Life, 1920-07-08 · page 37 of 40
Life — July 8, 1920 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This essay satirizes the declining aesthetic standards of educated young people. Alfred Noyes (a real poet) conducted an experiment: he mixed nineteen examples of contemporary "rubbish" poetry with one beautiful Shakespeare lyric, asking students to identify the best and worst. All eleven students chose Shakespeare as the worst—a damning verdict on modern taste. The author argues that young men now prefer mediocre contemporary writers (Briggs, Ring Lardner) to literary masters (Hogarth, Dickens). The satire extends to fashion: just as they'd rather date a girl with no sleeves and bobbed hair than one in traditional dress, they prefer modern "lean scraps" to timeless artistic "delicacies." The point: education hasn't improved judgment; contemporary culture has corrupted aesthetic sensibility. Modern readers prefer breakfast gossip to Shakespeare itself—a biting commentary on declining literary standards among the supposedly educated classes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ABLACH Face Powoer LABLACHE BESPEAKS ne quality, and its unusual, rehned odor, wh velvety skins an ions. Ever com stant. is Lablache, but deli- eately unobtrusive. An old Evvorite, indispensable and be dangerous. Flesh, White. Pink. or Crean, 7c aor of dor. stsor by mai. Over two million ‘boxes sold y.. Reed 10e for & Je hoe BEN. LEVY CO. French Perfumers, Dest. 14 125 Klagston Bt, Besioa, Mass In Our Own Tongue ALFRED NOYES recently gave M": an examinat He selected nineteen of the nto his advanced class | { in poetry. poorest examples of modern poetry that he could find and placed among this rub- | bish—as he called it—one of Shake- — | speare’s least known but most beautiful lyrics. Then he asked the class to choose the best and the worst. For the best he received eleven varied specimens of rub- bish, while every one of his eleven stu- dents picked out Shakespeare's lyric as the worst | To Mr. Noyes, it is a calamity that the | most highly educated young day prefer the lean scraps from the frugal board of their contemporaries to the rare - delicacies that fell from the table of , an old-world genius. And he would be shocked if he knew that they consider Briggs a far superior artist to Hogarth, and Ring Lardner a much greater humor- ist than the author of Pickwick Papers. Yet this is the truth. come down to it, there is no more reason And when you fora ung man of the present genera tion to go into raptures over a Shake oy spearean lyric than there is for his fal’- ng ing in love with a girl who wears a yard or of s around her neck, a starched If he must f. in love, he prefers a girl who puffs her hair out over her ears, wears no sleeves H and my bodice and a hoop skirt. shimmies. And when it comes to é L. E. Waterman Company 191 Broadway, New York SAN FRANCISCO BOSTON becomes a sweet memory # — made still sweeter by the thought of your fragrant Flowers. : The Week End > ; Tou can Is . yy. I serempor ens XUM Say tt with Flowers’ States and Gx Telegraph Delivery tn amy port never rere are terature, he'd rather have breakfast with Fe P. Art, after all, is A. than with Shakespeare. what good are interp speak our own tongue? 5.1 XE are two places where a wo she always place is at a bargain-sale, and the other is on the end of her nose. comicbooks.com