COMRADE’S PROGRESS
There is another artist of English Puritanism we must not overlook. We
shall have no trouble in proving this one a propagandist; so obviously
was he preaching, that the critics of his own time overlooked him
entirely. The elegant men of letters of the Restoration period,
gossiping in their coffee houses, dicing in their taverns, and carrying
on their fashionable intrigues, would have been moved to witty couplets
by the notion that an ignorant tinker, a street-corner tub-thumper
locked up in Bedford gaol, was engaged in composing one of the immortal
classics of English literature. As soon might you attempt to tell one of
the clever “colyumnists” of the New York newspapers, stumping his last
cigarette in his coffee saucer at luncheon in the Algonquin, that an
immortal classic of American literature was running serially in the
“Appeal to Reason” or the “Daily Worker.”
John Bunyan came from the lowest ranks of the people, those same louts
and clowns whom Shakespeare delighted to ridicule. And he was quite as
ridiculous as Shakespeare could have wished him; he saw visions, and was
pursued by devils, and rushed out onto the street to save the souls of
people as ignorant and unimportant as himself. Under the laws of England
the saving of souls was a privilege reserved to the younger sons of the
gentry, who got “livings” out of it; so John Bunyan was persecuted,
precisely as ignorant and unimportant I. W. W. are persecuted in my
neighborhood today. And he behaved exactly as the I. W. W. behave; that
is, he stubbornly declined to change his opinions, or to cease
proclaiming them on the streets. Sent to prison, he did what a number of
the I. W. W. did in Leavenworth; despite the fact that he had a pregnant
wife and four small children, one of them blind, he refused to give a
purely formal promise to behave himself. This caused extreme
embarrassment to humane magistrates, who didn’t want to be hard on a
poor crack-brain, but were sworn to uphold the majesty of the law.
So for twelve years John Bunyan stayed in jail and wrote “Pilgrim’s
Progress.” Now my friend, Albert Mordell, includes it among his “waning
classics.” He says: “The story that children delight in the book and
read it through is mythical; many children try to read it but usually
drop it.” Well, it so happened that when I read those words, I had been
making a test on a ten-year-old boy, my own. We used to read it aloud,
sitting in front of the fireplace on winter evenings; and of all the
books we read, none created such excitement. It was difficult to keep on
reading, because of the stream of questions: “What does that mean,
Papa?” You see, allegories, which bore us adults, are fascinating to the
child mind. Such a wonderful idea, when you first think of it--to embody
moral qualities in living beings, and give them names, and send them
walking out over the earth, to engage in adventures and contend with
each other! To see the every-day problems of your own conduct unrolled
before you in the form of a story!
My young friends of the radical intelligentsia, who used to live in
Greenwich Village, but have now moved to Croton and Provincetown and
Stelton to get away from the bally-hoo wagons, have been calling me a
Puritan ever since they knew me; and now they will smile a patronizing
smile, hearing me endorse this old-fashioned Sunday school story. I can
only record my conviction, that one does not escape the need of personal
morality by espousing proletarian revolution. Even after the revolution,
there will be moral struggles fought out in the hearts of men and women.
I realize that morality is destined to become a science, and that by the
study of psychology we shall abolish many problems of conduct;
nevertheless, life will still require effort--there will remain the
question of whether to study or not to study, and why!
I suggest to my young radical friends that they amuse an idle hour by
applying “Pilgrim’s Progress” to the great movement of our day. Instead
of Christian, read Comrade; instead of Christian’s burden, read a
soap-box. You can always find some youngster to serve as traveling
companion under the name of Hopeful. And very soon in your journey you
will enter the Valley of Humiliation; very soon you will begin to meet
Mr. Money-Love and Mr. Pliable; also Mr. Talkative will come in swarms
to your studio parties. And By-Ends--he works beside you in every
office; the fellow who takes care of himself and does not believe in
going to extremes. And Mr. Worldly-Wiseman--perhaps you have a rich
uncle who will serve; you can see him sitting in the padded leather
chairs of any club. And when Comrade’s Pilgrimage brings him to New
York, he will see Vanity Fair, flaunting its glories up and down the
avenue, protected by plate glass. And the fiend Appolyon--we have had
two attorney-generals exactly cut for the rôle. If you think that a
joke, it means that you have been playing the part of Mr. Facing
Both-ways during the past ten years, and do not know about the realities
of government by gunmen.
The forms of things change, but the inner essence remains the same, and
you must learn to recognize it. The Slough of Despond, for example, is
discovered in the bottom of the coffee-cups in which Greenwich Village
now gets its bootleg gin. As for the Giant Despair--a singular
transformation!--he is a pale-colored microscopic organism of cork-screw
shape, lurking in the delicious intrigues of our gay and saucy young
folks. As for the Interpreter’s House, it is out of repair just now,
having been hit by H-E shells in 1917. As for the Celestial City, which
we old fogies used to vision under the name of the Co-operative
Commonwealth--the young people won’t let us mention it any more; they
tell us that propaganda is out of style, in these days of
petting-parties and hip-pocket flasks.