The Little Review

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

JUNE, 1914

25 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO

$2.50 a year

The Little Review

Vol. I

JUNE, 1914

No. 4

Copyright, 1914, by Margaret C. Anderson.

“Incense and Splendor”

Margaret C. Anderson

A young American novelist stated the other day that the American woman is oversexed; that present-day modes of dress are all designed to emphasize sex; and that it is high time for a reaction against sex discussions, sex stories, and sex plays.

But I think she’s entirely mistaken. The American woman, speaking broadly, is pathetically undersexed, just as she is undersensitive and underintelligent. The last adjective will be disputed or resented; but it’s interesting once in a while to hear the thoughtful foreigner’s opinion of our intelligence. Tagore, for instance, said that he was agreeably surprised in regard to the American man and astonished at the stupidity of the American woman. As for our fiction and drama—we’ve had much about sex in the last few years, some of it intensely valuable, much of it intensely foolish; but it’s quite too early to predict the reaction. The really constructive work on the subject is yet to be done.

And the pity of the whole thing is that the critics who keep lecturing us on our oversexedness don’t realize that what they’re really trying to get at is our poverty of spirit, our emotional incapacities, our vanities, our pettinesses—any number of qualities which spring from anything but too much sex. Nothing is safer than to say that the man or woman of strong sex equipment is rarely vain or petty or mean or unintelligent. But as a result of all this vague bickering, “sex” continues to shoulder the blame for all kinds of shortcomings, and the real root of the trouble goes untreated—even undiagnosed. One thing is certain: until we become conscious that there’s something very wrong with our attitude toward sex, we’ll never get rid of the hard, tight, anæmic, metallic woman who flourishes in America as nowhere else in the world.

This doesn’t mean the old Puritan type, to whom sex was a rotten, unmentionable thing; nor does it mean the Victorian, who recognizes the sex impulse only as a means to an end. They belong to the past too definitely to be harmful. It means two newer types than these: the woman who looks upon sex as something to be endured and forgiven, and the woman who doesn’t feel at all.

The first type has a great (and by no means a secret) pride in her spiritual superiority to the coarse creature she married, and a never-dying hope that she can lead him up to her level. She talks a lot about spirituality; she has her standards, and she knows how to classify what she calls “sensuality”; she’s convinced that she has married the best man in the world, but—well, all men have this failing in common, and the only thing one can do is to rise above it magnificently, with that air of spiritual isolation which is her most effective weapon. Shaw has hit her off on occasion, but he ought to devote a whole three acts to her undoing; or perhaps an Ibsen would do it better, because tragedy follows her path like some sinister shadow, as inevitably as those other “ghosts” of his. The second type has no more capacity for love or sex than she has for music or poetry—which is none at all. Like a polished glass vase, empty and beautiful, she lures the man who loves her to a kind of supreme nothingness. She will always tell you that marriage is “wonderful”; and she urges all her friends to marry as quickly as possible, for that’s the only way to be perfectly happy. Marriage is “wonderful” to her just as birth is “wonderful” in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s satire:

Birth comes. Birth—

The breathing re-creation of the earth!

All earth, all sky, all God, life’s sweet deep whole,

Newborn again to each new soul!

“Oh, are you? What a shame! Too bad, my dear!

How will you stand it, too. It’s very queer

The dreadful trials women have to carry;

But you can’t always help it when you marry.

Oh, what a sweet layette! What lovely socks!

What an exquisite puff and powder box!

Who is your doctor? Yes, his skill’s immense—

But it’s a dreadful danger and expense!”

It’s all a powder-puff matter: marriage means new clothes, gifts, and a house to play with. It gives her another chance to get something for nothing—which is immoral. But the beauty of the situation is that the immorality (thanks to our habits of not thinking straight) is so perfectly concealed: it even appears that she is the one who does the giving. As for any bother about sex, she’ll soon put an end to that. And so she goes on her pirate ways, luring for the sake of the lure, adding her voice to the already swelled chorus which proclaims that truth and beauty lodge in things as they are, not in things as they might or should be.

