THE LITTLE REVIEW
Literature Drama Music Art
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
NOVEMBER, 1915
“Life Itself” The Editor
The Zeppelins Over London Richard Aldington
Portrait of Theodore Dreiser Arthur Davison Ficke
Theodore Dreiser John Cowper Powys
“So We Grew Together” Edgar Lee Masters
Choleric Comments Alexander S. Kaun
The Scavenger’s Swan Song
Dregs: Ben Hecht
Life
Depths
Gratitude
Editorials
John Cowper Powys on War Margery Currey
The Washington Square Players Saxe Commins
Rupert Brooke’s “Lithuania” at the Little Theater
Book Discussion:
An Inspired Publisher
Gogol’s “Taras Bulba”
Gorky’s “Chelkash, and Other Stories”
Andreyev’s “The Little Angel”
Chekhov’s “Russian Silhouettes”
Artzibashef’s “The Breaking Point”
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THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. II
NOVEMBER, 1915
No. 8
Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson
“Life Itself”
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
I.
“But you don’t know Life,” they are always saying.
I wonder what it is they mean?
They mean humanity and the urge of it:
In the beginning and in the end the soul’s longing to be known, to know
itself, and to know others;
And that means, in the beginning and in the end, the quest for love;
It is the ideal of love and the finding of it;
And the magic of it and the drain of disillusionment;
And the luxury of sorrow and the voluptuousness of suffering;
And the vacuum that is beyond death;
And the conviction that ideals are better than reality;
And the decision to live for “art”;
And the pull to new love ...
And the discovery that love is enslavement;
And the breaking from it;
And the courage to contain life;
And the emancipation _from_ something;
And the complacency of first freedom;
And the emptiness of it;
And the pull to new love ...
And the discovery that rapture is not relived;
And the conviction that passion is not love;
And the dedication to “the spiritual”;
And the pull to new love ...
And the deepest agony, which is unrequited love;
And the realization of people;
And the discovery that the world is wrong;
And the glory of rebellion;
And the emancipation _for_ something;
And the pull to new love ...
And the birth of cynicism;
And the conviction that rebellion is futile;
And the discovery of one’s self;
And the dedication to one’s self;
And the discovery that one’s self is not big enough;
And the pull to new love ...
And the knowledge that love includes passion;
And the sense of rich growing;
And the hope of sharing growth;
And the longing to be known;
And the relinquishing of that longing;
And the discovery that perfection does not last;
And the sufficiency of self-direction;
And the completeness of freedom;
And the longing to know the human soul;
And the pull to new love ...
And the relinquishing of that longing;
And the discovery of the peace that is in nature;
And the realization of the unimportance of man;
And the knowledge that only great moments are attainable;
And the hatred of consummations;
And the realization of truths too late to act upon them;
And the acceptance of substitutes;
And the pull to new love ...
And every human being knows these things.
II.
“But you don’t know life itself,” I am always saying.
I wonder what it is I mean.
I think it is something wonderful like color and sound, and
something mystical like fragrance and flowers.
And something incredible like air and wind,
And something of grey magic like rain;
It is faded deserts and the unceasing sea;
It is the moving stars;
It is the orange sun stepping through blue curtains of sky,
And the rose sun dropping through black trees;
It is green storms running across greenness,
And gold rose petals spilled by the moon on dark water;
It is snow and mist and clouds of color,
It is tree gardens and painted birds;
It is leaves of autumn and grasses of spring;
It is flower forests and the petals of stars;
It is morning—yellow mornings, green mornings, red mornings, gold
mornings, silver mornings, sun mornings, mist mornings, mornings
of dew;
It is night—white nights, green nights, grey nights, purple nights,
blue nights, moon nights, rain nights, nights that burn;
It is waking in the first of the morning,
It is the deep adventure of sleep;
It is lights on rivers and lights on pavements;
It is boulevards bordered with flowers of stone;
It is poetry and Japanese prints and the actor on a stage;
It is music;
It is dreams that could not happen;
It is emotion for the sake of emotion;
It is life for the sake of living;
It is silence;
It is the unknowable;
It is eternity;
It is death.
And only artists know these things.
The Zeppelins Over London
RICHARD ALDINGTON
... The war saps all one’s energy. It seems impossible to do any
creative work in the midst of all this turmoil and carnage. Of course
you know that we had the Zeppelins over London? Let me give you my
version of the affair.
It was just after eleven. We were sitting in our little flat, which is
on the top floor of a building on the slope of Hampstead Hill. We were
reading—I was savouring, like a true decadent, that over-sweet honied
Latin of the early Renaissance in an edition of 1513! Could anything be
more peaceful? Our window was shut—so the silence was absolute. Suddenly
there was a Bang! and a shrill wail. “That was pretty close,” said I.
Bang—whizz! Bang—whizz! Shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns which are
not five hundred yards from our house! (Of course, like boobies, we
thought they were bombs.) I jumped up and got my coat, and grabbed the
door-key. It took hours to put out the light! (All the time Bang—whizz!)
