"Why, you are too full of life for that."
"But that's just what the Ibsen plays are--full of life," she answered.
"If you're bored by them it's because you're probably looking for
stories, for 'action.' But art is something more significant than that.
There is moral force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the
old masters."
"That's exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the up-to-date
rabbis are always talking about--moral force, moral beauty, and
moral clam-chowder," Mendelson retorted
The real-estate man uttered a chuckle
"Would you turn the theater into a church or a reform synagogue?"
the photographer continued. "People go to see a play because they
want to enjoy themselves, not because they feel that their morals
need darning."
"But in good literature the moral is not preached as a sermon,"
Miss Tevkin replied. "It naturally follows from the life it presents.
Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page
after page and there doesn't seem to be any substance to it." She
said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding views of this
kind
"Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens, too?" I
ventured
"I do," she answered, in the same doleful tone
She went on to develop her argument.
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