THE LITTLE REVIEW
Literature Drama Music Art
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
MAY, 1916
Three Flesh-tints: Ben Hecht
The Incense Burner
The Goldfish in a Bowl
A Nude
“The Compleat Amateur” Harold Bauer
Three Japanese Paintings: Arthur Davison Ficke
Dream of a Chinese Landscape
Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory
The Golden Symphony
The Struggle Sherwood Anderson
A Mischievous Rhapsody of the
First Recurrence
Poems: Daphne Carr
Welt Schmertz
Prisoners
Leo Ornstein Margaret C. Anderson
Nocturne (from Paul Verlaine) Clara Shanafelt
White Mists M. C. A.
Letters from Prison Emma Goldman
Off the Turnpike Amy Lowell
Potatoes in a Cellar R. G.
New York Letter Allan Ross Macdougall
Amber Monochrome Mark Turbyfill
Three Imagist Poets John Gould Fletcher
Rossica Alexander S. Kaun
The Independent Exhibition Lupo de Braila
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. III
MAY, 1916
NO. 3
Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson
Three Flesh-tints
BEN HECHT
The Incense Burner
A bending flower rises from its mouth
And sways like the vein of a zephyr.
Threads of moonlight float entangled over it,
Delicate as the breath of a dying woman.
Souls come whispering from its ancient lips,
Laden with thin secrets,
And torn by the long nails of idiot Gods....
Pale dancers arise, whirling listlessly,
Expiring in a writhing languor.
Heavy-lidded eyes crawl out and open vacantly and close....
Dried whisps of water break into blue wings.
A sleeping woman’s arm reaches up and curves into a sigh
And scratches at the air with opalescent claws.
Dead pearls drift in a dead circle—till, quivering,
A slow finger rises, balancing a grey moon on its tip.
And then a severed face squeezes out and lolls to and fro,
Its washed purple lips leering with a grotesque sin.
The Goldfish in a Bowl
A tiny shimmering courtesan
Dressed in red spangles,
Weaves a monotonous thread of painted rubies
Through the stagnant curtains of her room.
Stifling under faint rags,
A dumb enchanted nightingale
Tosses in droll anguish,
Dreaming of the sapphire roses and the crystal fringe and the topaz
silks
That were her lovers.
A Nude
The rich brocade of night,
Sewn with the red dust of roses
And the topaz breath of the sleeping sun
Hangs from the cool ivoried silk of her shoulders.
The winged beacons of her breasts
Gleam with golden moonlight.
And her eyes are like purple bosomed birds
That circle and beat against the azure gloom.
Her nakedness is an opal mirror,
Quivering with splintered images.
Her nakedness is a white kiss.
Burning on the shadowed lips of the night.
Her nakedness is the flowing of ghostly water
Under fierce moons—
The poplar silver of the wind that dances in the gardens at night.
Her nakedness is the golden fabric woven out of bloody grapes
And the dead mists of incense.
“The Compleat Amateur”
or
How Not to be An Artist
HAROLD BAUER
(_No, I cannot write you an article. And I add to this the
expression of my fervent hope that no Amateurs are going to be
allowed to scribble for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW. _Speaking as a
subscriber, I haven’t the least desire to read any of H. Bauer’s
clumsy attempts to express himself in a medium that is foreign to
him. Let him stick to his business.... You must write the article
you have in mind yourself. From the depths of your artistic
intuitions draw forth the material and give away the secrets—which
are no secrets. Moreover, don’t confine yourself to music, much less
to piano playing; take in the whole field of art and call it “The
Compleat Amateur, or, How Not To Be an Artist.” I suggest the
following headings.—Extract from a letter of the Author._)
I. “_Le Style fait l’homme_”
If you want to become an author, give up your life to the study of
calligraphy, if a painter, devote yourself to the manufacture of paints
and brushes, if a composer, commit to memory the number of notes in
every standard classical work, and if a singer or instrumentalist, spend
your whole energy in the establishing of a “sound technical foundation.”
Emotional expression can then, if desired, be subsequently smeared like
treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, this
operation requiring neither skill nor expression.
II. “_Means to an End_”
The amateur must learn that technique represents an obstacle to be
overcome and a set of tools to be acquired. It has nothing to do with
expression. Only an imaginative artist like Maeterlinck would suggest
that the road along which the student travels towards his destination is
in reality a link, a connection joining one with the other—an umbilical
cord partaking of the nature and attributes of both traveler and goal.
To a perfectly rational person the road is merely a distance to be
covered, a separation.
III. _Personality, or, as some authorities have it: Individuality_
This is the greatest asset of the Amateur. An artist is like everybody
in the world. The book we read, the picture we see or the music we hear
which renders tangible our own dimly-felt thoughts and emotional
stirrings shows that we are in reality one with the artist and with the
universe of which these expressions are but reflections of unseen and
unheard forces. An artist combines the power and responsibilities of the
aristocrat with the feelings of an anarchist, he is the guardian of
privilege and the destroyer of authority, the leveler of barriers and
the creator of the superman, the leader and the servant of humanity and
... the Arch Enemy of the Amateur! The artist is like all humanity, but
the Amateur is not like the Artist. The Amateur must hang on for dear
life to his precious soul and resist to the last gasp the incursions of
any outside force in which he can trace the semblance of his own nature,
for if anything gets in something may get out and he won’t be able to
sort himself out afterwards. Hence the Amateur must be an Individualist;
otherwise he is doomed to extinction. The Amateur’s business is to
interpret the universe in terms eternally incomprehensible to anyone but
himself, and to compromise with the necessity for intercourse with his
fellow-creatures by the adoption of an artificial language which can
convey thoughts and feelings of a superficial character, but nothing
more.
