have a sense of humor and to have it bad, is not such a cheerful thing
as it is thought to be, for it is also a sense of our hopelessness. It
is a sad business, this jesting about the human tragedy--or the human
farce. In other words, it is to see the futility of all our efforts, the
failure of all our fighting, the uselessness of our aspirations, the
emptiness of our aims, the vanity of our strivings, the nothingness of
it all. Life, with all its faults and foibles and failures, with all its
incongruities, irreconcilables, clashes and unfitnesses, stretches out
before you as just so much material for sardonic satire. Scrambling,
squabbling, scurrying, seething, squally squads and crowds of humanity,
how gruesomely grotesque it all is and how ludicrous! With all its
heroics, brave deeds and still greater bravadoes, with all its gloried
wonders and wonderful achievements, with all its glorious boasts, lofty
hopes and superb masteries, with all our arts and philosophies, humanity
and the whole world seems to me like a swarming mole-hill, and at times
moves me to nothing but to laughter. It is so ridiculous, all the
mimicry of the whole microcosm. Tell me, have you ever been seized by a
sense of the utter absurdity of it all, so that you laughed and laughed
until there were tears of blood, almost, in your eyes?
"I wonder if you know what it is to have a mocking demon within you to
laugh and leer at everything you do, at every step you take, at your
best deeds, finest words, greatest strides, noblest endeavors. Imagine a
voice that at every turn of the road--especially when you act your
grandest, talk your loudest, achieve your highest--that at every turn of
the road exclaims: 'How absurd, how silly of you!' Imagine a state of
mind when all is farce around you and your own caricature is your
constant companion. Such things happen to some people, and to them
everything is so unreal, so absurd, so stupid; the greatest events, the
sublimest utterances, are ever so laughable. The more seriously the
people play their parts the more ridiculous the performance seems. The
greater the tragedy the more laughter. What is so funny as Hamlet's
soliloquy? What are so laughable as the ravings of Job? And so it
sometimes feels with the other sublimely sad things that have been
written. The moving finger writes, and the mocking voice within
laughs--laughs at everything and you can take nothing seriously. You
take up the best, the most pathetic things you have written yourself,
and even these make you smile. Such things have been said before and
they were absurd and out of place--in the first place. Whatever you do
you hear the mocking voice from within say: 'Silly creature, those
things have been done before, and they have only led fools to their
dusty death.' You whisper the sweetest things, prompted by love to your
lady fair, and the voice from within: 'Silly fool, these things have
been said before and the course of true love never did run long.' You
have a feeling that it is all histrionic, all acting, all farce, and
that we are all overdoing our parts tremendously. Strutting, swaggering,
blustering, bombastic swashbucklers all. It is not life. It is an
historical novel. It will sink into nothingness. '_O, Thor, du Thor, du
prahlender Thor!_' Do you remember Bret Harte's parody on Hugo's 'Les
Misérables'? So easily is the sublime tipped over and made ridiculous.
'Tis but a slight step from pathos to bathos. But wait until I address
this letter to the New York 'Abend Blatt.' Abe Cahan came over here and
spoke for the Socialists this afternoon, so I wrote the thing up. He is
in the other room with that blatant crowd of Jewish actors. They are
taking him to task for one of his reviews in the 'Arbeiter Zeitung' of a
recent performance of theirs. They never know exactly what a critic
means except when he does not criticise. They are to give here Gordin's
'Jewish King Lear' to-morrow night. You don't know Cahan? He is one of
the brightest, biggest men in our movement. I come in here," Keidansky
explained, "because these actors are so ignorant of the conventions,
simple and natural, and I like them for it.
"There is a story by J. L. Peretz," Keidansky continued, after he had
folded up and addressed his communication, "that I want to tell you
apropos of what I have been saying. Peretz is one of the literary
masters of to-day, but he writes in Yiddish, so the world misses his
greatness. The story is about a reformer, a revolutionary, an idealist.
