Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 6))

shut from his observation those delicate surprises of effect which in nature,
whether animate or inanimate, are so full of beauty. Indeed, it is in them
that the very spirit of the subject is often expressed. The negative records
these and a good deal else beside that is unessential, and in the endeavor
to obliterate the latter, the worker in the gum will often generalize with
too little discrimination—in a word, too brutally.
In these prints of Coburn'sthere is delicacy of expression as well as
robustness, yet some of them betray either a lack of observation or imper-
fect skill in rendering what has been observed—defects which time and study
will remove. For the vision of an artist and more than usual command of
craftsmanship are apparent in all of them, and underlying these qualities
an evident reverence for beauty.
Charles H. Caffin.

ON THE LACK OF CULTURE.
WHEN I first came to Boston, in the vain and vagrom days of my
youth, about seventeen years ago, I was very much interested in
Ibsen, even to the extent of being actually engaged in the preparations
for the performance of several of his plays. The performances never took
place, as nobody seemed to feel the moral impetus to subscribe to them.
The author of “Nora” and " The Pillars of Society,” although discussed
at the time all over Europe, was still an unknown entity to the literary
circles of the Hub.
One day, during a conversation with a gentleman who had the reputation
of being a literary authority, I expressed the opinion that I considered the
Scandinavian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen, the greatest dramatist of modern
times. He replied, " You mean Björnson?,, " No,” I said; " I mean
Ibsen." He did not know him; he had never heard of him. I was simply
dumbfounded at such ignorance. Surely, it could be expected that a man
of literary taste, writing, as he was, on literary topics for one of the leading
Boston papers, would have at least a superficial knowledge of contemporary
literature. If he had pleaded ignorance on the new literary movement in
Japan, or on Turkish or Hungarian belles-lettres, it would have been
pardonable, but to ignore entirely the existence of such a personality as
Ibsen — incredible! I was young and inexperienced at the time. I have
learnt since then that this lack of culture, this indifference to contemporary
achievements is with us a natural condition; that we are always twenty years
behind the rest of the world in all artistic and literary matters. Böcklin and
Segantini, for instance, were absolutely unknown to us during their lifetime.
And who in the profession knows to-day of Max Klinger, the great German
etcher; of the Belgian painter, Fernand Khnopff, who tries to solve the
problem of the unconscious in line and color; of Repin, the Zola of Russian
painting; or Antokolsky, the sculptor of “Spinoza” and " Peter the Great”?
Each of these men is indisputably a powerful artistic personality; they all had,