The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 9, June 1923), by Students of Yale

Title: The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 9, June 1923)

Author: Students of Yale

Release Date: July 13, 2022 [eBook #68518]

Language: English

Produced by: hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

Vol. LXXXVIII No. 9

The
Yale Literary Magazine

Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.

“Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque Yalenses

Cantabunt Soboles, unanimique Patres.”

June, 1923.

New Haven: Published by the Editors.
Printed at the Van Dyck Press, 121-123 Olive St., New Haven.

Price: Thirty-five Cents.

Entered as second-class matter at the New Haven Post Office.

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Probably one in every ten men brought up in a cultured environment has written, at some youthful period or other, sentimental verse. Such product is in any prep.-school paper; a few brilliant or hard working youngsters win prizes each year for the best “poems” of their classes. But too many of these prodigies, because they are one in ten, are convinced that they are endowed with the powers of a poet. They cannot realize that riming is to be outgrown at adolescence, just as other games are. Since some grown men continue to write poetry, and no one continues to rollerskate, they put off rollerskating as a childish thing, but they keep puttering away over platitudes “To ——” and to Spring. They have not yet come fully into their manhood.

Personally, I should prefer them to become professional rollerskaters, for then they could do no harm. Instead, they join the group of “younger litterati” of college, and play the artist as an extra-curriculum means to distinction, bringing down an undeserved indictment upon whatever men there happen to be with music in their hearts, and with something to say. The university[284] which most desires to honor its true artists finds itself rewarding a kindergarten Greenwich Village for sentimentality that will be forgotten before the quickness of time has killed it. “Litterati” thus has become to others a name of derision, and “he heels the Lizzie Club” is a taunt. Especially, a magazine founded for the sincere promotion of literary expression is in danger before these men with the trick of verse and a desire for prominence.

It has become, therefore, the duty of the Lit. to defend itself, and to stand guard for the rest of the College, against this tendency to dilettantism, even while it welcomes to its pages the writer who is eager to learn and practice expression. Such a task is difficult, I acknowledge, because it involves a judgment between boys by boys, but it is not impossible. We have had enough poets at Yale in the past few years to be able to distinguish them generally from the poetasters, and if a fake slips by now and then, time betrays him and the laurels he has won. Many attain a kind of prominence that is strangely akin to that of a rollerskater who has taken a spill.

Yet it might be well for those interested in Yale literature to look suspiciously at the number of undergraduates who are Lit. heelers only when it is profitable, who drop out—never to write again—when the competition is crowded, or who begin to write when it is seen that there is to be a vacancy on the Board. They are unquestionably with us, accomplishing nothing more than to disgust and alienate those who really desire to write. Unquestionably, such an element is exceedingly bad for Yale, if Yale intends to be any kind of a force in literature. If the Lit. Board and kindred honors are to mean more than a badge placed somewhere on a college boy’s anatomy, we must show the pretender that he is out of place.

Of course, this must not lead to the discouragement of anyone with the slightest itching of the pen. It is the man who writes badly, yet for the sheer and indescribable love of writing, who should resent most the prostitution of our literary organizations, for to the “passionate few” creating is serious, joyous business. The “passionate few” must direct public sentiment against those who would play it as a game in the childish politics of the University.[285] We must not permit a false intelligentsia to become associated with Yale. We cannot allow clever youngsters, fired with the aspiration of a charm for their watch-chains, to hack out verses in the feverish night before a makeup. However few, and however dry, the pages of the Lit. may be, we want them to contain the result of sincere emotion; we want the author to have given the best of his ability toward making his contribution acceptable by any editor. This is the only way a literary magazine can be written.

DAVID GILLIS CARTER.

A fresh wind from the ocean made the waves sparkle when Daniel took his cruise. He was on a solitary tour of New York Harbor in a hired motorboat, his tribute to the general pleasantness of a spring day out of doors, balmy, yet with sufficient air. A motorboat was not, he reflected, as attractive to a lover of the sea as a sailboat, but it enabled him to poke around the arms of the port more satisfactorily. Today he set off down the harbor with the breeze in his face.

