There is a maxim particularly suitable to those who follow any art:
"Don't talk about what you do!" And yet, once in a way, one must clear
the mind and put into words what lies at the back of endeavour.
What, then, is lying at the back of any growth or development there may
have been of late in drama?
In my belief, simply an outcrop of sincerity--of fidelity to mood, to
impression, to self. A man here and there has turned up who has imagined
something true to what he has really seen and felt, and has projected it
across the foot-lights in such a way as to make other people feel it.
This is all that has happened lately on our stage. And if it be growth,
it will not be growth in quantity, since there is nothing like sincerity
for closing the doors of theatres. For, just consider what sincerity
excludes: All care for balance at the author's bank--even when there is
no balance; all habit of consulting the expression on the public's
face; all confectioning of French plays; all the convenient practice of
adding up your plots on the principle that two and two make five. These
it excludes. It includes: Nothing because it pays; nothing because it
will make a sensation; no situations faked; no characters falsified; no
fireworks; only something imagined and put down in a passion of
sincerity. What plays, you may say, are left? Well, that was the
development in our drama before this war began. The war arrested it, as
it arrested every movement of the day in civil life. But whether in war
or peace, the principles which underlie art remain the same and are
always worth consideration.
Sincerity in the theatre and commercial success are not necessarily, but
they are generally, opposed. It is more or less a happy accident when,
they coincide. This grim truth cannot be blinked. Not till the heavens
fall will the majority of the public demand sincerity. And all that they
who care for sincerity can hope for is that the supply of sincere drama
will gradually increase the demand for it--gradually lessen the majority
which has no use for that disturbing quality. The burden of this
struggle is on the shoulders of the dramatists. It is useless and
unworthy for them to complain that the public will not stand sincerity,
that they cannot get sincere plays acted, and so forth. If they have not
the backbone to produce what they feel they ought to produce, without
regard to what the public wants, then good-bye to progress of any kind.
If they are of the crew who cannot see any good in a fight unless they
know it is going to end in victory; if they expect the millennium with
every spring--they will advance nothing. Their job is to set their
teeth, do their work in their own way, without thinking much about
result, and not at all about reward, except from their own consciences.
Those who want sincerity will always be the few, but they may well be
more numerous than now; and to increase their number is worth a
struggle. That struggle was the much-sneered-at, much-talked-of
so-called "new" movement in our British drama.
Now it was the fashion to dub this new drama the "serious" drama; the
label was unfortunate, and not particularly true. If Rabelais or Robert
Burns appeared again in mortal form and took to writing plays, they
would be "new" dramatists with a vengeance--as new as ever Ibsen was,
and assuredly they would be sincere. But could they well be called
"serious"? Can we call Synge, or St. John Hankin, or Shaw, or Barrie
serious? Hardly! Yet they are all of this new movement in their very
different ways, because they are sincere. The word "serious," in fact,
has too narrow a significance and admits a deal of pompous stuff which
is not sincere. While the word "sincere" certainly does not characterise
all that is popularly included under the term "new drama," it as
certainly does characterise (if taken in its true sense of fidelity to
self) all that is really new in it, and excludes no mood, no
temperament, no form of expression which can pass the test of ringing
true. Look, for example, at the work of those two whom we could so ill
spare--Synge and St. John Hankin. They were as far apart as dramatists
well could be, except that each had found a special medium--the one a
kind of lyric satire, the other a neat, individual sort of comedy--which
seemed exactly to express his spirit. Both forms were in a sense
artificial, but both were quite sincere; for through them each of these
two dramatists, so utterly dissimilar, shaped forth the essence of his
broodings and visions of life, with all their flavour and individual
limitations. And that is all one means by--all one asks of--sincerity.
Then why make such a fuss about it?
Because it is rare, and an implicit quality of any true work of art,
realistic or romantic.
Art is not art unless it is made out of an artist's genuine feeling and
vision, not out of what he has been told he ought to feel and see. For
art exists not to confirm people in their tastes and prejudices, not to
show them what they have seen before, but to present them with a new
vision of life. And if drama be an art (which the great public denies
daily, but a few of us still believe), it must reasonably be expected to
present life as each dramatist sees it, and not to express things
because they pander to popular prejudice, or are sensational, or because
they pay.
