title: The young idea; an anthology of opinion concerning the spirit and aims of contemporary American literature,
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Henry Holt and Company, for the use of the essay by Mr. Louis Untermeyer, a com- pilation of three causeries which originally appeared in the Review of Reviews, the Chi- cago Evening Post and the New York Evening Post, published in pamphlet form by Henry Holt and Company as "The New Spirit in American Poetry:" To Mr. Mitch- ell Kennerley, for the use of several para- graphs from Mr. John Curtis Underwood's "Literature and Insurgency:" To the edi- tors of the North American Review for the privilege of reprinting Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke's essay, "Modern Tendencies in Poetry:" To Mr. William Marion Reedy for permission to reprint "Home Rule in Poetry," by Mr. Vachel Lindsay, from Reedy' s Mirror. CONTENTS Introduction i I The Empiricists : The Renascence of Com- mon Experience - - - - 3 Conrad Aiken 7 Witter Bynner 10 Will Levington Comfort - - 11 Max Eastman 15 Donald Evans 18 John Erskine 20 Arthur Davison Ficke - - - 22  Imagism 100 John Gould Fletcher - - - - 100 Amy Lowell 110 (2) Spectrism 114 Anne Knish 114 Emanuel Morgan 116 vii viii CONTENTS III The Idealists : The Renascence of Spirit- uality 121 William Rose Benet 123 Joyce Kilmer 128 Josephine Preston Peabody - - - - 134 Ridgely Torrence 140 IV The Pessimists 145 Benjamin De Casseres 145 Floyd Dell 147 Donald Marquis - 149 John Curtis Underwood ----- 150 V The Traditionalists 173 Fannie Stearns Gifford 174 Louis V. Ledoux ------- 177 John G. Neihardt 188 Edward Arlington Robinson - - - 193 Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff - - - 196 Thomas Walsh 198 Conclusion 205 THE YOUNG IDEA INTRODUCTION The Young Idea is an outgrowth of the widespread revival of interest in literature, and more especially in poetry, which, during the past few years, has afforded one of the most arresting phenomena in the entire course of our literary history. This literary revival has brought with it a fresh content and many innovations in form, and of these much has been written in interpretation by critics of literature, and, frequently, by the authors and poets who have been concerned with establishing the ideals of what has been called the "new literature." But in some degree these various critical discussions and explanations have lacked co-ordination, and, while Mr. Braithwaite's annual anthology has provided the basis for a survey of the x* xii INTRODUCTION yearly accomplishment of the poets, there has been no attempt made thus far to pro- vide its complement in criticism, a collective statement of the ideals and the ideas upon which rests the work of contemporary Amer- ican writers. Moreover, the confusion with which the public has received the work of the more radical of these innovators has been paralleled, in some instances, by the dismay of the critics confronted with a literature with whose fundamental contentions they were unacquainted. It is to fill this void that The Young Idea has been compiled. Any ambitious critic who would interpret the ideals which are finding expression in contemporary American writ- ing, would, in doing so, hold himself open to the charges of misconception and of lack of receptivity. How, then, solve the dilemma otherwise than by requesting from each in- dividual author a statement of his or her ideals, a definition of the essential intention of his or her art? This was a solution which apparently had INTRODUCTION *& not heretofore recommended itself to the critics. And so the following letter was sent out: My dear Mr. I am compiling a statement of opinion by the younger groups of American writers concerning the contemporary and future temper of our literature. I believe that such a statement would possess sound value as creative criticism and would center public attention upon the ideals of the generation in between. A well-known publisher has offered to take the book, believing as firmly as myself in the value of such a symposium in clarifying the ideals and determining the essential direction both of the literature that is being written to-day and that which lies in the dreams and aspirations of our writers. Will you not, then, aid me in my investi- gation by contributing a reply to the follow- ing questions? Do you believe that there is manifest to- day a new movement in our literature? If xiv INTRODUCTION so, what are its ideals? What relation does it bear to the immediate past? Which of its many currents seem to you to be the most important? What relation does your own work bear to this new movement? What is your criticism of contemporary American literature? I shall hold myself deeply indebted to you for your valued opinion concerning these questions, which appear to me to be both important and interesting. Please feel free to reply to them, either directly as I have stated them, or to view the subject in a dif- ferent light. In a word, where does our literature stand to-day, and whither is it going? Whatever you say will be published in exactly your own words, over your own