the one, therefore, was as necessary as the other; and our reprobation
of the former for its comparative sterility is entirely without
justification. If we happen to be living in an unproductive age, it
is our misfortune, then; but we are not entitled, in contemplating
this age, to the luxury of condemnation, reproof or scorn. What we
_may_ demand of any period now is that it should be a period either
of preparation or of fruition. So the present era _is,_ after all,
deserving of condemnation, but only because it is not an era of
preparation--not for any other reason.
91
_Duties of the Unproductive_
The history of culture is the history of long ages of unproductiveness
broken by short eras of production; but unproductiveness is the
rule. The men born in barren periods have not, then, the right to
bewail their lot: _we_ have not that right. But what is of the first
importance, for the sake of culture, is to find out what are the duties
proper to men in a sterile age. Certainly their duty it is not to
produce whether they are productive or not; that can only result in
abortions and painful caricatures: does not contemporary literature
demonstrate it? The work that is born out of the poverty of the artist
is, as Nietzsche pointed out, decadent work, and debases the spectator,
lowers his vitality.
What, then, are the tasks of a writer in an unproductive age? To
live sparely and conserve strength? To make discipline more rigid?
To preserve and fortify the tradition of culture? To render more
accessible the sources from which creative literature draws its
life, so that the _next_ generation may be better placed? To observe
vigilantly the signs of today--and not only of today? It may be so;
but, also, when necessary, to throw these prudent and preservative
tasks to the winds and spend his last ounce of strength in battling
with the demons who make a productive era forever impossible. Yes, this
last duty is for us today--the most important. And, we may depend, it
is the creators--those who produce what they should not--who will fight
most bitterly on the opposite side.
92
_"Emancipation"_
The rallying cry of the great writers of the last century was
"emancipation." Goethe, Heine and Ibsen alike professed as their
task the emancipation of man; Nietzsche, their successor, elevated
the freed man, the Superman, into an ideal, in the pursuit of which
it was necessary meantime that men should discipline themselves. The
later moderns, our own contemporaries, have belittled this freedom,
seeing in it nothing but a negation, the freedom _from_ some one
thing or another. But Ibsen and Heine, these men of true genius, who
believed most sincerely that they were "brave soldiers in the war of
the liberation of humanity" did not perhaps waste their powers in
battling for a thing so trivial! It is barely possible that they meant
by emancipation something much more profound; something spiritual
and positive; indeed, nothing less than an enhancement of the powers
of man! Certainly both poets looked forward to new "developments" of
man: Heine with his "happier and more perfect generations, begot in
free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy";
Ibsen with his perplexed figures painfully "working their way out to
Freedom." It was the task of us in this generation, who should have
been the heirs of this tradition, but are not, to supply the commentary
to this noble vision, to carry forward this religion of hope further
and further. But the _cult_ of modernity has itself prevented this;
the latest theory has always seized us and exacted our belief for its
hour; the present has invariably triumphed; and we have discarded the
great work of last century before we have understood it. Heine has been
seized mainly by the decadents; his healthy and noble sensuousness,
his desire to restore the harmony between the senses and the soul,
_as a means_ towards the emancipation of man, and as nothing else,
has been perverted by them into worship of the senses for their own
sake--a thing which to Heine would have seemed despicable. Ibsen has
fallen among the realists and propagandists; all the spiritual value
of his work has for this age been lost--and what a loss!--his battle
to deliver man from his weakness and inward slavery has been reduced
--it is no exaggeration--to a battle to deliver the women of the middle
classes from their husbands. The old story of emanation has been again
repeated, with the distinction that here there is no trace left of
the original source except negative ones! Well, we have to turn back
again, our task, second to none in grandeur, before which we may well
feel abashed, is still the same as that of Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche,
the task of emancipation. To restore dignity to literature, indeed, it
would be necessary to create such a task if it did not already exist.
