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Title: The Little Review, January 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 10)

Author: Various

Editor: Margaret C. Anderson

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, JANUARY 1915 (VOL. 1, NO. 10) ***

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

EDITOR

JANUARY, 1915

The Allies

Amy Lowell

The Logical Extreme

George Soule

Little Flowers from a Milliner’s Box

Sade Iverson

My Friend, the Incurable:

Ibn Gabirol

On Personalities: Villon, Verhaeren, Parnell, Rolland, Dostoevsky

A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry

Edward J. O’Brien

The New Beauty

Nicolas Beauduin

The Artist as Master

Henry Blackman Sell

Evolution versus Stagnation

Herman Schuchert

Dawn in the Hills

Florence Kiper Frank

The Bestowing Virtue

George Burman Foster

Editorials and Announcements

Mrs. Havelock Ellis’s “The Love of Tomorrow”

Herman Schuchert

London Letter

Edward Shanks

New York Letter

George Soule

I Am Woman

Marguerite Swawite

Albert Spalding

Herman Schuchert

Book Discussion

Sentence Reviews

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. I JANUARY, 1915 No. 10

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.

The Allies

(August 14th, 1914)

AMY LOWELL

Into the brazen, burnished sky the cry hurls itself. The zigzagging cry of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the head of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching men. Men weighted down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war. The cry jars and splits against the brazen, burnished sky.

This is the war of wars, and the cause? Has this writhing worm of men a cause?

Crackling against the polished sky is an eagle with a sword. The eagle is red and its head is flame.

In the shoulder of the worm is a teacher.

His tongue laps the war-sucked air in drought, but he yells defiance at the red-eyed eagle, and in his ears are the bells of new philosophies, and their tinkling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He shrieks, “God damn you! When you are broken the world will strike out new shoots.”

His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may be shot, but he is in the shoulder of the worm.

(Over)

A dust speck in the worm’s belly is a poet.

He laughs at the flaring eagle and makes a long nose with his fingers. He will fight for smooth, white sheets of paper and uncurdled ink. The sputtering sword cannot make him blink, and his thoughts are wet and rippling. They cool his heart.

He will tear the eagle out of the sky and give the earth tranquility, and loveliness printed on white paper.

The eye of the serpent is an owner of mills.

He looks at the glaring sword which has snapped his machinery and struck away his men.

But it will all come again, when the sword is broken to a million dying stars, and there are no more wars.

Bankers, butchers, shopkeepers, painters, farmers,—men, sway and sweat. They will fight for the earth, for the increase of the slow, sure roots of peace, for the release of hidden forces. They jibe at the eagle and his scorching sword.

One! Two!—One! Two! clump the heavy boots. The cry hurtles against the sky.

Each man pulls his belt a little tighter, and shifts his gun to make it lighter. Each man thinks of a woman, and slaps out a curse at the eagle. The sword jumps in the hot sky, and the worm crawls on to the battle, stubbornly.

This is the war of wars, from eye to tail the serpent has one cause:

PEACE!

The Logical Extreme

GEORGE SOULE

(The first of a series of three Dramatic Extravaganzas to be called “Plays for Irascibles.”)

CHARACTERS:

GENERAL HEINRICH VON BUHNE

MARYA RUDINOFF

SCENE:

A private dining room in the General’s house in Berlin. It is decorated in black and white, and designed to impress one with the luxury of austerity. A chaotic but strong cubist bust in black onyx is at the left. The dining table, right center, is prepared for a meal. The effect of the room is that of a subtle beauty compressed and given terrific force by a military severity. There is a door at the rear and an entrance for servants at the left.

The General enters rear, followed by Marya. He is tall, with a large mustache and gray hair; his face and figure are in striking harmony with the room. A man of high intellectual quality; the lines and angles of his jaw, his mouth, his brows, are almost terrifying in their massiveness. He is in evening dress, and wears a single crimson order. Marya likewise is tall, a young woman with dark hair, and of a tense beauty. She is subtle, yet apparently lacks utterly fear and the softer qualities. She moves about with an unemphasized superiority over her surroundings. She wears a red evening gown, low cut to show her superb shoulders, yet without daring for its own sake. One feels that she would be equally at ease as a nude Greek goddess.

The General seats her at the right of the table, bows, and sits opposite her. Two servants enter with appetizers; they continue serving the dinner as the dialogue progresses.

GENERAL VON BUHNE (lifting his glass). To a good day’s work. (She touches hers to her lips) Fräulein Rudinoff, you are superb! I do not refer to your beauty; any dog could see that. I don’t believe in praise. But as a sculptor to his statue, allow me to say that of the many secret agents I have employed, you are the most subtly efficient—cold as ice and blazing as fire.

MARYA. Please, Heinrich! I don’t believe in praise either.

GENERAL. Not even when it is for myself? But you are right. Man does not become strong until he ceases to wonder at his strength.

MARYA. That is your secret, I believe.

GENERAL. My secret, Marya? I do not have secrets. A secret is something guarded, kept. My mystery, perhaps, yes. That is something which the many are incapable of discovering—even when it is flaunted in their faces.

MARYA. But we flaunt nothing, you and I.

GENERAL. No, we stand for everyone to see. My enemies think you are their spy, and I—know what you are.

MARYA. And so, we have them at last where your iron fist can close on them.

GENERAL. Yes, I have them, thanks to you. The poor visionary fools shall not assassinate the chancellor and blow up the churches.

MARYA. You know, we women are supposed to worship the poets. Well, we do, but we are fascinated and held by men like you. I loved the comrades, but—as you see——

GENERAL. You are right, Marya. I love them, too; that is why—I crush them. (He laughs shortly.) And perhaps that is why I dominate you. It is not an effort; it is an instinct. There is something—inevitable—about our love. That, I think, is because I—am inevitable.

MARYA. When I first came to you, Heinrich, I hated you. I think I do still, a little. There is always the zest of hate about the greatest love.

GENERAL. How you echo me! (A silence) Would it surprise you, my beautiful one, to know that I, like you, was once an anarchist?

MARYA. You!

GENERAL. Yes, I, the bugaboo of the democrats, the great reactionary, the militarist, the apostle of repression, the fortress of the German Empire. I was once a revolutionist, and I plotted to kill your Czar!

MARYA. And yet you failed!

GENERAL. I am in a whimsical mood tonight. Shall I explain to you the paradox?

MARYA. Tell me!

GENERAL. When I was a young chap I was restless, full of that driving spirit all healthy youngsters have. The methodical occupations they gave me in the Fatherland disgusted me. I had money, and I traveled. So I came to Russia and took up with one of your artistic groups in an interior city—I won’t tell you which. Believe me, I was fascinated, lifted out of myself! The great, clean spirit of your intellectual anarchists, the daily dangers they thrived on, the nonchalance with which they met death or exile, their daring minds, which ripped the veil from the future, their beautiful art productions—these things carried me to the height of inspiration. They represented the highest human quality of which it was possible to dream.

MARYA (covering her eyes with her hand). You have known that, too!

GENERAL. Yes, and love along with it. It was a boy-like worship. And when my beloved one went to the scaffold it burned into me a white-hot scar of fearlessness and severity I shall never lose. The love, I see now, was ephemeral; the scar is eternal.

MARYA. And why did you leave them? Why did you leave them?

GENERAL. I had heard of America; I wished to go there and study the freedom we desired to create in Russia.

MARYA. So you went; what then?

GENERAL. I found a country without a hereditary ruler, one rich in opportunity, where all men are theoretically equal before the law. I found a country where even the peasants read and have their magazines, a country without a state church. It was a land won from the wilderness by heroic struggle, whose freedom men had died to create, and whose unity men had died to preserve.

MARYA. Did you not breathe more freely there?

GENERAL. Ah, Marya, that was the tragedy! I suffocated! For it was also a country without a poet, without a musician, without a sculptor, without a philosopher. The cities were run for loot, and the people, in whose power everything lay, could not seize the reins. And business—business—business, everywhere. As I went along the railroads I saw nothing beside the track but dirty wooden shanties in the cities, nothing in the country but ugly advertising signs. What do you think was the best paid and most highly honored profession? Advertising!

MARYA. Are you lying to me!

GENERAL. No, it is the truth. Heroism, the love of beauty, the love of truth—except convenient truth—any sort of high endeavor for its own sake, was laughed at and crushed in those people by the dull weight of prosperity. That whole nation was an ugly monument to the triumph of the commonplace, a stone over the grave of godlike aspiration.

MARYA. But surely they have improved since then?

GENERAL. Do you know why they put up new buildings? Because some millionaire who sells worthless things for five and ten cents wishes to make money renting offices; because some railroad or insurance company wishes to get advertising space in the papers without paying for it. Do you know why the clergymen preach honesty? So that business conditions may not be disturbed! Do you know for what purpose the magazines accept stories and articles? So that they may gain the largest possible public to offer up to their advertising men! Whenever an artist appears, he is either ignored or scoffed at by that bestial monster, the majority! It is like a prehistoric animal taking up the whole earth with his vast bulk, seizing everything beautiful for food with which to stuff his maw, and poisoning the air with the breath of his indigestion. (He rises and goes to the sideboard, where he busies himself selecting a cigar. As his back is turned, Marya quickly empties a powder into his glass. As he comes back and seats himself, she lifts her glass.)

MARYA. Then let us toast Russia, General! (They drain their glasses.)

GENERAL. Would you mind telling me, Marya, how long I have to live? (He lights his cigar.) You are surprised? But that does not suit you. You should have known me better than to think I did not know what you would do when I turned my back tonight.

MARYA (rising, pale): About a minute, General.

GENERAL. Then let us use the time well. Now we can be perfectly frank. Why have you—(He waves his hand in the direction of the empty glass.)

MARYA. Because I am true to my cause! Because you are the scourge of Germany; you represent everything we hate, every cruelty, every oppression, every evil thing of the past. I have lived for this moment for years!

GENERAL. Ah, you are beautiful! In you is my reward! And do you renounce your love, too?

MARYA. I have loved you—more than I knew how to bear. Do not think I shall live after you. And yet—I had to kill you!

GENERAL. Now I am ready to die. My work is done. I have produced the beauty I desired!

MARYA. You? What do you mean?

GENERAL. You, who know how to kill what you love, can ask that? To produce the rebellion in Germany, to make heroes with the scourge—that has been my life! I, too, have lived for this moment! To be loved by a woman with a flaming soul, a woman who is greater than her love!

MARYA (Springing to him as he weakens): Stay with me! Come back to me! O Heinrich, Heinrich, I have wronged you!

GENERAL. No, Marya, you would have wronged me if you had not carried your faith to its end. I—I—am the greatest anarchist of you all! (He dies. She looks at him a moment, puts her arms across her eyes, then rises and speaks levelly to the servant who enters.)

MARYA. Peter, I have killed your master. No, do not be afraid, I shall sit here quietly. Lock me in, if you like, and send for the authorities. (The servant stands stupidly staring at her.) Do as I say, at once! (He tumbles out. She sits slowly at her place, her elbows on the table, looking dumbly into the distance.)

Slow curtain

Little Flowers From a Milliner’s Box

SADE IVERSON

Reminders

I have been making a little hat;

A hat for a little lady.

Red and brown leaves edge it,

And the crown is like brown moss.

If I might, I would say to her:

“Pay me nothing, pay me nothing—

I have been paid in full, lady—

I have been paid in memories.

Ah, the sweep of the sun-burned meadow

Rising above the woodland!

Ah, the drift of golden beech-leaves,

Fluttering the still hour through!

I can hear them falling, softly,

Softly, falling on the tawny ground.

The nuts, too, are falling, pad-pad,

Mischievously on the earth.

Never was sky so blue, so deep,

So unbearably perfect!

I throw up my hands to it,

I fling kisses heavenward,

To Something, to Somebody,

Who made beauty—who made Youth!

Take your hat, little lady,

Wear it smilingly;

It is all sewn with dreams,

And looped with memories.

Little dead joys, like mists,

Float about it invisibly,

Making it miraculous.

You lack the money to pay for these things.

It is I who owe you for the little hat

You commissioned, made of red and of brown leaves,

With a crown like sun-dried moss

In the woods where I once wandered.”

But I cannot afford to be kind,

Or strange, or mad, or merry.

She will give me purse-worn bills

For the little dream hat, the fairy-sewn hat,

And I shall say with formality:

“Thank you, madam; I am glad

You are pleased with the little hat.”

Stale, stale, flat, flat!

Will there never again come a day

When I shall be throwing kisses to the sky,

Hoping they will reach up to Him

Who made beauty, and little golden leaves,

And brown nuts falling in the Autumn woods?

Eidolons

I have been looking at the sun-ball,

Red as a Japanese lantern

Swinging low in the West

On a bed of saffron sky.

And now I have come into my room

With grey and lonely walls all about me,

And everywhere I look, behold,

Little wonderful bright balls are swinging!

My room is gay with them,

My wall is dancing.

Who could guess this little grey room could be so gay?

Voices

I awake in the night to the sound of voices—

Voices of strangers passing in the street.

I cannot hear what they are saying,

But it is easy to see that they are happy.

Perhaps they have been to a party,

Dancing to music—or remembering the birthday

Of some one whom they love.

I am glad to have heard them,

Glad they were laughing.

It fretted the silence

As the bright balls of a rocket

Fret the black sky of night.

As for me, I am shut up in silence,

Like a fly in odorous amber.

No one hails me, no one calls me;

No one tells me the day is fair

Or wishes me happy dreams.

Sometimes I fall to wondering,

What if I should run out onto the street,

Crying to some passerby:

“I would make a good friend to you!

I am one who understands friendship;

Try me and see!”

Oh, what would happen?

Should I be scorned?

Oh, silence, silence,

You are but a grey bubble, and I could break you

With one breath of impatience. Yet I dare not.

Something witholds me. Still must I waken

In the lonely night-time,

Taking joy from the voices of strangers

Passing in the street, talking, laughing.

Joy?

It mocks me like the sound of falling water

That tricks the ear of the thirst-mad wretch

Dying in the desert.

My desert is Silence!

It covers the bleak rotundity of the earth.

Ten Square Feet of Garden

Did you ever see my garden? See my mallow? See my larkspur?

My petunias like censers, snowy white and full of honey?

And my phlox, a summer snow-bank, and my haughty purple asters?

Did you ever see my flocks and herds, all my little golden creatures?

Dusky honey-bees in plenty, golden bumble-bees a few?

Have you never seen them feeding on my larkspur and my mallow?