It seemed interminable, that descent of those four flights of stairs,
all the time with the knowledge that any second might see the whole damn
place blown to hell. We could see the flashes of the guns and the
searchlights as we passed the windows—_they were pointed straight at
us_! That meant that the Zeppelin was either right overhead or coming
there! Some excitement, I tell you. I shiver with excitement when I
think of it. We stood at the porch for a few seconds—very long
seconds—wondering what to do. You are supposed to get into the cellars,
but we haven’t got cellars; and it’s very risky in the streets from the
flying shrapnel. We could see the long searchlights pointing to a spot
almost overhead and the little red pinpricks of bursting shells. A man
came down from one of the flats—very calm, with field glasses, to have a
look at the animal! Suddenly we saw it, clear over head, with shells
from three or four guns making little rose-coloured punctures in the air
underneath it. One shell went near, very near, the Zeppelin swerved,
tilted—“They’ve got it! It’s coming down!” we all exclaimed. In the
distance we could hear faint cheering. But the Zeppelin righted itself,
waggled a little, and scenting danger made for the nearest cloud!
Apparently a piece of shell had hit the pilot, for there was no apparent
damage to be seen through the glasses. There were a few more bangs from
the guns, followed by the cat squeals of the shells and the little
explosions in the air. Then silence as the Zeppelin got into a cloud;
the searchlights looked wildly for it, for ten minutes. Then they all
went out and in the resulting darkness we could see the glow of the
fires in London.
What rather detracts from our heroism is the fact that the Zeppelin had
already dropped all its bombs in the middle of London, but we didn’t
know it till afterwards.
I deduce these reflections. 1. That as an engine of frightfulness the
Zeppelin is over-rated. And the damage it does is comparatively
unimportant. 2. That it is uncultured of the Germans to risk murdering
the English Imagists and ruining the only poetic movement in England,
for the sake of getting their names into the papers. 3. That I notice I
never go to bed now earlier than twelve, and frequently go for a walk
about eleven o’clock.
I can’t of course tell you where the bombs fell, as it is strictly
forbidden. Still I can say this: that no public building of any kind was
touched; that it looks jolly well as if our Teutonic friends made a dead
set at St. Paul’s and the British Museum; that, without exception, the
bombs fell on the houses of the poor and the very poor—except for a
warehouse or so and some offices; that one bomb fell near a block of
hospitals, containing paralytics and other cripples and diseased
persons, smashed all the hospital windows, and terrified the unhappy
patients into hysterics; that, lastly, it is a damned lie to say there
are guns on St. Paul’s and the British Museum—the buildings are too old
to stand the shock of the recoil. Voilà!
... Remy de Gourmont is dead.... Camille de Saint-Croix also. It is hard
to write of friends recently dead....
The experienced artist knows that inspiration is rare and that
intelligence is left to complete the work of intuition; he puts
his ideas under the press and squeezes out of them the last drop
of the divine juices that are in them—(and if need be sometimes
he does not shrink from diluting them with clear water).—_Romain
Rolland._
Portrait of Theodore Dreiser
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
There were gilded Chinese dragons
And tinkling danglers of glass
And dirty marble-topped tables
Around us, that late night-hour.
You ate steadily and silently
From a huge bowl of chop-suey
Of repellant aspect;
While I,—I, and another,—
Told you that you had the style neither of William Morris
Nor of Walter Pater.
And it was perfectly true ....
But you continued to occupy yourself
With your quarts of chop-suey.
And somehow you reminded me
Of nothing so much as of the knitting women
Who implacably counted stitches while the pride of France
Went up to death.
Tonight I am alone,
A long way from that Chinese restaurant,
A long way from wherever you are.
And I find it difficult to recall to my memory
The image of your large laboring inexpressive face.
For I have just turned the last page
Of a book of yours—
A book large and superficially inexpressive,—like yourself.
It has not, any more than the old ones,
The style of Pater.
But now there are passing before me
Interminable figures in tangled procession—
Proud or cringing, starved with desire or icy,
Hastening toward a dream of triumph or fleeing from a dream of doom,—
Passing—passing—passing
Through a world of shadows,
Through a chaotic and meaningless anarchy,
Under heavy clouds of terrific gloom
Or through ravishing flashes of knife-edged sunlight—
Passing—passing—passing—
Their heads haloed with immortal illusion,—
The terrible and beautiful, cruel and wonder-laden illusion of life.
Theodore Dreiser
JOHN COWPER POWYS
In estimating the intrinsic value of a book like _The “Genius”_
and—generally—of a writer like Theodore Dreiser, it is advisable to
indulge in a little gentle introspection.
Criticism need not always impose itself as an art; but it must at least
conform to some of the principles that govern that form of human
activity. The worthlessness of so much energetic modern criticism is
that it proceeds—like scum—from the mere surface of the writer’s
intelligence. It is true that all criticism resolves itself ultimately
into a matter of taste;—but one has to discover what one’s taste really
is; and that is not always easy.
Taste is a living thing, an organic thing. It submits to the laws of
growth; and its growth is fostered or retarded by many extraneous
influences. In regard to the appreciation of new and original works of
art, it belongs to the inherent nature of taste that it should be
enlarged, transmuted, and undergo the birth-pangs of a species of
re-creation. In the presence of a work of art that is really unusual, in
an attempt to appreciate a literary effect that has never appeared
before, one’s taste necessarily suffers a certain embarrassment and
uneasiness. It suffers indeed sometimes a quite extreme discomfort. This
is inevitable. This is right. This means that the creative energy in the
new thing is getting to work upon us, unloosening our prejudices and
enlarging our scope. Such a process is attended by exquisite
intellectual excitement. It is also attended by a certain rending and
tearing of personal vanity.
