D I A VOLUME LXXIV January to June, 1923 f THE DIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY Index INDEX VOLUME LXXIV Adams, B. M. G Carchester {Fiction) 24i Agard, Walter A Reconsideration of Greek Art. 94 Aiken, Conrad Smith and Jones (Fiction) . . . 369 Aldington, Richard Saint-Evremond 245 Anderson, Sherwood Many Marriages (Fiction) 3i, i65, 256 Balazs, Bela Hungarian Letter 387 Birrell, Francis Marcel Proust: The Prophet of Despair 463 Britten, Clarence Utopia Revisited 307 Brooks, Van Wyck . . . . Henry James: The First Phase . . 433 Burke, Kenneth Engineering With Words ... 408 Realism and Idealism .... 97 Burke, Kenneth, translator . Charles Dickens i Coppard, A. E The Poor Man (Fiction) ... i2i Cournos, John The Samovar (Fiction) 595 Cowley, Malcolm A Monument to Proust .... 234 The Owl and the Nightingale . . 624 Craven, Thomas German Symbolism 6i9 The Progress of Painting .357,58i De-wey, John China and the West i93 Dos Passos, John Baroja Muzzled i99 Drake, William A Carducci in Translation .... 20i Eglinton, John Anglo-Irish Literature ... 395 Dublin Letter i88 The Irish Poetic Tradition . 293 Gregory, Alyse A Definitive Hearn 289 A Novel of the Artist 5ii Pessimism and Prose Poetry 405 Hauptmann, Gerhart The Heretic of Soana (Fiction) 329, 475. 563 Komroff, Manuel A Wedding Feast (Fiction) Lawrence, D. H Indians and an Englishman Model Americans Taos Llona, Florence Nelson, translator The Kneeling Woman (Fiction) LovETT, Robert Morss Robert Herrick's New Novel . Mc Bride, Henry Max Beerbohm's Rossetti Mann, Thomas German Letter .... Tristan (Fiction) Mansfield, Katherine .... A Married Man's Story (Fiction) Miles, Hamish Machen in Retrospect Moore, George The Apostle 38i i44 5°3 25i 226 206 609 57 45i 627 S37 IV INDEX Morand, Paul Morgan, Bayard Quincy, translator Mortimer, Raymond Piccoli, Raffaello Pound, Ezra Russell, Bertrand Seldes, Gilbert Shaw, Vivian von hofmannsthal, hugo Wilson, Jr., Edmund Wright, Cuthbert Wright, Willard Huntington Zweig, Stefan PAGE The Kneeling Woman (Fiction) . 225 The Heretic 0/ Soana (Fiction) 33°. 475. 563 London Letter i85 Italian Letter 77,495 Paris Letter 85, 273 From Comte to Bergson .... 9i Freedom in Education i53 A Synthetic Mind 6i5 First Inversion i00 Omitting Scotland Yard . . . 5i8 The Sultan's Turret 204 Moving Pictures iii A Professional Novelist . i97 Vienna Letter 28i The Hamlet Controversy .... 297 Many Marriages 399 Reconstructing Miss Austen 62i Mr Robinson's Moonlight . 5i5 The Snows of Yesteryear.... 303 Art Books in America\ .... 40i Charles Dickens I INDEX v VERSE Andelson, Pearl Excursion i52 Barney, Natalie Cufford ... To Travel or Not to Travel . . . 379 Bodenheim, Maxwell Decadent Cry 368 Brownell, Baker Be a Sport 45° Christoph, Charles Mood for Pianiste i64 Cowley, Malcolm The Fishes 494 Starlings 494 Cummings, E. E Seven Poems 15 de Richey, Tina Modotti .... Plenipotentiary 474 George, Legare Petite Chanson 607 Kreymborc, Alfred Festoons 0/Fishes 580 Moore, Marianne Novices i83 Poore, Dudley Marigold Pendulum 35i Stephens, James The Last Word 232 Wescott, Glenway Magnolias and the Intangible Horse 594 Williams, William Carlos Poem 562 Winters, Yvor Eternity 255 Wrynn, Anthony Admonition in Autumn .... 250 Yeats, William Butler .... Meditations in Time of Civil War . 50 Ancestral Houses 50 / See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fulness and of the Coming Emptiness 55 The Jay's Nest by My Window 54 My Descendants 53 My House 5i My Table 52 The Road at My Door .... 54 VI INDEX ART Archipenko, Alexander .... Female Figure May Barnes, Djuna Rudolph Schildkraut April Beiler, Adi Two Silhouettes June Cranach, the Elder, Lukas . Lucretia April Cummings, E. E Four Line Drawings ... January Davis, Stuart Imaginary Portrait February The Philosophers February Dehn, Adolph Daughter Seule April Mother and Daughter .... April Derain, Andre A Head April Fry, Roger Two Woodcuts May Juta, Jan C D.H. Lawrence .... February Kokoschka, Oskar ...... Portrait of Max Reinhardt March Lachaise, Gaston Woman's Head March Laurencin, Marie A Portrait April Portraits April Two Young Women April Le Fauconnier, Henri .... Stefan Zweig January Maillol, Aristide Two Pieces of Sculpture . . February Masereel, Frans Le Boxeur March Le Cheval de Bois .... March L'IngSnieur March Le Voyageur March Matisse, Henri Girl at Window June Nagle, Edward Two Brush Drawings .... June Old German Christ and Saint John January Pascin, Jules The Bath June Siesta June Picasso, Pablo Woman and Child s. . . . March Woman Reading March Robinson, Boardman Roger Fry May Roennebeck, Arnold Three Bas-reliefs ... May Rousseau, Henri A Painting January van Delft, Vermeer Lady With a Chinese Hat June Van Gogh, Vincent L'ArKsienne February von Huhn, Rudolf Itow May Wauer, William Skater January Young, Art American Peasant April Zorach, William Boxers Clinching .... February On the Elevated .... February INDEX vn BOOKS REVIEWED Authors and Titles PAGE Agnetti, Mary Prichard, translator. The Life of Antonio Fogazzaro, by Tommaso Gallarati-Scotti 4i6 American Poetry, i922, A Miscellany 522 Ami el, Henri-Frederic. Van Wyck Brooks, translator. Jean Jacques Rousseau 3i3 Anderson, Sherwood. Many Marriages 399 Anderson, Sherwood. Introduction to Geography and Plays, by Gertrude Stein . 408 Atherton, Gertrude. Black Oxen 632 Austen, Jane. Concluded by L. Oulton. The Watsons 62i Bacon, Peooy. Volume III, The Younger Artists' Series 40i Bagger, Eugene S. Eminent Europeans 4i6 Baroja, Pio. Isaac Goldberg, translator. The Quest i99 Barton, Ralph, illustrator. Perfect Behavior, by Donald Ogden Stewart . i04 Beaumont, Isabel. Secret Drama 632 Beerbohm, Max. Rossetti and His Circle 206 Belloc, Hilaire. On 522 Benchley, Robert C. Gluyas Williams, illustrator. Love Conquers All i04 Bennett, Arnold. Things That Have Interested Me 522 Bergson, Henri, foreword to Modern French Philosophy, by J. Alexander Gunn . 9i Bigongiari, Dino, translator. Introduction by Benedetto Croce. The Reform of Education, by Giovanni Gentile 97 Blaker, Richard. The Voice in the Wilderness 4i3 Blunden, Edmund. The Shepherd i05 Bodenheim, Maxwell. Blackguard 632 Borgese, G. A. Isaac Goldberg, translator. Rube 52i Boyd, Ernest A. Ireland's Literary Renaissance . 395 Brock, A. Clutton-. See Clutton-Brock. Brook, Alexander. Volume II, The Younger Artists' Series 40i Brooks, Van WYCK^translator. Jean Jacques Rousseau, by Henri-Frederic Amiel . 3i3 Broun, Heywood. The Boy Grew Older i00 Brown, Alice. Old Crow 2i0 Brown, Horatio F., editor. Letters and Papers of John Addington Symonds 634 Bunin, I. A. D. H. Lawrence, S. S. Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf, translators. The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories 4i3 Bynner, Witter. A Book of Plays . 3i5 Canfield, Dorothy. Rough-Hewn 209 Carducci, Giosue. Emily A. Tribe, editor and translator. A Selection from the Poems of Giosue Carducci 20i Carpenter, Rhys. The Esthetic Basis of Greek Art 94 Chesterton, Gilbert K. The Man Who Knew Too Much 5i8 Clutton-Brock, A. Shakespeare's "Hamlet" 297 Coblentz, Stanton A. The Thinker 633 Cohen, Helen Louise. Lyric Forms From France 522 Colum, Padraic. Dramatic Legends and Other Poems 293 Conkling, Hilda. Shoes of the Wind 4i5 Cooke, Delmar Gross. William Dean Howells 3i2 Corbin, John. The Return of the Middle Class 2i2 Couch, Sir Arthur Quiller-. See Quiller-Couch. Cournos, John. Babel i00 Crapsey, Adelaide. Verse i06 Craven, Thomas. Paint 5ii Croce, Benedetto, introduction. Dino Bigongiari, translator. The Reform of Edu- cation, by Giovanni Gentile 97 viii INDEX PAGE Culbertson, Ernest Howard. Goat Alley 209 Damon, S. Foster, and Robert Silliman Hillyer, editors. Eight More Harvard Poets 3i4 Dargan, E. Preston, and William A. Nitze. A History of French Literature . . 3ii Decameron, The New 4i3 Deland, Margaret. The Vehement Flame i03 Distinguished American Artists Series 404 Dos Passos, John. A Pushcart at the Curb 3i3 Dostoevsky, Aimee. Fyodor Dostoevsky . 2ia Dreiser, Theodore. A Book About Myself 634 Drew, John. My Years on the Stage i04 Dyke, Paul Van. See Van Dyke. Eagle, Solomon. Essays at Large 4i4 Eaton, Walter Prichard. Penguin Persons and Peppermints i0J Egan, Maurice Francis. Confessions of a Book-Lover 4i4 Ellis, Havelock. Kanga Creek: An Australian Idyll 3ii Ellis, Havelock, introduction. John Howard, translator. Against the Grain (A Rebours) by J-K. Huysmans 303 Erskine, John. Collected Poems. i907-i922 4i5 Fabian, Warner. Flaming Youth 520 Feinstein, Martin. In Memoriam 3i4 Ficke, Arthur Davison. Sonnets of a Portrait Painter 4i5 Fiene, Ernest. Volume I, The Younger Artists' Series 40i Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tales of the Jazz Age 3ii Flandrau, Grace H. Being Respectable 4i4 Fletcher, John Gould. Preludes and Symphonies 4i5 Franklin, Fabian. What Prohibition Has Done to America 3i5 Frederick, John T. Druida 520 Gallarati-Scotti, Tommaso. Mary Prichard Agnettt, translator. The Life of Antonio Fogazzaro 4i6 Garnett, David. Lady Into Fox 63i Gentile, Giovanni. Dino Bigongiari, translator. Introduction by Benedetto Croce. The Reform of Education 97 Gerhardi, William. Futility: A Novel on Russian Themes 52i Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson. Krindlesyke i06 Giraudoux, Jean. Ben Ray Redman, translator. Suzanne and the Pacific . . 520 Goldberg, Isaac, translator. The Quest, by Pi0 Baroja i99 Goldberg, Isaac, translator. Rube, by G. A. Borgese 52i Gorman, Herbert S. The Barcarole of James Smith i06 Graves, Robert. On English Poetry i05 Gregory, Lady. Three Wonder Plays 2ii Gropper, William, illustrator. Chinese White, by Gladys Oaks 3i3 Gunn, J. Alexander. Foreword by Henri Bergson. Modern French Philosophy: A Study of the Development Since Comte 9i Hearn, Lafcadio. %The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn 289 Hecht, Ben. Gargoyles i00 Hecht, Ben. A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago 413 Herrick, Robert. Homely Lilla 5i3 Hesse, Hermann. N. H. Priday, translator. Demian 6i9 Hillyer, Robert Silliman, and S. Foster Damon, editors. Eight More Harvard Poets Ji4 Hind, C. Lewis. More Authors and I 3i2 Holden, Raymond. Granite and Alabaster 3i4 Howard, John, translator. Introduction by Havelock Ellis. Against the Grain (A Rebours) by J-K. Huysmans 303 Howe, P. P. The Life of William Hazlitt 633 Hull, Helen R. Quest 2l0 Hutton, Edward. Pietro Aretino 523 INDEX IX Huysmans, J-K. John Howard, translator. Introduction by Havelock Ellis. Against the Grain (A Rebours) 303 Jackson, Holbrook. Occasions 4i5 Jersey, Dowager Countess of. Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life 634 Jewell, Edward Alden. The Moth Decides i03 Jones, Robert Edmond, and Kenneth Macgowan. Continental Stagecraft . 204 Koteliansky, S. S., D. H. Lawrence, and Leonard Woolf, translators. The Gentle- man from San Francisco and Other Stories, by I. A. Bunin 4i3 Kuniyoshi, Yasuo. Volume IV, The Younger Artists' Series 40i Lawrence, D. H., S. S. Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf, translators. The Gentle- man from San Francisco and Other Stories, by I. A. Bunin 4i3 Looms, George. Stubble 2i0 Lubbock, Percy. Earlham 63i Macgowan, Kenneth, and Robert Edmond Jones. Continental Stagecraft . 204 Machen, Arthur. Far Off Things.—Hieroglyphics.—The Hill of Dreams.—The House of Souls.—The Secret Glory.—Things Near and Far 627 Mackenzie, Compton. The Seven Ages of Woman 63i Maugham, W. Somerset. East of Suez 3i5 Mazzini, Giuseppe. E. F. Richards, editor. Emilie Ashurst Venturi, translator. Mazzini's Letters to an English Family 2i2 Milne, A. A. Three Plays: The Dover Road, The Truth About Blayds, The Great Broxopp 3i5 Molnar, Franz. Fashions for Men, and The Swan 52i Monro, Harold. Real Property 2ii Morris, Lloyd. The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson 5i5 Mumford, Lewis. The Story of Utopias 307 Munson, Gorham B. Waldo Frank: A Study 3i3 Murrell, William, editor. The Younger Artists'Series. Vol. I: Ernest Fiene. Vol. II: Alexander Brook. Vol. Ill: Peggy Bacon. Vol. IV: Yasuo Kuniyoshi . 40i Nathan, George Jean. The World in Falseface 3i2 Nathan, Robert. Youth Grows Old i05 Nicholson, Meredith. Broken Barriers i03 NrrzE, William A., and E. Preston Dargan. A History of French Literature . . 3ii New Decameron, The 4i3 Oaks, Gladys. William Gropper, illustrator. Chinese White 3i3 O'Higgens, Harvey. Some Distinguished Americans 209 Oulton, L., conclusion to The Watsons, by Jane Austen 62i Passos, John Dos. See Dos Passos. Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Development of the American Short Story 522 Pattee, Fred Lewis. Sidelights on American Literature 3i2 Paul, Elliot. Impromptu 63i Pearl, Raymond. The Biology of Death 523 Phillpotts, Eden. The Red Redmaynes • 52i Pound, Louise, editor. American Ballads and Songs 632 Powys, John Cowper. Samphire 633 Powys, Llewelyn. Ebony and Ivory 405 Priday, N. H., translator. Demian, by Herman Hesse 6i9 Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur. Studies in Literature: Second Series 2ii Ramuz, C. F. The Reign of the Evil One 3ii Redman, Ben Ray, translator. Suzanne and the Pacific, by Jean Giradoux 520 Reid, Forrest. Pender Among the Residents $2i Rhys, Ernest, editor. Modern English Essays, i870-i920 2ii Richards, E. F., editor. Emilie Ashurst Venturi, translator. Mazzini's Letters to an English Family 2i2 Robertson, M. D., John W. Edgar A. Poe: A Psychopathic Study 523 Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Roman Bartholow 5i5 Rosen, Baron. Forty Years of Diplomacy 4i6 Ruskin, John. John Ruskin's Letters to William Ward i04 Russell, Bertrand. The Problem of China .... i93 x INDEX PACE Sandburg, Carl. Rootabaga Stories 2i0 Santayana, George. The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress 6i5 Savage, Henry. Richard Middleton, the Man and His Work 523 Scorn, Tommaso Gallarati-. See Gallarati-Scotti. Shay, Frank, editor. Contemporary One-act Plays of i92i 2ii Sherman, Stuart P. Americans $03 Simons, Hi. Orioles and Blackbirds 633 Sinclair, May. Anne Severn and the Fieldings i97 Sinclair, Upton. The Goose Step 523 Smith, Henry Justin. Deadlines 4i3 Squire, J. C. Books Reviewed 4I4 Stauffer, Ruth M. Joseph Conrad: His Romantic-Realism 634 Stein, Gertrude. Introduction by Sherwood Anderson. Geography and Plays 408 Stewart, Donald Ogden. Ralph Barton, illustrator. Perfect Behavior i04 Symonds, John Addington. Horatio F. Brown, editor. Letters and Papers of John Addington Symonds 634 Thomas, Augustus. The Print of My Remembrance i04 Thomson, J. Arthur, editor. The Outline of Science i06 Tribe, Emily A., editor and translator. A Selection from the Poems of Giosue Car- ducci 20i Tuckerman, Arthur. Breath of Life 2i0 Untermeyer, Louis. Roast Leviathan 633 Van Dyke, Paul. Catherine de Medicis 4i6 Venturi, Emilie Ashurst, translator. Mazzini's Letters to an English Family, edited by E. F. Richards 2i2 Wagner, Charles. Poems of the Soil and Sea 3i4 Walpole, Hugh. The Cathedral . . . ^ i03 Waugh, Alec. Roland Whately 209 Weaver, John V. A. Finders 3i4 Wheelock, John Hall. The Black Panther i05 Williams, Gluyas, illustrator. Love Conquers All, by Robert C. Benchley . i04 WooLr, Leonard, D. H. Lawrence, and S. S. Koteliansky, translators. The Gentle- man from San Francisco and Other Stories, by I. A. Bunin 4i3 Woollcott, Alexander. Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play i04 Wylie, Elinor. Black Armour 624 Wyatt, Edith Franklin. The Invisible Gods 520 Young, Stark. The Flower in Drama 528 INDEX xi COMMENT PAGE America—Seen from a Distance 3i" Dial, The—After Three Years i07 Dial's Award, The 2,3 Dial's Policy, The 637 International Copyright Laws 5*4 Sports and Criticism 4'7 THE THEATRE Adding Machine, The 52° Com£dien, Le 635 Enchanted Cottage, The 636 Fashions for Men ii0 God of Vengeance, The 42° Hamlet l°9 Hopkins', Mr Arthur, Productions of Shakespeare 32° Lady Cristilinda, The 2i5 Lower Depths, The 320 Merchant of Venice, The 2i5 Merton of the Movies ii0 Moscow Art Theatre 3'9 Moving Pictures iii Peer Gynt 42° Roger Bloomer 42° Sandro Botticelli 527 Tidings Brought to Mary, The 2i5 Will Shakespeare 3™ Young, Stark. The Flower in Drama 52" Ziegfeld Follies 4™ MODERN ART Art and the Mr Tripps 32i At the Season's Beginning "5 British Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum ii5 Demuth, Charles 2i7 Eakins, Thomas 529 Patlagean, Numa Soupault, M Philippe, on Dada "3 Stella, Joseph 423 Villon, Jacques 2i8 Weber, Max 424 MUSICAL CHRONICLE Franck, Cesar n7 George, Stefan S32 International Composers'Guild I22,.43I Milhaud, Darius 324 Schoenberg, Arthur 22°i 42° Scott, Cyril 532 xii INDEX MISCELLANEOUS MENTION Abstractionism 5*" A. E. The Interpreters i88 Barry more, John '°9 Benton, Thomas H 593 Cendrars, Blaise 273 Cezanne, Paul 58i Cocteau, Jean 277 Collier, William 635 Communism and Fascism 495 Cubism 584 d'Annunzio, Gabriele 498 Deutsches Lesebuch 6i2 Dickens, Charles i Expressionism 585 Faggi, Alfeo 592 Froude, J. A 396 Futurism 585 George, Stefan 532 German Book Market °°9 Guitry, Lucien and Sacha 635 Hungarian Literature 387 James, Henry +33 Lachaise, Gaston 592 Leger, Fernand 88, 584 Literary Review, Reply to the 637 Lyesskov, Nikolai 6i4 Marchand, Jean 5*4 Marin, John 5"" Matisse, Henri 5'" Moscow Art Theatre 275, 3'9 Nietzsche-Gesellschaft 0i0 O'Neill, Eugene l83 Papini, Giovanni 77 Picasso, Pablo 5*4 Pirandello, Luigi. La Volupt6 de l'Honneur 176 Proust, Marcel 234. 463 Ray, Man . , 274 Reinhardt, Max 286 Remizov, Alexei 6i4 Rodin, Auguste 59' Rousseau, Henri 58** Saint-Evremond, Charles de 245 Saintsbury, George 8^ Salzburg Festival 28i Tolstoy, Count Alexei 6'4 von Hofmannsthal, Hugo. The Grand World-Theatre of Salzburg 18i,6i2 Yeats, W. B., as Senator "9i INDEX XIII DEPARTMENTS PACE Briefer Mention i03, 209, 3ii, 4i3, 520, 63i Comment i°7. 3l6, -H7. 5J4, 637 Dublin Letter l8& German Letter 609 Hungarian Letter 3"7 Italian Letter 77. 495 London Letter l85 Modern Art ii3,2i7,32i,423,529 Musical Chronicle ii7, "°. 3^, 4*6, 532 Paris Letter 85,273 Theatre, The i09, 2i5, 3i9, 420, 526, 635 Vienna Letter 28i Kaiser Fritdrich-Muscum, Berlin CHRIST AND SAINT JOHN THE I DIAL JANUARY i923 CHARLES DICKENS BY STEFAN ZWEIG Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke NO, there is no use in looking through books and biographies to find how much Charles Dickens was loved by his contem- poraries. Love lives and breathes solely in the spoken word. One must have it told by word of mouth, preferably by an Englishman whose childhood reminiscences go back to the earliest successes, by one of those who cannot bring themselves even after fifty years to call the creator of Pickwick Charles Dickens, but invariably refer to him by his more intimate and confidential nickname, Boz. By the poignancy of such reminiscences one can gauge the enthusiasm of the thousands in those days; one can judge with what an enor- mous delight they received each month their blue-coloured instal- ment of a novel, pages which even to this day are yellowing on shelves and in cases, a rarissimum for bibliophiles. As one of these old Dickensians has told me, they could never restrain themselves to wait at home for the postman who was finally to bring the new blue pages of Boz in his sack. Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes? For a whole month they had hungered, waited, hoped, and argued. Or they had rejoiced that Micawber's affairs had reached another crisis, although they knew that he would live it down heroically with hot punch and good humour. And now would they have to wait until the mail-carrier arrived on his lazy wagon and settled all these agreeable problems'? That was impossible; it simply could not be done. And on the proper day all of them, old as well as young, wandered year after year two miles out to meet the carrier, simply that they might have their book that much the 2 CHARLES DICKENS sooner. They already began reading on the way back, some looking over the shoulders of others, some reading aloud; and only the noblest hurried back on the run to bring the bounty quicker to wife and child. In towns and cities throughout the entire country, and beyond this to all corners of the world where there were English- men, Charles Dickens was similarly loved, loved from the first striking of acquaintanceship until the day of his death. There is no other instance in the nineteenth century of such a stable and cordial relationship between a poet and his nation. His fame shot up like a rocket, but it did not go out; it continued to illuminate the world with a steady light, like the sun. Four hundred copies of the first of the Pickwick Papers were printed; by the fifteenth this figure had reached forty thousand—which goes to show the landslide of his fame. He soon began penetrating into Germany. Hundreds and thousands of little penny editions sowed happiness and laughter in the furrows of even the most hardened hearts; little Nicholas Nickleby, poor Oliver Twist, and the thousands of other characters from this inexhaustible pen have made their way to America, Australia, and Canada. By now there are millions of Dickens' books in circulation: big and little volumes, thick and thin, cheap editions for the poor, and in America the most expensive edition which has ever been published of any writer—it costs nearly one hundred thousand dollars, this edition for millionaires. But these books still retain all of their former felicitous laughter; it is ready to flutter up like a twittering bird as soon as one turns the first page. This author was loved to an unequalled degree; and if his appeal did not grow even greater in the course of years it was solely because the emotions had no further possibilities of exten- sion. When Dickens decided to give public readings, when he ap- peared face to face with the public for the first time, England was in a turmoil. The halls were packed and jammed; enthusiasts climbed up the pillars, or crept under his platform, simply to be able to hear their beloved poet. In America, in the bitterest winter weather, people brought along mattresses and slept in front of the ticket office, waiters brought them food from nearby restaurants; but the crush was beyond control. Every hall proved to be too small, and finally a church was secured in Brooklyn. From the pul- pit he read the adventures of Oliver Twist and the story of little Nell. Fame for him was not capricious. It pressed Walter Scott to one side; it overshadowed Thackeray's genius for a whole life- STEFAN ZWEIG 3 time; and when the light went out, when Dickens died, the entire English-speaking world felt it like a blow. On the streets foreign- ers remarked to one another that London was as depressed as though some great battle had been lost. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey, the Pantheon of England. Thousands streamed in, and a continual flood of flowers and wreaths poured over the simple burial place. Even to-day, fifty years later, one can seldom pass there without seeing a few flowers strewn by some grateful hand; his fame and his appeal have not wilted in all these years. To-day, as in that hour years ago when England pressed into the hand of this un- suspecting nobody the unhoped-for gift of a world-wide reputation, Charles Dickens still remains the most beloved, the most command- ing and feted story-teller of the entire English world. When a literary product has such an enormously powerful effect, extending equally in breadth and profundity, this can have resulted solely from the union of two forces customarily in conflict—from the iden- tification of a man of genius with the traditions of his time. As a rule genius and the traditional react upon each other like fire and water. Indeed, it is almost the earmark of genius that it embodies coming traditions, antagonizing those of the past, and, as the author of a new race, declares war on the one which is on the decline. A genius and his times are like two worlds: they may interchange light and shadow, it is true, but they move in other spheres; their two orbits may touch, but they never unite. Here, then, is a rare moment in the heavens when the shadow of one planet so completes the brilliant side of the other that they merge into one. Dickens is the only great writer of the century whose deepest attitudes corre- spond completely with the spiritual needs of his time. His novels are absolutely identical with the England of the corresponding period; his work is the materialization of English traditions. Dick- ens is the humour of sixty million people across the Channel; he is their viewpoint, their morality, their aesthetics, their spiritual and artistic content, their particular sense of life which is sometimes foreign to us and at other times sympathetic in its yearnings. These works were not written by him, but by English tradition, which is the strongest, richest, most distinct tradition of all modern culture, and for this reason the most dangerous. Its vitality must not be underestimated. Every Englishman is more English than the Ger- man is German. When a man is English it is not simply as though a varnish or a colour were superimposed upon his spiritual organ- 4 CHARLES DICKENS ism. The very blood is affected and given a set rhythm; the most secret and remote parts of the individual are penetrated, even to the artistic where the separate entity is usually most pronounced. For as an artist also the Englishman is more racially-minded than the German or the Frenchman. For this reason every artist in Eng- land, every authentic poet, has struggled with his English inheri- tance; but even the most desperate and violent hatred has not suc- ceeded in suppressing the tradition. Its subtle roots extend too deeply into the spiritual soil. To cut away the English is to disrupt the entire organism and make it bleed to death of its wound. A few aristocrats, filled with yearnings to become citizens of the world, have made the attempt: Byron, Shelley, Oscar Wilde wished to annihilate the peculiarly English part of themselves, because they detested the inevitable English smugness. But they merely shat- tered their own lives. The English tradition is the most powerful, the most victorious in the world, but it is also the most inimical to art. It is the most inimical because it is so insidious in its appeal; it is not barren nor chilling, not unsociable nor inhospitable; it lures with the warm fire of its hearth and with its mild comfort. But it functions to the detriment of the free artistic impulse, con- fining it within moral boundaries, within set limitations. The Eng- lish tradition is that of a modest dwelling with stuffy air, protected against the dangerous storms of life, cheerful, friendly, and sociable, a genuine home warmed by the fires of Philistine contentment; but it is a prison for those whose home is the world and whose deepest pleasure consists in a nomadically free and adventurous coursing across the unbounded. Dickens made himself at home in the Eng- lish tradition; he set up housekeeping within its four walls. The sphere he was born into suited him perfectly; and during his entire life he never once overstepped the artistic, moral, or aesthetic limi- tations of his country. He was not a revolutionary. His art com- promised with his blood until blood was the determining factor. Everything that Dickens has done rests securely on the foundation of a hundred-year tradition in England, and never deflects from it more than a hair's breadth; still, he raises the structure to unexpect- ed heights by his charming architectonics. ( His works are the un- conscious will of his nation transmitted into art;'and when we point out the intensity, the peculiar advantages, and the lost opportunities of his creations, we are always dealing simultaneously with Eng- land. STEFAN ZWEIG 5 Dickens is the highest poetic expression of English tradition be- tween the heroic century of Napoleon, the glorious past, and im- peralism, the dream of its future. If he has simply given us some- thing extraordinary instead of the mighty works for which his genius had fitted him, this was not caused by England, not by the race itself, but by the unpropitious moment: the Victorian period of England. Shakespeare also marks the highest possibility, the poetic fulfilment of an English era. But this was Elizabethan England, young, vigorously active, sensuously fresh; England was warm and throbbing with excess vitality, and was getting its first grip on the imperium mundi. Shakespeare was the child of a century distinguished for its activity, its will, its energy. New horizons had arisen, promising territories had been acquired in America, the hereditary enemy had been overwhelmed. The torch of the Renaissance was being carried into the northern mist from Italy; a God, a religion, had been displaced that the world might be filled again with new living values. Shakespeare was the incar- nation of heroic England; \Dickens was merely the symbol of bourgeois England/) He was the logical subject of the mild, mother- ly, insignificant old Queen Victoria; he was the citizen of a prudish, comfortable, well-ordered commonwealth lacking in dash and pas- sion. His impulse was lessened by the sluggishness of an age which was never avid, but content to digest at its leisure. It was at most a light wind that played in the sails of his ship, never driving it from the English coast out into the dangerous beauty of the unknown, into the uncharted infinite. Essentially prudent, he has always remained in the vicinity of the domestic, the usual, and the time- honoured. Shakespeare is the boldness of the England of appetites, Dickens is the prudence of England when its appetites have been appeased. He was born in i8i2. Just as he was opening his eyes to look at the world it grew dark; the great flame which threatened to consume the rickety structure of European states went out. At Waterloo the Garde goes to pieces under the blows of the English infantry; England is saved, and can watch her enemy perish on a distant island, without crown or authority. Dickens did not parti- cipate in these experiences. He does not see the world-flame, the brilliant fire, which swayed back and forth across Europe; he must grope his way through the joy of England. The youth finds no more heroes; the time for heroes is past. To be sure, a few men in England refuse to believe it, and wish to restore by the power of 6 CHARLES DICKENS their enthusiasm the feel of the past and set the world its former rousing pace. But England, wanting peace, repulses them. They flee for romance to the secret corners of themselves; they try to kindle the fire again from a