nearer he comes to an assertion of infallibility the surer is the final
defeat of his cause. If he will allow no room for change and growth,
change and growth will sweep him aside. We need big men who will not
enlist under colors, but are always pushing back the horizon of truth.
Distrust the leader who has found the final answer to the riddle. Some
day shall we not have a Messiah who shall begin by saying: "Do not found
in my name any church, cult, or school. If a man question my message,
listen to him closely and learn what truth he has. Always seek the new,
the more perfect. Always grow out from the fixed. So shall you begin a
race of Kings greater than I."
Correspondence
Miss Columbia: An Old-Fashioned Girl
That the United States of America is young is a truism which needs no
stating, and unfortunately its youth is hopelessly fettered in the
strings of tradition.
Ferrero says that aesthetic taste in America shows itself in bathrooms;
and certainly in plumbing we do seem to have a taste above that of the
rest of the world. In other things America fears originality and change
far more even than England does. Miss Columbia is a bright girl, sitting
in a schoolroom, with well-worn editions of the English classics on the
book-shelves. Miss Columbia writes verses and stories following the most
approved models; she succeeds rather well, but, after all, they are only
school essays. It seems impossible for Americans to have the courage to
admit that Life is as they see it. Hence the shallow and frivolous
optimism which hangs like an obscuring fog over practically all our
writing. It would be a convention were it not that we think we believe
it; it would be a conviction only that we never look at it close enough
to test it. The vogue, a year or two ago, of Mr. Robert Haven
Schauffler's Scum o' the Earth is a case in point. It deals with the
problem of immigration, not as it is, but as it might be if it were. The
poem is imitative as art, and false as life, but it flatters an existing
condition, and paints a sore to represent healthy flesh; wherefore
America hails it with content. Americans are afraid of Life, in the
Victorian manner. A Catholic said to me, some time ago: "Sex is dirty."
This sacrilege is a thoroughly Victorian sentiment, but sex alone does
not come under the ban; pain, squalor, and, above all, the fact that
virtue and effort frequently go unrewarded, are facts to which, in
America, one must shut one's eyes. Miss Columbia is very young, and her
gold must be minted before she recognizes it; in the matrix it looks
insignificant to her inexperienced eyes.
Style is not manner, but personality. And the fact that our poets and
story writers keep to the old forms and expressions proves (does it
not?) that they have no inward urging which makes them find old molds
too cramping.
In a play of George Cohan's, Broadway Jones, you have the best of
middle-class America--its good points and its limitations. Perhaps this
is even better brought out in his other play, Get-Rich-Quick
Wallingford. "Crude," you say; "childish!" Quite true, but entirely and
absolutely America. For the United States is governed by the Great God:
Mediocrity! The middle-class, or, as we call him, "the man in the
street," rules. Neither the gaunt simplicities of the lower class
(although we talk a great deal about the lower class), nor the
simplicities of the educated and intellectually alert, can leaven the
lump of self-satisfied commonplaceness. Not only don't we know, but we
don't want to know. An American writer, who had lived in Europe long
enough to forget the peculiar American temper, was sufficiently
ingenuous as to propose to the editor of one of our best-known magazines
a series of three articles on six contemporary French poets. They were
refused, because his clientèle did not care to read of things of which
they knew nothing. "They will know less than I," said the editor, "and I
have only heard of two of these names."
We are a little better off as regards our musical taste, because music
is a universal language, and we can hear music in the "original," so to
say. In music, again, our output is more in accordance with the spirit
of the whole world.
This does not mean that there are not good writers in America. There
are. But most of them write "dans le goût d'avant-hier." I am only
telling you that Miss Columbia is in her artistic 'teens, and is as
unimaginatively conventional as is the human animal at the same age.
And, again like the human animal, she was not so childish when she was a
baby. Paul Revere, riding across the Middlesex Fells to rouse the minute
men, was like any adult man on a job which he shrewdly suspects will
change the fate of nations. Poe and Whitman were not exactly childish.
