The Little Review

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

FEBRUARY, 1915

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

The Little Review

Vol. 1

FEBRUARY, 1915

No. 11

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson.

Our First Year

Margaret C. Anderson.

An interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1) energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that he arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener a judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that would not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place of number one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy does seem the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of those persons who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration. But Imagination!—that gift of the far gods! There is simply no question of its position in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and beautiful thing that has been accomplished in the world.

Last March we began the publication of The Little Review. Now, twelve months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle of being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a policy; we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in so far as we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not expounded a philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite outlandishly anarchistic; we have been uncritical, indiscriminate, juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish, emotional, tiresomely enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which I can’t remember now—all the things that are usually said about faulty new undertakings. The encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly about promising ones.

Of course The Little Review has done little more than approach the ideal which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than some other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of the visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the priest or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get drenched than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I should rather see one side of a question violently than to see both sides calmly; I should rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely a matter of choice: people are either extremists or nonentities; I should far rather sense the big things about a cause or a character even vaguely than to analyze its little qualities quite clearly; in short, I should rather feel a great deal and know a little than feel a little and know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our negative attitude.

But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the worship of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is our only attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will understand that I did not say our platform is merely the worship of beauty. Beauty involves too many elements to be championed lightly. Beauty from the aesthete’s point of view and beauty from the artist’s point of view are two widely different things. I might paraphrase Wilde and say that the new Beauty is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for The Little Review, as I want from life, not merely beauty, not merely happiness, but a quality which proceeds from the intensity with which both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, are present.

This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that within their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without The Little Review because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished, nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim to artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines of good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude; that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most magazines have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that is what’s wrong with them. I have none of the qualifications of the editor; that’s why I think The Little Review is in good hands. Because the editorial tradition in this country has usurped the place of the literary tradition we have lifted loyalty to policies into the place of loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a man of letters—once told me that there were fifty good writers to every good editor in America, and that he would teach me to be the former. He proceeded to illustrate, not by chucking out the poor stuff that was being written for his journal but by showing how it could be stuck in where it wouldn’t be too noticeable! When some manuscript that delighted his soul came in (he was very human and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy” that had somehow grown up around his own magazine) he taught me the “art” of reducing its policy to a state of negativeness that would not be out of harmony with the policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once he received some poetry that was very strong and very beautiful. He treasured it so that he kept it in his desk for months before returning it. It was so beautiful as to be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was sure; and anyhow his journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it merely printed reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I used to feel that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving the ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or to become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to read us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is more honest to say outright that they will probably find less and less of it. Because as “sanity” increases in the world The Little Review will strive more and more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers continue to compromise in order to get their public, as book-makers continue to print rot in order to make fortunes, as writers continue to follow the market instead of doing their Work, as the public continues to demand vileness and vulgarity and lies, as the intellectuals continue to miss the root of the trouble, The Little Review will continue to rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work for its ideal rather than for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of excellent quality and no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and flame, to be swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young and fearless and reckless and imaginative—

... chanter

Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre,

Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....

—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly first.

There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful by being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say this so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated, fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as we are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is to pay for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work don’t make enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now no one can live by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions are cases which emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the meantime a magazine ought to be started for the sole purpose of printing the good things that the best magazines reject. Until we are on our feet and able to pay for stuff we can at least do this. And never, we hope, will we achieve that last emptiness: sophistication.

But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important. I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called Drift and Mastery, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr. Lippmann says this in his preface:

The issues that we face are very different from those of the last century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste, the dogma of sin, obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young today are born into a world in which the foundations of the older order survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry through their purposes when they have them. If the standpatter is still powerful amongst us it is because we have not learned to use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic purpose should be.

So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against absolutism, commercial oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. The Rebel program is stated. Scientific invention and blind social currents have made the old authority impossible in fact, the artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We inherit a rebel tradition. The dominant forces in our world are not the sacredness of property nor the intellectual leadership of the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution, the glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England respectability, the Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller.... In the emerging morality the husband is not regarded as the proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats over the children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child the sense of sin is a poor preparation for a temperate life.

The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom.

That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do not. I think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small minority—the people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of the population. Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other four tenths have something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is still there. The new authority is quite as strong as the old, and more insidious because it is more subtle. Young people used to be disinherited when they disagreed with their parents; now they are argued with. The former method left their minds clear; the latter befogs them—and they disinherit themselves. That is the difference. One worked from without in; the other works from within out. Of course it’s much better this way. But this is not the most important problem—this of the old rock of ages. The horrible joke of modern life is that we have been presented with a new rock of ages!

