East that furthered human
progress. Even in the field of ethics, Jean Jacques has his perma-
nent values. The Contrat Social still contains workable ideas. The
difficulty with all metaphysical systems is that they are one-sided.
"La métaphysique,” said Michelet, "est l'art de s'égarer avec mé-
thode.” It is not given men to see all angles at once. Thus human
error is inextricably mingled in all human action, and the world
will go on as before: the plaything of forces which the human mind
will never fully fathom.
On the other hand, the artist-unlike the philosopher, the poli-
tician, the man of affairs-is a being apart. He does not join in the
procession, he represents it. In the words of Conrad:
“The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas,
questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that
part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us
which is a gift and not an acquisition-and, therefore, more per-
manently enduring.”
WILLIAM A. NITZE.


1
1
1
1



Courtesy of the Weyhe Galleries
BRUNNHILDE. BY ODILON REDON



VI
VTI
THE
DIAL
VIT
OXX INO
FEBRUARY 1920
RICHARD STRAUSS
BY PAUL ROSENFELD
STI
TRAUSS was never the fine, the perfect artist. Even in the
first flare of youth, even at the time when he was the meteoric
dazzling figure flaunting over all the bald pates of the universe the
standard of the musical future, it was apparent that there were seri-
ous flaws in his spirit. Despite the audacity with which he realized
his amazing and poignant and ironic visions, despite his youthful fire
and exuberance-and it was as something of a golden youth of music
that Strauss burst upon the world-one sensed in him the not quite
beautifully deepened man, heard at moments a callow and plebeian
accent in his eloquence, felt that an unmistakable alloy was fused
with the generous gold. The purity, the inwardness, the searchings
of the heart, the great religious sentiment of beauty, present so un-
mistakably in the art of the great men who had developed music,
were wanting in his work. He had neither the unswerving sense of
style, nor the felicity of touch, that mark the perfect craftsman. He
was not a scrupulous or exacting artist. It was apparent that he was
careless, too easily contented with thematic material, not always
happy in his detail. Mixed with his fire there was a sort of laziness
and indifference. But, in those days, Strauss was unmistakably the
genius, the original and bitingly expressive musician, the enginer
of proud orchestral flights, the outrider and bannerman of his art,
and one forgave his shortcomings because of the radiance of his
figure, or remained only half-conscious of them.
For, once his period of apprenticeship passed, and all desire to
write symphonies and chamber music in the styles of Schumann and
Mendelssohn and Brahms, to construct operas after the pattern of


138
RICHARD STRAUSS
a
a
Tannhäuser and Parsifal, had gone out of him, this slender sleepy
young Bavarian with the pale curly hair and moustaches had com-
menced to develop the expressive power of music amazingly, was
making the orchestra speak wonderfully as it had never spoken be-
fore. Under his touch the symphony, that most rigid and abstract
and venerable of forms, was actually displaying some of the novel's
narrative and analytical power, its literalness and concreteness of
detail. It was describing the developments of a character, was psy-
chologizing as it had hitherto done only in conjunction with poetry
or the theatre. Strauss had made it represent the inflammations of
the sex illusion, comment on Nietzsche and Cervantes, recount the
adventures, somersaults, and end of a legendary rascal, portray a
hero of our time. He had made all these intellectual concepts plas-
tic in a music of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that
not many classic symphonies can rival. Other and former composers,
no doubt, had dreamt of making the orchestra more concretely ex-
pressive, more precisely narrative and descriptive. The Pastoral
Symphony is by no means the first piece of deliberately, confessedly
programmatic music. And before Strauss, both Berlioz and Liszt
had experimented with the narrative, descriptive, analytical sym-
phony. But it was only with Strauss that the symphonic novel was
finally realized.
Neither Berlioz nor Liszt had really embodied their programmes
in living music. Liszt invariably sacrificed programme to sanctioned
musical form. For all his radicalism, he was too trammelled by the
classical concepts, the traditional musical schemes and patterns to
quite realize the symphony based on an extra-musical scheme. His
symphonic poems reveal how difficult it was for him to make his
music follow the curve of his ideas. In Die Ideale, for instance, for
the sake of a conventional close, he departed entirely from the curve
of the
poem
of Schiller which he was pretending to transmute. The
variations in which he reproduced Lamartine's verse are stereotyped
enough. When was there a time when composers did not deform their
themes into amorous, rustic, and warlike variations? The relation
between the pompous and somewhat empty Lament and Triumph
and the unique, the distinct thing that was the life of Torquato
Tasso, is outward enough. And even the Mazeppa, in which Liszt's
virtuosic genius stood him in good stead, makes one feel as though
Liszt could never quite keep his eye on the fact, and become finally


· PAUL ROSENFELD
139
engrossed in the weaving of a musical pattern fairly extraneous to
his idea. ' The Faust Symphony is, after all, an exception. Berlioz,
too, failed on the whole to achieve the musical novel. Whenever he
did attain musical form, it was generally at the expense of his pro-
gramme. Are the somewhat picturesque episodes of Harold in Italy,
whatever their virtues -- and they are many-anything but vaguely
related to the Byronism that ostensibly elemented them? The sur-
prisingly conventional overture to King Lear makes one feel as
though Berlioz had sat through a performance of one of Shake-
speare's comedies under the impression that he was assisting at the
tragedy, so unrelated to its subject is the music. And where, on the
other hand, Berlioz did succeed in being regardful of his
of his programme,
as in the Symphonie Fantastique, or in Lelio, there resulted a some-
what thin and formless music, a music without much intrinsic
value.
But Strauss, benefiting by the experiments of his two predeces-
sors, realized the new form better than any one before him had done.
For he possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of
the task. He possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of
musical characterization. Through the representative nicety of his
themes, through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and
transformation, his playful and witty and colourful instrumenta-
tion, Strauss was able to impart to his music a concreteness and
descriptiveness and realism hitherto unknown to symphonic art, to
characterize briefly, sparingly, justly, a personage, a situation, an
event. He could be pathetic, ironic, playful, mordant, musing, at
will. He was sure in his tone, was low-German in Till Eulenspiegel,
courtly and brilliant in Don Juan, noble and bitterly sarcastic in
Don Quixote, childlike in Tod und Verklärung. His orchestra was
able to accommodate itself to all the folds and curves of his elabo-
rate programmes, to find equivalents for individual traits. It is not
simply "a man,” nor even "an amatory hero," that is portrayed in
Don Juan. It is no vague symbol for the poet of the sort created
by Orpheus or Tasso or Mazeppa. It is Lenau's hero himself, the
particular being Don Juan Tenorio. The vibrant brilliant music of
the up-surging light-treading strings, of the resonant palpitating
brass, springs forth with a lithe, virile march, reveals the man him-
self, his physical glamour, his intoxication that caused him to see in
every woman the Venus, and that in the end made him the victim as


140
RICHARD STRAUSS
well as the hero of the sexual life. It is Till Eulenspiegel himself,
the scurvy comic rascal, the eternal dirty little boy with his witty
and obscene gestures, who leers out of every measure of the tone-
poem named for him, and twirls his fingers at his nose's end at all
the decorous and respectable world. Here, for once, orchestral music
is really wonderfully rascally and impudent, horns gleeful and windy
and insolent, wood-wind puckish and obscene. Here, a musical form
reels hilariously and cuts capers and dances on bald heads. The
variation of Don Quixote that describes with wood-wind and tam-
bourine Dulcinea del Toboso is plump and plebeian and good-natured
with her very person, is all the more trenchantly stupid and fat for
the preceding suave variation that describes the knight's fair, sonor-
ous radiant dream of her. There is no music more plaintively stupid
than that which in the same work figures the “sheep” against which
Don Quixote battles so valiantly. Nor is there any music more ma-
liciously, malevolently petty than that which represents the adver-
saries in Ein Heldenleben. So exceedingly definite is the portrait
of the Hero's Consort, for which Frau Richard Strauss, without
doubt, sat, that one can aver without even having seen a photograph
of the lady that she is graced with a diatonic figure. And certainly
the most amusing passage of the Sinfonia Domestica is that complex
of Bavarian lustihood, Bavarian grossness, Bavarian dreaminess,
and Bavarian good nature, the thematic group that serves as auto-
portrait of the composer.
And just as there seemed few characters that Strauss could not
paint, in those days, so too there seemed few situations, few atmos-
pheres, to which he could not do justice. A couple of measures, the
sinister palpitation of the timpani and the violas, the brooding of the
wood-wind, the dull flickering of the flutes, the labouring breath of
the strings, and we are lying on the death-bed, exhausted and gasping
for air, weighed by the wrecks of hopes, awaiting the cruel blows on
the heart that will end everything. Horns and violins quaver and
snarl, flutes shrill, a brief figure descends in the oboes and clarinets,
and Till has shed his rascal-sweat and danced on the air. The orches-
tra reveals us Don Juan's love affairs in all their individuality: first
the passionate fiery relation with the Countess, quickly begun and
quickly ended; then the gentler and more inward communion with
Anna, with the boredom resulting from the lady's continual demand
for sentiment and romantic posturing; then the great night of love
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
141
and roses, with its intoxicated golden winding horns, its ecstatically
singing violins; and finally the crushing disappointment, the shud-
der of disgust. The battle in Ein Heldenleben pictures war really;
the whistling ironical wind-machine in Don Quixote satirizes dreams
bitingly as no music has done; the orchestra describes the enthusiastic
Don recovering from his madness, and smiles a conclusion; in Also
Sprach Zarathustra it piles high the tomes of science and waltzes
with the superman in distant worlds.
And then, though less fecund an inventor than Liszt, less rich and
large a temperament than Berlioz, Strauss was better able than either
of his masters to organize his material on difficult and original lines,
and find musical forms representative of his programmes. Because
of their labours, he was born freer of the classical traditions than
they had been, and was able to make music plot more exactly the
curves of his concepts, and to submit the older forms, such as the
rondo and the theme and variations, more perfectly to his purpose.
Compositions of the sort of Till Eulenspiegel, Tod und Verklärung,
and Ein Heldenleben are both solidly made and yet narrative
and dramatic, place the symphonic poem in the category of legiti-
mate musical forms. The themes of Till grow out of each other
quite as do the themes of a Beethoven symphony or of Tristan or
of Parsifal. Indeed, Strauss has done for the symphonic poem some-
thing of what Wagner did for the opera. And not an overwhelm-
ing number of classical symphonies contain music more eloquent
than, say, the "sunrise” in Also Sprach Zarathustra, or the final va-
riation of Don Quixote with its piercing shattering trumpets of de-
feat, or the terrifying opening passage of Tod und Verklärung. For
Strauss was able to unloose his verve and fantasy completely in the
construction of his edifices. His orchestra moves in strangest and
most unconventional curves, shoots with the violence of an explod-
ing firearm, ambles like a palfrey, swoops like a bird. There are few
who, at a first hearing of a Strauss poem, do not feel as though some
a
wild and troubling and panic presence had leaned over the concert
hall and bedevilled the orchestra. For, in his hands, it is no longer
the familiar and terrorless thing it once had been, a thing about
whose behaviour one could be certain. It has become a formidable
.
engine of steel and gold, vibrant with mad and unexpected things.
Patterns leap and tumble out of it. Violin music launches swiftly
into space, trumpets run scales, the tempi move with the velocity of
a
a


142
RICHARD STRAUSS
express trains. It has become a giant terrible bird, the great auk of
music, that seizes you in its talons and spirals into the empyrean.
But it was what he seemed to promise to perform, to bring into
being, that, even more than what he had already definitely accom-
plished, spread about the figure of Strauss the peculiar radiance. It
was Nietzsche who had made current the dream of a new music, a
music that should be fiercely and beautifully animal, full of laugh-
ter, of the dry good light of the intellect, of "salt and fire and the
great compelling logic, of the light feet of the south, the dance of
the stars, the quivering dayshine of the Mediterranean.” The other
composers, the Beethovens and Brahmses and Wagners, had been
sad, suffering, wounded men, men who had lost their divine inno-
cence and joy in the shambles, and whose spiritual bodies were scarred,
for all the muscular strength gained during their fights, by hunger
and frustration and agony. Pain has even marred their song. For
what should have been innocence and effortless movement and god-
like joy, Mozartean coordination and harmony, was full of terrible
cries and convulsive rending motions and shrouding sorrow. And
Nietzsche had dreamt of music of another sort. He had dreamt of a
music that should be a bridge to the Superman, the man whose every
motion would be beautiful. He had seen striding across mountain
chains in the bright air of an eternal morning a youth irradiant with
unbroken energy before whom all the world lay open in vernal sun-
shine like a domain before its lord. He had seen one beside whom
the other musicians would stand as convicts from 'Siberian prison
camps, who had stumbled upon a banquet of the gods, might stand.
He had seen a young Titan of music, drunken with life and fire and
joy, dancing and reeling and laughing on the top of the world, and
with fingers amid the stars, sending suns and constellations crashing.
He had caught sight of the old and eternally youthful figure of In-
dian Dionysos.
And even though Strauss himself could scarcely be mistaken for
the god, nevertheless, he made Nietzsche's dream appear realizable.
He permitted one for an instant to perceive a musical realm in
which the earth-fast could not breathe. He permitted one for an
instant to hear ringing "the prelude of a deeper, stronger music, per-
haps a more wayward and mysterious music; a music which is super-
German and which, unlike other music, would not die away, nor
pale, nor grow dull beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
143
Mediterranean sky; a music super-European, which would hold its
own even by the dark sunsets of the desert; a music whose soul is
akin to the palm-trees; a music that knows how to live and move
among great beasts of prey, beautiful and solitary; a music whose
supreme charm is its ignorance of good and evil.” For he came with
some of the light and careless and arrogant tread, the intellectual
sparkling, the superb gesture and port, of the musician of the new
race. The man who composed such music, one knew, had been born
on some sort of human height, in some cooler, brighter atmosphere
than that of the crowded valleys. For in this music there beat a
faster pulse, moved a lighter, fierier, prouder body, sounded a more
ironic and disdainful laughter, breathed a rarer air, than had beat
and moved and sounded and breathed in music. It made drunken
with pleasant sound, with full rich harmonies, with exuberant dance
and waltz movements. It seemed to adumbrate the arrival of a new
sort of man, men of saner, sounder, more athletic souls and more
robust and cool intelligence, a generation that was vitally satisfied,
was less torn and belaboured by the inexpressible longings of the
romantic world, a generation very much at home on the globe. For
it had none of the restless, sick desire of Wagner, none of his exces-
sive pathos, his heaviness and stiff grandeur. It had come down off
its buskins, was more easy, witty, diverting, exciting, popular and
yet cerebral. Though it was obviously the speech of a complicated
modern man, self-conscious, sophisticated, nervous, product of a
society perhaps not quite so free and Nietzschean as it deemed itself,
but
yet cultivated and illuminated and refined, it nevertheless seemed
healthful and good. The sweet broad diatonic idiom, the humour,
the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive little folk-tunes it em-
ployed, the tranquil touching childlike tones, the close of Tod und
Verklärung, with its wondrous unfolding of corrolla upon corrolla,
were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wag-
ner, the sultry air of Klingsor's wonder-garden.
And this music glittered with the sun. The pitch of Wagner's
orchestra had after all been predominantly sober and subdued.
But in the orchestra of Strauss, the colour-gamut of the plein-air
painters got a musical equivalent. Those high and brilliant tints,
these shimmering, biting tones, make one feel as though Strauss made
music with the paint brush of a Monet or a Van Gogh. His trum-
pets are high and brilliant and silvery, his violins scintillant and
a


144
RICHARD STRAUSS
а
electric, at moments winding a lazy, happy smoke-blue thread
through the sunburnt fabric of the score. His horns glow with soft
fruity timbres. The new sweetness of colour which he attains in
his songs, the pale gold of Morgen, the rose of the Serenade, the
mild evening blue of Traum Durch die Dämmerung, shimmers
throughout his orchestra scores. Never have wind instruments
sounded more richly, dulcetly, than in that Serenade für Dreizehn
Bläser. At a first hearing of Also Sprach Zarathustra, it seemed as
though the very dayspring had descended into the orchestra to make
that famous brassy opening passage. For here, in the band of
Strauss, the orchestra begins to round out its form and assume its
logical shape. The various families of instruments are made inde-
pendent; often play separately. The shattering brass of which Ber-
lioz had dreamt is realized.' Violas da more, haeckelphones, wind-
machines are introduced into the band; the familiar instruments are
used in unfamiliar registers. Through the tone-poems of Strauss,
the orchestral composer for the first time has a suitable palette, and
can achieve a brilliance quite as great as that which the modern
painter can attain.
To-day, it is difficult to realize that Richard Strauss ever incensed
such high hopes, that there was a time when he made appear
realiz-
able Nietzsche's mad dream of a modern music, and that for a while
the nimbus of Dionysos burned round his figure. To-day, it is diffi-
cult to remember that once upon a time Strauss seemed to the world
the golden youth of music, the enginer of proud orchestral flights,
the outrider and bannerman of his art. For it is long since he has
promised to reveal the new beauty, the new'rhythm, has seemed the
wonderful start and flight toward some rarer plane of existence,
some bluer aether, the friend of everything intrepid and living and
young, the “arrow of longing for the Superman.” It is a long while
since any gracious lordly light has irradiated his person. In recent
years, he has become almost the very reverse of what he was, of what
he gave so brave an earnest of becoming. He who was once so élec-
tric, so vital, so brilliant a figure, has become dreary and outward
and stupid, even. He who once seemed the champion of the new,
has come to fill us with the weariness of the struggle, with deep self-
distrust and discouragement, has become a heavy and oppressive
weight. He who once sought to express the world about him, to be
the poet of the coming time, now seems inspired only by a desire to
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
145
do the amazing, the surface thing, and plies himself to every ephem-
eral and shallow current of modern life. For Strauss has not only
not deepened and matured and increased in stature. He has not even
stood still, remained the artist that once he was. He has progres-
sively and steadily deteriorated during the last decade. He has be-
come a bad musician. He is the cruel, the great disappointment of
modern music, of modern art. The dream-light has failed alto-
gether, has made the succeeding darkness the thicker for the momen-
tary illumination. Strauss to-day is seen as a rocket that sizzled up
into the sky with manicoloured blaze, and then broke suddenly, and
extinguished swiftly into the midnight.
It is not easy, even for those who were aware from the very first
that Strauss was not the spirit "pardlike, beautiful and swift," and
that there always were distinctly gross and insensitive particles in
him, to recognize in the slack and listless person who concocts Jo-
seph's Legende and the Alpensymphonie, the young and fiery com-
poser, genius despite all the impurities of his style, who composed
Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote; not easy, even though the con-
tours of his idiom have not radically altered, and though in the
sleepy facile periods of his later style one catches sight at times of
the broad simple diction of his earlier. For the later Strauss lacks
preeminently and signally just the traits that made of the earlier so
brilliant and engaging a figure. Behind the works of the earlier
Strauss there was visible an intersely, fierily experiencing being, a
man who had powerful and poignant and beautiful sensations, and
the gift of expressing them richly. Behind the work of the latter
there is all too apparent a man who for a long while has felt nothing
beautiful or strong or full, who no longer possesses the power of
feeling anything at all, and is inwardly wasted and dull and spent.
The one had a burning and wonderful pressure of speech. The
other seems unable to concentrate energy and interest sufficiently
to create a hard and living piece of work. The one seemed to blaze
new pathways through the brain. The other steps languidly in road-
ways well worn. He is not even amusing any longer. The contriver
of wonderful orchestral machines, the man who penetrated into the
death-chamber and stood under the gibbet, has turned to toying with
his medium, to imitating other composers, Mozart in Der Rosen-
kavalier, Haendel in Joseph's Legende, Offenbach and Lulli (a
coupling that only Strauss has the lack of taste to bring about) in


146
RICHARD STRAUSS
Ariadne auf Naxos. He has become increasingly facile and unorig-
inal, has taken to quoting, unblushingly, Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky,
Wagner, even himself. His insensitivity has waxed inordinately,
and led him to mix styles, to commingle dramatic and coloratura
passages, to jumble the idioms of three centuries in a single work, to
play all manner of pointless pranks with his art. His literary taste,
has grown increasingly uncertain. He who was once so careful in
his choice of lyrics, and recognized the talents of such modern Ger-
man poets as Birnham and Dehmel and Mackay, accepts librettos
as dull and inartistic and precious as those with which Hofmannsthal
is supplying him, and lends his art to the boring buffooneries of Der
Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos. Something in him has bent
and been fouled and broken.
One thing at least the Strauss of the tone-poems indisputably was.
He was freely, dazzlingly, daringly expressive. And this is what
the Strauss of the last years thinly and rarely is. It is not Oscar
Wilde's wax flowers of speech, nor the excessively conventionalized
and stylized action of Salome, that bores one with Strauss's opera of
that name. It is not even the libretto of Der Rosenkavalier, essen-
tially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its pow-
dered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's “Musical Comedy,”
or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of Ariadne auf Naxos that turns
one against that little monstrosity. It is the generally inexpressive
and insufficient music in which Strauss has vested them. The music
of Salome, for instance, is not even commensurable with Wilde's
drama. It was the evacuation of an obsessive desire, the revulsion
from a pitiless sensuality, that the poet had intended to procure
through this representation. But Strauss's music, save in such excep-
tional passages as the shimmering, restless, nerve-sick opening page,
or the beginning of the scene with the head, or certain other crimson
patches, hampers and even negates the intended effect. It emascu-
lates the drama with its pervasive prettiness, its lazy felicitousness
where it ought to be monstrous and terrifying, its reminiscences of
Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky, and “Little Egypt.” The lascivious and
hieratic dance, the dance of the seven veils, is represented by a valse
lent. Oftentimes, the score verges perilously on circus-music, recalls
the side-shows at county fairs. No doubt, in so doing it weakens
the odour exuded by Wilde's play. But if we must have an oper-
atic Salome, it is but reasonable to demand that the composer in his


PAUL ROSENFELD
147
music express the sexual cruelty and frenzy symbolized in the figure
of the dancer. And the Salome of Strauss's score is as little the
Salome of Wilde as she is the Salome of Flaubert or Beardsley or
Moreau or Huysmans. One cannot help feeling her eminently a
buxom, opulent Berliner, the wife, say, of the proprietor of a large
department store; a heavy lady a good deal less "dämonisch” and
“perverse” than she would like to have it appear. But there are mo-
ments when one feels as though Strauss's heroine is not even a Ber-
liner, nor of the upper middle class. There are moments when she is
plainly Käthi the waitress at the Münchner Hofbrauhaus. And
though she declares to Jokanaan that “it is his mouth of which she is
enamoured,” she delivers the words in her own true-hearted, unaf-
fected brogue.
Nor is Elektra more sharp than Salome, though it oftentimes is
the musical equivalent for the.massive and violent forms of archaic
Greek sculpture that Strauss intended it to be. Elektra herself is
perhaps more truly incarnate fury than Salome is incarnate luxury;
ugliness and demoniacal brooding, madness and cruelty are here
perhaps more sheerly, powerfully expressed than in the earlier score;
the scene of recognition between brother and sister is perhaps more
large and touching than anything in Salome; Elektra's paean and
dance, for all its closeness to a banal cantilena, its tempo di valse
so characteristic of the later Strauss, is perhaps more grandiosely
and savagely triumphant than the dancer's scene with the head.
Nevertheless, the work is by no means realized. It is formally im-
pure, a thing that none of the earlier tone-poems are. Neither style
nor shape is deeply felt. Both are superficially and externally con-
ceived, and nothing so conclusively demonstrates it than the extreme
ineffectuality of the moments of contrast with which Strauss has
attempted to relieve the dominant mood of his work. Just as in
Salome the more restless and sensual passages, lazily felt as they
are, are nevertheless infinitely more significant than the intensely
contrasting silly music assigned to the Prophet, so too, in Elektra,
the moments when Strauss is cruel, brutal, ugly are of a much higher
expressiveness than those in which he has sought to write beautifully.
For whereas in moments of the first sort the lions of the Mycenae
gates do at times snarl and rage, in those of the second it is the
Teutonic beer-mug that makes itself felt. Elektra laments her father
in a very pretty and undistinguished melody, and entreats her sister


148
RICHARD STRAUSS
to slay Klytemnaestra to the accompaniment of a sort of vals per-
vers. It is also in tempo di valse that Chrysothemis declares her
need of wifehood and motherhood. As an organism, the work does
not exist.
But even the expressiveness and considerability of Salome and
Elektra, limited and unsatisfactory as it is, is wanting in the more re-
cent works. With Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss seems to have reached
a condition in which it is impossible for him to penetrate a subject
deeply. No doubt, he always was spotty, even though in his golden
days he invariably fixed the inner informing binding rhythm of each
of his works. But his last works are not only spotty, but completely
spineless as well, invertebrate masses upon which a few jewels, a
few fine patches, gleam dully. Salome and Elektra had at least a a
certain dignity, a certain bearing. Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf
Naxos, Joseph's Legende, and Eine Alpensymphonie are makeshift,
slack, slovenly despite all technical virtuosity, all orchestral marvels.
Every one knows what the score of Rosenkavalier should have been,
a gay, florid, licentious thing, the very image of the gallant century-
with its mundane amours and ribbons and cupids, its petit-maîtres
and furbelows and billets-doux, its light emotions and equally light
surrenders. But Strauss's music is singularly flat and hollow and
dun, joyless and soggy, even though it is dotted with waltzes and
contains the delightful introduction to the third act and the bril-
liant trio. It has all the worst faults of the libretto. Hofmanns-
thal's “comedy for music,” though gross and vulgar and cheap in
spirit and unoriginal in design, is full of a sort of clever preciosity,
full of piquant details culled from eighteenth century prints and
memoirs. The scene of the coiffing is a print of Hogarth's trans-
lated to the stage; Rofrano's name, Octavian Maria Ehrenreich
Bonaventura Fernand Hyazinth, is like an essay on the culture of
the Vienna of Canaleto; the polite jargon of eighteenth century aris-
tocratic Austria, spoken by the characters, with its stiff courteous
forms and intermingled French, must have been studied from old jour-
nals and gazettes. And Strauss's score is equally precious, equally
a thing of erudition and cleverness. Mozart turned the imbecilities
of Schickaneder to his uses; Weber triumphed over the ridiculous
romancings of Helmine von Chezy. But Strauss follows Hofmanns-
thal helplessly, soddenly. Just as Hofmannsthal imitates Hogarth,
so Strauss imitates Mozart, affects his styles, his turns, his spirit;


PAUL ROSENFELD
149
inserts a syrupy air in the style of Haendel or Mehul in the first
act; and follows Mozart with modern comic-opera waltzes, Haendel
with post-Wagnerian incantations. And, like Hofmannsthal's li-
bretto, the score remains a superficial and formless thing. The inner
and coherent rhythm, the spiritual beat and swing, the great unity
and direction, is wanting. “I have always wanted to write an opera
like Mozart's, and now I have done it,” Strauss is reported to have
said after the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier. But Der
Rosenkavalier is almost antipodal to Don Giovanni or to Falstaff
or to Die Meistersinger or to any of the great comic operas. For
.
it lacks just the thing the others possess abundantly, a strong lyrical
movement, a warm emotion that informs the music bar after bar,
scene after scene, act after act, and imparts to the auditor the joy,
the vitality, the beauty of which the composers' hearts were full. It
is a long while since Strauss has felt anything of the sort.
Had the new time produced no musical art, had no Debussy nor
Scriabine, no Strawinsky nor Bloch, put in appearance, one might
possibly have found oneself compelled to believe the mournful
decadence of Richard Strauss the inevitable development awaiting
musical genius in the modern world. There exists a group, inter-
national in composition, which, above all other contemporary bodies,
arrogates to itself the style of modernity. It is the group, tendrils
of which reach into every great capital and centre, into every artistic
movement and cause, of the bored ones, the spoilt ones. The present
system has lifted into a quasi-aristocratic and leisurely state vast
numbers of people without background, without tradition or culture
or taste. By reason of its largeness and resources, this group of
people without taste, without interest, without finesse, has come to
dominate in particular the world of art as the world of play, has
come to demand distraction, sensation, excitement which its false
existences do not afford it. Indeed, this band has come to give a
cast to the whole of present-day life, its members pretend to repre-
sent present-day culture. It is with this group, with its drained
bodies and frayed sensibilities and tired pulses, that Strauss has be-
come increasingly identified, till of late he has become something
like its court-musician, supplying it with stimulants, awaking its curi-
osities, astonishing and exciting it with the superficial novelty of his
works, trying to procure it the experiences it is so lamentably unable
to procure itself. It is for it that he created the trumpery horrors, the


