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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76625 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE LITTLE REVIEW
+
+
+                         A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS
+               MAKING NO COMPROMISE WITH THE PUBLIC TASTE
+
+                          Margaret C. Anderson
+                               Publisher
+
+                               JUNE, 1917
+
+        Chinese Poems                                           
+        (translated from the Chinese of Li Po by Sasaki and     
+           Maxwell Bodenheim)                                   
+        Push-Face                                            jh.
+        Improvisation                              Louis Gilmore
+        Poems:                              William Butler Yeats
+          The Wild Swans at Coole                               
+          Presences                                             
+          Men Improve with the Years                            
+          A Deep-Sworn Vow                                      
+          The Collar-Bone of a Hare                             
+          Broken Dreams                                         
+          In Memory                                             
+        An Anachronism at Chinon                      Ezra Pound
+        Imaginary Letters, II.                     Wyndham Lewis
+        The Reader Critic
+
+                           Published Monthly
+
+                            15 Cents a copy
+
+                      MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor
+                       EZRA POUND, Foreign Editor
+                       31 West Fourteenth Street
+                             NEW YORK CITY
+
+                              $1.50 a Year
+
+     Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, New York, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+                           The Little Review
+
+
+                                VOL. IV.
+
+                               JUNE 1917
+
+                                 NO. 2
+
+               Copyright, 1917, by Margaret C. Anderson.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chinese Poems
+
+
+       Translated from the Chinese of Li Po by Sasaki and Maxwell
+                               Bodenheim
+
+
+                           Gently-Drunk Woman
+
+   A breeze knelt upon the lotus-flowers
+   And their odor filled a water-palace.
+   I saw a king’s daughter
+   Upon the roof-garden of the water-palace.
+   She was half-drunk and she danced,
+   Her curling body killing her strength.
+   She grimaced languidly.
+   She smiled and drooped over the railing
+   Around the white, jewel-silenced floor.
+
+
+                          Perfume—Remembrance
+
+   When you stayed, my house was filled with flowers.
+   When you left, all disappeared, except our bed.
+   I wrapped your embroidered clothes about me,
+   And could not sleep.
+   The perfume of your clothes has stayed three years.
+   It will always be with me.
+   But you will never come back.
+   While I think of you yellow leaves outside
+   Are dropping, and white dew-drops moisten the moss beneath them.
+
+
+                                 Drunk
+
+   When we fill each other’s cups with wine,
+   Many mountain flowers bloom.
+   One drink; another; and another—
+   I am drunk; I want to sleep,
+   So you had better go.
+   Come tomorrow morning, hugging your harp,
+   For then, I shall have something to tell you.
+
+
+                          Mountain-Top Temple
+
+   Night, and rest in the mountain-top temple.
+   I lift my hands, and knock at the stars.
+   I dare not talk loudly,
+   For I fear to surprise the people in the sky.
+
+
+
+
+                               Push-Face
+
+
+                                  jh.
+
+
+                                   I
+
+It is a great thing to be living when an age passes. If you are born in
+an age in which every impact of its expression is a pain, there is a
+beautiful poetic vengeance in being permitted to watch that age destroy
+itself.
+
+What other age could have so offended? Instead of pursuing the real
+business of life, which is to live, men have turned all their denials
+and repressions into the accumulation of unessential knowledge and the
+making of indiscriminate things. Other ages have taken out their
+repressions in religious frenzies, but this age has taken everything out
+in motion. It is an elementary fact of sex knowledge that rhythmic
+motion is part of sex expression. Isn’t it ironical and immoral that
+those nations which have prided themselves most on their virtue, and
+have hugged tightest to themselves the puritanic ideal, are the ones
+that have gone maddest over motion? America, being the most virtuous,
+obviously has the least sense of humor and has exceeded herself. From
+the cradle to the turbine engine, from the rocking-chair to the
+spinnings and whirlings of a Coney Island, she has become a national
+mechanical perpetual whirling Dervish.
+
+The wheels became rollers which have rolled life out thin and flat.
+
+Then Art cried out with all her voices. In the last few years we have
+had a return to the beginnings of all the Arts. If there ever comes a
+time in the world when men will give their attention to the life of Art
+and understand its movement, they will find it alert and inevitable.
+Life would follow it trustingly if it were not for the intrusions and
+hindrances of men. The Thing had happened: Life had made its protest
+through Art. But this consciousness never reached the unendowed mind. It
+(the unendowed mind) forced Life to avenge itself by flying into war.
+
+
+                                   II
+
+   “I pray God,” said President Wilson, “that the outcome of this
+   struggle may be that every element of difference amongst us will
+   be obliterated—The spirit of this people is already united, and
+   when suffering and sacrifice have completed this union, men will
+   no longer speak of any lines either of race or association
+   cutting athwart the great body of this nation.”
+
+But the Anarchists, who are never agreeable or content in any country,
+no matter how perfect, arranged a non-conscription meeting in a hall in
+Bronx Park the night before registration. So “united was the spirit of
+this people” that no one attended this non-conscription meeting except
+the 5,000 who crowded the hall and the 50,000 who stood outside in the
+streets for several hours.
+
+There were squads of the usual police and dozens of rough raw fellows in
+soldiers’ uniforms to hold back the crowd and keep it in order,—a crowd
+that scarcely moved and seldom spoke except in low tones or in foreign
+languages; a crowd too full for speech, because of this last numbing
+disappointment in America. The only demonstration it made was to applaud
+when an echo of the applause inside the hall reached it. Any attempt to
+get nearer the hall was met with clubs and the fists of soldiers in your
+face. Nasty little Fords with powerful search-lights raced up and down
+and about the hollow square. A huge auto truck hung with red lights
+acted as a mower at the edges. Word went about that it was mounted with
+a machine gun.
+
+As I was pushed about in the crowd I overheard always the same
+conversations:
+
+“Is she there”?
+
+“Over there where the light is”?
+
+“Yes, on the second floor.”
+
+“Are there any people inside”?
+
+“Oh it’s full since seven o’clock.”
+
+“Oh!?”
+
+“Will they let her speak?”
+
+“Who? Her”?
+
+Silence.
+
+“Will they get her, do you think”?
+
+“Will the police take her”?
+
+A thin pale Russian Jew, standing on a rock looking over the heads of
+the crowd, was spoken to by a stranger. “They’ll get her tonight all
+right.” The Russian looked over to the lighted windows of the hall and
+said in revolutionary voice: “She’s a fine woman, Emma Goldman.”
+
+Suddenly in the densest part of the crowd a woman’s voice rang out:
+“Down with conscription! Down with the war!” Several other women took it
+up. The police charged into the crowd. The crowd made a slight stand.
+The soldiers joined the police, and with raised clubs, teeth bared and
+snarling, they drove the crowd backward over itself, beating and
+pushing. Three times the crowd stood. Three times they were charged.
+Women were beaten down and run over. Men were clubbed in the face and
+escaped, staggering and bleeding.
+
+How much of this treatment will it take to obliterate every element of
+individuality amongst us?
+
+
+                                  III
+
+In the same week the plutocrats and artists held an Alley Festa for the
+Red Cross. At a cost of $10,000 they turned the stables of MacDougal
+Alley into a replica of an Italian street, draped it with much color,
+daubed it with much paint, hung it with many lights. I hope there were
+pluts there; the artists we saw were not artists. You can easily pick
+out the pluts: they look like figures from the wax-works; but the
+“artists” looked like Greenwich Village. It was a bastard performance, a
+bastard street, a bastard hilarity, bastard plutocrats and bastard
+artists, with bastard soldiers guarding the scene.
+
+Between the acts they all congregated in the Brevoort to have drinks.
+The pluts foregathered,—women in up-town clothes, looking like Mrs.
+Potter Palmer, with grey marcelled hair and broad stiff black hats,
+holding the hands and looking neurotically into the eyes of young men
+who resembled bank clerks. Groups of artists came in, costumed like
+people fleeing from a fire. I believe they thought they were Neopolitans
+or something. They all settled clamourously at one table and fell
+amourously upon each other’s necks. There was nothing personal, nothing
+unique, nothing imaginative about any of their costumes. One woman sat
+in the embrasure of a man’s arm, sharing his chair with him. She had
+short hempy hair, she was dressed in street-gamin clothes, she was at
+least forty, and her cheek bones were on a line with her nostrils. No
+human head should be made that way; it’s intolerable except in fish,
+frogs, or snakes.
+
+The greatest American dancer came in, followed by a little girl and a
+train of men—_bummel-zug dritte classe_. She had draped about her a
+green plush toga, thrown over her shoulder in a fat knot—not apple
+green, nor emerald green, nor sap green, but a green and texture sacred
+to railroads. The only other perfect example I have seen of that color
+and texture was on the great chairs in the station at Mons. She was
+too-young-looking—a type much admired in my childhood when China dolls
+lived, with painted China hair undulating above pink and white China
+faces. When she looked up in conversation her profile made almost a flat
+line, the chin retiring into the neck as if it had no opinions on the
+subject, the eyes rolling up but no expression of the face moving up
+with them. Oh beautiful people, oh beautiful fête!
