(1) Romances of the middle ages.
(2) Comedies of present-day Virginia.
Both elements are found in _The Cream of the Jest_ (cf. with Du Maurier's
_Peter Ibbetson_). The romances illustrate different aspects of his
theory of chivalry; the modern comedies, his theory of gallantry (cf.
_Beyond Life_).
3. In his romances he has created an imaginary province of France, the
people of which bear names and use idioms drawn from widely diverse and
incongruous sources. His effort to create mediæval atmosphere by the use
of archaisms does not preclude modern idiom and slang. Through all this
work, elaborate pretense of non-existent sources of the tales and
frequent allusions to fictitious authors are a part of the method. After
reading some of these stories, consider the following criticism from the
_London Times_ quoted by Mr. Cabell himself at the end of _Beyond Life_:
"It requires a nicer touch than Mr. Cabell's, to reproduce the atmosphere
of the Middle Ages ... the artifice is more apparent than the art...."
4. An interesting study is to isolate the authors for whom Mr. Cabell
expresses particular admiration and those for whom he expresses contempt
in _Beyond Life_ and to deduce from his attitudes his peculiar literary
qualities.
5. Mr. Cabell's style is notable for the elaboration of its rhythm, its
careful avoidance of _clichés_, its preference for rare, archaic words
and its allusiveness. Consider it from the point of view of sincerity,
simplicity, clarity, and charm. Does it intensify or dull your interest
in what he has to say? Study, for example, the following exposition of
his theory of art:
For the creative artist must remember that his book is structurally
different from life, in that, were there nothing else, his book
begins and ends at a definite point, whereas the canons of heredity
and religion forbid us to believe that life can ever do anything of
the sort. He must remember that his art traces in ancestry from the
tribal huntsman telling tales about the cave-fire; and so, strives
to emulate not human life, but human speech, with its natural
elisions and falsifications. He must remember, too, that his one
concern with the one all-prevalent truth in normal existence is
jealously to exclude it from his book.... For "living" is to be
conscious of an incessant series of less than momentary sensations,
of about equal poignancy, for the most part, and of nearly equal
unimportance. Art attempts to marshal the shambling procession into
trimness, to usurp the rôle of memory and convention in assigning to
some of these sensations an especial prominence, and, in the old
phrase, to lend perspective to the forest we cannot see because of
the trees. Art, as long ago observed my friend Mrs. Kennaston, is an
expurgated edition of nature: at art's touch, too, "the drossy
particles fall off and mingle with the dust" (_Beyond Life_, p.
249).
In summing up Mr. Cabell's work, consider the following:
(1) Has he a definite philosophy?
(2) Has he a genuine sense of character or do his characters
repeat the same personality?
(3) Is he a sincere artist or "a self-conscious attitudinizer?"
(4) Is he likely ever to hold the high place in American
literature which by some critics is denied him today? If so,
on what basis?