_Reinforcements: Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell, Joseph
Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank_
I have been up to this as objective as possible, sparing neither praise
nor criticism to the present-day American novelists. I confess that the
path I have followed has been rather arduous and not always leading
to gardens of pleasure. American realism does not provide on the road
artistic oases like Flaubert’s or Maupassant’s. The great Dreiserian
desert or the Andersonian jungle are hard enough to travel through. The
writers whom I have studied are more interesting for the subjects which
they treat than for their style. As artists they are imperfect, one
might be tempted to say uneducated. On the other hand, if I have been
at all sedulous in depicting them, the reader will be struck with the
unanimous character of their grievances. All of them almost ferociously
criticize the social man; all have of American life a somewhat tragic
opinion. The more optimistic among them feign to be ironical. Few show
either pity or resignation.
It was reserved for the women to soften this realism with a grain
of human pathos. The novels of Miss Willa Cather and Zona Gale in
particular are characterized by a profound feeling of sympathy towards
the inhibited people of whom they write. Willa Cather, like James
Branch Cabell, is from Virginia. As an analyst, she can be pitiless
when occasion requires and she was so when she wrote “A Lost Lady.”
This novel once again portrays an American Emma Bovary, buried in
the grass of a small town. From adventure to adventure, from fall to
fall, the Lost Lady ends up by marrying one of her servants. This book
is rich in intuitions. Its gloomy atmosphere enhances the feeling
of the tragedy of suppressed lives and the ensuing moral decadence.
Disregarding the chronological order, this novel can be compared with
a more recent work by the same author, “The Professor’s House.” It
is again the story of a recluse. The composition of the book is not
perfect. Being concerned primarily with faithfully representing people
and their surroundings, the author deprived “The Professor’s House”
of almost any plot. She appears to have hesitated between telling a
story and drawing portraits. The book is interrupted in the middle by a
lengthy digression. But the hero of the novel, Professor Saint Pierre,
is an attractive figure.
Saint Pierre would feel at home in one of Mr. Edouard Estaunié’s
books.[53] He is an ardent adept of the “secret life.” A very human
sort of man, with many prepossessing traits, Saint Pierre in his
home recalls King Lear among his daughters. The professor, who is a
historian, lives among comfortable surroundings. He likes his work and
is an enthusiastic student. All he needs is the solitude requisite to
bring his labors to an auspicious end. Unfortunately, he is the slave
to a shrewish woman, and plays the indulgent father to two coquettish
daughters, without mentioning the sons-in-law who are perfect
Philistines. This state of affairs is not conducive to serene living in
the academic groves. This is why the title of this novel is symbolic.
It is an allusion to the existence of Saint Pierre, living in two
different houses, just as he is leading two highly dissimilar lives.
The first house, the real one, is the home where he is besieged by
practical cares and worries. Poor Saint Pierre has a hard time of it,
what with holding his own with a wife and family who do not understand
him, and pretending to be a scholar and a writer! But there is the
other house, the little dream house which Saint Pierre rigged up all
for himself and within whose threshold he becomes his real self. It is
a haven of dreams. From its windows the distant azure of Lake Michigan
may be seen. There Saint Pierre is happy in solitude. But family
demands are pitiless. They pursue him in his retreat like a beast
trapped in the woods. In the end, to loosen this stranglehold, Saint
Pierre tries to commit suicide, casually, as if to give the impression
that he did not do it on purpose. But he is not even allowed to commit
suicide. Like most of the inhibited characters of American fiction, he
capitulates and makes a virtue of necessity. His failure is all the
more pathetic.
* * * * *
The other novels which have contributed to Miss Cather’s reputation
are equally based on suppression. They include the “Song of the Lark,”
“My Antonia,” “One of Ours.” The heroine of the “Song of the Lark,”
Thea Kronburg, is the daughter of a village pastor. She grew up alone
in an indifferent and commonplace atmosphere. She fell in love with
her German music master, who was the choir leader in the church where
Thea played the organ on Sundays. Her soul vents itself through music,
like Corinne or Consuelo. She must have art and passion to be happy.
