Mr. Hamlin Garland, writing with the corn-fed enthusiasm of the
prairies, “hails the dawn of a new era” in literature—an era which is
to be distinguished by dominance of the Western man. That a great new
literature is to “come out of the West” because of broad prairies and
wide rivers and big mountains and infrequent boundary lines—that is a
conviction dear indeed to the Western mind which has discovered that
marks can be made on paper with a pen. A few years ago the Eastern
mind was waiting wide-eyed to “hail the dawn” of a literature that
was to be “distinctively American,” for the Eastern mind in those
days claimed a share in the broad prairies, the wide rivers and the
big mountains, with all the competencies, suggestions, inspirations
and other appurtenances thereunto belonging—a heritage which now Mr.
Garland austerely denies to any one born and “raised” on the morning
side of the Alleghanies. The “distinctively American literature” has
not materialized, excepting in the works of Americans distinctively
illiterate; and there are no visible signs of a distinctively Western
one. Even the Californian sort, so long heralded by prophets blushing
with conscious modesty in the foretelling, seems loth to leave off its
damnable faces and begin. The best Californian, the best Western, the
best American books have the least of geographical “distinctiveness,”
and most closely conform to the universal and immutable laws of the
art, as known to Aristotle and Longinus.
The effect of physical-geographical environment on literary production
is mostly nil; racial and educational considerations only are of
controlling importance. Despite Madame de Staël’s engaging dictum
that “every Englishman is an island,” the natives of that scanty plot
have produced a literature which in breadth of thought and largeness
of method we sons of a continent, brothers to the broad prairies,
wide rivers and big mountains, have not matched and give no promise
of matching. It is all very fine to be a child o’ natur’ with a home
in the settin’ sun, but when the child o’ natur’ with a knack at
scribbling pays rent to Phœbus by renouncing the incomparable advantage
of strict subjection to literary law he pays too dearly.
Nothing new is to be learned in any of the great arts—the ancients
looted the whole field. Nor do first-rate minds seek anything new.
They are assured of primacy under the conditions of their art as they
find it—under any conditions. It is the lower order of intelligence
that is ingenious, inventive, alert for original methods and new
forms. Napoleon added nothing to the art of war, in either strategy or
tactics. Shakspeare tried no new meters, did nothing that had not been
done before—merely did better what had been done. In the Parthenon was
no new architectural device, and in the Sistine Madonna all the effects
were got by methods as familiar as speech. The only way in which it is
worth while to differ from others is in point of superior excellence.
Be “original,” ambitious Westerner—always as original as you please.
But know, or if you already know remember, that originality strikes
and dazzles only when displayed within the limiting lines of form.
Above all, remember that the most ineffective thing in literature is
that quality, whatever in any case it may be, which is best designated
in terms of geographical classification. The work of whose form and
methods one naturally thinks as—not “English”; that is a racial
word, but—“American” or “Australian” or (in this country) “Eastern,”
“Mid-Western,” “Southern” or “Californian” is worthless. The writer who
knows no better than to make or try to make his work “racy of the soil”
knows nothing of his art worth knowing.