BOOKS
349
Badge,
which
has
been reprinted for the first time from the original
manuscript, Professor Stallman scores 54 of his 145 pages with foot–
notes and variants, some of them consuming most of the text. A great
deal of this possesses interest and even value; but quite often the reader
has
less the sense of having bought a book than enrolled in a course.
That, in a volume presumably produced for non-scholars and non–
specialists, so much apparatus should be compelled upon one, seems at
least debatable; but let us pass that by in view of how much else we
must debate. For of course the crucial question is not how appropriate
but how rewarding the apparatus is; and at least one man's answer
is that, taking any large-minded view of literature or view of criticism,
Mr. Stallman's performance is symptomatically most disquieting and
in
itself very deleterious. I haven't the slightest desire to single out Pro–
fessor Stallman for attack, nor to suggest-indeed it is quite the other
way-that what I find amiss is at all unique with him. His seems simply
the most glaring example I have thus far seen, of a type of approach
I have seen all too often. It seems to me the type of approach that is
drying up criticism and sealing up literature. And it seems all the more
so
because there is nothing very controversial about Stephen Crane
himself; it's not with most of Professor Stallman's specific critical judg–
ments that one has any quarrel. He happens to be among the most
exacting of the New Critics; but neither is one's quarrel here with his
sect. Neither is it, in any final sense, with his manner, carping and con–
descending though I find it. He cannot let any of Crane's previous
editors and critics off for the mildest misdemeanor; he must put them
all
in their place and rule as many as he can out of court. So harsh a
tone offends even where an A. E. Housman, trouncing previous critics
of Manilius, is as irrefutable about facts
as
he is relentless; with Mr.
Stallman, often treating of opinion merely, the justification seems far
less great. But one's real quarrel here is with Mr. Stallman's inner
spirit,
with a priggish, bloodless, authoritarian mind that does more
than
carp over Crane's previous critics; that narrowly legislates for
Crane, and criticism, and literature, themselves.
He is the sort of fanatic in his beliefs who has none of the grandeur,
the fiery disinterestedness, that can partly redeem fanaticism. He must–
as
much from vanity
as
pedantry-call attention to his small triumphs
of accuracy, thoroughness, insight; and in his chiding of others, notably
of
Crane himself, he soon turns into a nag. His more pregnant utterances
are set forth in italics:
Crane's style is prose pointillism.-Crane is al–
wo:ys
dealing with the paradox of man.
Mr. Stallman, in any case, is
always dealing with the paradox of something, or with the irony of