But, to return to the novelist’s argument about clothes, the present fashion for low necks and slit skirts has nothing to do with sex necessarily. Its origin is in vanity—which may or may not have a bearing upon sex. And of course it usually hasn’t; for vanity is an attribute of small natures, and sex is an attribute of great ones.

There has never been a time when women had such an opportunity to be beautiful physically. And they are taking advantage of it. Watch any modern matinée or concert or shopping crowd carefully. There’s something about the new style that points to a finer naturalness, just as it is more natural for men to wear clothes that follow the lines of their bodies than to pad their shoulders and use twice too much cloth in their trouser legs. The move of muscles through a close-fitting suit gives an effect of strength and efficiency and animal grace that is superbly healthy. And it is so with women, too. With the exception of the foolish and unnecessary restrictions in walking women have such a splendid chance to look straight, unhampered, direct, lithe. I don’t know just why, but I want to use the word “true” about the new clothes. They’re so much less dishonest than the old padded ways—the strange, perverted, muffled methods. The old plan was built on the theory that the suppression of nature is civilization; the new plan seems to be that a recognition of nature is common sense. We may become Greek yet. By all of which I’ll probably be credited with supporting the silly indecencies we see every day on the street—ridiculous, unintelligent manifestations of the new freedom—instead of merely seeing in its wise expression a bigger hope of truth. I think the preachers who are filling the newspapers with hysterical protests about women’s dress had better look a little more closely at the real issue and stop confusing a fine impulse with its inevitable abuses.

But after all there’s only one important thing to be said about sex in its relation to a full life. Some day we’re going to have a tremendous revaluation of the thing known as feeling. We’re going to realize that the only person who doesn’t err in relation to values is the artist; and since the bigger part of the artist’s equipment is simply the capacity to feel, we’re going to begin training a race of men toward a new ideal. It shall be this: that nothing shall qualify as fundamentally “immoral” except denial—the failure of imagination, of understanding, of appreciation, of quickening to beauty in every form, of perceiving beauty where custom or convention has dwarfed its original stature; the failure to put one’s self in the other person’s place; the great, ghastly failure of life which allows one to look but not to see, to listen but not to hear—to touch but not to feel.

The other night I heard Schumann’s Des Abends—that summer-night elegy of a thousand, thousand cadences—played near a place where trees were stirring softly and grass smelling warm and cool; some one said afterward that it was pretty.... The other day I heard a violin played so throbbingly that it was like “what the sea has striven to say”; and through it all a group of people talked, as though no miracle were happening. Not very long after these two —— (I can’t find a noun), I talked with some one who tried to convince me that the biggest and most valiant person I know was—“well, not the sort one can afford to be friends with.” Somehow all three episodes immediately linked themselves together in my mind. Each was a failure of the same type—a failure of imagination, of feeling; the last one, at least, was tragedy; and it will become impossible for people to fail that way only when they stop failing in the first two ways.

Not long ago I went into a music store and bought Tschaikowsky’s Les Larmes. It cost twenty-eight cents. I walked out so under the spell of the immense adventure of living that I realized later how imbecile I must have looked and why the clerk gazed at me so suspiciously. But I had a song which had cost a man who knows what sorrow to write—a thing of such richness that it meant experience to any one who could own it. One of the world’s big things for twenty-eight cents! And such things happen every day!

Sex is simply the quintessence of this type of feeling, plus a deeper thing for which no words have been made. But we reach the wonder of the utmost realization in just one way: by having felt greatly at every step.

“American artists know everything,” said a young foreign sculptor lately; “they know that much” (throwing out his arms wide), “but they only feel that much!” (measuring an inch with his fingers). How can we produce the great audiences that Whitman knew we needed in order to have great poets, if we don’t train the new generations to feel? How can we prevent these crimes against love and sex—how put a stop to human waste in all its hideous forms—if we don’t recognize the new idealism which means not to deny?

A Kaleidoscope

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

Blanche Sweet—Moving-Picture Actress

[After seeing the reel called Oil and Water.]

Beauty has a throne-room

In our humorous town,

Spoiling its hobgoblins,

Laughing shadows down.