If you want further evidence that the new dramatic movement is marked
out by its struggle for sincerity, and by that alone, examine a little
the various half-overt oppositions with which it meets.
Why is the commercial manager against it?
Because it is quite naturally his business to cater for the great
public; and, as before said, the majority of the public does not, never
will, want sincerity; it is too disturbing. The commercial manager will
answer: "The great public does not dislike sincerity, it only dislikes
dullness." Well! Dullness is not an absolute, but a very relative
term--a term likely to have a different meaning for a man who knows
something about life and art from that which it has for a man who knows
less. And one may remark that if the great public's standard of what is
really "amusing" is the true one, it is queer that the plays which
tickle the great public hardly ever last a decade, while the plays which
do not tickle them occasionally last for centuries. The "dullest" plays,
one might say roughly, are those which last the longest. Witness
Euripides!
Why are so many actor-managers against the new drama?
Because their hearts are quite naturally set on such insincere
distortions of values as are necessary to a constant succession of "big
parts" for themselves. Sincerity does not necessarily exclude heroic
characters, but it does exclude those mock heroics which actor-managers
have been known to prefer--not to real heroics, perhaps, but to simple
and sound studies of character.
Why is the Censorship against it?
Because censorship is quite naturally the guardian of the ordinary
prejudices of sentiment and taste, and quaintly innocent of knowledge
that in any art fidelity of treatment is essential to a theme. Indeed, I
am sure that this peculiar office would regard it as fantastic for a
poor devil of an artist to want to be faithful or sincere. The demand
would appear pedantic and extravagant.
Some say that the critics are against the new drama. That is not in the
main true. The inclination of most critics is to welcome anything with
a flavour of its own; it would be odd indeed if it were not so--they get
so much of the other food! They are, in general, friends to sincerity.
But the trouble with the critic is rather the fixed idea. He has to
print his opinion of an author's work, while other men have only to
think it; and when it comes to receiving a fresh impression of the same
author, his already recorded words are liable to act on him rather as
the eyes of a snake act on a rabbit. Indeed, it must be very awkward,
when you have definitely labelled an author this, or that, to find from
his next piece of work that he is the other as well! The critic who can
make blank his soul of all that he has said before may indeed exist--in
Paradise!
Why is the greater public against the new drama?
By the greater public I in no sense mean the public who don't keep motor
cars--the greater public comes from the West-end as much as ever it
comes from the East-end. Its opposition to the "new drama" is neither
covert, doubtful, nor conscious of itself. The greater public is like an
aged friend of mine, who, if you put into his hands anything but
Sherlock Holmes, or The Waverley Novels, says: "Oh! that dreadful book!"
His taste is excellent, only he does feel that an operation should be
performed on all dramatists and novelists by which they should be
rendered incapable of producing anything but what my aged friend is used
to. The greater public, in fact, is either a too well-dined organism
which wishes to digest its dinner, or a too hard-worked organism longing
for a pleasant dream. I sympathise with the greater public!...
A friend once said to me: "Champagne has killed the drama." It was half
a truth. Champagne is an excellent thing, and must not be disturbed.
Plays should not have anything in them which can excite the mind. They
should be of a quality to just remove the fumes by eleven o'clock and
make ready the organism for those suppers which were eaten before the
war. Another friend once said to me: "It is the rush and hurry and
strenuousness of modern life which is scotching the drama." Again, it
was half a truth. Why should not the hard-worked man have his pleasant
dream, his detective story, his good laugh? The pity is that sincere
drama would often provide as agreeable dreams for the hard-worked man as
some of those reveries in which he now indulges, if only he would try it
once or twice. That is the trouble--to get him to give it a chance.
