diff options
Diffstat (limited to '75706-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 75706-0.txt | 2335 |
1 files changed, 2335 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/75706-0.txt b/75706-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5924ee6 --- /dev/null +++ b/75706-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2335 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75706 *** + + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + Literature Drama Music Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + EDITOR + + MAY, 1916 + + Three Flesh-tints: Ben Hecht + The Incense Burner + The Goldfish in a Bowl + A Nude + “The Compleat Amateur” Harold Bauer + Three Japanese Paintings: Arthur Davison Ficke + Dream of a Chinese Landscape + Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory + The Golden Symphony + The Struggle Sherwood Anderson + A Mischievous Rhapsody of the + First Recurrence + Poems: Daphne Carr + Welt Schmertz + Prisoners + Leo Ornstein Margaret C. Anderson + Nocturne (from Paul Verlaine) Clara Shanafelt + White Mists M. C. A. + Letters from Prison Emma Goldman + Off the Turnpike Amy Lowell + Potatoes in a Cellar R. G. + New York Letter Allan Ross Macdougall + Amber Monochrome Mark Turbyfill + Three Imagist Poets John Gould Fletcher + Rossica Alexander S. Kaun + The Independent Exhibition Lupo de Braila + The Reader Critic + + Published Monthly + + 15 cents a copy + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher + Fine Arts Building + CHICAGO + + $1.50 a year + + Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + VOL. III + + MAY, 1916 + + NO. 3 + + Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson + + + + + Three Flesh-tints + + + BEN HECHT + + + The Incense Burner + + A bending flower rises from its mouth + And sways like the vein of a zephyr. + Threads of moonlight float entangled over it, + Delicate as the breath of a dying woman. + Souls come whispering from its ancient lips, + Laden with thin secrets, + And torn by the long nails of idiot Gods.... + Pale dancers arise, whirling listlessly, + Expiring in a writhing languor. + Heavy-lidded eyes crawl out and open vacantly and close.... + Dried whisps of water break into blue wings. + A sleeping woman’s arm reaches up and curves into a sigh + And scratches at the air with opalescent claws. + Dead pearls drift in a dead circle—till, quivering, + A slow finger rises, balancing a grey moon on its tip. + And then a severed face squeezes out and lolls to and fro, + Its washed purple lips leering with a grotesque sin. + + + The Goldfish in a Bowl + + A tiny shimmering courtesan + Dressed in red spangles, + Weaves a monotonous thread of painted rubies + Through the stagnant curtains of her room. + + Stifling under faint rags, + A dumb enchanted nightingale + Tosses in droll anguish, + Dreaming of the sapphire roses and the crystal fringe and the topaz + silks + That were her lovers. + + + A Nude + + The rich brocade of night, + Sewn with the red dust of roses + And the topaz breath of the sleeping sun + Hangs from the cool ivoried silk of her shoulders. + + The winged beacons of her breasts + Gleam with golden moonlight. + And her eyes are like purple bosomed birds + That circle and beat against the azure gloom. + + Her nakedness is an opal mirror, + Quivering with splintered images. + Her nakedness is a white kiss. + Burning on the shadowed lips of the night. + Her nakedness is the flowing of ghostly water + Under fierce moons— + The poplar silver of the wind that dances in the gardens at night. + + Her nakedness is the golden fabric woven out of bloody grapes + And the dead mists of incense. + + + + + “The Compleat Amateur” + + + or + How Not to be An Artist + + HAROLD BAUER + + (_No, I cannot write you an article. And I add to this the + expression of my fervent hope that no Amateurs are going to be + allowed to scribble for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW. _Speaking as a + subscriber, I haven’t the least desire to read any of H. Bauer’s + clumsy attempts to express himself in a medium that is foreign to + him. Let him stick to his business.... You must write the article + you have in mind yourself. From the depths of your artistic + intuitions draw forth the material and give away the secrets—which + are no secrets. Moreover, don’t confine yourself to music, much less + to piano playing; take in the whole field of art and call it “The + Compleat Amateur, or, How Not To Be an Artist.” I suggest the + following headings.—Extract from a letter of the Author._) + + + I. “_Le Style fait l’homme_” + +If you want to become an author, give up your life to the study of +calligraphy, if a painter, devote yourself to the manufacture of paints +and brushes, if a composer, commit to memory the number of notes in +every standard classical work, and if a singer or instrumentalist, spend +your whole energy in the establishing of a “sound technical foundation.” +Emotional expression can then, if desired, be subsequently smeared like +treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, this +operation requiring neither skill nor expression. + + + II. “_Means to an End_” + +The amateur must learn that technique represents an obstacle to be +overcome and a set of tools to be acquired. It has nothing to do with +expression. Only an imaginative artist like Maeterlinck would suggest +that the road along which the student travels towards his destination is +in reality a link, a connection joining one with the other—an umbilical +cord partaking of the nature and attributes of both traveler and goal. +To a perfectly rational person the road is merely a distance to be +covered, a separation. + + + III. _Personality, or, as some authorities have it: Individuality_ + +This is the greatest asset of the Amateur. An artist is like everybody +in the world. The book we read, the picture we see or the music we hear +which renders tangible our own dimly-felt thoughts and emotional +stirrings shows that we are in reality one with the artist and with the +universe of which these expressions are but reflections of unseen and +unheard forces. An artist combines the power and responsibilities of the +aristocrat with the feelings of an anarchist, he is the guardian of +privilege and the destroyer of authority, the leveler of barriers and +the creator of the superman, the leader and the servant of humanity and +... the Arch Enemy of the Amateur! The artist is like all humanity, but +the Amateur is not like the Artist. The Amateur must hang on for dear +life to his precious soul and resist to the last gasp the incursions of +any outside force in which he can trace the semblance of his own nature, +for if anything gets in something may get out and he won’t be able to +sort himself out afterwards. Hence the Amateur must be an Individualist; +otherwise he is doomed to extinction. The Amateur’s business is to +interpret the universe in terms eternally incomprehensible to anyone but +himself, and to compromise with the necessity for intercourse with his +fellow-creatures by the adoption of an artificial language which can +convey thoughts and feelings of a superficial character, but nothing +more. + +The tale that points a moral, the picture that suggests a tale, and the +music that evokes a picture; these are the vehicles for “personality” +and your fine amateur must cultivate the pride that the realization of +an exclusive understanding of these things gives. If Hamlet had been an +amateur instead of being an artist he would never have suggested that a +cloud was like a camel, a weasel, or a whale; he would have pointed out +its resemblance to a mathematical calculation or a treatise on political +economy, and Polonius would have been far more impressed—for this would +have shown Great Individuality. + + + IV. _The Mission of Amateurism_ + +A true Amateur must learn the value of success, the immense importance +of achievement, the inward meaning of gratified self-conceit. Praise +from small minds represents the highest possible attainment of +accomplished Amateurism. The object of Amateurishness is, like the +puzzle pictures in the daily papers, to present a pretty little problem +with a perfectly simple and obvious solution, thus giving effortless +pleasure and satisfaction to all concerned. + +The opportunities afforded by collective Amateurism for the repression +of Art are invaluable and as the study of the subject is within the +reach of all, including those who are congenitally afflicted with +artistic talent, it devolves upon everyone who holds the opinion that +this is the best of all possible worlds, to make it his life’s +occupation and aim to be a “compleat amateur”. + + + + + Three Japanese Paintings + + + ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE + + + I. + Dream of a Chinese Landscape + (_A Screen by Soga Shubun_) + + Mists are rolling + Over the grey mountains, + Over the quiet waters + And marshy shores— + Rolling up into valleys + Where pagodas rise,— + Rolling over slopes + Along whose crests + Monasteries dream. + Wild geese soar + Above the marshes + In downward flight— + In flight from unknown shore + To unknown shore. + Over all + Mists are swaying. + + The shadowy bridge + And wandering roadway, + The dark gnarled tree by the road + And the pale tree afar, + Are touched with doubtful mists + Or emergent from lifting mists,— + Trembling in mist; born of mist; shadows.... + O mountains, shores, and streams! + Beautiful transient illusion! + Mortal world, dream world, + Vanishing into mist, into mist only! + + + II. + Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory + (_A Screen by Sesshu_) + + Across quiet waters, far off, + Faint, misty mountains unfold in limitless ranges, + Guarding some dream-world,— + Some dim and tranquil world of golden pagodas, + Lawns and pools, terraces and deep groves, + Vermilion palaces, and peacock-haunted gardens. + + But that is afar; + And the quiet waters lie between. + + Here at our feet + Rises out of the quiet water + Stormily, ridge by ridge, + Buttress by buttress, + Cliff beyond cliff beyond cliff, + The jagged headland. + + Here, + Gigantic, primeval, + Juts the grey promontory. + It is bleaker than death, though temples deck it; + Starker than ice, though pines bestrew it; + Inhuman, though the village at its base + Humanly nestles. + + With writhing turrets, + With dizzy gulfs, + With winding abysses + And cloven brinks, + The rock rises + In ripples, in waves, in spires— + It rises fiercely, with an appalling passion,— + An apparition of dark monstrous life,— + And foaming up at last to its highest crest + Stands frozen + To freeze the blood of generations. + + + III. + The Golden Symphony + (_A Screen by Sotatsu_) + + Golden clouds, and a golden bridge + Lifting in a great arc, swinging in a high arc, + Under clouds of gold, over clouds of gold,— + From the long slow curve of a golden shore + Across wide spaces of dark river!... + And behold! a drifting miracle— + Behold the long steady advancing prow + Of a golden boat, heavier than the sun, + Quiet upon the dark river; bearing two lovers + In robes of state, intricate, luminous, + Upon this dim river—where the great arc + Of the bridge from clouds into clouds + Swings, from golden shore to golden shore, + From the gold earth to the gold heaven. + + + + + The Struggle + + + SHERWOOD ANDERSON + +The story came to me from a woman, met on a train. The car was crowded, +and I took the seat beside her. There was a man in the offing, who +belonged with her,—a slender, girlish figure of a man, in a heavy brown +canvas coat such as teamsters wear in the winter. He moved up and down +in the aisle of the car, wanting my place by the woman’s side, but I did +not know that at the time. + +The woman had a heavy face and a thick nose. Something had happened to +her. She had been struck a blow or had a fall. Nature could never have +made a nose so broad and thick and ugly. She talked to me in very good +English. I suspect now that she was temporarily weary of the man in the +brown canvas coat, that she had travelled with him for days, perhaps +weeks, and was glad of the chance to spend a few hours in the company of +some one else. + +Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of the +night. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It had +rained for days and the fields were flooded. In the clear night the moon +came out and the scene outside the car-window was strange and in an odd +way very beautiful. You get the feeling: the black bare trees standing +up in clusters as they do out in that country, the pools of water with +the moon reflected and running quickly as it does when the train hurries +along, the rattle of the car-trucks, the lights in isolated farmhouses, +and occasionally the clustered lights of a town as the train rushed +through it into the west. + +The woman had just come out of war-ridden Poland, had got out of that +stricken land with her husband by God knows what miracles of effort. She +made me feel the war, that woman did, and she told me the tale that I +want to tell to you. + +I don’t remember the beginning of our talk, nor can I tell you of how +the strangeness of my mood grew to match her mood, until the story she +told became a part of the mystery of the still night outside the +car-window and very pregnant with meaning to me. + +There was a company of Polish refugees moving along a road in Poland in +charge of a German. The German was a man of perhaps fifty, with a beard. +As I got him, he was much such a man as might be professor of foreign +languages in a college in our country, say at Des Moines, Iowa, or +Springfield, Ohio. He would be sturdy and strong of body and given to +the eating of rather rank foods, as such men are. Also he would be a +fellow of books and in his thinking inclined toward the ranker +philosophies. He was dragged into the war because he was a German, and +had steeped his soul in the German philosophy of might. Faintly, I +fancy, there was another notion in his head that kept bothering him, and +so to serve his government with a whole heart he read books that would +re-establish his feeling for the strong, terrible thing for which he +fought. Because he was past fifty he was not on the battle-line, but was +in charge of the refugees, taking them out of their destroyed village to +a camp near a railroad where they could be fed. + +The refugees were peasants, all except the woman in the American train +with me and her mother, an old woman of sixty-five. They had been small +land-owners and the others in their party were women who had worked on +their estate. Then there was the one man, my companion’s lover, weak in +body and with bad eyes. + +Along a country road in Poland went this party in charge of the German, +who tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in his +insistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leader of +the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal to go +forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and her party +gathered about her. Like a stubborn old horse she shook her head and +muttered Polish words. “I want to be let alone, that’s what I want. All +I want in the world is to be let alone,” she said, over and over; and +then the German came up, and putting his hand on her back pushed her +along, so that their progress through the dismal night was a constant +repetition of the stopping, her muttered words, and his pushing. They +hated each other with whole-hearted hatred, that old Polish woman and +the German. + +The party came to a clump of trees on the bank of a shallow stream. The +German took hold of the old woman’s arm and dragged her through the +stream while the others followed. Over and over she said the words: “I +want to be let alone. All I want in the world is to be let alone.” + +In the clump of trees the German started a fire. With incredible +efficiency he had it blazing high in a few minutes, taking the matches +and even some bits of dry wood from a little rubber-lined pouch carried +in his inside coat-pocket. Then he got out tobacco, and, sitting down on +the protruding root of a tree, smoked, and stared at the refugees, +clustered about the old woman on the opposite side of the fire. + +The German went to sleep. That was what started his trouble. He slept +for an hour, and when he awoke the refugees were gone. You can imagine +him jumping up and tramping heavily back through the shallow stream and +along the muddy road to gather his party together again. He would be +angry through and through, but he would not be alarmed. It was only a +matter, he knew, of going far enough back along the road, as one goes +back along a road for strayed cattle. + +And then, when the German came up to the party, he and the old woman +began to fight. She stopped muttering the words about being let alone +and sprang at him. One of her old hands gripped his beard and the other +buried itself in the thick skin of his neck. + +The struggle in the road lasted a long time. The German was tired and +not as strong as he looked, and there was that faint thing in him that +kept him from hitting the old woman with his fist. He took hold of her +thin shoulders and pushed, and she pulled. The struggle was like a man +trying to lift himself by his boot-straps. The two fought and were full +of the determination that will not stop fighting, but they were not very +strong physically. + +And so their two souls began to struggle. The woman in the train made me +understand that quite clearly, although it may be difficult to get the +sense of it over to you. I had the night and the mystery of the moving +train to help me. It was a physical thing, the fight of the two souls in +the dim light of the rainy night on that deserted muddy road. The air +was full of the struggle, and the refugees gathered about and stood +shivering. They shivered with cold and weariness, of course, but also +with something else. In the air, everywhere about them, they could feel +the vague something going on. The woman said that she would gladly have +given her life to have it stopped, or to have some one strike a light, +and that her man felt the same way. It was like two winds struggling, +she said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and trying vainly to +push another cloud out of the sky. + +Then the struggle ended and the old woman and the German fell down +exhausted in the road. The refugees gathered about and waited. They +thought something more was going to happen, knew in fact something more +would happen. The feeling they had persisted, you see, and they huddled +together and perhaps whimpered a little. + +What happened is the whole point of the story. The woman in the train +explained it very clearly. She said that the two souls, after +struggling, went back into the two bodies, but that the soul of the old +woman went into the body of the German and the soul of the German into +the body of the old woman. + +After that, of course, everything was quite simple. The German sat down +by the road and began shaking his head and saying he wanted to be let +alone, declared that all he wanted in the world was to be let alone, and +the Polish woman took papers out of his pocket and began driving her +companions back along the road, driving them harshly and brutally along, +and when they grew weary pushing them with her hands. + +There was more of the story after that. The woman’s lover, who had been +a school-teacher, took the papers and got out of the country, taking his +sweetheart with him. But my mind has forgotten the details. I only +remember the German sitting by the road and muttering that he wanted to +be let alone, and the old tired mother-in-Poland saying the harsh words +and forcing her weary companions to march through the night back into +their own country. + + + The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed to judge + life.—_Nietzsche._ + + + + + A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence + + +I Zarathustra, declare myself! Ye have dulled me with priests; ye have +sweetened me with girls; ye have betrayed me with envious anarchists. + +Lo, I am not for the preacher, I am not for the woman, I am not for the +oppressed! Ye say that by me ye shall save the world; I say that I shall +destroy the world! + +These things do I hold sacred—my strength, my lust, my joy. These ye +shall feed, and die. + +Too long have I stood silent in the cackle of my followers. Poultry +after my corn! I have said, “Dost thou seek to multiply thyself? Find +ciphers!” + +I will give you a new law:—Love your enemy, for him ye may destroy. Fear +your friend, for he shall steal your raiment. + +Dost thou think that my aloofness is thy aloofness? Dost thou flutter +upon a ridgepole because I stand upon a mountain? Fool, thou shalt +starve unless thou peck the earth. + +I say unto the preacher: Stick to the Nazarene; he hath deserved his +Golgotha. But who shall make my words a law for me? + +I say unto the woman: My scourge is yet upon thee. Dost thou set thyself +against myself? I shall ravish thee when I desire thee. Who art thou to +pretend manhood? Submit or deny thy life. Serve, or go barren into the +earth. + +I say unto the poor and lowly: I denied you my pity; now ye think to rob +me of my scorn. Paltry ones! Shall I deny myself because of you? Lo, if +I delight in riches, I shall take them. My life is not your life; my +children are not your children. Cry not at my oppression; ye shall not +move me. And if ye mock me with my own words, they shall scorch your +tongues; ye shall go to a blacker oppression, ye shall find harder +masters—yourselves! + +And I say unto the priest, the woman, and the lowly: Touch me not; ye +are my enemies! I have declared myself, and ye have not known me. I am +life, I am splendor, I am eternity. Ye deny me as ye lay your hands upon +me. Remain afar off; then may I be in you. I will keep you slaves; thus +only shall I live. + +_Also sprach Zarathustra!_ + + + + + Poems + + + DAPHNE CARR + + + Welt Schmertz + + I have crushed so many roses + That my hands + Drip with red fragrance. + But I would crush to death against my breast + The wind + That is raging drunk with the perfume of all flowers. + + I have bathed in a hundred cool springs— + Still I am burning. + I would plunge into the ocean, + Diving down and down + To find myself + Freshly fluid + As a wave. + + + Prisoners + + A wind runs through the room, + And leaps out of the window. + The white curtain springs after + Fluttering out. + But it is fastened tight inside. + + My love kisses me + And goes + Waving good-bye + And laughing. + Am I also held fast in this room? + + + + + Leo Ornstein + + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + +Nietzsche thought Wagner was the artist of decadence; Arthur Symons +thinks he was a unique genius. Nietzsche regarded him as the great +corrupter of music:—“he has made music sick”; Symons says that to find a +parallel for Wagner’s achievement we must look back to the Greeks, to +the age of Æschylus and Sophocles. Each one proved his point. It’s a bit +confusing, and you begin to wonder what Art is. + +Have you ever found a definition of aesthetic values that will hold +through the whole art miracle? I never have and never expect to. Even in +Pater’s _The School of Giorgione_ you are merely told that since all art +constantly aspires toward the condition of music, toward that perfect +identification of matter and form, the chief function of aesthetic +criticism is to estimate the degree in which all the arts approach to +musical law. But musical law is constantly changing; and the criterion +of the degree to which matter and form become identical will be a sort +of sliding scale. And what every one wants to know is how to gauge that +scale. Can you think of a single art judgment in the whole realm of +aesthetics that you can use as an infallible touchstone; with which you +can make a mediocre poet realize why his work is bad instead of good? +You can make him realize, by the desperate wildness with which you +shriek “It’s not well done”, that something is wrong; but to save your +life you can’t convince him that you are talking about anything except +your own instinct—as you aren’t; and of course he feels that his +instinct may be just as good as yours—which of course it can’t! Suppose +you choose one of the best definitions ever thought of,—Mérimée’s “all +art is exaggeration _à propos_”; you find that you’re just as badly off +as before: by what standard is the _à propos_ measured? + + * * * * * + +It was in this frame of mind that I heard Leo Ornstein’s music. First he +came one night and played for us alone, on our Mason and Hamlin, in a +half light and an atmosphere of intense excitement. None of us had +decided beforehand that we should want to laugh or hiss or throw things +at him, as they did in London two years ago. We expected something +beautiful and we got it. He played his _Impressions of the Thames_, +which he afterward described as a river of “towers and turrets