THE LITTLE REVIEW


                   _Literature_ _Drama_ _Music_ _Art_

                          MARGARET C. ANDERSON
                                 EDITOR

                              APRIL, 1915

  Etchings (Not to Be Read Aloud)                     William Saphier
  Mr. Comstock and the Resourceful Police        Margaret C. Anderson
  Wild Songs                                         Skipwith Cannéll
  The Poetry of Paul Fort                           Richard Aldington
  The Subman                                        Alexander S. Kaun
  Hunger                                              George Franklin
  Poems                                                  David O’Neil
  Musik or Music?                                     James Whittaker
  The Critics’ Catastrophe                           Herman Schuchert
  A Shorn Strindberg                               Marguerite Swawite
  Vers Libre and Advertisements                   John Gould Fletcher
  Extreme Unction                                          Mary Aldis
  The Schoolmaster                               George Burman Foster
  My Friend, the Incurable                                Ibn Gabirol
  Gabrilowitsch and the New Standard                         M. C. A.
  Bauer and Casals                                   Herman Schuchert
  Book Discussion                                                    
  John Cowper Powys on Henry James                                   
  The Reader Critic                                                  

                           Published Monthly

                            15 cents a copy

                    MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
                           Fine Arts Building
                                CHICAGO

                              $1.50 a year

         Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago




                           THE LITTLE REVIEW


                                Vol. 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.

   The presence in Chicago of one James Shooneker is like some
   fearfully disturbing shadow behind each of the five writers.
   Bowowski, within half an hour after the recital, has three
   helpers in the Public Library searching for every printed word of
   Shooneker. After a tasteless dinner, Ben Dullard Krupp scares
   three piano pupils out of their wits by an unusual amount of
   shouting and stamping; this, also, should be attributed to the
   visiting author. Worcester seeks his desk in the editorial room
   and crams on “Pathetic Spaces”—Shooneker’s latest book, according
   to the clerk. But the young critic’s attention strays from the
   pages of print to the lady in the green-room ... lovely person,
   if she can’t play the piano. Worcester has an impulse to use
   the telephone, and soon it masters him. He calls up Madame
   Bonjoline’s hotel and, as she is out, leaves a message—he will
   call in person at eight o’clock. Then a note is written, which he
   despatches to her by messenger. After that, there is time to
   think things over. Was there ever anyone as charming as she? And
   she has expressed her admiration for his frank manner and open
   criticism. Perhaps——Now the Madame is not willing to admit him at
   first; but he is insistent, and she permits him to enter. James
   Shooneker is seated by the window. Worcester, like a guilty boy,
   shakes hands with him and mumbles acknowledgement. But soon the
   celebrated critic has him at his ease, and the young journalist
   is talking with his accustomed candor. Then, continuing in the
                         same friendly manner,

JAMES SHOONEKER. Mr. Worcester, you might be interested in knowing the
reason for my Chicago visit. In fact, it is only fair you should know.

DONALD WORCESTER. Sure!

JAMES SHOONEKER. Very well then. Your paper, the Worst Glaring Nuisance,
as its catch-word has it, has sent for me to fill the vacancy created by
your resignation.

DONALD WORCESTER. Who’s bluff is this?

JAMES SHOONEKER. It is true. I have your place offered me. Now, I don’t
want to seem arbitrary, but here’s my proposition: In the first place,
cut out your infatuation for Madame Bonjoline. That’s the main
condition, if you want me to leave Chicago. The second thing is perhaps
more important to yourself, and that is that you promise to take a long
course in counterpoint and musical history under some good authority, if
you can find one in the United States. Perhaps you would do well to tap
the boundless information of your friend, Bowowski. These are my only
demands. I don’t want your job. I’ll drop a note to your editor and tell
him he doesn’t appreciate you. But you will have to forget your
aspirations for the Madame, and behave yourself with a dignity becoming
your position. You mustn’t make yourself ridiculous over Frizza, and for
her sake—

DONALD WORCESTER. Shooneker, you certainly are a brick! You certainly
are! I can’t help being a bit dazed with Madame, but I’ll keep it all to
myself. You’re a peach!

MADAME BONJOLINE. See, James, how perfectly American he is! I told you
he would be. Isn’t he a dear boy?

JAMES SHOONEKER. You like the conditions, then?

DONALD WORCESTER. Bully! I appreciate them. And say, didn’t you write a
book once called _The Insane Melons_?

JAMES SHOONEKER. Yes, I have a book with a title something like that.
Why do you ask?

DONALD WORCESTER. If you’ve got one with you, I’d like a signed copy.

JAMES SHOONEKER. I’m very sorry, but I didn’t bring any with me. Perhaps
I can send you one later.

DONALD WORCESTER. Fine! I wish you would. That’s treating me mighty
good.

MADAME BONJOLINE. You deserve it, my boy.

   In a confusion of thanks, apologies, and compliments, Worcester
   leaves the room and returns to the office, where an article is
   written which harbors no doubt that Madame Frizza is a great
   pianist. About the same hour, Mr. Morless is passing in a copy of
   his own criticism, stating that the Madame is a fairly promising
   amateur. The menacing cloud of Shooneker seems to hang over him;
   it has nearly prevented his passing in the article. And Ben
   Dullard Krupp, without a regular post, mails his lengthy and
   scathing opinion of the Madame to a weekly paper, in the hope of
   securing a steady allotment of their space. To him, also, the
   thought of an “outside” critic in their midst is irritating and,
   at times, threatening. What was HE going to say about her? His
   word might have weight. Suppose ... and Krupp wishes now he could
   reach into the mail-box and pull out his article. But the panic
   passes; he recalls several of his pet phrases, and this restores
                  full confidence in his own finality.

   Again—the same dining-room in the “Cave Dwellers,” with three of
   the critics disposing of an early lunch, almost early enough to be
                           called breakfast.

BOWOWSKI. They can’t print more than a couple hundred.

HATCHETT. Somebody told me they had several thousand paid subscriptions,
and then printed a bunch of extras.

KRUPP. What difference does that make? The point is: what will they sell
for? I’m good for my share, but there’s a limit, you know. Do you
suppose that if I offered to do their musical criticism, they would
destroy this issue as it stands?

HATCHETT. You can’t tell. It isn’t “they” but “she.” You’re dealing with
a woman, a young one at that.

KRUPP. Oh, Hell; I can get around that difficulty. Waiter! Bring me a
telephone! Hurry up!

BOWOWSKI. Do you realize, gentlemen, that it is more than possible, in
fact it is even likely, considerably more than probable, that we are
right in the case of Madame Bonjoline, and that one James Shooneker is
in error?

HATCHETT. By George! That’s so, isn’t it!

KRUPP. There’s no question about it. Just wait a minute now, while I
call up this “Little Revolt”—ha! ha!—and see how they jump at the
mention of my name.

   Ben Dullard Krupp is informed over the wire that the new issue of_
   THE LITTLE REVIEW _in large quantities is already in the mails, etc.
   In fact, at the same moment, the famous Shooneker is glancing
   through his own contribution; he swears at a misprint and puts
   the magazine in his suitcase, to read on the train. Madame
   Bonjoline does not open her copy, having read the article
         concerning herself from manuscript, two weeks before.

KRUPP. Rank insolence, I call it!

HATCHETT. What’s the matter? Won’t they sell?

KRUPP. She says the mails are flooded with the impudent sheet.

BOWOWSKI. Horrible! Horrible, indeed!

KRUPP. It’s a great pity somebody couldn’t loosen up and say something
about this Shooneker. How did I know who he was, or that his opinion was
worth anything? Fine chance I’ll have now of getting on The Saturday
Blade!

BOWOWSKI. Perhaps if you had been able to curb your unfounded hatred of
Tchaikowsky for a moment, we wouldn’t have been placed in this
ridiculous position.

KRUPP. Blgh-gg-h! It’s bad music, rotten! and I don’t care who knows I
said it. This country is simply spineless when it comes to having an
opinion about music. Why, I’ve got enough opinion to supply the nation,
and they need it. That’s why I put on my American concerts. They’ve got
to learn that I’m the only prophet in America’s musical future. I feel
that it’s my duty—

HATCHETT. Tchaikowsky has written some very good—

KRUPP. Tchaikowsky! Man! if you mention that mediocrity’s unhallowed
name again, I’ll go completely mad!

BOWOWSKI. Great Heavens! Tim is coming to put us out, just on account of
your infernal shouting. And look! With him! Shooneker! How perfectly
horrible!

KRUPP. Blgh-gh-h!

   Abashed and silent, the three judges leave the table and get into
   their coats with more celerity than is comfortable. They glimpse
   a faint smile on the face of their jinx as they hasten out. The
   waiter, Tim, conceals his own mirth. Two critics rush down the
              street without a word. Calling after them is

KRUPP. I don’t care who he is. I know I was right in saying—




                           A Shorn Strindberg


                          MARGUERITE SWAWITE.

Had Mme. Strindberg deliberately planned to revenge herself upon him who
was once her husband, she could have devised no subtler way of wounding
that redoubtable sham-hater than the manner in which she chose to speak
of him before the Chicago public. As I sat in the prickly darkness, with
its accompanying rumble of Beethoven, I half-expected the musty
atmosphere of legerdemain to be scattered by the great August’s derisive
laughter. But the promise of occult things was not fulfilled, for with
the cessation of the music came a rosy glow, and then a gracious lady
with a wistful presence. And she seemed quite at ease in her mise en
scène.