One is too apt to confuse the existing synthesis of one’s aesthetic
instincts with the totality of one’s being; and this is a fatal blunder;
for who can fathom the reach of _that_ circumference? And it is of the
nature of all syntheses to change and grow.
Yet, on the other hand, nothing is more ridiculous and ineffective than
the kind of hand-to-mouth criticism which attempts to eliminate its own
past, and to snatch at the glow and glamour of a work of art, as it were
“_de vacuo_,” and out of misty clouds. If one wishes to catch the secret
of true criticism; if one’s criticism is to be something more than a
mere howl of senseless condemnation or yawp of still more senseless
praise; one must attempt to do what Goethe and Saint-Beuve and Brandes
and Pater were always doing: that is to say, to make every use of every
tradition, _our own_, as well as that of classical authority;—and then
carry all this a little, just a little, _further_; giving it the shudder
and the thrilling interest of the process of organic growth.
Without tradition, the tradition of our own determined taste and the
tradition of classical taste, there can be no growth. Oracles uttered in
neglect of these, are oracles “_in vacuo_,” without meaning or
substance; without roots in human experience. Whether we are pleased to
acknowledge it or not, our own gradually-evolved taste is linked at a
thousand points with the classical taste of the ages. In criticizing new
work we can no more afford to neglect such tradition than, in expressing
our thoughts, we can afford to neglect language.
Tradition _is_ the language of criticism. It can be carried further:
every original work of art, by producing a new reaction upon it,
necessarily carries it further. But it cannot be swept aside; or we are
reduced to dumbness; to such vague growls and gestures as animals might
indulge in. Criticism, to carry any intelligible meaning at all, must
use the language provided by the centuries. There is no other language
to use; and in default of language we are reduced, as I have said, to
inarticulate noises.
The unfortunate thing is, that much of the so-called “criticism” of our
day is nothing better than such _physiological gesticulation_. In
criticism, as in life, a certain degree of _continuity_ is necessary, or
we become no more than arbitrary puffs of wind, who may shriek one day
down the chimney, and another day through a crack in the door, but in
neither case with any intelligible meaning for human ears.
In dealing with a creative quality as unusual and striking as that of
Theodore Dreiser, it is of absolutely no critical value to content
ourselves with a crude physical disturbance on the surface of our minds,
whether such disturbance is favourable or unfavourable to the writer. It
is, for instance, quite irrelevant to hurl condemnation upon a work like
_The “Genius”_ because it is largely preoccupied with sex. It is quite
equally irrelevant to lavish enthusiastic laudations upon it because of
this preoccupation. A work of art is not good because it speaks daringly
and openly about things that shock certain minds. It is not bad because
it avoids all mention of such things. An artist has a right to introduce
into his work what he pleases and to exclude from his work what he
pleases. The question for the critic is, not what subject has he
selected, but how has he treated that subject;—has he made out of it an
imaginative, suggestive, and convincing work of art, or has he not!
There is no other issue before the critic than this; and if he supposes
there is,—if he supposes he has the smallest authority to dictate to a
writer what his subject shall be;—he is simply making a fool of himself.
There is an absurd tendency among some of us to suppose that a writer is
necessarily a great writer because he is daring in his treatment of sex.
This is quite as grotesque an illusion as the opposite one, that a great
writer must be idealistic and uplifting. There is not the remotest
reason why he should concern himself with sex; if he prefers—as did
Charles Dickens for instance—to deal with other aspects of life. On the
other hand there is not the least reason why he should be “uplifting.”
Let him be an artist—an artist—that is the important matter! All these
questions concerning “subjects” are tedious and utterly trifling.
In _The “Genius”_ Theodore Dreiser has achieved a very curious and a
very original work. In doing it he has once more made it clear how much
more interesting the quality of his own genius is than that of any other
American novelist of the present age.
_The “Genius”_ is an epic work. It has the epic rather than the dramatic
quality; it has the epic rather than the mystic, or symbolic, quality.
And strictly speaking, Dreiser’s novels, especially the later ones, are
the only novels in America, are the only novels, as a matter of fact, in
England or America, which possess this quality. It is quite properly in
accordance with the epic attitude of mind, with the epic quality in art,
this reduction of the more purely human episodes to a proportionate
insignificance compared with the general surge and volume of the
life-stream. It is completely in keeping with the epic quality that
there should be no far-fetched psychology, no quivering suspensions on
the verge of the unknown.
Dreiser is concerned with the mass and weight of the stupendous
life-tide; the life-tide as it flows forward, through vast panoramic
stretches of cosmic scenery. Both in respect to human beings, and in
respect to his treatment of inanimate objects, this is always what most
dominatingly interests him. You will not find in Dreiser’s books those
fascinating arrests of the onward-sweeping tide, those delicate pauses
and expectancies, in back-waters and enclosed gardens, where persons,
with diverting twists in their brains, murmur and meander at their ease,
protected from the great stream. Nobody in the Dreiser-world is so
protected; nobody is so privileged. The great stream sweeps them all
forward, sweeps them all away; and not they, but _It_, must be regarded
as the hero of the tale.
