THE SCARCITY OF GENIUS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SCARCITY OF GENIUS.

Every year, at this office, old trans- j Atlantic friends call upon us and ask us: "What new good writers (or poets) are there since I called on you last?" (writes Sir John Squire in the London "Mercury.") The usual answer is: "None whoso future can be guaranteed, but one or two who show promise." Disappointment invariably clouds their faces; what they really want us to do is to pound our lists upon otir desks and say that Mr. So-and-So and Miss Such-and-Such, who have just broken their way out of the egg, are as good as Shakespeare or Edna St. Vincent Millay. People cannot bear the thought of ten years passing and no writer of importance appearing; as may happen at any time. They see tho past telescopically. They do not realise that thero never was an age when a crop of good new poets and prose writers appeared every year; and that in most ages they were very scarce indeed. Great writers aro not the- only interesting writers; some men's memories have been kept green for centuries by single quatrains. But if the great, the future great, the great whom posterity will admire (and for whoso works posterity will pay prices which will show a handsome profit) are being looked for, it really ought to bo recognised that they are scarce. And they are normal. They are, since they live in a different age, different, to some extent, in thought, and in cadence of voice, from their predecessors. But they don't try to be different; they may endeavour new musics, but they do not think of new "stunts" in technique, or. join "movements" whose gospel is that the whole tribe of mankind in the past has been misguided, and that some particular modo of painting, composing, or writing, is tho only right one— emotion and thought fading clear out of sight, whilst attention is concentrated upon some eccentric mechanism of expression. Poets will continue to arise as long as people feel and respond to tho music of words; but good poets will come seldom, and most of the speculators in modern verse will find their investments worthless, unless they "get out" quickly to investors even less sagacious than themselves.