The rebel program is stated—exactly. More than that, it is in action. The difference between the new issues and the old, to Mr. Lippmann, is that we have now learned what we must do; to me, it is that we must learn to do something else. The battle lies not against the chaos of a new freedom, but against the dangers of a new authority.

Before I define, let me illustrate. About two months ago I spent four days in one of our second-large cities—a place of about two hundred thousand people. If I could only describe those four days and their stimulation—to fresh rebellion! The people I saw belonged to the supposedly enlightened inner circles—the representative upper middle class: the ones that still loom very large in comparison to the thinking minority from whom Mr. Lippmann draws his conclusions. Well, I had not forgotten how ignorant people can be, but I had forgotten how cruel they can be. I had not expected their knowledge to have increased, but their hypocrisy to have lessened. I had not looked for vision but at least for a beginning of sight; not for Truth, but perhaps for a willingness to stop lying. And I found scarcely a glimmer of these things. It was ghastly! But the strange part was this: all the time I found I was thinking not of the great faults of their opinions but of the great barrenness of their lives. Over and over the thought kept running through my head: There is no poetry of living in this place!

This brings me to my point. The new rock of ages is that wholly false perspective which assumes that what one thinks is more important than what one feels. It has been set up, quite unconsciously, by the very people who have trying to blast the old one. It is that perspective which the new generation must fight not only with the old, but in its own ranks! Here is the interest of the new battle! Our next renaissance will be concerned with changing that perspective; the genius of the future must be directed toward that end. And that is why I think it is not enough to say that there will come a time when men will think of nothing but education. There will come a time when men will think of nothing but education in imagination! And since there is no such thing as education in imagination, but only procreation of it,—well, the time will come when men will think of nothing but art. The crimes of ignorance are not comparable to the crimes of philistinism: there is no philosophy that will ever reach beyond that of the personality or of the artist.

The dominant forces in the new rock of ages are not of course the intellectual leadership of the priest, the divinity of the constitution, Victorian sentiment, or the Republican Party, but the intellectual leadership of cleverness, the divinity of cults, no sentiment, and the Practical Plan. They are endorsed by the most promising element in modern life: the young intellectuals who are working valiantly to create here what Europe has given to the arts and sciences,—and working in the wrong direction. Our inferiorities to the other civilizations they attribute to our puritanism, our speed, our economic evils. Oh, I get so sick of their failure to reach to the real cause! It is so silly to keep on insisting that we need poets like the French or philosophers like the Germans or musicians like the Russians, etc., etc., if we don’t begin soon to understand why we haven’t got them. We haven’t got them because, in this curious country, we haven’t got people who feel.—Think of an Irish peasant walking under the stars....

I grant you that it also becomes silly to talk eternally of “feeling” without qualifying or defining. It is like taking refuge behind that vaguest phrase in the language—“life itself.” But by “feeling” I mean simply that flight of wings which makes walking unnecessary; that dazzling tight-rope performance which takes you safely over the chasm of Experience but leaves you as bruised as though you had fallen to its depths. Feeling is that quality of spirit which will save any artist from the philosophical redundancies of a De Profundis. The torturing need of expressing something that far outstretches one’s capacity for expression is the foundation of art. That’s why we have so little of it in this country. There may be some Americans in whom the perspective has retained its proper balance. I happen to know of one.

It is for some such need as this that The Little Review exists: to create some attitude which so far is absolutely alien to the American tradition. I have been going to the lectures of John Cowper Powys, which are spoken of in other places in this issue, and that appreciative man gave me an interesting idea the other day. I should like to see him as editor of a literary magazine whose policy was to cut off the subscription list everybody who speculated about his pose or his insincerity and failed to miss the great beauty of his words. Now Mr. Powys is as unstable as water: that is his value. He feels entirely too much ever to be fully sane. His hypothetical magazine would gather an audience that could fight successfully the great American crime which may be described briefly as missing the point. Thus we might establish a reign of imagination which would make stupid things as impossible as cruel things, which would consider a failure to catch some new beauty or a “moral lynching of great and independent spirits” as greater crimes than murdering a man in a dark corner.

On this basis we shall continue. If we must be sensible at least we shall make it, in Shaw’s phrase, an ecstasy of common sense. And out of all this chaos shall we produce our dancing star.

