Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  Some mist and a little rain.

  A life with a dash of love-light,

  Some dreams and a touch of pain.

  To love a little and then to die!

  To live a little and never know why!

  BECAUSE —

  Because they must, the birds sing.

  The earth turns new in Spring

  Because it must— ‘Tis only man

  That does because he can

  And knowing good from ill,

  Chooses because he will —

  TO THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH: TO KITTY

  It is not all of life

  To cling together while the years glide past.

  It is not all of love

  To walk with clasped hands from first to last.

  That mystic garland which the spring did twine

  Of scented lilac and the new-blown rose,

  Faster than chains will hold my soul to thine

  Thro’ joy, and grief, thro’ life — unto its close.

  THERE’S MUSIC ENOUGH

  There’s music enough in the wood to-day,

  O, me! O, my!

  With Love a-piping his same old lay:

  We live, we die!

  But tomorrow’s a million miles away

  When the world is green and the month is May.

  AN ECSTASY OF MADNESS

  There’s an ecstasy of madness

  Where the March Hares dwell;

  A delirium of gladness

  Too wild to tell.

  The Moon has gone a-maying

  And the Sun’s so far!

  O! what’s the use of staying

  With a blinking star!

  Let us join hands this instant

  And fly a-top the hill,

  And whether near or distant,

  We’ll ne’er stop still

  Or we find the Moon that’s Maying

  And the Sun so far,

  That left us here a-praying

  To a blinking star.

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  PSYCHE’S LAMENT

  IF IT MIGHT BE

  THE SONG EVERLASTING

  IT MATTERS ALL

  YOU AND I

  IN DREAMS THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT

  GOOD NIGHT

  IF SOME DAY

  TO CARRIE B.

  TO HIDER SCHUYLER —

  TO “BILLY” WITH A BOX OF CIGARS

  TO MRS. R.

  LET THE NIGHT GO

  I WANTED GOD

  THE HAUNTED CHAMBER

  LIFE

  BECAUSE —

  TO THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH: TO KITTY

  THERE’S MUSIC ENOUGH

  AN ECSTASY OF MADNESS

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  AN ECSTASY OF MADNESS

  BECAUSE —

  GOOD NIGHT

  I WANTED GOD

  IF IT MIGHT BE

  IF SOME DAY

  IN DREAMS THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT

  IT MATTERS ALL

  LET THE NIGHT GO

  LIFE

  PSYCHE’S LAMENT

  THE HAUNTED CHAMBER

  THE SONG EVERLASTING

  THERE’S MUSIC ENOUGH

  TO “BILLY” WITH A BOX OF CIGARS

  TO CARRIE B.

  TO HIDER SCHUYLER —

  TO MRS. R.

  TO THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH: TO KITTY

  YOU AND I

  The Non-Fiction

  Ruins of the Kate Chopin House and Bayou Folk Museum, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Destroyed by fire, October 1, 2008

  LIST OF ESSAYS AND ARTICLES

  CONTENTS

  “CRUMBLING IDOLS” BY HAMLIN GARLAND

  THE REAL EDWIN BOOTH

  EMILE ZOLA’S “LOURDES”

  THE WESTERN ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS

  CONFIDENCES

  ON CERTAIN BRISK, BRIGHT DAYS

  IN THE CONFIDENCE OF A STORY-WRITER

  AS YOU LIKE IT

  Kate Chopin in 1899

  “CRUMBLING IDOLS” BY HAMLIN GARLAND

  Mr. Garland seems not content that the idols whereof he speaks are crumbling. He attempts to hasten their demolition with hammer-strokes that resound and make much noise, even if they accomplish nothing in that work of destruction which moves too slowly for his impatient humor.

  In these twelve essays on art, however, the author has sounded a true note if not a new one, which would be more forcible were it less insistent; which would ring clearer were it not accompanied by a clamor and bluster often distressing to sensitive ears. He suggests — what no one who has thought upon the subject is ready to dispute — that the youthful artist should free himself from the hold of conventionalism; that he should go direct to those puissant sources, Life and Nature, for inspiration and turn his back upon models furnished by man; in a word, that he should be creative and not imitative. But Mr. Garland undervalues the importance of the past in art and exaggerates the significance of the present.

  Human impulses do not change and can not so long as men and women continue to stand in the relation to one another which they have occupied since our knowledge of their existence began. It is why Æschylus is true, and Shakespeare is true to-day, and why Ibsen will not be true in some remote to-morrow, however forcible and representative he may be for the hour, because he takes for his themes social problems which by their very nature are mutable. And, notwithstanding Mr. Garland’s opinion to the contrary, social problems, social environments, local color and the rest of it are not of themselves motives to insure the survival of a writer who employs them.

  The author of “Crumbling Idols” would even lightly dismiss from the artist’s consideration such primitive passions as love, hate, etc. He declares that in real life people do not talk love. How does he know? I feel very sorry for Mr. Garland.