and +stars, of dark rushing water, of bridges and buildings, of desolate +muddy banks, and then something which you cannot bear to look at any +longer.” I can’t “see” music, so I only know that it was sound which +interested and pleased and shook me. Then he played his _Funeral March_, +which had something dark and vast in it; then some Ravel, the music of +which interested me more than his playing of it; and finally the +Schumann _Arabesque_, which he did so beautifully that I thought “Here +is a man who plays just as he wants to, and probably comes nearer to +what Schumann would have liked than all the strict interpreters with +their flawless ‘taste’ have done.” It seemed to me that Ornstein did +what he did with it—stretched its slenderness to a lovelier curve—in the +interest of the piano; and that is the very best thing anyone can do +with written music for the piano, even if the pedagogues can’t beat time +to it. + +So at the end I was beginning to think: perhaps this is the man who is +to bring to the piano that something it still needs. + + * * * * * + +But the next morning, at his recital, I made an interesting discovery. +Ornstein has brought nothing to the piano. He has brought something to +the world of music: compositions which show that the piano music is more +pliable than we had thought, and interpretations which show an +exaggeration _à propos_. To the piano, as an instrument, he has brought +what all the others have brought: virtuosity—and in this case a not +exceptional virtuosity. This may sound like hair splitting, but it +really is not. + +Ornstein has done this: he has written some very interesting music, and +he plays it as most composers of talent—perhaps of genius—would play +their things if they had studied the piano as thoroughly as he. What is +there in this to cause hysterics? The fact that it sounds different from +the music you have been hearing? But that would seem to be a reason for +interest, not merely for mirth. This reaction belongs in the same plane +with patriotism and duty:—you laugh at what is strange, you love what is +familiar, you obey what has been tested:—the three ready-made emotions, +with which you can escape most effectively from art and life. So they +howled at Ornstein. Two respectable women sitting near me, who would not +have dared—what do I say? who would not have _been able_—to laugh at a +minister’s treatise on good and evil or a president’s speech on loyalty +to a flag, were so convulsed over Ornstein’s _Impressions of the Thames_ +that they moved their seats to the rear of the theatre where they could +not be watched,—where they could merely disturb the pianist by their +audible snortings. The critics have done the same thing—laughed at +Ornstein’s own music and criticised scathingly his manner of playing +familiar music. Ornstein’s interest, I am sure, is chiefly in what he +has to say, and second in the way he says it. He is a composer-virtuoso. +I had hoped he would be a piano-lover. That is the kind of artist I am +looking for with more interest than I have for anything else in this +world. + +As for Ornstein himself, I think he is a sincere person who means to go +on doing his work. I sometimes judge the sensitiveness of a nature by +the intensity of expression that moves across the cheek-bones. You might +look carefully at Ornstein’s face instead of judging him by the fact +that his hair falls into his eyes when he plays. Of course he has been +indiscreet enough to mention that he does not like Beethoven. Why that +is unforgivable I can’t imagine. A man may surely like what he pleases. +The high genius of a Mozart or a Haydn is a thing he feels intensely. He +admires Chopin deeply as an artist who could do one thing very well and +was content to let it go at that. Grieg he thinks is not a worthy +mouthpiece for all that Norway has to give a musician. He loves Debussy, +but thinks that Ravel is the greater man: “Debussy stands beside a pond +and tells you beautifully of all he sees there; Ravel plunges into the +pond and gives you the life of it.” Stravinsky and Scriabine are the two +he cares for most, as I remember. “Schönberg has worked out his theory +before he has worked out his art.” Something of that sort might apply to +Ornstein himself, as in the case of his Chopin _Nocturne in E Flat_: I +disliked his “exaggeration” in it as much as anything I have ever heard +on a piano. + + * * * * * + +Oh, does no one realize what the unique beauty of a piano is, and that +there are secrets of sound in it which have not yet been touched upon? + + + + + Nocturne + + + (_From the French of Paul Verlaine_) + + CLARA SHANAFELT + + Your soul is like a lovely garden place + Where masque and bergamasque move graciously, + Playing the lute and dancing, yet of face + Half sad beneath their guise of fantasy. + + The while they sing in minor key + Love conquering, life opportune, + They seem to doubt their own felicity— + Their song floats faintly upward in the moon, + + In the clear moonlight, sad and fair, + That makes birds dream where dim boughs sway, + And fountains sigh their rapture on the air + From marble pools—the tall slim fountain spray. + + + + + White Mists[1] + + + There are grey stone rat-traps on the earth + Where human beings are put to die + By other human beings. + They die hour after hour, a million million times, + And still face death.... + + There is blue air between the clouds and the earth + Which they once saw; + There are gold stars, + And suns that come up red, + And trees that turn to purple in the evening— + But they cannot remember.... + + Now their days are bundles of soiled rags, + Their nights are stone.... + I dare not think of them: + It drives me toward the whiteness of insanity. + + M. C. A. + +---------- + + [1] _In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail + for advocating that “women need not always keep their mouths shut + and their wombs open.” Some extracts from letters written during + her fifteen-day sentence appear on the next page._ + + + + + Letters from Prison + + + EMMA GOLDMAN + + _Queen’s County Jail, + Long Island City, New York. + April, 1916._ + +What am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no misery so +appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so humiliated. + +Yes, I think the prisoners do love me, at least those who have been +thrown in with me. It is so easy to get their love. The least bit of +kindness moves them—they are so appreciative. But what can one do for +them? + +Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s _Justice_ in which some +one says to Falder: “No one wishes you harm”? Therein lies the pathos. +No one wishes these social victims harm. The Warden and Matron here are +exceptionally kind. And yet the harm, the irreparable harm, is done by +the very fact that human beings are locked up, robbed of their identity, +their self-respect, their self-hood. + +Oh, I am not sorry I was sentenced. In fact I am glad. I needed to get +to these pariahs who are the butt of all the horrors. It would be well +if every rebel were sent to prison for a time; it would fan his +smouldering flame of hate of the things that make prisons possible. I am +really glad. + + * * * * * + +... We are awakened at six and unlocked at seven in the morning. Then +comes breakfast, of which I have so far eaten only oatmeal with what +pretends to be milk. The coffee or tea I have not managed to get down. +At seven-thirty we are taken out into the yard. I walk up and down like +one possessed, to get the exercise. At eight-thirty we are back, and the +women keep themselves busy scribbling; but my girls will not let me do +that; I must talk to them. (The Warden, by the way, is reading my +_Anarchism_, and the Matron my _Social Significance of the Modern +Drama_). In fact, I seem to have more devotion here than on the outside. +At eleven we have dinner, and at four in the afternoon supper—which I +will describe to you when I come out. Then we are locked up until seven +A. M.—fifteen hours, the hardest of all to bear. Do you remember the +line in _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: “Each day a year whose days grow +old”? To me it is “each night a year whose nights grow long”. I have +always loved the night, but jailed nights are ghastly things. + +The lights are on until nine P. M., and we can read and write all +day—which is a god-send. Also this prison is one of the cleanest in the +country. + + * * * * * + +... What on earth have I done that people should go into such ecstasies? +No one raves because you breathe; why rave if you take a determined +stand when that means the very breath of life to you? Really I feel +embarrassed with all the love and devotion and adulation for so little a +thing, so infinitesimal compared with the truly heroic deeds of the +great souls. My only consolation is that the fight is not at an end and +that I may yet be called upon to do something really great. But for the +present it is hardly worth the fuss. + + * * * * * + +Today is Sunday and we were taken out to the yard for a walk. It was a +glorious day, marred only by the monotony of the stripes and the +spiritless slouching figures. Yet the sky excluded no one; its glorious +blue spread over them all, as if there were no sorrows in all the world +and man was never cruel to his kind. + + * * * * * + +The days pass quickly between the study of my fellow prisoners, my +letters, and other writing. The evenings are taken up with reading. But +jailed nights are so oppressive. They lie like stone upon your heart. +The thoughts, the sobs, the moans that emerge like pale shadows from +every human soul. It is stifling. Yet people talk of hell. There is no +more threatening thing in all the world than the hell of jailed nights. + + * * * * * + +Good morning. Another crazing night has gone.... + + + + + Off The Turnpike + + + AMY LOWELL + + Good ev’nin’, Mis’ Priest. + I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye. + Yes, it’s all over, + All my things is packed + And every last one o’ them boxes + Is on Bradley’s team + Bein’ hauled over to th’ station. + No, I ain’t goin’ back agin. + I’m stoppin’ over to French’s fer to-night, + And goin’ down fust train in th’ mornin’. + Yes, it do seem kinder queer + Not to be goin’ to see Cherry’s Orchard no more, + But Land Sakes! When a change’s comin’, + Why, I allus say it can’t come too quick. + Now, that’s real kind of you, + Your doughnuts is always so tasty. + Yes, I’m goin’ to Chicago, + To my niece, + She’s married to a fine man, hardware business, + And doin’ real well, she tells me. + Lizzie’s be’n at me to go out ther fer the longest while. + She ain’t got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know. + She’s rented me a real nice little flat, + Same house as hers, + And I’m goin’ to try that city livin’ folks say’s so pleasant. + Oh, yes, he was real generous, + Paid me a sight of money fer the Orchard, + I told him ’twouldn’t yield nothin’ but stones, + But he ain’t farmin’ it. + Lor’, no, Mis’ Priest, + He’s jest took it to set and look at the view. + Maybe he wouldn’t be so stuck on the view + Ef he’d seed it every mornin’ and night for forty year + Same’s I have. + I dessay it’s pretty enough, + But it’s so pressed into me + I c’n see’t with my eyes shet. + No. I ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, + Don’t shet th’ door. + I’ll be all right in a minit. + But I ain’t a mite sorry to leave that view. + Well, maybe ’tis queer to feel so, + And maybe ’tisn’t. + My! But that tea’s revivin’. + Old things ain’t always pleasant things, Mis’ Priest. + No, no, I don’t cal’late on comin’ back, + That’s why I’d ruther be to Chicago, + Boston’s too near. + It ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, + It’s jest my thoughts. + I ain’t sick, only— + Mis’ Priest, ef you’ve nothin’ ter take yer time, + And have a mind to listen, + There’s somethin’ I’d like ter speak about. + I ain’t never mentioned it, + But I’d like to tell yer ’fore I go. + Would yer mind lowerin’ them shades, + Fall twilight’s awful grey, + And that fire’s real cosy with the shades drawd. + Well, I guess folks about here think I’ve be’n dret’ful unsociable. + You needn’t say ’taint so, ’cause I know diff’rent. + And what’s more, it’s true. + Well, the reason is I’ve be’n scared o’ my life. + Scared ev’ry minit o’ th’ time, fer eight year. + Eight mortal year it is, come next June. + It was on the eighteenth of June, + Six months after I’d buried my husband + That somethin’ happened ter me. + Maybe