The sun., 1919-06-29
Don Marquis and His Book, "Prefaces"
By BENJAMIN DE cASSEREs.

Nv HhA 'auue'nie 10 W JUG ''aso VIZ
w editorial page Column" is to
American literature The "column" is, as
Mr. Christopher Morley has pointed out,
uniquely American. We are all facets.
Our Promethean energy demands express
sion in every direction at once. The
"column" writer is high powered wire
less receiving station; he "picks up"
everything ahoat and translates every
thing into paragraphs. satires, poems,
epigrams and solilOquy.
Don Marquis has presided over The
Sun Dial in THE EVENING SUN since
1912 To have read him every day for
those years is to have enjoyed the easy
conversational style of a god who has
caught the lingo of Nassau street. He
pours tremendous ideas into the psychic
matrices of the crowd. He knows how to
camouhage the speeches of Lucifer as
well as Anatole France and George Ber-
nard Shaw.
Poet, satirist and thinker, his univer-
salty startles. If he uses the slapstick
to-day, it is to prepare you for the magic
wand of Prospero tomorrow. Did he
pepper you with puns yesterday That
is because he is going to launch ire
mendous Satire offensive to-day. His brain
is like q ball of thousand colors tossed
high, tossed low, on the summit of foun-
tain whose waters come straight from the
earth Of our common experience.
His poetry contains some of the finest
lyrics that have been done in Eng
lish. He is essentially religious God
seeker an inhabitant of Eternity. He
has climbed Horeb with Moses and Cal
vary with Another. He has looked long
into that mystery Of mysteries-a child's
eyes. The sense of wonder, of amaze
ment, in the presence Of the achievements
ofGod and mantle stars or an airplane,
the ocean or the wireless-wells from his
volume, Dreams and Dust; and over all
there hangs like an impalpable atmOs-
phere the profound and immortal melan-
cholia of Lucretius.
He is the greatest satirist writing on
this side of the Atlantic. He is to me, in
fact, the greatest satirist this country has
yet produced-greater than Mark Twain
Excepting always the latter's The MyS-
FERROUS Strangely, Ambrose Bierce or
Stephen Crane What would he not give
us il he we're not "chained to a Hoe
press" f-the phrase is Mr.. Morley's. His
Savage Portraits are unique in our litera-
ture; Goyas etched in acid. His Hermit
one is already classic. His Almost Per
feet State is the first ironic history done
Over Here. His paragraphs-hundreds
of them1are the equal Of Rochefou-
caulds, Voltaire's or Chamfort's. He uses
a cutlass on the great god Bunk.
His greatness consists in his auto-irony.
He plays Moliere, Voltaire and Shake
speare to his own experiences. His sense
Of humor Stays his own dragons. Every
thing that happens to him is "copy"-the
safety valve of Goethe. He is not too
serious about anything. In reading some
of the best of Don Marquis's satires one
thinks of those colossal ironies hidden
deftly away in the pages of Ernest Renan
and Anatole France.
To paraphrase what has been said of
Leaves of GraSs-The Sun Dial is not a
"column"; it is a man.
His latest book, Prefaces, just from the
press, is Mr.. Marquis at his satiric and
philosophic best. These are prefaces to
all kinds of books that will never be writ