Part 6

James Whittaker’s music is very personal, very sensitive, very charming, and very marked by good taste. It is by far the most musical playing I have heard in Chicago. Mr. Whittaker went to Berlin to study and then to Paris, where he finished and became an ardent exponent of the French school. His technical equipment is not the perfect tool that Carol Robinson’s is; by which I don’t mean that it is at all inadequate, but somehow you feel that he is always conscious of the demands he puts upon it and that it sometimes leaves him unsatisfied. His theory is that most of the methods taught outside the French Conservatoire are “short cuts”; but his work suggests that he succeeds in spite of his theory. For he does succeed in the one great essential: in making music. His relation to the piano is a dedication, and his music is vibrant with feeling. His tone production is a pressure with a fine nervousness in it, and he has the real “pearl” quality in his scales. His Chopin is perhaps, as he himself says, a little “scientific.” His César Franck just misses being deep _enough_. He is at his best in quite modern French music, or in a thing like Grieg’s Cradle Song which he plays very, very beautifully. Brahms he doesn’t want to play, I imagine; but the breadth that Brahms requires and gives is the very quality that would make what James Whittaker has to say (and is saying very charmingly) a bigger and deeper thing.

M. C. A.

WITH KREISLER

_Four weeks in the Trenches, by Fritz Kreisler._ [_Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston._]

I had a big day with Ruby Davis, our Chicago little violinist, out in the country, roaming, climbing, racing, conversing, but not talking. Talk we left behind us, in the city drawing-rooms. Between pranks and escapades we found rest in sitting side by side and reading Kreisler’s war impressions. I knew that Ruby worshipped Fritz, but his reflections on the book of the violinist have shown me that in addition to admiration he possesses critical perception. We delighted in the pages written with spontaneous beauty, without pose, without the banal superstructure of sentimental colors, but revealing a tense, vibrating, virile artistic heart, reservedly sensitive to bloody horrors as well as to imperceptible impressions of human emotions concealed beneath the dehumanizing military uniform. Ruby called my attention to the fact that only such an artist as Kreisler could have had a broad non-professional outlook on men and things, an artist of unusual versatility, of a wide education, of rich experiences in various fields of life. Yet, he added, only the keen, delicate ear of a musician could have perceived the symphonic sounds on the battle-field and in the trenches, as, for instance, in this passage:

My ear, accustomed to differentiate sounds of all kinds, had some time ago, while we were still advancing, noted a remarkable discrepancy in the peculiar whine produced by the different shells in their rapid flight through the air as they passed over our heads, some sounding shrill, with a rising tendency, and the other rather dull, with a falling cadence. A short observation revealed the fact that the passing of a dull sounding shell was invariably preceded by a flash from one of our own cannon in the rear on the hill, which conclusively proved it to be an Austrian shell. It must be understood that as we were advancing between the positions of the Austrian and Russian artillery, both kinds of shells were passing over our heads. As we advanced the difference between shrill and dull shell grew less and less perceptible, until I could hardly tell them apart. Upon nearing the hill the difference increased again more and more until on the hill itself it was very marked. After our trench was finished I crawled to the top of the hill until I could make out the flash of the Russian guns on the opposite heights and by timing flash and actual passing of the shell, found to my astonishment that now the Russian missiles had become dull, while on the other hand, the shrill sound was invariably heralded by a flash from one of our guns, now far in the rear. What had happened was this: Every shell describes in its course a parabolic line, with the first half of the curve being ascending and the second one descending. Apparently in the first half of its curve, that is, its course while ascending, the shell produced a dull whine accompanied by a falling cadence, which changes to a rising shrill as soon as the acme has been reached and the curve points downward again. The acme for both kinds of shells naturally was exactly the half distance between the Austrian and Russian artillery and this was the point where I had noticed that the difference was the least marked. A few days later, in talking over my observation with an artillery officer, I was told the fact was known that the shells sounded different going up than when going down, but this knowledge was not used for practical purposes. When I told him that I could actually determine by the sound the exact place where a shell coming from the opposing batteries was reaching its acme, he thought that this would be of great value in a case where the position of the opposing batteries was hidden and thus could be located. He apparently spoke to his commander about me, for a few days later I was sent on a reconnoitering tour, with the object of marking on the map the exact spot where I thought the hostile shells were reaching their acme, and it was later on reported to me that I had succeeded in giving to our batteries the almost exact range of the Russian guns. I have gone into the matter at some length, because it is the only instance where my musical ear was of value during my service.