sig- nature, and there will be an introductory and concluding essay dealing with the question as a whole. I am endeavoring to make this inquiry as serious as possible, and as repre- sentative of the ideals of our writers of to- day and tomorrow. INTRODUCTION xv I am enclosing herewith a stamped and addressed envelope, hoping that you will find it convenient to favor me with your opinion. May I not call your attention to the im- portance of your individual opinion to the investigation as a whole, and respectfully urge you to favor me with it? It was sent, not to those writers of whom, because of our long acquaintance with their art, it may without presumption be predicted that their philosophies are accomplished facts and that their work is likely to suffer little change in the future, but to those writers who, since they are shaping our contempo- rary literature by expressing the spirit of today, are also in a measure illuminating our literary ideals of tomorrow. It is in this sense that this little book justifies its claim to be an expression of the young idea. For it is only in the degree that we are aware of what our quest is today, that we may hope for enlightenment of the spirit of the immediate future, xvi INTRODUCTION The response to this inquiry has been most gratifying, and the authors whose contribu- tions to the investigation appear in the body of this book have co-operated generously by stating frankly what they are about. The fact that absolute freedom of statement was a condition of the inquiry accounts for the disparity in length between the various con- tributions. A word must necessarily be said in ex- planation of the grouping of the contribu- tions. As I read the replies, I discovered certain outstanding ideas so strongly em- phasized that, when they appeared common to the points of view of several of the writers, they suggested the divisions because of an essential unity of direction. Thus, for example, the writers who have been grouped as The Empiricists have indi- vidually emphasized as the most important content of their art a concern with the com- mon experience of contemporary American life. The Idealists share the belief that the most significant tendency in our contempor- INTRODUCTION xvii ary poetry is its return to primitive faith and its expression of spiritual experience. The chapter called the Romanticists in- cludes expressions of the philosophy of two movements whose existence is defi- nitely admitted ; the oldest and the youngest of those groups of contemporary poets who, holding certain ideals in common, have formed schools and promulgated consistent programs. And since both of these schools have been, in their art, concerned chiefly with the extension of poetic form, always a ro- mantic revolt, I have grouped them as Ro- manticists. The Pessimists are those who find nothing of any essential importance in contemporary American letters ; and one of them grounds his pessimism upon a flagellat- ing denunciation of our contemporary na- tional life. The Traditionalists, I think, re- quire no explanation. I hope that the readers of this little book will derive from it a fuller understanding of the aims and of the ideals of our own contem- porary writers. For if we believe that lit- xviii INTRODUCTION erature is a record of and a reaction to ex- perience, we shall learn from our writers what it is, in thought and in feeling, that we stand for as a nation. Our literature has, quite obviously, been undergoing certain changes; and we should discover whether these changes are the expression of a parallel process taking place in our national con- sciousness and in our national experience. If we find that they are, we must believe that we are in a period of transition between old ideals and new ones. And, should we find this to be the case, it is to our writers that we must look for the light wherewith we may see the ideals of tomorrow. Lloyd R. Morris. THE EMPIRICISTS: THE RENASCENCE OF COMMON EXPERIENCE THE EMPIRICISTS Empiricism as a philosophical doctrine implies actual contact with experience; in its strictest form it claims that all knowledge is derived from experience through the senses. It would be unfair, however, to adopt this term of philosophical usage and employ it as a generic description of a group of writers who share in common certain ideals, without explaining the significance which, in so doing, we attach to the word itself. The writers in question unite in express- ing a lively interest in the world about them, in how people in their time and country are living, and what they are thinking and feel- ing. They are concerned with the problems, social, moral, intellectual, aesthetic, which 3 4 THE YOUNG IDEA arise from an attempt to adjust American life to American ideals. As poets they are refusing to be bound by rules or traditions inherited from the past which would limit the subject-matter of their art. They are claim- ing the freedom of selection of the novelist, the right to deal with life as they find it, and in its own terms. And in so doing, they are bringing about a change in our conception of what actually is meant by the