The Little Girl sketched this impression of an Indian Summer Dusk:
* * * * *
... Just now the great blue dusk, after an Indian summer day. It
deepens and seems to laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll
up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, selfish, unafraid, stand
the poplar trees. The great Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in
Nature is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, sing in this
magical moment. One feels it all in one's self, feels the glory, the
romance, the very core-life of the Universe. The matings too, taking
place in the grass and air; the matings of the two streams, the two
grains of sand; the matings of butterflies, birds and bees. It all
flows through one's body like music and honey and sunshine....
Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and
beauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve.
My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not
stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone
and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly,
gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so
swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over
valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully....
The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back
again--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am
all glowing inside.
* * * * *
This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she
recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way
that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there
could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or
six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits
of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a
greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the
more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement.
There has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering
to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"--but the fact for
enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened.
These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling
together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East,
and the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps,
working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what
is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an
integrity to match their own....
Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art
since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the
output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people
in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is
true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy
what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and
energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures
and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big,
unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the
real tale.
He is a queer boy--from the bleak fishing grounds north of Boston.
He is in no hurry. You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. He
doesn't seem to want much--for O'Brien.... After he had his main line
and most of the ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors to
send on the stories. Most of them did. O'Brien did a lot of work in a
few weeks, did it startlingly well. He started something.... Now, if a
writer sits down, suddenly struck with a fine idea for a tale, and this
fine idea precludes the possibility of selling it for a high price--the
writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because he knows O'Brien
will get to the thing in due time, and that if it is really what it
seems and the performance of the idea adequate, then the work will not
be utterly lost.
As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placation, since no work is
lost; no one gets the value of a big thing to anything like the degree
of the man who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, not even
if dropped in a sewer, if it is really important for the world to
have it. We are all a bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea
of what the world should have from our own shops--at the same time,
when we are young, we pant for the quicker return, the answering hail
within reason--at least, within time and space. Now O'Brien has come,
strangely arrived, his proper phylacteries in place, the touch of
tinted haze about his head, the right man.
Back of all, however, is the workman's own spine. That's the best
thing to lean on; and when the going is heavy, to learn to do without.
We often remind each other in Chapel of the modern artist Cezanne,
who moved about his painting for many years, painting _the thing_,
satisfying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in the fields for
the peasants to laugh at or mull over.... They have long since been
brought in out of the rain--those canvasses. I forget the incredible
thousands his littlest sketch brings now.... But Cezanne got the films
out of himself--tallied them off--the landscapes within and without,
when it did him most good. It never fails. What was good for the artist
is good for the rest of us afterward.
Meanwhile much is still to do in the story world. The big smash of
the moving pictures hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the
cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for you can't portray
the realities of romance upon a flat screen. For a time the many
thought it was no longer necessary to learn to read, because there was
such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it was only through the
pictures that the few has finally managed to realize how marvelously
pictorial mere words are, and how few words are required when they are
imaginatively driven. One day in Stonestudy we discussed these story
and screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better times than these.
One of our young men, whose story is told in a later chapter, put down
the things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing:
* * * * *
A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in American
literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colours
and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who for the first
time, in the fullest sense, may be termed "North American." The first
characteristic of this new element, these young flexible and vigorous
minds, is that they are workmen--not labourers, not professionals, not
primarily artists in anything unless it be life--but workers first, and
after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They
are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice,
but they know well the stern face of compassion--they know that it
takes Christ and anti-Christ to make a world. They are neither modest
nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive. This
implies their joy.
The great love story has not been written. The few great love stories
of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that
we have been told that certain are great love stories, but they do
not stand examination. The classic form will not do for the New Age.
There is to be a new language--for literary handling. It may be called
American, to distinguish it from English in the accepted form. It is to
be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient--to meet the modification all must
reckon with--the screen-trained mind.
American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet accept a great love-story. It
would be called "sentimental" if not lascivious. The average American
is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and
the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted
or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus
makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative
dynamics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few of corresponding
receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate
singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have
the full redolence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred,
his literary quality at the same time crystalline with reality.
The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns,
horses and redskins is over. Photoplays have developed these fiction
resources to the limit, proving to those writers born to be modern
that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There
will be undercurrents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions upon
the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words.
The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of
one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be
explained--only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by
two-plane production--minds which demand more of life than the camera
sees.
The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon.
This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will
arise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist,
the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and
statesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of
War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous
greed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of
effects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely
pawns in a Planetary Game.
Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with
the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday
the wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided
enthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers.
* * * * *
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