If, for the sake of making a beginning, one2 must fix on that memorable9 day when Beardsley burnt his boats as the date of the opening of the period of the nineties, it must be remembered that this arbitrary limitation of the movement is rather a convenience than a necessity. To divide up anything so continuous as literature and art into sections like a bookcase is uncommonly10 like damming up a portion of a stream to look at the fish in it. It breaks the contact between what was before and what came after. However, as one must go a long way back to investigate accurately11 how a new movement in art arises, and as it is tedious to follow up all the clues that lead to the source, it will be perhaps as well not to worry too much over the causes of the movement or over the influences from which it arose. Let us accept the fact so well pointed12 out by Mr. W. G. Blaikie Murdoch in The Renaissance13 of the Nineties, that the output of the nineties was ‘a distinct secession from the art of the previous age ..., in fact the eighties, if they have a distinct character, were a time of transition, a period of simmering for revolt rather than of actual outbreak; and it was in the succeeding ten years that, thanks to certain young men, an upheaval14 was really made.’
It is to France if anywhere we can trace the3 causes of this new attitude. First of all, in painting, the great French impressionists, with Manet and Monet leading them; the doctrine of plein air painting, and all the wonder of this new school of painting gave a new thrill to art. Then about 1885 the literary symbolists killed the Parnassian school of poetry, while at the same time there was a new esplozione naturlistica. Paris, always the city of light, was again fluting15 new melodies for the world. In the Rue16 de Rome, Stéphane Mallarmé received all the world of art and letters. To the Rue de Rome came Whistler, John Payne, George Moore, Oscar Wilde, and others. The French influence that swept over to England was as powerful as that which stirred artistic Germany, creating a German period of the nineties in the group of symbolists who, under Stefan George, issued the now famous Bl?tter für die Kunst. The Englishmen, indeed, who attended these soirées of the Rue de Rome did not come away empty-handed. Not only did their own work suffer an artistic change through this influence, but they handed it on to their successors. So directly and indirectly17 the great French painters and writers of the day influenced the art of England, creating the opportunity for a distinct secession from the4 art of the previous age. At the same time French art and literature were never stationary18 but always developing. It was only in 1890 that we find the real Régnier appearing. In the same year Paul Fort, just eighteen summers like Beardsley, founded the Théatre d’Art. All this French art at high pressure had a stimulating19 effect on English art; and, in fact, remained its main stimulus20 until the Boer War, when the imperialism21 of writers like Kipling became the chief interest. So it was in no small degree the literary symbolists, the plein air painters and all the motives22 that lay behind them, that awoke the Englishmen of the nineties to new possibilities in art and life. In Paris, in 1890, Rothenstein met Conder, and at once the two became lifelong friends. There they encountered artists like Toulouse Lautrec and Anquetin.
The first men, of course, to realise this feverish23 activity in France were the elder men, who handed on the tidings to the younger majority. Thus the men of the eighties turned the attention of the unknown of the nineties towards France, so that Englishmen again began to remember that something else counted in Paris besides lingerie. In dealing24 then with the influences that helped to beget5 the period, it is as well to remember that if Walter Pater and Whistler were its forerunners25, so to speak, Oscar Wilde and George Moore were responsible in no small degree for many of the tendencies that afterwards became prevalent.
Wilde himself, in fact, was artistically26 an influence for evil on his weaker juniors. His social success, his keen persiflage27, his indolent pose of greatness, blinded them as much as it did the ο? πολλο? to his real artistic industry and merit. His worst works were, in fact, with one exception, his disciples28. Richard Le Gallienne in his Quest of the Golden Girl and Prose Fancies was watered-down Wilde, and very thin at that. Even John Davidson, in Baptist Lake and Earl Lavender, strove in vain to overtake the masterly ease with which Wilde’s ordered prose periods advance like cohorts of centurions29 to the sound of a full orchestra. Wilde’s best work—his Prose Poems, his poem The Harlot’s House, his one-acter Salomé, and one or two of the stories in the House of Pomegranates—will, however, remain as some of the finest flowers of the age’s art. Yet Wilde, in reality, was senior to the nineties proper, and was much too good an artist to approve of much of the work that was6 done in imitation of himself during the period by the mere30 hangers-on of the nineties. He was with the men of the nineties, but not of them. Beardsley, indeed, the age’s real king, took the liberty of mocking at Wilde in the very illustrations, or rather decorations, intended for Wilde’s most elaborate production. Wilde, in his turn, never wrote for The Yellow Book, which he disliked intensely. Again, we know what Symons’s opinion of Wilde was from his essay on him as a poseur31. In fact, Wilde was a writer apart from the others, though undoubtedly32 his presence among them up to the time of his débacle was a profound direct influence.
