| Show ARt WE IN THftWILGHT OFPOETRY v D Howels Discusses the Present Tendencies Litera turePeople No Longer Read HistoryPoet al Cycle ClosedInfuence of Dlagazines l About Howels Himself William Dean Howels is a man ot habits and genial presence of simple address whose democracy has kept pace wih hIs culture and whose sympathies sym-pathies are as brad and indulgent a his standards Of life are earnest and hlha man who has strong convip them lions and who Is not afraid to spealt 1 found hIm In the quiet study of hIs New York home a beautiful apartment overlooking Central park Hq sat In 119 comfortable chair surrounded by his books and papers and talked with me on the subjects of which he Is better lualfe to speak perhaps than any other living American The conversation conversa-tion ran lightly from subject to sub writer appears but I Is justas much Interested Has not the decline of poetry lowered low-ered the tone ot literature I dont think on thewhole tat It has sad 111 Howels for the rise In fiction has compensated for its loss But 1 think the turn of poetry wi come again I think there are some signs of It coming I dont see why a story In verse should not be done again Don Juan and even the Odyssey Odys-sey are real novels In verse The appeal of poetry Is the mot immediate and universal of any form of literature U appeals to the young to sensitive nerves we do not respond I to It so readily when we grow old Something a marked as the twl j i4Ik S I I I WILI DEAN HOWL ject ns a nveration will and 1 have 1ut I down offhand as it came to me When we touched on poetry 11 Howels said I I were asked what seemed tu be the most significant ten deney le in literature I should say that it was thc gradual decline of interest In poetry 1 have SJolwn of it as the twilight of poetry Whoa I began to write young people read Byron Byron By-ron was indeed a craze A little later read Emerson Hawthorne everyone Hawthorne Tennyson and Whiter People of lit erary taste were real fond of poetry They committed it to memory they talked about it But now all that eems to be changed Browlint apparently closed the poetical cycle This evan scence of poetry seems to me to be the most marwl change In imaginative literature tertureHwell On Kipling 3ust here I suggested Mr Kipling The Recessionl and The White Mans Burden Mr Howels expressed the deepest admiration for Kiplns work but in speaking of The WhIte Mans Burden he said I Is very fine and notable It Is poetry with a object and It is perhaps per-haps the most significant recent utterance ut-terance of a literary man I think I however that It has been taken rather differently from what I was Intended 10 me I seems a note of warning The I idea that I Is xtr destiny to assume this tremendous responsibility of soy crning several million savages many S thousand miles away is not at all clear And since we have approached this subject 1 nun glad to be able to c press myself on thc war and its probable elects on our literature The opinion seems to be pretty general held that It i tend to bring about a revival of romanlici1m On the contrary 1 believe its influence to be already past 1 even doubt if it has exerted any leal influence Xo good can come from war It can Inspire nothing that Is worthy in art or letters What did our great civil war do for literature Literature may be sad to k have produce I but it left no lter tre The revolution was also barren of inspiration No book poem or paint lag of any val came out of It War is a madness a blind rage i crushes and destroys the beautiful Mr Howell spoke of thee subject with the greatest earnestness and ye hemence I vas but a step from the discussion of war and Its influences to a consideration Lu f history The Decline of History History he sid Is written in a different way from what it was forty ear ago and pCplc do not read the historical works which they once did I 1 can remember when everyone had been through wit Motleys Rise of the Dutch Republic and books of that soct hut that has all passed Now history his-tory ha become more critical critical inquIry has taken the place of the old methods of representation indeed here is a general convergence toward criticism to be noted In all brches of literature Naturalswhch Is only a better mime for realsmIs a closer criticism of life th romant clam < I asked him what llc thought pf the realie srthe story based on some actual experience of the writer In a special business or proession thinking of the work of Mr Hamblen 11 WhIt marsh Mr V ckof and other writers or stirring true stories All this may have its place s dIr d-Ir Howels In art things cannot be real but natural some Frenchman says One transcript of hire cannot be real but It may be lifelike It would I hfl1l51I1O bf difcult for me to le entirely en-tirely natural writing a story of the kind you mention 1 should count