/BERKELEY 
 
 I LIBRARY 
 
 ! UNIVERSITY OF 
 V CALIFORNIA 
 
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VARIATIONS 
 
BY JAMES HUNEKER 
 
 MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC (1898) 
 
 CHOPIN: THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC uwo) 
 
 MELOMANIACS (1902) 
 OVERTONES (1904) 
 
 ICONOCLASTS: A BOOK OF DRAMATISTS uo5) 
 
 VISIONARIES (1905) 
 
 EGOISTS: A BOOK OF SUPERMEN (1909) 
 
 PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST (1910) 
 
 FRANZ LISZT. ILLUSTRATED (1811) 
 
 THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE (1912) 
 
 NEW COSMOPOLIS (1915) 
 
 IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS (1915) 
 
 UNICORNS (1917) 
 
 BEDOUINS (1920) 
 
 STEEPLEJACK. TWO VOLUMES (120,> 
 
 VARIATIONS (1921) 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 BY 
 JAMES HUNEKER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1921 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 Published November, 1921 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1919, BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CO. 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY THE PRESS PUBLISHING co. 
 
 PRINTED AT 
 
 THE SCRIBNER PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK, U. S. A. 
 
R ( L 4- 
 
 H4V3 
 
 ^l 
 
 PUBLISHER S NOTE 
 
 MR. HUNEKER S literary career was at its flood 
 when ended by his sudden and unlooked for death. 
 He was perhaps our only, certainly our chief, lit 
 erary journalist, and his instructive, penetrating, 
 and, above all, entertaining criticism in the field 
 of what he liked to call the Seven Arts was almost 
 always first seen in the periodical press, daily or 
 weekly. Afterward it was sifted and the residue 
 abridged or expanded, burnished or simplified, in 
 its assimilation into appropriate permanent style 
 and stuff. Needless to say it lost none of its bril 
 liance in the process which was always minimized 
 by having been largely forestalled, as it were, in 
 the original composition. The result was not so 
 much merely eminent as literally unique. His 
 books have not only no rivals but no competitors. 
 Alone among American belletristic writers he fol 
 lowed in the French journalistic-literary tradition, 
 illustrated and rendered illustrious by the practice 
 of a long and shining roll of litterateurs. Such a 
 practice tends of itself to popularize its product by 
 inevitably keeping the larger public more or less in 
 mind and therefore eschewing professional pedan 
 tries. The element of personality acquires promi 
 nence as in conversation. Style itself becomes 
 conversational. Huneker is as familiar in address 
 as if he were not often erudite in material. He 
 establishes first of all, however imperceptibly, his 
 relations with his reader. Whatever the effect, it 
 is devoid of dulness, and accordingly the interest 
 
PUBLISHER S NOTE 
 
 of his writing is incontestable even when its value 
 is indeterminate. 
 
 Composed of essays written since the publication 
 of his last book Bedouins though of necessity 
 lacking the advantage of his personal selection and 
 supervision, Variations is a worthy companion of its 
 shelf-full of predecessors in its possession of these 
 qualities. Aptly named, it presents perhaps better 
 than any of them a wide-reaching diversity of 
 aesthetic material for the consideration, the illumina 
 tion, and pre-eminently the entertainment of 
 the cultivated. Perhaps, too, it shows a maturer 
 treatment, a mellower temper without a whit less 
 energy, and a greater opulence than ever of the 
 author s stored acquisitions and spontaneous, even 
 exhilarated, exposition of them. And here and 
 there amid the wealth of literary and aesthetic mis 
 cellany which he displays and expounds one comes, 
 with greater frequency than ever, upon memorable 
 crystallizations of experience in the contemplation 
 of these matters. Such truths, too, he exemplifies 
 as well as formulates. No one ever, for instance, 
 credited more completely his own maxim: "There 
 is no disputing tastes with the tasteless," or 
 conformed more cordially to his own injunction: 
 "Write only for the young. The old will not heed 
 you, being weary of the pother of life and art." 
 There was nothing, however, of which he was less 
 weary, as this his last volume copiously attests, 
 and the explanation, of course, is his unimpaired 
 youthfulness of mind and spirit. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VARIOUS i 
 
 How NOT TO BE A GENIUS n 
 
 THE RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE . . 20 
 
 CRUSHED VIOLETS 30 
 
 BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS TO His MOTHER . 37 
 
 THE Two TEMPTATIONS 46 
 
 THE FLAUBERT ANNIVERSARY 52 
 
 ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 57 
 
 PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING .... 67 
 
 IN PRAISE OF PRINTS 77 
 
 NEW RUSSIA FOR OLD 84 
 
 CEZANNE 91 
 
 EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 99 
 
 SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY in 
 
 CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 121 
 
 ART AND ALCOHOL 130 
 
 THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 137 
 
 PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN .... 147 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 157 
 
 IDLE SPECULATIONS 166 
 
 THE MASTER BUILDER 173 
 
 VERDI S OTELLO 181 
 
 FAUST AND MEPHISTO 189 
 
 BOHEMIAN Music 195 
 
 THE Music OF YESTERDAY? 203 
 
 LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 210 
 
 DREAMING OF LISZT 218 
 
 A BRAHMA OF THE KEYBOARD 225 
 
 CONTEMPORARY BRAN 233 
 
 A MOOD REACTIONARY 241 
 
 MUSICAL "POTTERISM" 248 
 
 MY "CHILDE ROLAND" 255 
 
 "OSCAR" AND DVORAK 263 
 
 ENRICO CARUSO . . . 273 
 
 vni 
 
VARIOUS 
 
 COLERIDGE quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds as de 
 claring that: "The greatest man is he who forms 
 the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who 
 corrupts it." It is an elastic epigram and not 
 unlike the rule which is poor because it won t 
 work both ways. All master reformers, here 
 tics, and rebels at first were great corrupters. 
 "Corruption," so-called, is a prime factor in 
 their propaganda. Buddha, Jesus, and Moses; 
 Arms and Aristophanes, Mohammed and Napo 
 leon, Paul and Augustine, Luther and Calvin, 
 Voltaire and Rousseau, Darwin and Newman, 
 Liszt and Wagner, Kant and Schopenhauer 
 here are a few names of men who undermined the 
 current beliefs and practices of their epoch, 
 whether for good or for evil. Rousseau has been 
 accused by Pierre Lasserre as being the greatest 
 corrupter in modern history; yet his name will 
 always be associated with the Constitution of 
 the United States of America. Tom Paine has 
 been called a "dirty little atheist," but he wrote 
 The Rights of Man. In prose of unequalled 
 force and limpidity Pascal denounced the Jesuits 
 as corrupters of youth poor, persecuted Jesu 
 its, who were the "Yellow Peril" of that time. 
 Nevertheless, Dr. Georg Brandes, an "intellec 
 tual" and a philosophic anarch, wrote to Fried- 
 rich Nietzsche: "I, too, love Pascal. But even 
 i 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 as a young man I was on the side of the Jesuits 
 against Pascal. Wise men, it was they who 
 were right; he did not understand them; but 
 they understood him and . . . they published 
 his Provincial Letters with notes. The best edi 
 tion is that of the Jesuits. 77 
 
 Were not Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt the 
 three unspeakable devils of painting for William 
 Blake? Loosely speaking, then, it doesn t much 
 matter whether we consider a great man as 
 either a regenerator or a corrupter. It all de 
 pends on your critical angle of vision. Taine 
 called Napoleon a bandit, notwithstanding the 
 idolatries of his contemporaries. Nor does the 
 case of Nietzsche differ much from that of his 
 philosophic forerunners. He scolded Schopen 
 hauer, although he borrowed his dialectic tools, 
 as he later mocked at the sincerest friendship of 
 his solitary life his love for Richard Wagner. 
 We know that the most " objective 57 comical 
 old categories, "objective 77 and "subjective 7 
 philosophies are tinged by the temperaments of 
 their makers; perhaps the chief characteristic of 
 philosophers is their unphilosophic contempt for 
 fellow- thinkers. This trait Schopenhauer dis 
 played when he abused Hegel & Co., Berlin, 
 Ltd. Nietzsche attacked Wagner after writing 
 that lucid and comprehensive study of him, 
 Richard Wagner and Baireuth. Wagner was a 
 bitter polemist and didn t spare Meyerbeer and 
 other operatic trusts. He was an amateur phi 
 losopher, his rickety system adorned with 
 
VARIOUS 
 
 plumes borrowed from Feuerbach, Schelling, 
 and Schopenhauer. But Arthur Schopenhauer 
 was endowed with a more powerful, more origi 
 nal intellect than either Wagner or Nietzsche. 
 He "corrupted" both, though it may be ad 
 mitted that their intellectual and artistic soil 
 was primed for just such corruption. And Scho 
 penhauer, gay old misogynist, was materialist 
 enough to echo an epigram attributed to Fonte- 
 nelle: "To be happy a man must have a good 
 stomach and a wicked heart." In other words, if 
 your stomach is sound your soul will take care of 
 itself. All Hobbes, Destutt de Tracy, Cabanis, 
 Helvetius, and Condillac are in that phrase. 
 
 But it is not my intention to stray among the 
 pleasant groves of speculation, taking an occa 
 sional potshot at the strange fauna of meta- 
 physic or admiring its many-colored flora. 
 Some one wrote asking me if Manette Salomon, 
 by de Goncourt the brothers Edmond and 
 Jules, had been translated into English; also 
 if it were the only fiction about art and artists. 
 I can t say yes or no as to the translation; if it 
 is not, it should be; but it is safe to say that 
 Manette is the best novel dealing entirely with 
 paint and painters that I know of. Fiction 
 about art and artists is rare; that is, good fic 
 tion, not the stuff daily ground out by publish 
 ing mills for the gallery gods. A classic ex 
 ample in American literature is The Marble 
 Faun, by Hawthorne. Romola, by George 
 Eliot, is atmospheric with Florentine art and 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 the genius of place. However, it is to the 
 French that we must go for such literature, 
 Manette being a notable example. It depicts 
 the spiritual and physical decadence of a splen 
 did painting talent, Coriolis, and contains vera 
 cious pictures of the pre-impressionist days in 
 Paris. Balzac in the Unknown Masterpiece has 
 left a model. His Frenhofer is the first of the 
 impressionists withal, a fumbler of genius. In 
 both Daudet and de Maupassant there are 
 stories clustered about the artistic guild. 
 Strong as Death, by de Maupassant, is long 
 enough to be called a novel (roman), though it 
 is but an expanded episode, and a mighty inter 
 esting one, even a touching one, for the usually 
 impassive Guy. Daudet described a Paris Salon 
 on varnishing day in his accustomed facile, feb 
 rile style; but it stems from Goncourt and Zola. 
 Zola s His Masterpiece (L CEuvre) is one of his 
 best- written books. It was said to be a favorite 
 of his, and it justifies his taste. The much- 
 belauded fifth chapter is a faithful transcription 
 of the first Salon of Rejected Painters (Salon des 
 refuses) at Paris in 1863. Napoleon III, after 
 social and political pressure had been brought 
 to bear on him, had consented to a special Salon 
 within the official Salon at the Palais de ITndus- 
 trie, where the rejected work of the young luna 
 tics who wished to paint purple turkeys, ver 
 milion water, and black sunsets would be har 
 bored. Ivory hallucinations and girls with car- 
 milion-colored eyes were not barred. It is an 
 
 4 
 
VARIOUS 
 
 enormously clever book, this chiefly deriving 
 from Manette Salomon and Balzac s Frenhofer. 
 Claude Lantier is said to be the portrait of Paul 
 Cezanne, a schoolmate and friend of Zola at Aix- 
 en-Provence. When I made the trip from Mar 
 seilles to Aix Cezanne still lived, but I had been 
 warned not to mention the name of Zola, who 
 shows Cezanne in this novel as an impotent 
 groper after impossible ideals. The irritable 
 Paul would go into spasms of rage when Zola 
 was referred to in his presence. Imbecile, 
 traitor, charlatan! These were sample expres 
 sions. A reading of L GEuvre at once convinces 
 you that the artistic procedures of Claude Lan 
 tier and Paul Cezanne are diametrically differ 
 ent. Claude failed and hanged himself. There 
 are contemporary critics who consider Cezanne 
 the greatest master of the impressionist group. 
 But the struggle for artistic veracity on the part 
 of Zola s sorry hero is not unlike the case of 
 Manet. The Breakfast on the Grass, described 
 by Zola, was actually the title and the subject 
 of a Manet canvas that had scandalized Paris at 
 this period. The fantastic idea of nude females 
 at an al fresco banquet upon the grass, while 
 the other figures were clothed and in their 
 right mind all this was too much for a pur 
 blind public and hostile critics; although there 
 are many examples in Italian renaissance paint 
 ing of the same style of composition. The pic 
 ture became notorious. Manet, like Richard 
 Wagner, knew the uses of advertising. 
 
 5 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Poe, Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, inter alia, have dealt with the theme 
 pictorial, and Paul Bourget, in his thrice- 
 charming story, The Lady Who Lost Her 
 Painter. Henry James has written delightful 
 tales, such as The Liar, The Real Thing, and 
 The Tragic Muse this a full-fledged novel in 
 two volumes in which artists appear and 
 live their lives. But it is the particular psycho 
 logic problem involved, rather than theorizing 
 about art, that steers the cunning pen of James. 
 We all recall the woman in The Liar, who de 
 stroyed the portrait of her husband because it 
 revealed to her, at last, the secret of his moral 
 infirmity. In this story John Singer Sargent has 
 been accredited as the psychologist of the brush. 
 There is a nice, fresh young fellow in The Tragic 
 Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers, at the 
 last, his palette and brush to the charms and 
 wealth of Julia D allow and her ambitious plans 
 for his political career. In The Real Thing we 
 recognize Henry James would call it the 
 " emotion of recognition" one of those un 
 erring strokes that prove the writer to be mas 
 ter-psychologist among English novelists. Any 
 discerning painter will tell you that the value 
 of a model who can take the "pose" far out 
 shines crude naturalism. It is the suggestive- 
 ness of the pose with its pictorial implications 
 that sets moving the imagination of the artist. 
 Upon this thesis the novelist has built a semi- 
 pathetic, amusing, and striking fable. 
 6 
 
VARIOUS 
 
 There are painters and sculptors scattered 
 throughout English fiction shall we ever for 
 get Thackeray and Clive Newcome? Ouida 
 has not missed weaving Tyrian purples into the 
 gorgeous patterns of her romantic painters. 
 And Disraeli. And George Bernard Shaw 
 there is a painting creature in his Love Among 
 the Artists. (I contend that an admirable nov 
 elist was killed in Mr. Shaw when he deserted 
 fiction for the playhouse. He won t agree with 
 me, but I should willingly part with all his pref 
 aces for another Byron CashePs Profession.) 
 But it is to George Moore we must go for fiction 
 of this sort. He has devoted more of his pages 
 to paint and painters than other latter-day nov 
 elists. The reason is that George Moore went 
 to Paris, there to study art, and he drifted into 
 the Julian atelier just as would any likely young 
 chap with a well-filled purse and hazy notions 
 concerning art. Those early experiences were 
 not wasted, they cropped up in his stories and 
 critical studies, He became the critical pioneer 
 in England of French impressionist art painters, 
 the champion of Manet, Monet, Degas, and the 
 rest. He even declared, in an article of rare 
 acumen, that if Jemmy Whistler had been a 
 heavier man, with more beef and brawn and 
 beer, as was Rubens, for example, the spider- 
 waisted American painter might have been as 
 great an artist as Velasquez. To the weighing 
 scales, fellow-artists ! retorted Whistler; never 
 theless, the bolt of Mr. Moore reached the mark. 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Whistler s remarks about the Irish critic, espe 
 cially after the Eden litigation, were, so it is 
 reported, not "fit to print." 
 
 In Spring Days, the first volume of Mr. 
 Moore s trilogy A Modern Lover and Mike 
 Fletcher are the other two we are shown a 
 young painter who thinks more of petticoats 
 than paint. Mike Fletcher, the most virile 
 and, for some of us, the quintessence of Moore, 
 has its share of paint talk. In A Modern Lover 
 the hero is an artist who succeeds in the fash 
 ionable world by painting pretty, artificial por 
 traits, thereby winning wealth, popular ap 
 plause, and official approbation. He also makes 
 love in a fascinating fashion the secret of his 
 mundane success. This same Lewis Seymour 
 lives and paints modish London beauties in 
 rose color. He may be found in Paris and New 
 York. He is a type. The sitter for this por 
 trait is said to have been Sir Frederick Leighton, 
 a statement I accept on its face value, and one 
 that Mr. Moore would probably vehemently 
 deny. But his irony must have entered the 
 souls of a hundred celebrated humbugs; that is, 
 if they had souls to boast. A Modern Lover, 
 despite the rewriting and consequent deface 
 ment of the original design, is distinctly a paint 
 er s novel and the best of its kind, were it not 
 that subsequently the novelist wrote a master 
 piece, Mildred Lawson, to be found in the vol 
 ume entitled Celibates a Balzacian title, by 
 the way. Masterly in analysis and description, 
 8 
 
VARIOUS 
 
 this story chiefly deals with art. Mildred, a 
 selfish English girl without heart, soul, or tal 
 ent, studies in the Julian atelier and goes to 
 Fontainebleau during the summer vacation. 
 Naturally, no one has ever described the Forest 
 better than Flaubert in Sentimental Education; 
 Flaubert, who wrote better than any one else 
 save Balzac. In this great canvas of Parisian 
 life there are marvellous evocations. There is a 
 semi-burlesque painter, Pellerin, who first reads 
 all the literature of aesthetics before he draws a 
 line, and poses his sitters a la Van Dyck, Rubens, 
 Gainsborough, or Titian; in a word, the man 
 of precedent. De Goncourt, too, has excelled 
 in his impressions of the Forest and its paint 
 ers; in particular, Francois Millet. 
 
 It is only just to Mr. Moore to say that you 
 can t find Mildred Lawson in Flaubert or de 
 Goncourt; no, not even in Balzac, whose work 
 is the very matrix of modern fiction. She is 
 her own cruel, perverse, Moorovian self, and 
 she lives here or London or in the Philip 
 pines. Elsewhere I have classed her as one of 
 the most disagreeable heroines in fiction, an 
 inky sister of Hedda Gabler and Undine Spragg 
 (in Edith Wharton s Custom of the Country). 
 
 All the one-time novel theories of "plein air" 
 impressionism are discussed in Zola s His Mas 
 terpiece, yet the work as a whole lacks the fine- 
 fibred style and clairvoyance of Manette Salo 
 mon; that breviary for painters which in 1867 
 anticipated the experimentings, the discoveries, 
 
 9 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 and the practice of the naturalistic and impres 
 sionist groups, running the gamut from Manet, 
 Monet, to Cezanne, Maufra, and Paul Gauguin. 
 The book is crowded with verbal pictures of art 
 students, atelier and open-air life; painting was 
 still one of the romantic arts when de Goncourt 
 wrote. No such psychological manual of the 
 painter has appeared, before or since, Manette 
 Salomon. The celibate bias of the brothers is 
 revealed in the leading motive oh, that musty, 
 fusty melodramatic idea which is the degra 
 dation of a man s artistic ideals because of the 
 woman Manette, his model he marries. 
 It was Goncourt who introduced Japanese art 
 to Europe; the brothers were friends of the late 
 M. Bing, a pioneer collector in Paris. And 
 they foresaw the future of fiction as well as 
 painting. 
 
 10 
 
HOW NOT TO BE A GENIUS 
 
 How not to be a genius nowadays is as dif 
 ficult as it is to believe in prohibition. Every 
 other man and woman you meet on the side 
 walks of life is a genius; at least they admit it, 
 or their disciples say they are. People with 
 mere talent are becoming rare. If you happen 
 to write a best seller you are acclaimed a genius. 
 And when you think it over, a man who can 
 sell a million copies of a book compounded of 
 sentimental slush and slimy piety must be a 
 genius. What else is he? An artistic writer? 
 No. Respectable? Yes. In Carlyle s times a 
 person was considered respectable if he owned 
 a gig; he was called a gigman. To-day it is 
 the motor-car that is the symbol of financial 
 well-being. Carlyle had much fun with his 
 gigman. What would he write about those 
 egregious humans who starve themselves and 
 their families in order to sport about the high 
 ways in a mortgaged motor? Popularity may 
 be for dolls, declared Emerson, but it s a mighty 
 asset when all the world is a doll. Even the 
 old Carlyle definition was thrown out of court 
 by Herbert Spencer, himself a prize specimen 
 of one who possessed an infinite capacity for 
 taking pains in his work. Nevertheless, indus 
 try is not necessarily an indication of genius, 
 ii 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 although elbow-grease has been an underrated 
 factor in the case. The truth is that there are 
 no royal paths to Parnassus. 
 
 In 1857 Dr. Morel published his Traite des 
 Degenerescences, and gave modern psychiatry 
 its initial springboard. Then Guerensen pro 
 nounced genius a disease of the nerves, and the 
 floodgates of madcap theories were wide opened. 
 We learned much from Magnan, Ribot, the 
 brothers Janet, Maudsley, Esquinol, and Char- 
 cot. After their psychological plumber work 
 genius became a dangerous profession. You 
 were likely to be either a madman or a criminal, 
 and such piffling busybodies as Lombroso and 
 Nordau tracked you to your lair, measured 
 your ears, the cut of your nose and a glance 
 of the eye, Reginald ! (Surely Beau Brummel 
 was a clothes maniac.) 
 
 Luckily for the world, genius is still a scarce 
 product, and the charlatan theories were laughed 
 off the map when Nordau wrote his partly amus 
 ing and wholly ridiculous book on Degenera 
 tion. The late William James walloped him 
 into silence. But the vulgar error persists in 
 the mind of the half-baked of culture. Like 
 Mahomet s coffin, it hangs suspended twixt 
 earth and heaven. It bobs up in the so-called 
 new school of Freudian psychoanalysis, which 
 exploits to the reductio ad absurdum the von 
 Hartmann theory of the subliminal conscious 
 ness, with a little spice of soothsaying and dream- 
 book twaddle thrown in to lend an air of novelty. 
 
 12 
 
HOW NOT TO BE A GENIUS 
 
 We learn from Dr. Freud that dreams are the 
 result of unfulfilled desires which may mean 
 anything that authors unconsciously reveal 
 themselves in their writings. What an astound 
 ing discovery ! Important if true. O la belle 
 histoire! Cut out the erotic element in this 
 "new" theory and the world would pass it by. 
 Who would read Leaves of Grass for its "poetry" 
 if such chaste, odoriferous "poems" as The 
 Woman Who Waits for Me were absent? 
 
 Genius is a word that has fallen into disrepute 
 because of its being bandied about so freely by 
 our makers of fiction. That burlesque of a 
 raw-head-and-bloody-bones, Strickland, the al 
 leged painter in Somerset Maugham s melo 
 dramatic "shocker," The Moon and Sixpence, 
 is a case in point. The clever author expects 
 his readers to believe that a staid business man 
 is transformed into a great painter at the age 
 of forty. To be sure, Strickland was what the 
 French call a "Sunday painter," one who potters 
 with color tubes and canvas every seventh day, 
 yet is supposed to accomplish what such men of 
 genius as Degas, Manet, Millet, couldn t in 
 protracted daily toil. And the innocent public 
 swallows such fairy-tales because it believes 
 in miracles. You may be sure of one thing 
 no one in the history of the Seven Arts has mas 
 tered his material save in the sweat of his brow. 
 Works and days. You can t change your psy 
 chology overnight. Mr. Maugham suggested 
 Paul Gauguin, the painter of South Seas land- 
 
 13 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 scapes, rich in color, decoration and arabesques. 
 But Gauguin was a real genius. Augustus John 
 too has been dragged in. Ridiculous! We 
 mention Strickland because he seems to embody 
 the popular notion of genius. A bolt from the 
 blue, and a stupid Philistine becomes in a trice 
 a scarecrow painter. No, he won t do, any 
 more than Theodore Dreiser s The Genius will 
 serve as a portrait of one. In Shakespeare you 
 are jostled by genius, but, then, the poet was 
 a genius of geniuses. He englobed all forms of 
 genius. 
 
 But is genius a disease, like the tenor voice, 
 or the pearl in a mollusk? It is, we know, a 
 gift that seldom brings happiness to its pos 
 sessor. Either it is unmercifully flouted, or else 
 unrecognized, and no two persons agree as to its 
 specific quality. There is in Poland a poet- 
 novelist-playwright who bears a name that 
 sounds like an unconquered Polish fortress. He 
 is called Stanislaw Przybyszewski, and when his 
 story, Homo Sapiens, was translated and pub 
 lished here the unhappy man was heartily hated 
 by all proofreaders and compositors. Do you 
 wonder? Possibly that dislike was a factor in 
 the suppression of the book, which wasn t a whit 
 less moral in its implications than the Re-crea 
 tion of William J. Bryan Kent. Stanislaw 
 we mercifully omit the full name has wisely 
 written of genius and has illustrated it in his ex 
 ceedingly vivid personal career. Readers of 
 Strindberg s Inferno, which contains in com- 
 
 14 
 
HOW NOT TO BE A GENIUS 
 
 pression more tortures than Dante s epic, a sort 
 of pemmican hell, need hardly be reminded that 
 the rival to the Swedish dramatist s affections is 
 Stanislaw P. in the guise of a pianist who plays 
 with overwhelming power and pathos the F 
 sharp minor polonaise of Chopin. That is the 
 way the super-subtle Pole courted one of Strind- 
 berg s lady-loves; it may have been a matrimo 
 nial rib, but that is a mere detail. 
 
 Stanislaw asserts in his brochure, Chopin and 
 Nietzsche, that physicians do not busy them 
 selves enough with history; if they did they 
 would recognize that " decadence" has always 
 existed; that it is not decadence at all, but only 
 a phase of development quite as important as 
 normality; normality is stupidity, decadence is 
 genius. Is there, he demands, a more notable 
 case of the abnormal than the apostle of Protes 
 tantism, Martin Luther ? We are all children of 
 Satan, he cries. Those rare men who for the 
 sake of their ideals sacrifice the lives and happi 
 ness of thousands, such as Alexander or Napo 
 leon there are more modern instances, if we 
 cared to mention them; or those who dispel the 
 dreams of youth, Socrates and Schopenhauer; or 
 those who venture into the depths of sin be 
 cause sin has depth Poe, Baudelaire, Rops; 
 and those who love pain for the sake of pain and 
 ascend the Golgotha of mankind, Chopin, Schu 
 mann, Nietzsche of such material is genius 
 compounded. Satan is the first philosopher, the 
 first Anarchist, and pain is the foundation of all 
 
 IS 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 art and, with Satan, the father of illusions. I 
 quote these luminous reflections to prove how 
 easy it is to twist a theory so as to suit one s own 
 point of view. The decadence theory is non 
 sense. I may only refer you to Havelock ElhYs 
 masterly volume of critical essays, entitled Af 
 firmations, for a concise refutation of the 
 heresy; and equally fallacious is the contention 
 of the Polish writer that the normal always spells 
 stupidity. The reverse is often the case. Cole 
 ridge, you may remember, disputed, in his Bio- 
 graphia Literaria, that antique sarcasm of 
 Horace, the " genus irritabile vatum." He 
 wrote: "The men of the greatest genius, as far 
 as we can judge from their own works or from 
 the accounts of their contemporaries, appeared 
 to have been of calm and tranquil temper in all 
 that related to themselves." Coleridge gives ex 
 amples to uphold this belief. Taine has written 
 in his history of English literature of the sane 
 genius among such old chaps as Rabelais, Mon 
 taigne, Shakespeare, and Goethe, all of whom 
 performed prodigies of labor. No neurasthenia 
 hampered their literary invention. Yet Shake 
 speare created Hamlet, the incarnation of a dis 
 ordered will and a poetic soul astray. 
 
 Schopenhauer has adequately dealt with the 
 theme and with more conviction-breeding results 
 than many of the later explorers in this field, at 
 his time a field outside of the biological labora 
 tory. He finds that "talent is versatile and be 
 trays more acuteness of discursive than intuitive 
 16 
 
HOW NOT TO BE A GENIUS 
 
 knowledge." The genius beholds another world 
 because he has a profounder conception of the 
 world which lies before us all, inasmuch as it 
 presents itself with more objectivity and dis 
 tinctness than it does to less favored mortals. 
 Myriad-minded Goethe summed up the question 
 in a memorable phrase. "Genius is incommen 
 surable/ 7 he told Eckermann when discussing 
 Faust. Mozart confessed that music came to 
 him without his volition. So-called secondary 
 selves exist in the subliminal mind, and in certain 
 circumstances may usurp the reign of the pri 
 mary self for varying periods of time, just as a 
 saint and sinner may inhabit one soul. The old 
 theologians spoke of guardian angels and angels 
 of evil. Some see God in an ecstatic vision and 
 others peer into the fiery pit of hell with morose 
 delectation. Don t worry about this moral 
 dichotomy. It s only your various selves at 
 war. When the dissociation becomes a half- 
 dozen split-up personalities struggling for mas 
 tery then it is time to consult a psychiatrist. 
 That way lies the madhouse. But we are all of 
 us the victims of our cells. 
 
 A genius is a superman a man, according to 
 Dr. Jacobson (see his Possible Clues to the 
 Nature of Genius), plus a secondary personal 
 ity, his genius not residing in the primary self 
 but in his secondary personality. In the one 
 case we have the spiritualistic medium low 
 mentality, irresponsible secondary personality; 
 in the other case we have genius high men- 
 
 17 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 tality, super-rational secondary personality. It 
 might be well to remember this fact just now 
 when a wave of debasing superstition is rising 
 everywhere, of which the mildest symptom is the 
 Ouija-board and other clotted nonsense; the 
 gravest symptoms, devil-worship and alleged 
 communication with spirits; after all cataclysmic 
 events, war, pestilence, earthquake, the pro 
 longed nerve-tension causes "new" religions, 
 witchcraft, healers, and prophets of evil to 
 flourish like toadstools in a damp, dank cellar. 
 Mock- turtle mysticism and ineffable silliness. 
 It is not the denial of such so-called "phenom 
 ena" that concerns us, for there are numberless 
 unexplained mysteries in nature; all occult re 
 search is not hocus-pocus; but it is the inter 
 pretation, divine or diabolic, of these happenings 
 to which sensible thinkers object. Bateson, 
 quoted by Dr. Jacobson, "conceives of evolution 
 and life as an unpacking of an original complex." 
 Here we are knocking at the transcendental gates 
 of the Fourth Spatial Dimension. Life is an un 
 coiling. Humanity is a watch-spring of the in 
 finite. Our existence is the progress of a spiri 
 tual tapeworm. Death is the grand vermifuge. 
 Nevertheless, genius is a shy bird. Spear him 
 and put him under the microscope. But first 
 catch your fish. And that is always difficult. 
 
 Man has chartered the globe, but, probably by 
 reason of an almost ineradicable superstitious 
 timidity, has left the human soul an undis 
 covered country, or, at least, but partially ex- 
 
 18 
 
HOW NOT TO BE A GENIUS 
 
 plored. Genius, whether manifesting its power 
 in the arts or in the sciences, is the worthiest 
 theme for the philosopher; not reactionary meta 
 physicians like Bergson, weavers of verbal 
 dreams, spinners of futile cobweb systems; but 
 the biologist, psychiatrist, the practical scientist, 
 for whom the visible as well as the invisible 
 worlds exist. "I breathe, therefore I live," said, 
 in effect, William James. (Essays in Radical 
 Empiricism.) The mind of man has ever been 
 a house divided in itself. Yet it is a consolation 
 to know that our several subliminal personalities 
 may be the cause of our conflicting thoughts. 
 (The late Prof. Muensterburg declared that such 
 a thing as subconsciousness did not exist.) In 
 Faust we read of two spirits that abide in our 
 breast, also the spirit that denied. Mephisto 
 then may be only our second personality. How 
 ever, we haven t answered the question posed at 
 the beginning of this Sunday morning ramble 
 through the tangled forest of minor speculation 
 -how not to be a genius. The answer is as 
 easy as lying never work ! 
 
THE RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE 
 MOORE 
 
 I HAD intended writing of the tragic Chopin 
 to-day, but George Moore supervened; he and 
 Atlantic City an odd combination. Man 
 cannot live in music alone, and when Maurice 
 Speiser met me on the boardwalk and lent me 
 his copy of Avowals (numbered eighty and 
 privately printed for subscribers), I shooed 
 Chopin to the backyard of my consciousness 
 and proceeded to reread Mr. Moore. I say 
 reread because much of the subject-matter in 
 this new, bulky volume saw the light of pub 
 lication years ago in various English and at 
 least one American periodical: Lippincotts , 
 the Fortnightly, et al. Still, it is, all of it, worth 
 while, notwithstanding the fact the old nurse 
 of the County Mayo author wouldn t have 
 blushed at a line therein. Why the book was 
 published as "wicked" by implication is difficult 
 to discover. It should be given to the world 
 at large, after several minor excisions. The one 
 gay anecdote is related in France, and it is so 
 mildly diverting that it will bear repeating here. 
 An eccentric nobleman adorns himself with 
 peacock s feathers for the edification of his pea 
 hens ! Yet people subscribe for the pleasure of 
 such innocent foolery. By all means, let us 
 20 
 
RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE 
 
 have Avowals naked and unashamed. Only 
 good Moorovians will endure its leagues of 
 technical literary criticism. The Story Teller s 
 Holiday of last year was another kind of a book. 
 Rather blistering than elevating. But amusing 
 always. 
 
 There was a time when Mr. Moore was con 
 tent to be called the Irish Flaubert; nowadays 
 he is evidently after the title of the Celtic Casa 
 nova, though hardly in these new avowals. 
 They will never rank in interest with Memoirs 
 of My Dead Life; or, indeed, with his Hail 
 and Farewell Trilogy. For one thing, printed 
 dialogue makes slow reading, even when the 
 prose is the incomparable prose of Walter Savage 
 Landor. The opening chapters are devoted to 
 discussions, purely academic, between Edmund 
 Gosse and George Moore. English prose nar 
 rative is the weakest part of English literature 
 -a paradoxical contention. Mr. Gosse puts 
 up a good fight, but is pulverized by his op 
 ponent, who leaves him gasping on a balcony 
 wrapped in a shawl, feebly expostulating. The 
 Moore dialectic is fairly familiar to his admirers. 
 It is one-third lack of logic and two-thirds per 
 suasion and browbeating. Need I add that the 
 persuasiveness is not wholly divested of a cer 
 tain veiled Donnybrookishness ? Mr. Moore 
 goes for the hated Sassenach, and only those 
 Englishmen who seem to resemble him are 
 treated with consideration; the Rev. Laurence 
 Sterne, whose wheedling prose style is admir- 
 21 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 ably wedded to his prurient themes ("Are you 
 Jewish or ticklish?" he was asked by a critic 
 long ago), is praiseworthy in the eyes of our 
 critic. 
 
 I should have preferred to pose as an adver 
 sary to Mr. Moore the redoubtable Prof. George 
 Saintsbury, who with a Sam Johnson bluffness 
 would have smashed the Irishman s arguments 
 at the very first throw out of the box. No doubt 
 about that. Mr. Moore admits the genius of 
 Landor, Pater, Lamb, De Quincey, in the essay 
 form ; but it is fiction narrative he centres upon, 
 and despite De Foe, Fielding, Jane Austen, not 
 to speak of Dickens, Thackeray and Meredith, 
 he finds no good has come forth from that Brit 
 ish Nazareth. Of the exquisite prose patterns 
 which Cardinal Newman has woven for us he 
 speaks no word; elsewhere, years past, he has 
 expressed his dislike of Newman s flowing style; 
 the "style coulant" abhorred of Charles Baude 
 laire, especially when it issued from the pen of 
 George Sand. Yet Mr. Moore s Keltic prose 
 (spell it with a K, Samivel !) is like Newman s 
 in so far as both are subtle, sensitive, and rip 
 pling; both avoid dynamic contrasts, both per 
 suade rather than assault. And there is a 
 suspicion of the serpentine in the writings of 
 both men. The spiral prose of The Brook Kerith 
 is a case in point. Can t you see that minotaur 
 of English literary criticism or should I say 
 Torquemada? George Saintsbury frowning 
 and thundering on Mr. Moore, and quoting 
 
 22 
 
RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE 
 
 from his History of English Prose-Rhythms ! 
 A battle of the bookmen, indeed. 
 
 The recantations of George Moore become 
 increasingly numerous with the passage of the 
 years. I had expected the inclusion in Avowals 
 of his top-notch in criticism, not dealing with 
 the plastic arts naturally his stronghold a 
 criticism that appeared about twenty years 
 ago in Cosmopolis, an international magazine 
 edited, if I remember aright, by Lady Randolph 
 Churchill. Far finer than his study of Zola is 
 this study of Flaubert s Sentimental Education, 
 entitled A Tragic Novel, the tragedy of drab, 
 commonplace living, not that of high heroics 
 or tragic and romantic gestures. But Mr. Moore 
 violently repudiates his Flaubert worship and 
 explains why he doesn t reprint the splendid 
 pages of that particular criticism. Flaubert, it 
 seems, is not a novelist, only a satirist he 
 says something of the same sort earlier con 
 cerning George Meredith and he places him 
 far below Balzac as a creator of character, be 
 low Turgenieff as a teller of tales; he even de 
 cries his style the sanity, simplicity, which, 
 allied to its sonorous harmonies, is one of the 
 most fascinating in French literature. I fancy 
 Mr. Moore suffered from the revulsion which 
 often attacks critical pioneers; as soon as the 
 public, wooed or banged into submission by the 
 critic, begins to admire them the critic moves 
 on; his object accomplished, newer idols must 
 be sought, fresher victories achieved; the old 
 
 2 3 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 idol is again become a block of wood. Mr. 
 Saintsbury fought for Baudelaire and Flaubert 
 before George Moore; nevertheless, Mr. Moore 
 was the first English-writing novelist who 
 adopted Flaubert s methods; recall Untilled 
 Fields and Evelyn Inness the manner, of 
 course, not the matter. And there is Swin 
 burne, who after extravagantly praising Walt 
 Whitman violently repudiated the Camden 
 "bard," later inventing the word " Whitmaniac" 
 to signify his contempt for Walt s comical yawp 
 ing. In humbler fashion I may give as an 
 example of this critical dog-in-the-manger atti 
 tude my own case. In 1877 I went as a lad to 
 visit Walt across the Delaware River from my 
 home, and from him received the kiss of peace 
 and went away with the glowing brow of the 
 neophyte. I became an ardent Whitmaniac 
 in my teens, and for two decades or more I wrote 
 of W. W. as if he were really a great poet. I 
 can t read him now, nor can I read the effusions 
 of his followers. He has been a disruptive force, 
 still is one; to imitate his "poetry" is so easy 
 that an entire new school of lads and lassies 
 are murdering English prosody and filling the 
 urn with their lascivious cater waulings. Walt 
 is to blame. He did it first in his Children of 
 Adam. 
 
 Flaubert is not the only writer from whom 
 
 Mr. Moore has seceded. Being a peculiarly 
 
 susceptible Celt, he is always changing his 
 
 opinions, which is a legitimate function of the 
 
 24 
 
RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE 
 
 male as well as the female intellect. At one 
 epoch Dublin never knew when beginning a 
 fresh day whether her favorite son was a Cath 
 olic or a Protestant. It was like a barometrical 
 puzzle. He recanted his Catholicism de 
 canted might be a better word and he 
 changed his mind every morning about his best 
 friend, the poet, William Yeats. The New Irish 
 movement was to be George Moore or it was to 
 be nothing. Finally John Millington Synge ap 
 peared, and the movement, luckily enough, be 
 came Synge. Being dead, this master is spared 
 from the scarifications to which Moore subjected 
 Yeats, Edward Martyn, and Lady Gregory. 
 Ireland is no longer Erin go bragh ! and the Lord 
 knows what he thinks of Sinn Fein. In fact, 
 since Ireland did not appreciate the genius of 
 George Moore, he abandons Ireland as he 
 abandoned England during the Boer Rebellion. 
 We hear no more of Douglas Hyde or the revival 
 of Erse says the Shan Van Vocht ! 
 
 He sharply criticised Jane Austen and women 
 writers generally in articles published in the 
 North American Review, but in Avowals Jane is 
 given her just dues, which is well. George Eliot 
 and the Brontes he won t have. He rightfully 
 rates Tolstoy and his absence of true spirituality. 
 The great Russian writer is not a prober of the 
 human soul, despite the accepted belief to the 
 contrary; that is, he doesn t deeply probe. His 
 rendering of reality borders on hallucination. 
 Simply prodigious is his mastery of realism. 
 
 25 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Yet Dostoievsky is the profounder man of the 
 pen. He lived and suffered the life that Tolstoy 
 only wrote about but never experienced. His 
 novels, tedious, explosive, tumultuous, may be 
 the " psychological mole-runs" of TurgeniefTs 
 dictum; nevertheless they are aglow with vital 
 ity, palpitating with pity for the downtrodden 
 and humiliated, and pullulating with humanity. 
 Dostoievsky, an essentially morbid man, as was 
 Nietzsche, by reason of this very deviation from 
 normality, was enabled to sink his plummet 
 into the darkest recesses of the soul. His self- 
 cruelty had a sadistic tinge. But he is the real 
 psychologist, not Tolstoy. Deploring Tolstoy s 
 dodging of psychological issues for his religion 
 was of the old intolerant order and he was suf 
 fering from an excess of moralic acid in the 
 blood, which finally killed his art Mr. Moore 
 yet refuses to give Dostoievsky a truly exalted 
 position. He better likes Turgenieff, nor need 
 we quarrel with him on this score. Turgeniefl 
 represents the almost perfect artist, blithe, 
 Greek, charming, while his rival, a Prometheus 
 of the inkpot, groans in travail as he shows 
 us his wounded soul. In the Confessions of a 
 Young Man the author speaks of Dostoievsky 
 as " Gaboriau with psychological sauce." When 
 he wrote an introduction to a translation of 
 Poor Folk he had evidently seen a great light. 
 But in Avowals he is back in the Gaboriau 
 trenches. 
 
 A more definite recantation is his present 
 26 
 
RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE 
 
 view of Tolstoy. The first avowals, in periodical 
 form, saw him a worshipper at the shrine. I 
 well remember his essay, Since the Elizabethans, 
 and its contemptuous comparison of Tolstoy and 
 Thackeray. English fiction, he said, in effect, 
 never dives below the surface; it is an affair of 
 decoration, never of depth. Well and good. 
 Tolstoy, like Balzac, has no counterpart in Eng 
 lish literature, Mr. Moore says, and maintains 
 his argument with admirable examples. Musi 
 cal analogies are employed. Verdi or Donizetti, 
 never the passionately profound harmonies of 
 Wagner, are overheard in English fiction. With 
 a sense of relief I find that Mr. Moore is still 
 faithful to Walter Pater. The best pages in the 
 volume are those in which he describes the art 
 and personality of the shy, complex author of 
 Marius. It may be remembered, his eulogy of 
 Marius in the early confessions. From this 
 faith he has never swerved. Of Henry James he 
 was not an admirer. He seems not to have gone 
 further than The Portrait of a Lady. He en 
 countered Mr. James at the home of the Robin 
 son girls, Mary and Mabel. Here is a portrait 
 of our famous countryman: "And these thoughts 
 drew my eyes to the round head, already going 
 bald, to the small, dark eyes, closely set, and to 
 the great expanse of closely shaven face. His 
 legs were short, and his hands and feet large, 
 and he sat portentously in his chair, speaking 
 with some hesitation and great care, anxious 
 that every sentence, or if not all, at least every 
 27 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 third or fourth, should send forth a beam of 
 humor." Apart from the fact that the eyes of 
 Henry James were not small, but large and 
 heavy lidded, eyes in which were pictured an 
 entire social world, his description is not without 
 a certain malicious verisimilitude. The two men 
 were, naturally enough, antipathetic to each 
 other. Mr. James failed to recognize the great 
 ness of Esther Waters, and Mr. Moore hated 
 humor. He objurgates humor in a writer. Yet 
 he is, consciously or unconsciously, humorous. 
 And what a bon mot was his summing up of 
 Bernard Shaw as being only the " funny man in 
 a boarding house." Perhaps. But at the time 
 that boarding house comprised Europe and 
 America. 
 
 Moore and Whistler were always clawing and 
 scratching. Both feline, both tenors, and pos 
 sessing the tenor temperament, how could they 
 be expected to sing in amiable ensemble? 
 Moore relates that James the Butterfly pre 
 sented him with a copy of his Ten o Clock, 
 inscribed: "To George Moore for furtive 
 reading," which is the epitome of irony. But 
 George never began to repeat the epigrams 
 of "Jemmy," as did Jemmy those of Oscar 
 Wilde. Whistler, according to friends who 
 knew, would sit up half the night manufacturing 
 witticisms. It was to himself, not to Oscar, 
 that he should have applied the remark: "But 
 you will, Oscar, you will." The Irishman was 
 as spontaneous in his wit as the American con- 
 28 
 
RECANTATIONS OF GEORGE MOORE 
 
 stipated. However, " furtive reading" is dis 
 tinctly good. George Moore paid off his score 
 in his Modern Painting when he wrote of Whis 
 tler that if he had been fifty pounds heavier he 
 might have painted as well as Velasquez. And 
 weight and substance are precisely the qualities 
 lacking in the Whistlerian canvases, which are 
 becoming more attenuated, more ghostly as the 
 years wear on. If it were not for the etchings 
 the next generation would have cause for won 
 derment over the exaggerated praise bestowed 
 upon a painter whose originality principally de 
 rives from his Paris friend, Fantin-Latour, and 
 from the Japanese. 
 
 But Avowals is good fun. It should be placed 
 on the general market. It s too decent to be 
 locked away in the "enfer" of a bibliophile. 
 Apropos of nothing, did you hear George Moore 
 on the League of Nations? He is convinced 
 enough on that score to exclaim: "There s only 
 one way of bringing about the League. Leave 
 off talking about the President and hang the 
 Kaiser." 
 
 29 
 
CRUSHED VIOLETS 
 
 " GOOD GOD ! I forgot the violets ! " exclaimed 
 Walter Savage Landor, after he had thrown his 
 cook out of the window. This happened at 
 Fiesole, near Florence, and within one year of a 
 century ago. The great prose master had a 
 rather excitable temperament, as Charles Dick 
 ens has testified. (The novelist put him in 
 Bleak House as Boythorn "with the genius 
 and much else left out/ as Havelock Ellis says.) 
 Landor dearly loved his flowers, and in his dis 
 may he gave birth to a classic phrase. Nowa 
 days we would gladly put a chef on the throne, 
 so debased has become the world s cuisine. But 
 Landor was an aristocrat masquerading as a 
 fierce democrat and his gesture was a typical 
 one, and in the gentlemanly interest; we might 
 say a gentleman s prerogative, one that has gone 
 quite out of fashion. 
 
