THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 533 



and flourishing. That were at any time a lordly enterprise and here, 

 plainly unsuitable. Let me but comment briefly on certain aspects 

 of literary study and literary creation that may be viewed among 

 us with too little discernment of their rich significance. 



Many of those who would subscribe themselves students of belles- 

 lettres neglect deliberately whether it be from affectation, or lazi- 

 ness, or from pure ignorance, one cannot always tell, but in any case 

 deliberately neglect sometimes openly scorn the writings of 

 their direct progenitors in earlier times. Most lightly they pass over 

 nearly all the centuries of the Christian Era to the time of the Renais- 

 sance, as if forsooth the spirit of literature had been absent from the 

 earth this long while, when the people lived simply, and only returned, 

 like an Arthurian knight from the happy Otherworld, at a call to 

 engage in tilt and tournament. "Go back behind the Renaissance! " 

 one often hears students of our literature remark. "What is the need? 

 Well, perhaps for the sake of Dante and Chaucer but behind them 

 again? There is surely no behind that one who is interested only in 

 'art for art's sake' need bother about." And I have marveled at 

 the singular unwisdom of such men's attitude, at their folly in thus 

 limiting their powers to judge and appreciate adequately the periods 

 of their o\vn special predilection. Do they disdain knowledge of the 

 earlier periods because they have it not themselves, or are they 

 actually blind to the advantage of it? No one who can speak with 

 knowledge but will affirm that he has never found any study of any 

 period of any literature useless in the investigation of any other. 

 The more one learns of ancient and medieval conceptions, the better 

 one seems to understand those of one's contemporaries. The more 

 familiar one becomes with works written in French. Italian. Spanish. 

 Portuguese, and Provencal. works in (iernian, Scandinavian, 

 Dutch, and Celtic, not to mention the classics, the more enlight- 

 enment one possesses for the elucidation of the best productions in 

 one's own native tongue. The more definitely conversant one is with 

 the facts determining past phenomena in the history of any literature, 

 the more confidence one may feel in a forecast of its probable future. 

 Formerly the literature of the so-called Dark Ages was thought 

 to consist merely of a few pedantic treatises in barbarous Latin. 

 Now a happy tendency is becoming manifest to consider as far more 

 valuable than these artificial documents the wealth of embryonic 

 poetry once instinct with the people, and partially preserved in ar- 

 tistic form. In such early indications of the common thought and 

 feeling, we must. I believe, seek the primal quality of each nation's 

 originality, the determining spirit of its belles-lettres. Students will 

 be more helped to a proper understanding of what literature really 

 is by examining its development in periods of communal effort than 

 in those marked bv the swav of ureat individuals. 



