Sherwood Anderson

The new note in the craft of writing is in danger, as are all new and beautiful things born into the world, of being talked to death in the cradle. Already a cult of the new has sprung up, and doddering old fellows, yellow with their sins, run here and there crying out that they are true prophets of the new, just as, following last year’s exhibit, every age-sick American painter began hastily to inject into his own work something clutched out of the seething mass of new forms and new effects scrawled upon the canvases by the living young cubists and futurists. Confused by the voices, they raised also their voices, multiplying the din. Forgetting the soul of the workman, they grasped at lines and solids, getting nothing.

In the trade of writing the so-called new note is as old as the world. Simply stated, it is a cry for the reinjection of truth and honesty into the craft; it is an appeal from the standards set up by money-making magazine and book publishers in Europe and America to the older, sweeter standards of the craft itself; it is the voice of the new man, come into a new world, proclaiming his right to speak out of the body and soul of youth, rather than through the bodies and souls of the master craftsmen who are gone.

In all the world there is no such thing as an old sunrise, an old wind upon the cheeks, or an old kiss from the lips of your beloved; and in the craft of writing there can be no such thing as age in the souls of the young poets and novelists who demand for themselves the right to stand up and be counted among the soldiers of the new. That there are such youths is brother to the fact that there are ardent young cubists and futurists, anarchists, socialists, and feminists; it is the promise of a perpetual sweet new birth of the world; it is as a strong wind come out of the virgin west.

One does not talk of his beloved even among the friends of his beloved; and so the talk of the new note in writing will be heard coming from the mouths of the aged and from the lips of oily ones who do not know of what they talk, but run about in circles, making noise and clamor. Do not be confused by them. They but follow the customs of their kind. They are the stript priests of the falling temples, piling stone on stone to build a new temple, that they may exact tribute as before.

Something has happened in the world of men. Old standards and old ideas tumble about our heads. In the dust and confusion of the falling of the timbers of the temple many voices are raised. Among the voices of the old priests who weep are raised also the voices of the many who cry, “Look at us! We are the new! We are the prophets; follow us!”

Something has happened in the world of men. Temples have been wrecked before only to be rebuilt, and destroying youth has danced only to become in turn a builder and in time a priest, muttering old words. Nothing in all of this new is new except this—that beside the youth dancing in the dust of the falling timbers is a maiden also dancing and proclaiming herself. “We will have a world not half new but all new!” cry the youth and the maiden, dancing together.

Do not be led aside by the many voices crying of the new. Be ready to accept hardship for the sake of your craft in America—that is craft love.