Advocate Contains Artifice Justified By Achievement

"Inspiration cannot be where sincerity is not," says an editorial writer in the current number of the Advocate. "Neither inspiration nor sincerity is in much of our undergraduate poetry. There are too many sonorous nothings, too many technical devices, too many detriments. It were better to express true emotion imperfectly than to express a feigned emotion perfectly."

One may agree with this opinion in the main and yet feel that it is slightly wrong in its implications, dangerously wrong in the time and place of its statement. One may feel at first that the opinion finds some support in the very number of the magazine in which it appears. In both the prose and the verse of this number there is excellent artifice, ingenious technical device, promising experimentation. But after all, this is as it should be. The presence of these things even in overflowing measure does not argue a necessary absence of sincerity. For, besides the two sorts of sincerity mentioned by this editorial writer as possible in art--the sincerity born of experience and that born of imagination--there appears to be a third, the sincerity, namely, which is born of a delight in mere making and shaping. This delight and this sincerity are of a lower order certainly, but they are prerequisite. Romeo chants his real love for Juliet in the noble language he has learned in sonnetting the shadowy Rosaline. Romeo's creator strikes out that noble language clear and true only after long years of experimentation in technical devices and sonorous nothings. Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson,--nearly all, indeed, who have most completely mastered the literary art,--have had their periods of aureate preciousness beside which anything in the undergraduate poetry of the present pales into insignificance. Little is ever gained by protests against too much attention to technic. In a time when almost any style of delivery is tolerated provided the ball cuts the plate, such a protest seems particularly inopportune.

Of the narrative sketches in this number, Mr. Davidson's "Mr. Brodie Lapses From Virtue" is the most successful, and Mr. Ness' "On Hearing the 'Apres-Midi' of Debussy" is the most interesting. There are grave objections against any attempt to render the effects of one art in the terms of another, but the beauty of phrase and image in this carefully wrought prose poem is nearly sufficient to tease one out of thought and critical severity. In "The Ship" Mr. Low prepares an elaborate and impressive setting for an action which is not presented or even adequately suggested. There are no essays.

Mere artifice will carry one farther in verse than in prose. Perhaps this is why one finds the verse in this number somewhat more interesting than the stories. Whether it indicates a change of editorial policy or not, the absence of vers libre is worthy of comment. Most of the verse is in stricter forms and Mr. Hillyer even turns back the clock of the years to write a very dainty and winsome triolet:--

"A wisp of song, a moment set

In loveliness away."

Most attractive, on the whole, among the sonnets I find Mr. Cowley's except "From the Diary of a Restoration Gentleman," which successfully imprisons within fixed form the loose and rambling idiom of Samuel Pepys. Some change of the second line which would avoid the double use in the rhyme position of the word "approach" would leave a sonnet of memorable power, beauty, and satirical point. Although Mr. MacVeagh's "Sonnet" is strongly reminiscent of Mr. E. A. Robinson's poetry, it is interesting and impressive in and for itself. In Mr. Norris's sonnet on the sonnet and in his three quatrains, "Poets Forgotten" there is everywhere abundant grace, charm, case of manner, and a rare sense of verbal music.

If I were required to say what single thing in this issue of the Advocate has pleased me most, I think I should choose Mr. Robert Hillyer's "A Heron." Here there is artifice, certainly artifice justified by achievement. Here too there is imperfection, but of the sort which a less fine critical sense would have trimmed away, losing with it the suggestion which is now so clear of assured though careless power. The little poem has the sharp definition coupled with the large suggestiveness of the best Japanese painting