+
+The music and lights drew the children out of the slums back of
+Washington Square: fathers holding babies in their arms, and strings of
+little children trimming the edges of the sidewalks at a respectful
+distance around the back entrance, were pushed in the face and told to
+get out, to move on, by policemen and some more rough fellows in
+khaki—because ... this was a fête for humanity. And it’s all right, this
+game of push-face: every one plays it. When you’re little children you
+play it and call it push-face; nations call it government; the “people”
+are playing it now in Russia and call it revolution.
+
+
+
+
+                             Improvisation
+
+
+                             Louis Gilmore
+
+   Your hands are perfumes
+   That haunt the yellow hangings
+   Of a room.
+
+   Your hands are melodies
+   That rise and fall
+   In silver basins.
+
+   Your hands are silks
+   That soothe the purple eyelids
+   Of the sick.
+
+   Your hands are ghosts
+   That trouble the blue shadows
+   Of a garden.
+
+   Your hands are poppies
+   For which my lips are hungry
+   And athirst.
+
+
+
+
+                                 Poems
+
+
+                          William Butler Yeats
+
+
+                        The Wild Swans at Coole
+
+   The trees are in their autumn beauty
+   The woodland paths are dry
+   Under the October twilight the water
+   Mirrors a still sky
+   Upon the brimming water among the stones
+   Are nine and fifty swans.
+
+   The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
+   Since I first made my count.
+   I saw, before I had well finished,
+   All suddenly mount
+   And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
+   Upon their clamorous wings.
+
+   But now they drift on the still water
+   Mysterious, beautiful;
+   Among what rushes will they build;
+   By what lake’s edge or pool
+   Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
+   To find they have flown away?
+
+   I have looked upon these brilliant creatures
+   And now my heart is sore.
+   All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight
+   The first time on this shore
+   The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
+   Trod with a lighter tread.
+
+   Unwearied still, lover by lover,
+   They paddle in the cold
+   Companionable streams or climb the air;
+   Their hearts have not grown old,
+   Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
+   Attend upon them still.
+
+                                                        October, 1916.
+
+
+                               Presences
+
+   This night has been so strange that it seemed
+   As if the hair stood up on my head.
+   From going down of the sun I have dreamed
+   That women laughing, or timid or wild,
+   In rustle of lace or silken stuff,
+   Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read
+   All I have rhymed of that monstrous thing
+   Returned and yet unrequited love.
+   They stood in the door and stood between
+   My great wood lectern and the fire
+   Till I could hear their hearts beating:
+   One is a harlot, and one a child
+   That never looked upon man with desire,
+   And one, it may be, a queen.
+
+                                                       November, 1915.
+
+
+                       Men Improve With the Years
+
+   I am worn out with dreams;
+   A weather-worn, marble triton
+   Among the streams:
+   And all day long I look
+   Upon this lady’s beauty
+   As though I had found in book
+   A pictured beauty;
+   Pleased to have filled the eyes
+   Or the discerning ears,
+   Delighted to be but wise:
+   For men improve with the years.
+   And yet and yet
+   Is this my dream or the truth?
+   O would that we had met
+   When I had my burning youth;
+   But I grow old among dreams,
+   A weather-worn, marble triton
+   Among the streams.
+
+                                                        July 19, 1916.
+
+
+                            A Deep-Sworn Vow
+
+   Others, because you did not keep
+   That deep sworn vow, have been friends of mine,
+   Yet always when I look death in the face,
+   When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
+   Or when I grow excited with wine,
+   Suddenly I meet your face.
+
+                                                     October 17, 1915.
+
+
+                       The Collar-Bone of a Hare
+
+   Would I could cast a sail on the water,
+   Where many a king has gone
+   And many a king’s daughter,
+   And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,
+   The playing upon pipes and the dancing,
+   And learn that the best thing is
+   To change my loves while dancing
+   And pay but a kiss for a kiss.
+
+   I would find by the edge of that water
+   The collar-bone of a hare
+   Worn thin by the lapping of water;
+   And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare
+   At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,
+   And laugh, over the untroubled water,
+   At all who marry in churches,
+   Through the white thin bone of a hare.
+
+                                                         July 5, 1915.
+
+
+                             Broken Dreams
+
+   There is grey in your hair.
+   Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
+   When you are passing;
+   But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
+   Because it was your prayer
+   Recovered him upon the bed of death,
+   But for your sake—that all heart’s ache have known,
+   And given to others all heart’s ache,
+   From meagre girlhoods putting on
+   Burdensome beauty—but for your sake
+   Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
+   So great her portion in that peace you make
+   By merely walking in a room.
+
+   Your beauty can but leave among us
+   Vague memories, nothing but memories.
+   A young man when the old men are done talking
+   Will say to an old man “tell me of that lady
+   The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
+   When age might well have chilled his blood.”
+
+   Vague memories, nothing but memories,
+   But in the grave all all shall be renewed.
+   The certainty that I shall see that lady
+   Leaning or standing or walking,
+   In the first loveliness of womanhood
+   And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
+   Has set me muttering like a fool.
+   You were more beautiful than any one
+   And yet your body had a flaw:
+   Your small hands were not beautiful.
+   I am afraid that you will run
+   And paddle to the wrist
+   In that mysterious, always brimming lake
+   Where those that have obeyed the holy law
+   Paddle and are perfect: leave unchanged
+   The hands that I have kissed
+   For old sake’s sake.
+
+   The last stroke of midnight dies
+   All day in the one chair
+   From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
+   In rambling talk with an image of air:
+   Vague memories, nothing but memories.
+
+                                                       November, 1915.
+
+
+                               In Memory
+
+   Five and twenty years have gone
+   Since old William Pollexfen
+   Laid his strong bones in death
+   By his wife Elizabeth
+   In the grey stone tomb he made;
+   And after twenty years they laid
+   In that tomb, by him and her,
+   His son George the astrologer
+   And masons drove from miles away
+   To scatter the acacia spray
+   Upon a melancholy man
+   Who had ended where his breath began.
+
+   Many a son and daughter lies
+   Far from the customary skies,
+   The Mall, and Eadés Grammar School,
+   In London or in Liverpool,
+   But where is laid the sailor John
+   That so many lands had known,
+   Quiet lands or unquiet seas
+   Where the Indians trade or Japanese;
+   He never found his rest ashore
+   Moping for one voyage more:
+   Where have they laid the sailor John?
+
+   And yesterday the youngest son,
+   A humorous unambitious man,
+   Was buried near the astrologer;
+   And are we now in the tenth year?
+   Since he who had been contented long,
+   A nobody in a great throng,
+   Decided he would journey home,
+   Now that his fiftieth year had come,
+   And “Mr. Alfred” be again
+   Upon the lips of common men
+   Who carried in their memory
+   His childhood and his family.
+
+   At all these deathbeds women heard
+   A visionary white sea bird
+   Lamenting that a man should die,
+   And with that cry I have raised my cry.
+
+
+
+
+                        An Anachronism at Chinon
+
+
+                               Ezra Pound
+
+Behind them rose the hill with its grey octagonal castle, to the west a
+street with good houses, gardens occasionally enclosed and well to do,
+before them the slightly crooked lane, old worm-eaten fronts low and
+uneven, booths with their glass front-frames open, slid aside or hung
+back, the flaccid bottle-green of the panes reflecting odd lights from
+the provender and cheap crockery; a few peasant women with baskets of
+eggs and of fowls, while just before them an old peasant with one hen in
+his basket alternately stroked its head and then smacked it to make it
+go down under the strings.
+
+The couple leaned upon one of the tin tables in the moderately clear
+space by the inn, the elder, grey, with thick hair, square of forehead,
+square bearded, yet with a face showing curiously long and oval in spite
+of this quadrature; in the eyes a sort of friendly, companionable
+melancholy, now intent, now with a certain blankness, like that of a
+child cruelly interrupted, or of an old man, surprised and
+self-conscious in some act too young for his years, the head from the
+neck to the crown in almost brutal contrast with the girth and great
+belly: the head of Don Quixote, and the corpus of Sancho Panza,
+animality mounting into the lines of the throat and lending energy to
+the intellect.
+
+His companion obviously an American student.
+
+Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting yet, since you are here at
+all, you must have changed many opinions.
+
+The Elder: Some. Which do you mean?
+
+Student: Since you are here, personal and persisting?
+
+Rabelais: All that I believed or believe you will find in _De
+Senectute_: “... that being so active, so swift in thought; that
+treasures up in memory such multitudes and varieties of things past, and
+comes likewise upon new things ... can be of no mortal nature.”
+
+Student: And yet I do not quite understand. Your outline is not always
+distinct. Your voice however is deep, clear and not squeaky.