Some day I shall have a fountain, or a tiny pool for lilies.

And I’ll sit there, hidden safely, all alone and full of fancies,

Playing I’m a lovely princess, resting by her carven fountain.

I shall like to be a princess, to have friends and lovers by me!

I can praise them, I can chide them, tell them secrets if I like,

Flinging back their happy laughter like a handful of clear water.

Oh, my little treasured garden, ten square feet of haunting perfume,

Ten square feet of tossing blossoms, all my feoff and own dominion,

How I love you, with your old-gold, noisy, honey-bearing herds!

My Friend, the Incurable

III.

Personalities: Villon; Verhaeren; Parnell; Romain Rolland; Dostoevsky

How do you do? Or, as Oscar Wilde preferred it, How do you think? It is so much more interesting. Tell me, if you can, spontaneously, freely, about your thoughts, reveal your personality, and we shall enjoy a most engaging conversation, as charming as any good novel or essay. Speak about yourself; people do this so much better than when they discuss others. To me the most enchanting reading has always been literature of Personality, such as subjective lyrics or chatty essays of the Montaigne category; but I am particularly interested in Letters and Memoirs, where the writer reaches transparency, unless he deliberately uses his pen as a masque for self-concealment, as is the case, to my mind, in De Profundis. True, an artist reveals his best in his artistic creation; you discover autobiographical contours of Goethe in Faust and Werther; Tolstoy’s restless searchings are mirrored in Besukhov, in Levin, in Nekhludov; Zarathustra and Ecce Homo allow you a glimpse into the very crater of Vesuvius-Nietzsche. Yet through this medium you see the artist in his royal garb, so to speak, in his regalia; he seldom appears to you in his unceremonious morning-gown and slippers, to let you contemplate him not at his best but in his quotidian intimate aspect. Exceptions? I admit a legion.

To be sure, Francois Villon[1] wore no stage array. His childish frankness and spontaneity account for the fact that he is to this very day an outcast among bon ton salons, and even Robert Louis Stevenson stooped to condemn him. Of course he is a disgrace for the fraternity of writers: a thief, a robber, a murderer, a tramp, a debauchee, who possessed less tact than even his by-no-means puritanic confrère, Rabelais, and chanted most exquisite verses on most base topics. Villon is not in the least detached from his poetry: he is it, his very life was a song, a ballad. Filthy fifteenth century Paris, licentious monks, mercenary courtesans, tavern sages, knights of the road and candidates of the gibbet—in such an atmosphere the poet breathed, lived, and sang in the old picturesque French. Every adventure, every experience, impression, and emotion, Villon reflected in a ballad or a rondel, with equal beauty and sincerity; with equal compassion and loyalty he chanted to his religious mother and to the faded courtesan, to the duck-thief and to the creaking gibbet; and he poured a world of tender humor and sympathy into his greatest Ballade des Pendus, an epitaph for himself and his companions expecting to be hanged. You may love him, you may condemn him, but you cannot deny his absolute truthfulness, for his soul is unreservedly denuded, a quivering, appealing, humane soul.

[1] The Poems of Francois Villon, translated by H. DeVere Stacpoole. [John Lane Company, New York.]

Ayez pitie, Ayez pitie de moy.

A tout les moins, si vous plaist, mes amis!

Villon is justly called “the father of French poetry”; his influence has been felt for nearly five centuries, from Rabelais to Verhaeren. Indeed, in the savage cosmic rhythm of the “enormous” Belgian I often hear the echo of the medieval “Pauvre Villon.” Verhaeren.... I must close my eyes when I think of this Titan. You cannot gauge him, you cannot see him in his entirety: an Atlas, bigger than our planet, detached from it. I think Verhaeren has been best loved, and perhaps best understood in Russia,—a land where realities are looked upon as symbols, else life would become a horrible absurdity. There he is endeared as the lyricist of the modern soul rent with eternal contradictions in the great task of transvaluation of values: a mystic with no God, a prophet with no blessing, a positivist without faith in man, a socialist without a political program, an anarchist without “action,” an urbanite longing for his village, a villager craving for the city. Verhaeren destroys rather than creates, wills rather than believes, yearns rather than attains. His movement lacks gracefulness; his attack, firmness; his flight, lightness; his love, tenderness; his architecture is without system, his system without method. And the more profound, the more palpitating and irresistible is the chaos of his titanic images heaped in masses, the more sincere are his wails, the more burning his tears. I think it was the admirable French critic, René Ghil, who observed that to Verhaeren the world appears as if in a flash of lightning, in an enormous, exaggerated form, and as such he embodies it in his work—also exaggerated, also enormous; that his poetry resembles the genius of Rodin hewing his Balzac out of marble and powerful dreams.

How differently is Verhaeren conceived in the Teutonic mind! The Austrian poet, Stefan Zweig,[2] has written an interesting book on the Belgian, an elaborate study of his personality and works, which substantiates my claim that people speak much more successfully about themselves than about others. Herr Zweig appreciates Verhaeren highly (and let me tell you sub rosa, my friend, that his general estimation of the Poet is but a pale echoing of the brilliant Léon Bazalgette in his book Les célébrités d’aujourd hui); he considers him the greatest poet living, he names him the European poet in the same sense as Whitman is the American poet. Soon, however, he falls into the Teutonic fallacy of preciseness-by-all-means, of violently accurate definitions which must suit the facts, else—desto schlimmer für die Fakten. He wishes us to believe with him that Verhaeren is the poet of socialism, of democracy, that he has proclaimed his great Aye to contemporary life, with its greed, factories, and smoke; that a poet who wants “to be necessary to our time must feel that everything in this time is necessary, and therefore beautiful.” Thus with the German skill in fencing with Hegelian dialectics the critic endeavors to persuade us that Verhaeren must needs love modern life in all its aspects, that he is enraptured with all manifestations of contemporary spirit, from the urban “multitude” to that most hideous platitude, the Eiffel Tower. Mr. Zweig has utterly failed to see that Verhaeren does not feel the present, the contemporary, that he lives spiritually in the past and in the future, while the fleeting present is for him but a symbol, an alphabet of monstrous hieroglyphs, the mysteries of which he interprets prophetically. Has he not expressed his endless despair and maddening grief over the tragedy of the all-absorbing monster-city? Has the world not been to him a Golgotha, “an eternal illusion”? To Mr. Zweig Verhaeren is a happy, satisfied lover of all and everything. The poet and the painter, Maximilian Voloshin (one of whose poems appeared in THE LITTLE REVIEW), relates his impression of the Belgian: “When you see him for the first time you notice before anything else a deep furrow cleaving his brow, resembling two wide-spread wings of a flying bird. This furrow is himself. In it is his sorrow, his flight.” I wonder whether Mr. Zweig has observed the furrow; or did he deliberately overlook it in order to save his “structure”?

[2] Emile Verhaeren, by Stefan Zweig. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.]

Yes, my friend, people seldom succeed in their attempt to interpret others. Would you classify biographies as literature of personality? Perhaps in the sense that they reveal the personality of the biographer, but then it depends upon the value of that personality. Here is an instance. The brother of Parnell writes his Memoirs[3], bringing forth a mass of details and anecdotes of “Charley’s” life. Charles Parnell has always been a fascinating personality to me. Long ago I heard a lecturer speaking on the great Irishman before a European audience of revolutionists; the listeners (by no means Irish!) were enchanted with the figure of the unique leader, with his powerful individuality and skillful strategy. I have pondered many a time over his portrait revealing the mysterious face of a medieval sorcerer, and have looked forward to a work that would help me in gaining a clearer idea of the “uncrowned King of Ireland.” His brother’s memoirs gave me a wealth of information about their family pedigree and about each individual member (their number is considerable), particularly about the writer’s business undertakings. About Charles Parnell I have learned numerous external facts and figures, but his intrinsic self is as little known to me now as before. Of what value is such a book which succeeds merely in introducing to you Mr. John Howard, an Irish gentleman of no particular interest?

[3] Charles Steward Parnell: A Memoir, by his brother, John Howard Parnell. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]

It is totally different when you are confronted with such a wonderful individuality as Romain Rolland[4]. Apparently it is a book of essays on Berlioz, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, D’Indy, Strauss, Debussy, and on some aspects of modern music; in reality you come to know the rich personality of Rolland and the reactions of his sensitive, graceful soul on the musical productions of our best-known composers. I am delighted with his influence on my views; not that he has altered them: musical opinions do not let themselves be proved or disproved; but he has enhanced my attitudes, he has made me admire my favorites more profoundly and hate my torturers more thoroughly. Do not let your Editor know that Brahms’s symphonies prove as indigestible to Rolland as they have been to your humble Incurable. It is the reading of such a book that offers me the joy of looking into a great soul, and it reminds me of the exalted experience I have had in reading Wilde’s Intentions, or the essays of Przybyszewsky and Arthur Symons.

The unceremonious self-revealment of a great man, of which I spoke in the beginning, does not always appeal to my aesthetic sense. At times my feeling of delicacy is scalded at the sight of a repulsive negligee. It has painfully irritated me to read Dostoevsky’s letters[5] in the English translation: would that the Russians kept their dirty linen at home. The book reveals a petty tragedy of a great personality; eternal want, indebtedness, whimpering, small jealousy, narrowness, intolerance. We learn how most of his books were written in a hurry, under pressure of need, the author being aware of their inadequacy; we learn of his petty envy towards Turgeniev, his slighting of Tolstoy, his bigoted hatred of everything liberal, European, his sturdy opposition to the revolutionists, his obsequious demeanor before high officials. With the exception of a few bright spots, the pages produce the nauseating effect of a pathological museum. Such a pity.

Come, now, friend: How do you think?

IBN GABIROL.

[4] Musicians of To-Day, by Romain Rolland. [Henry Holt Company, New York.]

[5] Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky. [The Macmillan Company, New York.]

A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN

Paroxysm is the poetic expression of that modern spirit which finds its most notable expression in other arts in the sculpture of Meunier, the polyphonic music of Strauss, the philosophy of Bergson, and the American skyscraper. It is the application of dynamics to poetry. It stands midway between romanticism, which is an escape into the past, and futurism, which is a flight into the future. Paroxysm is deep-rooted in to-day.

M. Nicolas Beauduin, its most noteworthy French exemplar, has many noteworthy disciples in France and Germany, and paroxysm is a well-known force in every literature except that of America, where its unconscious expression in life has been most remarkable. Students will find its philosophy set forth and its current phases in literature duly chronicled in M. Beauduin’s quarterly review, La Vie des Lettres. It is only possible here to offer a few very brief hints as to its literary aims and materials:

It aims to be a synthesis of modern industrial and mechanical effort.

It repudiates the ivory tower.

It handles the materials of modern life directly, not in symbols.

It responds to the roar of factories and trains.

The poet is to be “an active lyric,” representing his age.

The poet’s vision is the cinematograph of modern life with its continual mechanical transfiguration.

It is not sentimental.

To art for art’s sake, and art for truth’s sake, it opposes art for life’s sake.

It discards personal sensation; it is not ashamed to be “cosmic.”

The evolution of poetry is to be as rapid and terrible henceforth as material evolution.

It will sing the new man, the man-machine, the multiplied man, the Man-Bird.

It exalts motion and repudiates equilibrium.

It is social.

It feels the need for violent motives of faith, and finds them in the passion of the cities.

It cultivates a scientific technique.

It does not reject any words in forming a vocabulary.

It seeks swift, hurtling, dynamic rhythms.

It is based on “dynamic notions of qualitative duration, of heterogeneous continuity, of multiple and mobile states of consciousness.”

It perceives the elements of poetry contained in modern cities, locomotives, aëroplanes, dreadnoughts, and submarines; in a stock exchange, a Wall Street, or a wheat pit; and in every scientific marvel and in the sonorous song of factories and railways.

It emphasizes their dynamic consciousness.

To sum up: It aims to attain and express with the quick, keen vigor and strength of steel, the whirling, audacious, burning life of our epoch in all the paroxysm of the New Beauty.

When M. Beauduin’s new volume, La Cité des Hommes, is translated and published in America, it will be less difficult to estimate the success with which paroxyst poetry may be achieved.

The New Beauty

NICOLAS BEAUDUIN

(Authorized translation from the French by Edward J. O’Brien)

Long years the poet had not understood

This powerful art bursting from forces in sight,

From the tamed element which revolts in cries,

From the victory of the spirit

Over the passive immensity of matter.

The modern beauty of joy and madness,

Of triumph and truth,

He saw her, in a passionate rhythm,

Flinging down the palaces of doubt and silence,

Vanquishing black scepticisms and torpors,

Rekindling the universe under her jets of vapor,

Destroying the vain mystery that disappears,

Covering the entire world with her network of iron,

Launching her towers, her bridges, her tunnels, her dockyards,

Over all the exasperated continents of the globe.

Ah! the new beauty, ardent, insatiate,

Strained toward conquest and the vastest life,

She was indeed the god whom nothing resists,

Dynamic beauty of swiftness and hope,

Rushing ever beyond, out of the blackness,

Dancing and paroxyst humanity.

He saw her at last, superb before him,

Entrapping error, mowing night;

She erected on the old barbaric soil

Her cathedral with its vertiginous walls,

Lit by the mad and whirling suns of the searchlights.

Beauty of brass, beauty of fire,

She was there visible as a god.

Beauty of vapor, geometric beauty,

Modern beauty who builds for her temple and landscape

High furnaces casqued with purple and gold,

Cities mad beneath their electric lamps,

Launching at conquered heaven in spirals of pride,

The rut of dynamos and the bustle of windlasses,

The multiplied brutal effort of the machines,

The fiery flight of aeroplanes in the air,

The frantic trolleys under their sheaves of lightnings,

And dominating the night of silence and hatred,

The terrible thunderous flight of hertzian waves.

The Artist as Master

The Japanese Print: An Interpretation, by Frank Lloyd Wright. [Ralph Fletcher Seymour Company, Chicago.]

HENRY BLACKMAN SELL

“‘A flower is beautiful,’ we say—but why? Because in its geometry and its sensuous qualities it is an embodiment and significant expression of that precious something in ourselves which we instinctively know to be Life, ‘an eye looking out upon us from the great inner sea of beauty,’ a proof of the eternal harmony in the nature of a universe which is too vast and intimate and real for the mere intellect to grasp.”

