QUATRAINS.
TOLSTOI.
He calls, from the hot road to us, who stray
In shady pleasant woods abroad,—
Yes, Tolstoi, your path leads to God,
But through the forest there may be a way.
IBSEN.
A cannon shot, not fired to kill,
But to dislodge and make to rise
The decomposing corpse that lies
Beneath life’s surface, smooth and still.
Claude F. Bragdon.
SUCCESS.
Without one thought in his wide, empty brain
(For Reason never sowed a seed to grow),
He sits and writes page after page—no strain;
Why? Chaff is cheap and sometimes looks like grain.
EUMENIDES.
All kindred gods have crumbled into dust
Though latest born of that once teeming womb.
Ye yet abide who shall not taste a tomb—
Of passion, gold, and fame the lashing lust.
Philip Becker Goetz.
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE REHABILITATION
OF LETTERS IN
THE LITERARY SHOW.
We may take it that the old story of the Tower of Babel symbolizes the failure of the human mind to transcend the limits of natural knowledge. It is some old poet’s picture of the aspiring race lifting its bold head to steal God’s secrets from Heaven, stricken down into the dust, whence it came and to which it must return, foiled and despairing. But the babble of a million futile, unprovable human speculations continues to sway and mock generation after generation of men, wrapt in the ironies of the world of sense and necessity. So all human thought runs in cycles, and the latest heir of all the ages but gains the wisdom of increased doubt.
Our age raises its Babel of philosophies and creeds, as did the civilizations that have gone before, and left us but the fantasy of great and moving names. So our most cherished realities, for which we all suffer so much, and for which so many heretics suffer the rack and martyrdom, fade away into the gibes and bogies of tradition. Ah, how sad is the fantasy of names our freed tongues troll over so lightly! Let established wisdom learn tolerance in this levity of today’s knowledge. For those who hold to any idea or ideal, know the days of martyrdom are not yet over. The old Hebrew picture is as true of today as when first written. We, too, shall pass away into the fantasy of history. We, too, shall leave but the grinning skulls and bare bones of once vital but finally unbelievable religions and philosophies—precious, priceless scraps of rubbish and litter in the catacombs of decayed and buried cities.
But the times show a certain change in spirit. Our Babel of today does not assail God’s security, for our babble builders do not seek to play the prophet or the sage so much as to play the clown successfully. The seer who gives us words of fire and folly in his futile attempt to cleave body and soul with the sword of thought, at least contrives to show us that life here can be sweet and beautiful and grand. Those whose fearful content with the life of sense and show drags us all to the level of our necessities, make life even more of an irony; for they deny the intellect and spirit their right of unfettered freedom in the domain of thought. And when thought is fettered with the appetites, life, indeed, becomes a very slavery. And half our writers are in servitude to the Egyptians. Only a few thinkers lie sullen and idle in the sun—profitless vagabonds, who can only work by whim and inspiration.
At this end of the century our Babel lacks the genuine inspiration of ancient prophecy and poetry. It is taken for granted, seemingly, that as we cannot reach God, it is not worth while to rise in thought above the mere show of life, and so all the mystery of man is swept out of our literature and philosophy. We are deafened with a million small noises of small, soulless, unreal persons. The old stirring voices that thrilled us with the clamor and sternness of life, are, for the most part, silenced or muffled, because those who grow fat on the partial enlightenment of the masses, will not allow any sort of literature to prosper which, in the words of the Areopagitica, contains “views or sentiments at all above the level of the vulgar superstition.” The literature that sprang from the marrow of the intellect, the core of the heart and life, is out of fashion, is a drug in the market. This is a day in which mere noise and notoriety completely ousts and worsts any real thought in every joust of letters. In fact, literature is read less as letters, in the old sense, than as autobiography of scandalous and notorious people. Only the sensational in literature can attract attention. There are lots of good books published every year, but they steal quietly into the world, and no one knows about them. They burden the bookseller’s shelves for awhile, and their only chance of circulation is finally that some whimsical crank may pick them out of the “remainder” boxes, when their one brief season of undisturbed respectability on the shelves is over.
