diff options
Diffstat (limited to '75976-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 75976-0.txt | 1258 |
1 files changed, 1258 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/75976-0.txt b/75976-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..815d887 --- /dev/null +++ b/75976-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1258 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75976 *** + + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + Literature Drama Music Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + EDITOR + + AUGUST, 1916 + + A Real Magazine Margaret C. Anderson + Wakefulness Amy Lowell + Plymouth Rocks R. G. + Ulysse Fait Son Lit Jean de Bosschere + Modernity Exposed: Caesar Zwaska + Sandburg’s Chicago Poems + The Case of Masters + The Poet Sings to the World Ben Hecht + Splendid Isolation John Grimes + The Tree Helen Hoyt + Editorials and Announcements + Julia to Jim Sue Golden + A Vers Libre Contest + The Reader Critic + + Published Monthly + + 15 cents a copy + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher + Montgomery Block + SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. + + $1.50 a year + + Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, San Francisco, Cal. + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + VOL. III + + AUGUST, 1916 + + NO. 5 + + Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson + + + + + A Real Magazine + + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + +I am afraid to write anything; I am ashamed. + +I have been realizing the ridiculous tragedy of _The Little Review_. It +has been published for over two years without coming near its ideal. + + * * * * * + +The ultimate reason for life is Art. I don’t know what they mean when +they talk about art for life’s sake. You don’t make art so that you may +live; you do just the reverse of that. Life takes care of itself, rolls +on from the first push, and then falls over the edge. Art uses up all +the life it can get—and remains forever. Art for Art’s sake is merely +the sensible statement of the most self-evident fact in the world. It +has been the easy creed of charlatans; but what does that matter? It has +always been the faith of the strongest. + +Well—I wanted Art in _The Little Review_. There has been a little of it, +just a very little.... It is tragic. I tell you. + +And Revolution? Revolution _is_ Art. You want free people just as you +want the Venus that was modelled by the sea.... All my inadequate +stammerings about Emma Goldman have been to show her as the artist she +is: a great artist, working in her own material as a Michael Angelo +worked in his. + +Now we shall have Art in this magazine or we shall stop publishing it. I +don’t care where it comes from—America or the South Sea Islands. I don’t +care whether it is brought by youth or age. I only want the miracle! + +Where are the artists? Where is some new Pater, and how will his “She is +older than the rocks among which she sits” sound to us? Where is some +new Arthur Symons with his version of “Peter Weyland”? Where is a Henry +James and a Hardy and a Bjornson and an Andreyev for us? Where is a +Jean-Christophe who will let us publish his songs? + +Helen Hoyt, you have a poem in this issue called _The Tree_. It is not +Art; it is merely a rather good poem. You could have made it Art. Do it +every time, for the love of the gods! “Sue Golden” has one about Jim and +Arabella. It has an interesting idea that many people need to +understand. Why not make Art of it? I know one of hers which begins “My +body is too frail for these great moods”—and the miracle is in it. + +I loathe compromise, and yet I have been compromising in every issue by +putting in things that were “almost good” or “interesting enough” or +“important.” There will be no more of it. If there is only one really +beautiful thing for the September number it shall go in and the other +pages will be left blank. + +Come on, all of you! + + + + + Wakefulness + + + AMY LOWELL + + Jolt of market-carts; + Steady drip of horses’ hoofs on hard pavement; + A black sky lacquered over with blueness, + And the lights of Battersea Bridge + Pricking pale in the dawn. + The beautiful hours are passing + And still you sleep! + Tired heart of my joy, + Incurved upon your dreams, + Will the day come before you have opened to me? + + + + + Plymouth Rocks + + + R. G. + +Some new Agitation is always fretting the souls of those who feel that +it is their task to save the world from itself. Of late it has been +Birth Control. They have been going to prison for merely mentioning the +words Birth Control in the presence of an ingenue government. And all +the time the government has the most perfect system of Birth Control for +genius and art—the National Board of Censorship—so perfect as to produce +sterility. + +A simple mind would wonder why these agitators don’t first fight the +censorship, and perhaps all these things would be added unto them! + +Last winter a rumor did come out of New York that a few of these and a +few artists were trying to form a plan of unorganized but concerted +action, each profession or art or group protesting to the state on its +own behalf. It turned out to be another of those Spoon River things: +when the test came a few stood by the idea, but the others were either +too lily-livered to have their names appear or the inevitable Puritan +ancestor arose to remind them that after all they were Plymouth Rocks. + +And all the while the tale grows finer yet: + +Jerome Blum, a painter of reputation, a real painter, returned from +China in the spring naively bringing with him, to this land of the free, +a little collection of Chinese and Japanese art to keep by him for the +delight of his soul. In the collection was a book over one hundred and +fifty years old, containing eight original paintings on silk, by one of +the greatest of Chinese painters, and a Japanese scroll, twelve feet +long, of even finer workmanship. + +Mr. Blum was summoned before the Collector of the Port of Chicago. The +two works described had been declared obscene by an appraiser: “They +would arouse