THE LITTLE REVIEW
_Literature Drama Music Art_
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
SEPTEMBER, 1914
Poems Maxwell Bodenheim
Armageddon
Women in War Sonya Levien
Children of War Eunice Tietjens
Grocer Shops and Souls
The Democrat With Apologies to Mr. Galsworthy
The Constructive Reasoner "
The Crucified Dionysus Alexander S. Kaun
Poems Amy Lowell
The Poetry of Revolt Charles Ashleigh
The Nietzschean Love of Eternity George Burman Foster
The Restaurant Violin George Soule
Editorials
"Baboosya"
Obituary of a Poet Floyd Dell
Humbugging the Public Henry Blackman Sell
New York Letter George Soule
Book Discussion:
The Gospel According to Moore
Chekhov and Andreyev
Horace Traubel's Whitman
"Midstream"
A Defense of the Grotesque
The Reader Critic
Published Monthly
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MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
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THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. I
SEPTEMBER, 1914
No. 6
Copyright, 1914, by Margaret C. Anderson.
Poems
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
After Feeling Deux Arabesques by Debussy
I stuffed my ears with faded stars
From the little universe of music pent in me,
For your fiendish ripple must be heard but once:
Passing twice through ears, it looses
Its thin divine kinkiness....
I felt it undulate my soul--
Lavender water, pitted and heaved to huge, uneasy circles.
Let Me Not Live Too Long
Never will my crumbling tongue hug the drying sides of the basin,
Slaying the last, delicate drops.
Fire have I tasted;
It has flicked me but never burnt--
I shall leave it before it breaks into me.
One flame will I wrap about my browned skin--a deed accomplished--
To speak to me on the way.
Then will I go quickly, lest the other fire-beings scorch my slow feet.
To the Violinist
(_Mr. Bodenheim writes of the violinist described in our last
issue._)
Pits a trillion times blacker than black,
Fringed with little black grasses, each holding
The jerking, smoldering ghost of a thought.
(O deep-aged pupils and lashes!)
At the bottom of the pits lay the phosphorescent bones,
Of many souls that have cried and died.
I think you clutched one of your soul-bones with irreverent hands,
And struck your cringing violin.
Gifts
A dwindling gift are you, laughter.
Old men have I seen, counterfeiting you on street-corners.
Never shall I join them,
For not in scorn do I laugh, but in praise.
Only with my smiles am I lavish;
A different smile for each thought have I.
(O thousands of smiles waiting for the labor of birth!)
To my death-bed will come the wildest smile:
It will be moon-paint on a colorless house.
Hell
(_A Part of Heaven Overlooked by Ford Madox Hueffer._)
Heaven and Hell are together.
As we walk home on a street in Heaven, in the evening,
Those in Hell will stalk past us
(For Hell is a condition, not a place)
And when we return at dawn will we still see them--
Men bearing infants born dead,
Kissing the inert purple cheeks;
(For the kiss will be the one punishment of Hell);
Men and women holding the severed heads of those they once spat on.
Before a king kissing the head of his queen will we stop,
To give him a kind word;
Or before an anarchist clasping the head of the king;
Or before a woman carrying the head of the anarchist--
Each unaware of the other's presence.
We will see them walking up and down the streets of Heaven
For countless years,
Till the day when the heads will disappear,
And the head-bearers build homes next to our own.
To a Woman
Lovers married a thousand years in Heaven
And in that which lies beyond Heaven
(For Heaven is but the first rest of a thirstless journey)
Know not each other as we do.
Knowledge is born of a second:
We had our slim second,
And it will live for millions of years.
Only when it reaches the suburbs of Eternity, will it die.
Armageddon
The greatest war of history flames away all other human concerns. Upon
the reaction of humanity to this gigantic thing depends the future.
No one can foresee what will happen to the cultures and the peoples
which already crackle in its vortex. It is more profitable to search the
heart of America.
A great newspaper has published a cartoon picturing Uncle Sam on a
harvesting machine, calmly saying "Giddap" to his horses, while a
neglected sheet with the inscription "European war" blows to one side.
As long as devastation and horror do not exist on his own piece of land,
Uncle Sam doesn't care--while he can harvest his wheat and sell it at a
good high price to starving people. Even the dramatic aspect of the
tremendous conflict does not impinge on his provincial consciousness.
Can this contemptible attitude represent that of any great number of our
people? One cannot escape the feeling that it is the usual reaction of
the newspaper to any thing outside of "business," whether it be social
misery, or an interesting idea. But in this case its brutish stupidity
is so flagrantly apparent that even the majority must revolt from it.
A more creditable reaction is anger. With such titanic wrath blazing in
Europe, any sensitive person must reflect a little of it. Anger at what?
We don't know precisely until we stop to think. The emotion comes before
the intellectual objective. Anger perhaps at the terrific human waste.
