the year 1912 has been nothing but preliminary experimentation. In
Rubens were consummated the aims of the old painters (beginning with the
fifteenth century; the Primitives are dismissed as not deserving
consideration)—organization and composition. The new cycle opens in the
nineteenth century with Turner, Constable, and Delacroix, who experiment
in naturalism. Manet introduces thematic freedom—not more. The
Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists close the second, naturalistic,
cycle, having enriched art with laborious investigations into the
secrets of color in relation to light. All these have been but
precursors forging weapons for the third and _last_ (!) cycle—the final
purification of painting. Synchromism, of course. Of this last cycle
Cezanne was—hear, Messieurs and Mesdames Questioners—the primitive!
Still Cezanne and Matisse and Picasso ignored color as a generator of
form, until two Americans, MacDonald-Wright and Russell, rent asunder
the ultimate veil from purity and truth, and the new and final deity
emanated from their canvasses, the unsurpassable Synchromism.
There is so much truth in Mr. Wright’s statements, particularly in his
negative statements, that we may disregard his fanatic credo. Who will
deny that painting has been “a bastard art—an agglomeration of
literature, religion, photography, and decoration”? Who will not approve
of the efforts of modern painters to eliminate all extraneous
considerations and make painting as pure an art as music? But why
dogmatize again and anew? Why reduce creative art to scientific
formulae, to mathematical calculations, to Procrustean standards? Why
ridicule those who paint _comme l’oiseau chante_? Why belittle Kandinsky
for his too-subjective symphonies? Why be so hard, Mr. Wright, so
finite, so sententious, so encyclical? Why not have a little sense of
humor, pray?
Gorky’s Memories
_My Childhood, by Maxim Gorky. New York: The Century Company._
That Gorky is deteriorating has become a truism. Exaggerated as the
importance of his early works has been, one could not deny their
freshness, elementary adroitness, soulfulness. But the god-fire was soon
exhausted in the none-too-deep spirit of the tramp-poet. He gave us the
few good songs he knew about the life of the has-beens, and then went
hoarse. The public, Hauptmann’s Huhn, is not irresponsible for Gorky’s
false notes. Compel the canary to imitate the nightingale and the poor
bird will lose her short, simple, pretty twitter, and rend her little
heart with shrill ejaculations. I have in mind Gorky’s later dramas and
stories.
The book before me makes me think that Gorky has come to recognize his
fallacy in attempting to treat subjects alien to his inherent capacity.
At any rate in this case he is free from pretentiousness. His childhood
memories are related simply, realistically, sans philosophizing, sans
allegorizing. It is left for the reader to deduce the “moral” from the
sordid panorama that is revealed before him, that malodorous dunghill
swarming with human beings, whose crawling and writhing is called life.
The book should have been much shorter; the super-abundance of details
makes it Dreiserian or Bennetian.
And here I should like to touch upon a sore which reviewers customarily
do not discuss, for fear of _mauvais ton_. Why are the English
translations so careless and comical? The book in question is full of
such glaring errors, such nonsensical misunderstandings, such atrocious
ignorance, that it has made me pull my hair in despair of solving the
dilemma whether I should laugh at the comicalness or whether I should
rage at the impertinence. I am quite sure that the translator (his name
is not revealed) knows as much Russian as Percy Pinkerton, the crucifier
of Artzibashev; he mutilated Gorky from a German translation, I suspect.
The book has another jolly feature—illustrations. They are reproductions
from popular Russian paintings, with inscriptions that are supposed to
illustrate the text. The naive forgery is too crude and unskilful to
mislead even the unsuspecting reader. Will the publishers ever acquire
respect for the printed word?
Instruction
_The Greatest of Literary Problems, by James Phinney Baxter.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin._
Have you the sense of humor to guess which is the Problem? Shakespeare
or Bacon! About seven hundred gigantic pages on this vital question,
with illustrations and data. Are you curious to know who wins? I shall
not tell. Why should the reader be spared the reviewer’s agony in wading
through the bewildering labyrinth of speculations and arguments till he
reaches ... the same point that he started from. Bon voyage!
