the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky[6]. It is deplorable that the
publisher who has given us the excellent translation of Dostoevsky by
Constance Garnett should throw on the market such a mediocrity as Mr.
Soloviev’s work, as if there were not excellent books on the novelist
written by Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Veresayev! Mr.
Soloviev presents the accepted view of Dostoevsky as the preacher of
repentance and atonement, the retrograde, the pillar of church and
autocracy. Superficially, the view appears to be correct. Dig deeper
into the chaotic, epileptical soul of the author of _Crime and
Punishment_, gaze into the abysses of the dual characters of
Raskolnikov, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, the Karamazovs,
fling your imagination into the hellish crater of the novelist’s mind,
and Mr. Soloviev’s symmetrical structure evaporates like mist. Again I
ask, Why are such useless school-exercises reproduced by intelligent
publishers? Why should such a fine translator as Mr. Hogarth waste his
energy on puerilities?
The same Whys can be applied to another recent publication[7],
Doroshevich’s impressions. Doroshevich is the most popular journalist in
Russia, a witty, entertaining _feuilletonist_, who employs an original
staccato rhythm. But there is no reason under the sun to translate his
reportorial impressions of the war fugitives, written for a Moscow daily
paper. Their value is purely local. How can we be interested in the
management of the Russian relief-points, or their mismanagement? True,
at times Doroshevich flashes brilliant impressionistic colors, as in
describing the fugitives’ bonfires in the forest. But the rare gems do
not justify the journalistic heap.
I am uneasy about these fallacies of the publishers. Few though they
are, they may serve the part of a spoonful of vinegar in a pot of honey.
----------
[2] _The Mantle and other stories, by Nikolai Gogol. New York:
Frederic A. Stokes._
[3] _Makar’s Dream and other stories, by V. Korolenko. New York:
Duffield._
[4] _Twenty-six Men and a Girl, by M. Gorky. New York: Frederic
A. Stokes._
[5] _The Duel, by A. Kuprin. New York: Macmillan. The River of
Life, by A. Kuprin. Boston: John W. Luce._
[6] _Dostoevsky, by Evgenii Soloviev. New York: Macmillan._
[7] _The Way of the Cross, by Doroshevich. New York: G. P.
Putnam._
The Independent Exhibition
LUPO DE BRAILA
The rich aunt with whose aid the Chicago Society of Artists has managed,
up to the present, to check all artistic impulses in this city, has lost
her magic attraction and power. Her golden smiles and soft pillows have
failed lately to captivate and hold. There is a new breed of young
artists. They seem to be an energetic lot, and decline to live in the
future of promises; and, what is more horrible, they decline to flirt
with the rich aunt through the aid of the honorable society.
For many years she was the bubbling liquid within the life-giving
bottle. The magic corkscrew was in the safe, the combination known to
the initiated few. According to these few, young artists had to go
through a certain process of taming and self-effacement before they were
gradually given the secret. A certain amount of artistic ignorance plus
an ability to pull strings was required of every aspirant. A soft
backbone bent by many kicks was also one of the main requirements.
“Don’t knock, you’ll break the magic bottle” was their watchword. If you
dared to ask questions concerning the sacred duty of the initiated few,
you aroused a hatred that took years to melt,—a hatred that seemed
impossible in such delicate souls. The few artists who refused to be
tamed left the city and have settled in other parts.
And the philanthropic aunt, like all true philanthropists, acquired all
she could get and paid the minimum price. The paying was usually
accompanied by a lot of pompous actions and was supposed to be received
like a first-class iron cross by a common soldier. You see, the young
talented artist was actually compelled to bribe the art patron to get to
the secret of the combination, and was compelled to listen to all kinds
of insults besides. Here are a favorite few: “I have discovered him”; “I
helped him to get where he is now”; “If it were not for me....” The
artist was also used as a rare orchid at their dinner tables and as
Chinese embroidery at unusual occasions. I know one of these patrons who
even resorted to threats, when a young and independent sculptor refused
to be “discovered.” And such creatures pose as art patrons and
connoisseurs, and hold the combination to the life-giving bottle of this
city.
