The Washington herald., 1913-10-19

believe to be the truth, but what they
would like. When a woman is serene and
beautiful as Diana they like to say to
others that she is loose of virtue. though
they know for certairr-fn themselves that
they are uttering a falsehood. 1t need
hardly be said that such a man Is OF the
type that calls aloud for literature like
the ''Kreutzer Sonata" and Artsibashefs 8
"Sanin."
Atmosphere of Money.
The bourgeois literature centers around
the sex problem, round the probable un-
chastity of women; his religion is in
trade. money. and feasting. As said. he
wants to know the price OF everything. II
you take of your overcoat he wants to
know the price of your trousers; II you
undress to go to bed he asks you what
your underwear cost. In a train an utter
stranger will commonly feel the material
of your dress and ask what you paid for
1t. II you wear a ring, what did you pay
for 1t: he could never understand a ring
used as a sacred token. If you arrive at
his house in a cab, how much did You pay
the cabman, by how much did you beat
him down, by how much do you think
he cheated you? He swallows money.
digests money, lives in an atmosphere of
money such as one knows nothing OF in
England.
1t is not to the music of Sobinoff that
you sit down to dinner with NJ. lie Bour-
geois, but TO Lehar, the composer OF mu-
sical comedies, which are liked equally by
the bourgeois OF five nations
Instead of opera, the gramophone: in
stead of the thester, the cinematograph;
instead OF national literature, the cheap
translation; instead of national life, a
miserable imitation of modern English
life.
The peril is that the bourgeois class is
recognizing its power and claiming to be
the educated class as opposed to the peas
ants, the educated: to be the wise of the
nation as opposed to the cultured, the
'overeducated." 1t is beginning to clamor
in the press, to write, to define, to CEN
sure. 1t calls itself the democracy and
points out that it will pay for its likes
and that its sort Of art and life will
pay"
Test Of Approval.
That a thing pays is to the bourgeois
the test Of democratic approval. By force
of this democratic approval 1t is putting
the older intelligentia to the wall; it is
turning out the national literature for
what is in editorial slang called SKY.
blue romance" Russia cannot produce
what it wants; the Russian author, be he
novelist, playwright or poet, is naturally
a seeker, a national dreamer; he won't
do. Forward the foreigner, Shaw, Je-
rome, Wells; II is astonishing, but such
is the power of the Russian bourgeois
that these three English authors are al
most as much read now in Russia as in
England. The bourgeois has found their
great man in Artisbashef, a man who
wrote the most scandalous novel about
the ulterior intentions and thoughts Of
men and women in one another's COM
pany-"S "Sanin.' book that swept Russia
as no other book has done in any coun-
try in Europe. Fortunately the Russian
censor stopped 1t when 1t had been pub
lished six months.
Leould Andreff would be one of the
great writer's of Europe but for the fact
that he has the bourgeois in his mind
and is always compromising between
what he Is inspired to write and what
the public wants. Alas for Russia IL the
succeed! The tyranny Of the
bourgeois is the worst of all tyrannies.
Under 1t the spirit OF the peasantry will
be deprayed.
It may be thought that there Is little
harm In the commercializstion of the
Russian peasant, the secuiafizing of his
life, and that after all the bourgeois pop
uIation of England, France, and Ger
many is not SO bad as not to be on the
way to something better. But that would
be a mistake. II once the Russian ma
lion becomes thoroughly perverted II will
be the most treacherous. most vile, most
dangerous in Europe. For the perverted
Russian all is possible. 1t is, indeed. his
tavorite maxim, borrowed. he thinks,
from Nietzsche. that "All is permitted"
and by ''all'' he means all abomination,
all fearful and unheard-of beastiality, all
cruelty, all falsity, all debauch. am
not pamphleteering against the Russian |
say IL out Of my love for the simple |
peasant, the modern movement is damn |
ltion.