She read to us of herself, of Prince Hassan’s feast in Paris, of her
theatrical meeting with Strindberg, and of how he talked with her all
the evening and later walked home with her; of how she stopped on the
bridge to toss snowballs and Strindberg dried her hands upon his
handkerchief; and of how she dreamed of him that memorable night—a
strange symbolic dream. And as she read, her face was as quiet water
rippled by gentle vagrant breezes.

The remainder of the meeting was distinguished by the fact that there
was light, but the spirit of the seance persisted. Madame pleaded for
questions, but the little audience seemed frozen into inarticulateness.
Those few who did venture stammered for a moment and then drooped into
silence. Madame, however, was not discouraged. She read us Strindberg’s
views on divorce. In reply to the mumbled questions she replied that she
considered eugenics impractical and indelicate, that her husband had
believed intensely in peace and had written a beautiful story in its
favor, which she had meant to read us but to which an accident had
occurred; that Strindberg was a democrat in theory but an aristocrat in
feeling; that he was not a misogynist, but had reviled bad women because
he loved good women; that _The Father_ was a plea for the sanctity of
the home, the sanctity of woman.... Until it seemed that she was not
speaking of the bitter-tongued, fiery-souled Swede, but of some
complacent American, say, Augustus Thomas. And then someone said that it
was past ten, and Madame thanked us and disappeared.

As we swung down Michigan Avenue in the fresh night air I smiled to
think that over across the water they still thought of us as the
“hayseed” among the nations to whom the “gold brick” might be disposed
with impunity—and with exceeding profit. But we are learning....




                     Vers Libre and Advertisements


                          JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

In common with all the judicious readers of American magazines and
newspapers, I have learned to look on the advertising pages for the best
examples of news the journalist can offer. It is only reasonable that
this should be the case. Advertisement writers are the best-paid, least
rewarded, and best-trained authors that America possesses. Compared to
these, even the income of a Robert Chambers pales into insignificance.
Moreover, they understand the public thoroughly and do not attempt to
overstrain its attention by overseriousness, or exhaust its nerves by
sentimentality. That is, the best ones do not. There may be some
exceptions, but in the main I have found American advertisements
refreshingly readable.

It had never occurred to me, however, that there might be gems of poetic
ability hidden away in these tantalizing concoctions—these cocktails of
prose. But I must revise my estimate. Without wishing to boom or
discourage anyone’s products I cannot resist quoting some recent
advertisements that I and I alone have discovered, seized, and gloated
upon. After all, I approach the subject purely from the angle of form.
What student of poetic form could afford to ignore the following:


                       SERVE A HOT MUFFIN SUPPER

   Light flaky muffins, _oven hot_ and _golden topped_, a suppertime
   goody that certainly will strike that hungry _spot_. Serve them
   with the finest, richest syrup you can buy anywhere. That’s
   “Velva,” with the best of flavor, nourishing goodness and the
   satisfying elements that put real strength into growing children.
   Give them Velva three times a _day_. They’ll say, “_Great_,” when
   they eat it on your _flaky_ hot biscuits or on _waffles_ or
   _batter cakes_.

I hope the unknown author of this little masterpiece will excuse my
italics. The public simply will not see beauties that are not pushed
under its nose. If the public could realize how much more difficult as
well as more musical this style of writing, with its rich assonances and
rhymes on _day_, _say_, _great_, _flaky_, _cakes_, is, than the insipid
tinklings of the lyrists who feebly strum in pathetically threadbare
metres through the pages of most magazines, then we would have a
revolution in verse-writing. That we have not yet arrived at the
revolution is proved by the fact that a talent of this order confines
itself to writing syrup advertisements.

Take another case. The following appeared in a well known monthly. The
editor doubtless looks on free verse as the rankest heresy:

      A pipe, a maid,
      A sheet of ice,
      The glow of life—
      And that glow doubled
      By the glow of “Lady Strike”
      Cuddling warm in the bowl;
      This is the life
      In the good old winter-time!

I do not say this is without faults. With the substance I have,
naturally, nothing to do. But as regards form, which of your scribblers
of cosmic bathos and “uplift stuff” could more cunningly weave _pipe_,
_ice_, _life_, _strike_, and _time_ into a stanza that has half as much
swing and verve, as this? Note also the absence of adjectives. In short,
here is poetry with a “punch” to it.

My last example is the most ambitious of all. I present it exactly as it
was written without comment. It appeared in _The North American Review_:


                              _Univernish_

      Compared with old-method varnishes,
      it is convenience and certainty.

      It means one finishing varnish
      for the job, instead of two or three.
      It does away with the extra cans
      and the extra cleanings of brushes.
      It avoids mistakes and accidents.
      It is safe and sure and fool-proof.
      Compared with other new-method varnishes,
      it is a vital improvement.

      It is the new-method varnish
      which does not thicken in the can
      nor clog the painter’s brush.
      It remains a clear, pure liquid.
      It is easy working and free-flowing.
      It requires vastly less labor.
      It gives a smooth, clean finish
      which is especially beautiful
      and durable.
      We think we are quite conservative
      in saying that it saves twenty per cent
      of the finishing cost.

Gentlemen of the poets’ profession, be ashamed of yourselves! How can
you expect to find readers by lazily sticking to your antiquated
formulas, when even the advertisement writers in the very magazines you
do your work for, are getting quite up-to-date?




                            Extreme Unction


                               MARY ALDIS


                              CHARACTERS:

                       A DYING PROSTITUTE
                       A SOCIETY LADY
                       A SALVATION ARMY LASSIE
                       A DOCTOR
                       A NURSE


                                 SCENE:

   The screened space around a high narrow bed in a Hospital ward.
   Record-card hanging above. The Screens have antiseptic white sheets
                               over them.

   When the curtain rises the nurse is straightening and tucking in
   with uncomfortable tightness the white counterpane of the bed. On
   the bed, with eyes closed, lies what is left of a girl of 18 or
   20. The nurse takes the thermometer from the girl’s mouth, looks
   at it, shakes her head and makes a record note on the chart. She
   gives the girl water to drink and leaves her with a final pull to
   straighten the bed clothes. The girl tosses restlessly—moans a
   little and impatiently kicks at and pulls the bed clothes out at the
           foot, exclaiming “God, I wish they’d lemme ’lone!”

                           (The Lady enters)

THE LADY. Hattie dear, were you sleeping? No? See, I’ve brought you some
roses. Aren’t they fresh and sweet? Shall I put them in water?

THE GIRL. I don’ want ’em!

THE LADY. All right dear. We’ll just put them aside. I know sometimes
the perfume is too strong if one isn’t quite oneself. Shall I read to
you?

THE GIRL. If you want to.

THE LADY. What shall I read?

THE GIRL. I don’ care.

THE LADY. A story perhaps?

THE GIRL. All right—Fire it off.

THE LADY. And then afterward, Hattie dear, perhaps if you’d let me, the
twenty-third psalm. It’s so gentle and quiet! You might go to sleep—and
when you awakened you’d hear those comforting words.

THE GIRL. Is that the one about the valley? God, but I’m sick of it!
Gives me the jimmies. Got a story?

   (THE LADY puts the flowers back in their box—takes off her wrap and
            settles herself to read aloud from a magazine):

   Marianna Lane swung back and forth, back and forth, in the
   hammock, tapping her small, brown toe on the porch as she swung.
   It was a charming porch, framed in clematis and woodbine, but
   Marianna had no eye for its good points. She was lying with two
   slim arms clasped behind her head, staring vacantly up at the
   ceiling and composing a poem. On the wicker table beside her
   stood a glass of malted milk and a teaspoon. They were not the
   subject of the poem, but they were nevertheless responsible for
   it. In the first place, Marianna would _not_ drink her
   twelve-o’clock malted milk, and as she was forbidden to go off
   the porch until she had done so, there seemed to be nothing
   better to do than to cultivate the muse in the hammock. After
   patiently sipping malted milk for eight years, Marianna had
   suddenly rebelled. In the second place, her cousin Frank, who
   lived in the next house, had been inspired by this beverage to
   make up an insulting ditty.

      “Grocerman, bring a can
      Baby-food for Mary Ann!”

   The girl listens for a moment with a faint show of interest, then
                   goes back to her restless tossing.

THE GIRL (interrupting). Say,—d’ye know I’m done for?

THE LADY. Oh no! You’re getting better every day.

THE GIRL. Oh quit it—I’m goin’! I tell ye. I’ve got a head piece on me,
haven’t I? I can tell—they’ve stopped doin’ all them things to me. The
doctor just sets down there where you are and looks at me—and say—he’s
got gump that doctor. He’s the only one knows I know.

THE LADY. You mustn’t talk like that. I’m sure you’re going to get well
(girl makes an angry snort). Now try and lie quiet. You mustn’t get
excited, you know, it isn’t good for sick people. I’ll go on with the
story. You’ll see. Now listen, will you, dear? It’s quite interesting.
(Reads.)

      “Grocerman, bring a can
      Baby-food for Mary Ann!”

   he sang loudly over the hedge whenever he caught sight of
   Marianna’s middy blouse and yellow pigtails. That was yesterday.
   To-day the malted milk was standing untouched upon the wicker
   table, and Marianna in the hammock was trying to think up an
   offensive rhyme for Frank. When she found it, she intended to go
   around on the other side of the house and shout it as loud as
   ever she could in the direction of her uncle’s garden. This, it
   is true, was a tame revenge. What Marianna really wanted to do
   was to go over and pinch her cousin Frank; but that, unhappily,
   was out of the question, as Frank had a cold, and she was
   strictly forbidden to go near anybody with a cold.[3]

THE GIRL (interrupting). Lady, where d’ you think you’re goin’ to when
you kick it? Tell me!

