powers of Emma Goldman, although it is always too easy to consider only
Miss Goldman’s sturdy “wrecking” capacity. But the percentage of
constructive element in Mrs. Ellis’s work is much more apparent than in
Miss Goldman’s. Clearly, each woman is superlative in her own sphere. By
virtue of its tested strength, Mrs. Ellis’s constructive machinery may
be said to destroy naturally whatever gets in its way. And in addition
to this she does some direct, incisive battling as well. Her humor has
carbolic in it. Her sarcasm is a spiritual antiseptic.
In the realm of the child, Mrs. Ellis agrees with that grand Swedish
woman—Ellen Key. These two coincide upon the supreme importance of full
and proper education for the coming generation, including eugenics,
hygiene, and kindred topics. It is a joy to know of so much sanity
abroad in the world.
But even today, when a number of more or less important writers and
speakers are taking up her ideas, when Chicago is having the truths of
humanity forced down its tonsilitic throat, it was still possible—on a
Sunday night in the Little Theatre—for Mrs. Ellis to have in her
audience many whose deep sighs of boredom it was scarcely necessary to
observe before tagging them as a lower class of mentality, while no
doubt their jewels and furs were quite necessary to indicate their
social standing. What curious gropings of psychology brought these
people to such a lecture? Or was it fashion? In the faces of these might
a dozen Saviours have found ample pity-material. Yawns and dull looks!
Something between a Cross and a Bomb was wanting to awaken these
unthinking ones, asleep while superb ideas—ideas of admirable vitality
and development—were being put before them by the clear and earnest
voice of a great woman.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and
evil.—_Nietzsche._
London Letter
EDWARD SHANKS
_London, Dec. 1, 1914._
I have to humiliate myself at the beginning of this letter. Nietzsche
did not provoke the war; he did not imagine there was ever any
specifically “Teutonic” culture, worthy of being spread at any cost; and
he seems to have disliked Prussia as much or more than I do. I say this
not to inform the readers of THE LITTLE REVIEW, who know it all already
from the number in which my error appeared, but to unburden my soul. I
sinned like a daily journalist and spoke from hearsay—for I confess I
have never been able to read Nietzsche with sufficient attention to gain
more than a vague notion of his ideas. Two persons set me right—Mr.
Harold Monro, the editor of _Poetry and Drama_, with some heat and
indignation, and, more gently, Mr. A. R. Orage, the editor of _The New
Age_, who was in old days one of the first to bring Nietzsche to
England. It would seem that his efforts were of little use, for my
blunder was merely an incident in a carnival of misapprehension which is
now engaging our pseudo-intellectual critics. I have sinned in numerous,
if evil, company.
I must withdraw another statement—namely, that the war has produced no
adequate and agreeable verse. Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s _Sing-songs of the
War_ (published by the Poetry Bookshop) is an admirable little volume.
Wisely pitching his note neither too high nor too vulgarly, he has
struck closer to the mark than he has ever in any attempt. He has
achieved an excellent patriotic song, beginning
O, England is an island,
The fairest ever seen:
They say men come to England
To learn that grass is green.
That needs only supporting music to be a fine song of the pleasant
boisterousness and exaggeration that it should be. Of the others, _The
Drowned Sailor_ and _Soldier, Soldier_, have caught a wonderful and
touching note of the folk-song. Mr. Hewlett’s work here is not
ambitious, he has profited enormously by not keeping in his mind the
necessity of producing a fine piece of literature. He has tried honestly
to produce “something that will do” and much good poetry has been
written in that way.
Mr. Harold Monro’s new book, _Children of Love_, which he has published
himself at the Poetry Bookshop, contains also four gloomy war poems as
far removed from Mr. Hewlett’s as from the verse of the newspapers. They
are vivid and real impressions of fighting and, as appeals for
recruiting, enormously inapt. But poetry does not exist for that. The
title poem is a lovely piece, Mr. Monro’s very best, the composition
which settled, or should have settled, all our doubts concerning his
genius. The others display that sombre misery which is the
characteristic note of his writing, which is extremely uncomfortable
and, after a little while, extremely impressive.
