THE REVOLT OF THE “ONCE BORN”
Challenge, by Louis Untermeyer. [The Century Company, New York]
There has recently appeared a volume of verse by Louis Untermeyer which is an excellent example of the determinedly young and eupeptic philosophy so prevalent today—the philosophy of revolt. The book is named Challenge and as challenge it must be considered. To be sure it is rhymed, but the fact seems quite incidental. To rhyme a polemic does not make it poetry, and one feels sure that Mr. Untermeyer is more proud of the spiritual attitude than of the artistry.
The book is a revolt, but a careful perusal of its pages fails to reveal against what it revolts. At first glance one might think it socialistic, but it is not clearly enough visualized for that. Socialism has at least found the enemy. Mr. Untermeyer manfully girds on his armor and sets forth to war, shouting his challenge lustily the while. And why, after all, be particular about having an actual enemy? Life, with a capital L, can do duty for that, or “the scornful and untroubled skies,” or the “cold complacency of earth.” The revolt is the point, and Mr. Untermeyer drives it home with all the phrases of frozen impetuosity to be discovered in a very useful vocabulary. “Athletic courage,” “eager night,” “Life’s lusty banner,” “impetuous winds,” “raging mirth,” etc., are scattered carefully through the pages. But unfortunately, virility—with all due respect to the reviewer who mentioned these poems in the June number of The Little Review—has a way of oozing out of such phrases, leaving them empty of everything save a painful determination to be manly at all costs.
But though Mr. Untermeyer is not quite clear on some subjects he is very clear on others. Several things seem to have struck him with peculiar force—that city streets are dirty, for instance; that strife is tonic for young blood; and that it is difficult for the human soul to conceive of complete annihilation. These things he proclaims passionately and challenges the world to disprove them. A little couplet from Kipling’s Jungle Book suggests itself rather maliciously as the probable attitude of the world towards this outbreak:
“There is none like to me!” says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.
Seriously, however, Mr. Untermeyer’s attitude is what William James calls the attitude of the “once born.” One feels that he thinks in one dimension, that he does not see around his subject, nor hear the overtones which surround every happening for a man of deep intellect. The revolt is Walt Whitman’s magnificent revolt, which is overpowering in a giant, cropping out in a man of very ordinary stature, where it sits a little ridiculously.
As philosophy much of this, printed on a neat little card, would do splendidly to hang in a business office for the encouragement of the employees. As poetry it is negligible. Mr. Untermeyer lacks entirely the one gift which could redeem it—the gift of poignancy. This lack is particularly striking in the middle section, called Interludes, in which he pauses for a little from revolt. These are love songs and lyrics, a field in which anything not perfect is no longer acceptable. And Mr. Untermeyer’s are not perfect. His sense of rhythm is extremely primitive and his lyrics are full of words. Only now and then, when he forgets for a moment how manly he is, does he say anything simply enough to strike home. These lines, for instance, from Irony stick:
There is no kind of death to kill