Leader
Probably one in every ten men brought up in a cultured environment has written, at some youthful period or other, sentimental verse. Such product is in any prep.-school paper; a few brilliant or hard working youngsters win prizes each year for the best “poems” of their classes. But too many of these prodigies, because they are one in ten, are convinced that they are endowed with the powers of a poet. They cannot realize that riming is to be outgrown at adolescence, just as other games are. Since some grown men continue to write poetry, and no one continues to rollerskate, they put off rollerskating as a childish thing, but they keep puttering away over platitudes “To ——” and to Spring. They have not yet come fully into their manhood.
Personally, I should prefer them to become professional rollerskaters, for then they could do no harm. Instead, they join the group of “youngerlitterati” of college, and play the artist as an extra-curriculum means to distinction, bringing down an undeserved indictment upon whatever men there happen to be with music in their hearts, and with something to say. The universitywhich most desires to honor its true artists finds itself rewarding a kindergarten Greenwich Village for sentimentality that will be forgotten before the quickness of time has killed it. “Litterati” thus has become to others a name of derision, and “he heels the Lizzie Club” is a taunt. Especially, a magazine founded for the sincere promotion of literary expression is in danger before these men with the trick of verse and a desire for prominence.
It has become, therefore, the duty of theLit.to defend itself, and to stand guard for the rest of the College, against this tendency to dilettantism, even while it welcomes to its pages the writer who is eager to learn and practice expression. Such a task is difficult, I acknowledge, because it involves a judgment between boys by boys, but it is not impossible. We have had enough poets at Yale in the past few years to be able to distinguish them generally from the poetasters, and if a fake slips by now and then, time betrays him and the laurels he has won. Many attain a kind of prominence that is strangely akin to that of a rollerskater who has taken a spill.
Yet it might be well for those interested in Yale literature to look suspiciously at the number of undergraduates who areLit.heelers only when it is profitable, who drop out—never to write again—when the competition is crowded, or who begin to write when it is seen that there is to be a vacancy on the Board. They are unquestionably with us, accomplishing nothing more than to disgust and alienate those who really desire to write. Unquestionably, such an element is exceedingly bad for Yale, if Yale intends to be any kind of a force in literature. If theLit.Board and kindred honors are to mean more than a badge placed somewhere on a college boy’s anatomy, we must show the pretender that he is out of place.
Of course, this must not lead to the discouragement of anyone with the slightest itching of the pen. It is the man who writes badly, yet for the sheer and indescribable love of writing, who should resent most the prostitution of our literary organizations, for to the “passionate few” creating is serious, joyous business. The “passionate few” must direct public sentiment against those who would play it as a game in the childish politics of the University.We must not permit a false intelligentsia to become associated with Yale. We cannot allow clever youngsters, fired with the aspiration of a charm for their watch-chains, to hack out verses in the feverish night before a makeup. However few, and however dry, the pages of theLit.may be, we want them to contain the result of sincere emotion; we want the author to have given the best of his ability toward making his contribution acceptable by any editor. This is the only way aliterarymagazine can be written.
DAVID GILLIS CARTER.