“_CULTURE_”
_Richard Aldington, London_:
... It is almost impossible to get English people to subscribe to an
American literary review. English people are so conservative, so
self-satisfied, that it will be years and years and years and _years_
before they even become aware of the new spirit in America—and then it
will be more years and years and years before they will take it
seriously and still more years before they will _pay_ to know anything
of it. In a sense, you are more fortunate than we are—in England the big
circulating libraries have almost stopped the sale of new books, and
there is such an amazing mental lassitude that no one ever buys literary
and art periodicals. England is well behind the four other great
powers—France, Russia, Austria, and Germany. There seems to be a
tremendous Renaissance in Russia, but that comes, I think, from their
reading French stuff seriously. Have you ever tried to make an English
person—I expect it’s the same with Americans—read a new French book, a
book which has original ideas? If you haven’t, don’t!
... Is Comstock’s successor worse or better? It seems to me—who am
down-trodden by a corrupt aristocracy—amazing that the Great Republic
(?) should humbly let Comstock sit on its head for forty years; why even
in stodgy, money-bagged, hypocritical old England, someone would have
arisen—some Shaw—and assassinated him! There is no tyranny for the
artist comparable to that of an “enlightened” (God save us) democracy.
Notice that Vienna and Petrograd, the two capitals of benighted
feudalism, are, at this moment, the two great art centres of the world.
Paris has become a provincial town since the war; I don’t believe it
will recover—at least not for a decade.
_TO THE EDITOR, “WHO TENTS—INTENSE!”_
“_Ursus_”:
How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? To release, to joy, to clout
with hilarious freedom is to outguess the crowd. To outguess the crowd
is to encourage critical suicide in episodal splendor. The unknowable is
not wanted known; to venture is contagion.
Man ruts—knowingly, wilfully; slithers in purring abandon so long as
steaks fry and pieces of silver rattle in the pocket. When you attempt
to stir unthinking recesses, whip at latent possibilities, you prove
that you outclass, and he stares fishily from his Mongolian eyes. You
seek beauty; the average person tortures it! His father did not diet him
upon such. Your creed is not his. Mass brains chemicalize into a common
ingredient. Why precipitate? The world wants its filing cabinets to
contain regular, trimmed memos.
How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? Shall you consecrate yourself
to individual newness, to truth, against age-old creeds? Against
mountains of odds?
Then I congratulate you. You are different—you shall be singular and
never plural. Go your way! You may find beauty because of the adventures
in seeking it.
_Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa_:
Witter Bynner has sent me a copy of his letter to you on the subject of
the imagists, with the rubric—“Come at them yourself! Print something
about them! The public mustn’t think itself alone in disliking them!” In
spite of our very old friendship,—or perhaps because of it,—he and I
have never agreed on any subject under the sun; and now, when I find
that the greater part of his letter is just what I should like to say, I
am dissuaded from following his suggestion only by the fear that he and
I must both be wrong since we are at last in agreement. But I suppose
that even an unholy alliance cannot poison a good cause; and I therefore
beg you to append this as a footnote to Bynner’s communication.
_AN OBJECTION_
_John F. Weedon, Chicago_:
Your menu promises “Literature, Drama, Music, Art,” and as your guest I
sat down to enjoy one of those “feasts of reason and flows of soul,—so
extremely rare since _The Chap Book_ went out of print,—and I was
immediately plunged into five or six pages of dyspeptic regurgitation of
war dope.
I hate the war,—I am sick of the war. It is not, according to my
well-worn lexicon, either Literature, Drama, Music, or Art. I came near
pitching your magazine into the waste paper basket and getting a drink
to take the taste out of my mouth.
Really, we caterpillars are tired of the war. Can we not find refuge
from it even in THE LITTLE REVIEW, or will you always get the head of
Charles the First into your Memorial?
However, I admit the picture of Rupert Brooke alone was worth the price
of admission; and Ben Hecht,—I don’t know who he is,—I could love like a
brother. Lucian Cary is enjoyable, and your stuff is good but a little
inclined to be sophomorish. I bet old Dr. Johnson would have insisted
that “you define your terms, young man.”
Anyhow, as an elderly gentleman with a large family I bow to the
superknowledge and exuberance of your youth, and freely admit you are
giving full value for the money. But you will cut out the “vaarrr”—von’t
you?
_The following letter, typical of many that come in, expresses much
of what we have hoped to do through_ THE LITTLE REVIEW.
Until I read Mr. Ben Hecht’s article on _The American Family_ in the
August issue I had not believed that any one in America would have the
courage to give expression to the terrible truth about our most prized
institution, the family. It is splendid; it is the kind of thing we
“struggling daughters” need to keep us from being unselfish once too
often.
I imagine there are not enough emancipated souls in Chicago who are
understanding your work to make a word of sincere appreciation a mere
bore.... My social position is such that just a suggestion of the
revolutionary things which are “going on inside” would be a matter for
intense horror to most of my friends. THE LITTLE REVIEW is one of the
sources from which I am deriving strength to cling to my ideals, and to
keep on hoping until school is finished and it is time to strike for
freedom.
_THE “ARTIST IN LIFE”_
_M. Isadore Lyon, Chicago_:
Please permit me to point out to all the Mrs. Quackenbushes in one that
the obviously clear though much misunderstood article, _The Artist in
Life_, so far from being a snobbish self-revelation of pessimism is a
clarion feast of optimism; it is the optimistic urge back of it which
presupposes people _do_ possess latent will power, latent art love back
of—deep under—the lethargic brooding sleep of the Mass. It is a strong
plea to cease crawling in slumpy illusions and become self-conscious,
self-directed beings. I would ask the Quackenbushes to read it from this
view point.