BUSINESS MANAGERS
| CHARLES EVANDER SCHLEY | HORACE JEREMIAH VOORHIS |
Leader
It is now two thousand years ago that Horace sang that triumph-song of his which has rung ever since:
Exegi monumentum aere perennius.
The succession of numberless years and the very flight of time have left that monument still higher than the pyramids of kings, for it was a good thing, and he knew it, and we to-day know it. Perhaps it is well for us to stop a moment and wonder a little just what we are leaving, which after two thousand years, will stand so, firm-fixed, splendidly living.
We look at this century of ours, we try to see it as might a future historian, and find a surprising hodge-podge. Fully judge it without the future, we cannot, yet, because everything is moving at such a terrific rate, these days, the present and the future are almost one, and we are thus enabled to pass partial judgment at least. Partial judgment—and on what? A world disillusioned, its ideals smashed, or, more tragic even, forgot; in the field of its arts, new music, new poetry, new painting; and over and above all, Science triumphant.
We need say nothing about the world in general—it is out of place here, and we all know too much of wars and rumors of wars, and the rest. So let us consider a moment then, the arts.—Such new arts they are, too, and like most youngsters, so very self-assertive! Their Muses are flapper-muses, and, like their physical prototypes, cause havoc enough. We have with us “the arts, though unimagined, yet to be” of Shelley’s prophecy, and, to Shelley, who loved Beauty and knew her, they would indeed be unimaginable! Poetry, unformed and unthought; great loose-joined masses of prose called novels; canvases, inch-deep with modelled paint; statues of featureless faces, or rectangular muscles; and music, uninspired, discordant aggregations of notes. We grant these illegitimate members of the “progeny immortal of painting, sculpture, and rapt poesy” do fall, under our very eyes, prostrate along the path to lasting fame, with that goal still not even in sight, nevertheless, men and women are gulled by them, look, and admire even, in their breathless attempt to be “astride the times”. Therein lies the tragedy—that they are accepted.
And is it these—these outlandish oddities, and these gulled seekers for the sensational—which are the monument we are raising to ourselves that future generations may unearth them, and smile a little at the magniloquent impotence of them all? And if they do constitute our conception of a lasting contribution to Time’s granary, are we to do nothing about it? Of course, we being young, do take it all too seriously, for Youth always takes everything, particularly itself, too seriously; but, we, being idealists, stand to defend our ideals, which are mental discipline and intellectual aristocracy. Surely the poor Muses are not to blame that they are so misshapen and unlovely, for they are only the manifestation of a moving Cause behind them, which Cause, it seems to us, is mental sloppiness, a lack of intellectual discipline. It is in opposition to the basic reason of the artistic monstrosities of the age, then, that our ideals lie.
Shelley, in the preface to Prometheus Unbound, says: “Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one case, the creators, and in another, the creations, of their age”, and it is there we may find, perhaps, the explanation, and at the same time a hint as to the solution of the whole problem: the age with its chaos and inefficient efficiency has created these inartistic artists; a new order of artists could re-create a less chaotic order—it at least is a possible solution. For plainly,—the terrific discordant elements hurtled into life through the agency of the Great War are reflected on the arts. Huge, subconscious forces, strong and like subway-trains jostling us onward through the artificially-lighted dark, cannot but communicate themselves with greatest intensity to the soul with the keenest sensibilities—to the Artist; and the Artist, caught in the mighty whirligig of Time, rushed on, unthinking, undisciplined for thought, to attain—anything. Never having been thoroughly taught it, he has quite forgot, if he ever by chance knew, that “genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains”. But it is that that he should be taught; it is that which should absolutely be driven home to him, lest chaos become dissolution.