THE LITTLE REVIEW
_Literature Drama Music Art_
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
JANUARY, 1915
The Allies Amy Lowell
The Logical Extreme George Soule
Little Flowers from a Milliner’s Box Sade Iverson
My Friend, the Incurable: Ibn Gabirol
On Personalities: Villon, Verhaeren,
Parnell, Rolland, Dostoevsky
A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry Edward J. O’Brien
The New Beauty Nicolas Beauduin
The Artist as Master Henry Blackman Sell
Evolution versus Stagnation Herman Schuchert
Dawn in the Hills Florence Kiper Frank
The Bestowing Virtue George Burman Foster
Editorials and Announcements
Mrs. Havelock Ellis’s “The Love of Tomorrow” Herman Schuchert
London Letter Edward Shanks
New York Letter George Soule
I Am Woman Marguerite Swawite
Albert Spalding Herman Schuchert
Book Discussion
Sentence Reviews
The Reader Critic
Published Monthly
15 cents a copy
MARGARET C. ANDERSON, PUBLISHER
FINE ARTS BUILDING
CHICAGO
$1.50 a year
Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago.
THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. I
JANUARY, 1915
No. 10
Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.
The Allies
(_August 14th, 1914_)
AMY LOWELL
Into the brazen, burnished sky the cry hurls itself. The zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the head
of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching men.
Men weighted down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war. The
cry jars and splits against the brazen, burnished sky.
This is the war of wars, and the cause? Has this writhing worm of men a
cause?
Crackling against the polished sky is an eagle with a sword. The eagle
is red and its head is flame.
* * * * *
In the shoulder of the worm is a teacher.
His tongue laps the war-sucked air in drought, but he yells defiance at
the red-eyed eagle, and in his ears are the bells of new philosophies,
and their tinkling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He shrieks,
“God damn you! When you are broken the world will strike out new
shoots.”
His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may be shot, but he is in
the shoulder of the worm.
(_Over_)
A dust speck in the worm’s belly is a poet.
He laughs at the flaring eagle and makes a long nose with his fingers.
He will fight for smooth, white sheets of paper and uncurdled ink. The
sputtering sword cannot make him blink, and his thoughts are wet and
rippling. They cool his heart.
He will tear the eagle out of the sky and give the earth tranquility,
and loveliness printed on white paper.
* * * * *
The eye of the serpent is an owner of mills.
He looks at the glaring sword which has snapped his machinery and struck
away his men.
But it will all come again, when the sword is broken to a million dying
stars, and there are no more wars.
* * * * *
Bankers, butchers, shopkeepers, painters, farmers,—men, sway and sweat.
They will fight for the earth, for the increase of the slow, sure roots
of peace, for the release of hidden forces. They jibe at the eagle and
his scorching sword.
One! Two!—One! Two! clump the heavy boots. The cry hurtles against the
sky.
* * * * *
Each man pulls his belt a little tighter, and shifts his gun to make it
lighter. Each man thinks of a woman, and slaps out a curse at the eagle.
The sword jumps in the hot sky, and the worm crawls on to the battle,
stubbornly.
This is the war of wars, from eye to tail the serpent has one cause:
PEACE!
The Logical Extreme
GEORGE SOULE
(_The first of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be called
“Plays for Irascibles.”_)
CHARACTERS:
GENERAL HEINRICH VON BUHNE
MARYA RUDINOFF
SCENE:
A private dining room in the General’s house in Berlin. It is decorated
in black and white, and designed to impress one with the luxury of
austerity. A chaotic but strong cubist bust in black onyx is at the
left. The dining table, right center, is prepared for a meal. The effect
of the room is that of a subtle beauty compressed and given terrific
force by a military severity. There is a door at the rear and an
entrance for servants at the left.
The General enters rear, followed by Marya. He is tall, with a large
mustache and gray hair; his face and figure are in striking harmony with
the room. A man of high intellectual quality; the lines and angles of
his jaw, his mouth, his brows, are almost terrifying in their
massiveness. He is in evening dress, and wears a single crimson order.
Marya likewise is tall, a young woman with dark hair, and of a tense
beauty. She is subtle, yet apparently lacks utterly fear and the softer
qualities. She moves about with an unemphasized superiority over her
surroundings. She wears a red evening gown, low cut to show her superb
shoulders, yet without daring for its own sake. One feels that she would
be equally at ease as a nude Greek goddess.
The General seats her at the right of the table, bows, and sits opposite
her. Two servants enter with appetizers; they continue serving the
dinner as the dialogue progresses.
GENERAL VON BUHNE (_lifting his glass_). To a good day’s work. (_She
touches hers to her lips_) Fräulein Rudinoff, you are superb! I do not
refer to your beauty; any dog could see that. I don’t believe in praise.
But as a sculptor to his statue, allow me to say that of the many secret
agents I have employed, you are the most subtly efficient—cold as ice
and blazing as fire.
MARYA. Please, Heinrich! I don’t believe in praise either.
GENERAL. Not even when it is for myself? But you are right. Man does not
become strong until he ceases to wonder at his strength.
MARYA. That is your secret, I believe.
GENERAL. My secret, Marya? I do not have secrets. A secret is something
guarded, kept. My mystery, perhaps, yes. That is something which the
many are incapable of discovering—even when it is flaunted in their
faces.
MARYA. But we flaunt nothing, you and I.
