The Little Review

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

APRIL, 1915

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
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Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

The Little Review

Vol. II

APRIL, 1915

No. 2

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson

Etchings Not to Be Read Aloud

William Saphier

LIGHTS IN FOG

Weak sparkling assertions

In an opal, opaque atmosphere

Sharp suffering and

Kindly whispering eyes

In a wan, olive grey face.

You mean all to a few

And nothing to the rest.

THE OLD PRIZE FIGHTER

A rosy, I-dare-you nose

On a twisted steel-trellice face,

Just some knotty lumber

Without a hint of flower or fruit.

You tingled many a passion,

But never a single soul.

Mr. Comstock and the Resourceful Police

Margaret C. Anderson

I want to write about so many things this time that I don’t know where to begin. At first I had planned to do five or six pages on the crime of musical criticism in this country—particularly as focused in the critics’ antics with Scriabin’s beautiful Prometheus recently played by the Chicago Symphony. Truly that was an opportunity for the American music critic! He could be as righteously bourgeois as he wished and his readers would credit him with “sanity” and a clear vision; or he could be as ignorantly facetious as he wished and increase his reputation for wit. It didn’t occur to him that there might be something wrong with his imagination rather than with Scriabin’s art. How exciting it would be to find a music critic whose auditory nerves were as sensitive as his visual or gustatory nerves! Surely it’s not asking too much of people engaged in the business of sound that they be able not only to listen but to hear. Well ... there were many other matters I wanted to write of: For instance, the absurdity of our music schools; the pest of writers who begin their sentences “But, however,”; the so-far unnoticed strength of Sanin; the fault with George Middleton’s Criminals; the antics of the Drama League; the stunning things in The Egoist; exaggeration as a possible basis of art; the supremacy of Form; the undefinable standard of those of us who hate standardizations, etc., etc. But for the moment I have found something more important to talk about: Mr. Anthony Comstock.

Of course there is nothing new to say about him—and nothing awful enough. The best thing I’ve heard lately is this: “Anthony Comstock not only doesn’t know anything, but he doesn’t suspect anything.” Francis Hackett can write about Billy Sunday and resist the temptation of invective. Perhaps he’s too much an artist to feel the temptation. I wonder if he could do the same about Anthony Comstock. Certainly I can’t. Even the thought of Billy Sunday’s mammoth sentimentalizations and the 35,135 people who, according to the last reports, had been soothed thereby, fills me with shudders of hopelessness for the eventual education of men. And the thought of Anthony Comstock is ten times more horrible. His latest outrage is well-known by this time—his arrest of William Sanger for giving to a Comstock detective a copy of Mrs. Sanger’s pamphlet, Family Limitation. The charge was “circulating obscene literature.” I have seen that pamphlet, read it carefully, and given it to all the people I know well enough to be sure they are not Comstock detectives. There is not an obscene word in it, naturally. Margaret Sanger couldn’t be obscene—she’s a gentle, serious, well-informed woman writing in a way that any high-minded physician might. I have also seen her pamphlet called English Methods of Birth Control, which practically duplicates the leaflet (Hygienic Methods of Family Limitation) adopted by the Malthusian League of England and is sent “to all persons married or about to be married, who apply for it, in all countries of the world, except to applicants from the United States of America, where the Postal Laws will not allow of its delivery.” These pamphlets tell in simple language all the known methods for the prevention of conception—methods practised everywhere by the educated and the rich and unknown only to the poor and the ignorant who need such knowledge most. Mrs. Sanger says in her preface: “Today, in nearly all countries of the world, most educated people practise some method of limiting their offspring. Educated people are usually able to discuss at leisure the question of contraceptives with the professional men and women of their class, and benefit by the knowledge which science has advanced. The information which this class obtains is usually clean and harmless. In these same countries, however, there is a larger number of people who are kept in ignorance of this knowledge: it is said by physicians who work among these people that as soon as a woman rises out of the lowest stages of ignorance and poverty, her first step is to seek information of some practical means to limit her family. Everywhere the woman of this class seeks for knowledge on this subject. Seldom can she find it, because the medical profession refuses to give it, and because she comes in daily contact with those only who are as ignorant as herself of the subject. The consequence is, she must accept the stray bits of information given by neighbors, relatives, and friends, gathered from sources wholly unreliable and uninformed. She is forced to try everything and take anything, with the result that quackery thrives on her innocence and ignorance is perpetuated.”

The result of this propaganda was Margaret Sanger’s arrest last fall. I’ve forgotten the various steps by which “that blind, heavy, stupid thing we call government” came to its lumbering decision that she ought to spend ten or fifteen years in jail for her efforts to spread this knowledge. But Mrs. Sanger left the country—thank heaven! However, I understand that when she has finished her work of making these pamphlets known she means to come back and face the imprisonment. I pray she doesn’t mean anything of the kind. Why should she go to jail for ten years because we haven’t suppressed Anthony Comstock? Last year his literary supervision was given its first serious jolt when Mitchel Kennerley won the Hagar Revelly suit. But that was not nearly so important as the present issue, because Hagar Revelly was rather negative literature and birth control is one of the milestones by which civilization will measure its progress. The science of eugenics has always seemed to me fundamentally a sentimentalization—something that a man might have conceived in the frame of mind Stevenson was in when he wrote Olalla. Because there is no such thing, really, as the scientific restriction of love and passion. These things don’t belong in the realm of science any more than one’s reactions to a sunrise do. But the restriction of the birth-rate does belong there, and science should make this one of its big battles. Many people who used to believe that love was only a means to an end, that procreation was the only justification for cohabitation, now realize that if there is any force in the world that doesn’t need justification it is love. And these people are the ones who refuse to bring children into the world unless they can be born free of disease and stand a chance of being fed and educated and loved. Havelock Ellis sums it up well: “In order to do away with the need for abortion, and to counteract the propaganda in its favor, our main reliance must be placed, on the one hand, on increased foresight in the determination of conception and increased knowledge of the means for preventing conception; and on the other hand, on a better provision by the State for the care of pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, and a practical recognition of the qualified mother’s claim on society. There can be no doubt that in many a charge of criminal abortion the real offence lies at the door of those who failed to exercise their social and professional duty of making known the more natural and harmless methods for preventing conception, or else by their social attitude have made the pregnant woman’s position intolerable.”

