e artist. That is why new writers
and unusual publications, The Dial and The Little Review among
them, receive from Mr Orage a critical welcome depending upon
their work alone. That is why, with Swift and Sterne as his ac-
knowledged idols, he does not believe that the best has already been
in English prose and writes with as much vigour of the English
quietists as he does of Mr Ezra Pound who is alternately the vil-
lain and the hero of the first portion of the book.
I suggest that all of these characteristics are "not literary” be-
cause the professional literary life, as we know it, so markedly has
ceased to be interested in letters and has devoted itself to the trivial
exploitation of trivial ideas or to moral criticism. Mr Orage is a
mystic, a philosopher and a religious man, one gathers; in his ca-
pacity as editor of The New Age he is eminently concerned with
social reconstruction. These things are the background of the lit-
erary essays; they come naturally to the surface in the few which
deal with politics, philosophy, and religion. But I do not often find
him in the position of a pretender, using one thing as a pretext for
another. In that, and in the simplicity with which he exposes an
exceptional critical equipment, I find him superior to his contem-
poraries, both in his country and in ours.
Vivian SHAW


THE AUTHOR OF BLISS
THE GARDEN Party and Other Stories. By Katherine
Mansfield. 12mo. 255 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.
T:
(HERE is no doubt that the stories of Katherine Mansfield are
literature. That is, their qualities are literary qualities. No
one would think of dramatizing these stories, of condensing them
into pithy paragraphs, or of making them into a scenario for Doug-
las Fairbanks. They do not dissolve into music, like Mallarmé, or
materialize into sculpture like Heredia. The figures are not plastic;
the landscapes are not painted, but described, and they are described,
usually, through the eyes of a character, so that they serve both as
a background and as a character study. In the same way Katherine
Mansfield does not treat events, but rather the reflection of events in
someone's mind. Her stories are literature because they produce
effects which can be easily attained by no other art.
Nobody ever dies in one of her stories; nobody ever marries or is
born. These pompous happenings occur off-stage, discreetly, a day
before the curtain rises or a year after its descent; so do most other
events on which her stories touch. If one uses the word in the sense
of, let us say, J. Berg Esenwein, there is no plot; instead she tries
to define a situation. That is why her stories give the effect of over-
flowing their frame; an event has a beginning and an end, but the
consequences of a situation continue indefinitely like waves of sound
or the familiar ripples of a pool. This is the effect produced by the
best of her work, but actually it is nothing more than a moment out
of the lives of her characters; a moment not of action but of realiza-
tion, and a realization of one particular sort.
a
These stories, at least the fifteen contained in her second volume,
have a thesis: namely, that life is a very wonderful spectacle, but
disagreeable for the actors. Not that she ever states it bluntly in so
many words; blunt statement is the opposite of her method. She
suggests it rather; it is a sentence trembling on the lips of all her
characters, but never quite expressed; it is the discovery of little
Laura Sheridan, who burst into tears on the evening of her success-
ful garden party:


MALCOLM COWLEY
231
3
“ 'Isn't life,' she stammered, ‘isn't life— But what life was she
couldn't explain.”
The other characters come no nearer to explanation, but they dis-
cover life to be wonderful and very disagreeable, just as did little
Laura Sheridan. The moment from their existence which Katherine
Mansfield chooses to describe is the moment of this realization.
The method is excellent, and the thesis which it enforces is vague
enough and sufficiently probable to be justified aesthetically. Only,
there is sometimes a suspicion—I hate to mention it in the case of an
author so delicate and so apparently just, but there is sometimes a
suspicion that she stacks the cards. She seems to choose characters
that will support her thesis. The unsympathetic ones are too ag-
gressively drawn, and the good and simple folk confronted with
misfortunes too undeviating; she doesn't treat them fairly.
One situation recurs constantly in her work. There is a woman:
neurotic, arty, hateful, and a good, stupid man whom she con-
stantly torments. He suffers and she laughs, and he loves her
still. It is the situation which Anne Proctor explains so carefully to
her suitor in Mr and Mrs Dove. She shows him her two pigeons.
“The one in front, she's Mrs Dove. She looks at Mr Dove and gives
that little laugh and runs forward, and he follows her, bowing and
bowing. And that makes her laugh again. Away she runs and after
her comes poor Mr Dove, bowing and bowing
and that's
their whole life.” Often with Katherine Mansfield that is the whole
story.
Another situation, which she repeats rather less
frequently, is that of the destruction of a woman's individuality by
some stronger member of her family, as, for example, in The Daugh-
ters of the Late Colonel or in The Lady's Maid. These two situa-
tions by their recurrence give a faint air of monotony to The Garden
Party.
This second volume, compared with the first, adheres more faith-
fully to the technique of Chekhov, and the adherence begins to be
dangerous. He avoided monotonousness only, and not always, by
the immense range of his knowledge and sympathy. Katherine
Mansfield's stories have no such range; they are literature, but they
are limited. She has three backgrounds only: continental hotels,
New Zealand upper-class society, and a certain artistic set in Lon-
don. Her characters reduce to half a dozen types; when she deserts
.
.
a
a


232
THE AUTHOR OF BLISS
these she founders awkwardly, and especially when she describes
the Poorer Classes. Lacking a broad scope, she could find salvation
in technical variety, but in her second volume she seems to strive
for that no longer.
To read her first book was to make a voyage of adventure, or
maybe even to open Chapman's Homer. She had borrowed a little
from her English contemporaries, but not enough so that one could
identify her sources. She had borrowed a great deal from Chekhov,
but her characters were other and more familiar. In general the
stories were her own experiments and successful experiments; that is
why it was exhilarating to read them. One did not quite know what
she would write next.
The Garden Party has answered
that question. It is almost as good as Bliss, but not much different;
from Katherine Mansfield it is immensely disappointing.
.
.
.
MALCOLM COWLEY


BRIEFER MENTION
HUMBUG, by E. M. Delafield (12mo, 345 pages; Macmillan : $2) derives
philosophically from Samuel Butler; it is sharp and subacid in treatment,
touched with those high-lights of irony so characteristic of Miss Delafield's
work. The author has essayed a study in education, directed against paren-
tal discipline in the guise of sentimental exhortation and moral falsifica-
tion—those unrelegated props of Victorianism. Once embarked on her cru-
sade, Miss Delafield never swerves; her logic is as accurate as a chart, and
her conclusion stands out like a lighthouse. A book which will be read and
relished-except by those who need it.
The Soul of A Child, by Edwin Björkman (12mo, 322 pages; Knopf:
$2.50) is an impressionistic novel of exceptional psychologic value—both
in the fidelity with which it adheres to its major theme and in the vividness
with which it is presented. As a narrative of adolescence, it is honest and
inclusive without being morbid, while as a study of environment it is so
successful that it virtually imposes upon the author an obligation to write
a sequel.
MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR, by Remy de Gourmont, translated by John Howard
(12mo, 272 pages; Lieber & Lewis : $2). Antiphilos, Satyr, cries that beauty
is a rarity, adding that "even the immortal nymphs are sometimes a little
Alat-nosed.” The words of a connoisseur of women voiced by an experi-
menter with civilization who hides his hoofs in provincial shoes and secretly
polishes his horns. In this brilliant satire Gourmont is distinctly of the
Symbolists who have caused Anatole France to wring his hands and to cry,
in effect, “But I wish I could like them, for I do believe they're sincere.”
DAVID, OF Jesse, by Marjorie Strachey (12mo, 351 pages; Century:
$1.75). It would not be precisely correct to say that Miss Strachey
plays the part of valet to the Hebrew poet-king, but David is certainly
no hero to her. She succeeds in recounting nearly all the incidents of his
.
life, quite stripped of their significance. This would seem one of those
stories revamped for children if it were not for the inclusion of certain
amorous incidents which definitely invalidate such a solution, and leave
the book something of a mystery.
EGHOLM AND His God, by Johannes Buchholtz, translated by W. W. Worster
(12mo, 298 pages; Knopf: $2.50) is bizarre without being fascinating;
vivid, but not real; a curious, but not a compelling work of fiction. A suc-
cession of pictures, a motley parade of characters, an occasional touch of
humour—these make up the narrative, which advances, but does not some-
how acquire momentum. One finds in this novel a suggestion of Bojer, al-
though the craftsmanship is much less sure and the ingredients of the tale
less universal in appeal. The translation by W. W. Worster is competent,
idiomatic, and well-sustained.


234
BRIEFER MENTION
ADRIENNE TONER, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick (12mo, 374 pages; Houghton
Mifflin : $2). Though this novel is notable chiefly for the psychological in-
sight and the gift of character analysis it displays, even the central fig.
ures are imperfectly depicted. The author's method is one of vague out-
lines; she is guilty of endless circumlocutions, of needless iteration and re-
iteration, of page after page of dull and unnecessary conversation. She has
not striven for the economy which is necessary to perfect art; she has fre-
quently been guilty of putting into empty verbiage that which might more
effectively be expressed in action.
DAUGHTERS OF FIRE, by Gerard de Nerval, translated by James Whitall
(16mo, 138 pages; Brown: $1.50) is a collection of three stories which are
written with an all-too-innocent fervour. De Nerval's visions were more
prolific than ingenious, and their fluctuations within these stories result from
the author's vagaries rather than through any aesthetic necessity. Emilie,
the second story, is a more formal bit of narrative, with few drastic bursts
of poesy, and is the best story in the volume. The other two will recom-
mend themselves most to readers possessing a categorical awe of poets who
hang themselves with apron strings.
The KINGFISHER, by Phyllis Bottome (12mo, 347 pages ; Doran : $2) sets the
reader off in an entirely different sphere from that which has hitherto en-
grossed this novelist-a departure which represents both a loss and a gain.
Miss Bottome has here sounded a character drawn out of the lower ranks of
life, and traced a development which has sociological as well as psychologi-
cal interest. It is a sincere and earnestly written piece of work, which makes
up in vividness what it lacks in novelty. On the other hand, one misses that
deft searching of the feminine mind and heart which has been the author's
most valuable contribution in her previous excursions in fiction.
а
THE ANSWERER, by Grant Overton (12mo, 373 pages ; Harcourt, Brace: $2)
is a novel with Walt Whitman for its central figure, the first in which he
appears as a character. The book communicates something of the same
gusto, the same edged appetite for life, that Whitman had; and to the years
we know least about, which he spent in the South before the Civil War, it
lends a romantic illumination. It loses in effectiveness because the poet in
his own work poured himself out so unreservedly; and beyond individualiz-
ing his love experience, admits us to no greater intimacy than he did
himself.
INTRUSION, by Beatrice Kean Seymour (12mo, 339 pages; Seltzer : $2) is a
saner and a far more objective story than Invisible Tides. Some of the emo-
tional situations created are hectic and strained, but the character of Roberta,
in which the interest of the book centres, is depicted with a strength and
subtlety not manifested in the earlier work. Roberta is an unconscious vam-
pire, the more deadly because unconscious. She succeeds in convincing her-
self as well as others that she is superior to her victims because she is too
cold-blooded to share their temptations and their sufferings. Though Mrs
Seymour finds the devastions of her heroine more remediable than they are
in life, she is honest in revealing the forces of ordinary experience.


BRIEFER MENTION
235
NÊNE, by Ernest Pérochon (12mo, 289 pages; Doran: $1.75). This book,
which received the Prix Goncourt in 1920, is a story of French peasant life,
poignantly real, not self-conscious for a moment, and told with the utter-
most simplicity—the sort of thing that is foreign to American literature,
but is always appreciated. Its style is adapted to the subject and makes a
rarely beautiful thing of it. The story is that of Michael Corbier, who after
the death of his young wife, finds it necessary to get some woman to help on
the farm, of Madeleine, a sturdy peasant girl, well suited to the work, and
of the children, who become the great factors in her life. Le Gallienne
likens the author to Hardy; the paper cover is suggestive of a Millet etching
-both comparisons are indications of its general type.
a
ABROAD WITH MARK TWAIN AND EUGENE FIELD, by Henry W. Fisher
(12mo, 246 pages; Brown: $2.25) may be set down neither as a revelation,
from the viewpoint of its humorous subjects, nor as a handy addition to the
bookshelf of the after-dinner speaker, seeking to renovate his stock of
anecdotes. Mr Fisher appears to have been assiduous without great suc-
cess; his contribution to the bulk of Mark Twain's recorded wit is hardly
commensurate with the size of his book.
A LETTER Book, selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of
Letter-Writing, by George Saintsbury (12mo, 306 pages; Harcourt, Brace:
$2.25). A tithe of Mr Saintsbury's acquaintance with the byways of litera-
ture would caparison a normal knight of to-day's reading world for the
highways. Mr Saintsbury has the gayest freedom of both road-systems, in-
cluding all connecting lines. He both delights and affrights us by the de-
vouring gusto of his relishes in letters. The long Introduction is full of
bantering erudition and has as pleasing irrelevances as are needed to intro
duce a casual kind of anthology. The book itself, an “appendix” to the
introduction, begins with the proper sprinkling of classical letters and picks
its way, not too systematically and with good editorial tips, through the im-
posing volumes of English "epistolers,” to use Mr Saintsbury's word, from
the dim Pastons down to Robert Louis Stevenson. To presume to say
whether the precisely right choice is here offered is to pretend to an encyclo-
paedic vision such as not even a reviewer can possibly possess.
Mr. Faust, by Arthur Davison Ficke (12mo, 62 pages; Frank Shay: $1.25)
is a four-act play that was produced at the Provincetown Players theatre,
New York, early in 1922. Mr Faust himself symbolizes the philosophic
spirit of man, aloof, disillusioned, but not cynical. His two friends, Brander
and Oldham, stand respectively for romantic acceptance and escape from
reality. Satan has lost his horns and other picturesque attachments; his
mission is to throw alluring negations in the path of man, sensual delight
and the quest of power for the coarser-grained, self-obliterating Nirvanas
and Christian humilities for aspiring souls. There is uncertainty in the
workmanship of this play. The blank verse lacks flow, the diction seems to
hesitate between the colloquial and the "poetic," and the action has not the
reality that is powerful enough to attract us to a symbolic interpretation.
Mr. Faust is very much the kind of play we should expect from an average-
ly good lyric poet.


236
BRIEFER MENTION
ODES AND Lyrics, by Hartley Burr Alexander (8vo, 181 pages; Marshall
Jones : $2). There is genuine poetic feeling in many of these poems, but
they are sadly in need of pruning. Where the thought is slow-paced, the
metre need not gallop, and too often thought is smothered with an amaz-
ingly erudite vocabulary. There is an echo of Swinburne about the longer
poems, and, sometimes, in the shorter ones on Greek models, a clear-cut
simplicity which redeems many faults.
WATCHERS OF THE Sky, by Alfred Noyes (12mo, 281 pages; Stokes : $2.50)
is a volume of narrative verse which demonstrates that the author's real
field is the lyric. Though the theme is a magnificent one and well worth the
efforts of any poet, Mr Noyes' prevalent mood is a prosy one, and his
blank verse, while illumined here and there by a patch of light and colour,
unfortunately indicates that the author has not selected with care.
THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO Poetry, chosen and edited with an essay on
the Negro's Creative Genius by James Weldon Johnson (12mo, 214 pages;
Harcourt, Brace: $2.25). In this anthology there are poems of passion and
of a fiery protest, of tempestuous emotion and of a twinkling humour, of
sensuousness and fancy and of a dreaminess like that of indolent clouds
against a sunset sky. The volume stands as testimony to the fact not only
that the negro has made an authentic contribution to American poetry, but
that he has proved himself a master both of light and of serious verse.
GREEK VASE-PAINTING, by Ernst Buschor, translated by G. C. Richards
(illustrated; 8vo, 180 pages; Dutton : $10). A document on the develop-
ment of styles and technique in Greek vase-painting from the stone and
bronze ages down to the shifting of the Hellenic centre of gravity to Italy.
The essential purpose of the volume is to chart the field; new departures
therefrom are left to the discretion of the reader. Incidentally, such new
departures are greatly stimulated by the striking spiritual parallels to be
noted between contemporary art and the art of Greece's last gasp.
The
author's discussions of movements are made much more intelligible by the
excellent and copious reproductions of vases.
WALL SHADOWS, by Frank Tannenbaum (12mo, 168 pages; Putnam: $2)
reveals intelligence functioning in a field long pre-empted by tradition,
laziness, cruelty, and the human propensity for building quite arbitrary
mental walls and running industriously around inside of them. Mr
Tannenbaum analyses the vicious circle of prison cruelty, demonstrating
beyond question that it is not a sporadic or individual affair, as we like
to think when we read of occasional horrors, but the logical and con-
tinuous outcome of our methods of social retaliation. He shows that
such a system of Prison Democracy as that evolved by Thomas Mott
Osborne breaks this circle. Having cannily established his hardheadedness
by his unemotional account of the daily horrors of prison life, he adds a
last chapter, Facing the Prison Problem, in which he declares that the
prison is a makeshift and an escape which must be destroyed root and
branch, and suggests several methods to replace those he criticizes.


VAUDEVILLE
THE
HE argument about M Nikita Balieff's Chauve-Souris has
nothing to do with the rare qualities of that entertainment,
but it has points of interest. Starting with the assumption that the
Chauve-Souris is precisely such a national institution in Russia as
vaudeville is in America (on which point I cannot testify) one ar-
rives at the suspired wish that American vaudeville might be similar
and equal. A curse is thereupon laid upon America and upon its
makers of vaudeville. The suggestion often follows that with Ed
Wynn as conférencier (or with Al Jolson) and Fannie Brice and
the Rath Brothers and a few others, an entertainment could be ar-
ranged. In the same breath one hears that vaudeville is American
commedia dell' arte.
All of this, I confess, leaves me a little bewildered; with the im-
mortal Cholly I am inclined to say that there's a great deal of tosh
talked about the commedia dell'arte. I feel that those who boggle
at vaudeville and have to say music hall or varieties, who have
to refer and compare and derive, are too uncertain of their pleasure
,
in the thing in itself. They are appalled by the faults in the native
forms of expression, forgetting that what is native begins, and is
likely to end, by pleasing the natives in fairly large numbers. I do
not pretend that many of the turns are not dull, and I know that the
vulgarity of the dull ones is not of the divine variety. But I remain
convinced that nothing worse could happen to them, and to the ex-
cellent numbers they set off, than the attempt to refine them à la
russe.
Their actual technical refinement is much more important. In ad-
dition to a handful of vaudeville artists of the first rank there are
at least fifty acts which have one inestimable quality: exact adapta-
tion of the means to the end—including, of course, a precise under-
standing of the relation of the performer to the time and place of
his performance. The headliners fit in and out of vaudeville; catch
them on the wing at the various revues or in musical comedy and
they do their bit well enough, so that the entertainment at once loses
its original character and becomes vaudeville. But remember the
magnificent Fannie Brice, and how after years of trying she is never


238
VAUDEVILLE
quite successful in being part of any show but her own one-man act!
Harry Watson, Jr., as Young Kid Battling Dugan; Williams
and Wolfus; the Six Brown Brothers; two or three creators of jazz;
Joe Cook, the Humorist; these are some of the people whose work
has the blessed accuracy and unction which "serious acting” so much
fumbles for and misses. To see Miss Brice's burlesque of aesthetic
dancing, followed by her vamp, and then by Mon Homme is actu-
ally to understand nearly everything one needs to know about
finesse; to watch Joe Cook's one man vaudeville show, and to know
in what degree his audience relishes his parodies, is to realize how
definite, conventional, and secure the vaudeville-form has become,
since it so superbly burlesques itself.
It is refinement, in this sense, which one found so quickly in the
Chauve-Souris; its exaggerations and caricatures were felt although
the solemn actualities which were distorted we did not know. This
caricature is rapidly becoming the surest part of each vaudeville act.
The heavy headliners (alas that Miss Ethel Levey should have be-
come one!) still play their acts straight; the younger generation,
am afraid, tends to create its illusion only for the joy of destroying
it. All of this, all of this purely intellectual interest in vaudeville
escapes our intellectuals because vaudeville is neither exotic nor
sombre.
There is one other reason and I mention it with reservations. In
several
years I have not seen one single interesting stage decoration
in vaudeville. I have seen elaborate curtains and pretentious sets,
but nothing, girls apart, upon which the eye could rest with any
satisfaction. I confess to liking the flats and false perspectives of
the usual act in-one; the Caliph's palace and the Sultan's harem
leave me chilly. And as I think of them, with a grim foreboding, I
feel sure that they are importations from another world. For it is
the fate of our vaudeville, when it sees vice, to embrace it first and
to ridicule it afterwards.
Even more notably than the moving picture, vaudeville has re-
fused to be uplifted and to reform itself. It lacks, to excess, broad-
ness and salaciousness, but it maintains its inclusiveness and its free-
dom. Nearly all its faults are in its importations; its virtues are
peculiarly and brilliantly its own. The moral proposal I make is
that our critics leave it alone.
G. S.


COMMENT
"I am not rushing to the rescue of the Dial.”
-JH IN THE LITTLE Review
JE
H suggests that The DIAL has "a larger audience” than The
Little Review, so we give publicity to her renunciation. What
she is doing is an attack upon Secession which attacked us for hav-
ing, she recalls the words, no “obligation to homogeneity.” She
saves us also from the necessity of replying to what seems an ill-
mannered reference to Mr Sherwood Anderson in our connexion.
"Why make the physical age of the creative artist a measurement ?"
asks jh; "Why swipe the time-honoured measure of the rocking-
chair brigade ?” Good. But why does jh swipe the time-honoured
measure of collegiate (read: economic) determinism from the Free-
man's Reviewer. Ezra isn't dead in spite of masks and even if it
was in the Mercure de France or somewhere he has spoken winged
words about keeping the eye on the object and let economics and in-
terpretations and analyses go hang.
PERHAPS the essay on Occam's Razor in Mr Santayana's Solilo-
quies in England will suggest to some of our literary critics that they
provide themselves with an instrument as effective in their trade.
The dangers of Occam's method is made clear, as everything is
made clear in these beautiful pages. "If God or nature had used
Occam's razor and had hesitated to multiply beings without neces-
sity, where should we be ?” is his question. What we are looking
for is the critic who will hesitate to multiply concepts and ideas
without necessity, and who will therefore, in discussing a work of
art, introduce into his discussion only such things as are relevant and
in the degree of their application.
These same critics could then proceed to understand Mr San-
tayana's paragraph in A Contrast with Spanish Drama:
"Enjoyment, which some people call criticism, is something aes-
thetic, spontaneous, and irresponsible; the aesthetic perfection of
anything is incommensurable with that of anything else. But there


240
COMMENT
is a responsible sort of criticism which is political and moral, and
which turns on the human advantage of possessing and loving this
or that sort of perfection. To cultivate some sorts may be useless or
even hostile to the possible perfection of human life.”
It is of comparatively little importance which sort of criticism
one chooses to write or to read, so long as one is aware that the two
exist and that their objects are profoundly dissimilar though they
are not necessarily hostile. Interest in aesthetic perfection has dwin-
dled to such an extent that there are moments when one feels in-
clined to forego the moral type of criticism entirely and to say that
the only value of comparative literature is to make us interested in
the incomparable. Enjoyment follows its own laws (it is no less
irresponsible for that) and the creative artist is most potent when
he discovers his laws within himself. And neither in creation nor in
enjoyment can we be bound for ever by the moral and economic
circumstances of our lives. We do not suggest that the disciplinary
and moral critics are totally without place and service; they are
only in error if they imagine that theirs is the only possible service
to the creative artist of our time.
We hear gratifying rumours of an American issue of Ulysses for
the technical protection of which—nice irony!—the original copy-
right of a portion of the text by The Little Review alone remains.
Meanwhile the unformed society of enthusiasts continues to grow
and one of its members, Mr Terence Holliday, of 10 West 47th
street, in New York, has undertaken to collect and file—against the
time of a re-issue-all the typographical errors of the present issue.
They are many, they are forgivable, but they need not be perpetu-
ated. Even Mr Orage's quotation "Eglintoneyes looked up sky-
brightly” hardly serves as well as Mr Joyce's “shybrightly.”


i
{
1


r |
Made in Germany
Courtesy of Der Sturm, Berlin
HORSES. BY FRANZ MARC



THE NDIAL
VII
IX
OXXITO
SEPTEMBER 1922
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
BY RICHARD SPECHT
Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke
PEOPLE who
pass by their true life and their true happiness, or
whom happiness passes by. People of very delicate adjustments,
haughty in their isolation, and yet suffering because no one is quite
open to another. People of the defensive, of perfect form, of good
bearing. Amiable melancholics, hardly adapted to living, a bit
spoiled and querulous, and sensitive to any banality. The disillu-
sioned, who go on nevertheless in their quest for love. Quiet ironists
and beauty-hungering egoists. Then again, those who are simply
young; some unhampered, others sombre, but all entranced with
living and loving, which is to them the gravitational centre and the
quintessential meaning of existence; everything else, and especially
such "serious things” as vocations and work
this is a mere
incidental tracery. (Only one of these young people is different:
Felix in The Lonely Way, who orients himself calmly and steadily
in the big issues of life and seems to stride by all small adventures
towards a life of action and utility.) People who stand aside from
the confused struggles of the age, with a strong Viennese element to
their cultivation, somewhat over-refined and yet not without a cer-
tain rigour in their self-sickness; aesthetes of the spirit, for the most
part removed from all practical manual labour: writers, painters,
doctors, fine sceptics with soft, white, delicately cautious hands,
hands which are in another plane of existence from that of violent
grips and blows. Women who understand nothing but love, with
slight inklings of the maternal, and around whom even in old age


242
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
there hovers the gleam of past sweet hours; when they really are
mothers there is a conflict, they find it so hard to avoid becoming or
remaining somebody's mistress. Women who can love only once,
who give themselves completely and perish thereby, because they
are unable to see how in this world there could be room for anything
beyond their own wonderfully internal experiences. Others who
take nothing much to heart, who never think of a safe little corner
or a permanent happiness, who suffer from neither satiety of sensa-
tion nor from disappointments, giving and receiving pleasure, glid-
ing from one person to another with a natural grace, often without
noticing the enormous events through which they pass or for which
they are responsible, and absolutely incapable of surprise or embar-
rassment at these events or at themselves; they are innocents rather
than prostitutes, each time virginal anew, and yet sufferable solely
through the childishness and the ease with which they can love and
surrender. Still others who are duly conscious and are plagued with
their consciousness, who hunger after and wish to be hungered after,
but lack the courage to follow their feelings regardless of the false,
unjust morality which denies to women what is granted to men; and
they are punished if they do make this show of courage for once, not
suspecting in their haste that they may be committing the one and
only sin in not being worth the great mystery which is signalized
in the junction of man and woman; because it was not the chosen
man, but someone casually desired to whom the surrender was made,
in an hour of lust rather than of that authentic love which is heavy
with the great secret and stretches along the endless chain of crea-
tion. Then again, men who have known the true in life, who are
lost to the world, who renounce everything external, action, fame,
wealth, and honour, and simply tinker the more with human souls;
after much stumbling and groping they have finally come into their
own, and assert their true being, their real calling, will no longer be
diverted by alloys or allurements, will hardly even be aroused. But
the most are those who live, not with a purpose, but beautifully.
Men of the metropolis and of luxury, themselves the losers in their
game, caught in their sport of love, sorrow, truth and folly, seem
and be, life and death, unfit for growing old-torturing themselves
with ill-humour and bitterness when youth begins to decline-un-
pathetic, lacking in full-throated tones, of a spiritualized sensuality,
trained in the shades and tints of living all of which is, or
perhaps more accurately was, something specifically Viennese.
a