It is precisely this quality, this subordination of the individual to
the deep waters that carry him, which makes Dreiser so peculiarly the
American writer. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why he has had a
more profoundly appreciative hearing in England than in the United
States. It was so with Walt Whitman in his earlier days. To get the
adequate perspective for a work so entirely epical it seems necessary to
have the Atlantic as a modifying foreground. Americans—so entirely _in
it_ themselves—are naturally, unless they possess the Protean faculty of
the editor of Reedy’s _Mirror_, unable to see the thing in this cosmic
light. They are misled by certain outstanding details—the sexual scenes,
for instance; or the financial scenes,—and are prevented by these, as by
the famous “Catalogues” in Whitman, from getting the proportionate
vision.
The true literary descendants of the author of the _Leaves of Grass_ are
undoubtedly Theodore Dreiser and Edgar Masters. These two, and these two
alone, though in completely different ways, possess that singular
“beyond-good-and-evil” touch which the epic form of art requires. It was
just the same with Homer and Vergil, who were as naturally the epic
children of aristocratic ages, as these are of a democratic one.
Achilles is not really a very attractive figure—take him all in all; and
we remember how scandalously Æneas behaved to Dido. The ancient epic
writers, writing for an aristocracy, caught the world-stream from a
poetic angle. The modern epic writers, writing for a democracy, catch it
from a realistic one. But it is the same world-stream; and in accordance
with the epic vision there is the same subordination of the individual
to the cosmic tide. This is essentially a dramatic, rather than an epic
epoch, and that is why so many of us are bewildered and confused by the
Dreiser method.
_The “Genius”_ is a long book. But it might have been three times as
long. It might begin anywhere and stop anywhere. It is the Prose-Iliad
of the American Scene; and, like that other, it has a right to cut out
its segment of the shifting panorama at almost any point.
And so with the style of the thing. It is a ridiculous mis-statement for
critics to say that Dreiser has no style. It is a charming irony, on his
own part, to belittle his style. He has, as a matter of fact, a very
definite and a very effective style. It is a style that lends itself to
the huge indifferent piling up of indiscriminate materials, quite as
admirably as that gracious poetical one of the old epic-makers lent
itself to their haughtier and more aristocratic purpose. One would
recognize a page of Dreiser’s writings as infallibly as one would
recognize a page of Hardy’s. The former _relaxes_ his medium to the
extreme limit and the latter _tightens_ his; but they both have their
“manner.” A paragraph written by Dreiser would never be mistaken for
anyone else’s. If for no other peculiarity Dreiser’s style is remarkable
for the shamelessness with which it adapts itself to the drivel of
ordinary conversation. In the Dreiser books—especially in the later
ones, where in my humble opinion he is feeling more firmly after his
true way,—people are permitted to say those things which they actually
do say in real life—things that make you blush and howl, so soaked in
banality and ineptitude are they. In the true epic manner Dreiser
gravely puts down all these fatuous observations, until you feel
inclined to cry aloud for the maddest, the most fantastic, the most
affected Osconian wit, to serve as an antidote.
But one knows very well he is right. People don’t in ordinary
life—certainly not in ordinary democratic life—talk like Oscar Wilde, or
utter deep ironic sayings in the style of Matthew Arnold. They don’t
really—let this be well understood—concentrate their feelings in bitter
pungent spasmodic outbursts, as those Rabelaisean persons in Guy de
Maupassant. They just gabble and gibber and drivel; at least that is
what they do in England and America. The extraordinary language which
the lovers in Dreiser—we use the term “lovers” in large sense—use to one
another might well make an aesthetic-minded person howl with nervous
rage. But then,—and who does not know it?—the obsession of the
sex-illusion is above everything else a thing that makes idiots of
people; a thing that makes them talk like Simple Simons. In real life
lovers don’t utter those wonderful pregnant sayings which leap to their
lips in our subtle symbolic dramas. They just burble and blather and
blurt forth whatever drivelling nonsense comes into their heads. Dreiser
is the true master of the modern American Prose-Epic just because he is
not afraid of the weariness, the staleness, the flatness, and
unprofitableness of actual human conversation. In reading the great
ancient poetic epics one is amazed at the “naivete” with which these
haughty persons—these gods and demi-gods express their emotional
reactions. It is “carried off,” of course, there, by the sublime
heightening of the style; but it produces just the same final
impression,—of the insignificance of the individual, whether mortal or
immortal, compared with the torrent of Fate which sweeps them all along.
And the same thing applies to Dreiser’s attitude towards “good and evil”
and towards the problem of the “supernatural.” All other modern writers
array themselves on this side or that. They either defend traditional
morality or they attack it. They are anxious, at all costs, to give
their work dramatic intensity; they struggle to make it ironical,
symbolical, mystical—God knows what! But Dreiser neither attacks
morality nor defends immorality. In the true Epic manner he puts himself
aside, and permits the great mad Hurly-Burly to rush pell-mell past him
and write its own whirligig runes at its own careless pleasure. Even
Zola himself was not such a realist. Zola had a purpose;—the purpose of
showing what a Beast the human animal is! Dreiser’s people are not
beasts; and they shock our aesthetic sensibilities quite as often by
their human sentiment as they do by their lapses into lechery.