GENERAL. No, we stand for everyone to see. My enemies think you are
their spy, and I—know what you are.
MARYA. And so, we have them at last where your iron fist can close on
them.
GENERAL. Yes, I have them, thanks to you. The poor visionary fools shall
not assassinate the chancellor and blow up the churches.
MARYA. You know, we women are supposed to worship the poets. Well, we
do, but we are fascinated and held by men like you. I loved the
comrades, but—as you see——
GENERAL. You are right, Marya. I love them, too; that is why—I crush
them. (He laughs shortly.) And perhaps that is why I dominate you. It is
not an effort; it is an instinct. There is something—inevitable—about
our love. That, I think, is because I—am inevitable.
MARYA. When I first came to you, Heinrich, I hated you. I think I do
still, a little. There is always the zest of hate about the greatest
love.
GENERAL. How you echo me! (_A silence_) Would it surprise you, my
beautiful one, to know that I, like you, was once an anarchist?
MARYA. You!
GENERAL. Yes, I, the bugaboo of the democrats, the great reactionary,
the militarist, the apostle of repression, the fortress of the German
Empire. I was once a revolutionist, and I plotted to kill your Czar!
MARYA. And yet you failed!
GENERAL. I am in a whimsical mood tonight. Shall I explain to you the
paradox?
MARYA. Tell me!
GENERAL. When I was a young chap I was restless, full of that driving
spirit all healthy youngsters have. The methodical occupations they gave
me in the Fatherland disgusted me. I had money, and I traveled. So I
came to Russia and took up with one of your artistic groups in an
interior city—I won’t tell you which. Believe me, I was fascinated,
lifted out of myself! The great, clean spirit of your intellectual
anarchists, the daily dangers they thrived on, the nonchalance with
which they met death or exile, their daring minds, which ripped the veil
from the future, their beautiful art productions—these things carried me
to the height of inspiration. They represented the highest human quality
of which it was possible to dream.
MARYA (_covering her eyes with her hand_). You have known that, too!
GENERAL. Yes, and love along with it. It was a boy-like worship. And
when my beloved one went to the scaffold it burned into me a white-hot
scar of fearlessness and severity I shall never lose. The love, I see
now, was ephemeral; the scar is eternal.
MARYA. And why did you leave them? Why did you leave them?
GENERAL. I had heard of America; I wished to go there and study the
freedom we desired to create in Russia.
MARYA. So you went; what then?
GENERAL. I found a country without a hereditary ruler, one rich in
opportunity, where all men are theoretically equal before the law. I
found a country where even the peasants read and have their magazines, a
country without a state church. It was a land won from the wilderness by
heroic struggle, whose freedom men had died to create, and whose unity
men had died to preserve.
MARYA. Did you not breathe more freely there?
GENERAL. Ah, Marya, that was the tragedy! I suffocated! For it was also
a country without a poet, without a musician, without a sculptor,
without a philosopher. The cities were run for loot, and the people, in
whose power everything lay, could not seize the reins. And
business—business—business, everywhere. As I went along the railroads I
saw nothing beside the track but dirty wooden shanties in the cities,
nothing in the country but ugly advertising signs. What do you think was
the best paid and most highly honored profession? Advertising!
MARYA. Are you lying to me!
GENERAL. No, it is the truth. Heroism, the love of beauty, the love of
truth—except convenient truth—any sort of high endeavor for its own
sake, was laughed at and crushed in those people by the dull weight of
prosperity. That whole nation was an ugly monument to the triumph of the
commonplace, a stone over the grave of godlike aspiration.
MARYA. But surely they have improved since then?
GENERAL. Do you know why they put up new buildings? Because some
millionaire who sells worthless things for five and ten cents wishes to
make money renting offices; because some railroad or insurance company
wishes to get advertising space in the papers without paying for it. Do
you know why the clergymen preach honesty? So that business conditions
may not be disturbed! Do you know for what purpose the magazines accept
stories and articles? So that they may gain the largest possible public
to offer up to their advertising men! Whenever an artist appears, he is
either ignored or scoffed at by that bestial monster, the majority! It
is like a prehistoric animal taking up the whole earth with his vast
bulk, seizing everything beautiful for food with which to stuff his maw,
and poisoning the air with the breath of his indigestion. (_He rises and
goes to the sideboard, where he busies himself selecting a cigar. As his
back is turned, Marya quickly empties a powder into his glass. As he
comes back and seats himself, she lifts her glass._)
MARYA. Then let us toast Russia, General! (_They drain their glasses._)
GENERAL. Would you mind telling me, Marya, how long I have to live? (_He
lights his cigar._) You are surprised? But that does not suit you. You
should have known me better than to think I did not know what you would
do when I turned my back tonight.
MARYA (_rising, pale_): About a minute, General.
GENERAL. Then let us use the time well. Now we can be perfectly frank.
Why have you—(_He waves his hand in the direction of the empty glass._)
MARYA. Because I am true to my cause! Because you are the scourge of
Germany; you represent everything we hate, every cruelty, every
oppression, every evil thing of the past. I have lived for this moment
for years!
GENERAL. Ah, you are beautiful! In you is my reward! And do you renounce
your love, too?
MARYA. I have loved you—more than I knew how to bear. Do not think I
shall live after you. And yet—I had to kill you!
