Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/133

 CONCLUSION 131 the stage of the tragic Ezekiel, of Saint Gregory Nazian- zen, of Hroswitha, the Jeux and Miracles of our XIII Century, the Autos; here, Greek tragedy and the psy- chologists' imitations of it; there, English, German and French drama of 1830; still nearer, the type of piece which from the background of China, through Lope and Calderon, Diderot and Geothe, has come to cover our stage today. It will be remembered that, when we were catalogu- ing dramatic production in its thirty-six classes, an assiduous effort to establish, for every exceptional case found in one of them, symmetrical cases in the other thirty-five caused unforseen subjects to spring up under our very feet. Likewise, when we shall have analyzed these orders, systems and groups of systems, when we shall have measured with precision their resem- blances and their differences, and classified them, or, one by one, according to the questions considered, shall have brought them together or separated them, - we shall necessarily remark that numerous combinations have been forgotten. Among these the New Art will choose. Would that I might be able to place the first, the obscurest foundation-stone of its gigantic citadel! There, drawing about her the souls of the poets, the Muse shall rise before this audience re-assembled from ancient temples, before these peoples who gathered of yore around Herodotus and Pindar; she will speak the new language 'he Dramatic ;i language too lofty for the comprehension of the single soul, however great it be, a language not of words but of thrills, such as that spoken to armies, a language in truth addressed to thee, BaCChU. dispenser of glory, soul of crowds, delirium of races, ab tract, but One and Eternal! Not in one of our parlor-like pasteboard reductions of the Roman demi-circua will this come to pass, but upon b sort of mountain, Hooded with light and air, raised, thanks to our conquest of iron added t<> the construe- tive experience of tne Middle Ages; offered to the nation by those who have -till held to the vanity of riches,