yer’ll mind that afore that + I was a cheery body. + Hiram was too, + Allus liked to ask a neighbor in, + And ev’n when he died, + Barrin’ low sperrits, I warn’t averse to seein’ nobody. + But that eighteenth o’ June changed ev’rythin’. + I was doin’ most o’ th’ farmwork myself, + With jest a hired boy, Clarence King ’twas, + Comin’ in fer an hour or two. + Well, that eighteenth June + I was goin’ round, + Lockin’ up and seein’ to things fore I went to bed. + I was jest steppin’ out to th’ barn, + Goin’ round outside ’stead of through the shed, + ’Cause there was such a sight of moonlight + Somehow or another I thought ’twould be pretty outdoors. + I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess. + I ain’t stuck on em no more. + Well, them laylock bushes side o’ th’ house + Was real lovely. + Glitt’rin’ and shakin’ in the moonlight, + And the smell o’ them rose right up + And most took my breath away. + The colour o’ the spikes was all faded out, + They never keep their colour when the moon’s on ’em, + But that smell fair ’toxicated me. + I was allus partial to a sweet scent, + And I went close up t’ th’ bushes + So’s to put my face right into a flower. + Mis’ Priest, jest’s I got breathin’ in that laylock bloom + I saw, layin’ right at my feet, + A man’s hand! + It was as white’s the side o’ th’ house, + And sparklin, like that lum’nous paint they put on gateposts. + I screamed right out, + I couldn’t help it, + And I could hear my scream + Goin’ over an’ over + In that echo behind th’ barn, + Hearin’ it agin an’ agin like that + Scared me so, I dar’sn’t scream any more. + I jest stood there, + And looked at that hand. + I thought the echo’d begin to hammer like my heart, + But it didn’t. + There wus only th’ wind, + Sighin’ through the laylock leaves, + An’ slappin’ them up agin’ the house. + Well, I guess I looked at that hand + Most ten minits, + An’ it never moved, + Jest lay there white as white. + After a while I got to thingin’, that o’ course + ’Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield. + That calmed me some, + An’ I commenced to think I’d better git him out + From under them laylocks. + I planned to drag him inter th’ barn + An’ lock him in ther’ till Clarence come in th’ mornin’. + I got so mad thinkin’ o’ that all-fired brazen tramp + Asleep in my laylocks, + I just stooped down and grabbed th’ hand and give it an awful pull. + Then I bumped right down settin’ on the ground. + Mis’ Priest, ther’ warn’t no body come with the hand. + No, it ain’t cold, it’s jest that I can’t bear thinkin’ of it + Ev’n now. + I’ll take a sip o’ tea. + Thank you, Mis’ Priest, that’s better. + I’d ruther finish now I’ve begun. + Thank you, jest the same. + I dropped the hand’s ef it’d be’n red hot + ’Stead o’ ice cold. + Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass + Pantin’. + Then I up and run to them laylocks + An’ pulled ’em every which way. + True as I’m settin’ here, Mis’ Priest, + Ther’ warn’t nothin’ ther’. + I peeked an’ pryed all about ’em, + But ther’ warn’t no man ther’ + Neither livin’ nor dead. + But the hand was ther’ all right, + Upside down, the way I’d dropped it, + And glist’ning fit to dazzle yer. + I don’t know how I done it, + And I don’t know why I done it, + But I wanted to get that dre’tful hand out o’ sight. + I got in t’ th’ barn, somehow, + An’ felt roun’ till I got a spade. + I couldn’t stop fer a lantern, + Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. + Then I scooped that awful thing up in th’ spade. + I had a sight o’ trouble doin’ it. + It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn’t bear + Ev’n to touch it with my foot to prop it, + But I done it somehow. + Then I carried it off behind the barn, + Clost to an old appletree + Where you couldn’t see from the house, + An’ I buried it, + Good an’ deep. + I don’t rec’lect nothin’ more o’ that night. + Clarence woke me up in th’ mornin’, + Hollerin’ for me to come down and set th’ milk. + When he’d gone + I stole roun’ to the appletree + And seed the earth all newly turned + Where I left it in my hurry. + I did a heap o’ gardenin’ + That mornin’. + I couldn’t cut no big sods + Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted ’em fer, + So I got teeny bits o’ turf here and ther,’ + And no one couldn’t tell ther’d be’n any diggin’ + When I got through. + They was awful days after that, Mis’ Priest, + I used ter go every mornin’ and poke about them bushes, + And up and down the fence, + Ter find the body that hand come off of. + But I couldn’t never find nothin’. + I’d lay awake nights + Hearin’ them laylocks blowin’ and whiskin’. + Finally I had Clarence cut ’em down + An’ make a big bonfire of ’em. + I told him the smell made me sick, + An’ that warn’t no lie, + I can’t a’ bear the smell on ’em now. + An no wonder, es you say. + I fretted somethin’ awful about that hand. + I wondered could it be Hiram’s, + But folks don’t rob graveyards hereabouts. + Besides Hiram’s hands warn’t that awful, starin’ white. + I give up seein’ people, + I was afeared I’d say somethin’. + You know what folks thought of me + Better’n I do, I dessay, + But maybe now you’ll see I couldn’t do nothin’ diffrent. + But I stuck it out, + I warn’t goin’ to be downed + By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther’. + But that ain’t the worst, Mis’ Priest, + Not by a long way. + Two years ago Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry’s Orchard. + Well, I’d got used to th’ thought of bein’ sort o’ blighted, + And I warn’t scared no more. + Lived down my fear, I guess. + I’d kinder got used t’ the thought o’ that awful night, + And I didn’t mope much about it. + Only I never went out o’ doors by moonlight; + That stuck. + Well, when Mr. Densmore’s offer come, + I started thinkin’ about the place + An’ all the things that had gone on ther’. + Thinks I, I guess I’ll go and see where I put the hand. + I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by. + I knew the place real well, + Fer I’d put it right in between two o’ the apple-roots. + I don’t know what possessed me, Mis’ Priest, + But I kinder wanted to know + That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway. + It had sorter bothered me, thinkin’ I might ha’ imagined it. + I took a mornin’ when the sun was real pleasant and warm, + I guessed I wouldn’t jump for a few old bones. + But I did jump, somethin’ wicked. + Thar warn’t no bones! + Thar warn’t nothin’! + Not even the gold ring I minded bein’ on the little finger. + I don’t know ef there ever was anythin’. + I’ve worried myself sick over it. + I be’n diggin’ and diggin’ day in and day out + Till Clarence ketched me at it. + Oh, I knowed real well what you all thought, + An’ I ain’t sayin’ you’re not right, + But I ain’t goin’ to end in no country ’sylum + If I c’n help it. + The shiv’rin’ fits come on me sudden like. + I know ’em, don’t you trouble. + I’ve fretted considerable about the ’sylum, + I guess I be’n frettin’ all the time I ain’t be’n diggin’. + But anyhow I can’t dig to Chicago, can I? + Thank you, Mis’ Priest, + I’m better now. I only dropped in in passin’! + I’ll jest be steppin’ along to French’s. + No, I won’t be seein’ nobody in the mornin’, + It’s a pretty early start. + Don’t you stand ther’, Mis’ Priest, + The wind’ll blow yer lamp out, + An’ I c’n see easy, I got aholt o’ the gate now. + I ain’t a mite tired, thank you. + Goodnight. + + + + + Potatoes in a Cellar + + + R. G. + +I am not here to harry institutions, to prod up mummies swathed in red +tape and embalmed in routine and respectability, nor am I here to bury +the unburied dead. + +People say, “Why do you jump on the Art Institute for becoming a trade +school? It is only following the tendencies of the times. Art is like +everything else.” There you have it!—the whole trouble. There is no +consciousness of art, no consciousness that art is beyond all these +things—that it is as the sun to the earth, and if it were to fail us we +should grow like potatoes in a deep cellar. + +It is only when art students say, “This is not what we sought. Where +shall we go, what shall we love, what do, to find what we sought?” that +the Art Institute is brought into it, and then only to serve as an +example of the lack of art consciousness everywhere, and to emphasize +the fact that the artist has no place in this land of wasteful virtues. + +An artist almost disgraces the family into which he is born, he is +pitied a little by outsiders, he is left alone. At last, when he can +stand it no longer, he breaks the parent heart, and goes out full of +high hope to find his own kind and to keep his own faith. After a short +time he finds the art school very much like a factory; he learns to do +his piece, when he had thought to create a new beauty, and he finds, +too, that he is still an outcast for his beliefs and desires. + +More than ninety-nine percent of the students who study art never +qualify as artists. We are all born into the world creators. In the +interval some wander into by-paths, play nicely upon the piano or +violin, do art, or write poetry. Maiden aunts and fond grandmas proclaim +them geniuses, all the time praying that they do not become artists. +When love comes, they leave the by-paths to fall into lock step on the +old worn way. + +It is not what is accomplished on these journeys along the outposts of +art, but it is the experience that counts. If they have met there one or +two who stirred their senses with the impression of bearing a “fragile +and mighty thing,” who could rise above the earth and shout in a +flamelight of joy, or fall upon the earth and moan with the dark trouble +of Things; if they have caught from these a quickened sense of Life, and +learned a broader observation and consciousness of beauty; even though +they cannot create as the artist creates—still from this experience they +should feel the power to create a new life for those whom they in their +turn may meet. If they would so much as teach the children, not the old +formidable “Fear God and keep his commandments,” but rather + + “Find in every foolish little thing that lives but a day + Eternal Beauty wandering on its way” + +we should grow a race with a deep desire for the “free, unsullied things +which never fail and never can decay.” + +The Artist knows as surely as though he walked with God upon those six +days of creation that _this_ He made and nothing more—but here He made +all. Other men fill in the gap between what they are and what they feel +they could be, what they long for and cannot find, what they attain and +aspire to, with Religion. Then, walled in with the belief of finding +completion in a future life, they live on unconscious of the passionate +splendor and ecstasy of this life. The artist, realizing that here we +must live our life and our immortality, cries out to men to know all, to +feel all, to be all here, and he strives with his whole soul, gives up +his life to show men what he has seen. But the turning of great wheels, +the blasts of furnaces, and the straining of millions of human beings +that a few may be comfortable, drown his voice. And because he does not +take part in this great struggle for physical contentment, does not live +the cramped, dwarfed life of society, there is no place for him in +modern life. Even though the wisest seem deceived, still the artist must +believe that a consciousness of Art will come, and that even the most +stupid will sometime know that he must have Art before bread. + + + I know—for I have experienced it and perhaps experienced little + else!—that art is of more value than truth.