So with the sciences. Organized scientific research began in the country with the founding of the Johns Hopkins University, a bald imitation of the German universities, and long held suspect by native opinion. Even after its great success there was rancorous hostility to its scheme of things on chauvinistic grounds, and some years ago efforts were begun to Americanize it, with the result that it sank to the level of a glorified high-school, and was dominated by native savants who would have been laughed at in any Continental university. Science, oppressed by such assaults from below, moves out of the academic grove into the freer air of the great foundations, where the pursuit of the shy fact is uncontaminated by football and social pushing. The greatest of these foundations is the Rockefeller Institute. Its salient men have been such investigators as Flexner, Loeb and Carrel—all of them Continental Jews.
The Blue-Nose
From the Smart Set, May, 1919, p. 53
ALL the histories of American literature, with perhaps one exception, devote a good deal of space to the lofty idealism of the snuffling pre-Methodists who settled New England. Reading such books, one somehow gets the notion that these bilious theologians were, in some strange way, noble fellows, and that, in particular, they cherished the fruits of the intellect, and so laid the foundations of whatever culture now exists in the United States. But what is the actual fact? The actual fact is that the fruits of the intellect were held in about as much esteem, in Puritan New England, as the fruits of the vines of Burgundy now get at a banquet of Presbyterians. The Puritans not only tried their damndest to shut out every vestige of sound information, of clean reasoning, of ordinary intellectual self-respect and integrity; they absolutely succeeded in shutting these things out. The gigantic play of ideas that went on in Europe during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries had no effect upon them whatsoever; it was not until foreign influences, slowly percolating into the country on the heels of commerce, gave a start to Transcendentalism that New England could show so much as a single third-rate college, a single readable journal or a single genuinely educated man. And even Transcendentalism was moony, hollow and sterile. Its highest product was a puerile confusion of European ideas, as in Emerson and Thoreau. It produced no art that is alive today—only poor schoolboys, abominably forced to the business by idiot pedagogues, read its masterpieces. And it produced no civilization, but only a tawdry pseudo-civilization—a codfish civilization.
Even in politics it has always been stupid and imitative. What! Even in politics? Then what of Abolition? Answer: Abolition was no more a New England invention than the affected broad a was a New England invention: both were borrowed from the English middle classes toward the end of the Eighteenth Century. And business? Here we let down the last bar: it requires a racking stretch of the imagination to put a talent for business among the evidences of culture. But even so, New England fails again. Can you think of a conspicuous captain of industry who was born there? Finally, of the twenty-seven general officers who stood at the head of the Army List at the close of the Civil War exactly three were New Englanders.
Folk-Literature
From the Smart Set, June, 1921, pp. 143–44.
A review of Poctic Origins and the Ballad, by Louise Pound;
New York, 1921
DR. POUND’S book completely disposes of the theory upon which nine-tenths of all the pedagogical discussions of the ballad and its origins are based. This is the theory that the ballads familiar to all of us—for example, “Chevy Chase” and “Lord Bateman” – are the product, not of individual authors, but of whole herds of minnesingers working together, and that most of them came into being during dance ceremonies—in brief, that the primitive balladists first joined in a communal hoofing, then began to moan and hum a tune, and finally fitted words to it. It is difficult to imagine anything more idiotic, and yet this doctrine is cherished as something almost sacred by whole droves of professors and rammed annually into the skulls of innumerable candidates for the Ph.D. Dr. Pound proves by the analogy of the customs observed among existing savages and barbarians, and by ordinary common sense no less, that the ballads really did not originate in that way at all—that they were written, on the contrary, by individual poets with talents as far above those of the populace as the talents of the late J. Gordon Cooglar, say, were above those of the average Carolinian, and that most of them first saw the light, not at vulgar shindigs on the village green, but at fashionable and even intellectual ale-parties in castle halls.
The notion that any respectable work of art can have a communal origin is wholly nonsensical. The plain people, taking them together, are quite as incapable of a coherent esthetic impulse as they are of courage, honesty or honor. The cathedrals of the Middle Ages were not planned and built by whole communities, but by individual men; all the communities had to do with the business was to do the hard work, reluctantly and often badly. So with folk-song, folk-myth, folk-balladry. The fable of Adam and Eve in the Garden was not invented by the ancient Jews as a people, bit by bit, slowly and painfully; it was composed in toto on some fair morning by some long-forgotten Babylonian O. Henry, just as Gefüllte Fisch was invented centuries later by some cook of brilliant gifts; all the Jews did was to adopt both fable and dish—and spoil both. German folk-song, the loveliest in the world, had precisely the same sort of origin. It used to be credited to a mysterious native talent in the German yokelry, but scientific investigation reveals that some of the songs regarded as especially characteristic of the folk-soul were actually written by the director of music at the University of Tübingen, Prof. Dr. Friedrich Silcher, and that he was still alive so recently as 1860.
