CHANGING IDEALS

Evening Star, Issue 21007, 22 January 1932, Page 10

CHANGING IDEALS

LIFE AND LITERATURE

The literary gods of one generation are seldom worshipped by its successor. In our own time we have witnessed a decline in the reputations of most of the great literary figures of tho Victorian era—Scott, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens, Tennyson, and some .of the lesser lights who have shone in that era have been completely extinguished by the indifference of to-day, says a writer in the Melbourne ‘ Age.’ But, as Mr E. E. Kellett points put in his very able study, ‘ Fashion in Literature,’ the process of change in literary taste must not be regarded as evidence that the taste of the present generation is better -than that if its predecessor. “It is plain that we must expect a change from generation to'generation,” states Mr Kellett. “ Each generation is not only later than its predecessor; it is made up of different people, who stArt from a different point, pass through different experiences, and view them with different eyes. A thousand causes, not litdrary, necessitate this or retrogression, and a thousand literary causes add their weight. A war, a political or social upheaval, a French revolution, on an era of repression, a new mechanical invention, and literature responds to it as face answers to face in the mirror. The change, in fact, is often but the natural antagonism of age and youth, which, as was observed long before the Passionate Pilgrim set out on his progress, cannot live together. Probably since Jubal smote his lyre the parents have disliked the frivolous fugues the children have pursued, and the children have rejected the stodgy stuff that suits the parents. “ There are many people who imagine that it is a mark of superiority to be severe in the rejection 'of forms or styles that have gone out of fashion. It is certain that the younger generation, when it pours scorn on the works that pleased its fathers, imagines that in doing so it is showing how much better it is than the old. The exact contrary is the case. Inability to appreciate a style once regarded as great is simply a proof of ignorance and narrowness of mind. If we say we cannot endure Pope, Tennyson, or any other of the gods of the past, that simply means that we are hopelessly limited in our outlook; that we cannot take in more than a very little at once. It is stupid, insular ignorance that says all foreigners are fools.’ It may be that we have not the opportunity of learning the foreign language, or the means to go abroad. In that case the ignorance may be excusable, but the arrogance is not. It must _ always be remembered that Pope, having satisfied the Augustan age, must have been a great man unless we are to be guilty of the inexpiable crime of bringing an indictment against a whole century; that Tennyson, having been the idol of the Victorians, must have been great, unless we are to claim that the age of Darwin, Huxley, Browning, Clerk Maxwell, and a thousand other names was an age of imbeciles. That we do not like him shows that we do not understand the age in which he lived. It may be that we have not the time to put ourselves by hard study into the position to understand that age. So far, wo are pardonable, but we are not pardonable if we make boast of our incapacity. The first thing we have to recognise is that our fathers were not stupid; that when they admired they admired with reason. Nothing is more ridiculous than the swaggering vanity which goes about saying: ‘Doubtless, we are the people, and wisdom was born with us.’ “ If amid all the uncertainties and vacillations of criticism there be anything indubitable, it is this—that catholicity of taste is superior to fastidious narrowness; that the man who can find pleasure in the works of a dozen periods and many languages is so far of a higher rank than the man who has to confine himself to one. Nothing is more certain amid uncertainty than that the inability to appreciate in due fashion and measure what others appreciate—in fact to enter sympathetically into the minds of our fellows —is a disability, something to bo ashamed of, rather than to bo boasted about. “ There is a sense in which even tho gradual refinement of taste is sometimes to bo carefully watched and checked. If wo find that books which are to us obviously crude and bad are yet popular, theiro is a danger here, also, of arrogant superiority. Tho right attitude is not that of contempt, but that of humble inquiry into the causes of tho sympathy between the ‘ bad ’ author and his public. It may be desirable to study whether,a writer with this wide appeal can bo’ altogether bad; whether he has not some quality of humanness which, perhaps, tho more ‘ highbrow ’ author might not cultivate with advantage. ‘ There is one person ’ said Talleyrand, ‘ wiser than Napoleon, ami that is ail mankind,’ ami the great world may not be stupid after all.” '