The mirror., 1923-06-21


monized state of society art has stepped
out of the false position into which the
infancy of new age, the advance of
machinery, had thrust it and has begun
to assume its true place in the life of
man. And because the old order, the Or
der in which we are yet forced to live,
no longer sufficed and thus had become
false, romanticism which was its result,
had to 60. Then followed, in rapid sue
'cession with the aid of ideas which had
been worked out on the Continent during
the Immediately preceding and somewhat
similar revolt series of instigations, pro-
bings, analyses, observations, and expert
ments whose purposes are, beneath the ex-
teriors and subterfuges, one and the same
"a clearer, more comprehensive under
standing of the relations existing between
man and the most complex social environ
ment history has yet to record, that from
this knowledge frmer basis on which to
build life may be attained. This is the
province of art, for which it came into
being and which it must continue so long
as life continues. On scale within our
vision the evolution is now going on.
\ There are three components to any art,
beside the medium: the artist proper who
creates; the critic who suggests to the
artist and explains to the people; and the
people. 1t is quite clear that the people,
in the broader sense of the word, have
neither the time nor the training necessary
to analyze and clearly understand work
of art; they will sense its purport intui-
lively and when the work is in accord
with their time they will appreciate it.
The corollary of this is also true: that if
both the art and the times are correspond
ingly false, the people will yet submit to
its power. The critic who acts as inter-
mediary, should know both the functions
and details of the art which he is inter-
preting and understand the language of
the multitude that he may explain to them
tie merits or demerits of any work. The
artist, who is by his nature very much
alone, has of necessity to fall back upon
the critic as the only person who can ad-
wise him accurately. So it comes about
that while the critics and the artists are
studying, and sometimes wrangling, over
points of purely aesthetic theory, or while
a group of critics and artists banded to-
gether by mutually analogous perceptions
are at times attacking other groups, or
while the critics are sending forth the re-
suits of their efforts, the public is forgotten
or perhaps abused as being the cause
rather than part of the study and argu-
ments which, are taking place. 1t is this
mistaken oblivion which has caused the
people to defend themselves with the two
overworked terms of "Highbrow" and
"Young Intellectuals, the result, not of
too much understanding as both sides
would affirm, but, as is usually the case,
of too little.
Art is, since it exists solely in the de-
sire to harmonize the emotions and the in
telect in form and thereby create a firmer
reality, the most useful acquisition man
has discovered. Even food loses its i'm
portance if some constructive desire is not
found to consume the energy which it
gives. And literature is art when the
functions of statue by Phidias or a can
vas by Korin are transferred from the
physical sight to the mental focus. 1t is
in this respect that the DiVine Comedy of
Dante, the Faust, of Goethe, the Comedie
Humane of Balzac, the Comedies and
Tragedies of Shakespeare, or the Ulysses
of ioyce are important. And by under
stnding these standards, which are as free
as life and as concise as its boundaries,
and by applying them to the works of
any writer, the distinction between T. S.
Eliot and Berton Braley, between A. E.
Coppard and o. Henry, between Oscar
Wilde and Hugh Walpole becomes, with
the critic at least, merely habit of mind
leaving open for him the detection of the
nuances of the perfected workman. Nor
does the sincere critic and artist with
draw from Freud or Henry James, from
Nietsche or Schropenhauer, from Ezra
Pound or H. L. Menken, from Papini or
Dewey, in fear or incomprehension. Rather
he absorbs the knowledge that is to be
gained from each, knowing that in the
truths and falibilities of others he will
find but the reflection of himself.
1t is a significant tendency in America
that has in three years raised the Dial,
a magazine of laboratory work in litera-
ture, from mere studio journal to its
present potentiality. Other magazines,
many of them, have appeared and been
submerged in the rising tide of literary
experimentation. But mostly have they
fallen through too limited view and too
narrow scope, by confning their contri-
butors to resident Americans when the