But were Poe writing today, he would be told that his subjects were
"unimportant" and that he "lacked social consciousness." For we in
America are suffering from a pathological outlook on the world. Our
activities function along the line of preventive medicine for
communities. The richness and variety of personality is lost sight of in
the lump. We forget that admirable truth set forth in the poem beginning
"Little drops of water."
And then, too, poor America is so many different kinds of persons and
places. What we are going to be lies on the lap of the Gods. But it
seems quite clear that, whatever it is, it will not be Anglo-Saxon.
Go to any vaudeville theatre and you will see Americans
"turkey-trotting" to an intricately syncopated music we have dubbed
"rag-time." No European can dance it with just that zip and swing. It is
a purely American thing. Stop a minute! Do you realize that this is
America's first original contribution to the arts! Low or high, that is
not the point; it is America's own product, and for that reason I regret
to see the tango superseding it, although the tango is a better dance. I
am told by those who know, that dancing is the first art practised by
primitive peoples. I believe that in our "turkey-trotting" and
"rag-time" we have the earliest artistic gropings of a new race. Our
musicians scorn "rag-time," and it takes the clear eye of a Frenchman to
see its interest. Debussy has seen it in his Minstrels.
AMY LOWELL.
Poetry to the Uttermost
We are afraid. We are all horribly afraid. The seal of poetic propriety
is laid upon our lips, the burden of tradition bows us down. Crouched
and abject beneath the dominance of the slave-driver, gap-toothed
Custom, we set our shoulders to the toil--the useless toil--of dragging
through the mile-years of simoom-whipped sand the impassive statue of
Mediocrity.
What, if the vulture scream above us, can we dare to tell the meaning of
its cry? Sharp will descend the whip of circumstance to warn that
otherwhere the nightingales are singing under a full-orbed moon and we
must sing of them.
Does an all-reckless slave defy his Maker with a thunderbolt of
blasphemy, forged in the furnace of his agony? Straight comes the
penalty decreeing silence and neglect unless we chant apocalyptic
anodynes.
If the challenge of the blood outbeats the clanging of the bonds and in
the glowing dusk man and woman cling to each other until the uttermost
is won, shall this be told in paean and in song? Not unless social usage
has been satisfied and it be ascertained that desire has given place to
design, that love has been exchanged for lucre, and that marriage has
been substituted for mating; then are we bidden cull from the
common-casket of permitted phrases the veil, the orange-flower wreath,
and all the weary paraphernalia of convention, and write an epithalamium
to the plaudits of the admiring throng.
Rituals began in poetry. And since all rituals today have lost most of
their ancient power, serving to soothe and charm instead of to stir and
challenge, we look to the poetry of today to lay the web whereon the
rituals of the future shall be spun. Let not that web possess one strand
of mediocrity. Platitudinizing is no pattern for the future. If we are
fain to cry aloud, let our throats crack thereat; if we would hurl
defiance, let us not fear to charge after our javelins and find our
freedom in the breach ourselves have made.
Every true poet has the uttermost within, if he or she will but give it
voice. Oh, poets of every craft, give of the uttermost! Better a single
cry like The Ballad of Reading Gaol, like Bianca, like When I am dead
and sister to the dust--to touch on a few moderns only--than a
lumber-loft of pretty and tuneful voicings of the themes that please but
do not satisfy. There are those of us who read whose blood runs hot and
red as well as yours. Dare, O you poets of every craft! Rise to the cry!
Your hearts are high and full of gallantry, the world is waiting to be
led by you to heights before unscaled. Shake cowardice away and dare!
FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER.
Reflections of a Dilettante
All art is symbolical. A mere presentation of things as they are seen by
our physical eye is photography, not art. Yet there exists a Symbolistic
school in contradistinction to other currents such as Realism,
Impressionism, Neo-Romanticism, etc. Is not this a misnomer? Can we say,
for instance, that Beaudélaire's Fleurs du Mal were symbols, while
Goethe gave us but realistic reproductions of actual life? Should we
exclude Whitman from the Symbolists for the reason that his poems are
less fantastic, nearer to life than those of Poe? What about
Vereshchagin: was not his brush symbolistic because he adhered to
realistic methods? Obviously, an artist presents not objects but ideas,
and the symbolisticity of a certain work of art is rather a question of
method and degree.
