East is West: And the Great World Shrinks
Tlop — tlop — clatter — clatter! ... " Hi there, stop! What's the matter? Have you gone mad that you clash against the pages and lash your verbs and nouns in hot rages of sounds? Zounds! " cries the astounded reader, " Are there no laws for such a speeder? Will she never pause as her sixty-horse power Pegasus courses madly on the earth here or the sky there? ... Hi, there! "
But the warning is vain. The intrepid rider, scorning conventions, is out of hearing. Clearing the three dimensions of space, her racer thunders sonorously out of Boston and is lost in new flights over Peru. Ascending and tossed in smoke, it blunders through what Mary Austin calls " our Amerind folk-lore. " It soars over the parched wall of China; strips the starched borders of eighteenth century artifice; skips to the balladists' Middle Ages; burns through the pallid pages of sages and returns, as unwearied as when it hastened forth, to north of Brookline and Points Adjacent. The abused beast never trips although the Muse applies the whip remorselessly. The strong horse flies as though each poem were a gruelling race; his headlong pace is a gallop, at best. Every step is a dazzle of light; a bright adventure in excitement. He is pressed on ... and on. ... A zest that crackles and knows no rest.
Everything fares the same; it shares this unrelieved tension. At the mention of a name, of an enamel-studded frieze, budded fruit trees or flower gardens — everything suddenly hardens, shoots, flames, spins, turns and burns with an almost savage intensity. Nature seems to have lost its usual stature; it becomes an immense contrapuntal series of frontal attacks; an unrelaxed assault of suns that clang like gongs, clouds that crash and splinter, boughs that clash and rouse their roots, a lark that " shoots up like a popgun ball. " ... It is all rigorously fortissimo, enthralling in its vigor; appallingly energetic.
Musically alone, the tones of it are full of uncanny changes. A strange and unearthly symphony is heard here; queer tympani add their blows to this polyphonic prose. There is the patter of clicking bones and the quick, dry chatter of xylophones, the hiss of tambourines, the cymbals' shivering kiss, the high quiver of triangles, the clack and mutter of drum-sticks tapping on slackened guts.
And colors! Nothing duller than bright blue, new white, light green of an almost obscene brilliance; millions of reds and purples that blaze and splutter; buttercup-yellows and iris-tinted fires that mellow the polished sides of space. One fades, and fresh shades spring up in its place. Jades — like the wings of a dragonfly resting on young lily-pads. Crimson — like the tongue of carmine that skims on the tips of rusty peonies. Lilac — with the faint dust that slips over the wistaria blossoms. Silver as magnolias stroked by moonlight, blue-mauve, dove-gray, livid azaleas, fire-ball dahlias ... all of them shouting their vivid promises. Let the doubting Thomases scatter their seeds of distrust. Matter is matter. Who needs further affirmation? Let the stars shatter themselves, heedless of gravitation; there is an end even to infinity. Straight lines bend not only in a poet's rhymes. Times have changed. Science is ranged on the side of the singer who has learned to distort the widely assorted phenomena of life. Circles are no longer round. Sound can be seen. Light can be weighed. Black is made white; the last have come first. The worst, one thinks, may be the best. East is West: and the great world shrinks.
But the warning is vain. The intrepid rider, scorning conventions, is out of hearing. Clearing the three dimensions of space, her racer thunders sonorously out of Boston and is lost in new flights over Peru. Ascending and tossed in smoke, it blunders through what Mary Austin calls " our Amerind folk-lore. " It soars over the parched wall of China; strips the starched borders of eighteenth century artifice; skips to the balladists' Middle Ages; burns through the pallid pages of sages and returns, as unwearied as when it hastened forth, to north of Brookline and Points Adjacent. The abused beast never trips although the Muse applies the whip remorselessly. The strong horse flies as though each poem were a gruelling race; his headlong pace is a gallop, at best. Every step is a dazzle of light; a bright adventure in excitement. He is pressed on ... and on. ... A zest that crackles and knows no rest.
Everything fares the same; it shares this unrelieved tension. At the mention of a name, of an enamel-studded frieze, budded fruit trees or flower gardens — everything suddenly hardens, shoots, flames, spins, turns and burns with an almost savage intensity. Nature seems to have lost its usual stature; it becomes an immense contrapuntal series of frontal attacks; an unrelaxed assault of suns that clang like gongs, clouds that crash and splinter, boughs that clash and rouse their roots, a lark that " shoots up like a popgun ball. " ... It is all rigorously fortissimo, enthralling in its vigor; appallingly energetic.
Musically alone, the tones of it are full of uncanny changes. A strange and unearthly symphony is heard here; queer tympani add their blows to this polyphonic prose. There is the patter of clicking bones and the quick, dry chatter of xylophones, the hiss of tambourines, the cymbals' shivering kiss, the high quiver of triangles, the clack and mutter of drum-sticks tapping on slackened guts.
And colors! Nothing duller than bright blue, new white, light green of an almost obscene brilliance; millions of reds and purples that blaze and splutter; buttercup-yellows and iris-tinted fires that mellow the polished sides of space. One fades, and fresh shades spring up in its place. Jades — like the wings of a dragonfly resting on young lily-pads. Crimson — like the tongue of carmine that skims on the tips of rusty peonies. Lilac — with the faint dust that slips over the wistaria blossoms. Silver as magnolias stroked by moonlight, blue-mauve, dove-gray, livid azaleas, fire-ball dahlias ... all of them shouting their vivid promises. Let the doubting Thomases scatter their seeds of distrust. Matter is matter. Who needs further affirmation? Let the stars shatter themselves, heedless of gravitation; there is an end even to infinity. Straight lines bend not only in a poet's rhymes. Times have changed. Science is ranged on the side of the singer who has learned to distort the widely assorted phenomena of life. Circles are no longer round. Sound can be seen. Light can be weighed. Black is made white; the last have come first. The worst, one thinks, may be the best. East is West: and the great world shrinks.
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