THE LITTLE REVIEW
_Literature Drama Music Art_
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
FEBRUARY, 1915
Our First Year The Editor
Poems: Amy Lowell
Bright Sunlight
Ely Cathedral
Heaven’s Jester Mrs. Havelock Ellis
Green Symphony John Gould Fletcher
The Case of French Poetry Richard Aldington
The Last Woman George Soule
The Liberties of the People William L. Chenery
A Hymn to Nature (An Unpublished Goethe Poem)
My Friend, the Incurable: Alexander S. Kaun
On the Vice of Simplicity
John Cowper Powys
Muck and Music Alfred Knopf
While Hearing a Little Song Maxwell Bodenheim
A Hard Bed George Burman Foster
George Middleton’s One-Act Plays Clayton Hamilton
New York Letter George Soule
Music
Book Discussion
The Reader Critic
Published Monthly
15 cents a copy
MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO
$1.50 a year
Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago
THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. 1
FEBRUARY, 1915
No. 11
Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.
Our First Year
MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
An interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into
the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1)
energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I
number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that
he arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener
a judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that
would not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place
of number one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy
does seem the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of
those persons who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration.
But Imagination!—that gift of the far gods! There is simply no question
of its position in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and
beautiful thing that has been accomplished in the world.
Last March we began the publication of THE LITTLE REVIEW. Now, twelve
months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle of
being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always
asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a
policy; we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in
so far as we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not
expounded a philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite
outlandishly anarchistic; we have been uncritical, indiscriminate,
juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish, emotional, tiresomely
enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which I can’t remember now—all
the things that are usually said about faulty new undertakings. The
encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly about promising
ones.
Of course THE LITTLE REVIEW has done little more than approach the ideal
which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned
above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad
that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than
some other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of
the visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the
priest or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get
drenched than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I
should rather see one side of a question violently than to see both
sides calmly; I should rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely
a matter of choice: people are either extremists or nonentities; I
should far rather sense the big things about a cause or a character even
vaguely than to analyze its little qualities quite clearly; in short, I
should rather feel a great deal and know a little than feel a little and
know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our negative attitude.
But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express
all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made
explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the
worship of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is
our only attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will
understand that I did not say our platform is merely the worship of
beauty. Beauty involves too many elements to be championed lightly.
Beauty from the aesthete’s point of view and beauty from the artist’s
point of view are two widely different things. I might paraphrase Wilde
and say that the new Beauty is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for
THE LITTLE REVIEW, as I want from life, not merely beauty, not merely
happiness, but a quality which proceeds from the _intensity_ with which
both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, are present.
This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that within
their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without THE
LITTLE REVIEW because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished,
nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim to
artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines
of good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude;
that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most
magazines have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that
is what’s wrong with them. I have none of the qualifications of the
editor; that’s why I think THE LITTLE REVIEW is in good hands. Because
the editorial tradition in this country has usurped the place of the
literary tradition we have lifted loyalty to policies into the place of
loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a man of letters—once told me that
there were fifty good writers to every good editor in America, and that
he would teach me to be the former. He proceeded to illustrate, not by
chucking out the poor stuff that was being written for his journal but
by showing how it could be stuck in where it wouldn’t be too noticeable!
When some manuscript that delighted his soul came in (he was very human
and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy” that had somehow grown up
around his own magazine) he taught me the “art” of reducing its policy
to a state of negativeness that would not be out of harmony with the
policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once he received some poetry
that was very strong and very beautiful. He treasured it so that he kept
it in his desk for months before returning it. It was so beautiful as to
be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was sure; and anyhow his
journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it merely printed
reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I used to feel
that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving the
ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or
to become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to
read us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is
more honest to say outright that they will probably find less and less
of it. Because as “sanity” increases in the world THE LITTLE REVIEW will
strive more and more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers
continue to compromise in order to get their public, as book-makers
continue to print rot in order to make fortunes, as writers continue to
follow the market instead of _doing their Work_, as the public continues
to demand vileness and vulgarity and lies, as the intellectuals continue
to miss the root of the trouble, THE LITTLE REVIEW will continue to
rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work for its ideal rather than
for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of excellent quality and
no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and flame, to be
swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young and
fearless and reckless and imaginative—
... chanter
Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre,
Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....
—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly
first.
There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful by
being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say this
so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated,
fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as
we are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is
to pay for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work
don’t make enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now
no one can _live_ by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions
are cases which emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the
meantime a magazine ought to be started for the sole purpose of printing
the good things that the best magazines reject. Until we are on our feet
and able to pay for stuff we can at least do this. And never, we hope,
will we achieve that last emptiness: sophistication.