GENERAL. Now I am ready to die. My work is done. I have produced the
beauty I desired!
MARYA. You? What do you mean?
GENERAL. You, who know how to kill what you love, can ask that? To
produce the rebellion in Germany, to make heroes with the scourge—that
has been my life! I, too, have lived for this moment! To be loved by a
woman with a flaming soul, a woman who is greater than her love!
MARYA (_Springing to him as he weakens_): Stay with me! Come back to me!
O Heinrich, Heinrich, I have wronged you!
GENERAL. No, Marya, you would have wronged me if you had not carried
your faith to its end. I—I—am the greatest anarchist of you all! (_He
dies. She looks at him a moment, puts her arms across her eyes, then
rises and speaks levelly to the servant who enters._)
MARYA. Peter, I have killed your master. No, do not be afraid, I shall
sit here quietly. Lock me in, if you like, and send for the authorities.
(_The servant stands stupidly staring at her._) Do as I say, at once!
(_He tumbles out. She sits slowly at her place, her elbows on the table,
looking dumbly into the distance._)
_Slow curtain_
Little Flowers From a Milliner’s Box
SADE IVERSON
Reminders
I have been making a little hat;
A hat for a little lady.
Red and brown leaves edge it,
And the crown is like brown moss.
If I might, I would say to her:
“Pay me nothing, pay me nothing—
I have been paid in full, lady—
I have been paid in memories.
Ah, the sweep of the sun-burned meadow
Rising above the woodland!
Ah, the drift of golden beech-leaves,
Fluttering the still hour through!
I can hear them falling, softly,
Softly, falling on the tawny ground.
The nuts, too, are falling, pad-pad,
Mischievously on the earth.
Never was sky so blue, so deep,
So unbearably perfect!
I throw up my hands to it,
I fling kisses heavenward,
To Something, to Somebody,
Who made beauty—who made Youth!
Take your hat, little lady,
Wear it smilingly;
It is all sewn with dreams,
And looped with memories.
Little dead joys, like mists,
Float about it invisibly,
Making it miraculous.
You lack the money to pay for these things.
It is I who owe you for the little hat
You commissioned, made of red and of brown leaves,
With a crown like sun-dried moss
In the woods where I once wandered.”
But I cannot afford to be kind,
Or strange, or mad, or merry.
She will give me purse-worn bills
For the little dream hat, the fairy-sewn hat,
And I shall say with formality:
“Thank you, madam; I am glad
You are pleased with the little hat.”
Stale, stale, flat, flat!
Will there never again come a day
When I shall be throwing kisses to the sky,
Hoping they will reach up to Him
Who made beauty, and little golden leaves,
And brown nuts falling in the Autumn woods?
Eidolons
I have been looking at the sun-ball,
Red as a Japanese lantern
Swinging low in the West
On a bed of saffron sky.
And now I have come into my room
With grey and lonely walls all about me,
And everywhere I look, behold,
Little wonderful bright balls are swinging!
My room is gay with them,
My wall is dancing.
Who could guess this little grey room could be so gay?
Voices
I awake in the night to the sound of voices—
Voices of strangers passing in the street.
I cannot hear what they are saying,
But it is easy to see that they are happy.
Perhaps they have been to a party,
Dancing to music—or remembering the birthday
Of some one whom they love.
I am glad to have heard them,
Glad they were laughing.
It fretted the silence
As the bright balls of a rocket
Fret the black sky of night.
As for me, I am shut up in silence,
Like a fly in odorous amber.
No one hails me, no one calls me;
No one tells me the day is fair
Or wishes me happy dreams.
Sometimes I fall to wondering,
What if I should run out onto the street,
Crying to some passerby:
“I would make a good friend to you!
I am one who understands friendship;
Try me and see!”
Oh, what would happen?
Should I be scorned?
Oh, silence, silence,
You are but a grey bubble, and I could break you
With one breath of impatience. Yet I dare not.
Something witholds me. Still must I waken
In the lonely night-time,
Taking joy from the voices of strangers
Passing in the street, talking, laughing.
Joy?
It mocks me like the sound of falling water
That tricks the ear of the thirst-mad wretch
Dying in the desert.
My desert is Silence!
It covers the bleak rotundity of the earth.
Ten Square Feet of Garden
Did you ever see my garden? See my mallow? See my larkspur?
My petunias like censers, snowy white and full of honey?
And my phlox, a summer snow-bank, and my haughty purple asters?
Did you ever see my flocks and herds, all my little golden
creatures?
Dusky honey-bees in plenty, golden bumble-bees a few?
Have you never seen them feeding on my larkspur and my mallow?
Some day I shall have a fountain, or a tiny pool for lilies.
And I’ll sit there, hidden safely, all alone and full of fancies,
Playing I’m a lovely princess, resting by her carven fountain.
I shall like to be a princess, to have friends and lovers by me!
I can praise them, I can chide them, tell them secrets if I like,
Flinging back their happy laughter like a handful of clear water.
Oh, my little treasured garden, ten square feet of haunting perfume,
Ten square feet of tossing blossoms, all my feoff and own dominion,
How I love you, with your old-gold, noisy, honey-bearing herds!
My Friend, the Incurable
III.
