coarse poetry, prosaic poetry--anything but vulgar and sentimental
poetry--than no poetry at all. To be susceptible to no revival of
the vivid emotions of youth, to be touched by no thoughts more
intense than our own, to be accessible to no imaginative
interpretation of the life we lead--this seems to me to be a heavy
misfortune. But to possess, as most of us do, our share of all
these qualities, and then at no time, in no fitting mood or
proffered opportunity, to read poetry--this can only be regarded
as deafness by habit and blindness from choice.
EYE, EAR, AND MIND
Our eyes are more civilized than our ears, and much more civilized
than our minds; that is the flat truth, and it accounts for a good
deal that puzzles worthy people who wish to reform literature.
Consider the musical comedy of the kind that runs for a year and
costs the price of two books for a good seat. Its humor is either
good horseplay or vulgar farce, and its literary quality nil. Its
music is better, less banal than the words, and, sometimes, almost
excellent. But its setting, the costumes, the scenic effects, the
stage painting, and, most of all, the color schemes are always
artistic and sometimes exquisite. They intrigue the most
sophisticated taste, which is not surprising; yet, at the same
time, the multitude likes them, pays for them, stays away if they
are not right. Eye is an aesthete, ear is, at least, cultivated,
mind is a gross barbarian, unwilling to think, and desirous only
of a tickle or a prod.
Or to localize the scene and change the angle a trifle, compare
the New York ear for music with the New York taste for reading.
The audiences who hear good concerts, good operas, good oratorios,
and thoroughly appreciate them, far outrun in number the readers
of equally artistic or intellectual books. Ear is more cultivated
than mind, musical appreciation keener than literary taste. A good
stage set on a first night in this same metropolis of the arts,
will get a round of applause, when not only often, but usually,
perfection of lines, or poignancy of thought in the dialogue, will
miss praise altogether. Eye detects sheer beauty instantly, mind
lags or is dull to it.
This is a fact; the cause of it let psychologists explain, as they
can, of course, very readily. It is a rather encouraging fact, for
it seems to indicate that our members educate themselves one at a
time, and yet, as parts of a single body corporate, must help each
other's education. If we grow critical of the sped-up background
of a movie scene, we may grow critical of its sped-up plot. Eye
may teach the ear, ear lift the mind to more strenuous
intellectual efforts.
And, of course, it explains why the literary reformers have such
difficulties with the multitude. Why, they say, do these women,
whose dress is admirably designed and colored, whose living rooms
are proportioned and furnished in taste, who know good music from
bad, and enjoy the former--why do they read novels without the
least distinction, without beauty or truth, barely raised above
vulgarity? Why, they say, does this man who cooperates with his
architect in the building of a country house which would have been
a credit to any period, who is a connoisseur in wine and cigars,
and unerring in his judgment of pictures, why does he definitely
prefer the commonplace in literature? Eye, ear, and tongue are
civilized; intellect remains a gross feeder still. Good reading
comes last among the arts of taste.
This is not an essay in reform; it is content to be a question
mark; but one bit of preaching may slip in at the end. Why give
eye and ear all the fine experiences? Why not do something for
poor, slovenly mind? The truth is that we are lazy. In a stage
full of shimmering beauty, in a concert of chamber music, in a
fine building, or an admirable sketch, others do the work, we have
only to gaze or listen in order to pluck some, at least, of the
fruits of art. But fine novels take fine reading; fine essays take
fine thinking; fine poetry takes fine feeling. We balk at the
effort, and ask, like the audience at the movies, that eye should
take the easier way. And hence the American reader still faintly
suggests the Fiji Islander, who wears a silk hat and patent
leathers on a tattooed naked body.
For all we can tell, that may be the direction of Progress. In
2021 New Yorkers may be gazing at a city beautiful, where even the
subways give forth sweet sounds; and reading novelized movies in
words of one syllable. Eye may win the race and starve out the
other members. It would be a bad future for publishers and
authors; and I am against it, even as a possibility. Hence my
energies will be devoted to poking, thrilling, energizing,
tonicking that lazy old organism, half asleep still--Mind.
OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE
A few years ago drums and trumpets in American magazines and
publishers' advertisements announced that the essay was coming to
its own again. We were to vary our diet of short stories with
pleasing disquisitions, to find in books of essays a substitute
for the volume of sermons grown obsolete, and to titillate our
finer senses by graceful prose that should teach us without
didacticism, and present contemporary life without the incumbrance
of a plot.
The promise was welcome. American literature has been at its very
best in the essay. In the essay, with few exceptions, it has more
often than elsewhere attained world-wide estimation. Emerson,
Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes were primarily essayists. Hawthorne
and Irving were essayists as much as romancers. Franklin was a
common sense essayist. Jonathan Edwards will some day be presented
(by excerpt) as a moral essayist of a high order. And there was
Lowell.
Have they had worthy successors? In the years after the Civil War
certainly none of equal eminence. But it is too early to say that
the trumpets and drums of the last decade were false heralds. The
brilliant epithets of Chesterton, the perfect sophistication of
Pearsall Smith (an American, but expatriated), the placid depth of
Hudson's nature studies, are not paralleled on this side of the
water, yet with Crothers, Gerould, Repplier, Colby, Morley,
Strunsky, we need not fear comparison in the critical genre,
unless it be with the incomparable Max Beerbohm.
Two kinds of expository writing are natural for Americans. The
first is a hard-hitting statement, straight out of intense feeling
or labored thought. That was Emerson's way (in spite of his
expansiveness), and Thoreau's also. You read them by pithy
sentences, not paragraphs. They assail you by ideas, not by
insidious structures of thought. The second is an easy-going
comment on life, often slangy or colloquial and frequently so
undignified as not to seem literature. Mark Twain and Josh
Billings wrote that way; Ring Lardner writes so to-day.
When the straight-from-the-shoulder American takes time to finish
his thought, to mold his sentences, to brain his reader with a
perfect expression of his tense emotion, then he makes literature.
And when the easy-going humorist, often nowadays a column conductor,
or a contributor to _The Saturday Evening Post_, takes time to deepen
his observation and to say it with real words instead of worn symbols,
he makes, and does make, literature. More are doing it than the
skeptical realize. The new epoch of the American essay is well under
way.
But the desire to "make literature" in America is too often
wasted. The would-be essayist wastes it in pretty writing about
trivial things--neighbors' back yards, books I have read, the
idiosyncrasies of cats, humors of the streets--the sort of
dilettantish comment that older nations writing of more settled,
richer civilizations can do well--that Anatole France and occasional
essayists of _Punch_ or _The Spectator_ can do well and most of us do
indifferently. We are a humorous people, but not a playful one. Light
irony is not our forte. Strength and humorous exaggeration come more
readily to our pens than grace. We are better inspired by the follies
of the crowd, or the errors of humanity, than by the whims of culture
or aspects of pleasant leisure. And when we try to put on style in the
manner of Lamb or Hazlitt, Stevenson or Beerbohm, we seldom exceed the
second rate.
When the newspaper and magazine humorists of democracy learn to
write better; when the moralists and reformers and critics of
American life learn to mature and perfect their thought until what
they write is as good as their intentions--then the trumpets and
drums may sound again, and with justification. Many have; may
others follow.
And perhaps then we can scrap a mass of fine writing about nothing
in particular, that calls itself the American literary essay, and
yet is neither American in inspiration, native in style, nor good
for anything whatsoever, except exercise in words. Out with the
dilettantes. We are tired of the merely literary; we want real
literature in the essay as elsewhere.
FLAT PROSE
SOME time ago a writer protested against the taboo on "beautiful
prose." He asserted that the usual organs of publication,
especially in America, reject with deadly certainty all
contributions whose style suggests that melodious rhythm which De
Quincey and Ruskin made fashionable for their generations, and
Stevenson revived in the 'nineties. He complained that the writer
is no longer allowed to write as well as he can; that he must
abstract all unnecessary color of phrase, all warmth of
connotation and grace of rhythm from his style, lest he should
seem to be striving for "atmosphere," instead of going about his
proper business, which is to fill the greedy stomach of the public
with facts.
