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diff --git a/old/66083-0.txt b/old/66083-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 408f50f..0000000 --- a/old/66083-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3772 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3), -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, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3) - -Editor: Margaret C. Anderson - -Release Date: August 18, 2021 [eBook #66083] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made - available by the Modernist Journal Project, Brown and Tulsa - Universities. - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, MAY 1915 (VOL. -2, NO. 3) *** - - - - - THE LITTLE REVIEW - - - _Literature_ _Drama_ _Music_ _Art_ - - MARGARET C. ANDERSON - EDITOR - - MAY, 1915 - - Poems Mitchell Dawson - What We Are Fighting For Margaret C. Anderson - Echo (from the German of Fritz Schnack). - America’s Ignition Will Levington Comfort - Solitude George Soule - Remy de Gourmont Richard Aldington - Who Wants Blue Silk Roses? Sade Iverson - “Mother Jones” and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn M. C. A. - The Poetry Bookshop Amy Lowell - America, 1915 John Gould Fletcher - Poems Maxwell Bodenheim - Some Imagist Poets George Lane - Editorials and Announcements - The Sermon in the Depths Ben Hecht - “The Spoon River Anthology” Carl Sandburg - Poetry and the Panama-Pacific Eunice Tietjens - The Mob-God “The Scavenger” - The Theatre - 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. II - - MAY, 1915 - - No. 3 - - Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson - - - - - Poems - - - MITCHELL DAWSON - - - Cantina - - You were the flame of a Pompeian lamp, - Wavering in the sea-wind, - Cosima, - And ever to the gale of me you danced, - Flickering out of reach.... - - I will return to Sorrento, - To the wine-room under the cliff. - - - Santa Maria del Carmine - - Here by the church door - A shriveled bat - Has folded his wings - And dreams of dead crepuscular delights, - Bat loves, bat orgies, - Tarantistic flittings through the dark. - - O fragrant beggar blinking in the sun, - I will drop three soldi in your hat. - - - Harpy - - O keen of scent, - You who have found me in my slough, - Not your beak, but your green eyes - Have torn to the center of me. - Ah, but I shall not slake them with a tremor. - - - Termaggio - - In the asylum at Termaggio - Reside a dozen poets— - So many colored balloons bobbing against a black ceiling; - Will none of them be caught - By the arm of a strong wind, - Down and outward through the open window? - - We cannot remove the roof at Termaggio, - In the sun our balloons would burst.... - - Perhaps we had better close the window. - - - Under the Cypresses - - Under the cypresses - No nightingales will sing this spring; - For I have strewn the ground - With the shards of broken illusions, - And I will build of them a citadel of austerity - With towers whence I can search the sky - For a rainbow that is stronger than painted china. - - Dear nightingales, - There are still the saccharine gardens of Verona, - Where the moon-moth waves his fragile wings. - - - - - What We Are Fighting For - - - MARGARET C. ANDERSON - -I have been much criticised for an article on Gabrilowitsch in the last -issue. I have been told rather violently that I didn’t know what I was -talking about; that to say Gabrilowitsch had stood still artistically or -that the music critics were deaf because they didn’t like Scriabin’s -_Prometheus_ was simply to brand THE LITTLE REVIEW again as the kind of -magazine which delights in any sort of snap-shot judgment that may sound -startling or “new.” But the fact of the matter is this: if THE LITTLE -REVIEW is ready to stand behind any of its judgments (and it is very -ready), I can think of nothing that has appeared which I will so eagerly -and convincingly defend as that article on Gabrilowitsch or my remark -that _Prometheus_ was extraordinarily beautiful. I can “prove” the first -in at least three ways, and I have some one in mind (a Russian) who will -write a poem on his reactions to _Prometheus_ that will make you all -wish you had imaginations too. - -But this is not important. It merely leads me to an announcement of a -series of articles—a sort of campaign—that we have been planning for the -last two months. If we are to prove that we have a real “function” it -will be this of depreciating values that have ceased to be important and -appreciating new ones that have emerged—or, as I should say, values that -_are about to become unimportant_ and those that _are about to emerge_. -In view of such a function I am quite willing to agree with my critics -that the Gabrilowitsch article wasn’t worth anything: it merely stated -things that are already quite well known, and a magazine that means to -announce transvaluations before the approximate ten-year period during -which even the uninspired come to accept them has no business to concern -itself with mere restatements. Of course the most frequent criticism -brought against THE LITTLE REVIEW is that it goes to artistic and -emotional and intellectual lengths no well-balanced person wants to go. -I only wish this were true: I mean, we haven’t gone any real -_lengths_—and that is just what’s the matter with us. We have made -statements that seemed fearfully radical and new to a lot of people who -don’t know what’s going on in the world; and I’m afraid we have listened -to these people and tried to “convert” them. We have wanted to convince -everybody—particularly those who seemed to need it most. And there is -nothing more fatal: because what everybody thinks doesn’t matter; what a -few think matters tremendously. I was brought up with a shock the other -day, at an editors’ “meeting,” when Lucien Cary said that though THE -LITTLE REVIEW had one of the requisites of the ideal magazine,—youth,—it -had the wrong kind of youth: the kind that has not yet caught up instead -of the kind that has gone ahead. After trying to face that squarely for -five awful minutes I was forced to decide that he was right. I mean in -this way: I know the quality of our youth is all right, just as I know -that people who write true things and live false ones are all wrong; but -the wisdom of it is quite another matter. And one of our big mistakes -has been a hope that preaching will help. - -There’s nothing pompous in saying that the thoughts of only a few people -matter. This has always been so and always will be. Every new valuation -has come about just that way—championed by a group and then endorsed by -a majority long after it has ceased to matter much. But for a magazine -that means to count—well, I can’t decide whether our predicament of -having got into a sort of Billy Sunday slump is humorous or very sad. -Hereafter we shall pretend that there are no impossibilists in our -audience. - -But the announcement: In each of the future issues of THE LITTLE REVIEW, -beginning with June if possible, we shall have a special article -attacking current fallacies in the arts or in life—getting down to the -foundations. Each one will be written by a person who knows thoroughly -what he is talking about, and each will be “true and memorable,” to use -Will Comfort’s good phrase. For instance, suppose we begin with the -modern theatre. It will be interesting to find why Clayton Hamilton -calls a play as false, as distorted, as unwholesome and demoralizing as -_The Shadow_ a great drama, and why Percy Hammond, who is looked upon -even by some of the discerning as a critic worthy to be trusted in the -work of spreading ideas, should have nothing but superlatives for the -same outrage. (To do him justice, Mr. Hammond did modify his praise with -a single naive sentence: “I could find some flaws in _The Shadow_”; and -then, to put his other foot in, “but the playing glossed them over until -they were forgivable”—which is precisely the crime and tragedy of such -productions). This type of intellectual blundering is apparent -everywhere among the critics of literature, of music, of art, of the -drama, and among the strangest of all human creatures—the historians -(“men who reserve their judgments for a hundred years”) and the -philosophers (men whose judgments are good for everything except to live -by). If you happen to be equipped with knowledge of the intricate -hypocrisies of the music schools, or the way the newspapers treat a -competent art critic, or the methods of a manager in making a good play -a bad one, or how dissatisfied the railway employees really are or ought -to be—send us an article on the subject. The conditions of acceptance -are these: You must know English prose; you must write it as though you -are talking instead of writing; you must say quite frankly and in detail -the things you would not be allowed to say in the prostituted, -subsidized, or uninteresting magazines; and you must be true. This -begins our warfare. - - - - - Echo - - - (_Translated from the German of Fritz Schnack by William Saphier_) - - Into the forest your voice flew - Clear and light as a bird from its nest. - From your mouth the sound departed - Swinging gaily into the black forest. - - It flew - Through dusky deep solitude - Mysterious quiet, pale night, - Gravely-bent tree tops, fairy-tale flowers. - It danced past - Queer animals and strange things, - It touched them with quick moves - And they were frightened by the gay bird. - - Green looks stared through the night - And angry phosphor glints pierced the foliage - Where owls were moving their beaks deceitfully. - - Here your gay bird was frightened - And fearfully returned - Beaten by the envy of the black branches. - - Shuddering it fell into the blue day - Tired, lame-winged, dead. - - - - - America’s Ignition - - - WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT - -... The quickened pulse of America did not appear with the outbreak of -war. It came with the winter cold, like all revival spirit—a strange and -fervent heat, breaking down the old, vitalizing the new everywhere. No -one doubts now—no one who can tear his eyes from the ground even for a -little—doubts now that the new social order is upon us. - -America, in opening her breasts to the agony of Europe, in her giving of -solids and sympathy, has stumbled upon the ancient and perfect formula -for receiving the greater good. In forgetting herself a little, her own -human spirit has been ignited. - -If someone announced that there lived in the Quattor Islands a man who -knew the exact way to bring into the world, not only the spirit, but the -action of _brotherhood_ and _fatherland_, there would be some call for -maps and steamship passages. If the Quattor Islands were not already on -the maps, they would presently appear, but not before the earliest -pilgrims had set out. And if someone should add that all expression of -the arts so far in the world is wumbled and imperfect compared to that -which is about to be, if a certain formula is followed; and that this -man in the Quattor group has the formula—many more would start on the -quest, or send their most trusted secretaries. - -And yet the truth and the way is all here, and has been uttered again -and again by every voice that has lifted itself above the common din. - -The wise men carried gifts. You would expect to give something for the -secret. You might expect to be called upon to sell all you have and give -to the poor. You would not be surprised even if the magnetic Islander -said: - -“It is not your frankincense and myrrh that I want, though I thank you. -That which I have is for you. I am more anxious for you to know and live -it, than you can be to have and hold it. But the mystery is that it will -not come to abide with you, while you are passionate for possession. The -passion to give to others must be established within you before you can -adequately receive—” - -You are beginning to see how ancient is the gospel. It is old, older -than that. It belongs to the foundations. Personally and nationally, the -law works the same way. That which is true, is true in all its parts. -There is an adjustment by which that which is good for the whole is good -for the part; that which is good for the nation is good for the man; but -each, whole and part, nation and man, must have for the first thought -not self-good but the general good. One nation, so established in this -conviction that its actions are automatically founded upon the welfare -of the world, could bring about the true fatherland in a generation; and -one human heart so established begins to touch from the first moment the -profound significances of life. - -Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is -beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a -patriot. It is not _my country_ that is of interest, but humankind. -America’s political interests, her trade, all her localizations as a -separate and bounded people, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new -social order cannot concern itself as a country apart. American -predatory instincts, her self-worship, her attempt at neutrality while -supplying explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her deepening -confinement in matter during the past fifty years, have prepared her for -the outright demoralization of war, just as surely as Europe is meeting -today the red harvest from such instincts and activities. For action -invariably follows the thought. - -Yet the hearts of men in America are changing. I do not write as a -religionist, but as one very much of the world. For the hearts of men do -change, and it is only through such changes that the material stagnation -of a people can be relieved without deluges of blood. - -The high hope is upon us. In being apart from war, America has been -enabled to see. One must always remove himself from the ruck to see its -movement. In the past six months, within these western shores, the -voices of true inspiration have been heard. From a literary standpoint -alone, this is the most significant fact since Emerson, Whitman, and -Thoreau, took pen in hand forgetting themselves a little while each day. -There is a peculiar strength upon American production of all kinds, as a -result of this very act of getting out from under European influence. - -England and France and Germany are merely national voices now. The voice -of the partisan is but a weak treble against the basic rumble of war. -War is a confession, as suicide is a confession, as every act of blood -and rage is a confession, of the triumph of the animal in the human -mind.... If you have received letters from friends in England or Germany -or France since the war; friends whom formerly you admired for their -culture and acumen, you have been struck by the dullness and misery of -the communications, the uncentered points of view, the incapacity of -human vision in the midst of the heaviness and blackness of life there; -if, indeed, you have read the recent newspapers and periodicals of these -countries, you will require no further proof of the fact—that a nation -at war is an obscene nation, its consciousness all driven down into the -physical, its voice tonally imperfect from hate and fear, its eyes open -to red illusion and not to truth. - -Even in America the voice of the nationalist is a part of the old and -the unclean. The new social order does not recognize the rights and -desires of any isolated people. Humankind is basically one in meaning, -in aim and in destiny. The difference of one nation from another in -relation to the sun’s rays, in character, country, environment, race, -color and structure of mind—these are primal values, the very values -that will sum up into the essential grandeur of the whole. Personally -and nationally there are no duplicates in the social scheme. The -instruments of this magnificent orchestra are of infinite diversity, but -the harmony is one. - -The spiritual source of all human achievement is already a harmonic -whole. That globe is complete. It is our business as men to make a -pattern of it in matter—to make the dream come true in flesh, each man -and each nation bringing his labor, which can only be bent into a -fitting arc, by the loss of the love of self. - -It requires but a little vision to observe Nature at work upon this -concept in a thousand ways. She always seeks to preserve her balances. -If a certain plant, or bird, insect, beast, man or nation, rises by -intrinsic force and predation to dangerous increase, a destroying -parasite is invariably fostered within its shadow. In good time these -two growths turn to rend each other, a mutual cleansing. The Prussian -war-office is a counter-growth to British imperialism. That which -survives will be humbler and wiser. - -I saw in a doctor’s office in Canada the picture of an English bull-dog -standing large against the background of a British flag, and beneath was -this line: - -“What we have, we’ll hold.” - -I found that the picture had a national acceptance in the British -colonies and at Home. Yet a child stopping to think would have seen -breakers ahead for a nation so lost in material things, as thus to -challenge the Fates.... There is a fairy-tale of a man building a great -boat for the air. It looked to win, and in the effrontery of -achievement, he set forth to conquer God. Just then a hornet stung -him.... - -All this to suggest that the new dimension of life must come from -America, if it comes at all; and from this vantage-point, the reality is -mightily appearing—in the new poetry, in the new novels, in music, -painting, and the crafts. The generation just coming into its own, -contains the builders whose work is to follow the destroyers of war. -They are not self-servers. They do not believe in intellect. Their -genius is _intuitionally_ driven, not intellectually. Just as steam has -reached its final limitation as a force, and is being superseded by -electricity, the limitations of which have not been sensed so far even -by the most audacious, so the intellect as a producing medium, has had -its period—a period of style-worship, vanities of speech and action, of -self-service, or parading, of surface show and short-sightedness, -without parallel in the world. - -For the intellect is a product of sunlight, its energy supplied by human -blood which dies. The new dimension comes from the fountain-head of -energy, and its first realization is the unity of all nature. The -intellect is as old as your body is; the giant that is awakening from -sleep in the breasts of the rising generation is immortal. - -The thing that was called genius in the last generation met a -destructive force in the material world, almost as deadly and vindictive -as that encountered by Copernicus. The voices of the few heralds were -scarcely heard, but there is a battle-line of genius in the new -generation, timed for the great service years following the chaos of -war. They will bring in the liberation of religion from mammon; they -will bring in the religion of work, the equality of women, not on a mere -suffrage matter alone, but in spirit and truth; they will bring in their -children un-accursed. - - - - - Solitude - - - GEORGE SOULE - - I was fretted with husks of men; - I cried out to be alone, - To be free, - To run in the wind. - Solitude was to me as the dream of a country well to a fevered man. - I ran away to be alone. - And there were the stars, and the sea, and the sun coming up out of the - sea. - And I went mad with the wind’s