecent. What is decency, then, or its -opposite? - -At this point the writers ought to stand up and answer. In other ages -they would have done so; they would have thought no one so competent -as the artist to define decency in his own field, and they would have -stated their definition from the point of view of art. They would have -called it “decorum” instead of “decency”, but they would have meant the -same thing—fitness or propriety in the particular art they practised. -When Milton made his famous plea on ethical grounds for freedom of the -press, he went on, as an artist, to say that of course there are good -and bad books, and when a book has had its chance, it must submit to the -judgment of the competent. He was writing in an age when the reader might -be expected to have some training in artistic definitions of decorum. -If books are to enjoy freedom of publication now, it seems incumbent -upon the writers to define the decency of their art, and to spread the -knowledge of the definition, as widely as possible, that the competent -reader of today may have a standard by which to judge. - - -II - -It ought to be possible now, as it once was, to define decency in terms -outside our emotions, not variable with our private taste but fixed in -the conditions of the artist’s work. When man is inspired by the world -he sees to make some lasting record of his feeling about it, and selects -a medium to express himself in,—wood, stone, metal, color, language,—he -immediately encounters certain problems and difficulties in his medium, -certain limitations in it which he must submit to, if he would convey -his meaning with precision. The limitations of his medium, therefore, -dictate to the artist his first lessons in decorum. For if you will not -respect those limitations, you will find yourself saying what you did -not intend; instead of beauty, you will convey some effect humorous or -grotesque or ugly. It is at least bearable to see actual garments on -the wax figures in shop-windows; we dress up dolls. But not even the -shop window could tolerate a marble statue with clothes on. When the -artist learns that some things, though excellent in themselves, do not -come out in his medium with the effect he desires, his good sense and -the sincerity of his art compel him to leave these subjects for other -mediums. The themes he thus abandons are not indecent in the sense of -obscenity or filth, not bad in themselves, but they do not fit his -art—or, as writers used to say, do not belong to its decorum. - -The decorum of art may seem to the moralist far less important than the -decency his own strong emotions feel after, but the moralist is wrong. -The decorum of art is the deeper kind of decency, for it is based on -lasting principles, and it leads to an understanding of the positive -good in art, to beauty, as the moralist’s concern for decency often does -not. You cannot explain on moral grounds why the glorification of the -body in Walt Whitman, let us say, is sometimes disconcerting, yet the -glorification of it in Greek sculpture seems not only decent but noble. -The artist could explain the matter if he understood the decorum of -artistic mediums. In so far as he does not understand it, he adds to the -confusion of the arts in our time; he fills our magazines, for example, -with photographs of Greek dances, and is himself, let us hope, disturbed -by the grotesque contortions he has perpetuated. The dance was probably -a graceful flow of motion; of all that flow, however, only a few moments -would be in the decorum of the camera—moments of poise, in which motion -might be suggested but not represented. But the photographer was charmed -by the moments of motion, which are the essence of dance decorum, and -he gives us a picture of grim-faced ladies suspended in the air, with -frantic gestures of fingers and toes. - -In literature, since the medium is language, decorum is a question of the -limitations and capacities of words. The great limitation of language -is that it must be heard or read one word at a time, though most of -the things we wish to speak of in this world should be thought of or -seen all at once, and their true outline and their total effect may be -dislocated by piecemeal expression. To represent in language a landscape -or a person, a building or any intellectual architecture, is, strictly -speaking, impossible; we can merely make statements, carefully selected, -about the subject, and trust that no matter how dismembered in the -telling, it will somehow come together again in the hearer’s mind, thanks -largely to the hearer’s imagination. Where the suggestion is so slight -and the collaboration so great, the writer is under some obligation to be -precise and conscientious in what he suggests. His responsibility might -perhaps seem less when he is telling a story; if language is inapt for -the portrayal of stationary things having mass, structure and extent, we -might suppose it better fitted to the representation of action, which -like language occurs in sequence of time. But even in the recital of -events, language has to name separately in an artificial order events -which actually coincide, and the reader’s imagination must put the -fragments together again. _“Indeed,” replied Mr. Jones_, or, _Mr. Jones -replied, “Indeed!”_ Neither formula quite represents what happened. In -life, when we heard the “Indeed!” the sound would tell us not only what -was said but also who said it. No wonder the poets have so often thought -of the drama as the most satisfying literary form, for when a play is -acted, words convey in it all that they can convey in life, and they -are aided, as in life, by other kinds of language—by gesture, facial -expression, scenery, which speak to the eye while the voice is speaking -to the ear. - -Because words must be spoken one after another, there are not only some -things which are hard to say in that medium, but others which in certain -circumstances should not be said at all. No matter how much we select the -sounds, our utterance will lay a fairly even emphasis on all the things -we name; therefore, if we wish to subordinate some part of the picture, -to pass over it with no emphasis at all, we cannot throw it into shadow, -as a painter can—we must leave it out altogether. A painter may portray -a face half in shadow, so that one ear is barely discernible; looking -at the picture you do not see the shadowed ear, and do not miss it. But -if some one tells you in words that the ear is in shadow, at once the -ear enjoys special emphasis, the opposite of the painter’s intention. Or -suppose the portrait is not shadowed, but all the features are clear; and -suppose the artist has focused your attention on the eyes, or has brought -out some characteristic expression. You can attend to the picture exactly -as you look at the subject in life—noticing what is important in it, but -not examining it otherwise in detail. The head has two ears, but you do -not count them. If, however, the writer describes the face as it is in -life, or as it is in the portrait, he may speak only of the chief focus -or expression of it; he must not say that the subject has two ears. If -he does so, he will be indecent in his art, and may seem to the original -of the portrait insulting in his manners. - -All literary accounts of the human body raise this problem, not a problem -of squeamishness or puritanism, but of decorum. The classical Greeks -seem to have mastered the question either by instinctive good taste or -by analysis, as they mastered so many other problems in art with which -we are only beginning to wrestle. They cannot be accused of prudishness -where the body is concerned; they loved its naked beauty, and in their -sculpture they portrayed it frankly, with a serious and unflagging -delight. Yet in their poetry they did not portray it; they merely noted -the total effect of physical beauty, and omitted details, as we should -omit the number of ears in the portrait. In the classical Homer, to be -sure, there remained even after much expurgating certain stereotyped -labels of the body; goddesses are “ox-eyed”, beautiful women are -“deep-bosomed.” But the phrases are so conventional that they probably -called up a general sense of approval, rather than a specific detail, -as the word “mortals” calls up to us the general idea of men, rather -than the fact of death. Aside from such phrases Homer and the other -classical poets suggest the body without detail, trying to render the -general effect the body makes in life—its femininity, its masculinity—at -the same time avoiding any such attention to anatomical detail as in -real life would seem, to the Greek and to us, morbid or clinical. The -sculptor, working in another medium, can use the details the poet must -omit; when we look at his Apollo or his Aphrodite we see not a naked -body but a divine presence. The effect of divinity is not furnished by -any anatomical member, nor interfered with by any. The body in detail -is before us, but the expression, the something divine we feel, is in -the attitude or the character. The wise poet, knowing the limitations -and dangers of his medium, tries to reproduce only the attitude or the -character. Later sculptors, in the decadence that followed the Periclean -age, deserted the decorum of their own medium, and called attention -to separate parts of the body—to ribs or veins, neck or breasts. In -literature a parallel decadence occurred; the poets tried to give the -effect of beauty, not in Homer’s way, by avoiding physical detail, but by -citing it. They managed to suggest not beauty but sex. - -The modern lover of beauty who quite properly wishes to restore the body -to its rightful honor and reverence, usually appeals to the Greeks for -his precedent. But if he wishes to celebrate the body in detail, he -should appeal not to the Greeks but to the poets of the Renaissance. -The praise of the body in the Renaissance is sometimes explained as -springing from a newly recovered delight in material beauty. It should -also be explained as a reaction, on the part of earnest, even puritanical -moralists, against other moralists who, they thought, viewed life but -partially and cramped the human soul. In our own language, Edmund Spenser -and John Milton led in this praise of beauty—moralists both; as in modern -times Walt Whitman led the praise, a moralist also, whether or not his -detractors admit it. But a moral purpose is a dangerous approach to -art, whether you are a critic or a poet. Whitman is perhaps the easiest -illustration to begin with. He felt that to the pure every part of the -body is sacred, and at its best is a thing of beauty. Had he been a -sculptor, he would have proceeded to make statues which probably would -have shocked nobody. Working in language, however, he mistook the decorum -of the art, and wrote as though he were sculptor or painter, and the -result is in those anatomical catalogues from which no beauty emerges, -whatever else does. He differs as widely as possible from Edmund Spenser -in most things, but in this one matter they are alike. Milton was too -close to the Greeks to go wrong, even with his moral impulse to assert -the honor of the body; his impassioned praise of wedded love, and his -remarks on the glory of nakedness when Adam and Eve first appear in his -epic, put no strain on literary decorum. But Spenser’s moral enthusiasm -for beauty leads to such physical inventories as his picture of Belphœbe, -in the second book of the _Faerie Queene_, or of his own bride, in -the _Amoretti_ and the _Epithalamium_—an accounting of eyes, teeth, -hair, neck, shoulders, breasts, waist, arms and legs. Many a critic has -suggested that his poems have the character of painting or of tapestry, -and had he actually worked in a pictorial medium, he would have made the -effect he desired. In his portrait of Serena naked among the savages, in -the sixth book of the _Faerie Queene_, he followed Homer’s method with -admirable success. No English poet is more spiritual than he—all the more -impressive the indecorum to which his moral earnestness occasionally -brought him, and all the more helpful his example ought to be to modern -beauty-lovers who fancy that the decorum of an art need not be studied -and obeyed. - -Through ignorance of decorum in language a moralist sometimes comes -to grief in the opposite direction; wishing to indicate indecency, -he sometimes through reticence stumbles upon the Homeric method and -portrays beauty instead. A while ago a minister of some name, an -aggressive defender of decency, preached a sermon on the dangers which -at the moment he saw threatening us from the arts. According to the -newspapers, he said that if certain theatrical managers could get it by -the police, we should have a show in which a naked woman in one scene -posed before a black velvet curtain. Wishing to touch the sulphurous -subject as gingerly as possible, he merely suggested the lovely contrast -of body and background; those of his congregation who had seen it forgot -their moral danger and remembered the Venus de Milo in the Louvre. It -occurred to some of them that this material might be indecorous in the -pulpit; in the theatre, however—well, they were not unwilling to see it, -if it was actually put on. - - -III - -The principle of literary decorum which applies to the representation -of the body applies also to the allied theme of sex. The body is a fit -subject for literature, but not in detail. Sex is a proper subject for -literature, so long as it is represented as a general force in life, and -particular instances of it are decent so long as they illustrate that -general force and turn our minds to it; but sexual actions are indecent -when they cease to illustrate the general fact of sex, and are studied -for their own sake; like the ears in the portrait, they then assume -an emphasis they do not deserve. This seems to be the decorum of the -theme as great writers have treated it, and this is the decorum which -men instinctively adopt in discussion, if they have not been trained -to think that all discussion of sex is naughty. People so trained will -call any book indecent which in any way touches the theme. When _Trilby_ -appeared years ago, many of us then youngsters were protected (in vain) -from the lovely story because Trilby had been somebody’s mistress before -the romance began. So to an earlier generation _The Scarlet Letter_ had -seemed dangerous because Hester Prynne’s child was illegitimate. But -neither book had physical passion for its theme, though the force of sex -in life, for good or evil, gave each story most of its interest and its -pathos. How indecent in the artistic sense, how indecorous, either book -might have been, we realize by supposing that Du Maurier had centred -attention on Trilby’s early and sordid affairs, before she met her true -love, or that Hawthorne had given us in detail the experiences of Hester -in Arthur Dimmesdale’s arms. One has an uneasy feeling that so the books -might have been written today; the general fact of sex and its influence -would not operate as a colossal force in the story, but would be deduced -in an argument or assumed as an hypothesis—modern specialists in sex are -so uncertain of its existence—and the focus would have been on the animal -behavior of human beings, which the hypothesis of sex would explain. -This kind of book is indecent, though it is usually too psychological in -manner to disturb the censorious, and entirely too frequent in recent -literature to suppress. - -We turn for relief to the decorum of great literature. “From the roof -David saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful to -look upon.” The painter might give the details of that beauty; the writer -could not. But he could continue: “And David sent and inquired after -the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, -the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers and took her, -and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; and she returned unto her -house. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am -with child. And David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite.” -So begins one of the greatest of stories from both points of view, -artistic and moral. Is it too frank for our taste? Would the minister who -described so well the naked woman and the black velvet, set this story -also before his congregation? He ought to, for it is a masterpiece of -decency. David’s passion, Bathsheba’s acceptance of it and her consequent -terror, were important only as beginning the spiritual tragedy; the old -writer names the facts and passes on to his great subject. To have -begun less frankly would have been to misrepresent life and spoil the -moral; to have elaborated the scene of David’s love-making would have -been indecent. In the same decorum the classical Greeks told their -stories; Helen eloped with Paris; Œdipus had children by his own mother; -Clytemnestra killed her husband and made her lover king—so much of the -fact is necessary in each case to understand the magnificent and tragic -consequences; but the Greek poets did not pry further into the details of -passion. - -There are, of course, unhealthy minds which have developed a mania -for obscenity, and at the other extreme of exaggeration there are the -unbalanced minds which do not care to admit the existence of sex. But -sex, in one form or another, is in the thoughts of most people most of -the time, and common folk—and the great poets—speak of it constantly, -and in the same way. In unsophisticated society, among sincere and -simple men, the references to sex are at once reticent and frank; it is -recognized and respected as gravitation might be or as the sea is by -sailors—as a power always immanent, in contact with which men may be lost -or saved. Gossip in that kind of society may whisper that such a girl had -a child by such a boy only a month after their wedding, or that so and -so is not really the son of his supposed father. Exactly this kind of -scandal furnishes material to Homer and to the old prophets in the Bible, -to Dante and to Shakespeare, for sex is one of the permanent sides of our -moral world. If this treatment of it is essential to a complete picture -of life, the thinness of American literature may well come from lack of -frankness; but current attempts to correct the thinness by dwelling on -physical details are seeking frankness in the wrong direction and are but -so many offenses against literary decorum. One reason why we cling with -such pride to _The Scarlet Letter_ is that with all its shortcomings as a -novel it bases its great moral vision on just such a complete and decent -observation of life as our books do not usually give us. - - -IV - -In this discussion of sex our attention has shifted from the problem of -language to the question of the general and the particular in art—that -is, from the principle of decorum involving the medium of literature -to the principle of decorum involving its subject-matter. This second -principle, rightly understood, marks the chief difference between -contemporary art and what some of us still believe was the great art -of the world hitherto—the best of the Greek, the best of the medieval. -When you look at life naturally, in the directions dictated by your -spontaneous impulses, it is your own life that seems important, your -private fortunes, your personal ambitions. Everything that belongs to -you seems peculiar, because it is not natural at first to compare the -lives of others with our own. A poet who presents experience from this -angle of individuality will always make a strong initial appeal and -perhaps a lasting one, since he falls in with our instincts, and this -accord will seem to us evidence of something profound. Such a poet, to -some extent, was Euripides, who imagined his characters sympathetically -from their private points of view, and portrayed for us the egotism of -human nature in its most tragic form. It is not fair to say that in -his world men and women need only to explain themselves in order to be -right; but, at least, after they have explained themselves it is hard -to tell who are right and who are wrong. Such another poet is Browning, -who represents human nature one individual at a time, always from the -individual’s point of view. By such a simple and primitive method he -obtains effects of obvious richness—he shows how varied life is, since -there are so many individuals in it, and how novel it perpetually must -be, since each of us is discovering the world for the first time, and -how much right there is in every man’s cause, once he has the chance -to speak for himself. If we had all the works of Euripides, we should -probably find in them as rich and varied a world as Browning’s, expressed -with clearer and more direct poetic genius. Our contemporary taste is -rather solidly for this kind of literature—Browning flourishes more and -more, and Euripides has been revived; and if you really approve of the -individualistic approach to art, it is hard to see how you can call -anything indecent. Anything that is natural to any kind of character must -get a hearing. - -But men can also be imaginative enough to look at life as a whole—first, -perhaps, to look out at all other men, and then to stand off and look -at all men, oneself included. When you begin to take an interest in -other men, you notice of course that their lives are not like yours, not -so important nor interesting nor promising, but in their drabness they -are all curiously alike; they all, with slight variation, are born, are -brought up, fall in love according to their lights, marry, earn their -living, have children, grow old, and die. When this uniformity begins -to interest you, you are making your first intelligent acquaintance -with life; and when you have looked at mankind and included yourself in -the picture, when you have admitted however reluctantly that the single -addition does not change the total effect, that life is still simple and -uniform and that you are less peculiar than you thought—then you have -seen yourself at last as one of the human race. - -To see this calls for imagination and for the Greek virtue which we -translate as magnanimity—great-mindedness. The virtue is not to be -acquired all at once. We have made a