But the immediate concern is William Sanger and his trial, which is to take place some time in April, I believe. His friends are trying to raise $500 for legal expenses, and contributions may be sent to Leonard D. Abbott, President of the Free Speech League, 241 East 201st Street, New York City; to the Sanger Fund, The Masses Publishing Company, 87 Greenwich Avenue, New York City; to Mother Earth, 20 East 125th Street, New York City, or to The Little Review.

Another thing that must not be forgotten is the “dramatic” attempt to blow up St. Patrick’s Cathedral last month, and all the deep plots to destroy the rich men of that city—what was it the headlines said? Everybody of normal intelligence who read those headlines suspected a police frame-up—which it proved to be. The psychology of the police is something I don’t understand, let alone being able to write about it so that any one else will understand. So I will quote the story of this quite unbelievable crime—police crime, I mean—as it appeared in The Masses. (The Masses, by the way, is one of the magazines indispensable to the living of an intelligent life). The story is called “Putting One over on Woods”:

When Commissioner Woods took office as head of the New York police force a year ago, he brought with him some enlightened ideas about the relation of the police to the public. A week before a meeting had been held at Union Square which by police interference had been turned into a bloody riot. A week later another Union Square meeting took place, with the police under orders to “let them talk.” The meeting passed off peaceably.

Thus the enlightened views of the new commissioner of police were vindicated. The right of free speech, and of free opinion, was conceded as not being a menace to civilization.

But a police force which is enabled to exist and enjoy its peculiar privileges by virtue of protecting the public against imaginary dangers, could not see its position undermined in this way. It was necessary to persuade the public that Socialists, Anarchists, and I. W. W.’s were plotting murder and destruction. The public was prone to accept this melodramatic view, but Commissioner Woods, being an intelligent man, was inclined to be cynical. So it became necessary to “put one over on Woods.”

They framed it up in the regular police fashion. A clever young Italian detective named Pulignano, it appears from the evidence, was promised a raise of salary and a medal if he would engineer a bomb-plot. Pulignano got hold of two Italian boys—not anarchists or socialists, but religious fanatics—and urged them on to blow up St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He planned the deed, bought the materials of destruction for them, and shamed them when they wanted to pull out of the plot the night before. The next morning, at great risk to an innocent public, the bomb was carried into the cathedral, lighted, and then the dozens of policemen and detectives, disguised as scrubwomen, etc., rushed in to save civilization.

And Woods fell for it. He swallowed the whole sensational business. They have got him. He is their dupe, and henceforth their faithful tool.

Reaction is in the saddle. “All radicals to be expelled from the city,” says a headline. A card catalogue of I. W. W. sympathizers. Socialism under the official ban. Free speech doomed.

So they hope. At the least it means that the fight has for the lovers of liberty begun again. But one wonders a little about Arthur Woods. He is on their side now—the apologist of as infamous and criminal an agent provocateur as ever sent a foolish boy to the gallows. But will Woods fail to see how he has been used by the police in this latest attempt to crush freedom in the interest of a privileged group? Is he as much a fool as they think?

Giovannitti’s Italian magazine, Il Fuoco, states that the bomb was made of caps and gravel—the kind of thing children use on the fourth of July. I know that Mother Earth has started a fund to prevent the two boys from being railroaded. Will there never be an end of these ghastly things?...

As too much light may blind the vision, so too much intellect may hinder the understanding.

—Romain Rolland.

Wild Songs

(From “Monoliths”)

Skipwith Cannell

IN THE FOREST

I am not alone, for there are eyes

Stealthy and curious,

And they turn to me.

I will shout loudly to the forest,

I will shout and with a sob

Griping my throat I will cower

Quickly

Beneath my cloak.

For the old gods stand silently

Behind the silent trees,

And when I shout they step forth

And I dare not

Look upon their faces.

THE FLOOD TIDE

The red in me

Lives too near my throat.

My heart is choked with blood,

And a rage drives it upward

As the moon drags the flood tide

Raging

Across the marshes.

I will dance

Somberly,

In a ritual

Terrible and soothing;

I will dance that I may not

Tear out his throat

In murder.

THE DANCE

With wide flung arms,

With feet clinging to the earth

I will dance.

My breath sobs in my belly

For an old sorrow that has put out the sun,

An old, furious sorrow ...

I will grin,

I will bare my gums and grin

Like a grey wolf who has come upon a bear.

The Poetry of Paul Fort

Richard Aldington

It is said that there are only three honors in the world really worth accepting. The first is that of Pope of Rome, the second Prime Minister of England and the third Prince des Poètes. Monsieur Paul Fort is Prince des poètes, a sort of unofficial title conferred upon him by the affection and admiration of the young poets of Paris. Paul Verlaine, Stephen Mallarmé and Leon Dierx were M. Fort’s successors, and in the ballot which took place when he was elected M. Henry de Régnier was an excellent second.