song. - - Then I chanted my ardor to the air— - But it came back clanging about my ears: - The stars were too near, - I was compressed between horizons; - I choked in the wind and the sun! - - In my wrath I strode back to men - And smote the husks asunder. - From them came forth - The whole of me that I had lacked. - For the first time I was alone, - Alone with all of myself, - In splendid peace. - - - - - Remy De Gourmont - - - BY RICHARD ALDINGTON - -The work of Remy de Gourmont is known and read in all parts of the -civilized world. Yet he has not a large circulation and a purely -commercial writer would probably be disgusted at his profits, but he has -an influence, especially over the younger and more adventuresome -spirits, which few writers today possess. One can—or rather one could in -the days before the war—hardly pick up any French review without finding -some reference to his ideas or some criticism of his work. In Russia he -appears to have a more considerable reputation than anywhere else -outside France. For, though one sees criticism and translations of him -even in languages like Hungarian and Roumanian, it is in Russia alone -that a word of praise from Remy de Gourmont seems to make a man’s -reputation. The English are far slower in their international -appreciations, and the Americans—quick though they are to seize on new -men—do not seem to have taken up de Gourmont with much understanding. -Mr. Ransome’s translation of _Un Nuit au Luxembourg_ was not received -with either appreciation or enthusiasm by English and American critics. -And though a savant like Mr. Havelock Ellis quotes from M. de Gourmont’s -work, and has, I believe, a great admiration for his personal -intellectual qualities; though Mr. Sturge Moore, in his book on Flaubert -and Blake, quotes M. de Gourmont among the great critics of France, it -must be admitted that few English-speaking critics have yet done him -justice. I question if the larger public has heard more of him than a -vague rumour of his name. - -It may be that he is thought too “high-brow.” I suppose every man who -gives his life up to the task of expressing his ideas, his character, -and his genius in a purely disinterested manner is liable to this -criticism. But there is so great a fascination in his work, whether it -be criticism or fiction, philosophic dialogue or prose poem, that -whenever he gains a reader it is not for an hour but for life. In -America especially he should find readers, for America, whatever -artistic faults and drawbacks it may have, has not, as England has, a -“ring” of reviewers who unanimously “queer” any book whose originality -or genius is any menace to their own stick-in-the-mud critical methods. - -The Symbolist movement in France is now almost ancient history. -Unanimists, Futurists, Paroxysts, Fantasists, and all the other “ists” -so abundantly produced by this century now face the “ists” of Germany on -the battlefield. And while they are there fighting out by bodily force -and not by words the intellectual destinies of Europe we may perhaps -consider with free minds the Symbolist poets and authors who are now too -old to take the field for their country and can only sit at home -“waiting for news.” - -Some of the “children of Mallarmé” are dead; others are forgotten; a few -still remain. Maeterlinck, Vielé-Griffin, Jammes, and Remy de Gourmont -occur first to one’s mind as the best living representatives of the -great Symbolist school, and of these the subtlest, the most fascinating, -the most modern is Remy de Gourmont. Along with M. Anatole France, -though very different from him, Remy de Gourmont is an example of the -tradition of European culture. Less derivative than M. France, or -perhaps deriving from less familiar sources, with as great an irony and -with a faith that seems more sceptical than scepticism itself, he has -extracted from the literature of each country and century that part -which helped him to develop and train his own character. He presents in -one person the manifold and often conflicting opinions and ideas of -modern culture. Reading his books one sees that there is a mystical sort -of beauty even in science and under his pen mysticism itself appears -almost as exact as a science. - -I said just now that M. de Gourmont was an example of the tradition of -European culture, and since Paris, we are mostly agreed, is the centre -of European culture, and since Remy de Gourmont is a Parisian of -Parisians, we may count him, I think, as one of the best examples of -Latin or West European culture now living. I rather dwell upon this -aspect of Remy de Gourmont as the man of supreme culture since that -quality has so suddenly and so startlingly come into public discussion. -It is extremely difficult to say precisely what culture is; and a -definition of culture naturally varies with differences of race and -temperaments. John Addington Symonds, in his interesting and -illuminating essay on this subject, defines culture as “the raising of -previously-educated faculties to their highest potencies by the -conscious effort of their possessors.” And it might be added to this -excellent definition that the feature of Latin or West European culture -which most distinguishes it from the culture of other countries is a -wideness of interest, a great general “cultivating” of all the faculties -of the mind and character as opposed to the extreme development of one -single faculty. - -Remy de Gourmont is indeed so admirable an example of the type of -culture I have briefly indicated that it is difficult to think of any -form of intellectual activity which has not at one time or another -received his attention. He has been a founder of reviews—among them the -famous _Mercure de France_—and an editor of reviews. He has written -prefaces for modern authors and for ancient authors—both poets and -prose-writers. As a literary critic it is perhaps not too much to say -that in his time and generation he ranks as Sainte-Beuve did in his. -Under his name will be found five volumes of _Promenades Littéraires_, -collections of essays dealing with the widest possible range of literary -subjects—from Petronius to Guillaume de Machaut, from the Goliardi to -the latest “roman passionnel.” His _Livres des Masques_ are one of the -most considerable acquisitions to the criticism of French literature -during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In these two books -will be found amazingly penetrating studies of men so diverse as the de -Goncourt brothers and Maeterlinck, while American readers should be -especially interested in his studies of the two Franco-American poets, -Stuart Merrill and Francis Vielé-Griffin. As an admirer of Huysmans, M. -Remy de Gourmont was naturally interested in the mystic, Christian Latin -poets. And the fruit of several years’ study of these authors was that -notable and unique book _Le Latin Mystique_. It is no exaggeration to -say that hardly anyone else could have made these writers interesting to -anyone but the specialist. One can almost imagine M. de Gourmont being -challenged to produce a book which would appeal not only to savants but -to the lover of general culture. This mystic Latin poetry had, until -Huysmans’ day, been almost entirely neglected by students of beautiful -things. But Remy de Gourmont, treating the subject as a poet in love -with poetry—not as a pedant or a professor or a book-maker—has produced -a work which is at once a criticism and an anthology of the literature -produced during those thousand years which we ignorantly call the “Dark -Ages.” - -These investigations into an almost forgotten and strangely attractive -literature were not without effect upon his purely creative work. This -effect can be best seen in his _Litanies_, a series of curious and, -verbally, extremely beautiful prose-poems, full of assonances, of -internal rhymes, of strange symbols, of sonorous rhythms and of -fantastic images. Again in his prose, in works like _Le Pèlerin du -Silence_ and _D’un Pays Lointain_; in his poetry—especially in _Les -Saints du Paradis_—this influence is most marked. - -In books like _La Physique de l’Amour_, _Le Chemin de Velours_, the -series of _Promenades Philosophiques_ and _Epilogues_, we have an -entirely different kind of intellectual activity—lettered, it is true, -but with that incisiveness and clarity of style and thought which mark -French prose as the finest in the modern world. In these books problems -of philosophy, of morals, of everyday conduct and national and -international affairs, problems of music, of painting, of all the arts -and sciences, are discussed with a brilliance and an originality not -always palatable to the gloomier and duller elements of French society. - -One must not ask for too clear a definition of M. de Gourmont’s -philosophy. He is just sufficient of a mystic to enjoy being -misunderstood, and of a nature so ironical that his most -innocent-looking statements are traps for the unwary. He is an -individualist—true to his type of culture. Perhaps if he were very -closely questioned he would smile and say that he belonged to the -“tradition des libres esprits.” - -In addition to these many works, of so diverse a character that they -might well be the result of the labours of several men rather than of -one, he has written several novels, one or two of which at their -appearance were the literary sensation of the hour; he has devoted much -time to the study of aesthetic questions and has published two or three -volumes on the subject; beyond all this he has produced a modern French -rendering of Aucassin and Nicolette, a translation from the Spanish and -a couple of original plays! And in his little flat on the rive gauche, -not far from St. Sulpice, among his books, he still writes every day -words of encouragement for anxious Paris, still finds time to observe -and reflect and to let the rest of the world know what is happening in -France. - - - - - Words Out of Waking - - - HELEN HOYT - - In the warm, fragrant darkness - We lay, - Side by side, - Straight; - And your voice - That had been silent - Came to me through the dark - Asking, _Do you smell the lilacs?_ - You, half in sleep, - Speaking softly,— - Indistinctly. - Then it seemed to me, - A sudden moment, - As if we lay in our graves, - And you were speaking across - From your mound to mine: - In the springtime, - Speaking of lilacs,— - With muffled voice through the grass. - - - - - Who Wants Blue Silk Roses? - - - SADE IVERSON - - The battlefields are very far away: - No friend of mine fights on them—and no foe. - I have not sickened at the battle stench, - Nor seen the tragic trenches where men die. - I am a woman, walking quietly, - And fond of peace and place and fireside cheer, - Yet here, afar from strife, the grey Uhlans - Have battered down my door, let in the rain, - And put me out, purse-empty, on the street. - - Strange, say you? - Chance of war! Samaritans, - I’m past all succor;—slain in my pocket-book. - My little shop for hats—chic hats, oddities— - Is shut as tight as Juliet Capulet’s tomb. - “Bad times” has stood me up against the wall: - “Bad times” in Uhlan gear, takes certain aim. - (And firing squads have always stone cold eyes.) - - All winter long, I’ve peeped out on the street, - To watch my little customers go by - In conscious rectitude and home-made hats; - Home-made to noble ends! - Not that they’ve less - Than once they had. They’ve more—a bran new creed. - Economists approve: the fashion’s set. - “How fine and sensible the women are,” - You hear the men commenting on the train. - “My wife is trimming her own hats.” “And mine.” - “I like to see the women suit themselves - To present needs.” “And I. It’s fine, I say. - Some little good comes out of this sad war.” - (Ah, yes, but half a sausage and a roll, - Was all the food I’d had in twenty hours!) - - _Now_ that would seem a feast. The cupboard’s bare. - Well, here’s a chance to put my luck to test. - Who goes a-roving when the pot is full? - Say, comrades, comrades, let’s set out tonight, - And brew our mulligan behind the ties. - No more I’ll sit alone to play propriety; - I sell no more blue roses, hear me swear - But when the snows are gone, I’ll scent mayweed - Beside the fences, till some purple noon, - I find the passion flower, in panoply, - Awaiting me, and I shall stoop and pick. - - But do not think I am without a friend! - I have my own familiar Imp for company— - The secret, mocking creature of my heart, - Which keeps me laughing when I’m set to cry, - And fleers the cautions I thought principles. - He’s captain now. We’ll see how he’ll provide, - For food and drink and thought, and company. - Let him advise what lens I’d best look through. - Nero, they say, chose green; fools like rose-red. - The Imp and I may stand for sun-bright truth, - And smoke our glasses if we prove too frail. - - Come hunger, then, and want, or any shame. - If Chatterton dare starve, why should not we? - We’ll travel far—though without carfare, dears, - And with shoe-soles that let in pavement slush. - But now I shall find out if dry-shod feet - Discount the wet ones. Live down the superstitions, - So I say. Ducks think wet feet are best. - Come, come, my Imp. Let’s start. Our fat landlord - Has locked the door on us and taken the key. - - (When you are passing by the little shop, - Remember one who wanted you for friend; - A victim of the war, without a faith, - But carrying a banner—a white field, - And no word written on it. - Yes, think of one, - Who lacks a watchword, and wears no disguise, - And arm in arm with impish laughter, seeks for Life.) - - - - - “Mother Jones” and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - - - MARGARET C. ANDERSON - -Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn have been talking in Chicago and -I went to hear them both, expecting to be captivated by the former and -disappointed in the latter. But it turned out just the other way. - -Mother Jones is all the things you have heard her to be—vigorous, almost -sprightly in her eighty-two years, witty, shrewd, kindly, hopeful of -great social changes, with snappy little blue eyes and a complexion like -a girl of eighteen and a tongue like an automatic revolver. You feel -you’d rather have her get after you with fire crackers, as she did to a -man in some Western hotel when she wanted to drive him out of town (and -succeeded), than to have her side against you in an argument. Right or -wrong, she would make you appear to be hopelessly wrong; and certainly -on any practical matter you would have a suspicion that she was right -anyhow. She is consistent and convincing. But there is one thing none of -the magazine articles has said about her: Mother Jones is a completely -simple human being, in the least flattering sense of the word. She -suffers because men are sent to jail and children are killed in strikes, -and she spends every day of her life working toward the prevention of -these things. But she lives on no more subtle plane of adjustments to a -difficult universe. You can’t associate her with any sort of intense -personal struggle. If temperament is the capacity to react, as I heard -some one define it the other day, then Mother Jones is as -untemperamental a person as I’ve ever seen. She acts; she doesn’t react -at all. She has neither a complex nor an interesting mind; she has a -well-informed one. She has read a lot—chiefly history and economics. She -hasn’t read philosophy or psychology, I think. She hasn’t needed to: her -knowledge of psychology is that sweeping and rather crude kind that -comes with years of hard experience in which there has been little time -for observation. If you asked her to sympathize with a man who had -killed himself because he loved too greatly, I can rather hear her say -that if men would keep busy they wouldn’t have time for such notions. -Life to her is reduced to a matter of two antagonisms: the struggle -between Capital and Labor. Other things, such as Art, for -instance,—well, she makes you feel it’s a little impertinent to expect -her to waste time like that; she is too busy trying to outwit the -“damned sewer rats,” as she calls Burns’ detectives or other obstacles -to peace and freedom. Mother Jones has a lot of effective phrases of -that sort; I think she wants to see if she can make you blanch before -she decides really to trust you; and then of course, as she says, “My -boys wouldn’t understand me if I talked nice and ladylike all the time.” -Underneath all this there is a charming old gentlewoman, full of -delicate courtesies that win for her the splendid chivalry of the rough -men she spends her life among. - -The man who took me to see her made an unfortunate remark. He told her -that I wanted to write an article about her, and asked if she wouldn’t -tell me how she got started in her work. (I tried to stop him in time, -but it was no use.) She gave me one scornful look and then flashed at -him: “That’s a woman’s question. No man ever asks me such a fool thing, -but women always do. How do I know how I got started? I was always a -worker—that’s all.” Another of her simplifications is that there are two -kinds of people—those who work and those who don’t. She seemed to put me -with the latter, and it was my instinct from the first that she didn’t -approve of me. She just treated me politely, and it was rather awful. -She kept insisting that women know nothing about Labor—which is _almost_ -quite true—and of course she didn’t neglect to mention her aversion for -the suffragists. But most of the time she told us stories, chuckling -heartily whenever she could say anything particularly explosive. She -described her recent trip to New York, and I remember her vivid account -of a visit she made the Colony Club. She said all the women came -tripping in on high heels, bent forward at an ominous angle that made -her think of cats ready to spring on a mouse. “I’ve got no time for such -idiots,” she finished. “And look at the crazy ones in this town, walking -in a mayor’s parade and yelling like wildcats instead of staying at home -where they might be reading and learning to educate their children.” - -That night we went to hear her talk to an organization of painters and -found her irresistible. But she did little except entertain -them—particularly with stories in which she herself figured as the -white-haired heroine, wading across streams in water up to her waist to -outwit the police, or forcibly throwing a Burns detective out of her -audience. The painters shrieked with joy at that, and it really was good -to hear. She had suspected a certain man who had been going to her -meetings, so one night she asked him to leave. He refused, but she -insisted. He said, “I won’t go and I’d like to see anybody who can make -me.” “Well,” she answered, “we’ll see about that”; and she stepped down -from the platform, took him by the throat, held him so tightly “that his -tongue stuck out,” and marched him out of the hall. He didn’t bother her -any more. These things, told in her blunt, snappy way, are -overwhelmingly funny—and stirring too. But what you like most about her -is her sudden falling into seriousness, and the way she says, “Now, my -boys, _stick together_. Solidarity is the only method by which we can -beat the system.” - -Mother Jones has no patience with anarchism: “Don’t talk to me about -philosophies of an ideal society that will happen some time long after -I’m in my grave. What I’m after is to do something for