The tale that points a moral, the picture that suggests a tale, and the
music that evokes a picture; these are the vehicles for “personality”
and your fine amateur must cultivate the pride that the realization of
an exclusive understanding of these things gives. If Hamlet had been an
amateur instead of being an artist he would never have suggested that a
cloud was like a camel, a weasel, or a whale; he would have pointed out
its resemblance to a mathematical calculation or a treatise on political
economy, and Polonius would have been far more impressed—for this would
have shown Great Individuality.
IV. _The Mission of Amateurism_
A true Amateur must learn the value of success, the immense importance
of achievement, the inward meaning of gratified self-conceit. Praise
from small minds represents the highest possible attainment of
accomplished Amateurism. The object of Amateurishness is, like the
puzzle pictures in the daily papers, to present a pretty little problem
with a perfectly simple and obvious solution, thus giving effortless
pleasure and satisfaction to all concerned.
The opportunities afforded by collective Amateurism for the repression
of Art are invaluable and as the study of the subject is within the
reach of all, including those who are congenitally afflicted with
artistic talent, it devolves upon everyone who holds the opinion that
this is the best of all possible worlds, to make it his life’s
occupation and aim to be a “compleat amateur”.
Three Japanese Paintings
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
I.
Dream of a Chinese Landscape
(_A Screen by Soga Shubun_)
Mists are rolling
Over the grey mountains,
Over the quiet waters
And marshy shores—
Rolling up into valleys
Where pagodas rise,—
Rolling over slopes
Along whose crests
Monasteries dream.
Wild geese soar
Above the marshes
In downward flight—
In flight from unknown shore
To unknown shore.
Over all
Mists are swaying.
The shadowy bridge
And wandering roadway,
The dark gnarled tree by the road
And the pale tree afar,
Are touched with doubtful mists
Or emergent from lifting mists,—
Trembling in mist; born of mist; shadows....
O mountains, shores, and streams!
Beautiful transient illusion!
Mortal world, dream world,
Vanishing into mist, into mist only!
II.
Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory
(_A Screen by Sesshu_)
Across quiet waters, far off,
Faint, misty mountains unfold in limitless ranges,
Guarding some dream-world,—
Some dim and tranquil world of golden pagodas,
Lawns and pools, terraces and deep groves,
Vermilion palaces, and peacock-haunted gardens.
But that is afar;
And the quiet waters lie between.
Here at our feet
Rises out of the quiet water
Stormily, ridge by ridge,
Buttress by buttress,
Cliff beyond cliff beyond cliff,
The jagged headland.
Here,
Gigantic, primeval,
Juts the grey promontory.
It is bleaker than death, though temples deck it;
Starker than ice, though pines bestrew it;
Inhuman, though the village at its base
Humanly nestles.
With writhing turrets,
With dizzy gulfs,
With winding abysses
And cloven brinks,
The rock rises
In ripples, in waves, in spires—
It rises fiercely, with an appalling passion,—
An apparition of dark monstrous life,—
And foaming up at last to its highest crest
Stands frozen
To freeze the blood of generations.
III.
The Golden Symphony
(_A Screen by Sotatsu_)
Golden clouds, and a golden bridge
Lifting in a great arc, swinging in a high arc,
Under clouds of gold, over clouds of gold,—
From the long slow curve of a golden shore
Across wide spaces of dark river!...
And behold! a drifting miracle—
Behold the long steady advancing prow
Of a golden boat, heavier than the sun,
Quiet upon the dark river; bearing two lovers
In robes of state, intricate, luminous,
Upon this dim river—where the great arc
Of the bridge from clouds into clouds
Swings, from golden shore to golden shore,
From the gold earth to the gold heaven.
The Struggle
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
The story came to me from a woman, met on a train. The car was crowded,
and I took the seat beside her. There was a man in the offing, who
belonged with her,—a slender, girlish figure of a man, in a heavy brown
canvas coat such as teamsters wear in the winter. He moved up and down
in the aisle of the car, wanting my place by the woman’s side, but I did
not know that at the time.
The woman had a heavy face and a thick nose. Something had happened to
her. She had been struck a blow or had a fall. Nature could never have
made a nose so broad and thick and ugly. She talked to me in very good
English. I suspect now that she was temporarily weary of the man in the
brown canvas coat, that she had travelled with him for days, perhaps
weeks, and was glad of the chance to spend a few hours in the company of
some one else.
Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of the
night. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It had
rained for days and the fields were flooded. In the clear night the moon
came out and the scene outside the car-window was strange and in an odd
way very beautiful. You get the feeling: the black bare trees standing
up in clusters as they do out in that country, the pools of water with
the moon reflected and running quickly as it does when the train hurries
along, the rattle of the car-trucks, the lights in isolated farmhouses,
and occasionally the clustered lights of a town as the train rushed
through it into the west.
The woman had just come out of war-ridden Poland, had got out of that
stricken land with her husband by God knows what miracles of effort. She
made me feel the war, that woman did, and she told me the tale that I
want to tell to you.
I don’t remember the beginning of our talk, nor can I tell you of how
the strangeness of my mood grew to match her mood, until the story she
told became a part of the mystery of the still night outside the
car-window and very pregnant with meaning to me.
