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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers that inner solidarity which the writer is conscious of; and it is in this doubt that the writer wishes to offer a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that they have every appearance of a group of desultory sketches and essays, without palpable relation to one another, or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet he ventures to hope that the reader who makes his way through them will be aware, in the retrospect, of something like this relation and this allegiance.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948100
Langue	English

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers thatinner solidarity which the writer is conscious of; and it is inthis doubt that the writer wishes to offer a word of explanation.He owns, as he must, that they have every appearance of a group ofdesultory sketches and essays, without palpable relation to oneanother, or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet heventures to hope that the reader who makes his way through themwill be aware, in the retrospect, of something like this relationand this allegiance.
For my own part, if I am to identify myself with thewriter who is here on his defence, I have never been able to seemuch difference between what seemed to me Literature and whatseemed to me Life. If I did not find life in what professed to beliterature, I disabled its profession, and possibly from thishabit, now inveterate with me, I am never quite sure of life unlessI find literature in it. Unless the thing seen reveals to me anintrinsic poetry, and puts on phrases that clothe it pleasingly tothe imagination, I do not much care for it; but if it will do this,I do not mind how poor or common or squalid it shows at firstglance: it challenges my curiosity and keeps my sympathy. InstantlyI love it and wish to share my pleasure in it with some one else,or as many ones else as I can get to look or listen. If the thingis something read, rather than seen, I am not anxious about thematter: if it is like life, I know that it is poetry, and take itto my heart. There can be no offence in it for which its truth willnot make me amends.
Out of this way of thinking and feeling about thesetwo great things, about Literature and Life, there may have arisena confusion as to which is which. But I do not wish to part them,and in their union I have found, since I learned my letters, a joyin them both which I hope will last till I forget my letters.
"So was it when my life began;
So is it, now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old. "
It is the rainbow in the sky for me; and I haveseldom seen a sky without some bit of rainbow in it. Sometimes Ican make others see it, sometimes not; but I always like to try,and if I fail I harbor no worse thought of them than that they havenot had their eyes examined and fitted with glasses which would atleast have helped their vision.
As to the where and when of the different papers, inwhich I suppose their bibliography properly lies, I need not bevery exact. “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business” was writtenin a hotel at Lakewood in the May of 1892 or 1893, and prettypromptly printed in Scribner's Magazine; “Confessions of a SummerColonist” was done at York Harbor in the fall of 1898 for theAtlantic Monthly, and was a study of life at that pleasant resortas it was lived-in the idyllic times of the earlier settlement,long before motors and almost before private carriages; “AmericanLiterary Centres, ” “American Literature in Exile, ” “Puritanism inAmerican Fiction, ” “Politics of American Authors, ” were, withthree or four other papers, the endeavors of the Americancorrespondent of the London Times's literary supplement, toenlighten the British understanding as to our ways of thinking andwriting eleven years ago, and are here left to bear the defects ofthe qualities of their obsolete actuality in the year 1899. Most ofthe studies and sketches are from an extinct department of “Lifeand Letters” which I invented for Harper's Weekly, and operated fora year or so toward the close of the nineteenth century. Notableamong these is the “Last Days in a Dutch Hotel, ” which was writtenat Paris in 1897; it is rather a favorite of mine, perhaps becauseI liked Holland so much; others, which more or less personallyrecognize effects of sojourn in New York or excursions into NewEngland, are from the same department; several may be recalled bythe longer- memoried reader as papers from the “Editor's EasyChair” in Harper's Monthly; “Wild Flowers of the Asphalt” is thereview of an ever- delightful book which I printed in Harper'sBazar; “The Editor's Relations with the Young Contributor” was myendeavor in Youth's Companion to shed a kindly light from myexperience in both seats upon the too-often and too needlesslyembittered souls of literary beginners.
So it goes as to the motives and origins of thecollection which may persist in disintegrating under the reader'seye, in spite of my well- meant endeavors to establish a solidarityfor it. The group at least attests, even in this event, the wide,the wild, variety of my literary production in time and space. Fromthe beginning the journalist's independence of the scholar'ssolitude and seclusion has remained with me, and though I am fondenough of a bookish entourage, of the serried volumes of thelibrary shelves, and the inviting breadth of the library table, Iam not disabled by the hard conditions of a bedroom in a summerhotel, or the narrow possibilities of a candle-stand, without adictionary in the whole house, or a book of reference even in therunning brooks outside. W. D. HOWELLS.
LITERATURE AND LIFE
THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS
I think that every man ought to work for his living,without exception, and that, when he has once avouched hiswillingness to work, society should provide him with work andwarrant him a living. I do not think any man ought to live by anart. A man's art should be his privilege, when he has proven hisfitness to exercise it, and has otherwise earned his daily bread;and its results should be free to all. There is an instinctivesense of this, even in the midst of the grotesque confusion of oureconomic being; people feel that there is something profane,something impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or astatue. Most of all, the artist himself feels this. He puts on abold front with the world, to be sure, and brazens it out asBusiness; but he knows very well that there is something false andvulgar in it; and that the work which cannot be truly priced inmoney cannot be truly paid in money. He can, of course, say thatthe priest takes money for reading the marriage service, forchristening the new-born babe, and for saying the last office forthe dead; that the physician sells healing; that justice itself ispaid for; and that he is merely a party to the thing that is andmust be. He can say that, as the thing is, unless he sells his arthe cannot live, that society will leave him to starve if he doesnot hit its fancy in a picture, or a poem, or a statue; and allthis is bitterly true. He is, and he must be, only too glad ifthere is a market for his wares. Without a market for his wares hemust perish, or turn to making something that will sell better thanpictures, or poems, or statues. All the same, the sin and the shameremain, and the averted eye sees them still, with its inwardvision. Many will make believe otherwise, but I would rather notmake believe otherwise; and in trying to write of Literature asBusiness I am tempted to begin by saying that Business is theopprobrium of Literature.
I.
Literature is at once the most intimate and the mostarticulate of the arts. It cannot impart its effect through thesenses or the nerves as the other arts can; it is beautiful onlythrough the intelligence; it is the mind speaking to the mind;until it has been put into absolute terms, of an invariablesignificance, it does not exist at all. It cannot awaken thisemotion in one, and that in another; if it fails to expressprecisely the meaning of the author, if it does not say him, itsays nothing, and is nothing. So that when a poet has put hisheart, much or little, into a poem, and sold it to a magazine, thescandal is greater than when a painter has sold a picture to apatron, or a sculptor has modelled a statue to order. These areartists less articulate and less intimate than the poet; they aremore exterior to their work; they are less personally in it; theypart with less of themselves in the dicker. It does not change thenature of the case to say that Tennyson and Longfellow and Emersonsold the poems in which they couched the most mystical messagestheir genius was charged to bear mankind. They submitted to theconditions which none can escape; but that does not justify theconditions, which are none the less the conditions of huckstersbecause they are imposed upon poets. If it will serve to make mymeaning a little clearer, we will suppose that a poet has beencrossed in love, or has suffered some real sorrow, like the loss ofa wife or child. He pours out his broken heart in verse that shallbring tears of sacred sympathy from his readers, and an editor payshim a hundred dollars for the right of bringing his verse to theirnotice. It is perfectly true that the poem was not written forthese dollars, but it is perfectly true that it was sold for them.The poet must use his emotions to pay his provision bills; he hasno other means; society does not propose to pay his bills for him.Yet, and at the end of the ends, the unsophisticated witness findsthe transaction ridiculous, finds it repulsive, finds it shabby.