my class while -I’m still alive. I believe in accomplishing things.” She has none of the -anarchist’s hatred of government; she merely wants our present system -humanized. And she has a lot of little prejudices about people and -things: about Bill Haywood, for instance, who “divides Labor against -itself,” as she says—and says untruly. - -On the whole she is just what you would have expected—except that she’s -more amusing. There is absolutely nothing of the artist in her. She is -imaginative in the large way a child is; in fact Mother Jones is a child -in the sense a grown-up can’t be without losing a lot. - - * * * * * - -Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “the girl agitator,” has an even more consistent -point of view than Mother Jones, and she has the advantage of being -without prejudices. Her face has more subtlety, more interest for the -analyst, than Mother Jones’s obvious compressed mouth and quick eyes; -but it has little of that stamp of multiple reactions which make Emma -Goldman’s face such a fascinating “subject.” There is a touch of Irish -poetry in it—something wistful and something stern. - -Miss Flynn gave three talks—on Birth Control, on Violence in Relation to -the Labor Movement, and on Solidarity: Labor’s Road to Freedom—but I -could only hear the last one, which everyone said was the least -interesting of the three. There was only a handful of workers there, and -she was so informing that the place ought to have been crowded with all -the good people who think the I. W. W. is an organization of -unintelligent outcasts whose only competence lies in throwing hammers -into printing presses, etc., etc. Miss Flynn is more articulate than any -I. W. W. I have heard, and she is freer from the stock phrases that give -so many of the very earnest young workers in the movement something of -pathos. I like these I. W. W. people a lot. They are not only offering -an efficient program of labor; they are getting close to a workable -philosophy of life. They are even capable of a virtue no working-class -organization is supposed to be overburdened with: hardness of thought. -As Miss Flynn said: “Don’t pamper yourselves. It’s not a _sacrifice_ to -fight for your own freedom!” Of course this group has its camp followers -who do it no end of damage; but then the Socialists have their -“practical” fanatics who are so awfully practical they always look at -the trees instead of the forest, and the Anarchists have their soulful -members who yearn for martyrdom and blubber about the duty of suffering -for a cause. The best of the Industrial Workers are neither visionless -nor sentimental. They have no interest in being martyrs; they are -workers. Miss Flynn is of the best of these. - - - - - The Poetry Bookshop - - - (_35 Devonshire Street, London_) - - AMY LOWELL - -I well remember the first time I went to the Poetry Bookshop. It was in -July, 1913. I had read of it in a stray number of _The Poetry Review_ -that had drifted my way. The idea attracted me at once, and I determined -to have a look at it during the summer. There was something alluringly -crazy about anyone’s starting a bookshop for the sale of poetry alone. -Poetry is at once my trade and my religion. All decent poets worship -their art and slave at it, and I am no exception to the rule. But I have -my “afternoons out” with their temptations, and the greatest of these is -a bookshop. Here was the combination: a poetry bookshop. I turned to it -as inevitably as a magnet to the pole. - -It was after a visit to one of those large and flourishing -establishments where every sort of book is sold that you do not want to -read; where rows and rows of the classics you wish you could read again -for the first time flaunt from the shelves in gaudy leather bindings, -and a whole counter labours to support the newest and dullest novels, -and another is covered with monographs which instruct you minutely as to -how to grow fruit-trees, catch salmon, handle golf clubs, or bicycle -through the home counties. It was in one of these “emporiums,” after the -usual “We can get it for you, Madam,” that I broke into open revolt and -started off to The Poetry Bookshop. - -I knew it was somewhere near the British Museum. “Off Theobald’s Road,” -I told the taxi driver, and settled down to looking out of the window, -for London, whether on foot or driving, is a never-ending interest to -me. Theobald’s Road is one of those large, busy thoroughfares, which cut -across London in all directions, and off it, to the left in my case, we -turned into a quiet, rather run-down little street, Devonshire Street. A -swinging sign about half-way down it attracted me. It was shaped like a -shield and blue, if I remember rightly, and on it were painted three -torches. All this was determined as the taxi approached. That must be my -place, I thought, and it was. - -We drew up at the door of a shop—unmistakably a shop, because it had a -big shopwindow. It did not need the name, “The Poetry Bookshop” in -excellently designed, big, black letters over the window, to tell me -that I had arrived. - -I did not go in at once. I like to take my temptations gradually, -nibbling at them bit by bit and tasting, before gulping them down as -full-fledged crimes. I nibbled at that window. It was broad and high, -and the books were displayed in it in the singularly fascinating manner -which American booksellers jeer at and call “English window dressing.” -All these books were poetry, or about poetry; that is, of course, all -the ones that were not plays. There were long strips of ballads hanging -down, like 18th century broadsides, each one topped by a crude woodcut -in glaring reds, and blues, and yellows. The nibbling was so delightful -that I collected quite a crowd of street urchins about me, wondering -what the lady was looking so long into the window for, before I had -done. - -Then I went in, but even the window had not prepared me for the shop -inside. It was a room rather than a shop, for there was a smart fire -burning in the grate, and there were chairs, and settles, and a big -table covered with the latest publications. The walls were lined with -shelves, and under the window was a little ledge entirely filled with -reviews from all over the world. The familiar cover of _Poetry_ made me -feel quite at home, but the eclecticism of the proprietor was at once -evidenced by the presence of _The Poetry Journal_ and _Poet Lore_, -periodicals of whose existence I should not have expected him to be -aware. There was also _The Poetry Review_, from which I knew he had -severed himself, so it was obvious that the proprietor cared very much -to be fair. - -I turned to the shelves, and my surprise was even greater. There were a -lot of shelves, all round the room and even over the chimney-breast. -Every volume of poetry recently published was there. That I had -expected, but what I had not expected was that all the classics were -there too. Not bound into mausoleums, “handsome editions in handsome -bindings, which no gentleman’s library should be without,” but readable -volumes, for the reader who wants to read. - -There was not a bit of glass in the shop, all was open and touchable. Of -course I touched, and opened, and browsed. There were French books, too, -and Italian. It goes without saying that the book I wanted was there. I -know I bought it, and others, and came out laden and happy. - -I did not meet Mr. Monro on this first visit, and I do not now remember -exactly when I did meet him. My sojourns in the shop were many, and at -this distance have become confused. But I did meet him sometime, and -found an earnest, quiet gentleman, the very opposite from the crank. But -even at the first visit I had felt the bookshop to be not “crazy” at -all, but an answer to a very real need. - -It has been my experience that people who really do things (in -contradistinction to talking about them) are very straightforward, -sensible persons, without sentimentalism in the pursuit of their ideal. -Mr. Monro was exactly this. He was spending his energy to give poetry -the dignity and charm of presentation it had lost at the hands of the -commercial booksellers; he was encouraging poets and allowing their -books a chance; but he did not talk ideals, nor dress like a combination -of a fool and a wild animal. He was too busy to pose, he was just “on -the job.” And what “on the job” meant and means is best told by giving -the history of his enterprise. - -For some years Mr. Monro had lived abroad, in Switzerland and Italy. But -the nostalgia of home took possession of him, and he returned to -England. Shortly after his arrival The Poetry Society asked him to edit -a magazine for them, and he consented, and _The Poetry Review_ began in -January, 1912. Mr. Monro not only edited the _Review_, but paid for it. -Now the Poetry Society, like all such bodies, is conservative, and Mr. -Monro is sown with the seeds of radicalism. So differences of policy -began, and at the end of a year, Mr. Monro seceded from _The Poetry -Review_ and founded another review, _Poetry and Drama_, to be published -quarterly. - -But I am anticipating. While editing _The Poetry Review_ Mr. Monro -conceived the idea of having a bookshop, which should be at once the -office of the review and its various publications, and a shop. An old -house in Devonshire Street was leased and everything “en train,” when -Mr. Monro found that the inevitable breach with The Poetry Society on -matters of policy was imminent. He announced in _The Poetry Review_ the -foundation of a new magazine, a quarterly, and relinquished _The Poetry -Review_ into other hands after having founded it and edited it for -twelve months. - -On January 8th, 1913, The Poetry Bookshop opened its doors to the -public, and the public, always caught by novelty, flocked in. Professor -Henry Newbolt gave the opening address. The first publication of the -Bookshop, _Georgian Poets_, an anthology of the work of Lascelles -Abercrombie, Rupert Brooke, W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, James Elroy -Flecker, Wilfred Wilson Gibson, D. H. Lawrence, John Masefield, James -Stephens, Harold Monro himself, and others, had already appeared. This -book has been extraordinarily successful, and, in two years, has gone -through ten editions. - -Of course the book helped the bookshop, and the bookshop helped the -book. So delighted were the amusement hunters with the idea, that there -was some danger of the venture being swamped in the tide of fashion. But -Mr. Monro was too genuinely in earnest to be elated by his success, or -depressed when it calmed down to a normal interest. The bookshop pegged -away at its work and in March, 1913, the first number of _Poetry and -Drama_ appeared. This little quarterly is indispensable to anyone -wishing to keep abreast with what is being done in poetry abroad. The -articles on French poetry by F. S. Flint alone are worth the cost of -subscription. But _Poetry and Drama_ also publishes original poetry, -critical reviews, and English, French, Italian, and American chronicles. -It is an interesting paper, and if I easily see how it could be -bettered, that only means that I am an enthusiastic reader. Was anyone -ever sincerely devoted to a paper without feeling that with a grain of -his advice it could still be improved? - -Yet I have a sneaking feeling that Mr. Monro runs his paper better than -I should, better than any of us would. It requires a singularly -unselfish and dispassionate devotion to run a paper and have it favor -all schools, and criticise all cliques, equally. Nobody is quite pleased -by that method, but the public gets what it pays for, and I, for one, -admire a man with this quality of justice in him. _Poetry and Drama_ ran -until December of this year, when it was suspended during the -continuance of the war, and the lack of it is so noticeable that it -shows very well what a position it had already achieved. - -The Poetry Bookshop publishes as well as sells. _Georgian Poetry_ was -followed by _Anthologie des Imagistes_, _Poems_ by John Alford, -_Anthology of Futurist Poetry_, and various small ventures such as _The -Rhyme Sheet_ (the broadsides I have spoken of before), and a number of -little chap books called _Flying Fame Publications_, of which one I have -seen, _Eve_ by Ralph Hodgson, is enchanting. - -Many though Mr. Monro’s activities were, the house was too big for them. -So Mr. Monro fitted up some of the attic rooms as bedrooms, and there -his clientele of poets hailing from the country find a welcome and -inexpensive lodgings. Other rooms are used as reading rooms, for -readings are held every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 P. M. Sometimes the -poets read their own poems, sometimes other people read them. Verhaeren -and Marinetti have read there and many other poets, well-known and still -unknown. Mr. Monro invites those he desires, and as he runs his readings -as he runs his shop there is great and stimulating variety. The -difficulty with this sort of thing is the hangers-on, the horde of the -sentimental of both sexes who fasten upon an artistic endeavor and -seriously hurt it. It is inevitable that some of these parasites should -drift into the readings, as I noticed on one occasion that I was there. -But time will weed them out, for such people can never bear to realize -that art is as hardworking as, say, stonecutting. - -Since the war The Poetry Bookshop has been printing chap books, -published at sixpence. Among them are Maurice Hewlett’s _Singsongs of -the War_, _Antwerp_ by Ford Maddox Hueffer, _The King’s Highway_ by -Henry Newbolt, _The Old Ships_ by James Elroy Flecker; and for unmartial -relief, _Spring Morning_ by Frances Cornford, _Songs_ by Edward Shanks, -_The Contemplative Quarry_ by Anna Wickham, and _Children of Love_ by -Harold Monro. - -Mr. Monro is so stern in his idealism that, although a poet of -originality and feeling, he willingly minimizes his own production for -the sake of advancing poetry “en masse.” That is remarkable, and his -enterprise deserves all the success which the poets and the general -public can give it. - - - - - America, 1915 - - - JOHN GOULD FLETCHER - -From the sea coast, from the bleak ravines of the hills that lift their -escarpments towards the sky that pours down pitiless threads of -sunlight, whirls over chill, clinging tentacles of rain, smashes hard -buffets of huge wind, sifts fine, quivering drifts of snow, thrashes -with thunder and with hail, uncurls its great sodden, flapping curtains -before the gale—from the marshlands, from the banks of slow rivers, from -the still brown plateaus, from the midst of steaming valleys, from the -wide bays ringed with peaks, a thousand cities reek into the sky. -Through a million vents the smell of cookery overflows. It rises upward -day and night in strange, tragic black rows of columns that glow and -make the stars quiver and dance and darken the sunlight. - -Green rivers of corn, golden seas of wheat, white lakes of cotton meet -and fuse and inter-cross. Cattle string across in frightened procession: -multitudes on multitudes of horses, black, dun, grey, gallop away after -them, jarring the earth with their hoofs, beating up dust in heavy, -fluffy masses. Far away the sun lies still over broad patches of -silence, sparsely green, where an eagle hovers, or an antelope starts -up, or a sly, half-starving coyote is seen. The sun looks into yellow -castles wedged in the cliff that were old when the first explorers saw -them, and on white bulging palaces tinselled with marble and gold. The -sun sees engines that rattle and cough, black derricks that wave their -arms in arcs aloft, crazy log cabins that topple into the marsh. On -every side are symbols of man’s desire, made with his hands, hurried, -glorious, sordid, tragic, clashing, insane; the sun looks and does not -understand but pours over them its heat and cold, and rain and light, -and lightning, always the same. - -Immense machines are clamoring, rattling, battling, wheeling, screaming, -heaving, weaving. The wheels bound and groan and roar and waver and -snap—and go on as before. Between the cities, over plain and hill, reel -double paths of shining steel, where screaming locomotives pass like -black shuttles leaving great trails of smoke amid the wheat, the cattle, -the corn, the cotton, the sordid, hideous factory shafts, the fleet -masses of plunging and galloping stallions. Their forces are never spent -or tired, for, nervously above them, earth is laced and wired with -crackling, chattering, singing, whispering electricity. They fly from -city to city, and the sky is scribbled above them with childish grey -gigantic scrawls, amid which the sun wabbles and crawls. And over all -shoot backward and forward words that walk in air, and perhaps not long -will the upper spaces be still, but soon be filled with racing lines of -strong black bird-machines bearing men on their backs. Purring autos -squawk and squeal, and spray and flutter, pale flashes through the rack. -Red, and black and yellow, the earth takes on its coat of colors, from -the struggle of a hundred million hands. It is a palimpsest which no one -reads or understands, which none has time to heed, a loom-frame woven -over with interspersed and tangled threads of which the meaning is lost, -from which the pattern hangs in shreds. - -Amid all this, men struggle, surge, call out, fall choking, toil with -backs bent over the earth in black arcs. Crowds of them clatter, -scramble, bustle, push, and drift away. They creep, black, greasy -masses, out of the earth like ants; they swing out on great frozen -blocks of steel or marble; they saunter in some forgotten place; they -yawn with the weariness of little towns. Men, brown, black, yellow, -pallid with fatigue, ruddy with gluttony, blotched with disease, swarm -and waver back and forth, east, west, south, north. Crackling twigs of -dripping forests mark their feet. Red wet furrowed plains receive their -pains. Grey, hungry factory towns bellow out through steam-filled lungs -for them each morning. Prison gates grate slowly, hospital beds spread -stateliness, insane asylums gibber through their windows. They hustle -and shovel, piling heaps of hovels, and now and then, as if in mockery, -some coppery tower that seems as if it would split its sky with its -majesty. They are in a great shallow sea, crinkling uneasily as if some -giant’s body were wallowing beneath. Some single impulse creaks through -them, pouring out its breath through the chimneys, scattering itself -over the fields, closing itself in behind the doors. It is one great, -vague, inchoate organism, scarcely feeling its pulse as yet, rolling in -the belly of the world, waiting its hour of birth. Earth is heaped about -it; still it eats the earth away, red covering after red covering, day -on day. Now it half timidly peeps out, now withdraws itself again. And -ever the sky pours on it heat and rain, and wind, and light, and -lightning, and hail, shaping it, making it less frail, more fit to wake -and take its place in the world. - -But over there, beyond the seas, where for years the war flags have been -stacked and furled, comes the crack of a pistol followed by faint -cheers. And now a smeary gloom appears; it seems to swell from out the -earth; it bulges in greenish folds above the horizon, and in its depths -are flashes from far-off guns. Suddenly from the heart of the cloud, -which the cowed world watches, holding