THE LITTLE REVIEW
Literature Drama Music Art
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
JUNE, 1914
"Incense and Splendor" The Editor
A Kaleidoscope Nicholas Vachel Lindsay
Futurism and Pseudo-Futurism Alexander S. Kaun
A Wonder-Child Violinist Margaret C. Anderson
The New Paganism DeWitt C. Wing
Gloria Mundi Eunice Tietjens
The Will to Live George Burman Foster
Keats and Fanny Brawne Charlotte Wilson
A New Woman from Denmark Marguerite Swawite
Editorials
New York Letter George Soule
Correspondence:
Miss Columbia: An Old-Fashioned Girl
Poetry to the Uttermost
Reflections of a Dilettante
The Immortality of the Soul
Book Discussion:
Dostoevsky--Pessimist?
The Salvation of the World à la Wells
The Unique James Family
The Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness
De Morgan's Latest
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THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. I
JUNE, 1914
No. 4
Copyright, 1914, by Margaret C. Anderson.
"Incense and Splendor"
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
A young American novelist stated the other day that the American woman
is oversexed; that present-day modes of dress are all designed to
emphasize sex; and that it is high time for a reaction against sex
discussions, sex stories, and sex plays.
But I think she's entirely mistaken. The American woman, speaking
broadly, is pathetically undersexed, just as she is undersensitive and
underintelligent. The last adjective will be disputed or resented; but
it's interesting once in a while to hear the thoughtful foreigner's
opinion of our intelligence. Tagore, for instance, said that he was
agreeably surprised in regard to the American man and astonished at the
stupidity of the American woman. As for our fiction and drama--we've had
much about sex in the last few years, some of it intensely valuable,
much of it intensely foolish; but it's quite too early to predict the
reaction. The really constructive work on the subject is yet to be done.
And the pity of the whole thing is that the critics who keep lecturing
us on our oversexedness don't realize that what they're really trying to
get at is our poverty of spirit, our emotional incapacities, our
vanities, our pettinesses--any number of qualities which spring from
anything but too much sex. Nothing is safer than to say that the man or
woman of strong sex equipment is rarely vain or petty or mean or
unintelligent. But as a result of all this vague bickering, "sex"
continues to shoulder the blame for all kinds of shortcomings, and the
real root of the trouble goes untreated--even undiagnosed. One thing is
certain: until we become conscious that there's something very wrong
with our attitude toward sex, we'll never get rid of the hard, tight,
anæmic, metallic woman who flourishes in America as nowhere else in the
world.
This doesn't mean the old Puritan type, to whom sex was a rotten,
unmentionable thing; nor does it mean the Victorian, who recognizes the
sex impulse only as a means to an end. They belong to the past too
definitely to be harmful. It means two newer types than these: the woman
who looks upon sex as something to be endured and forgiven, and the
woman who doesn't feel at all.
The first type has a great (and by no means a secret) pride in her
spiritual superiority to the coarse creature she married, and a
never-dying hope that she can lead him up to her level. She talks a lot
about spirituality; she has her standards, and she knows how to classify
what she calls "sensuality"; she's convinced that she has married the
best man in the world, but--well, all men have this failing in common,
and the only thing one can do is to rise above it magnificently, with
that air of spiritual isolation which is her most effective weapon. Shaw
has hit her off on occasion, but he ought to devote a whole three acts
to her undoing; or perhaps an Ibsen would do it better, because tragedy
follows her path like some sinister shadow, as inevitably as those other
"ghosts" of his. The second type has no more capacity for love or sex
than she has for music or poetry--which is none at all. Like a polished
glass vase, empty and beautiful, she lures the man who loves her to a
kind of supreme nothingness. She will always tell you that marriage is
"wonderful"; and she urges all her friends to marry as quickly as
possible, for that's the only way to be perfectly happy. Marriage is
"wonderful" to her just as birth is "wonderful" in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's satire:
Birth comes. Birth--
The breathing re-creation of the earth!
All earth, all sky, all God, life's sweet deep whole,
Newborn again to each new soul!
"Oh, are you? What a shame! Too bad, my dear!
How will you stand it, too. It's very queer
The dreadful trials women have to carry;
But you can't always help it when you marry.
Oh, what a sweet layette! What lovely socks!
What an exquisite puff and powder box!
Who is your doctor? Yes, his skill's immense--
But it's a dreadful danger and expense!"
It's all a powder-puff matter: marriage means new clothes, gifts, and a
house to play with. It gives her another chance to get something for
nothing--which is immoral. But the beauty of the situation is that the
immorality (thanks to our habits of not thinking straight) is so
perfectly concealed: it even appears that she is the one who does the
giving. As for any bother about sex, she'll soon put an end to that. And
so she goes on her pirate ways, luring for the sake of the lure, adding
her voice to the already swelled chorus which proclaims that truth and
beauty lodge in things as they are, not in things as they might or
should be.
But, to return to the novelist's argument about clothes, the present
fashion for low necks and slit skirts has nothing to do with sex
necessarily. Its origin is in vanity--which may or may not have a
bearing upon sex. And of course it usually hasn't; for vanity is an
attribute of small natures, and sex is an attribute of great ones.
