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} + .x-ebookmaker a.pagenum:after { display:none; } + + .x-ebookmaker .trnote { margin:0; } + + .x-ebookmaker span.firstchar { clear:left; float:left; } + .x-ebookmaker div.ads .fl { float:left; } + .x-ebookmaker div.ads .fr { float:right; } + +</style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75706 ***</div> + +<div class="frontmatter chapter"> +<h1 class="title"> +<span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> +</h1> + +<p class="subt"> +<em>Literature</em> <em>Drama</em> <em>Music</em> <em>Art</em> +</p> + +<p class="ed"> +<span class="line1">MARGARET C. ANDERSON</span><br> +<span class="line2">EDITOR</span> +</p> + +<p class="issue"> +MAY, 1916 +</p> + + <div class="table"> +<table class="tocn"> +<tbody> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THREEFLESHTINTS">Three Flesh-tints:</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Ben Hecht</em></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#THEINCENSEBURNER">The Incense Burner</a></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#THEGOLDFISHINABOWL">The Goldfish in a Bowl</a></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#ANUDE">A Nude</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THECOMPLEATAMATEUR">“The Compleat Amateur”</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Harold Bauer</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THREEJAPANESEPAINTINGS">Three Japanese Paintings:</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Arthur Davison Ficke</em></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#DREAMOFACHINESELANDSCAPE">Dream of a Chinese Landscape</a></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#DREAMOFACHINESEROCKPROMONTORY">Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory</a></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#THEGOLDENSYMPHONY">The Golden Symphony</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THESTRUGGLE">The Struggle</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Sherwood Anderson</em></td> + </tr> + <tr class=""> + <td class="col1"><a href="#AMISCHIEVOUSRHAPSODYOFTHEFIRSTRECURRENCE">A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#POEMS">Poems:</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Daphne Carr</em></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#WELTSCHMERTZ">Welt Schmertz</a></td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2"><a href="#PRISONERS">Prisoners</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#LEOORNSTEIN">Leo Ornstein</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Margaret C. Anderson</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#NOCTURNEFROMPAULVERLAINE">Nocturne (from Paul Verlaine)</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Clara Shanafelt</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#WHITEMISTS">White Mists</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>M. C. A.</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#LETTERSFROMPRISON">Letters from Prison</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Emma Goldman</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#OFFTHETURNPIKE">Off the Turnpike</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Amy Lowell</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#POTATOESINACELLAR">Potatoes in a Cellar</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>R. G.</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#NEWYORKLETTER">New York Letter</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Allan Ross Macdougall</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#AMBERMONOCHROME">Amber Monochrome</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Mark Turbyfill</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THREEIMAGISTPOETS">Three Imagist Poets</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>John Gould Fletcher</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#ROSSICA">Rossica</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Alexander S. Kaun</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THEINDEPENDENTEXHIBITION">The Independent Exhibition</a></td> + <td class="col2"><em>Lupo de Braila</em></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THEREADERCRITIC">The Reader Critic</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> +</tbody> +</table> + </div> +<p class="monthly"> +Published Monthly +</p> + + <div class="table"> + <div class="footer"> +<p class="pricel"> +15 cents a copy +</p> + +<p class="pub"> +MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher<br> +Fine Arts Building<br> +CHICAGO +</p> + +<p class="pricer"> +$1.50 a year +</p> + + </div> + </div> +<p class="postoffice"> +Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="frontmatter chapter"> +<a id="page-1" class="pagenum" title="1"></a> +<p class="tit"> +<span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> +</p> + + <div class="table"> + <div class="issue"> +<p class="vol"> +VOL. III +</p> + +<p class="issue"> +MAY, 1916 +</p> + +<p class="number"> +NO. 3 +</p> + + </div> + </div> +<p class="cop"> +Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson +</p> + +</div> + +<h2 class="article1" id="THREEFLESHTINTS"> +Three Flesh-tints +</h2> + +<p class="aut"> +BEN HECHT +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="THEINCENSEBURNER"> +The Incense Burner +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A bending flower rises from its mouth</p> + <p class="verse">And sways like the vein of a zephyr.</p> + <p class="verse">Threads of moonlight float entangled over it,</p> + <p class="verse">Delicate as the breath of a dying woman.</p> + <p class="verse">Souls come whispering from its ancient lips,</p> + <p class="verse">Laden with thin secrets,</p> + <p class="verse">And torn by the long nails of idiot Gods....</p> + <p class="verse">Pale dancers arise, whirling listlessly,</p> + <p class="verse">Expiring in a writhing languor.</p> + <p class="verse">Heavy-lidded eyes crawl out and open vacantly and close....</p> + <p class="verse">Dried whisps of water break into blue wings.</p> + <p class="verse">A sleeping woman’s arm reaches up and curves into a sigh</p> + <p class="verse">And scratches at the air with opalescent claws.</p> + <p class="verse">Dead pearls drift in a dead circle—till, quivering,</p> + <p class="verse">A slow finger rises, balancing a grey moon on its tip.</p> + <p class="verse">And then a severed face squeezes out and lolls to and fro,</p> + <p class="verse">Its washed purple lips leering with a grotesque sin.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="THEGOLDFISHINABOWL"> +<a id="page-2" class="pagenum" title="2"></a> +The Goldfish in a Bowl +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A tiny shimmering courtesan</p> + <p class="verse">Dressed in red spangles,</p> + <p class="verse">Weaves a monotonous thread of painted rubies</p> + <p class="verse">Through the stagnant curtains of her room.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Stifling under faint rags,</p> + <p class="verse">A dumb enchanted nightingale</p> + <p class="verse">Tosses in droll anguish,</p> + <p class="verse">Dreaming of the sapphire roses and the crystal fringe and the topaz silks</p> + <p class="verse">That were her lovers.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="ANUDE"> +A Nude +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The rich brocade of night,</p> + <p class="verse">Sewn with the red dust of roses</p> + <p class="verse">And the topaz breath of the sleeping sun</p> + <p class="verse">Hangs from the cool ivoried silk of her shoulders.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The winged beacons of her breasts</p> + <p class="verse">Gleam with golden moonlight.</p> + <p class="verse">And her eyes are like purple bosomed birds</p> + <p class="verse">That circle and beat against the azure gloom.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Her nakedness is an opal mirror,</p> + <p class="verse">Quivering with splintered images.</p> + <p class="verse">Her nakedness is a white kiss.</p> + <p class="verse">Burning on the shadowed lips of the night.</p> + <p class="verse">Her nakedness is the flowing of ghostly water</p> + <p class="verse">Under fierce moons—</p> + <p class="verse">The poplar silver of the wind that dances in the gardens at night.