Perhaps we should differentiate artists according to their relationship
with and attitude towards the public. The realist--and under this
elastic term we may understand likewise the romanticist and the
impressionist--is definite in his interpretation of life, is outspoken
and clear in conveying his conceptions; he drags us unto his point of
view, makes us see through his eyes and take for granted his
impressions. He says to us: "Thus I see the world. Thus life and nature
are reflected in my mind. This is precisely what I mean; please do not
misinterpret me." We are bound to obey; the artist--provided he is a
real artist--forces upon us his eyeglasses, and we follow his
directions.
The purely Symbolistic artist, on the other hand, grants freedom to the
public. Vague tones, dim outlines, abstract figures, imperceptible
moods, misty reflections, make his art unyielding to a definite
interpretation. All he imposes upon us is an atmosphere, into which we
are invited to come and co-create. Here is a canvas, here are colors,
here are moods; go ahead and make out of them what you like. We are thus
left to our own guidance; we are enabled to put our ego into the
artist's work, we are free to find in it whatever reflections we choose
and to form our own conceptions. If we succeed in solving the problem,
if we make the symbol live in our imagination, we experience the bliss
of creation; should we fail in our task, should the symbol remain
meaningless to us, we conclude that the given atmosphere is alien to our
mind. Music of all arts is the most symbolical. True, Wagner and Strauss
have endeavored to impose upon the listener leit-motifs, to dictate the
public an interpretation of specific tones, but they have failed in
their attempts to introduce a sort of a "key" to music; we remain
autonomous in "explaining" Siegfried and Don Quixote.
Which of the methods is preferable? I should resent any narrow decision
on this point. A crystalline September day or a purple-crimson sunset,
how can we choose? We delight in both, but in one case we admire the
visible beauty, while in the other we make one step forward and
complement the seen splendor with strokes of our creative imagination.
Perhaps my non-partisanship is due to my dilettantism; as it is, I
approach a book or a picture with one scale: is it a work of art? If it
is, then any method is justifiable, no matter how differently it may
appeal to the individual taste.
Yet--and there is no inconsistency in my statement--I do discriminate in
art productions in so far as my personal affections are concerned. Great
as my delight is in the arts of Tolstoi and Zola, of Rubens and Corot,
of Brahms and Massenet, of Pavlova and Karsavina, my mind is more akin
to the mystic utterances of Maeterlinck and Brusov, to the hazy
landscapes of Whistler and to the unreal women of Bakst, to the narcotic
music of Debussy and Rachmaninov, to the wavy rhythm of Duncan and St.
Denis. It is with them, with the latter, that I erect fantastic castles
of my own designs and find expression of my moods and whims. I may not
understand all of the Cubists and Futurists, but I owe them many new
thoughts and emotions which I had not realized before having seen the
new art. Schoenberg's pieces still irritate my conventional ear, but I
allow him credit for discovering new possibilities in the region of
sound interpretation. We, plain mortals, who are doomed to contemplate
art without having the gift to contribute to it, we are envious of
genius and crave for freedom in co-creating with the artist. Hence my
love for Bergson who appeals to the creative instinct of man; for him I
abandoned Nietzsche, my former idol: it is so much more pleasant and
feasible to be a creative being than to strive to become a perfect
super-being.
ALEXANDER S. KAUN.
The Immortality of the Soul
Bergson argues that there is a spiritual entity behind all science and
that it is impossible for scientists to go beyond a certain point in
developing a knowledge of whence we came. Clara E. Laughlin, in writing
a review of The Truth about Woman, by Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan, accuses
the writer of possessing a short-sighted, astigmatic vision of
"whereuntoness." She winds up her discussion with the sob of an ultra
religionist by accusing Mrs. Gallichan of having left out a most
important point in her discussion--that of the immortality of the soul.
To quote Miss Laughlin exactly:
But if, as most of us believe, we are more than just links in the
human chain; if we have a relation to eternity as well as to
history and to posterity, there are splendid interpretations of
our struggles that Mrs. Gallichan does not apprehend. If souls
are immortal, life is more than the perpetration of species, or
even than the improvement of the race; it is the place allotted
to us for the development of that imperishable part which we are
to carry hence, and through eternity. And any effort of ours
which helps other souls to realize the best that life can give,
to seek the best that immortality can perpetuate, may splendidly
justify our existence.
