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Show THE CITIZEN s HiiiiiuiiiuiuiiiiiiiiuuiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiimiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiHiuiiiiiHiiimHiiiuiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiHiiiiiiiHiimiiiiiiiiniiiiiiii THINGS BOOKISH riiiiMiiiuiiiHiiMiiiHuiiyiuiiiiHiiiiiiuiiuHHiiiiiiiiHiuiiiilllllllllllHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHIIlllllHUUIIWIIllHlHlllimiHlnmilnil Edited By WILLIAM C. WINDER, Jr. one who knew where the path led, yet could not turn back. There is something almost of fate itself in these thoughts of Jean Mintie, when he left the studio of his friend, to engage his new passion, When the door was shut behind me, it seemed that something huge and heavy had. closed itself upon . my past, that walls higher than the sky and darker than the night had' separated me forever fiom my decent life, from my dreams of aft, .There was anguish in my whole being , . . .. For a minute I stood there, stuplfied, with swinging arms, with eyes inor- could not console himself with the .drab, ponderous doings of the dwellers in the actual world about him, so he peopled his own world with the creatures of his fancy, Satyrs, Fauns, Dryads, Nymphs, and his characters, instead of engaging in the pompous,; .pretentious, work of the world, to be forgotten as soon as completed, pleas- 1 SATYRS AND MEN. It would be almost impossible to bring together in a criticism the books of two contemporary authors more widely dissimilar than Octave Mirbeau and Remy de Gourmont. Both were masters; one delivered his message with the voice of thunder, the other with the tongue of quiet, irresistible lightning; both have now gone from v whence not even artists return, and the work of their active brains is our rich legacy. Gourmont sat serenely in his ivory tower viewing with disdain the groping and striving, loving, living and dying of the millions around him. I doubt that the last generation produced a colder detachment from the worlds suffering than his, nor yet a brain better able to sift and to sort things good and bad and place them in their proper perspective. On the other hand, Mirbeau was part of life, and a tempestuous part, too. Into that vast tumultuous mind poured all the cries of anguish of a world which knew much of sorrow. And that mind wras in a constant state of indignation at the wrongs which he and the others were compelled to undergo. He really was too violent to be a great critic of either life or letters, for his sight was biased by his enthusiasms and indignations; but he was a brilliant man, and magnificently sincere. Calvary, by Octave Mirbeau, (Lie-be- r & Lewis) was written in 1887, but years it was not. during thirty-fiv- e available in this country in English, " notwithstanding the fact that Continental Europe recognized the author as one of its intellectual lights and the book as a masterpiece. Although Mirbeau often in his fury wrote in a manner offensive to the French themselves, this book is his least objectionable, which may be another reason that it was the first to be introduced here. We are still very reticent about permitting the rending of our painted veils, or, in other words, of looking at the naked truth or hearing it bluntly or candidly described. However, all may rest assured that this little diversion is not an intimation that there may be anything salacious or offensive in this book of which we are writing. Frankly, there is nothing in this life story of young Jean Mintie which even a professional reformer could condemn in public and enjoy in private. There is, on the other hand, no friendly screen to hide a naked and bleeding soul one which done to had been hurt and death by that which we know as life. In books of men of almost every nationality I have read burning words of the revolt against the horror and the folly of war, but in few instances more forcibly than in a few pages of this book. Here almost in a short chapter the mental, physical and spiritual reactions are shown in such clear silhouette as to be almost unfor- well-nig- h Mirbeau, in the guise of young Mintiej had no illusions even as to hysterical patriotism in time of war. He went through the war of 1870-1- , but his indignation was no stronger getable. against the conquering Prussians than against the ignorance and brutality of the leaders arid officials' of his Gwn side in the conflict Possibly the most touching and beautiful . war incident I have ever read is in the shooting of an Uhlan by the young French soldier, his frantic efforts to revive the man he had slain, his terrible sorrow in the realization of what he had done. We read , Stupidly, unconsciously, I had killed a man whom I loved, a man with whom my soul had just identified itself, a man who in the dazzling splendor of the rising sun was retracing the purest dreams of his life! . . . With tremV1i"'r I raised him slowly, his head swung from side to side, fell back, inert and heavy. I felt his chest where the heart was: it beat no longer. Then I raised him again, supporting his head with my knees, and suddenly I saw his eyes, his two clear eyes which looked at me sadly, without hatred, without reproach, his two eyes which seemed to I thought I was gobe alive! ing to faint, but gathering all my strength in a supreme effort, I clasped the dead body of the Prussian, placed it right in front of me and pressing my lips against this bleeding face, I desperately kissed it! If there is one instinct in Octave Mirbeau which stands out preminent-ly- , it is that of pitty. While having a nature almost as strong and violent