The Little Review, April 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 2)

Bernhardt on Reinhardt

Sarah Bernhardt has been playing a patriotic play, _Les Cathedrales_, in London. “It is such a great play I intend taking it into the provinces and then back to London again”, she says. We have said it is a patriotic play; nothing more need be said. Bernhardt plays one of the seven cathedrals, _Strasburg_. In the interview, quoted above, given to the London magazine, _Drawing_, Bernhardt has also this to say: “And now, it seems to me that artists in the Allied Countries, and also authors, painters, composers, and all those concerned in the theatre have to bind themselves into a league for removing all traces of German nature and influence from our plays and theatres.... Now the German showman Reinhardt flooded Paris and London with the Berliner deluge of the spectacular. He claims artistic superiority on the grounds of having introduced several novel trivialities. But to trace the real curve of truth I must say that he did nothing of the kind. He merely revived, in _Sumurun_ and _Oedipus Rex_, certain outworn conventions which existed before his time! But he has not the honesty to acknowledge it.” Later she does say something worth thinking over: “What he has done is to use Eastern methods for Western ideas when he should have used Eastern ideas for Western methods.” Plagiarism is an irrelevant charge to bring against an artist, but acknowledging an artistic right to adaptation means expansion and, despite nationalism, a universal one-ness.

Book Discussion

“And Lesser Things”

_“—— and Other Poets”, by Louis Untermeyer. New York: Henry Holt and Company._

Very, very clever. The ultimate emptiness of cleverness. These parodies are “not a piece of buffoonery so much as a critical exposition”,—the poet expects them to approach this “elevated and illuminating” standard; but they never reach satire, which is really the thing that is covered by the above quotation from Isaac Disraeli.

Untermeyer’s verse, including _Challenge_ and that so quantitatively published in the magazines,—still speaking comparatively,—has the same relation to poetry as Urban’s scenery for _The Follies_ has to his Boston Opera settings; or of all of Urban’s work to that of the numerous German poster school of five or eight years ago. Untermeyer is lenient in parodying poets of his own ilk—but it is easy to determine which of those he does not respect by his obvious, spiteful absurdities.

For years now newspaper paragraphers, “poets”, and editors have been saying such things as “It is time we are getting ourselves talked about” when mentioning Ezra Pound. Untermeyer stoops to it; he is still the “once born” when being “critical” about Amy Lowell: “A blue herring sings”. What he is really parodying here is his colleague Walt Mason’s prose-printed jingles which are syndicated throughout newspaperdom; he is not giving a “critical exposition” of polyphonic prose. It will need a keener critic or poet than he to do it—or to produce a parody or satire whose art equals that of the thing satired—Masters’s things for example. By ambling through thirty-seven lines Untermeyer imagines that he is being master of the situation as regards Masters. And the last line of the parody on James Oppenheim might very well have been written by Untermeyer himself as one of his own: “Clad in the dazzling splendor of my awakened self”.... No matter what may have been your attitude toward the poets parodied these things leave your feelings unchanged—except that he makes more definite your attitude towards him.

Impartial and Otherwise

_The Making of Germany, by Ferdinand Schevill. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company._

_Great Russia, by Charles Sarolea. New York: Alfred A. Knopf._

_Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, by Thorstein Veblen. New York: Macmillan._

These books are not war-literature—a compliment not often deserved in these days of ink-war demoralization. The lay, unbiased reader, who is inclined to learn facts rather than to find interpretations substantiating his prejudices, will enjoy the three books as a rare treat. They are very much unlike. Mr. Schevill is a historian par excellence, and lends a broad perspective to the related facts. He also lends a rich romantic flavor to his narrative, an emotional undercurrent—so unfrequent a feature with academic writers. His point of view may not be universally acceptable; even in history there are events and phenomena which belong to the autonomous region of taste and opinion. The scene of the triumphant Prussians solemnizing their victory in Versailles, for example, may arouse differing emotions and reflections. Mr. Schevill bows in reverence before the three heroic figures of Emperor William (“not unlike the legendary Barbarossa”), Bismarck, and Moltke. We may likewise not share his enthusiasm for the German idea of State, as superior to Anglo-Saxon individualism. But we cannot help admiring the general brilliancy of the treatment of the gigantic subject, and if we are capable of getting instructed, our reading of the book will amply reward us.