Unfortunately, this timely fighter in a good cause was too
enamored of the art whose suppression he was bewailing. He so far
forgot himself as to make his own style "beautiful" in the old-
time fashion, and thus must have roused the prejudice of the
multitude, who had to study such style in college, and knew from
sad experience that it takes longer to read than the other kind.
But there are other and safer ways of combating the taste for flat
prose. One might be to print parallel columns of "newspaper
English" (which they threaten now to teach in the schools) until
the eye sickened of its deadly monotony. This is a bad way. The
average reader would not see the point. Paragraphs from a dozen
American papers, all couched in the same utilitarian dialect,--
simple but not always clear, concise yet seldom accurate, emphatic
but as ugly as the clank of an automobile chain,--why, we read
thousands of such lines daily! We think in such English; we talk
in it; to revolt from this style, to which the Associated Press
has given the largest circulation on record, would be like
protesting against the nitrogen in our air.
Books and magazines require a different reckoning. The author is
still allowed to let himself go occasionally in books--especially
in sentimental books. But the magazines, with few exceptions, have
shut down the lid, and are keeping the stylistic afflatus under
strict compression. No use to show them what they might publish
if, with due exclusion of the merely pretty, the sing-song, and
the weakly ornate, they were willing to let a little style escape.
With complete cowardice, they will turn the general into the
particular, and insist that in any case they will not publish
_you_. Far better, it seems to me, to warn editors and the
"practical public" as to what apparently is going to happen if
ambitious authors are tied down much longer to flat prose.
It is not generally known, I believe, that post-impressionism has
escaped from the field of pictorial art, and is running rampant in
literature. At present, Miss Gertrude Stein is the chief culprit.
Indeed, she may be called the founder of a coterie, if not of a
school.
Her art has been defined recently by one of her admirers, who is
also the subject, or victim, of the word-portrait from which I
intend later to quote in illustration of my argument. "Gertrude
Stein," says Miss Dodge, "is doing with words what Picasso is
doing with paint. She is impelling language to induce new states
of consciousness, and in doing so language becomes with her a
creative art rather than a mirror of history." This, being written
in psychological and not in post-impressionist English, is fairly
intelligible. But it does not touch the root of the matter. Miss
Stein, the writer continues, uses "words that appeal to her as
having the meaning they _seem_ to have [that is, if "diuturnity"
suggests a tumble downstairs, it _means_ a tumble downstairs]. To
present her impressions she chooses words for their inherent quality
rather than their accepted meaning."
Let us watch the creative artist at her toil. The title of this
particular word-picture is "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa
Curonia." As the portrait itself has a beginning, but no middle,
and only a faintly indicated end, I believe--though in my
ignorance of just what it all means I am not sure--that I can
quote at random without offense to the impressions derivable from
the text.
Here then are a few paragraphs where the inherent quality of the
words is said to induce new states of consciousness:--
"Bargaining is something and there is not that success. The
intention is what if application has that accident results are
reappearing. They did not darken. That was not an adulteration....
There is that particular half of directing that there is that
particular whole direction that is not all the measure of any
combination. Gliding is not heavily moving. Looking is not
vanishing. Laughing is not evaporation.
"Praying has intention and relieving that situation is not solemn.
There comes that way.
"There is all there is when there has all there has where there is
what there is. That is what is done when there is done what is
done and the union is won and the division is the explicit visit.
There is not all of any visit."
After a hundred lines of this I wish to scream, I wish to burn the
book, I am in agony. It is not because I know that words
_cannot_ be torn loose from their meanings without insulting
the intellect. It is not because I see that this is a prime
example of the "confusion of the arts." No, my feeling is purely
physical. Some one has applied an egg-beater to my brain.
But having calmed myself by a sedative of flat prose from the
paper, I realize that Miss Stein is more sinned against than
sinning. She is merely a red flag waved by the _Zeitgeist_.