Thea’s music teacher is also her professor of philosophy, and this
philosophy is not puritanical but romantic. How small the world! How
petty, life in America! There is only one thing worth while, and that
is aspiration, romance. It is that at the bottom of our hearts which
gives its value to all things,--its redness to the rose, its azure
to the skies and love to man. Without it there is no art. Poor Thea
is only too easily converted to this creed. Thank goodness, she will
not be cheated from her happiness! She leaves her village and has a
magnificent artistic career, but she remains modest and sincere in
success. Art for Thea is not vanity; it is the realization of her
dearest and most intimate self, the whole-hearted expression of her
truest personality.
Not all of the inhibited people portrayed by Miss Willa Cather have
been as fortunate as Thea Kronburg; witness the Lost Lady and Professor
Saint Pierre. In “My Antonia” the author has gone back to a less
optimistic theme. She has put into this novel the best of her art
and of her philosophy. The scene of the novel is far-away Nebraska.
Antonia is a Czech. “My Antonia” is what is called in America an
“immigrant” novel. Immigration has given to America a new exotic
background, and a new source of local color. In “My Antonia” Willa
Cather studies the immigrants with her usual sympathy. Antonia is a
portrait drawn from within. Her self-abnegation is rare. A hard worker,
devoted to children, betrayed yet ever faithful, she is a new edition
of Flaubert’s “Simple Heart.” She is the incarnation of the motherly
feeling. The sites of the Far West, the rustic rites of the seasons
form the background of this canvas painted with the simplicity and the
forcefulness of a master.
It is difficult to find in “My Antonia” passages for an anthology.
Everything in it holds together. The tale is unfolded, “not as a thing
of which one thinks, but as conscience itself,” slowly, in sheer
duration. “My Antonia” is a little epic, the “Evangeline” of the Far
West. Here is a description of a Nebraska hamlet. It tells a lot as to
the nostalgia of its inhabitants. It is Jim, the hero of the story, who
is speaking:
In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for diversion. There
lay the familiar streets, frozen with snow or liquid mud. They led
to the houses of good people who were putting the babies to bed,
or simply sitting still before the parlor stove, digesting their
supper. Black Hawk had two saloons. One of them was admitted, even
by the church people, to be as respectable as a saloon could be.
Handsome Anton Jelinek, who had rented his homestead and come to
town, was the proprietor. In his saloon there were long tables
where the Bohemian and German farmers could eat the lunches they
brought from home while they drank their beer. Jelinek kept rye
bread on hand, and smoked fish and strong imported cheeses to
please the foreign palate. I liked to drop into his bar-room and
listen to the talk. But one day he overtook me on the street and
clapped me on the shoulder.
“Jim,” he said, “I am good friends with you and I always like to
see you. But you know how the church people think about saloons.
Your grandpa has always treated me fine, and I don’t like to have
you come into my place, because I know he don’t like it, and it
puts me in bad with him.”
So I was shut out of that.
Black Hawk is about as dead as Gopher Prairie or Winesburg, Ohio. Poor
Jim! There are very few distractions in this far Western village. There
is the druggist across his ice-cream and soda counter, the tobacconist
and the old German who stuffs birds, both of them great gossips. The
great thrill is going to see the night train fly by at the depot. At
the telegraph office, the idle clerk comforts himself in pinning on the
wall portraits of actors and actresses which he procured with cigarette
premiums. Then there is the station master who tries to forget the
death of his twins by fishing and writing letters to obtain a change of
residence:
“These,” says Jim, “were the distractions I had to choose from.
There were no other lights burning downtown after nine o’clock.
On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold
streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side,
with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy
shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle
porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe.
“Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and
unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on
in them seemed to be made up of evasions and negations; shifts to
save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate
the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like
living under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices, their very
glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste,
every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep
in those houses, I thought, tried to live like mice in their own
kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the
surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and
cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful,
consuming process of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl
Club danced; then there was a little stir in the streets, and here
and there one could see a lighted window until midnight. But the
next night all was dark again.”
