THIS CYNICAL AGE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3969, 7 October 1930, Page 7

THIS CYNICAL AGE

WHERE ARE OUR GREAT LOVERS? Xovcr lias the English-speaking world been so interested in “ passion ” as it is 'at present, and never has it been so incapable of experiencing it, writes James Laver, in the ‘ Sunday News.’ The very word is almost worn out with constant repetition. Every fifth book, every second . play, and every Jilin is concerned with nothing but Passion with a capital P. From every hoarding, from every railway bookstall, the same message is proclaimed in all the iridescent colours of the decaying mackerel il only our cheaper literature survives, posterity will imagine that the early twentieth century thought of nothing else. Undoubtedly, what is called “ flaming love” is an obsession with us, but perhaps for that very reason it is ■■ nguiarly rare in real life. Where are they, these passionate lovers? How often have we met the man or the woman who would sacrifice everything for a passion, whether of love or hate? If they are not to be met with in die banks and offices oi the city, still less can they ho found at the cocktail parties of A! yfair. The whole spirit of the age seems hostile to passion, for nothing is so fatal to it as the cold, critical attitude widen is common among us, even in our discussions of sex, it is partly the result of our being huddled together in mties. The passionate man is a bad pedestrian ; lie fits uii'-omfortably into buses, and is a disquieting neighbour win u hanging from a strap. In a large city distractions are easy, and (to make the obvious point) nothing is more distracing. What a contrast with ourselves is to be seen even in such a comparatively recent book .as ‘ Wuthering Heights.’ Those isolated and bottled-up people developed forces strong enough to devastate the countryside. What loves! What hates' What passions! And fmther back the contrast becomes even more remarkable We take those things more calmly, because we do not feel them so deeply. We are tolerant, we are reasonable, we are wise. In a word, we are civilised; but the “ Great Lovers ” of past ages would rise up shouting with laughter if we flattered ourselves that we were passionate. Even jealousy, that strange hybrid in love and hate, however common in Latin countries, exists in England only in a mild and innocuous form. We believe in individual liberty and a thousand modern notions with which passion will have nothing to do. The extent to which passion has decayed is shown by our humorous attitude towards it. We may occasionall,\ revive an old melodrama, hut it is only in order to smile at its absurdity. Snow-white heroines and coal-black villains are out of date. Human character has grown grey, like the aspect of the world. Yet passion does not die. It is only buried. Beneath the cool crust of our ordinary everyday life, volcanic fires still slumber, ready to burst forth again when a crack appears in the surface. The strange city of Chicago, with its odd likeness (under obvious surface differences) to some medieval Italian town rent by faction, develops passions unknown to those who live under the protection of an efficient police force. We have spoken of the hard crust which seems to form over our instincts. In the eighteenth century it was so hard and smooth and shining that men and women could skate on it, cut figures, amuse themselves with love as though it were a game. In the nineteenth century the crust grew soft and sticky, but it still bold. The liyroilists did not fall through. Those whiskered gentlemen in the check trousers only played, at passion. They made literature out of it, and we have carried the process a step further, and commercialised the literature