and the reason why is evi-
dent. He is trying for harder things, higher things. The fall from
the rarefied atmosphere he frequents makes the smash, when it oc-
curs, complete. Some of the Marin drawings in which the serious in-
tention can still be felt are, nevertheless, nothing but messes of col-
our. I say this deliberately because in cases of this kind so much
nonsense is apt to be spouted. The champions of this artist some-
times try to fight the dulness of his opponents with exaggerations
which in turn frighten away many honest inquirers. I should hate,


HENRY MCBRIDE
331
а
however, to be compelled to rush the editing of Marin's work. His
new explorations always require even from his most sympathetic ob-
servers a certain time in which they may orient themselves in his new
country. I have confessed to some distress with the frontispiece to
the February Dial, yet I was unfeignedly glad to see it used, to see it
have a trial. I think almost half of the drawings in the inner sanc-
tuary at Montross's, where all the most difficult Marin problems
have been placed, will eventually be relegated to the second plan in
the catalogue-raisonné of the future, but it certainly would be fool-
ish to attempt exact appraisements now. The superb qualities of the
drawings that are complete successes more and more draw attention
to the figure of Marin; and the public, it is true, that is attracted by
the noise gets only bewilderment from the unedited show. However,
this is not a serious drawback. They must make the Marin acquaint-
ance sooner or later and when beginners grasp the idea that the an-
nually recurring trouble with Marin is always with his latest out-
put, they may be able, philosophically, to eliminate worry from
their failure to possess him instantly.
HENRY MCBRIDE


MUSICAL CHRONICLE
There
a
NHE themes which spring, in the Ornstein two-piano sonata,
from the vibrant grey plinth; fling themselves out like running
reliefs and merge again and make way for other uprising material,
are of the race of the young composer's strongest ideas. These jerk-
ing, wailing, clanging motifs are not the sweet, facile ghosts, the
scions of a violent race become elegant and dreamily and pleasurably
melancholy that appeared in the 'cello sonatas and pianoforte so-
natinas of a few years since. They have the strong blood, the blunt
power, that sounded in the scoriac preludes and impressions, moods
and sonatas which first announced another composer had been born
the modern world. Into the glittering metallic stream of the new
work Ornstein has poured, in some measure, his own spiritual com-
plexity. The many planes of his personality, the many shaping influ-
ences that bore on him, mirror themselves therein. Themes recall
the arias and recitatives of synagogue cantors that must have come
into the child with the first imprints of the world; repeat the subtle
cadences, the oriental monotony, of the ritual chants. Themes re-
call the street-songs, part Slavic, part Jewish, of the Pale, the vulgar
tunes of working people and nurses, of the tavern and the road.
Themes speak violent sensuality drowned in black, violent passion
submerged and become fear, become hideous weariness and depres-
sion, become the lurid blue and black of the East Side. Certain ap-
pear that seem like responses, part joyous, part frenetic, to the ma-
chine world, to the mud and steam-whistles, the derricks and holds,
of the great ports: West street, the Thames ocean-docks, Hamburg.
Others are like the noises of the human breast down deep where it
is scarcely longer human, wild inchoate furious sounds, beastly howl-
ings one scarcely dared recognize lie in the subcellar of the body.
Others, again break out in unbridled flinging dance, crow, whistle
and gong like a college of Chinese on a holiday, rejoice with the
warm, quick, jetting Jewish blood when it overcomes fear and hurls
itself joyously and abandonedly.
And if not every ounce of Ornstein's young gianthood was press-
ing upon his material when he composed this sonata; if possibilities
of passion that one feels at this very moment latent in the twenty-


PAUL ROSENFELD
333
six year old composer were by no means exhausted in the work, the
music nevertheless possesses a beauty which he has never before
manifested in his creations. The sonata is not unanchored, a series
of unwelded powerful fragments. The themes are not mutually ex-
clusive, abrupt and broken masses cast forth. The work is a coming
together of many elements never before fused. The thematic mate-
rial has suddenly been forcefully wrenched, submitted to some su-
perior conception. It is as if motives which had never before taken
hands had timidly conjoined their palms, begun moving together in
harmonious flow. They are related to each other, necessitate each
other's presence, produce each other graciously. They still dance
with angular tic-like jerks, whimper and wail with the Jewish in-
dulgence in grief, stampede like herds of terrified locomotives madly
clanging their bells, proclaim passionately tragedy and pride. But
it is as though an alchemist with his virtuous stone had suddenly
touched many disparate black objects, and transfused them to a
single dark lustrous silver. Movement, relativity, has made them
clear and light and winged. An unbroken torrent of gorgeous sound
pours from the two vibrant instruments, a flood dense and metallic,
silver-grey as the warm voluptuous winter sky over New York. Cli-
max after exciting climax is churned. Ornstein at last has produced
a sizeable object that has a completed life of its own, a life not in-
commensurable in vigour to that which he always has carried knotted
in his own person.
For the first time, Ornstein has distinctly out-topped his medium.
For the first time, he has been far more deeply interested in the thing
before him, than in himself before the thing. Genius, we know, was
in his outpourings from the moment he wrote the Dwarf Suite; the
furious city world had in some manner entered through the ear of
this lad for whom any two notes were under the stress of necessity to
be combined; but it was the act of expression which excited him
more than the medium towards which he was ostensibly pouring him-
self forth. Composition, for him, ended with his own volcanic erup-
tion. What the result was concerned him little. And that, his work
demonstrated. The centre of his compositions was never entirely
outside Ornstein's person. His music referred continually in some
strange fashion to himself. Biting and high instants of music
occurred in nearly everything that came to him. One remembers for
such a moment a sonata, or sonatina, for piano, which had for its


334
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
second movement some not very successful variations of the fa-
vourite Volga boatman song; for after three doubtful movements
came a fourth that was a sumptuous throbbing thing, a dream of
rich textures tremblingly felt of. But, for the most, the expressions,
dazzling and powerful, were too fragmentary; too uncentred, too
clumsily organized, to be quite satisfying. Or, much of the expres-
sion was too naturalistic, too purely imitative; what the Germans
might term “naturlaute.” The outer world entered the composer,
but the process of relation was not initiated, and the world was re-
jected undigested. The Three Moods are instances of this sort of
production, amazing for utter verisimilitude, but scarcely fully ar-
tistic. Each of these pieces belongs to the category of things that
are single facts; art commences with the relation of at the least two.
It was, indubitably, this dead weight upon the imagination which
manifested itself in his compositions, that permitted Ornstein to be
so strongly impelled towards a career of virtuosic piano-playing. As
a virtuoso, it might have been possible for him to have retained in
his proper self the centre of his art, and make his composition a per-
sonal decoration or glorification, a means of achieving, as it had been
for Rubinstein before him, purely personal triumphs.
With the double sonata, this, the adolescence of a distinguished
artist, is ended. In his new magnificent composition, Ornstein has
grappled with large and resistant matter his own size, and achieved
a fairly rudimentary, but nevertheless honourable form. An inner
shape defines itself through the clamouring material. The three
movements, one lengthy, two briefer, stand fairly well defined against
one another, complement one another. The thematic material in each
is distinct, and yet homogeneity obtains throughout the work. A
strong, not very subtle, but clearly defined line is maintained
throughout. It will be seen that the composer has developed his
own feeling for distinguished and net forms from study of Scria-
bine; the complex César Franck and Florent Schmitt quintets have
also taught him much, have given him a model of richness of work-
manship. To be sure, Ornstein, though he rivals his masters in opu-
lence of material, is still a little constrained by the demands of form.
A certain rigidity is to be observed in his themes; musicians might
feel he has not exhausted all the possibilities of development latent
in the rich stuffs; nothing is more certain than that Ornstein, for all
his immense power, is far from possessing the miraculous technique
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
335
a
a
of development displayed, say, by Ernest Bloch. Still, the man is
striding along paths of his own. Every page of the sonata proclaims
as much, reveals him struggling towards a technique fit his per-
sonality. And a certain not very refined, but nevertheless not unre-
spectable solidity of construction has been obtained. If the form is
not specially deep and distended, the movements nevertheless hang
well together. In the first movement, which is dubbed by the com-
poser Fantasy, but which is indeed an essay in the binary form, hav-
ing an introduction, two thematic groups, a development section, a
restatement of the second group, and a coda shaped of material
drawn from the first-the two sets of themes, the one more vertical
and harmonic, the second more horizontal and melodic, are well con-
trasted. The material is in several marked instances surprisingly
well deployed, the composer inventing, with an often marvellously
rich fantasy, as he proceeds. The movement may, however, be
slightly prolix. It appears possible that Ornstein, in revulsion from
fragmentariness, brevity of wind, and poverty of construction, had
been a trifle too joyously abundant, had crowded into his bag a little
more than it quite conveniently might contain. The second and
third movements are less ambitious, and less replete. Of all, the
second is surely the best cast, perhaps because, in its slightness and
simplicity, it offered the composer a comparatively small problem. A
three-part song, with certain important extensions, it seems one of
those shapes that happen very quietly on the days when life is all
mountain-crest. The third movement, a rondo, possesses a good deal
of the foursquareness of the second. Less rich and less subtly worked
out than the first, it is perhaps the most powerful of all three. One
feels a massive inner form. Simple effects are obtained by the sheer
and unbridged contrasts of violently rhythmical prancing passages
with pianissimo lamenting and lugubrious pages.
What gives the work its highest aesthetic value is its deeply pian-
istic properties. If Ornstein's strong nature is still a little con-
strained by the problems of composition, it is magnificently released
in the language he writes. He is still something of a boy in his form;
but the degree to which his inventions lie within the medium of his
instrument places him in the very forefront rank of those who are de-
veloping to-day the art of tone. The two pianos which stood to-
gether on the platform of Aeolian Hall the night the double sonata
was performed seemed strange and many-throated black animals. It
a


336
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
was not the circumstances that they were played by two diabolos of
pianoforte-playing like Miss Leginska and the composer himself,
that might be made accountable for the fine metallic clangour, the
infinitely subtle timbres, they gave forth. These were produced by
the profound sensitivity of the composer to the media; sensitively evi-
denced by his score. The writing makes the two instruments give
forth not the crushed richness of one piano doubled, but of one
piano tripled or even quadrupled. And yet the immense silver vol-
ume of tone was never thick, never muddy. The two pianos balanced
each other, strengthened each other with their sharply conflicting
rhythms and tonalities. Together, they did terrible and wondrous
things: howled like beasts in the wilderness when the sap mounts;
clattered like "golden jewels down a golden stair”; arabesqued
"chop-sticks”; were pounding rhythms; were dark, velvety lugubri-
ous; wailed like mourners at the wall in Jerusalem; were like anvils
from which flew solid metal sparks as the strange intervals of the
Ornstein melodies sped and rocketed upward. One almost expected
them, as in the caricature, to rear on their hind-legs and balk.
Because of the developed piano-sense, Ornstein to-day seems to us
to be on the verge of becoming a member of the line of composers
that moves from Frédéric Chopin through Aleksander Scriabine and
onward into grey unknown regions. Despite a certain limited range
of ideas, he seems the latest of these orgiastic and solitary figures
who confide imperiously to the solo instrument par excellence their
pride and grief and love of magnificences. Of course, it remains pos-
sible that his virtuosity may still impede him, and approach him
always more to Rubinstein than to Scriabine. So strong a sensu-
ous gift, so much facility, makes it very easy for the possessor to re-
main always something of an improvisor. The double sonata, sig-
nificantly, enchants the sense more deeply than it touches the heart.
But one begins to breathe up. The tide that sweeps through the new
work moves from a different zone. It transports us forth again into
the grey horizonless open where it is good to swim. Out here, we
know how unhappy we were in the locked baylet where much of the
very finest of new music had left us. It is the wave and the wind
and the pounding heart that gives us life. It was for this battle that
we were born.
And once having swirled off its man, will it so readily let him
escape being carried even farther out?
Paul ROSENFELD


THE THEATRE
I
F I were Shaw-
But that alas cannot be helped now. The past month in the the-
atre has been so extraordinarily full of things that a universal genius
could have found it interesting and a limited genius, like Shaw,
whose cup is small, but who manages in the end to pour everything
into it, would have scooped up endless quantities of material for his
mind to work on. If it has been epoch-making—which I doubt-
the future is assured, at least, of variety. That its failures were not
wholly lacking in entertainment seems important.
The first effect of HE Who Gets SLAPPED was to make the pro-
duction of Liliom seem, retrospectively, like a trial balloon. My
private theory that Liliom was a trick play, "stunting” with impon-
derable, but by no means elusive, things (instead of with shot-guns,
identities, the Victor Hugo-Guilbert de Pixérécourt mixture of inci-
dents, was triumphantly borne out when a play by a comparatively
profound visionary was put on the same stage, with the same pro-
ducers and stage-artist, and with some of the same actors. The play
was published in this magazine exactly a year ago, so that nothing
need be said of it. The production is maddeningly interesting. It
is good and beautiful; as in the Theatre Guild's Liliom one detects
an error in the beginning, in the tone. But He, unlike Liliom, over-
comes the error and makes its way with an amazing vehemence.
Grant Mr Milton and Mr Simonson their idea and the rest is nearly
perfection.
Briefly, these gentlemen have given to a play which is a dramati-
zation of chaos a setting which is almost the last word in organiza-
tion, coherence, integration. The circus into which He flees for
sanctuary is elaborate and lavish; the tan-bark and the sawdust of
which He speaks are a million miles away. Jackson's sun is not on
his buttocks; Mancini is not a sinister Micawber, frayed and fraudu-
lent as the devil. The whole thing is exalted, runs smoothly, like
a country house in a bad novel, with seven servants. Mr Bennett
is never quite He; Miss Westley is all of Zinida except her sultriness
and terror; Miss Gillmore is exquisite in the earlier parts of the play


338
THE THEATRE
a
and an emotional ingenue in the final scenes; Mr Reicher forgave
his Mancini too generously; Mr Calvert heavily, but steadily and
consistently, accomplished Baron Regnard. Around these princi-
pals circulated an expressive and accomplished cast.
It is against the delicacy and the loveliness of the play that I make
my small protest; even in such a setting I think that most of the
principals could have done a little better; had they done much better
they would have broken through the lace-work which held them to-
gether. But, as I have said, grant the filigree, and those associated
in the production come in for unusual felicitations. Compelled to
make cuts in the text, they seem to have cut whatever was vague and
mysterious; they cut and polished and produced a cameo. But they
did it with exceptional gentleness, with a sort of tender effort to
understand what its madness meant. They called forth pity with-
out terror—a strange thing to do to Andreyev, yet in itself an un-
common achievement for us.
I am not moved to consider The Deluge so closely because of my
feeling that the slight uncertainty of its direction corresponded to
a like indecision in the mind of the playwright. It is in Roughing
It, I believe, that Mark Twain tells, with gusto and sentiment, the
story of a group of men caught in a flood, miserably repentant as
they approach the end, and miserable sinners again when their peril
is over. In Henning Berger's play the problem of the production is
to make the spectators believe that the deluge is fatal although they
know that it is not; everything which is pity comes from the stage
and everything ironical from the audience. It was necessary to feel
the slow disintegration of everything good and evil, of courage and
of fear alike, as the isolated individuals drew together. The actual
production succeeded miraculously in creating an atmosphere. The
solidity, not because it was wood, but because it was dark and glisten-
ing, of the setting; the changes of pace as the day pressed upon the
smothering town; the general satisfactory thickness of the human
relations; all these set off the middle act in which everything but
hysteria failed to live. Mr Hopkins' hand seemed to me freer than
usual; he set forces into swifter motion and let his masses build up
;
more roughly. If one is to assume that the personages of the play
were themselves aware of their tawdriness, good enough. If the
audience, and the audience alone, is to understand the paltry life
which requires the prospect of going under before it can be proud


THE THEATRE
339
or decent, then both the direction and the play are at fault. They
had before them a simple problem in short division: how much for
the audience and how much for the players? It did not matter which
got the lion's share. In the event it turned out a sort of intellectual
merry-go-round.
CONTINUING: Separate mention must be made of the enthusiasm
with which the New York critics received Miss Doris Keane and
THE CZARINA. Comment upon the actress, the play, and the critics
is beyond me. O God! O Montreal! O GREAT CATHERINE!
.
THREE weeks after seeing the Clavilux of Mr Thomas Wilfred
one is still aware of two or three technical delights which that colour-
organ can produce. Like an amiable figure in The Man Who Was
Thursday I feel that I will have to say “lush” and like Ed Wynn I
think I will say it. Lush those greens were, radiant. A soft refresh-
ment to the eye. And then what?
Why, then, I suppose, one begins to quarrel with both the shapes
and the rhythms in which those colours had their being. On the
night I saw the Clavilux, three fourths of the display seemed in the
same time-signature and lento. I cannot say whether this is due to
some necessity of the instrument or to Mr Wilfred's unconscious-
ness of the nature of the human pulse. Assuming that either or
both can be remedied, and omitting aesthetic theory, I would dis-
cover two difficulties: that direct association with a moving shape
(whether it looks like a hat or like the symbol of fruitfulness) at
once corrupts the comparatively innocent aesthetic pleasure which
the instrument is supposed to give us; and that the eye will have to
be either restored to its noble savage state or cultivated to some de-
gree beyond its present sophistication before it can carry the burden.
Incidentally one notes that, having rhythm, the Clavilux does not
really affect the beholder exclusively through the responses of the
eye, as the motor nerves are equally involved; the "purity” of the
aesthetic appeal is not more remarkable than
any
other.
Of Krazy Kat (Ballet composed by John Alden Carpenter,
danced by Mr Bolm, after the daily and Sunday chefs-d'æuvre of
George Herriman in the New York Journal and The American)
and of M Nikita Balieff's CHAUVE-SOUris, the detail must be lit-
ted here. Life, the Jade, has neatly brought them together so that


340
THE THEATRE
Mr Carpenter might be rated by some critics for "wasting his tal-
ents on a comic strip” while fairly intelligent people quite properly
lost their equilibrium and shouted Bravo! when M Balieff (through
Mr Morris Gest, blessings upon his no longer imperial but always
thoughtful head!) presented the highly sophisticated finished pro-
duct of exactly such a beginning. To me Mr Carpenter's tootling
moment of parody, a sort of The Afternoon Nap of a Faun, was
delightful, his jazz sufficient; he seemed to have missed the enor-
mous exquisite tenderness of Krazy's love, as Mr Bohm missed the
exquisite grace of heart in that adorably ugly body. No matter.
These artists were not wasting their time or their talents. And the
CHAUVE-SOUris, compounded of such trifles, is the proof. When
it wandered from fantasy to sentiment M Balieff's company was
flawless and only therefore interesting. In everything fantastic or
volkweise they were endlessly entertaining. They devoted them-
selves, without reserve and with no condescension, to trivialities, and
everything was exactly right. Even expressionistic settings are ap-
plauded there. It is, of course, important that M Balieff is an artist
of the utmost economy and that his company includes some remark-
able dancers, several actors, and a number of lovely voices. I won-
der whether we, matching them in this, would be allowed to create
something as fine as they did.
It is only eight years since Hiram Kelly Moderwell wrote his
Theatre of To-day, yet Mr Kenneth Macgowan was justified in
publishing a book which is "frankly a sequel" to that which first
made most of us acquainted with Inscenierung and cycloramas and
the Fortuny system. On all the things touching the mechanics of
the theatre Mr Macgowan shows an investigating, a singularly pre-
hensile and attractive mind. The information is detailed, compre
hensive, and up to the date of publication, although not to the date
of the title which is The Theatre of Tomorrow. What is more, the
book is well constructed, for it begins with the mechanical affairs of
the theatre, goes on to the artists who are notably associated with
the development of the elements of the new stage, sketches the plas-
tic, formal, and expressionistic theatre, and so approaches the actor
and the playwright and our common future.
Mr Macgowan, admitting that Gordon Craig "has the right to
respectful attention even when he grows eccentric” quotes Craig's
prophecy that when the reform of the theatre as an instrument is ac-


THE THEATRE
341
a
complished, "when the theatre has become a masterpiece of mechan-
ism, when it has invented a technique, it will without any effort
develop a creative art of its own.” One or the other of these two
mystics about the theatre has saved the reader the trouble of itali-
cizing the significant words. Mr Macgowan owes it to the reader to
adopt that article of faith candidly or candidly to disavow it; other-
wise one wonders a little what he means by saying that Chekhov
"sought spiritual deeps within the proscenium of the Moscow Art
Theatre."
I do not see how Mr Macgowan, or any one else who is sufficiently
concerned with the theatre to write a book about it, can help sharing
a
Craig's faith; and I, who am frankly sceptical of this lofty determin-
ism, am a little oppressed by the emphasis which is being constantly
thrown on investiture and mechanical exploits as if they were things
in themselves, which, after they leave the studio and workshop, and
appear in the theatre, they are not. If the new stagecraft (craft,
technique, methods) will not produce a creative art of its own, it
will succeed in doing what Mr Macgowan claims for it: "a visuali-
zation in color, line and light of the dominant emotions to be pictured
by the actors.” What has actually happened with Robert Edmond
Jones, Lee Simonson, Norman-Bel Geddes, and others, both here
and abroad, is that they have often surpassed their texts, actors, pro-
ducers, and created settings of a quite separate beauty. No Amer-
ican dramatist has yet been sufficiently inspired by their work to
give them a play worth their efforts, and their finest work has been
devoted to European plays written for the older and uglier theatre.
Mr Macgowan seriously believes that the new stagecraft releases
the spirit of the playwright; it seems to me that the old playwright
has released the spirit of the new stage artist. The revolving stage
made possible On Trial; but the despised old theatre was sufficient
for Seven KEYS TO BALDPATE; and Dante, Shakespeare, and Tol-
stoy are the sources of our finest stage productions so far. This is
not the European experience exactly; yet I remain sceptical of the
instrument and believe that whatever will be good in the theatre of
to-morrow will utilize the new craft, but will not be subjected to it.
I am also reasonably sure that little good will come if totally ad-
ventitious details are held sufficient to justify enthusiasm over unful-
filled and meretricious work. Mr Macgowan is perpetually doing
this, and perpetually encouraging us to wonder.
G. S.
.
.


COMMENT
NH
OW OR NEVER, or The Adventures of Bobby Bright, by
William T. Adams, known as Oliver Optic, is the book which
we recommend to those unable to reconcile themselves to America
because we, in this blackguard country, have no traditions. It is a
document, Exhibit in evidence, a book worthy of the Required List
for College Entrance.
We offer it, also, to any one who will do for raw America what
Pierre Laserre and Baron de Seillière and many others have done for
France. That is, make a study of the development of the controlling
ideas of each age. Confessedly, after glancing through the pages of
Sir Henry Newbolt's English Anthology of Prose and Poetry, in-
tended to exhibit the central ideas or the controlling ideals of Anglo-
Saxon life, we felt confused, a little ashamed not to know exactly
what each of the lovely or entertaining excerpts expressed in the
terms of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The French works are more ex-
plicit. For America we suggest that not the lofty idealisms of our
country, but the common notions, the sort of thing which Messrs
Nathan and Mencken put into their American Credo, be historically
examined. Mr Mencken has actually made one invaluable contri-
bution to this subject in The American Language, a rewritten ver-
sion of which has just been issued. His enormous gusto in dealing
with Americanisms does more than most period novels to create the
early American scene, and his researches indicate what Americans so
wilfully forget, that they have a tradition. It may not be a tradition
of culture, but if we understand the complainants correctly, a tradi-
tion of any sort is the material out of which culture is made. The
immitigable fact is that people using our words to express our mean-
ings were alive and well in the eighteen-thirties. Roughneck and
lobbying appeared in that decade; the first political machine so
named was run by Aaron Burr; and Noah Webster "sneered at the
broad a, in 1789, as an Anglomaniac affectation.” There's con-
tinuity!
As the inheritors of a Graeco-Hebraic civilization, sharpened and
determined for us by Runnymede, the Rennaissance, the struggle
between science and religion, the Industrial, French, and Russian
a
a


COMMENT
343
a
Revolutions, and the ideals of the Great War, we haven't felt ab-
normally depressed by the absence of a cultural tradition in our own
back lots. It was called to our attention and we were quite prepared
to suffer when it occurred to us to become a bit better acquainted with
our history. The march-past of ideas was not, we confess, impos-
ing, but it gave comfort; we weren't so much dissociated, so much
standing against a flat, as we had supposed. Did our fathers fight
in the Civil War or come over just in time to make us eligible for the
Presidency, we seem to live and to think very much as our prede-
cessors in this place three generations ago. Read in the preface to
Now or Never:
“This is a progressive age, and anything which Young America
may do need not surprise any person. That little gentleman is older
than his father, knows more than his mother, can talk politics, smoke
cigars, and drive a 2:40 horse. He orders ‘one stew' with as much
ease as a man of forty, and can even pronounce correctly the vil-
lainous names of sundry French and German liquors.”
Moeurs contemporaines, one might say; even contemporary style,
one observes, in the indignantly misplaced "villainous”—would it
be Clos-Vougeot? Yet it was written in 1856, when the hero of the
book bought a sheet of gingerbread and took the cars from Boston
to Riverdale.
More, O much more! In our very beginnings we seem to remem-
ber Thomas Jefferson knowing and acting upon the thought of
Europe, and even Benj. Franklin, father of Thrift Week and cor-
ruptor of the American spirit, was not totally hostile to the older
civilization. Those were the days when Joseph Dennie called the
Declaration of Independence a “false and flatulent and foolish
paper" and men felt neither fear of Europe nor the necessity of a
totally separate culture; they were the days, also, when the mere
fact that our civilization was beginning to differ from that of Eng-
land (which is not the same thing as departing from the Anglo-
Saxon tradition) was beginning to be noted: Noah Webster an-
nounced A Columbian Dictionary, with American corrections of the
English Language. It was a long time before the American attitude
towards Europe could be crystallized into A Tramp Abroad, written
by the man whose pictures of life on the Mississippi and in the pio-


344
COMMENT
neer west are among the priceless source books of our independent
traditions.
One doesn't pretend that the life of 1840 is mirrored in the Loop
or on the East Side or "down-town" generally. Yet it has a con-
nexion with American life, and it is this connexion which the home-
less fail to observe, chiefly because they feel that every manifesta-
tion of our national energy is as new and ungrounded as our airplane
post. They simply do not know what America has been, and they
are naturally impatient with the fanatics who half shut their eyes
and pretend that the stillicides on the national plate glass are main
currents of contemporary thought.
They are not exactly main currents, and those who feel that Amer-
ica is not spiritually isolated from Europe are the only ones who can
give a just and proportionate value to the direct American contribu-
tion to the life of the mind. A figure like Whitman's arises and is
considered as separate, “phenomenal.” He interests America as
much because he is outside our young tradition as because he is out-
side the complicated tradition of Europe. But no one who feels that
the intellectual background of Europe isn't firmly behind us, to lean
against or to throw rocks against, can begin to feel his portentousness.
It is conceivable that in a few centuries, if we assist Europe in her
handsome efforts to commit suicide, the background will exist no-
where else. It may be advisable to go there in order to savour its
richness to the last degree. But it is not necessary, if one doesn't go,
to remain unconscious of it and weep for the want of a substitute.
And it isn't, in effect, to the traditions of Europe that the greater
part of our exiles flee, but to the rebels against those traditions. To
say that there is a tradition of rebellion there, even a tradition of in-
dependence, is trivial. The lonely thinker, if he thinks, can enter-
tain himself more nobly at home, destroying Franklin, Emerson,
and Louisa M. Alcott, than in the arms of the newest dadaist, de-
spising Voltaire.
а
a


.
3
I
3
1.



