It is a fresh subject, scarcely
touched by writers, and full of surprises. The jaded reader should
be told that, in spite of rumors to the contrary, the middle-aged
still exist.
A LITERATURE OF PROTEST
I have pursued the discussions of the new American realism through
university gatherings and literary inquests. Stripped of all
metaphysics and relieved of all subtlety the conclusion of the
matter is inescapable. It is not the realism of the realists, or
the freedom of free verse, or the radicalism of the radical that
in itself offends the critics, it is the growing ugliness of
American literature. The harsh and often vulgar lines of Masters
(so they say) seem to disdain beauty. Vachel Lindsay's shouted
raptures are raucous. Miss Lowell's polyphonies have intellectual
beauty, but the note is sharp, the splendors pyrotechnic. Robert
Frost's restrained rhythms are homely in the single line. The
"advanced" novelists, who win the prizes and stir up talk, are
flat in style when not muddy in their English. They do not lift.
An eighteenth century critic would call American literature ugly,
or at least homely, if he dipped into its realities, rococo if he
did not.
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