few poor sparks; but fate will not be coerced. Shelley drowns in the Tyrrhene Sea; Lord Byron is con- sumed by a fever at Missolonghi: the age has no use for adventures. The world is ashen grey. England is feeding comfortably on her bleeding prey. The bourgeois, the shopkeeper, and the clerk are king; they loll about on the throne as though it were a couch. Eng- land is digesting. Art, to please it, has to be easily assimilated; it must not disturb, it must not disrupt with wild emotions, but must gently cajole and caress. It might only be sentimental, but not tragic. They did not want the shudder which darts through the breast like a flash of lightning, which takes the breath away or makes the blood go cold. All this could be supplied only too well from real life, in the news coming out of France and Russia. Simply a slight titillation was welcome, the trifling nonsense of following stories through varying complications of plot. The people of that time wanted an art for the home and family, books to be read by the fire in comfort while the storm rattled at the door. And similarly, these books should snap and crack with numerous harmless little flames. This art should not produce passion and intoxication, but should warm the heart like tea. The victors of yesterday no longer cared to venture new conquests, but desired at most to retain what they had already acquired. They had become so uneasy that they distrusted any strong feelings within themselves. In books, as in life, they wanted only moderate passions. They wanted no bursts of ecstasy, no feelings which are not normal or perfectly presentable. In England of that time happiness was identical with rumination, aesthetics with morals; the use of the senses was lost in prudery, loyalty in chauvinism, love in marriage. England was content with things as they are. Consequently, if art was to gain recog- nition of so sated a nation it must on its own score manifest a certain contentment, praising the powers that be and asking for nothing beyond them. And this desire for a comfortable, friendly, digestive art finds its appropriate genius, just as Elizabethan England found its Shakespeare, t Dickens is the extrinsication of contemporary England's artistic requirements. He became famous because he had appeared at the proper moment; it is his tragedy that he was over- whelmed by his country's requirements. His art is nurtured on the STEFAN ZWEIG 7 hypocritical morals of comfort and satiety. It so happens that there is an extraordinary poetic power behind his works, and that his glittering, golden humour stands out above the general medi- ocrity of his emotions; otherwise he would have a meaning solely for his own specific world, and would touch us as little as the thousands of novels which are always being deftly turned out across the Chan- nel. It is only when one hates from the depths of his being the hypocrisy and the confined vision of Victorian culture that one can fully measure the astounding genius of a man who could turn this tritest of prosaic life into poetry, who could take this repulsive world with its smug complacency and make us feel it as interesting or almost lovable. Dickens himself never fought against this England. But deep within—down in the unconscious—the artist in him was always struggling with the Englishman. At the start he stepped out strong and sure, but gradually the soft, half-yielding, half-resisting sand of his times tired him, and he tended more and more to walk in the old broad footprints of tradition. Dickens was the victim of his times; and his fate always reminds one of Gulliver's adventures among the Lilliputians. While the giant sleeps the dwarfs bind him down with thousands of tiny threads, and they will not release him until he capitulates and swears never to break the laws of the land. In the same way English tradition bound Dickens fast during the sleep of his security; with his successes they held him to the English soil, pushed him into fame, and at the same time bound his hands. After a childhood of prolonged dreariness he had become a stenogra- pher in Parliament and had once attempted to write little sketches; he did this, it is true, more from a desire to augment his income than from any spontaneous creative impulse. His first effort was suc- cessful; a paper accepted it. Then a publisher asked him for satiric comments on a club, serving more or less as a text to accompany cartoons of the English gentry. Dickens undertook the commission. And it succeeded, succeeded beyond all expectations. The first numbers of the Pickwick Club made an unparalleled appeal. With- in two months Boz was an author of national importance. Fame acted as an incentive; Pickwick was turned into a novel. The suc- cess was repeated. The subtle nets, the hidden bonds, of his na- tional reputation became gradually stronger. Applause drove him from one work to another, and drove him always further in the direction of contemporary tastes. And these myriad nets, intricate- 8 CHARLES DICKENS ly woven out of the applause, the unmitigated successes, and his proud consciousness of artistic power, held him fast to the English soil; finally he capitulated, inwardly pledged to the aesthetic and moral laws of his country. He fell wholly under the domination of English tradition, of bourgeois tastes; he was another Gulliver among the Lilliputians. His remarkable imagination, which could have soared like an eagle above this narrow world, was caught in the shackles of his success. His impulse as an artist is oppressed by the soundness of his satisfaction. Dickens was content; content with the world, with England, with those about him, and with himself. England was contented with him, and he was contented with England. There was none of that angry love in him which strives to castigate, to uproot, to spur on, to make more worthy; he lacked that primary urge of the artist to reckon with God, to dis- card this world and fashion it anew after his own ideas. Dickens was pious, and reverent; the established order of things filled him with a warm admiration, an incurably childish unthinking delight. He was content. He did not ask for much. As a child he had been poor, forgotten of fate, bullied by the world about him; his youth had been frittered away with wretched jobs. His yearnings of that time had been powerful and varied, but he had persistently been intimidated and forced back into his corner. That was smouldering in him. Childhood was an essentially poetic and tragic experience —here the total of his creativeness had been sunk into the fertile soil of silent pain. And, when he had attained the full use of his powers, it was his deepest ambition to avenge this childhood of his. He wanted his novels to aid all the poor, forgotten, abandoned children who—as he had once done—were suffering at the hands of bad teachers, neglected schools, indifferent parents; suffering from people's customary selfish unconcern and lovelessness. He wished to save for children those few coloured blossoms of pleasure which had wilted in his own breast since the dew of kindness had been denied them. In late life everything had been granted him; but his childhood cried for revenge. And his sole moral intention, the ultimate impetus of his poetry, was the helping of these weak- lings—on this score he wished to ameliorate contemporary ways of life. He did not rebel; he did not rise up to oppose the standards of the state; he did not threaten; he did not shake an angry fist in the face of his people, against the legislators, against the bourgeois, STEFAN ZWEIG 9 against all the lying conventions; he goes no farther than to point out here and there, with great caution, some open wound. About that time, around i848, England was the only country in Europe which did not undergo a revolution. Similarly, Dickens was un- willing to tear down and build anew; he wanted simply to correct and improve. When the thorn pressed too pointedly and painfully into the flesh he would strive to weaken this symptom of social in- justice; but he would not dig out and destroy its roots, its essential cause. As a true Englishman, he dares not touch on the fundamen- tals of morality; to the conservative they are as sacrosanct as the gospels. And this contentment, this dishing up of the dull temper- ament of his times, is characteristic of Dickens. He did not ask much of life; it is the same with his heroes. A Balzacian hero is eager, thirsty for domination; he is consumed with a haughty yearn- ing for power. There is no sufficiency for him; each one of these heroes is insatiable, a world conqueror, a destroyer, at once an anarchist and a tyrant. They have a Napoleonic temperament. Likewise, the heroes of Dostoevsky are fiery and ecstatic; their will throws over the world and reaches with a splendid insatiability be- yond their actual life to the true meaning of life. They do not want to be mere men and members of the community; in each of them, through all their humility, is the gleam of a dangerous, hauj^*"^" ambition: to become a saviour. A hero of Balzac's wants tor sub- jugate the world; a hero of Dostoevsky's wants to overcome itv In either case they extend beyond the quotidian, and plot afcourse through the infinite. All of Dickens' people are modest! Great heavens, what do they want? A hundred pounds a year, a neat wife, a dozen children, an inviting table laid for good frieVids, a cottage near London, with a little garden and a handful of \ hap- piness. These are the ideals of the smug petty bourgeois, and inust inevitably form the complexion of Dickens' work. All oi his people are set against any change of world-order, desiring neijther riches nor poverty; they want rather that comfortable avetage which is so admirable a rule of conduct for shopkeepers and dray- men, and so dangerous for the artist. Dickens' ideals take the colour of his wretched environment. Behind the works there stands as creator, as the binder of chaos, not an angry God, gigantic and superhuman, but simply a contented observer, a loyal citizen. This is the complexion of all Dickens' novels. i0 CHARLES DICKENS Thus, his one great and memorable accomplishment lay in dis- covering the romance of the bourgeois, the poetry of the prosaic. He was the first to convert into poetry the daily life of the world's most unpoetic nation. He made the sun shine through this dull grey. And how powerful the golden brilliance is which the strength- ening sun makes of this dull mass of clouds! . . . Whoever has seen this in England knows what a blessing a poet can be to his na- tion by rendering in his art this moment of release from the leaden semi-darkness. Dickens is this golden glow spread over England's everyday life; he is a halo for plain things and simple people; he is England's idyll. He found his heroes and his plots in the narrow streets of the suburbs, places which the other poets passed by with- out a glance. They found the heroes under the chandeliers of aristocratic salons, or on the paths through the enchanted forests of the fairy tales. They sought after the remote, the unusual, the extraordinary. To them the bourgeois was like the earth: gravi- tation turned into substance; they wanted only fiery, precious, ecstatically struggling souls, and lyric heroic men. Dickens was not ashamed to make the ordinary day-labourer his hero. He was a self-made man; he had risen from underneath, and he preserved a touching reverence for this environment. He felt a remarkable entsi.'isiasm tor the banal; he preferred absolutely worthless, old- fashipned things, the commonplaces of life. His books themselves are s£ curiosity shop full of odds and ends which everyone would have considered worthless, a jumble of rarities and strange trash which might have gone for years and found no admirer. But he took these dusty old things, cleaned them, put them together, and placecl them in the sun of his joviality. At this they suddenly be- gan to glisten with a surprising brilliance. In this way he took numjerous minute and neglected feelings from the breasts of simple people, tinkered with them and assembled their wheels and cogs until they ticked again with life. Suddenly they began to whir like little toy clocks, began to hum, and finally to sing; the melody was soft and old-fashioned, and lovelier than the heavy ballads of knights from legendry, or than cantos from The Lady of the Lake. Dickens rescued the entire bourgeois world from the ash-heap of neglect and restored it to good condition in his works until it be- came again a living world. With his indulgence he made its stu- pidities and its narrownesses acceptable; with his love he brought STEFAN ZWEIG ii out its beauty; he transformed its superstitions into a new and very poetic mythology. In his story the chirping of the cricket on the hearth becomes music, the chimes speak with human tongues, the charm of Christmas reconciles poetry with piety. He drew some deeper meaning from the slightest holiday; he helped these plain people to discover the poetry of their customary routine. He made even more appealing those things which already appealed to them most: their homes, the narrow room where the hearth leaps with red flames and where the heavy logs are crackling. The tea hums and sings on the table. Free of desire, lives here are lived apart from the eager storms, the wild excesses of the world. He wanted to teach the poetry of the quotidian to all those who were con- demned to the quotidian. He has shown thousands and even mil- lions how some element of the eternal touched on their sorry ex- istence, where some spark of quiet happiness lay shattered under the ashes of dull monotony. He taught how this spark could be kindled to a comforting and sprightly flame. He wanted to help children and the poor. He was antipathetic to everything that passed materially or spiritually beyond the confines of this class. He loved with all his heart only the customary, the average. He was ill-disposed towards life's favourites, the rich and the aristo- crats. They nearly always appear in his books as scoundrels and skinflints; seldom portraits, but almost invariably caricatures. He did not like them. Too often as a child he had brought letters to his father at Marshalsea, the debtors' prison, had seen arrests made and property confiscated; too often he had known the pressing need of money. Year in and year out he had sat at Hungerford Stairs high up in a dirty little sunless room, putting shoe polish in tins, and wrapping hundreds and hundreds of these daily, until the little childish hands were burning and tears of repugnance came to his eyes. He had experienced too much hunger and destitution, wandering along London streets in the cold, foggy mornings. No one had helped him then; carriages had passed the freezing boy, riders on horseback had trotted by; no one had taken him in. It was only from the simple people that he received kindly treatment; and consequently, he wanted to repay the gift to none but them. His work is distinctly democratic—not socialistic, he had not enough sense of the radical for that—love and sympathy alone give it its capacity for pathos. He preferred to remain with the middle 12 CHARLES DICKENS class, that stratum midway between income and poorhouse; it was solely among these simple people that he could feel at home. He describes their dwellings contentedly and exhaustively, as though he would like to live there himself; he lays out varied lives for them, always accompanied with sunshine; he dreams their modest dreams; he is their advocate, their preacher, their darling, the bright, ever warm sun of their plain, grey-toned lives. But how much richness he has added to this mediocre sphere! The whole ensemble of this middle-class life with all its furnishings and trappings and its vast range of feelings, has become once more a cosmos; in his books it is a separate universe, with its own stars and its own gods. Looking beneath the flat, stagnant, scarcely rippling surface of these mediocre existences his sharp eye spied treasures; and with a fine-meshed net he brought them to the light. Out of all this jumble he caught many people, hundreds, indeed enough to make up a small city. There are unforgettable characters among them, characters which hold an eternal position in literature and which have penetrated into the popular vocabulary to designate certain types: Pickwick and Sam Weller, Pecksniff and Betsey Trotwood, all those whose names conjure up in us smiling reminis- cences. How rich these novels are! The episodes in David Cop- perfield alone could supply another poet with material for a life- time. Further Dickens' works are genuinely novels in their fulness and continual mobility; they are not simply drawn-out psychologi- cal short stories, as is the case with us Germans; there are no barren places in them, no desolute, sandy stretches; they have an ebb and flow of action, and are really as deep and broad as a sea. One can hardly encompass this wild and merry throng of busy people; they pass along the theatre of our affections, hurrying by, one pushing immediately behind the other. Like beachcombers they bob up out of the surge of the great cities, and plunge back into the foam of incidents; but they appear again, rise and fall, embrace or repel one another. And yet these are not merely accidental movements; there is order reigning behind this delightful confusion. The threads weave together and form a many-coloured carpet. Not one of the figures which seem to be simply happening by is there with- out a purpose. They all complete, motivate, or counteract one an- other, supplying light or shadow as the case may be. Like a cat, now playfully, now in dead earnest, he drives the complicated ball STEFAN ZWEIG »3 of the plot back and forth. He runs rapidly up and down the entire scale of our emotions. Everything is commingled: mirth, exalta- tion, and horror. At times we drop a tear of sympathy, at times one of hilarity. A storm will arise, break, and gather again; but in the end, the air is cleared and a wonderful sun beams forth. Many of these novels are Iliads of countless isolated struggles, Iliads of a godless, earthy world; many are simply slight pleasant idylls. But all of them, the excellent ones as well as the unreadable ones, are signalized by a wealth of variety. And all of them, even the most farouche and melancholy, have frail, lovely little parts inserted like flowers which have caught root among the rocks of a tragic landscape. Their unforgettable felicities blossom everywhere; like small violets they lie partially hidden throughout the extensive meadows of his books. A clear spring of good cheer falls musically over the angry rocks of his harsher incidents. There are chapters in Dickens which could only be likened to landscapes in their effect; they are so pure, so divinely unsullied by earthly promptings, so rich and sunny in their jovial, tender love of mankind. These alone are enough to make us love Dickens, these little bits of art which are strewn so lavishly throughout his works. Who could merely count up these people: all these curly-haired, laughing, good-natured people, slightly ridiculous and ever so amusing. They are caught with all their caprices and idiosyncrasies, given the strangest of oc- cupations, involved in the most diverting adventures. And despite their great number, no one of them resembles another. Their in- dividuality has been worked out minutely, even to the smallest de- tail. There is nothing theoretical or made-to-order about them; everything is tangible and living. They are not conceived in the mind; they are seen, seen through the absolutely incomparable eyes of this poet. These eyes are of an unusual precision; they are remarkably sure instruments. Dickens was a visual genius. One can examine any picture of him, either as a child or—better—when he is matured: the dominant feature is always his eyes. They are not the eyes of a poet: there is nothing mad or mobile about them, nothing of the clouded or the elegiac; nothing soft and pliant, nothing of the im- petuous or visionary. They are English eyes: cold, grey, and as sharp as steel. And their steeliness is like that of a treasure chest where everything lies in a stuffy seclusion, safe from misplacement »4 CHARLES DICKENS and fire; it is here, whether it was picked up from the outside world yesterday or many years ago: it may be a most valuable item, or a thoroughly worthless one, some sort of coloured sign over a shop in London or a budding tree just outside the window. Nothing escaped these eyes; they were stronger than the times; and they carefully stored up impression on impression in the warehouse of the memory until the poet should have need of them. Nothing fell into neglect, nothing became pale or faded; everything lay there in readiness, with all its fragrance and its freshness, perfectly pre- served in colour, neither dead nor wilted. The tenacity of Dickens' eye is unparalleled. With this steel edge he cuts through the fog of childhood; in David Copperfield—this disguised autobiography —the two-year-old boy's recollections of his mother and the maid- servant stand out in sharp silhouette against the background of the unconscious. There are no vague contours in Dickens; he gives no ambiguous possibilities of vision; he is uncompromisingly clear. The power of his presentations leaves nothing to the free play of the reader's imagination, but assumes complete control—for which reason he became the ideal poet of an unimaginative nation. Give his books to twenty illustrators and ask for pictures of Copperfield and Pickwick: results will all be alike, presenting with an astonish- ing uniformity the typical portly gentleman with the white waist- coat and the friendly bespectacled eyes, or the pretty blond boy sit- ting nervously on the coach to Yarmouth. Dickens makes his de- scriptions so sharp, so minute, that one is hypnotized into follow- ing him obediently. He did not have the magic eye of Balzac which could catch people as they emerged and took form out of the chaos of their fiery and clouded passions. But he saw like a mariner, a hunter, a hawk, with a strictly businesslike appreciation of human- ity's more petty aspects. But, as he once said, it is the little things that give life its meaning. He is always on the look-out for the minute distinction: he sees the spot on the garment, the slight, help- less gestures of embarrassment; he does not miss the stray red hairs which peep out from under a dark wig when its owner falls into a rage. He has a sense of nuances, feels the movement of each finger during a handshake, and notes the gradations of a smile. For years previous to his literary activities he had been a stenographer in Parliament; he had become skilled at condensing the full statement into the summary, at designating a word by a stroke and a sentence STEFAN ZWEIG i5 by a short flourish. Later on, in his art, he practised a shorthand of reality, giving the abbreviated equivalent rather than the descrip- tion, distilling an essence of observation from a multitude of facts. He was uncannily shrewd in these slight utterances; he let nothing escape him; like a very speedy photographic apparatus he could register a gesture, a movement, which had consumed the hundredth of a second. He overlooked nothing. And this sharp-sightedness was still further accentuated by a remarkable refraction of vision, so that the object was not reproduced in its natural proportions, but was exaggerated into the characteristic as though by a concave mirror. Dickens always underscores the distinguishing features of his characters; he turns from the objective to the heightening of effect: the caricature. He makes them more intense, converts them into symbols. The corpulent Pickwick assumes at the same time the very spirit of plumpness; the skinny Jingle becomes aridity in- carnate; a bad character becomes Satan himself, a good character is the ultimate embodiment of goodness. Like every great artist, Dickens exaggerated, but he often produced the humoristic rather than the grandiose. The charm and effectiveness of his manner did not come primarily as the result of a free fancy; they originated rather in this remarkable obliquity of vision, this over-sharpness, whereby all appearances were exaggerated and distorted into the marvellous and the caricaturistic. Indeed, Dickens' genius is to be found not in the somewhat overly bourgeois complexion of his work, but in this peculiar optic. Essentially, Dickens was never a psychologist: he did not have a magical comprehension of the human soul; he could not let things unfold with a mysterious growth, developing from the original seed into colours and forms. His psychology begins with the visual; he characterizes by externals, especially by those more delicate and remote externals which are noticeable only to the sharp eye of a poet. Like the English philosophers he begins with particulars rather than with presuppositions. He assembles thoroughly un- promising material parallels to the spiritual and, by means of his remarkably caricaturizing optic, makes them into a perfectly ac- ceptable personality. He designates the type by means of particu- lar traits. He gives the schoolmaster Creakle a frail, scarcely audible voice; and immediately we suspect the children's terror of this man whose efforts to talk make the veins swell angrily on his i6 CHARLES DICKENS forehead. Uriah Heep always has cold, moist hands; this in itself makes the character unpleasant, gives it a certain snake-like repul- siveness. These are minute details, externals, but they always have a richer effect. Often he gives us nothing more than an embodied whim, a whim inside a man, moving him like a mechanical doll. Again, he frequently gets his characterization by some accompany- ing factor. What would Pickwick be without Sam Weller, Dora without Jip, Barnaby without his raven, or Kit without her pony! In such cases as this he does not draw the peculiarities of the figure on the model itself, but on its grotesque shadow. His characters are really nothing more than several peculiarities added together; but these peculiarities are so clear-cut and fit into one another so perfectly that they form an excellent picture in mosaic work. For this reason their effect is almost wholly external; their ocular appeal to our memory is intense, but the emotional content is vague. If we name a figure in Balzac or Dostoevsky, as Pere Goriot or Ras- kolnikov, this brings up an emotion, the memory of devotion, of desperation, of some passionate chaos. But if we say Pickwick, a picture emerges: a jovial gentleman with a rich embonpoint, and with gold buttons on his waistcoat. Here we get at the distinction: we remember Dickens' characters as we might remember a paint- ing, but we remember those of Dostoevsky and Balzac as we would a piece of music. For these latter men work intuitively, while Dickens works reproductively; they use the spiritual eye, Dickens the corporeal. He lacks that enchanting, intensely brilliant light of the visionary which drives the soul up out of the night of the unconscious. He waits until the incorporeal fluid has deposited a sediment of tangible reality; he strives to work the countless effects by which the spirit manifests itself in the body, and in this he is unfailing. His imagination is purely a matter of the eyes, and con- sequently it is adequate only for those middling characters and emotions which rest firmly on the ground; his people are not pliable except in the moderate temperatures of normal emotions. In the higher degrees of passion they melt into sentimentality like figures of wax; or in hate they stiffen and become brittle. Dickens can only handle elementary characters perfectly, and falls short of those incomparably more interesting ones in which there are hun- dreds of fluctuating transitions between good and evil, God and brute. His characters are always without complications; admirable STEFAN ZWEIG i7 heroes or despicable scoundrels, they are predestined natures with either a halo or a stigma on their brow. His world swings between "good" and "wicked," between the sensitive and the unfeeling. But he can find no path beyond this into the world of mysterious correspondences, mystic relationships. The magnificent is outside his grasp; he cannot understand the heroic. This is at once the glory and the tragedy of Dickens: that he should always have re- mained midway between genius and tradition, between the new and the banal, sticking to the paths that were laid out for him, to the pleasant and appealing, the comfortably bourgeois. But this glory was not sufficient for him; the writer of idylls yearned for the tragic. He was continually attempting a tragedy, but he always arrived simply at melodrama. Here were his limits. His attempts are dissatisfying. Although A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House may pass in England as great works, they are lost to us because their wide gesture is a forced one. Here his stretching after tragedy is truly marvellous. In these novels Dickens heaps up conspiracies, builds great catastrophes like arches of stone above the heads of his heroes, conjures up the terror of stormy nights, of popular uprisings and of revolutions, sets in motion the entire mechanism of awe and horror. But yet, the genuine awe of exalta- tion does not figure here; it is, rather, a mere shudder, the purely corporeal reflex to terror. Those deep upheavals, those heavy storm-like effects which make the heart groan with anxiety and with yearning for relief in a flash of lightning . . . there are no more of such things in Dickens. Dickens piles danger upon danger, but we do not fear them. In Dostoevsky we will suddenly come upon an abyss; we gasp for breath as we feel this blackness, this nameless chasm, disclosed in our own breast. We sense the ground dropping from beneath our feet, and experience a sharp vertigo, intense but alluring. We want to slip down, down—but at the same time, we tremble before this emotion in which pleasure and pain have been brought to such a glowing white heat that we cannot distinguish one from the other. Dickens also has abysses like this. He throws them suddenly before us, plunges them in darkness, shows us the extent of their danger; and yet, we do not thrill, we do not experience that sweet vertigo of falling which is perhaps the greatest charm possible to artistic enjoyment. Somehow we always feel safe with him, as though there was sure to be a railing at hand; i8 CHARLES DICKENS we know that he will never let us fall. And we know that his hero will never