+
+Rabelais: I was more interested in words than in my exterior aspect, I
+am therefore vocal rather than spatial.
+
+Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting, yet I confess I can
+scarcely read you. I admire and close the book, as not infrequently
+happens with “classics.”
+
+Rabelais: I am the last person to censure you, and your admiration is
+perhaps due to a fault in your taste. I should have paid more heed to
+DeBellay, young Joachim.
+
+Student: You do not find him a prig?
+
+Rabelais: I find no man a prig who takes serious thought for the
+language.
+
+Student: And your own? Even Voltaire called it an amassment of ordure.
+
+Rabelais: And later changed his opinion.
+
+Student: Others have blamed your age, saying you had to half-bury your
+wisdom in filth to make it acceptable.
+
+Rabelais: And you would put this blame on my age? And take the full
+blame for your writing?
+
+Student: My writing?
+
+Rabelais: Yes, a quatrain, without which I should scarcely have come
+here.
+
+   Sweet C.... in h... spew up some....
+
+(pardon me for intruding my own name at this point, but even Dante has
+done the like, with a remark that he found it unfitting)—to proceed
+then:
+
+                                                   ......some Rabelais
+
+   To ..... and ..... and to define today
+   In fitting fashion, and her monument
+   Heap up to her in fadeless ex .....
+
+Student: My license in those lines is exceptional.
+
+Rabelais: And you have written on journalists, or rather an imaginary
+plaint of the journalists: Where s......, s.... and p..... on jews
+conspire, and editorial maggots .... about, we gather .... smeared
+bread, or drive a snout still deeper in the swim-brown of the mire.
+
+   Where s....., s..... and p..... on jews conspire,
+   And editorial maggots .... about,
+   We gather .... -smeared bread, or drive a snout
+   Still deeper in the swim-brown of the mire.
+   O .... O ..... O b...... b...... b....
+   O c..., ........ O .... O ......’s attire
+   Smeared with ...........................
+
+Really I can not continue, no printer would pass it.
+
+Student: Quite out of my usual ......
+
+Rabelais: There is still another on publishers, or rather on _la vie
+litteraire_, a sestina almost wholly in asterisks, and a short strophe
+on the American president.
+
+Student: Can you blame ...
+
+Rabelais: I am scarcely ....... eh.....
+
+Student: Beside, these are but a few scattered outbursts, you kept up
+your flow through whole volumes.
+
+Rabelais: You have spent six years in your college and university, and a
+few more in struggles with editors; I had had thirty years in that sink
+of a cloister, is it likely that your disgusts would need such
+voluminous purging? Consider, when I was nine years of age they put me
+in that louse-breeding abomination. I was forty before I broke loose.
+
+Student: Why at that particular moment?
+
+Rabelais: They had taken away my books. Brother Amy got hold of a
+Virgil. We opened it, _sortes_, the first line:
+
+   _Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum_
+
+We read that line and departed. You may thank God your age is different.
+You may thank God your life has been different. Thirty years mewed up
+with monks! After that can you blame me my style? Have you any accurate
+gauge of stupidities?
+
+Student: I have, as you admit, passed some years in my university. I
+have seen some opposition to learning.
+
+Rabelais: No one in your day has sworn to annihilate the cult of greek
+letters; they have not separated you from your books; they have not rung
+bells expressly to keep you from reading.
+
+Student: Bells! later. There is a pasty-faced vicar in Kensington who
+had his dam’d bells rung over my head for four consecutive winters,
+L’Ile Sonnante transferred to the middle of London! They have tried to
+smother the good ones with bad ones. Books I mean, God knows the chime
+was a musicless abomination. They have smothered good books with bad
+ones.
+
+Rabelais: This will never fool a true poet; for the rest, it does not
+matter whether they drone masses or lectures. They observe their fasts
+with the intellect. Have they actually sequestered your books?
+
+Student: No. But I have a friend, of your order, a monk. They took away
+his book for two years. I admit they set him to hearing confessions; to
+going about in the world. It may have broadened his outlook, or
+benefited his eyesight. I do not think it wholly irrational, though it
+must have been extremely annoying.
+
+Rabelais: Where was it?
+
+Student: In Spain.
+
+Rabelais: You are driven south of the Pyrenees to find your confuting
+example. Would you find the like in this country?
+
+Student: I doubt it. The Orders are banished.
+
+Rabelais: Or in your own?
+
+Student: Never.
+
+Rabelais: And you were enraged with your university?
+
+Student: I thought some of the customs quite stupid.
+
+Rabelais: Can you conceive a life so infernally and abysmally stupid
+that the air of an university was wine and excitement beside it?
+
+Student: You speak of a time when scholarship was new, when humanism had
+not given way to philology. We have no one like Henry Stephen, no one
+comparable to Helia Andrea. The role of your monastery is now assumed by
+the “institutions of learning,” the spirit of your class-room is found
+among a few scattered enthusiasts, men half ignorant in the present
+“scholarly” sense, but alive with the spirit of learning, avid of truth,
+avid of beauty, avid of strange and out of the way bits of knowledge. Do
+you like this scrap of Pratinas?
+
+Rabelais (reads)
+
+   ’Εμὸς ἐμὸς ὁ Βρομίος Εμὲ δεῖ κελαδεῖν
+   Εμὶ δεῖ παταγεῖν ’Αν ὀρεα εσσάμενον
+   Μετὰ Ναἲδων Οἷα τε κύκνον ἄγοντα
+   Ποικιλόπτερον μέλος Τᾶv ἀοιδᾶν....
+
+Student: The movement is interesting. I am “educated,” I am considerably
+more than a “graduate.” I confess that I can not translate it.
+
+Rabelais: What in God’s name have they taught you?!!
+
+Student: I hope they have taught me nothing. I managed to read many
+books despite their attempts at suppression, or rather perversion.
+
+Rabelais: I think you speak in a passion; that you magnify petty
+annoyances. Since then, you have been in the world for some years, you
+have been able to move at your freedom.
+
+Student: I speak in no passion when I say that the whole aim, or at
+least the drive, of modern philology is to make a man stupid; to turn
+his mind from the fire of genius and smother him with things
+unessential. Germany has so stultified her savants that they have had no
+present perception, the men who should have perceived were all imbedded
+in “scholarship.” And as for freedom, no man is free who has not the
+modicum of an income. If I had but fifty francs weekly....
+
+Rabelais: Weekly? C..... J....!
+
+Student: You forget that the value of money has very considerably
+altered.
+
+Rabelais: Admitted.
+
+Student: Well?
+
+Rabelais: Well, who has constrained you? The press in your day is free.
+
+Student: C..... J....!
+
+Rabelais: But the press in your day is free.
+
+Student: There is not a book goes to the press in my country, or in
+England, but a society of ....... in one, or in the other a pie-headed
+ignorant printer paws over it to decide how much is indecent.
+
+Rabelais: But they print my works in translation.
+
+Student: Your work is a classic. They also print Trimalcio’s _Supper_,
+and the tales of Suetonius, and red-headed virgins annotate the writings
+of Martial, but let a novelist mention a privy, or a poet the rear side
+of a woman, and the whole town reeks with an uproar. In England a
+scientific work was recently censored. A great discovery was kept secret
+three years. For the rest, I do not speak of obscenity. Obscene books
+are sold in the rubber shops, they are doled out with quack medicines,
+societies for the Suppression of Vice go into all details, and thereby
+attain circulation. Masterpieces are decked out with lewd covers to
+entoil one part of the public, but let an unknown man write clear and
+clean realism; let a poet use the speech of his predecessors, either
+being as antiseptic as the instruments of a surgeon, and out of the most
+debased and ignorant classes they choose him his sieve and his censor.
+
+Rabelais: But surely these things are avoidable?
+
+Student: The popular novelist, the teaser and tickler, casts what they
+call a veil, or caul, over his language. He pimps with suggestion. The
+printer sees only one word at a time, and tons of such books are passed
+yearly, the members of the Royal Automobile Club and of the Isthmian and
+Fly Fishers are not concerned with the question of morals.
+
+Rabelais: You mistake me, I did not mean this sort of evasion, I did not
+mean that a man should ruin his writing or join the ranks of procurers.
+
+Student: Well?
+
+Rabelais: Other means. There is what is called private printing.
+
+Student: I have had a printer refuse to print lines “in any form”
+private or public, perfectly innocent lines, lines refused thus in
+London, which appeared and caused no blush in Chicago; and vice-versa,
+lines refused in Chicago and printed by a fat-headed prude—Oh, most
+fat-headed—in London, a man who will have no ruffling of anyone’s
+skirts, and who will not let you say that some children do not enjoy the
+proximity of their parents.
+
+Rabelais: At least you are free from theology.
+
+Student: If you pinch the old whore by the toes you will find a press
+clique against you; you will come up against “boycott”; people will rush
+into your publisher’s office with threats. Have you ever heard of “the
+libraries?”