At first he passed close to the docks of the enormous ships, some of which were so long their shapely stems reached far out into the stream. Nothing was so exciting as seeing their masts and the tops of their huge funnels over the top of a dock. It reminded him of a glimpse he had had of the tall, delicate spars of sailing vessels over the roofs of a seacoast town. The realization of being on the immediate threshold of the romantic sea is irresistible in its rich suggestions, linking the most prosaic person for a moment with strange places, hitherto only imagined, and possibilities of adventure, startling even at a distance from the point of view of ordinary life. Daniel thought about this and other theories of his concerning the sea as his boat sauntered past the imposing liners which so engrossed his attention. Their sharp, carefully flaring bows and the suggestion of velocity in their slanting rigging attracted him. One was just docking as he went by. It was huge, and seemed a city with a host of tugs like parasites slowly pushing it around. He could never get over the size of them. It seemed like magic,—this, building a community that floated so snugly on the water, the four red funnels above adding the emblem of something powerful in its compactness. Yet in spite of their size, the steamers seemed at a distance slim and graceful, essentially ships and obviously made to deal with the exacting ocean. Daniel saw liners with more penetrating eyes than the ordinary casual observer, he was sure.

It was not long before he was off down the harbor away from[287] the docks. Here the waves danced to the breeze among the little boats which carried on the teeming local traffic of the port, rushing back and forth like water-bugs on a pond. The vessels that were anchored strained at the ends of taut hawsers with the wind and tide both coming up the bay. Over near the farther shore against the sun, a great ship was moving down, a massive black shadow sliding imperiously out to sea. He steered the launch near the anchored vessels, under their high sterns. Reading their names was a fascinating diversion for an imaginative person like himself, he thought. Here was the “George B. White” of Jersey City, near it the “Orphan” of Bombay; here a sloppy tramp from Beirut, there an empty freighter of Cape Town; Japanese and Chinese and Javanese vessels were there whose names he could not read, and a little ship from the Piraeus, laden with smells from Athens—dirt from her gutters and hovels, and dust from the Acropolis.

Well, well, what a highway the sea was, after all. It was fascinating, the harbor, fascinating! These great ships always sailing out on voyages that somehow still seemed perilous, and others, looking—to the imagination, at least—weatherbeaten, coming in from foreign lands.

He turned and headed out past the narrows to the slow dips of the ground swell, powerful, but almost at peace for the moment, which his little boat climbed and descended like smooth, gentle hills. The sun still sparkled, and here the water slapped more vigorously against the sides of the boat, throwing flecks of spray out and whirling back some of them to sting his face. He was getting gradually drunk, he concluded. Certainly the spaciousness of everything around him was going to his head. But it was, he later decided, really the smell of the air that did it. No sweet gasoline-sick atmosphere of streets out here, nor the faint odor of millions of his fellow-men to which he was accustomed in the buildings he frequented. The breeze was fresh and tasted strong of salt. It had a palpable vigor of its own. Not artificially intoxicating like a stimulant, but with a gusty sting. It whipped his mind and brought it up eager and sharp, like a trembling racehorse.

That air—that makes men on steamers feel so ridiculously fit[288] without exercise, enabling them to eat and eat—tea, jam, pastry, steaks, cheeses, and then sit and read all day in one steamer chair and be ravenous again! If only he could sail on a ship, he thought. To feel so strong and finely balanced—not, as usual, subject to his little moods of depression which so often went hand in hand with indigestion, he had discovered—to feel so well tuned! He had a vision of himself as he would stand on a ship—as he had, on the only trip he had ever taken—in the very peak of the bow, looking over and watching the tall prow sweep down on and devour the unsuspecting patches of the sea. He remembered how the breeze was steady in his face and how he used almost to taste it! His hair was worried by the wind and he relished its swift buffets on his face as he stood against it, drinking it in as a hot man drinks a running stream. What nameless joy he felt, he now remembered; and how he used so to overflow with something buoyant inside him that he would ecstatically smile. Well tuned! And singing, like an old lyre at the touch!

Well, if he could get to feeling like that he would give anything, he said to himself in his conventional way—and suddenly he grew disgusted. Give anything! Lord, he wouldn’t give up a month of his most valuable time. Love the sea! He had been repeating to himself all during his little outing that he loved the sea. He was one of those few who really loved the sea. He felt that he understood it better than a good many people. As though he knew anything about it, who had never gone to sea and never would. His experience of it standing on the street-like decks of a liner and watching it; thinking about it, he flattered himself, with rather a light touch, as it were, but still from a poetic point of view.