There was a company of Polish refugees moving along a road in Poland in
charge of a German. The German was a man of perhaps fifty, with a beard.
As I got him, he was much such a man as might be professor of foreign
languages in a college in our country, say at Des Moines, Iowa, or
Springfield, Ohio. He would be sturdy and strong of body and given to
the eating of rather rank foods, as such men are. Also he would be a
fellow of books and in his thinking inclined toward the ranker
philosophies. He was dragged into the war because he was a German, and
had steeped his soul in the German philosophy of might. Faintly, I
fancy, there was another notion in his head that kept bothering him, and
so to serve his government with a whole heart he read books that would
re-establish his feeling for the strong, terrible thing for which he
fought. Because he was past fifty he was not on the battle-line, but was
in charge of the refugees, taking them out of their destroyed village to
a camp near a railroad where they could be fed.
The refugees were peasants, all except the woman in the American train
with me and her mother, an old woman of sixty-five. They had been small
land-owners and the others in their party were women who had worked on
their estate. Then there was the one man, my companion’s lover, weak in
body and with bad eyes.
Along a country road in Poland went this party in charge of the German,
who tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in his
insistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leader of
the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal to go
forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and her party
gathered about her. Like a stubborn old horse she shook her head and
muttered Polish words. “I want to be let alone, that’s what I want. All
I want in the world is to be let alone,” she said, over and over; and
then the German came up, and putting his hand on her back pushed her
along, so that their progress through the dismal night was a constant
repetition of the stopping, her muttered words, and his pushing. They
hated each other with whole-hearted hatred, that old Polish woman and
the German.
The party came to a clump of trees on the bank of a shallow stream. The
German took hold of the old woman’s arm and dragged her through the
stream while the others followed. Over and over she said the words: “I
want to be let alone. All I want in the world is to be let alone.”
In the clump of trees the German started a fire. With incredible
efficiency he had it blazing high in a few minutes, taking the matches
and even some bits of dry wood from a little rubber-lined pouch carried
in his inside coat-pocket. Then he got out tobacco, and, sitting down on
the protruding root of a tree, smoked, and stared at the refugees,
clustered about the old woman on the opposite side of the fire.
The German went to sleep. That was what started his trouble. He slept
for an hour, and when he awoke the refugees were gone. You can imagine
him jumping up and tramping heavily back through the shallow stream and
along the muddy road to gather his party together again. He would be
angry through and through, but he would not be alarmed. It was only a
matter, he knew, of going far enough back along the road, as one goes
back along a road for strayed cattle.
And then, when the German came up to the party, he and the old woman
began to fight. She stopped muttering the words about being let alone
and sprang at him. One of her old hands gripped his beard and the other
buried itself in the thick skin of his neck.
The struggle in the road lasted a long time. The German was tired and
not as strong as he looked, and there was that faint thing in him that
kept him from hitting the old woman with his fist. He took hold of her
thin shoulders and pushed, and she pulled. The struggle was like a man
trying to lift himself by his boot-straps. The two fought and were full
of the determination that will not stop fighting, but they were not very
strong physically.
And so their two souls began to struggle. The woman in the train made me
understand that quite clearly, although it may be difficult to get the
sense of it over to you. I had the night and the mystery of the moving
train to help me. It was a physical thing, the fight of the two souls in
the dim light of the rainy night on that deserted muddy road. The air
was full of the struggle, and the refugees gathered about and stood
shivering. They shivered with cold and weariness, of course, but also
with something else. In the air, everywhere about them, they could feel
the vague something going on. The woman said that she would gladly have
given her life to have it stopped, or to have some one strike a light,
and that her man felt the same way. It was like two winds struggling,
she said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and trying vainly to
push another cloud out of the sky.
Then the struggle ended and the old woman and the German fell down
exhausted in the road. The refugees gathered about and waited. They
thought something more was going to happen, knew in fact something more
would happen. The feeling they had persisted, you see, and they huddled
together and perhaps whimpered a little.
What happened is the whole point of the story. The woman in the train
explained it very clearly. She said that the two souls, after
struggling, went back into the two bodies, but that the soul of the old
woman went into the body of the German and the soul of the German into
the body of the old woman.
After that, of course, everything was quite simple. The German sat down
by the road and began shaking his head and saying he wanted to be let
alone, declared that all he wanted in the world was to be let alone, and
the Polish woman took papers out of his pocket and began driving her
companions back along the road, driving them harshly and brutally along,
and when they grew weary pushing them with her hands.
There was more of the story after that. The woman’s lover, who had been
a school-teacher, took the papers and got out of the country, taking his
sweetheart with him. But my mind has forgotten the details. I only
remember the German sitting by the road and muttering that he wanted to
be let alone, and the old tired mother-in-Poland saying the harsh words
and forcing her weary companions to march through the night back into
their own country.
The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed to judge
life.—_Nietzsche._
A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence
I Zarathustra, declare myself! Ye have dulled me with priests; ye have
sweetened me with girls; ye have betrayed me with envious anarchists.
Lo, I am not for the preacher, I am not for the woman, I am not for the
oppressed! Ye say that by me ye shall save the world; I say that I shall
destroy the world!
These things do I hold sacred—my strength, my lust, my joy. These ye
shall feed, and die.
Too long have I stood silent in the cackle of my followers. Poultry
after my corn! I have said, “Dost thou seek to multiply thyself? Find
ciphers!”