+
+Rabelais: I have heard the name, but not associated with strange forms
+of blackmail.
+
+Student: I admit they do not affect serious writers.
+
+Rabelais: But you think your age as stupid as mine.
+
+Student: Humanity is a herd, eaten by perpetual follies. A few in each
+age escape, the rest remain savages, “That deyed the Arbia crimson.”
+Were the shores of Gallipoli paler, that showed red to the airmen flying
+thousands of feet above them?
+
+Rabelais: Airmen. Intercommunication is civilization. Your life is full
+of convenience.
+
+Student: And men as stupid as ever. We have no one like Henry Stephen.
+Have you ever read Galdos’ _Dona Perfecta_? In every country you will
+find such nests of provincials. Change but a few names and customs. Each
+Klein-Stadt has its local gods and will kill those who offend them. In
+one place it is religion, in another some crank theory of hygiene or
+morals, or even of prudery which takes no moral concern.
+
+Rabelais: Yet all peoples act the same way. The same so-called “vices”
+are everywhere present, unless your nation has invented some new ones.
+
+Student: Greed and hypocrisy, there is little novelty to be got out of
+either. At present there is a new tone, a new _timbre_ of lying, a sort
+of habit, almost a faculty for refraining from connecting words with a
+fact. An inconception of their interrelations.
+
+Rabelais: Let us keep out of politics.
+
+Student: Damn it, have you ever met presbyterians?
+
+Rabelais: You forget that I lived in the time of John Calvin.
+
+Student: Let us leave this and talk of your books.
+
+Rabelais: My book has the fault of most books, there are too many words
+in it. I was tainted with monkish habits, with the marasmus of allegory,
+of putting one thing for another: the clumsiest method of satire. I
+doubt if any modern will read me.
+
+Student: I knew a man read you for joy of the words, for the opulence of
+your vocabulary.
+
+Rabelais: Which would do him no good unless he could keep all the words
+on his tongue. Tell me, can you read them, they are often merely piled
+up in heaps.
+
+Student: I confess that I can not. I take a page and then stop.
+
+Rabelais: Allegory, all damnable allegory! And can you read Brantôme?
+
+Student: I can read a fair chunk of Brantôme. The repetition is wearing.
+
+Rabelais: And you think your age is as stupid as mine? Even letters are
+better, a critical sense is developed.
+
+Student: We lack the old vigour.
+
+Rabelais: A phrase you have got from professors! Vigour was not lacking
+in Stendhal, I doubt if it is lacking in your day. And as for the world
+being as stupid, are your friends tied to the stake, as was Etienne
+Dolet, with an “Ave” wrung out of him to get him strangled instead of
+roasted. Do you have to stand making professions like Budé?!!
+
+   Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui
+   Volo: nihil juvat mortuum
+   Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit
+   Animose.
+
+Student: What is that?
+
+Rabelais: Some verses of Dolet’s. And are you starved like Desperiers,
+Bonaventura, and driven to suicide?
+
+Student: The last auto-da-fe was in 1759. The inquisition reestablished
+in 1824.
+
+Rabelais: Spain again! I was speaking of....
+
+Student: We are not yet out of the wood. There is no end to this
+warfare. You talk of freedom. Have you heard of the Hammersmith borough
+council, or the society to suppress all brothels in “Rangoon and other
+stations in Burmah?” If it is not creed it is morals. Your life and
+works would not be possible nowadays. To put it mildly, you would be
+docked your professorship.
+
+Rabelais: I should find other forms of freedom. As for personal morals:
+There are certain so-called “sins” of which no man ever repented. There
+are certain contraventions of hygiene which always prove inconvenient.
+None but superstitious and ignorant people can ever confuse these two
+issues. And as hygiene is always changing; as it alters with our
+knowledge of physick, intelligent men will keep pace with it. There can
+be no permanent boundaries to morals.
+
+Student: The droits du seigneur were doubtless, at one time, religious.
+When ecclesiastics enjoyed them, they did so, in order to take the
+vengeance of the spirit-world upon their own shoulders, thereby
+shielding and sparing the husband.
+
+Rabelais: Indeed you are far past these things. Your age no longer
+accepts them.
+
+Student: My age is beset with cranks of all forms and sizes. They will
+not allow a man wine. They will not allow him changes of women. This
+glass....
+
+Rabelais: There is still some in the last bottle. DeThou has paid it a
+compliment:
+
+                                                     Aussi Bacchus....
+
+   Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye De quoi dissiper mon chagrin,
+   Car de ma Maison paternelle Il vient de faire un Cabaret
+   Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et le clairet...
+   On n’y porte plus sa pensée Qu’aux douceurs d’un Vin frais et net.
+   Que si Pluton, que rien ne tente, Vouloit se payer de raison,
+   Et permettre à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma Maison;
+   Quelque prix que j’en puisse attendre, Ce seroit mon premier souhait
+   De la louer ou de la vendre, Pour l’usage que l’on en fait.
+
+Student: There are states where a man’s tobacco is not safe from
+invasion. Bishops, novelists, decrepit and aged generals, purveyors of
+tales of detectives....
+
+Rabelais: Have they ever interfered with your pleasures?
+
+Student: Damn well let them try it!!!
+
+Rabelais: I am afraid you would have been burned in my century.
+
+                       END OF THE FIRST DIALOGUE
+
+
+
+
+                           Imaginary Letters
+
+
+            (Six Letters of William Bland Burn to his Wife)
+
+                             Wyndham Lewis
+
+                                            Petrograd, February, 1917.
+
+My dear Lydia:
+
+Once more to the charge= In your answer to my letter I feel the new
+touch of an independent attack. Villerant comes in, but I feel this time
+that you have set your own dear person up for a rebuff. You have not
+sent me any Aunt Sally, but my Grecian wife. I will take two things and
+answer them.=First, you object to my treatment of the Gentleman, because
+you sharply maintain, more or less, that I by no means object to being a
+gentleman myself.=On that point, my dear girl, you have _not got_ me.
+For many purposes, on occasion I should not hesitate to emphasize the
+fact that I was not born in the gutter. If, for instance, I was applying
+for a post where such a qualification was necessary, Harrow would not be
+forgotten. The Gutter generally spoils a man’s complexion in childhood.
+He grows up with sores around his mouth and a constantly dirty skin. His
+eyes, unless he has them well in hand, become wolfish and hard, etc. Who
+would not be better pleased that he was born on the sunny side of the
+wall? All that has nothing to do with my argument. Those things are in
+themselves nothing to linger round, although the opposite, squalor and
+meanness, it is more excusable to remember and lament.
+
+But in your last letter you reveal an idea that seems chiefly to have
+struck you, and which is at the bottom of your present obstinacy. In
+your letter of last month you kept it in the background, or did not
+state it in so many words.
+
+(In once more reading through your present letter, I find you have not
+even stated it _there_. But I see, I believe, the notion that has found
+favour with you.) I will give you my opinion on it in the form of a
+criticism of an article I read yesterday in an English paper (one of
+those you sent me).
+
+A Russian war-novel is discussed. The writer of the article “does not
+care much for Russian books,” he finds that “the Englishman begins where
+the Russian leaves off.” The Russian book seems to deal with the inner
+conflict of a Russian grocer on the outbreak of War. The Russian grocer
+is confused and annoyed. He asks what all this bloody trouble has to do
+with _him_—the small grocer. He cogitates on the causes of such
+upheavals, and is not convinced that there is anything in them calling
+for his participation. But eventually he realizes that there is a great
+and moving abstraction called Russia=the _old_ abstraction in fact, the
+old Pied Piper whistling his mournful airs, and waving towards a
+snow-bound horizon. And—_le voilà_ in khaki=or the Russian equivalent.
+At this point he becomes “noble,” and of interest to the writer of the
+article—But there, alas, the book ends.= Now, (of course the writer of
+the article continues) _we_ in England do not do things in that way. We
+do not portray the boring and hardly respectable conflict. No Englishman
+(all Englishmen having the instincts of gentlemen) admits the
+possibility of such a conflict. _We_ are _accomplished_ beings, _des
+hommes, ou plutôt des gentlemen faits_! We should begin with the English
+grocer already in khaki, quite calm, (he would probably be described as
+a little “grim” withal) in the midst of his military training on
+Salisbury Plain. A Kiplingesque picture of that: Revetting would come
+in, and bomb-throwing at night. He next would be in the trenches. The
+writer would show, without the cunning, hardly respectable, disguise of
+any art, how the Balham grocer of to-day was the same soldier, really,
+that won at Waterloo= You would not get a person or a fact, but a piece
+of patriotic propaganda (the writer of course being meanwhile a shrewd
+fellow, highly approved and well-paid).
