Fairy-Tale Mysticism
Jerusalem, a Novel by Selma Lagerlöf(Doubleday, Page & Co., New York).
ThoseScandinavians! I have often wondered at the combination of grim strength with childlike imaginativeness that we find in the artists of those pale cold lands. In the winter, at twilight, I like to sit with closed eyes and to relive old and new Norse sagas, the unbelievable wonders told or sung or painted with the perfect earnestness of absorbed children; I like to dream then to the accompaniment of the not-smiling music of the sad child, Edward Grieg.
Jerusalemis not a novel, not according to the terminology acceptedheretofore. For—may I reveal a secreten passant?—we are on the eve of the publication of a novel by a Chicagoan who will revolutionize the prevailing literary classifications. Another thing which is not! Selma Lagerlöf isnota mystic, some of her friends want us to believe; not in the Maeterlinckian sense. The book is a series of tapestries to be hung in an ideal children’s-room; a web of fairy-tales told in the Scandinavian, unsmiling, earnest way. Mystic? Yes, as much as all fairy-tales are mystic, as much as all not “clever” and “wonderful” children are mystic. A mysticism which instead of lifting us up to the clouds brings the clouds down to us; instead of lending us wings and making us soar in imperceptible intangible regions, anthropomorphosizes gods and spirits and drags them down to terra firma. So convincing! We actually see the dead Ingmarssons gathered in a large farm house up in heaven; we see their ruddy hard faces, sandy hair, white eyes; we hear their slow, heavy, laconic talk. We are not surprised at meeting Christ among the pines in the glow of the autumnal sunset. The opening of heaven on a winter night before the eyes of the two Ingomars appears as ordinary reality. We are in a world where everything is simple, believable, possible. And you cannot smile; you are in an earnest childlike atmosphere.
Those Scandinavians!
K.
The Reader CriticUNWORTHY!Rev. W. D. J., Riverside, Ill.:I used to have great expectations for you. But, pardon the frankness of one who has watched the careers of many writers in the past fifty years, you are headed now either forthe lake or a padded cell. God forbid you reach either. Let an old man say that the only way to find life is to lose it. Forget it and reach out a hand to the poor, the sick, the suffering, and the sinning. Happiness comes only in forgetfulness of self and ministering to others. It is never the result of a theory but of action. I have seen so many wrecked on the reefs toward which you are drifting that I am fain to call out and entreat you to find happiness where alone it can be found, not in fleeing from the world or cursing it but in thanking God you were born into a world where you can be of some use to your fellows. Those lines of yours in the September issue might have been written by a Heine, a Byron, or a Walt Whitman. But they are unworthy of you. You were born to bless your fellows. Be true to your vocation.AN EXAMPLE!R. C. Smith, Chicago:Inspiration will never take the place of intelligence, nor enthusiasm that of cerebration. Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would grow useless in which no direction toward any cylinder was given to the indubitable forces generated in the boiler. For your pages are as a rule careless, unconsidered, and inept. Let me give you an example:—Mr. Huntley Carter, in your September number, wrote on “Poetry versus Imagism.” I happen to consider his article an ill-digested congeries of vague views; but other persons may feel differently about it. What, however, can be the estimation in which every sane and intelligent and decently responsible man will hold your magazine and Mr. Carter when he has the effrontery to present to us such an example of ineptitude and carelessness as this:—“Browning ... gets to work in a businesslike manner:The sun looked over the water’s brimAnd straight there was a path of gold for himAnd a world of souls for me.I QUOTE FROM MEMORY, BUT I BELIEVE I QUOTE CORRECTLY.” (The capitals are mine.)May I ask—must an enthusiasm for or against the new movements obliterate all sense of accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all fidelity to honest statement, and all interest in truth? Your Mr. Carter and his extraordinary indifference to the workaday obligations of literary criticism have considerably discouraged my interest in the new forces. I can imagine Mr. Carter writing—“Since, as Nansen says, ‘The natives of the polar regions are coal-black,’—(I quote from memory), it must be hotter there