THE LADY. Why—I don’t know—To Heaven, I hope—but you mustn’t—

THE GIRL. What makes you think you’re goin’ to Heaven?

THE LADY. Well—I think so because—well—because I’ve always tried to do
right—no, no—I didn’t mean that exactly. Of course I’ve done millions of
wrong things—but I mean—Oh Hattie dear, Heaven is such a vague term! All
we know is that it is a beautiful place where we’ll be happy, and that
we’re going there.

THE GIRL. How do you know we’re goin’?

THE LADY. I don’t know, I believe.

THE GIRL. But how do you know the wrong things you done won’t keep you
out?

THE LADY. Now I’m afraid you’re exciting yourself—

THE GIRL. Oh Lord, cut that out! I’m excited all right, all right! Guess
you’d be if you had the thoughts I got goin’ ’round in your head all the
time—but there’s no sense talking them out. Nobody can’t do nothin’ for
me now!

THE LADY. Oh you mustn’t say that!

THE GIRL. Well, can ye?

THE LADY. I’ll try if you will tell me what is troubling you.

THE GIRL. Oh Gawd! She wants to know what’s troubling me, she does!

THE LADY. Can’t you tell me? Perhaps I could help you.

THE GIRL. You said you done wrong things.—What was they?

THE LADY. I—I don’t know exactly.

THE GIRL. You don’t _know_?

THE LADY. Why I suppose I could think of lots of things but—

THE GIRL. She could “think of lots o’ things”! Has to stop to remember—O
gee—guess she’ll get in.

THE LADY. Oh _please_ don’t laugh like that! Listen—Whatever you have
done, no matter how dreadful, if you are sorry it will be all
right—Don’t be afraid.

THE GIRL. Is that true?

THE LADY. Yes.

THE GIRL. I don’t believe it.

THE LADY. It is true nevertheless.

THE GIRL. Well, if you aint sorry?

THE LADY. But surely you are—You must be!

THE GIRL. No I aint. It was better dead.

THE LADY. What do you mean?

THE GIRL. I tell ye, it was better to be dead. Say, Lady—in them wrong
things you done you _can’t remember_ did ye—did ye ever kill a kid that
hadn’t hardly breathed—Say, did ye—did ye?

THE LADY. Oh, oh—What shall I do? Hattie! Hattie! Try and stop crying.
I’m so grieved for you. Tell me what you wish—only don’t cry so!

THE GIRL. I aint sorry.

THE LADY. No, no, never mind that. Tell me if you want to, tell me—about
it.

THE GIRL. An’ I aint sorry for what cum first—him—it was all I ever had;
that time, that little weeny time!

THE LADY. Wait a moment—wouldn’t you rather have a clergyman?

THE GIRL. _No!_ There’s one comes ’round here. I don’ want to tell him
nothin’.

THE LADY. Very well—go on.

THE GIRL. It was so little, and it squawked! It squawked awful!

THE LADY. Oh—don’t!

THE GIRL. You don’t want me to tell ye?

THE LADY. Yes, yes.

THE GIRL. Oh what’s the use? What’s the use? You can’t do nothin’.
Nobody kin. I aint sorry! The kid’s better dead, lots better. It’s what
cum after—I’m so dirty! I’m so dirty! I’ll never get clean! Oh, what’s
gona happen when I die? What’s gona happen? An’ I gotta die soon!

THE LADY. You mustn’t feel so, you mustn’t! God is kind and good and
merciful. He will forgive you—Ask Him to!

THE GIRL. I did ask Him to—lots o’ times. It don’ do no good. I aint
sorry! Everybody says you gotta feel sorry, an’ I aint. A girl kid’s
better dead, I tell ye! That’s why I done it. I loved it, ’fore it came,
’cause it was hisn. After I done it nothin’ mattered—nothin’! So I—And I
gotta die soon—what’s gona happen?

   (During the preceding the sound of a tambourine and singing has been
   heard outside. As the girl cries out the last words, the Lady,
   finding no answer, goes to the window. She has a sudden thought.)

THE LADY. I’ll be back in a moment! (She goes out.)

   (Nothing is heard but the girl’s sobs for a moment. Then the Lady
   ushers in a Salvation Army Lassie—her tambourine held tightly, but
   jingling a little. She stands embarrassed by the foot of the bed.
                        The Girl stares at her.)

THE GIRL. I know them kind too.

THE LASSIE. Can’t I do something for you?

THE GIRL. No—not now—You’re a good sort enough—but—I aint sorry—I tell
ye—I aint, I aint!

THE LASSIE (to Lady). What d’ye want me for? What’ll I do?

THE LADY. Couldn’t you sing something brave and cheerful? You were
singing so nicely out there.

THE LASSIE (to Girl). Shall I?

THE GIRL. No—they won’t let ye. It ’ud make a noise.

THE LADY. Sing it low.

THE LASSIE. (In a sing-song voice—swaying, half chanting, half
speaking:) “Shall we gather at the river—the beautiful, the beautiful
river, etc.”

THE GIRL (after trying to listen for a stanza or two). Oh cut it out! I
don’ want ye to sing to me—I want ye to tell me what’s gona happen. Oh,
don’ nobody know? I’m so afraid—so ’fraid! (As her voice rises the
nurse, who has, unobserved, looked in during the singing, enters with
the doctor. He bows slightly to the Lady and the Lassie, then goes
quickly to the girl, putting his hand on her forehead.)

THE DOCTOR. Why child—what troubles you?

THE GIRL (clinging to his hand). Doctor! Everybody says I got to be
sorry to get in. I aint sorry, an’ I’m ’fraid, I’m ’fraid.

THE DOCTOR. To get in where?

THE GIRL. Heaven, where you’ll be happy.

THE DOCTOR. That is very interesting, how do you suppose they found that
out? How do they know, I mean?

THE LADY. Doctor, I didn’t tell her that.

THE DOCTOR. Didn’t you? She seems strangely excited. (He seats himself
by the bed.) Come child, let’s talk about it. (He motions—to the nurse
that she is not needed. She goes out. The Salvation Army Lassie, makes
an awkward little bow and gets herself out. The Lady stands at the foot
of the bed listening for a few moments, then slips quietly out.)

THE DOCTOR. Now, tell me what is on your mind, but try and stop crying
and speak plainly, for I want to understand what you say.

THE GIRL. I’m gona die, aint I?

THE DOCTOR. Yes.

THE GIRL. When?

THE DOCTOR. I don’t know.

THE GIRL. _Soon?_

THE DOCTOR. Yes.

THE GIRL. How soon? Tomorrow?

THE DOCTOR. No, not tomorrow. Perhaps in a month, perhaps longer.

THE GIRL. Will I get sorry ’fore I go?

THE DOCTOR. How can I tell? But what does it matter? Why do you want to
be sorry especially? What good would it do? It is all passed, isn’t it?
Nothing can change that.

THE GIRL. But I gotta be—to get in.

THE DOCTOR. You seem very sure on that point.

THE GIRL. But everybody says I gotta be.

THE DOCTOR. What is the use saying it or thinking it when nobody knows?

THE GIRL. What you sayin’?

THE DOCTOR. You and I can believe differently if we want to. But why in
the world should you be asking me all these hard questions? I’ve never
been to Heaven have I? I don’t know whether you have to be sorry to get
in or not. How do you suppose _they_ found all that out?

THE GIRL. But aint I gotta be punished somewhere till I git sorry?

THE DOCTOR. Do you remember the other night when the pain was so bad?

THE GIRL. Yep.

THE DOCTOR. And I told you you would have to bear it, that I could do
nothing for you, and that you must be quiet not to disturb the others?

THE GIRL. Oh, don’t I remember!

THE DOCTOR. I guess that’s about enough punishment for one little girl.
You’ve been pretty unhappy lately, haven’t you, with the pain and the
terrible thoughts? I think it’s about time something else turned up for
you that would be nicer, don’t you?

THE GIRL. Turned up?

THE DOCTOR. Yes, something that would make up for all this. Do you know,
child, as I’ve gone through these wards day after day ’tending to all
you sick folks, I’ve about come to the conclusion that there must
be—something nicer—

THE GIRL. Tell me more about it.

THE DOCTOR. Well now—there’s another queer question. Didn’t I tell you I
don’t know anything to tell? I’ve never been there. I should think _you_
would have found out a _little_ something since you’re planning to go so
soon. But no, I don’t suppose you know much more than the rest of us.
And when you get there you will probably forget all about me and how
much I’d like to know what’s happening to my little patient. No use I
suppose asking you to tie a red string on your finger and say “that’s to
send Dr. Carroll a little message.” Is there any way, do you think you
could remember?

THE GIRL. You’re kiddin’ me!

THE DOCTOR. Indeed I am not. I long to know with all my heart, and I
suppose it will be years and years before I do. Why just think, you, you
are going to have a great adventure—You are going on a journey to a far
country where you’ll find out lots of things, and here am I, jogging
along up and down, to and fro, between my office and this hospital and
wondering and wondering and wondering! What a lucky little girl you are!

THE GIRL. And I don’t have to be sorry—to get in?

THE DOCTOR. Didn’t I tell you you were going soon anyway? You can be
sorry if you want to—but I think it is more interesting to dream about
the strange things there will be to discover, at the end of the journey.

