importance of the application of this law to art-forms. But I may take
one concrete instance of its existence and inevitableness, and of the
growth and progress that result whenever the artist happens to work
under its guidance. I have within recent months seen the existence of
this law and traced the course of its working in the studies of a new
and comparatively unknown comer in the world of painting. Here is a
painter, Clarence E. King by name, who is undoubtedly working out his
high destiny in terms of Art, at the bidding of a force to whose
direction he is willing to surrender himself. And he surrenders himself
not because he has no judgment, no discriminating sense of his own, but
because he believes that the true artist works without volition. I know
very little about Mr. King’s first experiences, but I can quite imagine
that art-expression came to him as a bewildered dream. Perhaps he felt
instinctively it was but an imaginary magician’s wand and the effect it
ever sought to produce was far above the limited measure of the artist’s
dead materials. It was an effect that could only be attained in one way,
not by stone, wood, or canvas, but by direct surrender to its
livingness. I remember once receiving a letter from Mr. King in which he
hinted at some such transcendental vision of Art and indicated its
difficulties—both aesthetic and economic. The latter will be seen to be
very real when I say that Mr. King is a poor man, that he has to engage
in a mechanical form of occupation which constantly opposes him with the
dread of losing guidance and his real purpose, and of falling under the
subjection of aims and methods entirely opposed to his own. From the
letter I learned that he began with a longing to attain the maximum
intensity of expression and he has ever since been impelled irresistibly
towards this end. But the path was not easy, for it seems he became
aware at an early period of the small measure of expression in the
painter’s dead materials. He relates how one day he took his colors into
the sun so that they should rival its livingness. But when he looked at
them (in the light of the sun) they were dead. Then he bought the most
expensive paint, he kept his palette clean, he slept in the open,
watched the sunrise, absorbed its magic, and prepared himself and his
materials in every way, as he thought, to express the fluid character of
the experience flowing through him. He grappled with powerful feelings
and sought to fix them in form. To no purpose. Apparently there was a
point beyond which paint, like words, could not go. The fault, however,
was not altogether in the materials. The artist too was to blame. He was
a boy strenuously striving to transcend representative forms. But in
doing so he neglected one thing. He made no attempt to escape from the
illusion of volume and solidity contained in solid space. In other words
he tried to transcend solids by the process of merely copying solids. He
tried to express the eternal livingness of a tree by painting an
ephemeral tree. This is the meaning underlying the earliest example of
his work. It accounts for the expression of representative forms very
slightly raised above actuality. In the second example the next upward
sweep of the curve is apparent. The pursuit of the maximum intensity of
expression is maintained, with the result that there is a further escape
into fluid motion. And actuality becomes very much exaggerated as by a
hand that feels the stimulating impulse which the steadily increasing
growth of an unknown power brings with it. Perhaps the most noticeable
characteristic of the second example is the attainment of a greater
freedom of expression. There is in consequence an increase of intensity,
and as intensity is the source of rhythm,—rhythm being but the natural
characteristic of what we call intensity—a greater manifestation of
rhythm. This rhythmic ascent, if I may call it so, marking the growth
and development of intense expression, is continued in the third
example. The illusion of volume and solidity to be found in the other
two examples is still noticeable. But the flow is at a far higher
pressure than in actuality, and if the painter is not yet fully afloat
on fluid motion, he is certainly moving in the desired direction. He is
in fact true to his widening curve.
It is too early to predict what degree of intensity of effect Mr. King
will ultimately attain. He is still a young man with an enviable future
before him. And he approximates more and more towards an unconscious
method of expression. He applies the natural law of growth and
progression because he must. A time may come when he will take up his
pencil and trace a picture as in a trance simply at the bidding of the
inner flow called inner necessity. It is certainly hopeful that he has
remained up to the present a fairly pure medium, having escaped the
pollution of conventional art education. He turned to painting at the
urge of inner necessity and expressed himself in intense form and color
because such form and color were in him to express. The technical
characteristics of his work are really a part of himself. He expresses
everything with simplicity and freedom because they are characteristics
of his own nature. It should be said that he does not aim to produce the
so-called automatic work of art. There is nothing automatic in a fluid
force organizing itself by uniting itself to a medium that is really a
part of its own livingness. If the artist’s hands are guided by a
mysterious agency it is not a mechanical process any more than the
guiding of a plant into leaves, blossom, and fruit is one. The artist is
really guided by that which is a part of his higher self. He surrenders
himself to the guidance of a spirit which is his own, the spirit of Art.