Ruby kept on explaining Kreisler while we were making our way through picturesque ravines. Then we stormed a steep bluff that made a difficult climb, and I had to pull and push my gentle co-adventurer. “Be brave, little Kreisler!” He turned to me with serious eyes, and proceeded to point out the greatness of his god, who throughout the book does not even once show any national narrowness or hatred for the enemy, who speaks with equal sympathy of the Russians and of the Austrians, who relates his terrible experiences in the swampy trenches in such a calm, modest tone, making your heart bleed with sorrow for the hardships and suffering of the belligerents. What a terrible calamity it would have been had the Cossack slashed Kreisler’s hand instead of his leg! Ruby smiled with joy reading the last page in which the violinist regrets that he had been pronounced “invalid and physically unfit for armed duty” and had “to discard his well-beloved uniform for the nondescript garb of the civilian.” Ruby does not share his big brother’s regret.

K.

Book Discussion

QUASI-RATIONALISTIC MORALIZING

_Criticisms of Life, by Horace Bridges._ [_Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston._]

Some time ago, at a meeting of the Book and Play Club, Mr. Bridges complained against THE LITTLE REVIEW wherein a certain book was criticised and labeled “naive and dull as the sermon of an Ethical Society preacher.” “Ladies and gentlemen, _I am naive and dull_!” protested Mr. Bridges. The reviewer of that unfortunate book, who happened to be present, expressed his surprise at the complainer’s unmodest assumption that those epithets were meant for him, as if he had monopolized the characteristic features of all ethical preachers. Now that Mr. Bridges’ book is out, the reviewer wishes to make amends and apologize; verily, the distinguished preacher was justified in claiming the honorary titles.

The author analyzes his problems through the prism of empirico-pragmatic rationalism, if such a combination is thinkable. Whether it be Chesterton’s theological views, or Ellen Key’s marriage theory, or Maeterlinck’s mysticism, or Sir Lodge’s ideas on immortality—the author applies to them the same apparatus for testing their validity and truth: Are they provable? Are they workable? Are they in harmony with Mr. Bridges’s ethical standard? A few citations will illustrate the critic’s method and sense of humor.

He takes Gilbert Chesterton very seriously, and indignantly reproves him for such typically Chestertonian offences as misquoting his opponents, as paradoxical buffooneries, “unpardonable tricks” and “inexcusable mistakes”; he offers him a few lessons in theology, explains to him in an earnest tone the meaning of miracles, the Fall of Man, and finally comes to the astounding discovery that the readers “will see in Mr. Chesterton’s amateur apologetics nothing but a psychological curiosity, to be read, like his novels, for amusement, in some slight degree perhaps for edification, but not at all for instruction.” Horribile dictu!

Mr. Bridges’s heaviest cannon are directed against Ellen Key. He totally destroys her and Shaw’s opposition to marriage with one humorous stroke, arguing that if that institution were really bad it would either have destroyed humanity, or the revolted conscience of mankind would have “risen and annihilated the abominable thing.” This optimistic argument needs as little comment as the author’s logical conclusion that “free love” is equivalent to prostitution and that free divorce is synonymous with adultery, or as these pearls:

I am decidedly of opinion that in a more enlightened age divorce will be as completely obsolete as duelling is to-day in England.

I am opposed to divorce on this ground (incompatibility of temper) for two reasons: first, because if people’s tempers are really so incompatible as to make their lifelong companionship intolerable, they can, and therefore ought to, know this in time to prevent their union. And, secondly, because such incompatibility as can remain entirely concealed before marriage cannot possibly be so great but that it may be overcome and harmonized after marriage by means of proper self-discipline and true grasp of the idea of duty.

No soldier would be pardoned for deserting from the army on the ground that he found his temper hopelessly incompatible with that of his comrades and his officers. No party to a business contract would be absolved from observing its terms upon any such consideration.

The right to renounce marriage because of unhappiness would logically involve the right to commit suicide for the same reason.... Who are we that we should repudiate the universe because it will not devote itself to securing our petty pleasures and happinesses?... Marriage, like every other great social ordinance, is instituted not primarily to secure our happiness, but to enable us to discharge our duty, in the matter of the perpetuation and spiritual development of the human species.

I am confident that the reader will appreciate the reviewer’s gallantry in not taking issue with the quoted statements: it would be too easy a task to exercise one’s humor over such threadbare niceties. My only apology for devoting so much space to Mr. Bridges’s book is the fact that Mr. Bridges is one of the moulders of public opinion in Chicago, hence ... I shall owe one more apology for my unrestrainable desire to quote the closing lines of the author’s sermon on the War:

May she (this country) preserve her unity, and that nobly disinterested foreign policy manifested, to the admiration of all Europe (indeed!!) in Cuba and Mexico: so that, when the vials of apocalyptic wrath beyond the seas are spent, she may enter to motion peace—the welcome arbitress of Europe’s dissensions, the trusted daughter, first of England, but in lesser degree of all the nations now at strife, called in to cover their shame and to mediate the purgation of their sins.

