not so amiable and harmless as we are wont to think. It, too, was born
of the doubt of that whole old culture; of the most radical protest
again _status quo_. It, too, leagued with all the revolutionary spirits
of humanity. And it, too, revalued all the values of "faith" and
"morals." What if this new Nietzschean spirit of life's universal
reform, this creative, forward-striving genius of humanity, be once yet
again embodiment and representative of life's essential element of
rejuvenescence and growth? What if true prophets are always men of
_Sturm und Drang_, men of divine discontent, fellow-conspirators with
the Future? Anti-Christs? These are they who blaspheme the holy spirit
of humanity. Immoralists? These are they who say that life is good as it
is, and therefore should stay as it "is" forever. Faith? This is
directed, not to the past, but to the future; not to the certain, but to
the uncertain. Faith is the venturesomeness of moral knighthood.
Nietzsche was a Knight of the Future.
Why, then, should not a magazine of the Future interpret Nietzsche the
prophet of a new culture? Man as the goal, beauty as the form, life as
the law, eternity as the content of our new day--this is Nietzsche's
message to the modern man. In such an interpretation, Man and Superman
should be the subject of the next article.
How a Little Girl Danced
NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY
_Being a Reminiscence of Certain Private Theatricals_
(Dedicated to Lucy Bates)
Oh, cabaret dancer,
_I_ know a dancer
Whose eyes have not looked
On the feasts that are vain.
_I_ know a dancer,
_I_ know a dancer,
Whose soul has no bond
With the beasts of the plain:
Judith the dancer,
Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow
And with step like the rain.
Oh, thrice-painted dancer,
Vaudeville dancer,
Sad in your spangles,
With soul all astrain:
_I_ know a dancer,
_I_ know a dancer,
Whose laughter and weeping
Are spiritual gain;
A pure-hearted, high-hearted
Maiden evangel
With strength the dark cynical
Earth to disdain.
Flowers of bright Broadway!
You of the chorus
Who sing in the hope
Of forgetting your pain:
I turn to a sister
Of sainted Cecelia,
A white bird escaping
The earth's tangled skein!--
The music of God
In her innermost brooding!
The whispering angels
Her footsteps sustain!
Oh, proud Russian dancer:
Praise for your dancing!
No clean human passion
My rhyme would arraign.
You dance for Apollo
With noble devotion:
A high-cleansing revel
To make the heart sane.
But Judith the dancer
Prays to a spirit
More white than Apollo
And all of his train.
_I_ know a dancer
Who finds the true God-head;
Who bends o'er a brazier
In Heaven's clear plain.
_I_ know a dancer,
_I_ know a dancer,
Who lifts us toward peace
From this Earth that is vain:--
Judith the dancer,
Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow,
And with step like the rain.
The Dream of the Children
The children awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.
From their feet as they strayed in the meadow
It led through caverned aisles,
Filled with purple and green light and shadow
For mystic miles on miles.
--_From A. E.'s Collected Poems._
The Critics' Critic
GALSWORTHY AS A GREEK
Do you read Arthur Guiterman's rhymed reviews? They are not to be taken
too seriously, of course, though they are generally sane; but in the one
on _The Dark Flower_ he asks if such things don't tend to weaken our
moral fiber! Wow! Probably Homer might be said to do the same thing;
we'd better take it out of the schools, hadn't we? There's an episode I
recall about a female person named Helen, who was torn from her adoring
husband, etc., etc. You know I don't believe in weakening moral fiber,
but beauty _is_ beauty. All I could think of, in reading _The Dark
Flower_, was Greek classics. Do you remember that exquisite thing (is it
Euripides?)--
"This Cyprian
She is a million, million changing things;
She brings more joy than any god,
She brings
More pain. I cannot judge her; may it be
An hour of mercy when she looks on me."
Galsworthy's hero was just a Greek, swayed by Aphrodite. There's no
question of morals. And besides, he behaved pretty well--for a man!
THE CASE OF RUPERT BROOKE
I can't share THE LITTLE REVIEW'S estimate of Rupert Brooke. I'm
reminded immediately of something I found not long ago by Herbert
Trench:
"Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the earth is brief,
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take
If we go hence today
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they.
Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be,
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I'll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendor that we wear.
Great be the love, if with the lover dies
Our greatness past recall;
And nobler for the fading of those eyes
The world seen once for all."
Swinburne's
"From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free"
I like better so far as the music of it is concerned; and fully as well,
perhaps, as far as ideas go. There is something rather conscious and
posing in Mr. Trench's effort. And you see why I think of him when I
read Rupert Brooke. There is the same _memento mori_, the same
hopelessness of outlook. It seems a pity to me, when a man can write as
well as Brooke does in _The Hill_ and in that exquisite sonnet beginning
"Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire of watching you," that he
should waste his time on stupid, unpleasant cynicisms like _Wagner_ and
that _Channel Passage_, in which he doesn't know which pain to
choose--nausea or memory. I believe an Englishman can't achieve just the
right degree of mockery and brutality necessary for such an effort. Take
Heine, if you will--(I'm a Heine enthusiast); _he_ could do it with
supreme artistry. Do you remember the sea poems--especially the one
where he looks into the depths of the sea, catches sight of buried
cities and sees his lost love ("ein armes, vergessenes Kind")? It
finishes with the captain pulling him in by the heels, crying, "Doktor,
sind Sie des Teufels?" Heine can touch filth and offer it to you, and
you are rather amused--as at a child. But Englishmen are too
self-conscious for anything of that sort. You are shocked and ashamed
when they try it, feeling in a way defiled yourself by reading. It
irritates me, and I wish Mr. Brooke would stop it, right away. He's too
worth while to waste himself.
THE FEMINIST DISCUSSIONS
Do you know the story of the man, elected by some political pull to a
judgeship in Indiana, who, after listening to the argument for the
plaintiff, refused to hear anything further. "That feller wins," he said
decisively. On being told that it was customary and necessary to hear
the defendant's side also, he duly listened, with growing amazement.
"Don't it beat all?" he said, pathetically, at the close; "now the other
feller wins."
In much the same frame of mind I read the articles that are appearing in
the current magazines on the subject of feminism and militancy. Edna
Kenton's in _The Century_ is the only one that is content to give one
side of the case. Decidedly, you will say on reading it, "That feller
wins." _The Atlantic_ prints an admirable article by W. L. George on
Feminist Intentions, and follows it hastily with a rebuttal by E. S.
Martin (_Much Ado About Women_), fearing, I imagine, lest it would seem
to be bowing its venerable head before new, profane altars. _Life_ gets
out a really excellent suffrage number, sane and logical and reasonable,
and has followed it up ever since with all the flings it can collect
against suffrage, militancy, or feminism in any form. A recent amusing
instance of this is a letter by one Thomas H. Lipscomb, who signs
himself, alack! A Modern Man, and adds that his name is legion. Judging
by the terror in the communication Mr. Lipscomb's modernity goes back as
far as the Old Testament Proverbs, and the womanly ideal he so
passionately upholds is in all respects the one the writer of this
particular proverb acclaims. I have heard it used as a text so often,
and have had it grounded into the very framework of my being so
consistently, that it seems almost strange and irreverent to regard it
with an alien and critical eye. And yet--just see what is expected of
the poor thing: She
Seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands.
Bringeth her food from afar.
Riseth while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household;
Considereth a field, and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands
planteth a vineyard.
Her candle goeth not out by night.
She
Layeth her hands to the spindle; and her hands hold the
distaff.
Maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles unto the
merchant....
together with a few other airy trifles such as bearing and rearing
children, I suppose. But most significant of all--
Her husband is known in the gates where he sitteth among the
elders of the land.
I should think so indeed! There seems to be little else left for him to
do.
I can almost hear the writer smacking his lips over this description,
which no doubt tallies closely with Mr. Lipscomb's own notions.
For all this she is to
Receive of the fruit of her own hands, and her own works shall
praise her.
Possibly women have tired a little of letting their own works praise
them--and nothing else! But I am taking the letter too seriously.
