Laughing Truths/Attack

There is no more exasperating experience than an enforced recognition of the way in which our sciolistic schoolmastering has brought it about that the sweetest fruits have been rendered insipid by pedagogic bacteria and that gifts, meant to make us happy, have been turned into pains and penalties. Art is great-hearted and humane, like the beauty from which it springs. It is one of the consolations of mortal life, and raises no other claim than to work zealously for our joy and bliss. It demands neither study nor preparation, for it acts directly through the senses on our heart and imagination, so that it has ever been true that the simple receptiveness of youth has shown itself a better judge in the realm of art than the most advanced erudition. Just as we have no need to learn how to appreciate flowers and sunshine, just as we need no Previous study to find the Rigi imposing or a maiden fair, so is it unnecessary to study art. It is true that susceptibility is limited, that gifts are unequally distributed, that the senses which transmit artistic impressions are sometimes keener and sometimes blunter. I have, however, never found a human being of feeling and imagination (for feeling and imagination are the preconditions, and the only preconditions, for the enjoyment of art) who did not receive immediate pleasure from one or other form of art. And that is the one thing necessary. Let each of us ​at the heavenly feast select those dishes which delight his soul and enjoy them to his heart's desire, as often and as much as he likes, whether alone or (when his heart overflows) in the company of congenial friends. That is enjoyment of art. It is also understanding of art. Whoever honestly and modestly enjoys a work of art understands it as well as (and very likely better than) the man who delivers learned lectures on the subject. Just so, the artists themselves have always appealed directly to the simple people and shunned all sponsors or intermediaries between themselves and the public.

Art bondage begins when pleasure in art is conceived of as a duty. It is no more a man's duty to love beauty and art than it is for him to find sugar sweet. Art is nothing more than a gracious permission and an urbane invitation; you can either take it or leave it. Happy he who knows enough to appreciate and accept it; we may pity the man who cannot do this, but we are not entitled to scold him. Genuine artists and simple lovers of art are always good souls; but does the fact that experience tells us that art has an ennobling effect justify us in using it as a means of education? "Yes", if we stipulate that the word 'education' is used in the sense of a century ago, when its aim was the training of an all-round man, and that the tomfoolery of the pedant is excluded. When "William Tell" is read in the original, the schoolroom becomes a green and breezy hill, and little ragamuffins are converted into a group of amiable and enthusiastic lovers of poetry. But if the reading is followed by discussion, if the drama is analysed, and illustrated by parallel passages, and written about in ​essays, much of the gain will be lost. So our answer is "No", if the presupposition is that examinations are the be-all and end-all of education, that it means the same thing as teaching and learning. In art there is nothing to teach, except by artists to artists, and little to learn. The ennobling and educative power of art rests, not on knowing, but on enjoying. Indeed, knowledge of art may in certain conditions impair the susceptibility to enjoyment of art. This is sure to be the case when self-conceit or priggishness appears on the scene; for self-conceit is the antipodes of that attitude of the soul implicit in every artistic enjoyment, which is one of modest and self-forgetting surrender. The attempt to carry over the idea of "culture", which means knowledge of a somewhat desultory and superficial cast, into the realm of art, is really an unhappy confusion. The conception of art from the "culture" point of view leads at its best to superficiality, quite usually to self-deception, and at its worst to emotional hypocrisy. One should therefore give up, once for all, the hope to attain the unattainable. Art is far too rich, and the individual far too poor, for him to master the colossal sum of its beatitudes; he should without any doubt restrict himself to the delights most akin to his own soul and enjoy his intimate communion with those. Such a resolve frees him from the most oppressive bondage of the modern world, the serfdom of culture, that burdensome and deleterious form of poll-tax. This resolve, moreover, costs no more than resignation to the fact that we cannot enjoy all the rays of the sun on all sides at once; there is enough and more than enough ​for the needs of the individual when he contents himself with his own proper share. The sense of need is the proper regulator of joy in art; when it is silent, we should let art alone.

Many make the mistake of confounding the external call or invitation with the inner need. "We must take the opportunity". This conclusion, however, is just as false as if we believed it was necessary to eat every time we read of a tempting menu in the newspaper. In normal persons the craving for art has its pauses; it is periodic; an everlasting wolfish hunger for art is itself a sign of a morbid condition, where the diagnosis indicates pseudo-culture. We must learn, therefore, to pass by concert programmes, theatrical posters, museums, and even Campi Santi with as much sangfroid as if they were shop-windows, for the fact that an article is brought prominently before our eyes is no proof that we need it. Even the rarity of an opportunity is no reason why we should avail ourselves of it, for a man is not a pelican and he cannot stow away undigested impressions for which no craving has arisen.