But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important.
I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called _Drift and
Mastery_, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than
anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr.
Lippmann says this in his preface:
The issues that we face are very different from those of the last
century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up
roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism
and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The
sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste,
the dogma of sin, obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in
brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young today are
born into a world in which the foundations of the older order
survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry
through their purposes when they have them. If the standpatter is
still powerful amongst us it is because we have not learned to
use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American
conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic
purpose should be.
So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against
absolutism, commercial oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. _The
Rebel program is stated._ Scientific invention and blind social
currents have made the old authority impossible in fact, the
artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We
inherit a rebel tradition. The dominant forces in our world are
not the sacredness of property nor the intellectual leadership of
the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution, the
glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England
respectability, the Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller....
In the emerging morality the husband is not regarded as the
proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats over the
children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that
the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child
the sense of sin is a poor preparation for a temperate life.
The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted
prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom.
That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do not. I
think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and
nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small
minority—the people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of
the population. Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other
four tenths have something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is
still there. The new authority is quite as strong as the old, and more
insidious because it is more subtle. Young people used to be
disinherited when they disagreed with their parents; now they are argued
with. The former method left their minds clear; the latter befogs
them—and they disinherit themselves. That is the difference. One worked
from without in; the other works from within out. Of course it’s much
better this way. But this is not the most important problem—this of the
old rock of ages. The horrible joke of modern life is that _we have been
presented with a new rock of ages_!
The rebel program is stated—exactly. More than that, it is in action.
The difference between the new issues and the old, to Mr. Lippmann, is
that we have now learned what we must do; to me, it is that we must
learn to do something else. The battle lies not against the chaos of a
new freedom, but against the dangers of a new authority.
Before I define, let me illustrate. About two months ago I spent four
days in one of our second-large cities—a place of about two hundred
thousand people. If I could only describe those four days and their
stimulation—to fresh rebellion! The people I saw belonged to the
supposedly enlightened inner circles—the representative upper middle
class: the ones that still loom very large in comparison to the thinking
minority from whom Mr. Lippmann draws his conclusions. Well, I had not
forgotten how ignorant people can be, but I had forgotten how cruel they
can be. I had not expected their knowledge to have increased, but their
hypocrisy to have lessened. I had not looked for vision but at least for
a beginning of sight; not for Truth, but perhaps for a willingness to
stop lying. And I found scarcely a glimmer of these things. It was
ghastly! But the strange part was this: all the time I found I was
thinking not of the great faults of their opinions but of the great
barrenness of their lives. Over and over the thought kept running
through my head: There is no poetry of living in this place!
This brings me to my point. The new rock of ages is that wholly false
perspective which assumes that _what one thinks is more important than
what one feels_. It has been set up, quite unconsciously, by the very
people who have trying to blast the old one. It is that perspective
which the new generation must fight not only with the old, but in its
own ranks! Here is the interest of the new battle! Our next renaissance
will be concerned with changing that perspective; the genius of the
future must be directed toward that end. And that is why I think it is
not enough to say that there will come a time when men will think of
nothing but education. There will come a time when men will think of
nothing but education in imagination! And since there is no such thing
as _education_ in imagination, but only _procreation_ of it,—well, the
time will come when men will think of nothing but art. The crimes of
ignorance are not comparable to the crimes of philistinism: there is no
philosophy that will ever reach beyond that of the personality or of the
artist.
The dominant forces in the new rock of ages are not of course the
intellectual leadership of the priest, the divinity of the constitution,
Victorian sentiment, or the Republican Party, but the intellectual
leadership of cleverness, the divinity of cults, no sentiment, and the
Practical Plan. They are endorsed by the most promising element in
modern life: the young intellectuals who are working valiantly to create
here what Europe has given to the arts and sciences,—and working in the
wrong direction. Our inferiorities to the other civilizations they
attribute to our puritanism, our speed, our economic evils. Oh, I get so
sick of their failure to reach to the real cause! It is so silly to keep
on insisting that we need poets like the French or philosophers like the
Germans or musicians like the Russians, etc., etc., if we don’t begin
soon to understand why we haven’t got them. We haven’t got them because,
in this curious country, we haven’t got people who feel.—Think of an
Irish peasant walking under the stars....
I grant you that it also becomes silly to talk eternally of “feeling”
without qualifying or defining. It is like taking refuge behind that
vaguest phrase in the language—“life itself.” But by “feeling” I mean
simply that flight of wings which makes walking unnecessary; that
dazzling tight-rope performance which takes you safely over the chasm of
Experience but leaves you as bruised as though you had fallen to its
depths. Feeling is that quality of spirit which will save any artist
from the philosophical redundancies of a _De Profundis_. The torturing
need of expressing something that far outstretches one’s capacity for
expression is the foundation of art. That’s why we have so little of it
in this country. There may be some Americans in whom the perspective has
retained its proper balance. I happen to know of one.
