though others, no doubt, do. It is interesting, however, to remark that
before the war, and for a considerable period during the war, the policy
of the Holy See was directed to the support of Germany. I have often
wondered how a Catholic like M. Hovelaque accommodates his thesis with
that fact. If the war, as he says, was only an episode in the secular
conflict of Germany with Rome (meaning the Roman Church as the spiritual
successor of the Roman Empire), how came it that before and during the
war the directors of the Roman Church were pro-German? Something must
surely be wrong here; for either the Roman Church did not take that
view of Germany which M. Hovelaque has defined, or, as seems to me more
probable, the Holy See had another end in view than victory over Germany,
namely, alliance with a prospectively victorious Germany! With this key,
I think, the mystery is unlocked for the ordinary man, however much it
continues sealed to the faithful. As _The Times Literary Supplement_
said: “Modernists understand no better than Newman the springs of Roman
ecclesiastical policy, which is never fanatical or idealistic, but
always based on cool political calculation.” And, undoubtedly, the “cool
political calculation” of the Holy See, both before and during the first
years of the war, was that Germany would win. If this was not the case,
how are we to explain the sudden change over of policy when it began
to appear that Germany, after all, was not to be the victor? That at
a certain stage in the war such a change took place is well known to
everybody, and it was openly admitted in the Catholic _Dublin Review_.
“The pendulum of Catholicism,” said the _Dublin Review_, “has swung away
from Germany ... with Austria and Spain ... and with the English-speaking
peoples and their Latin Allies the Catholic order in the era of the
future.” The “eternal conflict” theory must go by the board after this,
for it obviously fails to fit the facts.
THE ORIGINS OF MARX.—It is to be hoped that the reputation of Marx will
not long survive the war unimpaired. I can scarcely think that the German
Socialists will be so proud of their Marxism in the future as they have
been in the past, since it will have clearly betrayed them into one of
the most shameful moral surrenders in all history. It is dangerous for
a man’s writings to be regarded as the “Bible” even of Socialists; and
when, in addition, the Marxian Bible, unlike the other, aims at and,
in a sense, achieves, logical consistency, the peril of it is greater
upon minds lacking the inestimable virtue of common sense. Marx was not
himself a slave of his own inspiration; he was anything but a Marxian
in the sense in which his followers are Marxian. He had, indeed, a very
sharp word for certain of the disciples whose breed, unfortunately, has
not been extinguished by it. “Amateur anarchists,” he called them, who
“make up by rabid declarations and bloodthirsty rampings for the utter
insignificance of their political existence.” Groups of his disciples,
answering perfectly to this description, are to be found to-day in
English as well as in other Labour circles. In between their rampings
they reveal their political insignificance by inquiring of each other
such elementary facts about literature and history as schoolboys should
be ashamed to have forgotten. And the surprising thing is that even these
open confessions induce no reaction upon their conviction that they
understand Marx.
It is a common supposition among Marx’s followers that not only has he
left nothing to be said on the subject of economics, but that nothing was
said before him. One German Socialist, at any rate, has rid himself of
this notion, for Dr. Menger has remarked that “Marx was completely under
the influence of the earlier English Socialists, and more particularly
of William Thompson.” In a valuable essay upon Marx, by Professor Alfred
Rahilly, the facts are let out. Marx, it appears, came across Thompson’s
work on _The Distribution of Wealth_ (1824) in the British Museum, and
read it with great profit. From Thompson he took practically all his
chief doctrines, with the exception of his peculiar interpretation
of history in terms of economics. The theory of Value as measured by
labour-power, the distinction between capital and capitalism, the law
of decreasing utility, and, above all, the very phrase as well as the
very idea of Surplus Value—all of these “Marxian” doctrines Marx found
in Thompson. I am not arguing that Marx was the less for having been
indebted to his English predecessors. He would, indeed, in my opinion,
have been a greater man if he had borrowed more of Thompson, for
Thompson possessed the common sense to realise that it was possible that
the concentration of capital might take place simultaneously, with a
diffusion of ownership—an idea which would have spared Marx the ignominy
of many of his most fanatical disciples. What, on the other hand, was
great in Marx, was his capacity for large generalisations, and his
industry in establishing them. In this respect he belonged to the great
Victorians, and, as such, he deserves more credit than his present-day
followers will permit him to receive.
