The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX So Padraic Colum has tried to civilize young America in the right way. No more important task has ever been undertaken, for civilization, education, are fundamental. Reformers usually make the mistake of the empiric, and try to re- lieve the symptoms. It is quite useless to try to relieve the symptoms of America. Willy Pogany is not Flaxman, but he is Flaxman enough for children, and now and again, as in the picture facing page 106 (and several others), he is Flaxman enough for nearly everybody. (You cannot expect an illustrator as such to be altogether Flaxman in an age where artists have to earn their living.) But it is impossible to give too much praise to the prose of Padraic Colum. It is simple enough for a child who has just learned to read. It is good enough for a book-worm-eaten hag like myself, sodden on Sterne and Swift. A book like this revives the drooping flower of hope; so long as there are people willing to try, there is still hope for humanity. AC How To Stnc a Sone. By Yverre Guiigert. The Macmillan Co. Price $2.00. Ir is commonplace that Yvette Guilbert is the greatest artist of her period. It is a tragedy that her art happens to be ephemeral. The poignancy of such a reali- zation is like that which one feels in the eternal Greek which Synge re-awakened in the wild Western world. I am thinking of Riders to the Sea. Experience dulls us; words are prostituted in the brothel of life. In Riders to the Sea, Synge says merely, “A man was drowned.” His genius sweeps away the cobwebs which time spins over the door of the cavern of our imagination. We realize the meaning of those words, “A man was drowned.” This power to make us feel is the divine thing in art. It is the creative force which answers “Yea” to the prophet’s cynical, “Lord, shall these dead bones live?” Now this is exactly what Yvette Guilbert has done for song. She has not done it for one century only. She has made all time speak, give up its secret, to those who are capable to live in that divine air of the spirit which magazines, cocktails, and automobiles so easily pollute. I see in Yvette Guilbert not only an artist in the ordinary sense of the word, but an artist like Blake. Her preface on Time might have come from a Book of Ecclesiastes written by Solomon in the period before that in which he could not do it any more. Vanity of vanities? Contemptuously Yvette Guilbert replies, “Does life ever stop?” Iam not a singer. The technique of music is to me a mournful mystery. Yet in reading this book I find a thousand splendid counsels valid for all art. This book is more than “How to sing a song.” It is a philosophical treatise on How to do anything. The arts are one. There is nothing but creation. As it is written, Love is the law, love under will. It is apprehension of this fact that makes art- istry of any sort possible. It explains why there are no artists in America, or at 290