To go back to _The Atlantic_, I find Mr. George, who is in full sympathy
with the movement of which he writes, classifying the demands of the
feminists as follows: Economically, they intend to open every occupation
to women; they intend to level the wages of women; in general, they wish
to change the attitude of those who regard women's present inferiority
to men (they frankly admit that there is inferiority in many respects)
as inherent and insuperable, by demonstrating that it is due merely to
long lack of thorough training--(an old friend, apparently, in a new
dress!) They wish also gradually to modify and change existing marriage
laws so that they will be equally fair to both sexes.
A careful re-reading of Mr. Martin's article fails to reveal much in the
way of counter argument to Mr. George's forcible appeal. There's a great
deal of courteous agreement and some rather good satire, but against the
specific counts of the feminists' intentions Mr. Martin raises no
telling argument. We hear that whereas fathers wish all earthly
blessings for their daughters, mothers do not, as women are jealous of
women; also that mothers fear the modern woman on account of their sons,
for whom they in turn wish all possible good: the modern woman will not
make a good wife! Angels and ministers of grace defend us! In a double
quality as daughter to a devoted and loving mother, and as a devoted and
loving mother to a most precious daughter, I throw down my glove.
I am sure Mr. Martin has never acted in either of these capacities, so
precious little he knows about it! Besides, I do want my son to have
everything that the world provides in the way of blessings and
happiness, so I want him to have as a wife a thoroughly modern woman
with an awakened soul and a high ideal, to finish the good work in him
which I have at least endeavored to begin.
As I read further, however, the cat begins to poke a cautious head out
of the bag. Women, Mr. Martin argues, are not responsible for the
blessings the feminist movement is trying to bring them. It is men! That
is why he is so particular to tell us of the careful solicitude of a
father for his daughters. Men, right along, have procured all happiness
for women; or, if not men exactly, at least a sort of _Zeit Geist_--I
believe he calls it "necessity." And the poor deluded feminists are
simply the little boys running along by the side of the procession and
hollering. The procession is made up of vague forces, "working nowadays
for the enlargement and betterment of life for women"--forces, he
quaintly complains, that are "making things go too fast their way
already."
So we must take all credit from Luther and Knox and Calvin and the
reformers of all times and give it to the _Zeit Geist_. They, too, are
little boys, I suppose, who ran along and hollered. At least they
hollered lustily and well, and the feminists are in good company.
And the peroration--every true woman will appreciate this: "What a
husband sees in forty years, maybe, of the good and bad of life for a
woman; what a father sees in his daughters and the conditions of modern
life as they affect girls--those are the things which count in forming
or changing the convictions of men about woman's errand in this current
world."
Well! However far the _Zeit Geist_ has progressed in other directions,
it is plain that it has not made inroads on Mr. Martin's consciousness
of the present state of affairs. Who has given men the power and right
to decide about woman's errand in the world? For lo! these many years we
have been letting husbands, fathers, and brothers decide for us just
what it were best for us to do; and if the new idea has any significance
at all it is just this: that we feel able to decide for ourselves what
we most want and need.
M. H. P.
The New Note
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
The new note in the craft of writing is in danger, as are all new and
beautiful things born into the world, of being talked to death in the
cradle. Already a cult of the new has sprung up, and doddering old
fellows, yellow with their sins, run here and there crying out that they
are true prophets of the new, just as, following last year's exhibit,
every age-sick American painter began hastily to inject into his own
work something clutched out of the seething mass of new forms and new
effects scrawled upon the canvases by the living young cubists and
futurists. Confused by the voices, they raised also their voices,
multiplying the din. Forgetting the soul of the workman, they grasped at
lines and solids, getting nothing.
In the trade of writing the so-called new note is as old as the world.
Simply stated, it is a cry for the reinjection of truth and honesty into
the craft; it is an appeal from the standards set up by money-making
magazine and book publishers in Europe and America to the older, sweeter
standards of the craft itself; it is the voice of the new man, come into
a new world, proclaiming his right to speak out of the body and soul of
youth, rather than through the bodies and souls of the master craftsmen
who are gone.
In all the world there is no such thing as an old sunrise, an old wind
upon the cheeks, or an old kiss from the lips of your beloved; and in
the craft of writing there can be no such thing as age in the souls of
the young poets and novelists who demand for themselves the right to
stand up and be counted among the soldiers of the new. That there are
such youths is brother to the fact that there are ardent young cubists
and futurists, anarchists, socialists, and feminists; it is the promise
of a perpetual sweet new birth of the world; it is as a strong wind come
out of the virgin west.