its breath, come thick insensate -hammer-blows that split the core of earth asunder—the iron cannon -unleashed for the dance of death. Deeper and deeper the noise unrolls in -a vast salute to the new world from the old. It rises higher and higher, -covering the sea with its tumult, and filling the sky with gouts and -spatters of crimson fire. North, south, east, west, all the craters are -emptying out their vitals on earth’s breast. But the immensity of the -troubled continent stirs not, nor gives to the world the life that is -restlessly heaving beneath it. - -The centuries sit with hands on their knees, wearing on weary foreheads -their iron-crowned destinies. The sun glares, the rain spatters, the -thunder tramples his drums, the wind, rushing, hums its scorn; but the -being—the thing that will master all the ages—still hesitates to be -born. The great derricks, black and frozen, lift their arms in mid air; -the locomotives hoot and mutter in despair; the shuttles clatter and -clamor and hammer at the woof day and night. The black flight of -priceless instants reels and rebounds and shivers and crawls, while -without the uproar of the cannon calls like black seas battering the -earth, grinding, sweeping, flickering, pounding, pounding, pounding, in -the increasing throes of birth. But still the thing will -not arrive. Still it refuses at the very gates of life. -America—America—blood-stained and torn with choked, convulsive sighs, -perhaps too late thou shalt arise, perhaps in vain shalt seek to rule -the earth! - - - - - Poems - - - MAXWELL BODENHEIM - - - Silence - - The wordless dream of the fire; - The white clock dropping gray minutes from its placid lips; - The breathing of women, like the birth of little winds; - The muttering of the man in the next room, painting a landscape; - I threw them together with a jerk of my soul-wrist, - And had silence—a swaying sound - Made of the death of the others. - - - A Head - - Her head was a morning in April. - Loose, livid mist arose from cold ground - And revealed two tired shepherds with lanterns, - Standing above the wrinkled red blankets they had lain on... - Then came the morning light—her smile. - - - The Operation - - With eyes of radium, and beard the color of wet sand, - The doctor unlocked his instrument case as carelessly - As a child opens an old box of blocks, - And almost silently whistled something out of “Aida.” - And the nurses—bits of sky with thick clouds— - Chattered about patients and hummed frayed songs. - But when the still body on the little cart came, - The lips of the doctor became stiff and trim - (Bows of ribbon turning to circles of stone) - And the nurses were no longer women: - Were sexless, with tapering fingers and metal eyes... - The doctor made the incision and checked the blood: - And I thought of a miner, half-reverently, half-wearily cutting soft - earth, - Picking out lumps of dead silver... - But the picture changed when the doctor sewed up the wound, - And I saw a middle-aged woman gravely mending a limp rag... - The little cart disappeared, - And the doctor locked his instrument case as carelessly - As a child closes an old box of blocks: - And the nurses were once more bits of sky with thick clouds. - - - - - Some Imagist Poets - - - GEORGE LANE - -Some months ago, in these pages, Mr. Witter Bynner pointed out that -“Imagism” was derived from a Japanese poetical form, the name of which -Mr. Bynner regretted that he had forgotten. This name is “Hokku,” and -undoubtedly the Japanese Hokku poetry was the model upon which much of -the work in the first Imagist Anthology was formed, notably the -contributions of Mr. Ezra Pound. There was Greek influence, too, in that -first collection. But the whole volume showed a remarkable desire -towards perfection and clarity of utterance, and a delicate perception -of beauty. - -There were few poetry lovers who did not taste its fine, astringent -flavour, but its qualities were at once its faults. It was beautiful -work, but too tenuous ever to become a great art, said the objectors. It -was incapable of embracing many of the elements of life and poetry. The -Imagists must remain side-tracked, and therefore, clever though they -were, they could not be of real importance. - -But it seems that Imagism was more virile, more capable of growth, than -was supposed. The jejune maledictions and assertions of their chief -spokesman, Mr. Pound, have done so much to make the group ridiculous -that it is with a feeling of surprise that we find this volume a great -advance upon its predecessor. - -Here is the work of six poets, four of whom were represented in the -first anthology. In an interesting preface they state their poetical -theories, which are much the same as those printed so often in _Poetry_. -But here the tenets are soberly and sensibly presented, and the whole -preface is dignified and worthy of consideration. Clearly the Imagists -are growing up. - -It is hardly necessary to rehearse here the Imagist creed. It has been -discussed, with more or less hostility, in many reviews. But certainly, -in reading this preface, the hostility suddenly vanishes, and the -reviewer finds himself wondering if perhaps, after all, this movement is -not one of most unusual significance. - -Briefly, these poets call themselves Imagists because their object is to -present an “image”; they believe “that poetry should render particulars -exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and -sonorous”; they desire “to use the language of common speech,” and “to -employ always the _exact_ word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely -decorative word.” They wish “to produce poetry that is hard and clear, -never blurred nor indefinite”; and, finally, they are convinced that -“concentration is of the very essence of poetry.” - -Brave words, excellent aims and hard enough of attainment. Again, these -poets agree to allow absolute freedom of subject, and, with a little dig -at some of their contemporaries, they say, “It is not good art to write -badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad art to -write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value -of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so -uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.” - -That is a wholesome point of view, but indeed the Imagists have hardly -erred on the side of too great a preoccupation with modern life. In fact -this volume is noteworthy as showing a more personal, a less literary, -outlook on life. - -The first Imagist Anthology contained the work of ten poets. Some were -represented by a number of poems, some by only one. In this new volume -only four of those poets are represented. But what is remarkable is that -they are not all the one poem authors. On the contrary, Richard -Aldington and H. D. had more poems in the first anthology than anyone -else in the volume, yet here are Richard Aldington and H. D. subscribing -to an arrangement which gives each poet approximately the same amount of -space. “Also,” says the preface, “to avoid any appearance of precedence, -they (the poets included) have been put in alphabetical order.” So art -is to come before self-advertisement. Happy omen! With such ideals the -group should go far. Six young poets with so much talent, devotion, and -singleness of purpose, is a phenomenon to be noticed. - -Perhaps this is the key to the “differences of taste and judgment” which -have divorced these poets from the others of the first anthology. They -go on to say that “growing tendencies are forcing them along different -paths.” We can only guess at the tendencies, as the poems in this book -show them, and it is not our business to probe farther into a schism -which is touched upon so lightly and quietly in this admirable preface. - -The six poets of this little anthology are: Richard Aldington, H. D., -John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, D. H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell. It is -quite easy to see why “mutual artistic sympathy” binds these young -people together. But how extraordinarily individual they are, just the -same! From the exquisite, gem-like poems of H. D., to the organ music of -Amy Lowell in _The Bombardment_, with the graceful, tender, often -humorous work of Richard Aldington and the tragic earnestness of D. H. -Lawrence, set off by the rich imagination of John Gould Fletcher, and -the poetic realism, touched with a charming intimateness, of F. S. -Flint. - -Richard Aldington’s contributions begin with _Childhood_, a study of a -lonely little boy in a horribly dull English town. It is full of -wistfulness, for the little boy is very real, and the detail is -admirably managed. The little boy is shut up in the ugly town, like a -chrysalis in a matchbox: - - I hate that town; ... - There were always clouds, smoke, rain - In that dingy little valley. - It rained; it always rained. - I think I never saw the sun until I was nine— - And then it was too late; - Everything’s too late after the first seven years. - -That is very vivid. So, too, is the description of the contents of the -large tin box in the attic. But Mr. Aldington never allows the -descriptions to usurp the poem; he keeps them properly subordinated to -his theme, the loneliness of the child. - -Fine as this poem is, it seems more experimental than Mr. Aldington’s -shorter work. Long poems require a different technique from short poems, -and perhaps Mr. Aldington has not yet become quite master of it. It is -in the short poems that he is so eminently successful. - -_The Poplar_ is an almost perfect poem of its kind. A complete “image,” -and with that fine, poetic imagination which is the hall-mark of Mr. -Aldington’s best work. What could be more beautiful than this: - - I know that the white wind loves you, - Is always kissing you and turning up - The white lining of your green petticoat. - The sky darts through you like blue rain, - And the grey rain drips on your flanks - And loves you. - And I have seen the moon - Slip his silver penny into your pocket - As you straightened your hair; - And the white mist curling and hesitating - Like a bashful lover about your knees. - -_The Poplar_ is, on the whole, the best poem of Mr. Aldington’s in the -book, but _The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time_ runs it close. And -here we have that divine gift of poetical humor which is another of Mr. -Aldington’s rare qualities. Space alone prevents me from quoting it. But -if I put these two first, where shall I put _Round-Pond_, with its sun -“shining upon the water like a scattering of gold crocus-petals”? - -Mr. Aldington has advanced in his art. In spite of the _Faun_ and -_Lemures_, he has sloughed off much of the Greek mannerism which marred -his work in the first anthology. The training which his Greek studies -have given him, is here put to excellent and individual use. One looks -for much from him in the future. - -H. D.’s poems are undoubtedly the most perfect in the book. There is -nothing broad, nothing varied about her attempts, but what she tries for -she succeeds in doing, absolutely. But in her work, too, we find a -grateful change going on. The stage properties are no longer exclusively -Greek. In fact, only one poem of her seven has anything obviously Greek -about it. There is nothing specifically inartistic in this transplanting -of the imagery of another place and time into one’s work. But when an -English poet fills every poem full of Greek names and Greek devices, the -result is intense weariness on the part of the reader. The poems may be -beautiful, but this foreign flavour gives them a sort of chilling -quality. One cannot help feeling that the poet is straining after a -poetical effect, and that stands in the way of a complete sympathy -between poet and reader. - -H. D. is too much of an artist not to have realized this, and in these -new poems (with the exception I have mentioned), there is no hint of -direct preoccupation with the Greek in title or text. Yet the poems are -so completely Greek that they might be translations from some -newly-discovered papyrus. And still, in reading them, one feels that the -sincerity of the artist is not to be questioned. Here is no striving -after effect, but a complete saturation of a personality in a past mode. -If one believed in reincarnations, one could say, and be certain, that -H. D. was the reincarnation of some dead Greek singer. The Greek habit -sits upon her as easily as a dress, loosened by constant wear. It is -undubitably hers. To adopt another speech would be an unpardonable -artificiality. Realizing this, and not making the mistake that so many -reviewers have done in considering her a copyist, we must admit that H. -D.’s poems attain a perfection which is not to be found in the work of -any other modern poet. This garland of sea flowers is a masterpiece of -pure beauty. I have only space to quote one of these poems, but it shall -be quoted entire. - - - Sea Iris - - Weed, moss-weed - root tangled in sand, - sea iris, brittle flower, - one petal like a shell - is broken, - and you print a shadow - like a thin twig. - - Fortunate one, - scented and stinging, - rigid myrrh-bud, - camphor-flower, - sweet and salt—you are wind - in our nostrils. - - - II. - - Do the murex-fishers - drench you as they pass? - Do your roots drag up colour - from the sand? - Have they slipped gold under you; - rivets of gold? - - Band of iris-flowers - above the waves, - you are painted blue, - painted like a fresh prow - stained among the salt weeds. - -H. D. has her limitations, as I said before. They are the most obvious -thing about her, except her perfection. But it is so ridiculous to cavil -at them, as it would be to deny the loveliness of one of the sea flowers -she writes about, because it is not a forest of lofty trees. - -To pass from H. D. to Mr. John Gould Fletcher is something in the nature -of a shock. It is a good deal like plunging into the ocean from a warm, -sunny cliff. One’s ears, and nose, and mouth, are filled with rushing -water. One feels in the grasp of an overwhelming power, and one -struggles to the surface, breathless, half-drowned, but wholly -invigorated. - -To drop the figure, these two poems of Mr. Fletcher’s are so full of -potentialities, so large in suggestion, that one hardly knows what to -say about them. Does _The Blue Symphony_ mean life? I confess I do not -know. Is it merely a series of pictures? No, there is a vague -undercurrent to the poem which makes that impossible. It is the sort of -poem which a mystic might ponder over indefinitely and find new meanings -every hour. And yet it is all done with the precision and clearness of -the Imagist theory. - -It is impossible to give any idea of the poem as a whole by quoting bits -of it. But little pieces, even divorced from their context, have that -succinct epigrammatic quality which is the stamp of genius. Here are -three lines: - - I have heard and have seen - All the news that has been: - Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green! - -It is evident in this poem that Mr. Fletcher has been much influenced by -the Japanese. - - And now the lowest pine-branch - Is drawn across the disk of the sun. - -is absolutely Japanese. But strangely enough it is a technique got from -a study of Japanese painting rather than from Japanese poetry. - -Mr. Fletcher’s versatility is shown by turning from _The Blue Symphony_, -to his other poem, _London Excursion_. Here the note of mysticism of -_The Blue Symphony_ is entirely abandoned, and there is no hint of -Japanese influence. If _London Excursion_ follows any lead, it is the -lead of the new schools of poetry and painting in France. But I will not -insult Mr. Fletcher by suggesting that he is, in any way, a disciple of -Marinetti and the Futurists. It is nearer the truth to say that he has -realized the vividness of some of their methods, and modified them to -his own use. - -_London Excursion_ is one of the most interesting poems in this volume. -It is a poem of a man going into London in the morning by ’bus, spending -the day walking about the streets and going into shops, and coming home -at night by train. It sounds simple, but it is really the most amazing -expression of light, color, and unrelated impressions that one can -conceive. This is his impression of a street from his ’bus-top: - - Black shapes bending, - Taxicabs crush in the crowd. - - The tops are each a shining square - Shuttles that steadily press through wooly fabric - Drooping blossom, - Gas-standards over - Spray out jingling tumult - Of white-hot rays. - - Monotonous domes of bowler-hats - Vibrate in the heat. - Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic, - Down the crowded street. - The tumult crouches over us, - Or suddenly drifts to one side. - -Mr. Flint’s work is always delightful. He has a winning way of taking -his reader into his confidence. This, and his love of nature, which he -paints with real affection, gains our sympathy at once. It must be -admitted that none of Mr. Flint’s seven poems quite equal two of his in -the first anthology, _London My Beautiful_ and _The Swan_. One feels in -these two poems a groping quality, as though the poet were not quite -satisfied with them himself. As though the first _élan_ with which he -adopted the _vers libre_ medium were passing away, and he were beginning -to realize that the form has its limitations. - -If there is any truth in this, it is evident, however, that Mr. Flint -has not yet made up his mind to try anything else. It would be almost a -pity if he did, for few _vers librists_ understand the manipulation of -cadence as he does. Perhaps the following is the one of these poems -which has most of his characteristic charm: - - - Lunch - - Frail beauty, - green, gold and incandescent whiteness, - narcissi, daffodils, - you have brought me Spring and longing, - wistfulness, - in your irradiance. - - Therefore, I sit here - among the people, - dreaming, - and my heart aches - with all the hawthorn blossom, - the bees humming, - the light wind upon the poplars, - and your warmth and your love - and your eyes ... - they smile and know me. - -_Malady_ strikes a stronger note than anything of Mr. Flint’s that I -have read before. It is excellent psychology, and steadily, astringently -done. - -It is this constant change and growth which makes the progress of this -little group so interesting to watch. Mr. Flint’s work in the first -anthology seemed quite successful and finished. He had done what he had -done excellently, and he would go on doing it to the end of the chapter. -But here we see Mr. Flint, dissatisfied with mere success, daring a -wider horizon. From the point of view of adequacy of technique, his -poems suffer, as is natural; but the technique is sure to follow the -widened thought, before long. _Malady_ and the poem called _Fragment_ -show the direction in which Mr. Flint is moving. His next work will be -interesting to see. - -Mr. D. H. Lawrence is the best known of the poets in this book, although -a newcomer to the anthology. No modern writer is more vigorous than he, -and none is more entirely, almost brutally sincere. In Mr. Lawrence’s -novels this brutality is sometimes excessively evident, but always one -feels that the author inflicts pain upon himself as well as his readers; -that he says what he sees and is concerned not to shirk and be a coward -for his own comfort. - -In his poetry, Mr. Lawrence seems to be