the passions of an ordinary man.” They were to be +destroyed, with the possible inclusions of the entire case of old +bronzes, tapestries, embroideries, etc., in which they were shipped. Mr. +Blum had laid himself open to a fine of thousands of dollars, with +something like five years imprisonment, for good measure. + +Law versus Art. Mr. Blum offered to paint out all objectionable parts, +asked permission to send the things back to China or permission to +present them to some museum. “Art or no Art, all paintings of the kind +were to be burned” was the decree from the customs officials. And the +two “obscene” works of art were burned in the furnace of the Federal +building. + +No need here to go into what Mr. Blum must have suffered as an artist +over the destruction of precious beauty never to be replaced—or as a man +over the delicate and unobscene discussions, by the officials, of the +objectionable parts, over the injustice of having his property destroyed +without trial before a jury of his peers. + +All people of any education know that the art of all ancient peoples +sprung from a desire to recreate for the hearts of men the mystery of +creation and reproduction of life; thence came religion to explain to +the minds of men the awe and wonder of creation. The Art of the Orient +is almost wholly concerned with these subjects. Here was where Mr. +Blum’s became “obscene” art. + +If the censors should become informed woe for the Christian churches, +each raising an “obscene” phallic symbol, in the cross, shamelessly +uncensored to the sky; the bishops would mourn their fish-mouthed +phallic hats, and so on endlessly. + +Who knows but if left to themselves they may not even reach themselves +in their unlimited censorship and be their own destruction? + + + It is not doubt, but certitude which drives one mad.—_Nietzsche._ + + + + + Ulysse Fait Son Lit + + + JEAN DE BOSSCHERE + + Ulysse glorieux, revenu des batailles + Choisit une terre, dans la ville qui sourit à sa paix + Il est à eux; il s’est donné avec la paix. + Tous le touchent, et + S’il pose la main sur les yeux + Tous crient + “Il songe à trahir, il est orgueilleux + Peut-être croit-il nous faire honneur + Même en ne nous regardant pas. + Nous ferons deux nouvelles statutes pour toi, Ulysse! + Tu seras bien forcé à te tenir parmi nous.” + + Or, Ulysse ne songe pas à fuir. + Il sait l’homme dans les cuisines + Dans l’aréopage, dans les batailles + Il les aime avec leurs écailles de poisson + Leurs nageoires sur un corps de truie + Et la tête est celle du canard, + Les pattes celles du coq, + Avec des ailes de moineau; + Il aime leur saveur de mauvais pain d’épices + Mais souvent, le soir, l’odeur de chat, + L’odeur est trop forte + Et il ne peut plus embrasser ses amis + “Que ma statue et ma penseé soient avec eux” dit-il. + + Dans sa terre, autour d’un sycomore + Il elève un mur rond de pierre et de bois; + À la hauteur du front, il coupe une porte; + Elle n’est pas plus large que des épaules d’homme + Puis il la ferme avec des planches + Comme les cinq doights de la main cachent une blessure + “Comme un pied appliqué aux vastes fesses des hommes” + Dit-il; mais il rougit + “Comme un couvercle sur le monde + Comme un couvercle sur un pot de fromage piqué de vers.” + Dit-il; mais il rougit. + Et se frappe trois fois la poitrine. + + La foule regarde le mur + Il n’y a pas de fenêtres. + “Ulysse n’a pas le droit de se mettre au tombeau.” + Le jeune Franklin s’accroche aux branches du sycomore + Se hisse, et regarde par dessus le mur. + Il retombe sur ses pieds de sycophante; + “Ah! il scie le tronc de l’arbre” crie-t-il. + “Il nous trahit, il nous vend, il nous renie.” + + “Ulysse, Ulysse! nous avons déposé des roses blanches + Sous ta statue + Ulysse, Ulysse! nous accrochons des roses rouges à ta porte; + Ulysse, Ulysse montre-toi aux bourgeois de la ville.” + Il a scié le tronc. + Il en sépare des planches adorables, + Et que l’on peut aimer d’amour + Des planches plus aimables que des miches de pain. + Ulysse, sans clous de fer + Construit son lit avec le sycomore. + “Ulysse, Ulysse, le conseil te réclame. + Nous lui contâmes ce que tu fis de l’arbre” + Lui avait-on, avec le terre, donné l’arbre + D’où le jeune Franklin pouvait le voir? + Il n’a pas le droit, + Pas le droit. + Il y a peut-être un souterrain + Certainement il reçoit des messages sans fils. + Oui, il communique avec l’ennemi. + Ulysse avec des couleurs rouges et noires + Trace des signes de joie sur son lit et sur sa porte. + Puis il rit, + Il rit, et son cœur + Au milieu de l’air joyeux de la poitrine + Et comme une rose sensuelle qui l’ouvre. + Elle s’épanouit comme un soupir d’aise sans limite. + Alors, du coté de la mer + Il fore un trou dans la muraille. + “Je vais prendre femme” dit-il, + “Je sais bien comment elle sera, lisse et blanche + Des cheveux ni de blé, ni de châtaigne + Et des yeux sages avec l’ardeur des chats. + Mais je veux la voir dans ce jour d’exultation + À peine s’il me faut ajouter une table, un coffre, un autel.” + + Ulysse regarde par le trou ouvert, dans la pierre + Ils sont mille autour du mur rond + Et il entend que les hommes disent + “A-t-il ses armes? + Vous savez combien des la mamelle il fut malin + Habile aux armes + Et méchant” + Il voit que les hommes sont chargés de fagots. + Il y a un bûcher autour de la maison. + Les femmes l’arrosent avec l’huile des lampes + Et y versent celles de leur toilette, + Les cuisiniers l’huile des poissons conservés, + Les charrons la poix des charrettes, + Le batelier apporte une marmite de goudron, + Et un capitaine, vêtu de ses médailles de sioux + Pousse la flamme d’une torche sous le bûcher. + Ils cuisent Ulysse + Car il est bien à eux. + + Au loin les statutes sont traîneés vers la mer. + Un chaudronnier les achète à la foule trahie. + Il paie trois guinées pour boire en paix. + Ulysse cuit + Les jeunes filles chantent + Rougies par la lueurs des flammes + Et les mères ravies, sourient. + + + + + Modernity Exposed + + + —And Gone One Better[1] + + CAESAR ZWASKA + +It has come to be that on the stage, where once we watched for artists, +we find only vainly