—_Nietzsche._ + + + + + New York Letter + + + ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL + + (_The Poetry Society of America Meets and I Attend, Taking with + Me a Sense of Humor._) + +There is, in this city, a Poetry Society. Once a month they gather +together at a handsome club to talk and be talked to. Once a year they +foregather at a grand hotel for a handsome dinner and some more talk. + +I am inquisitive, God help me! He and good training have made me so. To +gratify my curiosity concerning the makers of American poetry, I asked +Master Witter Bynner, one of their band, to take me to their monthly +meeting at the National Arts Club. I ache still from suppressed +laughter. (Dear sense of humor, what would I do without you when I visit +the habitations of the pretentious and the congregation of the +hum-bugs?) + +It is the custom of this body of—of—the word I want will come to me +later. It is their custom, I say, to ask for unpublished verse to be +read aloud to the assemblage. The reader of the evening was Witter +Bynner. Now Mr Bynner is a poet with a fine, vibrant voice and a rare +appreciation for pause and effect, but when he read the verse of those +anonymous poets such feeling did he put into them that his legs quivered +and showed great emotion. That distressed and distracted me. + +After each poem was read it was criticized by the audience. Criticism of +a certain type is the easiest thing in the world. That type, that petty, +empty, wordy type, was present in all its glory. Its chief exponent was +one Shaemas O’Sheel, a wordy fellow loving the sound of his own voice +and giving vent to many empty phrases with much gusto and argumentative +fervor. Mr O’Sheel once wrote and had published in a book this plaintive +thing: + + My song is such a little thing + Oh, such a little thing! + It is not loud; it is not long, + And wherefor should I sing? + +Echo answers, Wherefor? + +Another fellow who fancied himself as critic was a youth named Joyce +Kilmer. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is the author of charming +conceits, in verse, on trees and delicatessen stores. He has also +written some sweet roundels and ballades. Incidentally he is a member of +the staff of _The New York Times_. Occasionally he makes excursions to +Women’s Clubs and other intellectual organizations to tell them all he +knows about poetry. God save him! And God save me from ever hearing +another night of such criticism from ponderous youths and knowing old +maids! + +After the reading of the poems, and the stupid remarks that followed the +reading, there came what was called the “social intermission”. During +this time insipid punch and silly little biscuits were served to as many +of the mob as could grab them, and a noise as of a host of parrots in a +small place filled the room. (Curious what bad punch will do to good, +respectable people!) Following the excitement of the jabber and the +near-wine the audience settled down to be sobered up by the reading of +two seeming epics by Cale Young Rice. Mr Rice is dull—oh, very dull he +is. Not only so, but his verse is—I won’t say; and he reads it with the +voice of the spirit of a one-time virtuous Methodist minister chanting a +prayer in the coolest part of Hell. + +So he read his dreary interminable poems. So I had visions of all the +precious Sundays my Presbyterian parents had forced me to waste. That +vision passed and I still heard the whining drone. Back to my mind again +where I had vicious thoughts of the tortures I would like to play upon +bad poets who write bad verse and read it with bad accent and bad voice +to good harmless people. By the time I had thought out and perfected a +most amazing and subtle form of torture for such disturbers of human +happiness, the dismal noise had stopped. Some day.... + +After the effort of the Rice man, Laurence Houseman read some of his +fanciful poems. They were welcome. A Spring wind among the reeds after a +prolonged dull thaw. + +Poetry flourishes in America. + +The poets are paid well by the Magazines; and strange women dine and +wine them and pay them sweet homage. + +The majority own and sport dress suits. They are eminently decent and +respectable. + +Poetry readings are now a well-attended form of afternoon time-killing. + +Poetry flourishes. + + + _THE PASSING OF FORBES-ROBERTSON_ + +The stops are in. The organ is closed. For forty years it has +“discoursed much excellent sweet music.” Now the organist is weary, and +would fain rest. He has played many things and played them well. A +gentle sweet melody like _Mice and Men_ was made more sweet by his +playing; and even if he did sometimes play a popular tune like _The +Third Floor Back_ were we not the more thrilled and moved when we heard +the beauty of his playing of the symphony of _Hamlet_? + +On Saturday, April 22, I watched, now from the wings, now from a side +box, the last public performance of this artist’s _Hamlet_. Oh that I +could write as well as I feel; that my words had the strength and the +bursting keenness of my emotions. Then might I tell something. + +Have you seen the sudden brilliant leap of a flame sometimes before it +finally goes out? There was the same sort of spurt in that past +performance. I had seen Robertson play Hamlet a year ago; in Brooklyn a +week before I had watched him wearily play his part, and by the +comparison I understood the effort involved in the brilliancy of his +playing that day. There was a heart-bursting poignancy about his swan +song. I cried with the Queen: “Oh Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in +twain!” And when at the end of it all he sat there on the throne of +Denmark with that unforgettable look, purged from all the suffering and +weariness; and when they bore him off to the music of Tchaikovsky’s +_Dead March_, what could a feeling mortal do but—but—I cannot tell what +I did. + + “The rest is silence.” + + “Good night, sweet prince.” + + + + + Amber Monochrome + + + MARK TURBYFILL + + I pass + Outside into the amber night. + + A lamp within + Prints shadow-flowers + On the stiffness of an amber screen. + + My dream is like that— + An amber scheme + Straining through cold, stiff screens. + + + + + Three Imagist Poets + + + JOHN GOULD FLETCHER + + + I. + +The question is being asked, re-asked and debated, What is Imagism? The +fact that this question is constantly raised anew proves that it is not +an academic one. For if we are to see clearly the underlying principles +of the new poetry, and to understand the relationship of the group which +call themselves the Imagists to those principles, we must first +disassociate Imagism, strictly speaking, from all that body of verse now +being produced in the free-verse forms. As a critic not long ago pointed +out, vers libre and Imagism are not to be confused. Vers libre can be +produced and has been produced which is not Imagistic, but realistic, +symbolistic, or merely dull. Imagism is an attitude of mind which can +appear just as well under the guise of metre and rhyme, or prose, as in +verse itself. What, then, is Imagism? + +Briefly, the doctrine we call Imagism has four cardinal points or +principles. The first of these concerns presentation of the subject. The +Imagist aims to present his subject as an image; that is to say, he +presents the sum-total of the emotions in any given subject in such a +way that the reader experiences the self-same emotions from them. To do +this it is necessary for the Imagist to regard his subject-matter from +its most imaginative aspect, and to present it visually. For the reader, +not having experienced the emotion which moved the author to create his +poem, is incapable of grasping that emotion save through a direct and +complete appeal to his imagination through his higher senses of sight +and hearing. By stimulating these senses, through appropriate choice of +words, the Imagist aims to arouse the reader to such a pitch that the +reader re-creates imaginatively for himself the emotional complex which +gave birth to the poem. Imagism is, therefore, first of all a means of +arousing the emotions through the imagination. The Imagists must +therefore be sharply distinguished from the realistic school, and also +from the symbolists of the nineteenth century, from which latter they +have, in some sense, derived. Through the constant insistence on emotion +as the underlying essence of poetry, the Imagists approach closely to +the Elizabethans of the sixteenth and the early romantics of the +nineteenth century. + +The second principle of Imagism concerns style. The Imagists desire to +accomplish that renovation of the English language which is always +periodically necessary if good poetry is to continue to be created in +it. The Imagists have certain prejudices against inversions, clichés, +journalese, highfalutin bombast, literary jargon, messy padding with +adjectives. Each word must be an exact word, that is to say the sole +word necessary for its particular place and purpose in the poem. This +careful consideration for style relates the Imagists to the classicists +of the eighteenth century, who undoubtedly rescued the English language +from the absurdities of the “metaphysical” school. The Imagists also +insist on it as a useful check to too great an exuberance of +imagination. + +The third principle of Imagism concerns form. The rhythmical form of the +poem should not be a mere empty pattern, but should follow, as far as +possible, the ebb and flow of the emotion throughout the poem. It should +be an integral part of the poem itself, as indissoluble from it as the +substance of the words themselves. Therefore the Imagists hold that the +theory and practice of vers libre is necessary, although they do not go +so far as to demand it in every case, or to say that rhyme and metre +have not their uses. In their desire to create a full emotional range of +rhythmical nuances, inclusive of both rhyme and metre as well as freer +rhythmical figures, the Imagists derive direct from the first great +romantic poets of England—Blake and Coleridge. + +The last principle of Imagism concerns the attitude of the artist to +life. The artist should realize that if he is not to be the slave of +life he must not attempt to be its judge. He must not obtrude his petty +personal judgments and vanities between the reader and the subject he +writes about. He must not, in short, moralise about life, or gush over +it, or make others feel anything else except what he has felt about it. +In this respect the Imagist poets are in very firm reaction against the +sentimental and pious optimism of the mid-nineteenth century, against +the equally sentimental and fallacious aestheticism of the eighties and +nineties, and—it may be added—against a good deal of the wishy-washy +suggestiveness and sex-obsession that seems to be getting the upper hand +of so many writers of today. The Imagist does not weight the balance, +either for “morality” or “immorality”: he states, and lets the reader +draw his own conclusion. + +With these four principles in mind, we may now ask ourselves how the +Imagists have carried them into practice. For practice is, after all, +the supreme test of any theory of art. There are signs that Imagism is +getting itself taken more seriously, not as a mere passing fad, but as +something that has at least established certain guide-posts and +land-marks for future poets, who wish to renew the traditions of good +writing. I maintain that it has done more. It has permitted three poets, +at least, to start from the same principles and to produce among them a +very respectable body of poetry, which in each case is filled with the +individual flavour of the personality who wrote it. That the Imagist +principles should display such applicability and elasticity is, I +maintain, very remarkable. We shall now see who these three poets are. + + + II. + +Mr Richard Aldington, the first of the three to be considered, has +recently brought together some thirty of his poems in a small volume, +entitled _Images_. That this selection does not represent all of Mr +Aldington’s work, must be apparent to all who are familiar with it. His +long poem, _Childhood_, is not here; nor is his other long poem on the +war, which surely deserves mention as being one of the few really +humorous war poems ever written. To come to the shorter pieces, surely +all admirers of Mr Aldington’s talent must deplore the absence of +_Daisy_, _Round Pond_ and _The Poplar_—the latter one of the most +beautiful poems he has ever written. But whether Mr Aldington has +omitted these pieces from a too severe critical judgment, or whether +because they seem to interfere with the unity of his book, the fact +remains that they were omitted, but that enough is left to give nearly +all sides of his achievement. + +Mr Aldington is a sophisticated, a cultivated, even a bookish poet. He +has translated Anyte of Tegea, the Latin Poets of the Renaissance, and +even that astounding farrago of poetry and buffoonery called Les +Chansons de Maldoror. Recently he has given us, in the columns of _The +Egoist_, a glimpse at his library which ranges from Euripides, via +Apuleius, Hooker and Crowley, to Ford Madox Hueffer! “And is it for this +I have laboured?” he cries. “To be the object of derision of some +bibliophile looking at his books as cynically and disgustedly as I look +at mine?” + +No, it is not for this. It is for a handful of strange and satisfying +poems that Mr