Yet our materialists would solve the Problem with their material intellects. And our theologians would solve it with their ecclesiastical deductions. The one would put Life in the cold hands of the scientist, expert in fact and figure; the other, gropingly indefinite, in the hands of the spiritual formulaist. Yet both are wrong. The Problem can be solved. The literal, objective guesses of the materialist are but flimsy realisms far from true. The indefinite, abstract dreams of the theologian are but the futile inaptitudes of man calculated to define that which cannot be defined.

But definitions are not what the world needs. The Solution would be interesting, but the Problem is fascinating. It is the Going and not the Goal that holds us to the bitter and the sweet, through mornings, noons, and nights, year by year.

If, then, we grant the Solution but a cold conclusion, and the Goal but a stagnation point, to whom can we turn but to the artists—those spiritual children of that great master who wept when he could find no imperfection in his masterpiece.

The artist, whose interests are in the interpretations, and not in the translations of Life, and whose interpretations have given Life all that it holds sacred.

There is no power but has its root in his ....

There is no power

But his can withold the crown or give it

Or make it reverent in the eyes of men.

Written philosophies of artist craftsmen are rare. Their busy lives find little time for penning rules; but when one does speak, it is with the captivating force of original thought: the summary of attainments through many trials and many failures.

And it is with this sure touch of deep artistic experience that Frank Lloyd Wright draws from the geometric beauty of the mystic Japanese prints his philosophy of the artist as master of the Problem.

“Real civilization means for us a right conventionalizing of our original state of nature, just such a conventionalizing as the true artist imposes on natural forms. The law-giver and reformer of social customs must have, however, the artist soul, the artist eye in directing this process, if the light of the race is not to go out. So, art is not alone the expression, but in turn the great conservator and transmitter of the finer sensibilities of a people. More still, it is to show those who shall understand just where and how we shall bring coercion to bear upon the material of human conduct. So the indigenous art of a people is their only prophecy and their school of anointed prophets and kings. Our own art is the only light by which this conventionalizing process we call “civilization” may eventually make its institutions harmonious with the fairest conditions of our individual and social life.

“I wish I might use another word than ‘conventionalizing’ to convey the notion of this magic process of the artist mind, which is the constant haunting reference of this paper, because it is the perpetual, insistent suggestion of this particular art we have discussed. Only an artist, or one with genuine artistic training, is likely, I fear, to realize precisely what the word as here used connotes. Let me illustrate once more. To know a thing (what we can really call knowing), a man must first love the thing and sympathize vividly with it. Egypt thus knew the lotus, and translated the flower to the dignified stone forms of her architecture. Thus was the lotus conventionalized. Greece knew and idealized the acanthus in stone translations. Thus was the acanthus conventionalized. If Egypt or Greece had plucked the flowers as they grew, and given us a mere imitation of them in stone, the stone forms would have died with the original. In translating, however, its very life’s principle into terms of stone well adapted to grace a column capital, the Egyptian artist made it pass through a rarifying spiritual process, whereby its natural character was really intensified and revealed in terms of stone adapted to an architectural use. The lotus gained thus imperishable significance; for the life-principle in the flower is translated—transmuted to terms of building stone to idealize a real need. This is conventionalization. It is reality because it is poetry. As the Egyptian took the lotus, the Greek the acanthus, and the Japanese every natural thing on earth, as we may take and adapt to our highest use in our own way a natural flower or thing, so civilization must take the natural man, to fit him for his place in this great piece of architecture we call the social state. And today, as centuries ago, it is the prophetic artist mind that must reveal this natural state idealized, conventionalized harmoniously with the life-principle of all men. How otherwise shall it be discerned? All the sheer wisdom of science, the cunning of politics and the prayers of religion can but stand and wait for the revelation,—awaiting at the hands of the artist that conventionalization of the free expression of life-principle which shall make our social living beautiful,—organically true. Behind all institutions or dogmatic schemes, whatever their worth may be, or their venerable antiquity,—behind them all is something produced and preserved for its aesthetic worth; the song of the poet, some artist vision, the pattern seen in the mount.

“Now speaking a language all the clearer because not native to us, beggared as we are by material riches, the humble Japanese artist has become greatly significant because he is the interpreter of the one permanent thing in the life of his people; that one permanent thing being the principle of a right conventionalization of life which makes of their native forms the most humanly significant, and most humanly joy-giving as in its ever varied moods and in evanescent loveliness he has made Fujiyama—that image of man in the vast—the God of Nippon.”

Evolution versus Stagnation

(Being a Debate, with Rare Illustrations, by Major Funkhouser, Mr. Lucian Cary, and The Camera, reported for THE LITTLE REVIEW by Herman Schuchert.)

Place: Fullerton Hall.

Time: Thursday afternoon, December 10, 1914.

Characters: Mere and supporting members of the Drama League, and others mentioned above; also guards, committees, and a few men.

MAJOR FUNKHOUSER (his remarks, condensed).

Censorship of the movies is necessary because it must be.

Buildings, public rights, and milk are censored, and it is good.

Fifty per cent of a movie audience is under fifteen years of age.

I may be wrong sometimes, but I pass what I think they should see.

We must be big-brothers to our citizens of lesser intelligence.

I told my four daughters only what I thought they should know.

I believe in telling women as little as they may really need.

The working class wants salacious stuff; we must prevent.

These excerpts from banned films will illustrate my points:

THE CINEMATOGRAPH (its pictures, briefly mentioned).

Woman and man clutching each other in a raging, although amiable, passion.

Boy being taught how to pick pockets.

Hold-up.

Woman and man in furious love-experiments.

Mexicans burning bodies of dead rebels.

Doctors dressing Mexican battle-wounds.

Woman and man preparing the furnace of love.

Woman and man ....

Woman ....

Man ....

MR. LUCIAN CARY (his ideas, pieced together).

These pictures are positively abominable.

No human being could possibly want to see them.

If we must have censorship, the Major’s is as good as any.

Censorship with flaws is preferable to perfect censorship because perfect censorship would abolish the necessity of one’s judgment.

Imperfect censorship permits us, by its slips, to exercise our minds.

In no other civilized country is there such restriction.

Artists in America must keep their keenest visions to themselves.

Censorship deadens human perceptions.

Who wants cloistered virtues when true health is possible?

Man must learn to judge for himself; and he surely will do so.

America is unprecedented in its timidity of tastes and convictions.

MRS. HENDERSON (in a bored manner).

It isn’t a question of arbitrary standard; it’s purely aesthetic.

The Major passes films of the most flagrant sentimentality.

Only legal restrictions are made, and these are futile.

The only satisfactory standard is that of individual taste.

Of course, the title of this debate was not quite the one used on this article. It was very tame—the title. But not so with the films. The Major had evidently selected his choicest ones—and a goodly number of these—which were reeled off in swift succession. Murder trod on the heels of love. Flaming moments of lust were split up by stage-robbers. Nigger babies, whose crime was that they didn’t need clothes, followed suicides.

Your reporter was fortunate enough to find an acquaintance, sitting in the rear of the hall. This lady married a man of millions. He liked the way she did Florodora—liked it so well that he gave her a chance, which she has since made much of. She is charming, because she has retained the frankness of the stage and merely exchanged the shoddy furs and diamonds for the real thing. She confided that The Follies were simply right, and that the Drama League was radically opposed to the movies in any or all forms, and that she adored winter because it kept reminding her of Christmas. She is a supporting member of the League, and the only one present who waived her constitutional prerogative of a front seat. Her sisters-in-league were availing themselves of their privilege. They wanted to be where they could not get out, in case the pictures were really good.

And they were—sickening. Not a member left. Not a whisper. All eyes focused upon the screen, where horrors of war and of love (in which there seemed to be nothing fair) were showing. When their nervous systems could stand no more, some lady’s locomotive and oral powers returned, and the reel was stopped.

Then came Mr. Cary, who found it difficult not to speak over their heads with his simple language and big ideas. The audience whispered and began to show the tips of countless yellow-feathers. They could stand horrible pictures; but this talk was too much. It was too sane and calm and cutting. Yellow feathers showed, full length. Women left in twos and threes, although the first person to go out was a male. Cary’s short, admirable paragraphs were divided in this manner:—three ladies on the right of the hall would balance their departure under cover, as it were, of the departure of three sisters on the left. This mental cowardice was worse than the pictures.

An intolerable discussion followed. A huge wave of ancient yet ever-modern philistinism raised itself among the majority of those who remained, and surged across the hall to drown Mr. Cary and Mrs. Henderson. Major Funkhouser found his feet again, and assumed the big-brother-protector attitude, to repeated grand-stand advantages. As long as they had seen the pictures, what matter if the public didn’t? Evolution lost the day. Stagnation was an immediate success. Your reporter left, grinning.

Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.—Nietzsche.

Dawn in the Hills

FLORENCE KIPER FRANK

Out of the vast,

Flooding and flowering the cool, skyey vast,

Day, day at last!

Squandering, spilling, pouring white-flecked fire,

Higher and higher

The light of the sun mounts into the dim of the sky.

And all the little fields that lie

At the foot of the hills that hold them in mothering tender,

Sweet with translucent, shimmering green,

Lay themselves bare to the sun, and the hill-trees slender,

Upward reaching thin arms of prayer,

A-shiver with ecstasy, tipped with sheen,

Sway to the quivering call of the fresh-stirring air.

Through the night have I waited Thy summons, through the night have I lain

Racked with unutterable, ancient, blackening pain.

And the soul of me touched not Thy presence nor felt Thee about me,

And the soul of me, sick with its hate and dismay, was minded to rout Thee,

Yea, from itself to tear Thee, enduring without Thee.

But now have I found Thee again, O my Comrade, again!

In the light of the morning and white of the dawn I behold Thee.

See, with my arms outstretched, I enclose and enfold Thee.

With a shout that the darkness is light, I enclose and enfold Thee.

Now feed me with life as with rain is nourished the flower!

Crown me with ecstasy, drench me with power!

See, I am bare to Thee as the fields are bare to the sun.

Resplendent, vivid, ever-living One,

This is the moment, this the creative hour!

Lo, I am one with thee,

I partake, I am washed anew.

Out of lies this is true,

Out of the dark of lies and entangling hates this is true,

That Thou who art ever-living, out of death shall create anew.

What weakling spirit knew thee gray and old,

Thou flaming one,

Thou fructifying sun,

Thou trumpet-call of morning to the blood,

Thou surge of the earth flood!

Youth of the universe art Thou, militant, bold.

Naught to Thee is decay,

When the spirit rots in its shroud,

And the horrible thoughts of night have way,

And life is a noisome cloud;

A noisome cloud of the fen,

Dank with the spirit’s decay!

O out of the morning laughest Thou then,

Out of the singing day.

Out of the morning leapest Thou,

Laughing at fear and pain,

And the horrible thoughts of night give way,

And the soul is created again.

The hills now are flooded with light and the trees rejoice

With happy voice.

The smell of the sweet, green things is in the air.

The breeze is a prayer.

And my soul, O my Comrade, my living soul is a prayer.

And rapture gives way to peace.

The dawning faints into the day.

Out of night have I found release,

Out of death, the way.

And my heart is calm with Thee, my heart that went forth with a shout.

Thou hast compassed me wholly about.

With the floods of Thy peace Thou hast compassed me wholly about.

I am elate with power.

Past is the creative hour.

I am calm for the ways of men.

Shall I not proclaim Thee then

To the doubting lives of men!

Out of the dawn have I plucked Thee.

I go to the world of men.

The Bestowing Virtue

GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER

The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; thus spake Zarathustra.

In times most ancient—at culture’s dawn of day—the individual was swallowed up and lost in the life of the tribe. He did not count as an individual, but was valued only as a member of the group to which he happened to belong. Subsequently, man’s endowment to personality entered upon its unfolding—the first syllables of the long human story were stammered. Man began to become a self. To be a self was to specialize into a difference from all other men. From that moment on, the entire course of evolution may be considered as a progressive differentiation and specialization of the human personality. At the outset there were only a few splendidly and highly endowed natures that felt a distinct life of their own welling up in themselves from mysterious springs of being. They took up the gauge of battle against others, against the mass which attempted to subject and assimilate them to its peculiarity. Mass meant monotony. But the differentiating energy and impetus encroached further and further, passing from the great to the small, pushing into the mass whose members no longer wanted to be mass, herd, but men. The might of spiritual personality opposed itself to the superiority of corporeal peculiarity. Psychical feeling more and more became personal. Character increasingly received a distinctive stamp. Along with this, the impulse to self-dependence began to stir even in those men who were outclassed in physical strength by their stronger human brothers. Later, when the head and heart, and no longer the fist, formed the strength of man, woman pressed into the circle of life’s evolution. She was no longer a mere exemplar of the genius. She, too, would be personality. This course of events signified an infinite refinement and enrichment of cultural life on the one side; on the other, it gave rise to the question as to how, in this differentiation of men into even more decidedly pronounced personalities, a cohesiveness could be originated among them that would save life from disintegration and consequent decay. At bottom, the individual is not sufficient unto himself. Self-dependent, he would be miserably impoverished and stunted—of this there can be no doubt, according to the most elementary laws of life. Hence, along with the formation of human personality, there is a refinement of those forces of life which seem summoned to secure a bond of fellowship among men: law, custom, a benevolent disposition toward others, the feeling of sympathy for others. Even Nietzsche, who foresees a future in which all these older group forces and moral impulses shall be obliterated, and every man pander to his own self alone and his own peculiarity in willing and feeling, in thinking and speaking—even Nietzsche cannot help preaching a new love that shall bind men together. Even Zarathustra confesses: “I love men! My will, my ardent will to creation, impels me constantly to men—as the hammer to the stone!” To be sure, this Zarathustra-love is to grow out beyond and above what we call love to-day, what we call Christian love. There is to be a Beyond Christianity. The new love will be as high above the old love as Above-Man will be above man. Beyond-man means Beyond-love. How earnestly and ominously does this preaching of a new love pierce like a sword into the heart of our time! A new test of the worth or unworth of our moral view of life! Were we even convinced that the best and purest features of the old Christian love would re-appear in any new love, still the question would not be elucidated—the question whether this old love would thereby become new again, would become living again, save through a storm of thunder and lightning that should purify the heavy, stuffy atmosphere which has gathered about the word love itself.