It safer to set out franky t create without with-out Any pleg to that Imrtcular kind of literalness Is there the same chance of mn ning distinction now that there was formerly I asked next Chances For New Writers Ye said Mr Howels young authors au-thors receive recognition quIte a promptly a when 1 entered the field more prompt Indeed for there Is an enlvene curiosity on the pat of the public a greater demand for new writer and it is easier to reach the public The rapidity wit which 11 Kipling Mr Crane and other have established themselves would show this to be te The older writers do not perhaps hold their own quite so well the eagerness eager-ness for nosy men in authorship detracts de-tracts a little from the value of the older men whose work has lost Its novelty The chances of winning distinction llae on the whole increased since a time tat I can remember the methods r much refined and improved what would once lle been thought a rare facility is now very common both Inverse In-verse and prose A story in the At anUc or Harpers that forty rears ago would have made an impressIon is now rmpnlonw by twenty or thirty of almost equal merit The best of thee tae precedence of course but 1 have a mesur of recognition and sUcces There Is more attention paId 10 what people are doing now The public has become accustomed to strong impressions from new menIt b 1ut 0 much surprised when a new L r I light of IJOctn is tlC decline of the essay I es-say The essayist has practically disappeared dis-appeared from the field fn the sense I of any direct and Immediate influence on the public This too Is a compa I tvely recent change lan of the 1 greatest minds must now be content to Ilnfuen e the public by Influencing those who work through the press the I pulpit the stage and thd more popular popu-lar forms of literature upon the mass ot the people They dont rah the public directly and It is no longer ne essaI that they should for there arc middlemen in thought just as there are in trade Take TolstQi Ibsen Hauptman and others thqlr greatness I great-ness Is manifest hy the influence they wield In this indirect way for the re I generation of thought and their own work might be for the time denied the wider audience I Spey of Zola In this way ve came to the discussion discus-sion of Zola and his work I Zola Is one of the men who has no intermediary He Is decidedly moral I In spite of his materials Any true presentation of life must be moral I I i tn nf ict not for that reason advecate I putting his books in every ones hands I To put them in the hands of immature people would be as ridiculous and dan erous as to put certain parts of the Bible in the hands of young children I believe that the trend of literature is toward health rather than unhcalh There are eddie and counter currents cur-rents and some new elements perhaps I but the trend and current Is healthful and it is significant that the influence of literature has Increased with the Immense Increase in printed matter I The output on the whole Is better form truer There Is of course a vast mass of rot but then threefourths of the British classics might be given to the por Even the hack work of which so much must of necessity be done been is better now than it has ever Pay For Literary Ware The pay for literary work is infinitely nitely better The Grub street days no longer exist Prices arc doubled tripled quadrupled No one In the I tnited States when I began to write lived by authorship alone All had to piece out in some way I have never been sensible that the remoteness from type and printing presses in which most authors live and labor nowadays has In any way changed the character of wring Proximity to the means of production gave one a sense of hurry a false I I facility and nil that I would tend to journalism and journalism is merely I hurried literature No Writers have not become more timid with the changed conditions and interdependence of modern life They are bolder decidedly Very few men are now afraid to say what they thill The trouble is to know what they think at aH A good deal that Passes for boldness and strong writing is in reality quite the reverse Any sort of vehemence is an indication of weakness weak-ness nessRefinement Refinement is a mode of strength and if a man is strong enough to hold still and refine his work his reward is almost certain for delicacy 16 a proof of power I cannot say that I think there has been any especial change in the rein ton of an author to his audience It is not more intimate There Is a change in manner from generation to generation which may appear like a chhnge of character but it Is not Tomas Hardy the most famous among modern Eng I Eug lishmen of letters is not bO unpleas ant Intimate with his readers as Dickens was Ith his The personal note in letters may seem more pronounced than fOmerl but I