Dour musicians torture

Rag-time ballads vile,

But we walk serenely

Down the odorous aisle.

We forgive the squalor,

And the boom and squeal,

For the Great Queen flashes

From the moving reel.

Just a prim blonde stranger

In her early day,

Hiding brilliant weapons,

Too averse to play;

Then she burst upon us

Dancing through the night,

Oh, her maiden radiance,

Veils and roses white!

With new powers, yet cautious,

Not too smart or skilled,

That first flash of dancing

Wrought the thing she willed:—

Mobs of us made noble

By her strong desire,

By her white, uplifting

Royal romance-fire.

Though the tin piano

Snarls its tango rude,

Though the chairs are shaky

And the drama’s crude,

Solemn are her motions,

Stately are her wiles,

Filling oafs with wisdom,

Saving souls with smiles;

Mid the restless actors

She is rich and slow,

She will stand like marble,

She will pause and glow,

Though the film is twitching

Keep a peaceful reign,

Ruler of her passion,

Ruler of our pain!

Girl, You Shall Mock No Longer

You shall not hide forever,

I shall your path discern;

I have the key to Heaven,

Key to the pits that burn.

Saved ones will help me, lost ones

Spy on your secret way—

Show me your flying footprints

On past your death-bed day.

If by your pride you stumble

Down to the demon-land,

I shall be there beside you,

Chained to your burning hand.

If, by your choice and pleasure,

You shall ascend the sky,

I, too, will mount that stairway,

You shall not put me by.

There, ’mid the holy people,

Healed of your blasting scorn,

Clasped in these arms that hunger,

Splendid with dreams reborn,

You shall be mastered, lady,

Knowing, at last, Desire—

Lifting your face for kisses—

Kisses of bitter fire.

The Amaranth

Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here ...

Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns

And the tremendous amaranth descends

Sweet with glory of ten thousand dawns?

Does it not mean my God would have me say:—

“Whether you will or no, oh city young

Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you,

Flash and loom greatly, all your marts among?”

Friends I will not cease hoping, though you weep.

Such things I see, and some of them shall come

Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-grey,

Though now our youths are strident, or are dumb.

Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town shall rise.

Naught can delay it. Though it may not be

Just as I dream, it comes at last, I know

With streets like channels of an incense-sea!

An Argument

I. The voice of the man who is impatient with visions and Utopias.

We find your soft Utopias as white

As new-cut bread, as dull as life in cells,

Oh scribes that dare forget how wild we are,

How human breasts adore alarum bells.

You house us in a hive of prigs and saints

Communal, frugal, clean, and chaste by law.

I’d rather brood in bloody Elsinore

Or be Lear’s fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.

Promise us all our share in Agincourt.

Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death.

That future ant-hills will not be too good

For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.

Promise that through tomorrow’s spirit-war

Man’s deathless soul will hack and hew its way,

Each flaunting Cæsar climbing to his fate

Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.

And never a shallow jester any more.

Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.

Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise,

And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain!

II. The Rhymer’s reply. Incense and Splendor.

Incense and splendor haunt me as I go.

Though my good works have been, alas, too few,

Though I do naught, High Heaven comes down to me

And future ages pass in tall review.

I see the years to come as armies vast,

Stalking tremendous through the fields of time.

Man is unborn. Tomorrow he is born

Flamelike to hover o’er the moil and grime;

Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone,

Sowing a million flowers where now we mourn—

Laying new precious pavements with a song,

Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn.

I have seen lovers by those new-built walls

Clothed like the dawn, in orange, gold, and red;

Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love

Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head.

Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers;

Passion was turned to civic strength that day—

Piling the marbles, making fairer domes

With zeal that else had burned bright youth away.

I have seen priestesses of life go by

Gliding in Samite through the incense-sea:—

Innocent children marching with them there,

Singing in flowered robes—“the Earth is free!”

While on the fair deep-carved, unfinished towers

Sentinels watched in armor night and day—

Guarding the brazier-fires of hope and dream—

Wild was their peace, and dawn-bright their array!