THE GIRL. Will there be gates of gold that open wide, and angels
standin’ by with shinin’ wings?

THE DOCTOR. Wouldn’t you like to know? And so would I. You mustn’t
forget to send that message, will you? Do be careful to be accurate and
try to speak distinctly. You know that a great many wise men have
promised to send messages back, yet all that seems to come are foolish
words. If you will look at everything carefully and find a way of
telling me, I’ll write it down for all the world to ponder. Oh—then we
should really _know_ something—not just be groping—groping—groping in
the dark. If you only could, if you only could! I wonder— (In his turn
he gazes at her intently, then rises abruptly.) Well, child, I must go
on. Shall I teach you a few questions before you go, so you’ll be sure
and find out for me the most important things?

THE GIRL. Oh Doctor!

THE DOCTOR. You’d like to do something for me, wouldn’t you child?

   (The girl reaches out for his hand and kisses it humbly, then gazes
                                at him.)

THE DOCTOR. Well, that would be the most wonderful thing in the world,
only you must be very very careful and you must do a lot of thinking
before you go, about what I’ve said. It is important to understand.
Don’t waste any time thinking about what is passed, will you?

THE GIRL. No, Doctor.

THE DOCTOR. We must talk it all over. There aren’t many people I could
trust to remember exactly all the things I want to know. But you can if
you try hard. (He touches the bell, the nurse appears.) Now, Miss
Bryant, Miss Hattie and I have several important things to discuss and
there isn’t much time left, so if she wants me at any time call me and
I’ll come. And I think while she has so much thinking on hand about what
I’m asking her to do for me, she had better not see other visitors. You
don’t mind, do you?

THE GIRL. No no! I don’ want ’em! Doctor, when will it come? Doctor,
will I know soon?

THE DOCTOR. Soon I think—Very soon. (He takes her hand a second, then
goes out, motioning the nurse to precede him.)

THE GIRL (raptly). Soon! He said it would be very soon—and I’m so tired!
I’d like something nicer.

      (She settles herself with a little sigh, and falls asleep.)

                                CURTAIN.

   [3] From _The Century, March, 1914_.




                            The Schoolmaster


                          GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER

The history of the world has not known a greater movement than that
which seized the hearts of men when the old culture was borne to its
grave, _and a new fresh Spring-life,—the Christ-life_, as it came to be
called,—of humanity, welled up from hidden and mysterious sources of
power. In the commerce of thought diverse folk-spirits were
cross-fertilized and bounds once held to be insurmountable were
transcended as vision grew wider. Customs came to be more human. Man
himself grew greater, deeper, freer. Man learned to practice virtues
which hitherto he had hated as vices: mercifulness, meekness,
peaceableness. Man prayed to a new God who made his sun to shine upon
the evil and the good. He ever created sacreder names for his God.
Taking his cue from the adorable will of this new God he framed ever
more earnest and more sacred rules of life. These were radical and
revolutionary novelties to the old culture, which speedily scented the
dangers menacing it, and as speedily dispatched executioners to the
rescue. In the language of its old theology, the language of St.
Augustine, this was called the war of the Kingdom of the World against
the Kingdom of God. Any well-informed scholar can recall what were said
to be the hindrances which the Kingdom of God had at first to overcome,
and how today these hindrances still offer the same resistance;
degenerate paganism, with its powers of unbelief, and with its supremacy
of the “flesh”; judaism, apostate from God, with its priests and
scribes.

It is not within the scope of my task to inquire how far this
traditional _schema_ of the upheavals at the tumultuous beginnings of
our era coincide with the facts. Only one consideration concerns me at
this time, and that one is not open to question: change as the phenomena
of history may, the _laws_ of those phenomena remain ever the same.
Accordingly, even the resistances which time’s new unfolding life has to
surmount, ever return—usually under a changed name, indeed,—and they
will continue to do so as long as there is a history of human culture in
the life of the world.

Passing on, now, to speak of the forces which the most modern prophet of
a new culture, _Friedrich Nietzsche_, looks upon as the most grievous
hindrances to a _new kind of man_, we shall surely expect to see first
of all, quite other faces than those which the pious fathers of the old
church saw in the foes of the _civitas die_; still, we shall
re-discover, significantly enough, many an old acquaintance behind the
strange re-modeled mask. As in that old day, so in ours, we shall
perceive in these foes of a new life, nothing of their hostility to
life. In part, they appear quite harmless; in part, they are the
universally dined and wined celebrities of the day at whom the masses
stare as the special pioneers of our culture, and in whom the masses
applaud the bearers and promoters of the best achievements of our
culture. It would be certainly a very one-sided and unhistorical way of
looking at things were we to hold those particular individuals, who did
duty in the olden days in synagogues of the scribe’s learning, primarily
responsible for the warfare which ancient Christianity had to sustain
against the dominant religious parties, especially against the scribes
and their followers. The war was not waged against _persons_, but
against a _system_. The synagogue was the _school_ of the Jews; the
scribes were the _masters_ in that school. Viewed from this side,
Christianity seemed to be rebellion against the authority of the school,
and an emancipation of humanity from the influence which the toasted
masters of the school exercised over spirits.

Approaching the problem, then, as to how far such an emancipation would
be serviceable today, one need scarcely say that one does not at all
have in mind the institutions which, in a narrower sense, we now have
come to call “schools.” As, for broad gauge philosophers, the concept
priesthood is by no means identical with a definite office, the
so-called clerical office, so what we understand by school and its
masters, in Nietzsche’s sense, embraces a much wider circle than we are
wont to think. There are schoolmasters in all vocations and callings and
positions, not alone among scholars, but also among artists,
politicians, laborers and merchants. We find them in the household and
in the nursery; for schoolmaster-ism is a _certain kind of spirit_, and
it is this kind of spirit which, under various names, Nietzsche pursues
with his bitterest scorn and ridicule; which he stigmatizes as the most
perilous hindrance in the path of the new culture.

We modern men must concede that Nietzsche is right at this point; that
mastery on the part of “school” signifies decay, stuntedness, of the
very human essence itself.

School gives _knowledge_. In all knowledge, man confronts nature. Man
elaborates nature in his thoughts, and thus lifts himself _above_
nature. With his rules, he becomes master of nature. But, now, if a man
abides in his school, a time comes, irremediably, when he is estranged
from nature, estranged from life. His knowledge grows, indeed, his world
of thought enlarges; but the “thoughts” which he calls his “knowledge”
narrow and cramp him! The more he learns to work exclusively with his
thoughts, the more he mislearns whence he derives his thoughts. He
thinks about things, but he no longer finds his way into things, right
into the innermost life of things. He thinks _after_, not _with_, not
before. He thinks the alien, not his own. He knows names, not souls.
Yes, life is so great, so infinite; and the school, our knowledge of
life, is so paltry, so limited! Once man stood with his soul in this big
wide world. Intimations of its abysses, unfathomable and awful, haunted
him. Once man felt his hot cheeks fanned by the breezes of an eternal
life of the world, by a divine breath that breathed and blew through the
world. Once on some calm crest where mountain kissed sky, one of those
blissful moments came over him when he felt himself so small, so great,
so alone, so companioned,—inwardly seized by the miracle and mystery of
life surrounding him, pervading him, at once bowing him down and lifting
him up. Now all this is changed. Now he hears voices, loud, raucous,
zealous, parading their wisdom as regards this august wealth of God.
They speak, these voices, so wisely and cleverly, concerning that which
no man’s wisdom and sagacity has ever plumbed. They out-trump each other
with their oceanic learnedness. But once yet again let the soul take a
deep breath, and cry, “I am a man, not a scholar. I dare to be a man,
not a knower, the masters of the school smother and deaden me with their
science of the sublime and free world of the deep and the divine and the
eternal,”—let the soul that “thought” has kept from _seeing_ and
_hearing_ and _feeling_, so cry, and how childish, how ridiculously
petty, how weak and pathological, will all schoolmasterism come to seem!

Nature is also _Art_, genuine, true art. It is an inner nature, a
soul-nature, a soul-life. This art-life which gushes forth like a spring
from secret depths, this enraptures the heart glowing with Dionysiac
enthusiasm, and steals over men like sweet images of a dream, which will
not fade even from his waking soul. Then it sings in us in a wonderful
way, in an unheard-of manner,—in jubilant bliss, aye, in heartbreaking
lamentations, longing for death! Life smites the strings of our soul,
life itself, and makes them resound in secret and hidden depths. It is
this rich, overflowing life which mirrors all its colorful magnificence
in the soul, and reveals to us its height and depth in dazzling light or
midnight darkness.

But even here, here most of all perhaps, even out of this art men have
made a “school” and a schoolmasterism. Men try to measure according to
rules—measure what most of all mocks rules. Rules for poetry, rules for
song, rules for color, for light and shade, rules for the creation
(copying?) of pencil and brush and chisel and square, rules, rules, ever
rules—until one would think that art was for the sake of the rules of
the school, and not _vice versa_. There was a time—and for the matter of
that, there still is—when the born master had a slim chance and short
shrift among the “learned” masters. Who did not know a “school” by whose
name he could proudly name himself, thus guaranteeing his art to be
artistic; who beheld the world with his own free eyes, unfitted with
spectacles by some one of the “masters”; who with listening soul
eavesdropped life, asking never what was “written in the law” of art’s
scribes and pharisees upon the subject, let him set his house in order,
for he must die and not live, at least he must be cast out of the
synagogue, excluded from the artists’ guild, he must expect the
“masters” to pounce upon him—at least with the hoary weapons of obloquy
and ridicule and ostracism and starvation—until all the joy has gone out
of his life. _Vers libre_—did not, does not, the “master” antecedently
and dogmatically know how “rotten” that is? Ah, but what if that
attitude of the finishedness and finality of art, especially in its
form, should replace art and artists with schools and scholars? Are we
to have only “masters” of schools, or also _Masters_ who belong to no
school, and who cannot be tagged as scholars of another “master.”

