Philip Becker Goetz.
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE REHABILITATION
OF LETTERS IN
THE LITERARY SHOW.
We may take it that the old story of the Tower of Babel symbolizes the failure of the human mind to transcend the limits of natural knowledge. It is some old poet’s picture of the aspiring race lifting its bold head to steal God’s secrets from Heaven, stricken down into the dust, whence it came and to which it must return, foiled and despairing. But the babble of a million futile, unprovable human speculations continues to sway and mock generation after generation of men, wrapt in the ironies of the world of sense and necessity. So all human thought runs in cycles, and the latest heir of all the ages but gains the wisdom of increased doubt.
Our age raises its Babel of philosophies and creeds, as did the civilizations that have gone before, and left us but the fantasy of great and moving names. So our most cherished realities, for which we all suffer so much, and for which so many heretics suffer the rack and martyrdom, fade away into the gibes and bogies of tradition. Ah, how sad is the fantasy of names our freed tongues troll over so lightly! Let established wisdom learn tolerance in this levity of today’s knowledge. For those who hold to any idea or ideal, know the days of martyrdom are not yet over. The old Hebrew picture is as true of today as when first written. We, too, shall pass away into the fantasy of history. We, too, shall leave but the grinning skulls and bare bones of once vital but finally unbelievable religions and philosophies—precious, priceless scraps of rubbish and litter in the catacombs of decayed and buried cities.
But the times show a certain change in spirit. Our Babel of today does not assail God’s security, for our babble builders do not seek to play the prophet or the sage so much as to play the clown successfully. The seer who gives us words of fire and folly in his futile attempt to cleave body and soul with the sword of thought, at least contrives to show us that life here can be sweet and beautiful and grand. Those whose fearful content with the life of sense and show drags us all to the level of our necessities, make life even more of an irony; for they deny the intellect and spirit their right of unfettered freedom in the domain of thought. And when thought is fettered with the appetites, life, indeed, becomes a very slavery. And half our writers are in servitude to the Egyptians. Only a few thinkers lie sullen and idle in the sun—profitless vagabonds, who can only work by whim and inspiration.
At this end of the century our Babel lacks the genuine inspiration of ancient prophecy and poetry. It is taken for granted, seemingly, that as we cannot reach God, it is not worth while to rise in thought above the mere show of life, and so all the mystery of man is swept out of our literature and philosophy. We are deafened with a million small noises of small, soulless, unreal persons. The old stirring voices that thrilled us with the clamor and sternness of life, are, for the most part, silenced or muffled, because those who grow fat on the partial enlightenment of the masses, will not allow any sort of literature to prosper which, in the words of the Areopagitica, contains “views or sentiments at all above the level of the vulgar superstition.” The literature that sprang from the marrow of the intellect, the core of the heart and life, is out of fashion, is a drug in the market. This is a day in which mere noise and notoriety completely ousts and worsts any real thought in every joust of letters. In fact, literature is read less as letters, in the old sense, than as autobiography of scandalous and notorious people. Only the sensational in literature can attract attention. There are lots of good books published every year, but they steal quietly into the world, and no one knows about them. They burden the bookseller’s shelves for awhile, and their only chance of circulation is finally that some whimsical crank may pick them out of the “remainder” boxes, when their one brief season of undisturbed respectability on the shelves is over.
It is with the idea of partially remedying this state of affairs, in which the odds are so uneven, that I venture to offer a few suggestions on the advisability of adopting an old and picturesque institution from a totally different Trade, and adapting it to the needs of contemporary Literature. This is the explanation of the caption of this paper, which may be a little perplexing to some unsophisticated readers. I propose to borrow the main features of the old clothing Fair, which is held among the Hebrews every Sunday morning in Petticoat Lane, London,—one of the most picturesque Babels in the world.