St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-11-11
THE SEX OF PASSION.

THE SEX OF PASSION.
''The present tendency among our
female poets is so marked that it has
become duty to swing the danger sig
nal" says an editorial writer in the
New York Sun, who discharges the
duty he conceives with critical COM
parison Of ''Two Female Poets of Pas
sion"-Amele RiyeS Chanler and Ella
Wheeler Wilcox. After convicting the
former of being an unconscious imi-
tator of uburne and the latter of
being passionate in cold bloOd-as if
nice little Yankee scheolmarm should
attempt to copy the delirious antics of a
bacchante"-the self-constituted censor
of passionate poetesses quotes from Mrs.
Wilcox:
Lovely limbs and lips of luscious tre
Shall be the theme Of many poets Tyre,
AS long as men have words wherewith to
praise,H
and adds, perhaps. But it does not
therefore follow that as long as female
poets of unblemished personal reputa-
ton have pens and ink they should
write in the masculine gender about
luscious lips and softly moulded breasts
and draw without reserve upon the alb
h0rred vocabulary of eroticism."
Alas! for the digestive apparatus of
women; alas. for their healthy exist
ence; alas. for their very lives. We
have it OH Scriptural authority that our
first mother partook of the fruit Of
knowledge; but never, with the con-
~ h.
been permitted to digest it. That bite
of apple, for ages and ages, has lodged
UnaSSimilatcd among W0man'S yitalS,
and that she has not died of dyspepsia
ond been forgotten is due to innate
perversity rather than because she has
not been encouraged to that end by
society. 1t is contrary to the laws of
nature that we should take any
thing in without giving forth and
Just WhyepasSion, which is common to
the experience Of both men and women,
should be relegated solely to poets of
the former sex for expression, is diff
cult to comprehend. That sex should
be maintained in the realms above the
clouds. where poets live and from which
they speak TO the multitude below. is
absurd. The poet sees wide" and a
woman vino sits above and looks down
upon the world Of men cannot always
remember TO cast her eyes in the feml-
nine gender, and receive inspiration
only from babbling brooks, twittering
birds, spring, snow, or any other
of the few subjects which have
been adiudged perfectly proper and all
sufficient for the inspiration of Woman's
genius. The true poet is neither man
nor Woman-bound by the narrow
sphere of neither SeX-and just as the
poet-Soul in man compartments and StirS
mothers all over the earth with pictures
of mother-lOvc, just SO clearly, with just
as little question of prOpriety. the poet
soul in woman comprehendS passion,
and pictures its various phases. The
poet-souI i'll woman is as keenly alive to
every influence of earthly experience as
is the poet-soul in man, and, moved to
expression. she should no more be
judged by the yard-stick that measures
the range of vision OF other women than
should Goethe be claSSed an abnormity
because he saw Faust and Wilhelm
MciSter where other men see only the
spreading wings of the American eagle
and the bread and butter it will buy.
If Ella Wheeler WilcoX's passionate
poetry is cenSIirdbe in any respect, it is
in its failure to be passionate. The
most ii betrayS of unWomanlineSs is a
desire to appear as ii stirred by the
emotions she comes short of depicting.
Her commercial nature dominates over
her p0etical nature in her passion verse,
which fails ever to move the reader be-
cause he is conscious that she figured in
dollars and cents on his sensations as
she wrote it. She confesses that she
has been wont to dash Off poem in OF
der to buy new pair of slippers for a
ball. and while she writes OF yearning
for sweet hell" of Willingness to bar
ter her hopes OF heaven FOR kiss of
the past, one gets stronger impression
Of her Seethng desire for the check the
poem will bring than of any more irreg-
uIar sentiment. Amelie RiveS Chan
Ter, on the contrary, plungeS into her
passion poems or passion prose with an
uncCnsciousness of purpose that is evil
dent and betokenS genius. Simili-
tude is one Of the curses of all
human effort While one finds Paul
Haine in Amelie Riyes' tales and
Swinburne in her verse, one finds,
too, the assurance that Amelie
RiyeS would have lived and had her
literary being without either. We have
our period Of druling in literature as
well as in infancy. A part of the food
that nourishes runs back, little changed
in form-perfect assimilation is mat
requires time and favorable conditions
to accomplish. Amelie Rivers ChanleI
has no cause to blush for her power of
passion, no cause to blush for her un,
conscious plagiarisms. Both are nat
Ilral: the power is To the glory Of her
soul, the latter only speaks her youth.
-
The latest thing i'll women's clubs is
1.-The Kindly club" A society organ
lied under this name exists in New
York. and has for its object the cult
walton of kindly thought by kindly
words and by the suppression of evil
speaking. lying and slanderng. The
only qualification demanded of mem
Der is pledge Ito strive earnestly tt
cultivate EindlineSs of thought and
word, to resolve never to repeat derog
atory OF ill-natured remarks of another
never TO belittle any one and never t.
spread unkindly gossip or scandal
Can this be a deliberately organized eff
fort to break women up in business?
-
Rachel e. Foster has resigned hel
position us secretary of the Women.
National league TO become tie wife O.
man named Avery. Discretion is tht
better part of woman's valor when fem
mime Independence encounters old age