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Title: The Little Review, December 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 9)
Author: Various
Language: English
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1915 (VOL. 2, NO. 9) ***
THE LITTLE REVIEW
Literature Drama Music Art
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
DECEMBER, 1915
Hellenica Edward J. O’Brien
Sister Sherwood Anderson
Toward Revolution The Editor
Images of Life and Death Maxwell Bodenheim
Preparedness: Universal Slaughter Emma Goldman
Ellie Mary Aldis
The Ecstasy of Pain: Alexander S. Kaun
Fragmentary Reflections on the Art of Przybyszewski
“Homo Sapiens” Discussed by Readers
The Spring Recital Theodore Dreiser
Editorials:
John Cowper Powys at the Hebrew Institute
The Foreigner in America
The Russian Literature Class
The Illusions of “The Art Student”
The Theatre:
“Grotesques,” by Cloyd Head
Book Discussion:
“Plays for Small Stages,” by Robert M. Lovett
“The State Forbids”
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
DECEMBER, 1915
No. 9
Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson
Hellenica
EDWARD J. O’BRIEN
I.
The scent of mint on the sandy grave of Nicias
Crieth unto the wanderer
For remembrance.
II.
Here in the arms of the harvest
Lieth the gleaner, Bion,
Whose sickle shineth above him in the evening.
III.
Far from tides and sand
On the slope of Cithaeron
Resteth Eumenes
In the purple distance.
His fellow tunny-fishers erect this stone.
IV.
Chaste Clearista flowereth in the heavens,
For dearer than Helen’s beauty in April sunlight
The gods love the spotless dreams of a maiden.
V.
Fairer than iris blossoms slenderly swaying
Under the sighing zephyrs of sandy Argos,
The harvest breezes stole the heart of Erinna.
Now she dreameth under the meadow grasses.
VI.
The swan afloat on the rippling azure waters
Remembereth thy fairness, Rhododaphne,
And dreameth on time’s surface of thy passing.
VII.
Nerissa played with the swallows till the twilight.
Now they soar above her,
And they wonder.
VIII.
Barefoot, a little lad hath wandered far,
And we have sought in vain,
For he hath found
The amaranthine meadows.
IX.
Far from Cos where the sailors hail in passing,
Cleonicus lieth unmarked on the ocean strand.
The crying gulls bring tidings of ancient summer,
But not to me the sound of his glad coming.
X.
Now that the flower is blown
And the rosy petals
Render earth more fragrant
With their body,
Myrrhis dreameth of spring in the flaming ground.
XI.
Lightly I walked the hills of my native Hellas.
Lightly I rest in the heart of her rushing forest,
Hermas, the hunter,
At peace,
With the moon above me.
XII.
Thyrsis, who loved the rain in the dreaming hollows,
Wandereth now soft-sandalled in misty ways,
Where the scent of flag
Recalleth not
Hylas, lonely.
Sister
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
The young artist is a woman, and at evening she comes to talk to me in
my room. She is my sister, but long ago she has forgotten that and I
have forgotten.
Neither my sister nor I live in our father’s house, and among all my
brothers and sisters I am conscious only of her. The others have
positions in the city and in the evening go home to the house where my
sister and I once lived. My father is old and his hands tremble. He is
not concerned about me, but my sister who lives alone in a room in a
house on North Dearborn Street has caused him much unhappiness.
Into my room in the evening comes my sister and sits upon a low couch by
the door. She sits cross-legged and smokes cigarettes. When she comes it
is always the same—she is embarrassed and I am embarrassed.
Since she has been a small girl my sister has always been very strange.
When she was quite young she was awkward and boyish and tore her clothes
climbing trees. It was after that her strangeness began to be noticed.
Day after day she would slip away from the house and go to walk in the
streets. She became a devout student and made such rapid strides in her
classes that my mother—who to tell the truth is fat and
uninteresting—spent the days worrying. My sister, she declared, would
end by having brain fever.
When my sister was fifteen years old she announced to the family that
she was about to take a lover. I was away from home at the time, on one
of the wandering trips that have always been a passion with me.
My sister came into the house, where the family were seated at the
table, and, standing by the door, said she had decided to spend the
night with a boy of sixteen who was the son of a neighbor.
The neighbor boy knew nothing of my sister’s intentions. He was at home
from college, a tall, quiet, blue-eyed fellow, with his mind set upon
foot-ball. To my family my sister explained that she would go to the boy
and tell him of her desires. Her eyes flashed and she stamped with her
foot upon the floor.
My father whipped my sister. Taking her by the arm he led her into the
stable at the back of the house. He whipped her with a long black whip
that always stood upright in the whip-socket of the carriage in which,
on Sundays, my mother and father drove about the streets of our suburb.
After the whipping my father was ill.
I am wondering how I know so intimately all the details of the whipping
of my sister. Neither my father nor my sister have told me of it.
Perhaps sometime, as I sat dreaming in a chair, my mother gossiped of
the whipping. It would be like her to do that, and it is a trick of my
mind never to remember her figure in connection with the things she has
told me.
After the whipping in the stable my sister was quite changed. The family
sat tense and quiet at the table and when she came into the house she
laughed and went upstairs to her own room. She was very quiet and
well-behaved for several years and when she was twenty-one inherited
some money and went to live alone in the house on North Dearborn Street.
I have a feeling that the walls of our house told me the story of the
whipping. I could never live in the house afterwards and came away at
once to this room where I am now and where my sister comes to visit me.
And so there is my sister in my room and we are embarrassed. I do not
look at her but turn my back and begin writing furiously. Presently she
is on the arm of my chair with her arm about my neck.
I am the world and my sister is the young artist in the world. I am
afraid the world will destroy her. So furious is my love of her that the
touch of her hand makes me tremble.
My sister would not write as I am now writing. How strange it would seem
to see her engaged in anything of the kind. She would never give the
slightest bit of advice to any one. If you were dying and her advice
would save you she would say nothing.
My sister is the most wonderful artist in the world, but when she is
with me I do not remember that. When she has talked of her adventures,
up from the chair I spring and go ranting about the room. I am half
blind with anger, thinking perhaps that strange, furtive looking youth,
with whom I saw her walking yesterday in the streets, has had her in his
arms. The flesh of my sister is sacred to me. If anything were to happen
to her body I think I should kill myself in sheer madness.
In the evening after my sister is gone I do not try to work any more. I
pull my couch to the opening by the window and lie down. It is then a
little that I begin to understand my sister. She is the artist right to
adventure in the world, to be destroyed in the adventure, if that be
necessary, and I, on my couch, am the worker in the world, blinking up
at the stars that can be seen from my window when my couch is properly
arranged.
Toward Revolution
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
On Thanksgiving Day some five thousand men and women marched in Joe
Hillstrom’s funeral. Why didn’t they march for Joe Hillstrom before he
was shot, everybody is asking.
Yes, naturally. Why not?
Incidentally, why didn’t some one shoot the governor of Utah before he
could shoot Joe Hill? It might have awakened Capital—_and Labor_. Or why
didn’t five hundred of the five thousand get Joe Hill out of jail? It
could have been done. Or why didn’t fifty of the five thousand make a
protest that would set the nation gasping?
There are Schmidt and Caplan. Why doesn’t some one see to it that they
are released? Labor _could_ do it. And there are the Chicago garment
strikers. Why doesn’t some one arrange for the beating-up of the police
squad? That would make a good beginning. Or set fire to some of the
factories, or start a convincing sabotage in the shops?
Why aren’t these things done?
For the same reason that men continue to support institutions they no
longer believe in; that women continue to live with men they no longer
love; that youth continues to submit to age it no longer respects; for
the same reason that you are a slave when you want to be free, or a
nonentity when you would like to have a personality.
It is a matter of Spirit. Spirit can do anything. It is the only thing
in the world that can.
* * * * *
For God’s sake, why doesn’t some one start the Revolution?
Images of Life and Death
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
Life
I.
The sky is the thin, strong expanse of a God,
And the trees are lines of black Hindus
Praying in black shrivelled attitudes.
II.
The grass is a priest in dream-gold cloth,
Lying on his back, hard with years of thought-spinning.
The lateral-gray, snarled clouds over him
Are the thoughts he has solemnly woven.
III.
The slender lagoon holds the laughter of a child
With his lips to a huge, full cup.
Death
I.
A fan of smoke, in the long, green-white reverie of the horizon,
Slowly curls apart.
So shall I rise and widen out in the silence of air.
II.
An old man runs down a little yellow road
To an out-flung, white thicket uncovered by morning.
So shall I swing to the white sharpness of death.
Preparedness.