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Her nakedness is the golden fabric woven out of bloody grapes</p> + <p class="verse">And the dead mists of incense.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THECOMPLEATAMATEUR"> +<a id="page-3" class="pagenum" title="3"></a> +“The Compleat Amateur” +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="u subt"> +or<br> +How Not to be An Artist +</p> + +<p class="aut"> +HAROLD BAUER +</p> + +<p class="note"> +(<em>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</em> <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>. <em>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.</em>) +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="ILESTYLEFAITLHOMME"> +I. “<em>Le Style fait l’homme</em>” +</h3> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">f</span> 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 <a id="corr-0"></a>stylistic bases, this operation requiring +neither skill nor expression. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="IIMEANSTOANEND"> +II. “<em>Means to an End</em>” +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="IIIPERSONALITYORASSOMEAUTHORITIESHAVEITINDIVIDUALITY"> +III. <em>Personality, or, as some authorities have it: Individuality</em> +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 +<a id="page-4" class="pagenum" title="4"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="IVTHEMISSIONOFAMATEURISM"> +IV. <em>The Mission of Amateurism</em> +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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”. +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THREEJAPANESEPAINTINGS"> +<a id="page-5" class="pagenum" title="5"></a> +Three Japanese Paintings +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE +</p> + +<h3 class="section u" id="DREAMOFACHINESELANDSCAPE"> +I.<br> +Dream of a Chinese Landscape<br> +(<em>A Screen by Soga Shubun</em>) +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Mists are rolling</p> + <p class="verse">Over the grey mountains,</p> + <p class="verse">Over the quiet waters</p> + <p class="verse">And marshy shores—</p> + <p class="verse">Rolling up into valleys</p> + <p class="verse">Where pagodas rise,—</p> + <p class="verse">Rolling over slopes</p> + <p class="verse">Along whose crests</p> + <p class="verse">Monasteries dream.</p> + <p class="verse">Wild geese soar</p> + <p class="verse">Above the marshes</p> + <p class="verse">In downward flight—</p> + <p class="verse">In flight from unknown shore</p> + <p class="verse">To unknown shore.</p> + <p class="verse">Over all</p> + <p class="verse">Mists are swaying.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">The shadowy bridge</p> + <p class="verse">And wandering roadway,</p> + <p class="verse">The dark gnarled tree by the road</p> + <p class="verse">And the pale tree afar,</p> + <p class="verse">Are touched with doubtful mists</p> + <p class="verse">Or emergent from lifting mists,—</p> + <p class="verse">Trembling in mist; born of mist; shadows....</p> + <p class="verse2">O mountains, shores, and streams!</p> + <p class="verse">Beautiful transient illusion!</p> + <p class="verse">Mortal world, dream world,</p> + <p class="verse">Vanishing into mist, into mist only!</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section u" id="DREAMOFACHINESEROCKPROMONTORY"> +<a id="page-6" class="pagenum" title="6"></a> +II.<br> +Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory<br> +(<em>A Screen by Sesshu</em>) +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">Across quiet waters, far off,</p> + <p class="verse">Faint, misty mountains unfold in limitless ranges,</p> + <p class="verse">Guarding some dream-world,—</p> + <p class="verse">Some dim and tranquil world of golden pagodas,</p> + <p class="verse">Lawns and pools, terraces and deep groves,</p> + <p class="verse">Vermilion palaces, and peacock-haunted gardens.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">But that is afar;</p> + <p class="verse">And the quiet waters lie between.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">Here at our feet</p> + <p class="verse">Rises out of the quiet water</p> + <p class="verse">Stormily, ridge by ridge,</p> + <p class="verse">Buttress by buttress,</p> + <p class="verse">Cliff beyond cliff beyond cliff,</p> + <p class="verse">The jagged headland.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">Here,</p> + <p class="verse">Gigantic, primeval,</p> + <p class="verse">Juts the grey promontory.</p> + <p class="verse">It is bleaker than death, though temples deck it;</p> + <p class="verse">Starker than ice, though pines bestrew it;</p> + <p class="verse">Inhuman, though the village at its base</p> + <p class="verse">Humanly nestles.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">With writhing turrets,</p> + <p class="verse">With dizzy gulfs,</p> + <p class="verse">With winding abysses</p> + <p class="verse">And cloven brinks,</p> + <p class="verse">The rock rises</p> + <p class="verse">In ripples, in waves, in spires—</p> + <p class="verse">It rises fiercely, with an appalling passion,—</p> + <p class="verse">An apparition of dark monstrous life,—</p> + <p class="verse">And foaming up at last to its highest crest</p> + <p class="verse">Stands frozen</p> + <p class="verse">To freeze the blood of generations.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section u" id="THEGOLDENSYMPHONY"> +<a id="page-7" class="pagenum" title="7"></a> +III.<br> +The Golden Symphony<br> +(<em>A Screen by Sotatsu</em>) +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse2">Golden clouds, and a golden bridge</p> + <p class="verse">Lifting in a great arc, swinging in a high arc,</p> + <p class="verse">Under clouds of gold, over clouds of gold,—</p> + <p class="verse">From the long slow curve of a golden shore</p> + <p class="verse">Across wide spaces of dark river!...</p> + <p class="verse">And behold! a drifting miracle—</p> + <p class="verse">Behold the long steady advancing prow</p> + <p class="verse">Of a golden boat, heavier than the sun,</p> + <p class="verse">Quiet upon the dark river; bearing two lovers</p> + <p class="verse">In robes of state, intricate, luminous,</p> + <p class="verse">Upon this dim river—where the great arc</p> + <p class="verse">Of the bridge from clouds into clouds</p> + <p class="verse">Swings, from golden shore to golden shore,</p> + <p class="verse">From the gold earth to the gold heaven.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THESTRUGGLE"> +The Struggle +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +SHERWOOD ANDERSON +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">he</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of the +night. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It +<a id="page-8" class="pagenum" title="8"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-9" class="pagenum" title="9"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-10" class="pagenum" title="10"></a> +said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and trying vainly to push another +cloud out of the sky. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<div class="filler"> +<p class="noindent"> +The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed +to judge life.—<em>Nietzsche.</em> +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="AMISCHIEVOUSRHAPSODYOFTHEFIRSTRECURRENCE"> +<a id="page-11" class="pagenum" title="11"></a> +A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">I</span> Zarathustra, declare myself! Ye have dulled me with priests; +ye have sweetened me with girls; ye have betrayed me with envious +anarchists. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +These things do I hold sacred—my strength, my lust, my joy. These +ye shall feed, and die. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +I will give you a new law:—Love your enemy, for him ye may destroy. +Fear your friend, for he shall steal your raiment. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I say unto the preacher: Stick to the Nazarene; he hath deserved +his Golgotha. But who shall make my words a law for me? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<em>Also sprach Zarathustra!</em> +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="POEMS"> +<a id="page-12" class="pagenum" title="12"></a> +Poems +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +DAPHNE CARR +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="WELTSCHMERTZ"> +Welt Schmertz +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I have crushed so many roses</p> + <p class="verse">That my hands</p> + <p class="verse">Drip with red fragrance.