Chapter X: Part THREE: La Closerie De Lilas (2)

For me, there is heaviness and over-elaboration paramount in this preface to the Letters from America, excess of byword, a strained relationship with his subject, but that would of course be Jamesian, and very naturally, too. It is hardly, this preface, the tribute of the wise telling of beautiful and "blinding youth", surely more the treatise of the problemist forging his problem, as the sculptor might; something too much of metal or stone, too ponderous, too severe let one say, for its so gracing and brightening theme, something not springing into bloom, as does the person and personality of the young subject himself. Only upon occasion does he really come upon the young man, actual, forgetful of all but him.

There is no question, if the word of those be true who had relation however slight or intimate with Brooke, that he was an engrossing theme, and for more than one greater than himself, as certainly he was for many much less significant than James. It is distinguished from the young poet's point of view that he was impressed, and that as person to person he really did see him in a convincing manner, as might one artist of great repute find himself uncommonly affected by the young and so living poet with more than a common gift for creation. It seems to me however that James is not over certain as to how poetic all things are in substance, yet all the while treating Brooke coolly and spaciously as an artist should.

I did not know Brooke, and I know nothing of him beyond various photos showing him one way, quite manly and robust, and I feel sure he was so, and in another way as neither youth nor man, but something idyllic, separate and seraph-like, untouched mostly with earthly experience. These pictures do show that he was, unquestionably, a bright gust of England, with an almost audible splendour about even these poor replicas, which make it seem that he did perform the ascribed miracle, that England really had brought forth of her brightest and best, only to lay away her golden fruitage in dust upon the borders of a far and classical sea, with an acute untimeliness. But respectfully let me say, I think much in these hours of the incongruity and pathos of excessive celebration. There shall not be for long, singers enough to sing high songs commensurate with the delights of those numberless ones "who lived, and sang, and had a beating heart", those who have sped into the twilight too soon, having but a brief time to discover if years had bright secrets for them or clear perspective. There shall always lack the requisite word for them who have made many a dull morning splendid with faith, they who have been the human indication immeasurably of the sun's rising, and of the truth that vision is a thing of reason.

Of Brooke and the other dead poets as well, there has, it seems to me, been too much of celebration. But of Brooke and his poetry, which is a far superior product to these really most ordinary "Letters", there is in these poetic pieces too much of what I want to call "University Cleavage", an excess of old school painting, too much usage of the warm image, which, though emotional, is not sensuous enough to express the real poetic sensuousness, to make the line or the word burn passionately, too much of the shades of Swinburne still upon the horizon. Rose and violet of the eighteen ninety hues have for long been dispensed with, as has the pierrot and his moon. We have in this time come to like hardier colourings, which are for us more satisfying, and more poetic. We hardly dare use the hot words of "Anactoria" in our day. To be sure rose is English, for it has been for long a very predominant shade on the young face of England, but in Brooke there is an old age to the fervour, and in spite of the brilliant youth of the poet, there is an old age in the substance and really in the treatment as well. We are wanting a fresher intonation to those images, and expect a new approach, and a newer aspect. It is not to adhere by means of criticism to the prevailing graveyard tendency, nor do we want so much of the easy and cheap journalistic element, as comes so often in the so named "free verse". What is really wanted is an individual consistency, and a brightness of imagery which shall be the poet's own by reason of his own personal attachment, and not simply the variance of the many-in-one poetry of the day.

It is not enough to write passably, it is only enough when there are several, or even one, who will give their or his own peculiar contact with those agencies of the day, the hour, and the moment, who will find or invent a style best suited to themselves. Attempts at excessive individualism will never create true individualistic expression, no affected surprise in personal perversity of image or metaphor will make a real poet, or real poetry. There must be first and last of all, a sure ardour, the poet's very own, which will of itself support obvious, or even slightly detectable, influences. It is not enough to declaim oneself, or propose continually one's group. The single utterance is what is necessary, a real freshness of vocalization which is, so to speak, the singer's own throat. If he be original in his freshness, we shall be able to single him away from the sweeping movements of the hour by his very "specialness" in touch, that pressure of the mind and spirit upon the page, which is his.