RICHARD SPECHT
243
An Austrian dance of death. For this race, if it has not completely
succumbed to these recent years of madness and degradation, has
sought refuge in exclusiveness and retirement; it is not equipped for
resistance, not vulgar and brutal enough to exist in this ruined
humanity of humanity's ruin. They are men who have more brain
than biceps, more nerves than heart, with a perfect grace of bearing,
and of so fine a charm in their manner and their wit that one finds
them the best of company. The people of Arthur Schnitzler.
At least, those of the first importance, those in the foreground.
Those farther back are more robust, contented bourgeois natures,
artists at tennis, eccentrics, strivers, episodists of life, often hardly
more than foils and glosses, or even theses. But though the poet has
frequently put them in his work to attain some contrast, for the
characterization of a social sphere, or as one of the cogs in his plot-
processes, they, too, stand out with such pronounced vividness that
they really become part of our lives. Thenceforth they belong to
our “personal acquaintances”; we think of them and can speak of
them as though they were actually alive. There are not many writ-
ers whose characters, quite apart from what they have to say to us,
fill space with such substantiality and such a convincing sense of
life, and live their present so forcefully before us, or with us. Not
merely within the frame. Their past and their future is perfectly
plain to us, without any direct statements having been made on
these points. One often gets the impression that they lead their own
lives above and beyond the will of their creator, and not always as
he had intended. (Schnitzler himself has expressed this feeling in
his wonderfully clever grotesquerie, Vom Grossen Wurstel.) But
they are always rich with reality, not inventions of the closet,
living beings of the most pronounced definiteness of character, and
with every contradiction, lacuna, and quirk of the human soul.
His landscape: Vienna and the Vienna Forest; I had almost said
the Vienna of Hero and Leander, there is such a waft of innocent
passion and tender sensuality in this atmosphere. Moreover, there
are only parts of Vienna which live in Schnitzler's work: the green
suburbs, the slopes of the Kahlenberg, the vineyards of Grinzing,
the woods of the Sofienalpe, and the silent Sommenheidenweg lead-
ing from the old yellowish villas across the hills into lovely lonely
places. Otherwise only the "inner Vienna” is the scene of Schnitz-
ler's works; not the workers' quarter and the business section, the
noisy markets and the banks, but the old distinguished streets with


244
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
.
their plain houses. Here, after entering on mouldy, broken, worn
out steps, one is surprised by large beautiful rooms, with dark, noble
pictures, graceful porcelains, heavy carpets and curtains, solid, spa-
cious, luxurious Biedermeier furniture, and—frequently-Makart
bouquets in the corners, behind a bust or a console. (The Makart
bouquet also appears here and there in his works of "all modern
conveniences.") The cool scent of churches, abandoned spots filled
with the rustling of a fountain, angular courts where the windows
are overgrown with fuchsia, flights of wooden stairs in the open,
gateways entwined with ivy, carpets and washing hung on the land-
ings, in the middle a green pump with a groaning handle, a few
dusty oleander bushes, solitary gardens which have the effect of a
song by Schubert, at once delightful and unhappy, serious little
houses where the sweet blond heads of girls frequently appear at the
windows, and ... But surely these are not scenes from Schnitz-
ler; his for the most part are much more elegant and more mundane
-none of your high society elegance, however, but the authentic
product of old cultures—and especially more modern
... and
yet when one considers his works one does not see first of all the
actual milieu, but that distinctly Viennese atmosphere which, like a
sublimated music, is so remarkably and charmingly the property of
this city, its people, and its houses. Such is the setting for these
marionette plays and mysteries of the soul, but it is not dispropor-
tionately prominent. For it is not the essential matter—although in
a certain sense the setting must “take part”; above this there is the
piece itself wherein every element of the external is almost negligi-
ble. Only the inner processes are important: the wounding, healing
or dying of sensation, the dark corners of the soul, the interludes and
modulations, the spiritual fluctuations, the sensing of the ineffable.
That Arthur Schnitzler is one of the few who know how to say this
unsayable, or at least to make us feel its presence, that he is a giver
of light and has told his contemporaries for the first time many con-
clusive facts about themselves .. this is his significance in the
literature of our days. From this standpoint his motives and mate-
rials become almost of secondary importance; they could be over-
looked. But I do not overlook them. By no means. For there are
good things, documents—frequently on the ars poetica, as a revolt
against the theatre in a play written for the theatre, and again, a
surrender to its irresistible snares; there are exceptionally neat ma-


RICHARD SPECHT
245
noeuvrings of the puppets, clever segments of life with the strangest
points of intersection among the lines of fate; there is the wealth of
a skilled narrator who both arranges and simplifies, even though he
may seem to add complications again afterwards. I do not overlook
any of this; by no means, and least of all in a critical summary. But
it does not constitute the major portion of his value, although it is
one of his potent charms.
His world: the wide land of the soil. Certainly not merely that
world in which people are not bored, nor merely the monde-for
this belongs to the periphery of his nature rather than to its centre.
That, again, is not the important matter. Not the world of society,
not these environs of the soul. The important matter is the man who
passes through this world, the man who rests above it, the eye which
focuses upon it, the hand which forms it, the agent which widens
our knowledge of ourselves and makes us feel that here, in the por-
trayal of people who perhaps concern us very little, a world is being
treated which may not be strictly ours—or is no longer ours—but
which is our affair. And nothing but our affair. Mea res
that is what Schnitzler has done. He has widened our knowledge of
ourselves. Even in scenes of the renaissance when he is having dag-
gers drawn for us, and drinking done out of poisoned goblets, and
human bodies mutilated. Even when a mediaeval doctor accom-
plishes marvels of hypnosis, or when play and reality, comic intrigue
and bloody truth are intermingled, while the Revolution goes on and
the Bastille is stormed. Our affair. That is his value. That he has
brought the most hidden emotions to the light, elements which were
not previously in our consciousness; and that he has done all this
more delicately than it was ever done before. That he, even in
apparently negligible subjects, has always released new visions,
glimpses into the spiritual, into the eternally human, into the eter-
nally animal. That he has given us revaluations, seen new details of
importance, unmasked nullities, discovered new correlations of life,
and displayed the delicate workings of fate's blunt comedies. That
he needs no symbols to give a meaning to life; nor does he need
"messages," although he does frequently concern himself with such
things, and then often constructs rather than forms. Simplifier:
inasmuch as he is a poet. And a man who speaks to us of today,
even when he is speaking of people who belong to yesterday.


DOCTOR GRAESLER
BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
Translated from the German by Paul Bloomfield Zeisler
VIII
IC
N his home city a pleasant surprise awaited Doctor Graesler.
Though he had only at the last moment announced his arrival, he
found his quarters not only in the best of order, but also furnished
in much more friendly fashion than he had left them a year before.
Only now did he remember that during the past autumn Friederike
had stayed there by herself for a few days. She had, as she told him
later, purchased some new furniture and assigned to some reliable
workmen certain contracts regarding whose completion she had been
in communication with his friend Boehlinger during the winter
months. And when Graesler had appraised the dwelling a second
time, and finally entered his dead sister's bed-chamber which faced
upon the court, he sighed softly—a little in deference to the com-
positor's wife who had taken care of the house for years and who
was now leading him through it, but also in truly mournful mem-
ory of the departed who had not been destined again to see that
familiar room, newly and agreeably appointed, in the glow of the
electric lights.
Doctor Graesler unpacked, intermittently walked here and there
through the rooms, occasionally took down one or another book from
a library shelf only to put it back in its place again unread, and
looked down into the narrow street. It was barely astir and on the
moist pavement a corner lamp was mirrored. He sat in the old
chair which went with the writing-table inherited from his father,
read the paper, and felt with a melancholy sense of astonishment
that he was so distant from Sabine-not only that many miles lay
between him and her, but as if the letter in which she had offered
him her hand and which had driven him to fight had reached him
not the day before, but many weeks ago. When he brought it forth
a pungent and disquieting scent seemed to him to rise from it, and,
а


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
247
a
overcome by a fearsome reluctance at the possibility of having to
read it again, he locked it up in a drawer.
The following morning he asked himself how in the world he
would pass that day and the succeeding ones. He had long since
become a stranger to his own native city; most of his friends had
died off, and his connexions with the few surviving ones had gradu-
ally become slack or been broken off altogether; only his sister had
been wont again and again to employ her occasional presence in the
town to visit various extremely old people who had belonged to the
circle of acquaintances of her long since departed parents. Graesler
therefore had, as a matter of fact, no other business to attend to at
home than the conference with his old friend, the attorney Boeh-
linger—a business which did not seem pressing.
Upon leaving his house he first took a walk through the city, as
he had a habit of doing when he returned again, after a long absence,
for a short stay at home. In these wanderings a certain faint and
almost salutary emotion usually had a way of coming over him,
but that day, beneath the heavy, grey, rainy sky, such an emotion
was completely wanting. Somewhat apathetically he passed the
house where, from a narrow, high corner window a sweetheart of
his youth had furtively beckoned to, and smiled at, the school-boy
on his way to and from school; indifferently he heard the rippling
of the fountain in the autumn-clad park, which he himself had seen
develop slowly in the old town moats; and when he stepped from
the court of the famous old town-hall, and around the corner, in a
narrow, hidden lane, saw the ancient, almost dilapidated little
house where, behind half opaque windows, easily identified by their
red curtains, he had had his first miserable adventure followed by
weeks of terror, he had a sensation as of seeing torn and dusty veils
lifting themselves from his whole boyhood.
The first person to whom he spoke was the white-bearded tobac-
conist in the store in which he was accustomed to supply himself
with cigars. When this individual expressed to him somewhat pro-
fusely his condolences on the death of his sister, Graesler hardly
knew what to reply, and was afraid of meeting still more acquaint-
ances and of having to listen to further, similar, meaningless words.
But the next one he met did not recognize him, and a third, who
made a move to stop, he himself passed by with a hurried, almost
impolite greeting


248
DOCTOR GRAESLER
After luncheon, which he took in a familiar old restaurant-now,
however, newly and all too ostentatiously appointed—he went to
see Boehlinger, who had been already apprised of his arrival in
the city; Boehlinger gave him a friendly but quiet welcome, and
after a few sympathetic words asked to hear the circumstances
of Friederike's death in more detail. With lowered eyes and in an
undertone, he reported the sad affair to the friend of his youth, and
when at length he looked up he was somewhat astonished to find that
the man with whom he was face to face was an elderly, stout per-
son, whose smooth-shaven countenance—which his memory had still
retained in its youthfulness—now had a rather faded and weather-
beaten appearance. At first Boehlinger showed that he was deeply
moved and was silent for a long space; finally he shrugged his
shoulders and sat down at his writing-table, as though he wished by
this gesture to express that even when confronted by such a deplor-
able event there was nothing left for the survivor but to turn reso-
lutely to the problems of the day. He then opened the top of his
desk, drew out a brief-case, and, after producing the will and other
important papers for Graesler's inspection, proceeded to discuss the
matter of the inheritance in detail. As the deceased had left more
extensive savings than Graesler had expected, and as he was the
only heir, the way matters stood he could from then on live mod-
estly, but comfortably, on his income from the bequest alone,
without continuing to practise his profession. So the attorney in-
formed him at the end of his analysis. But through precisely this
disclosure the doctor realized that it would be long before the time
for his retirement would come; nay, that, in fact, a passionate im-
pulse towards activity came to life in him; and upon affirming this
vigorously, he no longer hesitated to tell his old friend of the sani-
tarium and of the prospective negotiations for its purchase which he
had made shortly before leaving the little watering-place. The
attorney listened attentively, asked the doctor for further elucida-
tion of several details, seemed at first to be inclined to sanction
Graesler's aim, but in the end hesitated to urge his friend seriously
to an undertaking which, apart from such medical skill and adroit-
ness of social intercourse as he was willing to allow him in the
highest measure, demanded also a certain talent for business and
organization, a talent which Graesler had displayed slight evi-
dence of possessing. The doctor could not dispute this objection and


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
249
asked himself whether it would not now be advisable to make some
mention of Fräulein Schleheim, who was by all means equal to any
demands this side of the problem might make on him. But he re-
flected that the old bachelor who now sat facing him would probably
be the last person in the world to evidence the proper comprehension
of such an exceptional affair of the heart. Graesler knew all too
well Boehlinger's peculiarity, that of speaking his mind about
women at every opportunity in the most disparaging, even cynical
terms; and he should never have been able to bring himself to put
up quietly with any loose remarks about Sabine. To the friend of
his youth Boehlinger had at the time made no secret of the expe-
rience through which he had become such a mocker of women. At
a masquerade here in the city, where middle-class society had made
it a habit once each year to foregather with the world of the theatre
a
and also with certain elements of still more questionable morality,
Boehlinger had, as it were in passing, won the favour of a lady
whom no one, even in his most fantastic dreams, would have be-
lieved capable of such rashness and such indiscretion. Even at the
height of her ecstasy she had retained her mask, and had thought
herself unrecognized, then and for all time; but by a remarkable
accident Boehlinger had discovered to a certainty who it was
that had given herself to him that night. Of this adventure Boeh-
linger had, to be sure, told his friend, but as he had continued to
suppress the name of his sweetheart there was hardly a woman in
town, married or unmarried, whom Graesler had not at one time or
another suspected; and the more immaculate the reputation and
conduct of that particular woman appeared to the world, the more
acute his suspicions became. This adventure had prevented Boeh-
linger from entering into more intimate relations—aiming, perhaps,
ultimately even at marriage—with any of the women here. And
thus it was that, in his position as an esteemed attorney in a medium-
sized city, intent upon decorum and moral purity, he had been
obliged to gather, on frequently repeated, short, and secretive vaca-
tion-trips, such further experiences as would serve only to confirm
him in his bitter view of the female sex. On Graesler's part it
would, therefore, have been unwise to draw Sabine's name into the
conversation, even doubly unwise since he had actually released the
pure, charming creature, who had to a certain extent thrown herself
at him, but was perhaps already lost to him for ever. In the circum-


250
DOCTOR GRAESLER
a
stances Graesler preferred not to venture upon any further conver-
sation regarding his future plans, explained evasively that he was
in any case minded to wait for advices from the contractor, and
finally invited the friend of his youth—though not so heartily as he
had intended to visit him soon at his house on the Burggraben. It
did not occur to the doctor until now that he still owed the attorney
thanks for the assiduity with which he had superintended the paper-
hanging. Boehlinger declined the thanks modestly, but said that at
any rate he found happiness in the prospect of soon setting foot
again in a house which was not exactly poor in memories of his own
youth, though these were unfortunately all too dim. They shook
hands and looked one another in the eye. Those of the attorney
seemed about to become moist; but even now Graesler was insensible
of any such emotion as that which he had all day been vainly ex-
pecting and which would have been able to soften for him the sorry
aftertaste of that hour.
A minute later he stood upon the street with an almost torturing
feeling of inner desolation. The sky had cleared up and the air had
grown milder. Doctor Graesler strolled through the principal street
of the town, stopped in front of several display-windows, and felt
gently gratified that a modern taste was now beginning clearly to
proclaim itself everywhere in his native city. At last he stepped into
a haberdashery where, in addition to several trifles, he intended to
buy a hat.
Contrary to his usual custom, this time he chose a hat with a soft
form and a fairly broad brim, and found, on looking in a mirror,
that it was more becoming to him than the stiff headgear to which
he used to consider himself pledged. Nor could he possibly
think this an illusion when, on continuing his walk as twilight came
on, the women seemed here and there to be surveying him with
critical, but approving glances. Suddenly it occurred to him that in
the meantime a letter might have arrived from Sabine. He hurried
home. A number of letters had come—for the most part they were
forwarded from the little watering-place—but there was none from
Sabine among them. Disappointed at first, he soon realized that he
had been expecting the improbable, nay, the impossible; he left the
house again and strolled aimlessly about through the streets. Later
on he hit upon the notion of riding some little distance in the tram
which had stopped near him. He remained standing on the rear


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
251
platform, and remembered for the first time, with a touch of sad-
ness, that in the years of his youth there had been nothing but open
fields and farm land in the suburban quarter through which he was
now riding. By degrees most of the passengers had got off, and not
until then did it strike him that the conductor had as yet not made
his appearance. He cast a glance about him, and encountered two
eyes
which smiled at him in friendly mockery. They belonged to a
young, rather pale girl dressed simply, but attractively in something
light, who had presumably been standing next to him on the plat-
form for some little while.
“I suppose you are wondering that the conductor doesn't come
along,” she said, raising her head and looking brightly up at Graes-
ler from under her flat, black straw hat, the brim of which she held
with one hand.
“Yes, that's right,” he replied rather stiffly.
“You see, we haven't one,” the young girl explained. “But up
front there, by the motorman, you know, there's a box where you
drop your ten-pfennig piece, and that settles the matter."
“Thanks very much,” the doctor said, betook himself to the front
of the car, did as directed, walked back, and repeated, “Thank you
very much, Fräulein. That's really an awfully convenient arrange-
ment—especially for rascals.”
“They would be out of luck,” the young girl replied. “There are
nothing but honest people hereabouts."
“Far be it from me to doubt it, of course. But I wonder, now,
just what others must have thought of me.”
“Oh, simply that you're a stranger here—which you are, aren't
you?” And she looked up at him inquisitively.
"Well, I suppose you might call me that,” he replied and looked
away. Then he turned again quickly towards his neighbour and
asked, "What kind of a stranger would you take me for?”
" “Of course, I can tell now that you are German, perhaps from
right around here somewhere. But at first I thought you must come
from some place far away—from Spain, or Portugal.”
“Portugal ?” he repeated, and reached involuntarily for his hat.
“No, I'm not a Portuguese, to be sure—though,” he added paren-
thetically, "I do know the country slightly."
“Yes, I should think so. You've gotten around quite a bit in the
world, I suppose.”


252
DOCTOR GRAESLER
"Oh, a little,” Graesler replied, and over his eyes came a warm
glow of recollection of strange lands and seas. He observed with
some satisfaction that the girl's glance began to betray not only
curiosity, but a certain admiration besides. Quite unexpectedly she
said, however:
“Here is where I get out. I hope you have a good time in our
city.”
"Thanks very much, Fräulein,” Graesler said, and tipped his hat.
The girl had got out, and nodded to him from the street-rather
more familiarly than the shortness of their acquaintance would
have warranted. Obedient to a bold impulse, Graesler jumped off
the car just as it was getting under way, approached the girl, and
said:
“As long as you have just wished me a pleasant stay here, Fräu-
lein, and our acquaintance has begun so promisingly, perhaps it
would be best-"
"Promisingly?” the girl interrupted him. “Oh, I don't know
about that.” It sounded like an honest rebuff, and so he continued
somewhat more discreetly:
"What I really meant to say, Fräulein—It's so perfectly charm-
ing, chatting with you, that it really seems a shame to—"
She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "I'm practically at home
now, and I'm expected for supper.”
“But just a quarter of an hour.”
“I'm sorry, but it really can't be done. Good night.” She turned
>
to go.
“Please, don't go yet,” Doctor Graesler cried in a tone almost of
fear, so that the girl stopped and smiled. "We can't break off our
acquaintance so abruptly, can we?”
She had turned around towards him again, and looked up at him
with a smile from under her dark straw hat.
“Of course not,” she said. “Why, that wouldn't be possible. We
know each other now, and that's all there is to it. And if we should
happen to meet anywhere again, why I'll always say to myself right
away, ‘There is that gentleman from—Portugal.
“But if I begged you, Fräulein, to give me the opportunity for
such a meeting, so that we could just chat together for an hour ?”
“A whole hour? You must have lots of spare time.”
“Any amount to spare for you, Fräulein.”
a


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
253
a
a
“Unfortunately I can't say the same.'
"Well, of course, neither could I, always."
“But just now I suppose you've got leave of absence.”
"Well, yes, in a way. You see, I'm a doctor. Allow me to intro-
duce myself. Doctor Emil Graesler-born here and here at home,”
he added quickly and as though he were confessing a sin.
The girl smiled. “So you come from right here? What do you
think of that? You're certainly good at pretending. One has to be
careful with you.” She looked up at him, shaking her head mock-
seriously.
"Well, then, when can I see you again ?” Graesler asked more
peremptorily. At first she gazed ahead thoughtfully; then she said:
"If it doesn't bore you too much, why you can take me home
again to-morrow evening."
“Glad to, glad to. And where may I expect you ?"
I
"I guess it will be best if you walk up and down across the street
from the store. You know, I'm working at the glove shop of Klei-
mann, at 24 Wilhelmstrasse. We close at seven o'clock. And then,
if it's agreeable to you, why you can ride along this far with me
again on the tram.” She smiled.
"Haven't you really got any more time for me than that ?''
“How can I manage? I have to be home at eight, you know.”
“You live with your parents, Fräulein ?"
She looked up at him again. "I guess I ought to be telling you at
last who I am. My name is Katharina Rebner and my father is a
clerk at the post-office. And right up there, if you'll look-on the
second floor, where that window is open—that's where we live,
father and mother and I. And I've got a sister-she's married-
and she's coming over with her husband this evening. They always
do on Thursdays. And that's why I've got to be home.”
“Yes, this evening—but not every evening, do you ?” Doctor
Graesler quickly interposed.
“How do you mean, Doctor ?"
"Well, you surely don't stay home every evening, do you?
You've got some friends you visit, haven't you-or you go to the
theatre ?"
“People of our sort seldom get the chance.” Of a sudden she
nodded pleasantly to someone walking on the other side of the
street. It was a man, no longer young, and clad simply, in the man-


254
DOCTOR GRAESLER
ner of a better-class workman; in one hand he carried a package.
He returned her greeting briefly and apparently without taking any
notice of Graesler.
“That was my brother-in-law,” she said. “That means my sister
must be home already. And now it's really high time for me to be
going.'
“I hope no unpleasantness will arise out of my having taken the
liberty of accompanying you so near your door.”
.
“Unpleasantness ? Fortunately I'm of age, and by this time they
know at home with whom they've got to deal. Well, good-bye,
Doctor.”
"Until to-morrow?''
“Yes.”
“At seven o'clock in the Wilhelmstrasse,” Graesler repeated.
She remained and seemed to be considering something. Suddenly
she looked up at him, and then said somewhat hastily:
"Seven o'clock, yes. But,” she added hesitantly, “so long as you
said something before about the theatre, you won't be angry at me
if 14"
"Why angry?''
"'I mean, so long as you mentioned it before—if perhaps you
could bring some tickets for the theatre right along with you, why
that would be awfully nice. It's so long since I've been there.”
"Why I'd be glad to. I'm only too happy to be able to do any- :
thing to give you pleasure.”
“But no expensive seats, please, such as you're probably used to.
That would spoil all my fun.”
"You may rest easy on that score, Fräulein-Fräulein Kath-
arina.”
“And you're sure you aren't angry at me, Doctor?"
“Why-Fräulein Katharina-angry-"
"Well, then, auf Wiedersehen, Doctor.” She shook hands with
him. “Now I've really got to hurry. To-morrow we ought to have
more time together.” She turned away so quickly that he could no
longer catch the glance that had accompanied her last words. But
in her voice he thought he heard the echo of a whispered promise.
When Graesler had returned to the four walls of his dwelling,
the picture of Sabine appeared to him with a passionate intensity.
He was possessed by an irrepressible desire to write her, even if but


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
255
a few words. And so he informed her that he had arrived safely,
found his home in the very best order, held a serious but not defini-
tive conference with his old friend Boehlinger, and, so as not to let
time pass unprofitably, would to-morrow visit the infirmary, where,
as he had told her on occasion, an old university colleague of his
was head of a division. He hastily signed himself, "With very best
regards, your sincere friend Emil,” and hurried out again into the
street to take the letter to the station, so that it might still travel to
its destination by the night train.
a
IX
The following morning Doctor Graesler visited the infirmary, as
he had promised in his letter to Sabine. Cordially welcomed by the
doctor in charge, he asked permission to accompany the latter on his
round of visits to the wards. He followed everything with an atten-
tion which pleased himself most, inquired into the progress and
treatment of noteworthy cases, and even ventured a few differences
of opinion, invariably using some such qualifying phrase as, “In so
far as we physicians at health-resorts succeed in maintaining some
association with theoretical medicine.” He took lunch with several
assistants in a modest restaurant across from the hospital, and got
a
so much enjoyment from the company of his young colleagues and
from their technical conversation that he made up his mind to return
there often. On his way home he procured the theatre tickets, and at
home he turned the pages of medical books and periodicals, getting
more absent-minded as the hour advanced, partly in expectation of
some word from Sabine, and partly in vague speculation upon the
probable progress of the approaching evening. In order to be armed
against all possible emergencies, he decided to have on hand some
cold refreshments and a few bottles of wine-which, after all, did
not obligate him in any way. He left his lodgings, attended to the
necessary purchases, and had them sent to his house; and a few min-
utes before seven he was strolling up and down the Wilhelmstrasse,
this time without the romantic headpiece of the day before, but-
so as to make a less showy appearance and also, as he fancied, to put
the genuineness of Katharina's feelings to the test-in his old and
familiar stiff black hat. He was just looking at a window-display
when he heard the sound of Katharina's voice behind him.
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DOCTOR GRAESLER
a
“Good evening, Doctor.”
He turned around and shook hands with her. He was pleased at
her attractive and well-dressed appearance; any one might have
thought that she was the well-bred daughter of a middle-class fam-
ily—and as Doctor Graesler hastened to say to himself, she would
unquestionably have to be regarded in this light, since she was the
daughter of a state official.
“Now what do you think my brother-in-law took you for, yester-
day?” she asked immediately.
"I haven't the faintest notion. Perhaps also for a Portuguese?”
“No, not that. But for a bandmaster. He said you looked exactly
like a bandmaster he had once known.”
"Well, did you set him right ?”
“Yes, I did. Wasn't that the thing to do?”
"Oh, I haven't any reason to make a secret of my profession. And
did you also tell them at home that you intended going to the theatre
with me this evening ?”
“That wasn't anybody's business but my own. And besides, they
didn't ask me. I guess I could certainly go alone if I wanted to,
couldn't I ?"
“Of course you could. But I like it better the way it has turned
a
out."
She looked up at him, with a trick she had of holding on to the
brim of her hat with one hand, and said:
“It doesn't give you any real pleasure alone, does it? It's no fun
going to theatres unless you've got company. There's got to be
someone sitting next to you who laughs when you laugh, and whom
you can peep up at, and "
“And? What were you going to say?"
“And you can squeeze his arm when the play gets particularly
nice.”
“I hope it will get particularly nice to-night. In any case, I am
entirely at your disposal.”
She laughed softly, and started walking faster as though she
were afraid of missing the beginning.
“We've gotten here too early," Doctor Graesler said as they ar-
rived in front of the theatre. "There's still almost a quarter of an
hour's time.”
She was not listening to him. Eyes shining, she rushed down the


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
257
first aisle ahead of him, scarcely bothered about him as he helped
her off with her coat; and not until they were sitting next to each
other in their seats in the third row did she throw him a grateful
glance.
Doctor Graesler looked about for familiar faces in the moderate-
ly well filled theatre. Here and there he noticed one that he still re-
membered. As for himself, he was sitting in the shadow, so that he
was certain no one recognized him.
The curtain rose. They were giving a new German farce. Kath-
arina enjoyed herself immensely and often burst into laughter, but
without once turning towards her neighbour. During the first inter-
mission he bought her a bag of bonbons, which she accepted with a
smile of thanks. In the course of the second act, at spots that seemed
to her especially jolly, she nodded at him delightedly. As the play
went on, Doctor Graesler, who had been listening to it somewhat
absently, became aware that an opera-glass was being trained on
him from a box. He recognized Boehlinger, greeted him without
embarrassment, and in no way returned the slyly questioning look
of his old friend. As he was strolling up and down the lobby with
Katharina during the last intermission, he suddenly put his arm
through hers—which she allowed him to do without further cere-
mony—delivered his opinion on the performances of several of the
actors, but as softly and urgently as though there existed some sweet
secret between him and his charming companion; he was somewhat
disappointed at not having encountered Boehlinger. The last gong
sounded, and when Graesler was sitting beside Katharina again, he
pushed over so close to her that their arms touched; and as she did
not budge hers, he felt that an increasingly intimate relation had
gradually been established between them; and while he was helping
her on with her coat in the cloak-room, he even dared to go so far as
to stroke her hair and her cheeks fleetingly.
When they stood outside the doors, she looked up at him from
under her hat and said in a tone which did not sound as though she
intended to be taken altogether seriously:
"Well, now I'm afraid I'll have to be getting home.'
Gracsler responded adroitly, "But not, I hope, my dear Fräulein
Katharina, before you have accorded me the honour of sharing a
modest supper with me.”
At first she looked at him as though questioningly, then nodded


