The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

THE PIONEER. JANUARY, 1843. INTRODUCTION. Dr. Joun Nortu, a man of some mark in his — which only does not offend taste, because it day, wrote on the first leaf of his notebook lacks even the life and strength to produce any these significant words ;—‘‘I beshrew his decided impression whatever. heart that gathers my opinion from anything We are the farthest from wishing to see wrote here!’’ As we seated ourselves to the what many so ardently pray for — namely, a hard task of writing an introduction for our new National literature ; for the same mighty lyre literary journal, this sentence arose to our minds. of the human heart answers the touch of the It seemed to us to point clearly at the arch- master in all ages and in, every clime, and any want. of our periodical literature. We find literature, as far as it is national, is diseased, opinions enough and to spare, but scarce any inasmuch as it appeals to some climatic pecu- of the healthy, natural growth of our soil. If liarity, rather than to the universal nature. native, they are seldom more than scions of a Moreover everything that tends to, encourage public opinion, too often planted and watered by the sentiment of caste, to widen the boundary the prejudices or ignorant judgments of individ- between races, and so to put farther off the hope uals, to be better than a upas-tree shedding a of one great brotherhood, should be steadily poisonous blight on any literature that may resisted by all good men, But we do long for chance to grow up under it. Or if foreign, they a natural literature. One green leaf, though are, to borrow a musical term, “‘ recollections ”’ of the veriest weed, is worth all the crape and of Blackwood or the quarterlies, of Wilson, wire, flowers of the daintiest. Paris milliners. Macauley, or Carlyle—not. direct imitations, For it is the glory of Nature that.in her least but endeavors, as it were, to. write with their part she gives us all, and in,that simple love- cast-off pens fresh-nibbed for Cisatlantic service. token of her’s we may behold the type of all The whole regiment. comes. one by one to our her sublime mysteries, as in the least fragment feast of letters in the same yellow domino. of the true artist we discern the working of the Criticism, instead of being governed as it should same forces which culminate gloriously in a be by the eternal and unchanging laws of Hamlet or a Faust. We would no longer see beauty which are a part of the soul’s divine the spirit of our people held up as a mirror to nature, seems rather to be a striving to reduce the oLD wWorLD ; — but rather lying like one of Art to one dead level of conventional mediocrity our own inland oceans, reflecting net only the VoL. I.— NO. 1. 1 : | : 2 THE PIONEER. Lh wee mountain and the rock, the forest and the red- speak and think ill—a freedom matched with man, but also the steamboat and the railcar, the which the lowest of all other slaveries were as cornfield and the factory. Let us learn that the blue tent of Heaven to a dungeon — and romance is not married to the past, that it too little freedom to think, and speak, and act is not the birthright of ferocious ignorance the highest and holiest promptings of the eter- and chivalric barbarity, — but that it ever was nal soul. We cheat to-morrow, to satisfy the and is an inward quality, the darling child of petty dunning of to-day ; we bribe ourselves the sweetest refinements and most gracious with a bubble reputation, whose empty light- amenities of peaceful gentleness, and that it ness alone lends it a momentary elevation, and can never die till only water runs in these red show men our meanest part, as if we could rivers of the heart, that cunning adept which make ourselves base enough to believe that we can make vague cathedrals with blazing oriels should offend their vanity, by showing our and streaming spires out of our square meeting- noblest and highest. Are prejudices to be boxes overcome by grovelling to them! Is Truth * Whose rafters sprout upon the shady side.” any longer worthy of the name, when she Re (NE 35>, A We do not mean to say that our writers stoops to take falsehood by the hand, and caresses her, and would fain wheedle her to should not profit by the results of those who have gone before them, nor gather from all forego her proper nature? Can we make men countries those excellencies which are the noble, the aim and end of every literature effects of detached portions of that universal worthy of the name, by showing them our own tendency to the Beautiful, which must be cen- want of nobleness? In the name of all holy tred in the Great Artist. But let us not go and beautiful things at once, no! We wanta forth to them ; rather let us draw them by manly, straightforward, ¢rue literature, a criti- sympathy of nature to our own heart, which is cism which shall give more grace to beauty, iin? ae the only living principle of every true work. and more depth to truth, by lovingly embracing The artist must use the tools of others, and them wherever they may lie hidden, and a understand their use, else were their lives fruit- creed whose truth and nobleness shall be less to him, and his, in iarn, vain to all who ensured, by its being a freedom from all came after: but the skill must be of his own creeds. toilsome winning, and he must not, like The young heart of every generation looks Goethe’s magician’s apprentice, let the tools forth upon the world with restless and bitter become his masters. But it seems the law of longing. ‘To it the earth still glitters with the our literature to receive its impulses from with- dews of a yet unforfeited Eden, and in the out rather than from within. We ask oftener midst stands the untasted tree of knowledge of than the wise king of Ashantee, ‘‘ What is good and evil. We hear men speak of the thought of us in England?’’ We write with restless spirit of the age, as if our day were the fear of the newspapers before our eyes, peculiar in this regard. But it has always been every one of which has its critic, the Choragus the same. The Young is radical, the Old con- of his little circle, self-elected expounder of the servative ; they who have not, struggle to get, ee laws of Nature — which he at first blush under- and they who have gotten, clench their fingers wae +4 stands more thoroughly than they whom Nature to keep. ‘The Young, exulting in its tight and herself has chosen, and who have studied them springy muscles, stretches out its arms to clasp life-long — and who unites at pleasure the exe- the world as its plaything ; and the Old bids it cutive with the judiciary to crush some offender be a good boy and mind its papa, and it shall mad enough to think for himself. Men seem have sugar-plums. But still the new spirit endowed with an insane alacrity to believe that yearns and struggles, and expects great things ; wisdom elects the dullest heads for her confi- still the Old shakes its head, ominous of univer- dants, and crowd to burn incense to the hooting sal anarchy; still the world rolls calmly on, owl, while the thoughtful silence of the god- and the youth grown ojd shakes its wise head dess makes them to mistake her for her bird. at the next era. Is there any more danger to We boast much of our freedom, but they who be looked for in the radicalism of youth than in boast thereof the loudest have mostly a secret the conservatism of age? Both gases must be sense of fetters. mixt ere the cooling rain will fall on our seed- field. ‘The true reason for the fear which we “ License they mean when they cry liberty ; ” often see expressed of a freedom which shall and there is among us too much freedom to be debased into destructiveness and license, is  HUDSON RIVER. 3 to be found in a false judgment of the natural age, and sometimes go near its deeper heart. progress of things. Cheerfully will men reve- Yet, while we shall aim at that gravity which rence all that is true, whether in the new or the is becoming of a manly literature, we shall old. It is only when you would force them to hope also to satisfy that lighter and sprightlier revere falsehoods that they will reluctantly element of the soul, without whose due culture throw off all reverence, without which the spirit the character is liable to degenerate into a mo- of man must languish, and at last utterly die. rose bigotry and selfish precisianism. Truth, in her natural and infinitely various To be one exponent of a young spirit which exponents of beauty and love, is all that the shall aim at power through gentleness, the soul reverences long ; and, as Truth is univer- only mean for its secure attainment, and in sal and absolute, there can never be any balance which freedom shall be attempered to love by a in the progress of the soul till one law is reverence for all beauty wherever it may exist, acknowledged in all her departments. Radi- is our humble hope. And