You will know them by their fruits—of nothing is this so true as of love. Where there is power, an effect must ensue, and in the effect, not only the right of the power, but the kind as well, manifests itself. Now, love wills to promote the life of another with its own life. Love wills to do good to its object, to redress some wrong, supply some lack, help some need, remedy some defect, and the like. Therefore, the fruits of love are gifts—hence, die schenkende Tugend, the bestowing or the giving virtue, of Nietzsche’s phrase. Accordingly, only a possessor can give. Who possesses most—the rich—give most! Who needs gifts is poor, and since poverty is great, becoming ever greater, gifts are needed to meet the needs. Thus, human love has become the practice of beneficence—the work of the rich by which they help the poor. The greatness of benefactions, this becomes a criterion for the greatness of love. We have but to think of the “foundations” and “benevolent funds” and “charitable institutions” and “unions” for the care and keeping of the poor, as well as of the incalculable sums which are given in private for the relief of want, in order to be impressed with the “fruits” which have grown on the tree of human love. How magnificent, how imposing these “fruits” are! How much love there is in the world today, in this world in which so much good is done! Who could doubt it? Who could deny it? Who? Who but Friedrich Nietzsche!

The loathsome vanity and the refined hypocrisy with which this beneficence is prosecuted, such obvious strictures as these, Nietzsche passes over without a word. This genus “benefactor” that does what it does just to benefit itself, is so lowdown to the Zarathustra-poet that he will not honor it with a notice. He simply classed it with the gilded and counterfeit rabble, Pöbel, with the culprits of wealth, who pick their profits from sweepings. Then there is the criterion of the numerical worth of the gift, not the ratio of the gift to the possessions of the giver, this criterion for the evaluation of love was so external, so deceptive, to Nietzsche, that he left it, too, out of account. What impelled Nietzsche to his depreciation of this whole species of beneficence was something different, something deeper. All these gifts, great and numerical as they may be, are alms, and who has only alms to give to man is a poor man, and Zarathustra feels—well, listen to what he says to the saint!

Zarathustra answered: “I love men.”

“Why,” said the saint, “did I go to the forest and desert? Was it not because I loved men greatly over-much? Now I love God: men I love not. Man is a thing far too imperfect for me. Love of men would kill me.”

Zarathustra answered: “What did I say of love! I am bringing gifts to men.”

“Do not give them anything,” said the saint. “Rather take something from them and bear their burdens along with them—that will serve them best; if it only serve thyself well! And if thou art going to give them aught, give them no more than an alms, and let them beg even for that.”

“No,” said Zarathustra, “I do not give alms. I am not poor enough for that.”

I am not poor enough for that. Priceless words! You read these words and you think of truly kindhearted men who sigh: If I were only rich so I could do good! They envy the rich their possessions, not for the sake of the pleasures and comforts which possessions permit their possessors to provide, but in the wholly honest feeling of the blessings which they could scatter with their wealth. Then comes Nietzsche, and says to these kindhearted men, You are only poor noodles, if you have nothing better to bring the world and men than this blessing of wealth. Then he points them to gifts the least of which outweighs a million donations.

Now, Nietzsche had no contempt of wealth with which to insult his fellowmen’s intelligence. Nor was he a socialistic indicter of beneficence. Nor was he even a rigorous critic of the doubtful disposition, so often manifest in such benevolent activities. But perhaps his plain words on the poverty of almsgiving seem so weighty precisely because he must be acquitted without further ado of speaking from contempt, from the standpoint of Christianity, or from the milieu of poor folk. And yet it was this most soaring spirit of the nineteenth century, this aristocrat from top to toe, compared with whom even a Goethe seems like a plebeian, it was precisely he who—as from an aerie up among the eagles—looked down with such abysmal contempt upon the highest and noblest triumph of riches—namely, the ability to bestow benefits—that he detected, even in this triumph, only testimony to the poverty of riches. Along with this, at all events, Nietzsche passed damnatory judgment upon a Kultur which estimates the distances among men, the measure of their greatness according to the distinctions of possession, and therefore derives the right of the influence which it accords the individual from the sums which he donates by way of alms. Then, too, what has the man to do with his possession! It is not his personality which has assigned him a place in life where a confluence of industrial goods crystallize around him! What does it signify as to the worth of a man that he has cast his baited hook into the stream of life just where a big hungry fish swims by and bites! And if, now, this most contingent of all contingencies, that a man should get rich, is considered by his generation as the peculiar deed of a hero, the deed which he was in a position to compass in life,—if the mere fact that a man releases, in the shape of benefits and alms, a part of this wealth which he could not spend upon himself if he would is a phenomenon around which the conversation of the day revolves, of which newspapers in special articles and telegraphic dispatches have so much to say, then this is a sign of the decay of our moral culture, and we cannot be thankful enough to the man who has jolted us out of such aberration of ideas and made us see with eyes no longer blinded by the glitter of gold!

Aye, wealth a man does need who wants to give. Wealth he needs for the sake of his giving love. But he must create this wealth himself. He must wrest wealth from all values. He must coerce all things to himself and into himself. All these things must stream back from the well of living water within him as the gifts of his love. Insatiably does the soul seek after treasures and gems because her virtue is insatiable in her will to give. This is the soul’s thirst to be an offering and a gift, and hence she thirsts to house all wealth in herself.

Vulgar souls give what they have, noble souls what they are—this is the well known saying that mirrors the meaning of Nietzsche. Love’s highest labor is to create something great out of its ownself, that it may be able to give unceasingly out of its own fulness and yet never be exhausted! No mountain is too steep and no valley too deep for love, because love herself must know heights and depths that she may give to others what she has seen and known there. Do we fear lest we succumb to a weakness? Then we must force the weakness underneath our feet because we need our strength to give strength to others. Would we say to virtue: Thou art too hard for us; take thy laurel and let us sin? Now, the hardest is spur to our love, to steel our wills, our courage, so that courage may gush into the souls of others also. What we have made out of our own selves, this, this alone, is our wealth, this is the gift by whose bestowal men can become rich. A thought of our own which we have acquired; a light of our own, which we have kindled in our innermost being; a lofty enthusiasm for what is great; an energetic aversion to all that is common and base,—this is our true wealth, the gift that enriches us while it is given to others. Poor indeed are the people who can give only alms; rich indeed are those who give themselves to men, who proffer their most intimate gifts to men, who say to men’s hidden hearts and hopes: Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give unto thee!

Why are we so deeply involved in hard necessity that our life can not dispense with alms and therefore with the people who make a virtue out of this giving of alms! Simply because we have so few such truly rich men who thirst to become offerings and gifts for man! These men can we have, can we become ourselves, only when duty and righteousness, and not benevolence and inclination, shall decide in an ordering and helpful way, as to the requirement of life. Behind every benefit which is necessary there is concealed an unrighteousness of life which makes the benefit necessary. All alms with which the world cannot dispense today is an accusation against our culture, a confession of how poor we are in the midst of all our wealth. It will be the first great step towards a new culture when we first learn to measure the unworth of these benefits by the eternal worths which alone are worthy of man, which man forms in himself as new fructifying deeds, as the lightning of thought which detonates from his soul, as living beauty to which he gives shape in his own being.

Then if all duties which are based on right and law, shall cease to be considered as something special, something great, if their fulfilment shall be no longer marveled at as a feat of virtue, because these duties shall have become self-evident and natural, then shall man be illumined by new and greater duties which shall make him a debtor to life, then shall he call his wealth and the fulness of his being his debt which he can pay only in constant creation for man, in ceaseless giving to man! “Therefore, nobler souls will it: they will to have nothing gratis, least of all life! Whoever is of the Pöbel wills to live gratis, but we others to whom life gave itself—we ever meditate as to what we can best give in return and, verily, that is a noble saying which says: what life promises us, that will we keep for life!” In simpler language: Not to merit a reward, heavenly or earthly, will we give, will we assemble in ourselves the highest gifts, to lay them down as offerings upon the altars of men, but we will give to return thanks for all that we have undeservedly received. Bickering and calculating as to whether we have had our just dues, haggling over hopes which have not done what they promised, we will have none of this, but thanks, thanks, that as men we have gained some material from the saddest life, created joys out of its pains, wealth and worth out of its weakness and loss. This, this, in Nietzsche’s immortal words, is eine Umwertung der Werte, a transvaluation of values in the moral life, from which a new moral culture can issue. In our labors we are ever shadowed by the still, lurking thought of returns and rewards, we calculate, and calculate ever in our own favor, that somewhere life has left us in the lurch. Could we but once reverse this matter: It is not life that is obligated and indebted to us—we are obligated and indebted to life! In the former way of counting we always come out with a deficit, with a poverty: in the later, with a balance, with a wealth: we still have something for which we gave nothing, did nothing, with which we have done no good!

How would it do to put such thankfulness to the test? When the heart is shaken with sorrow’s power—it is life’s gift to feel such shaking, in such shaking love can feel the storm raging. Even such gift you would not have gratis. You would make some return—the bravery with which you settle for it. You come to know despondency, a new deed, and your thanks therefor is that you have been permitted to overcome a paralysis of your energy. If, with freer vision and with broader heart, your eye has become alert and keen for human folly and lamentation, and these attack you as cowardice and disgust of life, then you take this as a gift that you will not have gratis, you will give something as counter-gift and thanks: a more energetic will, that will go to the bottom of folly and grief, with the fineness of feeling which has been bestowed upon you—you will dig deeper, search out more earnestly the genuine values of life, so that your cowardice and your ennui at life may become a new strength and a new joy for life. If you feel your hands tied, if the world seems a prison at whose bars you lunge, but whose rods you cannot break, if then a horrible feebleness befalls you, and your best will confesses that you are too weak,—then take this, too, as a gift for which you learn to give thanks, for even the restriction of your power creates a new freedom, the pressure of the impossible ceases with your learning, thus, the possible, the necessary, of your life. Poor? You may be rich, immeasurably rich, not for yourself indeed, but for others, that you may communicate to them, give to them and yet never give out! Be debtor of life, that in your poverty you may make many rich. Be debtor of love, that you may never be able to pay your great eternal debt. Confessing and obligating yourself to such debt, your life gains that eternal worth which increases the more you spend of it, which receives, the more you give of it. Poor, yet having all things; poor, yet making many rich—also sprach Paulus-Nietzsche.

After this Zarathustra went back into the mountains and the solitude of his cave and withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who hath thrown out his seed. But his soul was filled with impatience and longing for those he loved; for he had still many gifts for them. For this is the hardest: to shut one’s open hand because of love.

It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the dangers which life itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they can neither feel it nor sympathize with it, and he cannot any longer go back! He cannot ever go back again to the sympathies of men.—Nietzsche.

Editorials and Announcements

Mrs. Havelock Ellis

Mrs. Ellis’s visit to Chicago has been a series of revelations. At first she was a little disappointing: in her lecture on James Hinton and his sex ethics—particularly in the discussion which followed it—Mrs. Ellis did not loom as large as some of her more “destructive” contemporaries. The thing was beautifully done, of course—a gorgeous bit of interpretative art; for Mrs. Ellis chooses words with a poet’s care and presents ideas with an economy that is invigorating and restful at the same time. But in so far as the lecture reflected her own ideas it had some of the limitations to which the eugenist point of view is always open: the failure to go quite the whole distance. Compared with the directness and honest thoroughness of the few pioneers who are advocating birth control—like Margaret Sanger, whose little pamphlet on the subject will cost her ten years imprisonment if the authorities can get hold of her—the ideas of Mrs. Ellis came with a certain inadequacy. But later she cleared herself of the charge of cultism by her laughing remark to some one who discussed eugenics with her: “Eugenics? A mere spoke in the wheel, and a very dogmatic spoke at that. Heaven knows we don’t want a race of averages.” One of her most delightful afternoons was given over to her Cornish stories. She read one called The Idealist, which ought to be studied by all those who draw their rigid distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal”. As Mrs. Ellis said, “This story is an attempt to show that those people we so piously consider the worst of us are sometimes the best of us.” And so this charming woman with her simplicity, her humor, her frankness, her idealism, and her fine boyishness is a personality one must not fail to know. She returns to Chicago on February 4, to lecture on sex and eugenics in Orchestra Hall. That lecture will be given exclusively to women and will include a discussion of sex abnormalities, as well as a paper on the subject written especially for the occasion by her husband, which Mrs. Ellis will read.

A Journal of Ideas

The New Republic is the first weekly in America which has dared to assert that ideas are interesting, even if they are new. We have had one kind of weekly whose main purpose is to pay dividends to its owners. Dividends demand advertising, advertising demands large circulation, circulation demands pleasing as many people as possible, pleasing many people has seemed to demand piffle and dishonesty. We have had another kind of weekly which confines itself to academic criticism and frankly gives up any attempt to speak to the nation. The New Republic is run neither for dividends nor for ancient prestige. It proceeds on the assumption that we can find writers who are both honest enough and intelligent enough to speak things of a value not determined either by capital or by the mob. It hopes that their product may be so interesting that the people who want to read it will be sufficiently numerous to support the paper. It hopes vastly more that the ideas and opinions so enunciated will introduce a powerful and much-needed element of disinterested intelligence into American public life. The way in which these hopes are put into print will have much to do with the success of the attempt. But it is hopeful that somebody with adequate resources and equipment is actually engaged in the attempt to relate honesty and intelligence with the democracy.

John Cowper Powys

When the Welshman, John Cowper Powys, comes to the Chicago Little Theatre for his lectures during January and February a great many people ought to fall under the spell of this man whose methods spoil one for almost all other lectures. Mr. Powys’s intellect has that emotional character which is likely to be the quality of the man of genius rather than the man of talent. He might be called the arch-appreciator: he relies upon the inspiration of the moment, and when violently enthusiastic or violently the reverse (he is usually one of the two) he never stops with less than ten superbly-chosen adjectives to express his emotion exactly. His subjects will be Dostoevsky, Wilde, Milton, Lamb, Hardy, Henry James, Dante, Rabelais, Hugo, Verlaine, Goethe, and Heine. The dates may be had at the Little Theatre.

Mrs. Havelock Ellis’s “The Love of Tomorrow”

HERMAN SCHUCHERT

One’s sense of the general or the particular fitness of things is disturbed when an attempt is made to paraphrase or condense the spoken words of Mrs. Ellis. It is seldom that this sense of fitness is at all troubled, because it is a simple matter to extract from the average lecture enough coherent material for second-hand purposes. On the subject given above Mrs. Ellis compels continuous attention. It is not enough to say that she steadily advances her ideas by means of careful phrases, for every phrase seems to be an idea in itself. She is an artist. Her words are like so many focussed lights, not one of which is superfluous. And the illumination which she obtains is a grateful brightness. In listening to her one’s powers of receptivity, while never strained, are not for one moment allowed to rest. As she says, “It’s all solid meat.” Hence, the feeling of futility in an attempt to present justly her observations and schemes of social betterment.