Paul Fort is indeed a prince of poets, the essence and the type of the poetic personality, princely in the extraordinary generosity with which he scatters largess of poetry and princely in his disdain for any occupation but that of poet. If I were king of England I believe I would ask Paul Fort to be my Prime Minister, but he would refuse, for he has a better and more interesting kingdom of his own. He should have been Grand Vizier to Haroun-al-Raschid, and when the Sultan went to war or to love, when he was idle or busy, vainglorious or craven, happy or sad, wanton or grave, M. Fort, Grand Vizier, would have made a poem to express or correct the Sultan’s mood.

Critics are fond of making epigrams on Paul Fort. They say he is “genius pure and simple”; that he has a nature continually active and awake. It would be simpler to say he is a poet. Everything he lives, everything he sees, everything he hears or smells or touches or experiences is matter for poetry. Everything from Louis XI. to the “joli crottin d’or” goes into his varied subtle rhythms. He is the only living poet who can gracefully introduce his own name into a poem without appearing ridiculous. He is continually interested in himself and notes with pleasure the interest of others:

“Cinq, six, sept, huit enfants me suivent très curieux du long nez éclairant la cape au noir velours, ‘de ce monsieur tombé de la lune, avec des yeux de merlan frit!’ dit l’un d’entre eux.”

He writes that in the midst of a poem describing a visit to the village of Coucy-le-Chateau. I have no doubt thousands of other people have been to Coucy-le-Chateau, among them many poets, but Paul Fort is the first to make a poem of it:

Les sires d’autrefois portaient: Fascé de vair et de gueules. Pour supports: deux lions d’or. Au cimier: un lion issu du même. — Or voici que, premier, notre gai souverain, missire le soleil,

porte un écu vivant! “Sur champ de vert gazon, Paul Fort couché près d’une amoureuse Suzon mêle distraitement cent douze violettes à sa barbe, et Suzon rêve sous sa voilette.”

There you have the “familiar style” over which so many gallons of ink have been shed. Observe how perfectly naturally the author speaks of “Paul Fort”; can you hear Tennyson doing it, or Keats or Francis Thompson or the disciples of Brunetière? One might make a pleasant little literary sketch on poets who possess the familiar style to the extent of using their own names in their verse. Thus, that admirable man, Browning:

And Robert Browning, you writer of plays,

Here’s a subject made to your hand.

And old Walt:

I, Walt Whitman, a Cosmos, turbulent, fleshly, sensual,

Eating, drinking and breeding.

It is, at least, agreeable to find poets who consider themselves as human beings instead of very inflated, somewhat simian demi-gods. Better a thousand times have desperate vulgarity than the New England pose au Longfellow and Emerson, or the still more horrible old England pose au Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shelley. Heaven preserve me from saying M. Fort is vulgar, but if to hate pomposity and moral pretentiousness be vulgar, then let us be vulgar, as M. Fort is. Better be obscene than a ninny.

Those who have not read M. Fort’s work and who suspect from the foregoing quotations that he is really a prose writer impudently palming off his productions as “sweet poesy,” are asked to read the following poem with attention:

LA RONDE

Si toutes les filles du monde voulaient s’ donner la main, tout autour de la mer

elles pourraient faire une ronde.

Si tous les gars du monde voulaient bien êtr’ marins, ils f’raient avec leurs

barques un joli pont sur l’onde.

Alors on pourrait faire une ronde autour du monde, si tous les gens du monde

voulaient s’ donner la main.

That is said, I don’t know with what truth, to be the most popular of M. Fort’s poems. It certainly was, I am told, in everybody’s mouth in Paris when it was first published—rather as Dolores was in London in the sixties. The cadence of the poem is, of course, obvious and marked, as it should be in a “chanson.” It is rather a good poem to start on, as M. Fort’s way of printing rhymed and accented verse as prose is there forcibly exemplified. M. Fort has not abandoned the Alexandrine; but he is not its slave. Confident in his theory that most poetry is a matter of typography he writes rhymed alexandrines, rhymed vers libres and rhymed and unrhymed prose in exactly the same manner; the effect is curious and charming. It is of course not the very commonplace device of daily newspapers when they want to be funny, but a genuine artistic principle. The effect is very different from that received from a perusal of tedious quatrains written as prose; in the latter case one is disgusted immediately, knowing that no man, not even a paid journalist, is such a fool as to write such stuff in prose; in M. Fort’s case the typographical arrangement prevents the ear becoming fatigued with the stressed rhymes of linear verse and at the same time gives a richness to the apparent prose that no real prose possesses.

For example, this quotation from the Roman de Louis XI., one of Paul Fort’s finest poem-novels.

Comtes, barons, chevaliers, capitaines, tous gentilshommes de grand façon, et le plus fier, le plus grand, le plus beau, Charles de Charolais, qui les dépassait tous, entrèrent un beau matin d’azur pure et de cloches, dans Rouen, la bonne ville, et c’était doux plaisir de voir briller les casques, les cuirasses et les housses; les belles housses, de fin drap d’or étaient, et d’autres de velours, fourrées de pennes d’hermine, et d’autres de damas, fourrées de zibeline, et d’autres, qui coûtaient moult cher, d’orfèvrerie; et c’était doux plaisir de voir courir les pages, les beaux jeunes enfants bien richement vêtus, et le voir danser, devant les personnages, des hommes en sauvages et de belles femmes nues, et sautiller autour des chevaux, en cadence, des nains rouges, roses, verts, et des filles en bergère, et de voir flotter aux toits les étandards bleus, semés de feux d’or, rouges, avec un lion noir, qui se mêlaient avec les bannières toutes blanches, et de voir venir de la cathédrale, sur le parvis, le clergé violet, venir à la rencontre du roi Louis le pâle, que représentait un si beau comte, et le ciel bleu passait dans les clochers à jour, toutes les cloches battaient, de joie ou de douleur, que les crosses luisaient! que les lances étaient belles!... et c’était doux plaisir d’aller voir les fontaines jeter vin, hypocras, dont chacun buvait; et y avait encore trois belles sirènes, nues sur une estrade, comme Ève au paradis, et jouaient d’instruments doux, jolis et graves, qui rendaient de suaves et grandes mélodies; et c’étaient sur le grand pont, sur la Seine, écuyers lâchant oisels peints en bleu, et dans toute la ville c’étaient moult plaisances, dont le tout avait coûté moult finance.