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DOCTOR GRAESLER
gravely and as quickly as if she had understood more than he
had said. And like lovers whose steps are hastened by passion, they
hurried arm and arm through the evening streets towards his house.
When they had arrived and he had made a light in the study,
Katharina glanced all around her and observed the pictures and
books with curiosity.
"Do
you
like it here?" he asked.
She nodded. “But it's really quite an old house, isn't it?''
“Three hundred years, certainly.”
“But how new everything looks!"
He gladly offered to show her the remaining rooms, where the
furnishings and arrangement met her approval; but as she entered
the room of his departed sister with him, she looked at him with
astonishment and said:
“You aren't married after all, are you? And your wife
out of town?
At first he smiled, then ran his hand across his forehead, and ex-
plained to her in an undertone that this newly furnished room had
been intended for his sister, who had died in the south but a few
months before. Katharina looked him in the eye, as though to prove
his sincerity; then she stepped up closer to him, took his hand, and
stroked it caressingly with hers—which made him feel better. He
turned off the light and they went into the dining-room, and not
until then could Katharina be persuaded to take off her hat and
coat. After that, however, she quickly made herself at home. When
he was preparing to set the table, she would not allow it, contending
that that was her province. At her sportive command he sat in a
chair at some distance from the table, and watched her contentedly
as she made all the preparations for supper in true matronly fashion
and found her way about, not only there, but also out in the kitchen
and in the pantry, with as much skill as though she had been keeping
house for him always. Finally they both sat down at the table; she
served, he poured, and then they ate and drank. She chatted rap-
turously about the evening just passed, and was amazed to hear
from Doctor Graesler that he seldom went to theatres; they meant
to her the quintessence of all earthly joy. He explained to her that
his manner of living rarely permitted him amusements of that sort,
that he lived in some new place every six months, that he was just
returning from a small German watering-place, and that he would


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
259
soon have to be travelling across the ocean again, to a far-off island
where tall palms grew, and there was no such thing as winter, and
one rode off in a little carriage, under a burning sun, into a world of
yellow. Katharina asked him whether there were lots of snakes
there too.
“Yes, but one can protect oneself from them,” he said.
"When will you have to be going there again?”
“Soon. Why? Would you like to go along?” he asked, as though
in fun; but he had been drinking his wine rapidly, it had raised his
spirits, and he felt that in this jest there also trembled the hint of an
actual fact.
"Why not?” Katharina responded quietly, but without looking
at him.
He moved closer to her and softly put his arm around her neck.
She avoided him, and this he rather liked. He stood up, deciding
henceforward to treat Katharina altogether like a lady, and polite-
ly begged her permission to light a cigar. Then, smoking and walk-
ing up and down the room, he spoke seriously and pertinently of
the strange course of human life, not a single day of which one
could calculate beforehand; he told of all manner of places, north
and south, to which his profession had led him at one time or an-
other, and offered no opinion as to whither it might possibly still lead
him. As he talked he stopped now and then near Katharina, who
was munching dates and nuts, and laid his hand gently on her
brown hair. Katharina had been listening to him with interest, oc-
casionally interrupting him with questions prompted by her curios-
ity; sometimes the doctor would notice a strange, half-scornful flash
of her eyes, which always led him to continue his discourse with
even more punctiliousness and circumstantiality. When the hall-
clock struck twelve, Katharina arose, as though this were the irrev-
ocable signal for departure; and Graesler acted quite disturbed,
although in the bottom of his heart he felt a certain relief. Before
a
Katharina left she cleared the table, arranged the chairs, and put
the room in order. At the door she suddenly stood up on tiptoe and
put up her lips for the doctor to kiss.
"Because you've been so nice,” she said, and again her eyes
flashed out that strangely mocking light. They walked down the
stairs by the light of a flickering candle which Graesler carried
ahead. At the next corner a carriage was standing, and Graesler


260
DOCTOR GRAESLER
a
and Katharina climbed in. She leaned against him and he put his
arm around her; and so they rode silently through the nocturnal
streets until they were not far from Katharina's home, when Graes-
ler drew the young girl violently to him and covered her mouth and
her cheeks with passionate kisses.
"When shall I see you again ?” he asked as, at Katharina's re-
quest, the carriage stopped at some little distance from her home.
She promised him to come the following evening. Then she climbed
out, begged him not to escort her to the door, and vanished in the
shadow of the houses.
On the following morning Doctor Graesler was not conscious of
the slightest inclination to visit the hospital; but later, when he
wandered about in the city park under a cool, clear autumn sun, at
a time of day at which others were following their trades and pro-
fessions, he was aware of a soft stirring in his conscience, as though
he were accountable for his behaviour not only to himself, but also
to someone else, and this someone else he knew to be Sabine. Of a
sudden the thought of Doctor Frank's establishment again forced
itself powerfully on his attention; Graesler reflected upon all sorts
of constructional changes, considered the erection of new bath-
houses, drew up prospectuses with a vigour and dash of wording
which was unusual with him, and swore that in the very hour in
which he should receive word from Sabine he would return and set .
the whole matter in order. If, however, she should allow his last
letter to go unanswered also, everything would be over–between
him and her, at least. For there was no reason why he should make
the purchase of the sanitarium depend exclusively upon Sabine's
behaviour, and it would really be not at all a bad idea-a con-
founded good one, in fact—to make his entry into the splendidly
transformed building accompanied by a different Frau Direktorin-
if possible, one who did not just happen to take him for an egotistic,
squeamish, tiresome fellow, as Sabine did. And if, by any chance, it
should suit him to select Fräulein Katharina to live with, why then
it was not likely that any one would consider him a Puritan any
longer. He sat down on a bench. Children rushed past him. Rays
of the autumn sunshine flowed across the yellowed foliage. He
heard the twelve-o'clock whistle from a distant factory. This even-
ing, he thought. This evening! Was youth again in the ascendant?
Was it still a proper season for adventures of that kind ? Could he
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ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
261
permit himself this gesture? Rush off? Off, immediately, take the
very next steamer to Lanzarote? Or back--to Sabine? To the
creature with the pure soul? Hm! Who knows how life would
have shaped itself for her if, at a given moment, she had met the
right man—not merely some audacious tenor or some low-spirited
practitioner of medicine.
He arose and sought out for lunch the fashionable restaurant
where he would not be bothered by the shop-talk of
leagues, as he had been yesterday. As to the rest, everything else
could be decided upon
later.
young col.
X
He had hardly sat down at his desk that afternoon and opened
the anatomical atlas which happened to be lying there, when there
was a knock on the door and there entered the compositor's wife,
who had announced herself willing to take care of his bachelor's
quarters for him. After many apologies she asked him whether he
might be so kind as to make her a present of some piece or other of
clothing from the wardrobe of his sister, so unhappily deceased.
Graesler frowned. “This woman,” he said to himself, "would not
have dared to make such an almost shameless demand of me, if she
did not happen to know that I have been receiving a female visitor
here in my lodgings.” He answered evasively that he intended to
abide by the wishes of his dead sister and turn over her estate, for
the most part, to charitable institutions; thus, since he had not as
yet found time even to have a look at what there was, for the present
he could make no promise whatever. It developed that the woman
had in any event brought along the key to the garret; she handed
it over to the doctor with an officious smile, thanked him as extrava-
gantly as though he had already fulfilled her request, and with-
drew. Since the key was in his hands, Graesler thought, and as he
was really glad to have come upon a way of passing the next few
empty hours, he determined to pay a visit to the garret, which he
had not seen since his childhood days. He climbed the wooden
stairs, opened the door, and stepped into a crowded room which was
so poorly illuminated by the slanting skylight that Graesler could
only gradually find his way about. Superfluous and forgotten house-
hold furniture stood in the dusky corners, but the middle was filled
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262
DOCTOR GRAESLER
with trunks and chests. The first one Graesler unlocked seemed to
contain nothing but old curtains and house-linen; and Graesler, who
had no intention of unpacking and putting these things in order
himself, let the lid fall shut. A longish, coffin-like chest which he
now opened seemed to promise more notable contents. Graesler
saw all sorts of papers lying before him, partly in the form of legal
documents, letters in envelopes, large and small packets tied to-
gether with string; on one of the latter he read, “Left by Father.”
Doctor Graesler had not known that his sister had preserved this
sort of thing so carefully. He picked up a second packet with three
seals on which was hand-printed, in capital letters, “To be de-
stroyed unread.” Doctor Graesler shook his head sadly. “When the
time comes, my poor Friederike,” he thought to himself, "your wish
shall be fulfilled.” He put the packet, which probably contained
diaries and innocent love-letters of her girlhood, back in its place
and opened a third trunk; here fabrics had been stored, shawls, rib-
bons, and yellowed laces. He took some of them out, let them slip
back through his fingers, and believed he even recognized one or
another of the articles from his mother's time or even his grand-
mother's. Some of them his sister had worn herself, especially in
earlier days. And he remembered having seen upon her shoulders,
not at all a long time before, the beautiful Indian shawl with the
embroidered green leaves and flowers; years ago a rich patient who
was leaving had given him this shawl as a present for his sister. It,
as well as several other things he found, was certainly of no use to
the printer's wife or any charitable institution—but they did all
the better for a pretty young lady who could be so kind as to en-
liven and sweeten a few poor secret hours of a lonely old bachelor's
life. He locked the trunk with special care, spread the shawl
smoothly over his arm, and, with a smile of contentment playing
about his lips, he left the room as it sank gradually into darkness.
He did not have long to wait before Katharina arrived, a little in
advance of the appointed hour-straight from the store and without
having dolled up first, as she excused herself jestingly. Doctor
Graesler was glad that she had come, kissed her hand, and with a
humorous bow handed her the shawl, which had been laid out, ready
for her, on the table.
"Why, what can this be?” she asked him, astonished.
“Something to help you doll up,” he replied, “even if you don't
exactly need it."
a


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
263
>
“Why, whatever could you have been thinking of ?” she said, took
the shawl in her hands, let it slip in and out among her fingers, put
it around her, draped herself in it, looked at herself in the mirror,
still speechless, until she finally walked over to Graesler with genu-
ine delight written upon her features and, gazing up at him, took
his head in both her hands and drew his lips down to hers.
"Thank you a thousand times,” she said.
“That doesn't satisfy me.'
"Well, then, a million times.” He shook his head. She smiled.
"Thank you, dear,” she said, and put up her lips for him to kiss.
He took her in his arms and immediately told her that he had
picked the pretty thing out for her that afternoon in the garret, and
that he would probably find in all these trunks and chests many an-
other nice bit that would be just as becoming to her as this. She
shook her head as though to say that she would be unwilling to put
up with any more gifts of such value. He asked her how the pre-
vious evening had agreed with her and whether there was much to
do in the store that day; and after she had prattled along about
everything he had wanted to know, he reported to her, as to some
dear old friend, his doings of the day: how he had cut the hospital
and instead had loitered around in the city park recalling bygone
days when, as a child, he had played there between the old, grass-
grown ramparts. Then he reverted to all manner of other things out
of his past, particularly-half by accident and half on purpose—to
the period of his activity as a ship’s-doctor; and when Katharina in-
terrupted him with childishly curious questions about the appear-
ance, dress, and customs of unfamiliar peoples, and about coral-
reefs and ocean storms, he felt that those things which he had re-
cently recited to the approbation of higher circles must now be
adapted to a simpler but all the more appreciative audience. And
unwittingly he assumed the tone and manner of a story-telling
uncle who in a dim-lit chamber seeks to stir and entertain, through
tales of fabulous adventure, a group of attentive children.
Katharina, who had been sitting beside him on the divan with her
hands in his, had just got up to prepare supper, when he heard the
door-bell ring. Graesler started slightly. What did this mean?
His thoughts succeeded one another rapidly. A telegram? From
The Range? Sabine? Was her father sick? Or her mother? Or
did it have something to do with the sanitarium? A pressing in-
quiry on the part of the proprietor? Had another prospective buyer
a


264
DOCTOR GRAESLER
a
mixed up
appeared? Or could it, after all, be Sabine herself? What could
he do, if it were? Well, in any case she would no longer take him
for a Philistine. And still, young girls with pure souls were not in
the habit of ringing a bachelor's door-bell at such a late hour. Pres-
ently there came a second ringing, more insistent than the first. He
saw Katharina looking at him, questioning and artless. Altogether
too artless, as it suddenly seemed to him. To be sure, it could have
something to do with her. Her father? Her brother-in-law—the
alleged brother-in-law? A preconcerted affair? An attempt at ex-
tortion? Ah! Well, it served him right. How could he have let
himself get
in such a mess? Old fool that he was! They
shouldn't succeed, however. He wouldn't let them browbeat him.
He'd gone through other dangers, the devil take 'em. On a South
Sea island, once, a bullet had whistled hard by him. A handsome,
blond young naval officer had fallen down dead beside him.
“Don't you want to go see who it is?'' Katharina asked, and
seemed to be wondering at the singular expression of his face.
“Certainly,” he replied. Even when he had reached the door he
could still hear her asking, “Who could it be, so late ?" The little
hypocrite! He pulled the door shut behind him, and looked through
the peep-hole out into the hall.
"Who is there?” he asked.
“If you please, sir, is the doctor at home?''
“What do you want? Who are you?”
“If you please, sir, I'm Frau Sommer's servant."
“I don't know any Frau Sommer.”
“She's the party on the first floor. Her little child is in a bad way.
a
Can't I speak to the doctor?''
Graesler opened the door with a sigh of relief. He knew that a
widow Sommer and her seven-year-old daughter lived in the house.
It must at all events be the handsome woman in mourning whom he
had met on the stairs only the day before and had even turned to
look after for no particular reason.
"I am Doctor Graesler. What do
you want?”
"If the Doctor would be so kind—the little girl's forehead is very
hot and she's been screaming all along without stopping.”
“But I do not practise here in the city. I am only here on my
way through. I must ask you please to get another doctor."
“Oh, until we get another one at this time of night—'
>


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
265
“It is not so very late."
A shimmer of light from a suddenly opened door fell on the
flagging in the hall on the floor below. A whispering voice sounded
up to him.
"Anna."
“That’s Frau Sommer herself,” the servant said quickly, and
hurried to the railing.
"Madam.”
“Where have you been staying all this time? Isn't the doctor at
home?"
Graesler now also stepped over to the railing and looked down.
Below in the corridor the woman, whose features were dissolved in
the half-light, raised her arms on high, as to a saviour.
“Thank God! You're coming right away, aren't you, Doctor?
The child is—I don't know what is the matter with it."
“I—yes, I–I am coming, of course. If you will only wait for a
minute. I must go get my thermometer and bring it along. Just a
minute, Madam, and I shall”
A whispered “Thank you” floated up to Doctor Graesler as he
closed the door behind him. He hurriedly entered the room where
Katharina stood leaning against the table, looking across at him ex-
pectantly. He was filled with a deep tenderness towards her, the
more so as he had just admitted such base suspicions of her. She
seemed to him a touching, an altogether angelic figure. He walked
up to her and stroked her hair.
"We are having poor luck,” he said, "or rather I am. Think of
it, I have just been called to a sick child right here in the house, and
of course I cannot refuse my help. Unfortunately, I can't see any-
thing else to do but walk you off to a carrirage.”
She seized his hand, which still rested on her head. "You're
sending me away?"
“Not gladly, you can believe me. Ormor would you care to wait
for me after all ?
She stroked his hand. "If it doesn't take too long."
"Well, in any case, I'll hurry. You're very, very dear.”
He kissed her on the forehead, quickly brought from his study
the black instrument-case which was always ready for use, admon-
ished Katharina to enjoy her meal in the meanwhile, turned around
at the door to look at her once more, saw her nodding to him pleas-


266
DOCTOR GRAESLER
a
antly, and then hurried down the steps with the blessed prospect of
having a young and lovely little creature receive him affectionately
upon his return from the gloomy gravities of his profession.
When Doctor Graesler entered, Frau Sommer was sitting at the
bedside of her child, which tossed about feverishly. After a few
introductory questions and remarks he set about making a careful
examination of the sick child, and was obliged at the end to express
the expectation that a rash would probably break out. The mother
was in despair. She had already lost one child three years before,
she said, and her husband had died six months ago while he was
away from home on a business trip; in fact, she had not even seen
his grave. What would become of her if she should now be robbed
of the last thing that had been left her? Doctor Graesler explained
to her that at present there was no occasion for undue apprehension,
that it might possibly turn out to be nothing but a simple infiamma-
tion of the throat, and that, moreover, such a strong, well-nourished
child ought to be able to offer sufficient resistance to an even more
serious illness. He succeeded in advancing any number of reassur-
ing possibilities, and noticed with relief that his sensible words had
not failed of their effect upon the mother. He prescribed the neces-
sary medicines, and the servant was dispatched to the nearby phar-
macy; meanwhile Graesler tarried at the bedside of the child, feel-
ing its pulse from time to time and frequently touching its hot, dry
forehead, on which his hand occasionally met that of the solicitous
mother. After a silence of some duration the latter began again to
whisper anxious questions; the doctor seized her hand in a fatherly
manner, spoke to her soothingly; he called to mind that Sabine
would probably be satisfied with him now, and at the same time
noticed, in the dim and greenish light from a shaded chandelier,
that the loosely flowing wrapper of the young widow concealed a
very attractive figure. When the servant had returned, he rose and
repeated what he had already mentioned casually at his entrance,
namely, that he was unfortunately not in a position to undertake the
further treatment of the child as he would be leaving town in the
course of the next few days. The mother entreated him to remain
the child's doctor at least as long as he expected to stay in the city.
She had had such sad experiences with the doctors there in town;
but she had immediately felt the most unreserved confidence in him,
and if anybody was capable of saving her beloved child she knew


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
267
that it was he. There was nothing left for him to do, for the present,
but make an appointment for a visit the following morning; and
after he had stood for a while over the sick-bed, silently watching
the child, which was now breathing more quietly, he pressed the
mother's hand heartily and took his leave, followed by her looks of
warm gratitude.
He hurried quickly up to the second floor, opened the door, and
entered the dining-room, which he found empty. She had soon lost
patience, he thought to himself. That was to be expected. Perhaps
it was for the best, as long as the child down stairs had very likely
contracted a contagious disease. She, too, had probably thought of
that. Sabine, to be sure, would not have rushed off in such a case.
Well, anyhow, she had enjoyed her supper before she left. He con-
templated the table and the remains of the meal, and his mouth
twitched contemptuously. It would not be such a bad idea, he
thought, to go down stairs again, to the first floor, and keep the
handsome widow company. He had a feeling that in this very hour,
at the bedside of her feverish child, he could obtain from her what-
ever he might want, and was not unpleasantly thrilled by the de-
pravity of the notion.
“But of course I won't go down,” he murmured to himself. “I
am, and remain, a Philistine—for which even Sabine would prob-
ably forgive me this time.”
The door to his study stood open. He entered it and switched on
the light. Of course Katharina was not here either. He switched it
off again, and then noticed a beam of light piercing through a crack
in the door to his bedroom. A bare hope stirred within him. He
hesitated, for it was at all events pleasant to warm himself for a
while upon that hope. From within he now heard a rustling and a
rumpling. He opened the door. There was Katharina, lying—or
rather sitting upright-in his bed. She looked up from a thick vol-
a
ume which she was supporting on the bed-cover with both hands.
“You're not angry, are you?” she said quite simply. Her brown,
slightly curly hair hung loosely about her white shoulders. How
beautiful she was! Graesler stood still in the doorway without mov-
ing. He smiled, for the book which rested on the coverlet was the
anatomical atlas.
"Why, what's that you've picked out for yourself ?” he asked,
approaching with some embarrassment.
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268
DOCTOR GRAESLER
“It was lying on your writing-desk. Shouldn't I have taken it?
Please forgive me! But otherwise I might have fallen asleep, and
then it's a job to get me awake.”
Her eyes smiled, quite without mockery—almost with abandon.
Graesler sat down beside her on the bed, drew her to him, kissed her
on the throat—and the heavy book fell shut.
XI
The next morning while Doctor Graesler was visiting his little
patient, who had in the meanwhile begun to show unmistakable
signs of having developed scarlet fever, Katharina vanished from
his lodgings; but she appeared again early in the evening, to Graes-
ler's amazement carrying a little grip. To be sure, she had said the
previous night that she was entitled each year to a week's vacation
which, as though through some manner of premonition, she had
not yet used up this summer; and in the enthusiasm of their first
embraces, he had invited her on a little honeymoon. But when, thus
prepared, she approached him with the cheerful words, "Well, here
I am; if you like, we can drive down to the station at once,” some-
thing within him rose up against this peremptory manner of appro-
priating his life, and he was almost glad that he could point to
professional duties which would be holding him in the city for the
next few days. Katharina did not seem particularly troubled at
this; she immediately began chattering of other things, called his
attention to her pretty, new, tan oxfords, spoke about the manager of
her firm who had just come back from Paris and London with new
merchandise; and all the time she kept walking up and down the
room, arranged a few books in their proper places, and put the writ-
ing-table in order, while Graesler stood by the window and watched
her activity in silence and vague emotion. His gaze fell on the little
grip standing sadly and as though shamed upon the floor, and there
crept over him a vague pity that the good little creature should have
to go off with it again. At first he avoided saying anything about it,
but later, when he was sitting at his writing-table with her on his lap
like a child, her arms twined around his neck, he said:
"Would it have to be a trip? Wouldn't you like simply to spend
your vacation right here in my house?”
“Why, that would not be possible, would it?" she replied weakly.
a


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
269
"Why not? Isn't it beautiful here?” He pointed through the
window at the distant line of hills upon the horizon, and then added
jestingly, “And I'll also see to it that you are satisfied on the score
of board and lodging.”
With sudden decision he arose, offered Katharina his arm,
escorted her into the room of his deceased sister, switched on the
lamp so that a soft, reddish shimmer of light flowed through the
friendly room, and with an air of gentility offered his sweetheart,
as it were for a gift, all that her gaze could encompass. Katharina
remained silent; at last she shook her head gravely.
“Don't you want to ?” Graesler asked tenderly.
“Why, it isn't possible,” she responded softly.
"Why? It is quite possible.” And, as though he had to combat
nothing more in her than a superstitious agitation, he explained,
“Everything is quite new, even the wall-paper. It did not look
nearly so friendly before.” And somewhat hesitantly he added, "I
guess it was all fated to turn out this way.”
“Don't say that,” she answered as though alarmed. Then she
looked all around the room, her features brightened, and she ran her
hand, as though critically, over the brightly flowered cretonne on
the arm-chair which stood near the bed. Then her eyes fell on the
light curtains drawn back over the toilet-table and spied a pretty
toilet set and some cut-glass phials. While she stood there ab-
sorbed, Graesler quickly left the room, to return in a few seconds
with her little grip. She turned around, started slightly, smiled half
incredulously. He nodded to her; she shook her head. Then, as
though finally conquered, she spread her arms out to him. He set
the grip down, and with pride and emotion took his sweetheart to
his breast.
There followed wonderful times, such as he had hardly ever ex-
perienced even in his youth. Like happy newly-weds they remained
almost all day long within their snug four walls, solicitously served
by the printer's wife; she had accepted this unusual state of affairs
the more easily as Doctor Graesler had in the meantime fulfilled
her immodest wish and laden her with presents from the wardrobe
of his deceased sister. Arm in arm, drawn tenderly close, the young
pair would go for walks along the more deserted streets in the even-
ing; and one sunny afternoon they drove into the country in an
open carriage, completely unconcerned over the possibility of en-


270
DOCTOR GRAESLER
countering some of Katharina's relatives, who supposed the young
girl to be visiting an out-of-town friend. One day while they were
still at table Boehlinger appeared; after preliminary scruples about
admitting him Doctor Graesler was all the more satisfied that he
had done so, as the attorney rendered his friend's charming com-
panion every imaginable courtesy, addressed her as "gnädige Frau,"
and, after cursorily discussing the business transaction which had
brought him there, kissed Katharina's hand lightly and took his
leave with the self-possession of a man of the world. After this
Graesler was filled with an increased tenderness for Katharina, who
could bear up as well in company as she had as a housewife.
To be continued


Grolpur
HOPE.
BY WILLIAM GROPPER


4



Wrappen
TIGHT ROPE. BY WILLIAM GROPPER





FOREWORD TO TSANG-LANG DISCOURSE
ON POETRY
BY J. E. SPINGARN
S
a
O far as I know, this Discourse on Poetry, which Mr Peng Chun
Chang has translated at my urgent request, is the first example
of Chinese literary criticism to appear in English. But whether or
not it is the first—for in this field I cannot speak with authority-it
is a delightful thing, well worthy of an even larger audience than
that which has treasured it for centuries. Everyone to whom such
things make any appeal whatever will recognize its naïve and exotic
charm. But beyond this, it has a special interest as anticipating by
eight centuries some of the most modern conceptions of art of the
Western World.
The arts, including the art of poetry, are as old as life itself, but
it is only recently that their real place and function in the life of
man have been clearly understood. For centuries they were assumed
to be one with philosophy, or science, or religion, or morals, or sen-
sual enjoyment, and their purpose was thought to teach, or to im-
prove morals, or to give pleasure. It is only during the last century
or two that we have gradually begun to understand that "beauty is
its own excuse for being,” and that art is an inevitable expression of
a side of man's nature that can find no other realization except in it.
This side of our nature Croce calls "intuition." But whether we
call it intuition, or imagination, or fantasy, or whatever else may
best suit our whim or our thought, it remains an integral part of
the life of the spirit, without which men can no more live than they
can without acting or thinking; and art needs no further justifica-
tion than that it is the flowering of this side of human nature. The
true critic distinguishes clearly between art, religion, morals, and
philosophy, not for the purpose of denying, but of establishing their
essential unity in the life of the spirit.
But though this conception of art has come to us only recently, a
few earlier anticipations of it have of course been discovered. An
Italian scholar, Rostagni, has found them in a Greek treatise On
Poetry of the first century, fragments of which have been salvaged


272
FOREWORD TO TSANG-LANG DISCOURSE
from the ruins of Herculaneum. Philodemus, the author of this
treatise, seems to have been the critical opponent of Neoptolemus of
Parium, from whom the poet Horace borrowed most of his Ars
Poetica; and it is against Horace's conception of poetry as intended
"to teach or to please or to do both together” that Philodemus'
argument is chiefly directed. Mr Ananda Coomaraswamy, in some
of the essays of his Dance of Siva, has attempted to point out simi-
lar anticipations in the early philosophy of India, but the evidence
he musters is not clear; and in any event it would seem that China,
without the logical gift of the Hindu, applied the spiritual message
of Buddhism to criticism of the arts in a special way of her own.
What was accomplished by Buddhism after centuries of life on
Chinese soil may be judged from this Discourse on Poetry, which
seems to be wholly unknown to Western scholars. The more formal
Confucian standards of criticism may not be wholly absent. But
here, in the most definite manner, poetry is given its rightful
place among the spiritual activities of man's life and conceived as
something to be judged by spiritual rather than mechanical stand-
ards. Poetry is distinguished from learning, from philosophy and
science, from propaganda, from rhetoric: it deals with fundamental
human passions, with the music of joys and sighs,” and not pri-
marily with the reasons of things,” with "books,” with “opinions,
or with "words.” Its essential nature is that of "spiritual intuition.”
Of the two Chinese characters which have been thus rendered the
translator says:
“Miao, which I have translated 'spiritual, denotes some quality
that is magically delicate or subtle beyond description; the two
halves that make up the character are ‘girl' and 'young'; and its
peculiar transcendental meaning has been emphasized by Buddhists
and Taoists. Wu, which I have rendered 'intuition,' is the faculty
by which we sense or feel or know, but the Buddhists have given it
a special significance, as describing the faculty that can comprehend
the Divine Doctrine, and transcends mere mundane reasoning."
From this it is obvious that for Yen Yü the word "intuition,” like
the Jhāna of Indian Buddhism or the ecstasy of neo-Platonism, has
a mystical significance quite different from the logical concept given
to it by Croce, for whom intuition is merely the first stage of that


J. E. SPINGARN
273
activity of mind of which the more developed stage is found in the
process of thought. But even in Yen Yü's sense the word designates
a form of spiritual activity; and to connect poetry with spiritual
activity is to find the only key to an understanding of its intrinsic
meaning
But I should not like to lay undue stress on this Discourse as an
anticipation of modern aesthetic thought. It is wholly outside the
main highway of our own historical traditions; and even if it were
not, it is always well to bear in mind what Stirling says in his Secret
of Hegel:
a
"It is a curious thing that, once a doctrine has become historically
established, we are often startled by expressions in the works of
previous writers which seem accurately to describe it; yet these pre-
vious writers shall have no more insight into the doctrine concerned
than any Indian in his woods; and we ourselves should have found
something quite else in the expressions, had we read them before the
doctrine itself was become historically overt.”
Rather for itself, as a guide to the still unexplored genius of
China, this fragment may interest the Western World
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Yen Yü was a man of letters of the Sung Dynasty, about the
twelfth century A. D. There are five parts in his noted Discourse
on Poetry—the Definition of Poetry, Styles of Poetry, the Method
of Poetry, Judgements of Poetry, and Proofs of Poetry. As the
treatise is richly illustrated with historical allusions it becomes very
difficult to translate it without providing an elaborate commentary
on all the poets and poems represented. Such a rendering may be
desired by the special student. But the general reader is interested in
having a glimpse of the treasured criticisms of poetry in Chinese
literature. Hence a rough attempt is made here to translate the two
parts of the treatise which are comparatively free from allusions
and textual proofs. These are the Definition of Poetry and the
Method of Poetry, and even these two parts are not given in full.
P. C. C.


