Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Pleasure, enlightenment, energy, says Rolland, are what the theatre should furnish the people. Neither the classic drama, which bores the workingman to death by presenting to him _les parties mortes de l’ame_, nor the present drama, which injures or lowers him by setting him in a fever of sordid passions, is fit for a people’s theatre. It must furnish the best drama of the present time, the spectacle in which the serious aspect of the time is reflected, or scenes from those earlier phases in which the spirit of struggle and of devotion lived; in other words, it must furnish a virile and wholesome art.

The heroes of the French Revolution were Rolland’s inspiration for the drama, and he utilized the struggles of the time of the Revolution for spectacles and folk festivals. At that time he wrote and produced for the people’s theatre: _Le 14 Juillet_, _Danton_, _Les Loups_, _Le triomphe de la raison_. The last he has recently published, together with two other early dramas, _St. Louis_ and _Aërt_. They are all, as he himself says, devoted to religious enthusiasm; for God, for country, for reason.

He wished to set these pictures of struggling devotion against the cowardice of thought and cowardice of will that he saw everywhere around him. He voiced his own sentiment and that of his young kindred spirits in the words of one of his heroes, who was condemned to death:

“Life will be what I will. I have anticipated victory, but I shall be victorious.” And in the words of another:

“You are always thinking of what you can keep or lose. Only think of what you can give. Live; be like the water that flows.... The world would not exist without that happiness of beings, of flowers in the sun, that joy of giving one’s life to the point of exhaustion—which is also a joy of dying continually!”

“It is elder brother to Jean Christophe,” Rolland says, “less robust but not less faithful,” who uttered these words, which comprise Rolland’s creed in its most succinct formula.

To revive the energy of action of the French Revolution in order to continue thus the work interrupted in 1794; to set in motion the great passions, not for the purpose of arousing chauvinistic or revolutionary fanaticism, but in order to kindle anew the universal feeling of solidarity—this was the hope of Rolland and his friends for the future of France.

“This hope,” he says, “was one of the purest and holiest forces in our young lives.” Rolland, therefore, calls his _Théâtre du peuple_ a document of the time, because it “reflects the artistic ideas and hopes of a whole generation.”

He gives voice now (1913) to that proud utterance: “Let the future judge us even should it prove that it was our crime to have believed too much in the future.”

That this little group has not yet been victorious, we know. Romain Rolland indicated the reason when he said: “In order to fashion a theatre for the people, we must _first have a people_; a people with a _freedom of the soul_ able to enjoy art; a people with _leisure_; a people not oppressed by misery or incessant toil; a people not brutalized by every superstition and fanaticism from right and left; a people lord over itself and victor in the battle fought out from day to day.”

To these utterances of 1903 can be added one of this year, in which Rolland expressed himself most fervently and with comprehension in regard to the working class of _women_—and in that connection in regard to the whole woman question.[3] It was made evident, then, that the idealist Rolland is no advocate of the chauvanistic-religious reaction. His idealism is of the whirl of revolutionary times and the future.

[3] In a preface to _Celles qui travaillent_, a work of the
notable and sincere French authoress, Simone Bodève.

His critique upon the classic French literature, his “Teutonism” in _Jean Christophe_, his political and religious radicalism, have made him as obnoxious to nationalistic-Catholic France as Mme. de Stael once was because of her _De l’Allemagne_. Among other evidences of Rolland’s status in his own country is the circumstance that when the French Academy recently awarded its new prize of 10,000 francs, it was given, through the influence of Maurice Barrès, to a wholly new man in French literature: André Lafon du Blaye, instructor in a Catholic private school, who had written a book about a school boy, a book which was found to possess that “elevated character” the awarding of the prize demanded! _Jean Christophe_ had just been finished! It is, however, not merely in academic circles that Romain Rolland is denied recognition. He has succeeded in getting himself well hated in many another circle because of the cutting truths in _Jean Christophe_, directed against all factions. In _Ord och Bild_, 1912, George Brandes has given a brief but excellent characterization of Rolland’s spiritual and intellectual endowments and of his limitations.