Nature, life, this is also _religion_, genuine, true religion at least.
We have not created it in us yet—this overpowering longing and striving
to surrender ourselves to another, a higher. To be sure, we have
received it as a heritage from our mother. At first a flood of love and
longing flowed through our souls from her eyes and heart. But her gift
to us was in turn a gift to her. In that gift all love’s beams focused,
gathered together, from all the ends of the earth and the eternities. In
that gift all life was wedded to the waking spirit—all life, sleeping
and dreaming, found its existence. And as this life awoke in us, we
called it “inspiration,” we felt that a Stronger had come upon us,
against which we could do nothing; we called it happiness, heart, love,
God—the name was noise and sound—and yet it was all feeling, veiled in
heavenly glow.

Then the name became everything. On this name scribes exercised their
wits. They wrote it in their books and taught it in their schools. Then
the schoolmasters became the lords of faith. What was once original life
was now to be taught and learned—forgetting that while the psychology,
or history, or philosophy of religion can be taught, _religion_ cannot
be, any more than you can teach grass to grow, or flowers to bloom, or
birds to sing, or lovers to love. So, religion came to be a thing of
grades, like the “grades” of a school—the more grades, the more
religion! At last the scholar in turn becomes a master! Verily, nowhere
in the world has schoolmasterism done so much harm as in religion. No
scoff of the scoffer, and no sword of the executioner, has dealt so deep
and deadly wounds upon the religious life, as has the folly of the wise
and the understanding who press their school knowledge and their school
system upon men as religious faith, and so overspin the entrance to the
garden of the heart with their spider-webs that no one can find the path
any more to its bloom and fragrance.

To be sure, objections to all this bristle. Is not the blessing of the
school—so this or that objector might urge—so manifest that, on account
of the blessing, all its evils might be very well put up with? The
school makes the unintelligible intelligible. The school widens the bed
of the spiritual life, so that its stream no longer devastatingly
overflows its banks. The school builds canals everywhere, that the
watering of the land of the human may be as extensive as possible, and
the spirit of life be universally fertilized with the achievements of
civilization and culture. We may thank our schools that all the world
today has learned to read and write. And, for him who can read and
write, the way is open to all the treasures of the human spirit—and
where is there a civilization that equals ours in the effort to provide
schools corresponding to all the spheres of life? Ought we not to bless
such effort, promote and support it, with all the means in our power?

Now, looking upon life more seriously and profoundly, we shall not be
able to show that the censor of these schools is entirely in the wrong,
when he declares that the spirit is perverted and corrupted by them.
School is model, is a uniform of the spirit which all individuals are to
don and wear. Hence as this school business spreads there is a dying-out
of spiritual originality, a monotony of manufactured personality.

Everything that belongs to the average is best conserved by school. The
most proper average man is always the best scholar. But all that is
above or below the average—this is often the best in a man—decays and
finds no nourishment. We have but to look at the whole state of our
literature in this country, to see what has become of the art of
writing, of authorship, in an age bursting with pride over everybody’s
being able to read and write. All the nameless insipidity and
thoughtlessness written and printed today, all the mendacity and
perversity of feeling, which in novels find their way into hut and salon
alike might be happily spared us did not everybody think he could read,
and especially write! There is no denying it, a serious question stares
at us in the name of the school today. This question is above all
questions of school-reform, which seem so important to us, for the
improved, nay, the best school remains just—school! And something of
schoolmasterism and scholasticism cleaves to school! And therefore
Nietzsche was its so bitter foe because he would have _men_, men who
spoke and thought and felt powerfully and not as the scribes! Nietzsche
was its foe because he would have among men, personalities,
individualities, diversities, not uniformity and identity of spiritual
life.

If, now, we have rightly comprehended the force of this censure against
the school and its master, we are already in the way to overcome and to
heal this school malady. The malady does not inhere in the school as
such, but in the false evaluation which we of today attribute to it, and
in the dominion which the school exercises over human spirits, by virtue
of this false appraisal. We think we can read if we have learned to read
in school. But this learning to read has yet to begin! Whoever does not
begin it his own self, will never truly learn it at all. We call our
schools educational institutions and yet they are altogether
_imitational_ institutions, _after_ which the true human education first
begins. We do not think of this, that this man whose knowledge still
tastes of his school, whose art shows his school, is still stuck in his
school, and has not made proper use of his school—which is to apply it;
especially to overcome it! Or, rather we think still less! We rest on
the laurels of our school, and if we won them we think that we have
carried off the warrior’s prize of life. But it is _our_ fault, not the
school’s, if the school narrows rather than broadens our vision; if it
binds us to its rules instead of releasing us from them. Where are the
men who still learn after school, nay, who first begin then to learn
what after all is the main thing of all learning—how they can become
greater, freer men, independent personalities? How does it come that all
stirring and moving of the modern spirit is at the same time an
insurrection against some kind of school? How does it come that all
creative, path-breaking spirits can begin to create, to live, only when
they have snapped the fetters of some school? And how does it come that
great discoveries of unknown islands of the human have never been made
within, but only without, the schools? Most of all, how does it come
that a Christ can speak with power only when he has learned not to speak
as the scribes and schoolmasters? The answer in every case is that we
are accustomed to expect of the school what, according to its very
nature, it cannot do, namely: to give life, to create life. Therefore,
it is all-important that we keep the path open, wide open, to the
fountain of life in the abyss of the human heart, in the
unfathomableness of the world, so that we too may learn to speak with
power and not as the scribes; so that our schools may not be diseases to
be overcome, for many never overcome during an entire life—but a staff
with which we may learn to walk until we shall need staff no more,
because our feet have grown strong to bear us on our way during the
brief years of our pilgrimage.




                        My Friend, the Incurable


                                  VI.

                    CHOLERIC COMMENTS ON CACOPHONIES


                           _On the G String_

We are sailing in a gondola along exotic shores. Crystal castles, dewy
meadows, weeping cypresses, glowing craters.... We pass through the
dreamy regions of Shelley and Keats, we envisage the gigantic cosmos of
Shakespeare, of Dante, of Milton, of Goethe, we perceive in a haze the
purple-crimson crucifixion of Nietzsche, the cruel gloom of Dostoyevsky,
the dizzy abysses of Poe, the all-human chaos of Whitman....

We sail on—but ah, our picturesque gondolier! He is so excited, so
restless, so loud—we are forced to turn our eyes from the grandiose
landscape and follow bewildered our conscientious cicerone. In his
anxiety lest we fail to notice the passing “places of importance,” our
industrious guide shrieks and yells, wriggles and gesticulates, beats
upon our senses, pricks and tickles, and all this he performs to the
accompaniment of a mellow mandolin, so sweet, so touching, so
exasperating.

We are weary.

                   *       *       *       *       *

With some apprehension I looked forward to Mr. Powys’s book of “Literary
Devotions,”[4] for I had the good luck of listening to his lectures.
They are unforgettable, those bewitched moments in the darkened Little
Theater, where we sat hypnotized by “the galvanized demi-god vibrating
in the green light of the stage,” invoking the spirits of the Great. How
will those invocations appear, I worried, when congealed in the static
book-form, minus the catacomb-atmosphere, minus the serpent-like,
mesmerizing cant of the meteoric sorcerer, minus Raymond Johnson’s
light-effects? “And, ah! sweet, tender reader,” to use Mr. Powys’s
style, my fears came true: the book is a libretto, sans orchestra, sans
singer. I know that many of the lecturer’s devotees, especially the
worshipping young ladies, will find little difficulty in mentally
supplying the libretto with the dynamic personality of the performer;
but my imagination is dewinged at the sight of the motionless symmetric
lines, and I fail to vocalize the legions of exclamation-marks, the
innumerable capital-letters, the profuse superlatives. With a
kaleidoscopic velocity the author displays his personal reflections upon
the greatest minds of the world; he bends them, he liquifies them, he
moulds them, recreates them according to his whim—good, bravissimo! I am
the last person to depreciate subjective criticism; I am tolerant enough
to digest even such a statement as that Goethe was typically and
intrinsically German, or that Nietzsche was thoroughly Christian. It is
not Mr. Powys’s What that nauseates me, but his How, his butaforial
Grand Style, his monotonous tremolo, his constant air of discovering new
planets, his Pateresque worship of beauty which lacks Pater’s
aristocratic calm and reservedness, his Oscaresque paradoxicalness
deprived of Wilde’s chiselled wit, his continuous ruminating of a
limited stock of long, high words, of dizzying adjectives, of saccharine
adverbs.

Pray, “sweet, tender reader,” how long could you endure Mischa Elman
playing the Minuet in G?

   [4] _Visions and Revisions, by John Cowper Powys._ [_G. Arnold
   Shaw, New York_]


                           _And Pippa Dances_

Yet there are some who complain about the lack of musical devotion among
Americans. Nay, music is getting absolutely too popular—witness the
crowded concert-halls, especially the ten-cent-Sunday-concerts arranged
by philanthropists for the uplift of the masses. It is significant to
observe that the so-called Submerged have learned not only to applaud,
but also to hiss, not only to accept with gratitude any sort of “divine”
music, but to demand a certain kind of music. And, surely, they well
know what they want.

Hauptmann’s Huhn, the personification of the mob, wants the fragile
Pippa, the symbol of beauty, to dance for him. She is forced to obey,
and is of course crushed to death. And Pippa dances. That omnipotent
Huhn who can call down all the muses to come and entertain him, to amuse
him, to serve him, to degenerate or to perish! Watch that wonderful
creature, the amalgamated American Huhn, making love to music, hugging
and caressing her; I shudder at the thought of what will become of
gentle Pippa in the choking embrace of her boorish suitor.

Yes, Huhn knows what he wants. He expects of music the same service that
he gets from illustrations in popular magazine novels. He comes into an
ice-cream parlor and orders Banana-Split plus _William Tell_ on the
victrola—so digestible and understandable. Last Sunday I observed a
crowd at a ten-cent concert enjoying the _Meditation_, good-humoredly
assisting the soloist by humming and whistling the familiar tune, their
faces expressing the satisfaction of victors. And the night before I
witnessed the thousands at Orchestra Hall, the Huhns in sweaters and in
décolleté-gowns and in dress-suits, going mad over that vulgarity, Mr.
Carpenter’s precise reproduction of barking dogs and of a policeman’s
heavy walk. Huhn demands music which he is capable of interpreting in
every-day terms, which transparently reflects his little emotions, his
petty joys, his sirupy sorrows, his after-meal dreams. Is it to be
wondered that Huhn hisses and grumbles when the conductor hesitatingly
smuggles in such a risky novelty as Scriabin’s _Prometheus_? What is to
Huhn the Poem in Fire, the emerging of a dazed humanity out of Chaos,
the collision of gloom and light, the birth of the Winged Man? What is
Hecuba to him! And since Pippa must dance, the obliging conductor
hastens to appease the growling Huhn by the taffy of Bruch’s concerto.

In recent years some inspired rebels among painters and sculptors have
striven towards the elevating of their arts to the highest level, that
of music, the noblest medium for the expression of aesthetic emotions,
nobler than words or brush or chisel. Recall Kandinsky’s
color-symphonies. Alas, music is not any longer a daughter of Olympus;
she has been dragged by Huhn from the pure atmosphere of the mountain
summit down into the damp valley. Wagner began the prostitution of music
by making it subservient to words; he has won the sanction and
acclamation of the crowd. Then followed the orgy of Program-music, those
wood-cut illustrations, those rich gravies that were invented to sweeten
Mr. Huhn’s meals. Now an enterprising Chicago merchant, Mr. Carpenter,
has presented us with an apotheosis of vulgarity to the hilarious
triumph of the appreciative crowd, to the delight of our “independent”
music-critics—“that strange creature, the American music-critic,” to
quote a naive English journal.

And Pippa dances.

                                                          IBN GABIROL.




                                 Music


                   GABRILOWITSCH AND THE NEW STANDARD

                          MARGARET C. ANDERSON

Ideas make their impressions very slowly, but they travel very fast.
That is why Gabrilowitsch’s playing of the piano on March 21 was two
different kinds of revelation to two different kinds of people. To a
great many it was a rich fulfillment of promise; to a few it was the end
of something that had had a great beginning.

The trouble is that there’s a new standard to reckon with. We used to
argue that what a man had to say was more important than the way he said
it. Then we reversed that, claiming that a man may say anything provided
he say it well. Then the socialistic school tried to go back to the
first premise, but what they were really groping for was the new
standard—which is simply this: A man may still say anything he wishes
and if he says it well it will be art—_provided he really has something
to say_. Tennyson knew how to say things well, but he missed being an
artist because he had nothing to say. On what basis do we establish such
a criterion? Not merely on that of “ideas,” because you may have no
ideas at all and yet have profound reactions; and not merely on that of
“socialism” or sincerity or ideals; and not—oh well, I mean to get
through this discussion without dragging in the artist’s alleged
monopoly of the eternal verities. B. Russell Herts got very close to
what I mean when he said that Arnold Bennett missed real bigness because
he had only a great and mighty skill without having a great and mighty
soul.

Well—you can’t make Art, we think now, unless you belong in the
great-and-mighty-soul class. And what does that mean, exactly? Perhaps
the whole thing can be explained under the term “enlarged
consciousness.” I wish Dora Marsden would discuss it in one of those
clear-headed articles she writes for _The Egoist_. The confusion in all
our discussions of matter and manner, of subject and form, of what
determines genius, has come about in two main ways: first, because we
have made Taste a synonym for Art—so that if we like Beethoven or Mozart
we don’t accept Wagner or Max Reger, or if we like classic rules we call
romanticism “bad art”; and second, because we have decided who had great
and mighty souls on an ethical basis. We said that Browning and Tennyson
had them—chiefly because they talked a great deal about God, I suppose;
which only shows how confusing it is to judge that way; it leaves no
room for the distinction that Browning had and Tennyson hadn’t. It’s all
as silly as insisting that the cubists ought to be considered great if
they are sincere. Grant that they are. To be sincere is easy; to say
what you believe is simple; but to believe something worth saying is the
test of an art. Sincere stupid people are as bad as any other stupid
ones—and more boring.

I don’t know what else to say about it; but I know you can recognize
that “enlarged consciousness” in the first bars of a pianist’s playing,
or in a singer’s beginning of a song. Paderewski has it to such a degree
that he can play wrong notes and it doesn’t matter; and Duse has it, and
Kreisler, and Isadora Duncan, and Ludwig Wüllner, who breaks your heart
with his songs though he hasn’t even a singing voice. And the
disappointment in Gabrilowitsch is that he hasn’t.

I went to hear him play Chopin and Schumann with positive excitement.
Godowsky, with all his perfectly worked-out theories, always leaves me
with the feeling that he would be an artist if he weren’t an empty
shell; and Bauer, with all his beautiful work, leaves me with a sense of
how he _might_ play if a fire could be started inside him. I expected
that fire in Gabrilowitsch—partly because I heard him play ten years ago
and partly, I suppose, because he is Russian. But the ten years have
left him unstirred. It’s as though the man in him had stood curiously
still; as though life had passed him. He is like a poet who has somehow
escaped unhurt; or a technician who perfects his expression and then
wonders what he shall express. As for his form, he does many exquisite
things; for instance, his _Des Abends_, which was extremely poetic and
which seems to be the type of thing he likes to play most. And he played
the D Flat Prelude with an exquisite perspective—and then a Chopin Waltz
without any perspective at all. Technically his worst feature is his
chord-work—Bauer’s chords sound like an organ in comparison. But Bauer
knows how to touch the piano for deep, “dark” effects, and Gabrilowitsch
appears to like “bright” sounds. He takes his chords with a high, tight
wrist and brings them out by pounding. These things are not done any
more; the piano has shown new tone-capacities since a few of the moderns
abandoned, or modified, what is supposed to be the “straight”
Letschitizky method.

Well, all this wouldn’t matter so much if Gabrilowitsch had the ultimate
inspiration.... Somehow I keep feeling that the world is waiting for its
next great pianist.


                            BAUER AND CASALS

Two sorts of listeners heard the second Bauer-Casals recital at
Orchestra Hall: Those who love great music and those who love to babble
about great music. Intermediate classes of the mildly interested, the
botching amateurs, the self-adoring students, et al., stayed away, for
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Cesar Franck, in sonata form, have nothing
for them. Would that the critics and the exuberant school-girls might
forever remain away on such occasions, and choose for their frothing
something less than the best.

Beethoven was not “dry” for a moment. One suspects that this composer is
perpetually slandered by the “traditional” handling of zealous
academics; for Bauer and Casals, with their wonted beauty of piano- and
violoncello-playing, made his music warm and pleasantly expansive, with
no sacrifice of dignity. He sounded almost romantic in the best sense of
the word. This was an experience. And Mendelssohn—what is more truly
elegant than his musical grace, or more delightful than his delicate
humour—a playfulness so seldom discovered by performers! Humour that
becomes subtler than a horse-laugh is beyond the ken of “professional”
musicians, although first-rank composers never lack a refined sense of
fun, a keen relish for jollity, for all that it may be in ethereal
realms. In Cesar Franck there is perhaps the very sublimate of humour,
the mystic smile of faith. One cannot escape a feeling of the deeply
religious in this French master. A new word should be coined to
designate his music; it might be formed by transposing the “passionate”
of passionate love and the “fervent” of fervent piety, and by some such
amalgamation of cool, impersonal, austere love with deepest faith become
sensuous, impassioned, and lovely, the characterizing word is secured.
Franck’s music, surcharged with intense experience, renders unnecessary
any apology for this left-handed use of English. It is but poorly spoken
of in orthodox terms, since it embodies strange blendings of emotion,
both common and uncommon—emotions unified and crystallized into the
expression of a genius. Cesar Franck’s love, apparently, flowed as
readily and as warmly toward God as toward ravishing, although possibly
abstract, woman.

This is doubtless a considerable, if not impossible, reach for the
imagination of the patiently-groping reader, but it would have been less
difficult with Bauer and Casals for interpreters. The ’cellist’s playing
was at once sane and poetic, clean-cut and well-rounded; it was chaste
without chill, voluptuous without a debauch. And Bauer, master-pianist
indeed, as his press-agent styles him, brought from the piano more than
enough kinds of tone to shame the monochromatic theory about the
restricted nature of the piano. The most individual feature of his art
is the production of solemn, organ-like chords in the lower
register—chords wonderfully sonorous and rich, powerful enough to
obliterate the memory of bedlam. Who cares if he smudges a “run?” This
god can sound chords. He redeems a host of piano-jolters.