As a matter of fact, almost all the prestige and almost all the artistic
knowledge possessed by these same patrons was given them by their
so-called protegees at starvation prices. However, the patrons are
hardly to be blamed for this state of affairs. They were made by
well-meaning but mediocre artists whose highest ambitions were foggy
imitations of a certain kind of realism practiced abroad when my
grandmother’s dolls used up most of her time. The saddest or funniest
side of this spectacle is that the patrons have, for the last few years,
advanced in understanding beyond the possibilities of the artists who
have made them. As you can easily see, a most discouraging and
impossible state of affairs. It reached its climax at the last Chicago
Artists’ exhibition, when those in control, to use a popular saying,
rubbed it in. It was a show of the aged and crippled, and prizes were
awarded on the basis of an Old-Age Benefit. It was a slow sickness and
positive in retarding all artistic endeavor in this city.
But like a clear and promising path in this dark jungle comes the first
International Exhibition of Independent Artists. It is a jury-free
exhibition, and every man is allowed to hang two paintings, provided he
pays for the space. And it was a strong indictment against the old
order. It showed how thoroughly it has managed to kill all originality
and individuality in the younger artists. In spite of the fact that it
was a jury-free exhibition you could easily see that almost everyone had
painted with this little thought in the back of his head: This must
please Messrs. Albright, Juergens, and Company. To pick out the few who
made a good showing this time would be unfair to the rest. The whole
show was conceived and arranged in six weeks, and to me it was more
interesting and held more promise than any other show held in this city.
It is a young oak whose knotty branches, like playful fists, shoot in
unexpected directions. It grows up near a grey solemn mausoleum. The
mausoleum acts as if it does not notice the sturdy youngster; but it
knows in its heart, if it has one, that it will soon be hidden in the
shadow of this tree’s branches. Virile roots will crack the walls and
decay will be the deserved fate.
The Reader Critic
_SHE IS NO FRIEND OF OURS!_
_Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa_:
Will you be so kind as to ask your friend, “Virginia York”, to refrain
from re-misprinting for a third time, a bit hacked from my _Café
Sketches_? If she finds the poem so interesting, why does she not print
it in its entirety, and correctly? Then perhaps her readers could decide
just where the joke lies—in the light of “Virginia York’s” Olympian
pronouncement that “maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is
not intended to be.” Just because a little learning would be dangerous
for her, I shall never disclose to her what the poem _was_ intended to
be. Besides, she wouldn’t believe me; for her, a thing has to be either
_Lear_ or _Charley’s Aunt_, evidently.
I have harbored doubts as to the value of _vers libre_; but now they are
gone. For I see that it does shut out a certain type of mind.
Harriet Dean’s _Pillar_ is admirable! Also Sandburg’s four.
Tell your “sixteen year old boy” that his poem is damn interesting—but
to cut out the “only sixteen” and “one could not expect me to know much
about poetry” stuff. At sixteen most of us had read all the poetry in
existence, and were busy writing epics that were to re-make the world.
Tell him to stop being a sixteen-year-old worm, and to get up on his
hind legs and bite the stars. Tell him to write arrogantly of this
“charming” world he sees. It’s time enough to be humble when one is old.
_THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY._
_Daphne and Michael Carr, Columbia, Missouri_:
We have been greatly enraged by reading Mr Charles Zwaska’s article, _An
Isaiah without a Christ_, in the April number of THE LITTLE REVIEW. It
reminds us of a review of the same book in _Judge_. It ran something
like this: “Vachel Lindsey has out a new book on the Art of the Moving
Picture. It might be all right, but for the fact that the movie can
never be Art.” In just the same sententious way Mr Zwaska seems to be
peeved that Lindsay should suggest the possibility of art in a thing
which is at present clumsily done. Some one has said that when Miriam
led the women of Israel to a dance of rejoicing, all of the women who
were too fat or too stiff to dance stood back and deplored the immodesty
of their nimble sisters. Perhaps Mr Zwaska is too fat, or too stiff, or
too old. I don’t know: may be he is so young that he still creeps and
doesn’t think of dancing. For Lindsay has sung out humanly and
delightfully a more acceptable ideal of democracy than any American has
yet sung. The rest of us would-be artists are creating things that can
appeal to a small number. Lindsay is chanting to all America, and all
America is listening—we, the artists, as well as the littlest country
school-boy.
