a right which extended even to the development of a personal idiom. Mallarmé's expert mal-writing reached a rare flowering—in such a hothouse product, for instance, as "heureuses deux tétines." And the peculiar glory of these pursuits is that the artist attains thereby "au-dessus d'autre bien, l'élément de félicités, une doctrine en même temps qu'une contrée."
Waldo Frank's idiom is no less personal. But instead of Mallarmé's special-case fauns and nymphs with their icy emotions, Mr Frank gives us the eager, pulsing universe noted above. Still, it cannot be denied that Waldo Frank's idealism emphasizes a somewhat different aspect. If Mallarmé was striving simply for beautiful possibilities, for intriguing enormities, for likely distortions which would appeal to the connoisseur acquainted with all the rules, Mr Frank falls in rather with the German expressionists who strive to give us a version of life which shall be alas! only too true. For the last fifty years the world has been pressionistic (read, volitional) first im and then ex. If Mallarmé, looking at a man, goes beyond that man with the direct purpose of distortion, the expressionists take their man, rip off his clothing, observe the sorry nipples of his breasts, look into his viscera, and maintain that here is the real man, the essential man. The subtle difference is that Mallarmé has said, "Here is a distortion," and has given us one, while the expressionists have said, "Here is the very pulse of truth," and their distortion has been no less marked.
One goes into a park and sits down, and immediately, if one is an artist, the park becomes a problem. It lies there. The individual feels his edges knocking improperly against it. He is sitting in somebody else's park. Then, if he is Waldo Frank, he starts remaking that park. Exorbitant characters appear, the skyline begins to churn, mad speeches are ground out. And we have John the Baptist, one of the most interesting stories of City Block. But such a park is a personal creation, and is statistically false; it is true as a reflection of Waldo Frank's temperament, true in a sense that Mallarmé's fauns are true, but completely erroneous as a gauge of our environment.
My reason for pointing this out is a somewhat complicated one. But first of all, I feel that it provides us with a criterion for approaching Mr Frank. Thus, we have the two possibilities: a book must be statistically true, a whole and proper valuation of life; or