It is for some such need as this that THE LITTLE REVIEW exists: to
create some attitude which so far is absolutely alien to the American
tradition. I have been going to the lectures of John Cowper Powys, which
are spoken of in other places in this issue, and that appreciative man
gave me an interesting idea the other day. I should like to see him as
editor of a literary magazine whose policy was to cut off the
subscription list everybody who speculated about his pose or his
insincerity and failed to miss the great beauty of his words. Now Mr.
Powys is as unstable as water: that is his value. He feels entirely too
much ever to be fully sane. His hypothetical magazine would gather an
audience that could fight successfully the great American crime which
may be described briefly as _missing the point_. Thus we might establish
a reign of imagination which would make stupid things as impossible as
cruel things, which would consider a failure to catch some new beauty or
a “moral lynching of great and independent spirits” as greater crimes
than murdering a man in a dark corner.
On this basis we shall continue. If we must be sensible at least we
shall make it, in Shaw’s phrase, an ecstasy of common sense. And out of
all this chaos shall we produce our dancing star.
The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is
right.—_Oscar Wilde._
Before the scientific spirit can reach its full bloom, it will
have to acquire an honest sense of the rôle that fantasy plays in
all its work. This is especially true of the social sciences. We
are just beginning to realize the importance in economics of the
economist’s utopia. We are learning the determining influence of
the thinker’s dream.—_Walter Lippmann._
Poems
AMY LOWELL
Bright Sunlight
The wind has blown a corner of your shawl
Into the fountain,
Where it floats and drifts
Among the lily-pads
Like a tissue of sapphires.
But you do not heed it,
Your fingers pick at the lichens
On the stone edge of the basin,
And your eyes follow the tall clouds
As they sail over the ilex trees.
Ely Cathedral
Anaemic women, stupidly dressed and shod
In squeaky shoes, thump down the nave to laud an expurgated God.
Bunches of lights reflect upon the pavement where
The twenty benches stop, and through the close, smelled-over air
Gaunt arches push up their whited cones,
And cover the sparse worshipers with dead men’s stones.
Behind his shambling choristers, with flattened feet
And red-flapped hood, the Bishop walks, complete
In old, frayed ceremonial. The organ wheezes
A moldy psalm-tune, and a verger sneezes.
But the great Cathedral spears into the sky
Shouting for joy.
What is the red-flapped Bishop praying for, by the bye?
Heaven’s Jester
or
The Message of a White Rose
MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS
“It is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou strange
child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me to thee, a
woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as mine,
whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are
pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou
lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed
into Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in
the sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the
sleep of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of
Paradise and heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her
passing from Earth, had barely gained thy body again before the cap and
bells were donned by thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The
jingle of thy bells drew laughter and tears. God found he had need of
the fool the woman had signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly
courts must not lower his head or hide his face. Tears ill become the
piebald suit and trappings of mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the
woman who gave me to thee needed thy heart? Hear the message the white
rose by thy bed gives to thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is
not for thee to choose thy way of love. God’s jester is neither man nor
woman nor child, but a singer of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and
dry the eyes of women. Play thy part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win
her lips, women crave her help, the world takes her service, and thou
her smiles. Wouldst thou have more, thou poet lover in the guise of a
fool?
Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows thee his
face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss. In his
absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her
body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy
into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the
strange enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has
given thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and
sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast
seen will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the
cap and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose
on his breast.
“Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song
of the souls of women and be satisfied!
HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY
Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body,
her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known
his God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”
In the dawn the white rose spoke once more to the jester. “Thou hast
lied. Thy lady’s unknown body is untried music to thee. Thy hands would
touch the strings, thy ear catch the vibrations her soul modulates to
sounds of sighs and sobs at the call of love. Look at my whiteness!