And in doing so he achieves his highest destiny. For in the complete
surrender to Art lies the affirmation of Art.
My Friend The Incurable
V.
WAR HALLUCINATIONS
_An interview with Mme. Truth_
I found her in an obscure corner of a wein-stube which bore the legend:
In vino veritas. She beckoned to me appealingly. “Mr. Incurable, will
you come and sit at my table? They all shun me nowadays; to associate
with me is considered _mauvais ton_. But you, I am sure, need not fear
for your reputation....” To be sure, my reputation could not suffer any
more, even if I committed patricide; so I went bravely to Madame’s
table, and ordered Rhine-wine and a neutrality sandwich à la Wilson
(caviar and Limburger dressed in petals of French roses); to complete
the expression of my loyalty to the President, I requested the national
hymns of all the belligerents, after which conscience-clearing ordeal I
turned to my companion. Her appearance was shocking; not even the clumsy
robe of Censor O’Connor’s cut could conceal her bruises and many-colored
insignia. “Madame,” I gallantly inquired, “whence these atrocities?”
“These are love-tokens from the special war correspondents. Ah, dear,
since the death of Tolstoy I have had no true lover. You say, how about
Shaw? Well, George Bernard has championed me daringly, I admit; but I
can never tell whether he is in earnest or whether he makes use of me
for his clever jugglery. G. B. S. has made it his profession to say
unpopular things; how could he have overlooked such a rare stunt as
telling the truth in time of war? He is so very skilful in the gentle
art of making himself unpleasant to the majority that I am inclined to
believe he would readily betray me for my rival, Mlle. Lie, as soon as
she had lost her popularity. As for Maximilian Harden, you see, I am an
old flame of his; he has suffered prison and persecution for my sake,
the dear; do you remember the Eilenburg affair, when Maxie removed the
figments from Wilhelm’s bosom friends, and demonstrated that the “crime”
punishable in England with two years of Reading Gaol was freely
practiced by the august princes of Germany? O, he is a darling,
Monsieur; but, between us, he handles me too roughly, the bulldog. Think
of Bismarckian hugs and Kruppesque caresses! You see how hard it is to
please me as a lover: I am such a frail sweetheart.”
I protested that I have never had the ambition of becoming her lover,
consequently I was in no need of her warning. Mme. Truth felt offended.
“I shall get you yet. Wait till you grow older, when you will declare
from the house-tops your devotion for me. You do not think objectively,
Mr. Incurable, hence your numerous offences against me. With all your
endeavor to appear neutral, your anti-German feelings are transparent.
Why don’t you give ear to me occasionally? Think of a people generally
hated and envied, yet strong, successful, defiant. How can you help
admiring their wonderful achievements in the present war?”
I rejoined that I could admire war as an art; that there was art in
Napoleon’s warfare, no matter whether he won or lost, no matter whether
it was St. Bernard or Waterloo; while the Germans are merely good
mathematicians, clever technicians; but I prefer Zimbalist’s artistic
flaws to the perfect technique of Albert Spalding, the craftsman.
“You are hopelessly incurable, sir. Do you perceive that Germany has won
already? Whatever the outcome of the war, the Germans are the victors.
To be hated by all one must accomplish something meritorious. Surely the
Germans will emerge from the struggle forged with self-respect,
self-assurance, and contempt for the rest of the world. Surely they will
be spared the demoralizing influence of universal sympathy, which is so
atrociously showered upon poor Belgium. In their splendid isolation the
Teutons will achieve gigantic things; they may become a race of
supermen....”
I hastened to order Moselwine and sauer-kraut.