On the other hand, George Moore, as a reactionary33 influence against Victorianism,1 as a senior who had lived and written in Paris, was more of an indirect factor for the younger men. For a time he lived in the Temple, where many of them had come to live. By his works he helped to disseminate34 the influences of the great French writers and painters that had come into his own life. His own writings came to others surcharged with ‘The poisonous honey of France.’ In his Modern Painting, in his novel, Evelyn Innes, in his era of servitude to7 Flaubert’s majesty35, he is of the nineties. But the nineties with George Moore were merely a phase out of which he grew, as out of many others. But when the nineties began Moore contrived36 to assist at their birth in the same way as he did later at that of the Celtic renaissance. Indeed, it is said, in Moore’s novel, Mike Fletcher (1889), one can obtain a glimpse of the manner in which the period was to burgeon37.
1 See his Literature at Nurse, 1885.
There was, indeed, amongst the younger men in those early days a wonderful spirit of camaraderie38. It was an attractive period full of the glamour39 of youth before it went down fighting for Art with a capital A, before age had chilled its blood or dulled its vision. And there came, no doubt, an immense vitality40 for them all, a stimulating energy to each one, from this meeting together in London. Indeed, coming together by chance, as it were, in London, they not only discovered one another and the ineffable41 boon42 of comradeship, but they also rediscovered, through Whistler, London for art. So once again the streets of London began to be written about, not it is true in the Dickens manner, but still with even as great a love as his. They went so far as to attempt to institute real French café life, by having meetings8 at the Cheshire Cheese and evenings in the Domino Room of the Café Royal. Symons wrote of the ballets of Leicester Square; Dowson of the purlieus round the docks; Davidson made poems of Fleet Street; Binyon sang of white St. Martin’s and the golden gallery of St. Paul’s; Crackanthorpe sketched43 his London vignettes; Street talks of the indefinable romance of Mayfair. In fact the nineties brought the Muses44 back to town. In a cabman’s shelter, in Soho restaurants of doubtful cheapness, in each other’s rooms, they rejoiced in each other’s company. At the same time Beardsley, by a stroke of luck through the good services of friends, was commissioned by Mr. Dent45 to illustrate46 Le Morte d’Arthur. The Bodley Press had begun in Vigo Street in 1887. Symons, Yeats, and others had already published their first books. The curtain had gone up on the drama of the nineties, of which this is intended as a brief appreciation47.
At the date of the appearance of these young men amid a mass of lucubrators, there was actually a band of genuine young writers (besides the big Victorians like Meredith and Hardy), who were turning out good work, and who were under the sway of that old Pan of poetry, Henley of The National Observer. These9 young men of Henley must not be therefore confused with the Yellow Book group. They were often deliberately48 coarse, not because they liked it, but because it was part of their artistic gospel. And when one considers the methods of the feeblest of them, one sees more ruffianly sturdy British horseplay than art, more braying49 and snarling50 than sounding on the lute51. But among the best of them, Stevenson, Kipling, and Steevens, was a fine loyalty52 to the traditions of the leading spirit of the Observer Henley—Pan playing on his reed with his crippled hoofs53 hiding amid the water-lilies of the purling stream. All these last writers and artists were men of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; while, on the other hand, the young men who had, so to speak, just come to town, were full of the Latin tradition. The main thing in the lives of these last was French literature and art, and out of this influence came not only the art, but the eccentricities54, of the coterie, which is so often called the nineties. Theirs was a new spirit. They were of the order of the delectable55 ‘Les Jeunes.’ Epigram opened a new career with Oscar Wilde; Beardsley dreamed of a strange world; Ernest Dowson used to drink hashish and make love in Soho in the French manner of Henri Murger’s Latin Quarter—for a time,10 indeed, hair was worn long, and the ties of the petty homunculi of the Wilde crowd were of lace; but, fortunately, artists like Beardsley and the other men worth while did not cultivate foolishness except as a protection against the bourgeois56.
