AFTER-WAR LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3193, 26 May 1915, Page 71

AFTER-WAR LITERATURE.

By Constance Clyde.

There seems ingrained in human nature a belief that out of evil good must come. Grapes are to grow on thistles and figs on brambles, just because it is so terrible a thing that there are so many brambles and thistles; so, as regards this war, many firmly believe, for instance, that it is to effect a definite change in art and literature. They prophesy a wonderful revival in literature especially. The last six months, however, are already strewn with failed prophecies, and this may prove one of them. As one writer has pointed out, wo have no reason to believe that an after-war period shows an increase in literary genius or public appreciation of genius. After no great national contest has there Iv'en observable any increase in such genius. In his.opinion there is rather « decrease. France’s great literature was formed before, not after, 18,0— much of it, we might say, before the Revolution. Many, again, have pointed out that victory in this same contest benefited not at all the Germans, whose best period also is before this time. That war results in a recrudescence of literature is a pure supersti-

tion; yet some differences may be expected, and are beginning even now. It is only the other day, for instance, that a woman remarked: “We read a story about how So-and-so worked up in life because he thought he was of noble birth when he wasn’t, and it is all very good and the style excellent; but when we have finished we ask ourselves : ‘ Was it, after all, worth while? Was the pleasure of the style and the cleanness of the story enough 1° keep us away from the real world for so many hours?’ ” That is what many of us are asking just now. It is not merely the flashy, ephemeral novels that are tiresome now. We may take it for granted that titles like “ Poisonous Lobelia” and “Confessions of an Uncle” no longer attract. But other novels good and strong and vigorous in their way are also losing their hold._ What, then, is going to remain ? Is William de Morgan after all a voice from the future instead of an echo from the past ? Are we going to return to the days when, instead of remembering a novel by some felicity of phrasing or trick of description, or clever situation, we remembered it by characters that soon became as dear to us as old friends? Are our young fiction-readers to find their best companions between the pages of a book, as did our mothers and grandmothers? Certainly, much as they enjoy reading, thev do not do so now. Even Ethel Turner’s little heroes and heroines have not the personal reality for our young people that Ethel May, of Charlottle "Yonge’s days, possessed, or the numerous little heroines that our mothers took to their hearts. It is no use saying that the modern defect lies in the reader, for we have seen .some recrudescence in the fashion of heroine-worship. It was roused by a certain Lossie in Joseph Vance. All who know her take her to their hearts in the old-fashioned way of our grandparents with a Dickens heroine. Why ? It would be difficult to assert that De Morgan is much superior to Mrs Humphrv Ward, for instance. Lossie is no better portrayed ; her story is less poignant than Eleanour's or Lady Rose’s Daughter. Shall I tell the reason why the one is beloved, why the others are not? I think the reason lies not in the hei’oines themselves, but in their surroundings. The Eleanours and Lady Hose’s Daughters and so forth are shown in too narrow a canvas, and the effect is one of egotism We may be told that thev are good and kind; but we'see them with one or two persons always round them, alwaj s immersed in their own'affairs, and the result is to make them just at present seem a little meaningless and certainly very egotistic. The average modern novelist has been decreeing in general that the characters shall be very few, and —to save the author trouble—shall always be discussing themselves or . one another. Ihe effect in the more exalted fmme # mind to-day is disagreeable. That ind:.v perhaps, what the novel of the near future will be. It may be longer than at present: it will certainly be wider; it will be life seen as a whole, not through some jaundiced hero or heroine’s eyes. Do not imagine, however, that literature may not lose by this change; it will. Our narrowschool writers are by no means poor or mechanical. They have given us exquisite bits of literature—flashes of wit and satire not easily surpassed. We shall lose much of that, because, unfortunately, such flashes seem called out by subjects that will no longer interest us —subjects more or less morbid or giving undue prominence to the ignoble side of life. . It is noticeable that it is when life is dull and hard that we want our fictionfolk to be real companions. That was so in the Victorian era, when life—especially for large sections of women —was so strangely cramped and narrow. I« may be so again, for life will be dull again after the war—dull and toilsome, while slowly positions are built up once more. After the excitement there may be even more unhappiness than now. Certainly there will be for many thousands work and dreariness, where before there had j been gaiety and pleasure. Then the novel will cease ’ to he a mere clever satire on some nassing foible or foolish social craze. It will be for many almost like a second Bible.' . , , ~ The new age will be, therefore, the age of the moralist writer. _Do not let us bo frfghtened, however. Dickons, ■when you come to analyse him, wrote nothing but glorified tracts. Martin Chuzzlewit, for instance, is meant to indicate the vice of selfishness pervading a whole family. Of course, the idea is speedily disguised in rollicking humour —one notes Dickens somewhat painfully remembering to make young Martin act inconsiderately towards Tom Pinch or someone else; —but the idea is there, just as the moral, love not money, pervades “Our Mutual Friend.” Thackeray’s chef d’oenvre has the same theme. Almost everyone, Doblin and Amelia excepted, are curiously tainted with this vice, more so than in real life. George Eliot’s novels are, of course, in essence pure sermons. But in all these cases the humour, the wit, the reality are so pronounced that one swallows the pill without reluctance. Such will be 'possibly the novel of the future —wide in scope, full of characterisation, and based alwavs on some simple moral maxim, “Art for arts sake, no longer our motive. Another point will be the higher place given to humour. Even already we feel this. For instance, as already mentioned, we take up a book that has some slightly unnatural plot—a boy’s rise in the world owing to some mistake, —and feel that reading this is really not worth while. We think of our boys at the war and find this hero’s adventures tame. But _ a humorous story or a fantasy does not impress us this w 7 ay. It does not compete with real life. We plunge into “Anstey” or “The Adventures of Jenny Pearl” without a feeling of_ inconsistency.- The 1 characters are not serious about anything; therefore we* do not feel reminded of the war. So will it be in the future. The humorist will be put very high in the days to be. His will not be dry, pawky humour, but rollicking humour —humour that shows human nature weak sometimes, but never irredeemably bad. There is

nothing, of course, more tiresome than this sort of humour unless exceptionally well done; and we can only hope, therefore, that it will be exceptionally well done. But there are dangers. The simple, quiet novel of - ordinary human life that we will find refreshing will no doubt sometimes descend to pathos, and, similarly, humour may have its declension. We shall find something gained, but something also lost, in after-war literature.