Voices of To-Morrow Critical Studies of the New Spirit in Literature

THE sentence that left the deepest impression upon me in a recent perusal of Edwin Björkman's "Voices of To-morrow" was this: "Eternal disharmony is the price which must b e paid for eternal progress." A whole philosophy of life is contained in that statement. Unrest is surely the word that best characterizes the dominant mood of most of the writers whom Mr. Björkman interprets. Strindberg, Björnson, Maeterlinck, Bergson, Selma Lagerlöf, Francis Grierson, Edith Wharton, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad and Robert Herrick-none of these, with the possible exception of Maeterlinck, suggests anything quiet or stationary. At the heart of all tugs the Zeitgeist summoning to fuller and freer expression. They are contradictory-divided not only against one another, but against themselves. And so we find Strindberg, for instance, passing from mood to mood; fiercely misogynist, yet lover of woman; an individualist and. a Socialist. Bergson is a similarly contradictory figure. Yet from writers such as Strindberg and Bergson have come great inspiration for us all. We feel in them and in their kind a passionate idealism, a passionate sincerity, and an impulse that puts truth ahead of all else. I feel this same impulse in Edwin Björkman and honor him for it. There is one quality, however, that I think all the writers he describes have in common. They are all trying to extend the boundaries of life and thought. They all believe in freedom. They probably recognize that it will be a richly varied and not a uniform freedom. They have given up the idea of enclosing existence under dogmas. They are willing to let life play free, even though liberty some-times leads to disorder. It is this quality perhaps, that, chiefly entitles them to be called the true "Voices of To-morrow." ... -The American-Scandinavian Review, Volume 2