Personalities: Villon; Verhaeren; Parnell; Romain Rolland;
Dostoevsky
How do you do? Or, as Oscar Wilde preferred it, How do you think? It is
so much more interesting. Tell me, if you can, spontaneously, freely,
about your thoughts, reveal your personality, and we shall enjoy a most
engaging conversation, as charming as any good novel or essay. Speak
about yourself; people do this so much better than when they discuss
others. To me the most enchanting reading has always been literature of
Personality, such as subjective lyrics or chatty essays of the Montaigne
category; but I am particularly interested in Letters and Memoirs, where
the writer reaches transparency, unless he deliberately uses his pen as
a masque for self-concealment, as is the case, to my mind, in _De
Profundis_. True, an artist reveals his best in his artistic creation;
you discover autobiographical contours of Goethe in Faust and Werther;
Tolstoy’s restless searchings are mirrored in Besukhov, in Levin, in
Nekhludov; Zarathustra and _Ecce Homo_ allow you a glimpse into the very
crater of Vesuvius-Nietzsche. Yet through this medium you see the artist
in his royal garb, so to speak, in his regalia; he seldom appears to you
in his unceremonious morning-gown and slippers, to let you contemplate
him not at his _best_ but in his quotidian intimate aspect. Exceptions?
I admit a legion.
To be sure, Francois Villon[1] wore no stage array. His childish
frankness and spontaneity account for the fact that he is to this very
day an outcast among _bon ton_ salons, and even Robert Louis Stevenson
stooped to condemn him. Of course he is a disgrace for the fraternity of
writers: a thief, a robber, a murderer, a tramp, a debauchee, who
possessed less tact than even his by-no-means puritanic confrère,
Rabelais, and chanted most exquisite verses on most base topics. Villon
is not in the least detached from his poetry: he is it, his very life
was a song, a ballad. Filthy fifteenth century Paris, licentious monks,
mercenary courtesans, tavern sages, knights of the road and candidates
of the gibbet—in such an atmosphere the poet breathed, lived, and sang
in the old picturesque French. Every adventure, every experience,
impression, and emotion, Villon reflected in a ballad or a rondel, with
equal beauty and sincerity; with equal compassion and loyalty he chanted
to his religious mother and to the faded courtesan, to the duck-thief
and to the creaking gibbet; and he poured a world of tender humor and
sympathy into his greatest _Ballade des Pendus_, an epitaph for himself
and his companions expecting to be hanged. You may love him, you may
condemn him, but you cannot deny his absolute truthfulness, for his soul
is unreservedly denuded, a quivering, appealing, humane soul.
[1] _The Poems of Francois Villon_, translated by H. DeVere
Stacpoole. [John Lane Company, New York.]
Ayez pitie, Ayez pitie de moy.
A tout les moins, si vous plaist, mes amis!
Villon is justly called “the father of French poetry”; his influence has
been felt for nearly five centuries, from Rabelais to Verhaeren. Indeed,
in the savage cosmic rhythm of the “enormous” Belgian I often hear the
echo of the medieval “_Pauvre Villon_.” Verhaeren.... I must close my
eyes when I think of this Titan. You cannot gauge him, you cannot see
him in his entirety: an Atlas, bigger than our planet, detached from it.
I think Verhaeren has been best loved, and perhaps best understood in
Russia,—a land where realities are looked upon as symbols, else life
would become a horrible absurdity. There he is endeared as the lyricist
of the modern soul rent with eternal contradictions in the great task of
transvaluation of values: a mystic with no God, a prophet with no
blessing, a positivist without faith in man, a socialist without a
political program, an anarchist without “action,” an urbanite longing
for his village, a villager craving for the city. Verhaeren destroys
rather than creates, wills rather than believes, yearns rather than
attains. His movement lacks gracefulness; his attack, firmness; his
flight, lightness; his love, tenderness; his architecture is without
system, his system without method. And the more profound, the more
palpitating and irresistible is the chaos of his titanic images heaped
in masses, the more sincere are his wails, the more burning his tears. I
think it was the admirable French critic, René Ghil, who observed that
to Verhaeren the world appears as if in a flash of lightning, in an
enormous, exaggerated form, and as such he embodies it in his work—also
exaggerated, also enormous; that his poetry resembles the genius of
Rodin hewing his Balzac out of marble and powerful dreams.
How differently is Verhaeren conceived in the Teutonic mind! The
Austrian poet, Stefan Zweig,[2] has written an interesting book on the
Belgian, an elaborate study of his personality and works, which
substantiates my claim that people speak much more successfully about
themselves than about others. Herr Zweig appreciates Verhaeren highly
(and let me tell you sub rosa, my friend, that his general estimation of
the Poet is but a pale echoing of the brilliant Léon Bazalgette in his
book _Les célébrités d’aujourd hui_); he considers him the greatest poet
living, he names him _the_ European poet in the same sense as Whitman is
_the_ American poet. Soon, however, he falls into the Teutonic fallacy
of preciseness-by-all-means, of violently accurate definitions which
_must_ suit the facts, else—_desto schlimmer für die Fakten_. He wishes
us to believe with him that Verhaeren is the poet of socialism, of
democracy, that he has proclaimed his great Aye to contemporary life,
with its greed, factories, and smoke; that a poet who wants “to be
necessary to our time must feel that everything in this time is
necessary, and therefore beautiful.” Thus with the German skill in
fencing with Hegelian dialectics the critic endeavors to persuade us
that Verhaeren must needs love modern life in all its aspects, that he
is enraptured with all manifestations of contemporary spirit, from the
urban “multitude” to that most hideous platitude, the Eiffel Tower. Mr.
