Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1884 — The Disease of Modern Letters. [ARTICLE]

The Disease of Modern Letters.

M. Guillemot, denouncing the growing tendency of authors and dramatists and artists to thrust themselves and their private life before the public, traces the origin ojf the malady to America. Unless it is checked, he declares that it must of necessity lower the standard of all modern literary productions. It is natural enough that an author, ah artist, or a poet should be ambitious to leave an honored name to posterity; but that is an altogether different thing from craving to be talked about and marveled at while in the land of the living. Formerly the poet sang his song, the author told his tales, and the artist completed his work without ever a thought of putting himself to the front. Whether he was married or single, whether tall or short, fair or dark, sanguine or bilious—what had this to do with his work ? No one knew, and no one cared to know. They gave their spirit, their mind to the world, and besides this they were nothing to the public at large. They remembered Confucius’ words, “Do not talk of yourself either good or evil; because in the former case no one would believe you, and in the latter everybody would. ” Within the last two centuries all this has changed. At present all houses are built of glass, the inhabitants’ themselves being the architects, throwing open to the gaze of the public even those chambers which have hitherto been held sacred in their privacy. “And is not this fact,” asks M. Guillemot, “the characteristic of modern society ? A courteous society, thanks to which the term private life is nothing but a vain phrase, and Paris an immense crystal palace. ” Fortunately for France these evils do not originate within its frontiers, but comes, like tempests, across the Atlantic from “that powerful nation which in turn astonishes the world by its grandeur and its folly, its love for liberty and its contempt for inferior races; from the United States, which let a, Lincoln die and a Barnum live.” Audacious, resolute Americans exercise the same influence on the French which every firm spirit does on the weak and undecided. “We are as wax in their hands. ” It was in America that conferences and lectures originated, the Yankees having always had a great desire to approach the persons of great men. That, however, is due to a physical effect, which incapacitates the American from seeing the difference between a justly celebrated poet and a two-headed calf—a remark which Mr. Arnold will perhaps not be slow to appreciate. It is by no means the deep interest in the works of a great man which excites this curiosity among the people; in the same degree as art declines, the personality of the artist increases in interest. American journalism and reporting strengthen this tendency to pry into the private life of public characters, and France has eagerly taken up the evil habit.— Pall Mall Gazette.