The Road to Universal Slaughter
EMMA GOLDMAN
Ever since the beginning of the European conflagration the people of
Europe have thrown themselves into the flames of war like panic-stricken
cattle. And now America, pushed to the very brink by unscrupulous
politicians, by ranting demagogues, and by military sharks, is preparing
for the same terrible feat.
In the face of this approaching disaster it behooves men and women not
yet overcome by the war madness to raise their protest, to call the
attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be
perpetrated upon them.
America is essentially the melting pot. No national unit composing it is
in a position to boast of superior race purity, particular historic
mission, or higher culture. Yet the jingoes and war speculators are
filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocritical nationalism,
“America for Americans,” “America first, last, and all the time.” This
cry has caught the popular fancy from one end of the country to the
other. In order to maintain America military preparedness must be
engaged in at once. A billion dollars of the people’s sweat and blood is
to be expended for dreadnaughts and submarines for the army and the
navy, all to protect this precious America.
The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a
huge military force is not the America of the people, but the America of
the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and
controls their lives. And it is no less pathetic that so few people
realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but is indeed the road
to universal slaughter.
The American military ring with its Roosevelts, its Garrisons, its
Daniels, and lastly its Wilsons, is moving the very heavens to place the
militaristic heel upon the necks of the American people—using the same
methods of the German diplomats to saddle the masses with Prussian
militarism. If it is successful America will be hurled into the storm of
blood and tears now devastating the countries of Europe.
Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: “Germany above
everything. Germany for the Germans, first, last and always. We want
peace; therefore we must prepare for war. Only a well-armed and
thoroughly-prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can
be sure of its national integrity.” And Germany continued to prepare,
thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The European war is
the fruition of the gospel of military preparedness.
Since the war began, miles of paper and oceans of ink have been used to
prove the barbarity, the cruelty, the oppression of Prussian militarism.
Conservatives and radicals alike are giving their support to the Allies
for no other reason than to help crush that militarism, in the presence
of which, they say, there can be no peace or progress in Europe. But
though America grows fat on the manufacture of munition and war loans to
the Allies to help crush Prussianism, the same cry is now being raised
in America which, if carried into national action, will build up an
American militarism far more terrible than German or Prussian militarism
could ever be; because nowhere in the world has capitalism become so
brazen in its greed as in America, and nowhere is the state so ready to
kneel at the feet of capital.
Like a plague the mad spirit of militarism is sweeping the country,
infesting the clearest heads and staunchest hearts. National security
leagues, with cannon as their emblem of protection, naval leagues with
women in their lead, have sprung up all through the United States.
Americanization societies with well-known liberals as members, they who
but yesterday decried the patriotic clap-trap of today, are now lending
themselves to the befogging of the minds of the people, to the
building-up of the same destructive institutions in America which they
are directly and indirectly helping to pull down in Germany—militarism,
the destroyer of youth, the raper of woman, the annihilator of the best
in the race, the very mower of life.
Even Woodrow Wilson, who not so long ago talked of “a nation too proud
to fight,” who in the beginning of the war ordered prayers for peace,
who in his proclamations spoke of the necessity of watchful waiting—even
he has been whipped into line. He has now joined his worthy colleagues
in the jingo movement, echoing their clamor for preparedness and their
howl of “America for Americans.” The difference between Wilson and
Roosevelt is this: Roosevelt, the bully, uses the club; Wilson, the
historian, the college professor, wears the smooth polished university
mask, but underneath it he, like Roosevelt, has but one aim: to serve
the big interests, to add to those who are growing phenomenally rich by
the manufacture of military preparedness.
Woodrow Wilson, in his address before the Daughters of the American
Revolution, gave his case away when he said: “I would rather be beaten
than ostracized.” To stand out against the Bethlehem, Du Pont, Baldwin,
Remington, Winchester metallic cartridges and the rest of the armament
ring means political ostracism and death. Wilson knows that; therefore
he betrays his original position, goes back on the bombast of “too proud
to fight,” and howls as loudly as any other cheap politician for
preparedness and national glory, for the silly pledge the Navy League
women intend to impose upon every school child: “I pledge myself to do
all in my power to further the interests of my country, to uphold its
institutions and to maintain the honor of its name and its flag. As I
owe everything in life to my country, I consecrate my heart, mind, and
body to its service and promise to work for its advancement and security
in times of peace and to shrink from no sacrifice or privation in its
cause should I be called upon to act in its defense for the freedom,
peace, and happiness of our people.”
To uphold the institutions of our country—that is it; the institutions
which protect and sustain a handful of people in the robbery and plunder
of the masses, the institutions which drain the blood of the native as
well as of the foreigner and turn it into wealth and power; the
institutions which rob the alien of whatever originality he brings with
him and in return give him cheap Americanism, whose glory consists in
mediocrity and arrogance.
The very proclaimers of “America first” have long before this betrayed
the fundamental principles of real Americanism, of the kind of
Americanism Jefferson had in mind when he said that the best government
is that which governs least; the kind of an America David Thoreau worked
for when he proclaimed that the best government is the one that doesn’t
govern at all; or the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of
this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and
oppressed coming to these shores would give character, quality and
meaning to the country. That is not the America of the politicians and
the munition speculators. Their America has been powerfully portrayed by
a young New York sculptor I know; he has made a hard cruel hand with
long lean merciless fingers, crushing in over the heart of the
foreigner, squeezing out its blood in order to coin dollars.
No doubt Woodrow Wilson has reason to defend these institutions. But
what an ideal to hold out to the young generation! And how is a
military-drilled and trained people to defend freedom, peace, and
happiness? This is what Major General O’Ryan has to say of an
efficiently trained generation: “The soldier must be so trained that he
becomes a mere automation; he must be so trained that it will destroy
his initiative; he must be so trained that he is turned into a machine.
The soldier must be forced into the military noose; he must be jacked
up; he must be ruled by his superiors with pistol in hand.”
This was not said by a Prussian Junker; not by a German barbarian; not
by Treitska or Bernhardi, but by an American major general. And he is
right. You cannot conduct war with equals; you cannot have militarism
with free born man; you must have slaves, automatons, machines, obedient
disciplined creatures, who will move, act, shoot, and kill at the
command of their superiors. That is preparedness, and nothing else.
It has been reported that among the speakers before the Navy League was
Samuel Gompers. I have long ceased to believe what is reported in the
press. But if that is true, it signalizes the greatest outrage upon
labor at the hands of its own leaders. Preparedness is directed not only
against the external enemy; it aims much more at the internal enemy. It
is directed against that element of labor which has learned not to hope
for anything from our institutions, that awakened part of the working
people who have realized that the war of the classes underlies all wars
among nations, and that if war is justified at all it is the war against
economic dependence and political slavery, the two dominant issues
involved in the struggle of the classes.
Already militarism has been acting its bloody part in every economic
conflict, with the approval and support of the state. Where was the
protest from Washington when “our men, women and children” were killed
in Ludlow? Where was that high-sounding outraged protest contained in
the note to Germany? Or is there any difference in killing “our men,
women and children” in Ludlow or on the high seas? Yes, indeed. The men,
women, and children at Ludlow were working people, belonging to the
disinherited of the earth, foreigners who had to be given a taste of the
glories of Americanism, while the passengers of the Lusitania
represented wealth and station; therein lies the difference.
Preparedness, therefore, will only add to the power of the privileged
few and help them to subdue, to enslave, and crush labor. Surely Gompers
must know that, and if he joins the howl of the military clique he must
stand condemned as a traitor to the cause of labor.
It will be with preparedness as it has been with all the other
institutions in our confused life which were created for the good of the
people and which have accomplished the very reverse. Supposedly, America
is to prepare for peace; but in reality it will prepare for the cause of
war. It has always been so and it will continue to be so until nation
refuses to fight against nation, and until the people of the world stop
preparing for slaughter. Preparedness is like the seed of a poisonous
plant; placed in the soil, it will bear poisonous fruit. The European
mass destruction is the fruit of that poisonous seed. It is imperative
that the American workers realize this before they are driven by the
jingoes into the madness that is forever haunted by the spectre of
danger and invasion; they must know that to prepare for peace means to
invite war, means to unloose the furies of death over land and sea.
You cannot build up a standing army and then throw it back into a box
like tin soldiers. Armies equipped to the teeth with highly-developed
instruments of murder and backed by their military interests have their
own dynamic functions. We have but to examine into the nature of
militarism to realize the truth of this contention.
Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each
nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue.