There has never been a time when women had such an opportunity to be
beautiful physically. And they are taking advantage of it. Watch any
modern matinée or concert or shopping crowd carefully. There's something
about the new style that points to a finer naturalness, just as it is
more natural for men to wear clothes that follow the lines of their
bodies than to pad their shoulders and use twice too much cloth in their
trouser legs. The move of muscles through a close-fitting suit gives an
effect of strength and efficiency and animal grace that is superbly
healthy. And it is so with women, too. With the exception of the foolish
and unnecessary restrictions in walking women have such a splendid
chance to look straight, unhampered, direct, lithe. I don't know just
why, but I want to use the word "true" about the new clothes. They're so
much less dishonest than the old padded ways--the strange, perverted,
muffled methods. The old plan was built on the theory that the
suppression of nature is civilization; the new plan seems to be that a
recognition of nature is common sense. We may become Greek yet. By all
of which I'll probably be credited with supporting the silly indecencies
we see every day on the street--ridiculous, unintelligent manifestations
of the new freedom--instead of merely seeing in its wise expression a
bigger hope of truth. I think the preachers who are filling the
newspapers with hysterical protests about women's dress had better look
a little more closely at the real issue and stop confusing a fine
impulse with its inevitable abuses.
But after all there's only one important thing to be said about sex in
its relation to a full life. Some day we're going to have a tremendous
revaluation of the thing known as feeling. We're going to realize that
the only person who doesn't err in relation to values is the artist; and
since the bigger part of the artist's equipment is simply the capacity
to feel, we're going to begin training a race of men toward a new ideal.
It shall be this: that nothing shall qualify as fundamentally "immoral"
except denial--the failure of imagination, of understanding, of
appreciation, of quickening to beauty in every form, of perceiving
beauty where custom or convention has dwarfed its original stature; the
failure to put one's self in the other person's place; the great,
ghastly failure of life which allows one to look but not to see, to
listen but not to hear--to touch but not to feel.
The other night I heard Schumann's Des Abends--that summer-night elegy
of a thousand, thousand cadences--played near a place where trees were
stirring softly and grass smelling warm and cool; some one said
afterward that it was pretty.... The other day I heard a violin played
so throbbingly that it was like "what the sea has striven to say"; and
through it all a group of people talked, as though no miracle were
happening. Not very long after these two ---- (I can't find a noun), I
talked with some one who tried to convince me that the biggest and most
valiant person I know was--"well, not the sort one can afford to be
friends with." Somehow all three episodes immediately linked themselves
together in my mind. Each was a failure of the same type--a failure of
imagination, of feeling; the last one, at least, was tragedy; and it
will become impossible for people to fail that way only when they stop
failing in the first two ways.
Not long ago I went into a music store and bought Tschaikowsky's Les
Larmes. It cost twenty-eight cents. I walked out so under the spell of
the immense adventure of living that I realized later how imbecile I
must have looked and why the clerk gazed at me so suspiciously. But I
had a song which had cost a man who knows what sorrow to write--a thing
of such richness that it meant experience to any one who could own it.
One of the world's big things for twenty-eight cents! And such things
happen every day!
Sex is simply the quintessence of this type of feeling, plus a deeper
thing for which no words have been made. But we reach the wonder of the
utmost realization in just one way: by having felt greatly at every
step.
"American artists know everything," said a young foreign sculptor
lately; "they know that much" (throwing out his arms wide), "but they
only feel that much!" (measuring an inch with his fingers). How can we
produce the great audiences that Whitman knew we needed in order to have
great poets, if we don't train the new generations to feel? How can we
prevent these crimes against love and sex--how put a stop to human waste
in all its hideous forms--if we don't recognize the new idealism which
means not to deny?
A Kaleidoscope
NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY
Blanche Sweet--Moving-Picture Actress
[After seeing the reel called Oil and Water.]
Beauty has a throne-room
In our humorous town,
Spoiling its hobgoblins,
Laughing shadows down.
Dour musicians torture
Rag-time ballads vile,
But we walk serenely
Down the odorous aisle.
We forgive the squalor,
And the boom and squeal,
For the Great Queen flashes
From the moving reel.
Just a prim blonde stranger
In her early day,
Hiding brilliant weapons,
Too averse to play;
Then she burst upon us
Dancing through the night,
Oh, her maiden radiance,
Veils and roses white!
With new powers, yet cautious,
Not too smart or skilled,
That first flash of dancing
Wrought the thing she willed:--
Mobs of us made noble
By her strong desire,
By her white, uplifting
Royal romance-fire.
Though the tin piano
Snarls its tango rude,
Though the chairs are shaky
And the drama's crude,
Solemn are her motions,
Stately are her wiles,
Filling oafs with wisdom,
Saving souls with smiles;
Mid the restless actors
She is rich and slow,
She will stand like marble,
She will pause and glow,
Though the film is twitching
Keep a peaceful reign,
Ruler of her passion,
Ruler of our pain!
Girl, You Shall Mock No Longer
You shall not hide forever,
I shall your path discern;
I have the key to Heaven,
Key to the pits that burn.