Think of thy unrest! The secrets of thy lady’s body are not learnt
through the strong desires common to the herd of men or the fainting
dreams of impassioned women. Fool! inscribed as thou art in the heavenly
registers by a woman as God’s Fool, thou must learn the mystic’s lore
about the body of thy Love. Thy desire is towards thy lady, and her
will, not thine, is thy law. Hearken then! It were the work of an
instant to close thy strong hands round her throat and bruise her into
forgetfulness that love is pain. To force her mouth, so much desired,
into an open well for slaking thine own thirst is love’s delicious
robbery. To hurtle to her breast, as if to rob and forestall the child
who may one day drink there, is to have found a shrine for prayer and
peace. Yes! even to rest in the hallowed forests of her body ere thou
storm the citadel where thy weapon shall break into the silent house of
life, is easy and has always been the way of men with woman. Woman the
abandoned, man the triumphant, woman the flower, man the gatherer, woman
the luscious wine and man the thirsty drinker. Thy old-world needs
desire thy lady in the way of men, though prayer before and after would
grace thy feasting. Listen to the secret the white rose whispers to
thee. It does not suffice that thou dost need thy lady or even that thy
lady needs thee. Thou must prepare thyself for her even if she has no
need of thee. The gateways of thy body must be clean, pure as snow and
free from taint. Thy thoughts must shine through thine eyes like stars,
thy passions burn with fires at white heat, without smoke or noise.
Heaven’s jester may not approach the Holy of Holies till Desire is as
white flame. The sacrament of thy Lady’s Body is precious bread and
wine, to be partaken of at her desire, not thine, and only in Heaven’s
good time. It is not for thee to choose. Thy part is to watch and pray
and laugh and sing, and maybe lead another in to the feast thou hast
prepared. Thou must bring to thy lady’s white feet frankincense and
myrrh, the spoils of the sorrows thou hast borne for the tired
travellers on thy journey. Precious stones, too, thou must gather for
her neck, from the shores of thy past desolations. Pearls thou must also
offer, burnished out of the memories of thy wayward desires which knew
not her chastity or her smiles. For her breasts thou must bring shields
forged from thy gluttonies and petty aims. For her arms crystals wrought
out of thy dreams. For her girdle rubies made from all thy heart’s
desire. For her eyes? Ah! perhaps thy kiss, delicate and passionate as
is the way of seas and clouds when the earth sleeps. For her forehead
thou mayest weave a crown of myrtle, for friendship, as thy Love is thy
Friend and is steadfast. For her ears I will tell thee the dreams of my
sister, almost black with the redness the sun has poured into her heart.
For her hair, only a wreath of “love in the mist,” for in that little
flower is the wonder of the Great Heart thou art learning to understand.
For her lips, only thy hopes made chaste and thy fears made passionate,
if God wills.
Should thy Love waken with thy kisses on her closed eyes and turn
towards thee with wonder and joy at the things thou hast learned and the
gifts thou hast given to her, then have a care! Women are not drunk with
wine but with pity, and pity is no use to Heaven’s Jester. There are
signs, though, which even thou canst understand, and when Love is born,
the Fool is wise. If by chance, for there is no hope in this message of
the dawn, there is a resurrection day for thee, if by chance or God’s
pure will, she turns to thee as God allows one spirit to turn to another
spirit, when Love has prepared the altar, then clash thy cymbals, blow
thy trumpet, shout till the sleepy world rejoices, shake thy bells and
fling thy Jester’s cap and cloak aside, for to eat the sacramental bread
and drink the wine of thy love’s pure body thou wilt not need raiment,
and as thou wert born and as thou wilt die thou wilt enter into thy Holy
of Holies. And if thou die of joy, thou criest:
What is Death?
Only Love freed.
THE FOOL TO THE SOUL OF HIS LADY
The Jester said to himself, “If the body of my lady is so fair a
tabernacle for her soul, how can I, a Fool, understand the ways of her
spirit? My lute and pipes can only render the voices of the wind, the
sea, the trees and the cries of beasts in joy and pain. My bells are a
Jester’s toys for assuaging the griefs of the children of men. The
travailings of my lady’s spirit, like the snow on the mountains, are out
of reach of a fool’s understanding. For one brief hour I heard a faint
whisper in the halls of peace when my name was signed in the heavenly
registers, but, except in my heart, I carried no trophy to earth by
which I could tell men of the music I heard.
This is the birthday of my Lady, the festival which calls for prayer and
joy. Prayer, because the paths of earth are hard for the feet of her
whose tread awakens a longing for wings in the Fool standing near. Joy,
because her eyes are mirrors of a time to come when love and peace will
renew earth into heaven, and men and women will become as wise as eagles
and children. Through her body, I love the soul of my lady, and through
her soul I love her body. Neither her soul nor her body may help and
comfort the Jester even though God leads and helps him by both grace and
mercy. Though his heart be sore and his body sick unto death and there
seems none to comfort him, he can still sing songs for men and pipe
melodies for women of the wonders revealed to him.”
The White Rose, dying by the Jester’s bed, spoke once more to the Fool.
“Cast self pity out of thine heart. Learn to live as I have learned to
die, and then learn to die as I have learned to live. For thee absence
seems death, but trace the meaning of the soul of the woman thou lovest.