Even in times of peace almost nothing is spent on education, art,
literature, and science in comparison with the amount devoted to
militarism; while in times of war everything else is set at naught: all
life stagnates, all effort is curtailed, the very sweat and blood of the
masses are used to feed this insatiable monster—militarism. Under such
circumstances it must become more arrogant, more aggressive, more
bloated with its own importance. If for no other reason, it is out of
surplus energy that militarism must act to remain alive; therefore it
will find an enemy or create one artificially. In this civilized purpose
militarism is sustained by the state, protected by the laws of the land,
fostered by the home and the school, and glorified by public opinion. In
other words, the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live
except through murder.
But the most dominant factor of military preparedness, and the one which
inevitably leads to war, is the creation of group interests which
consciously and deliberately work for the increase of armament whose
purposes are furthered by creating the war hysteria. This group interest
embraces all those engaged in the manufacture and sale of munition and
in military equipment for personal gain and profit. For instance, the
family Krupp, which owns the largest cannon munition plant in the world;
its sinister influence in Germany, and in fact in many other countries,
extends to the press, the school, the church, and to statesmen of
highest rank. Shortly before the war, Karl Liebknecht, the one brave
public man in Germany now, brought to the attention of the Reichstag the
fact that the family Krupp had in its employ officials of the highest
military position, not only in Germany, but in France and in other
countries. Everywhere its emissaries have been at work, systematically
inciting national hatreds and antagonisms. The same investigation
brought to light an international war supply trust which gives a hang
for patriotism, or for love of the people, but which uses both to incite
war and to pocket millions of profits out of the terrible bargain.
It is not at all unlikely that the history of the present war will trace
its origin to this international murder trust. But is it always
necessary for one generation to wade through oceans of blood and heap up
mountains of human sacrifice that the next generation may learn a grain
of truth from it all? Can we of today not profit by the cause which led
to the European war, can we not learn that it was preparedness, thorough
and efficient preparedness on the part of Germany and the other
countries for military aggrandizement and material gain; above all can
we not realize that preparedness in America must and will lead to the
same result, the same barbarity, the same senseless sacrifice of life?
Is America to follow suit, is it to be turned over to the American
Krupps, the American military cliques? It almost seems so when one hears
the jingo howls of the press, the blood and thunder tirades of bully
Roosevelt, the sentimental twaddle of our college-bred President.
The more reason for those who still have a spark of libertarianism and
humanity left to cry out against this great crime, against the outrage
now being prepared and imposed upon the American people. It is not
enough to claim being neutral; a neutrality which sheds crocodile tears
with one eye and keeps the other riveted upon the profits from war
supplies and war loans, is not neutrality. It is merely hypocritical.
Nor is it enough to join the bourgeois pacifists, who proclaim peace
among the nations, while helping to perpetuate the war among the
classes, a war which in reality is at the bottom of all other wars.
It is this war of the classes that we must concentrate upon, and in that
connection the war against false values, against evil institutions,
against all social atrocities. Those who appreciate the urgent need of
cooperating in great struggles must oppose military preparedness imposed
by the state and capitalism for the destruction of the masses. They must
organize the preparedness of the masses for the overthrow of both
capitalism and the state. Industrial and economic preparedness is what
the workers need. That alone leads to revolution at the bottom as
against mass destruction from on top. That alone leads to true
internationalism of labor against Kaiserdom, kingdom, diplomacies,
military cliques, and bureaucracies. That alone will give the people the
means to take their children out of the slums, out of the sweat-shops
and the cotton-mills; that alone will enable them to inculcate in the
coming generation a new ideal of brotherhood, to rear them in play and
song and beauty; to bring up men and women, not automatons; that alone
will enable woman to become the real mother of the race, to give to the
world creative men, and not soldiers who destroy. That alone leads to
economic and social freedom, and does away with war.
Ellie
MARY ALDIS
She came to do my nails.
Came in my door and stood before me waiting,
A great big lummox of a girl—
A continent.
Her dress was rusty black
And scant,
Her hat, a melancholy jumble of basement counter bargains.
Her sullen eyes,
Like a whipped animal’s,
Shone out between her silly bulging cheeks and puffy forehead.
She dropped her coat upon a chair
And waited;
Then, at a word, busied herself
With files and delicate scissors,
Sweet-smelling oils and my ten finger tips.
She proved so deft and silent
I bade her come again;
And twice a week
While summer dawned and flushed and waned
She used me in her parasitic trade.
The dress grew rustier,
The hat more melancholy,
And Ellie fatter.
Each time she came I wondered as she worked
If thought lay anywhere
Behind that queer uncouthness.
She had a trick of seizing with her eyes
Each passing thing,
An insatiate greediness for something out of reach;
And yet she seemed enwrapped
In a kind of solemn patience,
Large, aloof and waiting.
We hardly ever spoke—
I could not think of anything worth saying;
One does not chatter with a continent.
Finally it was homing time;
The seashore town was raw and desolate
And idlers flitted.
The last day Ellie came
Her calm was gone, she had been crying.
Fat people never ought to cry;
It’s awful....
The hot drops fell upon my hand
While Ellie dropped the scissors suddenly
And sniffed and blew and sobbed
In disconcerting and unreserved abandonment.
I said the usual things;
I would have patted her but for the grease,
But Ellie was not comforted.
Not until the storm was spent
And only little catching breaths were left
I got the reason.
“I’m so fat,” she gulped, “so awful, awful fat
The boys won’t look at me.”
And then it came, the stammered passionate cry:
Could I not help?
Could I not find a medicine?
We talked and talked
And when at dusk she went, a teary smile
Hovered a moment on her mouth
And in those sullen, swollen eyes
A little hope perhaps;
I did not know.
The city and its interests soon engulfed me.
A letter or two,
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.
A curious letter written stiffly,
From Ellie’s mother,
Told me I was invited to the funeral
“By wish of the Deceased.”
Wondering I travelled to the little town
Where the sea beat and groaned
And sorrowed endlessly,
And made my way down the steep street
To Ellie’s door.
Her mother met me in the hall
And motioned,—
“She wanted you to see her,”
Then ushered me into an awful place, the parlor—
A place of emerald plush and golden oak
Set round with pride and symmetry,
And in the midst
A black and silver coffin—
Ellie’s coffin.
Raising the lid she pointed and I looked.
Somewhere in Florence Mino da Fiesole
Has made a tomb
Where deathless beauty lies with upturned face.
Two gentle hands, palms meeting,
Touch with their pointed forefingers
A delicate chin, and over the vibrant body
Clings a white robe
Enshrouding chastely
Warm curving lines of adolescent grace.
No sleeper this,—
The figure glows, alert, awake, aware,
As if some sudden ecstacy had stolen life
And held imprisoned there
The moment of attainment
Rapt, imperishable and fair.
Even so lay Ellie,
And when from somewhere far I heard
The mother’s voice
I listened vacantly.
The woman chattered on,
“The dress you know, white chiffon, like a wedding dress—
I never knew she had it,
She must ’a made it by herself.
It’s queer it fitted perfectly
An’ her all thin like that—
She must ’a thought—”
Then black-robed relatives came streaming in
To look at Ellie.
I watched them start
And look around for explanation.
The mother pinched my arm:
“Don’t ask me anything now,” she whispered;
“Come back tonight.”
Then old, old words were sung and prayed and droned,
While everybody dutifully cried,
And when the village parson
Rhythmically proclaimed—
And this mortal shall put on immortality,—
With a great welcoming
And a great lightening
I knew at last the ancient affirmation.
When evening came I found the mother
Sitting amidst her golden oak and plush
In a kind of isolated stateliness.
She led me in.
“’Twas the stuff she took that did it,”
She began; “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.”
Oh ain’t it awful?” and she fell to crying miserably;
“But wasn’t she real pretty in her coffin?”
And then she cried again
And clung to me.
The Ecstasy of Pain
(Fragmentary Reflections on the Art of Przybyszewski)
ALEXANDER S. KAUN
... Out of the effervescent hurricane of light burst forth a terrible
song.
Despair, as if thousands of graves had torn open. As if the heavens had
rent asunder, and the Son of Man had descended upon the earth to judge
the good and the wicked. Millions of hands rose up to heaven in a mad
horror of death—hands that prayed for mercy and charity. He heard a
beastly roar, which like a geyser of a smoking sea of blood spurtled
upward; and above all this he saw bony fingers that twisted and writhed
in convulsions of fear and shouted to heaven: “Ad te clamamus exules
filii Hevae, ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes.”
And he saw a multitudinous crowd that was lashed with an insane ecstacy
of destruction, and above them a heaven that yawned with disease and
fire. He saw how those miserable creatures wriggled and serpentined in
hellish madnesses of life; he saw the bleeding backs furrowed by the
whips into chunks; he saw all humanity demented, obsessed, with an
inspired frenzy in the bestialized eyes.
