But this promise of better
things was soon found to be no more than a promise. Mark Twain, after
"The Gilded Age," slipped back into romanticism tempered by
Philistinism, and was presently in the era before the Civil War, and
finally in the Middle Ages, and even beyond. Harte, a brilliant
technician, had displayed his whole stock when he had displayed his
technique: his stories were not even superficially true to the life they
presumed to depict; one searched them in vain for an interpretation of
it; they were simply idle tales. As for Howells and James, both quickly
showed that timorousness and reticence which are the distinguishing
marks of the Puritan, even in his most intellectual incarnations. The
American scene that they depicted with such meticulous care was chiefly
peopled with marionettes. They shrunk, characteristically, from those
larger, harsher clashes of will and purpose which one finds in all truly
first-rate literature. In particular, they shrunk from any
interpretation of life which grounded itself upon an acknowledgment of
its inexorable and inexplicable tragedy.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241