He addresses a meeting in behalf of his cause, speaks fervently,
passionately, 'spits fire,' waves a sharp sword at his audience and
makes a ringing appeal for the truth. In the room where he speaks there
is a mirror. Accidentally he looks into it. He sees himself. His
enthusiasm leaves him at once, his fervor vanishes, he loses his power
of speech, becomes calm, indifferent, and finishes his oration in
disgust. He no longer feels the saint and hero he felt. While speaking
so excitedly he looked like a murderer in the mirror. After this he has
an unearthly dream about the part of hell that is allotted to reformers.
When he wakes up he receives a postal card asking him to come to
another meeting of the revolutionists. He immediately burns the card.
This is giving but the faintest outlines of the story, but you see
Peretz, like Heine, also has the sense of humor developed to a tragic
extent--to the extent of seeing the absurdity, futility and irony of it
all--even our grandest efforts.
"Yes, so it seems to some eyes, and so it is at least to those who see
it so. After all, what is it? A cry and a struggle and a sigh, a flash
of light and a streak of dawn and darkness, and then we stand by the
grave and weep for the dead that the living may see our tears. Ah, the
helplessness and hopelessness of it all; the desolation and despondency,
the thoughts that paralyze the mind and stifle the soul; all things out
of joint, out of proportion, and Fate cries out to you in the slang
phrase 'you don't fit!' Ah, the humor of the entire procession and the
deep tragic background behind it. Seek and you will find, and when you
find you shall not want it. Wealth makes us weary of it. Fame brings her
wreath and finds her poet dead. Faith consoles, but we have the
consciousness all along that we are sick and are taking medicine. 'Love
grows hate for love's sake and life takes death for guide.' Love? Have
ever two souls come near each other? Those whom we love most understand
us least. Happiness? The art of finding happiness is one of the lost
arts. No one is ever consciously happy. Knowledge is almost positive
proof that we cannot know. With it we are more puzzled than we were
without it. The last word of science is 'wait.' What do we know? Moses
went up to heaven, but God refused to be interviewed. The people, like
the modern editor, insisted upon a story and so we have the Bible. But
science and the higher criticism has interrupted our reading and spoiled
the pleasure of it. What do we know? Even Professor Daniel De Leon does
not know everything. Man asks questions, investigates, '_und ein Narr
wartet auf Antwort_.' Life contains more emptiness than anything else.
Life is a long wait for that which does not come. Is life worth living?
'Tis not worthwhile asking the question."
"If that is so, or seems so," I hazarded the question, "then why be
here?"
"Why, to see it all, to enjoy the tragedy," Keidansky answered with
swift enthusiasm. "I would not advise my best friend to commit suicide.
Such an exciting farce. What would life be, what would art be without
the tragic elements in it? It's great! But I began to tell you why it is
sometimes grossly immoral to live up to your highest principles, when my
train of thought was wrecked. Some other time. Come, let's go into the
other room and I'll introduce you to the players and to Comrade
Cahan--if he is still alive."
XVI
The Immorality of Principles
"Yes, I have promised to tell you why it is sometimes grossly immoral to
live up to your highest principles. It was a rash promise, yet I shall
try to make it good. And though it was several weeks ago, I am more than
ever inclined to think the same way."
Thus spake Keidansky when I reproachfully reminded him of a former
utterance.
"There are the missionaries," he said, "who go forth among peaceful,
law-avoiding savages to force upon them a religion that has outlived its
usefulness, a religion that has not prevented them from doing such an
immoral, impolite thing. They go forth to promulgate the truth of which
they are not sure. They invidiously invade the premises of goodly
primitive people, and ruthlessly trample upon their traditions, beliefs,
superstitions and feelings. We shut people out of our country, and we
send missionaries to offer them free admission or standing-room in our
heaven. Heedless that their bodies are starving, we come and ask to let
us save their souls. We forget that they have a right to their religion,
to their way of non-thinking, to take the medicine they like; that their
method of salvation is best for them,
'That human hopes and human creeds
Have their roots in human needs.'
We forget that they have just as much a right to wear their mental
corsets as we have to wear ours, or, if you wish, that their beliefs are
as true to them as ours are to us. We forget that they speak to God in
their own language. We go forth among them and mock at all that is holy
and dear to their hearts.
