The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-03-09

to offset q ERRIT AMMIDON completely. GERRrr AM
MIDoN will marry twice for incredible reasons and
ROGER BREvARD will not even marry once for the
most compelling of reasons-love. The beautiful
melody proclaimed by the violins is brutally
parodied by the tubas.
The Closed Circle of Art
Is it all right thusY 1t is not all right thus and
it never can be so long as life remains the unpat-
termed thing we discern it to be- IL life were com
pletely patterned it would most certainly not be
worth living. When we say that life is unpatterned
we mean of course, that cannot read all its pat
terms 1--WE like to that all patterns are there
because it comforts us to think Of a fundamental
Order and Symmetry.
But so long as life is largely unpatterned, or so
long as cannot discern all its patterns life is
eager interesting, surprising and altogether dis
tracing and lovely, however bewildering and dis
tressng, too. Different people take the unreliable
differently. Some like THOMAS HARDY, take it in
defiant bitterness of spirit; some like JOSEPH Con-
RAD, take it i'll profound faith and wonder. HARDY
sees the disorder that he cannot fathom; CONRAD
admires the design that he can only incompletely
trace. To HARDY the world is place where
q As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport. - $3.50.
To CONRAD tho; world is a place where men may
continually make the glorious and heartening dis
eovery that a solidarity exists among them; that
they united by bond as unbreakable as it is
mysterious
And to others, regrettably to Mr.. HEROES
HEIMER writing JaCa Head, the world is place
where it is momentarily sufficient to trace casual
symmetres without thought of their relation to an
ineluctable whole
The Patternless
What, then, is the novelist to dol Is it not
obvious that he must not busy himself too carefully
with the business of patternng the things he has to
tell? For the moment he has traced everything out
nicely and beautifully; he may know for a surety
that he has cut himself off from the larger design
of Life. He has got his little of the Oriental
rug all mapped out with the greatest exactitude
But he has lost touch with the bigger intricacy be-
yond his corner 1t is prayer rug. He had better
kneel down and pray.
Now there novels in which no pattern at all
Is traced; and these arc as bad as those which
mInutely map mere corner. These are meaning
less and confused stories in which nobody can dis
Germ any cause effect, any order or law, any SYM
metry or proportion expressed idea. These are
the novels which have been justified as "sice of
life, and which have brought into undeserved dis
repute the frequently panstaking manner of their
telling The trouble is seldom primarily as SO
many people think, with the material but with its
presentation. You may take almost any material
you like and so present it to make it mean some
thing; and you may also take almost any material
you like and so present it as to make it mean moth
ing to anybody A heap of bricks is meaningless;
but the same bricks are Ineligible expressed as
building of whatever sort, or merely a sidewalk
with zlgzags, perhaps, of var-colOr.
The point would make-and we might as well
try to drive it home without further Intellectual at
tempts at illustrations that you must do some
patterning with your material, whether bricks for
a building or lives for story; but if you pattern
too previously your building will be contemplate
and your story without soul. In your building
you must not be so decided as to leave no play for
another's imagination, contemplating the structure.
In your narrative You must not be so dogmatic
about two and two adding to four as to leave no
room for wild speculation that perhaps they came
to FIVE For it is not the certainty that two and two
have always made four but the possibility that some
day they may make five that makes life worth living
and guessing about on the printed page