I will give you a new law:—Love your enemy, for him ye may destroy. Fear
your friend, for he shall steal your raiment.
Dost thou think that my aloofness is thy aloofness? Dost thou flutter
upon a ridgepole because I stand upon a mountain? Fool, thou shalt
starve unless thou peck the earth.
I say unto the preacher: Stick to the Nazarene; he hath deserved his
Golgotha. But who shall make my words a law for me?
I say unto the woman: My scourge is yet upon thee. Dost thou set thyself
against myself? I shall ravish thee when I desire thee. Who art thou to
pretend manhood? Submit or deny thy life. Serve, or go barren into the
earth.
I say unto the poor and lowly: I denied you my pity; now ye think to rob
me of my scorn. Paltry ones! Shall I deny myself because of you? Lo, if
I delight in riches, I shall take them. My life is not your life; my
children are not your children. Cry not at my oppression; ye shall not
move me. And if ye mock me with my own words, they shall scorch your
tongues; ye shall go to a blacker oppression, ye shall find harder
masters—yourselves!
And I say unto the priest, the woman, and the lowly: Touch me not; ye
are my enemies! I have declared myself, and ye have not known me. I am
life, I am splendor, I am eternity. Ye deny me as ye lay your hands upon
me. Remain afar off; then may I be in you. I will keep you slaves; thus
only shall I live.
_Also sprach Zarathustra!_
Poems
DAPHNE CARR
Welt Schmertz
I have crushed so many roses
That my hands
Drip with red fragrance.
But I would crush to death against my breast
The wind
That is raging drunk with the perfume of all flowers.
I have bathed in a hundred cool springs—
Still I am burning.
I would plunge into the ocean,
Diving down and down
To find myself
Freshly fluid
As a wave.
Prisoners
A wind runs through the room,
And leaps out of the window.
The white curtain springs after
Fluttering out.
But it is fastened tight inside.
My love kisses me
And goes
Waving good-bye
And laughing.
Am I also held fast in this room?
Leo Ornstein
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
Nietzsche thought Wagner was the artist of decadence; Arthur Symons
thinks he was a unique genius. Nietzsche regarded him as the great
corrupter of music:—“he has made music sick”; Symons says that to find a
parallel for Wagner’s achievement we must look back to the Greeks, to
the age of Æschylus and Sophocles. Each one proved his point. It’s a bit
confusing, and you begin to wonder what Art is.
Have you ever found a definition of aesthetic values that will hold
through the whole art miracle? I never have and never expect to. Even in
Pater’s _The School of Giorgione_ you are merely told that since all art
constantly aspires toward the condition of music, toward that perfect
identification of matter and form, the chief function of aesthetic
criticism is to estimate the degree in which all the arts approach to
musical law. But musical law is constantly changing; and the criterion
of the degree to which matter and form become identical will be a sort
of sliding scale. And what every one wants to know is how to gauge that
scale. Can you think of a single art judgment in the whole realm of
aesthetics that you can use as an infallible touchstone; with which you
can make a mediocre poet realize why his work is bad instead of good?
You can make him realize, by the desperate wildness with which you
shriek “It’s not well done”, that something is wrong; but to save your
life you can’t convince him that you are talking about anything except
your own instinct—as you aren’t; and of course he feels that his
instinct may be just as good as yours—which of course it can’t! Suppose
you choose one of the best definitions ever thought of,—Mérimée’s “all
art is exaggeration _à propos_”; you find that you’re just as badly off
as before: by what standard is the _à propos_ measured?
* * * * *
It was in this frame of mind that I heard Leo Ornstein’s music. First he
came one night and played for us alone, on our Mason and Hamlin, in a
half light and an atmosphere of intense excitement. None of us had
decided beforehand that we should want to laugh or hiss or throw things
at him, as they did in London two years ago. We expected something
beautiful and we got it. He played his _Impressions of the Thames_,
which he afterward described as a river of “towers and turrets and
stars, of dark rushing water, of bridges and buildings, of desolate
muddy banks, and then something which you cannot bear to look at any
longer.” I can’t “see” music, so I only know that it was sound which
interested and pleased and shook me. Then he played his _Funeral March_,
which had something dark and vast in it; then some Ravel, the music of
which interested me more than his playing of it; and finally the
Schumann _Arabesque_, which he did so beautifully that I thought “Here
is a man who plays just as he wants to, and probably comes nearer to
what Schumann would have liked than all the strict interpreters with
their flawless ‘taste’ have done.” It seemed to me that Ornstein did
what he did with it—stretched its slenderness to a lovelier curve—in the
interest of the piano; and that is the very best thing anyone can do
with written music for the piano, even if the pedagogues can’t beat time
to it.
So at the end I was beginning to think: perhaps this is the man who is
to bring to the piano that something it still needs.
* * * * *
But the next morning, at his recital, I made an interesting discovery.
Ornstein has brought nothing to the piano. He has brought something to
the world of music: compositions which show that the piano music is more
pliable than we had thought, and interpretations which show an
exaggeration _à propos_. To the piano, as an instrument, he has brought
what all the others have brought: virtuosity—and in this case a not
exceptional virtuosity. This may sound like hair splitting, but it
really is not.
