Preston Bradley, who insists he is a reformed clergyman, really likes
Walt Whitman, feels thrilled with the reading of him. But the joy the
Rev. Bradley derives from reading Walt in his library is not enough for
him. In fact, it is not a joy at all. It is an irritation. Give the Rev.
Bradley an opportunity to show what he thinks of Walt Whitman, to stand
up on his feet before three hundred and fifty sympathetic souls and
prove what a keen sense of taste and an advanced instinct of culture he
(Rev. Bradley) possesses by yawping:
“I love Whitman, I adore Whitman. He is this to me. He is that to me—”
—then and not till then does the Rev. Bradley feel the real joy of
appreciation for “good old, dear old, wonderful old Walt.” Give the Rev.
Bradley a decent chance to platitudinize, attitudinize, and
blatitudinize, and the love he bears old Walt oozes from him in dewy
sighs and briny words.
Do not imagine that I am violently indignant with the Rev. Bradley, or
wish the reader to be, for his insincerity. It is indeed one of his best
qualities. By being insincere, by having no actual ground for his
ecstacy, the Rev. Bradley must, perforce, pay a great deal of attention
to what he says. He is free to pick out the best words, the best pose,
the most arresting and perhaps enlightening point of view. I say he is
free to do this, but of course he doesn’t. It is not the fault of his
insincerity, however. If the Rev. Bradley were an artist he would profit
by it and be great. But why all this talk about such a person as the
Rev. Bradley? Surely not because he is deserving of careful censure. The
reason is that there were at least three hundred male and female Rev.
Bradleys listening to him, slobbering in silence.
And now the next division of mediocrity. Mr. Clarence Darrow was another
of the talkers. Mr. Darrow sneered. Mr. Darrow sneered at Homer,
Euripides, Shakespeare, Dante, Landor, Whittier, Tennyson, Milton,
Kipling, and Heine because they didn’t write as good old Walt wrote.
Because they wore fetters in their art and insisted on making the last
word in the first line rhyme with the last word in the third line. They
were weak, ignoble creatures, these copybook writers, said Mr. Darrow;
they insisted on using a singular subject with a singular predicate and
believed that a violation of such procedure was a sin. One of the things
you learn in your school text books on physics is that a gentleman by
imposing a pencil-point before his eye can obscure his vision of the
Colossus. The idea seems apropos in the case of Mr. Darrow. Mr. Darrow
by imposing his soul upon the figures of the world’s big men can obscure
them entirely for himself and evidently his sympathizers. After he had
concluded three hundred and fifty persons, every one present so far as I
could see except my friend K—— and myself, stood up and sneered with Mr.
Darrow. They passed him a rising resolution of love and cheered him
three times, omitting, however, the customary tiger.
The greatest trouble with Mr. Darrow was his sincerity. He didn’t
slobber any more than a public speaker has to in order to have a public
to speak to. But his sneers were deep and earnest. They were entirely
intellectual, the intellectual essence of mediocrity. All of us sneer,
of course. The sneer is the one great American characteristic. When I
told a man in the office in which I work that I had attended a Walt
Whitman dinner he sneered at me.
“Fourflushers,” he said. “I can’t see how you put that highbrow stuff
over. A lot of long-haired, flea-ridden radicals, ain’t I right? I
wouldn’t let my wife associate with a bunch like that.”
(This is my office friend’s highest conception of manly virtue,—a
thoroughly American one,—being careful of whom his wife associates
with.)
Then my office friend went on to assert that Whitman was undoubtedly an
immoral, not to say degenerate, party, that he “got by with his stuff
because it was raw,” and that everybody who professed any admiration for
him was a suspicious character and one he “would think twice about
before inviting to his home” (where his wife is).
It is rather a complicated matter, this sneering business; and after
attending a Walt Whitman dinner I don’t know whose sneers disgust me
more, Mr. Darrow’s or my friend’s. They are both, however, identical in
spirit, the spirit of mediocrity and sincerity when sincerity becomes,
as it most always does, the cloak for ignorant convictions and bigoted
fanaticism.