For this is the sort of thing we are bound to get if the lid is
kept down on the stylists much longer. Repression has always bred
revolt. Revolt breeds extravagance. And extravagance leads to
absurdity. And yet even in the absurd, a sympathetic observer may
detect a purpose which is honest and right. Miss Stein has
indubitably written nonsense, but she began with sense. For words
_have_ their sound-values as well as their sense-values, and
prose rhythms _do_ convey to the mind emotions that mere
denotation cannot give. Rewrite the solemn glory of Old Testament
diction in the flat colorless prose which just now is demanded,
and wonder at the difference. Translate "the multitudinous seas
incarnadine" into "making the ocean red,"--or, for more pertinent
instances, imagine a Carlyle, an Emerson, a Lamb forced to exclude
from his vocabulary every word not readily understood by the
multitude, to iron out all whimseys, all melodies from his
phrasing, and to plunk down his words one after the other in the
order of elementary thought!
I am willing to fight to the last drop of ink against any attempt
to bring back "fine writing" and ornate rhetoric into
prose. "Expression is the dress of thought," and plain thinking and
plain facts look best in simple clothing. Nevertheless, if we must write
our stories, our essays, our novels, and (who knows) our poems in
the flat prose of the news column,--if the editors will sit on the
lid,--well, the public will get what it pays for, but sooner or
later the spirit of style will ferment, will work, will grow
violent under restraint. There will be reaction, explosion,
revolution. The public will get its flat prose, and--in addition--
not one, but a hundred Gertrude Steins.
VI
MEN AND THEIR BOOKS
CONRAD AND MELVILLE
THE appearance of the definitive edition of Joseph Conrad, with
his interesting critical prefaces included, was a provocation to
read and reread his remarkable series of books, the most
remarkable contribution to English literature by an alien since
the language began. But is it a reason for writing more of an
author already more discussed than any English stylist of our
time? For myself, I answer, yes, because I have found no adequate
definition of the difference between Conrad and us to whom English
thinking is native, nor a definition of his place, historically
considered, in the modern scheme; no definition, that is, which
explains my own impressions of Conrad. And therefore I shall
proceed, as all readers should, to make my own.
If you ask readers why they like Conrad, two out of three will
answer, because he is a great stylist, or because he writes of the
sea. I doubt the worth of such answers. Many buy books because
they are written by great stylists, but few read for just that
reason. They read because there is something in an author's work
which attracts them to his style, and that something may be study
of character, skill in narrative, or profundity in truth, of which
style is the perfect expression, but not the thing itself. Only
connoisseurs, and few of them, read for style. And, furthermore, I
very much doubt whether readers go to Conrad to learn about the
sea. They might learn as much from Cooper or Melville, but they
have not gone there much of late. And many an ardent lover of
Conrad would rather be whipped than go from New York to Liverpool
on a square-rigged ship.
In any case, these answers, which make up the sum of most writing
about Conrad, do not define him. To say that an author is a
stylist is about as helpful as to say that he is a thinker. And
Conrad would have had his reputation if he had migrated to Kansas
instead of to the English sea.
In point of fact, much may be said, and with justice, against
Conrad's style. It misses occasionally the English idiom, and
sometimes English grammar, which is a trivial criticism. It
offends more frequently against the literary virtues of
conciseness and economy, which is not a trivial criticism. Conrad,
like the writers of Elizabethan prose (whom he resembles in
ardency and in freshness), too often wraps you in words, stupefies
you with gorgeous repetition, goes about and about and about,
trailing phrases after him, while the procession of narrative
images halts. He can be as prolix in his brooding descriptions as
Meredith with his intellectual vaudeville. Indeed, many give him
lip service solely because they like to be intoxicated, to be
carried away, by words. A slight change of taste, such as that
which has come about since Meredith was on every one's tongue,
will make such defects manifest. Meredith lives in spite of his
prolixities, and so will Conrad, but neither because they are
perfect English stylists.
