diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-0.txt | 1998 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-h/76625-h.htm | 3347 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 288692 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-h/images/huck.jpg | bin | 0 -> 269225 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-h/images/ornament.jpg | bin | 0 -> 9579 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 76625-h/images/spine.jpg | bin | 0 -> 75962 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 5361 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/76625-0.txt b/76625-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb0c2ab --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1998 @@ + +*** 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. + + + Subscription Form + + Please send me _The Little Review_ for the twelve-month beginning + ......................, for which I enclose $1.50 + + Name ......................................... + Address ...................................... + ............................................... + ............................................... + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + 31 West 14th Street + NEW YORK CITY + + + Eugene Hutchinson + + + + + Photographs + + FINE ARTS BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL. + + + Mason & Hamlin + + + The Stradivarius of Pianos + + + + + Mason & Hamlin Co. + + 313 FIFTH AVENUE + NEW YORK + + + + + COLONY ART SHOP + + + Artists’ Materials + + Oil and Water Colors + Brushes and Canvass + Smocks to Order + + Interior and Exterior Decorating + Paper Hanging + Polishing and Refinishing + of Wood Work + + + + + ADOLPH KLAFF + + 132 Sixth Ave., NEW YORK CITY Chelsea 1285 + + + STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, + CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF + CONGRESS, OF AUGUST 24, 1912. + + 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 + the names of owners, stockholders, and security + 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 + holder appears upon the books of the company as + trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the + name of the person or corporation for whom such + 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.) + + + + + THE ARTISTS’ GUILD + + A NATIONAL ORGANIZATION INCORPORATED ON A + “NOT FOR PROFIT BASIS.” + + + Paintings, Sculpture + AND + Handwrought Objects + + As security for the purchaser and to ensure merit, all works + are approved by a jury. + + + Exquisite and Rare Gifts + + The Artists’ and Craft Workers’ own organization + + GALLERIES, EXHIBITION AND SALESROOMS + FINE ARTS BUILDING CHICAGO, ILLINOIS + + + + + 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 _______________________________ + _______________________________________ + + _Orders, accompanied by remittance should be sent to_ + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + 31 West 14th Street, New York City + + + + + 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 *** diff --git a/76625-h/76625-h.htm b/76625-h/76625-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1846ce --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-h/76625-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3347 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="UTF-8"> +<title>The Little Review, June, 1917 (Vol. 4, No. 2) | Project Gutenberg</title> + <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <!-- TITLE="The Little Review, June, 1917 (Vol. 4, No. 2)" --> + <!-- AUTHOR="Margaret C. Anderson" --> + <!-- LANGUAGE="en" --> + <!-- PUBLISHER="Margaret C. Anderson" --> + <!-- DATE="1917" --> + <!-- COVER="images/cover.jpg" --> + +<style> + +body { margin-left:15%; margin-right:15%; } + +div.frontmatter { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; max-width:30em; } +div.frontmatter h1.title { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-variant:small-caps; + margin-bottom:0; } +div.frontmatter .subt { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:0; + margin-bottom:1em; } +div.frontmatter .subt .line1 { font-size:1.5em; border-top:1px solid black; + border-bottom:1px solid black; } +div.frontmatter .subt .line2 { font-size:0.8em; } +div.frontmatter .ed { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-bottom:2em; + font-size:0.8em; } +div.frontmatter .ed .line2 { font-size:0.8em; } +div.frontmatter .issue { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-bottom:2em; } +div.frontmatter div.footer { display:table; width:100%; margin-top:1em; font-size:0.8em; } +div.frontmatter div.footer p { text-indent:0; display:table-cell; margin:0; width:33%; + vertical-align:middle; } +div.frontmatter div.footer .pricel { text-align:left; width:20%; } +div.frontmatter div.footer .pub { text-align:center; font-family:sans-serif; width:60%; } +div.frontmatter div.footer .pricer { text-align:right; width:20%; } +div.frontmatter .tit { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:3em; + font-size:2em; font-weight:bold; font-variant:small-caps; } +div.frontmatter div.issue { display:table; width:100%; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +div.frontmatter div.issue p { text-indent:0; display:table-cell; margin:0; width:33%; } +div.frontmatter div.issue .vol { text-align:left; } +div.frontmatter div.issue .issue { text-align:center; } +div.frontmatter div.issue .number { text-align:right; } +div.frontmatter .monthly { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-size:0.8em; margin:1em;} +div.frontmatter .postoffice { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-size:0.8em; + margin:1em;} +div.frontmatter .cop { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-size:0.8em; } + +div.chapter{ page-break-before:always; } +h2 { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:3em; margin-bottom:1em; } +h2.article1{ page-break-before:auto; margin-top:0; padding-top:3em; } +h2.article { page-break-before:auto; margin-top:0; padding-top:3em; } +h2.editorials { page-break-before:auto; padding-top:0; margin-top:2em; } +h2.excerpt { page-break-before:auto; padding-top:0; margin-top:2em; } +h2.filler { page-break-before:auto; padding-top:0; margin-top:2em; } +h3 { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:1em; } +h4 { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0.5em; } +h5 { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0.5em; } +h3.excerpt { font-size:1em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0.5em; } +h4.excerpt { font-size:1em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0.5em; } + +div.excerpt { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; } +div.excerpt.narrow { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; + width:50%; } +div.filler { margin-top:3em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; } +div.epi { font-size:0.8em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:4em; } + +p.subt { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +p.aut { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +p.book { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +p.ded { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; font-size:0.8em; } +p.note { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; + font-size:0.8em; } +p.date { text-indent:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; font-style:italic; } +p.right { text-indent:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; } + +p { margin:0; text-align:justify; text-indent:1em; } +p.noindent { text-indent:0; } +p.vspace { margin-top:1em; } +.vspace.cb { font-size:0; margin:1em; clear:both; } +p.first { text-indent:0; } +span.firstchar { clear:left; float:left; font-size:3em; line-height:0.85em; } +span.prefirstchar { } +span.postfirstchar { } +p.sign { margin-top:0.5em; text-indent:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; } +p.attr { margin-top:0.5em; text-indent:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; } +p.center { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +div.hang p { text-indent:-2em; margin-left:2em; } +p.cap { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-size:0.8em; margin-bottom:1em; } + +/* only this issue */ +div.list p { text-indent:-1em; margin-left:2em; margin-top:0.5em; } + +div.linespace p { margin-top:1em; } +div.editorials { border:1px solid black; padding:0.5em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +div.editorials h3 { font-style:italic; text-align:left; } +div.loffre h3 { font-style:italic; font-size:1em; font-weight:normal; margin:1em; } +div.editorials h3.filler { font-style:normal; text-align:center; } +div.editorials h4 { font-style:italic; } +div.letters p.from { margin-top:1em; text-indent:0; font-style:italic; text-align:left; } +div.letters p.note { font-size:0.8em; margin:0; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; + text-indent:0; text-align:justify; } +div.letters div.note { font-size:0.8em; margin:0; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +div.letters div.note p { text-align:justify; } +p.footnote { text-indent:0; margin:1em; margin-top:0; font-size:0.8em; } +p.footnote2{ text-indent:0; margin:1em; margin-top:0; font-size:0.8em; } +hr.footnote{ margin-bottom:0.5em; width:10%; margin-left:0; margin-right:90%; } +div.play p { text-indent:0; } +div.dir { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; font-style:italic; } +div.play div.dir p { text-indent:1em; } +div.play div.dir p.first { text-indent:0; } +p.dir { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; font-style:italic; } +span.dir { font-style:italic; } +span.speaker { font-style:italic; } +p.end { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; text-indent:0; text-align:center; } + +div.definitions