_Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head._
_Fine, or superfine._
Theodore Dreiser is old—he is very, very old. I do not know how many
years he has lived, perhaps thirty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old.
Something gray and bleak and hurtful that has been in the world almost
forever is personified in him.
When Dreiser is gone we shall write books, many of them. In the books we
write there will be all of the qualities Dreiser lacks. We shall have a
sense of humor, and everyone knows Dreiser has no sense of humor. More
than that we shall have grace, lightness of touch, dreams of beauty
bursting through the husks of life.
Oh, we who follow him shall have many things that Dreiser does not have.
That is a part of the wonder and the beauty of Dreiser, the things that
others will have because of Dreiser.
When he was editor of _The Delineator_, Dreiser went one day, with a
woman friend, to visit an orphans’ asylum. The woman told me the story
of that afternoon in the big, gray building with Dreiser, heavy and
lumpy and old, sitting on a platform and watching the children—the
terrible children—all in their little uniforms, trooping in.
“The tears ran down his cheeks and he shook his head,” the woman said.
That is a good picture of Dreiser. He is old and he does not know what
to do with life, so he just tells about it as he sees it, simply and
honestly. The tears run down his cheeks and he shakes his head.
Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to pick his books to
pieces, to laugh at him. Thump, thump, thump, here he comes, Dreiser,
heavy and old.
The feet of Dreiser are making a path for us, the brutal heavy feet.
They are tramping through the wilderness, making a path. Presently the
path will be a street, with great arches overhead and delicately carved
spires piercing the sky. Along the street will run children, shouting
“Look at me”—forgetting the heavy feet of Dreiser.
The men who follow Dreiser will have much to do. Their road is long. But
because of Dreiser, we, in America, will never have to face the road
through the wilderness, the road that Dreiser faced.
_Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head._
_Fine, or superfine._
To John Cowper Powys, on His “Confessions”