more lenient with himself. It is -as though he allowed the moralist in him a day out. Not that he ever -ceases to be a moralist, really. But he permits himself to lay a slight -covering over the stark nakedness of disagreeable facts. This covering -is poetry, and very beautiful and original poetry it is. - - - Green - - The sky was apple-green - The sky was green wine held up in the sun, - The moon was a golden petal between. - - She opened her eyes, and green - They show, clear like flowers undone, - For the first time, now for the first time seen. - -Mr. Lawrence has solved the problem of _vers libre_ for himself, by -writing in a rhymed metre which usually defies all scansion, but which -gives a queer, and most satisfactory effect, of elasticity and strength. -For this reason, and for its novelty, Mr. Lawrence’s manner is very -interesting, but his matter is still more so. Read _The Mowers_, a -common tragedy, but put so newly and strikingly that it comes upon one -with all its original force. - -_Fireflies in the Corn_ and _A Woman to Her Dead Husband_ are new in -subject as well as in presentation, and they have a bald reality about -them which I have never met in any other poem. But never once does Mr. -Lawrence make the mistake of being only a realist; he never ceases to be -a poet. In _Fireflies in the Corn_ there are these lines: - - And those bright fireflies wafting in between - And over the swaying cornstalks, just above - And all their dark-feathered helmets, like little green - Stars, come low and wandering here for love - Of this dark earth. - -The _Ballad of Another Ophelia_ is probably his best poem. In it we see -his peculiar style at its very best. - -Mr. Lawrence is the singer of truth, the lover of humanity. His -inclusion into the Imagist group shows that the school is broad and real -enough not to desire to shut itself up in the cupboard of precocity, as -in the beginning there was some fear of its doing. - -Where Mr. Lawrence gives us the broadest view of Imagism from an English -standpoint that this newer, more vital group has offered us, Miss Lowell -does the same service for the American side. The qualities that make her -work noteworthy are first, a virtuoso command of language that fits -itself to the most diverse themes, and second, a sort of fantastic, -curious irony that is essentially American. This irony is perhaps at its -finest in _The Traveling Bear_ and _The Letter_, but these are too long -to quote. I choose instead _Bullion_, which may be taken for a very -modern type of love poem, in which love itself becomes a burden: - - My thoughts - Chink against my ribs - And roll about like silver hail-stones. - I should like to spill them out, - And pour them, all shining, - Over you. - But my heart is shut upon them - And holds them straitly. - - Come, You! and open my heart; - That my thoughts torment me no longer, - But glitter in your hair. - -Miss Lowell always looks at things from an angle. Her mind reflects the -unusual aspect and that most vividly. As she says of herself: - - When night drifts along the streets of the city, - And sifts down between the uneven roofs, - My mind begins to peek and peer. - It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens, - And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples, - Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. - It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair, - And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses. - How light and laughing my mind is, - When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles, - And the city is still! - -Miss Lowell has the ability which is rare among present-day poets of -recognizing that beauty does not belong to an epoch or a period, but is -always the same, under whatever strange form it may present itself. - -Doubtless her most remarkable poem is that called _The Bombardment_. -Whether the technique adopted here by Miss Lowell is destined to work a -revolution in verse-writing remains for the future to settle. But here, -at least, it perfectly justifies itself. No one should permit, however, -a question of technique to obscure the deep tragedy, the splendid -humanity, of this poem. War has only one beauty: that of its terrible -destructiveness of all beauty. _The Bombardment_ is the best statement -of this aspect of war I know. It must be read in its entirety, and so I -will not attempt piecemeal quotation of this most fitting conclusion to -the volume. - -This book is so provocative of thought, the poets in it are so -suggestive, each one by him—or herself, that each really requires a -separate review. But I have said enough to show what an important volume -this little book is. We are told that it is to be an annual, and -certainly we shall watch its succeeding appearances with great interest. - - - It is certainly best to separate an artist so far from his work - as not to take him as seriously as his work.—_Nietzsche._ - - - - - Editorials and Announcements - - - _The Murder of a Poet_ - -It is reported that Rupert Brooke died of sun-stroke last month in the -Dardanelles. There is nothing to be said in the face of such monster -horrors.... And it is also reported that Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson -has burned up his production of Shaw’s _Caesar and Cleopatra_, not being -able to bear the strain of acting in a play written by his unpatriotic -countryman who protested against such horrors. - - - _Emma Goldman’s Lectures in May_ - -At a recent meeting of the Chicago Woman’s Club, when all the editors of -Chicago magazines explained the virtues of their respective journals, -Lucien Cary said, politely but in effect, that THE LITTLE REVIEW was no -good. “The only striking thing it has done (beside coming out at all) is -to discover Emma Goldman, a nice woman with views less radical than -Emerson’s and certainly far less well expressed.” I quote this because -it is so exhilarating to catch Mr. Cary in a half-truth—the kind of -thing that makes for the confused thinking he is so valiantly in arms -against. If THE LITTLE REVIEW had been alive about twenty-five years ago -I hope we would have had the sense to discover that a great woman was -beginning to work in this country. As it is, we could only try to point -out how difficult and how fine has been Emma Goldman’s living of the -things Emerson thought it would be good to live. It was not for the -people who know their Emerson that we tried it, but for those who have -forgotten him, like Mr. Cary.... Since we failed so miserably we shall -have to try again. But in the meantime you may hear Emma Goldman herself -and discover just how she is helping to make Emerson’s essays livable. -She is to lecture for a week in Chicago, in the most delightful lecture -room in the city—the Assembly Room in the Fine Arts Building. Her -subjects are as follows, at 8:15 in the evening: - - _Sunday, May 9_: - “Friedrich Nietzsche, the Intellectual Storm Centre of the European - War.” - - _Monday, May 10_: - “Is Man a Varietist or Monogamist”? - - _Tuesday, May 11_: - “Jealousy” (Its Cause and Possible Cure). - - _Wednesday, May 12_: - “Social Revolution vs. Social Reform.” - - _Thursday, May 13_: - “Feminism” (A Critique of the Modern Woman’s Movements). - - _Saturday, May 15_: - “The Intermediate Sex” (A Study of Homosexuality). - - _Sunday, May 16_: - “The Limitation of Offspring” (A Discussion of How and Why Small - Families Are Desirable). - - - “_Dionysion_” - -One of the most stirring things that has come to this office lately is a -small journal with the word “Dionysion” on its cover. It is the first -volume of a magazine for the furtherance of Isadora Duncan’s work in -America, and the committee that has helped make this rather amazing -thing possible includes such names as John W. Alexander, Percy MacKaye, -Theodore Dreiser, Will Levington Comfort, Max Eastman, Robert Henri, -Edith Wynne Mathison, Julia Culp, Witter Bynner, John Drew, Walter -Damrosch, and many others. On the first page is Whitman, then Nietzsche -on Dionysian Art, and then Robert Henri with a little article on the new -education in which he says: “I was tremendously impressed one day in -Isadora Duncan’s studio, by the look in the faces of the children. As -they passed by me in the dance I saw great dignity, balance, ease. I was -impressed, too, throughout the entire time by the fact that they seemed -absolutely secure in their happiness. They appeared to know -unconsciously that they would receive a full measure of praise and that -in no case would there be blame or punishment. In each little upturned -face was a rare look of freedom—the look of people on a higher plane of -self-consciousness, an aloofness from the common thought. I saw in their -expression the impress of the measures of great music.” And he goes on -that “to inspire courage in children, to stimulate them with the work of -those who have the courage to create, to make of them frank facers of -the emotional problems of life, to start them on the way toward a great -constructive life, we must take care not to impose our wisdom and our -ignorance on them, but to give them the benefit of the best we have -through a frank response to their natural interrogation.” Isadora -Duncan’s idea is that “the expression of the modern school of ballet -wherein each action is an end, and no movement, pose, or rhythm is -successive or can be made to evolve succeeding action, is an expression -of degeneration, of living death. All the movements of our modern ballet -school are sterile movements because they are unnatural; their purpose -is to create the delusion that the law of gravitation does not exist for -them.” I know a man from Russia who came to this country knowing only -two words of English: “Isadora Duncan.” He had seen Miss Duncan dance -once in St. Petersburg and from that moment he looked forward to America -as the country of “highest intelligences in the freest bodies.” We may -sometime become worthy of this remarkable woman. _Dionysion_ ought to -help.... - - - _Isaac Loeb Peretz_ - -Last month, under the strain of relief work for the Jewish families -driven from the war zone, there died in Warsaw a great poet, Isaac Loeb -Peretz, almost unknown to the English reader, if we do not count one -volume of his _Tales_, issued by the Jewish Publication Society. His -poetry, written in Hebrew and in Yiddish, may be compared to that of -Heine in its gracefulness, but it bears in addition the melancholy of -Polish skies. His sketches in prose and his dramas are too subtle in -their profound symbolism to be appreciated by the Jewish masses, who -nevertheless, worship him as one of the few great artists who had not -gone over to till strange fields, richer and more remunerative. The -Jewish stage in America flourishes on Gordin’s melodramas and on cheap -farces; the theatrical managers are too business-like to produce such a -high play as Peretz’s _Golden Chain_. - - - _The St. Patrick’s Affair_ - -Emma Goldman sent me this letter about the two Italian boys, Abarno and -Carbone, who have been found guilty of trying to blow up St. Patrick’s -Cathedral: “Our efforts for the Italian victims were in vain. They were -found guilty, although every bit of evidence brought out how the -provocateur induced, urged the act, bought the material, made the bombs, -and placed them in the cathedral. But the judge said that an officer has -the right to do all this since he does it not out of criminal intent but -‘out of duty.’ Imagine what sort of sentence the boys will get from this -cruel machine! I was in court all day until ten that night. I was near a -collapse, so terribly had the day impressed me. At midnight they -telephoned to tell me of the verdict. The horror of it all to me is the -material which Polgnani chose—two typical proletarian slaves, one a boot -black, the other a cobbler, both underdeveloped from malnutrition, -irresponsible in their youthful inexperience, like two frightened deer -driven at bay. To hear the lawyers refer to them as ‘fools,’ -‘degenerates,’ ‘ignoramuses,’ without a sign of protest on their part, -almost drove me crazy. I had to restrain myself from pulling them to -their feet to cry out against the cruelty and humiliation of it all. -Life is terrible....” - - - _More Censorship_ - -A book called _Fewer and Better Babies: The Limitation of Offspring by -the Prevention of Conception_, by William J. Robinson, has just been -published by the Critic and Guide Company of New York. In looking -through it I came upon several mysterious blank pages, and then found a -foot-note explanation to the effect that the chapters on preventives had -been completely eliminated by the censorship: “Not only are we not -permitted to mention the safe and harmless methods,” says the poor -author; “we cannot even discuss the unsafe and injurious methods.” But -it probably won’t be long before Mr. Comstock is suppressed.... - - - - - The Sermon in the Depths - - - (_Phosphorescent Gleams of Spiritual Putrefactions_) - - BEN HECHT - -Since reading the recent translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book which -is called _The House of the Dead_[1] I have suffered from a distressing -ambition. I would like to go to Russia and there commit some naive -atrocity and be sent to a Siberian prison for at least ten years. I have -an unpatriotic prejudice and a lack of illusion concerning American -criminals or I would commit my atrocity on American soil. They, American -criminals, are as a rule a petty lot given to sentimental regrets and -griefs and reforms and periodicals. There is nothing which reflects the -smugness of a people so much as the manner and temperament of its vice. -And the temperament of American vice is more distinctly and monotonously -bourgeois than any of its virtues. The American citizen even when about -to be hanged is unable to rise above the commonplace reactions -“imagined” for his predicament by such authors as belong to the Indiana -Society. - -I have hunted the American criminal with the police, been present at his -confession, watched him at his trial, sat with him in his death cell and -listened to him recite psalms and sermonize as the nervous sheriff -adjusted the noose around his neck. He is an artificial and -uninteresting disappointment. It would be as extreme a punishment to -spend ten years in his society behind the bars as to live in a State -Street Studio Building or join the Y. M. C. A. for a similar period. - -But the “prison that stood at the edge of the fortress grounds close to -the fortress wall” and the primitive, debauched children who inhabited -it! The swaggering monstrosities that swilled on vodka and wept at the -stars. The bestial grotesques who delighted in the murder of infants for -the sake of the warm blood that bathed their hands. The filthy saints -and nonchalant parricides. The Herculean villains, the irritable -gargoyles innocently steeped in insatiable perversion and dripping with -infamy. The arrogant, sadistic artists of torture, human as children, -with their pitifully crippled souls; praying before the prison ikons, -stealing their comrade’s clothes and washing his feet; hating and loving -with the simplicity of Pagan gods and the ramified cunning of -continental diplomats. The nerveless flagellants, the heartbreaking -humorists, the fierce, fanciful executioners. There’s a company for you! -A purifying company in the very dregs of its depravities. - -They stand alone in literature. Only Christ could have written of them -as well as Dostoevsky. Was Dostoevsky dreaming of a new religion when he -filled the pages with his human crucifixions? Probably not. But his -artistry and his painstaking, searching minute psychology have illumined -_The House of the Dead_ so that for him who is not afraid it is as holy -and human a source of inspiration as the loving sacrifices of the -Nazarene Thaumaturgist. - -And yet it is a simple book. There are very few writings so direct and -simple, so easy to read and to understand. The terrifying lusts and -passions and distorted rages make the mind quiver, but they never -mystify. The harrowing morbidities pierce the intelligence like hot -lances, but they never blunt or deprave the moral senses. The fierce -pathos so exquisitely written, the blood-soaked restraints, the -consumptive dying in his iron fetters too weak to support the weight of -the little cross on his chest, the wild, inhuman humanness—they sizzle -away the nerve cuticles and burn the emotions with a strange fire. - -It is the peculiar paradox of reaction. I visited once a Home for -Crippled Children and came away happier and cleaner. There the little -misshapen bodies and the unconscious holiness of their suffering -suddenly revealed to me things I had scoffingly overlooked in the -popular words of accepted divines. And it is the same way with the -company that writhes through the pages of Dostoevsky’s book. A more -material illustration of this paradox is the very rhapsodics I have -indulged in to convey what I have read. There are no rhapsodies in the -book. There is no “dramatic action” at all in the book. It is the most -inactive book I ever have read, barring not certain memoirs and diaries. -Nothing happens in the book, yet from its start a demoralized pageant -marches thunderingly across the pages, and somehow, by a psychological -process it would take Dostoevsky again to reveal, lifts the spirit to -heights as lofty as its itinerary is low. As for the style of its -writing, there are no secrets in the art for the great Russian. And here -he chooses the grim, gripping reiteration, the tragic calm and human -poesy of simple words to build up his staggering effects. - -What will Americans think of the book providing it becomes popular?