Courtesy of the Bourgeois Galleries
DANTE.
BY ALFEO FAGGI



THE INDIAL
IX
V
OXXIIIO
APRIL 1922
THE DARK CITY
BY CONRAD AIKEN
HW
IS greatest pleasure in life came always at dusk. Its prelude
was the reading of the evening paper in the train that took
him out of the city. By long association the very unfolding of the
grimy ink-smelling sheets was part of the ritual: his dark eyes di-
lated, he felt himself begin to “grin,” the staggering load of business
detail, under which he had struggled all day in the office, was in-
stantly forgotten. He read rapidly, devoured with rapacious eyes
column after column-New York, London, Paris, Lisbon—wars,
revolutions, bargains in umbrellas, exhibitions of water-colours. This
consumed three quarters of the journey. After that he watched the
procession of houses, walls, trees, reeling past in the mellow slant
light, and began already to feel his garden about him. He observed
the flight of the train unconsciously, and it was almost automati-
cally, at the unrealized sight of a certain group of trees, oddly
leaning away from each other, like a group of ballet dancers express-
ing an extravagance of horror, that he rose and approached the door.
The sense of escape was instant. Sky and earth generously took
him, the train fled shrieking into the vague bright infinity of after-
noon. The last faint wail of it, as it plunged into a tunnel, always
seemed to him to curl about his head like a white tentacle, too weak
to be taken seriously. Then, in the abrupt silence, he began climb-
ing the long hill that led to his house. He walked swiftly, blowing
tattered blue clouds of smoke over his shoulders, revolving in his
mind the items of news amusing enough to be reported to Hilda;
such as that Miss Green, the stenographer, who had for some time
been manifesting a disposition to flirt with him, to-day, just after
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346
THE DARK CITY
closing, when everybody else had gone out, had come to him, blush-
ing, and asked him to fasten the sleeve of her dress. A delicious
scene! He smiled about the stem of his pipe, but exchanged his
smile for a laugh when, looking in through a gap in his neighbour's
hedge, he found himself staring into the depraved eyes of a goat. .
This would add itself to the episode of Miss Green, for these eyes
were precisely hers. He turned the corner and saw his house before
him, riding on the hill like a small ship on a long green wave. The
three children were playing a wild game of croquet, shrieking.
Louder sounds arose at his appearance, and as he strode across the
lawn they danced about him chattering and quarrelling.
“Daddy, Martha won't play in her turn, and I say—”
"Marjorie takes the heavy mallet—"
The chorus rose shrill about him, but he laughed and went into
the house, shouting only,
"Out of the way! I'm in a hurry! The beans are dying, the to-
matoes are clamouring for me, the peas are holding out their hands!"
“Daddy says the beans are dying. Isn't he silly.”
“Let's get to the garden before daddy does."
As he closed the door he heard the shrieks trailing off round the
corner of the house, diminuendo. He hung up coat and hat with a
rapid gesture and hurried to the kitchen. Hilda, stirring the cocoa
with a long spoon, looked round at him laconically.
“Chocolate!” he shouted, and pulled a cake of chocolate out of his
pocket. He was astonished, he rolled his eyes, for it appeared to
have been sat upon—"in the train.” Hilda shrieked with laughter.
He thrust it into her apron pocket and fled up the stairs to change.
He could not find his old flannel trousers. Not in the cupboard-
not in the bureau. He surrendered to an impulse to comic rage.
"Not under the bed!” he cried. He thrust his head out of the win-
dow that overlooked the garden and addressed his children.
“Martha! bring my trousers here this instant!"
He drew in his head again from the shower of replies that flew up
at him like missiles and going to the door roared down to his wife.
"I've lost my trousers!”
Then he found them in the closet behind the door, and, laughing,
put them on.


CONRAD AIKEN
347
II
a
a
He ran out of the side door, under the wistaria-covered trellis, and
down the slippery stone steps to the vegetable garden.
“Here comes daddy, now," shrilled to him from Martha.
He lighted his pipe, shutting his left eye, and stood in profound
meditation before the orderly, dignified, and extraordinarily vig-
orous rows of beans. They were in blossom—bees were tumbling
the delicate lilac-pink little hoods. Clouds of fragrance came up
from them. The crickets were beginning to tune up for the evening.
The sun was poised above the black water tower on the far hill.
Martha and Marjorie began giggling mysteriously behind the
lilacs.
"My hoe!” he wailed.
The hoe was thrust out from behind the lilacs.
“If anybody should drive up in a scarlet taxi,” he said to Martha,
accepting the hoe, “and inform you that your soul is free, don't be-
lieve him. Tell him he's a liar. Point me out to him as a symbol of
the abject slavery that all life is. Say that I'm a miserable thrall to
wife, children, and beans-particularly beans. I spend my days on
my knees before my beans.' ”
“I'll do nothing of the sort,” said Martha.
He held his hoe under his arm and walked solemnly among the
beans. The two girls followed him.
"Here's a caterpillar, daddy!"
“Kill him!”
"Here's another-a funny green one with red sparkles on his back.
O look at him!”
“Don't look at him! Kill him.”
“He squirts out like green tooth-paste.
“Don't, Martha!” he cried, pained. “Don't say such things!
Spare your neurotic father.”
He shrank visibly and strode off to the corner where his
peas were
planted and started methodically hoeing the rows, turning the rich
loam up about the pale stalks. Now and again a pebble clinked, he
stooped and threw it off into the meadow. Mary, the youngest, came
to the top of the steps and cried. Martha and Marjorie went to her,
and he forgot them. The rising and falling of the hoe-blade, shiny
with much polishing in the brown soil, hypnotized him, and his
وو


348
THE DARK CITY
a
.
thoughts fell into a sort of rhythm, came and went without his inter-
ference. “Ridiculous!” he thought, “that this solemn singular bi-
ped, whom other bipeds for convenience call Andrew, should stand
here with a stick and scratch the skin of this aged planet. What does
he expect to get for it? It pleases the aged planet. She stretches
herself in the twilight, purrs like an old cat, and expresses her pleas-
ure in the odd and useful effluvium we call peas. And this biped
wears clothes. Think of it! He wears clothes; things made out of
plant-fibre and sheep's wool cunningly and hideously made to fit his
arms and legs. He has in his pocket—a small pouch made in these
singular garments—a watch, a small shiny round object in which he
has reduced to feeble but regular iambics the majestic motions of
the sun, earth, and stars. He takes it out and looks at it with an air
of comprehension and puts it back again. Why doesn't he laugh at
himself?” ... He chuckled. ... "This object tells him that
.
he has time for two more rows before dinner. Clink, clink. Damn
these pebbles. My antediluvian anthropoid ape of an ancestor had
to walk round them, they were so huge. He sat on them, cracked
nuts against them, chattered with his family. He had no watch,
and his trousers grew like grass. .. Thank the lord they've be-
come pebbles.”
He sighed, and for a moment rested his chin on the hoe-handle,
peering out towards the tree-encircled swamp. The hylas were begin-
ning to jingle their elfin bells. A red-winged blackbird sailed in the
last sunlight from one apple-tree to another.
"All a vicious circle and all fascinating. Utterly preposterous
—
and futile, but fascinating.
He dropped the hoe and trundled the wheelbarrow to the edge of
the strawberry-bed.
"Why can't you stay where you're put?" he said. "Why do you
grow all over the place like this?”
With a trowel he began digging up the runners and placing them
on the wheelbarrow. It delighted him to part the soft cool soil with
his fingers, to thrust them sensitively among the finely filamented
roots. The delicate snap, subterranean, of rootlets gave him a de-
licious pang. "Blood flows—but it's all for the best; in the best of
all possible worlds. Yield to me, strawberries, and you shall bear.
I am the resurrection and the life.” When he had a sufficient pile of
plants, he trundled the wheelbarrow to the new bed, exquisitely pre-


CONRAD AIKEN
349
а
pared, rich, warm, inviting. With the hoe he made a series of holes,
and then, stooping, thrust the hairy roots back into the earth, press-
ing the soil tenderly about them. Then he rose, stretched his back,
and lighted his pipe, shutting his left eye, and enshrining the flame,
which danced, in the hollow of his stained hands. The cloud of
smoke went up like incense.
"Water!” he cried. "Water! Water!"
Martha appeared, after a moment, bringing the watering-pot.
She held it in front of her with both hands.
"Quick, Martha, before they die. Their tongues are turning
black.”
"Silly!” Martha replied.
The earth about each plant was darkened with the tilted water,
and the soiled leaves and stems were brightened.
“Listen, daddy! they're smacking their lips."
“They are pale, they have their eyes shut, they are reaching des-
perately down into the darkness for something to hold on to. They
grope and tickle at atoms of soil, they shrink away from pebbles,
they sigh and relax.”
"When the dew falls, they'll sing.'
"Ha ha! what fools we are."
He flung the hoe across the wheelbarrow and started wheeling it
towards the toolhouse.
“Bring the watering-pot!”
Martha ran after him and put it in the wheelbarrow.
“That's right-add to my burden-never do anything that you
can make somebody else do."
Martha giggled, in response, and skipped towards the house.
When she reached the stone steps she put her feet close together and
with dark seriousness hopped up step after step in that manner. He
watched her and smiled.
“O Lord, Lord,” he said, "what a circus we are."
He trundled the bumping wheelbarrow and whistled. The red
sun, enormous in the slight haze, was gashing itself cruelly on a
black pine tree. The hylas, by now, had burst into full shrill-sweet
chorus in the swamp, and of the birds all but a few scraping grackles
were still. “Peace-peace-peace,” sang the hylas, a thousand at
once. Silver bells, frailer than thimbles, ringing under a still and
infinite sea of ether. .. “Peace-peace,” he murmured. Then
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350
THE DARK CITY
he dropped the wheelbarrow in horror, and put his hands to his ears.
“The enemy!” he cried. “Martha! hurry! Martha!” This time,
Martha seemed to be out of earshot, so he was obliged to circumvent
the enemy with great caution. The enemy was a toad who sat, by
preference, near the toolhouse door: obese, sage, and wrinkled like a
Chinese god. “Toad that under cold stone.' Marvellous com-
pulsion of rhythm He thrust the wheelbarrow into the cool
pleasant-smelling darkness of the toolhouse, and walked towards
the kitchen door, which just at that moment Hilda opened.
"Hurry up,” she said. Her voice had a delicious mildness in the
still air and added curiously to his already overwhelming sense of
luxury. He had, for a moment, an extraordinarily satisfying sense
of space.
III
He lifted his eyes from the pudding to the Hokusai print over the
mantel.
“Think of it with shame! We sit here again grossly feeding our
insatiable bellies, while Fujiyama, there, thrusts his copper-coloured
cone into a cobalt sky among whipped-cream clouds! Pilgrims, in
the dusk, toil up his sides with staves. Pilgrims like ants. They
struggle upwards in the darkness for pure love of beauty.”
“I don't like bread-pudding,” ejaculated Mary solemnly, “it's
beany."
Martha and Marjorie joined in a silvery cascade of giggles.
"Where did she get that awful word!” said Hilda.
“Tom says it, mother."
"Well for goodness sake forget it.”
Mary stared gravely about the table, spoon in mouth, and then,
removing the spoon, repeated “It's beany."
He groaned, folding his napkin.
“What an awful affliction a family is. Why did we marry,
Hilda? Life is a trap.”
“Mrs Ferguson called this afternoon and presented me with a
basket of green strawberries. I'm afraid she thought I wasn't very
appreciative. I hate to be interrupted when I'm sewing. Why un-
der the sun does she pick them before they're ripe ?"
“That's a nice way to treat a neighbour who gives you a present!
You are an ungrateful creature.”
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CONRAD AIKEN
351
of
Hilda was languid.
"Well, I didn't ask her for them.”
Her eyes gleamed with a slow provocative amusement.
“They're beany,” said Mary.
He rolled his eyes at Mary.
"Our kids are too much with us. Bib and
spoon,
Feeding and spanking, we lay waste our powers!
They all pushed back their chairs, laughing, and a moment later,
as he lighted his cigar, he heard, from the music-room, Hilda's violin
begin with tremulous thin notes, oddly analogous to the sound of her
voice when she sang, playing Bach to a methodical loud piano ac-
companiment by Martha. Melancholy came like a blue wave out of
the dusk, lifted him, and broke slowly and deliciously over him. He
stood for a moment, made motionless by the exquisite, intricate mel-
ody, stared, as if seeking with his eyes for the meaning of the silvery
algebra of sound, and then went out.
The sun had set, darkness was at hand. He walked to the top
the stone steps and looked across the shallow valley towards the fad-
ing hill and the black water-tower. The trees on the crest, sharply
silhouetted against a last band of pale light, looked like marching
men. Lights winked at the base of the hill. And now, as hill and
water-tower and trees became obscure, he began to see once more the
dim phantasmal outlines of the dark city, the city submerged under
the infinite sea, the city not inhabited by mortals. Immense, sinister,
and black, old and cold as the moon, were the walls that surrounded
it. No gate gave entrance to it. Of a paler stone were the houses
upon houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers, which surmounted
the walls. Not a light was to be seen in it, not a motion: it was still.
He stared and stared at it, following with strained eyes the faint
lines which might indicate its unlighted streets, seeking in vain, as
always, to discover in the walls of it any sign of any window. It
grew darker, it faded, a profound and vast secret, an inscrutable
mystery.
"She is older than the rocks,” he murmured.
He turned away and walked over the lawn in the darkness, listen-
ing to the hylas, who seemed now to be saturating the hushed night
with sound. “Peace-peace-peace” they sang. Pax vobiscum.
_
.
He gathered the croquet mallets and leaned them against the elm
tree, swearing when he tripped over an unseen wicket. This done, he


352
THE DARK CITY
•
walked down the pale road, blowing clouds of smoke above him
with uplifted face, and luxuriated in the sight of the dark tops of
trees motionless against the stars. A soft skipping sound in the
leaves at the road's edge made him jump. He laughed to himself.
... "He had no watch, and his trousers grew like grass
He took out his watch and peered closely at it. The children were
in bed, and Hilda was waiting for a game of chess. He walked back
with his hands deep in his pockets. Pawn to king-four.
“Hilda! wake up!"
Hilda opened her candid eyes without astonishment and sat up
over the chess-board, on which the tiny men were already arranged.
“Goodness! how you scared me. What took you so long? I've
been dreaming about Bluebeard."
“Bluebeard! Good heavens. I hope he didn't look like me.”
“He did—remarkably!”
“A nice thing to say to your husband. Move! Hurry up!
I'm going to capture your king. Queens die young and fair.”
He smoked his pipe. Hilda played morosely. Delicious, she was
when she was half asleep like this! She leaned her head on one
hand, her elbow on the table. When she had been check-
mated, at the end of half an hour, she sank back wearily in her chair.
She looked at him intently for a moment and began to smile.
"And how about the dark city to-night?” she asked. He took
slow puffs at his pipe and stared meditatively at the ceiling.
"Ah—the dark city, Hilda! the city submerged under an infinite
sea, the city not inhabited by mortals! . . It was there again-
would you believe it? ?
It was there.
I went out to
the stone steps, smoking my cigar, while you played Bach. I hardly
dared to lookI watched the hill out of the corner of my eyes, and
—
pretended to be listening to the music. . . And suddenly, at the
right moment of dusk, just after the street-lamps had winked along
the base of the hill, I saw it. The hill that we see there in the day-
light, with its water-tower and marching trees, its green sloping fields
and brook that flashes in the sun, is unreal, an illusion, the thinnest of
disguises—a cloak of green velvet which the dark city throws over
itself at the coming of the first ray of light. . I saw it dis-
tinctly. Immense, smooth, and black, old and cold as the
moon, are
the walls that surround it. No gate gives entrance to it. Of a paler
stone are the houses upon houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers
.
.
.
.


CONRAD AIKEN
353
that surmount those sepulchral walls. No motion was perceptible
there—no light gleamed there—no sound, no whisper rose from it.
I thought: perhaps it is a city of the dead. The walls of it have no
windows, and its inhabitants must be blind. And then I
seemed to see it more closely, in a twilight which appeared to be its
own, and this closer perception gave way, in turn, to a vision. For
first I saw that all the walls of it are moist, dripping, slippery, as if
it were bathed in a deathlike dew; and then I saw its people. Its
people are maggots-maggots of perhaps the size of human chil-
dren; their heads are small and wedge-shaped, and glow with a faint
bluish light. Masses of them swarm within those walls. Masses of
them pour through the streets, glisten on the buttresses and parapets.
They are intelligent. What horrible feast is it that nightly they
celebrate there in silence? On what carrion do they feed? It is the
universe that they devour; and they build above it, as they devour
it, their dark city like a hollow tomb. . . . Extraordinary that
this city, which seen from here at dusk has so supernatural a beauty,
should hide at the core so vile a secret.
Hilda stared at him.
“Really, Andrew, I think you're going mad.”
“Going? I'm gone! My brain is maggoty.”
They laughed, and rattled the chessmen into their wooden box.
Then they began locking the doors and windows for the night.
.


POEM
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
tunes.
at the head of this street a gasping organ is waving moth-eaten
a fattish hand turns the crank; the box spouts fairies, out
of it sour gnomes tumble clumsily, the little box is spilling rancid
elves upon neat sunlight into the flowerstricken air which is filthy
with agile swarming sonal creatures
-Children, stand with circular frightened faces glaring at the
shabby tiny smiling, man in whose hand the crank goes desperately,
round and round pointing to the queer monkey
(if you toss him a coin he will pick it cleverly from, the air and
stuff it seriously in, his minute pocket) Sometimes he does not
catch a piece of money and then his master will yell at him over
the music and jerk the little string and the monkey will sit, up, and
look at, you with his solemn blinky eyeswhichneversmile and after
he has caught a, penny or three, pennies he will be thrown a pea-
nut (which he will open skilfully with his, mouth carefully hold-
ing, it, in his little toylike hand) and then he will stiff-ly throw
the shell away with a small bored gesture that makes the children
laugh.
But i don't, the crank goes round desperate elves and hopeless
gnomes and frantic fairies gush clumsily from the battered box
fatttish and mysterious the flowerstricken sunlight is thickening
dizzily is reeling gently the street and the children and the monkey-
andtheorgan are dancing slowly are tottering up and down in a
trembly mist of atrocious melody ... tiniest dead tunes crawl up-
on my face my hair is lousy with mutilated singing microscopic
things in my ears scramble faintly tickling putrescent atomies,
and
i feel
the jerk of the little string! the tiny smiling shabby man is yelling
over the music i understand him i shove my round red hat back on


E. E. CUMMINGS
355
my head i sit up and blink at you with my solemn eyeswhichnever-
smile
yes, By god.
for i am they are pointing at the queer monkey with a little oldish
doll-like face and hairy arms like an ogre and rubbercoloured hands
and feet filled with quick fingers and a remarkable tail which is
allbyitself alive. (and he has a little red coat with i have a real
pocket in it and the round funny hat with a big feather is tied
under myhis chin.) that climbs and cries and runs and floats like
a toy at the end of a string


CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE WEST
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL
HERE is at present in China a close contact between our Civil-
a
. is
still a doubtful question whether this contact will breed a new civ-
ilization better than either of its parents, or whether it will merely
destroy the native culture and replace it by that of America. Con-
tacts between different civilizations have often in the past proved to
be landmarks in human progress. Greece learnt from Egypt, Rome
from Greece, the Arabs from the Roman Empire, mediaeval Europe
from the Arabs, and Renaissance Europe from the Byzantines. In
many of these cases, the pupils proved better than their masters. In
the case of China, if we regard the Chinese as the pupils, this may be
the case again. In fact, we have quite as much to learn from them
as they from us, but there is far less chance of our learning it. If I
treat the Chinese as our pupils, rather than vice versa, it is only be-
cause I fear we are unteachable.
With the exception of Spain and America in the sixteenth cen-
tury, I cannot think of any instance of two civilizations coming into
contact after such a long period of separate development as has
marked the history of China and Europe. Considering this extra-
ordinary separateness, it is surprising that mutual understanding be-
tween Europeans and Chinese is not more difficult. In order to make
this point clear, it will be worth while to dwell for a moment on the
historical origins of the two civilizations.
Western Europe and America have a practically homogeneous
mental life, which I should trace to three sources: (1) Greek cul-
ture; (2) Jewish religion and ethics; (3) modern industrialism,
which itself is an outcome of modern science. We may take Plato,
the Old Testament, and Galileo as representing these three elements,
which have remained singularly separable down to the present day.
From the Greeks we derive literature and the arts, philosophy and
pure mathematics; also the more urbane portions of our social out-
look. From the Jews we derive fanatical belief, which its friends
call "faith”; moral fervour, with the conception of sin; religious in-


BERTRAND RUSSELL
357
tolerance, and some part of our nationalism. From science, as ap-
plied in industrialism, we derive power and the sense of power, the
belief that we are as gods, and may justly be the arbiters of life and
death for unscientific races. We derive also the empirical method,
by which almost all real knowledge has been acquired. These three
elements, I think, account for most of our mentality.
No one of these three elements has had any appreciable part in the
development of China. China belongs, in the dawn of its history,
to the great river einpires, of which Egypt and Babylonia contribut-
ed to our origins by the influence which they had upon the Greeks
and Jews. Just as these civilizations were rendered possible by the
rich alluvial soil of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, so the
original civilization of China was rendered possible by the Yellow
River. Even in the time of Confucius, the Chinese Empire did not
stretch far either to south or north of the Yellow River. But in
spite of this similarity in physical and economic circumstances, there
was very little in common between the mental outlook of the Chi-
nese and that of the Egyptians and Babylonians. Lao-Tze' and Con-
fucius, who both belong to the sixth century B. C., have already the
characteristics which we should regard as distinctive of the modern
Chinese. People who attribute everything to economic causes would
be hard put to it to account for the differences between the ancient
Chinese and the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. For my part,
I have no alternative theory to offer. I do not think science can, at
present, account wholly for national character. Climate and eco-
nomic circumstances account for part, but not the whole. Probably
a great deal depends upon the character of dominant individuals,
who happen to emerge at a formative period, such as Moses,
Mohammed, and Confucius.
The oldest known Chinese sage is Lao-Tze, the founder of Tao-
ism. “Lao-Tze” is not really a proper name, but means merely “the
old philosopher.” He was an older contemporary of Confucius, and
to my mind a far more interesting man. He held that every person,
every animal, and every thing has a certain way or manner of behav-
ing which is natural to him or her or it, and that we ought to con-
form to this way ourselves and encourage others to conform to it.
“Tao” means "way,” but used in a more or less mystical sense, as in
1 With regard to Lao-Tze, the book which bears his name is of doubtful
authenticity, and may have been compiled two or three centuries after his
death.
9
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358
CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE WEST
а
the text: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” I think he fan-
cied that death was due to departing from the "way,” and that if
we all lived strictly according to nature we should be immortal like
the heavenly bodies. In later times Taoism degenerated into mere
magic and was largely concerned with the search for the elixir of
life. But I think the hope of escaping from death was an element in
Taoist philosophy from the first.
Lao-Tze's book is very short, but his ideas were developed by his
disciple Chuang-Tze, who is almost more interesting than his master.
The philosophy which both advocated was one of freedom. They
thought ill of government, and of all interferences with nature.
They complained of the hurry of modern life, which they contrasted
with the calm existence of those whom they called "the pure men of
old.” There is a flavour of mysticism in the doctrine of the Tao, be-
cause in spite of the multiplicity of living things the Tao is in some
sense one, so that if all live according to it there will be no strife in
the world. But both sages have already the Chinese characteristics
of humour, restraint, and under-statement. Their humour is illus-
trated by Chuang-Tze's account of Po-Lo, who "understood the
management of horses,” and trained them till five out of every ten
died. Their restraint and under-statement are evident when they
are compared with Western mystics. Both characteristics belong to
all Chinese literature and art, and to the conversation of cultivated
Chinese in the present day. All classes in China are fond of laugh-
ter, and never miss a chance of a joke. In the educated classes, the
humour is sly and delicate, so that Europeans often fail to see it,
which adds to the enjoyment of the Chinese. Their habit of under-
statement is remarkable. I met one day in Peking a middle-aged
man who told me he was academically interested in the theory of
politics; being new to the country, I took his statement at its face
value, but afterwards discovered that he had been governor of a
province, and had been for many years a very prominent politician.
In Chinese poetry there is an apparent absence of passion which is
due to the same practice of under-statement. They consider that a
wise man should always remain calm, and though they have their
passionate moments (being in fact a very excitable race) they do not
wish to perpetuate them in art, because they think ill of them. Our
romantic movement, which led people to like vehemence, has, so far
as I know, no analogue in their literature. Their old music, some of
a


BERTRAND RUSSELL
359
which is very exquisite, makes so little noise that one can only just
hear it. In art they aim at being exquisite, and in life at being rea-
sonable. There is no admiration for the ruthless strong man, or for
the unrestrained expression of passion. After the more blatant life
of the West, one misses at first all the effects at which they are aim-
ing; but gradually the beauty and dignity of their existence becomes
visible, so that the foreigners who have lived longest in China are
those who love the Chinese best.
The Taoists, though they survive as magicians, were entirely
ousted from the favour of the educated classes by Confucianism. I
must confess that I am unable to appreciate the merits of Confucius.
His writings are largely occupied with trivial points of etiquette,
and his main concern is to teach people how to behave correctly on
various occasions. When one compares him, however, with the
traditional religious teachers of some other ages and races, one must
admit that he has great merits, even if they are mainly negative.
His system is one of pure ethics, without religious dogma; it has not
given rise to a powerful priesthood, and it has not led to persecution.
It certainly has succeeded in producing a whole nation possessed of
exquisite manners and perfect courtesy. Nor is Chinese courtesy
merely conventional; it is quite as reliable in situations for which no
precedent has been provided. And it is not confined to one class; it
exists even in the humblest coolie. It is humiliating to watch the
brutal insolence of white men received by the Chinese with a quiet
dignity which cannot demean itself to answer rudeness with rude-
ness. Europeans often regard this as weakness, but it is really
strength, the strength by which the Chinese have hitherto conquered
all their conquerors.
There is one, and only one, important foreign element in the tra-
ditional civilization of China, and that is Buddhism. Buddhism
came to China from India in the early centuries of the Christian era,
and acquired a definite place in the religion of the country. We,
with the intolerant outlook which we have taken over from the Jews,
imagine that if a man adopts one religion he cannot adopt another.
The dogmas of Christianity and Mohammedanism, in their orthodox
forms, are so framed that no man can accept both. But in China
this incompatibility does not exist; a man may be both a Buddhist
and a Confucian, because nothing in either is incompatible with the
other. In Japan, similarly, most people are both Buddhists and


360 CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE WEST
a
Shintoists. Nevertheless there is a temperamental difference be-
tween Buddhism and Confucianism, which will cause any individ-
ual to lay stress on one or other even if he accepts both. Buddhism
is a religion in the sense in which we understand the word. It has
mystic doctrines and a way of salvation and a future life. It has a
message to the world intended to cure the despair which it regards
as natural to those who have no religious faith. It assumes an in-
stinctive pessimism only to be cured by some gospel. Confucianism
has nothing of all this. It assumes people fundamentally at peace
with the world, wanting only instruction as to how to live, not en-
couragement to live at all. And its ethical instruction is not based
upon any metaphysical or religious dogma; it is purely mundane.
The result of the co-existence of these two religions in China has
been that the more religious and contemplative natures turned to
Buddhism, while the active administrative type was content with
Confucianism, which was always the official teaching, in which can-
didates for the civil service were examined. The result is that for
many ages the government of China has been in the hands of liter-
ary sceptics, whose administration has been lacking in those qualities
of energy and destructiveness which Western nations demand of
their rulers. In fact, they have conformed very closely to the max-
ims of Chuang-Tze. The result has been that the population has
been happy except where civil war brought misery; that subject na-
tions have been allowed autonomy; and that foreign nations have
had no need to fear China, in spite of its population and resources.
Comparing the civilization of China with that of Europe, one
finds in China most of what was to be found in Greece, but nothing
of the other two elements of our civilization, namely Judaism and
science. China is practically destitute of religion, not only in the
upper classes, but throughout the population. There is a very defin-
ite ethical code, but it is not fierce or persecuting, and does not con-
tain the notion of "sin.” Except quite recently, through European
influence, there has been no science and no industrialism.
What will be the outcome of the contact of this ancient civiliza-
tion with the West? I am not thinking of the political or economic
outcome, but of the effect on the Chinese mental outlook. It is dif-
ficult to dissociate the two questions altogether, because of course
the cultural contact with the West must be affected by the nature of
the political and economic contact. Nevertheless I wish to consider
the cultural question as far as I can in isolation.