One does not talk of his beloved even among the friends of his beloved;
and so the talk of the new note in writing will be heard coming from the
mouths of the aged and from the lips of oily ones who do not know of
what they talk, but run about in circles, making noise and clamor. Do
not be confused by them. They but follow the customs of their kind. They
are the stript priests of the falling temples, piling stone on stone to
build a new temple, that they may exact tribute as before.
Something has happened in the world of men. Old standards and old ideas
tumble about our heads. In the dust and confusion of the falling of the
timbers of the temple many voices are raised. Among the voices of the
old priests who weep are raised also the voices of the many who cry,
"Look at us! We are the new! We are the prophets; follow us!"
Something has happened in the world of men. Temples have been wrecked
before only to be rebuilt, and destroying youth has danced only to
become in turn a builder and in time a priest, muttering old words.
Nothing in all of this new is new except this--that beside the youth
dancing in the dust of the falling timbers is a maiden also dancing and
proclaiming herself. "We will have a world not half new but all new!"
cry the youth and the maiden, dancing together.
Do not be led aside by the many voices crying of the new. Be ready to
accept hardship for the sake of your craft in America--that is craft
love.
Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody
Edited, with introduction, by Daniel Gregory Mason. (Houghton
Mifflin Company, Boston.)
I shall never forget how, at sixteen, I read Stevenson's letters and
thought them the most beautiful things in the world. I shall never
forget similar experiences with Keats and Browning, and finally with
Meredith; and now comes another volume of letters by the man who might
be called the American Henley (though that only does him half justice)
to keep one up at night and teach him unforgettable things. People have
been saying that this collection doesn't represent the best letters
Moody wrote. Certainly if he wrote more interesting ones the world ought
to be allowed to see them, for these are valuable enough to become an
American tradition.
The following is typical:
_To Daniel Gregory Mason._
DEAR DAN:
I have just heard from your sister-in-law of your enforced
furlough. I am not going to help you curse your luck, knowing
your native capabilities in that direction to be perfectly
adequate, but my Methodist training urges me to give you an
epistolary hand-shake, the purport of which is "_Keep your
sand._" I could say other things, not utterly pharisaical. I
could say what I have often said to myself, with a rather reedy
tremolo perhaps, but swelling sometimes into a respectable
diapason. "The dark cellar ripens the wine." And meanwhile, after
one's eyes get used to the dirty light, and one's feet to the
mildew, a cellar has its compensations. I have found beetles of
the most interesting proclivities, mice altogether comradely and
persuadable, and forgotten potatoes that sprouted toward the
crack of sunshine with a wan maiden grace not seen above. I don't
want to pose as resourceful, but I have seen what I have seen.
The metaphor is however happily inexact in your case, with Milton
to retire to and Cambridge humming melodiously on the horizon. If
you can only throttle your Daemon, or make him forgoe his leonine
admonition "Accomplish," and roar you as any sucking dove the
sweet vocable "Be"--you ought to live. I have got mine trained to
that, pardee! and his voice grows not untunable. I pick up shreds
of comfort out of this or that one of God's ashbarrels. Yesterday
I was skating on a patch of ice in the park, under a poverty
stricken sky flying a pitiful rag of sunset. Some little muckers
were guying a slim raw-boned Irish girl of fifteen, who circled
and darted under their banter with complete unconcern. She was in
the fledgling stage, all legs and arms, tall and adorably
awkward, with a huge hat full of rusty feathers, thin skirts
tucked up above spindling ankles, and a gay aplomb and swing in
the body that was ravishing. We caught hands in midflight, and
skated for an hour, almost alone and quite silent, while the rag
of sunset rotted to pieces. I have had few sensations in life
that I would exchange for the warmth of her hand through the
ragged glove, and the pathetic curve of the half-formed breast
where the back of my wrist touched her body. I came away
mystically shaken and elate. It is thus the angels converse. She
was something absolutely authentic, new, and inexpressible,
something which only nature could mix for the heart's
intoxication, a compound of ragamuffin, pal, mistress, nun,
sister, harlequin, outcast, and bird of God,--with something else
bafflingly suffused, something ridiculous and frail and savage
and tender. With a world offering such rencontres, such aery
strifes and adventures, who would not live a thousand years stone
dumb? I would, for one--until my mood changes and I come to think
on the shut lid and granite lip of him who has had done with
sunsets and skating, and has turned away his face from all manner
of Irish. I am supported by a conviction that at an auction on
the steps of the great white throne, I should bring more in the
first mood than the second--by several harps and a stray
dulcimer.