Instruction Plus
_Tales from Old Japanese Dramas, by Asataro Miyamori. New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons._
_Some Musicians of Former Days, by Romain Rolland. New York:
Henry Holland Company._
These books, like the preceding one, are intended to be instructive;
they attain their purpose, however, thanks to gracefulness of style and
fascination of subject. Mr. Miyamori has condensed the plots of the most
famous _joruri_—the epical dramas of the Yeddo period, which are to this
day chanted in Japanese theatres. It is an exotic atmosphere of oriental
fairyland, tapestries of childlike love and naive passion, of smiling
bloody tragedies and blissful harakiris. When lovers are prevented from
being married they do not employ the cumbersome process of elopment, but
transport themselves into the other world by committing _shinju_ or
double suicide. The author tells us that Metizahormach shinju dramas
have had such powerful influence on the audiences that there have been
numerous instances of lovers performing that delicious suicide after
leaving the theatre. I fear that for the occidental reader the dramas
will not prove as convincing—alas.
After _Musicians of To-Day_ the last book of Rolland has little appeal.
Journalistic notes, interesting information, brilliant suggestions—and
we look in vain for the profound spirit of the old Romain.
Hospitable Mr. Braithwaite
_Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915, by William Stanley
Braithwaite. New York: Gomme and Marshall._
Mr. Braithwaite has chosen the guests for his house party with kindly
catholicity. Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, and H. D. sit
uncomfortably in his New England parlor eyeing one another furtively.
Clement Wood clowns in a corner. Vachel Lindsay before the mantel-piece
declaims to James Oppenheim and Louis Untermeyer, who listen with an air
of importance. Edgar Lee Masters sits on the _corpus juris_ and
meditates upon the beauties of silence. Sara Teasedale dances in the
hallway. Harriet Monroe reclines on a porch chair, listening to the
rain. A crowd in the library recreate themselves by reading from a set
of British Poets. Percy MacKaye gloomily reads the war news to a group
in the dining-room, while little Arvia, his daughter, lisps happily to
herself. And alone in the kitchen is Robert Frost roasting chestnuts.
Who will say that Mr. Braithwaite could have better performed the duties
of host? Did he omit any of the “older established names”? And did he
not make a special Cook’s tour to far off islands (not shown in the
atlas of the _Boston Transcript_ office) for the purpose of bringing
home with him certain “new discoveries”?
Mr. Braithwaite pats his guests admiringly upon the back and regrets
that there are other excellent poets for whom he has no accommodations.
Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Maxwell
Bodenheim, perhaps he will invite you next time. Is it not a pleasant
anticipation?
Empty Souls
_The Later Life, by Louis Couperus. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company._
This is the second part of the tetralogy of “Small Souls” which began to
appear in English last year. The slowly-developing epic is pregnant with
promises, but, oh how slowly the skein unrolls. We are still in the
midst of Dutch bourgeoisie, dull, stony-faced, petty, filthy; again the
incessant rain, ever-cloudy skies, bicycle rides, large dinner-parties
at Mama’s. Small souls. Last year I asked the question whether in
depicting Dutch life Couperus could not find a single big soul, one
interesting individual. This second book gives us pale glimmers of
potentialities, very pale indeed. The big man is big only relatively; he
has been in America, worked in factories, and is now ... lecturing on
peace.
The book introduces a feature that may interest the sexologist: frequent
passionate love among near kinsmen. Two sisters are in love with their
brothers. A romance between uncle and niece. The heroes and heroines are
awakened to love for the most part at the dangerous age of forty. I
recall that Przybyszewski presents in two of his works love between
brother and sister. Shall we say that ideal sex-relationship requires
the closest kinship of body and spirit? In the Pole’s lovers the force
driving them together is the harmonious coincidence of two morbidly
developed intellects with a common craving for beauty and fullness. In
Couperus we face mutual yearning of small, pale, empty souls. But I am
not interested in sex-problems, not yet.
K.
Two Points of View
_Violette of Pere Lachaise, by Anna Strunsky Walling. New York:
Frederic A. Stokes._
A gigantic background—the eternal graves and trees and monuments of the
old Paris cemetery. The rest is fudge. A mouse born out of the bowels of
a mountain. Nauseating feminine sentimentalism. Boring talk, talk, talk.