Saved ones will help me, lost ones
Spy on your secret way--
Show me your flying footprints
On past your death-bed day.
If by your pride you stumble
Down to the demon-land,
I shall be there beside you,
Chained to your burning hand.
If, by your choice and pleasure,
You shall ascend the sky,
I, too, will mount that stairway,
You shall not put me by.
There, 'mid the holy people,
Healed of your blasting scorn,
Clasped in these arms that hunger,
Splendid with dreams reborn,
You shall be mastered, lady,
Knowing, at last, Desire--
Lifting your face for kisses--
Kisses of bitter fire.
The Amaranth
Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here ...
Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns
And the tremendous amaranth descends
Sweet with glory of ten thousand dawns?
Does it not mean my God would have me say:--
"Whether you will or no, oh city young
Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you,
Flash and loom greatly, all your marts among?"
Friends I will not cease hoping, though you weep.
Such things I see, and some of them shall come
Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-grey,
Though now our youths are strident, or are dumb.
Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town shall rise.
Naught can delay it. Though it may not be
Just as I dream, it comes at last, I know
With streets like channels of an incense-sea!
An Argument
I. The voice of the man who is impatient with visions and
Utopias.
We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, as dull as life in cells,
Oh scribes that dare forget how wild we are,
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean, and chaste by law.
I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
Promise us all our share in Agincourt.
Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death.
That future ant-hills will not be too good
For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
Promise that through tomorrow's spirit-war
Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
Each flaunting Cæsar climbing to his fate
Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.
And never a shallow jester any more.
Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.
Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise,
And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain!
II. The Rhymer's reply. Incense and Splendor.
Incense and splendor haunt me as I go.
Though my good works have been, alas, too few,
Though I do naught, High Heaven comes down to me
And future ages pass in tall review.
I see the years to come as armies vast,
Stalking tremendous through the fields of time.
Man is unborn. Tomorrow he is born
Flamelike to hover o'er the moil and grime;
Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone,
Sowing a million flowers where now we mourn--
Laying new precious pavements with a song,
Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn.
I have seen lovers by those new-built walls
Clothed like the dawn, in orange, gold, and red;
Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love
Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head.
Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers;
Passion was turned to civic strength that day--
Piling the marbles, making fairer domes
With zeal that else had burned bright youth away.
I have seen priestesses of life go by
Gliding in Samite through the incense-sea:--
Innocent children marching with them there,
Singing in flowered robes--"the Earth is free!"
While on the fair deep-carved, unfinished towers
Sentinels watched in armor night and day--
Guarding the brazier-fires of hope and dream--
Wild was their peace, and dawn-bright their array!
Darling Daughter of Babylon
Too soon you wearied of our tears.
And then you danced with spangled feet,
Leading Belshazzar's chattering court
A-tinkling through the shadowy street.
With mead they came, with chants of shame,
Desire's red flag before them flew.
And Istar's music moved your mouth
And Baal's deep shames rewoke in you.
Now you could drive the royal car:
Forget our Nation's breaking load:--
Now you could sleep on silver beds--
(Bitter and dark was our abode).
And so for many a night you laughed
And knew not of my hopeless prayer,
Till God's own spirit whipped you forth
From Istar's shrine, from Istar's stair.
Darling daughter of Babylon--
Rose by the black Euphrates flood--
Again your beauty grew more dear
Than my slave's bread, than my heart's blood.
We sang of Zion, good to know,
Where righteousness and peace abide ...
What of your second sacrilege
Carousing at Belshazzar's side?
Once, by a stream, we clasped tired hands--
Your paint and henna washed away.
Your place (you said) was with the slaves
Who sewed the thick cloth, night and day.
You were a pale and holy maid
Toil-bound with us. One night you said:--
"Your God shall be my God until
I slumber with the patriarch dead."
Pardon, daughter of Babylon,
If, on this night remembering
Our lover walks under the walls
Of hanging gardens in the spring--
A venom comes, from broken hope--
From memories of your comrade-song,
Until I curse your painted eyes
And do your flower-mouth too much wrong.
I Went Down Into the Desert
I went down into the desert
To meet Elijah--
Or some one like, arisen from the dead.
I thought to find him in an echoing cave,
For so my dream had said.
I went down into the desert
To meet John the Baptist.
I walked with feet that bled,
Seeking that prophet, lean and brown and bold.
I spied foul fiends instead.
I went down into the desert
To meet my God,
By Him be comforted.
I went down into the desert
To meet my God
And I met the Devil in Red.
I went down into the desert
To meet my God.
Oh Lord, my God, awaken from the dead!
I see you there, your thorn-crown on the ground--
I see you there, half-buried in the sand--
I see you there, your white bones glistening, bare,
The carrion birds a-wheeling round your head!
Encountered on the Streets of the City
THE CHURCH OF VISION AND DREAM
Is it for naught that where the tired crowds see
Only a place for trade, a teeming square,
Doors of high portent open unto me
Carved with great eagles, and with Hawthorns rare?