Aldington has laboured. Every artist knows that it takes a +great deal of life, an immense amount of experience and appreciation, to +make even a little art. Life is like a many-faceted prism. We must walk +around it, observe it on every side, see it not as we ourselves would +care to see it, but as others have seen it, before we can induce it to +show a new side to our efforts, to cast a few rays which it has not +already cast before. Matthew Arnold, who was one of the few English +critics able to look at literature from the standpoint of its historical +development, declared that poetry was a criticism of life. And so it is. +The task of a modern poet is not to shut his eyes to the past, but to +see the work of the generations that preceded him as an uncompleted +structure, the living intention of whose builders is again born in him, +and seeks fruition in the additions he can make to it. In this sense Mr +Aldington is a modern poet. He is a poet for the well-read, intelligent, +cultivated man or woman. + +The first poem of his I can remember seeing in print was the one +entitled _Choricos_: + + The ancient songs + Pass deathward mournfully. + + Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths + Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings, + Symbols of ancient songs, + Mournfully passing + Down to the great white surges + Watched by none— + + And we turn from the Kyprian’s breasts, + And we turn from thee, + Phoibos Apollon— + And we turn from the fiery day, + And the lips that were over-sweet; + For silently, + Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, + With purple robe, + Searing the grass as with a sudden flame, + Death, + Thou hast come upon us. + + O Death, + Thou art the silence of beauty, + And we look no more for the morning, + We yearn no more for the sun— + We kneel before thee; + And thou, leaning towards us, + Caressingly layest upon us + Flowers from thy thin cold hands, + And smiling as a chaste woman, + Knowing love in her heart, + Thou seelest our eyes + And the illimitable quietude + Comes gently upon us. + +There is nothing in all the literature I know which can be safely set +beside this poem (of which I have only quoted a few fragments) except a +few lines of Leopardi: + + In te, Morte, si pose + Nostra ignuda natura; + Lieto, no, ma sicura + Del antico dolor. + +Other than that, it is unique. And since it is the fashion to despise a +poet because he does not write of aeroplanes and locomotives and +socialism, but of the eternal verities of life, death, beauty, irony, +let us first of all brush away the shallow assumption that Mr Aldington +is an imitator of the classics and that all his work seems a derivation +from the Greek. + +The mood of the poem from which I have just quoted is not a mood which +can be found in any Greek poet, or which any Greek would ever have +understood. I have quoted enough to show what that mood is. It is a mood +of mutability, of the sadness that arises in us when we see the +instability of all earthly things. The first Occidental poet who ever +expressed this mood, to my knowledge, was François Villon. In the East, +of course, it was felt and expressed much earlier. For one must have +seen kingdoms pass away and empires crumble to the dust and “the owl +sing his watch-song from the towers of Afrasiab” before one can feel +this mood, which Mr Aldington has here so beautifully and poignantly +expressed. + +Throughout his poetry Mr Aldington has frequently given us this emotion +of a civilized man, a modern, brought face to face with some beautiful +fragment of the past. Thus he cries to a Greek marble: + + I am thy brother, + Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, + And thou hearest me not. + +Surely no one would contend that a Greek could ever have said this! And +in some quite recent poems we have the same feeling applied to the +Renaissance, and even to modernity: + + I turn the page and read: + “I dream of silent verses where the rhyme + Glides noiseless as an oar.” + + The heavy, musty air, the black desks, + The bent heads and the rustling noises + Vanish— + The sun hangs in the cobalt sky + The boat drifts over the bare shallows— + The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns + And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle + About the cleft battlements of Can Grande’s castle. + +Or take this: + + + London, (May, 1915) + + Glittering leaves + Dance in a squall: + Above them, bleak immovable clouds. + + A church spire + Holds up a little brass cock + To peck at the blue wheat fields— + + A pear tree, a broken white pyramid, + In a dingy garden, troubles one + With ecstasy— + And I am tormented, + Obsessed, + Along all this beauty. + With a vision of ruins, + Of walls tumbling into clay. + +Such a poet is not what we vulgarly choose to call an optimist. No! Let +us admit once for all, Mr Aldington is a pessimist. (So, by the way, +were Sophocles and Leopardi and Shakespeare when he wrote _King Lear_, +and Mr Thomas Hardy, to mention only a few; but I have never heard they +were worse poets for it.) At times he gives us a very bitter dose indeed +to swallow, as in his _Childhood_, _Cinema Exit_, or _In the Tube_. Yet +he is not devoid of humour, playful and fantastic. Witness _The Faun +Sees Snow for the First Time_, the _Interlude_, the _Evening_ (a +beautiful grotesque which I am tempted to quote), or for a grimmer note +the conclusion of _Lesbia_. He will not admit that life is altogether +without compensations. Herein he is honest. He even admits sentiment as +a compensation, and he treats it delicately, fastidiously, with an +unexpected touch of purely fourteenth-century feeling in the following +piece: + + + After Two Years. + + She is all so slight, + And tender and white, + As a May morning. + + She walks without hood + At dusk. It is good + To hear her sing. + + It is God’s will + That I shall love her still + As he loves Mary. + And night and day, + I will go forth to pray + That she love me. + + She is as gold; + Lovely, and far more cold. + Do thou pray with me, + For if I win grace + To kiss twice her face + God has done well to me. + +Altogether an unusual poet. One who never takes up the pen except when +he has something individual to say, and whose utterance is at times so +varied as to make him almost bafflingly individual. But not a Greek, +although he has written finely on Greek themes. A modern? Yes; and not +only a modern but, au fond, a Romantic. Remember the conclusion of the +beautiful _Night Piece_: + + “Very faint and shrill and far away the whistle sounds—more like + a wild bird than ever. And all my unsatisfied desires and empty + wishes and vague yearnings are set aching by that thin tremulous + whistle—the post-horn of the Coach of Romance.” + + (_For lack of space, Mr Fletcher’s article will be concluded in + the June issue._) + + + + + Rossica + + + ALEXANDER S. KAUN + +It is still on—the Russian invasion. + +Across the ocean the triumphant Prussian drives a hedge into the heart +of Russia. With blood and iron and fire Efficiency celebrates its +victory over Nihilism. + +And we, the neutrals, the note-writers, attempt to thwart the grand +march of Efficiency by delivering shells to the port of Vladivostok. +Shells that do not always explode, despite their “moderate” prices. + +In exchange we are getting thoughts, ideas. Unobstructed by Krupps or +U’s or Zeppelins, they invade our peaceful shores, and intend to stay. + +Woe to the Chambers and Herricks and Pooles and Dreisers and McCutcheons +and other best sellers! The enemy is raining in torrents, in avalanches. +What if the good, good public will be forced to taste the new food. What +if after having tasted it they will rebel and demand real meat +thereafter, rejecting as indigestible the canned affairs and the +oleomargarine surrogates. What if.... + +No danger, I am assured by my friend who has great faith in the +uncorruptible taste of the American public. + +Surely no one will accuse the American publishers of being pure +idealists or Ford-like fanatics who are ready to squander their hard +dollars for propaganda purposes. Surely those gentlemen know their +market and adjust the supply to the demand. The extraordinary deluge of +Russian literature is evidently a paying proposition. + +It is gratifying. We need the injection of new blood into our anemic +literature. + +New blood. Not even Gogol is too old for us. No matter that he died in +1852. His _Dead Souls_, _Tarass Bulba_, and just published stories[2] +belong to the category of works that do not age in spite of their +technical flaws. If you use this perspective, _The Mantle_ will loom up +as the peak of Russian realism. “We have all come out of _The Mantle_”, +admitted Gogol’s disciple, Dostoevsky. If in that tale we recognize the +forerunner of the relentless soul-vivisectionists of the later days, we +get in the other stories a glimpse of the mystic Gogol, the poet of +Goyaesque witches and devils. Do not read _Viy_ before bed-time lest you +go through a heavy nightmare. + +It is an enormous leap from Gogol to Korolenko[3], Gorky[4], and +Kuprin[5]. These are living authors, although they belong rather to the +past century in their motives and modes. Vladimir Korolenko is a writer +whose very name causes the heart of every Russian to beat with emotion. +Not for the greatness of his art: as an artist he ranks among the +lesser. It is the charm of his personality that places him far above all +his colleagues. His long years of exile in Siberia, his never-flagging +championship of the oppressed classes and races, his tireless +encouragement of the young beginners, and his smile, the deep, broad +smile that flows like a sunny stream through his writings, have endeared +him to his countrymen beyond parallel. Korolenko is the bridge between +the heroic, idealistic seventies and the ultra-individualistic moderns. +His stories are not idylls, yet they smile; he deals with tragedies, +describes horrifying situations, but he bears no ill feeling for the +universe, he loves it with all its evils and follies, loves it with that +keen understanding which spells forgiveness. Gorky tells us that he owes +to Korolenko not only his discovery and introduction to the public, but +also his style. I seldom trust an author’s self-criticism. Gorky differs +from his alleged teacher in his style as well as in his philosophy. +Korolenko is gentle, mild, refined, loving, forgiving. Gorky is rude, +loud, hating, revenging. Both have known misery and hardships, both have +rubbed shoulders with the humiliated and down-trodden. But Korolenko +came out of the crucible with a radiant smile, with universal compassion +and sympathy. Gorky neither forgets or forgives. His body and soul +shriek out vengeance for man enslaved, maimed, bestialized. Korolenko +and his “disciple” both exalt human personality, but the first does so +indiscriminatingly, wholesalely, while Gorky glorifies only the strong, +proclaims the “beauty of power”, and scorns the weak worms, the lazy +adders who are content to stagnate in the mire. Gorky’s philosophy may +appeal to us who have drunk from the waters of Zarathustra, but +Korolenko’s art is purer, free from preaching, and hence more +convincing. + +Alexander Kuprin has been hailed as an anarchist, a free-love preacher, +a social reformer, a cynic, a retrograde, and what not. He may be all +these, or none, or more. Of all the Russian writers he is the only true, +unaffected Dionysian. His love for women, for wine, for horses, for +nature—in a word, for life, is spontaneous and elemental. None of the +hectic morbidity of the consumptive Artzibashev. Kuprin is a healthy +artist with an enormous eye. He sees to the bottom the mind of man and +animal, of the thief and the intellectual, of the empty military officer +and of the street-woman, of the artist and of the gambler, and he makes +us see what he sees with a cheerful gracefulness, with no other purpose +but the presentation of his sweetheart, life. His novel, _The Duel_, +stirred Russian society as a vigorous indictment of militarism, a +picture of the dehumanizing garrison life. Kuprin guffawed at that +accusation over a glass of vodka, as he is usually drawn by cartoonists. +Far be it from him to advocate or condemn. He rejoices in all his +heroes, whether they be garrison dummies, or artistic pickpockets (_The +Outrage_), or Japanese spies (_Captain Ribnikov_), or petty philistines +(_The River of Life_). He floats upon the “river of life”, observes, +absorbs, delights, and