He who consults his cultured conscience instead of his actual desire, who believes it his duty to take advantage of every artistic opportunity in every field at every moment, is a man rather to be avoided than to be envied; the wise will give him a wide berth. For he is inspired, not by the free and noble Goddess of Art, but by the Art of the Schools. This pretentious, and at the same time so sterile, branch of knowledge is answerable for the insincere contortions of art-culture. There is, however, an excellent antidote to it, viz. ​the simple phrase "I don't understand a word of it". What a relief these words bring both to the hearer and the speaker! Really everyone should learn to utter this phrase, the pronunciation of which somehow seems a little difficult, though it expresses an obvious truth, since nobody can assume to be cordially and comfortably at home in every field of art. Of course the confession carries with it the danger of incivility from an ill-mannered interlocutor; but even this may rank on the credit side, as it will teach us not to enter into conversation with every Tom, Dick, or Harry. I call it bad manners for one man to make an unpleasant remark to another on account of his real or supposed insusceptibility or ignorance in artistic matters, for, as no one is bound to enjoy art, so no one has any tight to put another through an artistic inquisition. It would be very desirable if the ideas of politeness in this connection could be somewhat improved, for in most cases the restless and disturbing craving for artistic culture originates simply in the dread of the superficial inquisition in society, railway carriages, and hotels. As soon, however, as we relegate cultivated impertinence to the same class as boorish, rudeness, the terribly high level of the culture flood will sink with great rapidity, just as those nations in which a high degree of conversational tact prevails hardly know the meaning of artistic hypocrisy.

As art exists for the pleasure and not for the discipline of man, we must not regard a great master, however long he may have been dead, as a sort of bugbear, created to impress or even oppress us, but rather as a ​friend and benefactor. Affection is the only suitable feeling we can have for a master, and it must be an unembarrassed affection, free from bashfulness or antediluvian respect. Every creator, even the greatest, is content with this kind of homage, for the homage of the heart is the finest of all. Gratitude will naturally accompany the affection; and conscientious effort finds in this the best reward for the toil and trouble it has had to go through.-Admiration is the tribute paid by professional artists to the master. The layman is not called upon for this; and, anyhow, it does not sit very well on him, for he can have no idea of the difficulties that have been overcome in the production of a work of art, or of the problems that have had to be solved. Let him be satisfied with gratitude and affection; that will be more natural and more modest.-No artist acknowledges any duty of compulsory deification, any nervous taboo vis-à-vis of illustrious names, any bar to an honest affirmation that the august swellings of the Immortals may be nothing more or less than goître. These are the impudent inventions of presumptuous creatures, who busy themselves with the unjustifiable exploitation of a dead master, eager to monopolise him, and in so doing make themselves intolerable by their use of the glory they steal from him. By grovelling before one great man, they flatter themselves that they have earned the right to refuse the due meed of reverence to all the others. Every creative soul hates them with a holy hatred.

We may twist, handle, and call it what we like, the fact remains that in art and poetry everything depends on belief or the want of it. Belief in this connection means a firm conviction of an ever-present and effective spirit of beauty; unbelief is the idea that this spirit marches off gaily, quite apart from the present time, to bivouac at a distance of at least a generation back. And each conviction is based on experience. The believer is full of his belief; how can he fail to note it? In the unbeliever there yawns a gray desolation, therefore he cannot but regard the present as a sterile Jurassic-limestone period.

The believers of the highest order are naturally those whose whole activity is determined by faith as a motive force:—the creators, the originators, the masters. Wherever a master dwells, hope shines and encouragement beckons. At a mere rumour of his presence the brave raise their heads; his example kindles in every corner of the globe; his name acts as a challenge to the noble; his fame muzzles the lie about contemporary inferiority. Whoever gets into personal touch with a master bathes in a fountain of youth. While the wailing women chant the coronach of talent in the streets, while every pulpit announces the closing of the gate of poetry, while every village journal bans the vineyard and every bell chimes for evensong, he, the ​Master, points to the sun of Homer, indicates brother-eagles on the horizon, and waxes eloquent on the inexhaustibility of the beautiful, on the short span of life, on the little that has been so far garnered, on the incalculable harvest still to be reaped. At the cross-roads the hoarse voice of the village constable continues to croak: "Back; hands off! You're too late! Nothing is left!" The Master stands at his hospitable door and greets us in friendly wise: "What has hitherto been achieved is only a beginning".