Doors I proclaim, for there are rooms forgot
Ripened through æons by the good and wise:
Walls set with Art's own pearl and amethyst
Angel-wrought hangings there, and heaven-hued dyes:--
Dazzling the eye of faith, the hope-filled heart:--
Rooms rich in records of old deeds sublime:
Books that hold garnered harvests of far lands
Pictures that tableau Man's triumphant climb:
Statues so white, so counterfeiting life,
Bronze so ennobled, so with glory fraught
That the tired eyes must weep with joy to see,
And the tired mind in Beauty's net be caught.
Come, enter there, and meet Tomorrow's Man,
Communing with him softly, day by day.
Ah, the deep vistas he reveals, the dream
Of Angel-bands in infinite array--
Bright angel-bands that dance in paths of earth
When our despairs are gone, long overpast--
When men and maidens give fair hearts to Christ
And white streets flame in righteous peace at last!
The Stubborn Mouse
The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down
Began his task in early life,
He kept so busy with his teeth
He had no time to take a wife.
He gnawed and gnawed through sun and rain,
When the ambitious fit was on,
Then rested in the sawdust till
A month in idleness had gone.
He did not move about to hunt
The coteries of mousie-men;
He was a snail-paced stupid thing
Until he cared to gnaw again.
The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down
When that tough foe was at his feet--
Found in the stump no angel-cake
Nor buttered bread, no cheese, nor meat--
The forest-roof let in the sky.
"This light is worth the work," said he.
"I'll make this ancient swamp more light"--
And started on another tree!
The Sword-Pen of the Rhymer
I'll haunt this town, though gone the maids and men
The darling few, my friends and loves today.
My ghost returns, bearing a great sword-pen
When far off children of their children play.
That pen will drip with moonlight and with fire;
I'll write upon the church-doors and the walls;
And reading there, young hearts shall leap the higher
Though drunk already with their own love-calls.
Still led of love, and arm in arm, strange gold
Shall find in tracing the far-speeding track
The dauntless war-cries that my sword-pen bold
Shall carve on terraces and tree-trunks black--
On tree-trunks black, 'mid orchard-blossoms white--
Just as the phospherent merman, struggling home,
Jewels his fire-paths in the tides at night
While hurrying sea-babes follow through the foam.
And, in the winter, when the leaves are dead
And the first snow has carpeted the street,
While young cheeks flush a healthful Christmas red,
And young eyes glisten with youth's fervor sweet--
My pen will cut in snow my hopes of yore,
Cries that in channelled glory leap and shine--
My village gospel--living evermore
'Mid those rejoicing loyal friends of mine.
Futurism and Pseudo-Futurism
ALEXANDER S. KAUN
That Futurism is not a mere fad, a capricious bubble, is apparent from
the fact that after five years of stormy existence the movement does not
disappear or abate, but, on the contrary, continually gains soil and
spreads deep and wide over all fields of European art. The critics of
the new school no longer find it possible to dismiss it with a
contemptuous smile as a silly joke of over-satiated modernists, but they
either attack the Futurists with the vehemence and fury of a losing
combatant, or they discuss the doctrine earnestly and apprehensively.
To set art free of the atavistic fetters of the old culture and
civilization, to imbue it with the nervous sensitiveness of our age,
have been the negative and positive aims of Futurism. It is absurd to
abide by the forms of Phydias and Æschylus in the days of radium and
aeroplanes. The influence of the old masterpieces is accountable for the
fact that of late humanity ceased to produce great works of art. It is
quite natural that the protest against the "historical burden" should
have originated in Italy, a country which, after having served for
centuries as a pillar of light, has so degenerated that in our times it
can boast only of such names as the saccharine Verdi and the pretentious
D'Annunzio. It is natural, I should like to add, that in this country
Futurism is still a foreign plant; for, fortunately or unfortunately, we
have been free of a burdensome heritage, and an iconoclastic movement
would appear quixotic.
Started in Milan in the end of the year 1909, the movement has swept the
continent and has revolutionized art. Even conservative England feebly
echoes the battle-cry in the attempts of the Imagists. I do not intend
to prognosticate the future of Futurism; it is still in its infantile
stage, growing and developing with surprising leaps, continually taking
on new forms; but the present-day Futurism is abundant with quaint,
grotesque features approaching caricature; and some of them merit a few
words.
The "parent" of Futurism and the present leader of Futurist poets,
Marinetti, is, to say the least, an unusual personality. His Boswell,
Tullia Pantea, describes his master's life in its minutest nuances and
chants dithyrambs to his wonderful achievements. We learn that Marinetti
was born in Egypt in voluptuous surroundings, his father being a
millionaire. From his childhood on he disposed of unlimited sums of
money. "At the age of eleven he knew a woman; at fifteen he edited a
literary magazine, Papyrus, printed on vellum paper; at seventeen he
fought a duel." We follow this enfant terrible to Paris where he
lavishly squanders his millions, fights duels, and faces the court for
his pornographic poems. He is sentenced to an eight weeks' imprisonment
for an exotic work which I shall not venture to quote, as it is too
repulsive to the English reader. Pantea further describes his master's
kingly palazzo in Milan, where "... at night in the bed-chamber
decorated with astonishing elegance and with mad extravagance meet the
most beautiful women of Italy and Europe."
