Inquiries and Opinions

Inquiries and Opinions



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Title: Inquiries and Opinions
Author: Brander Matthews
Release Date: September 25, 2005 [EBook #16746]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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INQUIRIES AND OPINIONS

Copyright, 1907, by BRANDER MATTHEWS
_Published September, 1907_

TO MY FRIEND AND FELLOW CRAFTSMAN HENRY ARTHUR
JONES

CONTENTS
PAGE
I Literature in the New Century 1
II The Supreme Leaders 27
III An Apology for Technic 49
IV Old Friends with New Faces 73
V Invention and Imagination 95
VI _Poe and the Detective-story_ 111
VII Mark Twain 137
VIII A Note on Maupassant 167
IX The Modern Novel and the Modern Play 179
X _The Literary Merit of our Latter-day Drama_ 205
XI Ibsen the Playwright 227
XII _The Art of the Stage-manager_ 281

LITERATURE IN THE NEW CENTURY
[This paper was read on September 24th, 1904, in the section of
Belles-lettres of the International Congress of the Arts and Sciences,
held at St. Louis.]
There is no disguising the difficulty of any attempt to survey the whole
field of literature as it is disclosed before us now at the opening of a
new century; and there is no denying the danger of any effort to declare
the outlook in the actual present and the prospect in the immediate
future. How is it possible to project our vision, to foresee whither the
current is bearing us, to anticipate the rocks ahead and the shallows
whereon our bark may be beached?
But one reflection is as obvious as it is helpful. The problems of
literature are not often merely I literary; and, in so far as literature is an
honest attempt to express life,--as it always has been at the moments of
highest achievement,--the problems of literature must have an intimate
relation to the problems which confront us insistently in life. If we turn
from the disputations of the schools and look out on the world, we may
discover forces at work in society which are exerting also a potent
influence upon the future of literature.
Now that the century in which we were born and bred is receding
swiftly into the past, we can perceive in the perspective more clearly
than ever before its larger movements and its main endeavor. We are at
last beginning to be able to estimate the heritage it has left us, and to
see for ourselves what our portion is, what our possessions are, and
what our obligations. While it is for us to make the twentieth century,
no doubt, we need to remember that it was the nineteenth century
which made us; and we do not know ourselves if we fail to understand
the years in which we were molded to the work that lies before us. It is
for us to single out the salient characteristics of the nineteenth century.
It is for us to seize the significance of the striking advance in scientific
method, for example, and of the wide-spread acceptance of the
scientific attitude. It is for us, again, to recognize the meaning of that

extension of the democratic movement, which is the most obvious
characteristic of the past sixscore years. It is for us, once more, to
weigh the importance of the intensifying of national spirit and of the
sharpening of racial pride. And, finally, it is for us to take account also
of the growth of what must be called "cosmopolitanism," that breaking
down of the hostile barriers keeping one people apart from the others,
ignorant of them, and often contemptuous.
Here, then, are four legacies from the nineteenth century to the
twentieth:--first, the scientific spirit; second, the spread of democracy;
third, the assertion of nationality; and, fourth, that stepping across the
confines of language and race, for which we have no more accurate
name than "cosmopolitanism."
I
"The scientific spirit," so an acute American critic defined it recently in
an essay on Carlyle,--who was devoid of it and detested it,--"the
scientific spirit signifies poise between hypothesis and verification,
between statement and proof, between appearance and reality. It is
inspired by the impulse of investigation, tempered with distrust and
edged with curiosity. It is at once avid of certainty and skeptical of
seeming. It is enthusiastically patient, nobly literal, candid, tolerant,
hospitable." This is the statement of a man of letters, who had found in
science