of emancipation from older forms of expression, of the rim of finer issues, of compressing into a single page of prose or music the vivid impression of a moment, a lifetime, an eternity. In this phase of his character studies, Huneker's pages form an excellent preachment upon these certain tendencies to an ultra refinement of modern modes of expression, of aesthetics in gen eral. The evolution of literature, art and in a large measure of philosophic thought is from the objective to the subjective, from the real to the ideal. Then in art, as mode of expression, comes the introspective, the psychologic period, and we have deep analy sis and dissection of moods and emotions, individualism; out of this arises the phychologic novel, Nietzsche and his individualism, with him Strauss and his symphonic poem setting of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” which the author in another work characterizes as “this weltering symphony of sin, sorrow and cruel passions.” Further on in the work just quoted Huneker seizes the key-note of the whole matter when he says of “Also Sprach Zarathustra “It is complex with the diseased complexity of the age , and its strivings are the agonized strivings of a morbid Titian.” Nothing could better describe the emptiness, the vanity, the hollowness of this euphistic individualism, and the whole of “Melomaniacs” is a most artifully contrived and executed expose of the manner in which many dilettanti have forced this empty rim of nothingness upon modern art in music and literature. In “The Piper of Dreams,” perhaps the most powerfully writ ten of any of the sketches, we have another composer, Illowsld, gone music-mad, aiming at instilling anarchy in the minds of the common people through his lurid corrosive music. Fie finds something lacking in the classical music, something which Chopin approaches in the mad martial riot of the “Revolt” Polonaise, something which Wagner tried to supply in the Nibelungen Cycle, “Tristan” and “Parsifal” with color, costume, lights and scenery. In describing this revolutionary music of Illowsld, Pluneker’s descriptive and imaginative poems are at their height, parts of it appeal to one as an intellectual debauch almost:
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