The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.—Oscar Wilde.

Before the scientific spirit can reach its full bloom, it will have to acquire an honest sense of the rôle that fantasy plays in all its work. This is especially true of the social sciences. We are just beginning to realize the importance in economics of the economist’s utopia. We are learning the determining influence of the thinker’s dream.—Walter Lippmann.

Poems

Amy Lowell

Bright Sunlight

The wind has blown a corner of your shawl

Into the fountain,

Where it floats and drifts

Among the lily-pads

Like a tissue of sapphires.

But you do not heed it,

Your fingers pick at the lichens

On the stone edge of the basin,

And your eyes follow the tall clouds

As they sail over the ilex trees.

Ely Cathedral

Anaemic women, stupidly dressed and shod

In squeaky shoes, thump down the nave to laud an expurgated God.

Bunches of lights reflect upon the pavement where

The twenty benches stop, and through the close, smelled-over air

Gaunt arches push up their whited cones,

And cover the sparse worshipers with dead men’s stones.

Behind his shambling choristers, with flattened feet

And red-flapped hood, the Bishop walks, complete

In old, frayed ceremonial. The organ wheezes

A moldy psalm-tune, and a verger sneezes.

But the great Cathedral spears into the sky

Shouting for joy.

What is the red-flapped Bishop praying for, by the bye?

Heaven’s Jester
or
The Message of a White Rose

Mrs. Havelock Ellis

“It is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou strange child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me to thee, a woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as mine, whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed into Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in the sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the sleep of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of Paradise and heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her passing from Earth, had barely gained thy body again before the cap and bells were donned by thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The jingle of thy bells drew laughter and tears. God found he had need of the fool the woman had signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly courts must not lower his head or hide his face. Tears ill become the piebald suit and trappings of mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the woman who gave me to thee needed thy heart? Hear the message the white rose by thy bed gives to thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is not for thee to choose thy way of love. God’s jester is neither man nor woman nor child, but a singer of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and dry the eyes of women. Play thy part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win her lips, women crave her help, the world takes her service, and thou her smiles. Wouldst thou have more, thou poet lover in the guise of a fool?

Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows thee his face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss. In his absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the strange enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has given thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast seen will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the cap and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose on his breast.

“Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song of the souls of women and be satisfied!

HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY

Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body, her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known his God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”

In the dawn the white rose spoke once more to the jester. “Thou hast lied. Thy lady’s unknown body is untried music to thee. Thy hands would touch the strings, thy ear catch the vibrations her soul modulates to sounds of sighs and sobs at the call of love. Look at my whiteness! Think of thy unrest! The secrets of thy lady’s body are not learnt through the strong desires common to the herd of men or the fainting dreams of impassioned women. Fool! inscribed as thou art in the heavenly registers by a woman as God’s Fool, thou must learn the mystic’s lore about the body of thy Love. Thy desire is towards thy lady, and her will, not thine, is thy law. Hearken then! It were the work of an instant to close thy strong hands round her throat and bruise her into forgetfulness that love is pain. To force her mouth, so much desired, into an open well for slaking thine own thirst is love’s delicious robbery. To hurtle to her breast, as if to rob and forestall the child who may one day drink there, is to have found a shrine for prayer and peace. Yes! even to rest in the hallowed forests of her body ere thou storm the citadel where thy weapon shall break into the silent house of life, is easy and has always been the way of men with woman. Woman the abandoned, man the triumphant, woman the flower, man the gatherer, woman the luscious wine and man the thirsty drinker. Thy old-world needs desire thy lady in the way of men, though prayer before and after would grace thy feasting. Listen to the secret the white rose whispers to thee. It does not suffice that thou dost need thy lady or even that thy lady needs thee. Thou must prepare thyself for her even if she has no need of thee. The gateways of thy body must be clean, pure as snow and free from taint. Thy thoughts must shine through thine eyes like stars, thy passions burn with fires at white heat, without smoke or noise. Heaven’s jester may not approach the Holy of Holies till Desire is as white flame. The sacrament of thy Lady’s Body is precious bread and wine, to be partaken of at her desire, not thine, and only in Heaven’s good time. It is not for thee to choose. Thy part is to watch and pray and laugh and sing, and maybe lead another in to the feast thou hast prepared. Thou must bring to thy lady’s white feet frankincense and myrrh, the spoils of the sorrows thou hast borne for the tired travellers on thy journey. Precious stones, too, thou must gather for her neck, from the shores of thy past desolations. Pearls thou must also offer, burnished out of the memories of thy wayward desires which knew not her chastity or her smiles. For her breasts thou must bring shields forged from thy gluttonies and petty aims. For her arms crystals wrought out of thy dreams. For her girdle rubies made from all thy heart’s desire. For her eyes? Ah! perhaps thy kiss, delicate and passionate as is the way of seas and clouds when the earth sleeps. For her forehead thou mayest weave a crown of myrtle, for friendship, as thy Love is thy Friend and is steadfast. For her ears I will tell thee the dreams of my sister, almost black with the redness the sun has poured into her heart. For her hair, only a wreath of “love in the mist,” for in that little flower is the wonder of the Great Heart thou art learning to understand. For her lips, only thy hopes made chaste and thy fears made passionate, if God wills.