Twenty-odd million men flying at each other's throats and destroying the
bitterly won triumphs of years of peace, without any good reason. We
hear phrases like "balance of power," "dynastic supremacy," "the life of
our country," "patriotism," "racial prejudice," "difference of
religion." Each individual nation is praying to God with profound
sincerity for its own success. Priests bless the arms. There is no
denying the reality of all this in the consciousness of Europe. Such
things do lead men to battle with the fire of conviction.
Well, the brutal fact stands out like a giant against the sky, that if
such motives can produce such a result, they are working only for their
own destruction. Not a single nation, whether conqueror or victim, can
come out of the struggle as strong or as great as it went in. All alike
must be swept into destitution of all the things civilization has taught
us to value. And this is the result of civilization! It is a spectacle
or demoniac laughter.
And shall the United States stand aloof with a feeling of pitying
superiority, thinking that, because we happen to have a president
instead of a king, and inhabit a different continent, such motives are
foreign to us? What folly of conceit! As long as we cultivate the ideal
of patriotism, as long as we put economic value above spiritual and
human value, as long as in our borders there exist dogmatic religions,
as long as we consider desirable the private ownership and exploitation
of property for private profit--whether by nations or by individuals--we
maintain those elements of civilization which have led Europe to the
present crisis.
Do not think that we shall ever escape wrath, hatred, violence. The
so-called "primitive emotions" are giving incontrovertible proof of
strong present existence. The thing to do is to turn all the emotions,
which are eternal, into new forms which shall not be self-destructive,
which shall propel instead of oppose the starward march of mankind.
Violence? Yes, if it destroys something hateful.
Nineteenth-century civilization has overwhelmingly and dramatically
failed. What shall we build now?
Women in War
(_By a spectator_)
SONYA LEVIEN
The suffragettes at Lincoln's Inn are skeptical of foreigners' sympathy.
I pleaded with those in authority to be taken in.
"It is real war with us," I was told, "and we have reached the stage
where, even at the sacrifice of being regarded as insane and fools by
the world, we cannot stop to explain all over again." It was not
curiosity, I urged, or lack of understanding. I believed in votes, but I
believed in women more; I wanted to feel as well as understand their
great Purpose.
My earnestness won their faith, and for two weeks my senses were
saturated with every emotion that prevailed in the Englishwomen's fight
against their own country and the rest of the world.
I saw their ammunition stored in back bedrooms of hidden houses--cotton
soaked in kerosene, small bags of stone, bottles filled with
queer-smelling liquids, and now and then a small bomb filled with powder
or metal. All this I considered very formidable then and marvelled at
the women's courage in handling the material.
Scared and horrified, I witnessed the burning of two famous old
churches; I helped in the heckling of public speakers, and remonstrated
with the police at their outrages upon unoffending women.
The spiritual urge of the fighting women transmitted itself to me and I
found myself supporting them with a courage not natural to me. That the
character of their protest might be petty, tactless, unwomanly, or even
futile, mattered not--for one felt that they were soldiers fighting in a
great cause, the slogan of which was: "Give us a chance to develop a
better race of men and women." And the Englishmen looked on ashamed of
their womenkind, and the rest of the world snickered.
And then the cataclysm of war descended upon all Europe and civilized
man went mad for murder--wholesale terrible murder without reason or
purpose. Sickened by the cry for blood, the women's fight became holy in
its significance to me. I saw England change in five minutes when on the
streets of London the first cry of war was heard. In a lightning shift
Trafalgar Square became a seething mass of gesticulating people--a mob
which seemed instantly to drop its sacred inheritance of "good form" and
give way to wild and ominous protest and speak eloquently of "an honor"
to be upheld; but just what "the honor" was no one seemed to know.
Berlin sang all night to the tune of "Die Wacht Am Rhein," in
celebration of the opportunity given the fittest of the Vaterland to
slaughter and be slaughtered by the pick of the neighboring countries.
But the reason and purpose for the slaughter they did not know.
Russia, famous for its barbaric cruelty to the Poles and Jews, asks for
the sacrifice of the races and thinks itself a generous Christian if in
return it promises to give what is left of them the right to their
mother-tongue and the privilege to worship God in their own way.
And what of the women? For the first time I felt the real greatness of
the women's fight and the sad futility of it before man's ignorance. For
the first time I felt the real tragedy of the women of Europe whose
business it is to bring up sons for the man's _game of war_. And to see
them now is to see death--a calm bitter death surrounded by panic and
catastrophe.
Children of War
EUNICE TIETJENS
Out of the womb of war we cry to you,
We who have yet to be,
We who lie waiting in the strong loins of time, unformed and hesitant,
We who shall be your sons and your slim daughters.
In the womb of war shall you beget us, and with the seal of the war-god
shall we be sealed;
In ditches shall we be begotten, of lust-crazed soldiers on the
screaming women of the enemy.
Of camp followers and scavengers shall we be conceived, of the weakling
and the sick.
We shall be begotten in secret, stolen meeting of man and wife, drunk
with weariness the man, and blind with terror the woman.
