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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #65948 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65948)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Review, February 1915 (Vol.
-1, No. 11), by Margaret C. Anderson
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Little Review, February 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 11)
-
-Editor: Margaret C. Anderson
-
-Release Date: July 28, 2021 [eBook #65948]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
- at http://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images
- made available by the Modernist Journal Project, Brown and
- Tulsa Universities, http://www.modjourn.org.
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, FEBRUARY
-1915 (VOL. 1, NO. 11) ***
-
-
-
-
-
- THE LITTLE REVIEW
-
-
- _Literature Drama Music Art_
-
- MARGARET C. ANDERSON
- EDITOR
-
- FEBRUARY, 1915
-
- Our First Year The Editor
- Poems: Amy Lowell
- Bright Sunlight
- Ely Cathedral
- Heaven’s Jester Mrs. Havelock Ellis
- Green Symphony John Gould Fletcher
- The Case of French Poetry Richard Aldington
- The Last Woman George Soule
- The Liberties of the People William L. Chenery
- A Hymn to Nature (An Unpublished Goethe Poem)
- My Friend, the Incurable: Alexander S. Kaun
- On the Vice of Simplicity
- John Cowper Powys
- Muck and Music Alfred Knopf
- While Hearing a Little Song Maxwell Bodenheim
- A Hard Bed George Burman Foster
- George Middleton’s One-Act Plays Clayton Hamilton
- New York Letter George Soule
- Music
- Book Discussion
- The Reader Critic
-
- Published Monthly
-
- 15 cents a copy
-
- MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
- Fine Arts Building
- CHICAGO
-
- $1.50 a year
-
- Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago
-
-
-
-
- THE LITTLE REVIEW
-
-
- Vol. 1
-
- FEBRUARY, 1915
-
- No. 11
-
- Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.
-
-
-
-
- Our First Year
-
-
- MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
-
-An interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into
-the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1)
-energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I
-number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that
-he arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener
-a judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that
-would not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place
-of number one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy
-does seem the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of
-those persons who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration.
-But Imagination!—that gift of the far gods! There is simply no question
-of its position in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and
-beautiful thing that has been accomplished in the world.
-
-Last March we began the publication of THE LITTLE REVIEW. Now, twelve
-months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle of
-being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always
-asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a
-policy; we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in
-so far as we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not
-expounded a philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite
-outlandishly anarchistic; we have been uncritical, indiscriminate,
-juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish, emotional, tiresomely
-enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which I can’t remember now—all
-the things that are usually said about faulty new undertakings. The
-encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly about promising
-ones.
-
-Of course THE LITTLE REVIEW has done little more than approach the ideal
-which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned
-above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad
-that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than
-some other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of
-the visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the
-priest or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get
-drenched than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I
-should rather see one side of a question violently than to see both
-sides calmly; I should rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely
-a matter of choice: people are either extremists or nonentities; I
-should far rather sense the big things about a cause or a character even
-vaguely than to analyze its little qualities quite clearly; in short, I
-should rather feel a great deal and know a little than feel a little and
-know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our negative attitude.
-
-But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express
-all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made
-explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the
-worship of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is
-our only attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will
-understand that I did not say our platform is merely the worship of
-beauty. Beauty involves too many elements to be championed lightly.
-Beauty from the aesthete’s point of view and beauty from the artist’s
-point of view are two widely different things. I might paraphrase Wilde
-and say that the new Beauty is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for
-THE LITTLE REVIEW, as I want from life, not merely beauty, not merely
-happiness, but a quality which proceeds from the _intensity_ with which
-both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, are present.
-
-This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that within
-their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without THE
-LITTLE REVIEW because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished,
-nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim to
-artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines
-of good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude;
-that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most
-magazines have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that
-is what’s wrong with them. I have none of the qualifications of the
-editor; that’s why I think THE LITTLE REVIEW is in good hands. Because
-the editorial tradition in this country has usurped the place of the
-literary tradition we have lifted loyalty to policies into the place of
-loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a man of letters—once told me that
-there were fifty good writers to every good editor in America, and that
-he would teach me to be the former. He proceeded to illustrate, not by
-chucking out the poor stuff that was being written for his journal but
-by showing how it could be stuck in where it wouldn’t be too noticeable!
-When some manuscript that delighted his soul came in (he was very human
-and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy” that had somehow grown up
-around his own magazine) he taught me the “art” of reducing its policy
-to a state of negativeness that would not be out of harmony with the
-policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once he received some poetry
-that was very strong and very beautiful. He treasured it so that he kept
-it in his desk for months before returning it. It was so beautiful as to
-be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was sure; and anyhow his
-journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it merely printed
-reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I used to feel
-that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving the
-ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or
-to become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to
-read us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is
-more honest to say outright that they will probably find less and less
-of it. Because as “sanity” increases in the world THE LITTLE REVIEW will
-strive more and more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers
-continue to compromise in order to get their public, as book-makers
-continue to print rot in order to make fortunes, as writers continue to
-follow the market instead of _doing their Work_, as the public continues
-to demand vileness and vulgarity and lies, as the intellectuals continue
-to miss the root of the trouble, THE LITTLE REVIEW will continue to
-rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work for its ideal rather than
-for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of excellent quality and
-no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and flame, to be
-swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young and
-fearless and reckless and imaginative—
-
- ... chanter
- Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre,
- Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....
-
-—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly
-first.
-
-There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful by
-being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say this
-so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated,
-fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as
-we are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is
-to pay for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work
-don’t make enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now
-no one can _live_ by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions
-are cases which emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the
-meantime a magazine ought to be started for the sole purpose of printing
-the good things that the best magazines reject. Until we are on our feet
-and able to pay for stuff we can at least do this. And never, we hope,
-will we achieve that last emptiness: sophistication.
-
-But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important.
-I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called _Drift and
-Mastery_, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than
-anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr.
-Lippmann says this in his preface:
-
- The issues that we face are very different from those of the last
- century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up
- roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism
- and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The
- sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste,
- the dogma of sin, obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in
- brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young today are
- born into a world in which the foundations of the older order
- survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry
- through their purposes when they have them. If the standpatter is
- still powerful amongst us it is because we have not learned to
- use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American
- conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic
- purpose should be.
-
- So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against
- absolutism, commercial oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. _The
- Rebel program is stated._ Scientific invention and blind social
- currents have made the old authority impossible in fact, the
- artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We
- inherit a rebel tradition. The dominant forces in our world are
- not the sacredness of property nor the intellectual leadership of
- the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution, the
- glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England
- respectability, the Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller....
- In the emerging morality the husband is not regarded as the
- proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats over the
- children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that
- the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child
- the sense of sin is a poor preparation for a temperate life.
-
- The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted
- prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom.
-
-That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do not. I
-think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and
-nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small
-minority—the people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of
-the population. Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other
-four tenths have something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is
-still there. The new authority is quite as strong as the old, and more
-insidious because it is more subtle. Young people used to be
-disinherited when they disagreed with their parents; now they are argued
-with. The former method left their minds clear; the latter befogs
-them—and they disinherit themselves. That is the difference. One worked
-from without in; the other works from within out. Of course it’s much
-better this way. But this is not the most important problem—this of the
-old rock of ages. The horrible joke of modern life is that _we have been
-presented with a new rock of ages_!
-
-The rebel program is stated—exactly. More than that, it is in action.
-The difference between the new issues and the old, to Mr. Lippmann, is
-that we have now learned what we must do; to me, it is that we must
-learn to do something else. The battle lies not against the chaos of a
-new freedom, but against the dangers of a new authority.
-
-Before I define, let me illustrate. About two months ago I spent four
-days in one of our second-large cities—a place of about two hundred
-thousand people. If I could only describe those four days and their
-stimulation—to fresh rebellion! The people I saw belonged to the
-supposedly enlightened inner circles—the representative upper middle
-class: the ones that still loom very large in comparison to the thinking
-minority from whom Mr. Lippmann draws his conclusions. Well, I had not
-forgotten how ignorant people can be, but I had forgotten how cruel they
-can be. I had not expected their knowledge to have increased, but their
-hypocrisy to have lessened. I had not looked for vision but at least for
-a beginning of sight; not for Truth, but perhaps for a willingness to
-stop lying. And I found scarcely a glimmer of these things. It was
-ghastly! But the strange part was this: all the time I found I was
-thinking not of the great faults of their opinions but of the great
-barrenness of their lives. Over and over the thought kept running
-through my head: There is no poetry of living in this place!
-
-This brings me to my point. The new rock of ages is that wholly false
-perspective which assumes that _what one thinks is more important than
-what one feels_. It has been set up, quite unconsciously, by the very
-people who have trying to blast the old one. It is that perspective
-which the new generation must fight not only with the old, but in its
-own ranks! Here is the interest of the new battle! Our next renaissance
-will be concerned with changing that perspective; the genius of the
-future must be directed toward that end. And that is why I think it is
-not enough to say that there will come a time when men will think of
-nothing but education. There will come a time when men will think of
-nothing but education in imagination! And since there is no such thing
-as _education_ in imagination, but only _procreation_ of it,—well, the
-time will come when men will think of nothing but art. The crimes of
-ignorance are not comparable to the crimes of philistinism: there is no
-philosophy that will ever reach beyond that of the personality or of the
-artist.
-
-The dominant forces in the new rock of ages are not of course the
-intellectual leadership of the priest, the divinity of the constitution,
-Victorian sentiment, or the Republican Party, but the intellectual
-leadership of cleverness, the divinity of cults, no sentiment, and the
-Practical Plan. They are endorsed by the most promising element in
-modern life: the young intellectuals who are working valiantly to create
-here what Europe has given to the arts and sciences,—and working in the
-wrong direction. Our inferiorities to the other civilizations they
-attribute to our puritanism, our speed, our economic evils. Oh, I get so
-sick of their failure to reach to the real cause! It is so silly to keep
-on insisting that we need poets like the French or philosophers like the
-Germans or musicians like the Russians, etc., etc., if we don’t begin
-soon to understand why we haven’t got them. We haven’t got them because,
-in this curious country, we haven’t got people who feel.—Think of an
-Irish peasant walking under the stars....
-
-I grant you that it also becomes silly to talk eternally of “feeling”
-without qualifying or defining. It is like taking refuge behind that
-vaguest phrase in the language—“life itself.” But by “feeling” I mean
-simply that flight of wings which makes walking unnecessary; that
-dazzling tight-rope performance which takes you safely over the chasm of
-Experience but leaves you as bruised as though you had fallen to its
-depths. Feeling is that quality of spirit which will save any artist
-from the philosophical redundancies of a _De Profundis_. The torturing
-need of expressing something that far outstretches one’s capacity for
-expression is the foundation of art. That’s why we have so little of it
-in this country. There may be some Americans in whom the perspective has
-retained its proper balance. I happen to know of one.
-
-It is for some such need as this that THE LITTLE REVIEW exists: to
-create some attitude which so far is absolutely alien to the American
-tradition. I have been going to the lectures of John Cowper Powys, which
-are spoken of in other places in this issue, and that appreciative man
-gave me an interesting idea the other day. I should like to see him as
-editor of a literary magazine whose policy was to cut off the
-subscription list everybody who speculated about his pose or his
-insincerity and failed to miss the great beauty of his words. Now Mr.
-Powys is as unstable as water: that is his value. He feels entirely too
-much ever to be fully sane. His hypothetical magazine would gather an
-audience that could fight successfully the great American crime which
-may be described briefly as _missing the point_. Thus we might establish
-a reign of imagination which would make stupid things as impossible as
-cruel things, which would consider a failure to catch some new beauty or
-a “moral lynching of great and independent spirits” as greater crimes
-than murdering a man in a dark corner.
-
-On this basis we shall continue. If we must be sensible at least we
-shall make it, in Shaw’s phrase, an ecstasy of common sense. And out of
-all this chaos shall we produce our dancing star.
-
-
- The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is
- right.—_Oscar Wilde._
-
-
- Before the scientific spirit can reach its full bloom, it will
- have to acquire an honest sense of the rôle that fantasy plays in
- all its work. This is especially true of the social sciences. We
- are just beginning to realize the importance in economics of the
- economist’s utopia. We are learning the determining influence of
- the thinker’s dream.—_Walter Lippmann._
-
-
-
-
- Poems
-
-
- AMY LOWELL
-
-
- Bright Sunlight
-
- The wind has blown a corner of your shawl
- Into the fountain,
- Where it floats and drifts
- Among the lily-pads
- Like a tissue of sapphires.
- But you do not heed it,
- Your fingers pick at the lichens
- On the stone edge of the basin,
- And your eyes follow the tall clouds
- As they sail over the ilex trees.
-
-
- Ely Cathedral
-
- Anaemic women, stupidly dressed and shod
- In squeaky shoes, thump down the nave to laud an expurgated God.
- Bunches of lights reflect upon the pavement where
- The twenty benches stop, and through the close, smelled-over air
- Gaunt arches push up their whited cones,
- And cover the sparse worshipers with dead men’s stones.
- Behind his shambling choristers, with flattened feet
- And red-flapped hood, the Bishop walks, complete
- In old, frayed ceremonial. The organ wheezes
- A moldy psalm-tune, and a verger sneezes.
-
- But the great Cathedral spears into the sky
- Shouting for joy.
-
- What is the red-flapped Bishop praying for, by the bye?
-
-
-
-
- Heaven’s Jester
- or
- The Message of a White Rose
-
-
- MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS
-
-“It is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou strange
-child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me to thee, a
-woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as mine,
-whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are
-pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou
-lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed
-into Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in
-the sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the
-sleep of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of
-Paradise and heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her
-passing from Earth, had barely gained thy body again before the cap and
-bells were donned by thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The
-jingle of thy bells drew laughter and tears. God found he had need of
-the fool the woman had signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly
-courts must not lower his head or hide his face. Tears ill become the
-piebald suit and trappings of mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the
-woman who gave me to thee needed thy heart? Hear the message the white
-rose by thy bed gives to thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is
-not for thee to choose thy way of love. God’s jester is neither man nor
-woman nor child, but a singer of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and
-dry the eyes of women. Play thy part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win
-her lips, women crave her help, the world takes her service, and thou
-her smiles. Wouldst thou have more, thou poet lover in the guise of a
-fool?
-
-Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows thee his
-face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss. In his
-absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her
-body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy
-into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the
-strange enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has
-given thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and
-sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast
-seen will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the
-cap and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose
-on his breast.
-
-“Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song
-of the souls of women and be satisfied!
-
-
- HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY
-
-Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body,
-her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known
-his God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”
-
-In the dawn the white rose spoke once more to the jester. “Thou hast
-lied. Thy lady’s unknown body is untried music to thee. Thy hands would
-touch the strings, thy ear catch the vibrations her soul modulates to
-sounds of sighs and sobs at the call of love. Look at my whiteness!
-Think of thy unrest! The secrets of thy lady’s body are not learnt
-through the strong desires common to the herd of men or the fainting
-dreams of impassioned women. Fool! inscribed as thou art in the heavenly
-registers by a woman as God’s Fool, thou must learn the mystic’s lore
-about the body of thy Love. Thy desire is towards thy lady, and her
-will, not thine, is thy law. Hearken then! It were the work of an
-instant to close thy strong hands round her throat and bruise her into
-forgetfulness that love is pain. To force her mouth, so much desired,
-into an open well for slaking thine own thirst is love’s delicious
-robbery. To hurtle to her breast, as if to rob and forestall the child
-who may one day drink there, is to have found a shrine for prayer and
-peace. Yes! even to rest in the hallowed forests of her body ere thou
-storm the citadel where thy weapon shall break into the silent house of
-life, is easy and has always been the way of men with woman. Woman the
-abandoned, man the triumphant, woman the flower, man the gatherer, woman
-the luscious wine and man the thirsty drinker. Thy old-world needs
-desire thy lady in the way of men, though prayer before and after would
-grace thy feasting. Listen to the secret the white rose whispers to
-thee. It does not suffice that thou dost need thy lady or even that thy
-lady needs thee. Thou must prepare thyself for her even if she has no
-need of thee. The gateways of thy body must be clean, pure as snow and
-free from taint. Thy thoughts must shine through thine eyes like stars,
-thy passions burn with fires at white heat, without smoke or noise.
-Heaven’s jester may not approach the Holy of Holies till Desire is as
-white flame. The sacrament of thy Lady’s Body is precious bread and
-wine, to be partaken of at her desire, not thine, and only in Heaven’s
-good time. It is not for thee to choose. Thy part is to watch and pray
-and laugh and sing, and maybe lead another in to the feast thou hast
-prepared. Thou must bring to thy lady’s white feet frankincense and
-myrrh, the spoils of the sorrows thou hast borne for the tired
-travellers on thy journey. Precious stones, too, thou must gather for
-her neck, from the shores of thy past desolations. Pearls thou must also
-offer, burnished out of the memories of thy wayward desires which knew
-not her chastity or her smiles. For her breasts thou must bring shields
-forged from thy gluttonies and petty aims. For her arms crystals wrought
-out of thy dreams. For her girdle rubies made from all thy heart’s
-desire. For her eyes? Ah! perhaps thy kiss, delicate and passionate as
-is the way of seas and clouds when the earth sleeps. For her forehead
-thou mayest weave a crown of myrtle, for friendship, as thy Love is thy
-Friend and is steadfast. For her ears I will tell thee the dreams of my
-sister, almost black with the redness the sun has poured into her heart.
-For her hair, only a wreath of “love in the mist,” for in that little
-flower is the wonder of the Great Heart thou art learning to understand.
-For her lips, only thy hopes made chaste and thy fears made passionate,
-if God wills.
-
-Should thy Love waken with thy kisses on her closed eyes and turn
-towards thee with wonder and joy at the things thou hast learned and the
-gifts thou hast given to her, then have a care! Women are not drunk with
-wine but with pity, and pity is no use to Heaven’s Jester. There are
-signs, though, which even thou canst understand, and when Love is born,
-the Fool is wise. If by chance, for there is no hope in this message of
-the dawn, there is a resurrection day for thee, if by chance or God’s
-pure will, she turns to thee as God allows one spirit to turn to another
-spirit, when Love has prepared the altar, then clash thy cymbals, blow
-thy trumpet, shout till the sleepy world rejoices, shake thy bells and
-fling thy Jester’s cap and cloak aside, for to eat the sacramental bread
-and drink the wine of thy love’s pure body thou wilt not need raiment,
-and as thou wert born and as thou wilt die thou wilt enter into thy Holy
-of Holies. And if thou die of joy, thou criest:
-
- What is Death?
- Only Love freed.
-
-
- THE FOOL TO THE SOUL OF HIS LADY
-
-The Jester said to himself, “If the body of my lady is so fair a
-tabernacle for her soul, how can I, a Fool, understand the ways of her
-spirit? My lute and pipes can only render the voices of the wind, the
-sea, the trees and the cries of beasts in joy and pain. My bells are a
-Jester’s toys for assuaging the griefs of the children of men. The
-travailings of my lady’s spirit, like the snow on the mountains, are out
-of reach of a fool’s understanding. For one brief hour I heard a faint
-whisper in the halls of peace when my name was signed in the heavenly
-registers, but, except in my heart, I carried no trophy to earth by
-which I could tell men of the music I heard.
-
-This is the birthday of my Lady, the festival which calls for prayer and
-joy. Prayer, because the paths of earth are hard for the feet of her
-whose tread awakens a longing for wings in the Fool standing near. Joy,
-because her eyes are mirrors of a time to come when love and peace will
-renew earth into heaven, and men and women will become as wise as eagles
-and children. Through her body, I love the soul of my lady, and through
-her soul I love her body. Neither her soul nor her body may help and
-comfort the Jester even though God leads and helps him by both grace and
-mercy. Though his heart be sore and his body sick unto death and there
-seems none to comfort him, he can still sing songs for men and pipe
-melodies for women of the wonders revealed to him.”
-
-The White Rose, dying by the Jester’s bed, spoke once more to the Fool.
-
-“Cast self pity out of thine heart. Learn to live as I have learned to
-die, and then learn to die as I have learned to live. For thee absence
-seems death, but trace the meaning of the soul of the woman thou lovest.
-Her soul is also absent from the Oversoul as her body is absent from a
-Lover. Only through absence can the Oversoul draw its own to itself, and
-only through loneliness can the Great Lover and the Lesser Lover
-understand one another. Words confuse and touch enslaves. Souls speak
-clearly in the silence. In absence a note becomes a chord, and in
-silence the chord becomes a symphony. The discord dissolves into
-harmony, and the darkness into dawn. The absence of Death is not
-different from that of Life, for Death is Life, and Life the discord
-making Death’s music. The soul of thy Lady will find thine by the aid of
-both Life and Death, for it is not God’s Fool who hath declared that
-there is no Love nor a Creater thereof. Thou art learning that all is
-Love. In thy prayers today for thy Lady’s peace incline thy spirit
-towards hers as both approach the maternal source of the Universe. It is
-the Mother-Spirit of the world who has hidden thy love from thy sight,
-and taken thine head from the touch of her hands and torn thy lips from
-her kisses. Is it not always so that the mothers of the smaller world
-wean their children into growth and knowledge? Thou art still hers even
-if her body is out of sight and touch, for pure love is the simple
-miracle of thine heritage as a son of man and of God. Nothing can take
-from me what the sun made of me through his shining. Even as I die the
-fragrance remains. Nothing can rob thee of the hours when all things
-seem possible because of thy hopes and her vows. Love is pain but
-over-love is peace. Turn thy tears into help and pity for those who weep
-without thy hope and for those who dwell in dungeons and are not yet
-registered in heaven as wise or foolish. Let thy longings for one break
-into prayer for the weal of the world. Thou wert not sent here only for
-thy pleasure or thy peace, nor was the body of thy Lady sent for thy
-delight, or her soul for thy strength alone. Pain is ordained for the
-bringers of good tidings and love lent for the redemption of the many
-through the loneliness of the one. Accept thy lot and thy vision shall
-make thee free. Resist thy fate and thy Love’s soul and thine shall
-sleep embedded in flesh and with no power to grow wings. On thy knees
-then and pray for strength and courage with thy cap and bells in
-readiness by thy side, and joy within thy heart. As I die thou must
-live.”
-
-The Jester took the rose in his hands, and, as its petals fell, a Fool’s
-prayer broke the silence.
-
-“Maker of men,” he cried, “pour into a fool’s heart the understanding of
-life’s joy and pain. Make my spirit at one with the great order. Let me
-understand what is required of me and in understanding be at peace.” As
-he prayed, the Jester slept, for a great weariness was on him from much
-dancing. In his dream, a little child ran towards him. He opened his
-Jester’s cloak, and the little one held the sleeves in her tiny hands.
-
-“Give all that thou hast and all that thou art even to one so small as
-I,” cried the child and ran from his sight.
-
-The Jester was awakened by the opening and clanging of a door. He went
-out into the courtyard. A beggar, unshaved, and swollen with dropsy,
-stood before him. He had evil eyes and a mouth twisted by pain. He
-looked at the Jester and laughed.
-
-“Give me thy cap and bells,” he said, “I have need of them.”
-
-The Jester took money from his pouch.
-
-“Take all this instead,” he cried.
-
-The old man laughed.
-
-“Any lord or lady can throw me that,” he said, “if only to keep me from
-defiling them by my presence. Gold costs less to give than to gather. It
-is dross and could only help my body to live and suffer. Thy cap and
-bells would succour my spirit so that I could forget my body. With the
-jingle of them I could smile at the curses of the healthy or the jibes
-of the well-washed. Give them to me. Thou art well and happy and hast no
-need of help.”
-
-The Jester bowed his head and gave up his cap and bells, but with sorrow
-and pain in his heart. The beggar ran away shaking the bells and dancing
-with glee, the Jester’s cap all awry on his swollen head. A sweet
-melting tenderness and faintness took hold of the Jester and an ecstasy
-swayed him so that he nearly fell.
-
-“It is the soul of my Lady speaking to mine,” he whispered. “What matter
-the cap and bells? Let them go.”
-
-The woman he loved stood by him and her voice was like a lute on the air
-as she grasped the Jester’s shoulders.
-
-“Give all thy music to me,” she whispered, “I am in sore travail because
-of things a Fool cannot understand. Thy music ravishes me and makes me
-know that love is a consuming fire in which one burns gladly. Thy wild
-notes make desire in me a quenchless thirst which no drinking can
-assuage. Thy soft piping fills my veins with a pain which is like joy
-and with a joy which is like pain. Give me all, keep nothing back. I
-would see as thou seest, hear as thou hearest, dream as thou dreamest,
-so that I can play as thou, but I must tune thy pipes to the voice of my
-heart.”
-
-The Jester drew his hood over his head and went to his cell. His Lady
-had no doubt as to what he would bring back to her, for she had learnt
-from him that love gives all things without question or regret. The
-Jester quite simply collected all the instruments he had made during the
-long years of his youth and his manhood. They were precious to him, for
-he had not been able to buy as others because of his poverty. He had
-gone even to the offal of the slaughter-houses, and to the dank banks of
-the ponds, and the waste places in hills and valleys for the things
-which gave his instruments such power over men with the strange cries he
-evoked. The Jester’s sadness had been greater than even his poverty, but
-the music had never failed to comfort and strengthen him. Voices from
-the over-world and under-world spoke to him, and the strange secrets he
-translated into sound. The Jester’s heart was glad at last. His Lady had
-need of him and of what he had made. His music was hers as his heart was
-hers. He laid all his precious instruments at her feet and looked in her
-eyes. There were smiles for him there. She bent as he knelt and took his
-head, as of old, between her long cool hands, and kissed his brow.
-
-“Happy, happy Fool,” she cried, “thus to be able to give all. I will
-break hearts with the sweetness of these strings, I will bind others to
-me and know it is thy gift. Happy Fool! Goodbye!”
-
-“May God comfort thee and me,” said the Jester, as he turned toward his
-cell.
-
-
- THE JESTER SLEEPS
-
-“The Jester is dead.” The words were said gravely, and the Lady who
-heard them looked keenly in an old man’s face.
-
-“Dead,” she cried.
-
-“Yes! Found dead this morning. We could not find his cap and bells nor
-the instruments he loved more than all other things. There seems no more
-music in the world now, for we all grew happy through his music and the
-sun.”
-
-“Dead!” she whispered. “May I....”
-
-She hesitated. “Yes, come.”
-
-The old man led the way.
-
-“He is there. We found nothing by him but the leaves of a dead white
-rose and the wind from his window blew them on to his breast.”
-
-“He smiles,” said the Lady.
-
-There was silence in the cell except for the fierce howling of an April
-wind and the tiny fluttering of the leaves on the breast of the Jester.
-
-The Lady turned towards the door.
-
-“His instruments are at the gate,” she said, impatiently. “Why did he
-die, I wonder? The reeds are no use to me. I cannot play upon them ...
-not a sound will come.”
-
-
-
-
- Green Symphony
-
-
- JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
-
-
- I
-
- The glittering leaves of the rhododendrons
- Balance and vibrate in the cool air;
- While in the sky above them
- White clouds chase each other.
-
- Like scampering rabbits,
- Flashes of sunlight sweep the lawn;
- They fling in passing
- Patterns of shadow,
- Golden and green.
-
- With long cascades of laughter,
- The mating birds dart and swoop to the turf:
- ’Mid their mad trillings
- Glints the gay sun behind the trees.
-
- Down there are deep blue lakes:
- Orange blossom droops in the water.
-
- In the tower of the winds,
- All the bells are set adrift:
- Jingling
- For the dawn.
-
- Thin fluttering streamers
- Of breeze lash through the swaying boughs,
- Palely expectant
- The earth receives the slanting rain.
-
- I am a glittering raindrop
- Hugged close by the cool rhododendron.
- I am a daisy starring
- The exquisite curves of the close-cropped turf.
-
- The glittering leaves of the rhododendron
- Are shaken like blue green blades of glass,
- Flickering, cracking, falling:
- Splintering in a million fragments.
- The wind runs laughing up the slope
- Stripping off handfuls of wet green leaves,
- To fling in peoples’ faces.
- Wallowing on the daisy-powdered turf,
- Clutching at the sunlight,
- Cavorting in the shadow.
-
- Like baroque pearls,
- Like cloudy emeralds,
- The clouds and the trees clash together;
- Whirling and swirling,
- In the tumult
- Of the spring,
- And the wind.
-
-
- II
-
- The trees splash the sky with their fingers,
- A restless green rout of stars.
-
- With whirling movement
- They swing their boughs
- About their stems:
- Planes on planes of light and shadow
- Pass among them,
- Opening fanlike to fall.
-
- The trees are like a sea;
- Tossing;
- Trembling,
- Roaring,
- Wallowing,
- Darting their long green flickering fronds up at the sky,
- Subsiding,
- Spotted with white blossom-spray.
-
- The trees are roofs:
- Hollow caverns of cool blue shadow,
- Solemn arches
- In the afternoons.
- The whole vast horizon
- In terrace beyond terrace,
- Pinnacle above pinnacle,
- Lifts to the sky
- Serrated ranks of green on green.
-
- They caress the roofs with their fingers,
- They sprawl about the river to look into it;
- Up the hill they come
- Gesticulating challenge:
- They cower together
- In dark valleys;
- They yearn out over the fields.
-
- Enamelled domes
- Tumble upon the grass,
- Crashing in ruin
- Quiet at last.
-
- The trees lash the sky with their leaves,
- Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.
-
-
- III
-
- Far let the voices of the mad wild birds be calling me,
- I will abide in this forest of pines.
-
- When the wind blows
- Battling through the forest,
- I hear it distantly,
- Like the crash of a perpetual sea.
-
- When the rain falls,
- I watch silver spears slanting downwards
- From pale river-pools of sky,
- Enclosed in dark fronds.
-
- When the sun shines,
- I weave together distant branches till they enclose mighty circles,
- I sway to the movement of hooded summits,
- I swim leisurely in deep blue seas of air.
-
- I hug the smooth bark of stately red pillars
- And with cones carefully scattered
- I mark the progression of dark dial-shadows
- Flung diagonally downwards through the afternoon.
-
- This turf is not like turf:
- It is a smooth dry carpet of velvet,
- Embroidered with brown patterns of needles and cones.
- These trees are not like trees:
- They are innumerable feathery pagoda-umbrellas,
- Stiffly ungracious to the wind,
- Teetering on red-lacquered stems.
-
- In the evening I listen to the winds’ lisping,
- While the conflagrations of the sunset flicker and clash behind me,
- Flamboyant crenelations of glory amid the charred ebony boles.
-
- In the night the fiery nightingales
- Shall clash and trill through the silence:
- Like the voices of mermaids crying
- From the sea.
-
- Long ago has the moon whelmed this uncompleted temple.
- Stars swim like gold fish far above the black arches.
-
- Far let the timid feet of dawn fly to catch me:
- I will abide in this forest of pines:
- For I have unveiled naked beauty,
- And the things that she whispered to me in the darkness,
- Are buried deep in my heart.
-
- Now let the black tops of the pine-trees break like a spent wave,
- Against the grey sky:
- These are tombs and memorials and temples and altars sunkindled for me.
-
-
-
-
- The Case of French Poetry
-
-
- RICHARD ALDINGTON
-
-It is with a feeling of regret and astonishment that I find nearly all
-my English confrères so opposed to the spirit of French culture, so
-mistaken in their views, and so curiously ignorant of the real facts of
-the development of modern French literature.
-
-I am led to this reflection by reading Mr. Shanks’s excellent article in
-your December number. It is a most ungracious task to criticise a man
-who is about to hazard his life in the service of his country; and I
-honor Mr. Shanks more than I can express. But if I felt as Mr. Shanks
-does on the subject of French and German poetry I would not fight at all
-or I would fight for Germany! To a poet poetry must be the great
-business of life and, speaking for myself, I would emphatically support
-the Germans if I thought they were better poets than the French and
-English! (You will take that rhetorical statement for what it is worth.)
-
-Intellectually about fifty per cent of English people are Germanized
-without knowing it. I should say the percentage is even higher in
-America. I believe that no study is considered so frivolous or so
-suspect in both countries as the study of French art and poetry. And
-yet—Russia and one or two Anglo-Saxons put aside—the history of the art
-of the last fifty years is the history of French art. You who have given
-Whistler to the world do not need me to tell you what French art is. The
-American painting at a recent Exhibition here was of so high a quality
-that I felt my respect for the intellectual progress of America greatly
-increased. I admit freely and regretfully that it was immeasurely better
-than English painting. That is because most Americans study painting in
-Paris.
-
-Why don’t they sometimes give a look at the poetry of France, for in no
-country is poetry so cultivated, so well understood, and so honored? Mr.
-Shanks apparently knows something of German poetry and nothing of
-French. Of Liliencron I know nothing. But I do know something of
-Hauptmann, Dehmel, and Stefan Georg. (I have no doubt Mr. Shanks
-dislikes Georg because the latter got his training in France.) Well, I
-will cheerfully wager that any more or less fair-minded person would
-find three equally good poets in France to every one that can be
-mentioned in Germany.
-
-“Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolistes”! What an odd statement!
-Régnier is a Parnassian and Kahn a nobody. I am not going to write a
-history of modern French poetry, nor speculate as to the effect of 1870
-or the probable effect of 1914 on poetry, especially French poetry. I
-just want to give some names, and if anyone,—if Mr. Shanks,—can give me
-half as many German poets of the same calibre, charm, and general
-technical accomplishment I shall be delighted.
-
-Let us grant that Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the elder Parnassians were
-products of the period of before 1870. Well, since that disastrous war
-France has produced the following—I will not say great—delightful and
-readable poets: Samain, Francis Jammes, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas,
-Paul Fort, Laurent Tailhade, Jules Romains, Remy de Gourmont, Charles
-Vildrac, Laforgue, Louys (translations), Mallarmé (pre-1870?) and
-younger men like Guy-Charles Cros, Apollinaire, Castiaux, André Spire,
-Carco, Divoire, Jouve, Luc Durtain, and dozens more. I do not mention
-the Belgians Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Elskamp, and Rodenbach, nor the two
-Franco-Americans Vielé Griffin, and Merrill—though they also have
-considerable reputations. (Did you ever hear of an American who wanted
-to write German?)
-
-I have quoted off-hand twenty-six names from a period of about forty
-years. And you must remember that there are scores and scores of names
-only a little less known, and scores and scores beyond that which I may
-have missed in my reading.
-
-But I think those few names prove beyond all doubt—and I would like
-people to read them and contrast them with German poets—that French
-poetry is the foremost in our age for fertility, originality, and
-general poetic charm.
-
-It is not hatred of Germany but love of poetry which has called this
-letter from me. I believe in France in the French tradition. And if
-there is one thing which can reconcile me to this war it is the fact
-that England has ranged herself beside France and Belgium, beside the
-cosmopolite, graceful, humanizing, influences of France and French
-civilization against the nationalist, narrow, and dehumanizing
-influences of Berlin. I believe all Englishmen regret that they oppose
-the gay, cultivated, cosmopolite Austrians; it is a misfortune. But of
-the great issue between the nations—the great intellectual issue—there
-can be no doubt. And Mr. Shanks, when he praises (unjustly I firmly
-believe) the poets of Germany and disparages (equally unjustly) the
-poets of France, is intellectually on the side of the enemy he is so
-courageously opposing with physical force. I believe in the kindliness
-of Germans; I know them to be excellent fathers and most generous
-friends; I know them to be brave soldiers and sailors; I know they are
-good chemists, reasonably good doctors, and very boring professors. At
-the name of Heine all men should doff their hats, but that modern
-Germany (Germany since 1870) has produced one-fiftieth of the poetry
-that France has produced—in quality as well as quantity—that it has
-added anything to the purely creative side of the arts, I utterly deny.
-
-I know that there is Nietzsche.... Perhaps I will write you another
-letter on Nietzsche, if I may.
-
-I feel that this protest will be put down to “war-fever.” I must refer
-you to my pre-war articles in English periodicals, and to the testimony
-of my friends—some of whom are now in America—that such has always been
-my attitude. It has always been a deep regret of mine that both American
-and English literature, criticism and periodicals were so undermined
-with German influences that all gentleness, all intentional good will,
-all that we mean by the “Latin tradition” was anathema, and utterly
-despised!
-
-
-
-
- The Last Woman
-
-
- GEORGE SOULE
-
- (_The second of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be
- called “Plays for Irascibles.”_)
-
-
- CHARACTERS:
-
- THE SAGE OF THE GREEN EARS }
- THE SAGE OF THE PURPLE HAIR }
- THE SAGE OF THE BLUE FACE }
- THE SAGE OF THE YELLOW HAT } FUTURIST SAGES
- THE SAGE OF THE RED SWORD }
- THE SAGE OF THE WHITE HEART }
- THE WOMAN }
-
-
- SCENE:
-
-_The Council Room of the Futurist Sages, decorated in brilliant colors
-to suggest a battle of the minds at some far future date. The Sages are
-seated about the walls in a parabolic curve. They are costumed with
-appropriate inappropriateness. Green ears is in present day evening
-dress; Purple hair in fiery green robes; Blue face in a pink business
-suit; Yellow hat in a conventional futurist costume of mingled colors;
-Red sword in a black monk’s gown, with a sword in his rope girdle; White
-heart, who is young, in football armor._
-
-BLUE FACE. Shall we give the woman a chance to defend herself?
-
-GREEN EARS. Why should we? If her defense is good, we shall be
-prejudiced against her. And as we admit the rule of prejudice, the
-defense will lose its judicial character.
-
-RED SWORD. Judicial? Who wants to be judicial? I abolished that word
-last year.
-
-GREEN EARS. That’s just the point. We hate the judicial; therefore if
-the defense loses its judicial character we may be forced to decide both
-ways at the same time. Acquit on the ground of illogical defense;
-convict on the grounds of prejudice against good defense.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. Red sword has abolished judicial. Well, we have also
-abolished the past; we have abolished all abolishments!
-
-YELLOW HAT. Above all, we must guard against precedent. Let us look up
-all previous trials, and take care to do the opposite.
-
-WHITE HEART. But again, that would entangle us in the past. I want to
-see the woman!
-
-RED SWORD. He wants to see the woman! He is a reactionary!