Ornstein has done this: he has written some very interesting music, and
he plays it as most composers of talent—perhaps of genius—would play
their things if they had studied the piano as thoroughly as he. What is
there in this to cause hysterics? The fact that it sounds different from
the music you have been hearing? But that would seem to be a reason for
interest, not merely for mirth. This reaction belongs in the same plane
with patriotism and duty:—you laugh at what is strange, you love what is
familiar, you obey what has been tested:—the three ready-made emotions,
with which you can escape most effectively from art and life. So they
howled at Ornstein. Two respectable women sitting near me, who would not
have dared—what do I say? who would not have _been able_—to laugh at a
minister’s treatise on good and evil or a president’s speech on loyalty
to a flag, were so convulsed over Ornstein’s _Impressions of the Thames_
that they moved their seats to the rear of the theatre where they could
not be watched,—where they could merely disturb the pianist by their
audible snortings. The critics have done the same thing—laughed at
Ornstein’s own music and criticised scathingly his manner of playing
familiar music. Ornstein’s interest, I am sure, is chiefly in what he
has to say, and second in the way he says it. He is a composer-virtuoso.
I had hoped he would be a piano-lover. That is the kind of artist I am
looking for with more interest than I have for anything else in this
world.
As for Ornstein himself, I think he is a sincere person who means to go
on doing his work. I sometimes judge the sensitiveness of a nature by
the intensity of expression that moves across the cheek-bones. You might
look carefully at Ornstein’s face instead of judging him by the fact
that his hair falls into his eyes when he plays. Of course he has been
indiscreet enough to mention that he does not like Beethoven. Why that
is unforgivable I can’t imagine. A man may surely like what he pleases.
The high genius of a Mozart or a Haydn is a thing he feels intensely. He
admires Chopin deeply as an artist who could do one thing very well and
was content to let it go at that. Grieg he thinks is not a worthy
mouthpiece for all that Norway has to give a musician. He loves Debussy,
but thinks that Ravel is the greater man: “Debussy stands beside a pond
and tells you beautifully of all he sees there; Ravel plunges into the
pond and gives you the life of it.” Stravinsky and Scriabine are the two
he cares for most, as I remember. “Schönberg has worked out his theory
before he has worked out his art.” Something of that sort might apply to
Ornstein himself, as in the case of his Chopin _Nocturne in E Flat_: I
disliked his “exaggeration” in it as much as anything I have ever heard
on a piano.
* * * * *
Oh, does no one realize what the unique beauty of a piano is, and that
there are secrets of sound in it which have not yet been touched upon?
Nocturne
(_From the French of Paul Verlaine_)
CLARA SHANAFELT
Your soul is like a lovely garden place
Where masque and bergamasque move graciously,
Playing the lute and dancing, yet of face
Half sad beneath their guise of fantasy.
The while they sing in minor key
Love conquering, life opportune,
They seem to doubt their own felicity—
Their song floats faintly upward in the moon,
In the clear moonlight, sad and fair,
That makes birds dream where dim boughs sway,
And fountains sigh their rapture on the air
From marble pools—the tall slim fountain spray.
White Mists[1]
There are grey stone rat-traps on the earth
Where human beings are put to die
By other human beings.
They die hour after hour, a million million times,
And still face death....
There is blue air between the clouds and the earth
Which they once saw;
There are gold stars,
And suns that come up red,
And trees that turn to purple in the evening—
But they cannot remember....
Now their days are bundles of soiled rags,
Their nights are stone....
I dare not think of them:
It drives me toward the whiteness of insanity.
M. C. A.
----------
[1] _In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail
for advocating that “women need not always keep their mouths shut
and their wombs open.” Some extracts from letters written during
her fifteen-day sentence appear on the next page._
Letters from Prison
EMMA GOLDMAN
_Queen’s County Jail,
Long Island City, New York.
April, 1916._
What am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no misery so
appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so humiliated.
Yes, I think the prisoners do love me, at least those who have been
thrown in with me. It is so easy to get their love. The least bit of
kindness moves them—they are so appreciative. But what can one do for
them?
Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s _Justice_ in which some
one says to Falder: “No one wishes you harm”? Therein lies the pathos.
No one wishes these social victims harm. The Warden and Matron here are
exceptionally kind. And yet the harm, the irreparable harm, is done by
the very fact that human beings are locked up, robbed of their identity,
their self-respect, their self-hood.
Oh, I am not sorry I was sentenced. In fact I am glad. I needed to get
to these pariahs who are the butt of all the horrors. It would be well
if every rebel were sent to prison for a time; it would fan his
smouldering flame of hate of the things that make prisons possible. I am
really glad.
* * * * *
... We are awakened at six and unlocked at seven in the morning. Then
comes breakfast, of which I have so far eaten only oatmeal with what
pretends to be milk. The coffee or tea I have not managed to get down.
At seven-thirty we are taken out into the yard. I walk up and down like
one possessed, to get the exercise. At eight-thirty we are back, and the
women keep themselves busy scribbling; but my girls will not let me do
that; I must talk to them. (The Warden, by the way, is reading my
_Anarchism_, and the Matron my _Social Significance of the Modern
Drama_). In fact, I seem to have more devotion here than on the outside.
At eleven we have dinner, and at four in the afternoon supper—which I
will describe to you when I come out. Then we are locked up until seven
A. M.—fifteen hours, the hardest of all to bear. Do you remember the
line in _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: “Each day a year whose days grow
old”? To me it is “each night a year whose nights grow long”. I have
always loved the night, but jailed nights are ghastly things.
The lights are on until nine P. M., and we can read and write all
day—which is a god-send. Also this prison is one of the cleanest in the
country.
