Life and Literature

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Contents

CBAPm PACT

Introduction vii

I On Reading in Relation to Literature . . . i

Introduction

This volume contains a third selection from the lectures which Lafcadio Heam delivered at the University of Tokyo between 1896 and 1902. An account of these lectures and of the remarkable student notes in which they were preserved, is given in the Introductions to the first selection, "Interpretations of Literature," 1915, and to the second selection, "Appreciations of Poetry," 1916. It should be said again, for the information of those who may read this present volume without acquaintance with the others, that Lafcadio Heam lectured very slowly, choosing simple words and constructions, in order to make the foreign language as easy as possible to his Japanese students; and some of his students managed to take down many of his lectures word for word. From their notes — the only record we have of Lafcadio Heam the teacher — ^the present volume, like its predecessors, is selected.

It is unnecessary to speak again of the service Lafcadio Heam rendered to the West by his interpretations of Japan, nor of the service he rendered to the East in these lectures on Westem literature. The editor would call attention once more, however, to the extraordinary quality of these lectures simply as literary criticism. Had they been addressed to an American audience, they would not have suggested, as they now do, the lonely and romantic adventure of Westem culture in the Japanese classroom ; but they would still have deserved our attention as one of the finest illustrations — certainly the illustration on the largest scale in English— of that kind of criticism which tries to interpret rather than to pass sentence. To be sure, a sjmipathetic explanation, in art as in life, may imply a verdict, but with Heam the

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TU viii INTRODUCTION

implication remained secondary to the sympathy and the understanding. His attitude is the usual one among creative artists ; it is in grateful contrast with both the academic and the journalistic schools of criticism today, which light up their verdicts with artificial emphasis, and leave sympathy and understanding — shall we say, imagination? — in subdued shadow. The present editor, therefore, does not expect all readers to agree with him now that these volumes of Lafcadio Heam's are among the best examples of the soundest kind of criticism ; but he hopes for a day when such praise will seem not extreme. The pigeon-holing type of criticism, having its central roots in mediocrity, is likely to survive the assaults of common sense, but its prestige is waning, and it may be forced to surrender the high place it has long usurped. Certainly the appreciation of literature has not prospered under the tradition which, having fixed a label on a book, would dispose of it like a jar of jam — all of one kind on the same shelf. When this tendency is benevolent, it enables a trained scholar to call each new novel by a generic name — for him it is a Henry James novel, or a Howells novel, or an Arnold Bennett novel; and similarly the habit of labelling books enables the journalistic critic at his best to recognize an O. Henry story or a Don Marquis poem. But the particular qualities of the work thus pigeonholed, neither the trained labeller nor the journalistic recognizer seems to be interested in. Moreover, the trained scholar and the journalistic critic are not always at their best; and at their worst — as in their clash over the new poetry in America today — their sentence-pronouncing habit degenerates into an orgy of scorn, in which the older readers pour disdain upon the wreckers and the experimenters, and the younger generation gesticulate contempt at the old fogies, and neither side furnishes a good reason for its prejudice. Is it rash to hope that common sense will at last persuade us to understand books — or at least to try to understand them — ^before we judge them? And if we once un-

INTRODUCTION ix

derstand a great work of art, or even a minor work of art, shall we still think it so necessary to label the work great or minor?

Lafcadio Heam says simply that the object of criticism is to find out why you like a book or why you dislike it; the good qualities of a book he defines in terms of its truth to life; and for an impartial index as to whether the book is true to life, he would accept the opinion of generations of men. No book entirely bad can, he thinks, become famous ; unless men could recognize in it some experience of their own, they would not read it permanently. If the sceptic should say. This simple theory does well enough for books already famous, but how shall I judge a new book? — Heam would answer that the study of famous books, where life is truly represented, helps us to recognize life itself, by developing in us a more sensitive memory, a livelier imagination, until we are quick to recognize truth to experience even in a new and unheralded work. The prosperity of a book, in short, lies not in its conformity to any outward tradition, but to its reflection of the reader's experience. Sound criticism is for Heam identical with thoughtful reading; the art of reading or of criticism is simply the art of discriminating among one's experiences. Turning the idea about, Heam would define literature — in so far as it is a fine art — as the best expression of the most intimate experiences. "In all my lectures," he says, *T have never failed, when I had the opportunity, to remind you that literature is not the art of writing books, but the art of expressing feeling — feeling, which means everything noble as well as everything common in himian life." He is at pains to explain that by "feeling" he means emotion, not sensation.