-
-PURPLE HAIR. Do not argue, brothers. For if we argue, we shall either
-settle the case by logic, which we repudiate, or by violence, so that we
-shall kill each other before we have a chance to decide about the woman.
-
-RED SWORD. Time server! I shall kill you all, and decide for myself.
-
-BLUE FACE. Red cabbages, redness of blue cabbages, when breakfast is no
-cabbage in a potato. Cocoa crinkles!
-
-YELLOW HAT. He is right, brothers.
-
-ALL. He is right.
-
-BLUE FACE. We, who have exalted ourselves above all modes of thought, we
-who have cast aside all images and unfettered ourselves from all
-language and all sequence, we who have repudiated humanity; we have a
-right to fight a lower order with its own weapons. Caprice is our god;
-let us then have a caprice to judge this woman with logic and judicial
-procedure. Have you all this caprice?
-
-ALL. We have.
-
-RED SWORD. I object: This is democracy.
-
-GREEN EARS. We accept your objection, and act in opposition to it.
-
-BLUE FACE. Then let the woman be brought in.
-
-(_White Heart goes out right and brings in the woman. She is tall, of
-beautiful face and figure, in a simple white Greek tunic. In her hair is
-a gold fillet. She is led to the center, where she is left standing, as
-White Heart resumes his seat._)
-
-BLUE FACE. Deliver the charge, Red sword!
-
-RED SWORD (_standing_). You are charged, first, with being a woman. And
-as a woman you are the living incarnation of the past. You represent
-conservatism and the anti-military virtues; you clog the wheels of
-progress; you sap men’s energies and misdirect them from the triumphs of
-achievement to the service of material things—or immaterial things. Your
-effeminate beauty poisons art and furnishes countless photographic
-realists with the means of selling paintings. The love of you has
-vitiated poetry and music. Masquerading in the garments of caprice, you
-have deceived man into accepting the traditional. As Futurists we detest
-you. This is the first charge! (_A pause._)
-
-THE WOMAN. You accuse me of being a woman. It is a grave charge. But
-first, in order that I may have a chance to disprove it, I suggest that
-you tell me what a woman is.
-
-GREEN EARS. A woman is that whose place is in the home.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. A woman is that which is ruled by instinct.
-
-BLUE FACE. A woman is that which is beautiful.
-
-YELLOW HAT. A woman is that which men call a mystery.
-
-WHITE HEART (_rapturously_). A woman is that which men love.
-
-RED SWORD (_vehemently_). A woman is that which men hate.
-
-THE WOMAN. These are your definitions?
-
-BLUE FACE. They are.
-
-THE WOMAN. Then in order to prove that I am a woman you must prove that
-they describe me. And you must prove that there is nothing else in me.
-
-RED SWORD. We must prove nothing. We act.
-
-THE WOMAN. Then why do you talk?
-
-RED SWORD (_heatedly_). I deny that you are beautiful. And if you are
-beautiful, I deny beauty.
-
-YELLOW HAT. Is it not our caprice to be judicial? Come, Red Sword, do
-not descend to flattery!
-
-PURPLE HAIR. All our definitions have been proved a million times. They
-are unprovable.
-
-THE WOMAN. I admit them. What then? I will leave the home, I will learn
-logic, I will cut off my nose, I will tell you my mystery, and I will
-let your love and your hate kill each other. And I shall still be here.
-
-WHITE HEART. Then you will not be a woman, you will be a feminist!
-
-THE WOMAN. But I shall be I instead of what you think I am.
-
-RED SWORD. You can not be you unless you are what we think you are.
-
-BLUE FACE. Brothers, can we kill the woman and spare the feminist?
-
-WHITE HEART. If you kill the woman you will make the feminist.
-
-YELLOW HAT. No; the feminist is more female than the woman. The feminist
-would inflict domesticity on the world. She wants all men for her
-husband. She wants to tie pink ribbons on siege guns and abolish the
-mountains to make room for the nursery. If we let the feminist live, man
-can no longer find a place in which to be alone with his adventure. If
-we let the feminist live we shall make the woman a giant. If we kill the
-woman we shall kill them both at the same time.
-
-GREEN EARS. Show us the feminist without the woman.
-
-THE WOMAN. I will do so if you will cease to be men.
-
-BLUE FACE. We have ceased to be men. We are supermen.
-
-THE WOMAN. Then you see the subwoman.
-
-RED SWORD (_fiercely_). We must kill what we see.
-
-THE WOMAN. But have I not shown you that I am something besides a woman?
-
-RED SWORD. You might show us that you are everything, and still I would
-hate you. Hate is not hate unless it exists for its own sake.
-
-THE WOMAN. At last you have spoken the truth. I am everything. And you
-hate me because you hate me.
-
-BLUE FACE. Gentle pickles in a vacillating pink mound. Inkwell is not
-ink. Ink is not inkwell. Flying postman leathers purple letters.
-
-THE WOMAN. But I have reserved my best defence to the last. I am a
-descendant of Gertrude Stein!
-
-RED SWORD. Descendant! What heresy! Gertrude Stein had no descendants.
-She has ascendants!
-
-YELLOW HAT. Deliver the rest of the charge.
-
-RED SWORD. Be it known unto you that we are the sole surviving members
-of the human race. By a process of selection we have killed all except
-the best stock. You alone remain of the female sex. We charge you not
-only in your capacity as woman, but in your capacity as mother. In order
-to prove your right to live, you must justify mankind. We accuse you of
-being the perpetuator of human beings! Defend yourself!
-
-THE WOMAN. You are the sole surviving males?
-
-YELLOW HAT. We are.
-
-THE WOMAN. Then you may let me live. I shall not perpetuate the race.
-
-WHITE HEART. Do not despair; _I_ will marry you!
-
-GREEN EARS. Where are your manners? Has not Shaw taught us that women do
-the wooing?
-
-BLUE FACE. What have we to do with Shaw? Let us be serious about
-frivolous matters.
-
-RED SWORD. She is not to be trusted. It is necessary for her to defend
-the race. Speak, woman!
-
-THE WOMAN. Now indeed you have given me a heavy burden. What could be
-brought forward as a defence for humanity? Why should anything exist?
-
-YELLOW HAT. Why, indeed? That is for you to show. For aeons life has
-perpetuated itself through a mere animal instinct. Yet through all that
-time consciousness has been growing; will has at last come into the
-ascendancy. Now for the first time man’s ego is really on the throne.
-For the first time man, with power to extinguish himself, can demand an
-adequate reason for his existence. And man is ready to hear the secret
-of the sphinx. We have come to you, madam, as the last and most perfect
-woman, as the final manifestation of the eternal mystery, to force you
-on pain of death to divulge yourself.
-
-THE WOMAN. But I thought mankind existed for the purpose of creating the
-superman.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. He did; but now he has created the superman. We are the
-embodiment of the purpose. What next?
-
-BLUE FACE. As futurists we refuse to accept the old answer. If our
-existence merely pushes the problem forward a few generations, it is
-futile. If, on the other hand, we are the crowning goal of man’s
-endeavor, there is no need to create further.
-
-THE WOMAN. You are superchildren using superlogic. How can a reason come
-out of one who is ruled by instinct? How can a conservative satisfy a
-futurist? But I will answer you, and my answer is this: I am a female so
-that you may be males. I am a holder of traditions so that you may smash
-them. And I perpetuate the race so that you may ask the reason.
-
-RED SWORD. Come, come, this will not do. We are above the fogs of
-mysticism. We are talking of final things, and we must have a definite
-answer.
-
-THE WOMAN. Then make a definite accusation.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. We hold the human race guilty until it is proved innocent.
-We assume the position of an all-wise intelligence, as aloof from the
-earth as the farthest star. And we see a race of ant-things crawling on
-two legs and going through all sorts of meaningless antics. Why is one
-ant exalted? Because he has led an army which has killed a million other
-ants. Because he has discovered how to make ants live a few seconds
-longer. Because he has written a rhyme with ant-words or put a few
-senseless daubs on ant-canvas. And when the ant asked himself what his
-purpose was, he answered first, “To exist.” And his second answer was
-like the first: “To create something more like myself than I am.” There
-is no validity in these which a superior intelligence can recognize.
-What is the third answer?
-
-RED SWORD. Woman, defend yourself!
-
-WHITE HEART. Stop! I love the woman and I demand her (_He jumps from his
-seat and embraces her_).
-
-THE WOMAN. Here, O supermen, is your answer! Man exists for that which
-cannot be spoken, for that which cannot be thought. He exists for his
-mystery, for that which he loves, for that which he hates. Man exists
-for me!
-
-GREEN EARS. And if he denies you?
-
-THE WOMAN. You cannot have your future without your past.
-
-RED SWORD. You see, I was right; we shouldn’t have listened to her. She
-is her own argument; and she has to bring in the past. Away with her!
-
-YELLOW HAT. Away with her; we exist for ourselves!
-
-BLUE FACE. Remarkable apples, apple black, apple pink, blossom apples in
-squirming shrieks. Skyrockets deserve apples. Bang!
-
-RED SWORD. Stop using that antique language! I’m sick of it. It’s too
-obvious.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. Yes, we have proved that we can be more obscure in good
-English.
-
-RED SWORD. And now, brothers, the sentence! The execution!
-
-ALL. The sentence, the sentence!
-
-RED SWORD. Stand aside, White Heart, or I will kill you both at the same
-time!
-
-WHITE HEART. I shall die with her!
-
-RED SWORD. You are not yet superman. We shall execute the last man and
-the last woman together. (_To the woman_) Have you any last words? It is
-traditional to have last words.
-
-THE WOMAN. I will match my silence against your silence, my eternity
-against your eternity!
-
-RED SWORD. Come with me! (_He leads them out, right. There is an
-oppressive silence. In a moment he returns, wiping his sword on his
-gown. He takes his seat without a word. The light begins to fail, and
-the room grows rapidly darker until the last few sentences are spoken in
-an enveloping blackness._)
-
-GREEN EARS. Man has produced the superman, and the superman has put an
-end to mankind.
-
-BLUE FACE. Brothers, we stand on an icy mountain peak in the twilight of
-time.
-
-YELLOW HAT. We experience a breathless emotion which no one has had
-before, which there will be no more to have.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. No longer do we feel the drag of the past; no longer do we
-feel the lure of the future.
-
-RED SWORD. We are the future. We are the goal of consciousness.
-
-BLUE FACE. For this moment has mankind dragged out a million weary
-years.
-
-GREEN EARS. For this moment have been the countless joys of love, the
-countless pangs of death.
-
-YELLOW HAT. The thing-in-itself for which philosophers have sought—that
-is here.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. We have broken the spell of cause and consequence.
-
-RED SWORD. Will has won its first and its last victory over fate.
-
-GREEN EARS. The stupid serpent of wisdom swallowing its own tail has
-grown great and finished the task.
-
-BLUE FACE. Grubbing logic has looked into the mirror and discovered
-itself to be gigantic caprice.
-
-YELLOW HAT. Infinity has turned inside-out and become nothingness.
-
-PURPLE HAIR. The great contradiction has annihilated itself.
-
-RED SWORD. Let us keep silence before the solution of the ancient
-riddle.
-
-(_A long, dark silence. Slow curtain._)
-
-
- There is something transitory in the moods evoked by rhyme. For
- rhyme shimmers on the surface of language like sunlight on the
- surface of a shallow stream; it conducts the mind as in a circle;
- its sphere is a world of harmonious delights. Rhyme is to the
- mind what sentimentality is to art.—_Francis Grierson._
-
-
-
-
- The Liberties of the People
-
-
- WILLIAM L. CHENERY
-
-LORD VALIANT. The exercise of such tyranny over the minds of men has
-been productive, in a great degree, of the miseries that have fallen
-upon mankind. We have been happy in England since every man has been at
-liberty to speak his mind.
-
-MEDROSO. And we are very quiet at Lisbon, where nobody is permitted to
-say anything.
-
-LORD VALIANT. You are quiet but you are not happy. Your tranquility is
-that of galley slaves who tug the oar, and keep time in silence. * * *
-
-MEDROSO. But what if I find myself quite at ease in galleys?
-
-LORD VALIANT. Nay, in that case, you deserve to continue there.
-
- _—Voltaire._
-
-Sunday afternoon, January 17, Chicago was given a vivid picture of the
-liberties allowed the people. On that occasion the freedom of assemblage
-and the right of free speech were ruthlessly and brutally denied a great
-host of people because forsooth they were poor and unemployed.
-
-Men and women whose crime was that they could not find work had
-assembled at Hull House. After the meeting, it was suggested that a
-parade would impress their needs upon the city. Immediately they were
-attacked by the police, some of whom had been disguised in the tatters
-of unemployed men and scattered into the crowd. Young girls were beaten,
-women were knocked down, men were assaulted, and all in the name of law.
-
-The assistant chief of police, Herman F. Schuettler, directed the
-official lawlessness. This exponent of anarchy detailed fifty mounted
-police to charge the assemblage of hungry men and women. And here is the
-explanation given by Schuettler:
-
-“We expected something like this to happen. We had refused these people
-a permit and they took it upon themselves to violate the law. I have no
-fault to find with the conduct of the policemen. Of course they may have
-been a bit rough but I am sure they acted within their rights. They were
-obeying orders.”
-
-And then, poltroon fashion, the anarchistic police attempted to conceal
-their stupid crimes and cruelties by stressing the fact that Mrs. Lucy
-Parsons, one of the philosophical anarchists of Chicago, was a speaker
-at the Hull House meeting! Could bureaucracy go further?
-
-The episode is important because it is typical of what is going on all
-over the United States. It is a by-product of our undigested industrial
-order and also a promise of what the future has in store for us; it is
-the prophecy of a future feudalism which is rising like a flood and
-which will sweep us into impotency if we are not wise enough and strong
-enough to plan a sound reconstruction. From San Diego to Portland, from
-Los Angeles to New York, the fight is raging. In places the people have
-definitely lost all the rights and privileges of a supposed democracy.
-In Lead, S. D., in the Colorado coal fields, in parts of Montana, in
-parts of the Michigan copper country, in West Virginia, in Pennsylvania,
-and in Massachusetts, whole sections of the population have been
-degraded by forces too strong for them to a condition of servility. A
-servile people is not a threat of the future; it is a comment upon the
-present. And among the servile peoples, the liberties have perished. The
-question which now remains is only: “Is the remnant strong enough or
-disciplined sufficiently to regain the fundamentals of freedom which
-slipped away while we slept?”
-
-It is not only the poor unemployed who have been battered about and made
-to cringe. Preachers and professors have also felt the stultifying
-constraint exercised by tired business men in moods of irritation.
-Howard Crosby Warren gave an appallingly lengthy list of professors who
-have been discharged from universities all over the land within the last
-two or three years because they exercised the most commonplace latitude
-in the choice of their sentiments and their pronouncements. A Florida
-professor had to forego his position because he doubted the finality of
-the wisdom of the ante-bellum teachers in the South. A professor at
-Marietta College, Ohio, was forced to resign because his political
-opinions were displeasing to his masters. A professor at Wesleyan was
-driven out on account of his opinion concerning the observance of the
-Sabbath. But why go on? The number is tediously inclusive.
-
-So great has this evil become among teachers that an association of
-University professors was organized in New York in early January. From
-it college presidents and deans were expressly excluded. The members of
-the association, actuated no doubt by motives of middle-class
-respectability, announced that they were not to be considered a trade
-union; but, for all their dislike of the dignity of labor, they have
-found it necessary to fight as a body for the retention of the liberties
-essential to self-respect.
-
-The attack on the Chicago unemployed, who made nothing like so much of a
-parade as the visitors to a ball park any summer afternoon, nor so much
-of a street jam as the fashionable attendants at a Mary Garden opera,
-illustrated the direction in which the attack is being made. The real
-government of men is industrial, and not political, as every one knows.
-Consequently the genuine tyrannies, or abuses of government, can be
-discovered naturally among the incidents of industry.
-
-Dr. Annie Marion MacLean of Adelphi College, Brooklyn, read a living
-document upon this phase of the question at a conference held by the
-economic and sociological associations at Princeton during Christmas
-week. In the course of her investigation, says Paul U. Kellogg in his
-report of the meetings in _The Survey_, Dr. MacLean had been told by
-girls how their foremen had warned them against telling what their pay
-was, of loft building doors locked, of foul air, and what not. The head
-of an employer’s utopia had told her he would keep out unionism by
-making examples of the talk leaders. How? By firing them. She told of
-strikers suppressed by the police for what they said, while
-strikebreakers inside the factory, hurling insults at them from the
-windows, went unmolested. “Working women have the right to state the
-beliefs they hold without forfeit of their livelihood,” said she. “They
-need reassurance that liberty is more than a catch word. The box-maker,
-the bobbin girl, and the doffer have the right not only to life but to
-liberty and free speech in a land which is supposed to be the home of
-freedom.”
-
-Professors are denied the right of free speech because colleges and
-universities are organized on business principles. Scholars and teachers
-are deprived of the franchise in all vital matters affecting university
-life. They are clerks. Tired business men are the masters of education,
-and tired business men have but one great principle: loyalty to the
-organization. Criticism seems sacrilege. Incidentally, that accounts for
-the fact that the great inventions in business have been made by
-outsiders; but that is not my story.
-
-The same tired business men operating through the police take away the
-essential liberties from trade unionists, from the unemployed, from
-socialists, and from the I. W. W.’s when the occasion arises. The police
-acquire the habit of tyranny and then set to work to practice it on
-their own account. What reason under heaven could have persuaded Herman
-F. Schuettler to order an attack on hungry men and women, inoffensive,
-armed only with banners bearing fragments of the Lord’s Prayer? Surely a
-Christian litany is not an incitement to riot. “Give us this day our
-daily bread”—if this be treason, we may well pray for annihilation at
-the touch of some vagrant comet.
-
-But the police are pawns in the great game of the modern world, the game
-of hide and seek for sovereignty. Blind and stupid, they do the
-occasional desires of their masters and then, filled by a lust for
-repression, go on to satiate their unwholesome appetites.
-
-Hitherto I have assumed that the somewhat constitutional guaranties of
-free speech and free assemblage—the two go hand in hand—were actual
-rights. Theodore Schroeder, leader among the libertarians, has been
-prominent long among the small group which has ceaselessly stressed our
-fading freedom. Schroeder has an article in _The Forum_ in which he
-makes a witty attack upon Comstockery and upon the censorship which has
-grown up in the Post Office Department—a censorship prudish and powerful
-enough to exclude the Chicago Vice Report from the mails. This
-censorship of the imagined obscene is puerile and petty in sufficiency
-for any appetite, but it is useless to discuss it here. The reaction is
-always more potent than the action where obscenity is charged, as
-witness our own September Morn. Schroeder, albeit, announces his freedom
-of speech to be “a natural and a constitutional right.”
-
-Society, so far as I know, recognizes no natural rights and modern
-philosophy seems to sanction none. As for constitutional rights, every
-constitution, unless it be dead, is subject to amendment. The real
-foundation for the liberties of speech and assemblage is discovered in
-the social need for them. Without freedom the common weal withers and
-perishes. That, then, is the basis and incidentally it affords a rod by
-which any attempt at censorship, by the police, by factory foremen, by
-the post office, by university trustees, and even by a sluggish popular
-taste, may be measured.
-
-If the powers of Olympus would lend to men some creature of infinite
-wisdom and taste, some creature versed in the weary evolutions of the
-past, and pregnant with the unformulated tendencies of the future
-through which an increasing happiness may be attained by men, then well
-might that creature assume a censorship of human thought and speech. But
-salvation cannot be won so lightly, for the seed of happiness is with
-men. No one lives, or has lived, with the power to say what idea was
-valuable to the world and what idea was baneful. The human substitutes
-which have been commissioned during the absence of this all-wise and
-all-prophetic authority have been uniformly dull, limited, and poisonous
-to the best hopes of the future.
-
-Since, then, we may not have a wise authority, why not frankly face the
-situation? We blame the police, and justly, for their cruelties; yet
-upon them American society has imposed an impossible task. We have
-demanded free speech and free assemblage by our fundamental law, and
-privately we have told the police not to obey the constitution. Who’s at
-fault? New York knows. Last winter at Madison Square Garden the same
-sort of folly was enacted as that which disgraced Chicago on Sunday,
-January 17. Then Arthur Woods, police commissioner, saw a great light.
-He made an experiment in freedom. It worked hugely to his credit and,
-parenthetically, to the discredit of some of those most noisy in
-demanding the right. The emptiness of many of the speakers was exhibited
-and that was all. The existing order was unruffled.
-
-As a result of his enlightenment Commissioner Woods made a request at
-the conference on the old freedoms held at Princeton: “Policemen are
-entitled to definite orders,” said the commissioner. “People in this
-country have the constitutional right to freedom of assemblage and
-freedom of speech. The police have not only the responsibility to permit
-it—but to protect them in its exercise, and the police should be so
-instructed.”
-
-The police should be so instructed; the welfare of the race demands it.
-But they won’t get instructions until powerful organized groups of
-citizens find expression. Upon this organization rests the future.
-
-
-
-
- A Hymn to Nature
-
-
- (_This fragment, a “Hymn to Nature,” unknown to us in the published
- works of Goethe, was found in a little bookshop in Berlin, and
- translated into English by a strong man and a strong woman whose
- lives and whose creations have served the ideals of all humanity
- in a way that will gain deeper and deeper appreciation._)
-
-Nature!
-
-We are encompassed and enveloped by her, powerless to emerge and
-powerless to penetrate deeper.
-
-Unbidden and unwarned she takes us up in the round of her Dance and
-sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from her Arms.
-
-She creates ever new Forms; what is, was never before; what was, comes
-never again—everything is New and yet ever the Old.
-
-We live in the midst of her and are Strangers to her.
-
-She speaks incessantly with us and never betrays her Secret to us.
-
-We have unceasing Effect upon her and yet have no Power over her.
-
-She appears to have committed everything to Individuality and is
-indifferent to the Individual.
-
-She builds ever and ever destroys and her Workshop is inaccessible.
-
-She is the very Children—and the Mother—where is she?
-
- * * * * *
-
-She is the only Artist.
-
-With the simplest Materials she arrives at the most sublime Contrasts.
-
-Without Appearance of Effort she attains utmost Perfection—the most
-exact Precision veiled always in exquisite Delicacy.
-
-Each of her Works has its own individual Being—each of her Phenomena the
-most isolated Conception, yet all is Unity.
-
-She plays a Drama.
-
-Whether or no she sees it herself we do not know and yet she plays it
-for us who stand in the Corner.
-
-There is an eternal Life, Growth and Motion in her and yet she does not
-advance.
-
-She changes ever, no Moment is stationary with her.
-
-She has no Conception of Rest and has fixed her Curse upon Inaction.
-
-She is Firm.
-
-Her Step is measured, her Exceptions rare, her Laws immutable.
-
-She has reflected and meditated perpetually; not however as Man but as
-Nature.
-
-She has reserved for herself a specific all-embracing Thought which none
-may learn from her.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Mankind is all in her and she in all.
-
-With all she indulges in a friendly Game and rejoices the more one wins
-from her.
-
-She practices it with many, so occultly that she plays it to the End
-before they are aware of it.
-
-And most unnatural is Nature.
-
-Whoever does not see her on every side, nowhere sees her rightly.
-
-She loves herself and ever draws to herself Eyes and Hearts without
-number.
-
-She has set herself apart in order to enjoy herself.
-
-Ever she lets new Admirers arise, insatiable, to open her Heart to them.
-
-In Illusion she delights.
-
-Whoever destroys this in himself and others, him she punishes like the
-most severe Tyrant.
-
-Whoever follows her confidently—him she presses as a child to her
-Breast.
-
-Her Children are Countless.
-
-To none is she everywhere niggardly but she has Favorites upon whom she
-lavishes much and to whom she sacrifices much.
-
-Upon Greatness she has fixed her Protection.
-
-She pours forth her Creations out of Nothingness and tells them not
-whence they came nor whither they go; they are only to go; the Road she
-knows.
-
-She has few Motive Impulses—never worn out, always effective, always
-manifold.
-
-Her Drama is ever New because she ever creates new Spectators.
-
-Life is her most beautiful Invention and Death her Ruse that she may
-have much life.
-
-She envelops Mankind in Obscurity and spurs him ever toward the Light.
-
-She makes him dependent upon the Earth, inert and heavy; and ever shakes
-him off again.
-
-She gives Needs because she loves Action.
-
-It is marvelous how she attains all this Movement with so little.
-
-Every Need is a blessing, quickly satisfied, as quickly awakened again.
-
-If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of Desire; but soon
-she comes to Equipoise.
-
-She starts every Moment upon the longest Race and every Moment is at the
-Goal.
-
-She is Futility itself: but not for us for whom she has made herself of
-the greatest importance.
-
-She lets every Child correct her, every Simpleton pronounce Judgment
-upon her; she lets thousands pass callous over her seeing nothing and
-her Joy is in all and she finds in all her Profit.
-
-We obey her Laws even when we most resist them, we work with her even
-when we wish to work against her.
-
-She turns everything she gives into a Blessing; for she makes it
-first—indispensable.
-
-She delays that we may long for her, she hastens on that we may not be
-sated with her.
-
-She has no Speech nor Language; but she creates Tongues and Hearts
-through which she feels and speaks.
-
-Her Crown is Love.
-
-Only through Love can we approach her.
-
-She creates Gulfs between all Beings and all wish to intertwine.
-
-She has isolated all that she may draw all together.
-
-With a few Draughts from the Beaker of Love she compensates a Life full
-of Toil.
-
-She is Everything.
-
-She rewards herself and punishes herself, rejoices and torments herself.
-
-She is harsh and gentle, lovely and terrible, powerless and omnipotent.
-
-Everything is ever present in her.
-
-Past and Future she knows not—The Present is her Eternity.
-
-She is generous.
-
-I glorify her with all her Works.
-
-She is wise and calm.
-
-One drags no Explanation from her by Force, wrests no gift from her
-which she does not freely give.
-
-She is cunning but for a good purpose and it is best not to observe her
-Craft.
-
-She is complete and yet ever uncomplete; so as she goes on she can ever
-go on.
-
-To Everyone she appears in special Form.
-
-She conceals herself behind a thousand Names and Terms and yet always is
-the same.
-
-She has placed me here; she will lead me hence;—
-
-I confide myself to her.
-
-She may do with me what she will: she will not despise her Work.
-
-I speak not of her. No, what is true and what is false; She herself has
-spoken all;
-
-All the Fault is hers; hers is all the Glory.
-
-
-
-
- My Friend, the Incurable
-
-
- IV.
-
- Pro domo mea: on the vice of simplicity. John Cowper Powys—a
- revelation
-
-One of my critics sent me a New Year’s wish and admonition: “You are
-hectic. Why not see things as they are? You must learn to be simple.”
-
-This is another attempt on the part of my good-wishers to cure me, in
-defiance of my resolute declaration that I cannot and do not want to be
-cured. Furthermore, I am in the position of a normal lunatic who
-considers the whole world, except himself, insane; not only do I refuse
-to learn the art of being simple, but I regard simplicity as a vice, a
-defect, a misery.
-
-What is simplicity? I cannot define things; definitions are absurd,
-limiting, simplifying. In this case perhaps I ought to adopt the method
-of the school-boy who defined salt as “what makes potatoes nasty when
-not applied to.” It is an English joke which I have tried with
-discouraging results on the American sense of humor; it suits my purpose
-nevertheless. How would this do: “Simplicity is that which makes life
-dull when applied to?” No; decidedly, I cannot think in Procrustean
-formulas.
-
-Nothing is simple. What nonsense it is to synonymize this word with
-“natural,” as if nature were not most complex and complicated! Neither
-is the primitive savage simple, for he conceives things not “as they
-are,” but through a veil of awe and mystery. Nor is the child simple,
-Messrs. and Mesdames Pedagogues; you may instruct it scientifically,
-tell it “plain truths” and facts, but the not-yet-educated young mind
-will distrust you and will continue to live in its illusionary,
-fantastic world. Not even beasts may be accused of that vice: recall
-Maeterlinck’s subtle dogs and horses.
-
-Nothing is simple, although civilization has attempted to simplify a
-good deal. We have come to live in accordance with established
-standards, customs, regulations; inertia and routine have replaced
-impulse and initiative. Science has endeavored to explain away man’s
-dreams, to do away with religion, soul, imagination, to prove away our
-mysteries and wonders. Known stuff. Thus has come to be the
-matter-of-fact multitude, the simple, the all-knowing, those who act and
-think and feel “as everybody else does,” as they are taught and trained
-by the ingenious apparatus of scientific, moral, and social
-classifications, definitions, simplifications, in a word—the civilized
-man.
-
-Yet side by side with civilization, machinization, automatonization,
-there is another powerful force moving the world: culture. Culture
-_versus_ civilization, this is how I gauge the issue. Do not ask me to
-define these words: let Professor Herrick do it. We are all civilized,
-of course; especially the Germans: witness their recent astounding
-achievements. Now try to apply the term “culture” to the activities of
-those _Kulturtraeger_ in Belgium and before Rheims—Q. E. D.
-Michael Bakounin “tried” it in 1848, when he suggested to his
-fellow-revolutionists in Dresden that they place on the besieged walls
-Raphael’s Madonna in order to avert the canon of the cultured Prussians;
-luckily the Saxons knew better their cousins, “the blond beasts.” Pardon
-this paroxysm of my old disease, Prussophobia. Bakounin, you see,
-belonged to the few, to the non-simple, to those who had an insight
-beyond the apparent, the fact, to the hectic, to the abnormal, if you
-please; “abnormal” is the label given to such individualities by the
-many, the civilized.
-
-I am not so vulgar as to affect megalomania, when asserting that I am
-cultured: this is an _apologia_, a confession of my sins before my
-critic, the advocate of simplicity. When facing a sunset, I do not
-simply see a display of colors, nor do I think of the simple explanation
-of this phenomenon as offered by science, but I live through a world of
-associations, recollections of diverse impressions and reactions
-imprinted on my mind by Boecklin, Mallarmé, Debussy—by all the gods that
-make up the religion of modern man. Life external, simple facts, are to
-me an artless raw libretto, which, naturally, cannot in itself satisfy
-one who has come into this world with the intention of enjoying
-grandiose opera. I call it culture, this faculty of seeing things
-_creatively_, not in monotones, not through window-panes, but through
-multiplying lenses which collect the rays of all suns and concentrate
-them on the focus. Now, pray, is there any hope for me “to learn how to
-be simple?”
-
-Life is composed of hundreds of grey days interspersed with a few
-scintillating moments, the few moments justifying our otherwise
-superfluous existence. In this respect I am not a Croesus, but the half
-dozen or so of meteoric flashes that have pierced through the
-ordinariness of my life I treasure grudgingly, and would not exchange
-them for years of continuous well-being. Congratulate me: I have become
-enriched now with another moment of rare beatitude, of indelible
-radiance. I was present at the transubstantiation of Oscar Wilde,
-performed by John Cowper Powys.
-
-Was it a lecture? “Most certainly,” would advise me my simple friend.
-What a dwarfish misnomer for the solemn rite that took place in the dark
-temple, the “catacomb” of the Little Theatre! I close my eyes, and see
-once more the galvanized demi-god vibrating in the green light, invoking
-the Uranian Oscar. We, the worshipers, sit entranced, hypnotized,
-demundanized, bewitched; the sorcerer makes us feel the presence in
-flesh and spirit of the Assyrian half-god, half-beast, who had the moral
-courage of living his life actively, to the full; we follow bewildered
-the quaint meteor of Wilde’s genius illuminating the world for a moment,
-dropping down into a hideous pit, reflaming in the pale glimmer of
-discovered sorrow; we finally hear the sonorous requiem to Oscar’s
-break-down from the shock of having discovered a heart in himself. The
-lights are on, the sorcerer is gone, but we remain under the spell of
-the hovering spirit.
-
-To quote Powys is as impossible as to _tell_ a symphony. It is the How
-and the What and the stage background that combine in creating the
-inexpressible charm of that experience. As to Oscar Wilde—well, what
-does it matter whether we agree with Mr. Powys’s interpretation or not?
-Wilde was my idol for a long time; I chanted dithyrambs to him and
-worshiped him fanatically. Later, in the perpetual process of dethroning
-gods, I observed the halo of the Prince of Paradoxes becoming paler in
-my eyes. Mr. Powys rekindled in my heart the sacred flame, for a moment
-at least, and gave me the rare sensation of reliving an old love.
-
-À propos of simplicity: Wilde proclaimed artificiality as the great
-virtue, and certainly lived up to his theory. Compare his short but
-italicized life with the last weary years of Tolstoy that were an
-attempt for “simple life.” Need I tell you which I prefer?
-
-
-
-
- Muck and Music
-
-
- ALFRED A. KNOPF
-
- (_We disagree with Mr. Knopf in too many respects not to be eager to
- print his interesting article._)
-
-Dr. Karl Muck resumed charge of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the
-fall of 1912. Looking over the twenty-two programs which he has given
-since then one is forced to admit that his tastes are, to say the least,
-peculiar. There have been frequent performances of Beethoven and Brahms
-and occasional classical programs. These, perhaps, serve to keep his
-feet on solid earth, but at other times he soars into the realm of
-incomprehensible novelty and one can tell in advance where he will land
-just about as easily as if he were a German Zeppelin headed for Paris.
-One thing only seems certain—he cannot resist the virtuoso that is in
-him; he gluts us with what can only be called virtuosity for its own
-sake. If he offers a novelty (and when Brahms and Beethoven are taken
-care of he chooses, for the most part, to offer little else) it is sure
-to be some outrageously difficult affair—difficult both to play and to
-listen to. One cannot reasonably object to music merely because it is
-difficult to understand. The test is whether there is sufficient real
-beauty in it to repay careful and painstaking attention. And my point is
-simply that many of us feel that the beauty in Sibelius, Holbrooke,
-Reger, Lendvai, Mraczek, Loeffler, Mahler, Schmitt and others is
-disproportionately small.
-
-The reasons for the New Yorker’s peculiar bitterness against Dr. Muck
-are not difficult to discover. He makes only ten appearances each
-season: the Philharmonic and the New York Symphony each gives many more
-concerts. From our point of view, would it not be better if we relied on
-Stransky and Damrosch (the merits of the one and the fripperies of the
-other are too apparent to call for comment here) for our first hearings
-of novelties? Then, if a particular composition seemed to warrant it,
-the Boston Orchestra could play it for us in its usual masterly manner.
-Just so long as New York worships the men from Boston in the mad
-feminine way it does, just that long will it resent Dr. Muck’s playing
-what it doesn’t want to hear. It was Theodore Thomas, I think, who,
-discovering that people cared very little for Wagner’s music, played it
-until they changed their minds. That is all very well when you have a
-Wagner, but I wonder just how heartily Dr. Muck admires the music he has
-recently served up to his New York audiences.
-
-To begin with there was Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony. Now Sibelius is one
-of the great living composers. He is a genuine musician—by which I mean
-that you do not suffer all the agonies of stage fright when you hear a
-composition of his for the first time. He knows the business of his
-craft and you usually feel safe in his hands, thanks to three Symphonies
-and Finlandia. But how rudely this fourth symphony shakes your
-confidence! Call it musicianly: show how consistently-planned and
-executed it is: you won’t like it any the more. To be sure, Sibelius is
-a Finn and an intensely feeling one. He gives expression to the emotions
-of that curiously unhappy race. But music to appeal must be more
-universal than this angry symphony of ugly moods. You can’t explain it
-on cubist grounds—unless the Finns also call it disagreeable. But one
-ventures the guess that they, perchance, find it richly agreeable, in
-which case its performance should, by International law (or what is left
-of it) be confined to Finland.
-
-Then there was _Schlemihl_—a symphonic biography by one Emil Nikolaus
-von Reznicek. This was the pièce de resistance at the evening concert.
-It is scored for one piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn,
-three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, double bassoon, four
-horns, four trumpets, three trombones, contra bass tuba, two trumpets
-off the stage, kettle drums, snare drums, bass drum and tambourine,
-Glockenspiel, Cuckoo, Xylophone, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, two harps,
-celesta, organ, sixteen first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve
-violas, ten violoncellos, eight double basses, and a tenor voice. This
-huge orchestra, plus the detailed analysis of his work furnished by the
-composer, explains _Schlemihl_. It is an attempt to out-Richard Richard
-Strauss, and, like almost all such attempts, it fails. Reznicek recounts
-the life and fate of a modern man pursued by misfortune who goes to
-destruction in the conflict between his ideal and his material
-existence. A compound essentially of _Tod und Verklärung_, _Tyll
-Eulenspiegel_ and _Ein Heldenleben_, but at no time reaching the heights
-attained by Strauss in all three of these tone poems. Imitators somehow
-almost always fall down in two ways—they devote far too little attention
-to what they want to say and far too much to their manner of saying it.
-And as a not unnatural result of this, they forget, or appear to forget
-at any rate, that melody is the prime essential in great music. Wagner
-had melodic genius, as we all realize today, and that Strauss has it is
-no longer open to very serious questioning. Reznicek hasn’t. His music
-is all rather good, but none of it good enough to grip you as the finest
-music does. It has no great moments but only moments of very great
-sound. The house fairly quaked at some of the fortissimos. And yet
-_Schlemihl_ would be pleasant enough were it not so pretentiously
-bombastic and did it not last twice too long. But the mere existence of
-_Ein Heldenleben_, _Tyll Eulenspiegel_ and _Tod und Verklärung_ deprives
-_Schlemihl_ of any greater claim than that.
-
-After these two pieces Scheinpflug’s _Overture to a Comedy of
-Shakespeare_ proved quite simple and enjoyable. It is a musicianly piece
-of work lacking neither in melodic invention nor in skilful
-orchestration. The Allegretto Graziosa, in which an old English tune
-from the Fitz William Virginal Book is introduced, is wholly delightful.
-And having said that much, one really has said all. The overture can
-have no possible chance of immortality; it is not great music, it is not
-intensely interesting or unusually delectable: one feels rather that
-such compositions as this are the by-products of the daily practice of
-the art of music by men of no little talent but very little genius. As
-such, they demand an occasional hearing—today Scheinpflug has the stage:
-tomorrow someone else—what matter who, since none are really masters.
