Chapter 15

Somewhere in poetry, and best in poetry because there most concentrated and most penetrative, lies crystallized experience at hand for all who need it. It is not difficult to find, although no one can find it for you. It is not necessarily exalted, romantic, passionate; it may be comfortable, homely, gentle or hearty, vigorous and cheerful; it may be anything but commonplace, for no true emotion is ever commonplace. I have known men of one poet; and yet that poet gave them the satisfaction they required. I know others whose occasional dip into poetry leads to no rapture of beauty, no throbbing vision into eternity; and yet without poetry they would be less alive, their minds would be less young. As children, most of us would have flushed before the beauty of a sunrise on a tropic ocean, felt dimly if profoundly--and forgotten. The poet--like the painter--has caught, has interpreted, has preserved the experience, so that, like music, it may be renewed. And he can perform that miracle for greater things than sunrises. This, perhaps, is the best of all reasons why every one except the emotionally senile should sometimes read poetry.

I know at least one honest Philistine who, unlike many Philistines, has traveled through the Promised Land--and does not like it. When his emotional friends talk sentimentalism and call it literature, or his aesthetic acquaintances erect affectations and call them art, he has the proper word of irony that brings them back to food, money, and other verities. His voice haunts me now, suggesting that, in spite of the reasons I have advanced, the general reader can scarcely be expected to read modern poetry, and that therefore his habit of skipping must continue. He would say that most modern poetry is unreadable, at least by the average man. He would say that if the infinitely complex study of emotional mind-states that lies behind the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson, or the eerie otherworldliness of Yeats, or the harsh virility of Sandburg is to be regarded as an intensification and clarification of experience, he begs to be excused. He would say that if the lyrics of subtle and passionate emotion and the drab stories of sex experience that make up so many pages of modern anthologies represent a renewal and extension of youth, it was not _his_ youth. He prefers to be sanely old rather than erotically young. He will stick to the daily paper and flat prose.

Well, it is easy to answer him by ruling out modern poetry from the argument. There was more good poetry, neither complex, nor erotic, nor esoteric, written before our generation than even a maker of anthologies is likely to read. But I am not willing to dodge the issue so readily. There _is_ modern poetry for every reader who is competent to read poetry at all. If there is none too much of it, that is his own fault. If there is much that makes no appeal to him, that is as it should be.

It is true that a very large proportion of contemporary poetry is well-nigh unintelligible to the gentleman whose reading, like his experience, does not often venture beyond the primitive emotions. Why should it not be? The modern lyric is untroubled by the social conscience. It is highly individual, for it is written by men of intense individuality for readers whose imaginations require an intimate appeal. Such minds demand poetry prevailingly, just as the average reader demands prose prevailingly. They profit by prose now and then, just as, occasionally, he profits by poetry. We talk so much of the enormous growth of the mass of average readers in recent years that we forget the corresponding growth in the number of individualities that are not average. Much modern poetry is written for such readers, for men and women whose minds are sensitive to intricate emotional experience, who can and do respond to otherworldliness, to the subtly romantic, the finely aesthetic, and the intricately ideal. They deserve whatever poetry they may desire.

The important point to note is that they do not get it. It is they--far more than the Philistines--who complain that modern poetry is insufficient for their needs. The highly personal lyric is probably more perfected, more abundant, and more poignant in its appeal to living minds now than ever before in the history of our civilization. But it occupies only one province of poetry. A lover of poetry desires, far more keenly than the general reader, to have verse of his own day that is more Shakespearian, more Miltonic, more Sophoclean than this. He wants poetry that lifts spacious times into spacious verse, poetry that "enlumynes," like Petrarch's "rhetorike sweete," a race and a civilization. He desires, in addition to what he is already getting, precisely that poetry so universal in its subject-matter and its appeal, which the general reader thinks he would read if he found it instead of "lyrical subtleties" in his pages.

Well, they do not get it very abundantly to-day, let us admit the fact freely. But the fault is not altogether the poets'. The fault is in the intractable mediocrity of the age, which resists transference into poetry as stiff clay resists the hoe of the cultivator. The fault lies in the general reader himself, whose very opposition to poetry because it _is_ poetry makes him a difficult person to write for. Commercialized minds, given over to convention, denying their sentiment and idealism, or wasting them upon cheap and meretricious literature, do not make a good audience. Our few poets in English who have possessed some universality of appeal have had to make concessions. Kipling has been the most popular among good English poets in our time; but he has had to put journalism into much of his poetry in order to succeed. And Kipling is not read so much as a certain American writer who discovered that by writing verse in prose form he could make the public forget their prejudice against poetry and indulge their natural pleasure in rhythm and rime.