The light touch! Everything nowadays was written and spoken and even thought of with a light touch. A light touch in connection with the sea! The old sailing vessels—swift clippers around the horn; that was the ocean! No drawing-room stuff about that. When the brutal masters carried all the press of sail they could in those tremendous storms, till the topmasts went and the gear came flying down like a thunderbolt and had to be chopped away to save the ship. Trim ships where you worked beneath the lash, and insubordination was best viewed from the yardarm. Ships[289] used to go down and never be heard from—often in those days. But the men that lived were really children of the sea who knew its great aspects; and they knew their ships, every inch of them, from their thin spars that “shone like silver”, as the chantey says, to the bright copper on their keels.

The great longing, the parching thirst of a hothouse intellect for hardship swept over him like a wave of the sea itself. Hardship assumed an intrinsic value for him at once, as it had one winter in the South when he missed savagely the bleak Januaries of his Northern home; as it had when he read of the Homeric heroes who so relished battle, and the brawn children of Thor, and Sir Lancelot with his great shoulders in iron, oppressed and conquering. It seemed as though hardships were the only road to reality, somehow. Hardships of the sea,—the grim knowledge of experience; that would have given him something solid in his mind! But none of that on the ocean now. Where there had been towers of canvas (as he visualized it) now there were freighters. Clippers and freight ships! The sea rather intriguing whimsical people like himself—when once she held men until it was her will to fling them away! Whimsy! What was this compared to a strong man’s desire? What was this careful self-consciousness of his feelings to his grand impulses?—the humorous affairs of life to the grim ones?—dilettantism to the austere compulsion of a passion?

While Daniel was working himself up in this manner, he was steering straight out to sea, and, in doing so, overhauling a tramp steamer that was starting on a voyage. He was coming abreast of what he later called his fate. Upon impulse, he dared the wash of the boat when he came opposite and ran in close along her side, slowing down so as to keep pace for a while. She was old and scarred, with a dip in her middle like an overworked horse’s back which seemed to give her a jaunty air. Paint had not been wasted on her ramshackle sides, nor any white on her cabin above, nor red on her rusty funnel. Filthy clothes, drying in the sun, hung from clotheslines; a thick rope dragged over the side near the stern and it splashed irregularly in the water. She was dilapidated. But some of her crew were singing for some reason or other as they finished stowing cargo, and the sight of the little boat facing[290] outward and the sight of the great, blank, capricious sea ahead waiting for her was distinctly thrilling, particularly as a fog was coming up, making even the horizon mysterious in its invisibility.

What would it be like, Daniel wondered all of a sudden, if he were to hail this boat and jump aboard? Often he had considered doing some quite possible thing like this, such as getting off a Western train as it stopped at a little, unknown town and—simply staying there, or chucking his work some morning and going on the stage. But there he was again with those light fancies of his. People like himself seemed to have their individualities in glass cases, to be looked at like shell-flowers. What was he, anyway, that he actually could not do what he wanted to? Why should he be so bound, and he was bound, he knew, as if with iron bars. Tied down. Slaves, slaves, slaves. People thought of doing this and that—they still had impulses at least, thank God—and were powerless to do them. There seemed no manhood left. People didn’t seem to be in control of themselves any more. Freedom!—he wondered at the word. Oh, for a touch of it—just a taste—just a whiff! Creatures in the grasp of something huge and stolid! Damn those infernal practical considerations! What was the world, a gigantic taskroom—an ogre-like mill to be turned? By heaven, he must have a will! God knew he must stand there free! He even looked around wildly to assure himself that he was there alone and free.

Then he stood up. There was the rope hanging over the side. He sprang for it, clutched it, and swung there.

There was no shield between him and a rasping sense of mortification as he dragged himself spluttering and coughing into his motorboat once more forty seconds later. He had so neatly proved what he had railed at in this unusual seizure of the disease of spring, and so humorously. Had staid old common sense ever had to deal so brazenly with an impulse as to make a man jump into the sea? Damp physically, and with a real bitterness in his heart at such a plain statement of affairs, the world seemed very dark. Depression swooped down upon his mind like the swift black shadow of a vulture, and as he made his way home for three hours it seemed to be actually feeding on his nerves. It was that dark, stone-wall type of depression which is unarguable[291] and seems final—as though trusted old hope had a limit which was suddenly glimpsed around a bend in the road. It left no room for hypothesis; things were seen clearly to be foundationless that had been rocks to the imagination.