chuckles at the very fact of his existence. “Even +if I were to fall under a railway train, and were left lying on the line +with broken and bleeding limbs, and any one were to ask me if life were +beautiful, I should none the less, and even by summoning my last remains +of strength, answer enthusiastically, ‘Ah, yes, even now life is +glorious!’” (_The Duel_). + +From the charming, lithe, joyous Kuprin I pass reluctantly to a book on +the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky[6]. It is deplorable that the +publisher who has given us the excellent translation of Dostoevsky by +Constance Garnett should throw on the market such a mediocrity as Mr. +Soloviev’s work, as if there were not excellent books on the novelist +written by Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Veresayev! Mr. +Soloviev presents the accepted view of Dostoevsky as the preacher of +repentance and atonement, the retrograde, the pillar of church and +autocracy. Superficially, the view appears to be correct. Dig deeper +into the chaotic, epileptical soul of the author of _Crime and +Punishment_, gaze into the abysses of the dual characters of +Raskolnikov, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, the Karamazovs, +fling your imagination into the hellish crater of the novelist’s mind, +and Mr. Soloviev’s symmetrical structure evaporates like mist. Again I +ask, Why are such useless school-exercises reproduced by intelligent +publishers? Why should such a fine translator as Mr. Hogarth waste his +energy on puerilities? + +The same Whys can be applied to another recent publication[7], +Doroshevich’s impressions. Doroshevich is the most popular journalist in +Russia, a witty, entertaining _feuilletonist_, who employs an original +staccato rhythm. But there is no reason under the sun to translate his +reportorial impressions of the war fugitives, written for a Moscow daily +paper. Their value is purely local. How can we be interested in the +management of the Russian relief-points, or their mismanagement? True, +at times Doroshevich flashes brilliant impressionistic colors, as in +describing the fugitives’ bonfires in the forest. But the rare gems do +not justify the journalistic heap. + +I am uneasy about these fallacies of the publishers. Few though they +are, they may serve the part of a spoonful of vinegar in a pot of honey. + +---------- + + [2] _The Mantle and other stories, by Nikolai Gogol. New York: + Frederic A. Stokes._ + + [3] _Makar’s Dream and other stories, by V. Korolenko. New York: + Duffield._ + + [4] _Twenty-six Men and a Girl, by M. Gorky. New York: Frederic + A. Stokes._ + + [5] _The Duel, by A. Kuprin. New York: Macmillan. The River of + Life, by A. Kuprin. Boston: John W. Luce._ + + [6] _Dostoevsky, by Evgenii Soloviev. New York: Macmillan._ + + [7] _The Way of the Cross, by Doroshevich. New York: G. P. + Putnam._ + + + + + The Independent Exhibition + + + LUPO DE BRAILA + +The rich aunt with whose aid the Chicago Society of Artists has managed, +up to the present, to check all artistic impulses in this city, has lost +her magic attraction and power. Her golden smiles and soft pillows have +failed lately to captivate and hold. There is a new breed of young +artists. They seem to be an energetic lot, and decline to live in the +future of promises; and, what is more horrible, they decline to flirt +with the rich aunt through the aid of the honorable society. + +For many years she was the bubbling liquid within the life-giving +bottle. The magic corkscrew was in the safe, the combination known to +the initiated few. According to these few, young artists had to go +through a certain process of taming and self-effacement before they were +gradually given the secret. A certain amount of artistic ignorance plus +an ability to pull strings was required of every aspirant. A soft +backbone bent by many kicks was also one of the main requirements. +“Don’t knock, you’ll break the magic bottle” was their watchword. If you +dared to ask questions concerning the sacred duty of the initiated few, +you aroused a hatred that took years to melt,—a hatred that seemed +impossible in such delicate souls. The few artists who refused to be +tamed left the city and have settled in other parts. + +And the philanthropic aunt, like all true philanthropists, acquired all +she could get and paid the minimum price. The paying was usually +accompanied by a lot of pompous actions and was supposed to be received +like a first-class iron cross by a common soldier. You see, the young +talented artist was actually compelled to bribe the art patron to get to +the secret of the combination, and was compelled to listen to all kinds +of insults besides. Here are a favorite few: “I have discovered him”; “I +helped him to get where he is now”; “If it were not for me....” The +artist was also used as a rare orchid at their dinner tables and as +Chinese embroidery at unusual occasions. I know one of these patrons who +even resorted to threats, when a young and independent sculptor refused +to be “discovered.” And such creatures pose as art patrons and +connoisseurs, and hold the combination to the life-giving bottle of this +city. + +As a matter of fact, almost all the prestige and almost all the artistic +knowledge possessed by these same patrons was given them by their +so-called protegees at starvation prices. However, the patrons are +hardly to be blamed for this state of affairs. They were made by +well-meaning but mediocre artists whose highest ambitions were foggy +imitations of a certain kind of realism practiced abroad when my +grandmother’s dolls used up most of her time. The saddest or funniest +side of this spectacle is that the patrons have, for the last few years, +advanced in understanding beyond the possibilities of the artists who +have made them. As you can easily see, a most discouraging and +impossible state of affairs. It reached its climax at the last Chicago +Artists’ exhibition, when those in control, to use a popular saying, +rubbed it in. It was a show of the aged and crippled, and prizes were +awarded on the basis of an Old-Age Benefit. It was a slow sickness and +positive in retarding all artistic endeavor in this city. + +But like a clear and promising path in this dark jungle comes the first +International Exhibition of Independent Artists. It is a jury-free +exhibition, and every man is allowed to hang two paintings, provided he +pays for the space. And it was a strong indictment against the old +order. It showed how thoroughly it has managed to kill all originality +and individuality in the younger artists. In spite of the fact that it +was a jury-free exhibition you could easily see that almost everyone had +painted with this little thought in the back of his head: This must +please Messrs. Albright, Juergens, and Company. To pick out the few who +made a good showing this time would be unfair to the rest. The whole +show was conceived and arranged in six weeks, and to me it was more +interesting and held more promise than any other show held in this city. + +It is a young oak whose knotty branches, like playful fists, shoot in +unexpected directions. It grows up near a grey solemn mausoleum. The +mausoleum acts as if it does not notice the sturdy youngster; but it +knows in its heart, if it has one, that it will soon be hidden in the +shadow of this tree’s branches. Virile roots will crack the walls and +decay will be the deserved fate. + + + + + The Reader Critic + + + _SHE IS NO FRIEND OF OURS!_ + +_Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa_: + +Will you be so kind as to ask your friend, “Virginia York”, to refrain +from re-misprinting for a third time, a bit hacked from my _Café +Sketches_? If she finds the poem so interesting, why does she not print +it in its entirety, and correctly? Then perhaps her readers could decide +just where the joke lies—in the light of “Virginia York’s” Olympian +pronouncement that “maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is +not intended to be.” Just because a little learning would be dangerous +for her, I shall never disclose to her what the poem _was_ intended to +be. Besides, she wouldn’t believe me; for her, a thing has to be either +_Lear_ or _Charley’s Aunt_, evidently. + +I have harbored doubts as to the value of _vers libre_; but now they are +gone. For I see that it does shut out a certain type of mind. + +Harriet Dean’s _Pillar_ is admirable! Also Sandburg’s four. + +Tell your “sixteen year old boy” that his poem is damn interesting—but +to cut out the “only sixteen” and “one could not expect me to know much +about poetry” stuff. At sixteen most of us had read all the poetry in +existence, and were busy writing epics that were to re-make the world. +Tell him to stop being a sixteen-year-old worm, and to get up on his +hind legs and bite the stars. Tell him to write arrogantly of this +“charming” world he sees. It’s time enough to be humble when one is old. + + + _THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY._ + +_Daphne and Michael Carr, Columbia, Missouri_: + +We have been greatly enraged by reading Mr Charles Zwaska’s article, _An +Isaiah without a Christ_, in the April number of THE LITTLE REVIEW. It +reminds us of a review of the same book in _Judge_. It ran something +like this: “Vachel Lindsey has out a new book on the Art of the Moving +Picture. It might be all right, but for the fact that the movie can +never be Art.” In just the same sententious way Mr Zwaska seems to be +peeved that Lindsay should suggest the possibility of art in a thing +which is at present clumsily done. Some one has said that when Miriam +led the women of Israel to a dance of rejoicing, all of the women who +were too fat or too stiff to dance stood back and deplored the immodesty +of their nimble sisters. Perhaps Mr Zwaska is too fat, or too stiff, or +too old. I don’t know: may be he is so young that he still creeps and +doesn’t think of dancing. For Lindsay has sung out humanly and +delightfully a more acceptable ideal of democracy than any American has +yet sung. The rest of us would-be artists are creating things that can +appeal to a small number. Lindsay is chanting to all America, and all +America is listening—we, the artists, as well as the littlest country +school-boy. + + “Says the swift black horse + To the swift white horse: + ‘There goes the alarm + There goes the alarm. + They are hitched, they are off, + They are gone in a flash, + And they strain at the driver’s iron arm.’” + +We shout it when the fire-engines fly down the street. We croon the moon +poems together in the evenings, and we chant _The Santa Fé Trail_ as we +tramp across country. + +Mr Zwaska seems to catch a glimmering of the fact that Lindsay is a +rhyming poet, because he is singing to all the people. Why does he not +apply this a little farther? Lindsay’s message, as I catch it, is this: + +The Moving Picture has in it possibilities of a great art. Furthermore, +it is for all America, for every farm boy, for every little dish-washer +as well as for every millionaire. Let us make this art as perfect, as +inspiring, as possible, since it has a wider influence, be it good, bad, +or indifferent, than any other art in the history of humanity. The +exquisite Parthenon, Sophocles’s tragedies performed in the theater of +Dionysus, were for the Athenians, and for such as could reach Athens. +Fortunately, that included a large percentage of the Greeks. But how +many Americans, proportionately, can see such wonders as New York has to +offer? + +When a moving-picture as perfect as the Parthenon has been produced +there need be no soul in America who has not seen it. + +This being the ideal, we proceed toward its realization. Lindsay points +out some means of attaining beauty in the moving-pictures. The producers +can, he says, learn from the painters beauties of composition, of +symbolism, of mood. Beautiful sculpture can teach the rhythm, the speed, +the grace of motion. And architecture will help to interpret big social +emotions, such as patriotism and religion in terms of crowds, +pageantlike, of landscapes, and, upon occasion, of architecture itself. + +But here Mr Zwaska objects. He says that Lindsay is making the +moving-picture a parasite on the other arts. I am not going to quote +Noah Webster, or Dr Johnson, but it is generally understood that a +parasite is an organism that steals its life from its host, weakening +the host thereby. Has Mr Lorado Taft, or Mr Frank Lloyd Wright, or Mr +Jerome Blum, been robbed of any tittle