Without doubt Rolland’s spiritual tendency in youth was determined not only by Tolstoy but also by Guyau; the more because Tolstoy has Guyau to thank for whatever of reason is found in his theories of art.

In regard to the influence of Guyau upon Tolstoy and Nietzsche, see, for example, Professor Albert Nilson’s excellent essay upon _Guyau’s Aesthetics_.

In the mind of Rolland as well as of Guyau, the ethical ideal is the highest intensive quality of life, the most effective energy. Rolland is far from the Christian asceticism that diluted the wine of Tolstoy. But along with Tolstoy, with Guyau, with Nietzsche, he demands an art that possesses life’s consummate vigor; that is itself the richest life, the highest intensity of power. In other words: the ethical ideal and the aesthetic are at heart the same thing; the fundamental principle of art and religion is solidarity; the sense of beauty is at the same time the most intensive and the most expansive of feelings, and so—like the love of humanity—the great fraternizing power. “They who love most create most richly,” and “the work that reveals to us the life of greatest value is the noblest”: these propositions permeated Rolland just as they did Guyau and Tolstoy, although Rolland establishes a basis of valuation quite different from that of the latter. Perhaps Bergson, too, has in some respects confirmed Rolland’s personal view of life. But as Rolland’s view was enunciated before Bergson began to write, the influence could have been only to strengthen, not to determine it. No idea harmonized better with Rolland’s own innermost being than that respecting the power of the spirit to make a way for creative, unfathomable, inexhaustible life. _Jean Christophe_, from the first chapter to the last, is an illustration of this explosive power, this _élan vital_.

Schiller’s words come to mind: Der Dichter ist der einzige wahre _Mensch_ und der beste Philosoph ist nur eine Karikatur gegen ihn.[4] The poet is the only real _Man_ and the best philosopher is only a caricature beside him.

[4] In a letter to Goethe, 1795, after reading _Wilhelm Meister_.

Not only with his dramas of the Revolution did Romain Rolland endeavor to make his countrymen hero-worshippers; he also began a series of popular biographies aimed to present, not the great man’s work, but the personal powers and experiences that found expression in his work. He says in the preface: “Europe is poisoned with materialism and egotism; we must throw open the windows to get air: _Respirons le souffle des heros. Let us breathe the breath of heroes._” He rejoices that he too has witnessed contemporary heroic deeds: the defense of the Boers and the vindication of Dreyfus. But he knows that it is “easier to kindle enthusiasm by heroes of the past,” heroes “who were great in heart.”

His hero-worship did not lead him, however, to glorification at the expense of truth. He utters the thought, profoundly true and all too little understood, that every lack of harmony between life and its laws depends—even in great spirits—not upon their greatness, but upon their weaknesses. “But these weaknesses render them not less worthy of our love.... The idealism that will not recognize the truth is cowardice; there is only one heroism in the world: _to see the world as it is—and to love it_.”

So without hesitation, Rolland points out weaknesses in Michael Angelo’s life, and inconsistencies in Tolstoy’s. He sees in both great specimens of the “type that will pass away”; the Christian—those who “have had their refuge in God and the everlasting life when this life has gone against them; those whose faith has often been expression for deficient belief in life, in the future, in themselves; a lack of courage and a lack of gladness.” “I know,” he continues, “of how many defeats your grievous victories are made, and therefore I pity you and admire you. You make the world more doleful but more beautiful. Praised be pain and praised be joy! Both are holy; they form the world and they broaden great souls: joy and pain are powers, are life, are God.”[5]

[5] Epitome of the introduction to _Michael Angelo_.

The three biographies that Rolland has thus far published are of Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Tolstoy. In the first, it is the love of life and the courage of life; in the second, creative power and strength of belief; in the third, the ecstacy of life and the love of mankind, that he emphasizes. Such souls, he says, restore to us belief in life and in mankind, for from them “issues a current of social power and potent goodness.”

II.

Beethoven is Rolland’s own conception of life, and is nearest his heart. To that “soul of music, heroism, and goodness” Rolland has reared the only memorial worthy of Beethoven that art has created: _Jean Christophe_.