I quote these nauseatic details, for they help to explain the erotic
aroma of Marinetti's poems. Their erotism is morbid, aroused by
artificial "convulsions of sensuality," "imitation of madness," "a
cancan of dancing Death." Yet we cannot overlook the beauty of the
verses, their devilish rhythm, and enchanting mysticism. Some of his
early poems, more natural than his latest Words at Liberty, are
intoxicating with their mad exoticism.
The following is one of his best-known poems, The Banjos of Despair:
Elles chantent, les benjohs hystériques et sauvages,
comme des chattes énervées par l'odeur de l'orage.
Ce sont des nègres qui les tiennent
empoignées violemment, comme on tient
une amarre que secoue la bourrasque.
Elles miaulent, les benjohs, sous leurs doigts frénétiques,
et la mer, en bombant son dos d'hippopotame,
acclame leurs chansons par des flic-flacs sonores
et des renâclements.
The hysteric and savage banjos that meow like cats maddened by the odor
of the storm; the sea which, swelling its back of a hippopotamus,
applauds their songs with its sonorous twick-twacks and snorts--I
understand the poet, I believe him. But, as I said, this is Marinetti's
early poetry. How far he has "progressed" you may judge from the
following quotation from his latest Words at Liberty, as it appears in
The London Times:
INDIFFERENZA
DI 2 ROTONDITA SOSPESE
SOLE + PALLONE
FRENATI
s
p
i
r
a
c l
f o i
l l
a o d
m n i
m n
e e s
c
g d i
i i n
g t
a f i
n u l
t m l
i o e
villaggi turchi incendiati
grande T
rrrrrzzzonzzzzzzante d'ue monoplano bulgaro
+ neve di manifesti.
This "poem" is a description of a battle during the Turco-Bulgarian war;
the style is supposed to be "polychromatic, polymorphous, and
polyphonic, that may not only animalize, vegetalize, electrify, and
liquefy itself, but penetrate and express the essence and the atomic
life of matter." This is the dernier cri of Italian Futurism which
originated in a--draff-ditch. Here is Marinetti's own "electrified"
description of that memorable event:
As usual we spent the night in our favorite café, which is
attended by the most elegant women. Some one suggested that we
take an automobile ride in the suburbs. We whirled over the
sleepy streets. Out of town. Deep darkness.... Moment of falling.
We are hurled into an abyss. Ecstasy....
Then--we are on the bottom of a ditch filled with malodorous
dregs. We drown in the mud. Mud covers the face, the body, mud
blinds the eyes, fills the mouth.
Finally we succeed in getting out of the filthy ditch and we go
back to the city. But....
For a certain time there remained with us the taste of
rottenness; we could not get rid of the rotten odor that
permeated all pores of our bodies. In the moment of falling into
that ditch the idea of Futurism came into my head. On the same
night before dawn we wrote the entire first manifesto on
Futurism.
Thus the new art was born under peculiar circumstances--"under the sign
of scandal"--and scandal became the tactics of Italian Futurists who
have professed their "delight in being hissed" and their contempt for
applause.
A few points of that manifesto:
We shall sing of the love of danger, the habit of energy and
boldness. Literature has hitherto glorified thoughtful
immobility, ecstasy of sleep; we shall extol aggressive movement,
feverish insomnia, the double quick step, the somersault, the box
on the ear, the fisticuff.
There is no more beauty except in strife. We wish to glorify
war--the only purifier of the world--militarism, patriotism, the
destructive gesture of the anarchist, the beauty of Ideas that
kill, the contempt for women.
We wish to destroy the museums, the libraries, to fight against
moralism and feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian
meannesses.
This bombastic program has been heralded by the Italian Futurists ever
since 1909. Fortunately they went no further than threats, but they
strove to attract attention and in this they gloriously succeeded.
Their attitude toward women was expressed in the motto: "Méprisez la
femme." Love for woman is an atavism and should be discarded into
archives.
We chant hymns to the new beauty that has come into the world in
our days, a hymn to swiftness, a doxology to motion.
Woman is justified in her existence inasmuch as she is a prostitute.
Sensuality for the sake of sensuality is extolled as the only stimulus
in human life,--its only aim. Otherwise human beings are of no
importance, at best as important as inanimate objects.
The suffering of a man is of the same interest to us as the
suffering of an electric lamp, which, with spasmodic starts,
shrieks out the most heart-rending expressions of color.
These aphorisms belong to the pen of Marinetti or to those of his
disciples, who are but pigmies in comparison with their leader. They
greeted the war with Turkey in Tripolitania enthusiastically, and
Marinetti joyously witnessed the splendor of "bayonets piercing human
bodies" and similar features of the great "health-giver"--war. At that
time he began the cycle of his pictorial poems recently published in the
Words at Liberty. Here is one of his early descriptions:
A stream. A bridge. Plus artillery. Plus infantry. Plus trenches.
Plus cadavers. Dzang-bah-bakh. Cannon. Kha-kh-kha. Mitrailleuse.
Tr-r-r. Sh-sh-sh-sh. S-s-s-s-s-s. Bullets. Chill. Blood. Smoke.
