WHERE IS LITERATURE AT?

At any time the sight of a Don Quixote leveling an earnest lance at a mill is inspiring, hence a book called Degeneration, by one Max Simon Nordau, is worthy of attention. The book has been discussed pro and con as fully as it deserved. If not forgotten it is reserved for another generation to adjudicate its value. Enough that it has stirred up a valiant mess, out of which can come nothing but good.

As a whole it is worthless—it might well have been written by a son of Robert Elsmere and Mrs. Nickelby—for the mosaic of clever observation is wrought into a most grotesque picture. The perception of Mr. Nordau is fine, but his perspective is absurdly jumbled. The premises, logical enough, are made to form an absurd conclusion—yet the half-truths in the book are well worthy of note.

Genius was an abnormality long before Nordau found it out from Lombroso. Granted that everybody who has risen above the dead level of mediocrity is a maniac, let us head the list with Jesus of Nazareth. But does that detract from the value of their work or the good of their mission? Moses may have had asymmetrical ears, and Blind Homer been possessed with all sorts of mental afflictions. That is not the point. What Mr. Nordau does show us is that the literature of this decade is self conscious and that it is marked in general by a hopeless lack of unity. Not that these facts were discovered by the captious German: Good lack, they are apparent enough, but he has surely emphasized them. And the object of this is to say a say about the present non-importance of modern literature’s self consciousness and its lack of unity.

When one talks with a decrier of modernity, when our ears are stuffed with the prattle about self consciousness, should there be an attempt to say a word it is met with a flaunting statement about Homer. Homer is undeniably the great unsullied spring, the rock struck in the desert which pours forth a clear limpid stream. But the example does not serve. If Homer is pristine he is also primeval. Self consciousness in these days means nothing less than that one comprehends in part that momentous question of where we are at. Underlying which it means that it has a realizing sense of battles to fight and wrongs to retrieve. Marry and up, we might all be Homers had literature no past. The past is a millstone that has hung around the neck of many a sturdy man.

Truth to tell, there must be a certain self consciousness nowadays if anything is to be done. Besides, what is self consciousness? Not the kind that mistakes the medium for the work accomplished, but a genuine hearty self consciousness. Is it not manifestly absurd to deny to the father of an idea the most complete conception of his paternity? Can we interpret the works of an author in any other proportion than that which exists between our understanding and his?

But Nordau’s principal casus belli is the present diversity in literature, he thinks; its lack of unity—a segregation which denotes decay.

Pish!

Diversity is a step towards universality. And is not the present aspect due primarily to a self assertive spirit, a declaration of individual independence in literature, built upon the lack of single leaders and the abolition of a great literary center?

Take the literary capillarity of a great name. It has a marvelous effect, availing perhaps for all time, but scarcely to the succeeding generation. Dante, Shakespeare and the world’s sons are but the flood marks of a great literary tidal wave that crests with eternity. These marks leave such an influence on the next generation that they can only be viewed with wonder. And when that same next generation perceives that deeds were wrought on certain lines, behold a mad rush to build on the same, to blindly copy after the model, to servilely imitate the pattern. This is the damning power of the so-called classicists. Not having the original spontaneity, such doing accomplishes little more than to emasculate itself wittingly.

Trend is an unseen thread in the warp and woof of literature. It bobs about, hides here and there, and who will say but now and then it drops a stitch? Yet the weave goes on for all that. Achievement in the realm of the real and the realm of the ideal are rarely synchronous. Literature acted as a John the Baptist for the Renaissance. Artistic expression antedated for centuries the march of science. Why should we of the purple trouble ourselves if science should now be the vanguard. It will be a close finish at the End of Things.

The Sleeping Beauty is now all ready for the magic kiss. The Prince is perhaps bending over her. He has cut a way through the thorns, the briars and brambles that hedged her in. He has climbed the stairs and looks her at last squarely in the face. She will be awake while we yet pule and despair that there is no good in us and that if a good thing ever came out of Nazareth it was immediately and ignominiously pushed along by the rabble.

That’s a close analogue, that Sleeping Beauty. Literature wanted not for thorns and brambles. Conventions, artificial ties and misconceptions were of the prickliest kind. Those that spring up where empty ancient forms are worshipped always are, but we have had some Princes with strong buskins, who laughed at the stings and bade the small things do their worst.

Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites were of that kind. Walt Whitman lacked the princely qualities, the blue blood of prestige that would work the magic charm, but he was valiant for all that. And there have been others who have not lacked in bravery.

Now, it is just that hardihood that Nordau derides. Let him creak and carp, let others erect their idols and worship thereat. Even fetiches have their use. The world wags on, however, and the line is forming anew. We will be happy yet.

It is a Gargantuan task to get at the heart of this multiple age. He will be a Titan who does it.

Form antedates concept. Thus far have we journeyed on this way of ours—the leaven of concept and of form both have broken out in patches here and there. Let someone arise who can master both.

Then—

E. R. W.