But faith is needful not only for the creation of the beautiful, but also for its reception, i.e. for its instant reception, for its appreciation before it has become legend; because, when it has become legendary, even the numskulls accept it. In this connection also the artists are far in front of all others, because they are not only at once creator and instrument, but also a sounding-board. Everything that is beautiful awakes in them a full-toned echo, unmuffled by any sullen mistrust or by any carping reservations. A special organ of the soul enables the master to recognise the gold-dust in the sand of the most discouraging flood, to select unerringly what is important in the most devastating swarm of books. This is the feeling of kinship, which presents itself uninvoked the moment anything great enters the field of vision. Outside the circle of artists, the judgment of even the most intelligent needs crutches: comparison with precedents, fundamental principles, the verdicts of earlier masters, and so on. I grant you these are very admirable crutches, but they are crutches all the same; and, moreover, they have ​the fault that they are apt to fail when the need of them is greatest, when the original is not like the standard models, when the great does not please the little, when the new brings with it no sanctifying touch of the old. The judgment of the artists is also a loving one, taking kindly note of every valuable quality; there is no more grateful public for the gifted than other great men—the greater, the better. By reason of these qualities the older, already recognised masters at any given period, are the natural protectors of the younger, who are still struggling for recognition. The necessity of removing the worst obstacles out of the way of a successor, which costs merely a frank word of commendation, lies too near to be other than a general rule. The reverse occurs in the history of art and literature only as a rare exception. About the mutual relations of mature artists many unpleasant things have been whispered. If, however, we examine the records more closely, we shall find that in every single case the disagreement arose from the provocations of the followers of the two great men. Even gold may be converted into an acid through incessant boiling and stirring, and by the use of hydrogen, chloride, and sulphur.

Besides the artists there are two other classes of believers to mention, or, rather, a class and a condition. The Class consists of the best kind of women. The well-known impartial susceptibility of women to beauty of every sort, of every form, and of every name, is part and parcel of their nature, is inherent in their very being. In distinguished individuals it is a deeply felt longing, a real thirst. Other people, too, like the beauti​ful, assert that they desire it, and believe that they seek it; but woman alone utters a spontaneous cry of joy when she sees it. The female judgment, like the artistic, rests upon instinct, which must always be the most valuable foundation, because it is not open to influences. The woman's instinct is, however, limited to the "beautiful" in a narrower sense; it is of little avail in distinguishing the derivative from the original, the pretentious from the really great. Lovely Titanias, who cling to a boorish ass or perfumed ape, in the belief that they have found a godlike genius, will continue to present themselves to our astonished gaze. If, however, woman often takes a frog for a fish, she practically never takes a fish for a frog. Still less does she make it a reproach to the fish that he is not a frog. This is a noble trait and no common virtue; it may be unreservedly recommended for our imitation. And then, what loyalty to the object of belief, once it has been chosen! What selflessness! What a marvellous freedom from moral cowardice! Woman waits for no signs or permissions, regards no prohibitions, laughs at scorn. Her star is not extinguished by the most hopeless defeats; its gentle, joy-bringing beam penetrates the blackest storms of night. Afterwards, when the victory has been won and the skulkers in the bushes break out into obtrusive jubilation, she draws back; for she does not fight for pay. Philosophy may judge of woman as it will or must; art owes her reverence, gratitude, and love. If it were not for woman, we should long ago have been estimating works of art by logarithms and measuring poetic force by the coprometer.

​The Condition above referred to is Youth, that wondrous glaze, which for sundry years glorifies even souls of common clay with a lustrous bloom. By youth I mean only those of the male sex, since the young girl is otherwise occupied in posing as a model for the imagination and with the possibilities of marriage. Male youth, in my sense, extends from the earliest boyhood to adolescence. The interplay of enthusiastic acceptance and creative divination, of humble adoration and confident self-esteem, lends the idealism of puberty both its charm and its value; the enormous number of the participators and the stormy character of its expressions of conviction give it its force. The arrival of new regiments of youth always means a reinforcement for the artist, an increase of reverence for the creative, a strengthening of the fame of enduring values. Like oxygen, youth attacks only rusty iron and rotten wood; it protects the precious metals from dust. The most salutary function of youth is, however, the blowing up of the Babel towers of scholasticism. It is true that the digging and piling up of the earthworks begin again at once; but, all the same, it does one's heart good to see the pagodas and the parsons all scattered to the winds together.

We have now completed the list of the lambs and come to the goats. And the goats bear a singular family-likeness to those described in the New Testament. The New Testament distinguishes two main classes of unbelievers: on the one side, the people, on the other, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, with their disciples. In the language of art the people is ​known as the "public". Under either name it betrays its well-known characteristics. On the one side, vacillating opinions and desires and mental sluggishness; on the other side, good-nature and a fallow and usable spirit of readiness. To condemn the public as a whole is neither seemly, nor fair, nor wise. In the first place, it does no good; in the second place, men have more urgent duties on earth than to educate the public; and, in the third place, in this checkered group some really noble souls are found—e.g. the leading masters of the ancillary arts, persons, like queens, to whom we owe at least respect, and, lastly, persons, like our own brothers and sisters, to whom no well-brought up man would try to play the schoolmaster. The chief trouble caused by the "people" or "public" comes from its blind belief in its teachers; if to this blindness be added zeal or bigotry, we have the "faction" of the Pharisees. The farther we get from the schools, the more this danger dwindles, the more harmless and manageable the public becomes. Therefore it is that the masters now, as two thousand years ago, reveal a marked preference for the company of publicans and fishermen.

