Having carved these twenty-six critical impressions, and having arranged them with various odd intentions in three little galleries, I am to stand for a few moments in the vestibule, exhibiting the artist and chatting about his exhibition with the visitors, the purpose being to lure the curious onward and to satisfy the incurious at the door.
In the present state of criticism, I fancy that most of my visitors will interest themselves in the subjects and not in the treatment, just as, to compare great things with small, the casual visitor at the Metropolitan standing before the portrait of an eminent American falls into a revery on Mr. Rockefeller rather than on John Sargent. But as the object of my appearance here is to remind the public that even the crudest sketches imply the existence of an artist, this is clearly the occasion for the drumming up, if possible, of a little interest in the workshop and in the point of view at which these "woodcuts" were made.
It has been intimated to me that this book shows significant changes in my point of view and in my opinions. Perhaps it does. If so, I trust that some reviewer, hostile to change, will go patiently through the essays, collect the evidence, compare it with the previously accessible evidence, and point out my aberrations and inconsistencies. I have never taken a vow to carry any opinion unaltered to the grave; and if it can be proved to-night that I have learned absolutely nothing since morning, I shall be dismayed.
The first duty of a commentator on current literature, as it appears to me, is to present a fairly full and veracious report of what is going on. He will have his own convictions regarding the permanent value of various parts of the contemporary spectacle; and, inevitably, they will "show through" in his report. But his first duty is not to exploit his own predilections; it is rather to understand the entire "conspiracy" of forces involved in the taste of his day. What is "important" now and never may be so again has a charm for him which he would think it a kind of baseness and disloyalty not to admit and record.
He conceives of literature perhaps as a river, himself as a scout seeking for the main channel of intellectual and emotional activity in his own tract of time, recurring constantly to the point where the full rush of living waters comes in from the past, and eagerly searching for the point where the flood breaks out of the backwater and through the dams, and streams away into the future. He is always sounding and essaying to discover where the water is deepest now. He tries to characterize the most promising navigators, their crafts, their cargoes. When he concerns himself with historical figures, he seizes upon those who, by reason of some vital congruity, are felt by us as "modern" and pertinent to our present occasions.
In the back of his mind is the knowledge that an annual chronicle so composed will outweigh the sum of the diurnal entries; his work will come together in the end, and constitute a picture of his age and its tendencies.
I am talking much of pictures, and, on very high authority, I understand that Mr. Joel E. Spingarn now classes me as a belated convert to the theory of expression for expression's sake. I have now and have always had a lively interest in the arts of expression; and yet I am not conscious of any alteration in my ancient conviction that all human activities have, up their sleeves, an ulterior object and ultimate justification in happier living; and that it is rather specially the "function" of critics to be engaged in an incessant untiring exploration in quest of "the good life."
The important change of which I am conscious is in the intensity of my conviction that no man should state very emphatically what "the good life" is until he has found it. Too much theory about it and too many preconceptions obscure the vision. The best criticism is of a concrete and inductive habit. The wise critic attempts on all possible occasions to keep his theoretical and didactic mouth shut and all his other faculties open, here, there, and everywhere, for all the reports and rumors of positive charm and joy in things and people, as the most indubitable tokens that they are participators in some degree of that "good life" which he is seeking.
A suspense of judgment regarding the complete outlines of the ideal, need involve no abdication of discrimination and judgment. But these elements in the critic's report will, in proportion as the report itself becomes "artistic," be more and more implicit, will be conveyed insensibly along with the characterization of the subject, will be felt by the reader immediately as elements in his own response to the subject.
In my exploration for the "virtues" of men, I have learned that patient search usually discovers some refreshing virtue wherever there has been exhibited any unusual display of energy. As I revisit my three little galleries, I am impressed by the abundance and variety and high interest of the vital powers exhibited there. Taking my "sitters" one by one, I rather think that my main intention has been to feel strongly the unique life in all these men and women from Sherwood Anderson to the Known Soldier, and to communicate the impetus of it, in a sort of blind faith that "where there is life there is hope," and where there is power there is virtue.
The essays in this volume were all printed in "Books," the literary supplement of the Herald Tribune, in 1924 and 1925. The title was suggested by my admiration for the swift cutting art of the original and present illustrator, Mr. Bertrand Zadig, who, under the constant temporal stress which urges a contributor to journalism to do well promptly, has accomplished with the graving tool what I have tried to do with the pen.