word poetic. In this discovery of the romance of the commonplace there is evident a riotous in- toxication. In the true sense of the word it has been a discovery, and the poets, having broken the bonds, whether fancied or real, which shackled them to a conventionally accepted relation to experience, have become drunk with life. They are experiencing a magic wonder at familiar things with some- thing of the same penetrating vision and in- stinctive truthful reaction we find in children who are called upon to adjust themselves for the first time to a new situation of which they have previously been told nothing. THE EMPIRICISTS 5 Wonder comes with difficulty to the sophisti- cated soul. And the person whom conven- tion has taught what he should and what he should not see is likely to be ashamed of and to suppress the immediate and natural re- action to experience which either disconcerts or charms us when it is expressed by a child- like mind. These poets are the childlike minds of our day. They are discovering to us what we might discover for ourselves had we their vision and their courage. They are enthralled by the strange spell of their own time, by its science, its mechanical in- ventions, its laboring masses, its tremendous industrial activity, its new ways of living and thinking. The most thoughtful among them are asking its meaning in terms of in- telligence or spirituality, seeking to extend their discovery beyond the mere surface of common experience into the realm of the mind and the spirit, reading the contempo- rary in the light of the eternal. The others are content to record their immediate and instructive reaction to common experience 6 THE YOUNG IDEA itself. But they share the instant and pres- ent quest of the pattern of daily life and its problems. Some writers in every age, perhaps, have made this discovery of their own times. But rarely before has the search and the discov- ery been so general, and the writers, as many of them here point out, been so busy in making the discovery of their own mind. The combination of conscious introspection and a naive reaction to everyday experience is one of rare novelty, and it has bestowed a peculiar flavor upon our literature. Finally, each age, in making its own world, is making a new world; and its discovery is each time a fresh discovery. So that this new spirit in our literature may be called the spirit of empiricism, and the writers who are expressing it are em- piricists, in that they are testing out their art in the light of common experience, and demanding of it that it shall express an honest and sincere reaction to our life, our thought and our feelings to-day. THE EMPIRICISTS 7 Mr. Conrad Aiken, the author of "Earth Triumphant," "Turns and Movies," and "The Jig of Forslin," in the following letter clearly defines the fundamental intention of his art. But his letter is something more than a personal definition ; it is an exception- ally penetrating diagnosis of the contempor- ary state of American poetry. In one respect the literary situation in America today is an anomalous one. In so far as there is a definite revival of letters here, and I think there is, it is limited almost entirely to the domain of poetry. It is as if the poets had got tired of waiting for the novelists to take hold of modern ideas and modern conditions, to bring literature up to date, and had resolved to do it themselves. While the greater part of our fiction is still amiably superficial and romantically ideal- istic, with here and there such encouraging exceptions as the work of Theodore Dreiser, our poets have all of a sudden, and with an extraordinary simultaneity which reminds 8 THE YOUNG IDEA us almost of the Elizabethan age, extended the claims of poetry in many new directions and with considerable success. Poetry has now appeared among the best sellers, and it would not be at all surprising, and, to my mind, a good thing, if poetry should to some extent usurp the field of the novel or of the epic — in fact, be restored to its original estate, with all life for its province, and all knowledge, too. Several distinct tendencies are manifest in this poetic renaissance. At bottom, two ordinarily antithetical currents are now flow- ing side by side: the romantic and the real- istic. Each of these two main currents can be divided into subsidiary currents ; there are conservative romanticists and radical, just as there are conservative and radical realists. Of the realists, Masters— to choose one ex- ample — is the most radical, both as regards form and ideas, and Frost, perhaps, the most conservative. Of the romanticists, I think it might be said that Fletcher is the most consistently radical — and the Imagists in THE EMPIRICISTS 9 general — and there are many conservatives, with none outstanding. In general, I believe it can safely be said that it is the radicals of the two groups who are doing the most interesting work, the work most likely to have cumulative influence. These classifications are, of course, vague and perhaps unjust. Frost, for example, is conservative as regards form but radical as regards matter ; he imports into