Part 12

"He will write the advertisements for manufacturers and storekeepers," said Keidansky; "he will sing the song of the products of modern industry, chant of the wonderful performances of the age and glorify the fruits of our civilization, extol the things of use and of beauty that serve the needs of to-day's humanity. This will be an ample theme for his Muse and the guerdon of his song will be tangible. His talents will serve a great practical need. He will prove at last that there is some advantage in genius. The world, the world of reality, of facts, figures and statistics will no longer ask, 'What's the use of poetry?' The world will recognize its usefulness, and commerce and trade and capital shall become its friends. In graceful rhymes, in silvery stanzas, in beautiful verses will the poet voice the marvels of all the results of the inventiveness, ingenuity and skill with which our era is so richly blessed. And whatever article on the market will be the burden of his song, it will bring good prices and make easy the life of the singer. And people will no longer have to strain their eyes to find the poet's lines in an obscure corner of a magazine, or in a little volume of tiny type; the bards will no longer have to depend upon such poor methods of attracting attention.

"In great, glaring, garish and golden letters their poems will look down upon people from the rooftops, from the high walls of factories and barns, from fences and huge signs by all the roadsides, railroad sides, mountain sides, seasides, and all sides, and people will be compelled to look up to them, because there will be nowhere else to look. There will be no escape. The large letters painted in glowing colors and with their artistic arrangement will arrest the attention of all. And when a foreigner will come here to study this country and write it up, he will not be able to see anything on account of these signs which will cover the land, and after reading the inscriptions upon them, he will go forth saying that it is the most poetic country in the whole world. So inspired will the stranger become that he will go forth and tell the world of the wonderful things we make and advertise here. Thus poetry, at last, become useful, will help us conquer the foreign market. After all, the bards will come down from the clouds and the garrets of starvation, and in their song embrace the whole world; celebrate the things concrete, material and real. Poetry and the world will at last become reconciled; spirit and substance will be united to the practical advantage of the spirit.

"For too long a time has the poet wandered about in distress, begging for a pittance, persecuted everywhere, singing his song for nothing, with starvation and inspiration as his only rewards. For too long a time has the poet, 'the unacknowledged legislator of the world,' been subjected to all manner of scorn, persecution, calumny, and been compelled to seek in vain some one who will pay well for a dedication of his work. His own lot was ever hard, and, besides, he suffered all the sorrows of humanity. He lived with all and grieved with all. He put his life into his songs, yet few paid any heed to them. Poets have ever been the victims of the prosiness of things. The world was ever ugly to them because they made it so beautiful. No matter how great their immortality, they never could pay their rent. 'A genius is an accused man,' said Victor Hugo in his book on Shakespeare, and then he goes on to enumerate all the banishments, persecutions, imprisonments and outrages that were heaped upon the poets of all lands and all ages, including Victor Hugo himself. Yes, a poet has ever been an accused man, and nearly every one has found him guilty. But as I say, these cruelties had for too long been practised upon the singers and the time has come for a change. With the advance of civilization he will be given useful employment, a decent wage, and thus enabled to make a living without working overtime. Richard Le Gallienne shall weep no more for a government endowment for the poet. The poet shall become self-supporting. He will sing of things whereof the owners can afford to pay for the song. Whether he will create immortal works or not he will work, and work is immortal. It will continue unto the end of time."

Here I wished to remonstrate, but Keidansky would not permit me. He continued, as we walked along through the Ghetto.

"The human and other machines of the age are bringing such wonderful things into existence, and the poet will lift his voice in praise of them. It really takes the imagination of a poet to picture and glorify the countless commodities that are manufactured and put upon the markets of our time. It takes a poet to point out their usefulness. What will he not sing of on those huge street signs and in the double-page advertisements in the newspapers? Of pre-digested foods, of squeezeless corsets, of baking powder that bakes the cakes without any form of heat, of ink that endows the pen with brains, of cigars that are conducive to health, of watches that make people up to date, of a hair restorer that keeps the hair you have, of shoes with which you can walk in the air, of clothes that make man and woman out of nothing, pianos that make Paderewskys, of bicycles and typewriters, and razors and house-lots and furniture, and peerless, rare, surpassing, extraordinary everything mentionable. What will he not sing of? These things will be. God will send us a Bobby Burns and he will sing the song of the best steamship company, and he will not only be able to go abroad often, but he may in the course of time even become the general passenger agent. It takes a competent fortune to escape the materialism of the age, and to acquire this the poet will associate himself with the material interests of the time and become as free as a bird in the woods.

