DOI article:
Beerbohm, Max: A letter to the editor
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0288
284 A Letter to the Editor
of gauging the greatness of its own artists is the merest bauble-tit.
Were it not for the accursed abuse of their function by the great
body of critics, no poet need " live uncrown'd, apart." Many and
irreparable are the wrongs that our critics have done. At length
let them repent with ashes upon their heads. Where they see not
beauty, let them be silent, reverently feeling that it may yet be
there, and train their dull senses in quest of it.
Now is a good time for such penance. There are signs that
our English literature has reached that point, when, like the
literatures of all the nations that have been, it must fall at length
into the hands of the decadents. The qualities that I tried
in my essay to travesty—paradox and marivaudage, lassitude, a
love of horror and all unusual things, a love of argot and archaism
and the mysteries of style—are not all these displayed, some by
one, some by another of les jeunes ^crivains ? Who knows but
that Artifke is in truth at our gates and that soon she may pass
through our streets ? Already the Windows of Grub Street are
crowded with watchful, evil faces. They are ready, the men of
Grub Street, to pelt her, as they have pelted all that came before
her. Let them come down while there is still time, and hang
their houses with colours, and strew the road with flowers. Will
they not, for once, do homage to a new queen ? By the time this
letter appears, it may be too late !
Meanwhile, Sir, I am, your obedient servant,
MAX BEERBOHM.
Oxford, May '94.
of gauging the greatness of its own artists is the merest bauble-tit.
Were it not for the accursed abuse of their function by the great
body of critics, no poet need " live uncrown'd, apart." Many and
irreparable are the wrongs that our critics have done. At length
let them repent with ashes upon their heads. Where they see not
beauty, let them be silent, reverently feeling that it may yet be
there, and train their dull senses in quest of it.
Now is a good time for such penance. There are signs that
our English literature has reached that point, when, like the
literatures of all the nations that have been, it must fall at length
into the hands of the decadents. The qualities that I tried
in my essay to travesty—paradox and marivaudage, lassitude, a
love of horror and all unusual things, a love of argot and archaism
and the mysteries of style—are not all these displayed, some by
one, some by another of les jeunes ^crivains ? Who knows but
that Artifke is in truth at our gates and that soon she may pass
through our streets ? Already the Windows of Grub Street are
crowded with watchful, evil faces. They are ready, the men of
Grub Street, to pelt her, as they have pelted all that came before
her. Let them come down while there is still time, and hang
their houses with colours, and strew the road with flowers. Will
they not, for once, do homage to a new queen ? By the time this
letter appears, it may be too late !
Meanwhile, Sir, I am, your obedient servant,
MAX BEERBOHM.
Oxford, May '94.