Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-08
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE

n critic SHES rocks at the public
AA for it's supposed Indifference to
the classics. This is diverting in the
east just now because most of the "po-
lite world" at whom the bricks are
aimed are far away at the seaside, and
the ordinary, Woodworking folk who
read the screeds can wink at the bonn
harding satire without even those deli
cious tWinges OF sympathy with WhlC1
one sees a neighbor's glass houses
smashed. The great difficulty in tax
ing such onslaughts seriously, OF
course, is the difficulty in deciding just
what a classic is In Los Angeles only
the press agents know, and they Will
tell-in the advertising columns. But
in general many good but beWildered
people will be inclined to agree with
an ironical dramatic philosopher in the
Chicago Record Herald, who quotes
certain frivolous persons as defining
q classic as IAN author whom nobody
takes the trouble TO read because it IS
certain he will never be discussed in
polite circles
This is all very jolly, but which are
the polite circles? At what particu-
lar row at the Mason these weeks, for
instance does bored society cease to
loll and the great opera-hungry mob
begin to spraWl2 Where dL me-
Greater Claim" were the adventurous
spirits" whom this superior Chicago
critic declares occasionally essay the
task of trying to enjoy a serious play?
"The Greater Claim to be sure, is not
a classic, but it may be made one. Per
haps, as the Chicagoan says IS true or
all great drama, Mr.. Tedford's work
must pass through three stages: FIRST,
the obscurity of public ignorance
CHATS over at any rate) second, the
celebrity of critical misapprehension'
CHATS right now, of course); third
the obscurity of public knowledge"
That's next week-perhaps,
1.-THE first obscurity," says the Rec
ord-H Herald man, lis to the second as
MONDAY to the darkest night, and 1t Is
not till a man has passed through TINS
final stage that he can be pronounced
q classic and safely ignored
How sad it all is! But here is worse,
from the same authority:
There is a kind of immodesty in
great pretensions which is OBJ
noxious to the soberer part of man
kind. They can tolerate the social
and political pre-eminence of
monarch because they may tiatter
themselves that they are both hand
somer and wiser than he; but the
pre-eminence of a man of brains is
a thing not to be put by. 1t is in
tolerable, but it must be endured;
therefore has the race of mankind
created the classic. 1t is the ultl-
mate limbo to which are banished
all who, through accident or pro-
digious labor, have achieved in
contestible superiority.
The classic thereafter is the sole
possession of commentators who
work indefatigaby year in and year
out for generations winding about
the body of the great man an i'm
penetrable sheath of criticism so
ls,,
brightness of the body. His praise
is kept alive by his heroic worship
ers, who make a cult of obscurity
and thus frighten away all but the
most adventurous of their fellow
spirits.
Now there is just enough clever soph-
istry in this kind of talk to make il
interestingly it were only true. The
slowness of the public to accept works
of genius we may waive. Sometimes
it is the canny conservatism of d purse
tight manager who has often been inn
posed upon. Sometimes it is lack Of
practical sense on the part of the
genius himself. Both are lamentabe
but why blame the public? But the
underlying assumption of our critics
witty arraignment is that ordinary men
and women--like me and, maybe, yOu-
do not appreciate Art, nor patronize il
1 unhestatingly brand as a canard.
On my Own account, and yours.
A classic infers a standard of class
icism. Somebody had to coin the word
genius" And that somebody was not
the dramatic critic, nor the manager
nor the genius, who like enough didn't
know what he was but only knew the
ache in his stomach and the fire at his
heart. The somebody who discovered"
Homer was the big mob who used to
D. smite him on the back after he smote
the Tyre, and buy him drinks when he
wanted bread and meat That wasn't
wise, perhaps, any more than the treat
ment of Keats, and Burns and Poe
was kind, but it coined the word
genius" 1t set the standard, not only
of art, but Of just how much red LIQUOR
was fit to reward the splendid and in
credible things that a good workman
could do. That was the first wage
scale, as applied to art. There you have
the margin of existence as applied
to the creative intellect
And ever since the same big, ma
Iigned public have been paying for
the bread and beer of the playwrights
who have had something to tell them
of life as they know it-and the life
of the drawing room is pretty much
the same, at its human heart, as the
life of the tap room. 1t was the or
binary man who yelled "Bravo" at
Duce- Merola and Norelli at the Mason
last week. 1t was the hosts of the
poor and the simple minded who