In bitterness of soul shall we be borne, and deeply shall we suck the
pap of hatred. Revenge shall be our daily bread, and with
blood-lust shall we be nourished.
Yea, in our bodies shall we bear the seal of the war-beast.
Our hearts shall be thin and naked as your sword-blades, and our souls
ruthless as your cannon.
And we shall pay--year by year, in our frail bodies and our twisted
souls shall we pay
For your glorious patriotism.
Out of the womb of war we cry to you,
We who have yet to be!
Grocer Shops and Souls
A very eminent American professor has recently declared that American
literary criticism is deficient, that the commercialism of publishers is
largely responsible. The first proposition is obvious, the second
defensible. The professor further argues for a criticism based on
academic standards, which he says are as immutable as the ten
commandments; and he couples this with the declaration that criticism
finds its justification in the desire of the public to know what it is
buying. The immutable standards are to correspond with the
government-approved weights and measures of the grocer-shop.
It would be enlightening to give the professor an opportunity to try his
plan. Let some millionaire, instead of starting a new college, endow a
critical magazine for the professor. In the first number should be
announced the fixed standards by which all literature is to be judged.
Then would follow calm, irrefutable issues in which the principles of
unity, coherence, emphasis and perhaps one or two other measures, should
be applied to new literature. The public, eager for standard articles,
would, of course, never again read Hall Caine and Harold Bell Wright.
The commercialization of literature would be abolished, for would not
the professor declare it to be against the decalogue? And there would
arise a new generation of writers, carefully observing all academic
rules, and scrupulously giving the public full measure of what it wants.
A veritable Utopia, an apotheosis of the grocer-shop!
But, however much we may doubt the possibility of such a thing, we
cannot oppose the professor, because he has disarmed opposition by
predicting it. Of course, he says in effect, there will arise hordes of
young, ill-seasoned, and irresponsible persons who will deny my sound
position. But don't let them trouble you; they are of a piece with all
the queer people who nowadays are advancing preposterous new ideas. As
if anything that is not sanctioned by tradition could possibly be taken
seriously!
Very well, we won't oppose the professor. We are quite willing to let
him go ahead pigeon-holing the kind of literature that appeals to him,
and anything he may be able to do in turning the public taste from Hall
Caine deserves approbation. But in the meantime we shall assiduously
forget about him, and try some experiments of our own in the effort to
say vital things about literature.
In the first place, we don't believe in the majority rule for writers.
We don't believe that a writer ever lived who wrote anything really good
because he thought the reading public wanted it. Our conviction is based
on the testimony of writers themselves. A writer should write what is in
him, not what is in the public. He has no excuse for writing unless he
is a stronger, more sensitive, and more intelligent man than either his
readers or his critics. That is the first distinction between the
manufacturer of sausages and the maker of books.
In the second place, we don't believe in the subjection of writers to
critics, or to fixed standards, or to anything except themselves.
Whatever excuse there is for standards arises from the fact that writers
have furnished the examples on which the standards are founded. The
writer must find his authority in his own soul. The one thing he must do
is to say what he has to say in the way which seems to him right. The
history of art is one long example of the discarding by genius of rules
founded on previous work. When was a new technique ever predicted by the
academic critic? When has not the new genius been bitterly fought by the
academic critic? The natural history of art is this--first the artist,
then the intelligent critic, then the appreciative public.
The function of the critic is to be a warrior for the artist. He must
understand profoundly, he must be quick to detect and denounce artistic
insincerity, he must declare the man who has attained the magic of real
aesthetic rightness. The recognition of artistic excellence does not
proceed by the scaffolding of academicism; it is instinctive, just as
its creation was instinctive, emotional. The critic may, if he likes,
oppose the artist, but his first duty is to make him known. He must say
to the public, not "you will like this man" but "you must like this man,
or at least you must experience him." No critic is fit to do these
things unless he understands the passionate independence of the real
artist, his service of no law except inner necessity.
Our spiritual world is tangled up in mechanism. No sooner does a fresh
wind make itself known than we try to imprison it in a system, to impale
it with a classification. Let us have done with these futilities. The
important joy is to feel the mysterious and dynamic glory of the wind.
We need in our criticism, as in our literature, more insight, more
emotion, more of the power that is produced by virility and the
corresponding female quality for which there is as yet no adequate name.
The heightening of consciousness, the intensifying of essential
values--these shall be our critical aims.
A sense of the obviousness of what we have said prevents us from
amplifying it. Our excuse for saying it is that there are still many
professors in the world!
There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is
something entirely too splendid to be sane.--_Oscar Wilde._
The Democrat
(_With apologies to Mr. Galsworthy_)
He knew himself for a democrat. He might be with a crowd of what he
called "real people" and if he happened to pass a waiter who had served
him or a barber who had shaved him he would speak to them. He would do
it without the least embarrassment or condescension; anything else he
would have considered low. His friends knew him to be essentially
democratic; they would assure you of this quality in him as something
that only the morally courageous possess.