perish; he will be carried unharmed across all gaps and chasms on the white wings of those two angels, pity and justice, which hover above the world of this English poet. Dickens lacks thejbrutality, the boldness of real tragedy. He is not heroic, but sentimental. Tragedy is the will to defy, sentimentality the yearn- ing after tears. Dickens never attained the ultimate tearless speech- less power of despair and pain; the gently touching—as Dora's death in Copperfield—is the farthest reach of serious feeling that he is capable of. If he attempts a genuinely wide gesture, he is always interrupted by pity. He calls forth a storm of the elements, but the oil of pity—and often it is rancid—lays it smooth. The senti- mental tradition of the English novel defeats his desire for the powerful. For in England the contents of a novel are expected to serve simply as an illustration of prevalent moral maxims. Through the melody of fate there runs the dutiful undertone, "Be ever frank and true." The finale must be an apocalypse, a Day of Judgement; the good are lifted up, and the wicked punished. Unfortunately Dickens has accepted this type of justice in most of his novels: his villains drown, or kill one another, the rich and the haughty become bankrupt, and his heroes are left warm and comfortable. Even to- day the Englishman will not stand a play which fails to leave him at the end with the assurance that all is well with the world. And this characteristically English hypertrophy of the moral sense con- trived in some way to defeat Dickens' most grandiose inspirations for a tragic novel. For the Weltanschauung of these works, the gyrating mechanism which supports them, is no longer the justice of the free artist, but that of the Anglican and the bourgeois. Dick- ens censors his emotions instead of striving for their freest and full- est effect. Unlike Balzac, he does not allow them to overflow as they will, but instead he directs them by dams and pits into chan- nels which serve to turn the mills of bourgeois morality. The preacher, the minister, the commonsense philosopher, the school- master . . . they all crowd unnoticed into the poet's work- shop; they induce him to make his first novel an example and a warning for young people, rather than an humble reproduction of the free and the real. Of course, this pious attitude had its reward: when Dickens died, the Bishop of Winchester was able to praise his books because every one of them could be placed without misgiv- STEFAN ZWEIG i9 ings in the hands of a child. But his creative powers are narrowed by this very fact that he depicts life in a manner safe for children, and not as it really is. For us who are not English his work is too full of moralizing. To be one of Dickens' heroes a character must be a bundle of virtues, a Puritan ideal. With Fielding and Smollett, who were English to be sure, but children of a more rollicking century, it is nothing against the hero that he punches his opponent's nose in a brawl or if, despite his heated love for a noble lady, he crawls into bed with her maid. In Dickens not even the debauchees indulge in such enormities. Even his characters that transgress most are essentially harmless, and their pleasures can be followed by an elderly spinster without blushing. Dick Swiveller is a libertine. In what respect? Great heavens! he drinks four glasses of ale in- stead of two, pays his bills irregularly, loafs a bit . . . and that is all. At the end he gets an inheritance—a modest one, of course—at just the right moment, and marries with the utmost propriety the girl who helped him on his road to virtue. Not even the villains in Dickens are truly immoral; even they must weaken in spite of all their wicked instincts. This English lie about im- morality is a blotch on his work. The shifting hypocrisy which re- fuses to see what it does not like to see diverted Dickens from the sharp appraising of reality. The England of Queen Victoria thwarted Dickens in his deepest ambition: the writing of a thorough- ly tragic novel. And it would have drawn him down to the level of its own contented mediocrity, would have confined him with its geniality to the business of upholding its sexual deceptions . . . but there was still one outlet for his creative urge; he still had silver wings to lift him triumphantly above the sultry lowlands of such utility: the almost unearthly felicity of his humour. This one blessed halcyon land on which the fog of England never drops is the land of childhood. The English lie cuts away the sensual aspects of life and holds the adult completely under its domination; but the children live out their feelings with an Edenic simplicity. They are not Englishmen, but bright little blossoms of mankind; their brilliant world is not yet overshadowed by the mist of English hypocrisy. In this province, where Dickens could func- tion independent of his bourgeois conscience, his accomplishments are immortal. The years of childhood in his novels are of a unique beauty; and I feel that these figures, these merry and serious episodes 20 CHARLES DICKENS of early life, will never disappear from the world's literature. Who could forget the Odyssey of little Nell as she leaves the dust and filth of the big city and goes out with her grey-haired grandfather into the awaking green of the fields; mild and harmless, her angel- like smile accompanies her triumphantly through all perils and dan- gers even until death itself. That is touching in a manner which reaches beyond all sentimentality to the genuine, vital feelings of mankind. There is Traddles, the fat boy in the spacious breeches; in his concern over the drawing of a skeleton he forgets all about the beating he has received. Kit, the truest of the true, little Nickle- by; and also the one character who is always returning, this pretty, slight, not overly well-treated youth who is none other than Charles Dickens the poet, quite without a rival in the immortalizing of his early pleasures, the song of his own childhood. Again and again he tells of this abandoned, intimidated, dreamy boy who has been left an orphan; and in this his pathos really does bring us close to tears, his sonorous voice is as full and brilliant as the sound of bells. This array of children in Dickens' novels is unforgettable. Here laughter and tears, the sublime and the ridiculous, weld together; the sentimental and the exalted, the tragic and the comic, truth and fiction become reconciled, forming something new, something which never existed heretofore. Here he overcomes the English, the earthy; here Dickens is unqualifiedly great and incomparable. Erecting a statue to him, one would have to surround his figure with marbles of these childhood characters . . . and he would stand as their guardian, father, and brother. For he genuinely loved them as the purest manifestations of human nature. When he de- sired to make a person appealing, Dickens made him childlike. For the children's sake he even loved those who were not childlike, but childish: the weak-minded and the mentally unbalanced. In each of his novels there is one of these gentle imbeciles whose poor lost wits fly like white birds above the miseries and complaints of life; the world is no problem for them, no painful task, but a lovely, happy, incomprehensible game. It is touching to see how he de- scribes these characters. He treats them as tenderly as the sick, and lays kindness about their heads like halos. They are sacred to him because they have always remained in the paradise of childhood. For in Dickens' work the state of childhood is paradise. When I read a novel by Dickens I always have a feeling of melancholy STEFAN ZWEIG 21 when the children grow up. For I know that now his sweetest, rarest quality will be lost; the poetic will become adulterated with the conventional; pure truth with the English lie. And he himself seems to share this feeling deep within him. For he is reluctant to turn his favourite heroes over to the steady course of life. He never follows them up to the age when they become banal, when they become draymen and shopkeepers. He takes leave of them when he has brought them before the church door to be married, when, after all their vicissitudes, they have entered the mirror-like harbour of comfort and contentment. And the one child that was his pick from the whole bright lot of them, little Nell (in her he has im- mortalized his memory of a girl who died young and who was very dear to him) was not allowed to enter the raw world of disenchant- ments, the world of lies. He kept her for ever in the paradise of childhood, closed her soft blue eyes prematurely, let her slip un- knowingly from the brightness of her early years into the darkness of death. He felt that she was too dear for the real world. For, as I have already said, this world is a timid, bourgeois Eng- land, tired and sated; it is one mean little slice from the enormous possibilities of life. Such a destitute world always requires some great emotion to enrich it. Balzac has given power to the bourgeois through his hate, Dostoevsky through his love of the Saviour. And Dickens, the artist, also releases these people from their oppressive sluggishness through his humour. He does not consider this petty bourgeois world with objective gravity; he does not sing that hymn to nice people, that hymn of self-righteous industry and sobri- ety, which makes the majority of our German family-novels so repulsive. But he eyes his characters with kindly merriment; like Gottfried Keller and Wilhelm Raabe he makes them just a slight bit ridiculous in their Lilliputian worries. Ridiculous, however, in an amiable, good-natured way, so that one loves them all the more for all their trumpery and vulgarity. Humour spreads over his books like sunlight, suddenly making the neutral landscape cheer- ful and infinitely appealing. In its warm, kindly brilliance every- thing becomes more lifelike and convincing; even the false tears glitter like diamonds, and tiny passions light up like an authentic fire. Dickens' humour lifts his work out of his times and into all time. It delivers him from the boredom of everything English; Dickens survives the lie thanks to his smile. Like Ariel this humour 22 CHARLES DICKENS soars through the air of his books, filling them with a homely music, catching them up into a dance, a pronounced delight with living. It is everywhere. Even up out of the shaft of the gloomiest parts of his books it twinkles like a miner's lamp; it relieves suspense when it has become too intense; it mitigates the excess of sentimen- tality by an undercurrent of irony. Through this humour the exag- gerated is redeemed by its own shadow, the grotesque. Humour is the element in his works which brings this about, and makes them imperishable. Like all of Dickens, it is English by nature, genuinely English. But even this humour lacks sensuousness; it can never quite forget itself, can never tipple to its heart's content, can never transgress. Even in its brilliance it remains within limits; it does not bawl and belch as with Rabelais; it does not, as in Cervantes, tumble all over itself from sheer friskiness; nor does it spring head- long into the impossible after the American fashion. It always re- mains upright and cool. Dickens laughs like all Englishmen with his mouth and not with his whole body. His merriment is not con- sumed by its own heat; it gleams simply, and sends little sparks through our veins; it flickers with thousands of little flames; it plays frivolous, jovial pranks, bits of exquisite roguery, in the face of reality. And, since it is always Dickens' fate to exemplify a mean, his humour is a compromise between a revel of the emotions, an excess of pure caprice, and the cold, calculating smile of irony. His humour cannot be compared to that of great Englishmen. He has nothing of Sterne's destructive irony, nothing of that broad, spirited merriment of the landed gentry as it appears in Fielding. Nor does he corrode painfully into men, like Thackeray. He is always kindly, never offensive; humour plays about his characters like sunlight on their head and hands. It has no moral nor satiric intent, it conceals no dreadful earnestness behind cap and bells. It has absolutely no ulterior purpose. It simply is. Its existence is its own justification. The cunning originates automatically in that remarkable angle of Dickens' vision which makes him see his characters distorted and exaggerated, thus giving them those amus- ing proportions and comic inversions which have been the entertain- ment of millions. Everything comes within this circle of light, but shines as though its radiance were its own. Even the crooks and villains have their halo of humour; somehow the whole world must smile, it seems, while Dickens is observing it. Everything STEFAN ZWEIG 23 shines and spins. The yearning for sunlight in a land beset by fog seems to have been definitely satisfied. His speech turns somer- saults, the sentences whirl together and spring apart again, play hide and seek with their meaning, shout questions across to one an- other, tease back and forth, lead one another astray; they are set to dancing simply through love of the gesture. This humour is secure. It manages to be tasty despite the fact that by the recipes of the English cuisine it must go without the salt of sexuality. And it is not disconcerted by the printer with his resolute prodding of the poet; even in a fever, when angry and destitute, Dickens could not help writing merrily. His humour is irresistible; it was encased in this remarkably sharp eye, and was not extinguished until the eye itself was extinguished. Nothing on earth could impair it; and it will withstand the effects of time almost as well. For I cannot conceive of people who would not love stories like The Cricket on the Hearth, and who could close themselves to the merriment of many episodes in these books. Perhaps our spiritual requirements change as pronouncedly as our literary ones. But so long as people feel the need of jollity; when the life-energy is nearly in repose except for the mere feel of living which moves within it like the play of gentle waves; when people desire most of all some harmless melodic excitation of tenderness ... in England, and in every other part of the world, they will go to the work of Dickens. This is the element of greatness, of imperishability, in these earthy, all too earthy, books. It contains sunlight; it lights and warms. Works of art should not be judged solely by their intensity, not solely by the man that stands behind them; we should also take into account their extensity, their effect on the masses. And we can say of Dickens more appropriately than of any other writer of the century, that he has augmented the world's store of happiness. His books have made millions of eyes twinkle; he has planted laughter again in the hearts of thousands where it had been dead. His effects went far beyond the purely literary. Rich people took thought and gave to charity when they had read of the Cheeryble brothers. The hard-hearted were touched. It is a vouchsafed state- ment that children on the streets received more alms after Oliver Twist appeared. The government improved the poorhouses and examined the private schools. Thanks to Dickens, pity and benevo- lence became stronger in England, and the fate of the poor and the 24 CHARLES DICKENS unhappy was lightened in countless ways. I am aware that such extraordinary results have nothing to do with the aesthetic values in a work of art. But they are important because they show that every really great work, going beyond that world of the imagina- tion wherein every creative will is free to rove as it may, causes some modifications in the real world: changes first of essence, then of aspect, and finally in the degree of sensitivity. Unlike those poets who plead on their own behalf for pity and encouragement, Dickens increased the merriment and the pleasure of his contem- poraries, quickened the blood in their veins. The world has been brighter since the day the young Parliament stenographer began writing of human lives. He has preserved the jollity of his own times and passed on to later generations a record of that "merry old England" which prevailed between the Napoleonic wars and the rise of imperialism. After many years people will still look back on these times—even then they were old-fashioned—with their strange vocations which have long since been crushed in the mortar of industrialism; and perhaps people shall yearn for this innocent life with its plenitude of plain, harmless enjoyments. Dickens gave us in writing the idylls of England: that is his attainment. Let us not compare this quietude, this contentment too unfavourably with the powerful: the idyll also is a return to something of antiquity, something eternal, the georgic or the bucolic, the poem of retreat, of those who stand aside from the restless appetites of humanity . all this is recovered here, just as it will be recovered again and again in the march of generations. It comes and goes, this pause between excitations, this building up of strength either before or after some exertion, this moment of peace to a restlessly hammer- ing heart. Some give us the powerful, some the quiet. Charles Dickens has turned into poetry a period of the world in repose. To- day life has become high-pitched again; machines are groaning; the times are speeded up. But the idyll is immortal, because it is the joy of living; it returns like the blue sky after a storm, the merri- ment which will always follow after great spiritual crises and cataclysms. Thus, Dickens will regain prominence every time that people hunger after jollity and, wearied by the tragic strenuousness of passion, want to hear for a while what delicate music and poetry can be extracted from the simple things of life. SEVEN POEMS BY E. E. CUMMINGS I suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. young death sits in a cafe smiling, a piece of money held between his thumb and first finger (i say "will he buy flowers" to you and "Death is young life wears velour trousers life totters, life has a beard" i say to you who are silent.—"Do you see Life? he is there and here, or that, or this or nothing or an old man 3 thirds asleep, on his head flowers, always crying to nobody something about les roses les bluets yes, will He buy? Les belles bottes—oh hear , pas cheres") and my love slowly answered I think so. But I think I see someone else there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards she is sitting beside young death, is slender; likes flowers. SEVEN POEMS II at dusk just when the Light is filled with birds seriously i begin to climb the best hill, driven by black wine, a village does not move behind my eye the windmills are silent their flattened arms complain steadily against the west one Clock dimly cries nine, i stride among the vines (my heart pursues against the little moon a here and there lark who; rises, and; droops as if upon a thread invisible) A graveyard dreams through its cluttered and brittle emblems, or a field (and i pause among the smell of minute mown lives) oh my spirit you tumble climb and mightily fatally i remark how through deep lifted E. E. CUMMINGS fields Oxen distinctly move, a yellowandbluish cat (perched why curvingly at this) window; yes women sturdily meander in my mind, woven by always upon sunset, crickets within me whisper whose erect blood finally trembles, emerging to perceive buried in cliff precisely at the Ending of this road, a candle in a shrine: its puniest flame persists shaken by the sea III before the fragile gradual throne of night slowly when several stars are opening one beyond one immaculate curving cool treasures of silence (slenderly wholly rising, herself uprearing wholly slowly, lean in the hips and her sails filled with dream— when on a green brief gesture of twilight trembles the imagined galleon of Spring) somewhere unspeaking sits my life; the grim clenched mind of me somewhere begins again, shares the year's perfect agony. Waiting (always) upon a fragile instant when herself me (slowly, wholly me) will press in the young lips unearthly slenderness SEVEN POEMS IV Take for example this: if to the colour of midnight to a more than darkness (which is myself and Paris and all things) the bright rain occurs deeply, beautifully and i (being at a window in this midnight) for no reason feel deeply completely conscious of the rain or rather Somebody who uses roofs and streets skilfully to make a possible and beautiful sound: if a (perhaps) clock strikes, in the alive coolness, very faintly and finally through altogether delicate gestures of rain a colour comes, which is morning, O do not wonder that (just at the edge of day) i surely make a millionth poem which will not wholly miss you; or if i certainly create, lady, one of the thousand selves who are your smile. V of this sunset (which is so filled with fear people bells) i say your eyes can take day away more softly horribly suddenly; (of these two most early stars wincing upon a single colour, i know only that your hands E. E. CUMMINGS move more simply upon the evening and a propos such light and shape as means the moon, i somehow feel your smile slightly is a more minute adventure) lady. The clumsy dark threatens (and i do not speak nor think nor am aware of anything save that these houses bulge like memories in one crooked street of a mind peacefully and skilfully which is dis- appearing VI Paris; this April sunset completely utters utters serenely silently a cathedral before whose upward lean magnificent face the streets turn young with rain, spiral acres of bloated rose coiled within cobalt miles of sky yield to and heed the mauve of twilight (who slenderly descends, daintily carrying in her eyes the dangerous first stars) people move love hurry in a gently arriving gloom and see! (the new moon fills abruptly with sudden silver these torn pockets of lame and begging colour) while there and here the lithe indolent prostitute Night, argues with certain houses 3© SEVEN POEMS VII will out of the kindness of their hearts a few philosophers tell me • what am i doing on top of this hill at Calchidas, in the sunlight? down ever so far on the beach below me a little girl in white spins, tumbles; rolling in sand, across this water, crowding tints: browns and whites showing, the dotting millions of windows of thousands of houses—Lis- boa. Like the crackle of a typewriter, in the afternoon sky. goats and sheep are driven by somebody along a curve of road which eats into a pink cliff back and up leaning out of yellowgreen water. they are building a house down there by the sea, in the afternoon. rapidly a reddish ant travels my fifth finger, a bird chirps in a tree, somewhere nowhere and a little girl in white is tumbling in sand Clouds over me are like bridegrooms Naked and luminous (here the absurd I; life, to peer and wear clothes, i am altogether foolish, i suddenly make a fist out of ten fingers voices rise from down ever so far— hush. Sunlight, there are old men behind me I tell you; several, in- credible, sleepy A DRAWING. BY E. E. CUMMINGS A DRAWING. BY E. E. CUMMINGS MANY MARRIAGES BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON II TEN or fifteen minutes had passed and in the interval John Webster had completed his arrangements for leaving the house and setting out with Natalie on his new adventure in life. In a short time now he would be with her and all the cords that bound him to his old life would have been cut. It was sure that, whatever hap- pened, he would never see his wife again and perhaps he would never see again the woman, now in the room with him, who was his daughter. If the doors of life could be torn open they could also be closed. One could walk out of a certain phase of life as out of a room. There might be traces of him left behind, but he would no longer be there. He had put on his collar and coat, arranging everything quite calmly. Also he had packed a small bag, putting in extra shirts, pajamas, toilet articles, et cetera. During all this time his daughter sat at the foot of the bed with her face buried in the crook of her arm that hung over the railing of the bed. Was she thinking? Were voices talking within her? What was she thinking? In the interval, when the father's telling of the tale of his life in the house had ceased and while he was doing the necessary little mechanical things before setting out on his new way of life, there was this pregnant time of silence. There was no doubt that, if he had become insane, the insanity within was becoming constantly more fixed, more a habit of his being. There was, taking constantly deeper and deeper roots within him, a new viewpoint of life or rather to be a bit fancy and speak of the matter more in the modern spirit, as he himself might later have done laughingly, one might say he had been permanently caught up and held by a new rhythm of life. At any rate it is true that, long afterwards, when the man some- times spoke of the experiences of that time, what he himself said was 32 MANY MARRIAGES that one, by an effort of his own, and if he would but dare let him- self go, could almost at will walk in and out of various planes of life. In speaking of such matters later he sometimes gave the im- pression that he quite calmly believed that one, once he had acquired the talent and courage for it, that one might even go so far as to be able to walk in the air along a street at the level of the second story of houses and look in at the people going about their private affairs in the upper rooms, as a certain historic man of the East is said to have once walked on the surface of the waters of a sea. It was all a part of a notion he had got fixed in his head regarding the tearing down of walls and the taking of people out of prisons. There he was, at any rate, in his room fixing, let us say, his tie pin in his neck-tie. He had got out the small bag into which he put as he thought of them the things he might need. In the next room his wife, the woman who in the process of living her life had become the large heavy inert one, was lying in silence on her bed as she had but a short while before been lying on the bed in the presence of himself and his daughter. What dark and terrible things were in her mind? Or was her mind a blank as John Webster sometimes thought it had become? At his back, in the same room with himself, was his daughter, in her thin night-gown and with her hair fallen down about her face and shoulders. Her body—he could see the reflection of it in the glass as he arranged the tie—was drooped and limp. The experi- ences of the evening had no doubt taken something out of her body, perhaps permanently. He wondered about that and his eyes in roving about the room found again the Virgin with the candles burn- ing by her side looking calmly at the scene. It was that calmness men worshipped in the Virgin perhaps. It was a strange turn of events that had led him to bring her, the calm one, into the room, to make her a part of the whole remarkable affair. No doubt it was the calm virginal thing he was at that moment in the process of taking out of his daughter, it was the coming of that element out of her body that had left her so limp and apparently lifeless. There was no doubt he had been daring. The hand that was arranging the tie trembled a little. Doubt came. As I have said the house was at that moment very silent. In the next room his wife, lying on the bed, made no sound. She floated in a sea of silence, as she had done ever since that other SHERWOOD ANDERSON 33 night, long before, when shame, in the form of a naked and dis- traught man, had embraced her nakedness in the presence of those others. Had he in turn done the same thing to his daughter? Had he plunged her also into that sea? It was a startling and terrible thought. One did no doubt upset things by becoming insane in a sane world or sane in an insane world. Quite suddenly everything became upset, turned quite upside down. And then it might well be true that the whole matter simply re- solved itself into this—that he, John Webster, was merely a man who had become suddenly enamoured of his stenographer and wanted to go and live with her and that he had found himself with- out the courage to do so simple a thing without making a fuss about it, without in fact an elaborate justification of himself, at the ex- pense of these others. To justify himself he had devised this strange business of appearing nude before the young girl who was his daugh- ter and who in reality, being his daughter, deserved the utmost con- sideration from him. There was no doubt but that, from one point of view, what he had done was altogether unforgivable. "After all I am still but a washing machine manufacturer in a small Wiscon- sin town," he told himself, whispering the words out slowly and dis- tinctly to himself. That was a thing to bear in mind. Now his bag was packed and he was quite dressed and ready to set out. When the mind no longer moved forward sometimes the body took its place and made the consummation of an act once begun quite definitely unavoidable. He walked across the room and stood for a time looking up into the calm eyes of the Virgin in the frame. His thoughts were again like bells heard ringing across fields. "I am in a room in a house on a street in a town in the state of Wis- consin. At this moment most of the other people here in town, the people among whom I have always lived are in bed and asleep, but to-morrow morning when I am gone the town will be here and will move forward with its life, as it has been doing since I was a young fellow, married a woman, and began living my present life." There were these definite facts of existence. One wore clothes, ate, moved about among his fellow men and women. Certain phases of life were lived in the darkness of nights, others in the light of days. In the 34 MANY MARRIAGES morning the three women who worked at his office and also the book-keeper would appear to do their usual tasks. When, after a time, neither he nor Natalie Swartz appeared there would begin a looking from one to another. After a time whispering would begin. There would begin a whispering that would run through the town, visit all the houses, the shops, the stores. Men and women would stop on the street to speak to each other, the men speaking to other men, the women to other women. The women who were wives would be a little angry at him and the men a little envious, but the men would perhaps speak of him more bitterly than the women. That