doubt if I realy is Consider Iontaige Xo one could be more personal per-sonal than he was Charles Lamb Leigh Hunt the essayists of the 5tse tatar all were person CThc anlmcsty of journalism has done much to discourage dis-courage this personal note I do not thInk the growth of the magazine has brought about any real change I is a different form of pub lcatonthat Is all I has promoted the short st06 and I has fostered the noel also While editors are continually contnu ally decidIng not to publish novels serially yet more novels arc Issued in this way every par The magazines of thirty years ago differed from the magazines of today In the inferiority or absence of Illustrations Illus-trations In the Inferiority of Its ler Icism ture and the provincialism of its crt IcismYes Yes the Influence of the magazines ha been decidedly beneficial to the literature lit-erature that is closet to life and that IR the best literature I has brought I closer I may not have intensified the Interest In literature but It has widened wid-ened It Howels On Short Story As to the short story as a medium for the presentation of plot character thought and style I can only say that I cant do or say so much and It cant do or say It so well as the novel It I can be fine and It can represent character char-acter pointedly but modeling is lost There Is no room for it as there Is In the novel The short sto 1 should say has the merit of an intaglo I think there can be a strong literature of short storIes There is a way or ex i prssing briefy ani strongly he plases or our widely different form of life The short stories now done so well will prove a rich inheritance for the future novelist Among your ow1 noels which is your favorite I dont know that that Is a question which an author has a right to answer I like A Modern Instance for but one reason and Indian Summer for another an-other The reasons are purely personal The public has liked best A Hazard of New Fortunes The Rise of Sias Lap ham holds second place I will probably prob-ably live as long as anything I have done as it Is typical of so much that Is American JIost Significant of ook What do you consder the most sig nifcant among recent books I have read so little of late I cannot say that any book Impressed me a especially es-pecially significant Hardys Jude the Obscure I thought very strongabout the strongest thing In recent fiction Everybody knows that Mr Howels i3 an Ohio man he himself says laughing ly he Is ashamed to tel iit Is too I much oC a recommendation He grew up in a country printing ofce tot most of his education at the case and through desultory reading vrote as avery a-very young man a campaign life of Lincoln and was rewarded for It by appointment as consul at Venice The consulate as has been well said was his university course There he wrote thc Venetian Letters whose success doubtless fixed his native Inclination for a purely literary life Now for some years he has made New York hIs home His faml relations are of the happl cst He Is blessed with a wife wholly devoted and two children of unusual promise The daughter Miss Mildred Howels is a very pretty girl with avery a-very prety talent both for water colors and for literature Her pIctures have appeared in the Paris salon and her farces show that se inherits much of her fathers gift of expression The son Is an architect newly come from Paris I where he has finished a cQurse of study I several year long I In literature Mr Howels stands half I way between the old order and the new I He ben to write when Lowell Longfellow Long-fellow Emerson and Thoreau were In their prime He is 1 mtthodial worker spending the mom inS and early afternoon after-noon at hIs desk then going out for along a-long walk Just now he is putting the last touches to a contnuato of Their Wedding Journey which sas one of his earliest successes His study Is a snsahi i room sparsely furnished but f Sh1dIS I with wellfilled book shelves A visitor rarely penetrates i though once If there of right he finds himself in genial presence 11 Howels owns a democracy as sincere rs his culture and sympathies as broad as hIs standards stand-ards of life arc high An avowed socialist so-cialist IsIs interest is entirely with the hopes and the conditions of the average aver-age man I Is a mistale to set him down astern a-stern critic He sees whatever good there nsay be but cannot see only good where there is also evil The honesty of clear vision compels him to see good and evil even in the English classics However sharp hc maS be over them he Is never ungenerous to the men of his own time No otlel wrier has ever aided by praise so many young authors He has never sought notoriety He has been content with the abundant fame that has ought him I he has never been the man of thc moment he Is assuredly one of the men of his tme VAUGHAN KESTER |