To have explained that his attitude was a matter of common sense rather
than democracy would have left him bewildered. Surely every one
recognized that there were certain barriers that had to be maintained;
it was not a question of snobbishness, but simply of natural law. The
man who had pushed ahead and made something of himself was more entitled
to the respect of his fellows than the waiter who was content to spend
his life serving other people. Take himself, for example. He might have
been a bricklayer if he had not worked hard enough to be a power on the
Board of Trade. He had done it all himself and he knew the difficulties
of the struggle. He could remember the time when he would hire a taxi
and dash all over town to find the special brand of cigarettes he liked.
Of course he realized now that that was an extravagant and foolish thing
to do; but after all a boy must have his taste of "sporting." And then,
of course, there was nothing _harmful_ in chasing around town for
cigarettes in a taxi. He might have been doing something really wrong
instead--such as marrying a chorus girl or becoming one of those
revolutionists who worries his friends to death by fighting for the
proletariat and getting into jail as a consequence. No, thank heaven, he
had had his little flings, but he had always kept his head. He had never
really done anything to disgrace himself or his friends. But it was a
hard struggle, and he respected anyone who had come through it
successfully. That was the reason of his insistence on natural barriers.
That was the reason he felt it an honor to shake the hand of a great
man--the man who had made a million by his skilful corner of the wheat
market, for instance. He had a real respect for brains, for power, for
achievement, for all the things that keep a man from being a weakling.
Not that he worshipped power or made a god of success. On the contrary,
he was something of an idealist himself--though not the sort literary
people talk about. He always made it a point to state that he had no use
for literary "ideas." Those people didn't really know what they were
talking about. They were so impractical; they wanted to change the face
of the earth and they seemed to think that ideas would do it. But even
for that sort of thing he had a certain tolerance: he remembered how he
had planned long ago to be a missionary--to go to the ends of the world
and help people. He did not remember just what he wanted to help them
to, but it was a sort of plan to ease his conscience when he felt he
wasn't doing any good in the world. However, he had got over that in the
same way he had given up his vision of the brown-stone mansion with
which he had planned at eighteen to delight the woman he married.
He was very human, too; but he did demand certain standards of conduct.
There was nothing he hated like snobbishness--he would always speak to
anybody, no matter what he had done; but beyond that he respected
himself and his friends too much to venture. When the men at his club
pointed out, with their knowing winks, that a certain woman was
"outside"--well, that was enough for him. He would never do anything to
push her further down, but he could at least warn his friends. And he
had an infinite disgust, a pitying contempt for those who suggested that
circumstances may have had something to do with it. As though it were
not the prime business of every human being to fight circumstances; as
though he himself might not have been a regular Mark Lennan if he had
let himself go. Every man had these things in him. That was the trouble
with such writers as Galsworthy:--they helped people to tolerate
weakness, even to see a certain beauty in it. It had got to be the
fashion, especially among "literary" circles, to break away from
standardizations. The persons who did so were given credit for living a
fuller Life. How he hated their talk--what rot it was to suppose that
any life could be full or rich unless it were a good life. And if there
was anything in the world, in these hysterical times, to which a man
could anchor, it was the fact that good was good and bad was bad, and
even a child knew which was which. There was no arguing about it.
But people seldom argued with him because he disarmed them beforehand by
declaring that it didn't matter what any one thought: all these things
had been settled for us long ago; they were the very bulwark of our
progress, our prosperity, our whole civilization. It was strange that
the people who most enjoyed the benefits of that civilization should be
the ones to abuse it. If one must know outcasts (and one might of course
be able to help them) let him confine the acquaintanceship to his office
or some place where he would not run the risk of influencing other
people. He remembered with horror a woman he had once known who could
never understand these distinctions. He had not tried to dissuade her
from knowing any one in the world she wanted to know; but he had begged
her to be discreet about it, at least--to remember her responsibilities
in the matter on account of her friends, and to be sure that "those
people" were made to feel the inevitable barrier between. "Good God!" he
had said, "I'm democratic and all that; but you can't let people of that
sort feel they're your equals!" Eventually he stopped worrying about the
woman--after she told him that she would be proud to be as big and fine
as those friends of hers. What was the use? She must have been a little
insane all the time; because he knew that she was a good woman, and
those "friends" of hers were the sort who believed in free love and that
kind of thing--some of them had even been in jail for preaching
anarchism.
He had solved such problems in his own case much in the same way he had
solved the question of his family relationships. He had been brought up
in a home where card-playing, smoking, theatre-going, etc., were
forbidden. His life as a man had of course included all these evils. But
whenever he visited the old home he reverted to the old order. He would
no more think of smoking a cigarette in his mother's presence than he
would think of telling her how vital a part of his life the theatre had
become. He had too much respect for her. He knew it would hurt her, and
his love and reverence for her were too deep to allow of that.