would be to cover up their own wish to break in some way the boredom of their own existence. A smile spread itself over John Webster's face and it was then he went to sit on the floor at his daughter's feet and tell her the rest of the story of his married life. There was after all a kind of wicked satisfaction to be got out of his situation. As for his daughter, well, it was a fact too, that nature had made the connexion between them quite inevitable. He might throw into his daughter's lap the new aspect of life that had come to him and then, did she choose to reject it, that would be a matter for her to decide. People would not blame her. "Poor girl," they would say, "what a shame she should have had such a man for a father." On the other hand and if after hear- ing all he had to say she decided to run a little more swiftly through life, to open her arms to it, in a way of speaking, what he had done would be a help. There was Natalie whose old mother had made herself a great nuisance by getting drunk and shouting so that all the neighbours could hear and calling her hard-working daughters whores. It was perhaps absurd to think that such a mother might be giving her daughters a better chance in life than a quite respecta- ble mother could possibly have given them and still, in a world upset, turned upside down as it were, that might be quite true too. At any rate there was a quiet sureness in Natalie that was, even in his moments of doubt, amazingly quieting and healing to himself. "I love her and I accept her. If her old mother, by letting go of herself and shouting in the streets in a kind of drunken splendour of abandonment, has made a clear way in which Natalie may walk, all hail to her too," he thought, smiling at his own thoughts. He sat at his daughter's feet talking quietly and as he talked something within her became more quiet. She listened with con- stantly growing interest, looking down at him occasionally. He sat SHERWOOD ANDERSON 35 very close to her and occasionally leaned over a little and laid his cheek against her leg. "The devil. He was quite apparently making love to her too." She did not think such a thought definitely. A subtle feeling of confidence and sureness went out of him into her. He began the tale of his marriage again. On the evening of his youth, when his friend and his friend's mother and sister had come into the presence of himself and the woman he was to marry, he had suddenly been overcome by the same thing that afterward left so permanent a scar on her. Shame swept over him. Well what was he to do? How was he to explain this second running into that room and into the presence of the naked woman? It was a matter that could not be explained. A mood of desperation swept over him and he ran past the people at the door and down the hallway, this time getting into the room to which he had been assigned. He had closed and locked the door behind him and then he dressed, hurriedly, with feverish rapidity. When he was quite dressed he came out of the room carrying his bag. The hallway was silent and the lamp had been put back into its bracket on the wall. What had happened? No doubt the daughter of the house was with the woman, trying to comfort her. His friend had perhaps gone into his own room and was at the moment dressing and no doubt think- . ing thoughts too. There was bound to be no end of disturbed agi- tated thinking in the house. Everything might have been all right had he not gone into the room that second time, but how could he ever explain that the second going was as unpremeditated as the first. He went quickly down stairs. Below he met his friend's mother, a woman of fifty. She stood in a door-way that led into a dining-room. A servant was putting din- ner on the table. The laws of the household were being observed. It was time to dine and in a few minutes the people of the house would dine. "Holy Moses," he thought, "I wonder if she could come down here now and sit at table with myself and the others, eating food? Can the habits of existence so quickly reassert themselves after so profound a disturbance?" He put his bag down on the floor by his feet and looked at the older woman. "I don't know," he began, and stood looking at her and stammering. She was confused, as everyone in that house must have been confused at that moment, but there was something in her, 36 MANY MARRIAGES very kindly, that gave sympathy when it could not understand. She started to speak. "It was all an accident and there is nobody hurt," she started to say, but he did not stay to listen. Picking up the bag he rushed out of the house. What was to be done then? He had hurried across town to his own home and it was dark and silent. His father and mother had gone away. His grandmother, that is to say, his mother's mother, was very ill in another town and his father and mother had gone there. They might not return for several days. There were two ser- vants employed in the house, but as the house was to be unoccupied they had been permitted to go away. Even the fires were out. He could not stay there, but would have to go to a hotel. "I went into the house and put my bag down on the floor by the front door," he explained, and a shiver ran through his body as he remembered the dreariness of that evening long before. It was to have been an evening of gaiety. The four young people had planned to go to a dance and in anticipation of the figure he would cut with the new girl from another town, he had, in advance, worked himself up to a state of semi-excitement. The devil, he had counted on find- ing in her the something, well what was it? the something a young fellow is always dreaming of finding in some strange woman who is suddenly to come up to him out of nowhere and bring with her new life which she presents to him freely, asking nothing. "You see, the dream is obviously an impossible one, but one has it in youth," he explained, smiling. All through the telling of this part of his story he kept smiling. Did his daughter understand? One couldn't question her understanding too closely. "The woman is to come clad in shining garments and with a calm smile on her face," he went on, building up his fanciful picture. "With what regal grace she carries herself and yet, you understand, she is not some impossible cold drawn-away thing either. There are many men standing about, all no doubt more deserving than yourself, but it is to you she comes, walking slowly, with her body all alive. She is the unspeakably beautiful Virgin, but there is something very earthy about her too. The truth is that she can be very cold and proud and drawn-away when any one else but yourself is concerned, but in your presence the coldness all goes out of her. "She comes towards you and her hand, that holds before her slen- der young body a golden tray, trembles a little. On the tray there is a box, small and cunningly wrought, and within it is a jeweJ, a SHERWOOD ANDERSON 37 talisman, that is for you. You are to take the jewel, set in a golden ring, out of the box and put it on your finger. It is nothing. The strange and beautiful woman has but brought it to you as a sign, before all the others, that she lays herself at your feet. When your hand reaches forward and takes the jewel from the box her body begins to tremble and the golden tray falls to the floor making a loud rattling sound. Something terrific happens to all the others who have been witnesses of the scene. Of a sudden everyone present realizes that you, whom they had always thought of as just an ordi- nary fellow, not, to tell the truth, as worthy as themselves, well, you see, they have been made, fairly forced, to realize your true self. Of a sudden there you stand before them all in your true colours, quite revealed at last. There is a kind of radiant splendour comes out of you and fairly lights up the room where you, the woman, and all the others, the men and women of your own town you have always known and who have always thought they knew you, there they all stand looking and gasping with astonishment. "It is a moment. The most unbelievable thing happens. There is a clock on the wall and it has been ticking, ticking, running out the span of your life and the lives of all the others. Outside the room, in which this remarkable scene takes place, there is a street with the activities of the street going on. Men and women are per- haps hurrying up and down, trains are coming in and going out of distant railroad stations, and even further away ships are sailing on many wide seas and great winds are disturbing the waters of seas. "And suddenly all is stopped. It is a fact. On the wall the clock stops ticking, moving trains become dead and lifeless, people in the streets, who have started to say words to each other, stand now with their mouths open, on the seas winds no longer blow. "For all life everywhere there is this hushed moment and, out of it all, the buried thing within you asserts itself. Out of the great stillness you step and take the woman into your arms. In a moment now all life can begin to move and be again, but after this moment all life for ever will have been coloured by this act of your own, by this marriage. It was for this marriage you and the woman were made." All of which is perhaps going the extreme limit of fancifulness, as John Webster was careful to explain to Jane, and yet, there he was in the upper bedroom with his daughter, brought suddenly close to the daughter he had never known until that moment, and he was 38 MANY MARRIAGES trying to speak to her of his feelings at the moment when, in his youth, he had once played the part of a supreme and innocent fool. "The house was like a tomb, Jane," he said, and there was a break in his voice. "You see perhaps the state I was in. It was as I have said, very cold in the house and for a long time I stood in one spot, not moving at all and thinking I never wanted to move again. In some neigh- bouring house someone was talking. The voice from the distance was like a voice coming from some hidden buried place in myself. There was one voice telling me I was a fool and that, after what had happened, I could never again hold up my head in the world, and another voice telling me I was not a fool at all, but for the time the first voice had all the best of the argument. What I did was to stand there in the cold and try to let the two voices fight it out without putting in my oar, but after a while, it may have been because I was so cold, I began to cry like a kid and that made me so ashamed I went to the front door quickly and got out of the house forgetting to put on my overcoat. "Well, I had left my hat in the house too and there I was outside in the cold, bare-headed, and presently as I walked, keeping as much as I could in unfrequented streets, it began to snow. "'All right,' I said to myself, 'I know what I'll do. I'll go to their house and ask her to marry me.' "When I got there my friend's mother was not in sight and the three younger people were sitting together in the parlour of the house. I looked in through a window and then, fearing I would lose my courage if I hesitated, went boldly up and knocked on the door. I was glad anyway they had felt that after what had happened they couldn't go to the dance and when my friend came and opened the door I said nothing, but walked directly into the room where the two girls sat. "She was on a couch in a corner, where the light from a lamp on a table in the centre of the room fell on her but faintly, and I went directly to her. My friend had followed me into the room, but now I turned to him and his sister and asked them both to go out of the room. 'Something has happened here to-night that can't very well be explained and we must be left alone together for a few minutes,' I said making a motion with my hand to where she sat on the couch. "When they went out I followed to the door and closed it after them. SHERWOOD ANDERSON 39 "And so there I was in the presence of the woman who was later to be my wife. There was an odd kind of droopiness to her whole person as she sat on the couch. Her body had, in a way you see, slid down from its perch on the couch and now she was lying rather than sitting. What I mean is that her body was draped on the couch. It was like a garment thrown carelessly down there. That had hap- pened since I had come into the room. I stood before it a moment and then got down on my knees. Her face was very pale, but her eyes were looking directly into mine. "'I did something very strange twice this evening,' I said turning my face away so that I no longer looked into her eyes. Her eyes frightened and disconcerted me, I suppose. That must have been it. I had a certain speech to make and wanted to go through with it. There were certain words I was about to say, but now I know that at the same moment other words and thoughts, having nothing to do with what I was saying, were going on down within me. "For one thing I knew my friend and his sister were at that mo- ment standing just outside the door of the room waiting and lis- tening. ''What were they thinking? Well, never mind that. "What was I thinking myself? What was the woman to whom I was about to propose marriage thinking about? "I had come to the house bare-headed, you understand, and no doubt looking a little wild. Perhaps everyone in that house thought I had gone suddenly out of my mind and it may be that in fact I had. "At any rate I felt very calm and on that evening and for all these years, up to a short time ago, when I became in love with Natalie, I've always been a very calm man, or at least thought I was. I have dramatized myself that way. What I suppose is that death is always a very calm thing and I must, in a way, have been committing suicide on that evening. "There had been, in the town, a few weeks before this happened, a scandal that had got into the courts and was written about guard- edly in our weekly newspaper. It concerned a case of rape. A farmer, who had employed in his household a young girl, had sent his wife off to town to buy supplies and while she was gone had got the girl into the upper part of his house and had raped her, tearing her clothes off and even beating her before he forced her to acquiesce in his desires. Later he had been arrested and brought to town 4o MANY MARRIAGES where, at the very time I was kneeling on the floor before the body of my future wife, he was in jail. "I speak of the matter because, as I knelt there, I remember now, a thought crossed my mind connecting me with the man. 'I am also committing a rape' something within me said "To the woman, who was there before me, so cold and white, I said something else. "'You understand that, this evening, when I first came to you naked, it was an accident,' I said. 'I want you to understand that, but I want you also to understand that when I came to you the second time it was not an accident. I want you to understand every- thing quite fully and then I want to ask you to marry me, to consent to be my wife.' "That was what I said and after I had said it I took one of her hands in mine and, without looking at her, knelt there at her feet waiting for her to speak. Perhaps had she spoken then, even in con- demnation of me, everything would have been all right. "She said nothing. I understand now why she couldn't, but then I didn't understand. I have always, I admit, been impatient. Time passed and I waited. I was like one who has fallen from a great height into the sea and who feels himself going down and down, deeper and deeper. There is a great weight, you understand, press- ing upon the man in the sea and he cannot breathe. What I suppose is that in the case of a man, falling thus into the sea, the force of his fall does after a time expend itself and he comes to a stop in his descent, and then suddenly begins again rising to the surface of the sea. "And something of the sort happened to me. When I had been kneeling there for some little time, at her feet, I suddenly sprang up. Going to the door I threw it open and there, as I had expected, stood my friend and his sister. I must have appeared to them, at the moment, almost gay, perhaps they afterwards thought it an in- sane gaiety. I cannot say as to that. After that evening I never went back to their house and my former friend and I began avoiding each other's presence. There was no danger that they would tell any one what had happened—out of respect to their guest, you understand. The woman was safe as far as their talking was concerned. "Anyway I stood before them and smiled. 'Your guest and I have got into a jam because of a series of absurd accidents that perhaps did not look like accidents and now I have asked her to marry me. SHERWOOD ANDERSON ... . ...- 4i She has not made up her mind about that,' Tsaid, speaking very formally and turning from them and gomgioiit of-the house an.d'-td :. my father's house where I quite calmly got my overcoat and my bag. Til have to go to the hotel and stay until father and mother come home,' I thought. At any rate I knew that the' affairs of the evening would not, as I had supposed earlier in the evening, throw me into a time of illness." in "I do not mean to say that after that evening I did think more clearly, but after that day and its adventures other days and weeks did come marching along and, as nothing specially happened as a result of what I had done, I couldn't stay in the half-exalted state I was in then." John Webster rolled over on the floor at his daughter's feet and, squirming about so that he lay on his belly facing her, looked up into her face. He had his elbows on the floor and his chin rested on his two hands. There was something diabolically strange about the way youth had come into his figure and he had quite won his way with his daughter. There he was, you see, wanting nothing specially from her and he was whole-heartedly giving himself to her. For the time even Natalie was forgotten and as for his wife, in the next room lying on the bed and perhaps in her dumb way suffering as he had never suffered, to him at the moment she simply did not exist. Well, there was the woman who was his daughter before him and he was giving himself to her. It is likely that at the moment he had quite forgotten she was his daughter. He was thinking now of his youth, when he was a young man, much perplexed by life, and was seeing her as a young woman who would inevitably, and as she went along through life, often be as perplexed as he had been. He tried to describe to her his feelings as a young man who had proposed to a woman who had made no answer, and in whom nevertheless there was the perhaps romantic notion that he was in some queer way in- evitably and finally attached to that particular woman. "You see what I did then, Jane, is something you will perhaps find yourself doing some day and that it may be inevitable every- one does." He reached forward and taking his daughter's bare foot in his hand drew it to him and kissed it. Then he sat quickly up- right holding his knees in his arms. Something like a blush came 42 MANY MARRIAGES swiftly bve'r •biffdaughter's face and then she began to look at him \^irtfr very.seric^s'Jjuzzled fy£§. He smiled gaily. He began to talk. "And so you see, there I Was, living right here in this very town anctJMt 'girl to J^honvl had proposed marriage had gone away and I h'afcl heard'rrotnihg'more from her. She only stayed at my friend's house a day or two after I had managed to make the beginning of her visit such a startling affair. "For a long time my father had been scolding at me because I had taken no special interest in the washing machine factory it was sup- posed I was after his day to take hold of and run, and so I decided I had better do a thing called 'settling down.' That is to say, I made up my mind it would be better for me if I gave myself less to dreams and to the kind of gawky youthfulness that only led to my doing such unaccountable things as that second running into that naked woman's presence. "The truth is, of course, that my father, who in his own youth had come to a day when he had made just such another decision as I was then making, that he, for all his settling down and becoming a hard working sensible man, hadn't got very much for it; but I didn't think of that at the time. Well, he wasn't such a gay old dog as I remember him now. He had always worked pretty hard, I sup- pose, and every day he sat for eight or ten hours at his desk and through all the years I had known him he had been subject to at- tacks of indigestion, during which everyone in our house had to go softly about for fear of making his head ache worse than it did. The attacks used to come on about once a month and he would come home, and mother would fix him up on a couch in our front room, and she used to heat flat-irons and roll them in towels and put them on his belly, and there he would lie all day groaning, and as you may suppose, making the life of our house a gay festive affair. "And then, when he got all right again and only looked a little grey and drawn he would come sit at the table at meal-time with the rest of us and would talk to me about his life, as an entirely success- ful affair, and take it for granted I wanted just such another life. "For some fool reason, I don't understand now, I thought then that was just what I did want. I suppose all the time I must have wanted something else and that made me spend so much of my time having vague dreams, but not only father, but all the older men in our town and perhaps in all the other towns along the railroad east SHERWOOD ANDERSON 43 and west were thinking and talking just that same way to their sons and I suppose I got caught up by the general drift of thinking and just went into it blind, with my head down, not thinking at all. "So there I was, a young washing machine manufacturer, and I hadn't any woman, and since that affair at his house I didn't see my former friend with whom I used to try to talk of the vague, but nevertheless more colourful dreams of my idle hours. After a few months father sent me out on the road to see if I couldn't sell wash- ing machines to merchants in small towns and sometimes I was suc- cessful and did sell some and sometimes I didn't. "At night in the towns I used to walk about in the streets and sometimes I did get with a woman, with a waitress from the hotel, or a girl I had picked up on the streets. "We walked about under the trees along the residence streets of the town and when I was lucky I sometimes induced one of them to go with me to a little cheap hotel or into the darkness of the fields at the edge of the towns. "At such times we talked of love and sometimes I was a good deal moved, but after all not really moved. "The whole thing started me thinking of the slender naked girl I had seen on the bed and of the look in her eyes at the moment when she came up out of sleep and her eyes met mine. "I knew her name and address and so one day I grew bold and wrote her a long letter. You must understand that by this time I felt I had become quite a sensible fellow and so I tried to write in a sensible way. "I remember I was sitting in the writing-room of a small hotel in an Indiana town when I did it. The desk where I sat was by a win- dow near the town's Main Street and, as it was evening, people were going along the street to their houses, I suppose going home to the evening meal. "I don't deny I grew pretty romantic. As I sat there, feeling lone- ly and I suppose filled with self-pity I looked up and saw a little drama acted out in a hallway across the street. There was a rather old tumble-down building with a stairway at the side running to an upper story, where it was evident someone lived, as there were white curtains at the window. "I sat looking across at the place, and I suppose I was dreaming of the long slender body of the girl on the bed up stairs in another 44 MANY MARRIAGES house. It was evening and growing dusk, you understand, and just such a light as had fallen over us at the moment we looked into each other's eyes, at the moment when there was no one but just our two selves, before we had time to think and remember the others in that house, when I was coming out of a day-dream and she was coming out of the dreams of sleep, at the moment when we accepted each other and the complete and momentary loveliness of each other— well, you see, just such a light as I had stood in and she had lain in as one might lie on the soft waters of some southern sea, just such another light was now lying over the little bare writing-room of the foul little hotel in that town and across the street a woman came down the stairway and stood in just such another light. "As it turned out she was also tall, like your mother, but I could not see what kind or colour of clothes she wore. There was some peculiarity of the light; an illusion was created. The devil! I wish I could tell of things that have happened to me without this eternal business of having everything I say seem a little strange and un- canny. One walks in a wood at evening, let us say, Jane, and one has queer fascinating illusions. The light, the shadows cast by trees, the open spaces between trees—these things create the illu- sions. Often the trees seem to beckon to one. Old sturdy trees look wise and you think they are going to tell you some great secret, but they don't. One gets into a forest of young birches. What naked girlish things, running and running, free, free. Once I was in such a wood with a girl. We were up to something. Well, it had gone no further than that we had a tremendous feeling for each other at the moment. We had kissed and I remember that twice I had stopped in the half-darkness and had touched her face with my fingers—ten- derly and softly, you know. She was a little dumb shy girl I had picked up on the streets of an Indiana town, a kind of a free immoral little thing, such as sometimes pop up in such towns. I mean she was free with men in a kind of queer shy way. I had picked her up on the street and then, when we got out there in the wood, we both felt the strangeness of things and the strangeness of being with each other too. "There we were, you see. We were about to—I don't exactly know what we were up to. We were standing and looking at each other. "And then we both looked suddenly up and there, in die path - 45 SHERWOOD ANDERSON before us, was a very dignified and beautiful old man. He was wearing a robe that was caught over his shoulders, in a swaggering kind of a way, and it was spread out behind him over the floor of the forest, between the trees. "What a princely old man! What a kingly fellow, in fact! We both saw him, both stood looking at him with eyes filled with won- der, and he stood looking at us. "I had to go forward and touch the thing with my hands before the illusion our minds had created could be dispelled. The kingly old man was just a half-decayed old stump and the robe he wore was just the purple night shadows falling down on the floor of the forest, but our having seen the thing together made everything dif- ferent between the shy little town girl and myself. What we had perhaps both intended doing couldn't be done in the spirit in which we had approached it. I mustn't try to tell you of that now. I mustn't get too much off the track. "What I am thinking is merely that such things happen. I am talking of another time and place, you see. On that other evening, as I sat in the hotel writing-room, there was just such another light, and across the street a girl, or a woman, was coming down a stair- way. I had the illusion that she was nude like a young birch tree and that she was coming towards me. Her face made a greyish wavering shadow-like spot in the hallway and she was evidently waiting for someone as she kept thrusting her head out and looking up and down the street. "I became a fool again. That's the story, I dare say. As I sat looking and leaning forward, trying to see deeper and deeper into the evening light, a man came hurrying along the street and stopped at the stairway. He was tall like herself and when he stopped I re- member that he took off his hat and stepped into the darkness hold- ing it in his hand. There was probably something stealthy and cov- ered-up about the love affair between the two people as the man also put his head out of the stairway and looked long and carefully up and down the street before taking the woman into his arms. Per- haps she was some other man's wife. Anyway they stepped back a little into a greater darkness and, I thought, took each other quite completely. How much I saw and how much I imagined I'll of course never know. At any rate the two greyish white faces seemed to float and then merge and become one greyish white spot." 46 MANY MARRIAGES IV "And so you see I lighted a lamp in the writing-room of that hotel and forgot my supper and sat there and wrote pages and pages to the woman, and grew foolish too and confessed a lie, that I was ashamed of the thing that had happened between us some months before, and that I had only done it, that is to say, that I had only run into the room to her that second time, because I loved her and a lot of other unspeakable foolishness." John Webster jumped to his feet and started to walk nervously about the room, but now his daughter became something more than a passive listener to his tale. He had walked to where the Virgin stood between the burning candles and was moving back towards the door, that led into the hallway and down stairs, when she sprang up and running to him impulsively threw her arms about his neck. She began to sob and buried her face on his shoulder. "I love you," she said. "I don't care what's happened, I love you." V And so there was John Webster in his house and he had suc- ceeded, at least for the moment, in breaking through the wall that had separated him from his daughter. After her outburst they went and sat together on the bed, with his arm about her and her head on his shoulder. Years afterward, sometimes, when he was with a friend and was in a certain mood, John Webster occasionally spoke of that moment as having been the most important and lovely of his whole life. In a way his daughter had given herself to him as he had given himself to her. There had been a kind of marriage, that he realized. "I have been a father as well as a lover. Perhaps the two things cannot be differentiated. I have been one father who has not been afraid to realize the loveliness of his daughter's flesh and to fill my senses with the fragrance of it," was what he said. As it turned out he might have sat thus, talking with