'Thank you,' she answered. 'I don't want to sink into oblivion so soon.'
But she is an idyl of the Ghetto just the same. Look; here are the poems
of David Edelstaat. He sleeps now in a lonely grave in the Jewish
cemetery at Denver, Colorado, by the side of the fence, for he was a
delinquent in Israel. He went there by way of the corroding sweat-shop
and a damp cellar in New York, where he edited a little communist
weekly. Many of our idealists go to Denver this way. It is the only time
they travel and take a vacation. The hospitals there are crowded. But
Edelstaat's poems, they are a sacred treasure among the Jewish working
people."
XX
The Purpose of Immoral Plays
The smoke was so thick and the din so heavy, that I did not see him when
I came in and barely heard his shouted greeting. Such was the crowded
condition of the regular resort on Saturday night; yet I found Keidansky
tucked up in a corner of the café, "oblivious to the obvious," around
him, with a pile of newspapers in his hands. "The group" had not as yet
assembled, so my friend was reading.
"This has been a great week," he said with gladsome emphasis, after we
had exchanged courtesies. I at once suspected what he meant.
"A great week," I said, "because you have been able to see humanity
piteously dissected, human beings mercilessly analyzed, souls stript of
their raiment, wounded and bleeding, our fellow-men on exhibition,
crippled by custom and walking on the crutches of convention, our best
arrangements of life held up to ridicule and scorn. A great week," I
said, "because you have fed on tragedy like a fiend?"
"Yes, there is something sad about tragedy," answered Keidansky,
ignoring my bitterness, "but the man who sees things clearly, who looks
a long distance behind the scenes, the man who sees the worst and does
not die, but lives to cast his observations into a perfect work, and to
lift you up to the mountain-top with him, is not this man great and
gladdening? Is there not cause for exultation in a really big tragedy?
And this is saying but little about the æsthetic pleasure of a story
told in heart-breaking and soul-stirring manner," he added. "Some one
must do this work, and it makes one feel real good when the right man
comes along.
"The saddest stories are yet to be told, before there can be much more
happiness in the world. We can never reach the heights until we realize
the depths. As for myself, I give all the world to the man who can make
it better than it is. And such works are making the longed-for
improvement, by performing the miracle of making men and women think,
doing this, not by any pedantic preachments, but by the power of
suggestiveness and the large vision of the newer and truer art. Art with
a purpose? But all art has this purpose. And the less the purpose is
consciously inculcated into art, the better is that purpose carried out.
They call them problem plays, but was there ever a great play without
some sort of problem in it? Without some burning question of life, and
love, and death? What's that? Immoral? Was there ever a masterly and
mastering work that was not immoral, according to the popular judgments?
Was there ever a work with a big purpose that conformed to the critics
and to current lack of opinions? Could there be much of a purpose to
anything that did not shock the world's conspiracy of cowardice they
call morality? _Gott ist mit dir!_ You must go abroad and take some
cure. You have been reading the American dramatic critics. It was a
great week, I say, with Ibsen and Björnson, Sudermann and Pinero, and
two wonderful artists to interpret them, but the pleasure was very much
spoiled for me by some of these critics. Ah, these poor critics. Here
are the papers, and I can still hear them choking and croaking and
cackling, and my heart goes out to them and turns sick. What a wonderful
lot of fellows they are. What endless platitudes and empty phrases--full
of nonsense--they have delivered themselves of this week, yet I don't
think they are any the wiser for it. I know one of the fraternity (there
is sufficient disagreement between themselves to be called a fraternity)
who is a perfect genius. With one stroke of his mighty pen he once
annihilated Ibsen, Echegaray, Astrowsky, Paul Hervieue and Edward
Martyn. It was all 'morbid trash,' he said of a series of their plays,
and it is strange that these men are still heard of occasionally. That
was after the John Blair experiment, and I walked into this critic's
office and made a few extemporaneous remarks. He said I ought to have
more respect for a man who can get as much advertising for his paper as
he can. Of course, this was indisputable. It would take so little
courage to do it, yet they dare not think their own thoughts, the dear,
dear critics. No, there is not any use in trying to reason with them,
but I sometimes would like to get them all together in one room and
give them all a sound horsewhipping.