What an absurdity might be suggested to the reader by the statement that Mrs. Ellis advocates a form of “trial marriage” or a “probation for engaged lovers”! And yet her plan of such a pre-ceremonial arrangement is as practical as it is badly needed—practical and entirely reasonable, in that she has apparently overlooked nothing, from the subtleties of human nature to the future laws of the land. And how faddish might she appear if one told of her attacks upon latter-day Puritanism, lust in the guise of love, prostitution within marriage, the evils of both repression and brutish or premature expression, the abomination of smirking elders and cowardly guardians, and so forth. Truly, these things constitute a fad of today, but—Mrs. Havelock Ellis was writing and preaching these ideas longer than twenty-five years ago. In questions of love, marriage, and the possible beauty of human relations, she is a splendid, unhurrying pioneer. It would be impossible to measure the courage, the fine perseverance, it has taken to work on patiently and forcefully in the midst of leering society, infallible misunderstanding, and a great ocean of evil-mindedness. What daring! to speak plainly of the beauty of love-passion. And how hopeless! Here, evolution endlessly proves itself a laggard process.

Until one hears Mrs. Ellis it is easy to overestimate the “building” powers of Emma Goldman, although it is always too easy to consider only Miss Goldman’s sturdy “wrecking” capacity. But the percentage of constructive element in Mrs. Ellis’s work is much more apparent than in Miss Goldman’s. Clearly, each woman is superlative in her own sphere. By virtue of its tested strength, Mrs. Ellis’s constructive machinery may be said to destroy naturally whatever gets in its way. And in addition to this she does some direct, incisive battling as well. Her humor has carbolic in it. Her sarcasm is a spiritual antiseptic.

In the realm of the child, Mrs. Ellis agrees with that grand Swedish woman—Ellen Key. These two coincide upon the supreme importance of full and proper education for the coming generation, including eugenics, hygiene, and kindred topics. It is a joy to know of so much sanity abroad in the world.

But even today, when a number of more or less important writers and speakers are taking up her ideas, when Chicago is having the truths of humanity forced down its tonsilitic throat, it was still possible—on a Sunday night in the Little Theatre—for Mrs. Ellis to have in her audience many whose deep sighs of boredom it was scarcely necessary to observe before tagging them as a lower class of mentality, while no doubt their jewels and furs were quite necessary to indicate their social standing. What curious gropings of psychology brought these people to such a lecture? Or was it fashion? In the faces of these might a dozen Saviours have found ample pity-material. Yawns and dull looks! Something between a Cross and a Bomb was wanting to awaken these unthinking ones, asleep while superb ideas—ideas of admirable vitality and development—were being put before them by the clear and earnest voice of a great woman.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.—Nietzsche.

London Letter

EDWARD SHANKS

London, Dec. 1, 1914.

I have to humiliate myself at the beginning of this letter. Nietzsche did not provoke the war; he did not imagine there was ever any specifically “Teutonic” culture, worthy of being spread at any cost; and he seems to have disliked Prussia as much or more than I do. I say this not to inform the readers of THE LITTLE REVIEW, who know it all already from the number in which my error appeared, but to unburden my soul. I sinned like a daily journalist and spoke from hearsay—for I confess I have never been able to read Nietzsche with sufficient attention to gain more than a vague notion of his ideas. Two persons set me right—Mr. Harold Monro, the editor of Poetry and Drama, with some heat and indignation, and, more gently, Mr. A. R. Orage, the editor of The New Age, who was in old days one of the first to bring Nietzsche to England. It would seem that his efforts were of little use, for my blunder was merely an incident in a carnival of misapprehension which is now engaging our pseudo-intellectual critics. I have sinned in numerous, if evil, company.

I must withdraw another statement—namely, that the war has produced no adequate and agreeable verse. Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s Sing-songs of the War (published by the Poetry Bookshop) is an admirable little volume. Wisely pitching his note neither too high nor too vulgarly, he has struck closer to the mark than he has ever in any attempt. He has achieved an excellent patriotic song, beginning

O, England is an island,

The fairest ever seen:

They say men come to England

To learn that grass is green.

That needs only supporting music to be a fine song of the pleasant boisterousness and exaggeration that it should be. Of the others, The Drowned Sailor and Soldier, Soldier, have caught a wonderful and touching note of the folk-song. Mr. Hewlett’s work here is not ambitious, he has profited enormously by not keeping in his mind the necessity of producing a fine piece of literature. He has tried honestly to produce “something that will do” and much good poetry has been written in that way.

Mr. Harold Monro’s new book, Children of Love, which he has published himself at the Poetry Bookshop, contains also four gloomy war poems as far removed from Mr. Hewlett’s as from the verse of the newspapers. They are vivid and real impressions of fighting and, as appeals for recruiting, enormously inapt. But poetry does not exist for that. The title poem is a lovely piece, Mr. Monro’s very best, the composition which settled, or should have settled, all our doubts concerning his genius. The others display that sombre misery which is the characteristic note of his writing, which is extremely uncomfortable and, after a little while, extremely impressive.

I may seem to have devoted too much space to the publications of the Poetry Bookshop. But I think that, with luck, as time goes on, it may bulk yet more largely in English letters. Mr. Monro, if he is careful, may have the position that the Mercure de France held in Paris until quite recently: that is, he may publish about ninety per cent of all the good poetry that is published.

The war—again—disturbing our lives as a great tidal wave disturbs sea and shore, has brought to the surface, as waves will, many things of beauty. Among these, one that is not regarded, is Thomas Hardy’s Dynasts, which has been abridged and produced by Mr. Granville Barker. It is printed in three volumes and nineteen acts, with innumerable choruses and semi-choruses. Mr. Barker has reduced the play to three acts and the chorus to two persons who sit enthroned, one on each side of the stage. Mr. Henry Ainley sits at a reading-desk lower down in front and declaims the descriptive stage-directions. The setting is a conventional design in grey to which slight additions are made from time to time, but which remains for the most part unchanged. Thus you see the men and women of Wessex in fear of invasion by “Boney,” the victory and death of Nelson, the death and burial of Sir John Moore, Wellington at Salamanca, Napoleon signing his abdication at Fontainebleau, Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo. The Napoleon was bad: he laughed sardonically in the fashion of melodrama, but the play transcended him. The tragedy was profoundly moving, the comedy not less so. It is an extraordinary work, written in Mr. Hardy’s graceless style, and probably the greatest of his compositions. One thing only was wanting—an audience. That which is essentially impressive must have something to impress—the listeners have a place in a good play—and the grandeur of the occasion was sensibly diminished. When we went, we asked the box-office attendant if we might go in at half-price, on account of our uniforms, and he answered indifferently that “we might if we liked.” When we got in, we understood. There were about two rows in the stalls and two more in the pit. The boxes were empty as far as I could see. I cannot understand the English public. What more do they want now than to see Nelson on the Victory and Wellington at Waterloo? Is it a cause of offence to them that the play is by a great man?

New York Letter

GEORGE SOULE

If I were a Japanese journalist looking for notoriety, I should translate sections from Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richmond P. Hobson, et al., and publish them under the title “America and the Next War.” There is no question that these gentlemen put together are ten times as influential in the United States as von Bernhardi was in Germany. And there is no question that their utterances are just as inciting to militarism. If to them were added editorials from the Hearst newspapers, with their millions of circulation, and the books of certain prominent army officers, no one could convince the Japanese that the United States is not a conceited, hot-headed, and militarist nation. After the outbreak of a war we should plead in vain that we are peace-loving and fight only in self-defence. “Have you not the second largest navy in the world?” the Japanese would say. “Was any nation threatening you? Did you not capture the Philippines by force and subdue them against their will, practicing against the innocent natives horrible atrocities? Would you not do the same to Japan if you had the chance? Fortunately we are forewarned, and seize a favorable occasion to free the Philippines, since you have broken your promise to give them independence.” And we should feel that the Japanese were monsters hiding their aggressive spirit under humanitarian humbug.

Most of us have forgotten the spasm of “divine mission” that swept over this country at the time of the Spanish-American war. We were appointed by God to conquer or absorb the world, and bestow upon it, willing or unwilling, our American Kultur. “Civilization” was, indeed, the precise word we used, although we sometimes varied it with “free institutions.” At the same time the beef trust was furnishing “embalmed beef” to the army, and our economic system was at its very depth of unsavoriness. The Spanish papers cartooned us, quite justly, as “the American hog,” and the cartoons were reproduced broadcast over this country to feed the fires of hate. A Spaniard became to us the very impersonation of demoniacal cruelty. The country ran high with the spy fever, while the Atlantic coast waited in some trepidation for the imagined approach of Cervera’s squadron. We were prey to all the grinning illusions of war.

European opinion was at this time largely against us. To most Europeans we seemed a combination of pious humbug and bumptious conceit. To be actively dangerous we should have needed only a powerful armament. As it was, they regarded us with only distant apprehension. But they were not for a moment deceived by our high-sounding phrases. We were the most dollar-worshipping nation in the world, had often proved ourselves so. They recalled the unpleasant experiences they had had at the hands of Americans—vulgar tourists. The thing was perfectly obvious. We had little fineness of feeling. What we were fighting for was really dollars and cents, not the freedom of subject peoples. At this time they set themselves to watch us very carefully. Canada and the rest of America shared their feelings, with more bitterness.

Since then there has been little visible and striking change. We still live under an inchoate and un-idealistic commercialism. The world can thank us for very few treasures of literature, philosophy, or art. Not a single great nation has any particular occasion to love us. To most of them we are blasphemous and hateful. Hearst has more millions and more newspapers than ever, and we are still subject to strong popular hysteria—such as the recently-shown hatred of Germany. We sit as judges on the world. We calmly assume that we could do no such terrible things as other nations; that our Kultur is the best. At any time we may again be ready to spread it by force of arms.

Now all the powerful nations of the world, except us, are weakening each other in a terrific struggle. The occasion is seized in America by the armament makers and a political party without an issue. To defend ourselves we must arm! they say. Anyone who has taken the trouble to read Bernhardi’s books will know that it is the precise argument he employed. Political parties under commercialism are unscrupulous, and we shall doubtless see the agitation raised to a national issue. Anything to get the Democrats out of office. The probability is that the hysteria will succeed. The only hope to the contrary is that it may be allayed, not by opposition, but by prompt action on the part of the administration which shall mend our present fences without committing us to any definite policy of armament.

Suppose, however, that a President should be elected on the issue of larger armament immediately after the European war. It is an insult to the intelligence to pursue the logic of events further. The “defensive” alliance against us, the “defensive” alliance for us—if, indeed we could induce anybody to enter one—the constantly-increasing tension, the casus belli, the repetition of history. But such a disastrous war would not be a tragedy if we had so deserved it. The tragedy would be that we should have no such intrinsic worth as has Germany to offer as a defence. The tragedy would be that we had been so concerned about the mote in our brother’s eye that we had failed to remove the beam in our own.

I Am Woman

MARGUERITE SWAWITE

I am woman:

Old as Lebanon cedars—and far older;

Young as the freshest green shoot

That peeps through the snow in the March time.

My face is turned to the East

Pink with the dawn of my promise;

My hands are clutched from behind

By the fettering fingers of her who was woman alone,

Molded and spurred by desire,

Knowing only the need

Of a kiss for the cup of her throat,

Of a child for the curve of her arm.

To-day I am woman,

Less—yet a little more;

For I am learning to sing

Not his, nor another’s, but mine own song,

That has lain in my heart since the first day.

A great golden song it shall be

Though not always soft with sweet cadence,

For I must travail to sing:

I am learning

To feed upon nothing, yet fill me;

To warm my chill limbs without fire;

To go on my way, without kiss, without child,

Though my lip is red, my arm willing.

Yet I know I shall never cease

Till I have sung it all—

All to the very last note.

Still I shall be woman

In all the long days to come

That beckon to me in the pink dawn;

My song shall grow sweetly familiar,

And he who was frightened shall draw near

Singing his separate song,

Ever his own and yet blending

Its virile strains with mine;

So we shall raise a great harmony

Enfolding the world in our music,

Rejoicing again in our marriage.

One day that shall be ....

But to-day

I am weary—

The East is rosy with promise of dawn.

(The following is one of the poems in Edgar Lee Master’s “Spoon River Anthology” which has been running in Reedy’s St. Louis Mirror and attracting such wide-spread attention. In our opinion it is in the first ranks of fine poetry.)

Caroline Branson

With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked

As often before the April fields till star-light

Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness

Under the rock, our trysting place in the wood,

Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing

Like notes of music that run together, into winning

In the inspired improvisation of love!

But to put back of us as a canticle ended

The rapt enchantment of the flesh,

In which our souls swooned, down, down,

Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—

Annihilated in love!

To leave these behind for a room with lamps;

And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,

And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,

Stared at by all between salad and coffee.

And to see him tremble, and feel myself

Prescient, as one who signs a bond—

Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped

With rosy hands over his brow.

And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!

With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning

In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all.

Next day he sat so listless, almost cold,

So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,

Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness

Seized us to make the pact of death.

A stalk of the earth sphere,

Frail as star-light,

Waiting to be drawn once again

Into creation’s stream.

But next time to be given birth

Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis

Sometimes as they pass.

For I am their little brother,

To be known clearly face to face

Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.

You may know the seed and the soil;

You may feel the cold rain fall.

But only the earth-sphere, only heaven

Knows the secret of the seed

In the nuptial chamber under the soil.

Throw me into the stream again,

Give me another trial—

Save me, Shelley!

Music

The Kneisel Quartet and Hofmannized Chopin

ALBERT SPALDING

What more felicitous combination could be desired than this: Albert Spalding playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Thomas Orchestra! Twice, four thousand people were warmed to genuine enthusiasm; and at both the Friday and Saturday concerts the orchestra men (whose utterly bored manner is their usual tribute) awakened and showed the strongest appreciation for the young man’s art. Frederick Stock beamed, fatherly, while he clapped his hands.

The displayers of sophisticated conceit and blasé judgment still choose to regard Albert Spalding as a student. Their criticism, superficial as it is, might have been based upon his playing of three or more years back, when, along with the most marked talent, there was an element of the conservatoire in his work. But the pupil has disappeared, and there is now purely the artistic individual. And it follows naturally that, for these same critics, unless one draws from a violin a tone as big as a string bass, it cannot be beautiful.

For his two Chicago appearances he chose a work which is completely suited to him. Spalding can play Mendelssohn. This composer, with his happy delicacy, beauty, and rhythmic finesse, was safe in the hands of the artist. A sturdier or a more sensuous fiddler might have soiled the concerto. For Spalding is a spiritual aristocrat, a musician whose tonal excellencies are not florid, but elegant; not passionate, but of a fine intensity.

