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BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
UNICORNS. 12mo, _net_, $1.75
IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
NEW COSMOPOLIS. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE. 12mo, _net_, $2.00
FRANZ LISZT. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_, $2.00
PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
EGOISTS: A BOOK OF SUPERMEN. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
ICONOCLASTS: A BOOK OF DRAMATISTS. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
OVERTONES: A BOOK OF TEMPERAMENTS. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
CHOPIN: THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC. With Portrait. 12mo, _net_, $2.00
VISIONARIES. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
MELOMANIACS. 12mo, _net_, $1.50
UNICORNS
UNICORNS
BY
JAMES HUNEKER
"I would write on the lintels
of the door-post, 'Whim.'"
--_Emerson_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1917
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE NEW YORK HERALD COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE RIDGEWAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1911, 1916, 1917, BY THE SUN PRINTING AND
PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, BY THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1916, BY PUCK PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY NORTH AMERICAN
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE NEW YORK EVENING MAIL
THIS BOOK
OF SPLEEN AND GOSSIP IS INSCRIBED
TO MY FRIEND
EDWARD ZIEGLER
"Come! let us lay a crazy lance in rest
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky."
--_John Galsworthy._
"He is a fribble, a sonsy faddle, whose conceits veer with the
breeze like a creaking weather-vane. As the sterile moon hath
her librations, so must he boast of his oscillations, thinking
them eternal verities. A very cockatoo in his perched-up vanity
and prodigious clatter...."
[_From "The Velvet Cactus." Anonymous.
Printed at the Sign of the Cat and
Cameo, Threadneedle Street, London.
A.D. 1723. Rare._]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN PRAISE OF UNICORNS 1
II. AN AMERICAN COMPOSER: THE PASSING OF EDWARD MACDOWELL 6
III. REMY DE GOURMONT: HIS IDEAS. THE COLOUR OF HIS MIND 18
IV. ARTZIBASHEF 33
V. A NOTE ON HENRY JAMES 53
VI. GEORGE SAND 67
VII. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL 82
VIII. THE CASE OF PAUL CEZANNE 96
IX. BRAHMSODY 106
X. THE OPINIONS OF J.-K. HUYSMANS 111
XI. STYLE AND RHYTHM IN ENGLISH PROSE 121
XII. THE QUEEREST YARN IN THE WORLD 139
XIII. ON REREADING MALLOCK 151
XIV. THE LOST MASTER 161
XV. THE GRAND MANNER IN PIANOFORTE PLAYING 171
XVI. JAMES JOYCE 187
XVII. CREATIVE INVOLUTION 195
XVIII. FOUR DIMENSIONAL VISTAS 203
XIX. O. W. 212
XX. A SYNTHESIS OF THE SEVEN ARTS 218
XXI. THE CLASSIC CHOPIN 228
XXII. LITTLE MIRRORS OF SINCERITY 241
XXIII. THE REFORMATION OF GEORGE MOORE 261
XXIV. PILLOWLAND 277
XXV. CROSS-CURRENTS IN MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE 283
XXVI. MORE ABOUT RICHARD WAGNER 300
XXVII. MY FIRST MUSICAL ADVENTURE 317
XXVIII. VIOLINISTS NOW AND YESTERYEAR 323
XXIX. RIDING THE WHIRLWIND 339
XXX. PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING 353
UNICORNS
CHAPTER I
IN PRAISE OF UNICORNS
"The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:
The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town." ...
In the golden book of wit and wisdom, Through the Looking-Glass, the
Unicorn rather disdainfully remarks that he had believed children to
be fabulous monsters. Alice smilingly retorts: "Do you know, I
always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one
alive before!" "Well, now that we _have_ seen each other," said the
Unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a
bargain?" "Yes, if you like," said Alice. No such ambiguous bargains
are needed to demonstrate the existence of Unicorns. That is, not
for imaginative people. A mythical monster, a heraldic animal, he
figures in the dictionary as the Monoceros, habitat, India; and he
is the biblical Urus, sporting one horn, a goat beard and a lion's
tail. He may be all these things for practical persons; no man is a
genius to his wife. But maugre that he is something more for
dreamers of dreams; though not the Hippogriff, with its liberating
wings, volplaning through the Fourth Dimension of Space; nor yet is
he tender Undine, spirit of fountains, of whom the Unicorn asked:
"By the waters of what valley has jealous mankind hidden the source
of your secrets?" (Cousin german to the Centaur of Maurice de
Guerin, he can speak in like cadence.)