Thank God, even at Black Hawk there are a few compensations for a
refined sensibility. Antonia and Jim know how to see through things,
and they find beauty even in their monotonous surroundings. There are
the orchard, the hen yard, the stable and the charm of the rustic works
and days. There is the hay in the attic, the favorite nook of Antonia’s
brood. And then Christmas comes bringing the snow, the spiced cakes
made in true Bohemian fashion, then spring and the budding out of fresh
leaves and flowers. Jim is not blind to the familiar and simple beauty
around him. Let us follow him in Antonia’s wild garden:
Alone, I should never have found the garden--except, perhaps,
for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their
withering vines--and I felt very little interest in it when I got
there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over
the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light
air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and
sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would
be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the
tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the
grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in
one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the
soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at
the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.
When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up
there in the garden awhile.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Aren’t you afraid
of the snakes?”
“A little,” I admitted, “but I’d like to stay anyhow.”
“Well, if you see one, don’t have anything to do with him. The big
yellow and brown ones won’t hurt you; they’re bull-snakes and help
to keep the gophers down. Don’t be scared if you see anything look
out of that hole in the bank over there. That’s a badger hole. He’s
about as big as a big ’possum, and his face is striped, black and
white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won’t let the men
harm him. In a new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I
like to have him come out and watch me when I’m at work.”
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went
down the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the
windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she waved
at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of
lightness and content.
The art of Miss Cather shows itself in these sketches of nature
faithfully and minutely observed, but pervaded too with a sympathetic
emotion. She herself has given us the key of her art, in an article
which she wrote when “The Professor’s House” was published. Her ideal
in writing, she tells us, would be to have people and things posing
before her as they would for painters of still life, like Rembrandt or
Chardin, omitting nothing from the background up to the surface. This
“still-life” painting is the most correct definition of Miss Cather’s
art. Her ambition is to treat style as secondary in respect to the
characters. She wants to omit what is only picturesque in order to let
people tell their own story, without any comment on her part. She takes
a green vase and a yellow orange and puts them side by side on a table.
She carefully avoids interfering and relies entirely on the objects
thus placed to produce an artistic effect. Let her make the reader
_see_ the green vase beside the orange. Nothing else matters. She
would like to have the style fused so completely with the object that
the reader would not even suspect the former’s existence. The people
for whom she writes are those whose chief interest is in the vase and
the orange as such, and in the way each lends it color to the other.
Here is an original programme of static and intimate realism based
upon a scrupulous reproduction of the object, a realism which could
not exist without this gift of sympathetic intuition (the Germans call
it _Einfühlung_) characteristic of Miss Willa Cather. The art of an
Edmond Jaloux, an Edouard Estaunié or a Georges Bernanos would give to
a reader familiar with French literature a fairly good understanding of
her talent. _Les choses voient_, but they see only for those who can
_feel_ them.
* * * * *
This wilfully static realism explains at once the qualities and faults
of Miss Cather’s war novel, “One of Ours.” The American critics
have not been very benevolent towards this book. The first and
autobiographical part of it is excellent. Faithful to her philosophy of
art through reminiscence, the author describes the youth of a child of
the prairies, also a victim of Puritanism. Eugene Willer, the hero of
“One of Ours,” is one of those American youths whose restlessness is
increasingly preoccupying the moralists and the sociologists. His is a
soul filled with desire and easily wounded by the things which surround
him. Miss Cather has told, with her usual minute realism, the sad story
and tragic death of this misunderstood youth. A tender and loving boy,
Eugene expected too much of life, and was hurt in his first encounter
with it. He had married a frigid woman, a “crystal cup.”[54] His wife
slammed the door in his face on their wedding night. The unfortunate
youth had no taste left for life after that. Hear him exhaling his
dejection in the moonlight, like Salammbô on her high terrace, or Carol
Kennicott in her Gopher Prairie garden. The moon which illuminated the
romantic enthusiasms of yore is nothing more than a mirror for the
deceptions of this American René. How many agonies has this pale moon
of the prairies shone upon!
Inside of living people, too, captives languished. Yes, inside of
people who talked and worked in the broad sun, there were captives
dwelling in darkness--never seen from birth to death. Into those
prisons the moon shone, and the prisoners crept to the windows and
looked out with mournful eyes at the white globe which betrayed
no secrets and comprehended all.... The people whose hearts were
set high needed such intercourse--whose wish was so beautiful that
there were no experiences in this world to satisfy it. And these
children of the moon, with their unappeased longings and futile
dreams, were a finer race than the children of the sun. This
conception flooded the boy’s heart like a second moonrise, flowed
through him indefinite and strong, while he lay deathly still for
fear of losing it.