And now we come to the third and last condition—boredom. Among the
speakers at this memorable dinner was Mr. Llewellyn Jones. Mr. Jones is
a critic of literature by profession if not qualification—although I do
not say it, really. Of all the orators at good old Walt’s memorial
gabfest Mr. Jones was the least offensive. He said nothing that shocked
the taste or violated one’s innerself or harrowed one’s soul. I don’t,
of course, remember what Mr. Jones did say. One never does, not only in
the case of Mr. Jones but in the thousands like him. They occupy time
and space and leave them empty. Not for them the sneer or the slobber.
Mr. Jones wouldn’t sneer for the world. And as for slobbering Mr. Jones
has too much good taste and discretion for that. Not that he is above
them. His fear of them, his apparent uncertainty in distinguishing
between these two characteristics and the characteristics of inspired
opinion, indicate this plainly enough.
So to be safe Mr. Jones resorts to the time-honored entrenchment of
mediocrity. He barricades himself behind the bulwarks of boredom. He
discharges no cannon, he commits no sins, he makes no false steps or
takes no false flights. He is boredom incarnate, the eternal convention
in the arts whether he deals with Nihilism, radicalism, or stands pat on
the isms of the past. Mr. Jones never gets anywhere, I repeat. I speak
of all the Joneses. Nobody derives anything from him—from them—except
ennui. He, they, never offend, never elate. He, they, are always Mr.
Jones.
Listening to the Joneses is as elevating an experience as watching the
water blop-blop out of the kitchen hydrant. And this idea leads me back
to where I started—THE LITTLE REVIEW.
Can you imagine what a thorough contempt a kitchen hydrant would have
for a fountain rising from the rocks, for a brook gurgling down the
hillside, or a strong river capering to sea? It wouldn’t exactly sneer
at them. Mr. Jones doesn’t. But it would feel moved to spirited reproof.
How juvenile it is to gurgle, the hydrant would say, how vain and
foolish it is to rise from the rocks, how upsetting it is to be
continually capering to sea. I do not claim any super-intelligence in
the matter of hydrants. But Mr. Jones and all the Joneses do say, and I
have enough intelligence to understand them if not to sympathize with
them, that THE LITTLE REVIEW is young and idiotic and given to
unnecessary emotions and so forth. All of which is true, looked at from
the elevation of a kitchen sink. “Why don’t you,” remonstrates the
hydrant to the brook, “blop blop with me?”
An afterthought: at this Whitman dinner there was one among the speakers
who sustained a dying faith in Walt, humanity, and _vers libre_ in
general. He was Carl Sandburg who read a free verse poem of his own on
Billy Sunday.
It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of
success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a
greater struggle necessary.—_Whitman._
The Death of Anton Tarasovitch
A Short Story of the Present War
FLORENCE KIPER FRANK
Anton Tarasovitch lay dying. He lay in a pleasant cornfield whither he
had dragged himself in the heat of the afternoon, for a shelter against
the merciless sun. But now it was evening and the stars were out, and
dying was not now so bad an affair as it had been in the dust and the
blinding sunlight. True, the pain was at times terrible, but at other
times it made one only light-headed, so that oneself or the part that
was Anton Tarasovitch seemed to be a different thing altogether from the
body of Anton Tarasovitch which lay beneath It shot to pieces, while It
fluttered and hovered above.
He had not been lying for many hours in the Austrian cornfield. He knew
that by the progress of the sun downward—downward until it made the long
summer shadows that he loved in the fields at home; downward until it
brought a breath of coolness and a gray light that had brushed out the
clear distinction of shadows and sunlight; downward until it was gone
forever and a few stars burned quietly in the sky overhead. It was the
last sunset that Anton Tarasovitch was to see in this world. But time
had no longer any meaning for Anton Tarasovitch. Lying on one’s back,
so, and waiting to die, a minute can seem all there is of the world, and
then an hour can be burned up like a minute, while one faints into
unconsciousness, before one is slowly dragged back again to the thought,
“I am I”—the thought that makes the world for each man, that creates for
him the stars and the shadows and the sun sinking downward.
Yes, Anton Tarasovitch knew that now—that it was this thought that made
the world. And when he stopped thinking it, the world would again be
nothing. Down! down! down! one would plunge, and then the world would be
nothing. But it would exist still for other men. Yet how could that be?
