It will probably have to prove itself by itself
and its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity (this
new word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining all
lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold, from
God and the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustrating
all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point
of view, the entirety of imaginative literature's themes and results
as we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put
in statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast
fields and values and varieties left unreap'd? Of our own country,
the splendid races North or South, and especially of the Western and
Pacific regions, it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric
and Biblic elements are all untouch'd, left as if ashamed of, and only
certain very minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiously
sought and put in print, in short tales, "poetry" or books.
I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the
comfort of thousands--perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women's and
young men's--who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns
and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere
there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the
absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, the
songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full
assertion of ourselves.
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