This theory of criticism implies a large hospitality toward every kind of book, and Lafcadio Heam was one of the most generous and most patient of readers. He could find the virtues even of the types of literature toward which his temperament did not dispose him, and though in his own

X INTRODUCTION

writing he was one of the most painstaking of artists, he could value the potential good even in books crudely expressed. The casual way in which these lectures were recorded, and the fact that he had no opportunity to revise them, will account for certain lapses of style, certain exaggerations of statement, such as his just taste would deplore. But these defects in the record do not impair the theory nor the spirit of these volumes. To one who has read them consecutively, the abiding impression is of a noble and continuous discrimination, a sustained sympathy, day after day, year after year, toward good books of all sorts, whether contemporary or long published.

A theory of life and of art so romantic as his, with such emphasis upon the possibilities of adventure, might have lent itself to shallowness or to impressionism, had it not been sustained in Lafcadio Heam by a self -discipline almost beyond the rigour of classicism. Again and again he reminds us that the enjoyment of art, like the enjoyment of life, is itself an art ; he never fails, when speaking of his beloved romantics, to show that their freedom was either an achievement or a failure; he has no use for the books which can be drained in one reading; he likes best poets like Meredith or Rossetti, whose crowded lines repay study. The note of discipline on every page of his lectures gives even his slighter moments an undertone of character, so that when he speaks specifically of the moral function of art, he seems not to introduce a new theme, but to put finally into words what we were waiting for him to say.

It remains only to add that in preparing this volume the editor tried, as in the other volumes, to verify all the quotations, dates, and allusions. If errors have escaped him, he must plead the condition of the manuscripts, which in these chapters were full of perplexities. In reading the proofs he has again had the kind assistance of Pay Director Mitchell McDonald, U. S. N., literary executor of Lafcadio Heam — and his friend.

LIFE AND LITERATURE

I

Chapter I On Reading In Relation To Literature

As the term approaches its close, I wish to keep my promise regarding a series of lectures relating to literary life and work, to be given independently of texts or authorities, and to represent, as far as possible, the results of practical experience among the makers of literature in different countries. The subject for this term will be Reading — apparently, perhaps, a very simple subject, but really not to simple as it looks, and much more important than you may think it. I shall begin this lecture by saying that veiy few persons know how to read. 0)nsiderable experience with literature is needed before taste and discrimination can possibly be acquired ; and without these, it is almost impossible to learn how to read. I say almost impossible; since there are some rare men who, through a natural inborn taste, through a kind of inherited literary instinct, are able to read very well even before reaching the age of twenty-five years. But these are great exceptions, and I am spes^- ing of the average.

For, to read die characters or the letters of the text does not mean reading in the true sense. You will often find yourselves reading words or characters automatically, even pronouncing them quite correctly, while your minds are occupied with a totally different subject. This mere mechanism of reading becomes altogether automatic at an early period of life, and can be performed irrespective of attention. Neither can I call it reading to extract the narrative portion of a text from the rest simply for one's personal amusement, or, in other words, to read a book "for the story." Yet most of the reading that is done in

the world is done in exactly this way. Thousands and thousands of books are bought every year, every month, I might even say every day, by people who do not read at all. They only think that they read. They buy books just to amuse themselves, "to kill time," as they call it; in one hour or two their eyes have passed over all the pages, and there is left in their minds a vague idea or two about what they have been looking at; and this they really believe is reading. Nothing is more common than to be asked, "Have you read such a book?" or to hear somebody say, "I have read such and such a boot" But these persons do not speak seriously. Out of a thousand persons who say, "I have read this," or "I have read that," there is not one perhaps who is able to express any opinion worth hearing about what he has been reading. Many and many a time I hear students say that they have read certain books ; but if I ask them some questions regarding the book, I find that they are not able to make any answer, or at best, they will only repeat something that somebody else has said about what they think that they have been reading. But this is not peculiar to students; it is in all countries the way that the great public devour books. And to conclude this introductory part of the lecture, I would say that the diflFerence between the great critic and the common person is chiefly that the great critic knows how to read, and that the common person does not No man is really able to read a book who is not able to express an original opinion regarding the contents of a book.

