Chapter II

Przybyszewski transplants his readers from their ordinary mental environment into those astral regions where metaphysical subtleties are clothed with reality. Life is dealt with not on the surface strata of its expressions but at its base where motives and ideas and emotions have their source. And in spite of this fact, or rather because of the uncanny clairvoyance of its author there is no perversion or befogging of one’s point of view. These nebulous regions are lit up by the ruthless penetration of an artist who is a scientist as well.

One’s first sensations are like seeing for the first time with the naked eye the fan of nerves which spread out from the corona radiata, or touching the single nerve trunks with the dissecting knife. In the same manner the pathological Pole brings you into actual contact with the cargos of these nerves, ideas, emotions, sensations. All the concealing layers of evasions and of equivocations have been dissected away; there lies spread out before you sections of naked consciousness. And so subtle has been the dissecting work that there has been no disarrangement and no death. All is still living, still functioning. And your sensation of strangeness, almost of horror, is born out of revulsion against a self-consciousness so intense as to seem almost morbid. “I feel,” said a friend of mine, “as if I had been vivisected.” Not so much this as that one has been vivisecting. Przybyszewski compels you to co-operate with him in analysing psychological phenomena. At moments you lift your eyes from the page, panting, almost physically exhausted from the effort of concentrating on those tortuous, subtle reactions which occur in the farthest recesses of consciousness and spread upward in waves to the surface, where they often take on curious irrelevant expression.

But that is sheer morbidity, cries your friend the Philistine. It is introspection carried past the point of decency. But to the investigator there is no point past which it is indecent to press. In him there is no affectation of scruple to erect its artificial barricade. He must have transcended all such petty egotism and have depersonalized himself. He is constrained to this by that curiosity which is his master passion, which generates itself and is dynamic in him as hunger or sex are dynamic in the ordinary individual. This curiosity of the artist brooks no bounds, short of the facts against which it brings up abruptly. And so Przybyszewski for all his uncanny subtlety cannot be accused of morbidity since he uses it not to distort but merely to reveal the truth. If he has no false reverence neither has he irreverence. His scalpel, always flashing and leaping, pauses a moment on a state of emotion and, pointing, calls it by name. “For I am I,” says Falk. “I am a criminal diabolic nature.” Or again:

“And so a certain man is suffering from love induced by auto-suggestion. Very well. But at the same time he loves his wife unqualifiedly. And he loves her so much that there can be no doubt of the reality of his love. In a word he loves both the one and the other.”

But such a condition isn’t possible, the Philistine will cry out, wounded at his most vulnerable point, his inflexible principles. “A man can’t love two women at the same time.” This isolated case would undermine the whole monogamistic theory. He sees one of his cherished institutions tottering. And so he takes fright and refutes the fact. “It can’t be, it isn’t possible.” But Przybyszewski continues to stand with the scalpel wearily pointing. “My dear Sir, this is no question of postulates, it’s a question of an individual instance. It _is_ possible, because it occurs. Falk _does_ love two women at the same moment.” And the Philistine will doubtless turn away snorting furiously and unconvinced. “Przybyszewski,” he will sneer, “that degenerate Pole, always half drunk with cognac, a Slav to boot. What does he know of life or reality? They were all neurasthenics. Look at Artzibashev and Andreyev and Dostoevsky. Yes, let us look at them, and remembering Dostoevsky’s epilepsy, remember also Raskolnikov. A criminal’s psychology lifted onto paper out of the limbo regions of consciousness by the mammoth Russian’s bloody pen. Something more than neurasthenia, this gift of analysis.

What, finally, is Homo Sapiens? Who is this writer-fellow, Falk, with no conscience, with his “criminal, diabolic nature?” Does he only exist to analyse himself, and his tortuous, painful psychologizings? Why is he, what is he?—He is the self-conscious man, par excellence. This book is the epic of consciousness. “The thing must be thought out,” says Falk. And nuance by nuance it is thought out, rapidly but faithfully, under your very eyes. You are invited,—no, compelled,—to take part in the operation. Hence your feeling of fatigue. And again, after a page or two, “He examined his own feelings.”

“But why a Falk?” the Philistine demands. “Falk is no average man. He is a genius, and as such his psychology is specialized and distinct. Falk is a neurasthenic, victim of erotomania. Even his lucidity is not to his credit. Since he is a writer it is implicit in him, as muscle is in the circus rider. He is bound to analyse his acts, to trace them back to their motives. Falk presents an isolated case. If one is going to deal with consciousness why not choose a less precocious exponent? Why not the everyday consciousness of the average human being?”