150
RICHARD STRAUSS
sweet erotics, of the score of Salome. It is for it that he imitated
Mozart saccharinely in Der Rosenkavalier, mangled Molière's com-
edy, committed the vulgarities and hypocrisies of Joseph's Legende.
And did no evidence roundly to the contrary exist, one might sup-
pose this group really to represent modern life, that its modernity
was the only true one, and that in expressing it, in conforming to it,
Strauss was functioning in the only manner granted the contem-
porary composer. But since such evidence exists aplenty, since so
many eminent modern musicians have managed to avoid that pesti-
lential band, since a dozen other musicians, to speak only of the
practitioners of a single art, have kept themselves immune and yet
create beauty about them, to remain on the plane upon which Strauss
began life, to persevere in the direction in which he was originally
set, and yet live fully, one finds oneself convinced that the deteriora-
tion of Strauss which has made him musical purveyor to this group,
has not yet been the result of the pressure of outward and hostile
circumstances. One finds oneself positively convinced that it was
some inner weakness within himself that permitted the spoilt and
ugly folk to seduce him from his road, and use him for their own
purposes.
And in the end it is as the victim of a psychic deterioration that
one is forced to regard this unfortunate man. The thing that one
sees happening to so many people about one, the extinction of a
flame, the withering of a blossom, the dulling and coarsening of the
sensibilities, the decay of the mental energies, seems to have hap-
pened to him, too. And since it happens in the lives of so many
folk, why should it surprise one to see it happening in the life of an
artist, and deflowering genius and ruining musical art? All the
hectic unreal activity of the later Strauss, the dissipation of forces,
points back to such a cause. He declares himself in every action the
type who can no longer gather his energies to the performance of an
honest piece of work, who can no longer achieve direct, full, living
expression, who can no longer penetrate the centre of a subject, an
idea. He is one type of man unfaithful to himself in some funda-
mental relation, unfaithful to himself throughout his deeds. Many
people have thought a love of money the cause of Strauss's decay;
that for the sake of gain he has delivered himself bound hand and
foot into the power of his publishers, and for the sake of gain turned
out bad music. No doubt, the love of money plays an inordinate
a
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
151
role in the man's life, and keeps on playing a greater and greater.
.
But it is probable that Strauss's desire for incessant gain is a sort of
perversion, a mania that has gotten control over him because his
energies are inwardly prevented from taking their logical course and
creating works of art. Luxury-loying as he is, Strauss has probably
never needed money sorely. Some money he probably inherited
through his mother, the daughter of the Munich beer-brewer
Pschorr; his works have always fetched large prices-his publishers
have paid him as much as a thousand dollars for a single song; and
he has always been able to earn great sums by conducting. No mat-
ter how lofty and severe his art might have become, he would always
have been able to live as he chose. There is no doubt that he would
.
have earned quite as much money with Salome and Der Rosenkava-
lier had they been works of high artistic merit, as he has earned with
them in their present condition. The truth is that he has rational-
ized his unwillingness to go through the labour, the pains of creation,
by pretending to himself a constant and great need of money, and
permitting himself to dissipate his energies in a hectic disturbed
shallow existence, in a tremor of concert-tours, guest-conductor-
ships, money-making enterprises of all sorts, which leave him about
two or three of the summer months for composition, and probably
rob him of his best energies. So works leave his writing-table half-
conceived, half-executed. The score of Elektra he permits his pub-
lishers to snatch from him before he is quite finished with it. He
commences composing Der Rosenkavalier before having even seen
the third act. The third act arrives; Strauss finds it miserable. But
it is too late. The work is half-finished, and Strauss has to go
through with it. Composition becomes more and more a mechanical
thing, the brilliant orchestration of sloppy undistinguished music,
the polishing up of details, the play of superficial cleverness which
makes a score like Der Rosenkavalier, feeble as it is, interesting to
many musicians.
And Richard Strauss, the one living musician who could with
greatest ease settle down to uninterrupted composition, gets to his
writing-table in his apartment in Charlottenburg every evening at
nine o'clock, that is, whenever he is not on duty at the Berlin Opera.
And always the excuses: "Earning money for the support of wife
and child is not shameful,” or “I am going to accumulate a large
enough fortune so that I can give up conducting entirely and spend


152
RICHARD STRAUSS
•all my time composing.” But one can be sure that when Strauss
soliloquizes, it is a different defence that he makes. One can be
sure, then, that he justifies himself cynically, bitterly, grossly, tells
himself that the game is not worth the candle, that greatness is a
matter of advertisement, that only the values of the commercial
world exist, that other success than the procurement of applause and
wealth and notoriety constitutes failure. Why should you take the
trouble to write good work that will bring you posthumous fame
when without trouble you can write work that will bring you fame
during your lifetime? The whole world is sham and advertisement
and opportunism, is it not ? Reputations are made by publishers
and newspapers. Greatness is a matter determined by majorities.
But impress the public, but write music that will arouse universal
comment, but break a few academic formulas and get yourself
talked about, but write music that will surprise and seèm wonderful
at a first hearing, and your fame is assured. The important thing is
to live luxuriously and keep your name before the public. In so
doing one will have lived life as fully as it can be lived. And after
one is dead, what does it all matter?
Yet, though the world be full of men whose spiritual energies
have been lamed in kindred fashions, the terrible misadventure of
Richard Strauss remains deeply affecting. However far the mil-
lions of bright spirits who have died a living death have fallen,
their fall has been no farther than his. There is no doubt of the com-
pleteness of Strauss's disaster. It is a long while since he has been
much beside a bore to his once fervent admirers, an object of hatred
to thousands of honest, idealistic musicians. He has completely, in
his fifty-sixth year, lost the position of leadership, of eminence, that
once he had. Even before the war his operas held the stage only
with difficulty. And it is possible that he will outlive his fame.
One wonders whether he is not one of the men whose inflated repu-
tations the war has pricked, and that a world will shortly wonder,
before his two new operas, how it was possible that it should have
been held at all by the man. Had he been the most idealistic, the
most uncompromising of musicians, he could not be less respected.
Perhaps his last opportunity offered itself in the Alpensymphonie.
Here was a ceremony that could have made him priest once again.
Europe had reached a summit, humanity had had a vision. Before
it lay a long descent, a cloudburst, a sunset of a civilization, another
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
153
53
be
1
a
al
d
Ć
night. Could Strauss have once more girded himself, once more
summoned the faith, the energy, the fire that created those first grand
pages that won a world to him, he would have been saved. But it
was impossible. Something in him was dead for ever. And so, to
us, who should have been his champions, his audiences, his work al-
ready seems old, part of the past even at its best, unreal except for
a few of the fine symphonic works. And to us, who once thought
to see in him the man of the new time, he seems only the brave
sonorous trumpet-call that heralded a king who never put in his
appearance, the glare that in the East lights the sky for an instant
and seems to promise a new day, but extinguishes again. He is
indeed the false dawn of modern music.
€
e
1
5
]
]
5.
1


GHITZA
BY KONRAD BERCOVICI
THA
1
WHAT winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The
Danube froze solid a week before Christmas and remained tight
for five months. It was as if the blue waters were suddenly turned
into steel. From across the river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds
pulled by long-horned oxen, the Tartars brought barrels of frozen
honey, quarters of killed lambs, poultry and game, and returned
heavily laden with bags of flour and rolls of sole leather. The whole
day long the crack of whips and the curses of the drivers rent the icy
atmosphere. Whatever their destination, the carters were in a hurry
to reach human habitation before nightfall- before the dreaded
time when packs of wolves came out to prey for food.
In cold, clear nights, when even the wind was frozen still, the
lugubrious howling of the wolf permitted no sleep. The indoor peo-
ple spent the night praying for the lives and souls of the travellers.
All through the winter there was not one morning but some man
or animal was found torn or eaten in our neighbourhood. The peo-
ple of the village at first built fires on the shores to scare the beasts
away, but they had to give it up because the thatched roofs of the
huts in the village were set on fire in windy nights by flying sparks.
The cold cowed the fiercest dogs. The wolves, crazed by hunger,
grew more daring from day to day. They showed their heads even
in daylight. When Baba Hana, the old gypsy fortune-teller, ran
into the schoolhouse one morning and cried, “Wolf, wolf in the
yard,” the teacher was inclined to attribute her scare to a long drink
the night before. But that very night, Stan, the horseshoer, who
had returned late from the inn and had evidently not closed the door
as he entered the smithy, was eaten up by the beasts. And the
smithy stood in the centre of the village! A stone's throw from the
inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He
must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts,
as big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan
had disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high
leather boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledge-


KONRAD BERCOVICI
155
a
hammer were the only remains of the man. There was no blood,
either. It had been lapped dry. That stirred the village. Not
even enough to bury him-and he had been a good Christian! But
the priest ordered that the slight remains of Stan be buried, Chris-
tian-like. The empty coffin was brought to the church and all the
rites were carried out as if the body of Stan were there rather than
in the stomachs of wild beasts.
But after Stan's death the weather began to clear as if it had
been God's will that such a price be paid for His clemency. The
cold diminished daily and in a few days reports were brought from
everywhere on the shore that the bridge of ice was giving way. Two
weeks before Easter Sunday it was warm enough to give the cows an
airing. The air cleared and the rays of the sun warmed man and
beast. Traffic on the frozen river had ceased. Suddenly one morn-
.
ing a whip cracked, and from the bushes on the opposite shore of
the Danube there appeared following one another six tent wagons,
such as used by travelling gypsies, each wagon drawn by four horses
harnessed side by side.
The people on our side of the Danube called to, warn the trav-
ellers that the ice was not thick enough to hold them. In a few min-
a
utes the whole village was near the river, yelling and cursing like
mad. But after they realized that the intention was to cross the
.
Danube at any cost, the people settled down to watch what was
going to happen. In front of the first wagon walked a tall, grey-
bearded man trying the solidity of the ice with á heavy stick. Flank-
ing the last wagon, in open lines, walked the male population of the
tribe. Behind them came the women and children. No one said a
word. The eyes of the whole village were on the travellers, for every
.
one felt that they were tempting Providence. Yet each one knew
that Murdo, the chief of the tribe, who was well known to all, in
fact to the whole Dobrudja, would not take such risks with his
people without good reason.
They had crossed to the middle of the frozen river in steady fash-
ion, when Murdo shouted one word and the feet of every man and
beast stopped short. The crossing of the river had been planned to
the slightest detail. The people on the shore were excited. The
women began to cry and the children to yell. They were driven in-
land by the men, who remained to watch what was going on. No
assistance was possible.


156
GHITZA
.
The tall chief of the gypsies walked to the left and chose another
path on the ice. The movement continued. Slowly, slowly, in
silence the gypsies approached the shore. Again they halted. Murdo
was probing the ice with his stick. We could see that the feet of
the horses were wrapped in bags, and instead of being shod each hoof
was in a cushion made of straw. As Murdo felt his way, a noise
at first as of the tearing of paper, but more distinct with every mo-
ment, came from somewhere in the distance.
“Whoa, whoa, Murdo, the ice is breaking!” every one began to
shout excitedly. The noise grew louder and louder as it approached.
One could hear it coming steadily and gauge how much nearer it
was. The ice was splitting lengthwise in numberless sheets which
broke up in smaller parts and submerged gaily in the water, rising
afterwards and climbing one on top of the other, as in a merry
embrace.
“Whoa, whoa, Murdo . . » but there was no time to give
warning. With one gesture Murdo had given his orders. The
wagons spread as for a frontal attack; the men seized the children
and with the women at their heels they ran as fast as their legs could
take them. On the shore every one fell to his knees in prayer. The
strongest men closed their eyes, too horrified to watch the outcome.
The noise of the cracking of the ice increased. A loud report, as of
a dozen cannon, and the Danube was a river again-and all, all
the gypsies had saved themselves.
It was a gay afternoon, that afternoon, and a gay night also for
the whole village. It drank the inn out of everything. The gypsies
had a royal welcome. To all questions of why he had dared Provi-
dence, Murdo answered, “There was no food for my people and
horses. The Tartars have none to sell.”
Murdo and his tribe became the guests of the village. His people
were all lean. The men hardly carried themselves on their legs.
Each one of them had something to nurse. The village doctor ampu-
tated toes and fingers; several women had to be treated for gan-
grene. The children of the tribe were the only ones that had not
suffered much. It was Murdo's rule: “Children first, the horses
next.” The animals were stabled and taken charge of by the peas-
ants. The gypsies went to live in the huts of the people in order to
warm themselves back to life. Father liked Murdo, and so the old
.
chief came to live with us. The nights were long. After supper we
>


KONRAD BERCOVICI
157
a
>
a
all sat in a semicircle around the large fireplace in which a big log
of seasoned oak was always burning.
I had received some books from a friend of the family who lived
in the capital of the country, Bucharest. Among them was Carlyle's
Heroes and Hero-Worship, translated into French. I was reading it
when Murdo approached the table and said, “What a small Bible
my son is reading."
“It is not a Bible, it is a book of stories, Murdo.”
a
“Stories! Well, that's another thing.”
He looked over my shoulders into the book. As I turned the
page
he asked:
"Is everything written in a book? I mean, is it written what the
hero said and what she answered and how they said it? Is it written
all about him and the villain? I mean are there signs, letters for
everything; for laughter, cries, love gestures ? Tell me.”
I explained as best I could and he marvelled. I had to give an
example, so I read a full page from a story-book.
"And is all that written in the book, my son? It is better than I
thought possible, but not so good as when one tells a story. . . . It
is like cloth woven by a machine, nice and straight, but it is not like
the kind our women weave on the loom-but it is good; it is better
than I thought possible. What are the stories in the book you are
reading? Of love or of sorrow ?”
“Of neither, Murdo. Only about all the great heroes that have
lived in this world of cowards.”
“About every one of them?” he asked again. “That's good. It
is good to tell the stories of the heroes."
He returned to the fireplace to light his pipe; then he came to me
again.
“If it is written in this book about all the great heroes, then there
must also be the record of Ghitza-the great Ghitza, our hero. The
greatest that ever lived. See, son, what is there said about him?"
I turned the pages one by one to the end of the book and then
reported, “Nothing, Murdo. Not even his name is mentioned.”
“Then this book is not a good book. The man who wrote it did
not know every hero ... because not Alexander of Macedon and
not even Napoleon was greater than Ghitza.
I sat near him at the fireplace and watched his wrinkled face
while Murdo told me the story of Ghitza as it should be written in
.


158
GHITZA
the book of heroes where the first place should be given to the great-
est of them all. ...
а
$
About the birth of people, I, Murdo, the chief of the gypsy tribe
which was ruled by the forefathers of my great-grandfather (who
each ruled close to a hundred years) – about the birth of people,
I, Murdo, can say this: That the seed of an oak gives birth to an oak,
and that of a pine to a pine. No matter where the seed be carried
by the winds, if it is the seed of an oak, an oak will grow; if it is the
seed of a pine, a pine. So though it never was known who was the
father of Ghitza, we knew him through his son. Ghitza's mother
died because she bore him, the son of a white man-she, the daugh-
ter of the chief of our tribe. It was Lupu's rule to punish those who
bore a child begotten from outside the tribe. But the child was so
charming that he was brought up in the tent of one of our people.
When Ghitza was ten years old, he worked alongside the men; and
there was none better to try a horse before a customer than Ghitza.
The oldest and slowest gathered all the strength it had and galloped
and ran when it felt the bare boy on its back. Old mares frisked
about like yearlings when he approached to mount them.
In his fifteenth summer he was a man, tall, broad, straight and
lissom as a locust tree. His face was like rich milk and his eyes as
black as the night. When he laughed or sang-and he laughed and
sang all the time-his mouth was like a rose in the morning, when
the dew-drops hang on its outer petals. And he was strong and good.
If it happened that a heavy cart was stuck in the mud of the road
and the oxen could not budge it, Ghitza would crawl under the cart,
get on all fours, and lift the cart clear of the mud. Never giving
time to the driver to thank him, his work done, he walked quickly
away, whistling a song through a trembling leaf between his lips.
And he was loved by everybody; and the women died just for the
looks of him. The whole tribe became younger and happier because
of Ghitza. We travelled very much those days. Dobrudja be-
longed yet to the Turks and was inhabited mostly by Tartars. The
villages were far apart and very small, so we could not stay long in
any place.
When Ghitza was twenty, our tribe, which was then ruled by my
mighty grandfather, Lupu, happened to winter near Cerna Voda, a
village on the other side of the Danube. We sold many horses to the


KONRAD BERCOVICI
159
peasants that winter. They had had a fine year. So our people
had to be about the inn a good deal. Ghitza, who was one of the
best traders, was in the inn the whole day. He knew every one. He
knew the major and his wife and the two daughters and chummed
with his son. And they all loved Ghitza, because he was so strong,
so beautiful, and so wise. They never called him “tzigan” because
he was fairer than they were. And there was quite a friendship be-
tween him and Maria, the smith's daughter. She was glad to talk
to him and to listen to his stories when he came to the smithy. She
helped her father in his work. She blew the bellows and prepared
the shoes for the anvil. Her hair was as red as the fire and her arms
round and strong. She was a sweet maid to speak to, and even the
old priest liked to pinch her arm when she kissed his hand.
Then came spring and the first Sunday dance in front of the inn.
The innkeeper had brought a special band of musicians. They were
seated on a large table between two trees, and all around them the
village maidens and the young men, locked arm in arm in one long
chain of youth, danced the Hora, turning round and round.
Ghitza had been away to town, trading. When he came to
the inn, the dance was already on. He was dressed in his best, wear-
ing his new broad, red silken belt with his snow-white pantaloons
and new footgear with silver bells on the ankles and tips. His shirt
was as white and thin as air. On it the deftest fingers of our tribe
had embroidered figures and flowers. On his head Ghitza wore a
high black cap made of finest Astrakhan fur. And he had on his
large ear-rings of white gold. Ghitza watched the dance for a while.
Maria's right arm was locked with the arm of the smith's helper,
and her left with the powerful arm of the mayor's son. Twice the
long chain of dancing youths had gone around, and twice Ghitza
had seen her neck and bare arms, and his blood boiled. When she
passed him the third time, he jumped in, broke the hold between
Maria and the smith's helper, and locked his arm in hers.
Death could not have stopped the dance more suddenly. The
musicians stopped playing. The feet stopped dancing. The arms
freed themselves and hung limply.
The smith's helper faced Ghitza with his arm uplifted.
"You cursed tzigan! You low-born gypsy! How dare you
break into our dance? Our dance!" Other voices said the same.
Everybody expected blows, then knives and blood. But Ghitza


160
GHITZA
just laughed aloud and they were all calmed. He pinned the smith's
helper's arm and laughed. Then he spoke to the people as follows:
"You can see on my face that I am fairer than
any
of
you.
I
love Maria, but I will not renounce the people I am with. I love
them. The smith's helper knows that I could kill him with one
blow. But I shall not do it. I could fight a dozen of you together.
You know I can. But I shall not do it.
But I shall not do it. Instead I shall outdance
all of you. Dance each man and woman of the village until she or
he falls tired on the ground. And if I do this I am as you are, and
Maria marries me without word of shame from you."
And as he finished speaking he grasped the smith's helper around
the waist and called to the musicians:
"Play, play.”
For a full hour he danced around and around with the man while
the village watched them and called to the white man to hold out.
But the smith's helper was no match for Ghitza. He dragged his feet
and fell. Ghitza, still fresh and vigorous, grasped another man and
called to the musicians to play an even faster dance than before.
When that one had fallen exhausted to the ground, Ghitza took on
a third and a fourth. Then he began to dance with the maidens.
The fiddler's first string broke and the guitar player's fingers were
numb. The sun went to rest behind the mountains and the moon
rose in the sky to watch over her little children, the stars.
But Ghitza was still dancing. There was no trace of fatigue on
his face and no sign of weariness in his steps. The more he danced,
the fresher he became. When he had danced half of the village
tired, and they were all lying on the ground, drinking wine from
earthen, urns to refresh themselves, the last string of the fiddle
snapped and the musician reeled from his chair. Only the flute and
the guitar kept on.
“Play on, play on, you children of sweet angels, and I shall give
to each of you a young lamb in the morning,” Ghitza urged them.
But soon the breath of the flutist gave way. His lips swelled and
blood spurted from his nose. The guitar player's fingers were so
numb he could no longer move them. Then some of the people beat
the rhythm of the dance with their open palms. Ghitza was still
dancing on. They broke all the glasses of the inn and all the bot-
tles beating time to his dance,
The night wore away. The cock crew. Early dogs arose and the
.
9


KONRAD BERCOVICI
161
<
sun woke and started to climb from behind the eastern range of
mountains. Ghitza laughed aloud as he saw all the dancers lying
on the ground. Even Maria was asleep near her mother. He en-
tered the inn and woke the innkeeper, who had fallen asleep behind
the counter.
“Whoa, whoa, you old swindler! Wake up! Day is come and
I am thirsty.”
After a long drink, he went to his tent to play with the dogs, as
he did early every morning.
A little later, toward noon, he walked over to the smith's shop,
shook hands with Maria's father and kissed the girl on the mouth
even as the helper looked on.
“She shall be your wife, son,” the smith said. “She will be
waiting for
you
when
your
tribe comes to winter here. And no man
shall ever say my daughter married an unworthy one.”
The fame of our tribe spread rapidly. The tale of Ghitza's feat
spread among all the villages and our tribe was respected every-
where. People no longer insulted us, and many another of our tribe
now danced on Sundays at the inn-yea, our girls and our boys
danced with the other people of the villages. Our trade doubled
and tripled.' We bartered more horses in a month than we had at
other times in a year. Ghitza's word was law everywhere. He
was so strong his honesty was not doubted. And he was honest. An
honest horse-trader! He travelled far and wide. But if Cerna
Voda was within a day's distance, Ghitza was sure to be there on
Sunday to see Maria.
To brighten such days, wrestling matches were arranged and bets
were made as to how long the strongest of them could stay with
Ghitza. And every time Ghitza threw the other man. Once in the
vise of his two arms, a man went down like a log.
And so it lasted the whole summer. But in whatever village our
tribe happened to be, the women were running after the boy. Lupu,
the chief of the tribe, warned him; told him that life is like a burn-
ing candle and that one must not burn it from both ends at the same
time. But Ghitza only laughed and made merry.
“Lupu, old chief, didst thou not once say that I was an oak? Why
dost thou speak of candles now?''
And he carried on as before. And ever so good, and ever so merry,
and ever such a good trader.


162
'GHITZA
1
a
Our tribe returned to Cerna Voda early that fall. We had many
horses and we felt that Cerna was the best place for them. Most
of them were of the little Tartar kind, so we thought it well for them
to winter in the Danube's valley.
Every Sunday, at the inn, there were wrestling matches. Young
men, the strongest, came from far-away villages. And they all, each
one of them, hit the ground when Ghitza let go his vise.
One Sunday, when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the
harvest was in, there came a Tartar horse-trading tribe to Cerna Voda.
And in their midst they had a big, strong man. Lupu, our chief,
met their chief at the inn. They talked and drank and praised each
their horses and men. Thus it happened that the Tartar chief spoke
about his strong man. The peasants crowded nearer to hear the
Tartar's story. Then they talked of Ghitza and his strength. The
Tartar chief did not believe it.
“I bet three of my best horses that my man can down him,” the
Tartar chief called.
“I take the bet against a hundred ducats in gold,” the innkeeper
answered.
"It's a bet,” the Tartar said.
“Any more horses to bet ?” others called out.
The Tartar paled but he was a proud chief and soon all his horses
and all his ducats were pledged in bets to the peasants. That whole
day and the rest of the week to Sunday, nothing else was spoken
about. The people of our tribe pledged everything they possessed.
The women gave even their ear-rings. The Tartars were rich and
proud and took every bet that was offered. The match was to be on
Sunday afternoon in front of the inn. Ghitza was not in the village
at all the whole week. He was in Constantza, on the shores of the
Black Sea, finishing some trade. When he arrived home on Sunday
morning he found the people of the village, our people, the Tartars,
and a hundred carriages that had brought people from the surround-
ing villages camped in front of the inn. He jumped down from his
horse and looked about wondering from where and why so many
people at once! The men and the women were in their best clothes
and the horses all decorated as for a fair. The people gave him a
rousing welcome. Lupu called Ghitza aside and told him why the
people had gathered. Ghitza was taken aback but laughed instantly
and slapped the chief on the shoulders.


KONRAD BERCOVICI
163
“It will be as you know, and the Tartars shall depart poor and
dishonoured, while we will remain the kings of the horse trade in
the Dobrudja, honoured and beloved by all.”
Oak that he was! Thus he spoke, and he had not even seen the
other man, the man he was to wrestle. He only knew he had to
maintain the honour of his tribe. At the appointed hour he came to
the inn. The whole tribe was about and around. He had stripped
to the waist. He was good to look at. On the ground were bundles
of rich skins near rolls of cloth that our men and women had bet
against the Tartars. Heaps of gold, rings, watches, ear-rings, and
ducats were spread on the tables. Tartar horses and oxen of our
men and the people of the village were trooped together, the necks
tied to one long rope held on one side by one of our men or a villager
and at the other end by a Tartar boy. If Ghitza were thrown, one
of ours had just to let his end of the rope go and all belonged to the
other one. The smithy had pledged all he had, even his daughter,
to the winner; and many another daughter, too, was pledged.
Ghitza looked about and saw what was at stake: the wealth and
honour of his tribe and the wealth and honour of the village and the
surrounding villages.
Then the Tartar came. He was tall and square. His trunk rested
on short, stocky legs, and his face was black, ugly, and pock-marked.
All shouting ceased. The men formed a wide ring around the two
wrestlers. It was so quiet one could hear the slightest noise. Then
the mayor spoke to the Tartars and pointed to the Danube; the inn
was right on its shore.
“If your man is thrown, this very night you leave our shore, for
the other side."
Ghitza kissed Maria and Lupu, the chief. Then the fight began.
A mighty man was Ghitza and powerful were his arms and legs.
But it was seen from the very first grip that he had burned the candle
at both ends at the same time. He had wasted himself in carouses.
The two men closed one another in their vises and each tried to crush
the other's ribs. Ghitza broke the Tartar's hold and got a grip on
his head and twisted it with all his might. But the neck of the devil
was of steel. It did not yield. Maria began to call to her lover:
“Twist his neck, Ghitza. My father has pledged me to him if he
wins.” And many another girl begged Ghitza to save her from
marrying a black devil.


164
GHITZA
The Tartars, from another side, kept giving advice to their man.
Everybody shrieked like mad, and even the dogs howled. From
Ghitza's body the sweat flowed as freely as a river. But the Tartar's
neck yielded not and his feet were like pillars of steel embedded in
rocks.
"Don't let his head go, don't let him go,” our people cried, when
it was plain that all strength had gone out of his arms. Achmed's
pear-shaped head slipped from between his arms as the Tartar wound
his legs about Ghitza's body and began to crush him. Ghitza held
on with all his strength. His face was blue black. His nose bled,
and from his mouth he spat blood. Our people cried and begged
him to hold on. The eyes of the Tartars shot fire, their white teeth
showed from under their thick lips and they called on Achmed to
crush the Giaour. Oh! it seemed that all was lost. All our wealth,
the honour and respect Ghitza had won for us; the village's wealth
and all. And all the maidens were to be taken away as slaves to the
Tartars. One man said aloud so that Ghitza should hear:
“There will not be a pair of oxen in the whole village to plough
with; not a horse to harrow with, and our maidens are pledged to the
black sons of the devil.”
Ghitza was being downed. But, wait . what happened!
With the last of his strength he broke the hold. A shout rose to
rend the skies. Bewildered Achmed lay stupefied and looked on.
Tottering on his feet, in three jumps Ghitza was on the high point of
the shore a splash-and there was no more Ghitza. He was swal-
lowed by the Danube. No Tartar had downed him!
And so our people had back their wealth, and the people of the
village theirs. No honour was lost and the maidens remained in
the village-only Maria did not. She followed her lover even as
the people looked on. No one even attempted to stop her. It was
her right. Where was she to find one such as he? She, too, was
from the seed of an oak.
.
“And'now, son, I ask thee- if the book before thee speaks of all
the great heroes, why is it that Ghitza has not been given the place
of honour?"
The log was burning in the fireplace, but I said good night to
Murdo. I wanted to dream of the mighty Ghitza and his Maria.
And ever since I have been dreaming of . . . her.


RENOIR: AN APPRECIATION
BY ALBERT C. BARNES
THE
THE death of Renoir on December the third is so recent that a
detached estimate of his place among the great artists of the
past is hardly possible. It may be that even expressions of appreci-
ation from those who believe that they know his work, may savour
so much of individual bias that they serve chiefly as evidence of the
artist's power to generate love and reverence. If, however, there be
stated the criteria by which Renoir is judged, the question of mere
liking may sink into its deservedly unimportant place. Let us as-
sume the validity of the orthodox statement that all art is auto-
matic, a spontaneous expression of feeling which the artist can
neither summon by effort of will nor repress with impunity to his
own well-being. If the creative impulse leaves its mark in a ma-
terial that generates similar feelings in other people, the work of
art is a human document of permanent worth. Its degree of worth
is determined by the extent to which the artist has enriched, im-
proved, humanized, the common experience of man in the world
in which he lives. The manner in which the enrichment occurs is
largely by recalling memories and feelings originally associated with.
perceptions sometimes so nearly forgotten as to have left only the
cumulative residue, the "hushed reverberations," which we know as
"forms”; and these “forms” necessarily constitute the totals and
essence of experience, education and culture. For that reason, art is
practical, never exotic, in that it deals with ideas that have served
some purpose in human life.
If these axioms of the psychology of aesthetics be accepted, Renoir
takes high rank as an artist, because he dealt with the world as it
appears to rational beings, he interpreted it in terms of sense and
feeling, and his paintings register an enriched record of what hu-
manity sees and feels. He preached nothing but beauty in the world
and the joy of living: life is supreme, irresponsible, full of move-
ment, colour, drama, rhythm, music, poetry, and mystic charm. To
live for the moment with Renoir's paintings is to be in a haven free
from the ravages of one's own troubled spirit and from the vexations


166
RENOIR: AN APPRECIATION
a
of a stupid external world. With him one may live vicariously the
whole stream of the free spirit not dulled and depressed by the drab
monotony of everyday affairs. The other world he takes us into is
this world enriched by his vision. We see the aesthetic strand in all
its fabrics, that runs through all experience, that we ignore in the
real world. He shows us that there is an ideal world in which we
would thrive in peace did we but see it aright. The residuum of
our stay in his world is the conviction of the intrinsic justification of
life itself: a moral value the legitimate offspring of an aesthetic one.
If the day-dream is short-lived, it is none the less real and vital and
is capable of infinite and amplified repetitions; he continues to make
good.
Renoir proves that life is fundamentally and chiefly a matter of
feeling. He painted everything in life as we live it; he was pre-
occupied with the homely, everyday things, and he made them mo-
mentous, as they really are. Every subject is impregnated with its
own essential and delightful feeling; his flowers are voluptuous, his
fruit glows as in nature, his-people at work or play are intent, his
nudes are suffused with a high beauty which bars even the sugges-
tion of sensuality. By his magic he endows every subject with its
specific characteristics, vitalizes their associations, gives the feeling
of delight that we experience when we know that life is good. No
painter ever more successfully converted material reality into what
it is in its essence, the expression of the ideal. His perceptions in-
stinctively adjust that proper amount of emotion to each object,
which the fine intelligence demands: he is never literal or prosaic
and never sentimental. He makes the non-material side of the sub-
ject the most momentous part of it.
Renoir's work was the reconstruction of the objects of sense, and
that makes it per se of universal interest, with an intrinsic aesthetic
appeal. There can be no beauty except that objectified and no aes-
thetic interest that is not based upon a taste for existing things
in the real world: mere emotion is the nature in a vacuum which
calls for the psychiatrist. Renoir's creative genius reveals itself
in the penetrating eye that sees to the core of the structure of
things and in the skilled hand that reproduces them so that they
reawaken the intellectual content of the perceptions and bring to
life their exciting associations which we call feeling. It is because
.
“to and philosophers, real things are themselves symbols” that


ALBERT C. BARNES
167
-
we lose interest in the merely representative character of Renoir's
work and wander with him into the rich garden of experience where
imagination and beauty rule over matter. Renoir is a master pre-
cisely because he stamped the meanings-truth, rationality, human-
ity, beauty-upon his works, upon the world, and upon us. Not the
least of the charm is the simple, direct way he does it: he never de-
frauds us of our right to intelligence and to a richer vicarious life
by either overwhelming the senses, or by bewildering, or by a mystic,
irrational sentimentalism. We feel that the paintings are more im-
portant than the things he painted.
By what technical means Renoir wrought his magic is a question
of no great moment to the appreciator, of but secondary interest to
the connoisseur, and the cause of much literary effort and loose
thinking on the
part of professional critics. Renoir as a free spirit,
responsible only to his vision, intelligence and sincerity, has been
the target for the fierce opprobrium of those for whom congealed
memories and outworn traditions- the academicians-serve as sub-
stitutes for thinking and feeling. These, the "vested interests” of
art, argue that Renoir's drawing is wrong, his colour raucous, his
composition bad. The artists and connoisseurs in whom ideas func-
tion in the place of the debris of the academicians, see in Renoir's
drawing accurate expressiveness, in his colour a harmony and a
structural value in the creation of forms, and in his composition an
exquisite sense of the fitness of things. The amateur with even a
moderate acquaintance with Renoir's work is very sure that the
drawing, made up as it is of convincing colour, iridescent light, parts
of form, and loose indeterminate line, constitutes one of the many
rhythmic, musical paths into an altogether delightful poetic realm.
He feels that the colour sings harmoniously and richly but never
stridently; that the composition is made up of charming sensuous
elements dramatically meaningful; that the picture soon ceases to
be drawing, colour, composition; that it becomes a repose saturated
with the spirit of place, where self is no more, where all is peace and
harmony and music and poetry. Awakened from the dream, he
goes back to life with a conviction and a memory that Renoir
breathes the spirit of perpetual youth in a garden of perennial June
loveliness.