poetry much that would have seemed unpoetic ten years ago. Whether the romantic or the realistic will dominate, it is almost impossible to say. Do we want poetry to deal exclusively with a world of the imagination, a world of illusion and beauty? Or do we want to have it deal with man as he really is, illusions, disillusions and all? . . . Do we want work such as the Imagists give us, sensory phenomena presented discretely, unrelated to any cog- nitive functions, vividly descriptive, pri- marily static, — or work which aims primar- ily at an understanding of man? 10 THE YOUNG IDEA Personally, I should like to see a fusion of the two : to see the romantic method — color- ful, sensuous, illusion-making — employed for a realistic end. I should like to see poetry become scientific in its search for truth, pen- erating, destructive, comprehensive; not so much desiring to find beauty as to be beauty, no matter what be the subject treated. Two cardinal principles should govern it : it must tell the truth, and it must be a work of art. Of Mr. Witter Bynner, Mr. Untermeyer has written that "he can get magic and meta- physics out of a Pullman smoker." It is in- teresting to note that he finds our present renascence of poetry a reaction against the influence of the nineties. There is a new vigor in poetry, he writes. As I see it, the people are respond- ing to a renewal of humaness among the poets; human subjects, natural language and vital impulses. We have been slowly emerging from the aesthetic vanity of the THE EMPIRICISTS 11 nineties toward poetic health again ; and the public is quick now to perceive it. The pat- ter of the so-called "schools" of poetry will do no harm, I think; for they will freshen and diversify technique. But they are a side-show. And the three rings in the main tent are beauty, vigor and common-sense. Mr. Will Levington Comfort's letter is of peculiar interest in establishing the pro- pinquity of the viewpoint of the younger generation of American novelists to that of the younger group of American poets. His comment upon the effect of the moving pic- ture on the form and content of our fiction is worthy of serious consideration. A fresh and different vitality is manifest to-day in North American literature. At various points around us, dealing with words, colors, and the subtler tools, are active young workmen who, for the first time, in the full- est sense, may be termed "North American." The first characteristic of this new element, 12 THE YOUNG IDEA these young, flexible and very vigorous minds, is that they are workmen — not laborers, not professionals, not primarily artists in anything, unless it be life — but workers first, and after that, novelists, poets, musicians, painters or politicians. They are not competitors. They have not forgotten the warm side of justice, but they knew well the stern face of compassion — they know that it takes Christ and anti- Christ to make a world. They are neither modest nor egotistical, being for the most part busy and intensely alive, which implies joy. They are not responsible for their parents. The great love-story has not been written. The few great love-stories of the world have to be pieced out by the imagination. We find that we have been told that they are great love-stories, but they do not stand ex- amination. The classic form will not do for the New Age. There is to be a new lan- guage — for literary handling. It may be called American, to distinguish it from Eng- THE EMPIRICISTS 13 lish in the accepted form. It is to be brisk, brief, brave and ebullient — to meet the mod- ern modification all must reckon with — the screen-trained mind. American-mindedness, of itself now, would never accept a great love-story. It would be called "sentimental," if not lascivious. The average American is an impossible lover, making it incident to business. The real and the sham are equally above him. He would not know when to be exalted or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own passion is evil, and thus makes it so. The great love-story can only be written with creative dynamics, and can only be accepted by the few of cor- responding receptivity. There is nothing soft about true romance. Some passionate singer of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his story to have the full redo- lence and lustre of the heart, his emotions thoroughbred, his literary quality at the same time crystalline with Reality. The big adventure-story has not been done so far. The day of guns, horses and redskins 14 THE YOUNG IDEA is over. Photoplays have developed such fic- tion resources to the limit, proving to those writers who were born to be modern that their full tales can never be shown on a flat surface. There will be undercurrents, over- tones, invisible movements, tensions upon the reader, not only from between the lines, but between words. The story-teller of the New Age may handle his theme in words of one syllable, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to be explained — only responded to by minds which cannot be satisfied by two- plane production — minds which demand more of life than the camera sees. The real war-story of today, even for to- morrow, ought to arrive soon. This is an age for an epic. Some keen and compre- hensive mind will arise — a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and statesman — and tell the Story of War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous greed; vast, far-reaching causes and the slow, inev- THE EMPIRICISTS 15 itable hell of effects — told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely pawns in a Planetary Game. Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yes- terday the knockers and agnostics — today the specialists and one-sided enthusiasts — to- morrow the embodiers, the includers. Whit- man is the arch-type for builders to come; Nietzsche the master- wrecker ; these are the guidons of the New Generation — the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. Mr. Max Eastman, editor of "The Masses," poet and critic, wrote some years ago an illuminating and beautiful book called "The Enjoyment of Poetry." His contri- bution analyzes the new movement in our life which he believes our art will record. It may be added that in his latest book, "Jour- nalism vs. Art," he has voiced his disagree- ment with the champions of the free verse forms. And, therefore, with respect to his 16 THE YOUNG IDEA theory of poetic form, he ranks among the conservatives. But his criticism of the con- tent of contemporary art proclaims him a revolutionist. I think that the first three paragraphs of my review of a book by Rebecca West are an answer to the question you ask in your letter. I do not suppose there has ever been an age when there was not a "new move- ment in literature." And, as to literary movements as such, I am not so much inter- ested in them. But there is certainly a movement in our life today which will be re- flected in literature as contemporary life always is, and I think these paragraphs in- dicate my feeling as to what it is and what relation my work bears to it. "Every full-blooded young person has in his arteries a certain amount of scorn. Lit- erary young persons have usually directed this scorn against philistinism, the middle class monotonies, and any provincial obtuse- ness to those finer yalues discriminated by THE EMPIRICISTS 17 the cultured and by those who possess Art. But in our day the full-blooded young per- sons have got their scorn directed against a more important evil — against the ground- plan of money-competition built on indus- trial slavery which orders our civilization and makes all our judgments of value, even the most cultured, impure. Indeed, we suspect everything that is called culture — we suspect it of the taint of pecuniary elegance. We have armed our critical judgment with Thor- stein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class" — perhaps the greatest book of our day, for it combines a new flavor in literature with a new and great truth in science. This theory has taught us how to see through "culture." We know something about knowledge. We have been "put wise" to sophistication. Moreover, we have tasted an affirmative and universal sympathy with all realities of life that lies far out and beyond culture in the mind's adventure. We have drunk of the universe in Walt Whitman's poetry. And of "Art," too, we have our intolerant 18 THE YOUNG IDEA suspicion — a suspicion grounded in the fact that the whole standard of judgment by which art is judged was evolved in the parlor play of a petty minority of the race left idle by the tragic and real bitterness of life's experiences accorded to the majority who never spoke. We have read Tolstoy's great mad indictment of European art. We have made ready to knife the whole canvas, if necessary, in favor of a coarser and more universal reality. That is the direction in which our blood is coursing. We are rilled with scorn, as every young builder is filled with scorn. But our scorn makes of us rank and democratic revolutionists instead of over-exquisite and rather priggish aesthet- ics." Mr. Donald Evans disagrees with Mr. Bynner as to the ancestry of our contem- porary literature. He finds it to be the direct heir of the movement of the nineties. His own work has usually been considered as being one of the most radical contribu- THE EMPIRICISTS 19 tions to modern poetry ; he, however, places it midway between the radical and conserva- tive currents. There is undoubtedly a new spirit in American literature, but I should dislike calling it a "movement," because a "move- ment" is perforce self-conscious and artifi- cial, and I believe this new spirit is sponta- neous and unconscious. It is best summed up, I think, as the "voice of youth." Liter- ature today has burst the shackles of middle and old age which controlled it absolutely during the last half of the last century. To- day the writer wins a hearing in his twenties while his mind is still growing, expanding, and thus his work has all the charm of fresh- ness, illusion, contradiction, error, doubt, faith, intolerance, impatience — in short, all the charm of youth itself with always the promise of finer, larger things to come. The new spirit's most conspicuous ideal, I should say, is a healthy realism, a striving to express all sides of life, the "good and the bad and the best and the worst." 