his daugh- ter, for another half-hour and then left the house to go away with Natalie, without any more drama, but that his wife, lying on the bed in the next room, heard her daughter's cry of love and it must have stirred something deeply buried away in her. She got silently off the bed and going to the door opened it softly. Then she stood SHERWOOD ANDERSON 47 leaning against the door-frame and listening as her husband talked. There was a look of hard terror in her eyes. Perhaps she wanted at that moment to kill the man who had for so long a time been her husband and did not do so only because the long years of inaction and submission to life had made it impossible for her to lift an arm to strike. At any rate she stood in silence and one might have thought that she would at any moment fall to the floor, but she didn't. She waited and John Webster kept on talking. Now he was telling his daughter with a kind of devilish attention to details all the story of their marriage. What had happened, at least in the man's version of the affair, was that, after having written one letter he could not stop and wrote another on the same evening and two more on the following day. He kept on writing letters and what he himself thought was that the letter-writing had created within him a kind of furious passion of lying that, once started, couldn't be stopped. "I began some- thing that has been going on and on in me all these years," he ex- plained. "It is a trick one practises, this lying to oneself about one- self." It was evident his daughter did not follow him, although she tried. He was talking now of something she had not experienced, could not have experienced, that is to say, the hypnotic power of words. Already she had read books and had been tricked by words, but there was in her no realization of what had already been done to her. She was a young girl and as, often enough, there was noth- ing in the life about her that seemed exciting or interesting she was thankful for the life of words and books. It was true they left one quite blank, went out of the mind leaving no trace. Well, they were created out of a kind of dream world. One had to have lived, to have experienced much of life, before one could come to the real- ization that just beneath the surface of the ordinary everyday life about there was deep and moving drama always going on. Few come to realization of the poetry of the actual. It was evident her father had come to some such realization. Now he was talking. He was opening doors for her. It was like travelling in an old town one had thought one knew, with a marvellously in- spired guide. One went in and out of old houses, seeing things as they had never been seen before. All the things of everyday life, a 48 MANY MARRIAGES picture on the wall, an old chair sitting by a table, the table itself at which a man one had always known, sat smoking a pipe. By some miracle all these things were now being invested with new life and significance. The painter Van Gogh, who it is said killed himself in a fit of desperation because he could not gather within the limits of his canvas all the wonder and glory of the sun shining in the sky, once painted a canvas, an old chair set in an empty room. When Jane Webster grew to be a woman and had got her own understanding of life she once saw the canvas hanging in a gallery in the city of New York. There was a strange wonder of life to be got from looking at the painting of an ordinary, roughly made chair that had perhaps been owned by some peasant of France, some peasant at whose house the painter had perhaps stopped for an hour on a summer day. It must have been a day when he was very much alive and very conscious of all the life of the house in which he sat and so he painted the chair and put into his painting all he felt about the people in that particular house and in many other houses he had visited. Jane Webster was in the room with her father and his arm was about her and he was talking of something she couldn't understand and yet she did understand too. Now he was again a young man and was feeling the loneliness and uncertainty of young manhood as she had already sometimes felt the loneliness and uncertainty of her own young womanhood. Like her father she must begin to try to understand things a little. Now he was an honest man, he was talking to her honestly. There was wonder in that alone. In his young manhood he went about towns, getting in with girls, doing with girls a thing she had heard whispers about. That made him feel unclean. He did not feel deeply enough the thing he did with the poor little girls. His body had made love to women, but he had not. That her father knew, but she did not yet know. There was much she did not know. Her father, then a young man, had begun writing letters to a woman into whose presence he once came quite nude as he had ap- peared before her but a short time before. He was trying to explain how his mind, feeling about, had alighted upon the figure of a cer- tain woman as one towards whom love might be directed. SHERWOOD ANDERSON 49 He sat in a room in a hotel and wrote the word "love" in black ink on a white sheet of paper. Then he went out to walk in the quiet night streets of the towns. She got the picture of him now quite clearly. The strangeness of his being so much older than her- self and of being her father had gone away. He was a man and she was a woman. She wanted to quiet the clamouring voices with- in him, to fill the blank empty spaces. She pressed her body more closely against his. His voice kept explaining things. There was a passion for ex- planation in him. As he sat in the hotel he had written certain words on paper and putting the paper into an envelope had sent it away to a woman liv- ing in a distant place. Then he walked and walked and thought of more words and going back to the hotel wrote them out on other pieces of paper. A thing was created within him it was hard to explain, that he had not understood himself. One walked under the stars and in quiet streets of towns under trees and sometimes, on summer even- ings, heard voices in the darkness. People, men and women, were sitting in the darkness on the porches of houses. There was an illu- sion created. One sensed in the darkness somewhere a deep quiet splendour of life and ran towards it. There was a kind of desperate eagerness. In the sky the stars shone more splendidly because of one's thoughts. There was a little wind and it was like the hand of a lover touching the cheeks, playing in one's hair. There was some- thing lovely in life one must find. When one was young one could not stand still, but must go towards it. The writing of the letters was an effort to go towards the thing. It was an effort to find foot- ing in the darkness on strange winding roads. And so John Webster had, by his letter-writing, done a strange and false thing to himself and to the woman who was later to be his wife. He had created a world of unrealities. Would he and the woman be able to live together in that world? To be continued MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ANCESTRAL HOUSES Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns, Amid the rustle of his planted hills, Life overflows without ambitious pains And rains down life until the basin spills, And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains, As though to choose whatever shape it wills, And never stoop to a mechanical, Or servile shape, at others' beck and call. Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung But that he found more substance there than dreams, That out of life's own self delight had sprung The abounding glittering jet though now it seems As if some marvellous empty sea-shell, flung Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams, And not a fountain where the symbol which Shadows the inherited glory of the rich. Some violent bitter man, some powerful man Called architect and artist in that they, Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone The sweetness that all longed for night and day, The gentleness none there had ever known; But when the master's buried mice can play And maybe the great-grandson of that house For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse. Oh, what if gardens where the peacock strays With delicate feet upon old terraces, Or else all Juno from an urn displays Before the indifferent garden deities; WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Oh, what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease And Childhood a delight for every sense, But take our greatness with our violence. What if the glory of escutcheoned doors, And buildings that a haughtier age designed, The pacing to and fro on polished floors Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined With famous portraits of our ancestors; What if those things the greatest of mankind, Consider most to magnify, or to bless, But take our greatness with our bitterness. MY HOUSE An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower, A farm-house that is sheltered by its wall, An acre of stony ground, Where the symbolic rose can break in flower, Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable, The sound of the rain or sound Of every wind that blows, The stilted water-hen That plunged in stream again Scared by the splashing of a hundred cows. A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone. A grey stone fire-place with an open hearth. A candle, and written page. II Penseroso's Platonist toiled on In some like chamber, shadowing forth How the demonic rage Imagined everything. Benighted travellers From markets and from fairs Had seen his midnight candle glimmering. MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR The river rises, and it sinks again; One hears the rumble of it far below Under its rocky hole. What Median, Persian, Babylonian, In reverie, or in vision, saw Symbols of the soul, Mind from mind has caught: The subterranean streams, Tower where a candle gleams, A suffering passion and a labouring thought? Two men have found it here. A man-at-arms Gathered a score of horse and spent his days In this tumultuous spot, Where through long wars and sudden night alarums His dwindling score and he seemed castaways Forgetting and forgot; And I, that after me My bodily heirs may find, To exalt a lonely mind, Befitting emblems of adversity. MY TABLE Two heavy trestles, and a board Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword, By pen and paper lies, That it may moralize My days out of their aimlessness. A bit of an embroidered dress Covers its wooden sheath. Chaucer had not drawn breath When it was forged. In Sato's house Curved like new moon, moon luminous, It lay five hundred years; Yet if no change appears No moon: only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Our learned men have urged That when and where 'twas forged A marvellous accomplishment In painting or in pottery went From father unto son, And through the centuries ran And seemed unchanging like the sword. Soul's beauty being most adored, Men and their business took The soul's unchanging look, For the most rich inheritor, Knowing that none who pass Heaven's door Have loved inferior art, Had such an aching heart That he, although a country's talk For silken clothes and stately walk, Had waking wits; it seemed Juno's peacock screamed. MY DESCENDANTS Having inherited a vigorous mind From my old fathers I must nourish dreams To leave a woman and a man behind As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind, Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams, When the torn petals strew the garden plot; And there's but common greenness after that. And what if my descendants lose the flower Through natural declension of the soul, Through too much business with the passing hour, Through too much play, or marriage with a fool, And find a comfort in it? May this tower Become a roofless ruin that the owl May build in the cracked masonry and cry Her desolation to the desolate sky. MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR The Primum Mobile that fashioned us Has made the very owls in circles move, And I, that count myself most prosperous Seeing that love and friendship are enough, For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house And decked and altered it for a girl's love, And know whatever flourish and decline These stones remain their monument and mine. THE ROAD AT MY DOOR An affable Irregular, A heavily built Falstaffian man, Comes cracking jokes of Civil War As though to die by gunshot were The finest play under the sun. A brown Lieutenant and his men, Half dressed in National uniform, Stand at my door, and I complain Of the foul weather, hail and rain, A pear tree broken by the storm. I count those feathered balls of soot, The moor-hen guides upon the stream, To silence the envy in my thought; And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream. THE JAY'S NEST BY MY WINDOW The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening, honey-bees Come build in the empty house of the stare. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 55 We are closed in, and the key turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no clear fact to be discerned: Come build in the empty house of the stare. A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of Civil War; Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare. We have fed the heart on fantasies, The heart grows brutal from the fare, More substance in our enmities Than in our loves; oh, honey-bees Come build in the empty house of the stare. I SEE PHANTOMS OF HATRED AND OF THE HEART'S FULNESS AND OF THE COMING EMPTINESS I climb to the tower top and lean upon broken stone, A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all, Valley, river, elms, under the light of a moon That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable, A glittering sword out of the east. A puff of wind And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by. Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind; Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye. "Vengeance upon the murderers," the cry goes up, "Vengeance for Jacques Molay." In cloud-pale rags, or in lace, The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop, Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face, Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay. MEDITATIONS IN TIME OF CIVIL WAR Their legs long delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes, Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs, The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies, Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs, Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool Where even longing drowns under its own excess; Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness. The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine, The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or of lace, Of eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean, Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place To brazen hawks. Nor self-delighting reverie Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone, Nothing but grip of claw and the eye's complacency, The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon. I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth In something that all others understand or share; But oh, ambitious heart had such a proof drawn forth A company of friends, a conscience set at ease, It had but made us pine the more. The abstract joy, The half-read wisdom of demonic images, Suffice the aging man as once the growing boy. TRISTAN BY THOMAS MANN VIII TOWARDS the end of February, one chilly day which was even clearer and more brilliant than all that had preceded it, a gen- eral feeling of good nature pervaded Einfried. The ladies and gen- tlemen with heart-trouble were speaking to one another with flushed cheeks, the diabetic general was humming like a child, and the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs were quite beside them- selves. What was it all about? Nothing less than that a general excursion had been arranged for, a sleigh-ride through the hills in vehicles with jangling bells and snapping whips. Dr Leander had decided on this as an entertainment for his patients. Naturally, the "serious cases" had to stay behind. Those mis- erable serious cases! Everyone got together and pledged them- selves to keep the whole thing a secret from them; it felt quite pleasant to be able to exercise a little sympathy and consideration. But even some who could have very easily taken part in the outing did not do so. As to Fraulein von Osterloh, she was excused without a word. Any one as loaded with household duties as she could not afford to think of sleigh-rides. Her presence was needed in Ein- fried. And in short, she stayed. But all were distressed when Herr Kloterjahn's wife declared she preferred not to go. Dr Leander tried in vain to urge her into taking the invigorating ride. But she claimed she was indisposed, that she had a headache, felt somewhat tired; and there was nothing to do but accept it. But the cynic and wit found occasion for the remark, "Just watch; now the decrepit baby won't go with us, either." And he turned out to be right, since Herr Spinell let it be known that he intended working that afternoon—he liked to apply the word "work" to his doubtful activities. But not a single soul was put out by his absence, and the disappointment was no greater when the Ratin Spatz decided to keep her younger friend company since riding made her sea-sick. Immediately after the mid-day meal, which had been served 5« TRISTAN to-day even before twelve, the sleighs drew up in front of Einfried, and the patients began moving across the park in lively groups, eager, excited, and bundled up snugly. Herr Kloterjahn's wife was standing with the Ratin Spatz behind the glass door which opened on the terrace, and Herr Spinell was observing the departure from the window of his room. Amid laughing and joking, minia- ture battles would arise over the best seats; Fraulin von Osterloh, a fur boa around her neck, was running from one sleigh to another to shove baskets of food under the seats; Dr Leander, his fur cap pulled down over his eyes, reviewed the whole scene once more with his glistening spectacles, then took his place and gave the sign to start. . . . The horses leaped forward, a woman or two let out a shriek as she fell over backwards, the bells jangled, the short- handled whips snapped and let their long cords drag in the snow behind the runners, and Fraulein von Osterloh stood at the gate waving her handkerchief until the sleighs glided out of sight at a bend in the road and the cheerful noise died away. Then she hur- ried back through the park to attend to urgent matters, the two women left the glass door, and almost at the same time Herr Spinell left his place of observation. Einfried was quiet. The sleigh-party was not to be expected back before evening. The "serious cases" were lying in their rooms and suffering. Herr Kloterjahn's wife and her older friend took a short walk together, and then went up to their rooms. Herr Spinell was also in his room, busy after his fashion. About four o'clock each of the women was brought her glass of milk, while Herr Spi- nell received his weak tea. Shortly afterwards, Herr Kloterjahn's wife knocked on the wall which separated her room from Magis- tratsratin Spatz's, and said, "Let's go down to the drawing-room for a while. I don't know what to do with myself up here." "Right away, my dear!" the Ratin answered. "Just let me pull on my shoes. I have been lying down, you see." As might be expected, the drawing-room was empty. The two women took seats in front of the fire-place. The Ratin Spatz was embroidering flowers on a piece of canvas, and Herr Kloterjahn's wife was also doing a bit of sewing, although she soon let her fancy-work sink into her lap and looked vacantly above the arms of her chair. Finally she made a remark which it was not worth the trouble of moving her teeth for, but since the Ratin Spatz, how- ever, asked "What's that?" to her great humiliation she had to re- THOMAS MANN 59 peat the whole sentence. Then the Ratin Spatz asked a second time "What's that?" But at this moment steps were heard, the door opened, and Herr Spinell entered. "Am I disturbing you?" he asked softly as he hesitated in the door-way. Then he looked on Herr Kloterjahn's wife and inclined the upper part of his body in a certain tender, soaring manner. The young woman answered, "Why, how could that bet In the first place, this room is a harbour open to all, Herr Spinell. And then again, in what way could you disturb us? I have the most decided sensation of boring the Ratin ..." At this he had nothing to answer, but allowed a smile to expose his carious teeth, and then walked somewhat stiffly under the eyes of the women to the glass door. He stopped here and looked out, with his back turned impolitely towards the women. Then he turned half around, although continuing to look out at the park. "The sun is gone. The sky has been clouding gradually. It is al- ready getting dark." "Yes, indeed; everything is in shadows," Herr Kloterjahn's wife answered. "The sleigh-party is in for some more snow, it seems. Yesterday at this time it was still broad daylight; but now it is dark already." "Ah," he said, "after all these excessively sunny weeks a little darkness is a rest to the eyes. I am quite grateful to this sun, which lights up the beautiful and the common with equally insist- ent clarity, that at last it has hidden itself for a while." "You do not like the sunlight, Herr Spinell?" "Since I am not a painter. We become more introspective with- out the sun. . . . It is one thick grey mass of cloud. Perhaps that means thawing for to-morrow. In any case, I should not advise you to keep looking at your fancy-work there, if I may say so." "Oh, don't mind that, for I have already quit. But what is there to do?* He had dropped on to the stool in front of the piano, with one arm resting on the cover. "Music . . . " he began. "Who ever hears music these days! Once in a while the English children sing little nigger-songs, but that is all." "And yesterday afternoon Fraulin von Osterloh went speeding through The Monastery Bells," Herr Kloterjahn's wife remarked. "But it is true that you play," he said pleadingly, and stood up. You used to play every day with your father." 6o TRISTAN "Yes, Herr Spinell, but that was then! Back when we sat around the spring, you know . . ." "But do it to-day!" he begged. "Just a few bars just this once! If you only knew how thirsty I am after ..." "Our family doctor as well as Dr Leander have both forbidden it expressly, Herr Spinell." "They are not here, neither one nor the other! We are free . . . you are free! Just a few meagre chords ..." "No, Herr Spinell, we must not think of it. Who knows what sort of marvels you expect of me! And I have gotten out of prac- tice, I assure you. I can do scarcely anything by heart." "Oh, then play this Scarcely-Anything! And furthermore, here are some scores, lying here, right on the piano. No, this is nothing. But here is Chopin . . . the Nocturnes. And now all that is necessary is for me to light the candles . . ." "Please don't expect me to play, Herr Spinell! I am not al- lowed. If it should hurt me?" He was silent. He stood there in the light of the two candles; large feet, long black coat, pale grey-haired beardless face, and hanging hands. "Now I won't ask you again," he finally spoke very softly. "If you are afraid that it may hurt you, then by all means leave the beauty dead and dumb which might acquire utter- ance beneath your fingers. You have not always been so prudent. Not, at least, when you were called upon to surrender yourself to the very opposite of beauty. Then you weren't worried about yourself, and showed a hastier and surer determination when you abandoned the spring and put off the little golden crown . . . But listen," he went on after a pause, and his voice sank even lower, "if you sit here and play the way you once did, when your father stood beside you and made his violin sing those tones which caused you to cry . . . then it may come about that the little golden crown will glisten secretly in your hair again . . ." "Indeed?" she asked, smiling. It happened that her voice broke on this word, so that it was pronounced half hoarsely and half toneless. She coughed, and then said, "And they are really Cho- pin's Nocturnes you have there?" "Certainly. They are opened, and everything is ready." "Well then, in heaven's name I will play one of them. But only one, you hear? Then you must be contented for ever." THOMAS MANN 6i She arose, laid aside her fancy-work, and went to the piano. She sat down on the stool where a couple of bound volumes had been lying, adjusted the lights, and began turning over the pages. Herr Spinell had brought a chair up beside her, and was sitting near her like a music teacher. She played the Nocturne in E-sharp Major, opus 9, number 2. Even if she truly was somewhat out of practice, nevertheless her execution was a bit of real artistry. The piano was at best mid- dling, but after the first few strokes she could manage it tastefully and with assurance. She displayed a nervous sense of the differen- tiations in tone-quality, and an imaginative feel for the slowing and speeding up of rhythm. Her touch was firm as well as soft. Under her hands the melody sang its ultimate measure of sweet- ness, and the little embellishments wound with a hesitating charm about her fingers. She was wearing the dress of the day she came here: the dark, heavy coat-suit and the soft velvet embroidery—all of which gave her hands and face such an unearthly frailty. The expression of her face did not change in playing, but it seemed as though the demarcation of her lips became clearer while the shadows deepened in the corners of her eyes. When she had finished, she laid her hands in her lap and went on looking at the notes. Herr Spinell continued to sit there, without a move or a sound. She played another Nocturne—a second and a third. Then she arose, but only to look for new pieces on the top of the piano. It occurred to Herr Spinell to examine the volumes in black boards which had been lying on the stool. Suddenly he let out an unintelligible exclamation, and his large white hands began finger- ing passionately one of these neglected volumes. "Impossible! ... It is not true! . . . " he said. "And yet I am not deceiving myself! ... Do you know what this is? What was lying here? What I am holding now? . . ." "What is it?" she asked. Then he pointed in silence to the title-page. He was quite pale, let the book sink down, and gazed at her with trembling lips. "Indeed? How does that come to be here? Give it to me, then," she said simply. Then she arranged the score, took her seat, and after a moment of stillness began with the first page. He sat next to her, bent forward, his head lowered, and his hands 62 TRISTAN folded across his knees. She played the opening plaintively, with an excessive slowness, with disquietingly long pauses between the individual figures. The yearning-motif, a lonely, wandering voice in the night, was heard softly uttering its uneasy question. A silence, and an expectation. And see . . . it answers: the same weak, lonely note, only this time brighter, more tender. Another silence. And then, in that marvellous dampened sforzato which is like a sud- den starting up, and the first sacred insistence of passion, the love- motif set in, rose, writhed keenly to a sweet culmination, sank back in resolution—and with their deep song of heavy, pained astonish- ment the 'cellos came forward and continued the melody. As she played on the miserable instrument, she tried with some success to bring out the effects of the orchestra. The run of the violins in their great climb rang with a brilliant precision. She played with a precise devotion, lingered credulously over every form, and raised up each element plainly and humbly like a priest lifting the holy wafer above his head. What happened? Two forces, two eager beings struggled in pain and sanctity towards each other, and embraced in a wild, enchanted hunger after the eternal and the absolute . . . The overture flamed up and dropped. She stopped where the curtain opens, and kept looking in silence at the notes. In the meantime the Ratin Spatz had reached boredom to a de- gree which deforms the face, drives the eyes out of the head, and produces a dreadful corpse-like appearance. Beyond that, this sort of music affected the nerves of her stomach, put this dyspeptic or- ganism in a state of anguish which made the Ratin fear an attack of cramps. "I must go to my room," she said weakly. "Good-bye; I'll be back." Then she had left. It was much darker now. Outside, the snow could be seen falling thick and silent on the terrace. The two candles gave a restricted, wavering light. "The second act," he whispered; and she turned the pages and began with the second act. A blare of horns was lost in the distance. What? Or was it the rustling of leaves? The soft gurgle of a spring? Night had already poured its silence everywhere, and there were no urgent warnings against surrender to the powers of melancholy. The holy secret was completed. The lights went out, the death-motif sank away with a peculiar, suddenly veiled quality; and with a driving THOMAS MANN 63 impatience, melancholy let her white coverings flutter out to the lover approaching through the darkness with wide-open arms. O abundant and insatiable rejoicing at union in the eternal Be- yond Things! Free of distressing error, escaped from the bounds of time and place, the you and the I, the meus and the tuus, melted together in an exalted happiness. The blinding malice of day might keep them apart, but no arrogant lie could deceive again these dwellers in darkness, since the strength of the magic potion had endowed them with sight. He who had looked with love on the night of death and its sweet secret, in the orgy of his vision now had only one desire, the yearning for the sacred night, the true, eternal, unifying . . . Oh, fall about them, night of love, and give them that oblivion which they yearn for; encompass them with ecstasies, and make them free of this world of deceit and separation. Look, the last torch has gone out! Every thought and image has dropped away in the sacred twilight, which spreads its salvation over the anguish of madness. Then, when delusion is fading, when my eye is fail- ing