people who know life and the town perceive its meanings. All things rely on mutual exchanges, common understandings, city usages. The point of view of this art is that of civilization. And civilization implies an intention that will develop in a society of individuals an art of coming together in a way that will be most beneficial to public and private interests; it implies harmony, a discipline of mutual complacency and consideration. A man's private interests are to be pursued only with some regard to the degree of his natural, civilized endowment and the good of the community. This point of view need not imply any heroics or self-sacrificing and certainly no patriotic cult or fanaticism; but it certainly does mean that the competition for honors and good fortune, rewards, riches, office and fame take place under some more or less reasonable scheme of society. With the French it means that they have, on no very necessarily lofty plane if you like, concerned themselves with evolving an art of life that will make human society more tolerable and expert. Such an idea of society must to some extent at least be anti-individualistic. But the very idea of a society at all implies something of that. Under such a theory, things that might be merely personal adventure become contracts under the State. Institutions that we might like to forget or deny are recognized, since they do exist, and are regulated. Not only this art of the theatre but much of all art in France succeeds almost entirely through a devotion to perfecting itself for the general uses of society. Through this, much of French art and French craft as well, though it attains no high distinction, is extraordinarily well adapted to the enjoyment of persons who are not by temperament or gift artistic, and so it is admirably social. It understands the fact that up to a certain point art is not entirely a temperamental matter; a good deal of it can be learned. The general artistic fame of the French derives from this fact. They have talked and chattered till the world concedes them to be its most artistic nation. But that is true only in this sense of a social level, a general excellence. The French achieve no oftener than other races the supreme artist. In the supreme artist the humanity of all men is included, but it is deepened and widened beyond the general into its own eminence. But among the French more than any other people in Europe the sense of art, or at least of finish, from their soaps to their prose, is widely applied. They make art social. And such a sense of civilization, however vague, affects manners, codes, and men's very speech itself, and not least it affects that mingled restraint and expression that is one of the chief problems of art. An art like this of the Comédie Française is a matter of arrangement. It is all built up. Every part is something accepted as signifying some meaning. It makes no pretension to being natural in the sense of representing nature. Its world is its own. Everything is arranged, true to a special set of principles; and the ensuing work of art has preeminently its own truth. Its triumphs are technical, logical, persuasively moving by means of a special language of emotion. The extent to which nature is drawn upon is arbitrary, as it is in architecture or design. And it is neither greater nor less by reason of the fact that it is consistent only with itself, with its own logic, its own artifices, rather than with some actuality outside itself. It is art first and last if it is anything. The limitations of such an art of the theatre as that practised at the Comédie Française are various enough. Under its scheme of things an exact realism is impossible. We could never in this art penetrate to the last reality of some section of living by portraying the exact and revealing outward elements of it, however painful or brutal or shocking. We could not render chaos as it often stands in human experience, because chaos remains unintelligible. And most of all we are deprived of the widest chance possible to the art of the theatre for more and more inclusiveness in the expression of life. The purpose of art is to express experience, to dilate the reality of the moment, to establish upon the flux and uncertainty of things the eternal and constant fact of the ideal. And it must follow that the greatest art of the theatre, the art most to be desired but never wholly attained as yet, will be that which is most free to express all things whatsoever that are in life, whether beautiful abstractions or exact images or the agonizing or the unsayable itself. The ideal art would allow for all methods of expression. Under its scheme every thought and circumstance would be allowed the form that is closest to it and that is most nearly its soul. But the very limitations insure in this French art advantages. The advantages that such an art as this of the French theatre enjoys are such as arise from the fact of its having a basis on which to construct and a more or less definite idea of society from which to observe and regulate its material. This art can fall back upon something that arises in such a society as the mind might create, upon something that we all admit as the general outline within which our experiences happen. These experiences and impulses may be warm, infinitely varied, curious or violent; but within this outline they remain and by it their proportions are measured. As for this art of the Comédie Française the control, the theory, the assured method and territory undoubtedly limit. But they afford a security on which the art can build an ordered and elaborate and often noble dramatic structure. By knowing its ground it approaches the ease of the immortal gods; and all that gods work, as Eschylos said, is effortless and calm. And it affords the best possible circumstances for the development of a style. I do not mean style in that perfect sense of a vanishing and wholly revealing medium of expression. I mean that quality in which artifice, intelligence and emotional reality are all at the same time apparent, and all together exercise and delight us with that consciousness of distinction and truth that we call style. And through its very limitations the art of the Comédie Française, at its best, forces its material into the region of universal type and high and essential patterns of human thought and experience. But none of this French art will convince the young AngloSaxon from Vermont. He will see its completeness, its entire adequacy to its own ends, its logic, its perfected art. But what it tells him, in so far as it tells him anything, is not what he believes about life. He admits this art and despises it. His mind appraises its skill and social intelligence. But he has no great respect for the mind as such. He prefers the spirit, whatever that may be; he guards the shadow in his soul. And he draws on the mystery of the universe to minister to him. STARK YOUNG. AFTERMATH BY MILDRED BLUMENTHAL "Why do you lie there stark and dead "What do you feel, you senseless clod?" "Dying grass that clings to my breast, Soothing winds that woo me to rest; Or, a gnawing pain, A tired, tortured brain, Hard, close-cuddling sod! But best of all-I feel at one with Nature and with God!" "What do you see with eyes half-closed?" "Sleek, kempt comrades that hurry by, Millions of brothers more lowly than I; Or, trenches and sky, Wreck and carnage that lie Where once was green grass! But worst of all-piteous glances of some who pass!" "What do you taste with lips closed and set?” "Air, paper, tobacco, dead leaves, or wood, Dust, stones, or bones. Life is so good! Or, soup, salmon, and beans From rolling canteens; At times, even lead! But strongest of all-salt spray from seas that wash o'er the dead!" Mold, shot, bloody grass And powder and fire! But foulest of all-a sickening stench of dead flesh and mire!" "What do you hear as you lie on your side?" "Idle chatter that does not matter; Noisy traffic; shrill, silly laughter; Over comrades who died! But faintest of all-the words of One who was crucified!" "And your Dream, and Prayer, and that awful Fear? Strong, brave man, tell us! We listen and hear! "My Dream? 'Tis of martyrs and prophets, gone to seed, Who gave their lives that men should be freed! My Prayer? 'Tis for the Harvest their death did yield— That tender seedling!—now naked and seared, And my Fear? 'Tis that more men will bleed! Lord, is there need?" |