M. Sarolea is a Belgian, hence pro-Ally and anti-German, hence unreservedly Russophil, hence not wholly impartial. It is a poor service to Russia, the unqualified praise of all her institutions and traits on the part of her friends. Exaggerated eulogy is apt to arouse suspicion. If M. Sarolea had interchanged his Mercurian sprightliness for Professor Veblen’s solidity, both would have gained considerably. Mr. Veblen takes us as far back as the pre-historic Baltic tribes in order to prove his point of the peculiar aptitude of the Prussians for borrowing. He certainly succeeds in his attempt, but at the expense of the reader’s patience and eye-sight which is subjected to the perusal of endless pages of miniature type. His scientific style is surcharged with profound sarcasm, and if you are fond of delicate subtleties the book will afford you “great sport.” Schevill, historian; Sarolea, publicist; Veblen, economist—the common feature of the three, particularly of the first and of the last, is respect for the reader who is treated with facts and not with phantoms for the sake of argument.

K.

The Reader Critic

“SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES”

_Anonymous_:

At your suggestion I have begun to read Arthur Symons’s “Spiritual Adventures.”

“Christian Trevelga” strikes me, as you predicted, most strongly so far. Symons is one of the subtlest of minds; everything he writes is worth reading. This is of his best certainly. What is one to make of him? I don’t know. I don’t know whether his kind of subtlety is of any earthly value, or whether it is as valuable as Shelley’s. I can never give up faith in the human race quite as completely as he does, nor adopt his attitude of autocratic detachment; yet I never seem to have any real faith, either.—_Vae victis!_

He is removed from all sense of human values, and lost, always, in abstract patterns. This particular story is an extraordinary expression of him—of the prizes and peril of such a state. Oh, hell! what an insult is put upon us when we are invited to live, and to make such a choice.

Perhaps one makes it: then he is not happy until he has lost himself in an art that is “something more than an audible dramatization of human life.” Perhaps he is right. But—

But—but—

Sometimes I _know_ that for the greatest artist there would be no chasm between what the heart desires and what the mind constructs. Tell me how to do that in poetry and I’ll give you a dollar. Perhaps it can be done in music—I don’t know. But in poetry the human heart and the mathematical soul are always fighting—and so far as I know they have not yet come to an agreement—not in English poetry, at least. The artist and the human being never get to be bedfellows. It’s either sickening humanitarianism or stark designing—the second is the less painful.

Well!—I loathe the world, including Symons and all the arts.

_Ezra Pound, London_:

Thanks for the January-February issue. Your magazine seems to be looking up. A touch of light in Dawson and Seiffert—though THE LITTLE REVIEW seems to me rather scrappy and unselective. I thought you started out to prove Ficke’s belief that the sonnet is “Gawd’s own city.” However, he seems to have abandoned that church. I still don’t know whether you send me the magazine in order to encourage me in believing that my camp stool by Helicon is to be left free from tacks, or whether the paper is sent to convert me from error.

I am glad to see in it some mention of Eliot, who is really of interest.

_The Egoist_ is about to publish Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in volume form (since no grab-the-cash firm will take it) and do Lewis’s “Tarr” as a serial. I think you will be interested in the two novels, and I hope you will draw attention to them, and to the sporting endeavor of _The Egoist_ to do in this dark isle what the _Mercure_ has so long done in France, i. e., publish books as well as a magazine.

Incidentally, Chicago should not depend on New York for its books.

_Anonymous_:

Will you ask that Lollipop Vender man, in the March issue, what happened to his little dirigible? He was sailing along dropping bombs, hitting the mark every time, when something seemed to happen and he came limply wobbling down to—nothing.