—and -it may. (The idolatrous regard born in this country for Russian art -instances the possibilities of American hysteria directed in the proper -channels.) The great majority of them, however—particularly those with -whom I have mentioned my horror of spending ten years—will feel it -incumbent upon them to be outraged, none more so than the criminal -fraternity. It is perhaps stretching a point to say that even so were -the highly and lowly estimable backbones of an earlier period of less -comparative moribund piety outraged by the Sermon on the Mount. But -there is a promising likelihood that their ectypes will never read the -volume and will thus be saved or lost or whatever you will. And those -who see the light from this Sermon in the Depths can effect an -exclusiveness which will merit them the flattering curses and derisions -of their fellow men for many sweet years to come. - -The translation is by Constance Garnett and is excellently done. Mrs. -Garnett, more than any linguist, has in her work conveyed the atmosphere -and idiom and temperament of the Russian into English. She is -responsible for the remarkable translations of Turgeniev which have -carried his art unchanged into another tongue, as well as for the -Dostoevsky novels. For the benefit of readers who will be puzzled by her -footnote on page 11, the “Green Street” which she is unable to define is -the avenue formed between two ranks of prison soldiers through which the -condemned convict is wheeled and beaten. The soldiers stand armed with -fresh, green sticks which flash brightly in the sun as they swish down -on the naked back—hence the jocular name. - - [1] _The Macmillan Company, New York._ - - - - - Notes For a Review of “The Spoon River Anthology” - - - CARL SANDBURG - - _The Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters. (The Macmillan - Company, New York)_ - -I saw Masters write this book. He wrote it in snatched moments between -fighting injunctions against a waitresses’ union striving for the right -to picket and gain one day’s rest a week, battling from court to court -for compensation to a railroad engineer rendered a loathsome cripple by -the defective machinery of a locomotive, having his life amid affairs as -intense as those he writes of. - -At The Book and Play Club one night Masters tried to tell how he came to -write the Anthology. Of course, he couldn’t tell. There are no writers -of great books able to tell the how and why of a dominating spirit that -seizes them and wrenches the flashing pages from them. But there are a -few forces known that play a part. And among these Masters said he -wanted emphasis placed on _Poetry_, voices calling “Unhand me,” verses -and lines from all manner and schools of writers welcomed in Harriet -Monroe’s magazine. - -Once in a while a man comes along who writes a book that has his own -heart-beats in it. The people whose faces look out from the pages of the -book are the people of life itself, each trait of them as plain or as -mysterious as in the old home valley where the writer came from. Such a -writer and book are realized here. - -Masters’ home town is Lewiston, Illinois, on the banks of the Spoon -River. There actually is such a river where Masters waded bare-foot as a -boy, and where the dead and the living folk of his book have fished or -swam, or thrown pebbles and watched the widening circles. It is not far, -less than a few hours’ drive, from where Abraham Lincoln was raised. -People who knew Lincoln are living there today. - -Well, some two hundred and twenty portraits in free verse have been -etched by Masters from this valley. They are Illinois people. Also they -are the people of anywhere and everywhere in so-called civilization. - -Aner Clute is the immortal girl of the streets. Chase Henry is the town -drunkard of all time. The railroad lawyer, the corrupt judge, the -prohibitionist, the various adulterers and adulteresses, the Sunday -School superintendent, the mothers and fathers who lived for sacrifice -in gratitude, joy,—all these people look out from this book with -haunting eyes, and there are baffled mouths and brows calm in the facing -of their destinies. - -When a few of the pieces in this book reached Ezra Pound, the judgment -he passed upon them was that they are real and great poetry from the -hand of a new and a genuine American poet. It was Alice Corbin Henderson -who was the first American critic to seize upon some of these poems as -they were running in _The St. Louis Mirror_, and put them forward in -_Poetry_ as striking, indigenous, out of the soil of America as a -home-land. William Marion Reedy, editor of _The St. Louis Mirror_, is -accredited by Masters for the keen enthusiasm with which he helped him -carry along the work of writing. - -In the year 1914 Masters not only handled all of his regular law -practice, heavy and grilling. Besides, he wrote _The Spoon River -Anthology_. There were times when he was clean fagged with the day’s -work. But a spell was on him to throw into written form a picture -gallery, a series of short movies of individuals he had seen back home. -Each page in the anthology is a locked-up portrait now freed. - -The stress of this bore down on Masters. Just before the proof sheets -for his book came to his hands, he went down with fever and pneumonia -and a complex of physical ills. It was the first time in his life he was -willing to admit he was “sick abed.” - -There is vitality, drops of heart blood, poured into Lee Masters’ book. -He has other books in him as vivid and poignant. Let us hope luck holds -him by the hand and takes him along where he can write out these other -ones. - - - - - Poetry and the Panama-Pacific - - - EUNICE TIETJENS - -Has poetry, as an art, any meaning whatever for the American people, or -has all the recent ink which has been spilled in proclaiming a -renascence of American poetry gone only to water the roots of the -publishing business? These are questions which will be forced upon the -mind of every admirer of the lyric muse in contemplating the -Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. For in spite -of the millions of money and the acres of ground at the disposal of the -American sections there is nowhere, except in the commercial exhibits of -the publishers, any recognition of the existence of contemporary poetry. - -When taxed with the fact that the art is unrepresented the heads of the -departments point deprecatingly to the fact that as a decorative feature -of certain architectural archways poetical quotations are used. There is -a quotation from Confucius, one from the Kalidasa, several from Edmund -Spencer, and one (O Triumph of Modernity!) from Walt Whitman. As no -commercial exhibit is accepted which was in existence at the time of the -St. Louis Exposition this answer is doubly enlightening. - -All the other arts are here. Architecture, music, sculpture, mural and -easel painting, drawing, prints and etching, landscape gardening, -together with the so-called “Liberal Arts” are adequately represented. -But not poetry. A perusal of the “P’s” of the official list in an -attempt to discover it is significant. “Poultry” is there with a large -exhibit, so is “Plumbago,” “Plumbers’ Implements,” “Pomology” and -“Ponies.” Excellent exhibits all, but hardly lyrical. - -It may be urged, of course, that other arts, such as the arts of the -theatre, acting and stagecraft, and the literary art of prose writing, -are also omitted. But although exhibitions of these things would be -eminently desirable they present great practical difficulties. And these -arts have, after all, a commercial side which is more or less adequately -suggested. But with poetry the case is different. The mere fact that -commercially poetry is, like Perlmutter’s automobile, a liability and -not an asset, ought in our practical age to prove that it is a “fine -art!” And the practical difficulty of providing a set of bookshelves and -a competent jury to pass on admissions need hardly stagger the directors -of so colossal an undertaking. Add to this daily, or even bi-weekly, -readings of contemporary poetry and the result would be a representation -in proportion to the attention paid the other arts. - -It would be useless to urge that this Exposition is a private, or even a -local enterprise. It cannot stand as such. It represents in the face of -the warring world the development of our country, culturally as well as -commercially. And the fact that one of the oldest and most reverenced of -the arts is totally unrepresented must inevitably redound to the -discredit of the executive officers, and through them of the people at -large. - -For the root of this cavalier treatment of poetry is, after all, in the -American people. As a nation, in spite of our complacency in the present -world crisis, we are still in the stage of culture in which we believe -that man can live by bread alone. And we can scarcely hope for more -adequate recognition of the art until those of us to whom poetry is a -living fact, and not an academic perception, have battled at greater -length and with greater self-sacrifice in the eternal struggle through -commercialism to beauty. - - - - - The Mob-God - - -The seats creak expectantly. The white whirr of the movie machine takes -on a special significance. In the murky gloom of the theater you can -watch row on row of backs becoming suddenly enthusiastic, necks growing -suddenly alive, heads rising to a fresh angle. Turning around you can -see the stupid masks falling, vacant eyes lighting up, lips parting and -waiting the smile, mouths opening waiting to laugh. A miracle is -transpiring. A sodden mass inclined toward protoplasmic atavism, a smear -of dead nerves, dead skin, fiberless flesh is beginning to quiver with -an emotion. Laughter is about to be born. The lights dance on the screen -in front. Letters appear in two short words and a gasp sweeps from mouth -to mouth. - -The name of a Mob-God flashes before the eyes. Suddenly the screen in -front vanishes. In its place appears a road stretching away to the sky -and lined with trees. The sky is clear. The scene is cool and healthy. -The leaves of the trees flutter familiarly. The road smiles like an old -friend. And far in the distance a speck appears and moves slowly and -jerkily. Wide open mouths and freshened eyes watch the speck grow -larger. It takes the form of a man, a little man with a thin cane. At -last his baggy trousers and his slovenly shoes are visible. His thick -curly hair under the battered derby becomes clear. He walks along -carelessly, quietly, with an infinite philosophy. He walks with an -indescribable step, kicking up one of his feet, shuffling along. - -Laughter is born. The vapid faces respond magically to His presence. -Pure, childish delight sounds. The faces are bathed in a human light. A -noisy, wholesome din fills the theater. And the little man comes down -the road with his calm and solemn face, his sad eyes, his impossible -mustache, his ridiculous trousers, and his nervous, spasmodic gait amid -the roars and wild elation of idiots, prostitutes, crass, common churls, -and empty souls converted suddenly into a natural and mutual simplicity. -The stuffy, maddening “bathoes” that clings to the mob like a stink is -dispelled, wiped out of the air. Laughter, laughter, shrieks and peals, -chuckles and smiles, the broad permeating warmth of the simplest, -deepest joy is everywhere. - -Charlie Chaplin is before them, Charles Chaplin with the wit of a vulgar -buffoon and the soul of a world artist. He walks, he stumbles, he -dances, he falls. His inimitable gyrations release torrents of mirth -clean as spring freshets. He is cruel. He is absurd; unmanly; tawdry; -cheap; artificial. And yet behind his crudities, his obscenities, his -inartistic and outrageous contortions, his “divinity” shines. He is the -Mob-God. He is a child and a clown. He is a gutter snipe and an artist. -He is the incarnation of the latent, imperfect, and childlike genius -that lies buried under the fiberless flesh of his worshippers. They have -created Him in their image. He is the Mob on two legs. They love him and -laugh. - -“Fruits to Om.” - -“Glory to Zeus.” - -“Mercy, Jesus.” - -“Praised be Allah.” - -“Hats off to Charlie Chaplin.” - - “THE SCAVANGER.” - - - - - The Theatre - - - “ROSMERSHOLM” - - (_The Chicago Little Theatre_) - -I don’t want to write about _Rosmersholm_ or about Ibsen now. I want to -write about Mme. Borgny Hammer, who is great in the manner of the great -Norwegians. - -There is a lot of talk about the Russian soul just at present. I wish -the Norwegian soul might come in for its share of analysis and -appreciation. It is interesting not because of its dark shudderings but -because of its intense light and its clearness. It is like the sun; it -is like wild flowers—not the delicate but the hardy ones. - -Mme. Hammer is this sort of person. She is an actress because she must -act or die. She is so intense that the air about her is always -“charged”; and she is so natural and simple that you know right away she -must be great. There wasn’t a particle of difference between her -presence on the stage as the Ibsen heroine and her manner when she meets -you on Michigan Avenue and stops to say that Ibsen is so wonderful it’s -impossible to cut a line of his dialogue. In both situations she is the -genius. Mrs. Fiske’s Rebecca West was a stunningly-worked-out idea; Mme. -Hammer’s was just—Rebecca West. Mrs. Fiske had a theory of the character -and presented it in a series of subtle and powerful designs. But what -did this wonderful woman do? She didn’t act Rebecca West at all: she -just gave you the impression that she is Rebecca every day of her life. -She made _Rosmersholm_ a natural scene in the life of some modern -family, instead of making it a “study”—an effect in a rather strained -psychology. - -I wish I could describe Mme. Hammer’s stage conversations—especially the -parts where she listens. She is so busy feeling Rebecca West that she -has no time to waste in managing her eyes and voice and hands. They take -care of themselves just as they would in her own library. When our best -actresses “listen” they keep their eyes on the person who is talking -with the kind of look that says: “I know it would be bad art now to look -at the audience out of the tail of my eye. I must pay close attention to -what this actor is saying to me.” Mme. Hammer looks at Rosmer with the -same expression she would wear if he were about to say things she hadn’t -heard him rehearse every day for six weeks. If she should break out with -some dialogue of her own it couldn’t sound any more spontaneous than her -reading of the lines Ibsen gave to Rebecca. I know Rebecca’s lines, and -yet I forgot them and decided she must be making things up as she went -along. What richness of simplicity, and what a sturdy beauty! - -I have never seen an actress who cares less about herself than Mme. -Hammer and cares so deeply for the character she is presenting. The -expressions of her face are marvelous.... She said to me once that she -disagreed with critics who thought Hedda Gabler had nothing to give. -“She had so much, so very much to give,” she said passionately. No -wonder she thinks so: she is a big woman who herself has an infinity of -things to give. - - M. C. A. - - - “THE TROJAN WOMEN” - -Of the production of _The Trojan Women_ of Euripides by The Little -Theatre Company, at the Blackstone Theatre, Sunday, April 11th, one -might waste many, many words and much good space. One might make merry -over the quaint little mannikins trying their hardest to look like -Spartan soldiers. Or again, a whole column might be devoted to the -insipid posturings of the saintly-pretty lady who played Helen. Much -sarcasm might be expended on the flops done, in the approved -French-tragedy style, by the lady who played Andromache. A whole thesis -might be written by an enterprising student at some correspondence -school on the use of the Vaudeville Spotlight in Classic Greek Tragedy. -And Hamlet’s advice to the players might be quoted with some profit to a -few of the company: pointed emphasis at the “do not _mouth_ your words” -part of the advice, to the lady who speaks the speech beginning: - - Lo, yonder ships: I ne’er set foot on one, - But tales and pictures tell, when over them - Breaketh a storm not all too strong to stem, - Each man strives hard, the tiller gripped, the mast - Manned, the hull baled, to face it, till at last - Too strong breaks the o’erwhelming sea: lo, then - They cease, and yield them up as broken men - To fate and the wild waters. - -And last of all one might say unkind things about the blending of the -voices in the chorus. - -All the above points, however, I know are very debatable. There are two -that cannot be debated. Two that outbalance by far all the other defects -of the production. - -If all the cast had voices like corncrakes, and used them after the -manner of country-town amateurs, the production would still be worth -seeing for the thrilling pictures of colour and line presented by -individuals and the ensemble. And rising, soaring away above all the -petty little defects is the wonderful, majestical verse of Euripides. -What could be more beautiful than the lyric: - - Even as the sound of a song - Left by the way, but long - Remembered, a tune of tears - Falling where no man hears, - In the old house as rain, - For things loved of yore: - But the dead hath lost his pain - And weeps no more. - -It is greatly to be regretted that it has been thought fit to cut that -lyric, Cassandra’s Hymn to Hymen, and many of the other beautiful parts -of the play. - -The whole thing might have been better in a hundred ways—then again it -might have been worse in ten hundred ways. Let us be glad that we had an -opportunity of seeing the wonderful thing, even though the Carnegie -Peace Foundation is backing it up. - - D. - - - - - Music - - - BUSONI - -Busoni—prophet. Where Bauer is a priest, Hofmann a wonder-child, Bachaus -a poet, Ganz an efficient, Paderewski a magician, and Samaroff a -failure—Busoni is a prophet. His voice arrests the senses, throws a -silence over them. At first, the world is obscured; later the last trace -of it is gone. The song of the prophet vibrates through new spaces. -Listening ones follow without restraint, so great is the magnetic pull -of it; they follow, enchanted, through new spaces to new and miraculous -realms of life, where music is more real than ivory or pine. - -With one paragraph’s deference to the clay-members, let them be informed -that Ferruccio Busoni is a composer and concert-pianist, almost fifty -years old, who began his study and piano-practice at a most tender age, -and who is now considered to be something of an artist—that is, when he -isn’t off pursuing some new notion about quarter-tones, or his one -hundred and thirteen new scales for the pianoforte. He has these -aberrations. But then, musicians are crazy anyway. At a recent concert -with the Chicago Symphony Mr. Busoni played one concerto by Saint-Saëns -and another one which he himself composed. Incidentally, Mr. Busoni’s -composition was based on North America. It is the least bit regrettable -that we are so busy and hurried that Mr. Busoni could introduce us, -through a work of art, to the country we hurry over. He played these -works on an inferior piano and did several questionable things in his -playing, such as let his wrist sag, etc. His personal friends insist -that he hates to play the piano. Let the clay-members join the blessed -minority in silent thanksgiving that he has hated it hard enough to have -scornfully brushed aside the limitations of wood and wire, that his -hatred is greater than a world of near-love. - -On his recent appearance here, at the very start, Busoni passed above -the norm of virtuosity in piano-manipulation, and the tonal explorations -began. It was quite bewildering. The mob thought it was fine. The -authorities had to admit that it was good. Young ladies considered it -divine. Professional musicians—always self-appointed and astute -critics—were prevented from indulging in their customary snap-judgments -while the artist played, and were held, opinionless, to the music. The -listeners who possessed not only sensitive ears but also receptive minds -and fluent imaginations were swung clear of earth, were lifted into a -region where no dead wall separated them from the strong voice of the -prophet. He was saying tremendous things. He forced upon smaller minds -the rush, the splendor, the glittering plunge of tones, such as they had -never dreamed of before. He gave them the dream. And this was what the -yet smaller and the very smallest minds, down between the dead walls, -admired, but sanctioned grudgingly, as brilliant style. There were noisy -hands and exclamations, as at a cock-fight. But the blessed minority -heard and recognized the piano-playing of today, tomorrow, and the -future. The instrument had at last shaken off the curse of apartment -houses, and had come into its own. - -Wilhelm Bachaus sings the fancies of a dreamy young poet; Paderewski -thrills his audience whether he smiles or sulks at the keyboard; Bauer -intones the affirmation