I may seem to have devoted too much space to the publications of the
Poetry Bookshop. But I think that, with luck, as time goes on, it may
bulk yet more largely in English letters. Mr. Monro, if he is careful,
may have the position that the _Mercure de France_ held in Paris until
quite recently: that is, he may publish about ninety per cent of all the
good poetry that is published.
The war—again—disturbing our lives as a great tidal wave disturbs sea
and shore, has brought to the surface, as waves will, many things of
beauty. Among these, one that is not regarded, is Thomas Hardy’s
_Dynasts_, which has been abridged and produced by Mr. Granville Barker.
It is printed in three volumes and nineteen acts, with innumerable
choruses and semi-choruses. Mr. Barker has reduced the play to three
acts and the chorus to two persons who sit enthroned, one on each side
of the stage. Mr. Henry Ainley sits at a reading-desk lower down in
front and declaims the descriptive stage-directions. The setting is a
conventional design in grey to which slight additions are made from time
to time, but which remains for the most part unchanged. Thus you see the
men and women of Wessex in fear of invasion by “Boney,” the victory and
death of Nelson, the death and burial of Sir John Moore, Wellington at
Salamanca, Napoleon signing his abdication at Fontainebleau, Wellington
and Napoleon at Waterloo. The Napoleon was bad: he laughed sardonically
in the fashion of melodrama, but the play transcended him. The tragedy
was profoundly moving, the comedy not less so. It is an extraordinary
work, written in Mr. Hardy’s graceless style, and probably the greatest
of his compositions. One thing only was wanting—an audience. That which
is essentially impressive must have something to impress—the listeners
have a place in a good play—and the grandeur of the occasion was
sensibly diminished. When we went, we asked the box-office attendant if
we might go in at half-price, on account of our uniforms, and he
answered indifferently that “we might if we liked.” When we got in, we
understood. There were about two rows in the stalls and two more in the
pit. The boxes were empty as far as I could see. I cannot understand the
English public. What more do they want now than to see Nelson on the
_Victory_ and Wellington at Waterloo? Is it a cause of offence to them
that the play is by a great man?
New York Letter
GEORGE SOULE
If I were a Japanese journalist looking for notoriety, I should
translate sections from Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richmond
P. Hobson, _et al._, and publish them under the title “America and the
Next War.” There is no question that these gentlemen put together are
ten times as influential in the United States as von Bernhardi was in
Germany. And there is no question that their utterances are just as
inciting to militarism. If to them were added editorials from the Hearst
newspapers, with their millions of circulation, and the books of certain
prominent army officers, no one could convince the Japanese that the
United States is not a conceited, hot-headed, and militarist nation.
After the outbreak of a war we should plead in vain that we are
peace-loving and fight only in self-defence. “Have you not the second
largest navy in the world?” the Japanese would say. “Was any nation
threatening you? Did you not capture the Philippines by force and subdue
them against their will, practicing against the innocent natives
horrible atrocities? Would you not do the same to Japan if you had the
chance? Fortunately we are forewarned, and seize a favorable occasion to
free the Philippines, since you have broken your promise to give them
independence.” And we should feel that the Japanese were monsters hiding
their aggressive spirit under humanitarian humbug.
Most of us have forgotten the spasm of “divine mission” that swept over
this country at the time of the Spanish-American war. We were appointed
by God to conquer or absorb the world, and bestow upon it, willing or
unwilling, our American _Kultur_. “Civilization” was, indeed, the
precise word we used, although we sometimes varied it with “free
institutions.” At the same time the beef trust was furnishing “embalmed
beef” to the army, and our economic system was at its very depth of
unsavoriness. The Spanish papers cartooned us, quite justly, as “the
American hog,” and the cartoons were reproduced broadcast over this
country to feed the fires of hate. A Spaniard became to us the very
impersonation of demoniacal cruelty. The country ran high with the spy
fever, while the Atlantic coast waited in some trepidation for the
imagined approach of Cervera’s squadron. We were prey to all the
grinning illusions of war.