-
-An occasional performance of Strauss’s early Symphonic Suite, _Aus
-Italien_, is probably quite justifiable because of his imposing
-importance among the composers of today. When a musician attains
-greatness almost everything he ever wrote becomes of interest to his
-disciples. _Aus Italien_ calls for little comment. First performed in
-1887, it is difficult today to realize the great uproar and rage it
-evoked. Now it seems quite tame. It was indeed Strauss’s “first step
-towards independence,” and it is interesting as the connecting link
-between his very early work and _Don Juan_ and its successors. Its first
-movement “On The Campagna” is probably the most successful, reaching as
-it does gravely grey and tragic heights. A sense of oppressiveness
-fairly overwhelms the listener and there are chords that are exquisite.
-“Amid Rome’s Ruins” is not nearly so sustained and well-knit. The
-opening of the third movement, “On the Shore of Sorrento,” depicts with
-wonderful effectiveness the brilliance of an Italian sea under a
-dazzling sun—a brilliance that no one who has seen it is likely ever to
-forget. Strauss, for all his reputed blare and noise, handles his
-orchestra pianissimo in a manner immeasurably more impressive than
-anyone else of his time. (The opening bars of _Tod und Verklärung_ and
-the love scene in _Don Juan_ immediately come to mind). And you can
-measure a generation’s progress in orchestration by the unruffled
-placidity with which people nowadays listen to the at-one-time
-“brilliant, tumultuous, audacious, unusual, and bold” finale—“Neapolitan
-Folk-Life.”
-
-Even the casual concert-goer must notice the amazing duplications that
-are being offered this season. For two or three seasons a particular
-composition is neglected; then suddenly it is played five times in half
-as many weeks. Stransky plays _Don Juan_; a week later Muck, as it were,
-shows us how it ought to be played. The Symphony Society plays Brahms’s
-Second Symphony and shortly thereafter Muck administers his reproach to
-Damrosch. Is there any reason why conductors shouldn’t meet occasionally
-and plan to avoid such ways? Muck appears the chief offender. His
-program stated that he was playing Ropartz’s Fourth Symphony for the
-first time in New York, but Stransky had played it only eight days
-earlier. When will we hear it again?
-
-For this Symphony deserves another hearing. The only work by a Frenchman
-that Dr. Muck has offered this season, it is far more satisfying than
-any of his other novelties. The restless swing of the opening theme
-grips you at once—and your curiosity is piqued as the violins sing
-against the “Kernel” in the horns. The Adagio is not so successful—the
-theme sung by the English horn is not sufficiently melodious. You need
-only compare it with the heart-breaking Largo of Dvorak’s _Aus Der Neuen
-Welt_. But there are the most engaging rhythms—many of them typically
-Scotch in their snap. In fact did Ropartz’s gift for melody (it is far
-from negligible) approach his rhythmic talent, he might produce really
-great music. As it is, this Fourth Symphony interests and gratifies. But
-it is too long. Its three movements are played without a pause and one’s
-attention flags at times. It seems likely that this is inevitable in
-absolute music: only a program can really hold one’s attention for
-almost forty minutes. Strauss does it in _Ein Heldenleben_; but _Don
-Juan_, _Tyll Eulenspiegel_ and _Tod und Verklärung_ last only about
-twenty minutes each, despite the fascinating explanations that the
-program notes always give of their musical contents. Ropartz’s Fourth
-Symphony would be much better if played with pauses, and the sections
-are so clearly indicated that this could be done without great
-difficulty. But, on the whole, a hearing of his work makes one wish for
-more French music, with its charming, clear-cut rhythms so typical of
-the Gaul. (To my mind Ropartz’s indebtedness to César Franck is a matter
-of comparative unimportance. Disciple or not, he has brought to his task
-of writing music freshness and charm, a fund of melody and a quite
-adequate technique).
-
-After listening to these five compositions, what effect would
-Beethoven’s _Egmont_ Overture naturally have? Relief,—pure unalloyed
-relief. And it confirms one in the feeling that relief is ever going to
-be one of the prime functions thrust by the musicians of today upon the
-greatest master of them all. Invariably he brings us back to earth, and
-as we sit listening to him in smug contentment, we can say over, without
-fear of contradiction: “This after all is music.”
-
-
-
-
- While Hearing a Little Song
-
-
- (_Solveigs Lied_)
-
- MAXWELL BODENHEIM
-
- A song flew lazily
- Over my upturned head.
- It dropped and I could see
- The ivoried limbs, the spread
- Of swaying, dream-colored wings,
- And barely sense the drift
- Of slender, cloud-voiced rings
- Of notes which seemed to lift
- The oval of my soul
- Up to their lingering death ...
- A purplish pallor stole
- Down to my leaden breath,—
- It was my melted soul
- And the soft death of the throng
- Of notes from the slim song.
-
-
-
-
- A Hard Bed
-
-
- GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER
-
-Warfare against suffering, this is man’s most natural fight. Suffering
-is an attack upon man, upon his will to live. On this account, he has a
-right to protect himself from suffering, to hold suffering far from him.
-
-But the struggle seems futile. The host of sufferings seems illimitable.
-For each old suffering which we thought we had vanquished, ten new ones
-come of which we had never dreamt. Indeed, the capacity to suffer grows
-with the growth of man. The feeling of pain grows as the senses become
-sharper and finer. The higher a man’s development, the stronger becomes
-his ability to feel life’s pains. Even if we could exchange all the
-sufferings of life for pure joy and bliss, this latter life would be
-suffering still, a surfeit and a search, and I doubt not we would long
-for an hour of some old anguish again that would redeem us from a
-pleasure now grown oppressive and intolerable.
-
-Shall we, then, hate life? Shall we say that it were better not to be
-than to be? We might, did we not find strength and comfort in and with
-every suffering,—did we not allow every item or event of experience the
-democratic right to a trial by a jury of its peers and to our trust that
-it is worth while until it shall prove that it is not,—did we not
-experience that up from the abyss of every suffering, painful as it
-seems, a path leads to a summit where all sufferings are only shadows of
-a blinding flood and fullness of light; that all articulate and fit into
-the eternal process of an upward-striving life.
-
-There is no question but that this is the workable view of life to
-present to the heart of man, draining, as one must, pain’s bitter cup
-for one’s self. But the sufferings one feels for others, sufferings in
-which one’s love, expressed in sympathy and pity, is complicated—this is
-another matter, here one may fall into mischievous aberration. There can
-be no doubt that the pain of our pity for others may be more painful
-than the pain of our own lives. In the throes of such pity, the woes of
-our own lives may seem small indeed, and finally fade away. To behold a
-human being that is deeply dear to us suffer is worse than it would be
-to suffer in his place. And if the man of moral elevation of soul feels
-equal in the end to all that brings pain to his own life, all the more
-defenseless does he feel with regard to the great all-prevailing misery
-which, in pity, celebrates its triumphal entry into his heart. Love is
-our noblest human power, and it is love that lets us feel such misery,
-it is love whose wealth of recognition and experience renders it
-possible for us to descry sorrow’s abysses, to anticipate them even in
-advance of the poor sufferer himself.
-
-Now, may love be good, and pity bad? What a problem is here! May we war
-a two-fold warfare, one against suffering and one against pity? Ought
-we? War upon pity—would not that be in contradiction to all that our own
-generation especially calls good and great? Our generation has done its
-best to develop in the human heart an ever-enlarging capacity for
-pity—what would it say to a warrior who pitilessly took up arms against
-pity?
-
-_Friedrich Nietzsche_ was such a warrior, single-handed and alone! And
-the venomous verbal onslaught upon Nietzsche by those who did not
-understand him was equalled only by those who did. At first Nietzsche’s
-own success consisted in supplying his opponents with new weapons
-against himself. Of all the words which have been used as bludgeons to
-break the head of this most resolute rebel against our previous moral
-view of life, Nietzsche’s piercing words concerning pity and the pitiful
-have most occupied the attention of his enemies. This may not deter us
-from looking unabashed the great question squarely in the face. In the
-end, is pity something to be overcome, a disease of the old culture?
-Does the path of the new culture lead men out and beyond and above pity?
-This is no longer a Nietzsche question merely. This is a question of the
-moral life of our time. Perhaps this is the last weightiest question
-which our time can put to men of dignity and depth of thought.
-
-However, it is only fair to say at the outset that no one has any right
-to fly into a rage at Nietzsche in particular for summoning men to arms
-against pity, since, if rage is in order at all, the conventional
-practices of our previous life furnished therefor occasion enough. Aye,
-there is an old wide-spread fashion of averting the strain of pity which
-is so mean and cool that almost anybody could fly into a frenzy over
-it—the fashion, not of triumphing over pity, but of cowardly flight from
-pity. Consider the whole conception of life of the so-called favorites
-of fortune. To what lengths do they go that they may be spared the sight
-of misfortune, that they may not be agitated by a touch of pity! How
-they avoid, if at all possible, every place that would remind them that
-there are want and misery, hunger and sorrow, in the world—as the
-Parisians did, until Zola, the most calumniated author of the nineteenth
-century, dragged these things, with their ensuing vices, out into the
-light of day and made the French people look at them! How furious they
-are, as the French were at great Zola, at anybody who dares to open
-their eyes to the sad and harrowing realities of life! Nay, they have
-invented a special art and religion that shall succeed in sparing them
-pity; the former to conjure up a make-believe world in which life shall
-be all sunshine and gladness; the latter to advocate the doctrine that
-all pain is punishment from God, and that, since God must be just, He
-will properly parcel out and administer pain and suffering. We do not
-need to bestir ourselves in behalf of sufferers; that would be a wrong
-against God; a doubt of the Everlasting Justice; hence all may not feel
-pity for the wicked man upon whom God visits His wrath and punishment!
-Thus the “good people” and the just harden their hearts. They have
-stones which they heave at the poor sinner—especially at a “sinful
-woman”—but no mercy, no pity, for those who are not as they are, and do
-not think and feel and act as they do. They grow chesty: “Yes, if others
-were as good as we are, then it would be as well with them as it is with
-us!” With such pride they choke all feeling of kinship and connection
-with others. Where pride grows, no pity can thrive. And at last pity
-itself becomes a kind of pride, a sorry self-reflection as in a mirror.
-The most subtle and dangerous way for men to free themselves from the
-pain of pity, when they cannot stave it off completely, is to make it a
-thing of pride and praise: “I thank Thee, God, that I am not like the
-hard-hearted!” Then they revel and riot in their pity, then they rejoice
-that they are so good-hearted, so tender-hearted, because they can see
-no suffering without being touched and melted to tears. And the pitiful
-call this their morality and their virtue. They make a “delicacy” of
-their pity to set before themselves at the table of life when all of
-life’s other gratifications and indulgences begin to grow stale and
-tasteless. The tears of emotion that gush generously forth at the
-spectacle of suffering humanity—even of frail and faulty humanity—taste
-so good! Many is the time they have felt the weary weight of this
-unintelligible world on listening to a sad story or seeing a play, and
-screwed up melancholy and doleful countenances—maybe pity can be put
-among the things that can make life, always requiring to be braced up a
-bit, a trifle more interesting. And so pity is at last honored with a
-place among the articles of luxury with which they enrich and adorn
-their lives—their lives, always surprising them with some fresh sign of
-poverty and patches!
-
-But if all guilt be revenged upon earth, punishment of this misuse of
-pity may not be stayed. It is doubly punished and revenged—upon him who
-practices it and upon him upon whom it is practiced. Or do we not know
-that the pharisees of pity become ever more feeble and sentimental men,
-losing all power and energy of will through pure emotionality? Or do we
-not know that most crafty business speculation, speculation in pity, in
-which sufferers magnify their least pains, expert in making an
-impression with their “cases” in order to arouse the interest of the
-pitiful, an interest which need not always be relieved by the clink of
-coin, but which makes ready its punishment much more frequently with
-idle hours spent in dreaming and weeping, with the unprofitable
-breathing-out of pathos and reproach? Often enough the enthusiasts of
-the kind and tender heart do not know what they do, but they rob men of
-the marrow of life, they emasculate and coddle the soul; and the
-emotional debauchery in which they live, requires ever stronger stimulus
-which ever operates more enervatingly still.
-
-Contemplating these devastations wrought everywhere in life by love’s
-softness, one begins to cherish some respect for a Nietzsche who
-preached to men “a hard bed,” love’s hardness. To be sure, if one is to
-understand this preaching, one must keep in mind what the preacher says:
-“My brethren, give heed unto each hour, in which your spirit wisheth to
-speak in parables: there is the origin of your virtue.” Nietzsche speaks
-in parables. For instance, his words on war and warriors—a good war
-hallowing every cause—these, too, are parables. And hardness, bravery,
-praised by him as the strength and consecration of life, truly this is
-not the barbarity of prize-fighting or the brutality of lynching; this
-is the high mind fearlessly going its own way, stampeded by no danger
-into thinking and acting and being other than what it holds to be right.
-Danger is but the acid test which such a mind applies to the ingredients
-of its life. To such a mind, hardness is the characteristic of the gem,
-of the diamond, which thus guarantees its genuineness, its sparkling
-worth. Zarathustra-Nietzsche loves everything which steels the will and
-augments life’s force. Therefore he loves his foe, for, thanks to his
-foe, he never comes to a standstill and stagnates. Therefore his true
-friend is the one who has become his best foe, who makes him sweat, who
-summons him to risk hot war with him, to break a lance with him in an
-intellectual passage at arms in which the soul struggles for its own yea
-and nay. So, similarly, this Zarathustra-Nietzsche hates pity. Why? Not
-because he is a brute. “Kind unto the sick is Zarathustra.... Would that
-they were convalescent and conquering and creating a higher body for
-themselves!” Not because, as we have seen, so much of pity is for self’s
-sake and not for the sake of service, though this is an essential part
-of the answer. Then why? Because it works an embarrassment for man,
-because it knows no shame, no reverence, in the presence of the giant
-forces which, for every brave soul, is concealed in great and deep pain.
-Therefore he combats pity because it is a passion and not an action, and
-yet life is not for passionists but for pragmatists. “All great love is
-lifted above all its pity, for it seeketh to create what it loveth....
-But all creators are hard.” “If thou hast a suffering friend, be a couch
-for his suffering, but a hard bed, as it were, a field-bed; thus thou
-wilt be of most use for him.”
-
-Hearken ye, O Reader, to another Transvaluer of values Whose Person
-Nietzsche “the Crucified,” excoriated at ill-starred moments, but did so
-on the basis of that very “high mind” for which He, rejecting pity, went
-to His Crucifixion! “And Jesus, Pilate handed over to their will. As
-they led him off he was followed by a large multitude of the people and
-also of women who beat their breasts and lamented him; but Jesus turned
-to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me!’”
-
-Now, as it seems to me, this Nietzsche preaching is not so far removed
-from that other preaching which we are otherwise wont to call a gospel,
-a good, a glad message! For this glad message was not a lamentation, but
-a hymn of heroism and of victory, a call to creation! And I take the
-liberty to repeat that the Preacher of this glad message forbade pity
-for himself even in his dark and desolate hour—do you think what that
-hour was?—when he appealed to weak and wailing and weeping womanly
-souls, Weep not for me, weep for yourselves! And He Who Himself wills no
-pity, Who bears in Himself a greatness which is elevated above all pity,
-would he have willed to have men so weak and pitiful as we often enough
-today imagine the Ideal of a Christ-man to be?
-
-What, now, if the true pitiful love, the true mercy to men, were to
-_harden_ them, to make them free from what meant only suffering to them?
-It is, to be sure, very much more difficult to make men themselves
-“hard,” so that the burden lying on their backs can not crush them than
-it is to indulge their weakness and sensitiveness and to leave them as
-they are. Indulgent parental hearts would a thousand times rather remove
-all life’s burdens from their children than to place burdens upon their
-children which they might learn to bear. So often our pity plays us a
-sorry trick—we would rather do something for men than to repress our
-pity, silence it, and then teach men how they themselves can do what is
-good and necessary for them. We speak of a ministrant love, meaning a
-love which knows nothing higher than to provide comforts, avert trials,
-spare vexations, and everything which could shake a man to his
-foundations. How much greater a service of love it would be to lead man
-to himself, make him strong that he might be equal to what we had
-thought we must take away from him! Pray, not for easier tasks, lighter
-burdens, but for more power! This Nietzschean love is not only a greater
-love, it also requires a greater, more tiresome work, it requires a
-constant conquest of our pitying weakness, it requires a courageous
-faith in man and a firm earnest appraisal of his power. And how entirely
-different a service of friendship do we render a friend if we show a
-hard love to him, if he break a tooth on us, as Nietzsche says, because
-we do not flatter and fit him, but compel him, out of love compel him,
-to assert himself against us, and to withstand our defense of our rights
-against him! Foolish men seek their friends among the _Jasagern_, most
-preferably, among those who are of their own opinion in everything. They
-then call this an ideal friendship: two souls and one thought, two
-hearts and one beat! But in such a friendship, their best, their own
-soul, their sense of truth, and their courage for the truth, soon rusts.
-To spare a friend the disillusion which he would suffer if he felt an
-antagonism, an opposition, in the friendship, they have pity on him,
-they learn to keep silent, and silence soon becomes a lie. Since they
-dare not cause the friend the grief of discovering to him these lies,
-they lie more, lie life-long,—all out of pity, out of their weak tender
-love. How much nobler and greater that friendship whose ideal Nietzsche
-sketches for us, in which we are gripped from the outset in a friend’s
-contradiction and hostility! We seek and love in him precisely what is
-not attuned to us, but is his own, and must forever remain his very own.
-Such hard love which gives the friend a “camp-bed” and not one as “soft
-as downy pillows are” and requires the like in return is the proudest
-manliest friendship, is alone what brings our sluggish and pampered
-natures forward, and makes us stronger, freer, richer in understanding
-and experience. Every genuine love should be a spur, freedom, to us, not
-an easy berth and a trammel in life.
-
-We cannot, we ought not, refrain from pity in life. We cannot, we ought
-not, stave it artificially from us. Pity belongs to man as man. It comes
-stealing upon him, and ought so to come. But when it has come, he ought
-not to be enmeshed in it. Still less ought he to let it grow rank. He
-should ennoble it, overcome it, with strong will and energetic deed. For
-pity is yet _suffering_ and all suffering summons men to conflict, to
-defense. The sign that such overcoming has succeeded is that
-_rejoicing-together_ has been born of _suffering-together_—is that the
-conflict has issued in a victory in which hard militant love triumphs
-over every weakness, and is grateful to the hardness which has given it
-such a victory!
-
-In his brilliant book on Nietzsche, “Who Is to Be Master of the World,”
-Ludovici writes powerfully as follows: “What the units of a herd most
-earnestly seek and find, is smug ease, not necessarily mastership. For
-mastership entails responsibility, insight, nerve, courage and
-_hardness_ towards one’s self, that control of one’s self which all good
-commanders must have, and which is the very antithesis of the gregarious
-man’s attitude towards himself.... Hardness?—He knows nothing of the
-hardness that can command his heart, his mouth, before it attends to the
-command of others; he knows nothing of the hardness that can dispel the
-doubts of a whole continent, that can lead the rabble and the ruck to
-deeds of anomalous nobility, or that can impose silence upon the
-overweening importunities of an assembled nation. He knows _this_
-hardness, that he could coldly watch the enemy of his private and
-insignificant little interests, burnt at the stake; he knows _this_
-hardness, that he would let a great national plan miscarry for the sake
-of a mess of pottage;—the gregarious man and future socialist has this
-so-called hardness; but so have all those who burn with resentment,—so
-have all parasites and silent worm-gnawers at the frame-work of great
-architecture.”
-
-But not Nietzsche’s interpreter, but Nietzsche himself, shall have the
-last word: “Praises are what maketh hard!—I do not praise the land where
-butter and honey—flow! To learn to look away from one’s self is
-necessary in order to see many things: this hardener is needed by every
-mountain climber.”
-
-_Also Sprach Aristoteles—Zarathustra!_
-
-
-
-
- George Middleton’s One-Act Plays
-
-
- CLAYTON HAMILTON
-
-The one-act play is an art-form that is worthy of careful cultivation.
-It shows the same relation to the full-length drama as the short-story
-shows to the novel. It makes a virtue of economy of means. It aims to
-produce a single dramatic effect with the greatest economy of means that
-is consistent with the utmost emphasis. A one-act play, in exhibiting
-the present, should imply the past and intimate the future. The author
-has no leisure for laborious exposition; but his mere projection of a
-single situation should sum up in itself the accumulated results of many
-antecedent causes. The one-act play, at its best, can no more serve as a
-single act of a longer drama than the short-story can serve as a single
-chapter of a novel. The form is complete, concise, and self-sustaining;
-and it requires an extraordinary focus of imagination.
-
-No other American dramatist has so carefully cultivated this special
-type of drama as George Middleton. His recently-published volume of
-one-act plays, entitled _Possession_, was preceded by two other volumes,
-called _Embers_ and _Tradition_. Each of these books contains half a
-dozen plays. From the fact that Mr. Middleton has chosen to publish
-these eighteen one-act plays in advance of their production, it is not
-to be inferred that he is a believer in the closet-drama. A closet-drama
-may be defined as a play that, being unfit for production in the
-theatre, is fit only to be locked up in a closet. Mr. Middleton is not a
-literary amateur, but a professional and practical playwright. He has
-produced more than half a dozen full-length plays in the commercial
-theatre; and such artists as Julia Marlowe, Margaret Anglin, George
-Fawcett, and the late E. M. Holland have appeared in dramas of his
-composition. All of Mr. Middleton’s one-act plays are written for the
-stage; and—to quote from his own preface to _Possession_—he conceives
-“the value of play publication not as a substitute for production but as
-an alternative for those whose dramas may offer little attraction to the
-manager because of theme or treatment.”
-
-At present there is, unfortunately, scarcely any market in the American
-theatre for one-act plays that take life seriously. It is against our
-custom to provide a full-length drama with a curtain-raiser or an
-after-piece; and the field for one-act plays in vaudeville is restricted
-to slap-stick comedies and yelling melodramas. It is for this reason
-that Mr. Middleton has been required to choose publication as an
-alternative for production, in the case of these diminutive dramas. The
-trouble is not at all that his pieces are unsuited to the stage: they
-are admirable in technique, and—like all good plays—they would be more
-interesting in the theatre than in the library. The trouble is only
-that—for wholly artificial and accidental reasons—the commercial theatre
-in America at present is inhospitable to the one-act play.
-
-Mr. Middleton’s one-act plays reveal a wide range of subject-matter and
-a corresponding versatility of treatment. No one of them is similar to
-any of the others. Yet, pervading this variety of subject and of mood,
-there is discernible an underlying unity. Each of them deals essentially
-with woman—and with modern woman in relation to our modern social
-system. Woman is, at present, a transitional creature, evolving from the
-thing that man considered her to be in the far-away period of wax
-flowers and horse-hair furniture to the being that she considers herself
-about to become in the unachieved, potential future; and Mr. Middleton
-has caught her in this period of transition, and has depicted her, under
-many different lights, colored with her virtues and discolored with her
-faults.
-
-Many of the most poignant and dramatic problems of present-day society
-arise from the fact that the evolution of woman is proceeding more
-rapidly than the evolution of her environment. While individuals
-advance, traditions linger. Mr. Middleton’s favorite subject seems to be
-a conflict between an advanced woman and a lingering tradition. The
-author is himself a radical, and his sympathy is forever on the side of
-the revolutionary individual; but his technical treatment is so fair to
-both sides of the contention that it remains possible for conservative
-readers to rank themselves against the individual on the side of the
-lingering tradition. Scarcely any of Mr. Middleton’s women would be
-pleasant to have around the house. Since most of them are discontented
-with the conditions of their lives, they naturally make the worst of
-these conditions instead of making the best of them. Hell hath no fury
-like a woman in revolt; and many readers may dislike Mr. Middleton’s
-heroines more heartily than he seems to like them himself. But to be
-able to dislike a character is a proof that that character is real, and
-must be considered as a tribute to the author’s art. The heroine of _The
-Unborn_, in Mr. Middleton’s latest volume, refuses to have children
-because motherhood might interfere with “her work,”—the work, in this
-case, being merely a habit of attending to minor matters in her
-husband’s photographic studio; but the intensity of impatience with
-which the reader listens to her twaddle is an indication that this
-character is really representative of a silly type of creature that is
-not infrequently encountered in actual life. Again, in the play called
-_Possession_, a woman who has been divorced for adultery attempts to
-kidnap her little daughter from the house of her former husband, to
-whose custody the child had, of course, been awarded by the courts. Her
-adultery was inexcusable, because it had been occasioned not by an
-irresistible and overwhelming love but merely by a superfluity of
-leisure; and her attempt to kidnap the child was treacherous and
-ignominious. She excuses herself, however, by telling her husband that
-the process of child-birth had been painful, and that, therefore,
-despite the judgment of the courts, their little daughter belonged more
-to her than to him. The reader is, of course, annoyed by all this
-nonsense; but this annoyance, once again, must be regarded as a tribute
-to the reality of the author’s characterization. No heroine who was not
-a living human being could make the auditor so ardently desire to climb
-upon the stage and talk back to her.
-
-Fortunately, it is not at all necessary to like Mr. Middleton’s women in
-order to like his plays. One may admire Ibsen’s _Hedda Gabler_ without
-wishing to be married to the heroine; and the pleasant thing about Mr.
-Middleton’s women is that, while the reader is permitted to observe and
-study them, he is also allowed to realize with hearty thankfulness that
-he will never have to live with any of them. The world in which his
-women move is a world of discontent. This discontent is truly
-representative of the present transitional period in the evolution of
-society; but it is not representative of that perennial reality of life
-that remains oblivious of periods and dates. At all times, the really
-womanly woman has been a lover of her life and has not found it
-difficult to feel at home at home.
-
-
-
-
- New York Letter
-
-
- GEORGE SOULE
-
-It would be difficult to imagine a more fantastic occasion than a debate
-in New York on the justice of the cause of the Allies vs. that of
-Germany between Cecil Chesterton and George Sylvester Viereck. The gods
-permitted it to happen last week, much to the chagrin of the Allies, for
-the hyphenated Germans took good care to fill the hall and hiss every
-offensive statement. Mr. Chesterton, an honest fighter and a clever
-polemicist, who has leapt through every phase of radicalism into the
-enfolding charity of the Catholic Church, deserves to be known for his
-journalistic achievements and his exposure of graft in high places
-almost as much as for his brother Gilbert. Mr. Viereck, a sublime
-egotist, has come into sudden favor with his countrymen by editing _Das
-Vaterland_, although before that he had taken every known means to
-secure notoriety for a naturally obscure individual. He began as a poet
-of strange verse, both in German and English. When it became apparent
-that it wasn’t going to sell, he issued a last volume which he called
-his “swan song,” with the announcement that as this commercial age was
-unappreciative of his poetry he would write no more, and anyone who
-wanted a last chance to value him at it must buy this book. For himself,
-he was going to get in line with the genius of the century and become a
-Big Business Man, for he must make himself felt. He announced in a
-stentorian wail his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt, and was much
-chagrined when that celebrity would not let him trail along on the
-skirts of his ample publicity. Later on, when Alfred Noyes began to sell
-in large quantities, Mr. Viereck resumed his dictatorship of poetry, and
-by scurrilous attacks attempted to draw Mr. Noyes’s fire—and newspaper
-space. Now German Patriotism has lifted him to the headlines.
-
-If Poetic Justice was present at the debate, she probably did not
-receive much enlightenment on the questions which are now vexing her in
-Europe. To quote any of the substance of the debate would be an insult
-to her intelligence.
-
-A more serious event was Richard Bennet’s recent production of Brieux’s
-_Maternity_. Considering the deadly earnestness with which author and
-cast struggled to inculcate lessons, the apathy of the public in respect
-to moral instruction was pathetic. On the night of my visit there was
-exactly one normal “theatre-goer” in the house. There was a sprinkling
-of people who had long admitted what Brieux has to say, and went from
-“high-brow” reasons. There was a young society matron who had escaped
-from her husband for the evening and is taking an amateurish interest in
-social questions. There were numerous persons who are always on the
-lookout for a chance to cackle at what they consider broad humor. These
-blonde ladies furnished an interesting refutation of one of Brieux’s
-theories. In one scene various women tell their troubles, emphasizing
-the fact that all women are united in their sorrows and understand them,
-whereas men do not. Immediately after this the drunken husband returns
-and disgusts and outrages the wife. There were many laughs in the
-audience to greet him—but not one from a man. Even the blonde ladies’
-fat escorts tried to quiet them while the rest of us were hissing.
-
-Granville Barker opens this week with _Androcles and the Lion_ and some
-of the other recent London productions. A number of the backers of the
-old “New Theatre” are guaranteeing his expenses, a fact which is a
-historical corroboration for Mr. Barker’s wit. When he was brought over
-as the chosen manager for that institution, he objected to the immense
-size of the house. “But the alterations you suggest would cost us a
-million dollars,” he was told. “If you don’t make them, it will cost you
-three million,” he replied, and sailed back to London. His popularity
-with the New Theatre guarantors has been steadily increasing from that
-day to this.
-
-There is even a rumor that if the present experiment succeeds, the New
-Theatre project will be resumed. This whisper aroused an answering howl
-from the American managers and actors. Why should good American money be
-spent in encouraging English talent, especially in such a disastrous
-season? they wailed. The answer was, in effect, the one that should be
-made to the whole “made in America” propaganda. What has American
-production done that it should be encouraged? When “made in America”
-comes to have any relation to honesty and intelligence, it will be time
-enough to invoke “patriotism” in its favor. In the meantime, the more
-disastrous foreign competition can be to our present shoddy products,
-the better.
-
-This ironic year has produced few more strange reversals than the one
-which has brought Mr. McClure to the status of an employee of Mr.
-Munsey. When a man has apparently won his life campaign and written so
-engagingly of it as has Mr. McClure in his Autobiography, we begin to
-regard him as beyond the touch of the fates. Perhaps the present
-eventuality should be taken, however, merely as another proof that in
-our present arrangement of things it is less profitable to have a touch
-of genius than to become the owner of trust companies. At any rate
-_McClure’s Magazine_ has apparently not profited much in recent years by
-Mr. McClure’s separation from its editorial policy.
-
-There is one real consolation in a season which has brought such
-material devastation to commercial managers and magazines. When
-conventionally-planned “successes” don’t succeed, success comes to have
-less meaning. People who are after money in the promotion of artistic
-products are in their desperation more ready to try less “safe” ways of
-getting it, while the others have a decidedly better chance of gaining a
-respectful public attention.
-
-
-
-
- Music
-
-
- KREISLER AND SHATTUCK
-
-In certain realms, words are opaque and stupid things. In others—oh,
-comforting thought!—they seem to become transparent and almost
-intelligent. Following this out consistently, it becomes easy to write a
-page about Arthur Shattuck, pianist, and very difficult to say anything
-at all about Fritz Kreisler, violinist.
-
-Arthur Shattuck was a disappointment. His faults, in a lesser man, would
-have been considered the sign of mere mediocrity; but in himself, they
-are obtrusive and disagreeable. An exasperating contrast existed between
-what may be called his style, with its rhythmic sureness and its
-admirable perspectives, and his great lack of tonal beauty. He cracks
-out hard tones. Any particular phrase of Mr. Boyle’s concerto for piano
-with orchestra, when passed on from the orchestra to the solo
-instrument, lost its lyric curve and became flat and lifeless under Mr.
-Shattuck’s long, aggressive hands. When another pianist, Ernest
-Hutcheson, played the same work with the composer conducting the New
-York Philharmonic, a certain phenomenon was lacking which appeared when
-Frederick Stock conducted the work with the Chicago Symphony. This
-phenomenon (let it be whispered) was a strange prominence of the brass
-choir of the orchestra in certain portions of the work which led one to
-believe that Mr. Stock was, perhaps, more interested in the orchestral
-accompaniment than in the performance of the soloist. If this were as
-true as it appeared, it is on a par with another startling fact:—that
-the public is really learning something about tone-values and the
-possible beauties of piano music. What else could account for the
-numerous confessions caught in snatches in the corridors and stairways,
-the composite of which was, “He left me cold”?... Arthur Shattuck is a
-millionaire.
-
-A compassionate attitude toward Chicago was considerably relieved by the
-sight of the Auditorium-full which paid to hear Kreisler. Think of so
-many people being moved by such good taste! And, what was better still,
-they all behaved well. Kreisler deserved their tribute of attentive
-silence. Such violin playing hasn’t been heard in Chicago since the same
-artist was here last season. There is no describing Kreisler’s tone; a
-magic circle of stillness encloses it, which words have not learned to
-cross. In the memory it is a living beauty, penetrant and bewitching.
-Praise and appreciation are miserable things in the presence of this
-man’s music. Fritz Kreisler is a genius.
-
- HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
-
-
-
-
- Book Discussion
-
-
- Ellen Key’s Steady Vision
-
- _The Younger Generation, by Ellen Key._ [_G. P. Putnam’s, New
- York._]
-
-In the present amusing reign of boisterous propagandic voices, it is
-good to find a thinker who describes the exciting truth in simple terms.
-The many are able to catch glimpses of the truth; between glimpses, they
-shout and wave their inefficient arms for the enlightenment of their
-brothers, and for their own joy. The few see the truth steadily and,
-because they see steadily, become so passionately enthusiastic that they
-are driven to express themselves in quiet, mighty phrases. Such phrases
-imprint vital ideas upon the mind of the seeker, while pitiable
-confusion alone results from the shouts and wavings. In _The Younger
-Generation_, Ellen Key tells simply and surely her conclusions about
-vital things.
-
-Conservative judgment is at once a splendid balance and a terrific
-barrier in the world of ideas. Intense enthusiasm, when it displays
-itself, often combines blindness with sight. It has always seemed to be
-asking too much to expect in one person a finely balanced enthusiasm in
-which the conservative element does not hamper the divine qualities of
-youth—courage, impetuosity, and an ever-fresh perception. Not to be
-extravagant, but to characterize her fairly, one may say that this
-Swedish woman writes as if she possessed the virtues commonly attributed
-to both age and youth. She is vigorous, free-hearted, and
-calm—enthusiastic, fiery, and sane—a champion of revolution when and
-wherever it breaks the path for evolution.
-
-Reaching deftly into anarchism, christianity, feminism, individualism,
-socialism, and other good glimpses of the truth, she secures the
-elements for a strangely consistent wisdom.
-
- Parents of the new generation will feel it to be a blasphemy
- against life—another name for God—that the beings their love has
- called into existence, the beings who bear the heritage of all
- past generations and the potentialities of all those to come,
- should be prematurely torn from the chain of development. Every
- such link that is wrenched away from unborn experiences, from
- unfinished work, was a beginning which might have had the most
- far-reaching effects within the race.... It is not death that the
- men of the new age are afraid of, but only premature and
- meaningless death.
-
-“Women ought not to be content until governments have been deprived of
-the power of plunging nations into war.”—Ellen Key doesn’t ask the
-ladies to fidget and whimper at afternoon teas, nor to operate upon
-male-kind with their verbal lancets, nor to adopt circuitous resolutions
-about affairs of which they know nothing; but her suggestion, here as
-elsewhere, is simple and practical—so very simple that the ladies will
-smile down upon it as something delightfully girlish and
-unsophisticated. It is safe to speculate that not one of the smilers
-could, in her comfortable condescension, live up to this humble and
-powerful procedure:—“Women can always and everywhere ennoble the
-feelings, refine an idea of justice, and sharpen the judgment of those
-who come under their influence. The indirect result of this influence
-will then be that war will become more and more insufferable to the
-feelings, repugnant to the sense of justice, and absurd to the
-intelligence. When thus the eyes of the best among the nation are opened
-to the true nature of war, they will be finally opened also to the way
-to real, not armed, peace.” And as it is the secret and boasted and
-forgotten desire of every woman to influence a man, or men, these
-profoundly plain suggestions would seem to be sown in a fertile field.
-There is hope in this. Then she says, on another page: “To win over
-men’s brains to the idea of solidarity, that is the surest way of
-working for peace.” And this, being a more complex remark, will probably
-upset everything gained by the clarity of the preceding quotations; but
-it is given here to repay the time otherwise wasted by the many for whom
-simplicity has lost its god-like charm. Solidarity is a great idea,
-partly because it is something to be shouted about. But the first
-element in solidarity, human kindness, has never seemed “strong” to a
-shouting age.
-
-One of the firm demands which Ellen Key makes in her future “Charter for
-Children” is “the right of all children to disinheritance; in other
-words, their being placed in the beneficent necessity of making full use
-of their completely developed powers.” After reminding us of the
-strenuous manners of a past age in which the children of any conquered
-city were dashed hideously against the walls, she claims that “the
-judgment upon our time will be more severe. For the people of antiquity
-knew not what they did, when they caused the blood of children to flow
-like water. But our age allows millions of children to be worn out,
-starved, maltreated, neglected, to be tortured in school, and to become
-degenerate and criminal; and yet it knows the consequences, to the race
-and to the community, that all this involves. And why? Because we are
-not yet willing to reckon in life-values instead of in gold-values.”
-
-What a frantic rage must there be in the souls of the truly
-social-minded when this terrific indictment is pronounced in their
-hearing! But the appalling nightmare will go on until the frantic
-element is overcome, and the rage is focused to a point of white heat—an
-intense simplicity.
-
- HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
-
-
- Two Conrad Reviews
-
- _Joseph Conrad: A Study, Richard Curle._ [_Doubleday, Page and
- Company, New York._]
-
-“The business of criticism,” says Mr. Curle, “is to surmount this
-_impasse_ between conviction and the power to convince.” Judged by this
-test, his study of Joseph Conrad is undoubtedly successful: it is hard
-indeed to imagine any reader reaching the end of it without believing
-that Conrad is a very great writer. A careful reading of the numerous
-and often lengthy quotations from Conrad’s books should alone convince
-the persons Mr. Curle is most anxious to convert—those who know nothing
-about them.
-
-But _Joseph Conrad_ has two obvious faults. In the first place, Mr.
-Curle is quite too modest—almost haltingly so. His pages abound in such
-phrases as “I dare say”, “I cannot help”, “I think”, and the like.
-That’s all very honest, but Americans prefer the more lordly manner. One
-feels really, that while the critic may speak in such fashion to
-himself, he should give us only his conclusions—and no apologies for
-them to boot. In the second place, Mr. Curle seems to think that he is
-very brave in putting forth this book, that the critics haven’t
-appreciated Conrad at all, and that since _he_ does there must be a real
-quarrel between him and them. Now as a matter of fact this is not so.