BERTRAND RUSSELL
361
There is in China a great eagerness to acquire Western learning,
not simply in order to acquire national strength and be able to resist
Western aggression, but because a very large number of people con-
sider learning a good thing in itself. It is traditional in China to
place a high value on knowledge, but in old days the knowledge
sought was only of the classical literature. Nowadays it is gener-
ally realized that Western knowledge is more useful. Many stu-
dents go every year to universities in Europe, and still more to Ameri-
ca, to learn science or economics or law or political theory. These
men, when they return to China, become teachers or civil servants or
journalists or politicians. They are rapidly modernizing the Chi-
nese outlook, especially in the educated classes.
The traditional civilization of China had become unprogressive,
and had ceased to produce much of value in the way of art and lit-
erature. This was not due, I think, to any decadence in the race, but
merely to lack of new material. The influx of Western knowledge
provides just the stimulus that was needed. Chinese students are
able and extraordinarily keen. Higher education suffers from lack
of funds and absence of libraries, but does not suffer from
any
lack
of the finest human material. Although Chinese civilization has
hitherto been deficient in science, it never contained anything hostile
to science, and therefore the spread of scientific knowledge encoun-
ters no such obstacles as the Church put in its way in Europe. I
have no doubt that if the Chinese could get a stable government and
sufficient funds, they would, within the next thirty years, begin to
produce remarkable work in science. It is quite likely that they
might outstrip us, because they come with fresh zest and with all the
ardour of a renaissance. In fact the enthusiasm for learning in
Young China reminds one constantly of the renaissance spirit in
fifteenth century Italy.
It is very remarkable, as distinguishing the Chinese from the
Japanese, that the things they wish to learn from us are not those
that bring wealth or military strength, but rather those that have
either an ethical and social value, or a purely intellectual interest.
They are not by any means uncritical of our civilization. Some of
them told me that they were less critical before 1914, but that the
war made them think there must be imperfections in the Western
manner of life. The habit of looking to the West for wisdom was
however very strong, and some of the younger ones thought that
Bolshevism could give what they were looking for. That hope also


362 CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE WEST
must be suffering disappointment, and before long they will realize
that they must work out their own salvation by means of a new syn-
thesis. The Japanese adopted our faults and kept their own, but it
is possible to hope that the Chinese will make the opposite selection,
keeping their own merits and adopting ours.
The distinctive merit of our civilization, I should say, is the scien-
tific method; the distinctive merit of the Chinese is a just conception
of the ends of life. It is these two that one must hope to see grad-
ually uniting.
Lao-Tze describes the operation of Tao as "production without
possession, action without self-assertion, development without dom-
ination.” I think one could derive from these words a conception of
the ends of life as reflective Chinese see them, and it must be admit-
ted that they are very different from the ends which most white men
set before themselves. Possession, self-assertion, domination, are
eagerly sought, both nationally and individually. They have been
erected into a philosophy by Nietzsche, and Nietzsche's disciples are
not confined to Germany.
But, it will be said, you have been comparing Western practice
with Chinese theory; if you had compared Western theory with
Chinese practice, the balance would have come out quite differently.
There is of course a great deal of truth in this. Possession, which is
one of the three things that Lao-Tze wishes us to forego, is certainly
dear to the heart of the average Chinaman. As a race, they are tena-
cious of money—not perhaps more so than the French, but certainly
more than the English or the Americans. Their politics are corrupt,
and their powerful men make money in disgraceful ways. All this
it is impossible to deny.
Nevertheless, as regards the other two evils, self-assertion and
domination, I notice a definite superiority to ourselves in Chinese
practice. There is much less desire than among the white races to
tyrannize over other people or to lord it over them. The weakness
of China internationally is quite as much due to this virtue as to the
vices of corruption and so on which are usually assigned as the sole
nation in the world could ever be "too proud to
fight,” that nation would be China. The natural Chinese attitude
is one of tolerance and friendliness, showing courtesy and expecting
it in return. If the Chinese chose, they could be the most powerful
nation in the world. But they desire only freedom, not domination.
It is not improbable that other nations may compel them to fight for
If
any
reason.
>


BERTRAND RUSSELL
363
their freedom, and if so, they may lose their virtues and acquire a
taste for empire. But at present, though they have been an imperial
race for two thousand years, their love of empire is extraordinarily
slight.
Although there have been many wars in China, the natural out-
look of the Chinese is very pacifistic. I do not know of any other
country where a man would have chosen, as Po-Chui did in one of
the poems translated by Mr Waley, called by him The Old Man
With the Broken Arm, to make a hero of a recruit who maimed him-
self to escape military service. Their pacifism is rooted in their con-
templative outlook, and in the fact that they do not desire to change
whatever they see. They take a pleasure—as their pictures show-
in observing characteristic manifestations of different kinds of life,
and they have no wish to reduce everything to a preconceived pat-
tern. They have not the ideal of progress which dominates the
Western nations, and affords a rationalization of our active impulses.
Progress is, of course, a very modern ideal even with us; it is part of
what we owe to science and industrialism. The cultivated Chinese
of the present day talk exactly as their earliest sages write. If one
points out to them that this shows how little progress there has been,
they will say: "Why seek progress when you already enjoy what is
excellent ?" At first, this point of view seems to a European unduly
indolent; but gradually doubts as to one's own wisdom grow up, and
one begins to think that much of what we call progress is only rest-
less change bringing us no nearer to any desirable goal.
It is interesting to contrast what the Chinese have sought in the
West with what the West has sought in China. The Chinese in the
West seek knowledge, in the hope—which I fear is usually vain-
that knowledge may prove a gateway to wisdom. White men have
gone to China with three motives: to fight, to make money, and to
convert the Chinese to our religion. The last of these motives has
the merit of being idealistic, and has inspired many heroic lives.
But the soldier, the merchant, and the missionary are alike concerned
to stamp our civilization upon the world; they are all three, in a cer-
tain sense, pugnacious. The Chinese have no wish to convert us to
Confucianism; they say "religions are many, but reason is one,” and
with that they are content to let us go our way. They are good mer-
chants, but their methods are quite different from those of Euro-
pean merchants in China, who are perpetually seeking concessions,
monopolies, railways, and mines, and endeavouring to get their


364 CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND THE WEST
claims supported by gunboats. The Chinese are not, as a rule, good
soldiers, because the causes for which they are asked to fight are not
worth fighting for, and they know it. But that is only a proof of
their reasonableness.
I think the tolerance of the Chinese is in excess of anything that
Europeans can imagine from their experience at home. We imagine
ourselves tolerant, because we are more so than our ancestors. But
we still practise political and social persecution, and, what is more,
we are firmly persuaded that our civilization and our way of life are
immeasurably better than any other, so that when we come across a
nation like China, we are convinced that the kindest thing we can do
to them is to make them like ourselves. I believe this to be a pro-
found mistake. It seemed to me that the average Chinaman, even
if he is miserably poor, is happier than the average Englishman, and
is happier because the nation is built upon a more humane and civ-
ilized outlook than our own. Restlessness and pugnacity not only
cause obvious evils, but fill our lives with discontent, incapacitate us
for the enjoyment of beauty, and make us almost incapable of the
contemplative virtues. In this respect we have grown rapidly worse
during the last one hundred years. I do not deny that the Chinese
go too far in the other direction; but for that very reason I think con-
tact between East and West is likely to be fruitful to both parties.
They may learn from us the indispensable minimum of practical
efficiency, and we may learn from them something of that contem-
plative wisdom which has enabled them to persist while all the other
nations of antiquity have perished.
When I went to China, I went to teach; but every day I stayed
I thought less of what I had to teach them and more of what I had
to learn from them. Among Europeans who had lived a long time in
China, I found this attitude not uncommon; but among those whose
stay is short, or who go only to make money, it is sadly rare. It is
rare because the Chinese do not excel in the things we really value:
military prowess and industrial enterprise. But those who value
wisdom or beauty or even the simple enjoyment of life will find more
of these things in China than in the distracted and turbulent West,
and will be happy to live where such things are valued. My hope and
prayer for China is that she may learn the good we have to teach
without acquiring the bad also, and that in return she may give us
something of her large tolerance and contemplative peace of mind.


لم
منوی
AN ETCHING.
BY HENRI-MATISSE





THE VERY LOVELY HOURS IN THE LIFE
OF THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
BY FELIX TIMMERMANS
Translated from the Flemish by Nell v. L. Boni
a
THI
HE air is silver-wet like the back of a fish. These are days filled
with beautiful clouds of every form and colour, and, while the
sun gently pokes its shining finger here through a window, a glowing
rainbow-fragment rests yonder, above the fields.
The time has come to get the garden ready. Beguine Symforosa
has ordered Martienus, the nephew of the vicar's assistant, to clear
up the vegetable beds, plant flowers, and prune the neat grape vines.
-
He has come in his red woolen sweater and his blue apron, and his
eyes laugh as he works.
Symforosa, with her little pointed nose, stands looking on; she is
knitting a white stocking and talks formally about the grape-vine.
The vine is old as the street; sinewed and gnarled, it creeps be-
tween the back-door and the window, straight up to the roof's edge,
where it suddenly unfolds like a fan over the whole damp brown
wall. But its soul is young and full of vitality. No sooner does it
sense the spring than it thrusts out shoots, and in October it bears
the most luscious white grapes to be found within seven hours'
journey.
Martienus is smiling out of the corner of his mouth. He is not
sure just what should be said in the presence of women.
This is the first time that he has worked at Beguine Symforosa's.
He has lived but a few months at the beguinage; before that he was
a gardener at the castle near Turnhout. But his uncle, the chaplain,
got him a place at the beguinage; he thought it inadvisable that a
youth of twenty-five should be left alone with the maids of the castle.
Martienus now works for himself, earning a comfortable living,
and with a house of his own back of the iron gate on Hellestraatje.
Symforosa is very proud to see this handy gardener in her little
Note: The beguines are members of a lay sisterhood, not bound by vows,
in the Netherlands.
a


366
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
a
>
yard; she is agreeably stirred by his presence and puts off her prayers
;
until evening.
She sees in him a beautiful boy, though his arms are a bit too long.
His face is shiny and broad and rather wide at the jaws. Two clear
good-natured dog-eyes which seem always to smile, a narrow mouth
with thick red lips, as if they had just tasted good bacon.
“Are you not thirsty, Martienus ?” Symforosa asks solicitously,
but she really does not know how she can please the youth.
He shrugs his shoulders slightly, declines modestly, and says with
a smile, "It is really not necessary, Miss."
But Symforosa has already disappeared and returns quickly with a
thick glass and a grey earthenware jug. The foamless red beer mir-
rors her white cap and the garden, and while Martienus drinks she
looks with amazement at his Adam's apple which bobs up and down
with every gulp.
"Come, have another,” she says when his glass stands empty.
He smiles good-naturedly, looks into her white lashed eyes,
lowers
his own timidly, and drinks half of this second helping.
With an easy swing he climbs up on his ladder again and goes on
with his work while Symforosa knits.
She grows quieter. She asks herself why he has looked at her that
way. It awakens in her such an inexpressible, strange feeling that
she no longer knows how to address him. She is looking for the right
words, but cannot find them. There is silence. The playful wind
shakes a big drop from the rain-gutter, and it falls with an awkward
splash into the hollow water-barrel.
In the apple-tree a blackbird is about to sing, but a door some-
where in the neighbourhood closes with a bang and frightens it away.
In the narrow, dark passage, separated from the yard by an ivy-
covered wall, a quick step resounds hollow and metallic. The little
gate opens and Beguine Muyshondt shows her white cap and large
black eyes. She nods three times to Symforosa; then offers Mar-
tienus an empty medicine bottle, asking, "Won't you hang this bottle
on the vine-stalk for a short while? The vine-sap is said to be so
good for the eyes. Miss Pel told me that Martienus was pruning the
vine, and so I'm taking this opportunity, as you see.
Miss Muyshondt is always regretting the past when two hundred
beguines lived in the beguinage. When she begins to talk one knows
it, but one does not know when she will stop. She is a chatterbox.
a


FELIX TIMMERMANS
367
Symforosa sighs, and remarks that she has to put the kettle on the
fire for coffee.
“Don't let me disturb you, Miss,” Beguine Muyshondt laughs.
Symforosa is shaken from her fine mood. She walks towards Sinte
Margaretastraat, where the pump stands. When she returns Be-
guine Muyshondt has fortunately left and the little bottle hangs on
a pruned stem.
The water-kettle sings and whistles in the white kitchen, a lullaby
in praise of the tortoise-shell crucifix, and Symforosa would like to
ask Martienus to join her at the table, but the regulations do not
permit. Instead, she takes him a big bowl of coffee.
As she sits in the kitchen, eating her three thin slices of buttered
bread and two dates, she spies through the little curtain on Mar-
tienus, who slowly eats his bread and cheese, squatting on his hoe.
She hurries through her meal, and once more she is standing next
to him, knitting while he works.
And with a pang she hears him say: “The way it is going this will
be finished to-day, all right.” And indeed it will be.
When she pays him, she has to look carefully, for it is getting
dark, and while she is counting the money, she touches his fat hand,
but withdraws her own quickly.
She sees his red mouth and his clear, dark eyes.
“Good evening, Miss,” he says smiling. “Till next year perhaps.
Let us hope the grapes will turn out well.”
“Ah but a year is so long,” she reflects with a sad heart,
"Well,” she calls after him, “when the grapes are ripe, you will have
the finest bunch.”
And then she stands alone in the yard. A wonderful smell of earth
rises. The evening comes up out of the ground. All is quiet, the
dome of the sky is dark blue, and a great feeling of loneliness comes
over her. Why isn't Martienus her brother? Her thoughts lead
even further than that. ... But she closes her eyes. No, not
that! The blood runs to her head. She already pictures the neigh-
bours beating kettles and tin pots.
"And what if I do want
it ?” she whispers in a moment of rebellion. But then the prayer-
bell rings sharp, piercing her heart. On her knees she prays the "An-
gel of the Lord.” As she rises, the moon's beams are entangled in
the thin branches of the skinny apple-tree. She grows anxious and
asks, "Have I committed any
sin to-day?"
O
.


368
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
EASTER
a
The bells have been returned from Rome. They sing jubilantly
over the city, and they ring with joy above the resounding beguinage.
The strong wind seizes the sounds, throws them high in the air,
shakes them, drops them, picks them up again and blows them in
shreds against the clouds, the smoke-stacks, and the branches of the
whining trees.
To-
morrow will be Easter. Then Heaven will open again and our
dear Lord Jesus return to the churches and to man. Then there will
be the music of the great organ and the many-voiced choir of the
beguines.
It is a lovely day for a Christian heart. It cleanses one of all sin,
gives him the innocence of a little suckling lamb, and makes him as
pure as a mirror. One becomes spiritually young again, with fresh
blood: the soul has washed itself, puts on new dress, and walks calm-
ly in the fragrance of piety and grace, as though sin could never come
again.
And to-morrow, the plates will be loaded again with greasy meat
and rich egg sauces, for all stomachs are drawn after Lent.
And Easter opens the door on beautiful days, when it will be pos-
sible to walk in the fields again and to cut chicory along the banks of
the Nethe.
The soil swells with the developing life under it. Spring stirs in
the air, the woods gather a new scent, the buds are sprinkling the
hedges with purple. The Easter lilies are on time again; at “Cal-
vary” they stand in their shrill colours. Everything awaits the sign.
It is as if one need only blow a horn and milk-white May will step
from behind the turning windmills.
All this fills human hearts with joy.
But Symforosa has changed entirely since the day Martienus came
to fix her garden.
Her heart is hurt.
In her imagination, Martienus with his pink face, his red woolen
sweater and blue apron follows her. And everything else has lost its
meaning. She thinks and dreams only of Martienus. His figure
moves through her prayers; when she comes into her little garden
she still sees him there spading and digging, eating his slices of
bread, pruning the grape-vine; and when she sleeps she sees his in-


FELIX TIMMERMANS
369
comprehensible look as she filled his glass for the second time. She
herself is helpless. In the beginning she was afraid; it disturbed her
spiritual life, her community with God, the Holy Mother, and the
beautiful angels and Saints. She prayed at home and in the church;
it seemed to her a great sin; but, while she prayed that her thoughts
of Martienus should disappear, she hoped that they would remain
with her.
And now, after a month and a half, it has come to such a pass that
she no longer struggles against it, but submits with satisfaction. And
while the bells are ringing she prays, her hands folded over her
breasts: “O Father in Heaven, lead me along straight paths, and
show me your ways.
But she is no longer able to see the path without Martienus, and
inwardly she wishes what she does not dare as yet to confess to her-
self. But in her imagination she sees a little chimney out of which
smoke rises in a straight line into the twilight, and a woman stands
on the threshold awaiting her good husband who is to return with
his hoe and rake.
Symforosa laughs at the sun which is pouring down through the
rushing white clouds upon the beguinage.
THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
The beguinage is quiet after the midday hour.
In the morning the town-folk and the beguines have done their
shopping in the stores and in the market.
Now everybody stays at home and the hot sun shines on closed
doors.
A crow is sitting on the brass rooster weathervane of the tower,
and sparrows are dancing on the clean, white pavement.
The little gardens in front of the houses are full of country flow-
ers; and the violent sun strikes them and brings tears to one's eyes.
Here are lilacs, violets, peonies, sun-flowers, glaring, shrill, vivid
in colour.
Symforosa thinks this a beautiful hour for a walk on the via
crucis. The Stations consist of a row of small paintings nailed on
the walls of the houses and the church, and each protected by a small
roof.


370
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
They are old-sweet, almost sugary paintings; cracked, blistered,
and peeling with age. .
The first halt is at the little “Calvary” square, where under a blue
wooden roof Our Dear Lady is sitting in a small terraced garden
among violets and myrtle shrubs, with the dead Jesus on her lap.
The first Station represents the Judgement. Pilate and Jesus
have faded but in a corner one may still see clearly through the door
of the palace a straight little path of trees leading to a fountain.
When Symforosa has finished praying, she greets the white Pas-
sion Group and turns into Sinte Margaretastraat.
Against the wall of the church, in a closely barred little house, sits
a chubby Christ child; he wears a purple mantle with a green lining,
and an iron reed sticks out of his bound hands. This Jesus has grey-
brown lips, and his eyes, bitter and dissatisfied, look to the side.
That picture always frightens Symforosa, especially at night when
the big lantern burns in front of it.
And after telling her beads in awe, she goes to the second Station
on the other side of the church.
Here she reads under the little painting:
“Thou bearest, O Blesséd God,
Our burdens and our sorrow,
And we are expiated
Sufficient to the morrow.
O grant us, Blesséd Lord,
The guilty, Thy permission
That we may bear the cross
With patience and contrition."
After that she comes to Pompstraatje with its blue washed walls
over which the laburnum hangs. Then she turns to the Canal-
side where all the houses are alike: red brick with white bands,
round doors, and iron bars in front of the high windows.
On the doors the following phrases are painted:
“In the sweet name of Jesus.” “In the Garden of Olives.” "On
the mountain of Patmos."
Her heart starts beating, for she is going to pass Martienus' yard.
It is a long time since she has seen him, but not for a minute have
>
a


FELIX TIMMERMANS
371
thoughts of him been absent from her heart. He has been in retreat
in a cloister near Antwerp and returned home day before yesterday.
She can't possibly hide it from herself any longer, for when she
does not see him for two days she feels that the whole world has
turned against her.
Oh, if she could only see him to-day! Just for a moment! At
least her heart will be soothed again and the feeling of lonesomeness
will disappear. But why does her heart beat like this! She cer-
tainly isn't doing any wrong. She is a beguine, and beguines still
have freedom of choice between the religious state and marriage.
But she does not want to brood; she shakes those thoughts out of
her little white cap, and, like a hunted pilgrim, walks hastily from
one Station to the other.
The chaplain, Martienus' uncle, lives in Vagevuurstraat; she
sees him sitting by the window, his parchment-yellow head bent over
a book. High above the house stretch the luxuriant tops of the trees
which line the beguinage wall. The gate in the city walls stands
open and gives a mediaeval view of the distant fields and the Nethe
as far as the blue tower of the distant village of Malignes.
Finally Symforosa arrives at Hellestraatje, where Martienus
lives. She is absolutely out of her senses; she turns red and pale and
breathes in quick gasps.
Martienus stands in his garden working among the roses.
He wears a large sun-hat and yellow wooden shoes.
Her steps sound cle
sound clearly in the sunny silence and Martienus lifts
his head.
“Hello-Morning, Miss Symforosa,” he nods bashfully, and as
she says nothing, he adds: "Walking in the sun, are you?”
Symforosa stops and says in a trembling voice:
"One should not feel it-you don't feel it either. . . Oh,
what beautiful roses!”
“But I am used to the sun,” he answers, turning red. “I am living
on sunshine; what should I, what would my flowers do, without sun-
shine?.
· · Here you are, put this one in a little vase,” and he
hands her a rose called Gloire de Dijon, a dark yellow rose with car-
mine edges.
Symforosa does not know what to do, she is so frightened. She
looks at him, at the rose—and suddenly she wants to say something
which will touch him to the heart.
a
.


372
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
.
.
.
.
"Well, yes
.
.
"It is a wonderful way of earning your bread ... one is always
surrounded by fragrance and beautiful colours . . Your
the woman whom you will marry some day will like that very
much!"
“Do you like flowers as much as that, Miss ? . . . Do you? .
Ꭰ
Well that certainly is too bad... But Martienus turns red
and keeps silent.
"But what is too bad, Martienus ?” Symforosa asks quickly and
her hands tremble.
" he hesitates, “then you ought to marry a gar-
dener," and he laughs heartily.
The ground under her feet slips away. A shower of happiness
pours down on her. She has to support herself on the iron bars of
the gate; everything turns and reels, and sweat comes out in ice-cold
drops on her forehead.
“Martienus, Martienus !" she stammers, "oh, if our dear Lord
would only !” but she is not able to say more. She will ex-
plain everything to him in a letter, later. Just see how earnestly
Martienus looks at her. His forehead is wrinkled and only the
whites of his eyes show; he does not understand why she behaves so
romantically; he is worried by it; he believes she is in great sorrow,
and he says to console her: "It will all turn out all right
just look what happened to me ... whoever would have thought
it possible when I came to the beguinage! Even when I worked in
your place, not a thought in my head led to that. But it came to me
suddenly when I was in retreat with the Brown Monks. It must no
doubt be the guidance of Our dear Lord.”
"Martienus, Martienus! what what are you trying to
say?” she interrupts him, fearful and happy at the same time.
"Well,” he says calmly, with a broad and proud smile which
shows his beautiful, large teeth, “don't you know, yet? Hasn't my
uncle, the chaplain, told you anything? Well then, Miss, I am going
to join the brotherhood of the Brown Fathers,” and he looks at her
childishly happy.
“Martienus ” but Symforosa cannot go on; she turns
around, and walks away, forgetting all about the last Station of the
via crucis. She hears the sexton's wife start to sing a hymn and
play the organ.
Martienus with his arms full of white and red roses stands dumb-
.
6
.