93
_Genealogy of the Moderns_
This is what has happened. The conventional moderns of our time are
the descendants _not_ of Heine and Ibsen, but of the race against
which the poets fought. They live unthinkingly in the present, just
as their spiritual ancestors lived unthinkingly in the past. But
slavery to the past has long ago fallen into the second place among
dangers to humanity: it is slavery to the present that is now by far
the greatest peril. Not because they broke the tyranny of the past, but
because they had an ideal in the future are the great fighters of last
century significant. To think of them as iconoclasts is to mistake for
their aim the form of their activity: the past lay between them and
their object: on that account alone did they destroy it. But the great
obstacle now is the domination of the present; and were the demi-gods
of last century alive today, they would be fighting precisely against
_you,_ my dear moderns, who live so complacently in your provincial
present, making of it almost a cult. To be a modern in the true sense,
however, is to be a fore-runner; there is in this age, an age of
preparation, no other test of the modern. To believe that there are
still potentialities in man; to have faith that the "elevation of the
type Man" is possible, yes, that the time is ripe to prepare for it;
and to write and live in and by that thought: this is to be modern.
94
_Domination of the Present_
To be modern in the accepted, intellectually fashionable sense: what is
that? To propagate always the newest theory, whatever it be; to be the
least possible distance behind the times, behind the latest second of
the times, whether they be good or bad; and, of course, to assume one
is "in the circle" and to adopt the tone of the circle: in short, to
make ideas a matter of fashion, to choose views as a well-to-do woman
chooses dresses--to be intellectually without foundation, principles or
taste. How did this convention arise? Perhaps out of lack of leisure:
superficiality is bound to engulf a generation who abandon leisure.
But to be enslaved to the present in this way is the most _dangerous_
form of superficiality: it is to be ignorant of the very thing that
makes Man significant, and with idiotic cheerfulness and unconcern to
render his existence meaningless and trivial. In two ways' can Man
become sublime; by regarding himself as the heir of a great tradition:
by making of himself a fore-runner. Both ways are open to the true
modern, and both must be followed by him. For the past and the future
are greater than the present: the sense of continuity is necessary for
human dignity.
The men of this age, however, are isolated--to use an electrical
metaphor--from the current of Humanity: they have become almost
entirely individuals, temporal units, "men"; what has been the outcome?
Inevitably the loss of the concept Man, for Man is a concept which can
be understood only through the contemplation on a grand scale of the
history of mankind. Man ceases to be dramatic when there are no longer
spectators for the drama of Humanity. The present generation have,
therefore, no sentiment of the human sublime; they see that part of the
grand tragedy which happens to pass before them, but without caring
about what went before or what will come after, without a clue, however
poor, to the mystery of existence. They know men only, the men of their
time. They are provincial--that is, lacking the sentiment of Man.
How much decadence may not be traced to this! In Art, the conventions
of Realism and of Æstheticism have arisen. The first is just the
portrayal of present-day men _as_ present-day men; nothing more,
therefore, than "contemporary art"; an appendage of the present, a
triviality. The second has as its creed enjoyment of the moment; and if
it contemplates the past at all, it is with the eyes of the voluptuous
antiquary--but a collector is not an heir. Art has in our time, both
in theory and in practice, become deliberately more fleeting. In
morality, there is Humanitarianism, or, in other words, the conviction
that the suffering of today is the most important thing, coupled with
the belief that there is nothing at present existing which can justify
and redeem this suffering: therefore, unconditional pity, alleviation,
"the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Modern pessimism,
which springs from the same source, is the obverse of this belief.
It, also, regards only the present, and says, perhaps with truth,
that _it,_ at any rate, is not noble enough to deserve and demand the
suffering necessary for its existence--consequently, _all life_ is
an error! All these theories, however, are breaks with the spiritual
tradition of emancipation; they are founded on the magnification of
the temporary--of that which only in a present continually carried
forward seems to be important. This judgment of Life with the eyes
of the present, this narrowest and most false of interpretations:
how has it confused and finally stultified the finest talents of our
time! The modern man is joyless; his joylessness has arisen out of his
modernity; and now to find forgetfulness of it he plunges more madly
than before--into modernity! For his own sake, as much as for that of
Humanity, it is our duty to free him from his wheel. One can live with
dignity only if one have a sense of the tragedy of Man. It is the first
task of the true modern to destroy the domination of the present.