</p> + <p class="verse">But I would crush to death against my breast</p> + <p class="verse">The wind</p> + <p class="verse">That is raging drunk with the perfume of all flowers.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I have bathed in a hundred cool springs—</p> + <p class="verse">Still I am burning.</p> + <p class="verse">I would plunge into the ocean,</p> + <p class="verse">Diving down and down</p> + <p class="verse">To find myself</p> + <p class="verse">Freshly fluid</p> + <p class="verse">As a wave.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="PRISONERS"> +Prisoners +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A wind runs through the room,</p> + <p class="verse">And leaps out of the window.</p> + <p class="verse">The white curtain springs after</p> + <p class="verse">Fluttering out.</p> + <p class="verse">But it is fastened tight inside.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">My love kisses me</p> + <p class="verse">And goes</p> + <p class="verse">Waving good-bye</p> + <p class="verse">And laughing.</p> + <p class="verse">Am I also held fast in this room?</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="LEOORNSTEIN"> +<a id="page-13" class="pagenum" title="13"></a> +Leo Ornstein +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +MARGARET C. ANDERSON +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">N</span><span class="postfirstchar">ietzsche</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The School of Giorgione</em> 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 <em>à propos</em>”; you find that you’re just +as badly off as before: by what standard is the <em>à propos</em> measured? +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 <em>Impressions of the Thames</em>, 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” +<a id="page-14" class="pagenum" title="14"></a> +music, so I only know that it was sound which interested and pleased and +shook me. Then he played his <em>Funeral March</em>, 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 <em>Arabesque</em>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 +<em>à propos</em>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>been able</em>—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 <em>Impressions of the Thames</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +As for Ornstein himself, I think he is a sincere person who means to +<a id="page-15" class="pagenum" title="15"></a> +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 <em>Nocturne in E Flat</em>: I disliked his “exaggeration” +in it as much as anything I have ever heard on a piano. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +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? +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="NOCTURNEFROMPAULVERLAINE"> +Nocturne +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="note"> +(<em>From the French of Paul Verlaine</em>) +</p> + +<p class="aut"> +CLARA SHANAFELT +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your soul is like a lovely garden place</p> + <p class="verse">Where masque and bergamasque move graciously,</p> + <p class="verse">Playing the lute and dancing, yet of face</p> + <p class="verse">Half sad beneath their guise of fantasy.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The while they sing in minor key</p> + <p class="verse">Love conquering, life opportune,</p> + <p class="verse">They seem to doubt their own felicity—</p> + <p class="verse">Their song floats faintly upward in the moon,</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">In the clear moonlight, sad and fair,</p> + <p class="verse">That makes birds dream where dim boughs sway,</p> + <p class="verse">And fountains sigh their rapture on the air</p> + <p class="verse">From marble pools—the tall slim fountain spray.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="WHITEMISTS"> +<a id="page-16" class="pagenum" title="16"></a> +White Mists<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-1" id="fnote-1">[1]</a> +</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">There are grey stone rat-traps on the earth</p> + <p class="verse">Where human beings are put to die</p> + <p class="verse">By other human beings.</p> + <p class="verse">They die hour after hour, a million million times,</p> + <p class="verse">And still face death....</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">There is blue air between the clouds and the earth</p> + <p class="verse">Which they once saw;</p> + <p class="verse">There are gold stars,</p> + <p class="verse">And suns that come up red,</p> + <p class="verse">And trees that turn to purple in the evening—</p> + <p class="verse">But they cannot remember....</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Now their days are bundles of soiled rags,</p> + <p class="verse">Their nights are stone....</p> + <p class="verse">I dare not think of them:</p> + <p class="verse">It drives me toward the whiteness of insanity.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza attr"> + <p class="verse">M. C. A.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class="footnote"> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-1" id="footnote-1">[1]</a> <em>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.</em> +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="LETTERSFROMPRISON"> +<a id="page-17" class="pagenum" title="17"></a> +Letters from Prison +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +EMMA GOLDMAN +</p> + +<p class="date"> +<em>Queen’s County Jail,<br> +Long Island City, New York.<br> +April, 1916.</em> +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">W</span><span class="postfirstchar">hat</span> am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no +misery so appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so +humiliated. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s <em>Justice</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +... 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 <em>Anarchism</em>, and the Matron my <em>Social Significance of the Modern +Drama</em>). 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 <em>The Ballad of Reading Gaol</em>: “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. +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-18" class="pagenum" title="18"></a> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +... 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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p class="noindent"> +Good morning. Another crazing night has gone.... +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="OFFTHETURNPIKE"> +<a id="page-19" class="pagenum" title="19"></a> +Off The Turnpike +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +AMY LOWELL +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Good ev’nin’, Mis’ Priest.</p> + <p class="verse">I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye.</p> + <p class="verse">Yes, it’s all over,</p> + <p class="verse">All my things is packed</p> + <p class="verse">And every last one o’ them boxes</p> + <p class="verse">Is on Bradley’s team</p> + <p class="verse">Bein’ hauled over to th’ station.</p> + <p class="verse">No, I ain’t goin’ back agin.</p> + <p class="verse">I’m stoppin’ over to French’s fer to-night,</p> + <p class="verse">And goin’ down fust train in th’ mornin’.</p> + <p class="verse">Yes, it do seem kinder queer</p> + <p class="verse">Not to be goin’ to see Cherry’s Orchard no more,</p> + <p class="verse">But Land Sakes! When a change’s comin’,</p> + <p class="verse">Why, I allus say it can’t come too quick.</p> + <p class="verse">Now, that’s real kind of you,</p> + <p class="verse">Your doughnuts is always so tasty.</p> + <p class="verse">Yes, I’m goin’ to Chicago,</p> + <p class="verse">To my niece,</p> + <p class="verse">She’s married to a fine man, hardware business,</p> + <p class="verse">And doin’ real well, she tells me.</p> + <p class="verse">Lizzie’s be’n at me to go out ther fer the longest while.</p> + <p class="verse">She ain’t got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know.</p> + <p class="verse">She’s rented me a real nice little flat,</p> + <p class="verse">Same house as hers,</p> + <p class="verse">And I’m goin’ to try that city livin’ folks say’s so pleasant.