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Show THE CITIZEN I of some men who lived centuries ago are perhaps more living today than the work of others done but a month ago. It is not at present a usual practice to write essays on those whose work is now old in years, the reason umuiiunimmimmmimlMiHUimiUIUIIIimilHlimiHimtinHHIIIIIHIWIIIIIIWWIIWHIIIIIIHHHMmMIHIIIlllllllllllHHtlllWIIIIHmili;t THINGS BOOKISH I E K. mini. apparently being that all there is to say has long ago been said. This, however, cannot be the case, as each new critic, if he is a true one and an honest craftsman, will feel and relate different mental experiences after his intercourse with the ideas of the great Edited By WILUAM C. WINDER, Jr. That in critical writing there is an aim far beyond the reviewing of books and the giving of literary advice is recognized today by intelligent readers. It is the universal aim of honest artistic endeavor, that of finding an outlet for the expression of self, and naturally of making this chosen mode of expression as attractive as possible. In other words, it is the making of lit- through the portraying of ones own mental life. JJnder existing conditions the making of true critical literature is held back by the fact that most critics deal entirely with contemporary work. This causes too many personal contacts with the subjects under discussion. There is an almost total lack of aloofness; there is entirely too little of calm impersonal accepting the things which hold an appealing interest, although the work as a whole of this writer or the other may be very displeasing to the critic. Too many critics feel themselves engaged in battle in defense of their personal enthusiasm; too quick to denounce the work of one for whom they feel an antipathy, and not always discriminating in their praise of the work of some favorite. This, in a way, may be quite proper, from the standpoint that true critical work should be quite subjective; but the mattters under discussion are in the majority of cases of immediate interest and have not stood the test of investigation after the cooling of that first ardor. With these conditions in mind, it is even remarkable that there is so much critical writing of lasting merit as there is today. But at the same time there is a vast amount of time and thought given to that which must from its very essence be but a transitory thing; perhaps of interest today because it throws a little light on some new idea or mode of expression, but never afterward to be read or spoken of because it really contains so little of the critics own personality and individuality; because it resorts to too much reporting and reviewing, and portrays too meagerly the reactions on the mind of the critic caused by its contact with some degree of genius. To make the literature of criticism, therefore, it is quite evident that the writer must put much of himself, that is of his mature ideas, into the work, and but very little of the subject which he has selected for discussion. In reading critical essays, I am not particularly interested in finding a catalogue of the contents of the books of a writer, as that I had rather find out for myself. But I am Intensely curious to learn how the ideas and words and method of this or that genius reacted on the receptive and acute minds of certain critics; say, for example, the effect on the mind of Mr. erature John Cowper Powys. Mr. Powys, in his essays, and es- pecially in the collection just issued as Suspended Judgments does not at all speak as one with a messianic . idea, as one with a mission to perform. He offers his thoughts and ideas, but he passes no judgment and does not even expect that others will agree with him. He is picturing his own mind, not a universal one. His essays are not so much pictures of certain great men as they are pictures of his own mind as affected by the work of these men. One learns not so much of Balzac and Henry James and Voltaire as one does of the workings of that discriminating brain of John Cowper Powys. With these recorded reactions one may or may not agree, but they are important to us to be used in comparison with our own ideas, and, of course, they are important as to the manner in which they are expressed. In his essay on Montaigne, Mr. Powys gives a good insight into his critical creed, if such it may be called, when he says: We, who are interested rather in literature than in the history of literature, and rather in the reaction produced upon ourselves by great original geniuses than in any judicial estimate of their actual achievements, can afford to regard with serene indifference the charges of arbitrariness and caprice brought against us by professional students. Let these professional students prove to us that, in addition to their learning, they, have receptive senses and quickly stimulated imaginations, and we will accept them willingly as our guides. And it is with this charming idea of literature, that it is not a matter of rules and regulations, but something to be enjoyed, that he reads for his own pleasure such things, and such things only, as fascinate his varying moods. He does not stand as the champion of any particular age or school. He is seeking beauty, and he finds it in the traditional figures of the past, in the seething present, and he will continue to find it in the voices of the future. After all, the time at which a work of art is done is of little or no consequence. Men are not so different fundamentally at any particular century. The candid understanding by a man of his own individuality and his charming expression of it in one century are never outworn to receptive minds of a later time. It is, after all else is said and done, only the individuals, those who achieve in some considerable degree a method of self expression, that are of value to the world. And the