American Literature - Transition

AMERICAN LITERATURE - TRANSITION change in literary values was, in America, sharp est in poetry. The so-called renaissance in American poetry might better be called a revolution. It was a result of new interests, new ideas acting upon the sensitive minds of the poets, and resulting both in a new technique and in a clamorous insistence that poetry should once again become a literature of importance. The makers of the new poetry in no real sense constituted a school. They included such diverse personalities as Ezra Pound with his cult of intellectualism ; Amy Lowell who drew her first inspiration from France and was as much concerned with criticism as with creation (Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds, 1915 ; Legends, 1921) ; Edgar Lee Masters, a mid-Western lawyer, self-made in style and careless in choice of theme, whose Spoon River Anthol ogy (I 9 i 5) depended upon a bitter realism for its success; Robert Frost, a sensitive humorist who planed down the conventions of poetical rhetoric to the levels of unromantic New England (North of Boston, 1914; New Hampshire, 1923) ; also Edwin Arlington Robinson, who at first poured his shrewd observation of American character into racy, difficult verse, obscure, philosophic and pungent (The Man Against the Sky, 1916; Tristram, 19 2 7) ; and Vachel Lindsay, a balladist and chanter of the Mississippi valley, who took up the native themes of the most American America— the frontier, the negro, revivalism (General Booth Enters Heaven, 1913; The Congo, 1914).

Two bonds only united these adventurers, around whom many others were soon grouped—an intense desire to make poetry once again vital in its expression, and a willingness to extend its province to include every new theme, however unlovely, which stirred the emotional mood. With Amy Lowell were ranked the advocates of free verse ; with Masters those poets who, like Carl Sandburg (Chicago Poems, 1916; Cornliuskers, 1918; Smoke and Steel, 1923), found democracy and all its works, including industrialism, more truly poetical than the old themes. With Frost were less rebellious writers who, like William Rose Benet (Mer chants from Cathay, 1913), Edna St. Vincent Millay (Renascence, ; A Few Figs from Thistles, 1920), Louis Untermeyer (Chal lenge, 1914), sought to put the American mood as they felt it into poetry that was original not so much in form as in its im press of a living spirit.

But in all these poets, when at their best, realistic spirit (al though by no means always realism), a willingness to experiment and a passionate interest in the new developing America were evident. Poetical criticism awoke with them and grew vociferous. Long poems appeared again, and new publications which, like Harriet Monroe's Poetry (1912), were given entirely to verse. Poetry societies were formed and poetry began again to be heard as well as read. Cultivated Americans added poetry to their read ing lists, but their rhythmic sense was blunted by disuse or stiffened by convention, and it was the novelty, not raucousness of free verse which called forth criticism, a fact responsible in part for the subsidence of the most promising movement in American poetry since the New Englanders of the 19th century.

Fiction.—The full effect of the transformations of the early 19th century did not show itself until after the World War. Just before this period Henry James had been writing the last and most complex of his novels (The Golden Bowl, 1904), and while he was to be reckoned as more cosmopolitan than American, his example was indicative of what was to happen in America. The American novel had a good tradition behind it, and in every period there were sound examples where imagination and the reality which must always accompany a novel were happily blended. The chief effect of the awakening of a new artistic consciousness in America and the breaking of the shackles of convention was to be seen in the fine series of novels of contemporary life in which Booth Tarkington (converted from pure romance), Edith Wharton, Joseph Hergesheimer and Willa Cather were beginning a more thorough-going study of the American scene than had been attempted before. This includes Booth Tarkington's Penrod (1914), which though a collection of short stories has continuity, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), Alice Adams (1921) and The Plutocrat (1927); Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of In nocence (1920) ; Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Antonia (1918), A Lost Lady (1923) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (192 7) ; Joseph Hergesheimer's The Three Black Pennys (1917) and Java Head (1919) .

These novels (if we include Henry James's) are more compe tent in their craftsmanship than any of the past half century with the exception of the best of Howells, and are richer emotionally than his. Their kind was to grow in power and variety for another two decades, and in them is to be seen the fruition of that careful workmanship and loving interest in the character types of Ameri can civilization which had been bred in the local-colour short stories of the generation before.

