Perhaps one reason why "The Great Divide," convincing enough when well acted, is a lamentable thing on the printed page is because it is an attempt to prove a theory. Moody was a Puritan, through and through, and like all modern literary Puritans he was desperately ashamed of his Puritanism. He glorified what he thought to be the pagan ideal, and in "The Great Divide" he wanted to show that the large acceptances of Ghent were nobler than the austere negations of Ruth. But paganism and Puritanism are nothing but terms, almost meaningless from much repetition, and "The Great Divide" is a play of terms, of symbols, of lay figures. And the only things that it proves are Moody's total inability to understand paganism and his reluctant but inevitable sympathy with Puritanism.
It was his Puritanism that made Moody try to stimulate the conscience of his land by means of "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," his best sustained long poem, and his most passionate utterance. It was the Puritan who wrote "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines." It was the Puritan who wrote "The Brute." And I think that it was the Puritan who wrote "Gloucester Moors." A pagan, such as Moody desired to be, would not have worried about the "souls distraught in the hold," nor would he have worried over the fact that some of the crew had over-eaten. Also, a pagan would have enjoyed the loveliness of the wild geranium and the barberry without asking:
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"Who has given to me this sweet, And given my brother dust to eat? And when will his wage come in?" |
These things are manifestations of that Puritan characteristic known as "the New England conscience"—the cause in recent years of many rather frantic efforts at social and economic and philosophical readjustment. Mr. John M. Manly says that "Gloucester Moors" is "a favorite poem with workers in the slums,"—a significant and startling observation.
Moody's Puritanism gives strength to many of his poems, but in others it produces strange inconsistencies and evasions. It helped him to write "The Brute"—a strong and sincere poem. But it caused him to fail ridiculously in "A Dialogue in Purgatory," in "Good-Friday Night," and in "Song Flower and Poppy." In the second half of the last-named poem we come upon the root of the matter—Moody's complete failure to understand any religious system, any philosophy of life, more warm and comprehensive than his own Puritanism. He rebelled against this Puritanism, yet he could not escape it. He sought vaguely after paganism, whereas he could no more have been a Bacchic reveller than he could have been a Druid. In spite of his reading of early French and Italian romances, he failed utterly to see the generous glories of the Middle Ages, when all that was noble and beautiful in paganism was made a part of the richest civilization the world has yet known. He thought of intellectual development and spiritual freedom as things beginning about 1517—and naturally this hampered him when he wrote about Michael, Raphael, Azaziel, Eve, Jubal, and Cain.
A longer residence in Italy might have given him a more liberal culture and a spiritual philosophy generous without being pagan, pure without being Puritanical. And therefore the critics who said that a poet of promise died in 1910 may have told the truth. A broader culture and more extensive human sympathies would have enabled this deft artist in words to give to the world a message of the kind it always welcomes—to express beautifully the beauty that is truth.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.
Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.