TSANG-LANG DISCOURSE ON POETRY
BY YEN YÜ
Translated from the Chinese by Peng Chun Chang
THE DEFINITION OF POETRY
Siin
O
PEAKING in general, the way of Buddhism is Spiritual Intui-
tion, and the
way
of
poetry is also Spiritual Intuition. A poet
like Meng Hsiang-Yang cannot compare with Han Tueh-Tse in
scholarly learning, but his poetry is vastly superior, and the differ-
ence lies in Spiritual Intuition. Only by Intuition can true virtuo-
sity and individual colour be achieved. But in Intuition there are the
shallow and the deep, and also the differences of discernment. There
is the Intuition that is clear and transparent, and there is the Intui-
tion that knows little and understands less. Thus the poetry of the
Han and Wei Dynasties is good; its Intuition is not false. Hsieh
Ling-Yuen and the poets of the most brilliant period of the Tang
Dynasty possess Intuition of the clear and transparent kind. In
others the Intuition is no longer of the first order. I so judge, and my
judgement is not pretension. I so argue, and my argument is not
unfounded. The way of
poetry
is what I have said it to be. If
there is disagreement, it must be because of the lack of extensive
observation or the lack of thoroughness in study.
There are five elements in the structure of poetry-Bodily Form,
Skeletal Strength, Atmosphere, Interest, and Rhythm.
There are nine qualities of poetry-Exaltation, Unconvention-
ality, Depth, Far-Awayness, Fluency, Masculine Maturity, Happy
Charm, Brave Tragedy, and Soft Sadness.
There are three places where special application is required
Beginning and End, Sentence Construction, and Word Choice.
There are two kinds of general effect-the Leisurely and Unhur-
ried, and the Soundly-Set and Supremely Satisfying.
There is but one Highest Reach in poetry, namely, Entering into
the Spirit. If poetry can enter into the Spirit, it has achieved the
best, the very highest, and there is nothing more to be added. Li Po
-


YEN YÜ
275
and Tu Fu have attained it. Others who have attained it are few.
In poetry there are other materials than those related to books,
and there are other interests than those related to the reasons of
things. But without reading many books and without pursuing the
reasons of things, the highest in poetry cannot be reached. Yet
poetry of the first order should, as noted by the saying, tread not the
path of reason and fall not into the trap of words. Poetry is the
singing of feelings and emotions. The men of the most brilliant
period in the Tang Dynasty in their inspired moods are like the
chamois hanging on their horns during sleep, leaving no trace of
their footsteps for others to follow. The most beautiful parts of
their poetry are clear, transparent, and fluttering like jade pieces in
the breeze. They are like music in the void, colour in phenomena,
moon in the water, image in the mirror—there is an end in words,
but the thought wafts on for ever.
The poets in recent times follow a peculiar doctrine. They com-
pose poetry out of words, compose poetry out of learning, and com-
pose poetry out of opinion. They are laborious enough, but theirs is
no longer the poetry of the ancients, for they are deficient in the
music of joys and sighs.
THE METHOD OF POETRY
To learn to compose poetry it is first required to do away with
Five Vulgarities (or Conventionalities)—Vulgar Form, Vulgar
Thought, Vulgar Sentences, Vulgar Words, and Vulgar Rhythm.
There must be individual colour; there must be true virtuosity.
Good couplets are attainable; but good concluding lines are hard
to attain, and harder still are good opening lines.
It is not necessary to stick too closely to the theme; it is not neces-
sary to use too many incidents.
.
In launching words it is important that they must be striking and
clear-sounding; in framing phrases it is important that they must
be rounded and mature.
Thoughts are valued for their freedom and ease; they should not
be like water inseparably mixed with mud.
It is most important to avoid disconnected fragmentariness; it is
most important to avoid patching and propping.
Phrases must not be blunt, thoughts must not be shallow, veins


276
EVENING
must not be exposed, flavour must not be short, rhythm must not
be scattered and spiritless, neither must it be hurried and cursory.
The spirit of words can be varied like birds flying suddenly up
and suddenly down, but it must not be self-contradictory.
There are three stages in learning to compose poetry. At first, not
knowing good or bad, the pen scribbles page after page. After
knowing shame, shrinking fear begins to dawn, and to compose be-
comes extremely difficult. But when the stage of clarity and trans-
parency is reached, poetry is picked up, right and left, at the com-
mand of the hand, and everywhere there is order.
One must be able to distinguish the styles of poets, like distin-
guishing black and white, before one can talk of
poetry
EVENING
BY ELIZABETH J. COATSWORTH
It is evening
The mountains sit as impenetrable as Buddhas.
The light falls upon their foreheads
Leaving their quiet forms and vast robes in
darkness,
The sky hangs drooping above their heads
Like a canopy,
And the immense earth is awed beneath their
feet.
Only the lowing of the cows and the calls of
the herd boys in the meadows
Come faintly to their ears.



被
​After Delacroix
Courtesy of the Belmaison Gallery, Wanamaker's
THE RAPE OF REBECCA. BY HENRI MATISSE





SIR THOMAS URQUHART, KNYCHT
BY LLEWELYN POWYS
AW
.
LL romancical lovers of English literature are grateful to John
Willcock for his excellent monograph on Sir Thomas Urqu-
hart, the inimitable translator of Rabelais.
The volume published some twenty years ago makes it possible
for us to arrive at a very fair conception of the honest knight whose
mellow conceits have been and will ever be so much appreciated by
a certain type of reader.
Less learned than Burton, less serious than Sir Thomas Browne,
he holds a unique position among men of letters of the seventeenth
century.
Not only was he the dandified thaumaturge that looks out upon
us from the famous etchings by George Glover, but also, be it said,
no mean philosopher. For the most casual observation of his style
reveals the fact that he had in his possession some enigmatic secret
which enabled him to preserve an intellectual detachment most
quaint and crazy, amid the prodigious banalities of the world.
Jerked to and fro, as he undoubtedly was, by destiny, one sus-
pects that in every phase of the hazardous puppet-show the last
laugh came from his own aristocratic lips.
Indeed it is as if the familiar chess-board of Kings and Pres-
byters, of Castles and Knights, over which he moved was but the
phantasmagoria of some roguish old-wives' tale.
When he is on his travels it is not the Princes of Italy or the Pre-
lates of Spain that impress his strange humour, but the fact that he
met a man in Venice "who believed he was sovereign of the whole
Adriatic” and another in Madrid "who thought himself to be Julius
Caesar and therefore went constantly into the streets with a laurel
crown on his head.”
His debts, he confides to us, were enough to "appal the most un-
daunted spirits and kill a very Paphlogonian partridge that is said
to have two hearts.” And the Presbyters, whom he so hated, he does
not hesitate to dub "cocklimatory wasps” or “evil eggs of evil


278 SIR THOMAS URQUHART, KNYCHT
crows” whose "wretched peevishness” should debar them from all
honest conversation.
Every one of his writings and utterances has the same disconcert-
ing turn or twist to them, so that at the last the bewildered readers
of his works are completely “metagrabolized” and can tell no better
than one of his own “Chitterlings” whether the worthy knight is to
be taken seriously or not.
How was it that Sir Thomas Urquhart managed to reach so
happy a state of detachment in a world which other mortals are
wont to take with such ponderous gravity?
Was it, one wonders, from observing the eccentric wisdom of his
great-uncle, John Urquhart of Craigfintray, who was so renowned
“for his deep reach of natural wit and dexterity in acquiring posses-
sions with all men's applause” or from listening, perhaps to the
shrewd words of some Cullicudden midwife who had taken stock
of her life's occupation with a "blinkard mind” and come to her
own dour conclusions ?
Sir Thomas was born in 1611. His home was the old embattled
Castle of Cromartie whose dark time-stained turrets rose no less than
one hundred and sixty feet above the village. It was in his library
there that this Scottish Montaigne on his return from his travels
occupied himself with such matter “as the reasons for the variety of
colours, and the squaring of a circle."
He himself gives us some vivid glimpses of his life during those
far off days.
While his friends would go tramping over the frozen marshes, he
of a winter's afternoon would remain closeted in the castle losing
himself in those curious investigations which with a scholar's par-
tiality he declares to be "worth more than six hundred thousand
moor-fowl.”
How well we can see his fanciful laced figure in that great tapes-
tried room, sitting goose-quill in hand, close up against the generous
fireplace "within the chimney of which two threshers could ply their
flails!”
How well we can see him, Cotgrave's dictionary shut at last,
stepping across to the tall diamond-paned window to peer with quiz-
zical interest at the familiar constellations whose dim starlight (be-
fore ever Cor Caroli had appeared in the heavens) shone down upon
the grey stone tiles of the castle roof, and upon the silent cobble
> >


LLEWELYN POWYS
279
street below, and upon the restless darkness of the sea! This happy
and undistracted period of Sir Thomas's life soon however came to
an end.
a
The fortunes of the house of Urquhart experienced evil days. For
the old man his father, the courteous Grangousier of Cromartie, in
that he considered it "derogatory to the nobility of his house to look
too closely into his own purse,” fell into debt.
It was in vain that his two sons, Thomas and Alexander, endeav-
oured to right the tottering fortunes of the castle. In spite of the
fact that their zeal actually led them on one occasion to imprison the
spendthrift old gentleman from a Monday to a Friday “within an
upper chalmer called the inner Dortour” things continued to go
from bad to worse.
The very civil war, we are told, was welcomed by the distressed
family, bringing as it did relief from "hornings” and “apprisings”
and "huddling up the terms of Whitsuntide and Martimas which in
Scotland are for the payment of debts.”
In 1641 having taken sides against the Presbyters Thomas went
to England, where in one of the galleries of Whitehall he received a
knighthood from King Charles.
His father died in the following year bequeathing to him "in
wordly goods twelve or thirteen thousand pounds sterling of debt,
five brethren all men and two sisters almost marriageable.”
From this time Sir Thomas suffered nothing but torments at the
hands of his creditors who seemed to derive a peculiarly malignant
satisfaction from aggravating their whimsical bankrupt. Robert
Lesly of Findrassie actually had audacity enough to take possession
of one of his outlying farms “to which," as the indignant Lord of
the Manor assures us "he had no more right than to the town of
Jericho mentioned in the scriptures.” Others, and these Sir Thomas
seems especially to have resented, would "pluck him away from his
studies by their importunity,” even going so far as to lay hold on
his beloved books.
Always a stout royalist, he marched with Prince Charles into
England and fought at the battle of Worcester. It was here that the
greatest of all calamities overtook him, for not only were the King's
troops routed and himself taken prisoner, but his much cherished
manuscripts, the very quintessence of his work in the library of Cro-
martie Castle, were lost. He had left them packed in three port-


280 SIR THOMAS URQUHART, KNYCHT
mantles” in the house of Master Spilsbury, “a very honest man who
hath an exceeding good woman to his wife,” but in the confusion
that succeeded the battle they fell into the hands of two of Crom-
well's soldiers, “exquisite snaps or clean shavers,” who scattered
them through the streets of the town so that certain "pie-makers”
seizing upon them put them to the scurvy use of wrapping up "figs,
dates, almonds, and caraway.” One or two pages however (the
value of which in Sir Thomas's opinion could hardly be over-esti-
mated) were picked up by one Master Broughton, a drizzling rain
having lodged them in the mud. And this intelligent Roundhead
immediately recognizing their worth made, “as we are informed, all
inquiry he could for trial whether there were any more such quin-
ternions or no.” By such means enough were eventually recovered
to serve as a foundation for the "Jewel picked up in the kennels
of Worcester Streets the day after the fight and six before the
autumnal Equinox anno 1651”—a prose work which was put into
print a few years later.
It now fell to the lot of Sir Thomas Urquhart to spend several
years as a state prisoner first in the Tower of London, afterwards at
Windsor. That Cromwell would continue to keep him behind stone
walls if once he came to realize the choice quality of his erudite and
ingenious spirit was inconceivable to Sir Thomas: so without more
to do he set about to prove to the preoccupied Protector, by means of
his pen, the inestimable value to the commonwealth of such an
author.
It would be a difficult undertaking to pass judgement upon these
works. They might have been the result of Panurge's collaboration
with Thaumast the Englishman. In them buffoonery and wisdom
stand so intermixed that whether they reach the height of super-
subtle sagacity or the depths of fantastical folly remains still an
open question.
In his Peculiar Promptuary of Time he gravely traces the pedi-
gree of the Urquharts to Adam surnamed “Protoplast,” indicating
thereby how sorry a thing it would be for a family, spared for so
many ages by God, to be brought to confusion in 1655 by Oliver
Cromwell!
It cannot be denied that his antecedents were remarkable. The
first to settle in Scotland was one Nomostor, son-in-law to Alcibi-
a


LLEWELYN POWYS
281
ades, who arrived at Cromartie or Portus Salutus in 389 B. C. Even
in historic times it is quite clear that his progenitors displayed a po-
tency of character such as would naturally separate them from the
rest of the human race. We learn, for instance, that Thomas Urqu-
hart, born in 1474, was surnamed Paterhemon "because he had of
his wife Helen, daughter of my Lord Salton, five and twenty sons
all men and eleven daughters all married women.”
His Trissotretras or, as he calls it, “A most exquisite Table for
resolving all manners of Triangles published for those that are
mathematically affected,” is obviously designed to relieve an ab-
struse science of much of its monotony by the simple method of
giving to each lineal symbol a proper name.
A short quotation should be sufficient to enable the reader to ap-
preciate his method! "The axiums of plane triangles are four
Rulerst Eproso, Grediftal, and Bagredif while Rulerst branches
into Gradesso and Eraetul is under the directory of Uphechet," et
cetera. The grammar and syntax of his Logopandecteision or Uni-
versal Language Contrived for the Utilitie of All Pregnant Spirits
were “a pescod on it!" lost at Worcester. Enough however escaped
the pie-makers of that city to give a receptive linguist a fair idea of
its possibilities. The language was made up of four numbers, eleven
genders, and one word for each several idea.
With pardonable complacence Sir Thomas himself points out
its especial merits. “Every word,” he says, “signifieth as well back-
ward as forward and however you invert the letters, still shall you
fall upon significant words whereby a wonderful facility is obtained
in the making of anagrams.”
Finally we come to the famous translation.
There must indeed have been a rooted congruity between the fan-
ciful Cavalier and the old French monk for in this work all the
cherished conceits of Urquhart's crested imagination found ample
encouragement and scope.
In Rabelais' massive and broad-mouthed chapters he could ex-
pand and burgeon to his heart's content; there being room and space
enough for his gravest drollery and his hugest planetary quip. Here
at last there was nothing to prevent him heaping up his
with
epithets and synonyms like so many pieces of chopped peat banked
against the wood-shed in the castle yard of Cromartie. Often he
page
a


282 SIR THOMAS URQUHART, KNYCHT
does not hesitate to enlarge upon the original, serving up from his
unctuous literary kitchens a largesse of words as quaint and origina!
as any used by the master himself.
In the well known passage of the animal noises that disturbed the
peace of the philosopher Rabelais is content with nine, but seventy-
nine are scarcely sufficient for Sir Thomas Urquhart! And as a
matter of fact how ill we could spare such inventions as the “cheep-
ing of mice," "coriating of storks," "snuttering of monkies” and
“nuzzing of camels”!
Unbroken indeed is the silence surrounding the latter years of
the philosopher of Cromartie. It is known that he crossed over to
the continent of Europe, but that is all.
Did he, the Urquhart "Parresiastes” or “Free of Speech,” grow
mute and inarticulate at the last? We cannot tell. Only once, and
that in the legend of his death do we hear of him again. For it is
reported that when news came to him of the Restoration and the
delight of the counties of England at the return of the royal house
they had been at such pains to evict, he fell into so great a fit of
Gargantuan laughter that it cracked his heart, dispatching the queer
spirit of this abstractor of quintessences forth with into the presence
of its Maker.



Courtesy of Der Sturm, Berlin
HERWARTH WALDEN. BY WILLIAM WAUER


1



Courtesy of Der Sturm, Berlin
NELL WALDEN. BY WILLIAM WAUER


f
1



Rudolf
Blamer
Courtesy of Der Sturin, Berlin
RUDOLF BLÜMNER. BY WILLIAM WAUER





MORE MEMORIES
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
XXXIII
G
RADUALLY Arthur Symons came to replace in intimate
friendship, Lionel Johnson, from whom I was gradually sepa-
rated by a scruple of conscience. If he came to see me, he sat tongue-
tied unless I gave him the drink that seemed necessary to bring his
vitality to but its normal pitch, and if I called upon him he drank
so much that I became his confederate. Once when a friend and I
had sat long after our proper bedtime, at his constantly repeated and
most earnest entreaty, knowing what black melancholy would de-
scend upon him at our departure, and with the unexpressed hope of
getting him to his bed, he fixed upon us a laughing and whimsical
look, and said; “I want you two men to understand that you are
merely two men that I am drinking with.” That was the only time
that I was to hear from him an imaginary conversation that had not
an air of the most scrupulous accuracy. He gave two accounts of
the same conversation with Wilde in prison; in one Wilde wore his
hair long, and in the other it had been cropped by the prison barber.
He was gradually losing too the faculty of experience, and in his
prose and verse repeated the old ideas and emotions, but faintly as
though with fading interest. I am certain that he prayed much, and
on those rare days that I came upon him dressed and active before
midday or but little after, I concluded that he had been to morning
Mass at Farm Street.
When with Johnson I had tuned myself to his mood, but Arthur
Symons, more than any man I have ever known, could slip as it were
into the mind of another, and my thoughts gained in richness and
in clearness from his sympathy, nor shall I ever know how much my
practice and my theory owe to the passages that he read me from
Catullus and from Verlaine and Mallarmé. I had read Axel to
myself or was still reading it, so slowly, and with so much difficulty,
that certain passages had an exaggerated importance, while all re-
mained so obscure that I could without much effort imagine that


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here at last was the Sacred Book I longed for. An Irish friend of
mine lives in a house where, beside a little old tower, rises a great
new Gothic hall and stair, and I have sometimes got him to ex-
tinguish all light but a little Roman lamp, and in that faint light
and among great vague shadows, blotting away the unmeaning or-
nament, have imagined myself partaking in some incredible ro-
mance. Half a dozen times, beginning in boyhood with Shelley's
Prometheus Unbound, I have in that mood possessed for certain
hours or months the book that I long for; and Symons, without ever
being false to his own impressionist view of art and of life, deepened
as I think, my longing.
It seems to me looking backward, that we always discussed life
at its most intense moment, that moment which gives a common
sacredness to the Song of Songs and to the Sermon on the Mount,
and in which one discovers something supernatural, a stirring as it
were of the roots of the hair. He was making those translations
from Mallarmé and from Verlaine, from Calderon, from St John
of the Cross, which are the most accomplished metrical transla-
tions of our time, and I think that those from Mallarmé may have
given elaborate form to my verses of those years, to the latter poems
of the Wind Among the Reeds, and the Shadowy Waters while Vil-
liers de l'Isle-Adam had shaped whatever in my Rosa Alchemica
Pater had not shaped. I can remember the day in Fountain Court
when he first read me Herodiade's address to some Sibyl who is her
nurse and it may be the Moon also:
“The horror of my virginity
Delights me, and I would envelope me
In the terror of my tresses, that by night,
Inviolate reptile, I might feel the white
And glimmering radiance of thy frozen fire,
Thou that art chaste and diest of desire
White night of ice and of the cruel snow!
Eternal sister, my lone sister, lo!
My dreams uplifted before thee! Now, apart
So rare a crystal is my dreaming heart
And all about me lives but in mine own
Image, the idolatrous mirror of my pride,
Mirroring this Herodiade diamond eyed.”


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
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Yet I am certain that there was something in myself compelling
me to attempt creation of an art as separate from everything hetero-
geneous and casual, from all character and circumstance, as some
Herodiade of our theatre dancing seemingly alone in her narrow
moving circle. Certainly I had gone a great distance from my first
poems, from all that I had copied from the folk-art of Ireland, or
from the statue of Mossollos and his Queen, where the luminous cir-
cle is motionless and contains the entire popular life. And yet why
am I so certain? I can imagine some Aran Islander strayed into the
Luxembourg Gallery, turning bewildered from impressionist or
post-impressionist, but lingering at Moreau's Jason, to study in
astonishment the elaborate background, where there are so many
jewels, so much wrought stone and moulded bronze. Had not lover
promised mistress in his own island song, “A ship with a gold and
silver mast, gloves of the skin of a fish, and shoes of the skin of a
bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland”?
a
XXXIV
Hitherto when in London I had stayed with my family in Bed-
ford Park, but now I was to live for some twelve months in cham-
bers in the Temple that opened through a little door passage
into
those of Arthur Symons. If anybody rang at either door, one or
other would look through a window in the connecting passage, and
report. We would then decide whether one or both should receive
the visitor, whether his door or mine should be opened, or whether
both doors were to remain closed. I have never liked London, but
London seemed less disagreeable when one could walk in quiet
empty places after dark, and upon a Sunday morning sit upon the
margin of a fountain almost as alone as if in the country. I was
already settled there I imagine when a publisher called and pro-
posed that Symons should edit a Review or Magazine, and Symons
consented on the condition that Beardsley were Art Editor. I was
delighted at his condition, as I think were all his other proposed
contributors. Aubrey Beardsley had been dismissed from the art-
editorship of the Yellow Book under circumstances that had made
us indignant. He had illustrated Wilde's Salome, and his strange
satiric art had roused the popular press to fury, and at the height of
the excitement aroused by Wilde's condemnation, a popular novel-


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ist, a woman who had great influence among the most conventional
part of the British public, had written demanding his dismissal.
“She owed it to her position before the British people,” she had
said. Beardsley was not even a friend of Wilde's—they even dis-
liked each other—he had no sexual abnormality, but he was certain-
ly unpopular, and the moment had come to get rid of unpopular
persons. The public at once concluded—they could hardly conclude
otherwise, he was dismissed by telegram-that there was evidence
against him, and Beardsley who was some twenty-three years old,
being embittered and miserable, plunged into dissipation. We knew
that we must face an infuriated press and public, but being all
young we delighted in enemies, in everything that had an heroic air.
XXXV
We might have survived but for our association with Beardsley,
perhaps but for his Under the Hill, a Rabelaisian fragment promis-
ing a literary genius that might have equalled his artistic genius;
and for the refusal of the bookseller who controlled the railway
bookstalls to display our wares. The bookseller, who was no doubt
looking for a design of Beardsley's, pitched upon Blake's Antaeus
Setting Virgil and Dante upon the Voyage of Cocytus as the ground
of refusal, and when Arthur Symons pointed out that Blake was
considered "a very spiritual artist” replied “O Mr Symons, you
must remember that we have an audience of young ladies as well
as an audience of agnostics.” However he called Arthur Symons
back from the door to say “If contrary to our expectations the
Savoy should have a large sale, we should be very glad to see you
again.” As Blake's design illustrated an article of mine, I wrote a
letter upon that remarkable saying to a principal daily newspaper.
But I had mentioned Beardsley, and I was told that the editor had
made it a rule that his paper was never to mention Beardsley's
name. I said upon meeting him later “Would you have made the
same rule in the case of Hogarth ?” against whom much the same
objection could be taken, and he replied with what seemed to me a
dreamy look, as though suddenly reminded of a lost opportunity
“Ah, there was no popular press in Hogarth's day.” We were not
allowed to forget that in our own day there was a popular press, and
its opinions began to affect our casual acquaintance, and even our


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
287
comfort in public places. At some well known house, an elderly
man to whom I had just been introduced, got up from my side and
,
walked to the other end of the room when I attempted to open a
conversation; but it was as much my reputation as an Irish rebel as
the evil company that I was supposed to keep, that excited some
young men in a railway carriage to comment upon my general ca-
reer in voices raised that they might catch my attention. I discov-
ered however that we were perhaps envied as well as despised. I
was in the pit at some theatre, and had just noticed Arthur Symons
a little in front of me, when I heard a young man who looked like a
shop-assistant or clerk say; "There is Arthur Symons. If he can't
get an order, why can't he pay for a stall.” Clearly we were sup-
posed to prosper upon iniquity, and to go to the pit added a sordid
parsimony. At another theatre I caught sight of a woman that I had
once liked, the widow of some friend of my father's youth, and tried
to attract her attention, but she had no eyes for anything but the
stage curtain; and at a house where I met no hostility to myself,
some popular novelist snatched out of my hand a copy of the Savoy
and opening it at Beardsley's drawing called The Barber began to
expound what he considered Beardsley's bad drawing and wound
up with “Now if you want to admire really great black and white
art, admire the Punch Cartoons of Mr Linley Sambourne" and
our hostess, after making peace between us said, “O Mr Yeats, why
do you not send your poems to the Spectator instead of to the
Savoy" and my answer “My friends read the Savoy and they do not
read the Spectator" brought a look of deeper disapproval.
Yet even apart from Beardsley we were a sufficiently distinguished
body; Max Beerbohm, Bernard Shaw, Ernest Dowson, Lionel
Johnson, Arthur Symons, Charles Conder, Charles Shannon, Have-
lock Ellis, Selwyn Image, Joseph Conrad; but nothing counted but
the one hated name. I think that had we been challenged we might
have argued something after this fashion; "Science through much
ridicule and some persecution has won its right to explore whatever
passes before its corporeal eye, and merely because it passes: to set
as it were upon an equality the beetle and the whale; though Ben
Jonson could find no justification for the entomologist in The New
Inn but that he had been crossed in love. Literature now demanded
the same right of exploration of all that passes before the mind's
eye, and merely because it passes.” Not a complete defence, for it