"The process has begun, and already one finds pretty little poems and fine sentiments in all advertisements, particularly those that meet one's eyes in the street cars. I usually have a book with me on the cars, but of late I find the advertisements more amusing. Pretty soon the best literature will appear in the advertisements of all publications. One firm advertises in choice epigrams, which show the possibilities for some future wits. I do not know whether they are written by Elbert Hubbard or not, but they sound like it and show which way things are going.

"This is the solution of the problem of the poet. I pondered over it long, but found it at last. Our hope comes from Parnassus. The poets will help us conquer the foreign market."

XXII

"My Vacation on the East Side"

"Green fields, fair forests, singing streams, pine-clad mountains, verdant vistas--from the monotony of the city to the monotony of nature. I wanted a complete change, and so I went to the East Side of New York for my vacation. That is where I have been."

Thus did our friend explain his strange disappearance and unusual absence from Boston for a whole week. For the first time since he came here from New York he had been missing from his home, his regular haunts, such as the cafés, Jewish book-stores and the debating club, and none of those whom I asked knew whither he had betaken himself. The direct cause of his disappearance, explained Keidansky, was a railroad pass, which he had secured from a friendly editor for whom he had done some work. He went on explaining. "I wanted to break away for awhile from the sameness and solemnness, the routine and respectability of this town, from my weary idleness, empty labors, and uniformity of our ideas here, so when the opportunity was available I took a little journey to the big metropolis. One becomes rusty and falls into a rut in this suburb. I was becoming so sedate, stale and quiet that I was beginning to be afraid of myself. The revolutionary spirit has somewhat subsided. Many of the comrades have gone back on their ideas, have begun to practise what they preach, to improve their conditions by going into business and into work, and I often feel lonely. Anti-imperialism, Christian Science and the New Thought are amusing; but there is not enough excitement here. Boston is not progressive; there are not enough foreigners in this city. People from many lands with all sorts of ideas and the friction that arises between them--that causes progress. New York is the place, and it is also the refuge of all radicals, revolutionaries and good people whom the wicked old world has cast out. America, to retain its original character, must constantly be replenished by hounded refugees and victims of persecution in despotic lands. To remain lovers of freedom we must have sufferers from oppression with us. Sad commentary, this, upon our human nature; but so are nearly all commentaries upon human nature. Commentaries upon the superhuman are tragic. New York with its Germans and Russians and Jews is a characteristic American city. Boston and other places are too much like Europe--cold, narrow and provincial. I came to Boston some time ago because I had relatives here--the last reason in the world why any one should go anywhere; but I was ignorant and superstitious in those days. I have since managed to emancipate myself, more or less, from the baneful influences of those near; but meanwhile I have established myself, have become interested in the movements and institutions of the community, and here I am. The symphony concerts, the radical movement, the library, lectures on art, the sunsets over the Charles River, the Faneuil Hall protest meetings against everything that continues to be, the literary paper published, the Atlantic Monthly, Gamelial Bradford, Philip Hale and so many other fixtures of Boston have since endeared it to me and I stayed. Besides, it would cost me too much to ship all my books to New York.

"But wishing a change, I wanted to go to the big metropolis. No, not to the country; not for me those parasitic, pestering and polished summer hotels, where a pile of people get together to gossip and giggle and gormandize and bore each other for several weeks. An accident once brought me to one of these places. I went out to see some friends, and I know what they are. They spend most of their time dressing; these vacationists dress three times a day; the green waist, and yellow waist, the brown skirt and the blue suit, the red jacket, the white hat, and the gray coat, and then the same turn over again; they fill themselves with all sorts of heavy and unwholesome foods brought from the cities; they sit around the verandas and talk all day, never daring to venture into the woods; they do no good to themselves, coming home tired and sick, and they do unspeakable wrong by turning good, honest farmers into parasitic, sophisticated boarder-breeders, and by turning them away from the tilling of the soil. No more of these places for me. Of course, if one could go into the woods and live as simply as a savage for awhile it would be fine; but one needs a tent, and I never did own any real estate.

"But this time I wanted a complete change; I wanted something to move and stir me out of the given groove, the beaten path I was falling into, some excitement that would shake the cobwebs out of my brain, so I turned towards the East Side.