95
_Encyclopædists_
Strange that the great dramatic poets of modern times have had a
weakness for turning their tragedies into encyclopædias! Consider
"Faust" and "Brand," for instance. Is it that the sentiment of the
eternal was already beginning to weaken in Goethe and Ibsen? Were they
overburdened by their own age? Their world was too much with them;
and so they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy: they were not
universal.
96
_What is Modern_
It is time we erected a standard whereby to test what is modern. To
be an adherent of all the latest movements--that is at most to be
anarchistic, eclectic, inconsistent--call it what you will. Futurism,
Realism, Feminism, Traditionalism may be all of them opposed or
irrelevant to modernity. It is not sufficient that movements should be
new--if they are ever new; the question is, To what end are they? If
they are movements in the direction of emancipation, "the elevation
of the type Man," then they are modern; if they are not, then they
are movements to be opposed or ignored by moderns. If modernism be a
vital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential
expression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of
humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. The true modern is a
continuator of tradition as much as the Christian or the conservative:
the tine fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight
between antagonistic _traditions._ To battle against tradition _as
such_ is, therefore, not the task of the modern; but rather to enter
the conflict--an eternal one--for his tradition against its opposite:
Nietzsche found for this antithesis the symbolism of Dionysus and
Apollo. Does such a tradition of modernity exist? Is there a "modern
spirit" not dependent upon time and place, and in all ages modern?
If there is--and there is--the possession of it in some measure will
alone entitle us to the name of moderns, give us dignity and make the
history of Man once more dramatic and tragical. It is a pity that some
historian has not yet traced, in its expression in events, the history
of this conflict--a task requiring the deepest subtlety and insight.
Meantime, for this tradition may be claimed with confidence such events
as Greek Tragedy, most of the Renaissance, and the emancipators of
last century. These are triumphant expressions of "the modern spirit,"
but that spirit is chiefly to be recognized as a principle not always
triumphant or easy of perception, constantly struggling, assuming many
disguises and tirelessly creative. It is not, indeed, only a tradition
of persons, of dogmas, or of sentiments: it is a principle of Life
itself. This conception, it is true, is grand, and even terrifying--a
disadvantage in this age. But is there any other which grants
modernity more than the status of an accident of time and fashion?
97
_How We Shall Be Known_
In an age it is not always what is most characteristic that survives:
posterity will probably know us not by our true qualities, but by the
exceptions to them. The present-day writers in English who will endure
after their age has passed are probably Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson,
and Hillaire Belloc for a few of his essays and lyrics--none of them
representative, none of them modern. They might have been born in any
era: they are in the oldest tradition. The most striking characteristic
of our time, however, is its lack of a tradition. The sentiment of
transiency is our most deeply rooted sentiment: it is the very spirit
of the age. But by its essential nature it cannot hope to endure, to be
known by future generations; for we shall not produce immortal works
until we become interested in some idea long enough to be inspired by
it, and to write monumentally and surely of it. We hold our ideas by
the day; but for a masterpiece to be born, an idea must have taken
root and defied time. Permanence of form, moreover, would seriously
embarrass a modern writer, who wishes to change with the hour, and does
not want his crotchets of yesterday to live to be refutations of his
fads of today. Thus we are too fleeting to make even our transitoriness
eternal. The very sentiment of immortality has perished amongst us, and
we actually prefer that our work should die--witness the Futurists! The
most self-conscious heirs of modernity, these propounded the theory
that _it is better_ that works of art should not endure: well, in that
case, their own creations have been true works of art! Nevertheless,
all they did in this theory was to erect into a system the shallowness,
provinciality and frivolousness of the present--and thereby to proclaim
themselves the enemies of the future.