strutting weak-willed human beings. We are not held, +and the light within the sacred space grows dimmer. We lose all interest +in places where once we have found Art. + +And how desperate we have become! + +The procession of the Imagists has been the only sacred thing before our +eyes—thin and fragrant. Their fragility has the sap of eternity; +blustering winds, blowing through the gaps back-stage, tear at them in +vain. The Imagists have grown straight and strong. The beauty of their +tiny procession strikes into our very hearts the emptiness, the +appalling desolation, of our position. + + * * * * * + +Carl Sandburg has understood the failures and the lies and exposed the +cause. He has shown the lie of your government and the farce and folly +of monuments to those who kill to keep it alive. He exposes your little +deaths and their perfumed sorrow and the bunk of words and antics of +your Billy Sunday and fellow citizens. He has heard the “fellows saying +here’s good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good +play,” when speaking of an Italian widow living in city slums. He has +the courage and the knack of giving them the challenge—calling their +bluff; and he declares with strong conviction that he’s able to back up +his defiance. Who of the scatter-brains living could put her or her +daughter-in-law or the working girls or the entire mob, for that matter, +into a play? But _he_ has put them, their spirit, into lines, gaunt and +vivid as their lives. And I declare he is the only modern that has got +it across. + + * * * * * + +This is the process of the book and of the poet’s progress: The Chicago +poems; he has worked his vengeance; from the cinders and ashes, glowing +still, rise sparks, brilliant and tiny. (He calls them _Handfuls_.) The +stifling smoulder of the War poems to the warm rich glow of The Road and +the End and the flame of the fire with its attendant fogs and then grim +shadows. As a confession, or rather a solidifying of the entire force of +the poet, he reveals the _Other Days_, quite as intense as the present +mood. This from the last of that section: + + Snatch the gag from thy mouth, child, + And be free to keep silence. + Tell no man anything for no man listens, + Yet hold thy lips ready to speak. + +Why should a man speak? When there are things to say, such as the _Red +Son_, always have your lips ready to speak: + + I am going away and I never come back to you; + Crags and high rough places call me, + Great places of death + Where men go empty-handed + And pass over smiling + To the star-drift on the horizon rim; + My last whisper shall be alone, unknown; + I shall go to the city and fight against it, + And make it give me passwords + Of luck and love, women worth dying for, + And money. + I go where you wist not of + Nor I nor any man nor woman. + I only know I go to storms + Grappling against things wet and naked. + There is no pity of it and no blame + None of us is in the wrong. + After all it is only this: + You for the little hills and I go away. + +Poetry has grown stronger in your eyes? + +Thus has Carl Sandburg in one book gone the entire range of a life +today. The humanitarian poet as well as the artist-poet. He has proven +things—and peoples. The nigger: foam of teeth ... breaking crash of +laughter; Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti: with that kindling wood piled on +her head, coming along Peoria street nine o’clock in the morning; Jan +Kubelik: girls of Bohemia ... in the hills with their lovers; Chick +Lorimer: a wild girl keeping a hold on a dream she wants; Mischa Elman: +a singing fire and a climb of roses; the plowboy: turning the turf in +the dusk and haze of an April gloaming; the gypsy: her neck and head the +top piece of a Nile obelisk. He has known uplands when the great strong +hills are humble; losses: and one day we will hold only the shadows; +wars: in the wars to come kings kicked under the dust and millions of +men following great causes not yet dreamed out in the heads of men; joy: +sent on singing, singing, smashed to the hearts under the ribs with a +terrible love; the mist: at the first of things, I will be at the last; +and The Great Hunt: + + When the rose’s flash to the sunset + Reels to the rack and the twist, + And the rose is a red bygone, + When the face I love is going + And the gate to the end shall clang, + And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long”— + Maybe I’ll tell you then— + some other time. + + + The Case of Masters + +In one of Whitman’s songs he speaks to those “who would assume a place +to teach, or be a poet here in the States”; or, rather, he questions +them, something like this: + + What is it you bring my America? + Is it uniform with my country? + Is it not something that has been better told or done before? + Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship? + Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?—is the good old cause + in it? + Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, + literats, of enemies’ lands? + Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here? + Does it answer universal needs? Will it improve manners? + Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? + Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my + strength, gait, face? + Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere + amanuenses? + +And so on. I think the questions quoted and the rest of the poem are +valuable; especially in thinking of Masters’ new book.