I am sure also that Conrad, at his very best, is not so good as
Melville, at his best, in nautical narrative; as Melville in, say,
the first day of the final chase of Moby Dick; I question whether
he is as good in sea narrative as Cooper in the famous passage of
Paul Jones's ship through the shoals. Such comparisons are, of
course, rather futile. They differentiate among excellences, where
taste is a factor. Nevertheless, it is belittling to a man who,
above almost all others in our language, has brooded upon the
mysteries of the mind's action, to say that he is great because he
describes so well the sea.
We must seek elsewhere for a definition of the peculiar qualities
of Conrad. And without a definition it is easy to admire but hard
to estimate and understand him.
I believe, first of all, that Conrad has remained much more a Slav
than he, or any of us, have been willing to admit. A friend of
mine, married to a Slav, told me of her husband, how, with his cab
at the door, and dinner waiting somewhere, he would sit brooding
(so he said) over the wrongs of his race. It is dangerous to
generalize in racial characteristics, but no one will dispute a
tendency to brood as a characteristic of the Slav. The Russian
novels are full of characters who brood, and of brooding upon the
characters and their fates. The structure of the Russian story is
determined not by events so much as by the results of passionate
brooding upon the situation in which the imagined characters find
themselves.
So it is with Conrad, always and everywhere. In "Nostromo" he
broods upon the destructive power of a fixed idea; in "The Rescue"
upon the result of flinging together elemental characters of the
kind that life keeps separate; in "Youth" upon the illusions, more
real than reality, of youth. No writer of our race had ever the
patience to sit like an Eastern mystic over his scene, letting his
eye fill with each slightest detail of it, feeling its contours
around and above and beneath, separating each detail of wind and
water, mood and emotion, memory and hope, and returning again and
again to the task of description, until every impression was
gathered, every strand of motive threaded to its source.
Henry James, you will say, was even more patient. Yes, but James
did not brood. His work was active analysis, cutting finer and
finer until the atom was reached. His mind was Occidental. He
wished to know why the wheels went round. Conrad's, in this
respect, is Oriental. He wants to see what things essentially are.
Henry James refines but seldom repeats. Conrad, in such a story as
"Gaspar Ruiz" for example, or in "Chance," gives the impression of
not caring to understand if only he can fully picture the mind
that his brooding imagination draws further and further from its
sheath. It is incredible, to one who has not counted, how many
times he raises the same situation to the light--the Garibaldean
and Nostromo, Mrs. Travers marveling at her knowledge of Lingard's
heart--turns it, opens it a little further, and puts it back
while he broods on. Here is the explanation of Conrad's prolixity;
here the reason why among all living novelists he is least a slave
to incident, best able to let his story grow as slowly as life, and
still hold the reader's interest. As we read Conrad we also
brood; we read slowly where elsewhere we read fast. Turns of
style, felicities of description, as of the tropic ocean, or the
faces of women, have their chance. And, of course, the excellence,
the charm of Conrad's style is that in its nuances, its slow
winding paragraphs, its pausing sentences, and constant suggestion
of depths beyond depths, it is the perfect expression of the
brooding mind that grasps its meaning by the repetition of images
that drop like pebbles, now here, now there, in a fathomless pool.
This is to define Conrad in space, but not in time. In time, he
may be Slav or English, but certainly is modern of the moderns.
The tribute of admiration and imitation from the youth of his own
period alone might prove this. But it is easier to prove than to
describe his modernity. To say that he takes the imagination
afield into the margins of the world, where life still escapes
standardization and there are fresh aspects of beauty, is to fail
to differentiate him from Kipling or Masefield. To say that he
strikes below the act and the will into realms of the sub-
conscious, and studies the mechanism as well as the results of
emotion, is but to place him, where indeed he belongs, among the
many writers who have learned of Henry James or moved in parallels
beside him.
To get a better perspective of Conrad's essential modernity I
should like to propose a more cogent comparison, and a more
illuminating contrast, with a man whose achievements were in
Conrad's own province, who challenges and rewards comparison,
Herman Melville.