I
There are never, at any time and place, more than a few literary
critics of genuine incision, taste, and instinct; and these
qualities, rare enough in themselves, are further debilitated, in
many cases, by excessive geniality or indigestion. The ideal
literary critic should be guarded as carefully as a delicate thermal
instrument at the Weather Bureau; his meals, friendships, underwear,
and bank account should all be supervised by experts and advisedly
maintained at a temperate mean. In the Almost Perfect State (so many
phases of which have been deliciously delineated by Mr. Marquis) a
critic seen to become over-exhilarated at the dining table or to
address any author by his first name would promptly be haled from
the room by a commissionaire lest his intellectual acuity become
blunted by emotion.
The unfortunate habit of critics being also human beings has done a
great deal to impair their value to the public. For other human
beings we all nourish a secret disrespect. And therefore it is well
that the world should be reminded now and then of the dignity and
purity of the critic's function. The critic's duty is not merely to
tabulate literary material according to some convenient scale of
proved niceties; but to discern the ratio existing in any given work
between possibility and performance; between the standard the author
might justly have been expected to achieve and the standard he
actually attained. There are hierarchies and lower archies. A pint
pot, full (it is no new observation), is just as full as a bathtub
full. And the first duty of the critic is to determine and make
plain to the reader the frame of mind in which the author approached
his task.
Just as a ray of sunshine across a room reveals, in air that seemed
clear, innumerable motes of golden dancing dust and filament, so the
bright beam of a great critic shows us the unsuspected floating
atoms of temperament in the mind of a great writer. The popular
understanding of the word _criticize_ is to find fault, to pettifog.
As usual, the popular mind is only partly right. The true critic is
the tender curator and warden of all that is worthy in letters. His
function is sacramental, like the sweeping of a hearth. He keeps the
hearth clean and nourishes the fire. It is a holy fire, for its fuel
is men's hearts.
It seems to us probable that under present conditions the cause of
literature is more likely to suffer from injudicious and excessive
praise rather than from churlish and savage criticism. It seems to
us (and we say this with certain misgivings as to enthusiasms of our
own) that there are many reviewers whose honest zeal for the
discovering of masterpieces is so keen that they are likely to burst
into superlatives half a dozen times a year and hail as a flaming
genius some perfectly worthy creature, who might, if he were given a
little stiff discipline, develop into a writer of best-readers
rather than best-sellers. Too resounding praise is often more
damning than faint praise. The writer who has any honest intentions
is more likely to be helped by a little judicious acid now and then
than by cartloads of honey. Let us be candid and personal. When
someone in _The New Republic_ spoke of some essays of our own as
"blowzy" we were moved for a few moments to an honest self-scrutiny
and repentance. Were we really blowzy, we said to ourself? We did
not know exactly what this meant, and there was no dictionary handy.
But the word gave us a picture of a fat, ruddy beggar-wench trudging
through wind and rain, probably on the way to a tavern; and we
determined, with modest sincerity, to be less like that in future.
The good old profession of criticism tends, in the hands of the
younger generation, toward too fulsome ejaculations of hurrahs and
hyperboles. It is a fine thing, of course, that new talent should so
swiftly win its recognition; yet we think we are not wholly wrong in
believing that many a delicate and promising writer has been
hurried into third-rate work, into women's magazine serials and
cheap sordid sensationalism, by a hasty overcapitalization of the
reviewer's shouts. For our own part, we do not feel any too sure of
our ability to recognize really great work when we first see it. We
have often wondered, if we had been journalizing in 1855 when
"Leaves of Grass" appeared, would we have been able to see what it
meant, or wouldn't we have been more likely to fill our column with
japeries at the expense of Walt's obvious absurdities, missing all
the finer grain? It took a man like Emerson to see what Walt was up
to.
There were many who didn't. Henry James, for instance, wrote a
review of "Drum Taps" in the _Nation_, November 16, 1865. In the
lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on
smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so
clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the
chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that
seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum
Taps" before its publication, said, "Its passion has the
indispensable merit that though to the ordinary reader let loose
with wildest abandon, the true artist can see that it is yet under
control." With this, evidently, the young Henry James did not agree.
He wrote:
It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a
still more melancholy one to write about it. Perhaps since the
day of Mr. Tupper's "Philosophy" there has been no more
difficult reading of the poetic sort. It exhibits the effort of
an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged
muscular strain, into poetry. Like hundreds of other good
patriots, Mr. Walt Whitman has imagined that a certain amount
of violent sympathy with the great deeds and sufferings of our
soldiers, and of admiration for our national energy, together
with a ready command of picturesque language, are sufficient
inspiration for a poet.... But he is not a poet who merely
reiterates these plain facts _ore rotundo_. He only sings them
worthily who views them from a height.... Mr. Whitman is very
fond of blowing his own trumpet, and he has made very explicit
claims for his book.... The frequent capitals are the only
marks of verse in Mr. Whitman's writing. There is, fortunately,
but one attempt at rhyme.... Each line starts off by itself, in
resolute independence of its companions, without a visible goal
... it begins like verse and turns out to be arrant prose. It
is more like Mr. Tupper's proverbs than anything we have
met.... No triumph, however small, is won but through the
exercise of art, and this volume is an offence against art....
We look in vain through the book for a single idea. We find
nothing but flashy imitations of ideas. We find a medley of
extravagances and commonplaces.
We do not know whether H.J. ever recanted this very youthful
disposal of old Walt. The only importance of it at this moment seems
to us this: that appreciation of all kinds of art is so tenderly
interwoven with inherited respect for the traditional forms of
expression by which they are conveyed that a new and surprising
vehicle quite unfits most observers for any reasonable assessment of
the passenger.
As for Walt himself, he was quite unabashed by this or any other
onslaught. He was not gleg at argument, and probably rolled up the
issue of the _Nation_ in his pocket and went down to Coney Island to
lie on the sand and muse (but no, we forget, it was November!). In
the same issue of the _Nation_ he doubtless read, in the "Literary
Notes," that "Poems Relating to the American Revolution," by Philip
Freneau, was "in press under the scholarly editing of Evart A.
Duyckinck to form a complete presentment of the genius of an author
whose influence in the affairs of his time would alone impart a
lasting value to his works." At this Walt smiled gently to himself,
wondered how soon "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" would
get into the anthologies, and "sped to the certainties suitable to
him."