It is
their job to make beauty out of it, beauty of a new kind probably,
because it will accompany new truth; but they must have time.
Surprise, shock, experiment, come first. The new literature
deserves criticism, but it also deserves respect. Contempt for it
is misplaced, aversion is dangerous since it leads to ignorance,
wholesale condemnation such as one hears from professional
platforms and reads in newspaper editorials is as futile as the
undiscriminating praise of those who welcome novelty just because
it is new.
BARBARIANS A LA MODE
The liberal mind, which just now is out of a job in politics,
might very well have a look at the present state of literature. A
task is there ready for it.
Our literature is being stretched and twisted or hacked and hewed
by dogmatists. Most of the critics are too busy gossiping about
plots and the private lives of authors to devote much attention to
principles. But the noble few who still can write about a book
without falling into it, or criticize an author's style without
dragging in his taste in summer resorts, are chiefly concerned
with classifications. Is our author conservative or radical? Are
his novels long or short skirted? Does he write for _Harper's_
or _The Dial_? They have divided America chronologically into the old
and the new and geographically into East or West of the Alleghanies,
or North or South of Fourteenth Street in New York.
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