without reason. He is obscure and justifies his obscurity; but how many others will write mere confusion and think it sublime? How many dire absurdities will be brought forth, with "Ulysses" as midwife? Mr. Joyce himself is little influenced by his contemporaries, though he is obviously steeped in Church writers, the classics, and French literature. He has read the Russians perhaps more than is good for him. But he is not one of those superficial people who pick up some shallow artifice as the canon of a new form of art; he will be the prey of coteries, but he himself is far above them. I recall an interesting remark of M. Marcel Proust. He says that Hugo was deep in Dion Cassius and Tacitus when he was at his most Romantic, that M. Denis was daily at the Louvre while producing his most individual pictures. I have myself met Gaudier Brzeska prowling furtively about the Elgin marbles. (New art, says M. Proust, is for the public, but classic art is for the artists. The young writer should not neglect his contemporaries, but his chief companions ought to be the classics. "Ulysses is dangerous reading for anyone whose style is unformed. If I had a younger friend who wanted to write and would accept my advice, I would conceal from him the works of Mr. Joyce and set him on Pascal and Voltaire, with Mr. George Moore and Flaubert as light reading. And when he knew the

value of clarity, sobriety, precision-the good manners of literature-I would hand him Mr. Joyce's books with the highest eulogy and little fear of the consequences.1

1 This note was written before " Ulysses was published in book-form. That event has not greatly modified my opinions, except to convince me that "Ulysses' "is the grave-stone, the cromlech, of Naturalisme. I am happy to recognize that the influence of "Ulysses" in England has been microscopic; perhaps that was because everyone concentrated on the last chapter and ignored the remarkable phantasmagoria two chapters earlier.

XIX

THE POET AND HIS AGE

IT may be plausibly advanced that the relation

of a poet to his age should not be self-conscious, that he should neither deliberately reject the actualities, discoveries, the temper of his age, nor should he constitute himself their interpreter. The former was the error of the Romantic à outrance, the latter the error of the Futuristi and other schools and individuals now forgotten or obscure. But the Romantic attitude, even in excess, is more tolerable and less harmful because the material of poetry remains much the same in all ages and because it is almost impossible for any man to remain quite untouched by the fresh ideas current in his time. The poet, then, does not constitute himself the "interpreter of his age"; he will draw his themes and perhaps his form from remoter times, but since he cannot escape, and ought not to wish to escape, the "spirit of his time," his work will be an expression of that spirit, according to his powers of intelligent comprehension and digestion.

He will not to-day set out to versify as much as he can understand of Einstein, he will not compose!

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poems of Relativity," but the mere fact that he possesses this new knowledge will make him different from predecessors who had it not, and to that extent, but no more, will he "interpret his age."

The present age is one of ferment and incoherence, not a depressing and terrifying spectacle as some imagine, but rather a heartening symptom that we are reacting against the spiritual enemies of our race-stagnation and decay-and that we are attempting to assimilate many new ideas and to bring them into order and harmony. But that the age is incoherent (perhaps all ages seem incoherent to those who live in them and need the perspective of time for their hidden order to appear luminously) is no reason why art generally, or that branch of art which we call poetry, should be incoherent. A little of the poetry written in English, a good deal of French poetry, and (if I am not misinformed) still more of German poetry, are now distinctly incoherent. On the other hand, a large proportion of recent poetry, particularly English, is stagnant, a repetition in a degraded form of something that has been done better before. The reader is in both cases disappointed; he feels that there is plenty of energy and intelligence and talent in the poetry I have called "incoherent,"

but it fails to become art because it lacks ordonnance; while he feels that the order of the poetry I have called stagnant is arbitrary, artificial, and unintelligent. The poetry which this hypothetical reader is seeking, which he is convinced can be written and will be written, has not yet emerged. Perhaps this is due largely to the erroneous conceptions of the art cherished by poets, to the fact that they have not clearly determined what is to be done, or, having determined, have arrived at a fallacious conclusion. The present time is undoubtedly rich in varied poetic talents, but the possessors of those talents seem unable to use them to the best advantage. They seem unable to put into their poetry all the fine things that are in their minds, so that it is far more interesting to listen to the conversation of modern poets (tête-à-tête, not in groups) than to read their poetry. Other observers must have been equally surprised that men so intelligent, so thoughtful, so sensitive, so variously informed should produce in poetry work which is so insignificant, abortive, and timid. It is perhaps overoptimistic to think so, but I believe that (Shakespeare and Donne apart) we have nearly as many able and intelligent men writing poetry now as in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Our con

1 This is certainly a preposterous statement, but I leave it as evidence, not of intelligence, but of good-will.