+
+Now glance at Tolstoi for a moment, that arch Russian bore, and at his
+book of Sebastopol sketches. He was an hereditary noble, and it is
+rather difficult to say that an hereditary noble is not a gentleman. But
+can the English journalist in his “_fort interieur_” admit that Tolstoi
+was a gentleman, all things considered? These foreign “nobles” are a
+funny sort of gentlemen, anyway. For let us see how Tolstoi writes of
+the Russians at Sebastopol.= He arrives at the town of Sebastopol. He
+has read in the Moscow newspapers of the “heroic defenders of
+Sebastopol.” His first impression is one of astonishment and
+disappointment of a sort. For there is nothing noticeably heroic about
+the demeanour of the soldiers working at the quays or walking in the
+streets. They are not even heroic by reason of the ineffable
+“cheeriness” of the British Tommy—(No journalist would be tolerated for
+a moment who did not, once in every twenty lines, remark on this
+ineffable national heroism of humour.)=Tolstoi, that is, does not _want_
+to see heroes, but men under given conditions and, that is, sure enough,
+what he sees. He also, being an hereditary noble and so on, does not
+want to make his living. One more opportunity of truth and clearness!
+Next, when Tolstoi gets up to the bastions, he again sees no heroes with
+any ineffable national cachet. The “heroes” of his sketches and tales,
+in fact, stoop and scurry along behind parapets in lonely sectors, and
+when they see another man coming straighten themselves out, and clank
+their spurs. They kill people in nightmares, and pray pessimistically to
+their God. You cannot at the end apply _any_ labels to them. Tolstoi’s
+account of their sensations and genuine exploits would not strike terror
+in the heart of future enemies of the Russian race; it is not an
+advertisement, or the ordinary mawkish bluff thrown over a reality. He
+had the sense to see human beings and not Russians. And _Russians_ are
+chiefly redoubtable, and admirable, because of this capacity of
+impersonal seeing and feeling. Where they are least Russian in fact.
+
+The discriminating enemy in reading these sketches, would fear that more
+than he would any unreal or interested gush.
+
+There always remains the question as to whether, by gush and bluff and
+painting a pretty picture of a man, you cannot make him _become_ that
+picture=and whether, politically, it may not be desirable to manufacture
+illusions of that description. But what have we got to do with
+politicians?
+
+Again, I am not saying that Russians have not a national gush. Tolstoi
+himself indulges in it. Everybody indulges in such things. It is a
+question only of the scale of such indulgence; of the absence per head
+in a population of the reverse.
+
+So then, what the paper-writer’s point amounted to was that only
+_gentlemen_ (or, sententiously, _men_) were worth writing about=or only
+at the moment when a man becomes a “gentleman” is he interesting, worth
+noticing, or suitable for portrayal. We all, however, know the simple
+rules and manifestations of this ideal figure. There is not much left to
+say on the subject. Ah yes, but there is such and such a one’s ineffable
+_way_ of being a gentleman!—
+
+In London you will meet few educated people who really are willing or
+able to give Russian books their due. Dostoevsky is a sort of epileptic
+bore, Tolstoi a wrong-headed old altruistic bore, Gorky a Tramp-stunt
+bore, Turgenev, even, although in another category, in some way
+disappointing.—All Russian writers insist on discovering America,
+opening discussions on matters that our institutions, our position in
+society, our Franco-English intelligence preclude any consideration of.
+There is something permanently transcendental and disconcerting about
+the Slav infant, and he pours his words out and argues interminably, and
+is such an inveterate drunkard,—as though his natural powers of
+indecorum and earnestness were not already enough.
+
+What really could be said of the Russian is this=Shakespeare is
+evidently better than any Russian novelist, or more permanently
+valuable. But the little Russian Grocer could rival Hamlet in
+vacillation; or any Russian, Shakespeare, in his portrayal of the
+_machinery_ of the mind. Dostoevsky is not more dark and furious than
+Shakespeare’s pessimistic figures, Lear, Macbeth, etc. _But we are not
+Englishmen of Shakespeare’s days._
+
+We are very pleased that in the time of Elizabeth such a national
+ornament existed. But Shakespeare would be an anachronism to-day.
+
+Dostoevsky and Co. were anachronisms as contemporaries of Tennyson and
+Napoleon III. _Had they been embedded two centuries back in Sixteenth
+Century Russia_, they would not be read, but would not cause annoyance
+and be called epileptic bores. Epilepsy would have been all right in
+those distances.—There is nothing dévoué about epilepsy to-day, any more
+than there is about a King!
+
+I think I have been lucid, if rather long-winded=
+
+How I look on these Christian Demi-Gods of the Steppes you know. I like
+them immensely. For a single brandyish whiff from one of Dostovesky’s
+mouths, at some vivid angle of turpitude I would give all English
+literature back to Shelley’s songs. Turgenev’s _Sportsman’s Sketches_
+enchant me. They are so sober, delicate and nonchalant; I can think of
+nothing like them. Gogol’s Tchichikoff is back with Cervantes, Sterne
+and the others who have not any peers in these days.
+
+_Today_=the requirements of the little man, especially of this day, are
+a similar thing to the _Russian_, the _Englishman_, etc. We must
+disembarrass ourselves of this fetish or gush, as of that other.—I want
+to live with Shakespeare and Cervantes=and I have gone to war for good
+with all things that would oppose a return to those realities.
+
+I feel you, in my absence, becoming enmeshed in environing
+respectability and its amiable notions. I feel that this letter may
+require another fervour to drive home, or excuse, its own=_A coup de
+poing_ is the best method of enforcing an idea (or a shell)=the mouth is
+similarly a more satisfactory aperture than the ear for introducing a
+philosophy into another body. Yorke is the embodiment of my philosophy.
+I love Yorke in exactly the way that I love a character in Molière or
+Turgenev. Yorke is the only _living thing except yourself_, that I know
+or find alive to the same extent.
+
+I shall stick here a little longer, and see what comes of my new
+venture. There have been lots of delays and difficulties which I will
+recite to you when we meet. I can, I am afraid, say absolutely nothing
+definite about my return. But I will write to you in a few days and tell
+you more certainly. Meantime, much love, my dear girl. I wish you were
+here with me. But on seeing how active the Germans are, it is out of the
+question your crossing the North Sea.
+
+I am looking forward to your next letter. Much love.
+
+                                                                Yours,
+                                                           W. B. Burn.
+
+(_Next letter of series will appear in July number._)
+
+
+
+
+                           The Reader Critic
+
+
+                            From James Joyce
+
+James Joyce, Zurich, Switzerland:
+
+I am very glad to hear about the new plans for _The Little Review_ and
+that you have got together so many good writers as contributors. I hope
+to send you something very soon—as soon, in fact, as my health allows me
+to resume work. I am much better however, though I am still under care
+of the doctor. I wish _The Little Review_ every success.
+
+
+                                Approval
+
+Alice Groff, Philadelphia:
+
+Never has _The Little Review_ pleased me, from cover to cover, as in the
+May number. I cannot imagine finding any one to express me for myself,
+but Mr. Ezra Pound in his editorial comes the nearest possible to doing
+this, as far as he goes.
+
+What he says about the Christian religion is delicious in its gentle
+tolerance; about organized religions, is the last word; about “the
+formation of thought in clear speech for the use of humanity,” a
+religion in itself. He utters my whole voice on “codes of propriety” in
+asserting that “they have no place in the arts.” I would add “nor in
+life, other than as subject matter.”
+
+His rallying cry to _The Egoist_ stirs my egoist soul to its depth. Ever
+since I have known this journal I have felt it to be the finest, freest,
+frankest, bravest avenue of expression in English ever opened to the
+creative literary mind, in all its variety of faculty, without having
+the least bias or prejudice as to any one variety. That _The Little
+Review_ should respond to this rallying cry would add a still deeper and
+stronger point to my already deep and strong interest in this brave
+little (?) magazine.
+
+
+                                Fear Not
+
+Mrs. O. D. J.:
+
+I have great faith in the artistic life of America and I don’t think
+Ezra Pound’s notions of it are very healthy. I sincerely hope the trend
+of it will not emulate the “smart” or dissipated literature which seems
+to please London and which can hardly come under the head of “good
+letters.” America must not necessarily be content with jejune flows of
+words. Really the only half interesting articles that appeared in the
+May number were Eliot’s and Pound’s—the former because it was about as
+good as _The Smart Set_ and the latter on account of auld lang syne. My
+harshness is really flattering because it shows that I expect better
+things from the “cultured” English.
+
+[We will take this opportunity of answering all those who have verbally
+or in letters expressed the fear that _The Little Review_ will entirely
+change its nature and be influenced in the future by its Foreign Editor.
+I do not want to be flippant, but indeed little faith is shown in us by
+all those who have known our struggle to be what we believe, and our
+financial struggle to be at all. Fear not, dear ones. We have learned to
+be penny wise; we will not be Pound foolish. We agree with Pound in the
+spirit; if we don’t always agree with him in the letter be sure we will
+mention it. And Pound didn’t slip up on us unaware. A mutual misery over
+the situation brought us together.
