The whole movement of the modern novel, indeed, has been toward a spiritualization which embodies within itself an essentially religious feeling; only this spiritualization not being of the monastic and ascetic kind which so long swayed the imaginations
of men, but of a social or humanistic order, has frequently been mistaken for other than its real self. It constitutes, too, a force active in all the affairs of life rather than one principally confined to certain of its details, and this fact can be glimpsed, sometimes from one angle, sometimes from another, in the more ephemeral as well as in the best examples of our twentieth century fiction. In an article published in the May issue of The Forum attention was called to the change which has taken place in the character of the fiction hero, who has lost his idle elegance and become a worker. That this work should so often be a part of the struggle for human betterment or a joining in the endeavor to right some especial wrong is both a portion of and a testimony to the idealistic spirit which quickens the modern novel, as is also the companion fact that its drama is in many notable instances mainly a psychic one. More and more is the inward effect thrusting the outward event into a position of subordinate interest; the story of a murder becomes an account not of the efforts to trace the slayer, but of the result of the deed upon his soul. The most interesting and important chapter of The Devil’s Garden is that wherein William Dale reviews the inner life which has been so turbulent, while the outer was so calm; The Debit Account has little to say of Jeffries’s career in the realm of finance but very much about his mental attitude toward himself and that “world without trifles” in which he lived; despite a charming heroine and an absorbing plot it is the influence of failure upon the character of Ralph Lingham which is the matter of supreme importance in When Love Flies out o’ the Window.
To call this confused mass of struggle and revolt and aspiration “religion” may seem to many persons unjust and perhaps even a trifle shocking; but that is because of the popular confounding of religions which are many with religion, which is one in essence, whether it be manifested under the Buddhistic form of quietism or the social service activities within and without the present-day church. Modern thought has made the old-time easy shifting of responsibility impossible, and the changed belief which this involves, enforcing the conviction that the world is to be saved and the Kingdom of God established on earth not by miraculous intervention but by the earnest labor in well-doing
of many generations of devoted men and women, has had even among those who deny it an incalculably powerful effect. It may be too that the new humanitarianism which causes us to view with horror conditions which our forefathers regarded with more or less equanimity and makes reform one of the most familiar of words is to some extent due to the desire to escape from any effort to measure and explain the Infinite with mere finite instruments. Since the days when knowledge destroyed the foundations of that ancient stately tower of faith and authority which men had believed was based on truth’s very rock, this attempt to find a working theory of life which shall not imply any dogmatic response to the riddles of the universe has been made in directions innumerable, and is being so made to-day; only, the way of escape by “practical” social labor has become more popular than any other and is a road along which travel in divers manners all sorts and conditions of men—among them many who would vehemently and even indignantly deny that religious and spiritual problems had anything whatever to do with their chosen path.
In the modern novel as in the modern world religion has come to be more and more a matter of service and aspiration; less and less a matter of accordance with fixed rules and formulas. And upon this, as upon so many other aspects of life, the writer of to-day can express himself with a freedom which only a few years ago would have brought down torrents of wrath upon his head. What in our parents’ time would have been said of The Trend, for example, or even of A Man’s World?
Thus religion in the modern novel evinces itself principally in four distinct ways: in revolt against the worn-out, cramping traditions; in a broad humanitarianism which has increased sympathy and given a fresh and vivid and impelling meaning to the word duty; in a quickened spirituality that has removed punishment and reward from the hereafter and even from the world of matter to the living human soul; and in a reaching out, vaguely, gropingly, but never futilely, toward “the stillness,” “the Ultimate Force,” “the Unknown Power,” or whatever term men prefer to use in their desire to get away from the old anthropomorphic conceptions, and yet express their consciousness of the
Infinite and Divine. For “the obstinate questioning of invisible things” which began so soon as man developed from the primeval ape-forms and became Man, still goes on and will go on, in all probability, so long as the race endures; only the shape and manner of the questioning has changed as humanity has slowly learned something of its ability to mould its own destiny, the duty and privilege which it possesses of working out its own salvation. There have been many periods in the world’s history when that questioning found few to voice it aloud, yet always after such a pause it has been renewed with fresh and greater vigor. One of these pauses came in the last century; to-day the questioning resounds all about us, and one of the means through which it is being uttered most clearly is the modern novel.
GIOVANNITTI
Poet of the Wop
Kenneth Macgowan