 I am minded of his despairing cry when I 
 think of Walter Pater. A member of the deli 
 cious Hermione s family, indelibly recorded by 
 Don Marquis, asked me once upon a time if the 
 prose of Pater didn t remind me of crushed vio 
 lets. I related then and there the adventure of 
 Landor s cook and the flowerbed. Her answer 
 threw much light on her mentality: "I wonder 
 what the cook said?" she asked. But Pater 
 
 30 
 
CRUSHED VIOLETS 
 
 prose and crushed violets ! For the life of me I 
 can t bridge this gulf of the dissimilar. Some of 
 Whistler is an indigestion of strawberries and 
 cream; but Pater and violets! Walter Pater 
 wasn t as " precious," as insipid, as his imitators. 
 On a certain occasion Matthew Arnold ad 
 vised Frederic Harrison to "flee Carlylese as the 
 very devil," and doubtless would have given the 
 same advice regarding Paterese. It is true 
 Pater is dangerous for students. This theme of 
 style, so admirably vivified in Sir Walter Ra 
 leigh s monograph the best we know of; Rob 
 ert Louis Stevenson s essay on the technical ele 
 ments of style is too technical, valuable as it is 
 has been worn threadbare from Aristotle to 
 Renton and his Logic of Style. Pater produced 
 slowly he wrote five books in twenty years, at 
 the rate of an essay or two every year, thus 
 matching Flaubert in his tormented production. 
 The chief accusation brought against the Pater 
 method of working and his consequent style is 
 its lack of spontaneity; it is not a natural style. 
 But a "natural style," so called, is not encoun 
 tered in its full flowering more than a half dozen 
 times during the course of a century; perhaps 
 that figure is an exaggeration. The French 
 write all but flawless prose. To match Flaubert, 
 Renan, or Anatole France we must go to Ruskin, 
 Newman, and Pater. When we say, "Let us 
 write simple, straightforward English," we are 
 setting a standard that has been reached only 
 by Thackeray, Newman, Arnold, and how few 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 others? There are as many victims of the 
 " natural English" formula as there are of the 
 " artificial" formula of Pater and Stevenson. 
 The first-named write careless, flabby, colorless, 
 undistinguished, lean commercial English, and 
 pass unnoticed in the vast whirlpool of universal 
 mediocrity, where the cliche is lord of the para 
 graph. The others, victims to a misguided ideal 
 of affected "fine writing," are more easily de 
 tected and denounced by purists, pedants, and 
 other sultry professorial persons. A master, 
 Renan, disliked the teaching of "style" per se 
 - as if the secret could be imparted yet he 
 toiled over his manuscripts. We recall the 
 Flaubert case. With Pater one should not rush 
 to the conclusion, because he produced slowly, 
 that he was of an artificiality all compact. For 
 him prose was a fine art. He could no more 
 have used a phrase coined by another than he 
 could have worn the other man s hat. He em 
 broidered upon the canvas of his themes the 
 grave and lovely phrases we so envy and admire. 
 Prose "cette ancienne et tres jalouse chose," 
 as it was described by Stephane Mallarme for 
 Pater was at once a pattern and a cadence, a 
 picture and a song. Never suggesting hybrid 
 "poetic-prose," the stillness of his style at 
 mospheric, languorous, sounding sweet under 
 tones is always in the true rhythm of prose. 
 Speed is absent. The tempo is usually lenten. 
 Brilliancy is not pursued; there is a hieratic, 
 almost episcopal, pomp. The sentences uncoil 
 
 32 
 
CRUSHED VIOLETS 
 
 their many-colored lengths; there are echoes, 
 repercussions, tonal imagery, and melodic evoca 
 tion; there is clause within clause that occasion 
 ally confuse; for compensation we are given har 
 monies newly orchestrated, as salient, as mor 
 dant, and as subtly rare as chords in the music 
 of Brahms or Debussy. Sane prose it always is; 
 but seldom simple. It is extremely personal, and 
 while it may not make music for every ear, it is 
 exquisitely adapted to the idea it garbs. Read 
 Ruskin aloud and then apply the same vocal test 
 to Pater, and the magnificent harmonies of the 
 older man will conquer your ear by storm; but 
 Pater, like Newman, will make your ear captive 
 in a persuasive snare more delicately varied, and 
 with modulations more enchanting. Never ora 
 torical, in eloquence slightly muffled, the last 
 manner of Pater hinted at newer combinations. 
 Of his prose we may say, quoting his own words 
 concerning another theme: "It is beauty wrought 
 from within, ... the deposit, little cell by cell, 
 of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and 
 exquisite passions." 
 
 The prose of Jeremy Taylor is more impas 
 sioned, Sir Thomas Browne s richer and full of 
 flashing conceits; there are deeper organ tones 
 in De Quincey, and Ruskin excels in effects, 
 rhythmic and sonorous; but the prose of Pater 
 is more sinuous, subtle, more felicitous, and in 
 its essence consummately intense. Morbid it 
 is, sometimes, and its rich polyphony palls if 
 one is not in the mood, and in greater measure 
 
 33 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 than the prose of classic masters, for the world 
 is older and Pater was often weary of life. But 
 suggestions of morbidity may be found in every 
 writer from Plato to Dante, from Dante to 
 Shakespeare and Goethe. It is but the faint 
 spice of mortality which lends a stimulating if 
 sharp perfume to all literatures. Beautiful art 
 is always challenged as corrupting. There may 
 be a grain of truth in the accusation. Man can 
 not live by wisdom alone, so art was invented by 
 him to console, to disquiet, to arouse. Art may 
 be a dangerous adventure and also an anodyne, 
 like religion. And unhappily we are losing our 
 taste for adventuring amidst dangerous ideas. 
 Once deprived of moral self-determination, of 
 the right of private judgment, man soon relapses 
 into a vegetable existence. Whenever a new 
 poet or philosopher appears he is straightway 
 accused of tampering with the moral currency. 
 This is only mediocrity s mode of adjusting too 
 marked mental disproportions. Difference en 
 genders hatred. In this period, when art and 
 literature are violently despised and persecuted, 
 do not let us be frightened by the word " wick 
 ed. " For my part, as an old practitioner in lit 
 erary and artistic poisons, I have never encoun 
 tered a book or a picture or a sonata that was 
 so immoral as to kill at twenty paces. So let us 
 cheer up, read Pater, Baudelaire, and the Bible 
 from which they derive and blench not 
 before the dissonantal batteries of the Neo- 
 Scythian composers. 
 
 34 
 
CRUSHED VIOLETS 
 
 There is another Pater, one far removed from 
 the weaver of colored silken phrases. If he re 
 calls the richness of Keats in the texture of his 
 prose, he can also suggest the aridity of Spencer. 
 There are essays of his as cold, as logically 
 adamant, and as tortuous as sentences in the 
 Synthetic Philosophy. Luckily his tendency 
 to abstract reasoning was subdued by the hu 
 manism of his temper. There are not many 
 "purple panels" in his prose; "purple" in the 
 De Quincey or Ruskin manner; no "fringes of 
 the north star" style. He never wrote in sheer 
 display. For the boorish rhetoric and apish 
 attitudes of much modern writing he betrayed 
 no sympathy. His critical range is catholic. 
 Consider his essays on Lamb, Coleridge, Words 
 worth, Winckelmann, not to mention those finely 
 wrought masterpieces, the studies of Da Vinci, 
 Giorgione, Botticelli, Joachim du Bellay. Even 
 the newly gathered minor essays, slight as they 
 are in theme and treatment, reveal the master. 
 
 Somewhat cloistered in his attitude toward 
 the normal world of work, often the artist for 
 art s sake, he may never trouble the main cur 
 rents of literature ; but he will always be a writer 
 for writers, a critic for critics. Little books may 
 have their destiny. Pater was a thinker whose 
 vision pierces the shell of appearances, the com 
 poser of a polyphonic prose-music which echoes 
 a harmonious adagio heard within the spaces of 
 a Gothic cathedral, through the multi-colored 
 windows of which filters alien daylight. It was 
 
 35 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 a favorite contention of his that all the arts 
 aspire toward the condition of music. This idea 
 is the keynote of Walter Pater, mystic and musi 
 cian, who, like his own Marius the Epicurean, 
 carried, his life long, "in his bosom across a 
 crowded public place his own soul." And 
 yet ! 
 
BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS TO HIS 
 MOTHER 
 
 WHEN a well-known man dies in England 
 they ask: What did he do? In France: How 
 did he do it? In the United States: How much 
 did he leave? But the Socialist in every land 
 says: He didn t do it! The poetic production 
 of Charles Baudelaire, if put to the same test 
 questions, might easily be conceived as evoking 
 even more variety of responses. Baudelaire 
 has said that nations produce great men against 
 their will. While his position in the poetic 
 firmament of France is that of a star of the 
 first magnitude, there are, nevertheless, dissi 
 dents, especially among foreign critics, who 
 either cannot or will not admit what is become 
 a truism in French criticism. And the critical 
 literature concerning the poet grows apace. 
 His letters to his mother, recently published, 
 make a volume admirably calculated to illumi 
 nate the character of the man. It contains a 
 preface and notes by Jacques Crepet, who, it 
 may be remembered, assisted his father, Eu 
 gene Crepet, in the biographical study of Baude 
 laire, a definitive study, one is tempted to add, 
 for it dissipated a lot of legends (most of them 
 fabricated by the poet himself) and put his 
 house of life into some sort of order. Above 
 
 37 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 all, it cleared up the rather murky atmosphere 
 of his relations with Jeanne Duval, his Black 
 Venus, who was in reality a young woman with 
 hardly a moiety of African blood in her veins. 
 But she served as a peg for the poet upon which 
 to hang some of his most acrid and lovely verse, 
 therefore she must pass muster in any estimate 
 of his disquieting genius. 
 
 Withal, the exegetical literature is not large. 
 George Saintsbury introduced him to English 
 readers, although Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 had in practice, if not by precept, brought his 
 " poisonous honey from France" Tennyson s 
 phrase. The Letters (1841-66) were published 
 in 1907 by the Mercure de France, which also 
 fathered a bulky volume devoted to the pos 
 thumous works (1908). La Plume had in 1893 
 republished from the Belgian edition the con 
 demned pieces from Les Fleurs du Mai, with an 
 extraordinary frontispiece by the Belgian etcher, 
 Armand Rassenfosse. There are some poetic 
 numbers in this rare plaque eagerly sought for 
 by lovers of exotic literature yet the majority 
 of the pieces must be read book in one hand, the 
 other hand tightly closing the nostrils. These 
 suppressed poems are not the best Baudelairia. 
 Feli Gautier s illustrated pamphlet (Editions de 
 la Plume) is the most succinct account of the 
 poet. There is also a handy little volume by 
 Alphonse Seche and Jules Bertaut, garnered 
 from various sources, yet of critical merit. And 
 in 1917, during the heat of conflict, Guillaume 
 
BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS 
 
 Apollinaire prefaced the definitive text of the 
 poems and said some pertinent things of Baude 
 laire. He calls the poet the literary son of Cho- 
 derlos de Laclos and Edgar Poe a shuddering 
 combination, indeed. 
 
 The previous collection of Letters are of more 
 general interest, for they are addressed to his 
 most distinguished contemporaries painters, 
 poets, musicians his friend Richard Wagner 
 among the rest men of letters and aristocratic 
 ladies. But in the Letters to his mother, Mme. 
 Aupick, the atmosphere is more dramatic, more 
 intense. A duel is fought from his school days 
 to the year previous to his death; the duel of a 
 man, half crazed with alcohol and drugs, and a 
 mother who failed to understand the queer duck 
 ling of genius she had hatched out in her first 
 marriage. Demands for money fill the ma 
 jority of these epistles. Pleas for his poetic 
 work also loom largely, but poverty is the lead 
 ing motive throughout. We catch more than a 
 profile portrait of the mother; it is not always 
 winning or " motherly. 7 How could it be with 
 such a son? A half -Hamlet, he was jealous of 
 his mother s second husband. It was one of the 
 determining causes in his morbid growth. How 
 has his case so long escaped the psychiatrists of 
 the psychoanalytic school? Albert Mordell, in 
 his Erotic Element in Literature, could have 
 found him a better subject than Stendhal for the 
 (Edipus-complex. Notwithstanding his Flowers 
 of Evil, his diabolic and dandical poses, Baude- 
 
 39 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 laire was not a wicked-hearted man. Weak he 
 was rather than depraved. And too curious of 
 certain matters. He did explore the subcellars 
 of the soul, dive into cesspools, and expose putrid 
 sores. A scavenger poet, nevertheless a great 
 poet, the greatest since Hugo. To-day his suc 
 cessor to the purple is Gabriele d Annunzio. 
 
 There was decay in Baudelaire s bones, a 
 necrosis of the moral nature, yet no more fervent 
 believer among latter-day poets in God and his 
 Mother has penned their praises, except Ver- 
 laine. He did lay too much stress on his ad 
 miration for Satan, an admiration well-nigh 
 Manichean, but he argued rightly when he said 
 that one can t believe in the Almighty and not 
 believe in the Adversary. Theologically speak 
 ing, this is an inexpugnable position; in reality 
 the world-experiences of the last five years have 
 uprooted a belief that Satan is bound and sealed 
 in some hellish solitude. Roaming about and 
 seeking whom he may devour, would be the con 
 sensus of opinion among pious folk. Baudelaire 
 believed in the devil because he had a personal 
 devil. Hence his Litanies to Satan, later imi 
 tated by Giosue Carducci in his Hymn to Satan. 
 " Salute, O Satana, O ribellione, O forza vindice, 
 Delia ragione !" But in his Litanies the French 
 poet is more explicit; his refrain is "O Satan, 
 prends pitie de ma longue misere!" And this 
 from the poet of De profundis clamavi and the 
 hymn, in Latin, to Saint Francis (Francisco 
 meas Laudes) ! 
 
 40 
 
BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS 
 
 A third person has a share in the new Letters, 
 M. Ancelle, the advocate and guardian of the 
 errant Charles. Alternately cajoling and bully 
 ing, the letters addressed him by his charge 
 reveal a curious mentality. The father of Bau 
 delaire bequeathed his son about seventy-five 
 thousand francs, soon dissipated by the in 
 cipient dandy on pictures, furniture, jewelry, 
 bibelots, clothes, and light o loves; yet he 
 seemed to think that his guardian was robbing 
 him, that his mother hated him. In the mists 
 and ecstasies of his wild life he saw nothing 
 clearly except his shining visions, and being 
 of an obstinate nature, he pinned these visions 
 to paper. The history of art can show few more 
 laborious workmen than Baudelaire; his was 
 the technical heroism of which Henry James 
 speaks. Despite his drugs and drinks, he never 
 ceased working, the work of an intellectual 
 galley-slave. He filed his poems. He wrote 
 criticism Manet, Monet, Cezanne, and Rich 
 ard Wagner are specimens of his critical clair- 
 voyancy read his Salons and his splendid 
 tribute to the genius of Wagner in his Music 
 of the Future. Luck seemed against him. Like 
 Balzac, he was forever in debt. His mother 
 came to the rescue; his friends were worn out 
 helping him across perilous pecuniary quag 
 mires. Then he fled to Belgium, a country he 
 loathed, and celebrated that loathing in dis 
 tasteful verse, there to be stricken with general 
 paralysis, and later to be brought back to Paris, 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 to die cared for by the mother he believed inimi 
 cal to him. The mystery is that he didn t suc 
 cumb earlier in his life to the perpetual assaults 
 on his health. 
 
 When his mother married the father of the 
 poet, Joseph Francis Baudelaire or Beaude- 
 laire she was twenty-seven, her husband 
 sixty-two. By his first marriage the elder Bau 
 delaire had one son, Claude, who, like his half- 
 brother, Charles, died of paralysis. After the 
 death of the father the widow married within 
 a year the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then 
 Chef de Bataillon, Lieutenant-Colonel, deco 
 rated with the Legion of Honor, later General 
 and Ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, 
 and London. Charles was a frail, nervous youth, 
 but, unlike most children of genius, he was an 
 excellent scholar and won brilliant prizes at 
 college. In this d Annunzio resembled him. 
 His stepfather was proud of him. From the 
 Royal College at Lyons Charles went to the 
 Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled 
 in 1839. (He was born in 1821, also the birth 
 year of Flaubert.) Troubles soon began at 
 home. He disdained his mother and quarrelled 
 with General Aupick. She has confessed that 
 she was partially to blame; in the flush of her 
 second love she had forgotten her boy. He 
 could not forget nor forgive what he called her 
 infidelity to the memory of his father. Hamlet- 
 like, he was inconsolable. The worthy Bishop 
 of Montpelier, an old family friend, said that 
 
 42 
 
BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS 
 
 Charles was a little crazy; that second mar 
 riages usually bring woe in their train. The 
 young poet contented himself with muttering: 
 "When a mother has such a son she doesn t re 
 marry." The reverse was probably the truth. 
 He wrote in his journal: "My ancestors idiots 
 or maniacs ... all victims of terrible passions " ; 
 which was another of his exaggerations. His 
 father was a student, a practical man, a steady- 
 going bourgeois. On the paternal side the 
 grandfather of Charles was a Champenois peas 
 ant; his mother s people presumably were of 
 Normandy, though little is known of her fore 
 bears. Charles believed himself lost from the 
 time his half-brother was stricken with paralysis, 
 as well he might. Like many others, Baudelaire 
 was a victim to a malady the origins of which 
 were little known in his day. He also believed 
 that his own instability of temperament was the 
 result of the disparity of years in his parents. 
 
 In the heyday of his blood he was perverse. 
 Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic 
 notion that ennui can be best cured by evil 
 ways; sin, Baudelaire found the saddest of 
 diversions. Despite Theophile Gautier s stories 
 about the hashish club, Catulle Mendes denies 
 that the poet was addicted to the hemp habit. 
 What the majority of mankind does not know 
 concerning the habits of literary workers is this 
 prime fact: that men who toil writing poetry 
 and there is no mental toil comparable to 
 it, not even the higher mathematics cannot 
 
 43 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 indulge in drink or opium without speedy col 
 lapse. The old-fashioned ideas of " inspiration," 
 spontaneity, easy improvisation, of the sudden 
 bolt from heaven, are delusions still hugged by 
 the world. To be told that Chopin filed at his 
 music for years, that in his smithy Beethoven 
 forged his thunderbolts in the sweat of his sooty 
 brows, that Manet slaved like a dock laborer, 
 that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion 
 to work, may be a disillusion for the sentimen 
 tal. Yet such is the case. Minerva springing 
 full-fledged from Jupiter s skull is a pretty fancy, 
 but Balzac and Flaubert did not encourage that 
 fancy. Work literally killed them, as it killed 
 Poe and Jules de Goncourt. Maupassant went 
 insane because he would work and he would 
 play the same day. Baudelaire worked and 
 worried. His debts haunted him. His consti 
 tution was undoubtedly flawed, but that his 
 life was one prolonged debauch is a nightmare 
 of the moral police in some white cotton night 
 cap country. These letters to his mother are 
 the most human of documents and they prove 
 the contrary. Charles Baudelaire is the sad 
 dest and the profoundest poet in modern litera 
 ture. 
 
 Speaking of Nietzsche, I am reminded of 
 the study by William M. Salter, Nietzsche the 
 Thinker, which happened to be published here 
 at an inopportune time (1917). It is the most 
 satisfactory exposition of the ideas of the great 
 
 44 
 
BAUDELAIRE S LETTERS 
 
 poet-philosopher, who, even if he did not create 
 an inclosed system, has given birth to original 
 and suggestive ideas. Mr. Salter has, of course, 
 exploded the erroneous notion that Nietzsche 
 was persona grata with the Prussians. A letter 
 in my possession, though not addressed to me 
 alas ! I have but one written to me be 
 gins thus: "Woe to the victors, for they shall 
 be vanquished!" A veritable prophecy. This 
 was dated 1875, and alluded to the Franco- 
 Prussian War, the consequences of which sor 
 rowed the soul of Nietzsche. The Salter book 
 is testimony to American scholarship; cogent, 
 bold, brilliant, and conclusive. 
 
 45 
 
THE TWO TEMPTATIONS 
 
 THE two Temptations! Sounds melodra 
 matic, doesn t it? But it only refers to the 
 various versions of a great book. All good 
 Flaubertians will rejoice to learn that the earlier 
 draft of Flaubert s Temptation of St. Antony, 
 has been given a fitting English garb. This 
 translation is made from the 1849 an d I ^56 
 manuscripts, edited by Louis Bertrand, and is 
 by Rene Francis. The preface is by Sir Gaston 
 Maspero, distinguished archaeologist, and there 
 is also a prefatory note by Louis Bertrand. 
 This version must not be confounded with the 
 definitive one of 1874, Englished in superlative 
 fashion by Lafcadio Hearn and published here 
 in 1910. The new and bulky volume, admi 
 rably printed and copiously illustrated, is a 
 literary curiosity without which no Flaubert col 
 lection would be complete. To be sure, Flau 
 bert translated is Flaubert traduced, for as 
 Arthur Symons has written, Flaubert is difficult 
 to translate because he has no fixed rhythm. 
 
 "His prose keeps step with no regular march 
 music. He invents the rhythm of every sen 
 tence ; he changes his cadence with every mood 
 or for the convenience of every fact. He has 
 no theory of beauty in form apart from what 
 
THE TWO TEMPTATIONS 
 
 it expresses. For him form is a living tiling, 
 the physical body of thought, which it clothes 
 and interprets. Compare the style," continues 
 Mr. Symons, "of Flaubert in his books and you 
 will find that each book has its own rhythm, 
 perfectly appropriate to its subject-matter. In 
 Chateaubriand, Gautier, even Baudelaire, the 
 cadence is always the same; the most exquisite 
 word painting of Gautier can be translated 
 rhythm for rhythm without difficulty into Eng 
 lish. Once you have mastered the tune you 
 have merely to go on; every verse will be the 
 same." Not so with Flaubert. His is truly 
 polyphonic prose a phrase, by the way, that 
 Amy Lowell uses to describe an amorphous form 
 of prose and poetry. When I invented the com 
 bination years ago I meant only prose, what 
 George Saintsbury would call "numerous 
 prose." See his valuable critical History of 
 English Prose Rhythm. 
 
 While on a visit in 1845, Flaubert visited 
 Genoa. There, in the Palace Balbi-Senarega 
 - not at the Doria, as Maxime du Camp wrote 
 with his accustomed carelessness the French 
 writer saw an old picture by Breughel (probably 
 Pieter the younger, surnamed Hell-Breughel) 
 that represents a Temptation of St. Antony. 
 It is dingy in color and far from a masterpiece. 
 But Flaubert, who loved the grotesque, pro 
 cured an engraving of this picture, and it hung 
 till the day of his death in his study at Croisset, 
 near Rouen. I have seen it, as it still hangs in 
 
 47 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 the Flaubert Museum there. This picture was 
 the spring-board for his two Temptations. 
 Their germ may be found in his mystery play, 
 Smarh, with its demon and its metaphysical 
 coloring. But Breughel surely set into motion 
 the mental machinery of the Temptation, which 
 never stopped whirring till 1874. 
 
 The first draft of the Temptation was begun 
 May 24, 1848, and finished September 12, 1849. 
 The manuscript numbered five hundred and 
 forty pages. Set aside for Madame Bovary, 
 this draft was again taken up and the second 
 version was made in 1856; when finished the 
 manuscript was reduced to one hundred and 
 ninety-three pages. Not satisfied, Flaubert 
 returned to the work in 1872, and when ready 
 for publication in 1874 the number of pages 
 was one hundred and thirty-six; even then he 
 cut out from ten chapters, three. When a few 
 years later the 1856 version was given to the 
 world French critics were astonished to find it 
 so different from the definitive version of 1874. 
 The critical taste of Flaubert was vindicated. 
 His was true technical heroism. Reading in 
 1849 the earliest version to his friends Bouilhet 
 and Du Camp he had been bidden to burn the 
 stuff; instead he boiled it down into the 1856 
 version. To his dearest friend, Ivan Turgenieff, 
 he submitted his 1872 draft. Thus it came that 
 the wonderfully colored psychic and philosophic 
 panorama, this Gulliver-like excursion round 
 and about the master-ideas and religions of the 
 48 
 
THE TWO TEMPTATIONS 
 
 antique and early Christian worlds was at last 
 published. 
 
 All the youthful Flaubert, the "spouter" of 
 blazing phrases, the lover of jewelled words, of 
 picturesque and monstrous ideas and situations 
 is in the first turbulent version of the Tempta 
 tion; in the definitive version he is more critical, 
 historical. As his emotions cooled with the 
 years, Flaubert had grown intellectually. The 
 first Temptation is romantic, religious; the 
 1874 is better composed and sceptical. Ar 
 ranged more dramatically than the first, the 
 author s leanings toward Oriental mysticism 
 and the dominating ideas of the classic world 
 are better revealed in the last version. The 
 psychological gradations of character are more 
 clearly indicated in this version. We cannot agree 
 with Louis Bertrand, editor of the 1856 version, 
 that it is superior to the version of 1874. It 
 seems more novel, that s all. Flaubert was 
 never so much the surgeon as when he operated 
 upon this manuscript. He often hesitated, he 
 always suffered, but he never flinched when his 
 mind was fully resolved. It is for the student 
 a subject of enthralling interest to follow the 
 slow growth of these various versions. 
 
 " Since Goethe," would be a suggestive title for 
 an essay on the various epics written since his 
 death. The list would not be large. In France 
 there are only the barren rhetorical exercises 
 of Edgar Quinet s Ahasuerus, the insurrec 
 tionary poems of Hugo and the frigidly faultless 
 
 49 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 verse of Leconte de Lisle. But a work of such 
 profound depth and heroic power as Faust 
 there is not, except the Temptation of St. An 
 tony, which is impregnated by the Faustian 
 spirit though in its development poles apart 
 from the older poem that we are not sur 
 prised when we learn that the youthful Flaubert 
 was a passionate admirer of Goethe, even ad 
 dressing to his memory a long poem in alex 
 andrines. The Temptation is the only poem 
 despite its prose it is poetic that may be 
 classed with Brand or Zarathushtra. At times, 
 in its sweep of execution and grandeur of con 
 ception, it grazes certain episodes in Faust. 
 
 But though it may excel in verbal beauty or 
 in its imaginative presentation of the problems 
 of volition, it falls short of Goethe s ethical 
 vision. Faust is a man who wills. "In the 
 beginning was the act." Antony is static, not 
 dynamic. Faust is tempted by Mephisto, yet 
 does not lose his soul. Flaubert s hermit resists 
 Satan at his subtlest; withal, we do not feel 
 that his soul is as much worth the saving as 
 Faust s. Man for man, Faust is the more sig 
 nificant; Antony is narrow-minded; indeed, 
 almost besotted by superstition. He crystallizes, 
 also symbolizes, a vanished period of mythology. 
 Faust stands for the man of the present, and in 
 the second part of the poem the man of the 
 future. Ideas are the heroes of Flaubert s epic, 
 though St. Antony s is a metaphysical history, 
 not a human one like Faust s. 
 
 50 
 
THE TWO TEMPTATIONS 
 
 But to Faust alone may the Temptation be 
 compared. George Saintsbury has pronounced 
 this masterpiece to be the most perfect example 
 extant of dream literature. And precisely be 
 cause of its precision in details, its astounding 
 architectonic and its rich-hued waking hal 
 lucinations. 
 
THE FLAUBERT ANNIVERSARY 
 
 IT is a holy and a wholesome act to visit the 
 grave of a genius, for the memories there aroused 
 may serve as a consolation and an inspiration 
 in our spiritually arid existence. I often thought 
 of this at Rouen when I went there to visit the 
 tomb of Gustave Flaubert, so happily described 
 by Francois Coppee as The Beethoven of French 
 Prose. A quarter of a century ago I protested 
 in newspapers and books against the tardy 
 official recognition accorded one of the great 
 prose masters of France which means the 
 world and one of the most marvellous among 
 novelists. In the Solferino Gardens at Rouen 
 there is the marble memorial by the sculptor 
 Chapu, and on the heights of the Monumental 
 Cemetery, in the Flaubert family plot Flau 
 bert s father was a distinguished surgeon and 
 not far from the Joan of Arc monument, lie 
 the remains of the author of Madame Bo vary. 
 His celebrated pupil, Guy de Maupassant, is 
 also remembered in the Solferino Gardens by 
 a statue; another may be seen in the Pare Mon- 
 ceau. But at the time I began urging some 
 form of a memorial to the master of masters 
 nothing had been done. Since then the govern 
 ment has made of the old Flaubert home at 
 Croisset, a half-hour from Rouen, down the 
 
 52 
 
THE FLAUBERT ANNIVERSARY 
 
 Seine, a worthy memorial. The house in which 
 such masterpieces as Madame Bo vary, Sa- 
 lammbo, Sentimental Education, The Tempta 
 tion of St. Antony, Bouvard and Pecuchet, and 
 the Three Tales were created is now a Flaubert 
 museum. Abbe Prevost is said to have written 
 Manon Lescaut there. The old house still 
 stands, though decaying. Flaubert s study is, 
 however, in fair preservation. The paternal 
 home, occupying a part of the little park, was 
 a dismantled manufactory when last I saw the 
 place. 
 
 The faithful Colange, for twenty years servi 
 tor in the Flaubert household, kept a cafe in 
 the neighborhood, and was always ready to 
 talk of his master, of Mme. Flaubert, the 
 mother. In vain I tried to get a photograph 
 of that lady. Colange would not sell it, would 
 not even have it reproduced. I have seen the 
 picture of Dr. Achille Flaubert, but I am mote 
 interested in the mothers of men of genius, and 
 I can recall no edition of the works containing 
 the portrait of Mme. Flaubert. But I recall 
 her features. A sweet, mild, intelligent face, 
 betraying evidences of sorrow and resignation. 
 The typical mother. Her son was a celibate, 
 and, with the exception of Louise Colet, he 
 never gave his mother any worriment over 
 women. And it was that lady, whose portrait 
 was recently exhibited at the Courbet retrospec 
 tive exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum, 
 who was the disturber, not Flaubert. There 
 
 53 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 had been an affair, and understanding the honor 
 able nature of the man, the wily humbug Louise 
 endeavored to make trouble. She wrote Mme. 
 Flaubert, a deeply pious woman; she har 
 ried Gustave, who, like most literary psy 
 chologists and sounders of feminine souls, was 
 naive in the practical conduct of his love-af 
 fairs. The epitaph of Louise Colet was com 
 posed by Maxime Ducamp: "Here lies the 
 woman who compromised Victor Cousin, made 
 Alfred de Musset ridiculous, and tried to as 
 sassinate Alphonse Karr; requiescat in pace." 
 A mean, spiteful masculine witticism this, 
 though well deserved. Of Ducamp a like 
 epitaph might be fabricated: Hie jacet the 
 man who slandered Baudelaire, traduced his 
 loving friend Gustave Flaubert, and who was 
 critically snuffed out of existence by Guy de 
 Maupassant. 
 
 I have preserved a card sent to me by Mme. 
 Franklin Grout, dated from Villa Tanit, An- 
 tibes, in which she expressed her gratitude for 
 several things I wrote regarding the necessity 
 of a Flaubert museum at Croisset; also for the 
 truth in the Ducamp matter. Mme. Grout 
 was the Caroline Commanville of the Flaubert 
 correspondence, the beloved niece of the mas 
 ter, for whom he sacrificed his personal fortune, 
 a considerable one for a man of letters forty 
 years ago (about one million two hundred 
 thousand francs). Her husband, M. Comman 
 ville, had suffered from reverses, and Flaubert, 
 
 54 
 
THE FLAUBERT ANNIVERSARY 
 
 the supposed egoist, cold-blooded, self-centred, 
 an epicurean of literature, calmly deprived 
 himself of his last franc and, nearly sixty years 
 of age, went into harness. His noble act was 
 accomplished without the flaring of trumpets. 
 There were no publishers " blurbs" then; nowa 
 days this transaction in hearts and bonds would 
 be yawped to the thousand winds of publicity; 
 luckily, the sensitive great man was spared 
 that vulgar fate. After the death of her hus 
 band, Caroline Commanville remarried; her 
 second husband was the Dr. Grout who at 
 tended Guy de Maupassant during his fatal 
 illness at the famous Maison Blanche. 
 
 Think of it ! I saw the great Flaubert in the 
 flesh. I may quote Browning: "Ah, did you 
 once see Shelley plain, and did he stop and 
 speak to you?" . . . Set me down as hopelessly 
 romantic, as a cultivator of the cult of great 
 artists in an age when there are only imitators 
 or pigmies. It s born in me, this species of ar 
 tistic snobbery. I can t help it. Every now 
 and then some professorial rabbit pokes its pink 
 snout from the academic hutch and passionately 
 pipes, "Romance is the ruin of the world !" and 
 retires on gliding paws. After his naughty 
 proclamation I always take down from the 
 shelf Alice in Wonderland and read with re 
 newed delight the conversation of the Mad 
 Hatter and the March Hare. No romance in 
 the world? Of that particular professorial 
 rabbit Daisy Ashford might say: Render unto 
 
 55 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Caesar s wife the things that are suspicious! 
 Even academic rabbits are romantic; else their 
 breeding propensities have been enormously 
 exaggerated. Flaubert is my romance. 
 
 Above all, Flaubert was a musician, a musical 
 poet. His ear was the final court of appeal, 
 and to make sonorous cadences in a language 
 that lacks the essential richness, the diapasonic 
 undertow of the English, is just short of the 
 miraculous. Until the time of Chateaubriand 
 and Victor Hugo the French language was less 
 a liquid, plastic collocation of sounds than a 
 formal pattern, despite the clarity and precision 
 of the eighteenth century; one must go back to 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for 
 richer, more pregnant speech. Omnipresent 
 with Flaubert was the musician s idea of com 
 posing a masterpiece that should float because 
 of its sheer style. Lyric verbal ecstasy quite 
 overpowered him. He was born December 21, 
 1821. As Henry James has said, he is one of 
 the glories of French literature. Doubtless 
 there will be a fitting commemoration of his 
 one hundredth birth anniversary two years 
 hence, and I hope that America will be repre 
 sented at Rouen on that occasion. 
 
ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 
 
 MY first meeting with Theodore Roosevelt, 
 though brief, will be ever memorable for me. I 
 was not precisely "summoned" to Oyster Bay 
 on Election Day early in November, 1915, 
 though I gladly accepted Col. Roosevelt s in 
 vitation in the light of a " royal command," and 
 went over to Long Island in company with John 
 Quinn, who had arranged the meeting, and 
 Francis J. Heney, once public prosecutor in San 
 Francisco. I had received several letters from 
 the Colonel of Colonels, of which I recall two 
 significant sentences. One ended: "What a 
 trump John Quinn is!" The other begins: "I 
 have just received your New Cosmopolis. My 
 son Kermit, whose special delight is New York, 
 would probably appreciate it more than I do, 
 for I am a countryman rather than a man of 
 the pavements." Now, I had always thought 
 of Theodore Roosevelt as a "man of the pave 
 ments," notwithstanding his delight in rough- 
 riding across Western prairies. Personally I 
 found him the reverse of either : a scholarly man, 
 fond of music and the fine arts he showed me 
 a number of canvases by the late Marcius Sim 
 mons, a young American painter, who had been 
 greatly influenced by Turner. The colonel had 
 an excellent library of Colonial literature, and 
 
 57 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 was fond of digging out pregnant sentences for 
 quotation in his speeches from early preachers 
 and statesmen. He appeared to be interested 
 in my comparison between his prose style and 
 the prose style of President Woodrow Wilson: 
 the one swift, concise, full of affirmations, strik 
 ing sentences, and notable for its absence of 
 glitter. For the colonel reality was greater than 
 rhetoric; while the prose of Mr. Wilson is emi 
 nently professorial, preserving as it does a nice 
 balance of sound and sense; above all, "literary" 
 prose, the prose of the study, never dynamic, 
 seldom brilliant; prose "standardized," eigh 
 teenth-century, smooth, sinuous, flexible, and 
 ever-illuding prose. 
 
 My distinguished host showed some of the 
 trophies he had acquired in Europe when on 
 that historic grand tour; and, as I had not visited 
 him in the guise of a professional interviewer, I 
 did not write at the time of what I saw; but now 
 I may do so without violating the intimacies of 
 private hospitality. One thing that interested 
 me was a photograph of the late Andrew Car 
 negie, taken in Berlin during the military ma 
 noeuvres; both Carnegie and Roosevelt had been 
 guests of William Hohenzollern, then Kaiser. I 
 told the colonel that I had been present at the 
 formal opening of the Peace Palace, in Septem 
 ber, 1913, at The Hague, and that the day had 
 been so hot that all Holland, there represented, 
 had fled to the beach at Scheveningen, adding 
 that I believed the palace eventually would be 
 
ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 
 
 turned into the handsomest cafe in Europe; and 
 I had printed this prophecy (?) in The Times 
 Sunday Magazine, when reporting the solemn 
 humbuggery of the peaceful house-warming. 
 
 War was discussed with all the zest of the 
 wonderful man. One question I permitted my 
 self: "Colonel, would the Lusitania have been 
 sunk if you had been in the White House?" 
 Snapping his formidable jaw, he exclaimed: 
 " There would have been no Lusitania incident 
 if I had been President." 
 
 Among other various topics the colonel des 
 canted on the poetical merits of George Cabot 
 Lodge, son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who 
 died in the very harvest time of his genius. In 
 his introduction to the two volumes of Poems 
 and Dramas, Theodore Roosevelt has never 
 written with such a happy mingling of perspi 
 cacity and tempered enthusiasm. Among the 
 younger American poets I find Lodge of impor 
 tance, not along because of his potential promise, 
 but because of his actual performance. An au 
 thentic poet, his versatility is marked. In his 
 sonnets and lyrics he paid the admiring tribute 
 of youth to Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, 
 Browning, Meredith, and Swinburne. He could 
 mimic Walt Whitman, who is fatally easy to 
 parody, and he early succumbed to Schopen 
 hauer and Baudelaire. In at least one of his 
 dramas I found the cosmic ecstasy of Nietzsche; 
 also the doctrine of the Eternal Return. But 
 young Lodge had assimilated a half dozen cul- 
 
 59 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 tures, and passed far out to sea the perilous rocks 
 of imitation, upon which so many lesser talents 
 have come to grief. When as an achievement 
 we consider his Herakles we are amazed at its 
 maturity of thought and technical finish. The 
 poet, the Maker, confronts us, and in reclo thing 
 the antique and tragic myth with his own lovely 
 language he is, nevertheless, a " modern." I 
 know few poets of the new school who may 
 boast this sense of the vital present, added to a 
 divination and an evocation of "old, unhappy 
 far-off things and battles long ago." His figures 
 are not fashioned by academic black magic, but 
 are vital beings, loving, trusting, suffering, and 
 in conflict with ineluctable destiny. He had the 
 lyric art, also the architectural. He was a singer 
 and a builder of the lofty rhyme. His handling 
 of complex forms and abstruse rhymes was re 
 markable. George Cabot Lodge possessed both 
 voice and vision. His life, by Henry Adams, 
 shows him to have been a young man beloved by 
 his friends, among whom were Jonathan Stick- 
 ney Trumbull, Langdon Mitchell, and the late 
 Sir Cecil Spring-Rice. When I met him in Paris 
 he was a student at the Sorbonne. It was about 
 1896. A charming youth. I may only add 
 now my humble mite of admiration to the manes 
 of this dead genius. 
 
 When I saw Dr. Georg Brandes at the Hotel 
 Astor a few months before the outbreak of the 
 Great War I told him that he resembled the bust 
 60 
 
ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 
 
 made of him by Klinger. It was the first time 
 I had talked to the celebrated Danish author, to 
 whom I had dedicated Egoists. Then past 
 seventy, as active as a young man, I could see 
 no reason why he shouldn t live to be a cente 
 narian. An active brain is lodged in his nimble 
 body. I had made up my mind to ask him no 
 questions about America. I found him in a 
 rage over the way he was misquoted by some of 
 the interviewers. It should be remembered that 
 primarily he is a cosmopolitan thinker. He 
 writes in English, French, German, and Danish 
 with equal ease. As to the provinciality of our 
 country s literature and the seven arts he has 
 definite opinions; but he was polite enough not 
 to rub them in on me. He was accused of find 
 ing his favorite reading in the "works" of Jack 
 London ! That idea amused him. Among our 
 "moderns" it is Frank Norris he likes; a slight 
 difference, indeed. Emerson, Poe, Whitman in 
 terested him, though not as iconoclasts or path 
 finders. The originality of this trinity he didn t 
 dwell upon; made-over Europeans, he called 
 them; Emerson and German transcendental 
 philosophy; Poe and E. T. W. Hoffmann; Whit 
 man and Ossian Walt s rugged speech is a 
 windy parody of MacPherson s, and Ossian him 
 self* is a windy parody of the Old Testament 
 style. 
 
 Brandes is an iconoclast, a radical, a non 
 conformist born, and more often a No-Sayer 
 than a Yes-Sayer. The many-headed monster 
 61 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 has no message for him. As he was the first 
 European critic to give us true pictures of Ibsen 
 and Nietzsche, I led him to speak of the poet- 
 philosopher. At Baireuth, where I had gone to 
 hear the Wagner music-drama at its fountain- 
 head and very muddy was the music-making, 
 I am sorry to say I was shown the house 
 where was born Max Stirner. My friend said: 
 "When the very name of Richard Wagner is 
 forgotten, S timer s will be in the mouth of the 
 world." Of course, this sounded improbable. 
 I know S timer s book, The Ego and Its Own, 
 knew his real name, Johann Kaspar Schmidt, 
 and that he had been a poor, half -starved school 
 master in Berlin, and, in 1845, imprisoned by the 
 Prussian Government. This intellectual anarch 
 rather call him nihilist, for, compared with 
 his nihilism, Bakunin s is only revolutionary re 
 sistance was to become later the most power 
 ful disrupting force in Europe ! I couldn t be 
 lieve it. But now I recall my friend s prophecy 
 when I read of the doings of the Russian Bol- 
 sheviki. Not Nietzsche, but Stirner, has been 
 the real motor force in the contemporary revo 
 lution. No half-way house of socialism for the 
 Reds ! And that is the lesson of Artzibachev s 
 Sanine, the import of which the majority of 
 critics missed, partially because of the imperfect 
 English translation many suppressions and 
 also because they missed the significance of the 
 new man, who, while continuing the realistic 
 tradition of Dostoievsky and Tolstoy, was di- 
 62 
 
ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 
 
 ametrically opposed to their sentimental Brother 
 hood of Man toujours that old fallacy of 
 Rousseau ! and preached the fiercest individ 
 ualism, violently repudiating Nietzsche and his 
 aristocratic individualism. It may be said in 
 passing that a reaction to individualism is bound 
 to come; the lesson of the war will not be lost. 
 Nor the teaching of Emerson. After the present 
 overt suppression of the individual, the pen 
 dulum will surely swing from tyrannical social 
 ism to the greater freedom of the individual. 
 And it can t come quickly enough here in 
 America. 
 
 Dr. Brandes sets more store by Nietzsche 
 than S timer; he was the first to call Nietzsche 
 a "radical aristocrat." We switched to the 
 theme of Strindberg. Brandes said: "Yes, he 
 was mad. Once he visited me and told me of a 
 call he had made at a lunatic asylum near 
 Stockholm. He rang the bell and asked the 
 physician if he Strindberg, the greatest of 
 dramatists was crazy; to which the doctor 
 replied: My dear Mr. Strindberg, if you will 
 only consent to stay with me six weeks and talk 
 with me every day, I promise to answer your 
 question. " After that Brandes had no doubts 
 on the question. Brandes is not only the dis 
 coverer of Ibsen, Nietzsche, and Strindberg, but 
 he himself is a revaluer of old valuations. 
 Therein lies his significance for this generation. 
 In 1888 he wrote to Nietzsche: "I have been the 
 best hated man in the north for the last four 
 
 63 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 years. The newspapers rave against me every 
 day, especially since my long feud with Bjornson, 
 in which all the moral German newspapers 
 take sides against me." . . . To-day he is re 
 garded as a reactionary by the Reds. The affec 
 tions of Brandes have always been bestowed 
 upon the literatures of England and France. 
 Of his Main Currents, Maurice Bigeon has said 
 that Brandes did for the nineteenth century 
 what Sainte-Beuve did for the seventeenth cen 
 tury in his History of Port Royal. What is vital, 
 what makes for progress, what has lasting influ 
 ence in social life? asks the Dane in his Main 
 Currents. He will remain the archetype of 
 cosmopolitan critics for future generations. A 
 humanist, the mind of Brandes is steel-colored. 
 Ductile, when white-hot, it flows like lava from 
 a volcano in eruption; but always is it steel, 
 whether liquefied or rigid. Pre-eminently it is 
 the fighting mind. He objects to being de 
 scribed as " brilliant." The model of Brandes 
 as a portrait-painter of ideas and individuals is 
 Velasquez, because "Velasquez is not brilliant, 
 but true." 
 
 Yet he is brilliant and lucid, and steel-like, 
 whether writing of Shakespeare or Lassalle. 
 An ardent upholder of Taine and the psychology 
 of race, he contends that in the individual, not 
 in the people, lies the only hope for progress. 
 He is altogether for the psychology of the indi 
 vidual. Like Carlyle, he has the cult of the 
 great man. The fundamental question is 
 
 64 
 
ROOSEVELT AND BRANDES 
 
 can the well-being of the race, which is the end 
 of all effort, be attained without great men? 
 "I say no, and again, no!" he cries. He is a 
 firm believer in the axiom that every tub should 
 stand on its own bottom; and in our earthly 
 pasture, where the sheep think, act, or vote to 
 order, the lesson of Brandes is "writ clear": To 
 myself be true ! that truth set forth with double 
 facets by Ibsen in Peer Gynt and Brand. Also 
 by Emerson. Beware of the Bogy the cow 
 ardly spirit of compromise, with its sneaking 
 prudent advice; Go around! For mobs and 
 mob-made laws Georg Brandes has a mighty 
 hatred. He, too, is a radical aristocrat whose 
 motto might be: Blessed are the proud of spirit, 
 for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Earth! 
 With his Hebraic irony he stung to the quick 
 the spiritual sloth of Denmark. His life was 
 made unpleasant at the Copenhagen University; 
 but he had behind him the younger generation. 
 He knew that to write for the intrenched and 
 prejudiced class would be a waste of ink. He 
 exploded his verbal bombs beneath the national 
 ark and blew sky-high stale and false ideals. 
 He became a national figure after he had been 
 recognized as a world critic. Not the polished 
 writer that was Sainte-Beuve, not the possessor 
 of a synthetic intellect like Hippolyte Taine s, 
 Brandes is the broadest-minded man of the three, 
 and upon his shoulders their critical mantles 
 have fallen. Agitated as he was by the war 
 his letters to me were full of references to it - 
 
 65 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 he was philosopher enough to plunge into the 
 profoundest work. He has finished two studies 
 on such divergent themes as Goethe and Vol 
 taire. Let us hope both books be given an Eng 
 lish garb and speedy publication. 
 
 66 
 
PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING 
 
 WHEN an etcher of Joseph Pennell s caliber 
 talks about his art it behooves both critic and 
 public to sit up and listen. Mr. Pennell is en 
 dowed with a special gift for making people sit 
 up. He loves to startle. He is occasionally 
 choleric, he indulges in righteous indignation 
 over the blindness of critics and fumes betimes 
 because of the indifference of the world at large 
 concerning the finer shades of art. Nevertheless, 
 he always says something pertinent, even when 
 it runs contrary to popular opinion, or sneers at 
 critical canons. He is well within his rights as 
 an artist to attack professional critics, for critics 
 and their criticism are a perpetual nuisance an 
 incontrovertible statement that will, we are 
 sure, be smilingly indorsed by the majority of 
 the pesky critters. In his newly published and 
 magnificently illustrated Etchers and Etching, 
 Mr. Pennell has rendered a genuine service to 
 students and amateurs, for not only does he re 
 veal the secrets of his prison house, but he also 
 reveals with a frankness that is fascinating his 
 opinions of other etchers as compared with his 
 god, Whistler, and incidentally tells his readers 
 that if they do not agree with him they are un 
 varnished damphools ! 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Bully old Joe ! He is the joy of honest re 
 viewers and the terror of them that are not 
 firmly grounded in their artistic technique. 
 Herein he puts himself through all his familiar 
 paces. Of all the graphic arts, etching is the 
 most superior! Of all etchers, living or dead, 
 James McNeill Whistler is the greatest ! From 
 this supreme judgment there is no appeal. And 
 the curious part is that Mr. Pennell gives you 
 chapter and verse to back up his argument. In 
 all that pertained to the delicate and difficult 
 art of etching, Whistler was the master. Not 
 Rembrandt, who was careless as to the printing 
 of his plates, careless as to finesse, and not given 
 to slicking up his work; not Meryon, who was, 
 according to Pennell, an indifferent etcher, and 
 no artist should be mentioned in company with 
 the peerless Whistler. There is but one Allah 
 in etching, and Pennell is his prophet. Salaam 
 alaiekum! Rembrandt and Whistler? The 
 Apocalypse and the Butterfly ! 
 