"One of the critics, who writes in silk gloves, swears in the most
perfect, correct English, and compares every play he sees to something
of Shakespeare, objects to 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' as an immoral
play. The dissection of this woman's heart and mind, he protests, is not
the proper business of the dramatist, nor is the inspection of his
dissecting table after the job has been done a proper amusement for
theatrical spectators. 'A process of repentance and purification' and
that sort of thing, on the part of this unfortunate, must be indicated,
if art is to approach this kind of life. The entire scheme of ethics is
bad. Yet the critic admits that the performance was terrible and
touching, and that Mrs. Campbell--Heaven bless her for coming to see
us--won a remarkable and complete victory in the part; altogether he
praises her very generously.
"Now, what I say is this. If we can be moved and stirred by an immoral
play, there is either something the matter with our morality, or there
is something radically wrong with our hearts. I must recall to you the
lines of Stephen Crane. 'Behold the grave of a wicked man, and near is a
stern spirit. There came a drooping maid with violets, but the spirit
grasped her arm. "No flowers for him," he said. The maid wept: "Oh, I
loved him." But the spirit grim and frowning: "No flowers for him."
"Now, this is it. 'If the spirit was just, why did the maid weep?' If
our standard of morality is right, why do our hearts go out for Paula
Tanqueray, for Nora Helmer, for Mad Agnes? Is it because we have become
so humane as to be far ahead of our morality? What does it mean, anyway?
We are told that the contents of the plays seen here last week, are not
fit subjects for the drama. Well, art might as well go out of business,
if it is not going to look life squarely in the face, if it is not going
to sound the very depths of things, and mirror conditions as they are
to-day, for modern humanity. The play in particular, it is clear, must
deal with the intense efforts, the dramatic essences of life; the play
in particular will have nothing to do unless it takes up the crucial
conditions, the large realities, the stirring struggles, the sterling
aspirations of the clashing life of to-day under the new and as yet
unadjusted surroundings. The drama must take up shame and crime, error
and suffering, or there is no plot for a great play anywhere. The few
pretty, romantic, silly stories have been told over and over again. Now
we have grown. There is a larger life before us, and we want something
stronger. We must have plays to educate our critics,--if that is
possible.
"'He who is without sin among ye, let him cast the first stone.' If
Christ had said nothing else, would not this have made him a great man?
Yet after eighteen hundred years it is necessary for another Jew, a
Portuguese Jew named Pinero, to say the same thing through the medium of
a play, because the Christians say that Christ's teachings are immoral.
And then the stones of the critics are thrown at Pinero."
Here I said something about the relation between art and morality, but
Keidansky protested.
"Art has nothing to do with morality," he said, "and therefore it
teaches such great moral lessons. It re-creates and reproduces Nature
and life in forms of beauty and power. And because it approaches
elementary conditions without bias and preconceived notions, and
illumines its material with the touch of human genius, it shows us life
in its largeness, right in its relativeness, and raises us above our
established moralities. Because art is the spontaneous expression of the
humane, the true, the good and the beautiful in our souls, it helps us
to see the larger rights, the greater justice, and helps us to make,
change and advance our morality. Art touches the commonplace and makes
it divine. It makes a saint out of a sinner by showing causes, and
casting a kindly light over human weakness.
"In real life 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' is a shameful scandal, to be
exploited by sensational newspapers, and we avoid the parties concerned
and run away from them; but art raises the story to the height of the
tragic and the epic, and we suffer and grieve with Paula, and even the
cold critic, who tries so hard not to be humane, is moved. In life we
are even afraid to mention the names of such people; but art makes us
weep for Camille, sympathize with Sapho, be sad, or gay, with the
vagabond François Villon, sigh for Denise, grieve with Don José, and
follow Manon Lescaut through the desert of North America. Art helps us
to realize that there is no sin but error, no degradation but dulness of
the mind, no vice but lack of vision.