He resolved at any rate to bury this experience in his heart as a tragic sort of trophy which should represent in its bitter essence all the disgust with life that assails people during a lifetime. He had nearly played a trick upon mortality, he reflected. A fine gesture had been made, and he had snatched lustily for the unvouchsafed. It was an affecting experience and one to be reverenced. But of course what really happened was that he made a very good story out of it and one which afforded intense amusement to his friends, though he was prone to shed a mental tear as he told it now and then.

W. T. BISSELL.

I.

I heard not long since the tale of a weary knight and his crippled horse. It had come about, after days of long travel in search of a lost princess, that the poor steed had worn away his shoes. Indeed, every step now left a clot of blood in the dust of the highway. The knight, realizing the suffering of his companion, dismounted and walked by his side, vainly seeking for a smith. Finally, one night when both knew his strength must be spent before the dawn, there gleamed a light in the distance. With words of encouragement the knight urged the horse on to a last effort. And his prayers were realized, for the light proved to be that of a forge blazing against the darkness. In the doorway sat the smith, drinking ale. When he saw the knight and his horse, he burst out laughing.

“Well, this is a prize,” he cried.

The knight smiled. “You’re a great prize to us,” he answered, “for this poor animal has plodded on through many days in great pain. Forge him the best shoes you know how to.”

At this the smith laughed all the louder. “I’d have you know, Sir Knight,” he replied, “that I am Martin Barrow, the greatest smith who ever blew a forge in all England!”

“So much the better,” answered the other, for he had heard of Martin Barrow. And, looking more carefully around, he saw that this was no ordinary forge. Such huge bellows must for certain hold a whirlwind; the anvil showed not a dent; and four hammers lay against the wall too heavy, he thought, to be wielded by any man. “I beg you to proceed with your business, Martin Barrow,” he went on, “for my horse needs help at once.”

“Not I,” laughed the smith scornfully. “I have forged the greatest swords that ever flashed in the sun. Mine are the horses’ shoes which have fought through many a battle. Now is my rest. I do no more!”

[293]

“But this forge,” cried the knight, “this anvil, these hammers—”

“For the pleasure of the many travellers who come to look on the forge of Martin Barrow!” So saying, the smith gulped down the last of his ale and turned away.

The knight flushed with anger, but he made no answer. Silently he took the bridle of his horse and the two pushed out again into the night. Neither had thought he could go further, but strength of the spirit is a strange thing. Such courage is never without its reward, and they had not gone far when there shone a faint glimmer by the roadside. The light seemed too small at first to be that of a forge, but as they came nearer the slow striking of a hammer echoed through the dark. Reaching the doorway, the knight saw an old man pounding away at his anvil.

“Good sir,” he said, as the smith paused in his work, “we have come far, and my horse is in great pain. Will you please shoe him with the best shoes you can forge?”

“That I will, Sir Knight,” he replied, and quickly set about his work. As he did so, the knight looked about him: he noticed the small little fire, the chipped anvil, and one poor hammer. And the smith was a bent old man—one who should long since have been awaiting in rest the near approach of death. He thought of Martin Barrow—his shining forge, and his glass of ale.

Soon the horse was shod, and the knight offered the smith some silver coins, all but one of which he refused.

“Great thanks to you,” said the knight. “I have yet to meet as fine and generous a smith. May I ask what name men call you by?”

“I have no Christian name,” he answered, “but men call me the bad smith.” And, looking down, the knight saw that the shoes were roughly forged and poorly set in place.

“Well, bad smith,” he replied, “you’ve done us both a great service—and that, after all, is doing any task well.” And turning from the doorway, the knight and his horse pushed out into the darkness again to continue their quest. And although I never heard whether or not they found the lost princess, I know they had found in the person of the bad smith something ten times more valuable.

[294]

II.

By the rocky shore of a vast sea there once lived an old philosopher. As long as men could remember, there he had dwelt in a stone castle built far above upon a high cliff. Huge rocks for many miles out prevented all approach to the shore by water. Once in a while a boat might be seen on the distant horizon, but never had one ventured nearer. Back from the coast stretched a dense forest inhabited not only by wildest monsters, but also by demons and strange spells—though I am at a loss to imagine how any man could have returned from such an Erebus to report his tale. However that may be, the only access to the castle lay by a narrow, dangerous path up the very side of the steep cliff.