 There is no denying the enthusiasm of an ex 
 pert. And there is no denial of the proposition 
 that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing in 
 etching as in criticism. Yet there is something 
 to be said for the much-abused critics. Artists 
 who discuss their art are sometimes biassed, to 
 put it mildly. The principal critical pronounce 
 ments that have endured were not made by pro 
 fessionals; on the contrary, such writers as 
 Wincklemann, Goethe, Diderot, Blanc, Gau- 
 tier, Baudelaire especially Baudelaire Zola 
 68 
 
PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING 
 
 (rather negligible), Goncourt, Roger Marx, 
 Geoffrey, Huysmans, Mauclair, Charles Morice, 
 Octave Mirbeau, R. A. M. Stevenson, George 
 Moore, D. S. MacColl, Lionel Cust, Colvin, 
 Ricci, Sturge Moore, Bernhard Berenson, John 
 Van Dyke, W. C. Brownell, Royal Cortissoz, and 
 others, have contributed more to the right un 
 derstanding of the plastic arts than any opposing 
 list of painters, sculptors and engravers you may 
 assemble. Sift names and opinions, and for 
 one Fromentin, one Whistler, one Reynolds, you 
 will find a hundred writers who, non-professional 
 as they were and are, have considerably added 
 to our enlightenment in matters artistic. 
 
 Not all critics are "men who have failed in 
 literature and art," as Balzac said. The tech 
 niques of the various arts are, naturally enough, 
 best known to the practitioners thereof. Yet 
 Curator Frank Weitenkampf of our Public Li 
 brary has written one of the most valuable books 
 in the arts graphic, How to Appreciate Prints. 
 Its union of technical insight and catholicity of 
 judgment has been justly praised by all discern 
 ing etchers. The Discourses of Sir Joshua are, 
 take them by and large, the best of their kind 
 because most temperate. What wouldn t we 
 give for the critical writings of Leonardo da 
 Vinci, whose prose, what we have of it, proves 
 him a master. Vasari is an immortal gossip. 
 William Blake was narrow in his outlook. 
 Fancy ruling out from court the pictures of 
 Rubens ! Degas was a wit who abominated art 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 critics more than Mr. Pennell. He abused 
 Huysmans, the first to make public his rare 
 genius. Millet, Rousseau, Constable said in 
 teresting things of their art, of their contem 
 poraries. "There is no isolated truth," de 
 clared Millet. "A good thing is never done 
 twice," wrote Constable; or Alfred Stevens s 
 definition of art as "nature seen through the 
 prism of an emotion," which epigram evidently 
 Zola remembered in his Experimental Novel. 
 Rodin has also uttered much wisdom. Fromen- 
 tin s studies of Dutch masters is a standard book, 
 although he missed Vermeer probably because 
 the work of that master of masters was attrib 
 uted to other men, notably to Terburg. 
 
 Ruskin did much to muddle public opinion 
 with his intemperate praise of Turner and his 
 purblind estimate of Whistler. Who shall deny 
 that he was a force making for good? Walter 
 Pater painted with words, not only making beau 
 tiful phrases but memorable criticism. Philip 
 Gilbert Hamerton often blundered, and Pennell 
 impales him, also abundantly quotes from him. 
 The written and reported words of artists are 
 alike precious to layman and critic. That the 
 artist, Mr. Pennell for example, prefers etching 
 to writing is natural; so might the critic if he had 
 the pictorial gift. Art is art, not nature; and 
 criticism is criticism, not always art. It pro 
 fesses to interpret the artist s work, and at best 
 it mirrors his art unavoidably intermingled with 
 the personal temperament of the critic. At the 
 70 
 
PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING 
 
 worst, the critic lacks temperament, and when 
 this is the case Heaven help artist and public ! 
 Walter Raleigh sums up the question in a sen 
 tence: "Criticism, after all, is not to legislate nor 
 to classify, but to raise the dead." The magical 
 art of evocation ! Few critics possess the gift, 
 but, then, fewer are the artists who boast it. 
 
 That painters or etchers can get along 
 without professional criticism we know from 
 history, but that they themselves play the critic 
 successfully is open to doubt. And are they any 
 fairer to younger talent than official criticism? 
 It is an inquiry that should be fraught with sig 
 nificance for professionals. Artists, great and 
 various, have sent forth their pupils into the 
 world. As befits honest criticism, have they at 
 all recognized the pupils of other men; played 
 fair with those whose practice and theory were 
 at the opposite pole to their own? The answer 
 is a decided negative; the examples that might 
 be adduced, legion. Recall what Velasquez said 
 to Salvator Rosa, according to Carl Justi. Sal- 
 vator had asked the incomparable Spaniard 
 whether he did not think Raphael the best of all 
 the painters he had seen in Italy. Velasquez 
 answered: "To be plain with you, Raphael does 
 not please me at all." In art criticism a Robert 
 Schumann is yet to appear; and notwithstanding 
 his catholicity in taste, Schumann missed Wag 
 ner, as did Berlioz. Perhaps Stendhal saw the 
 weakness in such criticisms when he remarked: 
 "Difference engenders hatred." 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 To leave historical generalities for the par 
 ticulars of contemporary criticism, let us open a 
 book that has recently appeared, entitled De 
 David a Degas, by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 
 famous portraitist, charming causeur, brilliant 
 penman, sympathetic and sometimes caustic 
 critic. M. Blanche, a painter by "the grace of 
 God," for his talents are many, considers such 
 diverse artists as Ingres, Manet, Renoir, Ce 
 zanne, Fantin-Latour a notably fine estimate 
 Degas one of the best essays Aubrey 
 Beardsley a masterly miniature of a marvel 
 lous draftsman and the redoubtable Whistler. 
 On page 35 M. Blanche writes of the etchings 
 and lithographs of the American artists, that they 
 were not worthy of their reputation; that the 
 Paris series frankly lean on Meryon, recall his 
 work; others are freer, occasionally pretty, 
 though weak, without character in their pictur 
 esque quality of vignette, a genre wherein later 
 Mariano Fortuny excelled ! We are here far from 
 Pennell s dictum that Whistler is the greatest 
 etcher that ever lived. What does Jacques 
 Blanche know about etching? probably will be 
 his comment if he reads the critique in question. 
 
 And we should quite agree with the etcher if 
 he should make some remark; such one-sided 
 verdict, despite the fact that M. Blanche is to 
 be listened to with respect when he talks of art 
 and artists deserves rebuke ! It again confirms 
 the attitude attributed to George Saintsbury 
 that all discussion of contemporaries is convex 
 72 
 
PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING 
 
 sation, not criticism. Mr. Pennell, who also 
 slaughters the reputations of the living and dead, 
 might put this witticism in his pipe and smoke 
 up. The late William M. Laffan, a practical 
 etcher, one who etched for his bread and butter, 
 as he assured us, wrote in the Sun newspaper, of 
 which he was the proprietor at the time of Whis 
 tler s death, that the plates of the etcher Whistler 
 would outlive Whistler the painter. Mr. Laffan, 
 who possessed a flair for criticism, prophesied 
 aright. He said too that there were no such 
 things as replicas, which is the truth. Many 
 Whistler canvases are sadly deteriorating, critical 
 enthusiasm concerning them is cooling the 
 artist Whistler is now seen not to be an isolated 
 apparition but a synthesis of his own enthralling 
 self, based on the art of Courbet, Fantin, Albert 
 Moore, the Japanese and the inevitable Velas 
 quez; but the etchings and lithographs of this 
 truly versatile genius, being things of beauty, 
 will be a joy forever. They are his legacy to the 
 elect. And yet, must the "grand manner" of 
 line-engravings irretrievably vanish to make 
 place for the sketchy, fussy etching? 
 
 Not only is Brother Pennell a brother to 
 dragons ! narrow in his estimates of all the 
 great etchers, but he is unjust to workers in 
 other black-and-white mediums. Old-fashioned 
 line-engraving is mechanical, and was so tedious 
 to execute that the process was abandoned for 
 still more mechanical though simpler methods. 
 Not, however, till the patient engravers had be- 
 
 73 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 queathed to art a gallery of stately portraits and 
 landscapes, minutely, if somewhat elaborately, 
 recorded. Etching, be it never so fine, so per 
 sonal, cannot compete with the masters of line, 
 because etching lacks depth and substance. It 
 is improvisation at the best; at its worst it is 
 almost feline in its scratchings. Mezzotint, too, 
 is a noble art. It is often smudgy, to be sure, 
 but it has tonal splendor, which etching has not, 
 despite the magical suggestion of tone in the 
 Whistler plates. After reading Mr. Pennell s 
 exposition of the pains and perils consequent 
 upon the production of a perfect etching, the 
 finished plates of Marc Antonio, Richard Earlom 
 or Masson s gray-haired man, do not seem a 
 whit more mechanical. There are tricks in all 
 trades. Whistler s supremacy did not alone 
 consist in his virtuosity with the needle, but in 
 his personality as poet and mystic. Rembrandt 
 was greater artist than etcher; in his days the 
 manipulation of material was not so consum 
 mate as during the Wliistlerian epoch, yet he is 
 by all odds the bigger man. A rude scratch of 
 his and you see the glories of heaven, the gloom 
 of hell. There is a fulness, a richness, a solidity, 
 an architectural quality in Meryon missing in 
 Whistler, Pennell to the contrary notwithstand 
 ing. In the evocation of the intangible, the 
 evanescent, of the exquisite, Whistler has never 
 had a rival, and as a technician he is foremost; 
 but George Moore was not far astray when he 
 said that if "Jemmy" had been fifty pounds 
 
 74 
 
PENNELL TALKS ABOUT ETCHING 
 
 heavier he might have painted like Velasquez. 
 In the last analysis his work lacks weight, sub 
 stance, virile power, though not imagination, 
 and that quintessential quality is worth a wil 
 derness of beefy, brilliant, magisterial canvases. 
 
 All this is beside the mark, which is the su 
 perb Pennell volume. Agree with him or not, 
 he writes with vigor, demolishing shams and 
 humbuggery, and his words, if often intem 
 perate, are prompted by burning sincerity. He 
 is never smug nor self-satisfied. He sees through 
 the hole in our national millstone of art. His 
 ideal is the linear, and at a time when sloppy 
 drawing, barbarous color and grotesque com 
 position have become our shibboleth, his warn 
 ings are salutary. His is the cult of beauty for 
 beauty s sake, the only culture in art. Etching 
 to him is the still small voice of an art abused by 
 amateurs, too often tortured by artists (you 
 think of the big plates of Frank Brangwyn). 
 He is fair to the Bohemian, Wenzel Hollar, who, 
 to be seen at his best, one must go to Prague, 
 to the Hollareum, there in the Rudolphinum, 
 where his amazing work may be studied in its 
 entirety. 
 
 Mr. Pennell pays a rather grudging tribute to 
 Seymour Haden, while admitting the beauty of 
 his plate, Sunset in Ireland, and he warmed the 
 cockles of our heart by his discriminating praise 
 of the splendid etcher that was Felicien Rops. 
 At the conclusion he peremptorily exclaims: "I 
 know of no other great etchers." Oh, yes, you 
 
 75 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 do, Joseph Pennell! You are too modest by 
 half. Demme, sir, as old Joseph Bagstock would 
 say, old Joey B., begad, sir, you know a chap 
 named Pennell who sometimes etches like an 
 angel. And also lithographs. We ll eat our 
 hat if his scraped mezzotint, Wrens City, isn t 
 a beautiful plate ! 
 
IN PRAISE OF PRINTS 
 
 (TO JOSEPH PENNELL) 
 
 THE gallery is rather narrow, but long and 
 lofty; the light is diffused and gentle. A tiny 
 staircase leads to mysterious retreats where, 
 Piranesi-like, may be descried other galleries, 
 though not peopled by the prisoners of the 
 fantastic Italian etcher. A familiar voice wel 
 comes the visitor who, weary of the monotonous 
 mobs on the avenue, finds here a haven where, 
 surrounded by the ingratiating arts of black- 
 and-white mezzotinting, etching, lithograph 
 and line-engraving he may soothe his soul 
 and rest his bones. The color-scheme is har 
 monious. A dark panelling, and for the smaller 
 galleries a more cheerful though neutral tone, 
 is observed. Moving slowly about he sees some 
 black spots on the wall; at close range they 
 resolve themselves into ingenious patterns. 
 Stacked in portfolios are prints. On large tables 
 more of them sprawl. In the rear room there 
 is, perhaps, an exhibition of etchings or mezzo 
 tints, but seldom of line-engravings. A young 
 Scotsman shows his mettle the Scotch take 
 to the needle as ducks do to grass. Why are 
 line-engravings never hung nowadays? You 
 are told that taste has changed since the golden 
 age of engraving ruled our walls. And changed 
 for the worse, thinks the fanatic of pure line. 
 
 77 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Yonder, above a huge bin, in which are stored 
 rare prints, hangs the Moses of Philippe de 
 Champaigne, engraved by Edelinck. It is a 
 largely moulded composition. The Hebrew law 
 giver, on whose noble features linger the reflec 
 tions of Jehovah s divine illumination, the horns 
 of light emanating from Mount Sinai, holds 
 the rod in one hand, supporting with the other 
 the table of the laws. A picture in the grand 
 manner. Therefore, to be passed by in favor of 
 some cryptic scratches on a small plate, a signed 
 proof by an artistic nobody, who designs and 
 etches in a mediocre fashion. Yet his work is 
 eagerly snapped up, while the rhythmic line of 
 Edelinck is not even looked at, rich as it is 
 as an interpretation or artistic performance. 
 " Engraving is so mechanical, don t you think 
 so ! " is the usual reason advanced for the neg 
 lect of this branch of black-and-white. But, 
 by the same token, no more mechanical than 
 the myriads of fussy little plates of the etchers, 
 for the most part without distinction in style 
 or technique. Nevertheless, etching is a swifter 
 method for registering illusion, and in all the 
 arts George Moore says there are nine, not 
 seven the chief thing is to create illusion. 
 
 Etching rules. Why? Because an artist of 
 overwhelming genius set upon the art his seal. 
 Because it is a consurnmate medium for ex 
 pressing personality, and in all the arts person 
 ality is the slogan of the hour. We must bare 
 our souls in our work, cry young folk; the rest, 
 
 78 
 
IN PRAISE OF PRINTS 
 
 art included, can go hang! But the question 
 is whether these same souls are worth the bother 
 of such exposure. When Rembrandt or Meryon, 
 Whistler, or Pennell exhibited their personali 
 ties on their plates the result was: primo, art; 
 secundo, personalities. In a word, not even 
 the perky, cantankerous side of Whistler in 
 tervened between his art and his public; the 
 nobler phases of his character, and there were 
 many, shone clear and truthfully. The mas 
 sive bulk of Rembrandt s personality is reflected 
 in his work with the needle; yet what magnifi 
 cent art is his ! Also a dangerous beacon in a 
 stormy sea for lesser etchers. We love etching. 
 It is the most concise and delicate of all artistic 
 stenography. The scratched line, its symbol, 
 is less complex than the convention of the so- 
 called "steel" engraver, who works in a denser, 
 richer medium, despite the allegation that his 
 is a chilly art. So is sculpture chilly. All de 
 pends on the man handling the chisel, or in 
 engraving the wielder of the burin. The richest 
 of the mediums is copper mezzotinted, or 
 scraped plate. It sometimes gives muddy re 
 sults. Etching has more personal charm; line- 
 engraving is chaster, loftier in style, because 
 more objective. 
 
 If a certain formal rigidity or hardness may 
 be urged against the less personal art of line- 
 engraving, what cannot be said of the thin, 
 facile, shallow impressionism of the etched 
 plate? Above all else, structure is lacking, and 
 
 79 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 it is too often a vehicle for piffling anecdote, 
 or the stamping-ground of the superficial dauber. 
 Mezzotint is not always a satisfactory means of 
 expression. It too is mainly reproductive, while 
 its seductive, velvety surfaces may easily de 
 generate into monotonous formulas. Between 
 Valentine Green and his interpretations of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, or Richard Earlom s evoca 
 tion of an incandescent forge, and the apoca 
 lyptic visions of a John Martin, there is the 
 wide and ineluctable gulf of technical mastery. 
 Martin may have been half-mad, like William 
 Blake as are most mystics viewed in the 
 cold light of worldly reason but he possessed 
 vision; while Green and Earlom, accomplished 
 copper-scrapers as they were, only saw the 
 superficies of things eternal. To-day John Mar 
 tin s crude prints may be had for a penny, and 
 the fantastic Piranesi is a drug in the shops. 
 Neither this mezzotinter nor etcher reveals 
 that mysterious "quality" essential in the 
 arts. 
 
 It is quality, then, that appeals in etching 
 and mezzotint. It was quality that appealed 
 when the specimen plates of the master en 
 gravers were in vogue. Well and good. But 
 why doesn t that quality continue to make 
 the same appeal now to our fastidious taste as 
 it did a half century ago? Naturally enough, 
 the answer is Fashion, which has decreed that 
 the grand old line-engravings be hung in cre 
 puscular hallways. To be sure, there is a corri- 
 80 
 
IN PRAISE OF PRINTS 
 
 dor in the Pitti Palace, Florence, a sun-flooded 
 hallway upon which sing the marvels of lyric 
 line-engravings. Fashion says: admire the 
 signed etching, coddle the impertinent remarque 
 proof; Fashion has set topnotch figures for the 
 English mezzotinters of English portraiture. 
 By leaps and bounds the prices of Green and 
 a few of his contemporaries have been mount 
 ing, so that to own a Gainsborough or a Sir 
 Joshua portrait in mezzotint is to proclaim 
 yourself a person of means. Nor should there 
 be a protest against these exalted prices. Rare 
 art can never be high enough; besides, the 
 domain of mezzotinting will soon be as bare 
 of practitioners as that of line-engraving. S. 
 Arlent Edwards is a name that occurs to us 
 in mezzotinting. Joseph PennelPs essays in 
 that medium reveal his mastery; while the 
 artist that is Timothy Cole, stands solitary 
 as probably the last of distinguished wood- 
 engravers, as Mandel may be said to have been 
 the last of famous European line-engravers. 
 
 The once haughty elder sister of the arts 
 graphic is now become their Cinderella. Who 
 but an anonymous minority cares for the stately 
 engraved pictures of the past? How their dig 
 nified style reproaches the heedless haste of 
 latter-day photographic reproductions ! Yet, 
 what modern mechanical process can match 
 the slowly executed plates of Mantegna, Marc 
 Antonio Ramondi, Albrecht Diirer, or Nanteuil 
 who engraved after his own designs ? From 
 81 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 the finesse of the Behams to the majestic sweep 
 of Bervic, or the virtuosity of Antoine Masson 
 - consider his head of Brisacier, the Gray- 
 Haired Man has not every manner, every 
 mood, every technique been reproduced rather, 
 let us say, interpreted in the terms of line- 
 engraving? The engraved plate can state as 
 succinctly as the etched the linear fretwork 
 and silhouette of forms. Among other resources, 
 the engraved plate is a method of the disposing 
 of mass. It is more subtle than mezzotint in 
 the indication of character, and is seldom so 
 monotonous; while to the impressionism and 
 often insignificant patterns of etching it opposes 
 a static quality, opposes with its synthetic quali 
 ties of the permanent, the majestic, the gracious, 
 and the powerful. As a medium it is as supple 
 as either etching or scraped copper, though in 
 this attribute it yields to wood-engraving. 
 
 What cannot line-engraving do in the way 
 of interpretation? Think of the variety of 
 technical styles and artistic individualities. 
 Ambushed behind every laboriously engraved 
 "steel" plate steel is only in use since 1820 
 there lurks a personality. Think of Man- 
 tegna, a master of line in his painting; of Lucas, 
 of the quaint Martin Schongauer, of Altdorfer, 
 Wierix who aped Rembrandt in his version 
 of The Three Trees of Sadeler and Goltzius; 
 of Caracci, Wille, Nanteuil, Raphael Morghen, 
 Visscher, with his Sleeping Cat and his Rat- 
 Catcher; of the Brevets, of William Sharp, 
 82 
 
IN PRAISE OF PRINTS 
 
 Robert Strange, and Woolet, the English trio; 
 and George Friedrich Schmidt is still a name 
 to conjure with. A litany of names might be 
 recited of engravers who have made master 
 pieces. To-day, when we are in such a hurry 
 to go nowhere to see nothing, the lenten and 
 aristocratic art of line-engraving has lost its 
 glamour, its significance. Nevertheless, a beau 
 tiful art it will always remain, beautiful not 
 withstanding the fluctuations of fashion. We 
 feel that the pendulum of popular taste will 
 surely swing back to this method of black-and- 
 white, despite its slow, painful process of pro 
 duction. After an optical debauch in color, 
 line is regaining its old supremacy. What else 
 meant the apparition of cubism but a revolt 
 against a too fluid impressionism! If this be 
 true of easel-paintings it will come truer of line- 
 engraving. The Sisters Five should walk 
 abreast, not processionally line, mezzotint, 
 etching, wood-cutting and lithography are their 
 names. And no one of this family is handsomer, 
 more stately, more decorative, less <e spotty" 
 on a wall than the classics of line-engraving. 
 
NEW RUSSIA FOR OLD 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED Russian diplomat, a visitor 
 now in America, has asked us not to judge 
 Russia too hastily; above all, not to abandon 
 hopes for her future. The deposition of the 
 Romanovs could not be accomplished without 
 a social cataclysm and the presence of what 
 Nicholas Murray Butler has so happily called 
 "an inverted autocracy," that is to say, contem 
 porary Bolshevikism. But the newcomers, after 
 tumbling over thrones and dynasties, cannot be 
 expected to halt at any half-way house of out 
 worn political expediency. Their slogan is: All 
 or Nothing. Everything is permitted. Pre 
 cisely the device on the victorious standards of 
 that strange Old Man of the Mountain, from 
 whose followers we derive the sinister word 
 "Assassin." Yet we are fain to believe that, as 
 nothing long endures, the tremendous Russian 
 muddle will be straightened out sometime. In 
 the bad old days when the Russian moujik was 
 not singing songs saturated with vodka, he spun 
 legends shot through with the fantastic or grim 
 with the pain of life. In the European concert 
 his formidable bass voice made the voices of his 
 neighbors seem thin and piping. Napoleon 
 prophesied that before the end of the nineteenth 
 century Europe would be either republican or 
 
 84 
 
NEW RUSSIA FOR OLD 
 
 cossack, and a Moscow journal has proclaimed 
 that the "twentieth century belongs to us." 
 One need not be a Slavophile to admire Russian 
 patriotism. The love of a Russian for his coun 
 try is a veritable passion. And from lips parched 
 by the desire of liberty, though the Russian be 
 persecuted, exiled, imprisoned, and murdered, 
 this passion is ever voiced with unabated in 
 tensity. What eloquent apostrophes have their 
 great writers made to their native land! The 
 youngest among the great nations, herself a na 
 tion with genius, she must possess a mighty 
 power thus to arouse the souls of her children. 
 How Turgenieff praised her noble tongue: "O! 
 mighty Russian language!" . . . 
 
 Yet the Russian is a cosmopolitan man; he is 
 more French than the Parisian, and a sojourner 
 among English ideas. Ivan Turgenieff, a Musco 
 vite doubled by a Greek artist, was called a cos 
 mopolitan by Dostoievsky that profound and 
 sombre soul and it was a frequent reproach 
 made during his lifetime that the music of 
 Tschaikovsky was not sufficiently national; 
 whereas to western ears it once smacked too 
 much of the Kalmuck. Naturally, Anton Ru 
 binstein suffered from the same criticism; too 
 German for the Russians, too Russian for the 
 Germans. The case of Modeste Moussorgsky 
 is altogether different. If Russian music, the 
 organized musical speech of the nation, owes 
 much to Schumann, Berlioz, and Liszt, never 
 theless Michael Glinka was its father. Like 
 
 85 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Weber, he lovingly plucked from his native soil 
 its wild flowers of melody, and gave them an 
 operatic setting in his Ruslan and Life for the 
 Czar. In his turn and representing the elder 
 school are Darjomisky and Serov, while with 
 New Russia blazoned on their banners follow 
 Cesar Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Bali- 
 kirev, Glazounov, Stcherbatchev, Rachmaninov, 
 Arensky, Moussorgsky, and, last not least, 
 Scriabin. 
 
 It might prove interesting to compare the 
 cosmopolitanism of Tschaikovsky with Tur- 
 genieffs. George Moore insists with Celtic ob 
 stinacy that Turgenieff is the greatest master of 
 fiction, greater even than Flaubert, because his 
 art is effortless. Certainly, the Russian is the 
 most artistic among novelists. Tschaikovsky 
 was suspiciously regarded by the lesser native 
 choir, while the big men, Gogol, Pushkin, Dos 
 toievsky, and Tolstoy had an army of imitators, 
 who wore their blouses untucked in their trou 
 sers. It was a symbol. Their watchword was: 
 We are going to the People ! From the Intelli 
 gentsia, the students, to the peasant himself, 
 this ominous cry was heard. It is still sounded. 
 Its echoes are in Western ears. The Great White 
 Czar would not heed the warning. Going to the 
 People is a phrase indicating a savage reaction 
 against cosmopolitan influences; Russia had 
 successively suffered from the invasions of Eng 
 lish, French, and German ideas, customs, man 
 ners, costumes. The rabid Slavophilist would 
 86 
 
NEW RUSSIA FOR OLD 
 
 have none of these. He disliked Italian pictures, 
 loathed German philosophy, despised French 
 literature, and hated English politics. Yet, 
 from these seemingly disparate elements was 
 born a national consciousness, a national culture. 
 Its eclecticism caused its disintegration. 
 
 To comprehend latter-day Russian music we 
 should remember that the national spirit per 
 vades its masterpieces. And that spirit is not 
 in a special compartment separated from the 
 seven arts, but waters their roots. With us art 
 is a tender flower, isolated as if in a hothouse. 
 The artist in America lives in a vacuum, or else 
 creates his own atmosphere. In Russia, "bar 
 barous" Russia, as we condescendingly refer to 
 her, an artist is first a patriot. The English 
 critic, John M. Robertson, wrote in 1891: "In 
 that strange country where brute power seems 
 to be throttling all the highest life of the people 
 . . . there yet seems to be no cessation in the 
 production of truthful literary art, ... for jus 
 tice of perception, soundness and purity of taste, 
 and skill of workmanship, we in England with 
 all our freedom, can offer no parallel. " Tyranny, 
 then, may be forcing ground for genius ! From 
 Gogol to Artzibachev Russian literature achieved 
 its spiritual freedom despite the Czar and Si 
 beria. The reason we speak of these writers and 
 composers is because to know them is to grasp 
 the psychology of Russian music, which is so 
 often inspired by the poems, novels, and dramas 
 of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoievsky, 
 
 87 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 TurgeniefT, Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, Gorky, Andrey 
 ev, Artzibachev, and by the paintings of Repin, 
 Perov, Verestchagin, and, in the case of Pro- 
 kofieff, by Boris Anisfeld. 
 
 We have elsewhere made a critical comparison 
 of Dostoievsky with Moussorgsky; no need to 
 refer to it here, except to say that when Dos 
 toievsky wrote, "The soul of another is a dark 
 place, and the Russian soul is a dark place," 
 he accurately plotted his nation s psychic curve. 
 And let it be said in passing that the author of 
 Crime and Punishment had developed the mys 
 tic idea (your Russian is nothing if not mystical) 
 that from Russia must come the salvation of the 
 peoples of the earth from Russian Christi 
 anity. This notion became an obsession of the 
 great-souled writer, in whose Karamasov 
 Brothers and The Possessed (Besi), may be found 
 the leading motives of Nietzsche s philosophy: 
 the superman, the eternal recurrence, the fan 
 tastic idea that eternity may be in a "boxed-in" 
 bathhouse, an idea that Henri Barbusse, who is 
 saturated with Dostoievsky, develops in L Enfer, 
 that infinity is contained within us. Eternity 
 is Now. Tolstoy, who was best described by 
 Count Melchior de Vogue in his epigram as 
 having "the mind of an English chemist in the 
 soul of a Hindoo Buddhist" ("On dirait 1 esprit 
 d un chimiste anglais dans 1 ame d un buddhiste 
 hindou") has not played as influential a role 
 among Russian composers because he was essen 
 tially tone-deaf. His Kreutzer Sonata demon- 
 88 
 
NEW RUSSIA FOR OLD 
 
 strates how a man ignorant of music, great 
 artist that he is, may write himself down ab 
 surdly. In comparison Dostoievsky is a spiri 
 tual reservoir of musical certitudes; while in 
 Turgenieff, thanks to a natural sensibility and 
 years of musical cultivation while sojourning in 
 the household of the Viardot-Garcias at Paris 
 *- surely the happiest as well as the most artistic 
 " menage a trois" in history he wrote of the 
 art with sympathy and understanding. 
 
 The further one dives into the Orient the more 
 chromatic become the arts, especially the tonal 
 art. The chromatic scale was once the shib 
 boleth of the Neo-Russian composer, and, being 
 the artistic offspring of Liszt and the Slav, he 
 vainly sought to veil his paternity by painting 
 it over with local color. It was then a trackless 
 and seldom explored country his, full of yawn 
 ing harmonic precipices, melodies that are at 
 once heavenly and hideous like the mouth of 
 a pretty woman with missing front teeth; moun 
 tainous ideals, bleak surprises, and rugged vistas. 
 To-day matters have changed. The younger 
 generation, headed by the astonishing Alexander 
 Scriabin, has thrown chromaticism to the dogs. 
 The whole-tone scale is monarch. Arnold 
 Schoenberg declared the scale must escape the 
 House of Bondage and be free from scholastic 
 shackles. Modulation is to be as Free Love, 
 which may supersede marriage according to 
 the recent programme of the Reds. Rebikov, 
 Stravinsky, Serge Prokofieff, and Leo Ornstein 
 
 89 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 have long ago nailed their color to the mast. It 
 is unequivocally scarlet. Notwithstanding the 
 seeming anarchy in all these social and artistic 
 manifestations, we believe that to the Slav is 
 the future. Out of darkest Russia may emerge 
 the next world-composer. Scriabin may be only 
 the Precursor of the new evangel. Dostoievsky 
 is right. There is enough fire of righteousness 
 in the Russians to burn up the world and all its 
 wickedness. Russia is the matrix heavy with 
 unborn genius, and who shall bear down too 
 heavily now on her sorrow and travail ? Water 
 seeks its level. A country is no greater than her 
 great men. And how truly great are those we 
 have just named ! New lamps for old. A new 
 and glorious Russia for the old. Avos ! 
 
 90 
 
CEZANNE 
 
 CEZANNE was pre-eminently occupied with 
 the problem of space and its corollaries, bulk, 
 weight, density, and with the still more stu 
 pendous problem of getting on a flat surface the 
 suggestion of a third dimension thickness. 
 To achieve even a suggestion proves him a genius. 
 And he was a genius. His supreme technical 
 qualities are volume, ponderability, and a per 
 sonal color-scheme. What s the use of asking 
 whether he is a sound draftsman or not? He 
 is a master of " edges," a magician of tonalities. 
 Huysmans spoke to me of the defective eyesight 
 of Cezanne; but disease boasts its discoveries 
 as well as health. Possibly his " abnormal" 
 vision gave him glimpses of a reality denied to 
 other painters. He advised students to look 
 for the contrasts and correspondences of tone. 
 He practised what he preached. No painter 
 was so little affected by personal moods, by 
 those variations of temperament dear to the 
 professional artist. Did Cezanne possess the 
 temperament he was always talking about? If 
 he did, his temperament was not precisely dec 
 orative or flamboyant. 
 
 An unwearying experimenter, he seldom "fin 
 ished" a picture. His morose landscapes were 
 usually painted from one scene near his home 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 at Aix. I saw the spot. The pictures do not 
 closely resemble it that is, in the photographic 
 sense which simply means that Cezanne had 
 the vision and I had not. A few themes with 
 polyphonic variations filled his simple life; art 
 was submerged by its apparatus. His was the 
 centripetal, not the centrifugal, temperament. 
 In the domain of his rigid, intense ignorance 
 there was little space for climate, charm, hardly 
 for sunshine. Recall the blazing blue sky and 
 sun of Provence, the tropical riot of its vegeta 
 tion, its gamuts of green and scarlet, and then 
 search for this mellow richness and misty, golden 
 air in the pictures of the master. You won t 
 find them in his dim, muffled surfaces, though 
 a mystic light permeates his landscapes. It 19 
 the sallow-sublime in its apotheosis. He did not 
 paint portraits of Provence as did Daudet in 
 Numa Roumestan, or Bizet in L Arlesienne. 
 Cezanne sought for profounder meanings. The 
 superficial, the facile, the staccato, the merely 
 brilliant repelled him. Not that he was an "ab 
 stract" painter as the self -contradictory atelier 
 jargon goes. He was eminently concrete. He 
 plays a legitimate "trompe-Pceil" on the optic 
 nerve. His is not a pictorial illustration of 
 Provence, but the slow, cruel delineation of a 
 certain hill on old Mother Earth which exposes 
 her bare torso, her bald, rocky pate and grav 
 elled feet. The hallucination is inescapable. 
 
 As drab as the orchestration of Brahms, as 
 austere in linear economy and as analytical as 
 
CEZANNE 
 
 Stendhal or Ibsen, the art of Cezanne never 
 becomes truly lyric except in his still life. Upon 
 an apple he lavishes his palette of smothered 
 jewels. And, as all things are relative, an onion 
 to him may be as beautiful as a naked woman. 
 Taste is not one of his marked traits. The 
 chiefest misconception of Cezanne is that of the 
 theoretical fanatics who not only proclaim him 
 chief of a school, which he is, but declare him 
 to be the greatest painter since the Byzantines. 
 This assertion I have read in cold type. There 
 is a lot of inutile talk about " significant form 5 
 by propagandists usually rotten bad painters. 
 As if form had not always been " significant." 
 When the impressionists as a school, now out 
 moded as the Barbizons, began to issue their 
 prospectuses, the emphasis was laid upon form; 
 form having served its purpose must go at 
 least become subordinate to color and its de 
 composition. The suave line of Raphael had 
 degenerated into the insipid arabesques of 
 Lefebvre, Bouguereau, and Cabanel. No deny 
 ing these truths, since become platitudes. Form 
 is again in the ascendant, impressionism having 
 in its turn become deliquescence. No one denies 
 Cezanne s preoccupation with form, nor Cour- 
 bet s, either. Consider the Oman s landscapes, 
 with their sombre flux of forest, painted by the 
 crassest realist among French artists, though he 
 seems hopelessly romantic to our sharper, more 
 petulant mode of envisaging the world ; yet what 
 better example of "significant form" and solid 
 
 93 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 structural sense than Courbet s? Nevertheless, 
 Cezanne quite o ercrows Courbet in his feeling 
 for the massive sometimes you can t see the 
 ribs of his landscapes because of the skeleton. 
 
 Cezanne s was a twilight soul. And a humor 
 less one. His early painting was quasi-struc 
 tural, well-nigh modelling. Always the archi 
 tectural sense. His rhythms are often elliptical. 
 He has a predilection for the asymmetrical. 
 Yet he is a man who lent to an art of two dimen 
 sions, the illusion of a third. His tactile values 
 are raised to the nth degree. His color is per 
 sonal. Huysmans was clairvoyant when, a half 
 century ago, he wrote of Cezanne s work as con 
 taining the prodromes of a new art. The han 
 dling of his material alone absorbed him, and not 
 its lyric, dramatic, anecdotic, or rhetorical ele 
 ments. He despised "literary" painting. His 
 portraits are charged with character. But he 
 sometimes profoundly ponders unimportant mat 
 ters loses himself in a desert of sandy the 
 orizing. 
 
 The tang of the town is not in his portraits of 
 places. His leaden, metallic landscapes seldom 
 spontaneously arouse to activity the jaded retina 
 fed on Fortuny, Monticelli, or Monet. In his 
 groups of bathing women there is no sex appeal. 
 Merely women in their natural pelt, as heavy 
 flanked as Percheron mares. They are as ugly 
 as the females of Degas, and twice as truthful. 
 With beauty, academic or operatic, he had no 
 traffic. If you don t care for his graceless nudes, 
 
 94 
 
CEZANNE 
 
 you may console yourself with the axiom that 
 there is no disputing tastes with the taste 
 less. We have seen some of his still-life pieces 
 so acid in tonal quality as to suggest that divine 
 dissonance produced on the palate by a stale 
 oyster, or akin to the rancid note of an oboe in 
 a pantomime score by Stravinsky. But what 
 thrice subtle sonorities, what opulent color- 
 chords may be found in his compositions. His 
 fruits savor of the earth. Chardin interprets 
 still-life with realistic beauty; when he paints 
 an onion it reveals a certain grace. Vollon dram 
 atizes it, or embroiders its homely shape with 
 luxuriant decorations. When Cezanne paints 
 an onion you smell it. His apples are seem 
 ingly falling off the table. How despairing 
 are the efforts of his imitators to get those slant 
 ing surfaces covered with fruit and vegetables 
 that have just been brought in by the cook. 
 You say, Miraculous! and make a gesture to 
 prevent the ripe stuff from sliding to the floor. 
 The "representation" abhorred of the Cubists 
 in its most pregnant shapes is there. 
 
 Cezanne did not occupy himself, as did Manet, 
 with the ideas, manners and aspects of his gen 
 eration. With the classic retort of Manet, he 
 could have replied to those who taunted him 
 with not "finishing" his pictures, "Sir, I am 
 not a historical painter." Nor need we be dis 
 concerted in any estimate of him by the depress 
 ing snobbery of collectors who don t know B 
 from bull s foot but go off at half-trigger in 
 
 95 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 their enthusiasm when a hint is dropped as to 
 the possibilities of a painter appreciating in a 
 pecuniary sense. Cezanne is the painting idol 
 of the present crowd, as were Manet and Monet 
 a few decades ago. These aesthetic fluctuations 
 should not distract us. Henner, Cabanel, Bour- 
 guereau too, were idolized once upon a time and 
 served to make a millionaire s holiday by hang 
 ing in his marble bathroom. It is the undeniable 
 truth that Cezanne has, in the eyes of the 
 younger generation, become a tower of strength 
 which intrigues critical fancy. Cezanne is sin 
 cere to the core, yet even stark sincerity does 
 not, of necessity, imply the putting forth of 
 masterpieces. Before he attained his synthetic 
 power he patiently studied Delacroix, Courbet, 
 and the early Italians. At times he achieved 
 the foundational structure of Courbet, though 
 I don t think he had either the brains or the 
 painting temperament of his elder contemporary, 
 whose portee was at times tremendous. Hos 
 tile critics declare that the canvases of St. Paul 
 of Provence are sans composition, sans linear 
 pattern, sans personal charm. However, "pop 
 ularity is for dolls," says Emerson. 
 
 I saw at the Champs de Mars Salon of 1901 
 a large picture by Maurice Denis, entitled Hom- 
 mage a Cezanne, the idea of which was mani 
 festly inspired by Manet s Hommage a Fantin- 
 Latour, or Fantin s Batignolle School. The 
 Maurice Denis canvas depicts a still-life by 
 Cezanne on a chevalet, which is surrounded by 
 
CEZANNE 
 
 the figures of certain painters Bonnard, Denis, 
 Redon, Roussel, Serusier, Vuillard, Mellerio, and 
 Vollard. Cezanne is posed standing and is ap 
 parently embarrassed, which was his natural 
 condition. There was a special Cezanne Salle, 
 as there was one devoted to Eugene Carriere, 
 but Cezanne held the place of honor. With all 
 his naive vanity he was dazzled by the uproarious 
 championship of "les jeunes," and, to give him 
 credit for a peasant astuteness, he was rather 
 suspicious of the demonstration. But he stolidly 
 accepted the frantic homage of the youngsters, 
 all the while looking like a bourgeois Buddha. 
 To-day a Cezanne of quality is costly. Why 
 not? When juxtaposed with many modern 
 painters his vital art makes other pictures seem 
 linoleum or papier mache. The nervous, shrink 
 ing man I saw at Aix and later at Paris would 
 have been astounded at the praise printed since 
 his death; while he yearned for the publicity of 
 the official Salon as did his school-friend Zola 
 for a seat in the Academy none the less, he 
 disliked notoriety. He loved hard work. He 
 loved his solitude. With a fresh batch of can 
 vases he trudged every morning to his pet land 
 scape, the Motive, he called it, and it was there 
 that he daily slaved with genuine technical 
 heroism. When I first saw him he was a queer, 
 sardonic old gentleman in ill-fitting clothes, with 
 the shrewd, suspicious gaze of a provincial no 
 tary. Like John La Farge, he hated shaking 
 hands. A rare impersonality. 
 
 97 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Goethe has told us that because of his limita 
 tions we may recognize a master. The limita 
 tions of Cezanne are patent. An investigator, 
 experimenter, even fumbler, he did not deem it 
 wise to stray from his chosen, if narrow, field. 
 His non-conformism defines his genius. Imagine 
 reversing musical history and finding Johann 
 Sebastian Bach following Richard Strauss. 
 The very notion is monstrous. Yet, figuratively 
 speaking, this order constitutes the case of Ce 
 zanne. He arrived on the pictorial scene after 
 the classic, romantic, impressionistic, and sym 
 bolic schools. He is a primitive, not made like 
 Puvis de Chavannes, but one born with an un 
 affected crabbed simplicity. Paul Cezanne will 
 be remembered as a painter who respected his 
 material, also as a painter, pure, without pre 
 occupation in schools or ideas. No man who 
 wields a brush need ask for a more enduring 
 epitaph. 
 
 98 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 "How shall we sing the Lord s song in a 
 strange land?" I couldn t help recalling these 
 words of the Psalmist, these and the opening, 
 "By the rivers of Babylon," in which is com 
 pressed the immemorial melancholy of an en 
 slaved race, when I heard Sophie Braslau intone 
 with her luscious contralto, a touching Hebrew 
 lament, "Eili Eili Lomo Asovtoni?" at a con 
 cert last winter. Naturally I believed the mel 
 ody to be the echo of some tribal chant sung in 
 the days of the Babylonian captivity, and per 
 haps before that in the days of the prehistoric 
 Sumerians and the epic of Gilgamesh. Others 
 have made the same error. Judge of my sur 
 prise when in a copy of The American Jewish 
 News I read that the composer of Eili Eili is 
 living, that his name is Jacob Kopel Sandier, 
 that he wrote the music for a historical drama, 
 Die B ne Moishe (The Sons of Moses), which 
 deals with the Chinese Jews. Mr. Sandier had 
 written the song for Sophie Carp, a Yiddish ac 
 tress and singer. The Sons of Moses was a 
 failure, and a new piece, Brocha, the Jewish 
 King of Poland, was prepared. (Not alluding 
 to Pan Dmowski.) It was produced at the 
 Windsor Theatre in the Bowery. The song, 
 not the play, was a success. Then the music 
 
 99 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 drifted into queer company, for music is a living 
 organism and wanders when it is not controlled. 
 Finally Sophie Braslau got hold of it, and the 
 composer, who was directing a choir in a Bronx 
 synagogue, was astounded to hear of the accla 
 mations of a Metropolitan Opera House Sunday 
 night audience. His daughter has listened to 
 Eili Eili and brought home the good news. 
 After troublesome preliminaries " Meyer Beer," 
 the pen name of the musical editor of The Ameri 
 can Jewish News, was able to prove beyond per- 
 adventure of a doubt the artistic parentage of 
 the song, and Jacob Sandier is in a fair way of 
 being idolized in his community, as he should be. 
 Eili Eili lomo asovtoni? may be found in 
 Psalm 22, the first line of the second verse in 
 Hebrew. In the English version the words of 
 David are in the first verse: "My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" And in the St. 
 Mark s Gospel we read: "And at the ninth hour 
 Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, 
 lama sabachthani ? which is, being interpreted : 
 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me?" (Chapter 15, verse 34.) The exegetists 
 and apologists, as well as sciolists, have made of 
 this immortal phrase a bone of theological con 
 tention. Schmiedel, who with Harnack believes 
 the words to have been uttered by our Saviour, 
 nevertheless points out various details which pre 
 figure the same things in the crucifix the just 
 man hanging on the stake, the perforated hands 
 and feet, the mocking crowd, the soldiers gam- 
 100 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 bling for the clothes, everything takes place as 
 described in the Psalm. Lublinski (in Dogma, 
 p. 93) and Arthur Drews (in The Historicity of 
 Jesus, p. 150) demur to the orthodox Christian 
 conclusions of Harnack and Schmiedel. A be 
 loved master, the late Solomon Schechter, dis 
 posed of the question in his usual open style. 
 "The world is big enough," he has said to me, 
 for both Jehovah and Jesus, "for two such 
 grand faiths as the Hebrew and the Christian." 
 But he saw Christianity only in its historical 
 sequence, and not as a continuator of Judaism; 
 rather, a branching away from the main trunk. 
 If it had not been for Constantine, the world 
 might be worshipping Mithra to-day, was the 
 erudite and worthy man s belief. Enveloped in 
 the mists of the first two centuries Christianity 
 seems to have had a narrow escape from the 
 doctrines of Mithraism. That Salomon Reinach 
 practically admits in his Orpheus, a most sig 
 nificant study of comparative religions from the 
 pen of this French savant. 
 
 Once upon a time I played the organ in a 
 "shool," a reformed, not an orthodox, syna 
 gogue; played indifferently well. But my ac 
 quaintance with the Jewish liturgy dates back 
 to my boyhood in Philadelphia, where I studied 
 Hebrew, in company with Latin. The reason? 
 My mother fondly hoped that I might become 
 a priest the very thought of which makes me 
 shudder now. The religious in me found vent 
 in music, and my love of change was gratified 
 101 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 by playing the Hebrew service on Shabbas 
 (Saturday) and the Roman Catholic on our 
 Sabbath. Probably that is why I was affected 
 by Sophie Braslau s singing of Eili Eili. Rosa 
 Raisa has put the song in her repertory, and 
 only on Easter Sunday last did Sarah Borni sing 
 it, although it appeared on the programme as a 
 composition of Kurt Schindler s, an error quickly 
 rectified by Miss Borni, who did not know the 
 authorship till too late. "Such songs," com 
 mented this soprano, "come but once in a man s 
 lifetime." Dorothy Jardon will no doubt sing 
 Eili Eili, as she sang for the first time a Jahrzeit, 
 a Kaddish by Rhea Silberta, at the Hippodrome 
 last Sunday. Mr. Sandier has come into his 
 own, and it is gratifying to record that the credit 
 is largely due to Meyer Beer and The American 
 Jewish News. 
 
 I have always entertained a peculiar admira 
 tion for the Jews and Judaism. It began with 
 the study of Semitic literature of the Talmud, 
 above all of Hebrew poetry, the most sublime in 
 our language, as Matthew Arnold asserts in his 
 comparative estimate of Greek and Hebraic cul 
 tures. My dearest friends have been, still are, 
 of that race. Prejudice, social or political, 
 against the Jew, I not only detest, but I have 
 never been able to comprehend. My early play 
 mates were Jewish boys and girls. I have stood 
 under the "Choopah" (marriage canopy), and 
 have seen many a Bar-Mitzvah; even sat 
 "Shivah" for the dead father of intimate friends. 
 102 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 From Rafael Joseffy to Georg Brandes; from the 
 brilliant Hungarian virtuoso that was Joseffy - 
 whose father, a learned rabbi, I visited at Buda 
 pest in Pest-Ofen in 1903, when he was 
 eighty-four, an Orientalist, a linguist with 
 twenty-six languages, ancient and modern, at 
 the tip of his tongue to Professor Brandes, 
 the Danish scholar, an intellectual giant, and a 
 critic in the direct line of Sainte-Beuve and 
 Taine both men I knew and loved. Whether 
 the Jew has attained the summits as a creator 
 in the seven arts I cannot speak authoritatively, 
 although the Old Testament furnishes abundant 
 evidences that he has in poetry. Disraeli 
 (Beaconsfield), who liked to tease Gladstone by 
 calling him "Frohstein" and pointing to his 
 rugged Jewish prophet s features, has written 
 of his race most eloquently. I should like to 
 quote a passage in its entirety, but time and 
 space forbid. But an excerpt I permit myself 
 the luxury of reproduction: "The ear, the voice, 
 the fancy teeming with combinations, the in 
 spiration fervid with picture and emotion, that 
 came from Caucasus, and which we have pre 
 served unpolluted, have endowed us with almost 
 the exclusive privilege of music; that science of 
 harmonious sounds which the ancients recog 
 nized as most divine and deified in the person of 
 their most beautiful creation. . . ." He goes on: 
 "There is not a company of singers, not an or 
 chestra in a single capital, that is not crowded 
 with our children under feigned names which 
 103 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 they adopt to conciliate the dark aversion which 
 your posterity will some day disclaim with shame 
 and disgust. . . ." 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield mentions Rossini, Meyer 
 beer, Mendelssohn as Jewish composers, and 
 Pasta and Grisi among the singers. Probably he 
 had not heard Rossini s witticism uttered on his 
 deathbed: "For heaven s sake, don t bury me 
 in the Jewish cemetery ! " Nor did Beaconsfield 
 look far enough ahead when he wrote "dark 
 aversion" which is wonderful. To-day the 
 boot is on the other leg. It may be Gentiles 
 who will be forced to change their names to 
 Jewish. I could easily sign myself "Shamus 
 Hanuchah" -leaving out the "lichts" -or 
 pattern after the name Paderewski jokingly 
 wrote on his photograph: "For Jacob Huneker- 
 stein." 
 