Zweig has utterly failed to see that Verhaeren does not feel the
present, the contemporary, that he lives spiritually in the past and in
the future, while the fleeting present is for him but a _symbol_, an
alphabet of monstrous hieroglyphs, the mysteries of which he interprets
prophetically. Has he not expressed his endless despair and maddening
grief over the tragedy of the all-absorbing monster-city? Has the world
not been to him a Golgotha, “an eternal illusion”? To Mr. Zweig
Verhaeren is a happy, satisfied lover of all and everything. The poet
and the painter, Maximilian Voloshin (one of whose poems appeared in THE
LITTLE REVIEW), relates his impression of the Belgian: “When you see him
for the first time you notice before anything else a deep furrow
cleaving his brow, resembling two wide-spread wings of a flying bird.
This furrow is himself. In it is his sorrow, his flight.” I wonder
whether Mr. Zweig has observed the furrow; or did he deliberately
overlook it in order to save his “structure”?
[2] _Emile Verhaeren_, by Stefan Zweig. [Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston.]
Yes, my friend, people seldom succeed in their attempt to interpret
others. Would you classify biographies as literature of personality?
Perhaps in the sense that they reveal the personality of the biographer,
but then it depends upon the value of that personality. Here is an
instance. The brother of Parnell writes his Memoirs[3], bringing forth a
mass of details and anecdotes of “Charley’s” life. Charles Parnell has
always been a fascinating personality to me. Long ago I heard a lecturer
speaking on the great Irishman before a European audience of
revolutionists; the listeners (by no means Irish!) were enchanted with
the figure of the unique leader, with his powerful individuality and
skillful strategy. I have pondered many a time over his portrait
revealing the mysterious face of a medieval sorcerer, and have looked
forward to a work that would help me in gaining a clearer idea of the
“uncrowned King of Ireland.” His brother’s memoirs gave me a wealth of
information about their family pedigree and about each individual member
(their number is considerable), particularly about the writer’s business
undertakings. About Charles Parnell I have learned numerous external
facts and figures, but his intrinsic self is as little known to me now
as before. Of what value is such a book which succeeds merely in
introducing to you Mr. John Howard, an Irish gentleman of no particular
interest?
[3] _Charles Steward Parnell: A Memoir_, by his brother, John
Howard Parnell. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
It is totally different when you are confronted with such a wonderful
individuality as Romain Rolland[4]. Apparently it is a book of essays on
Berlioz, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, D’Indy, Strauss, Debussy, and on some
aspects of modern music; in reality you come to know the rich
personality of Rolland and the reactions of his sensitive, graceful soul
on the musical productions of our best-known composers. I am delighted
with his influence on my views; not that he has altered them: musical
opinions do not let themselves be proved or disproved; but he has
_enhanced_ my attitudes, he has made me admire my favorites more
profoundly and hate my torturers more thoroughly. Do not let your Editor
know that Brahms’s symphonies prove as indigestible to Rolland as they
have been to your humble Incurable. It is the reading of such a book
that offers me the joy of looking into a great soul, and it reminds me
of the exalted experience I have had in reading Wilde’s _Intentions_, or
the essays of Przybyszewsky and Arthur Symons.
The unceremonious self-revealment of a great man, of which I spoke in
the beginning, does not always appeal to my aesthetic sense. At times my
feeling of delicacy is scalded at the sight of a repulsive negligee. It
has painfully irritated me to read Dostoevsky’s letters[5] in the
English translation: would that the Russians kept their dirty linen at
home. The book reveals a petty tragedy of a great personality; eternal
want, indebtedness, whimpering, small jealousy, narrowness, intolerance.
We learn how most of his books were written in a hurry, under pressure
of need, the author being aware of their inadequacy; we learn of his
petty envy towards Turgeniev, his slighting of Tolstoy, his bigoted
hatred of everything liberal, European, his sturdy opposition to the
revolutionists, his obsequious demeanor before high officials. With the
exception of a few bright spots, the pages produce the nauseating effect
of a pathological museum. Such a pity.
Come, now, friend: _How do you think?_
IBN GABIROL.
[4] _Musicians of To-Day_, by Romain Rolland. [Henry Holt
Company, New York.]
[5] _Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky._ [The Macmillan
Company, New York.]
A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry
EDWARD J. O’BRIEN
Paroxysm is the poetic expression of that modern spirit which finds its
most notable expression in other arts in the sculpture of Meunier, the
polyphonic music of Strauss, the philosophy of Bergson, and the American
skyscraper. It is the application of dynamics to poetry. It stands
midway between romanticism, which is an escape into the past, and
futurism, which is a flight into the future. Paroxysm is deep-rooted in
to-day.
M. Nicolas Beauduin, its most noteworthy French exemplar, has many
noteworthy disciples in France and Germany, and paroxysm is a well-known
force in every literature except that of America, where its unconscious
expression in life has been most remarkable. Students will find its
philosophy set forth and its current phases in literature duly
chronicled in M. Beauduin’s quarterly review, _La Vie des Lettres_. It
is only possible here to offer a few very brief hints as to its literary
aims and materials:
It aims to be a synthesis of modern industrial and mechanical
effort.
It repudiates the ivory tower.