To complete the character of Marinetti I shall quote his article in The
London Daily Mail in which he states his "profound disgust for the
contemporary stage because it stupidly fluctuates between historic
reconstruction (pasticcio or plagiarism) and a minute, wearying,
photographic reproduction of actuality."
His ideal is the smoking concert, circus, cabaret, and night-club as
"the only theatrical entertainment worthy of the true Futurist spirit."
"The variety theater is the only kind of theater where the public does
not remain static and stupidly passive, but participates noisily in
action." The variety show "brutally strips woman of all her veils, of
the romantic phrases, sighs, and sobs which mark and deform her. On the
other hand, it shows up all the most admirable animal qualities of
woman, her powers of attack and of seduction, of treachery, and of
resistance."
The variety theater is, of course, antiacademical, primitive, and
ingenuous, and therefore all the more significant by reason of
the unforeseen nature of all its fumbling efforts.... The variety
theater destroys all that is solemn, sacred, earnest, and pure in
Art--with a big A. It collaborates with Futurism in the
destruction of the immortal masterpieces by plagiarizing them,
parodying them, and by retailing them without style, apparatus,
or pity.
At this point I am ready to agree with the Russian critic, A.
Lunacharsky, who thus defines Marinetti:
He combines in his personality the exoticism of an East-African
with the cynical blaguerie of a Parisian and the clownishness of
a Neapolitan.
In connection with the foregoing it is curious to observe the pranks of
Marinetti's colleagues in the land of eternal contradictions--Russia.
The Russian Futurists, Ego-futurists, and Acmeists, vie with the
Italians in noisiness and eccentricity, and they have aroused an
extensive pro and con polemic. In the last issue of Russkaja Mysl there
is an interesting criticism of the Futurist poetry written by Valery
Brusov. This foremost poet, known on the continent as the Russian
Verhaeren, began his literary career some fifteen years ago with the
one-line "poem": "Oh, conceal thy pallid legs." This extremist is now
ranked by the Futurists among the reactionaries. Brusov is not hostile
to Futurism, although he opposes the contemporary bearers of its banner.
In a dialogue supposedly carried on between a Symbolist and a Futurist
Brusov makes the latter say:
Tell me, what is poetry? The art of words, is it not? In what
else does it differ from music, from painting? The poet is the
artist of words: they are for him what colors are for the painter
or marble for your sculptors. We have determined to be artists of
words, and only of words, which means to fulfill the true
vocation of the poet. You, what have you done with the word? You
have transformed it into a slave, into a hireling, to serve your
so-called ideas! You have debased the word to a subservient rôle.
All of you, the realists as well as the symbolists, have used
words just as the "Academicians" have used colors. Those
understood not that the essence of painting is in the combination
of colors and lines, and they have strived to express through
colors and lines some meager ideas absolutely useless for
commonly known. You likewise have not understood that the essence
of poetry lies in the combination of words, and you have
mutilated them by forcing them to express your thoughts borrowed
from the philosophers. The futurists are the first to proclaim
the true poetry, the free, the real freedom of words.
And so, since words have become enslaved and carry, unfortunately,
within them the ballast of established notions and conceptions, the
Futurists experiment in liberating the words of their accepted meanings
by creating new words, weird combinations of syllables, skilful
arrangements of sounds which defy translation. For the benefit of that
part of mankind which does not understand Russian the Futurists invented
a "universal tongue" which consists exclusively of single vowels. Here
is a specimen under the title Heights. I give the original letters and
their English transliteration.
[Cyrillic: e u yu] -- yeh oo you
[Cyrillic: i a o] -- ee ah oh
[Cyrillic: o a] -- oh ah
[Cyrillic: o a e e i e ya] -- oh ah yeh yeh ee yeh yah
[Cyrillic: o a] -- oh ah
[Cyrillic: e u i e u] -- yeh oo ee yeh oo
[Cyrillic: i e e] -- ee yeh yeh
[Cyrillic: i i y i e i i y] -- ee ee eh ee yeh ee ee eh
Do you feel the heights? The poet does, however, and he proclaims in his
defense: "The more subjective is truth, the more objective is the
subjective objectivity."
* * * * *
Brusov's point of view is expressed in the impassioned words of the
historian of literature who appears at the end of the above-mentioned
dialogue:
In the new poetry, that is, in the poetry of the last centuries,
one observes a definite shifting of two currents. One school puts
forward the primary importance of the content, the other--that of
form; later the same tendencies are repeated in the two
successive schools. Pseudo-Classicism, as a school, placed above
all form not the "what" but the "how." The content they borrowed
from the ancients and then performed the task most important in
their eyes--the elaboration of that material. The Romanticists,
in contra-distinction to the Pseudo-Classicists, insisted first
of all on the content. They admired the middle ages, their
yearning for an ideal, their religious aspirations. Of course,
the Romanticists contributed their did this, so to speak,
casually, while actually they neglected the form of their verses;
recall, if you will, the frolics of Musset or the carelessness of
the poems of Novalis. The Parnassians once more proclaimed the
primariness of form. "Reproachless verse" became their motto. It
was they who declared that in poetry not the "what" was
important, but the "how," and it was none other than Théophile
Gautier who invented the formula "art for the sake of art." The
Symbolistic school again revived the content. All this was in
reality not so simple, schematic, rectilineal, as I expressed it.