Technic?—One speaks of technic only when there is too much or too little. Albert Spalding has, at the age of twenty-six, learned the supreme art of self-expression; and both the self which he expresses and the medium he employs for it are of the first order of fine things.

HERMAN SCHUCHERT.

Book Discussion

Love’s Highway

Love and the Soul Maker, by Mary Austin. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.]

There is a certain generic myth, outcropping whenever the discovery of some mysterious, hidden treasure is in question, which is that the discoverer may possess only so much of it as he can carry away on his own person. Whenever I met this climax in my childish reading my greedy little soul rebelled because the hero might not have all that his eyes could see instead of the negligible bit that he could handle with his own muscles. Experience has taught that under no circumstances can a man own more than he possesses within himself; this is as true of material art forms as it is of culture and education. It is almost tragic in its truth when we look about and see such a wealth of apparent happiness and love and then look into our own impoverished hearts. We may not covet either our neighbor’s automobile or his wife, but frequently we do covet, in spite of good intentions, the happiness that he derives from that automobile and that wife. Particularly weak are we when we look down love’s highway and see what we believe to be limitless and ideal joy. The little orbit in which we move seems sadly askew, and it takes a book like Mary Austin’s Love and the Soul Maker to make us understand that all the topsy-turviness of the present is but the labor-pain of a saner, truer, happier future.

The author combines science and sentiment in a new way. Her facts show that she has read widely; her conclusions show that she has thought deeply; her sentiments show that she has felt—at least potentially—most, if not all, of the joys and sorrows which the practice and malpractice of love produce. And the one shining truth that she has discovered in all this hidden treasure of sex happiness is that “we’ve a right to as much love as we can work up into the stuff of a superior personality.” This truth is thrown out as independently of conventions, prejudices, religious beliefs or practices as a searchlight is independent of the hinges that hold it in place. It is the ultimate measure of what is good or what is bad in love; it is the standard by which all sex problems must finally be adjusted. She goes on to say that “taking anything over what we can give back in some form or other to the social sum is my notion of sinning”—and an inspired notion of sinning it is, too. We are all searching for the treasure of love happiness, yet no one may justly take more than he can carry away in inspiration and the impulse of creating something within or without that will add to the sum total of human happiness.

Between facts and sentiment Mrs. Austin leans to sentiment—yet why not? She is not writing for the elect body of sex students, but for ordinary men and women. Those who have read little or nothing of sex psychology would find cold, uncompromising facts too difficult a diet. Offering them such an argument would be like comforting a bumped child with the multiplication table. By means of such a book as Love and the Soul Maker it may be possible for even the ossifying brains of dogmatists to catch a glimmer of light on our present sex problems, while such dazzlingly and ruthlessly true books as Havelock Ellis writes may petrify several additional lobes.

Although not openly propagandic, Mrs. Austin has a decided philosophy of life which she sets forth in a dozen different ways and which, without saying so, she hopes her reader will accept. She insists that “the proper end of loving is not personal but racial; it is the Soul Maker’s most precious commodity,” and that love pirates or love grafters commit their most venal sin by believing that love is its own excuse. As Mrs. Austin expresses it, “Love for love’s sake is the shibboleth by which they blunt the unassailable fact that love was not invented for love’s sake but for life’s.” Here, of course, is a radical point of departure which will turn many readers away from her pages; it may, however, induce an equal number to read further.

The flaws in our modern system of marriage are more closely seen and more cleverly pointed out than are the remedies offered. For example, the author shows that modern society asks of marriage “things it was never meant to pay”; yet her remedy is vague. And again: “The initial mistake about marriage is in regarding it as a condition, a state, when it is primarily a relation” and may exist in spite of very unfavorable conditions and quite apart from them. Delightfully, indeed, does she puncture the time-worn fallacy of platonic friendships: “I doubt that there can be any informing intimacy between men and women unless there exists also the potentiality of passionate experience.” Yet many of her views are completely radical. “There never has been a time since man stood up and knew himself for man,” she writes, “that the major process of love has been reproductive,” and later she points out that “chief among the uses of passion is the raising of the percentage of values in those who entertain it.” She cuts off all the frills of convention, ceremony, tradition; strips away all but the essential naked truth germ and declares: “Marriage is an agreement between any pair to practice mate-love toward one another, with intention.”

Marriage, thus simplified, would not, indeed could not, be the failure which modern society so widely accepts with resignation instead of combating with thoughtful dissatisfaction. We have become so racially hypnotized that we do not distinguish between associated facts (such as food, shelter, religious sanction, obedience, etc.) and the essential truth of mate-love. “The primary obligation of lovers is to love,” she says. This done, all will adjust itself; and yet lest any should draw the over-quick conclusion that Mrs. Austin advocates free love, let me also add that she says: “To love and to keep on loving. This is the one way of making marriage do its work in the world.”

As a remedy she begs women to open their eyes to the fact that marriage is not now the only career for them. That marriage does not fill the lives of those who enter it is evidenced by the divorce courts. Tentatively Mrs. Austin suggests that instead of dissolving so many marriages it would be wiser to unload the excessive strain put upon them. Let economics take hold of the problem of the mother, who for the sake of providing bread for herself and her children crucifies her own personality, ignores her own right to happiness upon the racial conception of marriage. Very frankly she explains what marriage should do for us: “First of all to satisfy the hunger of the body for its natural mate ... and finally it must satisfy the need of companionship on the intimate and personal side of life.” She hints that “it is immensely more important that a mating pair should relish kissing together than that they should both be Presbyterian.”

She is hopeful concerning the final abolishing of prostitution if the present marriage customs are changed. She is emphatic in the need of young people being enlightened in regard to marital experiences and problems, but her suggestions are indefinite and inconclusive. However, much may be overlooked for her emphasis of the fact that sex is an active principal and that the best love-life is that which makes the best use of love’s activities. She admonishes us to “play fair alike in loving and unloving,” which means that love is not a light thing of a day, but must be great enough and strong enough to control itself, even to sacrifice itself for the greatest racial good—and never to sell itself from a motive of personal selfishness, or for the bliss of an hour.

The highway that Mrs. Austin lays out for love is rough and stony in spots, and yet its goal of racial betterment through achievement as well as by means of offspring is not to be despised.

MARY ADAMS STEARNS.

Dutch Bourgeoisie

Small Souls, by Louis Couperus. [Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.]

Rain, rain.... It is always raining in Holland; the skies are ever hidden behind muddy clouds, and in the damp, bleak atmosphere straggle grey figures with stony faces. It is painful to follow Couperus through the four hundred odd pages of his gloomy novel, to meet only “small souls,” petty men and women whose sole interest lies in dinner parties and endless gossip. Empty, tedious, stupid “society,” without even the piquant vice that makes attractive the bourgeoisie of Balzac, Maupassant, or Zola. The least boring figure among the asinine menagerie is that of the heroine, Constance, whose sole virtue consists in the fact that she had committed adultery in her early life. The author has not brought in a single positive type of Holland’s artistic or intellectual circles to counteract the general gloom of the picture; he has evidently determined to hold his readers within the frame of a family-epic, to focus their attention on one particular aspect of life in the Hague, the shallowest, the palest. As this novel presents the translation of the first part of the author’s tetralogy, we must be patient and consider the book as a prelude to the developing drama. Already we see at the end of this volume promising symptoms of a new, real life, to be manifested in the growing boy, Adrian—big, healthy, sturdy, who despises his petty relatives with their noisy intrigues, and whose “boyish lips, with their faint shading of dawn, curve into a scornful smile as he says: ‘It’s all about nothing!’” We shall eagerly look forward to the following volumes, for Couperus is an artist, a deep psychologist, a follower of Zola; his method may be old, arch-realistic, but, as I say, he is an artist, hence thrilling.

K.

James Stephens: Poet and Pagan

The Demi-Gods, by James Stephens. [The Macmillan Company, New York.]

God’s most high messengers and certain Irish loafers nest well together. James Stephens was the first man to discern this and other plain, albeit unique, facts; and in the Demi-Gods he takes the reader into a delightful confidence, telling him the inmost thoughts of three angels, their two companions (also Irish), a philosophic donkey, an ecstatic crow, and the like of them. The angels learn table-manners and similar ethics from the two Celtic vagabonds, whom they chance upon when they touch foot to earth, one dark night. The father-vagabond gets daily food for the party, paying for it when he isn’t temperamentally swept into stealing; the other, who is the dearest kind of an Irish girl, naturally in love with the youngest angel, does the cooking and mothering for them all,—and celestial wisdom is shelved during the acquirement of so much worldly knowledge.

How can the astonishing charms of this book be described? In the first place, there is poetry—neither cadent nor decadent poetry, but the sort of prose that conveys the most finely imagined poetic thought. And there is contrast. Such contrast! From the calm conversation of angels to the braying of an ass is the easiest jump for Stephens. It is a gentle slide from paragraphs of delicate dawn-picturing to a peasant’s narration of brawls and thieving, or a description of the angels attired in Pat McCann’s trousers. And, given the latitude of half a dozen quotations, one might prove that this same Stephens was a deep-gazing mystic. Nor would his extreme paganism be difficult to establish. But to avoid all the inevitable shruggings of literary shoulders, if one really said these things about the man, let it be quickly stated that James Stephens is before all else an artist, a writer with a superlative sense of humor and a pleasantly incomprehensible imagination.

While a deeper probing of his mysticism or paganism (as such) would perhaps bring about a sudden discounting of his humor and his poetic sensibilities, it is necessary to remember that Stephens is Irish, with all the implied values of that temperament. Therefore, it is well to consider the author of The Demi-Gods to be this day’s most unique literary light. The combination stands alone.

HERMAN SCHUCHERT.

Unfulfilled Expectations

A Lady of Leisure, by Ethel Sidgwick. [Small, Maynard and Company, Boston.]

Long, diffuse, sometimes clever, sometimes pointless conversations mark this latest book of an author from whom we had come to expect only the best. Miss Sidgwick could not write anything that did not have passages of keen insight and shrewd handling of our commonplace humanity, but here their value is hidden under an avalanche of words—words—words. The slight plot—which of course is no fault—deals with the whims of the daughter of a great London surgeon. She overcomes parental objection and enters a dressmaking establishment; but we are given no particularly vital picture of this life. There are several young people whose love affairs become mutually mixed, but ultimately untangled—all of which is done by means of conversations, jerky, exclamatory, unrestrained. This method is true to life because such chatter is exactly the way modern people talk, but nevertheless our ears ache with it, and we find ourselves longing for a paragraph of straightaway description or narration, which never comes.

The frivolous and empty atmosphere is all well enough for a relish, but it is unsatisfying as a total, particularly from one who can give too much that is worth while. It is like a continuous afternoon tea, or a lemon meringue pie with nothing but the meringue.

M. A. S.

Interpretation of Music

Nature in Music, by Lawrence Gilman. [John Lane Company, New York.]

Its thin divine kinkiness ...

I felt it undulate my soul—

Lavender water, pitted and heaved to huge, uneasy circles.

The readers of THE LITTLE REVIEW may remember these lines: they were meant to interpret Debussy. I challenge Llewellyn Jones to “object” to this gem and to question its “sense”! The staunchest conservative will agree that of all arts music presents the widest liberty for subjective interpretation, especially for such an autonomous artist as a poet. “There is some music which should be described by poets rather than exposed by inquisitive aestheticians. Of such is the magical music of Debussy.” This from Lawrence Gilman’s latest book. Mr. Gilman evidently considers himself a good member in both categories, for he follows up the quoted remark with unrestrained effusions of colorful descriptions of Landscape-music, Sea-music, Death-music. It is charming reading, though at times the unbridled Pegasus causes you dizziness; not that you are encountered with daringly-new views or dazzling ideas: Mr. Gilman is too much of an American for such extravagance. It is the manner of his exposition, the ravishing richness of his style, that endangers your mental equilibrium. Judge for yourself:

Debussy, when he wrote this delectable and adorable music (Rondes de Printemps), sent his spirit into the woods and fields, through gardens and orchards and petal-showered lanes, and upon the moors and hills; he trod the brown soil of the earth, but he also looked long up into the green branches and the warm, gusty sky of May, and savored the fragrant winds.

Is it not enchanting? But when you are treated to such nectar on nearly every page, you sigh for the elegant, reserved Romain Rolland, who expresses his enthusiasm for Debussy in a cooler, yet by no means less convincing, way.

Aside from this purely external characteristic the book contains very interesting remarks on the treatment of natural elements and phenomena by various composers. The invention of new instruments, the development of the art of orchestration, and general new conceptions of our age, have drawn a sharp line of distinction between the old and the new interpretations of nature in music. While the old composers (among the old the author places not only Hayden and Beethoven, but also Wagner and Grieg) approached Nature either as a subject to be faithfully rendered, or as a provocator of direct emotional reactions in themselves, to the new composers (Debussy, d’Indy, Loeffler, MacDowell) Nature “is a miraculous harp, an instrument of unlimited range and inexhaustible responsiveness, upon which the performer may improvise at his pleasure,” to quote the inimitable original. The classification is rather hazardous; the importance of Loeffler is greatly exaggerated, but as a purely subjective view the work of Mr. Gilman is interesting.

K.

A Pasteurized “Man and Superman”

The Raft, by Coningsby Dawson. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]

The Raft is based on the same idea as Shaw’s—minus moral shocks, mental exhilaration, and the Superman. The theory is served as strong drink in the one, as good boy’s tea in the other. The same idea receives such different treatment that the person who would pronounce Man and Superman a “corrupt play” might speak of The Raft, as a beautiful story, provided a few courageous truths which it was necessary for the author to state in order to refute, could be forgiven. It is a harmless compromise between the belief that no literature has a right to exist that is not suitable for a girl in her teens, and the conviction that men and women must face life as it is.

In The Raft, we read this figurative suggestion of the theory:

We’re girls adrift on a raft and we can’t swim. Over there’s the land of marriage with the children, the homes and the husbands; we’ve no means of getting to it. Unless some of the men see us and put out in boats to our rescue, we’ll be swept into the hunger of mid-ocean. But they’re too busy to notice us.... Always wanting, wanting, wanting the things that only men can give.... Did men ever want to be married or was it always necessary to catch them?