I quote that long passage in full to give a clear notion of M. Fort’s extraordinary fertility and precision in description. It is better than Hugo’s descriptions in Notre Dame de Paris, chiefly because it is more natural and familiar.

In this little article I have barely touched the rim of Paul Fort’s work. He is prodigious; he is not one poet, he is twelve, a whole school of poets; he is his own disciples, for none dares to imitate him, just as none dares to imitate Browning. He is the poet who has written everything: Chansons, Romans, Petites Epopées, Lieds, Elégies, Hymnes, Hymnes Héroiques, Eglogues et Idylles, Chants Paniques, Poèmes Marins, Odes et Odelettes, Fantaisies à la Gauloise, Complaintes et Dits, Madrigaux et Romances, Epigrammes à Moi-même. If he has not written plays, he has been a theater director, producing work which delighted literary Paris and annoyed the “boulevardiers”—this at a fabulously early age.

It may interest some readers to know what M. Fort has been doing since the war. He is an inhabitant of Rheims, born opposite the beautiful “cathédrale assassinée”; and he sits in a room at 125 Boulevard St. Germain writing, writing, poems against the invading Germans, poems to cheer on his heroic countrymen, poems mourning friends fallen on the battlefield, poems against H. I. M. the Kaiser, against the Prussian officers, against the “Monstrueux général baron von Plattenberg” (commanding the army which bombarded Rheims), poems to the English, to Joffre, and on the Battle of the Marne. The odd thing is that they are so good. I quote this one, from national vanity:

LA MANIERE[1]

ON meurt: l’Anglais s’élance et le Français le suit.... Il bondit, le Français!... L’Anglais court apres lui.... L’Anglais vif le rattrape. Qui, c’est même vaillance. Il me revient un mot, la fleur des mots guerriers. L’Anglais stoppe, et avec une grâce de France: “Messieurs de France, à vous de tirer les premiers.”

[1] This poem is printed by permission of M. Fort, from his periodical, “Poèmes de France,” published fortnightly at 25 centimes the number, 125 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.

The Subman

Life and Literature in Russia are interdependent forces to such a degree that in approaching a phenomenon, whether in book-form or in reality, we can hardly discern the line of demarcation between cause and effect. If it is true that a number of Russian writers have mirrored actual life in their works, it is more significantly true that many powerful authors have influenced life and have moulded it in accordance with their views and ideas. And it is to be noticed that the less artistic the writers have been, the more obvious has been their tendency to preach and sermonize, the stronger their influence upon the young minds; more than Gogol and Dostoyevsky have such second-rate writers as Chernyshevsky and Stepnyak succeeded in shaping the creeds of their readers. We must remember that literature in Russia, although gagged by bigoted censorship, has been the only medium for expressing and moulding public opinion throughout the past century, and to a great extent this holds true to our very day. Revolutionism, terrorism, socialism, have been propagated through the mouths of novel heroes and heroines for the ardent emulation of the seeking susceptible youth.

The furor produced in Russia by the appearance of Artzibashev’s Sanin some eight years ago has had no parallel even in that country, where a new word in belles-lettres has always taken on the significance of a national event. The importance of this novel is partly due to chronological circumstances—the fact that it came as a luring will o’ the wisp in the post-revolutionary gloom of Russian life. The young generation was on the verge of despondency; the collapse of the Revolution brought to nought the long struggle, the thousands of sacrificed lives, the high aspirations; the Constitution, which had been the ideal of generations, the religion of all pure-minded Russia, had degenerated into a mocking buffonade, the subservient Duma. At such a time Artzibashev steps forward offering the disillusioned youth a new type—the strong, sane Sanin, who derides the altruistic strivings of his compatriots and advocates simple animalistic life, sans principles, sans standards, with the sole aim of satisfying one’s impulses. So strong and timely was the appeal that it immediately created a large following; clubs and societies were formed for the promulgation of the new religion, Sanin’s ideas were hotly discussed from the lecture platform and in the press—in short, such a formidable movement burst forth that the government, which has usually welcomed any sign of deviation from revolutionary thought, became alarmed and withdrew the book from circulation.

But the importance of Sanin has been far more than local. In Germany it was translated and even dramatized, and has created a literature. Even France, oversatiated with pornography, was for a moment stirred at the appearance of the sensational novel, until a new scandal captured the limelight. Finally, with the customary Anglo-Saxon retardation, we have the book in English.[2] The universality of Artzibashev’s appeal is thus evident, and the question arises: What is the underlying force that makes the book arouse interest, admiration, and indignation in various tongues and countries? To my mind, this is the answer: The author, a typical representative of our age, has performed a purely subjective, introspective study—hence he has voiced the ideas of his contemporaries, hence he is so readily understood and appreciated by the children of our civilization.