Hm—but I promised to refrain from comments.

K.

SOPHOMORIC MAETERLINCK

_Poems, by Maurice Maeterlinck._ [_Dodd, Mead and Company, New York._]

The publisher of Maeterlinck’s _Poems_ states apologetically that there has been a demand for a complete edition of the Belgian’s works, hence his justification in publishing a translation of the poems that originally appeared twenty years ago. The service rendered thereby to the author is of doubtful value: great writers are inclined to forget their youthful follies; as far as the English reading public is concerned the little book may be of some interest as a pale suggestion of an early stage in the development of Maeterlinck’s talent. I say a pale suggestion, for with all the conscientious labor of the translator the poems Anglicised have lost their chief, if not sole value—their Verlainean musicalness. If as a verslibrist Maeterlinck was obviously influenced by Whitman, his rhymed verses bear the unmistakable stamp of the poet who preached: “De la musique avant toute chose.... De la musique encore et toujours!” Back in the eighties Maeterlinck belonged to the Belgian group of Symbolists, who, like Elskamp, Rodenbach, van Lerberghe, Verhaeren, reflected the French school which began with Baudelaire and culminated through Rimbaud and Verlaine in Mallarmé. Yet, unlike his great friend, Verhaeren, the Mystic of Silence directed his genius into a different channel and abandoned verse as a medium of expression. In the collected poems, the _Serres Chaudes_ and the _Chansons_, despite the mentioned influences, we discover the Maeterlinckian key-note—the languor of the oppressed soul, helplessly inactive in “a hot-house whose doors are closed forever.” We are dazzled frequently with such beautiful lines as “O blue monotony of my heart!”; “Green as the sea temptations creep”; “the purple snakes of dream”; “O nights within my humid soul”; “My hands, the lilies of my soul, Mine eyes, the heavens of my heart.” A friend confessed to me that these similes reminded him of Bodenheim; to be sure, this compliment should be laid at the door of the translator.

K.

“THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.”

_The Harbor, by Ernest Poole._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._]

In America today, other things being equal, that novelist first achieves success who writes—let us say—of the social fabric, rather than of the eternal verities. Thus, in the case of two undoubtedly great artists, John Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, the former had to wait but half the latter’s time before he came to enjoy real popularity.

And so it is not difficult to understand the noteworthy and deserved success of _The Harbor_—a book so good that one would be inclined to wonder if it _could become popular_. Mr. Poole writes with charm and a passionate earnestness of the growth through young manhood of his hero. He knows the New York water-front well and it furnishes an original and interesting background. The boy goes through college, to Europe for a happy year or two and returns to become a successful magazine writer—a worshipper at the shrine of “big” men. Gradually his social conscience is awakened and his entire life is transformed—his allegiance is transferred from the presidents of the corporations who own the steamers to the striking stokers and their fellows. On the whole the picture is impressively convincing and Mr. Poole has caught in his pages much of the most glowing thought of idealistic youth.

His work is so very good that criticism may appear ungracious—still, if one may be allowed: some of the young men at college speak Mr. Poole’s thoughts and not their own. College men do not think as Mr. Poole would have you believe they do—at least not until a year or two after they have graduated. And isn’t Eleanore, the hero’s wife, just a little too perfect—even for the role she has to play? How well an amiable weakness would become her! Finally, _The Harbor_ has the commonest fault of almost all first novels that have for their subject the social fabric: there is too much thought (or too little action)—the author wants to give his opinion on all the things he has ever seriously thought about.

When Mr. Poole has tempered his fine seriousness with just a little more of the creative artist’s austerity he will produce a greater novel than _The Harbor_, and one that will fulfill the splendid promise of this first book.

ALFRED A. KNOPF.

THE $10,000 PLAY

_Children of Earth: A Play of New England, by Alice Brown._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._]

Frankly, I do not like the spectacle of a collection of New Englanders, well past middle age, splashing about in a puddle of sex. And that is what _Children of Earth_ is. Of course sex is interesting—most of the time; New Englanders are interesting sometimes (especially when as skilfully drawn as Miss Brown draws them); but the combination is rather too much.

In the first place what happens to these people of Miss Brown’s play never seems of any real importance—it isn’t simply that they are unsympathetic. Nor need one believe for a moment in the old idea that in true tragedy the great must suffer. But at least either the great or the typical must, and I cannot feel that these children of earth are either. The play is well enough done; it may be compounded of fact; but I doubt if it exhibits that finer thing by far—truth. How much better work might Winthrop Ames’ money have purchased.