* * * * *
... What on earth have I done that people should go into such ecstasies?
No one raves because you breathe; why rave if you take a determined
stand when that means the very breath of life to you? Really I feel
embarrassed with all the love and devotion and adulation for so little a
thing, so infinitesimal compared with the truly heroic deeds of the
great souls. My only consolation is that the fight is not at an end and
that I may yet be called upon to do something really great. But for the
present it is hardly worth the fuss.
* * * * *
Today is Sunday and we were taken out to the yard for a walk. It was a
glorious day, marred only by the monotony of the stripes and the
spiritless slouching figures. Yet the sky excluded no one; its glorious
blue spread over them all, as if there were no sorrows in all the world
and man was never cruel to his kind.
* * * * *
The days pass quickly between the study of my fellow prisoners, my
letters, and other writing. The evenings are taken up with reading. But
jailed nights are so oppressive. They lie like stone upon your heart.
The thoughts, the sobs, the moans that emerge like pale shadows from
every human soul. It is stifling. Yet people talk of hell. There is no
more threatening thing in all the world than the hell of jailed nights.
* * * * *
Good morning. Another crazing night has gone....
Off The Turnpike
AMY LOWELL
Good ev’nin’, Mis’ Priest.
I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye.
Yes, it’s all over,
All my things is packed
And every last one o’ them boxes
Is on Bradley’s team
Bein’ hauled over to th’ station.
No, I ain’t goin’ back agin.
I’m stoppin’ over to French’s fer to-night,
And goin’ down fust train in th’ mornin’.
Yes, it do seem kinder queer
Not to be goin’ to see Cherry’s Orchard no more,
But Land Sakes! When a change’s comin’,
Why, I allus say it can’t come too quick.
Now, that’s real kind of you,
Your doughnuts is always so tasty.
Yes, I’m goin’ to Chicago,
To my niece,
She’s married to a fine man, hardware business,
And doin’ real well, she tells me.
Lizzie’s be’n at me to go out ther fer the longest while.
She ain’t got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know.
She’s rented me a real nice little flat,
Same house as hers,
And I’m goin’ to try that city livin’ folks say’s so pleasant.
Oh, yes, he was real generous,
Paid me a sight of money fer the Orchard,
I told him ’twouldn’t yield nothin’ but stones,
But he ain’t farmin’ it.
Lor’, no, Mis’ Priest,
He’s jest took it to set and look at the view.
Maybe he wouldn’t be so stuck on the view
Ef he’d seed it every mornin’ and night for forty year
Same’s I have.
I dessay it’s pretty enough,
But it’s so pressed into me
I c’n see’t with my eyes shet.
No. I ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest,
Don’t shet th’ door.
I’ll be all right in a minit.
But I ain’t a mite sorry to leave that view.
Well, maybe ’tis queer to feel so,
And maybe ’tisn’t.
My! But that tea’s revivin’.
Old things ain’t always pleasant things, Mis’ Priest.
No, no, I don’t cal’late on comin’ back,
That’s why I’d ruther be to Chicago,
Boston’s too near.
It ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest,
It’s jest my thoughts.
I ain’t sick, only—
Mis’ Priest, ef you’ve nothin’ ter take yer time,
And have a mind to listen,
There’s somethin’ I’d like ter speak about.
I ain’t never mentioned it,
But I’d like to tell yer ’fore I go.
Would yer mind lowerin’ them shades,
Fall twilight’s awful grey,
And that fire’s real cosy with the shades drawd.
Well, I guess folks about here think I’ve be’n dret’ful unsociable.
You needn’t say ’taint so, ’cause I know diff’rent.
And what’s more, it’s true.
Well, the reason is I’ve be’n scared o’ my life.
Scared ev’ry minit o’ th’ time, fer eight year.
Eight mortal year it is, come next June.
It was on the eighteenth of June,
Six months after I’d buried my husband
That somethin’ happened ter me.
Maybe yer’ll mind that afore that
I was a cheery body.
Hiram was too,
Allus liked to ask a neighbor in,
And ev’n when he died,
Barrin’ low sperrits, I warn’t averse to seein’ nobody.
But that eighteenth o’ June changed ev’rythin’.
I was doin’ most o’ th’ farmwork myself,
With jest a hired boy, Clarence King ’twas,
Comin’ in fer an hour or two.
Well, that eighteenth June
I was goin’ round,
Lockin’ up and seein’ to things fore I went to bed.
I was jest steppin’ out to th’ barn,
Goin’ round outside ’stead of through the shed,
’Cause there was such a sight of moonlight
Somehow or another I thought ’twould be pretty outdoors.
I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess.
I ain’t stuck on em no more.
Well, them laylock bushes side o’ th’ house
Was real lovely.
Glitt’rin’ and shakin’ in the moonlight,
And the smell o’ them rose right up
And most took my breath away.
The colour o’ the spikes was all faded out,
They never keep their colour when the moon’s on ’em,
But that smell fair ’toxicated me.
I was allus partial to a sweet scent,
And I went close up t’ th’ bushes
So’s to put my face right into a flower.
Mis’ Priest, jest’s I got breathin’ in that laylock bloom
I saw, layin’ right at my feet,
A man’s hand!
It was as white’s the side o’ th’ house,
And sparklin, like that lum’nous paint they put on gateposts.