The English ballads are to be accounted for in the same way. Dr. Pound shows that some of the most famous of them, in their earliest forms, are full of concepts and phrases that would have been as incomprehensible to the English peasantry of Elizabeth’s time as the Ehrlich hypothesis of immunity—that it is a sheer impossibility to imagine them being composed by a gang of oafs whooping and galloping around a May pole, or even assembled solemnly in an Eisteddfod or Allgemeinesängerfest. More, she shows the process of ballad making in our own time—how a song by a Paul Dresser or a Stephen Foster is borrowed by the folk, and then gradually debased. Her work is extraordinarily learned, and yet the writing is clear and charming. It is a capital example of what scholarship might be in America if there were more scholars and less of the ponderous mummery of sorcerers and corn-doctors.
The Literary Amenities
From the American Mercury, May, 1931, pp. 34–35
Now that realtors and used-car dealers, chiropractors and jobbers in plumbing supplies, keepers of one-arm lunchrooms and chattel loan brokers all have rigid codes of professional ethics, some of them enforced by drastic pains and penalties, I suppose that the authors of the United States will presently experiment in the same direction. So far all their discussion of right and wrong has had to do with the acts of the other fellow, to wit, of the publisher in his various forms: already, indeed, their trade union, the Authors’ League, has drawn up elaborate regulations for his conduct, not unlike the regulations prevailing in a well-conducted reformatory. But what authors themselves may do or not do is still rather vague, and so one encounters a wide variation in practise. There are authors in America who, in their transactions with a magazine editor, are as considerate and punctilious as so many Galahads, but there are others who are not above trying to rook him out of a few postage stamps.
In the matter of the relations between author and reviewer there seems to be a great difference of opinion, with English ideas running one way and American ideas another. Not long ago an eminent English novelist was protesting bitterly because one of the American reviewers had printed two reviews of a book of his, in two different periodicals, both of them unfavorable. He let it be known that this was regarded as immoral in England, at all events among novelists. But why it should be considered immoral I can’t understand. Certainly the complainant would have entered no caveat i
f both of the reviews had been favorable, and certainly the reviewer would have been open to suspicion if one had been favorable and the other not. I see no reason why, in such a case, a reviewer should not print as many reviews as he can induce editors to print. If his opinion is worth printing at all, then it is worth printing as much as possible. But it appears that different views prevail in the Motherland, at least among novelists with American hopes.
In another direction the English are far less squeamish. Here in the Republic it is considered infra dig for an author to protest against anything printed about his book; even in case of gross libel he leaves his publisher to make whatever representations may be called for. But in England authors are always protesting and complaining, and the letter columns of such journals as the Literary Supplement of the London Times are filled with their murmurs. This is most unusual west of the Atlantic. The few authors who indulge in the English habit are generally thought to be bounders, and no one pays any attention to them. But the English, as an offset, are far more careful than their American brethren about the use of private communications from reviewers, and never publish them as advertising blurbs and without permission, as is common over here.
Some time ago a young author who had just published his first book asked me if he should send letters of thanks to the reviewers who had noticed it favorably. I told him that the custom of the trade was against it—that he was estopped by etiquette from taking any cognizance of reviews, save, of course, those which happened to be written by personal friends. But I have since been wondering whether I advised him correctly. The fact is that the matter has never been discussed judicially by any author with a talent for ethical science, and that in consequence no one knows what is right and what is wrong. I am also in doubt about another matter. Two or three years ago, when an American novelist dedicated a novel to me and I reviewed it in due course, I was denounced for logrolling. The book was of such character that my customers naturally expected me to deal with it, and the review had vinegar in it as well as goosegrease; nevertheless, I was belabored as a logroller, and the doctrine was set up that a man to whom a book is dedicated should never notice it. Is this doctrine sound? If so, then it puts a burden upon reviewers of any experience, for they naturally meet a good many authors, and not a few books are dedicated to them. But I am by no means sure that my critics were wrong. Nor am I sure that it is good professional practise for an author to dedicate a book to a practising reviewer, even though the reviewer may be a personal friend.
The whole subject of dedications, indeed, deserves to be considered at length by a committee of elderly and discreet authors, to the end that sin may be avoided at either end. Personally, I have never dedicated a book to anyone, nor have I ever taken any notice of a review, whether good or bad, save (a) when the reviewer happened to be a personal friend, or (b)when he sent me his review and solicited my opinion of it. In the latter case I have always replied that it was swell, though not infrequently this was, in the strictest sense, not true. On sleepless nights I often think of such things, and find my conscience in a swollen and feverish state. If the subject were treated in books on moral theology I’d resort to them, but it isn’t. Thus I propose that a national duma of authors be called, and that the whole subject of professional ethics be pondered officially. Even psychiatrists and movie magnates now have rigid codes; nay, even newspaper editors. But authors continue to wander in a moral wilderness.