A striking proof of all that I have been writing is to be found in so-called magazine verse. Sneers at magazine poetry are unjust because they are unintelligent. It is quite true that most of it consists of the highly individualistic lyric of which I have spoken above. But in comparison with the imaginative prose of the typical popular magazine, it presents a most instructive contrast. The prose is too frequently sensational or sentimental, vulgar or smart. The verse, even though narrow in its appeal, and sometimes slight, is at least excellent in art, admirable in execution, and vigorous and unsentimental in tone. Regarded as literature, it is very much more satisfactory than the bulk of magazine prose. Indeed, there is less difference between the best and the worst of our magazines than between the verse and the prose in any one of them.

And if this verse is too special in its subject-matter to be altogether satisfactory, if so little of it appeals to the general reader, is it not his fault? He neglects the poetry from habit rather than from conviction based on experience. Because he skips it, and has skipped it until habit has become a convention, much of it has become by natural adaptation of supply to demand too literary, too narrow, too subtle and complex for him now. The vicious circle is complete.

This circle may soon be broken. A ferment, which in the 'nineties stirred in journalism, and a decade later transformed our drama, is working now in verse. The poetical revival now upon us may be richer so far in promise than in great poetry, but it is very significant. For one thing, it is advertising poetry, and since poetry is precisely what Shakespeare called it, caviare to the general--a special commodity for occasional use--a little advertising will be good for it. Again, the verse that has sprung from the movement is much of it thoroughly interesting. Some of it is as bizarre as the new art of the futurists and the vorticists; some is merely vulgar, some merely affected, some hopelessly obscure; but other poems, without convincing us of their greatness, seem as original and creative as were Browning and Whitman in their day. Probably, like the new painting, the movement is more significant than the movers.

Nevertheless, if one is willing to put aside prejudice, suspend judgment, and look ahead, _vers libre_, even when more _libre_ than _vers_, is full of meaning--poetic realism, even when more real than poetry, charged with possibility. For with all its imperfections much of this new poetry is trying to mean more than ever before to the general reader. I am not sure that the democracy can be interpreted for him in noble poetry and remain the democracy he knows. And yet I think, and I believe, that, in his sub-consciousness at least, he feels an intense longing to find the everyday life in which we all live--so thrilling beneath the surface--interpreted, swung into that rhythmic significance that will make it part of the vast and flowing stream of all life. I can tolerate many short, rough words in poetry, and much that we have been accustomed to regard as prose, on the way to such a goal.

For I honestly believe that it is better to read fantastic poetry, coarse poetry, prosaic poetry--anything but vulgar and sentimental poetry--than no poetry at all. To be susceptible to no revival of the vivid emotions of youth, to be touched by no thoughts more intense than our own, to be accessible to no imaginative interpretation of the life we lead--this seems to me to be a heavy misfortune. But to possess, as most of us do, our share of all these qualities, and then at no time, in no fitting mood or proffered opportunity, to read poetry--this can only be regarded as deafness by habit and blindness from choice.

EYE, EAR, AND MIND

Our eyes are more civilized than our ears, and much more civilized than our minds; that is the flat truth, and it accounts for a good deal that puzzles worthy people who wish to reform literature.

Consider the musical comedy of the kind that runs for a year and costs the price of two books for a good seat. Its humor is either good horseplay or vulgar farce, and its literary quality nil. Its music is better, less banal than the words, and, sometimes, almost excellent. But its setting, the costumes, the scenic effects, the stage painting, and, most of all, the color schemes are always artistic and sometimes exquisite. They intrigue the most sophisticated taste, which is not surprising; yet, at the same time, the multitude likes them, pays for them, stays away if they are not right. Eye is an aesthete, ear is, at least, cultivated, mind is a gross barbarian, unwilling to think, and desirous only of a tickle or a prod.

Or to localize the scene and change the angle a trifle, compare the New York ear for music with the New York taste for reading. The audiences who hear good concerts, good operas, good oratorios, and thoroughly appreciate them, far outrun in number the readers of equally artistic or intellectual books. Ear is more cultivated than mind, musical appreciation keener than literary taste. A good stage set on a first night in this same metropolis of the arts, will get a round of applause, when not only often, but usually, perfection of lines, or poignancy of thought in the dialogue, will miss praise altogether. Eye detects sheer beauty instantly, mind lags or is dull to it.

This is a fact; the cause of it let psychologists explain, as they can, of course, very readily. It is a rather encouraging fact, for it seems to indicate that our members educate themselves one at a time, and yet, as parts of a single body corporate, must help each other's education. If we grow critical of the sped-up background of a movie scene, we may grow critical of its sped-up plot. Eye may teach the ear, ear lift the mind to more strenuous intellectual efforts.

