Smirt, an Urbane Nightmare

THIS is an awkward volume to review.
Cabell has powers and makes a point or two,
Though I don’t relish much his cuts and thrusts
Who, when he aims to shock, at most disgusts;
Whose delicacy simply must be branded
As heavy-footed or as heavy-handed
As his who should be hero of the song,
That bull-voiced super-Jurgen, Huey Long.

O William Morris, who once had light and heat!
O Maurice Hewlett! And O Wardour Street!
From these derived, miraculous upheaval
Of the dull modern, duller mediæval,
Comes Jack who would be quick, though not so nimble,
Sounding his brass, tinkling his phallic symbol.
I cannot fathom it. It baffles me.
This man had breeding, brains, and courtesy.
Of those three, breeding, courtesy, and brains,
Only vestigial evidence remains.
And we’ve a Golden Bough-wow saturnine
Who works the tailings of James Frazer’s mine,
A strange Romantic, soiling with foul breath
The precious beauty between birth and death,
Extracting from cold fancy, made not dreamt,
Self-flattery, self-pity, self-contempt,
And mixing up a dubious oneirography
With passages of secondhand pornography,
Absorbed from local Lawrences and Joyces,
Who, though not deep, moan round with many voices.
In short, the doubtful legend of Arachne
Is sickbed o’er with intellectual acne.
Judge your own judgment, but I’ll make no apology
For eschatology shrunken to scatology.

Why all the rumpus? We have, no doubt, defects,
Grandiose vulgarities, little intellects.
Yet in the world, as far as I can see,
Was never more for Homer than for me,
Although the nasty fact cannot be hid
That I can’t do the things that Homer did.
But, why should that get upon Cabell’s nerves?
He has the kind of public he deserves,
A middling public, rather low than high,
Not to be sneezed at. And damn it! So have I.
But, let me tell you, he should thank his Maker
For the plaudits of ‘the butcher’ and ‘the baker,’
Who give him their obtuse consideration
And do not turn aside from affectation.

Wow! What urbanity! Strong men run insane
When Cabell threatens to become urbane
And the fountain pen excretes some arch inanity.
It’s not urbanity. It’s suburbanity,
Or worse yet, sub-Bourbonity, to coin
A word in which pun and punctilio join.

O Cabell! Cabell! Cabell! One word more:
Would you be Rabelais, then learn to roar.
For every Rabelais that plays the game
Must bellow in Thélème, or in Poictesme.
In vain — in vain! You cannot do the work,
If, after the raw line, you still will smirk.
No, you must shout magnificence obscene,
Rolling in ordure, royally unclean,
In Mrs. Grundy’s teeth howl out crescendo,
Nor hiss, diminuendo, innuendo.
And above all so well relearn your part
That none will think you think that Smirt is smart,
An alteration that could never hurt
And, let me tell you, would be smart of Smirt.

So much for middling mockery heavy-handed!
The book has pleasing places, to be candid.
I ’m pleased that Smirt felt that he knew all evil,
Having once been a book-reviewing weevil.
I even like the intention and the scheme,
Visionary longing and the Will to dream,
Although this thought your wandering brain may strike:
It does n’t greatly matter what I like.