I hope the last half of that article was not meant to be satire or wit or anything like that. He speaks with too much authority to have much sense of humor, and—ye gods!—the situation is far too desperate for wit—of that kind. Now there’s Bartlett—read what he says of Bartlett! Haven’t we answered all attacks for years with “There’s Bartlett”? It was only intuition and self-preservation on our part at first, perhaps—but now hasn’t Bartlett proved that he is a “real artist”? He is off to New York to live.

How he does wobble when he comes to his list of “able and honest”.

Poor Parker! that he should have to go into the list of best men, too—that list! The man _can_ paint—technic seems to be only a superstition now but it once had a place in Art. Parker has that at least. Wendt, Buehr, Ravlin, and Davis should be rescued from the “able and honest” before your critic collapses completely in referring to Clarkson and Oliver Dennet Grover as some of “their best men.” Ask him anyway—what happened?

_Alice Groff, Philadelphia_:

Why did not Sherwood Anderson write up “Vibrant Life” clean and true? Why did he not have the courage to paint every one of those emotions in clear color—to outline every one of those actions in the beauty of naturalness? Why does he artificialize everything? Is he afraid of the crouching tigers of conventional morality?

Why should not vibrant life assert itself after its kind, even in the presence of death? What desecration was there in this man and woman coming together in such presence, drawn by the invincible magnetism of sex? What of falsity to life was there in the lawyer’s giving and answering the call of life as to this woman, even though he had a wife whom he loved?

Why conjure up an atmosphere of guilt that neither man nor woman felt? Why suggest such hair-bristling horror as to the accidental overturning of a dead man’s body, any more than over the accidental upsetting of a vase, or a statue, in the course of a dance? Why such strained effort to make that specialized expression of vibrant life which is the very pivotal centre of all life appear as the degradation of degradation, degrading everything else, even death?

Will you answer that there is an eternal and universal sense of the fitness of things with which every soul may be lightened that cometh into the world? Shall I not reply to you that this is a lie against life—that life is sacrificed every day to this lie? Shall I not say to you that vibrant life must not allow itself to be sacrificed to such lies—that vibrant life must create anew continually a sense of the fitness of things for itself and for its every new expression—that it must do this with authority, shaking itself bravely free from the clutch of the dead hand, whether as to traditions, standards, customs, morals, ideals or love even? Shall I not say to you that Life must assert its right to Live? Shall we not organize life on such basis?

REVIEWING “THE LITTLE REVIEW”

_Virginia York in “The Richmond Evening Journal”_:

As we said a couple of months ago, THE LITTLE REVIEW, published in windy Chicago, is claimed by its editors and readers to be the very, very last word in prose and poetry. Also, it is the organ, the mouth organ, perhaps, of that unsustained tune known as “vers libre.” In a criticism of some of the Review’s lurid, foolish contents we poked a good deal of fun at the publication in general and one piece of loose, or free, verse in particular. This gem, entitled, “Cafe Sketches,” by Arthur Davison Ficke, said, in part:

Presently persons will come out And shake legs. I do not want legs shaken. I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably. I want to see dawn spilled across the blackness Like a scrambled egg on a skillet; I want miracles, wonders. Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ... But I have a horrible suspicion That neither you Nor your esteemed consort Nor I myself Can ever provide these simple things For which I am so patiently waiting Base people. How I dislike you!

As we said a couple of months ago, “Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be. Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote of THE LITTLE REVIEW.” However, the current issue of said magazine carries our editorial remarks in full, and with our hand on our heart we make a deep courtesy for the honor conferred upon us. Though we distinctly deplore the fact that absolutely no comment is made upon our criticism of THE LITTLE REVIEW and Mr. Ficke’s remarkable “pome.” It is as if we were taken by the editorial legs and shaken. And we do not want legs shaken. We are a lady. We would far rather have our immortal editorial soul shaken unreasonably and spilled across the literary blackness and blankness “like a scrambled egg on the skillet.” Yet, we have a horrible idea “that neither you,” nor our esteemed contemporary, “nor I myself,” know what it is all about; but we do wish that Margaret Anderson and the other editors of “Le Revue Petite” had made a few caustic remarks on our feeble attempts to be funny. “Base people! How I dislike you!”