K.
The reviewer above is absolutely mistaken about Mrs. Walling’s book, I
believe. It is the story of one of those human beings—rare people—who
live inner lives of extraordinary intensity. It is radiantly absorbing,
to me.
M. C. A.
The Reader Critic
_The Editor_:
_We have had cancellations, congratulations, and a lot of indignant
letters about Ben Hecht’s “Dregs.” I print two of them below. As it
happens, these stories are among the best things_ THE LITTLE REVIEW _has
printed. With the exception of some of the poetry and two stories of
Sherwood Anderson’s, they may be listed as the only “literature” we have
published. Some one has compared them to Gorky. But this is not a very
accurate judgment. As a reviewer pointed out in the November issue,
Gorky could feel his stories, could imagine them deeply, but he could
never quite tell them. The supreme virtue of Ben Hecht’s “Dregs” is that
he could tell them. That is the art. Of course I have nothing to say to
those people who deplore Mr. Hecht’s subject matter and urge me to use
some moral judgment in selecting things for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW. _There
is no such thing as moral judgment in literature. There should be no
such thing in life, but unfortunately_—
_A Sorrowful Friend_:
THE LITTLE REVIEW: _Literature, Drama, Music, Art_. Which of these four
shrines did you intend to desecrate in offering Ben Hecht’s “Dregs”? Or
have you added an “unwritten” class to your list, comprehensive enough
to include such bold portrayals of viciousness and filth, of
licentiousness and lust, as these three degenerate—manifestations!
LITTLE REVIEW—how _could_ you do it? You who have hitherto held so
bravely to the tenets of beauty and truth in thought and expression,
held to them courageously through storms of adverse criticism, consent
to print descriptions of the bestial abnormalities of the scum of
mankind! If _you_, who profess to look to a higher, better realization
of life, consent to crawl in the gutter with the vermin, what can we
expect of the lesser publications?
You have polluted an edition of your magazine; it is true that flames
will destroy the manuscript, but what of the hideous memory that
remains? Take heed—LITTLE REVIEW; remember that cleanliness is akin to
godliness and—look to your soul!
_Florence Kiper Frank, Chicago_:
May I call your attention to the fact that Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, in his
annual review of the year’s fiction, not only lists all the stories
printed in THE LITTLE REVIEW during 1915 among those possessing
“distinction,” but double-asterisks (verb) the three sketches of Ben
Hecht’s published under the title “Dregs.” This in the chaste and
genealogical Boston Evening Transcript! And, following to the best of my
ability Mr. O’Brien’s rather vague reference to and nebulous listings of
the stories to be published in his anthology, _The Best Stories of 1915
and Year Book of American Fiction_, I can but come to the startled
conclusion that Ben Hecht’s three stories are all to be reprinted in the
estimable collection. Good for Ben Hecht, THE LITTLE REVIEW, and Mr.
O’Brien’s catholicity of judgment! Some of us there are who like to have
our opinions backed and bolstered by authority. And what more august
authority than the printed word of Boston. Some of us—but of course not
your insurgents. Perhaps Mr. Hecht will resent congratulations. I tender
them, nevertheless—with apologies. Good stuff, Ben Hecht! Do us
some—more of them.
_Sada Cowan, New York_:
I’m truly grateful to your reviewer who found my play, _The State
Forbids_, “negative as literature.” If he had found it bad architecture
or mediocre sculpture I should have been less pleased.
Play making, to my mind, is not a form of literature (even though its
medium chances to be words) but it is an art of spacing ... focusing ...
building. Structure upon structure! Foundation. Ornament. Design. An art
as distinct from other forms of word utility as color medium is from
plastic art. Drama is related to literature only in so far as all arts
are inter-related. No more than this. By drama I mean, of course, plays
intended (at least in the writer’s mind) for production. These alone are
plays. For one reason or another they may never reach the boards, but
they must have lived in the writer’s fantasy as things produced. _Desk
drawer dramas_ are not plays.