</p> + <p class="verse">Oh, yes, he was real generous,</p> + <p class="verse">Paid me a sight of money fer the Orchard,</p> + <p class="verse">I told him ’twouldn’t yield nothin’ but stones,</p> + <p class="verse">But he ain’t farmin’ it.</p> + <p class="verse">Lor’, no, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">He’s jest took it to set and look at the view.</p> + <p class="verse">Maybe he wouldn’t be so stuck on the view</p> + <p class="verse">Ef he’d seed it every mornin’ and night for forty year</p> + <p class="verse">Same’s I have.</p> + <p class="verse">I dessay it’s pretty enough,</p> +<a id="page-20" class="pagenum" title="20"></a> + <p class="verse">But it’s so pressed into me</p> + <p class="verse">I c’n see’t with my eyes shet.</p> + <p class="verse">No. I ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">Don’t shet th’ door.</p> + <p class="verse">I’ll be all right in a minit.</p> + <p class="verse">But I ain’t a mite sorry to leave that view.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, maybe ’tis queer to feel so,</p> + <p class="verse">And maybe ’tisn’t.</p> + <p class="verse">My! But that tea’s revivin’.</p> + <p class="verse">Old things ain’t always pleasant things, Mis’ Priest.</p> + <p class="verse">No, no, I don’t cal’late on comin’ back,</p> + <p class="verse">That’s why I’d ruther be to Chicago,</p> + <p class="verse">Boston’s too near.</p> + <p class="verse">It ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">It’s jest my thoughts.</p> + <p class="verse">I ain’t sick, only—</p> + <p class="verse">Mis’ Priest, ef you’ve nothin’ ter take yer time,</p> + <p class="verse">And have a mind to listen,</p> + <p class="verse">There’s somethin’ I’d like ter speak about.</p> + <p class="verse">I ain’t never mentioned it,</p> + <p class="verse">But I’d like to tell yer ’fore I go.</p> + <p class="verse">Would yer mind lowerin’ them shades,</p> + <p class="verse">Fall twilight’s awful grey,</p> + <p class="verse">And that fire’s real cosy with the shades drawd.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, I guess folks about here think I’ve be’n dret’ful unsociable.</p> + <p class="verse">You needn’t say ’taint so, ’cause I know diff’rent.</p> + <p class="verse">And what’s more, it’s true.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, the reason is I’ve be’n scared o’ my life.</p> + <p class="verse">Scared ev’ry minit o’ th’ time, fer eight year.</p> + <p class="verse">Eight mortal year it is, come next June.</p> + <p class="verse">It was on the eighteenth of June,</p> + <p class="verse">Six months after I’d buried my husband</p> + <p class="verse">That somethin’ happened ter me.</p> + <p class="verse">Maybe yer’ll mind that afore that</p> + <p class="verse">I was a cheery body.</p> + <p class="verse">Hiram was too,</p> + <p class="verse">Allus liked to ask a neighbor in,</p> + <p class="verse">And ev’n when he died,</p> + <p class="verse">Barrin’ low sperrits, I warn’t averse to seein’ nobody.</p> + <p class="verse">But that eighteenth o’ June changed ev’rythin’.</p> + <p class="verse">I was doin’ most o’ th’ farmwork myself,</p> + <p class="verse">With jest a hired boy, Clarence King ’twas,</p> + <p class="verse">Comin’ in fer an hour or two.</p> +<a id="page-21" class="pagenum" title="21"></a> + <p class="verse">Well, that eighteenth June</p> + <p class="verse">I was goin’ round,</p> + <p class="verse">Lockin’ up and seein’ to things fore I went to bed.</p> + <p class="verse">I was jest steppin’ out to th’ barn,</p> + <p class="verse">Goin’ round outside ’stead of through the shed,</p> + <p class="verse">’Cause there was such a sight of moonlight</p> + <p class="verse">Somehow or another I thought ’twould be pretty outdoors.</p> + <p class="verse">I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess.</p> + <p class="verse">I ain’t stuck on em no more.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, them laylock bushes side o’ th’ house</p> + <p class="verse">Was real lovely.</p> + <p class="verse">Glitt’rin’ and shakin’ in the moonlight,</p> + <p class="verse">And the smell o’ them rose right up</p> + <p class="verse">And most took my breath away.</p> + <p class="verse">The colour o’ the spikes was all faded out,</p> + <p class="verse">They never keep their colour when the moon’s on ’em,</p> + <p class="verse">But that smell fair ’toxicated me.</p> + <p class="verse">I was allus partial to a sweet scent,</p> + <p class="verse">And I went close up t’ th’ bushes</p> + <p class="verse">So’s to put my face right into a flower.</p> + <p class="verse">Mis’ Priest, jest’s I got breathin’ in that laylock bloom</p> + <p class="verse">I saw, layin’ right at my feet,</p> + <p class="verse">A man’s hand!</p> + <p class="verse">It was as white’s the side o’ th’ house,</p> + <p class="verse">And sparklin, like that lum’nous paint they put on gateposts.</p> + <p class="verse">I screamed right out,</p> + <p class="verse">I couldn’t help it,</p> + <p class="verse">And I could hear my scream</p> + <p class="verse">Goin’ over an’ over</p> + <p class="verse">In that echo behind th’ barn,</p> + <p class="verse">Hearin’ it agin an’ agin like that</p> + <p class="verse">Scared me so, I dar’sn’t scream any more.</p> + <p class="verse">I jest stood there,</p> + <p class="verse">And looked at that hand.</p> + <p class="verse">I thought the echo’d begin to hammer like my heart,</p> + <p class="verse">But it didn’t.</p> + <p class="verse">There wus only th’ wind,</p> + <p class="verse">Sighin’ through the laylock leaves,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ slappin’ them up agin’ the house.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, I guess I looked at that hand</p> + <p class="verse">Most ten minits,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ it never moved,</p> + <p class="verse">Jest lay there white as white.</p> +<a id="page-22" class="pagenum" title="22"></a> + <p class="verse">After a while I got to thingin’, that o’ course</p> + <p class="verse">’Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield.</p> + <p class="verse">That calmed me some,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ I commenced to think I’d better git him out</p> + <p class="verse">From under them laylocks.</p> + <p class="verse">I planned to drag him inter th’ barn</p> + <p class="verse">An’ lock him in ther’ till Clarence come in th’ mornin’.</p> + <p class="verse">I got so mad thinkin’ o’ that all-fired brazen tramp</p> + <p class="verse">Asleep in my laylocks,</p> + <p class="verse">I just stooped down and grabbed th’ hand and give it an awful pull.</p> + <p class="verse">Then I bumped right down settin’ on the ground.</p> + <p class="verse">Mis’ Priest, ther’ warn’t no body come with the hand.</p> + <p class="verse">No, it ain’t cold, it’s jest that I can’t bear thinkin’ of it</p> + <p class="verse">Ev’n now.</p> + <p class="verse">I’ll take a sip o’ tea.</p> + <p class="verse">Thank you, Mis’ Priest, that’s better.</p> + <p class="verse">I’d ruther finish now I’ve begun.</p> + <p class="verse">Thank you, jest the same.</p> + <p class="verse">I dropped the hand’s ef it’d be’n red hot</p> + <p class="verse">’Stead o’ ice cold.</p> + <p class="verse">Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass</p> + <p class="verse">Pantin’.</p> + <p class="verse">Then I up and run to them laylocks</p> + <p class="verse">An’ pulled ’em every which way.</p> + <p class="verse">True as I’m settin’ here, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">Ther’ warn’t nothin’ ther’.</p> + <p class="verse">I peeked an’ pryed all about ’em,</p> + <p class="verse">But ther’ warn’t no man ther’</p> + <p class="verse">Neither livin’ nor dead.</p> + <p class="verse">But the hand was ther’ all right,</p> + <p class="verse">Upside down, the way I’d dropped it,</p> + <p class="verse">And glist’ning fit to dazzle yer.</p> + <p class="verse">I don’t know how I done it,</p> + <p class="verse">And I don’t know why I done it,</p> + <p class="verse">But I wanted to get that dre’tful hand out o’ sight.</p> + <p class="verse">I got in t’ th’ barn, somehow,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ felt roun’ till I got a spade.</p> + <p class="verse">I couldn’t stop fer a lantern,</p> + <p class="verse">Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience.</p> + <p class="verse">Then I scooped that awful thing up in th’ spade.