The Art Of Letters Part 15

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz,-- The night you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,-- And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-- And the anger, the blind compa.s.sion that seized and shook you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads,--those ashen-grey Masks of the lad who once were keen and kind and gay?

_Have you forgotten yet?..._ _Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget._

Mr. Sitwell's satires--which occupy the most interesting pages of _Argonaut and Juggernaut_--seldom take us into the trenches. Mr. Sitwell gets all the subjects he wants in London clubs and drawing-rooms. These "free-verse" satires do not lend themselves readily to quotation, but both the manner and the mood of them can be guessed from the closing verses of _War-horses_, in which the "septuagenarian b.u.t.terflies" of Society return to their plat.i.tudes and parties after seeing the war through:

But now They have come out.

They have preened And dried themselves After their blood bath.

Old men seem a little younger, And tortoise-sh.e.l.l combs Are longer than ever; Earrings weigh down aged ears; And Golconda has given them of its best.

They have seen it through!

Theirs is the triumph, And, beneath The carved smile of the Mona Lisa, False teeth Rattle Like machine-guns, In antic.i.p.ation Of food and plat.i.tudes.

Les Vieilles Dames Sans Merci!

Mr. Sitwell's hatred of war is seldom touched with pity. It is arrogant hatred. There is little emotion in it but that of a young man at war with age. He pictures the dotards of two thousand years ago complaining that Christ did not die--

Like a hero With an oath on his lips, Or the refrain from a comic song-- Or a cheerful comment of some kind.

His own verse, however, seems to me to be hardly more in sympathy with the spirit of Christ than with the spirit of those who mocked him. He is moved to write by unbelief in the ideals of other people rather than by the pa.s.sionate force of ideals of his own. He is a sceptic, not a sufferer.

His work proceeds less from his heart than from his brain. It is a clever brain, however, and his satirical poems are harshly entertaining and will infuriate the right people. They may not kill Goliath, but at least they will annoy Goliath's friends. David's weapon, it should be remembered, was a sling, with some pebbles from the brook, not a pea-shooter.

The truth is, so far as I can see, Mr. Sitwell has not begun to take poetry quite seriously. His non-satirical verse is full of bright colour, but it has the brightness, not of the fields and the flowers, but of captive birds in an aviary. It is as though Mr. Sitwell had taken poetry for his hobby. I suspect his Argonauts of being ballet dancers. He enjoys amusing little decorations--phrases such as "concertina waves" and--

The ocean at a toy sh.o.r.e Yaps like a Pekinese.

His moonlight owl is surely a pretty creature from the unreality of a ballet:

An owl, horned wizard of the night, Flaps through the air so soft and still; Moaning, it wings its flight Far from the forest cool, To find the star-entangled surface of a pool, Where it may drink its fill Of stars.

At the same time, here and there are evidences that Mr. Sitwell has felt as well as fancied. The opening verse of _Pierrot Old_ gives us a real impression of shadows:

The harvest moon is at its height, The evening primrose greets its light With grace and joy: then opens up The mimic moon within its cup.

Tall trees, as high as Babel tower, Throw down their shadows to the flower-- Shadows that shiver--seem to see An ending to infinity.

But there is too much of Pan, the fauns and all those other ballet-dancers in his verse. Mr. Sitwell's muse wears some pretty costumes. But one wonders when she will begin to live for something besides clothes.

