THE CULT OF THE FOUL.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1413, 13 April 1912, Page 9

THE CULT OF THE FOUL.

• Frederic Harrison, now in his eightieth year, has a vigorous article 011 Iho Cult of the Foul in the "Nineteenth Centurv."

The watolnvord of the twentieth century is L nrest—Journalism, Politics, Literature, and Art ring with one cry—'AH chanyc here! that it is often change for any. definite gain. It is 'change for the sake of change,' the thirst to get out of our old life, habits, thoughts, and pleasures, to get into new lives, now selves. It runs round England, Europe, Anioric-a, Asia, and the world, like the dancing mania in. the Middle Ages. We are all whirled along, thrust onward by the vast restless crowd, ever calliug out for 'something fresh'—'something up-to-date'—for the last thing out!' 'Omnes eodem eogi--111 nr.'

"The new crto' under which we are now suffering is the Cult of the Foul, or. to put. it in Greek, it may lie clubbed Aischrolatreia—worship or admiration of the Ugly, the Knsty. the Brutal. Poetry, Romance, Drama, Painting, Sculpture, Music, Manners, even .Dress, are now recast to suit popular taste by adopting forms which hitherto have boc-n regarded as 'unpleasing, gross, or .actually "loathsome.

'To be refined is to bo 'goody-goody'; gutter slang is so 'actual'; if a ruffian tramp knifes his pal, it is 'so strong'; and, i£ on the stage his ragged paramour bites off a rival's oar, the halfpenny press screams with delight. Painters are warned against anything 'pretty,' so they dab on bright tints to look liko n linoleum pattern, .ir they go for subjects to a thieves' kitchen. Tho one aim in life, au in Art, is to shock one's grandmother. And when the society woman dances in bare legs, the up-to-date girl can drcsa herself like a stable-lad.

"A debasement so general and so violent must needs have an originating cause; and this will be found in two reasons—first, in the legitimate reaction against mawkish conventions; secondly, in the initiation of powerful examples. Both of these exist m a high degree. ■ "In the latter part of the nineteenth century several men of original genius made their influence felt over Europe—all of them mora or less anarchic souls. About two generations after the death of

Scott and of Goethe in 18.1 i, tlio world of (literature and art •began to be stirred by Ibsen, Tolstoi, Zola, Gorklii, Wagner, Dore, Bjornstjerne, Bjornson, d'Aimunzio. All repudiated conventions and drove their scalpels deep down into the vitals of liunianity. The Scandinavian and Mongol imagination revels in horrors, unnatural crimes, de-seicd women, and depraved ami abnormal degenerates. The Latin races tend moro to obscenity and gore. The. world agrees that all those just named above were men of powerful genius, who have enriched their ago with permanent masterpieces. 'Tho question remains if they have not encouraged weaker imitators to drag the typo of Art down to the world of the crude, the cruel, the morbid, and' the loathsome."