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substitutes a spiritual for a physical objective, but sufficient it may
be for the moment, and to settle our place in the historical process.
The critic might well reply that certain of my generation de-
lighted in writing with an unscientific partiality of subjects long
forbidden. Yet is it not most important to explore especially what
has been long forbidden, and to do this not only with the highest
moral purpose like the followers of Ibsen, but gaily, out of sheer
mischief, or sheer delight in that play of the mind. Donne could
be as metaphysical as he pleased and yet never seemed unhuman
and hysterical as Shelley often does, because he could be as physi-
cal as he pleased; and besides who will thirst for the metaphysical,
who have a parched tongue, if we cannot recover the Vision of
Evil ?
I have felt in certain early works of my own which I have long
abandoned, and here and there in the work of others of my genera-
tion, a slight sentimental sensuality which is disagreeable and
doesn't exist in the work of Donne, let us say, because being per-
mitted to say what he pleased, he was never tempted to linger, or
rather to pretend that he could linger, between spirit and sense.
How often had I heard men of my time talk of the meeting of spirit
and sense, yet there is no meeting but only change upon the instant
and it is by the perception of a change like the sudden blacking out
of the lights of the stage that passion creates its most violent sen-
sation.
XXXVI
Dowson was now at Dieppe, now at a Normandy village. Wilde
too was at Dieppe, and Symons, Beardsley, and others would cross
and recross, returning with many tales, and there were letters and
telegrams. Dowson wrote a protest against some friend's too vivid
essay upon the disorder of his life, and explained that in reality he
was living a life of industry in a little Normandy village; but be-
fore the letter arrived that friend received a wire “arrested, sell
watch and send proceeds.” Dowson's watch had been left in Lon-
don—and then another wire "Am free." Dowson, ran the tale as I
heard it ten years after, had got drunk and fought the baker, and
a deputation of villagers had gone to the magistrate and pointed
out that M Dowson was “one of the most illustrious of English


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
289
9
Poets.” “Quite right to remind me” said the magistrate “I will im-
prison the baker.”
A Rhymer had seen Dowson at some café in Dieppe with a par-
ticularly common harlot, and as he passed, Dowson who was half
drunk, caught him by the sleeve and whispered "She writes poetry
-it is like Browning and Mrs Browning.” Then there came a won-
derful tale, repeated by Dowson himself, whether by word of
mouth or by letter I do not remember. Wilde has arrived in Dieppe,
and Dowson presses upon him the necessity of acquiring “a more
wholesome taste.” They empty their pockets on to the café table,
and though there is not much, there is enough if both heaps are put
into one. Meanwhile the news has spread, and they set out accom-
panied by a cheering crowd. Arrived at their destination, Dowson
and the crowd remain outside, and presently Wilde returns. He
says in a low voice to Dowson “The first these ten years, and it will
be the last. It was like cold mutton.” Always as Henley had said,
"a scholar and a gentleman” he no doubt remembers the sense in
which the Elizabethan dramatists used the words "Cold mutton"-
and then aloud so that the crowd may hear him “But tell it in
England, for it will entirely restore my character."
C
XXXVII
When the first few numbers of the Savoy had been published,
the contributors and the publishers gave themselves a supper, and
Symons explained that certain among us were invited afterwards to
the publisher's house, and if I went there that once I need never go
again. I considered the publisher a scandalous person, and had re-
fused to meet him; we were all agreed as to his character, and only
differed as to the distance that should lie between him and us. I
had just received two letters, one from T. W. Rolleston protest-
ing with all the conventional moral earnestness of an article in the
Spectator newspaper, against my writing for such a magazine; and
one from A. E. denouncing that magazine, which he called the
“'Organ of the Incubi and the Succubi” with the intensity of a per-
sonal conviction. I had forgotten that Arthur Symons had bor-
rowed the letters until, as we stood about the supper table waiting
for the signal to be seated, I heard the infuriated voice of the pub-
lisher shouting, "Give me the letter, give me the letter, I will prose-


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>
a
cute that man" and I saw Symons waving Rolleston's letter just
out of reach. Then Symons folded it up and put it in his pocket,
and began to read out A. E.'s and the publisher was silent, and I
saw Beardsley listening. Presently Beardsley came to me, and
said, “Yeats I am going to surprise you very much, but I think your
friend is right. All my life I have been fascinated by the spiritual
life--when a child I saw a vision of the Bleeding Christ over the
mantelpiece—but after all to do one's work when there are other
things one wants to do so much more, is a kind of a religion.”
Something, I forget what, delayed me a few minutes after the
supper was over, and when I arrived at our publisher's I found
Beardsley propped up on a chair in the middle of the room, grey
and exhausted, and as I came in he left the chair and went into an-
other room to spit blood, but returned immediately. Our publisher,
perspiration pouring from his face, was turning the handle of a
hurdy-gurdy piano—it worked by electricity, I was told, when the
company did not cut off the supply—and very plainly had had
enough of it, but Beardsley pressed him to labour on, “The tone is
so beautiful,” "It gives me such deep pleasure” et cetera, et cetera.
It was his method of keeping our publisher at a distance.
Another image competes with that image in my memory. Beards-
ley has arrived at Fountain Court a little after breakfast with a
young woman who belongs to our publisher's circle and certainly
not to ours, and is called “two pence coloured” or is it "penny
plain”? He is a little drunk and his mind has been running upon
his dismissal from the Yellow Book, for he puts his hand upon the
wall and stares into a mirror. He mutters "Yes, yes, I look like a
sodomite” which he certainly did not, “But no, I am not that” and
then begins railing against his ancestors, accusing them of that and
this, back to and including the great Pitt from whom he declares
himself descended.
а
XXXVIII
I can no more justify my convictions in these brief chapters
where I touch on fundamental things, than Shakespeare could justi-
fy within the limits of a sonnet, his conviction that the soul of the
wide world dreams of things to come; and yet as I have set out to
describe nature as I see it, I must not only describe events but those


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
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9)
patterns into which they fall when I am the looker-on. A French
miracle-working priest once said to Maud Gonne and myself and to
an English Catholic who had come with us, that a certain holy
woman had been the “victim” for his village, and that another holy
woman who had been victim for all France had given him her Cruci-
fix, because he too was doomed to become a "victim."
French psychical research has offered evidence to support the
historical proofs that such saints as Lydwine of Schiedam whose life
suggested to Paul Claudel his Annonce faite à Marie did really
cure disease by taking it upon themselves. As disease was consid-
ered the consequence of sin, to take it upon themselves was to copy
Christ. All my proof that mind flows into mind, and that we can-
not separate mind and body, drives me to accept the thought of
victimage in many complex forms, and I ask myself if I cannot so
explain the strange, precocious genius of Beardsley. He was in my
lunar metaphor a man of the thirteenth phase, his nature on the
edge of Unity of Being, the intellectual understanding of that
Unity his one overmastering purpose; whereas Lydwine de Schiedam
and her like, being of the saints, are at the seven and twentieth
phase, and seek a unity with a life beyond the individual life; and
so being all subjective he would take upon himself not the conse-
quences, but the knowledge of sin. I surrender myself to the wild
thought that by so doing he enabled men and women who had never
heard his name, to recover innocence. I have so often too practised
meditations, or experienced dreams, where the meditations or
dreams of two or three persons contrast and complement one an-
other, and just in so far as those persons are complementary or
contrasting, that I am convinced that it is precisely from the Saint or
potential saint that he would gather knowledge. I see in his fat
women and shadowy pathetic girls, his horrible children half child
half embryo, in all the lascivious monstrous imagery of the privately
published designs, the phantasms that from the beginning have de-
fied the scourge, and the hair shirt. I once said to him half seriously
“Beardsley, I was defending you last night in the only way in which
it is possible to defend you, by saying that all you draw is inspired
by rage against iniquity" and he answered “If it were so inspired the
work would be in no way different,” meaning, as I think, by that
profound sentence, that he drew with such sincerity that no change
of motive could change the image. I know that some turn of disease


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a
a
had begun to parade erotic images before his eyes, and I do not
doubt that he drew these images. “I make a blot upon the paper"
he said to me, "And I begin to shove the ink about and something
comes.” But I was wrong to say that he drew these things in rage
against iniquity, for to know that rage he must needs be objective,
concerned with other people, with the Church or the Divinity, with
something outside his own head, and responsible not for the knowl-
edge, but for the consequence of sin. His preparation had been the
exhaustion of sin in act, while the preparation of the Saint is by
the like exhaustion of his pride, and instead of the Saint's humility,
he had come to see the images of the mind in a kind of frozen pas-
sion, the virginity of the intellect.
Does not all art come, when a nature, that never ceases to judge
itself, exhausts personal emotion through action and desire so com-
pletely that something impersonal, something that has nothing to
do with action or desire, suddenly starts into its place, something
which is as unforeseen, as completely organized, even as unique, as
the images that pass before the mind between sleeping and waking.
But all art is not victimage; and much of the hatred of the art of
Beardsley came from the fact that victimage, though familiar
under another name to French criticism since the time of Baudelaire,
was not known in England. He pictures almost always disillusion,
and apart from those privately published drawings which he tried
upon his death-bed to have destroyed, there is no representation of
desire. Even the beautiful women are exaggerated into doll-like
prettiness by a spirit of irony, or are poignant with a thwarted or
corrupted innocence. I see his art with more understanding now,
than when he lived, for in 1895 or 1896 I was in despair at the new
breath of comedy that had begun to wither the impersonal beauty
that I loved, just when that beauty seemed about to unite itself to
mystery. I said to him once, “You have never done anything to
equal your Salome with the head of John the Baptist.” I think that
he was sincere, though but for the moment; when he replied “Yes,
Yes, but beauty is so difficult” it was for the moment, for as the
popular rage increased and his own disease increased, he became
more and more violent in his satire, or created out of a spirit of
mockery a form of beauty where his powerful logical intellect elimi-
nated
every outline that suggested quiet or even the quiet satisfied
passion.
The distinction between the image, between the apparition as it


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
293
a
were, and the personal action and desire, took a new form at the
approach of death. He made two or three charmingly blasphemous
designs; I think especially of a Madonna and Child where the Child
has a foolish doll-like face, and an elaborate modern baby's dress;
and of a St Rose of Lima in an expensive gown decorated with
roses, ascending to Heaven upon the bosom of the Madonna, her
face enraptured with love, but with that form of it which is least
associated with sanctity. I think that his conversion to Catholicism
was sincere, but that so much of impulse as could exhaust itself in
prayer and ceremony, in mere action and desire, found itself mocked
by the antithetical image; and yet I am perhaps mistaken, perhaps
it was merely his recognition that historical Christianity had dwin-
dled to a box of toys, and that it might be amusing to empty the
whole box on to the counterpane.
XXXIX
a
I had been a good deal in Paris, though never very long at any
time, my later visits with a member of the Rhymers' Club whose
curiosity or emotion was roused by every pretty girl. He treated
me with a now admiring, now mocking wonder, because being in
love, and in no way lucky in that love, I had grown exceedingly
puritanical so far as my immediate neighbourhood was concerned.
One night, close to the Luxembourg, a strange young woman in
bicycling costume, came out of a side street, threw one arm about his
a
neck, walked beside us in perfect silence for a hundred yards or so,
and then darted up another side street. He had a red and white
complexion and fair hair, but how she discovered that in the dark I
could not understand. I became angry and reproachful, but he
defended himself by saying “You never meet a stray cat without
caressing it, I have similar instincts.” Presently we found ourselves
at some café-the Café d'Harcourt I think—and when I looked up
from my English newspaper, I found myself surrounded with
painted ladies and saw that he was taking vengeance. I could not
have carried on a conversation in French, but I was able to say,
“That gentleman over there has never refused wine or coffee to any
lady,” and in a little they had all settled about him like greedy
pigeons.
I had put my ideal of those years, an ideal that passed away with
youth, into my description of “Proud Costello.” “He was of those


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ascetics of passion, who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred,
as other men for God, for Mary and for the Saints.” My friend
was not interested in passion. A woman drew him to her by some
romantic singularity in her beauty or her circumstances, and drew
him the more strongly if the curiosity she aroused was half intellec-
tual. A little later than the time I write of, throwing himself into
my chair after some visit to a music-hall or hippodrome, he began
“O Yeats, I was never in love with a serpent-charmer before.” He
was objective. For him “the visible world existed” as he was fond
of quoting, and I suspect him of a moon that had entered its fourth
quarter.
XL
At first I used to stay with Macgregor Mathers and his beautiful
young wife near the Champ de Mars, or in the Rue Mozart, but
later by myself in a students' hotel in the Latin Quarter, and I can-
not remember always where I stayed when this or that event took
place. Macgregor Mathers, or Macgregor, for he shed the "Math-
ers” when what the newspapers called the “Celtic Movement” was
well started, would come down to breakfast one day with his
Horace, the next day with his Macpherson's Ossian, and read out
fragments during breakfast, considering both books of equal authen-
ticity. Once when I questioned that of Ossian, he got into a rage
what right had I to take sides with the English enemy—and I found
that for him the eighteenth century controversy still raged. At
night he would dress himself in Highland dress, and dance the
sword-dance, and his mind brooded upon the ramifications of clans
and tartans. Yet I have at moments doubted whether he had seen
the Highlands, or even, until invited there by some White Rose
society, Scotland itself. One day in every week he gave to the
evocation of Spirits, and I noted that upon that day he would spit
blood. That did not matter he said, because it came from his head,
not his lungs; what ailed him I do not know, but I think that he
lived under some great strain, and presently I noticed that he was
drinking neat brandy, not to drunkenness, but to detriment of mind
and body.
He began to foresee vast changes in the world, announcing in
1893 or 1894, the imminence of immense wars, and in 1895 or 1896
began to learn ambulance work, and made others learn it. He had


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
295
a sabre wound on his wrist-or perhaps his forehead, for my mem-
ory is not clear-got in some student riot that he had mistaken for
the beginning of war. It may have been some talk of his that made
me write the poem that begins;
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather; unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before
my
dream awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
War was to bring, or be brought by, anarchy, but that would be
a passing stage, he declared, for his dreams were all Napoleonic. He
certainly foresaw some great rôle that he could play, had made him-
self an acknowledged master of the war-game, and for a time taught
it to French officers for his living. He was to die of melancholia,
and was perhaps already mad at certain moments or upon certain
topics, for though he did not make upon me that impression in those
early days, being generous, gay, and affable, I have seen none that
lacked philosophy and trod Hodos Camelionis come to good there;
and he lacked it but for a vague affirmation, that he would have his
friends affirm also, each for himself. “There is no part of me that
is not of the gods.” Once when he had told me that he met his
Teachers in some great crowd, and only knew that they were phan-
toms by a shock that was like an electric shock to his heart, I asked
him how he knew that he was not deceived or hallucinated. He
said "I had been visited by one of them the other night, and I fol-
lowed him out, and followed him down that little lane to the right.
Presently I fell over the milkboy, and the milkboy got in a rage
because he said that not only I but the man in front had fallen over
him.” He, like all that I have known, who have given themselves
up to images, and to the murmuring of images, thought that when
he had proved that an image could act independently of his mind,
he had proved also that neither it, nor what it had murmured, had
originated there. Yet had I need of proof to the contrary, I had it
while under his roof. I was eager for news of the Spanish-American
war, and went to the Rue Mozart before breakfast to buy a New
York Herald. As I went out past the young Normandy servant
who was laying breakfast, I was telling myself some school-boy ro-
mance and had just reached a place where I carried my arm in a
sling after some romantic escape. I bought my paper and returned,


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to find Macgregor on the door-step. “Why, you are all right” he
said "What did the Bonne mean by telling me that you had hurt
your arm and carried it in a sling."
Once when I met him in the street in his Highland clothes, with
several knives in his stocking, he said "When I am dressed like this
I feel like a walking flame” and I think that everything he did was
but an attempt to feel like a walking flame. Yet at heart he was, I
think, gentle, and perhaps even a little timid. He had some im-
pediment in his nose that gave him a great deal of trouble, and it
could have been removed had he not shrunk from the slight opera-
tion; and once when he was left in a mouse-infested flat with some
live traps, he collected his captives into a large bird-cage, and to
avoid the necessity of their drowning, fed them there for several
weeks. Being a self-educated, unscholarly, learned man, he was
bound to express the fundamental antithesis in the most crude form,
and being arrogant, to prevent as far as possible that alternation
between the two natures which is, it may be, necessary to sanity.
When the nature turns to its spiritual opposite alone there can be
no alternative, but what nature is pure enough for that.
I see Paris in the Eighteen-Nineties as a number of events sepa-
rated from one another, and without cause or consequence, without
lot or part in the logical structure of my life; I can often as little
find their dates as I can those of events in my early childhood.
William Sharp, who came to see me there may have come in 1895,
or on some visit four or five years later, but certainly I was in an
hotel in the Boulevard Raspail. When he stood up to go he said,
"What is that” pointing to a geometrical form painted upon a little
piece of cardboard that lay upon my window sill. And then before I
could answer, looked out of the window saying “There is a funeral
passing.” I said “That is curious, as the Death symbol is painted
upon the card.” I did not look out of the window for I had no
doubt the funeral was a dream. A few days later he came back and
said "I have been very ill, you must never allow me to see that sym•
bol again.” He did not seem anxious to be questioned, but years
later he said "I will now tell you what happened in Paris. I had
two rooms at my hotel, a front sitting-room and a bedroom leading
out of it. As I passed the threshold of the sitting-room, I saw a
woman standing at the bureau writing, and presently she went into
my bedroom. I thought, somebody has got into the wrong room by
a


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
297
paper she
mistake, but when I went to the bureau I saw the sheet of
had been writing upon, and there was nothing upon it. I went into
my bedroom and there was no one there, but as there was a door
from the bedroom on to the stairs I went down the stairs to see if
she had gone that way. When I got out into the street, I saw her
just turning a corner, but when I turned the corner there was nobody
there, and then I saw her at another corner. Constantly seeing her
and losing her like that I followed till I came to the Seine, and there
I saw her standing at an opening in the wall, looking down into the
river. Then she vanished, and I cannot tell why, but I went to the
opening in the wall and stood there, just as she had stood, taking
just the same attitude. Then I thought I was in Scotland, and that
I heard a sheep bell. After that I must have lost consciousness, for
I knew nothing till I found myself lying on my back, dripping wet,
and people standing all around. I had thrown myself into the
Seine."
I did not believe him, and not because I thought the story impos-
sible, for I knew he had a susceptibility beyond that of any one I
had ever known, to symbolic or telepathic influence, but because he
never told one anything that was true; the facts of life disturbed
him and were forgotten. The story had been created by the influ-
ence, but it had happened as reverie, though he may in the course of
years have come to believe that it happened as an event. The affec-
tionate husband of his admiring and devoted wife, he had created an
imaginary beloved, had attributed to her the authorship of all his
books that had any talent, and though habitually a sober man I have
known him to get drunk, and at the height of his intoxication when
most men speak the truth, to attribute his state to remorse for hav-
ing been unfaithful to Fiona Macleod.
XLI
Paul Verlaine alternated between the two halves of his nature
with so little apparent resistance that he seemed like a bad child.
Yet to read his Sacred Poems is to remember that the Holy Child
shared his first home with the beasts. In what month was it that I
received a note inviting me to “Coffee and cigarettes plentifully"
and signed "yours quite cheerfully, Paul Verlaine”? I found him at
the top of a tenement house in the Rue St Jacques, sitting in an easy


298
MORE MEMORIES
chair, his bad leg swaddled in many bandages. He asked me, speak-
ing in English, if I knew Paris well, and added, pointing to his leg,
that it had scorched his leg for he knew it "well, too well” and
“lived in it like a fly in a pot of marmalade.” He took up an Eng-
lish dictionary, one of the few books in the room, and began
searching for the name of his disease, selecting after a long search,
and with, as I understood, only comparative accuracy "Erysipelas.”
Meanwhile his homely, middle-aged mistress made the coffee and
found the cigarettes; it was obviously she who had given the room
its character; her canaries in several cages hanging in the window,
and her sentimental lithographs nailed here and there among the
nude drawings and newspaper caricatures of her lover as various
kinds of monkey, which he had pinned upon the wall. A slovenly,
ragged man came in, his trousers belted with a piece of rope and an
opera-hat upon his head. She drew a box over to the fire, and he
sat down now holding the opera-hat upon his knees, and I think he
must have acquired it very lately for he kept constantly closing and
opening it. Verlaine introduced him by saying “He is a poor man,
but a good fellow, and is so like Louis XI to look at that we call him
Louis the Eleventh.” I remember that Verlaine talked of Victor
Hugo who was “a supreme poet, but a volcano of mud as well as of
flame" and of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam who was "exalté" and wrote
excellent French; and of In Memoriam which he had tried to trans-
late and could not. “Tennyson is too noble, too anglais; when he
should have been broken-hearted, he had many reminiscences.”
At Verlaine's burial but a few months after, his mistress quar-
relled with a publisher at the grave-side as to who owned the sheet
by which the body had been covered, and Louis XI stole fourteen
umbrellas that he found leaning against a tree in the Cemetery.
XLII
I am certain of one date, for I have gone to much trouble to get
it right. I met John Synge for the first time in the autumn of 1896
when I was one and thirty, and he four and twenty. I was at the
Hotel Corneille instead of my usual lodging, and why I cannot
remember for I thought it expensive. Synge's biographer says that
you boarded there for a pound a week, but I was accustomed to
cook my own breakfast and dine at an anarchist restaurant in the


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
299
>
Boulevard St Jacques for little over a shilling. Someone, whose
name I forget, told me there was a poor Irishman at the top of the
house, and presently introduced us. Synge had come lately from
Italy, and had played his fiddle to peasants in the Black Forest; six
months of travel upon fifty pounds; and was now reading French
literature and writing morbid and melancholy verse.
He told me
that he had learned Irish at Trinity College, so I urged him to go to
the Aran Islands and find a life that had never been expressed in
literature, instead of a life where all had been expressed. I did not
divine his genius, but I felt he needed something to take him out of
his morbidity and melancholy. Perhaps I would have given the
same advice to any young Irishman who knew Irish, for I had been
that summer upon Inishmaan and Inishmore, and was full of the
subject. My friends and I had landed from a fishing boat to find
ourselves among a group of islanders, one of whom offered to bring
us to the oldest man upon Inishmaan. He brought us to an old man
who said, speaking very slowly, “If any gentleman has done a crime,
we'll hide him. There was a gentleman that killed his father, and
I had him in my own house six months till he got away to America."
From that on I saw much of Synge, and brought him to Mme
Gonne's, under whose persuasion perhaps, he joined the Young Ire-
land Society of Paris, the name we gave to half a dozen Parisian
Irish, but resigned after a few months because "it wanted to stir
up Continental nations against England, and England will never
give us freedom until she feels she is safe,” the one political sentence
I ever heard him speak. Over a year was to pass before he took my
advice and settled for a while in an Aran Cottage, and became
happy, having escaped at last, as he wrote "from the squalor of the
poor and the nullity of the rich.” I almost forget the prose and
verse he showed me in Paris, though I read it all through again when
after his death I decided at his written request what was to be pub-
lished and what not. Indeed I have but a vague impression, as of
man trying to look out of a window and blurring all that he sees by
breathing upon the glass. According to my lunar parable he was
a man of the twenty-third phase, a man whose subjective lives—
for a constant return to our life is a part of
my
dream-were over,
who must not pursue an image but Ay from it, all that subjective
dreaming that had once been power and joy now corrupting within
him. He had to take the first plunge into the world beyond himself,
a


300
MORE MEMORIES
that first plunge away from oneself that is always pure technique,
delight in doing, not because one would or should, but merely be-
cause one can.
a
He once said to me "a man has to bring up his family and be as
virtuous as is compatible with so doing, and if he does more than
that he is a Puritan; a dramatist has to express his subject and to
find as much beauty as is compatible with that, and if he does more
he is an aesthete.” That is to say, he was consciously objective.
Whenever he tried to write drama without dialect he wrote badly,
and he made several attempts, because only through dialect could
he escape self-expression, see all that he did from without, allow his
intellect to judge the images of his mind as if they had been created
by some other mind. His objectivity was however technical only,
for in those images paraded all the desires of his heart. He was
timid, too shy for general conversation, an invalid and full of moral
scruple, and he was to create now some ranting braggadocio, now
some tipsy hag full of poetical speech, and now some young man or
girl full of the most abounding health. He never spoke an unkind
word, had admirable manners, and yet his art was to fill the streets
with rioters, and to bring upon his dearest friends enmities that
may last their lifetime.
No mind can engender till divided into two, but that of a Keats
or a Shelley falls into an intellectual part that follows, and a hid-
den emotional flying image, whereas in a mind like that of Synge
the emotional part is dreaded and stagnant, while the intellectual
part is a clear mirror like technical achievement.
But in writing of Synge I have run far ahead for in 1896 he was
but one picture among many. I am often astonished when I think
that we can meet unmoved some person, or pass some house, that
in later years is to bear a chief part in our lives. Should there not
be some flutter of the nerve or stopping of the heart like that of
Macgregor experienced at the first meeting with a phantom ?
a
XLIII
Many pictures come before me without date or order. I am walk-
ing somewhere near the Luxembourg Gardens when Synge, who
seldom generalizes and only after much thought, says "There are
three things any two of which have often come together, but never


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
301
all three; ecstasy, asceticism, austerity; I wish to bring all three
together.”
I notice that Macgregor considers William Sharp vague and sen-
timental, while Sharp is repelled by Macgregor's hardness and arro-
gance. William Sharp has met Macgregor in the Louvre, and said;
“No doubt considering your studies you live upon milk and fruit.”
"
And Macgregor replied “No, not exactly milk and fruit, but very
nearly so” and now Sharp has lunched with Macgregor and been
given nothing but brandy and radishes.
Macgregor is much troubled by ladies who seek spiritual advice,
and one has called to ask his help against phantoms who have the
appearance of decayed corpses, and try to get into bed with her at
night. He has driven her away with one furious sentence “Very
bad taste on both sides."
I take hashish with a group of Martinists, and at one in the morn-
a
ing while we are talking wildly, and some are dancing, there is a
tap at the shuttered window; we open it and three ladies enter, the
wife of a man of letters, who thought to find no one but a confed.
erate, and her husband's two young sisters whom she has brought
secretly to some disreputable dance. She is very confused at seeing
us, but as she looks from one to another understands that we have
taken some drug and laughs; caught in our dream we know vaguely
that she is scandalous according to our code and to all codes, but
smile at her benevolently and laugh.
I am at Stuart Merrill's, and I meet there a young Jewish Persian
scholar. He has a large gold ring, seemingly very rough, made by
some amateur, and he shows me that it has shaped itself to his finger,
and says "That is because it contains no alloy—it is alchemical
gold.” I ask who made the gold, and he says a certain Rabbi, and
begins to talk of the Rabbi's miracles. We do not question him,
perhaps it is true-perhaps he has imagined it all—We are inclined
to accept every historical belief once more.
I am sitting in a café with two French Americans, a German poet
Dauthenday, and a silent man whom I am to discover to be Strind-
berg, and who is looking for the Philosopher's Stone. The French
a


302
MORE MEMORIES
American reads out a manifesto he is about to issue to the Latin
Quarter; it proposes to establish a communistic colony of artists in
Virginia, and there is a footnote to explain why he selects Virginia.
“Art has never flourished twice in the same place. Art has never
flourished in Virginia."
Dauthenday who has some reputation as a poet, explains that his
poems are without verbs as the verb is the root of all evil in the
world. He wishes for an art where all things are immovable, as
though the clouds should be made of marble. I turn over the page
of one of his books which he shows me, and find there is a poem in
dramatic form, but when I ask if he hopes to have it played he
says—“It could only be played by actors before a black marble
wall, with masks in their hands. They must not wear the masks
for that would not express my scorn for reality.”
I
go to the first performance of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi with the
Rhymer who had been so attractive to the girl in the bicycling cos-
tume. The audience shake their fists at one another, and the Rhymer
whispers to me “There are often duels after these performances,
and he explains to me what is happening on the stage. The Players
are supposed to be dolls, toys, marionettes, and now they are all
hopping like wooden frogs, and I can see for myself that the chief
personage, who is some kind of King, carries for Sceptre a brush of
the kind that we use to clean a closet. Feeling bound to support the
most spirited party, we have shouted for the play, but that night
at the Hotel Corneille I am very sad, for comedy, objectivity, has
displayed its growing power once more. I say “After Stéphane
Mallarmé, after Paul Verlaine, after our own verse, after Gustave
Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after all our subtle colour and
nervous rhythm-after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more
is possible? After us the Savage God.”
”
a
To be concluded



XX
D
(XX
0
Courtesy of the Belmaison Gallery, Wanamaker's
A DRAWING. BY MANOEL CANO





SEVEN POEMS
BY DUDLEY POORE
I
For you, Conquerors,
inexhaustible dark,
glory of rotting silk,
immortality of tinfoil garlands.
For you pompous bronze
in littered city squares
and homage of untidy sparrows.
For us the sun,
for us dusty roads of the South
between cactus and vine,
roads that scramble and pant
up through the gorse, through the fern
to the keen still peaks,
then vanish over the pass,
waving us after through silent uplands
fragrant with mint and snow,
winding forever onward
through the placid sunlight of mellow afternoons
drowsy with drone of bees,
through the smoky gold
of evenings that pattern the valley
with amber of sunset rivers,
through nights of honeyed moons and festooned
constellations
to find at the day's end
welcome of lighted inns,
warmth of dark wine,


304
SEVEN POEMS
coolness of sleep without dreams,
heavy with promise of endless to-
morrows,
with goals yet undreamed still receding
under the white fog of daybreak
down the frost grey path.
II
Black wind,
wine sharp with tang of snow new fallen
on far glittering ranges
and acridness of burning stubble,
clear from our blood the dust
of silted memories,
blow from our eyes the scales
that cloud with haze of pain
the peach bloom on distant heights,
sting us to such bitterness of desire
that not the fiery gold of untold noontides
shall slake our vengeance,
for we are avid of the sunlight,
avid as a slave that climbs
staggering from the reek of blind pits
to stand unfettered
high on the windy threshold of the world,
tiptoe with still insatiable longing
for singing orchards that dream
on warm cliff edges,
for burning plains where the marsh pools
hold in their poisonous depths the motionless image
of lonely columns,
for festering cities that bask amid tawny sands,
inscrutable as the eyes that smoulder
in the robe of the slow-stepping peacock
when he paces vaingloriously
up and down the porphyry balustrade
in evenings pungent with eucalyptus,
before the emperor's bedroom.