European opinion was at this time largely against us. To most Europeans
we seemed a combination of pious humbug and bumptious conceit. To be
actively dangerous we should have needed only a powerful armament. As it
was, they regarded us with only distant apprehension. But they were not
for a moment deceived by our high-sounding phrases. We were the most
dollar-worshipping nation in the world, had often proved ourselves so.
They recalled the unpleasant experiences they had had at the hands of
Americans—vulgar tourists. The thing was perfectly obvious. We had
little fineness of feeling. What we were fighting for was really dollars
and cents, not the freedom of subject peoples. At this time they set
themselves to watch us very carefully. Canada and the rest of America
shared their feelings, with more bitterness.
Since then there has been little visible and striking change. We still
live under an inchoate and un-idealistic commercialism. The world can
thank us for very few treasures of literature, philosophy, or art. Not a
single great nation has any particular occasion to love us. To most of
them we are blasphemous and hateful. Hearst has more millions and more
newspapers than ever, and we are still subject to strong popular
hysteria—such as the recently-shown hatred of Germany. We sit as judges
on the world. We calmly assume that we could do no such terrible things
as other nations; that our _Kultur_ is the best. At any time we may
again be ready to spread it by force of arms.
Now all the powerful nations of the world, except us, are weakening each
other in a terrific struggle. The occasion is seized in America by the
armament makers and a political party without an issue. To defend
ourselves we must arm! they say. Anyone who has taken the trouble to
read Bernhardi’s books will know that it is the precise argument he
employed. Political parties under commercialism are unscrupulous, and we
shall doubtless see the agitation raised to a national issue. Anything
to get the Democrats out of office. The probability is that the hysteria
will succeed. The only hope to the contrary is that it may be allayed,
not by opposition, but by prompt action on the part of the
administration which shall mend our present fences without committing us
to any definite policy of armament.
Suppose, however, that a President should be elected on the issue of
larger armament immediately after the European war. It is an insult to
the intelligence to pursue the logic of events further. The “defensive”
alliance against us, the “defensive” alliance for us—if, indeed we could
induce anybody to enter one—the constantly-increasing tension, the
_casus belli_, the repetition of history. But such a disastrous war
would not be a tragedy if we had so deserved it. The tragedy would be
that we should have no such intrinsic worth as has Germany to offer as a
defence. The tragedy would be that we had been so concerned about the
mote in our brother’s eye that we had failed to remove the beam in our
own.
I Am Woman
MARGUERITE SWAWITE
I am woman:
Old as Lebanon cedars—and far older;
Young as the freshest green shoot
That peeps through the snow in the March time.
My face is turned to the East
Pink with the dawn of my promise;
My hands are clutched from behind
By the fettering fingers of her who was woman alone,
Molded and spurred by desire,
Knowing only the need
Of a kiss for the cup of her throat,
Of a child for the curve of her arm.
To-day I am woman,
Less—yet a little more;
For I am learning to sing
Not his, nor another’s, but mine own song,
That has lain in my heart since the first day.
A great golden song it shall be
Though not always soft with sweet cadence,
For I must travail to sing:
I am learning
To feed upon nothing, yet fill me;
To warm my chill limbs without fire;
To go on my way, without kiss, without child,
Though my lip is red, my arm willing.
Yet I know I shall never cease
Till I have sung it all—
All to the very last note.
Still I shall be woman
In all the long days to come
That beckon to me in the pink dawn;
My song shall grow sweetly familiar,
And he who was frightened shall draw near
Singing his separate song,
Ever his own and yet blending
Its virile strains with mine;
So we shall raise a great harmony
Enfolding the world in our music,
Rejoicing again in our marriage.
One day that shall be ....
But to-day
I am weary—
The East is rosy with promise of dawn.
(_The following is one of the poems in Edgar Lee Master’s
“Spoon River Anthology” which has been running in Reedy’s
St. Louis Mirror and attracting such wide-spread attention.
In our opinion it is in the first ranks of fine poetry._)
Caroline Branson
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked
As often before the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the rock, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning
In the inspired improvisation of love!