SEVEN POEMS
BY MAXWELL BODENHEIM
WHEN FOOLS DISPUTE
A trickle of dawn insinuated itself
Through the crevices of black satiation.
The elderly trees coughed, lightly, hurriedly,
In remonstrance against the invasion.
Lean with a virginal poison
The grass-blades shook, immune to light and time.
A bird lost in a tree
Shrilly flirted with its energy.
One fool, in the garden, spoke to another.
ENDING
A fitting benediction of words
Stood, one by one, upon
The warped threshold of
your
mouth.
Dreams are wandering realities
Stooping to pick stray roadside flowers
And making silent boutonnieres :
Silent drops of mockery.
And since the flowers quickly die,
Dreams must ever walk with closed eyes.
Hearing you, the dream I held
Opened its eyes and perished.


MAXWELL BODENHEIM
169
SONNET
Like wine grown stale, the street-lamp's pallor seeks
The wilted anger of her scarlet lips,
And bitter, evanescent finger-tips
Of unsaid questions play upon her cheeks.
She sways a little, and her tired breath,
Fumbling at the crucifix of her mind,
Draws out the agèd nails, now dull and kind,
That once were sharp loves hardening in their death.
And so a dumb joy tips her sudden smiles
At passing men who eye her wonderingly
And hurry on because her face is old.
They merely think her clumsy in her wiles:
They know not that her face is dizzily
At rest because old memories have grown cold.
TO J. C.
Master of earnest equilibrium,
You are a Christ made delicate
By centuries of baffled meditation.
You curve an old myth to a peaceful sword,
Like some sleepwalker challenging
The dream that gave him shape.
With gentle, antique insistence
You place your child's hand on the universe
And trace a smile of love within its depths.
And yet, the whirling scarecrow men have made
Of something that eludes their sight
May have the startling simplicity of your smile.
Once every thousand years
Stillness fades into a shape
That men may crucify. .
1


170
SEVEN POEMS
TWO WOMEN ON A STREET
This street is callous apathy
In a scale of greys and browns.
Its black roof-line suggests
Flat bodies unable to rise.
Its air is swarthy rawness
Troubled with ashcans and cellars.
Even its screams are listlessness
Having an evil dream.
An old woman ambles on
With a black bag that seems a part of her back,
And a candidly hawk-like face.
She croons a smothered folk-song
That sifts a flitting roundness
Into her sharply parted face.
Then she surrenders her hand
To the welter of a garbage can.
A hugely wilted woman slinks by
With a cracked stare on her face.'
Her eyes are beaten discs
Of the street-lamps' ghastly keenness.
She glides away as though the night
Were a lover flogging her:
Glides into the callous apathy
Of this street, like one who cringes
Happily into her lover's room.
FIFTH AVENUE
Seasons bring nothing to this gulch
Save a harshly intimate anecdote
Scrawled here and there on paint and stone.
The houses shoulder each other
In a forced and passionless communion.
Their harassed angles rise
a


MAXWELL BODENHEIM
171
1
Like a violent picture-puzzle
Hiding a story that only ruins could reveal;
Their straight lines, robbed of power,
Meet in dwarfed rebellion.
Sometimes they stand like vastly flattened faces
Suffering ants to crawl
In and out of their gaping mouths.
Sometimes, in menial attitudes,
They stand like Gothic platitudes
Slipshodly carved in dark brown stone.
a
Tarnished solemnities of death
Cast their transfigured hue on this avenue.
The cool and indiscriminate glare
Of sunlight seems to desecrate a tomb,
And the racing people form
A stream of accidental shadows.
Hard noises strike one's face and make
It numb with momentary reality,
But the noiseless undertone returns
And they change to unreal jests
Made by death.
3
BOARDING-HOUSE EPISODE
Apples race into appetites:
The unswerving mechanism of the table
Hurries through the last dish of supper.
Then, an undulating interlude
From people who have spent one pleasure,
Distractedly juggling its aftermath
And peering at new desires.
One woman gazes at another
While twitching murder shimmers in her eyes
And skims across her face.
Violets in a madman's scene,
Suspended in the air,
Are the eyes of her neighbor.
And in between them sits the nervous man
a
be


172
SEVEN POEMS
With face like pouting gargoyle,
Whose brown eyes shout the things he cannot say:
Explosive evasions;
Fears that cannot escape their torn nakedness;
Renunciations groaning from their dungeons.
He eyes each woman, like a man
Solemnly trying to walk on slippery mud.
Crisp inanities ripple back and forth
Among these three, like feverish parrots
Visiting each other's cages.
She with. crazy,
violet
eyes
Plays with her fork, as though its clink
Rhymed with secret, chained thoughts.
Her struggling, urchin's face
Is split by a voiceless ache.
Stealthily she leans against the man's shoulder,
Her movement like the stifled beginning of light.
She with murder in her eyes
And curtly voluminous body,
Plays her child-role evenly.
She seems a demon underneath
Transparent simpering.
Cringing on the rim of middle-age,
With broken shields piled at her feet,
She has made this man a haunted palace
And she stands before the door
She dare not open, with a dagger
For the woman facing her.
They sit, afterwards, upon the boarding-house porch,
Meekly greeting the velvet swagger of evening-
Woman with crazy, violet eyes;
Woman with frightened murder on her face;
And man like a pouting gargoyle.
And then, like tired children,
Their words grow cool and lazy.
They draw nearer to each other
And with a trembling curiosity
Look at each other's hands.


2
1


GILBERT CANNAN. BY IVAN OPFFER



trought thing
GILBERT CANNAN AFTER READING
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE. BY IVAN OPFFER


!
1


GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
BY EVELYN SCOTT
R
a
ADICALISM is first of all a challenge to the accepted order
which it provokes from inertia to justify a hitherto unper-
turbed existence, but a radical epithet self-applied is also in effect
a challenge to him who claims it for title. If a man allow himself
to be dubbed a radical, he should be ready to explain as well as to
justify his emotional disagreement with the existing order. Mr.
Cannan, his friends, and his enemies have alike defied us with asser-
tions which distinguish Mr. Cannan from the complacent mass.
Though it be far from the conscious concern of the man himself to
recognize inferred alliances, it is very much the business of those
artists, or critics of life whom the future may entangle in the net of
inference to know in what Mr. Cannan's radicalism consists. If his
work has in it any persistent element, they will sooner or later be
called upon, in self-defence, to champion him or urge on his defeat.
,
In what sense then may he be truly called a revolutionist?
The revolutionist returns, as within etymological limits he must,
to something that existed before. If his reversion is to an idea, he
goes
back across the intervals of time to a thing as calmly permanent
as the contemporary ideal which he opposes. The disturbing fea-
tures which accompany an attempt to assert one conclusion over
another give revolutions initiated by the logic of ideas or events a
factitious appearance of incalculableness. A purposed progression
of incidents presupposes unalterable values, so that in reality this
newness which is arrived at by the mathematics of argument can
never be anything but a rearrangement of the old. It is true that
social revolutions create values by the emotional emphasis of the indi-
viduals who participate in them, yet all this is by the way and quite
extraneous to the accident which has precipitated the movement, and
but for art the unique values of all revolutions would escape in
achievement. There is no essential difference in the type of mind
which begins a theory of social benefits with the slogan of the repub-
lic, and with this text shapes a reasonable defence of its faith, and
the mind which operates similarly from a hypothetical point in real-
ity called communism. The interests of these two persons are di-


174
GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
vided' by unaccountable circumstances and it is sad to see the irrec-
oncilability of two natures impelled by their very identity to view
each other from opposite poles and without recognition of kinship.
It may be said to those who believe that there is something to dis-
cover beside the already existing word, that no one who has faith in
a formula believes in or desires to create a new value. For such a
faith and an attempt to justify it one must turn to the artist in a
mood in which he may be distinguished from the propagandist.
The artist turns back with a certain theoretical literality to a point
which embraces all points, as permanent as eternity, since he returns
to life itself. This is reasonable and theoretically sound; but to the
man who is a logician art must be superfluous—at best a bastard and
a
derived thing which would illustrate perfection with geometrically
appropriate allegory. Nevertheless, the artist draws his inspiration
from a life which evades categories. It is this return to imperma-
nence which makes art a disturbing element, and the purer the artis-
tic feeling which inspires a work, the less it will smack of illusory
discoveries contained in theories of rearrangement.
We examine Mr. Cannan's work and at a first glance are inclined
to billet him with revolutionists incapable of sensing the new. Again
and again he suggests to us that his new is a rearrangement of atti-
tude toward the old. He wants us to believe that art is a speculation
about life, a glorious affair of the moving-picture film or the labo-
ratory. Philosophy in a dressing-gown! A modern morality play
without the unconscious enhancements of the naive spirit. The ten-
dency of his genius, to use, in a slightly modified sense, a term re-
cently employed by Mr. Waldo Frank, is extroverted. His view of
life inclines to be extensive rather than intensive, and as it is im-
possible to become one with a medium which preserves all of its
spatial definitions, there is always an impression of Mr. Cannan's
work as far from an immediate revelation of Mr. Cannan as a new
theory of the solar system from the spirit of the astronomer who
formulated it. You may select from one of Mr. Cannan's novels
after another and find that all end on the speculative rather than
the inevitable note. The artist in him--and there is an artist in
him, as I shall point out later-is time after time subservient to the
moralist.
For the reason that the publication of Mr. Cannan's books in the
United States has been, chronologically, very erratic, it is impossible


EVELYN SCOTT
175
a
to follow the sequence in which the volumes were written, but it is
fairly certain that Three Sons and a Mother was one of the first of
his works to be generally read in this country. Here he attempts
an epic of Scotch family life among the lower middle classes and
tries to reveal its significance in a thousand real and apparent irrele-
vances. The author overlays the vagueness of some of his characters
with the passionateness of his assumption of the book as a whole.
This is a novel of manners in that it contemplates life as lived in a
certain time and place under certain social customs without attempt-
ing to break through the crust into new ways of consciousness. Here
is an eye that reveals the surface even as a mirror but enhances its
values and makes it seem remotely vivid as some street scene sud-
denly shown through the window upon a looking-glass in a bed-
room. These people have no more spatial reality than the characters
in Wuthering Heights, but, like Emily Brontë's figures, though in
a lesser degree, they are for the most part wraiths of sombre vital-
ity, phantoms congealing impressively in the murky subjective at-
mosphere which gave them birth. Mr. Cannan is shamelessly per-
functory in his relation of those circumstances which lead us to the
particular event which his interest anticipates. There is psychologi-
cal incident here for a volume twice this length, but much of the
vitality of the book is exhausted in the author's impatience to pro-
ceed, and he bridges the way from one crisis to another by long para-
graphs of bald and uncompromising narration. There is a certain
luxurious discrimination in the motives which actuate Mr. Cannan's
creatures, and they are rarely impelled by necessity in their solution
of the larger problems of life. This conception of man as an agent
limited rather by the condition of his environment than by the con-
dition of his soul, smacks of the romantic movement of a past gen-
eration with its belief in free will. Indeed it sometimes appears that
Mr. Cannan is capable only of romantic emotions and that Jamie, his
hero, Byronically cursing his inanition, is an exaggerated prototype
of his creator. There is a bogie named Tibby who presides over the
fortunes of the household and suffers much in the harsh rule of its
mistress. We are led to understand that Tibby loved Jamie but was
ruggedly resigned to her bad looks and the impossibility of arousing
a reciprocal feeling. The indomitable Margaret Lawrie dies and
Jamie, her son, goes off to America, hoping, as Mr. Cannan appears
to hope, that God may be found among strange scenes and new faces.


176
GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
a
The Stucco House is a sequel, but, terrible as that may sound, it
justifies itself. The author's previous familiarity with his characters
gives impetus to his re-creation of them; and Tibby, Agnes, Tom,
and especially Catherine are here more intensely themselves than in
the first book. This Catherine, whose egotism must express itself di-
rectly, is a vivid contrast to Margaret Lawrie, in whom personal
vanity is submerged in pride of family and race. Margaret Law-
rie's ambition is for a reflected glory, while Catherine's desire to
impress her world expresses itself without intervention, but the two
women are equally ruthless types of the female who, because Nature
concedes her nothing, demands every concession of the individuals
with whom she is accidentally related. The character of Catherine
furnishes a notable example of Cannan the interpreter of the present
triumphant over Cannan the apologist for the future. Would that
it might be always so, for here is a woman familiar enough for recog-
nition but individualized and inimitable. Catherine develops "sen-
suality of the soul” which she is able to satisfy within herself. She
is hugely and complacently oblivious to the nuances of life except as
they touch her interest, and is of course negatively triumphant when
she drives her husband to insanity. Jamie's existence wasted in
theoretical emotions, however, perverts our sympathies, and the
damnable simplicity of his wife's motives is dignified by contrast.
Perhaps that is why we are suspicious of the defiance of Jamie's son
and ready to believe that Mr. Cannan has introduced us to Bennett
for some ulterior propagandist reason, hoping to destroy our satis-
faction in the courageous pessimism which would otherwise conclude
the book.
It may be said in partial extenuation of Mr. Cannan's speculative
tendency that for most of his novels he has chosen the theme which
is nearest the life difficulties of the average individual. Time after
time he presents the same problem to us in different lights, self-
respecting egotism versus the compromises required by sex. There
is the childlikeness of the primitive male in Mr. Cannan's plain-
tive depiction of masculine irresponsibilty, and again and again he.
strays from the irony of the situation (an irony contained in the
characters themselves) to a crassly sex-conscious satirization of wo-
man, or, worse yet, he becomes sentimentally reverent of her bio-
logical function. Just as he wrote Three Sons and a Mother and
then rewrote it with a difference in The Stucco House, so he created


EVELYN SCOTT
177
Old Mole and revived Old Mole's problems in Young Earnest. In
Young Earnest the speculation is so much more intense, and parallel
difficulties are faced by characters so much more compelling than
those which move through the somewhat lagging pages of the first
written book, that Old Mole, except for some incidental intuitive
achievement, can safely be ignored. In the nature of a flash of
genius but quite casual from the standpoint of the author, is the
account of Old Mole's emotion when he hears the girl whom he has
married-merely because to marry was easier than not to marry-
despised for his sake, and suddenly adores her. The story of this
truant professor is told with those confirmed habits of expression
which are called style. The language has no richness in it but a
mellowed dryness as of old wood, and such details of psychological
observation as are contained in the account of the man's awakening
toward his wife seem fairly to leap out at us from the monotony of
pleasant words. Further on in the same volume we are introduced
to the jealousy of the chivalrous husband toward his wife's child by
another man, a theme that might have inspired the greatest of real-
ists. With Cannan the reactions of the pair toward each other are
not the artistic end but the little considered means for promoting the
same progression of rearrangement. The baby dies, and one feels
that this was to get rid of the annoyance of a tremendous motif
which was sure to assert itself against the superficialities of plot.
Mr. Cannan sacrifices life to exploit a theory of those social devices
which make life easiest lived. He not only confuses the means with
the end but he confuses the means with the beginning. Nowhere
does his reality coexist with himself. It is like the preacher's eter-
nity which begins to-morrow. One of the people in Old Mole says,
“The universe was not made for man but man for the universe.”
This is worthy of Thomas Hardy, but the author in question accepts
the fact with the Emersonian outlook of a Protestant divine. He is
evidently convinced that the body has “brutish” functions which an
exalted mind may elevate. As with all dualists, there is a naive sanc-
timoniousness in his resentment of an urge which the individual can-
not qualify, and turning from lust, he discovers that quality of
obliviousness most characteristic of lust in a religious experience.
That his God is called Humanity in no way alters the type of the
emotion, and it prevents him from detaching his art from a con-
ception of nobility. That he may be repelled by the complacency
а
a


178
GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
-
in disillusion which so often characterizes the modern critic of life
is
easy
to understand. An attitude of disillusion, however, presup-
poses a necessity in the soul of the scoffer for that very fatuousness
of noble aims which he carps at because unfulfilled in the lives of the
persons which surround him. True simplicity recognizes values in
life as beyond moral comment, and the negative fastidiousness of
the sophisticated worldling is as puerile as the blind assertiveness of
the self-enwrapped reformer. The latter half of Old Mole is a
mongrel tract-mongrel because confused by the artistic pretext. It
is concerned with a woman as seen through the eyes of two men.
She exists as a mirror-herself quite featureless-in which is re-
flected the double-visaged masculine image. The professor inter-
.
prets her for us as a priest his deity, but as she never manifests her-
self in word or act, we cease to believe in her. Mr. Cannan strikes
these beings into puppet-like fixity with his synthetic utterance, of
the times.
Young Earnest is another book which begins with Mr. Cannan at
his best and leaves us with Mr. Cannan at his triumphant worst, but
the best is so very good that we put down the volume with a grati-
tude that is stronger than our irritation. This writer has an instinct
for tragedy and time after time it leads him through his art to a vital
and irreparable accumulation of problems. Presented with the ver-
dict of his own genius, he refuses to recognize it. He cannot believe
in problems which have no solution. Leave that for the Frenchman
and the Russian. Young Earnest introduces us to an admirable
creation, René's mother, an old woman solemn as earth, her actions
inscrutably emoted from within. She is subject to the law of grav-
ity. One associates with her all the dirtiness of death and birth.
She fills space_does not merely film it-and she is isolated of
course by the very vividness of her definitions. Against her is set
René's father, Mr. Fourmy, a person whose necessities are only less
deniable than his wife's. They represent an apotheosis of Mr. Can-
nan’s reiterated challenge to life, and these two people are over-
powering enough to make the meandering hopefulness of the spirit in
which the book is completed seem childlike and vacuous in its futil-
ity. There is such an illusion of comradely sharing in the sensuous
joys of love that the inequality of its results is like a betrayal.
Every woman would, for a moment at least, reduce the man to her
own level of weakness, and it maddens her that no power on earth


EVELYN SCOTT
179
own.
a
a
can make his responsibilities one with her own. René conjectures
as to a rudimentary identity in man and woman with secondarily
acquired variations, and he considers woman's obliviousness to deli-
cate shades in experience as compelled by her dedication to a nobler
and simpler aim. He cannot feel the horror of a biological argument
to justify the self-aware being whose egotism is awake even as his
René’s wife, Linda Brock, and his mistress, Ann Pidduck,
are both in unsuccessful revolt, but Ann's rebellion is complete, of
the emotions as well as the mind, and there is a kind of dignity in her
acceptance of defeat. Linda Brock is a cheat. Without a sincere
respect for the established moralities she cannot forgo titles of
nobility. She wants the safeguard of matrimony but will give no
value received for it. Without suggesting in her that thing beyond
analysis which vivifies Mrs. Fourmy, Cannan makes her a character
study of arresting intricacy. While reading the book one decides,
doubtless without intention on the part of the author, that woman's
very triumphs are stolen from her for the good of the race, and if she
wishes to assert her individuality it is necessary for her to do some-
thing monstrous. Man individualizes himself against Nature's back-
ground, but woman's accomplishment is inextricably woven in the
tapestry of the race and she can free herself only by stifling the
opportunities which emotionally enrich her. Women envy men their
irresponsibility in Nature's plan, their fearless enjoyment of the mo-
ment, and most tragic complexes in sex relations are subtle attenu-
ations of this often subconscious resentment. Mr. Cannan, while
himself refusing to believe it, heightens our conviction that this is
true. He destroys our belief in woman's capacity for equality, but,
as in all his books, exempts one female expressly to revive our faith
during the last few pages. In this case it is Cathleen, a modern
adaptation of the mediaeval virgin. René's senses are less deadened
than his spirit, but the appeal of the coolly poised and plaintively
aloof Cathleen is the usual appeal of immaturity to the jaded taste
which hopes to enjoy vicariously some fresh experiences in disillu-
sionment. Of course the book ends happily. Presumably it was
because Cathleen and René did not marry that their life was so mar-
vellously uncomplicated. Does Mr. Cannan really fancy that the
relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Fourmy, for instance, would
have been altered by the technical absence of matrimony?
In two of Mr. Cannan's novels at least, Mendel and Mummery,


180 GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
there is no easy distinction of Cannan the artist from Cannan the
adjuster of difficulties, yet in both books one feels that the defects
which would become frank virtues in an inventor or a diplomatist
have here in the end insidiously usurped the magnificent humility of
the creator and made him puerily self-explanatory. Mummery might
be called, with slight injustice, Cannan’s interpretation of George
Moore. As Moore in Evelyn Innes, the author has hypnotized him-
self with a clever conception and elucidates it with the vague yet
undeterred certainty of the entranced speaker. Evelyn Innes exists
as something locked in the author's emotions, without beginning and
without end. Cannan, on the other hand, in recounting his artistic
project has allowed most of its life to escape him. No single moment
of the book is realized entirely, held in the heart an instant as in a
chalice of pain. The moments slip away with no attempt on his
part to grasp them and no indication that he is aware that they are
irrevocably gone. Without effort and without loss of breath he
explains to us the types of persons he would depict and the situation
in which he has chosen to exhibit their character. His facility in
drawing the plan has apparently blinded him to the fact that he
never put it into execution. We believe in Charles Mann and Clara
Day as people who have existed whom we should like to have known,
but no occasion is offered us in which to gratify the curiosity which
innuendo has aroused. Clara is a diagram of a charming human
creature whose sex enriches her intellectuality without enslaving her
through her emotions. Charles Mann and Lord Butcher are delight-
ful variations on the conventional conception of the masculine artist.
Sir Henry's shortcomings are depicted with that affectionate toler-
ance which one feels for the weak man whose vulnerability is poten-
tially at one's disposal. When the world without reacts on a man
to reveal him to himself and he does not turn from the fulness of
the revelation, we have the great artist in the making. Charles
Mann is the voluptuary who regulates the conditions of his accept-
ance of life. Such men attempt to arrange their experience to pro-
duce a series of modulated shocks which they hasten to interpret with
pen or brush and ask us to accept the balance of their equation as a
summing up of life. Of course there is Rodd, Mr. Cannan's real
artist, who thinks of humanity as a unity, “an organism subject to
the laws of organic life. Talk about persons, nations, groups, and
combinations seemed to him irrelevant.” If Rodd had gone back to
1


EVELYN SCOTT
181
something that anticipated imposed unities, we might hope the great-
est things of him, but we fear that like Mr. Cannan he has betrayed
himself. There is the unity of the thing we touch but cannot en-
.
compass, whole because it defies analysis, and there is the unity
which we conclude after dissection and reorganization of a past
occurrence. The latter may, for all that can be said to the contrary,
represent a reality. Art does more than this. It cannot in our con-
sciousness be subject to laws, for it continues to be immediate. With
the entrance of Rodd, the theoretical Cannan returns to the scene
and remains to announce his invariable formula of escape in which
Rodd and Clara go away together, this time with a legal insurance
of the project, and presumably live ever after in peace and under-
standing. Clara's resignation of personal ambition to fulfil herself
in her devotion to her husband is a somewhat mawkishly suggested
return to the Margaret Lawrie tradition. One is inclined to close
this book with the feeling that it is a great novel which was never
written.
Mendel does not evade itself, as might be said of Mummery. The
first book (it is in three books) is a substantial and enduring frag-
ment. The style is simple and gracious and the Jews of Gun Street
are so surpassingly beautiful within the harmony of their limitations
that it is hard to believe that Mr. Cannan has lately antagonized
members of the race by his unsympathetic comment.
Mendel's
mother and father are as fine as a pair of genre portraits by one of the
Dutch masters, and they are immaculately Jewish, satisfied to enjoy
only what they may possess but with absolute integrity of possession
in that little. The Jews are the only people who have reconciled the
vanity of the individual with the arrogance of the Nature which he
represents. Too often the Gentile is merely vain where the Jew is
self-respecting, for the Jew's contempt for the thing to which he
cannot attain is genuine, whereas this is rarely true of the Gentile.
It is the triumph and defeat of the Jews that their self-consciousness
is racial rather than individual. The virtue and vice of the fairy
tale, the virtue and vice of necessity, the Jew makes beautiful with
the exalted gauchéries of his religion, but the self-contempt of the
Gentile has left him entangled in intricacies of self-righteousness.
In spite of the sympathy of the creations in this book, Cannan, as he
shows later in The Anatomy of Society, shares the Gentile's falla-
cious superiority toward a financially successful people. He seems


182
GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
a
to think that a lie told with half a heart or a trick resorted to with
an anaemic will constitutes a demi-virtue. The crime of the Jews (I
myself bear them a grudge for it) is that they refuse to waste time
arguing with the sun for its hour of setting, and do in the beginning
what every one must in the end unless his defiance reach Christ-like
proportions.' Those who are afraid to die must live, and it would
be a very poor god who deviated his course for mere mortal pleading.
Cannan has given us a praiseworthy and almost reverent transla-
tion of Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe, and Cannan's books
seem to bear the occasional imprint of his devotion to the French
author. Mendel himself has a more satisfying reality than Jean
Christophe, who is half the time only a grandiose shadow of the
traditional great man of the people, yet the lives of the characters
appear to have been conceived under a similar impulse. From being
the story of Mendel, the young Jew of unadvantageous beginnings,
Cannan's novel digresses to recount the morality masques of Logan,
the pseudo-painter, and Oliver, his model, until finally the figure of
the Jewish artist which Mr. Cannan has limned so faithfully dis-
solves in the heat of the author's idealism and we perceive through
the shreds of emotional mist a slight inversion of Mr. Cannan's old
problem to which he offers again his now well worn solution. Men-
del and Morrison, like René and Cathleen, Clara and Rodd, even
Ruth and Trevor in that almost fatal volume, Pink Roses, decide to
begin over. To begin over in the approved Cannanonian style is to
shed one's past as a snake his skin in the hope that a new being has
matured beneath in virginal ignorance of itself, and waits only for
the sloughing off of exhausted imperfections to find its way into self-
awareness. Mendel, like René, turns from those individuals too
passionate to be moulded either to a present or a future tradition and
picks for a mate a creature of embryonic perceptions with every po-
tentiality for acquiring those premeditated virtues which might grace
a British matron. However, not even Turgenev could refrain from
sentimentality in his regard for an untouched being of the opposite
sex. Pity carries with it an inference which decries the capacity to
harm him who pities, since it is impossible to feel simultaneously fear
and pity for the same object. There is a dramatic quality of con-
descension in one's attitude toward a creature in whom one senses
potentialities of which she herself must be unaware until their ful-
filment; and as the man cannot think of her without surmises which


EVELYN SCOTT
183
a
relate her fate to his decision, there is a Sadistic caress in the gentle-
ness of his judgement of her. So in another manner Mr. Cannan
fails to escape masculinity in art. There is a little of the child in
him, to whom the grandiose is still the beautiful. His dramatic
instinct is that of a child. He decorates the subject of realistic
treatment with the artistic tinsel of the noble act.
In other respects beside his worship of humanity and his convic-
tion of the humanity of the arts, Mr. Cannan is the victim of his
too close understanding of M. Rolland. In the more casual features
of technique he imitates the Frenchman's wastefulness of material.
His canvases are often prodigally crowded. It may be said of M.
Rolland that only his defects permit the intrusion of his virtues, for
it is in the vignettes drawn by the way and frequently little related
to his central purpose that he has given us the delicate flavour of his
insight into isolated lives, and his expression of them is almost lyric.
Cannan, on the contrary, would much better leave us with a clear
vision of his original purpose. A character is drawn from the over-
pregnant depths and presented to us with an incisiveness that makes
us disproportionately hopeful that it will develop significance. We
feel almost defrauded when it drops back into quiescent obscurity
and we are allowed no further acquaintance with it than comes in a
bare allusion at the proper place. Visualization is wasted on minor
folk and incident, and the large figures on the canvas sometimes re-
main featureless through a whole volume.
In Mr. Cannan's more frankly discursive and abstract writing,
such as The Anatomy of Society, Satire, Samuel Butler: A Critical
Study, and Freedom, there is a general absence of the swift and un-
accountable vision which is the best thing he has to give us. The
occasional flare of intuition is gone, and without this to illumine his
language his words lack the decisiveness and precision which harmo-
niously render the austerities of argument and exposition. But if
I would speak of him at his worst I should recall a rhymed diatribe
against English politics named Noel, with the subtitle (Heaven
forefend that it be taken seriously!) An Epic-oh, Puritan Epic
fit to have been composed in New England!
It is a relief to turn to his plays-one wishes there were more of
them. James and John is a dramatic episode in one act. It fails
of the title of drama because when the curtain goes up on the two
sons and the mother waiting for the return of the prodigal father