FELIX TIMMERMANS
373
founded and shocked and cannot make out Symforosa's behaviour.
He stands there puzzling over it, while the sun filters through his
straw hat, and wraps the roses in majesty and gold.
In the meantime Symforosa has reached the front room of her
home and lets the tears run down her cheeks. She presses the yellow
rose tightly and sobs: "Martienus! Martienus! why have you for-
saken me?"
THE PROCESSION
It is the next to the last day before Martienus is to leave for the
Brown Fathers. Symforosa does not feel at all well and she prays
to Our dear Lady to let her keep her strength, for to-day the proces-
sion takes place.
Certainly it is a beautiful day for that.
The canopy of the sky is full of blue and gold, and of purple-
bellied clouds of silver and of white.
All this light falls straight upon the bright beguinage and strikes
sparks and gleams from crystal and brass candelabra standing on
window sills, and on white linen-covered tables, near holy paintings
and vases filled with sweet-smelling flowers.
The flags flutter from the overhanging gables; the candle flames
are wavering; the street is covered with confetti and white sand; and
the window-panes and relics rock with the resounding bells.
There they are! The people crowd aside on the narrow sidewalks
and the thresholds; to music, soft, sacred, yet cheerful, the proces-
sion advances.
Symforosa walks before the Host, the last of the beguines who
form the guard of honour, with a white veil over her head and the
green wax taper in her hand. She sees in front of her the whole
procession-young girls, banners, lanterns, old priests, holy pictures,
and shrines—as beautiful and richly coloured as a full-blown soap-
bubble; behind her the good fat pastor walks under a canopy of blue
brocade in clouds of incense to the cadence of Latin hymns and the
silvery tinkling of bells. Before his double-chinned face he holds
the gleaming pyx.
The canopy above the pastor is held by four boys in red robes and
white shirts, and the one behind Symforosa is Martienus.


374
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
Symforosa knows it, feels it, and can't pray; and when she has to
sing, her voice catches in her throat.
Ah, what a difference last year; how her young heart expanded
with joy amidst all this incense, colour, and music. How full of
pride she felt, and overpowered, too. Now her heart is constricted.
She still loves Martienus, and because of it has grown thin.
She has not seen him again. She has kept herself in her house like
a little mouse full of spite and shame; she sneaked to church to the
services and did her shopping at noon-time while everybody was at
lunch. Fear possessed her that Martienus would spread the story.
Whenever she saw people grouped together she felt that they were
talking about her. It seemed to her that the wife of the sexton had
looked at her sarcastically and that the Mother Superior had turned
away her head. But after a week she realized that Martienus had
not spoken a word, and then a heavy weight was lifted from her
heart. That made her feel free and she was able to mingle with peo-
ple. She no longer feared that she would be driven from the be-
guinage or severely lectured by the pastor. Nobody knew it.
Nevertheless she avoided Martienus. She did not dare come with-
in the horizon of his eye nor did she take any trips except to the
church.
In the meantime she dragged her great sorrow with her, and no
matter how her mouth had spoken of the coming parting, in her heart
she could not forget Martienus, and the grief of his departure stuck
like a thorn in her body. She kept thinking about it and many tears
moistened her white eyelashes.
She had not wanted to see him after he had given her that beauti-
ful rose, Gloire de Dijon; and now he, the man she loved, walks
right behind her, ready in heart and soul to enter the cloister irre-
vocably. She has not seen him since, but she has heard people say
that he wears a little beard and that it suits him quite well.
She would like to turn around, but she does not dare to, because of
the people and of him, and also because it would not be proper be-
fore God.
Already a blush of shame suffuses her plain, broad forehead and
in the attempt to resist the temptation she keeps her eye steadily and
sternly on the fat flame which wavers smoking above the taper. Her
head is so hot that it seems about to burst; her blood pulses violent-
ly, and she fears that some accident will happen to her.


FELIX TIMMERMANS
375
.
She prays to St Begga that she may keep from looking around;
she hears his step and feels his eyes upon her back. She will not be
able to bear it much longer. But she struggles and does not give in,
and is indeed happy that she is so strong. At the “Calvary Station”
the procession comes to a halt. Here the pastor will bless the people
with the Host.
Now all is still. The music has stopped and also the murmur
of the prayers.
A blue cloud of incense blows up into the sunshine and the be-
guines sing with uncertain voices the Tantum Ergo Gaudeamus.
Two sparrows chirp along in harmony.
The people are kneeling down, and during the intense silence pre-
ceding the three bell-strokes, Symforosa finally turns around and
meets Martienus' clear eyes which look at her in childish friendli-
ness; he smiles and nods.
And now the bell rings in the silence, three times, solemnly and
slowly; then a trumpet calls; again the music swells solemnly, lips
murmur “Amen Hail Mary''; there is a rustling of clothes
and banners and the procession marches on in clouds of incense, sing-
ing, and to the silver tones of bells. Symforosa's voice rises higher
again, the blood dances in her body, her heart in its joy does not
know what to do. Martienus has looked at her with kindly eyes!
In one sigh all her worries and sadness are blown away, and even
though she knows that he is going to leave her to-morrow, she is un-
speakably happy because of the beautiful glance that he has sent her.
And at the same time longings and desires return.
Oh, if she could tell him everything before he leaves, how wonder-
ful this farewell would be. Then he would never forget her within
the monastery walls. How good it is to know that there is somebody
who loves you and who is always thinking about you.
She laughs at the idea, but before she has gone two blocks farther
she is absolutely decided to talk to him, alone; before he departs
from the world. She does not look at him any more, fearful that she
will lose the beautiful impression. Oh, how happy she is!
And when she is lying at night in her big bed over which the white
curtains are hanging, she looks at the stars and says, smiling to her-
self: "And suppose he does not take orders after I have told him
everything?”


376
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
THE FAREWELL
The rain is falling softly on the roofs.
Miss Symforosa is waiting at the beguinage wall for Martienus.
She wrings her hands in despair, not knowing whether he is coming
or not.
She pushed a note to him, under his door, last night while the light
was burning back of the window, and on this note was written:
“Martienus, before you leave for the monastery, I must talk to
you. Come about eight o'clock to the beguinage wall, where the
three white birches stand.
Miss Symforosa.
Don't tell anybody and tear up this note.”
Will he come or not? She walks impatiently back and forth un-
der the high straight beguinage wall in the shadow of the high
straight round trees on which the rain patters.
Her throat is dry and her heart is small as a bean. Evening steals
into the air and already hangs in the trees. With its clear notes a
blackbird accompanies the soft rainsong.
The beguinage wall is like a church, of which the trees are the pil-
lars and the landscape the stained glass windows.
And Symforosa is fearful and happy. Fearful of her expectation
and happy about the rain. For now nobody goes out walking-
neither the pastor nor a beguine, nor anybody else from the place,
and nobody will see her talking to Martienus. But what does it mat-
ter? Everybody will think that it is just by chance; who would even
draw conclusions from seeing a beguine talk with a boy who is to
take orders to-morrow?
Now and again a drop falls on her white cap.
Many times she walks past the three white birch trees. He has
not yet come, but it is not quite eight o'clock. Oh, the time passes so
slowly. She begins to feel sorry that she has written to him. She
thinks it rather too far for a beguine to go, but it is done and nothing
can change it any more. She would rather go home, but what would
Martienus think if he came?
It would be best if he did not come. Oh, her heart is so full of
fear! What will happen? God only knows how angry he will be.


FELIX TIMMERMANS
377
.
.
What is he going to think of her? Therefore it would be better if
he did come; that would give her a chance to tell him everything.
Yes, she must tell him; her heart is simply overflowing; she could
tell it to a chair.
Ah, what an agreeable distress he is to her! And while she is walk-
ing back and forth past the three birch trees which shine out against
the black walls of the beguinage, she repeats to herself the words
which she plans to say to him.
Lazily the town-bell tolls eight o'clock and at the same time Sym-
forosa hears a step behind her. She does not dare turn round and
stands still, feeling all her blood sink into her legs.
“Are you there?” Martienus's soft bashful voice asks.
Then she turns towards him and with hesitating voice stammers:
“Good-day, Martienus."
He looks at her surprised, and in the twilight she sees his smile
and his large white teeth.
“Yes. ..” he hesitates, a smile twisted on one side of his face.
"Why did you ” but he dares not go on while she keeps her
eyes bashfully lowered.
He hears her sobbing, and sees her wipe tears out of her eyes
with
her middle finger.
“Oh, Martienus,” she sobs and suddenly she bursts out
crying, holding her face in her hands.
Martienus is frightened and doesn't know what to say. The rain
falls lightly on the leaves and all around everything is intensely still.
"What's the matter, Symforosa ?” he gathers the courage to ask,
while he pulls the meagre hairs of his new beard.
Symforosa looks up at him imploringly. “Now you are going
for ever, Martienus ?”
"Yes, Symforosa, I am,” he answers happily, "and I shall pray
I
for you!"
She closes her eyes and smiles bitterly.
"Thank you, Martienus, I thank you."
I
He does not understand her; she feels it, she hears it, and she can-
not open up her whole heart to his clear and innocent eyes.
It feels as if an awl is boring through her; the tears slip between
her fingers and suddenly she grasps his big, warm hand.
“Good-bye, then, Martienus, then good-bye,” jerks out of her
throat in sobs and gasps, and a raindrop splashes on her hand. The
.
.


378
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
blackbird still sings a few forgotten sounds and a cow lows from the
other bank of the Nethe.
"Good-bye, Martienus!" she says, apparently submitting. She
lets her hand slide out of his, tries to smile once more, and then de-
parts hastily, holding a red handkerchief to her eyes.
In her sorrow she hopes that he is going to call her back, but he
remains there watching her with open mouth and hanging arms.
The tender rain hums a song on the leaves and the roofs, and eve-
ning has come.
REMEMBRANCE
Symforosa enjoys her work.
Because she is young she has to get up when the Angelus is rung
to pray in church; after that she has to do the laundry; and now, as
the setting sun turns the sky to yellow, the work is done. She sits
on the bench which stands in front of the plaster statue of the Ma-
donna, looking at the sun. Her fingers are wrinkled, bloodless, and
white from work; her back is sore, but her mind is at ease.
The silent evening is as soft and golden as a yellow plum. The
smell of the roses is unusually strong at this hour; and on the line
the wash is hanging with a blueish tint and heavy with moisture.
From the sheets, spreads, and shirts comes a fresh smell of lavender,
bleaching, and castile soap. It all hangs so spick and span, so snow-
white, that it is a pleasure to look at it.
The Angelus is about to ring.
And Symforosa is happy.
But Symforosa is conscious that she has to be careful of her hap-
piness as of a soap-bubble which will burst at the slightest breath.
She must guard it in secret, with the windows and doors closed,
just as children do when they blow soap-bubbles from a tobacco
pipe; only in that way may she find satisfaction and enjoyment in
it.
But sorrow is jealous and has a Judas nature, and dresses itself in
a flower as well as in anything else.
Behind the old wall the blind beguine, Wittenhoodt, murmurs
her wreath of Ave Marias.
And she hears the playing of the harmonium in the sexton's wife's
house, and a woman's full voice starts to sing a song—the same song
a


FELIX TIMMERMANS
379
she heard that noon-hour when Martienus gave her the dark yellow
rose.
The song vibrates so gloriously in the evening; it rises and rises
till it is fine as crystal; then it sinks, and the tunes of the harmonium
enfold it, and birds' voices sprinkle it with silver.
Ah, it is so glorious and imposing; everything sits still and listens.
Symforosa sees that moment before her as though it were painted;
she sees the sun shining through his hat and the rose in his hand.
She hears the rain falling softly on the roofs and feels again the
thrill which went through her while she was saying good-bye to him,
and
... the soap-bubble of her happiness has burst.
The old sorrow streams once again through her heart and tears
roll from her eyes.
THE GRAPES
When a blue haze is hanging over the landscape like fine incense,
and over the hills the copper sun weaves threads which stick to one's
face or clothes; when quiet is in the yellow leaves and the shots of
the hunters reëcho from the woods, then the time has come to pick
grapes, for they are big and ripe and carry in their flesh the light of
the sun.
Symforosa stands on her ladder, picking the bunches of grapes
with pious devotion. She already has an apron full and there, every-
where, they still hang. She knows whom she is going to give bunches
to: one to the pastor, one to the chaplain, one to the Mother Superior
—and to the fourteen beguines, also to the three novices who are
passing their novitiate in the ivy-covered convent, a few to her sister
who lives in the city, and some to friends and acquaintances of the
beguinage.
But why doesn't she pick that one, that rich and overloaded
bunch? That one there, with its big, downy, sunclean grapes?
She cannot have missed seeing it, for it is the prime bunch of the
vineyard.
She did see it. She admired it. But she has not forgotten her
promise to Martienus, and as he has left, she does not dare pick that
wonderful bunch.
And she lets it hang there as a sacrifice and offering which she
presents to his memory. And of that she is very proud.


380
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
WINTER
a
Outside all is covered with snow, and it is dark.
Here in the room the stove snores and blushes, the lamp throws
a circle of clear light on the table around which Symforosa and the
beguines are sitting attentively occupied with picture lotto.
The one with the flushed face, sitting on the outside, is Miss
Siemus, and the other with eye-glasses and wax face is Miss Halver-
dyck-Doorn from Holland. The two beguines live in one house and
come every Thursday night in winter to play lotto with Miss Sym-
forosa.
They play for a penny a turn—the dice roll over the table, the
beguines have special sayings and smiles. Meanwhile a little voice
chirps now and then in the tea-kettle, and the round watch hanging
on the wall is so lazy that it seems about to stop with every
tick.
Miss Symforosa wins the three pennies and after every game fills
the coffee cups. Miss Halverdyck-Doorn hardly enjoys a mouth-
ful, as she seizes her chance to talk between games about her favorite
Saint-St Anthony.
Among other things she mentions that nowadays everybody is
talking about a marvelous relic which has been found in the monas-
tery in which Martienus is a brother.
Suddenly something awakens in Symforosa and she pushes her
white cap forward to be able to hear better.
“I should like to go there, to to that relic,” Symforosa
tremblingly whispers.
“Now is not the time, child!” Miss Halverdyck-Doorn says in a
sing-song tone, “you have to go too far afoot after the train ride.
The roads are bad and one has a terrible time getting through. Wait
a few months, Symforosa.
“Certainly,” Beguine Siemus adds very seriously. .
"I will go when the weather is good,” drops from Symforosa's
lips.
She blushes at her own words and looks suspiciously at the others'
faces to see whether they have guessed that she is not going for the
sole purpose of seeing St Anthony's wonderful relic.
a
.
a


FELIX TIMMERMANS
381
THE PILGRIMAGE
Symforosa has got permission from the Mother Superior to un-
dertake a pilgrimage to the wonderful relic of St Anthony. She
would have preferred to go on a Sunday, but as the beguines are not
allowed to leave the place on Sundays except in emergencies, she has
not dared to ask that of the pastor.
Now she is sitting and praying with some other people in front of
the smiling picture surrounded by burning candles and scented
flowers.
It is cool in the chapel, the door stands open, letting in the sun and
the fragrance of hawthorn.
It is very quiet in the church, although outside the sparrows are
chirping; silver candelabra and brass lamps glitter there; and a
brother with a bumpy bald head is laying the oriental rug in front of
the middle altar.
Symforosa tries her best to concentrate on her prayer; she shuts
her eyes tight, bites her lips; but every time the door bangs in the
hall of the monastery or in the vestry, or a shoe creaks, she turns her
head.
She is surprised that Martienus does not appear; she would have
liked so much to have seen him even if she refuses to confess to her-
self that it is on his account that she has come here. She has prayed
through the whole rosary; she has walked the entire length of the
r
Stations and has read her Hymns and Dedications to the Holy One.
With sorrow she feels that time is fleeting and that she has to leave
early, for the way through the fields is long, and on no account can
she miss her train.
She is not going to see him, her heart knows it; she will never see
him again, and she will keep on thinking about him. The peace of
mind she used to have is never to return.
For a long time now she has had the feeling that she should retire
to a cloister, there to forget the world with all that is in it.
She is sad now and a feeling of bitterness comes over her. She has
been longing for this day all winter; she has expected so much from
it, and has been looking forward to it like a mariner to land.
Why? She did not know. She was certain that she would find
him a Brother, and that would cut off all road to hope. And still,
still, she wanted to see him again; she wanted to see him; she wanted
>


382
THE BEGUINE SYMFOROSA
.
a
consolation for her eyes; she wanted to make her soul happy by the
sight of him.
It is time to leave. She is going to pray one-tenth of her
rosary, over, and if he does not come by that time, she is going to re-
turn home.
She prays very slowly, but it doesn't do her any good. The tenth
part is finished; Martienus does not appear. With a hollow sigh she
kneels down on the red and white tiles, totters from the church,
looks once more at the oak door of the vestry, and steps hastily
through the sunlit front garden, to make sure not to arrive too late
for her train.
It is the end of April and the two chestnut trees push out their
buds; and through the iron fence which she has to pass she sees the
monastery garden in which the fruit trees are glittering in their white
blossoms. It is as if white bread were growing there on the twigs.
Elder-bushes blossom next to flowering marguerites.
Symforosa stops surprised, for the brother standing there with the
gleaming sprinkling-pot in his hand, his cowl pulled up, long skinny
legs bare in the sun and the sunlight around his head-it is Mar-
tienus !
Her heart flutters; she has to put her hand in front of her mouth
so as not to call to him.
The water streams out of the pot. There is a smile around Mar-
tienus' mouth. The stiff black beard which begins on the lower part
of his chin accentuates the thick-lipped red mouth. He enjoys his
work; his clear eyes smile at the flowers.
She forgets the time and her train. She watches him work; she
follows him going and coming from the rainwater tank to the flower-
beds, and from the flowers to the tank.
It is becoming too much for her. He simply must know that she
is here and she calls him softly, so softly that he alone can hear it.
She calls him with a soft hissing sound.
His rosy head turns up; his clear eyes look around, and when he
sees a beguine standing back of the iron bars nodding to him, bash-
fulness comes over him; he recognizes her and smiles in a friendly
shy way; smiles once more as she stays there and nods a second time;
7
then he turns and goes away ashamed, and disappears behind the
shiny leaves of the laurel bushes.
Symforosa closes her eyes.
a
a


FELIX TIMMERMANS
383
This, Oh, Lord! surely is the most beautiful hour of her life!
A mighty surge of satisfaction sweeps over her. Her spirit is sud-
denly changed and lit with an inward clarity.
The sun around his head, the beautiful flowers, the cowl, and then
that happy face!
All selfishness vanishes. She is glad, for he is happy.
Then she hurries off through the fields with her tin basket hanging
on her arm and the umbrella in her hand,
She hears the train whistle in the distance. She slackens her
pace;
she can't make it anyway and she is glad to be alone with herself.
She has loved Martienus enough to marry him; she knows it now.
But having seen him in his cowl and in this spiritual happiness, all
that has been wiped out. There is space and light in her, and no sor-
row about him will bother her any more. She is satisfied.
From far above them she looks at the departed days smilingly.
Where were her thoughts? O good Martienus!
!
But the sky is never still for a moment. Grey cloudbanks are driv-
ing out of the south. The pastor once said: whenever long streaks
stretch out of the clouds, then that means rain.
You can always be sure of that.
Symforosa luckily has an umbrella with her and it is very pleasant
to walk in the rain.
The sun pushes behind a sail of clouds; in the distance it is wet
and little rapid drops make the stonepath shiny and patter softly on
the ripe fields and trees. A smell of soil and water rises from the
ground.
Symforosa is in sympathy with the rain. It all comes from the
sunny picture of Martienus, it sings in her, it makes her new, rich,
and once more full of confidence in God and his sweet Saints.
Now the rain pours.
It surely is going to rain for many days. The sky is wet and the
distances are drenched. It rains in lazy straight lines without wind
and it spatters mightily on the young leaves of the trees.
The aristocratic houses of the village through which she must pass
lie white and neat beyond the iron fences with golden peaks.
The well-kept garden-paths suck in the rain like velvet. There
are no people, but out of the open window of a great white villa with
a bed of red flowers in front of the house, come the harmonious chords
of a piano—and nothing else but the sound of the rain.


384
DONALD EVANS
It is just as if Heaven with all its bliss has opened for Symforosa.
It does not bother her that she must walk for three hours through
this pouring rain and that for the first time since she has been a be-
guine she will find the gates closed and will therefore have to leave
a forfeit with the janitress and be cross-examined by the Mother
Superior.
Symforosa shouts for joy.
For he who made her sigh and weep with love, who choked her
heart between hope and disappointment, he, himself, through his
own being has levelled her paths and cast light over her horizon.
And that is no small thing in the life of a human being.
DONALD EVANS
BY WITTER BYNNER
So I shall never hear from his own lips
That things had gone too ill with him awhile
Nor ever see again, but in eclipse,
The brown precision of his smile.
It does not seem his way at all,
To shoot no firecracker to a friend
But to make the usual interval
Unusual and finite and an end.
It is not hushed, like other deaths, nor grim,
Nor tragic nor heroic news,
But more as if we had not noticed him
Go by on lightly squeaking shoes
And down the coffins of the race
Tiptoe and stumble till he found his own,
Then clear his throat and decorate his face
With the consummate silence of a stone.


1.1" meinestone
tatto
A DRAWING. BY SIDNEY D. CARLYLE





*****
SR
1
TOUTE
EN
A DRAWING. BY SIDNEY D. CARLYLE





GEORGE SAND
BY BENEDETTO CROCE
I
F the hundred or more volumes of George Sand were a mad exhili-
rant to our grandmothers, to the people of our generation they
are a decided bore—toys that have lost their power to amuse now
that we know how their springs work. And I must confess my sur-
prise that critics who insist on regarding art as coincident with the
phenomena of society and like these a product of the historical
moment are not impressed by such startling losses of vogue as this
and fail to observe how impossible it is to revive as art something
that was never art in the first place.
In a practical sense, George Sand was doubtless one of the most
notable representatives of the moral life of Europe during the period
just preceding the Revolution of '48. This period she represented
energetically and above all else in a strange utopia that might be
called the religion of love, which by this very trait of religiousness
set itself off clearly from the sensiblerie of the eighteenth century
and bore the stamp of the new age-a Godless age yearning for a
new God. According to the tenets of this religion life finds value
and significance in love-love as a phenomenon of sex, quite simply;
and Eros is its god, though the rhetorical phrasing of that day pre-
ferred a more unctious formula—“Love comes from God.” Itself
the single and supreme act of worship, love recognizes no law supe-
rior to itself: once aroused, it has a right, "the right of passion,” to
satisfaction. A sovereign entity, it tolerates no division of power
with other impulses of the soul: every emotion, every action, must
be love's subject, content to serve it and to obey it. Love, also, is
one and eternal; if it seems to vary in its object, that is the fault of
society impeding and entrammeling with stupid tyrannical laws; or
of material circumstance, harassing and distracting. Essentially,
love remains synonymous with constancy, fidelity. The unrequited
lover, further, must respect the passion the loved one has for another
more fortunate being. Love demands self-sacrifice, that the loved
one may perform his or her own sacred rite in full liberty and in
perfect joy. In such sacrifice the true lover finds duty fulfilled and
heroism actualized.


386
GEORGE SAND
Now all this machinery of the sublime has ceased to fool any one.
We can see in a character like Jacques only the spineless idler, who
a
has never learned that true living means hard work for the realiza-
tion of some purpose. He is a combination of the hero and the rogue,
a dandy of false refinement, a man destitute of moral perception,
which, accordingly, he cannot demand or provoke in others. Carry-
ing indulgence to an extreme, we might at best describe him as a
paranoiac capable of rationalizing his obsessions. Lélia, too, is no
less a maniac, who hears from her sister Pulchérie (a woman of the
boulevards, who does not yield an inch to Lélia in this pretension to
the sublime) perhaps the wisest counsel ever given her: "If you
can't become a nun,” says Pulchérie, “why not come out on the
streets with me?” And a downright criminal, in conduct and at bot-
tom, is Léone Léoni. This man has received "from God” the “divine
capacity of loving." And so a noble woman lets herself be dragged
by him to all the depths of baseness and abjection. She cannot desert
him; and when he abandons her, she must return, on his appeal; for
“the hand of God” has united them in the indissoluble bonds of love.
The erotic philosophy of George Sand is that of a woman who not
only is stranger to humility and remorse, but who, in following every
caprice of sense or imagination, poses before herself and before the
world as the champion of liberty and of sincerity, the martyr of irre-
sistible passion, the model of devotion, tenderness, and self-sacrifice,
believing herself meanwhile the most fascinating creature conceiv-
able. In the course of her romantic escapades, George Sand hap-
pened once on an honest young fellow (a medical student of promise,
a certain Dr Pagello) whom she enticed into the turmoil of passion-
ate life about her and who followed her to Paris. There, shortly, she
tired of him; and he returned forth with to the pursuit of his studies.
"I was more or less of a nuisance to her,” he wrote years later, look-
ing back as an octogenarian upon this strange adventure of his youth
where he, involuntarily, had played the part of Octave between
Musset-Jacques and Sand-Fernande. "My common-sense, as a
plain ordinary Italian, was always deflating this so much misunder-
stood sublimity of hers with which she was wont to disguise the gar-
ishness of her passions.
It would be easy, perhaps, to prove that the sensuous and patho-
logical origin of George Sand's “religion of love” deprives it of any
philosophical importance and of any value as "truth.” All those
a


BENEDETTO CROCE
387
nervous contortions of hers furnished her with only the semblance of
coherent theory. But the point for us is that, translated into novel
form, they failed to produce true poetry and true art as well; for art
is always truth, and demands sincerity with one's self, a higher sin-
cerity capable of rising superior to practical interest and of probing
deep into the soul, scattering or at least penetrating, the mists that
linger there. Now George Sand was not a deep mind. There was
little tenseness in her inner life. People of her time describe her as
taciturn, abstracted, preoccupied—absorbed, however, as we may
justly guess, in stringing together mentally all those romantic plots
which reveal her as the woman she was. Art she never respected
duly, conceiving it simply as the natural outlet for her own sensi-
bility, her own intellectuality. She brought the spirit of the pot-
boiler into everything that she did, studying always to produce a
book that would please, and as many “successful” books as possible.
To be sure she "observed reality." Who, for that matter, does not?
She studied people and things very carefully indeed. But, as she
herself has expressed it, her own work consisted in “idealizing
reality.”
Now this “idealization" must not be mistaken for the severe pro-
cess of "purification,” of bona fide artistic creation; and to appreci-
ate how little significance attaches to the contrast so frequently
established between her "idealistic” and her “realistic" novels, it is
well to remember her own notion of “idealization.” It consisted, as
she says, in the construction of a character to embody the feeling, the
leading idea, of the novel, representing, therefore, passion, love. To
this character “I would give all the faculties towards which one in-
wardly aspires, or all the sorrows that one has witnessed or suffered
endowing beauty and pain, the forces exceptional people ex-
perience, with an importance they rarely have in real life.” And so
O
on.
Now this wholly practical, I might almost say mercenary, attitude
towards the process of imagination subordinate to the will to please,
has been wrongfully confused with a poetic mood. Time and again
critics have said that “thanks to her boundless wealth of imagination,
coupled with the gift of an expressive style, George Sand is a poet
with few equals, and one of the greatest of her race and age”; and
;
they praise her "lyricism” and define her novels as "lyric romances."
“Lyricism,” indeed, we may let pass if we stress the -ism, emphasiz-


