Chapter C: A. Z

Fairy-Tale Mysticism

_Jerusalem, a Novel by Selma Lagerlöf_ (_Doubleday, Page & Co., New
York_).

Those Scandinavians! 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.

_Jerusalem_ is not a novel, not according to the terminology accepted _heretofore_. For—may I reveal a secret _en 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 is _not_ a 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 Critic

_UNWORTHY!_

_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 for _the 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 brim_
And straight there was a path of gold for him
_And a world of souls for me_.