This book was published during the course of nine years. But long before it began to appear it had lived in and with its writer for the greater part of his life. In it Rolland has committed to writing his profound conception of the innermost being of a musical genius, and has done it in such a manner that one is firmly convinced of the truth of the revelations that one follows from the cradle to the grave. In other novels concerning geniuses the writers assert incessantly that they _are_ geniuses; here the genius evinces himself through his being. One does not read a book, one lives a life—and a life of the highest value, the existence that great spirit creates: that of the genius, who out of the flaming chaos of his nature forms a cosmos. An “educational novel,” of which the world’s literature thus far possesses only one such in _Wilhelm Meister_, and, in a measure, in Keller’s _Der Grüne Heinrich_.... I have lived more intensely with _Jean Christophe_ than with most living people.[6]

[6] Lack of space forces me to omit Miss Key’s interesting but
very long analysis of _Jean Christophe_.—The Editor.

World fame is a curious thing. Sometimes it is attained quickly through glorifying friends: a path to fame that often early avenges itself,—that is more dangerous even than the fame that the attacks of enemies furnish. Sometimes fame is won with one blow, by an exceptional work; again it is prepared for in silence and then suddenly rushes forth with the roar of a great torrent formed by many small streams. The last is the case with Romain Rolland.

When I read him in 1909, in Switzerland, I went shortly afterwards to Paris, where, at that time, he was not mentioned among the celebrated writers and where even his friends thought he dare not reckon his circle of readers larger than the ten or fifteen thousand faithful he possessed in the world of French-speaking readers. In Germany his circle was still narrower; in Sweden, he was unknown even by name.

For the new generation the book is a document of the spiritual history of the time. For the serious-minded portion of the French youth, Rolland has possessed an influence comparable with his own description of Tolstoy’s influence upon himself and the young generation with him. Youth has learned from him that the fleeting fashionable attitude toward the great souls or ideas that Paris shapes is sterile; that it is only by devotion that a spiritual growth can be attained; that skepticism in the face of all greatness is poverty, but admiration and love “is the way, to the most potent, the richest, life.” Youth has found in him contempt for mere fine phrases, for declamation, and received from him Goethe’s conception of creation: “In the beginning was action.” They have heard him proclaim _that_ nationalism that is loyalty to the best in the essence of the French nation: love of truth and justice, desire for freedom and fraternity, devotion to its ideal values and above all the dream of happiness for all mankind. This dream that among us Teutons is content to sleep, is among Frenchmen an ever restless disturbance of the blood. And it is only by occasionally letting his blood flow for these dreams that he feels he is living up to his highest ideals. _This_ Youth for whom each new part of _Jean Christophe_ has been a great event, despises with Rolland the estheticism that turns from life. This youth has learned to distinguish between great art and the work of those who think they are creating art but are only making arts. But above all, at a time of reaction toward the Christian “faith”—a reaction that has been justified by the fact that science has not been able to “explain” life nor “vindicate” it—they receive a new fountain of living water. Rolland has attempted neither to explain life nor defend it. The leit-motiv of his great symphonic work is Beethoven’s thought: “Durch Leiden Freude,”—“Through suffering joy comes.” We can, so he says, neither understand life in all its plenitude of contradictions nor ennoble it in all its brutality in any way other than by _living_ it one’s self in the fullest and highest meaning of the word. Music, the all-unifying art, love, the all-embracing condition of the soul, are the two highest attitudes of devotion to God, who is life.

More Rolland knows not. And more than he knows the veracious man does not say.

