Literature in the Making, by Some of Its Makers

by Unknown

I asked, "What do you think of contemporary poetry?"

"I admired chiefly that of Thomas Hardy," said Mr. Howells. "His poems have force and actuality and music and charm. Masefield I like, with reservations. Three modern poets who give me great pleasure are Thomas Hardy, William Watson, and Charles Hanson Towne. The first one of Mr. Towne's poems that I read was "Manhattan." I have not forgotten the truth of that poetic interpretation of New York. His poems are beautiful and they are full of humanity. In his latest book there is a poem called 'A Ballad of Shame and Dread' that moved me deeply. It is a slight thing, but it is wonderfully powerful. Like all of Towne's poetry, it is warm with human sympathy."

"Do you think," I asked, "that the great social problems of the day, the feminine unrest, for instance, are finding their expression in literature?"

"No," said Mr. Howells, "I cannot call to mind any adequate literary expression of the woman movement. Perhaps this is because the women who know most about it and feel it most strongly are not writers. The best things that have been said about woman suffrage in our time have been said by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She has written the noblest satire since Lowell. What wit she has, and what courage! Once I heard her address a meeting of Single-Taxers. Now, the Single-Taxers are all right so far as they go, but they don't go far enough. The Single-Taxers heckled her, but she had a retort ready for every interruption. She stood there with her brave smile and talked them all down."

"Do you think that Ibsen expressed the modern feminine unrest in The Doll's House?" Mr. Howells was asked.

"Ibsen seldom expressed things," was his reply. "He suggested them, mooted them, but he did not express them. The Doll's House does not express the meaning of unrest, it suggests it. Ibsen told you where you stood, not where to go."

Mr. Howells had recently presided at a meeting which was addressed by M. Brieux, and he expressed great admiration for the work of the French dramatist.

"He is a great dramatist," he said. "He has given faithful reports of life, and faithful reports of life are necessarily criticisms of life. All great novels are criticisms of life. And I think that the poets will concern themselves more and more with the life around them. It is possible that soon we may have an epic in which the poet deals with the events of contemporary life."

Mr. Howells is keenly awake to the effect which the war is having on conditions in New York. And in his sympathy for the society which inevitably must suffer for a war in which it is not directly concerned, the active interest of the novelist was evident. "If all this only could be reflected in a book!" he said. "If some novelist could interpret it!"