"Of course, missionaries, like all agitators, are devoted people, living
up to their very highest principles, and we all mean well; but this sort
of business, this invasion and utter disregard for others, is to me
grossly immoral. And to court and minister to the needs of cannibals and
brigands is too much altruism on our part, and that excessive phase of
it is wicked and hurtful."
"But," I protested, "is not the legitimate advocacy of ideas
justifiable?"
"Yes," said Keidansky, "the legitimate advocacy of ideas. There are
those who on one day of the week would turn our cities into cemeteries,
who would stifle our spirits and starve our souls, who on that day deny
us music and mirth and song--think it a sin to smile, wicked to be
happy, and a crime to make merry. If they could reach the sun, they
would stop it from working overtime and shining on the Lord's day; yet
if the sun should ever reach them, their piety would not cast such a
pall over the community. Yes, I know; but listen. Have patience.
Patience is a Christian virtue, which Christians have forced upon Jewish
money-lenders. I know that there are many people to-day who have quite
a high opinion of the Almighty, believing that He loves light and
sunshine, laughter and joy, and glories in the happiness of every living
thing, down to the humblest worm. But I am speaking of the others--those
who deny the pleasure of everything except self-denial; for whom the
only laws of life are the blue laws.
"Just now our city is being held up by the police, and at the point of a
club told to be good and pious and religious. We are told not to
breathe, or sigh, or sneeze, or smile, or show any signs of life on
Sunday. Orders to stop the circulation of our blood on that day have not
yet been issued, but everything comes to those who wait--every evil
comes to those who have over-zealous pietists among them. To heaven, or
be damned. It is a case of your adherence, or your life. You must be
killed, or cured. Now in this disregard of disbelievers, the narrowness
of vision and hurtful overzeal, I discern something immoral.
"Yet it is a matter of principle to spread whatever gospel one has been
captured by. Personally, I have never been so tortured by any as by
those people who wished to save me, and out of justice to them, I must
say that they tortured me according to their highest principles. It must
be admitted that there is an amount of good and pleasure for the
agitator, involved in agitation, yet his work cannot, generally, be
called moral on the ground that it conduces to happiness, because he is
only one, and those whom he is molesting to save are many.
"And so many of those who sacrifice and abnegate and deny themselves,
who neglect nature, ignore the laws of their being, emaciate their
bodies and starve their souls, is it not immoral of them to weaken their
constitutions, minds and spirits, and diminish their power for positive
good in the world? In the end, are not many of them miserably misled by
their highest principles?
"If he loseth the world, what shall it profit a man that he gaineth his
soul? Of what earthly use is a soul, without a wicked world to use it
in? To what good is a soul without all the opportunities of losing it?
"Alone in the mountains, far from the madding crowd, it is easy to be
sane and soulful and saintly; but to me, every effort to separate the
soul from the world is immoral, though it is in accord with some lofty
principles. The soul outside of the world is a tramp who shirks work. To
remain in the world, to do, to work, to wage war against weakness, to
live strongly and have no fear--that is the soul doing its duty, and
sowing happiness for all.
"And speaking of happiness for others, in the first place, it is not
right to force it upon others against their consent, and in the second
place, it is wrong to do it at the expense of your own welfare. Do all
that you can for yourself first, or you are not justified in trying to
manage other lives on a better basis. I believe in perfection, but I
believe that as much of it as is possible should begin with the
perfectionists. I believe that nothing is worth doing, unless there is a
sound reason for it. I believe in egoism. Altruism may have done much
good, but I pity the Altruists, who have enervated, weakened and
impoverished themselves by their mostly futile attempts to help others.
"Largely, altruism is an attempt to do for others what you cannot do for
yourself.
"There are principles which have led people to lose all that was good in
them. The roads to unattainable ideals and impossible perfections are
strewn with countless corpses of lost victims. People lose their health,
peace, welfare and all, trying to do for others what, in so many cases,
cannot be done at all. All this is wrong. It is wrong to add to the
store of the world's misery, though you are attempting to alleviate it.
No, no one should work for philanthropy unless he gets a good salary for
it. As to asceticism, it has never been a profitable business. Contrary
to other religions, Judaism rather stood for the joy of life than the
arrest of it.