“I cannot,” he writes, “give any metaphysical credo. For, in the
first place, I will never deceive myself by saying _I know that
which I do not know_—which, at the most, I can imagine or hope.
In the second place, I will never confine myself within the
limits of any belief. For I hope to develop until my last day; I
wish to reserve for myself unlimited freedom of intellectual
transformation and renewal. I have many gods in my Pantheon; but
my chief godhead is _Liberty_. At present I do not separate the
essence of the human soul from that of the divine spirit, of
which the former is a part. But I hardly believe that this divine
spirit fills the universe. It _seeks_, certainly, to fill the
world and guide it; but nothing indicates that it will succeed.
Even in this regard I reserve space for liberty. Pure monism does
not satisfy me. I am more inclined to a dualism such as the
ancient Empedocles believed in. I have an unbounded admiration
for the pre-Socratic philosophers, the sages of Ionia and Magna
Graecia. Indeed my first work, written at Rome, twenty years ago,
was a drama with Empedocles as hero. The struggle between two
principles is manifest to me in the whole history of the world,
material as well as moral history. The question is whether there
is not a _third_ principle, in which the other two are included
or harmonized. A trinity therefore—it is singular how this form
forces itself upon the human mind—but a trinity very different
from the Christian conception of the trinity, since it comprises
a father and two striving brothers: a triad that approaches the
antique cosmogony of which we find a reflection in Hesiod, in
_Chaos_, _Gaea_, and _Eros_. If I live I shall go deeper into
ancient thought. Those ancient philosophers lived in more
intimate contact with nature than any of their successors, and,
moreover, collected the thousand-year-old wisdom of the whole
Orient.”

Besides this personal utterance of Rolland himself, a French friend of his, intimate with his thought, has given me permission to communicate the following statement of the trend of Rolland’s thought:

The liberty of his mind, his lucidity, his keen penetration,
render him incapable of accepting the least dogma or the least
constraint. It is impossible to conceive of anything that could
have upon such a mind, not to say a direct hold, but even an
appreciable influence. That mind is alone, magnificently alone,
as independent as if the world were just born. Moreover, he is
quite as far from all revealed religions as from all systems. He
would in no wise admit that the Christian or any other religion
is more closely related to the past, and Darwinism or any
scientism whatever more to the future. He would see, in these
diverse ways of viewing life, forms of the human mind which
return at periodic intervals and of which one no more than the
other is an absolute progress in which he does not believe. Only
by his very nature, he is antimaterialistic. He believes in the
duality of soul and body in an absolute, organic manner. He hopes
sincerely to quit this body and go to live a larger and fuller
life. No personal immortality! He cannot endure the thought. That
would be the continuation of this captivity in a limited
personality, which to him appears stifling. He feels that he is
also going to live in God, not understanding by that word any
anthropomorphic god, but a fountain of universal life. He loves
to plunge, through time and space, into a meditation in which he
totally forgets his personality, and wherein he finds a sort of
intoxication. He has uttered this admirable and terrible
sentence: “Sometimes I feel _no difference_ between my friends
absent or present, living or dead.” To ask such a being if he is
of the past or of the future would have no significance; he is
beyond the compass of time.

I have met Rolland only through letters. But some words concerning his personality, as it had affected another poet, I can communicate here in conclusion:

“The confident grasp replete with experience, the modest ripeness ... in his being; the benignity, the unprecedented purity in all his purpose ... are beneficent.... Everything is genuine, developed with will and consciousness: a man who has improved steadily.... From him emanates a gentle plenitude, consummate in action, like that of a star at twilight.”

When world renown comes to such a man, it has not much to say to him. Rolland meets it with an averted glance in his far-seeing luminous eyes, eyes which quietly and steadily look towards new works and new horizons.

From all corners of the world he hears: that he has given to the time the book most brimming with the whole seething life of the time; that he has given men the book most permeated with the essence of music and Orphean effects; that he has created an entire human race, a race in which all ages of life and degrees of development, in which women as well as men are equally convincing in truth to life; that he has given a work overflowing with ideas, with philosophy of life, with vital help, by exhibiting a great human life in all its weakness and in all its strength. And assuredly this will give him joy.

But he will feel proud only when the word comes that his French heart longs to hear: The people that has given to the world such a work is not, as its enemies say, going to destruction. That nation is ever potent with the energy of life.

Rolland’s great book is not merely a glorious revelation of the fact that all the greatest ideas that France has given the world live ever in the French people. It demonstrates also that mankind needs the French spirit always in order to realize them.