 And I am ashamed to confess that I know 
 Jews who themselves are ashamed of having 
 been born Jews. Incredible ! In Vienna I have 
 seen St. Stefan s Cathedral crowded at the n 
 o clock high mass by most fervent worshippers, 
 the majority of whom seemed Semitic, which 
 prompted me to propound the riddle : When is a 
 Jew not a Jew? Answer: When he is a Roman 
 Catholic in Vienna. But you never can tell. 
 As Joseffy used to say when some musician with 
 a nose like the Ten Commandments was intro 
 duced, as, for example, Monsieur Fontaine, "He 
 means Brunnen, or, in Hebrew, Pischa. He is 
 not a Jew, but his grandmother wore a schei- 
 104 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 teP" (the wig still worn by orthodox Jewish 
 women). The truth is that among the virtuosi, 
 singers, actors, the Jew holds first place. Liszt 
 and Paganini are the exceptions, and Paganini 
 could easily pass in an east side crowd as Jehu- 
 dah. As to the Wagner controversy, not started 
 by Nietzsche, but by Rossini and Meyerbeer, 
 who referred to Wagner as Jewish, that was set 
 tled by O. G. Sonneck in his little book, Was 
 Wagner a Jew? but only after I had introduced 
 to the columns of the New York Times Sunday 
 Magazine in 1913, a book by Otto Bournot, en 
 titled Ludwig Geyer. Geyer was, as you may 
 remember, the stepfather of Richard Wagner. 
 Bournot had access to the Baireuth archives and 
 delved into the newspapers of Geyer s days. 
 August Bottiger s Necrology had hitherto been 
 the chief source. Mary Burrell s Life of Wagner 
 was the first to give the true spelling of the name 
 of Wagner s mother, which was Bertz, which 
 may be Jewish or German, as you like. 
 
 The Geyers as far back as 1700 were pious 
 folk. The first of the family mentioned in local 
 history was a certain Benjamin Geyer, who 
 about 1700 was a trombone player and organist. 
 Indeed, the Geyers were largely connected with 
 the evangelical church. Ludwig Geyer, virtually 
 acknowledged by Baireuth as the real father of 
 Richard Wagner, looked Jewish (which proves 
 nothing, as I have seen dark, Semitic fisher-folk 
 on the coast of Galway) and displayed Jewish 
 versatility. For that matter the composer von 
 
 105 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Weber looked like a Jew, as does Camille Saint- 
 Saens. When I ventured to write of this racial 
 trait much more marked in his youth the 
 French composer sent me a denial, sarcastically 
 asking how a man with such a "holy" name as 
 "Saint-Saens" could be Jewish. But Leopold 
 Godowsky, who was intimate with him, has told 
 me that he took his mother s name. As to 
 Wagner, a little story may suffice. In 1896 I 
 attended the Wagner festival at Baireuth. Be 
 tween performances I tramped the Franconian 
 hills. My toes hurt me. Looking for a corn- 
 cutter, I found one not far from the Wagner 
 house. The old chap seated me in his doorway, 
 probably to get better light, and as he crouched 
 over my feet in the street I asked him if he had 
 known Richard Wagner. "Know Wagner !" 
 he irascibly replied. "He passed my shop every 
 day. Many the times I cut his corns. Oh, 
 no ! not here; over yonder" he jerked his head 
 in the direction of Wahnfried. I inquired what 
 kind of a looking man was Wagner. "He was 
 a little bow-legged Jew, and he always wore a 
 long cloak to hide his crooked legs." Enfin ! the 
 truth from the mouth of babes. This beats 
 .Nietzsche and his "Vulture" Geyer. 
 
 Not religion, not nationality, but race, counts 
 in the individual. Wagner looked like a Jew. 
 And there are many red-haired Jews with pug 
 noses and light blue eyes. Renan in Le Judaisme 
 has shown us how non- Jewish elements were in 
 the course of time incorporated within the race. 
 106 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 The Chazars of eastern Europe are Jews, only a 
 thousand years old. Dr. Brandes in a confes 
 sion of his views on the subject has said in 
 The Journal for Jewish History and Literature, 
 published at Stockholm (Teldscript for Judisk 
 Historia), and quoted by Bernard G. Richards 
 in a capital study of Brandes "from the fif 
 teenth to the sixteenth year of my life I regarded 
 Judaism purely as a religion." But when he was 
 abused as a Jew then Georg Brandes felt him 
 self a genuine Jew. Many a man has found 
 himself in a similar position. Atavistic im 
 pulses, submerged in subconsciousness, may ex 
 plain why certain men, Gentiles, scholars, by 
 nature noncombatants, have left their peaceful 
 study, jeopardized their life, ruined their reputa 
 tion, to battle for an obscure Jew Dreyfus. 
 Zola, of Greek-Levantine origin, perhaps Italian 
 and Jew, was one of those valiant souls who 
 fought for the truth. Anatole France, born Thi- 
 bault, another. Count Thibault, at the time 
 of the Dreyfus uproar, challenged the great 
 writer who signs himself Anatole France to prove 
 his right to that distinguished Roman Catholic 
 name. That the gentle Anatole is the very spit 
 and spawn of a Jew, so far as appearance goes; 
 that since Heine (baptized a Christian) no such 
 union of mocking irony and tender, poetic emo 
 tion can be noted in the work of any writer, are 
 alike valueless as testimony. Nevertheless, 
 many believe in this Hebraic strain; just as they 
 feel it in the subtlety of Cardinal Newman s 
 107 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 writing he was of Dutch stock and in the 
 humor of Charles Lamb. Both Englishmen are 
 credited with the " precious quintessence," as 
 Du Maurier would say. 
 
 I have had to stand a lot of good-natured fun 
 poked at me for my Jewish propensity. I can 
 stand it, as I have a solid substratum of history 
 for my speculations. Some years ago The Con 
 temporary Review printed an article entitled "The 
 Jdw in Music," with this motto from Oscar 
 Wilde s Salome: "The Jews believe only in what 
 they cannot see." The writer s name was 
 signed: A. E. Keeton. Not even the assertion 
 that Beethoven was a Belgian is half so icono 
 clastic as some of the assumptions made in this 
 study. "When Mozart first appeared as a 
 prodigy before the future Queen of France, 
 Marie Antoinette, she announced that a genius 
 must not be a Jew. The original name, Ozart, 
 was changed. Mozart was baptized ! Which 
 anecdote makes the scalp to freeze, though not 
 because of its verisimilitude. Beethoven and 
 Rubinstein looked alike; ergo! But then they 
 didn t. In the case of Chopin he was certainly 
 Jewish-looking, especially in the Winterhalter 
 and Kwiatowski portraits. His father came 
 from Nancy, in Lorraine, thickly populated by 
 Jews. The original name, Szopen, or Szop, is 
 Jewish. His music, especially the first Scherzo 
 in B minor, has a Heine-like irony, and irony is 
 a prime characteristic of the Chosen (or Choosing 
 as Zangwill puts it) race ! But all this is in the 
 108 
 
EILI EILI LOMO ASOVTONI? 
 
 key of wildest surmise. Wagner was born in 
 the ghetto at Leipsic; yet that didn t make him 
 Jewish, any more than the baptism of Mendels 
 sohn made him Christian. Georges Bizet was 
 of Jewish origin, he looked Jewish; but the fact 
 that he married the daughter of Halevy (Ha- 
 Levi), the composer of La Juive, didn t make the 
 composer of Carmen a Jew. Neither religion 
 nor nationality are any more than superficial 
 factors in the nature of men and women. Race 
 alone counts. 
 
 Once upon a time I wrote a Jewish story, 
 The Shofar Blew at Sunset. Maggie Cline 
 liked it; so did Israel Zangwill. I preserve a 
 letter from Mr. Zangwill telling me of his liking. 
 The story appeared in Mile New York, now de 
 funct. It was afterward translated into Yid 
 dish, though it did not give general satisfaction 
 in either camp, Jewish or Christian. It revelled 
 in the cantillations and employed as leading mo 
 tive the Shofar, or ram s-horn blown in the syna 
 gogues on Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. 
 The scroll of the Torah also appeared. But these 
 liturgical references didn t offend; it was my sur 
 prising denunciation of Jewish materialism in 
 New York that was the rock of offence. I say 
 surprising, for what is a Christian-born doing in 
 another field and finding fault? I m sure I 
 can t say why, unless that in writing the tale I 
 unconsciously dramatized myself as a reproach 
 ing voice. There was much in my strictures of 
 that son of Hanan who prowled through the 
 109 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 streets of the Holy City in the year A. D. 62, 
 crying aloud: "Woe, woe upon Jerusalem!" I 
 remember that I predicted because of the lux 
 ury of the American Jew the lofty Jewish ideal 
 ism might be submerged in a flood of indifference 
 and disbelief. Prosperity would prove the snag. 
 In the heart of the Jew is the true Zion, not in 
 success nor in some far-away land. Naturally, 
 that didn t please the Zionists. One profes 
 sional Jewish publication, no longer in existence, 
 said that I preached like a Rabbi (Reb), but 
 thought like a goi. The word "Chutzpah" was 
 also used. Yet, wasn t I right ? It is the spiri 
 tual Ark of the Covenant, the spirit of the law, 
 and not the letter that killeth, which should be 
 enshrined in the heart of the Jew. He may 
 dream of Palestine, of its skies of the "few large 
 stars," a land overflowing with milk and honey; 
 but in the depths of his soul it is the living God 
 to whom he must go for spiritual sustenance. 
 God the eternal reservoir of our earthly certi 
 tudes ! Schma Ysroel ! 
 
 no 
 
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY 
 
 IN these piping times of peace when the body 
 politic is afflicted with socialism, bolshevism, and 
 other cutaneous disorders, it is a pleasing and a 
 profitable task to reread Socialistic Fallacies, by 
 M. Yves Guyot, who for years has been a deter 
 mined and consistent opponent of the bleak and 
 dismal "science" and the author of a number 
 of books on the subject. Luckily for those who 
 can t read French, Socialistic Fallacies has been 
 translated and should prove a manual to com 
 bat and confute the sophistries of socialism with 
 the writer s arsenal of arguments. M. Guyot 
 has been a deputy, a municipal councillor, minis 
 ter of public works. He advocated the revision 
 of the Dreyfus case, and he was political editor 
 of Le Siecle (1892-1903). He is also editor of 
 Journal des Economistes (since 1909) and editor 
 of UAgence Economique et Financieres (since 
 1911). He has written much about the great 
 war and its causes (also translated) and kindred 
 themes. Therefore a man who knows what he 
 is talking about. 
 
 In his drastic attack on socialistic fallacies he 
 thus concludes: " There are three words which 
 socialism must erase from the facades of our 
 public buildings, the three words of the repub 
 lican motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Lib- 
 in 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 erty, because socialism is a rule of tyranny; 
 equality, because it is a rule of class; fraternity, 
 because its policy is that of class war." M. 
 Guyot might have quoted Napoleon, a realist, 
 a cynic in politics, for he knew its seamy side, 
 who said: "Tell men they are equal and they 
 won t bother about liberty." And in this mat 
 ter men may change, mankind never. 
 
 Socialism, that word of so many meanings, 
 has itself become meaningless. Guyot shows us 
 each variety, analyzes its particular fallacy, and 
 though not a victim to the craze for statistics, 
 he furnishes many pages of figures to match 
 those of his adversaries. He attacks Karl Marx 
 on his weakest flank, and, incidentally, proves 
 him not to have been a proletarian, but the son- 
 in-law of a Prussian Junker. The selfishness of 
 Marx, his tyrannical behavior, his unphilosophi- 
 cal wrath when opposed by two such intellectual 
 giants as Bakunine and Lassalle; his jealous at 
 titude toward Ferdinand Lassalle, especially 
 after his tragic death, are all well known. These 
 traits do not reveal a man overflowing with true 
 brotherly love. Able, but frequently unscru 
 pulous, men amuse the idle and attract the mul 
 titude such are the leaders of the cause which 
 has made such headway in Germany, adds 
 Guyot, whose words in the light of contempo 
 raneous history are positively prophetic. These 
 leaders are plagiarists, with some variations, of 
 all the communist romances originally inspired 
 by Plato. Their greatest pundits, Marx and 
 112 
 
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY 
 
 Engels, have built up their theories upon a sen 
 tence of Saint-Simon and three phrases of Ri- 
 cardo s. Our author gives these examples: 
 " German socialism is derived from two sources: 
 (i) The French doctrine of Saint-Simon, The 
 way to grow rich is to make others work for 
 one/ which in Proudhon s mouth becomes the 
 exploitation of man by man/ (2) Three for 
 mulas of Ricardo, viz. : (a) labor is the measure of 
 value; (b) the price of labor is that which pro 
 vides the laborer in general with the means of 
 subsistence, and of perpetuating his species 
 without either increase or diminution; (c) profits 
 decrease in proportion as wages increase." 
 Formula (b) became the "iron law of wages" 
 enunciated by Lassalle. Inverted dogmatism all 
 these stale subterfuges. 
 
 The French doctrines and Ricardo s three 
 formulas were transformed into the theory of 
 Rodbertus, "the normal time of labor," and the 
 "surplus labor" theory of Karl Marx and Engels. 
 Guyot calmly demonstrates the fallacies of these 
 sonorous assumptions. He asks the where 
 abouts of the Utopias of Fourier, of Cabet, of 
 Louis Blanc s organization of labor, or of Prou 
 dhon s bank of exchange that Proudhon who 
 has been permanently saddled with Brissot s 
 famous phrase: "Property is theft." (Philo 
 sophical Examination of Property and Theft, 
 1780.) No Socialist has succeeded in explain 
 ing the conditions for the production, the re 
 muneration, and the distribution of capital in a 
 
 "3 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 collectivist system. No Socialist has succeeded 
 in determining the motives for action which an 
 individual would obey. When pressed for an 
 answer, they allege that human nature shall be 
 metamorphosed, but that the individual re 
 mains a constant quantity ! Rank materialism 
 all this, and absolutely without vision. 
 
 Socialism is a hierarchy on a military basis 
 imported from Germany. Karl Marx did not 
 concern himself with the incentives to action 
 which are to be placed before men in commu 
 nistic society, and his followers carefully evade 
 the question. When they do attempt to deal 
 with it, they fall into grotesque errors, as did the 
 late French leader, Jaures. Kautsky asks how 
 the workman is to be made to take an interest 
 in his work, and he can find no incentive other 
 than the force of habit. Like mechanical toys, 
 men will do the same thing every day because 
 they did it the day before. This is merely 
 teaching tricks to animals, the organization of 
 reflex action causing the individual mechanically 
 to do to-morrow what he did yesterday. Nor is 
 this a discovery of scientific socialism; the or 
 ganizers of churches, of armies, discovered the 
 trait long ago, employing it as a means of dis 
 cipline under the sanctions of allurement and 
 coercion; allurement, by preferments, decora 
 tions, and honorary distinction; coercion, by 
 means of more or less cruel and rigorous punish 
 ments. Bebel declared that "a man who will 
 not work has not the right to eat." This is 
 114 
 
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY 
 
 being condemned to death by starvation; and a 
 man who does less work than, in the opinion of 
 the executive, he ought to do, shall be put upon 
 a restricted diet; so, after all, the collectivist 
 ideal ends in servile labor. To replace a king 
 or a president there will be an " executive," 
 which means several instead of one tyrant. 
 Good old King Log is always a better ruler than 
 King Stork. For one thing, he is not so vora 
 cious as the ferociously hungry feathered biped. 
 Socialism, then, is only one more strait-jacket to 
 torture the individual. 
 
 It may be said that man is ready for every 
 form of sacrifice save one: nowhere and at no 
 time has he been found to labor voluntarily and 
 constantly from a disinterested love for others. 
 Man is only compelled to productive labor by 
 necessity, by the fear of punishment, or by suit 
 able remuneration. The Socialists of to-day, 
 like those of former times, constantly denounce 
 the waste of competition. Competition involves 
 losses, but biological evolution, as well as hu 
 manity, proves that they are largely compen 
 sated by gain. Furthermore, there is no ques 
 tion of abolishing competition in socialistic con 
 ceptions; the question is merely one of the sub 
 stitution of political for economic competition. 
 If economic competition leads to waste, and 
 claims its victims, it is none the less productive. 
 Political competition has secured enormous 
 plunder to great conquerors, such as Alexander, 
 Caesar, Tamerlane, and Napoleon; it always de- 
 
 "5 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 stroys more wealth than it confers upon the vic 
 tor. The Socialist formulates a theory of rob 
 bery and calls it restitution to the disinherited." 
 Disinherited by whom? Disinherited of what? 
 Let them produce their title-deeds! They call 
 it expropriation, but that is a misnomer; what 
 they set out to practise is confiscation. Georges 
 Bernard says that " socialism will be a regime 
 of authority." On this point Guyot grimly 
 agrees with him. In reality it will be the most 
 oppressive spiritual and material system ever 
 invented by man. 
 
 Socialist action has a depressing effect on all 
 fixed capital, and, he continues, "in order to 
 carry on a policy of preserving the political 
 equilibrium, of giving a few bones to the dema 
 gogues to gnaw, concessions are made to the 
 policy of spoliation." What, then, remains of 
 socialism when we come to close quarters with 
 it? And what are the prospects of this spolia 
 tion and tyranny ? The socialistic party cannot 
 balance up a governmental majority without 
 destroying government itself, for it cannot ad 
 mit that government fulfils the minimum of its 
 duties (this was written before 1914). When a 
 strike breaks out the intention of the strikers is 
 that security of person and property shall not 
 be guaranteed. Socialist policy represents con 
 tempt for law, and all men, whether rich or 
 poor, have an interest in liberty, security, and 
 justice, as the private interest of each individual 
 is bound up with these common blessings. But 
 116 
 
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY 
 
 Socialists despise them all. "The socialism of 
 Karl Marx s disciples betrays a long apprentice 
 ship to servitude," declares M. Reinach. 
 
 A law, the object of which is to protect each 
 man s property, is supported by all who possess 
 anything, and where is the man in advanced 
 societies who is incapable of being robbed be 
 cause he possesses nothing? 
 
 A law of spoliation may be passed and carried 
 into effect, but in the event of its results be 
 coming permanent it runs the risk of destroying 
 the government which has assumed the respon 
 sibility of it. Socialist policy is a permanent 
 menace to the liberty and security of citizens, 
 and, therefore, cannot be the policy of any gov 
 ernment, the primary duty of which is to exact 
 respect for internal and external security. If it 
 fail therein it dissolves and is replaced by an 
 archy; and, inasmuch as every one has a horror 
 of that condition, which betrays itself by the 
 oppression of violent men banded together 
 solely by their appetites, an appeal is made to 
 a strong government and to a man with a strong 
 grip, and then the risk is incurred of relapsing 
 into all the disgraces and disasters of Caesarism. 
 In several sections of this admirable work, M. 
 Guyot scrutinizes the various Utopias from 
 Plato to Proudhon: Sir Thomas More, the King 
 dom of the Incas, Campanella, the Jesuits in 
 Paraguay, Moselly, Robert Owen, Fourier, the 
 American Phalanx, the Oneida Community, 
 Cabet, the Icarians, and other unsuccessful ex- 
 117 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 perimenters. Utopia is always within sight, but 
 never reached. It is, in the charming parlance 
 of the hour, a pipe-dream; these Utopias always 
 cut their throats to spite their thirst. And pre 
 cisely where socialism was expected to be a 
 buffer against world wars, it dismally failed. 
 
 From time to time the everlasting busybody 
 asks himself why a plea for mediocrity is not a 
 fitting theme to interest ambitious essayists. 
 Supermen and supper-rogues have been done to 
 the death in print, yet few words are accorded to 
 the garden variety of the human plant. Instead 
 we are keyed to the loftiest pitch; exaggeration 
 is a national neurosis. We are all professional 
 altruists, and, as every one knows, altruism is the 
 art of making our neighbor unhappy because of 
 our oppressive happiness. And yet not a word 
 for mediocrity, which is the backbone of our 
 nation, the staple of its political, artistic, and 
 literary productions. Not a word for the man 
 in the street, whose collective opinion King 
 Opinion, the most despotic of tyrants rules 
 us, whose vote counts heavier than the vote of 
 the "exceptional" being perched on the house 
 top. (A majority of exalted souls would turn 
 America into a wilderness.) And all because 
 the excellent word "mediocrity" is become de 
 based in meaning. At one time it stood for 
 the golden mean, for a happy equilibrium of 
 forces, moral and physical. It spelled happiness 
 to its possessor we refer to the mediocre tem 
 perament and if a man had enough money to 
 118 
 
SOCIALISM AND MEDIOCRITY 
 
 keep the wolf from the door he was content. 
 That is the precise word content; to be con 
 tented is a gift of the gods. But to us nowadays 
 it means that you are merely commonplace, 
 without social ambitions, without intellectual 
 eminence. And this is not well. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that we are a united 
 nation of over one hundred millions of people, 
 we are each in his own fashion endeavoring to 
 escape the imputation of mediocrity. Alas! in 
 vain. Number is mediocrity. We think and 
 drink to order, vote as we are bidden by our 
 wives, and wear the clothes given us by destroy 
 ers of sartorial taste. Wherefore, then, this 
 mad desire to be exceptional? Whence this op 
 timism that shudders in the presence of genuine 
 art and espouses the vulgar because it better 
 agrees with fat nerves? Let us acknowledge 
 the truth. It is because, happily for us, we are 
 all mediocre; because genius is not a normal con 
 dition of humanity, and that talent is much less 
 rare than our national vanity admits. However, 
 let us pluck up courage. The future which 
 is said by some to belong to socialism will 
 work out the problem of mediocrity, especially 
 if socialism is involved; mediocrity and socialism 
 are not poles asunder. Concrete houses filled 
 with people who will eat, drink, and think alike 
 will cover the land. Everything will be of con 
 crete, even our political opinions. In his con 
 crete Capitol a concrete President will devise 
 concrete laws. Art, music, and literature will 
 119 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 be so concrete that our native Gradgrinds, hun 
 gry for hard facts, will be ravished into the 
 seventh concrete heaven. Made a law, medi 
 ocrity will do away with our present mortifying 
 doubts, deceptions, and pretensions. O Happy 
 Time ! And this coming age of concrete, wherein 
 all must walk and look alike, is it not a dream 
 compared with which Dante s Inferno would be 
 a Garden of Armida? 
 
 Said a great poet-philosopher: "And many a 
 man has gone into the desert and suffered from 
 thirst with the camels rather than sit about the 
 cistern with dirty camel drivers." No wonder 
 William James wrote that "the whole atmos 
 phere of present-day Utopian literature tastes 
 mawkish and dish-watery to people who still 
 keep a sense of life s more bitter flavors." And 
 how much more that is insipid and mawkish will 
 follow under socialistic regimentation! "Is it 
 not the chief disgrace in the world not to be a 
 unit; to be reckoned one character; not to yield 
 that peculiar fruit which each man was created 
 to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the 
 hundreds of thousands, of the party, of the sec 
 tion to which we belong, and our opinion pre 
 dicted geographically as the North or the 
 South?" These words were not uttered by a 
 Socialist; they emanated from the crystal-clear 
 intellect of our greatest Individualist, Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson. 
 
 1 20 
 
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 
 
 RATHER hotly I argued the question with my 
 editor: "After all, music critics are men and 
 brethren," I said. " Except when they are sis 
 ters," he ironically interposed. I sternly re 
 sisted a temptation to blush, and continued: 
 "Because I love Chopin must I forever write 
 of his music toujours perdrix ! It s an in 
 digestion of strawberries, clotted cream, and 
 green-eyes. I m suffering from spring-fever. 
 Let me write a story about the circus." "Why 
 not Ibsen?" interposed my editor, who is subtle 
 or nothing. "He was a grand man," I assented, 
 "but in the present case he is only a red-herring 
 across the trail. Suppose I mix up Chopin with 
 sawdust merely for the sake of the melange?" 
 My chief assented, wearily. There are more 
 important problems on the carpet than Chopin. 
 
 Had I ever been to the circus ? What a singu 
 lar question! Yet, yet ! No, I confessed to 
 myself, I had not been to the circus for at least 
 three decades. Critics are tame cats away from 
 their regular guests. In the concert room or at 
 the play, armed with our little hammers, we 
 are as brave as plumbers; but on a roof garden, 
 in church, at a circus, or innocently slumbering, 
 we are the mildest gang of pirates that ever scut- 
 121 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 tied an American sonata or forced ambitious 
 leading ladies to walk the plank. We may go 
 alone to the theatre with impunity and another 
 fellow s girl, but at the circus we need a nurse 
 to show us the ropes and keep us from falling 
 under the elephants hoofs. I know, because 
 I went one Sunday night to the Hippodrome 
 and liked John McCormack s singing immensely; 
 so much indeed that I forgot to criticise and 
 nearly fell over the edge of the box, so uncriti 
 cally did I applaud. A private nurse not 
 necessarily old say I is the only safety for a 
 critic out of his element; otherwise a sense of 
 the dignity of our calling is not maintained. 
 
 Therefore, I swallowed my Chopin scheme 
 without undue fervor and went to the circus. 
 No matter which one. All circuses are in an 
 attractive key to me. Thackeray said the same 
 thing about the play, and said it better. Any 
 circus will serve as a peg for my sawdust sym 
 bolism. Any Garden will do, so that it has a 
 capitalized initial letter. (No allusion to Magi 
 cal Mary.) The circus ! What a corrective for 
 the astringent Ibsen or the morbidezza of Sar- 
 matia s sweet singer, Chopin ! The circus ! It 
 is a revelation. One thing I regretted that I 
 could not be a boy again, with dirty hands, a 
 shining brow, and a heart brimming over with 
 joy. Peter Pan! Oh! to recapture that first 
 careless rapture, as Browning or some other 
 writing Johnny said; surely he must have meant 
 the circus, which is the one spot on our muddy 
 122 
 
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 
 
 planet where rapture rhymes with the sawdust 
 ring. 
 
 "Have you ever seen Hedda Gabler?" I 
 asked of the Finland giantess. We were wedged 
 in front of the long platform at the Garden, 
 upon which were the Missing Link, the Snake- 
 Enchantress, the Lion-Faced Boy, the English 
 Fat Girl so fat the Human Skeleton, the 
 Welsh Giant, the Lilliputians, tattooed men, a 
 man with an iron skull, dancers, jugglers, gun- 
 spinners, "lady" musicians, and the three- 
 legged boy. Eternal types at the circus. The 
 noise was terrific, the air dense with the aura 
 of unwashed humanity. This aura was twin 
 to the aura in a monkey house. But I enjoyed 
 my "bath of multitude," as Charles Baudelaire 
 names it, and I should not have bothered the 
 tall creature with such an inept question. She 
 coldly regarded me: 
 
 "No, I haven t seen Hedda to-day, but I re 
 member George Tesman always teased her with 
 one question, What do you know about that, 
 Hed? J Shoo! Sardou for mine." "Do you 
 read George Blarney Shaw?" I persisted. "He 
 ought to be in a cage here. He would draw 
 some crowds. But I m told he lives in Germany 
 now on account of the beer." I backed away 
 quickly as an East Side family consisting of a 
 baker s dozen, would allow. Why had I asked 
 such a question of a perfect stranger? This 
 giantess, I mused before the rhinoceros with the 
 double prongs, is Finnish. That s why she knew 
 123 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 the name of Hedda Gabler. Why didn t I speak 
 of Rosmersholm ? Rebecca West had Finnish 
 blood in her veins. Careful, careful this 
 Ibsen obsession must be surmounted, else I shall 
 be inquiring of the giraffe if neck or nothing is 
 the symbol of Brand. All or Nothing ! of course. 
 How stupid of me. Among the animals I re 
 gained my equilibrium. Their odors evoked 
 memories. Yes, I recalled the old-time circus, 
 with its compact pitched canvas tent on North 
 Broad Street, Philadelphia: the pink lemonade, 
 the hoarse voice of the man who entreated us 
 to buy tickets there were no megaphones in 
 those days the crisp crackling of the roasting 
 peanuts, the ovens revolved by the man from 
 Ravenna, the man from Ascoli, and the man from 
 Milan. They followed the circus all the way 
 from Point Breeze, and I swear they were to me 
 far more human than the policemen who gently 
 whacked us with their clubs when we crawled 
 under the tent. 
 
 The sense of smell is first aid to memory. 
 As I passed the cages saluting our pre-Adamic 
 relatives, bidding the time of day to the zebu, 
 nodding in a debonair fashion to the yak, I 
 could not help longing for my first circus. 
 Again I saw myself sitting in peaceful agony on 
 a splintery plank; again I felt the slaps and 
 pinches of my tender-hearted Aunt Sue now 
 in Paradise, I hope; again my heart tugged like 
 a balloon at its moorings as the clowns jumped 
 into the ring, grimacing, chortling, and fascinat- 
 124 
 
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 
 
 ing us with their ludicrous inhumanity. Again 
 we sat, a lot of noisy rapscallions, on the stoop 
 of Edwin Forrest s home the old Forrest man 
 sion is still on the west side of Broad Street 
 and how we tumbled to the sidewalk when that 
 terrific tragedian opened the door and trans 
 fixed us with his glittering glance. I can still 
 see his leonine head with its shock of iron-gray 
 curls, his exposed bull-neck, and hear his angry 
 roar: "Get to blank out of here, you blankety- 
 blanks ! " It was the giant s voice of Metamora, 
 Coriolanus, Lear that we heard, an echo from 
 the grand period in the history of the American 
 theatre; but we didn t know that. We were 
 mischievous boys, and made mock of the mighty 
 Edwin, no doubt adding insult to injury by 
 twiddling derisive thumbs at our noses. 
 
 Other days, other ways. I sighed as I tore 
 myself loose from the prehensile trunk of a too 
 friendly baby elephant and passed into the huge 
 auditorium where Gilmore had played. Ah! 
 the sad, bad, glad, dear, dead, tiresome, poverty- 
 stricken, beautiful days when we were young 
 imbeciles and held hands with a fresh " ideal" 
 every week (sometimes two). Ah! the senti 
 mental "jag" induced by peanut eating, and 
 the chaste, odoriferous apes. 
 
 It is time. We seat ourselves. I look about 
 me. Two resplendent gentlemen wearing eve 
 ning clothes at high noon, after the daring man 
 ner of our Gallic cousins, toll a bell. I became 
 excited. Why those three and thirty strokes? 
 
 125 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 What the symbolism ! Chopin, or Ibsen; again, 
 I groaned, and turned my attention to my 
 neighbors, one of whom I could feel, though 
 did not see. I raised my voice, employing cer 
 tain vocables hardly fit to print. The effect 
 was magical. " Johnny, take your feet out of 
 the gentleman s collar. That s a good boy." 
 It was the soothing voice of a mother. Bless her 
 clairvoyance! I sat comfortably back in my 
 seat. Johnny howled at the interference with 
 his pleasure. I felt sorrow for him. Childhood 
 is ever individualistic, even pragmatic. But I 
 only had one collar with me, and it was well the 
 matter thus ended. 
 
 Hurrah ! Here they come ! A goodly band. 
 The clowns ! the clowns ! Some hieratic owl of 
 wisdom has called the clown the epitome of man 
 kind. He certainly stands for something, this 
 " full-fledged fool," as good old Tody Hamilton 
 used to write, and "surcharged with the Roe 
 of Fun," which phrase beats Delaware shad. 
 Odds fish! There was only one Hamilton. 
 What a Rabelaisian list of names boast these 
 merry clowns ! If the years have passed over 
 the skulls of these lively rascals, jolly boys do 
 not show them. The same squeaks, the iden 
 tical yodling, the funny yet sinister expression 
 of the eyes, the cruel, red-slitted mouths not 
 a day older than ten did I seem as they came 
 tumbling in and began their horse-play, punctu 
 ated with yelling, yahoo gestures, ribald ejacula 
 tions, and knockabout diversions. It must all 
 126 
 
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 
 
 mean something, this hooting, in the economy 
 of the universe, else "life is a suck and a sell," 
 as Walt Whitman puts it. As in a dream-mirror 
 I saw Solness slowly mount the fatal tower when 
 Hilda Wangel cries to him: "My my Master- 
 builder!" She sings The Maiden s Wish, and 
 he hears the harps of Chopin hum in the air. I 
 rub my ears. It is not Hilda who is crying, but 
 a pet pig in a baby carriage, wheeled by a chalk- 
 faced varlet. How difficult it is to escape the 
 hallucinations of the critical profession. I 
 couldn t forget Chopin or Ibsen even at the 
 circus. 
 
 It was with relief, after more bellmanship 
 from the man with the shiny silk hat and spiked 
 coat, as the elephants majestically entered. 
 Followed the horses. Tumblers and wire- 
 walkers, women who stood on their heads and 
 smiled as they do in life. Something like the 
 "inverted pyramid," as James Hinton called 
 modern civilization plastic poseurs, Oriental 
 jugglers, the show was let loose at last. Human 
 projectiles were launched through midair to the 
 tap of a drum. My nerves forbade me to look 
 at them, so I read a programme advertisement 
 of wall-paper for bathrooms. Some people like 
 such horrible sights. I do not. They dare not 
 precisely formulate to themselves the wish that 
 "something" would happen, and when it does 
 they shudder with sadistic joy. I close my eyes 
 when the Whirl of Death or any other sensational 
 act is staged. "Something" might happen. 
 127 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 The mad dancers delight our rhythmic sense 
 as they make marvellous arabesques. The 
 chariot races stir the blood. The crash around 
 curves, the patters of gleaming metal excite so 
 that you stand up, and, brushing the feet of 
 inevitable Johnny from your neck (notwith 
 standing his remonstrances), you shout with 
 woolly mouth and husky voice. Instinctively 
 you turn down your thumbs: "Pollice verso," 
 which Bayard Taylor translated "the perverse 
 police." You remember the Ger6me painting? 
 
 "This beats Ibsen," I hilariously exclaimed to 
 Johnny s mother. (She was a comely matron.) 
 "His name is John, and when he gets home his 
 father will beat him," she tartly replied. With 
 the prevoyance of boyhood Johnny burst into 
 despairing howls. I at once folded up my mind. 
 A million things were happening in the haze of 
 the many rings. The New Circus is polyphonic, 
 or nothing. 
 
 Enough ! Filled to the eyes with the dis 
 tracting spectacle, ear-drums fatigued by the 
 blare and bang of the monster brass band, my 
 collar quite wilted by Johnny s shoemaker, my 
 temper in rags because of the panting, struggling 
 army of fellow-beings, I reached the avenue 
 in safety, perspiring, thirsty, unhappy. Like 
 Stendhal, after his first and eagerly longed-for 
 battle of love, I exclaimed: "Is that all?" In 
 sooth, it had been too much. The human sen- 
 sorium is savagely assaulted at the twentieth- 
 century circus. I was in pessimistic enough 
 128 
 
CHOPIN OR THE CIRCUS? 
 
 humor to regret the single ring, the antique 
 japes of a solitary clown, and the bewitching 
 horsemanship of Mile. Leonie, with her gauze 
 skirts and perpetual rictus. As a matter of fact, 
 we wouldn t endure for five minutes the old- 
 fashioned circus and its tepid lemonade. Where 
 are the mullygrubs of yesteryear? But the 
 human heart is perverse. It always longs for 
 the penny and the cake in company, while in 
 eluctable destiny ever separates them. Perhaps 
 my editor was right. Render unto Chopin the 
 things that are Chopin s; send Ibsen back to his 
 Land of the Midnight Whiskers. Smell the 
 sawdust at the Garden, not forgetting that the 
 chilly, dry days are at hand when even Panem 
 et Circenses shall be taboo; when pipe and prog 
 and grog will be banned; when these United 
 States shall have been renamed Puritania; when 
 a fanatically selfish minority shall take all the 
 joy from life. Ergo, carpe diem ! I thank you. 
 
 129 
 
ART AND ALCOHOL 
 
 WHAT will be the reactions among artistic 
 men and women summarily deprived of wine and 
 malt beverages ? I asked this of Manager Gatti- 
 Casazza the other day at the Metropolitan Opera 
 House. He is not a drinking man, but the con 
 temptuous shrug of his shoulders showed me 
 his position in the thrice-vexed controversy. 
 Singers, one and all, are accustomed to mild 
 alcoholic refreshment. If they go beyond 
 bounds the effect on their voices is soon made 
 manifest, but usually being foreign-born, they 
 have been in the habit of drinking light wines 
 at meal time, perhaps beer after a performance, 
 for good beer relaxes nerve-tension. People 
 don t drink beer to become intoxicated; they 
 drink it because it lets down the pressure of a 
 day s work better than whiskey or wine. Beer 
 is not an intoxicant; it is a depressant. The cry 
 that "the workingman must have his beer" is 
 far too exclusive. The professional man, the 
 brain-worker, needs beer, and the singer or mu 
 sician sometimes singers are not musicians ! 
 after a nerve-exhausting performance finds in 
 wine or beer a veritable solace. Matthew Ar 
 nold wrote that the American funny man was a 
 national calamity. What would he have said 
 to the plans of certain misguided females to 
 
 130 
 
ART AND ALCOHOL 
 
 found " recreation centres" where, after eight 
 hours exhausting daily grind, the workman 
 could listen to " instructive reading" ye gods ! 
 and drink non-alcoholic beverages (super- 
 taxed?). Little wonder Bolshevism is growing 
 apace in an America that soon will be a vast 
 Dry Tortugas. 
 
 In one of hsr always interesting novels Ger 
 trude Atherton depicts a poet whose inspiration 
 dried up when he stopped drinking. Swinburne 
 is said to have been Mrs. Atherton J s model; 
 when the English poet ceased his cognac his 
 muse did not fly far afterward. If he had not 
 become temperate in regard to spirituous liquors 
 the greatest Victorian poet would have died. 
 Walter Savage Landor, and after him Byron, 
 wrote that brandy is a drink fit only for heroes. 
 The puny physique of Swinburne could ill brook 
 alcoholic excesses. His friend and protector, 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton, literally saved the 
 effervescent Algernon Charles from sudden 
 death. As a rule lyric poets need no stimulant. 
 Youth is the propulsive force to their lyricism. 
 If Byron drank heavily at times, Shelley was 
 ever a water-drinker. No rules can be formu 
 lated. There is Bernard Shaw, the "Uncle 
 Gurnemanz" and venerable busybody of inter 
 national politics. He is a fierce teetotaler. He 
 has confessed that family reasons prompted him 
 to become so, although Archdale Reid in Hered 
 ity has shown that acquired traits are not in 
 herited; that the children of drunkards are sel- 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 dom drunkards (prohibitionists declare the op 
 posite, but figures can be made to lie). By the 
 same token the sons of clergymen are not often 
 pious. Nature abhors uniformity. If Shaw 
 had taken his ale like the British workmen he 
 harangues, he would not have been the pestifer 
 ous nuisance he is to-day. But, like all "re 
 formers," "uplifters," and public nuisances, he 
 has a weak stomach. Because he is virtuous ! - 
 the motto of all these Malvolios, these tailless 
 foxes. Mind your own business ! Ah ! that s 
 the true golden rule. There would be no wars 
 if this custom prevailed. 
 
 The late Lombroso-Levi, formulator of many 
 ingenious and amusing theories concerning the 
 stigmata of genius, has collected some names of 
 men who drank, nevertheless who contrived to 
 leave the world in their debt for their art. Max 
 Nordau followed his "master" with his absurd 
 tome on Degeneration, and then the system, 
 chiefly framed for imbeciles, quite collapsed. 
 Professor William James sent the cardboard 
 structure into thin air when he revealed its nu 
 merous inconsistencies. Any stigma applicable 
 to genius or talent may be found in your shoe 
 maker, butcher, or policeman, from megalomania 
 to alcoholism, from faun-like ears with attached 
 lobes to an unholy greed for other people s 
 money. Let us look at Lombroso s list of al 
 coholic men of genius. He writes that Alex 
 ander died after having emptied ten times the 
 goblet of Hercules (some thirst !). Julius Caesar 
 132 
 
ART AND ALCOHOL 
 
 was often carried home on the shoulders of his 
 friends so was a certain highest dignitary in 
 the United States during the last century, and 
 a mediocrity he was. Socrates, Seneca, Alcibi- 
 ades, Cato, Peter the Great, the Czarina Cath 
 erine were notorious boozers. Tiberius Nero 
 was nicknamed Biberius Mero. Septimius Seve- 
 rus and Mahomet II died in delirium tremens. 
 Jan Steen and Frans Hals were heavy imbibers. 
 Hals, who lived to an advanced age and painted 
 masterpieces to the last, was drunk every night. 
 So was Monticelli, absinthe proving his ruin. 
 George Morland drank, and Turner, too; both 
 drank to excess. As for the poets and literary 
 men, the litany is long. Henry Murger, Gerard 
 de Nerval, Alfred de Musset, Kleist, Poe, Hoff 
 mann, Addison, Steele, Carew, Sheridan, Burns, 
 Charles Lamb, James Thomson, Hartley Cole 
 ridge, James Clarence Mangan, Ernest Dowson, 
 Swinburne Rossetti, who drugged and Cole 
 ridge, De Quincey and Mme. de Stael abused 
 opium. 
 
 In the domain of music examples are as thick 
 as bombs were at Verdun. Handel swallowed 
 a mighty amount of firewater, for he was a 
 mighty man. Gluck drank far more than was 
 good for him. It was a pleasing habit of his to 
 have a harpsichord placed in some pretty rural 
 spot, where, with a regiment of bottles, he played 
 and composed. He died, so it is said, of brandy. 
 Tasso drank, Baudelaire drugged and drank, and 
 Lenau, poet, died from alcohol. Mozart and 
 
 133 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Beethoven abused wine. Beethoven was often 
 "a little how come ye so!" Modern instances 
 multiply. Singers, players, actors, authors, 
 composers how many there are about whose 
 heads is the aura of alcoholism ! Alcohol has 
 been the nursing bottle of genius, and of many 
 commonplace citizens may not the same be said ? 
 Woe to him who abuses the priceless gift. He 
 is doomed. And doomed, too, is the prohibi 
 tionist who overindulges in flapjacks and fried 
 steak. Native cookery has slain more than the 
 rum mills of the universe. And notwithstand 
 ing our vaunted cosmopolitanism, a natural out 
 come of the great war, the village pump is to 
 be our national Totem. Butchered to make a 
 prohibitionist holiday; that prohibition which 
 has elevated " legislation" to the dignity of a 
 sport. 
 
 Richard Wagner possessed an irritable stomach, 
 but was comforted by a glass of good wine (as 
 apparently was St. Paul). Walt Whitman 
 neither smoked nor drank. Poor Guy de Mau 
 passant began with wine, and, in the wake of 
 erotic excesses, he resorted to opium, even to 
 ether, which he would put on his handkerchief 
 and apply to his nostrils. Such a hatred of 
 reality was his ! He well deserved the appella 
 tion of "Taureau triste," as he was surly toward 
 the end of a brilliant career. Flaubert, like 
 Zola, was chary of excess, except in literary 
 work. Be chaste in your life that you may be 
 violent in your art ! he enjoined de Maupassant. 
 
 134 
 
ART AND ALCOHOL 
 
 Turgenieff, Daudet, Huysmans, Gounod, Gon- 
 court, were not alcoholic. Bizet, it is said, died 
 of absinthe, not of disappointment over the fail 
 ure of Carmen; which didn t fail, as Philip Hale 
 has shown us. Goethe was wild in his youth, 
 drank wine, pursued the golden girl, yet he 
 cannot by any stretch of imagination be placed 
 in the ranks of the drunkards. The alcoholic 
 neurosis exists in the individual, who drinks be 
 cause he is neurotic, and is not necessarily neu 
 rotic because he is a drunkard. As usual, the 
 prohibitionists have put the cart before the horse, 
 being ignorant, or pretending to be, of facts dis 
 closed by modern biological research. These 
 fanatics suffer from what might be called psy 
 chical dandruff. 
 
 What am I trying to prove? Nothing. Al 
 cohol inspired or spurred on these men, and we 
 are the inheritors of their visions. Naturally, 
 to the boneheads who engineer reforms, all art 
 is dangerous, is immoral. Art, like religion, is 
 also an opiate. God made the dawn, but the 
 devil invented the evening. The Seven Arts 
 are the invention of men in revolt against the 
 tedium of life. Killing time is only killing one s 
 self, for we are crucified at the crossroads of 
 Time and Space (with the Button-Moulder lurk 
 ing around the corner). To escape the eternal 
 ennui man created the arts, and music, the most 
 soothing of the seven, has drugged his dreams 
 and made fantastic the rude angles of concrete 
 life. Perhaps music is only a majestic noise. 
 
 135 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Sometimes it bruises the soul as do bells the air. 
 It can retire majestically into the recesses of the 
 imagination, like the faint roar of surf withdrawn 
 on the beach of Time. It may be a ballet for 
 triphammers or as splendidly sonorous as the 
 color chords of Picasso or the tortured mecha 
 nisms of Marcel Duchamps. But always an 
 opiate, a consoler. 
 
 The truth is that our existence without some 
 buffer between our naked souls and the chill 
 wind of empty spiritual space would be incon 
 ceivable. Man devised Time and Space 
 symbols of his terrifying ignorance in the pres 
 ence of eternity and religion and the arts 
 wherewith he might cloak his nakedness. All 
 the rest is vanity. Prohibition is only a symp 
 tom of the everlasting propensity of intolerant 
 minds to fashion others after their own mean 
 image. There is no need to worry over it. 
 Like other tyrannical devices to enslave the will 
 of mankind, it will be tested, found wanting, and 
 dropped. And the best way to hasten the de 
 cease is to enforce rigidly the law. But come 
 what may, art and alcohol are inseparably 
 wedded, as in the Greek myth Apollo and Diony- 
 sos imaged beauty and ecstasy. 
 
 136 
 
THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 
 
 CHOPIN has bequeathed to us six scherzos. 
 The four that comprise a group are opus 20, 
 in B minor; opus 31, B flat minor; opus 39, C 
 sharp minor, and opus 54, E major. The two 
 remaining scherzos are in the second sonata, 
 opus 35, and in the third sonata, opus 58. They 
 are in the respective keys of E flat minor and 
 E flat major. These six compositions are evi 
 dences of the power, originality, variety, and 
 delicacy of Chopin. The scherzo is formally 
 not his invention. Beethoven and Mendels 
 sohn anticipated him. But he remodelled the 
 form and filled it with a surprisingly novel con 
 tent, though not altering its three-four measure. 
 With the Beethoven scherzo we realize the swing, 
 the robustiousness and, at times, the rude jollity. 
 In the Mendelssohn scherzo we enjoy the velocity 
 and finish. Light without heat, true scherzando 
 moods; indeed, more scherzo-like than Chopin s, 
 Mendelssohn s sense of elfin joy stemmed from 
 the early Italian masters of the pianoforte. 
 Rossini voiced this belief after hearing the 
 scherzo a capriccio from the nimble fingers of 
 Felix himself, and said to the composer: "That 
 smells of Scarlatti." And it does recall Do- 
 menico Scarlatti, whose compositions, slight as 
 to structure, are replete with gracious vitality 
 
 137 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 and a surface skimming of sentiment like the 
 curved flight of a thin bird over shallow waters. 
 