MARX AS POLITICIAN.—The centenary celebrations of Marx ought not to
conclude without a tribute to his astonishing political insight.
Philosophically Marx was confused; as an economist he has suffered from
his disciples; but as a political critic he has seldom been surpassed.
Particular attention may be drawn to his analysis of the circumstances
of Bismarck’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and to his forecast of
the consequences. Though writing in London, and without our historic
knowledge of the Ems telegram, or our present knowledge of the world-war,
Marx might have written his manifesto to-day; but, in that case, I doubt
whether he would be published in Germany, or read with much attention by
Marx’s followers in this country. It is a strange reflection, indeed,
upon the fate of the works of Marx that it is precisely the most clear
and prophetic part of them which his professed followers neglect. For his
dubious forecasts and his riddling analyses they have a reverence that
transcends bibliolatry; but, concerning his most absolute and explicit
political policies—not a word!
The war of 1870, as we all know, was for Germany a declared war of
defence, exactly like the present war. Germany is always defending
herself at the world’s expense. No sooner, however, had the ostensible
motive of defence been satisfied by Sedan, than the real objects of
German militarism began to be revealed. Unhindered by the earlier
protestations of the Emperor William that Germany was at war only
with Napoleon and not with France, the militarists inspired the German
liberal bourgeoisie to press for annexations in the name of race and
security. They dared to pretend, said Marx, that the people of the
two provinces were burning to be annexed to Germany, and they adopted
without reflection the excuse of the military party that a rectification
of the Imperial frontiers was a strategic necessity. Thus, concluded
Marx, they insisted upon sowing in the terms of peace the seeds of new
wars—the phrase is Marx’s own. And what wars, too! Marx was not blind
to their probable character. History, he said, would not measure the
German offence by the number of miles of territory annexed, but by
the significance of the fact of annexation. This significance was no
less than a declaration of “a policy of conquest,” from which might be
anticipated in logical order a German racial war against “the Slav and
Latin races combined.” The war of 1870, having thus ended, would, he
said, be the precursor of a series of international wars, in the course
of which it was probable that the working-classes everywhere would
succumb to the forces of militarism and capitalism. What comment has the
_Call_ or any of our contemporary Marxian pacifists to make upon this?
It is not right that they should ignore it, more especially when it is
recalled that Marx paid a tribute to the English working-classes of his
day, who “protested with all their might against the dismemberment of
France.”
JOHN MITCHEL AS THE SAME.—Marx, however, was not the only observer of
the events of 1870 to be moved to prophecy by them. As a matter of fact,
everything has been foreseen. John Mitchel, the Irish Nationalist, whose
name is invoked by Sinn Feiners to-day, was in Paris before the 1870 war,
and wrote of the events of the war in the _Irish Citizen_ and elsewhere
during its progress. He, too, had no illusions concerning the nature of
Prussian militarism, and though his sympathies were mainly with France,
he had a word of warning for England. “Prussia,” he said, “cannot be
England’s friend. Prussia has her own aspirations and ambitions; one of
these is to be a great maritime power, or rather _the_ great maritime
Power of Europe; and nothing in the future can be more sure than that
Prussia, if successful in this struggle with France, will take Belgium,
and threaten from Antwerp the mouth of the Thames.” Things have not
worked out exactly as Mitchel prophesied, but they have worked out
nearly enough to justify his political clairvoyance. Like Marx, he was
not deceived by the events before him, and both saw in them the shadows
of the events which have now befallen us. I remark with irony that just
as the self-styled followers of the economist Marx ignore the political
judgments of their master, the professed inheritors of the Nationalist
opinions of Mitchel ignore his international opinions. It is in this
way that the garments of the great are divided, and the seamless coat
shredded to make partisan ribbons.