To a European mind there is something incredibly absurd in the notion
that these Dreiser books are immoral.
Unlike the majority of French and Russian writers Dreiser is not
interested in the pathology of vice. He is too deeply imbued with the
great naive epic spirit to stop and linger in these curious bye-paths.
He holds Nature—in her normal moods—to be sufficiently remarkable.
It is the same with his attitude towards the “supernatural.” The
American Prose-Epic were obviously false to reality if the presence of
the supernatural were not felt. It is felt and felt very powerfully; but
it is kept in its place. Like Walt Whitman’s stellar constellations, it
suffices for those who belong to it, it is right enough where it is—we
do not want it any nearer!
Because the much-tossed wanderer, Eugene Witla, draws a certain
consolation, at the last, from Christian Science, only a very literal
person would accuse the author of _The “Genius”_ of being a convert to
the faith. To omit Christian Science from any prose-epic of American
life would be to falsify the picture out of personal prejudice. Dreiser
has no prejudices except the prejudice of finding the normal man and the
normal woman, shuffled to and fro by the normal forces of life, an
interesting and arresting spectacle. To some among us such a spectacle
is not interesting. We must have the excitement of the unusual, the
shock of the abnormal. Well! There are plenty of European writers ready
to gratify this taste. Dreiser is not a European writer. He is an
American writer. The life that interests him, and interests him
passionately, is the life of America. It remains to be seen whether the
life of America interests Americans!
It is really quite important to get the correct point of view with
regard to Dreiser’s “style.” The _negative_ qualities in this style of
his are indeed as important as the positive ones. He is so epical, so
objective, so concrete and indifferent, that he is quite content when
the great blocked-out masses of his work lift themselves from the
obscure womb of being and take shape before him. When they have done
this,—when these piled-up materials and portentous groups of people have
limned themselves against the grey background,—he himself stands aside,
like some dim demiurgic forger in the cosmic blast-furnace, and mutters
queer commentaries upon what he sees. He utters these commentaries
through the lips of his characters—Cowperwood, say, or Witla—or even
some of the less important ones;—and broken and incoherent enough they
are!
But what matter! The huge epic canvas is stretched out there before us.
The vast cyclopean edifice lifts its shadowy bulk towards the grey sky.
The thing has been achieved. The creative spirit has breathed upon the
waters. Resting from his titanic labor, what matter if this Demiurge
drowses, and with an immense humorous indifference permits his
characters to nod too, and utter strange words in their dreams!
The carelessness of Dreiser’s style, its large indolence, its contempt
for epigrammatic point, its relaxed strength, is not really a defect at
all when you regard his work from the epic view-point.
There must be something in a great cosmic picture to take the place of
the sand and silt and rubbish and rubble which we know so well in life,
under the grey sky! And these stammered incoherences, these broken
mutterings, fill in this gap. They give the picture that drab patience,
that monotonous spaciousness which is required. Symbolic drama or
psychological fiction can dispense with these blank surfaces. The
prose-epic of America cannot afford to do without them. They suggest
that curious sadness—the sadness of large, flat, featureless scenery,
which visitors from Europe find so depressing.
Well! Thus it remains. If one is interested in the “urge—urge—urge,” as
Whitman calls it, of the normal life-stream as it goes upon its way, in
these American States, one reads Dreiser with a strange pleasure. He is
no more moral than the normal life-stream is moral; and he is no more
immoral. It is true the normal life-stream does not cover _quite_ the
whole field. There _are_ back-waters and there _are_ enclosed gardens.
There was a Europe once. But the American prose-epic is the American
prose-epic.
“So We Grew Together”[1]
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
Reading over your letters I find you wrote me
“My dear boy,” or at times “dear boy,” and the envelope
Said “master”—all as I had been your very son,
And not the orphan whom you adopted.
Well, you were father to me! And I can recall
The things you did for me or gave me:
One time we rode in a box-car to Springfield
To see the greatest show on earth;
And one time you gave me red-top boots,
And one time a watch, and one time a gun.
Well, I grew to gawkiness with a voice
Like a rooster trying to crow in August
Hatched in April, we’ll say.
And you went about wrapped up in silence
With eyes aflame, and I heard little rumors
Of what they were doing to you, and how
They wronged you—and we were poor—so poor!
And I could not understand why you failed,
And why if you did good things for the people
The people did not sustain you.
And why you loved another woman than Aunt Susan,
So it was whispered at school, and what could be baser,
Or so little to be forgiven?.....
They crowded you hard in those days.
But you fought like a wounded lion
For yourself I know, but for us, for me.
At last you fell ill, and for months you tottered
Around the streets as thin as death,
Trying to earn our bread, your great eyes glowing
And the silence around you like a shawl!
But something in you kept you up.
You grew well again and rosy with cheeks
Like an Indian peach almost, and eyes
Full of moonlight and sunlight, and a voice
That sang, and a humor that warded
The arrows off. But still between us
There was reticence; you kept me away
With a glittering hardness; perhaps you thought
I kept you away—for I was moving
In spheres you knew not, living through
Beliefs you believed in no more, and ideals
That were just mirrors of unrealities.
