LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18988, 30 April 1927, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

Is the English language on tho down grade? A pessimistic forecast is made for it by Basil do Selincourt in "Pomona: or Tho Future of English," tho latest volume in the Tc-day and To-morrow soxies. Ho is distressed by the apprehension thnt it may bo captured by America and that us growtU mav therefore be along lines wlncli mean nothing to tho older civilisation. And he is simplv horrified by tho prospect that it may become tho language of tho human race, and be irremediably corrupted in tho process. It will still be English, but what English? Uis dread of this calamity is reinforced bv a feeling that tho native English literature is exhausted. "Our literature," ho laments, "indubitably shows signs of fatigue. Every one feels in Chaucer tho joyous expansiveness of youth, in Hardy the sombre introspection of old age."" If librarians read the books the.v catalogue, somo of them will be tempted to classify Mr de Selincourt's treatise under tho heading of "Funeral Orations."

A vigorous counterblast, however, is provided in an "Observer" article by J. C. Squire, who absolutely refuses to bo downhearted. His cheerful attitudo will at once check any incipient tendency towards hara-kiri among English scholars and men of letters To take the last point first, Mr Squire stigmatises as "sheer nonsense" tho idea that our literature is declining into an autumnal twilight. Mr de Selincourt's argument would look loss convincing, he suggests, if ho were to say: "Every one feels in 'Piers Plowman' the expansiveness of youth, in P. G. Wodehouso the sombre introspection of old ago." Even if one admitted a temporary exhaustion of impulse, what has that peculiarly to do with England? Is not the whole world one now, Mr Squire asks, in the currents of its thoughts, and are not exhaustion and despair as familiar in franco and Germany as they are hero.

As to English becoming the worldwide language, Mr Squire sees nothing alarming in that. Any race that is widely separated from our own in outlook or habit will, in the end, create a new language differentiated from ours as Italian was from French and Spanish, which sprang from the same Latin. So far as America is concerned, Mr Squire exhorts his fellow-countrymen to keep their heads. It is annoying, he confesses, to see Americans—to whom the coming of neologisms is a parlour game—playing extravagant tricks with the language. •'But their new currencies rapidly become obsolete, and the few coins that remain in circulation are usually as useful to ns as thev aro to the Americans. . . If.

the American accent sounds oddly to our ears, so does the Yorkshire accent to a Southerner: the odd thing about tho language in America is that, at the core, it has changed so little."

The "Stratford Magazine" (U.S.A.) has awarded the third of its 100-dollar prizes to Paul Eldridge. for his poem, "A Novel in Twelve Poems." These prizes are awarded every four months for the best poem printed in the magazine during that period. The next award will be in May. The first two of Mr Eldridge's twelve poems are printed below: —

MUNG LUNG WARNS A GIRL. WHO OVERPROUD OF HER YOUTH REJECTS

HIM. You balance on your head With euperb assurance, A crystal vase, — But Time, 0 oherr7 Blossom, Is a large pebble Well-aimed. 11. CHERRY BLOSSOM ANSWERS MUNG LUNG.Words, O Mung Lung, Are the |arge shadows Tiny objects cast, When Time,— The giant-candle, Is behind them, Flickering in the wind. The stern father who wishes has son to go into the bond-selling business instead of going to Paris to study art need no longer resort to threats of disinheriting tho boy. All ho will need to do is to buy or borrow tho March issue of the "American Mercury" and leave it about where the budding artist will be sure to get, his hands on it. Thomas Craven's article, "Have Painters Minds?" will do the rest. If, after reading that, the young man still wants to be an artist, his case is hopeless; he is utterly debased, and it doesn't matter what becomes of him. He is already, intellectually, in tho same class as those despicable creatures; whom Mr Craven describes in these scorching words:

The modem painter la on Inferior being. He is dumb and dull and conceited, an antisocial coward who dwells in miserable cocklofts, and runs frantically to his dealer and back again, bleating like a sheep about Ma soul, his povorty, and his unappreciated genius. If he is lucky enough to hare a ltttto money, bo hurries off to Europe to steep Ms tender susceptibilities in the atmosphere of the past, or to destroy himself in the dives of Pans. Of all the workers in the arts he is the least alive—no man of brains and education could possibly waste his life in performances which are not only paltry and mechanical, but also totally divorced from current affairs. Ttie eoneral public has no conception of the feobleness. stupidity, and ignorance of too painter. He is inarticulate and prond ol If in any society he is a nonentity; »»<». instead of facing modern problems, he buries himself In his studio, worships the by-pro ducts of savages, and exhibits meaningless patterns which he confesses are less artistic than the scratchinga of cave-dwellers and the decorations of cannibals. Yet the superstition somehow persists that he is the arJsto*rßut there is worse than this. Intellectually Mr Craven says, our most celebrated painters—not the contemptible smaller fry, but those periodically acclaimed as masters"—ore much lower in the seale than such writers as Harold Bell Wright, James Oliver Curwood. Stratton Porter, and Margaret Pedler. If the public actually needed printing, and the critics spoke an intelligible language, this state of affairs would not exist. You will have noticed that doetora, lawyers, and other outsiders not wholly uneducated frequently discover in painting fruitful ground for self-glorification. They have nothing to say about literature; they are technically unequipped to discuse music; but in painting they can revel and theorise and mouth psychology to their heart's eontent without fear of being exposed or understood. Sometimes, they write book*—and Lord, what hooks they arel The palate?. dolt that he is. either does not read or does not understand, but he is duly impressed by the patronage; the public is indifferent or befuddled, and the meaning of art is aa deeply buried as ever. This condition eannot last. Unless painting enlists the attention of men with creative intelligence, and ceases to rely upon "pure feeling" and tfc* gropings of sensitive outcasts, it is destined to become a eport for amateurs aad androgynists.