Her soul is also absent from the Oversoul as her body is absent from a
Lover. Only through absence can the Oversoul draw its own to itself, and
only through loneliness can the Great Lover and the Lesser Lover
understand one another. Words confuse and touch enslaves. Souls speak
clearly in the silence. In absence a note becomes a chord, and in
silence the chord becomes a symphony. The discord dissolves into
harmony, and the darkness into dawn. The absence of Death is not
different from that of Life, for Death is Life, and Life the discord
making Death’s music. The soul of thy Lady will find thine by the aid of
both Life and Death, for it is not God’s Fool who hath declared that
there is no Love nor a Creater thereof. Thou art learning that all is
Love. In thy prayers today for thy Lady’s peace incline thy spirit
towards hers as both approach the maternal source of the Universe. It is
the Mother-Spirit of the world who has hidden thy love from thy sight,
and taken thine head from the touch of her hands and torn thy lips from
her kisses. Is it not always so that the mothers of the smaller world
wean their children into growth and knowledge? Thou art still hers even
if her body is out of sight and touch, for pure love is the simple
miracle of thine heritage as a son of man and of God. Nothing can take
from me what the sun made of me through his shining. Even as I die the
fragrance remains. Nothing can rob thee of the hours when all things
seem possible because of thy hopes and her vows. Love is pain but
over-love is peace. Turn thy tears into help and pity for those who weep
without thy hope and for those who dwell in dungeons and are not yet
registered in heaven as wise or foolish. Let thy longings for one break
into prayer for the weal of the world. Thou wert not sent here only for
thy pleasure or thy peace, nor was the body of thy Lady sent for thy
delight, or her soul for thy strength alone. Pain is ordained for the
bringers of good tidings and love lent for the redemption of the many
through the loneliness of the one. Accept thy lot and thy vision shall
make thee free. Resist thy fate and thy Love’s soul and thine shall
sleep embedded in flesh and with no power to grow wings. On thy knees
then and pray for strength and courage with thy cap and bells in
readiness by thy side, and joy within thy heart. As I die thou must
live.”
The Jester took the rose in his hands, and, as its petals fell, a Fool’s
prayer broke the silence.
“Maker of men,” he cried, “pour into a fool’s heart the understanding of
life’s joy and pain. Make my spirit at one with the great order. Let me
understand what is required of me and in understanding be at peace.” As
he prayed, the Jester slept, for a great weariness was on him from much
dancing. In his dream, a little child ran towards him. He opened his
Jester’s cloak, and the little one held the sleeves in her tiny hands.
“Give all that thou hast and all that thou art even to one so small as
I,” cried the child and ran from his sight.
The Jester was awakened by the opening and clanging of a door. He went
out into the courtyard. A beggar, unshaved, and swollen with dropsy,
stood before him. He had evil eyes and a mouth twisted by pain. He
looked at the Jester and laughed.
“Give me thy cap and bells,” he said, “I have need of them.”
The Jester took money from his pouch.
“Take all this instead,” he cried.
The old man laughed.
“Any lord or lady can throw me that,” he said, “if only to keep me from
defiling them by my presence. Gold costs less to give than to gather. It
is dross and could only help my body to live and suffer. Thy cap and
bells would succour my spirit so that I could forget my body. With the
jingle of them I could smile at the curses of the healthy or the jibes
of the well-washed. Give them to me. Thou art well and happy and hast no
need of help.”
The Jester bowed his head and gave up his cap and bells, but with sorrow
and pain in his heart. The beggar ran away shaking the bells and dancing
with glee, the Jester’s cap all awry on his swollen head. A sweet
melting tenderness and faintness took hold of the Jester and an ecstasy
swayed him so that he nearly fell.
“It is the soul of my Lady speaking to mine,” he whispered. “What matter
the cap and bells? Let them go.”
The woman he loved stood by him and her voice was like a lute on the air
as she grasped the Jester’s shoulders.
“Give all thy music to me,” she whispered, “I am in sore travail because
of things a Fool cannot understand. Thy music ravishes me and makes me
know that love is a consuming fire in which one burns gladly. Thy wild
notes make desire in me a quenchless thirst which no drinking can
assuage. Thy soft piping fills my veins with a pain which is like joy
and with a joy which is like pain. Give me all, keep nothing back. I
would see as thou seest, hear as thou hearest, dream as thou dreamest,
so that I can play as thou, but I must tune thy pipes to the voice of my
heart.”