Poems

WITTER BYNNER

I Shall Come to You Again

If you have pity, pity me a little,
For I had seen your pitiless lips and dared them
And I deserve the pity given fools...
Your mouth was passion but your eyes were love.
Your mouth might soon consent to harshness, but your eyes,
Your eyes would see me and be kind to me.
I should not suffer, loving you.
I should but carry the heroic pain of love.
Wounds that might come from hardness of your heart,
If I received them, I should heal, watching the everlasting pity of your
eyes...
If you have pity, pity me a little.
I who had seen your cruelty and dared it
Am stricken with it now
And have come through the streets in daylight
As though the daylight were the sound of laughter
Surrounding and consuming me.
I have put up my hands to ward it off,
The heaviness of light that would not let me hide
But held me and looked leering in my face...
For there has come a passer-by ....
And you have come with him.
I have no hatred for the passer-by, and none for you,
But hatred only of my own humiliation,
For I had challenged and been overthrown...
If you have pity, pity me a little.
For I who love life
Have heard its mouth despise me
And have seen its eyes, that had been kind, turn into stone.
Wherefore I lack new strength, new laughter.
And in the time before that strength is due,
If you have pity, pity me a little.
But if you have none—soon I shall have no need.
For I who choose life,
Shall receive my strength,
And I shall come to you again, laughing with love...
For my humiliation shall have been a rain,
Its arms about me and its lips alive.
And I shall walk in daylight
And it shall be a singing waterfall
Surrounding me and pouring over me.

Sicilia

(_In memory of Salvatore Garrito who was hanged at Reading,
Pennsylvania, October 29, 1908, for the killing of a State
Trooper._)

“It shows you on that paper where she lives,
In Sicily. Write her that I today
Am dead for having killed my second man.”
“Your second?” “Yes, sir, two. It’s not so bad
To kill a trooper. But I killed, before,
A friend who, like my brother and like me,
Loved her in Sicily. The jury thought
My brother did it. He’s been all alone
In jail eight years. Tell her I shall be glad
If now she gets him out and marries him.”

Christian

Truth heard him ask employ
And took him in,
A poor unfriended boy,
As her own kin,
And everything she made
She taught the youth.
When he had learned her trade
He went from Truth.

And when his eyes were dim
And he was rich,
Then Truth returned to him
Out of a ditch,
Poorer than he had been,
Pleading she came...
He would not let her in
Nor ask her name.

Marriage

Shall marriage never be the glory
That was wooed?
But ever enervate and vex,
Obstruct, intrude,
And make more wistful and complex
The solitude,
Trying to tell the human story
To its brood?

No matter how the homes are humming
In a mood
Of ecstasy or sentiment
Or love renewed,
What favored two can circumvent
The ancient feud?—
Till both in one shall die, becoming
Multitude!

A Glimpse at Russia

Wars have been the landmarks in Russian modern history. The Napoleonic war was followed by the insurrection of the Decembrists, the first attempt on the part of liberal Russia to break the autocracy. The iron reign of Nicolas I culminated in the Crimean campaign, which revealed the utter rottenness of the old order and necessitated the general reconstruction of the estate, from the liberation of the serfs to the establishment of jury-tribunals. The reaction under Alexander III and Nicolas II came to a collapse with the Japanese war, more disastrous and richer in results than Sebastopol. It may be interesting to notice that each of the mentioned epochs followed the previous one at a space of about a quarter of a century, and the fact that the present war broke out only ten years after the last one may be interpreted as an attempt for self-correction on the part of History. Both the war with Japan and the revolution that came as its result were abortive and premature phenomena, and were destined “to be continued.”