ALFRED A. KNOPF.

_American Thought, by Woodbridge Riley._ [_Henry Holt and Company, New York._]

A historical analysis of American philosophical theories, from Puritanism to New Realism, through the stages of Idealism, Deism, Materialism, Realism, Transcendentalism, Evolutionism, and Pragmatism. The work lacks the strict impartiality of a text-book, which it evidently intends to be. The author reveals a tendency to prove that American thought has developed independently of European influences; this appears to be true to a certain extent in regard to Pragmatism, as the philosophy of practicality.

THE POETRY OF A. E.

_Collected Poems, by A. E._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._]

A friend of mine once expressed pained surprise on hearing that A. E. was among the poets I delighted to read. Having just heard me dissent from occultism, he could not understand how one who did not believe in theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, or any of the many modern forms of Mumbo-jumboism could possibly take delight in a poet who, according to him, was a theosophist, or revere poems which had first appeared in a theosophical journal.

Poetry, however, is not a record of one’s beliefs; it is a record of one’s experiences; and while the existence of God may be asserted and just as easily disproved, in the medium of rhyming language, there is no question of poetry involved. But it is equally true that when a poet describes a spiritual experience, though he may draw his images from Neo-Platonic philosophy, Christian tradition or even the animatism of the primitive poets, there is no question of theological belief implied.

When, therefore, we open Mr. Russell’s book at random, as I actually did when this volume reached me, and come across the following lines, we must be blind to a wide-spread experience of mankind if we cannot see that it expresses poetic truth as well as poetic beauty:

Unconscious

The winds, the stars, and the skies, though wrought By the heavenly King, yet know it not; And the man who moves in the twilight dim Feels not the love that encircles him, Though in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press Lips of an infinite tenderness, He turns away through the dark to roam Nor heeds the fire in his hearth and home.

But Mr. Russell’s mysticism—and mysticism, being an attitude rather than an intellectual belief, is something that is legitimately expressible in poetry, and is moreover something that Mr. Russell constantly and beautifully expresses—is no mere world-flight. Even the Beatific Vision he would only accept on terms becoming a man whose life is implicated in humanity. Hence, under the title of _Love_ we find him singing:

Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace, While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men, May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release; May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succor again.

Ere I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and dominions of old, Ere the ancient enchantment allure me to roam through the star-misty skies, I would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth may unfold; May my heart be o’erbrimmed with compassion; on my brow be the crown of the wise.

I would go as the dove from the ark, sent forth with wishes and prayers, To return with the paradise blossoms that bloom in the Eden of light: When the deep star-chant of the seraphs I hear in the mystical airs, May I capture one tone of their joy for the sad ones discrowned in the night.

Not alone, not alone would I go to my rest in the heart of the love: Were I tranced in the innermost beauty, the flame of its tenderest breath, I would still hear the cry of the fallen recalling me back from above, To go down to the side of the people who weep in the shadow of death.

One of Mr. Russell’s poems suggests in its very first line a lyric from Shelley’s _Hellas_, and the two poems form an interesting contrast between the temperaments of the poet of sentimental Platonism and this later singer who adds to Shelley’s lyric vision a firmer stationing on the substance of earth. While Shelley began on a high note of joy that

The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, ...

but ends on the note of disenchantment:

O, cease! must hate and death return? Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! Drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past; Oh, might it die or rest at last!

—while Shelley thus descends, Mr. Russell in _The Twilight of Earth_ begins more or less where Shelley left off with:

The wonder of the world is o’er, The magic from the sea is gone; There is no unimagined shore, No islet yet to venture on. The Sacred Hazel’s blooms are shed, The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.

Oh, what is worth this lore of age If time shall never bring us back Our battle with the gods to wage, Reeling along the starry track. The battle rapture here goes by In warring upon things that die.

Let be the tale of him whose love Was sighed between white Deidre’s breasts; It will not lift the heart above The sodden clay on which it rests. Love once had power the gods to bring All rapt on its wild wandering.

But while

The Paradise of memories Grows fainter day by day ...

there is no need to cease from life or from aspiration on that account:

The power is ours to make or mar Our fate as on the earliest morn, The Darkness and the Radiance are Creatures within the spirit born. Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might Forget how we imagined light.

Not yet are fixed the prison bars; The hidden light the spirit owns If blown to flame would dim the stars And they who rule them from their thrones: And the proud sceptred spirits thence Would bow to pay us reverence.

Oh, while the glory sinks within Let us not wait on earth behind, But follow where it flies, and win The glow again, and we may find Beyond the Gateways of the Day Dominion and ancestral sway.