IV
ART AND LITERATURE
98
_Psychology of Style_
There are writers with a style--it may be either good or bad--and
writers with no style at all, who just write badly. What quality or
combination of qualities is it which makes a writer a stylist?
Style probably arises out of a duality; the association in a writer
of the scribe and the spectator. The first having set down his
thought, the second goes aside, contemplates it, as things should be
contemplated, _from a distance,_ and and asks, "How does this strike
me? How does it look, sound, move?" And he suggests here a toning
down of colour, there an acceleration of speed, somewhere else, it
may be, an added lucidity, for clearness is an æsthetic as well as an
intellectual virtue.
The writer without style, however, just writes on without second
thought; the spectator is altogether lacking in him; he cannot
contemplate his work from a distance, nor, indeed, at all. This
explains the unconsciousness and innocence in bad writing--not in
bad style, which is neither unconscious nor innocent! The stylist,
on the other hand, is always the actor to his own spectator; he must
get his effect; even Truth he uses as a means to his effect. If a
truth is too repulsive, he throws this or that cloak over it; if it
is uninteresting, he envelops it in mysticism (mysticism is simply
an artist's trick); in a word, he æstheticizes, that is, falsifies
everything, to please the second person in his duality, the spectator.
Even if he gets his effects by moderation of statements, he is to
be distrusted, for it is the moderation and not Truth that is aimed
at. And, then, his temptation to employ metaphors, to work up an
interesting madness, to rhapsodize--these most potent means to great
effects, these falsifications! Well, are we to assent, then, to the
old philosophic prejudice against style and refuse to believe any
philosopher who does not write badly?
99
_Modern Writing_
The greatest fault of modern style is that it is a smirking style. It
fawns upon the reader, it insinuates, it has the manner of an amiable
dog. If it does something smart, it stops immediately, wags its tail,
and waits confidently for your approval. You will guess now why those
little regiments of dots are scattered so liberally over the pages of
the best-known English novelist. It is H.G. Wells's style wagging its
tail.
100
_The Precise_
There have been writers--there _are_ writers--whose only title to fame
is an interesting defect. They are unable to write soundly, and this
inability, being abnormal, is more interesting than sound writing,
which is only normal. For to limp or to hop on one leg is never
pedestrian--what do I say?--is _not even_ pedestrian.
101
_Paradox_
What is paradox? The "bull" raised to a form of literary art?
102
_The Platitude_
There should be no platitudes in the works of a sincere author. A
platitude is an idea not understood by its writer--in one word, a
shibboleth.
103
_Praise?_
It is usual to extol the industry of those realists who put
_everything_ into their books, but they should rather be censured
for their want of taste. The truth is that they lack the selective
faculty--lack, that is, art. Afraid to omit anything from
their reproductions of existence--lest they omit what is most
significant--they include _all_: the easiest course. The easiest
course, that is--for the writers.
104
_Hostility of Thinkers_
When a thinker has a world of thought of his own, he generally becomes
cold towards other thinkers, and to none more than to him whose star is
nearest his own. It is necessary, therefore, that he should read, above
all, the philosopher whose thought most closely resembles his, for to
him he is most likely to be unjust. We are the most hostile to those
who say what we say, but say it in a way we do not like.
105
_The Twice Subtle_
The thinker who has been twice subtle arrives at simplicity. And in
doing so he has, at the same time, discovered a new truth. But this
other thinker has possessed simplicity from the beginning. Has he also
possessed this truth? At any rate, he does not know it.
106
_Mastery of One's Thoughts_
One should know how to keep one's thoughts at a distance. The French
can do this, and, therefore, write at once wittily and profoundly of
serious things. But the Germans live, perhaps, too near their thoughts,
and are possessed by them: hence, their obscurity and heaviness.
Wit--lightness of hand--shows that one is master of one's thought, and
is not mastered by it. Nevertheless, the thoughts of the Germans may
be the mightier. In this matter the complete thinker should be able to
become French or German as occasion demands.