[2] Because here +are put to the lawyer, who is known as a poet, all the questions of our +time. They are put to him because his first book gave us to believe that +he was the first poet whom we need scrutinize closely since Whitman +spoke his simplicities to the present and the next ten futures. + +Masters may not cringe before these “terms obdurate.” He will point to +_The Spoon River Anthology_. I will point to his work before the +Anthology and again these later things. Masters of course loves Walt +Whitman. He knows the poem from which I quoted. But Theodore +Watts-Dunton—you remember him? Masters, I am sure, is more anxious and +willing to accept, nay, subscribe to, the rules and judgments of this +Victorian critic than to the mere words spoken in poesy of +Watts-Dunton’s American contemporary, Whitman. I am almost certain of +this. Masters speaks highly of Watts-Dunton’s essay on poetry. It +appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Please read it and find the +Masters creed. He seems ready to bow before it. If Masters wants honors +as a decadent he can have them—really he has earned them. _The Spoon +River Anthology_: its manner, joy, abandon, deepest humanity, art (all +that makes it the tremendous book it is), seem to be the one great thing +that Masters had to give us. The new book does not show the “truly deep +poetic spirit” which Francis Hackett claims to have found in it. Such a +judgment is given the lie by such poems as: _St. Francis and the Lady +Clare_, _Rain in My Heart_, _Simon Surnamed Peter_, _The City_, _Helen +of Troy_, _O Glorious France_, _Love Is a Madness_, _The Altar_, _Soul’s +Desire_, _Ballad of Launcelot and Elaine_, _In Michigan_, _The Star_. + +Our own feeble voice aside, I merely put before you words of two men—one +a creator and critic, and the other a creator and human being. And I +hope I have visualized for you the pathetically absurd spectacle of a +“modern poet” bowing on bended knee before—. Well, why should a poet bow +at all? + +---------- + + [1] _Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg. New York: Henry Holt._ + + [2] _Songs and Satires, by Edgar Lee Masters. New York: + Macmillan._ + + + + + The Poet Sings to the World + + + BEN HECHT + + I am a stranger, wandering always. + Only the dark trees know me and the dark skies. + Wistfully I look on you and wander on coldly, + For you will not know me... + Only the night that swims in the black branches knows me + And the silence that walks in the dark streets. + + But I know you— + You of the little words and the little visions + Who are warm with laughter and the joy of common things. + I wander among you and I wish to laugh + And I yearn to take your hand. + But your eyes look into mine and stare + And there is no love in them such as you lavish elsewhere. + Your eyes look into mine and frown + For you will not know me... + Only the blue distances of the day on the water know me + And the cold wind that warms itself in my heart. + + I reach to embrace you, + I dream of touching your heart with my fingers, + But I am a stranger, wandering always; + Wistful and coldly mocking your dull faces + As you slip from my arms like a shadow; + Hating and laughing at your little sacredness... + For you will not know me... + Only the dark trees know me and the white stars + And the friendless night that comes smiling to me for comfort, + And the cold wind that warms itself in my heart. + + For you have sent me, doomed me to wander, + And only they know me—the far-away things. + Only they come to me, + Taking my hate and my love into their vastness. + And sometime you will hear the things I have spoken to them— + Unsaid things of myself and of you— + Coming out of their distances; + Tears for your sorrow and wild laughters for your joy. + And then you will know me + Even as they knew me: + Not as an exile singing + But as a part of your soul that wandered away. + + + + + “Splendid Isolation”[3] + + + JOHN GRIMES + +He might have removed mountains or carved out empires; instead he turns +his nails against provincial society and scratches. Pechorin—egoist, +self-seeker, hater, superman in swaddlings—stifled to madness by the air +of Russia, bled of energy, his idealism thwarted; fearing to raise his +head from the ashes and launch against circumstance, there was nothing +in all Holy Russia that could test his soul in supreme activity. He +lacked the moral courage that forced the sons of the fathers into +revolution. There was left mockery, and the insulting of the soul with +puny wickedness, vapid and provincial. So genius was poured into the +mould of the commonplace. + +Pechorin sought a splendid isolation. He killed humanity in his heart, +became a creature of self, and began to hate as sincerely as a +revengeful, spoiled child. His hatred becomes sordid vindictiveness; his +emotions correspond to tantrums. He feeds upon the ruined hopes and the +despair of society, making himself “an author of middle-class +tragedies.” + +He looms before us on the screen, menacing, grandiose, Byronic. But he +is great only from the scaling of values. His contact is incessantly +with weaker types who bend or break before him. Grushnitski is a modish +idealist; Bela, a captive maid who acknowledges his right to do as he +wills; Vera, a hysterical sentimentalist of that spirituelle type to +whom the intense physical traits of Pechorin make a ready appeal. She +quiets her scruples with the sacred notion that she is sacrificing +herself, soul and body to one whose life would otherwise be incomplete. +Princess Mary is a typical Byronese victim, a devotee at the shrine of +heroism, who for nothing in the world would give herself to a man who +has not some mystery or who has not been the victim of some crushing +sorrow. Contrast her with the vital, passionate Natalya in Turgene’s +_Rudin_.... Pechorin hunts easy game. He acknowledges that he has never +loved women of spirit: “Once only I loved a woman with a firm will that +I was unable to vanquish. We parted enemies.” What would these erotic, +parasitic Byrons subsist upon nowadays? Woman is no more the mere giver; +she asks and receives in return. + +Pechorin wins from us not honest hatred but contempt. One searches the +book for an honorable impulse upon his part. He is a washed-out Byron; a +pale Don Juan. He loves many women for the excitement of mere change. +“We live out of curiosity. We expect something new. How absurd, and yet +how vexatious!” Women fall at his feet and he asks derisively: “Can it +be that wickedness is so attractive?” He knows the ways of his victim by +heart, he anticipates her every move, and calls her accomplishment +tiresome. Passion has shriveled until it is an inglorious segment of his +life. It is a thing of curiosity