Slowly disappeared the procession of the doomed; wild cries intoxicated
with despair died away in a death-rattle, and a sun, red like copper,
shed a chatoyant green light on the puddles of blood.
“Ad te clamamus exules filii Hevae!”
* * * * *
This is a fragment from an early poem of Przybyszewski, _De Profundis_.
It is a proper background to all the works of the Pole, to his plays,
essays, novels, poems. At least I see him in that light.
A reminiscence: On a rainy autumn night I went to hear him lecture. “...
and if the psychologists will find contradictions in my words—I shall
not feel dismayed. There are contradictions that are dearer to me than
most perfect consequentialities.” From the dim light of the platform
ached a face distorted with contempt and suffering, with the grim
clairvoyance of the Beyond. At moments the eyebrows leaped up and bulged
the forehead into thick, strained furrows, and the eyes suddenly burst
in a flash that revealed unknown worlds, twisting your soul with awe and
mystery. But soon the flame would extinguish, and the face would resume
the masque of contemptuous weariness; the mouth-corners congealed a
satanic would-be smile that prepared one for his famous “Heh-heh.” That
face haunted me for many days and nights, as if my inner vision had been
scalded by an unearthly chimera. My friends, who have seen his
exaggerated portrait painted by Krzyzanowski, will understand me. Those
who will read his works (if they are translated), will understand me.
_Homo Sapiens_[1] is but a nuance of his multiplex creative spirit,
though perhaps a most characteristic nuance. Przybyszewski, like
Nietzsche, like Wilde, is a unique mosaique, in which the personality,
the artist, his life and his works, are inseparable, indivisible units
of the wonderful whole. Who can fathom this hellish cosmos, this mare
tenebrarum of the modern man’s soul, which the mad Pole has traversed
and penetrated to the bottom, and has cast out shrieking monsters and
gargoyles illuminated with blinding, dazzling, infernal flames?
[1] _Homo Sapiens, by Stanislaw Przybyszewski. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf._
I cannot. Perhaps only pale glimpses of reflections.
* * * * *
Those who have heard Przybyszewski play Chopin tell us that no virtuoso
can compare with his creative interpretation of his melancholy
compatriot. In his profound essay on _Chopin and Nietzsche_ I have been
impressed not so much with the morbid theory as with the characteristic
feature present in all his work—the reflection of his own personality.
In his favorite artists, in his heroes, in his women, he has painfully
sought an expression of his restless, boundless self. Thus Chopin
becomes one of the numerous selves of Przybyszewski. Let me picture the
Composer in the light of the Poet.
Specifically Slavic features: extreme subtility of feeling, easy
excitability, passionateness and sensuousness, predilection for luxury
and extravagance, and, chief of all, a peculiar melancholy lyricism,
which is nothing but the expression of the most exalted egoism, whose
sole and highest criterion is his own “I.” These, and the profound
melancholy of his native limitless plains with their desolate sandy
expanses, with the lead-skies over them, have been influences keenly
contradicting his flexible, light vivaciousness of the Gallic, his
coquettish effeminacy, his love for life and light.
Subtracting the last two strokes, who is it: Chopin or Przybyszewski?
The trait most obviously common to both Poles is the unquenchable
yearning, the eternal Sehnsucht, which filters through all their
productions. In neither of them was it the yearning of healthy natures,
in whom, as in a mother’s womb, it bears the embryo of fruitful life; it
is not the yearning of Zarathustra “in a sunny rapture of ecstacy
greeting new, unknown gods with an exalted ‘Evoi’!” Chopin’s longing, as
reflected in Przybyszewski, is tinted with the pale color of anemia
peculiar to a representative of a degenerate aristocracy (the Poet’s
progenitor died of delirium tremens), with his transparent skin
projecting the tiniest veins, with his slender figure and prolongated
limbs that breathe with each movement incomparable gracefulness, with
his overdeveloped intellect which shines in his eyes, as in the eyes of
frail children who are doomed to early death. This longing is the
incessant palpitation of a nervous, over-delicate nature, something akin
to the constant irritability of open wounds, the continuous change of
ebbs and flows of morbid sensitiveness, the eternal dissatisfaction of
acute emotions, the fatigableness of a too-susceptible spirit, the
weariness of one oversatiated with suffering. Yet this longing has in it
also wild passion, “the convulsive agony of deadly horror,”
self-damnation and thirst for destruction, delirium and madness of one
who strains his gaze into the vast—and sees nothing.
Indeed I should like to hear Chopin’s _Preludes_ recreated under the
longing fingers of Stanislaw.
* * * * *
Stanislaw Przybyszewski. Do pronounce it correctly, that you may hear
the sound of rain swishing through tall grass. Przybyszewski has come to
know himself so thoroughly and unreservedly, and, in himself, to know
the modern man of the widest intellectual and artistic horizons, through
a long excruciating internal purgatory. From the study of architecture
and general aesthetics his restless, ever-searching spirit hurled him
into natural sciences in the hope of finding positive answers to his
burning questions. He came out loaded with an enormous baggage of facts
and information; yet he had not quenched his everlasting
dissatisfaction, but had acquired a sceptical “heh-heh” towards life and
knowledge. He plunged into psychology, and found Nietzsche—to him the
deepest searcher, possessor of the keen eye of a degenerate, which like
a wintersun sheds its light with morbid intensity upon snowfields,
clearly illuminating each crystal. With a “heh-heh” he dismissed the
Loneliest One. For was not Nietzsche driven to create for himself a
superman, as a consolation, as a hope, as “a soft pillow upon which
could rest his weary inflamed head”? Did he for one moment believe in
that ghost which he erected in the heavy hours of despair? Nonsense.
Heh-heh. Had not his Falk, his homo sapiens, been crushed in his
struggle to attain liberation and supermanship? Recall Falk’s
self-rending meditations: “Conscience! Heh-heh-heh! Conscience! How
ridiculously silly is your superman! Herr Professor Nietzsche left out
of account tradition and culture which created conscience in the course
of hundreds of centuries.... Oh, how ridiculous is your superman sans
conscience!” Thus, step after step, killing god after god, burning his
ships behind him, the all-knowing, the all-denying degenerate-nobleman
Slav-cosmopolite has ascended the loftiest summit, or, as he would
rather say, has descended into deepest hell—Art. An equipment hardly
appropriate for an artist who sees “Life Itself” in color and fragrance
and petals and varicolored mornings and varicolored nights and Japanese
prints and ... but you may find the catalogue in the Editor’s rhapsody
of last month. Przybyszewski’s background served him as an Archimedean
lever to gauge and fathom the soul of modernity.
* * * * *
Let me attempt to present the quintessence of Przybyszewski’s modern
Individuum, as he prefers to call an exceptional personality.
He considers himself a superman, aloof from the market-interests of the
crowd. He is conscious of the fetters of his instincts and of the
gradual sapping of his strength—hence the history of the Individuum
turns into a sad monography of suppressed will and distorted instincts,
a history of a mountain torrent which cannot find an outlet, and rushes
into depth, dissolving obstructing strata, destroying and washing them
away, and ruining the structure of the rocks in their very bowels.
Hence the longing for liberation and the yearning for expanse, a
perilous “palpitating Sehnsucht and craving of the heights, of the
beyond.” But this longing has another distinctive symptom: the
consciousness of its hopelessness, the clear conviction that the
passionately-desired goal is but an idée fixe. In this longing is
expressed a spirit that ruins everything in itself with the corrosive
acid of reason, a spirit that had long lost faith in itself, that
considers its own activity diffidently and critically, a spirit that
spies and searches itself, that has lost the faculty of taking itself
seriously, that has become accustomed to mock itself and to play with
its own manifestations as with a ball; a spirit not satisfied with the
highest and finest human perceptions, that has come at last, after many
searchings, to the gloomy decision that all is in vain, that it is
incapable of surpassing itself.
Hence the pursuit of enjoyment. But this morbid seeking of enjoyment
lacks that direct, self-sufficient bliss that results from the
accumulated surplus of productive strength. The modern Individuum is
deprived of that healthy instinct, therefore in place of naive joy
experienced from the liberation of surcharged power he plunges into
self-forgetfulness. All his life is reduced to pure self-narcotization.