+
+And you, dear Mrs. O. D. J., what made you think that Ezra Pound and T.
+S. Eliot were “cultured” English? Because geese are white and float upon
+water they are not necessarily swans. Pound too seems to have enough
+faith in “good letters” to spare a little for America and share
+“cultured” English with her. Healthy? The unhealth is in the artistic
+life of America; and whatever the ailment, bitter and acid medicine
+seems necessary to cure it. America must not be content for a great
+while with the stuff produced here—jejune flows of words about
+popularizing art, home-town poets and great American novelists, and
+never-been-abroad painters. This seems to content it well enough now.
+
+But I congratulate you on being able to read _The Smart Set_ as
+literature. Maybe the audience will after all produce the art. I
+wonder....]
+
+
+                            A Poet’s Opinion
+
+Maxwell Bodenheim, New York:
+
+Ezra Pound writes in his editorial which headed your last number that
+“the two novels by Joyce and Lewis, and Mr. Eliot’s poems, are not only
+the most important contributions to English literature of the past three
+years, but are practically the only works of the time in which the
+creative element is present, which in any way show invention, or a
+progress beyond precedent work.”
+
+It is easy to make statements of this kind, but, having made them, a
+critic should tell us on what he bases his dictum. The trouble with
+criticism of art, today, is that it isn’t criticism. The critic writes
+statements of untempered liking or disliking, and does not trouble to
+support them with detailed reasons. We are simply supposed to take the
+critic’s word for the matter. I haven’t sufficient belief in the
+infallibility of Ezra Pound’s mind to require no substantiation of his
+statements. I have several faults to find with his methods of
+criticising poetry. He’s a bit too easily swayed by his personal
+emotions, in that regard. I happen to know that in an article of his,
+which appeared in _Poetry_, some time ago he omitted the name of a very
+good modern American poet, from the “American-Team” he was mentioning,
+merely because he has a personal dislike for that poet.
+
+He has also, too great a longing to separate poets into arbitrary teams,
+of best and worst. Poets are either black or white to him—never grey.
+
+In speaking of Harriet Monroe he says that she has conducted her
+magazine in a spirited manner, considering the fact that she is faced
+with the practical problem of circulating a magazine in a certain
+peculiar milieu. But he does not add that those are not the colors in
+which Miss Monroe, herself, comes forth. If she admitted that she was a
+practical woman, trying to print as much good poetry as she can, and
+still gain readers, there would only be the question of whether one
+believed that compromise is always the only method of assuring the
+existence of a magazine. But she refuses to admit that she is a serious
+compromiser. She stands upon a pedestal of utter idealism. Mr. Pound did
+not mention this aspect.
+
+His claim that Eliot is the only really creative poet brought forth
+during recent times is absurd. H. D., Fletcher, Marianne Moore,
+Williams, Michelson at his best, Carl Sandburg, and Wallace Stevens are
+certainly not inevitably below Eliot in quality of work. Eliot’s work is
+utterly original, attains moments of delicate satire, and digs into the
+tangled inner dishonesties of men. But many of the poets I have
+mentioned are as good in their own way as Eliot is in his, in addition
+to their being just as original as he. I have not Mr. Pound’s fondness
+for making lists, so I’m afraid I may have omitted the names of some
+American poets entitled to mention, even from my own limited view point.
+But I will say that at least the number of poets I have mentioned are
+fully the equals of Mr. Pound’s nominee for supreme honors—T. S. Eliot.
+
+[I get very tired of the talk about the establishment of two autocracies
+of opinion, and the claim that since each is the opinion of a capable
+brain each has therefore the right to serious artistic consideration.
+Now it is a fact that one particular kind of brain can put forward this
+claim and establish its legitimate autocracy. It is the brain that
+functions aesthetically rather than emotionally. Most artists haven’t
+this kind. Their work drains their aesthetic reserve—and they usually
+talk rot about art. There are thousands of examples—such as Beethoven
+treasuring the worst poetry he could find. There are notable exceptions,
+such as Leonardo, such as Gaudier-Brzeska. Ezra Pound seems to have this
+kind of brain. I am not familiar with all his judgments, but those I
+have read have always been characterized by an aesthetic synthesis which
+means that he can rightly be called a “critic.”
+
+To this kind of brain things _are_ black and white—which means good or
+bad of their kind. If by grey you mean that a poet is almost good, then
+the critic will have to call him black, meaning that he is a bad poet.
+There is no middle ground. If by grey you mean that he is a grey poet
+doing good grey work, then the critic will call him white—meaning that
+he is a good poet—_M. C. A._]
+
+
+                               Complaint
+
+New York Subscribers:
+
+We have read the first installment of the much-advertised London stuff
+and our comment is that unless “And ...” and “The Reader Critic” are
+restored, and at once, we withdraw our moral and financial support.
+
+
+                          For the Archeologist
+
+That great journal, _The New Republic_—I cannot say that great
+contemporary journal: it is here with us in the flesh, but in the spirit
+it abides with the Bible, the Koran, the Books of Maroni, and all great
+and ancient works of prophecy, truth and revelation—that great journal,
+mentioning even the least of us, spoke thus: “There was _The Little
+Review_ which began in high spirits, published some interesting
+experiments and a few achievements, and in the course of three years has
+sunk to pink covers with purple labels and an issue ecstatically
+dedicated to Mary Garden.”
+
+When these quaverings of senility reached us we were laid waste and
+brought to silence. We knew not whether Isaiah or Hosea or Mohamet had
+spoken.
+
+But now from the archives of _The New Republic_ comes this fragment in
+the form of a rejection of some Chinese poetry: “Our expert on Chinese
+poetry does not think that these translations are ... etc.” We feel that
+we have come upon something of great interest to archeologists and to
+all our readers who are excited over the Mysteries of History. Is it
+possible that Li Po himself may be on the staff of _The New Republic_,
+now too old to create but still retained on its board of experts?
+
+
+                        Mary MacLane’s Criticism
+
+Mary MacLane, Butte, Montana:
+
+All your bits of criticism of my book are true—but didn’t I say them
+first? Don’t I say I have a conscience? Don’t I say it’s an exasperating
+book—don’t I say it’s all incongruous? Don’t I tacitly tell you fifty
+times it is not creative but photographic? I call it a diary of human
+days: just that. Not artist days nor poet days. Human days must include
+the teakettle, the smoking chimney and the word Refined. Refined is not
+my word at all. In my bright lexicon there’s no such word. I use it
+because I am living human days and perforce encountering such words now
+and again. Have you the courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, too
+sub-analytic, for you? I set apart the word Refined to show it’s “their”
+word, not mine. Yet you solemnly take me to task for questioning the
+“refinement”, the “sincerity,” of my mountain shower-bath emotions. I
+don’t question anything. I’m saying what “they” do: In “someway the
+Lesbian” chapter I maintain I doubly prove, not “refute,” my analytic
+freedom. The book being human days includes the domestic thing. I live
+in a house and like it. I write as a human being not as an artist. You
+can’t get away from your tooth-brush. “Human days” includes satyrs and
+sisters looked at from exactly the same vantage—unless you’re a
+Christian Endeavor. You write justly, jh, but why label me with that
+“sexual”? I wrote also of my shoes: I contributed also the theory of
+Shoes.
+
+[Dear “I Mary MacLane”: All you have to say about my “criticism” of your
+book sounds just to me. Yes, you said them first and fifty times at
+least; that’s why I mentioned them at all. I thought perhaps the reason
+you said them so often was because you hoped it otherwise. Perhaps you
+are too “subtle,” too “sub-analytic,” too educated for me. I am just a
+painter. While I know, from the aching of the heart to the sickness of
+the stomach, what human days must include, I haven’t yet got to the
+point where I am willing to believe that writing a book doesn’t come
+under the same laws as painting a picture, sculping, or making music. If
+subject is not transformed into design by some inevitable quality in the
+artist then you have not made a book; you have merely helped to clutter
+up the place. I may be narrow-minded but I can’t quite see any art as a
+common activity or a household duty, indulged in or performed as an
+either=or. “I will clean off the snow or paint a picture; I will milk
+the cow or do a little modelling.” I haven’t been about enough to have
+found it so in any families; nor have I read enough to have found it so
+in many families, except perhaps the Da Vinci family.
+
+“Refined is not my word,” you say. I think the book exonerates you; but
+why your concern with it at all was my point, not my criticism.
+
+As to the label “sexual,” I meant shoes and all,—the whole hereditary
+attitude, in your case intriguing because neurasthenic.