I screamed right out,
I couldn’t help it,
And I could hear my scream
Goin’ over an’ over
In that echo behind th’ barn,
Hearin’ it agin an’ agin like that
Scared me so, I dar’sn’t scream any more.
I jest stood there,
And looked at that hand.
I thought the echo’d begin to hammer like my heart,
But it didn’t.
There wus only th’ wind,
Sighin’ through the laylock leaves,
An’ slappin’ them up agin’ the house.
Well, I guess I looked at that hand
Most ten minits,
An’ it never moved,
Jest lay there white as white.
After a while I got to thingin’, that o’ course
’Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield.
That calmed me some,
An’ I commenced to think I’d better git him out
From under them laylocks.
I planned to drag him inter th’ barn
An’ lock him in ther’ till Clarence come in th’ mornin’.
I got so mad thinkin’ o’ that all-fired brazen tramp
Asleep in my laylocks,
I just stooped down and grabbed th’ hand and give it an awful pull.
Then I bumped right down settin’ on the ground.
Mis’ Priest, ther’ warn’t no body come with the hand.
No, it ain’t cold, it’s jest that I can’t bear thinkin’ of it
Ev’n now.
I’ll take a sip o’ tea.
Thank you, Mis’ Priest, that’s better.
I’d ruther finish now I’ve begun.
Thank you, jest the same.
I dropped the hand’s ef it’d be’n red hot
’Stead o’ ice cold.
Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass
Pantin’.
Then I up and run to them laylocks
An’ pulled ’em every which way.
True as I’m settin’ here, Mis’ Priest,
Ther’ warn’t nothin’ ther’.
I peeked an’ pryed all about ’em,
But ther’ warn’t no man ther’
Neither livin’ nor dead.
But the hand was ther’ all right,
Upside down, the way I’d dropped it,
And glist’ning fit to dazzle yer.
I don’t know how I done it,
And I don’t know why I done it,
But I wanted to get that dre’tful hand out o’ sight.
I got in t’ th’ barn, somehow,
An’ felt roun’ till I got a spade.
I couldn’t stop fer a lantern,
Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience.
Then I scooped that awful thing up in th’ spade.
I had a sight o’ trouble doin’ it.
It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn’t bear
Ev’n to touch it with my foot to prop it,
But I done it somehow.
Then I carried it off behind the barn,
Clost to an old appletree
Where you couldn’t see from the house,
An’ I buried it,
Good an’ deep.
I don’t rec’lect nothin’ more o’ that night.
Clarence woke me up in th’ mornin’,
Hollerin’ for me to come down and set th’ milk.
When he’d gone
I stole roun’ to the appletree
And seed the earth all newly turned
Where I left it in my hurry.
I did a heap o’ gardenin’
That mornin’.
I couldn’t cut no big sods
Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted ’em fer,
So I got teeny bits o’ turf here and ther,’
And no one couldn’t tell ther’d be’n any diggin’
When I got through.
They was awful days after that, Mis’ Priest,
I used ter go every mornin’ and poke about them bushes,
And up and down the fence,
Ter find the body that hand come off of.
But I couldn’t never find nothin’.
I’d lay awake nights
Hearin’ them laylocks blowin’ and whiskin’.
Finally I had Clarence cut ’em down
An’ make a big bonfire of ’em.
I told him the smell made me sick,
An’ that warn’t no lie,
I can’t a’ bear the smell on ’em now.
An no wonder, es you say.
I fretted somethin’ awful about that hand.
I wondered could it be Hiram’s,
But folks don’t rob graveyards hereabouts.
Besides Hiram’s hands warn’t that awful, starin’ white.
I give up seein’ people,
I was afeared I’d say somethin’.
You know what folks thought of me
Better’n I do, I dessay,
But maybe now you’ll see I couldn’t do nothin’ diffrent.
But I stuck it out,
I warn’t goin’ to be downed
By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther’.
But that ain’t the worst, Mis’ Priest,
Not by a long way.
Two years ago Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry’s Orchard.
Well, I’d got used to th’ thought of bein’ sort o’ blighted,
And I warn’t scared no more.
Lived down my fear, I guess.
I’d kinder got used t’ the thought o’ that awful night,
And I didn’t mope much about it.
Only I never went out o’ doors by moonlight;
That stuck.
Well, when Mr. Densmore’s offer come,
I started thinkin’ about the place
An’ all the things that had gone on ther’.
Thinks I, I guess I’ll go and see where I put the hand.
I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by.
I knew the place real well,
Fer I’d put it right in between two o’ the apple-roots.
I don’t know what possessed me, Mis’ Priest,
But I kinder wanted to know
That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway.
It had sorter bothered me, thinkin’ I might ha’ imagined it.
I took a mornin’ when the sun was real pleasant and warm,
I guessed I wouldn’t jump for a few old bones.
But I did jump, somethin’ wicked.
Thar warn’t no bones!
Thar warn’t nothin’!
Not even the gold ring I minded bein’ on the little finger.
I don’t know ef there ever was anythin’.
I’ve worried myself sick over it.
I be’n diggin’ and diggin’ day in and day out
Till Clarence ketched me at it.
Oh, I knowed real well what you all thought,
An’ I ain’t sayin’ you’re not right,
But I ain’t goin’ to end in no country ’sylum
If I c’n help it.
The shiv’rin’ fits come on me sudden like.
I know ’em, don’t you trouble.
I’ve fretted considerable about the ’sylum,
I guess I be’n frettin’ all the time I ain’t be’n diggin’.