388
GEORGE SAND
ing, that is, the distinction between the truly lyric and the verbose
rhetoric of passion. On the other hand, the same critics usually ad-
mit (the admission implies that their laudatory "lyricism” was after
all a fiche de consolation) the poor construction of these novels, with-
out however observing that such a failing arises from lack of vigor-
ous conception, of true poetic inspiration; whereby George Sand
drifts casually along with the whims of her people, letting things
turn now this way and now that. She marries Indiana to Ralph; she
sends Lélia to a nunnery; but I imagine it would have cost her little
effort to invert these situations. Often, indeed, she begins with
vigour and enthusiasm-I am thinking of Mauprat; but when we
look for the full blossoming of that promise we find her gradually
lapsing into conventionality, intrigue, triviality, pure adventure.
“Lyricism” as a rhetorical device, and the sugared glamour of the
romanesque are present in all her novels—in varying proportions, to
be sure, the one preponderating in some, the other in others. In Lélia,
her sturdiest poetic effort, the first is more in evidence: everything
here is radiant and resonant, dazzling to the eye and soothing, when
it is not deafening, to the ear. The people of Lélia are neither alle-
gories nor poetic individuals: not allegories, for lack of precision in
significance; not poetic individuals, for lack of precision in character.
This prose poem, this Faust in skirts, does not reduce even to a series
of disconnected lyrics; for when we are offered poetry, we find decla-
mation pure and simple. Take even such a deliberate poem as Lélia's
song "to God” :
>
a
“Why, oh why hast thou made us thus? What profit to thee from
our anguish? Does our nothingness add to thy glory, Lord? Is sor-
row given to man that he may yearn for Heaven more ardently? Is
hope but a pale flower, clinging to the rocks and bending to the
storm? Precious flower! Adorable fragrance! Here find thy home,
in this empty, this sorrowing heart!"
1
In all this we have sentimentality in the worst sense of the term,
the staring eye, the frantic gesture, and the vacant head! But read
on to the scene where Lélia, Trenmor, and Stenio have their ride on
the lake (the heaviest cargo of sublimity a frail bark ever bore) cul-
minating in the sublime kiss which Lélia bestows on Stenio: "She
gave me,” says he, "something resembling the ransom of a king, but


BENEDETTO CROCE
389
with the simplicity with which another might have handed me a
penny!” Lélia, in short, remains the record of a state of mind. To the
dogmas of an erotic religion which the book contains, we might add a
few other items of interest, such as the negation of progress (“prog-
ress cannot create a new sense of things” or “progress cannot perfect
human society') or Lélia's yearning to “die of curiosity”; or her ex-
clamation at the end of the novel: "For ten thousand years I have
been crying to the Infinite: ‘Truth! Truth!'; and for ten thousand
years the Infinite has been answering: 'Desire! Desire!'”
The characters of Jacques also are phantoms of an exasperated
erotic sensuality—the hero himself, a mysterious, however perfect
being, utterly useless in the world and solely concerned with pure
(impure) love, so wholly devoted to women indeed that he will com-
mit suicide rather than disturb a moment of their pleasure; and Sil-
via, the heroine sister of this hero, self-banished to solitude par excès
et richesse d'amour: “My soul burns with thirst for adoring some
sublime being on bended knee—and I find only the commonplace
about me! I would make a god of my love—and I meet only men!"
And the letter form of this novel-letters in the same turgid style,
but which, inappropriately as letters, furnish all the exposition neces-
sary to the reader—is again a device for avoiding serious artistic
effort.
What is Indiana—the novel, through which she made her first
success, and which is the first example of her professional technique
-but a series, extrinsically and quite mechanically arranged, of sur-
prises, dramatic coups, suicides, transoceanic flights, and so on. A
young woman married to an old man longs to love youthfully and to
be youthfully loved: “Madame Delmare was really unhappy; and
once she felt her chilly environment warmed by the breath of a
young and ardent man, once a word of tenderness and caress fell en-
chanting upon her ear, once a kiss burning with desire had pressed
like a white hot iron to her hand, she forgot what duty imposed,
what prudence urged, what future promised, and .. Generic,
hackneyed phrases, these, though I realize that millions of women in
Europe have wept over them; just as the episodes and characters are
casual, without necessity. Ralph, the cousin for instance, is a deus
ex machina, a silent lover who never allows his feelings to be sus-
pected, but foresees everything Indiana plans to do, intervenes provi-
dentially in every moment of danger or despair, and finally comes
a


390
GEORGE SAND
a
out with a great speech in which he shows himself the opposite of
what all along he seemed to be. In the first writing of the novel,
George Sand threw the two cousins off a precipice. Later she felt
sorry for them, brought them back to life, and had them happily
married!
Unquestionably beauties of a secondary order are not wanting in
George Sand's early romances. She is a writer of admirable fluency
and amplitude, deficient in relief perhaps, but still capable of pro-
ducing many a vivacious description. I can find some poetry in her
much and properly praised “natural scenes,” which apparently de-
rive from a sincere exaltation of spirit—as it were, bars of real
music, in a minor key, faintly persisting through the din of hyper-
bolic passion, fallacious paradox, conventionality, and trade expe-
dient. Even here we find flowery language, rhetoric, verbosity—but
melancholy, withal, and abandonment, purification, joy.
In the second of the four periods into which historians commonly
divide the too copious production of George Sand, she began to cul-
tivate humanitarian, and more particularly, socialistic ideals. She
did no thinking of her own here, but repeated what the various men
about her were saying. In this respect some of her novels are evi-
dences of the wide diffusion of the old-fashioned Socialism of those
days. In them sociological prattle comes to replace the exploitation
of emotional experiences, a change of emphasis due, in the first place,
to an extension of George Sand's temperamental attitudes from the
narrow field of sex indulgence to that of society and humanity at
large; and, in the second place, to her need, as a professional writer,
of replenishing her stock of raw materials, threatened with exhaus-
tion by her repeated use of the “right of passion,” the "religion of
love,” and the “unattainableness of the erotico-religious ideal.”
In accord with her peculiar view of the world, her solution of the
social problem—who will deny its originality ?-consisted in a recon-
ciliation of the classes by the arrangement of love-affairs and mar-
riages between working men and ladies of the bourgeoisie—a sug-
gestion, moreover, that it took some courage to make; for though a
“gentleman,” hunting for amusement, need not disdain the kitchen-
maid and peasant girl, the European "lady,” in whom vanity is
a controlling impulse, will ever prefer the well-dressed fop to the un-
couth proletarian. In any case, such is the motif, the intellectual
motif, of a number of her novels, among them The Millman of Angi-


BENEDETTO CROCE
391
bault. Here an honest flour-maker is reluctant to marry the Baroness
of Blanchemont because of her wealth; till finally she writes to him
one day (you see, her husband has died leaving her without a
penny): "Oh, joy, joy, Henri! I am ruined!”
In her "third manner,” as critics say, free now from frantic asser-
tions of erotic "liberty” and from sociological sentimentalizing,
George Sand is reputed to have "found herself” at last; and in her
masterpieces, the idyllic romances, to have given a "new genre" to
French literature. It is beyond dispute that La Mare au Diable, La
Petite Fadette, François le Champi, Les Maîtres Sonneurs are attrac-
tive books, full of sweetness and gentleness and, from a literary point
of view, far better constructed than her preceding efforts, and more
carefully written as well, with a truly skilful use of humble lan-
guage. But to my mind, they represent rather the full maturity of
George Sand's technique as a producer of serials than any real poetic
vision. In La Mare au Diable, the best of them, everything is pre-
pared, worked out intellectually, with a view to "selling" a story of
innocence and tenderness. Mary is such a paragon of perfection—a
sort of rustic Consuelo! She plays the part of second mother to little
Pierre with such obvious designs (they are the author's, of course)
on the heart of Germain! The bivouac in the woods, where Mary
cooks Germain's supper, is special pleading in behalf of the heroine,
calculated to win our sympathy for this poor girl who is forced to
leave home and mother to work far away in a strange house. Nat-
urally, since Germain is looking for a wife, why should he not marry
such a thoroughly “good” soul as this, such a cheery, modest, exem-
plary person? The "other woman” has no chance in competition
with all this virtue, as we well understand even before meeting her;
and when Mary's new employer proves to be the villain he is, Ger-
main has no possible means of escape. The accuracy of George
Sand's portrayal of peasant life in these and other stories of country
people has been well attested, in rebuttal of an unjust criticism which
concealed a juster one—that there is something mannered, forced,
affected, in these edifying and consoling tales. Read the passage in
Les Maîtres Sonneurs where Thérence informs Joseph that she is in
love with him. Such dialogues have been assailed as representing
a moral refinement, an intellectual subtlety improbable in true peas-
ants. This is, I believe, irrelevant. The real defect here is affecta-
tion, pose, the premeditation of an idyllic fustian on the part of a
a


392
GEORGE SAND
writer bent on pleasing who has hit upon the simplicity of rural ways
as a new theme for exploitation.
Le Marquis de Villemer is the recognized masterpiece of George
Sand's "fourth period,” where she turns from the loves of plain
country people to those of town folks—and in the full serenity of
her art, as critics have held, without any of the fictions of rebellion
and apostleship which had disturbed her in the past. The situation
utilized in this novel was not new even in George Sand's day—the
governess, poor, beautiful, and proud, who, in the face of social
prejudices, finally marries the "young man of the house." There we
find the Marquis of Villemer, timid, bashful, sensitive, delicate, gen-
erous, a fountain of knowledge, a genius elect, with his heart bleed-
ing from a great love cut off by death; and his brother, the Duke, a
dissipated rake, but so kind-hearted, after all, so solicitous of the
happiness of other people; and Caroline de Saint Geneix herself, the
model woman, as usual, combining the highest moral virtues and in-
tellectual gifts with unparalleled strength of will—a new Consuelo,
a new petite Marie, a new petite Fadette, all in one. This is a tale
that our European débutantes, our ladies and gentlemen of “good
society," read with rapture, and which it is good taste to refer to as
exquis. But I advise lovers of simple poetry to keep far away from
such things; for when they do not leave one quite indifferent, they
tend to irritate by their palpable counterfeit of art.
In thus denying artistic value to the novels of George Sand, am I
guilty of a deliberate impoliteness towards such an outstanding
figure in nineteenth century culture, to such an accomplished writer,
as George Sand undeniably was? Nothing could be farther from my
intentions and from the fact. I insist merely that her place of dis-
tinction is in the "history of culture” and not in the "history of
literature,” in Kulturgeschichte and not in Literaturgeschichte.
Within the scope of the former only may her work be adequately ap-
preciated and accurately understood. We must realize that the
history of poetry contains a much smaller number of poetic and ar-
tistic geniuses than readers of the manuals of literature ordinarily are
led to believe. The "song of the true poet is as rarely heard as the
song of the swan!” The majority even of our great writers are great
publicists, great thinkers, great orators, great conversationalists,
great story-tellers, great entertainers. Only rarely are they “swans!"
Only rarely are they poets !



A DRAWING. BY EDWARD P. NAGLE





NAPOLEON
BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
From the black sagging cloud,
Heavy with thunder, brooding over the ocean,
The wind pours, and its voice
Is like a human cry;
a
The wave attacks the rock,
The lightning flashes; there, against the granite,
With pale white face uplifted,
A lonely frail man stands
With naught but a human brain
To match against the tempest,
The desire of a human heart
a
To fight the desolate sky.
Alone and frail he broods
Upon the stormcloud, and he sees how earth
Grows greener for each tumult of destruction
Loosed on the multitude from that dark breast-
And the cry of the sea-tempest
Rising in wrath, becomes to him a trumpet
Summoning his soul to blaze
As a fierce comet, fiery over earth.
II
The noise of the storm dies down,
Shattering the pine-tops, rattling at streaming windows;
Lazily over the last cloud-rack
Burns the great morning star.


394
NAPOLEON
Out of the East there rises,
Quietly, serenely,
From golden domes of ruined empty temples,
From sleepy old bazaars, from crumbling minarets,
From grey wastes where the jackal vanishes,
From the cold lairs of the green secret jungle,
Out of the gold and turquoise heart of dawn,
Processions of pale mist across the plain:
Trappings and plumage of scarlet,
Sheik after sheik advances,
The wind is rolling elephantine clouds
Down the long corridors between bald blue mountains,
Black bowmen release arrow-shafts of hail
To the tune of fluted singing;
And in the midst of these,
Surrounded with a phalanx of bright spears,
His brows bound with gold rays, and filleted in scarlet,
Alone in an ivory chariot,
Drawn by two milk-white stallions foaled within the desert,
Great Alexander rides, the offspring of the Sun.
It is as if the clouds were opening slowly,
Rank behind rank, wide-swaying gates of gold,
And in between them, fire-crowned, an eagle
Hovered against the burning empty sky.
а
He lifts his head; the vision vanishes;
The morning star has gone behind the cloud-rack.
Like a dim figure struggling in a sea
Of shouting, hoarse, and greedy voices,
He sees himself, wrecked on an iron lee-shore.
And round about, with stony visages,
The ancient, dull decaying kings of earth
Perch on their thrones, propped up with moneybags,
And stare at him with sleepy, fishy eyes.


JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
395
III
Who can describe the furnace-heart of man
When will and suffering meet in endless conflict?
Who measures out the rhythm of mad feet
Whose steady tread strikes hammers upon earth? ?
Through blazing day and drowsy starry night
Fires drift and dance and twinkle over hills;
Stone walls reëcho to a shouted name,
Rumours rush, buzzing, through a crowded street;
a
Armies melt under the pressure of a will;
Yet the old sphinx still watches, and her claws
Stir not, though on her lips
There curls, in hovering mockery, a smile.
Struggle of death and night
Surrounds him now; red flames upon the snow,
And ravens cawing
Over stiff-frozen corpses, sprawled in darkness;
Fiercely the flame outpours
And scatters desolation in its path;
Great towers enkindle, surge in smoke, and fall;
Dim figures hurry over ice-glazed rivers;
He who dared match his puny human skill
Against time's slow and dreary trituration
Of pain-born coils of prisoning destiny,
Lies shattered, at the last.
IV
From the black sagging cloud,
Heavy with thunder, brooding over the ocean,
The wind pours, and its voice
Is like a wild beast's
cry;


396
NAPOLEON
Afar off, in the track
Of the red sunset, brimming over the water,
A man stands and his face
Is a grey mask of pain;
He watches the sweltering tempest
Gather for its last onset;
And on his forehead is written now the answer;
Death.
Death in captivity,
Death bound about with iron chains to the rock,
Death in the storm, death without further conquest,
No sword to lift,
No voice to hurry to his cry.
a
He is now but a mask of marble flesh,
A veiled light in a dark shrine where is silence;
A pinch or two of that same human dust
That whirls about the earth, beyond decay;
And he lies cold and silent,
Shattered and beautiful, while the tropic storm
That beat its blue drum fiercely for his passing,
on the horizon, slowly moves away.
V
The darkness of the Gods who gazed upon him
Too deeply now enshrouds our minds and eyesight;
We dare not grope to find
Even the meaning of a little hour;
a
Was it their will or ours
That drew this flame out of its stagnant deeps,
To fling it back, reversed, into the darkness?
We cannot ever know.


JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
397
Red glares encircle the horizon of our life,
And in between, we flounder in the darkness;
Crowns, crosses, Caesars, crumble into dust,
And we, with feeble eyes, look forth and see
The momentary glimmer of a face
Pale, cold and godlike, bearing for those who fail
The image of a destiny that broke
Against the slow corruption of the dust.


PORTRAIT OF AN ARRIVED CRITIC
BY KENNETH BURKE
Et rien ne leur est
plus propre que de
prendre un peu en
pitié le génie
même, la puissance
qui brûle en créant.
SUARES.
A
.
.
LFRED closed the door softly behind her. He would send her
lilies. This must not be forgotten . . . lilies .. to Adel-
heid. Or perhaps just one lily; more laconic, and therefore more
damnably effective. But he had seen an ad somewhere: “Say it
with flowers.” He must not be department-store. Still, he was not
saying it with flowers; he was saying the exact opposite, in fact.
The exact opposite; poor little Adelheid! He wrote on his calendar,
“L. to A.”
As to this matter of the artist, “precocious cry-babies, all of
them.” That might be an effective tune to hum. But that was rude
rather than pessimistic. One may as well be an early martyr as be
rude. . . Condiebar ejus sale; “I was pickled in the brine of
Christ,” Flannagan insisted on spitting it out the other night. Flan-
nagan had outshrieked St Augustine by a note in translating it that
way. But Flannagan, of course, was invariably rude. A simple
Freudian case, since his abstinence was notorious. Flannagan was
revolting, a tongue dripping meconium, a mess of caca.
“Precocious cry-babies,” then, was Flannagan's province. Alfred
put a fresh sheet in his Corona. “Let us, rather, be kindly disposed
towards the artist. Let us realize just how pathetic are his bronzes
built against time and the universe. Consider the true misery of the
poor devil who deposits his treasure, squeezes a tear of joy over his
understanding of its significance, and dies. And we, if we do not
like it, forget it; and if we do like it, we examine it, and punctum.
It is astonishing, but true, that there are men who fill their stomachs
and bum their oxygen for the sole purpose of perfecting a work of


KENNETH BURKE
399
art, although even while they are doing it they are aware that a
generation is mewling in the cradle which will have a new idea of
perfection.”
Flo would complain that he was bitter, and he would grant her
that he had been "severe.” A letter was sure to come from some-
where out in Ohio. If only Flannagan stayed sober! A drunken
Flannagan would bawl disgustedly about “parlour pessimism” and
“bows to the ladies.” Why, of all people, had Flannagan chosen to
track him? But anyhow, neither Flo nor Adelheid could bear Flan-
nagan. “Or even those who feel that it is not perfection they are
after, but mere crude expression, the proclaiming of their own ego,
the thrusting of their personal wants and ecstasies on posterity-
perhaps their lot is more unfortunate still, since their message, being
more individual, is therefore all the harder to convey to the future,
let alone the present.”
To be making the artists in general provide his comfort for him!
It had never occurred to him, during that wretched adolescence of
his, that he could have obtained such easy terms with life. Not
even a toothache. . . . Furthermore, if he had attained a certain
competence in things, it was an active intelligence which had got it
for him. He had gauged life correctly, and that was nothing if not
admirable. Yet there was always a discouraging lot of detestation
in the world for someone who has succeeded—which was unfair.
Origins should be taken into account, although they never consid-
ered origins; if they found a man at astra they were inclined to
resent it, forgetting his per aspera. ...
• Adolescence would justify
everything; then he had plainly suffered. Out there in that ridicu-
lous cabin, with the wide nights and the big days to handle, with
symphonic storms to wail with, and long stretches of dead summer,
and his father reading fairy stories
all that meant that he
must either burst or get a grip on life. Hallelujah! he had gripped it!
.
.
“There are two million seven hundred and fifty thousand ways
of writing a given poem, and yet some greasy waif will knock his
head against the stars because he has stumbled on one of them. And
even while he writes, the wheels of the universe are grinding him
towards oblivion. What an interesting phenomenon it is, that the
poison of his genesomania is always the stronger, that he strives for
immortality in the most fragile of substances, art!"


400
PORTRAIT OF AN ARRIVED CRITIC
The artist, however clever he was in the use of his medium, lacked
a certain astuteness, a kind of cultured shrewdness, in looking at
life and relating it with himself. The disappointing thing was that
people admired this lacuna, although no lacuna should be admir-
able. If being a complete man precluded being an artist, the
artist should be properly discounted. He could see nothing divine
about myopia. There was room here for a less temperamental
Nordau. .
To put himself over against Flannagan, to make the contrast
screamingly evident, that little incident on his first night with Flo
was excellent. When he had laid the umbrella and the broom side
by side on the bed, and breathed a pun about the "bride and broom,
and then let suggestion run its course. Ten minutes later Flanna-
gan had come in, as drunk as a pig, shouting “confessions," a vile
vomit paraphrased from Huysmans, something about “I tore open
the bellies of little children and sat therein.” Flannagan was dis-
tinctly a minor character, to be utilized in a romantic novel like a
Bowery tough or an Irish washerwoman.
"Couldn't we, in the last analysis, divide the intellectuals into
two significant categories, the artist and the compleat gentleman?
The artist, disorbited, unoriented, reeling with the mental tipple of
his talk about unattainable beauty, unrealizable ambitions, in-
effable innuendos, slashing blindly, without discrimination or dig.
nity, at an escaping colour or a half-heard note, distressed in a
manner highly romanesque because he cannot express things which
were never there to be expressed, irresponsible, childish, unwashed;
and the opposing nature, the unit that is perfectly aware of the con-
tracts of society, alive to the subtleties of human relationship, that
tiptoes about the world with a discerning and critical caution, likes
and dislikes with a mildness born of the obligation of generations,
and knows that everything is subordinate to the regulations of life,
the compleat gentleman. But we must have artists, so long
as there are walls to be covered, and Pullmans to travel in; as we
must also have ditch-diggers."
•
“L. to A.” He must not forget the lily.



CE
TS
E
fi
ET
DIET
ther
德
​d!
51
3
D.'
MOTHER AND CHILD.
BY WILHELM LEHMBRUCK


1
1
1
1
1



FEMALE TORSO.
BY WILHELM LEHMBRUCK






KNEELING GIRL.
BY WILHELM LEHMBRUCK





PARIS LETTER
March, 1922
Fi
RENCH writers and British journalists: Mr Murry's article
in the December Dial lacked only one thing: an editorial note
to the effect that the article was given in order that the reader might
understand for himself, at first hand, with the baccilli of the disease
under his own eye and microscope, why nothing, absolutely and ut-
terly nothing, is to be expected from England. We have enough
dullards, dunces, in America; there is no need of importing them,
but the Murry article is so fine a specimen, so typical a slide that it
is worth examining. It might have come from anywhere in the Brit-
ish periodical press, from Gosse, Squire, Dove, Chose, Muggin,
Eagle, Badger, Bumper, Lind, Rind, Gumm, Buttock, Bellok, Ches-
tok, Shawkin, Newlet, Nibset, Nimmel, Brock, Knok, or Annyu-
vum.
I once had the Augean patience to go through some fifty specimens
of the British periodical press, analyzing with the diligence of an
Ehrlich the symptoms of their insular dunderness, I speak only after
years of endurance. Apropos this Flaubert outleak we see several
of the characteristic lesions: (a) the mortal hatred of any man who
does a good job; corollary, the sigh over the lyric boy (blanks left
for the adjectives).
Under this general head we may consider the original Brit. rev.
who said “After all Flaubert wrote three good books, but with infin-
ite labour; while George Sand did thirty without any trouble at
all.”
They like Dostoevsky not so much for his grasp of Russia, but be-
cause they think he muddled through, thereby justifying the muddle
process for all time and eternity.
(b) Symptom observed in present slide. “Criticism” with the
eye off the object, and the attention focussed on an argument not
particularly pertinent thereto. Flaubert wrote something in a let-
ter; therefore, one should neglect the evidence of his six volumes,
and prove by the letter that they couldn't be what they manifestly
are.


402
PARIS LETTER
C
Sub-head, the Alim-flam of wobbling from work to personality. As
if the triumph, and one of the greatest possible triumphs of a great
writer, were not in precisely the fact that he sprouts through his per-
sonal shell, his carpet slippers, his plaid shawl, et cetera, and man-
ages to become for an age, a generation, a period of five or ten cen-
turies, the symbol, the seal-sign of some great quality, "the death-
less voice,” the "surge and thunder,” the "mot juste," despite his
blindness and beggary, or his suburban flirtations.
Now the sum and distillation of Mr Murry's dish-wash results in
the following statements (context still visible in the Dial for Dec-
ember, 1921). Flaubert had "not the root of the matter in him.”
"In stature of soul he was a child.” Moral reflection, same page:
“It may not be given to mortal men to understand life more deeply
at the end than at the beginning of their share of it; but they can
more keenly feel its complexity and its wonder.” “It seems that it
was only by accident that he stumbled on a subject of any signifi-
cance at all.” “His choice of subjects was governed by his tempera-
ment." “Demon of style and demon of truthfulness stood between
Flaubert and his dreams”
“distracted his attention from con-
tent of his work and induced him to spend energies that might have
gone to the expansion of his sensibility.” (Reader note carefully this
phrase "expansion of his sensibility.") Mr Murry then says one
"dare not dogmatize.” “Flaubert had no certain hold on his charac-
ters”; made "only one masterpiece”; was a master, but a “minor
;
master.” He adored “divinities,” but the Brit. rev. is careful not to
say what "divinities.”
Now the answer to all this farrago is not to be found in the syl-
logisms whereby I or any other person of sense might happen to re-
fute the Brit. rev. The answer is to be found in the pages of Flau-
bert himself. He did not write with the self-abandonment of a
trance medium, and this the Brit. rev. will never forgive him. He
did however create Charles Bovary, and the creator of this most
Russian character in French literature was not lacking in human
pity, he disdained to falsify it by slobber; the range of what the
Brit. rev. terms his "small sensibility and his feeble creative imag-
ination,” ran from the fiacre episode (Brit. rev. finds Flaubert defi-
cient in humour) to "ce fut une tante qui s'en chargea. Elle
est pauvre et l'envoie, pour gagner sa vie, dans une filiature de
coton,” The Dickensian is at liberty to match this with the cele-
.
.