"I have seen much of the problem of immoral principles among our
radicals of the Ghetto, many of whom have ruined and wrecked their lives
because of the ideas they advocated. If the dream of social justice
would be realized to-morrow, many of them would not have the strength to
enjoy it. Others are so weak that they would not be able to stand the
shock. There were those who had others dependent upon them, and who
neglected everything and everybody, particularly themselves, for the
sake of 'the cause,' and who finally became utterly useless. They added
to the poverty of the East Side in their efforts to abolish it, while if
they had taken good care of themselves they would, in the long run, have
done vastly more for their ideals. Among my plots for stories that I
have never written, is the case of a man who became a tramp, because he
was too anxious to abolish the system that produces tramps. One of the
finest poets of the East Side is now a mental and physical wreck,
because he lived up to his highest principles--and neglected himself.
"Enthusiasts very often lose the sense of justice, become oblivious to
everything--except the invisible. I know too well the nobility of the
motives; I know that there are more of them on the East Side than any
other place in America; I know, also, that a cause requires such
sacrifices, yet, what are the results? Very often, failure. It has been
observed that a man, who in the midst of a savage or barbarous
community, in defiance of current social or religious customs, should
attempt to live the ideal life of a perfect civilization, would
doubtless be quickly eliminated from such a society by violent and
tragical means, and thus effectively be stopped from influencing those
around him to better ways of living. A great deal of our enforced
civilization of savage races has been fatal in its effects upon the
health and happiness of the vast majority, while it has failed to
elevate the average morals of the survivors. Authorities say that this
is likely to be the result, whenever conventional education is forced
upon a people in advance of their functional development. The Hawaiian
Islanders are pointed out as an impressive example, and the
missionaries, as well as the radicals of the Ghetto, trying to convert
their orthodox brethren, ought to remember these things.
"The way out of it? Some one says: 'That course of conduct must be
adopted which will promote the greatest possible development of
life-giving energies, both in the individuals immediately affected, and
in society at large, including the life of posterity.' That's science,
if I have the quotation right. Principles should be founded on fact, and
be conducive to the largest happiness, including even the happiness of
the one who holds the principles. In size, they should be more than 8 by
12 inches. They should be a yard wide--wide enough and true enough for
all. Yet they should be such principles as to allow others to hold other
principles. The right principles, in accord with the best laws of life,
and not theology, will come up to all requirements, and they will be
moral.
"Yes, individualism by all means," he added; "be yourself, but don't be
a savage."
XVII
The Exile of the Earnest
I met Keidansky at the performance of a Yiddish play, and our talk
turned to matters dramatic.
"I notice by the papers," I remarked, "that Sarah Bernhardt has just
produced a play written for her by F. Marion Crawford, the American
novelist. So we are going to supply the theatres of other countries with
plays. Are you interested?"
"Very much," said Keidansky; "this is not the only case of an American
writing for the foreign stage, and it suggests to me a fine possibility.
About Crawford I know but little; but he is one of our popular men. He
has, according to his own confession, written to please; he has never
offended any living beings by putting them into his works; he has never
attempted to picture life, uninteresting as it is, and he is, on the
whole, not one of those that we should want to send away to write plays
for the people of other lands. And I am rather glad his 'Francesca da
Rimini' has failed in London.
"But if there are any among us who are terribly in earnest, with
tremendous intentions to elevate the stage, to write plays that will
instruct, stimulate, uplift, to take all the struggles of humanity and
put them into dramas--why let them learn some one of the foreign
languages and go abroad and write plays for the serious people of
Europe. Yes, if they persist in these things, and want to make us think,
and all that sort of thing, which is short of pleasure, if they cannot
amuse us with something funny or entertain us with something nice and
romantic, why let them go abroad. It's the only way we can get rid of
them, and we shall not mourn the loss of those who would have us do
nothing else but mourn.
"We Americans do not want any plays that require intellect, for we need
all that we have in our business enterprises; we do not want to think in
the theatre, because it takes all our thoughts to advertise and sell our
goods, nor do we want our emotions stirred, for that is a nervous
strain, clouds the mind, and makes people unfit for speculation,
scheming or anything on the next day. Then, these plays that arrest the
brain and touch our very soul, they make us sentimental, soft-hearted,
kind-natured, and draw us out on long conversations with our wives,
children and friends. Meanwhile the wheels of trade are turning, and in
the race for success we are left behind.