great advance when we can think of -life in terms not of ourselves but of moral and material aspects and -powers—in terms of youth and age, for example, of strength or beauty or -pride. This is the allegorical stage of our pilgrimage in wisdom, no mean -stage to reach, though it happens to be out of fashion just now. We are -acquainted with it in the old morality plays, especially in the almost -popular _Everyman_, and perhaps in Æschylus, especially in _Prometheus -Bound_. - -But our advance is greatest when we can recognize these aspects and -powers in the individuals around us—when our observation includes at -one and the same time the general truths of life and the particular -instances. The poet preëminently master of this sane wisdom was -Sophocles, who, in Arnold’s familiar phrase, saw life steadily and saw it -whole. The point of view which he represented is the most magnanimous, -the least egotistical, that art has yet taken, and one would have to -think meanly of the race to believe that we shall not return to it, -as to the noblest part of the Greek legacy. But Sophocles was only -the illustration of a decorum generally practised. In the brief and -magnificent period which left us our greatest perfection in the arts, -the Athenians thought of the individual as important if he illustrated -for the moment the general truths or fortunes of life, but his strictly -private fate was insignificant. - -This attitude has been explained by saying that the Greeks, having no -gift for introspection, took always an objective view of life, but such a -formula hardly accounts for all the illustrations of magnanimity. When -Athens was in her glory, for example, it was only the public buildings -that were glorious; no individual, not even Pericles himself, thought of -putting Phidias to decorate his private home. Again, in the _Antigone_ -Sophocles is introspective enough—as introspective as Euripides or Ibsen -himself—but the introspection is concerned with the general theme of -piety, of one’s duty to blood relations, not at all with the love story -of Antigone. She was betrothed to the son of the king who condemned her -to death, and the fact proves tragic for the son and for the king, but -the love of the two young people is their private business, and the poet -therefore does not let his heroine discuss the problem of piety from that -point of view. - -It was the genius of Shakespeare and of Molière, even in comedy, to -preserve the same decorum. They show us those aspects of man’s fortune -which are of interest to all men; of course we are free to fill in the -gaps according to our taste in gossip, but the dramatist awakens our -feelings and calls our attention only to general experiences and common -wisdom. In Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_ is a good example, a noble -tragedy and a decent play. It is less glorious than the _Antigone_, -obviously, since it shows human nature resisting temptation rather than -establishing an ideal, but the grimness of its subject and the fact -that it portrays an indecent character do not make it indecent, as some -critics think. Its power is its probing into general truths of life, -chiefly into the capriciousness of temptation where sex is concerned, and -into the various forms of the fear of death. - -Claudio, condemned to die and convinced that there is no hope, persuades -himself that he does not care to live; but immediately he has a chance -to live at the cost of his sister’s honor, and he finds himself slipping -into casuistry to make his escape possible even on such terms. Here is -introspection of the Sophoclean sort, touching the psychology not of a -particular man but of all of us. Walter Pater remarked the paradox that -Angelo is tempted to his fall by sight of the pure-minded Isabella, the -incarnation of virtue. He might have named other paradoxes of Isabella’s -influence. She fascinates all the men she meets, good or bad. At the end -of the play the Duke announces that he intends to marry her himself, -and since he gives her little opportunity to dispute this plan, we may -speculate how far his motives differ essentially from Angelo’s. But -Lucio, the wretch so steeped by habit in indecency that he can hardly -frame a clean sentence, is immediately and permanently sensitive -to Isabella’s beauty of soul as well as of body. Why? Shakespeare -merely exhibits the paradox, in his characteristic way, without hint -of explanation. But we may read a lesson in decorum, if we wish, in -the decency of art, from the first speech of Lucio to Isabella in the -nunnery, when the dirty-minded wretch, having none but coarse formulas in -his vocabulary, tries to address her with the reverence he feels. - - -V - -On all this the moralist may comment that decency as a matter of art is -one thing, and the protection of public morals is another; that however -artists may be interested in the decorum of their medium, or in the -general truth of their subject-matter, the public is also interested in -the motives and the possible effects of their writing. Granted; but if -the moral point is to be made, as against the artistic, the artist has -his own conclusions to draw. The first is that one may as reasonably -question the motives of the vice-suppressors as the motives of the -artists. Better not to question the motives of either, but if the mean -insinuation begins, it must in justice spread in both directions. The -woman before the velvet curtain, described by the preacher, seemed a -vision of loveliness; yes, you may say, but what would be the motives -of those who produce such an exhibition—worship of beauty, or wish to -capitalize our baser impulses? The question is unanswerable unless -you can see into men’s hearts, but it applies also to the minister -who preached the sermon; was he interested only in morals, or was -he capitalizing to some extent our craving for the sensational? An -artist would be content to answer that where the result is beautiful, -in the decorum of the art, it is sensible as well as kind to suppose -men’s motives of the best; and when the result is not beautiful, it is -sufficient to condemn the result, without reference to the motives. - -But the more actively censorious hold that the weak need to be saved from -themselves; that a constant brooding upon indecencies is the death of -the soul. Well, if it is obscenity that we war against, by all means root -it out, for it can be recognized at a glance, and the reformer need not -brood long upon it. But in the realm of art in which decency rises, the -suppression of indecency involves as much brooding on it by the reformer -as by the endangered public—in fact, the reformer must specialize in such -brooding. Whether or not it is to the death of his soul, it seems to be -to the impairment of his taste. You cannot give all your time to bad -art and know much about good. The rôle of the censor would take on some -dignity if there ever were a censor who was a connoisseur, who was the -patron of good poets and painters, who actively supported a clean stage. -But then, if you had the taste for the best, no inducement whatever would -make you give your life to the detection of indecency. - -Human nature is wiser in the long run than any censor; in the long run -the books of the highest decency hold their place in fame by crowding -out the others. The public suppresses indecent books by reading decent -ones. Every artist would respectfully suggest this method to all censors. -Perhaps the censors will say that the method is too slow—that it takes -too long for the good books to crowd out the others. It does take too -long now, but why not hasten the process by calling attention to the -good books, instead of delaying it by advertising the bad? If the energy -which now tries to suppress books sure to be forgotten in fifty years, -were directed to the encouragement of the few books which after fifty -years might still be worth reading, the final verdict of fame might be -hastened. But there seems to be a decorum in morals too, or perhaps two -decorums, a creative and a negative—one seeking to displace evil by a -positive good, the other too much preoccupied with the evil to notice the -good at all. - - - - -II - -ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE - - -I - -If we accept the doctrine of criticism today, originality is a great -virtue in a writer, and if we believe the book advertisements, all the -new writers as they appear, and as they reappear, have this virtue to a -striking, even to an explosive extent. But with all their originality, -some of the new books turn out to be dull, and if we reconsider for a -moment the books men have finally judged great, we observe that they were -rather destitute of the kind of originality we talk of nowadays. - -“In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea”, wrote the imagist some time -ago, defending the use of free verse. The doctrine was in the interest -of the cadence, but it implied something larger and more significant, -that in poetry newness of ideas is desirable. More recently, an American -critic remarked, in effect, that what Lytton Strachey has accomplished in -his literary portraits is nothing but what Gamaliel Bradford accomplished -in his, and since Mr. Bradford’s portraits came first, they should -have the credit and the praise which an undiscriminating world bestows -on Mr. Strachey’s. If the question of priority is raised in this kind -of writing, perhaps something should be said for Plutarch; but are we -sure we should raise the question of priority? What arrests us in the -remark of the American critic is the undebated assumption that literary -excellence derives from doing something before somebody else does it. Is -it the business of art to discover new ideas, or indeed to busy itself -much with any ideas, as separated from emotion and the other elements -of complete experience? Is it the originality of genius in art to say -something no one has ever thought of before, or to say something we all -recognize as important and true? As for the mere question of priority, -even stupid things have been said for a first time; do we wear the laurel -for being the first to say them? - -One suspects that the new cadence will persist in poetry only if we like -it, and that Mr. Bradford’s reputation will outstrip Mr. Strachey’s only -if we prefer what he wrote, and if by chance we care for neither, then -both will be neglected, though one preceded the other by a hundred years. -Excellence is the only originality that art considers. They understand -these things better in France. There the young poet even of the most -radical school will respect the bias of art towards continuity rather -than toward novelty, toward the climax of a tradition rather than its -beginning; his formula of self-confidence will be, “Victor Hugo was a -great poet, Alfred de Musset was a great poet, and now at last I’m here.” -But in America the parallel gospel is, “Poor Tennyson couldn’t write, nor -Longfellow, of course; now for the first time let’s have some poetry.” - -The writers finally judged great, so far from sharing our present concern -for originality, would probably not even understand it. What is the -object of literature? they would ask. Of course, if it is to portray the -individual rather than human nature, or those aspects of life which stand -apart from life in general, then each book may have something queer in -it, something not in any other book and in that sense original; but then -the reader, before long, will be looking for peculiarity in every book -he buys—it must be, not better, but “different”, to use an American -term in esthetics; and the writer then who would meet this demand for -the peculiar must make a fresh start with every book. What bad luck, -they would say, to be forever a primitive, to be condemned, after every -success, to produce something in another vein, the first of its kind. -Originality in this sense will be continually undermined by fame, for -the more an author is read, and the more people become accustomed to his -world, the less he will seem original. On the other hand, if the reader -looks for originality, there will be no fame, for no matter how popular -an author is, we shall read his book only once, and then be waiting for -his next novelty. - -But if the object of literature is still, as it was for the great -writers, to portray human nature, then the only new thing the artist -will look for is a greater success in his art. Human nature is old and -unchangeable; he will hope to make a better portrait than has yet been -made—better, at any rate, for his own people and his own age, and if -possible better absolutely. There is nothing new about religion or love -or friendship, war, sunsets, the sea, danger or death, yet something -remains to be told of each eternal theme, and when a book comes which -tells the whole, which satisfies some hitherto unexpressed yearnings or -defines more sharply something hitherto half-seen, then that portrait of -human nature serves our purposes until we have a still finer, and other -versions meanwhile are neglected and forgotten. We remember how many -accounts of Romeo and Juliet there were before Shakespeare told the story -to suit us, and how many records of the journey to hell before Dante told -us the whole truth of that pilgrimage; perhaps we know the many desperate -attempts, long since mercifully swallowed up in oblivion, to portray the -American Indian before Fenimore Cooper made the picture the world wanted. -The achievements of literature are all, as in these instances, a gradual -reworking of traditional or popular or folk material, and in the process -it is precisely because the subject is not original that the audience can -decide how well it has been portrayed. A sequence of writers interpreting -Life are therefore like a succession of virtuosos playing the classics, -each trying to give us the true Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann. Their -renderings will be different enough, but the music is the same, and we -know it by heart. The player who calls our attention to most beauty in -it, will be original or unique in the only way that art permits. - -The example of the musician may not seem to all writers a fair parallel; -they may protest that the writer creates, as the composer does, but the -player only interprets what is already created. But they are wrong, and -the parallel is correct. The writer does not create as the composer does. -Music is an ultimate pleasure in itself, like the taste of sugar; so long -as it delights us, we do not ask what it means. Moreover, since there -is no question of its meaning, we may not need a previous experience to -find some enjoyment in it; it may be satisfactory at first contact. Of -course every art gives a more subtle pleasure as we become practised in -appreciating it, yet the contrast between music and literature remains -a real one, since without any knowledge of life at all men and even -children often penetrate deeply into the heart of music, but without some -knowledge of life they are stopped at the very threshold of literature. -The key to that door is some first-hand acquaintance with life. Music -has no other subject-matter than itself, but literature has life for -its content, and to find one’s way about in it, we must recognize what -it is dealing with. Life is a music already composed. It has been here -a long time, and had become already an ancient history when the first -poets began to play upon it. They merely said for us the things we had -been vainly feeling after, they brought out the colors our eyes had -almost missed, they defined sharply the flavors and the half tastes that -had haunted us. The amateurs in the audience listen spellbound when the -master plays to perfection a piece they have struggled with; this is more -to them than the loveliest of new sonatas, for it is their own world in a -better light. So mankind will listen to the authentic poet who completes -their half-realized selves; and will say of him, somewhat with the woman -of Samaria, “He told me all the things that ever I did.” - -If the audience enjoy the music best when they have tried to play it -themselves, they love it next best when they have heard it often, and -they like it least, sometimes not at all, when they hear it for the first -time. The reader likes poetry best when he has lived what it interprets; -next best when he has heard often of the adventures it renders; least, -even to the point of detestation, when he never entered that region of -life at all, not even by hearsay. In such a predicament the real ground -of his objection to the art is that it is original, at least so far as he -is concerned, but the experience of his discomfort will hide the cause of -it from him; not himself but the art will seem to him inadequate—is he -not as much alive as any one ever was? The book, he will say, portrays a -world that is dead. Let us start fresh and be original; let us portray my -world. - - -II - -In the slow fermentation of human societies, as fresh elements work -their way to the top and for a time give their flavor to history, the -new arrival is likely to herald himself in some such terms in a protest -against the art which, because he has as yet no share in it, seems to -him old and worn out, and in a cry for original expression which to -those with a longer memory of the world will be quite familiar. There -have been new arrivals before, and their wish to start fresh is the -cause rather than the result of decadence. For it is only in a figure -of speech that art declines or prospers—it is the artists who are less -competent or more so than their predecessors, and the poet who tells us -that the period before him is at an end, is really proclaiming that he -cannot improve upon it, and if the other poets are like himself, the -preceding period is indeed ended. There is no other reason why the great -moments of literature were not prolonged. Shakespeare was better than his -predecessors, but he was not perfection; why did not the drama continue -to develop? Ben Jonson, being himself a new arrival, and being, for -all his book learning, outside the spiritual regions which Elizabethan -drama had mainly portrayed, thought of course that a new kind of art was -needed. He is in danger now of sharing the ignominy of all writers who -coming after greater men pay homage through jealousy. Tennyson was not -the greatest of poets; why did not his successors treat him as though he -were a Greene or a Marlowe, and make Shakespearean improvements in him? -To hear the critics of today rail against his art, one might suppose he -had hopelessly damaged the language by using it, or that rhyme and meter -had come to a bad end at his hands. The poet who talks this way about his -predecessors is never the one who is conscious of the power to swallow -them up. If Shakespeare had been a little man, he would have taken one -look at Marlowe’s _Faustus_, and given up the Elizabethan drama as a -creaking and antiquated machine for moral doctrine. Had he been really -ignorant of the long-stored-up energies and impulses which were coming to -action in his marvellous hour, had he lacked the instinct to recognize -them even when badly expressed, and to express them better, he might have -walked the streets of London as the oriental arrival walked in Athens, -or as the invader from the north walked in Rome—with a conviction that -the day of this sort of thing was over. Nothing would remain but to be -original. - -If the clamor for originality is strong in the United States, it -is, perhaps, because here are many arrivals, and the newcomer not -infrequently desires us to change our ways in the interest of his -comfort. We have so much good will toward him, and we are so conscious -of the fine things the various races may bring to our commonwealth, that -we usually hesitate to speak frankly of his qualifications as writer -or critic. He often brings a rare aptitude for art, and frequently he -desires to write, but writing is the one art where his ignorance of life -will handicap him. In painting an eye for color, in music an ear for tone -and harmony, may carry him through, but in literature he will write in an -acquired language, and even if it were his native tongue, in literature -his attitude toward the art will be conditioned by his knowledge of -life. He will perhaps assert rather vigorously that his knowledge is -superior; has he not borne hardships and risen above them? Those who -have not suffered, he will say, know nothing of life. He will think you -cold-blooded if you tell him the better way to say it—that those who -have not suffered, know nothing of suffering. If he desires to write -the literature of suffering, he is probably competent, but since he is -usually a person of strong energy, with a constructive temperament, he -does not wish to write merely the literature of suffering, nor does he -usually wish his children to repeat his hardship, though he may have said -that only by such discipline comes knowledge. He usually desires to write -about the world in general, as every one would write, and for this task -he usually has had experience too meagre or too special. It is only in -the United States, after his arrival, that he most often makes his first -contact with the older literature—not of America but of his own land; -if he has had the experience necessary for understanding it, he absorbs -it eagerly, but if his hardships in his fatherland deprived him of the -necessary equipment, he will announce that the old literature is played -out and meaningless. He is like the native students in South African -schools, who may read the skating episode in Wordsworth’s _Prelude_, but -cannot get the shiver of the ice or the scratch of the steel runners. -Those who have been with us for several generations and who through -economic or other causes have missed that rich acquaintance with life -which would explain what the great writers talk about, are likely to join -the most recent comer in a plea for originality. Their fortunes are to -be pitied, but their advice in art is hardly to be followed. No amount -of sympathy or admiration for them as human beings will accredit them -as critics, for art is long, as we have heard, and the approaches to it -are long also; though we may teach democracy