rather than of sympathy. Love is an +annoyance, yet he persists in it: “I feel within me an insatiate hunger +that devours everything it meets upon the way. I look upon joy and +suffering only in their relation to myself, regarding them as nutriment +that sustains my spiritual forces.... To none has my love ever brought +happiness because I have never sacrificed anything for the sake of those +I loved. I have only tried to satisfy the strange cravings of my heart, +greedily draining their feelings, their tenderness, their joy, their +suffering—and I have never been able to sate myself.” + +It occurs to Pechorin that such aimlessness cannot but be a +misinterpretation of the mystic handwriting of life. “It cannot be that +I came purposeless into the world. A purpose there must have been, and +surely mine was an exalted destiny because I feel within my soul powers +immeasurable. But I was unable to discover that destiny. I allowed +myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions innane and +ignoble. From that crucible I issued hard and cold as iron.”... “My +chief pleasure is to make everything around me subject to my will. To be +the cause of suffering or joy to another without having a definite right +to be—is it not the sweetest food for our pride?” + +Lermontov is honest. He makes no attempt to vindicate a type. He must +have smiled at his hater, his incipient superman, shattered by fate +casting himself on the bare steppe after killing his horse in a mad +ride, and clasping his body to the earth. Did he think to merge himself +with the great “I am”? + +“Alas! there cometh a time when man shall no longer give birth to a +star. Alas! there cometh the time of the most contemptible man who can +no longer despise himself!” + + * * * * * + +Thus spake Zarathustra! + +Not submission, self-abnegation, Tolstoyanism, but wholesome +self-hatred, acknowledging in one’s self but a bridge to beyond-man. +Pechorin saw life as an end in itself. He was a creature of the surface, +he feared to plunge into the blue depths. + +One smiles at his childlike attempt to be self-efficient, isolated, +damnable. But one is impatiently sorry that his splendid vitality was +turned from healthful pioneering to the puny triumphs of the ballroom, +and the conquest of hysterical ladies. Young Russia despises life except +as a means. It will hurl revolutions into the world’s face, it will +build empires. Life will be a hot flame of action and not a hectic +afterglow of spent passion. + +---------- + + [3] _A Hero of Our Time, by A. Lermontov. New York, Alfred A. + Knopf._ + + + + + The Tree + + + HELEN HOYT + + On the way to the factory, + In the block as you leave the car, + Growing from cinders + Is a tree. + And it has leaves .... + Green .... + All around are the factory walls + And small sooty houses with bleak steps + And babies crawling among flies .... + In summer I have felt the pavements + Pouring out heat like ovens. + + O tree, how can you be so patient! + + + + + Editorials and Announcements + + + _A Real Orchestra in San Francisco_ + +It’s a quite amazing phenomenon: here in this town encased in +philistinism there is a symphony orchestra, conducted by a radical young +man who knows his business, playing a series of modern music programs +during the summer! + +The first day I went out to inspect San Francisco I was struck dumb +before a poster in a music store announcing Sunday afternoon concerts by +a People’s Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by N. Sokoloff, with +Debussy’s “_Faun_” and those lovely _Caucasian Sketches_ of +Ippolitow-Ivanow on the program, and Tina Lerner as soloist, etc., +etc.—all for a price ranging between twenty-five and seventy-five cents. + +I went, naturally; not because I expected it to be a very good concert, +but because I was starved for music. I knew nothing of Sokoloff, except +that he had played the violin in Chicago last winter and I had missed +his concert. Perhaps you can imagine the shock and the joy of hearing +the “Faun” conducted as I at least have never heard it done before: so +that it became really a thing of cool lavender shadows in a forest.... +It’s impossible to describe, but it made you weep—it was so beautifully +done. + +Since then I have heard the story of the unique organization. San +Francisco has one orchestra under the leadership of a man who may be +called a conservative, I suppose, and backed by numerous wealthy +citizens who have the artistic interests of the town at heart without a +very definite knowledge of what channels they should follow. But Mrs. J. +B. Casserly, a musician, conceived the idea of having better music in +San Francisco, and asked Mr. Sokoloff to undertake these concerts. Mr. +Sokoloff, who was a violinist rather than a conductor, was fired by the +idea, and a skating-rink was hired for the first rehearsal. There was +some embarrassment as to who should pay the expenses of the rehearsal, +but it was finally decided that if the orchestra men liked the new +conductor they would assume the entire cost; if not, it was to be “on” +Mrs. Casserly. As I remember, they played the Tchaikovsky _Pathetique_ +that afternoon in the sacred halls of the skating-rink, and when it was +over the men rose to cheer the conductor. “Well, gentlemen,” said Mrs. +Casserly, “who pays?” But there was no hesitation over that trifling +matter. + +And so the concerts began in a local theatre. It is perfectly simple to +realize that San Francisco would not largely appreciate such a blessing, +and that Mrs. Casserly and Mr. Sokoloff would be criticised for their +“modern” programs; but it is hard to understand the action of the other +orchestra people, who locked up their scores so that the “rival” +musicians couldn’t use them and were forced to buy new ones. This is the +typical history of all struggles in the world to find beauty, so one +grows used to it. But the important thing is that the People’s +Philharmonic is to go on next year, and their programs (I should have +mentioned that they play old music, which is good as well as new music) +are exciting to think of. I listened yesterday to their