(1) Romances of the middle ages.
(2) Comedies of present-day Virginia.

Both elements are found in The Cream of the Jest (cf. with Du Maurier’s Peter Ibbetson). The romances illustrate different aspects of his theory of chivalry; the modern comedies, his theory of gallantry (cf. Beyond Life).

3. In his romances he has created an imaginary province of France, the people of which bear names and use idioms drawn from widely diverse and incongruous sources. His effort to create mediæval atmosphere by the use of archaisms does not preclude modern idiom and slang. Through all this work, elaborate pretense of non-existent sources of the tales and frequent allusions to fictitious authors are a part of the method. After reading some of these stories, consider the following criticism from the London Times quoted by Mr. Cabell himself at the end of Beyond Life: “It requires a nicer touch than Mr. Cabell’s, to reproduce the atmosphere of the Middle Ages ... the artifice is more apparent than the art....”

4. An interesting study is to isolate the authors for whom Mr. Cabell expresses particular admiration and those for whom he expresses contempt in Beyond Life and to deduce from his attitudes his peculiar literary qualities.

5. Mr. Cabell’s style is notable for the elaboration of its rhythm, its careful avoidance of clichés, its preference for rare, archaic words and its allusiveness. Consider it from the point of view of sincerity, simplicity, clarity, and charm. Does it intensify or dull your interest in what he has to say? Study, for example, the following exposition of his theory of art:

For the creative artist must remember that his book is structurally different from life, in that, were there nothing else, his book begins and ends at a definite point, whereas the canons of heredity and religion forbid us to believe that life can ever do anything of the sort. He must remember that his art traces in ancestry from the tribal huntsman telling tales about the cave-fire; and so, strives to emulate not human life, but human speech, with its natural elisions and falsifications. He must remember, too, that his one concern with the one all-prevalent truth in normal existence is jealously to exclude it from his book.... For “living” is to be conscious of an incessant series of less than momentary sensations, of about equal poignancy, for the most part, and of nearly equal unimportance. Art attempts to marshal the shambling procession into trimness, to usurp the rôle of memory and convention in assigning to some of these sensations an especial prominence, and, in the old phrase, to lend perspective to the forest we cannot see because of the trees. Art, as long ago observed my friend Mrs. Kennaston, is an expurgated edition of nature: at art’s touch, too, “the drossy particles fall off and mingle with the dust” (Beyond Life, p. 249).

In summing up Mr. Cabell’s work, consider the following:

(1) Has he a definite philosophy?
(2) Has he a genuine sense of character or do his characters repeat the same personality?
(3) Is he a sincere artist or “a self-conscious attitudinizer?”
(4) Is he likely ever to hold the high place in American literature which by some critics is denied him today? If so, on what basis?

Bibliography