But to put back of us as a canticle ended
The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
In which our souls swooned, down, down,
Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—
Annihilated in love!
To leave these behind for a room with lamps;
And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
Stared at by all between salad and coffee.
And to see him tremble, and feel myself
Prescient, as one who signs a bond—
Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped
With rosy hands over his brow.
And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!
With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning
In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all.
Next day he sat so listless, almost cold,
So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,
Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness
Seized us to make the pact of death.
A stalk of the earth sphere,
Frail as star-light,
Waiting to be drawn once again
Into creation’s stream.
But next time to be given birth
Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis
Sometimes as they pass.
For I am their little brother,
To be known clearly face to face
Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.
You may know the seed and the soil;
You may feel the cold rain fall.
But only the earth-sphere, only heaven
Knows the secret of the seed
In the nuptial chamber under the soil.
Throw me into the stream again,
Give me another trial—
Save me, Shelley!
Music
The Kneisel Quartet and Hofmannized Chopin
ALBERT SPALDING
What more felicitous combination could be desired than this: Albert
Spalding playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Thomas
Orchestra! Twice, four thousand people were warmed to genuine
enthusiasm; and at both the Friday and Saturday concerts the orchestra
men (whose utterly bored manner is their usual tribute) awakened and
showed the strongest appreciation for the young man’s art. Frederick
Stock beamed, fatherly, while he clapped his hands.
The displayers of sophisticated conceit and blasé judgment still choose
to regard Albert Spalding as a student. Their criticism, superficial as
it is, might have been based upon his playing of three or more years
back, when, along with the most marked talent, there was an element of
the conservatoire in his work. But the pupil has disappeared, and there
is now purely the artistic individual. And it follows naturally that,
for these same critics, unless one draws from a violin a tone as big as
a string bass, it cannot be beautiful.
For his two Chicago appearances he chose a work which is completely
suited to him. Spalding can play Mendelssohn. This composer, with his
happy delicacy, beauty, and rhythmic finesse, was safe in the hands of
the artist. A sturdier or a more sensuous fiddler might have soiled the
concerto. For Spalding is a spiritual aristocrat, a musician whose tonal
excellencies are not florid, but elegant; not passionate, but of a fine
intensity.
Technic?—One speaks of technic only when there is too much or too
little. Albert Spalding has, at the age of twenty-six, learned the
supreme art of self-expression; and both the self which he expresses and
the medium he employs for it are of the first order of fine things.
HERMAN SCHUCHERT.
Book Discussion
Love’s Highway
_Love and the Soul Maker_, by Mary Austin. [D. Appleton and Company,
New York.]
There is a certain generic myth, outcropping whenever the discovery of
some mysterious, hidden treasure is in question, which is that the
discoverer may possess only so much of it as he can carry away on his
own person. Whenever I met this climax in my childish reading my greedy
little soul rebelled because the hero might not have all that his eyes
could see instead of the negligible bit that he could handle with his
own muscles. Experience has taught that under no circumstances can a man
own more than he possesses within himself; this is as true of material
art forms as it is of culture and education. It is almost tragic in its
truth when we look about and see such a wealth of apparent happiness and
love and then look into our own impoverished hearts. We may not covet
either our neighbor’s automobile or his wife, but frequently we do
covet, in spite of good intentions, the happiness that he derives from
that automobile and that wife. Particularly weak are we when we look
down love’s highway and see what we believe to be limitless and ideal
joy. The little orbit in which we move seems sadly askew, and it takes a
book like Mary Austin’s _Love and the Soul Maker_ to make us understand
that all the topsy-turviness of the present is but the labor-pain of a
saner, truer, happier future.
The author combines science and sentiment in a new way. Her facts show
that she has read widely; her conclusions show that she has thought
deeply; her sentiments show that she has felt—at least potentially—most,
if not all, of the joys and sorrows which the practice and malpractice
of love produce. And the one shining truth that she has discovered in
all this hidden treasure of sex happiness is that “_we’ve a right to as
much love as we can work up into the stuff of a superior personality_.”