"I don't want to speak to you because you did not go to see Björnson's
'Beyond Human Power' and Mrs. Campbell's acting in that piece. Yet since
you did not go you ought to be enlightened. You have read the story? Did
you see how the critics dodged the issues of the play, beating about the
bush and puzzling each other? A case of faith and reason, you know, and
you mustn't talk about these things. A blind leader of the blind, a man
who 'lacks the sense of reality' and sees only what he wishes to see; a
woman of intellect who wastes her love on him; unbelieving children of a
miracle worker; the clash between the new and the old; the decrepitude
of orthodoxy; the contrast between the master and his disciples and who
can never realize the impossible, unnatural ideals; the faith that
kills. The play has all the tragedy of a dying religion, and the last
act is as powerful as anything I have ever seen anywhere. What does it
mean? To me it indicates the dying of the old Christianity, and I
believe that Björnson, unlike Ibsen, is a Christian. The quiet, subdued,
subtle work of Mrs. Campbell was worthy of the play.
"And there was Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House.' I shall never forget
the performance of it. What a simple story, how concise and terse, not a
superfluous word in the whole of it, yet how strong and stirring! It is
primarily a picture, a powerful dramatic picture without a shadow of
preachiness in it. You say there is a problem in it? Yes, but it's in
the picture, the picture is the problem. Here is a perfect work of a
great master, if there ever was one. There are whole cities made up of
such dolls' houses, with women as playthings, toys, means of amusement,
slaves of conventionality and of slavish men, yet the critics are
croaking and raising the cry of 'immorality.' Save on the New York East
Side Ghetto, Ibsen is comparatively unknown in America, but it is not
true that the American people are not interested in his plays whenever
they are given and that they would not go to see them if more of them
were performed. In saying so the critics say what is not true, as was
manifest from the enthusiastic audiences at the last week's
performances. There is a Yiddish translation of the play by the poet
Morris Winchewsky, and it was performed by Mr. and Mrs. Jacob P. Adler,
but I have never seen it. Mrs. Fiske's 'Nora' is positively great. Her
delicacy, her mastery of light and shade, her manner of speech and
poise, and on the whole her perfect conception of the character is a
stroke of genius. Why did you not see it? Do you want to go? You can pay
for my lunch. Ibsen and Björnson have impoverished me this week."
"So you don't think much of the American critics?" I asked at this
point.
"On the contrary," he said, "with the exception of some, I think they
are all good advertising agents."
XXI
The Poet and the Problem
This time I met Keidansky in front of the Jewish theatre. He had just
left the rehearsal of a play which he had translated from the German
into Yiddish. As I approached he pointed to a huge sign on top of the
building across the street advertising, in a pretty jingle of rhymes, a
new biscuit of undreamed of deliciousness.
"I have solved the problem," he said proudly. This was not such a
surprise to me. To solve problems was my friend's business.
"What problem is that?" I asked.
"The problem of the poet," he answered. "After the ages of oppression,
persecution and poverty, after the exiles, insults and negligence of
centuries, the poet will at last come into his own, into bread and
butter and a respected position in society. Immunity from starvation,
peace, prosperity will at last be his. His worth will be recognized and
he will be put to work and made a useful member of society."
"What will he do?" I asked.
"He will write the advertisements for manufacturers and storekeepers,"
said Keidansky; "he will sing the song of the products of modern
industry, chant of the wonderful performances of the age and glorify the
fruits of our civilization, extol the things of use and of beauty that
serve the needs of to-day's humanity. This will be an ample theme for
his Muse and the guerdon of his song will be tangible. His talents will
serve a great practical need. He will prove at last that there is some
advantage in genius. The world, the world of reality, of facts, figures
and statistics will no longer ask, 'What's the use of poetry?' The world
will recognize its usefulness, and commerce and trade and capital shall
become its friends. In graceful rhymes, in silvery stanzas, in beautiful
verses will the poet voice the marvels of all the results of the
inventiveness, ingenuity and skill with which our era is so richly
blessed. And whatever article on the market will be the burden of his
song, it will bring good prices and make easy the life of the singer.
And people will no longer have to strain their eyes to find the poet's
lines in an obscure corner of a magazine, or in a little volume of tiny
type; the bards will no longer have to depend upon such poor methods of
attracting attention.
