The new generation is discovering its soul by the pain of its
bruises, as a baby is made aware of its body by pin-pricks and
chafes. It is explaining its dissatisfactions with more violence
than art.
Therefore at present the satirists and the educators hold the best
cards, and most of them are elderly. No one of _les jeunes_ writes
with the skill, with the art, of Mrs. Wharton, Miss Sinclair,
Tarkington, Galsworthy, or Wells. It should not long be so in a
creative generation. In sheer emotion, in vivid protest that is not
merely didactic, the advantage is all with the youngsters. But they
waste it. They have learned to criticize their elders, but not
themselves. They have boycotted the books of writers who were young
just before themselves, but they have not learned to put a curb on
their own expansiveness. We readers suffer. We do not appreciate their
talents as we might, because we lose our bearings in hectic words or
undigested incident. We lose by the slow realization of their art.
Youth is a disease that cures itself, though sometimes too late.
The criticism I have made, in so far as it refers to youthful
impetuosity, is merely the sort of thing that has to be said to
every generation, and very loudly to the romantic ones.
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