It is necessary to get an idea of what has occurred in Russia during the last ten years in order to understand her present situation and perspectives. The Russian people were neither prepared nor desirous of fighting against Japan for the Yalou forests, a problem that interested only a group of greedy capitalists. Nicolas was egged on by the Kaiser, who was more than anxious to involve his neighbor in a mess in the Far East, and thus to divert his attention from the Near East where the interests of the Triple Alliance demanded the elimination, or at least the weakening, of the formidable ally of France. The Czar caught the bait, and was rewarded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, which put an end to Russia’s ambitions in Manchuria and crippled her international prestige, to the immediate advantage of Germany and Austria. The defeated bear was forcibly driven to introspection. Her navy almost totally destroyed, her army decimated and demoralized, her population torn by revolutions and civil warfare, Russia faced a Herculean task. The government was confronted with a double problem, to quench the internal conflagration, and to get ready for “retaliation.” The first aim was more or less achieved; the revolutionists were hanged, shot, imprisoned, exiled; the moderate elements and the European financiers, who demanded a guarantee for their enormous loans, were hood-winked by a semblance of parliamentarism, the butaforial Duma, an institution elected and managed practically by the Czar’s ministers. With feverish energy the government set out to carry through its second purpose. The Dumas were forced to sanction gigantic war-budgets, and the entire bureaucratic state was thrown into a crucible of radical, sweeping reforms. The reconstruction of the army has become the all-important issue. Without naming the potential enemy, all parties, except the Socialists, agreed that Russia must concentrate her forces on the building up in the fastest possible time of an enormous, efficient, _modern_ army. The majority of the people differed with the government, however, on one point, as to who should carry out the great task. The people have had little confidence in the capability of the bureaucracy for self-reformation; they have applied to them the Russian saying, “Only the grave can change the hunchback.” Alexander Guchkov, while president of the Duma and later as an influential private citizen, has revealed the hopelessly rotten state of affairs in the military and civil organization of the country, managed by unscrupulous thieves and grafters, by useless sinecure-holders from among the nobility and the royal family. The reorganization of the state, pointed out Mr. Guchkov and his followers, must be taken from the hands of the effeminate and imbecile Grand Dukes, and entrusted to representatives of the nation. For such a heresy Guchkov had to resign from his post as head of the “parliament,” and the work of reconstruction continued to be handled by the old _chinovnicks_, the puppets of the Czar and of his uncles and cousins.

Public opinion in Russia has been crystallizing simultaneously with military preparation and diplomatic negotiations. Austria’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina gave Russian diplomacy the gravest slap since the Berlin Congress; Wilhelm’s threat to appear in “shining armor” to the assistance of his ally compelled foreign minister Sasonov to withdraw his protest against Austria’s act. The humiliation was felt deeply by all classes; the Russian people have come to regard Germany as their bitterest foe, responsible not only for their past and present military and diplomatic fiascoes, but largely responsible also for the internal retrogressive policy of their government. It has been widely known that during the last revolution the Kaiser had counselled Nicolas “unrelenting firmness,” and had even offered to “loan” his army for the suppression of the uprising. The popularity of the present war in Russia is thus explained. The conservatives see in it an opportunity to strengthen the power of the autocracy through drummed up patriotism and loyalty to the throne; the liberals hope that with the defeat of Germany there will come an end to the “dark influence” of the Prussian retrogrades on Russia’s policy; the masses are eager to fight against the “Antichrists,” the enemies of the Slavs and of the Slavonic church.

Whatever the outcome of this war may be, it has done inestimable service for the awakening of Russia. The country has been elevated and purified morally and nationally. The abolition of vodka, the unification of differing parties and of hostile races, the liberal concessions granted by the government,—these are the few tangible results of the war that can be checked off already. But there is considerably more to come. The ignominious failures of the army have pointed a burning finger of accusation against the real enemy of the people, the bureaucracy. The Russian soldiers have fought like lions ... led by asses. The shameless lack of munition, the use of antiquated guns, the wretched equipment of the soldiers, the inefficiency of field-hospitals, the continuing graft in giving out contracts, the presence in the army of such time-proved nonentities as General Rennenkampf and other Manchurian celebrities, these facts have shown to the people that the Czar and his clique have forgotten everything and have learned nothing. The general dissatisfaction in army circles and among the civilians may bring about a storm that will sweep away the tottering throne of Nicolas Romanov.