It is with the idea of partially remedying this state of affairs, in which the odds are so uneven, that I venture to offer a few suggestions on the advisability of adopting an old and picturesque institution from a totally different Trade, and adapting it to the needs of contemporary Literature. This is the explanation of the caption of this paper, which may be a little perplexing to some unsophisticated readers. I propose to borrow the main features of the old clothing Fair, which is held among the Hebrews every Sunday morning in Petticoat Lane, London,—one of the most picturesque Babels in the world.
This would even up matters a little. I do not propose any reform, and I should not dare to mention any of the remarkable modern instances of success in literature by persons who produce much fiction which is not literature. They are sufficiently glaring to advertise themselves among book lovers. But I do want to lead a forlorn hope to re-establish some sort of social and moral, if not intellectual, equilibrium between poor handicapped brains and overwhelming brass. At the present moment the calling of literature is the caravan or the refuge of the charlatan, the demagogue, the weakminded, the social fop, the hysterical and the notorious. My aim in this modest proposal is simply to remove a few obsolete superstitions and traditions of literary dignity that, once swept away, will leave all competitors for fame on the same footing. Perhaps we may then hope to see the few writers who are marred with a simple equipment of inspiration and talent enjoy some sort of equality with those who bring to the conquest of literature the overwhelming advantages of sex, brass, social authority and money.
Let us first touch upon certain aspects of criticism and publicity in the Literary Show. It will then be perfectly clear to the most prejudiced reader—and I expect prejudice in this wicked world—that my suggestion of a Sunday Fair for Literature is the most feasible and dignified expedient that can now be adopted, if any of us are to continue the struggle for some literary achievement and standard and some genuine thought in our modern Babel.
It has always been a question in the mind of the present writer whether most men, that is, sane men, do not actually know, in their own hearts, just about what they stand for absolutely in life, or whether saints and rogues, wise and unwise, we are all deluded about ourselves. Heine, who wrote with so much charm about himself, and could scarcely have found a more interesting subject, was of the opinion that one cannot tell the truth about one’s self; and, since the greater portion of mankind is of this opinion, autobiography is the most irresistible form of literature.
But it is unfortunate there is not more division of opinion on the subject, because, while this view may add to the interest of autobiography, it weakens its weight and authority; and there are good reasons for supposing that one of the necessary “short cuts” of contemporary literature of the near future will be the brief critical autobiography.
There is not a mother’s son of us in the whole scribbling guild, great or small, puffed or starved, can get his fill of praise; for there are too many of us scribbling in these latter years, and that man is fortunate who is famous for a whole season. There are but few who can reasonably hope for a life in the memory of mankind as long as Mumm’s champagne. It may be there are but few of us deserve it. Such scraps of comfort as occasionally fall to our lot are almost invariably disappointing, for our friends are perversely addicted to flattering us in good, round, general terms, which save thought and lack positiveness, or else they appreciate us for the very qualities it is perfectly evident we do not possess in the least degree. But this is the inevitable result of the production of literature by lightning-like machinery working day and night.
All these sugared things which authors crave can only be supplied by other writers who, aside from the necessity of earning a livelihood, are plagued with private personal ambitions of their own; and if there is any sort of drudgery more tedious than the reviewing of other people’s literature, I should like to know what it is. Those who have to earn precarious bread by the pen, somehow or other, are so busy reviewing and scribbling on topical matters that they have absolutely no time for reading, and so very few writers out of the great multitude receive more than a few perfunctory words of praise or indifferent comment, and are then straightway forgotten. With the ever increasing tide of books, literary criticism tends to become more and more a mere matter of description and catalogueing, and as this is obviously inadequate to satisfy all the demands of those who would live in the public eye, we have latterly seen the development of that interesting personage, the psychological interviewer.