The greater public will by preference take the lowest article in art
offered to it. An awkward remark, and unfortunately true. But if a
better article be substituted, the greater public very soon enjoys it
every bit as much as the article replaced, and so on--up to a point
which we need not fear we shall ever reach. Not that sincere dramatists
are consciously trying to supply the public with a better article. A man
could not write anything sincere with the elevation of the public as
incentive. If he tried, he would be as lost as ever were the Pharisees
making broad their phylacteries. He can only express himself sincerely
_by not considering the public at all_. People often say that this is
"cant," but it really isn't. There does exist a type of mind which
cannot express itself in accordance with what it imagines is required;
can only express itself for itself, and take the usually unpleasant
consequences. This is, indeed, but an elementary truth, which since the
beginning of the world has lain at the bottom of all real artistic
achievement. It is not cant to say that the only things vital in drama,
as in every art, are achieved when the maker has fixed his soul on the
making of a thing which shall seem fine to himself. It is the only
standard; all the others--success, money, even the pleasure and benefit
of other people--lead to confusion in the artist's spirit, and to the
making of dust castles. To please your best self is the only way of
being sincere. Most weavers of drama, of course, are perfectly sincere
when they start out to ply their shuttles; but how many persevere in
that mood to the end of their plays, in defiance of outside
consideration? Here--says one to himself--it will be too strong meat;
there it will not be sufficiently convincing; this natural length will
be too short, that end too appalling; in such and such a shape I shall
never get my play taken; I must write that part up and tone this
character down. And when it is all done, effectively, falsely--what is
there? A prodigious run, perhaps. But--the grave of all which makes the
life of an artist worth the living. Well! well! We who believe this will
never get too many others to believe it! Those heavens will not fall;
theatre doors will remain open; the heavy diners will digest, and the
over-driven man will dream. And yet, with each sincere thing made--even
if only fit for reposing within a drawer--its maker is stronger, and
will some day, perhaps, make that which need not lie covered away, but
reach out from him to other men.
It is a wide word--sincerity. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is no less
sincere than "Hamlet," "The Mikado" as faithful to its mood of satiric
frolicking as Ibsen's "Ghosts" to its mood of moral horror. Sincerity
bars out no themes; it only demands that the dramatist's moods and
visions should be intense enough to keep him absorbed; that he should
have something to say so engrossing to himself that he has no need to
stray here and there and gather purple plums to eke out what was
intended to be an apple tart. Here is the heart of the matter: You
cannot get sincere drama out of those who do not see and feel with
sufficient fervour; and you cannot get good sincere drama out of those
who will not hoe their rows to the very end. There is no faking and no
scamping to the good in art. You may turn out the machine-made article
very natty, but for the real hand-made thing you must have toiled in the
sweat of your brow. In Britain it is a little difficult to persuade
people that the writing of plays and novels is work. To many it remains
one of those inventions of a certain potentate for idle hands to do. To
some persons in high life, and addicted to field sports, it is still a
species of licensed buffoonery, to be regulated by a sort of
circus-master with a whip in one hand and a gingerbread nut in the
other. By the truly simple soul it is thus summed up: "Work! Why, 'e
sits writin' all day." To some, both green and young, it shines as a
vocation entirely glorious and exhilarating. If one may humbly believe
the evidence of his own senses, it is not any of these, but a patient
calling, glamorous now and then, but with fifty minutes of hard labour
and yearning to every ten of satisfaction. Not a pursuit, maybe, which
one would change, but then, what man with a profession flies to others
that he knows not of?
Novelists, it is true, even if they have not been taken too seriously by
the people of these islands, have for a long time past respected
themselves, but the calling of a dramatist till quite of late has been
but an invertebrate and spiritless concern. Pruned and prismed by the
censor, exploited by the actor, dragooned and slashed by the manager,
ignored by the public, who never even bothered to inquire the names of
those who supplied it with digestives--it was a slave's job. Thanks to a
little sincerity it is not now a slave's job, and will not again, I
think, become one.
From time to time in that vehicle of improvisation, that modern fairy
tale--our daily paper--we read words such as these: "What has become of
the boasted renascence of our stage?" or: "So much for all the
trumpeting about the new drama!" When we come across such words, we
remember that it is only natural for journals to say to-day the opposite
of what they said yesterday. For they have to suit all tastes and
preserve a decent equilibrium!