And, of course, it explains why the literary reformers have such difficulties with the multitude. Why, they say, do these women, whose dress is admirably designed and colored, whose living rooms are proportioned and furnished in taste, who know good music from bad, and enjoy the former--why do they read novels without the least distinction, without beauty or truth, barely raised above vulgarity? Why, they say, does this man who cooperates with his architect in the building of a country house which would have been a credit to any period, who is a connoisseur in wine and cigars, and unerring in his judgment of pictures, why does he definitely prefer the commonplace in literature? Eye, ear, and tongue are civilized; intellect remains a gross feeder still. Good reading comes last among the arts of taste.

This is not an essay in reform; it is content to be a question mark; but one bit of preaching may slip in at the end. Why give eye and ear all the fine experiences? Why not do something for poor, slovenly mind? The truth is that we are lazy. In a stage full of shimmering beauty, in a concert of chamber music, in a fine building, or an admirable sketch, others do the work, we have only to gaze or listen in order to pluck some, at least, of the fruits of art. But fine novels take fine reading; fine essays take fine thinking; fine poetry takes fine feeling. We balk at the effort, and ask, like the audience at the movies, that eye should take the easier way. And hence the American reader still faintly suggests the Fiji Islander, who wears a silk hat and patent leathers on a tattooed naked body.

For all we can tell, that may be the direction of Progress. In 2021 New Yorkers may be gazing at a city beautiful, where even the subways give forth sweet sounds; and reading novelized movies in words of one syllable. Eye may win the race and starve out the other members. It would be a bad future for publishers and authors; and I am against it, even as a possibility. Hence my energies will be devoted to poking, thrilling, energizing, tonicking that lazy old organism, half asleep still--Mind.

OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE

A few years ago drums and trumpets in American magazines and publishers' advertisements announced that the essay was coming to its own again. We were to vary our diet of short stories with pleasing disquisitions, to find in books of essays a substitute for the volume of sermons grown obsolete, and to titillate our finer senses by graceful prose that should teach us without didacticism, and present contemporary life without the incumbrance of a plot.

The promise was welcome. American literature has been at its very best in the essay. In the essay, with few exceptions, it has more often than elsewhere attained world-wide estimation. Emerson, Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes were primarily essayists. Hawthorne and Irving were essayists as much as romancers. Franklin was a common sense essayist. Jonathan Edwards will some day be presented (by excerpt) as a moral essayist of a high order. And there was Lowell.

Have they had worthy successors? In the years after the Civil War certainly none of equal eminence. But it is too early to say that the trumpets and drums of the last decade were false heralds. The brilliant epithets of Chesterton, the perfect sophistication of Pearsall Smith (an American, but expatriated), the placid depth of Hudson's nature studies, are not paralleled on this side of the water, yet with Crothers, Gerould, Repplier, Colby, Morley, Strunsky, we need not fear comparison in the critical genre, unless it be with the incomparable Max Beerbohm.

Two kinds of expository writing are natural for Americans. The first is a hard-hitting statement, straight out of intense feeling or labored thought. That was Emerson's way (in spite of his expansiveness), and Thoreau's also. You read them by pithy sentences, not paragraphs. They assail you by ideas, not by insidious structures of thought. The second is an easy-going comment on life, often slangy or colloquial and frequently so undignified as not to seem literature. Mark Twain and Josh Billings wrote that way; Ring Lardner writes so to-day.

When the straight-from-the-shoulder American takes time to finish his thought, to mold his sentences, to brain his reader with a perfect expression of his tense emotion, then he makes literature. And when the easy-going humorist, often nowadays a column conductor, or a contributor to _The Saturday Evening Post_, takes time to deepen his observation and to say it with real words instead of worn symbols, he makes, and does make, literature. More are doing it than the skeptical realize. The new epoch of the American essay is well under way.

But the desire to "make literature" in America is too often wasted. The would-be essayist wastes it in pretty writing about trivial things--neighbors' back yards, books I have read, the idiosyncrasies of cats, humors of the streets--the sort of dilettantish comment that older nations writing of more settled, richer civilizations can do well--that Anatole France and occasional essayists of _Punch_ or _The Spectator_ can do well and most of us do indifferently. We are a humorous people, but not a playful one. Light irony is not our forte. Strength and humorous exaggeration come more readily to our pens than grace. We are better inspired by the follies of the crowd, or the errors of humanity, than by the whims of culture or aspects of pleasant leisure. And when we try to put on style in the manner of Lamb or Hazlitt, Stevenson or Beerbohm, we seldom exceed the second rate.