 A terrible though beautiful domain is the 
 Chopin scherzo. Only two have the lightness 
 of touch, clarity in atmosphere and bustling 
 gaiety of the conventional scherzo: the other 
 four are fierce, grave, ironic, sardonic, fiery, pas 
 sionate, even hysterical, and most melancholy. 
 In several the moods are pathologic; in all, 
 magical. The scherzo in E, opus 54, may be 
 best described by the thrice commonplace word, 
 delightful. It is sunny music, and its sweep and 
 swiftness are compelling. The five preluding 
 bars of half-notes, unison, strike the keynote 
 of optimism. What follows is like the ruffling 
 of tree-tops by warm southern winds. The 
 little upward flight in E, beginning at the seven 
 teenth bar, in major thirds and fourths, has been 
 cleverly utilized by Saint-Saens in the scherzo 
 of his G minor piano concerto, opus 22. The 
 fanciful embroidery of the single finger passages 
 is never opaque; a sparkling, bubbling freedom 
 and freshness characterize this Chopin scherzo, 
 a composition not heard too often in public, 
 possibly because there are few pianists, like 
 Joseffy or De Pachmann, to play it. Its emo 
 tional content is not deep; it lies well within the 
 category of the elegant, the capricious. Its 
 fourth page contains an episode which at first 
 blush suggests the theme of the A flat valse, 
 opus 42, with its comminglement of duplex and 
 
 138 
 
THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 
 
 triple rhythms. Although the piu lento is in C 
 sharp minor, it betrays little sadness; it is but 
 the blur of a passing cloud that shadows with 
 its fleecy edges the wind-swept moorland. 
 
 This scherzo in E is a mood of joyousness; as 
 joyous as the witty, sensitive, umbrageous com 
 poser ever allowed himself to become. Its coda 
 is not so forcible as the usual Chopin coda. 
 There is a dazzling flutter of silvery scale at the 
 close. Altogether a charming work. Closely 
 allied to it in general sentiment is the E flat 
 scherzo from the B minor sonata. It is largely 
 arabesque and its ornamentation is genial 
 though not surprisingly ingenious. It some 
 what savors of Weber. It might go on forever. 
 The resolution is not intellectual; it is purely 
 one of tonality. The thought is tenuous. But 
 it is highly embroidered relief after the first 
 movement of the sonata. Nor is the trio in B 
 particularly noteworthy. Truly a salon scherzo, 
 which challenges Mendelssohn on his native 
 heath. It may be considered as an intermezzo, 
 also as a prelude to the lyric measures. 
 
 We are on firm and familiar footing when the 
 first page is opened of the B flat minor scherzo, 
 the second in order of composition. Who has 
 not heard with interest those overarching and 
 questioning triplets which Chopin could never 
 make his pupils play sufficiently tombe " ? He 
 told De Lenz: "It must be a charnel-house." 
 Alas! These same vaulted phrases have since 
 become banal. This scherzo, like the lovely 
 
 139 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 A flat Ballade, is cruelly tortured by the ambi 
 tious musical flapper. Yet how great, how 
 vigorous, it all is; how it abounds in sweetness 
 and light when the music falls from the fingers 
 of a master ! It is a Byronic poem "so ten 
 der, so bold, as full of love as of scorn," to quote 
 Schumann. Has Chopin ever penned a more 
 delicious song than this in D flat, with its stray 
 ing over the tonal borderland? It is the high 
 noon of life. The dark bud of the introduction 
 has come to a perfect flowering, and with what 
 miracles of scent, shape, and color ! The second 
 section has the quality of sane wit. It is serious 
 to severity, yet its meanings are noble. The 
 brief excursion that follows is the awakening 
 from a wondering dream; no suggestion there of 
 pallid morbidities. And how supremely welded 
 is the style with the subject; what masterly 
 writing evolved from the genius of the instru 
 ment ! Then, fearful that he has dwelt too long 
 upon his ideas, Chopin, in a rapturous flight, 
 soars away to clear sky. After the repetition 
 comes the development section, and while it is 
 ingenious and effective in a chaotic way, never 
 theless it is here that the composer is at his 
 weakest. The Olympian aloofness of Beethoven, 
 which permitted him to survey his material from 
 every point of view, Chopin could not boast. 
 He is a great composer, but he was also a great 
 pianist. He nurses his themes with construc 
 tive frugality, and sometimes the mechanical 
 limitation of the piano checks his imagination. 
 140 
 
THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 
 
 The well-sounding is considered as much as the 
 clearly thought. There is logic in his exposi 
 tion, though it is often piano, not music, logic. 
 A certain straining after brilliancy, a falling off 
 in the spontaneous urge of the earlier pages, 
 force us to feel easier with the return of the first 
 theme. The coda is brilliant. This scherzo in 
 B flat minor bids fair to remain the favorite 
 among its fellows. It is neither cryptic nor 
 repellent, like the first and third scherzo. It is 
 a perennial joy to pupil and public. Like the 
 soliloquy in Hamlet, the B flat minor scherzo 
 is become a popular quotation. 
 
 Its predecessor in B minor, opus 20, is the 
 profounder of the pair, but not so melodious. 
 It is the most shrill and hysterical of the scherzos. 
 Though in the ironic vein, it is Chopin recklessly 
 throwing himself to the winds of remorse a 
 Manfred mood, a mood of self-torture, a con 
 fession from the first chord to the last. Within 
 the dream inclosed by its gates of tonal brass 
 there is the struggle of an imprisoned soul. It 
 is the unhappiest and the most riotous of the 
 Pole s works, and it is also unduly long. Its 
 emotional keynote is too tense to permit of the 
 repetitions marked by the composer. These 
 repetitions are unsuited to present taste, which, 
 above all, demands brevity. Poignancy and 
 prolixity are mutually exclusive. The piece 
 greatly gains when played without "da capo." 
 Its first part is so drastically harsh that the 
 141 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 succeeding melody in B, with its lilting tenths 
 - "the sweet slumber of the moonlight on the 
 hill" - after the tragic strain comes as benison. 
 This scherzo seems to possess a personal mes 
 sage. Chopin, like Robert Louis Stevenson, was 
 consumptive. Slender of frame, as was the 
 Scotch writer, his spirit was leonine. His was 
 psychic bravery. He could write terrible music, 
 conjure up desperate images. A sense of stifled 
 longing, of the inability to compass his lofty 
 ambitions, fill this first scherzo. It is the trag 
 edy of Chopin s life compressed within a few 
 pages; the tragedy of one whose spirit was 
 weaker than his flesh. 
 
 The arabesques after the eight-bar introduc 
 tion some of them muted bars, as is Chopin s 
 wont has a spiritual resemblance to the prin 
 cipal figure in the Fantasie-Impromptu, opus 
 66; but instead of the ductile triplets, as in the 
 bars of the Impromptu, the figure in the scherzo 
 is divided between the hands, while the harsh 
 ness of the mood is emphasized by the anticipa 
 tory chord in the left hand. The vitality of 
 this first page is positively electrifying. The 
 questioning chords at the close of the section 
 are as imaginative as any passage ever written 
 by the composer. The half-notes E and the 
 upleaping appogiaturia are evidences of his 
 originality in minor details. These occur be 
 fore the modulation into the lyric theme and 
 with some slight dashes before the dash into the 
 coda. The second section, in agitato, contains 
 142 
 
THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 
 
 several knotty harmonic problems; they must 
 be skimmed over at tempestuous speed, else 
 cacophony. Here Chopin is bold to excess, as 
 if his spirit would knock at the very gates of 
 heaven or hell. But the thunder and surge, 
 after waxing, soon wanes and spends itself. 
 The soul has stormed itself into sheer weariness. 
 By critical consent, the molto piu lento is a 
 masterpiece. Written in the luscious key of B, 
 it is like a woven enchantment. Chopin attains 
 most subtle effects with broken accords in tenths. 
 The only other slow movements comparable to 
 this are the B major episode in the B minor 
 octave study, opus 25, and the largo of the B 
 minor sonata. The Garden of Armida or the 
 Vale of Tempe are evoked by all three tone- 
 poems. 
 
 Mark how the composer resumes his first 
 savage mood. It is a picture of contrasted vi 
 olences. Beware of the "da capo." Too many 
 repetitions provoke satiety. Rather attack at 
 once the coda that most dramatic of Chopin s 
 codas. Bold, breathless, startling, is this im 
 petuous ride cross country. The heavy accen 
 tuation on the first note of every bar should not 
 obscure one s rhythmic sense to the second beat 
 in the left, which is likewise accented. This 
 produces mixed rhythms, which add to the 
 murkiness, confusion, and despair of the finale. 
 These daring dissonances so daring, so logi 
 cal, so dramatic how they must have rasped 
 the nerves of Chopin s contemporaries! And 
 
 143 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 they should be rigorously insisted upon. No 
 veiled half-lights. All bridges are burned. 
 Naught remains but catastrophe. To his doom 
 goes this musical Childe Roland! The Dark 
 Tower crumbles as the poet dauntlessly blows 
 his slug-horn. The scherzo ends in overwhelm 
 ing ruin. The last page is a supreme offering 
 to the god of pessimism. 
 
 Even though the sneering fretfulness of an 
 unhappy sick-brained man disturbs its sharp 
 contours, the third scherzo in C sharp minor, 
 opus 39, is the most dramatic and the finest 
 moulded of them all. It is capricious to mad 
 ness, but the dramatic quality is unmistakable. 
 It seethes with scorn if such an extravagant 
 expression may be allowed; but it is extravagant, 
 full of fire and fury, yet signifying something. 
 A word as to the tempo: The scherzos, with a 
 few exceptions, are marked presto, but we must 
 remember that it is the presto of Chopin s time, 
 also of his piano action. His favorite Pleyel 
 piano was light and elastic in action. To-day 
 actions are heavier, the key dip greater, though 
 the elasticity is the same. Therefore the tempi 
 of these scherzos or should I write scherzi ? 
 - ought to be moderated, otherwise the music 
 loses its significant ponderability, not to say 
 dignity, when we adopt the old-fashioned time 
 markings. The first part of the B minor scherzo 
 may be taken at a presto pace that is, a com 
 modious presto, the scherzo in E major must be 
 144 
 
THE TRAGIC CHOPIN 
 
 played presto; also the one in E flat, as both are 
 of the velocity genre; but when the thought 
 takes on a graver hue, where the mastery of 
 utterance and nobility of phrase are to be con 
 sidered, then moderate your pulse-beat. The 
 scherzo in C sharp minor is a special sufferer 
 from a too hurried speed. Architectonics are 
 blurred, details jumbled and grandeur of style 
 is absent. And if you start with such a fiery 
 tempo, how shall you secure contrast in the 
 coda, which should be fairly shot from the 
 finger-tips? Or would you emulate Schumann 
 in his G minor sonata, in the finale, which begins 
 prestissimo, and is later ordered by the com 
 poser to become still more prestissimo ? Achieve 
 a presto, by all means, but consider the heavier 
 tonal mass of the modern piano. 
 
 This C sharp minor scherzo is a massive com 
 position, yet replete with fitful starts and rhyth 
 mic surprises. The chorale and its trio are 
 Chopinesque as to fioritura and in harmonic 
 basis. Throughout the narrative tone is dra 
 matic; even in the "meno mosso" it never tar 
 ries. The coda is built on an effect of persistent 
 iteration. It is excellently adapted to the key 
 board. The composition has affinities with the 
 dark and grotesque conceptions of Hoffmann, 
 Poe, or Coleridge. Its acid irony recalls Heine. 
 It is like fantastic architecture seen in a dream; 
 about it hover perpetual gloom and the despair 
 ing things that circle in the night. It is like a 
 tale from Poe s iron-bound, melancholy volume 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 of the Magi and across its portal is written the 
 word, Spleen. 
 
 Remains the E flat minor scherzo from the 
 second sonata. It is the most powerful of the 
 set. To interpret, one needs breadth of style, 
 heroic spirit, abetted by wrists of steel. The 
 big Rossinian one-bar crescendo at the begin 
 ning taxes the strength. The composition is 
 elemental; the chromatic whistling of the wind 
 in the chord of the sixth makes true storm-music. 
 There is menacing gloom in the initial bars; the 
 blissful song is not quite uninterrupted bliss; 
 there is always a tempest that threatens. The 
 descending octaves, which seem to invite us to 
 the infernal regions, are swept away by the 
 storm-theme, and once more we are madly pro 
 jected through space. Satanic pride, a challenge 
 to fate, the defiance of the microcosm to the 
 threatening macrocosm; these and other char 
 acteristics may be imagined in this profound 
 work. It depends on the listener. With Chopin 
 as with Rome, you carry away what you fetch 
 to either man or city. But your little Peter s 
 pence of sympathy has suffered a rich change 
 in the return. We are the gainers. Some day, 
 no longer as remote as when the fallacious belief 
 that the music of any particular nation is better 
 than another s, perhaps Chopin may stand 
 where he should, next to Bach, Mozart, and Bee 
 thoven. There is no such thing as map-music; 
 there is only beautiful music. And you can 
 never play Chopin beautifully enough. 
 146 
 
PHASES OF THE GREATER 
 CHOPIN 
 
 TO-DAY the Impromptus of Chopin are well- 
 nigh impossible in the concert-room. Those 
 delights of all true " flappers," the Fantasie- 
 Impromptu in C sharp minor, and the A flat 
 Impromptu are played too often, that is, played 
 badly. The first part of the Fantasie-Im- 
 promptu is taken at too swift a pace, and, in 
 consequence, sounds too much like an etude, 
 when in reality its arabesques do hint at some 
 thing more emotional. The figuration suggests 
 that of the B minor scherzo, not, however, so 
 pregnant with dramatic meanings. And that 
 second section in D flat, how it is dragged, how 
 it is sprawled and drawled ! In company with 
 the second theme of the Funeral March, it is 
 the most sentimental of its composer. The 
 greater Chopin is revealed in the second Im 
 promptu, the one in the key of F sharp major. 
 It is a sheaf of moods organically more bound 
 together than seems at a first hearing. Because 
 of its true impromptu spirit, its vagrant moods, 
 its restless outpouring of fancies, it has been 
 rather disregarded by some Chopinists, who, 
 hidebound as any academic critic, are shocked 
 by the changes in tonality, and, being unimag- 
 
 147 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 inative, are shocked also by the capricious shift 
 ing of moods; one dream melts into another, 
 and after a repetition of those sweetly attuned 
 chords at the close, a vigorous affirmation 
 awakens the listener as would a sudden clap 
 of thunder during a peaceful evening in June. 
 There are several enigmatic bars of modulation 
 that have puzzled purists and still are disquiet 
 ing even to excursionists through the tangled 
 harmonic underwoods of Ornstein and Stra 
 vinsky. I refer to a transitional passage after 
 the march-like measures and immediately be 
 fore the return of the principal melody. Else 
 where I have compared them to the creaking 
 of a rusty hinge in the dooryard where Walt 
 Whitman s lilacs last bloomed. The G flat 
 Impromptu, the third in the published order 
 the Fantasie-Impromptu, opus 66, is pos 
 thumous was seldom heard in recital till 
 Vladimir de Pachmann, master expositor of 
 the more delicate phases of the Polish composer, 
 revived it in his programme. Since then it is 
 become more familiar. It is charming with its 
 spiral figuration, though less novel than its 
 two predecessors. 
 
 The Mazurkas, those impish, morbid, gay, 
 sour, dour, graceful little dances, I need not 
 dwell upon here at length. For the majority 
 of pianists they are a sealed book, and if you 
 have not a savor of Slav in you pray do not 
 disturb them with your literalism. De Pach 
 mann, Godowsky, Paderewski, Gabrilowitsch, 
 148 
 
PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN 
 
 and Josef Hofmann play them wonderfully, 
 but how few others. I recall a story told me 
 by Rosenthal, whose colossal performances 
 here are memorable. He wished to hear from 
 De Pachmann s nimble fingers his own version 
 of the Mazurkas and paid the Russian a visit 
 one evening. Pachmann did not greet Rosen- 
 thai too sympathetically. "Ah !" he exclaimed, 
 when Moriz, the octave-thunderbolt, explained 
 the reason for his unexpected appearance. "Ah ! 
 but I play the Mazurkas so badly. Now, if I 
 had your technique" his eyes fairly sparkled 
 with malicious irony "I might be able to play 
 them!" However, he was persuaded, and once 
 seated at the piano he didn t leave it till he had 
 almost finished the entire collection; and Cho 
 pin wrote many of these dances. (At least 
 fifty-one, if you include several of doubtful 
 authenticity). How did he play them, this 
 perverse magical artist? Rosenthal told me 
 that he had never heard such beautiful, subtle, 
 and treacherous playing; the treachery was 
 the manner in which he interpreted the music. 
 Not an accent was correct, the phrasing was 
 falsified, though the precise notation was ad 
 hered to, and all delivered with a variety of 
 touches positively exquisite. " There!" cried 
 De Pachmann, as he finished, "that is the only 
 way to play the Mazurkas." And he smiled 
 with his eyes. "Not!" thought Rosenthal, 
 who thanked his colleague and hurried into 
 the open air where he could explode. Talk 
 149 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 about camouflage! The joke was later when 
 Rosenthal teased De Pachmann about his 
 trickery and the Chopinzee absolutely grinned 
 with joy. Surely, as Sam Johnson remarked, 
 the reciprocal civility of authors is one of the 
 most risible scenes in the farce of life. The 
 splenetic doctor could have joined musicians 
 to authors. 
 
 Chopin has composed some marvellous music 
 in the Mazurka form. Consider the three or 
 four of these dances in the key of C sharp minor, 
 the poetic one in B flat minor, the one with the 
 morbidly insistent theme in B minor or that 
 sad, appealing example in F minor, the last 
 which Chopin is said to have put on paper. Its 
 fixed idea, its hectic gaiety and acrid gloom 
 reveal a sick brain, the brain of a dying man. 
 But there are many other Mazurkas filled with 
 daylight cheerfulness. Of the greater Chopin 
 posterity will probably acclaim the Polonaises 
 in F sharp minor, A flat major and the Fan- 
 taisie-Polonaise in the same key. There is a 
 wealth of fantasy in this Polonaise, opus 61; 
 its restless tonalities, the beauty of the first 
 theme, the vaporous deliquesence later of this 
 theme, the violent mood changes and harmonic 
 grandeur left this work to the elect of the com 
 poser. The F sharp minor Polonaise and the 
 so-called Siberian in E flat minor, as well as the 
 Polonaise in C minor are nothing if not virile. 
 They demand men as well as pianists to inter 
 pret them. 
 
PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN 
 
 Liszt pronounced the F sharp minor Polonaise 
 pathologic. As a matter of fact, it surpasses 
 in sombre grandeur the Heroic Polonaise, opus 
 53, notwithstanding the thundering cannons 
 and cavalry charges of the more popular of 
 the pair. The triplets in eight notes of the 
 introduction achieve a splendid climax of sus 
 pense before the entrance of the chief theme. 
 Soon octaves and chords supplant the single 
 notes of the melody. There is epical breadth 
 which at each reiteration becomes bigger, so 
 big that it almost overflows the frame of the 
 keyboard, in suggestion becomes orchestral. 
 The second subject in the major (D flat) is 
 less drastic, is an excellent contrast figure. The 
 strange intermezzo in A which precedes the 
 Mazurka is not enigmatic if you hear it as a 
 sinister roll of drums. I think of Rembrandt s 
 Night Watch, and its muffled morning music. 
 Its intent is manifest, it leads to the second 
 theme, now transposed to the despairing key 
 of C sharp minor; the Mazurka which follows 
 tempted Liszt or his amanuensis, Princess 
 Sayn- Wittgenstein to the most extravagant 
 panegyric. Its brace of double notes, thirds 
 and sixths are lovely in hue and scent, but pray 
 do not languish your tempo, else the episode 
 soon becomes sugary. Again the Polonaise 
 resumes its elemental chant, a chant which 
 grows huger in rancorous woe until the very 
 bottom of the pit of desolation is reached, and, 
 without a gleam of light, comes the code with 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 mutterings of the main theme, and only in the 
 very last bar we hear with positive relief a 
 smashing F sharp in octaves. 
 
 What does it all mean? Some obscure psy 
 chological drama of the composer s soul in which 
 he vents his spleen, indignation and defiance, 
 and rages against the ineluctable canons of 
 destiny. In a sense this Polonaise is pathologic. 
 It appeals to the nerves. It lacerates the pulp 
 of our sensibility, it is morbid, but it is also 
 magnificent. It is not sensational like the two 
 Polonaises of Liszt in E major and C minor, 
 though it is equally brilliant. Arthur Fried- 
 heim played the Chopin Polonaise superbly at 
 one time. It suited his saturnine mood. I 
 fancy, however, that Franz Liszt s performance 
 must have been the supreme exemplar. There 
 is a loftiness of mood coupled with the heroic 
 patterns of this piece which place it in the cate 
 gory of masterpieces. It reminds one of a sullen, 
 rugged landscape in the style of Salvator Rosa, 
 a solitary human in the foreground, distracted, 
 who lifts suicidal hands to the darkling, indif 
 ferent skies. It is the tragedy of Man, who is 
 no longer, as in the old-fashioned geocentric 
 conception of the universe, the centre of things, 
 but discovers himself alone, deserted by the 
 familiar signs and stars in his cosey firmament, 
 and despairs. The tragedy of unfaith. The 
 tragedy of love that slays. Unhappy Chopin 
 was baptized a Roman Catholic, so was George 
 Sand. Both were, to put the case mildly, slack 
 
 152 
 
PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN 
 
 in the practices of their church. Chopin was 
 of a pious bent. 
 
 He concealed his attachment to the French 
 sphinx of the inkpot from his mother in War 
 saw because he feared to pain her. She was 
 profoundly religious. Madame Sand, who 
 didn t wear trousers and smoke all day, as cari 
 cature proclaims, was cruel to her consumptive 
 genius. She appreciated his work, but his 
 humors were antic. She called Frederic "mon 
 cher cadavre," and this "corpse" must have 
 grated on his nerves. Oh ! if he had possessed 
 but a tithe of her saving sense of humor. But 
 Chopin was not given to jesting over his love. 
 He flirted and mildly diverted himself; the 
 Sand affair was deadly serious to him. When 
 the spirit moved her she betrayed him (let us 
 politely call it spirit rather than temperament). 
 Her final desertion didn t kill him. It was the 
 liaison that slew the man, body and soul. She 
 robbed him of love, faith, and fatherland. His 
 ending, though, was in the proper religious key. 
 According to Turgines, half the countesses in 
 Europe sang him to his death. (Many are still 
 singing their hearers along the same road.) 
 I believe the F sharp Polonaise to be the most 
 subjective from the pen of its composer, even 
 more so than the B minor scherzo, opus 20. 
 
 The nocturnes are done to death. Let us 
 pass them by. The C sharp minor nocturne 
 is like the one in C minor; both are still free 
 from persecution at the hands of the young 
 
 153 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 person who has decked the most virile spirit 
 of his age with Parisian millinery. These two 
 nocturnes do not intrigue the fancy of the ama 
 teur. In breadth of conception they are Bee- 
 thovenian. The E major nocturne, a favorite 
 of Josef Hofmann, and the one in B, the 
 Tuberose, in which Paderewski proved so elo 
 quent and whose very title makes H. L. 
 Mencken grit his teeth, are loaded with purest 
 Chopin ore. I admire, but with reservations, 
 the transcription of various nocturnes to in 
 struments of the string family. Wilhelmj trans 
 posed the D flat nocturne for violin and Leopold 
 Auer has arranged the posthumous nocturne 
 in E minor, which Heifetz plays beautifully; 
 yet, effective as they may be, they are not truly 
 Chopinesque. They are too saccharine on the 
 strings; we miss the cool, crystalline tones of 
 the pianoforte. 
 
 The Berceuse ! Of that wonder-child who 
 came to us through the pink gates of the dawn, 
 and was rocked to rhythmic dreams in Chopin s 
 Cradle Song, I may only say that in the hands 
 of many pianists it has grown to be a brat of 
 banal visage and muscular proportions. An 
 ululation of the D flat tonality, it has now be 
 come a mere finger study. When Joseffy played 
 the composition a poem emerged from the 
 ivories. What of the Preludes? Alone the 
 twenty-five Preludes would give their creator 
 a claim on immortality. There are technical 
 range and poetic vision; above all, there is 
 
 154 
 
PHASES OF THE GREATER CHOPIN 
 
 humanity. Shades of feeling are explored, 
 depths and altitudes of passion explored. If 
 all Chopin were to be annulled I should plead 
 for the salvation of the Preludes. The cameo- 
 like stillness of some is like softly spoken words 
 overheard in a cloister. Truly religious. But 
 thunder-riven Preludes in D minor, in B flat 
 minor, in F minor and E flat minor stir our 
 pulse to sharper vibration. Surpassingly sweet 
 is the elegiac Prelude in B flat. It recalls the 
 nocturnes. The second Prelude with its enig 
 matic questionings is for a rainy day; a day 
 when the soul is racked by doubt or defeat; 
 about it, hovers a grisly something that we dare 
 not define. It may be Chopin s Horla, this 
 sinister music-making. A ray of sunshine, but 
 from a sun that slants in the west is the Prelude 
 in G. What marvels in miniature, what cun 
 ningly wrought jewels! Darker drama may 
 be found as the D minor Prelude with its ele 
 mental ground bass in angry sea roars 
 somewhere in the background; also in the glit 
 tering scales of the B flat minor Prelude and 
 the declamatory passages of the F minor Pre 
 lude. In the C sharp minor Prelude, opus 45, 
 there are marked anticipations of the later 
 manner of Brahms, not alone in spirit but in 
 figuration. This Prelude is a foretaste of 
 Brahms, the familiar Chopin note not missing. 
 The embroideries of the Barcarolle a fully 
 developed and dramatic Nocturne and of 
 the Bolero are more Polish than Italian or 
 
 155 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Spanish. By some critics the Fantaisie, opus 
 49, has been adjudged the most perfect work 
 of the composer. The grave, march-like intro 
 ductions, the insistent, climbing figures in trip 
 lets, the great song in F minor, followed by the 
 enchanting episodes in double-notes, and the 
 powerful climax reveal another Chopin from the 
 sentimental dreamer, the conventional Thad- 
 deus of Warsaw. There is logical development. 
 There are dramatic scope and intensity. The 
 lento is peaceful, the coda impressive. The 
 entire composition is massive, its phraseology 
 long-breathed. It represents the master at the 
 peak of his powers. 
 
 156 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 
 
 WHEN Cosima I, Queen of Baireuth, does 
 enter the eternal shadowland, her passing will 
 not greatly intrigue the attention of a world 
 whose ears buzz with the rumors of mightier 
 happenings. She has been a dweller for years 
 in the Twilights. (She was born December 25, 
 1837, at Bellagio, Italy, and not in 1840, as the 
 musical annals have it.) She is the last of the 
 famous dynasty founded by her husband, Rich 
 ard Wagner, greatest of modern composers. 
 No one, not even his admirers, dared pretend 
 that Siegfried Wagner would ever succeed his 
 father on the musical throne. A brief span 
 Cosima entertained high hopes for her son s 
 future. He had been coached by Humperdinck 
 and Richter. His operas were produced in 
 European capitals, but to no avail. He could 
 not fill the shadow of his sire, much less write a 
 bar of music worth the whistling. Wotan had 
 fathered a Parsifal, Jr., and Baireuth sympa 
 thized with Cosima s disappointment. It was 
 the second sorrow of a life crowded with happi 
 ness. In 1883 the man she adored as a god died 
 on her bosom at Venice. That tragic event trans 
 formed her from a loving wife to the sternly 
 ambitious woman who ruled the destinies of 
 Baireuth for thirty years. In 1913 the third 
 
 157 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 sorrow came to her in the unwelcome shape of 
 copyright expiration. The music of Wagner 
 was free to every country. Parsifal, the Rhine- 
 gold of Baireuth, already had been ravished by 
 an American Alberich; nevertheless, from the 
 shock of the legal decision which blotted Baireuth 
 off the map of music Cosima never recovered. 
 She was become a shadow of her former grandeur. 
 She had outlived her majesty. 
 
 I first saw her in 1894. It was the summer 
 when Lillian Nordica made her debut in the 
 historic opera-house on the hill. Zoltan Doeme, 
 her husband, also appeared. His Parsifal, too, 
 is historic. Queen Cosima I was a tall, gaunt 
 woman with the familiar Liszt profile, her white 
 hair worn a la Liszt, her stride that of a grena 
 dier. She ruled with an iron hand, a hand not 
 encased in a velvet glove like her father s. A 
 tyrant in petticoats was the usual ascription. 
 Not loved, indeed feared, she ran the Baireuth 
 machine with the shrewdness of a Tammany 
 Hall politician. Her contemporaries concur in 
 that. A woman of brains, courage, audacity, 
 she recalled for me a second Margravine of 
 Baireuth in her domineering manner. She 
 would tolerate no rivals. Conductor after con 
 ductor came and went. When Lilli Lehmann 
 toward the close of a glorious artistic career sang, 
 in 1896, then Gibraltar met Gibraltar. Lilli had 
 been one of the Rhine-Daughters in 1876. She 
 knew her Wagner as well as Cosima. There was 
 warlike gossip then of which I got my fill. The 
 
 158 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 
 
 ladies parted the best of friends, of course. 
 Olive Fremstad, a pupil of Lehmann, was one of 
 the Rhine-Daughters that year. Ellen Gul- 
 branson was the Brunnhilde after Lehmann. 
 Alois Burgs taller made a clumsy debut as Sieg 
 fried and Parsifal. Mottl was the reigning fa 
 vorite, Felix of Munich, the first man in whom 
 the inconsolable Cosima showed deep interest 
 after the death of Richard. Cosima, all said and 
 done, was a daughter of Franz Liszt. The last 
 time I saw her was in 1901. With George 
 Moore I stood on the esplanade facing the Fran- 
 conian valley, and during an entr acte of the 
 Ring we discussed the mediocre conducting of 
 Prince Siegfried Wagner and the fond, foolish 
 affection of his mother. She passed. This time 
 she rode, but that rigid spine, the proud pose of 
 the head, the undimmed hawk-like eyes I am 
 the widow of Wagner and the daughter of Liszt ! 
 they seemed thus to challenge the gaze of the 
 public proved her still in possession of all her 
 powers. And she was then past sixty. Truly 
 an extraordinary woman this, with her name out 
 of the Italian Renaissance, herself like some be 
 lated and imperious apparition from the Renais 
 sance. 
 
 Her forebears were just as remarkable. Liszt 
 met her mother, the Countess d Agoult, in the 
 brilliant whirl of his artistic successes at Paris. 
 Chopin had dedicated to her the first book of 
 his Etudes. She was beautiful, accomplished, 
 though her intimates declare that hers was not a 
 
 159 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 truthful nature. She was born Marie Sophie 
 de Flavigny, in 1805, at Frankfort-on-Main, 
 Germany. Her father was the Vicomte de 
 Flavigny, a French refugee, who had married the 
 daughter of Simon Moritz Bethmann, a rich 
 banker, originally from Amsterdam and a He 
 brew converted to Lutheranism. Marie had 
 literary ability, boasted of meeting Goethe once, 
 and in 1827 she married Count Charles d Agoult 
 of Paris. Social sedition was in the air. The 
 "Misunderstood Woman" no new thing then, 
 and still with us was the fashion. George 
 Sand was changing her lovers with every book 
 she wrote, and the Countess d Agoult began to 
 yearn for fame and adventures. Liszt appeared. 
 He seems to have been the pursued one. They 
 eloped. In honor he could not desert the 
 woman. They made Geneva their home 
 temporarily, for both had the nomad heart and 
 were doomed to pitch their tents in many strange 
 places. In her own right Marie had twenty 
 thousand francs yearly income. It cost Liszt 
 exactly three hundred thousand francs to keep 
 up an establishment such as the lady had been 
 accustomed to; he earned this at the keyboard, 
 a tidy amount for those days. (There were 
 pianistic money-kings before Paderewski.) And 
 yet she was not satisfied. Ever insatiable are 
 artistic women. 
 
 Mme. d Agoult bore him three children 
 Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel. Blandine, the 
 beauty of the family, married Emile Ollivier in 
 160 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 
 
 1857. She died in 1862. Liszt greatly loved 
 her. Ollivier was later Napoleon s war min 
 ister, and was fooled to the top of his bent by 
 the Mephisto of European politics, Count von 
 Bismarck. He died a few years ago nearly a 
 centenarian, and busy to the last explaining 
 that he was not to blame for losing the tragic 
 Franco-Prussian War. His hell was paved with 
 good intentions before he reached there. Cos- 
 ima married Hans von Billow, her father s 
 "favorite pupil" (there were hundreds of them), 
 in 1857. True to family form, she ran off with 
 Richard Wagner, and, to the despair of her 
 father, married that fickle gentleman. Her 
 father s discomfiture was the result of Cosima s 
 defection from the Roman Catholic faith. She 
 renounced this faith and became of her hus 
 band s religious persuasion, i. e., nominally a 
 Protestant, in reality a free-thinker. Daniel 
 Liszt, the hope of his father, died in December, 
 1859, at the age of twenty. Liszt had legitima 
 tized the birth of his children, had educated 
 them, had generously dowered his daughters, 
 and all three were a source of sorrow to him. 
 The high light of comedy was not absent when 
 the gallant Count d Agoult we shan t say 
 " bereaved of his wife," for who shall pretend 
 to analyze the mixed emotions of a man sorely 
 wounded in his pride of race and secretly over 
 joyed at being rid of a pernicious blue-stocking ? 
 - called a family council, which, after due con 
 sideration, pronounced the verdict that Mon- 
 161 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 sieur Frangois Liszt (they spelled it Litz in 
 Paris) had behaved like a " perfect gentleman" 
 in a certain delicate indiscretion, thereby ab 
 solving him from all blame in the matter. Re 
 cording angels on high must have wept, and 
 George Meredith lost a theme peculiarly fitted 
 to his ironic pen. But the injured husband 
 calmly went to his club every day and died in 
 the odor of mundane sanctity. 
 
 As might have been foreseen, la d Agoult 
 quarrelled with her Liszt. They parted bad 
 friends. Under the pen-name of Daniel Stern 
 she attacked him in her souvenirs and novels. 
 He forgave. A most irritating trait in his char 
 acter was his inability to hate his enemies. Of 
 Heine alone he spoke ill. When some one asked 
 him if Heine s name would be carved on the 
 portals of fame, Liszt replied: "Yes, in letters 
 of mud"; which is manifestly unjust. In 1860 
 Franz and Marie met for the last time, and in 
 Paris. He gently told her that the true title of 
 her souvenirs should have been Poses et Men- 
 songes. She wept. He was quite right. She 
 was a detestable poseuse and a fibber. Tragic 
 comedians, both. They bored each other. 
 Their union recalls Flaubert s profound remark 
 that Emma Bovary found in adultery only the 
 platitudes of marriage. Perhaps other ladies 
 had supervened in the cometary existence of 
 Liszt. Like Byron he was the sentimental hero 
 of his day. A Rene of the pianoforte. Read 
 the recollections of Mme. Adam for a clue to the 
 162 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 
 
 character of Cosima s mother. Liszt sensibly 
 intrusted to the care of his own mother the edu 
 cation of her three grandchildren. She was born 
 at Krems, Lower Austria, and a pious soul. 
 Curious it is that the son of a Hungarian mag 
 nate s overseer should be by the force of cir 
 cumstances and his own genius allied with the 
 aristocracy and high diplomacy in several lands 
 of his time, Liszt Ferencz, whose name trans 
 lated into English would be Frank Flour. 
 
 Unhappy with the intellectual but irascible 
 von Biilow, Cosima was happy with her Richard. 
 If there were quarrels they were fought behind 
 closed doors. She was not beautiful like her 
 sister Blandine, but she had more brains. An 
 ton Rubinstein loved her; Nietzsche s last re 
 corded writing before his mental eclipse at Turin, 
 1889, was a passionate phrase meant for her. 
 He was closely allied with the Wagners at Trieb- 
 schen, and had corrected the proofs of Richard s 
 Autobiography, a garbled version of which has 
 been published with the blue pencil of Baireuth 
 writ large on every page. Some day all the 
 secrets of that prison-house will be divulged. 
 Nietzsche surmised much, and many guesses 
 have furnished stuff for romantic commentators. 
 Romance of the most lurid pattern has enveloped 
 the Liszt Wagner von Biilow d Agoult group. 
 And the greatest influence in Wagner s career 
 was not Cosima but Mathilde Wesendonck, to 
 whom we owe the genesis of that lyric master 
 piece among masterpieces, Tristan and Isolde. 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 For her spiritual collaboration with Wagner, 
 Mathilde was never forgiven by Cosima after 
 all, a real woman. 
 
 Liszt participated in the musical inaugura 
 tion of Baireuth, in 1876; the family dissension 
 had been patched up in 1873; but he played 
 second fiddle to his son-in-law. His affectionate 
 daughter saw to that; also saw, in 1886, when 
 her father had the bad taste to die during the 
 festival at Baireuth, that he was buried as 
 quietly as possible, for an imposing funeral 
 might have disturbed the gate-money at the 
 big barn on the hill. Thrift, Cosima, thrift! 
 At her husband s death she declared that her 
 father no longer existed for her. Mention of 
 his music was snubbed at Wahnfried in the 
 back yard of which Wagner was buried like a 
 cat, as Philip Hale so blandly puts it. The 
 awful part was to follow. Liszt, instead of being 
 interred at Weimar, or Budapest, lies under the 
 shelter of a hideous tomb in Baireuth, devised by 
 his grandson, Siegfried Wagner who is also 
 an architect. This, another of Cosima s tactless 
 doings. She estranged the old friends of her 
 husband, with the exception of the faithful 
 Hans Richter, who told me at London in 1901, 
 where he conducted the Ring in Covent Garden 
 that Cosima was as great as a woman as 
 Wagner a composer; which was no doubt true; 
 and she was also a meddlesome blunderer. She 
 put Baireuth on the map of Cook s Trippers. 
 She botched artistically every performance she 
 164 
 
THE TWILIGHT OF COSIMA I 
 
 handled, but she made money; her banker- 
 grandfather s business ability she must have in 
 herited. There is no doubt the tragedy of Ger 
 many added to her sorrows. With her will pass 
 forever the once powerful Wagnerian dynasty. 
 
 165 
 
IDLE SPECULATIONS 
 
 IF it had been hinted a half century ago that 
 in the veins of Richard Wagner there flowed 
 Semitic blood, laughter would have ensued. 
 The race that Wagner reviled in speech and 
 pamphlet though he never disdained its 
 generosity the hated Jew, daring to claim 
 kinship with him might have set in motion the 
 spleen of the German master. Wagner s hatred 
 of the chosen race is historical. "Das Juden- 
 thum in der Musik," is not the only expression 
 of this contempt and dislike on the part of the 
 man who was born in a Ghetto at Leipzig. 
 Benefits forgotten, he seldom missed a chance 
 to gibe at Meyerbeer or Mendelssohn or to 
 flout some Hebrew banker who was imprudent 
 enough to advance him funds. The Wagnerian 
 pedigree has been subjected to critical micro 
 scopes. Bournot, who was patronized by Bai- 
 reuth, wrote concerning Ludwig Geyer, the true 
 father of the composer, that his family had been 
 Lutheran since 1700. Which proves nothing; 
 race, not nationality, nor yet religion, counts. 
 Geyer, from whom Richard inherited his ver 
 satile aptitudes, was markedly Jewish in features 
 and temperament. So was Wagner. Of the 
 putative father, a Police Magistrate, we know 
 little. In his autobiography Wagner avoids 
 the subject. 
 
 166 
 
IDLE SPECULATIONS 
 
 But Wagner s mother, born Johanna Bertz, 
 reveals in her portraits marked characteristics 
 of the Jewish race. There is mystery concern 
 ing her origin; even the name of Bertz was only 
 discovered a few years ago. Bertz, too, like 
 Geyer, is a Jewish name. There is in the po 
 lemical writings of Richard an almost insane 
 hatred of the Jew; and, ironic circumstance, 
 in his music there are the sensuous glow and 
 glitter of the Oriental. It is certainly unlike 
 any music made by a German, with its vibratile 
 rhythms, its dramatic characterization and 
 magnificent decorative frame. "Was Wagner 
 German at all? demands Nietzsche. "We 
 have some reasons for asking this. It is difficult 
 to discern in him any German trait whatsoever. 
 Being a great learner, he has learned to imitate 
 much that is German. His character itself is 
 in opposition to what has hitherto been regarded 
 as German not to speak of the German musi 
 cian. His father was a stage player named 
 Geyer. A Geyer is almost an Adler Geyer 
 and Adler are both names of Jewish families 
 [Vulture and Eagle, in English]. What has 
 hitherto been put into circulation as the Life 
 of Wagner is a fable. I confess my distrust of 
 every point which solely rests on the testimony 
 of Wagner himself. He had not pride for any 
 truth about himself; nobody was less proud. 
 He remained, like Victor Hugo, true to himself 
 in biographical matters he remained a stage 
 player." 
 
 167 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Thus Nietzsche, who knew whereof he spoke, 
 as he was the secretary of the composer at Trieb- 
 schen when Richard dictated his autobiography; 
 not an official secretary, but a dear friend and 
 confidant. But Nietzsche must be taken with 
 reservations in the Wagner case. He alter 
 nately adored and abused his idol. Another of 
 his favorite contentions was that Schopenhauer 
 ruined Wagner s art. The truth is that in Wag 
 ner the artist was stronger than Wagner the 
 philosopher. The reflective man was usually 
 overcome by the man poetic. Witness Tristan 
 and Isolde, composed, as Richard confessed, in 
 direct opposition, nay, defiance, of his life s 
 theories. Wagner began with Feuerbach and 
 ended a victim to the fascinating black magic 
 of Schopenhauer. But now we know, thanks 
 to James Sully s magisterial work Pessimism, 
 that pessimism and optimism are a question of 
 personal temperament. Wagner succumbed at 
 the last to the Buddhistic quietism of the Scho- 
 penhauerian theories, though his elastic, op 
 timistic nature rebelled at the yoke. In the 
 Ring the pessimism never crowds out the vital 
 dramatic power. In Parsifal the vigorous af 
 firmations of the earlier Wagner are absent. 
 He said Nay to the life that had exhausted 
 him, and, bathed in a mystic atmosphere, his 
 soul found consolation in the mere contempla 
 tion of Roman Catholic symbolism. 
 
 Nevertheless, hold firmly in your mind that 
 Richard Wagner the artist was greater than 
 
 168 
 
IDLE SPECULATIONS 
 
 Wagner the vegetarian, the anti-vivisectionist, 
 Socialist, revolutionist, Jew-hater, and foe of 
 Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, also greater than 
 Wagner the philosopher and poet-dramatist. 
 He was first and last the musician. For that 
 reason he did not say the last word in the music- 
 drama. It is a mistaken partisanship that at 
 taches to his every utterance profound signif 
 icance. We should gladly exchange his col 
 lected prose writings for another Tristan. He 
 dearly loved a paradox. A versatile man, he 
 wore many masks. Not that we doubt his 
 sincerity, but that his emotional nature, his 
 craving for excitement, his agitated life often 
 led him to speak and write in misleading terms. 
 He seldom put his best foot foremost when he 
 took up the pen. And the Jews he reviled al 
 ways proved his best friends. 
 
 We have often wondered where Wagner s 
 religion, metaphysics, his working theory of 
 life, would have led him had he lasted a few 
 years longer. That in his extraordinary brain 
 there had been dimly floating the outlines of a 
 greater work than Parsifal we learn from his 
 correspondence with Franz Liszt. He died with 
 the projected Trilogy incomplete. Tristan and 
 Isolde, Parsifal and the Penitent (Die Biisser) 
 were to have composed this Trilogy of the Will- 
 to-Live, Compassion and Renunciation. That 
 negation of the Will- to -Live, so despised by 
 Nietzsche, had gripped him after he became 
 acquainted with Schopenhauer s theories in 
 169 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 1854. He eagerly absorbed this Neo-Buddhism 
 and at the time of his death he was fully pre 
 pared to accept its final word, its bonze-like 
 impassivity of the will. In Parsifal he sought 
 to transpose to tone its hopelessly fatalistic 
 spirit, its implacable hatred of life in the flesh. 
 That the world has lost a gigantic experiment 
 may be true, but that it has lost the best of 
 Wagner we doubt. In Parsifal his thematic 
 invention is seldom at high-water mark, not 
 withstanding his mastery of technical material, 
 his marvellous moulding of spiritual stuff. Parsi 
 fal is an abstraction, while Kundry is a "howling 
 hermaphrodite," as Hanslick tastefully called 
 the poor hunted hind and harlot. It is with 
 Wagner s power of characterization that we 
 might concern ourselves, as the composer had 
 drifted into a philosophical nihilism that in 
 tellectual quietism which is a treacherous pitfall 
 for the thinker who strays across the border 
 line of Asiatic religions. The Christianity in 
 Parsifal seems like the last expiring glimmer of 
 its values. He deftly drew upon the ritual of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, yet in the essen 
 tial Christianity of the result we place no faith. 
 He went to the Buddhistic roots of Chris 
 tianity, perhaps for philosophical reasons. How 
 ever, Nietzsche s attack on Wagner s supposed 
 religious predilections is wide of the mark; no 
 one was less likely to indulge in sacerdotal sen- 
 timentalism than the musician. The fact is 
 that all was grist that came to his theatrical 
 170 
 
IDLE SPECULATIONS 
 
 mill. Despite his mysticism he never lost view 
 of the box-office. After the rude knocks of his 
 early career he, like Balzac, realized that money 
 is the Archimedes-lever that lifts the modern 
 world. Money is the leading motive of the 
 Human Comedy, and money it is that is the 
 ruling idea of the Ring. The speculation is at 
 tractive. He changed the title of his Trilogy 
 from The Victors (Die Sieger) to The Penitents. 
 First considered in 1856, the name was altered 
 a quarter of a century later. In the interval 
 Oriental philosophy had supervened with its ac 
 customed effect. 
 
 It was a critic of acuity who said of Tristan 
 and Isolde that "the thrills relieve each other 
 in squads." Wagner touched the top-notch 
 of his torrid imaginings in this apotheosis of 
 lyric ecstasy. Nothing has been written com 
 parable with its intensity; its double, it is safe 
 to predict, will never be composed. He declared 
 that when he wrote the music he could not 
 have made it otherwise. It is full-blown in its 
 imperfections, glaring excellences, noble tur- 
 gidity, lack of frugality, economy of thematic 
 resources, dazzling prodigality, soggy prolixity, 
 riotous tonal debaucheries and almost super 
 human enchantments. What boots it to gird 
 against a demoniacal art that thrills and makes 
 mock of theories concerning the divine in music ? 
 We are no longer on the windblown heights 
 with Beethoven, nor do we worship as in the 
 vast Cathedral of Bach. The Schopenhauerian 
 171 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 philosophy hurled at us in the pessimistic dual 
 ism of the love episode avails not to stem the 
 turbulent current of fashion, Tristan and Isolde 
 is the very deification of carnatism. Call it 
 what pretty titles you may, wreathe the theme 
 with poetic garlands, yet the stark fact stares 
 at you: The man s desire for the woman and 
 the woman s desire for the desire of the man, 
 to put the case in Biblical phraseology. The 
 potion does but unloosen their tongues; 
 both were mute lovers before Brangaene juggled 
 with the fatal brew. Wagner was the greatest 
 poet of passion odious, misused term in 
 the history of the Seven Arts. And he had a 
 more potent instrument than words at his com 
 mand, an orchestra that wooes and thunders, 
 that achieves in the surging undertow the 
 soul of love, A mighty master, but a dangerous 
 guide is this same Richard Wagner. 
 