Francis Hackett, who, when he writes on books, has no equal in this country, has remarked with his usual insight: “It is plain that for himself Artzibashev has made not a man, but a hero, a god.” To this true statement I wish to add that when we humans erect a god, we endow him with those qualities and virtues which we ourselves lack, which to us are but unattainable desiderata. Artzibashev glorifies Sanin because he himself is Sanin’s antipode, the whining, impotent Yourii, whom he paints with obvious disgust. This is no sheer presumption; I have followed the author’s career since his early short stories written in a Tolstoyan, idealistic vein, where he revealed a restless, self-questioning, self-analyzing spirit of the sort that he caricaturizes in Yourii: “Perpetual sighing and groaning, or incessant questionings such as ‘I sneezed just now. Was that the right thing to do? Will it not cause harm to some one? Have I, in sneezing, fulfilled my destiny?’” But the idealist-Artzibashev-Yourii lived not in the clouds, but in the midst of the St. Petersburg Bohème, with the decadent crowd of the restaurant “Vienna”—a life of questionable virtuousness and of dubious hygiene. He conceived the idea of Sanin when he had become almost a physical wreck, forced to spend his time, when not in “Vienna,” in a resort in Crimea. Incapable of enjoying carnal life any longer, yet morbidly craving to empty the cup of sensuous pleasures to the dregs, he creates for himself a fetish, an ideal male, stripped of all human weaknesses, doubtings, and questionings, free of all principles but the principle of professing no principles, living to the full the life of a healthy animal.

In order to accentuate the superiority of his god, Sanin, the author surrounds him with sentimental weaklings, vegetating in a small provincial town, engaged in petty philosophizing and whimpering, bored with one another and with the general ennui of their life, aimlessly pining, striving purposelessly. In such a setting the figure of Sanin naturally looms up as the least boring individual. But try to transfer the hero from this stage of marionettes into real Russian, or, for that matter, into any life full of struggle and love and passion, and what a platitudinous, uninteresting figure he will make! In what he says is nothing strikingly new; his discourses on Christianity or on morality could have been borrowed from any modern rank-and-file radical. As to what he does—well, it is zoology. A witty critic has endeavored to pin to him the label of Superman; what an insult for our hero, who after a feast of vodka, cucumbers, and cheap cigarettes, “undressed and got into bed, where he tried to read Thus spake Zarathustra which he found among Lida’s books” (an interesting detail about the intellectual status of the provincials who read Ibsen, Hamsun, Nietzsche). “But the first few pages were enough to irritate him. Such inflated imagery left him unmoved. He spat, flung the volume aside, and soon fell fast asleep.”

Artzibashev is obviously an erotomaniac. His men and women think of one another only in sexual terms, dream of possessing and being possessed. Broad shoulders, strong muscles, intense virility; ample bosoms, swaying hips, supple bodies—these are the ne plus ultra attractions of his heroes and heroines. Even nature appears to his characters through a pathological prism; under the influence of moonlight or sunshine they dream of nude bodies, white limbs, yielding mates.

I repeat my statement: Sanin, or rather Artzibashev, is typical of his age—the age of the oversatiated enervated urbanite, the age of civilization overdeveloped at the expense of culture. You see them in the big cities (perhaps to a lesser degree in this young country), on the streets, among society, among professionals—those over-ripe men and women whose senses have become dull, who are driven by ennui and imbecility to seek the piquant, the bestial, the “healthy.” But the true healthy men and women do not talk health, sex, muscles, virility, for as long as our natural faculties are sound we are hardly aware of them. The healthy, those who are pulsating with life, strive to surpass themselves, strive towards the Superman; it is the pathological, the incapacitated, the withered, who impotently yearn for a retrogradation towards the Subman-Sanin.

[2] Sanine, by Michael Artzibashef. [B. W. Huebsch, New York.]

There is hardly any danger of the book being persecuted by Anthony Comstock, for whatever pernicious influence it might have had has been splendidly neutralized through the wretched translation which evidently was rendered from the French version, in its turn a poor translation from the German; this explains—does it justify—the cosmopolitan transliteration of the proper names and the numerous nonsensical errors. The publisher threatens to present the public with Artzibashev’s Millionaire; let us hope that this time the author will be spared the atrocious mutilation by the hands of the humoristic Percy Pinkerton.

Hunger

George Franklin

The moment seems due. Fashion had better take care. Beggars can spit very venomously. Weird-looking jumbles of bones in rags are leering and grinning, jostling and hustling very defiantly. Men are blowing their noses on doorsteps and wearing their hats in church. Hunger is no more passive. Time comes, and with it the fulfillment of every destiny prophesied by a fact. Hunger is sickly till Frenzy quickens it. Hunger has no brain, and does not consider. It curses and swears, is blear-eyed and croaks. It sneers, mocks, jeers, coughs. It spits and throws filth on fine linen. It pours out from cesspool haunts and stinks out the most respectable of neighborhoods. Hunger has no morality—is devoid of all shame. In highest moods hungry knaves will hurl stones, smash windows, pinch, eat, drink, tear down altars, stretch the necks of the Respectable between the head and the shoulders, use guns, laugh, grin, joke, mock, stick grass in mouths of their victims, use pikes, uproot bastiles, and without ceremony lop off heads with every consecutive second of the clock. Hunger startles the world from its slumber, with a shock. Beware, Friends! Hunger is lynx-eyed and sees behind every fact. It sniffs and can smell out anything suspicious. Hunger will hurt no man except he smell or look a little of Tyranny. Does Tyranny wear a powdered wig, talk good French and say “Monsieur”—Hunger looks, sniffs, finds it, and sends its head rolling into a bushel basket. Does it look like a New York banker, have crease in pants, talk grammatical English, wear gold chain, wipe nose with clean handkerchief, wear feathered plumes and fashionable gowns—Hunger noses it out and despatches it without delay. Respectability with its disdain; Education with its stupidity; Fashion with its vanity; Wealth with its luxury; all exhale the same odor to the sniffings of Hunger. When Hunger sniffs, it is time for Fashion to drape itself in rags and give to its body a smell of dung. If Hunger cannot taste food, it will drink blood. There is only one passion stronger than Love—Hatred. Love will Sacrifice, but Hatred will live, though it torture the world with all the machinations of hell. Hatred and Hunger are dogs of the same kennel.... Hunger Hounds, starved, snarling, bloodshot eyes, fangs bared, straining at their chains—Friends, Beware!... Hunger—lean, bony, naked, and grimy—with talons and claws. Hunger with fever and mad. Hunger goaded. Hunger grinning. Hunger in consort with Death. Hunger—hideous, impalpable. Hunger that cannot die. Hunger, blood-smeared, ghastly, and sallow, with rotting teeth. Hunger that spits and leers. Hunger—devilish nightmare to all Tyrannies. Hunger, the fiendish torment of all Fashions and Respectabilities. Hunger without Reason—mad and demoniac. Hunger! Hunger! Hunger! Hunger! Friends, Beware! The moment seems due. Time will fulfill the destiny of a Fact.