As a boy can be I was critical of you.
And reasons for your failures began to arise
In my mind—I saw specific facts here and there
With no philosophy at hand to weld them
And synthesize them into one truth—
And a rush of the strength of youth
Deluded me into thinking the world
Was something so easily understood and managed
While I knew it not at all in truth.
And an adolescent egotism
Made me feel you did not know me
Or comprehend the all that I was.
All this you divined.......
So it went. And when I left you and passed
To the world, the city—still I see you
With eyes averted, and feel your hand
Limp with sorrow—you could not speak.
You thought of what I might be, and where
Life would take me, and how it would end—
There was longer silence. A year or two
Brought me closer to you. I saw the play now
And the game somewhat and understood your fights
And enmities, and hardnesses and silences,
And wild humor that had kept you whole—
For your soul had made it as an antitoxin
To the world’s infections. And you swung to me
Closer than before—and a chumship began
Between us......
What vital power was yours!
You never tired, or needed sleep, or had a pain,
Or refused a delight. I loved the things now
You had always loved, a winning horse,
A roulette wheel, a contest of skill
In games or sports ... long talks on the corner
With men who have lived and tell you
Things with a rich flavor of old wisdom or humor;
A woman, a glass of whisky at a table
Where the fatigue of life falls, and our reserves
That wait for happiness come up in smiles,
Laughter, gentle confidences. Here you were
A man with youth, and I a youth was a man,
Exulting in your braveries and delight in life.
How you knocked that scamp over at Harry Varnell’s
When he tried to take your chips! And how I,
Who had thought the devil in cards as a boy,
Loved to play with you now and watch you play;
And watch the subtle mathematics of your mind
Prophecy, divine the plays. Who was it
In your ancestry that you harked back to
And reproduced with such various gifts
Of flesh and spirit, Anglo-Saxon, Celt?—
You with such rapid wit and powerful skill
For catching illogic and whipping Error’s
Fangéd head from the body?.....
I was really ahead of you
At this stage, with more self-consciousness
Of what man is, and what life is at last,
And how the spirit works, and by what laws,
With what inevitable force. But still I was
Behind you in that strength which in our youth,
If ever we have it, squeezes all the nectar
From the grapes. It seemed you’d never lose
This power and sense of joy, but yet at times
I saw another phase of you......
There was the day
We rode together north of the old town,
Past the old farm houses that I knew—
Past maple groves, and fields of corn in the shock,
And fields of wheat with the fall green.
It was October, but the clouds were summer’s,
Lazily floating in a sky of June;
And a few crows flying here and there,
And a quail’s call, and around us a great silence
That held at its core old memories
Of pioneers, and dead days, forgotten things!
I’ll never forget how you looked that day. Your hair
Was turning silver now, but still your eyes
Burned as of old, and the rich olive glow
In your cheeks shone, with not a line or wrinkle!—
You seemed to me perfection—a youth, a man!
And now you talked of the world with the old wit,
And now of the soul—how such a man went down
Through folly or wrong done by him, and how
Man’s death cannot end all,
There must be life hereafter!.....
As you were that day, as you looked and spoke,
As the earth was, I hear as the soul of it all
Godard’s _Dawn_, Dvorák’s _Humoresque_,
The Morris Dances, Mendelssohn’s _Barcarole_,
And old Scotch songs, _When the Kye Come Hame_,
And _The Moon Had Climbed the Highest Hill_,
The Musetta Waltz and Rudolph’s Narrative;
Your great brow seemed Beethoven’s
And the lust of life in your face Cellini’s,
And your riotous fancy like Dumas.
I was nearer you now than ever before
And finding each other thus I see to-day
How the human soul seeks the human soul
And finds the one it seeks at last.
For you know you can open a window
That looks upon embowered darkness,
When the flowers sleep and the trees are still
At Midnight, and no light burns in the room;
And you can hide your butterfly
Somewhere in the room, but soon you will see
A host of butterfly mates
Fluttering through the window to join
Your butterfly hid in the room.
It is somehow thus with souls......
This day then I understood it all:
Your vital democracy and love of men
And tolerance of life; and how the excess of these
Had wrought your sorrows in the days
When we were so poor, and the small of mind
Spoke of your sins and your connivance
With sinful men. You had lived it down,
Had triumphed over them, and you had grown
Prosperous in the world and had passed
Into an easy mastery of life and beyond the thought
Of further conquests for things.
As the Brahmins say no more you worshipped matter,
Or scarcely ghosts, or even the gods
With singleness of heart.
This day you worshipped Eternal Peace
Or Eternal Flame, with scarce a laugh or jest
To hide your worship; and I understood,
Seeing so many facets to you, why it was
Blind Condon always smiled to hear your voice,
And why it was in a green-room years ago
Booth turned to you, marking your face
From all the rest, and said “There is a man
Who might play Hamlet—better still Othello”;
And why it was the women loved you; and the priest
Could feed his body and soul together drinking
A glass of beer and visiting with you......
Then something happened:
Your face grew smaller, your brow more narrow,
Dull fires burned in your eyes,
Your body shriveled, you walked with a cynical shuffle,
Your hands mixed the keys of life,
You had become a discord.
