The sun., 1918-10-13


you do not know her performance.
1t began right after the appearance Of The Land
of Little Roin with her next work. the novel Istdro,
a romance dealing with the California of the padres,
and it reached its high and sustained level with A
Woman of Genius:
Tale With Point
She did not remain on the edge of the desert. TO
do SO would have been fatal She moved about and
with benefit to herself and her work. Now she lives
in house facing on Gramercy Park, New York,
where she has studio. She has exchanged the
Moave desert for the desert of Manhattan, but she
is sheltered in an oasis touched with the lingering
loneliness of the New York II. c. RUNNER knew.
Ask her about the advantages of her new environ
ment and she will tell you story:
"A young Californian who came East to try his
fortune gravitated naturally to Washington Square,
where Genius is supposed to terminate. He was
personally conducted to the Liberal Club, where
young woman in bObbed hair and futurst dress
asked him if he didn't think the Liberal Club the
most remarkable thing in America.
'''We said the Westerner, there s the Grand
Canyon, you know
"Thcre you have it, concludes Mrs. AUSTIN.
"1f you haven't seen the Grand Canyon you had
better keep away from the Liberal Club; but once
you have caught the lift and bgness of America
outside New York, then New York is the most in
spring place in the world in which to work.
The truth is that the desert moulded MARY Aus
TIN without stunning her. She is like of those
desert plants Of which she tells us whose maturity
may be attained at ten feet four inches according
to moisture and the region in which they grow.
Herself, she is desert species-but transplanted
in time!
The Coming War of Ideas.
IN the psychological side this war is trench
" dous and oceanic reaction against intellcc-
tualsm 1t is protest against the brain. 1t is q
protest against approximation. II is a rank hon
est Impulse making war against knowledge.
We know too much. We feel too much We
have done too much. We have invented too much.
We have read too much. We have predicted too
much We have suffered too much. We have been
too cocksure.
The reaction after the will be felt first OF all
in literature All things born of their opposites.
After these slecpless hundred years we need dose
of oblivion. The problem novel and the problem
play will disappear. The corpse of the past must be
buried. There will be new kinds of flowers. A
new Tree of Good and Evil is taking root.
In the new Renaissance the Fantastic will stand
face to face with the Realist. IBsEN and lola and
their spawn will come face to face with the Dun.
sanys, the Grimms the Aesops and the Lewis
CAROLS of the coming time. There will be an
Armageddon of Ideas in literature.
And, as one prediction is as good as another, we
predict the complete humiliation of Common Sense
by the Imagination. We are to-day tremendously
awake, fearfully real. And at the end of the
catastrophe the human soul will demand anOdynes,
tramps in the Wilderness of the Unreal the hallu-
cinating dreams of great poets and fantastic tale
tellers
The world will cry for Vision. For that which
cannot be seen with the eye touched by the hand.
1t will need as an organic necessity bards and
troubadours, magicians and exalted prophets The
effulgent Latin imagination and the rhapsodie
Slavic music will come into their own There will
be an orgy Of Beauty, unrelated to psychological
or social theories, in the world of art.
We are famished for dreams We are trying
even now to liberate the stars from the crucibles
of Science. The garrets of heaven will be turned
into domes of many colored glass. Life will become
lyrical, MYSTICAL Dionysiac. We shall take the sun
L of hoo nd ST1rr and IiF0