I believe that the hope of the modern drama lies in the artist who can
learn to look upon himself as a builder ... a _maker_ and not a writer
of plays.
And so again I thank your critic whose charity has made me feel that I
am on the road which leads to “Somewhere.” Even though at the end of my
journey I may not yet have reached the first mile stone.
_Virginia York, Washington, D. C._:
It is published in windy Chicago, THE LITTLE REVIEW. Claimed by
management, editors and its readers to be the very, very last, last word
in prose and poetry; it is sold at fifteen cents a copy. Normal-minded,
healthy folk will find it cheap at that price, because normal-minded,
healthy folk will find in it fifteen laughs for fifteen cents, despite
the fact that it is entirely a serious publication.
Years ago an editor sent me to the government hospital for the insane
just outside Washington, to interview a certain man. As I passed into
the building an elderly gentleman of profoundly respectful manner
presented me with a neatly-bound pamphlet which he said he had written,
edited and illustrated entirely by himself. Examining it later, the
cover-page proved to be a mass of meaningless, whirling lines labeled in
carefully printed letters, “The Croucher At The Door.” The reading
matter was wholly unintelligible.
A poet-friend has given me the October number of THE LITTLE REVIEW. The
vers libre poetry in the small magazine might easily be called “The
Croucher At The Door” for all the sense to be made of it. In fear and
trembling that my own unworthy brain might finally have addled,
relatives and friends were invited to peruse the contents of the volume.
I thank heaven they could make nothing of it.
One contribution entitled _Cafe Sketches_, by Arthur Davison Ficke, is
herewith reprinted for the benefit of readers of this page who are
denied access, and accompanying the laugh, to THE LITTLE REVIEW. Mr.
Ficke, after telling in the first verse that he is in a cafe, surrounded
by a “cortege of seven waiters,” mourning for a “boundlessly curious
lady,” recites in mournful meanderings:
Presently persons will come out
And shake legs.
I do not want legs shaken.
I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.
I want to see dawn spilled across the blackness
Like a scrambled egg on the skillet;
I want miracles, wonders.
Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...
But I have a horrible suspicion
That neither you
Nor your esteemed consort
Nor I myself
Can ever provide these simple things
For which I am so patiently waiting.
Base people!
How I dislike you!
Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be.
Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote of THE
LITTLE REVIEW. This is vers libre with a vengeance. “Persons will come
out and shake legs. I do not want legs shaken.” Here we have the spirit
of the dance! It is quite evident Mr. Ficke does not wish joy to be
unconfined.
There have been many descriptions of dawn, probably none so unique as
“the dawn spilled across the blackness like a scrambled egg on the
skillet.” The second verse is short and to the point, but it is much to
be thankful for both in point of length and the statement that we are
abhorred.
In order to restore our thoughts to something sane, to take away from us
the taste of such gibberish, consider for a moment the following eight
lines by Harriet Howe, recently published in THE LITERARY DIGEST.
Comparison between the two authors is utterly impossible, totally
unnecessary:
SUNSET AFTER RAIN
The cradle of the valley
Is filled with floating mist,
The summits of the mountains
Are veiled in amethyst.
The trees spread grateful branches
Above a smiling sod,
For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,
All things are praising God.
_Huntly Carter, London_:
The letter by C. Smith of Chicago, in the October issue of THE LITTLE
REVIEW, is so phenomenally stupid and so intellectually dishonest that
it is almost beneath notice. If I consent to notice it, I do so in order
to warn Smithsonian understudies that they will be severely dealt with
if they attempt to repeat Smith’s brazen offence of writing to a
significant journal and coolly suggesting that a single and relatively
unimportant wrong attribution is to be regarded as a fair and honest
sample of the whole subject matter of an article occupying several pages
and mainly devoted to a metaphysical explanation of the origin and
nature of poetry. Furthermore, suggesting that I am applying to a poet
(Browning) a rigid test of poetry, seeking to prove his words poetically
good or bad by my poetical experience, when as a matter of fact I am
offering certain words, some of which are wrongly attributed to
Browning, as indisputable evidence that in venting the emotions
versifiers find descriptive figures efficacious.
No doubt some of the words flaunted by Smith are wrongly attributed to
Browning. They are so wrongly attributed that anyone can see they are
wrongly attributed. And any “sane, intelligent and decently responsible
man” (to use Smith’s yellow press tautology) would have given me an
opportunity of saying they are wrongly attributed before venturing to
put on silly airs of hypercriticism. Then he would have learnt that the
first and third line of the quotation belong oddly enough, to another
piece of poetry, and have got mixed up with Browning’s stuff in some
unaccountable way. I have not the least idea how the mix took place. All
I know is that my article was finished off in great haste to catch the
mail. It was sent in handscript and not typescript. And there was no
time to send me a proof; otherwise the quotation would certainly have
been corrected, and the many errors which now appear in my article would
have disappeared. I feel I am justified in saying it was not my
intention to send the words which have crept into print by the discovery
that I have actually written down Browning’s very words. Here is
Browning:
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
The first line of the verse is missing. The three lines however serve
the purpose of my comparison. I had also set down these lines by
Browning:
One lyric woman in her crocus vest,
Woven of sea-wools.
I intended to include this with my quotations. For here in my view is a
figure as original and precisely felicitous as anything the Imagists
have given us.
That this dragging in of some wrongly attributed words—so obviously
wrong as to deceive no one—for the sole purpose of discrediting an
important article is dishonest, is clear from the fact that Smith does
not drag in any other quotation from the many given, nor produce any
other evidence whatsoever in support of his contention that my article
is inept and careless throughout. In fact he has nothing more damaging
to offer than his own fatuous statement that he happens “to consider my
article an ill-digested congeries of vague views”; which, when one comes
to examine it is found to contain a baseless assertion and a clear
admission that my article is above and beyond Smith’s head.
As to the silliness of Smith’s letter, this may be judged from the
following: Smith begins with the generalization that magazines die
“whose pages are as a rule careless, inconsidered and inept” (note the
repetition and consequent lack of thoroughness). The publications of the
capitalist press answer this description. The news sheets, for instance,
are rotten with carelessness, inconsideredness and ineptness. They would
be rottener if they could. Yet they do not die. On the contrary they
sell by the million. If so, then THE LITTLE REVIEW should sell by the
million. But Smith says it will die. And Smith is a careful,
serviceable, and accurate man.
By way of comparison Smith relieves himself of this matchless
composition. “Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would grow
useless in which no direction towards any cylinder was given to the
indubitable forces generated in the boiler.” What is the precise meaning
of this bombastic twaddle? In homely words, it means that a steam engine
is (not “would grow”) useless when the steam power developed in its
boiler is not utilised in any cylinder. Anyone who examines this analogy
will agree with me that Smith is a careful, serviceable, and accurate
man.
From the general Smith comes to the particular and quotes what he is
pleased to call an example of my “ineptitude and carelessness” as an
example of the general “ineptitude and carelessness” of THE LITTLE
REVIEW. Without knowing anything as to the circumstances under which the
wrongly attributed words found their way into print, without stopping to
inquire to what extent I contributed to the mistake, and upon no other
evidence whatsoever than the said wrongly attributed words, he proceeds
to saddle me with the astounding intention “to obliterate all sense of
accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all fidelity to
honest statement, and all interest in truth” (which makes four ways of
uttering the same inverifiable statement).
Finally Smith challenges the editor of THE LITTLE REVIEW to print his
ghastly ineptitude. She has taken the short way and done so. It serves
Smith right.
_M. Silverman, Chicago_:
Your last issue is a failure—with two exceptions, Miss Goldman’s article
on “Preparedness” and Mr. Hecht’s letter. Both of them are human,
understandable, and sincere. They shout—but do not roar. All the others
are ostentatious, plebeian, and lack artistic restraint. They are not
beautiful. They _holler_ and produce a sense of heaviness and
overexertion. Sympathy and politeness are apparently the cardinal
virtues of the highly esteemed editor. Hence this “democratic” hash.
To be more specific: Your editorial, “Toward Revolution,” is the acme of
nonsense. I tried to take you seriously but I couldn’t. It is
pamphletory, and should have no place in THE LITTLE REVIEW.