One might suppose that the old philosopher, so fortified against the world, had as many hours to sit alone and think as his heart could desire. But it was not so. The little path up the cliff had been worn away by the feet of thousands of pilgrims—and that at the risk of their lives. Even the death of four men in one year failed to diminish the ever increasing number. The sand for miles along the shore had been pounded into a hard, even road. The sun never rose that it did not light the path to some figures plodding up the cliff. It never slipped to the west but it touched the faces of those returning to their far-off cities—a fearful tale upon their lips and wonder in their eyes. For the old philosopher was accredited the wisest man in the world—nay, even the wisest man who had ever walked upon the earth. There was no secret of the universe which he had not fathomed. You might ask him what question you would, and its darkest mystery would be at once revealed. What lay beyond the sea which stretched from the foot of the cliff endlessly away no man but he might say. For like his castle and the far horizon, Life and Death were playthings to his genius. Exactly what he told his pilgrims I know not. But it shall never be forgotten how king and peasant alike went away marveling at the miracle they had witnessed, though their hearts, if they knew it not, were no closer to the secret they sought.

There was only one other human who dwelt in the great castle with the philosopher. This was Endelhan, an old servant who had lived with his master ever since the time—if there were such a[295] time—when a whole day passed without a knock at the stone gate. It was Endelhan who patiently waited upon the other, caring for his slightest comforts. It was Endelhan who met each pilgrim at the gate and led him quietly into his master’s presence. There he would sit upon a stool close by, silently listening, gravely staring upon scholar and fool. Little did he understand the wisdom that he heard; the philosopher’s words to him were meaningless. That he was a very great man Endelhan realized, but his mute affection was born mainly of their long years in close contact together. Sometimes a whole day would pass with no more than a few words between them. To the philosopher Endelhan was a good servant—of low intelligence, to be sure, but careful and satisfactory. To Endelhan his master was a feeble old man whose care and comfort it was his duty to serve.

One dark night they say a boat came in on the tide and slipped away again before the dawn. The next day the pilgrims found the gate barred and their calls unanswered. Slowly the word passed from land to land that the old philosopher had uttered his last prophecy. And the dangerous little path which so many had perilously climbed was gradually overgrown, until to-day the castle stands upon the cliff inaccessible to all chance travellers.

One thing more may be added. When you, too, have slipped out with the tide and sailed that sea, you will stand on some far shore before the Master and that “goodly companie”. Surprising to say, you will find that the old philosopher is not there. Asking patiently, you will meet one or two who remember such a one—“wise in his own conceits”. That was long ago; he has passed on. But lo! At the feet of the Master with silent lips and eyes upon all who come sits Endelhan—faithful servant.

III.

Prince Toldath stood before the King:

“Most gracious Majesty, I have come a long way from my golden kingdom on the Northern Shore. Through storms terrible even in imagination, over mountain-passes ventured never yet by bravest men, across the length of a desert which holds the bones of many of your gallant people have I travelled. Yet the prize I[296] seek is worth a whole life spent in such journeys. My slaves lay before you a treasure which the gods themselves might dream of: those silks have come from far Cathay; Earth gave up her fairest secrets in revealing those priceless gems. Yet such a treasure is small indeed compared to that I now would ask of you. Most mighty King, my father is an old man, and it will not be long before his wide and rich domains are mine. As you very likely have been told, I am accredited one of the best swordsmen in our part of the world. And my distant travels have brought me a good measure of knowledge and wisdom. O great King, the prize I seek—my deepest and everlasting desire—is the hand of your only daughter!”

A hush was upon the court. All stared at this handsome prince who had come so far in quest of their fair princess. Here, indeed, was a suitor worthy at last. Brave and daring, he would succeed where so many before him had failed. Hilnardees for once should taste defeat. Slowly the King made answer—in the words he had addressed to numberless suitors in the past.