20 THE YOUNG IDEA It is the true child of the brave and bat- tlesome "Yellow 90s" of England. Naturally, to me, poetry seems the most important current. Never has poetry had a greater role in letters. In the last two years almost as many volumes of verse as novels have been published. My own work is in thorough sympathy with the new spirit, steering, I fancy, a rather middle course between the radicals and the conservatives. John Erskine, Professor of English at Columbia University, is widely known as a poet and critic. He draws an interesting comparison between the attitude toward life of our contemporary poets and the novelists of the last fifty years. And his criticism of our literature is incisive. His essay, "The New Poetry," in "The Yale Review" for January, 1917, is a comprehensive study of the spirit of recent American poetry. Here are my answers to your questions; THE EMPIRICISTS 21 I believe a new movement is showing itself in poetry today. I find it not only in the remarkable output of free verse and other kinds of verse, but in the growing attention to American life as a subject for poetry. It seems to me that the poets are taking some such interest in the world about them as the novelists have been taking in the last half century, and this new movement must be very largely an advantage to our literature. The attention to free verse I think fairly negligible — that is, I don't much care whether a man writes in free verse or in some other form, provided he writes poetry. It is perhaps unfortunate that so much attention has been attracted to the form in which verse is written today, when the question of the subject matter is so important. My own verse, I hope, shows an interest in what peo- ple are thinking and feeling today. It is meant, at least, to express the best thoughts and feelings that I have. My adverse crit- icism of American literature today would be that though there is this improvement in the 22 THE YOUNG IDEA attention to life about us, there is still a feel- ing among the writers that literature need not be particularly thoughtful nor scholarly. Too much of our writing might be dismissed, I think, with the hard verdict of "empty- headed and shallow-hearted." The poets who ever amounted to anything in the world shared deeply in the ideas and in the feelings of their time. Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke is a poet, dramatist and critic, whose "Sonnets of a Portrait Painter" received wide recognition. In this letter, and in the essay which follows it, is recorded the faith of one who, although writing in the traditional forms, has shared deeply in the process of liberation which he describes, and is thoroughly informed of the new spirit in poetry. The only branch of American literature about which I feel competent to speak is poetry. In that field there has been of late so striking an awakening of interest that im- THE EMPIRICISTS 23 portant new work may be expected. The manifest eccentricities and absurdities of the "new schools" are certainly no worse than the banalities and sentimentalities of the old ones ; in fact, the vigorous shock which some of these aberrations have administered to the moribund body of poetry is distinctly gal- vanizing. Goethe's words, used to describe the ultra-romantic excesses of French liter- ature in his own day, apply accurately to our present situation: "The extremes and excrescences will gradually disappear; but at last this great advantage will remain — besides a freer form, richer and more diversi- fied subjects will have been attained, and no object of the broadest world and the most manifold life will be any longer excluded as unpoetical." We are today experiencing, in poetry almost as markedly as in painting, one of those periodic outbursts of unbridled life by which alone can an art be kept from hardening into a fossil. English poetry of today is notoriously the 24 THE YOUNG IDEA scene of an opposition which to some ob- servers seems the rebellion of new life against sterile and petrified forms, while to others it appears as the menace of anarchy against order and beauty. Almost as clearly marked as in the economic world, the conservative and the radical forces are at work. The mak- ing of poetry is the aim of both, but they march under two irreconcilable banners. One of these is the very modern attempt to find some new and more flexible form in which can be expressed accurately the hon- est and unsentimental poetry of the modern mind; the other is the effort to invest the raw vigor of our modernity with that glamor of formal beauty which marks the classic tradition of the older poets. Between these two camps a merry war is waging ; and it is an open question whether the impatience of the Revolutionists toward the Traditional- ists, or the distaste of the Traditionalists for the Revolutionists, is the greater. In any examination of the Revolutionary poetry, it is best to put aside this little quar- THE EMPIRICISTS 25 rel and to approach the