Alice with her "dreaming eyes of wonder" was, after the manner of
little girls, somewhat pragmatic. She believed in Unicorns only when
she saw one. Yet we must believe without such proof. Has not the
Book of Job put this question: "Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his
band in the furrow?" As if a harnessed Unicorn would be credible. We
prefer placing the charming monster, with the prancing tiny hoofs of
ivory (surely Chopin set him to musical notation in his capricious
second Etude in F; Chopin who, if man were soulless, would have
endowed him with one) in the same category as the Chimera of "The
Temptation of St. Antony," which thus taunted the Sphinx: "I am
light and joyous! I offer to the eyes of men dazzling perspectives
with Paradise in the clouds above.... I seek for new perfumes, for
vaster flowers, for pleasures never felt before...."
With Unicorns we feel the nostalgia of the infinite, the sorcery of
dolls, the salt of sex, the vertigo of them that skirt the edge of
perilous ravines, or straddle the rim of finer issues. He dwells in
equivocal twilights; and he can stare the sun out of countenance.
The enchanting Unicorn boasts no favoured zone. He runs around the
globe. He is of all ages and climes. He knows that fantastic land of
Gautier, which contains all the divine lost landscapes ever painted,
and whose inhabitants are the lovely figures created by art in
granite, marble, or wood, on walls, canvas, or crystal. Betimes he
flashes by the nymph in the brake, and dazzled, she sighs with
desire. Mallarme set him to cryptic harmonies, and placed him in a
dim rich forest (though he called him a faun; a faun in retorsion).
Like the apocryphal Sadhuzag in Flaubert's cosmical drama of dreams,
which bore seventy-four hollow antlers from which issued music of
ineffable sweetness, our Unicorn sings ravishing melodies for those
who possess the inner ear of mystics and poets. When angered he
echoes the Seven Thunders of the Apocalypse, and we hear of
desperate rumours of fire, flood, and disaster. And he haunts those
ivory gates of sleep whence come ineffable dreams to mortals.
He has always fought with the Lion for the crown, and he is always
defeated, but invariably claims the victory. The crown is Art, and
the Lion, being a realist born, is only attracted by its glitter,
not the symbol. The Unicorn, an idealist, divines the inner meaning
of this precious fillet of gold. Art is the modern philosopher's
stone, and the most brilliant jewel in this much-contested crown.
Eternal is the conflict of the Real and the Ideal; Aristotle and
Plato; Alice and the Unicorn; the practical and the poetic;
butterflies and geese; and rare roast-beef versus the impossible
blue rose. And neither the Lion nor the Unicorn has yet fought the
battle decisive. Perhaps the day may come when, weariness invading
their very bones, they may realise that they are as different sides
of the same coveted shield; matter and spirit, the multitude and the
individual. Then unlock the ivory tower, abolish the tyrannies of
superannuated superstitions, and give the people vision, without
which they perish. The divine rights of humanity, no longer of
kingly cabbages.
The dusk of the future is washed with the silver of hope. The Lion
and the Unicorn in single yoke. Strength and Beauty should represent
the fusion of the Ideal and the Real. There should be no anarchy, no
socialism, no Brotherhood or Sisterhood of mankind, just the
millennium of sense and sentiment. What title shall we give that
far-away time, that longed-for Utopia? With Alice and the Faun we
forget names, so let us follow her method when in doubt, and
exclaim: "Here then! Here then!" Morose and disillusioned souls may
cry aloud: "Ah! to see behind us no longer, on the Lake of Eternity,
the implacable Wake of Time!" nevertheless, we must believe in the
reality of our Unicorn. He is Pan. He is Puck. He is Shelley. He is
Ariel. He is Whim. He is Irony. And he can boast with Emerson:
"I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain."