LITERARY NOVELTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOVELTIES.

EXPERIMENTS.

BY fcOTARE.

If the present age is not marked by great literary achievement, at least it can call itself one of the greatest periods of experimentation in our history. And that is at least a sign of growth, which is the surest sign of life. "All evil is the lethargic mind," writes John Drinkwater. Where there is experiment, the breaking away from traditional standards, there may he little absolute attainment, but the ground is being prepared for the great work when the truly great man shall appear, as appear ho will. There is no blight on the human mind more desolating than the "torpor of a foul tranquillity," the meek acceptance of things as they are. They render a great service, these launchers-out 011 uncharted seas; they keep us awake; more, they keep us alive. 111 every branch of literary activity the pioneers are blazing new trails. Most of them will end in a mere cul de sac; but even thus negatively, by pointing out where the true path does not lie, they contribute their part to humanity's advance. In the drama we have Sutton Vane boldly bringing 011 the stage the dead 011 their way to judgment. Some of the Elizabethan dramatists had to bring back the dead in the form of ghosts .to carry 011 the action of a tragedy in which all the characters, or most of them, had been sacrificed too early to the popular enthusiasm for slaughter. If an unfortunate author had killed off all his characters before the last act, he had to devise some means of keeping tho stage occupied to the end of the play. The ghost solved his problem, and the audience supped full 011 the horrors in which the Elizabethan soul delighted. The Drama. , Flecker, in his brilliant "Hassan," one of tho greatest triumphs of the modern drama, brings back tho spirits of his hero arid heroine, if you can call them that, to show them vaguely groping for each other in the shadows after death and inexorably thrust asunder like forlorn chips on a swirling torrent that recks not of them or their love or their sufferings. They had endured the ghastly horrors of the torture chamber in the faith that death the liberator would unite them. And 10, their frail spirits aro whirled asunder, never to meet each other again. But Sutton Vane in "Outward Bound" does not bring the dead back. All his characters are dead from the beginning ot the play. They are mighty human for all that, pretty well what they have been on earth, with the same follies and aspirations, the same meannesses and kindlinesses, and, 0110 is glad to notice, with tho same sense of humour. The result is a delightful comedy, with enough underlying seriousness to give anyone not incurably flippant some profound home-truths for his meditation and digestion. Here is the pathfinder jf ever there was one, though one cannot imagine Vane as the founder of a school. Such a work must remain sui generis. Eugene 0 JSieill, the greatest American dramatist, in his latest play reintroduces the ancient habit of wearing masks. The actor carries his masks with him and assumes a different 0113 as ho desires to express a different aspect of his personality. A man wears one mask when speakto one group of people; but in soliloquy or with another group he is an entirely different man, and to mark the change he assumes the mask appropriate to his role. It seems hopelessly artificial, a mere stage tricK to help out the author in his delineation of character. But the plav acted well, and that, after all, is the chief matter. O'Neill seems to believe that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the good and the evil elements in any personality, will give no inkling in face or gesture which is speaking in any given situation. lo mark the change of character he gives the actor a Dr. Jekyll mask and a Mr. Hyde mask. If this device becomes popular, we may yet see our actors and actresses with a string of masks in their hands and donning a home face, a street face, a business face, a pleasure face, as the action of the drama demands. And behind all the masks is O'Neill's cynical criticism of life and its shows and shams. Poetry. In poetry there is the general breakaway from tradition in poems like Brooke's "Grantchester" and Masefield s Everlasting Mercy." That is a permanent contribution to English literature; a demand for a wider range of topic and method, a revaluation of the essentials of poetry as an interpretation and a criticism of life. Poetry is brought into closer touch with the ordinary life of man, which it is supposed to express and beautify. As usual, the demand for liberty by the big men was followed by a demand for licence by the small men. Some sorry stuff masquerades as poetry in all ages. In past days if there was no imagination or power of poetic thought, or quick kindling of emotion, at least there was rhythm and an attempt at poetic form. If you had none of the essentials of poetry, you could at least tell the versifier was trying to write poetry. You have not even that certainty to-day. Most of the free verse I have read has all the defects of the poetasters of previous ages, and a considerable number of others peculiarly its own. Yet that is not the whole story. There are some poems in the new form that go far to justify it. One masterpiece will carry on its back a whole menagerie of freakish drivellings. The only real objection to free verse is the opportunity it gives to the lack wit and poseur to .inflict his sad stuff on a long-suffering public. The Novel. In the novel, by far the most popular of our literary forms, there is the same yearning beyond the skvline where the strange roads go down. 11. G. Wells has summed up an epoch, and himself as representative of it, in his massive "William Clissold." Some have denied to Wells' magnus opus the name of novel, but it is hard to see what else you can call it. He pours himself, his struggles, his doubts, his weakness and strength, his success and failure, all that has gone to the making of H. G. Wells, into the narrow framework of a novel. No wonder it is a tight fit sometimes, and the emotional and thought content often copiously overflows tho limits of the framework. The latest type of novel aims at reproducing great characters of ancient days in the cold light of modern realism, divested of all the glamour with which man's incurable romanticism has clothed them. Such is Erskine's "Private Life ,»f Helen of Troy"—Helen 110 longer simply the possessor of a face that launched a thousand ships, but a very ordinary woman set among very ordinary people, reacting in the usual way to the ordinary duties of home and society. Erskine then turns to Galahad; his picture of Arthur's court and its chief ornaments, the procession of very modern people facing very modern problems, make it difficult to turn back with the old-time pleasure to Malory or Tennyson. His stylo is fined down to its ultimate elements; thero is no ornament, and the thought ripples beneath the minimum covering of words. I shall deal with other literary novelties next week.