No doubt you will think that this statement of the case confuses reading with study. You might say, "When we read history or philosophy or science, then we do read very thoroughly, studying all the meanings and bearings of the text, slowly, and thinking about it. This is hard study. But when we read a story or a poem out of classhour, we read for amusement. Amusement and study are two different things." I am not sure that you all think this; but young men generally do so think. As a matter of fact, every book worth reading ought to be read in precisely the same way that a scientific book is read — ^not simply for amusement ; and every book worth reading should have the same amount of value in it that a scientific book has, though the value may be of a totally different kind. For, after all, the good book of fiction or romance or poetry is a scientific work; it has been composed according to the best principles of more than one science, but especially according to the principles of the great science of life, the knowledge of human nature.

In regard to foreign books, this is especially true; but the advice suggested will be harder to follow, when we read in a language which is not our own. Nevertheless, how many Englishmen do you suppose really read a good book in English? how many Frenchmen read a great book in their own tongue? Probably not more than one in two thousand of those who think that they read. What is more, although there are now published every year in London upwards of six thousand books, at no time has there been so little good reading done by the average public as today. Books are written, sold, and read after a fashion — or rather according to the fashion. There is a fashion in literature as well as in everything else; and a particular kind of amusement being desired by the public, a particular kind of reading is given to supply the demand. So useless have become to this public the arts and graces of real literature, the great thoughts which should belong to a great book, that men of letters have almost ceased to produce true literature. When a man can obtain a great deal of money by writing a book without style or beauty, a mere narrative to amuse, and knows at the same time that if he should give three, five, or ten years to the production of a really good book, he would probably starve to death, he is forced to be imtrue to the higher duties of his profession. Men happily situated in regard to money matters, might possibly attempt something great from time to time ; but they can hardly get a hearing. Taste is so much deteriorated within the past few years, that, as I told you before, style has practically disappeared — and style means thinking. And this state of things in England has been largely brought about by bad habits of reading, by not knowing how to read.

For the first thing which a scholar should bear in mind is that a book ought not to be read for mere amusement. Half -educated persons read for amusement, and are not to be blamed for it; they are incapable of appreciating the deeper qualities that belong to a really great literature. But a young man who has passed through a course of university training should discipline himself at an early day never to read for mere amusement. And once the habit of the discipline has been formed, he will even find it impossible to read for mere amusement. He will then impatiently throw down any book from which he cannot obtain intellectual food, any book which does not make an appeal to the higher emotions and to his intellect. But on the other hand, the habit of reading for amusement becomes with thousands of people exactly the same kind of habit as wine-drinking or opium-smoking; it is like a narcotic, something that helps to pass the time, something that keeps up a perpetual condition of dreaming, something that eventually results in destroying all capacity for thought, giving exercise only to the surface parts of the mind, and leaving the deeper springs of feeling and the higher faculties of perception unemployed.

Let us simply state what the facts are about this kind of reading. A young clerk, for example, reads every day on the way to his office and on the way back, just to pass the time; and what does he read? A novel, of course; it is very easy work, and it enables him to forget his troubles for a moment, to dull his mind to all the little worries of his daily routine. In one day or two days he finishes the novel; then he gets another. He reads quickly in these days. By the end of the year he has read between a hundred and fifty and two hundred novels; no matter how poor he is, this luxury is possible to him, because of the institution of circulating libraries. At the end of a few years he has read several thousand novels. Does he like them? No; he will tell you that they are nearly all the same, but they help him to pass away his idle time; they have become a necessity for him; he would be very unhappy if he could not continue this sort of reading. It is utterly impossible that the result can be anything but a stupefying of the faculties. He can not even remember the names of twenty or thirty books out of thousands ; much less does he remember what they contain. The result of all this reading means nothing but a cloudiness in his mind. That is the direct result. The indirect result is that the mind has been kept from developing itself. All development necessarily means some pain; and such reading as I speak of has been employed unconsciously as a means to avoid that pain, and the consequence is atrophy.