Something of the same simplicity and clarity colored his ideas of
property. Let each man work for his little plot of ground, own it, and
live on it. That would do away with all this fuss and competition. He
knew there were people who talked vaguely about property being robbery;
but what was there to keep the ambition in a man, make a good citizen of
him, if it were not his struggle for possession of something he might
call his own? If he had not had his little plot to look forward to, and
the thought of the woman who was to share it with him, he would long ago
have stopped working and started off to the South Sea Islands, wandering
about the earth aimlessly without any incentive. Incidentally, his idea
of the woman who was to share the plot was very interesting. He was not
one to talk bromidioms about woman's place being in the home, or to
discredit the achievements of the new woman. But the fact remained that
the new woman knew too much to be a comfortable companion. He refused to
be tyrannized; he would marry one of those sweet feminine women who
didn't know anything and live in peace and freedom.
Sometimes he got rather sick of life and found himself in that "what's
the use?" mood. It worried him a little. In the same manner that he had
driven around in a taxi for cigarettes he now lounged about in hotel
corridors or at his club, watching the people, speculating about life.
It seemed a waste of time, rather; yet it harmed no one and it kept him
from a good many worse things. His conscience was clear--which was more
than most men could say. He knew men. The only thing that really weighed
upon him seriously was the fact that he was getting a little too fat. He
would have to try to eat less.
True to his creed, his faith was in the people--the great mass of people
whose instincts always led them to the right thing. It was a safe rule
to go by--that of mistrusting the personality who did not measure up to
the decent average. It was the way to keep sane and healthful.
Socialists and anarchists and syndicalists and radicals in general--what
were they but abnormalities? He would never be guilty of the narrow
attitude that they ought to be hanged; they would quite naturally
fritter themselves out; for what they were all trying to achieve was
individualism pure and simple--and that would never buy bread for the
working-man or lift him to happiness. He might not be right about these
things, of course; but he had thought them out. Yes, he believed in the
people; he believed in their rights; and he believed in being kind to
them. There was no telling how much good a cheery smile might do, and so
he smiled constantly. A great man had once told him that he made it a
point to cultivate friendships only among those people who could help
him; and this seemed very sensible to the democrat. He practiced it
assiduously, with the result that he never lost that satisfying glow
which comes in with shaking a hand that belongs with a full dress shirt.
M. C. A.
The Constructive Reasoner
(_A Non-Mythical Allegory_)
GEORGE SOULE
He was born in the glacial age. They originally called him something
else, but as soon as he was old enough to talk he lisped the tertiary
dialect for "constructive reasoner"--when they paid any attention to
him. Later he was recognized by his characteristic expression, "Yes,
but--". When he was ten years old he watched his father, with much skill
and heroism, slaying a musk ox. "Why did you kill him?" he asked. "To
eat," was the reply. "Yes," replied the prodigy, "but what will you put
in his place?" The misguided parent glared at his son without replying,
and passed him a second joint, which was consumed with relish.
The tragedy of his early life was to watch the glaciers slowly leveling
mountains and laying up vast wastes of terminal moraine without
conscious purpose. All this destruction weighed on his soul.
He was ever an observer. As time went on, his intellect grew more
ponderous. He saw mankind slay the dinosaurs, rob the earth of its
minerals, hew down vast trees, and agitate the earth with rude plows.
Agitators were particularly distasteful to him. He stood aloof from
these movements, because he did not believe in destruction. And when men
finally set sail on the seas, he was moved to poetic rancor. "You are
destroying the mystery of the ocean" he cried. But he built himself a
fine house from the products of their commerce.
He was in Rome when the Goths swept down over Italy and sacked it. "What
will you give us instead?" he asked their leader. The Northerner frankly
did not know. "You have no right to sweep away something that has been
established so long unless you can put in its place something better,"
he complained. The great Goth laughed and grabbed another handful of
jewels.
Religions seemed to him peculiarly sacred. With great satisfaction he
watched the burning of the early Christian agitators, who were
attempting to tear in pieces the comfortable old hierarchy of Jove.
"What is this utopian theory of theirs?" he asked, derisively. "It won't
work. You can't change human nature in a day. When they give us a
program I can't pick flaws in, I will listen to them." Later he was
particularly incensed at Martin Luther and remonstrated with him for
undermining so many persons' simple faith without giving them something
that would exactly fill its place.
In the modern world he found a very comfortable niche. A city of
tradesmen offered him the post of chief prophet. Not that they bothered
much about his great principle, but he always did his best to stave off
the destructive elements of society, who interfered with business. He
advised people to be comfortable and quiet. He deplored violence of any
kind. Sane progress was all very well, but he always demanded progress
of visionaries and theorists, and he always pointed out tremendous flaws
in their programs. He opposed bitterly anything in the nature of tariff
reform or anti-trust laws. Such things destroyed business confidence,
and were not the business men the great constructive element in society?
To women who wanted the vote, he said "Woman's place is in the home. If
you had your way, you would destroy the family." He supported practical
men for office.
