In watching a play about modern educated people, with its meagre
language and its action crushed into the narrow limits of possibility, I
have found myself constantly saying: 'Maybe it has its power to move,
slight as that is, from being able to suggest fundamental contrasts and
passions which romantic and poetical literature have shown to be
beautiful.' A man facing his enemies alone in a quarrel over the purity
of the water in a Norwegian Spa and using no language but that of the
newspapers can call up into our minds, let us say, the passion of
Coriolanus. The lovers and fighters of old imaginative literature are
more vivid experiences in the soul than anything but one's own ruling
passion that is itself riddled by their thought as by lightning, and
even two dumb figures on the roads can call up all that glory. Put the
man who has no knowledge of literature before a play of this kind and he
will say, as he has said in some form or other in every age at the first
shock of naturalism, 'What has brought me out to hear nothing but the
words we use at home when we are talking of the rates?' And he will
prefer to it any play where there is visible beauty or mirth, where life
is exciting, at high tide as it were. It is not his fault that he will
prefer in all likelihood a worse play although its kind may be greater,
for we have been following the lure of science for generations and
forgotten him and his. I come always back to this thought. There is
something of an old wives' tale in fine literature. The makers of it are
like an old peasant telling stories of the great famine or the hangings
of '98 or his own memories. He has felt something in the depth of his
mind and he wants to make it as visible and powerful to our senses as
possible. He will use the most extravagant words or illustrations if
they suit his purpose. Or he will invent a wild parable, and the more
his mind is on fire or the more creative it is, the less will he look
at the outer world or value it for its own sake. It gives him metaphors
and examples, and that is all. He is even a little scornful of it, for
it seems to him while the fit is on that the fire has gone out of it and
left it but white ashes. I cannot explain it, but I am certain that
every high thing was invented in this way, between sleeping and waking,
as it were, and that peering and peeping persons are but hawkers of
stolen goods. How else could their noses have grown so ravenous or their
eyes so sharp?