It handles the materials of modern life directly, not in symbols.
It responds to the roar of factories and trains.
The poet is to be “an active lyric,” representing his age.
The poet’s vision is the cinematograph of modern life with its
continual mechanical transfiguration.
It is not sentimental.
To art for art’s sake, and art for truth’s sake, it opposes art
for life’s sake.
It discards personal sensation; it is not ashamed to be “cosmic.”
The evolution of poetry is to be as rapid and terrible henceforth
as material evolution.
It will sing the new man, the man-machine, the multiplied man,
the Man-Bird.
It exalts motion and repudiates equilibrium.
It is social.
It feels the need for violent motives of faith, and finds them in
the passion of the cities.
It cultivates a scientific technique.
It does not reject any words in forming a vocabulary.
It seeks swift, hurtling, dynamic rhythms.
It is based on “dynamic notions of qualitative duration, of
heterogeneous continuity, of multiple and mobile states of
consciousness.”
It perceives the elements of poetry contained in modern cities,
locomotives, aëroplanes, dreadnoughts, and submarines; in a stock
exchange, a Wall Street, or a wheat pit; and in every scientific
marvel and in the sonorous song of factories and railways.
It emphasizes their dynamic consciousness.
To sum up: It aims to attain and express with the quick, keen vigor and
strength of steel, the whirling, audacious, burning life of our epoch in
all the paroxysm of the New Beauty.
When M. Beauduin’s new volume, _La Cité des Hommes_, is translated and
published in America, it will be less difficult to estimate the success
with which paroxyst poetry may be achieved.
The New Beauty
NICOLAS BEAUDUIN
(_Authorized translation from the French by Edward J. O’Brien_)
Long years the poet had not understood
This powerful art bursting from forces in sight,
From the tamed element which revolts in cries,
From the victory of the spirit
Over the passive immensity of matter.
The modern beauty of joy and madness,
Of triumph and truth,
He saw her, in a passionate rhythm,
Flinging down the palaces of doubt and silence,
Vanquishing black scepticisms and torpors,
Rekindling the universe under her jets of vapor,
Destroying the vain mystery that disappears,
Covering the entire world with her network of iron,
Launching her towers, her bridges, her tunnels, her dockyards,
Over all the exasperated continents of the globe.
Ah! the new beauty, ardent, insatiate,
Strained toward conquest and the vastest life,
She was indeed the god whom nothing resists,
Dynamic beauty of swiftness and hope,
Rushing ever beyond, out of the blackness,
Dancing and paroxyst humanity.
He saw her at last, superb before him,
Entrapping error, mowing night;
She erected on the old barbaric soil
Her cathedral with its vertiginous walls,
Lit by the mad and whirling suns of the searchlights.
Beauty of brass, beauty of fire,
She was there visible as a god.
Beauty of vapor, geometric beauty,
Modern beauty who builds for her temple and landscape
High furnaces casqued with purple and gold,
Cities mad beneath their electric lamps,
Launching at conquered heaven in spirals of pride,
The rut of dynamos and the bustle of windlasses,
The multiplied brutal effort of the machines,
The fiery flight of aeroplanes in the air,
The frantic trolleys under their sheaves of lightnings,
And dominating the night of silence and hatred,
The terrible thunderous flight of hertzian waves.
The Artist as Master
_The Japanese Print: An Interpretation, by_ Frank Lloyd Wright.
[Ralph Fletcher Seymour Company, Chicago.]
HENRY BLACKMAN SELL
“‘A flower is beautiful,’ we say—but why? Because in its geometry and
its sensuous qualities it is an embodiment and significant expression of
that precious something in ourselves which we instinctively know to be
Life, ‘an eye looking out upon us from the great inner sea of beauty,’ a
proof of the eternal harmony in the nature of a universe which is too
vast and intimate and real for the mere intellect to grasp.”
Yet our materialists would solve the Problem with their material
intellects. And our theologians would solve it with their ecclesiastical
deductions. The one would put Life in the cold hands of the scientist,
expert in fact and figure; the other, gropingly indefinite, in the hands
of the spiritual formulaist. Yet both are wrong. The Problem can be
solved. The literal, objective guesses of the materialist are but flimsy
realisms far from true. The indefinite, abstract dreams of the
theologian are but the futile inaptitudes of man calculated to define
that which cannot be defined.
But definitions are not what the world needs. The Solution would be
interesting, but the Problem is fascinating. It is the Going and not the
Goal that holds us to the bitter and the sweet, through mornings, noons,
and nights, year by year.
If, then, we grant the Solution but a cold conclusion, and the Goal but
a stagnation point, to whom can we turn but to the artists—those
spiritual children of that great master who wept when he could find no
imperfection in his masterpiece.
The artist, whose interests are in the _interpretations_, and not in the
_translations_ of Life, and whose interpretations have given Life all
that it holds sacred.
There is no power but has its root in his ....
There is no power
But his can withold the crown or give it
Or make it reverent in the eyes of men.
Written philosophies of artist craftsmen are rare. Their busy lives find
little time for penning rules; but when one does speak, it is with the
captivating force of original thought: the summary of attainments
through many trials and many failures.
And it is with this sure touch of deep artistic experience that Frank
Lloyd Wright draws from the geometric beauty of the mystic Japanese
prints his philosophy of the artist as master of the Problem.