One day he came upon a workman wrecking an old building. The sight
filled him with pain. He went up to the man and asked him if he were
sure that the new building would be better than the old, if in fact it
would stand at all? To his great surprise the workman paid no attention
to him. Again the constructive reasoner put the question; he even
touched the workman on the shoulder. But it was as if the questioner did
not exist. He was angry and chagrined. Then it dawned on him that he was
dead. Unconsciously he had become a ghost.
Jehovah appointed a private judgment day for him. The dead hero came
before the throne. "Who are you?" asked the ruler of the universe. "I am
the constructive reasoner," he replied proudly. "What have you
constructed?" was the next question. For the first time since his birth,
the mortal was at a loss.
"Never mind," said Jehovah, "you have earned Heaven, for there all is
peace and perfection; there no one tears down or builds up." And so
Jehovah put him into a place which was labeled "Heaven," and locked the
gate on the outside.
For a while the saved soul sat on a golden throne and was contented. But
soon he began to be a little bored. He went to an older inhabitant and
asked him what one does in Heaven. "Nothing," was the answer. "The place
is populated with souls who have done nothing but try to get here, and
now they must rest from their labors. What can there be to do, in a
place that is perfect?"
For a moment the new arrival suspected for the first time that all these
years he had been mistaken. Would it not be better to be building
something, even if one had to destroy something else as a preliminary?
But he layed the suspicion aside as unworthy of him. "Before I can
logically object to Heaven," he thought, "I must propose something
better. And of course, that is impossible." So he sat down again, to
await Eternity.
G. S.
Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels.--_Dr.
Johnson._
The Crucified Dionysus
ALEXANDER S. KAUN
Achad Ha'am, in his admirable essay, _Priest and Prophet_,
differentiates between the two ways of serving an Idea. The Prophet is
essentially one-sided; a certain idea fills his whole being, masters his
every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. His gaze is
fixed always on what _ought_ to be in accordance with his own
convictions; never on what _can_ be consistently with the general
condition of things outside himself. He is a primal force. The Priest
also fosters the Idea, and desires to perpetuate it; but he is not of
the race of giants. Instead of clinging to the narrowness of the
Prophet, and demanding of reality what it cannot give, he broadens his
outlook, and takes a wider view of the relation between his Idea and the
facts of life. Not what _ought_ to be, but what _can_ be, is what he
seeks. The Idea of the Priest is not a primal force; it is an accidental
complex of various forces, among which there is no essential connection.
Their temporary union is due simply to the fact that they have happened
to come into conflict in actual life, and have been compelled to
compromise and join hands. The Priest sooner or later becomes a dominant
force, an interpreter, a teacher; the Prophet remains all his life "a
man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth," and is cried
after, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad." Throughout the
ages we have seen the repetition of this phenomenon: from Jeremiah to
Nietzsche, from Paul to Brandes. The narrow-minded, hapless giants have
been sowing seed for future generations; the broad-minded interpreters
have been cultivating the soil for their contemporaries.
_Friedrich Nietzsche_, by George Brandes, recently published by the
Macmillan company, adds little new to the vast interpretative literature
on the creator of Zarathustra. The book contains a moderate essay on
Aristocratic Radicalism, written in 1889, a necrolog, a brief note on
_Ecce Homo_, and a few letters interchanged between the philosopher and
the critic. In the last twenty-five years life and literature (perhaps I
ought to say art in general) have been so profoundly influenced by
Nietzschean views that the source of those views has ceased to be
discernable. From Gorky's _Bosyaki_ and the types of D'Annunzio down to
the Manifestoes of the Futurists, the aphorisms and paradoxes of
Nietzsche have been sounded and resounded on various scales, and the
slogan of Transvaluation of Values has been echoed and re-echoed from
the college platform, from the pulpit, from the soap-box, from the
stage, even from the cabaret and music-halls (the _Ueberbrettl'_
movement in central Europe). Perhaps the American public has been too
"busy" to be touched by that hurricane, so that it was left to Dr.
Foster to appear in our day and proclaim with prophetic fervor and
pathos the "new" Decalogue; but then our neophytes will hardly find
adequate Dr. Brandes' Essay written in 1889, when Nietzsche was
practically unknown.
Yet this belated book in its somewhat belated English translation
contains an invaluable feature--the correspondence between Nietzsche and
Brandes. "The letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious
life" says the famous critic, "appear to me to be of no little
psychological and biographical interest." Indeed so, and what is more,
they reveal a bit of the reserved personality of Brandes and provoke the
reader to venture a comparison between the correspondents.
From the very first we mark the distinct characteristics of the Priest
and the Prophet. The careful, correct, and clear interpreter, and the
bewildering, cascading revaluator of life, or, to use Ben-Zakkay's
metaphor, the plastered well that does not lose a drop, and the powerful
spring ever shooting forth new streams; the earnest professor offering
practical suggestions, telling of the book-binder, of the copyright
business, and of the big audiences at his lectures, and the seething,
"three parts blind" sufferer who swings his imagination on
revolutionizing Europe, bringing "the whole world into convulsions." The
difference in the style of writing is also characteristic. As against
Brandes' "free and graceful French way in which he handles the
language," Nietzsche thus explains his "difficult position."
