Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/151

Rh subject on which they seemed to be in agreement. This was the work of Giovanni Asperoni. Kenneth gathered that this must be a poet. He had flourished in the sixteenth century and apparently had been completely forgotten by the world until Peter Younger, the publisher, had brought him out in hand-made paper, deckel-edged, with three-inch margins and Stowcroft binding. The edition had been limited to 121 copies, after which the plates had been destroyed. The present company was enthusiastically in agreement as to Asperoni. Not only in form, thought, imagery, and sheer inspiration was he the superior of all modern writers, but the best of modern poetry was modelled directly upon him. Kenneth felt himself cast into outer intellectual darkness because he had never heard of the Italian. At this point, unexpectedly, up spoke Hallowell, who had contributed little but sapient strokings of his vandyke beard. He advanced and defended the hypothesis that the Greeks had done all aesthetic things perfectly; that it is useless to attempt to improve upon perfection; therefore we should cease a vain attempt to produce art and should give all our time to study and interpretation of Greek art. This was rather a bombshell. It was necessary to one's intellectual reputation to exalt the Greek—and yet as producers of one form of modern art They compromised at length by excepting poetry from this sweeping relegation. Poetry was the only true art of interpretation: and it was necessary that each age interpret to itself the eternal truths that Greece had embodied as generalizations. This ingenious way out was suggested by Miss Wills.

But Delmore, who was secretly still a little sulky over Iredell's having read a poem while he had not, interposed obstinately:

"I can see how for form—in sculpture and architecture—and politics and drama we can go back to the Greeks, but how about colour, atmosphere—painting, in short?"

This plunged them into a tremendous argument. They talked Pre-Raphaelite, and Rennaissance [sic], and Perugino, and Fra Angelico and forty-eleven old masters, with theories of light, colour, symbolism thrown in. Kenneth knew not even the common terms of painting. He took cover and stayed under, and when the party finally broke up he went back to the