new poems as one would a theatre — willing to be entertained, but not determined to be. Some readers will take up the modern work with minds haunted by the ghosts of poets who died before the new poets were born; and these will find it difficult to regard the birth of poetry as co- incident with the origin of any modern cult. In fact, many lovers of the old tradition ap- pear to have great trouble in keeping good- tempered in the face of some of the claims made by the advanced poets. It would be well if these apoplectic critics would remind themselves that an open mind is acceptable to God and profitable to man. As they con- front the novel and sometimes startling at- tempts of radical enthusiasts, they might ad- vantageously recall history and be a little humble. The revolts of each rising genera- tion have always seemed to each passing gen- eration like perverse breaches of immutable laws ; yet time has often made it clear that it was only against the very mutable and sometimes stupid misinterpretation of laws 26 THE YOUNG IDEA that the rebellion of the younger wills was directed. Thus the pathetic comedy goes on from generation to generation; and the old past fights bitterly against the rising tide of the young future. May heaven spare us the humiliation of acting so dull a part in so grotesque a drama. May we be ready to wel- come all in the new poetry that is beautiful even though it come dressed in an unfa- miliar beauty! On the other hand it would be a pity to abandon completely the attitude of the skep- tic mind — of the mind from Missouri. It is not wholly a sign of senility to demand evi- dence that the new is good before we discard the old. Change is, indeed, the condition of growth, in art as in life. But not all motion in the arts is progress, nor are all movements to be regarded as Crusades toward the Holy Sepulchre. In the arts, as in life, there are many blind alleys, many meaningless expe- ditions ; and no one wants to be tricked into adherence to one of these. Faith in the ne- cessity of progress need not drive the enthu- THE EMPIRICISTS 27 siast to such a pitch of desperation that he joins every Coxey's Army that marches shouting through the streets. Whatever we may think of the new poetry, we must perceive in it four sharply marked elements. These are the demand for com- plete metrical freedom; the insistence on hard actuality of images ; the adoption of an attitude of humor, irony, or grotesqueness in even the most serious poems; and an abso- lute frankness and shamelessness as to the content of the poet's work. Of these elements it is the metrical free- dom that stands out most obviously. The extremists of the new school look with dis- trust on the established verse-forms. They feel that the constraint of any regular metri- cal system is an intolerable prison to the spirit of the poet. Following the example of recent French poets, they demand that the integrity of the poet's meaning be poured into song whose cadences are born solely of the moment's emotion and are not respon- sible for conformity to any recurrent order 28 THE YOUNG IDEA of rhyme or rhythm. Such a theory pro- duces verse whose lines are of irregular length, whose dominant movement may change at any moment, and from which rhyme is usually absent. At its worst this verse is an abomination; at its best it is a very subtle medium for the expression of certain kinds of feeling. As all educated Revolutionists admit, though the name vers libre is new, the thing itself is not. In fact, it is a very ancient thing, which has been used admirably by the most classic of all the English poets, Milton. In the Choruses of Samson Agonistes he employs such free verse as no modern Revo- lutionary poet is likely to surpass. Hence if we protest against free verse, we set our- selves counter not only to the modernists of today but also to the classicists of yester- day. As Milton saw, regular rhythms do not fill every need. Not all themes fit them- selves into conventionalized sound-patterns. Sometimes, as in Samson Agonistes, an ef- fect of peculiar dryness and hardness is THE EMPIRICISTS 29 wanted which regular verse would be unable to supply. Also there are cases in which life strikes the emotion of the poet in broken flashes — in swift chaotic fragmentary per- ceptions; and to record these, free verse is an unsurpassed medium. For all these rea- sons there is no sense whatever in the popu- lar objections that have been raised to the free verse of the modern poet. It is only with those who proclaim free verse to be the sole possible poetic medium that one has a right to quarrel. There are such poets ; and in their attempt to create a cult of free verse they make themselves very ridiculous. Because the carpenter finds the hatchet useful for certain kinds of work is hardly a reason for throwing the saw out of the window. Milton knew very much better. Though he used free verse when he chose, he employed the regular metres and the son- net in a manner that has not been surpassed. Great artist that he was, he adapted his me- dium to his purpose. He knew what all poets will be wise to recognize today; that 30 