Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

work stupendous-not for a moment can you judge Heathcliff by his bare deeds. If there was never anything less heavenly, less Christian, than this drama, there never was anything less earthly, less pagan. It is above all our consecrated labels and distinctions. It is the drama of suffering born of suffering, and confined strictly within the boundaries of the soul. It is not (in spite of Madame Duclaux) any problem of heredity that we have here. It is a world of spiritual affinities; never was a book written with a more sublime ignorance of the physical. The book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and selfborn. It belongs to no school: it follows no tendency. It is not 'Realism,' it is not ' Romance.' Redemption is not its key-note. The moral problem never entered Emily Brontë's head. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. She is too lucid and too high for pity. There is nobody to compare with her but Hardy; and even he has to labour more, to put in more strokes, to achieve his effect. In six lines she can paint sound and distance and scenery and the turn of the seasons and the two magics of two atmospheres. The book has faults, many and glaring. It is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, and yet in style it stands far above anything of her sister's. . . . She has no purple patches, no decorative effects. There are no angels in her rainbows: her 'grand style' goes unclothed, perfect in its naked strength, its naked beauty. Nor does her dramatic instinct ever fail her as Charlotte's so frequently does." So much for an example of May Sinclair's critical genius; for 240 pages she can go on unfolding point after point in each of the sister's work, which all make that work clearer to understand, easier to appreciate. To return to Mrs Meynell. Her last essay is an attack

on the prevailing conception of the eighteenth century as "The Century of Moderation."

“After a long literary revolt against the eighteenthcentury authors, a reaction was due, and it has come about roundly. We are guided back to admiration of the measure and moderation and shapeliness of the Augustan age. And indeed, it is well enough that we should compare some of our habits of thought and verse by the mediocrity of thought and perfect propriety of diction of Pope's best contemporaries.

"If this were all! But the eighteenth century was not content with its sure and certain genius. Suddenly and repeatedly it aspired to a 'noble rage.'" She quotes example after example of such extravagant essays in noble rage as:

His eyeballs burn, he wounds the smoking plain,
And knots of scarlet ribbon deck his mane.

"It was the age of common sense, we are told, and truly; but of common-sense now and then dissatisfied, common-sense here and there ambitious, common-sense of a distinctively adult kind taking on an innocent tone. . . . The eighteenth century matched its desire for wildness in poetry with a like craving in gardens. The symmetrical and architectural garden, so magnificent in Italy, was scorned by the eighteenthcentury poet-gardeners because it was 'artificial,' and the eighteenth century must have 'naturenay, passion. There seems to be some passion in Pope's grotto, stuck with spar and little shells. Truly the age of The Rape of the Lock and the Elegy was an age of great wit and great poetry. Yet it was untrue to itself. I think no other century has cherished so consistent a self-conscious incongruity."

Sound criticism, genial bantering, pleasing to read,

Listen again to Miss "Shirley is modern

but set it beside May Sinclair's more robust stuffand what a world of difference. Sinclair on Charlotte Brontë: to her finger-tips, as modern as Meredith's great women; she was born fifty years before her time. Shirley was literally the first attempt in literature to give to woman her right place in the world." Or again, of Emily: "Her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. .. that was the secret of her greatness, of her immeasurable superiority to her sad sister's." Mrs Meynell writes in the study of art for art's sake; Miss Sinclair in the market-place, also of art, for the sake of erring humanity.

I'

V

LAFCADIO HEARN

I

T seems a curiously roundabout way of arousing interest in our literature in the young people of

our own country, but I have proved by experience that the best books of criticism on English literature for beginners are Lafcadio Hearn's Interpretations of Literature, and Appreciations of Poetry, lectures intended solely for Japanese students, put, for that purpose, into the simplest possible language. Extremely modest about his own attainments, "I know very little about English literature, and never could learn very much "—he taught it as the expression of emotion and sentiment as the representation of life. He based it altogether upon appeals to the imagination. He held the chair of English in the University of Tokyo from 1896 to 1902. For six years he was the interpreter of the Western world to Japan, and it is singularly fortunate that the Western world had so dignified, so broad-minded, so idealistic an interpreter. He used no notes in his lectures, but dictated slowly out of his head knowing himself to be no scholar, and having no belief in his critical powers, he did not think his lectures worth printing: he spent no time in analysing technique, but went straight to the heart of his subject and treated it as an emotional experience, as a total expression of racial endeavour, in which ideas, however abstract, often control conduct, and in

which conduct often explains ideas: he was a devoted Spencerian, and had a weird power of assimilating books which he passionately loved. That is all that we are told of him in the preface to these volumes: it remains to be seen how far his lectures throw light on his character.

He begins by explaining what he calls "the insuperable difficulty," the understanding on the part of the Japanese of the position of women in Western civilisation. "The highest duty of the man is not to

[ocr errors]

his father, but to his wife. every man is bound by conviction and by opinion to put all women before himself, simply because they are women . . . in time of danger the woman must be saved first: in time of pleasure the woman must be given the best place; this first place is given almost religiously: so you understand that woman is a cult, a religion, a god : men bow down before women, make all kinds of sacrifices to please them, beg for their good will and assistance. The man who hopes to succeed in life must be able to please the women-yet it is quite possible to worship an image sincerely, and to seek vengeance upon it in a moment of anger (hence wifebeating): this feeling of worship did not belong to the Greek and Roman civilisation, but it belonged to the life of the old northern races-in the oldest Scandinavian literature you will find that women were thought of and treated by men of the north very much as they are thought of and treated by Englishmen of to-day. Consider how the great mass of Western poetry is love poetry, and the greater part of Western fiction love stories. This feeling of worship has not originated in any sensuous idea, but in some very ancient superstitious idea."

Having so far cleared the way for a perception of

« AnkstesnisTęsti »