To be sure, all true poets have endeavored to bring into harmony
both content and form, but I have in view the prevailing tendency
of the poetic school as a whole. If my point of view is correct,
then it is natural to expect that there is to come a new school,
replacing the Symbolists, which will once more consider form of
primary importance. At the appearance of a new school the
doctrine of the old corresponding school becomes more subtle,
more poignant, more extreme. The Parnassians went further than
their progenitors, the Pseudo-Classicists. It is natural then to
foresee that the new coming school will in its cult of form go
further than the Parnassians. As such a school, destined to take
the place of Symbolism, I consider Futurism. Its historic rôle is
to establish the absolute predominance of form in poetry, and to
repudiate any content in it.
The weak point of Futurism appears to be, as is the case with every
revolutionary movement, the fact that alongside with the true fighters
for new horizons straggle parasitic marauders, that on the heels of the
sincere searchers of artistic truth tread nonchalantly buffoons and
charlatans. The number of the latter is so great that the true prophets
drown in the vast slough, and the public sees but the caricature side of
the movement. Take for instance, the Post-Impressionist and the Futurist
painters. Any unbiased and open-minded observer will admit that many of
them, like Odilon Redon, Duchamp, Picasso, Chabaud, even Matisse, have
created works which, whether you like them or not, possess the sure
criterion of art: they stir you, arouse your thoughts and emotions. Yet
how easy it is to smuggle into their midst colossal nonsense and
counterfeit can be judged from the following episode:
A group of young painters in Paris decided to arouse public opinion
against the unrestricted accessibility of the Independent Salon by
proving that among the exponents of the exhibition such an "independent"
artist as a donkey could find a place. The editors of Fantasio undertook
to assist them in carrying out their plan. A manifesto was issued of
which I quote a few pearls:
To art-critics: To painters: To the public:
A manifesto of the school of the Excessivists. Hurrah!
Brother-Excessivists, hurrah! Masters splendid and renascent, we
are on the eve of various exhibitions of banal and stereotypical
paintings. Let us smash, then, the palettes of our forefathers;
let us set fire of Joy to the pseudo-masterpieces, and let us
establish great canons destined to rule art henceforward.
The canon is contained in one word: L'excessivisme.
"Excess in everything is a defect," once said a certain ass. We
proclaim the reverse: excess at all times, in everything, is the
absolute power. The sun can never be too ardent, the sky too
blue, the sea-perspective too ruby, darkness too black, as there
can never be heroes too valiant or flowers too fragrant.
Down with contours, down with half-tones, down with craft!
Instead--dazzling and resplendent colors! And so on. Bombastic phrases
borrowed from Marinetti and his colleagues. The manifesto is signed
Joachim Raphael Boronali. Boronali is the anagram of Aliboron--the
French word for donkey. The jesters later explained that they intended
by the euphony of an Italian name "to arouse with more certainty the
admiration of the crowd."
The next step was to procure the services of Lolo, an old donkey well
known to the artists on Montmartre, as its stable is at the cabaret
Lapin Agile. The following procedure is immortalized in an official
protocol, the most unique document in the annals of art:
Protocol (Procès-verbal de constat). On the 8th of March, before
me, Paul Henri Brionne, magistrate of the civil court of Paris,
in my office on rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 33, appeared M.
----,[1] of the periodical Fantasio, whose residence is in Paris,
boulevard Poissonière, 14, and declared:
"Every year there takes place an exhibition of various works of
drawing, painting, and sculpture under the name of the Salon of
the Independent Artists;
"This exhibition is open for all painters, and unfortunately,
alongside with productions of high value there figure ridiculous
works that have no signs of art;
"In order to show to what extent any work can be accepted in that
exhibition, to the detriment of the meritorious productions, he
intends to send there in the name of Fantasio, a picture the
author of which would be a donkey. The picture will be entered in
the catalogue under the title Et le soleil s'endormit sur
l'Adriatique, and signed J. R. Boronali;
"For said reasons he asks me to be present at the painting of
said picture in order to witness the process and draw an official
report about it."
Having consented to the request, I went in the company of Messrs.
----, the editors of Fantasio, to the cabaret du Lapin Agile,
where in front of said establishment Messrs. ---- set up a new
canvas on a chair that took the place of an easel. In my presence
they arranged paints--blue, green, yellow, and red; to the
tail-extremity of the donkey, which belongs to the owner of the
cabaret Lapin Agile, was tied a paint-brush.
Then the donkey was brought to the canvas, and M. ---- upholding
the brush and the tail of the beast allowed her to daub in all
directions taking care only of changing the paints on the brush.
I assured myself that the picture presented various tones passing
from blue into green and from yellow into red without
constituting anything definite and resembling nothing.
When the work had been finished, in my presence the picture and
author were photographed.
In testimony of the aforesaid I have written and issued this
protocol for legal use.
P. BRIONNE.
[Footnote 1: The names were not revealed.]
