Humility and Literature

Extract

Our modern literature has become so self-conscious, analytic, subjective, conventional, and, invariable concomitant of the last, licentious in the true meaning of that word, that it would be an interesting experiment to see if any of the old accomplishment were still possible to it. Owing to our unfortunate acquisition of ‘temperaments,’ ‘view-points’ (loathsome word) and subjective theories of all sorts we have become singularly skilled in distorting language from its proper use as principally to make it the means of telling various kinds of lies which are no more true because they fall into the artistic heresy of subjective sincerity. (And, O Sincerity, what crimes are committed in thy name.)

From a psychological point of view these things are doubtless very interesting; and we ought to be very grateful to most of our modern authors for showing us so very instructively how many things can be used for purposes which their Maker never intended : how the English language can be tortured into a parody of German or Greek, and the fine gold of our verbal heritage transmuted, by a devil’s alchemy, into the base tokens of our common speech. But, in the intervals of our scientific raptures, some of us would like, occasionally, to read a little poetry, and, even more, a little prose. The air is full of neologisms unbeautiful, and twisted syntax inexpressive of thought, and not less opaque of feeling . . . ‘But that large utterance of the early Gods,’ where is it?