An Unacademic Literary Survey
Modern English Literature: From Chaucer to the Present Day, by G. H. Mair. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
Good histories of English literature are rare, and Mr. Mair’s book should accordingly be given a warm welcome, for it combines brevity with comprehensiveness of treatment in a very unusual manner. Mr. Mair not only writes well and knows his subject, but he seems instinctively to know what his readers will want—and he supplies it.
For instance, we do not remember that popular histories of English literature bother to tell such a detail as how the chronological order of Shakespeare’s plays is determined, but Mr. Mair’s telling of that will show the layman just what literary scholarship means, and in conjunction with his other remarks on our knowledge of Shakespeare it will rescue the uninformed from the chance of falling into such errors as the Baconian theory.
The book, however, is not one of higher and textual criticism and chronology. It is a work of appreciation, and the appreciation is that of a modern man. It is obvious that Chaucer might be treated in a manner quite alien to the interests of the man of today who is not a scholar, but the treatment of his work which ends in joining his hands to those of Charles Dickens as workers in a kindred quest is one that is well calculated to persuade even the philistine that Chaucer is a figure of passable interest to him.
It is the mark of the live man to recognize genius, and the manner in which Mr. Mair treats the genius of that great poet, John Donne, is in vivid contrast to the way in which it is usually treated in histories of English literature. For example:
Very different ... is the closely packed style of Donne, who, Milton apart, is the greatest English writer of the century, though his obscurity has kept him out of general reading. No poetry in English, not even Browning’s, is more difficult to understand. The obscurity of Donne and Browning proceed from such similar causes that they are worth examining together. In both, as in the obscure passages in Shakespeare’s later plays, obscurity arises not because the poet says too little, but because he attempts to say too much. He huddles a new thought on the one before it, before the first has had time to express itself; he sees things or analyzes emotions so swiftly and subtly himself that he forgets the slower comprehension of his readers; he is for analyzing things far deeper than the ordinary mind commonly can. His wide and curious knowledge finds terms and likenesses to express his meaning unknown to us; he sees things from a dozen points of view at once and tumbles a hint of each separate vision in a heap out on to the page; his restless intellect finds new and subtler shades of emotion and thought invisible to other pairs of eyes, and cannot, because speech is modeled on the average of our intelligences, find words to express them; he is always trembling on the brink of the inarticulate. All this applies to both Donne and Browning, and the comparison could be pushed farther still. Both draw the knowledge which is the main cause of their obscurity from the bypaths of mediævalism. Browning’s Sordello is obscure because he knows too much about mediæval Italian history: Donne’s Anniversary because he is too deeply read in mediæval scholasticism and speculation. Both make themselves more difficult to the reader who is familiar with the poetry of their contemporaries by the disconcerting freshness of their point of view. Seventeenth-century love poetry was idyllic and idealist; Donne’s is passionate and realistic to the point of cynicism. To read him after reading Browne and Johnson is to have the same shock as reading Browning after Tennyson. Both poets are salutary in the strong and biting antidote they bring to sentimentalism in thought and melodious facility in writing. They are corrective of lazy thinking and lazy composition.
Another feature in which this book differs from others of its kind is that the author is not afraid to bring the record down to the work of his contemporaries, and the struggles of Mr. Shaw with the bourgeois world, and the era opened by M. J. Synge and the Irish literary renascence, are here sympathetically dealt with.
L. J.
Overemphasized Purity
Love’s Legend, by Fielding Hall. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
With a somewhat overemphasized regard for purity, Fielding Hall approaches the narration of this honeymoon trip down a Burmese river. The novel—if such a dissertation on the early marriage state could be called a novel—is told in rather peculiar fashion, by the man and woman alternately, at first, and later on with the help of two more people.
The man is prone to burst forth into fairy tales to explain every point of argument to Lesbia. He tells her of a beautiful princess who was blindfolded and kept within an enclosed garden that she might never know the ways of man.
“They told her that the bandage made her see more clearly than if her eyes were free. For they had painted images upon the inside of her bandage and told her they were real.”
Silence.
“And she believed it. Then came a Prince. He wooed the Princess and he won her. So he took her with him out of her garden. They came into the world and passed into a forest. There they were quite alone.
“Take off your bandage,” said the Prince. “Look at the world and me.”
“I am afraid,” she sighed; “the world is evil.”
“It is God’s world,” the Prince replied. “He lives in it.”
“They told me that God lived in Heaven, far off, not here,” she answered.
“They told you wrong; open and you will see.”
“I will not look,” she said, “I fear the devil.”
“Your beauty is all cold,” he said, “your heart beats not!”
“What is a heart?” she asked.
“That which gives life,” he answered; “my heart beats strongly and it longs for an answer. You have a heart as strong maybe as mine. But it is sealed. Will you not let me loose it?”
“I am afraid,” she answered.
“Then I will tell you what he did. He held the Princess in his arms all despite herself and tore the bandage from her eyes.”
... “Did she let him do it?”
“She heard his voice and all despite herself she let him do his will.”
Mr. Hall voices these inanities with the appalling conceit of one who rushes in where even the best of writers tread with circumspection. And the worst of it is, that his rash feet have carried him nowhere, except, perhaps, into a limelight that is likely to prove embarrassing.
W. T. Hollingsworth.
Sentence Reviews
Russia: The Country of Extremes, by N. Jarintzoff. [Henry Holt & Co., New York.] A mosaic of essays on various aspects of Russian life, some of them of tremendous interest. Of particular importance are the chapters on “Studentchestvo” and on “Agents Provocateurs,” which deal with the political movements of the country. Although the book lacks unity, the English reader will find in it a wealth of information and a helpful interpretation of Russian misty reality. Reproductions from several great Russian paintings are excellent.
