Page:The Borzoi 1920.djvu/56

 VAN VECHTEN

By Philip Moeller

Carl Van Vechten's mental gesture is more or less unique in American literature. His work has about as much relation to what might be considered the "serious classical output" of writing today as irresistible footnotes have to filling an all too fulsome history. Whereas the bulk of the intellectual page of contemporary American writing is for the most part of transitional importance Mr. Van Vechten's essays are replete with the delightful essence of what is importantly transitory.

As a critic of the fine arts and other things, his range is not so immense as it is extraordinary. How can one keep on the hat of appreciation before the work of a writer who improvises as adroitly about cats as about prima donne, who in one book tells the only authoritative story of the music of Spain, in another makes or breaks the fame of some famous player and in still another goes far afield to bring into the glow of his praise some hidden personage from some remote and delicious byway of life and letters? If he mounts into his garret to unopen ancient chests and write of olden things, he doesn't neglect at the same time to look from his high window at what is going on about him. In the midst of the gorgeous hurry of New York he hears the quieter melody of far off places. He is a cosmopolitan critic and at the same time a critic of cosmopolis.

Music is never very far from his pages. He is acknowledged as one of the most important of the musical critics in 32