184 GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
>
a
who has spent the last twelve years in prison, the irrevocable thing
has already occurred and with the old man's actual appearance upon
the scene no further crisis is precipitated. The characters of James
and John are dryly and harshly indicated. Their mother and father
might be preliminary sketches for Mr. and Mrs. Fourmy. The
sketch (it can scarcely be called more), without profound subtleties,
has a massive simplicity about it that commands respect. Miles
Dixon is in the mood of the folk tale and is a drama in a more literal
sense than the play which begins the volume, in spite of the fact
that crises are presented with very little suggestion of the accumu-
lation of emotion which makes them inevitable; the construction of
the two acts is awkward; and the heroes' tendency to monologues
sometimes stretches the modern convention to the breaking-point.
'It is a thinly veiled allegory and much of its poetry has passed over
to the plane of pure intellect, but a residual essence of wistful real-
ity remains. Mary's Wedding, besides being authentic drama, is
poignant romanticism in realistic dress, the sordid happening in
which the motives of action are simplified to give them the true
romantic sweep. As an anti-climax there is a mildly amusing skit
called A Short Way for Authors, and in a separate edition Mr. Can-
nan has published an ingratiating fancy entitled Everybody's Hus-
band. The whimsy of this little play is fragrant with light feeling
that might well be the perfume of a deeply rooted flower. As it
happens, the glow which Mr. Cannan throws on the demure tragedy
of three happy and virtuous women is only topical and illumines
nothing which antedates the institution of a Christian marriage.
One does not waste a ream of good paper to damn a man's works.
If they deserve damnation, time will do the trick more cheaply. Mr.
Cannan is thirty-six years old. He seems yet groping through a fog
of personal adventure and has not reached that point at which he
can escape from his crystallizing self into full consciousness of his
capacities. He has not appraised himself. In him we have a sur-
face petrified in a conventional attitude but glowing with an im-
prisoned intensity, like a statue that owns a white, hot heart. Its
stone eyes are blind, or so closed inward that it sees only itself — not
the heart of it, but that self moulded by environment and truly its
picture of the world without. Mr. Cannan has seemingly reached a
point in his artistic career from which he must either go
forward to
an acceptance of the innate ironies of life or backward for ever to


EVELYN SCOTT
185
a
confound tragedy with circumstance. He is a man of brilliant be-
ginnings, but unless he can come to a clearer understanding of him-
self he cannot save his initial creative impulses from exhausting
themselves for lack of direction. In The Anatomy of Society there
is a chapter on definitions. Let Mr. Cannan begin the new chapter
of his own endeavour by a definition of his intentions toward art.
Volume after volume from his pen has the air of a spiritual experi-
ment. It is as though he asked of his art that it give him something
beyond life-a groping for a God outside who will complete what
is begun on paper. After the first immediate recognition of an expe-
rience, one detaches from it cause and effect, which are always ex-
terior to consciousness even if contained, as a sensation or an idea, in
the man himself. Thirdly, one abstracts from the experience a qual-
ity inclusive of both cause and effect and in this synthesis arrives at
the ideal. When one emotionalizes such a synthesis, one becomes ro-
mantic. Of the first kind of reaction which reflects life in an utter-
ance clouded with a mist of the senses as though yet warm with the
steaming heat of the body, there is little evidence in Mr. Cannan's
pages. The modern tendency in art is a fumbling after the source
of those things which die as they find the full light of intellectualiza-
tion. Mr. Cannan discovers himself somewhere midway between
the inscrutable impulse which eludes articulation and the formu-
lated expression which is the end of conjectural writing. The in-
tuitive plane is that on which the intelligence is yet actuated by a
rudimentary urge, and the wits, sharpened by unrecognized instincts,
motivate and direct expression along devious courses. Only in-
tuition could have sensed a psychological situation so involved as
(in Old Mole) the relation between father and son hinted at in the
synopsis of the early life of Cuthbert Jones, alias Timmis. In an-
other place in the same book Cannan says: "He had developed a
habit of talking and did not know it. She had taken refuge in silence
and was aware of it.” This is an almost inspired observation on
the complementary reactions of the characters implicated. Or in
another story: “Because he made her laugh she distrusted him the
more.” Again and again such detail is wasted as the story shatters
nebulously about Mr. Cannan's dominant conception of humanity
as a unit-a monstrous generality.
There is something of the Puritan in the person who demands an
intelligible order of his universe, and dresses his art in man-made


186
GILBERT CANNAN: INQUISITOR
a
garments of perfection in fear of the pain and confusion of her
naked beauty. Poor art tortured with yearnings for other spheres !
It is perhaps this that makes her return to us in Pink Roses in such
a sorry plight. With her she brings the same Byronic young man
reluctant to renounce the distinction of his grief; the same lady
who, ere she pass on, will refresh him with her piquant vulgarity;
and the same virgin of cool breeding who offers an ordered way of
escape from paths of obscure dalliance. And like Banquo's ghost to
the feast comes the persistent Jew. This time for the literary con-
venience of his creator, he is incarnate in a trinity, José Ysnaga,
Sophina Lipinsky, and Mr. Angel. These people are cardboard
replicas of the flesh that has gone before. If Mr. Cannan should
die now, those who love him would hold a discreet silence about his
later work. Fortunately he lives to retrieve himself. Perhaps the
spectacle of American art as it is believed in by the American people
will arouse in him an antagonism sharp enough to touch those de-
fects in himself which he might almost have owed to this alien race.
American art, with a few unpopular exceptions, is notoriously con-
cerned with the purpose of making something other than it is. Art
here is a superstructure erected upon the national life for its moral
ornament. The difference between Mr. Cannan's attitude and that
of many of his contemporaries on this side of the Atlantic is that he
retains the unequivocal mental processes of the passionate reformer,
while the American writers afflicted with a social conscience are for
the most part casual and partial in their reactions in behalf of their
faith. Mr. Cannan's feeling for the essential in the human problem
makes us sympathize, humanly speaking, with his reluctance to con-
sider it final. It is a passionate vision of incongruities which drives
men to the absolute denial that is the assertion of another universe
and another order. Of these are the martyrs of religion inviolate in
the entireness of their pessimism. Art is indivisible and is as much
the assertion of a life that coexists with us as religion is its denial.
Mr. Cannan has fairly caught himself between the affirmation of his
talent and the instinct which refuses it. May the future, for the
glory of art, extricate him from his dilemma! Then one may be
able to place him accurately among those who move toward the fu-
ture of art, or those others who merely gyrate with succeeding revo-
lutions.


NEW CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE
BY CLAUDE BRAGDON
a
E
INSTEIN, the author of the Theory of Relativity, is said
to have declared that there were only twelve men in the world
capable of understanding it. This may perhaps be true in relation
to its purely mathematical aspects, but certain correlative ideas any
one should be able to understand, after a fashion, and it is a profit-
able and delightful exercise of the imagination to follow where
they lead.
The chief of these ideas.- which is as old as philosophy itself-
is that all our knowledge is relative, conditioned by our receptivity
—“the perception of a perceiver”—and that by the so-called scien-
tific method we can never know things-in-themselves.
The reason for this is plain: we are altogether too conditioned, too
"immersed.” While endeavouring to discover the changes which
take place in the world round about us, we are ourselves affected by
those very changes which form the object of our quest. We cannot
correctly sense or accurately measure phenomena, because our senses
and our measuring instruments are affected in a manner and to an
extent it is impossible for us to find out.
For example, if at a given moment of time the universe, our
world, and we ourselves should shrink to half their present size, and
time (as would be the case) should accelerate correspondingly, we
should be quite unconscious of any change, and should regard as a
madman any one who tried to tell us what had happened. And this
shrinkage could go on repeating itself in geometrical progression
until a man became a midge, with a life no longer than an upward-
flying spark’s; and still, like Hamlet, could he count himself a king
of infinite space, and unlike Hamlet, never know that the "times”
were out of joint.
If
space curves, swells, shrinks; if time lags or hastens, we do not
know it, nor the extent of it. These ideas, implicit in the Theory of
Relativity, that space and time are not so immutable as they appear,
that everything may suffer distortion, that time may run swift or
slow without our being in the least aware, can be made interestingly
a


188
NEW CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE
says the
a
clear by an illustration first suggested by Helmholtz, of which the
following is in the nature of a paraphrase:
If you look at your own image in the shining surface of a teapot
or the back of a silver spoon, all things therein appear grotesquely
distorted, and all distances strangely exaggerated. But if you choose
to make the bizarre supposition that this spoon-world is real, and
your image--the spoon-man-a thinking and speaking being, cer-
tain interesting facts can be developed by a discussion between you
and him.
You say, “Your world is a distorted reproduction of the one in
,
which I live.”
“Prove it to me,” says spoon-man.
With a foot-rule you proceed to make measurements to show the
rectangularity of the room in which you are standing. Simulta-
neously he makes measurements yielding the same numerical results;
for his foot-rule shrinks and curves in the exact proportion to give
the true number of feet when he measures his shrunken and dis-
torted rear wall. No measurement you can apply will prove you in
the right, or him in the wrong. Indeed, he is likely to retort upon
you that it is your room that is distorted, for he can show that in
spite of all its nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same
orderly geometry that governs yours.
The above illustration deals only with space relations, for such are
easily grasped, but certain distortions in time relations are no less
imperceptible and unprovable. So far from having any advantage
over the spoon-man, our plight is his. The Principle of Relativity
discovers us in the predicament of the Mikado's “prisoner pent,”
condemned to play with crooked cues and elliptical billiard balls,
and of the opium victim, for whom "space swells” and time moves
sometimes swift and sometimes slow.
Another question-and perhaps the most important-raised by
the Theory of Relativity is in regard to what may be called the
spatiality of time. In other words, is time the fourth dimension of
space?
This idea, startling as it may appear, stands the pragmatic test,
that is to say, it "works.” Mathematical physicists have found that
experimental contradictions disappear, and the mathematical frame-
work of physics is greatly simplified, if, instead of referring phe-
nomena to a set of three space axes (corresponding to the three


CLAUDE BRAGDON
189
dimensions) and one time axis of reference, they are referred to a
set of four interchangeable axes involving four homogeneous co-
I | ordinates, three of space and one of time. Time, in other words, is
used by them as though it were a dimension of space — the fourth
dimension.
Professor N. A. Oumoff, in his address before the second Men-
deleevsky Convention, dealt with this idea in the following clever
way:
a
“The element of time is involved in all spatial measurements. We
cannot define the geometrical form of a solid moving in relation to
us, we are always defining its kinematical form. Therefore our spatial
measurements are in reality proceeding not in a three-dimensional
manifold, that is, having three dimensions of height, length, and
width, but in a four-dimensional manifold. The first three dimen-
sions we can represent by the divisions of a tape-measure upon which
are marked feet, yards, or some other measure of length. The fourth
dimension we shall represent by a moving-picture film upon which
each point corresponds to a new phase of the world's phenomena.
The distances between the points of this film are measured by a
clock going indifferently with this or that velocity. The transition
from one point to another of this film corresponds to our concept of
the flow of time. This fourth dimension we therefore call time.
The moving-picture film can replace the reel of any tape-measure,
or the tape-measure can replace the film. The ingenious mathema-
tician Minkowsky proved that all these four dimensions are equi-
potent and interchangeable.”
a
If time is space, if it is the measure of a direction at right angles
to every direction that we know, why is this so difficult to realize
in experience?
It is because we cannot apprehend the higher space-world as we
do this one (its three-dimensional section), in its entirety as one takes
in a landscape at a glance, but only fragment by fragment, that
is, successively. If you look at the landscape through the slit formed
by the two hands, moving them circle-wise so that everything is seen
piecemeal and successively, and if you utterly absorb yourself, limit-
ing your mind, just as your vision is limited, you get finally the
sense that the landscape is perpetually becoming; that what has just


190
NEW CONCEPTS OF TIME AND SPACE
been seen ceases thereupon to exist, that what is not seen yet will
spring to life all in a moment. In other words, your space-sense,
thus reduced or narrowed, takes on those attributes which we are
accustomed to associate with time.
This illustrates how the time-sense may be an imperfect sense of
higher space, the movement of consciousness on a dimension not
otherwise known, not otherwise sensed, foreign to experience. What
appear to us as phenomena-changes proceeding in the things of our
world-may be but the involvement in our space of a dimension of
which we are not spatially aware. Life, growth, organic being, the
transition from simplicity to complexity, the shrinkage and expan-
sion of solids-all these, to this view, are evidences of a four-dimen-
sional extension, because they involve relations which cannot be
expressed in terms of length, breadth, and height, but require also
time,
It will be helpful in understanding how this may be so by drama-
tizing the predicament of a consciousness limited to the two dimen-
sions of a plane-a flatman-in trying to understand the nature of
a solid of our space passing through that plane which constitutes his
world. The third dimension of such a solid (the one perpendicular
to his plane) would not manifest itself to him as spatial extension,
but as temporal change, as a principle of growth, and as a measure
of relations incapable of being expressed in terms of length and
width merely- the only two dimensions' that he knows. All he
would be conscious of would be the changing cross-section which the
solid traced, defined by the displacement of the constituent matter
of his plane. This would seem to him to be matter in a dynamic
condition. His watch would be his only tape-measure for the third
dimension. Imagine, for example, a cone, passed apex downward
through the plane. It would appear there first as a point, expand-
ing into a circle, and this still expanding circle would suddenly dis-
appear. These modifications would be caused by the gradual in-
volvement of the third-the vertical-dimension of the cone in the
two dimensions of the plane. They would be the time expression of
the cone's extension in the third dimension, and no other expression
would be comprehensible to the flatman. In the same way, the
fourth dimension—as spatial extension-is not otherwise compre-
hensible to us.
These new concepts of space and time bid fair to produce a revo-
a


CLAUDE BRAGDON
191
lution in philosophical thought considerably greater than that caused
by the displacement of the earth from the center of the universe by
Copernicus. Time becomes space, and space becomes a mathematical
a
abstraction! Mathematics in some of its more modern developments
requires neither time, space, number, nor quantity. Are we on the
point of discovering that the only reality is thought-consciousness?
If so, by a long detour, Western science arrives at the same con-
clusion as Eastern mysticism: that materiality is only maya, illusion
- the mirror of consciousness.
In studying phenomena by the objective method we are perhaps
in the position of a spectator at a moving-picture show, who, know-
ing nothing of the mechanism by which the images are produced,
tries to unravel the mystery by confining his attention to the screen.
What he should do is to turn his back upon the screen, and follow
the cone of light until it leads him to the booth, and finally to the
film and the lantern. The Theory of Relativity may have the effect
of leading us to seek the explanation of phenomena, not in other
phenomena of a similar order, for that is a fruitless quest, but to
seek it in a higher order of phenomena altogether-in consciousness.
For the world-secret dwells not in the world, but in the self.
/


THREE POEMS
BY FLORENCE TABER HOLT
I
TO PAN
Πάντες δε θεών χατέουσ’ άνθρωποι.
Sacred to thee,
Wild Spirit of the uplands,
Is the unsown land of these high pastures!
Where the flocks feed in the cool breezes,
And at night
Lie close in ferny hollows
Beneath the circling stars.
II
THE WIND OF LOVE
"Έρος δαύτ' έτιναξεν έμοι φρένας,
άνεμος κατ' όρος δρύσιν εμπέσων.
Like the wind that bows the tree-tops
Is thy presence!
Branches torn, and stripped leaves
Show thy way,
But, where thou hast passed,
The heart of the deep wood
Lies open to the stars.


FLORENCE TABER HOLT
193
III
FLOWERS
Not all flowers have souls,
But roses, for they are memories of lovers,
And lilies, their
prayers,
Azaleas, who give themselves to the winds,
And irises, beloved of Pindar,
And the pale oenothera,
Incandescent in the twilight,
And many sweet and simple flowers -
Snowdrops and violets,
White and delicately veined-
And all shadowy wind-flowers.,
But not tree blossoms,
Which are but the breath of Spring,
Nor poppies, splendid and secret,
And sprung from drops of Persian blood,
Nor water-lilies, who have but their dreams,
And float, little worlds of scent and colour,
Wrapt in their own golden atmosphere.


GASTON LACHAISE
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
Tourest
rid altogether of contemporary “sculpture” is perhaps the
surest way of appreciating the achievement of Lachaise. This
coup of unadulterated intelligence has already been given by Mr.
W. H. Wright in four sentences which I lift from the masterly sixth
chapter of Modern Painting-
“After Michelangelo there was no longer any new inspiration for
sculpture. After Cézanne there was no longer any excuse for it.
He has made us see that painting can present a more solid vision
than that of any stone image. Against modern statues we can only
bump our heads: in the contemplation of modern painting we can
exhaust our intelligences."
I say masterly, because so long as the author keeps one or more eyes
on Cézanne it must be admitted by any intelligent person that his
analysis is unspeakably correct. Were the entire book devoted to a
consideration of Cézanne our own task would be confined to proving
that Lachaise does not produce "modern statues.” Unfortunately
this is not the case. Elsewhere the author remarks that Swinburne
brought the rhymed lyric to its highest development. And at one
point he mentions that “the aesthetic possibilities of the human form
were exhausted by” his old friend Michelangelo, with which it is a
trifle difficult to agree. How about the renowned Pablo? Or, to
take two far from colossal geniuses: Lembrach, in his lean girl at the
Armory Show (1913), and Brancusi, in his Princesse Bonaparte at
the Independent of is it three years past, did something more
than exciting. In the first case a super-El Greco-like significance
was pitilessly extorted from the human form, in the second the
human form was beautifully seduced into a sensual geometry. In
his feeling for his material, moreover, Brancusi showed for some time
genuine originality. But he reached an impasse very soon. Judg-
ing'from the recent bumps and buttons at the De Zayas Gallery he
is at present as dead as a doornail.
It must be admitted that Wright is Johnny on the spot when it


E. E. CUMMINGS
195
>
a
comes to Paul Manship-a “sound” man, of course, but no slave to
the Rodin tradition, nor the Saint Gaudens tradition, nor whatever
may have produced those fattish girls helplessly seated on either
hand as you enter the Boston Public Library. Manship’s statues,
including the enlightened Injun at the Metropolitan, remind one a
good deal of the remark (which appeared on the back page of I have
forgotten which French funny paper while la guerre was still with
us) of one gonzesse to another—“J'ai un bon truc chez les boches.
Je leur dis que je suis française; ça prend toujours.” Not that Man-
ship tells us that he is française (gender aside) but that in his sculp-
ture he is always chez les américains, besides having in everything a
bon truc, a certain cleverness, a something "fakey.” One wonders
whether his winning the Prix de Rome accounts for the fact that in
the last analysis Manship is neither a sincere alternative to thinking,
nor an appeal to the pure intelligence, but a very ingenious titil-
lation of that well-known element, the highly sophisticated unin-
telligence. At any rate, he was formerly very popular, just as
Nadelman (who appeals less subtly to the H. S. U.) is at present
supremely popular. Fundamentally Manship is one of those pro-
ducers of "modern statues” whom Wright's four sentences wipe off
the earth's face. His work is, of course, superior to the masterpieces
of such people as French, Barnard, Bartlett, the Borglums, and Bela
Pratt-in so far as something which is thoroughly dead is superior
to something which has never been alive.
Wright is, after all, correct in his main thesis. We have bumped
our heads altogether too often on "modern statues.” Until recently
we gave them a bump every time we passed the celebrated Arc de
Triomphe at Twenty-third street. And if we have been caught in
the modern sculpture section of the Metropolitan we have received
gratis such a massage of bumping as probably could not be dupli-
cated in any one place in America. Let us then turn to Lachaise and
exhaust our intelligences for a change, assuming that we can boast
thereof.
In the light of contemporary “criticism” this assumption is de-
cidedly daring. Lachaise has, in the past few years, made a large
number of artists extremely enthusiastic, and a great many gallery-
goers very nervous, not to mention the ladies and gentlemen who
may have died of anger. But the official “critics,” perhaps realizing
the disastrous consequences to “criticism” of a genuine reaction on


196
GASTON LACHAISE
their part to work of overwhelming aesthetic value, have as it were
agreed to risk nothing. An exception which proves the rule is Mr.
McBride Of The Sun, who on Sunday (February 17, 1918) said, in
the course of some hair-raising platitudes, “I like this statue (The
Elevation) immensely,” generously adding, “If the ribald laugh at
it and call it a fat woman they may.” In regard to Lachaise's per-
sonality The Dealers In Second-Hand Ideas (Strictly guaranteed.
Good as new.) are content to quote from the preface which Lachaise
wrote for the catalogue of the American sculptors' show (Bour-
geois Galleries, Spring of 1919). As to his work, the consensus of
"critical” opinion seems to be that it has “dignity” and is the “buoy-
ant” product of a Frenchman who was born, and came to America.
This ducking and side-stepping of Lachaise and his work by the
"critics” is more than very amusing. It is extremely valuable as
drawing a nice line between his personal achievement and contem-
porary “sculpture.” Like some people who have to have their heads
rubbed before they can go to sleep, the "critics” must have theirs
bumped before they can go to “criticism.” But in Lachaise (as we
shall, it is to be hoped un-"critically,” see) these gentlemen are up
against a man who not only refuses to bump their heads for them
but demands a profoundly intelligent expenditure of sensitivity.
“Criticism” or no “criticism,” to attempt an analysis of La-
chaise's personality strikes us as being almost equally futile and im-
pertinent. And yet, given the important negative obscurity in which
the “critics” would plunge that significant and essentially positive
part of him, a few however random and obvious remarks on the sub-
ject may not be wholly without value. Three things Lachaise, to
,
any one who knows him, is, and is beyond the shadow of a doubt:
inherently naif, fearlessly intelligent, utterly sincere. It is accurate
to say that his two greatest hates are the hate of insincerity and the
hate of superficiality. That Lachaise is supremely and incorrigibly
enthusiastic about his adopted country would appear (in the light of
that country's treatment of him) perfectly unreasonable, had it not
its reverse side, which is the above mentioned disgust with super-
ficiality and contempt for insincerity-two qualities which he attrib-
utes in a high degree to his native land. As his work proves, he has
no use for prettiness. This work of his, a crisp and tireless searching
for the truths of nature as against the facts of existence, negates
Rodin incidentally, as Cézanne's solid strivings incidentally negate
a


E. E. CUMMINGS
197
!
Monet. Temperamentally Lachaise is about as far from the typical
Frenchman (more especially from what America likes to believe is
the typical Frenchman) as can be imagined; as far, that is, as Cé-
zanne, whose famous hate of contemporary facility and superficial-
ity drove him to a recreation of nature which was at once new and
fundamental. Lachaise's perhaps favourite (French) word is sim-
ple. Applied to his work, it means something quite different from, as
in Brancusi, a mere economy of form through the elimination of
unessentials; it means form which completely expresses itself, form
that perfectly tactilises the beholder, as in the case of an electric,
machine which, being grasped, will not let the hand let go.
We confess that in the sumptuousness of certain of his perfectly
sensuous exquisitely modulated vaselike nudes we have felt some-
thing pleasantly akin to what are known as the least imperfect speci-
mens of Chinese art. This brings up an interesting trait of Lachaise's
character. He believes that the Orient fascinated him at one time to
the point of hypnotism and is resolved that the experience shall not
be repeated. Significantly in contrast to Gaugin, he turns his eyes to
the north. There is one thing which Lachaise would rather dò than
anything else, and that is to experience the bignesses and whitenesses
and silences of the polar regions. His lively interest in Esquimaux
drawings and customs stems from this absolutely inherent desire -- to
negate the myriad with the single, to annihilate the complicated-
nesses and prettinesses and trivialities of Southern civilizations with
the enormous, the solitary, the fundamental.
Lachaise's work is the absolutely authentic expression of a man
very strangely alive.
Every one has read, and no one has heard him boast, that he
"studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts 1898–1903, exhibited at the
Salon des Artistes Française 1899, worked with Lalique and Aube
1901,” took various prizes, and so forth. What no one knows, out-
side his immediate friends, with whom he is preternaturally frank,
is Lachaise's attitude toward triumphs which would have seduced a
mind less curiously and originally sensitive. The fact is that he
regards them with something between amusement and disgust. This
is not a question of modesty, but of direct and fearless thinking-at
which, as has been already stated, Lachaise is a past master. Of the
man who in his twenties has captured beyond question every trick of
academical technique we ordinarily expect that he will amuse him-


198
GASTON LACHAISE
a
self for a few years at least, if not for the remainder of his life, by
the little game which Mr. Huneker has (if we remember correctly)
called "exploding firecrackers on the steps of the institute.” If he
doesn't do this, it means (to use the conventional argument against
art schools) that in the realization of academical ideals whatever
originality the pupil may have had at the outset has been, if not
entirely eliminated, at any rate irrevocably diluted. Lachaise’s per-
sonality profoundly negates the possibility of self-advertising. As
for the instinctive art thesis, his work makes this answer: that the
man who by the gods has been fated to express himself will succeed
in expressing himself in spite of all schools; that the greatest artist
is the man whom no school can kill.
Even if Lachaise could have enjoyed making chumps of his teach-
ers for the pure fun of the thing, it is safe to say that he would never
have done so, any more than his genius would ever have made the
mistake which Rodin made, of accepting the technique which it had
so easily conquered and with that as a basis proceeding to surpass
conventional standards, thereby creating another academy. For a
Lachaise, as for a Cézanne, academies hold nothing beyond a knowl-
a
edge of tools. For this reason both men are intrinsically great
geniuses. The significance of their production lies in the fact that it
goes not beyond but under conventional art.
Frequent allusions having been made to “Lachaise's work,” it is
high time that we become specific. Last Spring at Penguin Lachaise
had on show, in addition to a bust and an alabaster bas-relief, a
thing seventeen inches long which he called The Mountain. It is
not the slightest exaggeration to say that, to any one genuinely either
cognizant or ignorant of Art As She Is Taught, this thing was a
distinct shock. Surrounded by a gurly sea of interesting chromatic
trash it lay, in colossal isolation : a new and sensual island. Merely
to contemplate its perfectly knit enormousness was to admit that
analysis of, or conscious thinking on our part about, a supreme aes-
thetic triumph, is a very pitiful substitute for that sensation which
is impossibly the equivalent of what the work itself thinks of us. It
is difficult to conceive any finer tribute to The Mountain than the
absence of "criticism” which it created. Bust and bas-relief came in
for their customary meagre share, but, so far as can be discovered,
The Mountain was never once mentioned: which fact may partially,
at any rate, excuse the sentences which follow.
a


E. E. CUMMINGS
199
Its completely integrated simplicity proclaims The Mountain to
be one of those superlative aesthetic victories which are accidents of
the complete intelligence, or the intelligence functioning at intui-
tional velocity. Its absolute sensual logic as perfectly transcends the
merely exact arithmetic of the academies as the rhythm which utters
its masses negates those static excrements of deliberate unthought
which are the delight of certain would-be “primitives.” Let us as a
specimen of the latter take a painter: say Zorach. In being specta-
tors of his work we are charmed, lulled, by the lure of shapes which
imitate and we are tempted to say duplicate the early most simple
compositions of mankind. Our intelligence is as it were tempo-
rarily numbed into inactivity by the work's “emotional appeal”.
but only temporarily, since it is obvious that no art which depends
for its recognition upon the casting of a spell on the intelligence can,
except in the case of an undeveloped mind, endure beyond a few
moments or a few hours at best. The spell wears off, the intelligence
rushes in, the work is annihilated. Herein is discovered the secret
of that “fakey" feeling with which we are inevitably left by the
designs of this unquestionably sincere artist.
In contrast to this self consciously attempted naivete on the part
of a twentieth-century adult there is unself conscious expression,
that of the child who has not yet inherited the centuries and the
savage whose identity with his environment has not yet become a
prey to civilization, which-eminent aestheticians to the contrary-
is of the utmost significance to aesthetics. The stories by Harlow
Atwood in a recent number of Playboy, which unfortunately caters
habitually to the Zorach audience, are a supreme and exquisite ex-
ample. Two of Denise's paintings that Lachaise has, which she did
before sophistication set in, are another. With Harlow and Denise,
A.D. 194, are the authors respectively of that most amazingly beau-
tiful of all American Indian folk-tales, The Man Who Married A
Bear, and certain forms and colours out of Africa. All these demand
for their complete appreciation that, far from being mere spectators,
we allow our intelligences to be digested; and not until this occurs do
they cease to excite in us amusement or mépris, and reveal their sig-
nificance. That is to say, they require of us an intelligent process
of the highest order, namely the negation on our part, by thinking,
of thinking; whereas in an "art" which emulates naivete through
intelligent processes the case is entirely different. In the work of


200
GASTON LACHAISE
а
*
Zorach and his ilk our role is that of spectator, never anything more.
But the inexcusable and spontaneous scribblings which children
make on sidewalks, walls, anywhere, preferably with coloured chalk,
cannot be grasped until we have accomplished the thorough destruc-
tion of the world. By this destruction alone we cease to be specta-
tors of a ludicrous and ineffectual striving and, involving ourselves
in a new and fundamental kinesis, become protagonists of the child's
vision.
To analyze child art in a sentence is to say that houses, trees, smoke,
people, etc., are depicted not as nouns but as verbs. The more genu-
ine child art is, the more it is, contrary to the belief of those incapa-
ble persons who are content merely to admire it, purely depictive. In
denying that the child “represents” and substituting for “representa-
tion” some desperately overworked word like “expression,” these
people are only showing their hostility to the academies, just as when
they tell us (which is true) that the bad artist is the representational
artist. But, as has been sometimes pointed out, the artist who repre-
sents is bad not because he represents: he is bad because he represents
something which a camera can represent better. This means that he
.
is depicting something that is second, or rather nth, hand, which a
child most distinctly is not. Consequently to appreciate child art
we are compelled to undress one by one the soggy nouns whose
agglomeration constitutes the mechanism of Normality, and finally
to liberate the actual crisp organic squirm--the IS.
Academies are when everything included in the abstract and
therefore peculiarly soggy noun Nature is accepted superficially or
as a noun, and as such declined. In this case "art" is technically
nothing but an important prepositional connective-Mr. Sargent's
portrait OF Some One, Mr. French’s statue OF Something (to take
the worst painter and the worst sculptor in America)-between two
nouns: an artist and a sitter (if we may make so bold as to say that
Grief is it sat for Mr. French). But painting had its Cézanne,
whose incredulous and otherwise energetic intelligence resented the
doctrine that walking in the wake of some one who is smoking a
cigar is vastly superior to smoking the cigar yourself, and by whom
the academies, and their important fattish remarks about facts by
means of colours, were significantly undermined with minute sculp-
tural shocks of chromatic truth. Insofar as to understand some-
thing is, not completely to taste or smell or hear or see or otherwise