When the newspaper and magazine humorists of democracy learn to write better; when the moralists and reformers and critics of American life learn to mature and perfect their thought until what they write is as good as their intentions--then the trumpets and drums may sound again, and with justification. Many have; may others follow.

And perhaps then we can scrap a mass of fine writing about nothing in particular, that calls itself the American literary essay, and yet is neither American in inspiration, native in style, nor good for anything whatsoever, except exercise in words. Out with the dilettantes. We are tired of the merely literary; we want real literature in the essay as elsewhere.

FLAT PROSE

SOME time ago a writer protested against the taboo on "beautiful prose." He asserted that the usual organs of publication, especially in America, reject with deadly certainty all contributions whose style suggests that melodious rhythm which De Quincey and Ruskin made fashionable for their generations, and Stevenson revived in the 'nineties. He complained that the writer is no longer allowed to write as well as he can; that he must abstract all unnecessary color of phrase, all warmth of connotation and grace of rhythm from his style, lest he should seem to be striving for "atmosphere," instead of going about his proper business, which is to fill the greedy stomach of the public with facts.

Unfortunately, this timely fighter in a good cause was too enamored of the art whose suppression he was bewailing. He so far forgot himself as to make his own style "beautiful" in the old- time fashion, and thus must have roused the prejudice of the multitude, who had to study such style in college, and knew from sad experience that it takes longer to read than the other kind.

But there are other and safer ways of combating the taste for flat prose. One might be to print parallel columns of "newspaper English" (which they threaten now to teach in the schools) until the eye sickened of its deadly monotony. This is a bad way. The average reader would not see the point. Paragraphs from a dozen American papers, all couched in the same utilitarian dialect,-- simple but not always clear, concise yet seldom accurate, emphatic but as ugly as the clank of an automobile chain,--why, we read thousands of such lines daily! We think in such English; we talk in it; to revolt from this style, to which the Associated Press has given the largest circulation on record, would be like protesting against the nitrogen in our air.

Books and magazines require a different reckoning. The author is still allowed to let himself go occasionally in books--especially in sentimental books. But the magazines, with few exceptions, have shut down the lid, and are keeping the stylistic afflatus under strict compression. No use to show them what they might publish if, with due exclusion of the merely pretty, the sing-song, and the weakly ornate, they were willing to let a little style escape. With complete cowardice, they will turn the general into the particular, and insist that in any case they will not publish _you_. Far better, it seems to me, to warn editors and the "practical public" as to what apparently is going to happen if ambitious authors are tied down much longer to flat prose.

It is not generally known, I believe, that post-impressionism has escaped from the field of pictorial art, and is running rampant in literature. At present, Miss Gertrude Stein is the chief culprit. Indeed, she may be called the founder of a coterie, if not of a school.

Her art has been defined recently by one of her admirers, who is also the subject, or victim, of the word-portrait from which I intend later to quote in illustration of my argument. "Gertrude Stein," says Miss Dodge, "is doing with words what Picasso is doing with paint. She is impelling language to induce new states of consciousness, and in doing so language becomes with her a creative art rather than a mirror of history." This, being written in psychological and not in post-impressionist English, is fairly intelligible. But it does not touch the root of the matter. Miss Stein, the writer continues, uses "words that appeal to her as having the meaning they _seem_ to have [that is, if "diuturnity" suggests a tumble downstairs, it _means_ a tumble downstairs]. To present her impressions she chooses words for their inherent quality rather than their accepted meaning."

Let us watch the creative artist at her toil. The title of this particular word-picture is "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia." As the portrait itself has a beginning, but no middle, and only a faintly indicated end, I believe--though in my ignorance of just what it all means I am not sure--that I can quote at random without offense to the impressions derivable from the text.

Here then are a few paragraphs where the inherent quality of the words is said to induce new states of consciousness:--

"Bargaining is something and there is not that success. The intention is what if application has that accident results are reappearing. They did not darken. That was not an adulteration.... There is that particular half of directing that there is that particular whole direction that is not all the measure of any combination. Gliding is not heavily moving. Looking is not vanishing. Laughing is not evaporation.

"Praying has intention and relieving that situation is not solemn. There comes that way.

"There is all there is when there has all there has where there is what there is. That is what is done when there is done what is done and the union is won and the division is the explicit visit. There is not all of any visit."

After a hundred lines of this I wish to scream, I wish to burn the book, I am in agony. It is not because I know that words _cannot_ be torn loose from their meanings without insulting the intellect. It is not because I see that this is a prime example of the "confusion of the arts." No, my feeling is purely physical. Some one has applied an egg-beater to my brain.

But having calmed myself by a sedative of flat prose from the paper, I realize that Miss Stein is more sinned against than sinning. She is merely a red flag waved by the _Zeitgeist_.