THE MASTER BUILDER 
 
 THUS far this season we have heard the Hmd 
 
 r-ir./ :::,:: c: 
 
 Symphony in D, the second. These various 
 performaiHTs were respectively given at con 
 certs by the Symphony Society, the Phffliar- 
 monk Society, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 
 Nor were they timnaial happenings. The sym 
 phonic works of Brahms are perennial favorites 
 in New York. There is a gnffirmg reason. 
 Brahms is a transitional bridge between the 
 mighty Beethoven and the modern men. He 
 is the last of the classicists, though not precisely 
 
 the firsf nf the T"* I V* n tK S Sriiimiaitn was t^t , 
 
 not Berlioz. But Brahms is more romantic 
 than is commonly realized. It always wfll be 
 a mystery to the present generation why he was 
 called a pedant, a dry-as-dnst composer. He 
 has his doll moments, when philosopher-like he 
 contemplates the nrnbHirns of the universe. He 
 is not dramatic when drama is not demanded 
 by his theme, and he is occasionally drab in 
 orchestral color, though never brilliant in the 
 meretricious sense. He is on the side of the 
 angels. He stands for what is sound, lofty, 
 beautiful as opposed to shallow operatic trivi 
 alities and melodramatic effects. 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 It was unfortunate that almost at the outset 
 of his career Edouard Hanslick, erudite, witty, 
 malignant, should have posed Brahms as an an 
 tithetical man of straw to Richard Wagner. 
 Doubtless it was a tempting contrast to make: 
 Brahms, the serious symphonist, a reverent fol 
 lower in the broad pathway of Bach and Bee 
 thoven; and Wagner, creator of the music- 
 drama, of marvellous stage pictures romantic, 
 erotic Wagner. Yet what a fallacy is there. 
 Brahms, as his songs, symphonies, piano, and 
 violin music prove, was a poetic, a romantic, 
 musician. He could not paint as boldly as 
 Berlioz, but he always had something vital to 
 say, while Berlioz, despite his grandiloquent 
 rhetoric, like Victor Hugo, displayed more man 
 ner than matter. As for Wagner well, he, 
 too, absorbed as much of Bach and Beethoven 
 as he could assimilate for his particular usage, 
 and was quite as learned as Brahms. Von 
 Billow had set the pace for Dr. Hanslick and that 
 detractor of Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, indeed 
 of all the New Music whenever he saw a head 
 pop up on the horizon he hit it, like the game of 
 Aunt Sally recognized his opportunity and 
 promptly pitted Brahms against Wagner, with 
 the result that for a long period the musical 
 world labored under the mistaken notion that 
 Brahms was a rusty, musty old pedagogue, with 
 bewhiskered counterpoint and a plentiful lack 
 of melodic invention. And he was just the 
 reverse. 
 
 174 
 
THE MASTER BUILDER 
 
 He died over two decades ago and his vogue 
 has waxed with the years. When we consider 
 the list of his achievements we are amazed at 
 the slow, patient, yet fertile and versatile quali 
 ties of the man. " Their impatience," wrote 
 John Henry, Cardinal Newman, in condemning 
 the major defect of heresiarchs. Brahms was 
 ever patient. Patience might serve as his epi 
 taph. His was a genius that grew from accre 
 tions. His first opus was far from the later 
 Brahms, notwithstanding its potential powers. 
 It was but the acorn which became the great 
 oak of the four symphonies, the piano and the 
 violin concertos, the songs, chamber music, 
 choral compositions, the Songs of Destiny and 
 the Requiem. This massed work is the sum 
 total of a high ideal; stern, unyielding, betimes 
 frostily inhuman, yet logical and consistent. 
 The philosophic bent of his intellect extorts our 
 admiration. For a half century he pursued the 
 beautiful in its most difficult and elusive form, 
 followed it when the fashions of the season 
 mocked at such undeviating devotion, when 
 musical structure was called old-fashioned, sober 
 thought voted down as dull, when the theatre 
 had invaded the tonal realm and menaced it in 
 its very stronghold, the symphony. After all, 
 there is something to be said in favor of the 
 skeleton, whether concealed by human flesh or 
 embodied in religious dogma or encased within 
 the formal walls of musical compositions. 
 Things must have structure to interest mankind; 
 
 175 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 even the prudish oyster has a shell. Otherwise 
 the amorphous shreds of the floating jellyfish or 
 the primeval amoebae would become our ideal. 
 Brahms was homo sapiens. He stood on his 
 hind legs, as did our common forebears, with 
 " probably arboreal habits." And he wrought 
 the noblest music since Beethoven. 
 
 He is the first composer since Beethoven to 
 sound the note of the sublime. Naturally, 
 Wagner is excepted because he did not write 
 absolute music, and we are now dealing only 
 with that form. Because of this trait of sublim 
 ity Brahms has been called austere. His aus 
 terity and lack of personal profile sometimes 
 have made his loftiest music difficult of com 
 prehension. He never splits the ears of the 
 groundlings. He never makes any concessions 
 to popularity. Like Ibsen and Manet, he goes 
 out of his way to displease. The facile triumph 
 he despises. He saw musical Europe filled with 
 second and third rate men, and he noted that 
 their sole excuse was to give cheap pleasure to 
 the tasteless. This professional parasitism he 
 abhorred; with him the reaction became a species 
 of puritanism. It is a gratifying proof of his 
 flexible mental operations that he understood 
 and admired Wagner, whose ideals and practice 
 were the antipodes of his own. His workman 
 ship is well-nigh impeccable; formal and con 
 trapuntal mastery marks it. His contribution 
 to the techniques of rhythm is considerable. 
 He literally popularized the cross-relation, redis 
 covered the arpeggio and elevated it to an in- 
 
THE MASTER BUILDER 
 
 teger of the melodic phrase. Wagner did the 
 same for the essential turn. 
 
 His trait of fidelity, his spiritual obstinacy, 
 are characteristic. There seems to be a notion 
 because Brahms refused to swim the current 
 tendencies that he held himself aloof from hu 
 manity, a bonze, a Brahmin, and not, as he 
 really was, a bard chanting its woes and full- 
 blooded aspirations. It is platitudinous now 
 adays to say that his music throbs with the rich, 
 red blood of humanity. He is the greatest con- 
 trapuntalist since Bach (pace Richard Strauss 
 and Max Reger), and the supreme architectonist 
 since Beethoven. Nevertheless, in his songs he 
 is as simple and virile as Robert Burns. His 
 topmost peaks are remote and gleam in an at 
 mosphere too rarefied for dwellers on the plains, 
 but how intimate, how gracious are the happy 
 moments in his chamber-music. Following the 
 romantic side of Schumann, untouched by the 
 fever of the footlights, a realist with imagina 
 tion, both a classicist and a romanticist, he con 
 ducted music to its normal channel by showing 
 that a formal service and a mastery of polyphony 
 are not incompatible with the utterance of new 
 ideas in a new way. Brahms is not reactionary 
 any more than is Wagner. Neither found what 
 he needed in contemporary life and art, so one 
 harked back to the Greeks and Gluck, the other 
 to Beethoven. All progress is crab wise. In 
 the past of the arts may be found the germs of 
 their future. 
 
 Study the massiveness of the Brahmsian tonal 
 177 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 architecture; study those tonal edifices erected 
 after years of toil, consider his fertility in inven 
 tion, his patience in developing his ideas; con 
 sider the ease with which he moves, though 
 seemingly shackled by the most exacting of 
 forms, a form not assumed for the sake of over 
 coming difficulties, but because it was the only 
 form in which he could fully express himself. 
 The narrative-tone of the symphonic form 
 and this includes aU its practitioners from Haydn 
 to Tschaikovsky is like blank verse, it has 
 been the chosen field of the greatest masters; 
 and who shall say that either Shakespeare or 
 Beethoven has suffered from its adoption? 
 Even such a Romantic, mad and morbid, as 
 Charles Baudelaire employed as his vehicles of 
 expression forms as restricted and rigid as the 
 sonnet and the alexandrine. Note the leaven 
 of genius which militates against pedantry, 
 scholastic aridity, academic music-making, and 
 music arithmetical. Consider the intellectual 
 and emotional brain for the seat of the emo 
 tions is in the head, not the heart of this com 
 poser, and then realize that all art is the arduous 
 victory of great minds over great imaginations. 
 Recall the introductions to the first and last 
 movements of the Symphony in C minor by 
 Brahms. That magnificent work makes by 
 comparison other men s efforts like facile im 
 provising. Its bases are laid for the brief " eter 
 nity" accorded to all things fashioned by mortal 
 hands. 
 
THE MASTER BUILDER 
 
 Brahms ever consciously schooled his imagi 
 nation. He was his own severest critic. He 
 worked slowly, produced as slowly, and, being 
 of the contemplative rather than of the dramatic, 
 dynamic temperamental type, he incurred the 
 reproach of heaviness. There is enough sedi 
 ment in his collected work to lend truth to this 
 accusation, but from the very cloudiness of the 
 ferment has come the richest of wines. And 
 how refreshing is a draft of this wine after 
 the thin, frothing stuff concocted at the vintage 
 of every season ! He has his metaphysical mood 
 when he wrestles with abstract speculations, as 
 did Pascal or Spinoza. It cannot be said that 
 Brahms, the cryptic philosopher, is as interest 
 ing as Brahms of the symphonies, the F minor 
 piano sonata, the quintet for piano and strings 
 with the same key signature, or the fragrant 
 lyrics. He has the glorious simplicity of Bee 
 thoven, and, like that Master of masters, he does 
 not fear to employ such an elementary modula 
 tion-bridge as the chord of the dominant seventh. 
 
 A full chord for his orchestra has not the 
 rainbow tints of the first or major chord in the 
 Prelude to The Mastersingers, yet it can sink a 
 shaft into our consciousness quite as profound. 
 He is a thinker, his chilliness is rather in his 
 manner than in his discourse, which often is 
 thrice eloquent. This plodder, at times with 
 out Promethean fire, possesses shoulders wide 
 enough upon which to drape the symphonic 
 mantle of Beethoven. He reminds us of a 
 179 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 mediaeval architect whose life was a prayer, in 
 marble; who patiently built Gothic cathedrals 
 which majestically flanked upon mother earth, 
 whose thin pinnacles pierced the vasty blue, and 
 in whose marmoreal naves an army terrible with 
 banners could worship; while through the stony 
 forest of arches music flowed as the voices of 
 many waters. Brahms is the master-builder 
 of modern music. 
 
 180 
 
VERDI S OTELLO 
 
 THE announcement that Otello is to be pre 
 sented by the Chicago Opera Association next 
 Tuesday evening at the Manhattan Opera 
 House is interesting to lovers of Verdi s hot- 
 blooded music drama. That it is not often heard 
 is because of the difficulty in finding singing 
 actors to interpret the work. Since Tamagno 
 and Victor Maurel, the ideal Otello and the 
 ideal lago, we have had no two such interpreters. 
 Antonio Scotti was a remarkable lago, and from 
 time to time some unhappy tenor attempts to 
 bend the bow of Ulysses, but the two artists 
 who set the town on fire twenty-five years ago 
 have not been rivalled. Tamagno with his bar 
 baric cry, " Sangue, sangue " - " Blood, blood ! " 
 is unforgetable. In the killing of Desde- 
 mona he fell short of his great dramatic model, 
 the elder Salvini, because, as we have elsewhere 
 related, he left his spectators in doubt as to the 
 disposition of the pillow. But then his Desde- 
 mona was the lovely Emma Eames, and that, 
 no doubt, accounted for the indecision of the 
 murderous and amorous Moor at the fatal 
 moment. 
 
 Otello in 1887 set the musical world agog with 
 surprise, curiosity, and delight. It reveals little 
 of the narrow, noisy, violent, and vulgar Verdi 
 181 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 of 1850. The character drawing is by a man 
 who is master of his material. The plot moves 
 in majestical splendor and the musical psychol 
 ogy, especially in the case of lago, is often sub 
 tle. Verdi has at last flowered. Much of his 
 earlier music, despite the admirable melodic 
 flow in Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore, smelling 
 ranker of the soil, showing abundant thematic 
 invention, was but the effort of a hot-headed 
 man of the footlights, a seeker after applause 
 and money. In Otello his musical provincial 
 isms have well-nigh vanished. The writing is 
 clear, the passion controlled, the effects aimed at 
 easily compassed. The masterly craft of lago 
 is cleverly contrasted with the fiery passion of 
 Otello, and Shakespeare is suggested; although 
 an Italian Shakespeare. However, the English 
 poet is more Italian than the Italian in this 
 moving drama. 
 
 Otello is veritable music drama; its composer 
 seldom halts to symphonize his events as does 
 Wagner. Arrigo Boito, most intellectual of 
 librettists, has skeletonized the story; Verdi s 
 music endows it with vitality, grace, fleshly con 
 tours, brilliancy. The Italian poet has not 
 gravely disturbed the original text. It is but 
 a compliment to his assimilation of the Shake 
 spearian spirit to state that lago s credo, an 
 explosion of nihilism and hatred, does not seem 
 out of perspective in the picture. It is an in 
 tercalation of Boito s, as were the Cypriote 
 choruses in Act II. The rest is Shakespeare 
 182 
 
VERDI S OTELLO 
 
 undented, barring a few happy transpositions 
 from the Senate speech to the duo at the close 
 of Act I. 
 
 As we have said, the characterization is mas 
 terly throughout. Do not let us balk at com 
 parisons, nor, for that matter, at superlatives. 
 With the exceptions of Mozart and Wagner, no 
 composer has thus far lived who could have 
 painted the hot-blooded Moor and the cynical 
 cannikin-clinker, set them facing each other, 
 allowing them to work out their fates, musically 
 speaking, as has Giuseppe Verdi. The key to 
 Otello is its characterization. The medium in 
 which Verdi bids his puppets of destiny to move, 
 their fluidity, their humanity, with the complete 
 dissection of their secret springs of action 
 these elements are almost incalculable. Criti 
 cism can only endeavor to disentangle them. 
 Whether he is listening to his cunning Ancient, 
 or caressing Desdemona, or raging like the hardy 
 Numaean lion, it is always Otello, the Moor of 
 Venice, a loving, suffering, living man Shake 
 speare s Othello transposed to a fresco of 
 magnificent tones. 
 
 The character does not evoke a flashy, oper 
 atic ranter. Nor does lago, either as the bluff 
 soldier or the loathsome serpent stinging his 
 chieftain s soul, ever lag dramatically, ever 
 mimic the conventional attitudes of transpon 
 tine melodrama. It is always lago, "the spirit 
 that denies," perhaps underlined, for music must 
 emphasize the emotions. Desdemona is drawn 
 
 183 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 in relief to her furious lover and warrior, and as 
 a white cloud of purity in contrast with her cold 
 blooded maligner. Verdi has assigned her gen 
 tle music, the Ave Maria, the Willow Song. 
 She is a sweet background upon which was 
 etched the darker, sinister motives of the play. 
 No masculine shadow but her lord s has been 
 projected across her snowy, virginal soul. Deli 
 cacy and vivacity reveal, little by little, the 
 inner workings of her girlish nature. The other 
 figures, Cassio, Emilia, are sketches on the sec 
 ond plan, but figures that contribute to the 
 density of the dramatic scheme without detract 
 ing from our interest in the protagonists. 
 
 From the opening storm to the strangling 
 scene the music flows as swiftly as does the action 
 of the spoken drama. Rich, varied, eloquent, 
 the orchestra seldom tarries in its acute and 
 vivid commentary. There is scant employment 
 of typical motives; the kiss theme in Act I is 
 sounded with psychologic fidelity when Otello 
 dies. Only in the handkerchief trio is there 
 pause for instrumental elaboration; but in the 
 main old, set forms are avoided, and while there 
 are melodic currents they seldom crystallize. 
 The duo at the end of Act I, the Credo of un- 
 faith and Otello s frenzied exhortation in Act 
 II; the tremendous outburst in the following 
 act, with lago s sardonically triumphant ex 
 clamation, " Behold the lion!" as he plants his 
 scornful heel on the recumbent Otello then 
 the final catastrophe these about summarize 
 184 
 
VERDI S OTELLO 
 
 the high lights. Throughout there are pictur 
 esque and poignant strokes, effects of massed 
 splendor, and hovering about the tempest-stirred 
 souls is an atmosphere of gloom, doom, guilt, 
 and melancholy foreboding. 
 
 Verdi felt the moods of the poet and made 
 them live again in his score. Otello and lago 
 grow before our eyes and ears from act to act. 
 The simple-hearted, trusting general with his 
 agonized cry, "Miseria mia," develops into a 
 ferocious savage thirsting for blood. He is the 
 jealous male, who sees red. The multitudinous 
 music is incarnadine with blood. And it is 
 all vocal. It is written for the voice, which is 
 the centre of gravity in this astounding drama of 
 souls bedevilled, and not the orchestra. The 
 pedestal is not bigger than the statue, as is the 
 case with Salammbo. Another such lago, sub 
 tle, sinister, evil incarnate, withal a dangerously 
 attractive fellow, such an impersonation as 
 Victor Maurel s, may never be duplicated. 
 And this remarkable singing actor had the ad 
 vantage of Verdi and Boito s advice when the 
 music drama was produced at Milan, in 1887. 
 Verdi s first idea of a title was lago. This idea 
 does not seem strange after a performance of 
 Maurel. 
 
 The two most satisfying lagos I remember 
 were Henry Irving and Edwin Booth. Maurel s 
 interpretation paralleled them at every point. 
 Admitted that the singing heightened the im 
 pression, though it weakens the characteriza- 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 tion, MaurePs lago never betrayed a tendency 
 toward the melodramatic; as difficult as tread 
 ing on eggs without crushing them, he held a 
 middle course, and he was both a picture and a 
 dramatic happening. Malignant he was, but 
 that is the "fat" of the part, but he underlined 
 the reasons for his wicked actions. lago is also 
 a human being with a sound motive for revenge. 
 I know you will remind me that critical "white 
 washing" is become the fashion, that Nero, 
 Simon Magus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, 
 Casanova nay, even Lucifer, Prince of Morn 
 ing, has Anatole France for a defender (in 
 The Revolt of the Angels) are only getting 
 their just dues at the hands of various apolo 
 gists. De Quincey, a master casuist, has said 
 that without Judas the drama of Jesus cruci 
 fied would not have occurred. Everything is 
 necessary. Nero was a much-abused monster, 
 though Renan believes him to be the Beast 
 mentioned in the Apocalpyse it seems now 
 that there were no "atrocities" during the fab 
 ulous persecutions of the Christians, that Rome 
 was not burned by Nero, who had no fiddle 
 technique; but in the case of lago there is 
 something to be said in his favor. A pure 
 devil, as we conceive devils to be, he was not. 
 
 A rough, hard-drinking soldier of fortune, he 
 admits himself to be, and to call his advice, "Put 
 money in thy purse," cynical is to contravene 
 worldly wisdom. Otello had wronged him, 
 lago hated him for it, hated his wife for her al- 
 186 
 
VERDI S OTELLO 
 
 leged infidelity Emilia denies her treachery 
 therefore, his revenge is credible. It is his 
 method in achieving this revenge that revolts 
 our sensibilities. The innocent Desdemona is 
 crushed between the upper and lower millstones 
 of inexorable destiny. Maurel did not paint his 
 conception all black, but with many gradations 
 and nuances. Not a movement but meant 
 something; even that famous "psychological 
 crook of lago s left knee." Maurel was eco 
 nomical in gesture. His was an objective char 
 acterization. The drinking song was memo 
 rably, totally unlike his drinking lyrics in Don 
 Giovanni and Hamlet. Suffice to say that 
 Verdi intrusted him with the difficult task of 
 " originating" two such widely-sundered roles as 
 .Falstan" and lago. With them Victor Maurel 
 made operatic history. 
 
 And now what is the most surprising thing 
 about Otello? I think that it is the fact that 
 it was composed when Verdi was past three 
 score and ten. This seems incredible. It 
 seethes with the passion of middle manhood, 
 with the fervors of a flowering maturity. No 
 one before him had dreamed of setting Shake 
 speare in this royally tragic fashion. Rossini 
 but fluted with the theme. In Verdi, jealousy, 
 love, envy, hatred, are handled by a master 
 music dramatist. It is a wonderful thing that 
 Verdi began it at a time when most men are 
 preparing for the Great Adventure. Reversing 
 the usual processes, this extraordinary Italian 
 187 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 wrote younger music the older he grew. After 
 Aida, Otello. After grim tragedy, joyous com 
 edy Falstaffio. If he had survived until 
 ninety years, Verdi might have bequeathed us 
 an operetta that would have outpointed in wit 
 and sparkling humor the mercurial Johann 
 Strauss. And when we think of the later Verdi 
 we should not forget his faithful friend and 
 famulus, who played Wagner to his Faust 
 Arriga Boito. 
 
 188 
 
FAUST AND MEPHISTO 
 
 How does Faust wear in the flicker of the 
 footlights? Do the monologues sound with 
 glorious resonance or are they only philosophical 
 fustian? The question is not difficult to answer. 
 The thunder-words of the poet-dramatist still 
 thrill us with their meaning and with their 
 music, the clash of souls still makes thrall of 
 our imagination. To read Faust is to attain 
 the summit of an intellectual peak of Darien. 
 To witness an adequate performance of Faust 
 is to win fresh pleasure for eye and ear. If Ham 
 let inspired Goethe and Marlowe before Shake 
 speare, his Faust in turn created a memorable 
 literature. The very title crowds pages in ency 
 clopaedias. Sculptors chisel masterpieces after 
 reading the poem-play; the Mephisto of the 
 Russian Antokolsky is not easily forgotten and 
 George Grey Barnard was inspired by the famous 
 line, "Two spirits, alas, reside within my breast" 
 (the group is now at the Metropolitan Museum). 
 Painters, almost innumerable, from Ary Scheffer 
 to the rawest art student of yesteryear have 
 traced on the canvas the loves of Gretchen and 
 Faust. Barbier and Carre mutilated the poem 
 in search of effective theatrical material, and 
 Gounod melted with sensuous ecstasy when he 
 made the musical setting. Lenau presented a 
 sinister, half -mad Faust, a self-portrait; the 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 conservative Spohr surrounded the story with 
 antiquated music. Wagner, perhaps more than 
 other composers, realized the travailing Faust 
 spirit in his overture, which is a masterpiece. 
 Franz Liszt has of all men evoked within the 
 walls of his symphonic palace both the static 
 and dynamic Faust and the Gretchen of our 
 dreams. His Mephisto is the cynical spirit of 
 denial. Berlioz, as in a tremendous fresco, has 
 painted with torrential energy the infernal 
 glories of the theme. He even dragged his hero 
 to Hungary so that he might give him the 
 pleasure of hearing the Rakoczy March as or 
 chestrated by the audacious Frenchman. Arrigo 
 Boito, only half Latin, with Polish blood in his 
 veins, has given us the ideal Mephisto and dared 
 the impossible by composing the second part 
 of Goethe s master work. 
 
 In song Gretchen has been celebrated from 
 Schubert to the troubadour of yesterday. In 
 romance, Turgenieff, that gentle giant, has de 
 picted the soul of Faust transposed to Russian 
 soil. What the Faust spirit worked in an 
 unbalanced temperament may be noted in 
 Nietzsche, whose later rhapsodies stemmed 
 from Euphorion s song in the Second Part: 
 "Let me be skipping. Let me be leaping. To 
 soar and circle through ether sweeping is now 
 the passion that me hath won." Therein is 
 the kernel of the dancing philosopher, Zara- 
 thustra, who called man "a bridge connecting 
 animal and superman." And recall the line in 
 190 
 
FAUST AND MEPHISTO 
 
 Faust: "Die ird sche Brust im Morgenrot," 
 which served as a title for one of the unhappy 
 philosopher s sanest books. Goethe is the ma 
 trix of modern thought; he contained Wagner 
 as he contained Nietzsche. Wagner, of course, 
 went to Schopenhauer for his peculiar brand 
 of pessimism. You can t miss the Faustlike 
 touches in Tannhauser; the thirst for illimit 
 able pleasure, the redemption of the eternal- 
 womanly all this is Faust redivivus. John 
 Addington Symonds laments that Marlowe did 
 not follow his Doctor Faustus with a Tann 
 hauser. "He assuredly would have not suffered 
 this high mystic theme to degenerate into any 
 mere vulgarities of a sensual Venusberg," wrote 
 the Englishman, with one eye fastened on Wag 
 ner s version of the wonderful legend. No trivial 
 thirst for carnal pleasures but the desire for 
 beauty beyond human reach would have been 
 Marlowe s conception of the brave old tale. 
 Lohengrin is a Faust, so is Siegfried. Parsifal 
 is Faust in the vapors of mysticism, enveloped 
 by a Buddhistic pity; surely the "Good Friday 
 spell" was born of that exquisite episode near 
 the close of Act I in Faust, where the poet- 
 philosopher gives over his contemplated suicide, 
 ravished by sweet memories of his youth, his 
 Sabbath wandering in spring woods and mead 
 ows. 
 
 At one time Goethe thought of translating 
 Marlowe. His music is magical. It colored 
 Shakespeare; it created a new dramatic school. 
 191 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Marlowe is the father of English tragedy. What 
 if Shakespeare had died at the same age as Mar 
 lowe? "We may admit that in rhyme he never 
 did anything worth Marlowe s Hero and Lean- 
 der," says Swinburne. Charles Lamb adored 
 Marlowe, though he mocked the "pampered 
 jades of Asia." Yet the hand that fashioned 
 the turgid and bombastic Tamburlane also 
 penned that lovely lyric " Come lie ["live," in re 
 vised editions] with me and be my love" (The 
 Passionate Shepherd). It is as sparklingly pure 
 as a bar of Mozart. But Marlowe is more dra 
 matic poet than dramatist. His characters are 
 set forth with a mass of psychologic details 
 that recall some modern masters. He is an 
 early Browning with a mouth of gold. His 
 words sing. Yet he would never have written 
 the last speech of Paracelsus: "I press God s 
 lamp close to my breast; its splendor soon or 
 late will pierce the gloom." Marlowe was not 
 a believer. The desperate damnation of his 
 Faust chills the blood. "Where gods are not, 
 ghosts abound." Marlowe could surround his 
 unhappy hero with all the machinery of diab 
 olism; Beelzebub, Prince of Flies, the Seven 
 Deadly Sins, imps and goblins. He could utter 
 that thrilling line, "See where Christ s blood 
 streams in the firmament," but he had not the 
 talent of belief for it is both a gift and talent, 
 belief in the unseen. If he had with Browning s 
 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower come, he 
 would have died hopeless, impenitent, as in 
 192 
 
FAUST AND MEPHISTO 
 
 reality he did die. His Faust is the archetype 
 of the explorer in the "unplumbed, salt, estrang 
 ing sea" of knowledge. He cries: 
 
 "Had I as many souls as there be stars I d 
 give them all for Mephistopheles." He craves 
 eternal wisdom, " infinite richness in a little 
 room." Mephistopheles has built for him the 
 walls of Thebes with ravishing music. He would 
 fain have this devil "wall all Germany with 
 brass." He sees Lucifer, "chief lord and regent 
 of the night," and still are his longings unas- 
 suaged. This feverish simulacrum of a man 
 who aspired to know things terrestrial and 
 celestial Marlowe incarnated in his tragedy. 
 
 And what horrors he conjures up in Mephis- 
 topheles s description of Hades a description 
 less material, nevertheless revealing a grandeur 
 of conception second only to Dante s. This 
 damned creature of the English poet stands 
 for men who achieve victories or defeats by the 
 force of their intellect. Faust summons spirits 
 from the vasty deep, converses with them when 
 they come, argues, even wrangles, and would 
 circumvent them in discussion. Spiritual ex 
 plorers from Giordano Bruno to Spinoza and 
 Nietzsche are Fausts. And on the plane scien 
 tific so are Galileo and Darwin and Einstein. 
 All who slough off decaying half-truths are 
 Fausts who must suffer for their frankness the 
 plagues of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 Sordello s "Dante, pacer of the shore," was 
 a mediaeval Faust whose richly veined ore is 
 
 193 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 half hidden in the clay of scholasticism. And 
 so the mountains converse with mountains, 
 Dante with Goethe, Bach with Beethoven, 
 Marlowe with Browning. 
 
 Human insects, slowly toiling to the summits, 
 from time to time catch glimpses of trailing 
 cloud-glories and overhear the far-off rumblings 
 of divine events. Then the mists part and an 
 other Faust comes to earth, telling us of the 
 strange secrets he has surprised. "A sound 
 magician is a mighty god/ sings Marlowe. 
 Goethe said: "Gray are all theories and green 
 alone life s golden tree." To read Marlowe is 
 to feel the itch of quotation. Has there ever 
 been anything more vivid or pitiable since Dante 
 than the English poet s Edward II, in his "cave 
 of care," standing in mire and puddle, "and 
 lest I should sleep, one plays continually upon a 
 drum " ? It is Chinese in its hideous suggestion 
 of torture; we must go to Octave Mirbeau s Le 
 Jardin des Supplices, or the newly published 
 fiction of Charles Petit, Le Fils du Grand Eu- 
 nuque, for its match. Faust is a fatalist; "his 
 atheism has a background of terror thinly veiled 
 by the mind s inquisitiveness." Che sara, sara ! 
 he declares, and then berates his satanic famulus 
 for showing him so little. He knows that the 
 jealous gods have somewhere buried proofs of 
 the origin of all things, and, like Maurice de 
 Guerin, he would have demanded: "But upon 
 the shores of what ocean have they rolled the 
 stone that hides them?" 
 194 
 
BOHEMIAN MUSIC 
 
 IN New Cosmopolis I called Prague the most 
 original city in Europe, not perhaps so melo 
 dramatic as Toledo in Spain, yet quite as orig 
 inal, when you consider that pretty, placid 
 Dresden is only four hours away and that fur 
 ther down the map lies Vienna. As the traveller 
 approaches the Bohemian city as Praha it 
 is known to the natives the cathedral and 
 castles grouped on the hill form a fascinating 
 silhouette against the sky-line. At once the 
 alluring prospects of wood and architecture are 
 evoked, and to the memory comes ? the sangui 
 nary pages of its history. Arthur Symons once 
 wrote that to a Bohemian "Prague is still the 
 epitome of his country; he sees it as a man sees 
 the woman he loves, with her first beauty, and 
 he loves it as a man loves a woman, more for 
 what she has suffered." Needless to add, for 
 me it was love at first sight, this Prague, with 
 its imperial palace and the Hradschin fortress 
 so proudly perched on the Hradcany; the pin 
 nacle of the St. Vitus Cathedral, the four 
 Ottakan towers and the two towers of St. 
 George, which swim so gloriously in the air, 
 a miracle of tender rose and marble white, with 
 golden spots of sunshine, form an ensemble 
 that would intrigue the brush of Claude Monet. 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 The city proper enchants with its bewilder 
 ing jumbles of architecture, its historical evoca 
 tions. The Bridge of Prague, the Town Hall, 
 the Powder Tower, the historic Tyn church, 
 the old Jewish cemetery, the Belvedere, the 
 Chapel of St. Wenceslas, the shrine of St. Nepo- 
 muc, the Star Hunting Lodge, where in 1620 
 was fought the Battle of the White Mountain, 
 the Rudolphinium to go on like this would 
 send you to the guide-books. There is the mod 
 ern Representatives House, where you may 
 enjoy a symphony concert up-stairs, while in 
 the restaurant on the first floor you can eat an 
 omleba royal, a Fogos fish, a Telec filet specanky 
 and Ledovy creme, ending with an Americky 
 compote, and tell it not in Gath good light 
 wine is to be had, or the incomparable product 
 of Pilsen, there pronounced Pizn. I stopped at 
 the "Blauer Stern," on the Hybernska Ulice, 
 which old-fashioned, comfortable hotel has 
 probably changed its name since the war. Even 
 in 1913 anything German was anathema to 
 the Bohemians. There is the Bohemian Na 
 tional Theatre. Both Josef Stransky of the 
 Philharmonic Society and Artur Bodanzky of 
 the Metropolitan Opera House and the New 
 Symphony Orchestra were some years ago con 
 ductors at Prague. One afternoon in the Rep 
 resentatives House I listened to a programme 
 composed of national music the Scherzo a 
 Capriccioso of Dvorak, a symphony by Sme- 
 tana, a symphonic poem by Josef Suk and a 
 196 
 
BOHEMIAN MUSIC 
 
 work by Sdenko Fibich, the latter a composer 
 too little known here, whose piano composi 
 tions were introduced to us more than a decade 
 ago by Florence Mosher and Emily Burbank 
 at their lecture-recitals. One gray morning I 
 went astray while wandering about the twist 
 ing corridors of the "Blauer Stern" and, 
 tempted by the sounds of masterly violin play 
 ing, I stood before a door which bore the legend : 
 " Otokar Sevcik." It might have been his pupils, 
 Jan Kubelik or Kocian, though it was neither. 
 I had seen the brilliant Kubelik at Marienbad, 
 where I went annually to fight my fat and also 
 to war with the rum demon temporarily. 
 Since then Sevcik, the great teacher of aspiring 
 fiddlers, has removed to Vienna. 
 
 I mention these things concerning the delight 
 ful city of Ema Destinova, Thomas Masaryk 
 who married a New York lady, one of the 
 Misses Garrigue of the well-known musical 
 family; of the city wherein Mozart composed 
 his masterpiece, Don Giovanni "in order to 
 express the thanks of the great master to his 
 dearest citizens of Prague for their ardent 
 reception"; that Prague which is so dramatic 
 to gaze upon, the Slavic city further west, the 
 gateway to the Slavic lands because I have 
 just read with considerable satisfaction a slender 
 pamphlet of fifty pages entitled The Music of 
 Bohemia, by Ladislav Urban, published under 
 the auspices of the Czecho-Slovak Art Clubs 
 of New York City. The author calls his de- 
 197 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 cidedly interesting contribution a sketch, but 
 it is a sketch in which is compressed much valu 
 able matter. At the start he tells us that 
 "Czech" is the Slav name for the Slav people 
 and language in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. 
 The terms used to designate the whole country, 
 the state, are Bohemia and Bohemian/ The 
 Czechs themselves do not employ this distinc-, 
 tion, continues Mr. Urban, but use the word 
 Czech in both senses. Slovaks are that people 
 who live in the northwestern part of Hungary, 
 called Slovakia, which with Bohemia forms the 
 present republic and nation of the Czecho 
 slovaks. Mr. Urban warns us not to confound 
 Bohemians and gypsies, and cites Balfe s Bohe 
 mian Girl as an instance: a full-fledged Czech 
 folk-melody is introduced as a gypsy tune in 
 the allegro theme of the overture. 
 
 There has been bad blood between the Bohe 
 mians and Germans since the reign of King 
 Wenceslas (921-935 A. D.). After his assassina 
 tion, Wenceslas was canonized and is a national 
 saint; a folk-song, known as the Choral of St. 
 Wenceslas, is one of the oldest among its kind. 
 The John Huss reformation also aroused the 
 nation, and a battle hymn, "Ye warriors who 
 for God are fighting," was another product of 
 the folk. Bohemia has always been a musical 
 nation, as Mr. Urban proves by numerous cita 
 tions. Its folk-song literature is rich and varied. 
 He quotes from Seth Watson s Racial Problems 
 in Hungary: "Singing is the chief passion of 
 198 
 
BOHEMIAN MUSIC 
 
 the Slovaks. Nothing will find its way so surely 
 to the heart of the Slovak people as a well-sung 
 song. An old peasant woman once complained 
 to a friend of mine that her son was a useless, 
 disappointing fellow. What was the matter? 
 inquired my friend; did he drink or would he 
 not work? Oh, no, said the old woman; 
 but nothing will make him sing. It s a great 
 misfortune." 3 Rather a companionable sort, 
 we think a young man who doesn t sing, 
 whistle or make other disagreeable noises would 
 be a prize in our noisy Tophet of New York. 
 
 The polka must be credited to Bohemia; it 
 was invented about 1830 by a country girl. 
 This sounds a trifle doubtful, as the dance - 
 called polka, rather pulka, because of the half 
 step is as old as the immemorial hills of Bo 
 hemia, I have been informed by Bohemian 
 critics. There is a polka in Smetana s The 
 Bartered Bride, also a furiant, which means, 
 we are told, "a boasting farmer." Dvorak in 
 his first symphony introduces a furiant in the 
 place of a scherzo. But Mr. Urban is not se 
 duced into that most platitudinous of errors, 
 to wit, that the people make a nation s music. 
 He writes with admirable clearness on the sub 
 ject: "It is no wonder that the richness of folk- 
 art was overestimated in Bohemia at the be 
 ginning of the last century, and led to an error. 
 Folk-art was confused with nationality in art. 
 A false principle was constructed that national 
 art must be based upon folk-music. Thus the 
 199 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 imitation of folk-poetry and folk-melodies was 
 approved as the real national art. It is aston 
 ishing how long this principle, violating, as it 
 did, the national law of progress, could endure. 
 All works of this feverish, would-be-national 
 period belong to history. They live no more, 
 being but imitations." In a footnote to this 
 inexpugnable statement the author adds with his 
 accustomed acuity: "The matter was also dis 
 cussed in America, where some people saw na 
 tional American music under the guise of Indian 
 music. Nothing is easier for a composer than to 
 imitate the melodies of different nations, preserv 
 ing their rhythmical or melodic mannerisms." 
 He might have joined negro to Indian as our 
 national, so-called, musical characteristics. But 
 there are no more Indians, in a tribal sense, 
 and as to negro music, the best of it was com 
 posed by white men, notably Stephen Foster. 
 Why should Afro-American folk-tunes represent 
 America? In MacDowell s Indian Suite there 
 are authentic Indian themes, while in Dvorak s 
 From the New World the negroid tunes are 
 mere suggestions; the rhythms of Yankee 
 Doodle are faintly heard as a contrapuntal 
 device; in a word, the Americanism of Dr. 
 Dvorak s plenary composition is as American 
 as his own name, not to mention the fact that 
 its chief motto is taken from Schubert s un 
 finished symphony (Tchaikovsky went to the 
 same source for the principal theme of his E 
 minor, the fifth, symphony, hence the accusa- 
 200 
 
BOHEMIAN MUSIC 
 
 tion that Dvorak borrowed from the Russian. 
 Arcades ambo !) But the negro folk- tune as 
 a basic element for the American composer was 
 short-lived. Its logical conclusion landed us 
 in the dubious and never delectable region of 
 ragtime, and there let it lie forever. The musi 
 cal culture of America must have its roots in 
 more national soil, must stem from neither the 
 aboriginal natives nor yet from the one-time 
 slaves. It must be American or it will not be at 
 all. At present our supreme composer is Charles 
 Martin Loeffler, by virtue of his individual 
 genius. I suspect all map-music; patriotism 
 may cloak humbuggery or worse (Dr. John 
 son says it does). So let us first make good 
 music, and the national ingredients will take 
 care of themselves. 
 
 Mr. Urban devoted special sections to the 
 chief composers of Bohemia Bedrich Sme- 
 tana, Antonin Dvorak, Zdenko Fibich, Vitezslav 
 Novak, and Josef Suk. There are, of course, 
 many others, but within the scope of his little 
 study these five suffice. Naturally, the palm 
 of superiority is awarded Smetana, whose music 
 we heard last season, thanks to Josef Stransky, 
 himself a Bohemian. Smetana is the Bohemian 
 composer par excellence. There is a foreign 
 alloy in Dvorak, especially the later Dvorak, 
 that rules him from entering into competition 
 with his fellow-countryman. Dvorak remained 
 a peasant even in his best works, which were 
 written before he came to New York in 1892. 
 201 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 The New World Symphony is pleasing and 
 wears well, notwithstanding its unblushing 
 plagiarisms that excerpt from the Venusberg 
 bacchanale in Tannhauser quite takes your 
 breath away; quotation marks are sadly needed 
 in music ! but it remains presumably Czechish, 
 and only faintly American. We much prefer 
 his earlier Slavic Dances, the orchestral scherzo 
 and the Husitzka overture. As for the newer 
 men, it is to be hoped that Bodanzky and 
 Stransky and Stokowski conductors nowa 
 days seem to be sky-high will give them all 
 a hearing. Quality, not quantity, rules Bohe 
 mian music, a music racy of the national soil, 
 nevertheless not without the larger, profounder 
 accents of universal music. 
 
 202 
 
THE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY? 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that he played 
 the flute and ranked Rossini above Wagner, 
 Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things 
 about music. Here is a wise observation of 
 his: "Art is ever on the quest, a quest and a 
 divine adventure;" although this restless search 
 for the new often ends in plain reaction, prog 
 ress may be crabwise and still be progress. 
 We fear "progress," as usually understood, is 
 a glittering "general idea" that blinds many 
 to the truth. Reform in art is like reform in 
 politics. You can t reform the St. Matthew 
 Passion music or the fifth symphony. Is Par 
 sifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of re 
 forms is confusing the historic with the aesthetic. 
 Art is a tricksy quantity and, like quicksilver, 
 is ever mobile. As in all genuine revolutions, 
 the personal equation counts the heaviest, so 
 in dealing with the conditions of music at the 
 present time we ought to study the tempera 
 ment of our music-makers and let prophecy 
 sulk in its tent as it may. 
 
 One thing is certain: The old tonal order has 
 changed forever; there are plenty of signs and 
 wonders in the musical firmament to prove this. 
 Moussorgsky preceded Debussy in his use of 
 whole-tone harmonies, and a contemporary of 
 203 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Debussy and an equally gifted musician, Charles 
 Martin Loeffler, was experimenting before De 
 bussy in a dark but delectable harmonic region. 
 The tyranny of the diatonic and chromatic 
 scales, the tiresome revolution of the major 
 and minor modes, the critical Canutes who sit 
 at the edge of the musical sea and say to the 
 modern waves, "Thus far and no further!" 
 and then hastily abandon their thrones and rush 
 to safety, else to be overwhelmed all these 
 are of the past, whether in art, literature, music, 
 or let Nietzsche speak in ethics. Even 
 philosophy has changed its garb and logic is 
 "a dodge," as Prof. Jowett used to say. Every 
 stronghold is being assailed, from the "divine" 
 rights of property to the common chord of C 
 major. 
 
 If Ruskin had written music-criticism he 
 might have amplified the connotations of his 
 famous phrase, the "pathetic fallacy," for we 
 consider it a pathetic fallacy (though not in 
 the Ruskinian sense) in criticism to be over 
 shadowed by the fear that, because some of 
 our predecessors misjudged Wagner, Manet 
 and Ibsen, we should be too tender in our judg 
 ments of our contemporaries. Here is "the 
 pathos of distance" run to seed. The music 
 of to-day may be the music of to-morrow, but 
 if not, what then ? It may satisfy the emotional 
 needs of the moment, yet become a stale formula 
 to-morrow. What does that prove? Though 
 Bach and Beethoven built their work on the 
 204 
 
THE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY? 
 
 broad bases of eternity employing that tre 
 mendous term in a limited sense; no art is "eter 
 nal" - nevertheless, one may enjoy the men 
 whose music is of slight texture and " modern." 
 Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity 
 we shall always have with us; mediocrity is 
 mankind in the normal, and normal man de 
 mands of art what he can read without running, 
 hear without thinking. Every century pro 
 duces artists who are forgotten in a generation, 
 though they fill the ear for a time with their 
 clever production. This has led to another 
 general idea, that of transition, of intermediate 
 types. But after critical perspective has been 
 attained, it will be seen that the majority of 
 composers fall into this category of the transi 
 tional; not a consoling notion, but an unavoid 
 able conclusion. Richard Wagner had his epi 
 gones. And so had Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. 
 Mendelssohn was a feminine variation of Bach, 
 and after Schumann followed Brahms 
 Brahms, who threatens to rival his great ex 
 emplar. Yet I can recall the incredulous smiles 
 when, twenty-five years ago, I called the Brahms 
 compositions "The Music of the Future." 
 
 The Wagner-Liszt tradition of music-drama 
 and the symphonic poem have been continued 
 with personal modifications by Richard Strauss. 
 Max Reger pinned his faith to Brahms and ab 
 solute music, though not without an individual 
 variation. In considering his Sinfonietta, the 
 Serenade, the Hiller Variations, the Prologue 
 205 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 to a Tragedy, the Lustspiel overture, the two 
 concertos respectively for pianoforte and violin, 
 we are struck not so much by the masterly 
 handling of old forms as by the stark, emo 
 tional content of these compositions. It is an 
 error to dismiss his music as merely academic. 
 He began as a Brahmsianer, but he did not 
 succeed, as did his master, in fusing form and 
 theme. There is a Dionysian strain in him that 
 too often is in jarring discord with the intellec 
 tual structure of his work. The furor teutonicus 
 in conflict with the scholar. Yet at one period 
 Reger was considered the rival of Strauss, 
 though that day has long passed. Arnold 
 Schoenberg now divides the throne. And there 
 were many other claimants Rezinek, d Al- 
 bert, Ernest Boehe, Walter Braunfels, Max 
 Schillings, Hans Pfitzner, Klose, Ehrenberg, 
 Noren, Franz Schreker, and the younger choir 
 whose doings are analyzed weekly by clever 
 Cezar Searchinger in the pages of the Musical 
 Courier. Their name is legion. They enter 
 the lists sounding golden trumpets of self-praise 
 and are usually forgotten after a solitary per 
 formance of their huge machines, whether opera 
 or symphony. Size seems to be the prime 
 requisite. Write a music-drama that consumes 
 three nights in its performance, a symphony 
 that takes a hundred men, with a chorus of a 
 thousand, to play and sing. Behold ! You are 
 a modern among moderns. But your name is 
 as mud the following year. Exceptions are 
 206 
 
THE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY? 
 
 Mahler and Bruckner, yet I have my suspicions 
 that when the zeal of William Mengelberg has 
 abated, then the Mahler craze will go the way 
 of all flesh, despite the fact that he has com 
 posed some thrilling pages. Otherwise, his 
 symphonic structures are too mastodonic to 
 endure; like those of Berlioz, they are top- 
 heavy with ennui, and many chambers are 
 empty of significant ideas or vital emotions. 
 Musical intellectualism at its extreme Kam- 
 chatska. 
 
 Our personal preferences incline us to the 
 new French music. To be sure, substance is 
 often lacking, but you are not oppressed by 
 the abomination of desolation which lurks in 
 the merely huge, by what Mr. Finck calls Jum- 
 boism in music. The formal clarity, the charm 
 ing color sense, the sprightly, even joyful, spirit, 
 combined with an audacious roving among 
 revolutionary ideas, all endear these youngsters 
 to us. Debussy is their artistic sire, Ravel 
 their stepfather, and if d Indy does not fall into 
 this category, being a descendant of Franck, 
 he is none the less admirable as a musician. 
 Stravinsky outpoints them all in the imprevu, 
 as does the incredible ProkofiefT a man to be 
 carefully estimated, one who thus far hasn t 
 put his best foot foremost in America. The 
 Richard Strauss case is no longer a moot one. 
 He has in all probability given his best work, 
 and superlative work it is, despite its slag, scoriae, 
 rubble, and refuse. He is the chief of a school, 
 207 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 a position from which he can never be dislodged, 
 and when history sifts the pretensions of all 
 the second and third rate men of his generation, 
 his figure will be found standing close to Wag 
 ner s and Berlioz s and Liszt s. An epigone? 
 Yes. But an epigone of individual genius. 
 
 With Arnold Schoenberg freedom in modu 
 lation is not only permissible but an iron rule; 
 he is obsessed by the theory of overtones, and 
 his music is not only planned horizontally and 
 vertically but in a circular fashion. There is 
 in his philosophy no such thing as consonance 
 or dissonance, only perfect ear training. (We 
 quote from his Harmony; a Bible for Super 
 men). He writes: "Harmonic fremde Tone gibt 
 es also nicht" and a sly dig at old-timers 
 "sondern nur dem Harmonie-system fremde." 
 After carefully listening to his "chaos" a cer 
 tain order disengages itself; his madness is 
 methodical. For one thing, he abuses the in 
 terval of the fourth and he enjoys juggling with 
 the chord of the ninth. Vagabond harmonies 
 in which remotest keys lovingly hold hands do 
 not dissipate the sensation of a central tonality 
 somewhere the cellar, on the roof, in the gut 
 ter, up above in the sky so high. The inner ear 
 tells you that his D minor quartet is really 
 thought, though not altogether played, in that 
 key. As for form, you must not expect it from 
 a man who has declared: "I decide my form 
 during composition only through feeling," a 
 procedure which in other composers works 
 208 
 
THE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY? 
 
 might be called improvisation. Every chord is 
 the outcome of an emotion, the emotion aroused 
 by the poem or idea which gives birth to the 
 composition. Such antique things as the cyclic 
 form or community of themes are not to be 
 found in Schoenberg s bright lexicon of anarchy. 
 He boils down the classic sonata form to one 
 movement and begins developing his theme as 
 soon as it is announced. We should be grateful 
 that he announces it at all; themeless music 
 is the rage at present. 
 