There is a new safeguard of the self-respecting dramatist which no
amount of improvising for or against will explain away. Plays are now
not merely acted, they are published and read, and will be read more and
more. This does not mean, as some say, that they are being written for
the study--they were never being written more deliberately, more
carefully, for the stage. It does mean that they are tending more and
more to comply with fidelity to theme, fidelity to self; and therefore
are more and more able to bear the scrutiny of cold daylight. And for
the first time, perhaps, since the days of Shakespeare there are
dramatists in this country, not a few, faithful to themselves.
Now, all this is not merely fortuitous. For, however abhorrent such a
notion may be to those yet wedded to Victorian ideals, we were, even
before the war, undoubtedly passing through great changes in our
philosophy of life. Just as a plant keeps on conforming to its
environment, so our beliefs and ideals are conforming to our new social
conditions and discoveries. There is in the air a revolt against
prejudice, and a feeling that things must be re-tested. The spirit
which, dwelling in pleasant places, would never re-test anything is now
looked on askance. Even on our stage we are not enamoured of it. It is
not the artist's business (be he dramatist or other) to preach.
Admitted! His business is to portray; but portray truly he cannot if he
has any of that glib doctrinaire spirit, devoid of the insight which
comes from instinctive sympathy. He must look at _life_, not at a mirage
of life compounded of authority, tradition, comfort, habit. The sincere
artist, by the very nature of him, is bound to be curious and
perceptive, with an instinctive craving to identify himself with the
experience of others. This is his value, whether he express it in
comedy, epic, satire, or tragedy. Sincerity distrusts tradition,
authority, comfort, habit; cannot breathe the air of prejudice, and
cannot stand the cruelties which arise from it. So it comes about that
the new drama's spirit is essentially, inevitably human and--humane,
essentially distasteful to many professing followers of the Great
Humanitarian, who, if they were but sincere, would see that they
secretly abhor His teachings and in practice continually invert them.
It is a fine age we live in--this age of a developing social conscience,
and worthy of a fine and great art. But, though no art is fine unless it
has sincerity, no amount of sincere intention will serve unless the
expression of it be well-nigh perfect. An author is judged, not by
intention but by achievement; and criticism is innately inclined to
remark first on the peccadillo points of a person, a poem, or a play. If
there be a scar on the forehead, a few false quantities, or weak
endings, if there is an absence in the third act of some one who
appeared in the first--it is always much simpler to complain of this
than to feel or describe the essence of the whole. But this very
pettiness in our criticism is, fortunately, a sort of safeguard. The
French writer Buffon said: "_Bien écrire, c'est tout; car bien écrire
c'est bien sentir, bien penser, et bien dire._" ... Let the artist then,
by all means, make his work impeccable, clothe his ideas, feelings,
visions, in just such garments as can withstand the winds of criticism.
He himself must be his cruellest critic. Before cutting his cloth let
him very carefully determine the precise thickness, shape, and colour
best suited to the condition of his temperature. For there are still
playwrights who, working in the full blast of an _affaire_ between a
poet and the wife of a stockbroker, will murmur to themselves: "Now for
a little lyricism!" and drop into it. Or when the strong, silent
stockbroker has brought his wife once more to heel: "Now for the moral!"
and gives it us. Or when things are getting a little too intense: "Now
for humour and variety!" and bring in the curate. This kind of tartan
kilt is very pleasant on its native heath of London; but--hardly the
garment of good writing. Good writing is only the perfect clothing of
mood--the just right form. Shakespeare's form, you will say, was
extraordinarily loose, wide, plastic; but then his spirit was ever
changing its mood--a true chameleon. And as to the form of Mr. Shaw--who
was once compared with Shakespeare--why! there is none. And yet, what
form could so perfectly express Mr. Shaw's glorious crusade against
stupidity, his wonderfully sincere and lifelong mood of sticking pins
into a pig!
We are told, _ad nauseam_, that the stage has laws of its own, to which
all dramatists must bow. Quite true! The stage _has_ the highly
technical laws of its physical conditions, which cannot be neglected.