In the morbid straining of his abnormally-functioning nerves the
Individuum-decadent rises to those mysterious borders where the joy and
the pain of human existence pass into one another and intermingle, where
the two are brought in their extreme manifestations to a peculiar
feeling of destructive rapture, to an ecstatic being outside and above
himself. All his thoughts and acts acquire a character of something
devastating, maniacal, and over all of them reigns a heavy, depressing,
wearying atmosphere, like the one before the outbreak of a storm,
something akin to the passionate tremor of delirious impotence,
something similar to the consumptive flush of spiritual hysteria.
In such clinical terms Przybyszewski sees the modern homo sapiens.
Through this prism I perceive his Falk, doomed to utter failure and
futility.
* * * * *
Falk an erotomaniac? Nonsense. His sexual relations are as pathological
as the functions of his other faculties, not more. In his incessant
search for an outlet, for discharge, for some quantity that might fill
up his hollowed heart, Falk grasps woman as a potentional complement to
his emptiness. He fails, naturally. To the artist woman is a narcotizer
and wing-clipper; more often a Dalila or Xantippe than a Cosima Wagner
or a Clara Schumann. Neither the exoticism of Ysa, nor the
pillow-serviceability of Yanina, nor the medieval fanaticism of Marit,
nor Olga’s revolutionary resignedness, have the power of checking the
hurricane of his questing spirit for more than a moment, such moments
when the tormented man erects for his consolation a phantom, be it a
superman or a Christ. Falk’s quest for self-forgetfulness is futile. He
lacks the healthy capacity of us, normal beings, for finding salvation
in befogging our vision. No matter how we may indulge in
self-analization, we usually stop at the perilous point and brake our
searching demon with the same happy instinct that closes our eyes
automatically at the approach of danger. Falk’s mental motor has no
brakes; it hurls him into the precipice.
“I have never suffered on account of a woman,” boasts the old rake,
Iltis.
“Because your organism is very tough, a peasant’s organism, my dear
Iltis. Your sensibilities have not yet reached the stage of dependence
upon the brain. You are like a hydromedusa which suddenly parts with its
feelers stocked with sexual organs and sends them off to seek the
female, and then does not bother about them any more. You are a very
happy creature, my dear Iltis. But I don’t envy you your happiness. I
never envy the ox his enjoyment of grass, not even when I am starving.”
Przybyszewski’s Individuum seeks in woman the miraculous expression of
his most intimate, most precious “I.” He speaks in one place about the
love of the “anointed artist,” which is a painful conception of an awful
unknown force that casts two souls together striving to link them into
one; an intense torment rending the soul in the impossible endeavor to
realize the New Covenant, the union of two beings, a matter of absolute
androgynism. For such an artist love is “the consciousness of a terrible
abyss, the sense of a bottomless Sheol in his soul, where rages the life
of thousands of generations, of thousands of ages, of their torments and
pangs of reproduction and of greed for life.” Now recall Falk’s dream:
“He saw a meadow-clearing in his father’s forest. Two elks were
fighting. They struck at each other with their large horns, separated,
and made another terrific lunge. Their horns interlocked. In great leaps
they tried to disentangle themselves, turning round and round. There was
a crunching of horns. One elk succeeded in freeing himself and ran his
horns into the other’s breast. He drove them in deeper and deeper, tore
ferociously at his flesh and entrails. The blood spurted.... And near
the fighting animals a female elk was pasturing unmindful of the savage
struggle of the passion-mad males.... In the centre stood the victor
trembling and gory, yet proud and mighty. On his horns hung the entrails
of his rival.”
The epitomy of the sex-problem, heh-heh.
* * * * *
“I don’t envy the ox his enjoyment.” Przybyszewski despises happiness as
something unworthy of an artist. A happy soul, he believes, is a
miracle, the squareness of a circle, a whip made of sand. The soul is
sombre, stormy, for it is the aching of passion and the madness of
sweeps, living over ecstacies of boiling desire, the stupendous anxiety
of depths and the boundless suffering of being. For the artist who
creates the world not with his brain, but with his soul, all life is one
“sale corvée,” a filthy burden, eternal horror, despair, and submission,
fruitless struggle and impotent stumbling. For this reason love, the
greatest happiness for ordinary males, becomes for the artist the
profoundest disastrous suffering.
Take away from Przybyszewski his ecstacy of pain, and you rob him of his
very essence, of his raison d’être, of his creative breath. When you
read his _Poems in Prose_ you face a soul writhing in hopeless despair,
in futile longing, in maddening convulsions. But you cannot pity the
artist. You are aware of the sublime joy in his sorrow, of the unearthly
bliss that is wrapped in the black wings of his melancholy. In his poem
_At the Sea_, the elemental yearning of his soul reaches cosmic
dimensions. Only one other poem approaches it in its surcharged
grief—Ben Hecht’s _Night-Song_, if we overlook the latter’s redundancy.
Allow me to give you a pale translation of the “Introibo” to _At the
Sea_:—may the Pole’s spirit forgive me my sacrilegious impertinence.
INTROIBO
Thou, who with ray-clad hands wreathest my dreams with the beauty
of fading autumn, with the splendor of off-blooming grandeur,
with inflamed hues of the burning paradise,—
Radiant mine!
How many pangs have passed as if in a dream, since I saw Thee for
the last time, and yet mine heart doth shine amidst the stars
which Thou hast strewn in my life, yet the thirsting hands of my
blood yearn for the bliss Thou didst once kindle in my soul.
Thou, who in evening twilight spinnest for me with still hands on
enchanted harps heavy meditation on moments of joy that have
flown away like a distant whisper of leaves,—on suns that,
sinking into the sea, sparkle in the east with bloody dew,—on
nights that press to their warm breast tortured hearts,—
Radiant mine!
How many times has the sun set since those hours when with Thy
magic songs Thou pacified the sorrow of my soul,—and yet I see
Thine eyes, full of moans and sadness, burning in an unearthly
rapture, see the radiant hand stretching towards me and grasping
mine with a hot cry.
Thou, who transformest stormy nights into sunny days, in the
depths of my dreams quenchest reality, removest into an infinite
distance all near,—
Thou, who enkindlest in my heart will-o’-the-wisps and bearest
unto life black flowers—
Radiant mine!
A thousand times has the world transfigured since Thy look
consumed the tarnishing glitter of my soul, and yet I see Thy
little child-like face and the golden crown of hair over Thy
brow, see how two tears had spread into a pale smile that glowed
on Thy mouth, and hear the dark plaint of Thy voice.
Thou, who breakest before me the seals of all mysteries and
readest the runes of hidden powers, and in all the madnesses of
my life flingest Thyself in a rainbow of blessing from one heaven
to the other,—
Never yet has the storm so strewn the rays of my stars, never yet
has the aureole played with such bleeding radiancy around Thy
head, as now, when I have lost Thee forever.
“Homo Sapiens” Discussed by Readers
In another place I called _Homo Sapiens_ “the book of the age.” Surely
there has not been a more stirring work of literature since _Werther_.
Will the public respond? Is it true that the wall of American
indifferentism is impregnable? I am still optimistic about the
intellectual aristocracy of this country; that small circle of the young
in spirit, brave searchers and earnest livers, for whom art and life are
not merely diversions between meals and business transactions, but the
italicized essence of existence. To those few Przybyszewski’s book
should appeal; those should react.
I have been getting curious, and at times interesting, opinions of such
readers. I hope to receive more, and acquaint the _Little Review_ family
with them. On the whole, there prevails a note of depression and
uneasiness. One writes: “I had hoped to be left alone on a mountain peak
in a blaze of light and in the stress of wind; instead there is a
sardonic laugh, and I am again hurled into the maelstrom of a world that
cannot rise above suffering from its own passions.” A feminist remarks
sadly that the book demonstrates “the limit of man’s penetration. The
women are women still—not even women of the transition.” An incurable,
hopelessly struggling Puritan rages and curses both me and the author; I
give a few gems: “I’ve read your devilishly wonderful book!... It did
many things to me, which, thank God, have passed like a drunken
dream.... For three days I’ve been hideously torn up, slashed into
tatters, savage and fundamental. But you want my opinion! How can I tell
you, divorce it from myself, tear it out of my living flesh, when it has
become imbedded. That terrible, wonderful Falk! It makes you shudder
away from all temperamental people with experimental souls in their
fingers, and few convictions.... I became paralyzed with horror. At last
I cried out, writhed on the floor and prayed to some Power, any Power,
for pity, not to see myself, not to see life beneath the superficial
surface.... Go away, take your Slav fingers out of my soul! They force
me to look at truth, when I want to deal in lies. They force me to climb
the heights and peer into the hideous crevasses, when I want to browse
fatuously on the hillocks.” More such “drunken dreams,”
and the comfortable blinders will fall off the eyes of the
happiness-by-all-means-fiends.
