2.
The Way of Wizardry
§ 17
The literary artist plays, I had said, with common-sense.... But here I harked back, compunctious. For only a moment since I had admitted that "travel with Marco Polo to Cathay" was, after all, not the sole end of our art: such romanticizing was merely one of the two avenues which, equally, afforded escape from the tediousness of familiar material surroundings. Yet it was the only avenue I was in train to recommend. And so I paused here to reflect that in the Biography I had always ignored the very real and solid claims of "realism."
Well, of that other method of escape, just indicated by my concession of the possibilities of "travel with the Kennicotts to Gopher Prairie"—of the type of diversion which is furnished by the "realist,"—I could but admit the existence and the potency, restricted, to be sure, to an unenvied class of minds; and must so pass on, with no too obvious shuddering. "Realism" simply did not divert me, that was all: and thus in my mind ranked with dancing and The Literary Digest[1] and golf, as aberrancies of dullness that I could profitably avoid without reprehending.... Indeed, it had been my droll luck to have some pre-compository insight into the shaping of, if not the most notable, certainly the wideliest talked about, of this century's "realistic" novels; so that I still cherish a peculiar leniency for these Kennicotts whom I first met in manuscript; and I read their family history with a double sense of guilt. Here is the marriage I suggested between the school-teacher and Ramie Wutherspoon: and I recall, with qualms describable as second cousins to remorse, that in a "realistic" novel no marriage can ever turn out really happily. Here, murdered by me, I am afraid, in the middle of another man's book, is the unoffending Scandinavian girl, Bea Sorgenson, who, but for my lethal intervention, might perhaps have thrived and have utilized the resources, and have educed the covert virtues and nobilities of Gopher Prairie, overlooked by the less practical heroine in chief; for this was to have been coincidently the story of Bea's success and of Carol's failure as an exponent of general social uplift: and would so have converted the whole affair into a feminized and unreadable down-to-date version of the Idle and Industrious Apprentices. I might, I reflect with a troubled spirit, I might perhaps have here struck "realism" a shrewd blow by heartening Lewis in his first suicidal plan.... To the other side, here is Carol's technical virtue preserved unmarred, in the teeth of my lewd urgings: for I was resolute to have her fall from grace, duly escorted by Eric Valborg, and then to find that nothing whatever came of it. And here is not one of the suggested remedies for the Middle West's regrettable provincialism, of which, but for my protestations and scoffings upon bended knees, the reader might have had full benefit. I recall rather vaguely the nature, but vividly the great number, of these possible remedies which Lewis, once, planned to suggest: and I guiltily speculate if it would not have been the part of true kindliness, as well as of æsthetic morality, to have encouraged the launching of that avalanche of constructive criticism upon the unsuspecting reader of Main Street. He, paralyzed, engulfed, demolished, would probably not ever again, my conscience whispers, have opened another "realistic" novel.... At all events, I too had been in this matter of "realism" at least once, tinily, a particeps criminis. I confessed it, and resumed my epilogue.
For all this seemed remarkably remote from my introductory remark about Marco Polo. I had in mind, then, not The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian, but the small novel called Messer Marco Polo which Donn Byrne published now some years ago. And it is of this fiction that I wish here to speak more specifically, because of my personal involvement in its fortunes.
§ 18
Not often does one sustain the sense of having long awaited the book which time and chance and a kindred desire in another's being have combined to produce at last, and to make at last a vended commodity, as easy now to come by as blotting-paper or bad whiskey. I had this sense about Messer Marco Polo. It was, to me, the most delightful of surprises, a bit of unanticipatable flotsam washed up from the wide sunless sea of "realism." For we were, at just that time, being edified rather remorselessly. Sinclair Lewis had, via the book to which I have but now referred, detected several flaws in the cultural life of the Middle West; John Dos Passos had discovered that the Wilson War had been conducted not altogether as a pleasure trip for the private soldier; and Upton Sinclair was in his customary low spirits. Nobody, I think, could have looked for the coming of a Messer Marco Polo through the auctorial welter,—whose susurrus was after all but a more literate, vast "Ain't it awful, Mabel?"—among those fretful waves of indignation over the dreariness of small-town life and the loneliness of the artist in this unappreciative country, and over how terribly our army swore in Flanders, and over the venality of our press and pulpit and every other institution, and (lone lisper of good yet to come) over the imminence of several more stupendous wars that would wipe out us and all our sordid existence. And yet, through these gray floods of portentous information (here neatly to round off my simile) floated this carved spar of loveliness, with absolutely startling irrelevance.
That Messer Marco Polo should have "happened" at this precise moment seemed a small miracle so pleasure-giving that I hastily waived all consideration as to the book's ultimate value. I only knew I had joyed in the reading of it, somewhat as the partially starved might rejoice in an unexpected windfall of savory food, without any need to deliberate the viands' durability.
None the less does the tale, some years after that first keen greedy gulping of its delights, and after a more leisured third reading, remain a very fine and beautiful strange book. I sincerely hope you are familiar with it: even if you are not, here is no need for me to summarize this tale of how young Marco Polo, loitering through youth's amiable adulteries in thirteenth century Venice, became enamored, through report, of the Khan of Tartary's daughter, and of his adventuring as he crossed Asia to win to her. It suffices to report that here, in brief, we have a variant of the old high tale of Geoffrey Rudel and his Far Princess, adorned with very vivid, curious ornament, and brought to a dénouement no less sad but more soul-contenting.