+
+Sorry: but I did not solemnly take you to task. One must even criticize
+with joy.—_jh._]
+
+
+                            From “The Dial”
+
+“A quaint manifestation of editorial ethics crops out in the April issue
+of _The Little Review_. It is in connection with a vers libre contest,
+this being the issue in which the awards are made. There was a regularly
+constituted board of judges—three people sufficiently competent and
+sufficiently well known in their field; but the editor has chosen to
+indulge in some disclosures as to the lack of unanimity amongst her
+aides and even in some pointed animadversions on their tastes and
+preferences. Of the first choice of one of them, she says: What is there
+in the ‘subtle depth of thought’? Almost every kind of person in the
+world has had this thought. And what is there in the ‘treatment to make
+it poetry?’ And the poem itself follows. Of the two chosen for prizes by
+another judge, she observes: ‘These two poems are pretty awful’—and she
+prints them, with the authors’ names, as before. The third judge plumped
+for a pair of others—‘provided Richard Aldington wrote them; otherwise
+not.... If he wrote them they are authentic as well as lovely; but if he
+did not, so flagrant an imitation ought not to be encouraged.’ A
+perfectly sound position to take. Here again the poems follow—and they
+are under a name not Aldington’s. Query: has the judge, whose name is
+given too, exactly made a friend? Then comes, of course, a succession of
+poems approved by the editor but ignored by her helpers.... If such a
+system spreads, the embarrassments and even perils of judgeship will
+grow. Hereafter few may care to serve as judges, except under
+stipulations designed to afford some protection. And as for the poor
+poets themselves, such treatment should act to keep them out of
+‘contests’ altogether.”
+
+[Here is the old _Dial_ showing them all up. So there is an American
+editorial association just like the American Medical Association with
+all its criminology of professional ethics!
+
+We thought that the idea of that verse libre contest (it wasn’t our
+idea) was to stimulate interest in and more understanding of free verse,
+not to offer an operation for judges nor a fee for poets. Taking it
+simply as a free verse contest, the editor thought the only concern was
+with free verse. Since when has Art to do with ethics or with taste? If
+the poets and judges in the contest were as impersonal, direct, and
+sincere in their attitude toward poetry as the editor, the fussy anxiety
+of _The Dial_ over their plight is needless. But of course if to serve
+poetry is to serve yourself there isn’t much point to a contest except
+the money. On the other hand, if a contest is to be run on the “tastes
+and preferences” or sensitiveness of the judges then it is clear that
+the neatest poem chosen by the touchiest judge should win, provided the
+poet who wrote it was also easily offended and needed the money badly.
+
+“And as for the _poor_ poets” there should be _something_ to keep them
+out of contests—and also out of any other literary activity.—_jh._]
+
+
+                        You Do Us Too Much Honor
+
+Louis Puteklis, Cambridge, Mass:
+
+... You see it is a fact that your “art for art’s sake” cannot exist
+without supporters: nothing is free from economic conditions which are
+the creators and destroyers of people’s tendencies and deeds.
+
+Although I appreciate your surprising efforts, I must confess that I
+cannot yet agree with your dictum as to “the two most important radical
+organs of contemporary literature.” Until you strike your roots deeper
+you cannot soar so high. As for me, I am in touch already with many
+other radical magazines in English and in other languages. Radicalism
+does not consist in vers libre which murmurs about green grass, soft
+kisses, clinging limbs, ecstasy and faintness, the surprises of
+passionate intercourse. There is too much of such sensual poetry:
+Solomon long ago played the changes on that theme. Such poems come
+perilously near the emanations of diseased sexual appetites. There is
+neither life nor originality in them. When I read “green grass,” I know
+that I am close upon “clinging limbs.” Drink deeper of the Pierian
+fount; don’t disturb the grasshoppers!
+
+I think that _The Little Review_ must scatter more sensible seed in the
+future and throw away the tares. It will do better, I believe, to take
+for its province: Literature, Life, Science; all the fine arts are too
+much for its scope; each has its own organs.
+
+Still _The Little Review_ is doing good. Long life to it and may it do
+better!
+
+[You see, we said that _The Egoist_ and _The Little Review_ are radical
+organs of contemporary literature. That’s all: not economic, social, or
+religious. As we have stated a number of times: since all the arts are
+from the same source we are not getting out of our province or making
+our scope too wide by keeping to Art. Your advice about reducing to
+Literature, Life, Science, is a great compliment to our scope, but—well,
+for the present we can’t take up such limited and special subjects as
+Life, or such obvious and untaxing ones as Science.—_jh._]
+
+
+
+
+                      The Little Review Book Shop
+
+
+You may order any book you want from us and we have the facilities for
+delivering or mailing it to you at whatever time you specify.
+
+You may come in and look over our stock and take your selections with
+you.
+
+Some of the books you will want are these:
+
+   James Joyce’s _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. $1.50
+
+   Nexo’s _Pelle the Conqueror_. Four volumes, $5.00
+
+   Gilbert Cannan’s _Mendel_. $1.50
+
+   Romain Rolland’s _Jean Christophe_. Three volumes, $5.00
+
+   D. H. Lawrence’s _Prussian Officer_ and _Twilight in Italy_,
+   $1.50 each.
+
+   Ethel Sidgwick’s _Promise_ and _Succession_. Each $1.50
+
+   Ezra Pound’s _Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska_. $3.50
+
+   _The Imagist Anthology, 1917._ 75 cents
+
+   _Verharen’s Love Poems_, translated by Flint, Arthur Symons, etc.
+   $1.50
+
+   Willard Huntington Wright’s _Modern Painting_ and _The Creative
+   Will_. $2.50 and $1.50
+
+   Tagore’s _Reminiscences_ and _Personality_. Each $1.50
+
+   The complete works of Anatole France. Per volume, $1.25
+
+   The Works of Henri Fabre. 6 volumes. Each $1.50
+
+   The Works of Mark Twain. 25 volumes, $25.00
+
+   _Creative Intelligence_, by John Dewey and others. $2.00
+
+   Carl Sandburg’s _Chicago Poems_. $1.25
+
+   Joseph Conrad’s _The Shadow Line_. $1.35
+
+   Maurice Hewlett’s _Thorgils_. $1.35
+
+   Andreyev’s _The Little Angel_, _The Crushed Flower_, etc. $1.35
+   and $1.50
+
+   Kuprin’s _A Slave Soul_. $1.50
+
+   Tchekoff’s _The Kiss_, _The Darling_, _The Duel_, _The Black
+   Monk_. Each $1.25
+
+   Gorky’s _Confession_ and _Twenty-Six Men and a Girl_. $1.35
+
+   Dostoevsky’s _The Eternal Husband_. $1.50
+
+   Gogol’s _Dead Souls_, _Taras Bulba_, _The Mantle_. $1.40, $1.35
+
+   Sologub’s _The Sweet-Scented Name_. $1.50
+
+   Artzibashef’s _Sanine_, _The Millionaire_, _The Breaking-Point_.
+   Each $1.50
+
+   The Works of Freud and Jung
+
+   Max Eastman’s _Journalism versus Art_, _Understanding Germany_.
+   $1.00 and $1.25
+
+   John Cowper Powy’s _Confessions_, _Suspended Judgments_. $1.50
+   and $2.00
+
+   Paul Géraldy’s _The War, Madame_. 75 cents
+
+   Amy Lowell’s _Men, Women and Ghosts_. $1.25
+
+   H. D.’s _Sea Garden_. 75 cents
+
+   D. H. Lawrence’s _Amores_. $1.25
+
+   W. W. Gibson’s _Livelihood_. $1.25
+
+   The Stories of A. Neil Lyons. Each $1.25
+
+   Sherwood Anderson’s _Windy McPherson’s Son_. $1.40
+
+   _I, Mary MacLane._ $1.40
+
+
+
+
+                           The Little Review
+
+
+THE JULY NUMBER will have poems by T. S. Eliot; a Dialogue by Ezra
+Pound: “Aux Etuves de Wiesbaden”; and several other things of interest.
+
+THE AUGUST NUMBER will have at least seven more poems by Mr. Yeats, an
+Editorial and Notes on Books by Mr. Pound, etc., etc.
+
+PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and help us to make The Little Review a power.
+
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+                  STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT,
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+
+            Of THE LITTLE REVIEW, published monthly at New
+            York, N. Y., for April 1st, 1917. State of New
+            York, County of New York—ss.
+
+            Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State
+            and county aforesaid, personally appeared
+            Margaret C. Anderson, who having been duly
+            sworn according to law, deposes and says that
+            she is the Publisher, Editor, Owner, Business
+            Manager of THE LITTLE REVIEW, and that the
+            following is, to the best of her knowledge and
+            belief, a true statement of the ownership,
+            management (and if a daily paper, the
+            circulation), etc., of the aforesaid
+            publication for the date shown in the above
+            caption, required by the Act of August 24,
+            1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and
+            Regulations, printed on the reverse of this
+            form; to wit:
+
+            1. That the names and addresses of the
+            publisher, editor, managing editor, and
+            business managers are:
+
+            Publisher, Margaret C. Anderson, 31 W.