EZRA POUND
403
brated pathos of that author whenever he sees fit. Moreover when
Flaubert gets into a moonlit passage he so eminently shows the
abundant sensibilité of his epoch, that, whatever one may feel about
other authors, it is quite certain Flaubert in prescribing the Flau-
bertian discipline for himself, committed no error whatever.
All of which is not the root of the present “matter”; the Brit. rev.
is merely the stock product of the format of Brit. weekly journals
with their need for so much “criticism” per issue; and the fallacy un-
derlying all their écoulements is the fallacy of thinking criticism con-
sists in a fricassée of general statement about masterpieces and sub-
masterpieces. The real criticism of an author is found not in the in-
competents who talk about him, but in the creating writers who fol-
low him; thus the real criticism of Salammbo and Herodias is found
in Laforgue's Moralités Légendaires; and the historical, period,
costume historique, archaeologically rempli, novel has never recov-
ered from Laforgue's analysis. Laforgue's Salomé is as full of life
as Flaubert's in complete disregard of chronology. The criticism
of L'Éducation Sentimentale and of Bouvard et Pécuchet is to be
found in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist and in Ulysses; and in
the works of nearly all other good French, American, and even Eng-
lish prose writers since Flaubert. If Laforgue pricked the armour
joints in the one case, the solidity of the other work is amply justified
in the structure that has been built on the Flaubert foundation.
Moreover, it is not the work of a minor master to affect the whole of
a civilization, to modify the net mass of human outlook as Flaubert
has done; this mass is not affected by a triolet or a chef-d'oeuvre in
tessellating verbal surfaces over an unrelated content.
Flaubert does, let us admit it, pack so much into a "novel” that
many readers find it indigestible; but the utter indigence of the Brit.
rev's. comment becomes manifest when L'Éducation Sentimentale is
said to be something or other, or not to be something or other because
Madame so and so is the "complimentary figure" to something
somewhere else.
No "method” is justified until it has been carried too far; and
perhaps only great authors dare this (the timid are afraid of risking
a few years' work on commercially unprofitable exploration). Mau-
passant in the shelter of Flaubert's plenitude ran off a great num-
ber of volumes wherein the reader is given just the amount of sub-
ject that will aliment the particular hour. And the whole technique
a


404
PARIS LETTER
.
.
.
He was
.
.
of good magazine story writing and even of good journalism is in-
debted to Maupassant and thereby indebted to Flaubert. Bloom
follows the vast gropings of Bouvard et Pécuchet. A great author
• it is a dangerous doctrine, but still a great author has some
share in the work of his students and disciples and only sound work
will stand continuation and further development.
Flaubert not only left two masterpieces—Bovary and the Trois
Contes, which Trilogy is a whole built over a central theme and hav-
ing a single construction balanced over one phrase in the St Julien
Hospitalier—but he left two masterworks, works of a master; L'Éd-
ucation and the Bouvard et Pécuchet, on which later prose has been
and can still be built with solidity.
L'Éducation is burdened with data none of which one
would venture to cut away; it is not simply the sonnet of the chief
character or even the sonata of two characters, it is a period
and then they fuss and gabble as if this infinitely patient writer
whose reach constantly exceeded his grasp were notable only for
“perfection,” they are always swinging that style bogey, “perfec-
tion"
of verbal arrangements in paragraphs.
the first prose writer, perhaps, who dared to want to write a par-
agraph of prose presentation with the economy and "perfection”
that songsters had before him reserved for the lyric, the sonnet, the
triolet.
Eh be . . m. .
I return to contemplation of the Édi-
tion du Centenaire, Oeuvres de G. Flaubert, issued currently by
Sant'Andrea and Marcerou, 99 Boulevard Raspail, where one can at
last have the text cleanly printed in large type, and at a price not
exceeding rubies.
The thing they, the cacklers, won't stick in Flaubert is that his
tragedies are inherent in the characters of his people; they are not the
accidents of coincidence, the boats passing on the river at night; the
things that would have been different save for an accident. The sub-
jects “found only by accident" ah! are the limits of hu-
manity, the incapacities of mediocrity to surpass itself.
Emma's relations to Mme Bovary senior, on half a page, the last
letter to Père Rouault ... On the whole we conclude that if
Flaubert had not written five or six of the works now accepted as his,
he might have been as rootless and as unimportant as the Brit. rev.
would have us, for the convenience of our mental sloth, believe.
.
.
.
>
.
.
.


EZRA POUND
405
a
Louis Bertrand offers his centennial homage in a fantasy, Flau-
bert à Paris, ou le mort vivant, wherein he includes some anxiety
about sculptural monuments to the deceased, an affection for his
writings, and a number of sensible remarks presumably culled from
the Flaubert correspondence; then, for some reason not exactly clear
to us, offers a nice little plate of butter to whom? Why, bless us,
and blarst my remaining halyards (as his imagined Flaubert would
have said) to Paul Bourget, of the Académie Belge. René Des-
charmes' work on Bouvard et Pécuchet is announced but has not
yet come from the press.
The brothers Tharaud are solemnly considered as stylists (not by
Bertrand but in the current French periodicals):
“Dans une vallée de Charente, sur un gouffre solitaire,
Se penche un château ruiné.
C'est là que la légende, qui aime les romanesque berceaux, ,
Fait naître Jean-François Ravaillac."
As this jingle printed as prose, appears at the beginning of the elev-
enth edition of their Tragédie de Ravaillac, I can only conclude that
they like the metre of “Twas the night before Christmas and all
through the house." The book contains the material for quite a
good thesis for doctorate, the heart of Henri IV, looking one sup-
poses rather like calf's liver, was carried across France on a cushion
and kissed by devoted throngs; the torture of Ravaillac might lead
us to believe in human progress were there no contemporary phe-
nomena to balance our judgements. Part of the chapter on Caserio,
relating his trip to Lyons, might be a poem by Rimbaud, and per-
haps demonstrates the value of the Tharauds' literary ambition; or
of any literary ambition stirring in scholarly minds. Their Dingley
l'Illustre Ecrivain is some sort of imaginary portrait parody of Kip-
ling. Dedicated to Romain Rolland, it is about what one might
expect. The Tharauds are not in complete sympathy with imperial-
ism, but like the Keynesian liberals they don't like to hit anything
very hard. Here they are less documented and scholarly. They
even seem to believe that the wives of English authors are addressed
as "Mistress," and English sergeants use "my dear” as a synonym
for the Gallic "mon cher."
EZRA POUND


PRAGUE LETTER
March, 1922
INCE the beginning of its renaissance more than twenty years
ago,
Czech literature has been unfortunate. It has been adorned
by writers who, born in Paris, London, or New York, would have
made the coteries of Europe ring; but as it is they are merely names,
perhaps not even that, to the most cultured section of the chief Euro-
pean publics. For this the difficulty of the Czech language is partly
responsible, and partly the unspoken belief, held by all great nations,
that a small nation, or a subject province, has no right to recognition
of any kind, even literary recognition. Bohemia, combining Chris-
tianity strikingly with common-sense, has retaliated to the silence
of its neighbours by translating into Czech all the greatest works of
every literature in Europe. Vrchlicky, the father of modern Czech
literature, and even more admirable as a father than as a poet, a
great improvisatore, half Hugo, half encyclopaedist in verse—and
something more-translated from Italian, French, Spanish, English,
and Russian so lavishly and so brilliantly that he did not escape the
censure of the Czech critics. Vrchlicky died in 1912; and the chief
representatives of Czech literature now-I mean, the securely es-
tablished ones—are Otakar Březina, Antonin Sova, and J. S.
Machar. Of these Březina is universally acknowledged to be the
greatest and the most obscure. All his poetry is the expression of an
emotion before ultimate metaphysical realities, and the wealth of
his utterance, unexampled in contemporary literature, has in it some-
thing cryptic, the confusion of an over-rich harmony. Sova is a poet
more pellucid and elegiac, whose melancholy and whose overcoming
of it are alike charming. Machar is a bel-esprit more prosaic, and
also more definite; there is in his poetry itself a nuance of prose
which, however incongruous, is not without piquancy. His satire is
full of an easy inventiveness and spontaneity, and, together with his
preoccupation with practical questions, it has made him perhaps the
most popular of present-day writers in Czech.
Karel Toman, a lyric poet who stands midway between the older
writers and the new, would, if he were English, be called Georgian,
>


EDWARD MOORE
407
that is, if one could conceive a Georgian with temperament and an
almost too yielding grace. But his simplicity is nearer to French
than to English simplicity, and it is managed, as simplicity to be tol-
erable must be managed, with the most subtle tact. Otakar Theer,
who died at an early age in 1917, had a capacity for intense and
tragic lyrical expression, an impetuosity and strength of emotion,
which would have ultimately given him a European audience.
So much for the older writers, whom I have mentioned not be-
cause they are contemporary history, but because they are not yet
history, though they should be. The chief among the younger writers
are Karel Čapek and Frana Šramek, both of them dramatists and
novelists. Of these I will speak at present only of Čapek, in all of
whose work there is the mark of an unusual originality. His works
thus far include a volume of novelettes, two plays, The Robber and
R. U. R., and a volume of aphorisms, partly philosophical, partly
literary, with a tendency which one may term, inadequately, prag-
matic. The novelettes are studies of elusive subconscious states,
treated in a manner in the last degree concrete and objective. In
one of them, for example, a girl suddenly disappears from her home
in Prague, leaving no trace behind her. Two men set out by differ-
ent means to find her. The first, elaborating a theory of probability,
arrives at the logical conclusion that she is in one of the neighbour-
ing towns or villages: but further than that his intellectual brilliance
cannot enlighten him. The second, her brother, who believes that
love will succeed where reason fails, leaves himself to the guidance
of his instincts, wanders aimlessly about, and after pitching on a
particular railway line visits two villages without apparent success.
But he suddenly realizes that he has been hanging about the second
one as if he were incapable of leaving it, and eventually he finds his
sister there. The other stories are written about psychological points
such as this.
The tales, though they are psychologically profound, are studies
and therefore tentative: they have not the confident power and ful-
ness of the new plays. R. U. R. is the better known of these, and its
production in Prague in the beginning of this year was an event. It
is an apocalyptic drama somewhat in Mr Bernard Shaw's latest
manner; but it is superior to Heartbreak House in dramatic power,
and different from it in being undoubtedly tragic in mood. Two
acts in it are equal to anything that has been written in Europe for


408
PRAGUE LETTER
a
twenty years. Rossum's Universal Robots (which one may trans-
late as Knowall's Universal Hands) is a firm for the production of
mechanical men who have the advantage, from the commercial point
of view, of working more efficiently than real men, and at a fraction
of the cost. Being without desires, incapable of feeling pain or
pleasure, or of laughing or crying, they are tremendously efficient,
and after the lapse of ten years they not only do the world's work,
but fight the nation's wars. At the same time, children cease to be
born; nature, it appears, has no longer any need of man, and declines
;
,
to give herself the trouble of producing him. The Robots, logical in
everything, exterminate the human race until only one man is left,
Alquist, an architect at the factory, who for his own salvation has
always worked with his hands, and whom they spare on the equivocal
ground that he is a Robot. The new masters of the world are left
with the problem of reproducing themselves; a difficult question, for
they do not know the trade secret and they are all due to die in
twenty years, even the more recently-made among them who are su-
perior in brain and in sensibility to the earlier Robots. Alquist is
unable to do anything for them, but he happens to overhear two of
them laughing together, and making love: and he realizes that life
will go on again, and a new world will begin with a new Adam and
Eve.
The conclusion is adroit, pretty, by courtesy artistically appropri-
ate, but not decisive. The constructional, but not the dramatic,
problem of the play has been answered. It is a question, however,
whether that could have been answered, or whether R. U. R. in an-
swering it could have remained at the same time a work of art. The
problem is raised, and that is the great thing; and in raising it Čapek
shows decisively, as Březina showed before him, that the funda-
mental character of the Czech genius, in spite of a concession to, or
rather an aspiration after, Western models, a concession and aspira-
tion real and of immense value, is Slavonic. The great Slavonic
writers have been normally distinguished by a capacity for passing
over all mediate issues and for treating immediately final human
things. It is not the question here whether this is good or bad; per-
haps most Western nations would call it bad. The point is that
Čapek is in this in the good Slavonic tradition; R. U. R., begun, one
would think, as a fantastic comedy, drags him, perhaps involun-
tarily, into the conflux of immense issues, and becomes the statement
a


EDWARD MOORE
409
of the fate of man on the earth. In the working out of that theme
so many passions, aspirations, and fears are illumined, and with a
touch so sure and profound, that the drama gives the impression of
universal tragedy. It is full of that imaginative inventiveness which
is the surest sign of natural power, of a “fury of creation” perhaps
too exuberant and not sufficiently disciplined; and it contains things
which one can see at a glance "nobody else could have done." In
dramatic tact, in the sense of the theatre,” it is consummate. For-
tunately it has already been translated into French and German,
and is being translated, I believe, into English.
THE PRAGUE THEATRE
The chief works which the younger men in Prague are writing are
dramas and not, as in almost every other country, novels. For this
one cause is the power and brilliancy of the Prague theatre, and the
enthusiasm of the people for it. The theatre is the great intellectual
passion of the Czechs and the symbol of their love for their nation
and their language. In the time of the Hapsburg domination it was
the only place in which their desire for national freedom, denied
more direct utterance, was expressed under the double cloak of the
Czech language and of dramatic symbolism. The theatre, taken se-
riously then as politics, is taken seriously now as art. The chief
theatres, the National Theatre and the Vinhrady Theatre, at the
latter of which Čapek is one of the producers, are nursed by an enter-
prising and vigilant band of artists and literary men, and served by
a cast of actors and actresses who, accustomed to play only the best
drama of all the European nations, have acquired a finesse and con-
fidence which are extraordinary. A list of the plays which have been
produced during the last year at these two theatres will sound al-
most incredibly good. There have been staged, of the English dra-
matists, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Otway, Sheridan, Browning, Wilde,
Shaw, Synge, and Yeats; and among others, the Greek tragedians;
Alfieri; Racine and Molière; Goethe, Schiller, Hauptmann, and
Wedekind; Ibsen and Strindberg; Chekhov and Merejkovski. In the
art of making great dramatic works shine by giving them an appro-
priate and unexpected setting the Prague theatre could give lessons
to almost any capital in Europe. It is indebted for its habitual tact
partly, no doubt, to its great experience in the production of works


410
PRAGUE LETTER
a
of the first rank, and partly to the national responsiveness to artistic
stimuli, immediate comprehension of artistic demands, and rapid
initiative in fulfilling them. In employing conventions which are
not strictly realistic, conventions half pantomimic, the Czech actors
show freedom of invention and sureness of taste. They produced
in the demi-pantomimic genre recently Le Malade Imaginaire of
Molière, and an old Czech comedy by Zeyer, Stara Historie, an essay
in the commedia dell'arte, with scenery and dresses by Joseph Ča-
pek, the painter. The Molière did not entirely come off; an attempt
to be a little naturalistic and a little artificial was bound to fail; but
the Stara Historie, stylized to the last gesture, seemed by the very
rigidity of its pantomimic convention to give the actors the freedom
they desired. It was a tour de force, and the excellence of the acting
in Prague is exactly defined by the fact that a producer can dare to
entrust to his actors the carrying off of a tour de force on the stage.
The most depressing thing about great towns is that culture is in
them so dispersed, so lonely, so much a private affair, that it is in-
visible. In Prague the centre of culture is the stage: that is, a public
centre, concrete and living; and its culture is, therefore, culture be-
fore witnesses. This is what distinguishes the capital of Czecho-Slo-
vakia most clearly from the larger capitals of Europe. Its culture is
not, indeed, popular (the chief patrons of the stage are not "the
people” but the middle classes) but it is more wide and more con-
crete, more stylized and in one tradition, than perhaps anywhere
else. If the theatre continues to be so enterprising, and its public so
constant—and there seems to be no reason why they should not-a
real culture in the classical sense, a tradition of intellectual and ar-
tistic style, may in a decade or so be created in Bohemia.
a
PAINTING
Czech painting has in the last twenty years passed through the
usual stages of post-impressionism, cubism, and futurism, and is in
the hands at present of four painters who call themselves the “Un-
shiftables.” Of these, Vaclav Špála is perhaps most purely and le-
gitimately a painter; his art depends less than that of the others on
the subject; there is not so much "dramatic interest” in it. By the
use of rugged and explosive planes caught into a tempestuous rhythm
he achieves tremendously dynamic effects. His canvases seem to


EDWARD MOORE
411
burst with health. Vlatislav Hofman, Josef Čapek, and Jan Zrzavy,
the other painters in the group, have, like Špála, mastered the tech-
nique of the West in the only possible way, by using it and experi-
menting with it; but the inspiration of their art is perhaps more
Eastern, more Slavonic, than that of Špála. Hofman, an improviser
above all, a man who dashes off his "ideas” on the canvas, is so di-
verse, so chaotic (for his moods contradict one another and he sets
them all down) that it is difficult to appraise him. A certain criticism
is passed on him in saying that he has a passion for subjects which are
generally called dramatic: he has sketched a Dostoevsky cycle, for
instance, containing all the chief characters in the novels, each one
a study in “significant form.” Čapek, the brother of the dramatist,
has the same engaging curiosity as Hofman, but in him it is more
refined, more subtle, and he searches for the grotesque and the rare.
Once he has chosen his subjects, he works them out more completely
than Hofman; and he is not content, as Hofman often seems to be,
with anything less than the solution of the artistic problem which
he has raised. Zrzavy is the strangest and perhaps the most dis-
tinguished of the four. His art has a terribly anaemic quality, a
bloodlessness positive, convincing, and refined. His figures are less
human than ghosts and more real; and while they are spiritually
perverted, they are at the same time noble. Zrzavy's work is sick;
but its sickness is not one of the age. It is a metaphysical sickness,
the very possession of which implies perhaps the most rare and spir-
itual qualities. The technique of all these four painters is eclectic,
and gathered from Russia as well as from Paris; but their inspiration
is most certainly Slavonic; and the character of their work is there-
fore perfectly distinct from that of Munich, Paris, or London.
EDWARD Moore


BOOK REVIEWS
THE PERFECT TORY
Life of Robert, MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. By Lady
Gwendolen Cecil. 2 vols. 8vo. 742 pages. George
H. Doran and Company. $12.
THE
THE gallery of late Victorian portraits has received an addition
in the Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, by his daughter,
Lady Gwendolen Cecil. Necessarily it is by no means so impressive
a study as the biographies of the protagonists of the period, the Life
of Gladstone, by John Morley, or the Life of Beaconsfield, by Mon-
eypenny and Buckle. Nor can it compare in vividness of charac-
terization and interest of material with the records of men who were
in Lord Salisbury's class, the Recollections of John Morley or the
Life of Sir Charles Dilke. Moreover, it is disconcerting to find that
despite the extent of canvas the figure lacks much of being full
length; the record closes with 1880, the year in which by Beacons-
field's death Lord Salisbury became the leader of his party, and sub-
sequent to which he was for ten years premier of Great Britain. For
what we have received, however, let us be duly thankful. The char-
acter and attitude of Lord Salisbury were doubtless determined in
essential features when he was fifty years old, and when he had
shared in the responsibilities of government for half that time. His
figure is needed to complete the gallery, and to furnish an example
of the right Tory in contrast to the Liberals Gladstone, Morley, and
Dilke, the Radical Labouchère, and the eccentric Wilfrid Scawen
Blunt.
Robert Talbot Cecil came to his Toryism by inheritance from a
family which had furnished two prime ministers to England. His
education by various clergymen of the Established Church, and at
Eton and Christ Church, was according to the straitest sect of the
Pharisees. A voyage to South Africa and Australia made him ac-
quainted with the nascent Empire; and on his return to England he
naturally succeeded to the privilege of participating in the govern-


ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
413
a
ment of his country by the gift of a seat in Parliament for Stamford,
before he was twenty-four. His first mark in politics was made,
however, not in Parliament, but as a writer of articles for the Quar-
terly and the Saturday Review. These were the days when Par-
liamentary government was a game for power played between Whigs
and Tories with the Radicals inclining the balance this side or that,
when national politics was a series of sporting events participated in
by such leaders as Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Derby,
and their followers, the Finns, Tapers, and Tadpoles of Disraeli's
and Trollope's novels. It was in the premiership of Palmerston that
Lord Robert described the situation as one in which "the Whigs
should furnish the placemen, the Radicals should furnish the votes,
and the Conservatives should furnish the policy.” It was such shafts
as this levelled against party government that gave Lord Robert his
reputation for trenchant invective and mordant satire. He did not
spare his friends. Three times during this period the Tories, under
Disraeli's opportunist leadership, attracted enough Radical support
to turn out the Whigs and enjoy a short-lived term of office, under
conditions which led Lord Robert to rebuke his own party for its
betrayal of principle and dignity, and to attack its leadership.
In one of these shortlived Tory ministries, that of 1866-68, Lord
Salisbury was a member of the Cabinet as Secretary of State for In-
dia, and with his friend Lord Carnarvon resigned in disgust at the
rapid and shameless changes in his Reform Bill which Disraeli
forced on the Government in the desperate effort to remain in office.
When Sir Stafford Northcote was sent to invite Lord Salisbury to
rejoin the ministry, he wrote: “I told him I had the greatest respect
for every member of the Government except one—but that I did not
think my honour was safe in the hands of that one.”
During this period, the football of the game of politics was the
question of Parliamentary Reform, the extension of the franchise
and the reapportionment of representation. This question gave Lord
Salisbury an opportunity to define his fundamental position against
democracy. He showed himself in public policy, as in the manage-
ment of his own estate at Hatfield, enlightened and hospitable in re-
gard to plans for the welfare of the lower classes and the improve-
ment of their condition, but resolutely opposed to any extension of
power to them. He argued that a state was like a joint stock concern
in which the voting power is strictly proportioned to the stake which


414
THE PERFECT TORY
each man holds in the company. His distrust of the people was com-
plete. “The bestowal upon any class of a voting power dispropor-
a
tionate to their stake in the country must infallibly give to that class
a power pro tanto of using taxation as an instrument of plunder, and
expenditure and legislation as a fountain of gain.” He absolutely
denied the divine right of the individual to a vote, or of the multi-
tude to rule. He constantly dwelt upon the impossibility of combin-
ing government by numbers with government by the best men. In
an article in the Quarterly Review in 1862 he makes the plea for
aristocratic government in the most persuasive terms. Political
equality, he asserts, is a non-existent chimera. It is hardly necessary
to point out how far Lord Salisbury saw his country
ury saw his country fall away from
his ideal. It is fair to say that the conduct of his own party fur-
nished the most complete refutation to Lord Salisbury's theory.
The major part of Lord Salisbury's career was concerned with
that function of government in which democratic control has always
counted least, the department of foreign affairs. When the Con-
servatives returned to power in 1874, although he resumed his old
place at the India Office, he soon became the most decisive voice in
the Cabinet on the Eastern Question which the Bulgarian massacres
had raised into first importance. Lord Salisbury was the English
representative at the Conference of the powers at Constantinople,
which the stubbornness of the Turks rendered abortive. Later when
.
the conduct of the Foreign Office by Lord Derby during the crisis
with Russia became intolerable, he succeeded him, and accompanied
Lord Beaconsfield to the Berlin Congress, from which they brought
back "peace with honour.” The questions in regard to the reality of
this triumph and the share of Lord Salisbury in obtaining it have
been persistent, and the volumes before us do not decisively answer
them. Was Lord Salisbury the strong man of Europe, bearing him-
self like Castlereagh at Vienna, commanding his senile superiors,
Gortchakoff, Bismarck, and Beaconsfield, to sign on the dotted line,
and brushing the representatives of lesser powers, Corti and Wad-
dington, haughtily aside; or was he, in Bismarck's phrase, "the man
of lath painted to look like iron”?
On the technique of international conference Lord Salisbury held
enlightened views. He wrote beforehand:
“Our view as to the Congress is that though it is an admirable in-
strument to enable friendly Powers to come to an agreement about


ROBERT MORS
415
details, it only aggravates the divergence between those who radi-
cally differ because it accentuates and calls public attention to the
amount of difference and makes retreat on either side a loss of
honour. We are not, therefore, anxious for a meeting until we have
ascertained that Russia on essential points is amenable.”
>
A little later Lord Salisbury wrote to his chief that Count Münster,
the German Ambassador at London, had assured him that “Bismarck
entirely concurred in my view that a Congress would be of little
value unless an understanding had previously been come to on the
chief points at issue.” Accordingly such a preliminary understand-
ing was arrived at with Russia, which, while not excluding the pos-
sibility of changes as the result of bargaining at the Conference,
insured that meeting against possibility of deadlock, disruption, and
the eventuality of war. The memorandum embodying the preliminary
agreement was immediately published in the London Globe, but
Lord Salisbury assured the House of Lords, on the strength of a
single misstatement, that the publication was "wholly unauthentic.”
Thus fortified against failure, the all-star cast met at Berlin to ren-
der the grand opera of European diplomacy, in which they had
carefully rehearsed their parts. Perhaps the difficulty of maintain-
ing perfect gravity in the circumstances was responsible for the sug-
gestion of opera bouffe which coloured their proceedings.
In one respect the biography is disappointing. We have heard of
Lord Salisbury as a brilliant cynic; Beaconsfield called him "a master
of gibes and flouts and jeers.” He defended the Tory cause as it
ought to be defended always, with disconcerting realism, contemptu-
ous frankness, careless audacity. Too few examples of his power are
recorded by his serious-minded offspring. Lady Gwendolen does not
even tell us whether her father really said that in the Crimean War
“England put her money on the wrong horse." It is true, there is
his unforgettable rejoinder in the House of Commons, when on being
summoned to excuse himself for having attributed to Mr Gladstone
"devices more worthy of an attorney than a statesman” he admitted
that he had done a great injustice to the attorneys. But in spite of
the meager evidence afforded by these volumes we shall continue to
think of Lord Salisbury as the cynical jem'enfoutiste who won some-
thing on the Zanzibar coast for England, and in return gave Heligo-
land to Germany.
Robert Morss Lovett


MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET
MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET. By Walter De la Mare. Svo.
436 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.
I
T is difficult to review Walter De la Mare’s Memoirs of a Midget.
It is a large book. It is a profound book. It is a book, too,
that has qualities that are not easily exposed.
One does not take it as a tale of good tidings when one hears that a
lyrical poet has written a romance. One thinks of a dim and a loose
construction with purple passages by way of compensation for a
wrong done the narrative. And Walter De la Mare's other work
in prose, The Three Mulla-Mulgars, did not leave one sanguine.
Everything, however, is better than one hoped. For, as a novel, ,
Memoirs of a Midget is masterly: here is an instance of a poet work-
ing faithfully in a prose medium and yet not transforming himself
into a prosaic writer. Memoirs of a Midget remains a poet's work.
And most assuredly it remains the work of Walter De la Mare.
As a poet Walter De la Mare has had a strange and a rare quality.
He gives us mystery. But he has not to go to Xanadu for his mystery
-he can draw it out of a familiar scene. His woods and fields, his
houses and castles, are English. But they are seen as if in a crystal.
They come before us as if we saw them in a moment of clairvoyance.
The quality of clairvoyance is in his rhythms, too—his is an every-
day speech, but it comes to us in the tone of one in a trance:
".
'Once . once upon a time
Like a dream you dream in the night
Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light.
“And her beauty far away
Would fade, as her voice ran on,
Till hazel and summer sun
And all were gone: -
“All foredone and forgot;


PADRAIC COLUM
· 417
And like clouds in the height of the sky,
Our hearts were all in the hush
Of an age gone by.”
I had often wondered whom this poet had for predecessor—who be-
fore him in English had worked in this strange music. In the present
prose book the secret is left open. Little Miss M is made to recite
that strange and fragmentary ballad, Tom o' Bedlam's Song, and
then we hear the only piece of verse in English that Walter De la
Mare's
poems
have affinities with:
"The moon's my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake,
And the night-crow, make
Me music to my sorrow.
“I know more than Apollo;
For oft when he lies sleeping,
I behold the stars
At mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping.”
a
But it is not one who has the moon for mistress that is the subject
of the prose romance. Memoirs of a Midget is really a singularly
sober-minded book, and it is Walter De la Mare's triumph that, in
the gravest, in the most humane way, he has been able to give us the
,
life history of a being of delicate and singular faculties whose point
of pride it is not to be too different from the rest of humanity. You
may marvel after you have read it at the grace of the writing, at
the glimpses into the world and into the human heart that are given
in the course of the narrative, but as you read it you think only of
a poignant and realizable story.
I suppose that the theme of the story is the relation of the strange-
ly limited, strangely isolated human spirit to the mysterious world
that is around. That, perhaps, is the theme of The Listeners also:
"Is there any one there? said the traveller
Knocking at the moonlit door."