And by the same token, why not a Falk, Mr. Philistine, since we are agreed that this is a drama of consciousness. Of what use is the average man in this extremity? The artist is the Homo Sapiens par excellence, for it is in him that consciousness has reached its most complex differentiation. “I am,” says Falk, “what they call a highly differentiated individual. I have, combined in me, everything—design, ambition, sincerity of knowledge and ignorance, falsehood and truth. A thousand heavens, a thousand worlds are in me.” And recognizing this fact he wrestles with it through some four hundred odd pages. That Falk loved two women, or ten women, is not only possible, but probably inevitable. What in the average man is a temperate reaching out for a few specific joys becomes in a Falk the impulse of his whole being for self-expression. It bursts out along a thousand channels, requiring as many outward aspects as there are sources in his personality. And it is this devious stream of a human consciousness that we are following outward to its expression in words or acts, and backward to its source, as we dissect with Przybyszewski Falk’s mental protoplasm.

“Futile,” sneers the Philistine, “utterly futile. If that is a Homo Sapiens, give me a subman. Your Falk knew no happiness and he gave none. He only strewed suffering in his wake both for himself and others. He was without scruples and without conscience. Where did he get to with all his differentiation? He wrote a few books, to be sure, but what were they in the scale of the women he ruined, the men he did to death? Even of his own misery? His gift of introspection was a sharp knife turned against himself, since he cried out in the end: ‘to be chemically purified of all thoughts.’ Homo Sapiens indeed!”

You can see Przybyszewski wearily twisting the scalpel in his nerveless hands, you can see the smile that twists his lips just before they curve about the waiting cognac glass. “No, he was not happy, it is true he did strew misery in his wake. He was neurasthenic and degenerate and criminal. He was all these things and all the other things which you have forgotten or never perceived. For he was Homo Sapiens. And such as he is I have drawn him. Ha, ha—Vive l’Humanité!”

The Spring Recital

THEODORE DREISER

SCENE:

A prosperous First Church in the heart of a great city. Outside the
city’s principle avenue, along which busses and vehicles of all
descriptions are rolling. Surrounding the church a graveyard,
heavily shaded with trees, the branches of which reach to the
open windows bearing soft odours. Over the graves many full blown
blossoms, and in the sky a full May moon. An idling sense of
spring in the gait and gestures of the pedestrians. In front of
the church hangs a small lighted cross, and under it swings the sign
“Organ Recital, 8:30, Wilmuth Tabor, Organist.” The doors giving
into the church are open. The interior, save for the presence of
a caretaker in a chair, is empty. On either side of the pulpit,
below a great dark rose window, burns a partially lighted
electrolier. In the organ loft, over the street doors, a single
light.

FIRST STREET BOY (to his companion, ambling to discover what the world contains, and glancing in as they pass). Gee! Who’d wanta go to church on a night like this?

SECOND STREET BOY. I should say! Didjah see the old guy with the whiskers sitten’ inside?

FIRST STREET BOY. Sure. A swell job, eh? (Their attention is attracted by an automobile spinning in the opposite direction, and they pass on).

AN OLD LADY (to her middle-aged daughter, on whose arm she is leaning ... sympathetically and reminiscently). The dear old First Church! What a pity its parishioners have all moved away. I don’t suppose the younger generation cares much for church going anymore. People are so irreligious these days.

THE DAUGHTER. Poor Mr. Tabor. I went to one of his concerts in the winter and there were scarcely forty people there. And he plays so heavenly, too. I don’t suppose the average person cares much for organ music.

(They pass with but a glance at the interior.)

A BELATED SHOE CLERK (hurrying to reach Hagan’s Olio Moving Picture and Vaudeville Theatre before the curtain rises, but conscious that he ought to pay some attention to the higher phases of culture, turning to the old door-keeper). When does this concert begin?

THE OLD DOOR-KEEPER (heavily). Half past eight. (He glances at the sign hanging over the youth’s head.)

THE BELATED SHOE CLERK. Do they have them every Wednesday night?

THE OLD DOOR-KEEPER. Every Wednesday. (The Clerk departs, and the old man scratches his head.) They often ask, but they don’t come in. (He shifts to a more comfortable position in his chair.) I see no use to playin’ to five or six people week in and week out all summer long. Still, if they want to do it they have the money. It looks like a good waste of light to me.

(Mrs. Pence and Mrs. Stillwater, two neighbors of the immediate vicinity, enter the church door.)

MRS. PENCE (a heavy pasty faced woman in white lawn, lowering her voice to a religious whisper as they enter). Yes, I like to come here now and then. I don’t know much about music but the organ is so soothing. We had a parlor organ when I was a little girl and I learned to play on that.

MRS. STILLWATER (short, blonde, and of a romantic turn, but with three grown sons). I just think the organ is the loveliest of all instruments. It’s so rich and deep. Isn’t it dim here? So romantic! I love an old church. (They seat themselves in a pew.) I don’t suppose people want much light when they hear music. See the moonlight in that window over there, isn’t it lovely?

