XI
“MERE LITERATUREâ€
IS there any justification for the phrase “mere literature†which one often hears nowadays? There is no doubt a serious sneer in it, as Professor Woodrow Wilson, in a recent “Atlantic†essay, avers; but I think the sneer is not aimed so much at literature in itself as at certain phases of literature. Lowell has been quoted as saying that “mere scholarship is as useless as the collecting of old postage stamps;†yet at vital scholarship—scholarship that is wielded as a weapon, and that results in power—Lowell would be the last man to sneer. In all times of high literary culture and criticism, a great deal is produced that may well be called mere literature,—the result of assiduous training and stimulation of the literary faculties,—just as a great deal of art is produced that may be called mere art. Literature that is the result of the friction upon the mind of other literatures, might, with some justice, be called mere literature. That which is the result of the contact of the mind with reality is, or ought to be, of another order.
Or we may say “mere literature†as we say “mere gentleman.†Now gentlemanly qualities—refinement,good breeding, etc.—are not to be sneered at, unless they stand alone, with no man behind them; and literary qualities—style, learning, fancy, etc.—are not to be sneered at unlesstheystand alone, which is not infrequently the case. We should not apply the phrase “mere gentleman†to Washington, or Lincoln, or Wellington, though these men may have been the most thorough of gentlemen; neither should we apply the phrase “mere literature†to the works of Bacon, or Shakespeare, or Carlyle, or Dante, or Plato. The Bible is literature, but it is not mere literature. We apply the latter term to writings that have little to recommend them save their technical and artistic excellence, like the mass of current poetry and fiction. The men who have nothing to say and say it extremely well produce mere literature.
Both England and France have at the present time many excellent writers, men who possess every grace of style and charm of expression, who still give us only a momentary pleasure. They do not move us, they do not lay strong hands upon us, their works do not take hold of any great reality; they produce mere literature. Literary seriousness, literary earnestness, cannot atone for a want of manly seriousness and moral earnestness. A sensitive artistic conscience cannot make us content with a dull or obtuse moral conscience. The literary worker is to confront reality in just as serious a mood as does the man of science, if he hopes to produce anything that rises above mere literature. The picnickers,the excursionists, the flower-gatherers of literature do not produce lasting works. The seriousness of Hawthorne was much more than a literary seriousness; the emotion of Whittier at his best is fundamental and human.
There is a passage in Amiel’s “Journal†that well expresses the distinction I am aiming at. “I have been thinking a great deal of Victor Cherbuliez,†he says, under date of December 4, 1876. “Perhaps his novels make up the most disputable part of his work,—they are so much wanting in simplicity, feeling, reality. And yet what knowledge, style, wit, and subtlety,—how much thought everywhere, and what mastery of language! He astonishes one; I cannot but admire him. Cherbuliez’s mind is of immense range, clear-sighted, keen, full of resources; he is an Alexandrian exquisite, substituting for the feeling which makes men earnest the irony which leaves them free. Pascal would say of him, ‘He has never risen from the order of thought to the order of charity.’ But we must not be ungrateful. A Lucian is not worth an Augustine, but still he is a Lucian.... The positive element in Victor Cherbuliez’s work is beauty, not goodness, nor moral or religious life.â€
The positive element in the enduring works is always something more than the beautiful; it is the true, the vital, the real, as well. The beautiful is there, but the not-beautiful is there also. The world is held together, life is nourished and made strong, and power begotten, by the neutral or negativelybeautiful. Works are everywhere produced that are artistically serious, but morally trifling and insincere; faultless in form, but tame and barren in spirit. We could not say this of the works of Froude or Ruskin, Huxley or Tyndall; we cannot say it of the works of Matthew Arnold, because he had a higher purpose than to produce mere literary effects; but we can say it of most of the productions of the younger British essayists and poets. In some of them there is a mere lust of verbal forms and rhythmic lilt. In reading their poems, I soon find myself fairly gasping for breath; I seem to be trying to breathe in a vacuum,—an effect which one does not experience at all in reading Tennyson, or Browning, or Arnold. One is apt to have serious qualms in reading the prose of Walter Pater, the lust of mere style so pervades his work. Faultless workmanship, one says; and yet the best qualities of style—freshness, naturalness, simplicity—are not here. What in Victor Hugo goes far towards atoning for all his sins against art, against sanity and proportion, are his terrible moral earnestness and his psychic power. Whatever we may think of his work, we are not likely to call it “mere literature.†That masterly ubiquitous sporting and toying with the elements of life which we find in Shakespeare we shall probably never again see in letters. The stress and burden of later times do not favor it. The great soul is now too earnest, too self-conscious; life is too serious. Only light men now essay it. With so much criticism, so much knowledge,so much science, another Shakespeare is impossible. Renan says: “In order to establish those literary authorities called classic, something especially healthy and solid is necessary. Common household bread is of more value here than pastry.†There can be little doubt that our best literary workers are intent upon producing something analogous to pastry, or even confectionery,—something fine, complex, highly seasoned, that tickles the taste. It is always in order to urge a return to the simple and serious, a return to nature, to works that have the wholesome and sustaining qualities of natural products,—grain, fruits, nuts, air, water.