"In great, glaring, garish and golden letters their poems will look down
upon people from the rooftops, from the high walls of factories and
barns, from fences and huge signs by all the roadsides, railroad sides,
mountain sides, seasides, and all sides, and people will be compelled to
look up to them, because there will be nowhere else to look. There will
be no escape. The large letters painted in glowing colors and with their
artistic arrangement will arrest the attention of all. And when a
foreigner will come here to study this country and write it up, he will
not be able to see anything on account of these signs which will cover
the land, and after reading the inscriptions upon them, he will go forth
saying that it is the most poetic country in the whole world. So
inspired will the stranger become that he will go forth and tell the
world of the wonderful things we make and advertise here. Thus poetry,
at last, become useful, will help us conquer the foreign market. After
all, the bards will come down from the clouds and the garrets of
starvation, and in their song embrace the whole world; celebrate the
things concrete, material and real. Poetry and the world will at last
become reconciled; spirit and substance will be united to the practical
advantage of the spirit.
"For too long a time has the poet wandered about in distress, begging
for a pittance, persecuted everywhere, singing his song for nothing,
with starvation and inspiration as his only rewards. For too long a time
has the poet, 'the unacknowledged legislator of the world,' been
subjected to all manner of scorn, persecution, calumny, and been
compelled to seek in vain some one who will pay well for a dedication of
his work. His own lot was ever hard, and, besides, he suffered all the
sorrows of humanity. He lived with all and grieved with all. He put his
life into his songs, yet few paid any heed to them. Poets have ever been
the victims of the prosiness of things. The world was ever ugly to them
because they made it so beautiful. No matter how great their
immortality, they never could pay their rent. 'A genius is an accused
man,' said Victor Hugo in his book on Shakespeare, and then he goes on
to enumerate all the banishments, persecutions, imprisonments and
outrages that were heaped upon the poets of all lands and all ages,
including Victor Hugo himself. Yes, a poet has ever been an accused man,
and nearly every one has found him guilty. But as I say, these cruelties
had for too long been practised upon the singers and the time has come
for a change. With the advance of civilization he will be given useful
employment, a decent wage, and thus enabled to make a living without
working overtime. Richard Le Gallienne shall weep no more for a
government endowment for the poet. The poet shall become
self-supporting. He will sing of things whereof the owners can afford to
pay for the song. Whether he will create immortal works or not he will
work, and work is immortal. It will continue unto the end of time."
Here I wished to remonstrate, but Keidansky would not permit me. He
continued, as we walked along through the Ghetto.
"The human and other machines of the age are bringing such wonderful
things into existence, and the poet will lift his voice in praise of
them. It really takes the imagination of a poet to picture and glorify
the countless commodities that are manufactured and put upon the markets
of our time. It takes a poet to point out their usefulness. What will he
not sing of on those huge street signs and in the double-page
advertisements in the newspapers? Of pre-digested foods, of squeezeless
corsets, of baking powder that bakes the cakes without any form of heat,
of ink that endows the pen with brains, of cigars that are conducive to
health, of watches that make people up to date, of a hair restorer that
keeps the hair you have, of shoes with which you can walk in the air, of
clothes that make man and woman out of nothing, pianos that make
Paderewskys, of bicycles and typewriters, and razors and house-lots and
furniture, and peerless, rare, surpassing, extraordinary everything
mentionable. What will he not sing of? These things will be. God will
send us a Bobby Burns and he will sing the song of the best steamship
company, and he will not only be able to go abroad often, but he may in
the course of time even become the general passenger agent. It takes a
competent fortune to escape the materialism of the age, and to acquire
this the poet will associate himself with the material interests of the
time and become as free as a bird in the woods.
"The process has begun, and already one finds pretty little poems and
fine sentiments in all advertisements, particularly those that meet
one's eyes in the street cars. I usually have a book with me on the
cars, but of late I find the advertisements more amusing. Pretty soon
the best literature will appear in the advertisements of all
publications. One firm advertises in choice epigrams, which show the
possibilities for some future wits. I do not know whether they are
written by Elbert Hubbard or not, but they sound like it and show which
way things are going.
