The sun., 1903-12-27

their eyes Rlnmerlnp Wn'te, OF the Hdii
hidden charm of "O'Sulvan Rua to the
Secret Rose" Pagan Yes, pagan all Of
them in their keen devotion TO sky and
water, grass and brown Mother Earth.
Yeats seems to be uttering one long chant
of regret for the vanished gods, though
like Heinrich Hene, his gods are but "in
exile" They peep from behind the bull
rush and tmorously hide in the calyx OF
the flower; they are everywhere, in the
folds of the garrulous old woman, in the
love light of the girls black eyes. Ireland
is fairly paved with fairies, and Yeats tells
us of them in his sweet, languorous poetic
speech.
One is struck not 80 much with the breadth
Of his work as with its depth, it's intensity.
The Celt il narrow at tmes-but he touches
the tall stars, though his feet are plunged
in the black waters Of the bogs. The vision
Of Yeats approaches more nearly that OF
seer. He sees visions. He is exalted by
the sight of the fringe on some wandering
gods garment and he relates to us in naive
accents his fear and his joy at the privilege.
After ca rrival of Realism, when the master
mat terialists were defining the limits OF
space, when Matter and Force were crowned
on the throne of reason, suddenly comes
this renascence of the spiritual, comes first
to Belgium. spreads to France. then to
Ireland. After brick and mortar the
dreams multicolored and tragic Of poetsl
1t has been called pre-Raphaelism, SYM
bolism, neo- Catholicism, and what not
it is but the human heart crying for other
and more spiritual fare than the hard bread
Of facts. of reality. Such wave Of spirit
uality in art has not had its counterpart
since the age of Faith, since the Middle
Ages.
The Irish Independent Theatre has its
literary organs in Beltdine, in Sdmhdin, both
edited by Mr.. Yeats. Therein one learns
of its ideals, of its accomplished work
The Countess Cathleen," wonderful
piece, was first acted in 1899 at the Antient
Concert Rooms in Dublin. Mr.. Martyrs
"The Heather Field" and Mr. Moore's
strong, admirable play "The Bending Of the
Bough." and with Mr.. Yeats. their "Diar-
mud and Grania" were, with plays by
DR.. Hyde and several others, successfully
produced Mr.. Moore. always a fighter,
born propagandist Whether for the
paintings of Manet, Degas, Monet, the
music of Wagner, the poetry Of Verlaine,
or the prose of Huysmans, launched him
self into the movement with his accustomed
enthusiasm. He saw in Ireland the one
country of Europe unspoiled by commerce,
not debased by low ideals. He simply
wiped England of the face Of the artistic
globe with a wave of his magisterial hand
In a memorable preface he attacks the
contemporary theatre, and finds it empty,
frivolous, vulgar The eye, not the soul,
is the appeal made to sodden public.
Listen to this eloquent passage:
the manager can only save
himself from bankruptcy by offering TO
the public the amusement OF scenery and
dresses. Scenery is painting with the
intellectual side Of painting left out, just
as modern dramatic writing is writing
with the intellectual side, commonly called
literature, left out: and modern acting is
merely the personality of the actor and
actress with the intellectual side of acting.
the impersonation of character, left out.
And as the theatre has identified itself
with the life Of the senses rather than that
CT the intellect. it has become popular, for
the crowd desires the life of the senses;
the senses are the life Of the crowd, and
of immortality are the life OF
the crowd and accusations Of immortality
that we have heard raised against 1bsen,
against all who have sought the life of the
intellect on the stage, are merely the voice
of the crowd crying that its prescriptive
right to the life OF the senses in the theatre
shall noo be infringed upon. I'm
morality is never prosecuted, the world
cannot persecute itself; nothing is perse-
cuted in this world except the intelligence
Mr.. Moore only begs of the public little
province Of poetic art in its wide kingdom.
Touching on this oft hurled word de-
cadence" wish l had space to transcribe
the words of noble English thinker on this
subject. Whenever man sets out to create
beauty the world throws mud at his image.
Madness, immortality, decadence, is the
favorite trio of abusive vocables which
have been applied to poets from Shelley
and Byron to Maeterlinck and D'Annunzio.
Even Mr.. Yeats has not escaped. Yet,
what is this decadence. what has it to do
with ethics? Technically decadent style
is only such in relation to classic style.
1t is simply further development of
classic style, further specialization; the
homogeneous, in Spencerian phraseology,
haNlnR become heterogeneous. Inc nTSJ
is beautiful because the parts are SUBJ
ordinated to the whole; the second is beau-
tiful because the whole Is subordinated to
the parts. Among our own early prose
writer's Sir Thomas Browne represents
the type of decadence in style. Swifts
prose is classic, Paters decadent. Hume
and Gibbon are classic, Emerson and Car
lyle decadent. All art is the ris-
ing and falling of the slopes Of a rhyth-
mic curve between these two classic
and decadent extremes. = Decad-
ence suggests a going down, falling,
decay. If we walk down real hill we do
not feel that we commit more wicked
act than when We walked up it. In
decadence the individual has
gained more than the community has lost
the chief literary artists of
America-Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman-are
in the technical sense decadent.
We have to recognize that decadence is an
aesthetic and not a moral conception. The
power of words is great, but they need not
befool us. The classic herring should sug-
gest no moral superiority over the decadent
bloater. We are not called upon to air our
moral indignation over the bass end OF the
musical clef. All confusion of intellectual
substances is foolish and we
have to recognize that those persons who
bring the "a me crude notions into the fold