p { text-indent:0; margin-left:3em; } +div.definitions p.item { text-indent:1em; margin-left:0; } + +.tb { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +hr { border:0; border-top:1px solid black; text-align:center; margin:1em; } +hr.tb { margin-left:45%; width:10%; } + +p.epi { margin:1em; font-size:0.8em; text-align:right; } + +div.impressum { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; max-width:35em; font-size:0.8em; + border:1px solid black; margin-bottom:1em; page-break-before:always; + padding:0.5em; clear:both; margin-top:2em; line-height:1em; } +div.impressum .c { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin:0.5em; } +div.impressum .b { font-weight:bold; } +div.impressum .sign { margin-top:0; } + +/* tables */ +/* TOC table */ +div.table { text-align:center; } +table { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; border-collapse:collapse; } +table td { padding-left:0em; padding-right:0em; vertical-align:top; text-align:left; + text-indent:0; } +table.tocn td { font-size:0.8em; } +table.tocn td.col1 { padding-right:2em; text-align:left; max-width:22em; + padding-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; } +table.tocn td.col2 { padding-left:1em; text-align:right; font-style:italic; } +table.tocn tr.i td.col1 { padding-left:4em; } +table.tocn tr.r td.col1 { text-align:right; padding-left:2em; padding-right:0; + text-indent:0; } + +/* spans */ +.larger { font-size:1.25em; } +.smallcaps { font-variant:small-caps; } +.underline { text-decoration:underline; } +.small { font-size:0.8em; } +.hidden { display:none; } + +/* poetry */ +div.poem-container { text-align:center; } +div.poem-container div.poem { display:inline-block; } +div.stanza { text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +.stanza .verse { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:2em; } +.stanza .verse1 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:3em; } +.stanza .verse2 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:4em; } +.stanza .verse3 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:5em; } +.stanza .verse4 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:6em; } +.stanza .verse5 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:7em; } +.stanza .verse7 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:9em; } +.stanza .verse9 { text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:11em; } +.stanza .verse10{ text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:12em; } +.stanza .verse13{ text-align:left; text-indent:-2em; margin-left:15em; } +.stanza.attr .verse { text-indent:0; margin-left:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; } +.stanza.right .verse { text-indent:0; margin-left:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; } +.stanza.date .verse { text-indent:0; margin-left:0; text-align:right; margin-right:1em; + font-style:italic; } + +/* tabulated poetry */ +div.poem-container div.tabulated { display:inline-block; } +div.tabulated .speaker, div.tabulated .stanza { display:table-cell; } +div.tabulated .speaker { text-indent:0; text-align:right; padding:0; margin:0; + padding-right:0.5em; font-style:italic; } +div.tabulated .stanza { padding:0; margin:0; } +div.tabulated .stanza .verse { text-align:left; text-indent:-3em; margin-left:3em; } + +/* ads */ +div.ads { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; max-width:40em; font-size:0.8em; + border:1px solid black; margin-bottom:1em; page-break-before:always; + padding:0.5em; clear:both; margin-top:2em; } +div.ads p { text-indent:0; margin-bottom:0.5em; } +div.ads div.poem p { margin-bottom:0; } +div.ads .adh { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-weight:bold; + margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +div.ads .h1 { font-size:1.5em; } +div.ads .h2 { font-size:1.2em; } +div.ads .h3 { font-size:1em; } +div.ads .h4 { font-size:1em; } +div.ads .adb { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-weight:bold; margin-top:1em; + margin-bottom:1em; } +div.ads .ada { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } +div.ads .ads { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; + font-size:0.8em; } +div.ads .adp { text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; + font-size:0.8em; } +div.ads .adp.r { text-align:right; margin-top:0; margin-right:1em; } +div.ads .ade { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-weight:bold; margin-top:1em; + margin-bottom:1em; font-size:1.2em; } +div.ads p.fl { margin:0; } +div.ads p.fr { margin:0; } +div.ads p.r { text-indent:0; text-align:right; } +div.ads p.l { text-indent:0; text-align:left; } +div.ads .c { text-indent:0; text-align:center; } +div.ads .b { font-weight:bold; } +div.ads .s { font-size:0.8em; } +div.ads .fl { float:left; } +div.ads .fr { float:right; } +div.ads div.box.w50.fr { margin:0; margin-left:0.5em; margin-bottom:0.5em; } +div.ads .cb { clear:both; } +div.ads .vspace6 { margin-bottom:6em; } +div.ads .vspace.cb { font-size:0; margin:0; } +div.ads .narrow { width:70%; margin-left:15%; margin-right:15%; } +div.ads .narrow.fr { width:60%; margin-left:0; margin-right:0; } + +div.ads .box { border:1px solid black; margin:0.5em; padding:0.5em; } +div.ads .w30 { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; width:30%; } +div.ads .w40 { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; width:40%; } +div.ads .w40r{ margin-left:auto; margin-right:0; width:40%; } +div.ads .w50 { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; width:50%; } +div.ads .w60 { margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; width:60%; } +div.ads .ib { display:inline-block; } +div.ads hr.hr10 { margin-left:45%; width:10%; } + +div.ads div.hang p { text-indent:-2em; margin-left:2em; margin-top:1em; } + +a:link { text-decoration: none; color: rgb(10%,30%,60%); } +a:visited { text-decoration: none; color: rgb(10%,30%,60%); } +a:hover { text-decoration: underline; } +a:active { text-decoration: underline; } + +/* Transcriber's note */ +.trnote { font-size:0.8em; line-height:1.2em; background-color: #ccc; + color: #000; border: black 1px dotted; margin: 2em; padding: 1em; + page-break-before:always; margin-top:3em; } +.trnote p { text-indent:0; margin-bottom:1em; } +.trnote ul { margin-left: 0; padding-left: 0; } +.trnote li { text-align: left; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 1em; } +.trnote ul li { list-style-type: square; } +.trnote .transnote { text-indent:0; text-align:center; font-weight:bold; } + +/* page numbers */ +a[title].pagenum { position: absolute; right: 1%; } +a[title].pagenum:after { content: attr(title); color: gray; background-color: inherit; + letter-spacing: 0; text-indent: 0; text-align: right; font-style: normal; + font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: x-small; + border: 1px solid silver; padding: 1px 4px 1px 4px; + display: inline; } + +div.centerpic { text-align:center; text-indent:0; display:block; } +img { max-width:80%; } +div.centerpic.ornament img { max-width:6em; } +div.centerpic.huck img { max-width:100%; } +div.centerpic.spine { max-width:20%; } +div.centerpic.spine img { max-width:100%; } + +body.x-ebookmaker { margin-left:0; margin-right:0; } + .x-ebookmaker div.frontmatter { max-width:inherit; } + + .x-ebookmaker div.poem-container div.poem { display:block; margin-left:2em; } + .x-ebookmaker div.poem-container div.tabulated { display:block; margin-left:2em; } + .x-ebookmaker div.editorials { border:0; padding:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } + .x-ebookmaker div.excerpt { font-size:1em; margin-left:2em; } + + .x-ebookmaker div.ads { max-width:inherit; border:0; border-top:1px solid black; + padding:0; padding-top:0.5em; margin-top:0; } + + .x-ebookmaker div.ads div.ib { clear:both; display:block; } + + .x-ebookmaker a.pagenum { display:none; } + .x-ebookmaker a.pagenum:after { display:none; } + + .x-ebookmaker .trnote { margin:0; } + + .x-ebookmaker span.firstchar { clear:left; float:left; } + .x-ebookmaker div.ads .fl { float:left; } + .x-ebookmaker div.ads .fr { float:right; } + +</style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76625 ***</div> + +<div class="frontmatter chapter"> +<h1 class="title"> +THE LITTLE REVIEW +</h1> + +<p class="u subt"> +<span class="line1">A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS</span><br> +<span class="line2">MAKING NO COMPROMISE WITH THE PUBLIC TASTE</span> +</p> + +<p class="ed"> +<span class="line1">Margaret C. Anderson</span><br> +<span class="line2">Publisher</span> +</p> + +<p class="issue"> +JUNE, 1917 +</p> + + <div class="table"> +<table class="tocn"> +<tbody> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#CHINESEPOEMS">Chinese Poems</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="r"> + <td class="col1" colspan="2">(translated from the Chinese of Li Po by Sasaki and Maxwell Bodenheim)</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#PUSHFACE">Push-Face</a></td> + <td class="col2">jh.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#IMPROVISATION">Improvisation</a></td> + <td class="col2">Louis Gilmore</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#POEMS">Poems:</a></td> + <td class="col2">William Butler Yeats</td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THEWILDSWANSATCOOLE">The Wild Swans at Coole</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#PRESENCES">Presences</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#MENIMPROVEWITHTHEYEARS">Men Improve with the Years</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#ADEEPSWORNVOW">A Deep-Sworn Vow</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THECOLLARBONEOFAHARE">The Collar-Bone of a Hare</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#BROKENDREAMS">Broken Dreams</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr class="i"> + <td class="col1"><a href="#INMEMORY">In Memory</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#ANANACHRONISMATCHINON">An Anachronism at Chinon</a></td> + <td class="col2">Ezra Pound</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#IMAGINARYLETTERS">Imaginary Letters, II.