(A pair of lovers enter.)

THE BOY. I’ve heard of him. He’s a well-known organist. I love Grieg. I wish he would play the Nocturne in G Minor.

THE GIRL. Oh yes, or Solveig’s Lied. Isn’t it dim here.

(They enter a pew in the most remote corner. She squeezes his hand and he returns the pressure.)

THE ORGANIST (a pessimistic musician of fifty, entering and climbing slowly to the organ loft. As he does so he surveys the empty auditorium gloomily.) Only four people! (He turns on the bracket lights, uncovers the keys, and adjusts the sheets of his programme before him. Surveying himself in the mirror, and then examining the opening bars of The Toccata and Fugue in D by Bach, he pulls out various stops and looks into the dim, empty auditorium once more.) What a night! And me playing in this dim, empty church. It’s bad enough to be getting along in years and have no particular following, but this church! All society and wealth away to the sea shore and the mountains and me here. Ah, well (he sighs). Worse and worse times still succeed the former. (He sounds a faint tremolo to test the air pressure. Finding all satisfactory, and noting the hour by his watch, which stands at eight-thirty, he begins the Overture to “The Magic Flute,” this being a purely secular programme).

(Enter through a north window, open even with the floor of the organ loft, a horned fawn, with gay white teeth grimacing as he comes, begins_ _pirouetting. He carries a kex on which he attempts to imitate the lovely piping of the overture).

THE FAWN (prancing lightly here and there). Tra aa ala-lala! Ah, tra-la-la, Ah, tra-la-la! Tra-la-leee! Tra-la-leee! Very excellent! Very nice! (He grins from ear to ear and espying the church cat, a huge yellow tom who is mousing about, gives a spirited kick in its direction). Dancing’s the thing! Life is better than death, thin shade that I am!

THE CAT (arching his back and raising his fur). Pfhs-s-st! Pfhs-s-st!

(The fawn pirouettes nearer, indicating a desire to dance with it, whereupon the cat retreats into a corner under the organ).

THE FAWN. Ky-ey-ey! You silly dolt! (Kicks and spins away).

THE ORGANIST (noticing the spit-fire attitude of the cat). He seems to see something. What the deuce has got into him, now? I wonder whether cats do see anything when they act like that. (He drifts into a frail dance harmony, yielding to the seduction of it and closing his eyes).

THE BOY LOVER. Wonderful! So delicately gay and sad! It’s just like flowers blooming in the night, isn’t it? (His sweetheart squeezes his hand and moves closer).

SIX HAMA-DRYADS (sweeping in from the trees and circling about, wreath-wise under the groined arches of the ceiling. They are a pale, ethereal company, suiting their movements to the melody and its variations).

Arch of church or arch of trees,
Built of stone or built of air,
Spirits floating on a breeze,
Dancing gayly anywhere.

Out of lilac, out of oak,
Hard by asphodel and rose,
Never time when music spoke
But a dryad fled repose.

Weaving, turning, high and low
Where the purpled rhythms fall,
Where the plangent pipings call,
Round and round and round we go.

THE FAWN (dancing forward and about them). I can dance! Let me dance! (He grins in the face of one).

THE HAMA-DRYADS. Go away! Don’t bother!

THE CAT (prowling under the organ). I saw a mouse peeping out of that hole just now. Wait! (He crouches very low, ready to spring).

THE ORGANIST (dreamily). This passage always makes me think of moonlight on open fields and the spicy damp breath of a dark dewy wood, and of lilacs blowing over a wall, too. So suitable, but I would rather live than play. (He sighs. A gloomy ghost with sharp green eyes enters from the sacristy, and pauses in the dark angle of the wall).

THE GHOST (a barrel house bum a dozen years dead, and still enamored of the earth). What’s doing here, I wonder? (He stares). A lot of fools dancing. (Turns and departs).

THE GIRL. Oh Sweetheart, isn’t it perfect. (She lays her head on his shoulder).

THE BOY. Darling!

THE CAT (springing). There! I almost caught him. (Peers into the hole). Just the same, I know where he is now. (He strolls off with an air of undefeated indifference).

THE ORGANIST (missing a note). This finale isn’t so easy. And I don’t like it as well, either. I always stumble in the allegro. (He wipes his brow, improvises a few bars, interpolating also a small portion of the triumphal march from “Aida”). This is different. I can do it better. (He begins upon the Grail motif from “Parsifal”).

MRS. STILLWATER (shifting her arm and moving her knee). I never like loud music as well as the softer kind. That middle part was beautiful.