It would be quite easy to find in the realms of art titles closely parallel to "Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes". This, however, is not my task, as I have to do with synthesis, not with analysis. For this synthesis I deliberately choose the name of the Alexandrians, a name indicating a common spiritual home. Whoever wishes to deal fairly with the Alexandrians must distinguish between the natural aspect of these people ​and their sour looks when confronted with a miracle or a real creation. The Alexandrians were and are in themselves very worthy personages, respectable and respected, deserving well of education and science (and therefore rewarded with titles and offices), the best instructed antiquarians of their time (and therefore occupying the highest seats in the synagogues), full of zeal for the education of youth and the public, guardians of the temple and the law (art and literature), filled with unbounded, almost idolatrous veneration for the holy scriptures (the "classics"). Unable to do enough to show their enthusiastic appreciation for the writers thereof, they "build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous"; they shun every criticism of the scriptures, every opinion differing from that of the prophets, as if it were an abominable blasphemy. Their only fault is that they believe that the source of revelation has dried up, that they teach that the Holy Ghost had instituted a short entr'acte of a century or so in their time, that they address their cheerful prophecies to the end of the world, that the whole of their feeling and thinking is dominated by the assumption that the present has no more admirable duty than to polish the finger-nails of the past, and that living men have no more important task than to embalm the dead. The only genuine balsam is, of course, that furnished by Messrs. Caiaphas & Co.

If we ask in what obscure corner of the soul originated this extraordinary impulse to depreciate the present by superstitious veneration of the past, and to treat despitefully the children of the very prophets before ​whom they grovel in the dust—an impulse as natural to all the Alexandrians as breathing and pulse-beat—the answer is obvious and conclusive. It arises from the instinct of self-preservation; that is why it is so tough and so stubborn. The whole importance and high social position of the Alexandrians rested on an interim or temporary vacancy of the papal chair; on the fact or assumption that no great men existed in their day. Otherwise they would have had to climb down from their throne and put the foot-rule, which they used in so masterly a manner, into its case. They had, however, nestled down snugly in their lofty position and had found their seat very comfortable. This explains their unconscious, but none the less zealous hostility to every living art and to every claim in the creative field. A parable may make this tendency even clearer. When, on the death of their master, the servants have taken over the inheritance and are managing and enjoying it in his name, are they likely to welcome with effusion the news that a relative of their late lord is approaching, and will they meet him humbly to hand over their bunch of keys? Not so, they will declare themselves ready to yield the heritage to the rightful heir, but in each individual case they will assert that the claimant is an impostor. Eventually, no doubt, they would produce documents to prove that their lord had died without children or other relatives. The same situation, translated into unfigurative speech, is as follows. The Alexandrians must declare war on all that is original and great, when it is alive, at hand, and incarnated in an individual, because it menaces them, ​because it forces them to step down from their position as custodians of the Holy Grail, because the new arrival will undoubtedly have a view, a voice, a judgment, behests, and all kinds of curious dislikes of his own. The whole care of the Alexandrians is therefore directed to ward off the arrival of a dominant personality; and, in the unlucky case that he comes in spite of their teeth, they will set to making breakwaters to avert the injurious consequences. For this purpose the instinct of self-preservation contrives an extensive system of defence, with outworks more ingenious than the most perfect efforts of the beaver or the white ant.

First of all a calendar is prepared, based on the position of the moon with regard to the earth, showing that no great talents can appear in the next hundred years. The critics assume the responsibility for the assurance that that law of nature cannot be transgressed. In any case nature has endured such a strain in producing the great classics that she must inevitably be allowed a period of relaxation. So she is forced to take a vacation, whether she wants it or not. The diagnosis has been made, the danger of consumption is imminent; the opinion of the doctors cannot be trifled with. It is sharply impressed on the contemporary world that an unimpeachable method of recognising extraordinary gifts, which one man can judge of as well as another, is that (as experience shows) every genuine man of talent goes about with a monument at his feet. Naturally, this doctrine may also be applied, by inversion, to false talent. The Ministry of Health issues a circular pointing ​out that deserved recognition, and still more glory and honour, is poisonous if enjoyed during youth or in the prime of life. Everyone is therefore exhorted to exercise anxious care to ensure that anyone who, contrary to nature, attains distinction in his youth, shall be guarded from the dangerous influences just mentioned. For bunglers and dabblers, on the other hand, prominence is a help at every time of life, as it gives them encouragement. Promising masters, who are either young or still robust in their maturity, should, accordingly, be immediately isolated on their appearance and subjected to a lifelong quarantine, until a medical board testifies to their approaching death or at least the near advent of their seventieth birthday. In this case the examining committee of the Alexandrians calls a session, to discuss their eligibility for the literary senate. Only one, of course, can be admitted to the senate at a time; and great care must be taken that the reception ceremony be so regulated that the recognition of one man shall have the character of a depreciation of all the others. Tact must determine this in each case. The shout of welcome must be so loud as to overbear any antagonism, and so the sole right of veneration is effectively pre-empted. The constitutional Council of the United Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes has the honour to inform an estimable present and future that the said Council has determined to transform the aristocratic republic of artists and poets into an elective monarchy. Dead senators are alone eligible. Eventual competitors for the position of poet-prince have to hand in to the signatories of this notice (not later than ​the end of the month) their testimonials, a list of their works and unpublished letters, and their curriculum vitæ, together with their name, their address, and the registered number of their tombstone. Any application not provided with an official certificate of death will be ignored. Artists, authors, and poets are not allowed to vote. Insubordination towards an elected poet-prince, in the form of unseemly comparison of him with anyone inferior to him in rank and office, shall be considered as high treason. The immortalised poet-prince is to be provided with a council or regency, possessing unlimited powers and chosen from the ranks of the Alexandrians, which will carry on the affairs of state in his name.