-Probably no living writer has had a fraction of the hearty recognition
-from the best critics that Conrad has. True, he has (until six months
-ago) woefully lacked anything like popularity and the material rewards
-it brings—but very few of those whose opinion carries weight will
-hesitate to agree with most of the fine things that Mr. Curle says about
-the author of _Chance_. Mr. Curle’s attitude simply arouses unfriendly
-antagonism on the part of his readers who know and love their Conrad.
-
-So much for its faults. They are not of serious importance and should
-not obscure the really splendid qualities of Mr. Curle’s book. It
-abounds in acutely perceptive remarks—often extremely well put. In the
-course of seven chapters on Conrad’s Psychology, Men, Women, Irony and
-Sardonic Humour, Prose and the Artist, he piles up an overwhelming
-evidence of the man’s greatness. Is there a man alive, has any English
-novelist ever lived about whom one could wax so easily, so madly
-enthusiastic? True, to some Conrad does not appeal. They have never
-caught the glorious glamour of his pages—the solemn grandeur of his
-magnificent prose. Probably the surest way to win converts would be to
-compile a small book of extracts from his works, carefully graded
-according to their difficulty.
-
-When I was still at college I was curious about Conrad. A well-meaning
-bookseller sold me _Lord Jim_. I tried to read it, but fifty pages was
-as far as I could go. I tried again, but with even less success. Then
-one day at Interlaken I found a Tauchnitz copy of _A Set of Six_. Before
-I had quite finished the last story I lost the book—changing trains. But
-Conrad has never since seemed obscure to me. A beginner in French would
-never try to appreciate the shimmering pages of Flaubert; nor would even
-the Yankee farm-hand feed his baby pie. More than any living writer has
-Conrad needed some one to _present_ him to the public. This his American
-publishers have tried of late to do. Mr. Curle’s book will add to their
-success in so far as they manage to persuade people to read it. Except
-for those who have begun with _Lord Jim_, _Nostromo_, or _Chance_, I
-have never found anyone, who, having read one book by Conrad, was
-content to stop there. Mr. Curle thinks _Nostromo_ Conrad’s greatest
-work. It is now, with Europe in the throes of a bloody conflict, that
-one realizes more and more how Conrad’s men and women, far removed from
-the problems of a Wells, a Chesterton, or a Shaw—problems which _appear_
-suddenly to be of very little importance after all—bulk great and ever
-greater. There they loom—like Rodin’s _Balzac_ against the glowering
-sky.
-
- ALFRED KNOPF.
-
- _A Set of Six, by Joseph Conrad._ [_Doubleday, Page and Company,
- New York._]
-
-In this first American edition of his _Set of Six_, Conrad is revealed
-as an artist _par excellence_. You find no subjective emotionalism on
-the part of the author in any of his six tales, in spite of their
-subtitles—_Romantic_, _Indignant_, _Pathetic_, and the like. You see in
-him the wistful observer of characters and situations, which he presents
-with impassionate objectivity, with the impartiality of a painter who
-lovingly draws his object, whether it is ugly or beautiful, whether it
-is a villain or a saint. Conrad possesses a wonderful skill in setting
-up a background, which, at times, appears of more importance than the
-plot. He makes you feel equally at home in the atmosphere of Napoleonic
-France and of France of the Restoration, of revolutionary Peru and of a
-Neapolitan amusement garden. You enjoy the tales greatly, you admire the
-clever craftsmanship of the story-teller, but you close the book with an
-empty feeling, as if you had listened to brilliant anecdotes in a
-bachelors’ club.
-
- K.
-
-
- Amy Lowell’s Poetry
-
- _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, by Amy Lowell._ [_The Macmillan
- Company, New York._]
-
-In one of his letters, Byron says: “To withdraw myself from myself has
-ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.”
-Such a confession seems strange coming from a poet, and it is a
-confession of quite a different character which is written on every page
-of Miss Lowell’s book of poems. There one finds in every line the
-expression of a personality which tries to realize itself and succeeds
-in doing so. The unity as well as the interest of the book is in this
-very development of a strong personality, of which a new and original
-aspect is revealed in every poem.
-
-What charms us at once in this personality, and renders the reading of
-the book a constant enchantment, is a most wonderful imagination—an
-imagination at the same time creative and representative, rich, varied,
-overflowing with images and themes. All that life and nature offer is
-the domain of this imagination; it wakes up at the most unexpected
-moment and seizes the unseen detail, giving us an idea of the wonderful
-wanderings through which it must take the person fortunate enough to
-possess it. Now it is a temple; now a church; now a beggar; a blue
-scarf; the distant notes of a flute; or the nocturnal noises of a London
-street, which starts it on its way. At other times we find the
-imagination at play with itself, so to speak, creating out of nothing a
-historical or legendary atmosphere, or opening a philosophical vista, as
-in _The Great Adventure of Max Breuck_, _The Basket_, or the poem from
-which the book takes its name. Each one of these poems (and several
-others also) has its own special atmosphere, precise in its complexity
-and different from all the others.
-
-In the style itself, in the development of the subjects, one finds the
-same quality. It seems as if the pen were too slow to note the multiple
-images which offer themselves to the mind of the poet. They accumulate
-themselves, sometimes, in a manner not unlike that of Victor Hugo,
-forming long periods in which the idea is turned in all possible ways,
-presented from all angles and in every natural or artificial light.
-
-It is not only the richness of the images, but their quality, which
-reveals the power of Miss Lowell’s imagination. We all experience at
-every minute of our lives an infinity of sensations of which we are more
-or less conscious. It might almost be said that we are poets in exactly
-the measure that we realize and enjoy our sensations. The real poet not
-only registers his sensations, but is able to awaken in the mind of his
-readers the sudden recollection of those visual or auditive impressions
-which have never before reached his consciousness. This is what often
-delights us in _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_. It gratifies us to feel
-that we are able to understand these subtle comparisons, these curious
-and unexpected alliances of words, such as those in the first poem of
-the book, where, to define certain shades of porcelains the poet speaks
-
- Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen
- Their colours are felt, but never seen.
-
-Also in the first poem entitled _Miscast_, where she speaks of her mind
-as
-
- So keen, that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by,
- So sharp, that the air would turn its edge
- Were it to be twisted in flight.
-
-To help her imagination, Miss Lowell possesses a faculty which belongs
-only to the happy few: the gift of words. The astonishing description of
-arms and vases in the first poem is but one example, if one of the best,
-of this rare gift.
-
-It is necessary also, in order to study thoroughly this interesting and
-complex personality, to mention the great dramatic quality of some of
-the long poems in the book. From that point of view, _The Great
-Adventure of Max Breuck_ seems to me the most interesting. And there is
-much to be said of the sincerity and depth of sentiment in such poems as
-_A Gift_, _Stupidity_, _Patience_, _Absence_. All these short poems have
-something unique about them and constitute one of the greatest charms,
-and an important part of the value, of the book. It is almost incredible
-that a little poem like _Obligation_, for example, should contain such a
-world of thought and restrained sentiment in its ten short lines. I have
-chosen this poem as the type of this genre, because it characterizes
-perhaps better than any other this very special trait of Miss Lowell’s
-talent:
-
- Hold your apron wide
- That I may pour my gifts into it,
- So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them
- From falling to the ground.
-
- I would pour them upon you
- And cover you,
- For greatly do I feel this need
- Of giving you something,
- Even these poor things.
-
- Dearest of my heart.
-
-There is, in these few lines, a simplicity so naive, a sincerity so
-complete, and at the same time such an intensity of feeling, that we
-almost feel while reading it as if we were composing it ourselves. And
-everybody knows that this is the mark of genius. It is rare to attain
-such perfection in thought and in form as we find in these short poems,
-which stand on their stems, straight and pure, like wild flowers opening
-their hearts to the sun.
-
-I should like, in conclusion, to speak of the very new and effective
-attempts of the author in the free use of all possible rhythms. The
-preface presents the author’s point of view, but I may add that she has
-been especially skilful in the adaptation of the rhythms to the
-subjects, a thing which requires great poetic tact and musical sense. To
-study this side of the book would carry us too far, for to do it
-properly a long article written especially on the subject would be
-necessary.
-
-To those who love poetry, and who are at the same time interested in the
-progress of new schools, this book must be of the greatest value.
-
- MAGDELAINE CARRET.
-
-
- The Man and the Artist
-
- _Achievement, by E. Temple Thurston._ [_D. Appleton and Company,
- New York._]
-
-“Every man knows himself; but there are few women with all their
-experience of men who act as if they knew anything about them.” “For it
-is only in moments that men are dispassionate about women, while half
-their lives through women are being dispassionate about men.” Why is it
-that such glistening generalities prove invariably attractive to the
-“general reader”? Perhaps the poor maligned g. r. fancies he is getting
-“tips” on the values of his neighbors’ lives, or interminable “good
-leads” as to his own adventures. Perhaps the fatuous distinctions merely
-tickle the sex-vanity. Undoubtedly the same word-wisdom, offered in
-regard to mankind and without the alluring distinction between man and
-woman, would secure but half the attention. This attention seems no whit
-slackened if the generalities are manifestly unfair by reason of their
-fealty to traditionalism, as Mr. Thurston’s statements of this ilk are
-apt to be.
-
-The foregoing generality is not unfair to Mr. Thurston, since this
-attractive bait is offered without stint in his latest novel
-_Achievement_. In fact, the theme of the book is that ancient perennial
-among popular themes: the conflict between a man and his loves; in this
-case finding its redemption from the usual in that the protagonist is
-the man’s work rather than the man.
-
-Yet, in spite of these sops to Cerberus, the book does not hold. It is
-but another of the multiplying outputs of today which are interesting to
-the critic alone, and to him only as a study in the pathology of the
-creative instinct. The lay-reader will find himself nodding over the
-crucial scenes or will lose his place time and again, if he persist in
-reading to the end. If a sense of justice will not permit him to judge
-the whole by a part, his persistence is tribute only to the undeniable
-sincerity of aim felt throughout the work. A stronger tribute, of
-course, is the mere length of this review; the fact, that is, that
-whatever of critic be in the reading mind is drawn to reiterate
-questions and puzzle over their answer, as to the reason for the falling
-short of this novel from the better standards, manifestly striven after.
-
-The reader who does concern himself, then, with _Achievement_ will be
-puzzled, perhaps irritated, by the insistent question: “But what is the
-matter?” There is a certain mastery of words; there is honesty and
-sensitiveness of treatment, to a degree beyond the usual; moreover, side
-by side with the theme proper, is carried a sympathetic and reverent
-revelation of the mind of a creative artist, in this case, a painter; a
-study alone sufficient to redeem the work from the stigma of triteness.
-These qualities should carry any novel into favor at least; might be
-expected to overshadow the noticeable unevenness of work, astonishing in
-an author of E. Temple Thurston’s apprenticeship. But the book fails to
-convince. The only lasting impression it leaves is the question, “Why
-inadequate?”
-
-Perhaps the answer lies in the inadequacy of the theme itself. This may
-be voiced, in both its major and minor keys, through Mr. Thurston’s own
-words, “For as it is the tragedy of women when the romance of love is
-gone from them, so it is the tragedy of men, when their work is done.”
-Had the author juggled the words of that sentence a bit—had it read so:
-“The realization that the romance of love has gone out from one’s life
-is no more a tragedy than the instant when one knows that his work is
-done”; could the author have conceived this theme, the subject of
-achievement would have compelled a more worthy treatment. Had he been
-able to think of women and men as alike potent, whether creators or
-lovers, then his picture of the creator in Richard Furlong fertilized by
-the lover in him might have been adequate.
-
-The greatest need of today is a pronoun of the common gender. It is
-beginning to be recognized that the generation now growing up to face
-the ultimate issues of living is one which will declare that spiritual
-experience is basically an unsexed phenomenon. Woman of today has been
-heard to declare that whatever charge can be made about man’s
-potentialities, even his propensities, can be charged alike to the
-woman. This is no meaningless attitude. Neither is it naive nor
-amusingly unscientific, when the young girl of the future lifts her
-voice and sings out, “Before she is woman or he is a man, man and woman
-are alike persons.” In this theorem, difficult to word, lies the fertile
-germ of suffrage, feminism, suffragettism, militantism, and all the
-other lifted voices of woman.
-
-No one of the women of Mr. Thurston’s portrayal is of value to herself
-or to the lives about her, except as a woman, a slave or queen of man,
-his toy or his inspiration, life’s parasite. The author would answer
-that he is not attempting a study of woman, but of an artist achieving
-by means of woman. None the less, if all the women who influence his
-artist were drawn in as hunchbacks, we would resent the distorted
-picture, the hypothesis that woman is essentially hunchbacked. Thus,
-since all the women in _Achievement_ are traditionally paralyzed women,
-we resent the generic theme of art under influence of womanhood. In
-order to receive serious audience today, any portrayal of woman,
-indirectly or directly, must recognize that there are genuine women as
-there are men, who live in terms of selfhood rather than in terms of
-sex.
-
-The denouement is the usual stock company curtain. However, if so many
-pistol shots per volume is a stipulation in the novelist’s contract, it
-must be conceded him that his telling of the murder is admirably simple.
-A more admirable simplicity is attained in the trenchant description of
-the murderer’s psychology after the deed. The author is to be
-congratulated for missing that “opportunity” for analysis, of which the
-usual fiction writer spins chapter after chapter, morbid, a snare to
-catch cheap horror and pity, a spider-web for flies.
-
-That the scene of the last two pages should have been written once is
-regrettable. That these pages were not cut out hastily as soon as
-written is unforgivable in an author who desires so profoundly to be in
-sympathy with the artist who has achieved.
-
- R.
-
-
- Ethel Sidgwick’s Books
-
- [_Small, Maynard and Company, Boston._]
-
-I cannot let another issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW go to press without some
-mention of Ethel Sidgwick. Last year, with a sense of worship, I read
-_Succession_, the second volume of a trilogy devoted to the story of a
-boy-wonder violinist. To find such subtlety, such radiance, such art—to
-find such music!—in a piece of fiction was an unforgettable experience.
-Music has never been so richly treated in fiction—except in _Jean
-Christophe_, which of course is the master work of the last years. I
-felt that I had never comprehended any character so fully as I did
-little Antoine, and I still feel that way. This year on Christmas day,
-as a sort of special celebration, I read the first volume, _Promise_. It
-is just as interesting, though there is not such a brilliant
-concentration of art in it. But isn’t there some way to make these books
-known? They will never be popular; but it is tragic to think of their
-not getting to the people who would value them. Their publishers would
-far rather advertise their cheap fiction than to try to force Ethel
-Sidgwick on a nation that does not demand good work of novelists.
-
-
- Oxford and Genius
-
- _Sinister Street, by Compton Mackenzie._ [_D. Appleton and
- Company, New York._]
-
-E. Temple Thurston attracted attention here before Compton Mackenzie
-did, but the latter is as far ahead of him now as is Gilbert Canaan,
-whose _Peter Homunculus_ came out about the time of Thurston’s _City of
-Beautiful Nonsense_. These three young Englishmen know how to write
-English prose; Mackenzie and Canaan know how to tell big stories.
-_Sinister Street_ is much too important a book to be reviewed in less
-than three or four pages at least. The first part of it tells of the
-modern man at Oxford—“a more complete account of the mind of a young man
-of our day than has been written previously in English, an account which
-presents some of the things that Thackeray meant when he complained that
-his public would not permit him to tell all he wished about Pendennis,
-and a good many more besides,” as Lucien Cary has said. It is so
-extremely well done that the second part of the volume—the hero’s
-reactions to life after Oxford—comes with a sense of forced writing.
-Perhaps the war had something to do with it. We shall try to review this
-book more at length later.
-
-
- “Without Machiavellian Subtlety”
-
- _The War and Culture, by John Cowper Powys._ [_G. Arnold Shaw,
- New York._]
-
-Among all the patriotic rubbish that has been heaped upon the book
-market since the outbreak of the European war, Mr. Powys’s pamphlet
-presents at least not dull reading. The brilliant lecturer unmasques the
-underlying motives of German statesmen who have accepted Machiavellian
-principles, “without acquiring Machiavellian subtlety.” He successfully
-attacks Münsterberg and other apologists for the Fatherland, who
-endeavor to present their country in the image of an innocent lamb
-dragged into the bloody struggle by greedy barbarians. Mr. Powys’
-mission is a negative one, and there it ends. He falls flat as soon as
-he attempts to idealize and to glorify the Allies. His speculation that
-the present war is a struggle of ideas, of individualism versus state,
-of soul versus machine, is far fetched.
-
-
-
-
- The Reader Critic
-
-
- Mr. Powys on Dostoevsky
-
- (_A reader sends us these jottings from one of Mr. Powys’s
- lectures._)
-
-Shudders of life....
-
-I have only one thing to do—to bring you into a strange mass of palpable
-darkness with something moving in it. Dostoevsky is really a great mass,
-a volume, not a cloud nor a pillar of fire nor a puff of smoke, but a
-vast, formless, shapeless mass of darkness, palpable and drawing you
-towards itself.
-
-Reading him is dangerous because of the inherent sense of fear likely to
-be accentuated in those who are a little mad and whose madness takes on
-the form of fear. We go on a visit to a mad house, to hospitals with
-Dostoevsky. But with him this whole world suddenly changes into a mad
-house. It is all haunting mad houses and hospitals filled with us
-maniacs of the particular fear we are subject to.
-
-(Life is all a running away—a distraction. We are running away when we
-are talking, when we are making love—then more than ever, perhaps.)
-
-In Dostoevsky we suddenly realize that these Russians are ourselves. If
-the religion, mysticism, liberalism, despotism they possess were only
-Russian there are excellent books written by travellers in Russia for us
-to read. But Dostoevsky is different. If I could but mesmerize you....
-It is like reading the gospels in childhood, being overrun and
-overthrown by fate and then after one has lived meeting the words of the
-childhood situations and making associations.
-
-I do not think of him as an artist, though he is a great one. You do not
-_think_ of him.... In ordinary life we suppress half the things and more
-we might say. Vanity and fear are the ultimate things. In Dostoevsky the
-people tug and scrape at one anothers’ vain nerves with adder’s poison.
-He gives one the sensation of discovering one’s self and betraying one’s
-self. He reveals as friends talking and discussing in the small hours of
-the morning reveal themselves to one another. The talk may be a
-describing of the animal functions of the human body. But in reality it
-is the psychic tingling, electric vibrations which the physiological
-structure exerts upon mind! Mind! Mind! Dostoevsky is interested in what
-people actually feel. He is more with people who have written diaries
-than with so-called realistic novelists. One gets from him a sense of
-perversion of human imagination.... He is the most important of
-novelists; full of ripples and vibrations of imagination. Everybody has
-imagination. The things we do are nothing. Imagination is the only thing
-over which Will has no power.
-
-Nietzsche says that he got all his contemporary philosophy from
-Dostoevsky. He got from him even his idea of the inner circle of
-aristocratic souls who really rule the world, are themselves unhappy,
-and take with others to places which they (these others) cannot enter.
-Dostoevsky thinks that the secret of the world is in abandonment,
-perversion; Nietzsche in harness, stiffness, the gay, the strong, the
-beautiful, aristocratic, dominant.... Nietzsche with all his reality
-does not describe life as it is. Zarathustra is a dream—impossible
-perhaps. But Dostoevsky does describe life. Nietzsche’s man is
-absolutely alone—has his own hell. Dostoevsky’s has that too, but in a
-different way. He gives the feeling of a third person where two are
-alone. Do not think that Dostoevsky is a mystic. The essential thing is
-that you have this sense of a third person to which genius appeals.
-Dostoevsky is a stronger as well as a truer one than even Nietzsche
-himself.
-
-Nietzsche is as a skater upon the ice, a dancer upon a tight rope who
-remains a white, balanced figure on the surface. Dostoevsky plunges—into
-a darkness full of voices. You must get there by a form of perversion.
-Every one of his characters is incurably hurt. Nietzscheans harden their
-hearts and live on the surface. All Dostoevsky people are weak. He
-thinks that only out of weakness will redemption come; abandonment to
-every emotion. In that he is Dionysian.... Dostoevsky I cannot put into
-words. Perversion; Disease; God is Disease; God is Pain; Dostoevsky
-depicts how Disease gives one illumination. We have an idea that we must
-be well. Even Nietzsche says that. The Greeks said it ages ago.
-Dostoevsky says “No; I offer you a new value.” He has a lust for
-fools—understands the mania that people have of making fools of
-themselves. God is Folly; God is Cruelty—perhaps an epicene God.
-
-Dostoevsky is a cerebralist. His specialty is imaginative reactions. All
-the lusts that have stretched their wailing arms, all the hopes, all the
-goblins.... In sex as in everything else people are not what they are
-doing; they are in that vortex of what they imagine themselves.
-Dostoevsky understands all that. Those frank-spoken people who think
-they know sex are puritans on the other side. They have no imagination.
-
-We can overestimate what Dostoevsky has from Russia and not attribute
-what he is to himself. Other Russians are Russians—Turgeniev, Tolstoy,
-Andreyev, Chekhov, Gorky—but they are not as big as he is; perhaps they
-are more of the broader stamp.
-
-... Constance Garnett’s translations are masterpieces. The French are
-too artistic to translate Dostoevsky.... No one can approach Dostoevsky
-in creating a saint. Russia as the spiritual bringer-back of the world
-to Christianity—this runs through his works. He is _the_ Christian. His
-books are full of translations from Scripture. He understands the
-underlying psychology of the gospels. Nietzsche said that putting the
-gospels with the art of the Old Testament was a crime in the name of
-Art. The Old Testament is undoubtedly finer art, but the New is
-psychology—masterly.
-
-
- VERS LIBRE AND COMMON SENSE
-
-_Clinton Masseck, St. Louis_:
-
-_Vers Libre_ has no inconsiderable tradition in English verse, as Mr.
-Arthur Ficke has recently pointed out in THE LITTLE REVIEW. Its progress
-in French poetry, particularly among modern writers, is familiar to all
-students. And if we were inclined to forget or to forgive Whitman
-(meaning in politer terms to accept him and his followers), the recent
-verse of the Imagiste group and such writers as Miss Amy Lowell and Mr.
-Max Bodenheim in our own midst would be likely to force our attention to
-this interesting form—if I may employ this word in no paradoxical sense.
-
-But _vers libre_ is of the moment—new, if you will, in its present
-appeal. Its modern themes, its unique figures of speech, its wide
-practice, both in this country and in England, mark it as a new
-movement, or at least a new recrudescence.
-
-Anything new invites attack; anything new in literature perhaps warrants
-attack. If it can stand the test, by just such a token, it is worth
-consideration. But there are those to whom the new is always a thing to
-be attacked—because it is new, because it is inexplicable according to
-their own canons of emotion and intellect. Francis Jeffrey, with his
-famous caption on Wordsworth, “This will never do,” has his echo, futile
-and otherwise, in every generation of critics. And so we have Mr.
-Llewellyn Jones, in the January issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW, sending up
-his protest against _vers libre_ in general and Mr. Bodenheim in
-particular.
-
-Mr. Jones is markedly distressed. If he were not so much in earnest and
-so decently—or indecently—polite, so “suedy,” so suave, even scholastic
-in his handling, he might be amusing. He is also distinctly pugnacious
-and, as most pugnacious people are inclined to be, he is curiously
-inconsistent.
-
-In fact, it is a little difficult to determine why Mr. Jones cannot
-accept Bodenheim. (He is guilty of reading Meredith, “popularly supposed
-to be obscure.”) Because our poet writes of “a world of growing sieves,
-slim squares, powdered souls, cool, colorless struggles, the obstetrical
-adventures of white throats, and green and yellow dins,” and because Mr.
-Jones, in the smallness of his soul or environment, has never been able
-to concoct or to conceive of poetry couched in this garb—let us grant
-the idea behind it—he straightway announces “This will never do.”
-Wordsworth, after being so thoroughly “sieved” by the critics, still
-lives; the divine essence of romanticism was not killed by Jeffrey and
-his thunder-pellet phrase. Courage, Mr. Bodenheim!
-
-Yet in a really admirable paragraph of summary as to the function of
-poetry and the relation of a poet to his audience, Mr. Jones lays down
-the dictum that “the poet sees the world as we do not see it.
-Consequently, he can put a new complexion on it for us. The world is
-pluralistic, and so are we. Intellectually we may be of the twentieth
-century, but emotionally we may be born out of our due season. Then let
-the poet of that due season mediate to us the emotional life that we
-need.... By his aid alone we may get outside of our own skins and into
-the very heart of the world.”
-
-The last words of this statement are peculiarly significant in this
-connection. “By his aid alone we may get outside of our skins into the
-very heart of the world.” What is the heart of the world? I do not know
-it all, emotionally or intellectually, although if I were to trust one
-of these endowments in order to render judgment upon poetry, I should
-choose the first. On the other hand, Mr. Jones does not know the entire
-heart of the world; nor does Mr. Bodenheim. But we may each of us know
-some little corner of this heart that the other does not or cannot ever
-know. For some of us poetry remains but the supreme expression of mere
-external beauty, for others the expression in consummate form of a
-purely intellectual process; to others poetry is a weapon wherewith to
-pierce the veil of externality and to expose the hidden but the real
-reality. The late William James once declared that we were standing on
-the verge of new discoveries in feeling and knowledge; that just beyond
-us lies a world of new adjustments and new experiences. Of course, in
-this instance, James had reference to our new appreciation and estimate
-of the value of mysticism in the judgment of certain phases of religious
-experiences. But the thing holds true even in poetry; the line between
-the poet and the mystic has yet to be drawn. I, for one, should not want
-to think myself incapable of enlarging either my soul or my
-appreciation. If anybody can show me whether in new terms or not a
-hitherto unsuspected and unknown aspect of beauty, I shall be content to
-accept that person. I would go further; I should be very thankful that I
-had obtained a new point of view with which to regulate both my emotions
-and my intellect.
-
-I, for one, saw and felt and appreciated the appeal of the
-much-discussed “sieve” poem. To be sure, along with Mr. Jones, I had
-previously thought of a sieve only in relation to ashes and garden
-earth—and even of that “little triangular sieve that fits into kitchen
-sinks.” But if some one can come along and convince me that this
-hitherto vulgar and despised implement has inherent in it the
-possibilities of metaphysical development, and that a certain person can
-be likened to a sieve, why, then I have learned a new aspect of beauty.
-
-And hence, it would seem to me that Mr. Bodenheim has fulfilled every
-single requirement that Mr. Jones has put upon the poet. And the only
-reason Mr. Jones cannot appreciate these little poems is because,
-intellectually and emotionally, he is “born out of due season.”
-
-After all, “All art is convention.” The Alaskan Indian, with his
-grotesque—to us—totem poles, cannot understand the smooth and plastic
-strength of much of classic sculpture. The African Negro, with his
-Campbell-soup-can earrings and his Connecticut-made curtain ring
-bracelets, cannot appreciate the effect of simple unadornment. Yet in
-any case the point of view, the impelling instinct that leads toward
-beauty, is the same for any person, any race, any civilization. Let us
-be honest and admit this. Let us sincerely seek and discover the
-philosophy that guides every new movement, whether in fashion or food or
-poetry.
-
-Yet it seems to me that we are too prone to accept poetry and to judge
-it from a too utilitarian point of view. We would make it stand the same
-test that we apply to religion, to household furnaces, and other things
-that have been long tried. We ask ourselves when some new manifestation
-of it arises: “Will it do the trick? Will it comfort and warm and
-sustain us in the way that we have been accustomed to being comforted,
-warmed, and sustained by that which has already been accepted?” Yet if a
-new form discovers a new idea, if it tears away the covering with rough
-and clumsy hands in order to show the emotions, a fresh significance or
-a bold interpretation, we jump back in terror and horror.
-
-So it is with _vers libre_ at the present moment. Because it shows us
-new things, and a new and perhaps at times an awkward manner, critics
-fed on the diluted sentimentality of Longfellow—or even the classic and
-obscure Meredith—revolt. Eventually they will accept it; they must.
-Those that are not fools must remember that history repeats itself; that
-to cite but a recent instance, Manet and Monet and Sisley, in painting,
-are accepted where forty-five years ago they were characterized as fools
-and madmen. After time has crystalized the unusual into the
-conventional, and the crystals are as common and as pretty as only time
-and much practice can make them, the critic, along with the man in the
-street, will be content to partake and to appreciate. It will be then
-too late; what was once unique and rare will be common and banally
-uninteresting; a new awakening will then take place, and once more the
-world will witness the same absurd attack of the critics.
-
-In this connection, in our future judgment of _vers libre_, let us
-recall the wise and simple words of R. A. M. Stevenson: “The test of a
-new thing is not utility, which may appear at any moment like a shoot
-with the first favouring breath of spring. The test is the kind and
-amount of human feeling and intellect put into the work. Could any fool
-do it? Now, in this matter of depicting truth, there are eyesights of
-all grades and breadth, of grandeur, of subtlety, and art has more than
-the delicacy of a tripos examination in tailing out as in a footrace all
-the talents and capabilities of the competitors.”
-
-Go to it, Mr. Bodenheim!
-
-
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- THE DUEL—A Military Tale
- IL CONDE—A Pathetic Tale
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- Youth
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- _Contains “Youth,” “Heart of Darkness,” and “End of the
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-
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- interprets man’s endless struggle.”—Chicago _Evening Post_.
-
- ’Twixt Land and Sea
-
- AND TWO OTHER SEA STORIES
-
- “Mr. Conrad has never painted more vivid scenes of nature or
- looked more deeply into the hearts of his characters than in this
- moving book.”—_The Outlook._
-
- Almayer’s Folly, and An Outcast of the Islands
-
- _Mr. Conrad’s first and second novels_
-
- “The figures in these books live for us, and above and beyond
- them are the power of presentment, the marvellous faculty for the
- absolute creation of atmosphere, the genius for description, and
- the individual, finished style which these, Mr. Conrad’s earliest
- works, display.”—Sir HUGH CLIFFORD, K.C.M.G., in the _North
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-
- Falk
-
- _Contains “Falk,” “Amy Foster,” and “To-morrow.”_
-
- “‘Falk’ leaves one inclined to declare that the writing of that
- one story would be sufficient to place him among the
- immortals.”—_New York Times._
-
- Typhoon
-
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- experience. It is unforgettable, even as the experience it
- pictures and interprets must be unforgettable.”—HILDEGARDE
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-
- Romance
-
- (_With_ FORD MADOX HUEFFER)
-
- “‘Romance’ is indeed a work of blazing imagination. It is a sheer
- novel of adventure, and the glory of it lies in its color and
- shifting lights.”—RICHARD CURLE, in “Joseph Conrad.”
-
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- $16.50
-
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-
- _With Illustrations and Map, $1.25_
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- By WINIFRED GRAHAM
-
- A good old-fashioned tale of adventure and intrigue, which in
- some ways recalls “The Prisoner of Zenda,” and the romances of
- the great Dumas. The sort of story that is passing now, but which
- every one enjoys once in a while. No sex, no problem, but lots of
- plot and counterplot and excitement. A book that may be read and
- enjoyed by every member of the family.
-
- _$1.00_
-
- MITCHELL KENNERLEY PUBLISHER NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
- Books By Havelock Ellis
-
- Mr. Ellis is one of the most distinguished psychologists, and men
- of letters in the world today. He is a scientist with a vision
- and a sense of humor, a traveler who sees below the surface, and
- a scholar who has read and digested a great part of the world’s
- literature without becoming a pedant. To readers of THE LITTLE
- REVIEW who are not familiar with his work we confidently
- recommend any of the four books below.
-
- IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS
-
- “A book of random observations, thoughts, and half-thoughts,
- crotchets, hobbies, guesses, and whims. One day Mr. Ellis muses
- over a drunken woman and on another he descants on the evolution
- of furniture, having in the meanwhile declared his taste in
- architecture, the women of Normandy, the ugliness of modern
- civilization, and the music of Franck and Elgar, and his opinion
- of the devil, Cornishmen, George Meredith, Raphael, Gaby Deslys,
- war, and nakedness.”
-
- F. M. Colby in The North American Review.
-
- $1.50 net.
-
- THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE
-
- A discussion of the changing status of woman, the emancipation of
- woman in relation to romantic love, the significance of the
- falling birth-rate, and other aspects of sex and society. “It is
- an inspiring and reassuring volume, which deserves not one but
- several readings from everyone who takes anything more than a
- predatory interest in the social organism.”
-
- Waldo R. Browne in the Chicago Dial.
-
- $2.50 net.
-
- THE WORLD OF DREAMS
-
- A scholarly, yet entertaining study of just the peculiarities and
- curiosities of the world of dreams which everybody has wondered
- at. It describes them with the vividness and fantastic imagery
- which combine so charmingly in Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy,” and
- at the same time interprets them in the light of a psychologist’s
- special knowledge.
-
- $2.00 net.
-
- THE SOUL OF SPAIN
-
- This brilliant volume on the romance, the woman, the art, the
- dancing, and the gardens of Spain, and especially on the Spanish
- character, is probably the most illuminating as well as the most
- readable interpretation of this inscrutable people in literature.
-
- With photogravure frontispiece, $2.00 net.
-
- Order at your bookstore or direct from the publishers
-
- 4 Park Street HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.
-
-The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect
-correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.
-
-The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
-errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here
-(before/after):
-
- [p. 11]:
- ... of good tidings and love leant for the redemption of the many
- through the ...
- ... of good tidings and love lent for the redemption of the many
- through the ...
-
- [p. 15]:
- ... Hallow caverns of cool blue shadow, ...
- ... Hollow caverns of cool blue shadow, ...
-
- [p. 29]:
- ... to the descredit of some of those most noisy in demanding the
- right. The ...
- ... to the discredit of some of those most noisy in demanding the
- right. The ...
-
- [p. 30]:
- ... Unbidden and unwarmed she takes us up in the round of her
- Dance and sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from
- her Arms. ...
- ... Unbidden and unwarned she takes us up in the round of her
- Dance and sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from
- her Arms. ...
-
- [p. 31]:
- ... If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of
- Desire; but soon she come to Equipoise. ...
- ... If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of
- Desire; but soon she comes to Equipoise. ...
-
- [p. 36]: (multiple cases)
- ... von Rezñicek. This was the pièce de resistance at the
- evening concert. ...
- ... von Reznicek. This was the pièce de resistance at the
- evening concert. ...
-
- [p. 36]:
- ... first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, ten
- violincellos, eight double ...
- ... first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, ten
- violoncellos, eight double ...
-
- [p. 36]: (multiple cases)
- ... existence. A compound essentially of Tod und Verkläring,
- Tyll Eulenspiegel ...
- ... existence. A compound essentially of Tod und Verklärung,
- Tyll Eulenspiegel ...
-
- [p. 37]:
- ... Tod und Verkläring deprives Schlëmihl of any greater claim
- than that. ...
- ... Tod und Verklärung deprives Schlemihl of any greater claim
- than that. ...
-
- [p. 39]:
- ... (Solvieg’s Lied) ...
- ... (Solveigs Lied) ...
-
- [p. 48]:
- ... favor with his countrymen by editing Der Vaterland, although
- before that ...
- ... favor with his countrymen by editing Das Vaterland, although
- before that ...
-
- [p. 60]:
- ... to glorify the Allies. His speculation that the present war
- as a struggle of ...
- ... to glorify the Allies. His speculation that the present war
- is a struggle of ...
-
- [p. 62]:
- ... Dostoevsky is a celebralist. His specialty is imaginative
- reactions. All ...
- ... Dostoevsky is a cerebralist. His specialty is imaginative
- reactions. All ...
-
- [p. 63]:
- ... England, mark it as a new movement, or at least a new
- recrusence. ...
- ... England, mark it as a new movement, or at least a new
- recrudescence. ...