_Shmah Yisroel_
There is an inmate in one of the Russian insane asylums at present, a
Jewish soldier who paces up and down his cell, continually groaning:
“Shmah Yisroel.” His story is simple. One night lying in the trenches on
the Prussian frontier, he observed an approaching grey figure, obviously
that of a German soldier. When the figure came close to the trenches,
the Jew leaped upon his foe and pierced him with the bayonet. The German
fell, moaning in agony: “Shmah Yisroel.” The two words have been
haunting the Russian since, until, they say, he lost his reason.
It is a grave symptom for the Jews, when they begin to lose their reason
under the stress of tragedy; their very existence as a people is
imperiled, as soon as they show signs of normality, and fail to endure
grief and suffering. For what has kept the Eternal Ahasver so
wonderfully alive these two thousand years but his philosophical
defiance of seeming reality? “Shmah Yisroel,” “Hear, o Israel, the
Eternal is our God, the Lord is one,” has been the motto of the nation
through the long centuries of persecution, the pillar of fire on its
historical Golgotha; it has become the symbol of Judaism, the
coat-of-arms of the “Chosen People” who were destined to wander among
gentiles, to teach them the living word, and to be rewarded for the
instruction with hatred and contempt.
“Shmah Yisroel” were the last defiant words of the Palestinian martyrs,
when tortured to death by the Syrian Hellenizers of the time of
Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted the apparently easy task of
annihilating Judaism by the force of his mighty legions. “Shmah Yisroel”
cheerfully cried the Rabbis enwrapped in the scrolls of the Law, set
afire by the order of Emperor Adrian, “and their souls returned in
purity to their Creator,” relates the Agadah. “Shmah Yisroel” was the
cry that thundered amidst the blaze of the Auto-da-Fe set up by the
Spanish Inquisition ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Throughout the ages,
humiliated and offended, but inwardly proud, despising and forgiving
those “who knew not what they were doing,” the Jew marched his endless
road with his Motto as a talisman, as an invulnerable shield. Recently,
during the first decade of the twentieth century, the world heard once
more the cries of “Shmah Yisroel” piercing the air of Russia from end to
end, when Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by
governmental hooligans in order to quench with the blood of Israel the
Revolution.
Neither is the present great trial new for the indestructible people:
many battles have been fought, with Jews taking part on both sides.
There is a popular print in Germany, presenting the Jews of the
Kronprinz’s regiment praying on the day of Atonement before Sedan; a
grotesque mass of warriors entreating the Lord of peace to grant the
world eternal peace. What greater incongruity can be imagined than Jews
exterminating one another; what more terrible absurdity, than the
descendants of the prophets waging war, the descendants of Isaiah who
was the first to preach to the nations “to beat their swords into
ploughshares”! Yet the life of Israel in the last two thousand years has
been a continuous incongruity, an anomaly, a miracle; will this nation
collapse under the tragicness of the present situation?
The Russian-Jewish soldier who lost his reason, because he failed to
understand the “Why” of his having killed his brother, a German-Jewish
soldier, is a grave symptom for the abnormal, supernormal people. Has
“Shmah Yisroel” ceased to serve as the all-answering formula, as the
justification of the impossible reality, as the invincible watch-word,
as the great stimulus to live on, to march on, ever forward, into the
unknown future?
_Bestialization_
The other day I received a deserved blow. A letter from the war-zone
reached me. Nothing but the handwriting told me that it was written by
an old friend of mine, a poet of exquisite sonnets—so rude was the
style, so dry and matter-of-fact the tone of my erstwhile elegant
correspondent. She cynically derided my glorification of the war as
Europe’s healthful purgatory, and spoke of death and want, cruel prosaic
want. Do we ever realize the actual stultifying, bestializing conditions
of the non-combatants under whizzing shells and roving aeroplanes? We,
the calm philosophizers, the curious spectators and speculators? Do we,
neutrals, envisage Death and Murder raging in a bacchanale over the
embroiled lands? Of all the war poems and sermons it was only Eunice
Tietjens who perceived the trans-Atlantic horrors in her prophetic
_Children of War_; the rest are cold, labored writings. Perhaps our
American diplomats, who are anything but diplomatic, will innocently
involve this country in the world mess, and our authors will be given a
fair test.
IBN GABINOL.