The Jester drew his hood over his head and went to his cell. His Lady
had no doubt as to what he would bring back to her, for she had learnt
from him that love gives all things without question or regret. The
Jester quite simply collected all the instruments he had made during the
long years of his youth and his manhood. They were precious to him, for
he had not been able to buy as others because of his poverty. He had
gone even to the offal of the slaughter-houses, and to the dank banks of
the ponds, and the waste places in hills and valleys for the things
which gave his instruments such power over men with the strange cries he
evoked. The Jester’s sadness had been greater than even his poverty, but
the music had never failed to comfort and strengthen him. Voices from
the over-world and under-world spoke to him, and the strange secrets he
translated into sound. The Jester’s heart was glad at last. His Lady had
need of him and of what he had made. His music was hers as his heart was
hers. He laid all his precious instruments at her feet and looked in her
eyes. There were smiles for him there. She bent as he knelt and took his
head, as of old, between her long cool hands, and kissed his brow.
“Happy, happy Fool,” she cried, “thus to be able to give all. I will
break hearts with the sweetness of these strings, I will bind others to
me and know it is thy gift. Happy Fool! Goodbye!”
“May God comfort thee and me,” said the Jester, as he turned toward his
cell.
THE JESTER SLEEPS
“The Jester is dead.” The words were said gravely, and the Lady who
heard them looked keenly in an old man’s face.
“Dead,” she cried.
“Yes! Found dead this morning. We could not find his cap and bells nor
the instruments he loved more than all other things. There seems no more
music in the world now, for we all grew happy through his music and the
sun.”
“Dead!” she whispered. “May I....”
She hesitated. “Yes, come.”
The old man led the way.
“He is there. We found nothing by him but the leaves of a dead white
rose and the wind from his window blew them on to his breast.”
“He smiles,” said the Lady.
There was silence in the cell except for the fierce howling of an April
wind and the tiny fluttering of the leaves on the breast of the Jester.
The Lady turned towards the door.
“His instruments are at the gate,” she said, impatiently. “Why did he
die, I wonder? The reeds are no use to me. I cannot play upon them ...
not a sound will come.”
Green Symphony
JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
I
The glittering leaves of the rhododendrons
Balance and vibrate in the cool air;
While in the sky above them
White clouds chase each other.
Like scampering rabbits,
Flashes of sunlight sweep the lawn;
They fling in passing
Patterns of shadow,
Golden and green.
With long cascades of laughter,
The mating birds dart and swoop to the turf:
’Mid their mad trillings
Glints the gay sun behind the trees.
Down there are deep blue lakes:
Orange blossom droops in the water.
In the tower of the winds,
All the bells are set adrift:
Jingling
For the dawn.
Thin fluttering streamers
Of breeze lash through the swaying boughs,
Palely expectant
The earth receives the slanting rain.
I am a glittering raindrop
Hugged close by the cool rhododendron.
I am a daisy starring
The exquisite curves of the close-cropped turf.
The glittering leaves of the rhododendron
Are shaken like blue green blades of glass,
Flickering, cracking, falling:
Splintering in a million fragments.
The wind runs laughing up the slope
Stripping off handfuls of wet green leaves,
To fling in peoples’ faces.
Wallowing on the daisy-powdered turf,
Clutching at the sunlight,
Cavorting in the shadow.
Like baroque pearls,
Like cloudy emeralds,
The clouds and the trees clash together;
Whirling and swirling,
In the tumult
Of the spring,
And the wind.
II
The trees splash the sky with their fingers,
A restless green rout of stars.
With whirling movement
They swing their boughs
About their stems:
Planes on planes of light and shadow
Pass among them,
Opening fanlike to fall.
The trees are like a sea;
Tossing;
Trembling,
Roaring,
Wallowing,
Darting their long green flickering fronds up at the sky,
Subsiding,
Spotted with white blossom-spray.
The trees are roofs:
Hollow caverns of cool blue shadow,
Solemn arches
In the afternoons.
The whole vast horizon
In terrace beyond terrace,
Pinnacle above pinnacle,
Lifts to the sky
Serrated ranks of green on green.
They caress the roofs with their fingers,
They sprawl about the river to look into it;
Up the hill they come
Gesticulating challenge:
They cower together
In dark valleys;
They yearn out over the fields.
Enamelled domes
Tumble upon the grass,
Crashing in ruin
Quiet at last.
The trees lash the sky with their leaves,
Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.
III
Far let the voices of the mad wild birds be calling me,
I will abide in this forest of pines.
When the wind blows
Battling through the forest,
I hear it distantly,
Like the crash of a perpetual sea.
When the rain falls,
I watch silver spears slanting downwards
From pale river-pools of sky,
Enclosed in dark fronds.
When the sun shines,
I weave together distant branches till they enclose mighty circles,
I sway to the movement of hooded summits,
I swim leisurely in deep blue seas of air.