Darling Daughter of Babylon

Too soon you wearied of our tears.

And then you danced with spangled feet,

Leading Belshazzar’s chattering court

A-tinkling through the shadowy street.

With mead they came, with chants of shame,

Desire’s red flag before them flew.

And Istar’s music moved your mouth

And Baal’s deep shames rewoke in you.

Now you could drive the royal car:

Forget our Nation’s breaking load:—

Now you could sleep on silver beds—

(Bitter and dark was our abode).

And so for many a night you laughed

And knew not of my hopeless prayer,

Till God’s own spirit whipped you forth

From Istar’s shrine, from Istar’s stair.

Darling daughter of Babylon—

Rose by the black Euphrates flood—

Again your beauty grew more dear

Than my slave’s bread, than my heart’s blood.

We sang of Zion, good to know,

Where righteousness and peace abide ...

What of your second sacrilege

Carousing at Belshazzar’s side?

Once, by a stream, we clasped tired hands—

Your paint and henna washed away.

Your place (you said) was with the slaves

Who sewed the thick cloth, night and day.

You were a pale and holy maid

Toil-bound with us. One night you said:—

“Your God shall be my God until

I slumber with the patriarch dead.”

Pardon, daughter of Babylon,

If, on this night remembering

Our lover walks under the walls

Of hanging gardens in the spring—

A venom comes, from broken hope—

From memories of your comrade-song,

Until I curse your painted eyes

And do your flower-mouth too much wrong.

I Went Down Into the Desert

I went down into the desert

To meet Elijah—

Or some one like, arisen from the dead.

I thought to find him in an echoing cave,

For so my dream had said.

I went down into the desert

To meet John the Baptist.

I walked with feet that bled,

Seeking that prophet, lean and brown and bold.

I spied foul fiends instead.

I went down into the desert

To meet my God,

By Him be comforted.

I went down into the desert

To meet my God

And I met the Devil in Red.

I went down into the desert

To meet my God.

Oh Lord, my God, awaken from the dead!

I see you there, your thorn-crown on the ground—

I see you there, half-buried in the sand—

I see you there, your white bones glistening, bare,

The carrion birds a-wheeling round your head!

Encountered on the Streets of the City

The Church of Vision and Dream

Is it for naught that where the tired crowds see

Only a place for trade, a teeming square,

Doors of high portent open unto me

Carved with great eagles, and with Hawthorns rare?

Doors I proclaim, for there are rooms forgot

Ripened through æons by the good and wise:

Walls set with Art’s own pearl and amethyst

Angel-wrought hangings there, and heaven-hued dyes:—

Dazzling the eye of faith, the hope-filled heart:—

Rooms rich in records of old deeds sublime:

Books that hold garnered harvests of far lands

Pictures that tableau Man’s triumphant climb:

Statues so white, so counterfeiting life,

Bronze so ennobled, so with glory fraught

That the tired eyes must weep with joy to see,

And the tired mind in Beauty’s net be caught.

Come, enter there, and meet Tomorrow’s Man,

Communing with him softly, day by day.

Ah, the deep vistas he reveals, the dream

Of Angel-bands in infinite array—

Bright angel-bands that dance in paths of earth

When our despairs are gone, long overpast—

When men and maidens give fair hearts to Christ

And white streets flame in righteous peace at last!

The Stubborn Mouse

The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down

Began his task in early life,

He kept so busy with his teeth

He had no time to take a wife.

He gnawed and gnawed through sun and rain,

When the ambitious fit was on,

Then rested in the sawdust till

A month in idleness had gone.

He did not move about to hunt

The coteries of mousie-men;

He was a snail-paced stupid thing

Until he cared to gnaw again.

The mouse that gnawed the oak-tree down

When that tough foe was at his feet—

Found in the stump no angel-cake

Nor buttered bread, no cheese, nor meat—

The forest-roof let in the sky.

“This light is worth the work,” said he.

“I’ll make this ancient swamp more light”—

And started on another tree!

The Sword-Pen of the Rhymer

I’ll haunt this town, though gone the maids and men

The darling few, my friends and loves today.