418
MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET
And like the traveller in that poem we are left:
“And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry.”
But in the prose book we have the sense of moving, not in the moon-
light, but in the full light of day.
We have said there are no purple passages in the book, for all is
in a sober proportion. But the grace of the writing gives passages
that are a constant delight—so fresh and firm they are in their un-
forced beauty. For instance, there is the passage where Fanny
Bowater, the fox-woman as the Chinese story-tellers would call her,
comes again into the life of Miss M:
“She was in dark gray—a gown I had never seen before. A tight
little hat sat demurely upon her hair. In that first moment she had
not noticed me, and I could steal a long, steady look at the still, light,
vigilant eyes, drinking in at one draught their new surroundings.
Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen
in an artificial light. What wonder I had loved her. My hands
went numb, and a sudden fatigue came over me.”
a
a
"Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen
in an artificial light.” How fresh and how revealing the image is.
The notable thing about the book is that Walter De la Mare sees
men and women and sees them in that mysterious universe that men
and women have all but cut themselves off from the constellations
above, the woods around, the wild creatures that often seem to have
more of the secret than men and women have—men and women,
who, according to Miss M's tragical friend, Mr Anon, "had swollen
to their present shape, of which they had lost the true spring and
mastery, and had sunk deeper and deeper into a kind of oblivion of
the mind, suffocating their past, and now all but insane with pride in
their own monstrosities.” Memoirs of a Midget is a book that is
rot merely current; it is a book to go on the shelves with the great
English novels, near David Copperfield and near Henry Esmond.
PADRAIC COLUM


THIS SIDE OF INNOCENCE
The BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED. By F. Scott Fitzgerald.
12m0. 449 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.
TH
HE impression Mr Fitzgerald's work makes on his elders is so
Deity from his new title. To his contemporaries, “interested only
in ourselves and Art,” his revelations are of quite secondary impor-
tance and he has neither the critical intelligence nor the profound
vision which might make him an imposing figure. His elders, natur-
ally, do not require these things of him, since they have other sources
of supply, and they are the best judges of his immediate significance.
To them he presents a picture of the world which is no longer theirs,
and even when they doubt his supreme truthfulness they can safely
go behind the book to the author and say that this is what the younger
generation would like us to think.
It cannot, of course, continue indefinitely, because even about so
bright and cheerful a talent as Mr Fitzgerald's the shadows of the
prison house are bound to close. Especially since he has been con-
sidered as a revealer and an artist he has had to grow quickly, and he
can say (I speak not of his private life with which I am unacquaint-
ed, but of his fiction) “my grief lies onward and my joy behind.”
The golden lads and girls of This Side of Paradise are in the new
novel, but they are far more than Amory Blaine and Rosalind aware
of their kinship in the dust with the world's chimney-sweepers. It
is not only because of the tragedy into which Gloria and Anthony
Patch are somewhat hastily precipitated. Tragedy, and particular-
ly in our own time a rather meaningless tragedy, are quite the nat-
ural thing for young people to deal in; it was surprising and credit-
able to him that Mr Fitzgerald's first book held so steadily to a gay
worldliness. Nor is it Mr Fitzgerald's increasingly detailed natural-
ism which marks the change in him. The new thing is his overburden
of sentiment and his really alarming seriousness. Sentiment, to be
sure, has been surreptitiously conveyed, and so made more poignant
and, when it doesn't come off, more objectionable, by being present-
ed always with scepticism. (This is, I believe, the real nature of the


420
THIS SIDE OF INNOCENCE
author's noted irony.) It is very strange that Mr Fitzgerald should
render emotion directly, that is without sentimentality, so that the
early love of Anthony and Gloria has the credible, somewhat incom-
prehensible atmosphere of any love affair to any outsider; so, too, the
quite successful episode of Anthony and Geraldine, the attractive al-
though virginal usher. It is whenever he approaches either the mind
or the soul of his characters that Mr Fitzgerald becomes romantic.
The first state culminates in the testament of Maury Noble, which
reads like a résumé of The Education of Henry Adams filtered
through a particularly thick page of The Smart Set. The second
stage sets in heavily when the author finds his catastrophe approach-
ing far too rapidly and tries to conceal his failure to foreshorten by
forcing the dramatic pace over into melodrama.
I do not know whether this change in Mr Fitzgerald is due to alien
influence; nor, when I mention the most impressive of his teachers,
do I wish to suggest that he is in any sense plagiarizing. The pell-
mell of ideas, or rather of the names of ideas, in the book is startling,
and more startling is the incipient philosophy of the author; but the
book is important not for these. It is important because it pre-
sents a definite American milieu and because it has pretentions as
a work of art; the degree of success (the degree, that is, of impor-
tance) comes out in comparison with the work of another American
novelist: Mrs Edith Wharton. It is not essential for my purpose to
know whether Mr Fitzgerald has read The House of Mirth and The
Custom of the Country, since I wish to make a comparison, not an
accusation.
Lily Bart's tragedy and that of Anthony Patch are similar in di-
rection and Undine Spragg is an older sister of Gloria Gilbert. Lily
dies undefiled, to be sure, and Anthony lives ignominiously; that dif-
ference is beyond criticism. But where the comparison injures Mr
Fitzgerald is in the treatment of the gradual disintegration of the
physical lives of the two characters, for Mrs Wharton, with a frac-
tion of the detail, has given the effect of the lapse of time, has kept
Lily's character active and growing before us, and has given us, all
'the while, the result of Lily's poverty upon her; Mr Fitzgerald has
clearly intended us to see that as the strain of life grew more tense,
Anthony became incapable of that devotion to abstractions which
made him so entertaining before, but as Anthony had somehow
ceased to exist long before he got to camp, the remaining scenes are


VIVIAN SHAW
421
a
impotent. As for Gloria and Undine, the methods used are singu-
larly alike and the younger writer comes out of the comparison rather
well. His half-chapter of preparing the stage for Gloria's entrance
is remarkable; he gives her general effect circuitously so that when
she appears
it matters very little whether he can stop to describe her,
which he actually never does, adding touches to the created character
as his story proceeds. The Gilberts are not in the same country as
the Spraggs; literally, since Apex City, or wherever it was for the
Spraggs, came effectively on the scene, while the background of the
Gilberts is pure conversation. But the careful treatment of Gloria
in the beginning brings its own reward to the author; as Anthony re-
cedes, Gloria becomes more and more vivid. She is, at first, a pres-
ence; Undine (Mrs Wharton understands irony) has a soul. In the
second half of the book Gloria slowly acquires being. If Mr Fitz-
gerald had followed his subject to the bitter end, instead of to an end
which is merely bitter, the triumph of Gloria would have been in-
evitable.
The failure to carry Gloria through, his seeing her as a flapper and
not as a woman, marks the precise point at which Mr Fitzgerald
now rests—this side of innocence, considerably this side of the mad
and innocent truth. He is this side, too, of a full respect for the me-
dium he works in; his irrelevance destroys his design. I have noth-
ing against his sudden descents into the dialogue of the printed play,
if that is the most effective way of presenting his scene, although I
wish he did not do this whenever he has a crowd to handle and some-
thing in itself insignificant to tell. His interludes are usually trivial
and never contribute to the one thing they can create, his atmosphere.
But I do wish that Mr Fitzgerald would stop incorporating into his
novels his wingéd words and his unrelated episodes as they are pub-
lished from time to time. It indicates a carelessness about structure
and effect which one who has so much to gain from the novel ought
to find displeasing.
VIVIAN SHAW
a


A CHILD'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD
THE STORY OF MANKIND. By Hendrik Willem Van
Loon. Illustrated. 8vo. 479 pages. Boni and Live-
right. $5.
A
BOOK for children of all ages,” is the language in which Mr
Van Loon describes his Ancient Man; and the words fit his
present volume, The Story of Mankind, very fortunately. They
point to its candour, its simplicity, its entertainment. It is no dis-
sertation; it avoids the creaky trudge of the schoolmaster. Rather
it inquires and marvels as children inquire and marvel. How full
of relish the manner is, how escaped from condescension, how little
thesis-ridden, the reader will soon discover as he advances, absorbed
and curious, through these brisk chapters on the world's proceedings
to an intelligent conception, finally, of the references reaching back
from modern man and his life into the far past. The theme, one
might think, would call for some heroics and solemnity, but such is
not the case. Here it is all natural, all interest, and hearty curiosity.
The story is written without irony and in great sincerity. But it is
not without the levity and sense of proportion that keeps us from
being too taken up with our human portentousness. “The scene of
our history," he remarks laconically, in the first place, underneath
his amusing frontispiece, “is laid upon a little planet, lost in the vast-
ness of the universe."
The narrative is quite unofficial. The author's greatest pre-
possession seems to have been to preserve in himself and his readers
a certain open-mindedness, even sketchy-mindedness, especially
when it comes to affairs of which little is known. He is constantly
present, constantly rules the scene, but with such modesty of utter-
ance and gesture, such appreciation and shrewdness as never to be
oppressive. Amid temptations (who does not itch for the grandiose
when the theme is Man) his honesty and restraint of phrase win
respect. If he knows how to be ingenuous it is because he knows
how to be sincere, how to deal simply in the assurance that his offer-
ings will be received in their own spirit. Not less than his frankness
is a certain tact apparent in producing the harmonious result of this
history. It is not the tact which presents indelicate matters deli-
>


CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD
423
cately so much as the intuition, rare and lonely, as to what needs
explanation and what not, but most particularly of when to stop
explaining. The elimination of the superfluous and the imperti-
nent has been well done indeed; though I do not say that exigencies
of space may not have contributed to the general tidiness.
Thought and painstaking have made good their portion in the
evident unity of the narrative. There was clearly the agony of
choice, the long pondering; and the resulting principle of exclusion
was that this Story should tell us nothing or little of those peoples
or persons who need not have lived so far as their contribution to-
wards making us what we are is concerned. Conversely, it should
tell as much as space permits of those, like the Greeks, who contri-
buted to make us more noteworthy than our anthropoid ancestors.
It should attempt especially to bring us to some understanding of
ourselves by showing us what we have been becoming. The thought
of the continuity of the human story has been much present in the
guidance of this narrative, has been the great resolvent of the mass
the author handles and draws from to produce the four hundred and
sixty-six abundant pages of his Story. "The more things change,”
he suggests, in consideration of Charlemagne and Napoleon, "the
more they remain the same.”
As a principle of exclusion, an instrument of organization, his
plan has proved simple and flexible. The making it effective did
not commit him to any rigid arrangement which he had to stick to
through all vicissitudes; ups and downs, indeed, he probably wel-
comed. The actual vicissitudes of narrative to which he must con-
stantly vary pace have seemingly blessed him; they have at any rate
made the reading of his Story like travels through various and pic-
turesque country. As a whole his presentation is perhaps some-
what loosely made, necessarily a thing of long perspectives and
sketchy doing. Yet the sketching, bold and brief-dealing as it is,
and not always perfect in line and detail, is heedful of fact and
scrupulous of the truth. And without too many or too tedious sum-
maries he yet travels with an eye ever on the directions of his wan-
derings, seeing that they do not fail to converge finally in his pre-
sent moment. The proportioning, therefore, of the rather formid-
able mass is skilful, the narrative featly managed.
Here, one feels, is a traveller and a philosopher who is not too
overborne with his sense of the frame of things, yet sufficiently rich


424
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD
in experience, sufficiently advised as to the deviousness of the world
to know which ways the roads lead and which roads lead nowhere.
He enjoys the reading of life and has a not unlively eye for the cur-
ious sights and sounds of this earth. His book, therefore, is not too
expository; it is written for the hungry seekers of experience, young
and old. These burn with no hard gem-like flame; theirs is an avid,
generous, if not actually uproarious conflagration.
It is soon to be discerned that notwithstanding the many discour-
aging things he discovers about Man's history, he is, on that matter,
unequivocally abandoned to good cheer. There is nothing brass-
buttoned or bawling about it; nothing, certainly, of that equally
nauseous cheerfulness of the he-chaperone one sometimes gets in his-
tory text-books for sheltered minds. Yet it is nevertheless emphati-
cally there—cheerfulness by all the force of conviction and of a san-
guinary temperament. He is natively an upholder, a yea-sayer.
On the first World War he writes:
“The shock has been so great that it killed the last spark of hope
in the breasts of millions of men. They were chanting a hymn of
progress, and four years of slaughter followed their prayers for
peace. “Is it worth while', so they ask, 'to work and slave for the
benefit of creatures who have not yet passed the stage of the earliest
cave men?
“There is but one answer.
“That answer is ‘Yes!”
It would be a mistake, however, to call this gladness. It is not
mere butter spread over the less palatable facts of our history for the
delectation of growing minds. This history is not so bloody as
Dickens' Child's History of England, but its author makes no great
hesitation in dealing plainly with the more ensanguined and less ele-
gant aspects of our sojourn on this planet. Although he makes no
special point of such things, his treatment of these not-nice episodes
in our none-too-sanctified past might prevent his history's being
certified safe by some school boards, at least in their present state
of moral anaphylaxis. His cheerfulness, at all events, is no unre-
flecting or unconsidered thing; it is one aspect of the individualiza-
tion he has given to his masses of fact. The book does not climb to
the upper aethers of contemplation, perhaps, but it gets up to the top


CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD
425
a
>
of a fine tower of good sense, and looks therefrom upon the multi-
faring world with independence. It combines cheerfulness with
savoir faire and shows some of that soundness of the middle way
which he so much praises in the Greeks.
Certainly the narrative neither swoops nor soars.
It does not
even, one feels, fulfil its author's intention that at least some of its
chapters should "gallop.” Perhaps some of them do, but they make
no Ride of the Valkyries out of the business; their power and merit
are of another sort. The regular pace is something like a strong four
miles an hour, with short cuts taken and some short work made of
things seen by the way. Short work he makes of the rise and fall of
Egypt, of the story of Moses, of the tale of Babylonia. His longer
account of the Greeks, in several chapters, is fair to their character
and surely urges one to learn more of their view and way of life.
There is a lusty chapter on the Mediaeval city, one of the higher
lights of the book, entertaining and brilliant, on the text: "Why the
people of the Middle Ages said 'City Air is Free Air.'” There are
adroit catches of such things as the origin of the University of Paris
and other Mediaeval universities, and shining passages here and
there in chapters like The Age of Expression, The Mysterious Mus-
covite Empire, and so on. To speak of bright passages, however,
is to imply a variability of entertainment which is not the case in
these pages. It is not an every-day matter to find a long book so
evenly done in attractiveness.
What are the means, what is the manner of this seduction? The
answer is not to be found in romantic capacity or command of the
picturesque; it is not in poetry; it is not in eloquence; it is not in
any
particular descriptive energy. While the narrative is certainly not
stodgy, it is quite as certainly, in an urbane and interesting way,
more matter-of-fact than romantic. The author's command of the
picturesque appears less in his text than in the drawings and maps
he sows through his pages, curious graphic sketches of ideas, some
noticeable only for a kind of rough futuristic style, some bizarre,
and some remarkably expressive. With a considerable practical
capacity for description he is not interested particularly in making
great prose views; he has no especial care for intense scenes, or dra-
matic moments; he has no battle pieces in the fashion which was set
þy Carlyle. He shows excellence and a taste for broad sweeps of
somewhat subdued historical colour, and for the occasional unroll-


426
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD
ing of spacious panoramas. He is frequently vivid in his pictures of
men: see his chapter on Napoleon and his passages on the Herculean
Peter the Great. He more excels in his characterizations of peoples
and their cultures. But his principal power is lodged in none of
these capacities. Nor is he eloquent; his chief principle of discourse
seems rather one of distribution; averaging, stopping down. Mod-
eration of utterance is one of the standards of his manner.
His special secret of effect, probably, is the finished ease with
which he gets his reader humanly close to the subject of discussion-
entirely on terms of intimacy with it. He has the not uncommon
knack of speaking about the antique past in terms of our modern
point of view. Even a Montessori graduate should feel no coldness
or strain of comprehension in reading this history, which speaks of
the Rialto of Venice as "the Wall Street of the Middle Ages," which
describes the Renaissance as a craze for the beautiful things of anti-
quity, like our modern craze for automobiles. This is a common
enough trick and plenty of writers are mechanically apt at it. But
the warmth of appreciation and the tact with which it is done here
make the effect uncommon. The author has little hesitation in
using long Latin words where necessary, but there is no sentence or
passage in the entire book that is not plainly and simply clear.
The magical trick after all is the solid humanness of the Story,
the author's sympathy both with his subject and his audience. He
brings to bear on the matter in hand some of the levers of modern
historical research—the economic interpretation of history, the train-
ed sense of evidence, the considered estimation, and so on; but these
shining engines do not tempt him, and he never forgets what a tre-
mendous entertainment the whole business is after all. "Who,” he
exclaims in splendid spirits, after some forced marching, “would
read fairy tales when the facts of history are so much more entertain-
ing?” The personable manner of the narrative, with so much in it-
but not too much—of the fireside and the vernacular, abets the
charm of sympathy in which the tale is conceived. In reading it one
comes by certain enthusiasms which keep suggesting that it may
be
one of those pleasant books by wise persons which genuinely hold
children from play and old men of all ages from the chimney-corner.
It will be strange at any rate if it is not liked by the young judges to
whom it is mainly, honestly, and democratically addressed.
CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD


THE BEST BUTTER
The Best SHORT STORIES OF 1921. Edited by Edward
J. O'Brien. 12m0. 506 pages. Small, Maynard and
Company. $2.
O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES OF 1921.
Chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences. With an
Introduction by Blanche Colton Williams. 12mo. 312
pages. Doubleday, Page and Company. $1.90.
The Stories EDITORS BUY AND Why. Compiled by
Jean Wick. 12mo. 362 pages. Small, Maynard and
Company. $2.
SELECTED STORIES From O. HENRY. Edited by C.
Alphonso Smith. 12mo. About 375 pages. Doubleday,
Page and Company. $1.25.
а
TH
HE first two of these books are as different as they can be; with
the possible variation of a month or so they glean from the same
field and professedly with the same purpose. Mr O'Brien calls his
book frankly The Best Short Stories and, since he is an intelligent
man, puts down his standards and principles. The Committee which
makes the O. Henry Memorial Award searches for "superior speci-
mens of short-story art” and reprints those which rank highest on its
lists. A careful consideration of the prefaces to the volumes of 1920
and 1921 fails to reveal a statement of principles; but the stories are
a revelation in themselves.
Now the striking thing about these two selections is not that they
fail to agree in one single instance; it is that both volumes, separate-
ly or together, are conclusive proof that the American short story
is by all odds the weakest, most trivial, most stupid, most insignifi-
cant art work produced in this country and perhaps in any country.
I shall distinguish between the two collections in a moment; the cu-
mulative effect of the thirty-six stories they include is so appalling
as to destroy the critical sense entirely, but the volumes do differ. In
this: that Mr O'Brien includes those stories which as a whole or in


428
THE BEST BUTTER
certain elements indicate the faint possibility of the appearance of a
respectable short story in America, while the O. Henry Memorial
volume gives place and precedence to those stories which are the ef-
fective proofs that the short story cannot live in our atmosphere. Let
me put it in another way: if these judges (Mr O'Brien and the
group) have done their work well, the present is hopeless and the fu-
ture dim; if they haven't—but I'm afraid they have.
Mr O'Brien has set himself the task "of disengaging the essential
human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled
conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criti-
cism of life.” Let me arbitrarily exclude from his volume the three
stories which appeared in The Dial and also Sherwood Anderson's
story from The Bookman as hors concours on account of prejudice.
I find in the remaining sixteen stories very little of the prevailing,
the almost characteristic “smartness” of the American short story; a
good deal of the emptiness of the American story of adventure; much
fake in the American story of superior or exotic beings; a few ex-
amples of fairly solid workmanship joined to fairly close observation
of common details; an occasional flash of imagination; a very rare
touch of skill in writing; and just the average technique which makes
a story moderately readable. Many of these stories are very dull.
The O. Henry Memorial Award committee which, in 1920, im-
mortalized itself by omitting the name of James Stephens from its
list of distinguished foreign contributors to American magazines,
fortifies itself in fame by omitting, for the second time in succession
the names of Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Sherwood Anderson,
Ring Lardner, Hugh Wiley, and Waldo Frank. Perhaps Mr Lard-
ner and Mr Wiley lack that final quality of the creative imagina-
tion which one associates with the highest art; perhaps the criticism
of life is not definite enough for Mr O'Brien to include them; but
what earthly excuse has the Committee? Technically Mr Lardner's
stories are excellent; Mr Wiley, working in a pattern, has been com-
pelled to refine the pattern so that his slightest variations are effec-
tive (I refer, of course, to the Wildcat stories) and both of these au-
thors are amazingly expert, delightfully humorous, and one hundred
times more interesting and entertaining than nine tenths of the imi-
tative and shoddy writers picked for praise in the Committee's book.
They are further distinguished from them by a great lack of vul-
garity.


GILBERT SELDES
429
An examination of the Committee's selection is one of the few en-
tirely hopeless experiences of a reviewer's life. The members of it
seem to have discovered a “story value” which is apart from the
story, and indications are that by this they mean plot or narrative or
action. But Dr Williams gives the case away entirely by her almost
complete absorption in two of the least significant aspects of fiction:
the locale and the subject. (Subject, not theme, thus: democracy, the
Oriental, the Unknown Soldier, the doctorate degree, the little shop
girl and her farmer husband.) Her introduction is the best commen-
tary on (a) American fiction (b) the readers of the same (c) the
Committee of which she is a member, and (d) the Society of Arts
and Sciences which allows its name to be associated with this work.
As has been remarked in another connexion, O God! O Montreal !
“Most American short story writers are bad because they copy
‘O. Henry’and most English short story writers are bad because they
copy Chekhov,” says Mr O'Brien. “Chekhov and 'O. Henry' were
‘
both great writers because they copied nobody.” It is not easy to
imitate Chekhov, so, without fear of diverting Americans from their
proper inspiration, I shall propose to them one simple test. Let them
read the story called Old Age in the volume recently issued by Mac-
millans. The story value,” I suppose will be found in the plot: a
hard successful man returns to the home of his youth and learns from
an old friend, who has acted as attorney in the affair, of what hap-
pened to the former's wife after their divorce had been arranged.
Nothing else, I assure you. The action of the story consists of a ride
to the dead woman's grave, no more. It is, in my opinion, one of the
greatest stories ever written, but I bring it forward here not because
it is supremely beautiful, supremely affecting, supremely satisfying,
but because it is presented with a technical perfection which no
American writer of our time has begun to understand. One has hoped
for several years that with the development of an adequate technical
equipment the American writer of short stories might eventually pro-
duce something worth reading. It is a desolate confession to make,
but one has been disappointed. The American technique of the short
story is the technique of the highwayman. He interests you, arrest-
ingly, at the start.
The absence of experimentation in the short story form is notable.
Granted their trivial and vulgar subjects, our writers might at least
be ingenious in their treatment. They are not; they are either imi-
a


430
THE BEST BUTTER
tative or conventional. But one thing they do remember: that O.
Henry was a successful and dearly loved master of their craft. He
and the editor who first discovered that solid advertising bored
Americans and must be relieved by columns of fiction are the two
most devastating influences of our literary life. (See the two books
listed above for the best statement of the case of each.) And the imi-
tators, as always, imitate the worst characteristics. It is, I trust, no
longer heretical to remark that much of O. Henry was shoddy and
smart. It may be advisable to remind the members of the Committee
that they are supposed to recall the best of O. Henry and not the
worst, that after all O. Henry and not Sam Slick is the man whose
memory they are attempting to honour.
GILBERT SELDES


BRIEFER MENTION
a
MR PROHACK, by Arnold Bennett (12mo, 313 pages; Doran: $1.75) has a
little of all of the best things in the various Arnold Bennetts who have en-
tertained this world. Only a touch of The Old Wives Tale, to be sure, as
this is a comedy; but much of The Grand Babylon Hotel and of The Card,
with a touch now and then of The Pretty Lady. Mr Bennett's grave
triviality has always been one of his most endearing qualities; here it is
joined to everything expert in his manner of telling a story and to his
abounding, if not high, humour. A thoroughly satisfactory performance
except to those who fancy that the Balzac de nos jours ought not to do this
sort of thing, forgetting that the Balzac of the others did precisely the same.
MARIA CHAPDELAINE, by Louis Hémon, translated by W. H. Blake (12mo,
288 pages; Macmillan : $2) is a prose symphony, vibrant and harmonious;
it touches reality with a serene and memorable simplicity. As a picture of
the hinterland of Quebec, it gives one an immediate sense of life in terms
of hardship linked with beauty; the book is a classic in the unerring right-
ness of its exclusions no less than in the enduring richness of what it con-
tains. Life and death and tenderness; love and labour and contentment-
these are its materials, and out of them Hémon wrought a story of crystal-
line charm, of refreshing grace-a narrative with the sweep of a clean
wind in it.
a
THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF, by W. Somerset Maugham (8vo, 302 pages;
Doran: $1.90) is a collection of short stories about the South Seas which
goes to show how difficult it is for a writer to lead a double life without
getting the two families mixed. Like all pot-boilers, the stories are a re-
hash of other men's experiences, reactions, and words, with a little of the
present compiler stirred in as a binder. In the product, Conrad, Kipling,
McFee, the composite magazine story writer and the man who wrote Of
Human Bondage are equally apparent. The first sentence—“The Pacific
is inconstant and uncertain as the soul of man"-is characteristic of the
book. Many prolific writers fall at times into the snare of fine writing,
but this smacks too much of The Red Book Order of Merit. The writing,
considered even from the standpoint of grammar, is at times absurdly care-
less; unshepherded pronouns sport about in happy promiscuity through long
paragraphs.
ENVY, A TALE, by Ernst von Wildenbruch, translated by Elise Traut (12mo,
144 pages; Four Seas: $2). Time leaves many once full sails flapping for-
lornly, and this belated translation of the work of the man who in 1884
received from the German Emperor the Schiller prize for his dramatic
achievements, leaves the modern reader cold and a little amused at its pre-
tentious tragedy and sentimentalism. Accustomed to the nervous writing
of the day, we balk at the use of one hundred thousand words or more to
float one mood and point a moral.


