The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-17
QUEERNESS NOT ART.


 worship of Novelty Sign of Decad- | Great art is sane. To be queer is to
 obtain notoriety, followed by annihila- ton. velasquez, Shakespeare, Ictinus,
 Beethoven are not queer. Whatever is to become classic must meet this test of sanity. The distinction between genius and eceentricity is reef on
 which many critical barque IS
 wrecked. Because of a certain hatred
 for the commonplace strange gods mis-
 lead us and for a time we are duped,
 but we find our way back eventually.
 It Is not by universal suffrage that the
 masters in art are elected, but by the
 consensus of expert opinion. The rest
 of the world gradually accepts the ver-
 diets thus rendered-not convinced so
 much as overawed, and bullied into con-
 formity. Was there never such stuff as
 great part of Shakspeare?" cried
 King George III "Only one must not
 say so It's Shakespeare, and nobody
 dares to abuse him" A more potent
 authority than he had pronounced the
 fiat, namely, the aristocracy of brains,
 against which he knew It was futile to
 rebel I have heard a great artist liken
 Shakespeare to Rembrandt; they are
 both so mystical, yet so simple. Simple
 Perhaps you think that is easy? It is not so unless one is made that way.
 The influence of France, in the drama, the novel and painting, in these days is queer. George Moore, who reflects the
 French angle of vision says of him self: 'I am feminine morbid perverse. But above all perverse; almost every thing perverse interests, fascinates me" He began with Shelley, then be- came infatuated by Theophile Gautier, and for a while widowed about with great gusto in Baudelaire; he prefers Balzac to Shakespeare In painting his demi gods are Manet, Degas and Whist Ter. though I reluctantly admit that he has lucid intervals enough to bow down before Velasquez and Frans Hals. "But above all perverse.' That is true, The least hint al decency frightens him in a work of art the idea of morality is absolutely repugnant to him; he has gone to the limit in the apotheoss of the queer. At first one reads his con- fessions with wonder, then with indig- nation. finally with pity. He lived in Paris for six or eight years, and imbibed most of his Ideas in converse tion with the habitues of the Cafe de la Nouvelle Athenes; but in all his "reminiscences I can find no evidence that he ever en- tered the Louvre. l am afraid that Moore is very sincere, and that his both aesthetic and ethic, are not made solely for the purpose of shocking his readers. Were he consist ent he would not admire Ingres, for he hates anything that is correct; but he l $ like the wind, which bloweth where it isteth and he is lawless that he is not even true to himself. Such abnor- nal creatures are certainly fit subjects Or the pathologist's study; they are ioomed to suffer extinction.
 Yet there are many flashes of in- | sight of intelligence, in. the writings of l George Moore; in spite of his social | moral blindness, his heartlessness his | oerversity. his egotism and his candid | iecadence, he has keen appreciation | # certain kinds of beauty, and keen disgust for all forms of humbug except lis own. On the technical side he ie q critic of painting and liter lture, with more wit than justice, and | nwarmed by the faintest ray of human or magination Shall I add | hat he admires Wordsworth; that he | learly perceives the Otcstant nations re beating the Catholic nations in the ace for supremacy; yet that he loves he French, and hates his own native ountry Greland) as much as he hates he Christian religion?
 Verlaine, Baudel ira, Ga utter. Ma aetes-
 nk, Besnard, the impressionists the ymbolists, the realists, the luminarists. he decadents the over-ripe, the fad ists, La Jeune France-all these men nd the movements and manias they