CALENDARS. T HERE is something romantic about a new calendar !
The meanest and most utilitarian " date card " suggests prophecy while still it is January. Neither that nor the gaily decorated thing presented by the butcher to the cook can be quite emotionally negligible. The most prosaically minded amongst us must experience .a certain thrill as we throw away the old calendar and put up the new. We oannot help wondering what will happen of good or evil before it is than . • d again.
It is strange, when one comes to think of it, that the calendar has not taken a more prominent place than it has among the symbols of daily life. It has been used in commemoration of the saints, but, so far as we remember, no great work of art or literature, with the possible-exception of Beble's Christian. Year, owes its inspiration to it. Many very poor anthologies concern themselves with the list of coming days, but no great one, we think (leaving out, of course, the " proper prayers " of the Prayer Book), has ever been gathered together under its shadow. Yet the calendar is always before us making its tacit suggestion—one, however, which only those incapable of greatly availing themselves of it appear to perceive. For a really good anthology put together upon such a system there is certainly an opening. The simpler public, indeed, would seem to be hungering for one, to judge by their devotion to haphazard lists of quotations which they will accept in any form— from shaving-papers -to smartly-bound little gift-books. It does not seem much to matter if they come from Shake- speare or-Scripture or Ella Wheeler Wilcox or are a hotch- potch of all eo long os they are short. Might not a new literary calendar be composed in such a manner as to be both delightful and educative ? Is it not thinkable that three hundred and sixty-five quotations averaging a page each might be made to illustrate the history of English poetry, say from Chaucer to Walter de In Mare ? An intelligent .person could surely get from such a book a bird's-eye view of English poetry. We say such a book, but we mean such a calendar, for the leaves should be loosely held together so as to permit of their being torn off and studied at leisure—or_at lunch--,-if the reader catching sight of something which interested him during his morning toilet wished to read it more carefully. Per- haps the idea is impossible with paper and printing so dear, but it seems a pity not to exploit for good the half- conscious hope at the back of the mind of those Who read little that they will one day find a small jewel of wisdom in the form of a quotation which will throw a real light upon life. Simple people who have neither time nor wish to read serious books have yet their own passion for literature. It is they who made the proverbs and stored them in their memories, and it is they who in the long run decide whether the witty sayings of each generation shall perish with it or live for ever. Their judgment seems to be almost infallible, for all the sayings they preserve are true. Would it be quite impossible to do for painting or for music what we have imagined someone doing in the form of a calendar for literature I Would the practical difficulties be too great ? Any form of pictorial reproduction is perhaps ruled out by the question of expense, but a few bars sug- gesting at least to musicians the representative works of the past and present could surely be found for every day. Such, for instance, as the opening phrase of the Eroica or a chip from one of the latest fanfares.
There is something rather shocking to the sophisticated mind in the thought of cutting poetic gems out of their context. But as a matter of fact such mutilation is inevitable. Whether the gems are put together in a book or not, they are used separately and out of their context in all good talk and all good writing. The art of quoting well is a superb art. There are writers and speakers so accomplished in it that the tarnish of time is removed from the words they make use of, and they sound fresh to those who have known them from infancy. They can turn an old light on to a new scene in such a manner that the light itself seems new. These are the masters of quotation, and they make the best-worn wisdom sparkle in a new context.
The determination to keep a diary probably has often owed its origin to the sight of a new calendar. It is a very common New Year's resolution, and one hardly ever kept. Yet most of us heartily wish that we had carried out our intention. It is so vexing to feel how many pictures once so vivid become blurred as time goes on and the memory becomes too full and mechanically turns out some of its records. It would have been so easy to have written it all down, we say to ourselves. But would it ? In mono- tonous times a diary is often dull both to write and to read. There are many crises in life when we dare not accentuate anxiety by putting it down in black and white ; and in like manner all extraordinary happiness seems to bring with it a certain fear of loss in its conscious contemplation. Novels in diary form are never quite out of fashion, though we do not remember that any great novelist has ever employed the device. We have sometimes wondered if any mute, inglorious novelists ever amuse themselves by keeping an intentionally inaccurate diary, one suggested by the facts but not bound at all by them. It might be an amusing experiment to try for a year to write the chronicle of our lives in bright colours, keeping within the limits of the likely, accepting the scene and the circumstances more or less as they are, accepting the fact of our own personalities, but within these well-defined boundaries letting our imagi- nations run riot. Some pretty books might be turned out in this way, and those who made the experiment would tell themselves a great deal about themselves which in after years they might find amusing—more amusing than the truth. A mixture of a daydream and a diary would 'bring us very near to the truth about personality. Somehow at the beginning of the present year the mysterious message of the new calendar is more disturbing than usuaL There is, so far as public things are concerned, so much movement in the air, so -many hopes, so much risk. Private life reflects public life--or is it the other way ? For us all there seems somehow to be more at stake than usual. Strange developments of the perwer of mind over matter produce an exciting sense of mystery and affect each of us personally. At the same time, in the remodelling of society and the wild promises held out of the mental regeneration to result from it, the power of matter over mind seems farther-reaching than ever. Perhaps life was never so truly an adventure. By this time next year what may not be written in the blank spaces of the calendar
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