But even when they are all properly attended to, it is only behind the
elbow of one who feels strongly and tries to express sincerely that
right expression stands. The imaginative mood, coming who knows when,
staying none too long, is a mistress who deserves, and certainly
expects, fidelity. True to her while she is there, do not, when she is
not there, insult her by looking in every face and thinking it will
serve! These are laws of sincerity which not even a past-master in the
laws of the stage can afford to neglect. Anything is better than
resorting to moral sentiments and solutions because they are current
coin, or to decoration because it is "the thing." And--as to humour:
though nothing is more precious than the genuine topsy-turvy feeling,
nothing is more pitifully unhumorous than the dragged-in epigram or
dismal knockabout, which has no connection with the persons or
philosophy of the play.
I suppose it is easy to think oneself sincere; it is certainly difficult
to be that same. Imagine the smile, and the blue pencil, of the Spirit
of Sincerity if we could appoint him Censor. I would not lift my pen
against that Censorship though he excised--as perhaps he might--the half
of my work. Sometimes one has a glimpse of his ironic face and his swift
fingers, busy with those darkening pages. Once I dreamed about him. It
was while a certain Commission was sitting on the British Censorship,
which still so admirably guards Insincerity, and he was giving evidence
before them. This, I remember, was what he said:
"You wish to learn of me what is sincerity? Look into yourselves, for
what lies deepest within you. Each living thing varies from every other
living thing, and never twice are there quite the same set of premises
from which to draw conclusion. Give up asking of any but yourselves for
the whereabouts of truth; and if some one says that he can tell you
where it is, don't believe him; he might as well lay a trail of sand and
think it will stay there for ever." He stopped, and I could see him
looking to judge what impression he had made upon the Commission. But
those gentlemen behaved as if they had not heard him. The Spirit of
Sincerity coughed. "By Jove, gentlemen," he said, "it's clear you don't
care what impression you make on me. Evidently it is for me to learn
sincerity from you!"
There was once a gentleman, lately appointed to assist in the control of
the exuberance of plays, who stated in public print that there had been
no plays of any value written since 1885, entirely denying that this new
drama was any better than the old drama, cut to the pattern of Scribe
and Sardou. Certainly, novelty is not necessarily improvement.
Comparison must be left to history. But it is just as well to remember
that we are not born connoisseurs of plays. Without trying the new we
shall not know if it is better than the old. To appreciate even drama at
its true value, a man must be educated just a little. When I first went
to the National Gallery in London I was struck dumb with love of
Landseer's stags and a Greuze damsel with her cheek glued to her own
shoulder, and became voluble from admiration of the large Turner and the
large Claude hung together in that perpetual prize-fight! At a second
visit I discovered Sir Joshua's "Countess of Albemarle" and old Crome's
"Mousehold Heath," and did not care quite so much for Landseer's stags.
And again and again I went, and each time saw a little differently, a
little clearer, until at last my time was spent before Titian's "Bacchus
and Ariadne," Botticelli's "Portrait of a Young Man," the Francescas, Da
Messina's little "Crucifixion," the Uccello battle picture (that great
test of education), the Velasquez (?) "Admiral," Hogarth's "Five
Servants," and the immortal "Death of Procris." Admiration for stags and
maidens--where was it?
This analogy of pictures does not pretend that our "new drama" is as far
in front of the old as the "Death of Procris" is in front of Landseer's
stags. Alas, no! It merely suggests that taste is encouraged by an open
mind, and is a matter of gradual education.
To every man his sincere opinion! But before we form opinions, let us
all walk a little through our National Gallery of drama, with inquiring
eye and open mind, to see and know for ourselves. For, _to know_, a man
cannot begin too young, cannot leave off too old. And always he must
have a mind which feels it will never know enough. In this way alone he
_will_, perhaps, know something before he dies.
And even if he require of the drama only buffoonery, or a digestive for
his dinner, why not be able to discern good buffoonery from bad, and the
pure digestive from the drug?