“Prince Toldath, we thank you for these lavish gifts which you have bestowed upon us. And we acknowledge the honor you pay us in asking for the hand of our only daughter. That your request may be granted depends upon one thing alone, and that simple enough. Listen with care: You shall travel eastward seven days, crossing the desert and plunging into a dense forest. At night you shall rest—except for the seventh night, when you shall push on after the fall of the sun. About the twelfth hour you will come to a narrow, rapid stream. The name of this river is Hilnardees, which means in our language ‘many-visioned’. On the west bank you will find a small boat. Push out into the darkness, and without effort you will be swept downstream with the current. It will not be far before you come to a place where the river branches into three parts. In the dark you will not know; the current will choose which one you shall follow. And each of these three streams in turn branches into three more. Each of those does the same, and so on indefinitely. Somewhere Hilnardees empties into the Sea—no man knows where nor in how many places. Before that, however, your boat will come to rest on the bank of one of the many branches. There you[297] shall see a vision of your own life—a living symbol of what you yourself are. For Hilnardees is a blessed river, and the hand of the gods is upon it. Many who have pushed out in the current have never returned again to their homes, although rumors of their existence in other parts of the world have later been reported. Such has been the fate of most who have sought the hand of my daughter. Those who have come back have told of strange and fitful sights. Go, Prince Toldath, if your desire is as great as it was, and return to me, paddling slowly upstream and crossing the forest and desert as before. May your vision prove worthy of my daughter’s hand.”

Prince Toldath smilingly bowed to the King. Here surely was no difficult task, and the whole was likely enough a foolish legend. If there were any truth in it, he need not doubt of a successful pilgrimage. If not, he might invent all manner of splendid “visions” on his way back. Thus, on the following morning he confidently set forth.

All happened as the King had foretold. At midnight of the seventh day he came upon Hilnardees, river of many visions. By the bank he found a small boat in which he pushed out into the dark. Whether he was exhausted from his travel or the river cast some strange spell upon him I know not—nor did he. Many hours passed in dreams of his princess before he was finally awakened by the sudden jolt of the boat as it struck the sandy beach below the bank of the river. It was broad daylight and the sun was high in the heavens. Before him rose a flight of marble steps. Slowly realizing that he must have come to the end of his journey, he pulled his boat upon the shore and mounted the steps. It was a glorious sight that lay before him. Never in all his far travels had he seen such shining beauty. Babylon in all its splendor could not have been like this. Rushing through the open gates—completely forgetful of the purport of his journey, the Prince found himself within a marble city. With awed wonderment he walked through one street after another. At every turn the beauty of architecture and sculpture surpassed the dreams of the wildest poet. Towers and turrets on all sides sparkled in the sunlight. His unheeded steps led him shortly to a wide square at the center, where a fountain murmured as it played into a round[298] pool. Then it was that suddenly the Prince realized that the fountain was the only sound he heard. The streets were empty. In his transfixed wonder he had not noticed the deep silence which was upon the city. Not even the cry of a bird was in the air. With ominous forebodings he entered one of the largest buildings—surely the palace of the king. The great door swung slowly open. Within was a grandeur and beauty akin to the exterior. No court in the world was the equal of this. Through room after room he marveled at the lavishness of paintings, and furniture, and ornament. Strangest of all, it seemed as though the palace had been built but yesterday. Time had left no touch upon it. So with the entire city. All was polished and shining—an ordered perfection.

Then fear seized upon the Prince. Wildly he dashed from the palace and shrieked aloud in the square. Only the taunting echo of his voice laughed back on all sides. Then the deep silence again. Turning, through one building after another he desperately, madly searched—only to find the same splendor, the same perfection. Finally, wearied, he sat by the edge of the fountain—the lone bit of life in the whole city. Gazing into the bright pool, he quickly laughed. Why, this was just a vision—a vision of himself! Of course! Now he understood! This beauty—this shining glory was his—his! Could any prince ask more? With a wild thrill of exultation, he ran through the gates down to the river, and leapt into his boat.

Ten days later Prince Toldath stood once more before the King. Dressed in his finest raiment, he smiled with easy confidence upon the assembled court. Indeed, the great hall was crowded to the full, for rumor had spread that Prince Toldath had seen a vision glorious enough to receive the hand of any princess.

“Prince Toldath,” said the King, “you have come back to our palace, having carried out in detail what directions we gave you?”

“I have, your Majesty.”

“Prince Toldath, when the current swept your boat upon the bank of one of the many branches of Hilnardees, what vision lay before you?”

“Most mighty King,” cried the Prince, “I saw there a city of marble flashing in the sun—a city more beautiful than any other[299] in all the world. As you know, I have travelled through many lands. Never before have I walked in such awe and wonderment. To describe the glory of the sparkling sunlight on the towers and turrets one would need a divine language. Yet more surprising, Time had not come into those streets, for all was as if it had been built yesterday—perfect to the last detail.”

“And what manner of people did you meet with?” asked the King.