as Nietzsche himself, his doctrine is almost diametrically opposed to that of the teacher of Superman. Seldom is it one's privilege to gaze into such a well of pity as seethed within his great heart. His mind was keen and sensitive; he realized the futility of the gropings of the little men around him. In this thing called life, there is in every hour a desperate searching for the verities. There are at this men and hour millions of women who, having given up the struggle for an answer to life or perhaps who were never capable of making the struggle, are now frantically striving for an hours gratification and numbing of some desire which will enable them to forget all. They have not the power to detach themselves. from the seething mass, perhaps not even the will. We, who are more fortunate, watch them coldly, perhaps cynically, and let them die without an effort. Not so with Mirbeau; life had hurt him too; their fight was his fight. Mirbeaus Jean Mintie knew well the facination and terrible power of an overwhelming passion. His was an artists mind and soul; even so, just that much greater was its suffering and Just so much deeper and more indelibly was it seared by the devastating flame. Yet withal, it was the agonizing of a highly intelligent man; . ... soul-starve- d dinately distended, staring at that prophetic door behind which something had just come to a close, something had just died. From my point of view, and in judging as liberally as I can from my standards, I find too much s of self pity in possibly the last of the book. One who has never gone through hell is perhaps ill fitted to pass judgment on the wounded soul of one who has languished there. My sympathy is not deep enough to fathom Jean Minties Calvary. My mind tells me, though, that the story of his suffering is too long drawn out, and at times approaches closely the maudlin. It is a living book, however; the masterpiece of a terribly unquiet soul. To leave so suddenly the tumult of the thoughts of Jean Mintie and, in a single bound, find oneself amidst the satyrs and nymphs surrounding the tower of Gourmont, causes one to tarry for a moment and breathe quietly the strangely cool, clear atmosphere so free from strife and turmoil. As I remarked before, Gourmont does not write of life as judged by his experience in living. With his clear analytical mind, he sees the foolish game go on. His wrork has been the reand he has search of the done this through his dissociation of ideas. He has no patience with the man who searches only for the absolute. His rich diversity of life and his vast knowledge of what has been done and thought, have brought to him the realization of the uselessness in attempting to utter the indisputable, final truth. For him, far more than most other men, truth is merely relative. He speaks through his satyr, Antiphilos, "The Phrygian Aesop has written a fable to prove that liberty is the chief blessing. I heard it in the Greek of my Infancy, and young girls learned it by heart on my knees. It is true and false, like every human invention. Liberty is a burden which one desires to throw on the ground, when one knows nothing else, and in the slavery of the happiest of civilizations there is a bitterness that oppresses the heart. Gourmont wrote, I do not love prisons of any sort. His whole life vras spent in a fight for intellectual freedom. His has been a life of intelligent scepticism, a tearing to shreds of the pretensions of Conventionality. Too many men have concealed a natural laziness for investigation under the cloak of scepticism, but not so with this Frenchman. His knowledge was so vast that his touch was correspondingly light. He fought with a rapier, never with a club. He too-conventio- two-third- non-tru- e, needle-pointe- d . ed themselves largely with delicate, trifling amours. His men, like his satyrs, were fail, ures when placed upon their own responsibility in the world of today, and judged by the standards of the. hour. But those standards were to Gourmont without particular merit, and his men, like himself, held themselves aloof from the world and its work, and in critical detachment tore its conven tions and pretensions to tatters. While the immortality of Gourmont will rest largely in his critical essays, and there has been no greater French critic, yet his novels, tales and poems are evidence of his great and Mr. Antiphilos, fled abilities. His Satyr (Lieber & Lewis), though not his greatest book by odds, is still a delightful voice from the tower of ivory. Remy de Gourmont himself is this satyr who attempts, with so little success, to reconcile himself to a life in civilization. Antiphilos brings into this new life a most delicious naivete, a disarming innocence, a charmingart-lessness- . He is simply Desire, which is the original of mail, and all the rest is made up of the clothes in which civilization has garbed us. He is Desire, but those desires are few, and he feels no shame in seeking their satisfaction. In the things which civilization calls sins, he is hardly Interested; in its morality, he is simply bored. To him civilization means the suppression of his natural desires, and the expression of numerous artificial ones. But even a satyr, once anxious to give up his liberty for a taste of the refinements of civilization, longs again for the hills and fruits and leaves of his freedom. There is a deep criticism of life, a vast wisdom in all the WTitings of Remy de Gourmont. Feeling himself apart from the life around him, he was able to look at it from all sides each view was of equal interest to him. 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