I hug the smooth bark of stately red pillars
And with cones carefully scattered
I mark the progression of dark dial-shadows
Flung diagonally downwards through the afternoon.
This turf is not like turf:
It is a smooth dry carpet of velvet,
Embroidered with brown patterns of needles and cones.
These trees are not like trees:
They are innumerable feathery pagoda-umbrellas,
Stiffly ungracious to the wind,
Teetering on red-lacquered stems.
In the evening I listen to the winds’ lisping,
While the conflagrations of the sunset flicker and clash behind me,
Flamboyant crenelations of glory amid the charred ebony boles.
In the night the fiery nightingales
Shall clash and trill through the silence:
Like the voices of mermaids crying
From the sea.
Long ago has the moon whelmed this uncompleted temple.
Stars swim like gold fish far above the black arches.
Far let the timid feet of dawn fly to catch me:
I will abide in this forest of pines:
For I have unveiled naked beauty,
And the things that she whispered to me in the darkness,
Are buried deep in my heart.
Now let the black tops of the pine-trees break like a spent wave,
Against the grey sky:
These are tombs and memorials and temples and altars sunkindled for me.
The Case of French Poetry
RICHARD ALDINGTON
It is with a feeling of regret and astonishment that I find nearly all
my English confrères so opposed to the spirit of French culture, so
mistaken in their views, and so curiously ignorant of the real facts of
the development of modern French literature.
I am led to this reflection by reading Mr. Shanks’s excellent article in
your December number. It is a most ungracious task to criticise a man
who is about to hazard his life in the service of his country; and I
honor Mr. Shanks more than I can express. But if I felt as Mr. Shanks
does on the subject of French and German poetry I would not fight at all
or I would fight for Germany! To a poet poetry must be the great
business of life and, speaking for myself, I would emphatically support
the Germans if I thought they were better poets than the French and
English! (You will take that rhetorical statement for what it is worth.)
Intellectually about fifty per cent of English people are Germanized
without knowing it. I should say the percentage is even higher in
America. I believe that no study is considered so frivolous or so
suspect in both countries as the study of French art and poetry. And
yet—Russia and one or two Anglo-Saxons put aside—the history of the art
of the last fifty years is the history of French art. You who have given
Whistler to the world do not need me to tell you what French art is. The
American painting at a recent Exhibition here was of so high a quality
that I felt my respect for the intellectual progress of America greatly
increased. I admit freely and regretfully that it was immeasurely better
than English painting. That is because most Americans study painting in
Paris.
Why don’t they sometimes give a look at the poetry of France, for in no
country is poetry so cultivated, so well understood, and so honored? Mr.
Shanks apparently knows something of German poetry and nothing of
French. Of Liliencron I know nothing. But I do know something of
Hauptmann, Dehmel, and Stefan Georg. (I have no doubt Mr. Shanks
dislikes Georg because the latter got his training in France.) Well, I
will cheerfully wager that any more or less fair-minded person would
find three equally good poets in France to every one that can be
mentioned in Germany.
“Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolistes”! What an odd statement!
Régnier is a Parnassian and Kahn a nobody. I am not going to write a
history of modern French poetry, nor speculate as to the effect of 1870
or the probable effect of 1914 on poetry, especially French poetry. I
just want to give some names, and if anyone,—if Mr. Shanks,—can give me
half as many German poets of the same calibre, charm, and general
technical accomplishment I shall be delighted.
Let us grant that Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the elder Parnassians were
products of the period of before 1870. Well, since that disastrous war
France has produced the following—I will not say great—delightful and
readable poets: Samain, Francis Jammes, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas,
Paul Fort, Laurent Tailhade, Jules Romains, Remy de Gourmont, Charles
Vildrac, Laforgue, Louys (translations), Mallarmé (pre-1870?) and
younger men like Guy-Charles Cros, Apollinaire, Castiaux, André Spire,
Carco, Divoire, Jouve, Luc Durtain, and dozens more. I do not mention
the Belgians Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Elskamp, and Rodenbach, nor the two
Franco-Americans Vielé Griffin, and Merrill—though they also have
considerable reputations. (Did you ever hear of an American who wanted
to write German?)
I have quoted off-hand twenty-six names from a period of about forty
years. And you must remember that there are scores and scores of names
only a little less known, and scores and scores beyond that which I may
have missed in my reading.
But I think those few names prove beyond all doubt—and I would like
people to read them and contrast them with German poets—that French
poetry is the foremost in our age for fertility, originality, and
general poetic charm.
It is not hatred of Germany but love of poetry which has called this
letter from me. I believe in France in the French tradition. And if
there is one thing which can reconcile me to this war it is the fact
that England has ranged herself beside France and Belgium, beside the
cosmopolite, graceful, humanizing, influences of France and French
civilization against the nationalist, narrow, and dehumanizing
influences of Berlin. I believe all Englishmen regret that they oppose
the gay, cultivated, cosmopolite Austrians; it is a misfortune. But of
the great issue between the nations—the great intellectual issue—there
can be no doubt. And Mr. Shanks, when he praises (unjustly I firmly
believe) the poets of Germany and disparages (equally unjustly) the
poets of France, is intellectually on the side of the enemy he is so
courageously opposing with physical force. I believe in the kindliness
of Germans; I know them to be excellent fathers and most generous
friends; I know them to be brave soldiers and sailors; I know they are
good chemists, reasonably good doctors, and very boring professors. At
the name of Heine all men should doff their hats, but that modern
Germany (Germany since 1870) has produced one-fiftieth of the poetry
that France has produced—in quality as well as quantity—that it has
added anything to the purely creative side of the arts, I utterly deny.
I know that there is Nietzsche.... Perhaps I will write you another
letter on Nietzsche, if I may.
I feel that this protest will be put down to “war-fever.” I must refer
you to my pre-war articles in English periodicals, and to the testimony
of my friends—some of whom are now in America—that such has always been
my attitude. It has always been a deep regret of mine that both American
and English literature, criticism and periodicals were so undermined
with German influences that all gentleness, all intentional good will,
all that we mean by the “Latin tradition” was anathema, and utterly
despised!
The Last Woman
GEORGE SOULE
(_The second of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be
called “Plays for Irascibles.”_)
CHARACTERS:
THE SAGE OF THE GREEN EARS }
THE SAGE OF THE PURPLE HAIR }
THE SAGE OF THE BLUE FACE }
THE SAGE OF THE YELLOW HAT } FUTURIST SAGES
THE SAGE OF THE RED SWORD }
THE SAGE OF THE WHITE HEART }
THE WOMAN }
SCENE:
_The Council Room of the Futurist Sages, decorated in brilliant colors
to suggest a battle of the minds at some far future date. The Sages are
seated about the walls in a parabolic curve. They are costumed with
appropriate inappropriateness. Green ears is in present day evening
dress; Purple hair in fiery green robes; Blue face in a pink business
suit; Yellow hat in a conventional futurist costume of mingled colors;
Red sword in a black monk’s gown, with a sword in his rope girdle; White
heart, who is young, in football armor._
BLUE FACE. Shall we give the woman a chance to defend herself?
GREEN EARS. Why should we? If her defense is good, we shall be
prejudiced against her. And as we admit the rule of prejudice, the
defense will lose its judicial character.
RED SWORD. Judicial? Who wants to be judicial? I abolished that word
last year.
GREEN EARS. That’s just the point. We hate the judicial; therefore if
the defense loses its judicial character we may be forced to decide both
ways at the same time. Acquit on the ground of illogical defense;
convict on the grounds of prejudice against good defense.
PURPLE HAIR. Red sword has abolished judicial. Well, we have also
abolished the past; we have abolished all abolishments!
YELLOW HAT. Above all, we must guard against precedent. Let us look up
all previous trials, and take care to do the opposite.
WHITE HEART. But again, that would entangle us in the past. I want to
see the woman!
RED SWORD. He wants to see the woman! He is a reactionary!
PURPLE HAIR. Do not argue, brothers. For if we argue, we shall either
settle the case by logic, which we repudiate, or by violence, so that we
shall kill each other before we have a chance to decide about the woman.
RED SWORD. Time server! I shall kill you all, and decide for myself.
BLUE FACE. Red cabbages, redness of blue cabbages, when breakfast is no
cabbage in a potato. Cocoa crinkles!
YELLOW HAT. He is right, brothers.
ALL. He is right.
BLUE FACE. We, who have exalted ourselves above all modes of thought, we
who have cast aside all images and unfettered ourselves from all
language and all sequence, we who have repudiated humanity; we have a
right to fight a lower order with its own weapons. Caprice is our god;
let us then have a caprice to judge this woman with logic and judicial
procedure. Have you all this caprice?
ALL. We have.
RED SWORD. I object: This is democracy.
GREEN EARS. We accept your objection, and act in opposition to it.
BLUE FACE. Then let the woman be brought in.
(_White Heart goes out right and brings in the woman. She is tall, of
beautiful face and figure, in a simple white Greek tunic. In her hair is
a gold fillet. She is led to the center, where she is left standing, as
White Heart resumes his seat._)
BLUE FACE. Deliver the charge, Red sword!