THE YOUNG IDEA certain effects in poetry are wholly impos- sible without the use of regular rhythms and rhyme. The reason for this fact is derived from the very nature of the art. It is based on the absolute necessity of carrying the lulled spirit of the reader on waves of recurrent sound into a state of suspended conscious- ness — a kind of visionary trance in which the mind, deaf for a moment to the distractions of the world around it, will see singly and solely the dream which the poet puts be- fore it. The emotion-heightening, hypnotic power of regular rhythms and recurrent rhymes is in many instances the whole basis of that peculiar somnambulistic effect which is the special magic of poetry. Emotion is the secret of it all; and some emotions an- swer to the call of rhyme and rhythm as to al- most nothing else. Rhythm seizes the thread of one's thought as might a current, and in- tertwines with it, and draws it down into re- mote subterranean caverns of the spirit un- visited by the everyday consciousness. THE EMPIRICISTS 31 The sole debatable question that arises is: How regular must the rhythm be to pro- duce the desired trance-like effect? When the degree of trance desired is not very in- tense, as in poems that keep close to the sur- face-details of observed reality, the beat of the verse may safely be reduced to a mini- mum. But when one wishes to lift the reader into regions of passionate ecstasy and to arouse the profoundest and most primal emotions, one will have to resort to a more powerful stimulus and carrjr the reader far- ther away from every-day reality on the flow of these hypnotic waves of sound. For ironic comments on the human comedy around us, for pictures of the common stage on which we do our little struttings, free verse is ad- mirable; but it will seldom serve to trans- port us to the heights of religious experi- ence, or to the depths of the black night of the soul, or to the sun-swept levels of beauty- drunken happiness. It is, in fact, difficult to escape the feeling that free verse, valuable though it is, is still 32 THE YOUNG IDEA in some obscure way incomplete verse — a rudimentary and not a final art-form. Many poets will agree that one resorts to free verse chiefly when what one has to say is not com- pletely crystallized, or when one's emotion is not at its most intense pitch, or when one wishes to note down a series of impressions that have not yet fully combined into one concentrated pattern. For one case in which free verse has been used as Milton used it, — out of deliberate and conscious choice, — there are a thousand cases in which it has been employed solely because the writer had not carried the inner processes of compo- sition far enough to poetize his material com- pletely. When the mind is a blaze of sudden revelation, and the poet's theme glows into thorough transparency of white heat, he will usually find that what he has to say flows rapidly and perfectly into the smooth mould of regular verse-forms ; but when the inten- sity of his impulse is a little lower, and all kinds of comments, reflections, minor ob- servations, and clever plays of word and THE EMPIRICISTS 33 thought are mixed with his truly poetical material, then he can give much more com- plete and appropriate expression to his idea in the less intense rhythms of free verse. The new poets have made no mistake in using free verse. Their only error has been in committing themselves to it with too blind an exclusiveness. Beyond the matter of rhythm lies another feature of the new poetry — that very inter- esting theory of writing called Imagism. The Imagists attempt to present to the reader a clear, exact, sharp picture of ob- jects and episodes; after this, they allow the reader himself to evoke from this presen- tation those comments, reflections, emotions, and overtones which form so large a part of ordinary poetry. The Imagist would not say "mournful waves" or "bleak coast"; he would refuse to comment thus: he would prefer "lead-gray waves" and "splintered I coast." He would attempt to find the pre- cise word "which brings the effect of the object to the reader as the writer saw it," 34 THE YOUNG IDEA and would present his scene with that im- personal interest in the scene itself which is the peculiar characteristic of modern paint- ing. He would avoid all flamboyant words, all set phrases, and keep his speech hard, spare, clean-cut, economical. He would ex- press even the most general ideas, even the most abstract conceptions, by means of the concrete manner and the definite embodi- ment of beauty. This theory has great fascination. The practice of the theory by the professed Im- agists has, however, been disappointing up to the present time. The poems which fol- low are from among those which the Imagists themselves praise. Here is one of the most admired of Imagist productions, Oread, by Mrs. Richard Aldington: Whirl up sea — Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, Cover us with your pools of fir. THE EMPIRICISTS 35 There is, indeed, a certain vividness of tumult expressed in this likening of the wind-tossed sea to a wind-tossed pine-forest. 