-
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, FEBRUARY
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Review, February 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 11), by Margaret C. Anderson</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Little Review, February 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 11)</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: Margaret C. Anderson</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 28, 2021 [eBook #65948]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the Modernist Journal Project, Brown and Tulsa Universities, http://www.modjourn.org.</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, FEBRUARY 1915 (VOL. 1, NO. 11) ***</div>
-
-<div class="frontmatter chapter">
-<h1 class="title">
-<span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>
-</h1>
-
-<p class="subt">
-<em>Literature Drama Music Art</em>
-</p>
-
-<p class="ed">
-<span class="line1">MARGARET C. ANDERSON</span><br />
-<span class="line2">EDITOR</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="issue">
-FEBRUARY, 1915
-</p>
-
- <div class="table">
-<table class="tocn" summary="TOC">
-<tbody>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#OURFIRSTYEAR">Our First Year</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>The Editor</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#POEMS">Poems:</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Amy Lowell</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr class="i">
- <td class="col1"><a href="#BRIGHTSUNLIGHT">Bright Sunlight</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr class="i">
- <td class="col1"><a href="#ELYCATHEDRAL">Ely Cathedral</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#JESTER">Heaven’s Jester</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Mrs. Havelock Ellis</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#GREENSYMPHONY">Green Symphony</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>John Gould Fletcher</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#THECASEOFFRENCHPOETRY">The Case of French Poetry</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Richard Aldington</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#THELASTWOMAN">The Last Woman</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>George Soule</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#THELIBERTIESOFTHEPEOPLE">The Liberties of the People</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>William L. Chenery</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#HYMN">A Hymn to Nature (An Unpublished Goethe Poem)</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#MYFRIENDTHEINCURABLE">My Friend, the Incurable:</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Alexander S. Kaun</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr class="i">
- <td class="col1"><a href="#VICE">On the Vice of Simplicity</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr class="i">
- <td class="col1"><a href="#POWYS">John Cowper Powys</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#MUCKANDMUSIC">Muck and Music</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Alfred Knopf</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#WHILEHEARINGALITTLESONG">While Hearing a Little Song</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Maxwell Bodenheim</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#AHARDBED">A Hard Bed</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>George Burman Foster</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#GEORGEMIDDLETONSONEACTPLAYS">George Middleton’s One-Act Plays</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>Clayton Hamilton</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#NEWYORKLETTER">New York Letter</a></td>
- <td class="col2"><em>George Soule</em></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#MUSIC">Music</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#BOOKDISCUSSION">Book Discussion</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><a href="#THEREADERCRITIC">The Reader Critic</a></td>
- <td class="col2">&nbsp;</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. 1
-</p>
-
-<p class="issue">
-FEBRUARY, 1915
-</p>
-
-<p class="number">
-No. 11
-</p>
-
- </div>
- </div>
-<p class="cop">
-Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="article1" id="OURFIRSTYEAR">
-Our First Year
-</h2>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Margaret C. Anderson.</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">A</span><span class="postfirstchar">n</span> interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into
-the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1)
-energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I
-number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that he
-arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener a
-judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that would
-not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place of number
-one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy does seem
-the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of those persons
-who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration. But Imagination!—that
-gift of the far gods! There is simply no question of its position
-in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and beautiful thing that has
-been accomplished in the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Last March we began the publication of <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>. Now,
-twelve months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle
-of being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always
-asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a policy;
-we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in so far as
-we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not expounded a
-philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite outlandishly anarchistic;
-we have been uncritical, indiscriminate, juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish,
-emotional, tiresomely enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which
-I can’t remember now—all the things that are usually said about faulty
-new undertakings. The encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly
-about promising ones.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of course <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> has done little more than approach
-<a id="page-2" class="pagenum" title="2"></a>
-the ideal which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned
-above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad
-that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than some
-other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of the
-visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the priest
-or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get drenched
-than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I should rather
-see one side of a question violently than to see both sides calmly; I should
-rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely a matter of choice: people
-are either extremists or nonentities; I should far rather sense the big things
-about a cause or a character even vaguely than to analyze its little qualities
-quite clearly; in short, I should rather feel a great deal and know a little
-than feel a little and know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our
-negative attitude.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express
-all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made
-explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the worship
-of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is our only
-attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will understand that
-I did not say our platform is merely the worship of beauty. Beauty involves
-too many elements to be championed lightly. Beauty from the aesthete’s
-point of view and beauty from the artist’s point of view are two widely
-different things. I might paraphrase Wilde and say that the new Beauty
-is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>, as I want
-from life, not merely beauty, not merely happiness, but a quality which
-proceeds from the <em>intensity</em> with which both beauty and ugliness, pleasure
-and pain, are present.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that
-within their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without
-<span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished,
-nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim
-to artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines of
-good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude; that it
-should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most magazines
-have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that is what’s wrong
-with them. I have none of the qualifications of the editor; that’s why I
-think <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> is in good hands. Because the editorial tradition
-in this country has usurped the place of the literary tradition we have lifted
-loyalty to policies into the place of loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a
-man of letters—once told me that there were fifty good writers to every
-good editor in America, and that he would teach me to be the former. He
-proceeded to illustrate, not by chucking out the poor stuff that was being
-written for his journal but by showing how it could be stuck in where it
-wouldn’t be too noticeable! When some manuscript that delighted his soul
-came in (he was very human and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy”
-<a id="page-3" class="pagenum" title="3"></a>
-that had somehow grown up around his own magazine) he taught me the
-“art” of reducing its policy to a state of negativeness that would not be
-out of harmony with the policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once
-he received some poetry that was very strong and very beautiful. He
-treasured it so that he kept it in his desk for months before returning it.
-It was so beautiful as to be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was
-sure; and anyhow his journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it
-merely printed reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I
-used to feel that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving
-the ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or to
-become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to read
-us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is more honest
-to say outright that they will probably find less and less of it. Because as
-“sanity” increases in the world <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> will strive more and
-more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers continue to compromise
-in order to get their public, as book-makers continue to print rot in
-order to make fortunes, as writers continue to follow the market instead of
-<em>doing their Work</em>, as the public continues to demand vileness and vulgarity
-and lies, as the intellectuals continue to miss the root of the trouble, <span class="smallcaps">The
-Little Review</span> will continue to rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work
-for its ideal rather than for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of
-excellent quality and no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and
-flame, to be swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young
-and fearless and reckless and imaginative—
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
- <div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse15">... chanter</p>
- <p class="verse">Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre,</p>
- <p class="verse">Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....</p>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly first.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful
-by being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say
-this so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated,
-fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as we
-are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is to pay
-for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work don’t make
-enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now no one can <em>live</em>
-by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions are cases which
-emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the meantime a magazine ought
-to be started for the sole purpose of printing the good things that the best
-magazines reject. Until we are on our feet and able to pay for stuff we can
-at least do this. And never, we hope, will we achieve that last emptiness:
-sophistication.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important.
-I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called <em>Drift and
-<a id="page-4" class="pagenum" title="4"></a>
-Mastery</em>, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than
-anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr.
-Lippmann says this in his preface:
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
-<p class="noindent">
-The issues that we face are very different from those of the last century and a
-half. The difference, I think, might be summed up roughly this way: those who went
-before inherited a conservatism and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use
-it. The sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste, the dogma of sin,
-obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in brief, has been blasted for us. Those who
-are young today are born into a world in which the foundations of the older order
-survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry through their purposes
-when they have them. If the standpatter is still powerful amongst us it is because
-we have not learned to use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American
-conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic purpose should be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against absolutism, commercial
-oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. <em>The Rebel program is stated.</em> Scientific
-invention and blind social currents have made the old authority impossible in fact,
-the artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We inherit a rebel
-tradition. The dominant forces in our world are not the sacredness of property nor
-the intellectual leadership of the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution,
-the glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England respectability, the
-Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller.... In the emerging morality the
-husband is not regarded as the proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats
-over the children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that
-the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child the sense of sin is a poor
-preparation for a temperate life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against
-the chaos of a new freedom.
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do
-not. I think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and
-nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small minority—the
-people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of the population.
-Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other four tenths have
-something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is still there. The new
-authority is quite as strong as the old, and more insidious because it is
-more subtle. Young people used to be disinherited when they disagreed with
-their parents; now they are argued with. The former method left their
-minds clear; the latter befogs them—and they disinherit themselves. That
-is the difference. One worked from without in; the other works from
-within out. Of course it’s much better this way. But this is not the most
-important problem—this of the old rock of ages. The horrible joke of
-modern life is that <em>we have been presented with a new rock of ages</em>!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The rebel program is stated—exactly. More than that, it is in action.
-The difference between the new issues and the old, to Mr. Lippmann, is
-that we have now learned what we must do; to me, it is that we must learn
-to do something else. The battle lies not against the chaos of a new freedom,
-but against the dangers of a new authority.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-5" class="pagenum" title="5"></a>
-Before I define, let me illustrate. About two months ago I spent four
-days in one of our second-large cities—a place of about two hundred
-thousand people. If I could only describe those four days and their stimulation—to
-fresh rebellion! The people I saw belonged to the supposedly
-enlightened inner circles—the representative upper middle class: the ones
-that still loom very large in comparison to the thinking minority from whom
-Mr. Lippmann draws his conclusions. Well, I had not forgotten how
-ignorant people can be, but I had forgotten how cruel they can be. I had
-not expected their knowledge to have increased, but their hypocrisy to have
-lessened. I had not looked for vision but at least for a beginning of sight;
-not for Truth, but perhaps for a willingness to stop lying. And I found
-scarcely a glimmer of these things. It was ghastly! But the strange part
-was this: all the time I found I was thinking not of the great faults of their
-opinions but of the great barrenness of their lives. Over and over the
-thought kept running through my head: There is no poetry of living in
-this place!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This brings me to my point. The new rock of ages is that wholly false
-perspective which assumes that <em>what one thinks is more important than
-what one feels</em>. It has been set up, quite unconsciously, by the very people
-who have trying to blast the old one. It is that perspective which the
-new generation must fight not only with the old, but in its own ranks!
-Here is the interest of the new battle! Our next renaissance will be concerned
-with changing that perspective; the genius of the future must be
-directed toward that end. And that is why I think it is not enough to say
-that there will come a time when men will think of nothing but education.
-There will come a time when men will think of nothing but education in
-imagination! And since there is no such thing as <em>education</em> in imagination,
-but only <em>procreation</em> of it,—well, the time will come when men will think
-of nothing but art. The crimes of ignorance are not comparable to the
-crimes of philistinism: there is no philosophy that will ever reach beyond
-that of the personality or of the artist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The dominant forces in the new rock of ages are not of course the
-intellectual leadership of the priest, the divinity of the constitution, Victorian
-sentiment, or the Republican Party, but the intellectual leadership of cleverness,
-the divinity of cults, no sentiment, and the Practical Plan. They are
-endorsed by the most promising element in modern life: the young intellectuals
-who are working valiantly to create here what Europe has given to
-the arts and sciences,—and working in the wrong direction. Our inferiorities
-to the other civilizations they attribute to our puritanism, our speed, our
-economic evils. Oh, I get so sick of their failure to reach to the real cause!
-It is so silly to keep on insisting that we need poets like the French or
-philosophers like the Germans or musicians like the Russians, etc., etc., if
-we don’t begin soon to understand why we haven’t got them. We haven’t
-<a id="page-6" class="pagenum" title="6"></a>
-got them because, in this curious country, we haven’t got people who feel.—Think
-of an Irish peasant walking under the stars....
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I grant you that it also becomes silly to talk eternally of “feeling”
-without qualifying or defining. It is like taking refuge behind that vaguest
-phrase in the language—“life itself.” But by “feeling” I mean simply that
-flight of wings which makes walking unnecessary; that dazzling tight-rope
-performance which takes you safely over the chasm of Experience but leaves
-you as bruised as though you had fallen to its depths. Feeling is that quality
-of spirit which will save any artist from the philosophical redundancies of
-a <em>De Profundis</em>. The torturing need of expressing something that far
-outstretches one’s capacity for expression is the foundation of art. That’s
-why we have so little of it in this country. There may be some Americans
-in whom the perspective has retained its proper balance. I happen to know
-of one.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is for some such need as this that <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> exists: to
-create some attitude which so far is absolutely alien to the American tradition.
-I have been going to the lectures of John Cowper Powys, which are
-spoken of in other places in this issue, and that appreciative man gave me
-an interesting idea the other day. I should like to see him as editor of a
-literary magazine whose policy was to cut off the subscription list everybody
-who speculated about his pose or his insincerity and failed to miss the great
-beauty of his words. Now Mr. Powys is as unstable as water: that is his
-value. He feels entirely too much ever to be fully sane. His hypothetical
-magazine would gather an audience that could fight successfully the great
-American crime which may be described briefly as <em>missing the point</em>. Thus
-we might establish a reign of imagination which would make stupid things
-as impossible as cruel things, which would consider a failure to catch some
-new beauty or a “moral lynching of great and independent spirits” as
-greater crimes than murdering a man in a dark corner.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-On this basis we shall continue. If we must be sensible at least we
-shall make it, in Shaw’s phrase, an ecstasy of common sense. And out of
-all this chaos shall we produce our dancing star.
-</p>
-
-<div class="filler">
-<p class="noindent">
-The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.—<em>Oscar Wilde.</em>
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="filler">
-<p class="noindent">
-Before the scientific spirit can reach its full bloom, it will have to acquire an honest
-sense of the rôle that fantasy plays in all its work. This is especially true of the
-social sciences. We are just beginning to realize the importance in economics of the
-economist’s utopia. We are learning the determining influence of the thinker’s dream.—<em>Walter
-Lippmann.</em>
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="POEMS">
-<a id="page-7" class="pagenum" title="7"></a>
-Poems
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Amy Lowell</span>
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="BRIGHTSUNLIGHT">
-Bright Sunlight
-</h3>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The wind has blown a corner of your shawl</p>
- <p class="verse">Into the fountain,</p>
- <p class="verse">Where it floats and drifts</p>
- <p class="verse">Among the lily-pads</p>
- <p class="verse">Like a tissue of sapphires.</p>
- <p class="verse">But you do not heed it,</p>
- <p class="verse">Your fingers pick at the lichens</p>
- <p class="verse">On the stone edge of the basin,</p>
- <p class="verse">And your eyes follow the tall clouds</p>
- <p class="verse">As they sail over the ilex trees.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="ELYCATHEDRAL">
-Ely Cathedral
-</h3>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Anaemic women, stupidly dressed and shod</p>
- <p class="verse">In squeaky shoes, thump down the nave to laud an expurgated God.</p>
- <p class="verse">Bunches of lights reflect upon the pavement where</p>
- <p class="verse">The twenty benches stop, and through the close, smelled-over air</p>
- <p class="verse">Gaunt arches push up their whited cones,</p>
- <p class="verse">And cover the sparse worshipers with dead men’s stones.</p>
- <p class="verse">Behind his shambling choristers, with flattened feet</p>
- <p class="verse">And red-flapped hood, the Bishop walks, complete</p>
- <p class="verse">In old, frayed ceremonial. The organ wheezes</p>
- <p class="verse">A moldy psalm-tune, and a verger sneezes.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">But the great Cathedral spears into the sky</p>
- <p class="verse">Shouting for joy.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">What is the red-flapped Bishop praying for, by the bye?</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article l3" id="JESTER">
-<a id="page-8" class="pagenum" title="8"></a>
-<span class="line1">Heaven’s Jester</span><br />
-<span class="line2">or</span><br />
-<span class="line3">The Message of a White Rose</span>
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Mrs. Havelock Ellis</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar"><span class="prefirstchar">“</span>I</span><span class="postfirstchar">t</span> is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou
-strange child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me
-to thee, a woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as
-mine, whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are
-pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou
-lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed into
-Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in the
-sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the sleep
-of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of Paradise and
-heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her passing from Earth,
-had barely gained thy body again before the cap and bells were donned by
-thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The jingle of thy bells drew
-laughter and tears. God found he had need of the fool the woman had
-signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly courts must not lower his
-head or hide his face. Tears ill become the piebald suit and trappings of
-mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the woman who gave me to thee
-needed thy heart? Hear the message the white rose by thy bed gives to
-thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is not for thee to choose thy way
-of love. God’s jester is neither man nor woman nor child, but a singer
-of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and dry the eyes of women. Play thy
-part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win her lips, women crave her help,
-the world takes her service, and thou her smiles. Wouldst thou have more,
-thou poet lover in the guise of a fool?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows
-thee his face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss.
-In his absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her
-body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy
-into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the strange
-enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has given
-thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and
-sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast seen
-will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the cap
-and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose on his
-breast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song
-of the souls of women and be satisfied!
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="HEAVENSJESTERTOTHEBODYOFHISLADY">
-<a id="page-9" class="pagenum" title="9"></a>
-HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY
-</h3>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body,
-her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known his
-God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the dawn the white rose spoke once more to the jester. “Thou hast
-lied. Thy lady’s unknown body is untried music to thee. Thy hands would
-touch the strings, thy ear catch the vibrations her soul modulates to sounds
-of sighs and sobs at the call of love. Look at my whiteness! Think of thy
-unrest! The secrets of thy lady’s body are not learnt through the strong
-desires common to the herd of men or the fainting dreams of impassioned
-women. Fool! inscribed as thou art in the heavenly registers by a woman
-as God’s Fool, thou must learn the mystic’s lore about the body of thy
-Love. Thy desire is towards thy lady, and her will, not thine, is thy law.
-Hearken then! It were the work of an instant to close thy strong hands
-round her throat and bruise her into forgetfulness that love is pain. To
-force her mouth, so much desired, into an open well for slaking thine own
-thirst is love’s delicious robbery. To hurtle to her breast, as if to rob and
-forestall the child who may one day drink there, is to have found a shrine
-for prayer and peace. Yes! even to rest in the hallowed forests of her
-body ere thou storm the citadel where thy weapon shall break into the silent
-house of life, is easy and has always been the way of men with woman.
-Woman the abandoned, man the triumphant, woman the flower, man the
-gatherer, woman the luscious wine and man the thirsty drinker. Thy old-world
-needs desire thy lady in the way of men, though prayer before and
-after would grace thy feasting. Listen to the secret the white rose whispers
-to thee. It does not suffice that thou dost need thy lady or even that thy
-lady needs thee. Thou must prepare thyself for her even if she has no
-need of thee. The gateways of thy body must be clean, pure as snow and
-free from taint. Thy thoughts must shine through thine eyes like stars,
-thy passions burn with fires at white heat, without smoke or noise. Heaven’s
-jester may not approach the Holy of Holies till Desire is as white flame.
-The sacrament of thy Lady’s Body is precious bread and wine, to be partaken
-of at her desire, not thine, and only in Heaven’s good time. It is not
-for thee to choose. Thy part is to watch and pray and laugh and sing, and
-maybe lead another in to the feast thou hast prepared. Thou must bring to
-thy lady’s white feet frankincense and myrrh, the spoils of the sorrows
-thou hast borne for the tired travellers on thy journey. Precious stones,
-too, thou must gather for her neck, from the shores of thy past desolations.
-Pearls thou must also offer, burnished out of the memories of thy wayward
-desires which knew not her chastity or her smiles. For her breasts thou
-must bring shields forged from thy gluttonies and petty aims. For her
-arms crystals wrought out of thy dreams. For her girdle rubies made from
-all thy heart’s desire. For her eyes? Ah! perhaps thy kiss, delicate and
-<a id="page-10" class="pagenum" title="10"></a>
-passionate as is the way of seas and clouds when the earth sleeps. For
-her forehead thou mayest weave a crown of myrtle, for friendship, as
-thy Love is thy Friend and is steadfast. For her ears I will tell thee the
-dreams of my sister, almost black with the redness the sun has poured into
-her heart. For her hair, only a wreath of “love in the mist,” for in that
-little flower is the wonder of the Great Heart thou art learning to understand.
-For her lips, only thy hopes made chaste and thy fears made passionate,
-if God wills.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Should thy Love waken with thy kisses on her closed eyes and turn
-towards thee with wonder and joy at the things thou hast learned and the
-gifts thou hast given to her, then have a care! Women are not drunk
-with wine but with pity, and pity is no use to Heaven’s Jester. There are
-signs, though, which even thou canst understand, and when Love is born,
-the Fool is wise. If by chance, for there is no hope in this message of the
-dawn, there is a resurrection day for thee, if by chance or God’s pure will,
-she turns to thee as God allows one spirit to turn to another spirit, when
-Love has prepared the altar, then clash thy cymbals, blow thy trumpet,
-shout till the sleepy world rejoices, shake thy bells and fling thy Jester’s cap
-and cloak aside, for to eat the sacramental bread and drink the wine of
-thy love’s pure body thou wilt not need raiment, and as thou wert born
-and as thou wilt die thou wilt enter into thy Holy of Holies. And if thou
-die of joy, thou criest:
-</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">What is Death?</p>
- <p class="verse">Only Love freed.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="THEFOOLTOTHESOULOFHISLADY">
-THE FOOL TO THE SOUL OF HIS LADY
-</h3>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-The Jester said to himself, “If the body of my lady is so fair a tabernacle
-for her soul, how can I, a Fool, understand the ways of her spirit?
-My lute and pipes can only render the voices of the wind, the sea, the trees
-and the cries of beasts in joy and pain. My bells are a Jester’s toys for
-assuaging the griefs of the children of men. The travailings of my lady’s
-spirit, like the snow on the mountains, are out of reach of a fool’s understanding.
-For one brief hour I heard a faint whisper in the halls of peace
-when my name was signed in the heavenly registers, but, except in my
-heart, I carried no trophy to earth by which I could tell men of the music
-I heard.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is the birthday of my Lady, the festival which calls for prayer
-and joy. Prayer, because the paths of earth are hard for the feet of her
-whose tread awakens a longing for wings in the Fool standing near. Joy,
-because her eyes are mirrors of a time to come when love and peace will
-renew earth into heaven, and men and women will become as wise as
-eagles and children. Through her body, I love the soul of my lady, and
-through her soul I love her body. Neither her soul nor her body may help
-and comfort the Jester even though God leads and helps him by both grace
-<a id="page-11" class="pagenum" title="11"></a>
-and mercy. Though his heart be sore and his body sick unto death and
-there seems none to comfort him, he can still sing songs for men and pipe
-melodies for women of the wonders revealed to him.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The White Rose, dying by the Jester’s bed, spoke once more to the
-Fool.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Cast self pity out of thine heart. Learn to live as I have learned
-to die, and then learn to die as I have learned to live. For thee absence
-seems death, but trace the meaning of the soul of the woman thou lovest.
-Her soul is also absent from the Oversoul as her body is absent from a
-Lover. Only through absence can the Oversoul draw its own to itself, and
-only through loneliness can the Great Lover and the Lesser Lover understand
-one another. Words confuse and touch enslaves. Souls speak clearly
-in the silence. In absence a note becomes a chord, and in silence the chord
-becomes a symphony. The discord dissolves into harmony, and the darkness
-into dawn. The absence of Death is not different from that of Life,
-for Death is Life, and Life the discord making Death’s music. The soul
-of thy Lady will find thine by the aid of both Life and Death, for it is not
-God’s Fool who hath declared that there is no Love nor a Creater thereof.
-Thou art learning that all is Love. In thy prayers today for thy Lady’s
-peace incline thy spirit towards hers as both approach the maternal source
-of the Universe. It is the Mother-Spirit of the world who has hidden thy
-love from thy sight, and taken thine head from the touch of her hands
-and torn thy lips from her kisses. Is it not always so that the mothers
-of the smaller world wean their children into growth and knowledge? Thou
-art still hers even if her body is out of sight and touch, for pure love is
-the simple miracle of thine heritage as a son of man and of God. Nothing
-can take from me what the sun made of me through his shining. Even as
-I die the fragrance remains. Nothing can rob thee of the hours when all
-things seem possible because of thy hopes and her vows. Love is pain
-but over-love is peace. Turn thy tears into help and pity for those who
-weep without thy hope and for those who dwell in dungeons and are not
-yet registered in heaven as wise or foolish. Let thy longings for one break
-into prayer for the weal of the world. Thou wert not sent here only for
-thy pleasure or thy peace, nor was the body of thy Lady sent for thy
-delight, or her soul for thy strength alone. Pain is ordained for the bringers
-of good tidings and love <a id="corr-1"></a>lent for the redemption of the many through the
-loneliness of the one. Accept thy lot and thy vision shall make thee free.
-Resist thy fate and thy Love’s soul and thine shall sleep embedded in flesh
-and with no power to grow wings. On thy knees then and pray for strength
-and courage with thy cap and bells in readiness by thy side, and joy within
-thy heart. As I die thou must live.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Jester took the rose in his hands, and, as its petals fell, a Fool’s
-prayer broke the silence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-12" class="pagenum" title="12"></a>
-“Maker of men,” he cried, “pour into a fool’s heart the understanding
-of life’s joy and pain. Make my spirit at one with the great order. Let
-me understand what is required of me and in understanding be at peace.”
-As he prayed, the Jester slept, for a great weariness was on him from much
-dancing. In his dream, a little child ran towards him. He opened his
-Jester’s cloak, and the little one held the sleeves in her tiny hands.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Give all that thou hast and all that thou art even to one so small
-as I,” cried the child and ran from his sight.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Jester was awakened by the opening and clanging of a door. He
-went out into the courtyard. A beggar, unshaved, and swollen with dropsy,
-stood before him. He had evil eyes and a mouth twisted by pain. He
-looked at the Jester and laughed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Give me thy cap and bells,” he said, “I have need of them.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Jester took money from his pouch.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Take all this instead,” he cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The old man laughed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Any lord or lady can throw me that,” he said, “if only to keep me
-from defiling them by my presence. Gold costs less to give than to gather.
-It is dross and could only help my body to live and suffer. Thy cap and
-bells would succour my spirit so that I could forget my body. With the
-jingle of them I could smile at the curses of the healthy or the jibes of
-the well-washed. Give them to me. Thou art well and happy and hast
-no need of help.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Jester bowed his head and gave up his cap and bells, but with
-sorrow and pain in his heart. The beggar ran away shaking the bells and
-dancing with glee, the Jester’s cap all awry on his swollen head. A sweet
-melting tenderness and faintness took hold of the Jester and an ecstasy
-swayed him so that he nearly fell.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“It is the soul of my Lady speaking to mine,” he whispered. “What
-matter the cap and bells? Let them go.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The woman he loved stood by him and her voice was like a lute on
-the air as she grasped the Jester’s shoulders.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Give all thy music to me,” she whispered, “I am in sore travail because
-of things a Fool cannot understand. Thy music ravishes me and makes me
-know that love is a consuming fire in which one burns gladly. Thy wild
-notes make desire in me a quenchless thirst which no drinking can assuage.
-Thy soft piping fills my veins with a pain which is like joy and with a joy
-which is like pain. Give me all, keep nothing back. I would see as thou
-seest, hear as thou hearest, dream as thou dreamest, so that I can play
-as thou, but I must tune thy pipes to the voice of my heart.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Jester drew his hood over his head and went to his cell. His Lady
-had no doubt as to what he would bring back to her, for she had learnt
-from him that love gives all things without question or regret. The Jester
-quite simply collected all the instruments he had made during the long
-<a id="page-13" class="pagenum" title="13"></a>
-years of his youth and his manhood. They were precious to him, for he
-had not been able to buy as others because of his poverty. He had gone
-even to the offal of the slaughter-houses, and to the dank banks of the ponds,
-and the waste places in hills and valleys for the things which gave his instruments
-such power over men with the strange cries he evoked. The Jester’s
-sadness had been greater than even his poverty, but the music had never
-failed to comfort and strengthen him. Voices from the over-world and
-under-world spoke to him, and the strange secrets he translated into sound.
-The Jester’s heart was glad at last. His Lady had need of him and of what
-he had made. His music was hers as his heart was hers. He laid all his
-precious instruments at her feet and looked in her eyes. There were smiles
-for him there. She bent as he knelt and took his head, as of old, between
-her long cool hands, and kissed his brow.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Happy, happy Fool,” she cried, “thus to be able to give all. I will break
-hearts with the sweetness of these strings, I will bind others to me and know
-it is thy gift. Happy Fool! Goodbye!”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“May God comfort thee and me,” said the Jester, as he turned toward
-his cell.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="THEJESTERSLEEPS">
-THE JESTER SLEEPS
-</h3>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-“The Jester is dead.” The words were said gravely, and the Lady who
-heard them looked keenly in an old man’s face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dead,” she cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Yes! Found dead this morning. We could not find his cap and bells
-nor the instruments he loved more than all other things. There seems no
-more music in the world now, for we all grew happy through his music and
-the sun.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Dead!” she whispered. “May I....”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She hesitated. “Yes, come.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The old man led the way.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He is there. We found nothing by him but the leaves of a dead white
-rose and the wind from his window blew them on to his breast.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“He smiles,” said the Lady.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was silence in the cell except for the fierce howling of an April
-wind and the tiny fluttering of the leaves on the breast of the Jester.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Lady turned towards the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“His instruments are at the gate,” she said, impatiently. “Why did he
-die, I wonder? The reeds are no use to me. I cannot play upon them
-... not a sound will come.”
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="GREENSYMPHONY">
-<a id="page-14" class="pagenum" title="14"></a>
-Green Symphony
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">John Gould Fletcher</span>
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="I">
-I
-</h3>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The glittering leaves of the rhododendrons</p>
- <p class="verse">Balance and vibrate in the cool air;</p>
- <p class="verse">While in the sky above them</p>
- <p class="verse">White clouds chase each other.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Like scampering rabbits,</p>
- <p class="verse">Flashes of sunlight sweep the lawn;</p>
- <p class="verse">They fling in passing</p>
- <p class="verse">Patterns of shadow,</p>
- <p class="verse">Golden and green.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">With long cascades of laughter,</p>
- <p class="verse">The mating birds dart and swoop to the turf:</p>
- <p class="verse">’Mid their mad trillings</p>
- <p class="verse">Glints the gay sun behind the trees.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Down there are deep blue lakes:</p>
- <p class="verse">Orange blossom droops in the water.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">In the tower of the winds,</p>
- <p class="verse">All the bells are set adrift:</p>
- <p class="verse">Jingling</p>
- <p class="verse">For the dawn.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Thin fluttering streamers</p>
- <p class="verse">Of breeze lash through the swaying boughs,</p>
- <p class="verse">Palely expectant</p>
- <p class="verse">The earth receives the slanting rain.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">I am a glittering raindrop</p>
- <p class="verse">Hugged close by the cool rhododendron.</p>
- <p class="verse">I am a daisy starring</p>
- <p class="verse">The exquisite curves of the close-cropped turf.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The glittering leaves of the rhododendron</p>
- <p class="verse">Are shaken like blue green blades of glass,</p>
- <p class="verse">Flickering, cracking, falling:</p>
- <p class="verse">Splintering in a million fragments.</p>
-<a id="page-15" class="pagenum" title="15"></a>
- <p class="verse">The wind runs laughing up the slope</p>
- <p class="verse">Stripping off handfuls of wet green leaves,</p>
- <p class="verse">To fling in peoples’ faces.</p>
- <p class="verse">Wallowing on the daisy-powdered turf,</p>
- <p class="verse">Clutching at the sunlight,</p>
- <p class="verse">Cavorting in the shadow.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Like baroque pearls,</p>
- <p class="verse">Like cloudy emeralds,</p>
- <p class="verse">The clouds and the trees clash together;</p>
- <p class="verse">Whirling and swirling,</p>
- <p class="verse">In the tumult</p>
- <p class="verse">Of the spring,</p>
- <p class="verse">And the wind.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="II">
-II
-</h3>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The trees splash the sky with their fingers,</p>
- <p class="verse">A restless green rout of stars.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">With whirling movement</p>
- <p class="verse">They swing their boughs</p>
- <p class="verse">About their stems:</p>
- <p class="verse">Planes on planes of light and shadow</p>
- <p class="verse">Pass among them,</p>
- <p class="verse">Opening fanlike to fall.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The trees are like a sea;</p>
- <p class="verse">Tossing;</p>
- <p class="verse">Trembling,</p>
- <p class="verse">Roaring,</p>
- <p class="verse">Wallowing,</p>
- <p class="verse">Darting their long green flickering fronds up at the sky,</p>
- <p class="verse">Subsiding,</p>
- <p class="verse">Spotted with white blossom-spray.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The trees are roofs:</p>
- <p class="verse"><a id="corr-2"></a>Hollow caverns of cool blue shadow,</p>
- <p class="verse">Solemn arches</p>
- <p class="verse">In the afternoons.</p>
- <p class="verse">The whole vast horizon</p>
- <p class="verse">In terrace beyond terrace,</p>
- <p class="verse">Pinnacle above pinnacle,</p>
- <p class="verse">Lifts to the sky</p>
- <p class="verse">Serrated ranks of green on green.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
-<a id="page-16" class="pagenum" title="16"></a>
- <p class="verse">They caress the roofs with their fingers,</p>
- <p class="verse">They sprawl about the river to look into it;</p>
- <p class="verse">Up the hill they come</p>
- <p class="verse">Gesticulating challenge:</p>
- <p class="verse">They cower together</p>
- <p class="verse">In dark valleys;</p>
- <p class="verse">They yearn out over the fields.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Enamelled domes</p>
- <p class="verse">Tumble upon the grass,</p>
- <p class="verse">Crashing in ruin</p>
- <p class="verse">Quiet at last.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">The trees lash the sky with their leaves,</p>
- <p class="verse">Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="III">
-III
-</h3>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Far let the voices of the mad wild birds be calling me,</p>
- <p class="verse">I will abide in this forest of pines.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">When the wind blows</p>
- <p class="verse">Battling through the forest,</p>
- <p class="verse">I hear it distantly,</p>
- <p class="verse">Like the crash of a perpetual sea.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">When the rain falls,</p>
- <p class="verse">I watch silver spears slanting downwards</p>
- <p class="verse">From pale river-pools of sky,</p>
- <p class="verse">Enclosed in dark fronds.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">When the sun shines,</p>
- <p class="verse">I weave together distant branches till they enclose mighty circles,</p>
- <p class="verse">I sway to the movement of hooded summits,</p>
- <p class="verse">I swim leisurely in deep blue seas of air.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">I hug the smooth bark of stately red pillars</p>
- <p class="verse">And with cones carefully scattered</p>
- <p class="verse">I mark the progression of dark dial-shadows</p>
- <p class="verse">Flung diagonally downwards through the afternoon.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
-<a id="page-17" class="pagenum" title="17"></a>
- <p class="verse">This turf is not like turf:</p>
- <p class="verse">It is a smooth dry carpet of velvet,</p>
- <p class="verse">Embroidered with brown patterns of needles and cones.</p>
- <p class="verse">These trees are not like trees:</p>
- <p class="verse">They are innumerable feathery pagoda-umbrellas,</p>
- <p class="verse">Stiffly ungracious to the wind,</p>
- <p class="verse">Teetering on red-lacquered stems.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">In the evening I listen to the winds’ lisping,</p>
- <p class="verse">While the conflagrations of the sunset flicker and clash behind me,</p>
- <p class="verse">Flamboyant crenelations of glory amid the charred ebony boles.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">In the night the fiery nightingales</p>
- <p class="verse">Shall clash and trill through the silence:</p>
- <p class="verse">Like the voices of mermaids crying</p>
- <p class="verse">From the sea.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Long ago has the moon whelmed this uncompleted temple.</p>
- <p class="verse">Stars swim like gold fish far above the black arches.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Far let the timid feet of dawn fly to catch me:</p>
- <p class="verse">I will abide in this forest of pines:</p>
- <p class="verse">For I have unveiled naked beauty,</p>
- <p class="verse">And the things that she whispered to me in the darkness,</p>
- <p class="verse">Are buried deep in my heart.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Now let the black tops of the pine-trees break like a spent wave,</p>
- <p class="verse">Against the grey sky:</p>
- <p class="verse">These are tombs and memorials and temples and altars sunkindled for me.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="THECASEOFFRENCHPOETRY">
-<a id="page-18" class="pagenum" title="18"></a>
-The Case of French Poetry
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Richard Aldington</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">t</span> is with a feeling of regret and astonishment that I find nearly all my
-English confrères so opposed to the spirit of French culture, so mistaken
-in their views, and so curiously ignorant of the real facts of the development
-of modern French literature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am led to this reflection by reading Mr. Shanks’s excellent article in
-your December number. It is a most ungracious task to criticise a man who
-is about to hazard his life in the service of his country; and I honor Mr.
-Shanks more than I can express. But if I felt as Mr. Shanks does on the
-subject of French and German poetry I would not fight at all or I would
-fight for Germany! To a poet poetry must be the great business of life and,
-speaking for myself, I would emphatically support the Germans if I thought
-they were better poets than the French and English! (You will take that
-rhetorical statement for what it is worth.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Intellectually about fifty per cent of English people are Germanized
-without knowing it. I should say the percentage is even higher in America.
-I believe that no study is considered so frivolous or so suspect in both countries
-as the study of French art and poetry. And yet—Russia and one or
-two Anglo-Saxons put aside—the history of the art of the last fifty years
-is the history of French art. You who have given Whistler to the world do
-not need me to tell you what French art is. The American painting at a
-recent Exhibition here was of so high a quality that I felt my respect for the
-intellectual progress of America greatly increased. I admit freely and
-regretfully that it was immeasurely better than English painting. That is
-because most Americans study painting in Paris.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Why don’t they sometimes give a look at the poetry of France, for in
-no country is poetry so cultivated, so well understood, and so honored?
-Mr. Shanks apparently knows something of German poetry and nothing of
-French. Of Liliencron I know nothing. But I do know something of
-Hauptmann, Dehmel, and Stefan Georg. (I have no doubt Mr. Shanks dislikes
-Georg because the latter got his training in France.) Well, I will
-cheerfully wager that any more or less fair-minded person would find three
-equally good poets in France to every one that can be mentioned in Germany.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolistes”! What an odd statement!
-Régnier is a Parnassian and Kahn a nobody. I am not going to write a history
-of modern French poetry, nor speculate as to the effect of 1870 or the
-probable effect of 1914 on poetry, especially French poetry. I just want to
-give some names, and if anyone,—if Mr. Shanks,—can give me half as
-many German poets of the same calibre, charm, and general technical accomplishment
-I shall be delighted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Let us grant that Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the elder Parnassians were
-products of the period of before 1870. Well, since that disastrous war
-<a id="page-19" class="pagenum" title="19"></a>
-France has produced the following—I will not say great—delightful and
-readable poets: Samain, Francis Jammes, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas,
-Paul Fort, Laurent Tailhade, Jules Romains, Remy de Gourmont, Charles
-Vildrac, Laforgue, Louys (translations), Mallarmé (pre-1870?) and younger
-men like Guy-Charles Cros, Apollinaire, Castiaux, André Spire, Carco,
-Divoire, Jouve, Luc Durtain, and dozens more. I do not mention the Belgians
-Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Elskamp, and Rodenbach, nor the two Franco-Americans
-Vielé Griffin, and Merrill—though they also have considerable
-reputations. (Did you ever hear of an American who wanted to write German?)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have quoted off-hand twenty-six names from a period of about forty
-years. And you must remember that there are scores and scores of names
-only a little less known, and scores and scores beyond that which I may have
-missed in my reading.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But I think those few names prove beyond all doubt—and I would like
-people to read them and contrast them with German poets—that French
-poetry is the foremost in our age for fertility, originality, and general poetic
-charm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is not hatred of Germany but love of poetry which has called this
-letter from me. I believe in France in the French tradition. And if there
-is one thing which can reconcile me to this war it is the fact that England
-has ranged herself beside France and Belgium, beside the cosmopolite,
-graceful, humanizing, influences of France and French civilization against
-the nationalist, narrow, and dehumanizing influences of Berlin. I believe
-all Englishmen regret that they oppose the gay, cultivated, cosmopolite Austrians;
-it is a misfortune. But of the great issue between the nations—the
-great intellectual issue—there can be no doubt. And Mr. Shanks, when he
-praises (unjustly I firmly believe) the poets of Germany and disparages
-(equally unjustly) the poets of France, is intellectually on the side of the
-enemy he is so courageously opposing with physical force. I believe in the
-kindliness of Germans; I know them to be excellent fathers and most generous
-friends; I know them to be brave soldiers and sailors; I know they are
-good chemists, reasonably good doctors, and very boring professors. At
-the name of Heine all men should doff their hats, but that modern Germany
-(Germany since 1870) has produced one-fiftieth of the poetry that
-France has produced—in quality as well as quantity—that it has added anything
-to the purely creative side of the arts, I utterly deny.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I know that there is Nietzsche.... Perhaps I will write you
-another letter on Nietzsche, if I may.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I feel that this protest will be put down to “war-fever.” I must refer
-you to my pre-war articles in English periodicals, and to the testimony of
-my friends—some of whom are now in America—that such has always been
-my attitude. It has always been a deep regret of mine that both American
-and English literature, criticism and periodicals were so undermined with
-German influences that all gentleness, all intentional good will, all that we
-mean by the “Latin tradition” was anathema, and utterly despised!
