THE MAGAZINE GIRL.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1449, 25 May 1912, Page 9

THE MAGAZINE GIRL.

"This is the literary era of the was doil with tin; brick)dust complexion," says C. L. iloore in the "Dial," in a notable article on "The Magazine Girl." "She stares at us from every news-stand. So self-respccting magazine venturer to i-sue forth without her picture on its cover. Head or bust or full length; walking, golfing, motoring; rampant, couchant, or regardant—.-lie is the heraldic emblem under which the cohorts of periodicals charge to victory. "Eighty or a hundred years ago there was a somewhat similar putting-forth of feminine charm.-- in I lie 'Books of Beauty ' 'Annuals,' and 'Keepsakes' of that period. Elegance was the note then, as prcttinc.-s is now. The duchesses were elegant ill their boudoirs; the heroines of the poets were elegant against their backgrounds of storm or sunshine; the wives of brigands were elegant in their mountain caves; even the bare-legged peasant women tending their flocks, or reaping a ten-acre field with a twelve-inch sickle, were prevailingly elegant. "We confess that, we have a weakness hotli for the older female (one would not. dare to eail her woman) of the 'Annuals,' and the newer Ciirl of the Magazines. Of course, both are dolls, and of the latter it mav Ik: said that, the pa St of her face lias sunken in and circulates in her vein>. It she were stablied with one of her own hatpins she would hardly exude a drop of real blood. But she is pretty; and her vogue testifies to the undying ideality of the race, its craving for beauty and romance—'the desire of the moth for the star.' and so forth. "That is it! I'or thirty years we have been wandering in the dwert of realism. Our novelists have swathed us in sand, and burned us with pitiless light. AVe have starved and been alhirst; wc have panted for the shadow of a great rock or the softening veil of trees or mist. Now and then we have stumbled into an oasis, and we have fortunately been fed with manna from abroad. Oh, the horror of the retrospect!—the gaunt sordid spectacle of life on New England or Pennsylvania farms or on the prairies of tlio West; the descent into the Inferno of New York stums; the ever-recurring visions of middle-claiS life in factory and shop 'and mansion. It ha.s Veil an or»v of the ordinary, a delirium of dullness, an apotheosis of the commonplace

"So we do well to welcome the Magazine Girl, with all tho literary output which sho represent!?. She does not work; she is the creature of tho leisure and opportunity and affluence which most of us covet. And Solomon was certainly not arrayed like her. Give her time and she will develop into a'genuine heroine. Her eyes will deepen with other emotions than des-iro for an automobile ride or a dinner at Sherry's. Her lips, which now discourse the' slang of the studio or of the streets, will utter poetic phrases. She may attain to tho wit of Uosalind, the tenderness of Imogen, tho Bcntl.o austerity of Isabella. Slio is at least on the right way. She sees tho 1 roimsed Land on the edge of the desert. I no llowcry meadows of the Age of Gold, which always opsn to the pu.view of every great literary epoch, aro in sight. He have said that tho new Magazine birl does not work, and wo must explain this apparent blasphemy against current ideas. Lvcry sane hunfaii being wants to exercise his or her muscles and mind— wants to produce something, tho labour of hands or brain, to justify existence. Health: and sanity are only retainable on those terms. But there i's a vast difference between voluntary labour, however extreme—labour dono with pleasure ami delight—and uncongenial work done at the command of a superior or at tho bidding of necessity.

_ Modern industrialism, we should say, is responsible for ■ modem realism in literature. By its dreary uniformity and'monotony it stunts body and soul alike, and makes.its victims "unfit cither to serve as models for great art or to enjoy the art when done. What is it that irresistibly attracts tho soul of mankind to warfare? Is it not its freedom from variety of action, its culminating excitement of battle? War is an intoxication, a play, for which men are willing to loso their lives. Imaginative literature is a less brutal form of intoxication, a less dangerous kind of play. And as anything is praiseworthy which brings back this primal, central conception of literature, we think the Magazine Girl deserves credit.

"If play is the main, purpose of imaginative literature, we are for tho rigour of the gome. Tho world is always loth to believe that there is any distinction between life and literature— that there is an unspanned gap between tho two. Like children, it demands of every story, 'Is this true?' Literature is the profoundest kind of truth; but it is far enough from being fact. Take tho mere mechanical aspect of .the case. Hero you have an oblong volume wherein some hundreds of thousands of black marks on white paper are supposed .to represent the solid earth and the superincumbent sky and the procession of life between them. Xay, this book which can bo read in a few hours pretends to give the life history of some score or two of human beings, from their cradles to their graves.' Obviously we aro a far way from reality—much further off than in painting or scultpure, -which do give some palpabaJe simulacrum of existence. The piece of literature exists only in the idea of the person who creates it, and in the minds of the people who road it.

"There are three main methods by which literary creations may be effected. The first is a method of pure idealism. A richly endowed mind may draw from the cave of his own being the figures and scenes of a phantasmal world.

"The second method is that of realism or naturalism. An author sets himself to study a certain part or section of the life about him. He vivisects, dissects, analyses, aud photographs. He sets his models in a glass case and studies them from every point of view. Ho becomes a prodigy of notes, a marvel of memoranda. Perhaps realism has been best realised by the great idealists—by, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. . ...

: "The third, creative method is-that r.of abstraction. It is really a combination of the other two, neither of them being pushed to excess. An author views the world, as it were, by glimpses and glances. He takes enough from it to fill out his preconceived idea. Ho concentrates and condenses the things and persons of the world, and breathes his own breath into his creations.

"Literature in. America began. with "pure' idealism:!' Poe, : Emerson, Hawthorne, Bryant, Cooper, and nearly all our first great flight of writers, built from the idea—whether innate in their own natures or derived from Europe. Then came the men of fact, the etiidents of contemporary life. They came in their multitude, men and woman, and drove the idealists, thinkers, poets, from the field. We are now far enough from them 'partially to adjudge their product, and it certainly beaTs no comparison with the first vintage of our wits. "Just at present a new sap seems to be rising in our midst. There seems to be the promise of a Spring, nnd that is why we pitch upon the Magazine Girl a's a symbol of hope. She has a touch of poetry and idealism, and is, we hope, the prelude to a rich harvest of the wine of literature."