I submit two letters of friends who have read my article and wished to
supplement my views. I humbly think that what they say is included in my
“reflections”; but I am also conscious of my inherent fault—conciseness
which borders on obscurity. Hence clarification is gratefully welcome.
I.
What you say about Przybyszewski I also think. But what you do not say
about _Homo Sapiens_ is what I feel most of all. There is something very
definite about _Homo Sapiens_, the book. It rises out of the mass of
flaming gibberish, dissected nerves, and poetical slashings. It rings in
the ears long after the book is closed. It is the most poignant cry of
the dying nineteenth century, and it comes out of lower depths than the
cry of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov,—shriller, madder, and more
penetrating....
Eric Falk is not a nuance. He is the whole of Stanislaw Przybyszewski,
the whole of modern wisdom and introspection, which is another word for
degeneracy.
Come now, pretend I am not reviewing it. Pretend I am something of a
clairvoyant.
See Przybyszewski creating him—Erick Falk. He is sitting at his desk. He
is going to write a book about man, not a type, not a silhouette, but
about Man complete. He wants the final man of his day, the Homo Sapiens,
the Zarathustran phantom.
This Przybyszewski is a thorough fellow, a biologist, a poet, a
physician, an historian, a psychologist. He lives on an operating table.
Knows his own insides.
“Come here, Zarathustra,” chuckles this Przybyszewski, and he coaxes him
off the heights, off the peaks where he is waiting to be fed by the
eagles.
And striding from the peaks comes Zarathustra. Who do you suppose it is?
Przybyszewski, of course.
They greet each other.
And Przybyszewski says to this self of his: “So you are the ultimate
clay, ha, ha.”
And this self answers: “Yea, behold in me the finite evolution, man
crowned by his own hard and subtly-won glories.”
“Come here,” purrs Przybyszewski. Remember, he is talking to himself—at
his desk.
Hesitating, frowning, and yet with the pure grimace of superiority
stamped on his face, this self approaches. And the book is on.
Przybyszewski’s inspiration is the fury of a madman, the derisive,
diabolical chuckling of a fanatical cynic.
“Come now, we will fly,” whispers Przybyszewski, and off they go—the
innocent Zarathustra and the steeped, slashbuckling Przybyszewski. And
remember still—they are one.
And the rest of it is the plot of _Homo Sapiens_, the book, which I will
skip....
Thus Eric Falk soars and Przybyszewski shows the sorry mechanics of his
wings, laughing, chuckling, for they are his own. Thus toward the middle
of the book you begin wondering. Falk is going to pieces, Falk the
immutable, the all knowing, the transcender, the ... the ... the ... the
Homo Sapiens. What is the matter? When he betrays a woman and causes her
death a hideous vapor suddenly envelopes his soul and befouls it.
Przybyszewski thrusts his radiant leer from behind Zarathustra’s mask
and hisses, “Conscience, ha!”
And thus it goes its merry way. To the edge of the precipice this mad
Pole pushes his whirling Falk, to the utter edge of known reason, known
psychology and known Passions.
And then suddenly the soarer falls. The mechanism comes clattering to
earth—to the bottom of the precipice. The lugubrious Stanislaw has led
his creation—himself—to the limits.
He has finished his book.
Piled on the desk lies the heap of glowing sentences, the history of
rhapsodic vivisection.
Przybyszewski has expressed himself.
He has uttered his most internal cry, the cry of a poet, a weaver of
plots, an anatomical expert, of an introspective vulture-minded
Disbeliever.
And now I call your attention to Mr. Przybyszewski at his desk—too tired
to rise. Gone are the golden thrills that quivered in him, gone
everything but the thin sardonic grin that lights the face of Eric
Falk—on the last page. And only Eric Falk’s last cry, “Vive L’Humanité”
is left him. So our Stanislaw, the idol of Bohemia, the tortured demon,
sits chuckling, a glass of cognac trembling in his fingers.
“Homo Sapiens,” he sighs with his inevitable sneer, that pierces through
his pity and pain like the point of a rapier, “behold thyself. Thou,
Eric, art man. Thou art the creaking vehicle for the golden theories,
the rainbow fantasies which have sifted out of the mental mists of the
century. And behold, thou creakest, thou groanest, thou breakest under
this lightest of burdens.”
The tired Przybyszewski quivers. His lips, mocking their way through the
delirious poison of thought and passion have kissed the intangible. He
has stripped his brain to its last cell and looked at it. And the cry
that rises out of the book comes condensed from his lips now—after it is
done. Nowhere is it written, nowhere is it heard except at Stanislaw
Przybyszewski’s desk—in Bohemia.
It is the answer, ha. Is it?
“Homo Sapiens, thou art clay. Thy mind is a super-chaos. Thy soul is a
petty mirage.”
II.
Przybyszewski transplants his readers from their ordinary mental
environment into those astral regions where metaphysical subtleties are
clothed with reality. Life is dealt with not on the surface strata of
its expressions but at its base where motives and ideas and emotions
have their source. And in spite of this fact, or rather because of the
uncanny clairvoyance of its author there is no perversion or befogging
of one’s point of view. These nebulous regions are lit up by the
ruthless penetration of an artist who is a scientist as well.
One’s first sensations are like seeing for the first time with the naked
eye the fan of nerves which spread out from the corona radiata, or
touching the single nerve trunks with the dissecting knife. In the same
manner the pathological Pole brings you into actual contact with the
cargos of these nerves, ideas, emotions, sensations. All the concealing
layers of evasions and of equivocations have been dissected away; there
lies spread out before you sections of naked consciousness. And so
subtle has been the dissecting work that there has been no
disarrangement and no death. All is still living, still functioning. And
your sensation of strangeness, almost of horror, is born out of
revulsion against a self-consciousness so intense as to seem almost
morbid. “I feel,” said a friend of mine, “as if I had been vivisected.”
Not so much this as that one has been vivisecting. Przybyszewski compels
you to co-operate with him in analysing psychological phenomena. At
moments you lift your eyes from the page, panting, almost physically
exhausted from the effort of concentrating on those tortuous, subtle
reactions which occur in the farthest recesses of consciousness and
spread upward in waves to the surface, where they often take on curious
irrelevant expression.
But that is sheer morbidity, cries your friend the Philistine. It is
introspection carried past the point of decency. But to the investigator
there is no point past which it is indecent to press. In him there is no
affectation of scruple to erect its artificial barricade. He must have
transcended all such petty egotism and have depersonalized himself. He
is constrained to this by that curiosity which is his master passion,
which generates itself and is dynamic in him as hunger or sex are
dynamic in the ordinary individual. This curiosity of the artist brooks
no bounds, short of the facts against which it brings up abruptly. And
so Przybyszewski for all his uncanny subtlety cannot be accused of
morbidity since he uses it not to distort but merely to reveal the
truth. If he has no false reverence neither has he irreverence. His
scalpel, always flashing and leaping, pauses a moment on a state of
emotion and, pointing, calls it by name. “For I am I,” says Falk. “I am
a criminal diabolic nature.” Or again:
“And so a certain man is suffering from love induced by auto-suggestion.
Very well. But at the same time he loves his wife unqualifiedly. And he
loves her so much that there can be no doubt of the reality of his love.
In a word he loves both the one and the other.”
But such a condition isn’t possible, the Philistine will cry out,
wounded at his most vulnerable point, his inflexible principles. “A man
can’t love two women at the same time.” This isolated case would
undermine the whole monogamistic theory. He sees one of his cherished
institutions tottering. And so he takes fright and refutes the fact. “It
can’t be, it isn’t possible.” But Przybyszewski continues to stand with
the scalpel wearily pointing. “My dear Sir, this is no question of
postulates, it’s a question of an individual instance. It _is_ possible,
because it occurs. Falk _does_ love two women at the same moment.” And
the Philistine will doubtless turn away snorting furiously and
unconvinced. “Przybyszewski,” he will sneer, “that degenerate Pole,
always half drunk with cognac, a Slav to boot. What does he know of life
or reality? They were all neurasthenics. Look at Artzibashev and
Andreyev and Dostoevsky. Yes, let us look at them, and remembering
Dostoevsky’s epilepsy, remember also Raskolnikov. A criminal’s
psychology lifted onto paper out of the limbo regions of consciousness
by the mammoth Russian’s bloody pen. Something more than neurasthenia,
this gift of analysis.
What, finally, is Homo Sapiens? Who is this writer-fellow, Falk, with no
conscience, with his “criminal, diabolic nature?” Does he only exist to
analyse himself, and his tortuous, painful psychologizings? Why is he,
what is he?—He is the self-conscious man, par excellence. This book is
the epic of consciousness. “The thing must be thought out,” says Falk.