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="THELASTWOMAN">
-<a id="page-20" class="pagenum" title="20"></a>
-The Last Woman
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">George Soule</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="note">
-(<em>The second of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be called
-“Plays for Irascibles.”</em>)
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="CHARACTERS">
-CHARACTERS:
-</h3>
-
-<div class="table">
-<table class="dpers" summary="Table-1">
-<tbody>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the Green Ears</span></td>
- <td class="col2 bracket" rowspan="7">}</td>
- <td class="col3 collect" rowspan="7"><span class="smallcaps">Futurist Sages</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the Purple Hair</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the Blue Face</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the Yellow Hat</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the Red Sword</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Sage of the White Heart</span></td>
- </tr>
- <tr>
- <td class="col1"><span class="smallcaps">The Woman</span></td>
- </tr>
-</tbody>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="SCENE">
-SCENE:
-</h3>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<em>The Council Room of the Futurist Sages, decorated in brilliant colors
-to suggest a battle of the minds at some far future date. The Sages are
-seated about the walls in a parabolic curve. They are costumed with appropriate
-inappropriateness. Green ears is in present day evening dress; Purple
-hair in fiery green robes; Blue face in a pink business suit; Yellow hat in a
-conventional futurist costume of mingled colors; Red sword in a black monk’s
-gown, with a sword in his rope girdle; White heart, who is young, in football
-armor.</em>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Shall we give the woman a chance to defend herself?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> Why should we? If her defense is good, we shall be
-prejudiced against her. And as we admit the rule of prejudice, the defense
-will lose its judicial character.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Judicial? Who wants to be judicial? I abolished that
-word last year.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> That’s just the point. We hate the judicial; therefore
-if the defense loses its judicial character we may be forced to decide both
-ways at the same time. Acquit on the ground of illogical defense; convict
-on the grounds of prejudice against good defense.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> Red sword has abolished judicial. Well, we have also
-abolished the past; we have abolished all abolishments!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Above all, we must guard against precedent. Let us
-look up all previous trials, and take care to do the opposite.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> But again, that would entangle us in the past. I want
-to see the woman!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> He wants to see the woman! He is a reactionary!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-21" class="pagenum" title="21"></a>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> Do not argue, brothers. For if we argue, we shall
-either settle the case by logic, which we repudiate, or by violence, so that
-we shall kill each other before we have a chance to decide about the woman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Time server! I shall kill you all, and decide for myself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Red cabbages, redness of blue cabbages, when breakfast
-is no cabbage in a potato. Cocoa crinkles!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> He is right, brothers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">All.</span> He is right.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> We, who have exalted ourselves above all modes of
-thought, we who have cast aside all images and unfettered ourselves from all
-language and all sequence, we who have repudiated humanity; we have a
-right to fight a lower order with its own weapons. Caprice is our god; let
-us then have a caprice to judge this woman with logic and judicial procedure.
-Have you all this caprice?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">All.</span> We have.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> I object: This is democracy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> We accept your objection, and act in opposition to it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Then let the woman be brought in.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-(<em>White Heart goes out right and brings in the woman. She is tall, of
-beautiful face and figure, in a simple white Greek tunic. In her hair is a
-gold fillet. She is led to the center, where she is left standing, as White
-Heart resumes his seat.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Deliver the charge, Red sword!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword</span> (<em>standing</em>). You are charged, first, with being a woman.
-And as a woman you are the living incarnation of the past. You represent
-conservatism and the anti-military virtues; you clog the wheels of progress;
-you sap men’s energies and misdirect them from the triumphs of achievement
-to the service of material things—or immaterial things. Your effeminate
-beauty poisons art and furnishes countless photographic realists with
-the means of selling paintings. The love of you has vitiated poetry and
-music. Masquerading in the garments of caprice, you have deceived man
-into accepting the traditional. As Futurists we detest you. This is the first
-charge! (<em>A pause.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> You accuse me of being a woman. It is a grave charge.
-But first, in order that I may have a chance to disprove it, I suggest that you
-tell me what a woman is.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> A woman is that whose place is in the home.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> A woman is that which is ruled by instinct.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> A woman is that which is beautiful.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> A woman is that which men call a mystery.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart</span> (<em>rapturously</em>). A woman is that which men love.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword</span> (<em>vehemently</em>). A woman is that which men hate.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> These are your definitions?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> They are.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-22" class="pagenum" title="22"></a>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Then in order to prove that I am a woman you must
-prove that they describe me. And you must prove that there is nothing else
-in me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> We must prove nothing. We act.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Then why do you talk?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword</span> (<em>heatedly</em>). I deny that you are beautiful. And if you are
-beautiful, I deny beauty.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Is it not our caprice to be judicial? Come, Red Sword,
-do not descend to flattery!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> All our definitions have been proved a million times.
-They are unprovable.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> I admit them. What then? I will leave the home, I
-will learn logic, I will cut off my nose, I will tell you my mystery, and I will
-let your love and your hate kill each other. And I shall still be here.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> Then you will not be a woman, you will be a feminist!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> But I shall be I instead of what you think I am.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> You can not be you unless you are what we think you are.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Brothers, can we kill the woman and spare the feminist?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> If you kill the woman you will make the feminist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> No; the feminist is more female than the woman. The
-feminist would inflict domesticity on the world. She wants all men for her
-husband. She wants to tie pink ribbons on siege guns and abolish the mountains
-to make room for the nursery. If we let the feminist live, man can no
-longer find a place in which to be alone with his adventure. If we let the
-feminist live we shall make the woman a giant. If we kill the woman we
-shall kill them both at the same time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> Show us the feminist without the woman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> I will do so if you will cease to be men.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> We have ceased to be men. We are supermen.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Then you see the subwoman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword</span> (<em>fiercely</em>). We must kill what we see.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> But have I not shown you that I am something besides
-a woman?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> You might show us that you are everything, and still I
-would hate you. Hate is not hate unless it exists for its own sake.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> At last you have spoken the truth. I am everything.
-And you hate me because you hate me.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Gentle pickles in a vacillating pink mound. Inkwell is
-not ink. Ink is not inkwell. Flying postman leathers purple letters.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> But I have reserved my best defence to the last. I am
-a descendant of Gertrude Stein!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Descendant! What heresy! Gertrude Stein had no
-descendants. She has ascendants!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-23" class="pagenum" title="23"></a>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Deliver the rest of the charge.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Be it known unto you that we are the sole surviving
-members of the human race. By a process of selection we have killed all
-except the best stock. You alone remain of the female sex. We charge you
-not only in your capacity as woman, but in your capacity as mother. In
-order to prove your right to live, you must justify mankind. We accuse
-you of being the perpetuator of human beings! Defend yourself!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> You are the sole surviving males?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> We are.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Then you may let me live. I shall not perpetuate the
-race.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> Do not despair; <em>I</em> will marry you!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> Where are your manners? Has not Shaw taught us
-that women do the wooing?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> What have we to do with Shaw? Let us be serious about
-frivolous matters.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> She is not to be trusted. It is necessary for her to defend
-the race. Speak, woman!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Now indeed you have given me a heavy burden. What
-could be brought forward as a defence for humanity? Why should anything
-exist?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Why, indeed? That is for you to show. For aeons
-life has perpetuated itself through a mere animal instinct. Yet through all
-that time consciousness has been growing; will has at last come into the
-ascendancy. Now for the first time man’s ego is really on the throne. For
-the first time man, with power to extinguish himself, can demand an adequate
-reason for his existence. And man is ready to hear the secret of the
-sphinx. We have come to you, madam, as the last and most perfect woman,
-as the final manifestation of the eternal mystery, to force you on pain of
-death to divulge yourself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> But I thought mankind existed for the purpose of creating
-the superman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> He did; but now he has created the superman. We
-are the embodiment of the purpose. What next?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> As futurists we refuse to accept the old answer. If our
-existence merely pushes the problem forward a few generations, it is futile.
-If, on the other hand, we are the crowning goal of man’s endeavor, there is
-no need to create further.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> You are superchildren using superlogic. How can a
-reason come out of one who is ruled by instinct? How can a conservative
-satisfy a futurist? But I will answer you, and my answer is this: I am a
-female so that you may be males. I am a holder of traditions so that you may
-smash them. And I perpetuate the race so that you may ask the reason.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-24" class="pagenum" title="24"></a>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Come, come, this will not do. We are above the fogs of
-mysticism. We are talking of final things, and we must have a definite
-answer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Then make a definite accusation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> We hold the human race guilty until it is proved innocent.
-We assume the position of an all-wise intelligence, as aloof from the
-earth as the farthest star. And we see a race of ant-things crawling on two
-legs and going through all sorts of meaningless antics. Why is one ant
-exalted? Because he has led an army which has killed a million other ants.
-Because he has discovered how to make ants live a few seconds longer.
-Because he has written a rhyme with ant-words or put a few senseless
-daubs on ant-canvas. And when the ant asked himself what his purpose
-was, he answered first, “To exist.” And his second answer was like the
-first: “To create something more like myself than I am.” There is no
-validity in these which a superior intelligence can recognize. What is the
-third answer?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Woman, defend yourself!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> Stop! I love the woman and I demand her (<em>He jumps
-from his seat and embraces her</em>).
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> Here, O supermen, is your answer! Man exists for
-that which cannot be spoken, for that which cannot be thought. He exists
-for his mystery, for that which he loves, for that which he hates. Man exists
-for me!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> And if he denies you?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> You cannot have your future without your past.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> You see, I was right; we shouldn’t have listened to her.
-She is her own argument; and she has to bring in the past. Away with her!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Away with her; we exist for ourselves!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Remarkable apples, apple black, apple pink, blossom
-apples in squirming shrieks. Skyrockets deserve apples. Bang!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Stop using that antique language! I’m sick of it. It’s
-too obvious.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> Yes, we have proved that we can be more obscure in
-good English.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> And now, brothers, the sentence! The execution!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">All.</span> The sentence, the sentence!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Stand aside, White Heart, or I will kill you both at the
-same time!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">White Heart.</span> I shall die with her!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> You are not yet superman. We shall execute the last
-man and the last woman together. (<em>To the woman</em>) Have you any last
-words? It is traditional to have last words.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">The Woman.</span> I will match my silence against your silence, my eternity
-against your eternity!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-25" class="pagenum" title="25"></a>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Come with me! (<em>He leads them out, right. There is an
-oppressive silence. In a moment he returns, wiping his sword on his gown.
-He takes his seat without a word. The light begins to fail, and the room
-grows rapidly darker until the last few sentences are spoken in an enveloping
-blackness.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> Man has produced the superman, and the superman has
-put an end to mankind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Brothers, we stand on an icy mountain peak in the twilight
-of time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> We experience a breathless emotion which no one has
-had before, which there will be no more to have.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> No longer do we feel the drag of the past; no longer
-do we feel the lure of the future.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> We are the future. We are the goal of consciousness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> For this moment has mankind dragged out a million weary
-years.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> For this moment have been the countless joys of love,
-the countless pangs of death.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> The thing-in-itself for which philosophers have sought—that
-is here.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> We have broken the spell of cause and consequence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Will has won its first and its last victory over fate.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Green Ears.</span> The stupid serpent of wisdom swallowing its own tail
-has grown great and finished the task.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Blue Face.</span> Grubbing logic has looked into the mirror and discovered
-itself to be gigantic caprice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Yellow Hat.</span> Infinity has turned inside-out and become nothingness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Purple Hair.</span> The great contradiction has annihilated itself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Red Sword.</span> Let us keep silence before the solution of the ancient
-riddle.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-(<em>A long, dark silence. Slow curtain.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<div class="filler">
-<p class="noindent">
-There is something transitory in the moods evoked by rhyme. For rhyme shimmers
-on the surface of language like sunlight on the surface of a shallow stream; it
-conducts the mind as in a circle; its sphere is a world of harmonious delights. Rhyme
-is to the mind what sentimentality is to art.—<em>Francis Grierson.</em>
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="THELIBERTIESOFTHEPEOPLE">
-<a id="page-26" class="pagenum" title="26"></a>
-The Liberties of the People
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">William L. Chenery</span>
-</p>
-
-<div class="epi">
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Lord Valiant.</span> The exercise of such tyranny over the minds of men has
-been productive, in a great degree, of the miseries that have fallen upon mankind.
-We have been happy in England since every man has been at liberty to
-speak his mind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Medroso.</span> And we are very quiet at Lisbon, where nobody is permitted to
-say anything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Lord Valiant.</span> You are quiet but you are not happy. Your tranquility is
-that of galley slaves who tug the oar, and keep time in silence. * * *
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Medroso.</span> But what if I find myself quite at ease in galleys?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smallcaps">Lord Valiant.</span> Nay, in that case, you deserve to continue there.
-</p>
-
-<p class="attr">
-<em>—Voltaire.</em>
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">S</span><span class="postfirstchar">unday</span> afternoon, January 17, Chicago was given a vivid picture of
-the liberties allowed the people. On that occasion the freedom of assemblage
-and the right of free speech were ruthlessly and brutally denied a
-great host of people because forsooth they were poor and unemployed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Men and women whose crime was that they could not find work had
-assembled at Hull House. After the meeting, it was suggested that a parade
-would impress their needs upon the city. Immediately they were attacked
-by the police, some of whom had been disguised in the tatters of unemployed
-men and scattered into the crowd. Young girls were beaten, women
-were knocked down, men were assaulted, and all in the name of law.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The assistant chief of police, Herman F. Schuettler, directed the official
-lawlessness. This exponent of anarchy detailed fifty mounted police
-to charge the assemblage of hungry men and women. And here is the
-explanation given by Schuettler:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-“We expected something like this to happen. We had refused these
-people a permit and they took it upon themselves to violate the law. I have
-no fault to find with the conduct of the policemen. Of course they may
-have been a bit rough but I am sure they acted within their rights. They
-were obeying orders.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, poltroon fashion, the anarchistic police attempted to conceal
-their stupid crimes and cruelties by stressing the fact that Mrs. Lucy Parsons,
-one of the philosophical anarchists of Chicago, was a speaker at the
-Hull House meeting! Could bureaucracy go further?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The episode is important because it is typical of what is going on all
-over the United States. It is a by-product of our undigested industrial
-order and also a promise of what the future has in store for us; it is the
-prophecy of a future feudalism which is rising like a flood and which will
-sweep us into impotency if we are not wise enough and strong enough to
-plan a sound reconstruction. From San Diego to Portland, from Los
-<a id="page-27" class="pagenum" title="27"></a>
-Angeles to New York, the fight is raging. In places the people have definitely
-lost all the rights and privileges of a supposed democracy. In Lead,
-S. D., in the Colorado coal fields, in parts of Montana, in parts of the Michigan
-copper country, in West Virginia, in Pennsylvania, and in Massachusetts,
-whole sections of the population have been degraded by forces too
-strong for them to a condition of servility. A servile people is not a threat
-of the future; it is a comment upon the present. And among the servile
-peoples, the liberties have perished. The question which now remains is
-only: “Is the remnant strong enough or disciplined sufficiently to regain
-the fundamentals of freedom which slipped away while we slept?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is not only the poor unemployed who have been battered about and
-made to cringe. Preachers and professors have also felt the stultifying
-constraint exercised by tired business men in moods of irritation. Howard
-Crosby Warren gave an appallingly lengthy list of professors who have
-been discharged from universities all over the land within the last two or
-three years because they exercised the most commonplace latitude in the
-choice of their sentiments and their pronouncements. A Florida professor
-had to forego his position because he doubted the finality of the wisdom
-of the ante-bellum teachers in the South. A professor at Marietta College,
-Ohio, was forced to resign because his political opinions were displeasing
-to his masters. A professor at Wesleyan was driven out on account of his
-opinion concerning the observance of the Sabbath. But why go on? The
-number is tediously inclusive.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So great has this evil become among teachers that an association of
-University professors was organized in New York in early January. From
-it college presidents and deans were expressly excluded. The members of
-the association, actuated no doubt by motives of middle-class respectability,
-announced that they were not to be considered a trade union; but, for all
-their dislike of the dignity of labor, they have found it necessary to fight
-as a body for the retention of the liberties essential to self-respect.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The attack on the Chicago unemployed, who made nothing like so much
-of a parade as the visitors to a ball park any summer afternoon, nor so
-much of a street jam as the fashionable attendants at a Mary Garden opera,
-illustrated the direction in which the attack is being made. The real government
-of men is industrial, and not political, as every one knows. Consequently
-the genuine tyrannies, or abuses of government, can be discovered
-naturally among the incidents of industry.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dr. Annie Marion MacLean of Adelphi College, Brooklyn, read a living
-document upon this phase of the question at a conference held by the
-economic and sociological associations at Princeton during Christmas week.
-In the course of her investigation, says Paul U. Kellogg in his report of the
-meetings in <em>The Survey</em>, Dr. MacLean had been told by girls how their
-foremen had warned them against telling what their pay was, of loft building
-doors locked, of foul air, and what not. The head of an employer’s
-<a id="page-28" class="pagenum" title="28"></a>
-utopia had told her he would keep out unionism by making examples of the
-talk leaders. How? By firing them. She told of strikers suppressed by
-the police for what they said, while strikebreakers inside the factory, hurling
-insults at them from the windows, went unmolested. “Working women
-have the right to state the beliefs they hold without forfeit of their livelihood,”
-said she. “They need reassurance that liberty is more than a catch
-word. The box-maker, the bobbin girl, and the doffer have the right not
-only to life but to liberty and free speech in a land which is supposed to be
-the home of freedom.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Professors are denied the right of free speech because colleges and
-universities are organized on business principles. Scholars and teachers
-are deprived of the franchise in all vital matters affecting university life.
-They are clerks. Tired business men are the masters of education, and tired
-business men have but one great principle: loyalty to the organization. Criticism
-seems sacrilege. Incidentally, that accounts for the fact that the great
-inventions in business have been made by outsiders; but that is not my
-story.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The same tired business men operating through the police take away
-the essential liberties from trade unionists, from the unemployed, from
-socialists, and from the I. W. W.’s when the occasion arises. The police
-acquire the habit of tyranny and then set to work to practice it on their
-own account. What reason under heaven could have persuaded Herman
-F. Schuettler to order an attack on hungry men and women, inoffensive,
-armed only with banners bearing fragments of the Lord’s Prayer? Surely
-a Christian litany is not an incitement to riot. “Give us this day our daily
-bread”—if this be treason, we may well pray for annihilation at the touch
-of some vagrant comet.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But the police are pawns in the great game of the modern world, the
-game of hide and seek for sovereignty. Blind and stupid, they do the
-occasional desires of their masters and then, filled by a lust for repression,
-go on to satiate their unwholesome appetites.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hitherto I have assumed that the somewhat constitutional guaranties of
-free speech and free assemblage—the two go hand in hand—were actual
-rights. Theodore Schroeder, leader among the libertarians, has been prominent
-long among the small group which has ceaselessly stressed our fading
-freedom. Schroeder has an article in <em>The Forum</em> in which he makes a
-witty attack upon Comstockery and upon the censorship which has grown up
-in the Post Office Department—a censorship prudish and powerful enough
-to exclude the Chicago Vice Report from the mails. This censorship of
-the imagined obscene is puerile and petty in sufficiency for any appetite, but
-it is useless to discuss it here. The reaction is always more potent than the
-action where obscenity is charged, as witness our own September Morn.
-Schroeder, albeit, announces his freedom of speech to be “a natural and a
-constitutional right.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-29" class="pagenum" title="29"></a>
-Society, so far as I know, recognizes no natural rights and modern
-philosophy seems to sanction none. As for constitutional rights, every constitution,
-unless it be dead, is subject to amendment. The real foundation
-for the liberties of speech and assemblage is discovered in the social need
-for them. Without freedom the common weal withers and perishes. That,
-then, is the basis and incidentally it affords a rod by which any attempt at
-censorship, by the police, by factory foremen, by the post office, by university
-trustees, and even by a sluggish popular taste, may be measured.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If the powers of Olympus would lend to men some creature of infinite
-wisdom and taste, some creature versed in the weary evolutions of the past,
-and pregnant with the unformulated tendencies of the future through which
-an increasing happiness may be attained by men, then well might that creature
-assume a censorship of human thought and speech. But salvation
-cannot be won so lightly, for the seed of happiness is with men. No one
-lives, or has lived, with the power to say what idea was valuable to the
-world and what idea was baneful. The human substitutes which have
-been commissioned during the absence of this all-wise and all-prophetic
-authority have been uniformly dull, limited, and poisonous to the best hopes
-of the future.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since, then, we may not have a wise authority, why not frankly face
-the situation? We blame the police, and justly, for their cruelties; yet upon
-them American society has imposed an impossible task. We have demanded
-free speech and free assemblage by our fundamental law, and privately we
-have told the police not to obey the constitution. Who’s at fault? New
-York knows. Last winter at Madison Square Garden the same sort of
-folly was enacted as that which disgraced Chicago on Sunday, January 17.
-Then Arthur Woods, police commissioner, saw a great light. He made an
-experiment in freedom. It worked hugely to his credit and, parenthetically,
-to the <a id="corr-5"></a>discredit of some of those most noisy in demanding the right. The
-emptiness of many of the speakers was exhibited and that was all. The
-existing order was unruffled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As a result of his enlightenment Commissioner Woods made a request
-at the conference on the old freedoms held at Princeton: “Policemen are
-entitled to definite orders,” said the commissioner. “People in this country
-have the constitutional right to freedom of assemblage and freedom of
-speech. The police have not only the responsibility to permit it—but to
-protect them in its exercise, and the police should be so instructed.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The police should be so instructed; the welfare of the race demands it.
-But they won’t get instructions until powerful organized groups of citizens
-find expression. Upon this organization rests the future.
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="HYMN">
-<a id="page-30" class="pagenum" title="30"></a>
-A Hymn to Nature
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="note">
-(<em>This fragment, a “Hymn to Nature,” unknown to us in the published
-works of Goethe, was found in a little bookshop in Berlin, and translated into
-English by a strong man and a strong woman whose lives and whose creations
-have served the ideals of all humanity in a way that will gain deeper
-and deeper appreciation.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<div class="hang">
-<p class="noindent">
-Nature!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We are encompassed and enveloped by her, powerless to emerge and powerless to penetrate deeper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Unbidden and <a id="corr-6"></a>unwarned she takes us up in the round of her Dance and sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from her Arms.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She creates ever new Forms; what is, was never before; what was, comes never again—everything is New and yet ever the Old.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We live in the midst of her and are Strangers to her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She speaks incessantly with us and never betrays her Secret to us.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We have unceasing Effect upon her and yet have no Power over her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She appears to have committed everything to Individuality and is indifferent to the Individual.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She builds ever and ever destroys and her Workshop is inaccessible.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is the very Children—and the Mother—where is she?
-</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="noindent">
-She is the only Artist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-With the simplest Materials she arrives at the most sublime Contrasts.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Without Appearance of Effort she attains utmost Perfection—the most exact Precision veiled always in exquisite Delicacy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Each of her Works has its own individual Being—each of her Phenomena the most isolated Conception, yet all is Unity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She plays a Drama.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whether or no she sees it herself we do not know and yet she plays it for us who stand in the Corner.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is an eternal Life, Growth and Motion in her and yet she does not advance.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She changes ever, no Moment is stationary with her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has no Conception of Rest and has fixed her Curse upon Inaction.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is Firm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her Step is measured, her Exceptions rare, her Laws immutable.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has reflected and meditated perpetually; not however as Man but as Nature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has reserved for herself a specific all-embracing Thought which none may learn from her.
-</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<a id="page-31" class="pagenum" title="31"></a>
-Mankind is all in her and she in all.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-With all she indulges in a friendly Game and rejoices the more one wins from her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She practices it with many, so occultly that she plays it to the End before they are aware of it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And most unnatural is Nature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whoever does not see her on every side, nowhere sees her rightly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She loves herself and ever draws to herself Eyes and Hearts without number.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has set herself apart in order to enjoy herself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ever she lets new Admirers arise, insatiable, to open her Heart to them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In Illusion she delights.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whoever destroys this in himself and others, him she punishes like the most severe Tyrant.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whoever follows her confidently—him she presses as a child to her Breast.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her Children are Countless.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To none is she everywhere niggardly but she has Favorites upon whom she lavishes much and to whom she sacrifices much.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Upon Greatness she has fixed her Protection.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She pours forth her Creations out of Nothingness and tells them not whence they came nor whither they go; they are only to go; the Road she knows.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has few Motive Impulses—never worn out, always effective, always manifold.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her Drama is ever New because she ever creates new Spectators.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Life is her most beautiful Invention and Death her Ruse that she may have much life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She envelops Mankind in Obscurity and spurs him ever toward the Light.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She makes him dependent upon the Earth, inert and heavy; and ever shakes him off again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She gives Needs because she loves Action.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is marvelous how she attains all this Movement with so little.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Every Need is a blessing, quickly satisfied, as quickly awakened again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of Desire; but soon she <a id="corr-7"></a>comes to Equipoise.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She starts every Moment upon the longest Race and every Moment is at the Goal.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is Futility itself: but not for us for whom she has made herself of the greatest importance.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She lets every Child correct her, every Simpleton pronounce Judgment upon her; she lets thousands pass callous over her seeing nothing and her Joy is in all and she finds in all her Profit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We obey her Laws even when we most resist them, we work with her even when we wish to work against her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-32" class="pagenum" title="32"></a>
-She turns everything she gives into a Blessing; for she makes it first—indispensable.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She delays that we may long for her, she hastens on that we may not be sated with her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has no Speech nor Language; but she creates Tongues and Hearts through which she feels and speaks.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her Crown is Love.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Only through Love can we approach her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She creates Gulfs between all Beings and all wish to intertwine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has isolated all that she may draw all together.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-With a few Draughts from the Beaker of Love she compensates a Life full of Toil.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is Everything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She rewards herself and punishes herself, rejoices and torments herself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is harsh and gentle, lovely and terrible, powerless and omnipotent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Everything is ever present in her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Past and Future she knows not—The Present is her Eternity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is generous.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I glorify her with all her Works.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is wise and calm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One drags no Explanation from her by Force, wrests no gift from her which she does not freely give.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is cunning but for a good purpose and it is best not to observe her Craft.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She is complete and yet ever uncomplete; so as she goes on she can ever go on.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To Everyone she appears in special Form.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She conceals herself behind a thousand Names and Terms and yet always is the same.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She has placed me here; she will lead me hence;—
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I confide myself to her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She may do with me what she will: she will not despise her Work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I speak not of her. No, what is true and what is false; She herself has spoken all;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All the Fault is hers; hers is all the Glory.
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="MYFRIENDTHEINCURABLE">
-<a id="page-33" class="pagenum" title="33"></a>
-My Friend, the Incurable
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section firstline" id="VICE">
-<span class="firstline">IV.</span><br />
-Pro domo mea: on the vice of simplicity. John Cowper
-Powys—a revelation
-</h3>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">O</span><span class="postfirstchar">ne</span> of my critics sent me a New Year’s wish and admonition: “You
-are hectic. Why not see things as they are? You must learn to be
-simple.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This is another attempt on the part of my good-wishers to cure me,
-in defiance of my resolute declaration that I cannot and do not want to be
-cured. Furthermore, I am in the position of a normal lunatic who considers
-the whole world, except himself, insane; not only do I refuse to learn the
-art of being simple, but I regard simplicity as a vice, a defect, a misery.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What is simplicity? I cannot define things; definitions are absurd,
-limiting, simplifying. In this case perhaps I ought to adopt the method of
-the school-boy who defined salt as “what makes potatoes nasty when not
-applied to.” It is an English joke which I have tried with discouraging
-results on the American sense of humor; it suits my purpose nevertheless.
-How would this do: “Simplicity is that which makes life dull when applied
-to?” No; decidedly, I cannot think in Procrustean formulas.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nothing is simple. What nonsense it is to synonymize this word with
-“natural,” as if nature were not most complex and complicated! Neither is
-the primitive savage simple, for he conceives things not “as they are,” but
-through a veil of awe and mystery. Nor is the child simple, Messrs. and
-Mesdames Pedagogues; you may instruct it scientifically, tell it “plain truths”
-and facts, but the not-yet-educated young mind will distrust you and will
-continue to live in its illusionary, fantastic world. Not even beasts may be
-accused of that vice: recall Maeterlinck’s subtle dogs and horses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nothing is simple, although civilization has attempted to simplify a
-good deal. We have come to live in accordance with established standards,
-customs, regulations; inertia and routine have replaced impulse and initiative.
-Science has endeavored to explain away man’s dreams, to do away
-with religion, soul, imagination, to prove away our mysteries and wonders.
-Known stuff. Thus has come to be the matter-of-fact multitude, the simple,
-the all-knowing, those who act and think and feel “as everybody else does,”
-as they are taught and trained by the ingenious apparatus of scientific, moral,
-and social classifications, definitions, simplifications, in a word—the civilized
-man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet side by side with civilization, machinization, automatonization, there
-is another powerful force moving the world: culture. Culture <em>versus</em> civilization,
-this is how I gauge the issue. Do not ask me to define these words:
-let Professor Herrick do it. We are all civilized, of course; especially the
-<a id="page-34" class="pagenum" title="34"></a>
-Germans: witness their recent astounding achievements. Now try to apply
-the term “culture” to the activities of those <em>Kulturtraeger</em> in Belgium and
-before Rheims—Q. E. D. Michael Bakounin “tried” it in 1848, when he
-suggested to his fellow-revolutionists in Dresden that they place on the
-besieged walls Raphael’s Madonna in order to avert the canon of the cultured
-Prussians; luckily the Saxons knew better their cousins, “the blond
-beasts.” Pardon this paroxysm of my old disease, Prussophobia. Bakounin,
-you see, belonged to the few, to the non-simple, to those who had an insight
-beyond the apparent, the fact, to the hectic, to the abnormal, if you please;
-“abnormal” is the label given to such individualities by the many, the
-civilized.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I am not so vulgar as to affect megalomania, when asserting that I am
-cultured: this is an <em>apologia</em>, a confession of my sins before my critic, the
-advocate of simplicity. When facing a sunset, I do not simply see a display
-of colors, nor do I think of the simple explanation of this phenomenon as
-offered by science, but I live through a world of associations, recollections
-of diverse impressions and reactions imprinted on my mind by Boecklin,
-Mallarmé, Debussy—by all the gods that make up the religion of modern
-man. Life external, simple facts, are to me an artless raw libretto, which,
-naturally, cannot in itself satisfy one who has come into this world with
-the intention of enjoying grandiose opera. I call it culture, this faculty of
-seeing things <em>creatively</em>, not in monotones, not through window-panes, but
-through multiplying lenses which collect the rays of all suns and concentrate
-them on the focus. Now, pray, is there any hope for me “to learn
-how to be simple?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="POWYS"></a>Life is composed of hundreds of grey days interspersed with a few
-scintillating moments, the few moments justifying our otherwise superfluous
-existence. In this respect I am not a Croesus, but the half dozen or so of
-meteoric flashes that have pierced through the ordinariness of my life I
-treasure grudgingly, and would not exchange them for years of continuous
-well-being. Congratulate me: I have become enriched now with another
-moment of rare beatitude, of indelible radiance. I was present at the transubstantiation
-of Oscar Wilde, performed by John Cowper Powys.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Was it a lecture? “Most certainly,” would advise me my simple friend.
-What a dwarfish misnomer for the solemn rite that took place in the dark
-temple, the “catacomb” of the Little Theatre! I close my eyes, and see
-once more the galvanized demi-god vibrating in the green light, invoking the
-Uranian Oscar. We, the worshipers, sit entranced, hypnotized, demundanized,
-bewitched; the sorcerer makes us feel the presence in flesh and spirit
-of the Assyrian half-god, half-beast, who had the moral courage of living
-his life actively, to the full; we follow bewildered the quaint meteor of
-Wilde’s genius illuminating the world for a moment, dropping down into a
-hideous pit, reflaming in the pale glimmer of discovered sorrow; we finally
-hear the sonorous requiem to Oscar’s break-down from the shock of having
-<a id="page-35" class="pagenum" title="35"></a>
-discovered a heart in himself. The lights are on, the sorcerer is gone, but
-we remain under the spell of the hovering spirit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To quote Powys is as impossible as to <em>tell</em> a symphony. It is the How
-and the What and the stage background that combine in creating the inexpressible
-charm of that experience. As to Oscar Wilde—well, what does it
-matter whether we agree with Mr. Powys’s interpretation or not? Wilde
-was my idol for a long time; I chanted dithyrambs to him and worshiped
-him fanatically. Later, in the perpetual process of dethroning gods, I
-observed the halo of the Prince of Paradoxes becoming paler in my eyes.
-Mr. Powys rekindled in my heart the sacred flame, for a moment at least,
-and gave me the rare sensation of reliving an old love.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-À propos of simplicity: Wilde proclaimed artificiality as the great virtue,
-and certainly lived up to his theory. Compare his short but italicized life
-with the last weary years of Tolstoy that were an attempt for “simple life.”
-Need I tell you which I prefer?
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="MUCKANDMUSIC">
-Muck and Music
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Alfred A. Knopf</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="note">
-(<em>We disagree with Mr. Knopf in too many respects not to be eager to print
-his interesting article.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">D</span><span class="postfirstchar">r.</span> Karl Muck resumed charge of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in
-the fall of 1912. Looking over the twenty-two programs which he
-has given since then one is forced to admit that his tastes are, to say the
-least, peculiar. There have been frequent performances of Beethoven and
-Brahms and occasional classical programs. These, perhaps, serve to keep
-his feet on solid earth, but at other times he soars into the realm of incomprehensible
-novelty and one can tell in advance where he will land just
-about as easily as if he were a German Zeppelin headed for Paris. One
-thing only seems certain—he cannot resist the virtuoso that is in him; he
-gluts us with what can only be called virtuosity for its own sake. If he
-offers a novelty (and when Brahms and Beethoven are taken care of he
-chooses, for the most part, to offer little else) it is sure to be some outrageously
-difficult affair—difficult both to play and to listen to. One cannot
-reasonably object to music merely because it is difficult to understand.
-The test is whether there is sufficient real beauty in it to repay careful and
-painstaking attention. And my point is simply that many of us feel that
-the beauty in Sibelius, Holbrooke, Reger, Lendvai, Mraczek, Loeffler,
-Mahler, Schmitt and others is disproportionately small.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The reasons for the New Yorker’s peculiar bitterness against Dr. Muck
-are not difficult to discover. He makes only ten appearances each season:
-<a id="page-36" class="pagenum" title="36"></a>
-the Philharmonic and the New York Symphony each gives many more
-concerts. From our point of view, would it not be better if we relied on
-Stransky and Damrosch (the merits of the one and the fripperies of the
-other are too apparent to call for comment here) for our first hearings
-of novelties? Then, if a particular composition seemed to warrant it, the
-Boston Orchestra could play it for us in its usual masterly manner. Just
-so long as New York worships the men from Boston in the mad feminine
-way it does, just that long will it resent Dr. Muck’s playing what it doesn’t
-want to hear. It was Theodore Thomas, I think, who, discovering that
-people cared very little for Wagner’s music, played it until they changed
-their minds. That is all very well when you have a Wagner, but I wonder
-just how heartily Dr. Muck admires the music he has recently served up
-to his New York audiences.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To begin with there was Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony. Now Sibelius
-is one of the great living composers. He is a genuine musician—by which
-I mean that you do not suffer all the agonies of stage fright when you hear
-a composition of his for the first time. He knows the business of his craft
-and you usually feel safe in his hands, thanks to three Symphonies and
-Finlandia. But how rudely this fourth symphony shakes your confidence!
-Call it musicianly: show how consistently-planned and executed it is: you
-won’t like it any the more. To be sure, Sibelius is a Finn and an intensely
-feeling one. He gives expression to the emotions of that curiously unhappy
-race. But music to appeal must be more universal than this angry symphony
-of ugly moods. You can’t explain it on cubist grounds—unless the
-Finns also call it disagreeable. But one ventures the guess that they, perchance,
-find it richly agreeable, in which case its performance should, by
-International law (or what is left of it) be confined to Finland.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then there was <em>Schlemihl</em>—a symphonic biography by one Emil Nikolaus
-von <a id="corr-8"></a>Reznicek. This was the pièce de resistance at the evening concert.
-It is scored for one piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three
-clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, four
-trumpets, three trombones, contra bass tuba, two trumpets off the stage,
-kettle drums, snare drums, bass drum and tambourine, Glockenspiel, Cuckoo,
-Xylophone, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, two harps, celesta, organ, sixteen
-first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, ten <a id="corr-9"></a>violoncellos, eight double
-basses, and a tenor voice. This huge orchestra, plus the detailed analysis
-of his work furnished by the composer, explains <em>Schlemihl</em>. It is an attempt
-to out-Richard Richard Strauss, and, like almost all such attempts, it fails.