Thus lamented the hero of “One of Ours,” a true _Obermann_ of the
prairie, seeking an ideal and a reason for existence.
Then came the war. How tragic is life, and how poor in resources is
the soul of man if it needs violent death to give it a meaning! The
American pacifists have shunned Miss Cather’s war novel. They have
not felt the bitter philosophy which exudes from it. Was it her
fault if those whom an army leader called “the élite of the best men
that ever were in America” went, in search of exaltation, to dye with
their blood the slopes of Belleau Wood? When are we going to have a
Freudian interpretation of the war as a supreme and tragic derivative
to inhibition?[55]
I shall stop here with the review of Miss Cather’s works. All of them
stand high as literary achievements. She belongs to that small group of
novelists who honor American letters and who are specialists of what
may be called “optimistic realism”: Ellen Glasgow, Mary Austin, Dorothy
Canfield, and Zona Gale, of the latter of whom I shall speak now.
* * * * *
Zona Gale was born in Wisconsin. She began with journalism and
published short stories and novels. She is the chronicler of American
life in the small towns of the Middle West. Her art recalls that of
Willa Cather. For the critics there are two Zona Gales. There is the
author of popular tales, such as “The Village of Friendship,” “Mother
of Men,” “When I Was a Little Girl,” “The Neighbors”; but “Birth” and
“Miss Lulu Bett” are her true masterpieces. “Miss Lulu Bett” appeared
in 1920 and won the author a wide reputation. It had a sensational
vogue on the screen. It is a classic. But let me begin with “Birth.”
Before speaking of it I want to recall what I have already mentioned of
that sensibility peculiar to Americans.
While the Frenchman, supposedly a domestic person, makes little of
family life on the stage and in his novels, the American idealizes
it. The father, the mother and the child, those are the corners
of his “eternal triangle.” Zona Gale has gratified the tastes of
that particular public. “Birth” is a work of original analysis, a
good psychological document for the study of certain maladies of
personality. The novel portrays a curious case of sentimental aphasia.
The hero of the book is a simple sort of soul. He married a woman his
superior in education. Awkward, _gauche_, even grotesque, he is at
bottom the best of men. His heart is paved with good intentions, but
unfortunately he knows not how to disclose them. Pitt--that is his
name--acts like a man, who knowing two languages, would be incapable
of translating one into the other. Failing to be able to express
himself, he buries himself in a sort of psychological twilight where he
vegetates and suffers in silence. Unable to express his sentiments to
others, he is reduced to acting for his own benefit what was meant for
them. His life is henceforward but a fiction, a novel which would never
have been read had not Zona Gale played the part of the publisher.
Pitt would make an excellent Pirandello character. Externally but a
grotesque clown, inside goodness and delicacy incarnate, he seemed to
come out of the shadows at the birth of his son. Pitt adores his child,
but as a father he continues to be a victim of Freudian inhibitions.
He feels every paternal sentiment, but he is unable to find the words
and gestures which correspond to his emotions. Little by little the
distance between father and child lengthens, and one day poor Pitt
disappears, misunderstood by his own child.
The book was followed by “Miss Lulu Bett.” Zona Gale studied in it
again the effects of suppression, but with new methods of dramatic
simplification. Her style is lighter; her portraits are more strikingly
pathetic and resemblant. Lulu Bett is a scapegoat. A Cinderella at home
and a slavey, her life is that of an automaton, and yet she possesses a
romantic heart. We must admire the skill with which Zona Gale was able
to keep her before us halfway between tears and laughter. Every reader
remembers poor Lulu’s courtship by an adventurer who subsequently
abandoned her, her devotion to the members of the household, her
marriage to the village music-dealer, all incidents of a trivial
nature, but sympathetically brought out to reveal the kind-hearted
Lulu. Zona Gale’s pathos is direct and familiar, almost trivial, but
pervaded with delicate and deep emotions.
All inhibited people are not necessarily Ophelias or Lady Macbeths.