MRS. PENCE. Well, I can’t say I like loud music, either, but now this—

(The Hama-dryads cease dancing and drift out of the window, followed
by the fawn. An English minister, once of St. Giles, Circenster, who
died in 1631, a monk of the Thebaid, A. D. 300, and three priests of
Isis, B. C. 2840, enter, each independently of the others. On
detecting the odour of reverence they visualize themselves to
themselves as servitors of their respective earthly religions—the
Egyptians in their winged hoods, the monk of the Thebaid in his
high pointed cowl, the Rector of St. Giles in his broad-brimmed
hat with the high conical crown, knee-length coat, and heavy,
silver-buttoned shoes.)

THE MINISTER (to himself). An unhappy costume, yet it is all that identifies me with my former earthly self, or with life. (He notes the Egyptians and the monk, but pays no attention to them for the moment).

FIRST PRIEST OF ISIS (to his brothers). A house of worship. How the awe of man persists. I thought I detected the rhythm of melody here.

SECOND PRIEST (tall and severely garbed, yet in the rich colors of his order). And I. It is melody. I feel the waves.

THIRD PRIEST (signing in the direction of the organist). There is the musician. He is arranging something. And here is a very present reminder of one of our earthly stupidities. We worshiped the forerunner of that in our day. (He motions to the church cat who strolls by with great dignity. They smile).

THE CAT (surveying them with indifferent eyes). At least I am alive.

FIRST PRIEST (a master of astrology). Small comfort. You will be dead within the year. I see the rock that ends you. Then no more airs for you.

THE MONK OF THE THEBAID (to himself). This is a religious edifice—heavily material and of small pomp—christian, possibly. That spirit yonder (he surveys the minister of St. Giles) was also a priest of sorts, I take it, and these three Egyptians—how they strut! They give themselves airs because of the thin memory of them and of their rites that endures in the world.

THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (surveying the monk). A sombre flagellant. I wonder has he outgrown his earthly illusion. (He approaches). Brother, do I not meet an emancipated spirit?

THE MONK. You do. Centuries of observation have taught me what earthly search could not. I smile at the folly of this. (He waves an inclusive hand about him).

THE MINISTER. And I, I also—though I was of stern faith in my day, and of this very creed—even now I suspect some discoverable power worthy of worship. My mere persistence causes me to wonder though it does not explain itself.

THE MONK. Nor does mine to me, nor the persistence of their seeming reality to them. (He points through the transparent walls of the church to where outside moving streams of shadows—automobiles, belated wagons, and pedestrians are to be seen—and to the lovers). Yet there is no answer. They have their faith, futile as it is. A greater darkness has fallen on you and me. Endless persistence for us if we must, let us say, but merging at last into what?

THE MINISTER. And when I died I imagined I should meet my maker face to face.

THE MONK (smiling). And I the same. And they,—(he nods toward the Egyptians),—their gods were as real to them,—shadows all, of the unknowable.

THE ORGANIST (plunging into the sub-theme which speedily dies off into unfathomable mysteries of dark notes and tones). I wonder if I’m boring them by this heavy stuff. Still what do I care. There are only four. (Nevertheless he fuses the Grail motif to the dance of the flower maidens).

THE BOY. Isn’t it lovely!

THE GIRL. Perfect!

THE ORGANIST. Lovely and very difficult. These pedals are working rather stiffly,—and that automobile has to honk just now. (He fingers lightly three notes of a major key indicative of woodland echoes and faint bird notes. Re-enter the barrel house bum who is seeking anything that will amuse him).

THE BUM. Still playing! And there are those two old stuffs of women. Not an idea between ’em. (He turns to go but catches sight of_ _the monk and the Egyptians. Pauses, and then turns back).

THE MONK. Soothing harmonies these! More strange combinations, the reason for which we cannot guess, the joy and beauty of which we know. I find earthly harmonies very grateful. But then, why?

(He and the priest forget their quondam materiality for a moment and disappear from sight; recovering themselves as shadows only by thinking).

THE BUM (staring interrogatively and irritatingly at the monk and the Egyptians, who, however, pay not the slightest attention to him). You thought you knew somepin’ when you were alive, didn’jah? You thought you were smart, huh? You thought you’d find out somepin’ when yuh died, huh? Well, yuh got fooled didn’jah? You’re like all the other stuffs that walk about and think they know a lot. Yuh got left. Har! Har! Har! (He chortles vibrantly). I know as much as you fellers, and I’ve only been dead a dozen years. There aint no answer! Har! Har! Har! There aint no answer! An’ here you are floatin’ aroun’ in them things! (He indicates their dress). Oh, ho, ho ho! (He grins maliciously and executes a crude clog step).

THE MONK (repugnantly and pulling his cowl aside). Away, vile creature—unregenerate soul! Has even the nothingness of materiality taught you nothing?