So far, the Alexandrians. What has the artist or poet to say about it? Well, he simply goes his own way, producing his works and doing his miracles. If the Alexandrians become a little too troublesome, he may turn his gaze on them for a moment and clear the air with a metaphor. To-day he leans to images drawn from the class of the higher vertebrates. Formerly it was "Oh ye generation of serpents, hypocrites, and vipers". But really they are not vipers, but only blindworms. Unfortunately for the Alexandrians, however, posterity takes a real pleasure in doubly and trebly underlining all such apostrophes, even when they are not quite fair. The reason of this is that it owes such an enormous debt to the poets and so pitifully little to their opponents; also, because the former are so abundantly amiable and the latter so distinctly the reverse. One is even tempted afresh to say a good word, in the name of ​justice, for the much-abused Alexandrians. Who, however, is to-day their most outrageous calumniator? The Alexandrians of the present dispensation. And that is the humour of want of faith. If it is not laughing and crying together, it is biting its own leg. And with this consoling picture, I draw the curtain.

A nation should from time to time look over the garden-wall to see whether all goes well with the glory which it means to allot to its elect citizens as the highest possible prize. For the matter is not so simple as we are apt to think; fame is not a natural, indestructible property of the human race.

On the contrary, a great deal of care is necessary for the growth of fame in a nation; the slightest unfavourable wind blights the laurel. Barbaric, despotic, chauvinistic, military, and pedantic peoples or ages lack fame; they may do honour to their heroes but cannot lend them real fame. Honour, however, is the malicious sister or (otherwise expressed) the parasite of fame. Before one knows, she has overcome and strangled it.

It seems to me that at present there is good reason for an examination. For I venture to assert that the literary reputation of present-day Germany is suffering from most deplorable evils.

In the first place, it has lost its loyalty, for the man who was glorified the day before yesterday has to-day been consigned to the lumber-room. All the belauded ​names wear themselves out with such celerity, that immortality is made to look like an ordinary article of consumption. The gentleman has scarcely found his way into the mouth of the public before he melts away. Indeed, it has come to be a simple logical proposition. Since So-and-So is to-day lauded as a genius, it follows that ten years hence he will be discarded with scornful shrugging of shoulders. Those who have a delicate ear may even, during the general jubilation, detect the falsetto overtone that will pretty soon become the contemptuous dominant.

Glorification has also become impudent. People do not now whisper respectfully the name they wish to honour; they bellow it into our ears, with their hats on their heads and their hands in their pockets. As if it all referred to a social-democratic comrade. I know, however, of nothing more insulting than reputation without veneration. First, respect a man; then bow before him; then bow again; thereafter, sound his praises.

Of course, when it has been arranged beforehand that an agent shall call out the names of selected candidates like Stock Exchange quotations; when he exalts his man on the shoulders of seven others, so that he may look tall, it is really difficult to pump up honour for the client so all too closely identified with him. And see how the example works. Other promoters put up other celebrities. Then ensues a most unsavoury competition for votes. It is Pope versus Anti-Pope. And nobody believes in his own Pope, to say nothing of the other man's.

This is the time to be on our guard. Otherwise, it ​may some day happen to us that the individual to whom we offer fame may reply: "You will, of course, wash this fame carefully with carbolic soap, before I touch it?"

I am not the only one who cannot altogether respond to the jubilation felt by a nation when one of its great men attains the age of sixty, or seventy, or eighty years. On the contrary, I find myself in most excellent company—viz. the company of those whose anniversaries are thus celebrated. For of all the people who take part in a jubilee, the jubilarian himself is the least disposed to feel jubilant. His mood is one apart, full of melancholy and bitterness. The patient endure it in silence, the defiant save themselves from the threatened operation by taking to the woods, if, indeed, they do not, like Grillparzer, call down fire and brimstone from heaven.