There are many nuances to repression. Nevertheless, Lulu Bett is a
romantic heroine. Watch her at the piano. She can play with only one
finger and she is ignorant of real music, but the village piano-dealer
visited her, and Lulu, as the saying goes, puts herself out.... When
words fail, music is the natural interpreter of people who understand
one another, especially if they are lovers. Here is the charming
description of this timid concerto:
Cornish was displaying his music. “Got up quite attractive,” he
said--it was his formula of praise for his music.
“But we can’t try it over,” Lulu said, “if Di doesn’t come.”
“Well, say,” said Cornish shyly, “you know I left that Album of Old
Favorites here. Some of them we know by heart.”
Lulu looked. “I’ll tell you something,” she said, “there’s some of
these I can play with one hand--by ear. Maybe----”
“Why sure!” said Cornish.
Lulu sat at the piano. She had on the wool chally, long sacred to
the nights when she must combine her servant’s estate with the
quality of being Ina’s sister. She wore her coral beads and her
cameo cross. In her absence she had caught the trick of dressing
her hair so that it looked even more abundant--but she had not
dared to try it so until tonight, when Dwight was gone. Her
long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered
awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and stove to make
all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud pedal--the
blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played “How Can I
Leave Thee,” and they managed to sing it. So she played “Long, Long
Ago,” and “Little Nell of Narragansett Bay.” Beyond open doors Mrs.
Bett listened, sang, it may be, with them; for when the singers
ceased, her voice might be heard still humming a loud closing bar.
“Well!” Cornish cried to Lulu; and then, in the formal village
phrase: “You’re quite a musician.”
“Oh, no!” Lulu disclaimed it. She looked up, flushed, smiling.
“I’ve never done this in front of anybody,” she owned. “I don’t
know what Dwight and Ina’d say.” She drooped.
They rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred
and quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of
its own, and poured this forth, even thus trampled.
“I guess you could do ’most anything you set your hand to,” said
Cornish.
“Oh, no,” Lulu said again.
“Sing and play and cook----”
“But I can’t earn anything. I’d like to earn something.” But this
she had not meant to say. She stopped, rather frightened.
Then there is the tragi-comical scene of Lulu Bett’s marriage, a mock
marriage unfortunately. One day the brother-in-law of Lulu’s sister
arrived from the West. He started to court Lulu. To celebrate his
homecoming the whole household had adjourned to a restaurant. There
are Lulu, her brother-in-law Dwight, who fulfills in the village the
functions of dentist and justice of the peace, Lulu’s sister, Ina,
and Ninian, the newcomer. Excited by the dinner, and without being
apparently aware that he is uttering before competent witnesses words
that might bind him, Ninian declares that he takes Lulu for his lawful
wedded wife, and Lulu accepts the challenge. She learns soon enough
that Ninian is a bigamist:
“Why not say the wedding service?” asked Ninian.
In the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating
to Dwight, something of overwhelming humor. He shouted a derisive
endorsement of this proposal.
“I shouldn’t object,” said Ninian. “Should you, Miss Lulu?”
Lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. They were all looking
at her. She made an anguished effort to defend herself.
“I don’t know it,” she said, “so I can’t say it.” Ninian leaned
toward her.
“I, Ninian, take thee, Lulu, to be my wedded wife,” he pronounced.
“That’s the way it goes!”
“Lulu daren’t say it!” cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that
those at the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her
wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to
think of Lulu that way....
Ninian laughed too. “Course she don’t dare to say it,” he
challenged.
From within Lulu, the strange Lulu, that other Lulu who sometimes
fought her battles, suddenly spoke out:
“I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my wedded husband.”
“You will?” Ninian cried.
“I will,” she said, laughing tremendously to prove that she too
could join in, could be as merry as the rest.
“And I will. There, by Jove, now have we entertained you, or
haven’t we?” Ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table.
“Oh, say, honestly!” Ina was shocked. “I don’t think you ought
to--holy things--what’s the _matter_, Dwightie?”
Dwight Herbert Deacon’s eyes were staring and his face was scarlet.
“Say, by George,” he said, “a civil wedding is binding in this
State.”