fast enough to win our vote -after five years, we must know at first-hand youth and maturity, and have -a suspicion of what old age is like, in the world the poet writes of, -before we can give a fair opinion whether he has written well. But if the -newcomer recovers here the adventure of life which his hardships cheated -him of in the old country, he will find that the great literature of the -world represents that adventure faithfully and vitally; it is merely a -question of patience with him, since he is energetic and the upturn of -the new world is exciting, and it is hard for him to believe that the old -shadows in art of a life he has not yet lived will ever again take living -form or pulse again in his imagination. - -A new world, a new life, a new art. This is the sequence his hopes dwell -on, though every term in it is debatable. Is there a new world, or a -new life, or a new art? Sometimes we are told that in a new world life -must automatically be new, but the doctrine is not convincing, for at -other times we are summoned to originality, as to another duty, by the -argument that in a new world we ought to be ashamed to lead still an old -life. Sometimes we hear that a new life inevitably means a new art, and -we reflect that if life now differs from what it once was, we need take -no thought for our originality, for we shall be different in spite of -ourselves; even by the old methods art will achieve something new; if we -would write of love, for example, we need only tell the truth about the -passion as we know it, and since the love we know is like nothing that -ever was on sea or land, our romance will be like nothing that ever was -in song or story. Why all this fret about it? And if religion and war -and sorrow and death are all by hypothesis quite other than they once -were, how can we escape originality when we report them in the setting -of the new world and the new life? But the fact is that those who call -for originality in art are not quite sure, after all, that the age is -a new one—they would feel safer if some further vestiges of the past -could be obliterated; and though they justify a new art by speaking much -of their new life, it is far from clear that they really think life -is new, or at heart desire it to be so. Social and political systems, -yes—but life? Horrible indeed is the vision of an absolutely original -career for one who loves his fellows and prefers to take his experience -outside a madhouse. “Your prayer is answered,” says the original Apollo, -touching the original poet’s ears, trembling with originality: “you will -have always a new cadence and a new idea; neither the language nor the -substance of your communications will ever have occurred before in human -experience. Your art will be unique and solitary. Nothing that men have -done before will you condescend to repeat—neither to sleep, nor to eat, -nor to travel, nor to know passion, pain, suffering or peace.” The poet, -lured by the prophecy, might think at last that he had achieved fame, but -Apollo would be there to remind him that his was like no fame achieved -before—not like Shelley’s or Shakespeare’s. He might lose his heart, and -in the throes of love might fancy he knew at last the meaning of Romeo’s -story or Tristram’s, but the god would remind him that his was a special -kind of love, not like the very ancient impulse that moved the sun and -the other stars. - -We need some divine reminder that our true desire is to realize in -ourselves the best of old experience—not to find an original life, but -to bring on the stage once more as far as possible the old procession -of passions, sorrows and delights. The latest of us hopes he is not too -late to taste for himself the high flavor of life which those before him -talked so much about. If falling in love is a business incidental to -adolescence, yet it is immensely hastened by our reading and by what we -have heard; those whom the passion does not touch usually worry about -their immunity instead of being thankful for it, and anything is better -than never to have loved at all. It is not passion entirely that fills -the hearts of the lovers brought at last to each other’s arms; at least, -the single thought with which the two hearts beat may be a triumphant -“Now I know for myself.” Similarly, however strange it may seem, we -welcome sorrow and suffering, or we feel ourselves cheated rather than -blest if none of it comes our way. Death, too, is less unwelcome than it -might fairly be. At least those who faced it and have been reprieved, -often remember that a satisfaction in knowing the worst took some of the -terror away. There it was at last, the old shadow that waylays us all. - -Desiring to discover for ourselves the well known and traditional -experience, we desire at the same time a more excellent version of it -than our predecessors have enjoyed. We would love as Romeo did, but -we like to think that Romeo never loved so well, and ours is a more -wonderful Juliet. Even our sorrows will be greater, if we have our -way, for in the intensity with which we explore the old experiences we -feel rightly that we ought to equal or surpass other men. We dread the -operation for appendicitis, before we undergo it; then we reach the -point of satisfaction in finding out for ourselves what the operation -is like; then finally we are persuaded that the operation was unusually -severe, the worst of its kind. This is the artist in us, trying for -distinction. And if with the old material of life we seek the distinction -of excellence of statement, our motive is not simply a desire to surpass -others, nor a desire to indicate progress, but often it is the hope to -report the experience once for all. Art has always a dying part in it, -as artists well know—some part which must constantly be restored by -restatement. Try as he may to express only permanent things, the artist -will include something that is aside from the main purpose, that goes out -of date. Of course if an artist deliberately strives to be contemporary, -and succeeds, his work to that extent will shortly become unintelligible; -later poets will then try their hand at refurbishing or restoring the -essential thing in the picture, and incidentally, without meaning -to, they will include some contemporary and insignificant material of -their own, which in time may precipitate another revision. What we call -classics are the lucky masterpieces in which the permanent elements are -so many and the transitory so few, that it seems useless and impertinent -to revise them. - - -III - -The desire for originality is not new, and explanations of it are -old. Some of them are based on the supposed working of the artistic -temperament. The artist, it is said, craves expression at all costs, -and if the craving is not satisfied in one direction, it will reach in -another. If we cannot pour all of our energy into our painting or our -music, we may express the surplus in long hair and flowing cravat. This -explanation, even if it were true, would imply that the artist desires -notoriety rather than expression, for you cannot express yourself unless -you speak a language your audience already knows, but eccentricity, -which is the extreme form of originality, will attract attention even -if it is not understood. But artists are not likely to admit that this -theory does justice to their temperament. They will remark that few of -the greatest masters have been eccentric in their appearance, none of -them in their subject-matter. Like other men they fitted the society in -which their lot fell, except that they had a genius for feeling life more -vitally than other men. So many of them, like Chaucer or Shakespeare or -Scott, cultivated the art of living close to their fellows and sharing -an average fate, that we half suspect the less gifted would do the same -if they could; for the artist who is original in dress or manners is not -likely to meet human nature in its normal state—rather, his neighbors -will whisper when he appears, and nudge each other, and he will never -see what manners they use toward those who are not queer. Poets with -an original or eccentric subject-matter meet the same fate. Could Poe -or Baudelaire learn anything about us if they came among us with a -reputation for the abnormal? Would we not unconsciously close to them -our usual impulses, in our curiosity to observe their strangeness? To -the artist who loves life in the sane way of a Chaucer, a Montaigne, a -Molière, such a welcome would be calamitous; rather hide anything that -distinguishes him from others, even the fact that he can write, if by -this caution he may draw closer to his sensitive race, and observe the -undisturbed mystery and beauty of natural life. - -Indeed, the whole question of originality, this desire for novelty, is -in the end a question of our love of life. In the moments when we love -life passionately we are not likely to get too much of it, and we do not -ask to exchange it for another kind. When art and politics were creative, -in the heyday of writers, painters, architects and statesmen who later -seem to us almost solitary in their excellence, there was still no taking -thought to be original; they fell in love, rather, with the obvious. -Columbus made no voyage in search of originality—simply there had been -too many hints and rumors for him to stay at home any longer. Some very -original spirits, we may suppose, took no stock in his expedition. For -Shakespeare or Molière play-writing was an obvious task, and an old one; -they may have expected to do successfully what others had only tried, but -except for the success they aimed at nothing new. Where great poets have -spoken on the matter themselves, their point of view is quite clear. At -the end of the _Vita Nuova_ Dante announced his hope to write of Beatrice -such things as had never been written of any woman. Not to write a new -kind of book, for women had been praised before, as he implied, and -there had been poems of vision and pilgrimages through hell; but his -hope was to excel. He determined to speak no more of his blessed lady -until he could praise her worthily, and to praise such a woman worthily -would be to write such things as had been written of no other. In the -same mood Milton promised his great epic—in passionate love of the best -before him, and in the assurance of doing as well or better—“I began -thus to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and -not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me, that by -labour and intense study, which I take to be my portion in this life, -joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might leave something so -written to after-times as they should not willingly let it die.” This is -the great manner of the poets. But in the opening words of Rousseau’s -_Confessions_, to take an opposite example, we have the accent of the -modern disease; he would undertake, he said, an enterprise of which there -had never been a parallel, and of which there would be no imitation—he -would tell the truth about one man, about himself. He promised no -excellence except the uniqueness of the subject, for truth-telling, -though always desirable, can hardly be important unless the subject is -worth while. - -Rousseau’s book is great in spite of its introductory sentence; his -subject after all was not unique, for each of us can follow his example -and write at least one book about ourselves; and perhaps he told less -of the unvarnished truth than he intended, for being an artist in -every fiber of his body, he selected from his experience not his most -singular adventures, but his adventures in those realms of experience—in -sex, for example—which his readers were surest to understand and find -interesting. But with his famous announcement, whether or not he followed -it, our malady began. Hence all the poems and novels of autobiography, -all the diaries of young men and maidens, old men and children, all the -bouquets of verse still showered upon us in which the poet confides his -intimate symptoms. In all this there is little to remind us of great -art, or of the times in which great art has been made; the resemblance -is rather to a hospital or an old folks’ home, where the inmates find -importance in the fact that they have been there longer than their -fellows, or are younger, or a little less blind and deaf. Hence also -our difficulty in understanding earlier literature, of a date when not -originality but excellence was the aim. When we first read Shakespeare’s -sonnets or Sidney’s, we conclude with satisfaction that the poet was -writing out of his heart, in the Rousseau fashion. But when we learn -that these stories are works of art, dramatic renderings of life, and -that the “I” who speaks in the lines is first of all the hero of the -story, whether or not he is the poet too; and when we learn further that -much of the material is adapted from earlier poets, used over again as -we use old words to make up new sentences—then perhaps our respect for -the master vanishes, our ideal is cracked; they were not such original -poets after all. It is the defect of our taste. We forget that the oldest -phrases, if they have the poetic excellence of being true to all of us, -are renewed and become personal in the adventure of each individual. -Though Job ought to get the credit, by all modern standards, of uttering -that very original profession of faith, “I know that my redeemer liveth”, -yet the words were too full of possible meanings to remain linked with -Job’s private misfortunes; being already immortal, they seem never to -have been said for a first time. Lover after lover has found in his -own passion the meaning of some old song, perhaps “My love is like the -red, red rose”, which until the passion fell on him seemed sentimental -and silly. And Rousseau himself in the _Confessions_, at the very -outset of his egotism, of his originality, of his indecorous opposing -of the individual to the race, records his boyhood love of an old -folk-song—precisely the kind of art from which his doctrine led us away. - -But nowadays the desire for originality comes not only from the writer; -a certain class of readers also demand it, the kind of person who reads -with an eye out for imitations and plagiarisms. That plot has been used -before, he says, when two men are in love with the same woman—or, that -character is copied from so-and-so, when Pierrot’s father forgives the -returning prodigal. There are reviewers of this type also, who read -their victims into categories, calling this poet Tennysonian, that -novelist Meredithian, that essayist Emersonian. Such categories become -less definite as we read back into the past, for over the range of a few -centuries no plot is new, nor does any writer seem altogether unlike the -others. There is such a thing as plagiarism, yet unless one is a fanatic -for originality, the question of plagiarism is of no great importance; -the world is not interested, and if the author is concerned from whom -the play or the plot is stolen, his concern is more for his property -than for his art. If his work is stolen unchanged, it is still as good -art as it was before; if the thief has mangled it, his plagiarized -version will not be so good as the authentic text; but if by luck he -has improved on what he took, it becomes his, bag and baggage, so far -as fame is concerned. Who were the authors of those songs Burns made -over into his masterpieces? Who were those dramatists and chroniclers -whom Shakespeare rewrote? The names in many cases can be looked up, but -they are of no account. The world feels that the great writer conferred -a benefit by improving on the earlier work. What is far more important, -the world also feels that the great writer, in improving on another man’s -work, actually invaded no private rights, for the material of literature -is life, and life is no one’s private property. After the invention of -printing, writers saw the possibility of financial dividends from their -works, and plagiarism is an aspect of this financial question, but it has -otherwise nothing to do with art. The world in general continues to think -of art in the old way, as creation rather than as business, and it quite -properly cares little who does the creating, or who afterward receives a -money reward. What were Homer’s annual earnings? Or was it really Homer? -Or who besides David wrote his psalms? We know instinctively that these -questions are trivial. - -But imitation in art is often more apparent than real. If a poet is in -touch with his age, he will write of the subjects that interest him, and -other poets in touch with the age will also write about what interests -them, and consequently they may all write of much the same thing; they -are not imitating each other, but they are enjoying a common pleasure, to -which one of them may have shown the way. We often say that the popular -writer is trying to catch the favor of the public by giving it what -it likes, and in some instances he may be calculating and his motives -unworthy. But it is more probable that being typical of his age, he -simply likes the same things as his fellows. The Elizabethan Londoner -liked historical plays; did Shakespeare write them only to please his -audience, or rather did he not share the general taste? The principle -here implied will explain why any poets who have an enormous popularity -will have also an enormous so-called influence. They are popular because -they share the people’s taste, and the people therefore find in their -work what they like; but if their subject-matter is so popular, many -others will be writing of it too. The resulting resemblance is not really -an influence, or rarely is; it is a contemporary tendency. The poet who -is best in the lot will be remembered. All ran, but one receives the -prize. However, those who came in second and third are neither imitators -nor plagiarists. - - -IV - -To submit oneself to the impersonal discipline of art is hard for -the young. Few young writers are lured into the profession by the -impossibility of being original in their craft, or by the excellent -chance their best works have of becoming anonymous with time. We can -imagine them pleading for the rights of their personalities; what on -earth did the old pagan mean by his proud _non omnis moriar_, if his -personality was not to survive in his work? For their comfort let us add -that personality in art is indestructible. If we have any of it, it will -live. And if we mean personality when we say originality, thinking of the -author rather than of his subject, then we may add also that genuine -personality is original in spite of itself. How hard it is to tell a -story twice the same way; how difficult to form anything permanent, even -habits; how impossible to get once for all into a rut. A dull lecture, -though we hear it a second time word for word, is subtly changed, for we -no longer hear it the first time, and “afflictions induce callosities”, -as Sir Thomas Browne said, and “sorrows destroy us or themselves.” The -record we buy for our phonograph, though we liked it at first, may empty -itself with each repetition, till the charm is gone; even the photograph -of our dear ones, framed on the wall, has a tendency at last to merge -itself in the wall paper. Whatever is repeated in our consciousness -becomes mechanical and unnoticed, or the edge of it is blunted. To -restore the sharp edges of impression, to bring back the first flavor -of things, is the ideal of life and of art; only strong personality -can do it, but where such a personality comes, it is irresistible and -undisguisable. It shows up best in those attitudes of life which in other -hands have grown drab and sordid; the contrast brings out the genius. -This kind of success in life is the art of the actor who plays a long -run, and who gives even in the one hundredth performance the impression -of a fresh experience. A poorer actor would have needed a new play long -before. Or we might say that art is a summary of life—and where will -personality show itself sooner than in summarizing? When Lafcadio Hearn -lectured to his Japanese students, he followed the reading of each -English poem by a brief paraphrase in prose, which usually is the most -precious part of his criticism; for in the retelling, his personality -emphasized what he liked in the verses. If we could ask Tennyson, Morris, -Browning, Arnold and Meredith each to write out a summary of something -we all know, we should have five criticisms, and five revelations of -personality. And there are more personalities in the world than we may -realize; only they waste themselves in the search for the original, when -all that is needed is to be sincere. - - - - -III - -THE CULT OF THE NATURAL - - -I - -It belongs with the confusion of esthetics in our time that the same -people who ask art to be original often ask it to be natural. Being -natural would appear at first sight the least original of programmes. -Even if by originality we mean personality, yet there still seems -some contradiction in the wish at one and the same time to develop a -strong personality and to remain in a state of nature. Since it is -the thoroughbred, not the wild animal, that is distinguished from his -fellows, and the cultivated bloom, not the field flower, that charms by -its single self rather than in quantity, a condition of impulse close -to the unsifted accidents of life would seem to promise an art notable -chiefly for its volume, its indistinction and its insignificance. But -those who ask art to be natural never mean completely natural. In their -wiser moments they are only asking art not to be artificial, or at least -to help them forget it is artificial. They demand a “realistic and -romantic naturalism”, or “a world of honest, and often harsh reality”, -and what they are looking for is indicated by the fact that they find -something convincingly lifelike in a drama of low life or an American -vulgarization of a French farce, but something strained and mechanical in -a comedy by Sheridan or Oscar Wilde. Art, no doubt, is still desirable in -literature—art shot through with crude material, to reassure us that we -are human. Since all plays are highly artificial, naturalness is hardly -the word for the virtue of good plays; they are convincing, rather, they -take us frankly into another world, and for the moment make us forget it -is not our world of everyday. Yet those who ask the stage to be natural -are apparently reassured when through the imaginary world of art breaks -some accent of ordinary speech, some aspect of our common sordidness. -Here, it seems, we touch earth and are strengthened. - -The cult of the natural at its best asks of the medium of art also, -as well as of the subject, that it wear a common aspect, untouched by -artifice. Many of the new poets take as their ideal “the sequence of -the spoken phrase”, with a special dislike of all “inversions”; the -“language of common speech” will serve their purposes. Yet most of them -are better poets than their theories would indicate, and their practise, -like Wordsworth’s in a similar predicament, is perhaps sufficient guide -to the kind of naturalness they are after. _An Extempore Effusion upon -the Death of James Hogg_ is the kind of naturalness Wordsworth fell into -when he was off his guard. “Other poets”, says a more modern cultivator -of naturalism, “will come and perchance perfect where these men have -given the tools. Other writers, forgetting the stormy times in which -this movement had its birth, will inherit in plenitude and calm that for -which they have fought.” Most of us who are convinced that all speech is -artful in so far as it is intelligible, can occasionally put up with a -bit of fine writing like this, but we note in passing that “perchance” -and “plenitude” are not the language of common speech today. As for the -fear of inversions and the sacredness of the natural word-order, it is -enough for the moment to observe that no one order is natural for all -peoples, nor for any one speech at all times; different word-orders -express different states of emotion, even different ideas, and one is -as natural as the other. “Tell me not in mournful numbers” or “Tell not -me in mournful numbers”—which is the natural order? From another and -contemporary New England poet, who sticks valiantly for the natural -sequence of speech, we may examine a characteristic line, which has as -high a percentage of nature in it as absence of art can insure—“I must -pass that door to go to bed.” Would it be less natural to say, “To go to -bed, I must pass that door”? - -To practise artifice and yet to seem spontaneous, to be natural and yet -to achieve art—these ancient paradoxes against which the cultivators -of the natural arrive, in both the subject-matter and the medium of -literature, need to be examined in greater detail, but it is well to -observe them first in a general way, in order to mark how much confusion -lies on the very surface of such thinking. It is emotion perhaps rather -than thinking; it is a protest in another form against what seems old and -inherited; it is an impatience with art itself. Yet art exerts its old -charm upon us all, and the worshipper of the natural succumbs unawares to -every triumph over nature. In American letters we fix on Abraham Lincoln -as our type of natural expression; the legend of his humble beginnings -and the plainness of his manner deceive us into a conviction that he was -less indebted to art than Thomas Jefferson, and we therefore talk of the -rhetorical extravagances of the Declaration and contrast them with the -Attic simplicities of the Gettysburg Address. Perhaps we see a final -proof of our sound taste in the story that Matthew Arnold gave up the -Address for lost when he got to the colloquial “proposition”; “dedicated -to the proposition”, we say, was more than his artificial spirit could -bear. Whether Arnold expressed such an opinion, or whether he would -have been right in so doing, is of less consequence than our emotional -readiness, if we cultivate the natural, to accept the Lincoln speech as -an illustration of our ideal, and to set it over against the artifice of -Jefferson’s great document—to detect a literary manner in such a phrase -as “When in the course of human events”, and nothing but naturalness in -“Fourscore and seven years ago”—or to find an empty and sounding rhetoric -in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but only the democratic -syllables of common sense in “government of the people, by the people, -for the people.” Both documents are as rich as they can well be in -rhetoric, as all great oratory is, and of the two, Lincoln’s as a matter -of fact is rather more artful in the progress of its ideas. - - -II - -Our confusion in the search for the natural in art springs from the many -different meanings that attach to both words, art and nature. For most -of us, perhaps, art is a decoration, something supplementary to life; in -the spirit of this definition we understand what it is to cultivate the -arts—to buy pictures when our means will permit us that addition to more -primary interests, or to attend the opera after the preliminary stages of -our social pilgrimage. We use the word art so often in this bad sense, -with the implication of insincerity, that there is something bracing in -any invitation to return to nature and to be once more what we were while -we still were honest with ourselves and had a sense of humor. - -This nature that we return to, haunts our thoughts as a fixed state -in which the wise soul can find enduring refuge. Just how we get the -idea that nature is stable, is not easy to see; the notion often -exists in our minds side by side with a deep conviction that life is a -flux, and that time and space are but relative terms in the universal -stream. But perhaps it is the outer appearance of the world, nature as -landscape, that first suggests a refuge even against time, mountains -are so immovable in their mysterious silence for us as for Wordsworth, -the ocean is so untamable for us, as it was for Byron. Perhaps also the -contemplation of the changing universe during the past century of daring -and imaginative science has endowed nature with a romantic career of -its own, such as the old humanists ascribed only to men; perhaps the -progress of stars, planets and solar systems, observed or guessed at, -suggests in spite of the evolution it illustrates a deeper kind of rest -in the laws by which that evolution conducts itself; so that the last -result of turning from human art to watch the behavior of inanimate -things is the conviction that nothing is really inanimate, but that all -move in the wisdom of an art superhuman, in an order peaceful and eternal -as only a divine vitality could conceive. When we think of nature in this -sense of the word, leaving man out of the picture, ourselves too as far -as possible who do the thinking, we are ready to say with Emerson that -art is an impertinent intrusion, nature is all. “Nature in the common -sense refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the -leaf; art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, -as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture; but his operations taken -together are so insignificant,—a little shaping, baking, patching and -washing,—that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human -mind they do not vary the result.” - -We can speak of nature in this all-embracing way so long as, like -Emerson for the moment, we lay aside every thought of man and of the -moral world which he creates or brings under his control, and in which -his responsibility is fixed. But once we resume that human outlook, we -begin to use the word natural in at least two other senses. In the first -place we use it to describe the process of life, that constant birth or -becoming which seems to have been present to the mind of the Greek also -when he used his word for nature—as when Aristotle says, in a famous -phrase, that art is an imitation of nature, meaning that the process of -art is a copy of the processes of birth and becoming, and creates by the -same methods that life does. In this sense of the word nature is like -art, not opposed to it, and with this interpretation Polixenes tried to -rebuke the cult of the natural in Perdita, who would not have in her -garden a flower artificially bred: - - Yet nature is made better by no mean, - But nature makes that mean: so, o’er that art - Which you say adds to nature, is an art - That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry - A gentler scion to the wildest stock, - And make conceive a bark of baser kind - By bud of nobler race: this is an art - Which does mend nature—change it rather: but - The art itself is nature. - -We use the word nature also to describe the raw material of life which is -the result of a previous birth or becoming. It is what some earlier art, -human or divine, has already worked on, and what we must work on now if -art is to continue. Nature in this sense is the marble, the color, the -language which are to be the mediums of various arts; human passions and -instincts also, the social and the material environments which attend our -lives, the accidents of fortune which make up their plots; and since all -this is what art must work upon, nature so defined is forever somewhat -opposed to art, as inanimate materials are opposed to the workman, as -the wood and the chisel are opposed to the carpenter. For art is the -use of the materials of life for human benefit, a method employed for -a premeditated end in a world which except for art might seem given -over to chance. Because it is a rearrangement and a control of nature -to effect the will of man, life itself, so far as it becomes civilized, -becomes an art. But in a world as old as ours the raw material with -which art deals is itself the result of art; the wood has been already -shaped into boards, the chisel and the hammer have been made into tools -before the carpenter touches them, and the environment in which the -carpenter is born, the instincts and passions he inherits, the turns and -coincidences of his fate, are all probably the result of what others -before him made of their materials and opportunities. Thinking of life -so, we see it as an alternation of nature and art, or as an alternation -in which what first is art becomes afterwards nature, all the achievement -of one generation turning into mere starting point and opportunity for -the next; and thinking of life so, we understand how nature, to the -true artist, is forever set over against art in a contrast that implies -affection rather than antagonism, for those who instead of defining -art as a decorative supplement to life identify it with civilization -itself, are free to love nature without abandoning an ideal, as a -sculptor is free to love fine marble, or the painter to love his medium -of tint and tone. With time and by such a process of reworking, nature -draws nearer and nearer to art; the raw material is made constantly -more orderly by rearrangement, as a field is enriched by plowing in the -crops. Even in the sphere of human character this is true, in the very -seat of the natural, in our instincts and passions; for though we may -agree that character should be measured by a moral career rather than -by impulses wholly innate, yet it is well to reflect that your impulses -and sentiments, if you are born and brought up in Florence or Chartres, -Heidelberg or Seville, are likely to be different from the impulses -and sentiments natural to a child born or brought up in The Bronx or -in Hoboken. In the eyes of the naturalist, nature is all, as Emerson -said, and art only a little shaping, baking, patching and washing, but -to the artist who carries in his imagination something of the scope of -agelong growth and creation, the truth is what Nature said to the poet in -Voltaire’s dialogue—“They call me nature, but by this time I am become -all art.” - - -III - -The possibility, then, of returning to nature disappears when we realize -how long a road we have traveled; all that the most primitive minded of -us can do is to stick close to the raw material of his own life, to the -circumstances with which the art of his predecessors surrounded him. This -is the nature which the realists cultivate today. They report those facts -of life from which art might take its beginning, but they report them as -much as possible in an arrested state, for fear they might pass on into -art. Among the poets one, catching the accent of the spoken language, -gives us the language of one phase of New England; another, with a -like faithfulness to the natural cadence, gives us another kind of New -England speech; a third has the colloquialism of Illinois. They are all -artists, or they would not mean much to us, but in so far as they have -followed their own ideals of the natural they have laid aside some of -the magician’s robes to which by inheritance they are entitled, and they -leave with us their renderings of our world in a form of utterance less -noble than their theme and out of harmony with it. In our prose and verse -alike, the studied inadequacy of style to the occasion is a standing -reproach to us, all the worse since it is often the pose of an inverted -vanity, like the democratic conviction still flourishing in the land that -the dinner coat or the evening coat is an artifice of a worn-out society, -whereas the senatorial frock coat and wide hat are natural and God-given -sheathings of our original nakedness. - -To revert to the starting point of our lives is to seek nature in vain, -since the alternations of art and nature proceed relentlessly, whether -we rest our dead weight on the process or try to help it along. It is a -vain flattery of our reluctance to travel, to take our seat always in -the last car. But, however futile, the cult of the natural in literature -has a reasonable explanation, and it is well to understand with sympathy -why it is likely to recur periodically in a civilization that must feel -its age more and more. Art criticizes life, as we have often been told, -by selecting or sifting it; that is what the word criticism means. -The authority that art has over us, its right to make such a sifting, -derives not from books but from the human brain itself, from the method -of memory; we remember only by forgetting most of the things we have -done or have suffered, and rearranging the rest. As we grow older life -becomes clearer, we say, thanks to this selection and forgetting. When -art sifts life, then, it is only imitating the process of nature, and -when we observe the process we can understand why the Greeks said that -memory was the mother of the muses. But this sifting of life on the part -of memory and of art is progressive, and in all honesty we may wonder at -times whether it has not gone too far. Some of the clarity of vision, -the firmness of doctrine, which is the reward of old age, may be not the -genuine harvesting of experience which is almost the gift of prophecy; -it may be rather a partial memory which seems clear because so much has -been left out. If a poet could get a first-hand impression of life, his -art would be one sifting of nature; if he reacts not only to nature but -to the interpretations of other poets, his art is a second sifting, -more highly organized, perhaps, more intelligible, than is normally -recorded from immediate contact with life. It makes no difference -whether we call these siftings poetry or criticism, since poetry, as -Arnold reminded us, is a criticism of life. The poet may submit his -sensitiveness to nature as sifted through three or four or any number -of interventions of personality, and we may call the result poetry, or -criticism, or criticism of criticism; very often we cannot tell, and -the poet does not know, whether the life that stimulates him is direct -or transmitted. But in each remove from the first contact with nature, -in each additional intervention of personality, we get a clearer order -and a finer intelligibility—truth instead of facts, formulas instead of -experiences, and fewer exceptions. The literature, then, which begins in -naturalism will at last emerge in philosophy, if we allow it time enough, -and the biography of an individual will be condensed and generalized into -a proverb. - -There are two good reasons, however, for suspecting this economical -result. One is that the proverb is probably not true. To arrive at it, -in each successive sifting we have left out something, and the total of -all the omissions has become almost as comprehensive as the original -experience. We must go back and gather up the discarded fragments of -our adventure, in order to qualify properly our too simple and absolute -summary of life. The art of the historian, we often fear, progresses by -some such over-elimination; archæology sometimes rescues him by restoring -large sections of a past, the absence of which he had not noticed, but in -periods too recent for archæology to take him by surprise, he constantly -rewrites his history, to sift it more to his mind, until we may suspect -that his account is nearer to our philosophy than to the original facts. -In history this tendency is hardly a matter of concern, for if we have a -criticism of the eighteenth century which satisfies us, we are content, -and the eighteenth century, being dead and gone, will not mind; the poet, -therefore, can look on with equanimity while the historians propose to -rewrite our national life in order to bring it more in harmony with our -present sentiments toward this or that other country; the poet knows -that history is not a science but one of the most fascinating of the -arts, closely allied to eloquence in its mission to teach and persuade, -and that having to do strictly with the past it enjoys rare freedom in -sifting its facts. But the poet himself enjoys no such freedom. Whatever -he writes will be checked up by the life we now live; his readers will -look into their hearts and criticize. If therefore he has gained his -clarity by leaving out things essential in our experience, we reject him -as too far from our reality to be of consequence to the race. He may be -a philosopher; he is no poet. - -His philosophy may even be true, and yet his right to the laurel may be -justly denied. For the special service of art is to make us live more -intensely in the very life which art sifts and selects—in fact, the -sifting has for its conscious purpose a more vivid realization of what we -live through, and a novel or a play is successful, from the standpoint -of imaginative literature, only in the degree to which we enter the -work, become ourselves the hero, fall in love with the heroine, hate -the villain. In this sense the dime novel and the melodrama, though -carelessly branded by the theorist as bad art, are likely to be very -good art indeed, and the over-reasoned story, though adorned with subtle -reflection and refinements of diction, is in fact poor art, as the -average person in his heart knows, for in such books the reflection -upon life is paid for by a failure to represent what the reflection is -about. If the author would only share with us the adventures that caused -him to reflect, we could do our own reflecting upon them, but if he -will not share the secret which inspires him, we do not care much what -philosophizing he does. Literature continues to be great so long as the -sifting it makes it really a selection only from life, and what remains -is for the imagination still a first-hand experience; when the residue -grows thin to the imagination and addresses itself rather to logic, we -feel justified in making whatever return we can to our starting point in -nature, to reassure ourselves there, if we cannot in the book, that this -human life we love is still with us. - - -IV - -If such a taking to cover is observed in much writing today, the writers -who in one form or another now cultivate nature rather than art may -plead with justice that the best literature our country produced before -them was perilously deficient in a sense of reality. If they do so -plead, however, they ought to be consistent. If they think that so great -an artist as Hawthorne was deficient in reality, that transcendental -philosophy occupies too much room in his romances and the sense of -actual American life too little, then they ought not to tell us at -the same time that Poe and Whitman are our great poets, for those -two were even further along toward the abstract than Hawthorne. And -there will be an increasing obligation on those who in each generation -of the fast-ripening world make a return to nature, to provide some -demonstration that it is not life after all they are running away from. -Some men have taken to the hermit’s cell to find God; others to avoid -responsibility. As civilization becomes greater in quantity, with more -discoveries of science, with more apparatus of education, we need more -and more the poetic genius that will dedicate this material to great -ends, and by articulating for us what we can recognize as our best ideal, -teach us to simplify life by casting off the other less significant -interests. The solution of all this raw material for art can only be -a greater art. When we turn back from this heroic opportunity to take -refuge in what is for us nature, we must convince ourselves, if we can -that our retreat does not indicate in us inadequate equipment or weak -nerve or small heart. - -In our present cult of the natural there is cause to suspect some such -lack of skill and courage. The plea that our predecessors were so -deficient in reality that we, to save the day, must exhibit less art than -theirs, will not go in the long run. Our new poetry is curiously relaxed -and enervated in temper, ground-hugging, grey and flat; if we have moods -which such writing adequately represents, we have other moments more -cheerful and creative, which our architecture and our engineering manage -to express, but which cannot be guessed at in our poetry, not as much as -the oak can be guessed at in the acorn. Our novels, too, have lost their -courage, and though they often represent photographically the machine of -civilization which builds up around us, and which now is the raw material -on which our art is to operate, they do not even attempt to portray the -spirit of the artist which actually pervades the land, the joy in putting -the machine to human uses, the almost divine ecstasy in having made so -much of nature subject already to the mind. This mood of confidence in -art is as much a fact in our national