To follow the impulses of my heart is my supreme law; what I can accomplish by obeying my instincts, is what I ought to do. Is that voice of instinct cursed or blessed? I do not know; but I yield to it, and never force myself to run counter to my inclination.

—Richard Wagner.

Poems

David O’Neil

APATHY

The bodies of soldiers

Come floating down the river

To the green sea,

Rich in amber,

Waiting to embalm them;

All is splendid silence

In this pageantry of wanton glory

Awed

By the setting sun.

ONE WAY OUT

In this terror of blood-spilling lust,

Why throw it in a ditch,

This boy’s beautiful body,

When his spirit might rise like steam from the soup

And stir the live ones to vengeance?

Disease will deter you?

Ah, but boil it well

And the thought will give it a spice.

Cannibalism, you say?

Why stop when you have gone so far?

He that died

Would rather his body

Gave life to his fellows,

Than be trampled over,

Shot over,

Shoveled like offal away.

Why throw it in a ditch?

VICTORY

I see captured shot-rent flags

Dancing with the wind,

Flying high to glory.

Why not anchor them

With a pyramid of bones,

Those of our own men?

It would tell

Of the price that was paid

To have these flags here,

Whipping in the wind.

OUR SON JACK

Our son Jack,

Wild with life,

Went through

When law and nature

Said, “Go around.”

Thus he died.

THE OAK

Gaunt,

Stripped of leaves,

Death-defiant,

Yet triumphant

In this thought:

There is nothing more to lose.

MOODS AND MOMENTS

I.

In dreams

I have been swept through space

On a star-hung swing,

Like a silkworm

Upheld by a slender strand,

Tossed about in the gale.

II.

His life was well ordered

And monotonously clean

As an orchard with white-washed trees.

But he felt not the cool

Of the sun-splotched woods

Nor the mad blue brilliance

Of the sea.

III.

I see green fields

In the first flush of the spring,

And little children playing,

Clustered as patches of white flowers.

Musik or Music?

James Whittaker

Despite its two world-cities our America is still a vast unattached province, subject now to the influence of London, now to that of Berlin or Paris, and again in a period of disaffection and unrestraint. Our taste is childish,—a capricious, intermittent taste—good once in a while, never lasting, and by no means frequent. Such a taste gives a few pleasures but not the developed one of judgment. It never lasts long enough to be imposed. We are unable to pair two congenial traditions and get a tendency. There is nothing for it but to welcome another generation of incomprehensible foreigners in the hope that among them will be found a mate for our very real desire for fine things.

One country has sent us little inspiration. Her natives do not willingly leave her soft sky for our harsh brilliant western sun. They have a proverbial preference for her gentle manner and speech. For our youth she has the admiration and envy of age, for our red knuckles and large ankles she has the indulgence of one who has been beautiful for many lovers, but for our loud-mouthed demand for adulation she has the aloofness of one who has still many courtiers. If we go fearfully as befits our youth and humbly as befits our awkwardness to Paris, instead of waiting for Paris the beautiful to come to us, perhaps we shall receive what Berlin and London have not yet given us.

London came to us willingly with a scholarly something that was better than our previous nothing. Berlin forced on us a manner of strong professionalism that was better than our previous weakness. Now we are beyond the age of facile conquests and we must, at the risk of being rebuffed and made unhappy, seek the favor of a lady who stays at home.

Since the spirit of Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert left Vienna, Music has loved no city. We shall soon agree that she did not love Weimar greatly nor Munich at all nor Leipzig enough. As for the lusty person who flaunts a passion for Berlin, we must call her a maid masquerading in her mistress’s cloak if, indeed, we concede her a resemblance to music at all.

The joy of loveliness admired, the frankness and naivete, the “jeu perle” and natural melodiousness that were the life of Viennese Music vanished utterly with the death of Schubert unknown. It seemed that he and his predecessors must have brought music into a cul-de-sac from which it would have to extricate itself. German music did and received new impetus from the professionalism of Weber, the literary romanticism of Liszt, the savoir-vivre of Chopin, and the cosmicality of Wagner. France, meanwhile, entertained loyally the older manner, nursing it through its unpopularity into the convalescence it now enjoys. When we come to discover that the spirit of Berlin is rather of something hyphenated to “Kultur” than of music purely, we shall also discover the spirit of Vienna,—vigorous and slightly Frenchified, in the Conservatoire and the Schola Cantorum.

Somehow, without the least effort or merit, we have strolled into the position of the “distinguished amateur.” It is an eminence from which one may see everything if one but keep a clear eye and a doubting mind. What fools we should be to view the road before us as we can only this once, wearing a prejudice like a pair of smoked goggles. To doubt is a privilege which the wise will make a duty. We should doubt what has given us our artistic existence, and if it can only stand by our faith it will fall—but we shall not fall with it. We should doubt the things we desire so that when we abandon them we cannot be reproached with broken faith. We must doubt the strength of organized professionalism that Berlin would teach us, the value of hard work the contrapunctalists of the Royal Academy preach;—we must doubt the superiority of art and the artist, the inviolability of tradition, the legitimacy of the Beethoven-Wagner-Strauss succession for the reason that they have been so freely offered if for no other. Surely such eagerness to be accepted does not prove great worth. Let us pooh-pooh all these magnificent “Pooh-Bahs” of music to see if their threats to have our heads off are real or bluff. Then with our tongues still in our cheeks, let us continue on to other courts.