This truth is thrown out as independently of conventions, prejudices,
religious beliefs or practices as a searchlight is independent of the
hinges that hold it in place. It is the ultimate measure of what is good
or what is bad in love; it is the standard by which all sex problems
must finally be adjusted. She goes on to say that “taking anything over
what we can give back in some form or other to the social sum is my
notion of sinning”—and an inspired notion of sinning it is, too. We are
all searching for the treasure of love happiness, yet no one may justly
take more than he can carry away in inspiration and the impulse of
creating something within or without that will add to the sum total of
human happiness.
Between facts and sentiment Mrs. Austin leans to sentiment—yet why not?
She is not writing for the elect body of sex students, but for ordinary
men and women. Those who have read little or nothing of sex psychology
would find cold, uncompromising facts too difficult a diet. Offering
them such an argument would be like comforting a bumped child with the
multiplication table. By means of such a book as _Love and the Soul
Maker_ it may be possible for even the ossifying brains of dogmatists to
catch a glimmer of light on our present sex problems, while such
dazzlingly and ruthlessly true books as Havelock Ellis writes may
petrify several additional lobes.
Although not openly propagandic, Mrs. Austin has a decided philosophy of
life which she sets forth in a dozen different ways and which, without
saying so, she hopes her reader will accept. She insists that “the
proper end of loving is not personal but racial; it is the Soul Maker’s
most precious commodity,” and that love pirates or love grafters commit
their most venal sin by believing that love is its own excuse. As Mrs.
Austin expresses it, “Love for love’s sake is the shibboleth by which
they blunt the unassailable fact that love was not invented for love’s
sake but for life’s.” Here, of course, is a radical point of departure
which will turn many readers away from her pages; it may, however,
induce an equal number to read further.
The flaws in our modern system of marriage are more closely seen and
more cleverly pointed out than are the remedies offered. For example,
the author shows that modern society asks of marriage “things it was
never meant to pay”; yet her remedy is vague. And again: “The initial
mistake about marriage is in regarding it as a condition, a state, when
it is primarily a relation” and may exist in spite of very unfavorable
conditions and quite apart from them. Delightfully, indeed, does she
puncture the time-worn fallacy of platonic friendships: “I doubt that
there can be any informing intimacy between men and women unless there
exists also the potentiality of passionate experience.” Yet many of her
views are completely radical. “There never has been a time since man
stood up and knew himself for man,” she writes, “that the major process
of love has been reproductive,” and later she points out that “chief
among the uses of passion is the raising of the percentage of values in
those who entertain it.” She cuts off all the frills of convention,
ceremony, tradition; strips away all but the essential naked truth germ
and declares: “Marriage is an agreement between any pair to practice
mate-love toward one another, with intention.”
Marriage, thus simplified, would not, indeed could not, be the failure
which modern society so widely accepts with resignation instead of
combating with thoughtful dissatisfaction. We have become so racially
hypnotized that we do not distinguish between associated facts (such as
food, shelter, religious sanction, obedience, etc.) and the essential
truth of mate-love. “The primary obligation of lovers is to love,” she
says. This done, all will adjust itself; and yet lest any should draw
the over-quick conclusion that Mrs. Austin advocates free love, let me
also add that she says: “To love and to keep on loving. This is the one
way of making marriage do its work in the world.”
As a remedy she begs women to open their eyes to the fact that marriage
is not now the only career for them. That marriage does not fill the
lives of those who enter it is evidenced by the divorce courts.
Tentatively Mrs. Austin suggests that instead of dissolving so many
marriages it would be wiser to unload the excessive strain put upon
them. Let economics take hold of the problem of the mother, who for the
sake of providing bread for herself and her children crucifies her own
personality, ignores her own right to happiness upon the racial
conception of marriage. Very frankly she explains what marriage should
do for us: “First of all to satisfy the hunger of the body for its
natural mate ... and finally it must satisfy the need of companionship
on the intimate and personal side of life.” She hints that “it is
immensely more important that a mating pair should relish kissing
together than that they should both be Presbyterian.”