suggestion that a new _Don Quixote_ be written to slay the dragon of
Capitalism with the pen of satire. The suggestion is unconditionally
free; no acknowledgment of its source need be made; but anybody is
at liberty to begin on the work at once. Some excellent arguments are
adduced why the work should be undertaken. Capitalism has long troubled
the land, and its evils are generally admitted. Reason has failed to
make any impression on the beast, and sentiment appears almost to be
its favourite food. Satire, therefore, is plainly indicated as the
appropriate weapon, and at its crack, my correspondent suggests, the
beast would dissolve into nothing amidst universal laughter. What more
need be said but “Cervantes, forward!”?
Unfortunately my correspondent proceeds to weaken his appeal by affirming
that Cervantes himself had Capitalism in his mind when writing certain
chapters of the First Book of _Don Quixote_. In Chaps. 44 and 45 it
appears to me, he says, that Don Quixote’s identity as a capitalist is
undoubted. Sancho Panza’s identity with the mass of labour is equally
undoubted; and the middle classes are represented by a number of ladies
and gentlemen, a canon, a judge, and a doctor. These chapters standing
by themselves would be a good allegorical explanation of the present
financial position. But why of the “present” position, if satire is
capable of dissolving Capitalism in laughter? Without questioning the
allegorical character of the chapters referred to, which may, for all
I dare say, be a perfect anticipation of the economics of Douglas—it
is not encouraging to our present-day Cervantes to be told that their
proposed method has already been tried by a master only to leave the
dragon of Capitalism still to be tickled to death. Now one comes to think
of it, not even Chivalry, an even more undoubted object than Capitalism
of Cervantes’s satire, really died of the shock, for the very good
reason that it was dead before Cervantes rained his laughter upon it.
Even Cervantes’s satire killed nothing, and the task to be undertaken
for my correspondent is therefore greater than Cervantes’. In the spirit
of Squeers, I can only suggest that he who spells window, w-i-n-d-e-r,
should clean it. My correspondent, forward!
The power of satire is usually much exaggerated; as a matter of fact, it
is one of the least effective of psychological weapons. Almost anything
can turn its edge. Juvenal is not reported to have done much more than
incur the dislike of his contemporaries; and Swift, the most serious
satirist since Juvenal, never effected anything by satire alone. His two
most immediately effective pamphlets, the _Drapier’s Letters_, and the
_Conduct of the Allies_, contained passages of satire, irony, and every
other sort of appeal, but neither of them can be called satirical as a
whole. Satire, like wit, is effective in small doses given at opportune
moments; but, as in the case of wit, sustained satire defeats its own
object. It owes what power it wields to the contrast in which it stands
to the prevailing mood of the work in which it appears: its unexpected
appearance therein. Surprise is the condition of its doing any work at
all. Surely if this were not the case the satirical journals of, let
us say, Germany or France, would have dissolved in laughter the vices
aimed at long before now. But satire is expected of them, is discounted
in advance, and positively adds to the attractiveness of the objects
satirised. I will not go so far as to say that Cervantes recalled
dead Chivalry to life by satirising it, though the crop of romances
that followed _Don Quixote_ in England may almost be said to justify
the charge; but it can safely be said that a satire directed against
Capitalism would lengthen rather than contract the life of the dragon, by
adding amusement to its claims to exist.
THE “DIAL” OF AMERICA.—The American _Dial_ is perhaps the most fully
realised of all the promising literary magazines now current in the
world. It is in all probability considerably in advance of the American
reading public for whom it is intended, but it is all the better on
that account. Culture is always called upon to sacrifice popularity,
and, usually, even its existence, in the interests of civilisation;
for civilisation is the child of culture, and has in general as little
consideration for culture as a human child for its own education. The
custodians of culture (or the disinterested pursuit of human perfection)
are the adults of the race of which civilisation is the children’s
school: and, fortunately or unfortunately, in these democratic days,
their function is largely under the control of their pupils. Gone are
the times when a Brahmanic caste can lay down and enforce a curriculum
of education for its civilisation. Modern civilisations believe
themselves to be, and possibly are, “old enough” to exercise their
right of selecting their teachers. It cannot be said, as yet, that
they exercise their choice with remarkable discretion, but the process
of popular self-education, if slow, may at any rate be expected to be
sure. In any event there is no use in kicking against the stars. If the
forces of culture are to rule modern civilisations, they must do so
constitutionally. The days of the dictatorship of the intelligentzia are
past.
There are two kinds of judgment which it is essential for civilisation
to acquire: judgment of men and judgment of things. Things are of
primary importance, but so also are persons. One is not before or
after the other. For instance, culture itself is a “thing” in the
philosophic sense; it is a reality in the world of ideas; but of quite
equal importance in our mixed world of ideas and individuals, are the
actual persons and personalities claiming to embody and direct culture.
Hence the transcendent importance of criticism next to creation in
both spheres: criticism of personalities and criticism of “works.” The
mistaking of a little man for a great man, or the reverse, may easily
mean the delay of the work of culture for whole generations. And,
equally, the confusion of the objects of culture with the objects of
civilisation may spell the ruin of a nation. Few critics realise the
magnitude and responsibility of their function, or the degree to which
personal disinterestedness is indispensable to its fulfilment. Holding
the office of inspectors of the munitions of culture, they are often
guilty of “passing” contraband upon the public, and, still more often,
of failing to ensure delivery of Culture’s most effective weapons. More
seriousness is needed, very much more, in matters of criticism. We must
be capable of killing if we are to be capable of giving life.
The _Dial_ is particularly to be praised for its courageous criticism
of great dead Americans. America, like Europe, suffers from necrophily,
a kind of worship of the dead. Indeed, as a good Injun was synonymous
with a dead Injun, a great American writer is usually a dead American
writer. All his faults die with him, and only his myth remains, with the
result that people who would not have acknowledged the existence of, let
us say, Whitman living, will not acknowledge a fault in Whitman dead.
For a nation thus under a critical statute of Mortmain, the utterance of
what seems like blasphemy is a necessary part of their education. They
must know that the dead great, by very virtue of their greatness and the
survival of their works, are still alive and active, and that the same
kind of criticism must be kept playing on them as upon the living forces.
The _Dial_ reviewers show no disposition to shirk this unpleasing duty.
One by one, as the occasion suggests, the dead great are given the honour
of living criticism, and treated as the immortal present which they are.
Since their spirits go marching on, criticism must go marching along with
them.
One of the recently so honoured dead in the pages of the _Dial_ has been
Whitman; and in an essay on _Whitman’s Love Affairs_ Mr. Emery Holloway
throws a fresh light on an old but still obscure subject. His “love
affairs” were obviously more matter for criticism in Whitman than in
some other writers, since Whitman was pre-eminently an autobiographical
writer who sang himself. What, then, does Mr. Holloway find? A little
surprisingly—at least to readers who have not already divined Whitman’s
secret—that Whitman “suffered” from love, and struggled against it
rather as a raw tyro than as the “master of himself” of his poetic
fiction. In some private diaries of Whitman, quoted by Mr. Holloway,
we are presented with the spectacle of Whitman grappling with his own
soul after the manner of saints mortifying the flesh, or, as I would
suggest, after the distinctively modern fashion. Instinct was at war
with reason, even in Whitman, and, in the end, as usually occurs with
modern men, it was reason that won. Mr. Holloway divides Whitman’s works
between two periods: the first, in which he sang “untrammelled natural
impulses”; and a second, in which he was concerned about democracy and
the immortality of the soul; in short, with reason. And between these two
periods, or worlds of discourse, Mr. Holloway tells us, was a purgatory,
in which Whitman’s soul was tried as by fire. The diaries already
mentioned contain some of the records of Whitman’s conflict with himself.
Here, for example, is an entry bearing all the marks of a painful
resolution. “I must,” he says, “pursue her no more” ... and resolve “to
give up absolutely and for good, from this present hour, the feverish,
fluctuating, useless, undignified pursuit of 164 ... avoid seeing her
or any meeting whatever from this hour forth, for life.” The reader is
to be pitied who does not understand, however dimly, what Whitman must
have gone through in imagination and reality to confide to the author
of _Leaves of Grass_ such a shocking confession. He emerged from the
experience with that past behind him, but still, I think, unresolved. For
it was not his to reconcile instinct with reason in an epigenesis; he
passed from one phase to the next without carrying his sheaves with him.
From being within sight of real greatness, he declined to the stature of
a great American.
Following its faithful treatment of the Whitman myth, the _Dial_ examines
the case of Mark Twain. It is undoubtedly a pathological case, and not
only Mark Twain but America was the victim in it. A nation suffers the
fate of its great men; as is their odyssey so is the odyssey of the
nation to which they belong. Does a great man in any nation become
corrupt; does he succumb to falsehood and to the morality of the herd?
Even so his nation is on the downward path. On the other hand, does he
maintain his integrity, even though his life should pay for it? There
is a sign that his nation also will battle through. From this point of
view, Mark Twain presents the spectacle both of a tragedy and a portent.
Nobody can read his works without realising the essential truthfulness of
the man, his marvellous capacity for intellectual honesty, his unerring
perception of the norm of things. Mark Twain, permitted and encouraged
to pass free judgment upon American and human life, might have been one
of the cultural forces of the new world; he was one of God’s best gifts
to America. We know, however, what America did for Mark Twain; it slowly
but surely emasculated him in the supposed interests of the female (not
the feminine) in the American soul. Under the influence of his wife who,
as he said, not only “edited everything I wrote, but edited me,” under
the similar influence of all that was bourgeois in America—Mark Twain
consented to “make fun” of everything he held dear. Talents and powers
which it is spiritual death to trade, Mark Twain prostituted for the
amusement of a people whose deepest need was high seriousness. As Mr.
Lovett says, Mark Twain “flattered a country without art, letters, beauty
or standards to laugh at these things.” The judgment is severe, but it is
just; and Mark Twain, I believe, would be the first to acquiesce in it.
That he preserved, in the back of his mind, his spiritual vision and
knowledge, there can be no doubt. He sinned not only against the light,
but in the light. One or two revealing phrases in his works have escaped
the censorship of the female American he married. “In our country,” he
said, “we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of thought,
freedom of speech, and the prudence never to practise either.” It must
be admitted that this is a “snag” in the smooth current of a work of
amusement; it betokened the existence of depths and danger. But it is
nothing to the remarks let off in conversation on the rare occasions when
the censor was absent. “I’ve a good mind,” he once said to a friend, “to
blow the gaff on the whole damned human race.” It is tragedy, indeed,
that he never did. We have the gaff blown on us all too seldom, and
usually by men whose idiosyncrasies and abnormalities allow us to ignore
them. Mark Twain was such a normal man that his blowing of the gaff could
not possibly have been attributed to a neurotic complex derived from
infantile suppression: it would have been the judgment of man upon Man.
His failure to bestow this inestimable gift upon America and the world we
owe to America, and if, as I have said, a nation suffers the fate of its
great men, we may be sure that America will pay for it.
AMERICA REGRESSING.—Just when we in Europe were beginning to envy America
her promise, contrasting it with the winter of our own discontent, “the
authorities” (as one might say the furies, the parcæ or the weird
sisters) have descended upon our unfortunate but deserving friend,
the _Little Review_, and suspended its mail service on account of its
publication of a chapter of Mr. James Joyce’s new novel, _Ulysses_. That
such an absurd act of puritanic spleen should be possible after and
before years of world-war is evidence that spiritual meanness is hard to
transcend; and it confirms the justice or, at least, the apprehension
expressed in Mr. Ezra Pound’s _bon mot_ that the U.S.A. should be renamed
the Y.M.C.A. Not only is the _Little Review_ perfectly harmless; would to
heaven, indeed, that it were, or could be otherwise, for never can any
good be done by something incapable of doing harm; but the _Ulysses_ of
Mr. James Joyce is one of the most interesting symptoms in the present
literary world, and its publication is very nearly a public obligation.
Such sincerity, such energy, such fearlessness as Mr. Joyce’s are rare
in any epoch, and most of all in our own, and on that very account they
demand to be given at least the freedom of the Press. What the giant
America can fear from Mr. Joyce or from his publication in the _Little
Review_ passes understanding. Abounding in every variety of crime
and stupidity as America is, even if _Ulysses_ were a literary crime
committed in a journal of the largest circulation, one more or less could
not make much difference to America. But _Ulysses_ is no crime; but a
noble experiment; and its suppression will sadden the virtuous at the
same time that it gratifies the base. America, we my be sure, is not
going to “get culture” by stamping upon every germ of new life. America’s
present degree of cultural toleration may ensure a herb-garden, but not a
flower will grow upon the soil of Comstock.
Among the scores of interesting experiments in composition and style
exhibited in _Ulysses_, not the least novel is Mr. Joyce’s attempt to
develop a theory of harmonics in language. By compounding nouns with
adjectives and adjectives with adverbs, Mr. Joyce tries to convey to
the reader a complex of qualities or ideas simultaneously instead of
successively. “Eglintoneyes looked up skybrightly.” In such a sentence
agglutination has been carried beyond the ordinary level of particles
into the plane of words, and the effect is to present a multitude of
images as if they were one. Thus “a new and complex knowledge of self”
finds its “appropriate medium of expression in terms of art.” I am not
so sure that Mr. Joyce has not carried the experiment too far, but this,
again, is a virtue rather than a defect in a pioneer. Moreover, the world
needs a few studio-magazines like the _Little Review_, and a few studio
writers like Mr. James Joyce. What does it matter if, in his enthusiasm,
Mr. Joyce travels beyond the limits of good taste, beyond, that is, the
already cultivated, if only a single new literary convention is thereby
brought into common use?
THE BEST IS YET TO BE.—“One dreams of a prose,” says _The Times Literary
Supplement_, “that has never yet been written in English, though the
language is made for it and there are minds not incapable of it, a prose
dealing with the greatest things quietly and justly as men deal with
them in their secret meditations ... the English Plato is still to be.”
Alas, however, that _The Times_ should be just a little misled, for the
“quiet” of meditation is not the real genius of the English language,
and the emphasis in the phrase, “English Plato,” should be on the word
English. Greek Plato translated into English would not give us what we
are seeking. What we need is Plato’s mind. It is characteristic, however,
this demand for quiet, or, rather, quietism, in _The Times Literary
Supplement_, since, on the whole, the _Supplement_ is about the deadest
mouse in the world of journalism. Above all, it is suggested, writers
must keep their voices low, speak in whispers, even, perhaps, a little
under their breath as if in meditation, in case—well, in case of what? Is
there not a _hush_ in the _Literary Supplement_ which is not the hush of
reverence for literature, but of fear and prudence?
Our writer observes very acutely that prose is usually thought greatest
when it is nearest poetry, and he properly dissents from this common
opinion. Prose, we should say, can only be great as it differs from
poetry, and the greatest prose is furthest away from poetry. And the
difference, we are told, is the difference between love and justice.
The cardinal virtue of poetry, he says, is love, while the cardinal
virtue of prose is justice. May we not rather say that the difference
is one of plane of consciousness, prose being at the highest level of
the rational mind, and poetry at the highest level of the spiritual
mind? Yes, but then, in all probability, _The Times_ would regard us as
fanciful, for note, anything _exact_ about spiritual things is likely
to be dismissed by the _Literary Supplement_ as fanciful and dangerous.
Again, “prose is the achievement of civilisation”; in other words,
it is the norm of social life. True, but let me add that it is the
register of Culture, marking the degree to which Culture has affected
its surrounding civilisation. Prose without poetry is impossible, and
the greatest prose presupposes the culture of the greatest poetry, for
the “justice” of prose is only the “love” of poetry _with seeing eyes_.
Finally, we must agree with our essayist when he quotes with approval
the excellent observation of Mr. Sturge Moore that “simplicity _may_ be a
form of decadence.” Simplicity is a sign of decadence when it sacrifices
profundity of thought to simplicity of expression—as in the classical
case of Voltaire, who positively dared not think deeply lest he should
be unable to write clearly, clarity of expression being more to him (and
often to the French genius generally) than depth of thought. And writers
like Mr. Clutton Brock are just as certainly symptoms of the decadence of
simplicity in our own time and place. On the other hand, I still dream
of a profound simplicity, the style of which is transparent over depths;
and in this, if no English writer has ever been a master, Lao Tse is
the world’s model, at least in fragments. We must learn to distinguish
between a puerile and a virile simplicity, between innocence and virtue;
and perhaps the first exercise in such judgment should be to put the
_Literary Supplement_ in its proper place.
This brings us back to quietism and the question whether the perfect
English prose would deal with the highest things in the spirit of
man’s secret meditations. I do more than doubt it. Secret meditation
is incommunicably secret; it is thought without words, and disposed to
poetry rather than prose. I suspect our writer really means rumination,
in which case, however, he is no better off. For the genius of the
language does not run easily in reverie, it is a language that loves
action and life. It has few cloistered virtues, and to employ it for
cloistered thought would be to use only one or two of its many stops,
and those not the most characteristic. Lastly, I cannot but think that
the choice of “quietism” as the aim of perfect English prose is a sign
of decadence, for it indicates the will to retire into oneself, and to
cease to “act” by means of words. The scene it calls up is familiar and
bourgeois: a small circle of “cultured” men week-ending in a luxurious
country house and confessing “intimately” their literary weaknesses.
It is the prevalent atmosphere of the _Literary Supplement_ and the
_Spectator_. It is essential that there be “equality” between them, that
none should presume to wish to inspire another to any “new way of life,”
that action, in short, should be excluded. Once granted these conditions
of sterility, and the perfect prose, we are told, would emerge.
The rest of us, however, have a very different conception of the perfect
English prose. The perfect English prose will be anything but a sedative
after a full meal of action. It will be not only action itself, but the
cause of action, and its deliberate aim will be to intensify and refine
action and to raise action to the level of a fine art. Anything less
than a real effect upon real people in a real world is beneath the
dignity even of common prose. The very “leaders” in the penny journals
aim at leaving a mark upon events. Is the perfect prose to be without
hope of posterity? On second thoughts, I shall withdraw Plato from the
position of model in which I put him. Plato, it is evident, is likely
to be abused; without intending it, his mood, translated into English,
appears to be compatible only with luxurious ease; he is read by modern
Epicureans. And I shall put in Plato’s place Demosthenes, the model
of Swift, the greatest English writer the world has yet seen. Yes,
Demosthenes let it be, since Plato is being used for balsam. We seek an
English Demosthenes.
Index
_Adonais_, 178
“Æ,” 117-34
Andrews, Francis, 176
_Anglo-Irish Essays_ (John Eglinton), 74
_Apology, The_ (Plato), 97
_Appreciations and Depreciations_ (Boyd), 76
Archer, William, 59
Arnold, Matthew, 82
_Art and Letters_, 136
Asquith, H. H., 68
_Athenæum, The_, 70
Baring, Maurice, 27
Beardsley, Aubrey, 115
Beerbohm, Max, 23
Bell, Clive, 72
Benda, Julien, 81
_Beyond Good and Evil_ (Nietzsche), 133
_Bhagavad Gita, The_, 44, 112
_Biographia Literaria_ (Coleridge), 69
Björnson, B., 29
Blake, William, 134
Boutroux, Emile, 69
Boyd, E. A., 76
_Breaking the Spell_ (Macan), 90
Brock, A. Clutton, 211
Caine, Hall, 28
_Call, The_, 165
_Candle of Vision, The_ (“Æ”), 117
Carlyle, Thomas, 36
_Causes profondes de la Guerre, Les_ (Hovelaque), 155
Cervantes, 197
Cheney, L. J., 192
Chesterton, G. K., 60, 155
Cicero, 96
_Clarté Française, La_ (Vannier), 65
_Cocoon, The_, 191
Coleridge, S. T., 29, 35, 69
Conrad, Joseph, 27
_Contemporary Drama of Ireland_ (Boyd), 76
_Contingency of the Laws of Nature, The_ (Boutroux), 69
_Cratylus, The_ (Plato), 130
Crees, G., 20
_Daily Mail, The_, 89
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 96
De Quincey, 95
_Dial, The_, 199
_Distribution of Wealth, The_ (Thompson), 162
Dodd, Professor, 181
_Don Quixote_ (Cervantes), 196
Dostoievski, F., 28
Douglas, C. H., 198
Dowson, Ernest, 173, 195
_Drapier’s Letters, The_ (Swift), 96, 198
_Dublin Review, The_, 161
“Eglinton, John,” 74
_Egyptian Book of the Dead_, 168
Ellis, Henry, 134
Epstein, Jacob, 46
Ervine, St. John, 76
_Essay on Comedy, An_ (Meredith), 168
_Euphues_, 61
Fielding, Henry, 139
Flaubert, G., 65
_Flight of the Eagle, The_ (Standish O’Grady), 79
Fontenelle, 15
Fowler, Warde, 88
_French Literary Studies_ (Rudmose-Brown), 73
Freud, Professor, 127
_Funeral Oration, The_ (Pericles), 66
Garnett, Edward, 27
Gaudier-Brzeska, 46
Gwynn, Stephen, 75
Hales, Professor, 49
Harland, Henry, 23
Haumont, M., 27
Heraclitus, 39
Herford, Professor C. H., 167
Hoare, —., 179
Hobbes of Malmesbury, 67
Holloway, Emery, 202
_Homage to Propertius_ (Pound), 49
_Homeland_ (Izzard), 89
Hope, John Francis, 168
Hovelaque, M., 155
Hudson, W. H., 88
Ibsen, Henrik, 29
_International Journal of Ethics, The_, 36
_Irish Books and Irish People_ (Gwynn), 75
_Irish Citizen, The_, 166