The Authors’ League
From THE NATIONAL LETTERS, PREJUDICES: SECOND SERIES,
1920, pp. 36–37
I QUOTE from a literary manifesto of 1920:
There are some conspicuous word merchants who deal in the English language, but the general public doesn’t clamor for their wares. They write for the “thinking class.” The élite, the discriminating. As a rule, they scorn the crass commercialism of the magazines and movies and such catch-penny devices. However, literary masterpieces live because they have been and will be read, not by the few, but by the many. That was true in the time of Homer, and even today the first move made by an editor when he receives a manuscript, or a gentle reader when he buys a book, or a T.B.M. when he sinks into an orchestra chair is to look around for John Henry Plot. If Mr. Plot is too long delayed in arriving or doesn’t come at all, the editor usually sends regrets, the reader yawns and the tired business man falls asleep. It’s a sad state of affairs and awful tough on art, but it can’t be helped.
Observe the lofty scorn of mere literature—the superior irony at the expense of everything beyond the bumping of boobs. Note the sound judgment as to the function and fate of literary masterpieces, e.g., “Endymion,” “The Canterbury Tales,” “Faust,” “Typhoon.” Give your eye to the chaste diction – “John Henry Plot,” “T.B.M.,” and so on. No doubt you will at once assume that this curious counterblast to literature was written by some former bartender promoted to composing scenarios. But it was not. It was written and signed by the president of the Authors’ League of America.
1 This curious foreignness is dealt with at length in Van Wyck Brooks’s The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865; New York, 1936.
XXVI. LITERATI
The Moonstruck Pastor
From the American Mercury, Oct., 1930.
A review of Emerson: The Enraptured Yankee, by Régis Michaud;
New York, 1930
IT is one of the mysteries of American life that Rotary has never discovered Emerson. His so-called philosophy, even more than that of Elbert Hubbard, seems to be made precisely for the lunch-table idealists. There is in it an almost incomparable sweep of soothing generalities, a vast marshaling of sugary and not too specific words, a wholesale assurance, a soaring optimism. It sets up a magnificent glow without generating any destructive heat. I can imagine nothing better suited to the spiritual needs of used-car dealers, trust company vice-presidents, bath-fixture magnates, and the like, gathered together in the sight of God to take cheer from one another and shove the Republic along its rocky road. Its effects upon the circulation is as powerful as that of a swig of C6H3(OH)2 – CHOH – CH2 – NHCH3. And yet the Rotarians neglect this powerful medicine for the feeble philtres of Hubbard, and gulp the even more watery perunas of Roger W. Babson and Bishop Manning as chasers.
M. Michaud is plainly surprised by this blindness. As he points out over and over again, Emerson was always very careful to keep idealism within the bounds of American respectability. He incited to hope, optimism, enterprise, enthusiasm, but never to any downright violation of decorum. Did he preach the sacredness of the individual, the kingship of the lonely soul? Then he always stopped far short of Thoreau’s corollary that it was unnecessary to pay taxes. Did he view theologians with a fishy eye, and distrust their mumbo-jumbo of sacraments and ceremonials? Then he still found it discreet and decent to go to church on Sunday. Did he call for frank words, honest exultations, dancing with arms and legs? Then he knew how to be cautious when it came to Walt Whitman. And did he praise the simple life and renounce luxury? Then it was always from the security of an ample income. In this last field, indeed, the student scarcely detects any difference between his philosophy and that of Arthur Brisbane. “One can read between the lines,” says Michaud, “that in Emerson’s eyes the poor, like the sick, are rogues, that the capitalists are the real ‘representative men,’ that all compensation which pays in specie is divine, and that Wall Street is the true temple of the Other-Soul.”
If this is not a philosophy made for soaring American business men, then I am surely no tailor of the psyche. But, as I say, they pass it over for inferior goods, and so leave it to the New Thoughters and the New Humanists. Both, alas, make a sad hash of it. The New Thoughters force it into a miscegenation with deep breathing, umbilicular contemplation and other borrowings from the heathen Hindus, and the New Humanists try to ram it into the mold of Calvinism. Emerson, if he were alive today, would feel uncomfortable in either camp. He was, for all his ventures into interstellar space, far too realistic a Ya
nkee to believe that reading the Bhagavad-Gita could wake his solar plexus or give him second sight, and he owed far too much to the Romantic movement to countenance the Humanists’ saucy denunciations of Rousseau. He was, indeed, the real founder of Romanticism in America, though he took his Rousseau at third hand. It was precisely from Romanticism that he got the ammunition for his polite and pussy-footing revolt against Calvinism.
Aristotelian Obsequies
Mencken Chrestomathy (Vintage) Page 54
