Literature in the Making Part 6

"There always have been aberrations," he said, "and there always will be. They're bound to exist. And there is bound to be, from time to time, att.i.tudinizing and straining after effect on the part of prose writers as well as poets. And it is all based on one thing--self-consciousness.

It is self-consciousness that spoils the work of some modern writers."

I asked Mr. Chambers to be more specific in his allusions. "I cannot mention names," he said, "but there are certain writers who are always conscious of the style in which they are writing. Sometimes they consciously write in the style of some other men. They are thinking all the while of their technique and equipment, and the result is that their work loses its effect. A writer should not be convinced all the while that he is a realist or a romanticist; he should not subject himself deliberately to some special school of writing, and certainly he should not be conscious of his own style. The less a writer thinks of his technique the sooner he arrives at self-expression.

"It's just like ordinary conversation. A man is known by the way in which he talks--that is his 'style.' But he is not all the while acutely conscious of his manner of talking--unless he has an impediment in his speech. So the writer should be known by his untrammeled and unembarra.s.sed expression."

I asked Mr. Chambers what he thought of the idea that the popularity of magazines has vitiated the public taste and lowered the standard of fiction.

"I do not think that this is the case," he said. "I do not see that the custom of serial publication has harmed the novel. It is not a modern innovation, you know. The novels of d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, and George Eliot had serial publication. But I do believe that the American public reads less fiction than it did a generation ago, and that its taste is not so good as it was."

This was a surprising statement to come from an author whom the public has received with such enthusiasm, so I asked Mr. Chambers to explain.

"In the days of our forefathers," he said, "this was an Anglo-Saxon country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the country was diluted.

"You see signs of this lowered standard of taste in fiction and on the stage. The demand is for primitive and childish stuff, and the reason for this is that the audience has only a sort of backstairs intelligence. If we had progressed along the lines in which we were headed before this wave of immigration, we would not be satisfied with the books and magazines that are given us to-day.

"Of course the magazines are mechanically better to-day than they were a generation ago. Then we had not the photogravure and the half-tone and the other processes that make our magazines beautiful. But we had better taste and also we had more leisure.

"I remember when one of the most widely read of our magazines was a popular science monthly, which printed articles by great scientists on biological and other topics. That was in the days when Darwin was announcing his theory of evolution--the first great jolt which orthodoxy received. People would not take time to read a magazine of that sort now. They are so occupied with business and dancing and all sorts of occupations that they have little leisure for reading."

Mr. Chambers stopped talking suddenly and laughed. "I'm not a good man for you to bring these questions to," he said, "because I never have had any special reverence for books or literature as such. I reverence the books that I like, not all books."

"And have you such a thing as a favorite author?" I asked.

"Yes," said Mr. Chambers. "Dumas."

During the 1870's Mr. Chambers was an art student in Paris, and he has many interesting memories of the French and English writers and painters who have made that period memorable. He knew Paul Verlaine (whose poetry he greatly admires), Charles Conder, and Aubrey Beardsley.

"One day," he said, "I was out on a shooting-trip--I think it was in Belgium--and I met a young English poet, a charming fellow, whose work I was later to know and like. It was the poet who wrote at least one great poem--'Cynara'--it was Ernest Dowson.

"I knew many of the Beaux Arts crowd, because my brother was a student of architecture at the Beaux Arts. And they were a decent, clean crowd--they were not 'decadents.' I do not take much stock in the pose of 'decadence,' nor in the artistic temperament. I never saw a real artist with the artistic temperament. I always a.s.sociated that with weakness."

Mr. Chambers, although he has intimate knowledge of the Quartier Latin, has little use for "Bohemia."

"What is Bohemia?" he asked. "If it is a place where a number of artists huddle together for the sake of animal warmth, I have nothing to say against it. But if it is a place where a number of artists come to scorn the world, then it is a dangerous thing. The artist should not separate himself from the world.

"These artistic and literary cults are wrong. I do not believe in professional clubs and cliques. If writers form a combination for business reasons, that is all right, but a writer should not a.s.sociate exclusively with other writers; he should do his work and then go out and see and talk to people in other professions. We should sweep the cobwebs from the profession of writing and not try to fence it in from the public."

To the somewhat trite question as to the effects of the war on literature, Mr. Chambers made first his usual modest answer, "I don't know." But when I told him of the author who had dogmatically stated that war always stops literature, and that the Civil War had produced no writing worthy of preservation, Mr. Chambers reconsidered.

"Did he say that the Civil War had produced no literature worthy of preservation?" he said. "He must have forgotten that the Civil War caused one man to make contributions to our literature as valuable as anything we possess. He must have forgotten Abraham Lincoln."