</a></td> + <td class="col2">Wyndham Lewis</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="col1"><a href="#THEREADERCRITIC">The Reader Critic</a></td> + <td class="col2"> </td> + </tr> +</tbody> +</table> + </div> +<p class="monthly"> +Published Monthly +</p> + + <div class="table"> + <div class="footer"> +<p class="pricel"> +15 Cents a copy +</p> + +<p class="pub"> +MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor<br> +EZRA POUND, Foreign Editor<br> +31 West Fourteenth Street<br> +NEW YORK CITY +</p> + +<p class="pricer"> +$1.50 a Year +</p> + + </div> + </div> +<p class="postoffice"> +Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, New York, N. Y. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="frontmatter chapter"> +<a id="page-3" class="pagenum" title="3"></a> +<p class="tit"> +The Little Review +</p> + + <div class="table"> + <div class="issue"> +<p class="vol"> +VOL. IV. +</p> + +<p class="issue"> +JUNE 1917 +</p> + +<p class="number"> +NO. 2 +</p> + + </div> + </div> +<p class="cop"> +Copyright, 1917, by Margaret C. Anderson. +</p> + +</div> + +<h2 class="article1" id="CHINESEPOEMS"> +Chinese Poems +</h2> + +<p class="aut"> +Translated from the Chinese of Li Po by +Sasaki and Maxwell Bodenheim +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="GENTLYDRUNKWOMAN"> +Gently-Drunk Woman +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">A breeze knelt upon the lotus-flowers</p> + <p class="verse">And their odor filled a water-palace.</p> + <p class="verse">I saw a king’s daughter</p> + <p class="verse">Upon the roof-garden of the water-palace.</p> + <p class="verse">She was half-drunk and she danced,</p> + <p class="verse">Her curling body killing her strength.</p> + <p class="verse">She grimaced languidly.</p> + <p class="verse">She smiled and drooped over the railing</p> + <p class="verse">Around the white, jewel-silenced floor.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="PERFUMEREMEMBRANCE"> +Perfume—Remembrance +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">When you stayed, my house was filled with flowers.</p> + <p class="verse">When you left, all disappeared, except our bed.</p> + <p class="verse">I wrapped your embroidered clothes about me,</p> + <p class="verse">And could not sleep.</p> + <p class="verse">The perfume of your clothes has stayed three years.</p> + <p class="verse">It will always be with me.</p> + <p class="verse">But you will never come back.</p> + <p class="verse">While I think of you yellow leaves outside</p> + <p class="verse">Are dropping, and white dew-drops moisten the moss beneath them.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="DRUNK"> +<a id="page-4" class="pagenum" title="4"></a> +Drunk +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">When we fill each other’s cups with wine,</p> + <p class="verse">Many mountain flowers bloom.</p> + <p class="verse">One drink; another; and another—</p> + <p class="verse">I am drunk; I want to sleep,</p> + <p class="verse">So you had better go.</p> + <p class="verse">Come tomorrow morning, hugging your harp,</p> + <p class="verse">For then, I shall have something to tell you.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="MOUNTAINTOPTEMPLE"> +Mountain-Top Temple +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Night, and rest in the mountain-top temple.</p> + <p class="verse">I lift my hands, and knock at the stars.</p> + <p class="verse">I dare not talk loudly,</p> + <p class="verse">For I fear to surprise the people in the sky.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="PUSHFACE"> +Push-Face +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +jh. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="I"> +I +</h3> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">I</span><span class="postfirstchar">t</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-5" class="pagenum" title="5"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The wheels became rollers which have rolled life out thin and +flat. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="II"> +II +</h3> + +<div class="epi"> +<p class="noindent"> +“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.” +</p> + +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-6" class="pagenum" title="6"></a> +As I was pushed about in the crowd I overheard always the +same conversations: +</p> + +<p> +“Is she there”? +</p> + +<p> +“Over there where the light is”? +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, on the second floor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are there any people inside”? +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it’s full since seven o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!?” +</p> + +<p> +“Will they let her speak?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who? Her”? +</p> + +<p> +Silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Will they get her, do you think”? +</p> + +<p> +“Will the police take her”? +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +How much of this treatment will it take to obliterate every +element of individuality amongst us? +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="III"> +III +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +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 id="page-7" class="pagenum" title="7"></a> +a bastard hilarity, bastard plutocrats and bastard artists, with +bastard soldiers guarding the scene. +</p> + +<p> +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 <a id="corr-2"></a>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. +</p> + +<p> +The greatest American dancer came in, followed by a little +girl and a train of men—<em>bummel-zug dritte classe</em>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="IMPROVISATION"> +<a id="page-8" class="pagenum" title="8"></a> +Improvisation +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +Louis Gilmore +</p> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your hands are perfumes</p> + <p class="verse">That haunt the yellow hangings</p> + <p class="verse">Of a room.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your hands are melodies</p> + <p class="verse">That rise and fall</p> + <p class="verse">In silver basins.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your hands are silks</p> + <p class="verse">That soothe the purple eyelids</p> + <p class="verse">Of the sick.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your hands are ghosts</p> + <p class="verse">That trouble the blue shadows</p> + <p class="verse">Of a garden.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your hands are poppies</p> + <p class="verse">For which my lips are hungry</p> + <p class="verse">And athirst.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="POEMS"> +<a id="page-9" class="pagenum" title="9"></a> +Poems +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +William Butler Yeats +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="THEWILDSWANSATCOOLE"> +The Wild Swans at Coole +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The trees are in their autumn beauty</p> + <p class="verse">The woodland paths are dry</p> + <p class="verse">Under the October twilight the water</p> + <p class="verse">Mirrors a still sky</p> + <p class="verse">Upon the brimming water among the stones</p> + <p class="verse">Are nine and fifty swans.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The nineteenth autumn has come upon me</p> + <p class="verse">Since I first made my count.</p> + <p class="verse">I saw, before I had well finished,</p> + <p class="verse">All suddenly mount</p> + <p class="verse">And scatter wheeling in great broken rings</p> + <p class="verse">Upon their clamorous wings.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">But now they drift on the still water</p> + <p class="verse">Mysterious, beautiful;</p> + <p class="verse">Among what rushes will they build;</p> + <p class="verse">By what lake’s edge or pool</p> + <p class="verse">Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day</p> + <p class="verse">To find they have flown away?</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I have looked upon these brilliant creatures</p> + <p class="verse">And now my heart is sore.</p> + <p class="verse">All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight</p> + <p class="verse">The first time on this shore</p> + <p class="verse">The bell-beat of their wings above my head,</p> + <p class="verse">Trod with a lighter tread.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Unwearied still, lover by lover,</p> + <p class="verse">They paddle in the cold</p> + <p class="verse">Companionable streams or climb the air;</p> + <p class="verse">Their hearts have not grown old,</p> + <p class="verse">Passion or conquest, wander where they will,</p> + <p class="verse">Attend upon them still.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">October, 1916.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="PRESENCES"> +<a id="page-10" class="pagenum" title="10"></a> +Presences +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">This night has been so strange that it seemed</p> + <p class="verse">As if the hair stood up on my head.