life as the number of gallons that -flow over Niagara each hour, but the poets and novelists seem to have -taken fright. - -In both verse and prose, in style as well as subject, the cult of the -natural has limited our writers to a few individualistic attitudes, and -has taken from them the power to speak with authority on all subjects -for us all. We have no American poet, no American novelist; each is -the poet or novelist of Vermont or Boston or Maine or Chicago—whatever -scene is to him by birth or habit his natural world. To find a universal -utterance of universal experience is the aim and the tendency of art, -but the cult of nature compels us to return each in what state he came. -The counsel to use the language of ordinary speech limits us to the -speech of some locality; and such limitation is a fatal handicap for -great poetry. The advice to use only the natural word-order limits us to -the word-order which each of us finds natural, whereas it is our duty, on -the contrary, if we make any claim to mastery in literature, to enlarge -our vocabulary even beyond the words our family and our neighbors made -natural to us, and to cultivate all the variety of word-order our speech -permits, that we may enrich and refine our style, and render our meaning -more precise. The temptation to get along with a small vocabulary and a -meagre change of construction is altogether too natural; we did not need -this premeditated urging to a still greater poverty. Hitherto the best -remedy for a narrow equipment in language has been to read constantly -in the great writers; it was they who extended the powers of speech and -laid upon each tongue the shape and cadence which to the ill-informed -might seem the gift of nature. But now that the ideal of the writer is to -shrink to the measure of the conversation he is used to, how shall our -nobler moments find expression? Not even in reading old authors, for by -the contemporary doctrine of naturalness the old masters are artificial. -“Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy -people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I -die, and there will I be buried.” ... “At her feet he bowed, he fell, he -lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed there he fell -down dead.” ... “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be -broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at -the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the -spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” - -These cadences are not natural, and they are not modeled on the sounds -that habitually fill our ears. Their distinction, or if you like, their -condemnation, is that they are works of art. Such language gets away -as far as it can from time and place, and by much sifting out from -unessentials it tries to preserve a universal appeal. If you can write -this way at all, you can write as well in New York as in London, as well -now as in 1611. - -The purpose of art is to make its subject-matter also universal, to sift -and rearrange the raw material of life into a history that will have as -much meaning as possible for as many readers as possible, for as long as -possible. But the cult of the natural tends to the opposite effect—to -make the subject-matter of literature temporary in its interest and -limited in its meaning. The Broadway entertainments which please us for -the moment, since they conform to our taste in the spontaneous, the -impromptu and the natural, are but the raw material of drama; good plays -might be made out of them; but in each case the author stops the story -before we pass from nature to art. It is natural, in the sense of our -definition, that a stoker in modern times should have two ideas—that -to the idle and effete he may seem akin to the missing link, and that -since he is at the bottom of society, he must be supporting it. Quite -a philosophy can be made out of two ideas, and these two, when put -together, as in a recent drama, promise an explosion. But after all, -nothing explodes. The man simply enunciates his two ideas in different -accents of violence, until the author thinks it is time to stop, and -gets him strangled in the zoo. An artist would have been interested to -see in action a character with such a philosophy. We have recently seen -another play with an idea, a very simple one; by any means in her power a -girl is going to capture the man she loves. Since the only means in her -power are eccentric ones, we watch her eccentricity with astonishment for -three acts; her behavior is original, like nothing that ever was or will -be, and our interest is held by the growing desperation of her ingenuity. -Well, she gets him—for much the same reason that the philosophic stoker -was strangled, because it is time for the audience to go home. An artist -would have granted her ambition as natural, and her success as natural -too; he would have shown us, however, what happened after her success, -when her philosophy of opportunism in etiquette would have met its -test. Had _Much Ado About Nothing_ been written by the author of either -of the plays just described, the famous comedy would never have got -further than the raw material of the story, the legend that Benedick and -Beatrice waged a merry war between them; we should have had an evening’s -entertainment of jokes and insults, made gradually more intensive, more -violent and more surprising in order to hold us till the last curtain. -Shakespeare, choosing the way of art, begins rather at the point where -the wit of Beatrice and Benedick is exhausted; they have the reputation -for it, but their public efforts show signs of strain and flagging. From -this start in nature the play proceeds to represent what happened to -Benedick and Beatrice, the witty enemies, when serious accidents brought -their fates together. - - -V - -Nowhere in literature, perhaps, is art so obviously essential and -naturalism so obviously fatal as in drama, for drama, by exhibiting life -to us directly, quickens to its utmost whatever desire we have to see -our fellows move on from their natural beginnings to some achievement or -significant conclusion. Impulses, ideas, motives, prejudices, passions, -and as we now say, complexes, are all natural forms of energy; in real -life they weary us if they have only a lyric expression, and we wish -they would get started into action. Their attempts toward action may -be thwarted, and such a defeat may be tragically significant, but at -least they should try, and if instead of trying they waste themselves -in talk, they become not energies but nuisances. It is for this reason, -we suppose, that Aristotle long ago cautioned us that tragedy, or all -drama, is an imitation not of men but of an action, and that plot is the -essential thing. He might have said that character may exist in a state -of nature, but plot presupposes art in life, a selection from all other -incidents of one succession of events which so selected have a meaning. -What he did say was that without action there can be no drama, but there -may be without character. Plot is a generalization of life, in which the -actors may or may not be portrayed as individuals. The woman who lost -the piece of silver, the good Samaritan, the mother of Œdipus, are clear -enough in their universal relation to the story in which they appear; -their personalities may be restated to suit our taste, or left undefined. -We read in the newspaper that a man jumps into the river to save a -drowning child, and having got to land, discovers that he has rescued his -own son. We live in that drama without asking what was the character of -the father or what was the psychology of the son. - -It is remarkable how Shakespeare illustrates Aristotle’s doctrine, by -showing his characters in action and by avoiding as far as possible an -analysis of their motives, their instincts, their prejudices, their -passions. Life with him finds expression in art or not at all. It is a -mirror indeed which he applies to nature, not a microscope; in his glass -we see the form of virtue and the features of vice, we know who are -good and who are bad, at least as accurately as we form such judgments -in life, but we do not know the motives of the good or the bad. What -were Falstaff’s motives? Should he be acted as a comic or a tragic -character? Why did Portia like Bassanio? Why did Cordelia take such -an absolute stand with her father? What did Hero think of Claudio, or -Hermione of Leontes, after the restoration to the jealous husband? Was -Hamlet’s mother an accessory to the murder of his father, or did her -conscience trouble her only because she had made a second marriage and in -such haste? The profundity of Shakespeare’s art lies in his genius for -representing the surface of action; in art as in ethics, life is chiefly -conduct, and it is enough that behind conduct lies unprobed the same -mystery that lies behind existence itself. - -But since naturalism thinks otherwise, Shakespeare is no longer our -example. Browning is more in our vein. For him the natural man, the raw -material of each one of us, the hidden instincts and impulses, must be -the whole subject, and action he finds useful only in the fragmentary -incidents that must be premised before you can conclude anything even -about instincts. Few verdicts in criticism are wider of the mark than -the too familiar saying that Browning’s genius is Shakespearean. He -is the opposite of Shakespeare. He is absorbed in what we call in a -loose way psychology, in the original man apart from his conduct, or -as far apart from it as you can separate him. To be so concerned about -motives and instincts is to be a kind of inverted dramatist, moving -back from action instead of toward it; it is no wonder, therefore, that -Browning’s so-called dramas fail on the stage, since in that direct -relation to the audience their static naturalness, their inability to -live out a significance in conduct, is pitilessly revealed. Everybody -examines himself and talks about himself, as God made him; nothing -gets under way; the audience is finally delivered by the death of the -soliloquizer, not in a zoo, but more politely, it may be, in a gondola. -“Even if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character,” -said Aristotle, “though well finished in diction and in thought, yet -you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with -a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and -artistically constructed incidents.” To return to nature absolutely -would be to return to silence. Short of silence, to return to nature in -literature is to confess your private character in monologue. Browning is -master in that kind. It would be untactful to name the writers today who -share the mastery with him, and perhaps it is enough merely to suggest -the idea. To save time we might prudently meditate rather upon the few -poets and novelists remaining whose art gets further than monologue. - -Meanwhile the universe marches on its secret errand, not altogether -secret since it marches, and its art is slowly dramatized in its vast -conduct. Art for art’s sake is a formula inspiring if taken in a noble -sense, but in any sense it is intelligible as a programme deliberately -chosen. To cultivate nature for nature’s sake is absurd. For nature is -here without our aid, and to preserve it in what we call its pure state, -we need cultivate nothing—unless it be a more animal contentedness to -profit in indolence by the art of those who came before us. - - - - -IV - -THE CULT OF THE CONTEMPORARY - - -I - -“The end of playing”, said Hamlet, “both at the first and now, was and -is, to show the very age and body of the time, his form and presence.” It -would seem that Hamlet thought the business of art was to portray the age -in which the artist lived, not only to address his contemporaries, but to -speak to them about themselves. The cult of the contemporary, then, in -our own day could ask for no better text than this phrase of the Prince -of Denmark; what a pity he uttered it so long ago! - -Shakespeare did not agree with Hamlet—at least, he made some pretence -to show his Elizabethan audience the form and presence of remote times -and far-away countries, Rome and Athens, Denmark itself, Italy, Scotland, -Bohemia, the age of King John and the Richards and the Henrys, the -time and place, whatever they were, of _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, the -_Tempest_, _Cymbeline_, the _Winter’s Tale_. And Hamlet himself, be it -noted, is hardly faithful to his theory, for when he asks the players to -repeat a favorite speech of his, it turns out to be Æneas’s tale to Dido. -It was from a piece, he said, that pleased not the million, perhaps never -had a second performance, but in the judgment of the competent and in his -own opinion it was an excellent play. Perhaps the million were at the -moment bred exclusively to appreciate contemporary themes; costume plays -were not the fashion. Hamlet’s other choice in drama is poor evidence -of his esthetic theory; the murder of Gonzaga seems to have been already -ancient history, but he chose it to catch the conscience of the king, -since the story fitted his own household tragedy. Shall we follow the -hint, and suggest that Hamlet, like Shakespeare, really had nothing in -common with those who would make contemporary life the proper subject for -art? Perhaps he would not have mentioned the age and body of the time, -if he had not just said that the end of playing is to show scorn her own -image, if indeed the purpose of his meddling with the drama at all, at -that moment, had not been to sting the royal murderer into a confession -of his guilt. - -The cult of the contemporary follows logically from the cult of the -natural. If we are to write of a life untouched with art, we can write -only of life about us, as our fathers left it to us—our best of nature, -the talent buried in a napkin; and if we are to use the ordinary -language of men, we must use today’s language, the only speech that to -us is ordinary. And if it is possible to understand the search for the -natural as an effort to correct the generalizing tendency in literature, -we may also find a sympathetic explanation of the insistence on the -contemporary, when we recall how many writers have reasoned themselves -into a determination to walk in the ways of their heart and in the -sight of their eyes. Did not Homer celebrate the glory of Hellenism? -Did not Virgil celebrate the empire of Rome? Well, then, we ought to -celebrate the United States, our United States, rather than the country -of Washington or Jefferson; we ought to celebrate the hour and the place -we know, for we ought to love what we know—New York, Boston, Chicago -or the Middle West. This conclusion seems rational, but the desired -enthusiasm does not follow; the celebration of the contemporary in our -literature is as dreary in its results as the worship of the natural, -inspired merely by the sense of some duty rather than by delight in what -is portrayed. Homer’s zest for Hellenism is undeniable, and the instinct -is right that we, too, must love life as he loved it before we can write -as he wrote. For the moment we postpone the question, whether we must -not also live a life as noble in kind as he portrayed. Virgil, writing -in a more complicated, a sadder age, none the less loved imperial Rome, -and we are right to think that before we shall be worthy to sing of our -own land, in its own grave and complex era, we must take it to heart, -problems and all. “The proof of a poet”, said Whitman, “shall be sternly -deferred till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he absorbed -it.” But Whitman’s own practise is a provoking comment on his saying; he -succeeded remarkably in loving his land under an eternal form; the form -and presence of his day he did not leave us. His poems are no guide-books -to Manhattan and Long Island in 1855; even his beloved ferry-boats are -dateless. - -In what sense, then, would Whitman have us love our country, the home -of our own times, and how did Homer and Virgil, as artists, love the -Greece or the Rome they knew? To be of one’s age, yet to be immortal, is -a problem more subtle perhaps than to achieve an art that seems natural, -but it can be solved in the same way, by defining the terms of our -esthetic, and by referring them, as to a touchstone, to what we know of -our common human nature. The question can also be narrowed at the start, -and very profitably, by pressing home our reflections on Hamlet’s remark -to the players. There is one kind of writing which does confine itself -to the feature of virtue and the image of scorn, and which does indeed, -for that very reason, limit itself always to giving the form and presence -of the time—the kind of writing, that is, which indicts human nature -instead of portraying it. Our better selves, our ideals, are of no time, -but our faults are personal responsibilities and strictly contemporary. -Satire, therefore, which holds up to merriment or to scorn what is -ridiculous or base, must always take a present subject, and in general -any art that leans toward the consideration of our shortcomings will lean -also toward the life enacted at the moment. If Hamlet meant to trap the -king, of course he would write into the old play the very murder the king -had committed only three or four months ago; this would not be satire in -the usual sense, but it would serve the same end, to convict the guilty -and to reform the world. The cult of the contemporary, then, is proper -quite literally for satire; it remains only to ask how far it is proper -for art. - -But is satire not art? Did not Martial and Juvenal, Dryden and Pope write -highly artistic satires? There is an art of satire, we must answer, as -there is an art of preaching and an art of prosecuting a criminal case. -But if there is a distinction between art and morals, then satire belongs -to the world of ethics, and of ethics on the grim side, rather than to -the world of beauty and delight. To survey and judge the morals of one’s -age is a serious office that no thoughtful and sensitive person seems -altogether to neglect; if the purpose of art is to make such a survey, as -Hamlet seems to say, then _Twelfth Night_ is hardly a masterpiece in art, -and _Sandford and Merton_ is certainly one. If art, on the other hand, -has for its purpose to salvage out of our crude days the truth which can -be translated into beauty, and which so translated may be a joy for ever, -then art will have as little as possible to do with men’s faults—what -faults are joys for ever?—and the kind of writing which confines itself -to our frailties or our sins will be as far removed as possible from -art. Moreover, the moralist desires a cure of souls, and when the fault -is remedied, who will care for the satire or even understand it? It is -easy enough, without taking thought, to perish with our own time, but it -is one of the oldest hopes art has held out to natural man, that being -purified into art he should not altogether die. But mortality is germane -to satire. When we read Dryden’s terrible excoriations of Og and Doeg, we -can only wonder who were the human beings he hated so, and when we come -to know something of their lives and characters, we are more confused to -name the moral impulse in him which made it necessary to fix them in so -warm a hell. In art, loving your own times does not mean loving to find -fault with them. - - -II - -A genuine love of your own time is the recognition, in what you meet in -it, of those best moments which crave to be made accessible even for the -remotest of ages following. To immortalize any given moment, however, -is to take it out of the temporary and somehow to find a language for -it so general in its appeal that hereafter it may preserve in its own -significance the trivial circumstances from which it first arose. -Whenever a genuine love of life stirs the artist, it will be a passion -for what he thinks is the best in his own day; even if he is antiquarian -and takes for object of his devotion some medieval phase of life, it -is medievalism in his own day that he worships. Such a passion leads -the writer toward the future, for since it is an ideal passion, yet to -be realized, he instinctively proclaims it to posterity, or tries to; -but in his search for the right language in which to utter it, he as -instinctively turns to the past. To cultivate the contemporary in art -is therefore as absurd as to waste effort cultivating the natural, for -the present, like nature, is always with us; but the problem for the -artist is to express a vision which necessarily points toward the future -in language which necessarily trails from the past. We cannot remind -ourselves too often that even the single words of common speech must be -used by each one of us perhaps a lifetime before they are charged with -emotions or sharpened to precise meanings, and before the writer can -use them with full effect they must be so charged and sharpened for all -his readers. The language of poetry, moreover, is far more than single -words; it is chiefly the metaphors and the legends, the characters and -the episodes, which the race has met with so often that at last they -suggest accurately to all men the same feelings and the same thoughts. -Life at each moment may be on its way to become something to talk with, -but only the rash would try to express a serious ideal through a picture -of that life which is still near us, and therefore still imperfectly -seasoned or digested. The patriotism that Shakespeare dramatized for -his audience was certainly a passion for the England of Elizabeth; that -is why he expressed it through Faulconbridge, the child of Richard the -Lion-Hearted, or through John of Gaunt, or through Henry V. Why did he -not put Elizabeth on his stage, with Raleigh and Spenser and Drake and -Sidney? Was he blind to the glory of his own hour? He seems not to have -been so, but in his own hour neither the Queen nor any of her great -courtiers was as clear a figure to the emotions as time has since made -them all; the sentiment of the audience would be divided as to each one -of them, the adherents to Rome still perhaps cursing Henry’s daughter -in their hearts, the friends of Ireland perhaps cursing the poet of the -_Faerie