Inquiries and Opinions | Page 7

the manners and
the ideas of his fatherland! Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a
zero,--less than a zero; outside of nationality, there is no art, no truth,
no life possible."
Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenieff and
Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing
century is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of
literature, while it is the national spirit which supplies the essential
inspiration that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the
'Demi-monde' of Dumas, the 'Pillars of Society' of Ibsen, the 'Magda' of
Sudermann, the 'Grand Galeoto' of Echegaray, the 'Second Mrs.
Tanqueray' of Pinero, the 'Gioconda' of d'Annunzio are all of them cast
in the same dramatic mold; but it is also a fact that the metal of which
each is made was smelted in the native land of its author. Similar as

they are in structure, in their artistic formula, they are radically
dissimilar in their essence, in the motives that move the characters and
in their outlook on life; and this dissimilarity is due not alone to the
individuality of the several authors,--it is to be credited chiefly to the
nationality of each.
Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable to the
arts,--not merely the taking over of raw material, but the more
stimulating absorption of methods and processes and even of artistic
ideals. The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Attic Isocrates; and the
style of the Athenian was imitated by the Roman Cicero, thus helping
to sustain the standard of oratory in every modern language. The
'Matron of Ephesus' of Petronius was the great-grandmother of the
'Yvette' of Maupassant; and the dialogs of Herondas and of Theocritus
serve as models for many a vignette of modern life. The 'Golden Ass'
went before 'Gil Blas' and made a path for him; and 'Gil Blas' pointed
the way for 'Huckleberry Finn.' It is easy to detect the influence of
Richardson on Rousseau, of Rousseau on George Sand, of George Sand
on Turgenieff, of Turgenieff on Mr. Henry James, of Mr. James on M.
Paul Bourget, of M. Bourget on Signor d'Annunzio; and yet there is no
denying that Richardson is radically English, that Turgenieff is thoroly
Russian, and that d'Annunzio is unquestionably Italian.
In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity--but only in so
far as the external form is concerned--discoverable in those
short-stories which are as abundant as they are important in every
modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief studies
from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether they were
written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach or by Daudet,
by Barrie or by Bret Harte. "All can grow the flower now, for all have
got the seed"; but the blossoms are rich with the strength of the soil in
which each of them is rooted.
This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard
against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against
cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our
cosmopolitanism may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our

century may come to be like the age of the Antonines, when a "cloud of
critics, of compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning,"
so Gibbon tells us, and "the decline of genius was soon followed by the
corruption of taste." It is the spirit of nationality which will help to
supply needful idealism. It will allow a man of letters to frequent the
past without becoming archaic and to travel abroad without becoming
exotic, because it will supply him always with a good reason for
remaining a citizen of his own country.
(1904.)

THE SUPREME LEADERS
In the fading annals of French Romanticism it is recorded that at the
first performance of an early play of the elder Dumas at the Odéon, a
band of enthusiasts, as misguided as they were youthful, were so
completely carried away that they formed a ring and danced in derision
around a bust of Racine which adorned that theater, declaring
boisterously that the elder dramatist was disgraced and disestablished:
_'Enfoncé Racine!'_
This puerile exploit took place not fourscore years ago, and already has
this play of Dumas disappeared beneath the wave of oblivion, its very
name being recalled only by special students of the history of the
French stage, while the Comédie-Française continues, year in and year
out, to act the best of Racine's tragedies, now nearly two centuries and
a half since they were first performed.
Again, in the records of the British theater of the eighteenth century, we
find mention of a countryman of John Home, who attended the first
performance of the reverend author's 'Douglas.' The play so worked
upon the feelings of this perfervid