Even this does not meet the exigencies of an overcrowded market. The psychological interviewer is only occupied with those whose names will help to sell his wares. The secret charm of the psychological interview, when it is at all well done, is that it enables an author to supplement the necessarily perfunctory reviewing of the day with his own keener critical insight into the less obvious excellent qualities of his work. This done with a fine conscientious egotism and some show of candor, carries as much weight with liberal and unprejudiced minds as rare and subtle criticism. In fact, it is autobiography, which the interviewer breaks up into more or less dramatic dialogue.
There are still thousands of us who are so obscure and unfortunate as to be untroubled by the interviewers, and, to make matters worse, are often tabooed by the critics. But since the calling of letters is no more restricted to the “deserving” and the “good” than any other, these also desire that publicity which helps to solve the problem of bread and butter. And so I predict that the pressure of competition in the Literary Show, and the exigencies of critical writing, often colored, if not inspired, by counting-house interests, will soon bring into current literature what I have here termed the critical autobiography. In this way we may get much good literature, for the dullest man is at his best when writing about himself. A man can then be perfectly independent, and still be heralded in print as one of the potent forces and geniuses of his day. The plan has some advantages over log-rolling, which sometimes involves unavoidable and ludicrous derogatory offices, that embarrass one’s reputation as a wit and a critic of discernment.
It is also really time that the writers of books learned to take something of the same vulgar view of them which those who make their living in dealing in them do, and that is to regard them when finally out of the brain and put into material shape merely as merchandise. It is this looking upon them as “children” that has made the poets the spoil of cunning men, and kept them daft and poor.
The writer’s problem is to reach his fellows, his generation. He is not, under modern conditions, concerned with posterity any more than the lawyer or the merchant. As for that, probably few books of this era will be known by name a hundred years hence; but every man should have a fair chance of getting a hearing in his own generation. As things are at present constituted, a thousand obstacles are placed in the way by other writers in the holy name of morality, style, literary ideals, and every other ingenious trick one writer can devise as a critic and literary tipstaff to keep others from dimming the effulgence of his golden beams. But, pouf! all this anxiety is unnecessary. At least one-half of our contemporary literature, though it is “boomed” and bought at impressive figures, is only passable journalism, and, perhaps, will be thrown aside and forgotten as unreliable data when the journals of today (such as not being printed on wood pulp paper may perchance survive) are treasured as the mirror of our semi-barbaric times.
We are fairly deluged now with cheap Brummagem “literature.” And so I think my Modest Proposal will appeal to all fair minded persons. Let us have an open market in literature, and let the best peddler win. The game of literature as carried on today, is, with a few glorious exceptions, a purely commercial speculation, an enterprise in trade; and there is no need to confuse the issues with a lot of babble about “literary ideals,” and all the rest of it. That is but an artful trick to embarrass rivals in trade. The howl about morality is another old trick, but one—thanks to the beauties of human nature—which only helps to swell the sales of a rival. Literature is now produced to meet the demands of different markets, on the same principle that governs the manufacture of other luxuries and commodities. What is the use of waiting for your rival in trade to announce your excellencies to the world? Human nature works the same in all trades. Ambition preys upon and harasses ambition. Only the cynics of Grub Street, who have no hopes and no ambitions, can be just and impartial critics, and they are in the pinch of necessity. Log-rolling, too, is an imperfect art; some fellows’ logs are so heavy!
Let it once be understood that there is no ideal aim or dignity in the literary market of our day other than to find quick buyers and win the bubble reputation, and why should any man hesitate to use the methods of ordinary commerce to advance his own interests? It is a matter of common sense.
I suggest in all seriousness this idea of a literary Petticoat-Lane Sunday Fair as the best way to develop a national literature in America. And let every man be his own critic, prophet and publisher. It could be held somewhere off the Bowery—a picturesque and appropriate place.
The critical autobiographies on the market would be genuine human documents and great fun. A collection of them would give our epoch everlasting fame. With every man peddling his own wares, like the chapmen of old, the law of the survival of the fittest would probably operate as effectively, and more convincingly, than under existing conditions.
Walter Blackburn Harte.