THE BUM (straightening up and leering). Who’s vile? What’s vile? (He thinks to become obstreperous but recalling his nothingness grins contemptuously). You think you’re still a monk, don’cha? You think you’re good—better’n anybody else. Whatcha got to be good about? Oh ho, ho, ho, ho! Ah har, har, har, har! He thinks he’s still a monk—

FIRST EGYPTIAN (to the monk sympathetically). Come away, friend. Leave him to his illusions.

SECOND EGYPTIAN. Time alone can point out the folly of his mood.

THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (drawing near and scowling at the Bum). Out, sot.

THE BUM (defiantly and yet indifferently). Who’s a sot? An’ where’s out? Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho!

THE ORGANIST (passing into the finale). And this is even more beautiful. It suggests graves and shrines—and fawns dancing. But I don’t propose to play long for four people.

(A troup of fawns and nymphs dance in, pursuing and eluding each
other. The six Hama-dryads return, weaving and turning in diaphanous
line. A passing cloud of hags and wastrels, the worst of the earth
lovers, enticed by the gaiety of sound, enter and fill the arches
and the vacant spaces for the moment, skipping about in wild
hilarity. The Bum joins them, dancing deliriously. Persistances
of fish and birds and animals, attracted by the rhythm which is
both colour and harmony to them, turn and weave among the others.
Ancient and new dead of every clime, enamored of the earth life
and wandering idly, enter. A tired pedestrian of forty, an
architect, strolling for the air and hearing the melody, enters.
After him come spirits of the streets—a doctor and two artisans,
newly dead, wondering at the sound).

THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (noting the flood of hags and wastrels). And these are horrible presences! Succubi! Will they never get enough of materiality?

THE MONK. In my day the Thebaid was alive with them—the scum of Rome and Alexandria, annoying us holy men at our devotions.

THE MINISTER. Do you still identify yourself with earthly beliefs?

THE MONK. A phase! A phase! In the presence and thought of materiality I seem to partake of it.

THE FIRST EGYPTIAN. And I! A sound observation!

THE THIRD EGYPTIAN. The lure of life! It has never lost its charm for me.

THE MINISTER (to himself). Nor for me.

THE FAWN (cavorting near, his kex to his lips, piping vigorously). Heavy dolts! Little they know of joy except to stare at it.

THE MINISTER (indicating the fawn). And this animal—to profane a temple!

THE MONK (mischievously). And do you still cling to earthly notions of sanctity?

THE MINISTER. I hold as I have said, that there must be some power that explains us.

THE TWELVE HAMA-DRYADS (dancing and singing):

Round and round a dozen times,
Three times up and three times down,
Catch a shadow circlewise,
Fill it full of thistledown.

Fill it up and then away—
How can stupid mortals know
All the gladness of our play—
Where the dew wet odours blow,
Round and round and round we go!

THE BUM (spinning near). This is glorious! Gee!

FIRST EGYPTIAN (unconscious of anything save the charm of the rhythm). Sweet vibrations these. But not our ancient harmonies. In our time they were different.

SECOND EGYPTIAN. Our day! Our day! Endless memories of days. Oh, for an hour of sealed illusion!

THE BOY LOVER. Isn’t it perfect!

THE GIRL. Divine! It’s like a dream and I want to cry.

THE THIRD EGYPTIAN. The harmony! The harmony! (He points_ _to the boy and girl. The three approach and stand before the lovers, viewing them with envious eyes). In ancient Egypt—on the banks of the Nile—how keen was this thrill of existence. How much greater is their reality than ours. And all because of their faith in it.

(The minister and the monk approach).

THE ORGANIST (finishing with a flourish). Well, there’s the end of my work tonight. (He closes various stops, begins to gather up his music and turn out the lights. The dryads and nymphs flood out of the windows, followed by the fawns, the hags, and the wastrels. The green-eyed bum starts to go, but pauses, looking back wistfully. The Egyptians, fading from their presence as such, appear only as pale flames of blue).

MRS. STILLWATER. Now that was lovely, wasn’t it?

MRS. PENCE. Charming, very charming!

THE BOY. Don’t you love Wagner?

THE GIRL. I do! I do! (In the shadows they embrace and kiss).

THE ORGANIST (wearily as he bustles down the stairs). Why should I play any more for four people? It is nine o’clock. A half hour is enough. At least I can find a little comfort at the Crystal Garden. (He thinks of an immense beer place, and shrugs his shoulders the while. The old doorman, hearing him go out, prepares to put out the lights).

MRS. STILLWATER (rising). I do believe it’s over.

MRS. PENCE. Well, there are so few you can scarcely blame him.

THE BUM (gloomily). Now I gotta find somepin’ else.

THE CHURCH CAT (prowling toward the organ loft in the dark of the closed church). Now for one more try at that mouse.

FINIS.