One is, I suppose, prejudiced in favour of this "new drama" of
sincerity, of these poor productions of the last fifteen years, or so.
It may be, indeed, that many of them will perish and fade away. But they
are, at all events, the expression of the sincere moods of men who ask
no more than to serve an art, which, heaven knows, has need of a little
serving.
* * * * *
So much for the principles underlying the advance of the drama. But what
about the chances of drama itself under the new conditions which will
obtain when the war ends?
For the moment our world is still convulsed, and art of every kind
trails a lame foot before a public whose eyes are fixed on the vast and
bloody stage of the war. When the last curtain falls, and rises again on
the scenery of Peace, shall we have to revalue everything? Surely not
the fundamental truths; these reflections on the spirit which underlie
all true effort in dramatic art may stand much as they were framed, now
five years ago. Fidelity to mood, to impression, to self will remain
what it was--the very kernel of good dramatic art; whether that fidelity
will find a more or less favourable environment remains the interesting
speculation. When we come to after-war conditions a sharp distinction
will have to be drawn between the chances of sincere drama in America
and Britain. It is my strong impression that sincere dramatists in
America are going to have an easier time than they had before the war,
but that with us they are going to have a harder. My reasons are
threefold. The first and chief reason is economic. However much America
may now have to spend, with her late arrival, vaster resources, and
incomparably greater recuperative power, she will feel the economic
strain but little in comparison with Britain. Britain, not at once, but
certainly within five years of the war's close, will find that she has
very much less money to spend on pleasure. Now, under present conditions
of education, when the average man has little to spend on pleasure, he
spends it first in gratifying his coarser tastes. And the average Briton
is going to spend his little on having his broad laughs and his crude
thrills. By the time he has gratified that side of himself he will have
no money left. Those artists in Britain who respect æsthetic truths and
practise sincerity will lose even the little support they ever had from
the great public there; they will have to rely entirely on that small
public which always wanted truth and beauty, and will want it even more
passionately after the war. But that little public will be poorer also,
and, I think, not more numerous than it was. The British public is going
to be split more definitely into two camps--a very big and a very little
camp. What this will mean to the drama of sincerity only those who have
watched its struggle in the past will be able to understand. The trouble
in Britain--and I daresay in every country--is that the percentage of
people who take art of any kind seriously is ludicrously small. And our
impoverishment will surely make that percentage smaller by cutting off
the recruiting which was always going on from the ranks of the great
public. How long it will take Britain to recover even pre-war conditions
I do not venture to suggest. But I am pretty certain that there is no
chance for a drama of truth and beauty there for many years to come,
unless we can get it endowed in such a substantial way as shall tide it
over--say--the next two decades. What we require is a London theatre
undeviatingly devoted to the production of nothing but the real thing,
which will go its own way, year in, year out, quite without regard to
the great public; and we shall never get it unless we can find some
benevolent, public-spirited person or persons who will place it in a
position of absolute security. If we could secure this endowment, that
theatre would become in a very few years the most fashionable, if not
the most popular, in London, and even the great public would go to it.
Nor need such a theatre be expensive--as theatres go--for it is to the
mind and not to the eye that it must appeal. A sufficient audience is
there ready; what is lacking is the point of focus, a single-hearted and
coherent devotion to the best, and the means to pursue that ideal
without extravagance but without halting. Alas! in England, though
people will endow or back almost anything else, they will not endow or
back an art theatre.
So much for the economic difficulty in Britain; what about America? The
same cleavage obtains in public taste, of course, but numbers are so
much larger, wealth will be so much greater, the spirit is so much more
inquiring, the divisions so much less fast set, that I do not anticipate
for America any block on the line. There will still be plenty of money
to indulge every taste.
Art, and especially, perhaps, dramatic art, which of all is most
dependent on a favourable economic condition, will gravitate towards
America, which may well become in the next ten years not only the
mother, but the foster-mother, of the best Anglo-Saxon drama.