“Real civilization means for us a right conventionalizing of our
original state of nature, just such a conventionalizing as the true
artist imposes on natural forms. The law-giver and reformer of social
customs must have, however, the artist soul, the artist eye in directing
this process, if the light of the race is not to go out. So, art is not
alone the expression, but in turn the great conservator and transmitter
of the finer sensibilities of a people. More still, it is to show those
who shall understand just where and how we shall bring coercion to bear
upon the material of human conduct. So the indigenous art of a people is
their only prophecy and their school of anointed prophets and kings. Our
own art is the only light by which this conventionalizing process we
call “civilization” may eventually make its institutions harmonious with
the fairest conditions of our individual and social life.
“I wish I might use another word than ‘conventionalizing’ to convey the
notion of this magic process of the artist mind, which is the constant
haunting reference of this paper, because it is the perpetual, insistent
suggestion of this particular art we have discussed. Only an artist, or
one with genuine artistic training, is likely, I fear, to realize
precisely what the word as here used connotes. Let me illustrate once
more. To know a thing (what we can really call knowing), a man must
first love the thing and sympathize vividly with it. Egypt thus knew the
lotus, and translated the flower to the dignified stone forms of her
architecture. Thus was the lotus conventionalized. Greece knew and
idealized the acanthus in stone translations. Thus was the acanthus
conventionalized. If Egypt or Greece had plucked the flowers as they
grew, and given us a mere imitation of them in stone, the stone forms
would have died with the original. In translating, however, its very
life’s principle into terms of stone well adapted to grace a column
capital, the Egyptian artist made it pass through a rarifying spiritual
process, whereby its natural character was really intensified and
revealed in terms of stone adapted to an architectural use. The lotus
gained thus imperishable significance; for the life-principle in the
flower is translated—transmuted to terms of building stone to idealize a
real need. This is conventionalization. It is reality because it is
poetry. As the Egyptian took the lotus, the Greek the acanthus, and the
Japanese every natural thing on earth, as we may take and adapt to our
highest use in our own way a natural flower or thing, so civilization
must take the natural man, to fit him for his place in this great piece
of architecture we call the social state. And today, as centuries ago,
it is the prophetic artist mind that must reveal this natural state
idealized, conventionalized harmoniously with the life-principle of all
men. How otherwise shall it be discerned? All the sheer wisdom of
science, the cunning of politics and the prayers of religion can but
stand and wait for the revelation,—awaiting at the hands of the artist
that conventionalization of the free expression of life-principle which
shall make our social living beautiful,—organically true. Behind all
institutions or dogmatic schemes, whatever their worth may be, or their
venerable antiquity,—behind them all is something produced and preserved
for its aesthetic worth; the song of the poet, some artist vision, the
pattern seen in the mount.
“Now speaking a language all the clearer because not native to us,
beggared as we are by material riches, the humble Japanese artist has
become greatly significant because he is the interpreter of the one
permanent thing in the life of his people; that one permanent thing
being the principle of a right conventionalization of life which makes
of their native forms the most humanly significant, and most humanly
joy-giving as in its ever varied moods and in evanescent loveliness he
has made Fujiyama—that image of man in the vast—the God of Nippon.”
Evolution versus Stagnation
(_Being a Debate, with Rare Illustrations, by Major Funkhouser, Mr.
Lucian Cary, and The Camera, reported for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW _by
Herman Schuchert_.)
Place: Fullerton Hall.
Time: Thursday afternoon, December 10, 1914.
Characters: Mere and supporting members of the Drama League, and others
mentioned above; also guards, committees, and a few men.
* * * * *
MAJOR FUNKHOUSER (_his remarks, condensed_).
Censorship of the movies is necessary because it must be.
Buildings, public rights, and milk are censored, and it is good.
Fifty per cent of a movie audience is under fifteen years of age.
I may be wrong sometimes, but I pass what I think they should see.
We must be big-brothers to our citizens of lesser intelligence.
I told my four daughters only what I thought they should know.
I believe in telling women as little as they may really need.
The working class wants salacious stuff; we must prevent.
These excerpts from banned films will illustrate my points:
* * * * *
THE CINEMATOGRAPH (_its pictures, briefly mentioned_).
Woman and man clutching each other in a raging, although amiable,
passion.
Boy being taught how to pick pockets.
Hold-up.
Woman and man in furious love-experiments.
Mexicans burning bodies of dead rebels.
Doctors dressing Mexican battle-wounds.
Woman and man preparing the furnace of love.
Woman and man ....
Woman ....
Man ....
* * * * *
MR. LUCIAN CARY (_his ideas, pieced together_).
These pictures are positively abominable.
No human being could possibly want to see them.
If we must have censorship, the Major’s is as good as any.
Censorship with flaws is preferable to perfect censorship because
perfect censorship would abolish the necessity of one’s judgment.
Imperfect censorship permits us, by its slips, to exercise our minds.
In no other civilized country is there such restriction.
Artists in America must keep their keenest visions to themselves.
Censorship deadens human perceptions.
Who wants cloistered virtues when true health is possible?
Man must learn to judge for himself; and he surely will do so.
America is unprecedented in its timidity of tastes and convictions.
* * * * *
MRS. HENDERSON _(in a bored manner)_.
It isn’t a question of arbitrary standard; it’s purely aesthetic.
The Major passes films of the most flagrant sentimentality.
