The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-03-03
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
VII.
True Literary Art.

tOpyF Aftt 1NOfs W a.. ~ SNtJ
The hope of the future in literature is
eminently not in the men or women who
shall write in the coming generation. 1t is
in the people who shall read, the people who
appreciate, the people who demand good
literature.
And what is good literature? 1t certainly
is not literature written under the tyranny
of the motto, Art for arts sake" In a
commonplace age, when crudity and vul-
garity were the rule of the day, the literary
men of the country might adopt such
a motto. But the motto OF which true
literature is produced is Art for
the revelation of the secrets of the heart
| Art exists for man, not man for art. The
| truest art is that which disappears. which
| conceals itself, because the thought that is
conveyed is so much more enhancing in its
| interest than the mere verbal expression can
ever be. Literature with a purpose-a pur-
| pose of discussing theology. sociology, or
| even art itself-is no true literature. But
art must have a purpose, nevertheless, above
| and beyond itself, the purpose of touching
and feeding the human heart. The intellect
belongs to science and theology and phil
| osophy. But the heart belongs to art, and
art belongs to the heart, and that is the
| truest art which makes the heart thrill most
wildly. The infamous doctrine that liter
| allure should be documents in the history OF
the race, that fiction should be a record of
| the manners and dress and tendency of a
| time. that philosophy should chronicle the
| latest ism. that poetry should be the shrine
| of local color, must be swept clear OF the
boards before one line of true literature can
| exist for the public. Mr.. Crawford says he
| classifes novels of local color in his library
| under the head of travel, not fiction. He is
right.
/ do not despise art, far from it. Three
men whose names / might mention as most
full of promise among the younger men, and
one of older fame whose work so largely ac-
complished already | should class with them,
are eminently scholars in their art, though
two of them be young scholars and two of
them be- old scholars. They are not ditch
diggers turned poet in a day, claiming that
after all the less knowledge of art a young
writer has the better seem to be the practical
results. They have given years to the study
of language and literature, and years of en-
thusiasm and toll. I myself have not ven
tured to write these Journalistic" notes
without more than a dozen years of the most
constant and arduous study, not only OF
language and literature. but also OF mathe-
mates and science and history, and the
hearts of my fellow men. And this humble
style, which | am quite certain the critics OF
the insiders will sheer at as Journalistic, was
acquired by the careful composition of
more than 200 folioS of manuscript, much
of it rewritten in toto three and four n
five times, and all of which, l am happy to
say, was promptly destroyed on its final
completion, lest 1 should be tempted in after
years to treat it as literature
No, l do not despise literary art. Rather,
I am the irrevocable foe of the literary
artists of the day who never learned
any literary art, and the young man or
Young woman who may come to me with a
spontaneous production of literature, out of
a full heart and utter lack of training, will
find no consideration. We enshrine that of
which we know least. We worship what Is
to us a mystery. The literaH of the day
who worship art for arts sake bow down to
an idol yelled by thick curtains, and behind
the curtains there is in reality-nothing.
But art must be forgotten before it can be
useful. There are two perfect artists,-the
innocent and unconscious child, who is but
the hand of divine intelligence, and the
trained man of letters to whom art has be-
come a second nature. Art does not exist
for the sake of the artist any more than for
it's W sake. 1t is but the fluid medium
through which heart speaks to heart. To
represent men as you see them, to draw life
as it is-all that seems to me aside from
the question. Ispeak that which L do know;
| coin my hearts blood into the universal
coin of the realm of heart. [ have lived and
toiled and suffered-may l not say died!-
and l would transmute my pain into life for
| Others. Literature is for the heart to live
by. What matter if the heart be clothed in
a testers gaudy tights, or the correct cos
tune of the gentleman or lady of New York
fashionable society. One is romantic and
one is real, but the same heart throbs
beneath the white shirt front
and the beggar's grimy coat, and in htera-
ture why not strip off both the grimy coat
of the beggar and the white shirt front of
the man of society, and present hearts in
whatsoever costume imagination nay sup
ply, so that the beggar, if he take the heart
to himself may not be afraid OF solllng the
heckless linen, OF the man OF society wish to
change his garments when he lays down the
latest novel. Howells writes for the classes,
Zola for the masses:-I would that one might
come who wrote for your heart and my
heart. whatever garment covered it,-some
seer who should see so clearly that his
eyes would pass through the garment as if it
were a mist, and read the letters OF eternal
hope and eternal despair, eternal victory
and eternal defeat, both written side by side,
and needing a seer to interpret their ever
lasting meaning.
That l or any one of my fellows be such a
seer is not for me to say. Whether we are
or not is quite apart from the point. Our
hope lies not in any such fortunate POSSIBLE
fly, but in the need of the people. When
the peopls call for a prophet one will be
given them. Do they call nowa Each
reader must answer that for himself. If he
answers it loud enough, and does not forget
TO repeat his answer at least three times, an
angel from above, or an angel from below,
whatever the call may be, will surely appear.
Literary News and Notes.
The literary agency fourishes tremend-
| ously in England, but in New York 1t has
not made so much Of a showing. DR.. Coan
succeeded with his Bureau of Revision, and