at all this glory—the glory of which I was cheated by the! lie of daylight; and I had been tricked into taking in its place the restless torture of my yearnings—even then, O prodigy of fulfil- ment! even then I am the world. . . . And Brangane's dark warning-song was followed by that soaring of violins which is higher than all reason. "I don't understand it all, Herr Spinell; a lot of it I can simply surmise. What docs that mean, that 'even then I am the world'?" He explained it to her, quietly and briefly. "Yes, so it is. But how does it come that you, who understand it so well, cannot play it, too?" Strangely enough, he could not bear up under this harmless ques- tion. He reddened, wrung his hands, and sank back into his chair. "Those two things are seldom found together," he at last said with an effort. "No, I cannot play. . . . But continue." And she went on into the drunken songs of this miracle play. Did love ever die? Tristan's love? The love of your Isolde, and my Isolde? Oh, the strokes of death can never reach this eternal woman! What could death be but that which distresses us, which tricks lovers into disunion? In one sweet and love brought them both together. . . . And if death destroyed this, how else except with the very life of one could death be given to the other? And 64 TRISTAN a mysterious interweaving of two melodies united them in the un- named hope of Love's Death, the endlessly inseparable enfolding in the Fairyland of night. Sweet night! Eternal night of love! All-inclusive land of holiness! Whoever has looked at you with understanding, how could he awake to desolate day again without sorrow? But ban all sorrow, friendly death! Free the hungering from the famine of awaking! O unattainable storm of rhythms; O rapture of the metaphysical certainty pressing forward chromati- cally! How is it acquired, how is it lost, this ravishment far from the loneliness of light? Soft desires without lies or sorrow; sublime, painless extinction; super-spiritual twilight in the incommensur- able! You Isolde, I Tristan, Tristan no longer, Isolde no longer. Suddenly something very frightful happened. She left off play- ing, and held her hand over her eyes that she might peer into the darkness. And Herr Spinell turned quickly about in his chair. The door back there which led to the corridor had opened, and a strange form entered supported on the arm of a second. It was a patient at Einfried who had not been able to take part in the sleigh- ride, but was employing this evening hour in one of her instinctive and mournful rounds of the institute; it was the wife of Pastor Hohlenrauch leaning on the arm of her nurse. Without looking up, she measured the rear of the room with uncertain, groping steps, and disappeared through the door opposite—speechless and star- ing, wandering without consciousness. There was a long silence. "That was the Pastorin Hohlenrauch," he said. "Yes, that was poor Hohlenrauch," she answered. Then she be- gan turning the leaves again, and played the finish to it all, played Isolde's Liebestod. How colourless and clear her lips were, and how the shadows had deepened in the corners of her eyes! Above the eyebrow, across her transparent forehead, the tiny, pale-blue vein was becoming disturbingly swollen. Under her industrious hands the unutterable ascent was completed, broken suddenly by that almost dissolute pianissimo which is like a floor slipping from beneath the feet, and a drop into a sublime covetousness. The abundance of a mighty attainment and conclusion broke out, was repeated. ... a bewildering turmoil of unrestricted rejoicing. Then it changed its form and its flow, seemed on the point of expiring, wove the yearn- ing-motif once more into its harmonies, exhaled, perished, faded, glided away. Deep silence. THOMAS MANN 65 They both listened, turned their heads to one side and listened. "Those are bells," she said. "They are the sleighs. I am going now." He arose and crossed the room. But he stopped at the door, turned about, and for a few minutes kept changing from one foot to the other. And then it happened that he, at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces from her, dropped to his knees, dropped on both knees without a word. His long black coat trailed on the floor. He kept his hands folded over his mouth, and his shoulders twitched sharply. She sat with her hands in her lap, leaning forward away from the piano, and looking at him. A forced, uncertain smile lay on her face, and her eyes were peering meditatively with such effort into the darkness that they showed a slight tendency to bulge. Out of the distance came the approaching sounds of bells, snap- ping whips, and a jumble of human voices. IX The sleigh-party, which was the talk of everybody for some time, had taken place on the twenty-sixth of February. It thawed on the twenty-seventh, when everything melted, dropped, splashed, and flowed; and Herr Kloterjahn's wife was getting along excel- lently. On the twenty-eighth she brought up a bit of blood . . . oh, insignificant; but it was blood. At the same time a much greater weakness than ever before came over her, and kept her confined to her bed. Dr Leander examined her, and his face was as hard as stone. Then he ordered what is prescribed by science: cracked ice, mor- phine, absolute quiet. Furthermore, the next day overwork forced him to transfer the case to Dr Miiller, who accepted it dutifully and faithfully, and in all mildness; a quiet, pale, insignificant, and unhappy man, whose modest and unheralded activities were de- voted to the nearly well and the hopeless. The opinion he expressed first of all was that the separation be- tween the Kloterjahn couple had continued for quite a while now. It would be especially pleasant if Herr Kloterjahn could pay an- other visit to Einfried, provided that his thriving business would permit it. A letter could be sent to him, perhaps even a short tele- gram . . • And it would certainly cheer up the young mother and 66 TRISTAN strengthen her if he would bring little Anton along; and in addition to that, the doctors would be very glad to make the acquaintance of this sturdy little Anton. And lo, Herr Kloterjahn appeared. He had received Dr Miil- ler's short telegram and came from the shore of the Baltic. He got out of the cab, called for coffee and rolls, and looked very discon- certed. ^ > "What is it?" he asked. "Why am I called here?" "Since it is advisable," Dr Miiller answered, "that you remain near your wife now." "Advisable . . . advisable . . . But necessary as well? I am tending to my business, my man, and times are bad and travel- ling is expensive. Was this journey unavoidable? I shouldn't have anything to say, for instance, if it was the lungs; but thank God it is only the trachea ..." "Herr Kloterjahn," Dr Miiller spoke softly, "in the first place, the trachea is an important organ ..." He incorrectly said "in the first place," since no "in the second place" followed. But at the same time as Herr Kloterjahn, a plump person dressed in red, plaid, and gold had arrived at Einfried, and she it was who carried in her arms Anton Kloterjahn, Jr., the small, sturdy Anton. Yes, he was there, and no one could deny that he really was excessively healthy. White and rosy, with clean fresh clothes, he rested fragrant and fat on the red bare arm of his ser- vant, swallowed powerful quantities of milk and chopped meat, shouted and surrendered himself in every way to his instincts. The author, Spinell, had observed the arrival of young Kloter- jahn from the window of his room. In a peculiarly veiled manner, but sharply nevertheless, he had fixed the child in his eye while it was being carried from the cab to the house. And for some time he had remained standing there with this same expression on his face. From now on he avoided as far as possible any meeting with Anton Kloterjahn, Jr. X Herr Spinell was sitting "at work" in his room. It was a room like all the rest at Einfried: old-fashioned, simple, and distinguished. The massive chest of drawers had lions' heads of metal on it; the high wall mirror was no flat surface, but made of THOMAS MANN 67 numerous little squares fastened together with lead; there was no carpet on the blue lacquered floor in which the stiff legs of the furni- ture were continued as clear shadows. A spacious writing-desk stood near the window across which the novelist had drawn a yel- low curtain, probably that he might be more by himself. In the yellowish twilight he was sitting over the escritoire, and writing . . . writing at one of those frequent letters which he mailed every week, and to which, ridiculously enough, he usually re- ceived no answers. A large sheet of heavy paper was lying in front of him; in the upper left-hand corner, under a mighty queerly drawn landscape, the name, Detlev Spinell, was to be read in the most completely up-to-date letters. He was covering this paper now with a small, carefully traced, and exceptionally pure handwriting. "Dear sir," it began. "I am sending you the following lines because I cannot help it, because the things I have to say to you burden me, torture me, and make me tremble, because the words pour forth with such violence, that I should be stifled with them if I did not venture to relieve myself of them in this letter ..." To give truth its dues, this "pouring forth" was certainly not the case, and God only knows what useless reasons prompted Herr Spinell to assert it. Words seemed to be doing anything but pour forth from him; for a man whose everyday occupation was writ- ing, he seemed to get along miserably slow. If any one had seen him, he would have come to the conclusion that an author is a per- son to whom writing is much more difficult than to anybody else. He would get hold of one of those little downy hairs on his cheeks between two finger tips, and twist at it for fifteen minutes at a stretch, while he stared into space and didn't advance a line. Then he would write a few neat words, and stop again. On the other hand it must be admitted that whatever finally appeared gave the impression of ease and vividness, even if its contents were of an unusual, questionable, and often incomprehensible character: "It is an inevitable necessity with me that those things which I have been seeing, which have been standing before my eyes as an inextinguishable vision for weeks, should be made plain to you as well . . . that you should see them through my eyes in that utter clarity in which they have stood before my inner vision. I am ac- 68 TRISTAN customed to yielding to such compulsions, that I may adjust my experience to that of the world in general, employing properly placed words in such a manner as to make them burning and unfor- gettable. I trust, then, that you will give me your attention. "I wish to state only what actually has been, and still is. I should simply like to tell a story, a very short, unspeakably moving story; to tell it without commentary, without accusations or judge- ments, but in my own words. It is, Sir, the story of Gabriele Eck- hof, the woman whom you now call your wife. And please note: it was you that lived through it, and yet it is I whose words will be the first truly to elevate it to the importance of an experience. "Do you remember, Sir, the garden, the old, grown-up garden behind the grey ancestral home? Green moss jutted out of the cracks in the weathered walls enclosing this dreamy wilderness. Also, do you remember the spring in the midst of it all? Lilac- coloured flags bent over its dank edges, and a white stream mut- tered its secrets down over the stones. The summer day was nearing a close. "Seven virgins were sitting in a circle around the spring. But in the hair of the seventh, the first, the one, the sinking sun seemed mysteriously to be weaving a glimmering symbol of superiority. Her eyes were like troubled dreams, and yet her pure lips were smiling. "They were singing. They kept their narrow faces turned to- wards the peak of the jet, just where, in a noble, weary curve, it inclines to fall again. And their soft, high voices hovered about its slender dance. Perhaps they held their frail hands folded across their knees while they sang. "Do you recall the picture, Sir? Did you see it? You did not see it. Your eyes were not made for that, and your ears were not made to catch the shy sweetness of its melody. If you had seen it, you would not have dared to breathe. You would have strug- gled to keep down the pounding of your heart. You would have had to go, back into life, into your life, to preserve deep within you for the rest of your earthly existence this vision as something un- touchable and imperishably sacred. But what did you do? "This picture should have been an end in itself, Sir. Did you have to come and destroy it, that you might continue it in vulgarity and the ugliness of pain? It was a touching and placid deification, immersed in the crepuscular glory of decay, dissolution, and ex- THOMAS MANN 69 tinction. An ancient line, already too weary and too noble for the facts of life, was standing at the end of its days, and its last utter- ances were the sounds of art, a few notes on the violin, full of the penetrative melancholy of those who are ripe for death. Did you see the eyes from which these notes lured forth tears? It is possible that the souls of the six playmates belonged to life; but the other one should have had for her sister and mistress—beauty and death. "You saw it, this beauty of death. You looked at it, but only to covet it. No reverence, no instinct to pull away, touched your heart at the thought of her appealing sanctity. It was not enough for you merely to behold; you had to possess, exploit, desecrate. How admirably you chose! You are an epicure, Sir, a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant. "Please let me assure you that I do not harbour the slightest desire to anger you. What I am saying is not an affront, but the formula, the simple psychological formula for your simple, artis- tically uninteresting personality. And I say all this only because I feel called upon to illuminate somewhat your life and actions for you, since it is my one inevitable calling on this earth to give things their names, to make them speak, and to throw more light on the unrealized. The world is full up of what I might call the 'uncon- scious type.' And I can't bear them, all these unconscious types. I cannot stand all this blunt mindless and unthinking turmoil and commerce, this world all around me of exacerbating simplicity! I am driven with painful insistence to orient everything around me —in so far as I am capable—to express and bring it into conscious- ness, completely indifferent as to whether this results favourably or unfavourably, whether it brings with it consolation and im- provement, or leaves nothing but anguish. "As I have said, Sir, you are a plebeian epicure, a cultured peas- ant. Of an especially strong constitution, in one of the very lowest stages of development, with the aid of money and congenial living, you have suddenly arrived at a barbaric corruption of the nervous system to an extent never before heard of in history. And along with this, you have acquired a certain lascivious refinement in your appetites. It is quite possible that when you decided to make Gabriele Eckhof your own, the muscles of your gullet went through the same smacking procedure as at the sight of some rare food, of a tasty soup. "The truth is that you led her and her half-dreamed desires 7o TRISTAN astray, that you took her out of the rich garden into life and ugli- ness, that you gave her your common name, and made her a wife, a housekeeper, a mother. You have lowered this shy, weary, full- hearted beauty of death with its exalted inutility; you have brought it down to subjection beneath the vulgarity of everyday life, and that stupid, relentless, and detestable idol which we call nature. And not a single suspicion of the deep degradation of your actions has ever crossed your rustic consciousness. "Again; what happens? She, with eyes like troubled dreams, presents you with a child. Every bit of blood and strength which she possesses, she gives to this being which is a continuation of the low-minded existence of its father . . . she gives this, and dies. Sir, she is dying! And if she does not depart in commonness, if at last she has risen out of the depths of her denigration, and passed away proud and purified under the deadly kiss of beauty, it is I that saw to it. You, in the meantime, were trying to while away the hours with chambermaids in lonely corridors. "But her child, Gabriele Eckhof's son, lives, flourishes, and tri- umphs. Perhaps it will follow in the steps of its father, and be- come a good business man, a tax-payer and a well-fed member of the community. Or perhaps a soldier or an official, some stupid, dependable pillar of the state. In any case, an amusical, normally functioning creature, trustworthy and unscrupulous, sturdy and ignorant. "Kindly accept the confession, Sir, that I hate you, you and your child, because I hate the life, the common, ridiculous, and yet conquering life which you represent—the eternal contrast and deadly enemy to beauty. I do not dare to say that I detest you. I cannot. I will be frank. You are the stronger. I have only one thing to bring against you in battle, the sublime weapon and engine of vengeance of the weak: mind and the word. To-day I have made use of these. For this letter—and here, too, I am being frank —is nothing but an act of retaliation, and I rejoice if there is only one word here which is sharp, brilliant, and beautiful enough to reach you, to make you feel some force outside of you, and just for an instant make your robust imperturbability vacillate. Detlev Spinell." And Herr Spinell put this letter in a stamped envelope, provided it with a neatly written address, and mailed it. THOMAS MANN 7i XI Herr Kloterjahn knocked on the door of Herr Spinell's room. He was holding a large, neatly written sheet of paper in his hand, and looked like a man who had decided to proceed with energy. The mail had done its duty; the letter had taken its journey; it had made the remarkable trip from Einfried to Einfried, and arrived in the proper hands. The time was now four o'clock in the after- noon. As Herr Kloterjahn entered, Herr Spinell was sitting on the sofa, reading his own novel with the bewildering cover designs. He arose and looked at his visitor with a surprised interrogation, although he plainly reddened. "Good day," said Herr Kloterjahn. "I hope you will pardon my disturbing you. But may I ask whether you wrote this?" He held out the large neatly written sheet of paper in his left hand, and beat on it with the back of his right until it crackled. Then he stuck his right hand in the pocket of his wide, comfortable trou- sers, turned his head to one side, and as with a good many people, opened his mouth to listen. Herr Spinell was smiling peculiarly. He was smiling amiably; somewhat puzzled and half-apologetic, his drew his hand across his head as though he were thinking, and said, "Why, to be sure . . . yes ... I took the liberty . . •." The point was that he had been too indulgent this morning, and slept until nearly noon. Consequently, he was suffering from a bad conscience and a stuffy head, felt a bit nervous and very ill-fit to defend himself. In addition, a spring breeze had set in, causing him to relax and making him a bit despondent. All this must be mentioned as an explanation of how it happened that he conducted himself so poorly in the following scene. "So! Aha! Fine!" said Herr Kloterjahn, pressing his chin against his breast, raising his eyebrows, stretching his arms, and making countless other little gestures, to plunge heartlessly into the matter once this question of form had been settled. Out of de- light in his person, he went a bit too far in these gestures; what finally followed could not completely correspond to the threaten- ing punctiliousness of his preparations. But Herr Spinell was quite pale. "Very fine!" Herr Kloterjahn repeated, and shook his head vig- 72 TRISTAN orously to show how impregnably sure he was of his case. "I wouldn't waste a word on this scribble, frankly, it would simply be too cheap for attention, if it didn't clear up for me certain things I didn't understand before, certain changes . . . However, that doesn't concern you, and doesn't belong here. I am a busy man; I have better things to think about than your unutterable visions . . ." "I wrote 'inextinguishable vision,'" Herr Spinell said, pulling himself up. This was the one time he made any show of dignity. "Inextinguishable . . . unutterable ..." Herr Kloter- jahn answered, and glanced at the manuscript. "You write a very miserable hand, my friend; I shouldn't like to have you working in my office. At first glance it seems good enough, but held up to the light it is full of all sorts of gaps and wabbles. But that is your affair, and has nothing to do with me. I came to tell you that in the first place, you are an ass. . . . Now, let us hope that has been made known to you. Besides that, you are a thorough coward, and I don't need to spend much time making that clear to you. My wife wrote me once that you never look into the faces of the women you meet, but just barely graze them that you might carry away a lovely impression, out of fear of the truth. Unfortunately, later on she quit telling me of you in her letters; otherwise, I should have some other stories about you. But there you are. You say 'beauty' every third word, but it is nothing but shooting off, and sham and envy, and that's where your shameless reference to 'lonely corri- dors' comes from; it was supposed to knock me over, and instead it was funny, just plain funny! Do you get all that straight now? Have I 'illuminated your life and actions,' you poor devil? Al- though it is not my 'infallible occupation,' ha, ha!" "I wrote 'inevitable occupation,' " Herr Spinell interposed, but he gave up the field again immediately. He stood there helpless and rebuked, like a big, whimpering, grey-haired schoolboy. "Inevitable . . . infallible . . . You are a low-down cow- ard, I tell you. You see me at table every day. You speak to me and smile, you pass things to me and smile, you wish me a pleasant day and smile. And then all of a sudden you sling all this muck of stupid calumnies at me. Ha, yes, you have courage on paper! If it comes down to a ridiculous letter like this. But you have been do- ing underhanded things against me, acting behind my back; I see that now plainly enough. Although you don't need to get the idea THOMAS MANN 73 that it has done you any good! In case you entertain the hope that you have put any nonsense in my wife's head, then you're all wrong, my dear sir, for she's too intelligent a person for that! Or finally, if you think that she received me, the child and me, any differently from usual when we arrived, then you've put the last touch to your crudeness! If she didn't kiss the little fellow, it was simply out of caution, because now the theory is that it might not be the trachea, but the lungs, and in that case we can't be sure. . . . Although I ought to assure you in addition that as to the lungs and your 'Sir, she is dying!' you are an ass!" At this point Herr Kloterjahn tried to recover his wind. He had become very angry by now, kept continually piercing the air with the index finger of his right nand and soiling the manuscript in his left hand most wretchedly. Between his blond English side-whisk- ers, his face was frightfully red, and his cloudy forehead was rent with swollen veins like choleric lightning. "You hate me," he went on, "and you would detest me if I were not the stronger. Yes, so I am, by God; I've got my heart in the right place, while yours for the most part is in your shoes. And I'd pound the life out of you and your 'mind and the word,' you sneak- ing idiot, if it weren't against the law. But I don't mean to say by that, my friend, that I'm going to take your invectives and let it go at that. And when I get home and show that 'common name' to my lawyer, we'll see if you don't get the surprise of your life. My name is a good one, sir, because I have made it good, and if any one would lend a penny on yours—well, you can decide that question for yourself, you prowling loafer! You have to be dealt with by law! You are a menace to the community! You put people out of their heads! . . . But you don't need to imagine that you have succeeded this time, you patronizing sneak! I am not usually put to rout by individuals such as you. My heart is in the right place . . ." Herr Kloterjahn was now really aroused to the utmost. He shouted, and claimed over and over that his heart was in the right place. "'They were singing.' Bosh. They weren't singing! They were darning. And besides, as far as I caught, they were talking about a recipe for potato-cakes. And when I mention that 'decay* and 'dissolution' to my father-in-law, he'll get his attorney after you as well, be sure of that . . . Did you see the picture? Did 74 TRISTAN you see it? Naturally I saw it, but I don't appreciate such things, which explains why I didn't catch my breath and flee. I don't barely graze on women's faces; I look right at them, and if they please me, and want me, I take them. My heart is in the right pi—" There was a knock. Nine or ten sharp raps on the door one after the other ... a slight persistent commotion of anxiety which silenced Herr Kloterjahn. And a voice which wouldn't stop, driven to impropriety by distress, kept saying in the greatest haste, "Herr Kloterjahn, Herr Kloterjahn, oh, is Herr Kloterjahn there?" "Wait outside," Herr Kloterjahn growled. "What is it? I am busy here." "Herr Kloterjahn," said the faltering, breaking voice, "you must come . . . the doctors are there, too ... oh, it is terribly sad ..." He got to the door with one stride and flung it open. The Ratin Spatz was standing outside. She held her handkerchief over her mouth, and big, elongated tears were dropping into it by twos. "Herr Kloterjahn," she broke out. "It is so terribly sad. . . . She brought up so much blood, so awfully much. . . . She was sitting up very quietly in bed humming a bit of music to herself, and then it came, O God, so much of it . . ." "Is she dead?" Herr Kloterjahn shrieked. He grabbed the Ratin by the shoulder and began shaking her in the doorway. "No, not quite, no? Not quite yet; she can still see me. . . . Did she bring up a little blood again? From the lungs? I'll admit, it might be from the lungs . . . Gabriele!" he spoke suddenly, his eyes beginning to fill, and it was evident what a good, kindly, warm, human feeling broke over him. "Yes, I'm coming!" and he pushed the Ratin out of the room and down the corridor. From quite a distance down the twisting hallway could be heard a rapidly vanishing, "Not quite, no? . . . From the lungs? ..." xn Herr Spinell was standing in the same place he had stood during Herr Kloterjahn's so rudely interrupted visit. He was gazing at the open door. Finally he made a few steps forward and listened intently. But everything was quiet, so that he closed his door and went back to his room. For a while he looked at himself in the mirror. Then he went THOMAS MANN 75 over to the writing-desk, took a little flask and a glass out of one of the pigeon-holes, and poured himself a cognac—and nobody could blame him. Then he stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes. The upper shutter of his window was open. Outside in the park of Einfried the birds were twittering; and in these frail, pert little noises spring found its full, penetrative expression. Once Herr Spinell spoke to himself softly. "Infallible occupation . . ." Then he twisted his head back and forth and sucked the air through his teeth, as though he were suffering with neuralgia. It was impossible for him to rest and collect himself. We are not made for such heavy experiences as that! . . . Through a process of the spirit which it would take too long to analyse, Herr Spinell came to the conclusion that he would get up and move about a bit, walk for a while in the open air. He took his hat and left the room. As he stepped out of the house and the soft, aromatic air sur- rounded him, he turned his head and let his eyes wander slowly along the wall until they came to a certain window. It was covered with a curtain; his gaze clung there for a while, earnest and gloomy. Then he put his hands behind his back and began walk- ing along the gravel path. He walked lost in thought. The flower-beds were still covered, the trees and bushes were still bare. But the snow was gone, and the roads showed only here and there any traces of moisture. The broad park with its grot- toes, arbors, and little pavilions lay in an excellently coloured afternoon light, with strong shadows and a full, yellow sun; and the black branches of the trees stood out in sharp, delicate outline against the bright sky. It was about the time when the sun increases in size, when the formless mass of brilliance becomes a noticeably sinking disk, a milder, broader flame which the eye can bear. Herr Spinell did not see the sun. His path was so situated that the sun was hidden from him. He was walking with lowered head humming a little bit of music to himself, just a few bars, one figure mounting plain- tively and uneasily, the yearning-motif. . . . But suddenly, with a jerk, one short, convulsive intake of breath, he stopped dead, and his wide-open eyes stared out from under heavily wrinkled brows with an expression of horror and defence. The road had made a turn; now it led in the direction of the 76 TRISTAN sinking sun. It was pierced by two slender strips of cloud with golden edges. It stood out large and oblique in the sky, setting the tops of the trees on fire and pouring its reddish-yellow light across the park. And in the midst of this golden illumination, with the powerful halo of the sun's disk just above, a plump somebody, dressed in red, gold, and plaid, was standing prominently in the road; her right hand was resting on a large hip, while with her left hand she was moving slowly back and forth a gracefully formed baby-carriage. But in this carriage the child was sitting, Anton Kloterjahn, Jr., Gabriele Eckhof's bouncing son. He was dressed in a white wadded coat and a large white hat; he was chubby-cheeked, and sat magnificently among his pillows. His eyes met those of Herr Spinell gleefully and unerringly. The novelist wanted to retreat. If he had been a man, he would have possessed the strength to pass by this