XXI.--LABOUR OF AUTHORSHIP

Literature maintains an endless quarrel with idle sentences. Twenty years ago this would have seemed too obvious to bear saying. But in the meantime there has been a good deal of dipping of pens in chaos, and authors have found excuses for themselves in a theory of literature which is impatient of difficult writing. It would not matter if it were only the paunched and flat-footed authors who were proclaiming the importance of writing without style. Unhappily, many excellent writers as well have used their gift of style to publish the praise of stylelessness. Within the last few weeks I have seen it suggested by two different critics that the hasty writing which has left its mark on so much of the work of Scott and Balzac was a good thing and almost a necessity of genius. It is no longer taken for granted, as it was in the days of Stevenson, that the starry word is worth the pains of discovery. Stevenson, indeed, is commonly dismissed as a pretty-pretty writer, a word-taster without intellect or pa.s.sion, a juggler rather than an artist. Pater's bust also is mutilated by irreverent schoolboys: it is hinted that he may have done well enough for the days of Victoria, but that he will not do at all for the world of George. It is all part of the reaction against style which took place when everybody found out the aesthetes. It was, one may admit, an excellent thing to get rid of the aesthetes, but it was by no means an excellent thing to get rid of the virtue which they tried to bring into English art and literature. The aesthetes were wrong in almost everything they said about art and literature, but they were right in impressing upon the children of men the duty of good drawing and good words. With the condemnation of Oscar Wilde, however, good words became suspected of kinship with evil deeds. Style was looked on as the sign of minor poets and major vices. Possibly, on the other hand, the reaction against style had nothing to do with the Wilde condemnation. The heresy of the stylelessness is considerably older than that. Perhaps it is not quite fair to call it the heresy of stylelessness: it would be more accurate to describe it as the heresy of style without pains. It springs from the idea that great literature is all a matter of first fine careless raptures, and it is supported by the fact that apparently much of the greatest literature is so. If lines like

Hark, hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings,

or

When daffodils begin to peer,

or

His golden locks time hath to silver turned,

shape themselves in the poet's first thoughts, he would be a manifest fool to trouble himself further. Genius is the recognition of the perfect line, the perfect phrase, the perfect word, when it appears, and this perfect line or phrase or word is quite as likely to appear in the twinkling of an eye as after a week of vigils. But the point is that it does not invariably so appear. It sometimes cost Flaubert three days' labour to write one perfect sentence. Greater writers have written more hurriedly.

But this does not justify lesser writers in writing hurriedly too.

Of all the authors who have exalted the part played in literature by inspiration as compared with labour, none has written more n.o.bly or with better warrant than Sh.e.l.ley. "The mind," he wrote in the _Defence of Poetry_--

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; the power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to a.s.sert that the finest pa.s.sages of poetry are produced by labour and study.

He then goes on to interpret literally Milton's reference to _Paradise Lost_ as an "unpremeditated song" "dictated" by the Muse, and to reply scornfully to those "who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the _Orlando Furioso_." Who is there who would not agree with Sh.e.l.ley quickly if it were a question of having to choose between his inspirational theory of literature and the mechanical theory of the arts advocated by writers like Sir Joshua Reynolds? Literature without inspiration is obviously even a meaner thing than literature without style. But the idea that any man can become an artist by taking pains is merely an exaggerated protest against the idea that a man can become an artist without taking pains. Anthony Trollope, who settled down industriously to his day's task of literature as to bookkeeping, did not grow into an artist in any large sense; and Zola, with the motto "Nulle dies sine linea" ever facing him on his desk, made himself a prodigious author, indeed, but never more than a second-rate writer. On the other hand, Trollope without industry would have been n.o.body at all, and Zola without pains might as well have been a waiter. Nor is it only the little or the clumsy artists who have found inspiration in labour. It is a pity we have not first drafts of all the great poems in the world: we might then see how much of the magic of literature is the result of toil and how much of the unprophesied wind of inspiration. Sir Sidney Colvin recently published an early draft of Keats's sonnet, "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art," which showed that in the case of Keats at least the mind in creation was not "as a fading coal," but as a coal blown to increasing flame and splendour by sheer "labour and study." And the poetry of Keats is full of examples of the inspiration not of first but of second and later thoughts. Henry Stephens, a medical student who lived with him for time, declared that an early draft of _Endymion_ opened with the line:

A thing of beauty is a constant joy

--a line which, Stephens observed on hearing it, was "a fine line, but wanting something." Keats thought over it for a little, then cried out, "I have it," and wrote in its place:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Nor is this an exceptional example of the studied miracles of Keats. The most famous and, worn and cheapened by quotation though it is, the most beautiful of all his phrases--

magic cas.e.m.e.nts, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn--

did not reach its perfect shape without hesitation and thinking. He originally wrote "the wide cas.e.m.e.nts" and "keelless seas":

the wide cas.e.m.e.nts, opening on the foam Of keelless seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

