LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--ART FOR ART'S SAKE
I
Art for art's sake has come to have a meaning which must be challenged,
but yet it can be used in a sense that is both high and sacred. If a
gifted writer take literature as a great vocation and determine to use
his talents faithfully and well, without reference to fee or reward; if
prosperity cannot seduce him to the misuse of his genius, then we give
him our high praise. Let it still not be forgotten that the labourer is
worthy of his hire. But if the hire is not forthcoming, and he knowing
it, yet says in his heart, "The work must still be done"; and if he does
it loyally and bravely, despite the present coldness of the world,
doing the good work for the love of the work and all beautiful things;
and if with this meaning he take "art for art's sake" as his battle-cry,
then we repeat it is used in a sense both high and sacred.
II
But there are artists abroad whose chief glory seems to be to deny that
they have convictions--that is, convictions about the passionate things
of life that rouse and move their generation. Now that they should not
be special pleaders is an obvious duty, but unless they have a
passionate feeling for the vital things that move men, heart and soul,
they cannot interpret the heart and soul of passionate men, and their
work must be for ever cold. When literature is not passionate it does
not touch the spirit to lift and spread its wings and soar to finer air.
That is the great want about all the clever books now being turned
out--they often give us excitement; they never give us ecstasy. Then
there is an obvious feeling of something lacking which men try to make
up with art; and they produce work faultless in form and fastidious in
phrase, but still it lacks the touch of fire that would lift it from
common things to greatness.
III
If we are to apply art to great work we must distinguish art from
artifice. We find the two well contrasted in Synge's "Riders to the Sea"
and his "Playboy." The first was written straight from the heart. We
feel Synge must have followed those people carrying the dead body, and
touched to the quick by the _caoine_, passed the touch on to us, for in
the lyric swell of the close we get the true emotion. Here alone is he
in the line of greatness. This gripped his heart and he wrote out of
himself. But in the other work of his it was otherwise. He has put his
method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote
around other people. It is characteristic of the art of our time. Let it
be called art if the critics will, but it is not life.
IV
No, it is not life. But there is so much talk just now of getting "down
to fundamentals," of the poetry of the tramp "walking the world," and
the rest of it, that it would be well if we _did get_ down to
fundamentals; and this is one thing fundamental--the tramp is a deserter
from life. He evades the troubled field where great causes are fought;
he shuns the battle because of the wounds and the sacrifice; he has no
heart for high conflict and victory. Let him under the cover of darkness
but secure his share of the spoils and the world may go to wreck. Yes,
he is the meanest of things--a deserter. On the field of battle he would
be shot. If we let him desert the field of life, go his way and walk the
world, let us not at least hail him as a hero.
The Repertory Theatre is the nursery of this particular art-cult, and
'twould relieve some of us to talk freely about it. The Repertory
Theatre has already become fashionable, and is quite rapidly become a
nuisance. Men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake,
for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock
the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the
bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing,
one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men
raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for
things for which they ought to die. But he likes the bourgeois to think
him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he
proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis
mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but
painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us
flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a
standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of
work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor
flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and
beautiful. With the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be
laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by
his own tragedy; the novelist should be interested in his own story; the
poet should make his song for the love of the song and his comedy for
the fun of the thing.
VI
We naturally think of the Abbey Theatre when we speak of these things,
and as the Abbey work has certainly suffered from overpraise we may
correct it by comparison with Shakespeare. Before the Abbey we were so
used to triviality that when clever and artistic work appeared we at
once hailed it great. We _did_ get one or two great things, a fact to
note with hearty pleasure and pride. But the rest was merely clever; and
now that we are getting nothing great we must insist, and keep on
insisting, that 'tis merely clever. But let us remember that value of
the word great. Let it be kept for such names as Shakespeare and
Molière; and lesser men may be called brilliant, talented or
able--anything you will but great. Consider the scenes from the supreme
plays of Shakespeare and compare with them the innumerable plays now
coming forth and note a vital difference. These give us excitement,
where Shakespeare gave us vision. We may be reminded of Shakespeare's
duels and brawls and battles and blood; his generation revelled in
excitement. Yes, they craved it, and he gave it to them, but shot
through with wonder, subtlety, ecstasy; and his splendid creations, like
mighty worlds, keep us wondering for ever. We must get back that supreme
note of blended music and wonder, that makes the spirit beautiful and
tempts it to soar, till it rise over common things and mere commotion,
spreading its wings for the finer air where reason faints and falls to
earth.
VII
A dramatist cannot make a great play out of little people. His chief
characters at least must be great of heart and soul--the great hearts
that fight great causes. When such are caught, in the inevitable
struggle of affections and duties and the general clash of life their
passionate spirits send up all the elements that make great literature.
The writer who cannot enter into their battles and espouse their cause
cannot give utterance to their hearts; and we don't want what he thinks
about them; we want what they think about themselves. He who is in
passionate sympathy with them feels their emotion and writing from the
heart does great things. The artist who is in mortal dread of being
thought a politician or suspected of motives cannot feel, and will as
surely fail, as the one who sits down to play the rôle of politician
disguised as play-right. That is what the artist has got to see; and he
has got to see that while the Irish Revolution for centuries has
attracted the greatest hearts and brains of Ireland, for him carefully
to avoid it is to avoid the line of greatness. For a propagandist to sit
down to give it utterance would be as if a handy-man were to set out to
build a cathedral. The Revolution does not need to be argued; it
justifies itself--all we need is to give it utterance--give it utterance
once greatly. Then the writer may proceed to give utterance to every
good thing under the sun. But our artists are making, and will continue
to make, only second-class literature, for they are afraid of the
Revolution, and it is all over our best of life; they are afraid of that
life. But to enter the arena of greatness they must give it a voice.
That is the vocation of the poet.
VIII
Yes, and the poet will be unlike you, gentlemen of the fastidious
phrase. He will not be careless of form, but the passion that is in him
will make simple words burn and live; never will he in the mode of the
time go wide of the truth to make a picturesque phrase; his mind rapt on
the thing will fix on the true word; his heart warm with the battle will
fashion more beautiful forms than you, O detached and dainty artist; his
soul full of music and adventure will scale those heights it is your
fate to dream of but not your fortune to possess. Yet, you, too, might
possess them would you but step with him into the press of adventurous
legions, and make articulate the dream of men, and make splendid their
triumph. He is the prophet of to-morrow, though you deny him to-day. He
is not like to you, supercilious and aloof--he would have you for a
passionate brother, would raise your spirit in ecstasy, flood your mind
with thought, and touch your lips with fire. Because of his
sensitiveness he knows every mood and every heart and gives a voice and
a song to all. You might know him for a good comrade, where freedom is
to win or to hold, over in the van or the breach; able to deal good
blows and take them in the fine manner, a fine fighter; not with
darkened brow crying, "an eye for an eye"--for who _could_ give him
blow for blow or match his deed with a deed?--but one of open front and
open hand who will count it happiness to have made for a victory he may
not live to enjoy, as ready to die in its splendour as he had been to
live through the darkness before the dawn; remembering with soldier
tenderness the comrades of old battles, forgetting the malice of old
enemies; a high example of the magnanimous spirit, happily not yet
unknown on earth; with fine generosity and noble fire, full of that
great love the common cry can never make other than humanising and
beautiful, not without a gleam of humour more than half divine, he will
pass, leaving to the foe that hated him heartily equally with the friend
that loved him well, the wonder of his thought and the rapture of his
melody.