  An excellent chapter in the book deals with impressionism in painting. It will be found interesting and even instructive to many who have rather vague and confused notions of what impressionism means. Mr. Garland has gone over heart and soul to the Impressionists. He feels and sees with them; being in close sympathy with their individualism; their abandonment of the traditional and conventional in the interest of “truth.” He admits that he himself has discovered certain “purple shadows” by looking at a stretch of sand, with his head turned top-side down! It is doubtful if many of us would exhibit an equal zeal in pursuing anything so elusive as a shadow; but the incident goes to prove Mr. Garland’s earnestness and sincerity of purpose.

  His attitude in regard to the East as a literary center is to be deplored; and his expressions in that respect seem exaggerated and uncalled for. The fact remains that Chicago is not yet a literary center, nor is St. Louis! nor San Francisco, nor Denver, nor any of those towns in whose behalf he drops into prophecy. There can no good come of abusing Boston and New York. On the contrary, as “literary centers” they have rendered incalculable service to the reading world by bringing to light whatever there has been produced of force and originality in the West and South since the war.

  The book is one which all Western art lovers should read. Mr. Garland is surely a representative Western man of letters. He is too young to assume the role of prophet becomingly; and he somehow gives the impression of a man who has not yet “lived,” but he is vigorous and sincere, and he is one of us.

  THE REAL EDWIN BOOTH

  The October Century opens with a selection of private letters of the late Edwin Booth, preceded by a brief preface from his daughter, Mrs. Grossman. The article bears the title, “The Real Edwin Booth,” and forms part of a collection to be published later in book form.

  If Booth were able to-day to take up the magazine and re-read these letters, never intended for the public eye, it is easy to fancy him quoting from one of them, “I shrink from the indelicacy.”

  Never has the world known a man more wrapped about in a mantle of sensitiveness and reserve than was Edwin Booth; and it seems a pity that in his case the public might not ha
ve respected the mute appeal for privacy which his whole existence expressed.

  Judging from the selection before us one can hardly hope that these letters will throw any new light upon the man’s relation to his life work — which could give some excuse for their being, so far as the public is concerned. They simply show us a man who seems fond of his daughter and of his friends; they lay bare the poignant sorrow of a husband for the loss of a well-beloved wife; they indicate that he possessed some heart, so far as the written word can represent so abstract a thing as a human heart; and they evince little or no power of mind or depth of character. No, it is not here that we are to look for the real Edwin Booth, in a puerile collection of letters, expressions wrung from him by the conventional demands of his daily life.

  The real Edwin Booth gave himself to the public through his art. Those of us who most felt its magnetic power are the ones who knew him best, and as he would have wished to be known. His art was his closest and most precious possession. Through it he was great, he was individual, he was a force that appealed to and acted upon the finer responsive chords of every human intelligence that heard him. It was the medium through which he expressed himself. He possessed no other form of expression by which to make himself known.

  If he might to-day turn over the leaves of this collection of letters, it would surely be with that sad, “pale smile” which we all remember, and no doubt with a spoken reproach to all of us — public, daughter and publishers: “Why look you, how unworthy a thing you make of me.”

  EMILE ZOLA’S “LOURDES”

  I once heard a devotee of impressionism admit, in looking at a picture by Monet, that, while he himself had never seen in nature the peculiar yellows and reds therein depicted, he was convinced that Monet had painted them because he saw them and because they were true. With something of a kindred faith in the sincerity of all Mons. Zola’s work, I am yet not at all times ready to admit its truth, which is only equivalent to saying that our points of view differ, that truth rests upon a shifting basis and is apt to be kaleidoscopic.

  “Lourdes” seems to me to be a mistake, not in its conception, but in its treatment. It cannot be called a failure, because Mons. Zola has not failed in his intention to give to the world an exhaustive history of Bernadette’s Lourdes. But that history could have been as direct, and surely more effective, had it been made subordinate to some powerful narrative, such as Mons. Zola is so well able to invent.

  As it is, the story is the merest thread of a story running loosely through the 400 pages, and more than two-thirds of the time swamped beneath a mass of prosaic data, offensive and nauseous description and rampant sentimentality.

  In no former work has Mons. Zola so glaringly revealed his constructive methods. Not for an instant, from first to last, do we lose sight of the author and his note-book and of the disagreeable fact that his design is to instruct us. Pierre, the hero of the book, seems to be also the victim, the passive medium chosen by the author to convey information to his readers. This young man (an unbeliever) is inspired with an inordinate tenderness for the memory of Bernadette, solely that he may chance to be carrying her history in his coat pocket that he may read it to the pilgrims journeying on the “white train” towards Lourdes, and that the reader may in this way become acquainted with it himself. Once at Lourdes, the movements of this young priest come to be looked upon by the reader with uneasiness and misgiving. If he happen to walk abroad, we need not suppose it is to take the air, or that it is for any other purpose than to be waylaid by one of the many individuals who seem to swarm in Lourdes, ever on the watch for willing ears in which to empty the overflowing vials of their information. If he sits for a moment contemplative before the Grotto, the insidious man of knowledge is soon there beside him, conveying to him by pages and pages information which we know that Mons. Zola acquired in the same way and thus subtly conveys to us.