+            Fourteenth St., New York; Editor, Margaret C.
+            Anderson, 31 W. Fourteenth St., New York;
+            Managing Editor, Margaret C. Anderson, 31 W.
+            Fourteenth St., New York; Business Manager,
+            Margaret C. Anderson, 31 W. Fourteenth St., New
+            York.
+
+            2. That the owner is, Margaret C. Anderson.
+
+            3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and
+            other security holders owning or holding 1 per
+            cent, or more of total amount of bonds,
+            mortgages, or other securities are: None.
+
+            4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving
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+            holders, if any, contain not only the list of
+            stockholders and security holders as they
+            appear upon the books of the company but also,
+            in cases where the stockholder or security
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+            trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the
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+            trustee is acting, is given; also that the said
+            two paragraphs contain statements embracing
+            affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the
+            circumstances and conditions under which
+            stockholders and security holders who do not
+            appear upon the books of the company as
+            trustees, hold stock and securities in a
+            capacity other than that of a bona fide owner;
+            and this affiant has no reason to believe that
+            any other person, association or corporation,
+            has any interest direct or indirect in the said
+            stock, bonds, or other securities than as so
+            stated by her.
+
+                                     MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
+
+            Sworn to and subscribed before me this 9th day
+            of April 1917.
+
+                              WALTER HEARN, Notary Public.
+                 (My commission expires March 30th, 1918.)
+
+
+
+
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+
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+                        “NOT FOR PROFIT BASIS.”
+
+
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+
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+                        are approved by a jury.
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+                               THE PAGAN
+
+   is something like _The Masses_ and _The Little Review_ because it
+   contains original stories, plays, essays, also translation from
+   the Europeans; as well as drawings and etchings.
+
+                        But how is it different?
+
+          _Buy a copy and see. $1.50 a year; 15 cents a copy_
+
+                      THE PAGAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
+                           174 CENTER STREET
+                             NEW YORK CITY
+
+      TINY TIM MAKES CANDY.
+      TINY TIM MAKES _GOOD_ CANDY.
+      TINY TIM MAKES _PURE_ CANDY.
+      TINY TIM _ORIGINATES_ EVERY VARIETY.
+      VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE.
+
+   _P. S._ Mary Elizabeth, Martha Washington, Park & Tilford,
+   Huylers, and the Mirror Stores make good candy, but they haven’t
+   any thing on TINY TIM for originality.
+
+   _P. S._ (_2nd._) TIM’S place is small and hard to find. It is
+   hiding out on Sixth Avenue, on the corner of Milligan Place,
+   between 10th and 11th Streets. If you ever find the place
+   remember the _special directions_ for opening the door. Grasp the
+   handle firmly—push to your right steadily. NOTE: The door slides
+   North.
+
+   _P. S._ (_3rd._) TIM or Mrs. TIM and the candy will probably be
+   there. If not, call again.
+
+
+                             “Hello Huck!”
+
+   Recall that golden day when you first read “Huck Finn”? How your
+   mother said, “For goodness’ sake, stop laughing aloud over that
+   book. You sound so silly.” But you couldn’t stop laughing.
+
+   Today when you read “Huckleberry Finn” you will not laugh so
+   much. You will chuckle often, but you will also want to weep. The
+   deep humanity of it—the pathos, that you never saw, as a boy,
+   will appeal to you now. You were too busy laughing to notice the
+   limpid purity of the master’s style.
+
+
+
+
+                               MARK TWAIN
+
+   When Mark Twain first wrote “Huckleberry Finn” this land was
+   swept with a gale of laughter. When he wrote “The Innocents
+   Abroad” even Europe laughed at it itself.
+
+   But one day there appeared a new book from his pen, so spiritual,
+   so true, so lofty that those who did not know him well were
+   amazed. “Joan of Arc” was the work of a poet—a historian—a seer.
+   Mark Twain was all of these. His was not the light laughter of a
+   moment’s fun, but the whimsical humor that made the tragedy of
+   life more bearable.
+
+
+                            A Real American
+
+   Mark Twain was a steamboat pilot. He was a searcher for gold in
+   the far West. He was a printer. He worked bitterly hard. All this
+   without a glimmer of the great destiny that lay before him. Then,
+   with the opening of the great wide West, his genius bloomed.
+
+   His fame spread through the nation. It flew to the ends of the
+   earth, until his work was translated into strange tongues. From
+   then on, the path of fame lay straight to the high places. At the
+   height of his fame he lost all his money. He was heavily in debt,
+   but though 60 years old, he started afresh and paid every cent.
+   It was the last heroic touch that drew him close to the hearts of
+   his countrymen.
+
+   The world has asked is there an American literature? Mark Twain
+   is the answer. He is the heart, the spirit of America. From his
+   poor and struggling boyhood to his glorious, splendid old age, he
+   remained as simple, as democratic as the plainest of our
+   forefathers.
+
+   He was, of all Americans, the most American. Free in soul, and
+   dreaming of high things—brave in the face of trouble—and always
+   ready to laugh. That was Mark Twain.
+
+
+                           The Price Goes Up
+
+         25 VOLUMES Novels—Stories—Humor Essays—Travel—History
+
+   This is Mark Twain’s own set. This is the set he wanted in the
+   home of each of those who love him. Because he asked it, Harpers
+   have worked to make a perfect set at a reduced price.
+
+   Before the war we had a contract price for paper, so we could
+   sell this set of Mark Twain at half price.
+
+                     Send the Coupon Without Money
+
+                                L. R. 5
+                                HARPER &
+                                BROTHERS
+
+                          Franklin Sq., N. Y.
+
+   Send me, all charges prepaid, a set of Mark Twain’s works in 25
+   volumes, illustrated, bound in handsome green cloth, stamped in
+   gold, gold tops and untrimmed edges. If not satisfactory, I will
+   return them at your expense. Otherwise I will send you $1.00
+   within 5 days and $2.00 a month for 12 months, thus getting the
+   benefit of your half-price sale.
+
+                                                      Little Review
+
+                               _Name_..............................
+
+                               _Address_...........................
+
+   The last of the edition is in sight. The price of paper has gone
+   up. There can be no more Mark Twain at the present price. There
+   never again will be any more Mark Twain at the present price. Get
+   the 25 volumes now, while you can. Every American has got to have
+   a set of Mark Twain in his home. Get yours now and save money.
+
+   Your children want Mark Twain. You want him. Send this coupon
+   to-day—now—while you are looking at it.
+
+                      HARPER & BROTHERS, New York
+
+
+
+
+                             Special Offer
+
+
+           JAMES JOYCE’S _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
+       Man_ and a year’s subscription to _The Little Review_ for
+                                  $2.50.
+
+   We are glad to announce that through the courtesy of Mr. Huebsch
+   we are able to make the following unusual offer, open to any one
+   who sends in a subscription (or a renewal) to _The Little
+   Review_:
+
+   Mr. Joyce’s _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, the most
+   important and beautiful piece of novel writing to be found in
+   English today, retails for $1.50. The subscription price of _The
+   Little Review_ is $1.50. We will cut the latter to $1.00, for
+   this special offer, and you may have the book and the
+   subscription for $2.50. Or you may have Mr. Joyce’s _Dubliners_
+   instead.
+
+
+
+
+                               ORDER FORM
+
+
+                           “A PORTRAIT OF THE
+                         ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN”
+
+   _Please send me_ ________ _cop_ ________ _of_
+
+   A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce, published
+   by Mr. B. W. Huebsch, for which I enclose ________.
+
+                            Name __________________________________
+                            Address _______________________________
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+
+
+
+
+                          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]:
+   ... woman sat in the embrazure of a man’s arm, sharing his
+       chair ...
+   ... woman sat in the embrasure of a man’s arm, sharing his
+       chair ...
+
+   [p. 10]:
+   ... My great wood lecturn and the fire ...
+   ... My great wood lectern and the fire ...
+
+   [p. 16]:
+   ... winters, L’lle Sonnante transferred to the middle of
+       London! ...
+   ... winters, L’Ile Sonnante transferred to the middle of
+       London! ...
+
+   [p. 21]:
+   ... Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye Dequoi dissiper mon
+       chagrin, ...
+   ... Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye De quoi dissiper mon
+       chagrin, ...
+
+   [p. 21]:
+   ... Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et el clairet... ...
+   ... Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et le clairet... ...
+
+   [p. 21]:
+   ... Et permetre à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma
+       Maison; ...
+   ... Et permettre à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma
+       Maison; ...
+
+   [p. 21]:
+   ... Quelque prix que j’eu püsse attendre, Ce seroit mon
+       premier souhait ...
+   ... Quelque prix que j’en puisse attendre, Ce seroit mon
+       premier souhait ...
+
+   [p. 30]:
+   ... courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, to sub-analytic, for
+       you? ...
+   ... courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, too sub-analytic,
+       for you? ...
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76625 ***