</p> + <p class="verse">From going down of the sun I have dreamed</p> + <p class="verse">That women laughing, or timid or wild,</p> + <p class="verse">In rustle of lace or silken stuff,</p> + <p class="verse">Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read</p> + <p class="verse">All I have rhymed of that monstrous thing</p> + <p class="verse">Returned and yet unrequited love.</p> + <p class="verse">They stood in the door and stood between</p> + <p class="verse">My great wood <a id="corr-3"></a>lectern and the fire</p> + <p class="verse">Till I could hear their hearts beating:</p> + <p class="verse">One is a harlot, and one a child</p> + <p class="verse">That never looked upon man with desire,</p> + <p class="verse">And one, it may be, a queen.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">November, 1915.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="MENIMPROVEWITHTHEYEARS"> +Men Improve With the Years +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I am worn out with dreams;</p> + <p class="verse">A weather-worn, marble triton</p> + <p class="verse">Among the streams:</p> + <p class="verse">And all day long I look</p> + <p class="verse">Upon this lady’s beauty</p> + <p class="verse">As though I had found in book</p> + <p class="verse">A pictured beauty;</p> + <p class="verse">Pleased to have filled the eyes</p> + <p class="verse">Or the discerning ears,</p> + <p class="verse">Delighted to be but wise:</p> + <p class="verse">For men improve with the years.</p> + <p class="verse">And yet and yet</p> + <p class="verse">Is this my dream or the truth?</p> + <p class="verse">O would that we had met</p> + <p class="verse">When I had my burning youth;</p> + <p class="verse">But I grow old among dreams,</p> + <p class="verse">A weather-worn, marble triton</p> + <p class="verse">Among the streams.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">July 19, 1916.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="ADEEPSWORNVOW"> +<a id="page-11" class="pagenum" title="11"></a> +A Deep-Sworn Vow +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Others, because you did not keep</p> + <p class="verse">That deep sworn vow, have been friends of mine,</p> + <p class="verse">Yet always when I look death in the face,</p> + <p class="verse">When I clamber to the heights of sleep,</p> + <p class="verse">Or when I grow excited with wine,</p> + <p class="verse">Suddenly I meet your face.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">October 17, 1915.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="THECOLLARBONEOFAHARE"> +The Collar-Bone of a Hare +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Would I could cast a sail on the water,</p> + <p class="verse">Where many a king has gone</p> + <p class="verse">And many a king’s daughter,</p> + <p class="verse">And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,</p> + <p class="verse">The playing upon pipes and the dancing,</p> + <p class="verse">And learn that the best thing is</p> + <p class="verse">To change my loves while dancing</p> + <p class="verse">And pay but a kiss for a kiss.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">I would find by the edge of that water</p> + <p class="verse">The collar-bone of a hare</p> + <p class="verse">Worn thin by the lapping of water;</p> + <p class="verse">And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare</p> + <p class="verse">At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,</p> + <p class="verse">And laugh, over the untroubled water,</p> + <p class="verse">At all who marry in churches,</p> + <p class="verse">Through the white thin bone of a hare.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">July 5, 1915.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="BROKENDREAMS"> +Broken Dreams +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">There is grey in your hair.</p> + <p class="verse">Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath</p> + <p class="verse">When you are passing;</p> + <p class="verse">But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing</p> + <p class="verse">Because it was your prayer</p> +<a id="page-12" class="pagenum" title="12"></a> + <p class="verse">Recovered him upon the bed of death,</p> + <p class="verse">But for your sake—that all heart’s ache have known,</p> + <p class="verse">And given to others all heart’s ache,</p> + <p class="verse">From meagre girlhoods putting on</p> + <p class="verse">Burdensome beauty—but for your sake</p> + <p class="verse">Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,</p> + <p class="verse">So great her portion in that peace you make</p> + <p class="verse">By merely walking in a room.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Your beauty can but leave among us</p> + <p class="verse">Vague memories, nothing but memories.</p> + <p class="verse">A young man when the old men are done talking</p> + <p class="verse">Will say to an old man “tell me of that lady</p> + <p class="verse">The poet stubborn with his passion sang us</p> + <p class="verse">When age might well have chilled his blood.”</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Vague memories, nothing but memories,</p> + <p class="verse">But in the grave all all shall be renewed.</p> + <p class="verse">The certainty that I shall see that lady</p> + <p class="verse">Leaning or standing or walking,</p> + <p class="verse">In the first loveliness of womanhood</p> + <p class="verse">And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,</p> + <p class="verse">Has set me muttering like a fool.</p> + <p class="verse">You were more beautiful than any one</p> + <p class="verse">And yet your body had a flaw:</p> + <p class="verse">Your small hands were not beautiful.</p> + <p class="verse">I am afraid that you will run</p> + <p class="verse">And paddle to the wrist</p> + <p class="verse">In that mysterious, always brimming lake</p> + <p class="verse">Where those that have obeyed the holy law</p> + <p class="verse">Paddle and are perfect: leave unchanged</p> + <p class="verse">The hands that I have kissed</p> + <p class="verse">For old sake’s sake.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">The last stroke of midnight dies</p> + <p class="verse">All day in the one chair</p> + <p class="verse">From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged</p> + <p class="verse">In rambling talk with an image of air:</p> + <p class="verse">Vague memories, nothing but memories.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza date"> + <p class="verse">November, 1915.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<h3 class="section" id="INMEMORY"> +<a id="page-13" class="pagenum" title="13"></a> +In Memory +</h3> + +<div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Five and twenty years have gone</p> + <p class="verse">Since old William Pollexfen</p> + <p class="verse">Laid his strong bones in death</p> + <p class="verse">By his wife Elizabeth</p> + <p class="verse">In the grey stone tomb he made;</p> + <p class="verse">And after twenty years they laid</p> + <p class="verse">In that tomb, by him and her,</p> + <p class="verse">His son George the astrologer</p> + <p class="verse">And masons drove from miles away</p> + <p class="verse">To scatter the acacia spray</p> + <p class="verse">Upon a melancholy man</p> + <p class="verse">Who had ended where his breath began.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Many a son and daughter lies</p> + <p class="verse">Far from the customary skies,</p> + <p class="verse">The Mall, and Eadés Grammar School,</p> + <p class="verse">In London or in Liverpool,</p> + <p class="verse">But where is laid the sailor John</p> + <p class="verse">That so many lands had known,</p> + <p class="verse">Quiet lands or unquiet seas</p> + <p class="verse">Where the Indians trade or Japanese;</p> + <p class="verse">He never found his rest ashore</p> + <p class="verse">Moping for one voyage more:</p> + <p class="verse">Where have they laid the sailor John?</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">And yesterday the youngest son,</p> + <p class="verse">A humorous unambitious man,</p> + <p class="verse">Was buried near the astrologer;</p> + <p class="verse">And are we now in the tenth year?</p> + <p class="verse">Since he who had been contented long,</p> + <p class="verse">A nobody in a great throng,</p> + <p class="verse">Decided he would journey home,</p> + <p class="verse">Now that his fiftieth year had come,</p> + <p class="verse">And “Mr. Alfred” be again</p> + <p class="verse">Upon the lips of common men</p> + <p class="verse">Who carried in their memory</p> + <p class="verse">His childhood and his family.</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">At all these deathbeds women heard</p> + <p class="verse">A visionary white sea bird</p> + <p class="verse">Lamenting that a man should die,</p> + <p class="verse">And with that cry I have raised my cry.</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="ANANACHRONISMATCHINON"> +<a id="page-14" class="pagenum" title="14"></a> +An Anachronism at Chinon +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="aut"> +Ezra Pound +</p> + +<div class="play"> + <div class="dir"> +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">B</span><span class="postfirstchar">ehind</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His companion obviously an American student. +</p> + + </div> +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I came here in hopes of this meeting yet, since you are +here at all, you must have changed many opinions. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">The Elder</span>: Some. Which do you mean? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Since you are here, personal and persisting? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: All that I believed or believe you will find in <em>De +Senectute</em>: “... 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.” +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: And yet I do not quite understand. Your outline is +not always distinct. Your voice however is deep, clear and not +squeaky. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: I was more interested in words than in my exterior +aspect, I am therefore vocal rather than spatial. +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-15" class="pagenum" title="15"></a> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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.” +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: You do not find him a prig? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: I find no man a prig who takes serious thought for +the language. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: And your own? Even Voltaire called it an amassment +of ordure. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: And later changed his opinion. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Others have blamed your age, saying you had to half-bury +your wisdom in filth to make it acceptable. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: And you would put this blame on my age? And take +the full blame for your writing? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: My writing? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Yes, a quatrain, without which I should scarcely have +come here. +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Sweet C.... in h... spew up some....</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +(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: +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza right"> + <p class="verse">......some Rabelais</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">To ..... and ..... and to define today</p> + <p class="verse">In fitting fashion, and her monument</p> + <p class="verse">Heap up to her in fadeless ex .....</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: My license in those lines is exceptional. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Where s....., s..... and p..... on jews conspire,</p> + <p class="verse">And editorial maggots .... about,</p> + <p class="verse">We gather .... -smeared bread, or drive a snout</p> + <p class="verse">Still deeper in the swim-brown of the mire.</p> + <p class="verse">O .... O ..... O b...... b...... b....</p> + <p class="verse">O c..., ........ O .... O ......’s attire</p> + <p class="verse">Smeared with ...........................</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +<a id="page-16" class="pagenum" title="16"></a> +Really I can not continue, no printer would pass it. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Quite out of my usual ...... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: There is still another on publishers, or rather on <em>la +vie litteraire</em>, a sestina almost wholly in asterisks, and a short +strophe on the American president. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Can you blame ... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: I am scarcely ....... eh..... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Beside, these are but a few scattered outbursts, you +kept up your flow through whole volumes. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Why at that particular moment? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: They had taken away my books. Brother Amy got +hold of a Virgil. We opened it, <em>sortes</em>, the first line: +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza " lang="la" xml:lang="la"> + <p class="verse"><em>Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum</em></p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +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? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I have, as you admit, passed some years in my university. +I have seen some opposition to learning. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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’<a id="corr-6"></a>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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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 +<a id="page-17" class="pagenum" title="17"></a> +have broadened his outlook, or benefited his eyesight. I do not +think it wholly irrational, though it must have been extremely +annoying. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Where was it? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: In Spain. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: You are driven south of the Pyrenees to find your +confuting example. Would you find the like in this country? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I doubt it. The Orders are banished. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Or in your own? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Never. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: And you were enraged with your university? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I thought some of the customs quite stupid. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Can you conceive a life so infernally and abysmally +stupid that the air of an university was wine and excitement +beside it? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span> (<span class="dir">reads</span>) +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza " lang="el" xml:lang="el"> + <p class="verse">’Εμὸς ἐμὸς ὁ Βρομίος Εμὲ δεῖ κελαδεῖν</p> + <p class="verse">Εμὶ δεῖ παταγεῖν ’Αν ὀρεα εσσάμενον</p> + <p class="verse">Μετὰ Ναἲδων Οἷα τε κύκνον ἄγοντα</p> + <p class="verse">Ποικιλόπτερον μέλος Τᾶv ἀοιδᾶν....</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: The movement is interesting. I am “educated,” I am +considerably more than a “graduate.” I confess that I can not +translate it. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: What in God’s name have they taught you?!! +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I hope they have taught me nothing. I managed to +read many books despite their attempts at suppression, or rather +perversion. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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 +<a id="page-18" class="pagenum" title="18"></a> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Weekly? C..... J....! +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: You forget that the value of money has very considerably +altered. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Admitted. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Well? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Well, who has constrained you? The press in your +day is free. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: C..... J....! +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: But the press in your day is free. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: But they print my works in translation. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Your work is a classic. They also print Trimalcio’s +<em>Supper</em>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: But surely these things are avoidable? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-19" class="pagenum" title="19"></a> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Well? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Other means. There is what is called private printing. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: At least you are free from theology. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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?” +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: I have heard the name, but not associated with strange +forms of blackmail. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I admit they do not affect serious writers. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: But you think your age as stupid as mine. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Airmen. Intercommunication is civilization. Your +life is full of convenience. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: And men as stupid as ever. We have no one like +Henry Stephen. Have you ever read Galdos’ <em>Dona Perfecta</em>? +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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Yet all peoples act the same way. The same so-called +“vices” are everywhere present, unless your nation has invented +some new ones. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Greed and hypocrisy, there is little novelty to be got +out of either. At present there is a new tone, a new <em>timbre</em> of +lying, a sort of habit, almost a faculty for refraining from connecting +<a id="page-20" class="pagenum" title="20"></a> +words with a fact. An inconception of their interrelations. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Let us keep out of politics. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Damn it, have you ever met presbyterians? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: You forget that I lived in the time of John Calvin. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Let us leave this and talk of your books. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I knew a man read you for joy of the words, for the +opulence of your vocabulary. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I confess that I can not. I take a page and then stop. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Allegory, all damnable allegory! And can you read +Brantôme? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: I can read a fair chunk of Brantôme. The repetition +is wearing. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: And you think your age is as stupid as mine? Even +letters are better, a critical sense is developed. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: We lack the old vigour. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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?!! +</p> + + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza " lang="la" xml:lang="la"> + <p class="verse">Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui</p> + <p class="verse">Volo: nihil juvat mortuum</p> + <p class="verse">Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit</p> + <p class="verse">Animose.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p class="noindent"> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: What is that? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Some verses of Dolet’s. And are you starved like +Desperiers, Bonaventura, and driven to suicide? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: The last auto-da-fe was in 1759. The inquisition reestablished +in 1824. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Spain again! I was speaking of.... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: We are not yet out of the wood. There is no end to +this warfare. You talk of freedom. Have you heard of the +<a id="page-21" class="pagenum" title="21"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Indeed you are far past these things. Your age no +longer accepts them. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: 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.... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: There is still some in the last bottle. DeThou has +paid it a compliment: +</p> + + <div lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"> + <div class="poem-container"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza right"> + <p class="verse">Aussi Bacchus....</p> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="verse">Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye <a id="corr-10"></a>De quoi dissiper mon chagrin,</p> + <p class="verse">Car de ma Maison paternelle Il vient de faire un Cabaret</p> + <p class="verse">Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et <a id="corr-11"></a>le clairet...</p> + <p class="verse">On n’y porte plus sa pensée Qu’aux douceurs d’un Vin frais et net.</p> + <p class="verse">Que si Pluton, que rien ne tente, Vouloit se payer de raison,</p> + <p class="verse">Et <a id="corr-12"></a>permettre à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma Maison;</p> + <p class="verse">Quelque prix que j’<a id="corr-13"></a>en <a id="corr-14"></a>puisse attendre, Ce seroit mon premier souhait</p> + <p class="verse">De la louer ou de la vendre, Pour l’usage que l’on en fait.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + </div> +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: There are states where a man’s tobacco is not safe +from invasion. Bishops, novelists, decrepit and aged generals, +purveyors of tales of detectives.... +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: Have they ever interfered with your pleasures? +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Student</span>: Damn well let them try it!!! +</p> + +<p> +<span class="speaker">Rabelais</span>: I am afraid you would have been burned in my century. +</p> + +<p class="end"> +END OF THE FIRST DIALOGUE +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="IMAGINARYLETTERS"> +<a id="page-22" class="pagenum" title="22"></a> +Imaginary Letters +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="subt"> +<span class="line1">(Six Letters of William Bland Burn to his Wife)</span> +</p> + +<p class="aut"> +Wyndham Lewis +</p> + +<p class="date"> +Petrograd, February, 1917. +</p> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">M</span><span class="postfirstchar">y</span> dear Lydia: +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>not got</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +(In once more reading through your present letter, I find you +have not even stated it <em>there</em>. 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). +</p> + +<p> +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 +<a id="page-23" class="pagenum" title="23"></a> +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 +<em>him</em>—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 <em>old</em> +abstraction in fact, the old Pied Piper whistling his mournful +airs, and waving towards a snow-bound horizon. And—<em>le voilà</em> +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) <em>we</em> 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. <em>We</em> are <em>accomplished</em> +beings, <em>des hommes, ou plutôt des gentlemen faits</em>! 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). +</p> + +<p> +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 “<em>fort +interieur</em>” 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 +<a id="page-24" class="pagenum" title="24"></a> +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 <em>want</em> 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 <em>any</em> 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 <em>Russians</em> are chiefly redoubtable, and admirable, because +of this capacity of impersonal seeing and feeling. Where +they are least Russian in fact. +</p> + +<p> +The discriminating enemy in reading these sketches, would +fear that more than he would any unreal or interested gush. +</p> + +<p> +There always remains the question as to whether, by gush +and bluff and painting a pretty picture of a man, you cannot +make him <em>become</em> 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +So then, what the paper-writer’s point amounted to was that +only <em>gentlemen</em> (or, sententiously, <em>men</em>) 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 <em>way</em> of being +a gentleman!— +</p> + +<p> +In London you will meet few educated people who really are +<a id="page-25" class="pagenum" title="25"></a> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>machinery</em> of the mind. Dostoevsky is not more +dark and furious than Shakespeare’s pessimistic figures, Lear, +Macbeth, etc. <em>But we are not Englishmen of Shakespeare’s days.</em> +</p> + +<p> +We are very pleased that in the time of Elizabeth such a +national ornament existed. But Shakespeare would be an +anachronism to-day. +</p> + +<p> +Dostoevsky and Co. were anachronisms as contemporaries of +Tennyson and Napoleon III. <em>Had they been embedded two +centuries back in Sixteenth Century Russia</em>, 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! +</p> + +<p> +I think I have been lucid, if rather long-winded= +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Sportsman’s Sketches</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +<em>Today</em>=the requirements of the little man, especially of this +day, are a similar thing to the <em>Russian</em>, the <em>Englishman</em>, etc. +We must disembarrass ourselves of this fetish or gush, as of +that other.—I want to live with Shakespeare and Cervantes=and +<a id="page-26" class="pagenum" title="26"></a> +I have gone to war for good with all things that would oppose +a return to those realities. +</p> + +<p> +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=<em>A +coup de poing</em> 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 <em>living thing except yourself</em>, that I know or find alive +to the same extent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +I am looking forward to your next letter. Much love. +</p> + +<p class="sign"> +Yours,<br> +W. B. Burn. +</p> + +<p class="note"> +(<em>Next letter of series will appear in July number.</em>) +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THEREADERCRITIC"> +The Reader Critic +</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="letters"> +<h3 class="section" id="FROMJAMESJOYCE"> +From James Joyce +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +James Joyce, Zurich, Switzerland: +</p> + +<p> +I am very glad to hear about the new plans for <em>The Little +Review</em> 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 <em>The +Little Review</em> every success. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="APPROVAL"> +Approval +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +Alice Groff, Philadelphia: +</p> + +<p> +Never has <em>The Little Review</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +What he says about the Christian religion is delicious in its +gentle tolerance; about organized religions, is the last word; about +<a id="page-27" class="pagenum" title="27"></a> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +His rallying cry to <em>The Egoist</em> 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 <em>The +Little Review</em> 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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="FEARNOT"> +Fear Not +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +Mrs. O. D. J.: +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The Smart Set</em> 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. +</p> + + <div class="note"> +<p class="noindent"> +[We will take this opportunity of answering all those who have +verbally or in letters expressed the fear that <em>The Little Review</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But I congratulate you on being able to read <em>The Smart Set</em> as +literature. Maybe the audience will after all produce the art. I +wonder....] +</p> + + </div> +<h3 class="section" id="APOETSOPINION"> +<a id="page-28" class="pagenum" title="28"></a> +A Poet’s Opinion +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +Maxwell Bodenheim, New York: +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>Poetry</em>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + + <div class="note"> +<a id="page-29" class="pagenum" title="29"></a> +<p class="noindent"> +[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.” +</p> + +<p> +To this kind of brain things <em>are</em> 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—<em>M. C. A.