Editorials and Announcement

_Powys at the Hebrew Institute_

On page 43 there is announcement of a series of lectures by John Cowper Powys. I can hear him now on the philosophical basis of democracy: “My dear friends, the philosophical basis of democracy is individualism”! As to the Nietzsche and Dostoevsky lecture, you may count upon it being one of the memorable occasions of your life.

_The Foreigner in America_

Mary Antin is talking all through the country of the wonderful things America does for the foreigner. These things are not true.

I went the other night to an affair given by a Norwegian woman and her husband before a gathering of Chicago’s representative intellectuals. The woman was Borgny Hammer, an actress of tremendous power from the National Theatre, Christiania. Mme. Hammer plays Ibsen so well that there is not much chance of her playing it very often. On this particular evening she gave some Björnson things and talked with naive fervor of Norway as compared with this commercialized land. Her intensity was so authentic and so beautiful and so moving that it became almost pitiable in that stiff, self-contained room. Mme. Hammer could be playing _Ghosts_ and _Master Builder_ and _Beyond Human Power_, could be giving nightly inspiration to thousands of unimaginative Americans if America was able to offer the foreigner one tenth of what the foreigner brings to America.

Not long ago the Hebrew Institute of Chicago refused its platform to Alexander Berkman who was to speak there on the Schmidt and Caplan case. Some one who sympathized with the action of the directors explained to me that it was a wise move on their part because the foreigners, especially the Russian Jews, are so easily inflamed. Thank heaven they are! If only something could be done to inflame the American. Well—there is always the flag....

_The Russian Class_

The group for the study of Russian literature will have a preliminary meeting in room 612 Fine Arts Building on Friday, January 14, 1916, at 8 p. m. All interested are invited.

The Illusions of “The Art Student”

There has made its appearance in this city of ours a new magazine, _The Art Student_. Its desire, according to the editor’s announcement, is to “help establish a bond of understanding between the American student of the allied arts and the public.”

This aim is commendable and deserves the co-operation of everybody unselfishly interested in the promotion of American art.

The reason for this publication at the present time is also given in that announcement. It says there: “With all Europe at war and its art centers crippled, it is not only America’s opportunity, but her duty, to preserve and promote art in its various forms.”

I am afraid the youthful enthusiasm of _The Art Student_ is the cause both of this exaggeration as concerns Europe and the illusion as concerns America.

We have heard much and read more about America’s opportunity these last fourteen months. First it was the trade fields deserted by the warring nations in South America and the Orient; then it was the sea routes closed to the second biggest merchant fleet of the world—the opportunity for an American merchant marine; and now it is our opportunity in the field of Art!

What has become of the first illusions of which our papers and magazines were full? England expanded her commerce in South America, having forced for the time being her German rival from that field of hottest competition, and Japan practically monopolized the commerce of China. England increases her merchant fleet by capering American ships, and the Pacific Mail retires voluntarily from the Pacific ocean.

That is the result of our boasted opportunity in the realm of trade and commerce. Why? Because we underestimated others and because we talked about our own foreign methods instead of changing our own and acting.

And now in Art we are doing exactly the same thing. We point with horror to the war that cripples European art and acclaim loudly the superiority of our civilization.

Gentlemen, you are all wrong. Art is not crippled in Europe through the war! Inter arma silent musae! The arts are silent, they sleep. Silence and sleep we all understand are good things. The first helps us to concentrate and find ourselves, the latter gives us new strength.

And that is the worst that the war does to Art in Europe. Art is at present less active, a self-imposed inactivity, owing to circumstances; not crippled, a result of direct unartistic influences.

European Art is free of such crippling influences. Art schools are not run by local millionaires, galleries not governed by rich manufacturers, academy instructors not selected by wealthy trustees with the sole idea that their insignificance will insure submittance to the layman rule!

Is Sir Thomas Lipton president of the Royal Academy? No! Is Herr von Krupp president of the Duesseldorf Academy? No! Do they make bankers and brewers directors and trustees of art institutions in Paris or Munich? No! Do they in St. Petersburg or Vienna? No! Do they in Berlin or Rome? No! Do they in Brussels or Madrid? No!

_Do they in America? Yes!_

Do they in England, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, or Australia invite their best painters and sculptors to teach in their academies? Yes! _Do they in America? No!_ Do they in England, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, or Austria select these teachers from mediocrities who will be sure not to revolt against the incompetent decisions of a layman board of trustees? They don’t!

_Do they in America? They do!_

What is “city beautiful” in Europe? It is a fact! _What is it in America? It is a “slogan.”_

No, gentlemen, you need not be worried about European Art! War is not inartistic. Money is! A general staff in war time can destroy what art has created! Our system of millionaire trustees is preventing Art from creating!

War in Europe can kill artists, it cannot kill art.

In America we kill art and our artists escape to Europe.