“Says the swift black horse
To the swift white horse:
‘There goes the alarm
There goes the alarm.
They are hitched, they are off,
They are gone in a flash,
And they strain at the driver’s iron arm.’”
We shout it when the fire-engines fly down the street. We croon the moon
poems together in the evenings, and we chant _The Santa Fé Trail_ as we
tramp across country.
Mr Zwaska seems to catch a glimmering of the fact that Lindsay is a
rhyming poet, because he is singing to all the people. Why does he not
apply this a little farther? Lindsay’s message, as I catch it, is this:
The Moving Picture has in it possibilities of a great art. Furthermore,
it is for all America, for every farm boy, for every little dish-washer
as well as for every millionaire. Let us make this art as perfect, as
inspiring, as possible, since it has a wider influence, be it good, bad,
or indifferent, than any other art in the history of humanity. The
exquisite Parthenon, Sophocles’s tragedies performed in the theater of
Dionysus, were for the Athenians, and for such as could reach Athens.
Fortunately, that included a large percentage of the Greeks. But how
many Americans, proportionately, can see such wonders as New York has to
offer?
When a moving-picture as perfect as the Parthenon has been produced
there need be no soul in America who has not seen it.
This being the ideal, we proceed toward its realization. Lindsay points
out some means of attaining beauty in the moving-pictures. The producers
can, he says, learn from the painters beauties of composition, of
symbolism, of mood. Beautiful sculpture can teach the rhythm, the speed,
the grace of motion. And architecture will help to interpret big social
emotions, such as patriotism and religion in terms of crowds,
pageantlike, of landscapes, and, upon occasion, of architecture itself.
But here Mr Zwaska objects. He says that Lindsay is making the
moving-picture a parasite on the other arts. I am not going to quote
Noah Webster, or Dr Johnson, but it is generally understood that a
parasite is an organism that steals its life from its host, weakening
the host thereby. Has Mr Lorado Taft, or Mr Frank Lloyd Wright, or Mr
Jerome Blum, been robbed of any tittle of artistic ideas, or of artistic
technique, or of admiration by Lindsay’s book, or by the producers who
have tried so ineffectually to follow his suggestions? I don’t want to
quibble with metaphors, but if horticulture is to be the basis of them I
should rather say that Lindsay proposes to burbank a wonderful new
nectarine art by crossing painting, sculpture, architecture, and
pantomime.
At present the difficulty is that there is no one in the producing field
with the artistic training, and feeling, and the burning genius withal
to produce a wonderful film. Max Reinhardt or Gordon Craig could do it,
but even they would be working against the difficulties of a new medium.
D’Annunzio did pretty well with _Cabiria_ but——Have you ever read
Aeschylus’ _Suppliants_? It was the first and afterwards came _Electra_
and _Œdipus_.
Well, along in his article Mr Zwaska grows boisterous at Lindsay who
has, supposedly working on a suggestion from his friend, James
Oppenheim, spoken of the possibility of a highly symbolic film
production of _The Book of the Dead_. And this because Mrs Moore of
Chicago, has worked out beautiful dances, and costumes and libretto for
a stage production of the wonderful Nile and Sun myth. Bless Mrs Lou
Wall Moore! We love her and her devotion. We have been wonder-struck by
the loveliness of her Egyptian costume designs. When she does produce
_The Book of the Dead_ we will, Fate permitting, make a pilgrimage from
this movie-ridden Missouri town to see it wherever it may he. And I know
that we will be rejoiced to be able to do so. But I am sure that dear
Mrs Moore would be the last person to object to a film production of
_The Book of the Dead_, _IF_ the production be a beautiful one. For, as
Lindsay iterates and reiterates, the stage and the moving-pictures
_MUST_ be different. Mrs Moore’s production will have “the splendor of
color, space, height, distance, and most magical of all, the voice.” And
the worthy moving-picture production, when it arrives, will have, in
black-and-white symphony, the infinite depths of the sky, waving palm
branches, the width of the desert, and above all, beautifully controlled
actors, streaming hundreds, directed and co-ordinated as was the
Diaghileff corps-de-ballet. And this beauty will travel all over the
country, touching, among others, this drama-starved town of Missouri,
where we suffer for want of visual beauty.
