DOI article:
Crackanthorpe, Hubert: Reticence in literature: some roundabout remarks
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0270
266
Reticence in Literature
effect—a fervid denunciation of express trains, evening news-
papers, Parisian novels, or the first number of The Yellow
Book. Verily, he is a versatile person.
Sometimes, to listen to him you would imagine that pessimism
and regulär meals were incompatible ; that the world is only
ameliorated by those whom it completely satisfies, that good pre-
dominates over evil, that the problem of our destiny had been
solved long ago. You begin to doubt whether any good thing
can come out of this miserable, inadequate age of ours, unless it
be a doctored survival of the vocabulary of a past Century. The
language of the coster and cadger resound in our midst, and,
though Velasquez tried to paint like Whistler, Rudyard Kipling
cannot write like Pope. And a weird word has been invented to
explain the whole business. Decadence, decadence : you are all
decadent nowadays. Ibsen, Degas, and the New English Art
Club ; Zola, Oscar Wilde, and the Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
Mr. Richard Le Gallienne is hoist with his own petard ; even the
British play wright has not escaped the taint. Ah, what a hideous
spectacle. All whirling along towards one common end. And
the elegant voice of the artistic objector floating behind : " Apres
vom le deluge." A wholesale abusing of the tendencies of the age
has ever proved, for the superior mind, an inexhaustible source
of relief. Few things breed such inward comfort as the con-
templation of one's own pessimism—few things produce such
discomfort as the remembrance of our neighbour's optimism.
And yet, pessimists though we may be dubbed, some of us, on
this point at least, how can we compete with the hopelessness
enjoyed by our artistic objector, when the spectacle of his despond-
ency makes us insufferably replete with hope and confidence, so
that while he is loftily bewailing or prettily denouncing the com-
pleteness of our degradation, we continue to delight in the evil of
our
Reticence in Literature
effect—a fervid denunciation of express trains, evening news-
papers, Parisian novels, or the first number of The Yellow
Book. Verily, he is a versatile person.
Sometimes, to listen to him you would imagine that pessimism
and regulär meals were incompatible ; that the world is only
ameliorated by those whom it completely satisfies, that good pre-
dominates over evil, that the problem of our destiny had been
solved long ago. You begin to doubt whether any good thing
can come out of this miserable, inadequate age of ours, unless it
be a doctored survival of the vocabulary of a past Century. The
language of the coster and cadger resound in our midst, and,
though Velasquez tried to paint like Whistler, Rudyard Kipling
cannot write like Pope. And a weird word has been invented to
explain the whole business. Decadence, decadence : you are all
decadent nowadays. Ibsen, Degas, and the New English Art
Club ; Zola, Oscar Wilde, and the Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
Mr. Richard Le Gallienne is hoist with his own petard ; even the
British play wright has not escaped the taint. Ah, what a hideous
spectacle. All whirling along towards one common end. And
the elegant voice of the artistic objector floating behind : " Apres
vom le deluge." A wholesale abusing of the tendencies of the age
has ever proved, for the superior mind, an inexhaustible source
of relief. Few things breed such inward comfort as the con-
templation of one's own pessimism—few things produce such
discomfort as the remembrance of our neighbour's optimism.
And yet, pessimists though we may be dubbed, some of us, on
this point at least, how can we compete with the hopelessness
enjoyed by our artistic objector, when the spectacle of his despond-
ency makes us insufferably replete with hope and confidence, so
that while he is loftily bewailing or prettily denouncing the com-
pleteness of our degradation, we continue to delight in the evil of
our