tl8
PARTISAN REVIEW
neglect form, it's true," people would say, "but he
is
a thinker!"
Whereupon the bourgeois would proceed with cries of joy to make
themselves admire what really bores them. It is easy, with a conven–
tional jargon, with two or three ideas acceptable as common coin,
to pass as a socialist humanitarian writer, a renovator, a harbinger
of the evangelical future dreamed of by the poor and the mad. Such
is
the modern mania: writers blush for their trade. Merely to write
verse or a novel, merely to carve marble, is not enough! It was ac–
ceptable previously, before the poet had a "social mission." Now
every piece of writing must have its moral significance, must teach
a lesson, elementary or advanced; a sonnet must be given philosoph–
ical implications, a play must rap the knuckles of royalty and a
watercolor contribute to moral progress. Everywhere there is petti–
foggery, the craze for spouting and orating; the muse becomes a mere
pedestal for a thousand unholy desires. Poor Olympus! Such people
would think nothing of planting a potato-patch on its summit!
If
it were only the mediocrities who were involved, the whole thing
could be forgotten. But no-vanity has banished pride, and caused
a thousand little cupidities to spring up where formerly a single,
noble ambition prevailed. Even men of parts, great men, ask them–
selves: "Why not seize the moment? Why not influence the crowd
now, every day, instead of being admired by them only later?"
Whereupon they mount the tribune. They join the staff of a news–
paper, and there we see them lending the weight of their immortal
names to theories that are ephemeral.
They intrigue to overthrow some cabinet minister who would
topple without them- when with a single line of satire they could
make his name a synonym for infamy. They concern themselves
with taxes, customs duties, laws, peace and war! How petty all this
is! How transient! How false and relative! All these wretched things
excite them; they attack all the crooks, gush over every good action
no matter how commonplace, cry their eyes out over every poor
fellow who
is
murdered, every dog that is run over-as though this
were the only purpose of their lives. To me it seems far finer to
stand at a distance of several centuries, and from that remove to
play on the heart-strings of the generations and provide them with
purer pleasures. Who can begin to count the divine thrills that
Homer has caused, all the tears that the good Horace has changed