of a lovely faith in tonal beauty; Godowsky -presents necklaces of perfectly carven gems to the subtly responsive -ones; these men and a few others justify their own uses of the -pianoforte. They are strongly individual, and are not to be balanced, -one against another. Ferruccio Busoni, however, would cast a shadow if -he traveled earthward from his altitudes. He is solitary and unique. -Others work up through human difficulties in order to perfect their -means of expressing tonal ideals. Busoni takes their goal as a fresh -starting-point, and tonal ideals become a further means, to voice the -surge of strength which he essentially is, to express the resistless, -flashing drive of the universe. His flying clusters of notes are the -tail of a comet, of some swift participator in cosmic rhythms. The swirl -of his music-fire is a glorious something for which the pianoforte must -providentially have been created—a genuine offering to the vigilant -keepers of Beauty. - - HERMAN SCHUCHERT. - - - TWO CHICAGO PIANISTS - -I have not heard all the young Chicago musicians play, but of those I -have heard there are two who stand out as musicians and pianists instead -of merely good players of the piano. They are Carol Robinson and James -Whittaker. - -Miss Robinson is an Illinois girl who came to Chicago to be Fannie -Bloomfield Zeisler’s “artist pupil” (or something like that) and chief -assistant. A year ago she was playing the piano efficiently; this year -she is using that as a starting-point and proving that she has a real -right to the instrument. She has a technical foundation that cannot fail -her; it is already equal to practically all the tests she may need to -put it to, and she uses it as surely and unconsciously as one uses his -feet to walk with. Her playing at present has the clearness and -innocence of a brook; if she can get something of the sea into her -feeling she will be big. The music Carol Robinson gives is not so far -the expression of some incredible longing to make the piano serve as an -outlet. It is natural and beautiful—and absolutely untroubled. It is -articulate and yet it has not acquired a meaning. It is without a hint -of intensity. Carol Robinson has the most interesting part of the -struggle before her—the part for which her genius for hard work is -merely a preparation: what does she want to say through the piano? - -James Whittaker’s music is very personal, very sensitive, very charming, -and very marked by good taste. It is by far the most musical playing I -have heard in Chicago. Mr. Whittaker went to Berlin to study and then to -Paris, where he finished and became an ardent exponent of the French -school. His technical equipment is not the perfect tool that Carol -Robinson’s is; by which I don’t mean that it is at all inadequate, but -somehow you feel that he is always conscious of the demands he puts upon -it and that it sometimes leaves him unsatisfied. His theory is that most -of the methods taught outside the French Conservatoire are “short cuts”; -but his work suggests that he succeeds in spite of his theory. For he -does succeed in the one great essential: in making music. His relation -to the piano is a dedication, and his music is vibrant with feeling. His -tone production is a pressure with a fine nervousness in it, and he has -the real “pearl” quality in his scales. His Chopin is perhaps, as he -himself says, a little “scientific.” His César Franck just misses being -deep _enough_. He is at his best in quite modern French music, or in a -thing like Grieg’s Cradle Song which he plays very, very beautifully. -Brahms he doesn’t want to play, I imagine; but the breadth that Brahms -requires and gives is the very quality that would make what James -Whittaker has to say (and is saying very charmingly) a bigger and deeper -thing. - - M. C. A. - - - WITH KREISLER - - _Four weeks in the Trenches, by Fritz Kreisler._ [_Houghton - Mifflin Company, Boston._] - -I had a big day with Ruby Davis, our Chicago little violinist, out in -the country, roaming, climbing, racing, conversing, but not talking. -Talk we left behind us, in the city drawing-rooms. Between pranks and -escapades we found rest in sitting side by side and reading Kreisler’s -war impressions. I knew that Ruby worshipped Fritz, but his reflections -on the book of the violinist have shown me that in addition to -admiration he possesses critical perception. We delighted in the pages -written with spontaneous beauty, without pose, without the banal -superstructure of sentimental colors, but revealing a tense, vibrating, -virile artistic heart, reservedly sensitive to bloody horrors as well as -to imperceptible impressions of human emotions concealed beneath the -dehumanizing military uniform. Ruby called my attention to the fact that -only such an artist as Kreisler could have had a broad non-professional -outlook on men and things, an artist of unusual versatility, of a wide -education, of rich experiences in various fields of life. Yet, he added, -only the keen, delicate ear of a musician could have perceived the -symphonic sounds on the battle-field and in the trenches, as, for -instance, in this passage: - - My ear, accustomed to differentiate sounds of all kinds, had some - time ago, while we were still advancing, noted a remarkable - discrepancy in the peculiar whine produced by the different - shells in their rapid flight through the air as they passed over - our heads, some sounding shrill, with a rising tendency, and the - other rather dull, with a falling cadence. A short observation - revealed the fact that the passing of a dull sounding shell was - invariably preceded by a flash from one of our own cannon in the - rear on the hill, which conclusively proved it to be an Austrian - shell. It must be understood that as we were advancing between - the positions of the Austrian and Russian artillery, both kinds - of shells were passing over our heads. As we advanced the - difference between shrill and dull shell grew less and less - perceptible, until I could hardly tell them apart. Upon nearing - the hill the difference increased again more and more until on - the hill itself it was very marked. After our trench was finished - I crawled to the top of the hill until I could make out the flash - of the Russian guns on the opposite heights and by timing flash - and actual passing of the shell, found to my astonishment that - now the Russian missiles had become dull, while on the other - hand, the shrill sound was invariably heralded by a flash from - one of our guns, now far in the rear. What had happened was this: - Every shell describes in its course a parabolic line, with the - first half of the curve being ascending and the second one - descending. Apparently in the first half of its curve, that is, - its course while ascending, the shell produced a dull whine - accompanied by a falling cadence, which changes to a rising - shrill as soon as the acme has been reached and the curve points - downward again. The acme for both kinds of shells naturally was - exactly the half distance between the Austrian and Russian - artillery and this was the point where I had noticed that the - difference was the least marked. A few days later, in talking - over my observation with an artillery officer, I was told the - fact was known that the shells sounded different going up than - when going down, but this knowledge was not used for practical - purposes. When I told him that I could actually determine by the - sound the exact place where a shell coming from the opposing - batteries was reaching its acme, he thought that this would be of - great value in a case where the position of the opposing - batteries was hidden and thus could be located. He apparently - spoke to his commander about me, for a few days later I was sent - on a reconnoitering tour, with the object of marking on the map - the exact spot where I thought the hostile shells were reaching - their acme, and it was later on reported to me that I had - succeeded in giving to our batteries the almost exact range of - the Russian guns. I have gone into the matter at some length, - because it is the only instance where my musical ear was of value - during my service. - -Ruby kept on explaining Kreisler while we were making our way through -picturesque ravines. Then we stormed a steep bluff that made a difficult -climb, and I had to pull and push my gentle co-adventurer. “Be brave, -little Kreisler!” He turned to me with serious eyes, and proceeded to -point out the greatness of his god, who throughout the book does not -even once show any national narrowness or hatred for the enemy, who -speaks with equal sympathy of the Russians and of the Austrians, who -relates his terrible experiences in the swampy trenches in such a calm, -modest tone, making your heart bleed with sorrow for the hardships and -suffering of the belligerents. What a terrible calamity it would have -been had the Cossack slashed Kreisler’s hand instead of his leg! Ruby -smiled with joy reading the last page in which the violinist regrets -that he had been pronounced “invalid and physically unfit for armed -duty” and had “to discard his well-beloved uniform for the nondescript -garb of the civilian.” Ruby does not share his big brother’s regret. - - K. - - - - - Book Discussion - - - QUASI-RATIONALISTIC MORALIZING - - _Criticisms of Life, by Horace Bridges._ [_Houghton Mifflin - Company, Boston._] - -Some time ago, at a meeting of the Book and Play Club, Mr. Bridges -complained against THE LITTLE REVIEW wherein a certain book was -criticised and labeled “naive and dull as the sermon of an Ethical -Society preacher.” “Ladies and gentlemen, _I am naive and dull_!” -protested Mr. Bridges. The reviewer of that unfortunate book, who -happened to be present, expressed his surprise at the complainer’s -unmodest assumption that those epithets were meant for him, as if he had -monopolized the characteristic features of all ethical preachers. Now -that Mr. Bridges’ book is out, the reviewer wishes to make amends and -apologize; verily, the distinguished preacher was justified in claiming -the honorary titles. - -The author analyzes his problems through the prism of empirico-pragmatic -rationalism, if such a combination is thinkable. Whether it be -Chesterton’s theological views, or Ellen Key’s marriage theory, or -Maeterlinck’s mysticism, or Sir Lodge’s ideas on immortality—the author -applies to them the same apparatus for testing their validity and truth: -Are they provable? Are they workable? Are they in harmony with Mr. -Bridges’s ethical standard? A few citations will illustrate the critic’s -method and sense of humor. - -He takes Gilbert Chesterton very seriously, and indignantly reproves him -for such typically Chestertonian offences as misquoting his opponents, -as paradoxical buffooneries, “unpardonable tricks” and “inexcusable -mistakes”; he offers him a few lessons in theology, explains to him in -an earnest tone the meaning of miracles, the Fall of Man, and finally -comes to the astounding discovery that the readers “will see in Mr. -Chesterton’s amateur apologetics nothing but a psychological curiosity, -to be read, like his novels, for amusement, in some slight degree -perhaps for edification, but not at all for instruction.” Horribile -dictu! - -Mr. Bridges’s heaviest cannon are directed against Ellen Key. He totally -destroys her and Shaw’s opposition to marriage with one humorous stroke, -arguing that if that institution were really bad it would either have -destroyed humanity, or the revolted conscience of mankind would have -“risen and annihilated the abominable thing.” This optimistic argument -needs as little comment as the author’s logical conclusion that “free -love” is equivalent to prostitution and that free divorce is synonymous -with adultery, or as these pearls: - - I am decidedly of opinion that in a more enlightened age divorce - will be as completely obsolete as duelling is to-day in England. - - I am opposed to divorce on this ground (incompatibility of - temper) for two reasons: first, because if people’s tempers are - really so incompatible as to make their lifelong companionship - intolerable, they can, and therefore ought to, know this in time - to prevent their union. And, secondly, because such - incompatibility as can remain entirely concealed before marriage - cannot possibly be so great but that it may be overcome and - harmonized after marriage by means of proper self-discipline and - true grasp of the idea of duty. - - No soldier would be pardoned for deserting from the army on the - ground that he found his temper hopelessly incompatible with that - of his comrades and his officers. No party to a business contract - would be absolved from observing its terms upon any such - consideration. - - The right to renounce marriage because of unhappiness would - logically involve the right to commit suicide for the same - reason.... Who are we that we should repudiate the universe - because it will not devote itself to securing our petty pleasures - and happinesses?... Marriage, like every other great social - ordinance, is instituted not primarily to secure our happiness, - but to enable us to discharge our duty, in the matter of the - perpetuation and spiritual development of the human species. - -I am confident that the reader will appreciate the reviewer’s gallantry -in not taking issue with the quoted statements: it would be too easy a -task to exercise one’s humor over such threadbare niceties. My only -apology for devoting so much space to Mr. Bridges’s book is the fact -that Mr. Bridges is one of the moulders of public opinion in Chicago, -hence ... I shall owe one more apology for my unrestrainable desire to -quote the closing lines of the author’s sermon on the War: - - May she (this country) preserve her unity, and that nobly - disinterested foreign policy manifested, to the admiration of all - Europe (indeed!!) in Cuba and Mexico: so that, when the vials of - apocalyptic wrath beyond the seas are spent, she may enter to - motion peace—the welcome arbitress of Europe’s dissensions, the - trusted daughter, first of England, but in lesser degree of all - the nations now at strife, called in to cover their shame and to - mediate the purgation of their sins. - -Hm—but I promised to refrain from comments. - - K. - - - SOPHOMORIC MAETERLINCK - - _Poems, by Maurice Maeterlinck._ [_Dodd, Mead and Company, New - York._] - -The publisher of Maeterlinck’s _Poems_ states apologetically that there -has been a demand for a complete edition of the Belgian’s works, hence -his justification in publishing a translation of the poems that -originally appeared twenty years ago. The service rendered thereby to -the author is of doubtful value: great writers are inclined to forget -their youthful follies; as far as the English reading public is -concerned the little book may be of some interest as a pale suggestion -of an early stage in the development of Maeterlinck’s talent. I say a -pale suggestion, for with all the conscientious labor of the translator -the poems Anglicised have lost their chief, if not sole value—their -Verlainean musicalness. If as a verslibrist Maeterlinck was obviously -influenced by Whitman, his rhymed verses bear the unmistakable stamp of -the poet who preached: “De la musique avant toute chose.... De la -musique encore et toujours!” Back in the eighties Maeterlinck belonged -to the Belgian group of Symbolists, who, like Elskamp, Rodenbach, van -Lerberghe, Verhaeren, reflected the French school which began with -Baudelaire and culminated through Rimbaud and Verlaine in Mallarmé. Yet, -unlike his great friend, Verhaeren, the Mystic of Silence directed his -genius into a different channel and abandoned verse as a medium of -expression. In the collected poems, the _Serres Chaudes_ and the -_Chansons_, despite the mentioned influences, we discover the -Maeterlinckian key-note—the languor of the oppressed soul, helplessly -inactive in “a hot-house whose doors are closed forever.” We are dazzled -frequently with such beautiful lines as “O blue monotony of my heart!”; -“Green as the sea temptations creep”; “the purple snakes of dream”; “O -nights within my humid soul”; “My hands, the lilies of my soul, Mine -eyes, the heavens of my heart.” A friend confessed to me that these -similes reminded him of Bodenheim; to be sure, this compliment should be -laid at the door of the translator. - - K. - - - “THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.” - - _The Harbor, by Ernest Poole._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._] - -In America today, other things being equal, that novelist first achieves -success who writes—let us say—of the social fabric, rather than of the -eternal verities. Thus, in the case of two undoubtedly great artists, -John Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, the former had to wait but half the -latter’s time before he came to enjoy real popularity. - -And so it is not difficult to understand the noteworthy and deserved -success of _The Harbor_—a book so good that one would be inclined to -wonder if it _could become popular_. Mr. Poole writes with charm and a -passionate earnestness of the growth through young manhood of his hero. -He knows the New York water-front well and it furnishes an original and -interesting background. The boy goes through college, to Europe for a -happy year or two and returns to become a successful magazine writer—a -worshipper at the shrine of “big” men. Gradually his social conscience -is awakened and his entire life is transformed—his allegiance is -transferred from the presidents of the corporations who own the steamers -to the striking stokers and their fellows. On the whole the picture is -impressively convincing and Mr. Poole has caught in his pages much of -the most glowing thought of idealistic youth. - -His work is so very good that criticism may appear ungracious—still, if -one may be allowed: some of the young men at college speak Mr. Poole’s -thoughts and not their own. College men do not think as Mr. Poole would -have you believe they do—at least not until a year or two after they -have graduated. And isn’t Eleanore, the hero’s wife, just a little too -perfect—even for the role she has to play? How well an amiable weakness -would become her! Finally, _The Harbor_ has the commonest fault of -almost all first novels that have for their subject the social fabric: -there is too much thought (or too little action)—the author wants to -give his opinion on all the things he has ever seriously thought about. - -When Mr. Poole has tempered his fine seriousness with just a little more -of the creative artist’s austerity he will produce a greater novel than -_The Harbor_, and one that will fulfill the splendid promise of this -first book. - - ALFRED A. KNOPF. - - - THE $10,000 PLAY - - _Children of Earth: A Play of New England, by Alice Brown._ [_The - Macmillan Company, New York._] - -Frankly, I do not like the spectacle of a collection of New Englanders, -well past middle age, splashing about in a puddle of sex. And that is -what _Children of Earth_ is. Of course sex is interesting—most of the -time; New Englanders are interesting sometimes (especially when as -skilfully drawn as Miss Brown draws them); but the combination is rather -too much. - -In the first place what happens to these people of Miss Brown’s play -never seems of any real importance—it isn’t simply that they are -unsympathetic. Nor need one believe for a moment in the