If we have enjoyed the simple and fine art with which Beethoven and Schubert enlivened and refined the salons of Vienna, we shall enjoy Franck. If we should prefer our Mozart livelier by a notch of the metronome and lighter by one-half of the strings than we hear it now, we should be pleased by Chabrier and Faure and the way they are played by the half-dozen youngsters who get their premier prix at the end of each year’s work in the Conservatoire. From pure inertia we have out-stayed our pleasure in modern German music. A bit of animation and on to Paris!

The Critics’ Catastrophe

(A Probable Possibility)

Herman Schuchert

The scene is a dining-room of the “Cave Dwellers,” Chicago’s most exclusively stupid club. At one table are seated four musical critics, and one ex-critic, of the daily papers. That this gathering is unique is attested by numerous hushed conversations at other tables; the critics’ table is a center of half-concealed interest. A waiter has just cleared away the dishes; cigars are brought. The youngest critic, of the Worst Glaring Nuisance (witness the yellow acre of illuminated sign at the foot of Michigan avenue) speaks as if to reassure his natural timidity:

Donald Worcester. I suppose it will be eminently respectable. (The others appear not to have heard his remark, until a reply is carefully chosen by

Carbon Hatchett. Her advance notices would lead one to suppose that she has something of a prestige.

Edward Morless. That guff! I saw it. Awful! What I want to know is: what the devil does she mean by beginning her program with Debussy. I just wonder what’s become of Beethoven—ha, ha!

Donald Worcester. I suppose she imagines she’s going to revolutionize program-making.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Gentlemen, when I give my piano recital on March twentieth, you’ll hear the best possible way to start a program. Debussy is altogether too weak to lead; he’s scarcely able to get in at all (chuckle) but I’ve found a leader that is a leader—Archibald Shanks. If I know anything, and I do, this Shanks is going to become the American composer. Why, he’s so much better than MacDowell with all his Scotchy junk that there’s no comparison. I found Shanks in Rolling Prairie, South Dakota; and when I play his March of the Rock-Spirits at my recital on March the twentieth, you’ll hear the real thing—it’s music, I tell you.

Xilef Bowowski. Hmh! Ah-hmh! I remember looking over compositions by Archibald Shanks, sent me by a certain New York publisher, to get my opinion before taking them; and in one of them—I forget the title—I think it was Through the Marsh—some such title—hmh!—it doesn’t really matter—I found seven consecutive fifths and twelve parallel octaves within the space of a few bars. Positively inexcusable!

Ben Dullard Krupp. Blgh-h! That belongs to his early period. Through the Marsh is simply a practice-stunt, done when he was about fifteen—a mere youthful exercise. You can’t judge by—blgh-h!

Donald Worcester. I read in the Artists’ News that young Shanks is only seventeen at the present time.

Edward Morless. Probably means his son—Waiter!—What do you want, boys? I’m dry as a bone. And we’ve got a long afternoon before us. However, for my part, I shan’t be in any hurry about getting there. What’ll it be?

Xilef Bowowski. A little plum brandy for me.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Bring me some Haig and Haig.

Carbon Hatchett. Manhattan cocktail.

Donald Worcester. A large beer.

Edward Morless. Good! Let’s have some Green River, Tim. Krupp, do you think she’ll be any good at all?

Ben Dullard Krupp. A woman? From Budapest? On a Thimble piano? Starting in with Debussy? And you ask if she’ll be good! How could she be?

Donald Worcester. I was reading the other day——

Ben Dullard Krupp. All she plays is trash, of one kind or another. Debussy never does anything but move up and down the whole-tone scale; no melody, no counterpoint, no music at all. And take the Tchaikowsky thing, for instance. Everybody knows that Tchaikowsky always carried a whip in one hand and a gun in the other, and when he wasn’t using one, it was the other. It’s proverbial, and makes such a handy remark when thinking would take too long. And his piano-style: he simply hasn’t got any; it’s pathetic. I see you don’t get my joke on the sixth symphony—the Pathetique. I say, America won’t stand for that sort of thing. Some kindly person should have informed this Madame Frizza Bonjoline before she made a complete fool of herself.

Carbon Hatchett. She hasn’t played yet, and maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

Donald Worcester. A friend of mine tells me that Mr. Debussy is one of the greatest living melodists.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Blgh-h!

No further imbecility is displayed for the time being. Soon the party breaks up, and a natural modesty prevents the critics from seeing each other again until after the piano recital by Madame Frizza Bonjoline, an artist who is but slightly known in the United States, but one who has achieved recognition throughout Europe, South America, and Australia. She has just given an unusual program, which she could not close with less than seven encores. While the five critics wait outside the green-room, they hold a restrained conversation.

Hatchett to Krupp. It’s good to have you among us again, Krupp. Although I do have a terrible time steering my thoughts through the mazes of the English language I feel like the only live one left, since the Trib dropped you. The town needs you, and I’m glad you have an opportunity again to mould public opinion. We need more strong-minded men like you.

Krupp (fiercely). I know it, but the cattle don’t recognize good criticism when they see it.

Hatchett to Krupp. How did the Madame strike you? Plenty of emotion, I thought.

Krupp (to all). Impossible program—good God!—did you ever hear such a medley? And she hasn’t the strength of a kitten.

Hatchett to Krupp. Of course, she didn’t seem quite vital enough, but that may have been because of her choice of numbers. They were somewhat “outre.”