 So, as it may be seen, the new dogmatism is 
 more dogmatic than the old. The absence of 
 rule in Schoenberg is an inflexible, cast-iron 
 law of necessity as tyrannical as the Socialism 
 that has replaced Czarism with a more oppres 
 sive autocracy, the rule of the unwashed, many- 
 headed monster. Better one tyrant than a 
 million. There is no music of yesterday or to 
 morrow. There is only the music of Now. 
 
 209 
 
LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 
 
 THAT two young American-born pianists, 
 John Powell and Louis Cornell, should have 
 selected recently Liszt s only piano sonata for 
 their programmes, and during the same week, 
 is sufficiently significant to call for comment. 
 It is a sign of the times. Many of the innova 
 tions in modern writing for the instrument may 
 be directly traced to this same B minor sonatar, 
 and when we name it as the composer s solitary 
 excursion into the classical domain, it is with 
 full consciousness that Liszt s "fantasia quasi- 
 sonata," after a reading of Dante, in Annees de 
 Pelerinage, is hardly to be described as a sonata. 
 What is a sonata? Liszt answers the question 
 in his highly original work. He rejects the old 
 order of three or four separate movements, sub 
 stituting a more complete organism. It may 
 not be, formally speaking, the Haydn, Mozart, 
 or early Beethoven sonata. Liszt employs as a 
 spring-board the last sonatas of Beethoven to 
 launch him into novel territory (study opus no 
 in A fiat and you will recognize the truth of 
 this contention). 
 
 Charles Souilier has declared that the sonata 
 expired with the eighteenth century, which gave 
 it birth. This is a rather risky statement. If 
 true, we should have missed such beautiful music 
 
 210 
 
LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 
 
 in the form Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, 
 Liszt. The Hungarian s astonishing use of the 
 leading-movement and its metamorphosis, one 
 theme of the slow introduction, as Shedlock, in 
 his book on The Pianoforte Sonata, is the source 
 whence he derives the principal part of his tone 
 picture, and, adds Mr. Shedlock, "everything 
 depends on the quality and latent power of the 
 fertilizing germ." But on the first page of the 
 B minor sonata may be found Wotan s chief 
 theme, the scream of Kundry, and a color scheme 
 which Wagner later incorporated in the Ring 
 and Parsifal. So the "fertilizing germ" is not 
 missing. As for the form, that is easily dis 
 cernible. Liszt has spun a complex web, his 
 sonata is an arabesque, and a logical one, for 
 nothing is more inexorably logical than a seem 
 ingly loose rhapsody. The chief fault of this 
 composition is not its form or lack of melodic 
 invention, but its length it demands at least 
 thirty-five minutes to play caused by repeti 
 tions, though in different keys, thus defeating 
 the very purpose for which it was composed, 
 i. e., suppression of unnecessary episodes and 
 breaks in the continuity. The same criticism 
 holds good for the Symphonic Poems. 
 
 Liszt s influence was not only profound upon 
 his contemporaries witness Wagner but on 
 the latter-day school, headed by Richard Strauss, 
 whose tone poems are inconceivable without 
 Liszt s discoveries. He also inspired the Rus 
 sians, and his impressionism is the base of 
 211 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Debussy and Ravel s piano music. Rimsky- 
 Korsakoff we long ago christened the Russian 
 Berlioz, yet he owes Liszt more; from Berlioz 
 he learned how to paint orchestrally, but in his 
 manner of composition he leans heavily on the 
 Hungarian. Sadko comes from Liszt s sym 
 phonic poem, Ce qu on entend sur la mon- 
 tagne, while Antar and Scheherazade come from 
 Harold and the Faust symphony. As a French 
 critic has written: "The brand of Liszt remains 
 ineffaceable" on those charming works of 
 Rimsky-Korsakoff. Like Moses, Liszt saw the 
 Promised Land, but was destined never to enter 
 it. He suffered the fate of intermediate types. 
 He was recognized too late. Dr. Frederick 
 Niecks, the biographer of Chopin, has wisely 
 said: "Be, however, the ultimate fate of his 
 works what it may, there will always remain to 
 Liszt the fame of a daring striver, a fruitful 
 originator, and a wide-ranging quickener." 
 
 The eminently pianistic quality of Liszt s 
 original music commends it to every pianist. 
 Joseffy told the present writer that the B minor 
 sonata was one of those compositions that plays 
 itself, it "lies" so beautifully for the hand. No 
 work of Liszt, with the possible exception of his 
 etudes, is as interesting. Agreeing with those 
 critics who declare that they find few traces of 
 the sonata form in the structure, and also with 
 those who assert the work to be an organic am 
 plification of the old obsolete form, and that 
 Liszt has taken Beethoven s last sonata period 
 212 
 
LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 
 
 as a starting-point for his plunge into futurity 
 agreeing with these warring factions, we find 
 fascinating music in this sonata. What a dra 
 matic work it is ! It stirs the blood. It is in 
 tense. It is complex. The opening bars are 
 truly Lisztian. The gloom, the harmonic haze 
 from which emerges that bold theme in octaves 
 (Wotan s theme), the leap from C to the A 
 sharp below how Liszt has stamped this and 
 the succeeding intervals as his own! Power 
 there is, sardonic power, like the first phrase of 
 the E flat piano concerto, so cynically mocking. 
 How incisively the composer traps your con 
 sciousness in the theme of the sonata, with its 
 four knocking D s! What follows might be a 
 drama enacted in the netherworld. Is there a 
 composer who paints the infernal, the macabre, 
 with more suggestive realism than Liszt? Ber 
 lioz and Saint-Saens and Raff come to the mind 
 as masters of the grisly and supernatural. But 
 the thin, sharp flames of hell hover about the 
 brass, wood- wind, and shrieking strings in the 
 Liszt orchestra. 
 
 The chorale, usually the meat of the Lisztian 
 composition, now appears and in dogmatic 
 affirmation proclaims the religious belief of the 
 composer; our convictions are swept along until 
 after that outburst in C major, when follows the 
 insincerity of it all in the harmonic sequences. 
 Here, surely, it is not a whole-hearted belief, 
 only theatric attudinizing; after the faint re 
 turn of the first motive is heard the sigh of sen- 
 
 213 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 timent, of passion, of abandonment, which en 
 genders the suspicion that when Liszt was not 
 kneeling in prayer he was prostrate before 
 woman. He blends piety and passion in the 
 most mystically amorous fashion; with the can- 
 tando expressivo in D begins some lovely music, 
 secular in spirit, mayhap intended by its creator 
 for reredos and pyx. 
 
 But the rustle of silken attire is behind every 
 bar; sensuous imagery, a delicate perfume of 
 femininity lurks in each trill and cadence. Ah ! 
 naughty Abbe, have a care ! After all thy ton 
 sures and chorales, thy credos and sackcloth, 
 wilt thou admit the Evil One in the guise of a 
 melody, in whose chromatic intervals lie dimpled 
 cheek and sunny tresses ! Wilt thou permit her 
 to make away with thy spiritual resolutions? 
 Vade retro me Sathanas! And behold it is 
 accomplished. The bold theme, so triumphantly 
 proclaimed at the outset, is now solemnly 
 sounded with choric pomp and power. Then 
 begins the hue and cry of diminished sevenths, 
 and this tonal panorama with its swirl of in 
 toxicating colons kaleidoscopically moves on 
 ward. Again the devil tempts our musical St. 
 Antony, this time in octaves and in the key of 
 A major. He momentarily succumbs, but that 
 good old family chorale is repeated, and even 
 if its orthodoxy is faulty in spots it serves its 
 purpose; the Satan is routed and early piety 
 breaks forth in an alarming fugato, which, like 
 the domestic ailment known as a bad conscience, 
 214 
 
LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 
 
 is happily short-winded. Another flank move 
 ment of the Eternal Feminine, this time in the 
 seductive key of B, made mock of by this mu 
 sical Samson, who in stretta quasi presto views 
 his weakness with contrapuntal glee. He shakes 
 it from him, and in the bass triplets frames it 
 as a picture to weep or rage over. 
 
 All this finally leads to prestissimo finale of 
 startling splendor. In the literature of the piano 
 there is nothing more exciting. It is brilliantly 
 captivating, and Liszt the Magnificent is painted 
 on every bar. What gorgeous swing and how 
 the very bases of the musical anvil tremble 
 under the sledge-hammer blows of this tonal 
 Attila. Then follow a few bars of the Beetho 
 ven-andante, a moving return to the earlier 
 themes, and softly the first lento descends to 
 the subterranean abode, whence it emerges, a 
 Magyar Wotan, majestically vanishing not in 
 the mists of Valhalla but in the bowels of 
 Gehenna; then a genuine Lisztian chord-sequence 
 followed by a profound stillness in the major. 
 The B minor sonata displays Liszt s power, 
 Liszt s weakness. It is rhapsodic, it is too long 
 infernal, not a "heavenly length" -it is 
 noble, drastic, cerebral, and it is blazing with 
 exotic hues. It is also cynical and insincere. 
 Liszt, more than other composers, Meyerbeer 
 and Berlioz excepted, excelled in depicting a 
 sneering, cynical sensuality. Also insincerity. 
 And when you come to think it over, it takes 
 genius to suggest in tones the insincere. This 
 
 215 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 feat Liszt achieved. In his symphony to Faust 
 he succeeds better with the Mephisto picture 
 than in his characterization of Marguerite. But 
 to deny the B minor sonata a commanding posi 
 tion in the Pantheon of piano music would be 
 folly. And interpreted by an artist saturated 
 in the Liszt tradition, such as Arthur Friedheim 
 who has intellectual power and never resorts 
 to mere sentimentalism the work almost com 
 passes the sublime. 
 
 Away from the glitter of the concert-room 
 this extraordinary Hungarian, inspired after the 
 loftiest in art, yet in the atmosphere of aristo 
 cratic salons, or of the papal court, Liszt was 
 not altogether admirable. We have heard cer 
 tain cries calling heaven to witness that he 
 was anointed of the Lord (which he was not); 
 also that if he had not cut and run to sanctuary 
 to escape the petticoats one was his egregious 
 Polish Princess we might never have heard 
 of Liszt the Abbe. This theory is not far from 
 the truth. Among the various penalties under 
 gone by genius is its pursuit by gibes and glos 
 saries. Like Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the com 
 poser Liszt has had many things read into his 
 music which do not belong there. He set great 
 store by his sacred compositions, his masses and 
 his psalms, and he was bitterly disappointed 
 because Rome did not espouse his reforms in 
 churchly music, notwithstanding his close friend 
 ship with Pope Pius IX. But there is a vein 
 of insincerity running throughout this music, 
 216 
 
LISZT S ONLY PIANO SONATA 
 
 despite its ecclesiastic pomp and operatic color 
 ing. Perhaps the best estimate of Franz Liszt 
 is the purely human one. He was a virile mu 
 sical genius, and was compact of the usual 
 pleasing and unpleasing faults and virtues as 
 is any great man not born of a book. 
 
 217 
 
DREAMING OF LISZT 
 
 PHILIP HALE once wrote that they buried 
 Richard Wagner in the back yard like a cat; 
 which is irreverent yet a bald statement of the 
 fact. Liszt is also buried at Baireuth, in a for 
 lorn pagoda designed by his grandson, Siegfried 
 Wagner, who, at the time of his grandfather s 
 death, was a student of architecture. After a 
 pilgrimage to this tomb in the cemetery in the 
 Erlangerstrasse, for I count myself among the 
 Lisztianer, and also after hearing several operas 
 of Siegfried I reached the conclusion that, not 
 withstanding critical opinion to the contrary, 
 the young man wisely abandoned his archi 
 tectural dreams. But it is another kind of 
 dream that I would describe this Sunday morn 
 ing. When a young chap, I was crazy to see, 
 to hear, Liszt, and while I think that the old 
 man with long white hair and warts on his face 
 was the real Liszt I met him on the Rue de 
 Rivoli in 1878 still the possibility of a closer 
 view haunted my sleeping and waking hours, 
 and, finally armed with letters of introduction 
 from a well-known French pianist, a pupil of 
 the musical Merlin, and a Paris music publisher, 
 I found myself one evening at the Gare de 1 Est, 
 en route for Strasburg, thence to Stuttgart, 
 and Weimar. In those times, forty years ago, 
 we travelled slowly. 
 
 218 
 
DREAMING OF LISZT 
 
 A lovely morning in May saw me walking 
 through a sun-smitten lane on the road to the 
 garden-house where his Serene Highness was 
 living. I had sent my introductions to the 
 royal household the previous evening. I had 
 been summoned. The hedges were white wirh 
 spring blossoms, the air redolent of bockbier. 
 Ah ! thronging memories of youth. Suddenly 
 a man on horseback, his face red with excite 
 ment, his beast covered with lather, dashed by, 
 shouting, "Make way for the Master. He 
 comes. He comes ! " Presently a venerable 
 being with a purple nose a Cyrano de Cognac 
 nose appeared, and walking. His hair 
 streamed in the wind. He wore a monkish 
 habit, and on his head was a huge shovel-shaped 
 hat of the pattern affected by Don Basilio in 
 The Barber of Seville. "It must be Liszt or 
 the Devil," I cried, and the only Liszt smiled, 
 his warts growing more purple, his expression 
 most benignant. He waved to me a friendly 
 hand, that formidable hand, which, like a steam- 
 hammer, could crush steel or crack the shell of 
 an egg, so sensitive was it. "Both Liszt and 
 the Devil," he grunted, and then I knew my 
 man. I kissed his hand, made the sign of the 
 cross, for I was addressing an ecclesiastic, an 
 Abbe, though one without a tonsure, and created 
 a deacon by Pope Pius IX, called Pio Nono in 
 Italy, but in Rome affectionately nicknamed 
 " Pianino " because of his love of piano music, 
 Liszt s in particular. 
 
 219 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 He invited me to refreshments at the Czerny 
 Cafe, but as it was crowded we went across the 
 street to the garden of the Elephant Hotel, 
 there to be surrounded by a throng of little 
 Liszts, pupils, male and female, who mimicked 
 the old, old gentleman in an absurd manner. 
 They wore their hair on their shoulders, they 
 sprinkled this hair with flour, they even went 
 so far as to paint purplish excrescences on their 
 chins and brows. They donned semi-sacerdotal 
 robes, they held their hands in the peculiar 
 style of the Master; they, too, sported shovel- 
 shaped hats, and from time to time they in 
 dulged in patibulary gestures. But, good Lord, 
 how they could down the beer ! 
 
 Enfin, after some diplomatic skirmishing I 
 was invited to the afternoon musicale and went 
 with the gang to the pretty little home of Liszt 
 in the ducal park. Liszt was amiable. He 
 knew that I was nervous, so he asked a few 
 promising young beginners, such as Arthur 
 Friedheim, Alfred Reisenauer, Moriz Rosen- 
 thai, Emil Sauer, Richard Burmeister, to open 
 the ball. After I heard them I wished myself 
 in Buxtehude. I had proclaimed myself as an 
 ardent upholder of the Thalberg school, which 
 champions a singing touch and pearly scales. 
 I had studied all the Thalberg fantasies on 
 operatic airs with Charles H. Jarvis of Phila 
 delphia, who could read prima vista any music 
 composed by man, god, or devil. You will 
 estimate my musical and intellectual equip- 
 220 
 
DREAMING OF LISZT 
 
 ment of those days when I tell you that my 
 battle-horse was the Prayer from Moses in 
 Egypt, arranged by Thalberg, and my favorite 
 reading the prose of Chateaubriand; in few 
 words, lush, luxuriant, and overblown romanti 
 cism. The step to Ouida s novels and the Hen- 
 selt etudes was not far. All that I detest now in 
 music and literature was then my passion. Like 
 Ephraim I was sealed to my idols, and the chief- 
 est was Thalberg, natural son of Prince Lichten- 
 stein, a handsome piano virtuoso with aristo 
 cratic side-whiskers, a smooth pianistic style, 
 and a euphonious touch. 
 
 Liszt called to me. "Tiens ! let us hear some 
 music by an admirer of my old friend Sigismund 
 Thalberg." I did not miss the veiled irony of 
 the speech, the slight underlining of " friend," 
 for I had read of the historical Liszt-Thalberg 
 duel in Paris during the third decade of the 
 last century. But memories soon annulled my 
 agony. What a via dolorosa I traversed from 
 my chair to the piano by the way, a Stein- 
 way concert-grand. I shall not forget to my 
 dying hour that chamber wherein I stood the 
 most fateful afternoon of my life. Liszt, with 
 his powerful profile of an Indian chieftain, 
 lounged in the window embrasure, the light 
 streaking his hair, silhouetting his brow, nose, 
 and projecting chin. He was the illuminated 
 focus of a picture that is burnt into my memory 
 cells. The pupils were wraiths floating in a 
 misty dream, with malicious points of light for 
 221 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 eyes. I, too, felt like a disembodied being in 
 this spectral atmosphere of which Liszt was the 
 living reality. 
 
 Urged by a hypnotic will I went to the piano, 
 sat before it, and in my nervous misery lifted 
 the fall-board and paused to decipher the name 
 of its maker; that s how I discovered Steinway. 
 My act did not pass unperceived. Whispering 
 ensued, followed chuckling, and some one said: 
 "He must have begun as a piano salesman." 
 It was the voice of the witty Rosenthal, and it 
 utterly disconcerted me. Facing me on the 
 wall was Ary SchefTer s portrait of Chopin, and 
 doubtless prompted by the subject, my fingers 
 groped among the keys and I began, without 
 rhyme or reason, the weaving prelude in D of 
 the immortal Pole. My insides were shaking 
 like a bowl of disturbed jelly, though outwardly 
 I was as calm as growing grass. Oddly enough 
 my hands did not falter, the music seemed to 
 ooze from my wrists. I had not studied in vain 
 Thalberg s Art of Singing on the Pianoforte. 
 I finished. Not a murmur was heard. Then 
 Liszt s voice cut the sultry air: "I had expected 
 Thalberg s tremolo study," he casually remarked, 
 avenging himself with an epigram on his old 
 rival a half century after their battles. But 
 Thalberg didn t hear it. I did. I took the hint 
 and bowed myself out of the royal presence, 
 permitted by the boss to kiss his technique-laden 
 fingers, and without stopping for my hat and 
 walking-stick in the ante-chamber I went away. 
 222 
 
DREAMING OF LISZT 
 
 Then tempted by the cool of the woods I strayed 
 across to Goethe s Garden House. At the mo 
 ment I preferred poetry to music. Neverthe 
 less, I had played for Liszt. Rotten playing, 
 of course, yet a historical fact. But when I 
 compiled a life of the Grand Old Man of Hun 
 gary I hadn t the courage to put my name in 
 that long list of reputed pupils, though I dare 
 say I didn t play any worse than some of them. 
 Ask Arthur Friedheim. 
 
 My hat and stick I sent for. I was not pre 
 cisely in a jubilant mood, though I joined the 
 Liszt lobby that night at the Hotel "Zum Ele- 
 fanten." It was a goodly crowd, the majority 
 of whom achieved musical fame later. In the 
 Weimar of those days Liszt walked and talked, 
 smoked big black cigars, drank his share of 
 brandy, played, composed, and prayed he 
 seldom missed early mass. Despite his Hun 
 garian origin, his early French training, there 
 emerged through the palimpsest of his brilliant 
 and complex personality the characteristics of 
 his mother, an Austrian born. He loved Ger 
 man music, German ways. He liked to speak 
 that tongue in preference to French. Of the 
 Magyar language he knew little. But his music 
 is Hungarian enough; Hungarian in the sense 
 that Tchaikovsky s is Russian i. e., cosmo 
 politan. However, there s a lot of nonsense 
 written about that fetish of a certain critical 
 school, the fetish of nationalism in music. Liszt 
 would have been invincibly Liszt even if he 
 223 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 had been born in Boston. And that tropically 
 passionate town does not in the least resemble 
 Budapest. 
 
 At the Liszt museum his old housekeeper 
 Paulina Apel I must ask Albert Morris Bag- 
 by if she still lives showed me its numerous 
 memorials. What a collection of trophies, 
 jewels, manuscripts, orders, pictures, letters, 
 and testimonials from all over the globe. I 
 read a letter from Charles Baudelaire to Liszt, 
 which is not to be found in the volume dedicated 
 to his correspondence. Gifts from royalty 
 abound. In glass cases are the scores of Chris- 
 tus, the Faust Symphony, Orpheus, Hungaria, 
 the Berg Symphony, Totentanz, and Fest- 
 klaenge. Besides the Steinway in the music- 
 room there was an old instrument dating back 
 to the forties; for the little piano upon which 
 he studied as a child you must go to the Buda 
 pest museum. At Weimar may be seen marble 
 hands of Liszt s, Beethoven s, and Chopin s; 
 also the long, nervous, spider-like fingers of 
 Liszt clasping the slender hand of the Princess 
 Sayn-Wittgenstein. Like Chopin, Liszt at 
 tracted princesses and other exalted personages 
 in petticoats as does sugar buzzing flies. 
 
 And then I woke up. I had been dreaming 
 in my Parisian attic in 1878. When I went 
 for the first time to Weimar in 1896 Liszt had 
 been dead ten years. 
 
 224 
 
A BRAHMA OF THE KEYBOARD 
 
 IN a half-forgotten study of Flaubert s mas 
 terpiece, L Education Sentimentale, which he 
 rightly calls A Tragic Novel, George Moore 
 compares the great Frenchman to Brahma 
 " creating the passing spectacle of life to relieve 
 his eternal ennui. 1 . . . Now, Leopold Godow- 
 sky is not Brahma, and he has never suffered 
 from ennui, thanks to his tremendous capacity 
 for work; yet I can t help picturing him as a 
 sort of impassive Asiatic deity seated before 
 the keyboard of his instrument calmly surveying 
 the eternal spectacle of music and its many 
 masques. All schools, all styles, he knows, but 
 upon this vast knowledge he has no desire to 
 make any personal comment. Passionless, pas 
 sionate, objective and subjective, his crystal- 
 clear comprehension of the musical universe 
 has made him apparently assume the attitude 
 of an omniscient spectator, though he is neither 
 one nor the other. Louis Ehlert asked Karl 
 Tausig probably the greatest of all piano vir 
 tuosi why he did not offer up a small sacrifice 
 to the human needs of the masses. The Pole 
 replied: "I am not sentimental; neither my life 
 nor my education intended me to be so." 
 Ehlert persisted. "How would it be if you were 
 to give us an historical representation of the 
 225 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 sentimental?" he suggested. Tausig shook his 
 head and shrewdly smiled. He never mafic- 
 concessions to public taste, and he was called 
 inhuman, cold, objective. His master, Liszt, 
 was the reverse, overflowing with the milk of 
 human music, spontaneous and prodigal in his 
 play. Tausig the obverse of the medal; yet I 
 believe that Liszt and Tausig were the piano 
 Dioscuri, and not Liszt and Chopin. Chopin 
 as a pianist has a niche all his own. 
 
 In an article several years ago and in the 
 magazine section of The Times, I wrote that 
 Leopold Godowsky is a pianist for pianists, as 
 Shelley is a poet for poets. But everybody 
 reads Shelley nowadays, and no doubt compares 
 him unfavorably with the ear-splitting verse 
 of the cacophonous young poets of the hour. 
 Leopold Liebling took exception to my ascrip 
 tion, and I fancy he is right; every musical per 
 son listens to the alluring playing of Godowsky 
 quite impervious to the fact that there are as 
 pects of his art which will always escape them. 
 In his playing he is transcendental. This doesn t 
 mean that he is frostily objective; he is human, 
 emotional, and has at his finger ends all styles. 
 It is the fine equilibrium of intellect and emo 
 tion that compels our admiration. No one plays 
 Chopin like Godowsky, no, not even that tricky 
 kobold, Vladimir de Pachmann. Paderewski 
 is more emotional, Josef Hofmann extorts a 
 richer, a more sonorous tone from the wires; 
 nevertheless, Godowsky is a Chopinist in a class 
 226 
 
A BRAHMA OF THE KEYBOARD 
 
 apart. He doesn t drip honey in the nocturnes 
 as does Irr.ace Jar.. Prerr.ie: of Poland; he car/: 
 thunder the polonaises like his friend Jozio from 
 Cracow; but these qualities he gives us in his 
 own scale of tonal values. He is a powerful 
 man with muscles that are both velvet and steeL 
 "When he wishes he, too, can sound the orches 
 tral note; but, then, he seldom wishes this. His 
 feeling for the limitations of the piano recalls 
 the words of Rafael Joseffy: "I m not a brass 
 band"; Joseffy, who, in his abhorrence of a 
 smeary touch produced his legato with the aid 
 of the pedals, and what an aristocratic floating 
 touch was his! What poetry! What atmos 
 phere! 
 
 Setting aside his Chopin interpretations, 
 which we take for granted, as he is Slavic, have 
 you heard Godowsky play Mozart, or the neg 
 lected Haydn; or Schubert, Schumann? Of his 
 Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms I shall not write. 
 I can only repeat all schools are at his beck, 
 and if they are "perfect pictures, perfectly 
 framed and hung," as Josefly said of his beloved 
 master, Tausig, there is also the personal equa 
 tion, for me, full of magic. Sensationalism, the 
 pianistic fracas, posing for the gallery, all the 
 bag of cheap tricks this great pianist eschews. 
 He is master of the art of playing the piano 
 beautifully. His exquisitely plastic phrasing, 
 artistic massing of colors, above all the nobility 
 of his conception little wonder I call him a 
 Brahma of the keyboard, far-fetched as the 
 227 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 simile may sound. To Godowsky all other pian 
 ists could go to school, if for nothing else but 
 the purity of his style, his kaleidoscopic tint- 
 ings, his polyphony. And it must be admitted 
 that pianists I have spoken to about him admit 
 his power. He does not boast the grand man 
 ner of Josef Hofmann, yet Hofmann is reported 
 to have told his manager that he enjoyed listen 
 ing in a room to Godowsky more than playing 
 to crowded and enthusiastic multitudes at his 
 own concerts. Truly a fraternal and noble 
 sentiment ! If it comes to sheer sensationalism, 
 then Godowsky easily leads them all, Rosen thai 
 not excepted. I refer you to his paraphrases of 
 Chopin, Weber, and Johann Strauss, and the 
 supreme ease with which he conquers them. 
 Brahma, indeed. Although as he plays he looks 
 more like Buddha under his Bodh tree conjuring 
 beautiful sounds from sky and air and the mur 
 muring of crystalline waters. 
 
 It must be nearly twenty years ago, anyhow 
 eighteen, that I entertained Vladimir de Pach- 
 mann in my Dream Barn on Madison Avenue 
 at Seventy-sixth Street. The tenth floor, a 
 room as big and as lofty as a cathedral. Alas ! 
 where are such old-fashioned apartments to-day ? 
 After eating a duck, a kotchka, cooked Polish 
 fashion, and borsch, beet soup, with numerous 
 Slavic side-dishes, preceded by the inevitable 
 zakuska those appetite-slaying bonnes bouches 
 De Pachmann fiercely demanded cognac. I 
 was embarrassed. Not drinking spirits, I had 
 228 
 
A BRAHMA OF THE KEYBOARD 
 
 inconsiderately forgotten the taste of others. 
 De Pachmann, who is a child at heart, too often 
 a naughty child, cried to heaven that I was a 
 hell of a host ! He said this in Russian, then in 
 French, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish, Eng 
 lish, and wound up with a hearty Hebrew 
 "Raca!" which may mean hatred, or revenge, 
 certainly something not endearing. But the 
 worst was to come. There stood my big Stein- 
 way concert grand piano, and he circled about 
 the instrument as if it were a dangerous mon 
 ster. Finally he sniffed and snapped: "My con 
 tract does not permit me to play a Steinway." 
 I hadn t thought of asking him, fearing Chopin s 
 classic retort after a dinner party at Paris: "Ma 
 dame, j ai mange si peu!" Finally I saw the 
 hole in the millstone and excused myself. When 
 I returned with a bottle of abominable cognac 
 the little man s malicious smile changed to a look 
 of ecstasy, and he was not a drinking man ever; 
 but he was accustomed to his "petit verre" after 
 dining, and was ill-tempered when deprived of 
 it. Such is human nature, something that Puri 
 tans, prohibitionists, and other pernicious busy- 
 bodies will never understand. And then this 
 wizard lifted the fallboard of my piano and, quite 
 forgetful of that "contract," began playing. 
 And how he did play! Ye gods! Bacchus, 
 Apollo, and Venus and all other pleasant celestial 
 persons, how you must have revelled when De 
 Pachmann played! In the more intimate at 
 mosphere of my apartment his music was of a 
 229 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 gossamer web, iridescent, aerial, an aeolian harp 
 doubled by a diabolic subtlety. Albert Ross 
 Parsons, one of the few living pupils of Tausig, 
 in reply to my query, How did Joseffy compare 
 with Tausig? answered: "Joseffy was like the 
 multicolored mist that encircles a mighty moun 
 tain; but beautiful." So Pachmann s weaving 
 enchantments seemed in comparison to Godow- 
 sky s profounder playing. 
 
 And what did Vladimir, hero of double-notes, 
 play ? Nothing but Godowsky, then new to me. 
 Liszt had been his god, but Godowsky was now 
 his living deity. He had studied, mastered, and 
 memorized all those transcendental variations 
 on Chopin studies, the most significant variations 
 since the Brahms, aPaganini scaling of the heights 
 of Parnassus; and I heard for the first time the 
 paraphrase of Weber s Invitation to the Valse, a 
 much more viable arrangement than Tausig s; 
 also thrice as difficult. However, technique, as 
 sheer technique, does not enter into the musical 
 zone of Godowsky. He has restored polyphony 
 to its central position, thus bettering in that re 
 spect Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. I have 
 called attention elsewhere to Godowsky s solo 
 sonata, which evokes images of Chopin and 
 Brahms and Liszt only in the scherzo. In 
 stead of exhuming such an "ungrateful," un- 
 pianistic composition as Tschaikovsky s Sonata 
 in G, pianists of caliber might more profitably 
 introduce the Godowsky work. He is too mod 
 est or else too indifferent to put it on his pro 
 gramme. It "lies" so well for the keyboard, 
 230 
 
A BRAHMA OF THE KEYBOARD 
 
 yet there is no denying its difficulties, chiefly 
 polyphonic; the patterns are intricate, though 
 free from the clogging effects of the Brahms 
 sonatas. De Pachmann delighted his two audi 
 tors from 10 P. M to 3 A. M. It is safe to wager 
 that the old Carrollton never heard such music- 
 making before or since. When he left, happy 
 over his triumph I was actually flabbergasted 
 by the new music he whispered: "Hein! 
 What you think ! You think I can play this 
 wonderful music? You are mistaken. Wait 
 till you hear Leopold Godowsky play. We are 
 all children, all woodchoppers, compared with 
 him!" Curiously enough, the last is the iden 
 tical phrase uttered by Anton Rubinstein in re 
 gard to Franz Liszt. Perhaps it was a quotation, 
 but De Pachmann meant it. It was the sin- 
 cerest sentiment I had heard from his often in 
 sincere lips. We were all three surprised to find 
 a score of people camping out on the curved 
 stairway and passages, the idealist, a colored 
 lad who ran the elevator, having succumbed to 
 sleep. This impromptu Godowsky recital by a 
 marvellous pianist, for De Pachmann was a 
 marvel in his time, must have made a grand hit 
 with my neighbors. It did with me, and when 
 Godowsky returned to New York I had last 
 heard him in the middle nineties of the previous 
 century I lost no time in hearing him play 
 in his inimitable manner those same works. A 
 pianist who can win the heartiest admiration of 
 such contemporaries as De Pachmann and Jo- 
 seffy and Josef Hofmann I could adduce many 
 231 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 other names must be a unique artist. And 
 that Godowsky is. 
 
 When he isn t teaching or playing with or 
 chestra or in recitals Mr. Godowsky spends his 
 leisure in pedagogic work. There is a wide- 
 spreading education scheme which has St. Louis 
 as headquarters, the name of which I ve for- 
 1 gotten, though the name doesn t much matter, 
 as musicians the country over know it. For this 
 Mr. Godowsky is editing the classics and roman 
 tics of piano literature. He is also composing 
 the most charming music imaginable for the 
 earlier and middle grades of students; music that 
 has genuine musical values, with technical. 
 Imagination and instruction blended. Pegasus 
 harnessed to the humbler draught horse. If you 
 think of Schumann s various albums for the 
 young you may surmise the spirit of the Godow 
 sky curriculum. I have been reading through 
 his Miniatures for four-hands (Carl Fischer, New 
 York), three suites, twelve numbers in all, in 
 which the treble is for the pupil of extreme sim 
 plicity yet demanding attention to the melodic 
 line, and amply developing the rhythmic sense. 
 With their fanciful titles, tiny mood-pictures, 
 ( these Miniatures are bound to attract all teach- 
 >ers of the instrument. Leopold Godowsky is a 
 master pedagogue, as well as a master of masters 
 among virtuosi. He belongs to the race of such 
 giants as Paganini, Liszt, Tausig and he is 
 " different." 
 
 232 
 
CONTEMPORARY BRAN 
 
 YESTERDAY was housecleaning in my office, 
 which I need hardly tell you is situated under 
 my hat. The principal debris to be removed 
 and dumped into the waste-paper basket were 
 letters addressed to this department. Their 
 number was appalling, the accumulation of 
 weeks, as the music editor has little time for 
 answering letters. A dozen concerts a day, 
 opera almost every night, do not make for the 
 life tranquil. Now, letters, anonymous or 
 signed, are always interesting, especially those 
 in the first category. Praise and blame run 
 neck and neck; cinquante-cinquante, in classic 
 parlance. Occasionally abusive missives arrive, 
 breathing fire and fury, and these are of psy 
 chologic import. You ask yourself why? And 
 lose yourself in an interesting labyrinth of specu 
 lation. The small boy who chalks naughty 
 words or figures on wall spaces during the spring 
 of the year testifies to the rising sap of the bud 
 ding season; it is an outlet for his nascent emo 
 tions. Presumably this is the case with those 
 whose handwriting reveals their uneasy sex. 
 But why do they select the present incumbent 
 of this chair of criticism ? William James, when 
 he dissected Dr. Nordau, twenty-five years ago, 
 pointed out as a major symptom of the too 
 
 233 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 critical Max what is called by psychiatrists co- 
 prolalia, or a tendency to indulge in vulgar, 
 abusive language. When certain inhibitions of 
 polite society are removed the patient indulges 
 in vile speech, and writes nasty and usually 
 anonymous letters for reasons only known to 
 himself or herself. Writers of anonymous let 
 ters are described as cowardly, but this is only 
 half the truth; they are also sick-brained, suffer 
 ing from mild hysteria, and as soon as they trans 
 fer to paper the expression of their petty spite 
 are temporarily relieved; there is "a load off 
 their minds/ 7 as they put it. 
 
 This doesn t mean that all anonymous letters 
 are abusive; some of them are pleasant reading. 
 A blushing maiden records her admiration. A 
 "violinist" tells me that I have overpraised 
 Raoul Vidas, although I was not at the concert 
 in question, Sunday being my day of respite 
 from the boiler shop; now and again pertinent 
 criticism is received, but, whether signed or un 
 signed, all these communications only prove that 
 their recipient s casual writing is closely read, 
 and that is a minor consolation. Then there are 
 the letters asking for advice, and these contain 
 , harder nuts to crack. Why warn a young man 
 or woman that musical criticism as a profession 
 is a delusion and a snare ? Neither one will be 
 lieve you. Why suggest to an ambitious young 
 composer that any other avocation will bring 
 him, if not happiness, then, at least, bread and 
 butter? But the stone hankers after the star, 
 
 234 
 
CONTEMPORARY BRAN 
 
 and who shall mock its aspiration ? How often 
 have we felt like crying aloud: "Hats on, gentle 
 man, this is not a genius!" reversing the his 
 toric utterance of Robert Schumann. A critic 
 should be clairvoyant, but sometimes he is not. 
 And little wonder. Paste passes for diamonds, 
 skim-milk masquerades as cream. But it is 
 always well to face the rising, not the setting 
 sun. Write only for young; the old will not 
 heed you, being weary of the pother of life and 
 art. To the young belongs the future. Hurrah 
 for Ornstein and Prokofieff, or the ideals they 
 represent! Progress always traverses a circle, 
 it is more imaginary than real, but we must have 
 the illusion of progress, else spiritually decay. 
 Without vision people perish. Nice copybook 
 axioms, paste them in your bonnet. 
 
 In Emile Hennequin s La Critique Scien- 
 tifique introduced to English readers by John 
 Mackinnon Robertson in his New Essays 
 Towards a Critical Method the brilliant 
 Frenchman, unhappily dead before his time, 
 advanced the idea that every critic should, in 
 the preface of his book, set forth not only his 
 qualifications, but also his prejudices, his limi 
 tations. This procedure might shed a dry light 
 on what follows, although it would seem un 
 necessary, as all these virtues and defects are 
 implicit in the critics work. However, Mr. Rob 
 ertson has elaborated the theory and frankly 
 exposes himself. I am minded of this by a 
 signed letter, evidently written by a gentleman, 
 
 235 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 which came to this department shortly after a 
 notice had appeared criticising the Oratorio So 
 ciety. The critic, it seems, must have been in 
 a disgruntled humor when he declared that the 
 oratorio form was as obsolete as the mastodon, 
 or some other prehistoric monster; perhaps he 
 meant hippopotamus. The writer of the com 
 munication protests, and logically, against send 
 ing a man to criticise choral singing when he is 
 not in sympathy with such. Other people, nu 
 merous people, find in oratorio the musical staff 
 of life. Why, then, trample on their feelings? 
 The answer is an unqualified assent to the argu 
 ment. As I signed the criticism in question, 
 and as I was bored to death at the time, there 
 is nothing left for me but to apologize also 
 put on paper my objections, thus following the 
 advice of the distinguished French critic. And 
 I fear I shall make out a poor case for the defense. 
 In the first place, on the night of the Oratorio 
 concert, our oratorio editor, yielding to a per 
 fectly human impulse about the fourth time 
 in his life accompanied the sporting editor to 
 a marvellous wrestling match between El Greco, 
 the Terrible Greek (his real name is said to be 
 Theototocopulous), and Goya, better known as 
 the Man-Strangler. Which one first went to 
 the mat on that tremendous occasion need not 
 concern us now; suffice to say that I was butch 
 ered to make the oratorio editor s holiday. Why 
 do I dislike oratorio ? I meekly retort I 
 don t. I love it, and my correspondent is right 
 236 
 
CONTEMPORARY BRAN 
 
 when he asserts that the form has served as a 
 vehicle for most masterly music. Think of 
 Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn. I know it. I 
 have heard and loved choral singing for a half 
 century. Masterpieces ^ never weary, but, as 
 Arthur Symons says, books about books soon 
 pass away, and there are some of us who prefer 
 to read than "see" Hamlet, although I agree 
 with Brander Matthews that the only test of a 
 play is "the fire of the footlights." In a word, 
 public performance may rob the masterpiece of 
 its original grandeur and we must predicate 
 grandeur for the B minor Mass, for the Messiah, 
 for Elijah. This sounds as if I were about to 
 lay the blame on the particular performance of 
 the Oratorio Society a cowardly evasion of 
 my duty. On the contrary, I confess that with 
 the exception of the inevitable limitations of 
 amateur singing Signor Setti choruses are not 
 plentiful I had never heard the Oratorio So 
 ciety sing with such refreshing vigor as the week 
 before last. Remember, too, that I heard the 
 society under Leopold Damrosch, when it sang 
 The Damnation of Faust at the Academy of 
 Music, Philadelphia, and young Walter con 
 ducted a chorus in the wings. 
 
 You will ask, You love the noble music in this 
 form, why write deprecatingly of it? Because 
 it is my unshakable conviction that such music 
 does not belong in the concert room, but in a 
 church. After hearing the Passion music in 
 Bach s old St. Thomas s Church, or the Brahms 
 
 237 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Requiem in a historical church, the anomaly of 
 singers in festive array singing in concert halls 
 is too much for my sense of eternal fitness. Yes, 
 critics have "nerves," and it needs a remark 
 able interpretation of the Messiah or kindred 
 compositions to stir me. I am only answering 
 for myself qui s excuse, s accuse ? and do 
 not presume to gainsay the feelings of pious folk 
 who regard the Messiah as a sacred function. 
 But for those who tell me that the mock-turtle 
 Christianity of Parsifal is "sacred" I merely 
 retort : " A fig for the mystic capon." Naturally, 
 a concert room better serves the practical pur 
 pose of singing organizations here than the house 
 of God; yet I prefer the church, for the spec 
 tacle of five hundred humans, with their mouths 
 wide open bawling the text would it not dis 
 tract one? Sacred fiddlesticks! you exclaim 
 when a tenor, faultlessly clad, arises and solemnly 
 intones, "And Jesus said," the remainder of the 
 speech being uttered by some one else. ^Estheti- 
 cally, oratorio has not a leg to stand on. It is 
 neither fish nor flesh. How dull was Samson et 
 Dalila till sung in costume and before the foot 
 lights ! And it is not by any means very dra 
 matic. Still, to many who do not visit the 
 opera for religious reasons, oratorio is a species 
 of emotional outlet. It is a half-way house, a 
 compromise you may enjoy both drama and 
 religion. Another thing I am weary of the 
 music, as I weary when I see Hamlet or hear the 
 Fifth Symphony, or look at the Dresden Ma- 
 
 238 
 
CONTEMPORARY BRAN 
 
 donna. I am not apologizing for this weakness, 
 only trying to explain its genesis. William Gil 
 lette has written about the " first- time" element 
 in acting; or why an actor must ceaselessly re 
 new the freshness of his original inspiration. 
 Would that some sympathetic writer deigned 
 to take up the cudgels for the ear-sick music 
 critic. It is difficult, nay, impossible, to recap 
 ture that first rapture when Tristan, or the C 
 minor Symphony, or Hamlet, swam into our 
 ken. That is why I did not "react" the other 
 night at the Oratorio Society, and why, as my 
 critique was reprehensible, I am now making a 
 clean breast of the matter and crying : Peccavi ! 
 And here is my old friend Frank Sealey mildly 
 complaining that it was not his fault that his 
 electric organ " ciphered" for a bar during the 
 evening. As I have literally sat at Brother 
 Sealey s feet for nearly thirty years since the 
 opening of Carnegie Hall it is not necessary 
 to assure him that I never doubted that it was 
 the fault of the organ, not his. He is a rock of 
 certitude on the organ bench. But I did enjoy 
 Wolf-Ferrari s Vita Nuova, a beautifully fash 
 ioned score, too sweetly sentimental in spots for 
 the austere and lovely sonnets of the deathless 
 Dante; nevertheless, a tour de force, happily 
 illustrating my primal contention that the ora 
 torio form is as obsolescent as the epic; the spirit, 
 I mean, rather than the form, for the bony 
 framework is there, but the age of piety, the 
 profound piety that prompted the composition 
 
 239 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 of such glorious music as Bach s or Handel s, 
 has quite vanished, to be replaced by machine- 
 made music, the "movies," and other stimulat 
 ing arts. Contemporary bran is filling, but it 
 nourishes not the soul. Need I add, when the 
 Oratorio Society sings the Messiah at Christmas- 
 tide, that the regular oratorio editor, a singularly 
 pious person, will report the annual occurrence ! 
 That night, perhaps, I shall enjoy the brutal 
 but diverting spectacle of a wrestling match. 
 It all depends on the amiability of the sportirg 
 editor. 
 
 240 
 
A MOOD REACTIONARY 
 
 I CONSIDER such phrases as the " progress of 
 art," the " improvement of art," and " higher 
 average of art" as distinctly harmful and mis 
 leading. How can art improve ? Is art a some 
 thing, an organism that is capable of growing 
 into a fat maturity? If this be so, then, by 
 the same token, it can become a doddering, senile 
 thing, and finally die and be buried with the 
 honors due its useful career. It was Henrik 
 Ibsen who asserted that the vital values of a 
 truth lasted at the longest about twenty years; 
 after that the particular truth rolled into error. 
 Now, isn t this quibble concerning "artistic 
 improvement" as fallacious as the vicious circle 
 of the dramatist from the Land of the Midnight 
 Whiskers or is it the Land of the Midnight 
 Bun? Contrariwise, Bach would be dead, 
 Mozart moribund, Beethoven in middle-aged 
 decay. Instead, what is the musical health of 
 these three composers? Have we a gayer, 
 blither, more youthful scapegrace writing to-day 
 than Mozart? Is there a man among the mod 
 erns more virile, passionate, profound, or noble 
 than Beethoven? And Bach is the boy of the 
 trinity. The Well-Tempered Clavichord is the 
 Book of Eternal Wisdom. In it may be found 
 the past, present, future of music. It is the 
 Fountain of Eternal Youth. 
 
 241 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 As a matter of cold fact, it is your modern 
 who is ancient; the ancients were younger. 
 Recall the Greeks and their naive joy in crea 
 tion. In sorrow the twentieth-century man 
 brings forth his art. His music betrays it. It 
 is sad, complicated, hysterical, morbid. No 
 need to mention Chopin, who was neurotic 
 an empty medical phrase nor Schumann, who 
 carried in him the seeds of madness ; nor Wagner, 
 who was a typical decadent on an epical scale. 
 Sufficient for the argument to adduce the names 
 of Berlioz, Liszt, Tschaikovsky, and Richard 
 Strauss. Some Sunday when the weather is 
 wretched, when icicles hang by the wall, and 
 " ways be foul" and "foul is fair and fair is foul," 
 I shall tell you what I think of the "blond bar 
 barian" who sets to music crazy philosophies, 
 bloody legends, sublime tommyrot, and the pic 
 tures and poems of his friend. At present I am 
 not in the humor nor have I the space. Good 
 white paper is become a luxury, like freedom 
 of speechlessness and other indelicacies of the 
 national cuisine. 
 
 As I understand the jargon of criticism, Ber 
 lioz is the father of modern instrumentation. 
 That is, he says nothing original or significant 
 in his music, but he says it magnificently. A 
 purple, pompous rhetorician, a Chateaubriand 
 of the orchestra. His style covers a multitude 
 of musical or unmusical defects with the 
 flamboyant cloak of chromatic charity. He 
 pins haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his 
 242 
 
A MOOD REACTIONARY 
 
 compositions, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit 
 open-mouthed at concerts trying to fill in his 
 big, sonorous, empty frame with an adequate 
 picture. Your picture is not the same as mine. 
 I swear that the young man who sits next to 
 me, with a silly chin, goggle eyes, and a cocoa- 
 nut-shaped head, sees as in a flattering mirror, 
 the idealized image of a strong-jawed, ox-eyed, 
 classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon 
 and Byron. I loathe the music that makes its 
 chief appeal to the egotism of mankind, all the 
 while slyly insinuating that it only addresses the 
 imagination. Yes, the imagination of your own 
 splendid ego in a white waistcoat driving a new 
 model car through the White Light district on 
 an immoral afternoon in the puberty of spring. 
 Let us pass to the Hungarian piano virtuoso, 
 who posed as a great composer. That he lent 
 his hard cash and musical themes to his precious 
 son-in-law, Richard Wagner, is undeniable. 
 Liszt admits it himself. But, then, beggars 
 must not be choosers, and Liszt gave Wagner 
 mighty poor stuff at times. We believe that 
 Wagner liked far better the solid shekels than 
 the notes of hand. Liszt would have had little 
 to say if Berlioz had not preceded him. The 
 idea struck him, for he was a master of musical 
 snippets, that Berlioz was too long-winded - 
 both in brass and wood that his so-called 
 symphonies were neither fish, nor form, nor 
 good red tunes. What ho ! cried Master Franz, 
 I ll give them a dose homoeopathic. He did, 
 
 243 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 and he named his prescription Symphonic Poem, 
 or, if you will, Poeme Symphonique, which is 
 not the same thing. Nothing so tickles the 
 vanity like this sort of verbal fireworks. "It 
 leaves so much to the imagination/ murmurs 
 the fat man with a 22-collar and a No. 6 hat. 
 It does. And his kind of imagination good 
 Lord ! Liszt, nothing daunted because he 
 couldn t shake out an honest throw of a tune 
 from his technical dice-box, proceeded to build 
 his noise on so-called themes, claiming that in 
 this method he derived from Bach. Not so. 
 Bach s themes are subjects for fugal treatment, 
 Liszt s are used symphonically. The parallel 
 is uncritical. Besides, Daddy Liszt had no me 
 lodic invention. Bach had, and in abundance; 
 witness his chorals, masses, oratorios, preludes, 
 suites, fugues. However, the Berlioz ball had 
 to be kept a-rolling; the formula was easy. 
 Liszt named his poems, named his very notes, 
 put dog-collars on his harmonies yet no one 
 whistled after them. Whoever whistled a Liszt 
 tune? 
 