NORSE IN ENGLISH.—Professor C. H. Herford makes a meritorious attempt
to recall attention to the influence and value of the Norse Myths
upon English Poetry. William Morris was most powerfully and directly
influenced by the Sagas, and of Morris Professor Herford says that
“no other English poet has felt so keenly the power of Norse myth;
none has done so much to restore its terrible beauty, its heroism, its
earth-shaking humour, and its heights of tragic passion and pathos, to
a place in our memories, and a home in our hearts.” It will not do,
however, for (let me whisper it) who reads Morris’s poetry to-day? Has
he a home in our hearts? Are his Norse enthusiasms really anything to
us? I am not defending our generation for neglecting Morris, or for
being indifferent to the Norse theogony, of which he was a prophet. Our
age is one of prose, and the passion of prose is justice—reasonable and
regulated justice. Terrible beauty, earth-shaking humour, tragic passion,
and so on—the stuff of epic poetry—are relegated nowadays to the police
court. Moreover, the Norse mythology is not only “pagan” in the sense of
being non-Christian, it is pagan in the sense of being sub- as much as
pre-Christian, differing in this respect from the Indian mythology of the
_Mahabharata_, or the Egyptian mythology of the _Book of the Dead_. We
can never return to it without committing an act of regression, since it
is a paganism of a world inferior rather than superior to the “Christian”
world. At the same time, since we must carry all our sheaves with us in
order to enjoy the complete harvest of the human soul, it is necessary
not to drop from consciousness the heroic past, albeit a past to which we
may not return. Let it be enshrined and enjoyed in poetry and music now
that it is no longer possible in life.
THE COMEDY OF IT.—Comedy still remains a secret hid from the English
mind, and not all the efforts of Mr. John Francis Hope to bring it into
popularity will succeed where the prior efforts of Meredith have failed.
The reason, as Mr. Hope has often explained it, even more clearly than
Meredith, is not only that the spirit of Comedy demands “a society of
cultivated men and women, wherein ideas are current and perceptions
quick”—a condition certainly not now existing—but the absence of three
qualities, each of which, unfortunately, blooms luxuriantly among
us—“sentimentalism, puritanism, and bacchanalianism.” Comedy, the play
of the mind about real ideas, is quite incompatible with any one of
these three vices. If you sentimentalise, play is over, and equally it
is over if you are shocked, or if you carry the _suggested_ humour of
the situation too far. But one of these things the ordinary English man
or woman is almost bound to do; and thus it comes about that “play,” the
sparkle of common sense, is so rare among us.
Meredith certainly worked very hard to instil Comedy into the English
mind. His essay is a classic, and our only classic on the subject. And
he may be said to have written the whole of his novels in order to
illustrate his idea. Meredith’s novels are much more than a mirror held
up in Nature; they are a model held up to human nature; and, from this
point of view, they are only an appendix to the _Essay on Comedy_. The
serious way in which Meredith’s novels are read, however, is an evidence
of his failure, and it would be interesting to hear his secret comment
on the critics who acclaim him as the grand portrait-painter of women.
Did Meredith even set himself to draw a woman? Was his art not rather to
“draw out” a woman from the imperfect society his times provided him?
Were not his “portraits,” in fact, constructive criticisms of the women
he knew? I put these opinions into interrogation out of mere courtesy,
for there is really no doubt whatever about them. Meredith drew women
still to be, as he hoped they would become.
“To love comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women
well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope
for good.” That is an almost complete summary of the conditions of the
comic spirit; but there must be added the “sense of society,” the social
sense, which is quite as important. This also introduces a considerable
difficulty for us, since if “our English school had not clearly imagined
society” in 1877, when Meredith wrote, it is less than ever probable
to-day. In 1877, such people of intelligence as were living in England
were still more or less homogeneous in their general views about life.
They were not eighteenth century—the century of our highest English
social culture; but they were not yet what we have subsequently become,
discrete and warring atoms of intellectuality. It was possible when
Meredith was alive for a group of people to meet, and to create something
remotely resembling a salon. The hope of realising a “salon spirit” was
not entirely dead. To-day nothing is more improbable than even an attempt
to restore a salon. Not only would nobody undertake to do it, but to
nobody would it occur that its restoration is highly desirable. But the
salon is, as it were, the foyer of the theatre of Comedy, as the theatre
of Comedy is itself the foyer of the Civilised Life of Brilliant Common
Sense; and if we cannot re-create a salon it is perfectly certain that
the greater mysteries are beyond us. We may continue, however, to “hope
for good,” since that also is an essential of Comedy.