rehearsal of the +_Tristan_ Prelude and I know that Mr. Stock in Ravinia Park is not +offering his audiences anything so fresh and inspired as Mr. Sokoloff’s +reading. May they live long and prosper! + + + _An Anarchist’s Question_ + +On the day of the Preparedness Parade in San Francisco some one threw a +bomb and killed eight people, who undoubtedly didn’t deserve to die. +Since then the city has gone around on tip-toe, as an anarchist I know +expressed it. Five people who undoubtedly don’t deserve it have been +thrown into jail and tortured. Puzzle: if the object of preparedness +parades is achieved, everybody will be killed off anyway; why is one +kind of murder so much worse than another? + + + + + Julia to Jim + + + (_After reading Edgar Lee Masters’ “Jim and Arabel’s Sister”_) + + SUE GOLDEN + + You see, it’s this way, Jim ... + You can call me a primrose, if you like, + Or the Lover, for that’s a way you have, or men have, + Of tying things in bundles, + That don’t belong in bundles; + For every woman, or man too, I guess, + Is a separate complex package + With a little bit of everything + Out of all the other bundles. + You find in us exactly what you look for, + As Francis did in Arabella; + It wouldn’t have made the least difference + What you or I told him, + Or what he found out— + But about me, Jim? + You’ve sat here drinking my coffee, + And I’ve made you comfortable and happy, + And you’ve told me all about myself, + And you haven’t even asked me what I thought about myself. + It didn’t occur to you. + Do you think Francis + Has ever gone deeper + Than the curve of Arabel’s cheek, + Or what he thought her, or wanted her to be? + + You call me the Lover. + And try to figure out + Why I am not like other women; + But I am, Jim— + Just an ordinary primrose, + For that primrose that changed + Started out like all the others; + And you wonder why I don’t live like the others, + Get married—I was once, have children—my son’s grown— + So I’ve been all three, sweetheart and mother and wife, + And I am still. + Every woman is all three, + But not all at the same time; + That’s why it is such a bore + Being expected to be. + + When you have had your coffee, you’ll go down town + And forget me. + And I’ll forget you, and be comfortable and happy, + Not having to remember you. + But if I were married to you, + You’d want me to keep on remembering you + Every minute of the day, + And I’d be so tired of it by the time you came home, + I’d be sorry to see you. + I have nothing against marriage, + Except that it’s a bore + Trying to live somebody else’s life. + You can’t do it. + Married people would be happier + If they didn’t try to. + They ought to live as freely + As we do. + All these sudden split-ups + In the newspapers + Are just this: + The hysteria of woman is a shriek of boredom. + Why, I’d die in a week if I had to keep on + Being the particular kind of primrose + That you think me. + But the hysterical woman, + There’s your flower changing, Jim. + I’m just the common kind, but I know that + I’m never the same, and I don’t want to be. + If I’m the mother today, I may be the lover tomorrow, + And I don’t want anybody sitting around on me + And keeping me from growing. Your primrose probably changed + Just to spite the old scientist who kept prying at it. + + Sex? No, it isn’t sex that these people are writing about, + _It’s sentimentality_. + They have an ideal, and if the first woman doesn’t answer it + They think the second will, or the third. + And they call it sex, or beauty, or urge— + But it isn’t sex, Jim. + I know what sex is. + + The reason I like you, Jim, + Is because you haven’t any of these silly notions. + Sex is honest and healthy. + You say they trace morbid ideas to sex, + But I tell you it’s the morbid, silly, beautiful ideas + About Love and about being able to satisfy the ideal + That are at the root of the trouble about sex! + I can’t absorb you, and I don’t want to, + And I don’t want to be absorbed. + + I don’t know whether you get what I mean. + + I like you, Jim, + Because you leave a person free. + After you go, I shall be busy with my own thoughts + And my own life, just as if a friend had dropped in. + I shall be anything I want to be. I shall change into + Just as many primroses as I want to, and you won’t + Know anything about it. + + You ought to get married, Jim, + No, not me. + But if you came here every night, + I’d a thousand times rather be married to you, + For I have never known anybody more tied up + Than these “free-love” people. + + Am I happy? Well, I’m free. + We’d all like to be free _and_ happy. + Lots of people could be happy—ought to be happy, + If they knew enough to be free..... + Perhaps happiness is partly the chance of being unhappy— + You and I, Jim, haven’t that. + + But what I hate is all this mussing up + Of love and sex and the ideal—it isn’t life. + One ought to start straight on earth, + And take heaven when it comes. + + + I promise the advent of a tragic age: the highest art in the + saying of yea to life, “tragedy,” will be born when mankind has + the knowledge of the hardest, but most necessary of wars, behind + it, without, however, suffering from that knowledge.—_Nietzsche._ + + + + + A Vers Libre Prize Contest + + +Through the generosity of a friend, THE LITTLE REVIEW is enabled to +offer an unusual prize for poetry—possibly the first prize extended to +free verse. The giver is “interested in all experiments, and has +followed the poetry published in THE LITTLE REVIEW with keen +appreciation and a growing admiration for the poetic form known as _vers +libre_.” + +The conditions are as follows: + +Contributions must be received by August 15th. + +They must not be longer than twenty-five lines. + +They must be sent anonymously with stamps for return. + +The name and address of the author must be fixed to the manuscript in a +sealed envelope. + +It should be borne in mind that free verse is wanted—verse having beauty +of rhythm, not merely prose separated into lines. + +There will be three judges: William Carlos Williams, Zoë Aikens and +Helen Hoyt. + +There will be two prizes of $25 each. They are offered not as a first +and second prize, but for “the two best short poems in free verse form.” + +As there will probably be a large number of poems to read, we suggest +that contributors adhere closely to the conditions of the contest. + + + + + The Reader Critic + + + The Nymph + +(_Edgar Lee, have you missed anything?