 Tschaikovsky kept one eye on Liszt and Ber 
 lioz, the other on Bellini and Gounod. What 
 would have happened if he had been one-eyed 
 I cannot pretend to say. In love with lush, 
 sensual melody, infatuated with the gorgeous 
 pyro technical effects of Berlioz and Liszt, also 
 the pomposities of Meyerbeer, this Russian, who 
 began too late in his studies, succeeded in manu 
 facturing a number of ineffectual works. On 
 244 
 
A MOOD REACTIONARY 
 
 them he bestowed strained, fantastic titles, 
 empty, meaningless, pretty,, and as he was con- 
 trapun tally short-winded, he made his so-called 
 tone-poems shorter than Liszt s. He had little 
 aptitude for the symphonic form, and his de 
 velopment section is always his weak point. 
 Too much Italian sentiment, and a sentiment 
 that is often hectic and morbid. He raves or 
 whines like the people in Russian fiction. I 
 think he was touched in the upper story, that 
 is, till I heard the compositions of R. Strauss of 
 Munich. What misfit music for such a joyous 
 name, a name evocative of all that is gay, witty, 
 sparkling, spontaneous in music. After Mozart, 
 give me Strauss Johann, not Richard. 
 
 No longer the wheezings, gaspings, short- 
 breathed phrases of Liszt. No longer the sen 
 suality, loose construction, formlessness and 
 vodka besotted peasant dances of Tschaikovsky, 
 but a blending of Wagner, Brahms, Liszt and 
 the classics. Richard Ostrich knows his little 
 affair. He is clever, he is skilled. He has his 
 chamber-music moments, his lyric outbursts. 
 His early songs are singable. It is his vile, 
 perverse orgies of orchestral noises that wound 
 my ears. No normal man ever erected such 
 mad architectural tonal schemes. He should be 
 penned behind the bars of his own mad music. 
 He lacks melody. He dotes on ugliness. He 
 suffers from the uglification complex. He writes 
 to distracting, unheavenly lengths, worst of all, 
 his harmonies are hideous. But he doesn t for- 
 
 245 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 get to call his monstrosities fanciful names. If it 
 isn t Don Juan shades of Mozart it is Don 
 Quixote shades of Cervantes. This literary 
 title humbug serves as the plaster for our 
 broken heads and split eardrums. Berlioz, 
 Tschaikovsky and R. Strauss are not for all 
 time. 
 
 The truth is that musical art has gone far 
 afield from the main travelled road, has been 
 led into blind alleys and dark forests. If this 
 art has made no "progress in fugue, song, sonata, 
 symphony, string quartet, oratorio, opera," who 
 has " improved" on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mo 
 zart, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, 
 Chopin? Name, name, I ask. What s the 
 use of talking about the "higher average of 
 to-day?" How much higher? You mean that 
 more people go to concerts, more people enjoy 
 music, than fifty or a hundred years ago. Do 
 they? I doubt it. Of what use all our huge 
 temples of worship if the true gods of art no 
 longer be worshipped therein? Numbers prove 
 nothing. Majorities are not always in the 
 right. There has been no great original music 
 composed since the death of Beethoven, for, 
 strictly speaking, the music-drama of Wagner 
 is a synthesis of the arts, and, despite his indi 
 vidual genius, in union there is death in the 
 case of the Seven Arts. United we fall, divided 
 we stand! The multiplication of orchestras, 
 opera-houses, singing societies, and concerts are 
 not indicative that general culture is achieved. 
 246 
 
A MOOD REACTIONARY 
 
 Quality, not quantity, should be the shibboleth. 
 The tradition of the classics is fading, soon it 
 shall vanish. We care little for the masters. 
 Modern music worship is a fashionable fad. 
 People go to listen because they think it the 
 mode. Alack and alas ! that is not the true spirit 
 in which to approach the Holy of Holies, Bach, 
 Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven. Oremus ! 
 
 247 
 
MUSICAL "POTTERISM" 
 
 POTTERISM is a clever, amusing satire on the 
 British philistine which has had considerable 
 vogue in London and New York. It was written 
 by Rose Macaulay, who is said to have a dozen 
 novels to her credit. The lady has evidently 
 read Shaw profitably; that is, Nietzsche strained 
 through the Shaw sieve, for G. B. S. never had 
 an original idea. She defines Potterism as a 
 frame of mind, not a set of opinions. Potterism 
 is only a new word for an old thing cant, or, 
 as we say, humbug, and, on its more serious 
 side, hypocrisy. Smug self-satisfaction is its 
 keynote. Will Irwin in a flash of divination 
 defined the particular quality as "highbrow," 
 a species of sterile intellectualism which irritates 
 sensible people because of the lofty, condescend 
 ing attitude assumed by certain persons who, 
 terribly at ease in Zion, are seemingly in the 
 secret councils of the Almighty. Don Marquis 
 daily tilts at assthetic sham in his stimulating 
 Sun Dial column, and Gelett Burgess, the au 
 thor of the deathless Purple Cow, long ago hit 
 out at the Potterism of his time. Potterism, 
 like the rich, is always with us. We are all of 
 us more or less Potterites. Dickens painted 
 the tribe, beginning with Mrs. Leo Hunter, not 
 forgetting Podsnappery. Thackeray s scimitar 
 prose cut through snobbish pretenses, while a 
 248 
 
MUSICAL "POTTERISM" 
 
 French philosopher, Jules de Gautier, in his 
 Bovaryisme, has demonstrated that we are 
 victims of the world illusion to pretend to 
 be otherwise than we are. It is a law of life, 
 a superstition, this game of self-illuding, and 
 superstition is the cement of civilization. 
 
 Therefore, Miss Macaulay has dealt with 
 nothing novel, but she has written an agree 
 able variation on the theme of human weak 
 ness, and the most engaging quality of her for 
 mula is its elasticity. No matter the depart 
 ment of life, Potterism lurks thereabouts. 
 Musical Potterism, for example, is everywhere 
 rampant. It bobs up in music criticisms and 
 peeps forth in daily intercourse. "Give me 
 good old Mozart/ cries the classical Potterite, 
 "and keep your modern kickshaws. Mozart 
 is good enough for me!" Alas, we think Mo 
 zart is too good for this bonehead, who no doubt 
 prefers a Broadway comic opera to The Mar 
 riage of Figaro. Another of the exasperating 
 Potterites is the haunter of concert halls who 
 spends his time in comparing violinists, pianists, 
 singers, orchestras. Criticism thrives on com 
 parisons. That we know; but the infernal hair 
 splitting over this bald subject gets on your 
 nerves. Music and morals is another favorite 
 grouping of two widely sundered things. Not 
 so, asserts the uplifter who seeks sermons in 
 running Bachs and usually finds immoral rub 
 ble. Of all the damnable nuisances in the Vale 
 of Tone, commend me to your moralizer. He 
 249 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 is too much in evidence nowadays, and his per 
 nicious influence will, I feel certain, close every 
 theatre, opera-house, picture-gallery, and book 
 in our present United States of Slaves. 
 
 There is too much critical cant concerning 
 the classics of music. How uncritical we are ! 
 We say Mozart and Beethoven just as we say 
 Goethe and Schiller. Such bracketing is bubbling 
 bosh. It is almost Hegelian in its identification 
 of opposites. We can understand the conjunc 
 tion of Mascagni and Leoncavello in Cavalleria 
 and Pagliacci, a managerial marriage, with our 
 eye on the box office. But Bach and Beethoven. 
 Or Schumann and Chopin. How absurd and 
 lazy-minded is such association of names ! One 
 of the most ingrained of Potterisms is that the 
 gallery at the opera is the repository of the 
 most precious criticism. For gallery, read the 
 standees at our opera the rail birds, so called. 
 As a matter of fact, the most illegitimate ap 
 plause comes from these quarters. Does a tenor 
 bawl, a basso bellow, a soprano scream, thunder 
 ous explosions prove our contention. When 
 Galli-Curci sang off key at the Lexington Thea 
 tre last season she was hailed in an unmistak 
 ably cordial manner. We have noticed the 
 same lack of taste at the San Carlo, Naples; at 
 La Scala, in Milan; in Paris, Berlin, and Lon 
 don. Italian audiences, especially of the top 
 gallery, are supposed to possess finer ears than 
 other people. More musical Potterism. They 
 applaud in Italy, as they applaud in New York 
 250 
 
MUSICAL "POTTERISM" 
 
 or London, the singers with the stentorian or 
 extremely high voices; whether they sing in 
 tune or not, whether they rhythmically distort 
 the musical phrase or not, matters little to these 
 fanatics for noise. And invariably they drown 
 the orchestra if the singer happens to end a 
 few bars before it. That the composition should 
 be allowed to terminate logically does not enter 
 into their unmusical comprehension. To bruise 
 their muscular palms and shout is their idea of 
 sensibility. We do not refer now to the official 
 claque, if there be one at the opera, but to the 
 diabolical hand-clapping and hurrahing which 
 is becoming a formidable menace to the enjoy 
 ment of the musical portion of the audience. 
 No applause is tolerated during Parsifal until 
 act-ends, no applause is tolerated at Tristan 
 and Isolde until the curtain falls, and what a 
 relief it is not to be forced to endure the belch 
 ing enthusiasm and vulgar fist-thumping in 
 the middle of a musical phrase ! Why, then, 
 are not Italian and French operas given the 
 same chance? We are indeed barbarians in 
 this cult of noise. We can t even escape noise 
 within our opera-house. It would be a wise 
 regulation if applause could be confined within 
 legitimate limits at the end of each act. It 
 might not please some singers, who are so avid 
 of applause that they actually hire it by the 
 yard, but it would be a boon to the occupants 
 of the stalls and boxes at the Metropolitan. 
 Hasta la vista ! 
 
 251 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 We blush to utter such Potterisms. There 
 should be no necessity for these obvious criti 
 cisms. Another annoying Potterism is the grow 
 ing hero-worship of conductors nothing rare, 
 by the way, in the history of art. We remember 
 Theodore Thomas in his palmy days; remember 
 that smoothly fitting dress coat of his. Yes, 
 there were many women who attended the 
 Philharmonic Society concerts to gaze ecstati 
 cally upon the shapely back and harmonious 
 movements of this handsome conductor. An 
 other prima donna conductor was Arthur Nik- 
 isch of the Boston band. He waved lily-white 
 hands; his weaving motions fascinated the 
 eye. They seemed in their rhythmic variety 
 the externalization of the music he was inter 
 preting, and, according to Delsarte and Dai- 
 croze, they were. But both Thomas and Nikisch 
 were great conductors Nikisch still is; in 
 deed, he is the dean of great conductors. His 
 personal mannerisms were and are taken as a 
 matter of course. We do not include Arthur 
 Bodanzky among the prima-donna baton heroes. 
 Nevertheless, he is a hero, and a hero always 
 in a hurry. He is the most precise and business 
 like of our conductors. He seems as if he were 
 making a train to Eldorado. Yet it is only a 
 fancy. He is absolutely master of his technical 
 and intellectual resources. The enormous dy 
 namic energy of the man, his driving power, are 
 concentrated at the tip of his stick. If the Bos 
 ton Symphony Orchestra boasts a demon drum- 
 252 
 
MUSICAL "POTTERISM" 
 
 mer, the National Symphony Orchestra can 
 boast a demon conductor. Bodanzky is de 
 moniacal when he cuts loose. At the second 
 Tristan performance he galloped his men at 
 such a pace that the singers could only pant 
 after them. A great conductor is Artur with the 
 Weber profile and the propulsive right hand. 
 If he had a calm left hand like Thomas or 
 Nikisch his readings would benefit thereby. 
 But how stimulating is his conducting! You 
 swing along on the crest of exaltation and for 
 get the composer s intentions in the tumultuous 
 symphonic sea. A brilliant apparition, a stork 
 of genius, but with brains, always brains. The 
 dark horse of American conductors is Ossip 
 Gabrilowitsch. That young man will bear 
 watching. 
 
 His antipodes is Walter Damrosch, who is 
 as familiar a spectacle nowadays as Trinity 
 Church. Walter leaves nothing to chance. He 
 doesn t believe in the imprevu; with him the 
 unexpected never happens. There is a sense 
 of security at his Symphony Society, the sort 
 of security that appeals to you when sitting 
 under a long beloved preacher. Since 1881, 
 on and off, we have sat metaphorically at the 
 feet of Walter Damrosch, and not once has he 
 startled, not once has he altogether disappointed 
 us. He is safe, sane, and sometimes sopo 
 rific. But he never uses rouge or pencils the 
 eyebrows of his interpretations; perfume is to 
 him abhorrent. Good old Walter! His has 
 
 253 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 been a long race, and his a sober victory. Leo 
 pold Stokowski is a pocket edition of Nikisch, 
 a Nikisch without genius. He is the ideal prima- 
 donna conductor and exudes sweetness and light 
 (Einstein says that light exudes), and as regards 
 the technique of the baton he has all his contem 
 poraries beaten to a frazzle save one, Arturo 
 Toscanini. Such economy of gesture, such 
 weighty significance in every motion are praise 
 worthy. His musicianship is excellent, his 
 memory remarkable, although commanding in 
 tellectuality is absent. He too has a sinuous 
 line in his back that enchants his feminine au 
 dience. He is graceful, and inevitably makes 
 his entrance carrying his baton as if it were a 
 baby. The Philadelphia Orchestra is largely 
 composed of mediocre material, but thanks to 
 the admirable disciplinarian, that is, Stokowski, 
 it sounds at times as if of prime quality. And 
 tonal quality is precisely what it lacks. Its 
 conductor hypnotizes his audience into think 
 ing it is so. Ah, these Poles! The Oriental 
 mango magic trick over again. Stokowski is 
 young, blond, and has a Chopinesque head, but 
 in profile his chin is as diffident as a poached 
 egg. Pierre Monteux, like a happy nation, has 
 no personal history. He is an accomplished 
 chef. We enjoy his cuisine. There is a savory 
 touch of the Midi in his musical ragouts. And 
 to my horror I find myself indulging in the most 
 reprehensible musical Potterism. 
 
 254 
 
MY "CHILDE ROLAND" 
 
 IF you keep good company too long it is dif 
 ficult to remain a decent member of society. 
 This sounds like a faded paradox, but I mean 
 it. No doubt vaso-motor reflex action is the 
 cause. Try it yourself. Frequent the abodes 
 of the self-righteous, of prohibitionists, of re 
 formers and uplifters generally, and you will 
 soon crave moral wood-alcohol, possibly the 
 more vicious benzine. Too much opera drives 
 me back to the church, and thence to the House 
 of the Flesh where the spirit sleepeth. Because 
 he was a clergyman s son and brought up in a 
 moral straight jacket, dosed with moralic acid, 
 Friedrich Nietzsche exploded such a phrase as 
 " Christianity, alcohol the two great means 
 of corruption" to civilization. I have often 
 wondered why he dragged in rum? (This is 
 a variant on Whistler s epigram.) 
 
 However, I m not attempting unimaginary 
 conversations, nor describing insurrections in 
 oyster-shells. A Scotch proverb warns us: 
 " Never tell your foe when your foot sleeps"; 
 nevertheless I shall make a confession that in 
 volves both feet, also my sleeping cortical cells. 
 The good company mentioned above chiefly 
 consisted of young, ambitious composers, an 
 approved gang of musical chaps who delighted 
 
 255 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 in symphonically setting poetic ideas, whether 
 from Byron, Nietzsche, Ben De Casseres, or 
 d Annunzio. And when I say symphonically I 
 mean symphonic poems, for the great sympho- 
 nists were long ago voted by this coterie as 
 "old stuff." Liszt and Richard Strauss were 
 our springboards. The Debussy influence was 
 yet to come. It was Tchaikovsky who most 
 appealed to us. Realism, not imagination, was 
 our shibboleth. As all my friends were com 
 posing I took it into my head to go them one 
 better, to be more realistic than the ultra-real 
 ists. I had, so I fancied, the necessary science. 
 I consulted young Henry Hadley, who was 
 quite a promising lad at that time, and he ad 
 vised after putting me through a course of 
 contrapuntal sprouts to go ahead and do 
 my worst, which worst would only mean spoil 
 ing music-paper, while my best ! Who 
 knows ? 
 
 I fancied that I had mastered the tools of 
 my trade, that I knew every form from a song 
 to a symphony, and that my scoring comprised 
 the entire gamut of orchestral pigments you 
 see, false modesty didn t stand in the way 
 so I began to cast about for my poetic subject 
 and its musical counterpart, hoping such is 
 the audacity of youth that the appearance 
 of the pair would be simultaneous, as in the 
 dual-composing of Richard Wagner. I didn t 
 expect much, did I? Well, one fine night, as 
 I wearily tossed on my folding bedouin, my 
 256 
 
MY "CHILDE ROLAND" 
 
 musical imagination began to work. I remem 
 ber now that it was a spring night, the moon 
 rounded, lustrous, and silvering the lake be 
 neath my window. I had been re-reading for 
 the hundredth time Childe Roland to the Dark 
 Tower Came, from my favorite poet, Robert 
 Browning, with its sinister coloring, its spiritual 
 overtones. Yet until that moment it had never 
 suggested musical treatment. Perhaps it was 
 the exquisite cool of the night, its haunting 
 mellow atmosphere, that fermented in my brain- 
 box. I went to the window. Suddenly I saw 
 a huge fantastic cloud shadow project a jagged 
 black pattern on the water. Presto! I had 
 my theme. It came with an electric snap that 
 blinded me for an instant. It would be the 
 first motive of my symphonic poem, Childe 
 Roland. It was thought in the key of B minor, 
 a key emblematic of the dauntless knight who 
 to "the dark tower came," unfettered by ene 
 mies, physical or spiritual. 
 
 How my imagination seethed the night 
 through, as I am one of those unhappy men 
 who, the moment an idea comes to them, must 
 develop it to the bitter end. Childe Roland 
 kept me on tenterhooks till dawn. I heard the 
 call of his "dauntless horn," and saw the "squat 
 tower." The knight s theme, so it seemed to 
 me, was Roland incarnated in tone. I over 
 heard its underlying harmonies with the in 
 strumentation, all sombre, gloomy, the note 
 of gladness missing. I treated my theme with 
 
 257 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 vitality, announcing it on the English horn, 
 with a strange rhythmic background supplied 
 by the tympani; the strings in division played 
 tremolando, the brass was staccato and muted. 
 It was novel enough to me, although this de 
 scription must sound banal to modern ears. 
 After seven months of agonizing revision, prun 
 ing, clipping, cutting, and hawking it about for 
 the inspection of my friends, and getting laughed 
 at for my pains, I finished the unwieldy work. 
 But the performance ! Diplomacy won the day. 
 A music-critic, who could compose a symphonic 
 poem was more of a rarity in those far-away 
 days than now, when children make fugues 
 while you wait. There was an interview with 
 Herr Kapellmeister Schnabelowsky and a def 
 inite promise. I shall spare you details of the 
 seventeen rehearsals, hours and hours in dura 
 tion, when my amateurish orchestration was 
 held up to scorn by the conductor for the delec 
 tation of the band (though I always paid for 
 his beer at Liichow s). The audience at the 
 concert had the pleasure of reading in the pro 
 gramme-book the entire poem, Childe Roland, 
 no doubt wondering what it meant. My sym 
 phonic poem would make clear the dark, dubious 
 sayings of the poet. I believed then in the power 
 of music to portray definite soul-states, to mirror 
 moods, to depict, though indefinitely, common 
 every-day physical facts. 
 
 My composition was adequately played, of 
 that there was no doubt. Give the Herr Kapell- 
 
 258 
 
MY "CHILDE ROLAND" 
 
 meister his due. It was only ninety minutes 
 long remember it was a symphonic poem, 
 not a symphony and I sat in nervous perspira 
 tion as I listened to the Childe Roland theme, 
 to the squat tower theme, the "sudden little 
 river" motive, the horrid engine of war motive, 
 the sinister grinning false-guide theme, in short, 
 to the many motives of the poem with its tre 
 mendous apotheosis, ending with the blast from 
 the slug-horn of the dauntless knight. I hope 
 you are acquainted with this extraordinary 
 poem, for I have met confirmed Browningites 
 who had never read it. After Paracelsus and 
 Sordello it is my daily sustenance. The apothe 
 osis theme I sounded with twelve trombones, 
 twenty-one basset horns, one calliope and a 
 chorus of one thousand two hundred, with a 
 vacuum choir for celestial coloring. It almost 
 brought down the roof and I was the happiest 
 person in the audience. As I went away I en 
 countered an old friend, the critic of The Dis 
 ciples of Tone, who said to me: 
 
 "Mon cher maitre, I congratulate you, it 
 beats Richard Strauss all hollow. Who and 
 what was your Childe Roland? Was he any 
 relative of Byron s Childe Harold? No, yes, 
 no? I suppose the first theme represented the 
 galumping of his horse, and that funny tri 
 angular fugue meant the horse was lame in one 
 leg and going it on three. Adieu! again con 
 gratulations. I m in a hurry." He fled. Tri 
 angular fugue! Why, that typified the cross- 
 
 2 59 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 roads before which Childe Roland hesitates. 
 How I detested that unimaginative critic ! I 
 was indeed disheartened. Then I was saluted 
 by a musical lady: 
 
 "It was grand, perfectly grand, but why did 
 you introduce a funeral march in the middle? 
 You know in the poem Childe Roland is not 
 killed till the end." I thanked her with a wry 
 face. The funeral march she alluded to was 
 not a march but the Quagmire theme, that 
 quagmire from which queer faces threateningly 
 mock at the brave knight. Hopeless, thought 
 I, musical people have no imagination. In the 
 morning newspapers I was treated rather 
 roughly. I was accused of cribbing my open 
 ing theme from the overture to The Flying 
 Dutchman, and giving it a rhythmic twist for 
 my own ends as if I hadn t conceived it on 
 the spur of an inspired minute! I was also 
 told that I couldn t write a fugue, that my or 
 chestration was overladen, my part-writing 
 crooked, while the work as a whole was deficient 
 in symmetry, development, repose, above all 
 in coherence. This last was too much. If 
 Browning s poem was pictured in my music, 
 why, then, Browning was to be blamed for the 
 incoherence, not I. I had faithfully followed 
 his poetic narrative. Years later, when I be 
 came a member of the critical guild, I saw in a 
 clearer light the reasons for those divagations. 
 You can t fool all the critics all the time. 
 
 Months afterward I read in his book, The 
 260 
 
MY "CHILDE ROLAND" 
 
 Beautiful in Music, by Edward Hanslick, that 
 " Definite feelings and emotions are unsus 
 ceptible of being embodied in music." So I 
 had been on a false track. Charles Lamb and 
 Hanslick had reached the same conclusion by 
 diverse roads. I realized that my symphonic 
 poem Childe Roland told nothing to its hearers 
 of Browning s poem; that my own subjective 
 and overthrown imaginings were not worth a 
 rush; that as music the composition had ob 
 jective existence, though not as a poetical pic 
 ture, which must be judged on its musical merits 
 alone; its themes, development, formal excel 
 lence, and not because of its arbitrary fidelity 
 to a literary programme. When I set about 
 analyzing, I discovered what poor stuff I had 
 produced; how my fancy had tricked me into 
 believing that my half dozen heavily instru 
 mented themes, with their restless migrations 
 into many tonalities were " souls and tales mar 
 vellously mirrored," when they were nothing 
 of the kind. 
 
 In reality my ignorance of form, and lack of 
 contrapunted knowledge, had made me label 
 the work a " symphonic poem" an elastic, 
 high-sounding, pompous, and empty tithe. In 
 a spirit of revenge on my fatuity I rearranged 
 the score for small orchestra and it is now played 
 in the circus under the better understood name 
 of The Patrol of the Night-Stick, and the critical 
 press has particularly praised the graphic power 
 of the night-stick motive and the verisimilitude 
 261 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 of the quick " get-away" of the burglars in the 
 elaborate coda. Alas ! poor Childe Roland. 
 
 If our young composers would study Hans- 
 lick s book much good might accrue. It is all 
 very well to give your composition a grandiose 
 title, but do not expect that your audience will 
 understand your idea. We may be thinking of 
 something quite different, according to our re 
 spective temperaments. I may enjoy the formal 
 musical side; my neighbor, for all I know, will, 
 in imagination, have buried his rich, irritable 
 old aunt; therefore your paean of gladness, with 
 its clamor of brazen trumpets, means for him 
 the triumphant ride home from the cemetery 
 and the anticipated joys of the post-mortuary 
 baked meats and the subsequent jag. You 
 never can tell. 
 
 262 
 
"OSCAR" AND DVORAK 
 
 WELL I remember the day when Oscar Ham- 
 merstein first entered the office of the Musical 
 Courier and introduced himself to Editor Marc 
 A. Blumenberg. The year may have been 1888, 
 perhaps 1889. He told Mr. Blumenberg that 
 he was worth a million dollars, which sum he 
 had made from a patent cigar-cutting machine; 
 he also said that he was the editor of a trade 
 journal devoted to the tobacco industry. Blu 
 menberg looked at me, winked, and shook his 
 head. The future impresario, with that ironical 
 smile of his, noticed the incredulous movement 
 and asked: "You think I m meshugah? I ll 
 prove that I m not crazy," and he produced irre 
 fragable evidence that he was neither crazy nor 
 poverty-stricken. He was worth more than a 
 million, and Marc immediately became inter 
 ested. Who wouldn t have? Oscar was then 
 dreaming of opera in English. The failures of 
 American operatic companies had only blazed 
 a trail for him, a trail that would be bound to 
 end in success. He thought that good singing 
 in our native language at moderate prices would 
 solve the problem. Every experimenter starts 
 out with that simple thesis, a dangerous one, as 
 opera has little to do with art, music, good sing 
 ing, or vernacular speech. 
 263 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Opera is an exotic. It is a fashionable func 
 tion or nothing. Oscar was told this by Blu- 
 menberg, but he in turn shook his head. He 
 proposed to be another Columbus and show 
 them the egg trick. He had a hundred prede 
 cessors, and no doubt he will have a thousand 
 successors. But somehow the egg never stands; 
 that is, in English. 
 
 There was much pow-wowing between the 
 two editors that I can t recall. The less I un 
 derstand a libretto the more I enjoy the music. 
 I agree with Harry B. Smith, who has said that 
 when an opera is a success the composer gets 
 the credit; when a failure, the blame is saddled 
 upon the book. As the librettist of Robin Hood 
 and a string of other De Koven and Smith 
 operas, Mr. Smith knows what he is talking 
 about. W. S. Gilbert was in the same rocking 
 boat with Arthur Sullivan. Later, Oscar Ham- 
 merstein was to settle the question by writing 
 both words and music for The Kohinoor, thus 
 patterning after Richard Wagner. But at first 
 he was rather timid. I don t believe he took 
 Blumenberg s advice, or, indeed, the advice 
 of any one, except Campanini s. Opera at the 
 Harlem Opera House followed after an interval. 
 It was not an enlivening affair. When I read 
 in some obituary articles that Hammerstein had 
 engaged Lilli Lehmann, Schumann-Heink, Al- 
 vary, Fischer, and others for his One Hundred 
 and Twenty-fifth-Street season, I also shook my 
 head. I can t remember such an imposing ar- 
 264 
 
"OSCAR" AND DVORAK 
 
 ray as they say in funeral notices at the 
 old Harlem Opera House. Does any one? I 
 remember the burning mountain in Auber s 
 Masaniello, or The Dumb Girl of Portici (what a 
 film it would make, this dumbness), and there 
 were other mediocre revivals, not worthy of 
 critical consideration. 
 
 However, Oscar was not to be discouraged. 
 He proceeded to play the game with energy and 
 recklessness. He was a gambler born. Organ 
 izing opera companies, vaudeville shows, erect 
 ing opera-houses in New York, Philadelphia, 
 London, building theatres, playing with men 
 and millions, what were the achievements of 
 Henry E. Abbey or Colonel Jack Haverly com 
 pared with those of this shrewd, ever- witty, good- 
 tempered Hebrew, who was more prodigal with 
 his own money than other managers were, and 
 are, with the capital of strangers? 
 
 Hammerstein s original operetta was once 
 upon a time as celebrated as his hat. The com 
 position was the result of a wager made by 
 Oscar and Gustave Kerker, the composer of 
 The Belle of New York, Castles in the Air, and 
 a dozen other popular pieces. Kerker is a well- 
 trained musician, and, naturally, he was rather 
 sceptical when Oscar boasted of his musical 
 genius. Whatever gifts Oscar may have pos 
 sessed, modesty was not one of his failings. I 
 have heard him quote with gusto Goethe s dic 
 tum as to the modesty of fools. At a table one 
 afternoon a quarter of a century ago, at the old 
 265 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Gilsey House, in the cafe, sat Oscar, Kerker, 
 Charles Alfred Byrne, dramatic critic and libret 
 tist; Henry Neagle, then dramatic editor of the 
 New York Recorder since defunct and the 
 present writer. Taunted by some one, Oscar 
 became excited and offered to compose an opera, 
 words and music, within forty-eight hours. 
 Gus booked the bet the amount of which I ve 
 forgotten. Rooms were engaged in the Gilsey, 
 an upright piano installed, and, cut off from the 
 world, Hammerstein began tapping out tunes 
 - he was a one-fingered virtuoso scribbling 
 verse, and altogether making himself extremely 
 busy. I forgot to say that Gus Kerker had 
 agreed to orchestrate the masterpiece. 
 
 Then we had lots of fun. Louis Harrison 
 engaged a relay of hand-organs to play under 
 the composer s windows, but Oscar never winced. 
 The hotel authorities had to telephone the police 
 in order to get rid of a string of Italian piano- 
 organists passionately grinding out popular mel 
 odies on Twenty-ninth Street. Plates of sinis 
 ter ham sandwiches were sent to his room, ac 
 companied by a brigade of cocktails. And the 
 tray was always returned empty, with the com 
 poser s thanks. I ve forgotten the other pranks 
 we played, and all to no purpose. Complaints 
 were made at the hotel office that a wild man 
 was howling and thumping the keyboard; again, 
 uselessly, for, barricaded, the composer refused 
 to give up the fort. Exhausted, but smiling, 
 Oscar at the end of the allotted time invited the 
 266 
 
"OSCAR" AND DVORAK 
 
 jury on awards to listen to his music. It proved 
 a tuneful hodge-podge, also proved the com 
 poser s retentive memory. Every operetta com 
 poser was represented. The book was a joy. 
 It would have pleased little Daisy Ashford. 
 (Why doesn t some humor-loving musician set 
 The Visiters to music?) Kerker threw up the 
 sponge. He had to pay the bet. The curious 
 side of the affair is that the operetta was actually 
 produced at the New York Theatre a few months 
 later, reinforced by extra numbers, considerably 
 "edited," and it met with some success. To be 
 sure, the composer was also the owner and man 
 ager of the three theatres clustered under one 
 roof. That first night of The Kohinoor was not 
 only notorious, it was side-splitting. The au 
 dience, of the true Tenderloin variety, laughed 
 themselves blue in the face. I can only recall 
 that the opening chorus consumed a third of 
 the first act. Oscar knew the art of camouflage 
 years before the word was imported. Two comic- 
 stage Jews alternately sang, "Good morning, 
 Mr. Morgenstern; good morning, Mr. Isaac- 
 stein," while the orchestra shifted the harmonies 
 to avoid monotony. I fancy that was a device 
 of Kerker s. Oscar "composed" a second oper 
 etta, but it never achieved the popularity of 
 The Kohinoor. 
 
 During a certain period the Hammerstein hat 
 
 was without duplicate, except that worn by 
 
 William M. Chase, the painter. Nevertheless, 
 
 the Hammerstein hat was unique, not alone for 
 
 267 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 the gray matter it covered, but because of its 
 atmospheric quality. It was a temperamental 
 barometer. When the glass had set fair the 
 tilt of the hat was unmistakable. If storm 
 clouds had gathered on the vocal horizon the 
 hat registered the mood and righted itself like 
 a buoy in agitated waters. Its brim settled 
 over the eyes of its owner; his people flurried 
 into anonymous corners. Or else the hat was 
 pushed off his forehead: unbuttoned then his 
 soul. You might dare to approach and beg for 
 seats. A weather gauge was Oscar s hat. Ask 
 his one-time famulus, W. J. Guard. He knew. 
 Or Mary Garden. Oscar had hurled his hat 
 at her head in the long ago. What a brim it 
 had, this hat. Oh! the breadth and flatness 
 thereof. How glossy its nap, in height how im 
 posing. To have described Hammers tein with 
 out his hat would have been as disastrous as to 
 give the Ring without Wotan. Shorn of it the 
 owner would have been like Alberich sans Tarn- 
 helm. As an Irishman would have said: His 
 hat was his heel of Achilles. Oscar sported it 
 while sleeping. Inside was stencilled the wisdom 
 of Candide: "II faut cultiver notre Jardin." 
 (Mary, of course.) Many painters yearned to 
 portray that hat in Oscar s dome of action. 
 The impressionists would have painted it in 
 complementary tones; the late William M. Chase 
 would have transformed it into a shiny still-life. 
 George Luks would have made it a jest for 
 Hades; Arthur B. Davies would have changed 
 268 
 
"OSCAR" AND DVORAK 
 
 it into a symbol the old Hebraic chant, Kol 
 Nidre, might have been heard echoing around 
 its curved surfaces, as echoes the Banshee on a 
 funereal night in dear old Tipperary. It was a 
 hat cosmopolitan, alert, joyous, both reticent 
 and expensive. It caused a lot of people sleep 
 less nights, did this sawed-off stovepipe with its 
 operatic airs. Why did Oscar Hammers tein 
 wear it? For the same reason that a miller 
 wears his hat, and not for tribal or political 
 reasons. Requiescat in Oscarino ! Pardon my 
 Latin. 
 
 But Oscar musical? Oscar a man of fine mu 
 sical tastes or intelligence? Basta! He had 
 the native wit to select as General for his oper 
 atic army a skilled conductor and a musician of 
 judgment and vision. That is the reason New 
 York had such a wide and novel repertory of 
 fered to it at the Manhattan Opera House. 
 When Signor Cleofonte Campanini left Hammer- 
 stein his musical fortunes began to wane. But 
 as a dynamic driving force I cannot name his 
 equal, except Jack Haverly, or Barnum. 
 
 When I was on the professional staff of the 
 National Conservatory the only musical in 
 stitution in this country that deserved the ap 
 pellation I was intrusted by the President, 
 Jeannette M. Thurber, with the care on his 
 arrival of Dr. Antonin Dvorak, Bohemian com 
 poser and musical director of the Conservatory. 
 For the "man in the street" his name means his 
 269 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 Humoresque as played by the inimitable Fritz 
 Kreisler, or wheezed out by some unmusical 
 instrument of torture; canned music; in the con 
 secrated phrase of Arthur Whiting, " musical 
 waxworks." But Dvorak also composed The 
 New World symphony, and other trifles; these, 
 however, do not trouble or soothe the digestion 
 of table d hotes. With "Old Borax," as Parker 
 the composer affectionately called Dvorak, in 
 tow I assured Mrs. Thurber that he would be 
 safe in my hands, and then I proceeded to show 
 him certain sections of our old town, chiefly the 
 near east side. As he was a fervent Roman 
 Catholic I found a Bohemian church for him; 
 he invariably began his day by attending the 
 first mass. Jauntily I invited him to taste the 
 treacherous national drink called whisky cock 
 tail. He nodded with that head which looked 
 like an angry bulldog bearded. At first he 
 scared me with his fierce Slavonic eyes, yet he 
 was as mild-mannered a musical pirate as ever 
 scuttled a pupil s counterpoint. I always 
 thought of him as a boned-pirate. But I made 
 a mistake in believing that American strong 
 waters would upset his nerves. We began our 
 rounds at Goerwitz s, then, as now, Scheffel 
 Hall, which stood across the street from the 
 National Conservatory. Later we went down 
 to Gus Liichow s; for a musician not to be seen 
 at Liichow s argued that he was unknown in 
 the social world of tone. We traversed the 
 great thirst belt of the neighborhood. At each 
 270 
 
"OSCAR" AND DVORAK 
 
 stopping-place Doc Borax absorbed a cocktail 
 or two. He seemed to take to them as a pro 
 hibitionist takes to personal abuse. 
 
 Now, alcohol I abhor. Therefore I stuck to 
 my usual three-voiced invention of hops, malt, 
 and water. We conversed in German, for he 
 knew no English, and I rejoiced at meeting a 
 man whose Teutonic accent, above all whose 
 grammar, was worse than mine. Yet we got 
 along swimmingly an appropriate enough 
 image, as the thirst-weather was wet, though 
 not squally. He told me of his admiration for 
 Brahms and of that composer s admiration for 
 Dvorak. I agreed with Brahms. After he had 
 put away about nineteen cocktails, maybe more, 
 I said, rather thickly: "Master, don t you think 
 it s time we ate something?" He gazed at me 
 through those jungle whiskers, which met his 
 tumbled hair half way. He grunted: "Eat! I 
 no eat. We go to Houston Street. You go, 
 hein! We drink the slivavitch. It makes 
 warm after beer." I didn t go that evening to 
 the East Houston Street cafe with Dr. Antonin 
 Dvorak. I never went there with him, for I 
 not only feared the slivavitch, but also that 
 deadly Humoresque played by a fake gypsy 
 fiddler, attired in a red coat and wearing an in 
 effable grin. Such a man as Old Borax was as 
 dangerous to a moderate drinker as a false 
 beacon to a shipwrecked sailor. His head was 
 like iron. He could drink as much spirits as I 
 could beer, and never turn a hair. I tell this 
 271 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 anecdote, not for a moral purpose, but as one 
 of the rapidly vanishing specimens of rum-lore, 
 soon to become legendary. Next year the na 
 tion will be put in cotton-wool and its feeble 
 will coddled by noble precepts and winning 
 words from mouths smoking with fiery wisdom. 
 And yet it was a better time when Hammer- 
 stein smoked or Dvorak drank than the dusty 
 prospect ahead for baffled thirsts. 
 
 272 
 
ENRICO CARUSO 
 
 ENTUCO CARUSO is dead. The enormous dis 
 placement caused by this lamentable happening 
 is not alone confined to the artistic sphere but 
 literally to the entire civilized world. We doubt 
 if there are more than a half dozen public men 
 on the globe to-day whose demise would so stir 
 the universal imagination as has the passing of 
 the incomparable tenor, for it must not be for 
 gotten that the voice of Caruso has been heard, 
 still is, and always will be listened to, from the 
 equator to both poles, thanks to his vocal records, 
 meagre, mechanical things, if you will, yet at 
 least the simulacrum of his golden organ. It is 
 a curious commentary on Theophile Gautiers 
 famous poetic dictum that empires perish but 
 art endures; that many of the great names con 
 temporary with Caruso s will surely be forgotten, 
 but the memory of his achievements not. Man 
 kind always recalls with satisfaction the artists 
 who have given pleasure to the senses. Kings 
 are embalmed in deathless verse or live on the 
 canvas of poet and painter. Yet where to-day 
 are the monarchs who patronized Shakespeare, 
 or Velasquez, or Moliere? Their very titles 
 would be forgotten were it not for art. 
 
 But actor and singer have not the luck of 
 creative artists; they do but interpret, there- 
 
 273 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 fore, with their disappearance from the painted 
 scene, for the majority there is naught but ob 
 livion. The happy few who seem as of yesterday 
 are, in the musical world: Patti, Rubinstein, 
 Liszt, Rubini, Chopin as pianist Paganini, 
 Malibran, and Lilli Lehmann. Great exemplars. 
 To this brief list is now added Caruso. And he 
 has one tremendous advantage over his cele 
 brated predecessors his voice is a living reality, 
 after a fashion. That same voice has given 
 profound satisfaction in hundreds of thousands 
 of homes scattered over the world; that voice 
 cheered the boys in the trenches during the 
 World War. After all, it is a sort of immor 
 tality, this record, about as vital as we may hope 
 for in a universe of changeless change. 
 
 Enrico Caruso is dead. There have been and 
 will be other tenors, yet for this generation his 
 memory is something sacred and apart. It is 
 doubtful if the Metropolitan Opera House will 
 again echo such golden music as made by his 
 throat that is, doubtful in our time. When 
 he first came here, not two decades ago, there 
 was a rich fruitiness to his tones that evoked 
 such disparate images as the sound of a French 
 horn and a golden autumnal sunset. Always 
 the word golden comes to the lips. Golden, 
 with a thrilling human fibre. Not the finished 
 vocal artist that he developed into, nevertheless 
 there was something indescribably fresh, lumi 
 nous and youthful in the singing of the early 
 Caruso. I had heard him in London before he 
 274 
 
ENRICO CARUSO 
 
 sang here, which, alas ! was to be his last home. 
 Veteran as I was I could hardly trust my ears 
 when he poured forth a golden stream of music, 
 and with effortless art. It needed no critical 
 clairvoyancy to predict that a star of the first 
 magnitude had arisen in the firmament of art. 
 That was in 1902, and since then this star grew 
 in lustre and beauty till the day of his death. 
 Caruso had not even then achieved his grand 
 artistic climax. He was ever a prodigious 
 student. 
 
 There will not be any critical dispute as to 
 Caruso s place in the history of his art. Even 
 in the brief span of life accorded the present 
 writer Caruso looms formidably. Originally a 
 lyric, he ended as a heroic tenor. His vocal 
 range was extraordinary. In his repertory he 
 demonstrated his catholicity. From Meyer 
 beer s Les Huguenots to Flotow s Marta, from 
 Rigoletto to Pagliacci, there are few lyric works 
 that he missed. La Forza del Destino was re 
 vived for him by Mr. Gatti-Casazza, and he 
 could squander his extraordinary art on such a 
 trifle as Mascagni s Lodoletta. But to all his 
 undertakings he brought a refreshing sincerity 
 and tonal beauty. It is not to be denied that 
 he was happier in Italian than French music; 
 his Rhadames outshone his Faust. Neverthe 
 less, he overcame the seemingly insuperable 
 difficulties of a foreign style and diction, and his 
 John of Leyden in Le Prophete and Eleazer in 
 La Juive rank among his greatest achievements, 
 
 275 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 not to mention his Samson. There was the 
 note of the grand manner in the assumption of 
 John and incomparable pathos in the delineation 
 of Halevy s persecuted and vengeful old Hebrew. 
 As an actor he grew amazingly the last decade 
 of his artistic career. Compare his light- 
 hearted, frivolous Duke in Rigoletto with the 
 venerable Jew in La Juive. Then we realize 
 how far intense study intelligently directed may 
 carry a singer. It has often been a cause of 
 critical wonderment why Caruso never sang the 
 music of Richard Wagner. What a Lohengrin 
 he would have been, what a Parsifal, yes, even 
 a Tristan ! He knew every note of these roles. 
 Once for my delectation he hummed the plain 
 tive measures of the dying Tristan. Tears 
 came to my eyes, so penetratingly sweet was 
 his tone, so pathetic his phrasing. 
 
 I have heard tenors from Brignoli, so fat that 
 he waddled, to the Spaniard Gayarre; from Italo 
 Campanini to Masini, Nicolini and the sten 
 torian Tamagno; no one of these boasted the 
 luscious voice of Caruso. Some have out 
 pointed him in finesse, Bonci; Tamagno out- 
 roared him; Jean de Reszke had more personal 
 charm and artistic subtlety; there have been 
 fierier Turridus and more sympathetic Don 
 Joses, but Caruso s natural voice was paved 
 with lyric magic, it was positively torrential in 
 its golden mellowness. When in his prime, full 
 of verve and unaffected gaiety think of 
 L Elisir d Amore and Marta he was unap- 
 276 
 
ENRICO CARUSO 
 
 proachable. There were many of us who would 
 rather have been Caruso than ruler of these 
 United States. 
 
 The social man in him was irresistible. Gen 
 erous, overflowing with the joy of life, his sense 
 of humor found one outlet in his caricatures 
 his pencil was clever as well as witty and in 
 the company of his friends. He was a good 
 friend. No need here to speak of his ready re 
 sponse to those in trouble. He was exploited, 
 of course, yet his belief in humanity was never 
 shaken. An Italian patriot, he was also a lover 
 of his adopted land. He was always a boy. 
 He really never grew up. The eternal boy in 
 him, mischievous, mirthful, coupled with his gift 
 of mimicry, endeared him to every one. He 
 fairly bubbled with kindly humor, and not the 
 least among his many admirable traits was his 
 conscientious attitude toward his audiences. 
 Not to disappoint an expectant audience often 
 cost him much personal suffering. He has sung 
 when he should have been in bed with doctors 
 and nurses. In Brooklyn he persisted in sing 
 ing until a ruptured vein filled his throat with 
 blood. The same desire, and not a craving for 
 more fame or money, impelled him to make 
 long and fatiguing trips in order that remote 
 audiences might enjoy his matchless voice. 
 
 Like the majority of his countrymen, he was 
 frugal in his habits, eating little and drinking 
 less. He abused the use of tobacco, and be 
 cause of his nervousness cigarettes were a seda- 
 277 
 
VARIATIONS 
 
 live. However, they did not fatally hurt his 
 throat as has been asserted. And considering 
 his exalted position and his innumerable temp 
 tations, Caruso was hardly a rake. Scandal 
 clustered about his name. Cruel persecution 
 pursued him, but at the close of his life he was 
 happily married and the father of a passionately 
 loved daughter. A democratic man, he at no 
 time bore himself with the arrogant airs of the 
 traditional tenor. Beloved by his associates, 
 especially beloved by the chorus, he was acces 
 sible to all and sundry. Truly a refreshing con 
 trast to the proverbially haughty signore with a 
 high C in his chest. 
 
 Born of humble parentage, Caruso suffered a 
 severe apprenticeship to his art. In Naples we 
 have met people who remember him singing in 
 the streets, around various cafes, in company 
 with a strummer on the guitar. Pasquale 
 Amato, a fellow-townsman as well as a colleague 
 at the Metropolitan Opera House, has told me 
 of the far-away days when Enrico sang in two 
 operas every Sunday at the Teatro Mercadante, 
 at Naples, and of the summers at Salerno when, 
 during entr actes he would drop a string from 
 his dressing-room window and draw up a fond 
 prize sardine and cream cheese sandwiches. 
 He was thin then and his appetite was that of 
 a growing youth. The local manager knew that 
 the only way to be sure of him for the two 
 Sunday performances was to lock him in the 
 theatre till the last curtain had been rung down. 
 278 
 
ENRICO CARUSO 
 
 He confessed to me that once as a boy his 
 mother had chastised him not gently because 
 he let the household bread bake till it burned. 
 But enough. Books might be crowded with 
 interesting stories of the great man. A good 
 comrade, a loving husband and father, the giant 
 tenor of his generation, Enrico Caruso is dead. 
 But to his admirers he remains the dearest 
 memory hi this drab, prosaic age. 
 
 279