DUDLEY POORE
305
III
Was it Marouf who found at the roots of the mountain
a palace of glass
where he lay with a Peri
tasting ripe figs, spicy quinces, luscious melons,
while sleek-breasted nightingales
hatched in the gardens of the moon
warbled officious approbation?
That was a feast no doubt
to gladden the bowels of Nebuchadnezzar,
yet now I remember
I was never extravagantly fond of melons.
Not for me those imperishable gardens,
those uncrumbling palaces.
Something better there is here,
something in the green moss gently covering
the cupids in the weed-choked pool,
little by little defacing their pudgy nakedness,
something in the eating lichens rose and grey
whose spreading arabesques
gnaw little by little through the ochre walls,
something in the delicate marigolds
whose creeping roots slyly wrench from the gate
stones the brown hands of workmen toiled to raise
a thousand years ago,
something fugitive that troubles me with such beauty
that even the odour of agony dropping from the clouds,
the stench of anguish darkening the air,
the memory of iron fingers inexorably tearing
the milky pulp of the brain,
cannot tarnish the bronzed glimmer
of shadows on the apricot-flushed paths,
or the shimmer of wind silvering the olive branches,
or through the heavy sunlight of untroubled afternoon,
the distant shrilling, faint as crickets,
of children's voices.


306
SEVEN POEMS
IV
They say there's a hant in the garden
who gesticulates in the moon at the end of the path,
or peeps at you timidly over the footboard
when
you lie asleep in the summer house.
And after dusk falls
in the stillness that trembles
with laughter mockingly drifted
on faintness of cinnamon pinks through the shaking vines,
laughter of lovers that stroll and whisper in the night,
you hear him scratch with a withered hand on the screen
that blocks the door towards the house,
and you know he crouches alone on the other side,
lonely and frightened of the dark,
peeping at you through the holes in the rotted fabric.
a
But if you rise he takes fright in a wink.
You have to lean awhile from the wall,
looking down at the huddled, moon-misted roofs,
pressing on the harsh stone coping moist with dew,
finger tips knife-edged with desire,
before out of the corner of your eye
you catch a glimpse of his face like an oval moon splotch
peeping and peering
among the vine shadows of the arbour,
see him beckon you with an arm
thin as a grape tendril.
a
What can possess him to roam like a starved dog?
Could he find nothing in any of the seven planets
or on the farther side of the moon
to make him forget the misty midnights of earth,
or the shimmer of roofs under autumnal stars,
or pungence of cinnamon pinks, or laughter
of young lips wistfully meeting in the darkness.


DUDLEY POORE
307
V
Who is it waves to you out of the trembling fountain ?
Through flakes of blue that have fallen
between scurrying grey cloud
someone smirks and beckons.
Who can it be is making signs at you?
Between the plump-thighed cupids that cavort
with conches at their swollen cheeks
bestriding mossy dolphins,
someone in anguish clutches towards the sun
like a cat snatching at a moth.
Someone down there is trying to escape,
some too inquisitive tenant of this garden
vanished before our time,
who craning over the grass grown edge
to see the sparks of hazy sunken sun
catch the blood opals of the Inca brooch
the old Infanta lost there years ago,
slipped on the treacherous moss and tumbled in.
And now,
tired of the gold trees and the singing flowers,
tired of the topaz fruits and amethyst paved walks,
tired of the ceaseless glitter
in that unchanging, unlaborious paradise
all fountains lead to,
where no one sweats in the sun of burning wheat-fields,
or wrenches the lurching plough in spring
through the steaming earth on ruddy hillsides,
or comes home weary through the plum-blue dusk,
he hovers wistfully under the brink,
tortured with longing.
And whenever you lean to touch the lily pads
he darts a thin, crooked arm


308
SEVEN POEMS
hungrily at your fingers,
but always before you grasp his hand,
the steel edged wind flashing between
shatters from the mirrored glass
his despairing image.
VI
Stunned by the August sun
and drunk with scent of parching leaves
I lay stretched on the wall,
when suddenly, as a ripe seed shoots
from the rind of a bursting pomegranate,
an enchanter robed in hornet yellow,
with a watered scimitar in his belt
and a turban like a crinkled marigold,
popped from the hot orchard earth.
a
a
On slippers poppy crisp
he advanced holding towards me
with a gesture grandiloquently imperious,
a key of age-greened bronze.
It was the key to Aladdin's paradise.
But the flames of the sun,
the scent of burning earth, of blistering leaves,
had scorched me with such delicious languor
that I only answered:
A humble visitor in the garden
begs the excellent magician to bestow
elsewhere his estimable gift.
Lurid rage distorted the bronze features,
sultry thunder shook the thirsty garden,
a buzzing of innumerable wasps
numbed the breathless air


DUDLEY POORE
309
as over me towered the angry turban
in the reeling sun,
and with a leaf-thin swish of steel,
with an irised flash
of light on dragon-fly wings,
in an arc the scimitar
blazed and descended.
a
But only a dead leaf fell across my neck,
for he was nothing but a tall sunflower,
a gaunt leering sunflower,
whose day was about over,
flapping blighted arms
in the incense of kindling earth.
VII
The parched grey earth is hot to the bare hands.
The dust between the tangled grass stems
has a bitter scent.
Would
you know your own words now, poet?
Would your dust thrill at the sound of them,
hear and glow for a little
with the old fire?
a
Listen, it goes like this:
VIVAMUS MEA LESBIA ATQUE AMEMUS
NOBIS QUAM SEMEL OCCIDIT BREVIS LUX
NOX EST PERPETUA UNA DORMIENDA.
DA MI BASIA MILLE
Do you remember that, Roman?
You'll not answer, I think.
Only the gold silence of the ending afternoon.
NOX EST PERPETUA UNA DORMIENDA.
The dust between the tangled grass stems
has an acrid taste
of gall and hellebore.


310
SEVEN POEMS
After all, it is a long while.
Ages and ages lie as dust between us.
Yet even they would scarce have seemed to you
time enough to slake the scorching thirst
of your dark blood, Caius Catullus.
You held your life like a ripe fruit
full of a subtle tang, acrid and sweet,
crushed to your lips
till you had sucked from the bright bitter rind
the last morsel of pulp.
And when your purse had in it nothing but cobwebs
you invited the guests to bring their own wines to
the banquet,
and from the cushions of your ivory bed
while Lesbia and Juventius
muffled in the voluminous scarlet of
your cloak
whispered love at your ear,
you surveyed with glittering eyes black as agates
each arriving guest:
he of the sallow face yellower than a gilded
statue's,
Gellius thin as a rose leaf,
the beloved Fabullus and Verannius in their
bracelets
just back from an unfruitful campaign,
then the sunlight filling with amber the irised
wine cups,
the brown feet of the dancing girl from Cádiz
in the whining of flutes, clatter of crotales,
crushing to fragrance the strown marjoram
on the veined pavement,
and beyond all these
under the wind-shaken awning of the portico,
the gold-footed peacocks strutting and bowing
to their green reflections in the polished floor,
storm buffeted galleys veering and tacking
on a porphyry sea.


DUDLEY POORE
311
And when you passed among the bloodless dead
it was never repeated against you
that you ever disgraced the banquet by quitting it
sober,
ever let a rare dish pass untasted,
ever reproached the lupanar with the austerity of
your attitudes,
ever embarrassed the licence of the actors with
your frown,
or that you lost or rejected
a single gift of the sunlight,
saving those handkerchiefs from Saetibis in Spain,
filched from you at a dinner by Asinius,
or by the Iberian whose white teeth,
incessantly flashed through the resinous smoke of
the torches,
filled the stilling Roman night
with the green lightning of your obscene wrath.
How long ago was it?
Too long for even such fiery dust as yours
to stay alight in the black earth.
Only the gold silence of the long afternoon
and the shimmer of ripe grass tops
stirred by an adder gliding away.
Between the dry stems of the tangled grass
the thick dust has a bitter scent.


JOHN THE BAPTIST
BY WALDO FRANK
THI
HE room was bright with the sun. Three stories
Three
up.
?
grimed hands, worn shoulders had rubbed their intricate soiled
burden, held up this room that was all bright with the sun.
The door was open: two windows with their mesh Dutch curtains
were thrown high: Clara Jones dusted.
She was a short woman, coloured a dark brown in which were
shadows of blue and orange. She was of indeterminate age. She
worked slowly, diligently, with a sort of submissive rhythm to the
sweep of her arms, the sway of her head: as if an invisible Master
timed her work with gentle strokes on her bent back. The contours
and objects of the room were a familiar haze against her hands. Her
eyes did not take in the books upon the mantel, the morris chair
which her hands groomed and shifted, the blue cover of the couch
which the room's tenant used for a bed. Her eyes were focused
dimly beyond the room, beyond the sunlight also that did not make
them blink-beyond the sun. At times a murmur as of words an-
swering in herself, a shred of tune, came from her. And these were
in unison with the rapt measure of her work. And it with the dis-
tant fixedness of her eyes that moved as if to remain upon some
point either far within or far without herself. Or both.
A tall young man
almost a boy
stood in the
door. He buttressed both his palms against the threshold's sides: he
watched her.
Her face turned to her shoulder: then fell forwards back into its
somnolent rhythm.
“Lor! that you already? You-all quick this mo’nin'.”
“May I come in?”
"Sho'ly, sho'ly. Sit down over th'ah."
She did not stop. She held a broom in her two brown hands.
With a steady stroke of shoulder back and forth it went, rasping
swinging: her small soft body cadenced with its stiff advance.
“Th’ah you are, Mr Loer!” She waved a musty rag over his
desk, over a picture nailed above it. “Th’ah you are.”
.


WALDO FRANK
313
She turned and smiled at him. He was still standing in the
threshold. She had a round small face, and her big mouth smiling
seemed to cover it. Her eyes still focused distantly.
She dropped the broom against a shoulder and flung the rag into
the fold of an elbow. She laughed.
"What yo' got, this mo’nin'? I'm done. Come along in.”
“I don't feel like being alone, this morning, Clara.”
Clara's smile was tender. Her face tilted to a side.
“Lonely, Mr Loer?” she said. He felt caressed.
“Oh, no.” He stepped into the room, lifting his knees unneces-
sarily high. He sank down in the morris chair and primed a pipe.
"Clara,” he seemed to hold her, “how'd you sleep last night ?”
She folded her hands.
“O fine, Mr Loer. You know I always sleeps fine.”
"Well I slept rotten.”
I “I wouldn't sleep none at all, Mr Loer ... ef I went to
sleep same as you does.”
He looked up from his pipe. "What do you mean?”
“'thout prayin'. Yo' tole me so, yo’self. No wonder you sleep
rotten. Lor! I wouldn't sleep none at all ... ef . I
went to sleep 'thout prayin'.” She paused. "Watch out, Mr Loer,"
she said with a sweet tremulousness. "Supposin' the time comes
when you cyant sleep at all.”
"I don't know whom to pray to.”
The old woman looked at the broomstick standing against her
shoulder.
“And you soeddicated,” she declared.
She ambled out, still keyed to that impalpable warm measure
kindling her feet, her hips, the drone of her soft voice.
.
The door's gentle click made him alone.
He relaxed forward in his chair. Crumpled hands held his sharp
fine chin. His eyes were disturbed. They wandered. They saw
his room: sharply each object in his room caught in his eyes and held
there. His eyes were hurt because they saw no farther.
He jumped up, Aung his coat. He ran his fingers through the
high blond hair. He faced his books.
Spencer's First Principles Introduction to Anthropology
Dewey's How We Think caught like long splinters
in his eyes. He shook his head as if to shake them out.
.


314
JOHN THE BAPTIST
Then he took the Psychology book and settled, rigid in his chair,
to read.
His mind held back. It seemed stiff and small, dry and remote.
It gave no attention to the book. It gave no attention, now, to the
movement of his body as the book fell from limp hands and he was
stepping to the corner where stood his 'cello.
He placed a stool. His body flexed and grew co-ordinate as it re-
ceived the instrument. Softly, with eyes arching beyond him and
his mind still gone, he began to bow. His mind held away no more.
It broke forward. It leaped, it sang: his fingers moved with delicate
precision making slow music.
The street. A woman, tall, clouded in dark glow, whom
he had seen, whom he had seen in the street. His mind out there
beat against her uprightness: it was a sea beating and breaking
against her. It went up, it went down—as did his fingers—avail-
less.
Then his mother. There was no doubt, she reminded him
of his mother who had died when he was a lad in Holland.
Karl Loer bent his face upon his loved 'cello and played deep
plaintive words. He saw the woman whom he had passed so often
in the street. ... She has arms piteous towards a man who is
her husband. She pleads with her arms. She wears a straight black
dress. And underneath her dress he saw her breast. It is bleeding!
There is an iron bar, clamped hard and close, on the breasts of the
woman!
His fingers stopped. He drew his bow dazedly back and forth.
He jumped up.
“O you! O you!” he cried, clutching his loved instrument. “I
"
could wring your neck. I could dash you to bits,” he lifted his
'cello in violence with both hands above his face. Softly he laid it
on the couch.
He stood now with eyes free and found that he was thinking of
his life.
"What nonsense! what nonsense!” he began. He had forgotten
how he had begun. Mother, this woman . two women
I have never known. He loved his mother. She was French. He
recalled her stately and dark in a Town of light plump people. He
recalled her lovely in a world of clods.
The whole world knew that she had been unfaithful, and had
disappeared disappeared for ever and for ever: that was
.
•


WALDO FRANK
315
.
.
she was gone
.
.
.
a
Eternity, her disappearing after his father turned her out.
He and his two brothers knew how sensual indulgence grew like the
fat upon his father, clogged him, clotted his brain
and he
had turned her out. His father's soul shrank famished, he was a
sucking brute. Then he was mad
and
Karl had come away.
America! He brought to it, he thought, his yearning and his
music. He dwelt in misery. He dwelt, it seemed to his free eyes,
in
misery that grew more deep, more blind.
He wondered why.
“I have a good mind,” he said aloud. He swung his chair to face
the row of books upon his mantel. So he sat looking at his books.
Proud of them.- I wonder why?
And as he sat, he forgot the books that stood within his eyes. He
thought again of his mother. Why had she been unfaithful? What
had driven her, and what his father? Was his brutality the way of
sorrow? Had she found joy in that Eternity where he had lost her?
Sudden like a stroke across his brain, the woman with white
breasts crushed in a clamping iron: her piteous arms stretched
towards a man—not he.
He walked up and down. He forgot the vision.
“There,” he said aloud with an emphasis that was a plea, “there
is what comes of Music
of emotion. Idiotic ideas
visions. That woman
what do you know about that
woman? Rot!”
He bent down and picked up the book that he had failed to read.
“Here's the place for your mind,” he said aloud.
“You,” he turned to his 'cello, "you'll go on earning my living."
He stroked the fragile wine-hued wooden breast. "For a while
But you'll not boss me, hear?” He stood the instrument
away.
There was a knock. Clara with a letter.
He took it. He seemed strangely perturbed. He laid the letter,
unread, aside. As she reached for the door, “Clara,” he said.
She turned.
"Clara,” he said again, “why are you so happy? What have you,
Clara ?!
Her round face was all warmth and smile. She found her ease on
her feet.
“I had fo' babies, Mr Loer. An' ev one of 'em died, afo' they
.
.


316
JOHN THE BAPTIST
was six. An' my husband that I nussed fo' ten years—he was sick
ten years a-dyin' on his back-he's gone too. They is all in Heaven,
Mr Loer. They is all waitin' th’ah fo' me. Ev'y onct in a while,
they comes to me at night. I sees 'em, sees 'em standin' th’ah as clar
—why as clar as you is! An’ they speaks to me: wuds as clar—as
clar as mine is. They's all gone and safe, awaitin' for me up th’ah. .
Tha's why I'm happy, Mr Loer.”
Old woman and young man stood very still, looking at each other.
Karl stirred first. His hands, then his head. He walked up and
down. She was still.
"But Clara-but Clara"
She beamed on him. He stopped. He smiled also. He grasped
his cap. He rushed into the street.
Into the street his smile and her words went with him
shredding his speed, eating into the mood of his release, until his
smile went and he stood stock still.
The sun splintered into the Block, from the East, through mouldy
cornices of houses. Men and women moved separate upon stone,
moved from sun to shadow, brokenly. The day was yet too young
to have welded them into the substance of the Block. Each was a
particle thrown out from a separate home.
Karl stood, looked down through the scatter of men and women,
the scatter of shade and sun. Athwart shoulders and skirts and hats
that bobbed like dark flotsam in a golden sluggish stream, he saw a
a
man move up.
A weight rose from his bowels, clutched at his throat. The man
he had seen once, with the woman he had seen often!-Her hus-
band
A sense of omen cloaked his head and made him dizzy. He felt
only his body free, his head was cloaked. The street was suddenly
a force, physical and relentless, fixing him there within the channel
of this man.
He could no longer fight for the fading word in him:—Folly!
The man was almost abreast of him standing to face him. There,
in himself he heard, sharp like a fusillade, the words that were his
own.
"I'm stopping you! Because your wife's in danger! Look at her!
Who put the iron bar across her breast?”


WALDO FRANK
317
.
.
.
A young man leisuredly moved up. A smile in his ruddy face, his
.
red lips mumbling as if he discoursed amiably to himself. His eyes
wandered amenably. He saw Karl. Something furrowed his brow
into a question. Karl swerved aside. They passed each other.
And now the word that had been fading "folly''
shrieked. It besieged him and shrieked. It was very brave.
"Fool! Fool!”—What did the words mean? Why am I in the
Street ? Why did her husband cross me in the Street?
His mind reached for the surety of his mantel and of its row of
sober books. These casual things could be explained. He was lone-
ly. Perhaps he was a bit unreally of course since what did
he know of her?
in love. Nonsense.
He jerked his cap over his eyes.
Look at her! Take away
the bar! Place your arms there! he returned to the house he
lived in.
The area-gate was open, so he went in by it.
His mind, he was very sure, was master now. It was a hard fight
of course. He had had so little training! For so very long, he had
weltered in emotion. At home, the emotion of rage and of salvation
,
against the brutal gluttony of his father: the emotion of faith
against the crass certainty of his world that his mother was bad.
And in America, above all, the emotion of hunger. With one way
only to destroy it · his easiest gift the emotion of
music with which he earned his bread.
-But it shall not master!
His mind pictured the book on psychology upon his mantel.—I'll
learn about that. And then some day I'll dash the old 'cello
I'll sell it.
His feet led him into Clara's kitchen.
She was alone. An ironing board was laid from table to low
shelf. He saw her back. A bent old back
a small round
head
a mass of tousled hair dusted with white. Yet as the
bare arm pressed the steaming iron to and fro, he felt with a new
poignance how a wind, tropical and fresh, wielded this woman.
He tiptoed in, sat down and watched her. The rhythm fleshed.
A naked woman, tall and firm and glowing like red earth.
Her hands are above her head. Her hands are flowers with the wind
in them. There is a tree above her. And her long, bare feet, with
the straight toes, are intertwined to the tree's roots.
.
.
.
no, absurd!
.
.
.


318
JOHN THE BAPTIST
.
Clara moved to the farther side of the board so as to iron and see
him. Her shoes were huge mis-shapen shreds of leather barely hold-
ing about her feet, so that but for the glide of her body, her moving
might have seemed a shuffle. He saw her smile now over her board
at him. He thought of a cloud saturate with sun.
“Clara,” he said, “I should be studying. But I'm a good-for-
nothing.”
“Yo' mus’n't say that, Mr Loer!” As her words came, her arms
went to and fro, pressing the steamy steel. Her shoulders spoke in
concord.
-Nigger woman you are all one! ... What a strange
thing to think about a person!
“No, Mr Loer,” she crooned, "yo' mus'n't say that! We is all
good fo' som'p'n. We doan know what a heap o' de time. But we
all is"
“How can you be so sure of Heaven?”
She rested her elbow on the board. “I done seen it, Mr Loer. I
sees it. offen.”
"How do you know you see it?”
“How do I know I'se a-seein' you?''
“You could describe me, Clara. Could you describe Heaven ?”
"Why ob co'se I could! What I sees I can describe
She ironed. “It's a great big place! Mos’ly light .. glorious
golden light! An'angels in white wings an' harps a-singin', a-singin'
When yo' plays sometimes, Mr Loer .. dem waily
shatterin' tones dey sings like dat. Dey music ... it
starts away down an' it leaps away up!"
She ironed.
"Clara, what would you say if I told you that was all a dream-
what you saw ?"
She beamed and ironed.
"The wise people, Clara, the wise men who study deep and who
write books
they say all that is nonsense.”
Clara beamed. “Dey aint wise, ef dey say dat, Mr Loer.”
She was bent over her towels, beaming upon her towels. Towel
after towel she ironed, folded, laid upon the pile of towels at her
side .. her brown face beaming.
She stopped. She straightened and looked at Karl. Then she
went back to her work.
.
.
.
.


WALDO FRANK
319
II
.
Karl was at work. From twelve to half past two, from half past
six to twelve, six days of the week, Karl played in the Trio at The
Bismarck. Played sentimental music grime of German and
Italian soil, froth and scum of Broadway. He drew with his bow
complacencies and veiled obscenities
at work. His mind
and his senses in revolt leaped away towards life: swirled, delved,
circled: beaten, brought back to his heart which sent them a burden
whose eternity he could not understand, would not accept: of Pain.
His eyes saw the café for whose lounging patrons his hand fin-
gered, his hand drew a bow. His eyes saw his associates
clever, ugly:-Stumm with bald blond-ruffed head at the piano;
Silvis, the leader, dark, agonizingly eager to be artistic swaying,
who was a muddy cloud about his violin.
Karl was at work and his mind and senses beating out of tune.
The flamboyant German Hall: smoked woodwork, panelled and
carved in Gothic sayings, beermugs and flags under the sombre
rafters like brittle colours falling, unable to rest. And in the sudden
alcoves, men and women: idle eyes that took in so little, moist
mouths, distended bellies that took in so much. Karl bowing an
aria from Bohème: and the crass glint of the Hall with its arrogant
beermugs, its mottoes, its elbow-leaning guests currying his mind
and his senses as they yearned forth towards purer air.
.
The
bald head of Stumm was round, it rested upon his neck like the head
of a pin. His wrists bounced up and down. They dragged Karl
back from the purer air he sought. Silvis crossed a knee upon the
other and swayed with a small finger fluttering from his bow. His
eyes were half-shut in an absorbent leer
absorbing Puccini
whom he loved. The weak grace of his body, swaying, leading,
sucked Karl from his need to be away.
Last chord. D A F-sharp D. Stumm swung about on his
stool. Silvis' legs stretched forward, abdomen collapsed—like a bug
stiffened no more into organic form by its creamy
fluid .. the
music .. now all oozed out. Their words scraped Karl's head.
When their words spoke to him, it was, this day, as if their fingers
touched his lips.
“Lehnstein says, next fall we are going to move for a raise—'
"Did you hear about his wife? I guess she's his wife"
o
•
.
a


320
JOHN THE BAPTIST
.
"Why don't Max bring that beer?”
The hard loom of the Hall, the coldness of men and women ab-
ject before their senses, taking in heat .. heat of air, heat of
sound, heat of food, heat of sex .. into their coldness: the
soil of these two men, his partners, playing this parody of life for an
unreal living: himself with truant senses reeling back and bringing
to his heart what pitiful crumbled fragments?–a woman stately
with white breasts clamped in iron, a woman with brown beaming
smile, all One, a woman of whom he knew no good, no ill, save that
she had been his Mother or to bar him from these a row of brittle
books upon his mantel ? . . . Karl with a burst of pain he could
..
not understand, at work making his living to know that this was
life?
He covered his 'cello and stood it away in the corner made by
.
the piano.
pure air.
“Aint you going to eat?”
"No thank you."
He was in the street.
Where was his mind? What was he suffering for? What about?
A lovely day. Here was pure air. Why did he breathe it and not
taste it? He wanted more of it than he could breathe. What was
air? Why was it pure ironically to him?
Long stiff rows of dirty houses exuding like sweat and excrement
his sisters and his brothers. Cold houses sweating in the spring.
Sick houses emptying their bowels
upon
the
He climbed by stairs into a house.
A swarthy little man in a great white vest with gold chain larding
it from arm-pit to stomach, opened the door. Hands brandishing,
lying, welcomed him.
"Well, Loer!
Come in."
“Just a moment, Dooch. I'm in a hurry.”—Hurry for what?
What am I hurrying towards ? "Will you, as a great favour, Dooch,
take my place to-night at The Bismarck ?”
Brandishing lying hands: “O my dear fellow. Y'know I'd love to
-anything to help you out. But I'm so busy lessons
lessons
all day. I must have my rest. At night
the
only time. Why don't you ask, let me see well Facker'd be
glad.
Another visit? “Ten dollars, if you'll do it, Dooch.”
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


WALDO FRANK
321
for you.
Hands dropping from lying. “Well, you know, I'd do anything
Half past six ?”
“Thank you, Dooch.”
Hands sincere, palm upward: waiting. A bill in a hand happy,
silent. Once more the air.
.
.
Sudden Karl heard these words in himself above the beat of his
feet: “I have never learned to use my mind. It's hard. That is
what hurts.
It will come.”
His legs walked on. He walked through desolation.
"O God, let me find something—” He stiffened, hearing his
words. “Of all prayers, if one is absurdest, this is the one.”
But he walked still through desolation. He sensed how he walked
swiftly. Interminable houses were a heavy fluttering Canopy that
passed him: banners they were of some arrogant Dominion, dragged
through mud, stiffened in frost. They shut him out.
Warm air. It was Spring.
Children went under his beating knees like the drip of frozen
houses melting in Spring.
“Let me think! What do I want? . . Something more solid
than air. Something as pure that is more solid than air."
His right hand clasped his left wrist behind him. His knees and
chin thrust forward. From waist to shoulder he tended back. So
he walked.
He walked through his life. He ached as he walked through his
life. He felt himself trample. He trampled what he felt.
Was it not clear? Clarity. He had lived in a pigsty. He had come
forth. He was young. He would make a better way for himself in
the world than the way of Silvis and Stumm. He would study, he
sensed already, and was it not good that already beyond the bowing
of fiddles he had won the trenchant accent of Reason—Spencer,
Darwin, Huxley? He yearned towards the ecstasy of their release
from mist and frowziness
from beer and Puccini. A crum-
ble of old churches falling in dust, drenching the air with dust. He
had hands to tear down. He partook of the ecstacy of the release
that lay in clear books, clear eyes, hands tearing down.
His father went to church. He saw again the great stomach and
the little eyes and the twist of the wreathing mouth
the
heft of fat red hands he felt. they were sodden in hair
a
.
.
.