Queene_. But the wise dramatist was on safe ground, he knew, when -the audience heard their common love of country issue unprejudiced from -the lips of old Gaunt, who died two centuries earlier: - - This fortress, built by nature for herself, - Against infection and the hand of war; - This happy breed of men, this little world, - This precious stone set in the silver sea, - Which serves it in the office of a wall, - Or as a moat defensive to a house, - Against the envy of less happier lands; - This blessed spot, this earth, this realm, this England. - -When a poet turns to the past for language with which to express his -love of the present or his vision of the future, he soon learns that not -all epochs lend themselves with equal felicity to his purpose; he must -select that aspect of the past which is adequate in nobility and energy -to what he has to say, and he must select that aspect of the past which -will be understood emotionally by his readers. We are prepared, every -one of us perhaps, to admit the necessity of this twofold selection, but -to admit so much is to admit a good deal; it is to admit that not all -epochs are equally available for the language of art, and that though -we exist in our own time, it may be the part of wisdom and good taste -to derive our artistic speech from another period. When Molière’s hero -pronounces his scorn of artificial verse and contrasts with it an old -song of the people, he is rejecting a fashion that was contemporary and -temporary for one that was lasting. When Homer wrote of ancient Troy, or -when Æneas sang the founding of Rome, either poet was choosing the date -of his story with the same taste with which he selected his theme, or -selected the words of which to make his lines; he was choosing what the -race after long reflection had realized was dignified, noble and true in -feeling. The poet, whoever he was, that left us the _Song of Roland_, -no doubt was expressing a sentiment toward France which flourished in -his own day, and which may have been very foreign to the feelings of -the original Roland; as in the other instances, the old story had to be -changed and expurgated to make it altogether the vehicle of contemporary -experience; yet he was right in taking the great figure of Roland for -the outer clothing or language of his emotions, since heroic sentiments -had already connected themselves with Charlemagne’s peer, as they had -not yet with William of Normandy, nor with his immediate predecessors. -In English history there have been efficient and picturesque rulers in -plenty, yet the poets were right who have retold their national epics in -the story of Arthur rather than in the biographies of Alfred or Edward I -or Cromwell; for the Arthurian legend as the race has chosen to remember -it is of richer fabric emotionally and of a simpler structure than any -nearer and more actual history could well be. Theodore Roosevelt, for all -we know, may have been a greater man than Cromwell, and time may make him -seem more significant, but if the poet wishes to say things about the -strenuous life, he had better say them now through the image of Cromwell, -about whom our emotions are more classified; better still if he says -them through the image of King Arthur, who much more than Cromwell has -become a precise symbol in the imagination. Arthur was to have been the -hero of Milton’s epic—at least, Milton considered him for a possible hero -but discarded him in favor, not of Cromwell or Hampden, but of Adam; and -again the choice was wise, since Adam is still an image more universally -understood than any of Milton’s contemporaries, and we know what we are -expected to feel when we hear his story. - -To say then that in writing, even when our purpose is art and not -satire, we should express ourselves in terms of the life about us, is -to lay down a formula which has been contradicted in practise by the -influential writers of the world. To find a language already wide-spread -and therefore intelligible, the artist will always draw to some extent -on the past, even though he does so unconsciously, and how far he goes -back into the past will depend on what it is he wants to express. In -_Henry Esmond_, Thackeray used the age of Marlborough to express a flavor -of romance that could not be said in life of a later date. But when -he had satire for his purpose, as in _Vanity Fair_, he chose a period -comparatively modern. It is but fair to observe, however, that Thackeray -follows this principle with very uncertain skill. The period he chose for -his great satire was somewhat more remote than for _Pendennis_ or _The -Newcomes_, where his purpose was less obviously and exclusively moral; -the resulting effect in each case is somewhat peculiar, since most of us, -unless we count up the dates, perhaps get the impression that _Vanity -Fair_ was the contemporary book. In one sense it makes little difference, -and we might use the illustration to indicate that it is the method of -treatment, rather than the life portrayed, that will make a book seem -contemporary. But we are left to wonder also whether Thackeray did not -intend _Vanity Fair_ to be more satirical in its effect than it actually -is, and _The Newcomes_ to be less so. Did the great but easy-going artist -make here a careless choice of the time for his story? - -Even the writers who seem now to have been most contemporary were really -not so; what seems contemporary in them are eternal aspects of life, -which even in their day were old. We sometimes doubt the value of those -scholarly labors which search out for us the sources, so-called, of the -great poets, the residuum of earlier times which they adapted to express -their genius; but these labors would be justified sufficiently by the -answer they give to those who think that art speaks through contemporary -life. They think that we should look in our heart and write, as Sidney -did, or return directly to nature, as did Wordsworth, forgetting -that when Sidney looked in his heart to write, he wrote some masterly -translations and paraphrases of earlier Italian or French poems, and -that when Wordsworth drew on his personal experience, as in the immortal -lines to the Cuckoo, he recast an earlier fine poem by Michael Bruce. -The believers in the contemporary urge us to paint the record of our own -times as immediately as Chaucer wove his neighbors into the tapestry of -the Canterbury Tales; they do not know how many versions there were of -the famous tales before Chaucer shaped them to his own purposes. Indeed, -so much of the past has gone into all that we now are or say or do, that -the attempt to detach ourselves from the best that has gone before is -in a way a denial of contemporary character to our own times, or to any -other period; for the quality of civilization in 1923 which distinguishes -it from civilization in 1823 is the gift, for good or evil, of the -hundred years in between; and to be contemporary with any moment in -history is to be aware of all the past that still is articulate in that -moment. - - -III - -If a writer fails to use the past as the language with which to express -his present, the reason may be that he does not know the past, or that -he has theoretical objections to using it so, even though the great -writers have followed no other method. But this reason is rarely the -true one. Today as at other times any sincere writer will be interested -in the great examples of his art, and will find them out, and probably -the same instincts will eventually show themselves in his work as in -the work of his predecessors. Undoubtedly there are poets and novelists -today who through a mistaken cult of the natural are striving for a -strictly contemporary utterance—rejecting, that is, all that they can -recognize in our speech as having a history. If their scholarship were -more complete, they would have to reject even the meagre vocabulary -of word, image and legend they are now content to use. But the writer -who willingly would avail himself of the full inheritance in his art -finds himself limited perhaps for another reason—he finds that his -readers do not know the past, that many of them cultivate an ignorance -of it, and that, therefore, if he uses it to speak with, he may not be -understood. It is part of the discipline which every art imposes on -those who practise it, that they must speak in terms intelligible to -their audience. It remains to ask, of course, who are the audience? and -the writer, if he is sufficiently courageous, stubborn, or hopeful, may -choose to address a more intelligent audience than he finds in his day, -an audience who he thinks will at last recover the traditional tongue in -which he speaks, and for whom it will be worth his while to wait. This -may seem to some of us the only way out, but we know it is a precarious -way. Such a brilliant belated justification came to the Greek classics at -the Renaissance; it has come in music to such a giant as Bach, who was, -as we say, ahead of his own day; but to expect it to come to us merely -because our contemporaries do not appreciate us is entirely too obvious a -self-flattery. The sane artist will rather do his best to say what he has -to say in language his day understands, and he will try also to encourage -his audience in the recovery of a larger language, so that he may say -more to them. - -This question whether the reader has sufficient command of the inherited -language of literature is always an acute one for the author; the lasting -successes in literature have been made at those moments when a knowledge -of the past was wide-spread, and the audience were as familiar with the -older literature as the writers were. Historical as Virgil seems to us in -the _Æneid_, almost antiquarian, he offered to his first readers nothing -they were not familiar with, and little that would not immediately -kindle an emotion. In one sense then he may be said to have spoken in -a contemporary language. But neither he nor his audience would have -understood the doctrine that art becomes great by being contemporary, and -that it becomes contemporary by discrediting the past. “To have great -poets, there must be great audiences too”, said Whitman, and here, as -elsewhere, we are coming to realize, he got at the permanent truth of -the matter. For it is a sound observation of literary historians that a -country exercises its impulses toward art, in any period, as much by -what it reads of the older books as by what it writes; the two activities -must go together if the contemporary great writer is to get a competent -hearing, and they must be studied together if we are to estimate justly -the culture of an epoch. In what was produced, some decades of the -eighteenth century in England look to us destitute of poetry, but in -those very moments Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton were widely loved, and -enjoyed perhaps a more humane and significant treatment from the critics -than they have often had since. The weakness of contemporary poetry in -Addison’s time, in Warton’s and Gray’s, was not that they knew the elder -masters, but that their practise departed so widely from them and became -so contemporary. The revival in the romantic age was brought about by -rejecting the kind of art the early eighteenth century wrote, and by -building on the still earlier art the eighteenth century had the wisdom -to love. - -In our day and in our land the question of the audience is peculiarly -acute, and it has been rendered more so by the intentional efforts of -those who believe that literature should be contemporary. Even without -those efforts we, who come from many countries, with different race -memories and with the legacy of different cultures, should have had -difficulty enough to achieve a common language adequately rich in -the best things of the past and welded into some continuity with our -American future. If we write in those terms which to an Italian would be -emotional, we shall hardly stir the pulses of a Scotchman or a Slav, and -if we waken the race-memories of the Spanish or the French, we may leave -quite cold the Dutch in Pennsylvania or the Swede in Minnesota. Our first -hope, to which some of us still desperately cling, is that we may lose -no one of these racial inheritances, but that by a jealous conserving -and study of each of them, and by teaching them all to our children, we -may build up one of the richest cultures that the accidents of migration -have ever permitted the race to compose. The literature of America in a -thousand years would carry in its majestic overtones the essential beauty -of all the civilizations that have made their entry through our ports, -the essential beauty too of the wonderful Indian civilizations which our -European coming dispossessed, and above these overtones, perhaps, the -far-off suggestions of the Greek and Roman worlds and the immemorial East. - -But this hope, whether or not it could be realized, is so far as we -can see at present a fantastic dream; our progress toward it has been -slight—better, to be frank, we have made no progress, rather we have -lost ground. There is less general culture of that sort in the United -States now than there was fifty years ago. It has seemed wise to many -of us, therefore, to moderate our hopes, and to aim at mastering, not -all our heritages in common, but at least one tradition, and that the -tradition of this country from the revolution till the present day. Such -a program might be carried out in our schools—not in the colleges, since -only a fraction of the country’s youth gets to college, but in those -early school years through which all the boys and girls may reasonably -be expected to pass; and there would be nothing illogical in burdening -the schools with the task, for the training of a common consciousness, -cultural or otherwise, in a land of immigrants is the chief problem of -elementary education. We thought, then, that we might all absorb our own -past and the few decades that preceded our coming, so that hereafter the -spokesmen of the nation, poets, dramatists, preachers, statesmen, might -at least touch some common chords in us all by naming those who built -up the opportunities we enjoy. This program is still in force in other -departments of study than literature, but the teachers of literature -have been largely won over to the cult of the contemporary; so far from -building up in the land a great audience for the great poets to sing to, -many energetic teachers of literature are persuading these children, if -persuasion is necessary, to read only books of the day, about things -of the day, and by inference to neglect as really negligible anything -written yesterday or written about other times and other problems than -ours. Our dream of a cosmopolitan culture has shrunk in practise to an -educational discipline which will make us more insular and provincial -than we are already, more selfish, more contemptuous of other times and -of other peoples, and still further disinherited from great art. - -The movement began a few years ago in a protest against the narrow -choice of books permitted by the requirements for entrance to college. -Some of the schools thought they could do their best work if their -teachers—and their pupils—could select the books for this arduous study; -there could be some wise consulting of taste, some adaptation to special -temperaments. So long as the choice was still to be made from books of -recognized merit, it was unreasonable to deny this request. But the trend -toward the contemporary developed quickly; if we consulted the taste and -the temperament of our students, the children of many racial traditions, -we found that few of the older writers were easy for them to understand; -the difficulty of bridging over the gap between traditions was too -great for many of our teachers to solve, or perhaps they themselves were -not at home in the tradition either of the books or of the students; -and the most graceful form of surrender was to study only what was easy -for everybody. The process was paralleled in society outside of the -schoolroom, in the change in ideals and in competence which overtook -professed criticism in our reviews; but the heart of the matter was and -still is in the centers of education. - -A teacher of English in New York City recently presented the case for -contemporary literature vs. the classics, in some such argument as this: -When she was in college, she said, the faculty took such an inhospitable -view of the world about them that only one author, of all those they -studied in literature classes, was still alive when they studied his -books. She and her fellow students felt somehow cramped and cheated, -not to be studying more books of which the authors were still living. In -other words, whereas the critics in Mr. Shaw’s play could not judge the -work till they knew who wrote it, these lovers of the contemporary could -not estimate a book till they knew whether the author was in or out of -the graveyard. In these better days, the teacher went on to say, she and -her colleagues allow for the natural desire of their students to read -what is written at the moment—a life of a prominent man like Theodore -Roosevelt, the work of a columnist in the daily press, the popular plays, -the most talked-of novels. Such reading, she explained, gives opportunity -for ethical or social or political discussion in class; she meant, it -seems, that you can argue whether the Middle West was fairly portrayed, -and if so, what should be done to cure it, or whether we should have gone -into the war at all, or if so, what should have been done to make the -lot of the private easier, and establish the officer on a less privileged -plane. Out of this open discussion of spontaneous interest in current -events, will come, she thought, a finer taste for the best in art. - -It is obvious that the training, such as it is, which is to produce this -finer taste is a training not in art at all, but in Americanization, if -you choose to call it so, in sociology or in politics. These purposes are -good in their place, but if they usurp the classroom where literature -as an art should be taught, we need expect no aid from the schools -in training us to a common culture, not at least so far as the word -applies to poetry, to romance, to the drama, to the novel. We might -Americanize ourselves in literature by reading our older poets—three of -them, Whitman, Poe and Emerson, of influence in the whole world today; -we might read our elder novelists, two of whom, Cooper and Hawthorne, -at their best were among the prose-poets of the nineteenth century; -or we might read Parkman, an historian not likely to be surpassed for -the beauty of his spirit, for the solidity of his method, and for the -romantic charm of his subject, by any who will hereafter write about this -land. We might read Lincoln, about whom we talk so much, and we might -profitably read Jefferson and Hamilton. We might even discover the charm -of the colonial records, north and south, and the heroic poetry of our -frontier, as it pushed through wilderness and across plain and canyon, -to face at last the Orient again and our inscrutable future. This kind -of Americanization would produce class discussion of some dignity, even -though it had nothing to do immediately with the art of literature, for -it would give us, not only a sense of our common destiny, but an escape -from our own circumstances into other days and other minds, and it would -cultivate the sympathy and the imagination once thought to be the fruit -of literary study. But to discuss always and exclusively only what is -under our own noses, to study a life of Mr. Roosevelt not because it is -a great biography but because it is about Mr. Roosevelt, and to study -novels not because they are good novels, but because they are about us, -is to find ourselves in the end just where we were in the beginning, -with our prejudices more firmly rooted and our skin a bit thicker to any -joy or sorrow in the world not our own. As for the ability to understand -great writing when it comes to us, we have learned only this, that since -Mr. Roosevelt lived nearer our day than Dr. Johnson, the biography of -him is a better biography and a more interesting one than Boswell could -write, and we need not read Boswell; and since Main Street is nearer to -us than Salem, Mr. Lewis is a greater novelist than Hawthorne, and we -need not read Hawthorne. Enough to know that the whole contains the part. - - -IV - -Well, then, says the teacher of current literature, there never can be -any great books, for you approve of nothing contemporary, and every -book, unfortunately, has to be written in its own time. Yes, in a sense, -anything you write, on however remote a subject, will be of your time and -will represent it; Walter Pater was expressing one phase of Victorian -England when he wrote _Marius the Epicurean_. But the artist hopes to -appeal to more than the present generation; even the most contemporary -of our contemporaries, who read no books of which the authors are not -living, cherish some ambition to have their own works read after they -themselves are gone. And since the fame of a book depends on its ability -to meet the interest of readers over a long period of time, the life -of our works will depend on two things—on our gift for selecting the -matter which is permanently interesting to men, and on the willingness -or unwillingness of any generation to be interested in the same things -as its predecessors. If readers are now brought up to neglect as a -matter of course any works of literature that once were loved, there -will be no fame for any one hereafter, and no masters of the art, but -only in each publishing season a nine days’ wonder. But if human nature -still asserts its primal interests, in spite of mistaken teaching, and -continues to like in the long run the same things that have been loved -in the past, then the writer will finally be reckoned great who answers, -not the mood of his hour, but the spirit of those constant demands. He -will get his inspiration from life as he knows it; he will express it -in an eternal form, as we say—at least in a form so durable that instead -of our understanding his work through the incident that inspired it, we -shall know of the incident through