THE EPIC SERBS.—_Kossovo: the Heroic Songs of the Serbs_, translated by
Miss Helen Rootham, has now been published for some months. If there is
any “epic sense” alive in this country, it must surely be gratified by
the appearance of these Serbian ballads, which are much more truly epic
fragments than ballads as we understand the term. In the ballad proper
the prevailing note is tragedy—sometimes individual, sometimes family,
sometimes clan; but in the Serbian, as in the Homeric, the tragedy
expressed in the popular poetry is more spacious even than the nation;
the nation becomes the race, and the race symbolises a psychological
power, which may very well be called a god—a suffering god. Grimm said of
these ballads that there had been “nothing since Homer to compare with
them; they were the best of all times and nations.” Goethe compared them
to the _Song of Songs_. Certainly there is something Homeric in them; and
since they are sung to-day, they can be regarded as unique. Long dwelling
on them, with a view to discovering their innermost secret, convinces
me, however, that they differ from the Homeric mood in their comparative
hopelessness. Mr. Baring says in his Introduction that these Serbian
ballad-writers “saw the world with the eyes of a child and the heart
of a man.” “Child” is a word of multiple _entente_; and the difference
between the Homeric and the Serbian “childhood” is that the latter
appears doubtful whether it can grow up. Homer, we know, occasionally
let fall a sad regret that his splendid heroes should still be children;
and in the plays of Æschylus the high philosophical meditations of Homer
are considerably elaborated. But in these Serbian ballads there does not
appear to me any sign of the _mind_ of a man, however much of the heart
there may be. No Serbian Plato will ever find in them such a text as
the Greek Plato found in Homer. It is not to be wondered at. Serbia has
always been on the frontier of European civilisation, and perpetually in
the trenches. Since 1389 Serbia has been in unbroken but unsubmissive
captivity, and her deliverance from alien bondage is only an event
of yesterday. But if the elements of the future are contained in the
quintessence of these ballads, there is no sight of a new Athens in them.
ERNEST DOWSON.—Mr. Arthur Symons’s Introduction to the reprinted _Poems
and Prose_ of the late Ernest Dowson has all the characteristics of the
age to which both he and Dowson belonged. It is delicately appreciative,
and not lacking in good judgment. Mr. Symons says, for instance, that
Dowson was small enough to be overwhelmed by experiences that would
have been nourishing food to a great man. But the style and manner of
passing judgment almost completely contradict the matter of the judgment
itself, and leave us in doubt whether Mr. Symons is not judging against
his judgment. Literary criticism does not need to be literature; least
of all does it need to be belles-lettres. Yet Mr. Arthur Symons and his
whole school seem to aim at precisely this effect, that of writing in the
same style as the work criticised. Thus we find him saying of Dowson:
“all the fever and turmoil and the unattained dreams of a life which had
so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of genius”—words
and phrases which might have been written by Dowson himself. They are
apologiastic of the person when what we ask of criticism is judgment of
the quality of the style, and in the unfortunate identification of genius
with disaster and suicide they are almost an incentive to the little
artists to trade on their neuroses. I do not know whether Mr. Symons knew
Dowson personally; it is of no importance; but his bedside manner with
ailing geniuses would have been anything but tonic.
It is symptomatic of Dowson’s state of mind, though Mr. Symons misses
the subtlety of it, that he was always repeating Poe’s line: “the viol,
the violet, and the vine.” A special affection for labials and liquids
is conclusive evidence of minority, not to say infantilism; and stylists
with any ambition to excel, and to develop both themselves and their
style, will be wise to watch their “v’s” and “m’s” and “l’s,” in fact,
their labials and liquids generally. Dowson wallowed in liquids and
labials to the end of his short life; his vocabulary never grew up, and
I have no doubt that, had he been asked to quote his own best lines, he
would have pointed, not to the notorious “Cynara,” which is sufficiently
pretty-pretty, but to these lines, in which he came as near to Poe as
originality permits:—
Violets and leaves of vine
For Love that lives a day.