—Editor._) + + I see it all now: I was born with the soul of a nymph, + And they expected me to be law-abiding and moral! + Why, I was a nymph from the day my mother lashed me + For playing kissing games with the boys, out behind the school, + To the day I shot my lover in a South State Street cabaret + For flirting with another girl and they put me in the penitentiary. + Good God! is it a sin to be young? + + —_Anonymous._ + + + How Stanilaus Szukalski Expresses Life + +_L. C. B._: + +There are trees and valleys and mountains—red, blue, orange and +purple—all smothered by a phosphorescent green. The trees stretch up +gnarled hands, swollen from too much striving. There is no sky. Dull +coal mingles with the earth clods. Diamond mines glitter. The ground is +misshapen. Flowers give forth a stale odor. A hideous laugh sounds. It +comes from the mouth of a hunch-back who, with prods of burning metal, +forces people into the quick-sands. Over the sands sucking, demoniacal +waters rush. Here and there an eye or a torso floats on the surface. +From the trees and valleys and mountains, luridly colored, come human +faces. Blood runs from their opened arteries. Their hands are horribly +twisted. In the foreground writhes a shape whose fingers bend back to +meet his knuckles. Another rears a massive head, the veins of which +stand out further than his purple lips. A woman’s arm is extended, too +full of blood. A weird figure hovers over an abyss, swathed with the +vapors arising from the gases of the underground. All the people are +dying. Everyone breathes hard. A whole mound is composed of a soft +substance—disintegrated limbs. The jelly-like mass quivers. This is +life. + +Did you see his exhibition at the Art Institute? At seventeen one is +almost wholly in sympathy with him. + + + Phantasy + +_Noncompos Mentis, Napa, California_: + + Night! A lambient fog * * * * * + Stirs the damp echos of the baleful deep, + Cimmerian in its fell intensity. + Shrouded in mist, pale wraiths flit hitherward + Or yon; lured or impelled * * * * * Peace! + Ah! Who shall say? + + Borne on the vagrant breeze she floats; + Kelp in her hands; ’twined in her hair + The weed from outer seas; writhing yet strangely still. + Behold her eyes—shallow, opaque, + Yet glaucous with a nascent light, gleaming + Its message of appeal to answering soul. + * * * * * Ah me! Recall the past; + Blot out its infamies; this fiery tumult quell + With one tempestuous kiss. + My being swoons—my soul is wafted hence, + Drowned in its God-like, saccharine ecstasy.[4] + +---------- + + [4] Here the Muse skidded. Author contemplated another stanza, + but warder entered with strait jacket and gag. + + + Birth Control + +_Russell Palmer, Seattle_: + +... With particular reference to the matter of Birth Control, which the +writer has studied in an amateurish fashion for some time, I want to ask +you if there has ever been framed a model statute providing for the +dissemination of such information by the State. + +If such a model statute exists I will arrange to have it introduced in +the Washington State Legislature when that body convenes next January. +If nothing of this sort is available I would earnestly recommend that +steps be taken immediately to prepare a measure which will bring about +the maximum amount of good and yet at the same time have an opportunity +of receiving the support of law-makers elected by a semi-civilized and +bigoted people. + +It should be borne in mind that the Initiative and Referendum are both +in effect in the State of Washington, so that there would be a strong +probability that such a proposed law would be passed upon directly by +the people, either through the failure of the legislature to meet the +issue squarely or its over cautious desire to have its action approved +by the voters individually. + +I believe that such an act would have a fair chance of passage. We look +upon our State as not altogether unprogressive, for in addition to the +legislative progress indicated by the Initiative and Referendum we enjoy +woman suffrage, glory in non-partisan direct primaries, carry but do not +wave a Red Light Abatement Act, tolerate Prohibition and threaten Single +Tax. So you see there are hopes. + + + What Is the State? + + (An answer to Alan Adair’s “What Is Anarchy?”) + +_Alice Groff, Philadelphia_: + +Is it not time that thinking people should cease to speak of the social +order as “the state”? The very meaning of state is static, and if there +be a qualifying word that does _not_ apply to the life of the social +order static is that word. The social order is a growing, developing, +evolving thing. + +Man is a social as well as an individual being. He may be called a +political being by virtue of his social activities, and the methods he +uses to live best his social life; but the individual man is not a +political being—he cannot “flock in a corner all by himself” as +Dundreary would say—he is political only in the sense of being an +element in a social ego, with a social will toward the desired social +end of that ego. + +Such social ego is continually being formed anew in the social order. +The dominating social ego of any stage is not necessarily the highest +ideal which the most advanced and thoughtful minds in that stage can +conceive. It is the highest ideal of the largest or most powerful number +of individuals that are in unanimity upon that ideal and capable of +ruling the rest of the social order with it for the time being. Every +form of social dominance that has ever prevailed in the history of the +world will come under this head and answer to this description. And who +shall say that the prevailing and dominating social ego at any one stage +is not the best possible for the social order at that stage? + +The individual man with a high