My next reason for thinking that sincerity in art will have a better
chance with Americans than in Britain in the coming years is
psychological. They are so young a nation, we are so old; world-quakes
to them are such an adventure, to us a nerve-racking, if not a
health-shattering event. They will take this war in their stride, we
have had to climb laboriously over it. They will be left buoyant; we,
with the rest of Europe, are bound to lie for long years after in the
trough of disillusionment. The national mood with them will be more than
ever that of inquiry and exploit. With us, unless I make a mistake,
after a spurt of hedonism--a going on the spree--there will be
lassitude. Every European country has been overtried in this hideous
struggle, and Nature, with her principle of balance, is bound to take
redress. For Americans the war, nationally speaking, will have been but
a bracing of the muscles and nerves, a clearing of the skin and eyes.
Such a mental and moral condition will promote in them a deeper
philosophy and a more resolute facing of truth.
And that brings me to my third reason. The American outlook will be
permanently enlarged by this tremendous experience. Materially and
spiritually she will have been forced to witness and partake of the
life, thought, culture, and troubles of the old world. She will have,
unconsciously, assimilated much, been diverted from the beer and
skittles of her isolated development in a great new country. Americans
will find themselves suddenly grown up. Not till a man is grown up does
he see and feel things deeply enough to venture into the dark well of
sincerity.
America is an eager nation. She has always been in a hurry. If I had to
point out the capital defect in the attractive temperament of the
American people, I should say it was a passion for short cuts. That has
been, in my indifferent judgment, the very natural, the inevitable
weakness in America's spiritual development. The material possibilities,
the opportunities for growth and change, the vast spaces, the climate,
the continual influxions of new blood and new habits, the endless shifts
of life and environment, all these factors have been against that deep
brooding over things, that close and long scrutiny into the deeper
springs of life, out of which the sincerest and most lasting forms of
art emerge; nearly all the conditions of American existence during the
last fifty years have been against the settled life and atmosphere which
influence men to the re-creation in art form of that which has sunk
deep into their souls. Those who have seen the paintings of the Italian
artist Segantini will understand what I mean. There have been many
painters of mountains, but none whom I know of save he who has
reproduced the very spirit of those great snowy spaces. He spent his
life among them till they soaked into his nerves, into the very blood of
him. All else he gave up, to see and feel them so that he might
reproduce them in his art. Or let me take an instance from America. That
enchanting work of art "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn," by the great
Mark Twain. What reproduction of atmosphere and life; what scent of the
river, and old-time country life, it gives off! How the author must have
been soaked in it to have produced those books!
The whole tendency of our age has been away from hand-made goods, away
from the sort of life which produced the great art of the past. That is
too big a subject to treat of here. But certainly a sort of feverish
impatience has possessed us all, America not least. It may be said that
this will be increased by the war. I think the opposite. Hard spiritual
experience and contact with the old world will deepen the American
character and cool its fevers, and Americans will be more thorough,
less impatient, will give themselves to art and to the sort of life
which fosters art, more than they have ever yet given themselves. Great
artists, like Whistler and Henry James, will no longer seek their quiet
environments in Europe. I believe that this war will be for America the
beginning of a great art age; I hope so with all my heart. For art will
need a kind home and a new lease of life.
A certain humble and yet patient and enduring belief in himself and his
own vision is necessary to the artist. I think that Americans have only
just begun to believe in themselves as artists, but that this belief is
now destined to grow quickly. America has a tremendous atmosphere of her
own, a wonderful life, a wonderful country, but so far she has been
skating over its surface. The time has come when she will strike down,
think less in terms of material success and machine-made perfections.
The time has come when she will brood, and interpret more and more the
underlying truths, and body forth an art which shall be a spiritual
guide, shed light, and show the meaning of her multiple existence. It
will reveal dark things, but also those quiet heights to which man's
spirit turns for rest and faith in this bewildering maze of a world. And
to this art about to come--art inevitably moves slowly--into its own,
to American drama, poetry, fiction, music, painting, sculpture--sincerity,
an unswerving fidelity to self, alone will bring the dignity worthy of
a great and free people.
1913-1917.
[C] The first part of this paper was published in the _Hibbert Journal_
in 1910.