the work. Molière has so immortalized -one moment of his times in his _Précieuses Ridicules_; without the play, -would we know much of the temporary affectation? And to be quite frank, -has not something died in the play, along with what was contemporary in -it, so that we enjoy it now with an historical effort not needed to be -at home, let us say, with Falstaff? Tennyson really immortalized the -Charge of the Light Brigade, for the incident on so many grounds has -since proved regrettable that we should be glad to forget it, but for -the poem, and we begin to be sorry that the poem is anchored to so much -that was transitory. Our own civil war poet, Henry Howard Brownell, true -genius if we ever had one, wrote his verses on the very scene, after the -fights he had passed through as Farragut’s secretary on the flagship, -and the virulence of contemporary passion is in his work forever, an -embarrassing alloy. But of the danger of being contemporary, Dante is the -great illustration. It is not hard to see what an impact his great poem -must have made on his first hearers, it was so immediate in its reference -to persons, places, incidents, crimes and disasters which Florence, Rome -and Italy well knew; but what an effort it is now to recover all those -allusions to the times, indeed how impossible! We wrestle with them, if -at all, because the greatness of the poem bears up their leaden weight; -and the poem is great for what is least contemporary in it, for the -vision which Dante drew from his masters, and which he handed on to the -future in images of the past. - -The impulse to be contemporary is in our time, and perhaps always was, -an impulse to tell the news. This impulse is felt perhaps in all the -arts, but most in books and in the theatre, less in music, still less in -painting, and least in architecture and sculpture. From these last we can -learn, if we need a reminder, what are the conditions of enduring art, -and what, in contrast to popularity, is fame. Sculpture and architecture, -from the substantial nature of their medium, must submit to be looked -at more than once, to be lived with, finally to be judged by the good -opinions of many men over a long period of time; and a good opinion -of such work, so lived with, will depend less on the first impression -than on habitual contact. For such work popularity is difficult, if not -impossible. A book about the war may be a popular book; the Farragut -statue in Madison Square is not a popular statue. What statue is -popular? It can have only the better kind of success, if any; like the -Farragut, it can be famous, loved and returned to over an indefinite -length of time. For we can read a book once and throw it aside, or hear -music or see a play but once, and then criticize it; it lies entirely -in our choice whether we shall read or hear twice. How different our -criticism would be if it were based on at least half a dozen readings -and hearings! But the bronze and the building are not easily removed -or ignored, and even the painting has a good chance of being looked at -more than once. It is not surprising then that the sculptor, like the -architect or the painter, attends to the conditions on which fame is -secured, since popularity is denied him, and makes his appeal to revised -judgments and to second thoughts. - -It would be a misfortune to seem to say that the author who misses -popularity is necessarily an artist, or that even temporary success is -not to be admired. But in American letters we are beginning to wonder -why our great successes are so transitory; why a writer who sells more -copies of his first book than did Thackeray or Dickens, does not continue -like them to reach a large public with succeeding books; and why he does -not, like them, continue to be read after he has ceased to write. The -explanation suggested is that most American writers, not only today but -throughout the last twenty-five years, have written as journalists—have -put out their material not as life but as news about life, and the -critics have discussed it as news, and the readers have come to look -for the news in it, and for nothing else. Some novelists still writing -began their work with successful stories of local color, which we read -in order to learn about Louisiana or Pennsylvania or the Middle West, -and having got the information we were looking for, we went elsewhere to -look into other novelties. It goes without saying that in this process we -readers have done injustice to many a work of art; _Old Creole Days_ and -_Main Traveled Roads_ have something for the permanent reader, as well as -for the news-seeker, and _Trilby_—to speak of an English book—is still -a magnificent romance of friendship and chivalry, though it expired of -its own success as a bulletin from the Latin Quarter and a document in -hypnotism. - -At least, says again the lover of current things, you must write in the -language of the hour. Some beauty is lost when the poet does not speak -in his native tongue, or when we cannot read him in it. Well, some -languages are better than others; Greek was a better language, more -precise, more varied, more forceful and more colorful, than English or -any of the modern tongues. But all language changes, as the works of art -in language do not; in literature we have this haunting paradox, that -through a temporary medium we can build something imperishable. Much -as we may dislike literature in translation, it is perhaps salutary to -remember that literary masterpieces must survive in translation or not at -all. In what language were the parables spoken? If Homer were not Homer -still in English or French or German, how much of Homer would the world -know? Some bouquet of his own time is gone, but perhaps we should not -have liked it if it had remained. At least we have kept what we liked; -we have kept what suited our spiritual needs, we have loved Andromache -and Hector, and wondered in the old way why such fine men as Achilles and -Agamemnon should quarrel, and have decided, as all our fathers have done, -that for so beautiful a woman as Helen to waste her time on so mean a -fellow as Paris, there must have been queer influences at work. To live -in art in this timeless way, is to satisfy what is eternal in ourselves; -it is to leave behind us the limitations of our hour, our place, and our -language. And unless art is wide enough for us to live in it so, we shall -trifle with it only for an hour, and without regret let it go the way of -other contemporary things. - - - - -V - -THE CHARACTERS PROPER TO LITERATURE - - -I - -Our impulse might be to say that any character at all is proper to -literature, or to any phase of literature, for we have long ago discarded -that convention of ancient story which introduced the hero and heroine -always as nobly born, or if at first they were not gentlefolk, yet in the -last chapter they were shown to be prince and princess in disguise. Our -leading characters now may have whatever origin God wills; the author -does not interfere. No longer do we reserve the peasant, the poor or -the ignorant for the foot of our list of _dramatis personæ_, nor do we -smuggle them into the scene at resting moments, for comic relief. Since -human nature is the subject of art, and since the Almighty (we quote -Lincoln for this) showed us where to put the emphasis in human nature, -by creating common folk in the vast majority, we have even followed the -example with an excess of enthusiasm, until the elect are pretty well -put down from their former seat in literature, and in their stead are -the socially humble and the mentally weak. For a hundred years or more -we have been pressing this charitable revolution. Wordsworth, though -not the first to try it, first won a considerable hearing in English -poetry for the beggar, the pedlar, the afflicted, the half-witted—a -hearing for them, that is, as central figures in the poems where they -occur; and shortly afterwards the novelists, on the irresistible tide of -humanitarianism, invited not only our attention but our admiration for -persons who hitherto had seemed obscure and unfortunate. Dickens perhaps -went too far, we now feel; he demonstrated the weakness of the gentry, -and sent them to the background of the story, where we are willing enough -they should remain, but he also tried to endow the lower classes with -so much delicacy, tact, and spirit that his leading persons seem to be -gentry still, masquerading in a temporary eclipse of fortune, like the -lost prince and princess of the fairy tale. But he taught us how to carry -on his unfinished revolution; since he stripped sentimentality, all that -sort of nonsense, from the gentry, we have known at last how to strip it -from the bourgeois. Some of our novelists riddle the polite world for us, -others tell us the unflinching truth about our middle classes. We have no -heroes; any character can get into our literature, if we may use him as -a target rather than worship him as a god. - -It is too late to return, even if we desired to do so, to the sentimental -misreading of social conditions against which our modern realism, however -grim, tries honestly to protest, and there is a form of discourse in -which human frailties can properly be discussed; social science or the -science of ethics would neither of them deserve the name of science -if we excluded from their consideration any aspect of human character -or conduct—just as medicine would fail in its office if we forbade it -to study any part or function of the body. But it is not too late to -ask ourselves the difference between science and art; between a story -which represents our physical actions with that conscience in detail -which would aid a medical diagnosis, and a story through which Helen’s -body walks, a joy forever; between a record of our neighbors just as -they are, or a bit meaner, and a picture of men and women as we would -gladly be. Anything printed may be called literature, even last year’s -time-tables, but if we preserve in the word an emphasis upon art rather -than upon information, we may ask after all whether certain characters, -or certain attitudes toward character, are not essential to art; or, -putting it another way, we may ask whether the type of character we -portray will not determine the kind of art we produce, with or without -our will, and whether the kind of character we portray will not finally -classify our writing for us as art or as social document. - -To have our novel appraised as a social document may seem to us a -compliment, and we may be glad to escape the equivocal verdict that our -picture of life is art. The terms are unimportant and our prejudices in -words may be respected. But the fact remains that some books we are -to read many times, and permanently, whereas others are for a season -only, and may be read but once; and books which must serve us in ways so -different would seem to need certain special privileges of method and -material—they may even be permitted certain varieties of emphasis not -usually found in life. The temporary writing helps us on our way, and -we ought to have one honorable name for it all—newspapers, telephone -directory, time-tables, all our telegrams and most of our letters. We -stop over them only for a moment, in order to go about our business more -conveniently. But the other kind of books will detain us forever, or -will try to—and this kind of literature is art; we return thither for no -information and for no immediate aid in our daily affairs, but rather to -taste again an experience we enjoyed before, to meet old friends, to -breathe an atmosphere which we crave, and which is hard to find elsewhere. - -If this distinction needs often to be made between the literature which -is information and the literature which is art, it is because both kinds -of book use the same medium, and speech is the commonest of mediums. -Painting or music escape such a confusion, but writing is a slippery -craft, now running to a bare record or to good advice, now drifting -into a music of words, articulating a beauty that seems ageless and -impersonal, and sometimes doing a bit of all these things at once. In -daily conversation, when we talk of anything in human interest, we use -the same words as literature is made of; what more natural than to -conclude that literature therefore may deal with any subject we talk of? -We resent the suggestion that art should be narrower than life itself. -Yet if we admit any difference at all between art and life, between -literature and our average conversations, between books which give -information and books which give delight, and if art is the record of -that aspect of life we delight in not for the moment but permanently, -then art is indeed narrower than life itself; outside of it will remain -the trivial things, however likable, of our daily round, which we forget -gladly, so many other pleasant and trivial things supplant them; and -outside of it also will remain very important issues which we hope and -resolve shall be temporary—the grave wrongs and errors which call not for -eternal contemplation but for reform. Face to face with such problems, -we often feel that art is inadequate. What can poetry do for the sick or -the dying? What solace is there in music or sculpture for the wretchedly -poor? The answer to such questions is not in art but in conduct; death -calls for fortitude, sickness must be cured, poverty must be relieved; -and if books deal with such subjects, it is not for a literary end, but -to aid us in practical remedies. Indeed, to have a literary ambition as -we contemplate another’s misery, would seem possible only for a fiend; it -is in the merit of Mrs. Stowe’s story of Uncle Tom that the book seems a -protest from the soul rather than a work of art. If there are sins and -misfortunes, it may be necessary to spread the news, as though the house -were on fire, but if we really care for our house we shall not linger to -enjoy the cadence of the thrilling call. On the other hand, if we are to -lose ourselves in a book or a play, if we are to live in it repeatedly, -ourselves the hero, in love with the heroine, and hating the villain, -then the book or play must give us an experience in some sense better -than the life ordinarily available to us; who would waste a moment -on Cleopatra in a book, if he knew where to find her in the world? Or -perhaps in life she was less charming than Plutarch said she was, or than -Shakespeare showed her to be; perhaps we could not be drawn irresistibly -to her until the poet made her better than she was—made her, that is, a -character proper for the literature which is to be enjoyed as art. - - -II - -The effect of the excellence or the inferiority of the character on -the book was long ago observed by Aristotle, when he said that tragedy -and the epic—that is, all serious literature—will aim at representing -men as better than in actual life, and that comedy and satire will -represent them as worse. In this second kind of writing, he added, -satire came first, and it was Homer who laid down the principles of -comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of composing personal -satire. This famous observation of the ancient critic has been too often -read as doctrine, as though Aristotle were telling us what should take -place in literature, whereas he is recording what actually does take -place. If you wish to write a story or a play in which the reader can -lose himself with delight, you must portray character better than the -reader, character which in some degree satisfies and strengthens his -aspirations. If you wish the reader to laugh at the world, or to scorn -it, or to feel the need of improving it, you portray for him character -in a condition inferior to his estimate of himself; if you wish him to -profit by that wholesome self-observation which we call the comic-spirit, -you mingle satire with tragedy—you show him character which satisfies his -aspirations, so that he will identify himself with it, and which at the -same time is inferior in some respects to what he would prefer to be, so -that he must laugh at himself. He will have a tendency to save the day -for self-respect by laughing, not at himself, but at human nature, and -the universal comic spirit will then have come to birth, akin to both -satire and tragedy, but more nearly a dramatizing of the ludicrous, as -Aristotle said, than a scoring of personal faults. - -These principles, it goes without saying, are not accepted by writers -today; the average author is not aware of them, or if he is, he takes -refuge in another remark of Aristotle’s, that perhaps tragedy was -destined to develop into something different from the type of poetry -produced by Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; perhaps new principles, -we say, in the too familiar formula, are needed for new material. So -think many of our poets and novelists who give us sordid and wretched -characters to contemplate, yet invite us to feel toward them not the -satiric regret, but the old pity and terror of noble tragedy. That -the principles do persist, however, very much as Aristotle described -them, is evidenced by the difficulty the readers still have with such -books; the authors argue their case, or critics argue it for them, but -common humanity remains unconvinced that misery is a proper subject -for permanent contemplation. In our age especially, when the impulse -to social good works is highly developed, it is a curious paradox that -writers should expect us to associate in art, as habitual companions, -with types of character which in real life we should hasten to rescue and -to change. It is generous of the writers to suppose that in a humane age -the reader will be ready to discern the heroic even beneath handicaps -and afflictions, and probably the reader is thus ready, but the writers -forget that in any age, particularly in a humane one, we do not like to -contemplate, in the permanence of art, heroic character smothered beneath -handicaps and afflictions. And in justice to the embarrassed reader it -should be added that often the character is not heroic at all, and the -only claim put forth for it is that it might have been attractive if it -had not been smothered. - -Perhaps it is the influence of Wordsworth that still spreads this -confusion in our writing. The effect of many of his best known poems -has never been wholly satisfactory, not even to his admirers; he drew -moral lessons from objects humble or mean, and since his own interest -was in the moral lesson, he sometimes was careless of the emotional -appeal which the object, left standing as it were in the poem, might -make on the reader. In one sense he was not a nature-lover, though he -had recourse to nature for ethical wisdom; it was only the wisdom he -cared about, and we have an unpleasant impression, which perhaps does -him injustice, that when he had got a moral idea out of the primrose -by the river’s brim, he was through with the primrose for the day. The -same impression, unfortunately, is made by his portrayal of humble or -mean characters. He obviously does not identify his better fortunes -with their misery, nor does he enter dramatically or imaginatively into -their lives; he is content to draw a moral from them, and the reader, -in his day and still in ours, is surprised that misery in the picture, -having produced a moral, is promptly dropped as though of no further -concern. The old leech-gatherer serves a purpose when his courage -against frightful odds cheers up a moodish poet; the old beggar at the -door moves us to gratitude that another man’s poverty keeps fresh in -us our springs of charity. Much good this does the leech-gatherer or -the beggar! And if there is to be no help for them, their presence is a -bit disturbing in the background of so much complacence. We wish there -were more tenderness in these poems that talk so much of feeling. And -when Wordsworth deliberately sets out to enlist our admiration for the -heroic, we may find ourselves facing such dumb human misery as we have -in _Michael_, the heroism of a wrecked family and an abandoned farm. -With relief we turn to the passages in the _Prelude_ where the poet no -longer looks down benignly on the wretched, but gives expression to the -ideal life which he himself desires to attain; there, where he shows life -better than it is, we can go with him and lose ourselves in the vision. - -It is our poets who chiefly defy Aristotle’s wise warning, and try with -Wordsworth to convert into a theme for meditation what is really a -subject for philanthropy. Our novelists tend more and more to give us -an inferior world, but not for our admiration; we may smile at it, or -despise it, or try to cure it. This is satire, an achievement in morals -rather than in art, and from the advertisements on the book covers it -is clear that the publisher at least knows that the author is revealing -something medicinal, something unpleasant but good for us. If we prefer -to write satires, we are at least achieving our ambition. But the reader -of the American novel today, whether he reads Mrs. Wharton, or Sinclair -Lewis, or whether he goes back to an earlier period and reads W. D. -Howells, is usually reading about other people, rarely about himself; -he has noticed those faults in his neighbors before. We have to go far -back in our literature to find a novel in which the American future is -implicit, a story into which we can enter as into a world we are glad is -ours. Perhaps we must go back as far as the _Scarlet Letter_, in which a -modern audacity of thought seems breaking through an antique repression, -and we can identify profound speculations of our own with the wisdom in -Hester’s heart or Arthur Dimmesdale’s. It has been pointed out before -how much Hawthorne gained by making his chief characters noble in the -Greek way, tragic characters better than in actual life; for the sin of -the woman and the minister was common enough in the world among weak or -vulgar characters, and the impulse even in Hawthorne’s time might well -have been to keep the story, for purposes of edification or realism, in -the low tone in which it first occurred. But we cannot easily take to -heart the sins of people who are obviously our inferiors; only the sins -of good people rouse in us tragic pity or