Tomorrow the sun would come up again into the sky just as every day it
had come up in the fields at home, making the long shadows that he had
so loved in the mornings and in the evenings. Tomorrow other men would
see the sun—many other men would see it. But if Anton Tarasovitch did
not see it——! In vain he struggled to create for himself a universe in
which there would be no Anton Tarasovitch. Well, he was not clever
enough to understand such matters. Men in universities and men who wrote
books had figured them out and knew all about them. But how was he, who
had never been to a University, who had not been to school even, to
understand!
Yet this much he understood—that he was dying for his country. This the
general had told them, and he had known always, since a boy, that it was
a brave and fine thing to fight for one’s country and to die if need be.
Anton Tarasovitch was dying that his country might be saved.
Yet it was strange that the big Russia had need of him, just one common
peasant. The great Russia had so many men that were strong and powerful,
men with uniforms that glittered—men that were much cleverer and braver
than Anton. Why should the country have need of him? Sasha needed him,
and the children. Sasha needed him in the fields and she needed him in
her heart too. She had often called him the light of her heart, in the
strange words—so different from the words of other women—that Sasha
often used. And he knew by her face that she needed him. She didn’t have
to tell him so. He knew by the kindling of her face, as of a curtain
behind which suddenly a candle appears. So her face would light up when
she saw him. Sasha would mind greatly if she never saw him again.
He was dying because it was a glorious thing to die for one’s
country—for the White Tsar, the little Father. You died to protect your
country, so that your great country might live forever. But if you
weren’t there to know that it lived forever!—now why couldn’t he think
of the world without Anton Tarasovitch in it? Why did he land against a
black wall every time he tried to think of tomorrow without Anton
Tarasovitch?
It was needful that he die to save his country. What if, to the general,
he _were_ only one of thousands and to Sasha and the children all of
life—nevertheless, if every man should think that, then there would be
no one at all to save the country. It was rather clever of him to figure
it out so, especially with the fire in his side that made his head so
light and his thoughts fly off from it and refuse to anchor down for
more than a minute. It was clever of him to reason it out—Anton
Tarasovitch who had never been to a University—that if every man should
say to himself, “O, I don’t count. Just one more or less!”—then there
would be no army at all to fight the Tsar’s battles.
Yet he was not fighting or dying now to save Sasha. Nor was he dying to
save his children even in the years to come. That wouldn’t be bad—to die
so that years afterwards, even though it might be many years afterwards,
one’s children would prosper and would live more happily. That would be
a sort of living when one was dead, because one’s children were in a way
oneself in different bodies. But he couldn’t see how Maxim and Ignat and
Sofya and Tatya would at any time be better off because he was dying
right now. He couldn’t see but that the land would be poorer and that
they would have to work harder because he and the other peasants were
dying for the Little Father and for their country.
But if he couldn’t figure out just what people he was saving, at least
he knew against what men he was fighting. He was fighting against the
Austrians. The Austrians were a horrible people who spoke a language one
couldn’t understand at all. When you tried to understand them, you
couldn’t understand a word they were saying. He had known an Austrian
once—a big blonde fellow who had stayed a few days at their little
village. One day Anton had been walking with the tiny Tatya on the road
that led to the market and they had met the Austrian, who had stopped
and had given Tatya a flower out of his button-hole. Anton remembered
Tatya’s crows of delight. The Austrian had smiled at her, a nice,
friendly smile, and Tatya had grabbed for his hand as children will,
even when the people they grab at are Austrians.
Tatya had seemed to like the Austrian. And Anton had had to confess to
himself that he wasn’t a bad fellow. But he must have been pleasant only
because of Tatya. No one could help being pleasant to Tatya. The
Austrian had been for a moment friendly because of her. At heart he was
a hateful fellow. All Austrians were hateful. They all hated the Tsar
and the Fatherland and they all hated him, Anton, because he was a
Russian.
There must be some Austrians lying in this cornfield now, wounded as he
was wounded. But he could see no one. Flat on his back, he could see
only the stars which were thick now against the sky. And he began to
think that this was a cruel thing—that a man should be alone when he was
dying. Even when a chap was just ill, he wanted someone to take care of
him. Once when Anton had been ill of a fever he had been just like a
baby, so weak and helpless. He had cried then because the milk that
Sasha had brought him had been too hot for his tongue and had burned
him. It was silly for a big man to cry, but that was the way you became
when you were sick—weak and silly. He had never in his life cried when
he was well. When men were well they were never silly.
