Sunlight and Song is one of the most uninteresting narratives of stage life that has ever been published. It is neither more nor less than a record of Maria Jeritza’s creations and interpretations, comparisons of her waistline to those of other prima donnas, assurances that her hair is all her own, except of course when she wears a black wig—and even then she has her own—and auto-appreciation and repetition of the flattering things that others have said of her.
There is no intimate or personal recollection, no confession or avowal. Of her own life, not a word, so that neither the reports of gossip nor the known facts about her personal record are denied or sanctioned; and despite oft-repeated beliefs that artists should not meddle in politics, and that “art and politics have nothing in common, but sometimes they have” we have more of the too-well-known story and tragedy of the Emperor of Austria and his family than we care to have, especially as it is viewed from an altogether prejudiced angle. To crown the insipidity of Sunlight and Song, either Maria Jeritza or the translator has strewn it with the American use of superlatives, so that a good teacher is always a wonderful teacher, a wonderful singer and a wonderful woman.
It would be harmful to the career of a prima donna in her full maturity, with a prospect of many years of success ahead of her and a valuable list of successes behind her, to tell the truth about her fellow-artists or even about herself. So with one exception Frau Jeritza gracefully avoids the subject. She knows that a giantess could scarcely play the rôle of the heroine in “Madame Butterfly,” so she willingly admits it would be impossible to do it better than Farrar did it.
However, Madame Jeritza is no poorer an autobiographer than her semi-countryman, Emil Fuchs. Both in their different lines succeed in obstructing their personality under the bulk of the personal pronoun “I,” and neither reveals anything not known already.
Mr. Fuchs’ book mentions art occasionally, but most of the large volume is devoted to himself, his material success, his influential friends, his successful ascent of the ladder of fame. We do not expect the life of an artist to read like an Almanach de Gotha, or a Blue Book—made readable by the addition of gossip and the personal memoirs of their editor. Mr. Fuchs takes his readers through the years of his prosperity, without more than a passing glance at his youth, at his formative years, at his friendships and enmities. His life has been a series of successes, and he is well aware of it. The accounts of his royal friends, of his noble admirers and wealthy patrons smack of the nouveau riche. Mr. Fuchs knows it is not good taste to appear conceited or vain—so he tries to be as genially simple as he can, but all the time he makes one feel he is on the point of exploding with pride. It is useless to deny that he has some reasons to be proud. He has made his name synonymous with other things than success—his work is art, and his art has a method, a tradition, and a foundation in painstaking love, in culture and in thorough understanding of his craft. It is because Mr. Fuchs could have given us a book on the artist which would be something more than the creation of a social puppet that we complain. Many authors can tell us of royalty and the English peerage, but few can make a contribution to art. It is to be admitted, however, that the former find a more ready market for their wares, but, since Mr. Fuchs’ book was first written in the form of articles for the readers of the Saturday Evening Post who no doubt enjoyed them to the full, why did not the author, in collecting these articles into a book, revise them, leave out half the social world and allow his pen free play to discuss Art? What he has to say of art comes as a reward, it seems, after one has waded through the first half of the book.
“Art and music tend to supplement each other and to blend with and relieve one another—like the cold and warm hues on the palette of the painter. Or like the major and minor chord. In fact, creation was founded on this principle of positive and negative; it pervades everything, commencing with the colours of the rainbow ... each needing its contrasting counterpart for the formation of a homogeneous entity, the structure of existence.”
Later, he expands a little, but not generously, on the art of sketching:
“It is the gift of expressing with a few well-defined strokes a hasty impression; and if each of these strokes testifies to the mastery of the artist, the sketch often stirs the imagination by its freshness and spontaneity to a greater degree than the finished work. But to look at a sketch by a dauber is like having to read a sentence with every word misspelled.”
This, with a few lines on art criticism, ends practically Mr. Fuchs’ effort to write a book on the life of an artist. He has told us much we do not care to know, and little that interests us.