-Reznicek recounts the life and fate of a modern man pursued by misfortune
-who goes to destruction in the conflict between his ideal and his material
-existence. A compound essentially of <em>Tod und <a id="corr-11"></a>Verklärung</em>, <em>Tyll Eulenspiegel</em>
-and <em>Ein Heldenleben</em>, but at no time reaching the heights attained
-by Strauss in all three of these tone poems. Imitators somehow almost
-always fall down in two ways—they devote far too little attention to what
-<a id="page-37" class="pagenum" title="37"></a>
-they want to say and far too much to their manner of saying it. And as a
-not unnatural result of this, they forget, or appear to forget at any rate,
-that melody is the prime essential in great music. Wagner had melodic
-genius, as we all realize today, and that Strauss has it is no longer open to
-very serious questioning. Reznicek hasn’t. His music is all rather good,
-but none of it good enough to grip you as the finest music does. It has
-no great moments but only moments of very great sound. The house fairly
-quaked at some of the fortissimos. And yet <em>Schlemihl</em> would be pleasant
-enough were it not so pretentiously bombastic and did it not last twice too
-long. But the mere existence of <em>Ein Heldenleben</em>, <em>Tyll Eulenspiegel</em> and
-<em>Tod und Verklärung</em> deprives <em><a id="corr-15"></a>Schlemihl</em> of any greater claim than that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After these two pieces Scheinpflug’s <em>Overture to a Comedy of Shakespeare</em>
-proved quite simple and enjoyable. It is a musicianly piece of work
-lacking neither in melodic invention nor in skilful orchestration. The Allegretto
-Graziosa, in which an old English tune from the Fitz William
-Virginal Book is introduced, is wholly delightful. And having said that
-much, one really has said all. The overture can have no possible chance
-of immortality; it is not great music, it is not intensely interesting or
-unusually delectable: one feels rather that such compositions as this are
-the by-products of the daily practice of the art of music by men of no little
-talent but very little genius. As such, they demand an occasional hearing—today
-Scheinpflug has the stage: tomorrow someone else—what matter
-who, since none are really masters.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An occasional performance of Strauss’s early Symphonic Suite, <em>Aus
-Italien</em>, is probably quite justifiable because of his imposing importance
-among the composers of today. When a musician attains greatness almost
-everything he ever wrote becomes of interest to his disciples. <em>Aus Italien</em>
-calls for little comment. First performed in 1887, it is difficult today to
-realize the great uproar and rage it evoked. Now it seems quite tame. It
-was indeed Strauss’s “first step towards independence,” and it is interesting
-as the connecting link between his very early work and <em>Don Juan</em> and its
-successors. Its first movement “On The Campagna” is probably the most
-successful, reaching as it does gravely grey and tragic heights. A sense
-of oppressiveness fairly overwhelms the listener and there are chords that
-are exquisite. “Amid Rome’s Ruins” is not nearly so sustained and well-knit.
-The opening of the third movement, “On the Shore of Sorrento,”
-depicts with wonderful effectiveness the brilliance of an Italian sea under
-a dazzling sun—a brilliance that no one who has seen it is likely ever to
-forget. Strauss, for all his reputed blare and noise, handles his orchestra
-pianissimo in a manner immeasurably more impressive than anyone else
-of his time. (The opening bars of <em>Tod und Verklärung</em> and the love scene
-in <em>Don Juan</em> immediately come to mind). And you can measure a generation’s
-progress in orchestration by the unruffled placidity with which people
-<a id="page-38" class="pagenum" title="38"></a>
-nowadays listen to the at-one-time “brilliant, tumultuous, audacious, unusual,
-and bold” finale—“Neapolitan Folk-Life.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Even the casual concert-goer must notice the amazing duplications that
-are being offered this season. For two or three seasons a particular composition
-is neglected; then suddenly it is played five times in half as many weeks.
-Stransky plays <em>Don Juan</em>; a week later Muck, as it were, shows us how it
-ought to be played. The Symphony Society plays Brahms’s Second Symphony
-and shortly thereafter Muck administers his reproach to Damrosch.
-Is there any reason why conductors shouldn’t meet occasionally and plan to
-avoid such ways? Muck appears the chief offender. His program stated
-that he was playing Ropartz’s Fourth Symphony for the first time in New
-York, but Stransky had played it only eight days earlier. When will we
-hear it again?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For this Symphony deserves another hearing. The only work by a
-Frenchman that Dr. Muck has offered this season, it is far more satisfying
-than any of his other novelties. The restless swing of the opening theme
-grips you at once—and your curiosity is piqued as the violins sing against
-the “Kernel” in the horns. The Adagio is not so successful—the theme
-sung by the English horn is not sufficiently melodious. You need only compare
-it with the heart-breaking Largo of Dvorak’s <em>Aus Der Neuen Welt</em>.
-But there are the most engaging rhythms—many of them typically Scotch
-in their snap. In fact did Ropartz’s gift for melody (it is far from negligible)
-approach his rhythmic talent, he might produce really great music.
-As it is, this Fourth Symphony interests and gratifies. But it is too long.
-Its three movements are played without a pause and one’s attention flags at
-times. It seems likely that this is inevitable in absolute music: only a program
-can really hold one’s attention for almost forty minutes. Strauss
-does it in <em>Ein Heldenleben</em>; but <em>Don Juan</em>, <em>Tyll Eulenspiegel</em> and <em>Tod und
-Verklärung</em> last only about twenty minutes each, despite the fascinating
-explanations that the program notes always give of their musical contents.
-Ropartz’s Fourth Symphony would be much better if played with pauses,
-and the sections are so clearly indicated that this could be done without
-great difficulty. But, on the whole, a hearing of his work makes one wish
-for more French music, with its charming, clear-cut rhythms so typical of
-the Gaul. (To my mind Ropartz’s indebtedness to César Franck is a
-matter of comparative unimportance. Disciple or not, he has brought to his
-task of writing music freshness and charm, a fund of melody and a quite
-adequate technique).
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After listening to these five compositions, what effect would Beethoven’s
-<em>Egmont</em> Overture naturally have? Relief,—pure unalloyed relief. And it
-confirms one in the feeling that relief is ever going to be one of the prime
-functions thrust by the musicians of today upon the greatest master of them
-all. Invariably he brings us back to earth, and as we sit listening to him
-in smug contentment, we can say over, without fear of contradiction: “This
-after all is music.”
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="WHILEHEARINGALITTLESONG">
-<a id="page-39" class="pagenum" title="39"></a>
-While Hearing a Little Song
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="subt">
-(<em><a id="corr-16"></a>Solveigs Lied</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Maxwell Bodenheim</span>
-</p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">A song flew lazily</p>
- <p class="verse">Over my upturned head.</p>
- <p class="verse">It dropped and I could see</p>
- <p class="verse">The ivoried limbs, the spread</p>
- <p class="verse">Of swaying, dream-colored wings,</p>
- <p class="verse">And barely sense the drift</p>
- <p class="verse">Of slender, cloud-voiced rings</p>
- <p class="verse">Of notes which seemed to lift</p>
- <p class="verse">The oval of my soul</p>
- <p class="verse">Up to their lingering death ...</p>
- <p class="verse">A purplish pallor stole</p>
- <p class="verse">Down to my leaden breath,—</p>
- <p class="verse">It was my melted soul</p>
- <p class="verse">And the soft death of the throng</p>
- <p class="verse">Of notes from the slim song.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="AHARDBED">
-A Hard Bed
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">George Burman Foster</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">W</span><span class="postfirstchar">arfare</span> against suffering, this is man’s most natural fight. Suffering
-is an attack upon man, upon his will to live. On this account,
-he has a right to protect himself from suffering, to hold suffering far from
-him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But the struggle seems futile. The host of sufferings seems illimitable.
-For each old suffering which we thought we had vanquished, ten new ones
-come of which we had never dreamt. Indeed, the capacity to suffer grows
-with the growth of man. The feeling of pain grows as the senses become
-sharper and finer. The higher a man’s development, the stronger becomes
-his ability to feel life’s pains. Even if we could exchange all the sufferings
-of life for pure joy and bliss, this latter life would be suffering still, a surfeit
-and a search, and I doubt not we would long for an hour of some old anguish
-again that would redeem us from a pleasure now grown oppressive and
-intolerable.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-40" class="pagenum" title="40"></a>
-Shall we, then, hate life? Shall we say that it were better not to be than
-to be? We might, did we not find strength and comfort in and with every
-suffering,—did we not allow every item or event of experience the democratic
-right to a trial by a jury of its peers and to our trust that it is worth
-while until it shall prove that it is not,—did we not experience that up from
-the abyss of every suffering, painful as it seems, a path leads to a summit
-where all sufferings are only shadows of a blinding flood and fullness of
-light; that all articulate and fit into the eternal process of an upward-striving
-life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is no question but that this is the workable view of life to present
-to the heart of man, draining, as one must, pain’s bitter cup for one’s
-self. But the sufferings one feels for others, sufferings in which one’s
-love, expressed in sympathy and pity, is complicated—this is another matter,
-here one may fall into mischievous aberration. There can be no doubt
-that the pain of our pity for others may be more painful than the pain of
-our own lives. In the throes of such pity, the woes of our own lives may
-seem small indeed, and finally fade away. To behold a human being that
-is deeply dear to us suffer is worse than it would be to suffer in his place.
-And if the man of moral elevation of soul feels equal in the end to all that
-brings pain to his own life, all the more defenseless does he feel with regard
-to the great all-prevailing misery which, in pity, celebrates its triumphal
-entry into his heart. Love is our noblest human power, and it is love that
-lets us feel such misery, it is love whose wealth of recognition and experience
-renders it possible for us to descry sorrow’s abysses, to anticipate them even
-in advance of the poor sufferer himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now, may love be good, and pity bad? What a problem is here! May
-we war a two-fold warfare, one against suffering and one against pity?
-Ought we? War upon pity—would not that be in contradiction to all that
-our own generation especially calls good and great? Our generation has
-done its best to develop in the human heart an ever-enlarging capacity for
-pity—what would it say to a warrior who pitilessly took up arms against
-pity?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<em>Friedrich Nietzsche</em> was such a warrior, single-handed and alone! And
-the venomous verbal onslaught upon Nietzsche by those who did not understand
-him was equalled only by those who did. At first Nietzsche’s own
-success consisted in supplying his opponents with new weapons against himself.
-Of all the words which have been used as bludgeons to break the
-head of this most resolute rebel against our previous moral view of life,
-Nietzsche’s piercing words concerning pity and the pitiful have most occupied
-the attention of his enemies. This may not deter us from looking
-unabashed the great question squarely in the face. In the end, is pity
-something to be overcome, a disease of the old culture? Does the path
-of the new culture lead men out and beyond and above pity? This is no
-longer a Nietzsche question merely. This is a question of the moral life
-<a id="page-41" class="pagenum" title="41"></a>
-of our time. Perhaps this is the last weightiest question which our time
-can put to men of dignity and depth of thought.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-However, it is only fair to say at the outset that no one has any right
-to fly into a rage at Nietzsche in particular for summoning men to arms
-against pity, since, if rage is in order at all, the conventional practices of
-our previous life furnished therefor occasion enough. Aye, there is an
-old wide-spread fashion of averting the strain of pity which is so mean
-and cool that almost anybody could fly into a frenzy over it—the fashion,
-not of triumphing over pity, but of cowardly flight from pity. Consider
-the whole conception of life of the so-called favorites of fortune. To what
-lengths do they go that they may be spared the sight of misfortune, that
-they may not be agitated by a touch of pity! How they avoid, if at all possible,
-every place that would remind them that there are want and misery,
-hunger and sorrow, in the world—as the Parisians did, until Zola, the most
-calumniated author of the nineteenth century, dragged these things, with
-their ensuing vices, out into the light of day and made the French people
-look at them! How furious they are, as the French were at great Zola,
-at anybody who dares to open their eyes to the sad and harrowing realities
-of life! Nay, they have invented a special art and religion that shall succeed
-in sparing them pity; the former to conjure up a make-believe world
-in which life shall be all sunshine and gladness; the latter to advocate the
-doctrine that all pain is punishment from God, and that, since God must
-be just, He will properly parcel out and administer pain and suffering. We
-do not need to bestir ourselves in behalf of sufferers; that would be a
-wrong against God; a doubt of the Everlasting Justice; hence all may not
-feel pity for the wicked man upon whom God visits His wrath and punishment!
-Thus the “good people” and the just harden their hearts. They
-have stones which they heave at the poor sinner—especially at a “sinful
-woman”—but no mercy, no pity, for those who are not as they are, and
-do not think and feel and act as they do. They grow chesty: “Yes, if
-others were as good as we are, then it would be as well with them as it is
-with us!” With such pride they choke all feeling of kinship and connection
-with others. Where pride grows, no pity can thrive. And at last pity itself
-becomes a kind of pride, a sorry self-reflection as in a mirror. The most
-subtle and dangerous way for men to free themselves from the pain of
-pity, when they cannot stave it off completely, is to make it a thing of pride
-and praise: “I thank Thee, God, that I am not like the hard-hearted!”
-Then they revel and riot in their pity, then they rejoice that they are so
-good-hearted, so tender-hearted, because they can see no suffering without
-being touched and melted to tears. And the pitiful call this their morality
-and their virtue. They make a “delicacy” of their pity to set before themselves
-at the table of life when all of life’s other gratifications and indulgences
-begin to grow stale and tasteless. The tears of emotion that gush
-generously forth at the spectacle of suffering humanity—even of frail and
-<a id="page-42" class="pagenum" title="42"></a>
-faulty humanity—taste so good! Many is the time they have felt the weary
-weight of this unintelligible world on listening to a sad story or seeing a
-play, and screwed up melancholy and doleful countenances—maybe pity
-can be put among the things that can make life, always requiring to be
-braced up a bit, a trifle more interesting. And so pity is at last honored
-with a place among the articles of luxury with which they enrich and adorn
-their lives—their lives, always surprising them with some fresh sign of
-poverty and patches!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But if all guilt be revenged upon earth, punishment of this misuse
-of pity may not be stayed. It is doubly punished and revenged—upon
-him who practices it and upon him upon whom it is practiced. Or do we
-not know that the pharisees of pity become ever more feeble and sentimental
-men, losing all power and energy of will through pure emotionality? Or
-do we not know that most crafty business speculation, speculation in pity,
-in which sufferers magnify their least pains, expert in making an impression
-with their “cases” in order to arouse the interest of the pitiful, an interest
-which need not always be relieved by the clink of coin, but which makes
-ready its punishment much more frequently with idle hours spent in dreaming
-and weeping, with the unprofitable breathing-out of pathos and reproach?
-Often enough the enthusiasts of the kind and tender heart do not know
-what they do, but they rob men of the marrow of life, they emasculate and
-coddle the soul; and the emotional debauchery in which they live, requires
-ever stronger stimulus which ever operates more enervatingly still.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Contemplating these devastations wrought everywhere in life by love’s
-softness, one begins to cherish some respect for a Nietzsche who preached
-to men “a hard bed,” love’s hardness. To be sure, if one is to understand
-this preaching, one must keep in mind what the preacher says: “My
-brethren, give heed unto each hour, in which your spirit wisheth to speak
-in parables: there is the origin of your virtue.” Nietzsche speaks in parables.
-For instance, his words on war and warriors—a good war hallowing
-every cause—these, too, are parables. And hardness, bravery,
-praised by him as the strength and consecration of life, truly
-this is not the barbarity of prize-fighting or the brutality of lynching;
-this is the high mind fearlessly going its own way, stampeded by no
-danger into thinking and acting and being other than what it holds to
-be right. Danger is but the acid test which such a mind applies to the
-ingredients of its life. To such a mind, hardness is the characteristic of the
-gem, of the diamond, which thus guarantees its genuineness, its sparkling
-worth. Zarathustra-Nietzsche loves everything which steels the will and
-augments life’s force. Therefore he loves his foe, for, thanks to his foe,
-he never comes to a standstill and stagnates. Therefore his true friend
-is the one who has become his best foe, who makes him sweat, who summons
-him to risk hot war with him, to break a lance with him in an intellectual
-passage at arms in which the soul struggles for its own yea and nay.
-<a id="page-43" class="pagenum" title="43"></a>
-So, similarly, this Zarathustra-Nietzsche hates pity. Why? Not because
-he is a brute. “Kind unto the sick is Zarathustra.... Would that
-they were convalescent and conquering and creating a higher body for themselves!”
-Not because, as we have seen, so much of pity is for self’s sake
-and not for the sake of service, though this is an essential part of the
-answer. Then why? Because it works an embarrassment for man, because
-it knows no shame, no reverence, in the presence of the giant forces which,
-for every brave soul, is concealed in great and deep pain. Therefore he
-combats pity because it is a passion and not an action, and yet life is not
-for passionists but for pragmatists. “All great love is lifted above all its
-pity, for it seeketh to create what it loveth.... But all creators are
-hard.” “If thou hast a suffering friend, be a couch for his suffering, but
-a hard bed, as it were, a field-bed; thus thou wilt be of most use for him.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Hearken ye, O Reader, to another Transvaluer of values Whose Person
-Nietzsche “the Crucified,” excoriated at ill-starred moments, but did
-so on the basis of that very “high mind” for which He, rejecting pity, went
-to His Crucifixion! “And Jesus, Pilate handed over to their will. As they
-led him off he was followed by a large multitude of the people and also of
-women who beat their breasts and lamented him; but Jesus turned to
-them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me!’”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now, as it seems to me, this Nietzsche preaching is not so far removed
-from that other preaching which we are otherwise wont to call a gospel,
-a good, a glad message! For this glad message was not a lamentation, but
-a hymn of heroism and of victory, a call to creation! And I take the liberty
-to repeat that the Preacher of this glad message forbade pity for himself
-even in his dark and desolate hour—do you think what that hour was?—when
-he appealed to weak and wailing and weeping womanly souls, Weep
-not for me, weep for yourselves! And He Who Himself wills no pity,
-Who bears in Himself a greatness which is elevated above all pity, would
-he have willed to have men so weak and pitiful as we often enough today
-imagine the Ideal of a Christ-man to be?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What, now, if the true pitiful love, the true mercy to men, were to
-<em>harden</em> them, to make them free from what meant only suffering to them?
-It is, to be sure, very much more difficult to make men themselves “hard,”
-so that the burden lying on their backs can not crush them than it is to
-indulge their weakness and sensitiveness and to leave them as they are.
-Indulgent parental hearts would a thousand times rather remove all life’s
-burdens from their children than to place burdens upon their children which
-they might learn to bear. So often our pity plays us a sorry trick—we
-would rather do something for men than to repress our pity, silence it,
-and then teach men how they themselves can do what is good and necessary
-for them. We speak of a ministrant love, meaning a love which knows
-nothing higher than to provide comforts, avert trials, spare vexations, and
-everything which could shake a man to his foundations. How much greater
-<a id="page-44" class="pagenum" title="44"></a>
-a service of love it would be to lead man to himself, make him strong that
-he might be equal to what we had thought we must take away from him!
-Pray, not for easier tasks, lighter burdens, but for more power! This
-Nietzschean love is not only a greater love, it also requires a greater, more
-tiresome work, it requires a constant conquest of our pitying weakness, it
-requires a courageous faith in man and a firm earnest appraisal of his
-power. And how entirely different a service of friendship do we render a
-friend if we show a hard love to him, if he break a tooth on us, as Nietzsche
-says, because we do not flatter and fit him, but compel him, out of love
-compel him, to assert himself against us, and to withstand our defense
-of our rights against him! Foolish men seek their friends among the
-<em>Jasagern</em>, most preferably, among those who are of their own opinion in
-everything. They then call this an ideal friendship: two souls and one
-thought, two hearts and one beat! But in such a friendship, their best,
-their own soul, their sense of truth, and their courage for the truth, soon
-rusts. To spare a friend the disillusion which he would suffer if he felt
-an antagonism, an opposition, in the friendship, they have pity on him,
-they learn to keep silent, and silence soon becomes a lie. Since they dare
-not cause the friend the grief of discovering to him these lies, they lie
-more, lie life-long,—all out of pity, out of their weak tender love. How
-much nobler and greater that friendship whose ideal Nietzsche sketches for
-us, in which we are gripped from the outset in a friend’s contradiction and
-hostility! We seek and love in him precisely what is not attuned to us,
-but is his own, and must forever remain his very own. Such hard love
-which gives the friend a “camp-bed” and not one as “soft as downy pillows
-are” and requires the like in return is the proudest manliest friendship, is
-alone what brings our sluggish and pampered natures forward, and makes
-us stronger, freer, richer in understanding and experience. Every genuine
-love should be a spur, freedom, to us, not an easy berth and a trammel in
-life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We cannot, we ought not, refrain from pity in life. We cannot, we
-ought not, stave it artificially from us. Pity belongs to man as man. It
-comes stealing upon him, and ought so to come. But when it has come, he
-ought not to be enmeshed in it. Still less ought he to let it grow rank. He
-should ennoble it, overcome it, with strong will and energetic deed. For pity
-is yet <em>suffering</em> and all suffering summons men to conflict, to defense. The
-sign that such overcoming has succeeded is that <em>rejoicing-together</em> has been
-born of <em>suffering-together</em>—is that the conflict has issued in a victory in
-which hard militant love triumphs over every weakness, and is grateful to
-the hardness which has given it such a victory!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In his brilliant book on Nietzsche, “Who Is to Be Master of the World,”
-Ludovici writes powerfully as follows: “What the units of a herd most
-earnestly seek and find, is smug ease, not necessarily mastership. For mastership
-entails responsibility, insight, nerve, courage and <em>hardness</em> towards
-<a id="page-45" class="pagenum" title="45"></a>
-one’s self, that control of one’s self which all good commanders must have,
-and which is the very antithesis of the gregarious man’s attitude towards
-himself.... Hardness?—He knows nothing of the hardness that can
-command his heart, his mouth, before it attends to the command of others;
-he knows nothing of the hardness that can dispel the doubts of a whole
-continent, that can lead the rabble and the ruck to deeds of anomalous nobility,
-or that can impose silence upon the overweening importunities of an
-assembled nation. He knows <em>this</em> hardness, that he could coldly watch the
-enemy of his private and insignificant little interests, burnt at the stake;
-he knows <em>this</em> hardness, that he would let a great national plan miscarry
-for the sake of a mess of pottage;—the gregarious man and future socialist
-has this so-called hardness; but so have all those who burn with resentment,—so
-have all parasites and silent worm-gnawers at the frame-work
-of great architecture.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But not Nietzsche’s interpreter, but Nietzsche himself, shall have the
-last word: “Praises are what maketh hard!—I do not praise the land where
-butter and honey—flow! To learn to look away from one’s self is necessary
-in order to see many things: this hardener is needed by every mountain
-climber.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<em>Also Sprach Aristoteles—Zarathustra!</em>
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="GEORGEMIDDLETONSONEACTPLAYS">
-George Middleton’s One-Act Plays
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">Clayton Hamilton</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">T</span><span class="postfirstchar">he</span> one-act play is an art-form that is worthy of careful cultivation.
-It shows the same relation to the full-length drama as the short-story shows
-to the novel. It makes a virtue of economy of means. It aims to produce
-a single dramatic effect with the greatest economy of means that is consistent
-with the utmost emphasis. A one-act play, in exhibiting the present, should
-imply the past and intimate the future. The author has no leisure for
-laborious exposition; but his mere projection of a single situation should
-sum up in itself the accumulated results of many antecedent causes. The
-one-act play, at its best, can no more serve as a single act of a longer drama
-than the short-story can serve as a single chapter of a novel. The form
-is complete, concise, and self-sustaining; and it requires an extraordinary
-focus of imagination.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-46" class="pagenum" title="46"></a>
-No other American dramatist has so carefully cultivated this special
-type of drama as George Middleton. His recently-published volume of
-one-act plays, entitled <em>Possession</em>, was preceded by two other volumes, called
-<em>Embers</em> and <em>Tradition</em>. Each of these books contains half a dozen plays.
-From the fact that Mr. Middleton has chosen to publish these eighteen one-act
-plays in advance of their production, it is not to be inferred that he is
-a believer in the closet-drama. A closet-drama may be defined as a play
-that, being unfit for production in the theatre, is fit only to be locked up
-in a closet. Mr. Middleton is not a literary amateur, but a professional and
-practical playwright. He has produced more than half a dozen full-length
-plays in the commercial theatre; and such artists as Julia Marlowe, Margaret
-Anglin, George Fawcett, and the late E. M. Holland have appeared in
-dramas of his composition. All of Mr. Middleton’s one-act plays are written
-for the stage; and—to quote from his own preface to <em>Possession</em>—he
-conceives “the value of play publication not as a substitute for production
-but as an alternative for those whose dramas may offer little attraction to
-the manager because of theme or treatment.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At present there is, unfortunately, scarcely any market in the American
-theatre for one-act plays that take life seriously. It is against our custom
-to provide a full-length drama with a curtain-raiser or an after-piece; and
-the field for one-act plays in vaudeville is restricted to slap-stick comedies
-and yelling melodramas. It is for this reason that Mr. Middleton has been
-required to choose publication as an alternative for production, in the case
-of these diminutive dramas. The trouble is not at all that his pieces are
-unsuited to the stage: they are admirable in technique, and—like all good
-plays—they would be more interesting in the theatre than in the library.
-The trouble is only that—for wholly artificial and accidental reasons—the
-commercial theatre in America at present is inhospitable to the one-act play.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Middleton’s one-act plays reveal a wide range of subject-matter
-and a corresponding versatility of treatment. No one of them is similar to
-any of the others. Yet, pervading this variety of subject and of mood,
-there is discernible an underlying unity. Each of them deals essentially
-with woman—and with modern woman in relation to our modern social
-system. Woman is, at present, a transitional creature, evolving from the
-thing that man considered her to be in the far-away period of wax flowers
-and horse-hair furniture to the being that she considers herself about to
-become in the unachieved, potential future; and Mr. Middleton has caught
-her in this period of transition, and has depicted her, under many different
-lights, colored with her virtues and discolored with her faults.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Many of the most poignant and dramatic problems of present-day
-society arise from the fact that the evolution of woman is proceeding more
-rapidly than the evolution of her environment. While individuals advance,
-traditions linger. Mr. Middleton’s favorite subject seems to be a conflict
-between an advanced woman and a lingering tradition. The author is himself
-<a id="page-47" class="pagenum" title="47"></a>
-a radical, and his sympathy is forever on the side of the revolutionary
-individual; but his technical treatment is so fair to both sides of the contention
-that it remains possible for conservative readers to rank themselves
-against the individual on the side of the lingering tradition. Scarcely any
-of Mr. Middleton’s women would be pleasant to have around the house.
-Since most of them are discontented with the conditions of their lives, they
-naturally make the worst of these conditions instead of making the best
-of them. Hell hath no fury like a woman in revolt; and many readers may
-dislike Mr. Middleton’s heroines more heartily than he seems to like them
-himself. But to be able to dislike a character is a proof that that character
-is real, and must be considered as a tribute to the author’s art. The heroine
-of <em>The Unborn</em>, in Mr. Middleton’s latest volume, refuses to have children
-because motherhood might interfere with “her work,”—the work, in this
-case, being merely a habit of attending to minor matters in her husband’s
-photographic studio; but the intensity of impatience with which the reader
-listens to her twaddle is an indication that this character is really representative
-of a silly type of creature that is not infrequently encountered in
-actual life. Again, in the play called <em>Possession</em>, a woman who has been
-divorced for adultery attempts to kidnap her little daughter from the house
-of her former husband, to whose custody the child had, of course, been
-awarded by the courts. Her adultery was inexcusable, because it had been
-occasioned not by an irresistible and overwhelming love but merely by a
-superfluity of leisure; and her attempt to kidnap the child was treacherous
-and ignominious. She excuses herself, however, by telling her husband
-that the process of child-birth had been painful, and that, therefore, despite
-the judgment of the courts, their little daughter belonged more to her than
-to him. The reader is, of course, annoyed by all this nonsense; but this
-annoyance, once again, must be regarded as a tribute to the reality of the
-author’s characterization. No heroine who was not a living human being
-could make the auditor so ardently desire to climb upon the stage and talk
-back to her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Fortunately, it is not at all necessary to like Mr. Middleton’s women
-in order to like his plays. One may admire Ibsen’s <em>Hedda Gabler</em> without
-wishing to be married to the heroine; and the pleasant thing about Mr.
-Middleton’s women is that, while the reader is permitted to observe and
-study them, he is also allowed to realize with hearty thankfulness that he
-will never have to live with any of them. The world in which his women
-move is a world of discontent. This discontent is truly representative of
-the present transitional period in the evolution of society; but it is not representative
-of that perennial reality of life that remains oblivious of periods
-and dates. At all times, the really womanly woman has been a lover of her
-life and has not found it difficult to feel at home at home.
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="NEWYORKLETTER">
-<a id="page-48" class="pagenum" title="48"></a>
-New York Letter
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="aut">
-<span class="smallcaps">George Soule</span>
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">t</span> would be difficult to imagine a more fantastic occasion than a debate
-in New York on the justice of the cause of the Allies vs. that of Germany
-between Cecil Chesterton and George Sylvester Viereck. The gods
-permitted it to happen last week, much to the chagrin of the Allies, for the
-hyphenated Germans took good care to fill the hall and hiss every offensive
-statement. Mr. Chesterton, an honest fighter and a clever polemicist, who
-has leapt through every phase of radicalism into the enfolding charity of
-the Catholic Church, deserves to be known for his journalistic achievements
-and his exposure of graft in high places almost as much as for his
-brother Gilbert. Mr. Viereck, a sublime egotist, has come into sudden
-favor with his countrymen by editing <em><a id="corr-18"></a>Das Vaterland</em>, although before that
-he had taken every known means to secure notoriety for a naturally obscure
-individual. He began as a poet of strange verse, both in German and
-English. When it became apparent that it wasn’t going to sell, he issued a
-last volume which he called his “swan song,” with the announcement that
-as this commercial age was unappreciative of his poetry he would write
-no more, and anyone who wanted a last chance to value him at it must buy
-this book. For himself, he was going to get in line with the genius of
-the century and become a Big Business Man, for he must make himself felt.
-He announced in a stentorian wail his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt,
-and was much chagrined when that celebrity would not let him trail along
-on the skirts of his ample publicity. Later on, when Alfred Noyes began
-to sell in large quantities, Mr. Viereck resumed his dictatorship of poetry,
-and by scurrilous attacks attempted to draw Mr. Noyes’s fire—and newspaper
-space. Now German Patriotism has lifted him to the headlines.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-If Poetic Justice was present at the debate, she probably did not receive
-much enlightenment on the questions which are now vexing her in Europe.
-To quote any of the substance of the debate would be an insult to her
-intelligence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A more serious event was Richard Bennet’s recent production of
-Brieux’s <em>Maternity</em>. Considering the deadly earnestness with which author
-and cast struggled to inculcate lessons, the apathy of the public in respect
-to moral instruction was pathetic. On the night of my visit there was
-exactly one normal “theatre-goer” in the house. There was a sprinkling
-of people who had long admitted what Brieux has to say, and went from
-“high-brow” reasons. There was a young society matron who had escaped
-from her husband for the evening and is taking an amateurish interest in
-social questions. There were numerous persons who are always on the
-lookout for a chance to cackle at what they consider broad humor. These
-<a id="page-49" class="pagenum" title="49"></a>
-blonde ladies furnished an interesting refutation of one of Brieux’s theories.
-In one scene various women tell their troubles, emphasizing the fact that
-all women are united in their sorrows and understand them, whereas men
-do not. Immediately after this the drunken husband returns and disgusts
-and outrages the wife. There were many laughs in the audience to greet
-him—but not one from a man. Even the blonde ladies’ fat escorts tried
-to quiet them while the rest of us were hissing.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Granville Barker opens this week with <em>Androcles and the Lion</em> and
-some of the other recent London productions. A number of the backers
-of the old “New Theatre” are guaranteeing his expenses, a fact which is
-a historical corroboration for Mr. Barker’s wit. When he was brought
-over as the chosen manager for that institution, he objected to the immense
-size of the house. “But the alterations you suggest would cost us a million
-dollars,” he was told. “If you don’t make them, it will cost you three
-million,” he replied, and sailed back to London. His popularity with the
-New Theatre guarantors has been steadily increasing from that day to
-this.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is even a rumor that if the present experiment succeeds, the
-New Theatre project will be resumed. This whisper aroused an answering
-howl from the American managers and actors. Why should good American
-money be spent in encouraging English talent, especially in such a disastrous
-season? they wailed. The answer was, in effect, the one that should be
-made to the whole “made in America” propaganda. What has American
-production done that it should be encouraged? When “made in America”
-comes to have any relation to honesty and intelligence, it will be time enough
-to invoke “patriotism” in its favor. In the meantime, the more disastrous
-foreign competition can be to our present shoddy products, the better.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This ironic year has produced few more strange reversals than the one
-which has brought Mr. McClure to the status of an employee of Mr.
-Munsey. When a man has apparently won his life campaign and written
-so engagingly of it as has Mr. McClure in his Autobiography, we begin to
-regard him as beyond the touch of the fates. Perhaps the present eventuality
-should be taken, however, merely as another proof that in our present
-arrangement of things it is less profitable to have a touch of genius than
-to become the owner of trust companies. At any rate <em>McClure’s Magazine</em>
-has apparently not profited much in recent years by Mr. McClure’s separation
-from its editorial policy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is one real consolation in a season which has brought such
-material devastation to commercial managers and magazines. When conventionally-planned
-“successes” don’t succeed, success comes to have less
-meaning. People who are after money in the promotion of artistic products
-are in their desperation more ready to try less “safe” ways of getting it,
-while the others have a decidedly better chance of gaining a respectful
-public attention.
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="MUSIC">
-<a id="page-50" class="pagenum" title="50"></a>
-Music
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="KREISLERANDSHATTUCK">
-<span class="smallcaps">Kreisler and Shattuck</span>
-</h3>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">n</span> certain realms, words are opaque and stupid things. In others—oh,
-comforting thought!—they seem to become transparent and almost intelligent.
-Following this out consistently, it becomes easy to write a page about
-Arthur Shattuck, pianist, and very difficult to say anything at all about
-Fritz Kreisler, violinist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Arthur Shattuck was a disappointment. His faults, in a lesser man,
-would have been considered the sign of mere mediocrity; but in himself,
-they are obtrusive and disagreeable. An exasperating contrast existed
-between what may be called his style, with its rhythmic sureness and its
-admirable perspectives, and his great lack of tonal beauty. He cracks out
-hard tones. Any particular phrase of Mr. Boyle’s concerto for piano with
-orchestra, when passed on from the orchestra to the solo instrument, lost
-its lyric curve and became flat and lifeless under Mr. Shattuck’s long,
-aggressive hands. When another pianist, Ernest Hutcheson, played the same
-work with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic, a certain
-phenomenon was lacking which appeared when Frederick Stock conducted
-the work with the Chicago Symphony. This phenomenon (let it be whispered)
-was a strange prominence of the brass choir of the orchestra in
-certain portions of the work which led one to believe that Mr. Stock was,
-perhaps, more interested in the orchestral accompaniment than in the performance
-of the soloist. If this were as true as it appeared, it is on a par
-with another startling fact:—that the public is really learning something
-about tone-values and the possible beauties of piano music. What else
-could account for the numerous confessions caught in snatches in the corridors
-and stairways, the composite of which was, “He left me cold”?...
-Arthur Shattuck is a millionaire.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A compassionate attitude toward Chicago was considerably relieved by
-the sight of the Auditorium-full which paid to hear Kreisler. Think of so
-many people being moved by such good taste! And, what was better still,
-they all behaved well. Kreisler deserved their tribute of attentive silence.
-Such violin playing hasn’t been heard in Chicago since the same artist was
-here last season. There is no describing Kreisler’s tone; a magic circle
-of stillness encloses it, which words have not learned to cross. In the memory
-it is a living beauty, penetrant and bewitching. Praise and appreciation
-are miserable things in the presence of this man’s music. Fritz Kreisler is
-a genius.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="BOOKDISCUSSION">
-<a id="page-51" class="pagenum" title="51"></a>
-Book Discussion
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="ELLENKEYSSTEADYVISION">
-Ellen Key’s Steady Vision
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>The Younger Generation, by Ellen Key.</em> [<em>G. P. Putnam’s, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">n</span> the present amusing reign of boisterous propagandic voices, it is
-good to find a thinker who describes the exciting truth in simple terms.
-The many are able to catch glimpses of the truth; between glimpses, they
-shout and wave their inefficient arms for the enlightenment of their brothers,
-and for their own joy. The few see the truth steadily and, because they
-see steadily, become so passionately enthusiastic that they are driven to
-express themselves in quiet, mighty phrases. Such phrases imprint vital
-ideas upon the mind of the seeker, while pitiable confusion alone results
-from the shouts and wavings. In <em>The Younger Generation</em>, Ellen Key
-tells simply and surely her conclusions about vital things.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Conservative judgment is at once a splendid balance and a terrific barrier
-in the world of ideas. Intense enthusiasm, when it displays itself, often
-combines blindness with sight. It has always seemed to be asking too much
-to expect in one person a finely balanced enthusiasm in which the conservative
-element does not hamper the divine qualities of youth—courage,
-impetuosity, and an ever-fresh perception. Not to be extravagant, but to
-characterize her fairly, one may say that this Swedish woman writes as if
-she possessed the virtues commonly attributed to both age and youth. She
-is vigorous, free-hearted, and calm—enthusiastic, fiery, and sane—a champion
-of revolution when and wherever it breaks the path for evolution.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Reaching deftly into anarchism, christianity, feminism, individualism,
-socialism, and other good glimpses of the truth, she secures the elements
-for a strangely consistent wisdom.
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
-<p class="noindent">
-Parents of the new generation will feel it to be a blasphemy against life—another
-name for God—that the beings their love has called into existence, the
-beings who bear the heritage of all past generations and the potentialities of all
-those to come, should be prematurely torn from the chain of development. Every
-such link that is wrenched away from unborn experiences, from unfinished work,
-was a beginning which might have had the most far-reaching effects within the
-race.... It is not death that the men of the new age are afraid of, but only
-premature and meaningless death.
-</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-“Women ought not to be content until governments have been deprived
-of the power of plunging nations into war.”—Ellen Key doesn’t ask the
-ladies to fidget and whimper at afternoon teas, nor to operate upon male-kind
-with their verbal lancets, nor to adopt circuitous resolutions about affairs
-of which they know nothing; but her suggestion, here as elsewhere, is simple
-and practical—so very simple that the ladies will smile down upon it as
-<a id="page-52" class="pagenum" title="52"></a>
-something delightfully girlish and unsophisticated. It is safe to speculate
-that not one of the smilers could, in her comfortable condescension, live up
-to this humble and powerful procedure:—“Women can always and everywhere
-ennoble the feelings, refine an idea of justice, and sharpen the judgment
-of those who come under their influence. The indirect result of this
-influence will then be that war will become more and more insufferable to
-the feelings, repugnant to the sense of justice, and absurd to the intelligence.