That would probably have seemed beautiful if the perfect version had not spoiled it for us. But does not the final version go to prove that Sh.e.l.ley's a.s.sertion that "when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline" does not hold good for all poets? On the contrary, it is often the heat of labour which produces the heat of inspiration. Or rather it is often the heat of labour which enables the writer to recall the heat of inspiration. Ben Jonson, who held justly that "the poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the treasure of his mind," took care to add the warning that no one must think he "can leap forth suddenly a poet by dreaming he hath been in Parna.s.sus." Poe has uttered a comparable warning against an excessive belief in the theory of the plenary inspiration of poets in his _Marginalia_, where he declares that "this untenable and paradoxical idea of the incompatibility of genius and _art_"

must be "kick[ed] out of the world's way." Wordsworth's saying that poetry has its origin in "emotion recollected in tranquillity" also suggests that the inspiration of poetry is an inspiration that may be recaptured by contemplation and labour. How eagerly one would study a Shakespeare ma.n.u.script, were it unearthed, in which one could see the shaping imagination of the poet at work upon his lines! Many people have the theory--it is supported by an a.s.sertion of Jonson's--that Shakespeare wrote with a current pen, heedless of blots and little changes. He was, it is evident, not one of the correct authors. But it seems unlikely that no pains of rewriting went to the making of the speeches in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ or Hamlet's address to the skull. Shakespeare, one feels, is richer than any other author in the beauty of first thoughts. But one seems to perceive in much of his work the beauty of second thoughts too.

There have been few great writers who have been so incapable of revision as Robert Browning, but Browning with all his genius is not a great stylist to be named with Shakespeare. He did indeed prove himself to be a great stylist in more than one poem, such as _Childe Roland_--which he wrote almost at a sitting. His inspiration, however, seldom raised his work to the same beauty of perfection. He is, as regards mere style, the most imperfect of the great poets. If only Tennyson had had his genius! If only Browning had had Tennyson's desire for golden words!

It would be absurd, however, to suggest that the main labour of an author consists in rewriting. The choice of words may have been made before a single one of them has been written down, as tradition tells us was the case with Menander, who described one of his plays as "finished" before he had written a word of it. It would be foolish, too, to write as though perfection of form in literature were merely a matter of picking and choosing among decorative words. Style is a method, not of decoration, but of expression. It is an attempt to make the beauty and energy of the imagination articulate. It is not any more than is construction the essence of the greatest art: it is, however, a prerequisite of the greatest art. Even those writers whom we regard as the least decorative labour and sorrow after it no less than the aesthetes. We who do not know Russian do not usually think of Tolstoy as a stylist, but he took far more trouble with his writing than did Oscar Wilde (whose chief fault is, indeed, that in spite of his theories his style is not laboured and artistic but inspirational and indolent). Count Ilya Tolstoy, the son of the novelist, published a volume of reminiscences of his father last year, in which he gave some interesting particulars of his father's energetic struggle for perfection in writing:

When _Anna Karenina_ began to come out in the _Russki Vyestnik_ [he wrote], long galley-proofs were posted to my father, and he looked them through and corrected them. At first, the margins would be marked with the ordinary typographical signs, letters omitted, marks of punctuation, and so on; then individual words would be changed, and then whole sentences; erasures and additions would begin, till in the end the proof-sheet would be reduced to a ma.s.s of patches, quite black in places, and it was quite impossible to send it back as it stood because no one but my mother could make head or tail of the tangle of conventional signs, transpositions, and erasures.

My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out afresh.

In the morning there lay the pages on her table, neatly piled together, covered all over with her fine, clear handwriting, and everything ready, so that when "Lyovotchka" came down he could send the proof-sheets out by post.

My father would carry them off to his study to have "just one last look," and by the evening it was worse than before; the whole thing had been rewritten and messed up once more.

"Sonya, my dear, I am very sorry, but I've spoilt all your work again; I promise I won't do it any more," he would say, showing her the pa.s.sages with a guilty air. "We'll send them off to-morrow without fail." But his to-morrow was put off day by day for weeks or months together.

"There's just one bit I want to look through again," my father would say; but he would get carried away and rewrite the whole thing afresh. There were even occasions when, after posting the Proofs, my father would remember some particular words next day and correct them by telegraph.