Mr Zwaska deplores the lack of composition—“moving lines” he calls it—in
the moving pictures. He says that he has seen it “only in the flight of
gulls (unconscious actors) or in pictures of rivers and trees, and the
sea; in short—Nature. But Nature is Nature” wailed Mr Zwaska. And pray,
why pervert the facts you bring forth? If the cinematograph can record
the beautiful motion of the birds, can it not equally well record the
beautiful motion of humans when the producer has learned to direct his
actors as M. Fokine directs his dancers? _There_ is room for Art.
Why—why, in the name of all that is lovely, must people howl at any
expression of belief in possibilities of a new art? The moving-picture
is Shakespearean, Hugoesque, Zolaesque, in its method. We see through it
not only Antony and Cleopatra, but the two great hungry struggling
groups that each impersonates. We see not only the typical coal-miner
and his typical sorrows; we see the mass of his comrades under the same
oppression, the same evil conditions. We see better, because more
swiftly, than Hugo could paint it with his wonderful vocabulary, Notre
Dame de Paris, the symbol, the social motif which embodies in a unity
all that the story tries to show of the beauty, the horror, the fate,
and the aspirations of the pre-Renaissance, an ever-present condition
behind the actors. Are such possibilities to be shoved aside and denied
a place among the arts where pageantry is admitted? Is the fact that
thousands of bad, atrociously bad, films are turned out to discredit the
few well-constructed, symbolic film-plays? Look at our abominable
American poster-makers. Does this discredit Mr Blum, whose praises we
hear sung?
There is one really vital criticism in Mr Zwaska’s hectic article. That
is, upon Lindsay’s “too ruthless a theory” of no music in the movie
theater. From the first we shied at that. We are surprised at the author
of poems to be read aloud. Another of our admirable countrymen, who
qualifies not only as a sociologist, but as a philosopher and a poet,
has his say on the subject quite incidentally. I speak of Max Eastman,
who, in his _Enjoyment of Poetry_, says, “I have yet to find one in
which the reality of the pictures is not enhanced with the beating of an
old piano. Nobody notices the piano, nobody remembers what the piano
plays, or how badly, but there it is, always keeping up a metre.” The
audiences’ “voluntary mind is on the canvas but the music slips all the
deeper into their beings, and it makes them live the pictures.” I can
well believe Mr Zwaska’s account of the after-midnight picture show.
Granted that most picture-show music is terrible, that the electric
piano is agonizing, that it is deeply shocking to hear the _Miserere_
when sweet Mary Pickford is acting the Un Bel Di Vedremo scene in
Butterfly, the music is far less dreadful than silence, and we talk
through it all the same. I do not know a possible remedy, but it is
worth the thought of every person interested or disgusted. This is
merely one of Vachel Lindsay’s acknowledged “paw paws.”
So here we are at the end of our wrath. And here’s a cheer and a hearty
greeting for Lindsay, who is scaling the Pike’s Peak of idealism. And
here’s congratulations to Mr Zwaska for directing a few more telescopes
at him.
_FOR THE BRAHMINS._
_A Poet, Chicago_:
I am sick of hearing Chicago audiences go into raptures over Brahms.
Here is my impression of him as I listened to the last concert of the
Chicago Symphony: _Symphony No. 4, E Minor, Opus 98_.
First Movement:
Milk and Liver.
Second Movement:
Bed-bugs crawling over the body of a fat burgher. Occasionally he
snorts sonorously (’cellos).
Third Movement:
Ten-ton joviality—beer, cheese, saurkraut, ham. Grazioso—Ach, du
lieber Augustine! The end suggests his Academic:
Fourth Movement:
a. Hungarian dancing—(Brahms’ only successful field).
b. Falls into pompernickel sentimentalism.
c. The German policeman (trombones).
d. More liver.
e. Gas.
_Yours Sylph-fully_:
Please let me “register” my appreciation of your April number. I read
the extract from _The Interstate Medical Journal_ with intense
purposefulness, have ordered Vance Thompson’s “epoch-making book, _Eat
and Grow Thin_”, and begin to feel that I am getting even more than I
subscribed for.
Incidentally, didn’t you love Carl Sandburg’s _Gone_? Chick Lorimer!
What a name! It makes one almost sorry to be “respectable”, somehow—it’s
so full of gayety and courage!