And nuance by nuance it is thought out, rapidly but faithfully, under
your very eyes. You are invited,—no, compelled,—to take part in the
operation. Hence your feeling of fatigue. And again, after a page or
two, “He examined his own feelings.”
“But why a Falk?” the Philistine demands. “Falk is no average man. He is
a genius, and as such his psychology is specialized and distinct. Falk
is a neurasthenic, victim of erotomania. Even his lucidity is not to his
credit. Since he is a writer it is implicit in him, as muscle is in the
circus rider. He is bound to analyse his acts, to trace them back to
their motives. Falk presents an isolated case. If one is going to deal
with consciousness why not choose a less precocious exponent? Why not
the everyday consciousness of the average human being?”
And by the same token, why not a Falk, Mr. Philistine, since we are
agreed that this is a drama of consciousness. Of what use is the average
man in this extremity? The artist is the Homo Sapiens par excellence,
for it is in him that consciousness has reached its most complex
differentiation. “I am,” says Falk, “what they call a highly
differentiated individual. I have, combined in me, everything—design,
ambition, sincerity of knowledge and ignorance, falsehood and truth. A
thousand heavens, a thousand worlds are in me.” And recognizing this
fact he wrestles with it through some four hundred odd pages. That Falk
loved two women, or ten women, is not only possible, but probably
inevitable. What in the average man is a temperate reaching out for a
few specific joys becomes in a Falk the impulse of his whole being for
self-expression. It bursts out along a thousand channels, requiring as
many outward aspects as there are sources in his personality. And it is
this devious stream of a human consciousness that we are following
outward to its expression in words or acts, and backward to its source,
as we dissect with Przybyszewski Falk’s mental protoplasm.
“Futile,” sneers the Philistine, “utterly futile. If that is a Homo
Sapiens, give me a subman. Your Falk knew no happiness and he gave none.
He only strewed suffering in his wake both for himself and others. He
was without scruples and without conscience. Where did he get to with
all his differentiation? He wrote a few books, to be sure, but what were
they in the scale of the women he ruined, the men he did to death? Even
of his own misery? His gift of introspection was a sharp knife turned
against himself, since he cried out in the end: ‘to be chemically
purified of all thoughts.’ Homo Sapiens indeed!”
You can see Przybyszewski wearily twisting the scalpel in his nerveless
hands, you can see the smile that twists his lips just before they curve
about the waiting cognac glass. “No, he was not happy, it is true he did
strew misery in his wake. He was neurasthenic and degenerate and
criminal. He was all these things and all the other things which you
have forgotten or never perceived. For he was Homo Sapiens. And such as
he is I have drawn him. Ha, ha—Vive l’Humanité!”
The Spring Recital
THEODORE DREISER
SCENE:
A prosperous First Church in the heart of a great city. Outside the
city’s principle avenue, along which busses and vehicles of all
descriptions are rolling. Surrounding the church a graveyard,
heavily shaded with trees, the branches of which reach to the
open windows bearing soft odours. Over the graves many full blown
blossoms, and in the sky a full May moon. An idling sense of
spring in the gait and gestures of the pedestrians. In front of
the church hangs a small lighted cross, and under it swings the sign
“Organ Recital, 8:30, Wilmuth Tabor, Organist.” The doors giving
into the church are open. The interior, save for the presence of
a caretaker in a chair, is empty. On either side of the pulpit,
below a great dark rose window, burns a partially lighted
electrolier. In the organ loft, over the street doors, a single
light.
FIRST STREET BOY (to his companion, ambling to discover what the world
contains, and glancing in as they pass). Gee! Who’d wanta go to church
on a night like this?
SECOND STREET BOY. I should say! Didjah see the old guy with the
whiskers sitten’ inside?
FIRST STREET BOY. Sure. A swell job, eh? (Their attention is attracted
by an automobile spinning in the opposite direction, and they pass on).
AN OLD LADY (to her middle-aged daughter, on whose arm she is leaning
... sympathetically and reminiscently). The dear old First Church! What
a pity its parishioners have all moved away. I don’t suppose the younger
generation cares much for church going anymore. People are so
irreligious these days.
THE DAUGHTER. Poor Mr. Tabor. I went to one of his concerts in the
winter and there were scarcely forty people there. And he plays so
heavenly, too. I don’t suppose the average person cares much for organ
music.
(They pass with but a glance at the interior.)
A BELATED SHOE CLERK (hurrying to reach Hagan’s Olio Moving Picture and
Vaudeville Theatre before the curtain rises, but conscious that he ought
to pay some attention to the higher phases of culture, turning to the
old door-keeper). When does this concert begin?
THE OLD DOOR-KEEPER (heavily). Half past eight. (He glances at the sign
hanging over the youth’s head.)
THE BELATED SHOE CLERK. Do they have them every Wednesday night?
THE OLD DOOR-KEEPER. Every Wednesday. (The Clerk departs, and the old
man scratches his head.) They often ask, but they don’t come in. (He
shifts to a more comfortable position in his chair.) I see no use to
playin’ to five or six people week in and week out all summer long.
Still, if they want to do it they have the money. It looks like a good
waste of light to me.
(Mrs. Pence and Mrs. Stillwater, two neighbors of the immediate
vicinity, enter the church door.)
MRS. PENCE (a heavy pasty faced woman in white lawn, lowering her voice
to a religious whisper as they enter). Yes, I like to come here now and
then. I don’t know much about music but the organ is so soothing. We had
a parlor organ when I was a little girl and I learned to play on that.
MRS. STILLWATER (short, blonde, and of a romantic turn, but with three
grown sons). I just think the organ is the loveliest of all instruments.
It’s so rich and deep. Isn’t it dim here? So romantic! I love an old
church. (They seat themselves in a pew.) I don’t suppose people want
much light when they hear music. See the moonlight in that window over
there, isn’t it lovely?
(A pair of lovers enter.)
THE BOY. I’ve heard of him. He’s a well-known organist. I love Grieg. I
wish he would play the Nocturne in G Minor.
THE GIRL. Oh yes, or Solveig’s Lied. Isn’t it dim here.
(They enter a pew in the most remote corner. She squeezes his hand and
he returns the pressure.)
THE ORGANIST (a pessimistic musician of fifty, entering and climbing
slowly to the organ loft. As he does so he surveys the empty auditorium
gloomily.) Only four people! (He turns on the bracket lights, uncovers
the keys, and adjusts the sheets of his programme before him. Surveying
himself in the mirror, and then examining the opening bars of The
Toccata and Fugue in D by Bach, he pulls out various stops and looks
into the dim, empty auditorium once more.) What a night! And me playing
in this dim, empty church. It’s bad enough to be getting along in years
and have no particular following, but this church! All society and
wealth away to the sea shore and the mountains and me here. Ah, well (he
sighs). Worse and worse times still succeed the former. (He sounds a
faint tremolo to test the air pressure. Finding all satisfactory, and
noting the hour by his watch, which stands at eight-thirty, he begins
the Overture to “The Magic Flute,” this being a purely secular
programme).
(Enter through a north window, open even with the floor of the organ
loft, a horned fawn, with gay white teeth grimacing as he comes, begins_
_pirouetting. He carries a kex on which he attempts to imitate the
lovely piping of the overture).
THE FAWN (prancing lightly here and there). Tra aa ala-lala! Ah,
tra-la-la, Ah, tra-la-la! Tra-la-leee! Tra-la-leee! Very excellent! Very
nice! (He grins from ear to ear and espying the church cat, a huge
yellow tom who is mousing about, gives a spirited kick in its
direction). Dancing’s the thing! Life is better than death, thin shade
that I am!
THE CAT (arching his back and raising his fur). Pfhs-s-st! Pfhs-s-st!
(The fawn pirouettes nearer, indicating a desire to dance with it,
whereupon the cat retreats into a corner under the organ).
THE FAWN. Ky-ey-ey! You silly dolt! (Kicks and spins away).
THE ORGANIST (noticing the spit-fire attitude of the cat). He seems to
see something. What the deuce has got into him, now? I wonder whether
cats do see anything when they act like that. (He drifts into a frail
dance harmony, yielding to the seduction of it and closing his eyes).
THE BOY LOVER. Wonderful! So delicately gay and sad! It’s just like
flowers blooming in the night, isn’t it? (His sweetheart squeezes his
hand and moves closer).
SIX HAMA-DRYADS (sweeping in from the trees and circling about,
wreath-wise under the groined arches of the ceiling. They are a pale,
ethereal company, suiting their movements to the melody and its
variations).