322
JOHN THE BAPTIST
.
.
.
.
.
beating against him, beating the children of his father's
house. Karl's arm swung at his side, his chin no longer thrust. He
felt now his mother's voice: it lay like a warm purple scarf against
the chill of his thoughts: his mother had a red sweet mouth shut
upon her Mystery: she moved beyond the shoulder of the town like
a sunset bleeding. Karl's hand clasped a wrist once more beyond his
back. · The woman whom he had seen in the street and who
haunted him he struggling against her.
“Think! Think! Conquer yourself!”
He walked now heavy and stiff.
"Very well. What is she?” he fought.
He turned upon this woman with clamped breasts this
Myth this nonsense. Why was she like green fields? Why
was his mind like lead?-Married ... a stranger! O she was
suffering, he knew.
-Once I spoke to her: but my lips trembled.
“No, I am married,” came her pleading whisper. But her hand
moved toward him.
A complacent clod of a little man. But husband. Married. A
stranger.
Why was his mind a forest of hot trees when he needed a path ? A
pavement. Hard, clear, cool, like here where his feet were pounding.
Tedium. He played in a waste of soiled senses. He walked
through a waste of frozen thoughts. He was frozen in tedium.
He sat down, for he was tired.
He opened his eyes.
a
III
a
The East Park gasped its scanty green between the loom of the
streets of men and the black tumult of the River. Here he, sitting
upon a bench.
Before his eyes first, two boys playing tether-ball. One of them
strong and with fresh eyes swung his racket well: it rose from a clear
forearm, muscle moulded, mazed with faint gold sleeping hair. His
mouth shut firm as he stroked. Against him, a boy, shorter, dark,
older. He lunged with mouth slant open, and dull feet. One of his
eyes stared wide, the other was half shut. He lost swiftly.
The victor stood bored, easefully: looking beyond for a comrade


WALDO FRANK
323
who did not come. Saliva wet the chin of the other, whose effort had
been great. His hand hung, palm forward, near his knee.
“Let's try again,” he said. “You give me your side where the
sun's not in my eyes. That's fair.” They exchanged places. The
battle went on the same.
Karl was very tired. He leaned back in his bench.
In three straight strokes came to his passive eyes Sky, River, Park.
The sky was steadfast and still. The river was dense and still, boats
and waves moving upon the river were like the shiver of sun-moats
upon a steadfast sky. The park swayed under the stillness of sky
and water. Its swaying was a word that came from moveless lips;
its swaying was a word issued from moveless lips. Three horizontal
strokes in the eyes of Karl, of a world that did not move.
Stillness came within him.
He turned his head from side to side, as within steadfastness, not
stirring it. He saw no more, no less by turning his head. He was
within a Focus where all was steadfast and where stillness was all.
He moved his hands, and felt how he was wrapped in movelessness.
He was not prisoned. He felt free, flgent, felt the accessibility of
flight within Stillness, within Changelessness as within air.
He sat upright on his bench and was not tired.
He swung his left arm slowly under his face: he felt how the
world swung with him so that naught had moved.
Upon the cuff of his left sleeve a spot caught him and made him
focus his eyes.
A cockroach moved on his cuff. It moved.
It moved against the world. It lied.
It flowed into the mass of his right hand. It was crushed. It was
killed.
He said aloud: "I am sorry, Life. But I cannot have you
around." He was not surprised at his words.
But his words were another stroke, perpendicular to the three-
fold stroke of Park and River and Sky. A stroke cutting along and
lifting a veil before his eyes. The movelessness of Life won by
this fourth stroke of his words another dimension still. So it was
that things seemed to happen. Within his immobile vision, he
watched things happen
people move, sun slant farther be-
neath the green fingers of trees
as if this fourth stroke of his
words saying "Things happen” were a knife cutting a cord, unfold-
ing a magic Parchment.
.


324
JOHN THE BAPTIST
Men sat upon benches as he sat upon a bench. Men had feet on
a pavement as he had feet on a pavement. Men had faces written
with thought as he had a written face. All this he saw as if it were
happening just now. There was ease in his soul which took each
happening and put it away and knew that all was one.
.
.
a
A man with a black thick filthy beard, black bushed eyebrows
beneath which glistened black eyes, a man with a nose inordinately
long falling sheer from his sooty brow, moved upon legs that carried
him circularly, level, as if they were wheels. moved about.
He dipped his talonous hand into a refuse can: his shoulders swung
like the walking-beam of a boat. He dipped the other hand. There
was refuse in his hand. He put it in his mouth. He dove under
benches: he ransacked the scanty grass: he sought refuse. He put it
in his mouth.
As he ate, his black eyes looked at Karl; they gleamed with a joy
so full that Karl breathed against the glisten of his eyes sparking
the air.
A little man with a face ghostly white, lips red like a gash of
blood soaking through chalk, a little man with up-pointed shoulders
and sleeves that were tatters to the elbow, moved, isolate, intent:
picking up scraps of paper. Each scrap his fingers feverishly
smoothed, his lean eyes bent and read what was there to read.
Then his fingers tossed the paper from his eyes behind his back
eyes roaming, roaming to another scrap.
As he read each message, his lips moved: as his lips moved they
bled.
A man wide as a hogshead, short as a boy, wider than long, black
as black earth, a negro dwarf with a huge head sat with legs dang-
ling from a bench and looked at Karl. Karl saw him. The dwarf
raised a hand to his head and doffed his derby hat. Courteously he
smiled, swinging his hat and his arm. He had white separate teeth
and no lips. Beneath the frowze of his muddy trousers, were patent
leather boots. And they dangled.
As he bowed, Karl knew that within the patent leather boots his
toes were twitching.
.
a
Karl sat easefully and still: and was not surprised to find beside
him on the bench the bearded tramp whom he had seen so often, here
and elsewhere, on his walks.


WALDO FRANK
325
а
a
The tramp had always interested him: he had always wondered
what could be his story. But a terrible reticence, savage or divine,
fended this shambling blond man who with great tender eyes, long
beard and skin transparent, blue-veined, now sat beside him.
This man, he felt, speaks to no one. There is an embryon
word, yet dumb, sheathed by his presence. They had sat before
in this park on a single bench, it had been impossible to touch his
eyes.
Slight and frail man beside him. Karl did not turn his head to
look at him. By virtue of the four-stroked vision within which he
dwelt, he saw him clear with his eyes beyond.
He saw between the straight blond beard and the arching fore-
head touched with delicate hair, a face young and worn. Sunken
cheeks with blue shadows: blue eyes gleaming in red sick lids: a
hidden mouth: a nose straight and fine and singularly sharp. He
saw, lost within the aged suit of brown, a tenuous body: and at the
hip beside him a huge excrescence
a sort of tumour
swelling the trouser leg which elsewhere hung in folds.
Karl sat and let the world play and was aware of himself and was
aware sharply that he was at ease as he had never been before. Yet
it was ease, for he knew it so, and somehow he remembered.
A voice
very thin, articulate like the faint etch of acid on a copper
plate, from his side:
"'I shall call you what you like as we sit here. My name is Peter
Dawes. What shall I call you?”
Karl answered: "I have no name.'
“You call me Dawes, then,” said the bearded tramp, “and I shall
call you Peter."
Karl-Peter nodded within himself, to himself he nodded.
The tramp went on: "Across the city the sun goes down. It will
soon go down to the Palisades. They are high there, that makes the
sun low. Do you see?” He was looking eastward.
Karl-Peter nodded within himself, to himself he nodded.
“Look at the little Park,” said the bearded tramp.
From the Park's straight plane, the sun was away. The hands of
the westward trees were empty. But beyond his shoulder, above the
wall of tenements stood a flame: it leapt into the sky and fell upon
the Park. The Park was thick now with stillness. It was low and
leaden-green: it was thickly still under the leaping glow of the sun
that was not there.
a


326
JOHN THE BAPTIST
were
>
Within it, moving
steadfast in Karl's eyes
busy men.
They pressed to and fro, furtive, intent, secret from one another.
The two boys at tether-ball kept exchanging places: the game was
for ever the same.
Under Karl's eyes was the black face of the long-nosed man. All
of it that was not under hair was under grime of coal, save the huge
nose that was white and the eyes that were clean and hard like a
clear black sky.
He spoke: “My name is Theophilus Larch. Thank you, Theo-
philus.”
His quick hand delved into the cuff of Theophilus-Karl's trouser.
It held up the dead cockroach. The long-nosed man had teeth very
white: they closed on the cockroach with a joyous crack.
The little man of the red mouth was in Karl's eyes.
"My name is Martin Lounton. Call me Lounton, Martin. ...
And permit me
He seized Martin-Karl's hand. He smoothed it with feverish
fingers. His lean eyes sought the palm of it and read. He tossed it
from him, and was gone, feverishly peering under bench, in grass,
for scraps of paper.
The black dwarf bowed under Karl's eyes.
“My name is Caesar Dott. Call me Dott, Caesar. And allow me
to congratulate you upon your wedding. Your Bride gave me a fa-
vour, from her own hands she gave it. Look, Caesar ." He
raised his trouser leg and there against the obscene mass of blackish
flesh was an iron bar, toothed and clamped in the flesh.
"It makes my
foot go to sleep. I have to wriggle my toes.”
Karl sat still.
The strong boy and the idiot who played tether-ball for ever, for
ever; the eater of dirt, the dwarf, the picker and reader of scraps
joined hands. They were unknown to one another. But they
knew Karl. They joined hands. They danced.
A heavy shattering measure. It made the glow of the gone sun
tremble, bounce up, join in. It shook the trees until their branches
with little leaves like bells reached down into the Park and the
trees danced also. It broke into the sheerness of the housewalls and
they rose stiffly and danced. All danced . moveless in Karl
sitting upon the bench beside the bearded tramp.
He breathed in measure. A row of houses swung into the Park
.
.
.


WALDO FRANK
327
and the Park swung into the River: and the River suddenly straight-
ened up and thrust like a lance, quivering white, to the Sky. The
Sky came down in a great gust of wind and lifted the beating feet
and garlanded the trees among the dancing legs of men, and stuck
branches into the windows of the rollicking houses. Karl breathed
in measure.
The stillness was very thick like a night without clouds and with
neither moon nor stars.
Now, in the dancing stillness like a single star, a voice:
“Think!"
The tramp was moveless beside him. His voice: "Think! for the
Time is not yet.
The star-voice neared, no longer the moveless tramp's. It pierced,
it was a shriek.
“Think! Think!”
Karl jumped up from the bench. “Think, think!” he echoed.
He thought. He beat with his thought against the dancing world.
He lunged and thrust: he hewed with his thought and beat. He
beat the Sky up. He beat the houses back. He thrust the trees
down. The strong boy and the idiot boy, the eater of dirt, the
dwarf, the picker and reader of scraps, he hewed and beat apart
from their thick dance. He trampled with his thought the Park into
the ground.
Then all was as it should be.
And it was as if he had fal-
len an unfathomable distance.
.
.
.
He sat upon his bench under the darkling sky, alone, beside the
bearded man whom he had seen so often.
He turned to him and nodded.
The tramp's reticent blue eyes nodded and turned away.
“It's getting late,” said Karl.
He was tingling, as from a mighty fall that had not killed him,
that had made him drunk. It was as if an infinitude of space coursed
through his veins, as he had coursed through an infinitude of
space.
He was daring as never before.
“Would you mind,” he turned again, very courteous, very quiet,
towards the tramp, "would you mind, sir, telling me who you are ?”
The look of the frail man was steady and far beyond him. His
words came very still, very far away through the straight gold
beard.
"You have seen me often,” he said, "and asked me nothing. You
>


328
HIBERNAL
have thought. What did it seem to you, I was?”
Karl was light with the abandon of his infinite flight, sitting so
commonly upon a bench. He was brave and clear, for his mind held
one memory:what this strange man, the first time, had seemed to
him to be. The words came unhindered.
“It seemed,” he stopped he began again, "the first time
that I saw you, I said to myself: 'He looks like a ridiculous Jesus.'
The bearded man gazed on beyond him. His head moved dream-
ing. His hands floated underneath his beard.
"You were right in what you said to yourself,” he spoke. "For
I am John the Baptist.”
.
> >
>
HIBERNAL
BY BABETTE DEUTSCH
The park is winter-plucked. The sky
and the grey pavement show a sheeted face:
the covered stare of one who had to die.
Now, when men sweat,
shovelling muddy snow or heaving ice,
they know the helpless sweat that will not wet them twice,
they know the staggering heart, the smothered breath
that stand between this knowing and the end.
Though they must drag a net of heavy hours
about their straining limbs,
though they behold
love like a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire-
this net will break before they tire,
this cloud, this flame will vanish and be cold.
Men think of this who limp against the wind
that freezes hate and sucks at their desire.
Winter is on us now, and will return:
soiled snows will choke the city streets again,
bleak twilights dull the windows as before,
dark hurrying crowds push towards lit rooms in vain.
One day we shall not kiss or quarrel any more.
a



Photograph by Keystone View
SHOLOM ASCH. BY Z, RUBIN





LONDON LETTER
August, 1922
THE NOVEL
It is sometimes supposed, when any new and excellent work of
art appears, that a new era of creative work will be directly propa-
gated. Certainly, great works of art do in some way mark or modify
an epoch, but less often by the new things which they make possible,
than by the old things to which they put an end. After Shakes-
peare, very little; after Dante, nothing; after Henry James, noth-
ing in that kind. So the intelligent literary aspirant, studying
Ulysses, will find it more an encyclopaedia of what he is to avoid
attempting, than of the things he may try for himself. It is at once
the exposure and the burlesque of that of which it is the perfection.
And Ulysses is not a work which can be compared with any "novel.”
And it is almost as difficult to compare what are called "novels”
with each other. When a novelist is worth the pains, the only task
is to find his particular topography, the characteristics of his uni-
verse, and judge their consistency; he can only be compared with
others for the purpose of illustrating the general differences. Only
in detail is comparison possible. There are at present, so far as my
knowledge extends, three main types of English novel. Whether
any one type has a future is doubtful, but a future novelist may
still learn something from each. And so I do not know how to
compare them with each other. I must mention them separately,
without the shadow of a comparison between any representatives
of each.
There is first the old narrative method, the tale, traditional in
English fiction. The novelist has depended for his success upon a
gift of invention, in plot, and an accurate knowledge of a social
milieu. As Wells knows the Cockney (whom he has lately aban-
doned) as Bennett knows his Midlander (whom he has abandoned)
so Mr Compton Mackenzie knows a certain theatrical world of
London. Mr Mackenzie lays on, not so much sentiment, as coloured
detail; and the reader has to accustom himself to the calcium light
by which the actor is made visible. But a clever writer of this type,


330
LONDON LETTER
like Mr Mackenzie, simply because he is satisfied to write about
what he knows, not complicating it with any striving to attain a
point of view not his own, may produce an interesting or even valu-
able document. Mr Mackenzie is better worth reading than many
more pretentious and sophisticated writers. He is not admired by
the intellectuals, but on the other hand there is a popularity which
he will never attain. No book of his will ever have the success of
If Winter Comes.
I should be sorry to see this type of novel disappear, unless it is
to be replaced by something better. Another interesting type, but
of a very short ancestry, is the psychoanalytic type, notably illus-
trated by Miss Sinclair's Harriett Frean and by a less finished, but
commendable book, Miss E. B. Stern's The Room. In Miss Sin-
clair's book a method seems to have been carried about as far as it
will go; and because it is a scientific method, and rests upon a du-
bious and contentious branch of science, I doubt whether even Miss
Sinclair can carry it much further. Miss Stern does not reduce us
to quite the state of lucid despair of Miss Sinclair, but that is be-
cause she does not carry the method so far. The conclusion of Miss
Sinclair's book (it has already been reviewed in The DIAL-I only
refer to it in describing a type) extracts as much pity and terror as
can be extracted from the materials: but because the material is so
clearly defined (the soul of man under psychoanalysis) there is no
possibility of tapping the atmosphere of unknown terror and mys-
tery in which our life is passed and which psychoanalysis has not
yet analysed. So that if I may predict, it is that Miss Sinclair will
find herself forced to proceed from psychotherapy even to the su-
pernatural, or at least to that transfinite world with which Henry
James was in such close intercourse.
Both Miss Sinclair and Miss Stern—this type of fiction would
appear to be practised rather by women, and rather by extremely in-
telligent women are too shrewd, I imagine, to pass on to the third
or Dostoevsky type of novel. I recall one very interesting essay in
this kind, Mr Murry's Still Life, an excellent study of a peculiarly
revolting form of spiritual corruption: but the method has pro-
duced more failures than successes. All novelists are dangerous
models for other novelists, but Dostoevsky—a Russian, known only
through one translation—is especially dangerous. For the method
is only permissible if you see things the way Dostoevsky saw them.


T. S. ELIOT
331
I would not disparage a great writer by pointing to the fortunes of
his offspring. One reason of Dostoevsky's appeal to the British
mind is that he appears to satisfy the usual definition of genius; that
is, an infinite capacity for taking no pains. On the other hand it is
no good making a gospel of taking pains, either; if a writer has not
the standard of perfection in himself, he will not acquire it from
public agitation in favour of "technique.” (I have even read in a
.
newspaper article in this country, that the highest form of literary
genius is indifferent to very careful execution. It is truer to say that
every good writer will be careful about what is important for his
purpose—but purposes vary indefinitely.) My own view is that
Dostoevsky had the gift, a sign of genius in itself, for utilizing his
weaknesses; so that epilepsy and hysteria cease to be the defects of
an individual and become—as a fundamental weakness can, given
the ability to face it and study it—the entrance to a genuine and
personal universe. I do not suppose that Dostoevsky's struggles were
fundamentally alien to Flaubert's. I cannot believe, at all events,
that Dostoevsky was a muddle-headed soul-struggler any more than
I can believe that Plato was an Oxford don. Of course, he some-
times parodies himself (his parodies are instructive); but anything,
unless it is as well done as it can be done, may be ridiculous.
One writer, and indeed, in my opinion, the most interesting nov-
elist in England—who has apparently been somewhat affected by
Dostoevsky, is Mr D. H. Lawrence. Mr Lawrence has
progressed
-by fits and starts, it is true; for he has perhaps done nothing as
good as a whole as Sons and Lovers. He has never yet, I think, quite
surrendered himself to his work. He still theorizes at times when
he should nerely see. His theory has not yet reached the point at
which it is no longer a theory, he still requires (at the end of
Aaron's Rod) the mouthpiece for an harangue. But there is one
scene in this book-a dialogue between an Italian and several Eng-
lishmen, in which one feels that the whole is governed by a creator
who is purely creator, with the terrifying disinterestedness of the
true creator. And for that we can forgive Mr Lawrence his subse-
quent lapse into a theory of human relationships.
T. S. ELIOT


PARIS LETTER
August, 1922
a
IF
F a reader cannot understand a masterpiece solely by looking at it
or reading or hearing it, no amount of philology or of biographi-
cal data will help him. There is a legitimate art of biography, and
were it not for the unfortunate occurrence of Ste-Beuves and their
followers this art might be kept properly in its own territory.
Second-rate minds of this type cannot endure the idea of any one's
having a more interesting mentality than their own; they must be
for ever proving that the "great author” had wash lists, tonsilitis,
and carpet-slippers. The actual production of the work of art is
usually the one thing which distinguishes its maker from let us say
six dozen other old gentlemen with checquered waistcoats, and the
only possible means for proving his temperamental and cerebral dif-
ference. But the work itself may give the skilled reader a fairly good
idea of the author, and one is not in the least surprised to find that
Flaubert when over fifty, impoverished himself to save a nephew-
in-law from bankruptcy. It is the kind of thing a man who wrote
as Flaubert wrote, would do, and René Descharmes in his Autour de
Bouvard et Pécuchet (Librairie de France; 99, Bd. Raspail) has
treated a subject of both literary and biographic interest, without
falling into the Ste-Beuvian slough. Flaubert's last book is un-
finished, and such knowledge as can be gathered regarding his state
of mind while at work on it, aids in the more or less useless but by
no means uninteresting conjecture as to how he would have com-
pleted it. Descharmes shows that the actions ascribed to the protag-
onists would have filled up at least thirty years, and this gives us the
measure of how little Flaubert had revised or pulled together his
separate chapters. He presumably intended his old chaps to remain
at some more uniform age. Descharmes has examined their alleged
reading, Amoros' gymnastics, Feinaigle's mnemotechnic, et cetera,
and shows that Flaubert in no way exaggerated the probable effects
of the diet.
Perhaps the chief use of such a book as Descharmes' is that it
sends one back to the text, that series of island paragraphs marvel-


EZRA POUND
333
lously clear and condensed. More and more we come to consider
Flaubert as the great tragic writer, not the vaunted and perfect
stylist. I mean that he is the tragedian of democracy, of modernity.
We are not, most of us, faced with the problem of whether or no
we should kill General Pershing in his bath; at most an undignified
puerile desire to kick Lloyd or Woodrow dans le derrière, follows
the morning editorial. More than Dostoevsky, Flaubert presents
the inevitable and quotidian. A tragedy that can be avoided by a
single flash of common sense, or by a momentary outbreak of the
Dickensian Christmas spirit, is good only for one reading. Flaubert
with his "generalization,” his avoidance of the anecdotal, and acci-
dental, has in each of his four works on temporary subjects given
everyman; nothing that any character will do will alter his case; the
whole thing is there and stays as long as human limitations are
human limitations.
I doubt if this impression is strengthened by reading the biog-
raphy of the ten years after 1870, the years during which Bouvard
was written. Civilization, as Flaubert had known it, appeared to
be foundering; Gautier died, as Flaubert wrote, “suffocated by
modern stupidity," and Flaubert thinking of Gautier feels "as if a
tide of filth" were rising around him and submerging him. This
tide of immondices must be considered as messy thought, general
muddle. "We pay for the long deceit in which we have lived, every-
thing was false, false army, false politics, and false credit.” “The
present is abominable, and the future ferocious.” So run the phrases
of his correspondence.
And the old man's last stand against this tide is his "dictionnaire
des idées recues,” his encyclopedia en farce; his gargantuan collec-
tion of imbecilities, of current phrases (“Bossuet is the eagle of
Meaux") and his “Album” of citations (“The Loire floods are
due to the excesses of the Press, and the lack of sabbath observance,"
Bishop of Metz, in his Mandements Dec. 1846). Thus Flau-
.
bert goes about making his immense diagnosis of the contemporary
average mind. And this average mind is our king, our tyrant, re-
placing Oedipus and Agamemnon in our tragedy.
It is this human stupidity that elects the Wilsons and Ll. Georges
and puts power into the hands of the gun-makers, demanding that
they blot out the sunlight, that they crush out the individual and the
perception of beauty. This flabby blunt-wittedness is the tyrant.


