The New York herald., 1922-03-26

amothers and kissing were tolerated in
Mr.. Robert Bonner's eminent family
weekly, the New York Ledger. Moth
ing of the kind was allowed to sully
the chaste columns Of that journal.
To-day We're Free and
Glory in Our Nudity
In the present year Of grace, and
indeed for several years past, the PEN
dulum has swung so far in the opposite
direction that we are inclined to hold
our breath and wonder what will be
the end. Discretion has been thrown
to the winds and we walk naked and
unashamed. We glory in our nudity.
The turning point may be said to have
begun when two or three Bowdierized
translations from the French made
their appearance in America. And if.
as has been aptly stated, the art of
translation consists in taking some
thing written in one language and not
putting it into another, these emascu-
lated editions Of Zola left little to be
desired, since they were scarcely on
speaking terms with the original.
Nevertheless they bore fruit after their
II.
George Moore succeeded in obtaining
an English publisher for his "A Num-
mer's Wife," after it had been done
into French and brought out in Paris,
we sat. up and took notice. Here we
were confronted by marital infidelity,
drunkenness and all sorts of wicked
ness. handled without gloves and with
no discreetly yelling asterisks.
From the very first George Moore
showed that he had the courage Of his
convictions, and he made good use OF
the legacy he had received from Zola,
for we may safely assert that we
should never have heard of "A Num-
mer's Wife" had it not been preceded
by 'L'Assommoir." But like Huysmans
and Mirbeau, Moore was much more
than a simple naturalist. He was, and
still remains, man Of genius, the
most consummate literary artist in the
English speaking world of to-day,
head and shoulders above Shaw. Ches-
terton, Bennett. tntti quunti, who
shrivel to woeful dilettantism beside
this heroic Franco-Celtic figure. sneer-
ing at convention and swapping his
fingers under everybody's nose There
are but two novelists in England fit to
be compared with him, and these are
Conrad and James Joyce, the gifted
Irishman, who in his Portrait OF the
Artist as Young Man" has given us
such remarkable pictures of contem-
porary school and college life in ire
land. Here burns the divine fame
America Late as Usual in
Realism as She Is in Verism
Following this tentative foothold,
established by some bad translations
and the early novels OF George Moore,
who up to the 90s was known only
to the Merdti and the lovers of ex-
ceptional fiction. the advance Of real
ism was slow. In France. meanwhile,
the decadents. or symbollsts, as they
preferred to be called, were flourish
ing, but in a social rather than a
literary way. In America however no
writer belonging to either school had
appeared. Desiring realism or SYM
bolism, we were obliged to go to France,
Russia or Belgium to get it. Yet a
minor clique OF novelists had a vogue
here, men and women who chose spe-
cial phases of city or small town life
for their subjects and faithfully de-
picted characters who were either
bound hand and foot by inherited Gus
toms and manners or openly rebelled
against them. We had Howells and
Mary Wilkins in New England, and
Edgar Fawcett. who strove to initiate
Henry James. in New York. The great
middle West, now SO prolific in writ
ers and types" was then an undis.
covered country.
In these novels the lights and
shadows, the spiritual and ethical val
ues, were executed with marvellous
dexterity. They were true to life, di-
versified, exact, yet we dinly realized
that something was missing. Possibly
they SKINNED too lightly over the sur.
face of emotions and events leaving
the depths unexplored. Be this as 1t
may. who reads them now? The au.
thors of the sos and COS flashed
across the literary horizon brilliantly
enough, but left in their wake merely
faint trail of sparks that quickly