“One is essentially of the autumn,” he wrote of himself. But that is not
true, for Dowson was not ripe, but (I say it of course with respect)
rotten. He remained in the cradle sucking sensations long after he should
have been out in the world creating sensations. Life never got beyond his
lips.
A SENTIMENTAL EXCURSION.—The writers of the _Venture_, a literary
magazine published from Bristol, and written chiefly by members of the
Postal Service, are sincere in that they are manifestly striving to
acquire a good English style; and they are modest in that they do not
pretend to have attained to it. Even better, and unlike so many current
“stylists,” they do not say that the unreachable grapes are sour,
while those only which they can pluck are the perfect fruit; in other
words, they do not try to pass off their defects as new beauties of
style. Their models are good, and their exercises are promising. The
introductory note contains, however, a little cant, rather out of key
with the prevailing mood of the journal. It demands “stalwart criticism,”
not for itself only, but for literature in general. The _London Mercury_
appeared before the world in the same austere attitude, calling in
prophetic tones for sterner criticism, more outspoken criticism,
criticism that should both say and mean something, criticism, in short,
of the kind which has for years ensured the ostracism of precisely that
kind of critic. It is the easiest thing in the world to demand such
criticism, and very popular on one condition—that it be never actually
provided. For the fact is that the criticism in question is really
killing; and how many of those who ask for stern criticism would welcome
their own extinction?
Special attention is directed to the longish poem by Mr. Francis Andrews.
It is entitled “Mother,” and the opening stanza is as follows:—
You can see from the gate which once enclosed my world
The tinted woods o’ the hill and the white road wending,
And among the nearer boughs whereon my stars were hung
The blown and shifting wraith of the blue smoke curled.
Let us stop at that and collect our impressions. It is a very dangerous
subject that Mr. Andrews has chosen. The temptation to indulge in
“sob-stuff” in reflecting on “Mother,” is well-nigh irresistible, since
the sentiment goes back to the childhood not only of the individual, but
of the race, and probably earlier. It is almost inextricably mingled with
the tears of things. But tears are not a proper accompaniment of poetry
or of beauty. The mission of Art is to dry all tears, and the utmost
severity and serenity are needed in dealing with a profoundly emotional
subject exactly to keep the tears from welling into it. That Mr. Andrews
has not succeeded is evident from the opening stanza which I have just
quoted. It is almost drenched with sentiment. Listen to the rhythm
which is nearly a lullaby in reverie, and let us ask ourselves whether
it is not calculated, quite apart from the words, to throw the reader
backwards into his mother’s arms. “Which once enclosed my world,” “and
the white road wending,” “whereon my stars were hung,” “the blown and
shifting wraith of blue smoke curled”—these are sentimental rhythms, and
their inevitable effect is to induce a reverie of the past rather than a
meditation or contemplation of the future. The mood is backward-looking,
and not forward-looking, an indulgence and not an effort of spirit. It
is quite in accordance with the diagnosis that a concluding stanza of
the poem should repeat the opening stanza, since there is no release
in a mood of this kind. In great reveries it will be observed that
the movement is forward and upwards. The action starts from a profound
sentiment, but it works its way upward to a triumphant assertion of
spiritual realisation. Look, for instance, at _Lycidas_ or _Adonais_,
both sentimental in origin, but both exalted in conclusion. There the
song springs from a dewy bed, drenched with tears, but it mounts and
mounts until it ends in the sky. Mr. Andrews keeps well to the ground,
and, as I have said, his concluding stanza is only a slight variation
of the prelude. The influence of Kipling is to be discerned at work,
especially Kipling’s “Envoi,” beginning, “There’s a whisper down the
field.” Kipling is another of the writers whose sentiment is still tied
to his mother’s apron-strings; and his “Envoi” and “Mother o’ Mine” are
almost as poisonous to poetry as Meredith’s “Love in the Valley.” We need
not be averse to sentiment as such, but the most careful discrimination
between the nest and the sky is essential to an æsthetic use of it. Let
us start in sentiment, by all means, but let us rise from it as quickly
as possible.