Krupp (sourly). Altogether too girlish, I say.

Edward Morless. Splendid personality, but a rotten technic, don’t you think?

Donald Worcester. As near as I can tell, she wears marvelous silk hose. They were the most striking thing about the whole concert.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Blgh-ggh-h!

Xilef Bowowski. I suppose then, Mr. Worcester, one doesn’t require any ears to get the good or bad out of a concert—only eyes.

Edward Morless. Well, Bowowski, ears were a nuisance today, at any rate, don’t you think? The optic impressions were far the best—easily. I wonder when we’re going to get in here.

Xilef Bowowski has been tramping up and down the corridor, his ultra-distinguished chin a trifle elevated, his hands locked behind his back. He is evidently searching for words. In a moment, the door of the green-room swings open and a well-dressed man is seen bidding good-bye to Madame Frizza. The stranger takes no notice of the group of critics as he brushes past and hurries away. Then a most charming voice welcomes the five critics. The Madame is greeted by four blushes and one scowl. The scowling one, Mr. Krupp, is the first one to enter the green-room. Close behind him come the embarrassed four.

Madame Bonjoline. Gentlemen, this is so good of you. And how did you like my recital? I hope it pleased you—yes?

There is a moment of silence which, as it becomes awkward, is broken by

Donald Worcester. Some concert, all right.

Madame Bonjoline. How good of you. I am happy.

Ben Dullard Krupp. I confess I find myself unable to understand the judgment which places Debussy at the first of a program. Now why did you——

Madame Bonjoline. Ah,—ho, ho, ha, ha—that is our little joke, gentlemen, is it not? I suppose no one knew that I played Rachmaninoff instead of Debussy at the start—no one but ourselves. I changed my mind after I was out on the platform.

Ben Dullard Krupp. I was—blgh-h!—that is, Mr. Stalk was at my office to see me about my coming American orchestra concert, at which I myself conduct, and so I was detained, and did not get to hear your opening number.

Donald Worcester. How did you manage to get along without Brahms, Madame. I should be interested——

Madame Bonjoline. Oh, you did not hear my third encore, then—the Brahms B-minor Capriccio. I am so sorry you missed it.

Donald Worcester. Oh, was that Brahms? I thought it sounded rather chunky, now that I recall it.

Edward Morless. Would it seem too—well, let us say—American to you if I were to ask you to lunch with me, Madame Bonjoline? I should be extremely happy to have that pleasure.

Madame Bonjoline. Ah, but the pleasure is mine. I shall be delighted to accept—that is, if there is time. I make that condition only.

Edward Morless. Thank you, thank you, Madame.

Xilef Bowowski. Madame Bonjoline, do you remember the date of publication of the Gliere Prelude which you played today? It has completely slipped my mind.

Madame (laughing). My good sir, I could not recall it to save my soul.

Donald Worcester. I wish your playing sounded as good as it looks, Madame.

Madame Bonjoline. How delightfully American you are! So frank, so utterly frank! But that reminds me: my friend, James Shooneker—perhaps you saw him; he left just as you came in—told me that my playing looked as good as it sounded. How strange a coincidence! You all know him, of course. For Europe, he is the great critic. He is in Chicago for a short time, and he is going to review my recital for a magazine here—I believe it is called Le Petit Revue, or something like that.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Oh, yes; that effusive young lady’s journal, The Little Review. I have heard of it. Ha!

Donald Worcester. Their poor musical writer was in your audience this afternoon, Madame.

Ben Dullard Krupp. He’s one of those chaps you can meet three or four times and still never recognize on the street.

Madame Bonjoline. So? At any rate, James Shooneker is going to “write up” (I believe you say) my recital. I understand that this number of The Little Review is coming from the press in the morning, and his article will appear in it.

Carbon Hatchett. So, indeed. This Mr. Shooneker, if I remember correctly, has written a book—what is the title of it?

Madame Bonjoline. Och! He has written so many, many books! I do not know which one you mean.

The charms of the woman, her little moues, smiles, and quick gestures, are entangling the five men. Conversation becomes increasingly difficult. The writers leave the green-room and, on the outside with the door closed, they glance nervously at one another.

Edward Morless. Say: this James Shooneker,—who’s he?

Ben Dullard Krupp. Who cares who he is? His stuff won’t get far in that sheet.

Edward Morless. Of course not. I just wondered. For my part, I’ve had a terrible afternoon.

Donald Worcester. But Ed, think of tonight. You’ve got to listen to Walter Spratt’s piano-playing.

Carbon Hatchett. Do you call that playing?

Nothing seems to relieve the collective nervousness of the five judges. At the outer door, they separate. Ben Dullard Krupp makes his way to McChug’s book-store and, after one swift glance up the street and another down the street, he pushes strenuously through the whirling doors. With swinging tread, he marches down the broad center aisle and hails a busy clerk. Yes, the clerk has sometimes heard of James Shooneker and—yes,—they have a book or two of his—just a minute. Then a convulsive terror seizes Ben Dullard Krupp, for on the other side of the same counter stands Donald Worcester. The younger approaches the elder with unaccustomed familiarity, having him, at the moment, on the hip, as it were.

Donald Worcester. Looking up Shooneker? Here’s one of his things,—Half-tones in Modern Music.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Oh, yes; that. I remember reading it when I was scarcely more than a boy.

Donald Worcester. It was published in 1909, I see.

Ben Dullard Krupp. Must be a later edition, then. Oh, pshaw! What’s the use of waiting for that clerk? I think I have a complete set of Shooneker packed away at home.

Donald Worcester. That so? Well, I’ll tell the clerk you couldn’t wait. Maybe I’d like the book myself, if it’s worth anything at all.