"But it really, at bottom, pleases them, in spite of a little sadness." Certainly, a little gentle sadness is pleasant, like every tempered suffering. And your voluminous protestations of affection, gratitude, and admiration may soften them, may move them, may move them perhaps even to tears. Many an unconscious grudge may vanish, all sorts of evil tensions may be relaxed. "After all, it did my heart good." Excellent, if that is all you want. But this "doing good after all" unfortunately reminds me of another case, which has ​little of the jubilee about it—viz. a death in the family. One probably does good "after all" to those concerned when one's sympathy moves them to tears. On this principle your jubilees become jubilees of condolence. In fine, in the mouth of the man whose jubilee is being celebrated—and, after all, he counts a little in the matter—the jubilee tastes like a bitter-sweet pastry, soaked in a saline infusion.

You approach the gentleman with congratulations? Congratulations on what, if I may venture to ask? One generally felicitates a man when he has attained something that he wanted—e.g. when he has been elected Mayor, or has become a Privy Councillor, or has won the chief prize in a sweepstake, or has married a charming bride, or has become the father of a healthy and vigorous boy-baby (mother and child doing as well as could be expected). But in the case of a jubilee, what has the poor victim attained? His seventieth year. An accursed prize! It amounts to a permit for cancer in the stomach or softening of the brain.

Yes, indeed, it is a fine idea to have a national festival of admiration for a single living individual—if only it came in good time and sprang spontaneously from a naïve overflow of enthusiasm. On the other hand an admiration which is born of the calendar; which waits pedantically for a date and as late a date as possible at that, in order not to be too early, i.e. in good time; which follows the beat of the conductor's baton, so as to come in at the proper moment—an admiration, in short, which is organised like a corner in copper, a gracious, condescending admiration, where the great age ​of the man celebrated is allowed to count as an extenuating circumstance—that is a truly rancid national fête. Do you imagine for one minute that the hero of the occasion does not see the strings by which this precious jubilee is worked? Do you think he cannot measure and weigh the impresarios who have contracted for the national enthusiasm; the grave-diggers, who squeeze his hand, while his obituary, ready for the press, sticks out of their pockets? It is an elevated lot, that of a king. But a king by grace of the king-makers? And what sort of king-makers! Let us out with it boldly. Your so-called poet jubilees are bookseller jubilees. In the second line they are biographic and monographic jubilees. At the age of seventy a poet will soon be a testator. That's where the honey comes in.

Would you like to know for whom these anniversaries were originally intended? Who is really refreshed by them? Who is he for whom they are really good, not merely good "on the whole"? The answer is easy. He who has no other merit than his advanced age; he who, his whole life long, has had nothing else to celebrate but his birthdays. A humble bookkeeper, a subordinate official, an obscure schoolmaster in an obscure town, who has done his duty honestly and modestly for twenty-five or fifty years, deserves a celebration of his age or (rather) of his period of service; and he doubtless feels his soul uplifted on the occasion. Now, for the first time in their life, they feel that they are in the limelight; for once at least they feel their petty ambition gratified; henceforth they can lay on the sick-bed beside them the sweet illusion that they have ​really done something, have had some value, have attained some end. Those, therefore, who celebrate the seventieth birthday of a great poet elevate him to the dizzy height of the bookkeeper of Brandt's celebrated Swiss Pills.

One thing is certain. Before his seventieth birthday the victim had a sixtieth birthday, before that a fiftieth, and so on. Why were no cheers uttered, no speeches made, no paragraphs printed, and no toasts drained on these occasions? I understand perfectly that jubilees have no overtures, only tattoos. All the same, a silence of thirty years before the first chord is rather excessive, and a sudden fortissimo of the whole orchestra after the muted passage seems rather abrupt. True fame does not orchestrate in this way; it prefers sempre crescendo. But, naturally, one cannot expect measure from a jubilee of which the tempo is wrong.

Jesting apart, the contrast between a silence of many years and the sudden tutti con timpani at the end of one's life is so startling a phenomenon, that it gives us pause and demands an explanation. I have often asked myself whether green-eyed jealousy does not, after all, have a finger in the pie. I have asked myself the question and I have answered "yes"; and I still give the same answer.

The chief reason, however, occurred to me by chance when Germany was perpetrating the jubilee of Paul Heyse. [One perpetrates a jubilee just as one perpetrates a solecism.] One of the leading German journals published a brief, in which it was seriously argued that it ought not to establish a precedent for celebrating an ​author at such a ridiculously early age as his sixtieth birthday. There it stands, in cold print, frankly and honestly. Let us grasp the idea, hold it fast, and see that it never more escapes us. A poet of sixty is too young to have a jubilee. Consequently, it is agreed that it is the robustness, the full vigour of creative power (and nothing else) that vitiates this hushed pause in honour of genius. A poet must not be publicly honoured until he has at least one foot in the grave. As already said, such a golden axiom as this must not be allowed to perish from the earth; it must be a never-dying possession of posterity, like the sayings of the Seven Sages.

