PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 555 



bearing messages of good will and broadening our understanding of 

 our fellow men. 



V 



The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in 

 the representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied 

 by an increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down 

 the barriers of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago 

 Goethe said that even then national literature was "rather an 

 unmeaning term" as "the epoch of world-literature was at hand." 

 With all his wisdom Goethe failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism 

 is a sorry thing when it is not the final expression of patriotism. An 

 artist without a country and with no roots in the soil of his nativity is 

 not likely to bring forth flower and fruit. As an Arnerican critic aptly 

 put it, "a true cosmopolitan is at home even in his own country. " 

 A Russian novelist has set forth the same thought; and it is the wisest 

 character in Turgenef 's Dimitri Roudine, who asserted that the great 

 misfortune of the hero was his ignorance of his native land. "Russia 

 can get along without any of us, but we cannot do without Russia. 

 Woe betide him who does not understand her! and still more him 

 who really forgets the manners and the ideas of his fatherland. 

 Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a zero, less than a zero; out- 

 side of nationality, there is no art, no truth, no life possible." 



Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenef 

 and Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing 

 century is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of 

 literature, while it is the national spirit which supplies the internal 

 inspiration that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the Demi- 

 Monde of Dumas, the Pillars of Society of Ibsen, the Magda of Suder- 

 mann, the Grand Galeoto of Etchegaray, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 

 of Pinero, the Gioconda of d'Annunzio arc all of them cast in the same 

 dramatic mould; but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is 

 made was smelted in the native land of its author. Similar as they 

 are in structure, in their artistic formula, they arc radically dissimilar 

 in their essence, in the motives that move the characters, and in 

 their outlook on life; and this dissimilarity is clue not alone to the 

 individuality of the several authors, it is to be credited chiefly to 

 the nationality of each. 



Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable 

 to the arts. not merely the taking over of raw material, but the 

 more stimulating absorption of methods and processes, and even of 

 artistic ideals. The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Athenian 

 Isocrates; and the style of the Greek was imitated by the Roman 

 Cicero, thus helping to sustain the standard of oratory in every 

 modern language. The Matron of Ephesus of Petronius was the ureat- 