In Man and Superman we find a more liberal statement:

To a woman, a man is only a means to the end of getting children and rearing them. Vitality in woman is a blind fury of creation. What other work has she in life but to get a husband? It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as he can.... You think that you are the pursuer, and she pursued. Fool, it is you who are the pursued, the destined prey.

During the last few years stories and plays exploiting this doctrine have been hurled thick and fast in the attempt to batter down so-called romantic love, romantic though fortified not only by the fancies of the poets and novelists but also by the analyses of the scientists and the experiences of life. According to these stories, love is nothing more or less than a passion for reproduction, a desire for children. This idea is being emphasized by two very different types for two very different reasons: one tries to make a Don Quixote of romantic love and hopes by ridicule to eliminate it as the great motive and to give some of the other passions a chance in literature; the other considers everything even suggestive of sex unmoral, and so searches for an excuse to justify the gratification of a natural craving. Neither satire nor platitudes can alter nature.

Love, they say, considered as intense personal affection is an idea purely fanciful, romantic. If so to consider it is romantic, scientists are romantic; for such men as Lankester and Pycraft say “the view that the sequel of mate hunger is the dominant instinct has no foundation in fact. Desire for the sake of the pleasure of its gratification, not its consequences, is the only hold on life which any race possesses. Love is the attribute upon which this preservation of the race depends.”

In other words it is a case of cause and effect. That the joy of motherhood is greater than any other joy in a woman’s life has absolutely nothing to do with the question as to whether or not the hope of that joy was the reason for the selection of a mate. The question is not one of superiority but priority; not which is the greater, but which came first; which is the cause and which the effect. If the desire for children is the cause of what we call love, the only logical outcome is that in selection any woman could not refuse any man fit to be the father of her children on the ground that he did not appeal to her personally. Life does not support such a conclusion.

Why woman’s choice is not impersonal is only one of the many things that cannot be explained by the theory that makes her desire for children the sole cause of attraction. It does not explain too many things: faithless wives, some childless marriages, children found on door-steps, abortions, some prostitution, why some women never marry for fear of children, or why man is not the coy, reluctant, elusive creature defined, though not pictured, by Dawson and Shaw.

No wonder it fails to explain; for children, instead of being the whole cause are the result of only a part of the cause, mate hunger—a hunger of body, mind, and spirit. Love is the feeling for the one that seems to supply those needs, the impulse toward that one. The sooner we realize that the attraction between men and women is not all physical any more than it is all mental and spiritual, and that sex is in all three phases, the sooner shall we reach the truth; the sooner shall we hear the last of one type that prudishly denies physical attraction or else tries to “purify” it by making it a means to an end, and of the other type that sees in marriage only physical union.

The theory will not stand either a logical or an emotional test. Not only can it not explain this confusion of cause and effect, this mistaking the part of love for its whole; but it also cannot answer why it should look to the future for a cause when love is so vitally a thing of the present; nor why it was ever thought necessary to find any explanation outside of itself for the attraction between men and women. If there is any passion in the world that does not need a justification other than its mere existence, it is love. For though realizing the exaltation of moral passion, the exhilaration of mental passion, no one can deny that it is through love we know intense, vivid personal happiness—happiness that is vibrant, full of color, rapturous.

But it is absurd to try to analyze it; it is even more so to argue about it: but really women have grown very tired of having men tell them why they marry, tired of this confusion of result with cause, of a part with the whole, tired of the belittling of love by people who have never experienced it, tired of this sex obsession. It is doubly absurd to waste time in arguing when the best argument I can offer against the Raft theory is the book itself, where the author spends most of his time disproving his own definitely-stated idea through the actions of his characters. It is interesting to see that both Dawson and Shaw should, by methods diametrically opposite, show how fallacious is their statement by exactly the same circumstance,—that is, by having the woman care passionately for the man, not a man. That fact alone routs the whole theory. Certainly Cherry and Jehane have very decided personal preferences regardless of the next generation; moreover the Golden Woman and “heaps of other well-bred women” will not marry for fear of children; and Peter, Ockey, and the Faun Man insist on being ardent lovers that vainly pursue.

Notwithstanding these contradictions throughout the book, the author keeps on bravely and inartistically reiterating his Raft motives, as if to keep up his courage. Possibly because he realizes that he is losing his theme, he starts another which is really the one consistently developed. This second theme is that love is never reciprocal: that at the best it is a case of one loving, the other allowing; that usually it is a case of one loving and the other not even allowing. He starts an endless chain of unrequited affection: Glory loves Peter; Peter loves Cherry; Cherry, the Faun Man; the Faun the Golden Woman; the Golden Woman, herself—or is it Peter? That is one chain; and another is Ockey loves Jehane; Jehane, Barrington; Barrington, Nan.

These two themes working at cross purposes are typical of the book which is a mass of contradictions of this author’s own definitely expressed ideas, and of life. So many things do not ring true: the labored, morbid, commonplace treatment of Peter, “the ’maginative child,” as an exponent of the artistic temperament; the lack of love as the sole cause of Ockey’s failure, when he needs so many other things to make a man of him; the marriage of Nan and Barrington as the ideal union, when neither one has a nature intense enough to feel a great love, when even such love as they know has never been put to the merciless tests that life uses; the brooding, year in and year out, of the unmarried women over the loss of the joys of motherhood, and their lack of interest in any other phase of life; Jehane’s unworthiness, emphasized by the author in person and through his characters, when her actions with different treatment might have made her almost a heroine; the declared finality of so many things that are really only initial steps; platitudes as answers to the vital questions of life.

Most of these false notes come from the fact that the theories of the author and the actions of his characters are not in harmony. Whenever I hear writers talking of such discords and saying that they are obliged to let their characters work out their own salvations, I always consider the attitude an affectation. But I have changed my mind. Dawson seems to be left alone on his Raft, shouting his untenable theories till he is hoarse; while his characters, ignoring him, have reached land and are living their own lives. I found myself in the absurd position of resenting the author’s interference with those vivid, distinctive, powerful characters he had created; of wanting to tell him to keep his hands off, and let them tell their own story.

And left to themselves they tell it unflinchingly. What if the treatment is obvious and conventional? It is obvious treatment of the great mysteries of life; conventional treatment of its beauties.

The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations. The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral one.—Nietzsche.

Sentence Reviews

Gustave Flaubert, by Emile Faguet. Balzac, by the same author. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.] Emile Faguet is a critic of the old school, an academician. He analyzes the writers thoroughly, profoundly, comprehensively, applying a uniform scholarly method. He gives the biographies of Flaubert and Balzac, reviews their works, and finally discusses their general importance for literature. You do not find any sparkling revelations or extraordinary insight, but you form an adequate opinion of the chief characteristics of the two great Frenchmen. The translations are good; Mr. Thorley, who did the Balzac, has proved that in the rôle of a translator he runs less risk than when undertaking to interpret Verlaine.

Bahaism: The Modern Social Religion, by Horace Holley. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] Another example of overestimation of Oriental thought. The success of Tagore’s second-rate allegories gave Mr. Holley the idea of displaying before the ever-thirsting Western mind another Eastern “great”. Bahaism, as interpreted by the writer, is one of the “57 varieties” of the blessed Christian Socialism. The world must be reformed, nicely, humbly, altruistically, without causing any damage to State and Society. Naive and dull like a Sunday sermon at an Ethical Society.

Woman and War, by Olive Schreiner. [Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.] A timely pamphlet, reprinted as a fragment from the famous book Woman and Labor. The author claims that woman can carry on war as well as man, considering modern war implements; but as a sculptor would resent the idea of hurling his creations on the ramparts to stop the breaches made by the enemy, so does the human child-bearer instinctively antagonize the reckless destruction of that which she has at so much cost produced; for “men’s bodies are our woman’s work of art.”

Appearances, by G. Lowes Dickinson. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] The title vindicates the author’s superficiality. Impressions of India, China, Japan, America, are bewilderingly crowded in a dazzling bouquet, revealing charming brilliance on the part of the observer, but lack of profound insight. A rapidly-changing panorama of faces and places, a cinematograph. “All America is Niagara. Force without direction, noise without significance, speed without accomplishment.” Such aphorisms lavishly scattered throughout the pages make the book ideal train reading.

Psychology General and Applied, by Hugo Münsterberg. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.] This new text-book by the Harvard professor summarizes various aspects of psychology and will be of help to the student who seeks facts rather than speculation. Mr. Münsterberg is at his best when he deals with a college audience; his reputation and prestige would be quite safe if he limited his activity to that field and did not indulge in pro-German pamphleteering.

The Story-Life of Napoleon, by Wayne Whipple. [The Century Company, New York.] The life of the “Man of Destiny” is an inexhaustible source for historians and biographers. Mr. Whipple has compiled a new biography of the Corsican, based exclusively on stories and anecdotes as related by various authorities. Those for whom Napoleon is the grandest phenomenon in history will feel grateful to the author for his enormous work performed lovingly and inspiringly.

Stories from Northern Myths, by Emilie Kip Baker. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] I enjoy reading Greek mythology in spring, Hindu legends in summer, the Bible at any time, Norse sagas in winter nights. This book is a skillful composition of the most interesting myths of the North, written with irresistible charm. It is ideal reading in the blissful moments of mental relaxation, when you dismiss temporarily all “problems” and plunge into the enchanting abyss of the Non-Real.

The Architecture of Humanism, by Geofry Scott. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.] A cold, merciless wielding of the scythe that the author admits is dogmatic criticism. Even the crucified Ruskin has more thorns added to his crown; but still we fail to see the object of this book in holding up all architectural ideals as “fallacies”.

Father Ralph, by Gerald O’Donovan. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] Ralph O’Brien was born to be a priest. One might almost say, considering his mother’s attitude, that he was a priest before he was born, and his bringing up was single-eyed to that end. Only as he grows older does he begin to find flaws in the supposedly flawless church of God. Then as he brings his keen young mind to these problems he fights against the religious decadence of Ireland, and causes the author’s pen to rush along through a torrent of socialistic and revolutionary indignation.

Balshazzar Court; or, Village Life in New York City, by Simon Strumsky. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.] These eight connected essays concern the modern apartment house filled with strange families which become linked together by the telegraphy of domestics; the street, Broadway, teeming with its interest in unnatural things; with the show which one knows perfectly beforehand through the kindness of the newspaper reporters; and others. The author sees the unimportant trifles that make up urban life, and lifts them into whimsical prominence.

The Wonderful Romance, by Pierre de Coulevain. [Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.] “To America, country of new thoughts”—thus does the author dedicate her last book. Almost as if she could foresee her death, Mlle. Fabre (Pierre de Coulevain was her pen name) wrote of conclusions and impressions long stored up in her brain. Like her previous books, this is a collection of thoughts and observations set down in a charming but desultory way.

To-Day’s Daughter, by Josephine Daskam Bacon. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.] To-Day’s Daughter is an utterly American book dealing with our peculiar present-day problems. Mrs. Bacon forces no conclusions upon the reader, for each case is “different.” The author limits her modern woman in no way except to make her choose one purpose and to show her that she cannot be a dozen different women and achieve success in all directions. She proves that woman must have a cohering line, a central motive to which other things are subservient, and a due regard to the environment where Fate has placed her.

Lucas’ Annual, edited by E. V. Lucas. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] Of course, the correct literary pose toward even the best “collections” is one of indulgent condescension. Nevertheless, we must admit that in Lucas’s collection Ruskin’s criticism of one of Browning’s poems gives us a good laugh and an intellectual challenge; that Barrie’s Hyphen and the prize novel, Spoof, are clever satires on literary style; that Browning’s letter emphasizes what we felt while prying into the Browning Letters: that our self-respect could never again be the same;—that as a whole the book appeals to our sense of humor and to our literary taste.

Nothing Else Matters, by William Samuel Johnson. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] That jaded epithet, “like champagne,” should have been reserved for this novel, for it bubbles and sparkles and leaves a luxurious taste in one’s literary mouth; and, while under its pleasurable influence, one is eager to declare that heroines of today should all bear resemblance to the charming little human who laughs and loves through these pages.

The Bird-Store Man, by Norman Duncan. [Fleming H. Revell Company, New York.] The old, Sabbath-scented story, practically told by the title, is in this case partially redeemed by a binding of tan, cream, and pale green.

Altogether Jane, by Herself. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] When a sane, intelligent woman speaks frankly and cleverly, with neither lush nor morbidity, the public owes itself the pleasure of hearing her; and, given that hearing, Jane, in this healthy chronicle, will be found convincing.

Personality Plus, by Edna Ferber. [Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.] One or two personalities plus slang raised to the nth power minus profundity gives the readable, salable unit which Edna Ferber presents in this story of a blossoming college chap.

The True Ulysses S. Grant, by Gen. Charles King. [J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.] Some patriotic hawker should get the idea and the permission to sell this informative volume at that sight-seen tomb on Riverside Drive, for Grant can’t have too many friends.

Nancy the Joyous, by Edith Stowe. [Reilly and Britton, Chicago.] Nancy, one animated beam of bookish sunlight, is just too sweet and frank and “wholesome” for anything—even to read.

The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.] Once again the reader is asked to consider a married woman with a talent—a situation which has become epidemic. In this case the plot is too big for the writer’s ability and the whole story is shallow and sketchy.

Selina, by George Madden Martin. [D. Appleton and Company.] Like so many writers who achieve a first success, Mrs. Martin has not done nearly so well with Selina as she did with Emmy Lou. Selina is natural but colorless. The Mid-Victorian setting (which is repeatedly emphasized) is of Mid-Victorian mediocrity. The plot is merely a series of unstartling incidents.

Essays.—Political and Historical, by Charlemagne Tower. [J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.] Those who have been taught to believe government is the most important thing in our existence and is an institution founded on truth, justice and human needs will if they read this book at all sincerely, close it in wonder. Despite the “skill and thoroughness” with which the book is written one cannot help questioning the meaning of all this petty, diplomatic scheming and complicated governmental legislating.

Coasting Bohemia, by J. Comyns Carr. [The Macmillan Company, New York.] Essays, some of which appeared in an English daily, the real value and literary worth of which compel us, who live in America, to realize our lack of journalistic criticism. Millais, Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, Whistler, and many others are written about in a manner that surely must have aided in public understanding and appreciation.

Anne Feversham, by J. C. Snaith. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.] “Delightful,” “charming,” “entertaining,” and all the rest of the usual publishers’ adjectives for usual books. They try to justify this one because of its historical background, which, however, is too slight to save it.