terror, for that is the kind -of sin, if any, we should commit. Hawthorne therefore makes the minister -a saint, and if Hester is not a saint at the beginning, she is so at -the end of her ordeal, and in the sufferings of both our own heart has -been wrung. In the _House of the Seven Gables_, however, the reader is a -looker-on rather than an actor, for the characters are not better than -life, their experience is therefore not ours, and since we cannot cure -their unhappiness, we are sorry to watch it. In that story our greatest -romancer was on the road toward the modern habit of satire, a road which -he had marked out for us clearly enough in some of his early sketches and -tales. - -The trend away from the literature of art to the literature of satire -is all the more remarkable in our day because the exigencies of satire -compel the American to deny wholesale his better self. There might be -some apparent reason for not writing in the epic or the tragic tone if in -order to do so we had to assume virtues we all knew we lacked; but why -make a religion of writing satire, when to do so we must conceal the few -virtues we are sure we have? Mr. Howells took it to be his duty to tell -the unvarnished truth about human society as he knew it, but you would -not guess from his novels that America ever produced so charming a man -as Mr. Howells and those literary friends of his of whom, outside his -novels, he wrote lovingly. So Mr. Lewis pictures America today—leaving -out of the picture the satirical criticism of America in which he leads, -and so Mrs. Wharton shows us the narrower world of fashion, with no one -in it so gifted, so admirably trained, as Mrs. Wharton. The best of us -is hard enough to express, as Rabbi Ben Ezra knew, but how odd that we -prefer not to express it, whether difficult or easy—that we deliberately -conceal what we have set our hearts on. We name half a dozen characters -from his plays in whom Shakespeare seems to be portraying himself, -and without too subtle a discrimination we recognize ideals of our own -in all of them. Pendennis seems to be Thackeray himself, and so seems -Henry Esmond and Clive Newcome, and we flatter ourselves that the great -novelist incorporated in those portraits some of our own best features. -We—and Cervantes—are incarnated in Don Quixote. - -The contrast between information and art in our books, and the tendency -to stress information with a moral bent, are both thrown into sharper -relief by the success of American architecture in expressing more and -more a significant and lasting beauty. Nothing might seem at first -more utilitarian than a building, and few things in our country seem -less permanent, we have such a passion for altering. Yet art has made -its greatest progress with us in architecture, and the stages of the -progress have been accompanied by just such a selection and choice of -subject as Aristotle’s remarks about character would imply. In our cities -a genuine impulse toward beauty began to show itself two decades ago in -shop-windows. Where else should beauty appear but in the enterprises we -care most about? Since we were lovers of business, we began to indicate -the beauty that business has in our eyes. The shop-window ceased to -be, what in country hardware stores it still often is, a place where -samples of all the merchandise were displayed, an order card from which -you could plan your purchases; it became rather a scene of loveliness -to contemplate for its own sake, an attraction to hold you rooted to -the spot rather than a stimulus to hurry you inside to buy. Probably -the shop-windows in our great streets could not be justified now on a -purely economic basis; they have been lifted into the realm of beauty -and are things to remember. But for this kind of shop-window not every -article the store sells is “proper”, in the Aristotelian sense; nothing -ridiculous is shown, though ridiculous things are bought and sold, -nothing trivial is shown, and nothing that discloses too publicly the -animal conditions in which we lead our spiritual life. With a different -selection of articles which the store for our convenience must sell, we -might have a comic window, the sight of which would cause us to smile -at ourselves, or a satiric one, which would teach us to laugh at our -fellowman. - -The buildings themselves, moreover, have become beautiful by expressing -what we genuinely love to contemplate, and not all kinds of buildings -were proper to that happy end. For mere sale and barter, any shed in -the market-place might serve, but if we think of traffic in the large -way that Ruskin suggested, as something potentially heroic and noble, -as a feeding of the hungry and a clothing of the naked, as a soldierly -occupying of outposts against poverty and wretchedness, as a campaign of -conquest against nature, and as an exchange at last of spiritual hungers -and satisfactions among men, then our houses of business should look -like temples. So they begin to look, and only a very blind critic here -and there still fails to see that so they should look. With our love of -traffic goes our love of travel. In this country travel is necessary, but -it is also an ideal. Any sort of railway station will serve as a place -to buy a ticket or board a train, and until recently almost any kind of -barracks did serve for those purposes. But the haphazard building could -not express our delight in travel, our enjoyment of distance and speed -and punctilious arrivings and departings. The pleasant casualness of the -stage-coach and the road-side inn does not really appeal to us, except -in exotic moments; our religion of travel is uttered in the Pennsylvania -Station in New York, and in other such structures fast rising throughout -the country, where the ritualistic atmosphere, produced by carefully -selected elements from the buildings of antiquity, have little to do with -buying your ticket and a great deal to do with the American spirit. We -breathe more freely as we enter them, and enjoy the space and the height; -our instinctive comment is, “This is something like!” as though some part -of us had found expression at last. And if this success in architecture -is as yet in the field of business and travel, among public buildings, -the reason probably is that in those fields we know what our aspirations -are. In ecclesiastical architecture, by way of contrast, we are less -clear. We feel that if the Woolworth building is so lovely, it is but -respectable to improve the appearance of our churches, so we put up very -wonderful Gothic chapels and cathedrals—only to find, perhaps, that they -are a sort of weight on our conscience rather than an expression of our -desires; we sometimes try to cultivate the religion that produced them, -in order that so eloquent a language may have more content in its words. - -When we turn back from our architecture to our books, we have the right -to ask why poetry and the novel address themselves exclusively to what is -in essence satire, to the portrayal of us as worse than we are, or with -our aspirations left out; why we as readers must be invited to absorb -mere information about ourselves and our country; why we so seldom meet -in the pages offered to us the kind of men and women we admire or ought -to admire. The arts all express the same thing, at any given moment, -and if we are equally proficient in them, they ought to achieve the same -grandeur and the same beauty. Against the trivial and drab contents of -much of our poetry and the condescending realism of much of our prose -American architecture now stands, a reproach and an indictment; for the -imaginative power and sweep of our buildings is hardly discernible in -our books. The architects have followed old wisdom, by making their work -ideal, better than life. The writers, in a stubborn wrong-headedness, in -defiance of the readers’ psychology, portray characters worse than in -actual life, and sometimes ask us to admire them. - - -III - -To ask what characters are proper to literature as an art, and to point -out that the character better than life will express our ideals, and -that the character worse than life will invite our satire, is only to -raise in another way the old problems of the universal as against the -particular in art, of the contemporary as against the eternal. To be -strictly personal is in the end to be contemporary, and to be strictly -contemporary is to give, whether or not we intend it, the effect of -satire. If our picture of life is to appeal to the reader, and to many -readers, as their own world, not simply as their neighbors’ private house -into which they are prying, it must have general human truth beyond -what is strictly personal; and if it is to be read with that sense of -proprietorship by many people over a stretch of time, it must not limit -itself to the peculiarities of any one moment. It is true that the writer -himself lives but one life and is circumscribed by time and place; if -there were no such thing as imagination he would only record what he -is, for the enlightenment of others who are just like him; without -imagination he would not know of a better character than his, or of a -worse one, and we should be spared the discipline of satire, but at the -price of art. The problem for the writer, as for any other artist, is -to imagine the lives of other men, and the lives that he and other men -aspire to; his business is to select from personal adventure what is -generally important, and to see it against the background of universal -experience. Can any one imagine universal experience? Perhaps not, but -the nearer he comes to this difficult success the more readers the world -over will find meaning in what he writes. To have a personal career is no -ground for conceit in an artist—every one has as much; the achievement is -to state our experience so that it is the experience of other people too. - -If we portray characters as better than in actual life, there is no -great difficulty in making them seem universal; for it is a radical gift -in human conceit to fancy that anything admirable or desirable has a -possible connection with ourselves. If we do not at first discover what -there is in common between Romeo or Lincoln or Achilles or General Lee -and ourselves, yet if we admire them we shall find the resemblance, or -try to create it. This is the power of great imaginative art, that the -admirable things in it generate a kind of universal emulation, and the -story or statue which has been said to imitate nature succeeds at last -in persuading men and women quite naturally to imitate it. The power of -a great book over human conduct, even its influence at last upon what -might seem instinctive conduct, is immeasurable. In the troubadour art of -love before Dante’s time, a true lover was taught to turn pale at sight -of his lady, and at the unexpected sight of her to faint; Dante loved -that literature, and he grew pale and fainted by second nature—just as -women once learned to blush at certain things, and afterward learned not -to blush. How many lives were affected, for good or evil, throughout -Europe and America, by the alluring power of Byron’s heroes and heroines? -The poet, then, who represents character as better than actual life, as -possessing, that is, something that we desire but have not, has already -made his hero universal, and must some day accept the responsibility of -having dedicated his readers to that general ideal. We may question Byron -on moral grounds by asserting that his hero, after whom so many lives -were patterned, was really not deserving of any imitation; just as an -Oriental reformer from India might tell us that the traffic and travel -of which our architecture is an expression are both of them trivial -enterprises, mere distractions from the contemplative ends of life. -But such criticism lies outside of art. To understand the discipline -which art imposes on us it is enough to observe the kind of character -which does make an ideal effective in literature, and the kind that -precipitates us into satire. - -The real difficulty for the writer is not, then, in generalizing the -characters which embody his ideal, and which therefore are better than in -actual life; what he will chiefly need for his success is to have the -ideals. But even with a consciousness of deep aspiration he may wish to -include in the picture whole characters or parts of character which are -not what they should be, and which yet are likable, even lovable; and -to give this double effect of inferiority in some sense, together with -charm in some sense, is, it seems, very difficult, for this is the effect -of comedy, and comedy is rare in any literature, almost entirely absent -from our own. If you represent a character as worse than in actual life, -the condescending attitude of the reader will not automatically draw the -portrait into some universal relation; the writer must add something -universally admirable to the particular weakness we look down on. -Beatrice and Benedick have exhausted their wit, and they are the victims -of a plot to marry them off to each other; for such inferiority to their -companions we cannot admire them. But Shakespeare makes them both loyal -to their friends and generous in their delight in life, and Beatrice has -the good sense to know innocence when she sees it; these qualities we -can identify with our own virtues, and for these we admire the hero and -heroine. The poet further generalizes both characters by reminding us -through their meditations that to fall in love is not the work of reason, -and that even the wittiest scoffers succumb; here too we gladly recognize -our own experience. We can therefore smile at the foibles of the young -people, partly because these foibles are incident to all human nature, -and partly because, even with the foibles, we like to identify ourselves -in imagination with the supplementary virtues. Socrates was trying to -persuade Aristophanes and Agathon, in the gray dawn after the Symposium, -that the art of comedy and the art of tragedy are the same; and so far -at least he was right, in that the universal rendering which character -must receive in both, gives to the comic effect some of the pity, though -none of the terror, which tragedy evokes. But Socrates did not say that -the art of tragedy is identical with the art of satire. - -When comedy is at its best—that is, when we have made the inferior -character universal by showing that its faults are natural, or by adding -to it some general virtues—we may indeed go further and say that comedy -produces perhaps the terror as well as the pity of tragedy, and that -the two kinds of writing are, as Socrates said, but one. The tragic or -epic hero, portrayed as better than in actual life, may have faults, -but so far from despising him on that account, we may not even smile; -we like him so much that the faults seem his misfortune. Moreover, if -we refer the weakness of the comic character to nature itself, how can -we be hard on the individual? And if we add to the faults positive and -lovable virtues, will not the comic character seem at last to be tragic? -In English drama Falstaff is perhaps the prince of comic characters, -so vitally imagined that he lives on the stage apart from any plot; he -is a living person, with no virtues at all, yet infinitely likable. He -can be played to make the groundlings laugh, but most of us after we -have laughed taste profound tragedy in what we have laughed at. He is -almost majestic in those moments of cowardice when he portrays himself -exactly as he is—when he sees himself, as it were, from outside, and -points to those aspects of his frailty which belong to mankind. An -actor might play the scenes on the battle-field in _Henry IV_ so as to -inspire, not laughter at the fat knight’s depravity, but a pitiful and -self-accusing silence. When he finds the corpse of Sir Walter Blunt, -just slain—“Soft! who are you? Sir Walter Blunt!—There’s Honour for you! -Here’s no vanity!... I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered; -there’s but three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are for -the town’s end, to beg during life.... I like not such grinning honour as -Sir Walter hath. Give me life; which if I can save, so; if not, honour -comes unlooked for.” - -In French drama Molière brought comedy to an excellence not matched, -perhaps, in any other literature, and no imaginative writing is richer -than his in general ideas. We laugh at the amusing situation, or delight -in the frankly artificial balancing of the plot, but on second thoughts -we fall silent, contemplating the universal sweep of humanity, ourselves -included, which he has uncovered for us. - -The most obvious example for American readers is in _Tartuffe_, where -the unhappy Elmire has difficulty in proving to her husband Orgon that -Tartuffe, whom he greatly admires, is a treacherous friend and is -actually making love to her. She finally admits Tartuffe to her room, -having first hidden her husband under the table, from which he has -promised to emerge if Tartuffe should go beyond the bounds of decency. -Tartuffe, of course, makes love in the clearest terms to his friend’s -wife, but Orgon remains concealed. “Before we go any further”, says -Elmire, “just look down the hall to make sure my husband isn’t coming.” -“Why worry about him?” says Tartuffe, “we can lead him around by the -nose.” Then Orgon comes from under the table. Where has the comedy -brought us? Is it not to a contemplation of our own vanity, the source of -the sense of honor in us all? Are we laughing at Tartuffe and Orgon, or -are we thinking of ourselves? - -Falstaff and Tartuffe illustrate the generalizing of inferior characters -by the ascribing of their faults to human nature. A good illustration of -the comic character which enlists our admiration and is a genuine ideal -is Huckleberry Finn. His ignorance, his poverty, and his lack of humor -would seem to disqualify him for any heroic career in literature, yet he -is a veritable hero, in the sense that we gladly put ourselves in his -point of view and return again and again to live for an hour or so in his -experience. The reason is that along with his inferior qualities he has -characteristics and he has a fortune which seem better than ours; he is -loyal to Tom and the negro Jim, he has a simple faith and zest in life, -and he has exciting adventures and gets romance out of scenes we should -otherwise find dull. He flatters us too by admiring people and things -which from his praise we know we should treat satirically. To know what -comedy is, as opposed to satire, we have but to read his story again -and compare it with any current indictment of the scene in which his -adventure was laid. - - -IV - -If the principles of tragedy, comedy and satire are as implicit in our -psychology now as when Aristotle described them, and if the principles -of decorum, of art, and of the timeless and the impersonal in art, are -as rooted in life as they are declared to be, there might seem to be no -great need to preach them; the practice of literature would disclose them -in spite of our ignorance. Try as we might to make a lovable hero out of -an inferior character, he would still emerge a figure in satire or, if -we generalized his faults, a figure in comedy; in serious literature, -only a character better than in real life would give satisfaction. Though -we do not doubt that the principles of art will thus be rediscovered -pragmatically by the unescapable discipline of literature, yet it is -something of a pity to go through such lengths of experiment in order to -find out what was known before. And the great danger in our country is -that we may not push the experiment to the tedious but profitable end at -which sound knowledge awaits us; we may grow weary of the discipline, and -take refuge in parody or in sentimentality. These two avenues of escape -from the problem have cursed American literature before, and signs are -not wanting that they now are the temptations of those who yesterday were -our “new” writers and promised brave things. Face to face with characters -worse than in actual life, we may find our own satiric attitude -monotonous, but to handle such material otherwise than satirically, we -must master the art of comedy, and comedy is an art too difficult. What -Bret Harte and Riley and Eugene Field did in such circumstances was -to obscure the meanness of the subject by sentimentality, instead of -illuminating it by the comic spirit. Spoon River has been celebrated -before, though we may not have recognized the subject with the old -sentimental surface removed; much of our contemporary satire has been the -kind of surgical operation necessary to separate the American reader from -the sentimentality which in his heart he likes. Since it is in his heart, -he may express it again quite shamelessly, this time as a protest against -too much satire, and we may have another welter of old oaken buckets and -old swimming holes and little boy blues—the literature that provides the -satisfaction of a good cry, without the over-exertion of tragic pity or -terror. Already we have again the familiar and dilettante essay, the -imitation of eighteenth-century style, even in newspaper columns, the -interminable parodies of Horace, which in this country have been the -advance signals of the sentimental wave. - -We can but hope that the signs may prove deceptive, and that literature -in America will not wait much longer for the characters and subjects -proper to it, and proper to the dramatic hour we live in—characters and -subjects expressing that better part of us which has given our land its -direction and its power, and expressing also that other world of the -spirit which man builds for elbow-room to exercise his genuine ideals in, -and carries it around with him, and sets it up to be a tabernacle in the -wilderness of this natural world. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Literary Discipline, by John Erskine - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITERARY DISCIPLINE *** - -***** This file should be named 62991-0.txt or 62991-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/9/9/62991/ - -Produced by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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