of artistic ideas, or of artistic +technique, or of admiration by Lindsay’s book, or by the producers who +have tried so ineffectually to follow his suggestions? I don’t want to +quibble with metaphors, but if horticulture is to be the basis of them I +should rather say that Lindsay proposes to burbank a wonderful new +nectarine art by crossing painting, sculpture, architecture, and +pantomime. + +At present the difficulty is that there is no one in the producing field +with the artistic training, and feeling, and the burning genius withal +to produce a wonderful film. Max Reinhardt or Gordon Craig could do it, +but even they would be working against the difficulties of a new medium. +D’Annunzio did pretty well with _Cabiria_ but——Have you ever read +Aeschylus’ _Suppliants_? It was the first and afterwards came _Electra_ +and _Œdipus_. + +Well, along in his article Mr Zwaska grows boisterous at Lindsay who +has, supposedly working on a suggestion from his friend, James +Oppenheim, spoken of the possibility of a highly symbolic film +production of _The Book of the Dead_. And this because Mrs Moore of +Chicago, has worked out beautiful dances, and costumes and libretto for +a stage production of the wonderful Nile and Sun myth. Bless Mrs Lou +Wall Moore! We love her and her devotion. We have been wonder-struck by +the loveliness of her Egyptian costume designs. When she does produce +_The Book of the Dead_ we will, Fate permitting, make a pilgrimage from +this movie-ridden Missouri town to see it wherever it may he. And I know +that we will be rejoiced to be able to do so. But I am sure that dear +Mrs Moore would be the last person to object to a film production of +_The Book of the Dead_, _IF_ the production be a beautiful one. For, as +Lindsay iterates and reiterates, the stage and the moving-pictures +_MUST_ be different. Mrs Moore’s production will have “the splendor of +color, space, height, distance, and most magical of all, the voice.” And +the worthy moving-picture production, when it arrives, will have, in +black-and-white symphony, the infinite depths of the sky, waving palm +branches, the width of the desert, and above all, beautifully controlled +actors, streaming hundreds, directed and co-ordinated as was the +Diaghileff corps-de-ballet. And this beauty will travel all over the +country, touching, among others, this drama-starved town of Missouri, +where we suffer for want of visual beauty. + +Mr Zwaska deplores the lack of composition—“moving lines” he calls it—in +the moving pictures. He says that he has seen it “only in the flight of +gulls (unconscious actors) or in pictures of rivers and trees, and the +sea; in short—Nature. But Nature is Nature” wailed Mr Zwaska. And pray, +why pervert the facts you bring forth? If the cinematograph can record +the beautiful motion of the birds, can it not equally well record the +beautiful motion of humans when the producer has learned to direct his +actors as M. Fokine directs his dancers? _There_ is room for Art. + +Why—why, in the name of all that is lovely, must people howl at any +expression of belief in possibilities of a new art? The moving-picture +is Shakespearean, Hugoesque, Zolaesque, in its method. We see through it +not only Antony and Cleopatra, but the two great hungry struggling +groups that each impersonates. We see not only the typical coal-miner +and his typical sorrows; we see the mass of his comrades under the same +oppression, the same evil conditions. We see better, because more +swiftly, than Hugo could paint it with his wonderful vocabulary, Notre +Dame de Paris, the symbol, the social motif which embodies in a unity +all that the story tries to show of the beauty, the horror, the fate, +and the aspirations of the pre-Renaissance, an ever-present condition +behind the actors. Are such possibilities to be shoved aside and denied +a place among the arts where pageantry is admitted? Is the fact that +thousands of bad, atrociously bad, films are turned out to discredit the +few well-constructed, symbolic film-plays? Look at our abominable +American poster-makers. Does this discredit Mr Blum, whose praises we +hear sung? + +There is one really vital criticism in Mr Zwaska’s hectic article. That +is, upon Lindsay’s “too ruthless a theory” of no music in the movie +theater. From the first we shied at that. We are surprised at the author +of poems to be read aloud. Another of our admirable countrymen, who +qualifies not only as a sociologist, but as a philosopher and a poet, +has his say on the subject quite incidentally. I speak of Max Eastman, +who, in his _Enjoyment of Poetry_, says, “I have yet to find one in +which the reality of the pictures is not enhanced with the beating of an +old piano. Nobody notices the piano, nobody remembers what the piano +plays, or how badly, but there it is, always keeping up a metre.” The +audiences’ “voluntary mind is on the canvas but the music slips all the +deeper into their beings, and it makes them live the pictures.” I can +well believe Mr Zwaska’s account of the after-midnight picture show. +Granted that most picture-show music is terrible, that the electric +piano is agonizing, that it is deeply shocking to hear the _Miserere_ +when sweet Mary Pickford is acting the Un Bel Di Vedremo scene in +Butterfly, the music is far less dreadful than silence, and we talk +through it all the same. I do not know a possible remedy, but it is +worth the thought of every person interested or disgusted. This is +merely one of Vachel Lindsay’s acknowledged “paw paws.” + +So here we are at the end of our wrath. And here’s a cheer and a hearty +greeting for Lindsay, who is scaling the Pike’s Peak of idealism. And +here’s congratulations to Mr Zwaska for directing a few more telescopes +at him. + + + _FOR THE BRAHMINS._ + +_A Poet, Chicago_: + +I am sick of hearing Chicago audiences go into raptures over Brahms. +Here is my impression of him as I listened to the last concert of the +Chicago Symphony: _Symphony No. 4, E Minor, Opus 98_. + + First Movement: + Milk and Liver. + Second Movement: + Bed-bugs crawling over the body of a fat burgher. Occasionally he + snorts sonorously (’cellos). + Third Movement: + Ten-ton joviality—beer, cheese, saurkraut, ham. Grazioso—Ach, du + lieber Augustine! The end suggests his Academic: + Fourth Movement: + a. Hungarian dancing—(Brahms’ only successful field). + b. Falls into pompernickel sentimentalism. + c. The German policeman (trombones). + d. More liver. + e. Gas. + +_Yours Sylph-fully_: + +Please let me “register” my appreciation of your April number. I read +the extract from _The Interstate Medical Journal_ with intense +purposefulness, have ordered Vance Thompson’s “epoch-making book, _Eat +and Grow Thin_”, and begin to feel that I am getting even more than I +subscribed for. + +Incidentally, didn’t you love Carl Sandburg’s _Gone_? Chick Lorimer! +What a name! It makes one almost sorry to be “respectable”, somehow—it’s +so full of gayety and courage! + + + Statement of Ownership, Management, + Circulation, Etc., required by the Act of + August 24, 1912 + + of _THE LITTLE REVIEW_ published monthly at + _Chicago, Ill._ for April 1st, 1916. + + Editor, _Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts + Building, Chicago_. + + Managing Editor, _Same_ + + Business Manager, _Same_ + + Publisher, _Same_ + + Owners: (If a corporation, give its name and + the names and addresses of stockholders holding + 1 per cent or more of total amount of stock. If + not a corporation, give names and addresses of + individual owners.) + + _Margaret C. Anderson + 834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago_ + + Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other + security holders, holding 1 per cent or more of + total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other + securities: _None._ + + _MARGARET C. ANDERSON_, + + Sworn to and subscribed before me this _31st_ + day of _March, 1916_. + + _MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public._ + (My commission expires _December 20, 1917_.) + + + + + ART SCHOOL or + ART FACTORY + WHICH? + + Charles A. Kinney’s story of his fight for individual rights in + the Art Institute: + + A few of the topics Mr. Kinney will discuss: + + The seven cases in the law courts—what they mean to students and + faculty. + + The Art Student Fellowship organization—why it was forced on the + students of the Institute. + + Why faculty members were forced to support it on penalty of + losing their positions. + + Organization and discipline, or art spirit? Which is most + essential in an art school? + + Student activities—shall the Dean or the students control them? + + Art Schools—shall men trained in Business or men trained in Art + control them? + + What encouragement is there for sincere artists? + + When at least half the scholarships are awarded because of + influence and favoritism rather than meritorious work? + + When faculty members of the Institute have practically no + independence? + + Mr. Kinney’s article will appear in the June issue of THE LITTLE + REVIEW. + + + + + THE FLAME + + + A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE + + Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors. + 3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass. + + “The Flame” is to be a monthly journal of revolution, soon to + take life. It is to burn against oppression and authority + everywhere, and is to be as pure and merciless as the flower of + light after which it is named. + + We want you to help us make “The Flame.” It is not to be one of + those vehicles for the delivery of the vast thoughts of an + unrecognized “genius,” but a little forum where every + revolutionist of high heart and purpose can speak. We can pay + nothing, of course. Cartoons, poems, stories, sketches, tracts, + philosophies, news reports—all will be welcomed. + + No creed or philosophy will be barred from our columns if only + its devotee writes in a beautiful and furious and yes-saying + gesture. The editorials will be flavored by the anarchy of the + publishers. + + + THE DRAMA For May Offers Two Plays + + REMY DE GOURMONT, whose dramatic work has never been accessible + in English. The translation has been made by the celebrated + Imagist poet, RICHARD ALDINGTON, who contributes also a skillful + critique of de Gourmont’s work. The plays are printed by an + authorization given a few weeks before the playwright’s death. + + Among the other articles is one by Alexander Bakshy, an associate + of the Russian producer, Meyerhold, on The Cinematograph as Art. + In this the author shows that the great field open to the + “movies” has not even been discovered by the film producer of + today. + + Mr. Charles Lemmi contributes a brilliant discussion of The + Italian Stage of Today, not so much a study of the individual + plays as an attempt to analyze and explain the forces in the + present-day Italian theatre. + + The Hull House Players, an organization of more than local fame, + is the subject of a brief history by the founder and director, + Laura Dainty Pelham. + + Many other articles on the current problems of the drama, reviews + and bibliographies complete the number. + + 736 Marquette Building + CHICAGO + + Three Dollars Per Year + + Two Dollars Per Year to Members of The Drama League of America + + Seventy-five Cents Per Copy + + + + + PIANO TRIUMPHANT + + The artistic outgrowth of forty-five years of constant + improvement—a piano conceived to better all that has proven best + in others. + + + GEO. P. BENT GRAND + + Could you but compare it with all others, artistically it must be + your choice. Each day proves this more true. + + Geo. P. Bent Grand, Style “A”—a small Grand, built for the + home—your home. + + + GEO. P. BENT COMPANY + + Manufacturers of Artistic Pianos + Retailers of Victrolas + 214 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. + +The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect +correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW. + +The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical +errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here +(before/after): + + [p. 3]: + ... treacle on bread over all these different stylic bases, this + operation requiring ... + ... treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, + this operation requiring ... + + [p. 44]: + ... What encouragement is there for sincere artists ... + ... What encouragement is there for sincere artists? ... + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75706 *** |