From the photograph it may be seen that the donkey had been teased with
some appetizing food held before his mouth, to which tantalization the
so-called Boronali responded with the wags of his "tail-extremity,"
according to the phraseology of the solemn document.
The picture then having been taken to the Salon, Monsieur Boronali was
asked to pay his membership fee, and thenceforward his name figured
among those of Matisse, Rousseau, Le Fauconnier, and other great. To the
astonishment of the Fantasio group, their prank remained unnoticed for
some time; the critics spoke of Boronali's work along with the other
pictures, and the manifesto of the Excessivists was but slightly
commented upon. In a series of sensational articles and piquant stories
The Fantasio finally succeeded in drawing general attention to their
chef d'oeuvre. The Paris press, as well as the foreign, opened a hot
discussion on the significance of Boronali's work in a serious tone.
Only the Kölnische Zeitung in a review of the manifesto and the picture
carefully remarked, "If it is not a carnival joke"--referring to the
manifesto but not doubting the authenticity of Boronali's canvas. True,
the title of the picture seemed mystifying: why The Sun Asleep over the
Adriatic, when there were neither sun nor sea? The Gazette de France
ridiculed the title. The New York Herald, endeavoring to justify the
name of the picture, suggested that the sun was asleep beneath the
Adriatic--an ingenious hypothesis. The Revue des Beaux-Arts gave a
detailed and scholarly account of the picture, but found in it nothing
extraordinary in comparison with the other Independents. The hardest
blow to Boronali's genius was dealt by De l'Art Ancien et Moderne, which
accused him of being banal. "Among the cosmopolite crowd, along with
Messrs. Ghéon, Klingsor, Jamet ... struts the sheer banality of M.
Boronali."
The scandal that took place after the mystificators had revealed their
trick is of secondary importance. What looms out of this incident is the
dangerously vague line of demarcation between what is true art and what
is mere daubery in Futurism.
The Gaulois summed up the affair in a few significant words:
The scholastics had maintained that "It is much easier for the
ass to disprove than it is for the philosopher to assert." But
here came an ass and proved something in spite of all the
philosophers of the world. He has proved--not a priori but a
posteriori--that the most manifest daubery may pass as a picture
in the eyes of those who accept the non-real, the improbable, and
the absurd for new art.
Thought uttered becomes an untruth.--Thaddeus Tutchev.
A Wonder-Child Violinist
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
The wonder-child is not so much a "wonder" in Europe as in this country.
"At seven, yes--even up to eleven, perhaps," a young German violinist
who began to concertize at six once told me. "But after that--there are
so many and they all play so beautiful! So it is more common there and
people think not so much of it." And she went on to tell me, with the
most wistful seriousness, how at twelve she had felt suddenly so
oppressed with age and weariness that for two years she had wanted not
to play at all. She described it as a period when she wanted to "stop
feeling and run in the country all day and be only with animals."
But on the whole her theory seemed to be that it was the simplest thing
in the world for a child to play well--better, in some ways, than he
will ever play later on; and very likely it's true. The newer
psychologists have given us enough reason to think so.
It still comes with something of a shock to us here, however; and when
we started for The Chicago Little Theatre one night two weeks ago to
hear Master Ruby Davis, aged twelve, give a violin recital, it was with
the most excited anticipations. I had never heard a child play the
violin. Surely disappointment was inevitable....
A little boy walked quietly out on to the stage, smiling. (I heard
afterward that some one had asked him if it didn't frighten him to face
all those people. "Oh, no," he said, "I'm going to play my violin!") He
had on a little soft white shirt and knickerbockers. His hair was almost
auburn and curled away from his forehead; his eyes were blue and his
skin the softest white. His hands were the long, slender, "artistic"
type rather than the blunt, heavy type which is quite as common among
first-rate violinists. "Antoine"--that was all I could think.
And then he lifted his bow and swung into the Haendel Sonata in A with
all the assurance of a master. It was only a matter of seconds until you
knew that he could not disappoint--ever: he knew how to feel! A musician
may commit all the crimes in the musical universe, or he may play so
flawlessly that you marvel; but none of it matters particularly. A
phrase will tell you whether he is an artist--the way the notes rise or
fall or seem to be gathered up into that subtle thing which is the
difference between efficient Playing and Music by the grace of God.
Ruby Davis makes Music. And how he loved doing it! He played a
Canzonetta by Ambrosia, and the Jarnefelt Berceuse, and other difficult
things like the Pugnani Praeludium, and that Motto Perpetuo of Ries,
beside the regulation Cavatina and the Dvorák Humoresque--every one of
them, in spite of small deficiencies that will be corrected, with a
quality that is genius. As nearly as I can register it this is the
picture of him I shall remember:
A little slender, eager, swaying body, and a great violin above which
his face seemed worshipping. His eyes turned deep blue as flowers when
he raised his head for some lovely soaring tone or dropped it on his
instrument over some deep G string melody. His mouth was the saddest
little mouth I've ever seen, and somehow you could watch the music
coursing through his cheek bones. His right foot kept moving gently
inside his shoe, always in perfect time.
The New Paganism
DEWITT C. WING