However, it is not really envy that speaks in this manner. For envy does not declare itself so frankly; it whispers. No, it is rather the delectable postulate that the importance of a poet does not begin until he is "a complete and rounded whole", until we can "survey at a glance" his "full activity", until we can "outline a lifesize portrait" of him. In other words, when we can discuss, explain, edit, comment upon, and emend him; when, in fact, we can grind him in the literary mortar.

This is the real "open sesame". Not his works—God forbid, those are quite secondary; what is really important is his image and superscription as a poet, the place and number assigned to the man in the history of literature. If we never knew it before, we should know it now. Modern Germany, in spite of all its fuss and gabble about Goethe and poetry, is concerned with literary history, not with literature. The aim is to lecture on the poet, not to enjoy him.

​I shall probably have a long time to wait before the advent of the jubilee which I should really enjoy and in which I should gladly play a part. I mean the jubilee in honour of a great work immediately after its first appearance.

Over and over again have I passionately envied the Greeks. First, at ten years old, because they had not to learn Latin. Secondly, at twenty, because their uncles gave them a little bunch of slave-girls as a birthday present instead of the two thick volumes of Weber's History of the World. And lastly, at thirty, because no one thought of ascribing silly love entanglements to their poets.

Do you like the future? For my part I don't know whether I do or not, as I have not the pleasure of its acquaintance. But I believe in it truly; in all seriousness, I believe that there is a future. In any case, surely we may assume it as possible that we are not the last men on the earth, but that we may be followed by ten or twenty or a hundred other generations? Seeing that the world has lasted for a million or so of years, it may manage to get on for a few dozen millennia more? The idea is not absolutely preposterous, is it?

On this assumption, then, I beg you to put your ear to the telephone and listen to what the literary historian of the thirtieth century (not to go too far afield) has to ​say about the thoroughly debased and prostituted literature of to-day. What is his opinion about the sloppy love stories that legions of writers, in myriads of books, periodicals, newspapers, and theatres unweariedly offer, year in, year out, to milliards of insatiable readers from Gibraltar to Hammerfest, from the Urals to the Sierra Nevada? What has he to say about the hundreds of thousands of little ladies and gentlemen, both in Europe and America, who have been recorded as in and out of love with each other during the past fifty years, and who are perfectly willing to go on with the same sort of thing for fifty years more? And what does he say of our precious assumption that absolutely every story and absolutely every drama, be it tragedy or be it comedy, whether it has to do with to-day or with the Mosaic dispensation, cannot possibly be a source of pleasure unless some sort of billing and cooing is involved? Or of our pretentious, amorous Song of Songs, the "Epic of the 19th Century"? Or of our craze to weave, retrospectively, some liaison or other into the reputation of every great artist, since otherwise we should find his story insipid?

Do you really hear nothing? Nothing (e.g.) like "old wives' gossip" or "a literature for procurers by procuresses"? For my part, I hear it quite distinctly. No, I can't give it you now. I'll copy it out and send it to you some day.

In the meantime, as some compensation, I venture to give you a handful of my own opinions, to beguile your homeward way.

Patient listening to or reading of detailed accounts ​of the intimate concerns of strangers is effeminate; to take pleasure in an account of their love affairs is unmanly.

A smirk over the fact that he and she have come together is pardonable on a woman's lips because of its maternal element; on the lips of a man it is repulsive, because senile. A real man, when he hears of a love-match, by no means assumes a smirk of content; on the contrary, he cries out "Is that pretty girl really taking up with that ass? If so, she has gone down fathoms in my estimation". After this exclamation, he goes home and sings the song of the fox and the grapes.

All the devout fuss and chatter about a personified god of love; about a sacred abstract love, which denies its origin in the senses and refuses to be associated with any single individual, in order to bless with tremulous emotion, from an allegorical heaven, all the pairs of lovers who are, or were, or ever shall be—all that sort of thing is worthy only of a eunuch.

For it is only for a woman, and not for a man, that this pure and detached "love" exists. He who writes "love is" or "love has" writes in an unmanly fashion. A man does not love the abstract, does not love "love". He loves a single particular woman, or possibly several particular women, or (if you insist upon it) all particular women; but he does not really care a hang for the barren idea of the relationship between the loving man and the loving woman. Yes, love's illusion, a passionate crazy illusion of a love for some particular woman, is quite a manlike quality; it is, in fact, manlike to the nth degree, víz. to madness. On the other hand, ​a distilled and holy love in the abstract is a hysterical assumption.

Well, that's probably enough to begin with, I have tried your patience enough. But I have still a small favour to beg. Can you, by any chance, favour me with Hecuba's address? For, somehow or other, I am beginning to take a most uncontrollable interest in that lady.

The prosaic wiseacres keep popping up with the idea that the pure gold of poetry is too soft, that it needs some alloy, even when they are (theoretically) teaching the very reverse—perhaps then, indeed, even most. After we have succeeded in seasoning poetry with wit, in draping it with phrases, in improving it with virtues, in elevating it with ideas, in deepening it with wisdom, in amplifying it with useful maxims—then the precious therapeutics calmly begin all over again, and (to avoid the compulsion of calling it primeval) we call it modern.