Of course this is an extreme case; but it is the ultimate outcome of reading for amusement whenever such amusement becomes a habit, and when there are means close at hand to gratify the habit. At present in Japan there is little danger of this state of things; but I use the illustration for the sake of its ethical warning.

This does not mean that there is any sort of good literature which should be shunned. A good novel is just as good reading as even the greatest philosopher can possibly wish for. The whole matter depends upon the way of reading, even more than upon the naturie of what is read. Perhaps it is too much to say, as has often been said, that there is no book which has nothing good in it; it is better simply to state that the good of a book depends incomparably more for its influence upon the habits of the reader than upon the art of the writer, no matter how great that writer may be.

In a previous lecture I tried to call your attention to the superiority of the child's methods of observation to those of the man ; and the same fact may be noticed in regard to the child's method of reading. Certainly the child can read only very simple things ; but he reads most thoroughly ; and he thinks and thinks and thinks untiringly about what he reads ; one little fairy tale will give him mental occupation for a month after he has read it. All the energies of his little fancy are exhausted upon the tale; and if his parents be wise, they do not allow him to read a second tale, until the pleasure of the first, and its imaginative effect, has begun to die away. Later habits, habits which I shall venture to call bad, soon destroy the child's power of really attentive reading. But let us now take the case of a professional reader, a scientific reader ; and we shall observe the same power, developed of course to an enormous degree. In the office of a great publishing house which I used to visit, there are received every year sixteen thousand manuscripts. All these must be looked at and judged; and such work in all publishing offices is performed by what is called professional readers. The professional reader must be 2 scholar, and a man of very uncommon capacity. Out oi a thousand manuscripts he will read perhaps not more thar one ; out of two thousand he may possibly read three. Th( others he simply looks at for a few seconds — one glance is enough for him to decide whether the manuscript is worth reading or not.

The shape of a single sentence will tel him that, from the literary point of view. As regards subject, even the title is enough for him to judge, in a larg< number of cases. Some manuscripts may receive a minut< or even five minutes of his attention; very few receive 2 longer consideration. Out of sixteen thousand, we maj suppose that sixteen are finally selected for /udgment. Hi reads these from beginning to end. Having read them, h< decides that only eight can be further considered. Th< eight are read a second time, much more carefully. At th< close of the second examination the number is perhaps reduced to seven. These seven are destined for a third reading; but the professional reader knows better than to read them immediately. He leaves them locked up in a drawer, and passes a whole week without looking at them. At the end of the week he tries to see whether he can remember distinctly each of these seven manuscripts and their qualities. Very distinctly he remembers three; the remaining four he can not at once recall. With a little more effort, he is able to remember two more. But two he has utterly forgotten. This is a fatal defect; the work that leaves no impression upon the mind after two readings can not have real value. He then takes the manuscripts out of the drawer, condemns two-^the two he could not remember — and re-reads the five. At the third reading everything is judged — subject, execution, thought, literary quality. Three are discovered to be first class; two are accepted by the publishers only as second class. And so the matter ends.

Something like this goes on in all great publishing houses; but unfortunately not all literary work is now judged in the same severe way. It is now judged rather by what the public likes ; and the public does not like the best. But you may be sure that in a house such as that of the Cambridge or the Oxford University publishers, the test of a manuscript is very severe indeed; it is there read much more thoroughly than it is likely ever to be read again. Now this professional reader whom we speak of, with all his knowledge and scholarship and experience, reads the book very much in the same way as the child reads a fairy-tale. He has forced his mind to exert all its powers in the same minute way that the child's mind does, to think about everything in the book, in all its bearings, in a hundred different directions. It is not true that a child is a bad reader; the habit of bad reading is only formed much later in life, and is always unnatural. The natural and also the scholarly way of reading is the child's way. But it requires what we are apt to lose as we grow up, the golden gift of patience; and without patience nothing, not even reading, can be well done.