The Commodore, by Maud Howard Peterson. [Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, Boston.] A lean-on-me-Grandpapa little boy, plenty of sentiment, a style which some people consider adorable, incidents of wholesome morality pinned to a background of naval stations and marine affairs, make this a book which the young may read with impunity—and, if young enough, with satisfaction and a grim resolve to go and do likewise.

The Grand Assize, by Hugh Carton. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] Milton built a heaven for his highest imaginings; Dante dug a hell and cast all his personal enemies into it; the author of The Grand Assize puts the Last Judgment into a municipal court room and tries the Plutocrat, the Derelict, the Daughter of Joy, the Drunkard, and all his other pet aversions. This he does with an intellect less alive to the essence of human nature than that of the most biased, graft-elected judge of the last decade, for he treats life as a theory and people as classified emotions.

Wintering Hay, by John Trevena. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.] This tragedy of weakness will hold everyone who has ever tried to pour success into some sieve-like character, too negative to stand alone. So well is Cyril Rossingall depicted that the reader loses the consummate art of the author in his seeming artlessness. Its setting is life in London and Dartmoor; its plot is life as lived by English gentlefolk; its theme is the reflex effect of events on life; its essence is simply—life.

The Story of Beowulf, translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Ernest J. B. Kirtland. [Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York.] Once again the ancient Anglo-Saxon manuscript, treasured through centuries in the British Museum, has been made over into up-to-date English with all the trimmings of introduction, foot-notes, appendix and frontispiece. As a mere layman, we believe it to be well done.

Stories without Tears, by Barry Pain. [Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.] Trivial of plot, sometimes hardly more than an incident, these stories capture some poise, pose, or feature of life and cast it masterfully into a medallion of delightful symmetry. Sad, gay, amusing, pathetic, they have the de Maupassant twist with all its perennial fascination.

Marta of the Lowlands, by Angel Guimera. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] What Lady Gregory has done for the Irish, Angel Guimera has done for the Catalan drama (Catalonia is a province in Spain) by picturing the characteristics of the people in various dramatic situations. In Marta of the Lowlands he has shown the tragic and absolute ownership of the landed proprietor over the peasants who live on his territory.

A Soldier of The Legion, by C. N. and A. M. Williamson. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] The Williamsons know Northern Africa and if you know them—you surely do, this being their fifteenth book—you will know what to expect here. Those people who still can find time for nothing but war “literature” may be interested to know that the Legion described in this book is fighting in France for the Allies in the present war.

Private Affairs, by Charles McEvoy. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.] It is human to be curious, and when we get a chance we like to know all about the intimate affairs of other people. In this book the affairs are told in such a direct, interesting manner, without the pettiness of gossip, that we find sufficient excuse for our human weakness.

The Reader Critic

George Middleton, New York:

I read Wedded with much interest and really want to congratulate you upon your courage in producing it. As I told the author, whom I recently met, I do not think technically it is perfect: he has overdrawn the minister and made an author’s comment in his lines. I feel the last line absolutely out of key; for the effect, in my judgment, would have been much stronger if the minister had been less obviously the hypocrite. Aside from a little bungling in the opening, I think, however, that its sincerity is much more important than this captious criticism. I feel he put over quite clearly a situation in human life which should be presented. And it was courageous of you to affront public opinion, as you no doubt have, and give place to such a sincere little piece of life. I wonder when the world is going to let us talk about all the things we now smirk over and know. Once we can place these sex matters on the same plane of conversation as we do pork and cheese then they will really cease to be important. I believe in the reticences of taste and proportion—but not those of subject matter. And sooner or later the question of birth control must be given wide publicity, so that only wanted children will come into the world. So long as functionally the woman must bear the labour and thus suffer unequally in parenthood, so should we do everything through education to arm her against assuming unwilling burdens. When children are born of free choice in marriage then they will partake of a higher dignity, and parenthood itself will mean more than a functional disturbance and a matter of rebellion it now is with many. Any play which makes us question our nice polite functions about morality should be accessible to those not afraid of new ideas. It is curious how little faith the innate conservative has in human nature and the finer things of life. So afraid are they that they would bind people by old traditions and not personally-achieved opinions. Wedded presents in vivid phrase a fragment of life which has no doubt come to many a woman, and I heartily congratulate you for the courage which prompted you to give the author a hearing.

S. H. G., New York:

The November number is the best yet. I don’t like Iris’s work as well as I do Bodenheim’s; judging by these poems I think he has been too much praised. Bodenheim makes some superb contributions to language and imagery. Langner’s play doesn’t escape the querulous note in spots, but it is worth doing and is done well on the whole. Darrow’s article is well-knit and presents an idea. The best thing in the issue is Kaun’s translation. And I dislike very much your article on Emma Goldman, because it falls so far below the hardness of thought it should have had.

I have taken much to heart two articles in the first New Republic: Rebecca West’s The Duty of Harsh Criticism and the editors’ Force and Ideas. We who are saying things in public have a simply tremendous responsibility not only to feel, but to know, and to use the acid test on everything we say. Your article shows that you have been carried away by a personality to approval of a social program, and is the most convincing proof I have ever seen that belief in anarchism is a product of the artistic temperament rather than the result of an intelligent attempt to criticise and remould society. I know you did not intend it to be so; that is the reason it annoys me so much. It was a wise and necessary thing to correct misapprehensions about Emma Goldman’s personality; that you have done fairly well; though even that is marred by too much protesting and a substitution of a somewhat sentimental elation for power of mind and emotion. But your offhand generalities on the top of the third page are just the sort of shoddy thinking that justifies conservatives in dismissing social theorists with a sneer, and imprisoning them when they get dangerous. These generalities do not even accurately represent Wilde’s essay. It is not that I disagree with you; I recognize a fundamental truth in these things if it could only be disentangled, made definite, and applied. But to a discerning and unprejudiced reader it is quite evident that in order to save yourself the trouble and unromantic grind of doing this, you have made a lot of meaningless assumptions without really knowing very much about history or anthropology or psychology or any of the other wonderful tools which modern heroes have put at the service of the human will. You have the blind faith of a Catholic saint in divine revelation; the only difference is that the terms of the revelation are altered.

As a thing entirely apart from the above objection, the sporadic violence of the anarchists is puerile and ridiculous. The whole muddle in which the anarchists find themselves on account of their disagreements as to violence is an example of the necessity of efficient and intelligent organization—which is exactly what government in its essence is, to me (but is not now). My own position on anarchism has become more clearly defined than before. I stand fundamentally with Montessori on the position that the beginning and the end of revolution is improvement of the individual. I should be prepared to endorse a brutal autocracy if that bred better human stock. I am thoroughly convinced that Emma Goldman could preach until she lost her voice without producing an appreciable effect. The world has had too much preaching. There would be something finally tragic about the waste of such a personality as hers unless there were a better way of accomplishing her object. She has been working for years, yet ninety-nine per cent of Americans regard her as a sort of Carrie Nation. The more we long for her success the more we appreciate her personality, the more keenly we must criticise her method.

The question of how race hygiene must be applied is a profound and complex matter, impossible of solution by any individual. It will be solved gradually, and as a resultant of honest intellectual work by all forward looking people—more especially by your despised scientists. It will be a matter of inspired scientific education, of proper industrial conditions, of profound art stimulus, of sex reform, in short, of most of the things advocated today by the socialist party. I have a fair-to-middling imagination, but I totally fail to see how these things may properly be put into action without intelligent governmental organization. We simply must not narrow our minds by perfectionist generalities. It is the duty—and the inspiration—of the poet to understand and use science, of the scientist to develop the poet in himself, of all to face grimly every fact which concerns him and banish forever from his mind sentimentalism. Sentimentalism about ribbons and candy is sometimes pretty, but sentimentalism about the human race is a terrible form of blasphemy and the greatest of the sins of pettiness.

Now that I have spoken honestly, don’t think I have joined the ranks of irascible conservatives, and that I yell because I’ve been prodded. No one realizes more than I the necessity of greater emotion, or more sweeping vision. But let’s not make our vision sweeping by the simple process of cutting off our view!

OBLOMOFFDOM

Minnie Lyon, Chicago:

We are told by literary authorities that a certain Goncharoff occupies the place next to Turgeniev and Tolstoy in Russian literature. As to this I cannot vouch, but I can say that he has written a most profound and wonderful book called Oblomoff wherein he has depicted in convincing terms the enthralling bondage of Russia’s intellectuals in her days of stagnant inactivity. From this book was coined the phrase—“Russian Malady of Oblomoffdom”, so well did it dissect her diseased and irresolute will—a malady so universal as to make one feel that Oblomoff was written for us as well as for Russia. It certainly is a direct emphasis upon a condition which prevails so largely both in our personal and social life that few can read this inimitable pen portrait without a sneaking feeling that some of his own lineaments are limned therein.

Goncharoff writes of his hero: “The joy of higher inspiration was accessible to him—the miseries of mankind were not strange to him.... Sometimes he cried bitterly in the depths of his heart about human sorrows. He felt unnamed, unknown sufferings and sadness, and a desire of going somewhere far away,—probably into that world towards which Stoltz had tried to take him in his younger days. Sweet tears would then flow upon his cheek. It would also happen that he would feel hatred towards human vices, towards deceit, towards the evil which is spread all over the world; and he would then feel the desire to show mankind its diseases. Thoughts would then burn within him, rolling in his head like waves in the sea; they would grow into decisions which would make all his blood boil; his muscles would be ready to move, his sinews would be strained, intentions would be on the point of transforming themselves into decisions.... Moved by a moral force he would rapidly change over and over again his position in his bed; with a fixed stare he would lift himself from it, move his hand, look about with inspired eyes ... the inspiration would seem ready to realize itself, to transform itself into an act of heroism—and then, what miracle, what admirable results might one not expect from so great an effort! But—the morning would pass away, the shades of evening would take the place of broad daylight—and with them the strained forces of Oblomoff would incline towards rest—the storm in his soul would subside—his head would shake off the worrying thoughts—his blood would circulate more slowly in his veins—and Oblomoff would slowly turn over and recline on his back; look sadly through his window upon the sky, following sadly with his eyes the sun which was setting gloriously.... And how many times had he thus followed with his eyes that sunset!”

How easy to fall back upon a soft bed of concessions—and drift into a world of forgetfulness! It is just into terrible inertia—this every day and every day humdrum conservatistic acceptance of things as they are—that THE LITTLE REVIEW comes with its laughter of the gods; it is so joyous, so fearless, so sure of its purpose, and hurls itself against it with its vital young blood and its burning young heart, and pleads with it for a re-creation of ideals in living, life, and art, and a bigger comprehension of what life and art can mean to the individual and to the race, if the individual will only open his heart and mind to these limitless freedoms. And it does not say: “Look, this is the only way;” but “come all ye who have something to offer—only let it be sincere, true, and unafraid.” And because of this big inclusiveness, we sometimes hear our friend, the sophisticated critic, say: “It lacks sophistication.”—What is sophistication anyway? Isn’t it something that has been baked and dried a long time? I wonder if every thoughtful reader does not grow weary of petty criticism! It is the twin sister (it has not the virility to be a boy twin) of Oblomoffdom, and lives as a parasite upon the brains of others. (I like that word Oblomoffdom; it covers such a multitude of indictments with an economy of words.) Let us have criticism—yes, by all means; but let it be criticism—critical in values, illuminating in meaning, clear in exposition, telling us how and why. Then we’ll give you our respectful and unbiased attention. Too much of the stuff that passes as criticism is merely a “personal attitude,” a channel for expressing a prejudice for (often) something too big for the critic’s grasp. How often, too, does one grow a bit heart-weary on hearing some big personality, some fine intellect limit itself to one vision—its own.

Why not throw that attitude aside as an outworn garment, and welcome any force, simply and gladly, that can stimulate a spark of life-urge within us? A more courageous and intense love of truth, of men, of life.

And so, we welcome you, LITTLE REVIEW, with a Happy New Year and a long life—as a Rebel spirit amongst us, fighting our deadly Oblomoffdom.

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Transcriber’s Notes

At the bottom of page 1, within Amy Lowell's The Allies, there is the centered word

(Over)

which seems out of place and is not found in later editions of the text. Speculating whether this was printed on purpose, e.g., to inform the reader to turn over the page to read the rest, we decided to reproduce it here as it was printed.

Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.

The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

- ... My petunias like censors, snowy white and full of honey? ...

... My petunias like censers, snowy white and full of honey? ...

- ... of the spiritual formulalist. Yet both are wrong. The Problem can be ...

... of the spiritual formulaist. Yet both are wrong. The Problem can be ...

- ... imposes on matural forms. The law-giver and reformer of social customs ...

... imposes on natural forms. The law-giver and reformer of social customs ...

- ... of his cane and withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who hath thrown ...

... of his cave and withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who hath thrown ...

- ... loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some manatour of conscience. ...

... loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. ...

- ... Under the rock, our trusting place in the wood, ...

... Under the rock, our trysting place in the wood, ...

- ... rather than expose by inquisitive aestheticians. Of such is the magical ...

... rather than exposed by inquisitive aestheticians. Of such is the magical ...

- ... morbid, commonplace treatment of Peter, “the maginative child,” as an ...

... morbid, commonplace treatment of Peter, “the ’maginative child,” as an ...

- ... Mr. Thorley, who did the Balzac, has proved that in the rôle or a translator he runs ...

... Mr. Thorley, who did the Balzac, has proved that in the rôle of a translator he runs ...

- ... for the Catlan drama (Catalonia is a province in Spain) by picturing the characteristics ...

... for the Catalan drama (Catalonia is a province in Spain) by picturing the characteristics ...

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Table of Contents

The Little Review

The Allies

The Logical Extreme

CHARACTERS:

SCENE:

Little Flowers From a Milliner’s Box

Reminders

Eidolons

Voices

Ten Square Feet of Garden

My Friend, the Incurable

III. Personalities: Villon; Verhaeren; Parnell; Romain Rolland; Dostoevsky

A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry

The New Beauty

The Artist as Master

Evolution versus Stagnation

Dawn in the Hills

The Bestowing Virtue

Editorials and Announcements

Mrs. Havelock Ellis

A Journal of Ideas

John Cowper Powys

Mrs. Havelock Ellis’s “The Love of Tomorrow”

London Letter

New York Letter

I Am Woman

Caroline Branson

Music

Albert Spalding

Book Discussion

Love’s Highway

Dutch Bourgeoisie

James Stephens: Poet and Pagan

Unfulfilled Expectations

Interpretation of Music

A Pasteurized “Man and Superman”

Sentence Reviews

The Reader Critic

OBLOMOFFDOM

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE