inevitable dogma and decay. It rings true to life. Even its name is
profoundly appropriate as a label for an inexorable law. If a play
reveals splendid thinking I am almost indifferent to what in that case
becomes largely the incident of acting, for to be engrossed in enforced
thought is to lose that narrow vision of the outward eye which merely
looks on a performance. One is not then an onlooker but a discoverer.
Change was hard, subtle thinking plus admirable interpretative acting.
Like the Irish and English players who have appeared in the Fine Arts
Theatre, the Welsh company who recently gave us this trenchant criticism
of life endowed the word "acting" with a fresh significance. One does
not think of them as players; they impress one as re-livers of the life
that they portray. That is art of a high order. If we Americans are
proud of our wealth and wonders, we must bow in humility when we
consider that the biggest plays that we have seen and the best acting
that we have witnessed are not of domestic authorship. They are
imported, and we have enjoyed them at the Fine Arts Theatre in Chicago.
Change is in four acts, written by J. O. Francis. It was awarded the
prize offered by the Incorporated Stage Society of London for the best
play of the season. The scene is in a cottage on the Twmp, Aberpandy, in
South Wales. The time is the present. A tragic change occurs in a
family, whose head was a collier. It is a kind of drama that might
inspire the private regret that the tragic martyrdom of Christian
fanatics is no longer in vogue, and offers a species of justification of
summarily removing human obstacles. Who among real men wouldn't have an
impulse to take an active hand in ridding life of a suppressive old
barnacle like John Price? He and his conscience and his God stood
against the primal law of change, with blind passion and colossal
selfishness. If his sons John Henry and Lewis had mangled him I should
have admired their passion. Gwen Price, the wife and mother, suffered
more than all because she was capable of suffering; I did not wish a
change on her account; she was a woman. Her suffering and weakness were
her triumph and strength. Besides, she was not at war with life as she
saw it in her sons. Her love was great and wise enough to confer tragic
beauty and adorn a soul; that kind of love is the supreme religion.
What John Price felt and expressed as religion was a contemptible mental
narrowness and spiritual poverty; a counterfeit religion based upon fear
and hardened by ceremonial practice. Its one virtue was that it offered
the most formidable opposition to the unfolding of manhood in two young
men. Youth is ever pushing its entangled feet down against the hard
substrata of anterior generations. Too often it is stuck and gradually
smothered in the upper mud, which solidifies as insidiously as it forms.
A man who can be held by dying or dead impedimenta is himself dead. A
man who struggles out and stands triumphant upon it, with the antennae
of his being reaching up and out for the widest and finest contacts,
fulfills destiny by adding a golden grain of solid value on which a
succeeding aspirant for a larger life may stand that much higher on the
old foundation. The man who conforms, remains in and a part of the
common level, plastically flattens out like dough under a rolling pin,
merely fulfills the law of the indestructibility of matter and the
conservation of mass. Whereas youth's great dream is symbolized by the
over-topping king of the forest, standing stiff-spined and straight upon
the old earth, its head in rare aloofness, the ease-lover functions as a
lowly parasite.
With wild winged thoughts of which these remarks are vague memories I
took Change in my consciousness from the theatre. No thoughtful person
could have returned unchanged from the playhouse. The transitoriness of
religions, institutions, customs, and all other so-called fixtures which
constitute modern civilization is the tremendous fact that makes Change
a powerful supplement to social forces. Of course to the modern mind the
idea is already old, but to the primitive majority it is a prophecy.
The author tempered his mild radicalism with the hard-headed sagacity of
Sam Thatcher, a one-armed pointsman, who, while unintellectually aware
of the changelessness of change, "figured it out" that life is cyclic;
that as experience broadens the attitudes of men they lose their little
individualities in a common resignation, defeat, and decay, which to him
meant contentment. "I've been round the world some--round and round.
That's how things go--round and round--I know, round and round." Sam
thus epitomized an old theory which has so many supporters that it must
be wrong. But if we do not go "round and round" in what direction do we
go? Nobody knows. If our movement is circular there is the desperate
possibility of sufficient momentum to gain new territory by virtue of
centrifugal force. We can at least make the circle larger. Races have
bloomed, fruited, and passed; planets have shone for an abbreviated
eternity and disappeared; baffling facts about life-forms upon the earth
have come to light. Our conscious life is young, densely ignorant, and
full of pain; our instinctive life is ageless, has perfected its
knowledge and can endure, as it has endured, the aeons of change. We
shall some day get the idea of change into our consciousness.
Unthinkingly one might regret that Sam was clever enough to sway back
toward dogma those wavering minds which might otherwise have yielded to
the drama's punches. But his pathetically amusing romance should have
made it clear to respectable auditors flirting with new ideas that he
was not a competent critic of their particular class-slice of life. What
he said was reassuring, assuaging, brilliantly trite, and an untroubled
mind would take it and reject the austere, burning truth of the
essential message of the play.
"Naught may endure but mutability": Shelley thus expressed what every
educated man knows. Change is the unvarying order, and yet we are
constitutionally averse to it. Comfortable people dislike it. "All great
natures love stability." Why do we make John Prices of ourselves? (I
think that H. G. Wells, more than any other literary man, has lived in
consonance with the law of change.) An expanding knowledge precludes
constancy. All John Prices are obscurantists. Convictions and blind
faith based upon glorified ignorance have for thousands of years
encysted, cramped, and twisted personal life, but somehow it has burst
through the fetters and arrayed itself for successive struggles.
Analyzing what we see and know, and confessing what we think we feel, we
have the ancient riddle before us. We applaud a play like Change, but
seek security and stability in every relationship. Eventually every man
must feel what Rousseau wrote: "Everything in this world is a tangled
yarn; we taste nothing in its purity, we do not remain two moments in
the same state. Our affections, as well as bodies, are in perpetual
flux." Maybe Sam Thatcher was wise, but if we knew that our life were
cyclic the joy of it to us would cease. The wiser man does not know so
much as Sam professed, but his endless endeavor is to try to know more.
The law of change, which he sees enforced everywhere, increases his
insatiability.
It is ultimate questions to which Change gives rise, and to such
questions there are no satisfactory answers. The social value of the
play lies in the graphic clearness with which it illustrates the slow
but epochal shifts that are always under way in thinking individuals,
families, and nations.
There is no Rock of Ages in the land of courageous knowledge. Nothing
endures but mutability. The purpose of a play like Change is to open the
inner mind to this glorious truth, so that with a fortitude born of
understanding we may accept misfortune, calamity, and death as the
effects of unalterable law, and not as donated penalties or inscrutable
accidents. Poise, power, and personality are the fruits of this attitude
toward change, and whoever achieves these has climbed out of the
"reddest hell"
Armoured and militant,
New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps
To those great altitudes whereat the weak
Live not.
Correspondence
The Vision of Wells
I should like to set "M. M.'s" mind at rest about H. G. Wells, but I
can't quite understand what her objection to him really is. She seems to
be in what the charming little old Victorian lady would have called "a
state of mind." Something about Wells annoys her; she hasn't thought it
out clearly, but she raps Wells wherever she can get at him, as a sort
of personal revenge for her discomfort.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the passage she quotes from the
hero really represents Wells's feeling about the relations between the
sexes. He believes that "under existing conditions" there is always
danger of love between men and women unless the man has one sole woman
intimate, and lets "a superficial friendship toward all other women veil
impassable abysses of separation." "M. M." wisely admits the truth of
that--in fact, it's the most obvious of truisms. Then the hero--or
Wells--goes on to say that this, to him, is an intolerable state of
affairs. For this "M. M." calls him "wicked," and "Mr. M. M." accuses
him of not being busy enough, and of not working for a living.
I wonder if "M. M." stopped to think exactly why the hero considers this
an intolerable state of affairs. The statement means nothing more than
that the man would like to have intimate friendships with more than one
woman. He doesn't say he wants to love more than one woman. Well, it is
easily conceivable that a man of active mind and companionability would
like to have some degree of intimacy with various women. There doesn't
seem to be anything wicked about that, and it's possible that he should
feel so even if he was "working for a living." If we confine ourselves
to one intimacy, we're likely to lose the full relish of it before many
years. The thought of that is certainly intolerable. A man who is close
to a good many people is usually better fitted to appreciate his best
friend. A woman novelist who has a conspicuously successful marriage put
it well the other day. "If you go into a room where there is a bunch of
violets," she said, "you are charmed by the odor. If you stay in the
room all the time, you forget about the odor--or it bores you. But if
you are continually going out and coming in again, it greets you every
time, and you learn to appreciate its subtleties." Perhaps "M. M."
thinks that reason is begging the question. Well, take the other side.
Any human being who is expanding has an insatiable desire for new
experience, new knowledge. That is the healthiest instinct in mankind.
Such a person would naturally fret at the inability to be intimate with
a new acquaintance who interests him. That feeling would not be wicked;
it would be right, by any sane standard.
Forgive the blatant obviousness of all this. But I'm bent on carrying
through the discussion to the end. Granted, then, that our hero's
feeling is not intrinsically wicked--what then? He faces a dilemma.
Either he must run the risk of a new love affair, or--and this, I think,
escaped "M. M."--present conditions must be changed. If he has a new
love affair, he is at the least violating the Victorian lady's
conventional morality, which says that every man must love not more than
one woman as long as that woman lives. We come then to an extremely
vital problem. On the one hand, is conventional morality desirable? On
the other, can present conditions be so changed as to eliminate the
danger? The solution of that problem is of great importance to anyone
interested in human beings. If it can't be solved, it means that the man
or woman must quench a right and healthy instinct along whichever line
he or she chooses. And that's a bit of pessimism which a warm-hearted
man like H. G. Wells doesn't want to accept without further
investigation. That's the reason he wrote The Passionate Friends. He is
engaged in the noble endeavor to do something at least toward freeing
the great spirit of mankind from the network in which it is enmeshed.
The history of that struggle is the history of human progress.
Perhaps it isn't necessary further to defend Mr. Wells for the sort of
novels he writes. But I'd like to offer an illustration of the
difference between Wells and the old-fashioned novelist. The old writer
started with the conviction that certain laws and fundamental conditions
were forever fixed, and must limit the destinies of his characters. He
then works out his little story according to rules, and gets his effect
by arousing in us pity for the misfortunes, hatred for the sins, and joy
for the virtuous triumphs of his people. The tendency of the whole was
to show us once more what the eternal verities were--and the result was
highly "moral." Every character was an object lesson. Wells, on the
other hand, is not a preacher, but a scientist. He starts with the
conviction that, through lack of impartial investigation, we don't
really know what the eternal verities are, or what power can be derived
from them. His attitude is as far from the old writers' as is Mme.
Curie's from the alchemists'. He attempts to free his mind from every
prejudice. Then he begins his experiment, puts his characters in their
retort under "controlled conditions," and watches what happens. What his
characters do corresponds to fact as well as his trained mind can make
it. The result may be negative or positive--but at least it is true,
and, like all truth, it is really valuable.
"M. M." prejudges the case when she talks about denial, and building up
character, and loyalty, and unselfishness. These things may demand her
conclusion, and again they may not. At best they are means to an end.
She may be right. But Wells is going ahead to find out. He isn't arguing
for anything. We may be denying something we ought to have; we may be
building the wrong kind of character; we may be loyal to a false
principle; we may be unselfish with evil result. But if we cease to
becloud the issue, and watch carefully the experiment of Mr. Wells and
his followers, we shall know more about it than we do.
And, for a general toning of her mind, I should like to ask "M. M." to
read The Death of Eve, by William Vaughn Moody, to pay particular
attention to the majestic song of Eve in the garden, and after she has
felt the tremendous impulse of that line--
Whoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here
to turn back to her words about denial, and see whether she still thinks
denial is always synonymous with strength.
GEORGE SOULE.
Another View of "The Dark Flower"
It is with no desire to be carping that I offer this criticism of The
Dark Flower, for I, too, am a devoted disciple who hangs on the master's
lips; but being a skeptical modern woman withal, I am not abject.
Perhaps we should be satisfied with what Galsworthy has given us--this
searching vision into the soul of a rarely sensitive man. The writing of
it--what we term style--is beyond doubt Galsworthy's most distinguished
performance, far more poetical than any of his verse. Its material is
invaluable for its sheer honesty as well as its sheer beauty. Its
reality and intimacy are grippingly poignant. And yet how account for
the pain of futility which sweeps over you as you close the book,
drowning for the time the ecstasy of high joy in all its beauty? It is
as if the heavy aroma of autumn's decay had invaded a garden in early
spring.
Yes, there is something essentially futile about The Dark Flower. It
lies so hidden in the warp and woof of the whole fabric that the casual
reader passes it over unseen. I can best explain by referring to the
novel itself. Each of the three episodes deals with Mark Lennan's
passion for a woman: in his youth for an older woman, in his maturity
for a woman his own age, in his approaching autumn for a young girl. And
in all three passion--the great primal force--is made an illicit
emotion. In the first two episodes the women are married; in the last,
Lennan is. It is scarcely by chance that Lennan's loves were unlawful;
on the contrary, a symbolic significance seems to be intended, that
passion is natural, free, coming and going by tides unbound by man's
will or law. But if that was Galsworthy's aim, he has run an unnecessary
stretch beyond his goal. By his over-emphasis, passion becomes
purposefully illicit, voluntarily seeking out the forbidden object and
the secret passage. And instead of being the priceless inheritance from
a free God, passion becomes an ailment laid upon us by some designing
fate.
And now glance at the dénouement of each episode. In the first it is the
woman who closes the little drama; Mark merely watches her go. In the
second the woman's husband kills her, and Mark is left dazed. In the
last his wife steps in and turns the current of events. Always an
extraneous force makes the decision for him. He is never permitted to
grapple with the situation created. Galsworthy forever extricates him.
Not once is his passion allowed to run its course. Each experience is
abortive. If I had been Mark Lennan I should have been tempted to curse
the meddling fate that insisted upon rescuing me just before I jumped.
No, a woman would not have had her perfect moment with Mark Lennan, but
only the promise of it.
Mark is a futile person; his love life a procession of futile
experiences. But in spite of its futility it is an exquisite record for
which I whole-heartedly give thanks.
MARGUERITE SWAWITE.
Dr. Foster's Articles on Nietzsche
M. H. P.'s remarks in "The Critics' Critic" of the April number of THE
LITTLE REVIEW on Dr. George Burman Foster's paper entitled "The Prophet
of a New Culture" in the March issue induced me to give that notable
article a third reading. M. H. P. says "... there's ... too much
enthusiasm to be borne out by what he actually says," and then asks the
author, "Won't you forget a little of this sound and fury and tell us as
simply as you can just what it is that you want us to do?" This
obviously tired and disturbed "critic" continues: "... I have a feeling
that pure enthusiasm, wasting itself in little geysers, is intrinsically
ridiculous. Enthusiasm should grow trees and put magic in violets--and
that can't be done with undue quickness, or in any but the most simple
way. Nobody cares about the sap except for what it does."
This irrelevant criticism is an intellectually lazy protest of a
sensuous, self-styled "healthy" person blundering through an
interpretative analysis of hard, serious thought, expecting to find a
program or a plan, cut and dried, ready for the seekers of a new
culture. Dr. Foster properly avoided making any definite proposals based
upon his study of Nietzsche. With a contagious enthusiasm he wrote his
own response to Nietzsche's attitude toward the universe. To condemn his
animation is barbaric stupidity. He probably was not conscious when he
wrote the paper that anybody wanted him to outline in desiccated phrases
a scheme to crystallize the Nietzschean philosophy into personal or
social action. He was fired by his subject, and his function--I do not
say his purpose--was to spread the flame. The depths of feeling must be
reached before action can be more than an abortion of the mind. Dr.
Foster's serious, almost sad, enthusiasm, makes the spirit of Nietzsche
arouse feeling, and feeling underlies every organic social action. It is
not what he "actually says" but what Nietzsche says to him that explains
and justifies Dr. Foster's enthusiasm.
An incoherent generalization like "pure enthusiasm wasting itself in
little geysers is intrinsically ridiculous" is a part of the typical
literary method of veneering ignorance or prejudices. For a critic who
asks "what is it that you want us to do?" which is the desperate voice
of an imitationist, and then talks glibly of "pure enthusiasm," which is
gaseous rhetoric, I have neither respect nor compassion. What is "pure
enthusiasm"?
M. H. P.'s objection to "sound and fury," which he associates with
"political speeches" "for a major prophet," clearly is attributable to a
temperamental inability to understand Nietzsche or emotionally to
respond to his dynamic appeal to intelligence. A "healthy" critic--was
there ever one?--is a myth, or a morbidly self-conscious person whose
striving after "healthy" attitudes is an infallible sign of disease at
the top. Such a person is pathologically interesting, but in the realm
of philosophical criticism he is incompetent. I should expect him to
demand that "enthusiasm should grow trees and put magic in
violets"--which is a ridiculous horticulture. To limit enthusiasm to so
definite a purpose as this is to affect a poetic attitude whose labored
simplicity has nothing in common with the magic of violets.
Your critic, who has a mania for "the most simple way," is aware of his
own amorphous complexity, and demands that thinkers and writers be
specific, calm, easy, leisurely, "healthy," and lucid, thereby
economizing his unhealthy distress. For him, Nietzsche has no message,
and upon him Dr. Foster's enthusiasm is wasted. To him "sound and fury"
exist where to Nietzsche's "preordained readers" there is the new music
of truth. It is that deep harmony which ran in legitimate fury through
the remarkable article contributed by Dr. Foster. "Nietzsche was a
Knight of the Future." This sentence from the article bears
interestingly upon M. H. P.'s allegation of "undue quickness" in what
the author expects from the adoption of the Nietzschean view of life. As
for nobody caring about the sap, I should say that if he have an
enthusiasm for growing trees and putting magic in violets he will,
perforce, have that care for the sap which conditions the strength of
the tree and the magic of the violet. Nietzsche's superman is not to be
achieved in a society that cares nothing about the sap.
Whoever reads Nietzsche and Whitman "slowly, profoundly, attentively,
prudently, with inner thoughts, with mental doors ajar, with delicate
fingers and eyes," will be better qualified than M. H. P. to serve as a
critic of articles like Dr. Foster's. Why not call it "the critics'
gossip"?
DEWITT C. WING.
H. G. Wells's Man of the Future
In a little while he will reach out to the other planets, and
take the greater fire, the sun, into his service. He will bring
his solvent intelligence to bear upon the riddles of his
individual interaction, transmute jealousy and every passion,
control his own increase, select and breed for his embodiment a
continually finer and stronger and wiser race. What none of us
can think or will, save in a disconnected partiality, he will
think and will collectively. Already some of us feel our merger
with that greater life. There come moments when the thing shines
out upon our thoughts. Sometimes in the dark, sleepless solitudes
of night one ceases to be so-and-so, one ceases to bear a proper
name, forgets one's quarrels and vanities, forgives and
understands one's enemies and oneself, as one forgives and
understands the quarrels of little children, knowing oneself
indeed to be a being greater than one's personal accidents,
knowing oneself for Man on his planet, flying swiftly to
unmeasured destinies through the starry stillnesses of space.--H.
G. Wells in Social Forces in England and America.
Lawton Parker
EUNICE TIETJENS
Paris, the iridescent dream of every struggling art student on the round
world; Paris the sophisticated, the most provincial of all cities--as
provincial as Athens of old in the sense that she is complacently
sufficient to herself and all the world else may wag as it will, since
she cares for nothing that does not happen on a few square miles of soil
beside the Seine; Paris the proud, the difficult;--Paris has recently
done the one thing that could be surprising from her. She has laid aside
her prejudices and her pride and has awarded to a foreigner--and that
foreigner an American--the most coveted prize in the whole realm of
painting. She has given to Lawton Parker of Chicago the first medal at
the Old Salon.