The eternal conflict between the radical and conservative finds new and vivid expression in a booklet “The Shifting of Literary Values,” published by Albert Mordell, of Philadelphia. Mr. Mordell can best be described as a literary insurgent, says “Current Literature.”
George Brandes, of Denmark, the greatest living literary critic, writes to the young author : "Of course, you are right. It is no longer necessary to adopt the old ideas expressed in the so-called classic books."
MORALITY AND LITERARY VALUES.
Mr. Mordell undertakes, in his own words, "to establish that changes in morality must affect literary values, that some of the classics idealise views of life now obsolete, that these books are therefore responsible for the existence of some of our moral and intellectual stagnancy, and that a new critical outlook upon them is called for." His essay, he tells us, is not the result of a mere desire to dethrone literary idols, but has been the product of a conviction fortified by years of extensive reading and careful deliberation, that "literature, having been the depository of men's thoughts in the past, must wane in artistic value, after the world has discovered that these ideas were false."
He attacks such exponents of Paganism as Seneca, Plato, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and such exponents of Christianity as Thomas a Kempis, St. Augustine, Bunyan and Pascal, on the ground that "these authors, while often embodying good precepts, also incorporate the most fallacious views of Stoicism and Monasticism." He indicts some of the world's greatest poets — Pindar and Aeschylus, Dante and Tasso, Spenser and Milton, on the ground that "they have corrupted their poetry by too close an adherence to the errors of their religion." But he says he is second to none in his admiration for writers like Aristotle, Thucydides, Plutarch, Lucian, Lucretius, Tacitus, Horace, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Chaucer, Bacon, Spinoza, Cervantes, Moliere, Fielding, Sterne, Voltaire, Diderot and Goethe.
MACAULAY AND PLATO.
Taking up, first of all, the Greek and Roman writers. Mr. Mordell refuses to be overawed even by the great name of Plato. He is inclined to agree with Nietzsche that Plato is “tiresome,” and he repeats Macaulay's dictum : “The more I read Plato, the more I admire his style, and the less I admire his reasonings.” Pindar and Aeschylus Mr. Mordell depreciates as champions of our out-grown ethical and religious systems, and as lacking in the broadness of vision that we find in the Age of Pericles. Aristophanes, too, is dismissed as one who used his gifts to defend reaction and to oppose progress.
Marcus Aurelius fares no better at the hands of this iconoclast. Mr. Mordell asks us to disregard the glamor that has grown up about the Emperor's name and to consider his ideas in their inherent value. Do we really believe, as he did, in philosophical quietism ? Should we accept misfortune and bereavement without protest ? Is it true that the soul can conquer external circumstances ? Is it well that we should regard death as a matter of indifference ? We have a right to admire Marcus Aurelius only if we answer these questions in the affirmative.
MONASTIC VIEWS.
The “Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas a Kempis, is as representative of monastic morality as Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" is of Stoicism. Let us ask ourselves again how far we believe in its teachings. “The book,” Mr. Mordell says, “insists upon our renouncing our will, upon our suppressing our individuality, upon our stifling our abilities. We suffer many of our misfortunes because we cannot will, because we cannot bravely assert our personalities. Yet the criticism of our times sees fit to lavish praises upon a book that encourages us in our weakness in developing our will power.”
“Every one is forced by the opinion of the public and the critics to think highly of the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante, of the 'Imitation of Christ' of a Kempis, and the 'Confessions' of St. Augustine. There is, no doubt, much in these authors that is great in spite of their monasticism, that appeals to our human instincts, but in these works are also idealised some of the most pernicious views that ever ruled the world.”
SHAKESPEARE, MILTON, BUNYAN.
Many of Shakespeare's plays are imbued with the feudal spirit, and "he is really great," Mr. Mordell asserts, "in proportion to its absence.” Puritanism inspired Milton and Bunyan. Both, it may be, were men of genius, yet their writings, according to Mr. Mordell, will not occupy as high a place in the future as they do to-day. Of the "Pilgrim's Progress," Taine wrote in a letter : "It is a nursery tale, a blood-curdling allegory, showing the terrible inner mind of one of those fanatics; groans, invasions of the spirit, the belief in damnation visions of the devil, scruples, etc.”
The central idea of modern literature, Mr. Mordell affirms, is self-development, as opposed to the hitherto central idea of literature which was self-sacrifice. The pioneers of the modern spirit have been such men as Nietzsche, Whitman and Ibsen, but all through the ages the struggle between the two ideas has been going on. The cultured reader, Mr. Mordell says, will see nothing heterodoxical in a taste which prefers Thucydides, Machiavelli, Spinoza and Hume to Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, and St. Augustine. Are not Nietsche, Taine and Pater greater moralists and stylists than Marcus Aurelius Bunyan and a Kempis? Goethe, Ibsen, Balzac and Byron are really greater than Milton, Aeschylus, Spenser, and Tasso. Mr Mordell adds :
ARE THEY STILL TRUE ?
The only question in determining the value of a book is whether it is still true. Does it still give voice to our longings and desires ? Has its value been materially affected by the changes in religion and morality ? Are the consolations that it offers and the social remedies it lays down genuine ? Is the picture of life presented imbued with the spirit of a discerning and intelligent mind ? Are the passions that are bursting forth those we feel and the struggles encountered those we undergo ?
"The truths delineated must be the gleanings of the best elements in Paganism and Christianity, in democracy and aristocracy. Both unbounded individualism and unreasonable self sacrifice must be kept in check ; the taste for beauty must be reconciled with the call to duty ; there must be a harmony between the body and the soul. The books of the past should remain valuable only on condition that they incorporate the moral views entertained by those of our thinkers who are still ahead of our times. One might almost say that the greatness of a past book depends upon how much of the ethics of the future it contains. If the ethical lessons taught by men like Pater, Whitman, Ibsen, Brandes, Nietzche, or Goethe are those that are in advance of the ethics of our own time and will be the ethics of to-morrow, surely those classics of the past that contain these same ethical lessons are the ones that above all deserve fame. Those classics that presented an ethical code that is obsolete and that our age is trying to get rid of, are the ones that should be consigned to obscurity.”
Sunday Times (Sydney, ), 1912, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120673888
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