Wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. He made violins sing him.
Perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization.
Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever been dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by its elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing Machine-Trainers.
Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men possessed by school-machines cannot be educators.
The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet, discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor poet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect, in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect to keep very long from losing their souls?
The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is that this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at the machines. They blame the locomotive.
A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive, and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the cab.
This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up into the cab.
First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the other poets.
In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and dells and love and above, the better.
Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry must make men next.
The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough.
We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us."