"This is the solution of the problem of the poet. I pondered over it
long, but found it at last. Our hope comes from Parnassus. The poets
will help us conquer the foreign market."
XXII
"My Vacation on the East Side"
"Green fields, fair forests, singing streams, pine-clad mountains,
verdant vistas--from the monotony of the city to the monotony of nature.
I wanted a complete change, and so I went to the East Side of New York
for my vacation. That is where I have been."
Thus did our friend explain his strange disappearance and unusual
absence from Boston for a whole week. For the first time since he came
here from New York he had been missing from his home, his regular
haunts, such as the cafés, Jewish book-stores and the debating club, and
none of those whom I asked knew whither he had betaken himself. The
direct cause of his disappearance, explained Keidansky, was a railroad
pass, which he had secured from a friendly editor for whom he had done
some work. He went on explaining. "I wanted to break away for awhile
from the sameness and solemnness, the routine and respectability of this
town, from my weary idleness, empty labors, and uniformity of our ideas
here, so when the opportunity was available I took a little journey to
the big metropolis. One becomes rusty and falls into a rut in this
suburb. I was becoming so sedate, stale and quiet that I was beginning
to be afraid of myself. The revolutionary spirit has somewhat subsided.
Many of the comrades have gone back on their ideas, have begun to
practise what they preach, to improve their conditions by going into
business and into work, and I often feel lonely. Anti-imperialism,
Christian Science and the New Thought are amusing; but there is not
enough excitement here. Boston is not progressive; there are not enough
foreigners in this city. People from many lands with all sorts of ideas
and the friction that arises between them--that causes progress. New
York is the place, and it is also the refuge of all radicals,
revolutionaries and good people whom the wicked old world has cast out.
America, to retain its original character, must constantly be
replenished by hounded refugees and victims of persecution in despotic
lands. To remain lovers of freedom we must have sufferers from
oppression with us. Sad commentary, this, upon our human nature; but so
are nearly all commentaries upon human nature. Commentaries upon the
superhuman are tragic. New York with its Germans and Russians and Jews
is a characteristic American city. Boston and other places are too much
like Europe--cold, narrow and provincial. I came to Boston some time ago
because I had relatives here--the last reason in the world why any one
should go anywhere; but I was ignorant and superstitious in those days.
I have since managed to emancipate myself, more or less, from the
baneful influences of those near; but meanwhile I have established
myself, have become interested in the movements and institutions of the
community, and here I am. The symphony concerts, the radical movement,
the library, lectures on art, the sunsets over the Charles River, the
Faneuil Hall protest meetings against everything that continues to be,
the literary paper published, the Atlantic Monthly, Gamelial Bradford,
Philip Hale and so many other fixtures of Boston have since endeared it
to me and I stayed. Besides, it would cost me too much to ship all my
books to New York.
"But wishing a change, I wanted to go to the big metropolis. No, not to
the country; not for me those parasitic, pestering and polished summer
hotels, where a pile of people get together to gossip and giggle and
gormandize and bore each other for several weeks. An accident once
brought me to one of these places. I went out to see some friends, and I
know what they are. They spend most of their time dressing; these
vacationists dress three times a day; the green waist, and yellow waist,
the brown skirt and the blue suit, the red jacket, the white hat, and
the gray coat, and then the same turn over again; they fill themselves
with all sorts of heavy and unwholesome foods brought from the cities;
they sit around the verandas and talk all day, never daring to venture
into the woods; they do no good to themselves, coming home tired and
sick, and they do unspeakable wrong by turning good, honest farmers into
parasitic, sophisticated boarder-breeders, and by turning them away from
the tilling of the soil. No more of these places for me. Of course, if
one could go into the woods and live as simply as a savage for awhile
it would be fine; but one needs a tent, and I never did own any real
estate.
"But this time I wanted a complete change; I wanted something to move
and stir me out of the given groove, the beaten path I was falling into,
some excitement that would shake the cobwebs out of my brain, so I
turned towards the East Side.