Very fortunately for the future of her book, Mrs. Gallichan ignores the
religionist except to say of religion, "I am certain that in us the
religious impulse and the sex impulse are one."
Mrs. Gallichan's book is a scientific discussion of woman yesterday and
today, without any attempt at sentimentalism. Her analysis is perfect
and decidedly constructive. She goes back to prehistoric times and
discusses in scientific phraseology how woman has progressed through the
ages, and describes the part she has taken in establishing
civilizations. Nowhere does she forget that she is writing for posterity
and indulge in the petty foibles that are sometimes so noticeable in the
work of women who write on feminism.
LEE A. STONE.
[The question of whether whatever it is that is meant by the word
soul is immortal--immortal in the sense that it will live forever
in a realm of the spirit or the blessed--is answered
affirmatively by those who hold to the orthodox faith, is not
worth discussing by a rational man who is informed, and is
discussed by avowed or implied atheists with a fanatical
seriousness that destroys whatever force their main contention
may have. The legitimate domain of argument is limited; truth
that is verifiable by men here and now is its only content. As
regards what uncritical people call "immortality" serious
argumentation is absolutely impossible. Faith, quotations, and
personal desires are not arguments. Mrs. Gallichan's book is in
parts scientific, and is therefore of importance to thousands of
people whose religion is an achievement of courageous thinking
and living. To many excellent persons their professed belief in
what they term "immortality" is a kind of merciful necessity.
They crave and even invent assurances of it. To such persons
there is no argument against it. To persons who produce the
"negative" arguments there is no argument for it. And there you
are!--W. C. D.]
Book Discussion
Dostoevsky--Pessimist?
The Possessed, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. [The Macmillan Company, New
York.]
Shatov was an incorrigible idealist, with a keen satirical ability to
destroy his own ideals. He had made a god out of Verhovensky, the
leading figure in Dostoevsky's The Possessed. Verhovensky was, he
imagined, a god of selfish courage and supreme unconcern, the sort of
man whom everybody followed involuntarily. Shatov knew that his hero had
irreparably injured three women, one of them half-witted and
defenseless. That did not bother the idealist at all; it was "in
character." But when Verhovensky lied about it to avoid condemnation,
Shatov hit him a savage blow on the cheek and brooded for weeks over the
disappointment. The disappointment was deepened by the fact that
Verhovensky did not kill him for the blow.
There is something characteristically Russian about that. It goes far to
explain Russian pessimism, and give the key to this very book. Your
Russian wants above all things to be logical. He will fasten upon an
idea and enshrine it in his holy of holies. He will relentlessly follow
the dictates of his idea though it lead him to insanity. There is
greatness in his attitude, also absurdity. Witness Tolstoy. And when he
recognizes his own absurdity he becomes gloomy and savage; there is no
escape from the vanity of the world, the spirit, and himself.
I can imagine the mood of Dostoevsky when this book germinated in his
mind. He saw this trait in the people about him, he felt it in himself.
The intellectuals, each with his little theory, were steadily working
towards--nothing at all. The government with its elaborate systems for
economic improvement and individual repression, the revolutionary with
his scheming insincerity and chaotic program, were equally futile. The
women with their pathetic loves, the frivolous with their mad pursuit of
amusement, the great and the small, the sycophant and the rebel, were
all bitter failures. Suddenly it occurred to him--they are all mad in an
insane world, each in his way, one no more than another. I will vent my
disgust with these vermin in a book; I will show what they really are.
Like the madman who carefully traces out his meaningless labyrinth, I
will with the most painstaking psychology unravel their minds, and in so
doing I will find my release and my fiendish joy. The only thing lacking
in this madhouse is complete self-consciousness. That I will
furnish.--And so Dostoevsky logically and nobly followed his idea to its
insane conclusion.
