Part 5 (1/2)
Let us follow these things by allbetter But to pretend that Alfred would have ad that St Doh, or that Fra Angelico would have revelled in the posters of Mr Aubrey Beardsley Let us follow thees of our change; in the wildest lories of the sha
MAETERLINCK
The selection of ”Thoughts from Maeterlinck” is a very creditable and also a very useful co and hewing of a consistent writer which is necessary for this kind of work, but upon ether adequate Maeterlinck is a very greatrun this process of reat reat patriot to be drawn and quartered and his head set on one spike in one city and his left leg on another spike in another city
It was the an to work reat men of the world
However careless, however botchy, iven in such a selection as this, it is assuredly far less careless and far less botchy than the version, the parody, the wild es will hear and distant critics be called upon to consider
No one can feel any reasonable doubt that we have heard about Christ and Socrates and Buddha and St Francis a mere chaos of excerpts, a rareatness as clearly as we can deduce Venus from the torso of Venus or Hercules _ex pede Hercule else about the Founder of Christianity, for exaious teacher lived in a rerinations and proclamations consistently called Himself ”the Son of Man,” we should know by that alone that he was a es happened to record nothing else about Socrates except that he owned his title to be the wisest of , they would be able to deduce frolory that was Greece The credit of such randoe Allen have just effected is quite secure It is the pure, pedantic, literal editions, the cootten It is such books as this that have revolutionised the destiny of the world Great things like Christianity or Platonism have never been founded upon consistent editions; all of them have been founded upon scrap-books
The position of Maeterlinck intoo obvious to be easily deter that it is the great glorification of the inside of things at the expense of the outside There is one great evil in modern life for which nobody has found even approximately a tolerable description: I can only invent a word and call it ”res which, as a matter of fact, lie far away from the actual centre of hue of life begins with the ains with ourselves Thus they say that the British Elorious, and at the very word Empire they think at once of Australia and New Zealand, and Canada, and Polar bears, and parrots and kangaroos, and it never occurs to any one of thele in le between the man like Maeterlinck, who sees the inside as the truth, and the man like Zola, who sees the outside as the truth A hundred cases u in love The sincere realist, the man who believes in a certain finality in physical science, says, ”Youas a divine and sacred and incredible vision; that is your sentimental theory about it But what it is, is an anined for certain natural purposes” The man on the other side, the idealist, replies, with quite equal confidence, that this is the very reverse of the truth I put it as it has always struck me; he replies, ”Not at all
Youas an anined for certain natural purposes; that is your philosophical or zoological theory about it What it is, beyond all doubt of any kind, is a divine and sacred and incredible vision” The fact that it is an animal necessity only co abroad, studying its origins and results, constructing an explanation of its existence, more or less natural and conclusive The fact that it is a spiritual triumph comes to the first errand boy who happens to feel it If a lad of seventeen falls in love and is struck dead by a hanso as it is, a spiritual ecstasy; he has never co as itin love is an ani theit, and none of those would ad
Maeterlinck's appearance in Europe means primarily this subjective intensity; by this the materialiss, not so which is ht than realis which is more real than realis This material world on which such vast syste It may be a dream, it may be a joke, it may be a trap or temptation, it may be a charade, itof which we are certain is this human soul This human soul finds itself alone in a terrible world, afraid of the grass It has brought forth poetry and religion in order to explain ain It matters not one atom how often the lulls of materialism and scepticism occur; they are always broken by the reappearance of a fanatic They have come in our time: they have been broken by Maeterlinck
RUSKIN[2]
I do not think anyone could find any fault with the way in which Mr
Collingwood has discharged his task, except, of course, Mr Ruskin hiies in passionate red ink and declared that his dear friend had selected for admiration the very parts of his hich were vile, brainless, and revolting That, however, was merely Ruskin's huwood is that he, like everyone else, fails to appreciate Ruskin as a hureat humourist: half the explosions which are solemnly scolded as ”one-sided”
were si experie Like a woman, he saw the huic, but deliberately exaggerated them by rhetoric One tenth of his paradoxes would have loves of an art yellow He was as fond of nonsense as Mr Max Beerbohs too
He did not ask humanity to dine on pickles
But while his kaleidoscope of fancy and epigraives him some kinshi+p with the present day, he was essentially of an earlier type: he was the last of the prophets With him vanishes the secret of that early Victorian sie to ood and bad, have destroyed it; humility as well as fear, caive our advice lightly and persuasively, to lide away
The contrast was in soree typified in the House of Commons under the last leadershi+p of Mr Gladstone: the old order with its fist on the box, and the new order with its feet on the table Doubtless the wine of that prophecy was too strong even for the strong heads that carried it
It made Ruskin capricious and despotic, Tennyson lonely and whisley often rabid to the ruin of logic and charity One alone of that race of giants, the greatest and lected, was sober after the cup No mission, no frustration could touch with hysteria the huh Ruskin seems to close the roll of the ures e consider hat pathetic eagerness men pay prophetic honours even to those who disclaim the prophetic character Ibsen declares that he only depicts life, that as far as he is concerned there is nothing to be done, and still ar and enthusiastically do nothing I have found traces of a school which avowedly follows Mr Henry James: an idea full of humour I like to think of a croith pikes and torches shouting passages froht and proper for a multitude to declare its readiness to follow a prophet to the end of the world, but if he hiesticulations, that he is only going for a walk in the park, there is not much for the multitude to do But the disciple of Ruskin had plenty to do He eology and botany
He lifted up paving stones and got down into early Florentine cellars, where, by hanging upside down, he could catch a glimpse of a Cimabue unpraisable but by divine silence He rushed fros His limbs eary, his clothes were torn, and in his eyes was that unfathoain until once wood's excellent chapters on the art criticism of Ruskin would be better, in my opinion, if they showed more consciousness of the after revolutions that have reversed, at least in detail, er think that art became valueless when it was first corrupted with anatomical accuracy But if we return to that Raphaelism to which he was so unjust, let us not fall into the old error of intelligent reactionaries, that of ignoring our own debt to revolutions Ruskin could not destroy the market of Raphaeliso back to the Renaissance, but let us reo back free We can picnic now in the ruins of our dungeon and deride our deliverer
But neither in Mr Collingwood's book nor in Ruskin's own delightful ”Praeterita” shall we ever get to the heart of the matter The work of Ruskin and his peers remains incomprehensible by the very completeness of their victory Fallen forever is that vast brick tements but never renew the spell Liberal Unionists howl in its high places, and in its ruins Mr
Lecky builds his nest Its records read with soeneration away from us, we read of a race who believed in the present with the same sort of servile optimism hich the Oriental believes in the past It ainst that roof for twenty years did not improve the temper of the prophet But heinto eternity”