unexpected sight with its flood of sunshine, and continue his walk. But just then, monstrous- ly enough, Anton Kloterjahn began to laugh and rejoice. He screeched in unexplained delight. It almost seemed uncanny. God only knows just what started him—whether it was the black form in front of him which threw him into such wild merriment, or whether some excess of animal well-being had come over him. In one hand he was holding a bone teething-ring and in the other a tin pop-gun. He extended both of these objects hilariously out into the sunlight, shook them and banged them together as though he were trying to shoo someone away with scorn. His eyes were almost closed with pleasure, and his mouth was so yawningly agape that his rosy gums, every bit of them, were visible. Also, he threw his head about, what time he exulted. Then Herr Spinnell turned his back and got away from there. Followed by the jubilations of the little Kloterjahn, holding his arms in a certain cautious and stiffly gracile manner, he walked over the gravel with the vehement, yet hesitating steps of one who seeks to hide the fact that he is—inwardly—on the run. The End 4 ITALIAN LETTER Florence December, 1Q22 MY summer and early autumn refuge, from the spiritual fever and tumult from which no one can escape in the life of European cities to-day, was a village in the Casentino, between the venerable hermitage of Camaldoli, founded by St Romuald at the dawn of the eleventh century, in the one hundred and fifth year of his apostolic life, and the mountain of La Verna where Francis re- ceived his stigmata. The last of my many walks, in a sudden inter- val of serenity among the first autumnal rains, was to La Verna, and beyond, to a village in the valley of the Tiber, Bulciano. Of La Verna, however, and of the shadow of the Saint on the mountain of his Passion, I shall not write now. It is with the second part of my journey that I am concerned here. About two hours before sunset my visit to the Sanctuary was ended. I knew that Bulciano lay exactly to the east of the Holy Mountain: leaving behind me its dark green, bison-shaped profile, what I had to do was but to follow, through the sparsely wooded mountain side, in the exhilarating solitude of the high Apennines, my gradually lengthening shadow, whose head would inevitably touch the first houses of Bulciano with the last rays of the sun. In the morning I had gone through two villages (and from a dark little den in one of them, a cobbler's or a carpenter's shop, I had heard one of these mountain poets chanting to a group of silent listeners, one line seeming to run after me as I passed: "benedico I'lddio che m'ha creato"); but apart from the villages and the Convent, I had seen or heard but little that was human, or, if hu- man, only primitively so. Small herds of sheep and goats, shep- herded by quiet-eyed, diffident girls, under the shadow of huge chestnut trees; now and then, from a distance, the rhythmic strokes of a woodman's ax; mainly rocks and trees, however, and waters and birds and snakes: successively focussing in the eye, in the ear, quick visions and sounds, out of the broad amphitheatre of moun- tains which is the Valle Santa. But now the landscape becomes more naked and austere, the solitude more absolute. A greyish purple profusion of towering rocks rises on the other side of this sudden, precipitous, desolate chasm which is the valley of the Tiber: 78 ITALIAN LETTER surmounted at the horizon by one straight wall of stone, into which opens a kind of Titanic gate suggesting an infinity of imaginary be- yonds. Above my head, as a silent benediction, a deep azure sky, and in vivid relief against it, vast clouds gathering in soft garlands the last intense roses of light. Too late for my shadow. From that aerial height looking into the darkening womb of the valley, Bulciano is already a cluster of stars fallen on a rugged, naked promontory flung as a gigantic dike across the path of the river. I descend and enter the village in darkness, with the sheep, and the goats, and the pigs, which form the majority of its population, now patiently returning to its few houses for the night. The rest are peasants and shepherds, and their women and children. And Papini, with his woman and his chil- dren. It is here, in this solitude, in this landscape, in this village; in the grey stone house which he built for himself, at the other end of the village, and where he lives many months each year; it is only here that Papini can be fully understood. It is among these symbols of a simple and yet venerable culture that the spirit of Papini becomes at last transparent, even to the eye of an ancient friend and of a constant reader. There are at least three Papinis, or three distinct phases in the development of his spirit. I shall call them the pragmatistic, the futuristic, and the Catholic Papini. Through all of them, recog- nizable under the most different disguises, audible among the most discordant variations, an overwhelming and violent poetic person- ality, which is the true, the essential Papini. Less visible at times, but not less essential, an equally overwhelming and violent moral passion (and what poetry is not the expression of a moral passion?) which is the guiding motive of all the variations and disguises. A self-taught man in a country of ancient and established schools and universities, from the very beginning of his career as a writer, some twenty years ago, Papini was a declared enemy of the official (academic, literary, rhetoric) culture of Italy: of the Germanized erudition of the professors, of the positivistic philosophy of the scientists and politicians, of the ornate and conventionalized poetry of the d'Annunzians. His first venture, the Leonardo, was a vehe- ment reaction against all current standards, strengthened by fre- RAFFAELLO PICCOLI 79 quent incursions in many fields of contemporary European and American culture. Starting its publication about the time of the first appearance of Croce and Gentile's Critica, the Leonardo was one of the main signs and factors of the deprovincialization of Italian intellectual life at the dawn of the century. But while the Critica remains to this day the centre and the organ of the revived philosophical tradition of Italy, and a steady source of moral and cultural influence, the Leonardo, after a short existence, gave way to other magazines (especially II Regno, La Voce, L'Anima, La- cerba) each of them marking new groupings of tendencies and forces, new experiments and excursions, in a rapid, nervous succes- sion. Its original impulse flowed into a variety of literary, artistic, social, and political movements, and through them into the whole spiritual history of our troubled generation. Every thinking Italian of my age has, at one moment at least of his life, and often at a cru- cial one, been touched by one or the other of these currents, whose origin was in Papini or in his first associate, Prezzolini. By these quick currents, moreover, more than by the monumental work of the philosophers, the temper of a still younger generation (not always younger in years) is even now being fashioned. And it is partly by the sight of their children that the fathers are being sobered. During one of his incursions in foreign parts the young Papini met the old James, and for a short time gave him the illusion of having found in Italy what he could hardly hope for in America, a true disciple. But what attracted Papini in James was rather the form than the substance of his thought; and he soon transformed the scientific and moralizing pragmatism of his master into a magic and fantastic pragmatism of his own, in which the original spirit was entirely submerged. Yet James had no right to complain: other and even greater thinkers, from Kant to Spencer, were at the same time receiving a much rougher treatment at the hands of Papini. The Crepuscolo dei Filosofi is a reduction of modern European philos- ophy into terms of personal psychology and morality; the expres- sion of the sometimes hasty, often unfair, reactions of a mind strug- gling for its own freedom and integrity against any metaphysics which could not justify itself when tested by life. It is because of this constant refusal to take philosophers, or any kind of men, at their own words; because of this constant effort to translate their 8o ITALIAN LETTER words into the untechnical language of common life, more than on account of his variations on James's themes, that we can talk of a pragmatistic Papini. Of this early phase of Papini's activity, of this time of intellec- tual journeys and adventures, the positive fruits were, on one hand, his participation in the nationalistic movement, then at its begin- nings (a political reaction similar to his philosophical reactions) on the other, three volumes of short narrative prose and an autobio- graphical novel. Nationalism was to him but one of many stages of a laborious evolution, and therefore little more than an experimen- tal spiritual position; yet many aspects of Italian political life, especially in these very last times, were partially contained in the seeds sown in those years. The purely lyrical, or polemical, violence of Papini was in a sense an anticipation of the political violence which has become the rule of our public life after the war. But in the tales and fantasies, which remind one of the more poetic Poe, with a certain vigour and freshness that in Poe's literary dandyism is wanting, we find Papini already in the full exercise of his creative gifts. Metaphysical problems seen not in their logical abstractness, but as personal and therefore as moral problems and experiences, make up the substance of all these stories, the web on which a tumul- tuous imagination, drawing its images from the common fund of European romance, and expressing itself in a free, rich, direct, and popular language, weaves its beautiful and irregular patterns. The autobiographical novel, Un Uomo Finito, is the candid, exuberant, impassioned history of a man who has exposed himself, not as a dilettante, but with all his soul, to the influence of all faiths and cultures, and is left, at the end of his journey, naked and empty- handed: whose only remaining hope is a return to the soil, and to the simplicity of his fathers. In the poetry, and if the phrase may be allowed, in the morality of the soil (particularly of the Tuscan soil) in the poetry and moral- ity of nature and of an elementary culture still adherent to the soil on which it has sprung: of trees and rocks, and of men who have the strength and simplicity of trees and rocks, a maturer Papini strikes the true chords of his inspiration. In his three volumes of lyrical' fragments (Opera Prima, Cento Pagine di Poesia, Giorni di Festa) he fixes the traits of his poetic personality and the limits of his RAFFAELLO PICCOLI 8i moral physiognomy with an energy and a surety of touch not sur- passed in his later work. More clamorous than his lyrical production, his almost contem- porary futuristic experience may even appear as superficial and su- perfluous after so many experiments which seemed to have reached a final, though mainly negative, conclusion. One did already think that the time had come for his magnum opus. But futurism was, more than an aesthetic movement, a moral fever; it was one of the many symptoms of that diffuse inquietude of the European spirit which issued in the war (and this, be it said in passing, is the reason why the movement, though started in Italy, had such a rapid for- tune beyond the Alps); and Papini saw in it a possible vehicle for the transfusion of a portion of his own spirit (that which, in its search for more concrete values, denied the validity of the rhetorical tradition of Italy) into the veins of Italian culture. The common destructive ends kept Papini and the futurists together for a short time at the eve of the war; witness that brilliant iconoclast, Lacerba, which was their common organ. It was the time of Papini's great- est violence of thought and expression. But the war, and a funda- mental difference in moral temper, parted them soon after. Futurism nursed the delusion that the modern mechanical civili- zation could be sufficient in itself to all the needs, aesthetic and moral, of mankind: that it contained in itself the essential patterns of a complete humanity. To this faith Papini was impervious: a man who had resisted the temptations of the literary heroism of d'Annunzio, as well as of the philosophical idealism of Croce, be- cause both seemed to him too distant from the realities of moral life, incapable of holding its infinite wealth in their systems of words or of concepts, could never mistake a mechanism, however powerful and subtle, for a form of humanism. His resistances, his negations, his apparent intellectual anarchism, were but steps towards a deeper, more rigid, more concrete discipline. Certain works of the Tuscan genius, the Divine Comedy, the Last Judgement, appeared to him as strictly related to the soil, as full of internal reasons, as obedient to an eternal and universal law, as the oak tree that has its roots in the obscurity of earth and its head among the immortal stars. To establish the continuity of that Tuscan tradition in which, by grad- ual approximations, he was discovering the ideal climate of his mind, he went back to Carducci, who was to him, even more as a 82 ITALIAN LETTER man (L'Uomo Carducci) than as a writer, the incarnation of a virility and simplicity (with his "beautiful hunger for liberty, truth, and justice, and especially for truth") almost unknown to the inter- vening generation. What Papini means by "truth" is something quite different from the truth of the scientist or of the philosopher: not a scientific or logical truth, rather a pragmatic (of a more comprehensive prag- matism now than either James's or his own early one) or, more humbly, a moral, religious truth; a truth which is not of the mind only, but of the whole spirit; a truth which is not only a belief, but also a law. Philosophy (modern European philosophy) may be striving towards such a type of truth; may be, as some think, pre- paring the advent of a new religion. It may one day become, to a new religion, what Platonism was to Christianity. But a religion, in the full sense of the word, it is not, it will probably not be for centuries. Papini denied the identity of religion and philosophy nearly twenty years ago; but until a few years ago he remained, though as an enemy in their midst, with the philosophers. The war, which precipitated so many other apostasies, threw him into the opposite camp. I shall not discuss his conversion: no conversion can be discussed without indiscretion. But the process of this conversion is lumi- nously clear. It may be stated almost syllogistically in a few sen- tences. The greatest, most solemn, most imposing, most forceful body of "truth" in our civilization is the word of Christ; this word lives in millions of humble men and women, to whom it imparts the knowledge of good and evil, the essential knowledge, the knowledge without which life, as in the higher strata of modern European cul- ture, is again reduced to the original Chaos; it lives in an association of these men and women, the Catholic Church, which has outlasted all kingdoms and empires, all cultures and philosophies; there is one place only, therefore, for the seeker after "truth," for the fugi- tive from Chaos, and this place is the Catholic Church. This is the essential process of Papini's conversion. It is idle to speak of sincerity. His moral sincerity is out of question: Papini finds in Catholicism the most satisfactory, and probably the final, object of his moral passion. And the degree of his aesthetic sin- cerity is equal to the poetical value of his Storia di Cristo: it is a RAFFAELLO PICCOLI 83 problem of literary criticism. But both from the moral and from the aesthetic point of view it is interesting to observe how all the conclusions of his long apprenticeship converge in his Catholic con- version. Catholicism is in Italy the religion of the soil, of the coun- tryside, of peasants and shepherds: the soul of an agricultural civili- zation. And Catholicism is also the soul of Dante's and Michael Angelo's Tuscan tradition: if between these two names we insert the name of Savonarola (it is with a recollection of Savonarola's King- dom of Christ in Florence that Papini's Cristo begins) we shall have found the keystone of that vault which Papini was so laboriously building before his conversion. Of the two kinds of returns to the Church to which we are used in modern literature, the aesthetic and the political, Papini's is neither. He goes straight to the soul, and to the man, Christ. The Storia di Cristo is a biography and a collection of homilies. Christ returns among the peasants who were his people, because Papini discovers among the mountains of Tuscany the same temper and the same culture out of which Christ and his disciples emerged in the countryside of Palestine: this is the poetry of the book, not pictur- esque and external, but substantial, intimate, out of Papini's most genuine inspiration. And when Christ goes among the priests and the publicans, this temper and culture, of the country, of the peas- ant, of Christ, is up in arms against the modern crucifiers of Christ, against the original Chaos triumphant in the spirit of man under the same masks to-day as twenty centuries ago: this is the eloquence of the book, vehement, passionate, of a Papini who at last has found an unshakable ubi consistam for his once extravagant indignations. But the Storia di Cristo is not a conclusion. Too much of the old Papini is still tumultuously seething within its pages. It is the ardent witness of a violent crisis; therefore a station, or perhaps a starting point. It is, in the sense which I have tried to make clear, a Tuscan book and a peasant book; and even because it has such narrow, definite roots, because it is the result of such an obstinate labour of spiritual elimination, it is a book not for Tuscany or for Italy only, but for all our Western culture. Its origins are a guar- anty of its solidity and concreteness in a world where Christ has be- come either a shadow or a problem. It is our only modern Christ. And yet, now that the civilization of the cities, with its mechanisms and standards, is more than ever threatening to submerge what of 84 ITALIAN LETTER the original human values was left standing by the war, shall we not expect of Papini a still purer Christian word, out of the heart of this Tuscan tradition, of this peasant culture? Some years ago Soffici decorated one of the rooms of the grey stone house in Bulciano with wild futuristic fantasies. Now these images, these lines, these colours, seem infinitely ancient to me, more remote from our spirit than the decorations of Etruscan tombs. It is in this room that I see Papini again after an interval of many years. Under a forest of ungovernable hair, under a massive brow, his spectacled eyes have lost the demonic brilliancy of a time when a meeting with him was to many as dangerous as an expedition ad dracones: in his weird faunesque face, they are now pools of medi- tative silence, looking inwards like the eyes of the older peasants and shepherds. The solemn line heard in the morning still echoes in my memory, and I almost expect he will use it as a form of welcome: benedico l'lddio che m'ha creato. But his words are humbler. Raffaello Piccoli PARIS LETTER December, iQ22 O INCE the remains of the Goncourt Academy decided not to ^ publish the remains of the Journal, one has been looking for the centre of civilization. It is not so much that the writer in the Libre Parole isn't perfectly right in saying, "They might have brought out ten copies in an edition de luxe, and that would have ended the matter and left us in peace and quiet"; it isn't so much this as that there wasn't, simply wasn't, enough intelli- gence left in the once distinguished circle of elderly gentlemen, to think of this simple expedient. The ephemerides of the case can be found in the back pages of the Mercure for September i5, October i, et cetera. As for the other and more aged Academy, Eugene Montfort has for some reason best known to himself re- printed a list of its members as they were in i895 and are at present; one is neither surprised nor ashamed to find various names in both lists which had not before met the eye. In '95 they seemed to rely on the social support of a few dukes, and in '22 they lean rather heavily on the sword, or swords of Marshals Joffre, Foch, and Lyautey. As exportation agent I have "nothing to report." I am a little tired of heroes and heroines who work off their Freudian com- plexes by running down roads, but I can't accept Ces Petits Mes- sieurs Parfumes, "devilishly and unutterably Parisian," Vie de Jesus, and the intermediate offerings of the current Parisian book- stall, as ameliorative literary chemicals. The latest real news of the French is still Flaubert, Corbiere, Laforgue, and Rimbaud. The rest is what I believe skilled city editors dismiss as "unimportant if true." The literature of exile has perhaps profited by the afore- mentioned authors as much as any national group has. In default of fails divers one falls back on the ambience. Na- poleon cleaned up the French legal codes; perhaps that helps to keep the air breathable. If the French are still gaoled for attempt- ing to commit suicide and failing in the endeavour, it probably is not on the legal supposition that they are thereby trying to cheat their feudal overlord (in the Hibbert case, Geo. V.). Sadism and fanaticism are, or at least one supposes they are, less prevalent on the bench in France than in England. 86 PARIS LETTER Also one has the morning papers in French, American, and English. If they lie, they do so with less unanimity than the Lon- don press. One also hears the American correspondents (yes, the old 'uns, the hard shells) apropos of the Near East at present, com- plaining that they send the news to America and that the home papers dope it to suit the prejudices of forty or more years ago. England has discovered the presence and influence of Sir Basil Zaharof in her territories, a fact of which we in Paris had for some time been aware. The last attempt to sell superfluous munitions to irresponsible nations has not been greeted with universal approba- tion. Mr Gandhi, of course, made the really fatal, or at any rate unpopular, discovery that if you refuse to buy Manchester goods and also refuse to buy British guns to shoot Englishmen, the Em- pire ceases. All these details help one in gauging the general flow of the arts and of civilization. Cosimo de' Medici was a pawnbroker. I don't know that we are any worse off in Paris than our contemporaries elsewhere, and this difference in the openness of the news certainly constitutes a difference of intellectual air, as compared with that of the only other great capital I have suffered. It makes a reason for Paris at least until some more constructive organism is discovered or brought into being. Professor Saintsbury has been annoyed by people poking fun at the Victorian era; he does not however commit the un-Victorian act of comparing that desolate reign with anything outside itself. He does not suggest that the age of Winterhalter ranks with that of Mino da Fiesole. He, in short, agitates for the preservation of as many possible electroplates of as many tolerable books as pos- sible. Our own age is the age of the retouched photograph and there is nothing on earth to be said for it. But there are a few critical notions which seem to have gained currency since Dr Saintsbury's unearthing of Trollope (an act for which he deserves every possible credit) even though Landor did stay out of print for over half a century between the issuing of the original editions and the Dent collection of i909. Perhaps Dr Saintsbury protested, but even if he did, he can't take it as a compli- ment to the intelligence of a period for which we, most of us, with more or less heat or tepidity or measure or unmeasure, have a good deal of contempt. It is not because you couldn't react or revolt EZRA POUND 87 against classicism or cighteenth-centuryism in favour of realism or even of romanticism, but because Landor was eschewed for none of these reasons. He was eschewed because he contained "danger- ous ideas," ideas at variance with current prejudice. There were various camels he would not swallow. Mr Saintsbury informs us that Carlyle, in spite of his faults, isn't dull. This shows a different angle of incidence. The idea of the rela- tive durability of books has been somewhat promenaded. A good book should save a man quite a good deal of reading. I must con- tinue to refute Dr Blum's slander that I want people to read all the classics. I repeat that Chaucer owned forty volumes, and that Shakespeare read perhaps half a dozen. No man who knows Ovid's Metamorphoses can remain an utter barbarian. Shakespeare had Gelding's translation of them, and Florio, and Froissart, and Hol- inshed, some popular Italian novels, and a Renaissance song book. In our day a man ought perhaps to have some better way to spend his time than on, say, Carlyle or Pascal. It is not necessarily a ques- tion of dulness; it is a question whether one, as critic, shouldn't try to focus more attention on a smaller number of more highly ener- gized works, than on this vast penumbra of books that deserve at most a very tempered and moderate consideration. The "hundred best books" chosen in the hope of improving the moral character of the masses is not the answer. I merely deny that the choosers of the "bookshelf" have up to the present been guided by justifiable motives. As a careful taster and comparer of second-rate works Mr Saints- bury is "invaluable" and probably without living equal. A more iconoclastic purveyor would probably have succumbed to his era. It is not fair to compare him to a man like Gourmont, who was en- gaged in putting a new generation on the map. I don't know that America is better served. Mr Brooks, "a young man who writes like a very old man," has exposed Twain's levity; Mr Edwin Arlington Robinson is probably so much older than Mr Brooks that Mr Brooks hasn't yet discovered Mr Robinson's levity. Not, of course, that there can be said to be any marked tendency, here in Paris, to enlarge the circle of reference. There is experi- ment, a little serious experiment. Experimentalism leaves perhaps more modes than men desirous of perfecting any one mode. Fer- 88 PARIS LETTER nand Leger is industrious. Taking his work retrospectively one knows of the time he stopped painting and for some years puzzled over the problem of ideal machines, three-dimensional constructions having all the properties of machines save the ability to move or do work. This is a perfectly serious aesthetic problem; Leger comes to a provisional answer in the negative, not convinced, but wondering whether the objet, the real machine, won't in the end be more inter- esting to look at, and better aesthetically. The struggle is interesting, at least as a symptom of sensitivity, and an evidence of his being aware of the much discussed and de- plored gap between "art and life" in our time. Leger returns to painting and finds the easel picture a constric- tion. Many of his designs only become effective when one imagines them forty feet by sixty, instead of the twelve by fifteen demanded by studio limits. Ghirlandaio wanted to paint the town walls of Florence. Leger would be perfectly happy doing the outside of a railway terminal, or probably doing an ad on the slab side of a sky- scraper. Through it all is the elegy, the lament that we lack a "chef d'orchestre"; that painting ought to be part of architecture; that there is no place for sculpture or painting in modern life; that painters make innumerable scraps of paper. This is true. The stuff is vendible or non-vendible, it is scraps, knick-knacks, part of the disease that gives us museums instead of temples, curiosity shops instead of such rooms as the hall of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena or of the Sala di Notari in Perugia. A rising painter said to me last week, "In a few years my worst competitors [in the job of making a living] will be the people who have bought my early work." This bogy did not weigh on the man who painted his masterpiece on an irremovable wall. He could afford to work for his bare board and keep. In the midst of which let me come out "strong" for Miniver Cheevy, let me once more profess a love of the Medici. Cosimo was a pawnbroker, three of his golden balls still hang over every pawnshop in Manhattan. I wish his successors would hang out the rest of the six and paint the fleur-de-lis on the top one. His friend Battista Alberti gives me a clue which twelve years among contemporary artists had not offered me. Miniver knew something the neighbours didn't. Alberti, a very great architect and EZRA POUND 89 not particularly well-known painter, says in his praise of painting in the Trattato della Pintura that the architect gets his idea from the painter, that the painter stirs the desire for beautiful building. One has but to recall the backgrounds of Quattrocento painting to see the sense of the remark. The painter begins with himself. Pinturic- chio, whomever you like. If he cannot build he at any rate registers a precise ideal of beauty. This passion ran on into, I think, the eighteenth century. One finds rare collections of huge engravings, architectural designs no one could possibly pay to build, but which the designer hoped to see at least on the theatre stage. It is very simple, we have got to make up our minds what we want, we have got to form a precise and positive desire, not flop about in a vague dissatisfaction. Ten years ago I was with Edgar Williams in San Zeno, and he came on Adamo San Guiglelmo's signed column. Adamo was the architect, and is said to have cut some or most of the stone himself. Williams looked at the two simple spirals of red marble cut in one block, and burst out, "How the hell do you expect us to get any buildings when we have to order our columns by the gross?" It is a very pretty economic problem. Paris is irritating to any one who has ever seen any real architecture. A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit. The detail must bear in- spection. The French had some stone-cutters once, long ago. The lament for apprenticeage is hackneyed. It is also true that every art student wants to do a Venus de Milo or a Victory or a war memorial at the age of sixteen or eighteen, and that neither maestria nor titanic inventiveness is found, d'habitude, in adolescents. Mastery has usually risen from craft. I suggest that if art schools set their infant sculptors to making columns instead of drawing- room ornaments, the limiting of the field might produce something very satisfactory. Gaudier-Brzeska was the only young sculptor I ever met who was willing to do building ornaments. I have since known two older sculptors who had the necessary modesty. If a number of schools could agree on a uniform size or several sizes of column, there would be a supply available, which could be sold at a possible commercial price; it would bring in something to the school or to the student instead of the usual nothing; and the town would have or could have a few agreeable facades. I know that the contemporary tendency to look at all things from 90 PARIS LETTER the point of view of paper credit makes this idea "difficult." The idea that the existence of a good building is a gain even to people who haven't a mortgage on it is dangerous, revolutionary, offensive both to unitized socialists and to the owners of munitions works. I accept the necessary exile. It is not outside our tradition. Jefferson sent over for the mea- surements of the Maison Carree. He did this as a private and civil- ized person, not as an elected magistrate. One doesn't need to re- linquish the beautiful inutility of the Tempio merely because there is a new aesthetic of factory architecture. There was a new aesthetic of steel, there is a new aesthetic of reinforced concrete . . . mostly botched, incomplete, unaccomplished, unrealized by con- structors. The great architect will always welcome an actuality. For the ass who built the Madeleine and the nincompoops who im- agined that mere multiplication of some "classic" proportion would make a larger building more . . . Heaven help to an adjec- tive, more shall we say, imposing, rather than more of an imposition . . . there is nothing but contempt. As for the studied aes- thetic of factories, I have heard that an American began it, but his work is only published in Germany, and it has thence descended on Turin for its material realization. The general and generic igno- rance of architects is beyond measure. The softness of the Paris stone invites every abortion; the boudoir and the curves of domestic plumbing seem to have set the Beaux Arts ideal of form. Through- out the rest of Europe the architects seem to have forgotten that the ordinary house fagade is an oblong pierced by several small oblongs beside and above an oblong or arched door. The proportion of these oblongs can attain "the qualities of music," it does in any number of palazzi in Verona. You can't blame a botch in proportion on "building conditions," the responsibility here lies with the architect. I am still waiting to find a practising architect who has thought of the subject; or of the corresponding fun to be had in planning twenty-eight stories in place of the old three to six. Ezra Pound BOOK REVIEWS FROM COMTE TO BERGSON Modern French Philosophy : A Study of the De- velopment Since Comte. By J. Alexander Gunn. With a Foreword by Henri Bergson. Fisher Unwin. London. 