—_Garnerin._

The Theatre

“Grotesques”

Cloyd Head—Maurice Browne: comparatively misty names, far below the golden monolith at whose base is carefully engraved the word—Granville Barker. Mr. Barker resurrects Greek tragedies and Shakespeare plays and produces them acceptably; Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne have evolved an absolutely new stage method and draped it about a poetic concept. Therefore Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne will probably be heralded and worshipped ten years from now, at the earliest. They must pay the penalty of originality and the ability of appreciating it.

In _Grotesques_ recently produced at the Chicago Little Theatre, for the first time, actors posed as black and white marionettes in a series of decorations created by Fate, masquerading as a sardonic artist. The idea of Fate moving human beings together as one shuffles a pack of cards is old. But the portraying of this shuffling through conventional decorations with the actors giving the jerking semblance of puppets, and with Fate personified, directly addressing the audience, is sparklingly new. Capulchard, the artist, has made a decoration symbolizing the background of life—an utterly simple picture composed of a conventionalized black and white wave effect, a black sky, a round white moon, stiff white trees, an owl on one of their branches, and a lotus-flower. From his marionette boxes at both sides of the decoration he drags forth his puppets—man motif, woman motif, crone motif, sprite motif, girl motif, and carelessly waves them into various poses, the main incidents of their lives. But they gradually become aware of him, they begin to speak out of their lines, to burst into tiny rebellions which he controls with difficulty. They show increasing determination to mar his series of decorations. Finally in a moment of sublime defiance, headed by the man-motif, they slash their strings. The result—Death. Capulchard carelessly erases the decoration—it has served its purpose.

I shall probably fully drain _Grotesques_ after slowly reading it again and again. But even now, Cloyd Head’s huge child whose face is like the pointed petals of sun-flowers, has aroused a little cluster of reactions within me. To sharply visualise the play, you need not see the actual black and white of the decoration, and the über-marionettes who move stiffly through it. The words of the play themselves are black and white: you feel them as an inextricable part of the picture: there is something in their staccato rising and falling that suggests light and darkness evenly spread upon a canvass. Something in the even placing and sounding of phrases like this:

Who am I that come,
Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?
A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.
I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.

It is not easily explained. It is a feeling that can only come to one after repeated reading of the play.

A second reaction comes to one while loitering with the images in their jerking procession. Each image, with its absolute minimum of words, has two clear virtues—the expression of emotion half-human and half artificial, and the concentration of just enough of this emotion to produce an illusion of the whole. Consider this speech of the sprite motif:

Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite
enters—oh, ho!
Dance, crinkled stream!
Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.
(_Blows_) ... Begone.
(_Reflectively_) It is night.
(_Bowing_) Madame Owl.
Hoot! To-whoo!

An actual sprite-soul in life would babble, would use more extravagant phrasing. In this sprite passage, just enough of the babbling and exuberance has been given, to suggest the essence of it; just enough words have been given, to suggest the steady motion of the invisible strings. These qualities run throughout the speeches of all the über-marionettes.

Book Discussion

_Plays for Small Stages, by Mary Aldis. New York: Duffield and
Company._

These plays are among those acted by the Lake Forest Players, and, written especially for them, they exemplify certain qualities of drama and stage-craft which are of special value in amateur production. First of all they are real in situation. Two of the five, _Mrs. Pat and the Law_ and _Extreme Unction_, deal with slum life, but with phases of it which the amateur can study at first hand, and is, indeed, the better for studying. The juxtaposition in both types of the submerged tenth and the reachers of helping hands suggests that the plays have in fact, grown out of such study. The former sketch is done with a brilliancy of Irish humor and fancy that reminds the reader of Lady Gregory’s best. The latter is the grim tragedy of a dying prostitute—a situation relieved first by the mordant irony of the conventional religious pouncet-box of the well-meaning lady visitor, and later by the sympathetic imagination of the physician. A third play, _The Drama Class_, presents with broad humor an occasion familiar to all uplifters of the drama in regions which on the “culture map” are lightly shaded—the discussion of a modern European play by a woman’s club. _The Letter_ and _Temperament_ represent the maladjustments of monogamy—the one with tragic emphasis, the other in pure farce. The point should be noted, however, that all five are plays of situation, static rather than dynamic, expository and revealing rather than developing—the type most suited to the dimensions of the one-act play, and made familiar by the playwrights of the Abbey and Manchester Theatres. As Mrs. Aldis says in her preface, speaking of the general policy of the Lake Forest Players: “In selecting plays we have departed radically from the amateur tradition of resuscitating ‘plays with a punch,’ which have fared well in the hands of professionals. In the established tricks of the trade, of course the amateur cannot compete with the professional.” In writing as well as in selecting plays for amateur performance Mrs. Aldis has wisely preferred truth of situation to the “punch.”