Women—women were different! Five times had Sasha been so ill that it was
terrible—four times for the children that were living and once for the
little one that had died. Sasha had almost died too that time. She had
been so white and so hopeless looking for weeks after! But in all the
times she was ill she had not complained as much as he had, that one
month that he was sick with the fever. That must be because women were
used to pain. The good God had so ordained it. For every life that they
brought into the world they had to suffer, not only at the time, but for
months before and then for years afterward.
They were strange creatures, were women. If a child became ill or died,
its mother suffered again, just as the day she had borne him. At least
so Sasha had suffered when the baby had died—and other women that he had
seen in the village.
Birth was a strange thing now! He had never really thought of it before,
but wasn’t it a strange thing that each time a person was born into the
world, there should be pain and the long months of waiting. Then in one
second an Austrian shell could blow away the body that some woman had
waited for and had carried in her own body. In one second—why, so he had
been waited for—he, Anton Tarasovitch. Now wasn’t that wonderful!—and he
had never until this minute really thought of it. He, Anton Tarasovitch,
had been carried in the body of his mother and had been born in pain and
in rejoicing. Why, it was like a miracle! And he had thought so lightly
of it, had just taken it for granted that he should be born and that she
should love him.
He would like to make it up to her in some way now. But it was too late.
She had been dead for very many years now and he also was dying. Well,
he could tell her about it when he saw her with the saints in Heaven.
Heaven! He would go there, of course, because he had always, since a
boy, been obedient and had done just what the priests had told him. He
ought to think now about Heaven. But somehow he did not care to think
about it, and the strange part was that it did not trouble him that he
did not care. Even if he woke tomorrow in Heaven, he would not be the
same Anton. He might live forever, but that wouldn’t be the same thing
as waking up in the morning with Sasha at his side. He tried to think
what “forever” meant, and he fetched up against the same black wall that
he had when he had tried to think of a world without Anton Tarasovitch
to know himself in it. Forever! ever! ever! No stopping! On and on! But
that would be horrible. No! no! he couldn’t bear that. One could do
nothing, nothing, to get out of it. Even if one could be blown to pieces
with a gun, say a thousand years from now, in Heaven, one’s soul would
gather itself together again and go on and on, forever and forever.
No, he mustn’t think about it. If he thought about it any more, he would
lift his hands and strangle himself, so as to be able to stop thinking
about it. Now he would think about Sasha. When he thought about her, he
could feel her right next to him. He couldn’t see her face exactly, nor
could he see her standing there. And yet it was as if she really _were_
there, and he _could_ see her. That was the way it was when you loved a
person. She was, as it were, in you, or at least right next to you, and
yet she was separate from you, too.
He had liked life with Sasha. He didn’t know until now how much he had
liked it. True, it was a hard life they had lived together. One was on
the go every minute—in bad weather when the frost stung and to walk even
a mile became an agony; and in good weather one was constantly on the
go, when it might perhaps have been pleasant to sit under the trees and
play with the children. But life was good, for all that. Of course, if
they could have saved money—only a little money—it would have been
better. But the little money they could save had had to go for the
taxes. The taxes were for the Fatherland, the priest had told him. The
taxes were paid so that when the need came, Anton would be able to die
for his country. But there was something confusing about that. Life
would be better if it were not for the taxes, and the taxes were paid so
that he might—no, that was bewildering. With the fire in one’s side and
in one’s brain, how could one think clearly about so difficult a matter?
Besides, there were many matters of that sort that he, Anton
Tarasovitch, was not clever enough to think about. One left such things
to the priests, who were good men, and to the clever men at the
universities.
The stars were sometimes a long way off now and sometimes very near to
him. But neither near nor far away did they seem to care about him. They
were the only things he could see in the world and they did not seem to
care about him. Undoubtedly they had seen many men dying. He knew about
the stars! A young teacher who had come to the village when he was a boy
had talked about them and Anton had never forgotten.