New York Letter
GEORGE SOULE
Now that the New York legislature has decided to submit the question of
woman suffrage to popular vote, we are being bored and sometimes
horrified by the revelations of a battle which most of us get into the
habit of thinking was fought and won long ago. That is the trouble with
many radicals. The investigation of new causes comes to mean with them
merely a process of personal salvation. A belief attained is taken as a
matter of course, as if there were nothing more to be done about it.
Even to mention it seems in bad taste—there are so many more important
things, so many more ecstatic attitudes. And then the world rumbles
along to it like some prehistoric monster, and we are caught unaware in
the midst of quarreling which seems to us beside the point. Have we not
discarded fighting machinery? Have we not thrown our siege guns on the
scrap heap? How rude of the unintelligent to disturb us! We are like the
pacificists who thought that war could be abolished by the mere act of
willing. We forget that mankind never wills all at once. We forget that
it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice our energy in the battle for a
distressingly old cause. Or else we never see the necessity, and damn
the naive volunteers with a supercilious smile of superior enlightenment
while we cuddle ourselves in the cotton wool of private emotions. We
offer them a new word as a reagent for all their difficulties.
Who, for instance, could have imagined that _The New York Times_, mental
yokel though it is, could come out with a two-column editorial article
against suffrage on the ground that women are not fitted to vote because
they do not share men’s economic burdens? It must have been six months
ago at least that _The Times_ published a census report on its back page
showing that 30.6 per cent of all the females in New York over ten years
of age are engaged in gainful occupations. You would think census
statistics would be just the thing to attract the eye of that editorial
writer. But here the editorial is, like an unbelievable fossil come to
life. If it represented merely a Tory minority we could afford to laugh
and wait for its partisans to die. It represents, however, the astute
judgment of _The Times_ as to what several hundred thousand people in
New York city really think. The big newspaper cannot afford to try
leading public opinion. It must agree with as many people of buying
capacity as possible. And here we are again, face to face with a blind,
stupid majority.
One begins to speculate on what possibility there is for a democracy
except running about in circles. Everything is apparently arranged so
that the majority can enforce its immediate will, and its immediate will
is always several generations behind the wisdom of its best citizens. An
enthroned tyrant can be dynamited, but a hydra-headed tyrant in the
election booth must be educated. What a wearisome, unromantic task that
is! Many a man who would exultingly give his life in the adventure of
assassination retires to his study before the labor of training a mob.
He has neither the strength of imagination nor the strength of heart
necessary to fight his way inch by inch. Here is a real sacrifice to be
made for the future. Here is a chance for modern heroes with stuff in
them. Here is an opportunity to substitute soul-testing labor for
amateur theatricals. To leaven stupidity, to work with raw and shouting
enthusiasts, to be humble enough to accept each partial victory, each
compromise, and still to fight for the next one—this is the challenge of
faith which proves to us there is still iron in mankind. There is
satisfaction in the thought that victories have not become easier. Many
a Launcelot would go insane in the trenches.
Everyone is looking for the supremacy of his own pet reform or reaction
as a result of the war, and it is banal to indulge in prophecies. Yet it
seems to me there will be a great gain in our understanding if we
approach the monster with humility. It has, to be sure, shown us the
brutality lurking in modern civilization. We can easily use it as a text
for denouncing politics, commercialism, militarism, and all the other
abstractions which represent to us the sum of present human failings.
Yet why not go a little farther, and blame as well an intellectualism
which slides about on the surface of things, a species of reform and
enthusiasm which does not bite into the substance of humanity? Do not
our philosophies now appear as futile as the pedantic dreaming of
mediaeval schoolmen and alchemists? Does not our separation of the ideal
from the material now seem as vicious as Christian asceticism? What
business have we to toy with perfectionist theories when to do so we
must ignore what is to-day and what will be to-morrow in the blood and
brain of nearly all human beings? We must make human breeding the test
of effort. We must admit that the will is powerless without the hands.
We must create our social tools to accomplish our social ends. We must
forget the false distinctions between emotion and intellect, and use
both for their common purpose. Let us not repudiate machinery because it
has not yet been consciously directed to an end that is worth gaining.
Modern civilization has spent its force developing in opposite
directions—toward the brute and toward the god—and now we are amazed at
the contradiction. Our task is to make a synthesis and arrive at man. It
will be a task to engage the highest qualities of the poet and the
scientist—this job of putting man’s will in control of his overgrown
body. And it will be more fascinating than any other work man has ever
set himself.