The short story was differently affected by the new currents of American life. It had begun as a filler for the magazines, had risen quickly into literature, and now began to descend toward journalism again. The standardizing of American life was accom panied and accelerated by the vast growth in circulation of the magazine, and a resultant demand for short fiction. To this the short story responded in two ways. First, the craftsmanship which could make an interesting story out of 3,00o words was stereotyped, and soon began to be taught in college courses, so that anyone with a tale to tell could learn to put it in acceptable form. A flood of good stories flowed over the land, which, when reprinted in book form, proved to be not so good. Only occasional master pieces, like Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome 0910, which is really a belated phenomenon of the '9os, stand out from the mass. Sec ondly, the most successful new writers wrote in strict con formity with the needs of journalism. O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), in The Four Million (1906), borrowed the method which Aldrich and Bunner had used in the 19th century, and made stories of a popularity only to be compared with the romantic best sellers that preceded him. His influence was great upon short story journalism, but has small relation to the changes in Ameri can life which were reflected in the contemporary novel.

Parallel Developments.

Theswing from romance toward a harder intellectualism and a more realist study of contemporary life as it was manifested in this transition literature was, indeed, a phase of the general change in the American mind. In journal ism the democratizing and vulgarizing of the newspaper, which had begun some years before, was an effect of better economic conditions for the classes that had hitherto not read at all, and influenced literature only by breeding innumerable writers alert to catch and follow the taste of the broadest American public. But new intellectual tendencies were evident even in the news papers. The humorous column now began, with B.L.T. (Bert Leston Taylor) of the Chicago Tribune and Franklin P. Adams and Don Marquis of New York, to take that edge of harder satire which was to characterize the new age. At about the same time, the illustrated literary magazine, which had been America's chief contribution to periodical literature, began to lose its vitality and give way to the new weeklies for men and women, like The Satur day Evening Post, Time and The Literary Digest, which, with more journalism and less literature, became the staple reading of the American bourgeoisie. Beside the older magazines came into existence new vehicles of thought, some of them, like The New Republic, created to express the intellectual unrest of an American generation quickly outgrowing provincialism, others, like the re vived Nation, organs of new social ideas, still others, like The Yale Review, expressive of a new spirit in the American universities, which were now ready to leave their specialization and take part in a reconstruction of American thinking. On the stage the change was even more marked, but as yet American talent took only a minor part, though it was in these transitional years that New York began to rival London and Paris as a market for dramatic ideas.

The Essay and Criticism.

Theessay, in which American lit erature, with Emerson and Thoreau, had shown great originality, was in the hands of conservatives. The graceful humour of Samuel McChord Crothers (Humanly Speaking, 1912), the caustic criti cism of Agnes Repplier (Counter Currents, 1916), were such as might emanate from highly civilized writers in any age. In criticism there was little revival until after the war, although from this period date the first efforts to supply new grounds for judgment of contemporary writers, the work of Van Wyck Brooks (America's Coming of Age, 1915), Joel Elias Spingarn (The New Criticism, 1911) and Randolph Bourne ( Youth and Life, 1913).

Academic criticism was still concerned almost exclusively with literary history, and was notably uncritical of anything but facts. It ignored American literature, which, from the time of Poe and the great New Englanders until the post-war period, went without serious scrutiny. A few accomplished scholars of humanistic trend, such as W. C. Brownell (American Prose Masters, 1909) and Paul Elmer More (Shelburne Essays, 1904– ), made distin guished contributions in traditional fields, but there was little vital ity in the criticism of contemporary literature. Note should be made of the brilliant criticism of life, half literary, half philo sophical, of George Santayana (Winds of Doctrine, 1913, Char acter and Opinions in the United States, 192o.) A vigorous exception was James Huneker, whose highly coloured observations on native and foreign writing in the New York news papers had the virility and immediate interest which general criti cism lacked (Promenades of an Impressionist, 191o; Ivory, Apes and Peacocks, 1915) .