We shall translate a poet through his indications and intentions as well as through his arrivals, and we must condemn no one to fame beyond his capacity or deserts. We have never the need of extravagant laud. It is not enough to praise a poet for his personal charm, his beauty of body and of mind and soul, for these are but beautiful things at home in a beautiful house. In the case of Brooke, we have ringing up among hosts of others, James's voice that he was all of this, but I would not wish to think it was the wish of any real poet to be "condemned to sociability", merely because he was an eminently social being, or because he was the exceptionally handsome, among the many less so; or be condemned to overpraise for what is after all but an indication to poetic power. "If I should die", is of course a very lovely sonnet, and it is the true indication of what Brooke might have been, but it is not the reason to be doomed to find all things wonderful in him. For in the state of perfection, if one see always with a lancet eye, we really do accentuate the essence of beauty by a careful and very direct critical sense, which can and should, when honorably exercised, show up delicately, the sense of proportion.

It is as much a part of the artist's equipment to find fault as it is to praise, for he wants by nature the true value with which he may relate himself to the sense of beauty. It seems, perhaps only to me, that in Brooke's poems there is but a vigorous indication to poetic expression, whereas doubtless the man himself was being excessively poetic, hour and moment together, and spent much energy of mind and body poetizing sensation. For me, there is a journalistic quality of phrasing and only very rarely the unusual image. As for the "Letters", they are loose and jotty in form, without distinction either in observation or in form, without real felicity or uniqueness. Art is nothing if it is not the object, or the idea, or experience seen in review, with clarity. In Brooke, I feel the superabundance of joy in the attractiveness of the world, but I do not feel the language of him commensurate or distinguished in the qualities of poetic or literary art. There seems to me to be too much of the blown lock and the wistful glance, too much of the attitudinized poet, lacking, I may even say, in true refinement, often.

A too comfortable poet, and poetry of too much verve without incision, too much "gesturing", which is an easy thing for many talented people, and there is also missing for me the real grip of amazement. You will not find anything in the letters that could not have been done by the cub reporter, save possibly in the more charming of the letters with reference to swimming in the South Seas. Here you feel Brooke at home instantly, and the picturing is natural and easy. But other than this, you will find no phrasing to compare with passages of James's preface, such, for instance, as the "sky-clamour of more dollars", surely a vastly more incisive phrase regarding the frenzies of New York, than all that Brooke essays to tell of it. Brooke is distinctly "not there" too often in these so irregular letters of his. Letters are notably rare in these times anyhow, and so it is with the letters of Brooke. We look for distinction, and it is not to be found, they have but little of the intimacy with their subjects that one expects.

As to his poetry, it seems to be a poetry rapidly approaching state approval, there is in it the flavour of the budding laureate, it seems to me to be poetry already "in orders". Brooke was certainly in danger of becoming a good poet, like the several other poets who perished in the throes of heroism. Like them, he would, had he lived, have had to save himself from the evils of prosperity, poetically speaking. He would have had to overcome his tendency toward what I want to call the old-fashioned "gold and velvet" of his words, a very definite haze hanging over them of the ill effect of the eighteen-ninety school, which produced a little excellent poetry and a lot of very tame production. Poetry is like all art, difficult even in its freest interval. Brooke must rest his claim to early distinction perhaps upon the "If I should die" sonnet alone, he would certainly have had to come up considerably, to have held the place his too numerous personal admirers were wont to thrust upon him. Unless one be the veritable genius, sudden laurels wither on the stem with too much of morning.

This poet had no chance to prove what poetry of his would have endured the long day, and most of all he needed to be removed from too much love of everything. The best art cannot endure such promiscuity, not an art of specific individual worth. In the book which is called "Letters from America", the attraction lies in its preface, despite the so noticeable irrelevancy of style. It seems to me that James might for once have condescended to an equal footing with his theme, for the sake of the devoutness of his intention, and have come to us for the moment, the man talking of the youth. He might then have told us something really intimate of "Rupert", as he so frequently names him, for this would indicate some intimacy surely, unless perchance he was "Rupert" to the innumerables whom he met, and who were sure of his intimacy on the instant's introduction, which would indeed be "condemned to sociability".

This book is in two pieces, preface and content, and we are conscious chiefly of the high style and interest of the preface, first of all, and the discrepancy inherent in the rest of the book accentuating the wide divergence between praiser and praised. It is James with reference to Brooke, it is not Henry James informing of the young and handsome Rupert Brooke. Apollo in the flesh must do some mighty singing. Brooke had not done much of this when they laid him by on the borders of that farther sea. He had more to prove the heritage laid so heavily upon him by the unending host of his admirers and lovers. He needed relief from the popular notion, and we must relieve ourselves from his excessive popularity if we are to enjoy him rightly, by being just with him. A little time, and we should have learned his real distinction. It is too soon for us, and too late for him. We must accept him more for his finer indications then, and less for his achievement in the sense of mastery.

THE DEARTH OF CRITICS

There is just cause for wonder at the noticeable absence of critics in the field of painting, of individuals who are capable of some serious approach to the current tendencies in art. We have witnessed a very general failure to rise above the common or high-class reportorial level in this particular sphere. Why do so many people who write specifically about painting say so little that really relates to it? It is because most of them are journalists or men of letters who have made emotional excursions into this field, which is in most instances foreign to them; well-known literary artists, occasionally, intent upon varying their subject matter.

We read Meier-Graefe, for instance, on the development of modern art, and we find his analogies more or less stimulating, but taken as a whole his work is unsatisfactory from an artist's point of view; not much more than a sort of novel with art for its skeleton, or rather a handbook from which the untutored layman can gather superficial information about group and individual influences, a kind of verbal entertainment that is altogether wanting in true critical values. I have listened to lectures on art by people who were supposed to know about it, merely to see how much this type of critical study could satisfy the really artistic mind somewhat conversant with true relations, and I have found these lectures of but the slightest value, _resumés_ compounded of wearisome and inappropriate detail. There is always an extreme lack of true definition, of true information, there is always too much of the amateur spirit passing for popular knowledge among these individuals who might otherwise do so much to form public taste and appreciation. Thus we find that even the chatty Meier-Graefe stops without going any further than Cézanne. It is possible that after writing two very heavy volumes upon the development of modern art, he has to remain silent on modern art itself, that he really feels he is not qualified to speak upon Cézanne and his successors; or does he assume possibly that there is nothing this side of Cézanne? How many writer people are there who really do understand what has taken place since then?

I have heard these characteristic remarks among the so-called art writers who write the regular notices for the daily journals--"You see I really don't know anything about the subject, but I have to write!" or--"I don't know anything about art, but I am reading up on it as much as possible so that I won't appear too stupid; for they send me out and I have to write something." Their attitude is the same as if their subject were a fire or a murder: but either of the latter would be much more in their line, calling for nothing but a registration of the simplest of facts. Just why these people have to write upon art will never be clear. But because of this altogether trivial relationship to the theme of painting we find it difficult to take seriously at all what we read in our dailies, in every case the barest notation with heavily worded comment, having little or no reference to what is important in the particular pictures themselves. How can anyone take these individuals seriously when they actually have no opinion to offer, and must rely either upon humor or indignation to inspire them?

If we turn to the pundits of criticism we find statements like this of Ruskin on Giotto:--"For all his use of opalescent warm color, Giotto is exactly like Turner, as in his swift expressional power he is like Gainsborough!" Again, speaking of Turner's _Fighting Téméraire_, he says: "Of all pictures of subjects not visibly involving human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted--no ruin was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave." Journalism of the first class certainly, but at the farthest stretch of the imagination how can one possibly think of Gainsborough or Turner in connection with any special quality of Giotto? As for the pathos of an aged ship, that belongs to poetry, as Coleridge has shown; sentiment of this kind has never had any proper place in painting. A far worthier type of appreciation in words is to be found, of course, in Pater's passages on _La Gioconda_ and Botticelli's _Birth of Venus_. But these belong to a different realm, in which literature rises to a height independent of the pictures themselves by means of the suggestion that is in them, the power of suggestion being a finer alternative for crude and worthless description. We shall always dispute with the writer on art as to exactly what symbol is inherent in the presence of a rose in the hand or a tear upon the cheek, but we cannot quarrel when the matter is treated as sublimely as in the case of a literary artist like Pater. It is in the sphere of professed critical judgment that the literary authorities so often go astray.