The Drama
“Alice in Wonderland”
(_Fine Arts Theatre_)
Judging from this initial production of _Alice in Wonderland_ the new
management of the Fine Arts Theatre is going to justify the name of the
theatre and yet compete with the loop theatres in attracting the
attention of the general public. The Players Producing Company has been
wise in securing the services of an exceptionally good professional
company under the direction of Mr. W. H. Gilmore, and they have made an
unusually happy start with Miss Gerstenberg’s dramatization of Lewis
Carroll’s classic, supplemented by the scenery of Mr. Wm. P. Henderson
and the musical setting of Mr. Eric de Lamarter.
At first thought it seems incredible that the subtle comedy of _Alice in
Wonderland_ could lend itself to the wider stage values; but the
dialogue loses nothing—it gains, rather, by the transposition. Some
doubt has been expressed as to whether _Alice_ is really a children’s
classic or an adult classic. On the stage that doubt is resolved—it is
both. The children appreciate seeing all the quaint creatures and people
that Alice meets in her adventures, and the grown-ups enjoy the humor of
the dialogue and the extraordinary real unreality of Carroll’s
imagination. As a matter of fact the psychology of Lewis Carroll is
amazing! He lived long before Mme. Montessori; yet in his own whimsical
fashion he has recorded how absurdly unreal and fantastic the unrelated
elements of education must seem to the child mind! The grown-up who does
not appreciate the humor of _Alice in Wonderland_ must be a very dull
person. Both the fun and the dream quality of the original have been
carefully emphasized in the production. Mr. Henderson’s scenery is
successful in more senses than one. First of all it is beautiful and
entirely in the spirit of the play, and, secondly, it does not sacrifice
the actors as so much of the new stage craft has a tendency to do.
Although extremely rich and varied in color, the setting waits for the
final complement of the actors in costume before the design is complete.
As Mr. Henderson is a _painter_, rather than a “man of the theatre”—that
vague term invented by Craig—he knows how to obtain effects on the stage
by color, and does not depend upon the manipulation of direct
lighting—often as imitative and theatrical as the old style scenery—to
create illusion. He obtains the effect of depth or distance on the stage
by the tonal quality of his painted drop, rather than by an increased
cubic depth which is apt to reduce an actor to the thin and non-existent
quality of a paper silhouette. It is well to indicate these principles,
for they are all important in connection with drama that depends upon
speech, and in his use of these principles Mr. Henderson is probably the
most radical of all the advanced scenic artists.
Altogether Chicago has reason to be proud of this production. It reveals
the fact that Chicago is not without independent artistic initiative,
and a full conviction of this fact should lead to interesting
developments. Unfortunately in this review it is impossible to speak of
the acting in detail, but this is hardly necessary as the critics have
given it the stamp of their approval. For the professional finish of the
performance credit is due to Mr. W. H. Gilmore. Little Miss Alice Tobin
made an ideal Alice. In fact not one part is mis-cast, and all the
actors give the impression that they are having the time of their
life—which contributes much to the spirit of the entertainment. Mr. De
Lamarter’s music has a charming fantastic quality and great delicacy of
imagination. And above all the delightful freshness of the play is due
to Miss Gerstenberg’s good faith in sticking to the text of the original
and not attempting to pump into it any extraneous matter which might
have deteriorated into musical comedy or farce. As it is the play is a
fantasy, and, when successful, as in this case, no form is more capable
of giving lasting enjoyment.
S. H. R.
Music
SAMAROFF AND CLAUSSEN
Olga Samaroff is not conspicuous for her bad piano-playing. There are a
great many others, as prominent as Mme. Samaroff, as popular in their
own way, who make just as much noise when they play—pianists who seem to
exert an odd vigilance lest music enter in for a moment. Mme. Samaroff
played Beethoven’s E-flat piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony. This
work is unique in its bombast, causing one to blush for the composer.
The soloist appeared in an ample gown of scorched orange, with slippers
of scarlet, and gave the work its traditional beating. The eye suffered
only less than the ear.