CHANGING IDEALS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1932, Page 18

CHANGING IDEALS

The literary gods of one generation are seldom worshipped by its successor. In our own time we have witnessed a decline in the reputations of most of tho great literary figures of thn "Victorian era—Scott, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens, Tennyson; and some of the lesser lights who shono in that era have been completely extinguished by the indifference of today, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." But, as Mr. E. E. Kcllett points out in his very able study, ''Fashiou in Literature," the process of change in literary taste must not bo regarded as evidence that the taste of the present generation is better than that of its predecessor. "It is plain that we must expect change from generation to generation," states Mr. Kellett. "Each generation is not only later than' its predecessor; it is made up of different people, who start from a different point, pass through different experiences, and view them with different eyes. A thousand causes, not literary, necessitate this advance or retrogression, and a thousand literary causes add their weight. A war, a political or social upheaval, a French revolution or an era of repression, a new mechanical invention and literature responds to it as face answers to face in. the mirror. The change, in. fact, is often, but the natural antagonism of age and youth, which as was observed long before the Passionate Pilgrim sot out on his progress, cannot live together. Probably since Jubal smote his lyre the parents have disliked, the frivolous fugues the children have pursued, and the children have rejected the stodgy stuff that suits the parents.

"There are many people who imagine that it is a mark of superiority to be severe in the rejection of forms or styles that have gone out of fashion. It is certain, that the younger generation, when it pours scorn on tho works that pleased its fathers, imagines that in doing so it is showing how much better it is than the old. The exact contrary is the case. Inability to appreciate a style once regarded as great is simply a proof of ignorance and narrowness of mind. If we say we cannot enduro Pope, Tennyson, or any other of the gods of the past, that simply means that we aro hopelessly limited in our outlook; that we cannot take in more than a very little at once. It is the stupid insular ignorance that says all foreigners are fools. It may be that we have not tho opportunity of learning the foreign language, or tho means to go abroad. In that case the

LIFE AND LITERATURE

ignorance- may bo excusable, but the arrogance is not. It must always be remembered that Pope, having satisfied the Augustan age, must have been a great man unless we are to bo guilty of the inexpiable crime of bringing an indictment against a whole century; that Tennyson, having been tho idol of the Victorians, must have been great, unless we are to claim that the ago of Darwin, Huxley, Browning, Clerk Maxwell, and a thousand other names was an age of imbeciles. That wo do not like him shows that wo do not understand tho ago in which he lived.

It may bo that we have not the time to put ourselves by hard study into the position to understand that age. So far, we are pardonable, but wo are not pardonable if we make boast of our incapacity. The first.thing we have to recognise is that our fathers were not stupid; that when they admired they admired with reason. Nothing is more ridiculous than the swaggering vanity which goes about saying, 'Doubtless, we are- the people, and wisdqm was born with us.'

"If amid all the uncertainties and vacillations of criticism, there be anything indubitable, it is this —that catholicity of taste is superior to fastidious narrowness; that the man who can find pleasure in tho works of a .dozen periods and many languages is so far of a higher rank than the man who has to confine himself to one. Nothing is more certain amid uncertainty than that the inability to appreciate iv duo fashion and measure what others appreciate—iv fact, to enter sympatheticallyinto the minds of our fellows —is a disability, something to be ashamed of, rather than to he boasted about.

"There is a sense in which even the gradual refinomentof taste is sometimes to be carefully watched and checked. If we find that books which are to us obviously crude and bad are yet popular, there is a danger here, also, of arrogant superiority. The right attitude is uot that of. contempt, but that of humble inquiry into the causes of the sympathy between the 'bad' author aud his public. It may be desirable to study whether a writer with this wide appeal can bo altogether bad; whether he has not some quality of humanness which, perhaps, the moro 'highbrow' author might not cultivate with advantage. 'There is one person,' said Talleyrand, 'wiser than Napoleon, and that is all mankind,' and the great world may not be stupid after all.