Should thy Love waken with thy kisses on her closed eyes and turn towards thee with wonder and joy at the things thou hast learned and the gifts thou hast given to her, then have a care! Women are not drunk with wine but with pity, and pity is no use to Heaven’s Jester. There are signs, though, which even thou canst understand, and when Love is born, the Fool is wise. If by chance, for there is no hope in this message of the dawn, there is a resurrection day for thee, if by chance or God’s pure will, she turns to thee as God allows one spirit to turn to another spirit, when Love has prepared the altar, then clash thy cymbals, blow thy trumpet, shout till the sleepy world rejoices, shake thy bells and fling thy Jester’s cap and cloak aside, for to eat the sacramental bread and drink the wine of thy love’s pure body thou wilt not need raiment, and as thou wert born and as thou wilt die thou wilt enter into thy Holy of Holies. And if thou die of joy, thou criest:

What is Death?

Only Love freed.

THE FOOL TO THE SOUL OF HIS LADY

The Jester said to himself, “If the body of my lady is so fair a tabernacle for her soul, how can I, a Fool, understand the ways of her spirit? My lute and pipes can only render the voices of the wind, the sea, the trees and the cries of beasts in joy and pain. My bells are a Jester’s toys for assuaging the griefs of the children of men. The travailings of my lady’s spirit, like the snow on the mountains, are out of reach of a fool’s understanding. For one brief hour I heard a faint whisper in the halls of peace when my name was signed in the heavenly registers, but, except in my heart, I carried no trophy to earth by which I could tell men of the music I heard.

This is the birthday of my Lady, the festival which calls for prayer and joy. Prayer, because the paths of earth are hard for the feet of her whose tread awakens a longing for wings in the Fool standing near. Joy, because her eyes are mirrors of a time to come when love and peace will renew earth into heaven, and men and women will become as wise as eagles and children. Through her body, I love the soul of my lady, and through her soul I love her body. Neither her soul nor her body may help and comfort the Jester even though God leads and helps him by both grace and mercy. Though his heart be sore and his body sick unto death and there seems none to comfort him, he can still sing songs for men and pipe melodies for women of the wonders revealed to him.”

The White Rose, dying by the Jester’s bed, spoke once more to the Fool.

“Cast self pity out of thine heart. Learn to live as I have learned to die, and then learn to die as I have learned to live. For thee absence seems death, but trace the meaning of the soul of the woman thou lovest. Her soul is also absent from the Oversoul as her body is absent from a Lover. Only through absence can the Oversoul draw its own to itself, and only through loneliness can the Great Lover and the Lesser Lover understand one another. Words confuse and touch enslaves. Souls speak clearly in the silence. In absence a note becomes a chord, and in silence the chord becomes a symphony. The discord dissolves into harmony, and the darkness into dawn. The absence of Death is not different from that of Life, for Death is Life, and Life the discord making Death’s music. The soul of thy Lady will find thine by the aid of both Life and Death, for it is not God’s Fool who hath declared that there is no Love nor a Creater thereof. Thou art learning that all is Love. In thy prayers today for thy Lady’s peace incline thy spirit towards hers as both approach the maternal source of the Universe. It is the Mother-Spirit of the world who has hidden thy love from thy sight, and taken thine head from the touch of her hands and torn thy lips from her kisses. Is it not always so that the mothers of the smaller world wean their children into growth and knowledge? Thou art still hers even if her body is out of sight and touch, for pure love is the simple miracle of thine heritage as a son of man and of God. Nothing can take from me what the sun made of me through his shining. Even as I die the fragrance remains. Nothing can rob thee of the hours when all things seem possible because of thy hopes and her vows. Love is pain but over-love is peace. Turn thy tears into help and pity for those who weep without thy hope and for those who dwell in dungeons and are not yet registered in heaven as wise or foolish. Let thy longings for one break into prayer for the weal of the world. Thou wert not sent here only for thy pleasure or thy peace, nor was the body of thy Lady sent for thy delight, or her soul for thy strength alone. Pain is ordained for the bringers of good tidings and love lent for the redemption of the many through the loneliness of the one. Accept thy lot and thy vision shall make thee free. Resist thy fate and thy Love’s soul and thine shall sleep embedded in flesh and with no power to grow wings. On thy knees then and pray for strength and courage with thy cap and bells in readiness by thy side, and joy within thy heart. As I die thou must live.”