  We are told that Pierre goes to the barber’s to be shaved, but we know better by this time; we know that he goes for some other purpose, which soon reveals itself when the intelligent barber tells in round terms what he thinks of certain clerical abuses prevailing at Lourdes, and we are certain that we are hearing what the author himself thinks of those things. Such handling of a subject is unpardonable in Mons. Zola.

  The style all through, however, is masterly, and there are descriptive bits which are superb, notably the description of a candle-light procession winding its tortuous way in and out among the hills: “Au ciel il semblait y avoir moins d’étoiles. Une voie lactée était tombée de la haut roulant son pondroiement de mondes, et qui continuait sur la terre la ronde des astres.”

  Very powerfully conceived and described is the scene before the Grotto, leading up to Marie Guersaint’s remarkable cure. The writer here touches a fine psychological point, though not a new one — the possibility of the combined will-power of a mass of humanity forcing nature to subserve its ends. A French savant has already reminded us that “the psychology of a multitude of men is not the psychology of the individual.” The subject is attractive, and Mons. Zola might have made more of it.

  “Lourdes” has been roundly denounced by Catholics and, I think, the ban of the Church set upon it. I cannot see why. It is a book which I think a good Catholic would greatly enjoy reading, the only and easy condition being to set aside Mons. Zola’s point of view and color his facts with one’s own. He has a thorough knowledge of Catholicism, extending to the most trifling mannerisms of its votaries, and this part of his subject he handles delicately and captivatingly.

  But the book will doubtless thrust him a step further away from the goal of his hopes and ambitions — the French Academy.

  It is hard to understand in Mons. Zola this persistent desire to be admitted to the Academy. One would suppose he would be content, even proud, to stand outside of its doors in the company of Alphonse Daudet.

  THE WESTERN ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS

  Provincialism in the best sense of the word stamps the character of this association of writers, who gather chiefly from the State of Indiana and meet annually at Spring Fountain Park. It is an ideally beautiful spot, a veritable garden of Eden in which the disturbing fruit of the tree of knowledge still hangs unplucked. The cry of the dying century has not reached this body of workers, or else it has not been comprehended. There is no doubt in their souls, no unrest: apparently an abiding faith in God as he manifests himself through the sectional church, and an overmastering love of their soil and institutions.

  Most of them are singers. Their native streams, trees, bushes and birds, the lovely country life about them, form the chief burden of their often too sentimental songs.

  Occasionally the voice of one of them reaches out across the prairies and is heard by the world beyond. For this is the soil, these are the conditions, and the Western Association of Writers are the typical human group which have given us James Whitcomb Riley, Mrs. Catherwood and Lew Wallace.

  Among these people are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms.

  There is a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it. When the Western Association of Writers with their earnestness of purpose and poetic insights shall have developed into students of true life and true art, who knows but they may produce a genius such as America has not yet known.

  CONFIDENCES

  There is somewhere registered in my consciousness a vow that I would never be confidential except for the purpose of misleading. But consistency is a pompous and wearisome burden to bear always and there is often relief in casting it aside.

  Having determined therefore to be inconsistent and talk about myself, I devised an
ingenious plan by which I might do so without being detected in the offense.

  I disguised myself as a gentleman smoking cigars with my feet on the table. Opposite me was another gentleman (who furnished the cigars) entrapping me into disclosures by well turned questions, after the manner of the middle men at the “Minstrels.” A person of sounder judgment than myself convinced me that the device was more clumsy than clever, and likely to bewilder rather than to deceive. He appreciated what he supposed to be the underlying notion of my diffidence and intimated that he readily understood I might be ashamed of myself. In this he is mistaken. Like the colored gentleman in the Passemala I am sometimes “afraid o’ myse’f” but never ashamed.

  About eight years ago there fell accidentally into my hands a volume of Maupassant’s tales. These were new to me. I had been in the woods, in the fields, groping around; looking for something big, satisfying, convincing, and finding nothing but — myself; a something neither big nor satisfying but wholly convincing. It was at this period of my emerging from the vast solitude in which I had been making my own acquaintance, that I stumbled upon Maupassant. I read his stories and marvelled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinking way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw. When a man does this, he gives us the best that he can; something valuable for it is genuine and spontaneous. He gives us his impressions. Some one told me the other day that Maupassant had gone out of fashion. I was not grieved to hear it. He has never seemed to me to belong to the multitude, but rather to the individual. He is not one whom we gather in crowds to listen to — whom we follow in procession — with beating of brass instruments. He does not move us to throw ourselves into the throng — having the integral of an unthinking whole to shout his praise. I even like to think that he appeals to me alone. You probably like to think that he reaches you exclusively. A whole multitude may be secretly nourishing the belief in regard to him for all I know. Someway I like to cherish the delusion that he has spoken to no one else so directly, so intimately as he does to me. He did not say, as another might have done, “do you see these are charming stories of mine? take them into your closet — study them closely — mark their combination — observe the method, the manner of their putting together — and if ever you are moved to write stories you can do no better than to imitate . . .