E. E. CUMMINGS
201
to touch it, and to believe something is, not completely to under-
stand it, Cézanne was compelled to mis- or disbelieve and to dis- or
misunderstand "Nature"; and he disbelieved and misunderstood it
at the age of faith and hope so violently and so carefully as to pre-
sent us with a significant conjugation of the chromatic verb which is
just as inherently intense as, from the plastic standpoint, declensions
and nouns are inherently flabby. Precisely in this sense Cézanne be-
came truly naif-not by superficially contemplating and admiring
the art of primitive peoples, but by carefully misbelieving and vio-
lently disunderstanding a second-hand world.
To the vocal gesture with preceded grammar Lachaise is com-
pletely sensitive. Consequently, in his enormous and exquisite way,
Lachaise negates OF with IS. To say that the 1918 exhibition at
the Bourgeois Galleries drew from the “critics" more statements of
ungentle unintelligence, and from the gallery-going public more
expressions of enthusiastic ignorance, than any one-man show of
sculpture previously held on the Avenue, is but to do justice to all
concerned, including Monsieur Bourgeois. The Elevation, which,
as we have already noted, occasioned, in the case of Mr. McBride,
the sole unbiased reaction of “criticism” to this exhibition, was re-
sponsible for, on the one hand, more unclever exasperation and on
the other more fulsome ecstasy than all the rest of the show put
together. Lest any should accuse us of hyperbole, we will quote a
sample of each "point of view” and let the reader decide for himself
whether or no one is more incredibly meaningless than the other.
a
“It might be a satire on the stout woman who pinches her waist
and wears high heels that stand her on her toes for life, or it might
be an idealization of her. The answer is in the point of view. Mr.
Lachaise is himself not very definite on this score. If it is a satire, it
is curious that he should employ the figure as a motif so often. Mr.
Lachaise is one of those modernists who hark back to the serenity of
Greece and forward to new rhythms which shall be more active.
"She is the mother of men, with the scorn of wisdom and domi-
nance on her brow. She is an unathletic-a queen bee-Amazon, dif-
ferent both from the 'clinging vine' or the pioneer companion that
her mothers were. She is the creature toward which creation groan-
eth. She is man's old 'delicious burden,' buoyed by his reverence
like a mist above the ground.”
>


202
GASTON LACHAISE
Perhaps it should be stated that one "critic," instead of mentioning
The Elevation by name, presented the world with a synopsis of
what he, she or it is pleased to call “modernism.”
1
“One regrets that an artist so evidently serious in his aims should
sacrifice too often to the extraordinary cult of ugliness which seems
to have taken the place of beauty on the altars of 'modernism' à
outrance. Strength, power, individuality, all of these qualities,
must be conceded to Mr. Lachaise, but the tendency to emphasize
and glorify the unsightly because it is supposed to represent force
and have some deep symbolic meaning, can only lead to the apothe-
osis of ugliness, a consummation scarcely to be desired, even by the
most ardent exponents of modernism."
>
The reason why all official and unofficial “criticism” OF The
Elevation fails, and fails so obviously as in the specimens quoted, is
this: The Elevation is not a noun, not a "modern statue," not a
statue OF Something or Some One BY a man named Gaston La-
chaise—but a complete tactile self-orchestration, a magnificently
conjugating largeness, an IS. The Elevation may not be declined;
it should not and cannot be seen; it must be heard: heard as a super-
Wagnerian poem of flesh, a gracefully colossal music. In mistaking
The Elevation for a noun the "critics” did something superhumanly
asinine. In creating The Elevation as a verb Lachaise equalled the
dreams of the very great artists of all time.
On the ground that it leads us to a consideration of Lachaise's
new show at the Bourgeois Galleries, which event is after all the
excuse for this article, we ask the reader's pardon for boring him
with a final specimen of "criticism.” The author is a distinctly
official “critic,” Mr. Guy Pène du Bois of the Evening Post, of
whom it may fairly be said that he succeeds in taking himself more
seriously than all the other members of his very defunct profession
put together. He is speaking of the exhibition of American sculp-
tures before mentioned.
9
“Indeed, in the instance of many of these exhibits, when one has
,
said that they are amusing, full credit has been done to their crea-
tors. This is entirely true neither in the instance of Lachaise nor of
Diederich. It is true that they are of the ultra-fashionables of


E. E. CUMMINGS
203
sculpture, but it is also true that they are more than this, that they
are exceedingly intelligent men, endowed, moreover, with more than
the usual allotment of talent. Just now they reach for a very small
and very particular audience, one jaded by experience in art, and
demanding certain definite shocks, rare expressions, in order to be
aroused. Lachaise's figure of a woman is a real contribution to the
so slowly growing gallery of portraits of her.”
a
Unless all signs err, Mr. Guy Pène du Bois is due to get-or should
we say has already got, since by the time The Dial appears the new
Bourgeois show will be in full swing-what may without exaggera-
tion be called the surprise of his "critical” life, when he looks over
the menu of the latest Lachaise exhibition. For in contrast to the
previous show, in which the titles (Rhythme, Anéantissement, etc.)
were chosen by Monsieur Bourgeois, the elements of the present
show are, as we trust, to be named by Lachaise himself; in which
case the "critic” of the Evening Post will find himself confronted
by at least two titles which not only knock his “reach for a very
small and very particular audience, one jaded by experience in art,
and demanding certain definite shocks, rare expressions, in order to
be aroused” thesis into a cocked hat, but will, we are confident, give
him an attack of goose-flesh into the bargain-id est, Love and
Home. And why? because while any one except Lachaise might
stand accused of insincerity in applying these stand-bys of morality
to work whose inherent, which is to say ultimate--significance is
purely for aesthetics, Lachaise has never stood and never will stand,
apropos either his personality or his work, accused of this particular
thing. Were it possible so to accuse him, Mr. Guy Pène du Bois
would in our opinion be incurring considerable personal danger in so
doing. It looks to us as though the gentleman is in the extraordi-
narily painful, not to say peculiarly undignified, position of being
up a tree. At least we may expect of our “critic” that in this predica-
ment he will comfort himself with the last line of that most popular
wartime song, America I Love You, which goes, “And there're a
hundred million others like me.”
Unless some unforeseen accident occurs, the present exhibition
should include a number of drawings (which totally negate the fa-
vourite contention of “criticism,” to the effect that Lachaise's work
constitutes the doing of one thing over and over), the bas-relief Dusk
a


204
GASTON LACHAISE
(already reproduced in the January Dial), two reclining figures
(Home and Portrait), a diving figure, the colossal Love, and last-
and to our thinking best — The Mountain. We have already, in all
probability, talked too much and said too little (to use a peculiarly
conventional phrase) about The Mountain; yet it is without shame
that we are guilty of a parting word, for which Lachaise's infre-
quently paralleled mastery of stone is wholly responsible. In The
Mountain as it appears in this exhibition Lachaise has completely
enjoyed an opportunity to work directly in the stone Himself as he
calls it. He has enjoyed it as his contemporaries to whom stone is
not a tactile dream, but a disagreeable everyday tangible nuisance to
be handled by paid subordinates, can never enjoy it. In the trans-
formation from the patined plaster (which was at Penguin and later,
unofficially, at the Bourgeois Galleries) to the stone now on view,
several vastly minute and enormously significant changes have oc-
curred-changes dictated purely by the superior medium. To speak
accurately, now for the first time The Mountain actualizes the orig-
inal conception of its creator; who, in contrast to the contemptible
conventionally called "sculptor," thinks in stone whenever and be-
cause stone is not, and to whom the distinction between say bronze
and alabaster is a distinction not between materials but, on the con-
trary, between ideas. In The Mountain as it IS Lachaise becomes
supremely himself, the master of every aspect of a surface, every
flexion of a mass, every trillionth of a phenomenon.
The reader who expects an analysis of the other work which we
· have mentioned as being included in the exhibition (Dusk, Portrait,
Love, etc.) is due for a pleasant disappointment. The very good
reasons for our not attempting such an analysis (or rather analyses,
since, once again-the whole tribe of Defunctives to the contrary-
Lachaise’s “point of view” never repeats itself) are briefly: first, we
do not feel that we are up to the job; second, if this essai means any-
thing whatever it means that the only very great sinners are the
Gentleman Dealers In Second-Hand Thoughts. God knows that in
the course of the preceding pages we have sinned deeply enough.
Rather than despicably to descend into mere praise of an artist who,
if only for the reason that we profoundly admire him, does not
merit from us a so conventional insult-a man in relation to whose
extraordinary achievement praise cannot but constitute a sumptuous
impertinence, we prefer to maintain or perhaps to regain silence.
a


WOMAN'S HEAD. BY
GASTON LACHAISE






A DRAWING. BY
GASTON LACHAISE


4



Photograph by Ward
Courtesy of the Bourgeois Galleries
FIGURE. BY GASTON LACHAISE






Photograph by Ward
Courtesy of the Bourgeois Galleries
A PORTRAIT. BY GASTON LACHAISE





!
KIRI NO MEIJIYAMA
A NOH-DRAMA IN JAPANESE SYLLABICS
BY S. FOSTER DAMON
I
a
A noble enters, fanning himself, talking as he crosses the path
to the stage:
AM Kiri no Meijiyama, who was travelling to Senako when in
a useless storm my boat was lost, buried in wave-flowers. The
storm has vanished, the evening is pleasant, and I have sauntered
out, accompanied only by my ancestral swords, to savour the de-
licious melancholy of the autumn moon.
He pauses, and holds his fan in an attitude.
,
In the field of heaven the clouds bow their heads,
having fallen asleep, cropping the stars.
CHORUS (waving their fans):
The sky is freckled with shapeless moons,
but over the earth
rises a luminous mist
that is tangled in the branches.
KIRI: The mist is troublesome. I cannot find the path.
CHORUS: My head is confused with the thick brightness.
Are these ghosts, mingled with the thrill of insect cries?
Are there golden eyes peering?
KIRI: Strange! to see fireflies in the mist!
Over the bridge to the stage have approached an old man, an
old woman, and a young girl. They are slightly smaller
than one would expect. They move curiously. They now
stand motionless, the man and the woman together, the girl
behind them. Kiri approaches them as through a mist.
What is this, all surrounded
by fronds of bamboo?
Surely not a hut?
What great fortune for the night!
KIRI: I was not sure, but it seems to be a small hut. The moon–
--silhouettes the bamboo leaves
like shadows on the shoji.
CHORUS:
a
CHORUS:


206
KIRI NO MEIJIYAMA
CHORUS:
CHORUS:
a
CHORUS:
KIRI: But here, where I saw the fireflies, is a little old man. Kind
sir, I am lost in the mist, and seek a lodging for the night.
THE OLD MAN (suddenly moves and bows): Our miserable hut is
unworthy a guest with two swords.
Mist is deepening
until wave-flowers
bury the whole world.
Has winter come already?
KIRI: Surely you can find space.
THE OLD MAN: Old woman! Prepare saki, for we have a guest.
Is it a winter snow-drift
that breathes on us all ?
THE OLD WOMAN (suddenly moves and bows): May the guest be
welcome! I will prepare.
kiri: Pray do not trouble yourself.
THE OLD MAN: Pray be pleased to step over our miserable
threshold.
The autumn leaves seem
immovable with terror.
The mist still thickens.
Why do I not hear
the stag belling for his mate?
KIRI: How dark the hut is! I can see nothing. But what is that?
Are there fireflies in the hut? No, for they do not move
My hand is on my sword.
THE OLD MAN (holding an imaginary lamp): Pray please to be
lighted.
KIRI: What a beautiful girl!
CHORUS.( softly):Outside, the trees exhibit
brocades of yellow and red;
but within the hut,
snow drips from cherry blossoms.
KIRI: - unexpected delight! Pray pardon my rudeness. (He
stumbles.) The sun has blinded me. What is
THE GIRL: Peach-flower is my over-worthy name. Pray be wel-
come.
She moves away, her face hidden by her fan.
KIRI: Surely her eyes flared at me, like pale gold. Shoki, protect
me, if there be need! But she is too lovely.
.
.
your name?


S. FOSTER DAMON
207
CHORUS:
THE GIRL:
The little old woman approaches. She skips queerly; but Kiri
sees nothing of it, gazing at the girl.
THE OLD WOMAN: Honourable sir, pray to taste of our miserable
rice-wine. (He drinks a small cupful.)
KIRI: Hot wine is pleasant on an autumn evening.
KIRI (to the girl): Is not the science of flowers known to one dwell-
ing here in the midst of nature?
THE GIRL: Autumn flowers are miserable; spring is the time to
study flowers.
The mist vanishes.
Warriors of ancient times rein in their horses
to drink the mists of the marsh.
Under the awful silence of the moving moon
the faces of the soldiers are the colour of rain.
KIRI:
Should the humming bird
taste not, behold! in three days
the blossoms of the peach-tree
have gone for ever.
1
The petals vanish
that under the leaves
fruit may timidly mature.
KIRI:
But the humming bird,
awaiting the fruit,
would starve miserably.
THE OLD WOMAN (approaching): This final cup of special wine will
make the night warm and full of dreams.
CHORUS (fluttering their fans):
-eyes of beaten gold!
KIRI: If the girl drinks, then I also dare drink.
The girl pretends to drink, but empties her cup behind her back.
Kiri hides his wine under the mat.
THE OLD MAN (singing outside):
From out the five cups
I have drunk five moons; yet
still
but one moon above!
The old man and the old woman retire. The girl arranges her
toilet with her hand-mirror.
KIRI: The moon-flower is mute, gazing at itself in the pool; the
twin flowers are thrice beautiful.


208
KIRI NO MEIJIYAMA
CHORUS:
CHORUS:
Eyes winged with delight
behold not past the threshold
the needles of the pine-tree
clear against the moon.
The night bubbles with faint ghosts;
but his eyes and words and thoughts
are entangled in her hair.
THE GIRL (faintly): When the flower has fallen
then are all flowers
equal in oblivion.
Her folded bosom bears an aureole
woven of ferns and thin dreams.
Since I have known you,
henceforth the moonlight will be
a cold companion.
CHORUS (two waving their fans with slow movements, the other
two holding their fans closed):
The peach-flower faints with thirst,
but the moth arrives.
Pulsing wings glisten with dew.
Ah! mingled honey and dew!
The moon has entered the pool.
Is it the pool that shines? Is it the moon?
THE GIRL:
SCENE II
.
.
KIRI: The saki was strong; I slept against my will. How fair the
moonlight falls across her body! Ah, moulded bosom! now
unmoving Her arm is chilled that was my pillow!-
Peach-flower!-Aah! ...
CHORUS (rapidly): Serpents of ice embrace him!
Speech is frozen in his throat!
Who has done this thing?
Alas! the bride of a night
lies headless in his embrace.
Was the old man drunk?
Alas, the bride of a night
lies bloodless upon his sleeve.
Ah! Horror, horror!


S. FOSTER DAMON
209
CHORUS:
CHORUS:
CHORUS:
KIRI: But I, whose ancestors carried steel fans into battle, I will
avenge this insult. My swords are here, safe beside me.
Where is the old man? Her kiss is not yet cold! Where is
the old woman?
His hungry strides shake the house,
his fists beat through the shoji.
But what does he see?
Horror, horror! the bodies
headless and bloodless
of the old man and woman!
KIRI: If it be robbers-
the flame of
my sword
will burn them alive;
one stroke from head to navel!
But hark-!
KIRI: There is surely noise of voices outside the door.
He steals to the door.
O bat in the willow-tree,
stir not more softly!
Is it a leaf that flutters?
a
The goblins enter, holding out their masks in a row.
KIRI: I see no one. But no! Theré-
CHORUS:
There on the pine branch
stretched across the moon,
three heads in a row,
chattering to each other;
pendant from each one
a bowel-cluster!
KIRI: Horrible! horrible! These are goblins, these are angry
ghosts, that suck the blood of the innocent guest! How fortu-
nate that I did not drink the last cup of wine. I will go de-
stroy their bodies, for then they must die.
CHORUS: Eyes of hollow gold gleam against the moon
while he takes the light bodies of the man and woman
down to the bread-stove. What a flight of sparks!
They were consumed instantly, being quite bloodless.
When the morning comes, they think to slip in
their bodies, screw their heads on
nicely, that none can guess it,


210
KIRI NO MEIJIYAMA
CHORUS:
and prey again on humans.
Haha, they are lost!
But see, they are flying here.
Silence! Kiri, speed!
for he yet must destroy the body of the young girl.
THE OLD MAN: No, no! Now is the time. My bowels are thirsty
and dry. They must be swollen with good rich blood.
THE OLD WOMAN: You fasten on his neck and I on his belly.
THE GIRL: I beg you, give me but one night more. To-morrow he
will stay, for he is enamoured. .
THE OLD MAN: No, no! Now is the time!
THE OLD WOMAN: You fasten on his arm.
THE GIRL: He will stay, he will stay, I tell you!
He stands above her body.
Quick, Kiri, hasten!
He stands above her body,
picks it up, runs through the house;
thrust it in, Kiri,
and destroy the brood!
They are approaching!
They fly in through the window !!
THE THREE: Aie! Aie! Our bodies are moved; the man is gone!
Seek him in the house, seek him in the forest!
KIRI: Beautiful body, even to save your soul, I must destroy you.
But I, Kiri no Meijiyama, I, flourisher of two swords, have I
the strength?
THE THREE: Kill! Kill him! Kill! Aah!!
Quick, quick! They seek you!
Quick, lest golden eyes
strike the strength from your muscles!
At last! It is done! Now their souls may be saved.
But Kiri must flee.
KIRI:
kiri: Hark! Their cries rouse me from a delicate torpor. I must
seek shelter in the wood, and then gain the nearest town.
The dawn stirs behind the hills,
the very moon is pallid.
Ah, desolation!
CHORUS:
What are they weaving
through the tall forest?
CHORUS:


S. FOSTER DAMON
211
1
CHORUS:
1
Are they bats searching for mates?
No! no!
you
will not find them.
No, they are lost for ever,
and your souls must now dissolve
like frost on the ferns.
Why must you be so angry
when you are released at last
from this long karma of blood?
Exeunt goblins. Re-enter Kiri.
KIRI: They are deep in the forest now; I will venture out. I follow
the path to the nearest town.
THE GIRL (re-entering): Kiri, where is my body?
KIRI: That you cannot know.
THE GIRL: Kiri, where is my body?
What is this sound in the dawn?
Has a withered bunch of grapes
grown a head; and can it speak?
O monstrous! strike it, Kiri!
THE GIRL: Kiri! What have you done with my body? For I shall
die without it
KIRI: I cannot give you your body. The peach-flower's petals are
shrivelled.
THE GIRL: Kiri, last night you loved me.
kiri: The moon vanished with the coming of day. Leave me,
Peach-flower. Your body is destroyed. Leave me, let me pass.
Ah! What a wail! She sinks down
weeping, on a chestnut bough.
Truly, it is sad.
But see, she flies after him.
THE GIRL: Kiri, last night I loved you; and I even dared my par-
ents' wrath when I tried to save you. You have destroyed me.
Kiri, embrace me.
KIRI: My blood is too precious.
THE GIRL: Kiri, embrace me in your arms. A last time, that I may
have a memory for eternity. . Kiri, embrace me!
KIRI: I have a sword.
Fly, fly! you have angered her.
The flower shows yellow teeth,
the forest-fern growls, wolf-like!
CHORUS:
a
CHORUS:


212
KIRI NO MEIJIYAMA
Kiri stands motionless, his hand over his face, while she darts
her mask over and about him.
But no, Kiri stands firmly.
She darts about him
like an angry bee;
he protects his face
from her fatal lips
with the sleeve of his left arm,
not wishing to use his sword.
What can she desire?
Does she thirst for blood?
Beat her off, Kiri!
And what has she done?
Finding her efforts useless,
in a last rage of despair, in a last thirst of passion,
a
a
she has caught his sleeve with desperate teeth,
and hangs exhausted-dead, maybe-- who knows?
The girl remains on the stage, entirely hidden in her gauze, the
mask being in Kiri's sleeve.
KIRI: I cannot loosen her from my sleeve. What will people think,
seeing this? Ah, golden eyes, closed at last! Why did you
not remain, my mistress in the moonlight? The night opened
a hundred dawns in my eyes, the autumn unfolded a thousand
springs in my breast.
Alas! Until now
never have I felt truly
the sadness of things.
A priest enters and addresses him.
The girl, unnoticed, moves to the other side of the stage from
the priest.
THE PRIEST: Who are you, young man, that sits weeping by the
roadside, holding a girl's head in your sleeve? I fear there
has been a misdeed!
KIRI: Sir, this was an angry spirit, that attacked me, and I cannot
rid myself of her. I beg you to say a prayer or so over her,
that she may rest without suffering.
THE PRIEST: Gladly, gladly, young sir, if your words be true.
CHORUS (The girl, at first expressing anger and amazement, leaves
the stage, with the last words of the chorus, in ecstasy):
a


S. FOSTER DAMON
213
CHORUS:
a
O marvel, at the first sound
of the green beads' click,
the head has dropped from the sleeve!
O wonder, at the first sound
of the priest's chanting,
the deadly passion must melt
frozen in her jaw!
The flesh falls in flakes,
resolves into a small mist
flowing on the moss,
evaporating!
Only an old toothless skull remains on the moss!
THE PRIEST: Your words, sir, were true. But cannot I be of more
assistance ? For there have been strange tales around here re-
cently of strong men shrivelled in a night; and it seems that
you might possess knowledge to open the mystery.
KIRI: There were three that invited me to their hut in last night's
mist; and they planned to suck my blood, but I escaped. Here
is the spot, but I do not see the hut.
THE PRIEST: There was no mist last night, but a clear moon. There
is nothing here but an old tomb fallen in ruins. O marvel !
for the inscription says that two centuries ago were buried
here a father, mother, and daughter, all executed .
CHORUS:
The father loved the daughter;
the father loved the mother,
and they became angry ghosts.
THE PRIEST: Let us say prayers for the peaceful progress of their
unfortunate souls. For their passions survived their bodies;
they were incarnated as shushin. And now, at last, they have
escaped by you surely the torments of this monstrous existence.
CHORUS: Let us pray for those bound to the wheel of anguish,
caught in the nets of heaven, earth, and hell.
May Kwannon lead us to the realms of the Bodai!
May Amida gather us to the west !
May our redemption be wholly perfect
when heaven, with its lotus-throned angels,
and earth, with its very trees and mountains,
and the seven hells of the three great sins
be folded and drawn into endless Nibbana.
a
a


DREAMS AND FACTS
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL
I
TO
HE influence of our wishes upon our beliefs is a matter of
common knowledge and observation, yet the nature of this
influence is very generally misconceived. It is customary to sup-
pose that the bulk of our beliefs are derived from some rational
ground, and that desire is only an occasional disturbing force. The
exact opposite of this would be nearer the truth: the great mass of
beliefs by which we are supported in our daily life is merely the
bodying forth of desire, corrected here and there, at isolated points,
by the rude shock of fact. Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened
sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in
the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somno-
lence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at
night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; but he might, with
an equal measure of truth, have said the same of the day-dreams
which we call beliefs.
There are three ways by which this non-rational origin of our
convictions can be demonstrated: there is the way of psycho-analy-
sis, which, starting from an understanding of the insane and the
hysterical, gradually makes it plain how little, in essence, these
victims of malady differ from ordinary healthy people; then there
is the way of the sceptical philosopher, showing how feeble is the
rational evidence for even our most scientific beliefs, such as that
the sun will rise to-morrow; and finally there is the way of common
observation of men. It is only the last of these three that I propose
to consider.
The lowest savages, as they have become known through the
labours of anthropologists, are not found groping in conscious
ignorance amid phenomena that they are aware of not understand-
ing. On the contrary, they have innumerable beliefs, so firmly
held as to control all their more important actions. They believe
that by eating the flesh of an animal or a warrior it is possible to


BERTRAND RUSSELL
215
acquire the virtues possessed by the victim when alive. Many of
them believe that to pronounce the name of their chief is such sacri-
lege as to bring instant death; they even go so far as to alter all
words in which his name occurs as one of the syllables; for exam-
ple, if we had a king named John, we should speak of a jonquil as
(say) a George-quil and of a dungeon as a dun-George. When
they advance to agriculture, and weather becomes important for
the food supply, they believe that magical incantations or the kin-
dling of small fires will cause rain to come' or the sun to burn
brightly. They believe that when a man is slain his blood, or
ghost, pursues the slayer to obtain vengeance, but can be misled by
a simple disguise -such as painting the face red or putting on mourn-
ing. The first half of this belief has obviously originated from
those who feared murder, the second from those who had commit,
ted it.
Nor are irrational beliefs confined to savages. A great majority
of the human race have religious opinions different from our own,
and therefore groundless. People interested in politics, with the
exception of politicians, have passionate convictions upon innu-
merable questions which must appear incapable of rational decision
to any unprejudiced person. Voluntary workers in a contested elec-
tion always believe that their side will win, no matter what reason
there may be for expecting defeat. There can be no doubt that, in
the autumn of 1914, the immense majority of the German nation
felt absolutely certain of victory for Germany. In this case, fact
has intruded and dispelled the dream. But if, by some means, all
non-German historians could be prevented from writing during the
next hundred years, the dream would reinstate itself: the early
triumphs would be remembered, while the ultimate disaster would
be forgotten.
Politeness is the practice of respecting that part of a man's be-
liefs which is specially concerned with his own merits or those of
his group. Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud
of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a
summer day. Some of these convictions are personal to himself:
they tell him of his virtues and excellences, the affection of his
friends and the respect of his acquaintances, the rosy prospects of
his career, and his unflagging energy in spite of delicate health.
Next come convictions of the superior excellence of his family:


216
DREAMS AND FACTS
how his father had that unbending rectitude which is now so rare,
and brought up his children with a strictness beyond what is to be
found among modern parents; how his sons are carrying all before
them in school-games, and his daughter is not the sort of girl to
make an imprudent marriage. Then there are beliefs about his
class, which, according to his station, is the best socially, or the
most intelligent, or the most deserving morally, of the classes in
the community-though all are agreed that the first of these merits
is more desirable than the second, and the second than the third.
Concerning his nation, also, almost every man cherishes comfort-
able delusions. “Foreign nations, I am sorry to say, do as they do
do.” So said Mr. Podsnap, giving expression, in these words, to
one of the deepest sentiments of the human heart. Finally we
come to the theories that exalt mankind in general, either abso-
lutely or in comparison with the "brute creation.” Men have souls,
though animals have not; man is the “rational animal”; any pecu-
liarly cruel or unnatural action is called “brutal” or “bestial”
a (although such actions are in fact distinctively human); God made
man in his own image, and the welfare of man is the ultimate pur-
pose of the universe.
We have thus a hierarchy of comforting beliefs: those private to
the individual, those which he shares with his family, those com-
mon to his class or his nation, and finally those that are equally
delightful to all mankind. If we desire good relations with a man,
we must respect these beliefs; we do not, therefore, speak of a man
to his face as we should behind his back. The difference increases
as his remoteness from ourselves grows greater. In speaking to a
brother, we have no need of conscious politeness as regards his par-
ents. The need of politeness is at its maximum in speaking with
foreigners, and is so irksome as to be paralyzing to those who are
accustomed only to compatriots. I remember once suggesting to an
untravelled American that possibly there were a few small points
in which the British Constitution compared favourably with that
of the United States. He instantly fell into a towering passion;
having never heard such an opinion before, he could not imagine
that any one seriously entertained it. We had both failed in polite-
ness, and the result was disaster.
But the results of failure in politeness, however bad from the
point of view of a social occasion, are admirable from the point of


BERTRAND RUSSELL
217
dispelling myths. There are two ways in which our natural beliefs
are corrected: one the contact with fact, as when we mistake a
poisonous fungus for a mushroom and suffer pain in consequence;
the other, when our beliefs conflict, not directly with objective fact,
but with the opposite beliefs of other men. One man thinks it
lawful to eat pork, but not beef; another, beef but not pork. The
usual result of this difference of opinion has been bloodshed; but
gradually there is beginning to be a rationalist opinion that per-
haps neither is really sinful. Modesty, the correlative of polite-
ness, consists in pretending not to think better of ourselves and our
belongings than of the man we are speaking to and his belongings.
It is only in China that this art is thoroughly understood. I am
told that, if you ask a Chinese mandarin after the health of his
wife and children, he will reply: “That contemptible slut and her
verminous brood are, as your Magnificence deigns to be informed,
in the enjoyment of rude health.” But such elaboration demands
a dignified and leisurely existence; it is impossible in the swift but
important contacts of business or politics. Step by step, relations
with other human beings dispel the myths of all but the most suc-
cessful. Personal conceit is dispelled by brothers, family conceit
by schoolfellows, class-conceit by politics, national conceit by de-
feat in war or commerce. But human conceit remains, and in this
region, so far as the effect of social intercourse is concerned, the
myth-making faculty has free play. Against this form of delusion,
a partial corrective is found in science; but perhaps the corrective
can never be more than partial, for it may be that without some
credulity science itself would crumble and collapse.
II
Men's personal and group-dreams may be ludicrous, but their col-
lective human dreams, to us who cannot pass outside the circle of hu-
manity, are pathetic. The universe as astronomy reveals it is very
vast. How much there may be beyond what our telescopes show, we
cannot tell; but what we can know is of unimaginable immensity. In
the visible world, the milky way is a tiny fragment; within this frag-
ment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our
planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure
carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat un-


218
DREAMS AND FACTS
usual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years,
until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are
compounded. They divide their time between labour designed to
postpone the moment of dissolution for themselves, and frantic strug-
gles to hasten it for others of their kind. Natural convulsions peri-
odically destroy some thousands or millions of them, and disease
prematurely sweeps away many more. These events are considered
to be misfortunes; but when men succeed in inflicting similar de-
struction by their own efforts, they rejoice, and give thanks to God.
In the life of the solar system, the period during which the exis-
tence of man will have been physically possible is a minute portion
а
of the whole; but there is some reason to hope that even before this
period is ended man will have set a term to his own existence by his
efforts at mutual annihilation. Such is man's life viewed from the
outside.
But such a view of life, we are told, is intolerable, and would
destroy the instinctive energy by which men persist. The way of
escape that they have found is through religion and philosophy.
However alien and indifferent the outer world may seem, we are
assured by our comforters that there is harmony beneath the appar-
ent conflict. All the long development from the original nebula is
supposed to lead up to man as the culmination of the process.
Hamlet is a very well-known play, yet few readers would have
any recollection of the part of the First Sailor, which consists of the
four words: “God bless you, sir.” But suppose a society of men
whose sole business in life was to act this part; suppose them iso-
lated from contact with the Hamlets, Horatios, and even Guilden-
sterns; would they not invent systems of literary criticism accord-
ing to which the four words of the First Sailor were the kernel of
the whole drama ? Would they not punish with ignominy or exile
any one of their number who should suggest that other parts were
possibly of equal importance? And the life of mankind takes up
a much smaller proportion of the universe than the First Sailor's
speech does of Hamlet, but we cannot listen behind the scenes to
the rest of the play, and we know very little of its characters or
plot.
When we think of mankind, we think primarily of ourself as
its representative; we therefore think well of mankind, and con-
sider its preservation important. Mr. Jones, the non-conformist


BERTRAND RUSSELL
219
grocer, is sure that he deserves eternal life, and that a universe
which refused it to him would be intolerably bad. But when he
thinks of Mr. Robinson, his Anglican competitor, who mixes sand
with his sugar and is lax about Sunday, he feels that the universe
might well carry charity too far. To complete his happiness, there
is need of hell fire for Mr. Robinson; in this way the cosmic im-
portance of man is preserved, but the vital distinction between
friends and enemies is not obliterated by a weak universal benevo-
lence. Mr. Robinson holds the same view with the parts inverted,
and general happiness results.
In the days before Copernicus there was no need of philosophic
subtlety to maintain the anthropocentric view of the world. The
heavens visibly revolved about the earth, and on the earth man
had dominion over all the beasts of the field. But when the earth
lost its central position, man, too, was deposed from his eminence,
and it became necessary to invent a metaphysic to correct the "cru-
dities” of science. This task was achieved by those who are called
“idealists,” who maintain that the world of matter is unreal ap-
pearance, while the reality is Mind or Spirit-transcending the
mind or spirit of the philosopher as he transcends common men. So
far from there being no place like home, these thinkers assure us
that every place is like home. In all our best—that is, in all those
tastes which we share with the philosopher in question, we are at
one with the universe. Hegel assures us that the universe resem-
bles the Prussian State of his day; his English followers consider it
more analogous to a bi-cameral plutocratic democracy. The rea-
sons offered for these views are carefully camouflaged so as to
conceal even from their authors the connection with human wishes:
they are derived, nominally, from such dry sources as logic and the
analysis of propositions. But the influence of wishes is shown by
the fallacies committed, which all tend in one direction. When a
man adds up an account, he is much more likely to make a mistake
in his favour than to his detriment; and when a man reasons, he
is more apt to incur fallacies which favour his wishes than such as
thwart them. And so it comes that, in the study of nominally
abstract thinkers, it is their mistakes that give the key to their
personality.
Many may contend that, even if the systems men have invented
are untrue, they are harmless and comforting, and should be left
1


220
DREAMS AND FACTS
.
undisturbed. But they are in fact not harmless, and the comfort
they bring is dearly bought by the preventable misery which they
lead men to tolerate. The evils of life spring partly from natural
causes, partly from men's hostility to each other. In former times,
competition and war were necessary for the securing of food, which
could only be obtained by the victors. Now, owing to the mastery
of natural forces which science has begun to give, there would be
more comfort and happiness for all if all devoted themselves to the
conquest of nature rather than of each other. The representation
of nature as a friend, and sometimes as even an ally in our strug-
gles with other men, obscures the true position of man in the world,
and diverts his energies from the pursuit of scientific power, which
is the only fight that can bring long-continued well-being to the
human race.
Apart from all utilitarian arguments, the search for a happiness
based upon untrue beliefs is neither very noble nor very glorious. .
There is a stark joy in the unflinching perception of our true place
in the world, and a more vivid drama than any that is possible
to those who hide behind the enclosing walls of myth. There is
the "foam of perilous seas” in the world of thought, which can
only be known by those who are willing to face their own physical
powerlessness. And above all, there is liberation from the tyranny
of fear, which blots out the light of day and keeps men grovelling
and cruel. No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his
place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of
which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own
littleness.



A PASTEL. BY CARL SPRINCHORN





THREE STORIES
BY ROWLAND KENNEY
THE FLAME
THE
HE Gasman was a sixfooter, with a heavy moustache, bushy
eyebrows, a thick, black mane, and stubbly beard. He arrived
about two in the afternoon-extremely angry, for he had arranged
to go to a football match on this particular Saturday, and at the last
moment, just as he was about to check off, the Milton Goods Yard
Inspector had telephoned to say that Number Four capstan was
frozen and must be seen to at once.
The trouble was this: The capstans at Milton were worked by
hydraulic pressure, and in wintertime a gas-jet was constantly
burning in the pit beneath the capstan to prevent the water in the
pipes from freezing and so putting the machinery out of action, and
in this case there was a great leakage of gas from one of the joints of
the gas-pipe, so the burner could not be fed.
On receiving instructions from the man in charge, the Gasman
crossed the Yard, Alung down his tool-bag, viciously tugged up the
sideplate, jumped into the manhole, and struck a match ...!
!
The next second a great flame stabbed up at the wintry sky, a
ragged, blue and yellow sheet, a sinister cloud in the open day. The
flame leapt quíte twenty feet from the capstan-plate, and in the
centre soared the Gasman. He dropped about three yards away, at
the foot of a large iron crane. For a few seconds he lay still, a hud-
dled ugly mass. Suddenly his head moved and he sprang to his feet.
One wild look he gave, and then ran round and round the crane as
fast as he could go. He leaned in towards the crane and circled
about it, like a chicken which has been hit on the head with a stick.
Ponto, the capstanman on duty at Number Four, was standing
by. For an instant he was too astounded to move, and then-evi-
dently as mad as the Gasman-he tore after him. They chased each
other round the crane a score of times before it struck Ponto that,
simply by stopping, he would be sure to catch his man. He turned
suddenly and the Gasman cannoned into him. In another second
they were on the ground, fighting like two bull-terriers.
a
a
a
-


222
THREE STORIES
a
The Gasman's eyebrows, eyelashes, and moustache were gone; all
that remained was crackling stubble. Except for a tuft still standing
stiffly up from the crown of his head, his magnificent crop of hair
had disappeared. His clothes had undergone a remarkable trans-
a
formation: the coat was entirely burnt up; the waistcoat was a
charred ruin; the trousers were burnt down to two narrow bands a
few inches wide round the tops of his boots. The remains of his
shirt, a few blackened ribbons, fluttered in the faint breeze. His
face was a chequer of red and black-the skin was all burnt, and in
places it had entirely fallen away, leaving jagged-edged pieces of
red flesh.
In the struggle Ponto got the madman's head “in chancery” and
large pieces of burnt skin peeled off on to his sleeve. Then he gripped
the Gasman's right hand, which was feeling for a leg-hold. It was a
strange shape. Blood and skin caked on Ponto's fingers. Later we
saw that the thumb was missing.
The Gasman's red eyes glared savagely; he clawed and fought
like a wild cat. Over and over they rolled in silence. It was queer,
said Ponto later, to feel those bare legs twining round his and hear
the skin crackling under the grip. The fight was finished by Ponto's
gripping his adversary's throat with his right hand, and heavily
dropping a knee in his stomach.
Ponto's hands and clothes were covered with burnt hair and skin.
A sickly smell was in his nostrils. He was faint and sick. It
seemed to him that he held his victim an eternity before help came.
The Gasman gasped and choked. He struck and kicked convul-
sively. His mouth was open- the tongue, swollen and parched,
hung over the nether lip. Finally the full gang arrived, but waited
some time before raising the madman to his feet. For a time he
stared wildly, but gradually some measure of sanity returned to
him. We helped him across the Yard to the men's dining cabin.
He was too dazed to feel the pain, but very soon his features twitched
and his fingers clutched at the edge of the table. The madman came
over him again. His reddened eyes glowed. He jabbed the thumb-
less knuckle into his mouth, as a child does, and sucked the stump-
licked the blood and moaned like a dog; then made vicious little
snaps with his teeth.
We tried to soothe him; for answer he sprang up and whirled his
arms about. Two of us crashed at him. Every time we handled


ROWLAND KENNEY
223
him we drew blood. The smell was awful. Still the madman
fought. He did not strike at us, nor we at him; he struggled to get
away from his pain, we strove to hold him. It took minutes to
master him. When finally we did beat him down, we threw him flat
on the table, bent his forearms over the edges and his ankles over the
end.
He raved and moaned. He cursed and prayed to us alternately.
We now hung on firmly to the bloody wrists and blistered ankles.
The ambulance van came as a surprise; we had forgotten that any-
thing existed but ourselves and the thing in our grip. .
The last we saw of him was the upstanding tuft of hair on the
crown of his head as he lay in the van strapped to the stretcher with
his feet to the driver.


224
THREE STORIES
TALKIN'
(
'F
>
a
VLEMIN’'s got the sack,” said Slanty Joe.
"What for?” some one asked.
“Talkin'."
It may seem strange that a man should lose his job as a docker for
talking, but to the whole gang Slanty's words were quite explicable.
You see, Fleming had been educated on a Hull trawler, so his habits
were peculiar and his vocabulary, though limited, weird and arrest-
ng. Take his habits first-though one couldn't say that the fish-
ing-ground was entirely responsible for them, they were mostly the
gift of nature, and could be borne with some degree of fortitude.
Some of them he did not indulge in much; those were the good ones,
and they were very few. The others, the ones he cultivated most,
we grouped under the general heading of "Fleming's monthly.”
They were all linked together by indissoluble bonds—thus:
At the beginning of the month he signed the pledge. He was then
agonizing through the aftermath of a very great drunk. For a week
or so he would assiduously preach temperance and thrift, and, hav-
ing no money, he would be consistent enough religiously to practise
those much over-rated virtues. Then he became dull and low-spir-
ited, and was awkwardly quarrelsome when interfered with. He
would continue in this state until the end of the third week, by
which time he had accumulated wealth-or what passed for wealth
on the Dalby docks-say, two pounds.
Early in the last week of the month he was neither quarrelsome
nor preachy; he was just-mellow. He believed in toleration and
the Brotherhood of Man. He had views-and aired them-on The
--
Inn as the Workers' Home, and shook hands with his mates about
forty times a day, and forgot all old smouldering animosities.
The end of the month often found him in the police court on some
charge or other. Once he was “up” for obstruction. Having car-
ried a policeman to the middle of the bridge that spanned the river,
he dropped his burden over the parapet, ran round to the bank, swam
to the gasping struggler, and tried to haul him to safety in a given
number of minutes. One of his prime diversions was juggling with
policemen. He didn't believe in Law at all. It hurt him too much.


ROWLAND KENNEY
225
Afterwards, of course, came repentance and the pledge.
Now this general routine was followed, with occasional lapses
when he was in prison, for quite a long time. It went on, as a mat-
ter of fact, for as long as Fleming's cousin was foreman, then he got
the sack for "talkin',” as Slanty put it.
Some of the words Fleming used no one could understand, but
they cut for all that. Most men can stand for a few swear words
that are familiar to them, but there is something sinister and ugly
in bad language when you don't know what it means.
“They come fro' Hull, an' that explains it,” Slanty Joe used to
say. Though how that explained it no one quite gathered. Ac-
cording to Slanty, on the fishing-grounds men never refer to the dic-
tionary, because only fifty per cent. of the words they use are to be
found in that remarkable book. The other fifty per cent. no one will
print, and it was in the use of this second fifty that Fleming excelled.
“ 'Tisn't as if Oi'd said annythin'— not really to say annythin',”
said Fleming, when he was telling of the affair later. "Oi just called
the crayther a pot-bellied, skew-backed, splay-footed, bandy-legged,
squint-eyed son of a cat-fish. Oi said that if Oi'd ever used such stuff
as himsilf for bait, all the little fishes in the North Say would ha'
been insulted an’ would ha' emigrated to Ameriky. Oi just sug-
gested, all kindlyways, that he ought to”- But why go on? I
can only give Fleming's mildest and poorest tellings. The cream of
his discourse would set this page on fire. . . . So he was sacked and
was, in a way, on our hands.
After walking round for some days looking for a job, Fleming be-
came filled with the desire to return to Hull and the rough North
Sea. "Oi'll be at home there,” he said. “Oi know the place. Oi
can undherstand what's what, and the bhoys undherstand me.”
The problem was how to get him there. Money there was none,
and tramping was too bad for Fleming; out of the question, in fact;
there was a foot of snow in the country districts at that time of the
year. At last the right idea struck Slanty Joe. Every night a wagon
of goods left the docks for Hull. The load generally consisted of
large cases or bales with a few oddments crammed in between. So
one evening Fleming hoisted himself on the top of the load under
the tarpaulin sheet. Slanty had taken the precaution of placing a
large bale of woollens at either end, so Fleming had a sort of lair.
Unfortunately, just before the train was made up, a few small


226
THREE STORIES
boxes and barrels and hard little objects of various kinds were rushed
through and shoved into the cavity where Fleming lay. There was
no chance of keeping them back, so the wagon was sheeted up and
then knocked down on to the waiting train.
Two days later Slanty Joe came rushing across from the Time-
office to the men's cabin. “It's that damned Fleming,” he explained,
as he banged and bolted the door from the inside. “He's mad!"
Naturally every one suggested that Slanty was the madman.
Hadn't Fleming been safely packed away? And then came con-
firmation of Slanty's tale. It came through the window in the form
of a brick. This brick struck the kettle, knocked it over on the fire,
and, in the resulting smoke and steam and fluster, Fleming's hands
tore down the window sash, and, in another second, Fleming's body
launched itself like a torpedo into the huddled mass of men.
"Shlanty!” he yelled.
"Where's that murdherin' divil Shlanty? Be the little fishes an’
the big waves o’ the sivin seas, Oi’ll-Oi'll shkin ’im. Be the Cape
blast an' the divil's buoy Oi'll-Oi'll have his blood.” And so on
-only much more so.
No wonder Slanty had rushed, frightened. Fleming was a sight
to turn daylight to dark. Lumps and bruises covered his face. One
eye was nearly lost to sight. His nose was swollen and all awry.
After he had been jumped upon by four or five of the gang and
quietened somewhat, it was seen that he limped. And when he was
calm enough to tell his story his language was so choice that even
the oldest timer in the gang could scarcely understand him.
The story ran something like this: As soon as the train that was
to take him to Hull was on the move, Fleming had scattered the
small hard objects around and settled down in the midst of them.
For a time he was comparatively comfortable. But he, and every
one else, had forgotten one important fact. Ten miles from Dalby
dock was a junction where all goods trains had to be re-set, and
where, consequently, a terrific amount of shunting took place. And
Fleming's Hull wagon-he averred-came in for ten times more
hitting up than any of the rest.
For the first bang or two Fleming grinned- he would grin in a
case like that, but when the shunters warmed up to their work and
rattled him about like a die in a box, he got first alarmed and then
wildly angry. The small boxes and barrels and things made dead
-


ROWLAND KENNEY
227
!
a
sets at him. As he warded off the sharp corners of a box on one side,
the end of an iron roller jabbed him in the back, whilst a cog-wheel
tried to climb up his face by hanging on to his nose. He was punched
and poked and jabbed and struck in every conceivable manner by
every object that shared his lair, until, despairing and frantic, he
signified to the night and the stars that he had had enough. He
signified in his usual manner, and the shunters and guards and en-
ginemen listened in awe and so became aware that he had had
enough, and that he intended to stand no more of it; but they were
in the dark as to who or what or where he was. So he enlightened
them.
Pulling out his jack-knife, he slashed madly at his tarpaulin cov-
ering. No clean cutting for Fleming. He criss-crossed and curved
and twisted until the top of the sheet was a flowing mass of ribbons
of insane patterns of all lengths and widths. Then he clambered
forth on to one of the bales at the end of the load and informed
both the animate and inanimate objects around him what he thought
of them and the world.
There were a few houses near, and the inhabitants were partly
awakened from sleep by Fleming's talk. They listened for a mo-
ment, shuddered, and resumed more pleasant and commonplace
dreams. The enginemen were envious when once they had recov-
ered from the first shock. They tried to make mental notes of some
of Fleming's most choice expressions, but they soon gave it
up
in
despair. It was impossible to hang on to any of the phrases for
above a minute, because one's attention was always distracted by
some more weird and effective effort that he was sure to put forth.
Luckily for Fleming one of the shunters knew him, and so the
railway police were not bidden to his feast of words. A new sheet
was found and rapidly changed for the one he had cut up, and half
an hour later the Hull wagon, minus Fleming, was bowling along
to its destination. A week later the new foreman softened his heart,
and Fleming, chastened in mind and still sore in body, returned to
his work as a docker, and made strenuous efforts to cease "talkin'.”


228
THREE STORIES
PREPARING FOR PASSENGERS
WE
.
E were a gang
of navvies.
There was Yorky from Wakefield who had just come out
of jail after doing ten years for killing his wife. She interfered with
him one night when he was trying to fix moonbeams in a whisky bot-
tle which he had just emptied, and he took an axe to her. There was
Clinker who had not taken the precaution of killing his first and sec-
ond wives before he married the third and was consequently always
kept on the move, dodging the lot of them. Taffy was the gentle-
man of the gang. His father was a rich old farmer in some outland-
ish place with an unpronounceable name-somewhere away up in the
mountains above Aberystwith. Taffy had been educated at Bangor
College and “spoke correctly.” He took to the road and the shovel
after tripping up a policeman who was running him in for laying
open another policeman's skull during a students' rag. And then
there was I.
Clinker was in charge, and we were working at a heading in the
Drew Railway Company's new tunnel under the Lampshire hills.
In tunnelling long distances under the mountains the method is,
or perhaps I had better say was, to sink shafts at regular intervals,
and from the bottom of these, along the future track, to burrow from
one shaft to the other, meeting midway; then when the tunnel was
finished and the trains traversed it with their human freightage, the
shafts were used as vents to let out the smoke from the engine stacks.
At the bottom of the number three shaft was a widening, a huge
cavern as big as a warehouse. From each end of the widening were
the tunnels running to the two and four shafts. The end of the cul-
de-sac-before the two approaching gangs met-was called the
"heading,” and we were at the one driving to number four.
From the shaft foot ran a narrow-gauge rail track right up to the
heading face, and fitted to this were metal trucks, called skips, about
sixty inches long by thirty wide and probably three feet deep.
In the widening were about fifty men-miners, navvies, brick-
layers, and labourers—all working at fever heat in the semi-dark-
ness. The place never was really light; each man had a candle
which he stuck in a piece of wet clay, or, if he happened to be skip-


ROWLAND KENNEY
229
running, fixed on the back of the skip, and the only illumination
came from these and from the miners' "ducks" - tin vessels like
coffee-kettles filled with oil and with a wick stuck down the
spout.
Number three shaft was eight hundred feet deep. We had already
driven one thousand feet from the shaft and most of the thousand
feet had been blown out, for nearly the whole of that infernal hill
was solid rock, blue stone as it was called locally, a substance as hard
as granite.
Clinker and Yorky fixed the props when necessary and did most
of the drilling, while Taffy and I filled and ran the skips and helped
with the blasting operations when there was not enough muck to
keep us on the run.
Blasting was the devil; we hated it. We were forced to swallow
some of the dust which rose in clouds from the screwing, whining
drill and, as the day wore on, our breathing became difficult; the
overcharged lungs felt as if they must burst our chests. We spat a
dark, slimy substance, and we tried to counteract the evil effects of
this by nightly swilling ourselves full of bad beer. But as bad as
the dust was the compressed air we had to breathe - the best loved
and the most hated thing in the tunnel; hated because we infinitely
preferred the clear air above, and loved because it was infinitely
better than the foul air below. It was pumped down from the sur-
face and conveyed in pipes laid by the side of the skip track. The
pipes were of iron, but a length of asbestos was used at the headings,
so that they could be twisted and moved as required.
When the holes had been drilled in the rock face and the charges
inserted-before the fuse was lit- we had to unscrew this asbestos
section, place it and the wooden parts of all tools in a skip and push
the skip back down the track, so as to be out of the way of damage
from flying pieces of rock. Three or four holes would be charged
at once, and as soon as the fuses were touched we raced back into
the tunnel and hid behind, or in, the skips, or sometimes lay flat on
the wet, rocky tunnel-bed and waited for the explosions, carefully
counting the number so as not to go back before the last shot had
roared. Sometimes three out of four shots would go off nearly to-
gether; then we would wait for the last, seconds would pass, a min-
ute, more minutes-still no sign; we would discuss the advisability
of going back, trusting that the fuse had failed, and positively ach-
ing for a draught of the sickly sweet air pipes under our feet.


230
THREE STORIES
All navvies love drink-if they are real navvies, and not ware-
housemen or others seeking blisters, thrills, and new swear words;
but to our never ceasing astonishment we discovered, when working
below, that there was one thing we loved better-fresh air.
When we got back to where the smoke was slowly circling, the
struggling ducks fitfully flickered and then gave up the battle in
despair, leaving us to grope our way in darkness to the pipe end.
After a period of cursing and stumbling over each other, and bark-
ing our fingers and shins, we would eventually fix the loose section
and throw ourselves down to the vent, taking deep draughts of the
horribly sweet stuff and feeling that life was again worth living.
Or again, a short fuse would burn too rapidly and, instead of
getting out of the range of the throw of stuff, we would have time to
run only a few yards and throw ourselves flat on the ground, or take
cover behind some rough projection of rock in the tunnel side before
the roar sounded.
We were always in too great a hurry to be frightened on these
occasions-though I remember the first time I was caught the mus-
cles of my legs seemed to get out of control, my knees jerked up and
down, and my feet knocked on the ground like drumsticks. But,
strangely enough, I had no thought of fear, only wonder. My shel-
ter was a small angle of stone like the point of a blacksmith's anvil,
it merely sheltered my waist for a few seconds, for the first explo-
sions sent a mass of rock against it and rock and shelter shattered
about my beating feet, whilst from the second burst a stone as big
as a chair hurtled close to my face-I felt the rush of wind as it
passed.
Yorky had to carry me to the air pipe, for I could not for the life
of me get my feet to do anything but beat aimlessly up and down.
These premature and delayed explosions were the cause of nearly
all the altercations between members of the gang. If Yorky said
that only three holes had been fired, and Taffy swore that four had
gone, then we considered it up to Taffy to back his words by hustling
up with the air pipe. If he were wrong and got knocked over by the
late fire of the fourth blast, he swore that Yorky had run five holes
instead of four. Anyway there was a row, but a row which seldom
lasted long, for Clinker checked it by cursing the disputants into
working the edges off their tempers.
One day, however, things came to a head. Yorky and Taffy had
a


ROWLAND KENNEY
231
been “barging' all the morning-or, at any rate, Taffy had been
snarling at Yorky and Yorky had done a good bit of grunting in
return.
We were all stripped to our boots, working like fiends; bad shots
and breaking drills had delayed us in our work and driven Clinker
into untellable profanity.
Yorky had fired the last hole and the fuse had burned like dry
powder. Taffy, who had dropped almost beneath it, got a scrape
on the side of the head which took off a patch of scalp as big as a
dollar, but which apparently did little damage otherwise -except
to rouse his usually vile temper to unbearable heights. He fumed
and cursed until he could scarcely see, swearing that Yorky had used
a short fuse and, as the Yorkshireman refused to be drawn, Taffy
finally threatened to cleave his skull with a pick.
Yorky had so far said nothing, but that fetched him. Swiftly
swinging his left, he tapped Taffy's nose. That meant fighting; but
it had to be done according to rules, so I laid hands on Taffy from
behind and held his throttle, whilst Clinker jerked the bar out of his
hands-a short pinch-bar he had grasped as he staggered under
Yorky's blow. It took minutes to get sense into him, Clinker knee-
ing his chest, I fingering his Adam's apple until his eyes bulged like
those of a hooked fish, and Yorky explaining that he'd fight till sun-
down where there was space.
There was marvelling and much joy in the widening when we
tailed out of the tunnel and Clinker explained to Big Walt, the
"standing ganger," that two of his men must fight.
In number three camp fighting was nearly as common as working,
but it was generally done after shifts, and members of our gang had
never before been known to fight with each other.
Now it was the inalienable right of the whole gang to play the
role of spectators in any fight that occurred, but it would have
wasted too much time to take all the men above, so some of them
formed a ring in the widening. It was not a very successful ring;
for one thing it was too elastic, the men outside pushed too much,
and the sides contracted according to the excitability of the units,
and then, in spite of the few sacks strewn around, the rough stony
ground was a bad place for a man to down on.
I can give no adequate description of the encounter, but Yorky
had the best of it throughout. Taffy was hefty with his tools, but


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THREE STORIES
1
a
too wild; and then he was a shorter man, he had not the reach of
Yorky, who kept surprisingly cool, or had hands on his temper, I
am not sure which. Anyway, after the second round, Taffy struck
all about and wasted wind on curses, whilst Yorky kept his mouth
shut, his eyes clear, and his blows steadily drumming on Taffy's left
ribs. Taffy must have had the heart of a lion, or it would have burst
under the Yorkshireman's blows.
In the seventh bout Yorky changed his tactics; he pressed Taffy
more, followed him round and went for his face, and twice Taffy's
head rattled on the stones.
At the beginning of the eighth round Taffy went mad. He
mopped and mowed like a village idiot, and as he left Big Walt's
knee-Clinker was seconding Yorky- there was an ugly feeling in
the ring that something was to happen.
Yorky left his corner calmly. He had scarcely a mark on him
and was almost as fresh and upright as at the start, whereas Taffy
was bruised all over; his left eye was half filled and lumps as big
as eggs showed where he had struck the stones in falling. His face
was covered with blood, his hair was matted with it, and his eyes
glared madly in the shifting light of the ducks. He was back be-
yond the savages. It did not require much imagination to see him
as an ape. He came to the centre, not erect nor even crouching as a
fighter does, but bent nearly double with his knees forward, his back
arched, and his teeth showing between tight lips, his eyebrows drawn
over his eyes and his nostrils dilated with the laboured breath. But
ugly and sinister as he looked, he was more in keeping with his sur-
roundings than the stolid Yorkshireman. Both were stark naked
except for their boots. The men around were stripped to the waist
and their faces were tense with excitement; they had ceased to shout
and waited silently for the recommencement of the fight.
A small stone detached itself and rattled down the side of the
cavern, and the rhythmical beat of the air pump at the shaft foot
hissed time for the fighters' feet.
No other sound could be heard.
The sides of the cavern were dark and distant as revealed by the
ghostly glimmer from the ducks. The shaft boy, a child of twelve,
who on no account was allowed to leave the bottom of the shaft, was
crouched on hands and knees trying to get a glimpse of the proceed-
ings by peering between the legs of the men around the ring.


ROWLAND KENNEY
233
a
The thing that was to happen happened as soon as the bout com-
menced. Yorky stepped up evidently determined to finish Taffy off.
Taffy gave a peculiar gurgle as he feinted with his right, and then
- before anyone dreamed of his intention-he planted a terrific kick
on Yorky's knee, following it up with one on the skull as Yorky
crashed to the ground.
Then Hell was loose.
Those navvies loved fighting, but it must be fair fisticuffing; kick-
ing was for mules. The cavern rang with their growls and in two
seconds a score of fists fell on the crouching form of Taffy, five score
fingers closed over his naked flesh, he was flung aloft as a boy flings
a ball and crashed to the earth a shapeless, grisly mass. They would
have torn him to bits if Big Walt had not been there.
Clinker beckoned me to give him a hand as Big Walt, with shouts
of “up tools and turn to,” shouldered the mob apart.
A number of the saner men took Yorky out and douched him
with water, whilst Clinker and I laid hands on the inanimate Taffy
and carried him into Big Walt's cabin-a small wooden shed in the
corner of the widening, containing a few sacks, some tools, and a
locked cupboard full of candles and explosives.
We laid Taffy on the bench, closed his eyes, covered his wrecked
body with sacking, shut the door, and waited silently for Big Walt,
who came in a few minutes later.
After a brief glance at the thing on the bench, Big Walt turned
to Clinker and asked, as he nodded his head in my direction : "Is he
safe?” And Clinker replied slowly: "Safe as Iron.”
"Then he'd better get the fool's clobber and bring it here,” said
Big Walt, and I picked up a duck and went out to the heading. To
the many queries as to “how the swine stuck," I replied that he was
“badly rattled but would tool again.”
When I returned to the cabin Big Walt was just shoving Taffy
under the bench, whilst Clinker was sorting out a number of sacks
and some thick twine. As soon as Clinker had finished his prepara-
tions he took the clothes from me and stuffed them with sacks, then
bracing the dummy together with twine, he laid it on the bench and
covered it with more sacking.
It was then five o'clock and in an hour the working day would be
over, so-before the full crowd left the bottom-the deputy Taffy
was hurried up the shaft and taken to Big Walt's hut where our
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234
THREE STORIES
gang lodged and the next day it was given out that he had gone
away during the night.
So much for the gang.
With navvies it is come day, go day, God send pay day. A man is
working in Scotland one day and, in a month, maybe, in America,
and the old country sees him never again; and navvies do not have
inquisitive relatives to worry about them- unless, like Clinker, they
have been extravagant in the matter of wives.
In Taffy's case, no one at number three knew much about him,
and eertainly none of his people knew anything about number three,
so I accepted the ruling of Big Walt and Clinker and at midnight
the three of us were let down the shaft by the night watchman.
I had never been in the widening without the full gang before; and
for the first time it struck me what an enormous hole it was. Our
three ducks only intensified the dank and miserable gloom. To the
swing of the lamps the arched roof seemed to move and twist; one
moment it was as far above us as the sky and the next it descended
almost on our heads.
Big Walt insisted that we must search the widening and both
headings to see that no one was watching us--a most preposterous
idea.
After the search we spent some time in discussing the best place
for a grave, and finally decided on a spot about twenty yards from
the widening in the three-four heading. At this point there had been
a quantity of loose, shaley stuff; a bricklayer had built up a wall to
a height of four feet and omitted to fill in the cavity behind as was
customary in such cases.
There we tombed Taffy.
Whilst Clinker and I fetched the body, Big Walt mixed a quan-
tity of cement and water to form a coffin.
It had not been difficult for Big Walt to squeeze the body under
the bench whilst it was warm and pliable, but to get it out when stiff
and cold was not an easy matter; the legs were twisted round one of
the legs of the bench and we had trouble in unlocking them.
We did not speak a word to each other. Our own movements
and the scraping of Big Walt's shovel in the tunnel as he kneaded
and pressed and cut the mortar were the only human sounds that
could be heard; and somehow these sounds did not break the pre-
ternatural silence, they were apart from it. For it was as if there


ROWLAND KENNEY
235
were two silences; one of them we broke, the other could not be
broken, not even by the unhuman sounds from outside, neither the
pattering of water drops, the squeal of a rat, nor the occasional fall
of small stones.
The cramped body was exceedingly difficult to carry, it slipped
and twisted in our hands, the clamminess peculiar to corpses pro-
duced uncanny sensations, and it was with grunts of relief that we
laid our burden on the ground outside the wall.
Big Walt was already in the tomb spreading the mortar when we
arrived, and in a couple of minutes we had hoisted Taffy up and
dropped him with a splash into his cemented grave. The booted
feet and bent limbs followed the formless head over the edge of the
wall, and I took a duck and rearranged the disordered stuff in the
cabin.
“It'll be a big rat as worries through that lot,” said Big Walt as
he and Clinker set to work with shovels and hurriedly filled in the
remainder of the mortar.
Then we went home to supper.


TWO POEMS
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER
WITH A VOLUME OF HEINE
Like some young flower, cool and white
With the stars' kiss still on its brow,
You shine through my heart's dusk, and light
The dark concern that gathers now.
Half on my lips, a fearful hope
Starts like a prayer, already planned.
Toward your bright head my fingers grope
But something holds my hand.
Prayers are not what you want. I see
That, when all other beauty fails,
You will not alter, you will be
So white and young-and hard as nails.


LOUIS UNTERMEYER
237
MATINÉE
The poet stood reciting
Examples of his art,
Considerately removing
The veils about his heart.
Eager and self-revealing,
He did his stripping well;
With every burning poem
Another garment fell.
With passionate abandon
He Aung each cloth away;
Exulting in the pleasure
Of noble self-display.
Until upon the platform
Were piled his draperies.
And still the poet gestured,
Naked and quite at ease.
And no one screamed or fainted;
There was no stir or start.
The ladies all applauded
At such a show of Art.


POETRY-OUR FIRST NATIONAL ART
BY JAMES OPPENHEIM
RUSS
USSIA first found herself as a people, that is, as a self-con-
scious nation, through prose fiction; Germany and England
through the poetic play; Greece, Rome, and Italy through epics.
It begins to appear as if the United States (what a name for a
nation, and yet how apt!) is finding herself through a rather loos-
ened-up lyric poetry.
Our land's name reveals our dilemma in art. A society of states,
in which each state is a society of races, is not a nation in the Old
World sense; it is not an organic fusion, but a collection, in which
the differences are more marked than the likenesses. France, we
say, has a soul, meaning that Frenchmen, to use James's phrase,
"dip their roots in the same pool of consciousness,” or more accu-
rately, sub-consciousness; but Americans are held together not by
unconscious identity, but by conscious ideals and interests. Ameri-
canism is not so much an impulse as a set of ready-made attitudes.
Since these can be learned in a short time, the Americanization of
immigrants goes on with rapidity.
One might expect then that an American national art would be
an impossibility. The national novel, play, or epic requires typic
characters, heroes who are the reflection of a people; but where is
our typical American? And by typical I do not mean the con-
scious attitudes and manners of a man, but his essential character;
for great art does not so much reveal the garb, speech, and habits,
as those deep unconscious forces which differentiate one people
from another. If, for instance, I see a certain kinship between J. J.
Hill, Daniel Boone, Billy Sunday, and Theodore Roosevelt, or
between Emerson, Dr. Eliot, John Dewey, and Woodrow Wilson,
or between Lincoln, Gene Debs, John Brown, Mark Twain, and
Jane Addams, I also find that, tested by the acid of art, they fail
as national symbols. For not one of these is the national character
.
heightened and intensified, but rather a sport, a divergence, a per-
sonal success. We must not be fooled by the fact that each group
held certain ideas, attitudes, and manners in common; these are


JAMES OPPENHEIM
239
environmental and not hereditary; and the very fact that there is
such a startling sameness in American exteriors argues that there
is a corresponding diversity in the unconscious. We wear the same
feathers but underneath we are immigrants from many lands.
This explains why our novelists never rise beyond a depiction
of manners to a revealing of character. To begin with, only a few
of the men mentioned could be subjected to deep treatment. Most
of them are stiff fronts, behind which vacancy takes the place of the
passions, tumults, Weltanschauung, and mystic grandeur which be-
long to the unconscious. Imagine Woodrow Wilson or Billy Sun-
day or T. R. as the hero of a great novel! How quickly each would
become wooden and unconvincing! The trouble is that they are
too typically American; the trouble is that a people united only by
conscious bonds, have, for the sake of unity, denied their uncon-
scious and alien character; and behind the striking samenésses gapes
a void.
What then of such genuine and deep men as Lincoln and Gene
Debs? At first glance we seem to have found what we are seek-
ing. But alas, at second glance we see that their very depth differ-
entiates them from the American people, and that when they are
taken over into art they are like foreign particles, austerely and
terribly separated from their social environment. Our nationalism
screamed in the late war: where did it hold "malice toward none,
and mercy for all,” to say nothing of democracy? Where was “a
race of Lincolns”?
Is the case then hopeless? Possibly yes for any art that requires
typic characters; and curiously not so for semi-lyrical poetry. Mark
Twain came the nearest to writing a national novel in Huckleberry
Finn; and this for the excellent reason that taking a boy as his
hero, he could approximate the psychic development of the nation.
But we cannot have great national art so long as boys are the
measure of our value.
In poetry, however, the case is different. Poetry is an excellent
medium for giving environmental colour, snap-shots, ideals and
abstract tendencies; it can give the vague favour of a mixed so-
ciety; and best of all it can reveal, not through a symbol, but
directly, the unconscious of the poet. Now this unconscious is
something passed on to the poet through a long descent; it is the
common racial inheritance, and differs only according to the stock


240
POETRY-OUR FIRST NATIONAL ART
a
-
of the individual. Since he does not have to gather his expression
round a typic character, that is, be concrete, he can vaguely allow
that mystic depth which is common to all men. And since he
strains this, as it were, through the sieve of the American environ-
ment, the American ideals, manners, scenery, and chaos, he gets a
product which is universal on the one hand but on the other with
what might be called the American flavour.
If we examine Walt Whitman' we find that the surface or ex-
terior is an arrangement of American facts and creeds, lifeless and
discrete in themselves, but become vital because they are fused with
the revelation of his own unconscious. In short, we have some-
thing universal, or say, human in the broadest sense--something
equally the property of every race-camouflaged by American
paint. That' this is not America is obvious. Yet “ 'tis enough,
'twill serve” — for it is indubitably American. We are all this
universal masked by Americanism. Hence, its truly national char-
acter. Walt was Dutch, yet Carl Sandburg who is Swedish can
prance his soul out to the same tunes and get a national expression
with only a slightly different tinge. For, as I said before, this
universal in us is conditioned by the stock we come from. Whit-
man and Sandburg differ from each other only in so far as the Dutch
and Swedish differ.
Walt Whitman then gave us our first national art. How did
he turn the trick? We had several other excellent poets, yet they
never found the key which to-day unlocks American expression. I
think it was because he realized that he must take a bold, conscious
plunge, and not be afraid of creating art deliberately. Our poetry
had been Colonial – whether English or European. Hence, the
first task was to throw overboard those traditions; and the second
was to find an expression more native to ourselves. But where find
this? We have no folk, no soil song or literature: we have only
our American speech, the resultant of new environment, mixture of
races and new experience. This American speech is decidedly
different in flavour and construction from English speech. It is not
Colonial, but native, that is, environmental. It is a speech, how-
ever, which is not strictly polite. I think of Dante deciding to
write in Italian vernacular instead of in Latin. Our Latin was our
literary English. Whitman decided along Dante's line; namely,
to write in American. The meaning of this is that he decided to


JAMES OPPENHEIM
241
а
take the only native expression we have, our conversation, and
intensify it.
The result is curious. Without the rootage of folk-song and
folk-art there is a certain thinness, a loss of overtones. But there
are real compensations, the work is, as I said, indubitably Ameri-
can, fresh, spacious, and free. Perhaps also it might be said that,
Whitman raises American conversation to oratory; that he carries
the common speech into the speaker's stand, and attempts thus to
give it a less personal, a more collective fibre.
Our new generation of poets has been unable to ignore Whit-
man. The strange service he performed for us was to give us a
substitute for folk-song. That is to say, we can't go back to folk-
art, but can go back to Whitman and thus catch for our own work
the overtones of an American past. That the result need not be
strictly Whitmanic is obvious. Masters in Spoon River has used
conversation and discarded oratory; Frost, Untermeyer, and Lind-
say have done the same and discarded free verse; Amy Lowell has
developed the form and wherever advisable discarded conversation.
It is necessary to note here that the Whitmanic attempt has ap-
peared in our fiction and essay.
Parallel with Whitman came
Emerson, and out of Emerson, William James, and writers like
Dewey, Veblen, and Randolph Bourne, save that James and Bourne,
more than the others, incorporate the conversational in the Whit-
man manner. Dreiser and Anderson in fiction also spring from
Whitman, though here we have the forerunner, Mark Twain; but
their success I think is limited by the reasons given above. The
result of all this many-stranded development, as well as an inner
evolution, is a marked change in American conversation. At Whit-
man's time there was a choice between Colonial and popular. The
choice is different to-day. Popular expression is not the only kind
that is American; we have the beginning of an intelligentsia, and
this younger world has a conversation of its own. That this con-
versation bears resemblance to the speech of H. G. Wells and
Masefield is not surprising-for these two writers, as well as Rol-
land, have been under American influence. Wells owes much to
William James, Rolland exceedingly much to Whitman. No bet-
ter proof of the vitality of American style could be produced than
this influence abroad.
I should say that our new poetry leans either to the conversation
a


242
POETRY-OUR FIRST NATIONAL ART
of our intelligentsia or to that of the mass and that its form is
divided between the Whitmanic and the traditional. Perhaps
more purely than the rest it is Sandburg who carries on the strict
Whitman tradition, and takes the common speech, with its slang,
as his basis. And it is quite possible that he is the most vital singer
of us all. At any rate it would seem as if he, Frost, and Masters
wrote most directly out of themselves, putting the accent on ex-
pression and giving second place to so-called style.
Recently, in one of our book stores, I went through a bundle of
insurgent English poetry. I was shocked into the realization that
the art-centre of English poetic expression has shifted from Eng-
land to the United States: against the stale music, phonographic
repetition, and forced freshness of the Englishmen I heard the
prairie-breezes of Sandburg, the poignant deep cry of Masters, the
colourful tumult of Amy Lowell, and other voices in our masterful
chorus, behind which the sea of Whitman forever thunders. And
this, I thought, is America. Have we great poetry, barring our
one Homer? We do not know; but we do know that we have a
genuine living art. An art, I should say, that will grow just in so
far as our poets, after having assimilateď them, learn to overcome
the great masters-just in so far as they release themselves from
the dominant influence of every tradition, including the Whitmanic,
and trust to their deepest impulse. It is not by saying, “Go to,
I will be American,” but by allowing the direct impact of environ-
ment and the direct response, that they will produce a truer and
more American art.


A FEMINIST BABY
BY EDNA CLARE BRYNER
a
MY
Y mother is a feminist and my father a radical who supports
my mother in her views only. How could I escape? Be-
fore I drew my first breath I was a radical. I realize that as a radi-
cal baby I must start my career early in life. That is why I am
writing what is to follow. If I wait until I am grown up and have
greater command of language, I shall be so interested in the prob-
lems of grownups that I shall have entirely forgotten my early
struggle for existence.
I am a brainy little thing. Otherwise I should not have had the
ghost of a chance of being born; for I had to fight for my birth.
Every argument I could scrape up in favour of the perpetuation of
the race I had to keep dinging into my mother to accomplish my
existence. As far as I know, this is the most radical thing that has
ever been done.
Not that my mother did not want me. Indeed, she had been
wanting me for a number of years. She wanted a lot of other
things, too. She wanted always to earn her own living so that she
need not be dependent for support on any man.
She wanted to
help solve all the vital problems of the day. She wanted to be
free to go hither and thither to find out first-hand what the miners
in Kamchatka struck for and what the Bolsheviki really are.
She kept putting me off every time I asked her, "How about my
being born?" until I decided that if ever I was to have a feministic
career (for which I was certainly destined) I must get born soon or
feminism would be out of fashion. I therefore asked her how she
could ever know what children really mean unless she had me. She
replied that she had talked that matter over with her own mother,
who had had half a dozen and who later became a feminist. “Just
an uncomfortable episode,” was what she said her mother said.
"Of course I shall give you some discomfort, dear mother,” I
went on, trying not to show that I was hurt at such an expression.
“I cannot help that. But I promise you—"
“It is not discomfort I fear,” returned my mother impatiently.
a


244
A FEMINIST BABY
“No, no," I answered soothingly. “Of course you don't.” Hast-
ily I changed my tactics. “What do you think other women will
say, the ones who know you as a feminist, as one who believes that
women should earn their own living in spite of the handicap of
.bearing and rearing children, when they see that you cannot live
out the theory you advocate? They will say, “That's all right.
She earns her own living. Why shouldn't she? What else has
she to do? She hasn't any children. If she had my three, now-'"
“Three!” exclaimed my mother. “That would take ten years
out of my life.”
"Never mind three,” I said quickly, feeling I had gone too far.
"You ought at least to have me-one, I mean.” Let my
brothers
and sisters argue their own cases. I had enough of a task in pre-
senting my own.
"Some day I suppose I shall have one," my mother murmured.
“To-day, however, matters are in such a state that it takes all of
us intellectuals to clear the path for others to follow. We must
sacrifice our intimate desires."
“Do you really want me then?” I cried happily. “Have me,
have me! I will carry on the torch for you! Who can do it so well
as your own child? Your immortality!" I stopped abruptly.
My mother had started writing an article on a topic which this con-
versation had stimulated. I felt that she was exploiting me, never
letting me become myself, but only using me for her own purposes.
I sulked. She would be sorry some day when she was an old, old
lady and had no dear little grandchildren.
Another time I did not let her off so easily. “It isn't that I want
to be just for myself,” I pleaded. “I am more than myself.” The
words came naturally to me from a play my mother had just seen,
a play OF THE FUTURE it was called. “I am the link between
you and countless generations. Unless you have irreproachable
reasons” (my mother became uneasy at this) “you are denying wil-
fully to the long line of those who projected you into a world in
which you are glad to live their further projection through me into
new and countless generations.” Eloquently I threw out the chal-
lenge, just like the lady lecturer in the play: “Dare you defy the
strength of the plasm within you seeking to throw out its force into
new individuals to replace you in the great scheme of evolution ?”
I thought my arguments finished. Time passed. I felt myself


EDNA CLARE BRYNER
245
و
no nearer creation. Shamelessly I went back to selfish arguments.
One evening when my mother had come home tired out and bored
with her evening, I said to her ingratiatingly, “If you had me, you
would never be bored. You would have a plaything of which you
would never tire. Those stupid men and women say the same
things over and over again. I should change all the time. Never
would
you
know from one minute to the next how I would act or
what I would say.”
“Oh, oh,” said my mother, holding her head in her hands. “How
tired I am! To-night I never want to see or hear anything radical
I
again. To-morrow I shall be all right. How tired I am!"
After all, what really brought me into the world was that I
became exasperated one day and simply yelled, "I want to be born!
I want to be born! Why don't you have me, cowardy calf? I've
got to be born!”—and first thing I knew I was well on my way to
having my wish made effective.
So far, excellent. Of course, my mother must keep on with her
job. To hear her talk you would think that all radicalism would
die instanter the minute she stopped working. Her work must be
tremendously difficult and exhausting. At first I was frightened, be-
cause I did not know what effect it might have on me. As time
went on, however, I became reassured. Indeed, her work seemed
very easy to me.
Every morning she was carried upstairs in an elevator to a small
room in a large building. She sat in a comfortable chair and wrote
some sort of manifesto. (I think I inherit this ability from her.)
She discussed intricate and delicate questions about the freeing of
something or some one. In the evening she met gay people who
had work somewhat like hers. Sometimes she went to hear music
or to see a play.
I felt I was lucky to have chosen a mother who had such an easy
time. As far as my welfare was concerned, it wasn't half bad to
be mothered by some one who earned her living so easily and had
such a good time. I was glad that she did not work all day in a
factory hunched up over a machine. I was still more glad that she
did not stay at home all the time cooking, and sweeping, and wash-
ing and ironing.
I couldn't help wishing, however, that my mother would stay
out of doors, not in the noisy, dirty, ugly city but in the country
3


246
A FEMINIST BABY
where there were green fields, and maybe a huge forest, and some
dripping water. Maybe I am sentimental; but I should like to
know that that's what she wanted to do while I was being created.
Finally I was born. That was rather bad for me. As there is a
whole book written on the subject of how it feels to be born, I shall
say nothing about it. At the time, I think it was worse for my
mother than for me. Now she has entirely recovered from it, but
I shall never recover.
I have been in the world two years. Until now I have held my
peace. But my present circumstances have aroused me to make
my first articulate revolt against tyranny. The fact is that every
day when my mother goes to work I am taken to a nursery where
· I spend the best part of the day with a lot of other tiny children.
I have funny things to lace up and button. I have good food to
eat and plenty of sleep. In the evening some one takes me home
and my mother plays with me a few minutes before I. am put
to bed.
This arrangement solves the problem of me for my mother. But
how about my own problem? I do not mean to complain, but
I must tell you that my radical tendencies make me abhor this way
of disposing of me. I would much rather live in my own house
where everything has a funny smell which seems good and com-
panionable to me. I want my father to hold me on his lap while
he reads one of his stories out loud so that his round dark voice
drones in my ear and puts me to sleep. I want my mother nearly
all the time I am awake. Just why, I cannot tell you. There is
something peculiar about it. Every one needs a companion. A
great big, soft, friendly, clean dog would do, but not so well as
a friendly human being, and no human being so well as a mother.
In concluding this document I should like to state that I con-
sider myself most courageous in performing the initial feat of
bringing about my entry into the world. Although I never spoke
of it, I knew all the time that I should have to undergo infinite
experimentation in the way of being brought up and that every one
would expect me, in spite of so much distraction, to be more radical
than my mother.
I realized, also, that I should have to submit to limitations to
which children of non-radicals do not have to bow. For example,
if I am a boy (I am too young yet, by the Binet test, to know my


EDNA CLARE BRYNER
247
sex), I shall have to wear my hair in locks just long enough to
cover up my coat collar and snaggle around my ears. If I am a
girl (I feel rather certain that I am a girl), never shall I be able to
see my long brown curls stream in the wind as I run along the Pali-
sades, for I shall have to wear my hair cropped close like the mane
of a shorn Shetland pony.
I have not dared to hope for brothers and sisters. As I am the
first-born, I can never have older ones to tease and annoy me so
delightfully as I should like to have them do. I shall never have
younger ones unless they are more argumentative than I, for my
mother seems entirely satisfied with me.


THE AUTHORESS OF THE WAY
OF ALL FLESH
SAMUEL BUTLER: A MemoIR. By Henry Festing Jones.
12mo. Two volumes. 979 pages. The Macmillan Com-
pany. New York.
MISS
SAVAGE becomes an obsession. Some
years ago when
I was studying Butler for my critical work I had to fight
hard to ward her off, because I knew nothing about her and Mr.
Festing Jones wanted her for this monument which he has raised to
the memory of his friend. She obsessed Butler to the extent of
making him believe that a woman wrote Homer, and she has also ob-
sessed myself to the point of making me give the above absurd title
to this review. She was malicious, she admitted and gloried in her
habit of lying, but she was feminine and feline, detestable and ador-
able. Mr. Festing Jones simply cannot trust himself to speak of
her, and has clearly been at some pains to avoid her obsessive power.
Butler was her victim, helpless under her hands as she dug out of
him the obstinate humour which was necessary for the completion
of her existence, perhaps in order to make the sharpness of her own
wit endurable. Butler, on the other hand, owed her just as much
because he could not live without obsessions, and at the time she
turned up he was bored almost to the point of extinction with his
beloved obsession of his father. Miss Savage's letters explain the
strange power that came into this odd little man in middle life and
left him after her death. The correspondence of these two is like
that of Abelard and Heloise, only in this instance the protagonists
are two queer little middle-aged persons in late-Victorian London.
Butler had been driven as far as New Zealand by the obsession of
his father and he returned to England when he thought Darwin, by
upsetting the Anglican faith, had made that country safe for him.
He returned with an incubus, an impecunious friend whom he had
undertaken to set on his feet. To this friend he gave a quarter of his
income, partly out of absurd generosity and partly to avoid being
like his father, who had effectively tied him up by making a rever-
sion contingent. The Butlers, father and son, squabbled for years
over money, and both thoroughly enjoyed it. They were nineteenth


GILBERT CANNAN
249
1
a
century Englishmen, wretched in the processes of industrial revolu-
tion, and taking it out of each other in consequence. The English
have a pig-headed capacity of endurance for which they are not as a
rule given sufficient credit. They will make a mess of things and
then just hang on stubbornly until life re-asserts itself and the mess
becomes a joke. To Samuel Butler that kind of joke was the all-
important thing in life, and therefore he had no use for success or
prosperity, which led nowhere. The joke was the divine thing, the
intimation of immortality, and therefore he could not endure people
like his father or Charles Darwin or Miss Savage, who took life and
themselves seriously. Of the three Miss Savage was the most really
serious and therefore his relationship with her was maintained for
the most part through correspondence. He was afraid of her just as
he was afraid of his father and Charles Darwin, with an intellectual
rather than a personal fear.
These three obsessions made up his real life, which he decorated
rather than enriched with friendships. Let us consider them in their
order. Butler, senior, was one of your Hell-fire Christians, so enam-
oured of Hell that they turn this life into a foretaste of it: no room
for the divine joke there. Hence Butler's horror of his father and
his fanatical struggle with him. Fear of Hell-fire, however, had
kept the English fairly decent-and for the ordinary purposes of
life Butler asked no more. Then came the publication of The Origin
of Species, and the young Samuel saw that his father was dished.
The menace of Hell-fire had lost its validity, because the theory of
evolution demonstrated that there was no such place. Hurrah! then,
for Darwin and Huxley who would at last make room in civilized
life for the divine joke. Butler in New Zealand felt that he could
return to civilization, and did so, only to find to his disgust that
there was less room for the divine joke than ever because to the
solemnity of the Bishops had been added that of the scientists.
Worse than that, Darwin by letting loose such phrases as the sur-
vival of the fittest and insisting upon the mindlessness of evolution,
had authorized the ruthlessness of the industrial revolution as it
gathered momentum for its work of world-wide devastation. A ma-
terialistic philosophy had been evolved which for sheer humbug
knocked Anglican and Hell-fire Christianity into a cocked hat. The
tyranny of machines which Butler had thought of in New Zealand
as a whimsy was in England rapidly becoming the most appalling
reality. He saw the danger to his beloved joke and did what he
a


250 THE AUTHORESS OF THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
could to defend it by attacking his old enemy, Anglican Christianity.
This new obsession was forcing out the old one: Charles Darwin
stepped into the place hitherto occupied by his father. Erewhon
did something, gave him at least some satisfaction but not enough.
A Darwinian world would be too frightful to live in because no one
would be able to laugh in it, and no one need be kind any more or
even decent. A letter from Darwin to Butler is illuminating:
“Have you ever read Huxley's article or articles on ‘Animal Au-
tomatism,' two or three years ago in The Contemporary? He tried
to show that consciousness was something superadded to nervous
mechanism, like the striking of a clock is added to the ordinary
going parts. I mean that the consciousness as we know it has noth-
ing to do with the act, which is a question of nerve-machinery.
“You seem to me to have gone on the reverse tack-instead of
reducing consciousness to a passive looker-on, you have, I think,
made consciousness into an active cause, a producer of
energy.”
That was precisely what Butler had done, though he was too ex-
cited and too much in earnest to be able to say so clearly. He felt
more than he saw of the implications of the elevation of Darwin's
scientific statement into a philosophy. He was brave enough to lose
his head-in order to find it; and, refusing to side with either the
Anglicans or the Darwinians, pleased no one and was left severely
alone as a crank, which he was, though a crank blessed with a sense
of humour and a belief that life knew its business better than me
or the society of men did theirs. He was a crank in that he could
not be fair to Darwin, nor to himself. In the intense excitement of
seeing the world go slowly mad while he remained sane, he lost all
sense of self-preservation and was inevitably forced into ruin. The
work he had set himself in the writing of Life and Habit and its suc-
cessors was work for which no one would pay him, and he could do
no other. This was too absorbing and too urgent. For a moment
he lost his sense of humour and was betrayed into the scandal of
insulting Darwin, who, poor old gentleman, could not make out
what this surprising adversary was driving at. Butler himself was
not too clear about it. He could make his meaning clear but not the
implications of his meaning. He had humour and common sense
but no imagination, for to him that had meant Hell-fire and all that
his father had stood for. A shocking dilemma this: if only Butler


GILBERT CANNAN
251
had been a humourless man like Ruskin or Carlyle or William-
Morris! But the thing he was fighting for was precisely the in-
tuition of the divine joke of the universe which is called the sense of
humour, and it made Butler, one of the most insighted men of his
time, a Conservative. The strain was too great: he knew that what
he had tried to do was all-important, but he could not find accept-
ance from the world or deliverance from his own difficulties. He
had tried to become a painter and was not a good painter, and in
writing he remained an amateur. The professionals could overlook
him because he could not-or would not — learn their jargon.
Life, with delightful sense of humour, presented him with a third
obsession, the lady, Miss Eliza Mary Ann Savage, who turned him
into a writer of potent influence, and of whom he wrote, as in his old
age he turned it all over in his whimsical brain, the following sonnet:
a
a
“She was too kind, wooed too persistently,
Wrote moving letters to me day by day:
The more she wrote, the more unmoved was I.
The more she gave, the less could I repay.
Therefore I grieve not that I was not loved,
But that, being loved, I could not love again.
I liked: but like and love are far removed:
Hard though I tried to love I tried in vain,
For she was plain and lame and fat and short
Forty and over-kind. Hence it befell
That, though I loved her in a certain sort,
a
Yet did I love too wisely but not well.
Ah! Had she been more beauteous or less kind
She might have found me of another mind."
He was always most obstinately unromantic and unimaginative or
he would have known that she had found the artist in him
and could not rest until she had brought it to light and life. How
much of what is commonly known as love was mixed with this de-
sire in her it is possible only to guess: in all likelihood she wanted
to discover in the odd shy little man what he would not-or could
not-discover for himself, the sensitive, quick perception of the
flame of life which had been almost numbed by Butler senior, who
so lamentably confused the flame of life with the flame of Hell. In
one letter of Miss Savage's there is an almost gasping eagerness that


252 THE AUTHORESS OF THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
the real quality in Butler might be released by the disaster that had
overtaken him, but it never was. For her the relationship was a
quick, intense drama, so vivid indeed that the pressure of it some-
times made her wit almost rise into a shrill scream to Butler: "Can't
you see what you are? Can't
are? Can't you see what
you see what you are ?” Butler could
not but feel that, and with male obtuseness thought she was ex-
claiming in every nerve: “Can't you see what you are to me?”
Nothing of the kind: she knew herself. She had only beauty of
soul, that beauty which is active in its love, and that she gave in full
measure, as Butler well knew after she had died. He enjoyed the
joke of it, of course, that the only possible wife life had ever pre-
sented him with was impossible. Yet she prevailed and married
him by letter and hen-pecked him into being artist enough to write
The Way of All Flesh.
From their own words, Mr. Festing Jones has created his wonder-
ful story, curious and delightful in its perfection, charming in its
surrounding detail. After Miss Savage's death Butler relapsed into
the eighteenth century, giving up the nineteenth as hopeless. His
father died and left him plenty of money so that he could become
the rich, eccentric, travelling English milord, almost, like so many
Englishmen of strong character, a person out of fiction, more fit to
live with Parson Adams and Squire Western than with the rather
grubby, savourless people who were beginning to throng London.
He attached Mr. Jones to himself, and Alfred, and escaped into
Italy and Sicily where he could still find people who, as he said,
lived “under grace and not under the law”—and he was happy.
Probably he was never anything else even during the dreadful years
when he lived through both a mental and a financial crisis. He un-
derstood happiness: that is a rare faculty. The God he imagined
was a happy God and Him he served all his days. He enjoyed his
isolation and his notoriety, but most of all he enjoyed the apprecia-
tion that came to him at last, taking a childish pleasure in every-
thing that was said and written about him. Possibly he is having a
wonderful time pestering Handel and Homer and Shakespeare with
posers about their work, or telling them what a wonderful person
Miss Eliza Mary Ann Savage was. He would loathe the compari-
son, and I am sure Mr. Jones will detest it; but, being romantic, I
like to think of them as consorting with Abelard and Heloise, who
will perfectly understand all that went on inside these two dowdy,
odd, ill-assorted but immortal little people. -GILBERT CANNAN


ONE KIND OF REALIST
The Bishop and Other Stories. By Anton Chekhov.
302 pages. Macmillan Company. New York.
12mo.
a
IN
a
N method Chekhov would appear to be a detached realist of the
Impersonal Succession; in character one suspects him of being a
realist by sheer fascination with his perceptions. There is a matter-
of-factness about his ironical folk and middle-class tales that would
reduce their content to so much ineloquent information were it not
for his seeming-ingenuous absorption in his narrative, and his reli-
able and perennial sense of effect, which is so fine that the edged pic-
turing survives even the process of translation. He has that bias for
a diminished range of spirit which Henry James thought deplorable
in Flaubert: no splendid persons, no fine cases, no heightened char-
acters.
One feels Chekhov, in these stories, to be a confirmed dealer in
the lore of human petty actuality, the endless small defeats that
men accomplish for one another. Underneath and carefully never
overflowing his impersonality, his perfect assiduity to fact, is as
abiding an irony as Thomas Hardy's, without Hardy's admiration
for men and women, with a touch, perhaps, of something cousin-
german to contempt. We hear from Chekhov truly little of the
stature and dignity of man; his typical characters cut uninspiring
figures enough. The third tale in the present volume, The Letter,
is, for instance, a thoroughly Chekhovian piece. Deacon Liubi-
mov, in this story, is so much disturbed by the wild career of an
absent raffish son that he implores Father Fyodor to help him com-
pose a letter which will head the young rake-hell back to the strait
gate. Father Fyodor dictates, Deacon Liubimov writes. In the
Deacon's eyes the result is a masterpiece of reproach. To know that
his old father could be capable of such dignity and eloquence must
infallibly shame the scapegrace into righteousness. But before the
Deacon could send off this imposing exhortation he must needs sit
down and add on his own account at the bottom of the letter:
“They have sent us a new inspector. He's much friskier than the
old one. He's a great one for dancing and talking, and there's noth-


254
ONE KIND OF REALIST
ing he can't do, so that all the Govorovsky girls are crazy about him.
Our military chief will soon get the sack too, they say. High time
he did!"
The
poor old Deacon is fairly embalmed in irony.
Yet Chekhov, notwithstanding dry exactnesses like the foregoing,
has a fresh and fascinated cordiality of picturing that few realists
can muster. He does not furnish, it is true, the filled-full sense of
acquaintance that a three-ply Saxon realistic epic lavishes on us;
he is not the realist of the itemized account. And he is as little dis-
posed to the accurate, morose baldness, the mere tractarian ripping
of decent illusions that Artzibashev practises. His realism is not his
theory, really; it is his character, his unflagging native interest. Con-
ditioned always, it is true, by a very article-of-faith reserve, he has,
more than most realists, a robust inheritance in the foundation in-
stinct of the natural dramatist: the frank appetite for personality,
even abject personality, the gusto for Sturm und Drang, even if they
are petty, the power of stomach, the zest in acquaintance, the ex-
pert interest in everything human. His eyes have seen all with the
most absorbed interest, his ears have heard all with the freshest
wonder. His perceptions have never gone stale; impressions have
formed upon his sensibility inexhaustibly, always full coloured,
varied, insistent, real. He may work in the spirit of irony and be
as laden with disillusion as Artzibashev, but he writes with a resili-
ency that Artzibashev, for all his simooms of power and passion,
does not know. Few realists have known so well as Chekhov how
to be spellbound. The capital instinct is in him; he is as intent as
a fancier when the matter is the items of character and appearance,
or the terms of personality, or the set of situation and scene.
Through his detachment and against his irony shows something of
the robust Pepysian, the thoughtful but eager folk-lorist, the chim-
ney-cornerer with the gift of vividness. His vision of humanity
and its purposes is not intricate, but the consideration of life has
never failed to fill his mind and absorb his heart.
CHARLES K. TRUEBLOOD


REVOLUTION AND THE FRENCH PEASANT
A HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES. By William Stearns Davis.
Illustrated. 12mo. 642 pages. Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany. Boston.
PHOT
ROFESSOR DAVIS has succeeded admirably in compressing
the essential facts of French political history into a volume of
six hundred pages. His limited space excludes detailed interpreta-
tion of separate events, and the author is also compelled to give only
the most perfunctory notice to the economic phenomena which are
associated with various stages of French history. On the political
side, however, the work is reasonably complete, and Professor Davis
shows an excellent sense of proportion in laying special stress upon
what may be called the revolutionary era of French history, the
period which begins with the meeting of the States-General in 1789
and ends with the suppression of the Commune in 1871.
Throughout this period France was in a state of suspended civil
war. On one side stood the bourgeoisie, the large and small investors
and landowners, the classes which had gained power and wealth as a
result of the overthrow of the feudal monarchy. The dominance of
these elements is apparent alike in the States-General, in the Direc-
tory, in the monarchism of Louis Philippe, and in the imperialism
of Louis Napoleon. Against this system of perpetual conservatism
under various outward forms the working-class population of Paris,
the men who had been captivated by the fierce levelling doctrines of
Marat and Hebert, stood ranged in sullen discontent. Omitting
riots and minor disturbances, this discontent burst out in actual
fighting on four occasions: in 1793, in 1830, in 1848, and in 1871.
In all these outbreaks the peasants played the decisive role. Their
support carried the Revolution through to triumphant success, de-
spite the excesses and follies of the Jacobin leaders. Their indif-
ference thwarted the republicans who fought on the barricades in
1830. In 1848 and in 1871 the peasants actively sided with the
bourgeoisie in putting down the Communists. This shift of
peasant
psychology from radicalism to conservatism can be understood only


256
REVOLUTION AND THE FRENCH PEASANT
by a consideration of the profound changes in the system of land-
ownership which were brought about by the Revolution.
Throughout the Middle Ages the peasants in France, as elsewhere
on the Continent, were a harried, miserable, and persecuted class.
Their intolerable suffering sometimes found expression in futile jac-
queries, which were invariably repressed with the utmost brutality.
Their condition grew worse, if possible, during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, as a result of the growth of absentee landlord-
ism and the heavy increases of taxation necessitated by the wars of
Louis XIV. In 1789 the great majority of the French peasants had
almost literally nothing to lose. Consequently they became the nat-
ural allies of the Parisian extremists. They instinctively felt that
.
only the most drastic changes in the government could permanently
improve their wretched condition.
From 1789 to 1794 the workers of Paris formed the spearhead
of the Jacobin movement. The grimy mobs of the Faubourg Saint
Antoine stormed the Bastille, forced the royal family to come from
Versailles to Paris, urged on the execution of the King, and brought
the Revolution to its last stage of radicalism by expelling the Gi-
rondists from the Convention. But Paris alone could not have made
and maintained the Revolution without the more or less active co-
operation of the provinces. Outside of La Vendée this cooperation
was generally given. The efforts of the Girondists to rouse the de-
partments against the capital met with total failure. The peasants
responded to the levie en masse in sufficient numbers to beat off the
invading forces of the coalition.
Had it lacked the hearty support of the peasants, the Revolution
must have foundered miserably, from incompetent leadership if
from no other cause. Now that the initial horror inspired by the
Reign of Terror and the threat of world-wide revolution has sub-
sided there is a general disposition to exaggerate the ability of the
men who headed the French government in 1793 and 1794. Even
Professor Davis, who is very far from sharing the radical views of
the Jacobins, pays a high tribute to them in declaring that “they
saved France.” It would be more accurate to say that France was
saved in spite of them. Outside of Carnot, the Revolution did not
produce a single first-rate organizing genius. The restoration of the
Bourbons was averted by the fierce courage and patriotism of the
French people, by the lukewarmness and dissensions of the allied


WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN
257
a
powers, not by any miracles of generalship or statesmanship on the
part of the leaders in Paris. While the revolutionary armies were
winning victory after victory in the field, the Jacobin chiefs were
largely occupied in sending each other to the guillotine. Little more
than a year after its inception the Jacobin regime practically com-
mitted suicide, when Robespierre followed most of his colleagues to
the scaffold. The collapse of the radical government thus came about
not through pressure from without or revolt from within, but solely
as a consequence of factional internal quarrels growing out of per-
·sonalities rather than out of principles. And with the fall of Robes-
pierre and the reaction under the Directory, the possibility of
establishing and maintaining a radical government with the support
of the majority of the French people passed away. For one of the
outstanding results of the Revolution was the breaking of the alli-
ance between the Parisian workers and the peasants.
The peasant's attitude towards the Revolution was quite simple.
He was determined to secure a fair share of the seigneur's land, free
from the oppressive dues and burdens of feudalism. To the con-
flicting political theories of royalists, constitutional monarchists,
Girondists, and Jacobins he was profoundly indifferent. He was
willing to support any government that would protect him in his
newly acquired land and would not tax him too heavily. Hence it
is
easy to understand at once the tenacity with which he resisted the
return of the emigres, who wished to take back the land, and the
apathy which he exhibited towards the most sweeping political
changes which did not affect his economic status. The Jacobins gave
way to the Directory; the Directory was supplanted by Napoleon;
Napoleon was succeeded by the Bourbons; but the peasant retained
his land.
The deposition of Charles X in 1830 scarcely assumed the pro-
portions of a civil war. All classes of the French people were tired
of the vain, stupid, tyrannical old man; and his removal and the
substitution of Louis Philippe were accomplished with little vio-
lence, although the retention of the monarchy was a sore blow to
many of the ardent republicans who had fought on the barricades.
It was in 1848 that the new political orientation of the peasants
made itself manifest. In the fighting which raged for several days
between the workers and the bourgeois guards of the National As-
sembly in the streets of Paris the peasants openly sided with the


258
REVOLUTION AND THE FRENCH PEASANT
latter. As Professor Davis says, the fighting of June 1848 was "a
case of the working quarters of Paris against nearly all the rest of
France.” Reinforcements hurried up from the provinces to assist
the Paris bourgeoisie in making an end of the radicals. A repub-
lican government with leanings towards communism, which de-
manded high taxes for the carrying out of elaborate social reforms,
which was even accused of contemplating a division of the land,
was altogether abhorrent to the new generation of thrifty peasants.
The final revolutionary uprising of the Parisian workers took
place in 1871. The disasters and humiliations of the war with
Germany contributed largely to the immediate outbreak. But the
seizure of power by the Communists represented the final act in the
prolonged drama of civil war. For the last time the Faubourg
Saint Antoine attempted to control the destiny of France. The re-
sponse of the provinces was swift and pitiless. The peasant soldiers
who formed the bulk of MacMahon's army stormed Paris and gave
Jacobinism its death-blow. The revolt which had lasted for almost
a century came to an end; the working-class population of Paris
could no longer withstand the hostility of the rest of France. The
descendants of the men who had led the way in burning up title-
deeds and displaying contempt for the seigneurs' property rights in
the days of the Revolution proved most zealous in upholding the
existing order against a new revolutionary dispensation.
So far as there is any lesson in the attitude of the peasants during
the French revolutionary era, it is not favorable to the ultimate tri-
umph of communism. The peasants remained good radicals only so
long as they were quite landless and destitute. As soon as they gained
secure possession of their little farms they became as respectable, as
conservative, as tenacious of the rights of property as any great
land-
owner or millionaire. A comparison between what has happened in
France and what is likely to happen in Russia is necessarily vague
and imperfect. But, unless the Bolsheviki prove more successful
apostles of communism than the Jacobins, it seems likely that a pe-
riod of private land-ownership will make the Russian moujiks as
conservative as their French brethren.
WILLIAM Henry CHAMBERLIN
1


THE WOMAN OF IHORNDEN
THE CHALLENGE to Sirius. By Sheila Kaye-Smith.
12mo. 442 pages. E. P. Dutton & Company. New
rork.
Izmo.
320
The Four Roads. Sheila Kaye-Smith.
pages. George H. Doran. New York.
MODE
ODERN art subsists to a remarkable extent by taking in its
own washing. Novelists adopt poets for heroes, who write
sonnets on pictures, for which musicians compose orchestral settings.
Painters contribute fantastic portraits of all these folks and be-
come in turn the heroes of new novels; the circle is complete. Think
over the list of Mr. Cannan's chief characters, or Miss Sinclair's, or
Romain Rolland's. It is true of course that an occasional hero is
free from the taint of art; he is always different, however, from the
mass of men, having at least the artistic sensibilities. Sometimes an
author dives into the sea of life and grasps an authentic, unliterary
experience; at such occasions we have reason to be grateful. Sheila
Kaye-Smith has made the plunge and returned tightly clutching a
bit of soil.
No wonder she prizes her discovery, for the soil is not merely the
background of her novels; it serves also to motivate the actions of
her characters; in fact the earth of Sussex might be called the chief
of her dramatis personae. It is not by oversight that her heroes are
never allowed to love a woman very strongly. The real affection
is for the ground itself. No more is it accidental that Miss Kayè-
Smith grows impassioned only when she describes a landscape, an-
alyzing her characters as coldly as if they were mathematical the-
orems. She has laid claim to a corner of England, but her owner-
ship is one of the soil alone; with the ways of its inhabitants she has
little sympathy.
There is, on the border of Kent and Sussex, a district of hillocks
and spongy pastures, with farms caught in a web of little, twisting
lanes. Here blooms a riot of wild plants- "bright colours and soft
pungent smells, like wasp-thridden apples lying in the grass. The


260
THE WOMAN OF IHORNDEN
barns with their tarred walls and great waving sprawls of roof, the
oast-houses with their red cones and white cowls, are all so many
fungus growths, pushed up by the soil rather than built by men.”
It is this country which she has chosen for her own. At first she
confined herself to it rigorously. Later she has dared occasional ex-
peditions into the outer world, but she has not yet learned to keep
her footing on other ground than Sussex.
Especially is this evident in The Challenge to Sirius. The novel
is long and inchoate, bound together only by the fact that it is the
biography of Frank Rainger; while he, in turn, is convincing only
when he moves against a south-English background. Rainger
spends his boyhood and adolescence in the Isle of Oxney, “a little
pip of a county wedged between Sussex and Kent." There he re-
turns, a man in his fifties, to marry his first love and settle down.
The interval is taken up with a London sojourn-of which Miss
Kaye-Smith gives a brilliant and thoroughly second-rate account-a
history of the Civil War from Pittsburg Landing to Atlanta, and a
final interlude of eleven years in Yucatan.
An English view of the War of the Rebellion is always fascinat-
ing to the American reader. Here Miss Kaye-Smith is safe but not
inspired. She wisely lays stress more on the general features of the
campaigns than on the reactions of the individual soldier; these re-
main somewhat of a closed book to women. She is less discreet
when she gives herself free rein on Southern landscapes. Evidently
she has gained her knowledge of them through textbooks of botany.
Frank, escaping from the Union forces, makes his way through a
jungle of Indian pipe and sumach. He hides from his pursuers be-
hind a pokeberry bush! and at last floats down the Suwanee River,
breathing in the heavy scents of orange-flowers, syringa, oleander,
and myrtle, and watching the delicate palm-fronds outlined against
the stars. . . . It is beautiful, it is exotic, but it reminds one more
of Chateaubriand than of Georgia. More real is the portrait of the
planter-at-arms, Zollicoffer, and especially that of Lorena Middle-
ton; she is a pressed flower of the Old South.
The scenes in the Isle of Oxney show more accuracy. Tom Coal-
brun and his lumpish brother Dave; Maggie, whom Frank Rainger
loves mildly and persistently—“She was habit and hunger like his
daily bread” — these people are depicted patiently, exactly, and with
a skill which Miss Kaye-Smith surpasses only in her descriptions of


MALCOLM COWLEY
261
-
the fields of marl which are their livelihood. It is from the style,
however, that the volume derives much of its worth. This quality
is one of which our generation seems almost unconscious. We know
that George Moore writes good prose—he has told us so himself.
Critics trumpet the perfection of Conrad in our ears. Appreciation
of the cadenced beauty which characterizes The Challenge to Sirius,
however, rests on no publicity methods. The ideas which Miss
Kaye-Smith expresses are often banal-she is naively indifferent to
her own platitudes—but the sentences that clothe them are ham-
mered in bronze; each one perfect, each sufficient to itself.
,
The flux and reflux of sentences such as these makes beautiful the
prose of The Four Roads. Here the subject is Sussex in wartime.
One hears at first the boom of ghostly artillery across the Channel as
a dissonance in the usual hum of afternoon. Later it grows louder,
threatening to destroy utterly this peaceful countryside. Sussex tri-
umphs over the guns; with the young men killed, there is left an-
other generation to grasp the warm plough-handles that the fathers
had dropped. The victory, however, is precarious, and the new Sus-
sex is not the peaceful county of Victoria's reign that sowed and
reaped and voted Tory to keep the prices up.
As a novel The Four Roads is almost everything that its precur-
sor was not. The real hero is a village instead of one man; despite
this fact, the story is distinctly of a single piece. One does not pick
many flaws; neither does one grow especially enthusiastic. Tom
Beatup and his stolid, maternal Thyrza; Tom's younger brothers;
Jerry, the scapegrace son of the Nonconformist parson and a gypsy
woman from Ihornden: all these characters are delineated with in-
finite understanding but without real sympathy. Miss Kaye-Smith,
near as she is to the heart of Sussex, is a stranger to its people, much
like the woman of Ihornden who married there and died and was a
friend only to the wild twisting roads. Or she is like the Frank
Rainger of the earlier volume, who, she says, “had sunk into the
fibre of Moon's Green like a nail embedded in the live trunk of an
oak. He would always be different in substance from his surround-
ings.”
This charge of lack of sympathy can hardly be brought against
her portrait of the Reverend Mr. Sumption. A gaunt, lonely Bap-
tist, he too was a stranger to the folk among whom he lived. His
son, his flock, his faith: one after another the war deprives him of
a


262
THE WOMAN OF IHORNDEN
these; finally he discovers salvation in physical labour. On a few
such characters as this, on her style, and above everything else, on
her feelings of kinship with a few square miles of Sussex earth, Miss
Kaye-Smith can justly base a claim to a rank beside the dozen or
half-dozen best novelists of her generation.
Yet if she ranks with the Young Englishmen, she is not one of
them. There is a peculiar datelessness about her work that separates
her from the experiments and bustling tract-novels of her contem-
poraries. I do not mean by this that she is not a very modern young
woman, nor to hint that she does not possess perfect acquaintance
with the literary movements of the last decade. At times she writes
two or three paragraphs of Galsworthy; there is a chapter in The
Four Roads that is utterly Wellsian; but these passages seem excres-
cences. At their best her novels partake of the timelessness of the
subject; she is Sussex rather than Victorian or Georgian. The limits
of her development are of the same nature; her art is bounded not
so much by her understanding, by her technique, as geographically
by the River Rother and the Royal Military Canal.
MALCOLM COWLEY


THE STRUCTURE OF CHINESE POETRY
MORE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE. By Arthur
Waley. 8vo. 144 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. New York.
I
N the preface to Mr. Waley's new volume of translations there
is a remark to the effect that no reviewer treated his earlier book,
170 Chinese Poems, as an experiment in English unrhymed verse,
though this was the aspect of it which most interested the writer.
This remark is perfectly just. No one did treat Mr. Waley's
earlier translations as examples of unrhymed versification. We,
with our Occidental eyes, are so dazzled with the substance of
Chinese poetry, as Mr. Waley has revealed it to us, the seemingly
pellucid simplicity concealing great depths of feeling, as not to ask
ourselves the question of how it is done. Mr. Waley may be ex-
cused his irritation at our blindness in this respect. For he has
evolved a metre and style which show, in so far as one language
can show the structure of another, exactly how the Chinese poets
worked. And as the Chinese poets themselves undoubtedly set
higher value on technique than on subject-matter, it is certainly nec-
essary to analyze the technique of these translations, in order to un-
derstand one reason for the strange charm of Chinese poetry.
Chinese poetry is based on a parallelism of thought and of sub-
stance. Even in its early examples, this parallelism is crudely mani-
fest. This parallelism runs in fact not only through Chinese poetry
but Chinese philosophy and religion. It corresponds to a deep-
seated instinct in the Oriental mind. We Occidentals, when we
make buildings, pictures, poems, music, or philosophic systems, seek
to vary; the Oriental seeks to repeat. It is as if he could not create
a form, a sound, a thought, without creating also its echo. For this
reason, Chinese poetry is without climax; for this reason also (much
like Chinese painting) it compensates for absence of climax by sheer
breadth of handling.
As Mr. Waley in the introduction to his first book of translations
pointed out, this parallelism did not come to birth all at once. In-
deed, the Chinese critics themselves have recognized two species of
poetry-poetry written in the Old Style (Ku-shih), which lasted up


264
THE STRUCTURE OF CHINESE POETRY
to the fourth century A.D., and poetry written in the New Style
(Lu-shih-or “strictly regulated”), which gradually evolved from
the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D., reaching its culmination in
the works of T'ang poets, who are, by common consent, the great
masters of the art of Chinese Poetry. And since it is largely these
T’ang poets whom Mr. Waley has chosen to translate, it is quite
evident that, for the most part, his translations reproduce, so far as
possible, the forms of this "new" or strictly regulated style.
Now, as Mr. Waley has told us, this style, although the divisions
between it and the earlier style are often arbitrary (which is quite
natural, since it grew out of the earlier style), is marked by a paral-
lelism omnipresent not only in the words of the couplets, but ex-
tending even to the arrangement of the “tones” (which are arranged
in pairs), and also in the vowel-assonance nature of the rhymes,
while in quatrains, where two lines do not rhyme, these lines must
end on the opposite tone to the rhyme! During the T’ang period all
these restrictions of form did not prevent poets from taking consid-
erable licenses; but with the succeeding age, they became even more
hampering and complicated, which led directly to the decline of
Chinese poetry. Let us take an example from Mr. Waley, and see
how his method reproduces that of the Chinese:
THE CRANES
By Po Chü-¿
The western wind has blown but a few days;
Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough.
On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes;
In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat.
Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away;
Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light.
In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,
The garden-boy is leading the cranes home.
tumn.
There can be no doubt that this poem is a picture of early au-
How is that picture achieved?' By a series of statements
each one of which is not only set against the other, but contradicts
the other. For instance, “The western wind has blown but a few


JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
265
days”; so summer is not over! “Yet the first leaf already flies from
the bough”; so autumn has come, after all. “On the drying paths I
walk in my thin shoes”-it is not cold; “In the first cold I have
donned my quilted coat”—but it is rather chilly. “Through
shallow ditches the floods are clearing away" — fine weather;
“Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light”—but winter is
coming. As for the last two lines, they simply complete the pic-
ture sketched out in these oppositions; they give us the relation of
all these details to each other. The mind is focussed at the close in
a single definite fact-autumn evening.
As if to show us how near this method is to the Chinese, Mr.
Waley has given us in his introduction this specimen of a. poem
literally translated:
EVENING
Water's colour at dusk still white:
Sunset's glow in-the-dark gradually nil.
Windy lotus shakes (like) broken fan,
Wave-moon stirs (like) string (of) jewels.
Crickets chirping answer one another,
Mandarin-ducks sleep, not alone.
Little servant repeatedly announces night;
Returning steps still hesitate.
Here we have the Chinese technique in excelsis. A set of definite
A
concrete statements are set against each other in balanced order to
convey a perfectly abstract idea. We dull Occidentals have to be
told that the poet who wrote this was sixty-three years of age. Then
we see that the “returning steps” that "still hesitate” are those of
the poet himself, and that his leisurely old age is contrasted through-
out with the servant-girl's youth-she is impatient to get to bed;
but, as Po Chü-i might say, “Water's colour at dusk is still white,
but sunset's glow in the dark is gradually nil”; and if this statement
does not receive an additional illumination from the last two lines,
then you must be totally insensible either to the charm or to the
substance of Chinese poetry.
I have dealt with this topic to some extent, as it is important. In-
deed, the importance of the Chinese poets is that they came nearest
of all poets to that complete fusion of substance and form which is


266
THE STRUCTURE OF CHINESE POETRY
the essence of a great style. Indeed, to them, substance is impor-
tant only in so far as it permits form to be given it. Their art is an
art of illuminating. Nothing is permitted to disturb the harmony
of the picture. Technically, I have no doubt that the Chinese are in
every respect our superiors, but their technique excludes the possibil-
ity of climax. Rather do they seek completion, the prolongation of
those mental echoes which their pictures gradually evoke. In the
hands of Mr. Waley (and I might almost say in his hands alone) in
this respect they are completely successful.
I have left out of account two of the most interesting things in
this volume: a short story by Yüan Chên, and a poem by Ch'ü
Yüan. The former is a poet celebrated as a friend of Mr. Waley's
favourite poet Po Chü-i, who, as a poet, was so famous for
the brilliance of his pathetic pieces that he was held to have in-
vented a new style. Mr. Waley gives us one capable specimen of
his poetry, and also this short story, the end of which springs an
ironic surprise upon us so definitely that we wonder anew at the
Chinese making artistic use of a device which we thought originated
with O. Henry. The other, the poem by Ch'ü Yüan, is, so far, Mr.
Waley's masterpiece as a translator. Its author, born in the trou-
blous times of the Feudal States, before the establishment of the Han
dynasty, is celebrated in China not only as the type of a loyal min-
ister,,but as the country's first great poet. In accordance with the
undeveloped state of the poetical art in his time, he was a vers-
librist. Mr. Waley translates one of his poems, The Great Sum-
mons, in shifting irregular metres, with tremendous use of refrain,
and imagery which suggests that in this poet China has her counter-
part of Poe and Coleridge. As I have said, this is Mr. Waley's
masterpiece as a translator so far; but let us hope that he will not be
deterred by Legge's predecessorship from giving us, in yet another
volume, Ch'ü Yüan's greatest poem, the Li Sao, or Falling in
Trouble.
JOHN GOULD FLETCHER


PREJUDICES
PREJUDICES. First Series. By H. L. Mencken. 12mo.
254 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. New York.
A
CERTAIN king once gave to three of his courtiers, in order to
determine their wisdom, three hollow crystal globes which
were filled with a golden wine and sealed so that none of the fluid
might escape therefrom.
Said the first courtier to himself:
"Wine is to be drunk. I will break the glass and taste this stuff,
for I am sure it will prove very excellent on the tongue.”
So he broke his crystal globe, and before he could catch any of the
wine it was spilled upon the ground.
Said the second courtier to himself:
“This crystal of mine is beautiful to the eye, but it is stained in-
side with a yellow liquid. If I remove the liquid my crystal globe
will then be transparent and exquisite."
And, boring a small hole in the side of it, he broke his globe into
a thousand fragments.
Said the third courtier to himself:
“This crystal which the king has given me is round like the dome
of the sky. Moreover, it is filled with a golden wine which, if
drunk, would doubtless make me happy for an hour but which may
not be removed, I fear, without breaking the glass and spilling the
wine upon the ground. Therefore I will only hang my globe in my
window that, seeing it each morning, I may contemplate infinity
and be drunk in my imagination on the wine which is within."
And he hung the king's gift in his window.
And when the king saw what the courtier had done he was
pleased. And he said to the courtier:
"For
your wisdom and understanding you shall be rewarded. I
hereby make you the First Critic of the Land.”
“Criticism is the last of all literary forms; it will perhaps end by
absorbing them all. It is admirably adapted to a very civilized so-
ciety whose memories are rich and whose traditions are already age-


268
PREJUDICES
old. It is peculiarly suited to a curious, learned, and polished race
of men. In order that it may prosper it demands more cultivation
than all other literary forms."
So, once upon a time, spake Anatole France; and if that curious,
learned, and polished Frenchman spake accurately it is scarcely sur-
prising that literary criticism in the United States, if not a lost art,
is one which only tentatively has been found. For American tradi-
tions are young, American society is but superficially civilized, and
American memories are rich principally in terms of Wall Street and
the Stock Exchange. It is true that we have produced such men as
Whitman, Poe, and Emerson. It is true, also, that we have bred
Abraham Lincoln and Samuel Clemens-one the author of an im-
mortal prose-poem, the other the author of Huckleberry Finn. It is
likewise true that we are far from hostile to the published dreams of
an ancient world: we glibly read Plato and Nietzsche and Shake-
speare and Shaw and Shelley; and, at least when our bugles are
mute and our flags are furled in peace, we listen as hungrily to Bee-
thoven and Wagner as we do to Bizet and Sir Edward Elgar. We
are, in fact, taken by and large, most generous patrons of the arts;
for we build museums, erect libraries, construct theatres, endow or-
chestras, and generally support the aesthetic edifices with a hand sel-
dom closed in avarice and often opened wide in opulence. We let
few chances slip of dropping several million dollars in the hat of a
passing band of skomorokhi, and we count that day lost whose low-
descending sun views from our pocket-books no aesthetic benefaction
done.
But one fact remains: our art is almost entirely imported. Our
dreams are not dreamed, but bought. Our museums, libraries,
theatres, orchestras, and aesthetic edifices generally, are erected by
our own hands—and then filled with the treasures of other men. As
yet the United States Senate has produced for us neither a Burke
nor a Macaulay; St. Patrick's Cathedral has given us neither a
Rubens nor a Michelangelo; our slums breed no Balzacs or Zolas;
and our aristocracy has failed to furnish us with a single Chopin,
Liszt, or Tchaikowsky. At times, we may have seemed to be, artis-
tically, a precociously fecund race. But if we have given this im-
pression we have done so, with very few exceptions, by merely play-
ing foster-mother to the arts. We have seldom conceived beauty or


WINTHROP PARKHURST
269
1
borne it in travail and patient sorrow: for the most part we have
bought beauty outright and dandled it proudly on our knee.
In the face, then, of this painful shortage of native material on
which a critic may judiciously engage his teeth, it is not astonishing
that most of our current criticism should be chiefly a garrulous ex-
pression of starvation. Without national maturity you cannot have
art, and without art you cannot have an adequate appreciation or
criticism of art. That we possess any critics at all is, indeed, more
a matter for amazement than that the majority of our critics are
cadaverous in phrase and lean in understanding. For, on the one
hand, they are confronted by the bleak and rocky Charybdis of crea-
tive aridity; and, on the other, they are buffeted and tossed about, as
in a storm, by the Scylla of popular puritanical opinion.
This whirlpool of popular opinion is, in truth, a more vicious and
dangerous phenomenon than even those barren cliffs beyond which
the American critic must swim before reaching the shores of his
Sicily; for it is formed of a watery emotionalism whipped high and
furious by the winds of puritanical doctrine. And though a critic
may, with no very serious difficulty, steer clear of such barren prom-
ontories as, say, the novels of Robert Chambers or Elinor Glyn, he
will find himself being sucked down, if he is not a careful navigator,
in the maelstrom made for his destruction by the preachers of art-
for-morality's-sake, of art-for-Anthony-Comstock’s-sake, of art-for-
everyone's-and-everything's-sake except the artist and his art.
Now, the belief that art should teach a fine moral lesson has, of
course, a certain excuse for existence. As long as men believe that it
is preferable to tell the truth rather than to lie, as long as men visit
condemnation on thieves and encomiums on public benefactors-as
long, in brief, as some modes of conduct are considered right and
others wrong, so long are the pages of literature a fit and proper
place for the dramatization of ethical ideas. The error of the doc-
trine of art-for-morality’s-sake lies not in asking literature to be-
speak the cause of righteousness; it lies in demanding that literature
bespeak the cause of nothing else