The fascinating result cannot be described in a paragraph. It is done,
of course, with consummate ability. Beginning the book is like walking
into a village of unknown people. They are real enough outwardly; you
don't know their nature or direction. Little by little you learn about
them, and begin to take sides. Long habit makes you pick favorites. This
man will be noble and successful; perhaps he is the hero. Suddenly you
begin to suspect that something is wrong. All things are not working
together for one end, as in well-regulated novels. Your favorites become
jumbled up with the others. The author doesn't give you a chance,
because he never shows you a cross-section of a mind. He merely tells
what the people do and say. You must draw your own conclusions as in
ordinary life. When you get used to this, you see an occasional
subtlety, a flash of sardonic laughter. Some of the people are not quite
right in their minds. And at length the truth dawns; the sane people are
even crazier than the others! This impression comes by sheer force of
magic; how the author creates it is inexplicable. But once you have it,
the fascination of following an idea obsesses you. And at the end it is
impossible to find any meaning or direction in the world.
Of course, no such obsession can find a firm footing in the American
temperament. After a while it seems Russian and incredible. If you can't
answer Dostoevsky logically, you will abandon logic. But he has stirred
you up, and certain important conclusions rise to the surface.
One is that it would be impossible to be such a pessimist unless one
looked for a good deal in the world, and looked for it rather sharply.
Idealism and courage began this course of thought. Isn't a big share of
our optimism shallow? Shouldn't we go a little deeper into things before
being so sure they are right? Another is that no living individual is
worth very much, after all. Our only salvation is in creating a nobler
race. And for that any sacrifice of present individuals is supremely
worth while.
It is as if some inspired member of a negro tribe in central Africa had
suddenly awakened to the fact that his voodoo-worshipping friends were
not acting rationally. From their status the burden of his chant might
be horrible for its devilish revelations. But in our eyes he would be a
seer and a prophet. Why should he have considered the feelings of the
miserable savages? There is something more important than that!
GEORGE SOULE.
The Salvation of the World à la Wells
Social Forces in England and America, by H. G. Wells. [Harper and
Brothers, New York.]
Like many philosophers, Mr. Wells is concerned mainly with the need of a
new human race. All profound reformers want that. The method of
achieving this desirable result is, however, the rock of turning. It
probably isn't necessary to say that our present reformer is not one of
those blind apostles of effortless immediacy. Such transmution was
respectable when Botany Bay was a popular seaside resort for radical
poets and philosophers. They of today realize something of the immensity
of the developmental process. Their hopes are often so remote that they
seem almost despair, but still time is trusted with a reliance on
science for the urge toward human perfectibility. Of such the leader is
H. G. Wells.
Clearly the conviction that civilization needs a new race is well
founded. All ideals, all ideas, civilization, culture are and have
always been the products of a pitiful minority. The tendency at present
is toward making the desire of the majority supreme. The majority do not
cleave toward ideals--not even toward establishing their own glory.
Rousseau imagined that millions loved righteousness; Jefferson made such
beliefs the basis of the country's documents of incorporation. The
idealists were manifestly mistaken. Men have never been drawn toward the
ideals they have professed. Truth, justice, equality have never been
valued when sex, property, or power were opposed. The virtues came in
the early days from "Thus saith the Lord," and they come today, if they
come at all, from "Thus saith a Strong Man."
Mr. Wells guesses that there are fifty thousand reading and thinking
persons in England--keepers of the citadel. The fifty thousand are
practically England. Perhaps his estimate is too low. John Brisben
Walker says that in the United States the number of persons able to
think independently about political and social matters has increased
from a few score to about two hundred and fifty thousand within thirty
years. The fact is, albeit, that the world has been fashioned always by
this very small minority. Furthermore the present creation is not one in
which there is reason for great pride.
The essay on the Great State is especially fine in this connection.
Wells's idea of the Normal Social Life and of the constant divergence of
a minority is altogether clarifying for the watcher from any vantage,
but it is in his discussion of the labor unrest that the reader in
Colorado discovers the prophecies he most needs. For illustration this:
The worker in a former generation took himself for granted; it is
a new phase when the toilers begin to ask, not one man here and
there, but in masses, in battalions, in trades: "Why, then, are
we toilers, and for what is it that we toil?"