                                                     HERMAN SCHUCHERT.




                            Book Discussion


                             AUTUMNAL GORKY

     _Tales of Two Countries, by Maxim Gorky._ [_B. W. Huebsch, New
                                York._]

Gorky’s genius was meteoric. It flashed in the nineties for a brief
period with an extraordinary brilliance, illuminating a theretofore
unknown world of “has beens,” of Nietzschean _Bosyaki_. Gorky’s genius,
we may say, was elemental and local; it revealed a great spontaneous
force on the part of the writer in a peculiar atmosphere, on “the
bottom” of life, in the realm of care-free vagabonds. As soon as Gorky
trespassed his circle he fell into the pit of mediocrity and began to
produce second rate plays, sermon-novels, political sketches, and
similar writings that may serve as excellent material for the
propaganda-lecturer. The present volume may be looked upon as Gorky’s
swan-song, if we consider his ill health; in fact he outlived himself
long ago as an artist, and in these _Tales_ we witness the hectic flush
of the autumn of his career. The exotic beauty of Italy appears under
the pen of the Capri invalid in a morbid, consumptive aspect; the author
is too self-conscious, too much aware of the fact of his moribund
existence to see the intrinsic in life. The tendency to preach socialism
further augments his artistic daltonism, which is particularly evident
in the _Russian Tales_. The doomed man casts a weary glance over his
distant native land, and he sees there nothing but dismal black,
hopeless pettiness and retrogression. The satire is blunt and fails the
mark; the allegories are of the vulgar, wood-cut variety. Gorky has been
dead for many years.


                       BREAKING INTO AN OPEN DOOR

     _Plaster Saints, by Israel Zangwill._ [_The Macmillan Company,
                              New York._]

The old situation: A revered priest, saint abroad, sinner at home; the
old sin—adultery; the old moral about casting the first stone. What is
new is the clergyman’s point of view that a “plaster saint” has no right
to preach righteousness, that only one who has gone through temptation,
sin, and contrition may be fit for the post of God’s shepherd.

   A sea captain who has never made a voyage—the perfection of
   ignorance—and you trust him with the ship. You take a youth—the
   fool of the family for choice—keep him in cotton-wool under a
   glass case, cram him with Greek and Latin, constrict his neck
   with a white choker, clap a shovel hat on his sconce, and lo! he
   is God’s minister!

   ... When I look at my old sermons, I blush at the impudence and
   ignorance with which I, an innocent at home, dared to speak of
   sin to my superiors in sinfulness.

It is all very well, if we grant that society is still in need of
sermons on chastity, if the Hebraic ideal of monogamy is still the most
important problem in the life of a community, to be discussed and
advocated from the pulpit, while ignoring the economic and social
complexities of the present age. But can we grant this anachronism? Is
it not high time to follow the policy of _laisser faire_ in regard to
individual morals? Mr. Zangwill appears in the unenvious position of one
quixotically breaking into an open door; yet he has been accused of
possessing a sense of humor.


                             MAGAZINE VERSE

     _Anthology of Magazine Verse, 1914; selected and published by
                        William S. Braithwaite._

The proper way to review this collection of verse would be, no doubt, to
quote some of the best and some of the worst, make a learned and
perfectly empty comment upon so-and-so, and say that the book was better
or worse than last year’s compilation. But Mr. Braithwaite has sifted
and re-sifted the entire crop of poems until there is in his book
nothing but the best, such as it is. And the general trend of the volume
is scarcely a matter for enthusiasm. A fair conclusion must be that
magazine editors were frequently hard pressed for copy. As a faithful
and stupidly patriotic American, one should ponder long over certain
attempts to found new “American” verse-forms; but it is to be regretted,
possibly, that the most enjoyable poems in the collection are written
upon foreign or mediaeval topics. As a true aesthete, one ought to reek
with admiration for nameless or badly-labelled sonnets that, for some
reason, fail to delight. And, as an exponent of politico-poetic
modernity, there should be wild raving over the “radical” art of
formless form; but this also is shamefully wanting in one’s reaction to
this anthology. A number of intelligent humans have been observed in
their expectant approach to this collection; they closed the book with
neither smiles nor frowns. It is difficult to forget that good poetry
will bear re-reading, or prove its worth by clinging to the memory; and
it is still more difficult to remember that art has only to be new,
rude, or extreme to be called wonderful. Why is this?




                    John Cowper Powys on Henry James


        (_Some more jottings from one of Mr. Powys’s lectures._)

Henry James is a revealer of secrets, but never does he entirely draw
the veil. He has the most reluctance, the most reverence of all the
great novelists. He is always reluctant to draw the last veil. This
great, plump-handed moribund figure, waits—afraid. All of his work is a
mirror—never a softening or blurring of outlines, but a medium through
which one sees the world as he sees it. In reading his works one never
forgets the author. All his people speak in his character. All is
attuned to his tone from beginning to end.

He uses slang with a curious kind of condescension,—all kinds of
slang,—with a tacit implicit apology to the reader. So fine a spirit—he
is not at home with slang.

His work divides itself into three periods—best between 1900 and 1903.
In reading him approximate 1900 as the climacteric period.

His character delineation is superb. Ralph in _The Portrait of a Lady_,
is the type of those who have difficulty in asserting themselves and are
in a peculiar way hurt by contact with the world. Osborne—in the same
book—is one of those peculiarly hard, selfish, artistic, super-refined
people who turn into ice whatever they touch. He personifies the cruelty
of a certain type of egoism—the immorality of laying a dead hand upon
life. Poe has that tendency to lay a dead hand upon what he cares for
and stop it from changing. Who of us with artistic sensibilities is not
afflicted with this immorality? This is the unpardonable sin—more than
lust—more than passion—a “necrophilism,” to lay the dead hand of eternal
possession upon a young head.

Nothing exists but civilization for H. J. There has been no such
writer since Vergil. And for him (H. J.) there is but one
civilization—European. He is the cosmopolitan novelist. He describes
Paris as no Frenchman does! Not only Paris, but America, Italy, anywhere
the reader falls into a delicious passivity to the synthesis of nations.
He knows them all and is at home in all. He is the novelist of society.
Society—which is the one grand outrage; it is not pain—it is not pity;
it is society which is the outrage upon personality, the permanent
insult, the punishment to life. As ordinary people we hate it often—as
philosophers and artists we are bitter against it, as hermits we are
simply on the rack. But it is through their little conventionalities
that H. J. discovers people, human beings, in society. He uses these
conventionalities to portray his characters. He hears paeans of
liberation, hells of pity and sorrow, and distress as people signal to
one another across these little conventionalities. He fills the social
atmosphere with rumors and whispers of people toward one another.

In describing city and country he is equally great. He does not paint
with words, but simply transports you there. Read _The Ambassadors_ for
French scenery! Everything is treated sacramentally. He is the Walter
Pater of novelists with an Epicurean sense for little things—for little
things that happen every day.

There is another element in his work that is psychic and beyond—magnetic
and beyond. His people are held together by its vibrations. Read _The
Two Magics_.

H. J. is the apostle to the rich. Money! that accursed thing! He
understands its importance. It lends itself in every direction to the
tragedy of being. He understands the art of the kind of life in which
one can do what one wants. He understands the rich American gentleman in
Europe—touches his natural chastity, his goodness, the single-hearted
crystalline depths of his purity. Read _The Reverberator_.

In the _Two Hemispheres_ we find a unique type of woman—a lady from the
top of her shining head to the tips of her little feet—exquisite, and
yet an adventuress.

This noble, distinguished, massive intelligence is extraordinarily
refined and yet has a mania for reality. He risks the verge of vulgarity
and never falls into it. He redeems the commonplace.

To appreciate the mise en scène of his books—his descriptions of
homes—read _The Great Good Place_. He has a profound bitterness for
stupid people. He understands amorous, vampirish women who destroy a
man’s work. Go to H. J. for artist characters—for the baffled atrophied
artists who have souls but will never do anything.

Read _The Tragic Muse_. Note the character of Gabriel Nash, who is
Whistler, Oscar, Pater all together and something added—the arch
ghost—the moth of the cult of art.

The countenance of H. J. says that he might have been the cruelest and
is the tenderest of human beings. To him no one is so poor, so unwanted
a spirit but could fill a place that archangels might strive for. James
is a Sennacherib of Assyria, a Solomon, a pasha before whom ivory-browed
vassals prostrate themselves. He is the Solomon to whom many Queens of
Sheba have come and been rejected, the lover of chastity, of purity in
the natural state.

He is difficult to read, this grand, massive, unflinching, shrewd old
realist, because of his intellect—a distinguished, tender, subtle spirit
like a plant. And in the end I sometimes wonder whether H. J. himself in
imagination does not stroll beyond the garden gate up the little hill
and over to the churchyard, where, under the dank earth he knows that
the changing lineaments mold themselves into the sardonic grin of
humanity.




                           The Reader Critic


_William Thurston Brown, Chicago_:

I have just read your article on Mrs. Ellis’s lecture, and I wish to
congratulate you upon its sentiments. Although I did not hear Mrs.
Ellis, some of my friends did, and their report quite agrees with your
judgment.