New Songs of Zion; a Zionist Anthology, edited by S. Roth, New York. If this anthology was intended to serve as an echo of the Zionist movement, it will appear as a testimonia pauperitatis. The lofty ideal of forming a cultural center in Palestine for the Wandering Jew is very pallidly reflected in the naive verses of American boys and girls. Israel Zangwill is also represented with a few shallow effusions to the astonishment of those who admire his sense of humor. The translations from Byalik are tolerable, and I heartily recommend the English reader to get acquainted through them with one of the greatest living poets who is known only to readers of Hebrew.
The Two Great Art Epochs, by Emma Louise Parry. [A. C. McClurg & Company, Chicago.] Complete and instructive as a text-book for the history of art from earliest Egypt down to the decline of Renaissance—if there is still need for such text-books. The wretchedness of the reproductions is irritating.
Changing Russia, by Stephen Graham. [John Lane Company, New York.] Sentimental observations of a poetic tramp who bewails the inevitable transformation of patriarchal, agricultural Russia into a capitalistic state. Excellent descriptions of the picturesque shore of the Black Sea; interesting, though often erroneous, notes on the “Intelligentzia.” Mr. Graham has been religiously tramping the globe for many years, and his love for nature and primitive life is manifest in every book of his.
Bellamy, by Elinor Mordaunt. [John Lane Company, New York.] Cleverly written, this chronicle of Walter Bellamy, a dynamic English obviosity, exploiter of silk pajamas, exhibits a man who is sufficiently honest to devote his life to himself.
Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, by Morris Jastron. [Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.] An exhaustive, cool, cautious treatment of the much-polemised question as to the primacy of one or the other of the two ancient civilizations. Of great value to the student of comparative religion.
The Rise of the Working Class, by Algernon Sidney Crapsey. [The Century Company, New York.] An optimistic book by an ex-clergyman. Many things are cited as working class gains and benefits which that class would willingly reject. As appendix, there is a long panegyric of that mountebank, Lloyd George, in which he is hailed as a social and economic savior of the “People.”
American Labor Unions, by a Member. By Helen Marot. [Henry Holt & Company, New York.] The first book on the American labor movement which takes tolerant and detailed notice of its later developments. The new Syndicalist tendency in the American Federation of Labor and the rise and growth of the Industrial Workers of the World are both discussed, as are also the much disputed questions of political action, violence, and sabotage. A book that merits the study of those who believe there is no other way of remedying economic conditions except through the periodical dropping of a paper ballot through a slit.
Life’s Lure, by John G. Niehardt. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] A novel of Western mining life which has the same note of virile realism as has the very worthy verse of the same author. A healthy contrast to the usual Western compound of Deadwood Dick and puling sentimentality. One of the best pieces of red-blooded stuff that has recently been written. Jack London had better look to his laurels.
Change, by J. O. Francis. [Doubleday, Page & Company, New York.] A play to be read. Life here without affection states itself in its own terms. The timid and the frivolous may read this and have their eyes opened. Labor’s struggle for freedom is forcefully depicted. The scene is laid in a little Welsh mining town, and the characters are drawn with simple charm and beauty. A play that breaths life and truth.
Everybody’s Birthright, by Clara E. Laughlin. [Fleming H. Revell Company, New York.] Miss Laughlin has both sympathy and understanding for the ideals of young girls. In this little book she makes clever use of the Jeanne d’Arc story as a means toward helping another Jean to bear the loss of a twin sister.
Myths and Legends of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes, by Katharine B. Judson. [A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.] Here are some old friends: Hiawatha, Nokomis, and Minnehaha—also Bre’r Rabbit and the Tar Baby; and some myths of fire, wild rice, and Mondamin the Corn Woman, which furnish a fascinating comparison with Prometheus and Demeter over in the Aegean. A careful arrangement of material overcomes in part the misfortune of fragmentariness.
The Twenty-Fourth of June, by Grace S. Richmond. [Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.] A study of love at first sight—or just before. Rich Kendrick came into the house by the back door and saw a rose-colored scarf on the hatrack; but the poor young millionaire had to wait weeks before meeting its owner, and then months until Midsummer’s Day for his answer. Incidentally he discovered the charms of work, home and good women.
Tansy, by Tickner Edwardes. [E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.] A charming story of the Sussex downs, by a man who lives among them. The background of village characters, of rural incidents, and of the Sussex countryside is exquisitely done. Tansy Firle is not a Watteau shepherdess—quite the contrary; she has a compelling personality and a beauty of the sturdy upland variety.
La Vie des Lettres: Collection anthologique et critique de poèmes et de proven Neuilly, Paris.
The July issue of this important quarterly is both breezy and instructive. Two exotic poems by the Roumanian, Alexander Macedonski; a cycle of poems by Nicolas Beaudrien (who was introduced to English readers by Richard Aldington in the June Egotist); a few dainty-grotesque Images de la Capitale, by Carlos Larronde,—they form what I called the breezy part. Of great charm also are the “ponderous” features. Among others there is an article by William Berteval on Tolstoi et L’Art pour L’Art; an attempt of a modernist to justify the Russian’s point of view on art. In its international review the Quarterly mentions The Little Review, with a “memento” for the poems of Nicolas Vachel Lindsay and Arthur Davison Ficke.