At present, for a change, the cry is all for a vigorous and virile poetry; we dose the Muse with peptones and hæmoglobin, and prescribe iron and chalybeate baths, in order to strengthen her constitution. Indeed, we come within an ace of applying a stimulant to make her beard grow! Burning questions, red flags, and murderous strikes must increase the red corpuscles; ​sweat and garbage, dialect and dynamite must expel diabetes. Yesterday our tonic was the shirt-sleeves of the peasant, to-day it is the apron of the artisan. This time, however, we are in grim earnest. We have so thoroughly ruined our digestion with golden syrup that we hanker after petroleum. What is prosaic? What is pedantic? What is frostbound, jejune, and nebulous? What tastes badly? What smells suspiciously? Out with it, so that we may turn it into poetry!

And what is the result? Titanic grimaces without the least accession of force. This is because tumefaction and muscle are two different things, and because portentous snoring may really be a sign of weakness.

For what does "force" or "strength" in art mean? It does not lie in the weight of the material, nor in bristly and brutal ideas, but in the victorious domination of the task of the moment. He who masters whatever he undertakes is a powerful artist. This goes so far that a healthy art never posits strength as an end in itself, but aims at perfection, in which strength is only one among other good qualities. When a generation passionately desires force in its poetry, it is as much a morbid symptom as when a chlorotic servant-girl longs for salad. Do you mean to tell me that imbibing iron, eating earth, or a craving to inhale the decomposing spirit of our day are signs of health? On the contrary, they are symptoms of anæmia and hysteria.

Art does not allow any alloy, and one cannot make poetry with one's fists. And, so far as I can judge, even if a whole generation with millions of primary electors unanimously affirmed the contrary, art would not be ​one jot more manly, though the generation might show itself puerile. For poetry refuses, like every other natural force, to be bull-dozed by will, or resolutions, or noisy outcry. Every vital force is sap; and all sap is soft and even (it's not my fault!) a little sweet. If, therefore, an unfortunate generation has had to swallow so many dainties that it whimpers "anything you like, but, for God's sake, nothing sweet", all right; there are plenty of things and activities in the earth that are anything but sweet. May good digestion wait on appetite! But you will find that, if you try to serve poetry, like soused herring, with social onions, you will produce a mayonnaise that nobody can digest.

On the one side is a senate, grown gray in the service of respectable mediocrity, to which I would gladly pay all due reverence, if I owed it any. On the other side is a group of youngsters, raising a cry of triumph over their problematical puberty like frogs on a May night. You may choose whichever better pleases you

"Old" and "Young" are terms that poetry does not recognise. Neither age nor youth is in the least a merit, or an advantage, or even a quality; they represent nothing but a condition. One is young or old just as he is healthy or sick, just as one day he will be dead. One is not this and the other that; each is this and that. What ​in the world, then, has art got to do with it? Exactly as much, as if you had or had not the toothache. Bring out your works! And each, I beg, singly, with his own productions. No Cook's personally conducted tours through the spirit of the age! For there is a turnstile in front of the ticket-office, and fame makes no reduction for schools and societies.

It is a very inadequate angle of vision that cannot span the interval between your own short life and the nearest point of eternity. If you have left a permanent work behind you at your death, then you will begin your youth; if not, you were born old, as old as a shrivelled apple in spite of all the blowing of your own trumpet and the donning of new plumage. Or is it, perhaps, just because one knows the horn will sound the "kill" to-morrow, that this shameless profligacy is indulged in to-day?

To-day you are still green, at any rate, greenish? I congratulate you heartily. The colour of fame, however, is not green but evergreen. To-day you are beyond dispute the flower of the nation, though I prefer to use other flowers for my buttonhole. Remember, however, there is also such a thing as cauliflower.

Certainly, youth has an advantage in natural selection, in marriage, love, and amourettes. If one of the senators of poesy took it into his silly head to try to cut you out with a tavern waitress, you would doubtless gain a brilliant victory over the old man. In a case of this kind, however, no great amount of genius is necessary. For if this is an advantage, it is, thank God, not a rare one. It is shared with millions of our fellow-men, and with ​milliards of other bipeds of a lower species who make no claim to genius.

In conclusion, I have a secret for your ear. Youth, let me tell you, is like a carrousel; it runs round and round. One has hardly begun to be the youngest rider, before another, still younger, is at his heels. And just as he is in fine fettle to call the man in front of him a dotard, he hears behind him a titter of "old donkey". Don't you hear it? Just take a look at yourself in the mirror. There are already three charming puckers under both eyes. These, my friend, are young and hopeful wrinklets. And when these wrinklets become fullgrown wrinkles, an impudent band of adolescents will sneer at you, just as you now sneer at the ancients. Amen, so let it be!