philosophic gift and a reasoning mind may +say to himself, and to others: “Man is capable of a better social order +than this, there are higher and finer ideals than those that +prevail”—but he can do absolutely nothing of himself to do away with the +prevailing social ego, and to substitute a new one with better ideals, +as he thinks, except to teach, to agitate, until he can induce a number +of individuals to take up his ideal and to join him in a social ego that +shall become powerful enough to drive out the dominating ego and +substitute for it the new one. This is all that there is to political +activity. This is the whole story of social evolution. And no individual +or social ego can possibly decide that the new ideal is better than the +old until it is “tried out.” It is of course likely to have better +elements than the old in so far as it is born of criticism upon the old +which _then_ was being “tried out.” But no dominating social ego can +ever hope statically to establish itself in the social order while the +world endures; consequently the reasoning mind must say to itself: “The +highest social ideal that I can conceive and can induce a social ego to +stand for is only the next step in social evolution, which must give +place to the next and the next.” Hence, such mind can only smile +indulgently upon all static ideals—monarchy, democracy, anarchy, +socialism alike; realizing that the only social ideals worthy the name +are those based upon demonstrated scientific truth—the collected and +collated set of social facts that have been found to work in accordance +with natural law in past social evolution; realizing that the personal +ideal of the individual man, unless based upon such facts, is socially a +child’s soapbubble, whatever it may be in the innermost of his own soul +as to the evolution of his own individuality. + + + + + The Little Review + + + Literature, Drama, Music, Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor + + The monthly that has been called “the most unique journal + in existence.” + + THE LITTLE REVIEW is a magazine that believes in Life for Art’s + sake, in the Individual rather than in Incomplete People, in an + Age of Imagination rather than of Reasonableness; a magazine + interested in Past, Present, and Future, but particularly in the + New Hellenism; a magazine written for Intelligent People who can + Feel, whose philosophy is Applied Anarchism, whose policy is a + Will to Splendour of Life, and whose function is—to express + itself. + + One Year, U.S.A., $1.50; Canada, $1.65; Great Britain, 7/- + + + + + The Little Review + + + + + OTHERS + + + A Magazine of the New Verse + + Various writers are being invited to edit Others, each for a + period of one month. + + Williams Carlos Williams will have charge of the July issue, + which he announces as A Competitive Number. + + Maxwell Bodenheim of the August, which he announces as A Chicago + Number. + + Helen Hoyt of the September, which she announces as A Woman’s + Number. + + OTHERS is published monthly at + 331 Fourth Avenue, New York. + + + Are you really opposed to the war and are you anxious to + do anti-military propaganda? Then help spread + + + ANTI-MILITARY LITERATURE + + Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter + By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred + + Patriotism, a Menace to Liberty + By Emma Goldman, 5c each, $2.50 a hundred + + War and Capitalism + By Peter Kropotkin, 5c each + + The Last War + By George Barrett, 5c each + + For sale by MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION + 20 EAST 125th STREET, NEW YORK CITY + + + + + THE SEXUAL QUESTION + + Heretofore sold by subscription, only to physicians. Now offered + to the public. Written in plain terms. Former price $5.50. _Now + sent prepaid for $1.60._ This is the revised and enlarged + Marshall English translation. Send check, money order or stamps. + + + Ignorance Is the Great Curse! + + Do you know, for instance, the scientific difference between love + and passion? Human life is full of hideous exhibits of + wretchedness due to ignorance of sexual normality. + + Stupid, pernicious prudery long has blinded us to sexual truth. + Science was slow in entering this vital field. In recent years + commercialists eyeing profits have unloaded many unscientific and + dangerous sex books. Now the world’s great scientific minds are + dealing with this subject upon which human happiness often + depends. No longer is the subject tabooed among intelligent + people. + + We take pleasure in offering to the American public, the work of + one of the world’s greatest authorities upon the question of + sexual life. He is August Forel, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D., of Zurich, + Switzerland. His book will open your eyes to yourself and explain + many mysteries. You will be better for this knowledge. + + Every _professional man and woman_, those dealing with social, + medical, criminal, legal, religious and educational matters will + find this book of immediate value. Nurses, police officials, + heads of public institutions, writers, judges, clergymen and + teachers are urged to get this book at once. + + The subject is treated from every point of view. The chapter on + “love and other irradiations of the sexual appetite” is a + profound exposition of sex emotions—Contraceptive means + discussed—Degeneracy exposed—A guide to all in domestic + relations—A great book by a great man. + + GOTHAM BOOK SOCIETY, DEPT. 564. + _General dealers in books, sent on mail order._ + 142 W. 23d St., New York City. + + In answering this advertisement mention THE LITTLE REVIEW. + + + + + The + Mason and Hamlin + + + The Artist’s Piano + + + The Cable Company + + Wabash and Jackson + Chicago - - - Illinois + + + + + 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. 7]: + ... Se hisse, et regarde par desses le mur. ... + ... Se hisse, et regarde par dessus le mur. ... + + [p. 8]: + ... Un chaudronnier les achète à la foule traphie. ... + ... Un chaudronnier les achète à la foule trahie. ... + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75976 *** |