"They are all there, the comrades, the radicals, the red ones, and dreamers; people who are free because they own nothing. Poets, philosophers, novelists, dramatists, artists, editors, agitators and other idle and useless beings, they form a great galaxy in the New York Ghetto. For several years, ever since I left New York, I had been receiving instruction and inspiration from them through the medium of the Yiddish and the Socialist press, where my own things often appeared beside their spirited outpourings, and now I was overcome by an overpowering desire to meet them again, talk matters over and fight it all out. There is no sham about the East Side branch of the ancient and most honorable order of Bohemians--the little changing, moving world that is flowing with the milk of human kindness and the honey of fraternal affections, where those who live may die and those who die may live. Here among the East Side Bohemians people feel freely, act independently, speak as they think and are not at all ashamed of their feelings. They have courage. They wear their convictions in public. They do as they please, whether that pleases everybody else or not. They talk with the purpose of saying something. They write with the object of expressing their ideas. They tell the truth and shame those who do not. Hearts are warm because they own their souls. Those who really own their souls will never lose them. As Joseph Bovshover, the fine poet of the East Side has sung:

'_Beauty hideth,_ _Nature chideth,_ _When the heart is cold;_ _Fame is galling,_ _Gold's enthralling,_ _When the mind is sold._'

"They all assemble in the cafés, those universities of the East Side, and in these places of judgment all things are determined. Is there a great world problem that puzzles and vexes all mankind? The debaters at one of these tea-houses take it up at their earliest discussion and soon the problem is solved and the way of human progress is clear again. Is there a question that has troubled the ages? Come and spend fifteen minutes on the East Side, and the salvation of humanity will be assured to you. There is so much squalor and suffering and sorrow here that nothing can overcome the optimism of these chosen people. Their incurable faith cannot be shaken even by their religious leaders, and when they become atheists they are the most pious atheists in all the world. But in the cafés the great issues given up in despair by famous statesmen are met and decided upon. The trusts? Are they not paving the way for the realization of Socialism? Not until all the industries have been concentrated by the trusts will the people through the government be able to take possession of them. Otherwise, how in the world will the new régime, for instance, ever organize and take hold of all the peanut stands of the land? You do not understand the question thoroughly if you have not read the articles of I. A. Hurwitz in the 'Vorwarts.' The future of war? There will be no war in the future. The workingmen of all countries are uniting and so are the capitalists. The international movement is not laboring in vain. Socialism is spreading in the European armies. Every government will have enough trouble in its own land. Others come here and say that every government will have to fight for its own life and will not be able to do anything else. People will take Tolstoy's advice and cease to pay taxes and withdraw their support from the powers that rule. Tolstoy, say some, is a masterful artist, but puerile as a philosopher, a curious mixture of genius and narrow-mindedness, a man, who once having erred, now sins against mankind by denying it the right of erring. The red-haired ragged orator with blue eye-glasses and the face of a Hebrew Beethoven quotes Ingersoll. 'Tolstoy,' said the agnostic, 'stands with his back to the rising sun.' And did not Edward Carpenter say of Tolstoy's book, 'that strange jumble of real acumen and bad logic, large-heartedness and fanaticism--What is art?'

"Ibsen is somber because he is almost alone in seeing the most tragic phases of life, because he feels compelled to treat what all other artists have neglected. Many of his plays are too much like life to be acted, and we go to the theatre only to see plays. One of the listeners speaks of the appreciation of Ibsen in 'The New Spirit,' by Havellock Ellis, and of the analogy that he finds between Ibsen and Whitman. Zangwill places Ibsen above Shakespeare, and more recently he has bestowed great praise upon Hauptmann. Rather strange of Zangwill, who is himself not a realist and has gone in for Zionism, to like Ibsen so much. And who is greater than Ibsen? some one asks. 'Perhaps it is I. Zangwill,' says the cynical, frowzy and frowning little journalist. G. Bernard Shaw is mentioned as a candidate, and his great little book on Ibsenism comes in for a heated discussion. Brandes is quoted, and several of his admirers present go into ecstasies over his works and almost forget the writers whom he has treated. The pale-faced, wistful-eyed poet with the Christlike face rises high on the wings of his eloquence in praise of the Danish critic's appreciation of Heine, and Brandes is declared to be one of the greatest Jews in the world. What was it Brandes said about Zionism? Zionism, Socialism and Anarchism come up in turn, and so many trenchant and vital things are said on these subjects. Will the novel pass away? The dramatist--bulky and bearded, impressive and strong-looking, with wonderful piercing eyes--the dramatist is inclined to think that it will. The short story is the story of the future. Long novels give one a glimpse of eternity. By the time you come to the last chapter, conditions have so changed in the world that you do not know whether the story is true to life or not. It is the necessarily historical, the long novel is. Old Jules Verne has won the East Side over with the fine words he has said on Guy De Maupassant. Some admirers of Z. Libin say that the Frenchman is too romantic, but on the whole he is the favorite story-writer. 'Yes,' says the Jewish actor, 'De Maupassant writes for all the Yiddish papers'; and in fact all the East Side dailies have for years been treating their readers to his charming tales. He may be imagined to be a constant contributor. Did not an old Israelite walk into the office of the 'Jewish Cry' and ask to see Friedrich Nietzsche? And then the problem of Nietzsche comes up; whether he was, or was not a reaction against, or the opposite extreme from, the meekness of Christianity, the weakness of his time. Wagner's music, Stephen Phillips's poetry, Zola's essay on realism, Maeterlinck's transcendentalism, Gorky's rise in letters, the Anglo-Saxon isolation in literature, Ludwig Fuldas's latest play, all these things are decided upon by people who understand them, more or less.