“There were no people, your Majesty. A deep silence lay over all. But if this be a vision of me—as I may scarcely believe, so rich was its glory—then my princess and I shall bring life and breath into the square, and the palace, and the temple. Great King, I await your decision.”

As deep a silence was upon the court as ever that of the marble city. The King—who was, as you have perceived, a very wise man—looked down at the Prince. For many seconds he did not speak. Then he said very quietly:

“Have you never heard, Prince Toldath, that the life of a city is its soul?”

Some say the Prince married a rich countess in his own kingdom on the Northern Shore and reigned happily many years. While others believe a strange tale, saying that he drowned himself in the waters of Hilnardees, river of many visions.

WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.

Victoria. By Knut Hamsun. (Knopf.)

With the translation of Victoria into English, Knut Hamsun demands again our serious consideration. He is universally recognized as the author of Growth of the Soil, Pan, and Hunger. In 1920 he received the Nobel Prize for literature; a great distinction for any writer. That fact alone should fascinate us into searching out his latest translated novel.

Victoria is a tragical romance dealing frankly with the hopeless mutual love of an aristocrat and one of lower caste. The plot is obviously commonplace; but Knut Hamsun has done with it what few other men could do: excited and maintained interest. To emphasize these qualities there must be some twist in his technique, some trick in his style. Perhaps this is it:—

He chooses an incident, relatively unimportant for the progress of the plot, and describes it distinctly in short, rapidly moving sentences. Action always commands inquiry into the who and the why. Then he presents the necessary description of the character, his situation, and any other details that he deems necessary. And in this last feature Knut Hamsun is a master craftsman. Interest is maintained greatly by the refinement, and consequently the confinement, of description. He is a poet by divine right, some one has said. True. And he is moreover a modern poet, abiding by the same principles that Ezra Pound and his followers recognize: namely, to present instead of to describe; to give direct treatment to the “thing”, whether subject or objective; and to compose in musical phrases.

Victoria is a poetical novel with a strange love for its theme. Formerly Knut Hamsun has been expansive, taking life as a whole for his study; but now he is dealing with love alone, and is therefore able to cast off much of the commonplace in details. He asks, “Ah, what is love?” and gives many conjectures on it. “Love was a music hot as hell which stirs even old men’s hearts to dance.[307] It was like the daisy that opens wide to the coming night, and it was like the anemone that closes at a breath and dies at a touch. It might ruin a man, raise him up again and brand him anew; it might love me to-day, you to-morrow and him to-morrow night, so inconstant was it.

“But again it might hold like an unbreakable seal and burn with an unquenchable flame even to the hour of death, for so eternal was it.

“Does it not lead the friar to slink into closed gardens and glue his eyes to the windows of the sleepers at night? And does it not possess the nun with folly and darken the understanding of the princess? It casts the king’s head to the ground so that his hair sweeps all the dust of the highway, and he whispers unseemly words to himself the while and puts out his tongue.

“No, no, it was again something very different and it was like nothing else in the whole world. It came to earth one spring night when a youth saw two eyes, two eyes. He gazed and saw. He kissed a mouth, and then it was as though two lights met in his heart, a sun flashing towards a star. He fell into an embrace, and then he heard and saw no more in all the world.”

Is there more beautiful treatment in all prose?

The tragical element enters into the form of fate. The Miller’s boy is not to have that love fulfilled, the daughter of the castle shall have it snatched away from her by death; the world is an unhappy place full of all beauties. Knut Hamsun the fatalist! Miss Larsen points out in her exhaustive study of the man that there is no reason why the novel should have been a tragedy except that, like Hardy, Hamsun believed during the period of his life when the book was written that no joy was to be attained. When he saw happiness coming towards any character he would say, “Ah, this must not be! It is not the order of things.” And that would end it. Yet there is strong foundation for an opinion that the tragedy enhances the pathetic charm of the book.

It is Knut Hamsun’s finest romance. Is there any more to say?

A. H. C.

[308]

Blackguard. By Maxwell Bodenheim. (Covici-McGee.)

Perhaps the most startling quality of Blackguard is its graphic lucidity of language. Consider this description of a man sobbing: “It was as though a martyr were licking up the blood on his wounds and spitting it out in long gurgles of lunatic delight.” The whole story is told with such compelling clarity of phrase, and Bodenheim has shifted his genius for acid wording from poetry to prose without the slightest apparent misgiving as to outcome. Result: a luminous biography of an introspective young author that in some ways approaches the manner of James Joyce.