2is. IT is a disappointing fact that France, after initiating modern philosophy with Descartes, and continuing brilliantly with Pas- cal and Malebranche, became content, in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, to imitate what had been initiated elsewhere. The whole philosophical development of France in the years before the Revolution was an outcome of Locke and Newton; the idealism which has prevailed in the universities in recent decades is an im- portation from Germany. It is true that the dependence on foreign sources is less absolute in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth cen- tury; neither Comte nor Bergson can be fitted into any foreign framework. It must be said, however, that even when they are origi- nal, French philosophers tend to be what James called "tender- minded," and what a less kindly person would call "soft." During the nineteenth century, some of the most difficult logical thinking ever achieved by mankind took place, but none of this was French. Most was German, a little was Italian, a good deal was English. The French have a reputation for being "logical," but it is a quite undeserved reputation. Since the suppression of the Jansenists they have contributed nothing to logic, while the Germans and English have revolutionized the subject. It is probable that the suppression of Jansenism (and, in a lesser degree, of Protestantism) had a great deal to do with this decay of the logical faculty. The Jesuits en- couraged sentimentality, in thought as in art; when they acquired control of education they trained boys to arrive at opinions by feel- ing rather than thought, and this produced mental habits which survived in many who revolted against Catholic orthodoxy. More- over, the Jesuits invented propaganda (in the sense in which it was 92 FROM COMTE TO BERGSON understood by Governments during the war); this made both their disciples and their opponents view opinions from a party point of view, and accept en bloc opinions which hung together politically, not logically. This, precisely, is what is meant when the French are said to be "logical"; and this, precisely, is what a logician would mean if he said they were "illogical." This combination of senti- mentalism and party spirit has characterized French philosophy ever since the days of Madame de Maintenon, to whom, no doubt, it is largely due. It is true that Voltaire is an exception, but I do not think there is any other exception among the "philosophes" most of whom illustrate the intellectual damage done by a persecuting orthodoxy even to those who rebel against it. Dr Gunn is much more interested in the social and ethical side of philosophy than in the logical side; he conceives philosophy rather as a help to a good life and a good society than as the crown of the scientific pursuit of knowledge. This makes him sympathetic to the tendencies of modern French philosophy, and insensitive to its defects from a scientific point of view. There is very little in his book about the more technical sides of philosophy, even in those exceptional cases in which the French have done good work in this direction. This, however, will make his book all the more accepta- ble to the general reader. His work is careful and accurate, and full of enthusiasm for the movement he is describing—the movement away from materialism and determinism towards spiritualism and free will. Sometimes, though rarely, his style becomes trenchant, as in the description of the cult of Jeanne d'Arc: "The clergy definitely encouraged this, with the definite object of enlisting sentiments of nationality and patriotism on the side of the Church. Ecclesiastical diplomacy at headquarters quickly real- ized the use which might be made of this patriotic figure whom, cen- turies before, the Church had thought fit to burn as a witch. . . . In i908, after the break of Church and State, she was accorded the full status of a saint, and her statue, symbolic of patriotism mili- tant, stands in most French churches as conspicuous often as that of the Virgin. . . . The cult of Jeanne d'Arc flourished particularly in i9i4 on the sentiments of patriotism, militarism, and religiosity then current. . . . She is evidently a worthy goddess whose worship is worth while, for we are assured that it was through her BERTRAND RUSSELL 93 beneficent efforts that the German Army retired from Paris in i9i4 and again in i9i8. . . . Meanwhile the celebrations of Na- poleon's centenary (192i) give rise to the conjecture that he, too, will in time rank with Joan of Arc as a saint. His canonization would achieve absolutely that union of patriotic and religious senti- mentality to which the Church of France directs its activities." Dr Gunn adopts the somewhat unusual course of dealing with his material not by authors, but by subjects—science, freedom, progress, ethics, and religion. If philosophy were a co-operative and advancing body of knowledge this would certainly be the right plan. But as it consists (especially in France) mainly of successive fairy tales, which are severally believed by each author because they appeal to his tastes, the unity of the author's temperament is usually a more important one than unity of subject between dif- ferent authors' treatment of the same topic. For this reason it seems doubtful whether Dr Gunn's plan is a good one. The views of one author on the above five topics are intimately connected, whereas the views of successive authors are not built one upon the other, as the views of men of science would be. Apart from this somewhat doubtful question, however, it would be difficult to find anything to criticize in Dr Gunn's work, given his very humanistic interpre- tation of philosophy. The philosophers concerned are perhaps not as important as he thinks, but every historian has a right to a high estimate of his period. And he certainly supplies material by which every reader will be enabled to come to his own conclusions. Bertrand Russell A RECONSIDERATION OF GREEK ART The Esthetic Basis of Greek Art. By Rhys Car- penter. i6mo. 2ji pages. Longmans, Green and Com- pany. $i.50. MR CARPENTER invites us to accompany him on a new sort of archaeological trip, to discover the Ludovisi Throne and the Parthenon pediments, a mirror in the Metropolitan Museum, the temple of Artemis at Magnesia. It is exhilarating discovery. These things he examines as objects of art, asking not, "Who made them, and when?" but, "What does the Greek artistic process do?" —not, "What does this represent?" but, "How does it arouse the aesthetic emotion?" The analysis is a suggestive one, intricately evolved, but deftly stated. It concerns the problem of form and content. For its ma- terial, its repraesentata, Greek art chose animate objects, and shaped "the inert and merely material into the illusion of animate existence." Mr Carpenter thinks this is the proper material for art. Pure form is not significant form; it lacks "sufficient emotional focus and bearing"; the sheer pattern of Mohammedan art "seems to miss the spiritual opportunities of more representational design. ... It can appeal to certain deep-seated likes and pleasures and instincts; but it does nothing with them, it does not humanize them, it does not bring them to bear upon that world of sensuous life in which our spiritual experience is rooted." But accurate representation is not enough. On the material must be imposed a form, emotionally appropriate to it, enabling us to "apprehend the animate and animating forces and qualities . . . not by an intellectual inference nor by a mere second-hand sympa- thetic understanding ... we feel them directly and as it were from within." This form may be one-dimensional, linear, as in red- figured vase drawing; two-dimensional pattern, as in the Parthenon frieze; or three-dimensional, as in the Ludovisi Throne, where a buoyant sense of volume in space is suggested. Mr Carpenter's dis- cussion of three-dimensional technique is an acute one. "Intelligible pose" may be employed to show expressive contours from various WALTER AGARD 95 angles; the construction of sharply-differentiated planes will sug- gest depth; and "modeling lines," as in the Parthenon Three Fates, suggest projection in the invisible dimension by means of equiva- lent curves lying in the visible plane. It is in the adequate fusion of repraesentata and abstract form (Mr Carpenter illustrates this with the East Archer of Aegina) that the magic is born. These principles are given precise and revealing application in a survey of the development of Greek sculpture. The fusion was most satisfactory in the transitional and "strong" periods (fifth century). Then, owing to the lack of sufficient technical skill for naturalistic rendering, sculptors used conventional forms; in this way "only the broader and more essential elements were recorded." But the forms were invested more and more with subtle variation by Phidias, Alkamenes, and Polykleitos, who recognized that the work was most difficult "when the clay was on the nail," in those last subtle strokes. This was far from chilly idealization. Mr Carpenter points out the difference between their technique and the pseudo-classicism of Canova and Thorwaldsen. He might have quoted Rodin, who came close to the truth when he said: "Without doubt the Greeks, with their powerfully logical minds, instinctively accentuated the essential, the dominant traits of the human type; nevertheless they never suppressed living detail. They were satisfied to envelope it and melt it into the whole; as they were enamoured of calm rhythms, they involuntarily restrained all sec- ondary motives which would disturb the serenity of a movement, but they carefully refrained from entirely obliterating them. . . . Among the ancients the generalisation of lines is totalisation, a re- sult made up of all the details; the academic simplification is an impoverishment, an empty bombastry." Obviously Mr Carpenter explains the aesthetic appeal in terms of empathy. Animate nature is to be chosen because through it alone we get a satisfactory sense of strength, power of movement, et cetera. One-dimensional devices suggest the absence of gravitation; two dimensions express size, a synthesis of forces, static mechanics; three dimensions express the exhilaration of motion. For architecture he claims the same empathetic function. Archi- 96 A RECONSIDERATION OF GREEK ART tectural decoration may be "structurally superfluous yet formally essential" if it contributes to a sense of poise, muscular self-control, agility, security; for architecture is to be regarded as "not mere ornamented engineering but as embodied emotion." This emotion he finds very insufficiently summoned by Greek architecture, which was the work of "timid engineers," content with slight deviation from established canons, with no notion of effective placement and grouping. The forms were, to be sure, good ones, based on well planned rhythms, and constituting an effective world of objects for architectural selection. But they were essentially two-dimensional, defining or bounding space, but not enclosing it, giving no sense of mass. This interesting fact Mr Carpenter at- tempts to explain by saying that the Greeks were not greatly con- cerned about interiors, living as they did and do, chiefly in a two- dimensional world. "Is it not then a futility?" he asks, "to take Greek architecture, calculated for visual projection upon parallel planes which the climate of Greece enforces, and to transplant it to Liverpool or Berlin where it will be riddled with depth, like a curtain shot through with holes?" One may criticize some of the phrasing as a bit mannered; and the multiple-lined margins in both form and content (with Ancient Mariner notes and a reminder at the bottom of each page that this is a Bryn Mawr monograph) are certainly ill-considered. But much could be forgiven a book which contains so much clarity and com- pression of reasoning, illuminating application of material, and unswerving consideration of Greek art as art. Walter Agard REALISM AND IDEALISM The Reform of Education. By Giovanni Gentile. Translated by Dino Bigongiari. Introduction by Bene- detto Croce. i2mo. 250 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. FOR some centuries the Western world has been on a rampage of volitionalism. This produced a religion of action, of ex- pansion, to the inevitable accompaniment of imperialism. Volition- alism reached its economic reductio ad absurdum in the cataclysm of the late war. It has reached its artistic reductio ad absurdum in the countless individualistic universes of the modern artist, each artist carefully cherishing his own bias like a precious gem, each willing his own world. And idealism, the schematization of vo- litionalism, is the philosophic parallel of those economic, artistic, and political movements which have led us to the impasse of mod- ern civilzation. It was no mere accident that Hegel was the official philosopher of a rising Prussianism, or that idealism has been flour- ishing during this last century which marks the highest concentra- tion point of the nationalist spirit. For idealism, with its strong emphasis on the creative will, brings about an abnormal, almost superstitious, emphasis on the value of the individual, the national entity, man triumphant. Now, the idealistic philosophers them- selves have hardly been a militaristic lot. Indeed, as in the case of Signor Gentile, one's objections to them are weakened by their almost pietistic attitudes. But one can hardly stress the sacredness of the individual to such lengths without giving formal sanction not merely to such harmless pursuits as the study of folklore and national spirits, but also to the more ominous demands for "a place under the sun," and all that, as experience has taught us, lies behind that phrase. But in The Reform of Education, Signor Gentile finds that if we are to save the world we must stamp out the lean wolf of realism, luring the lamb of idealism to its place. It is only, he says, by stressing the unity of knowledge and culture, information and 98 REALISM AND IDEALISM discipline, that we can save the world from the present absurdity and suicide of specialization. He concludes: "The dislike for the purus mathematicus is traditional. But whether he be a mathematician, or a priest, or an economist, or a dentist, or a poet, or a street cleaner, man as a fragment of human- ity is a nuisance." We are coming to see that this is quite true, while the world is gradually turned into monsters. One monster has an hypertrophied index finger, the rest of his body remaining undeveloped; another has excellent eyes, and is unable to walk; and so on. And that spe- cialization passes completely to one side of culture is shown by the fact that in the recent war practically all the scientists and the artists went stupid. There is, further, very little difference between the man who devotes his life to writing symphonies and the man who devotes his life to inventing a wireless outfit. Both are morons. At least, that is inherent in their activity; they may, in addition, be refined and balanced individuals, but such balance would be an accident foreign to the actual discipline of their pursuits. But just how can this difficulty be remedied by stressing the unity of knowledge and culture? Rather, the whole complacency with our modern dilemmas results precisely from the fact that we have unconsciously accepted the idealist's confusion of knowledge and culture, so that we have not realized that the technician had ac- quired nothing but knowledge; that the professional cutting up of bodies, for instance, is not conducive to a sense of tenderness. But if the realist in education points out this breach, our technically- minded civilization may realize that it is making simply for bar- barity, or at least for enormity. Signor Gentile, however, considers realism as an arrant and vulgar superstition. Perhaps this is be- cause he has not lived in America, where technical skill is constantly being confused with culture, and where education is conceived al- most exclusively in quantitative terms. Signor Gentile, on the other hand, insists that by proclaiming the unity of knowledge and culture, of science and morality, we can in some way restore humanism to education. But on the exact details of this point he is distressingly vague. Indeed, pedagogues will find this work highly dissatisfactory, for while the philosophy of teach- ing is gone into at great length, the methodology is almost com- KENNETH BURKE 99 pletely neglected. Just how, for instance, is one to get humanism into the binomial theorem. The teacher may have a persuasive voice, and an excellent personality—but it is hard to imagine just how this theorem per se has any cultural value. While by falling back powerfully on realism, and stressing the difference between knowledge and culture, one can advise the mathematician to seek his humanism elsewhere. Of idealisms we now have two kinds: optimistic idealism and pessimistic idealism. Optimistic idealism may be defined as ideal- ism which has not thought itself out sufficiently to become pessi- mistic idealism. Signor Gentile is of the former variety; and in the light of Spengler, he seems like a man who has walked on the edge of a precipice all his life without ever suspecting that the precipice was there. The vaunted glory of his idealism was that it preserved the dignity of man by showing him as a free creative spirit, a creature of triumphant free will who was continually mis- seeing the world in his own image. In the first place, one may legiti- mately question whether this is, after all, the highest imaginable type of freedom. It would be like envying a lunatic who thought he was king of the universe, and strutted about grandly with a feather duster tied to his coat. For here surely is the acme of ideal- istic freedom. While furthermore, pursuing the question into a study of the time-spirit (the logical corollary of idealism) one is simply forced into the historical determinism of Oswald Spengler. For if our mis-seeing moves in a gradual march of rhythm, then we are simply the acts of this mis-seeing, and mis-see (or "stylize") in accordance with our own civilization and our own period. True, Signor Gentile can object to my word "mis-see." For the idealist identifies object and subject; and the subject cannot mis- see itself, it can only become itself. But now we have a philosopher who has followed through this process of becoming, and who finds that the philosophy of history is nothing other than a physiognomy of history, and that the idealist's conception of becoming admits a chart of this becoming . . . and when we have the chart we have nothing short of determinism. The philosophy of history (the basis of idealism) has thus completed the rounds, and led to the bleakest philosophy of determinism on record. And this is pre- cisely what Signor Gentile's programme was designed to avoid. Kenneth Burke FIRST INVERSION Babel. By John Cournos. i2mo. 43i pages. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Gargoyles. By Ben Hecht. i2mo. 346 pages. Boni and Liveright. $2. The Boy Grew Older. By Heywood Broun. i2mo. 2gi pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $i.75. N the face of it the juxtaposition of these three books is ah V_-/surd; Mr Broun is among other things a humorist and has written a book which is among other things humorous; Mr Hecht is a professional iconoclast; Mr Cournos, if I gather his purpose at all, is writing around an exceptionally versatile character the in- tellectual and part of the spiritual history of our time. It would seem that their contact is in the fact that they have all three used fiction, as they might have used (say) moving pictures as a medium. It is not altogether beside the point that that is almost literally true, for as far as the art of fiction goes Mr Broun is a careless ama- teur, Mr Hecht a careless professional, and Mr Cournos practises the art in a fashion which, in spite of the respect I have for his work, leaves me without admiration. Mr Cournos' position is the most interesting of the three, and is interesting apart from the peculiar way in which his work coin- cides with the others. In all three I find implied the notion that if you have general ideas about life, or specific ideas about this or that aspect of life, and if these ideas are the antithesis of those currently accepted, you have virtually all that is necessary for the making of a novel. It is true that the novel is so elastic and, as James said, so prodigious, a form, that almost anything can happen in it—there have been novels without any ideas at all, and novels which expressed ideas exceedingly well. I know of no way to dis- miss these books by saying that they are "not novels." But it seems to me that trusting the idea—playing it for all it is worth—has in each case resulted in work ranging from imperfect to bad. Perhaps this is due to a slight impatience with the ideas them- GILBERT SELDES 10i selves. In The Boy Grew Older you will find scepticism about mother-love and father-love, counterblasts to the prevalent notions of discipline and of the imagination of children, fresh thoughts on virginity, continence, college spirit. In Mr Hecht's case the stain of city-room cynicism spreads slowly over the motives of humanity. Where Mr Broun has taken a tip from Bernard Shaw, Mr Hecht has swallowed all the cynics whole. For him, if I may misquote, the street is always time, and there is always Samuel Butler or Gustave Le Bon at the end of the street, and Mr Hecht never quite manages to say good-bye. You may read all the psychoanalysts in the world; Arthur Schnitzler and D. H. Lawrence will still be revelations, and the degree of appreciation will depend on the author's artistic interest in his work. But any one possessing a mod- erate knowledge of half a dozen iconoclastic philosophers and epi- grammatists will find Mr Hecht's work entirely sterile; little lives in it and nothing alive can come out of it. The little that does live draws from the author's attitude towards hypocrisy—he has an eye for it and so long as he gets amusement from his discoveries he employs them well; one gathers in the end that he hates hypoc- risy, which is laudable. Regrettably the expression of this hatred does not in itself distinguish a work of fiction. The simple inversion of a musical theme is interesting in relation to the theme itself and to what follows. Left alone it serves even- tually to intensify the monotony of the theme by adding a monot- ony of its own. The kind of sophistication which thrives on the commonplaces lived by commonplace people has just that quality of being boresome—it is as if one were continually seeing a burlesque of the rube melodrama. Mr Broun is aware of this when he is dis- cussing plays—he knows that turn to the left is as stereotyped as turn to the right. When he has done his job of poking fun at feel- ings he considers romantical and false, he proceeds to write a num- ber of humorous episodes which are the best things in his book. The participants are two characters who have hardly emerged from the shadow, because Mr Broun has created neither father nor son; they do, in fact, come out of life, as readers of Mr Broun's causeries will remember. That they here develop no individual character hardly detracts from the fun of the occasion—they are as wise, as witty, as appealing to human sympathies, as good stories always are. I speak of the book as a whole—there are passages of emergence, flashes of character, and Vonnie, the chorine, except when she is i02 FIRST INVERSION being deliberately made unlike a chorine, is close to having a sepa- rate existence. Like all the other minor characters, she can be seen and especially heard. And if Mr Broun is to go on writing novels the best thing he can do is to study the portions of this book to which he attached no particular importance, those in which his ideas are marking time; he should study the portions he omittec to write. Then, to discover how to avoid sophistication, he should study Bunker Bean. His humour, his humaneness, his delight in discovery, will bring him through. The Gombarov cycle lacks all three of these qualities. It has, instead, thoughtfulness, intensity, seriousness of purpose, and an intellect in operation. It was Mr Cournos' purpose in The Mask to go behind the enigmatic countenance of Gombarov and let us see how each furrow had been ploughed; in The Wall to tell how, in the modern world, an intellectual and spiritual man can be har- rassed and diverted from his path by his love for an indecisive "good woman." Babel continues both, but I am in despair of find- ing a theme in relation to Gombarov. I find him instead as the thread on which are strung essays, sketches, episodes, dreams, and of these only the last seem actually to affect him, his life, or his meaning. How the course of Gombarov's life is affected by meet- ing Bernard Shaw, Gordon Selfridge, and Ezra Pound, I cannot discover; and the discovery of these and other notable figures, through their thin disguises, has become a quite secondary interest in my reading of novels of London life. I quarrel with Mr Cour- nos' whole idea of the novel and am the last one to appreciate the excellent passages which seem to me never to have become an in- tegral part of his work. He is interesting because he does proceed, at times, beyond the simple inversion; he observes men and women, often without preconceptions, and the relations between his charac- ters have a private logic which has nothing to do with our ideas of how "people" are supposed to act. His chief strength remains, how- ever, in his intelligence, in his capacity to understand many aspects of life, and to record them with accuracy. Many of his episodes deal with mental and psychological things which, like the ideas of Mr Broun and of Mr Hecht, may be interesting for themselves. They have to be made differently interesting in a novel. While thinking of these books I rediscovered a phrase which says all that I have to say. "The tigers of wrath," says Blake, "are wiser than the horses of instruction." Gilbert Seldes BRIEFER MENTION The Cathedral, by Hugh Walpolc (i2mo, 459 pages; Doran: $2) carries on the Walpole tradition, in so far as the word may be applied to a tech- nique which is competent, earnest, and just a trifle tepid. The story centres around a single family, which is made the subject of an illuminating study in relation to the cathedral which is really the protagonist. After all, however, cathedrals are but sticks and stones—at least in their bearing upon human beings—and there are moments when one wishes that Mr Walpole would forget his symbolism and concentrate on "folks." The Vehement Flame, by Margaret Deland (l2mo, 378 pages; Harpers: $2). Mrs Deland retains her easy command of flowing sentences, the mark of a distinguished writer not so long ago. The conversation of her characters is much more lively and true to type than that of many newly acclaimed novelists. But she belongs to the pre-Dreiserian era and writes about life as it ought to be, and as most of us thought it was, until we started in living. Like her other books this is full of shrewd observation, sympathy with human foibles, a comfortable acceptance of life, and that blue and gold heaven. The Moth Decides, by Edward