Thus between the entertaining type of writer like Meier-Graefe and the daily reporter there is no middle ground. The journalist is frank and says that he doesn't know but that he must write; the other writes books that are well suited for reference purposes, but have scant bearing upon the actual truth in relation to pictures. Are there any critics who attempt seriously to approach the modern theme, who find it worth their while to go into modern esthetics with anything like sincerity or real earnestness of attitude? Only two that I am aware of. There is the intelligent Leo Stein, who seldom appears in print, but who makes an art of conversation on the subject; and there is Willard Huntingdon Wright, who has appeared extensively and certainly with intelligence also, both of these critical writers being very much at variance in theory, but both full of discernment whatever one may think of their individual ideas. We are sure of both as being thoroughly inside the subject, this theme of modern art, for they are somehow painter people. I even suspect them both of having once, like George Moore, painted seriously themselves.

Nevertheless there is a hopeful seriousness of interest developing in what is being done this side the sea, a rediscovery of native art of the sort that is occurring in all countries. The artist is being taught by means of war that there is no longer a conventional center of art, that the time-worn fetish of Paris as a necessity in his development has been dispensed with; and this is fortunate for the artist and for art in general. It is having its pronounced effect upon the creative powers of the individual in all countries, almost obliging him to create his own impulse upon his own soil; it is making the artist see that if he is really to create he must create irrespective of all that exists as convention in the mind.

How will this affect the artist? He will learn first of all to be concerned with himself, and what he puts forth of personality and of personal research will receive its character from his strict adherence to this principle, whether he proceeds by means of prevailing theories or by departure from them. The public will thus have no choice but to rely upon what he produces seriously as coming clearly from himself, from his own desire and labor. He will realize that it is not a trick, not a habit, not a trade--this modernity--and that with fashions it has nothing to do; that it is explicitly a part of our modern urge toward expression quite as much as the art of Corot and Millet were of Barbizon, as the art of Titian, Giorgione and Michelangelo were of Italy; that he and his time bear the strictest relationship to one another and that through this relationship he can best build up his own original power. Unable to depend therefore upon the confessedly untutored lay writer or even the better class essayist to tell him his place, he will establish himself, and his place will be determined in the régime of his day by precisely those qualities which he contributes to it. He will not rely too insistently upon idiosyncrasy; the failure of this we have already seen, in the post-impressionists.

The truth is that painters must sooner or later learn to express themselves in terms of pure language, they must learn that creation is the thing most expected of them, and, if possible, invention as well. Oddity in execution or idea is of the least importance. Artists have a more respectable service to perform than this dilettantist notion of beauty implies. Since the utter annihilation of sentimentality, of legend, of what we call poetry has taken place, a richer substance for expression has come to us by means of which the artist may express a larger, newer variety of matter, more relevant to our special need, our modernity.

The war disintegrated the _art habit_ and in this fact lies the hope of art. Fads have lost what slight interest they possessed, the folly of imitation has been exposed. As a result of this, I like to think that we shall have a finer type of expression, a richer kind of personal quality. Every artist is his own maker, his own liberator; he it is that should be the first to criticise, destroy and reconstruct himself, he should find no mood convenient, no attitude comfortable. What the lay-writer says of him in praise or blame will not matter so much in the future; he will respect first and last only those who have found the time to share his theme, at least in mind, if not in experience, and the discerning public will free itself from the temporary influences of the confessedly untutored critic. The artist will gain its confidence by reason of his own sincerity and intelligence. It is probable, too, that in time criticism in the mode of Ruskin will utterly disappear and the Meier-Graefe type of critic will have found a fitter and true successor, someone who, when he calls himself a critic, will prove a fairly clear title to the distinction and will not have to apologize for himself or for his occupation.