I thoroughly envy you your stay at Milton--wrist, Daemon, and
all. You must send me a lengthy account of the state of things at
Cambridge.... If the wrist forbids writing, employ a typewriter
of the most fashionable tint--I will pay all expenses and stand
the breakage. I stipulate that you shall avoid blonds, however,
they are fragile.
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY.
There are over a hundred letters here, written to Mr. Mason, Percy
MacKaye, Richard Watson Gilder, Josephine Preston Peabody, Edmund
Clarence Stedman, Henry Miller, Robert Morss Lovett, Ferdinand Schevill,
and others; and every one of them shows Moody's remarkable gift of
metaphor, his constant striving to "win for language some new swiftness,
some rare compression," his belief in the positive acceptance of life,
his paganism, "deeply spiritual, and as far as possible removed from the
sensualism the thoughtless have found in it." Mr. Mason furnishes an
introduction that is masterly; and the first and final drafts of
_Heart's Wild Flower_ are included, proving vividly how this poet
disciplined his rich imaginative gifts, training away from a native
tendency to the rococo to the high, pure dignity that marks his finished
verse. This volume is invaluable. Certainly with two such authentic
voices to boast of as Whitman's and Moody's this young country of ours
has reason to be proud.
M. C. A.
A Feminist of a Hundred Years Ago
MARGERY CURREY
_Rahel Varnhagen_: A Portrait, by Ellen Key. Translated from the
Swedish by Arthur G. Chater; with an introduction by Havelock
Ellis. (G. P. Putman's Sons, New York.)
For certain distinctive women Rahel Varnhagen lived; for the same women
Ellen Key has written this appreciation of Rahel. By the woman to whom
fine freedom of living and fearlessness and directness of thought are
the only possible terms on which she may deal with the social situation
in which she finds herself this book will be read and re-read, and
pencil-marked along the margins of its pages.
The rare woman, here and there, who worships simple, direct thinking
(which, after all, takes the most courage) will know how to value Rahel.
Always she thought truthfully. The woman who has been filled with joyful
new amazement on finding that her only reliance is on herself--that she
may not depend upon this person or that convention to preserve her
happiness--will know how to value her. Just so far as any woman of today
has become interested in her own thoughts and work, is the originator of
ideas, and knows the joy of making or doing something that more than all
else in the world she wants to make or do, so far she is nearer to
becoming of the size of this great woman.
Such a woman will share with Rahel Varnhagen the certainty that higher
morality is reached only through higher liberty; such a woman must
demand, as did Rahel, periods of that recuperative and strengthening
solitude, both of thought and mode of living, which only the
self-reliant and fearless can endure. She knows that she herself, not
convention, must furnish the answer to questions of right and wrong by
earnest, free inquiry and by testing every experience. The acceptance of
no convention was inevitable to Rahel, as she thought of it. She put it
to the best of scrutiny. What value was there in it? It was not
violating conventions which she set out to do, but meeting them with a
quiet, sincere inquiry of the reason and truth they contained.
Rahel Varnhagen lived in Berlin a hundred years ago and was probably the
most beloved and much-visited woman of those whose salons attracted the
notable men of the day--Fichte, Hegel, Prince Louis Ferdinand, Fouqué,
the Humboldts, the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, and other giants of the
time. Rahel was a woman--the lamentable rarity of them!--whose influence
was not through her literary work (her letters to friends are all that
we have of her writing), not through brilliancy of speech alone, nor
through her munificent patronage of the artists and literary men of her
day (she was not rich, and we read of the garret in which she
entertained her friends), but through the richness of her personality,
the glowing warmth of her sympathy, her understanding, and the wisdom of
her heart.