-When thus the eyes of the best among the nation are opened to the true
-nature of war, they will be finally opened also to the way to real, not armed,
-peace.” And as it is the secret and boasted and forgotten desire of every
-woman to influence a man, or men, these profoundly plain suggestions
-would seem to be sown in a fertile field. There is hope in this. Then she
-says, on another page: “To win over men’s brains to the idea of solidarity,
-that is the surest way of working for peace.” And this, being a more complex
-remark, will probably upset everything gained by the clarity of the
-preceding quotations; but it is given here to repay the time otherwise wasted
-by the many for whom simplicity has lost its god-like charm. Solidarity
-is a great idea, partly because it is something to be shouted about. But the
-first element in solidarity, human kindness, has never seemed “strong” to
-a shouting age.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of the firm demands which Ellen Key makes in her future “Charter
-for Children” is “the right of all children to disinheritance; in other words,
-their being placed in the beneficent necessity of making full use of their
-completely developed powers.” After reminding us of the strenuous manners
-of a past age in which the children of any conquered city were dashed
-hideously against the walls, she claims that “the judgment upon our time
-will be more severe. For the people of antiquity knew not what they did,
-when they caused the blood of children to flow like water. But our age
-allows millions of children to be worn out, starved, maltreated, neglected,
-to be tortured in school, and to become degenerate and criminal; and yet
-it knows the consequences, to the race and to the community, that all this
-involves. And why? Because we are not yet willing to reckon in life-values
-instead of in gold-values.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What a frantic rage must there be in the souls of the truly social-minded
-when this terrific indictment is pronounced in their hearing! But the
-appalling nightmare will go on until the frantic element is overcome, and
-the rage is focused to a point of white heat—an intense simplicity.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="TWOCONRADREVIEWS">
-<a id="page-53" class="pagenum" title="53"></a>
-Two Conrad Reviews
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>Joseph Conrad: A Study, Richard Curle.</em> [<em>Doubleday, Page
-and Company, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-“The business of criticism,” says Mr. Curle, “is to surmount this <em>impasse</em>
-between conviction and the power to convince.” Judged by this test, his
-study of Joseph Conrad is undoubtedly successful: it is hard indeed to
-imagine any reader reaching the end of it without believing that Conrad is
-a very great writer. A careful reading of the numerous and often lengthy
-quotations from Conrad’s books should alone convince the persons Mr.
-Curle is most anxious to convert—those who know nothing about them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But <em>Joseph Conrad</em> has two obvious faults. In the first place, Mr. Curle
-is quite too modest—almost haltingly so. His pages abound in such phrases
-as “I dare say”, “I cannot help”, “I think”, and the like. That’s all very
-honest, but Americans prefer the more lordly manner. One feels really,
-that while the critic may speak in such fashion to himself, he should give
-us only his conclusions—and no apologies for them to boot. In the second
-place, Mr. Curle seems to think that he is very brave in putting forth this
-book, that the critics haven’t appreciated Conrad at all, and that since <em>he</em>
-does there must be a real quarrel between him and them. Now as a matter
-of fact this is not so. Probably no living writer has had a fraction of the
-hearty recognition from the best critics that Conrad has. True, he has
-(until six months ago) woefully lacked anything like popularity and the
-material rewards it brings—but very few of those whose opinion carries
-weight will hesitate to agree with most of the fine things that Mr. Curle
-says about the author of <em>Chance</em>. Mr. Curle’s attitude simply arouses
-unfriendly antagonism on the part of his readers who know and love their
-Conrad.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So much for its faults. They are not of serious importance and should
-not obscure the really splendid qualities of Mr. Curle’s book. It abounds
-in acutely perceptive remarks—often extremely well put. In the course of
-seven chapters on Conrad’s Psychology, Men, Women, Irony and Sardonic
-Humour, Prose and the Artist, he piles up an overwhelming evidence of the
-man’s greatness. Is there a man alive, has any English novelist ever lived
-about whom one could wax so easily, so madly enthusiastic? True, to
-some Conrad does not appeal. They have never caught the glorious glamour
-of his pages—the solemn grandeur of his magnificent prose. Probably the
-surest way to win converts would be to compile a small book of extracts
-from his works, carefully graded according to their difficulty.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When I was still at college I was curious about Conrad. A well-meaning
-bookseller sold me <em>Lord Jim</em>. I tried to read it, but fifty pages was as
-far as I could go. I tried again, but with even less success. Then one
-<a id="page-54" class="pagenum" title="54"></a>
-day at Interlaken I found a Tauchnitz copy of <em>A Set of Six</em>. Before
-I had quite finished the last story I lost the book—changing trains. But
-Conrad has never since seemed obscure to me. A beginner in French would
-never try to appreciate the shimmering pages of Flaubert; nor would even
-the Yankee farm-hand feed his baby pie. More than any living writer
-has Conrad needed some one to <em>present</em> him to the public. This his American
-publishers have tried of late to do. Mr. Curle’s book will add to their success
-in so far as they manage to persuade people to read it. Except for
-those who have begun with <em>Lord Jim</em>, <em>Nostromo</em>, or <em>Chance</em>, I have never
-found anyone, who, having read one book by Conrad, was content to stop
-there. Mr. Curle thinks <em>Nostromo</em> Conrad’s greatest work. It is now,
-with Europe in the throes of a bloody conflict, that one realizes more and
-more how Conrad’s men and women, far removed from the problems of
-a Wells, a Chesterton, or a Shaw—problems which <em>appear</em> suddenly to be
-of very little importance after all—bulk great and ever greater. There they
-loom—like Rodin’s <em>Balzac</em> against the glowering sky.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-ALFRED KNOPF.
-</p>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>A Set of Six, by Joseph Conrad.</em> [<em>Doubleday, Page and
-Company, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-In this first American edition of his <em>Set of Six</em>, Conrad is revealed as
-an artist <em>par excellence</em>. You find no subjective emotionalism on the part
-of the author in any of his six tales, in spite of their subtitles—<em>Romantic</em>,
-<em>Indignant</em>, <em>Pathetic</em>, and the like. You see in him the wistful observer of
-characters and situations, which he presents with impassionate objectivity,
-with the impartiality of a painter who lovingly draws his object, whether
-it is ugly or beautiful, whether it is a villain or a saint. Conrad possesses
-a wonderful skill in setting up a background, which, at times, appears of
-more importance than the plot. He makes you feel equally at home in the
-atmosphere of Napoleonic France and of France of the Restoration, of
-revolutionary Peru and of a Neapolitan amusement garden. You enjoy the
-tales greatly, you admire the clever craftsmanship of the story-teller, but
-you close the book with an empty feeling, as if you had listened to brilliant
-anecdotes in a bachelors’ club.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-K.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="AMYLOWELLSPOETRY">
-<a id="page-55" class="pagenum" title="55"></a>
-Amy Lowell’s Poetry
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, by Amy Lowell.</em> [<em>The Macmillan
-Company, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-In one of his letters, Byron says: “To withdraw myself from myself
-has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.”
-Such a confession seems strange coming from a poet, and it is a confession
-of quite a different character which is written on every page of Miss Lowell’s
-book of poems. There one finds in every line the expression of a
-personality which tries to realize itself and succeeds in doing so. The unity
-as well as the interest of the book is in this very development of a strong
-personality, of which a new and original aspect is revealed in every poem.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What charms us at once in this personality, and renders the reading
-of the book a constant enchantment, is a most wonderful imagination—an
-imagination at the same time creative and representative, rich, varied, overflowing
-with images and themes. All that life and nature offer is the domain
-of this imagination; it wakes up at the most unexpected moment and seizes
-the unseen detail, giving us an idea of the wonderful wanderings through
-which it must take the person fortunate enough to possess it. Now it is
-a temple; now a church; now a beggar; a blue scarf; the distant notes of a
-flute; or the nocturnal noises of a London street, which starts it on its way.
-At other times we find the imagination at play with itself, so to speak, creating
-out of nothing a historical or legendary atmosphere, or opening a philosophical
-vista, as in <em>The Great Adventure of Max Breuck</em>, <em>The Basket</em>, or
-the poem from which the book takes its name. Each one of these poems
-(and several others also) has its own special atmosphere, precise in its complexity
-and different from all the others.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the style itself, in the development of the subjects, one finds the
-same quality. It seems as if the pen were too slow to note the multiple
-images which offer themselves to the mind of the poet. They accumulate
-themselves, sometimes, in a manner not unlike that of Victor Hugo, forming
-long periods in which the idea is turned in all possible ways, presented
-from all angles and in every natural or artificial light.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is not only the richness of the images, but their quality, which reveals
-the power of Miss Lowell’s imagination. We all experience at every minute
-of our lives an infinity of sensations of which we are more or less conscious.
-It might almost be said that we are poets in exactly the measure that we
-realize and enjoy our sensations. The real poet not only registers his sensations,
-but is able to awaken in the mind of his readers the sudden recollection
-of those visual or auditive impressions which have never before reached
-his consciousness. This is what often delights us in <em>Sword Blades and
-Poppy Seed</em>. It gratifies us to feel that we are able to understand these
-<a id="page-56" class="pagenum" title="56"></a>
-subtle comparisons, these curious and unexpected alliances of words, such
-as those in the first poem of the book, where, to define certain shades of
-porcelains the poet speaks
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
- <div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen</p>
- <p class="verse">Their colours are felt, but never seen.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-Also in the first poem entitled <em>Miscast</em>, where she speaks of her mind as
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
- <div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">So keen, that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by,</p>
- <p class="verse">So sharp, that the air would turn its edge</p>
- <p class="verse">Were it to be twisted in flight.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-To help her imagination, Miss Lowell possesses a faculty which belongs
-only to the happy few: the gift of words. The astonishing description of
-arms and vases in the first poem is but one example, if one of the best, of
-this rare gift.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is necessary also, in order to study thoroughly this interesting and
-complex personality, to mention the great dramatic quality of some of the
-long poems in the book. From that point of view, <em>The Great Adventure of
-Max Breuck</em> seems to me the most interesting. And there is much to be
-said of the sincerity and depth of sentiment in such poems as <em>A Gift</em>, <em>Stupidity</em>,
-<em>Patience</em>, <em>Absence</em>. All these short poems have something unique
-about them and constitute one of the greatest charms, and an important
-part of the value, of the book. It is almost incredible that a little poem like
-<em>Obligation</em>, for example, should contain such a world of thought and
-restrained sentiment in its ten short lines. I have chosen this poem as the
-type of this genre, because it characterizes perhaps better than any other
-this very special trait of Miss Lowell’s talent:
-</p>
-
-<div class="excerpt">
- <div class="poem-container">
- <div class="poem">
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Hold your apron wide</p>
- <p class="verse">That I may pour my gifts into it,</p>
- <p class="verse">So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them</p>
- <p class="verse">From falling to the ground.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">I would pour them upon you</p>
- <p class="verse">And cover you,</p>
- <p class="verse">For greatly do I feel this need</p>
- <p class="verse">Of giving you something,</p>
- <p class="verse">Even these poor things.</p>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <p class="verse">Dearest of my heart.</p>
- </div>
- </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-There is, in these few lines, a simplicity so naive, a sincerity so complete,
-and at the same time such an intensity of feeling, that we almost feel
-while reading it as if we were composing it ourselves. And everybody
-knows that this is the mark of genius. It is rare to attain such perfection
-in thought and in form as we find in these short poems, which stand on their
-stems, straight and pure, like wild flowers opening their hearts to the sun.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I should like, in conclusion, to speak of the very new and effective
-<a id="page-57" class="pagenum" title="57"></a>
-attempts of the author in the free use of all possible rhythms. The preface
-presents the author’s point of view, but I may add that she has been
-especially skilful in the adaptation of the rhythms to the subjects, a thing
-which requires great poetic tact and musical sense. To study this side of
-the book would carry us too far, for to do it properly a long article written
-especially on the subject would be necessary.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To those who love poetry, and who are at the same time interested in
-the progress of new schools, this book must be of the greatest value.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-MAGDELAINE CARRET.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="THEMANANDTHEARTIST">
-The Man and the Artist
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>Achievement, by E. Temple Thurston.</em> [<em>D. Appleton and
-Company, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-“Every man knows himself; but there are few women with all their
-experience of men who act as if they knew anything about them.” “For it
-is only in moments that men are dispassionate about women, while half their
-lives through women are being dispassionate about men.” Why is it that
-such glistening generalities prove invariably attractive to the “general
-reader”? Perhaps the poor maligned g. r. fancies he is getting “tips” on
-the values of his neighbors’ lives, or interminable “good leads” as to his
-own adventures. Perhaps the fatuous distinctions merely tickle the sex-vanity.
-Undoubtedly the same word-wisdom, offered in regard to mankind
-and without the alluring distinction between man and woman, would secure
-but half the attention. This attention seems no whit slackened if the generalities
-are manifestly unfair by reason of their fealty to traditionalism, as
-Mr. Thurston’s statements of this ilk are apt to be.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The foregoing generality is not unfair to Mr. Thurston, since this
-attractive bait is offered without stint in his latest novel <em>Achievement</em>. In
-fact, the theme of the book is that ancient perennial among popular themes:
-the conflict between a man and his loves; in this case finding its redemption
-from the usual in that the protagonist is the man’s work rather than the
-man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet, in spite of these sops to Cerberus, the book does not hold. It is
-but another of the multiplying outputs of today which are interesting to
-the critic alone, and to him only as a study in the pathology of the creative
-instinct. The lay-reader will find himself nodding over the crucial scenes
-or will lose his place time and again, if he persist in reading to the end.
-If a sense of justice will not permit him to judge the whole by a part, his
-persistence is tribute only to the undeniable sincerity of aim felt throughout
-the work. A stronger tribute, of course, is the mere length of this review;
-the fact, that is, that whatever of critic be in the reading mind is drawn
-to reiterate questions and puzzle over their answer, as to the reason for the
-<a id="page-58" class="pagenum" title="58"></a>
-falling short of this novel from the better standards, manifestly striven
-after.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The reader who does concern himself, then, with <em>Achievement</em> will be
-puzzled, perhaps irritated, by the insistent question: “But what is the
-matter?” There is a certain mastery of words; there is honesty and sensitiveness
-of treatment, to a degree beyond the usual; moreover, side by side
-with the theme proper, is carried a sympathetic and reverent revelation
-of the mind of a creative artist, in this case, a painter; a study alone sufficient
-to redeem the work from the stigma of triteness. These qualities
-should carry any novel into favor at least; might be expected to overshadow
-the noticeable unevenness of work, astonishing in an author of E. Temple
-Thurston’s apprenticeship. But the book fails to convince. The only lasting
-impression it leaves is the question, “Why inadequate?”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Perhaps the answer lies in the inadequacy of the theme itself. This
-may be voiced, in both its major and minor keys, through Mr. Thurston’s
-own words, “For as it is the tragedy of women when the romance of love
-is gone from them, so it is the tragedy of men, when their work is done.”
-Had the author juggled the words of that sentence a bit—had it read so:
-“The realization that the romance of love has gone out from one’s life is
-no more a tragedy than the instant when one knows that his work is done”;
-could the author have conceived this theme, the subject of achievement
-would have compelled a more worthy treatment. Had he been able to think
-of women and men as alike potent, whether creators or lovers, then his
-picture of the creator in Richard Furlong fertilized by the lover in him might
-have been adequate.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The greatest need of today is a pronoun of the common gender. It is
-beginning to be recognized that the generation now growing up to face the
-ultimate issues of living is one which will declare that spiritual experience
-is basically an unsexed phenomenon. Woman of today has been heard to
-declare that whatever charge can be made about man’s potentialities, even
-his propensities, can be charged alike to the woman. This is no meaningless
-attitude. Neither is it naive nor amusingly unscientific, when the young
-girl of the future lifts her voice and sings out, “Before she is woman or
-he is a man, man and woman are alike persons.” In this theorem, difficult
-to word, lies the fertile germ of suffrage, feminism, suffragettism, militantism,
-and all the other lifted voices of woman.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-No one of the women of Mr. Thurston’s portrayal is of value to herself
-or to the lives about her, except as a woman, a slave or queen of man, his
-toy or his inspiration, life’s parasite. The author would answer that he is
-not attempting a study of woman, but of an artist achieving by means of
-woman. None the less, if all the women who influence his artist were drawn
-in as hunchbacks, we would resent the distorted picture, the hypothesis that
-woman is essentially hunchbacked. Thus, since all the women in <em>Achievement</em>
-are traditionally paralyzed women, we resent the generic theme of
-<a id="page-59" class="pagenum" title="59"></a>
-art under influence of womanhood. In order to receive serious audience
-today, any portrayal of woman, indirectly or directly, must recognize that
-there are genuine women as there are men, who live in terms of selfhood
-rather than in terms of sex.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The denouement is the usual stock company curtain. However, if
-so many pistol shots per volume is a stipulation in the novelist’s contract, it
-must be conceded him that his telling of the murder is admirably simple. A
-more admirable simplicity is attained in the trenchant description of the
-murderer’s psychology after the deed. The author is to be congratulated
-for missing that “opportunity” for analysis, of which the usual fiction writer
-spins chapter after chapter, morbid, a snare to catch cheap horror and pity,
-a spider-web for flies.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That the scene of the last two pages should have been written once is
-regrettable. That these pages were not cut out hastily as soon as written
-is unforgivable in an author who desires so profoundly to be in sympathy
-with the artist who has achieved.
-</p>
-
-<p class="sign">
-R.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="ETHELSIDGWICKSBOOKS">
-Ethel Sidgwick’s Books
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-[<em>Small, Maynard and Company, Boston.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-I cannot let another issue of <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span> go to press without
-some mention of Ethel Sidgwick. Last year, with a sense of worship, I
-read <em>Succession</em>, the second volume of a trilogy devoted to the story of a
-boy-wonder violinist. To find such subtlety, such radiance, such art—to
-find such music!—in a piece of fiction was an unforgettable experience.
-Music has never been so richly treated in fiction—except in <em>Jean Christophe</em>,
-which of course is the master work of the last years. I felt that I had
-never comprehended any character so fully as I did little Antoine, and I
-still feel that way. This year on Christmas day, as a sort of special celebration,
-I read the first volume, <em>Promise</em>. It is just as interesting, though there
-is not such a brilliant concentration of art in it. But isn’t there some way to
-make these books known? They will never be popular; but it is tragic to think
-of their not getting to the people who would value them. Their publishers
-would far rather advertise their cheap fiction than to try to force Ethel
-Sidgwick on a nation that does not demand good work of novelists.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="OXFORDANDGENIUS">
-<a id="page-60" class="pagenum" title="60"></a>
-Oxford and Genius
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>Sinister Street, by Compton Mackenzie.</em> [<em>D. Appleton
-and Company, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-E. Temple Thurston attracted attention here before Compton Mackenzie
-did, but the latter is as far ahead of him now as is Gilbert Canaan, whose
-<em>Peter Homunculus</em> came out about the time of Thurston’s <em>City of Beautiful
-Nonsense</em>. These three young Englishmen know how to write English
-prose; Mackenzie and Canaan know how to tell big stories. <em>Sinister Street</em>
-is much too important a book to be reviewed in less than three or four pages
-at least. The first part of it tells of the modern man at Oxford—“a more
-complete account of the mind of a young man of our day than has been
-written previously in English, an account which presents some of the things
-that Thackeray meant when he complained that his public would not permit
-him to tell all he wished about Pendennis, and a good many more besides,”
-as Lucien Cary has said. It is so extremely well done that the second part
-of the volume—the hero’s reactions to life after Oxford—comes with a
-sense of forced writing. Perhaps the war had something to do with it.
-We shall try to review this book more at length later.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="MACHIAVELLIAN">
-“Without Machiavellian Subtlety”
-</h3>
-
-<p class="book">
-<em>The War and Culture, by John Cowper Powys.</em> [<em>G. Arnold
-Shaw, New York.</em>]
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-Among all the patriotic rubbish that has been heaped upon the book
-market since the outbreak of the European war, Mr. Powys’s pamphlet
-presents at least not dull reading. The brilliant lecturer unmasques the
-underlying motives of German statesmen who have accepted Machiavellian
-principles, “without acquiring Machiavellian subtlety.” He successfully
-attacks Münsterberg and other apologists for the Fatherland, who endeavor
-to present their country in the image of an innocent lamb dragged into the
-bloody struggle by greedy barbarians. Mr. Powys’ mission is a negative
-one, and there it ends. He falls flat as soon as he attempts to idealize and
-to glorify the Allies. His speculation that the present war <a id="corr-29"></a>is a struggle of
-ideas, of individualism versus state, of soul versus machine, is far fetched.
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="article" id="THEREADERCRITIC">
-<a id="page-61" class="pagenum" title="61"></a>
-The Reader Critic
-</h2>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="letters">
-<h3 class="section" id="MRPOWYSONDOSTOEVSKY">
-Mr. Powys on Dostoevsky
-</h3>
-
-<p class="note">
-(<em>A reader sends us these jottings from one of Mr. Powys’s lectures.</em>)
-</p>
-
-<p class="first">
-<span class="firstchar">S</span><span class="postfirstchar">hudders</span> of life....
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I have only one thing to do—to bring you into a strange mass of palpable
-darkness with something moving in it. Dostoevsky is really a great mass,
-a volume, not a cloud nor a pillar of fire nor a puff of smoke, but a vast,
-formless, shapeless mass of darkness, palpable and drawing you towards
-itself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Reading him is dangerous because of the inherent sense of fear likely
-to be accentuated in those who are a little mad and whose madness takes
-on the form of fear. We go on a visit to a mad house, to hospitals with
-Dostoevsky. But with him this whole world suddenly changes into a mad
-house. It is all haunting mad houses and hospitals filled with us maniacs
-of the particular fear we are subject to.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-(Life is all a running away—a distraction. We are running away when
-we are talking, when we are making love—then more than ever, perhaps.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In Dostoevsky we suddenly realize that these Russians are ourselves.
-If the religion, mysticism, liberalism, despotism they possess were only
-Russian there are excellent books written by travellers in Russia for us to
-read. But Dostoevsky is different. If I could but mesmerize you....
-It is like reading the gospels in childhood, being overrun and overthrown
-by fate and then after one has lived meeting the words of the childhood
-situations and making associations.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I do not think of him as an artist, though he is a great one. You do
-not <em>think</em> of him.... In ordinary life we suppress half the things and
-more we might say. Vanity and fear are the ultimate things. In Dostoevsky
-the people tug and scrape at one anothers’ vain nerves with adder’s poison.
-He gives one the sensation of discovering one’s self and betraying one’s self.
-He reveals as friends talking and discussing in the small hours of the
-morning reveal themselves to one another. The talk may be a describing
-of the animal functions of the human body. But in reality it is the psychic
-tingling, electric vibrations which the physiological structure exerts upon
-mind! Mind! Mind! Dostoevsky is interested in what people actually
-feel. He is more with people who have written diaries than with so-called
-realistic novelists. One gets from him a sense of perversion of human
-imagination.... He is the most important of novelists; full of ripples
-and vibrations of imagination. Everybody has imagination. The things
-we do are nothing. Imagination is the only thing over which Will has no
-power.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<a id="page-62" class="pagenum" title="62"></a>
-Nietzsche says that he got all his contemporary philosophy from
-Dostoevsky. He got from him even his idea of the inner circle of aristocratic
-souls who really rule the world, are themselves unhappy, and take with
-others to places which they (these others) cannot enter. Dostoevsky thinks
-that the secret of the world is in abandonment, perversion; Nietzsche in
-harness, stiffness, the gay, the strong, the beautiful, aristocratic, dominant....
-Nietzsche with all his reality does not describe life as it is. Zarathustra
-is a dream—impossible perhaps. But Dostoevsky does describe life.
-Nietzsche’s man is absolutely alone—has his own hell. Dostoevsky’s has
-that too, but in a different way. He gives the feeling of a third person
-where two are alone. Do not think that Dostoevsky is a mystic. The
-essential thing is that you have this sense of a third person to which genius
-appeals. Dostoevsky is a stronger as well as a truer one than even Nietzsche
-himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nietzsche is as a skater upon the ice, a dancer upon a tight rope who
-remains a white, balanced figure on the surface. Dostoevsky plunges—into
-a darkness full of voices. You must get there by a form of perversion.
-Every one of his characters is incurably hurt. Nietzscheans harden their
-hearts and live on the surface. All Dostoevsky people are weak. He thinks
-that only out of weakness will redemption come; abandonment to every
-emotion. In that he is Dionysian.... Dostoevsky I cannot put into
-words. Perversion; Disease; God is Disease; God is Pain; Dostoevsky
-depicts how Disease gives one illumination. We have an idea that we must
-be well. Even Nietzsche says that. The Greeks said it ages ago. Dostoevsky
-says “No; I offer you a new value.” He has a lust for fools—understands
-the mania that people have of making fools of themselves. God is Folly;
-God is Cruelty—perhaps an epicene God.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dostoevsky is a <a id="corr-30"></a>cerebralist. His specialty is imaginative reactions. All
-the lusts that have stretched their wailing arms, all the hopes, all the goblins....
-In sex as in everything else people are not what they are doing;
-they are in that vortex of what they imagine themselves. Dostoevsky
-understands all that. Those frank-spoken people who think they know sex
-are puritans on the other side. They have no imagination.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-We can overestimate what Dostoevsky has from Russia and not
-attribute what he is to himself. Other Russians are Russians—Turgeniev,
-Tolstoy, Andreyev, Chekhov, Gorky—but they are not as big as he is;
-perhaps they are more of the broader stamp.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-... Constance Garnett’s translations are masterpieces. The French
-are too artistic to translate Dostoevsky.... No one can approach
-Dostoevsky in creating a saint. Russia as the spiritual bringer-back of the
-world to Christianity—this runs through his works. He is <em>the</em> Christian.
-His books are full of translations from Scripture. He understands the
-underlying psychology of the gospels. Nietzsche said that putting the gospels
-with the art of the Old Testament was a crime in the name of Art. The
-Old Testament is undoubtedly finer art, but the New is psychology—masterly.
-</p>
-
-<h3 class="section" id="VERSLIBREANDCOMMONSENSE">
-<a id="page-63" class="pagenum" title="63"></a>
-VERS LIBRE AND COMMON SENSE
-</h3>
-
-<p class="from">
-<em>Clinton Masseck, St. Louis</em>:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-<em>Vers Libre</em> has no inconsiderable tradition in English verse, as Mr. Arthur Ficke
-has recently pointed out in THE LITTLE REVIEW. Its progress in French poetry,
-particularly among modern writers, is familiar to all students. And if we were inclined
-to forget or to forgive Whitman (meaning in politer terms to accept him and
-his followers), the recent verse of the Imagiste group and such writers as Miss Amy
-Lowell and Mr. Max Bodenheim in our own midst would be likely to force our attention
-to this interesting form—if I may employ this word in no paradoxical sense.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But <em>vers libre</em> is of the moment—new, if you will, in its present appeal. Its modern
-themes, its unique figures of speech, its wide practice, both in this country and in
-England, mark it as a new movement, or at least a new <a id="corr-31"></a>recrudescence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Anything new invites attack; anything new in literature perhaps warrants attack.
-If it can stand the test, by just such a token, it is worth consideration. But there are
-those to whom the new is always a thing to be attacked—because it is new, because it
-is inexplicable according to their own canons of emotion and intellect. Francis Jeffrey,
-with his famous caption on Wordsworth, “This will never do,” has his echo, futile
-and otherwise, in every generation of critics. And so we have Mr. Llewellyn Jones,
-in the January issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW, sending up his protest against <em>vers
-libre</em> in general and Mr. Bodenheim in particular.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Jones is markedly distressed. If he were not so much in earnest and so
-decently—or indecently—polite, so “suedy,” so suave, even scholastic in his handling,
-he might be amusing. He is also distinctly pugnacious and, as most pugnacious people
-are inclined to be, he is curiously inconsistent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In fact, it is a little difficult to determine why Mr. Jones cannot accept Bodenheim.
-(He is guilty of reading Meredith, “popularly supposed to be obscure.”) Because our
-poet writes of “a world of growing sieves, slim squares, powdered souls, cool, colorless
-struggles, the obstetrical adventures of white throats, and green and yellow dins,” and
-because Mr. Jones, in the smallness of his soul or environment, has never been able
-to concoct or to conceive of poetry couched in this garb—let us grant the idea behind
-it—he straightway announces “This will never do.” Wordsworth, after being so thoroughly
-“sieved” by the critics, still lives; the divine essence of romanticism was not
-killed by Jeffrey and his thunder-pellet phrase. Courage, Mr. Bodenheim!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet in a really admirable paragraph of summary as to the function of poetry and
-the relation of a poet to his audience, Mr. Jones lays down the dictum that “the poet
-sees the world as we do not see it. Consequently, he can put a new complexion on it
-for us. The world is pluralistic, and so are we. Intellectually we may be of the twentieth
-century, but emotionally we may be born out of our due season. Then let the
-poet of that due season mediate to us the emotional life that we need.... By
-his aid alone we may get outside of our own skins and into the very heart of the
-world.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The last words of this statement are peculiarly significant in this connection. “By
-his aid alone we may get outside of our skins into the very heart of the world.” What
-is the heart of the world? I do not know it all, emotionally or intellectually, although
-if I were to trust one of these endowments in order to render judgment upon poetry,
-I should choose the first. On the other hand, Mr. Jones does not know the entire
-heart of the world; nor does Mr. Bodenheim. But we may each of us know some
-little corner of this heart that the other does not or cannot ever know. For some of
-us poetry remains but the supreme expression of mere external beauty, for others the
-expression in consummate form of a purely intellectual process; to others poetry is a
-weapon wherewith to pierce the veil of externality and to expose the hidden but the
-real reality. The late William James once declared that we were standing on the
-<a id="page-64" class="pagenum" title="64"></a>
-verge of new discoveries in feeling and knowledge; that just beyond us lies a world
-of new adjustments and new experiences. Of course, in this instance, James had
-reference to our new appreciation and estimate of the value of mysticism in the judgment
-of certain phases of religious experiences. But the thing holds true even in
-poetry; the line between the poet and the mystic has yet to be drawn. I, for one, should
-not want to think myself incapable of enlarging either my soul or my appreciation.
-If anybody can show me whether in new terms or not a hitherto unsuspected and
-unknown aspect of beauty, I shall be content to accept that person. I would go further;
-I should be very thankful that I had obtained a new point of view with which to
-regulate both my emotions and my intellect.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-I, for one, saw and felt and appreciated the appeal of the much-discussed “sieve”
-poem. To be sure, along with Mr. Jones, I had previously thought of a sieve only in
-relation to ashes and garden earth—and even of that “little triangular sieve that fits
-into kitchen sinks.” But if some one can come along and convince me that this
-hitherto vulgar and despised implement has inherent in it the possibilities of metaphysical
-development, and that a certain person can be likened to a sieve, why, then
-I have learned a new aspect of beauty.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And hence, it would seem to me that Mr. Bodenheim has fulfilled every single
-requirement that Mr. Jones has put upon the poet. And the only reason Mr. Jones
-cannot appreciate these little poems is because, intellectually and emotionally, he is
-“born out of due season.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After all, “All art is convention.” The Alaskan Indian, with his grotesque—to us—totem
-poles, cannot understand the smooth and plastic strength of much of classic
-sculpture. The African Negro, with his Campbell-soup-can earrings and his Connecticut-made
-<a id="page-65" class="pagenum" title="65"></a>
-curtain ring bracelets, cannot appreciate the effect of simple unadornment.
-Yet in any case the point of view, the impelling instinct that leads toward
-beauty, is the same for any person, any race, any civilization. Let us be honest and
-admit this. Let us sincerely seek and discover the philosophy that guides every new
-movement, whether in fashion or food or poetry.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet it seems to me that we are too prone to accept poetry and to judge it from a
-too utilitarian point of view. We would make it stand the same test that we apply
-to religion, to household furnaces, and other things that have been long tried. We ask
-ourselves when some new manifestation of it arises: “Will it do the trick? Will it
-comfort and warm and sustain us in the way that we have been accustomed to being
-<a id="page-66" class="pagenum" title="66"></a>
-comforted, warmed, and sustained by that which has already been accepted?” Yet
-if a new form discovers a new idea, if it tears away the covering with rough and
-clumsy hands in order to show the emotions, a fresh significance or a bold interpretation,
-we jump back in terror and horror.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So it is with <em>vers libre</em> at the present moment. Because it shows us new things,
-and a new and perhaps at times an awkward manner, critics fed on the diluted sentimentality
-of Longfellow—or even the classic and obscure Meredith—revolt. Eventually
-they will accept it; they must. Those that are not fools must remember that history
-repeats itself; that to cite but a recent instance, Manet and Monet and Sisley, in painting,
-are accepted where forty-five years ago they were characterized as fools and
-madmen. After time has crystalized the unusual into the conventional, and the crystals
-are as common and as pretty as only time and much practice can make them, the
-critic, along with the man in the street, will be content to partake and to appreciate.
-It will be then too late; what was once unique and rare will be common and banally
-uninteresting; a new awakening will then take place, and once more the world will
-witness the same absurd attack of the critics.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In this connection, in our future judgment of <em>vers libre</em>, let us recall the wise and
-simple words of R. A. M. Stevenson: “The test of a new thing is not utility, which
-may appear at any moment like a shoot with the first favouring breath of spring. The
-test is the kind and amount of human feeling and intellect put into the work. Could
-any fool do it? Now, in this matter of depicting truth, there are eyesights of all
-grades and breadth, of grandeur, of subtlety, and art has more than the delicacy of a
-tripos examination in tailing out as in a footrace all the talents and capabilities of the
-competitors.”
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Go to it, Mr. Bodenheim!
-</p>
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-IL CONDE—A Pathetic Tale
-</p>
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-Five of these are practically unknown to American readers. Of “The Duel,” (formerly
-“The Point of Honor”) Mr. Curle, in his critical work on Joseph Conrad writes:
-</p>
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-</p>
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-The Nigger of the Narcissus
-</p>
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-“The sea, in his hands, fades to a background—sometimes
-smooth and blue—sometimes
-white and furious—but always
-a background against which are
-silhouetted the haunting figures in which
-he interprets man’s endless struggle.”—Chicago
-<em>Evening Post</em>.
-</p>
-
-<p class="adb">
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-</p>
-
-<p class="ads">
-AND TWO OTHER SEA STORIES
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-power of presentment, the marvellous
-faculty for the absolute creation of atmosphere,
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-the individual, finished style which these,
-Mr. Conrad’s earliest works, display.”—Sir
-<span class="smallcaps">Hugh Clifford</span>, K.C.M.G., in the
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-<p class="h1 adh">
-Published February Sixth, 1915
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-</p>
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-by CARLO DE FORNARO
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-years—the true story of the fifteen million peons who are making history, breaking
-tradition and waging a vigorous battle for liberty and common justice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To the student of sociological problems, Mexico is probably the most fascinating
-spot in the universe. Its problem is so complicated that very few people indeed know
-what the trouble really is about. Mr. Fornaro does. He has lived for a long time in
-Mexico, and his book, which tells of the overthrow of Madero, the campaign against
-Huerta, Wilson’s Mexican Policy, and other matters of immediate interest, is the
-result of a labor extending over a period of ten years.
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-form is disregarded
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-</p>
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-$2.50 net.
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-
-<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>
-... of good tidings and love <span class="underline">leant</span> for the redemption of the many through the ...<br />
-... of good tidings and love <a href="#corr-1"><span class="underline">lent</span></a> for the redemption of the many through the ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... <span class="underline">Hallow</span> caverns of cool blue shadow, ...<br />
-... <a href="#corr-2"><span class="underline">Hollow</span></a> caverns of cool blue shadow, ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... to the <span class="underline">descredit</span> of some of those most noisy in demanding the right. The ...<br />
-... to the <a href="#corr-5"><span class="underline">discredit</span></a> of some of those most noisy in demanding the right. The ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... Unbidden and <span class="underline">unwarmed</span> she takes us up in the round of her Dance and sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from her Arms. ...<br />
-... Unbidden and <a href="#corr-6"><span class="underline">unwarned</span></a> she takes us up in the round of her Dance and sweeps along with us, until exhausted we fall from her Arms. ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of Desire; but soon she <span class="underline">come</span> to Equipoise. ...<br />
-... If she gives another Need—then it is a new source of Desire; but soon she <a href="#corr-7"><span class="underline">comes</span></a> to Equipoise. ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
- (multiple cases)<br />
-... von <span class="underline">Rezñicek</span>. This was the pièce de resistance at the evening concert. ...<br />
-... von <a href="#corr-8"><span class="underline">Reznicek</span></a>. This was the pièce de resistance at the evening concert. ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, ten <span class="underline">violincellos</span>, eight double ...<br />
-... first violins, sixteen second violins, twelve violas, ten <a href="#corr-9"><span class="underline">violoncellos</span></a>, eight double ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
- (multiple cases)<br />
-... existence. A compound essentially of Tod und <span class="underline">Verkläring</span>, Tyll Eulenspiegel ...<br />
-... existence. A compound essentially of Tod und <a href="#corr-11"><span class="underline">Verklärung</span></a>, Tyll Eulenspiegel ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... Tod und Verkläring deprives <span class="underline">Schlëmihl</span> of any greater claim than that. ...<br />
-... Tod und Verklärung deprives <a href="#corr-15"><span class="underline">Schlemihl</span></a> of any greater claim than that. ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... (<span class="underline">Solvieg’s</span> Lied) ...<br />
-... (<a href="#corr-16"><span class="underline">Solveigs</span></a> Lied) ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... favor with his countrymen by editing <span class="underline">Der</span> Vaterland, although before that ...<br />
-... favor with his countrymen by editing <a href="#corr-18"><span class="underline">Das</span></a> Vaterland, although before that ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... to glorify the Allies. His speculation that the present war <span class="underline">as</span> a struggle of ...<br />
-... to glorify the Allies. His speculation that the present war <a href="#corr-29"><span class="underline">is</span></a> a struggle of ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... Dostoevsky is a <span class="underline">celebralist</span>. His specialty is imaginative reactions. All ...<br />
-... Dostoevsky is a <a href="#corr-30"><span class="underline">cerebralist</span></a>. His specialty is imaginative reactions. All ...<br />
-</li>
-
-<li>
-... England, mark it as a new movement, or at least a new <span class="underline">recrusence</span>. ...<br />
-... England, mark it as a new movement, or at least a new <a href="#corr-31"><span class="underline">recrudescence</span></a>. ...<br />
-</li>
-</ul>
-</div>
-
-
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