"I cannot tell you more, but these meetings and these talks at various times and in various places made my vacation on the East Side delightful. Then there were lectures and meetings and social gatherings of the comrades. The sun of new ideas rises on the East Side. Everywhere you meet people who are ready to fight for what they believe in and who do not believe in fighting. For a complete change and for pure air you must go among the people who think about something, have faith in something. Katz, Cahan, Gordin, Yanofsky, Zolotaroff, Harkavy, Frumkin, Krantz, Zametkin, Zeifert, Lessin, Elisovitz, Winchevsky, Jeff, Leontief, Lipsky, Freidus, Frominson, Selikowitch, Palay, Barondess, and many other intellectual leaders, come into the cafés to pour out wisdom and drink tea, and here comes also Hutchins Hapgood to get his education. Each man bears his own particular lantern, it is true, but each one carries a light and every one brings a man with him.

"There was that memorial mass-meeting in honor of Hirsh Leckert, the Jewish shoemaker, who shot at the governor of Wilna, who took his life in hand to avenge a hideous outrage perpetrated upon his fellow-workers by a despicable despot. The Jewish working-people of Wilna organized a peaceful procession, and at the behest of the governor hundreds of them were mercilessly flogged--flogged until they fainted, and when revived, flogged again. Then came this lowly hero, Leckert, and made a glorious ascent on the scaffold. In the afternoon news reached the East Side that Leckert was hanged. The same evening the working-people, just out of their factories and sweat-shops, in overwhelming numbers assembled in New Irving Hall, and the fervor and enthusiasm, the sobbing and the sighing, the tear-stained faces and love-lit eyes--the soul-stirring eulogies delivered--I shall never forget it. I tell you no man ever saw anything greater or more inspiring on his vacation.

"Mr. Jacob Gordin gave me a memorable treat, took me to see his latest and one of his best plays, 'Gott, Mensch, und der Teufel.' I have seen many of his works and it is hard to decide which is the best because they are nearly all so good. But this strange story of a Jewish Faust, the pious, saintly Jew who, tempted by Satan's gold, step by step loses his soul and cannot live without it; this wonderful blending of modern realism and supernatural symbolism, this superb summary of man and the new problem of life, the beauty and the strength of the work, is remarkable, to say the least. 'As in times of yore,' says Satan, 'the sons of Adam are divided into Abels and Cains. The former are constantly murdered and the latter are the constant murderers. Gracious Lord, in the new man there dwells the old savage Adam.' Sorry I cannot tell you more about it now, but the last words of the play have been ringing through my mind ever since I saw it.

'_All must die, all that is and lives;_ _Life alone is immortal._

_That only is mortal that desires and strives,_ _The striving and the desire immortal._'

"Why," added Keidansky, as a final thunderbolt, "I have gained enough ideas on the East Side to last me here in Boston for ten years."

XXIII

Our Rivals in Fiction

"After all, what is man when compared to the hero of romance?" asked Keidansky. "Beside the dashing, dauntless, duelling cavalier that now moves through the popular novel and struts our stage," he said, "the ordinary, mortal man of mere flesh and blood pales into insignificance. Beside the extraordinary exploits of the storied hero, the doings of the every-day man are like the foolish games of little children, only not half so graceful. Beside the strange adventures of the leading character, the simple efforts of earthly man are accounted as naught. It would not be so bad if no one ever made comparisons, but women do, and so men are always found wanting, and have a harrowing time of it.

"In the epic, the drama, the novel, the hero has nothing else to do but to make love, to deliver pretty speeches, perform remarkable feats and look graceful, and so he is ever so attractive. He plays upon the hearts, takes hold of the minds, fastens himself upon the imaginations of the gentle fair and fanciful. He knows just what to say, just what to do, and just where to go, just when to return, and is always so punctual--appears just in the nick of time to save as many lives as are in danger. He becomes a model, a type, that the lady fair goes in quest of, when the play is over, or the novel is ended. She turns to life for the realization.