A monstrous hatred consumed you—
You had suffered the greatest wrong of all,
I knew and granted the wrong.
You had mounted up to sixty years, now breathing hard,
And just at the time that honor belonged to you
You were dishonored at the hands of a friend.
I wept for you, and still I wondered
If all I had grown to see in you and find in you
And love in you was just a fond illusion—
If after all I had not seen you aright as a boy:
Barbaric, hard, suspicious, cruel, redeemed
Alone by bubbling animal spirits—
Even these gone now, all of you smoke
Laden with stinging gas and lethal vapor......
Then you came forth again like the sun after storm—
The deadly uric acid driven out at last
Which had poisoned you and dwarfed your soul—
So much for soul!
The last time I saw you
Your face was full of golden light,
Something between flame and the richness of flesh.
You were yourself again, wholly yourself.
And oh, to find you again and resume
Our understanding we had worked so long to reach—
You calm and luminant and rich in thought!
This time it seemed we said but “yes” or “no”—
That was enough; we smoked together
And drank a glass of wine and watched
The leaves fall sitting on the porch.....
Then life whirled me away like a leaf,
And I went about the crowded ways of New York.
And one night Alberta and I took dinner
At a place near Fourteenth Street where the music
Was like the sun on a breeze-swept lake
When every wave is a patine of fire,
And I thought of you not at all
Looking at Alberta and watching her white teeth
Bite off bits of Italian bread,
And watching her smile and the wide pupils
Of her eyes, electrified by wine
And music and the touch of our hands
Now and then across the table.
We went to her house at last.
And through a languorous evening.
Where no light was but a single candle,
We circled about and about a pending theme
Till at last we solved it suddenly in rapture
Almost by chance; and when I left
She followed me to the hall and leaned above
The railing about the stair for the farewell kiss—
And I went into the open air ecstatically,
With the stars in the spaces of sky between
The towering buildings, and the rush
Of wheels and clang of bells,
Still with the fragrance of her lips and cheeks
And glinting hair about me, delicate
And keen in spite of the open air.
And just as I entered the brilliant car
Something said to me you are dead—
I had not thought of you, was not thinking of you.
But I knew it was true, as it was
For the telegram waited me at my room.....
I didn’t come back.
I could not bear to see the breathless breath
Over your brow—nor look at your face—
However you fared or where
To what victories soever—
Vanquished or seemingly vanquished!
[1] Copyright, 1915, by Edgar Lee Masters.
Choleric Comments
ALEXANDER S. KAUN
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.—Proverbs, 27:6.
We were looking at oriental rugs one day, that enfant terrible, the
Scavenger, and I. There were rugs that tempted me to transgress the
tenth commandment, and there were rugs that jarred me as if I were
listening to Carpenter’s _Perambulator_ stunts. My fellow-flâneur became
impatient with my critical remarks.
“You don’t love rugs.” His Svidrigailovian face grinned. “If you did,
you would just love them, you would not quibble. Academician!”
The last epithet is used by THE LITTLE REVIEW priests and prophets as a
means to close all arguments. So it did on that occasion. But it left me
pondering over the words of a New York critic who accused our magazine
of being somewhat indiscriminate in its enthusiasm for the sake of
enthusiasm, in its emotionalism for the sake of emotion. I recalled
blushingly the confession of our chief Neo-Hellenist, who is moved
aesthetically by any sort of music, whether it emanates from Kreisler’s
Stradivarius or from the pianola at Henrici’s.
I confess I am a fastidious lover. The dearer a person or a thing are to
me the more I demand from them, the more painfully I am hurt by their
flaws. Hence the number of my dislikes exceeds that of my likes. Hence I
grit my teeth at the sight of Maria Gay in _Carmen_. Because the music
of that opera is so full of eternal symbols to me, because when
listening to it I understand why Nietzsche preferred Bizet to Wagner,—I
am scalded by its vulgar cabaretization. Had I not been stirred by Mr.
Powys’ remarkable liturgy of St. Oscar Wilde, I would not have been so
keenly pricked by his subsequent remark in his Verlaine lecture that
Rimbaud was a ruffian. It is because I cannot live without music that I
am compelled to suffer weekly indigestion from the sauerkraut menus
furnished by Mr. Stock’s bâton. Will Mr. Scavenger of the rug-philosophy
expect me not to swear and damn at the prospect of being doomed to a
long season of Meistersingers, Perambulators, Goldmarckian fudge,
Brahmsian Academics, Stockian Jubilee-Confetti, and similar insults? Let
me touch another sore:—the Little Theatre, the Temple of Living Art, to
which I have looked up with reverence and hope; the only theatrical
organization in the city that seemed to have other considerations
outside of box-receipts. I was present at the opening night of this
season, and left the little “catacomb” with an aching heart. What
reason, what artistic reason, is there to stage Andreyev’s _Sabine
Women_ anywhere outside of Russia? The play was written as a biting
satire against the Russian liberals who fought against the government
with Tolstoyan Non-Resistance instead of joining the revolutionary
proletariat. In Andreyev’s land he is perfectly, painfully understood;
but here, on Michigan Avenue, the satire degenerated into a boring
burlesque! Even Raymond Johnson’s suggestive, graceful horizons fail to
save the situation. As to _Lithuania_—what is the matter with the Little
Theatre males? They move and speak like hermaphrodites, they drink vodka
and swear in squeaking falsettoes, they appear so feeble and effeminate
in comparison with the virile, gruesome Ellen Van Volkenburg and Miriam
Kipper. Then, how realistic—shades of Zola! Maurice Browne vomits so
much more realistically than Charlie Chaplin in _Shanghaied_....
Finding myself in the Fine Arts Building, I am in dangerous proximity of
another “Temple” that invites my friendly hostility. But I vision the
brandishment of the Editor’s fatal pencil—silenzia! Yet, if I must
refrain from, or at least postpone, my general attack on THE LITTLE
REVIEW, let me be allowed, pray, to whip one of my confreres, the
Scavenger. Whether a sound thrashing will do him good or not is
doubtful; but he certainly deserves flagellation. As a denier, as a
depreciator, as an anti, he is as convincing as a bulldog; but when he
loves, when he lauds and affirms, his voice thins to that of a sick
puppy. He should be administered cure from his mania of showering
superlatives upon false gods and counterfeit prophets. I dislike the
rôle of a Good Samaritan, but our Scavenger is so young, so
impressionable; perhaps he will repent. Besides, I sympathize with him.
He is one of those promising Americans who suffocate in their native
atmosphere, or lack of atmosphere, and are easily lured and led astray
by will-o’-the wisps. In his yearning for wings he is apt to proclaim a
domestic rooster as an eagle; in his craving for sun, for light, he
often mistakes a cardboard butaforial sun for Phœbus Apollo. Hence his
admiration for that Arch-Borrower, Huneker. “He is one of the two or
three American critics that are above Puritanic provincialism, that are
broad, European!” exclaims Scavenger. It is true; but this truth serves
only as a testimonia pauperitatis for the intellectual state of this
country, where glittering counterfeit coins are less odious than
Simon-pure Americanism. The Huneker-cult is one of the American
tragedies of which I have spoken on other occasions, the tragedy of
surrogates. The young generation, seething with longing for the great
and the beautiful in life and art, is forced to feed on substitutes in
the absence of real quantities. They want to read a living word about
Verlaine, about Huysmans, about Matisse, about those winged titans who
make Trans-Atlantic life so rich and pulsating, and they turn to
Huneker, the great concocter of newspaper clippings and boulevard
gossip. When Scavenger read for me Huneker’s admirable essay on Huysmans
I was not yet aware that whatever was admirable in the essay had been
borrowed almost in toto from Havelock Ellis’s _Affirmations_.[2] Why use
the second or third-hand patched up cloak of Boulevardier-Huneker, when
you may drink from the very source, from Arthur Symons, from Havelock
Ellis, from—oh, well, who can recount them? Ah, the tragedy of
substitutes!
[2] _Affirmations, by Havelock Ellis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin._
The first edition of the book was issued about twenty years ago,
yet one reads it now with keen joy. With the exception of the
essay on Nietzsche, which is somewhat obsolete, the essays on
Zola, Huysmans, Casanova, and St. Francis have stood the test of
time. One feels the breeze of cleanness, freshness, sincerity,
and profundity. I may have an opportunity of discussing the book
some other time.
The other evening, at a gathering of “The Questioners,” I accused Miss
Harriet Monroe and Miss Margaret C. Anderson of being too lenient
editors, in not trying to mould the taste of their contributors. What
conscientious editor would allow a writer of Scavenger’s caliber to
descend to the irritating rhetoric of “The Dionysian Dreiser”? To print
this loud exaggeration immediately after Ben Hecht’s _Songs and
Sketches_ is to profess the rug-philosophy.
The Scavenger, as most of his colleagues, is a reformed Puritan. He
finds boyish delight in reading an author who is a professional
fence-wrecker and convention-smasher. To him immoralizing is a virtue
_per se_. He hails Dreiser as the greatest, for things that he has not
done. Dreiser is a genius because he has not followed the conventional
novelist who makes his villain repent or perish. I admit this; but such
a negative virtue, significant as it may appear in given conditions,
does not qualify an artist. _The “Genius”_ is not art. It is
instructive, it is of great value for the study of contemporary America,
as Mr. Masters pointed out. I can imagine that in the twenty-first
century _The “Genius”_ will be used as a textbook for the history of the
United States in the end of the nineteenth century, for the author has
minutely depicted our customs and morals, has gone into detailed
description of country and city life, of farmers’ menues, of
stomach-aches and their cure, of Christian Science wonders, of salaries
and prices, of all the infinitesimal particles that compose the mosaique
of mediocre life. Instructive—yes; but art—by no means. Let me quote
Havelock Ellis’s _Affirmations_:
Three strokes with the brush of Frans Hals are worth a thousand
of Denner’s. Rich and minute detail may impress us, but it
irritates and wearies in the end.... When we are living deeply,
the facts of our external life do not present themselves to us in
elaborate detail; a very few points are—as it has been
termed—focal in consciousness, while the rest are marginal in
subconsciousness. A few things stand out vividly at each moment
of life; the rest are dim. The supreme artist is shown by the
insight and boldness with which he seizes and illuminates these
bright points at each stage, leaving the marginal elements in due
subordination.