The book concerns the poetic and amorous development of Carl Felman, an aspiring scribbler who stoops casually to thieving rather than enter its father’s business of whiskey-selling. His fight against the world, and particularly against his mother, who had a body “on which plumpness and angles met in a transfigured prizefight of lines”, is rendered doubly difficult by his own discriminating soul. He is not willing to give and take, but is concerned with the taking only. In the end he achieves some tranquility of mind—in a manner strange enough to warrant reading about it.

Bodenheim will not cheer you up; rather will he wake you up. And for rhymesters who aspire to better verse or don’t know when to quit—here is an eye-opener that should not be passed by too lightly.

J. R. C.

Black Oxen. By Gertrude Atherton. (Boni & Liveright.)

The notion of rejuvenation is not a new one, and the theme of sophisticated womanhood reverting to romantic young love is not unprecedented. In Black Oxen Mrs. Atherton has successfully disguised the problem of the first with the accoutrements of the second.

The hero, Lee Clavering, is a scintillating “colyumist” whose literary worth is not restricted by journalism and whose ideals are not cramped by the Young Intellectual atmosphere of the Algonquin Group.

[309]

Mary Zattiany, the much-discussed heroine, is an American woman who married a foreign nobleman, dazzled the European courts and salons with her beauty and wit, and, after a process of re-upholstering, returned to New York, where she falls in love with the young journalist.

The motivation of the book is centered in the translated personality of the heroine, and Mrs. Atherton’s treatment of feminine psychology is exceedingly dextrous. But a large part of the story’s merit consists in the cross-section of metropolitan activity at the margin where contemporary artists enjoy social registration.

Black Oxen is primarily a woman’s novel. Its theme will always be close to the heart of womankind, and Mrs. Atherton has added a more than feminine touch by leaving the problem unsolved. When, at the end of the book, Mary obeys the call of European duty and closes the taxi door in the face of transcendent love, the reader continues to wonder whether or not rejuvenescence is a good thing.

The author has employed an idealized “colyumist” as a foil. Clavering’s sudden success as a playwright is dubious. And the ending is too obviously an escape from the lived-happily-ever-after solution. But one loses sight of these technical anomalies in the impetus of the romance, the deftness of satire, and the intricacies of the heroine’s strange predicament.

Mrs. Atherton, in her first treatment of Eastern “civilization”, has had the good grace to sublimate sentimentality without destroying its perennial charm.

H. W. H.

“It’s about time you did some work around here,” said Cherrywold, as Ariel arrived only one hour and fifteen minutes late.

“Oh, no, not nearly!” remonstrated that irresponsible virtuoso.

“You can write the Editor’s Table,” growled Mr. and Mrs. Stevens patronizingly, who had come back from New York with a first edition of Coleridge and couldn’t forget it.

At this point Rabnon, the Brushwood Boy, was detected trying to set fire to the Lit. office with his cigarette stub. As the office was still damp from the presence of the preceding Board, no conflagration ensued. In the confusion, however, three poems by Freshmen were accidentally accepted.

Little Laird Fauntleroy wrote the Table of Contents laboriously, being jumped on every minute or so for misspellings which he was expected to commit, but which he carefully disguised by writing illegibly. Thus the time wore on.

“What would you do with a man who perpetrated this?” expostulated Cherrywold, holding up a poem with the inscription: “I’m very much afraid that this is worth publishing—Mercury.”

“It shows he has no soul!” exulted Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. “No one with a soul could have a face like his, anyway.”

“No personalities in Art,” cautioned Rabnon the politic.

In walked Roland at this juncture, smoking a poor cigar and holding in his nervous hands a large sheet of paper with a one-word correction of his latest poem.

“Here’s the man who wrote a sonnet in six-foot lines!” Han cried. A chorus of groans and hisses greeted the heeler.

“Any defense?” asked Cherrywold, while Han prepared to hit Roland over the head with his stick.

“He’s just been elected Chairman of the News,” said Mr. and Mrs. Stevens in explanation.

“What’s the News?” inquired Han, hand to ear.

A wild scramble followed. Roland, vilified by the names “Traitor!”—“Snake in the Grass!”—“Turncoat!” ran for his life.

“He got away,” Cherrywold panted, his fair face flushed with exertion.

“That’s all right,” said Han; “I couldn’t have spelled his name, anyway.”

Ariel.

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