But to show that we can be generous and heap coals of fire upon the heads of our enemies, we propose to reproduce two short, sweet poems from this month’s (beg pardon, the January-February issue, lately out, “on account of having no funds during January,” as the Review editors admit) issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW. The first selection on our program, ladies and gentlemen, is by Harriet Dean and is called “The Pillar,” though much more effectively it might have been headed “The Pillow” or “The Hitching-Post.” Here goes:

When your house grows too close for you, When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you, There on the porch I shall wait, Outside your house. You shall lean against my straightness, And let night surge over you.

Now if it were only a nice slim lamp-post of a man giving such an invitation we should pray that the ceilings would descend, and should hasten to the porch—strangely enough on the outside of the house—and we should love to lean, and lean, and lean, surge what may.

The second, an “Asperity,” by Mitchell Dawson, is labeled “Teresa,” and madly singeth as follows:

“Do you remember Antonio— Swift-winged, green in the sun? Into the snap-dragon throat of desire Flew Antonio. Snap!... The skeleton of Antonio has made A good husband, a good provider.”

La, la, la! At first we thought “Antonio” was a green dragon fly, but, finally, by exercising a bit of common sense, we know that Tony is a locust and left his “skeleton,” or “shell,” behind; and that Mrs. Tony must have subsisted on the “leavings.”

Oh, this nut sundae, chocolate fudge, marshmallow whip vers libre poetry! Isn’t it just too lovely? Snap! “Into the snap-dragon throat of desire, Flew Antonio.” Honestly now, Tony, don’t you wish the lady had kept her mouth shut?

We should like to comment upon these remarks, but surely they are too good to spoil.

_A Boy, Chicago_:

I am a boy sixteen years old, and one could not expect me to know much about poetry—especially free verse. But I have heard of your magazine as a magazine that was ready to print what all kinds of people thought. So I have written a little verse—it is not a poem—telling you something about what is going on inside my mind, for these matters trouble every boy’s mind, although you may think that we are light-minded at my age.

BLINDNESS

I suppose I must be blind. People say continually that the world is a wicked place; I hear them talking about it all the time. They say our city streets reek With sin and sorrow And all manner of misery and filth, And yet I do not see any of it. I go up and down these streets every day And I see that they are ugly and that many people Are deformed and sick and hungry; But I close my eyes to it. I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do? I have no money to give the poor, and perhaps That is not getting at their real trouble anyway. I cannot heal the sick and deformed. I cannot make the streets cleaner. So I just think of other things. Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park, Or my pretty sister or anything. There is nothing wrong in my own world. I am happy. I like my school well enough. I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys. All the girls I know are good girls, With charming and high minds. And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal, And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame. Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything? Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?

FROM “THE INTERSTATE MEDICAL JOURNAL”

A case in point showing how little has been achieved by our medical men who have gone among the people, torch in hand, to lead them to the Promised Land of happiness and content and physical and mental health has been well illustrated in a poem, recently published in THE LITTLE REVIEW (Chicago), wherein the authoress, Mary Aldis, unwittingly indicts the whole medical profession for still allowing the sale of a patent medicine to reduce obesity. The strange title of the poem in homely and unadorned “free verse” is “Ellie: The Tragic Tale of An Obese Girl.”

Mrs. Aldis—thus runs the poem—had a manicurist who was “a great big lummox of a girl—a continent,” with “silly bulging cheeks and puffy forehead,” and who one day said to the poetess, weeping and distraught: “I’m so fat, so awful, awful fat! The boys won’t look at me.” She asked Mrs. Aldis for help and Mrs. Aldis suggested, “A doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise,” and “Ellie and her woes passed from my mind. Until, as summer dawned again, I heard that she was dead.” Mrs. Aldis went to the funeral and saw Ellie lying in her coffin and was told by Ellie’s mother, “She must a made it [the dress] by herself. It’s queer it fitted perfectly, An’ her all thin like that.” Later in the evening Mrs. Aldis received the following confidences from Ellie’s mother: “’Twas the stuff she took that did it, I never knew till after she was dead. The bottles in the woodshed, hundreds of ’em, All labelled ‘Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure Warranted Safe and Rapid.’”