This is not a mere theoretic conjecture. Since 1904 an intense revolutionary propaganda has been carried on within the army and navy. The germ of rebellion has penetrated not only the common soldiers, who are largely recruited from among the down-trodden peasants and workingmen, but also the officers, who have learned a good deal in the last ten years. A military _coup d’état_ after the model of the Young Turks has become a popular idea with the intelligent officers who cannot fail to see that the autocratic régime is a detrimental anachronism. There have been persistent rumors about the high ambitions of the ex-Supreme Commander. Grand Duke Nicolas is a happy exception among the degenerated Romanovs. He has been long considered as the “strong man,” and therefore feared and opposed to by the Court-camarilla. Necessity compelled the Czar to appoint him commander; his appointment was insistently recommended by Joffre and Kitchener. Unlike Kuropatkin, the Grand Duke refused to follow dictations from Petrograd. When in early spring he received an order from the Czar to evacuate Warsaw, the commander telegraphed back that he was willing to obey, but that he would move his army against the capital. The order was recalled. The fact that he was recently removed from his post and exiled to Caucasia shows the growing fears of the Czar, who has lost his head and is hewing the branch on which he is still seated. The Grand Duke had performed a difficult, although not very spectacular task—that of saving the _unarmed_ army from the iron grip of the Germans. Petrograd demanded “action,” as it did ten years ago from Kuropatkin. Now that the Czar has assumed the commandership of the army one may expect rapid “actions,” Sedans and Tzusimas and an early peace treaty as honorable as that of Portsmouth.

The sentiments of the population were characteristically voiced by the Jewish member of the Duma, Friedman. In his speech he recounted the unbelievable atrocities of the Russian authorities performed over the Jews in the war-zone. Yet he said: “It is true we are without rights, we are oppressed beyond endurance. But we know the foundation of the evil. It emanates from these benches (pointing to the Ministers). We are persecuted by the Russian government and not by the Russian people. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that we are content to bind our fate loyally and faithfully with the fate of the Russian people, whatever may be done to us by the Russian government.” The best of Russia are unanimously determined that “the foundation of the evil” must go. In the last few weeks various bodies of the Russian commonwealth have issued grave resolutions condemning the government and demanding democratization of the state. A revolution seems inevitable, but, to repeat, a military revolution is most likely to take place. The bulk of the virile population is within the fighting ranks, and it is there, in the army, that the national nerve pulsates at present. Whether it be Grand Duke Nicolas, or another capable and popular leader, it is to be expected that this time the army will pronounce the verdict over the imbecile Czar and will cleanse the Augean stables of the corrupted bureaucracy.

K.

Sophomoric Epigrams

There is no wisdom but youth. There is no vision but the unafraid impulse of unfettered nerves. The follies of youth are the enduring expressions of art. Man loses his Ego at thirty and becomes conceited. He becomes conscious of others. Life becomes a quibble. But youth! Youth, the flower before it has decayed into the mellow moss of age. Youth that knows not itself or the world. Youth that laughs at tears and weeps at laughter. Youth that paints queer pictures at which the critics smile. Illogical youth; arrogant youth; forever annoying the world’s stagnation. Youth capering like a fawn in the altar places of the holy. Ho! you with the pedantic whiskers and the ossified serenity lurking like a fog in your eye—there is no wisdom but youth. Ho! you with the murk of maturity thick upon your tongue—will you shape morals? I will unshape them. Will you rear dogmas? I will upset them. Will you burden the world with your heavy sagacity? I will ignore it. Ho, you didactic formulator, debauched with facts, man is born a butterfly and crawls to his grave a worm. Man is born young and dies old. Man is born wise and dies a fool. The ideas of youth are his wings. Do you see the lightning maze of colors forever flashing over your head? It is youth.

Ah! old Ossifus, your erudition is but the husk of my spirit. And my spirit is the shop-boy whistling on his way to work, joyous without reason for you have proved him an economic slave, stunted and damned forever to rot in chains. My spirit is the lover going to his ruin-woman, and tumbling out of heaven with a laugh. Ho! ho! old Petrifus, you have proved her the root of evil, the despoiler of greatness, the velvet vandal of illusions, and yet and yet....