</em>] +</p> + + </div> +<h3 class="section" id="COMPLAINT"> +Complaint +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +New York Subscribers: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="FORTHEY**ANCHEOLOGISTARCHEOLOGISTSILENTY"> +For the Archeologist +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +That great journal, <em>The New Republic</em>—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 <em>The Little Review</em> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But now from the archives of <em>The New Republic</em> 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 <em>The New Republic</em>, now too old to create but +still retained on its board of experts? +</p> + +<h3 class="section" id="MARYMACLANESCRITICISM"> +<a id="page-30" class="pagenum" title="30"></a> +Mary MacLane’s Criticism +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +Mary MacLane, Butte, Montana: +</p> + +<p> +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, <a id="corr-24"></a>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. +</p> + + <div class="note"> +<p class="noindent"> +[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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +As to the label “sexual,” I meant shoes and all,—the whole +hereditary attitude, in your case intriguing because neurasthenic. +</p> + +<p> +Sorry: but I did not solemnly take you to task. One must even +criticize with joy.—<em>jh.</em>] +</p> + + </div> +<h3 class="section" id="FROMTHEDIAL"> +<a id="page-31" class="pagenum" title="31"></a> +From “The Dial” +</h3> + +<p class="noindent"> +“A quaint manifestation of editorial ethics crops out in the April +issue of <em>The Little Review</em>. 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.” +</p> + + <div class="note"> +<p class="noindent"> +[Here is the old <em>Dial</em> showing them all up. So there is an +American editorial association just like the American Medical Association +with all its criminology of professional ethics! +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The Dial</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“And as for the <em>poor</em> poets” there should be <em>something</em> to keep +them out of contests—and also out of any other literary activity.—<em>jh.</em>] +</p> + + </div> +<h3 class="section" id="YOUDOUSTOOMUCHHONOR"> +<a id="page-32" class="pagenum" title="32"></a> +You Do Us Too Much Honor +</h3> + +<p class="from"> +Louis Puteklis, Cambridge, Mass: +</p> + +<p> +... 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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +I think that <em>The Little Review</em> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Still <em>The Little Review</em> is doing good. Long life to it and may +it do better! +</p> + +<p class="note"> +[You see, we said that <em>The Egoist</em> and <em>The Little Review</em> 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.—<em>jh.</em>] +</p> + +<div class="centerpic ornament"> +<img src="images/ornament.jpg" alt=""></div> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THELITTLEREVIEWBOOKSHOP"> +<a id="page-33" class="pagenum" title="33"></a> +The Little Review Book Shop +</h2> + +</div> + +<p class="first"> +<span class="firstchar">Y</span><span class="postfirstchar">ou</span> 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. +</p> + +<p> +You may come in and look over our stock and take your +selections with you. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the books you will want are these: +</p> + +<div class="list"> +<p> +James Joyce’s <em>Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</em>. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Nexo’s <em>Pelle the Conqueror</em>. Four volumes, $5.00 +</p> + +<p> +Gilbert Cannan’s <em>Mendel</em>. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Romain Rolland’s <em>Jean Christophe</em>. Three volumes, $5.00 +</p> + +<p> +D. H. Lawrence’s <em>Prussian Officer</em> and <em>Twilight in Italy</em>, +$1.50 each. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel Sidgwick’s <em>Promise</em> and <em>Succession</em>. Each $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Ezra Pound’s <em>Memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska</em>. $3.50 +</p> + +<p> +<em>The Imagist Anthology, 1917.</em> 75 cents +</p> + +<p> +<em>Verharen’s Love Poems</em>, translated by Flint, Arthur Symons, +etc. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Willard Huntington Wright’s <em>Modern Painting</em> and <em>The +Creative Will</em>. $2.50 and $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Tagore’s <em>Reminiscences</em> and <em>Personality</em>. Each $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +The complete works of Anatole France. Per volume, $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +The Works of Henri Fabre. 6 volumes. Each $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +The Works of Mark Twain. 25 volumes, $25.00 +</p> + +<p> +<em>Creative Intelligence</em>, by John Dewey and others. $2.00 +</p> + +<p> +Carl Sandburg’s <em>Chicago Poems</em>. $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +<a id="page-34" class="pagenum" title="34"></a> +Joseph Conrad’s <em>The Shadow Line</em>. $1.35 +</p> + +<p> +Maurice Hewlett’s <em>Thorgils</em>. $1.35 +</p> + +<p> +Andreyev’s <em>The Little Angel</em>, <em>The Crushed Flower</em>, etc. $1.35 +and $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Kuprin’s <em>A Slave Soul</em>. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Tchekoff’s <em>The Kiss</em>, <em>The Darling</em>, <em>The Duel</em>, <em>The Black Monk</em>. +Each $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +Gorky’s <em>Confession</em> and <em>Twenty-Six Men and a Girl</em>. $1.35 +</p> + +<p> +Dostoevsky’s <em>The Eternal Husband</em>. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Gogol’s <em>Dead Souls</em>, <em>Taras Bulba</em>, <em>The Mantle</em>. $1.40, $1.35 +</p> + +<p> +Sologub’s <em>The Sweet-Scented Name</em>. $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +Artzibashef’s <em>Sanine</em>, <em>The Millionaire</em>, <em>The Breaking-Point</em>. +Each $1.50 +</p> + +<p> +The Works of Freud and Jung +</p> + +<p> +Max Eastman’s <em>Journalism versus Art</em>, <em>Understanding Germany</em>. +$1.00 and $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +John Cowper Powy’s <em>Confessions</em>, <em>Suspended Judgments</em>. +$1.50 and $2.00 +</p> + +<p> +Paul Géraldy’s <em>The War, Madame</em>. 75 cents +</p> + +<p> +Amy Lowell’s <em>Men, Women and Ghosts</em>. $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +H. D.’s <em>Sea Garden</em>. 75 cents +</p> + +<p> +D. H. Lawrence’s <em>Amores</em>. $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +W. W. Gibson’s <em>Livelihood</em>. $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +The Stories of A. Neil Lyons. Each $1.25 +</p> + +<p> +Sherwood Anderson’s <em>Windy McPherson’s Son</em>. $1.40 +</p> + +<p> +<em>I, Mary MacLane.</em> $1.40 +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2 class="article" id="THELITTLEREVIEW"> +<a id="page-35" class="pagenum" title="35"></a> +The Little Review +</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="linespace"> +<p class="noindent"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +THE AUGUST NUMBER will have at least seven more +poems by Mr. Yeats, an Editorial and Notes on Books by Mr. +Pound, etc., etc. +</p> + +<p> +PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and help us to make The Little Review +a power. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +Subscription Form +</p> + +<p> +Please send me <em>The Little Review</em> for the twelve-month +beginning ......................, for which +I enclose $1.50 +</p> + +<p class="u"> +Name .........................................<br> +Address ......................................<br> +...............................................<br> +............................................... +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +THE LITTLE REVIEW<br> +31 West 14th Street<br> +NEW YORK CITY +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +Eugene Hutchinson +</p> + +<p class="h1 adh"> +Photographs +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +FINE ARTS BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +Mason & Hamlin +</p> + +<p class="h3 adh"> +The Stradivarius of Pianos +</p> + +<p class="h1 adh"> +Mason & Hamlin Co. +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +313 FIFTH AVENUE<br> +NEW YORK +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +COLONY ART SHOP +</p> + +<p class="h3 adh"> +Artists’ Materials +</p> + + <div class="box w40"> +<p class="u c"> +Oil and Water Colors<br> +Brushes and Canvass<br> +Smocks to Order +</p> + +<p class="u c"> +Interior and Exterior Decorating<br> +Paper Hanging<br> +Polishing and Refinishing<br> +of Wood Work +</p> + + </div> +<p class="h1 adh"> +ADOLPH KLAFF +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +132 Sixth Ave., NEW YORK CITY Chelsea 1285 +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="impressum"> +<p class="b c"> +STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED +BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS, OF AUGUST 24, 1912. +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Of THE LITTLE REVIEW, published monthly at New York, N. Y., for April +1st, 1917. State of New York, County of New York—ss. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, +and business managers are: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +2. That the owner is, Margaret C. Anderson. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of owners, stockholders, +and security 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 holder appears upon the books of +the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the +person or corporation for whom such 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. +</p> + +<p class="sign"> +MARGARET C. ANDERSON. +</p> + +<p> +Sworn to and subscribed before me this 9th day of April 1917. +</p> + +<p class="sign"> +WALTER HEARN, Notary Public.<br> +(My commission expires March 30th, 1918.) +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +THE ARTISTS’ GUILD +</p> + +<p class="u c"> +A NATIONAL ORGANIZATION INCORPORATED ON A<br> +“NOT FOR PROFIT BASIS.” +</p> + + <div class="box"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +Paintings, Sculpture<br> +AND<br> +Handwrought Objects +</p> + +<p class="c"> +As security for the purchaser and to ensure merit, all works are +approved by a jury. +</p> + +<p class="h2 adh"> +Exquisite and Rare Gifts +</p> + +<p class="c"> +The Artists’ and Craft Workers’ own organization +</p> + + </div> +<p class="ade"> +GALLERIES, EXHIBITION AND SALESROOMS<br> +FINE ARTS BUILDING CHICAGO, ILLINOIS +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +THE PAGAN +</p> + +<p> +is something like <em>The Masses</em> and <em>The Little +Review</em> because it contains original stories, +plays, essays, also translation from the Europeans; +as well as drawings and etchings. +</p> + +<p class="c"> +But how is it different? +</p> + +<p class="adp"> +<em>Buy a copy and see. $1.50 a year; 15 cents a copy</em> +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +THE PAGAN PUBLISHING COMPANY<br> +174 CENTER STREET<br> +NEW YORK CITY +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="u"> +TINY TIM MAKES CANDY.<br> +TINY TIM MAKES <em>GOOD</em> CANDY.<br> +TINY TIM MAKES <em>PURE</em> CANDY.<br> +TINY TIM <em>ORIGINATES</em> EVERY VARIETY.<br> +VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE. +</p> + +<p> +<em>P. S.</em> 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> + +<p> +<em>P. S.</em> (<em>2nd.</em>) 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 <em>special directions</em> +for opening the door. Grasp the handle firmly—push +to your right steadily. NOTE: The door +slides North. +</p> + +<p> +<em>P. S.</em> (<em>3rd.</em>) TIM or Mrs. TIM and the candy +will probably be there. If not, call again. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h2 adh"> +“Hello Huck!” +</p> + +<div class="centerpic huck"> +<img src="images/huck.jpg" alt=""></div> + +<div class="centerpic spine fl"> +<img src="images/spine.jpg" alt=""></div> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="h1 adh"> +MARK TWAIN +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="h3 adh"> +A Real American +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="h3 adh"> +The Price Goes Up +</p> + +<p class="b c"> +<b>25 VOLUMES</b> Novels—Stories—Humor Essays—Travel—History +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Before the war we had a contract price for paper, +so we could sell this set of Mark Twain at half price. +</p> + +<p class="b c"> +Send the Coupon Without Money +</p> + + <div class="box w50 fr"> +<p class="b u c"> +L. R. 5<br> +HARPER &<br> +BROTHERS +</p> + +<p class="b c"> +Franklin Sq., N. Y. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="r"> +Little Review +</p> + +<p class="r"> +<em>Name</em>.............................. +</p> + +<p class="r"> +<em>Address</em>........................... +</p> + + </div> +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +<b>Your children want +Mark Twain. You +want him. Send +this coupon to-day—now—while +you +are looking +at +it.</b> +</p> + +<p class="cb ade"> +HARPER & BROTHERS, New York +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="ads chapter"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +Special Offer +</p> + +<p class="h2 adh"> +JAMES JOYCE’S <em>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young<br> +Man</em> and a year’s subscription to <em>The Little Review</em> for $2.50. +</p> + +<p> +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 <em>The Little Review</em>: +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Joyce’s <em>Portrait of the Artist as a Young +Man</em>, the most important and beautiful piece of +novel writing to be found in English today, retails +for $1.50. The subscription price of <em>The Little Review</em> +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 +<em>Dubliners</em> instead. +</p> + + <div class="box"> +<p class="h1 adh"> +ORDER FORM +</p> + +<p class="h2 u adh"> +“A PORTRAIT OF THE<br> +ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN” +</p> + +<p> +<em>Please send me</em> ________ <em>cop</em> ________ <em>of</em> +</p> + +<p> +A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN +by James Joyce, published by Mr. B. W. Huebsch, for which I +enclose ________. +</p> + +<p class="r u"> +Name __________________________________<br> +Address _______________________________<br> +_______________________________________ +</p> + +<p class="c"> +<em>Orders, accompanied by remittance should be sent to</em> +</p> + +<p class="ade"> +THE LITTLE REVIEW<br> +31 West 14th Street, New York City +</p> + + </div> +</div> + +<div class="trnote chapter"> +<p class="transnote"> +Transcriber’s Notes +</p> + +<p> +Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. +</p> + +<p> +The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the +headings in this issue of <span class="smallcaps">The Little Review</span>. +</p> + +<p> +The original spelling was mostly preserved. +A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. +All other changes are shown here (before/after): +</p> + + + +<ul> + +<li> +... woman sat in the <span class="underline">embrazure</span> of a man’s arm, sharing his chair ...<br> +... woman sat in the <a href="#corr-2"><span class="underline">embrasure</span></a> of a man’s arm, sharing his chair ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... My great wood <span class="underline">lecturn</span> and the fire ...<br> +... My great wood <a href="#corr-3"><span class="underline">lectern</span></a> and the fire ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... winters, L’<span class="underline">lle</span> Sonnante transferred to the middle of London! ...<br> +... winters, L’<a href="#corr-6"><span class="underline">Ile</span></a> Sonnante transferred to the middle of London! ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye <span class="underline">Dequoi</span> dissiper mon chagrin, ...<br> +... Jusqu’en l’autre monde m’envoye <a href="#corr-10"><span class="underline">De quoi</span></a> dissiper mon chagrin, ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et <span class="underline">el</span> clairet... ...<br> +... Où le plaisir se renouvelle Entre le blanc et <a href="#corr-11"><span class="underline">le</span></a> clairet... ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... Et <span class="underline">permetre</span> à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma Maison; ...<br> +... Et <a href="#corr-12"><span class="underline">permettre</span></a> à mon Ombre errante De faire un tour à ma Maison; ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... Quelque prix que j’<span class="underline">eu</span> <span class="underline">püsse</span> attendre, Ce seroit mon premier souhait ...<br> +... Quelque prix que j’<a href="#corr-13"><span class="underline">en</span></a> <a href="#corr-14"><span class="underline">puisse</span></a> attendre, Ce seroit mon premier souhait ...<br> +</li> + +<li> +... courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, <span class="underline">to</span> sub-analytic, for you? ...<br> +... courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, <a href="#corr-24"><span class="underline">too</span></a> sub-analytic, for you? ...<br> +</li> +</ul> +</div> + + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76625 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/76625-h/images/cover.jpg b/76625-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bab6546 --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/76625-h/images/huck.jpg b/76625-h/images/huck.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e14b084 --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-h/images/huck.jpg diff --git a/76625-h/images/ornament.jpg b/76625-h/images/ornament.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..388807e --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-h/images/ornament.jpg diff --git a/76625-h/images/spine.jpg b/76625-h/images/spine.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..26b4fc4 --- /dev/null +++ b/76625-h/images/spine.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fd2dc99 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #76625 +(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76625) |