The Jester took the rose in his hands, and, as its petals fell, a Fool’s prayer broke the silence.

“Maker of men,” he cried, “pour into a fool’s heart the understanding of life’s joy and pain. Make my spirit at one with the great order. Let me understand what is required of me and in understanding be at peace.” As he prayed, the Jester slept, for a great weariness was on him from much dancing. In his dream, a little child ran towards him. He opened his Jester’s cloak, and the little one held the sleeves in her tiny hands.

“Give all that thou hast and all that thou art even to one so small as I,” cried the child and ran from his sight.

The Jester was awakened by the opening and clanging of a door. He went out into the courtyard. A beggar, unshaved, and swollen with dropsy, stood before him. He had evil eyes and a mouth twisted by pain. He looked at the Jester and laughed.

“Give me thy cap and bells,” he said, “I have need of them.”

The Jester took money from his pouch.

“Take all this instead,” he cried.

The old man laughed.

“Any lord or lady can throw me that,” he said, “if only to keep me from defiling them by my presence. Gold costs less to give than to gather. It is dross and could only help my body to live and suffer. Thy cap and bells would succour my spirit so that I could forget my body. With the jingle of them I could smile at the curses of the healthy or the jibes of the well-washed. Give them to me. Thou art well and happy and hast no need of help.”

The Jester bowed his head and gave up his cap and bells, but with sorrow and pain in his heart. The beggar ran away shaking the bells and dancing with glee, the Jester’s cap all awry on his swollen head. A sweet melting tenderness and faintness took hold of the Jester and an ecstasy swayed him so that he nearly fell.

“It is the soul of my Lady speaking to mine,” he whispered. “What matter the cap and bells? Let them go.”

The woman he loved stood by him and her voice was like a lute on the air as she grasped the Jester’s shoulders.

“Give all thy music to me,” she whispered, “I am in sore travail because of things a Fool cannot understand. Thy music ravishes me and makes me know that love is a consuming fire in which one burns gladly. Thy wild notes make desire in me a quenchless thirst which no drinking can assuage. Thy soft piping fills my veins with a pain which is like joy and with a joy which is like pain. Give me all, keep nothing back. I would see as thou seest, hear as thou hearest, dream as thou dreamest, so that I can play as thou, but I must tune thy pipes to the voice of my heart.”

The Jester drew his hood over his head and went to his cell. His Lady had no doubt as to what he would bring back to her, for she had learnt from him that love gives all things without question or regret. The Jester quite simply collected all the instruments he had made during the long years of his youth and his manhood. They were precious to him, for he had not been able to buy as others because of his poverty. He had gone even to the offal of the slaughter-houses, and to the dank banks of the ponds, and the waste places in hills and valleys for the things which gave his instruments such power over men with the strange cries he evoked. The Jester’s sadness had been greater than even his poverty, but the music had never failed to comfort and strengthen him. Voices from the over-world and under-world spoke to him, and the strange secrets he translated into sound. The Jester’s heart was glad at last. His Lady had need of him and of what he had made. His music was hers as his heart was hers. He laid all his precious instruments at her feet and looked in her eyes. There were smiles for him there. She bent as he knelt and took his head, as of old, between her long cool hands, and kissed his brow.

“Happy, happy Fool,” she cried, “thus to be able to give all. I will break hearts with the sweetness of these strings, I will bind others to me and know it is thy gift. Happy Fool! Goodbye!”

“May God comfort thee and me,” said the Jester, as he turned toward his cell.

THE JESTER SLEEPS

“The Jester is dead.” The words were said gravely, and the Lady who heard them looked keenly in an old man’s face.

“Dead,” she cried.

“Yes! Found dead this morning. We could not find his cap and bells nor the instruments he loved more than all other things. There seems no more music in the world now, for we all grew happy through his music and the sun.”

