Chapter CXI A Text-Book for Russia
Mrs. Ogi has been silent for some time; saving her energies in anticipation of that greatest satisfaction known to wives. Now she takes it. “I told you so!”
“What did you tell me?” asks Ogi, uneasily.
“You have filled up a book, and haven’t got in a word about Gloria Swanson’s salary, nor what Rupert Hughes really got for ‘The Sins of Hollywood’!”
“It’s this way,” says her husband. “I found I had so much material that I’d have to make two volumes, one dealing with the artists of the past, and the other with living artists.”
“I remember, eight years ago,” says Mrs. Ogi, “you started out to write a criticism of the world’s culture in one volume; and presently you came to me looking worried, and said you had so much about Religion it would need a volume to itself. So you took a hundred thousand words for Religion. And when you started after Journalism, and took a hundred thousand words to tell the story of your own life, and another hundred thousand to tell about the newspapers. And then Education; you came again and said you had so much about the colleges, you’d have to give a whole volume to them. You took two hundred and five thousand words for the colleges, and then a hundred and ninety-five thousand for the schools!”
As Ogi has no answer to this indictment, she continues: “Just what do you think you’ve written now?”
“I’ve written a text-book of culture.”
“For the schools?”—very sarcastically.
“It will be serving as a text-book in the high schools of Russia within six months.”
“In Russia, yes—”
“In every country in Europe, as soon as the social revolution comes. The workers, taking power, bring a new psychology and a new ethics; naturally they have to have a new art, and new art standards.”
“They may want to write their own text-books,” suggests Mrs. Ogi.
“No doubt they will—and better than mine. But so far no one has done it—and they will have to use such weapons as they find ready.”
Mrs. Ogi is one of those who observe the phenomena of religion with a mingling of fear and longing. It would be wonderful to believe like that! “Of course,” she says, “if your side has its way—”
“That is how history is made,” says Ogi. “Once upon a time a wealthy Virginia planter, with other wealthy gentlemen from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, rose up and declared rebellion against his king. A war was fought, and the rebel planter won; therefore he is known as the Father of His Country, and all little boys in school learn how he could not tell a lie. If he had lost his war against his king, he would have been a vile and traitorous varlet, and every little boy in school would have learned by heart a long list of the lies he had told. And just so it is with writers who take up the cause of the dispossessed and disinherited. If the proletariat wins in its war against capitalism, these outcast writers will become leading men of letters. On the other hand, if the proletariat loses, they will remain ‘propagandists,’ and ‘tub-thumpers,’ and ‘buzzards,’ and ’muckrakers’—you recognize those terms.”
Yes, Mrs. Ogi admits that she recognizes them; and he continues:
“I have given the workers an honest book, a sound book, from the point of view of their hopes and needs. I say to them: Why should you read the books of your enemies, those who make their glory and their greatness out of your misery and humiliation? Why should you walk into the traps that are set for you? Life is very cruel, but assuredly this is the most cruel thing in your fate—that you should admire those actions which crush you, those tastes which spurn you, those standards which have as their beginning and end your enslavement and degradation.”
“None but workers are to see this book?” asks Mrs. Ogi.
“I use the word in its revolutionary sense, the strict scientific sense of those who do the useful and necessary labor, whether of hand or brain. I am pleading especially with the young brain-workers, the intellectuals. For the hand-worker is a slave by compulsion, but the young thinker, the student, has the ancient choice of Hercules, between virtue and vice. He may sell himself to the exploiters, he may take the dress-suit bribe, the motor-cars and the ‘hooch’ parties, and the beautiful, soft-skinned, hard-souled women; or he may heed my plea, and steel his soul, and go back to the garret which is the cradle of the arts, back to the ancient and honorable occupation of cultivating literature upon a little oatmeal.
“To this young intellectual, hesitating at the parting of ways, I say: Comrade, this world of organized gambling and predation in which we live seems powerful and permanent, but it is an evil dream of but a few more years; the seeds of its own destruction are sprouting in its heart. I am not referring to its moral failure, the fact that it thwarts the most fundamental of human cravings, for justice and for freedom; I mean in the bare material sense—it fails to employ its own workers, it makes misery out of its own plenty, and war and destruction of its abounding prosperity. It is as certain to fall as a pyramid standing on its tip; and when it falls, what is left but the workers? What other force is there, having solidarity, the sense of brotherhood, the ideal of service, of useful labor, as against the buying and selling and exploiting, the robbing, killing and enslaving which is capitalism?
“This great new force is shaping itself in our world, preparing for the making of the future. And shall this new life not have an art? Shall men not thrill to this vision, and rouse others to make it real? Here lies your task, young comrade; here is your future—and not the timid service of convention, the million-times-over repetition of ancient lies, the endless copying of copies of folly and cruelty and greed. The artists of our time are like men hypnotized, repeating over and over a dreary formula of futility. And I say: Break this evil spell, young comrade; go out and meet the new dawning life, take your part in the battle, and put it into new art; do this service for a new public, which you yourselves will make. That is the message of this book, the last word I have to say: that your creative gift shall not be content to make art works, but shall at the same time make a world; shall make new souls, moved by a new ideal of fellowship, a new impulse of love, and faith—and not merely hope, but determination.
“That is what this book is about,” says Ogi; “and maybe not many will get me, but a few will, and they will be the ones I am after.”
Mrs. Ogi comes to him and puts her arms about him, trembling a little. “Yes, of course,” she says; “and I’m glad you wrote it, in spite of all my terrors.”
“Ah, now!” says Ogi, smiling. “We ought to have a picture of this! A happy ending, in the very best bourgeois style!”