</p> + <p class="verse">I had a sight o’ trouble doin’ it.</p> + <p class="verse">It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn’t bear</p> + <p class="verse">Ev’n to touch it with my foot to prop it,</p> +<a id="page-23" class="pagenum" title="23"></a> + <p class="verse">But I done it somehow.</p> + <p class="verse">Then I carried it off behind the barn,</p> + <p class="verse">Clost to an old appletree</p> + <p class="verse">Where you couldn’t see from the house,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ I buried it,</p> + <p class="verse">Good an’ deep.</p> + <p class="verse">I don’t rec’lect nothin’ more o’ that night.</p> + <p class="verse">Clarence woke me up in th’ mornin’,</p> + <p class="verse">Hollerin’ for me to come down and set th’ milk.</p> + <p class="verse">When he’d gone</p> + <p class="verse">I stole roun’ to the appletree</p> + <p class="verse">And seed the earth all newly turned</p> + <p class="verse">Where I left it in my hurry.</p> + <p class="verse">I did a heap o’ gardenin’</p> + <p class="verse">That mornin’.</p> + <p class="verse">I couldn’t cut no big sods</p> + <p class="verse">Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted ’em fer,</p> + <p class="verse">So I got teeny bits o’ turf here and ther,’</p> + <p class="verse">And no one couldn’t tell ther’d be’n any diggin’</p> + <p class="verse">When I got through.</p> + <p class="verse">They was awful days after that, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">I used ter go every mornin’ and poke about them bushes,</p> + <p class="verse">And up and down the fence,</p> + <p class="verse">Ter find the body that hand come off of.</p> + <p class="verse">But I couldn’t never find nothin’.</p> + <p class="verse">I’d lay awake nights</p> + <p class="verse">Hearin’ them laylocks blowin’ and whiskin’.</p> + <p class="verse">Finally I had Clarence cut ’em down</p> + <p class="verse">An’ make a big bonfire of ’em.</p> + <p class="verse">I told him the smell made me sick,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ that warn’t no lie,</p> + <p class="verse">I can’t a’ bear the smell on ’em now.</p> + <p class="verse">An no wonder, es you say.</p> + <p class="verse">I fretted somethin’ awful about that hand.</p> + <p class="verse">I wondered could it be Hiram’s,</p> + <p class="verse">But folks don’t rob graveyards hereabouts.</p> + <p class="verse">Besides Hiram’s hands warn’t that awful, starin’ white.</p> + <p class="verse">I give up seein’ people,</p> + <p class="verse">I was afeared I’d say somethin’.</p> + <p class="verse">You know what folks thought of me</p> + <p class="verse">Better’n I do, I dessay,</p> + <p class="verse">But maybe now you’ll see I couldn’t do nothin’ diffrent.</p> +<a id="page-24" class="pagenum" title="24"></a> + <p class="verse">But I stuck it out,</p> + <p class="verse">I warn’t goin’ to be downed</p> + <p class="verse">By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther’.</p> + <p class="verse">But that ain’t the worst, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">Not by a long way.</p> + <p class="verse">Two years ago Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry’s Orchard.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, I’d got used to th’ thought of bein’ sort o’ blighted,</p> + <p class="verse">And I warn’t scared no more.</p> + <p class="verse">Lived down my fear, I guess.</p> + <p class="verse">I’d kinder got used t’ the thought o’ that awful night,</p> + <p class="verse">And I didn’t mope much about it.</p> + <p class="verse">Only I never went out o’ doors by moonlight;</p> + <p class="verse">That stuck.</p> + <p class="verse">Well, when Mr. Densmore’s offer come,</p> + <p class="verse">I started thinkin’ about the place</p> + <p class="verse">An’ all the things that had gone on ther’.</p> + <p class="verse">Thinks I, I guess I’ll go and see where I put the hand.</p> + <p class="verse">I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by.</p> + <p class="verse">I knew the place real well,</p> + <p class="verse">Fer I’d put it right in between two o’ the apple-roots.</p> + <p class="verse">I don’t know what possessed me, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">But I kinder wanted to know</p> + <p class="verse">That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway.</p> + <p class="verse">It had sorter bothered me, thinkin’ I might ha’ imagined it.</p> + <p class="verse">I took a mornin’ when the sun was real pleasant and warm,</p> + <p class="verse">I guessed I wouldn’t jump for a few old bones.</p> + <p class="verse">But I did jump, somethin’ wicked.</p> + <p class="verse">Thar warn’t no bones!</p> + <p class="verse">Thar warn’t nothin’!</p> + <p class="verse">Not even the gold ring I minded bein’ on the little finger.</p> + <p class="verse">I don’t know ef there ever was anythin’.</p> + <p class="verse">I’ve worried myself sick over it.</p> + <p class="verse">I be’n diggin’ and diggin’ day in and day out</p> + <p class="verse">Till Clarence ketched me at it.</p> + <p class="verse">Oh, I knowed real well what you all thought,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ I ain’t sayin’ you’re not right,</p> + <p class="verse">But I ain’t goin’ to end in no country ’sylum</p> + <p class="verse">If I c’n help it.</p> + <p class="verse">The shiv’rin’ fits come on me sudden like.</p> + <p class="verse">I know ’em, don’t you trouble.</p> + <p class="verse">I’ve fretted considerable about the ’sylum,</p> + <p class="verse">I guess I be’n frettin’ all the time I ain’t be’n diggin’.</p> + <p class="verse">But anyhow I can’t dig to Chicago, can I?</p> +<a id="page-25" class="pagenum" title="25"></a> + <p class="verse">Thank you, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">I’m better now. I only dropped in in passin’!</p> + <p class="verse">I’ll jest be steppin’ along to French’s.</p> + <p class="verse">No, I won’t be seein’ nobody in the mornin’,</p> + <p class="verse">It’s a pretty early start.</p> + <p class="verse">Don’t you stand ther’, Mis’ Priest,</p> + <p class="verse">The wind’ll blow yer lamp out,</p> + <p class="verse">An’ I c’n see easy, I got aholt o’ the gate now.</p> + <p class="verse">I ain’t a mite tired, thank you.</p> + <p class="verse">Goodnight.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="POTATOESINACELLAR"> +Potatoes in a Cellar +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +R. G. +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">I</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-26" class="pagenum" title="26"></a> +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 +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">“Find in every foolish little thing that lives but a day</p> + <p class="verse">Eternal Beauty wandering on its way”</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +we should grow a race with a deep desire for the “free, unsullied things +which never fail and never can decay.” +</p> + +<p> +The Artist knows as surely as though he walked with God upon those +six days of creation that <em>this</em> 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. +</p> + +<div class="filler"> +<p class="noindent"> +I know—for I have experienced it and perhaps +experienced little else!—that art is of more +value than truth.—<em>Nietzsche.</em> +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="NEWYORKLETTER"> +<a id="page-27" class="pagenum" title="27"></a> +New York Letter +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +<span class="smallcaps">ALLAN ROSS MacDOUGALL</span> +</p> + +<p class="note"> +(<em>The Poetry Society of America Meets and I Attend, Taking +with Me a Sense of Humor.</em>) +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">here</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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?) +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">My song is such a little thing</p> + <p class="verse">Oh, such a little thing!</p> + <p class="verse">It is not loud; it is not long,</p> + <p class="verse">And wherefor should I sing?</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +Echo answers, Wherefor? +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-28" class="pagenum" title="28"></a> +member of the staff of <em>The New York Times</em>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Poetry flourishes in America. +</p> + +<p> +The poets are paid well by the Magazines; and strange women dine +and wine them and pay them sweet homage. +</p> + +<p> +The majority own and sport dress suits. They are eminently decent +and respectable. +</p> + +<p> +Poetry readings are now a well-attended form of afternoon time-killing. +</p> + +<p> +Poetry flourishes. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="THEPASSINGOFFORBESROBERTSON"> +<em>THE PASSING OF FORBES-ROBERTSON</em> +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 <em>Mice and Men</em> was made more sweet by his +playing; and even if he did sometimes play a popular tune like <em>The Third +<a id="page-29" class="pagenum" title="29"></a> +Floor Back</em> were we not the more thrilled and moved when we heard the +beauty of his playing of the symphony of <em>Hamlet</em>? +</p> + +<p> +On Saturday, April 22, I watched, now from the wings, now from +a side box, the last public performance of this artist’s <em>Hamlet</em>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Dead March</em>, what +could a feeling mortal do but—but—I cannot tell what I did. +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">“The rest is silence.”</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">“Good night, sweet prince.”</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="AMBERMONOCHROME"> +Amber Monochrome +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +MARK TURBYFILL +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I pass</p> + <p class="verse">Outside into the amber night.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A lamp within</p> + <p class="verse">Prints shadow-flowers</p> + <p class="verse">On the stiffness of an amber screen.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">My dream is like that—</p> + <p class="verse">An amber scheme</p> + <p class="verse">Straining through cold, stiff screens.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THREEIMAGISTPOETS"> +<a id="page-30" class="pagenum" title="30"></a> +Three Imagist Poets +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +JOHN GOULD FLETCHER +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="I"> +I. +</h3> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">he</span> 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-31" class="pagenum" title="31"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="II"> +<a id="page-32" class="pagenum" title="32"></a> +II. +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 <em>Images</em>. 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, <em>Childhood</em>, 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 <em>Daisy</em>, <em>Round Pond</em> and <em>The +Poplar</em>—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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The Egoist</em>, 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The first poem of his I can remember seeing in print was the one +entitled <em>Choricos</em>: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The ancient songs</p> + <p class="verse">Pass deathward mournfully.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths</p> + <p class="verse">Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings,</p> +<a id="page-33" class="pagenum" title="33"></a> + <p class="verse">Symbols of ancient songs,</p> + <p class="verse">Mournfully passing</p> + <p class="verse">Down to the great white surges</p> + <p class="verse">Watched by none—</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">And we turn from the Kyprian’s breasts,</p> + <p class="verse">And we turn from thee,</p> + <p class="verse">Phoibos Apollon—</p> + <p class="verse">And we turn from the fiery day,</p> + <p class="verse">And the lips that were over-sweet;</p> + <p class="verse">For silently,</p> + <p class="verse">Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,</p> + <p class="verse">With purple robe,</p> + <p class="verse">Searing the grass as with a sudden flame,</p> + <p class="verse">Death,</p> + <p class="verse">Thou hast come upon us.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">O Death,</p> + <p class="verse">Thou art the silence of beauty,</p> + <p class="verse">And we look no more for the morning,</p> + <p class="verse">We yearn no more for the sun—</p> + <p class="verse">We kneel before thee;</p> + <p class="verse">And thou, leaning towards us,</p> + <p class="verse">Caressingly layest upon us</p> + <p class="verse">Flowers from thy thin cold hands,</p> + <p class="verse">And smiling as a chaste woman,</p> + <p class="verse">Knowing love in her heart,</p> + <p class="verse">Thou seelest our eyes</p> + <p class="verse">And the illimitable quietude</p> + <p class="verse">Comes gently upon us.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">In te, Morte, si pose</p> + <p class="verse">Nostra ignuda natura;</p> + <p class="verse">Lieto, no, ma sicura</p> + <p class="verse">Del antico dolor.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-34" class="pagenum" title="34"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I am thy brother,</p> + <p class="verse">Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee,</p> + <p class="verse">And thou hearest me not.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I turn the page and read:</p> + <p class="verse">“I dream of silent verses where the rhyme</p> + <p class="verse">Glides noiseless as an oar.”</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The heavy, musty air, the black desks,</p> + <p class="verse">The bent heads and the rustling noises</p> + <p class="verse">Vanish—</p> + <p class="verse">The sun hangs in the cobalt sky</p> + <p class="verse">The boat drifts over the bare shallows—</p> + <p class="verse">The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns</p> + <p class="verse">And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle</p> + <p class="verse">About the cleft battlements of Can Grande’s castle.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +Or take this: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> +<h3 class="noindent" id="LONDONMAY1915"> +London, (May, 1915) +</h3> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Glittering leaves</p> + <p class="verse">Dance in a squall:</p> + <p class="verse">Above them, bleak immovable clouds.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A church spire</p> + <p class="verse">Holds up a little brass cock</p> + <p class="verse">To peck at the blue wheat fields—</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A pear tree, a broken white pyramid,</p> + <p class="verse">In a dingy garden, troubles one</p> + <p class="verse">With ecstasy—</p> + <p class="verse">And I am tormented,</p> + <p class="verse">Obsessed,</p> + <p class="verse">Along all this beauty.</p> + <p class="verse">With a vision of ruins,</p> + <p class="verse">Of walls tumbling into clay.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +<a id="page-35" class="pagenum" title="35"></a> +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 <em>King Lear</em>, +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 <em>Childhood</em>, <em>Cinema Exit</em>, or <em>In the Tube</em>. Yet +he is not devoid of humour, playful and fantastic. Witness <em>The Faun Sees +Snow for the First Time</em>, the <em>Interlude</em>, the <em>Evening</em> (a beautiful grotesque +which I am tempted to quote), or for a grimmer note the conclusion of +<em>Lesbia</em>. 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: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> +<h3 class="noindent" id="AFTERTWOYEARS"> +After Two Years. +</h3> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">She is all so slight,</p> + <p class="verse">And tender and white,</p> + <p class="verse">As a May morning.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">She walks without hood</p> + <p class="verse">At dusk. It is good</p> + <p class="verse">To hear her sing.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">It is God’s will</p> + <p class="verse">That I shall love her still</p> + <p class="verse">As he loves Mary.</p> + <p class="verse">And night and day,</p> + <p class="verse">I will go forth to pray</p> + <p class="verse">That she love me.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">She is as gold;</p> + <p class="verse">Lovely, and far more cold.</p> + <p class="verse">Do thou pray with me,</p> + <p class="verse">For if I win grace</p> + <p class="verse">To kiss twice her face</p> + <p class="verse">God has done well to me.