But anyhow I can’t dig to Chicago, can I?
Thank you, Mis’ Priest,
I’m better now. I only dropped in in passin’!
I’ll jest be steppin’ along to French’s.
No, I won’t be seein’ nobody in the mornin’,
It’s a pretty early start.
Don’t you stand ther’, Mis’ Priest,
The wind’ll blow yer lamp out,
An’ I c’n see easy, I got aholt o’ the gate now.
I ain’t a mite tired, thank you.
Goodnight.
Potatoes in a Cellar
R. G.
I am not here to harry institutions, to prod up mummies swathed in red
tape and embalmed in routine and respectability, nor am I here to bury
the unburied dead.
People say, “Why do you jump on the Art Institute for becoming a trade
school? It is only following the tendencies of the times. Art is like
everything else.” There you have it!—the whole trouble. There is no
consciousness of art, no consciousness that art is beyond all these
things—that it is as the sun to the earth, and if it were to fail us we
should grow like potatoes in a deep cellar.
It is only when art students say, “This is not what we sought. Where
shall we go, what shall we love, what do, to find what we sought?” that
the Art Institute is brought into it, and then only to serve as an
example of the lack of art consciousness everywhere, and to emphasize
the fact that the artist has no place in this land of wasteful virtues.
An artist almost disgraces the family into which he is born, he is
pitied a little by outsiders, he is left alone. At last, when he can
stand it no longer, he breaks the parent heart, and goes out full of
high hope to find his own kind and to keep his own faith. After a short
time he finds the art school very much like a factory; he learns to do
his piece, when he had thought to create a new beauty, and he finds,
too, that he is still an outcast for his beliefs and desires.
More than ninety-nine percent of the students who study art never
qualify as artists. We are all born into the world creators. In the
interval some wander into by-paths, play nicely upon the piano or
violin, do art, or write poetry. Maiden aunts and fond grandmas proclaim
them geniuses, all the time praying that they do not become artists.
When love comes, they leave the by-paths to fall into lock step on the
old worn way.
It is not what is accomplished on these journeys along the outposts of
art, but it is the experience that counts. If they have met there one or
two who stirred their senses with the impression of bearing a “fragile
and mighty thing,” who could rise above the earth and shout in a
flamelight of joy, or fall upon the earth and moan with the dark trouble
of Things; if they have caught from these a quickened sense of Life, and
learned a broader observation and consciousness of beauty; even though
they cannot create as the artist creates—still from this experience they
should feel the power to create a new life for those whom they in their
turn may meet. If they would so much as teach the children, not the old
formidable “Fear God and keep his commandments,” but rather
“Find in every foolish little thing that lives but a day
Eternal Beauty wandering on its way”
we should grow a race with a deep desire for the “free, unsullied things
which never fail and never can decay.”
The Artist knows as surely as though he walked with God upon those six
days of creation that _this_ He made and nothing more—but here He made
all. Other men fill in the gap between what they are and what they feel
they could be, what they long for and cannot find, what they attain and
aspire to, with Religion. Then, walled in with the belief of finding
completion in a future life, they live on unconscious of the passionate
splendor and ecstasy of this life. The artist, realizing that here we
must live our life and our immortality, cries out to men to know all, to
feel all, to be all here, and he strives with his whole soul, gives up
his life to show men what he has seen. But the turning of great wheels,
the blasts of furnaces, and the straining of millions of human beings
that a few may be comfortable, drown his voice. And because he does not
take part in this great struggle for physical contentment, does not live
the cramped, dwarfed life of society, there is no place for him in
modern life. Even though the wisest seem deceived, still the artist must
believe that a consciousness of Art will come, and that even the most
stupid will sometime know that he must have Art before bread.
I know—for I have experienced it and perhaps experienced little
else!—that art is of more value than truth.—_Nietzsche._
New York Letter
ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL
(_The Poetry Society of America Meets and I Attend, Taking with
Me a Sense of Humor._)
There is, in this city, a Poetry Society. Once a month they gather
together at a handsome club to talk and be talked to. Once a year they
foregather at a grand hotel for a handsome dinner and some more talk.
I am inquisitive, God help me! He and good training have made me so. To
gratify my curiosity concerning the makers of American poetry, I asked
Master Witter Bynner, one of their band, to take me to their monthly
meeting at the National Arts Club. I ache still from suppressed
laughter. (Dear sense of humor, what would I do without you when I visit
the habitations of the pretentious and the congregation of the
hum-bugs?)
It is the custom of this body of—of—the word I want will come to me
later. It is their custom, I say, to ask for unpublished verse to be
read aloud to the assemblage. The reader of the evening was Witter
Bynner. Now Mr Bynner is a poet with a fine, vibrant voice and a rare
appreciation for pause and effect, but when he read the verse of those
anonymous poets such feeling did he put into them that his legs quivered
and showed great emotion. That distressed and distracted me.
After each poem was read it was criticized by the audience. Criticism of
a certain type is the easiest thing in the world. That type, that petty,
empty, wordy type, was present in all its glory. Its chief exponent was
one Shaemas O’Sheel, a wordy fellow loving the sound of his own voice
and giving vent to many empty phrases with much gusto and argumentative
fervor. Mr O’Sheel once wrote and had published in a book this plaintive
thing:
My song is such a little thing
Oh, such a little thing!
It is not loud; it is not long,
And wherefor should I sing?
Echo answers, Wherefor?