old idea that in -true tragedy the great must suffer. But at least either the great or the -typical must, and I cannot feel that these children of earth are either. -The play is well enough done; it may be compounded of fact; but I doubt -if it exhibits that finer thing by far—truth. How much better work might -Winthrop Ames’ money have purchased. - - ALFRED A. KNOPF. - - _American Thought, by Woodbridge Riley._ [_Henry Holt and - Company, New York._] - -A historical analysis of American philosophical theories, from -Puritanism to New Realism, through the stages of Idealism, Deism, -Materialism, Realism, Transcendentalism, Evolutionism, and Pragmatism. -The work lacks the strict impartiality of a text-book, which it -evidently intends to be. The author reveals a tendency to prove that -American thought has developed independently of European influences; -this appears to be true to a certain extent in regard to Pragmatism, as -the philosophy of practicality. - - - THE POETRY OF A. E. - - _Collected Poems, by A. E._ [_The Macmillan Company, New York._] - -A friend of mine once expressed pained surprise on hearing that A. E. -was among the poets I delighted to read. Having just heard me dissent -from occultism, he could not understand how one who did not believe in -theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, or any of the many modern forms of -Mumbo-jumboism could possibly take delight in a poet who, according to -him, was a theosophist, or revere poems which had first appeared in a -theosophical journal. - -Poetry, however, is not a record of one’s beliefs; it is a record of -one’s experiences; and while the existence of God may be asserted and -just as easily disproved, in the medium of rhyming language, there is no -question of poetry involved. But it is equally true that when a poet -describes a spiritual experience, though he may draw his images from -Neo-Platonic philosophy, Christian tradition or even the animatism of -the primitive poets, there is no question of theological belief implied. - -When, therefore, we open Mr. Russell’s book at random, as I actually did -when this volume reached me, and come across the following lines, we -must be blind to a wide-spread experience of mankind if we cannot see -that it expresses poetic truth as well as poetic beauty: - - - Unconscious - - The winds, the stars, and the skies, though wrought - By the heavenly King, yet know it not; - And the man who moves in the twilight dim - Feels not the love that encircles him, - Though in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press - Lips of an infinite tenderness, - He turns away through the dark to roam - Nor heeds the fire in his hearth and home. - -But Mr. Russell’s mysticism—and mysticism, being an attitude rather than -an intellectual belief, is something that is legitimately expressible in -poetry, and is moreover something that Mr. Russell constantly and -beautifully expresses—is no mere world-flight. Even the Beatific Vision -he would only accept on terms becoming a man whose life is implicated in -humanity. Hence, under the title of _Love_ we find him singing: - - Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the - peace, - While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men, - May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not - release; - May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succor - again. - - Ere I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and - dominions of old, - Ere the ancient enchantment allure me to roam through the star-misty - skies, - I would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth - may unfold; - May my heart be o’erbrimmed with compassion; on my brow be the crown - of the wise. - - I would go as the dove from the ark, sent forth with wishes - and prayers, - To return with the paradise blossoms that bloom in the Eden of light: - When the deep star-chant of the seraphs I hear in the mystical airs, - May I capture one tone of their joy for the sad ones discrowned in - the night. - - Not alone, not alone would I go to my rest in the heart of the - love: - Were I tranced in the innermost beauty, the flame of its tenderest - breath, - I would still hear the cry of the fallen recalling me back from - above, - To go down to the side of the people who weep in the shadow of death. - -One of Mr. Russell’s poems suggests in its very first line a lyric from -Shelley’s _Hellas_, and the two poems form an interesting contrast -between the temperaments of the poet of sentimental Platonism and this -later singer who adds to Shelley’s lyric vision a firmer stationing on -the substance of earth. While Shelley began on a high note of joy that - - The world’s great age begins anew, - The golden years return, ... - -but ends on the note of disenchantment: - - O, cease! must hate and death return? - Cease! must men kill and die? - Cease! Drain not to its dregs the urn - Of bitter prophecy. - The world is weary of the past; - Oh, might it die or rest at last! - -—while Shelley thus descends, Mr. Russell in _The Twilight of Earth_ -begins more or less where Shelley left off with: - - The wonder of the world is o’er, - The magic from the sea is gone; - There is no unimagined shore, - No islet yet to venture on. - The Sacred Hazel’s blooms are shed, - The Nuts of Knowledge harvested. - - Oh, what is worth this lore of age - If time shall never bring us back - Our battle with the gods to wage, - Reeling along the starry track. - The battle rapture here goes by - In warring upon things that die. - - Let be the tale of him whose love - Was sighed between white Deidre’s breasts; - It will not lift the heart above - The sodden clay on which it rests. - Love once had power the gods to bring - All rapt on its wild wandering. - -But while - - The Paradise of memories - Grows fainter day by day ... - -there is no need to cease from life or from aspiration on that account: - - The power is ours to make or mar - Our fate as on the earliest morn, - The Darkness and the Radiance are - Creatures within the spirit born. - Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might - Forget how we imagined light. - - Not yet are fixed the prison bars; - The hidden light the spirit owns - If blown to flame would dim the stars - And they who rule them from their thrones: - And the proud sceptred spirits thence - Would bow to pay us reverence. - - Oh, while the glory sinks within - Let us not wait on earth behind, - But follow where it flies, and win - The glow again, and we may find - Beyond the Gateways of the Day - Dominion and ancestral sway. - -While in few or none of these poems is mystic thought absent it is never -present at the expense of poetry, and many of the poems find in nature -both their occasion and their material. A. E.’s vision is preeminently -for the evanescent aspect of things, especially for the colors of the -changes that come over earth and firmament. The poem beginning - - When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, - All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam, - With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes; - I am one with the twilight’s dream. - -is typical of his response to the vision of the outer world. - -The same sturdy sense of actual values that leads Mr. Russell to write -prose works on co-operation and nationality, seeing in these matters no -less than in religious ecstasy the ground for the free life of man, is -evident in the poem _On Behalf of Some Irishmen not Followers of -Tradition_. But lest sturdy commonsense be thought a grotesque piece of -praise for a poem, let me add that it is a commonsense illuminated by -the purest idealism. How close to earth this idealism moves is shown in -the little sketch _In Connemara_ describing the peasant girl: - - With eyes all untroubled she laughs as she passes, - Bending beneath the creel with the seaweed brown ... - -and enmeshing her in the nature mysticism of her race and country. - -William Morris somewhere speaks of the cultured man as one who is in -sympathy with past and present and future—a contrast indeed to much -latter-day doctrine—and one is reminded of the phrase by this poet who -with such lyrical skill not only embodies all three for us, but knits -them together in that unity which alone can bestow on man the values of -life which are timeless. - - LLEWELLYN JONES. - - - - - The Reader Critic - - -_A Chicago Reader_: - -I don’t like what THE LITTLE REVIEW or any one else I have read says -about Sanine. Too analytic, too professional.... Whatever all the -worthies say about the book being dangerous, it will not affect any soul -a jot if he is not already afflicted. - -What I can say is very inferior critically—only a hurried resume of -images after I had finished: - -A garden like a dull green cloud descended to earth, twilight skies with -supple moving figures, gardens kaleidoscopic, hills covered with woods, -odors of leaves and grasses, a dark abandoned slimy wolf cavern of -counterfeiters, dew-laden grass, shadows, dusk, whispers, eyes in the -gloom, skies pale green with faint silver stars and dark birds, night -fluttering bats, gardens filled with the melody of nightingales, a -little dying frog, lush river banks with wet reeds bending, mysterious -wood nymph smiles, mystic rays of sunlight illuminating frail flowers, -crimson morning-starred heavens, woods and streams with lithe shining -bodies of humans transformed into nymphs and satyrs—a storm that almost -breathes of the one in the Pastoral Symphony and Sanine in a flash of -lightning is revealed apostrophizing it. - -It hurts and one shrinks into one’s skeleton to think that perhaps a -setting is obviously made in order to be to the spirit of voluptuous -indulgence. But that feeling goes, because it is the objective thing -after all—the colors and odors and atmosphere remain. - - - THREE WOMEN - -_F. Guy Davis, Chicago_: - -There is one kind of worker active in the life of today whose work is -not often regarded in the light of art. There is a good reason for this -in the fact that the work they are attempting is so vast and vague in -character that many people do not even know it is being undertaken. They -cannot understand effort on such a scale that the final completed work, -if it is ever to be completed, will be nothing less than a new social -order, a new conception of social values, actualizing itself in the -shape of finer cities and grander and braver citizens on a world scale. - -There are various groups of men and women in this work of -reconstruction, some compactly organized, others not, some more militant -in their attitude and some less so, but all tending in the same -direction toward a better, freer, and fuller social life. This movement -is confused and uncertain as far as a definite structural goal is -concerned because of the contradictory and sometimes seemingly -antagonistic elements that go to make it up. Some of the groups have -specific architectural plans which they defend with the artist’s passion -against all other plans, or against no plan; but the movement as a whole -is pragmatic and makes its plans as it goes along, and whatever may be -the outcome the aim is at a better world, a world of beauty and goodness -in the deepest meaning of those terms. - -If the modern feminists understood great women, which they do not often -do, they would contend that there is a great significance in the fact -that three women stand out prominently in this movement and in a measure -at least are representative of three groups which more or less dominate -the whole. Listing them according to age,—for on any other basis -comparisons are difficult, each being effective in her own -sphere,—Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn are -social artists, working in different directions, yet in the same -direction, now seeming to exclude each other entirely, and now, no -doubt, sustaining each other in spirit across the separating gaps in the -common purpose, just as old age, middle age, and youth do sometimes in -life, or just as three mountains may have separate and distinct -characters and yet be a part of the same range. - -Old Mother Jones is a “character.” In her eighty-two years she has seen -life’s storm, has lived its hope, fear, love, and hate, and has mastered -it. She will die happy with the knowledge that she did her part in the -fight for better things, which she may not see but which she believes -are coming. - -Emma Goldman is at the height of her creative effort, breaking down the -stone walls of prejudice and superstition, freeing minds from the grip -of the past, preparing the soil for new harvests of life and beauty. She -sees mankind on the rack in the agony of a herculean struggle. Giant -social forces jostle each other in their efforts for recognition in her -consciousness. Her attitude toward the revolutionary movement reminds -one of the picture of the Earth in Meredith’s poem _Earth and Man_—“Her -fingers dint the breast which is his well of strength, his home of -rest.” She senses the stirring of new life in the race’s womb and she -fears a bit, for she sees clearly the possibilities of a tragic -miscarriage or a premature birth. - -Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is the young Diana of the labor movement. Strong, -full of hope, past the fear which accompanies all beginnings, facing the -future with the courage and confidence of a youth fully launched on its -career and enjoying the sense of growing understanding and power. - -The redeemers of life are those in whose natures this spirit of the -creator lives, whether it expresses itself in the labor movement or in -the studio; and there is a significance in the fact that all three of -these leaders come from one class, the workers. The interest in the -movement is not by any means confined to the laboring classes, -so-called, but the real dynamic power back of the movement, the steam -which drives it on, does come from this class; and it is more than a -coincidence that these three women should all belong to it, for the -vital power, the staying quality which is the condition of real -leadership, seems to have been nearly cornered by the laboring elements. - -Mother Jones has broad organizational affiliations. The great massive -groups which go to make up the American Federation of Labor are with -her, generally speaking, and lend her moral support and financial aid. -Her own age and the splendid organization of her mentality are in -keeping with the corresponding qualities in the A. F. of L. - -Emma Goldman stands alone as far as organizations are concerned, like so -many great artists in other fields, always an isolated figure of heroic -beauty, always the creator, lifting the world in spite of itself. - -Miss Flynn is a part of the Industrial Workers of the World, that body -of roughneck rebels which carries such promising seeds in its -revolutionary young heart. Her youth and promise symbolize the -possibilities of the I. W. W. - -But to return to the idea of the social artist. What splendid -compensations there must be in their work! To feel that they are part of -an historic movement for a new world of beauty and harmony, such as the -utopians have dreamed of through all history from Plato to Bellamy and -Howells, a work which accelerates its speed and power as it draws more -and more to its ranks the idealists of all countries and all classes. Is -it not better for them that they know they will probably not see its -completion, that it may take centuries? They will never be disillusioned -as long as they hold to the inner faith. “To travel hopefully is better -than to arrive”—and here surely is a journey, the end of which will not -be reached tomorrow. As to the ultimate outcome, why doubt it? The race -has millions of years ahead of it. - -On the personal side each one of the three has her own unique charm. -Mother Jones is a mother indeed. Her attitude toward “her boys” is more -than motherly; it is grand-motherly. The sweetness and childishness of -age, however, a sort of a sunset glow of real warmth and virility -radiates from her. She enjoys the privileges of age, and they are many -to those who know how to accept them gracefully as she does. Miss Flynn -enjoys the privileges of youth, which she likewise accepts with a poise -and an ease all her own. Emma Goldman has neither the privileges of -youth nor those of age. She is at that point in her development when in -the nature of life she must meet the challenge of the outer world alone, -when “the soul is on the waters and must sink or swim of its own -strength.” And yet, no doubt because of this very fact, she craves -companionship with a passion that sometimes has a quality of blue flame. -Middle age has few privileges and many responsibilities. Life is fair, -however, to the normal individual. It pays in advance to youth and -afterward as well to age, but it demands service of those who are in -their prime. - -To understand these personalities and others of their kind is to -understand much of life, possibly as much as the individual -consciousness in its present form can ever understand. To know of their -struggles is to feel that one knows history in the making. It is not -necessary to endorse, but to fail to catch the spirit of their work is -to be unprepared for the possible changes which seem to be more or less -imminent in the social and industrial U. S. A. as in the world at large. - - - - - By FRITZ KREISLER - - - FOUR WEEKS IN THE TRENCHES - - The world’s greatest violinist served as lieutenant in the - present war until wounded by a Cossack’s lance in a hand-to-hand - fight before Lemberg. This book is the record of what he saw and - experienced. It is the first account of the fighting by a man who - actually fought, a story of hardship and heroism as graphic as it - is thrilling. 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C. - - - - - 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. 8]: - ... being superseded by electricity, the limitations of which has - not been sensed ... - ... being superseded by electricity, the limitations of which - have not been sensed ... - - [p. 22]: - ... at sixpence. Among them are Maurice Hewlet’s Singsongs of - the ... - ... at sixpence. Among them are Maurice Hewlett’s Singsongs of - the ... - - [p. 27]: - ... thy desire “to use the language of common speech,” and - “to employ ... - ... they desire “to use the language of common speech,” and - “to employ ... - - [p. 47]: - ... she disagreed with critics who thought Hedda Gabbler had - nothing to give. ... - ... she disagreed with critics who thought Hedda Gabler had - nothing to give. ... - - [p. 54]: - ... for instruction.” Horrible dictu! ... - ... for instruction.” Horribile dictu! ... - - [p. 56]: - ... van Lerbergh, Verhaeren, reflected the French school which - began with ... - ... van Lerberghe, Verhaeren, reflected the French school which - began with ... - - [p. 56]: - ... friend confessed to me that these similies reminded him of - Bodenheim; to ... - ... friend confessed to me that these similes reminded him of - Bodenheim; to ... - - [p. 62]: - ... movement reminds one of the picture of the Earth in - Meridith’s poem Earth and ... - ... movement reminds one of the picture of the Earth in - Meredith’s poem Earth and ... - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, MAY 1915 (VOL. 2, -NO. 3) *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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