abil--it- y of the individual to not alone express his inmost feelings, but also to correctly interpret himself, is what is known in the world as genius. In the work of the genius there is nothing artificial; it is a natural outpouring of ones mental and artistic life. And that is the reason why such books, or whatever the form of expression may be, never grow old; why the writings dead. . We, of a new age, are not traitors to our own time if we go backward in our search for beauty and the key to the meaning of life. While we ' realize that each new generation brings with it its new symbols and modes of expression, or the recurring cycle brings back old ones disguised as new, yet there are natures which cannot .find satisfaction in the new forms. One needs hardly be reminded that all the. thoughtful persons living today are not in reality children of the present age. There are many who will find joyful satisfaction in the methods of self expression in vogue today, and will even go so far as to denounce any other; there are others who, with equal right, harken back to past centuries for light, whose natures are too sensitive for the bluster of this economic world of the present, and whose ears are attuned to the world music of a time when men were in closer touch with the soil; there are still others to whom both past and present are but promises of a greater day, who sense within themselves a time when men will have achieved a closer intimacy with the wonders of life. All these classes, and the many, who are part of one and part of another, have the right to search wherever they will for any whisper which will give them an inkling as to the measure and meaning of life. Mr. Powys, in the volume in question, goes back, to a marked extent, to the leaders of thought of other days. From Pascal to Paul Verlaine and to Joseph Conrad is no small sweep, yet the sixteen great men of whom he has written are almost as dissimilar as the three named. Between them all, however, there is a golden connecting link; they were and are all great individualists, each attempting to express his inmost self. And on the sensitive mind of Powys the work of each genius plays its part; not, however, forcing him to accept their views, but rather in contact with them enabling him to clarify his own ideas and opinions. In the essays there is much of compelling attraction, even as Powys was attracted by the masters themselves. His approach is from an unusual angle, almost as though with the power of clairvoyance. In the obvious he is not interested, but his search is for that elusive human spark which after all differentiates the great artist from the ordinary drudge. His mind reacts to influences in these books and lives which would perhaps pass me by unnoticed, while to me they would bear a different significance. But it is right here that their charm lies; I am able to clarify my own perceptions . through contact and comparison with . his. Of the essays, those appealing most strongly to me are the ones on Mon- taigne, Anatole France; de Gourmont and Joseph Conrad. Of the great Montaigne, one of the first modern thinkers, he writes with rare gusto and charm. There is something delightful in that amused sceptictlsm with which this classical scholar looked out on the petty strivings of his world of three hundred years ago. Yet his question, What do I know, is the universal expression of thinking people today. In fact it is the first step in intellectual advancement. Montaignes was not a wistful brooding over the doubtfulness of his ever knowing, but it was rather a constant amusement at the seriousness with which others looked upon the eternal riddle. France and de Gourmont he writes as the masters of disillusionment, that state from which a true civilization proceeds, and at the same time a product of a high state of civilization, or rather a condition of the decadence of barbarism and physical power. It is the result of an age when men take the time to rest and investigate, and above all to enjoy each day as it comes. In Conrad, Powys discerns a transcendent message which is almost new to Conradian criticism. He deplores, even, the violence of those wonderful books as something which detracts from that mental message which the Pole sends over his mystic wire. It is, I think, the nearest approach which Powys achieves to pure transcendental intuition, but in none of the essays is it entirely lacking. It is, I must confess, something to which I have paid litle attention in my reading of Joseph Conrad. Mr. Powys has been for years a public speaker of note, and it is quite evident that now and then, especially in his essay on Pascal, he reverts to his old form. One here finds rhetoric and oratory, largely to the exclusion of anything else. To a speaker, this is quite necessary; far more so, however, than to an essayist! Standing before a mixed audience it is essential to decorate ones ideas with these verbal flowers. But to a discerning reader, 'who requires nothing startling to attract his attention, they become rather tiresome. Mr. John Cowper Powys is, however, a charming pagan, in the highest sense of that word. Of the little matters which worry the masses of people, of the terrific economic struggle, he cares little or nothing. He has learned to question and continually does so, for that is life to him. He realizes the futility of passing judicial judgment on relative truths or on Of - x- - matters affecting the artistic interpretation of life. In his full realization that the benefit of literary effort of any kind, and especially criticism, lies in its effect upon the mind of the critic, he says: I think it is one of the most precious benefits conferred on us by every new writer that he flings us back more deeply than ever upon ourselves. He Is a Nietczschean individualist, claiming the right to do and think and v |