On the scale of my experiences and circumstances, the
predominance is given to the rarer, remoter, more attenuated
tones as against the normal, medial ones. Besides (as an old
musician, which is what I really am), I have an ear for
quarter-tones. Finally--and this probably does more to make my
books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of
reasons. What a person already holds "true," or has not yet
acknowledged as true, seems to me to depend mainly on his
courage, on the relative strength of his courage (I seldom have
the courage for what I really know).
To which Brandes comments with his usual clarity.
... You write more for yourself, think more of yourself in
writing, than for the general public; whereas most non-German
writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain
discipline of style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and
more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and
compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best
individuality, the anonymous in him. I have thus been horrified
at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted
at in my writings.
The earnest tone of Brandes' letters is at times counteracted by a
humorous frolic on the part of his correspondent. I even suspect an
ironical smile curving around the Polish mustache, when, for instance,
Nietzsche confesses his "admiration for the tolerance of your judgment,
as much as for the moderation of your sentences." Or as when Brandes
confesses:
At the risk of exciting your wrath ... Wagner's _Tristan und
Isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. I once heard this
opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of
mind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression
was so deep because I was so ill.
Nietzsche mischievously retorts:
As to the effect of _Tristan_, I, too, could tell strange tales.
A regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic
before a Wagnerian repast. The _Reichsgerichtsrath_, Dr. Wiener,
of Leipzig, gave me to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a
good thing....
Only once irony passes into impatient sarcasm. Nietzsche expresses his
regret at not knowing either Swedish or Danish. Yet Brandes continuously
tantalizes him with such exclamations as, "What a pity that so learned a
philologist as you should not understand Danish." Back comes a flash:
"Ah, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand
Danish!"
I am tempted to bring another illustration of the profound earnestness
of the Priest as against the plausible light-mindedness of the Prophet.
Brandes writes:
I am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage. But
why do you not _dig_ deeper here? You speak somewhere with a
certain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional
ideal has idealized emotion--here, however, you are more blunt
and forcible. Why not for once say the _full_ truth about it? I
am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have
been very useful in taming brutes, causes more misery to mankind
than even the church has done. Church, monarchy, marriage,
property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions
which mankind will have to reform _from the foundations_ in order
to be able to breathe freely. And of these marriage alone kills
the individuality, paralyzes liberty and is the embodiment of a
paradox. But the shocking thing about it is that humanity is
still too coarse to be able to shake it off. The most emancipated
writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and
virtuous air which maddens me. And they gain their point, since
it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the
mob. There is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform
opinion. What do you think about it?
And this is what Nietzsche thinks about it:
I feel for you in the North, now so wintry and gloomy; how does
one manage to keep one's soul erect there? I admire almost every
man who does not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky, to say
nothing of his faith in "humanity," in "marriage," in "property,"
in the "State".... In Petersburg I should be a nihilist: here I
believe, as a plant believes, in the sun. The sun of Nice--you
cannot call that a prejudice. We have had it at the expense of
all the rest of Europe. God, with the cynicism peculiar to Him,
lets it shine upon us idlers, "philosophers," and sharpers more
brightly than upon the far worthier military heroes of the
"Fatherland."
Think of the _Lebensfreude_ that sparkles from these lines written by a
man who a few months later had to be shut out from the world, who had
suffered extremely painful and persistent headaches,--"hundred days of
torment in the year"! It was his keen sense that "a sick man had no
right to pessimism," it was his extravagant love of life that led him to
set for chorus and orchestra the _Hymn to Life_ written by Lou von
Salomé, from which we read an extract in the book of Brandes:
So truly loves a friend his friend
As I love thee, O Life in mystery hidden!
If joy or grief to me thou send;
If loud I laugh or else to weep am bidden,
Yet love I thee with all thy changeful faces;
And shouldst thou doom me to depart,
So would I tear myself from thy embraces,
As comrade from a comrade's heart.
And in conclusion:
And if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me,
Lead on! thou hast thy sorrow still!
George Brandes "discovered" Nietzsche in the last year of his conscious
life, after he had written his greatest works, unrecognized, repulsed by
his few former friends, suffering in solitude, yet with superhuman
enthusiasm casting new worlds, slaughtering old gods, fighting
mediocrity. His letters of that year reveal the final act of the
greatest of world-tragedies--the Nietzsche-Tragedy; they grant us a
glimpse into the torn soul of the joyous martyr.
I lived for years in extreme proximity of death. This was my
great good fortune. I fought myself, I outlived myself....
... After all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it
has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be
myself.... And, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, I am a brave
animal, a military one even.... Am I a philosopher, do you
ask?--But what does that matter!...