“A civil wedding? Oh, well----” Ninian dismissed it.
“But I,” said Dwight, “happen to be a magistrate.”
They looked at one another foolishly. Dwight sprang up with the
indeterminate idea of inquiring something of someone, circled about
and returned. Ina had taken his chair and sat clasping Lulu’s hand.
Ninian continued to laugh ...
“I never saw one so offhand,” said Dwight. “But what you’ve said is
all you have to say according to law. And there don’t have to be
witnesses ... say!” he said, and sat again.
And so it happens that Lulu Bett is married to Ninian--not for long for
he deserts her right away and she comes back to her Cinderella’s duties
in her sister’s home.
Unfortunately for Lulu, Ninian was but an adventurer. How could she
possibly miss reading it in that man’s eyes? Betrayed and abandoned,
she came back home to resume her former drudgery. Zona Gale showed
some pity for her at the end, a relative sort of pity, for she
abandoned Lulu Bett to the circumambient banality.
* * * * *
I lack the space to go through the entire list of American novelists
of to-day who have specialized, in their rôle of scrupulous realists,
in the critique of Puritanism and of the repressions which follow upon
it. Among them I should like to make a special place for Floyd Dell,
one of the most original writers of to-day, author of “Moon Calf,” “The
Briary Bush,” and more recently “The Runaway.” This last novel depicts
a pathetic case of evasion. It tells the story of a man who goes as
far away as China to forget his natal village and married life. He
comes back after several years transformed and unrecognizable, to find
himself a complete stranger, even to his own daughter. Unfortunately,
the book ends like a popular “movie.”
Examples of dual personalities are not rare in the work of modern
American authors outside realism. I am thinking especially of the
novels of Joseph Hergesheimer and Waldo Frank, two notable artists.
Hergesheimer sticks to the purely romantic novel. He presented to us in
exotic or historic surroundings seductive personalities, half real and
half fantastic. The author of “Linda Condon,” of “Java Head,” is also
that of “Cytherea.” This last novel is very Freudian. It depicts the
explosion of a suppressed and tragic passion. The hero of “Cytherea,”
an adept of the “secret life,” is bewitched by the magical spell of
a fetish. He abandons his social rank, his wife, and his children,
and goes to Cuba to seek romantic exaltation. The woman he loves is
possessed like him of an irresistible desire. She is a magic doll, a
reincarnation of the goddess of Cytherea. The couple end sadly in the
tropics. She dies, and he finds himself alone in the world.
In “Linda Condon,” and particularly in “Java Head,” Hergesheimer has
dealt with similar topics. The hero of “Java Head” is a Puritan let
loose. He brought back with him to Hawthorne’s old Salem a Manchu
princess whom he married, thereby greatly scandalizing his relatives.
The book is full of picturesque and tragic contrasts. “Linda Condon,”
is a case of moral duplicity. Linda, bearing the weight of a loaded
heredity, is a willful inhibitor. She leads two lives. Pure as a
lily among roués, she abandons her carnal self to her husband, while
devoting to a sculptor an ideal love wherein her real personality is
gratified.
There is a great temptation to include Waldo Frank among the Freudians.
He is a master of the inner monologue. He has powerfully dramatized
in “Chalk Face” a morbid case of double personality. “Chalk Face” is
the story of a daydreamer, half insane, somewhat reminiscent of George
Duhamel’s Salavin. The insanity of this person is the result of a
divorce between his intentions and his will. His free will, lacking
balance, has gone over to the side of blind instincts and unconscious
desires. The hero of “Chalk Face” runs unconsciously to passionate
crime, and finally jumps into a lime kiln, in hallucination of his own
image.
Waldo Frank is not a pure realist. He likes to transpose reality
into lyrical and musical variations. His novel “A Holiday” should be
compared with Sherwood Anderson’s “Dark Laughter.” There are in it many
profound intuitions of the Negro soul.
“City Block” is a mysterious panorama, but yet a lyrical one, of a
modern city. The tableaux shown to us by the author appear through a
fantastic and subjective atmosphere recalling Edgar Poe. The author of
“Our America” is one of the most self-conscious artists of American
literature and a high-class critic, with no tender feelings towards the
Puritan tradition.