Statement of Ownership, Management,
Circulation, Etc., required by the Act of
August 24, 1912
of _THE LITTLE REVIEW_ published monthly at
_Chicago, Ill._ for April 1st, 1916.
Editor, _Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts
Building, Chicago_.
Managing Editor, _Same_
Business Manager, _Same_
Publisher, _Same_
Owners: (If a corporation, give its name and
the names and addresses of stockholders holding
1 per cent or more of total amount of stock. If
not a corporation, give names and addresses of
individual owners.)
_Margaret C. Anderson
834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago_
Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other
security holders, holding 1 per cent or more of
total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other
securities: _None._
_MARGARET C. ANDERSON_,
Sworn to and subscribed before me this _31st_
day of _March, 1916_.
_MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public._
(My commission expires _December 20, 1917_.)
ART SCHOOL or
ART FACTORY
WHICH?
Charles A. Kinney’s story of his fight for individual rights in
the Art Institute:
A few of the topics Mr. Kinney will discuss:
The seven cases in the law courts—what they mean to students and
faculty.
The Art Student Fellowship organization—why it was forced on the
students of the Institute.
Why faculty members were forced to support it on penalty of
losing their positions.
Organization and discipline, or art spirit? Which is most
essential in an art school?
Student activities—shall the Dean or the students control them?
Art Schools—shall men trained in Business or men trained in Art
control them?
What encouragement is there for sincere artists?
When at least half the scholarships are awarded because of
influence and favoritism rather than meritorious work?
When faculty members of the Institute have practically no
independence?
Mr. Kinney’s article will appear in the June issue of THE LITTLE
REVIEW.
THE FLAME
A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE
Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors.
3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass.
“The Flame” is to be a monthly journal of revolution, soon to
take life. It is to burn against oppression and authority
everywhere, and is to be as pure and merciless as the flower of
light after which it is named.
We want you to help us make “The Flame.” It is not to be one of
those vehicles for the delivery of the vast thoughts of an
unrecognized “genius,” but a little forum where every
revolutionist of high heart and purpose can speak. We can pay
nothing, of course. Cartoons, poems, stories, sketches, tracts,
philosophies, news reports—all will be welcomed.
No creed or philosophy will be barred from our columns if only
its devotee writes in a beautiful and furious and yes-saying
gesture. The editorials will be flavored by the anarchy of the
publishers.
THE DRAMA For May Offers Two Plays
REMY DE GOURMONT, whose dramatic work has never been accessible
in English. The translation has been made by the celebrated
Imagist poet, RICHARD ALDINGTON, who contributes also a skillful
critique of de Gourmont’s work. The plays are printed by an
authorization given a few weeks before the playwright’s death.
Among the other articles is one by Alexander Bakshy, an associate
of the Russian producer, Meyerhold, on The Cinematograph as Art.
In this the author shows that the great field open to the
“movies” has not even been discovered by the film producer of
today.
Mr. Charles Lemmi contributes a brilliant discussion of The
Italian Stage of Today, not so much a study of the individual
plays as an attempt to analyze and explain the forces in the
present-day Italian theatre.
The Hull House Players, an organization of more than local fame,
is the subject of a brief history by the founder and director,
Laura Dainty Pelham.
Many other articles on the current problems of the drama, reviews
and bibliographies complete the number.
736 Marquette Building
CHICAGO
Three Dollars Per Year
Two Dollars Per Year to Members of The Drama League of America
Seventy-five Cents Per Copy
PIANO TRIUMPHANT
The artistic outgrowth of forty-five years of constant
improvement—a piano conceived to better all that has proven best
in others.
GEO. P. BENT GRAND
Could you but compare it with all others, artistically it must be
your choice. Each day proves this more true.
Geo. P. Bent Grand, Style “A”—a small Grand, built for the
home—your home.
GEO. P. BENT COMPANY
Manufacturers of Artistic Pianos
Retailers of Victrolas
214 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago
Transcriber’s Notes
Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.
The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect
correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.
The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here
(before/after):
[p. 3]:
... treacle on bread over all these different stylic bases, this
operation requiring ...
... treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases,
this operation requiring ...
[p. 44]:
... What encouragement is there for sincere artists ...
... What encouragement is there for sincere artists? ...