How he created his greatest work, _Zarathustra_:
Each part in about ten days. Perfect state of "inspiration." All
conceived in the course of rapid walks: absolute certainty, as
though each sentence were shouted to one. While writing the book,
the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power.
In his first letter to Brandes, Nietzsche wrote:
How far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it
will carry me yet--I am almost afraid to imagine. But there are
certain paths which do not allow one to go backward and so I go
forward, because I _must_.
And the path led him to the inevitable end. His mind reached the summit
of the heights and burst into bleeding fragments over the yet not
comprehending world. In the last letter but one we see "signs of
powerful exaltation," as Brandes chooses to name the obvious symptoms of
megalomania. January 4, 1889, is the date of an unstamped, unaddressed
letter written on a piece of paper ruled in pencil:
To the friend Georg--When once you had discovered me, it was easy
enough to find me: the difficulty now is to get rid of me....
--_The Crucified._
In reading the letters of Nietzsche we follow the doomed one with
profound pain and awe unto his Golgotha; we witness the dire trials of
his spirit and body, we see the last flashes of Zarathustra's sun,
then--darkness. _Götter-dämmerung._ Self-crucified Dionysus.
Nietzsche was by no means a child of his age. As a prophet, he hurled
his seeds far into the future, over the heads of many generations.
Mankind is still vegetating on the bottom of the Valley unable to reach
the Heights where Zarathustra is alone with himself, bathing in an abyss
of light. They who have exchanged the Prophet's pearls on up-to-date
glittering coins, are counterfeiters; they who presumptuously wrap
themselves in the crimson mantle of the Crucified Dionysus, as his
faithful followers, are impostors: the time for the Superman has not
come yet. Let us bear in mind these burning words from the farewell
message, _Ecce Homo_:
Nun heiße ich euch, mich verlieren und euch finden; und erst,
_wenn ihr mich Alle verleugnet habt_, will ich euch wiederkehren.
Soon, I believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression
that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the
average mediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old
catechisms; but that great art demands intellects that stand on a
level with the most individual personalities of contemporary
thought, in exceptionality, in independence, in defiance, and in
artistic self-supremacy.--_George Brandes._
Poems
AMY LOWELL
Clear, With Light Variable Winds
The fountain bent and straightened itself
In the night wind,
Blowing like a flower.
It gleamed and glittered,
A tall white lily,
Under the eye of the golden moon.
From a stone seat,
Beneath a blossoming lime,
The man watched it.
And the spray pattered
On the dim grass at his feet.
The fountain tossed its water,
Up and up, like silver marbles.
Is that an arm he sees?
And for one moment
Does he catch the moving curve
Of a thigh?
The fountain gurgled and splashed,
And the man's face was wet.
Is it singing that he hears?
A song of playing at ball?
The moonlight shines on the straight column of water,
And through it he sees a woman,
Tossing the water-balls.
Her breasts point outwards,
And the nipples are like buds of peonies.
Her flanks ripple as she plays,
And the water is not more undulating
Than the lines of her body.
"Come," she sings, "Poet!
Am I not worth more than your day ladies,
Covered with awkward stuffs,
Unreal, unbeautiful?
What do you fear in taking me?
Is not the night for poets?
I am your dream,
Recurrent as water,
Gemmed with the moon!"
She steps to the edge of the pool
And the water runs, rustling, down her sides.
She stretches out her arms,
And the fountain streams behind her
Like an opened vail.
* * * * *
In the morning the gardeners came to their work.
"There is something in the fountain", said one.
They shuddered as they laid their dead master
On the grass.
"I will close his eyes", said the head gardener,
"It is uncanny to see a dead man staring at the sun."
* * * * *
Fool's Moneybags
Outside the long window,
With his head on the stone sill,
The dog is lying,
Gazing at his Beloved.
His eyes are wet and urgent,
And his body is taut and shaking.
It is cold on the terrace;
A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,
But the dog gazes through the glass
And is content.
The Beloved is writing a letter.
Occasionally she speaks to the dog,
But she is thinking of her writing.
Does she, too, give her devotion to one
Not worthy?
The Poetry of Revolt
CHARLES ASHLEIGH
_Arrows in the Gale_, by Arturo Giovannitti. [Hillacre Bookhouse,
Riverside, Connecticut.]
There are many ways in which we can approach this curious and portentous
volume. We may confine ourselves solely to the technique of the writing,
but, in so doing, we should ignore the most important and compelling
part of the book: its spirit. There is something which flames through
these poems that abashes one who would content himself with a sterile
commentary on the versification; only those who are afraid of life would
take refuge in such pedantic air-beating.
In this book there is a combination of two of the most significant
personalities of our time. The preface is written by that miracle
incarnate: Helen Keller. In it she gives us the background of the
poems--a background of tumultuous class-conflict. The awakening of the
working-class, and its surprising growth of self-reliance and militancy,
is the inspiration of the book, and Helen Keller announces herself for
it and with it.