"We are a healthy people, and we don't want any morbid, lurid, ghastly
productions over here, and in a large sense all very serious works are
morbid, lugubrious and gloomy. At bottom of them there is always a
problem, an evil, a crying wrong, a morbid state of something. A happy
home is not dramatic; people at peace with themselves and the world are
not good subjects for tragedy. According to the conception of these
earnest writers there is no plot for a play without a peck of trouble.
We don't want any such dramatic dishes served. We don't want people to
play upon our feelings, and yet pay them for it. Occasionally, we are
willing to have something a little bit sad, but we want it to end
happily. But the earnest ones tell us that in real life few sad stories
end happily, that their pictures are true to life. Hang it, we ourselves
know they are true to life. There's plenty of trouble at home,--that's
why we go to the theatre--to forget it. Gorky pictures a man--fat and
forty, successful and comfortable as a government official--a man, who
after reading 'a book of one of these modern much-praised writers,'
comes to the conclusion that he is 'an insignificant nonentity, a
superfluous being, of no use to any one.'
"This is just what one of the modern plays does for you. See, it seems
to say, see, you crown of creation, what a crawling creature you are.
Your past is what it ought not to have been. Your present is what it
ought not to be. 'The future is but the past again, entered through
another gate.' Yesterday you were a fool--to-morrow you will be a still
greater one. Your best resolutions shall become bitter regrets. You are
weak, and you make laws and build governments and create creeds, and
they make you weaker yet. All the adornments of your civilization are
relics of barbarism. Evolution is too slow for anything, and you cannot
get ahead of yourself. You have talked all your life and not uttered an
original thought. There have been a few original beings, but most of
you are poor imitations--you must follow others. You must have a master,
either in heaven, or on earth; you are a slave of society. You strike
for freedom and anti-conventionality only when it becomes a fad. You
don't understand. Your children cannot teach you anything. You are too
old to learn. When you were young you had only your parents to instruct
you. Your home rests upon false assumptions. It is a field of battle--or
there are no strong individuals in it and all is peace. The theory of
heredity is not true--your children are stupid; your wife is a doll,
which you have chosen for her pretty cheeks, and, though she is fading,
claims the rights of a free-born human being, and does not
understand--but what's the use? Of what earthly good can such plays be?
Why should we in this free, independent and prosperous country listen to
such things? Besides, family quarrels, filial relations, disagreements
between relatives are not fit materials for the dramatist. It is none of
his business to meddle in such private matters. If there is trouble in
the home, if a man and a woman find that one and one is two, if the
interests of certain persons, or classes, are against those of others,
if people find their religion too small for them and their laws not big
enough, why there are courts that they can go to, and legislatures and
clergymen and lawyers and Christian Scientists and so many other sources
of help and salvation. For a writer it is extremely bad taste to deal
with such matters. His mission is to amuse us, and he has no right to
abdicate the sovereignty of his exalted office.
"At least that is what we Americans--the majority of our people--think,
and if there are writers among us so abnormally serious as to see things
otherwise, there is but one thing to do with them--we should send them
away to other countries where people like that kind of dreary drama.
"Let them, like Marion Crawford, write for the French stage. The French
are not even shocked when they see a real resemblance between life and
the drama. In fact they put everything into their plays, all their
faults, and I wonder how they can look at these plays. So many things
happen in France, and it is all in their books and plays, besides a lot
of things that never happen. You cannot in their country escape life and
all its troubles by going to the theatre or reading one of their novels.
All life's tribulations, turmoil and travail are in them. Not that the
people are over-earnest, but that they like something strong, love to be
stirred and moved, and are recklessly unafraid of the vertigoes of
thought. They have great artists and wonderfully fine writers, but their
dramatic works are terribly upsetting. A good performance of 'Camille'
breaks a person up for several days. They are a dangerous lot, all the
French writers.
"No, we over here do not want such productions. There are plenty of
pretty incidents and fables out of our romantic history that we can use
on our stage.