In the second place Mrs. Aldis has made her characters speak the language of life rather than that of the stage. This trait again fits her plays for amateur production, especially in a small theatre where effects can be gained without the emphasis of stage talk. Working as she says for a small stage Mrs. Aldis has been able to reproduce with striking fidelity not only the vocabulary but the movement, the rhythm, even the intonations of human speech. This kind of naturalism is of great importance in the drama of situation. The words in which Mrs. Aldis calls attention to this connection, and to the possibilities of artistic success in amateur acting depending thereon might have occurred in Maeterlinck’s essay _The Drama in Daily Life_. “We seek,” she says, “plays in which the mental attitude and the interplay of character are more important than the physical action. Here, if anywhere, lies the amateur’s opportunity. So we are not afraid of plays with little action and much talk.... It is in talk, low and intense, gay and railing, bitter and despairing as the case may be, that we moderns carry on the drama of life, the foundation of the drama of the stage.”

—_Robert M. Lovett._

_The State Forbids: A Play in One Act, by Sada Cowan. New York:
Mitchell Kennerley._

The mother speaks: “The State won’t let us women help ourselves. We _must_ have children whether we want them or not, and then the State comes and takes them from us. It doesn’t ask. It commands. We’ve got to give them up. [_Shrilly_] I’ve got to give my boy. [_Again shrilly_] What are we, we women? Just cattle. Breeding animals ... without a voice! Dumb—powerless! Oh, the State! The State commands! and the State forbids! Damn the State!”

It is to appear in vaudeville. Like _War-Brides_ it is woman propaganda; but here the emphasis is on Birth Control. Like _War-Brides_ it is negative as literature, but the woman speeches make smashing vaudeville. We wonder whether it is the importance of its idea or its evident value as a thriller and shocker which prompts its production.

The Reader Critic

_Ben Hecht, Chicago_:

I congratulate you on the roseate misconceptions of “Life Itself.” Long live your fancies—mine didn’t. The perfumes of Araby are short-lived in a slop-jar.

I envy you your dogmatic naïveté until I remember something I thought of long ago:—that ideals are for the weak; that people who live on fancies starve for lack of sorrow, shrivel for lack of cynicism, and finally die of inhibition.

I remember, in a discussion on art the other evening, your crying out about “the eternal standard” and I feeling it was true but not knowing what it meant. I know now. It meant nothing. It is just another fancy.

Vive la divinité!

Remember what Homo Sapiens discovered: the limitations of the infinite—of his brain. They are as nothing to the limitations of our Gods.

_GOD’S GARDEN—THE WORLD_

(_Yes, this still happens. We get hordes of such letters._)

I feel sure that at heart your idea of freedom is right, but I do not believe that you altogether understand how to carry it out.

To get at the bottom of things—you want to be just a natural, normal human being. You want to live, to grow, to expand like a flower. How then is this most easily accomplished? Simply this, to be what nature or God or the power back of the universe intended for you to be. What then is your place in the universe, and what is your relation to it? You are by God’s grace a woman; then the greatest thing you can do is to be a woman. But what does it mean to be a woman? To love, to create, to protect, to uplift, and to purify. What do these words mean? You can love the out-of-doors, you can love books, music, art, people, all the world, everything your heart desires. All that you love you can create by writing, by making things grow, by building and constructing. You can protect by being a mother to all those weaker than yourself who need your help. You can uplift and purify by inspiring all you meet with goodness and high ideals.

Yes, you say, but how can I be free to do these things when I am hampered and bound by conventionalities and surroundings? No one is bound down who knows that freedom comes from within, not from without. The girl in the factory, the girl in college, the girl in her own home, or the girl out of doors can be just as free as she makes up her mind to be. Freedom is not a matter of clothes or environment.

As to conventionalities—most of them have been formed because time and culture have taught us to have regard for our fellow beings. There is nothing immorally wrong in a man going to the opera in his shirt sleeves but it might not be agreeable to the gentleman seated next to him. Then the psychology of the close relationship between thoughts and actions—free thoughts result in free actions, likewise carelessness in our habits of daily life make careless thinking. I believe in keeping your own individuality above all things if you can back up your ideas by good reasons; but you will find that there is a reason for most conventionalities that can’t be overthrown. If we were not an integral part of a whole we could do just as we pleased because no one would be affected and no one would care; but everything we do, every move we make, affects some part of the whole, and that is why we care and why everybody cares.

Stick to your idea of freedom and of being natural, but be careful how you apply it and of its effect on others. Whatever is good and helpful will live and what is not good will die.

Remember, too, that this is America, 1915, not Greece, B. C. 400.

Do not think I mean to be critical for I love you just the same as I love everybody and all things in God’s garden, the world, so much so that I want you to fully understand what it means to be a real woman.

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