107
_Psychologists_
The keenest psychologists are those who are burdened with no social
mission and get along with a minimum of theory. Joseph Conrad, for
instance, is infinitely more subtle in his analysis of the human mind
and heart than is H. G. Wells or John Galsworthy. He has the happy
unconcern and detachment of a connoisseur in humanity, of one who
experiences the same fine interest in an unusual human situation as the
dilettante finds in some recondite trifle. Henry James carried this
attitude to a high degree of refinement. He walked among men and women
as a botanist might walk among a collection of "specimens," dismissing
the ordinary with the assured glance of an expert, and lingering
only before the distinctive and the significant. Should we who nurse
a mission deplore the spirit in which these disinterested observers
enter into their task? By no means. But for them, certain domains of
human nature would never have been discovered, and we should have been
correspondingly the losers. For we revolutionists must know the human
kind before we can alter them. The non-missionary is as necessary as
the missionary, and to none more than to the missionary.
108
_Realism_
Novels which take for their subject-matter mere ordinary, pedestrian
existence--and of this kind are three-fourths of present-day novels
-are invariably dull in one of two ways. In the first instance, they
are written by pettifogging talents to whom only the ordinary is of
interest, by people, that is to say, who are incapable of writing a
book that is not dull. In the other, they are written by men generally
of considerable, sometimes of brilliant, ability, who, misled by a
theory, concern themselves laboriously with a domain of life which
they dislike and which even bores them. But if the writer is bored, how
much more so must be the reader! In short, the realist theory produces
bad books because it forces the writer to select subjects the only
emotion towards which it is possible to feel is boredom. And great art
may arise out of hate, grief, even despair, but never out of boredom.
109
_Fate and Mr. Wells_
Fate has dealt ironically with H. G. Wells. It has turned his volumes
of fiction into prophecies, and his volumes of prophecies into fiction.
110
Mr. G. K. Chesterton
A man's philosophy may be uninteresting, although he writes about it in
an interesting manner. Just as the many write dully about interesting
things, so a few write interestingly about dull things. And Mr.
Chesterton is one of these. Equality is a dull creed, Christianity
is a dry bone, tradition is wisdom for ants and the Chinese. But Mr.
Chesterton is a very interesting man. How is it possible for an
interesting man to have an uninteresting philosophy? Is this simply the
last paradox of a master of paradox?
Mr. Chesterton's most charming quality is a capacity for being
surprised. He writes paradoxically, because to him everything is a
paradox--the most simple thing, the most uninteresting thing. And
that is his weakness, as well as his strength. He has found the common
things so wonderful that he has not searched for the uncommon things.
The average man is to him such a miracle, that he will not admit the
genius is a far greater miracle. The theories he finds established,
Christianity, equality, democracy, traditionalism, interest him so much
that he has not gone beyond them to inquire into other theories perhaps
more interesting. And this, because he lacks intellectual curiosity,
along with that which frequently accompanies it, subtlety of mind.
For the intellectually curious man is precisely the man who is _not_
interested in things, or, at any rate, is interested in them only for a
little, and then passes on or burrows deeper to find something further.
One dogma after another he studies and deserts, this faith--- less
searcher, this philanderer, this philosopher; and that which leads him
on is the hope that at last he will find something to interest him
for an eternity. Perhaps it is this dissatisfaction of the mind which
has always driven men to seek knowledge; perhaps, if all mankind had
been like Mr. Chesterton, we should not have had even Christianity,
equality, democracy and the other theories which he holds and adorns.
For Mr. Chesterton's impressions are all first impressions. Like
his own deity, he sees everything for the first time always. And he
lacks, therefore, the power, called vision, of seeing _into_ things:
the outside of things is already sufficiently interesting to him. He
possesses imagination, however, and kindly and grotesque fancies which
he hangs on the ear of the most common clodhopper of a reality. In
fantasy he reaches greatness. But his philosophy is not interesting. It
is himself that is interesting.
111
_Nietzsche_