“Dead!” she whispered. “May I....”

She hesitated. “Yes, come.”

The old man led the way.

“He is there. We found nothing by him but the leaves of a dead white rose and the wind from his window blew them on to his breast.”

“He smiles,” said the Lady.

There was silence in the cell except for the fierce howling of an April wind and the tiny fluttering of the leaves on the breast of the Jester.

The Lady turned towards the door.

“His instruments are at the gate,” she said, impatiently. “Why did he die, I wonder? The reeds are no use to me. I cannot play upon them ... not a sound will come.”

Green Symphony

John Gould Fletcher

I

The glittering leaves of the rhododendrons

Balance and vibrate in the cool air;

While in the sky above them

White clouds chase each other.

Like scampering rabbits,

Flashes of sunlight sweep the lawn;

They fling in passing

Patterns of shadow,

Golden and green.

With long cascades of laughter,

The mating birds dart and swoop to the turf:

’Mid their mad trillings

Glints the gay sun behind the trees.

Down there are deep blue lakes:

Orange blossom droops in the water.

In the tower of the winds,

All the bells are set adrift:

Jingling

For the dawn.

Thin fluttering streamers

Of breeze lash through the swaying boughs,

Palely expectant

The earth receives the slanting rain.

I am a glittering raindrop

Hugged close by the cool rhododendron.

I am a daisy starring

The exquisite curves of the close-cropped turf.

The glittering leaves of the rhododendron

Are shaken like blue green blades of glass,

Flickering, cracking, falling:

Splintering in a million fragments.

The wind runs laughing up the slope

Stripping off handfuls of wet green leaves,

To fling in peoples’ faces.

Wallowing on the daisy-powdered turf,

Clutching at the sunlight,

Cavorting in the shadow.

Like baroque pearls,

Like cloudy emeralds,

The clouds and the trees clash together;

Whirling and swirling,

In the tumult

Of the spring,

And the wind.

II

The trees splash the sky with their fingers,

A restless green rout of stars.

With whirling movement

They swing their boughs

About their stems:

Planes on planes of light and shadow

Pass among them,

Opening fanlike to fall.

The trees are like a sea;

Tossing;

Trembling,

Roaring,

Wallowing,

Darting their long green flickering fronds up at the sky,

Subsiding,

Spotted with white blossom-spray.

The trees are roofs:

Hollow caverns of cool blue shadow,

Solemn arches

In the afternoons.

The whole vast horizon

In terrace beyond terrace,

Pinnacle above pinnacle,

Lifts to the sky

Serrated ranks of green on green.

They caress the roofs with their fingers,

They sprawl about the river to look into it;

Up the hill they come

Gesticulating challenge:

They cower together

In dark valleys;

They yearn out over the fields.

Enamelled domes

Tumble upon the grass,

Crashing in ruin

Quiet at last.

The trees lash the sky with their leaves,

Uneasily shaking their dark green manes.

III

Far let the voices of the mad wild birds be calling me,

I will abide in this forest of pines.

When the wind blows

Battling through the forest,

I hear it distantly,

Like the crash of a perpetual sea.

When the rain falls,

I watch silver spears slanting downwards

From pale river-pools of sky,

Enclosed in dark fronds.

When the sun shines,

I weave together distant branches till they enclose mighty circles,

I sway to the movement of hooded summits,

I swim leisurely in deep blue seas of air.

I hug the smooth bark of stately red pillars

And with cones carefully scattered

I mark the progression of dark dial-shadows

Flung diagonally downwards through the afternoon.

This turf is not like turf:

It is a smooth dry carpet of velvet,

Embroidered with brown patterns of needles and cones.

These trees are not like trees:

They are innumerable feathery pagoda-umbrellas,

Stiffly ungracious to the wind,

Teetering on red-lacquered stems.

In the evening I listen to the winds’ lisping,

While the conflagrations of the sunset flicker and clash behind me,

Flamboyant crenelations of glory amid the charred ebony boles.

In the night the fiery nightingales

Shall clash and trill through the silence:

Like the voices of mermaids crying

From the sea.

Long ago has the moon whelmed this uncompleted temple.

Stars swim like gold fish far above the black arches.

Far let the timid feet of dawn fly to catch me:

I will abide in this forest of pines:

For I have unveiled naked beauty,

And the things that she whispered to me in the darkness,

Are buried deep in my heart.