334
PARIS LETTER
Gautier, poor all his life, driven from one bit of hack work to
another (Mes colonnes sont alignées) reacts in his Olympian per-
fection:
“Le squelette était invisible
Au temps heureux de l’Art païen;
L'homme, sous la forme sensible,
Content du beau, ne cherchait rien.”
and Flaubert who until his quixotic abandonment of his fortune
had been able to keep out of it,” Flaubert capable of his great
engineering feat, reacts in his huge labour of drainage and sanita-
tion, beginning as Descharmes so intelligently points out, "when, as
a small child, he was already registering the imbecile remarks of
an old lady who had come on a visit to his father. (Où, tout petit
enfant, il notait déjà les bêtises d'une vieille dame qui venait en
visite chez son père.)
The "dictionnaire” of imbecile remarks heard "everywhere, all
the time," has found its way into Flaubert's work; it is spread about
in the conversation of his characters; the “Album” was intended
to form all or part of the second volume of Bouvard et Pécuchet.
Descharmes in stating his view is thorough, as a man may dare to
be thorough when he wants to settle a question once and for all;
he amply proves his qualifications for supervising the Centenary
Edition of his hero. One may look on Madame Bovary as the cul
mination of the anterior art of novel writing; Henry James and
Proust are perhaps the only authors who have, since Flaubert, made
any contribution of international importance to the art of this sort
of novel; they have specialized and elaborated the presentation of
the "upper” milieux, and they perhaps grew rather from the Gon-
courts than from Flaubert.
Descharmes, finding Bouvard et Pécuchet of particular interest
ends in a burst of enthusiasın:
a
“La tâche entreprise était gigantesque, et cette énormité même est
une raison d'indulgence. Qui donc a réussi dans cette tentative
quasi surhumaine de montrer sous forme de roman et d'oeuvre d'art,
le 'pignouflisme universel?” ”


EZRA POUND
335
One may take Bouvard et Pécuchet as the beginning of a new
form in literature; neither Gargantua nor Don Quixote furnish a
real precedent. Rabelais did fairly well succeed in rebutting the
imbecilities of his era, Cervantes attacked only one form of hyper-
bole. Since Flaubert no one save James Joyce has had the energy,
courage, patience to take up the task. Bouvard is unfinished,
Ulysses is gigantically complete, and the latter parts of Ulysses,
notably Bloom's conversational outburst, give one excellent ground
for comparison. He has emitted what appear to be all the clichés
of the English language in a single volcanic eruption. He, Bloom,
exists in a more contagious milieu than that inhabited by Flaubert's
retired copyists, and, as I wrote in my last letter, he is a much more
rapid means of summarizing the normal stupidity of the age. It is
only by a comparison of the two books that one can get any clear
and accurate idea of where we have "in a manner of speakin' got
to” in the art of the novel. From this spring-board the next great
prose writer must presumably "take off”—I mean he has here a
better chance than if he occupies himself solely with applying
known and familiar processes in depicting the affairs of some new
locality. Kipling, in applying a cheaper form of Maupassant to
British India, made no contribution to the art of the short story.
Flaubert's art was the art of "generalization,” that is he presum-
ably sought conditions, facts, relations which would be unaltered
by milieu; I take it that Mr Eliot has this in mind in the current
issue of the Tyro when he complains that no American has yet done
for America what James Joyce has done for Ireland; that is, he,
Eliot, must mean that no American author has yet so written of
things in America that they would be equally profound and equally
true for the rest of the Caucasian world.
He cannot mean that there has been no American contribution to
international letters, for there remain Poe, Whitman, and may we
say Hawthorne. And Henry James was translated into French in
"the Eighties,” in an edition which I have seen on book stalls in the
French provinces; Mr Eliot must mean that these authors have
treated their characters as if some fortuitous extra interest attached
to them on account of their nationality, and that the interest is at-
tached by such frail bonds that it would get unstuck if exposed to
sea-breezes. Stephen Crane has been mislaid, and everyone seems
to have forgotten a bad writer named Graham Phillips who must


336
PARIS LETTER
have tried this sort of thing. He was shot by a maniac before arriv-
ing at any recognizable sort of technique. The universal must exist
somewhere under the American crust? Or not?
We have, perhaps, the handicap of sprouting in an atmosphere
where one believes that everything would be all right if we could
only get to Chicago, or to New York, or to Paris; or at any rate
that everything will be all right in a few years or in a century or
so? Whereas the Frenchman knows that if he can't settle the mat-
ter on French soil it will never be settled at all. Some clever fellow
said similarly about Russia: they'll never be civilized because the
country is so big they can always move to somewhere else if they
don't like it where they are.
Joyce, growing steadily out of Flaubert, parallels the Trois
Contes, and l’Education without passing his predecessor; in
Ulysses he has gone further. The American writer, if he be serious,
must recognize that our indigenous product has only got as far as
Maupassant in the short story, and as far as H. James in the novel.
It remains to be seen whether any one will undertake to catch up
with the gigantic sottisier; whether the national folly will stand
still long enough to be registered; this registration does not mean a
simple filming of imbeciles and imbecilities as they pass, it means
a vast co-ordination and synthesis, without the Kate Douglas Wig-
gin touch, without the soft tender hand.
Eliot asks for someone to sort out the universal and provincial
elements in Dickens. Surely the division line is the Christmas spirit.
In Flaubert things are inevitable. In Dickens a simple touch of good-
will on the part of the villain would usually put everything right.
(I exaggerate, perhaps, but so general a statement must permit of
exceptions.) In other provincial writers the tragedy would often
disappear by a mere application of some bit or mass of “culture,”
i. e., of knowledge more or less commonly circulated somewhere else.
“And he said: Why flay dead horses 2
There once was a man called Voltaire."
I mean that with Dickens, with any provincial writer there is an
"answer,” which the author and reader know; a touch of kindness,
the payment of the instalment due on the mortgage, et cetera; but
with Flaubert, with the writer of first magnitude there is no answer,


EZRA POUND
337
humanity being what it is, and the given character moving inside
its own limitations there is no easy way out; the given situation has
arisen, and will continue to arise; the impasse is a biological im-
passe. Human capacity, perseverance, endurance continuing static,
it will continue to be an impasse. Hence the idea of literature as-
suming the duties of a science-despite the sentimentalist's shudder
and the lazy man's objection to the term "science.” I take it that
good poets have always believed this, but that the light has come to
few prose-authors.
>
The society of Bel Esprit has been founded in Paris, a sort of
consumers' league to pay for quality rather than quantity in litera-
ture and the fine arts. If it does not restart civilization it has at
least provided an instrument for calling bluffs, for weighing to the
utmost milligram and testing to the last degree of fineness a given
person's interest in "art” or in "literature.”
EZRA POUND


BOOK REVIEWS
MR STRACHEY'S PAST
Books and CHARACTERS. By Lytton Strachey. 8vo.
318 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.50.
.
TH
HE author of Queen Victoria and Eminent Victorians has in-
vented a new manner, if not a new genre, of history; and in
face of the imitations, often so vulgar, that are already appearing,
the word Stracheyesque seems an inevitable addition to our critical
vocabulary
The first characteristic of Mr Strachey's art is the startling vivid-
ity with which he paints his personages. They satisfy the eye. You
feel
you can walk round them. His Lord Melbourne, his Disraeli,
are as real as any characters in fiction. They are almost too lifelike,
one feels, too good to be true. But they are hypotheses that work:
and work neatly and gracefully, so that if we sometimes suspect that
the whole truth would be something very different, what matter? Is
not Mr Strachey—are we not all—too sensible and philosophic to
take History for more than a sober, daylight fiction, as Mr San-
tayana calls it? The trouble comes with certain other figures, Man-
ning, for instance, and Gladstone. Mr Strachey's touch remains
delicate, his technique unfaltering, but something is missing. And
what but a little sympathy on the showman's part with the moral
standpoint and inspiring faith of his puppets? Where there is no
belief in law, a lawyer seems a ridiculous figure; where there is no
belief in God, a saint is frankly grotesque. And it is the weakness of
Mr Strachey's histories that he is a worshipper of Reason, who can
no more understand the attraction and power of other faiths than he
can the stupider instincts of the brute creation.
The second characteristic of Mr Strachey is his attitude of ironic
detachment. In view of this it is natural that he should be accused
of lacking seriousness. He would appear to approach his subjects
without a prejudice, a prevention, or a moral theory; and often after
a detailed statement of the facts, sometimes given in the actual
words of the character concerned, he will leave them sans com-


RAYMOND MORTIMER
339
mentaire. But, le malin, does he not make them speak for them-
selves? For the facts are selected with an ingenuity which we some-
times fear to be disingenuous, and a Latin fondness for oratio
obliqua only makes his satire more devastating. Lack of principles
may amount in itself to a principle; and Mr Strachey, with all his
greater subtlety, is perhaps at heart as much a partisan as Gibbon
or Voltaire. In vain does he write of men as if they were animals,
and he a naturalist; though detached, he is still not impartial. For
obviously some sorts of animals are more attractive and compre-
hensible to him than others.
The third characteristic of this historian is that he has the expert
eye of a theatrical producer for dramatic effect. He makes costume
eloquent; he makes every situation tell; and if in Eminent Victor-
ians he is writing too evidently for the sake of "effects,” in Queen
Victoria he sets his scene and arranges his lighting with subtler and
more art-concealing art. Indeed it sometimes seems that while Clio
serves to grace his measure, Thalia is his real flame. For he stages
the drama of history as a comedy of manners; his particular delight
is in the unexpected and the preposterous; and his sentimental pas-
sages are flavoured with a delicate cynicism which makes them the
most enchanting things in his work. He remains detached, and so
succeeds in writing history that is dramatic without being romantic.
Does not such detachment constitute the difference between classic
and romantic art?
A favourite method of Mr Strachey's is to sketch a man's appear-
ance and deduce from it his character. When reading him, we nat-
urally tend to reverse the process. The phantasm of the author thus
evoked from the pages of his biographical studies is a figure half
Creevey, half Voltaire; a disillusioned happy little man, with small
penetrating eyes, very neat, very urbane, clean-shaven, of course,
and probably plumpish. And he seems, in these books, to gaze with
attentive curiosity through the bars of the Menagerie of History at
the pompous antics of all these ridiculous Victorian creatures, wag-
ging their vast vaticinatory beards, and taking the Union Jack, the
Deity, and themselves with fantastic and equal seriousness.
But now Mr Strachey turns his attention to a more polite zoologi-
cal department; and leads us to the Monkey House of the Eight-
eenth Century to observe the inhabitants as they gregariously chat-
ter and quarrel round the cleverest of apes, Voltaire, and tease into
madness the lonely, pathetic, farouche, incomprehensible bear, Jean-


340
MR STRACHEY’S PAST
Jacques Rousseau. It is evident that Mr Strachey prefers such
simian society to that of the solemn-eyed goats and monogamous
penguins in the Victorian enclosure.
The new book is a collection of papers written at intervals during
the last seventeen years, and arranged in the historical order of their
subjects. But to show the development of Mr Strachey's interests,
I will catalogue them in the order in which they were composed.
The years 1905 to 1908 give essays on Voltaire's tragedies, Shakes-
peare's last period, Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Blake, Rousseau,
Beddoes, and Racine. This may be considered the first period of Mr
Strachey's work; and the papers, with the exception of that on Rous-
seau, are all chiefly concerned with the criticism of literature. Then
in 1913 there is an essay on Mme du Deffand, followed in turn by
Voltaire in England, Henri Beyle, Voltaire and Frederic, and lastly,
in 1919, by Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr Creevey. All the papers
in this group are primarily biographical and portray individual and
social character. There only remains to mention a quite exquisite
little pastiche of a Voltairean dialogue between Moses, Diogenes,
and Locke: it is undated and has not appeared before.
This book then shows the transference of Mr Strachey's activity
from the study of style to that of character. Also here, in contrast
with the books he wrote later, he is chiefly occupied with persons
and books sympathetic to him. Thus it is pleasant, though surpris-
ing, to find that his appreciation of language should lead him to
write so enthusiastically of Beddoes, though his description of him
as a belated Elizabethan seems to me at least one-sided. This
essay
will certainly drive every reader to penetrate the Gothic gloom and
macabre magnificence of Death's Jest-Book, in which they will find
one of the most impressive and continuous cataracts of romantic
poetry in English. Even of Blake he writes with sympathy, though
he confesses that he finds a little goes a long way—“Such music is
not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our weakness, a few
strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of ordinary converse,
are enough.”
All the essays are written in the witty and precise style we have
come to expect from Mr Strachey, but it is easy to see his standpoint
becoming more definite, and his idiosyncracies more marked. The
two latest papers have exactly the same quality and texture as the
big work on Queen Victoria. Still I consider that the finest character
study in this collection, that of Mme du Deffand (and how fine it
a


RAYMOND MORTIMER
341
is!) is the one inspired by the greatest sympathy; and the best liter-
ary criticism is that of her, and I fancy Mr Strachey's, favourite
author, Racine. This is the most important essay in the book, and
an invaluable, because unique, contribution to English critical lit-
erature.
Mr Strachey always obviously enjoys reversing accepted opinions.
But it is unfair to call iconoclast the artist who has revealed that
the insipid Lady of the Lamp was really a splendid and remorseless
Amazon, and has substituted for the priggish alabaster Albert of
official history, a melancholy, misunderstood, too humane and too
romantic Prince. Never though has he fought more admirably than
against the Vulgar Errors and ignorant provincialism of English
critics of Racine. Most English students of French poetry can with
justice claim to appreciate Villon and the Pléiade, and not to be
taken in too completely by Victor Hugo. But they usually surrender
entirely to the plaintive melodies of Verlaine, and try to raise a
good minor poet to an uncomfortable eminence above his poetic
superiors. Similarly they are apt to treat Baudelaire as a mere
"gardener of strange flowers,” and to enjoy the superficial decadence
in his poems which would entitle them to be illustrated by Beards-
ley, while they neglect to see in him a classic poet directly descended
from Racine.
No one could be a better guide than Mr Strachey through the
obstacles which make the approach to Racine so arduous to English
readers. But first a warning; it is useless for any one to open a
Racine without a pretty sound understanding and appreciation of
the French language. The first thing necessary is a sensitive ear.
And it is lack of ear in the reader which is the most formidable ob-
stacle rather than any difficulty with the classical conventions the
use of which Mr Strachey so eloquently explains and defends.
Shakespeare stands translation fairly well; not losing more than
half his lustre.
.
Like Patience on a Monument,
Smiling at Grief”
is well enough rendered by
“Semblable à la résignation sur un tombeau
qui sourit à la douleur."


342
MR STRACHEY’S PAST
But how can a man with little English understand the art of Mil-
ton? How translate
“But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,
Now thou art gon, and never must return!"
And, equally, how translate into English the awful poetry of
"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit
or the poignant loveliness of
“Dieux! Que ne suis-je assise à l'ombre des forêts!”
Listen again to the music first impatient, then languorous, then des-
perate of Phèdre:
“Que ces vains ornements, que ces voiles me pèsent!
Quelle importune main, en formant tous ces noeuds,
A pris soin sur mon front d'assembler mes cheveux?
Tout m'afflige et me nuit, et conspire à me nuire.”
)
Here we are presented with the almost comic fact that our greatest
spiritual distresses may be enormously aggravated by some small
physical discomfort which but for them we should not notice.
Did Shakespeare ever invest psychological realism with a whiter
fame of poetical intensity ?
Admiration for Racine has swept me helplessly away from criti-
cism of Mr Strachey. But I return from him with renewed admira-
tion. Queen Victoria is a delightful fiction; the criticism on Racine
a more delightful truth.
RAYMOND MORTIMER


THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
The GLIMPSES OF THE Moon. By Edith Wharton.
12mo. 364 pages. D. Appleton and Company. $2.
IT
T has not been exactly roses, roses all the way for Mrs Whar-
ton's new novel, but it has been subject, subject. Mrs Wharton
has written a new book about the upper set. (Cheers!) Mrs
Wharton again exposes the vices of the rich. (Excitement!) Mrs
Wharton's hero says Men are different. (Cries of Take him out!)
Mrs Wharton re-establishes marriage. (Sensation in Heaven!)
If I suggest with some asperity that these things are in the second
order of importance it is not only to make again a plea for the kind
of criticism which will concern itself, at least for a little, with the
elements of form. It is because The Glimpses of the Moon is a
peculiarly affecting example of nearly all the dangers which the
novelist who cares for his form is likely to encounter; and that so
conscientious and so intelligent an artist as Mrs Wharton has failed
to overcome them is exceedingly instructive. In a word I feel that
even the enthusiasts for this new work are a little bewildered by it
because they lack the fulfilment of satisfaction; and I am convinced
that this failure is due not to Mrs Wharton's preoccupation with
any given social set nor to the domestic ideals which she gives to
her hero nor to the celebrated coldness of her treat:nent of love; it
can be explained only by the structural fault in the work itself.
What that fault is she has made exceptionally clear. The book
deals with two young people, Susy and Nick Lansing, married in
spite of their poverty and in spite of their loose association with the
rich. They hope to live as long as possible on the bounty of their
friends, then each is to give the other a helping hand to a more
prosperous affiliation. In securing this bounty Susy is more or less
against her will forced to do something she holds dishonourable;
when Nick hears of it, hears from her that such compromises are
likely to be the essence of their compact, he leaves her. Each then
comes close to another marriage; but meeting again they return to
each other. Giving thus the plot-subject of the book I have given
enough for the reader who knows Mrs Wharton's extraordinary


344
THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD
skill in working-in backgrounds, in foreshortening the past, in
dramatizing the present, to reconstruct the method of the book.
For this plot the structure is perfect; if there were nothing more in
The Glimpses of the Moon it would be faultless—and null.
The more in it is the theme: that those who have had glimpses
of the moon are as those who have drunk the milk of Paradise, the
circle woven round them not to be transgressed. “In the balance
the balance of one's memories” says another character,
small things are small indeed; that you cannot separate two who
have been through many things together ("it's not the things, you
see, it's the togetherness” adds Susy). And this is the very thing
which Mrs Wharton has failed to give us. For Susy and Nick go
through virtually nothing in this book except the few episodes
which sunder and separate. To give herself ample time and pro-
portion with a plot requiring the treatment of an episode for Susy
with Strefford and one for Nick with Carol, she has thinned the
previous life of both almost out of existence; and in the chapters
of their first married months she has had to work in the whole range
of her characters and several threads of her plot. So that when we
are informed that Susy
“saw how much it had given her besides the golden Aush of her
happiness, the sudden flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body.
Yes—there had been the flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs,
of
something graver, stronger, fuller of future power
thing that Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even
beyond love and beyond Nick."
some-
we want to cry out But that is exactly what we ought to have seen
and haven't; we feel, for once in Mrs Wharton's work, cheated and
unhappy. It is, of course, clear why she has not rendered the lives
of Susy and Nick—since they did live them fully under other names
and in another book. They do not resemble, they are Lily Bart and
Lawrence Selden; and it is on the altar of her dead that Mrs Whar-
ton has sacrificed these living two.
In her failure to suggest the richness of life, and in the refusal
to render the passion of love, Mrs Wharton has left her work empty.
The bowl is chastely proportioned and cunningly wrought; but it
brims over with no rich liquor. Instead there is the watered wine of


GILBERT SELDES
345
her plot. The distillation and watering are admirable. (By water-
ing I mean the employment, instance by instance, of the material of
her earlier work.) Among good things I note only the high dramatic
sense which, after the two have parted, conveys to us through Nick,
and not through Susy, the vital information that Streff has sur-
prisingly inherited and is therefore the natural upward step for her;
the reader unconsciously supplies and savours the drama which is
never related of Susy's response to the news. Or the superb dénoue-
ment, prepared for with a masterly certainty and delicacy, of Susy's
discovery that the hostess for whom she made her great false step
was the unknown adulteress who dispossessed her at Como. One
remembers with a positive thrill that Strefford, the owner of the
villa, had with embarrassment given a jewel to Mrs Vanderlyn's
little girl; one sees brilliantly that the money came from Mrs Van-
derlyn's paramour; one sees why the discovery makes it impossible
for Susy to marry Strefford. It is the magic of technique. It is not
quite enough.
The strange thing is that the theme is worthy of Mrs Wharton;
it isn't in any sense cheap, or sentimental, or thin. Isn't it, essen-
tially, the theme, too, of The House of Mirth where, though Lily
is dead, the word passes between them which makes all things irrev-
ocably right? Why then the extraordinary sensation of Mrs Whar-
ton's own scepticism concerning the whole affair? Why does one
feel so sure that she was unsure, believe that she did not at all be-
lieve? Why didn't the demands of her theme make themselves clear
to an artist who has always shown so responsive a mind to the re-
quirements of form? I can only suspect that she sets small store
by the felicity which her protagonists have and lose and win again;
and being unwilling to treat the subject with irony she treats it (in
another sense of the word) with contempt. Or is this, possibly, Mrs
Wharton's final comment on the happy ends of men's lives?
GILBERT SELDES


ENLARGING THE NARROW HOUSE
NARCISSUS. By Evelyn Scott. 12mo. 263 pages. Har-
court, Brace and Company. $1.75.
HA
AVING read only those portions of Rupert Hughes which
are pasted on the sides of newsstands, I can hardly venture to
discuss him with authority. Yet, if I were to form a tentative judge-
ment on those summaries and blurbs, I should say that Mr Hughes
is an author who gives us something like a society drama, with char-
acters, plot, and setting all more or less typical of some actual
stratum, or condition, in society. In this I may be entirely unjust to
Mr Hughes. But in revenge I am positive that it applies to Mrs
Scott, who wrote The Narrow House, and who has now made that
house gratifyingly less narrow in her new novel Narcissus.
But as Mrs Scott is quite plainly a much more complex writer
than Mr Hughes, one feels at the start that the juxtaposition of the
two names is false. To begin with, Mr Hughes would not write
like this, which I take from The Narrow House:
а
“The room closed them like a coffin. Their life was their own. It
did not flow in from the street."
No, that is not like Mr Hughes; it is like Mr Waldo Frank. There
are other passages scattered through Mrs Scott's books which show
the influence of Ulysses, a strain which it is safe to suppose has
never defiled our great cinema novelist. However, Mrs Scott writes:
"I'm suffering deeply, Julia. You are suffering. I see it. It is
only the little person who doesn't suffer. Why do you resent me?
Life is always making patterns. It has thrown us three-you and
me, and your husband-into a design—a relationship to each
other."
And although Mr Hughes would probably never have stepped so
circumspectly around the word "triangle,” it is safe to assume that
the situation has occurred to him: Lawrence immersed in his chemi-


KENNETH BURKE
347
cal work; Dudley, a young artist, lover of Julia; Julia, the wife
of Lawrence, beautiful and idle. But I have spoken of Mrs Scott's
greater complexity; let us examine just how it affects her treatment
of this vexing problem. First going back to The Narrow House.
The Narrow House was part of that astonishing post-war move-
ment of anti-chauvinism among the intellectuals, a movement which
attained its greatest expression in the sales of Main Street and the
departure of Mr Harold Stearns for Europe. The Narrow House,
then, was what might be termed "professionally depressing." Like
most of 1921's record, it dipped back into Zola, being somewhat
more circumspect and infinitely less powerful. It showed dull,
broken lives, American lives which were so weary, so hateful, that
even the American sun was discovered to shine with fatigue upon
them.
In her second work Mrs Scott has cut away a great deal of this
misery praeter necessitatem. The house is distinctly less narrow.
The professional depression is for the most part lightened. Despite
her public's approval of the patent gesture in The Narrow House,
Mrs Scott seems to have developed a distrust of it. But unfortu-
nately, the resultant virtue is only a negative one; the author has
gone through the excesses of The Narrow House to attain the neu-
tralization of Narcissus.
At the same time she has attempted to graft upon her style ele-
ments of James Joyce and Waldo Frank. There is no objection to
them as influences. There is no particular reason why writers should
begin over again, when philosophers hand their apparatus from one
to the other throughout the ages. Thus, my objection is neither to
influences in general nor to these particular influences; but I do
question the propriety of the influences as they appear in Narcissus.
For they produce a work which is peculiarly lacking in correla-
tion. One feels this especially in the case of Waldo Frank, since his
method is so specifically adapted to his own kind of writing. Nar-
cissus is, as we have said, more or less of a society drama, wherein
characters are presented for their objective reality, for their iden-
tity as people you see or shake hands with. But Waldo Frank's
characters are meant to be like pebbles dropped into a pool: he tries
to draw ever-widening circles around them. His plots are conceived
in the same non-temporal, non-spatial tone. It is not to the point to
attempt any judgements on this method at present. But it is to the
а


348
ENLARGING THE NARROW HOUSE
point to insist that the method is as peculiarly adapted to one set of
conditions as were dinosaurs or mastodons. Transferred, it is simply
bones in a glass case.
Thus, the novel Auctuates between its strict localization and this
lyrical drawing of the ever-widening circles. As a result the book
has no consistent drive. Even the blurb is at a loss, for it heralds
“A story of a group of people who are hindered by the relaxation of
old standards of conduct and don't know what to do with their
new freedom.” There is, to be sure, one adolescent who enters and
exits at intervals throughout the book, and who is undecided con-
cerning his future. But even here the element of social transitions is
only indirectly touched upon. (For which, by the way, let us be
grateful.) I spoke of the opening triangle: Dudley, the artist; Julia,
the wife; Lawrence, the husband. Actuated by a set of nuances
which is not completely cogent—and the vagueness arises precisely
because Mrs Scott always switches at such times from strict analysis
of motives to Waldo Frank's type of lyrism—she tells Lawrence of
their affair. He moves his bed into another room, and starts carry-
ing his life from her bit by bit. She breaks off with Dudley—again
by a set of elusive nuances—in the direction of a business man, and
has an affair with him. After which she finally pierces Lawrence's
steel on the last two pages, there is a reconciliation, and the book
closes with:
a
“Unacknowledged, each kept for himself a pain which the other
could not heal. Each pitied the other's illusion, and was steadied by
it into gentleness.”
Perhaps, in this fluctuation between the strict localizing of her
characters and the drawing of lyrical circles, I have objected to the
very thing which Mrs Scott was aiming for. But, if we are to have
two poles of treatment, we must also have their polarity. It is not
sufficient to juxtapose them without reconciliation. In the truest
sense, significance is lost: the significance of some modus consistent-
ly and exclusively pursued.
KENNETH BURKE


LIGHT FROM ITALY
BENEDETTO Croce: an Introduction to his Philosophy.
By Raffaello Piccoli. 12m0. 315 pages. Harcourt,
Brace and Company. $2.
TH
a
HE philosophic science which received its first systematic con-
sideration from Plotinus, and to which Baumgarten gave the
name Aesthetic, has been ennobled and fortified by such men as Vico,
Hegel, Schleiermacher, Shelley, and De Sanctis. The art of every
age is accompanied by an intellectual corpus arising from a source as
fundamental as the creative impulse itself—the will to determine
the true concept of the beautiful. These heuristic speculations have
been grouped categorically into five aesthetics: the empirical, hedo-
nistic, intellectual, agnostic, and mystic, each of which has contrib-
uted more or less to the eternal problem, but owing to the narrow-
ness of its postulates has failed to approximate anything like a final
solution. Another name and another philosophy must be appended
to the list, a name by no means new, for out of the crushing material-
ism of modern life Benedetto Croce has come to be the leader of an
idealism which has slowly spread from Italian soil to practically
every country of the globe.
Croce's writings, beautiful as they unquestionably are in certain
passages, cannot be called artistic. Indeed it is a significant fact
that among the illustrious figures in the history of aesthetics we sel-
dom encounter an artist. It will be worth while to look into this mat-
ter. A theory comprehensive enough to include the manifold forms
of art must, of necessity, be unencumbered with the accidents of
means and motives which, through their particularity, witness the
limitations of periods and special tendencies. Painters, in discussing
art, are, in most instances, bound to the technicalities of the moment,
and when the remotest sort of a concept appears, it is likely to prove
to be little more than a thin generalization instigated by the purely
emotional need for larger statement. This is not always a sign of
deficient intelligence; for painters deal with materials sensational in
themselves and capable in their raw and unordered state of produc-
ing such vivid emotions as to make philosophic vision almost impos-
a


350
LIGHT FROM ITALY
a
sible. Every period has its immediate preoccupations; every few
years the ideas of artists undergo a shift of direction, and with each
point of departure a new set of positive tenets is formulated. New
liberties taken with the simple facts of the visual world: geometrical
design and amusing effects in the unconventional combination of
bits of matter added to the sensuous excitement of varying colour-
ranges absorb the artist's entire attention. All of these factors have
their value as means—they are expressions, stuff of the mind in their
origin and closely linked with the material steps from the palette to
the canvas. Beyond them the painter is rarely at home. He is too
intensely concentrated on some particular discovery to be bothered
about universals, or to inquire critically into the larger meaning of
what he is doing. He is like the natural scientist who gets elated
over the precision and arresting clarity of a microscopic revelation.
It remains for the philosopher, to whom art is neither a specialized
science nor a technical process, to give us a logical analysis, and to
show how art is a coherent manifestation of the reality of life.
Raffaello Piccoli's exposition of the most convincing cycle of
spiritual activity since Hegel is an achievement. Not only does he
understand thoroughly Croce's philosophy, but he also succeeds in
putting into English, a foreign idiom, the glowing humanism which
he has caught from the master of modern Italian thought. If Signor
Piccoli is typical of the cultural life of young Italy, then I advise all
American expatriates to hurry thither for spiritual solace. His book
is profound and sympathetic: intended as an introduction to Croce,
it goes much farther, and presents in compact form a complete inter-
pretation of the doctrine of the theoretical and the practical. Croce's
influence has been steadily growing in this country—in 1912 he
wrote his Breviario di Estetica for the Rice Institute of Houston,
Texas—and his disciples will welcome a volume that is systematic,
sensitive, and exhilaratingly above journalistic smartness.
With Croce philosophy is a living reality: “Problems are not
given to you from the outside, as puzzles at which you might try
your skill, or duties imposed by the pedagogue: they are your expe-
rience, and your philosophy is your conscious reaction to them.”
His method annihilates all static conceptions of truth, and logic
rises to its proper function, "an inquiry into the nature of thought
and therefore, since there is no way by which we can reach reality
except through thought, into the nature of reality itself.” Briefly,
a


THOMAS CRAVEN
351
he resolves mental activity into two departments, the theoretical and
the practical, or knowledge and action. These departments are in
turn divided; the first into the aesthetic, or intuitive and individual,
as distinct from the logical, or conceptual and universal; the second
into the economic, or individually useful, as contrasted with the
ethical, or universally good. Finally he establishes the interrelation
of the theoretical and the practical, and gives precedence to the
former.
Art, then, is intuitive knowledge, or knowledge obtained through
the imagination; and intuition is no more and no less than expres-
sion. Beauty is successful expression; ugliness unsuccessful, or more
exactly, failure to express. The genius does not exist: the difference
between the artist and the layman is purely quantitative (if this
were not so, art would be a closed circle drawn round the chosen
few); “certain men have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclina-
tion fully to express certain complex states of the soul—these are
ordinarily known as artists.” Croce has anticipated the crimes com-
mitted against art by the ignorant worshippers of his expressionistic
gospel: he has rightly asserted the lyrical character of all art, but has
consistently advocated a higher standard of critical judgement.
Furthermore, he has applied his theory with brilliant results, The
Poetry of Dante being by odds the finest interpretation of the Italian
poet yet published, a book in which the personality of Dante shines
out splendidly from the smoky mazes of dead allegory. Neverthe-
less, his creed has done immense mischief among modern painters.
For a number of years we have had to face an appalling crop of
abortions—meaningless abstractions, random idiocies of spectrum
colour and riots of symbolical nonsense. And behind them a maniac
with a brush in his hand, shouting, “This is art! This is expression!”
What Croce has failed to make clear is the fundamental brain-
work necessary to the composition of a work of art. His analysis of
the intuitive ac