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American Anarchist and Early Activist in the Disabled Movement
: Randolph Bourne, who was to die in the flu epidemic shortly after the Armistice, cried out alone against the betrayal of the values of civilization by his fellow writers. (From: Ogilby Commentary.)
• "It is States that make wars and not nations, and the very thought and almost necessity of war is bound up with the ideal of the State." (From: War is the Health of the State.)
• "If the State's chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction." (From: War is the Health of the State.)
• "...war can be called almost an upper-class sport.War is the Health of the State" (From: War is the Health of the State.)
H. L. Mencken
Mr. Mencken's moralism infects the essay on Conrad perhaps the
least. With considerable effort the critic shakes himself loose from the
clutches of his puritan enemies and sets Conrad very justly in relation
to his time. What he sees and describes in his books,
Mr. Mencken
says, is not merely this man's aspiration or that woman's destiny, but
the overhwelming sweep and devastation of universal forces, the great central
drama that is at the heart of all other dramas, the tragic struggles of the soul
of man under the gross stupidity and obscene joking of the gods.
He likes
Dreiser for the same reason, because he puts into his novels a
touch of the eternal Weltschmerz. They get below drama that is of the moment and
reveal the greater drama that is without end.
Mr. Mencken discusses
Dreiser with admirable balance, and his essay is important because it criticizes
him more harshly and more searchingly than many of us dare to do when we are
defending him against the outrageous puritan. The essay on Huneker is
perhaps the most entertaining. If to be a civilized man in America is
measurably less difficult, despite the war, than it used to be, say, in
1890
(when Mr. Mencken, by the way, was ten years old), it is to Mr.
Huneker's gallant excitement that part of the credit is due.
Dreiser and Huneker Mr. Mencken used with the utmost lustiness, as Samson used the jaw-bone, to slay a thousand Philistines, and his zeal mounts to
a closing essay on Puritanism as a Literary Force, which employs all the
Menckenian artillery. Here Mr. Mencken, as the moralist contra moralism, runs
amok. It is an exposure that should stir our blood, but it is so heavily
documented and so stern in its conviction of the brooding curtain of bigotry
that hangs over our land, that its effect must be to throw paralyzing terror
into every American mind that henceforth dares to think of not being a prude.
Mr. Mencken wants to liberate, but any one who took his huge concern seriously
would never dare challenge in any form that engine of puritanism which derives
its energy from the history and soul of the American people. Mr. Mencken is much
in earnest. His invective rises above the tone of scornful exaggeration. But his
despair seems a little forced. I cannot see that the younger
writers--particularly the verse-writers—are conscious of living under any such
cultural terrorism as he describes. Mr. Mencken admits that the puritan
proscription is irrational and incalculable in its operation. Surely as long as
there are magazines and publishers--as there are in increasing numbers--who will
issue vigorous and candid work, comstockery in art must be seen as an annoying
but not dominating force. Mr. Mencken queerly shows himself as editor, of
a long list of such things by American authors, well-devised,
well-imagined, respectable as human documents and as works of art--but never to
be printed in mine or any other American magazine.
But what is this but
to act as busy ally to that very comstockery he denounces? If the Menckens are
not going to run the risk, in the name of freedom, they are scarcely justified
in trying to infect us with their own caution.
The perspective is false that sees this persecution as peculiar to America. Was not Lemonnier prosecuted in Paris? Did not Baudelaire, Flaubert, Zolasuffer? Did not Zola's publisher in England die in prison? Has not D. H. Lawrence's latest novel been suppressed in England before it had even a chance to be prosecuted here? It is England not America that has an official censorship of plays. Comstockery is not so much a function of American culture as it is of the current moralism of our general middle-class civilization. The attack must be, as Nietzsche made it, on that moralism rather than on its symptoms. But Mr. Mencken is not particularly happy in his understanding of Nietzsche. He wrote the book from which a majority of the Americans who know about Nietzsche seem to have gotten their ideas. How crude a summary it is may be seen by comparing it with the recent study of Nietzsche by another American, W. M. Salter. One wishes Mr. Mencken had spent more time in understanding the depth and subtleties of Nietzsche, and less on shuddering at puritanism as a literary force, and on discovering how the public libraries and newspaper reviewers are treating Theodore Dreiser.
Mr. Mencken's mode of critical attack thus plays into the hands of the philistines, demoralizes the artist, and demoralizes his own critical power. Why cannot Demos be left alone for a while to its commercial magazines and its mawkish novels? All good writing is produced in serene unconsciousness of what Demos desires or demands. It cannot be created at all if the artist worries about what Demos will think of him or do to him. The artist writes for that imagined audience of perfect comprehenders. The critic must judge for that audience too.
(Source: The New Republic, November 24, 1917.)
From : fair-use.org
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