432
BRIEFER MENTION
SLEEPING Fires, by Gertrude Atherton (12mo, 299 pages; Stokes : $1.90) is
a severe disappointment. Mrs Atherton has, according to common report,
done such good work in the past that one approaches her book hopefully,
but here she is writing sensational nonsense. The eternal triangle in high
society and all the eternal details that go with it are provided with a new
twist, it is true, but it is such a wild, impossible one that it destroys any
impression of reality that may have existed. Even the style is not fault-
less and the picture of San Francisco in the '70's is not enough to make up
for the rest.
a
THE POISONER, by Gerald Cumberland (12mo, 301 pages; Brentano: $2)
refuses to be put down until the last strand of its mystery is unravelled :
when the victim comes to himself he finds that he has a hard cider headache,
and regrets that he did not acquire it on champagne. Mr Cumberland de-
fers the hour of reckoning by suggesting half-a-dozen false clues, none of
them justified by the context, except as red pepper in the eyes of the pur-
suers. The book is distorted, provocative, up-to-the-minute in talk, musical
preferences, and its psycho-analytical solution, and the clever competence of
its style frequently gathers itself together for a quotable phrase.
The FAIR REWARDS, by Thomas Beer (12mo, 292 pages; Knopf: $2.50).
Already known as the novel wherein Anna Held appears, this book has
also such minor additional attractions as being beautifully, delightfully
written, as presenting the most intelligent and sophisticated analysis of the
whole Broadway pageant we have yet had, and as assemblying for
our enjoyment actually the sort of people one could endure meeting in real
life—a type practically extinct in modern American fiction. The style is
kaleidescopic: one begins a paragraph in Paris and ends it in New Jersey;
it's the Merry Widow Waltz one moment and the armistice the next.
And after all—so it was.
THREE OF Them, by Maxim Gorky (12mo, 383 pages; Knopf: $2). Ilia,
guided more by Life than by vengeance, strangles the ugly old merchant
who is living with his woman. But since he stole from the merchant, the
suspicion of a spite murder is removed, and Ilia successfully evades the
cross-questioning of the police. With this as a background we follow him
on his genuine Russian quest for purity, that is, an accumulation of the un-
clean which he meets with a growing hate. Finally his venom is released
at a birthday party, he exposes his affair with the hostess, confesses that he
murdered the merchant, and later-breaking free of the police-splits open
his brains against some rocks.
Jewish CHILDREN, by Shalom Aleichem, translated by Hannah Bermar
(12mo, 268 pages; Knopf: $2). Genre stories of Jews in Russia. Al-
though Shalom Aleichem's tales do not rank with those of the great pro-
fessionals, as tiny monuments to the customs and emotions of a race they
are excellent. In their rich orthodoxy and their somewhat patriarchal good-
humour they contrast strongly with the typical Bowery literature of Amer-
ica. The stories, however, are weakened by a too facile lyrism, as the
author cannot narrate for two consecutive pages without breaking into song.


BRIEFER MENTION
433
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK AND OTHER STORIES, by Ivan Turgenev, translated
by Constance Garnett (16mo, 345 pages; Macmillan : $2). The title story
of this volume, accuratedy termed A Study, is a convincing treatment of
coincidence, the coincidence working as a cause rather than as a God out of
the machine, and driving both the story and the hero surely to their end.
The Inn is an ingeniously assembled system of moves and counter-moves by
which the sympathetic character of the story, a serf inn-keeper, becomes
quite deadlocked. Lieutenant Yergenov's Story is the romance of an ami-
able fool among thieves. The Dog treats of the supernatural without the
Conan Doyle last two pages. The Watch is extravagant to the point of
discouraging any writer but a high-school poet or a master. In short, five
skilfully written stories by a Russian who had the rare fortune among Rus-
sians to lie outside the shadow of Tolstoy.
THE OPEN SEA, by Edgar Lee Masters (12mo, 302 pages; Macmillan:
$2.50). Ingenuous in conception, but slow in movement and wooden in
construction, these new groups of poems do little to alter Mr Master's
relative position among American poets. Their rough-hewn blank verse is
not compact enough to be dramatic, not happy enough in its images to be
poetic, not vivid enough to be effectively philosophic. Mr Masters might
produce more impressive poetry if he were to submit his work to a long
crucible process of heating, and carefully to boil out the prosaic elements.
IGDRASIL, by Royall Snow (8vo, 63 pages; Four Seas: $1.25) is as elaborate
as its title. It experiments conscientiously both with forms and emotions,
as when it particularizes that “The Same Place: Later" is a sonnet in free
verse, or writes "and the dusk is frosted delicately with grief.” It is not
guiltless of stock poetical words and is so uneven that one would suspect
Mr Snow of being quite lacking in critical sense if he had not already
proved the contrary in his fugitive writings in The New Republic. He is
at his best when he is humorous and epigrammatic, and the reader is fre-
quently tempted to quote. He is reminiscent of numerous older poets.
Yet in his eagerness for experience, his delicacy of perception, and his occa-
sional felicities he is justified of his borrowings-himself under those gar-
ments woven by so many hands.
While I REMEMBER, by Stephen McKenna (8vo, 328 pages; Doran: $3.50).
Wherein a rather conspicuous English novelist in his early thirties dis-
cusses his England as it was in his youth before the war, and as it is now
in the days of his somewhat flaunted and perhaps rather fidgety maturity.
Even in our remote regions the subject matter has been thoroughly hashed
out with the help of Mr MacKenzie, Mr Bennett, Mrs Asquith, Colonel
Tum-ta-ta, et cetera, et cetera. Mr McKenna, to be sure, can be entertain-
ing. But isn't there a gravity common to these early 'thirties, a wiseacre
head-shaking at the antics of the pursuing generation, which is almost as
trying as the cosmic comment of the nineteen-year olders, and the periodics
of their grandfathers ? Mr McKenna suggests in his book that he is a
victim of some such malaise. Possibly, however, and generously we hope
so, can be found an intrinsic charm in such chills and fevers by the truly
epicurean hypochondriac.


434
BRIEFER MENTION
CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD, by Juliet M. Soskice (illus., 8vo, 239 pages;
Harcourt, Brace: $3) is a roguish, captivating, and intimate disclosure of
life in the Rossetti circle; it has more of a twinkle in it than Daisy Ash-
ford, for it is equally unexpected and impersonal, and has in addition a
disarming touch of worldly wisdom. The chapters about Ford Madox-
Brown are especially vivid, while the glimpses of backstairs life, with
their scraps of gossip sieved through the alert intelligence of a child, are at
once droll and delicious. These reminiscences of Ford Madox-Brown's
granddaughter are charmingly illustrated with portraits.
FAERY LANDS OF THE SOUTH SEAs, by James Norman Hall and Charles Ber-
nard Nordhoff (illus., 8vo, 355 pages; Harper: $4). To read this book
is much like witnessing a motion picture in which exotic panoramas are
flashed before one's eyes, glimpses of Crusoe-like islands and of the “peril-
ous seas” and “faery lands forlorn” of Keats. Brilliant views of lonely
atolls and their inhabitants are opened up for us in a style which is per-
haps too discursive, yet which has something of the vividness of skilled
landscape painting, and something of the glow and colour of a Stevenson
romance.
a
THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA: KUFARA, by Rosita Forbes (illus., 8vo, 356
pages; Doran : $5) is a travel book whose charming narrative is unmarred
with any sentimentality concerning the author's deep scientific purpose.
Mrs Forbes was lured by the mystery surrounding the oasis in the Libyan
desert which was known to be the headquarters of the Senussi Brother-
hood, a strong Moslem sect, and she determined to go there. Incidentally
she established the true position of several other oases that had been men-
tioned by Rohlfs, a German explorer, the only other European who has
penetrated this rigorously guarded district. The narrator's temperamental
judgements of character afford some amusement, and there are gorgeous
desert descriptions and pictures of luxurious Mohammedan interiors. One
suspects that whether she is stumbling, dogweary and very dirty, after a
guide who has lost the trail, counterplotting against plotters, or wandering
in the prohibited precincts of a Zouia village with a camera hidden in her
flowing sleeve, her hankering for the romantic makes her regretful that
there is not more hardship and danger.
.
DANTON, by Louis Madelin, translated by Lady Mary Loyd (illus., 8vo, 379
pages; Knopf: $5). “. in a book which combines profound learning
with a rare felicity of style.” For once a publisher's jacket-eulogy arouses
no resentment for exaggeration! Here indeed is evidence that the author
has complete mastery of his historical material, and moreover it is evidence
inferred from the fulness of the portrait, not from the size of the foot-
notes. M Madelin has so thoroughly assimilated his data, he has been in-
spired to such enthusiasm by his subject, that he achieves in Danton a type
fictionnaire rather than a historical character. Therein lie both the great-
ness and the weakness of this work. It reads and enchants like fiction, and
like fiction it portrays as villains those who oppose its hero. Though the
period is drawn with artistic skill and integrity and Danton is neither ex-
alted nor vindicated, Robespierre, David, and Saint-Just are not so hon-
estly represented.


BRIEFER MENTION
435
MODERN ENGLISH STATESMEN, by G. R. Stirling Taylor (8vo, 267 pages;
McBride: $2.75) may be prescribed antidotally for the mythology of the
textbooks; it has iconoclasm without violence. In addition to studies of
Walpole and the Pitts, the author strips some of the political tinsel from
Burke, presents Cromwell in a manner which contrasts emphatically with
Mr Drinkwater's recent heroic figure of papier-mâché, and appraises Dis-
raeli with a greater degree of open-mindedness than has been the wont of
recent historians.
THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND Art in the United States, by Benjamin
Brawley (illus., 12mo, 197 pages; Duffield: $1.50). This revised edition
of Brawley's standard work on the subject includes new chapters which
bring it up to date, introducing Charles Gilpin and Claude McKay as the
newest personified refutations of racial inferiority, although the author is
far from so labelling them. In fact the book is distinguished by its impar-
tiality and lack of dogmatic claims. Confining itself to a concise relation
of fact, it makes out an interesting case for the Negro's contributions, ac-
tual and potential, to the rather meagre art of his foster country.
ZIONISM AND WORLD POLITICS, by Horace M. Kallen (8vo, 345 pages;
Doubleday, Page: $3.50). It is a great pity that the author did not choose
a more descriptive and more alluring title for his book. Zionism is gen-
erally understood, or rather misunderstood, as a family quarrel of the
Jewish people; whereas Zionism, as interpreted by Dr Kallen, is an inter-
national matter which marks the beginning of a new epoch in world poli-
tics. If the favourable criticism which this volume has received from
the press can overcome the public's prejudice against the title and bring it
into general notice, the book will contribute more towards an understanding
of the Jewish problem than any work since the publication of Zangwill's
ghetto novels. Dr Kallen has done a masterly piece of historical writing,
a remarkably articulate, illuminating, and authoritative book.
THE LABOR MOVEMENT, by Frank Tannenbaum (12mo, 259 pages; Putnam:
$2) refuses to admit that the union member is not more like Caesar's wife
than is the employer. In its revelation of the future economic and social
structure of the world, as the author sees it revolutionized by the increasing
organization of wage earners, the book crowns the worker with a halo of
virtue generally reserved for the dead whose humanness has been forgotten.
There is too much faith in man shown in the book, or else the predicted
social order for once will mock history. One almost hears the flutter of an-
gelic feathers about the unionists, so guileless does the writer make them.
The present system is certain of change, but unsophisticated is he who can
see such a cloudless future as Mr Tannenbaum describes. Yet, despite the
calmness of that to-morrow, it sounds as boresome as the orthodox heaven.
THE IDOLATRY OF Science, by the Honourable Stephen Coleridge (12mo, 99
pages; Lane: $1.25). In this attack upon science there are vigour, virulence,
and an ironic humour manifestly born of prejudice. The author makes it
evident that he has a basis of fact, but he writes with a superficiality that
is transparent, with a one-sidedness that is antagonizing, and with an
exaggeration that is at once amusing and inimical to his case.


MODERN ART
"SOCI
corners.
a
OCIALLY speaking,” the Alfred Stieglitz auction of modern
in the Anderson Galleries was an immense success. Many
more came than could get in and all of those who got in seemed to
know each other. It was quite like a party. There was a great
.
deal of hand shaking and waving of catalogues to friends in far
The determination to enjoy everything, no matter what,
was evident and it is doubtful if the witticisms of Mr Chapman, the
auctioneer, were ever more heartily relished. This elevation of the
affair into a festivity touchingly illustrates the plight to which we
have been reduced this winter and the appalling lack of things in
our art system—if we may be said to have a system as yet—that
have the human touch. To be sure there was the Kelekian sale a
little earlier, but that was formal, and concerned itself with foreign
modern art and ran into the thousands of dollars. This one was
distinctly our own. The very chaps of whose pictures when sold Mr
Chapman so callously remarked, “Off with the frames,” were sitting
there beside you. It was not a case of a dead Cézanne this time, but
of a live, and sometimes, alas, hungry young artist. But feast or
a
famine, all were gallant and gay and when the recurring verdict
“Off with the frame” ominously resounded, no one laughed so loud-
ly as these same young men. But possibly the phrase is new to you,
experienced auction-goers though you be. Well, know then that
certain of the artists sold their chefs-d'oeuvre under the condition
that failing to reach the price of one hundred dollars the frames
were not to be considered part of the sacrifice; and with what
amounted to extraordinary clairvoyance all of those who put this
restriction upon their sales were fated to hear the chilling words
already quoted, from Mr Chapman's lips. I never before under-
stood so clearly what Thoreau meant when he said, “One is pun-
ished for suspecting a friend by finding one's suspicions true.”
The prices frequently, indeed, went woefully below one hundred
dollars, but so far, only those connected with the arts in a business
a
way have made much of an outcry over this. The painters of the
pictures agreed with Mr Stieglitz that the auction was to be re-
garded as a sporting event and faced the outcome like sportsmen.


HENRY MCBRIDE
437
For my part I fail to see anything but good that may come of it;
even in the cases of Mr Kantor, Mr Stefan Hirsch, Mr Niccolo
Luisi, Mr Edward Nagle, and Mr Ben Benn, whose interesting
works, frames and all, disappeared for ridiculously small sums.
They may fortify themselves with the reflection that Cézannes and
Renoirs once sold for less. And in the meantime their pictures are
out, where they belong, in the possession of someone who bought
them because he wanted them. I have always advocated auctions
to the moderns and to young painters of whatever faith. For one
thing it disperses art and all agree (even business men) that art is
insufficiently dispersed in this country. I can think of no better
way of acquiring the sensation of actually being an artist than the
thought that at last a patron has appeared upon the scene. He may
not be much of a patron but-enfin—the game begins, one has sold
a picture, one is an artist. The point may be considered unimpor-
tant by arrived professionals who have long since forgot their own
early ennuis, but there is no danger that it will now be overlooked
by the young people whose nearest contact with professionalism is
a bowing acquaintance with the office boys in the various galleries.
For them auctions have come to stay. One enthusiast exclaimed,
“Let's have one every month," but was frowned upon by the cus-
todian of the goose that lays these eggs that are not golden, but are
nevertheless eggs. However there seems to be no valid reason why
the outlying districts should not be worked. It would still be pos-
sible to have auctions of the new things this year in Philadelphia
and Chicago—not to mention Des Moines, Walla Walla, and other
capitals of unworked districts. Considerable strain no doubt would
be placed upon one's sportsmanship, but one has to begin some time.
The early impressionistic auctions, so far from being considered
humiliating, are regarded as amusing episodes by all historians.
Salem, Ohio, they say, once petitioned the postal authorities to
have the other Salem, in Massachusetts, change its name, but there
was nothing doing. If the nomenclature of our towns must be sim-
plified doubtless, now, Salem, Ohio, will be willing to change its
own name and start all over again with an effort to lead a better
life, since it has been so unmercifully shown up by Citizen Burch-
field. There have already been in The Dial comment upon and re-


438
MODERN ART
productions of the work of Charles Burchfield who lived in Salem,
didn't like it, and said so forcibly in his water-colours. He laid
especial emphasis upon the outlying huts of the workmen and
showed them to us in the early spring, naked and ugly, with road-
ways hub-deep with mud and alternating pools of water and heaps
of soiled snow. The country stores and other buildings seemed pos-
itively obscene in their wanton disrepair and out of the switchman's
hut by the railway the artist made a powerful accusation against
our so-called civilization itself. The drawings had the air of hav-
ing been forced from a sensitive nature that had stood all it could.
They had the eloquence of anguish in them. Nevertheless, it is too
much to suppose that Mr Burchfield, having given vent to these
things, could have met with much success in his home town. If
Salem had eyes at all it must have seen that it had not been compli-
mented and when we sit for portraits, of course, it's compliments
we're after. Now civic pride is a dangerous thing to fool with.
Even a very small place, if roused, can be mighty unpleasant to a
single individual. And it is to be presumed that all the other in-
habitants of Salem liked it, or had not thought about it, which from
a civic point of view, is the same thing.
So those of us in the east who saw these powerful and satirical
arraignments of the mid-western city were alarmed for the artist's
present safety and future spiritual growth. There was no doubt
he had a talent for hating. But would Salem consent to letting him
go on hating her at close range? And if fired out of Salem, could
Mr Burchfield as effectually hate any other place? There was re-
joicing over the forceful expression that had occurred but could it
be continued? Apparently these alarums were unnecessary. A new
collection of water-colours by Mr Burchfield on exhibition in the
book-shop of the Sunwise Turn shows that the artist is as admir-
ably hate-full as ever. He arranges his satires with sureness and
with even greater breadth and gusto. Technically he has gained,
there is no doubt about it, and since the Sunwise Turn tells us these
drawings are to be sent abroad to astonish our British cousins, this
is all to the good. Absolute Americanism, Londoners say, is the
thing they are always looking for in American art. This time it is
not likely that they will be disappointed.
HENRY MCBRIDE
a


MUSICAL CHRONICLE
In ,
N Serge Prokofieff's opera, the mask Trouffaldino comes to amuse
the hypochondriac son of the King of Clubs, and fails: not be-
cause he is not comical, but because the Prince is incurably atrabil-
ious. The audience which heard the new work L'Amour des Trois
Oranges the night the Chicago Opera Company performed it for the
first time in New York was quite able to laugh; it did laugh at a good
deal of the veritably comical stage business; and if it found itself
unamused by the work as an entirety, it was because, contrary to the
instance enacted upon the stage, Trouffaldino Prokofieff proved him-
self far less witty and humorous a musician than he intended being
when he set out to divert operatic audiences with an opera bouffe.
The musical invention of the young Russian composer again showed
itself incapable of meeting adequately the situations he creates for
it whenever he tries to write. Certainly, few conditions have been
more favourable to its success than those which surrounded it when
he set about fleshing the fantastic and ironical commedia dell'arte of
old Carlo Gozzi. Prokofieff is in temper impish, puckish, exas-
perated, sarcastic. He writes, it would seem from his production,
most often in a mood half playful, half irritable. His little pieces
for the pianoforte sound like the much-admired improvizations of a
talented and somewhat bored infant prodigy of the mauve salon
world: he scrubs out on the instrument little angry marches, acidu-
lous badinage, scornful fleeting signs of the thumb and nose, all sorts
of impish suggestions. A certain broad sense of the comedy of or-
chestral instruments he undoubtedly possesses. The young com-
poser knows, for example, how to make the bassoon, the clown of the
band, grunt funny if not precisely subtle noises. And the very dry
and irresponsible fairy tale of the old Venetian dramatist offered
Prokofieff the opportunity of producing this puckish, satiric, gro-
tesque strain to fullest advantage.
Half the work had already been done for him; he had the rarest
of scaffoldings for his edifice. For Gozzi's L'Amore delle Tre Me-
lerancie, even in the almost undeveloped scenario-form in which it
has descended to us, is a masterly little piece of romantic irony.
Here, as never in Tieck or Brentano or any other romantic ironist,
the soul nimbly satirizes itself, shows itself to be as phantasmal as


440
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
the unreal spectacle of life which it has conjured up for its own
amusement, demonstrates itself the dupe of its own fantasies. The
sly self-satire is already in the nurses' tale plot which is offered the
adult public. It is in the marionette and playing-card souls of the
protagonists whom no poetic projection has brought to life. The
presence upon the stage of the five stock masks of the immemorial
Italo-Latin clown comedy, Tartaglia, Trouffaldino, Brighella, Pan-
taleone, and Smeraldine, further points the satire. So, too, does the
discussion by the characters of the merits of the very play in which
they are acting, of the rôles they are undertaking. Last, the continu-
ous invasion of the scene by the "absurdities” and other players who
represent the portion of the self which watches passively its own ac-
tivities, and produces a world for its own diversion, turns the laugh
inward. For these curious creatures might, like the Hans Wurst of
one of Tieck's comedies, lament the fact that they have to sit and
sweat in audiences all their lives, and sit and sweat in life itself,
merely because they cannot manage to repress in themselves the fatal
habit of imagining.
It is to Prokofieff's honour that he recognized the beauty of the aid
the Venetian playwright proffered him. If L'Amour des Trois
Oranges gives few signs of musical creativity latent in him, it never-
theless offers in many spots signs of a very alert intelligence. The
acted and spoken portion of the performance was delightful, for the
reason that in composing his libretto, the young Russ had given a
new life to the very informing spirit of Gozzi's plays. Certainly, he
was far more faithful to Count Carlo's genius than the programme's
statement: “The Love of Three Oranges. Words and music by
Serge Prokofieff. Suggested by Carlo Gozzi,” might have made us
to know. He did not, to begin with, make the error committed by
Schiller when he adapted another of Gozzi's comedies, Turandot, to
the needs of the German stage. He did not seek to breathe human
souls into the characters. He left them what they were made, mario-
vettes in the guise of men, playing-cards whom the stage magician
Tchelio and the stage witch Fata Morgana might play out against
each other as cardplayers trump down jacks and kings. The prince
remains what he is in Gozzi-a splenetic infant. Indeed, the li-
bretto as it stands is, on the whole, a most honourable piece of recon-
struction. The scenes which have been eliminated are of the sort of
explanatory incisions, conversations between the villains of the plot,


PAUL ROSENFELD
441
which were quite necessary on the langourously conducted eigh-
teenth-century stage, but which the modern tempi of performances
have made useless. The scene of the tournament, where the hypo-
chondriac prince for the first time laughs, and in so doing draws upon
himself the curse of Fata Morgana, is charmingly constructed; one
of the following scenes has been annexed to it, much to the improve-
ment of both. Very delightfully done, too, is the encounter with the
terrible cook in the castle of the guardian of the three oranges; Proko-
fieff has gathered all intimations from the scenario and from the
Venetian's own account of the first performance, and re-felt the
business in true comic vein. In particular, the rôle assigned to the
“ "absurdities” relieves Gozzi's intentions admirably. The composer
has kept these on the stage throughout the entire action, placing them
in two little towers in the proscenium, from whence they spy upon
the scene, make ironic comments, titter over the boasts of the ma-
gician, and occasionally invade the boards to change the course of
the action when it becomes intolerable to them. For example, when
the third princess delivered from out the oranges threatens to follow
her two predecessors and perish of thirst, the “absurdities,” unable
longer to bear the massacre, project "love" into the universe. One of
their number is sent onto the stage with a bucket of water, which the
prince finds and holds to the parching lips. And then the princess,
having drunk, turns to the prince and says “Tu m'as sauvé la vie,"
and he, like every man who is informed by her that he has given
"life” to a beautiful lady, modestly accepts the thanks and replies
“Rien ne pouvait m'arrêter."
On several occasions, to be sure, the model has been unintelligent-
ly followed, and local hits unintelligible to the modern audience
have been preserved along with the universal applicabilities. In the
second scene, Prokofieff lets Trouffaldino, examining carefully the
expectorations of the prince, exclaim
“Ce sont des rimes puantes!
J'ai de suite reconnu l'odeur,''
$
while the "absurdities," from their vantage-tower enlarge
"Mais parbleux! Il le nourrit de vers martéliens,
Leandre!"


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MUSICAL CHRONICLE
a
a
Now, it is not to be expected of modern audiences in Russia or Ameri-
ca or France that they shall have read either Gozzi's memoirs, Sy-
monds' excellent study of their author, or possess the sufficiency of
knowledge of the history of Italian literature that ought be every
college passman’s, to comprehend why Leander Knave of Clubs
should have fed the prince martellian verses, and why these, to the
conviction of all, would have polluted his entrails. Unless capacity
exists for recollecting the war of the aristocratic Granalleschi acad-
emy, of which Gozzi was a member, upon the plebeian tragedies of
the Abbé Chiari which were written in lumbering martellian verse,
the joke is lost. Tchelio is no longer a slap at Goldoni, as he was for
the Venetian public of the mid-eighteenth century, nor Fata, the pro-
tectress of the villainous Leander a caricature of Chiari; and some-
thing more local should have been found as substitute for these now
difficult allusions. Indeed, one doubts very much whether Prokofieff
himself was aware of the nature of the quip, and whether he did not
accept it rather naïvely. Certainly, had he understood it, he must
have made haste to bring it to date.
Still, there is so much good, so much vagrant fancy, in Prokofieff's
libretto that, could it have stood alone, it must have been a delight.
Unfortunately, Gozzi cannot to-day stand unaided on the boards.
His works remain scenarios, even the later of his works in which, in-
stead of leaving all the dialogue to the improvisation of his actors,
he wrote down the important speeches. They were in truth librettos
composed for what Marsden Hartley might call the "muscular mu-
sic" of Sacchi's troupe. The improvisation, the gestures, movements,
lazzi of this perhaps the most accomplished association produced by
the commedia dell'arte, were the pediment to the figurines Count
Carlo hewed. Some substitute for this irrevocable art has to be
found by the modernizer. Schiller found it in the great-hearted
flood of his own poetry; Volmoeller, a more recent adapter, tried to
find it in verse plus Reinhardt's staging plus Busoni's incidental
music. Prokofieff turned to the machinery of grand opera, to the or-
chestra and the singing actors, to base the statue. But he turned in
vain. For his score not only does not aid the stage-business. It drags
upon it, it is so poor. Gozzi, stage-carpenter, comedians of the Chi-
cago company, they were the performance. The compos