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 <em>Night Piece</em>: +</p> + +<div class="excerpt"> +<p class="noindent"> +“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.” +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="note"> +(<em>For lack of space, Mr Fletcher’s article will be +concluded in the June issue.</em>) +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="ROSSICA"> +<a id="page-36" class="pagenum" title="36"></a> +Rossica +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +ALEXANDER S. KAUN +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">t</span> is still on—the Russian invasion. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In exchange we are getting thoughts, ideas. Unobstructed by Krupps +or U’s or Zeppelins, they invade our peaceful shores, and intend to stay. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +No danger, I am assured by my friend who has great faith in the +uncorruptible taste of the American public. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It is gratifying. We need the injection of new blood into our anemic +literature. +</p> + +<p> +New blood. Not even Gogol is too old for us. No matter that he +died in 1852. His <em>Dead Souls</em>, <em>Tarass Bulba</em>, and just published stories<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-2" id="fnote-2">[2]</a> +belong to the category of works that do not age in spite of their technical +flaws. If you use this perspective, <em>The Mantle</em> will loom up as the peak +of Russian realism. “We have all come out of <em>The Mantle</em>”, 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 <em>Viy</em> before bed-time lest you go through a heavy +nightmare. +</p> + +<p> +It is an enormous leap from Gogol to Korolenko<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-3" id="fnote-3">[3]</a>, Gorky<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-4" id="fnote-4">[4]</a>, and +Kuprin<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-5" id="fnote-5">[5]</a>. These are living authors, although they belong rather to the +<a id="page-37" class="pagenum" title="37"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-38" class="pagenum" title="38"></a> +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, <em>The Duel</em>, 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 (<em>The Outrage</em>), or Japanese +spies (<em>Captain Ribnikov</em>), or petty philistines (<em>The River of Life</em>). 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!’” (<em>The Duel</em>). +</p> + +<p> +From the charming, lithe, joyous Kuprin I pass reluctantly to a book +on the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-6" id="fnote-6">[6]</a>. 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 <em>Crime and Punishment</em>, 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? +</p> + +<p> +The same Whys can be applied to another recent publication<a class="fnote" href="#footnote-7" id="fnote-7">[7]</a>, Doroshevich’s +impressions. Doroshevich is the most popular journalist in +Russia, a witty, entertaining <em>feuilletonist</em>, 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 +<a id="page-39" class="pagenum" title="39"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<hr class="footnote"> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-2" id="footnote-2">[2]</a> <em>The Mantle and other stories, by Nikolai Gogol. New York: Frederic +A. Stokes.</em> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-3" id="footnote-3">[3]</a> <em>Makar’s Dream and other stories, by V. Korolenko. New York: +Duffield.</em> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-4" id="footnote-4">[4]</a> <em>Twenty-six Men and a Girl, by M. Gorky. New York: Frederic A. +Stokes.</em> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-5" id="footnote-5">[5]</a> <em>The Duel, by A. Kuprin. New York: Macmillan.<br> +The River of Life, by A. Kuprin. Boston: John W. Luce.</em> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-6" id="footnote-6">[6]</a> <em>Dostoevsky, by Evgenii Soloviev. New York: Macmillan.</em> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a class="footnote" href="#fnote-7" id="footnote-7">[7]</a> <em>The Way of the Cross, by Doroshevich. New York: G. P. Putnam.</em> +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THEINDEPENDENTEXHIBITION"> +The Independent Exhibition +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +LUPO DE BRAILA +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">he</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-40" class="pagenum" title="40"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THEREADERCRITIC"> +<a id="page-41" class="pagenum" title="41"></a> +The Reader Critic +</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="letters"> +<h3 class="section" id="SHEISNOFRIENDOFOURS"> +<em>SHE IS NO FRIEND OF OURS!</em> +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +<em>Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa</em>: +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Café Sketches</em>? 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 <em>was</em> intended to be. +Besides, she wouldn’t believe me; for her, a thing has to be either <em>Lear</em> or <em>Charley’s +Aunt</em>, evidently. +</p> + +<p> +I have harbored doubts as to the value of <em>vers libre</em>; but now they are gone. +For I see that it does shut out a certain type of mind. +</p> + +<p> +Harriet Dean’s <em>Pillar</em> is admirable! Also Sandburg’s four. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="THEPROPHETINHISOWNCOUNTRY"> +<em>THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.</em> +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +<em>Daphne and Michael Carr, Columbia, Missouri</em>: +</p> + +<p> +We have been greatly enraged by reading Mr Charles Zwaska’s article, <em>An Isaiah +without a Christ</em>, in the April number of <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>. It reminds us of a +review of the same book in <em>Judge</em>. 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. +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">“Says the swift black horse</p> + <p class="verse">To the swift white horse:</p> + <p class="verse">‘There goes the alarm</p> +<a id="page-42" class="pagenum" title="42"></a> + <p class="verse">There goes the alarm.</p> + <p class="verse">They are hitched, they are off,</p> + <p class="verse">They are gone in a flash,</p> + <p class="verse">And they strain at the driver’s iron arm.’”</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +We shout it when the fire-engines fly down the street. We croon the moon +poems together in the evenings, and we chant <em>The Santa Fé Trail</em> as we tramp +across country. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +When a moving-picture as perfect as the Parthenon has been produced there +need be no soul in America who has not seen it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Cabiria</em> +but——Have you ever read Aeschylus’ <em>Suppliants</em>? It was the first and afterwards +came <em>Electra</em> and <em>Œdipus</em>. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The Book of the Dead</em>. 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 +<em>The Book of the Dead</em> 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 +<a id="page-43" class="pagenum" title="43"></a> +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 <em>The Book of the Dead</em>, <em>IF</em> the production +be a beautiful one. For, as Lindsay iterates and reiterates, the stage and the moving-pictures +<em>MUST</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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? <em>There</em> is room +for Art. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Enjoyment of Poetry</em>, 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 <em>Miserere</em> +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 +<a id="page-44" class="pagenum" title="44"></a> +or disgusted. This is merely one of Vachel Lindsay’s acknowledged “paw +paws.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="FORTHEBRAHMINS"> +<em>FOR THE BRAHMINS.</em> +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +<em>A Poet, Chicago</em>: +</p> + +<p> +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: +<em>Symphony No. 4, E Minor, Opus 98</em>. +</p> + + <div class="table"> +<table class="movements"> +<tbody> + <tr> + <td class="col1">First Movement:</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">Milk and Liver.