Before I left, I mentioned to Mr. Chambers the theory that literature is better as a staff than as a crutch, as an avocation than as a vocation. This, like the "inevitable word" theory, is greatly beloved by college professors. Mr. Chambers said:

"I disagree utterly with that theory. Do you remember how Dr. Johnson wrote _Ra.s.selas_? It was in order to raise the money to pay for his mother's funeral. I believe that the best work is done under pressure.

Of course the work must be enjoyed; a man in choosing a profession should select that sort of work which he prefers to do in his leisure moments. Let him do for his lifework the task which he would select for his leisure--and let him not take himself too seriously!"

_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_

JAMES LANE ALLEN

That Edgar Allan Poe, in spite of his acknowledged genius, has had practically no influence on the development of the short story in America, and that the current short story written in America is inferior to that written during the years between 1870 and 1895, these are two remarkable statements made to me by James Lane Allen, the distinguished author of _The Choir Invisible_, _The Mettle of the Pasture_, and many another memorable novel.

I found Mr. Allen in the pleasant workroom of his New York residence.

Himself a Southerner, he is an enthusiastic admirer of the poet whose name is inseparably linked with Southern letters. But I was soon to find that he does not share the opinion of those who consider Poe the originator of the modern short story, nor does he rate Poe's influence in fiction as very wide.

"There is always much interest in short stories," he said, "among authors, and in the great body of readers. You say that Mr. Gouverneur Morris believes that except Poe almost no writer before our generation could write short stories.

"I do not wish to be placed in a position of publicly criticizing Mr.

Gouverneur Morris's opinion of the short story. But it may not seem antagonistic to the opinion of any one to call attention to the fact that, of all American short stories yet written, the two most widely known in and outside our country were written independently of Poe.

These are _The Man Without a Country_ and _Rip Van Winkle_.

"As the technique of the American short story is understood and applied to-day, neither of these two stories can be regarded as a work of impeccable art. But flaws have not kept them from fame. By a common verdict the flawless short stories of the day are fameless. Certainly, also, Hawthorne was uninfluenced by Poe in writing short stories that remain secure among brief American cla.s.sics.

"This, of course, is limiting the outlook to our own literature. Beyond our literature, what of Balzac? In the splendor of his achievements with the novel, Balzac has perhaps been slighted as a master of the short story. Think, for instance, of such a colossal fragment as _The Atheists Ma.s.s_.

"And what of Boccaccio? For centuries before Poe, the _Decameron_ shone before the eyes of the world as the golden treasury of model forms for the short story.

"And centuries before Boccaccio, flas.h.i.+ng from hand to hand all over the world, there was a greater treasury still, the treasury of _The Arabian Nights_.

"It is no disparagement to Poe to say that his genius did not originate the genius of the short story. His true place, his logical place, in the development of the short story is that of a man with ancestors--naturally!

"Since there is a breath of nativity blowing through his stories, I think it is the breath of far distant romance from somewhere. Certainly his stories are as remote from our civilization and from all things American as are Oriental tales."

Mr. Allen showed he had given much thought to Edgar Allan Poe's place among the American fiction writers, so I thought that he might also have some interesting things to say about Poe as a poet. He had. He mentioned a quality of Poe's verse which for some reason or other seems heretofore to have escaped the notice of students of American poetry.

"It may be worth while calling attention," he said, "to the fact that nearly all of Poe's poems belong to the night. Twelve o'clock noon never strikes to his poetic genius. His best poems are Poe's Nights, if not _Arabian Nights_.

"There is a saying that the German novel long ago died of the full moon.

To Poe the dead moon was the orb of life. The sun blotted him out."

Great as is his admiration for Poe's genius, Mr. Allen does not believe he has greatly influenced American prose. He said:

"As to the influence of Poe's short stories in our country, this seems to be a tradition mainly fostered by professors of English in American universities and by the historians of our literature. The tradition does not prevail among American writers. Actually there is no traceable stamp of the influence of his prose writings on the work of any American short-story writer known to me, save one. That one is Ambrose Bierce."

"Why is it," I asked, "that Poe's influence on American fiction has been so slight?"

"The main reason," Mr. Allen answered, "why Poe's stories have remained outside American imitation or emulation is perhaps because they are projected outside American sympathies. They lie to-day where they lay when they were written--beyond the confines of what the German calls the literature of the soil.

"Poe and Ambrose Bierce are at least to be linked in this: that they are the two greatest and the two coldest of all American short-story writers. Any living American fictionist will perhaps bear testimony to the fact that he has never met any other writer who has been influenced by the stories of Poe."

"Mr. Allen," I said, "you believe that the American short story has not been influenced by Poe; has the American short story, however, improved since his time?"

"The renascence of the American short story," said Mr. Allen, thoughtfully, "its real efflorescence as a natural literary art form, took place after the close of the Civil War. The historians of our literature have, perhaps, as is customary with them, held to the strict continuity of tradition as explaining this renascence. If so, they have omitted one of the instinctive forces of human nature, which invariably act in nations that have literatures and act ungovernably at the termination of all wars.