Without Dogma | Page 2

of circumstances, the fine product of a highly complex
culture and civilization. He regards himself as a nineteenth-century
Hamlet, and for him not merely the times, but his race and all mankind,
are out of joint. He is not especially Polish save by birth; he is as little
at home in Paris or at Rome as in Warsaw. Set him down in any quarter
of the globe and he would be equally out of place. He folds the mantle
of his pessimism about him. Life has interested him purely as a
spectacle, in which he plays no part save a purely passive one. His
relation to life is that of the Greek chorus, passing across the stage,
crying "Woe, woe!"
Life has interested, entertained, and sometimes wearied him. He muses,
philosophizes, utters the most profound observations upon life, art, and
the mystery of things. He puts mankind and himself upon the

dissecting-table.
Here is a nature so sensitive that it photographs every impression, an
artistic temperament, a highly endowed organism; yet it produces
nothing. The secret of this unproductiveness lies perhaps in a certain
tendency to analyze and philosophize away every strong emotion that
should lead to action. Here is a man in possession of two distinct
selves,--the one emotional, active; the other eternally occupied in
self-contemplation, judgment, and criticism. The one paralyzes the
other. He defines himself as "a genius without a portfolio," just as there
are certain ministers-of-state without portfolios.
In such a character many of us will find just enough of ourselves to
make its weaknesses distasteful to us. We resent, just because we
recognize the truth of the picture. Leon Ploszowski belongs
unmistakably to our own times. His doubts and his dilettanteism are our
own. His fine aesthetic sense, his pessimism, his self-probings, his
weariness, his overstrung nerves, his whole philosophy of
negation,--these are qualities belonging to this century, the outcome of
our own age and culture.
If this were all the book offers us one might well wonder why it was
written. But its real interest centres in the moment when the cultivated
pessimist "without dogma" discovers that the strongest and most
genuine emotion of his life is its love for another man's wife. It is an
old theme; certainly two thirds of our modern French novels deal with
it; we know exactly how the conventional, respectable British novel
would handle it. But here is a treatment, bold, original, and
unconventional. The character of the woman stands out in splendid
contrast to the man's. Its simplicity, strength, truth, and faith are the
antidote for his doubt and weakness. Her very weakness becomes her
strength. Her dogmatism saves him.
The background of the book, its lesser incidents, are thoroughly artistic,
its ending masterly in its brevity and pathos; here again is the
distinguishing mark of genius, the power of condensation. The man
who has philosophized and speculated now writes the tragedy of his
life in four words: "Aniela died this morning." This is the culmination
towards which his whole life has been moving; the rest is foregone
conclusion, and matters but little.
One sees throughout the book the strong influence that other minds,

Shakespeare notably, have produced upon this mind; here its attitude is
never merely pessimistic. It does not criticise them, it has absorbed
them.
One last word concerning this novel. It does not seek to formulate, or to
preach directly. Its chief value and the keynote to its motive lie in the
words that Sienkiewicz at the beginning puts into the mouth of his
hero:--
"A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided
they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers,
giving them not only a faithful picture, but likewise human documents
that may be relied upon."
A _human document_--the modern novel is this, when it is anything at
all. If Mr. Crawford's canons of literary art are true, and we believe
they are, they give us a standard by which to judge; he tells us that the
heart in each man and woman means the whole body of innate and
inherited instincts, impulses, and beliefs, which, when quiescent, we
call Self, when roused to emotional activity, we call Heart. It is to this
self, or heart, he observes, that whatever is permanent in the novel must
appeal; and whatever does so must live and find a hearing with
humanity "so long as humanity is human." If this be a test, we cannot
doubt as to what will be the reception of "Without Dogma."
A few words concerning the novelist himself. The facts obtainable are
of the most meagre kind. He was born in 1845, in Lithuania. The
country itself, its natural and strongly religious and political influences,
its melancholy, seem to have left their strong, lasting impression upon
him.