I must confess I did not expect much from her to begin with. From
interviews and quotations it seemed clear that she was simply one who
had never faced realities frankly. Besides, her rather mawkish
“religiousness” betrayed a mind unfitted to deal adequately with such a
problem.

I wish also to congratulate you upon your recognition of the genuine
worth of Emma Goldman. I had thought you were in danger of making a
fetich of her, but this article shows that you appreciate the things for
which she stands.

I cannot believe that the superiority of Emma Goldman to such people as
Mrs. Ellis—I mean in the discernment of real values—is due to a
difference of psychology, or rather of temperament, but rather to the
difference of point of view from which Miss Goldman has seen the
problems of human life. Her experience as a protagonist of Labor in its
struggle for freedom from exploitation has been a vital factor, I think,
in her development.

All good wishes to THE LITTLE REVIEW.

_Albrecht C. Kipp, Indianapolis_:

Some time ago a friend of yours, and mine, under guise of a Yuletide
remembrance, innocently and unapprehensive of the consequences no doubt,
presented me with a year’s subscription to the magazine which you
purport to edit. Our mutual acquaintance made some point of the fact
that you were, as I aspire to be, a Truth-Seeker, and also alluded, in
passing, to a feminine pulchritude which you possessed, not ordinarily a
concomitant of an intellectual curiosity sufficiently keen to delve to
the bottom of things material and spiritual. I therefore looked forward
with undeniable expectation to a gratification of an insatiable desire
to view the remains of many idols and statues still unbroken, which have
been laboriously erected by the prejudice, credulity and ignorance of
mankind for eons. Permit me to apprise you of my keen disappointment in
perusing what I have found ensconced between the covers of your
magazine.

I was given to understand that you were a quasi-missionary, in the most
elastic sense of that word, and as one who is sincerely trying to fathom
your mission, if one you have, I am writing to ascertain what it may be,
because, owing either to an utter failure of a somewhat impoverished
sense of humor or a too ordinary quantum of common sense, I seem to miss
what you are driving at. If your magazine is designed to interest a
coterie of semi-crazed, halfbaked, “fin de siècle” ideologists, I would
appreciate a recognition of your object. To be quite frank with you,
however, I do not yet consider myself in the proper frame of mind to be
classified in that category of readers without demur. I am only a humble
Searcher for the Truth in Life in all its phases and being congenitally
opposed to the baleful spreading of “Buschwa,” I seem to find my mental
equipoise disturbed by an attempt to diagnose by any rational standard
most of the alleged literary ebullitions which find place in your
REVIEW.

If we were still living in the Stone Age and reading matter of any sort
were still a scarce article, it might be necessary to put up with the
poetical balderdash which you publish. But having the daily newspapers
to contend with and other pernicious thiefs of valuable time, it seems a
heinous offense to a perfectly respectable mind to offer it, the unripe
or overripe, mayhap, products of insane mentalities.

No doubt the fault is entirely that of an unschooled intellect, but at
that, I have to take my mind as it is. Just as it is unable to fathom
this Christian Science drivel, in that same measure does it utterly fail
to be touched by what has appeared in THE LITTLE REVIEW of the past four
months.

Let me assure you that I have made an honest effort to understand your
viewpoint. Unless, however, I am cleared up as to what your aim and goal
may be, I am compelled, in self defense, to request you to kindly
discontinue sending your magazine to me. It may deflour my joy of life
and ruin a saving and virtuous sense of the funny. You are too
kindhearted, I am sure, as our mutual acquaintance informs me, to be an
accessory before the fact to such an ungracious crime.

_Sada Cowan, New York_:

Your article on Mrs. Havelock Ellis was wonderful! Mrs. Ellis failed
here ... just as in Chicago. I admire the clear and concise way in which
you illumined the reason of her failure.

There is so much work to be done it seems wicked that a woman, to whom
the world is so ready and willing to listen, who has the gift of poetic
expression and direct logical thinking, should waste her powers. It is
as though she held understanding and wisdom in her hands—tightly
clenched—then when she should hold out those gifts to the world, she
opened wide her fingers ... here a flash—there a glimmer!—And all
vanishes!

_E. C. A. Smith, Grosse Ile, Michigan_:

I was delighted with your critique on Mrs. Ellis, not that I feel she
fell as short as you seem to think, but because your own article made a
beginning on things which must be said. I also emphatically endorse your
views on enabling the poor to restrict their birthrate, not on
sentimental grounds, but because I know by experience it would be a wise
economy for the state. It is natural for wholesome people to want
children; the rise in the labor market caused by the dropping off in
production by the cowardly and incompetent would be amply compensated by
the reduction in the ranks of economically valueless dependents. It
would take less, per capita, to support orphan and insane asylums,
dispensaries, and jails—not to speak of the wasteful drain of
unestimated sporadic charity. The contention that it would contribute to
immorality is absolutely absurd to anyone who has tried rescue
work—girls have child after child, undeterred by pain or shame, just as
the mentally deficient in other lines injure themselves in their
frenzies.

The only way one has a right to judge life is to look at it from the
inside. Before I read Havelock Ellis I was unable to take this view of
the subjects you so sanely and clearly project on our imaginations.
After laying down his book I found my only shock came from some of the
methods employed in “curing” these unfortunates. From the histories of
cases he cites, I should consider it fair to conclude that the nervous
organization of inverts tended to average below par—as is the usual
medical view. This may be a psychic, not physical, result. Personally, I
cannot see any effect the reading of that material has had on me except
to make me more wisely charitable in my views. It has broadened my
ideals, without weakening them. It has put a new value on normality. It
has not modified my personal theory of love any more than the
not-entirely aesthetic conditions of carrying and bearing my children
did. There are points about that sort of experience—especially the
attitude of the inexperienced—which makes the prude’s attitude to the
whole broad question ridiculous. Another generation will regard ours as
we do the Victorians—my shade will grind its spirit teeth to hear them
laugh.

I am not sure your point of view as a writer rather than a speaker does
not make you overlook legitimate limitations in Mrs. Ellis’s position. A
speaker can often suggest far more than she actually utters; the
conclusions people are inspired to make for themselves are of far
greater value than if they were cast forth with inspired eloquence. To
antagonize an audience by forcing your point is to lose efficiency. In
print one has not the personal element so strongly and immediately to
consider. Perhaps she was subtler than Emma Goldman, but not so much
weaker as you think.

THE LITTLE REVIEW is the most satisfactory source of mental stimulation
I have yet discovered. If I do not always agree with it I at least have
the sense of arguing with a friend whose intellect I respect—never did I
feel that for any other publication. And I love freshness and freedom
and enthusiasm as I love youth itself—they’re the qualities that promise
growth.

_Stella Worden Smith, Monte Vista Heights, Cal._:

For six months or so I have been blessed with the presense of your
LITTLE REVIEW. Many times I have wanted to tell you so. It is a matter
of deep gratitude that at last one can open the pages of a magazine and
feel that sense of freedom and incomparable beauty that one does in,
say, looking out at a sunset across the mountains—and no more hampering!
You give new horizons, fresh inspiration, and revive the creative
impulse that is more likely to be snuffed out than stimulated when one
peruses the majority of our “best” magazines. Forgive me if I seem over
enthusiastic, but it springs from a gratitude born of great need. And
you have filled it.

Your review of Mr. Powys’s lectures have carried me back four years into
a period when I was studying music in New York with a Norwegian singer,
and she and I listened to him at the Brooklyn Institute week by week!
Never will I forget it. And she—well, she is a genius herself, an
interpreter of Norwegian folk songs—and Powys lit her soul until it
flamed forth like a beacon! If you heard his Shelley, I think you saw
the veritable incarnation of that transcendent spirit....

Then I listened to him again in Buffalo, last year, on Keats. And the
audience, mostly women (God forgive them!) seemed like school
children—no, I will not confound such innocent souls with the inert mass
that confronted him! And this is our culture!

I think the spirit of your magazine is to other magazines what Powys is
to other lecturers. He makes you forget that he is such. You become part
of his theme, or is it, _himself_? And so it is I seem both to lose and
find myself when I read the pages of THE LITTLE REVIEW.


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                               THE EGOIST

       Every Number of THE EGOIST Contains an Admirable Editorial
                            by Dora Marsden

   In addition to the regular contributors, James Joyce, Muriel
   Ciolkowska and Richard Aldington, the March Number contains an
   article on James Elroy Flecker by Harold Monro and poems by Paul
   Fort, prince des poètes, and F. S. Flint.


                         SPECIAL IMAGIST NUMBER
                               May, 1915

   This Number will be entirely devoted—apart from the Editorial—to
   the works of the young Anglo-American group of poets, known as
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   Poems by Richard Aldington, H. D., J. G, Fletcher, F. S. Flint,
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   A Review of “Some Imagist Poets, 1915,” by Harold Monro.

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                          Transcriber’s Notes


Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.

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

In “Extreme Unction”, the line “THE GIRL. You don’t _know_?” was
obviously duplicated. After comparison with another edition, the second
occurrence was removed.

In the letters to the Editor (“The Reader Critic”), the Editor seems to
have left spelling variations uncorrected. They are not corrected here
either.

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

   [p. 32]:
   ... he sang loudly over the hedge whenever he cause sight of
       Marianna’s middy ...
   ... he sang loudly over the hedge whenever he caught sight of
       Marianna’s middy ...

   [p. 33]:
   ... wrong things you dont you can’t remember did ye—did ye
       ever kill a kid ...
   ... wrong things you done you can’t remember did ye—did ye
       ever kill a kid ...