Omaha daily bee., 1921-06-11
The Revolt of Youth
Polite Literature Belongs TO An
Older Day, When Facts Were Hid.
Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, in The Bookman.

That there is sharp line of cleavage be-
tween the young and the old since the war, in
England and America at least. is an open Sc
cret Books like "Potterism" and Limbo" in
England books like THE Narrow House" and
This Side of Paradise" in America, reveal the
line as almost steely in its hard, clear bright
ness. And I can we'll imagine the shock a
Harvard overseer of the hne old type would
receive in the ncighborhood OF his solar pexus
if he read One Mans Initiation, 1917 by a
recent Harvard graduate of great promise
John Dos Passos. Nothing could be less like
the accepted Harvard view of the feelings OF a
heroic young soldier. Yet some of US who saw
the war in France find that book true and
indeed beautiful portrayal of the actions and
reactions Of one type OF sophisticated and sensi-
tive American. 1t is the kind of frank yet
subtly shaded human document which French
man have always produced. | count it great
advance that young America has emerged from
our burst OF idealist unanimity not only more
self-conscous but with the determlnation-to
which love of France may well have con-
tributed--to face objective facts, whether or not
they are pleasant
It is probable that for time the unpleasant
will be overstressed in American literature, and
the pleasant denied or ignored. This is natural,
necessary perhaps in the leveling of scales
weighed heavily in the Polyanna direction 1t
was William Archer, | think, who told, after
walking in back street in Boston with that
genial novelist who expressed a wish that he
might know what was going on behind the
drawn shades of certain blank-looking house.
Archer grmly propounded certain possibilities
from which his companion recoled with an ex-
clamation of horror and dismay There you have
suggested the difference between the old Ameri
can realism of Howells and the "gentecl tradi-
ton" and the new American realism of Evelyn
Scott or Zona Gale l doubt if either OF these
writers will ever give birth to as great book
as THE Rise of Silas Lapham" But I think
someone as yet unborn may write far greater
because Miss Lulu Bett' and "The Narrow
House" came into being
The final test of the younger generation, the
thing that will eventually prove its contribution
to American life and literature to be deep or
meager draft on this great and largely unex-
plotted fund will be its disinterestedness. l pre-
fer this term to Mr.. Shermans moral idealism
but l admit that there is some resemblance be-
tween the two. If the younger generation have
the failing of the younger generation in England
as represented in "Potterism" the tendency to
work for what it gets out OF things (for money,
for success, for popular acclaim) instead OF what
it puts into things, then its members will not be
the equals of the best of those who have pre-
ceded them even by 10 years so-of Villa
Gather and Sherwood Anderson, for instance
One may not expect young person OF the
present to say at the end OF busy week as her
grandmother did, What have done to make
Others happy?'; but her What have done that
was amusing and excting?" leads one straight
to Bertrand Russells definition OF the acquis-
tive as distinguished from the creative temper.
The creative art certainly does not consist in
squeezing into ones glass dozens and dozens of
delicious oranges, though "objectivity" seems
sometimes to point that way. 1t consists in
turning oneself into the orange, in squeezing one
self, forcing out ones very last drop of juice.
We are learning, in spite of the guardians of
Puritanism. to create for the JOY of creating
and to cultivate our native roots in all their
varety-to graft New England stock with
Semitic branches, and fertilize the prairie with
seed from Scandinavia. But let the soil be
never so rich and abundant, we shall not have
great art and literature until we are willing as
the pioneers were, to pour our blood and tears
into the burrows.
Possibly the best way for the young revoltes
to carry through their revolt is TO see very clear
ly the line Of cleavage from their elders-see it
and glory in it, as Amy Lowell has deliberately
done with the new poetry. And yet-not long
ago ! heard poet, who ranks high among the
new but draws all his originality from traditional
New England roots, say that it was not ncces-
sary tor man to quarrel with his father in
order to be free, in order to "take his place. He
must find his direction find it and stick to it
but that done in youth he could wait 20 years
If need be, for success. So speaking in the midst
of reading of his farm poems, Robert Frost
with his timeless profile, his mop of tossed gray
hair his voice with its subtle hint of dialect con-
veyed a direct sense OF the creative spirit in
Amerca. And an ordinary, unilluminated New
York audience found itself suddenly sharing his
faith and patience his life that had been lived
for inmaterial rewards, his most beautiful in
dividual vision and expression of our national
genius.
vision, an expression utterly unlike Edgar
Lee Masters. Yet is one more American than
Lat, he eel l.. A.. 81
that includes them both.