And he is the artist running wild in the china-closet of the past. Have you anything sacred, old whiskers? Have you something labelled right and something labelled wrong? Show it to him. He will do for it. He is the eternal monster killing the dead.

There is no beauty but youth. There is no beauty in age. Ho! you doddering banality with the superior tolerance in your stutter, you are decomposing on your feet. Age is soiled. Age is dirty. Age drips with the phlegm of life. Age is the unclean residue in the cup.

Ho!—there is no tomorrow.

Blessed are the young in heart for they shall be God.

“A. E. D.”

Henri and Manship

One grows weary of the quibbling, the petty running about in circles of critics, would-be-critics, and students with the eyes of their teachers disputing “techniques,” values, and standards in regard to paintings that somehow seem to live outside any limits pedants have placed. Out from the noise the voice of the artist arises with a strength and clearness in words similar to the quality of his paintings. Writing in the February _Craftsman_ of this year, telling of his work, his ideas, and his “people,” Robert Henri has this to say:

“My love of mankind is individual. I am patriotic only about what I admire, and my devotion to humanity burns as brightly for Europe as for America. It flames up swiftly for Mexico if I am painting the peon there; it warms towards the bull fighter of Spain if in spite of its cruelty there is that element in his art which I find beautiful; it intensifies before the Irish peasant whose love, poetry, simplicity, and humor have enriched my existence just as completely as though these people were of my own country and my own hearthstone. Everywhere I see at times this beautiful expression of the dignity of life to which I respond with a wish to preserve this beauty of humanity for my friends to enjoy.... The Chinese American girl who has found coquetry in new freedom; the peon, a symbol of a destroyed civilization in Mexico, and the Indian who works as one in slavery and dreams as a man in still places ... all their lives are in their expression, in their eyes, their movements or they are not worth translating into art.”

He very simply tells what he feels about technique, which ought to quiet the objection to his or any individual’s methods:

“Technique is merely a language, and as I grow older and see more and more clearly I have but one intention and that is to make this language as clear and simple and sincere as is humanly possible.... It is a language of no value for its own sake.... It must be so translucent that it can be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.”

A woman who sat for Henri last year for her portrait has this to say of him in a recent letter:

“To me he is quite the most wonderful man among American artists; so very big yet simple as a child; so very human yet utterly unconscious of his humanity. He is much like Whitman only more tender, more subtle. To Henri life is his art. That’s what makes him truly great. That’s what made him go to the Ferrer School and awaken talent and even genius where no one else would have seen anything to awaken. As a teacher Henri is perhaps even greater than as a painter. I heard him explain things to his class only twice, but I have never heard anything more fascinating and vivid. His greatest worth, however, is his sense of freedom, his fervent belief that only freedom can bring out the best in the individual. He is really an anarchist though he does not label himself one.”

And thus the exhibit of twenty-five paintings at the Art Institute takes on a broader and more beautiful air. It becomes human and alive even though the noise from the studios is confusing.

* * * * *

Paul Manship also has a room at the Art Institute: Greek, Assyrian, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, Roman, Gothic, and what not; but where, oh where, is Paul Manship—“foremost American sculptor”? The incongruous and nerve-racking thing about the collection is that besides merely exactly reproducing all the above mentioned periods and styles he goes so far as to use two or three in one piece of work. The _Infant Herakles: fountain and bowl_ is a terror of complications, with gothic gargoyles as the high points of one’s discontent. The American Indian (with the African animal skin and the Egyptian hair and Roman face) and pronghorn antelope (Egyptian bronze of Alpine antelope) is the property of the Art Institute, having been purchased by the “friends of American Art”.... The conventionalized Roman busts with the Greek lettering were so top-heavy in appearance that I grew quite dizzy....

I found relief in the sculptor of the Ancient Greeks,—peace in the simplicity of a strange inspired beauty that intricate handling which draws on past glories can never produce.