Now let the black tops of the pine-trees break like a spent wave,

Against the grey sky:

These are tombs and memorials and temples and altars sunkindled for me.

The Case of French Poetry

Richard Aldington

It is with a feeling of regret and astonishment that I find nearly all my English confrères so opposed to the spirit of French culture, so mistaken in their views, and so curiously ignorant of the real facts of the development of modern French literature.

I am led to this reflection by reading Mr. Shanks’s excellent article in your December number. It is a most ungracious task to criticise a man who is about to hazard his life in the service of his country; and I honor Mr. Shanks more than I can express. But if I felt as Mr. Shanks does on the subject of French and German poetry I would not fight at all or I would fight for Germany! To a poet poetry must be the great business of life and, speaking for myself, I would emphatically support the Germans if I thought they were better poets than the French and English! (You will take that rhetorical statement for what it is worth.)

Intellectually about fifty per cent of English people are Germanized without knowing it. I should say the percentage is even higher in America. I believe that no study is considered so frivolous or so suspect in both countries as the study of French art and poetry. And yet—Russia and one or two Anglo-Saxons put aside—the history of the art of the last fifty years is the history of French art. You who have given Whistler to the world do not need me to tell you what French art is. The American painting at a recent Exhibition here was of so high a quality that I felt my respect for the intellectual progress of America greatly increased. I admit freely and regretfully that it was immeasurely better than English painting. That is because most Americans study painting in Paris.

Why don’t they sometimes give a look at the poetry of France, for in no country is poetry so cultivated, so well understood, and so honored? Mr. Shanks apparently knows something of German poetry and nothing of French. Of Liliencron I know nothing. But I do know something of Hauptmann, Dehmel, and Stefan Georg. (I have no doubt Mr. Shanks dislikes Georg because the latter got his training in France.) Well, I will cheerfully wager that any more or less fair-minded person would find three equally good poets in France to every one that can be mentioned in Germany.

“Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolistes”! What an odd statement! Régnier is a Parnassian and Kahn a nobody. I am not going to write a history of modern French poetry, nor speculate as to the effect of 1870 or the probable effect of 1914 on poetry, especially French poetry. I just want to give some names, and if anyone,—if Mr. Shanks,—can give me half as many German poets of the same calibre, charm, and general technical accomplishment I shall be delighted.

Let us grant that Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the elder Parnassians were products of the period of before 1870. Well, since that disastrous war France has produced the following—I will not say great—delightful and readable poets: Samain, Francis Jammes, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas, Paul Fort, Laurent Tailhade, Jules Romains, Remy de Gourmont, Charles Vildrac, Laforgue, Louys (translations), Mallarmé (pre-1870?) and younger men like Guy-Charles Cros, Apollinaire, Castiaux, André Spire, Carco, Divoire, Jouve, Luc Durtain, and dozens more. I do not mention the Belgians Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Elskamp, and Rodenbach, nor the two Franco-Americans Vielé Griffin, and Merrill—though they also have considerable reputations. (Did you ever hear of an American who wanted to write German?)

I have quoted off-hand twenty-six names from a period of about forty years. And you must remember that there are scores and scores of names only a little less known, and scores and scores beyond that which I may have missed in my reading.

But I think those few names prove beyond all doubt—and I would like people to read them and contrast them with German poets—that French poetry is the foremost in our age for fertility, originality, and general poetic charm.

It is not hatred of Germany but love of poetry which has called this letter from me. I believe in France in the French tradition. And if there is one thing which can reconcile me to this war it is the fact that England has ranged herself beside France and Belgium, beside the cosmopolite, graceful, humanizing, influences of France and French civilization against the nationalist, narrow, and dehumanizing influences of Berlin. I believe all Englishmen regret that they oppose the gay, cultivated, cosmopolite Austrians; it is a misfortune. But of the great issue between the nations—the great intellectual issue—there can be no doubt. And Mr. Shanks, when he praises (unjustly I firmly believe) the poets of Germany and disparages (equally unjustly) the poets of France, is intellectually on the side of the enemy he is so courageously opposing with physical force. I believe in the kindliness of Germans; I know them to be excellent fathers and most generous friends; I know them to be brave soldiers and sailors; I know they are good chemists, reasonably good doctors, and very boring professors. At the name of Heine all men should doff their hats, but that modern Germany (Germany since 1870) has produced one-fiftieth of the poetry that France has produced—in quality as well as quantity—that it has added anything to the purely creative side of the arts, I utterly deny.

I know that there is Nietzsche.... Perhaps I will write you another letter on Nietzsche, if I may.

I feel that this protest will be put down to “war-fever.” I must refer you to my pre-war articles in English periodicals, and to the testimony of my friends—some of whom are now in America—that such has always been my attitude. It has always been a deep regret of mine that both American and English literature, criticism and periodicals were so undermined with German influences that all gentleness, all intentional good will, all that we mean by the “Latin tradition” was anathema, and utterly despised!

The Last Woman

George Soule

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

CHARACTERS:

SCENE:

The Council Room of the Futurist Sages, decorated in brilliant colors to suggest a battle of the minds at some far future date. The Sages are seated about the walls in a parabolic curve. They are costumed with appropriate inappropriateness. Green ears is in present day evening dress; Purple hair in fiery green robes; Blue face in a pink business suit; Yellow hat in a conventional futurist costume of mingled colors; Red sword in a black monk’s gown, with a sword in his rope girdle; White heart, who is young, in football armor.

Blue Face. Shall we give the woman a chance to defend herself?

Green Ears. Why should we? If her defense is good, we shall be prejudiced against her. And as we admit the rule of prejudice, the defense will lose its judicial character.

Red Sword. Judicial? Who wants to be judicial? I abolished that word last year.

Green Ears. That’s just the point. We hate the judicial; therefore if the defense loses its judicial character we may be forced to decide both ways at the same time. Acquit on the ground of illogical defense; convict on the grounds of prejudice against good defense.

Purple Hair. Red sword has abolished judicial. Well, we have also abolished the past; we have abolished all abolishments!

Yellow Hat. Above all, we must guard against precedent. Let us look up all previous trials, and take care to do the opposite.

White Heart. But again, that would entangle us in the past. I want to see the woman!

Red Sword. He wants to see the woman! He is a reactionary!

Purple Hair. Do not argue, brothers. For if we argue, we shall either settle the case by logic, which we repudiate, or by violence, so that we shall kill each other before we have a chance to decide about the woman.

Red Sword. Time server! I shall kill you all, and decide for myself.

Blue Face. Red cabbages, redness of blue cabbages, when breakfast is no cabbage in a potato. Cocoa crinkles!

Yellow Hat. He is right, brothers.

All. He is right.

Blue Face. We, who have exalted ourselves above all modes of thought, we who have cast aside all images and unfettered ourselves from all language and all sequence, we who have repudiated humanity; we have a right to fight a lower order with its own weapons. Caprice is our god; let us then have a caprice to judge this woman with logic and judicial procedure. Have you all this caprice?

All. We have.

Red Sword. I object: This is democracy.

Green Ears. We accept your objection, and act in opposition to it.

Blue Face. Then let the woman be brought in.

(White Heart goes out right and brings in the woman. She is tall, of beautiful face and figure, in a simple white Greek tunic. In her hair is a gold fillet. She is led to the center, where she is left standing, as White Heart resumes his seat.)

Blue Face. Deliver the charge, Red sword!

Red Sword (standing). You are charged, first, with being a woman. And as a woman you are the living incarnation of the past. You represent conservatism and the anti-military virtues; you clog the wheels of progress; you sap men’s energies and misdirect them from the triumphs of achievement to the service of material things—or immaterial things. Your effeminate beauty poisons art and furnishes countless photographic realists with the means of selling paintings. The love of you has vitiated poetry and music. Masquerading in the garments of caprice, you have deceived man into accepting the traditional. As Futurists we detest you. This is the first charge! (A pause.)

The Woman. You accuse me of being a woman. It is a grave charge. But first, in order that I may have a chance to disprove it, I suggest that you tell me what a woman is.

Green Ears. A woman is that whose place is in the home.

Purple Hair. A woman is that which is ruled by instinct.

Blue Face. A woman is that which is beautiful.

Yellow Hat. A woman is that which men call a mystery.

White Heart (rapturously). A woman is that which men love.

Red Sword (vehemently). A woman is that which men hate.

The Woman. These are your definitions?

Blue Face. They are.

The Woman. Then in order to prove that I am a woman you must prove that they describe me. And you must prove that there is nothing else in me.

Red Sword. We must prove nothing. We act.

The Woman. Then why do you talk?

Red Sword (heatedly). I deny that you are beautiful. And if you are beautiful, I deny beauty.

Yellow Hat. Is it not our caprice to be judicial? Come, Red Sword, do not descend to flattery!

Purple Hair. All our definitions have been proved a million times. They are unprovable.