Only legal restrictions are made, and these are futile.
The only satisfactory standard is that of individual taste.
Of course, the title of this debate was not quite the one used on this
article. It was very tame—the title. But not so with the films. The
Major had evidently selected his choicest ones—and a goodly number of
these—which were reeled off in swift succession. Murder trod on the
heels of love. Flaming moments of lust were split up by stage-robbers.
Nigger babies, whose crime was that they didn’t need clothes, followed
suicides.
Your reporter was fortunate enough to find an acquaintance, sitting in
the rear of the hall. This lady married a man of millions. He liked the
way she did _Florodora_—liked it so well that he gave her a chance,
which she has since made much of. She is charming, because she has
retained the frankness of the stage and merely exchanged the shoddy furs
and diamonds for the real thing. She confided that _The Follies_ were
simply right, and that the Drama League was radically opposed to the
movies in any or all forms, and that she adored winter because it kept
reminding her of Christmas. She is a supporting member of the League,
and the only one present who waived her constitutional prerogative of a
front seat. Her sisters-in-league were availing themselves of their
privilege. They wanted to be where they could not get out, in case the
pictures were really good.
And they were—sickening. Not a member left. Not a whisper. All eyes
focused upon the screen, where horrors of war and of love (in which
there seemed to be nothing fair) were showing. When their nervous
systems could stand no more, some lady’s locomotive and oral powers
returned, and the reel was stopped.
Then came Mr. Cary, who found it difficult not to speak over their heads
with his simple language and big ideas. The audience whispered and began
to show the tips of countless yellow-feathers. They could stand horrible
pictures; but this talk was too much. It was too sane and calm and
cutting. Yellow feathers showed, full length. Women left in twos and
threes, although the first person to go out was a male. Cary’s short,
admirable paragraphs were divided in this manner:—three ladies on the
right of the hall would balance their departure under cover, as it were,
of the departure of three sisters on the left. This mental cowardice was
worse than the pictures.
An intolerable discussion followed. A huge wave of ancient yet
ever-modern philistinism raised itself among the majority of those who
remained, and surged across the hall to drown Mr. Cary and Mrs.
Henderson. Major Funkhouser found his feet again, and assumed the
big-brother-protector attitude, to repeated grand-stand advantages. As
long as they had seen the pictures, what matter if the public didn’t?
Evolution lost the day. Stagnation was an immediate success. Your
reporter left, grinning.
Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of,
and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.—_Nietzsche._
Dawn in the Hills
FLORENCE KIPER FRANK
Out of the vast,
Flooding and flowering the cool, skyey vast,
Day, day at last!
Squandering, spilling, pouring white-flecked fire,
Higher and higher
The light of the sun mounts into the dim of the sky.
And all the little fields that lie
At the foot of the hills that hold them in mothering tender,
Sweet with translucent, shimmering green,
Lay themselves bare to the sun, and the hill-trees slender,
Upward reaching thin arms of prayer,
A-shiver with ecstasy, tipped with sheen,
Sway to the quivering call of the fresh-stirring air.
Through the night have I waited Thy summons, through the night have
I lain
Racked with unutterable, ancient, blackening pain.
And the soul of me touched not Thy presence nor felt Thee about me,
And the soul of me, sick with its hate and dismay, was minded to rout
Thee,
Yea, from itself to tear Thee, enduring without Thee.
But now have I found Thee again, O my Comrade, again!
In the light of the morning and white of the dawn I behold Thee.
See, with my arms outstretched, I enclose and enfold Thee.
With a shout that the darkness is light, I enclose and enfold Thee.
Now feed me with life as with rain is nourished the flower!
Crown me with ecstasy, drench me with power!
See, I am bare to Thee as the fields are bare to the sun.
Resplendent, vivid, ever-living One,
This is the moment, this the creative hour!
Lo, I am one with thee,
I partake, I am washed anew.
Out of lies this is true,
Out of the dark of lies and entangling hates this is true,
That Thou who art ever-living, out of death shall create anew.
What weakling spirit knew thee gray and old,
Thou flaming one,
Thou fructifying sun,
Thou trumpet-call of morning to the blood,
Thou surge of the earth flood!
Youth of the universe art Thou, militant, bold.
Naught to Thee is decay,
When the spirit rots in its shroud,
And the horrible thoughts of night have way,
And life is a noisome cloud;
A noisome cloud of the fen,
Dank with the spirit’s decay!
O out of the morning laughest Thou then,
Out of the singing day.
Out of the morning leapest Thou,
Laughing at fear and pain,
And the horrible thoughts of night give way,
And the soul is created again.
The hills now are flooded with light and the trees rejoice
With happy voice.
The smell of the sweet, green things is in the air.
The breeze is a prayer.
And my soul, O my Comrade, my living soul is a prayer.
And rapture gives way to peace.
The dawning faints into the day.
Out of night have I found release,
Out of death, the way.
And my heart is calm with Thee, my heart that went forth with a shout.
Thou hast compassed me wholly about.
With the floods of Thy peace Thou hast compassed me wholly about.
I am elate with power.
Past is the creative hour.
I am calm for the ways of men.
Shall I not proclaim Thee then
To the doubting lives of men!
Out of the dawn have I plucked Thee.
I go to the world of men.
The Bestowing Virtue
GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER
The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but
the I not yet; thus spake Zarathustra.