The young teacher had not stayed long in the village. He was
“dangerous,” they said, and Anton heard afterwards that he had gone to
America. It gave one many thoughts to listen to the teacher. He had said
that the stars were worlds, just like our own earth—the earth that Anton
knew the good Christ had come down to save. Anton, who was just a boy,
had wanted to ask him if Christ had had to save all these worlds that
were stars. But that was only one of the many confusing thoughts one had
in listening to the young teacher. One felt strange in listening to him,
as if the world weren’t solid at all, but were flowing like a river. * *
*
Anton felt very sorry for himself, lying there under the stars that did
not care for him. He began to cry—silly, weak tears that tasted of salt
as they touched his mouth. It was only at times that he knew that he was
crying. At other times the soul of him entirely left his body and went
shooting up and up, to be recaptured only with a struggle.
The two of them—the burning body and the light soul—would have held
together better, he knew, if someone could grip his hand tightly. At
least that was the way they had done in the fever. When Sasha had
gripped his hand, as if by a miracle he had been restored for a moment
to a complete man, and was no longer two pieces—a body below and a soul
that went fluttering above it.
If only he could touch someone’s hand now—anyone’s hand—the hand of a
human being! To be all alone with the cruel, flickering stars up above,
that was no way to die—snuffed out into the darkness. That was no way
for any man to go, even though he _were_ just a peasant. But Anton knew
himself important now, almost as important as a general. He knew himself
important, with a strange, tremendous importance. He was as important as
almost anyone in the world, and he was dying alone in the darkness.
Then he remembered that there must be other men in the cornfield. He had
thought of that before, and afterwards he had forgotten. If there were
other men here—even one other man, an enemy—he would find that comrade
and they would die together.
Slowly, painfully, inch by inch he dragged himself. The stalks were like
an impenetrable thicket. They entangled him as snares or a forest of
swords set about him. He dragged himself on his palms, inch by inch,
butting away the cornstalks.
An Austrian was lying on his back, gazing upward. He was dead now, but
Anton did not know it. There was a wound in his neck, and the flies had
begun to gather.
Anton gave a sob as he saw the Austrian. One more effort and he would be
near enough to touch him. Perhaps the Austrian would grip his
hand—hard—as Sasha had gripped it.
The hand of the Austrian did not grip hard when Anton touched it. It
fluttered a little, however—Anton was sure of that. So Anton covered the
hand with his own, and with his own hand gripped hard, as Sasha had
gripped the hand of Anton.
And so died Anton Tarasovitch, looking up at the stars.
Art as it appears without the artist, i. e., as a body, an
organization (the Prussian Officers’ Corps, the Order of the
Jesuits). To what extent is the artist merely a preliminary
stage? The world regarded as a self-generating work of
art.—_Nietzsche._
Rupert Brooke
(_A Memory_)
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
One night—the last we were to have of you—
High up above the city’s giant roar
We sat around you on the generous floor—
Since chairs were lame or stony or too few—
And as you read, and the low music grew
In exquisite tendrils twining the heart’s core,
All the conjecture we had felt before
Flashed into torch-flame, and at last we knew.
And Maurice, who in silence long has hidden
A voice like yours, became a wreck of joy
To inarticulate ecstasies beguiled.
And you, as from some secret world now bidden
To make return, stared up, and like a boy
Blushed suddenly, and looked at us, and smiled.
[Illustration: RUPERT BROOKE, MCMXIV]
To a West Indian Alligator
(_Estimated age, 1957 years_)[2]
EUNICE TIETJENS
Greetings, my brother, strange and uncouth beast,
Flat-bellied, wrinkled, broad of nose!
You are not beautiful—and yet at least
Contentment spreads your scaley toes.
The keeper thwacks you and you grunt at me,
Two hundred pounds of sleepy spleen.
He tells me that your cranial cavity
Will just contain a lima bean.
How seems it, brother, you who are so old,
To lie and squint with curtained eye
At these ephemera, born in the cold,
These human things so soon to die?
You were scarce grown, a paltry eighty years,
Too young to think of breeding yet,
When Christ the Nazarene loosed the salt tears
Which on man’s cheeks today are wet.
Mohammed rose and died—you churned the mud
And watched your female laying eggs.
Columbus passed you—with an oozy thud
You scrambled sunward on your legs.
So now you doze at ease for all to view
And bat a sleepy lid at me,
You eat a little every year or two
And count time in eternity.
So, brother, which is wiser of us twain
When words are said and meals are past?
I think, and pass—you sleep, yet you remain,
And where shall be the end at last?