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1">Second Movement:</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">Bed-bugs crawling over the body of a fat burgher. Occasionally he snorts sonorously (’cellos).</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1">Third Movement:</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">Ten-ton joviality—beer, cheese, saurkraut, ham. Grazioso—Ach, du lieber Augustine! The end suggests his Academic:</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1">Fourth Movement:</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">a. Hungarian dancing—(Brahms’ only successful field).</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">b. Falls into pompernickel sentimentalism.</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">c. The German policeman (trombones).</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">d. More liver.</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1">e. Gas.</td> + </tr> +</tbody> +</table> + </div> +<p class="from"> +<em>Yours Sylph-fully</em>: +</p> + +<p> +Please let me “register” my appreciation of your April number. I read the +extract from <em>The Interstate Medical Journal</em> with intense purposefulness, have +ordered Vance Thompson’s “epoch-making book, <em>Eat and Grow Thin</em>”, and begin +to feel that I am getting even more than I subscribed for. +</p> + +<p> +Incidentally, didn’t you love Carl Sandburg’s <em>Gone</em>? Chick Lorimer! What +a name! It makes one almost sorry to be “respectable”, somehow—it’s so full +of gayety and courage! +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="impressum"> +<p class="b c"> +Statement of Ownership, Management, Circulation, Etc., required by +the Act of August 24, 1912 +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +of <em>THE LITTLE REVIEW</em> published monthly at <em>Chicago, Ill.</em> +for April 1st, 1916. +</p> + +<p> +Editor, <em>Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago</em>. +</p> + +<p> +Managing Editor, <em>Same</em> +</p> + +<p> +Business Manager, <em>Same</em> +</p> + +<p> +Publisher, <em>Same</em> +</p> + +<p> +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.) +</p> + +<p class="u c"> +<em>Margaret C. Anderson<br> +834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago</em> +</p> + +<p> +Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders, holding 1 per cent or +more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: <em>None.</em> +</p> + +<p class="sign"> +<em>MARGARET C. ANDERSON</em>, +</p> + +<p> +Sworn to and subscribed before me this <em>31st</em> day of <em>March, 1916</em>. +</p> + +<p class="sign"> +<em>MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public.</em><br> +(My commission expires <em>December 20, 1917</em>.) +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h1 u adh"> +ART SCHOOL or<br> +ART FACTORY<br> +WHICH? +</p> + +<p> +Charles A. Kinney’s story of his fight for individual rights in +the Art Institute: +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +A few of the topics Mr. Kinney will discuss: +</p> + +<p> +The seven cases in the law courts—what they mean to +students and faculty. +</p> + +<p> +The Art Student Fellowship organization—why it was +forced on the students of the Institute. +</p> + +<p> +Why faculty members were forced to support it on penalty +of losing their positions. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Organization and discipline, or art spirit? Which is most +essential in an art school? +</p> + +<p> +Student activities—shall the Dean or the students control them? +</p> + +<p> +Art Schools—shall men trained in Business or men trained in +Art control them? +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +What encouragement is there for sincere artists<a id="corr-7"></a>? +</p> + +<p> +When at least half the scholarships are awarded because of +influence and favoritism rather than meritorious work? +</p> + +<p> +When faculty members of the Institute have practically no independence? +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Mr. Kinney’s article will appear in the June issue of <span class="smallcaps">The +Little Review</span>. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> + <div class="box"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +THE FLAME +</p> + +<p class="h2 adh"> +A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE +</p> + +<p class="u ade"> +Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors.<br> +3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + + </div> + <div class="box"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +THE DRAMA For May Offers Two Plays +</p> + +<p> +<b>REMY DE GOURMONT</b>, whose dramatic work has never +been accessible in English. The translation has been made by +the celebrated Imagist poet, <b>RICHARD ALDINGTON</b>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Among the other articles is one by Alexander Bakshy, an +associate of the Russian producer, Meyerhold, on <b>The Cinematograph +as Art</b>. In this the author shows that the great field +open to the “movies” has not even been discovered by the film +producer of today. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Charles Lemmi contributes a brilliant discussion of +<b>The Italian Stage of Today</b>, not so much a study of the individual +plays as an attempt to analyze and explain the forces in +the present-day Italian theatre. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Many other articles on the current problems of the drama, +reviews and bibliographies complete the number. +</p> + +<p class="u c"> +<b>736 Marquette Building<br> +CHICAGO</b> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Three Dollars Per Year +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Two Dollars Per Year to Members of The Drama League of America +</p> + +<p class="r"> +Seventy-five Cents Per Copy +</p> + + </div> +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<div class="centerpic bent fl"> +<img src="images/bent.jpg" alt=""></div> + +<p class="h1 adh"> +<span class="smallcaps">Piano Triumphant</span> +</p> + +<p> +The artistic outgrowth +of forty-five years of +constant improvement—a +piano conceived to +better all that has +proven best in others. +</p> + +<p class="h2 adh"> +GEO. P. BENT GRAND +</p> + +<p> +Could you but compare it +with all others, artistically it +must be your choice. Each +day proves this more true. +</p> + +<p> +Geo. P. Bent Grand, Style +“A”—a small Grand, built +for the home—your home. +</p> + +<p class="h2 adh"> +<span class="smallcaps">Geo. P. Bent Company</span> +</p> + +<p class="u c"> +Manufacturers of Artistic Pianos<br> +Retailers of Victrolas<br> +<span class="larger">214 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago</span> +</p> + +<p class="cb vspace"> + +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="trnote chapter"> +<p class="transnote"> +Transcriber’s Notes +</p> + +<p> +Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. +</p> + +<p> +The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the +headings in this issue of <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>. +</p> + +<p> +The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors +were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here (before/after): +</p> + + + +<ul> + +<li> +... treacle on bread over all these different <span class="underline">stylic</span> bases, this operation requiring ...<br> +... treacle on bread over all these different <a href="#corr-0"><span class="underline">stylistic</span></a> bases, this operation requiring ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... What encouragement is there for sincere artists ...<br> +... What encouragement is there for sincere artists<a href="#corr-7"><span class="underline">?</span></a> ...<br> +</li> +</ul> +</div> + + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75706 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75706-h/images/bent.jpg b/75706-h/images/bent.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c435c35 --- /dev/null +++ b/75706-h/images/bent.jpg diff --git a/75706-h/images/cover.jpg b/75706-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b3e102 --- /dev/null +++ b/75706-h/images/cover.jpg |