Important then as careful reading is, you can readily perceive that it should not be wasted. The powers of a well-trained and highly educated mind ought not to be expended upon any common book. By common I mean cheap and useless literature. Nothing is so essential to self-training as the proper choice of books to read; and nothing is so universally neglected. It is not even right that a person of ability should waste his time in "finding out" what to read. He can easily obtain a very correct idea of the limits of the best in all departments of literature, and keep to that best. Of course, if he has to become a specialist, a critic, a professional reader, he will have to read what is bad as well as what is good, and will be able to save himself from much toraient only by an exceedingly rapid exercise of judgment, foraied by experience. Imagine, for example, the reading that must have been done, and thoroughly done, by such a critic as Professor Saintsbury. Leaving out of the question all his university training, and his mastery of Greek and Latin classics, which is no small reading to begin with, he must have read some five thousand books in the English of all centuries, — learned thoroughly everything that was in them, the history of each one, and the history of its author, whenever that was accessible. He must also have mastered thoroughly the . social and political history relating to all this mass of ^ literature. But this is still less than half his work. For \ being an authority upon two literatures, his study of French, * both old and new French, must have been even more ex- ■ tensive than his study of English. And all his work had I to be read as a master reads; there was little mere amusement in the whole from beginning to end. The only pleas- J ure could be in results; but these results arc very great.

Nothing is more difRcult in this world than to read a book and then to express clearly and truly in a few lines exactly what the literary value of the book is. There are not more than twenty people in the world that can do this, for the experience as well as the capacity required must be enormous. Very few of us can hope to become even third or fourth class critics after even a lifetime of study. But we can all leam to read; and that is not by any means a small feat. The great critics can best show us the way to do this, by their judgment.

Yet after all, the greatest of critics is the public — not the public of a day or a generation, but the public of cen-\ turies, the consensus of national opinion or of human opinion about a book that has been subjected to the awful test of time. Reputations are made not by critics, but by the accumulation of human opinion through hundreds of years. And human opinion is not sharply defined like the opinion of a trained critic; it cannot explain; it is vague, like a great emotion of which we cannot exactly describe the nature; it is based upon feeling rather than upon thinking; it only says, "we like this." Yet there is no judgment so sure as this kind of judgment, for it is the outcome of an enormous experience. The test of a good book ought always to be the test which human opinion, working for generations, applies. And this is very simple.

The test of a great book is whether we want to read it only once or more than once. Any really great book we want to read the second time even more than we wanted to read it the first time; and every additional time that we read it we find new meanings and new beauties in it. A book that a person of education and good taste does not care to read more than once is very probably not worth \ much. Sometime ago there was a very clever discussion going on regarding the art of the great French novelist, Zola; some people claimed that he possessed absolute genius; others claimed that he had only talent of a very remarkable

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kind. The batde of argument brought out some strange extravagances of opinion. But suddenly a very great critic simply put this question: "How many of you have read, or would care to read, one of Zola's books a second time?" There was no answer; the fact was settled. Probably no I one would read a book by Zola more than once; and this is proof positive that there is no great genius in them, and no great mastery of the highest form of feeling. Shallow or false any book must be, that, although bought by a hundred thousand readers, is never read more than once. But we can not consider the judgment of a single individual infallible. The opinion that makes a book great must be the opinion of many. For even the greatest critics are apt to have certain dulnesses, certain inappreciations. Carlyle, for example, could not endure Browning; Byron could not endure some of the greatest of English poets. A man must be many sided to utter a trustworthy estimate of many books. We may doubt the judgment of the single critic at times. But there is no doubt possible in regard to the judgment of generations. Even if we cannot at once perceive anything good in a book which has been admired and praised for hundreds of years, we may be sure that by trying, by studying it carefully, we shall at last be able to feel the reason of this admiration and praise. The best of all libraries for a poor man would be a library entirely composed of such great works only, books which have passed the test of time.