But enough of these affectations; the point I wish to bring out here is that the men who drew and wrote for The Savoy wrote their art with a difference to that of those others who were their contemporaries but appeared in the first instance as a virile57 imperialistic58 movement in The Scots Observer and The National Observer. The artists of the nineties were more, as we say rather badly in English, of the ‘kid-glove school.’ A note of refinement59, a distinction of utterance60, an obsession61 in Art marked all their best as well as their worst work. But this by no means prevented the two schools having a very salutary influence on each other. Indeed, we find a man like Mr. W. B. Yeats, who really belonged to a third movement, his own Celtic renaissance, publishing first of all lyrics62 like ‘The Lake Isle63 of Innisfree’ under the banner of Henley, and attending a year or two later the Rhymers’ Club meetings before he found his own demesne64. But to his former comrades of the Cheshire Cheese, the men11 who concern us here, Yeats has found occasion to render befitting praise in the well-known lines:
You had to face your ends when young— ’Twas wine or women, or some curse— But never made a poorer song That you might have a heavier purse;
Nor gave loud service to a cause That you might have a troop of friends: You kept the Muses’ sterner laws And unrepenting faced your ends.
In fact, since influences and counter-influences in all ages of literature are such subtle vermin to ferret out, I propose to avoid as far as possible any generalities in that connection, and to interpret broadly and briefly65 a somewhat vague period that reviewers have acquired the habit of calling ‘the nineties.’ What then was this period? It was a portion of the last decade of the last century which began about 1890, and passing through the Rhymers’ Club, blossomed out into The Yellow Book and The Savoy periodicals, and produced works like Beardsley’s drawings, Conder’s fans, Dowson’s poetry, and Hubert Crackanthorpe’s short stories. The men who composed the group are too numerous to recall in their entirety, even if a satisfactory list of such a nature could be produced. So all12 I intend to attempt here is a summary of the activities of certain typical examples of the group as will serve to furnish an appreciation of their general work. And the way I propose to obtain this view is to begin by considering Beardsley as the central figure of the period; to deal next with the two most vital manifestoes of the movement and their respective literary editors, The Yellow Book and Henry Harland, The Savoy and Mr. Arthur Symons, passing on in turn to the writers of fiction, the poets, the essayists and dramatists not of the whole decade, but only to those with whom this particular movement is concerned; it will then be time to make a few deductions66 on the spirit of the whole of this tendency. By rigidly67 adhering to only those men who were actually of the nineties group I am only too conscious these pages will be considered often to be lacking in the great literary events and figures of the age, such as Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, the rise of the Kipling star, the tragedy of Wilde, the coming of Conrad, etc. etc. Yet the sole object of this scant68 summary would be defeated if I began to prattle69 of these and others like Bernard Shaw. In fact its raison d’être constrains70 a method of treatment which must not be broken.
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1
ledger
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| n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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germinating
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| n.& adj.发芽（的）v.（使）发芽( germinate的现在分词 ) | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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coterie
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| n.(有共同兴趣的)小团体，小圈子 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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fluting
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| 有沟槽的衣料； 吹笛子； 笛声； 刻凹槽 | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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forerunners
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| n.先驱( forerunner的名词复数 )；开路人；先兆；前兆 | |
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artistically
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| adv.艺术性地 | |
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persiflage
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| n.戏弄；挖苦 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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centurions
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| n.百人队长，百夫长（古罗马的军官，指挥百人）( centurion的名词复数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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poseur
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| n.装模作样的人 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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reactionary
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| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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disseminate
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| v.散布；传播 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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burgeon
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| v.萌芽，发芽；迅速发展 | |
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camaraderie
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| n.同志之爱，友情 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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dent
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| n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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braying
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| v.发出驴叫似的声音( bray的现在分词 )；发嘟嘟声；粗声粗气地讲话（或大笑）；猛击 | |
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snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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lute
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| n.琵琶，鲁特琴 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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delectable
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| adj.使人愉快的；美味的 | |
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bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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imperialistic
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| 帝国主义的，帝制的 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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lyrics
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| n.歌词 | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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demesne
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| n.领域，私有土地 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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prattle
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| n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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constrains
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| 强迫( constrain的第三人称单数 )； 强使； 限制； 约束 | |
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