Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/157

Rh attacks not "new forms," but the "disease of the intellectualist who strives to make up for his artistic emptiness by the purely intellectual creation of 'new forms. It is clear from the essay that "age," "tradition," and "conventional forms" could just as well take the place of "youth," "modernity," and "new forms"; only Mr Spingarn feels that the "fashionable theory" requires him to state the case in his present terms.

We have again and again, specifically and by our practice, indicated the irrelevance of certain terms to the life of the spirit. We have believed that to publish the best work available in both the accepted and the unconventional forms of expression was closer to the ideal of a journal of art and letters than to publish work, however undistinguished, because the author was young or old or American or European or a member of the old school or of the new. The application of this belief has led us to publish, with pleasure, the work of those artists who worked in forms not yet familiar; and as a result we have been held to be defenders not of the specific works, but of the idea of "new forms." It has led us to publish the work of young men and women—it could not do otherwise. Yet in the silly hub-bub about the age of this second-rate poet or the youth of that insignificant novelist we have had little or no part. We have not been interested. It is necessary to recall these things because of the wholly illogical assumption that if one does not think physical youth a criterion of artistic excellence one must confine one's self to the works of physical age. We assume that in this connexion Mr Spingarn means what we mean, that one must confine one's self to works of art.

It would be unjust to give the impression that Mr Spingarn's Manifesto is wholly concerned with the elements we have taken up. His burden is:

"What city of the spirit shall we build, and how? And so I, who once called upon young men for rebellion and doubt, now call upon them for thought and faith There is only one real division to-day that has any reality, and that is the difference between an old-fashioned materialism and a new idealism It [idealism] divides those who seek truth inside the spirit of man from those who seek it outside. And only on the basis of what is inside us can we build up that creative energy of thought and faith