than at the equator.”You have printed many encomiums of your magazine: I shall watch with curiosity to see if you print this.THE WEAKNESS OF REVOLTDr. Weil, New York:The spirit of revolt is compounded from many causes. Even in the average young girl of whom Mr. Hecht writes in the AugustLittle Reviewit arises as much from her digestion as from her incomplete physical functioning, as much from her work as from her leisure, as much from her friends as from her freshness. Mr. Hecht would be the first to admit that; would he be equally willing to admit that it meets death variously?He talks only of the family as the snuffer for the flame. This does not mean that he excludes other causes, but it does mean that he has overemphasized one.It is true, as Mr. Hecht insists, that the American family tends to quell revolt. The battle of the generations is as old as the race; the family has always struggled to bring the rebel into line for its own preservation. But that struggle in all its various shades of acuteness has become a truism of modern thought, thanks to a multiplex modern drama, a scientific sociology, and even the daily press. Why discuss the subject only to dwell again heavily on the obvious?The problem is far more complicated. The verdict of guilt against the family grows monotonous when returned at every inquest. To place a single responsible cause for any tremor to revolt that dies abortive is to lack subtlety.Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict against the individual. One is not to blame if she is not a genius, but if even her greatest emotions are somewhat lacking in poignancy, the fluctuating spirit of restlessness in her never reaches the heights which demand action.Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict against the quality of the revolutionary spirit. Not only are its causal factors weak and fluctuating, but the very vagueness which to Mr. Hecht constitutes its charm spells also its damnation. A spirit of restlessness is, in itself, nothing about which one can go to the hilltops and shout, and when it crystalizes in some particular issue,—a book, a picture, a small individual right,—the object often seems too trivial to struggle for. To be sure the principle is not a small thing, but a principle is abstract and when it confronts a concrete bit of suffering, it fades by contrast.The sordid bread and butter difficulties to be faced by one standing wholly alone, the scathing force of public opinion, the pain of others which, when you love them, is pain to you,—these are realities which only the truly big souls dare to face. For most of us the spirit of revolt is too diffuse even to demand action, and for most of the rest action is too divine a consummation to be compassed by our weak human spirit. Not to any external cause really, but to an inherent lack in us, is it due that we slowly grow complacent, instead of crusading worthily in behalf of liberty.Alice Groff, Philadelphia:The most of you publishers are such unspeakable Kaisers of Kultur that you treat the geniuses who make you what you are as insignificant privates in a literary army, which you deploy; keeping them dangling upon your critical pleasure, or blowing them to pieces because they do not happen to walk the lineyoumark out.I suppose this is inevitable, however, in the present social order and that there will never be free literary expression until there is publishing organization on the part of the whole people for the benefit of the whole people. May the universe speed the day of such organization.
The Reader Critic
Rev. W. D. J., Riverside, Ill.:
I used to have great expectations for you. But, pardon the frankness of one who has watched the careers of many writers in the past fifty years, you are headed now either forthe lake or a padded cell. God forbid you reach either. Let an old man say that the only way to find life is to lose it. Forget it and reach out a hand to the poor, the sick, the suffering, and the sinning. Happiness comes only in forgetfulness of self and ministering to others. It is never the result of a theory but of action. I have seen so many wrecked on the reefs toward which you are drifting that I am fain to call out and entreat you to find happiness where alone it can be found, not in fleeing from the world or cursing it but in thanking God you were born into a world where you can be of some use to your fellows. Those lines of yours in the September issue might have been written by a Heine, a Byron, or a Walt Whitman. But they are unworthy of you. You were born to bless your fellows. Be true to your vocation.
R. C. Smith, Chicago:
Inspiration will never take the place of intelligence, nor enthusiasm that of cerebration. Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would grow useless in which no direction toward any cylinder was given to the indubitable forces generated in the boiler. For your pages are as a rule careless, unconsidered, and inept. Let me give you an example:—
Mr. Huntley Carter, in your September number, wrote on “Poetry versus Imagism.” I happen to consider his article an ill-digested congeries of vague views; but other persons may feel differently about it. What, however, can be the estimation in which every sane and intelligent and decently responsible man will hold your magazine and Mr. Carter when he has the effrontery to present to us such an example of ineptitude and carelessness as this:—
“Browning ... gets to work in a businesslike manner:
The sun looked over the water’s brimAnd straight there was a path of gold for himAnd a world of souls for me.
The sun looked over the water’s brimAnd straight there was a path of gold for himAnd a world of souls for me.
The sun looked over the water’s brimAnd straight there was a path of gold for himAnd a world of souls for me.
The sun looked over the water’s brim
And straight there was a path of gold for him
And a world of souls for me.
I QUOTE FROM MEMORY, BUT I BELIEVE I QUOTE CORRECTLY.” (The capitals are mine.)
May I ask—must an enthusiasm for or against the new movements obliterate all sense of accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all fidelity to honest statement, and all interest in truth? Your Mr. Carter and his extraordinary indifference to the workaday obligations of literary criticism have considerably discouraged my interest in the new forces. I can imagine Mr. Carter writing—“Since, as Nansen says, ‘The natives of the polar regions are coal-black,’—(I quote from memory), it must be hotter there than at the equator.”
You have printed many encomiums of your magazine: I shall watch with curiosity to see if you print this.
Dr. Weil, New York:
The spirit of revolt is compounded from many causes. Even in the average young girl of whom Mr. Hecht writes in the AugustLittle Reviewit arises as much from her digestion as from her incomplete physical functioning, as much from her work as from her leisure, as much from her friends as from her freshness. Mr. Hecht would be the first to admit that; would he be equally willing to admit that it meets death variously?
He talks only of the family as the snuffer for the flame. This does not mean that he excludes other causes, but it does mean that he has overemphasized one.
It is true, as Mr. Hecht insists, that the American family tends to quell revolt. The battle of the generations is as old as the race; the family has always struggled to bring the rebel into line for its own preservation. But that struggle in all its various shades of acuteness has become a truism of modern thought, thanks to a multiplex modern drama, a scientific sociology, and even the daily press. Why discuss the subject only to dwell again heavily on the obvious?
The problem is far more complicated. The verdict of guilt against the family grows monotonous when returned at every inquest. To place a single responsible cause for any tremor to revolt that dies abortive is to lack subtlety.
Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict against the individual. One is not to blame if she is not a genius, but if even her greatest emotions are somewhat lacking in poignancy, the fluctuating spirit of restlessness in her never reaches the heights which demand action.
Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict against the quality of the revolutionary spirit. Not only are its causal factors weak and fluctuating, but the very vagueness which to Mr. Hecht constitutes its charm spells also its damnation. A spirit of restlessness is, in itself, nothing about which one can go to the hilltops and shout, and when it crystalizes in some particular issue,—a book, a picture, a small individual right,—the object often seems too trivial to struggle for. To be sure the principle is not a small thing, but a principle is abstract and when it confronts a concrete bit of suffering, it fades by contrast.
The sordid bread and butter difficulties to be faced by one standing wholly alone, the scathing force of public opinion, the pain of others which, when you love them, is pain to you,—these are realities which only the truly big souls dare to face. For most of us the spirit of revolt is too diffuse even to demand action, and for most of the rest action is too divine a consummation to be compassed by our weak human spirit. Not to any external cause really, but to an inherent lack in us, is it due that we slowly grow complacent, instead of crusading worthily in behalf of liberty.
Alice Groff, Philadelphia:
The most of you publishers are such unspeakable Kaisers of Kultur that you treat the geniuses who make you what you are as insignificant privates in a literary army, which you deploy; keeping them dangling upon your critical pleasure, or blowing them to pieces because they do not happen to walk the lineyoumark out.
I suppose this is inevitable, however, in the present social order and that there will never be free literary expression until there is publishing organization on the part of the whole people for the benefit of the whole people. May the universe speed the day of such organization.