Arch of church or arch of trees,
Built of stone or built of air,
Spirits floating on a breeze,
Dancing gayly anywhere.
Out of lilac, out of oak,
Hard by asphodel and rose,
Never time when music spoke
But a dryad fled repose.
Weaving, turning, high and low
Where the purpled rhythms fall,
Where the plangent pipings call,
Round and round and round we go.
THE FAWN (dancing forward and about them). I can dance! Let me dance!
(He grins in the face of one).
THE HAMA-DRYADS. Go away! Don’t bother!
THE CAT (prowling under the organ). I saw a mouse peeping out of that
hole just now. Wait! (He crouches very low, ready to spring).
THE ORGANIST (dreamily). This passage always makes me think of moonlight
on open fields and the spicy damp breath of a dark dewy wood, and of
lilacs blowing over a wall, too. So suitable, but I would rather live
than play. (He sighs. A gloomy ghost with sharp green eyes enters from
the sacristy, and pauses in the dark angle of the wall).
THE GHOST (a barrel house bum a dozen years dead, and still enamored of
the earth). What’s doing here, I wonder? (He stares). A lot of fools
dancing. (Turns and departs).
THE GIRL. Oh Sweetheart, isn’t it perfect. (She lays her head on his
shoulder).
THE BOY. Darling!
THE CAT (springing). There! I almost caught him. (Peers into the hole).
Just the same, I know where he is now. (He strolls off with an air of
undefeated indifference).
THE ORGANIST (missing a note). This finale isn’t so easy. And I don’t
like it as well, either. I always stumble in the allegro. (He wipes his
brow, improvises a few bars, interpolating also a small portion of the
triumphal march from “Aida”). This is different. I can do it better. (He
begins upon the Grail motif from “Parsifal”).
MRS. STILLWATER (shifting her arm and moving her knee). I never like
loud music as well as the softer kind. That middle part was beautiful.
MRS. PENCE. Well, I can’t say I like loud music, either, but now this—
(The Hama-dryads cease dancing and drift out of the window, followed
by the fawn. An English minister, once of St. Giles, Circenster, who
died in 1631, a monk of the Thebaid, A. D. 300, and three priests of
Isis, B. C. 2840, enter, each independently of the others. On
detecting the odour of reverence they visualize themselves to
themselves as servitors of their respective earthly religions—the
Egyptians in their winged hoods, the monk of the Thebaid in his
high pointed cowl, the Rector of St. Giles in his broad-brimmed
hat with the high conical crown, knee-length coat, and heavy,
silver-buttoned shoes.)
THE MINISTER (to himself). An unhappy costume, yet it is all that
identifies me with my former earthly self, or with life. (He notes the
Egyptians and the monk, but pays no attention to them for the moment).
FIRST PRIEST OF ISIS (to his brothers). A house of worship. How the awe
of man persists. I thought I detected the rhythm of melody here.
SECOND PRIEST (tall and severely garbed, yet in the rich colors of his
order). And I. It is melody. I feel the waves.
THIRD PRIEST (signing in the direction of the organist). There is the
musician. He is arranging something. And here is a very present reminder
of one of our earthly stupidities. We worshiped the forerunner of that
in our day. (He motions to the church cat who strolls by with great
dignity. They smile).
THE CAT (surveying them with indifferent eyes). At least I am alive.
FIRST PRIEST (a master of astrology). Small comfort. You will be dead
within the year. I see the rock that ends you. Then no more airs for
you.
THE MONK OF THE THEBAID (to himself). This is a religious
edifice—heavily material and of small pomp—christian, possibly. That
spirit yonder (he surveys the minister of St. Giles) was also a priest
of sorts, I take it, and these three Egyptians—how they strut! They give
themselves airs because of the thin memory of them and of their rites
that endures in the world.
THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (surveying the monk). A sombre flagellant. I
wonder has he outgrown his earthly illusion. (He approaches). Brother,
do I not meet an emancipated spirit?
THE MONK. You do. Centuries of observation have taught me what earthly
search could not. I smile at the folly of this. (He waves an inclusive
hand about him).
THE MINISTER. And I, I also—though I was of stern faith in my day, and
of this very creed—even now I suspect some discoverable power worthy of
worship. My mere persistence causes me to wonder though it does not
explain itself.
THE MONK. Nor does mine to me, nor the persistence of their seeming
reality to them. (He points through the transparent walls of the church
to where outside moving streams of shadows—automobiles, belated wagons,
and pedestrians are to be seen—and to the lovers). Yet there is no
answer. They have their faith, futile as it is. A greater darkness has
fallen on you and me. Endless persistence for us if we must, let us say,
but merging at last into what?
THE MINISTER. And when I died I imagined I should meet my maker face to
face.
THE MONK (smiling). And I the same. And they,—(he nods toward the
Egyptians),—their gods were as real to them,—shadows all, of the
unknowable.
THE ORGANIST (plunging into the sub-theme which speedily dies off into
unfathomable mysteries of dark notes and tones). I wonder if I’m boring
them by this heavy stuff. Still what do I care. There are only four.
(Nevertheless he fuses the Grail motif to the dance of the flower
maidens).
THE BOY. Isn’t it lovely!
THE GIRL. Perfect!
THE ORGANIST. Lovely and very difficult. These pedals are working rather
stiffly,—and that automobile has to honk just now. (He fingers lightly
three notes of a major key indicative of woodland echoes and faint bird
notes. Re-enter the barrel house bum who is seeking anything that will
amuse him).
THE BUM. Still playing! And there are those two old stuffs of women. Not
an idea between ’em. (He turns to go but catches sight of_ _the monk and
the Egyptians. Pauses, and then turns back).
THE MONK. Soothing harmonies these! More strange combinations, the
reason for which we cannot guess, the joy and beauty of which we know. I
find earthly harmonies very grateful. But then, why?
(He and the priest forget their quondam materiality for a moment and
disappear from sight; recovering themselves as shadows only by
thinking).
THE BUM (staring interrogatively and irritatingly at the monk and the
Egyptians, who, however, pay not the slightest attention to him). You
thought you knew somepin’ when you were alive, didn’jah? You thought you
were smart, huh? You thought you’d find out somepin’ when yuh died, huh?
Well, yuh got fooled didn’jah? You’re like all the other stuffs that
walk about and think they know a lot. Yuh got left. Har! Har! Har! (He
chortles vibrantly). I know as much as you fellers, and I’ve only been
dead a dozen years. There aint no answer! Har! Har! Har! There aint no
answer! An’ here you are floatin’ aroun’ in them things! (He indicates
their dress). Oh, ho, ho ho! (He grins maliciously and executes a crude
clog step).
THE MONK (repugnantly and pulling his cowl aside). Away, vile
creature—unregenerate soul! Has even the nothingness of materiality
taught you nothing?
THE BUM (straightening up and leering). Who’s vile? What’s vile? (He
thinks to become obstreperous but recalling his nothingness grins
contemptuously). You think you’re still a monk, don’cha? You think
you’re good—better’n anybody else. Whatcha got to be good about? Oh ho,
ho, ho, ho! Ah har, har, har, har! He thinks he’s still a monk—
FIRST EGYPTIAN (to the monk sympathetically). Come away, friend. Leave
him to his illusions.
SECOND EGYPTIAN. Time alone can point out the folly of his mood.
THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (drawing near and scowling at the Bum). Out,
sot.
THE BUM (defiantly and yet indifferently). Who’s a sot? An’ where’s out?
Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho!
THE ORGANIST (passing into the finale). And this is even more beautiful.
It suggests graves and shrines—and fawns dancing. But I don’t propose to
play long for four people.
(A troup of fawns and nymphs dance in, pursuing and eluding each
other. The six Hama-dryads return, weaving and turning in diaphanous
line. A passing cloud of hags and wastrels, the worst of the earth
lovers, enticed by the gaiety of sound, enter and fill the arches
and the vacant spaces for the moment, skipping about in wild
hilarity. The Bum joins them, dancing deliriously. Persistances
of fish and birds and animals, attracted by the rhythm which is
both colour and harmony to them, turn and weave among the others.
Ancient and new dead of every clime, enamored of the earth life
and wandering idly, enter. A tired pedestrian of forty, an
architect, strolling for the air and hearing the melody, enters.
After him come spirits of the streets—a doctor and two artisans,
newly dead, wondering at the sound).
THE MINISTER OF ST. GILES (noting the flood of hags and wastrels). And
these are horrible presences! Succubi! Will they never get enough of
materiality?
THE MONK. In my day the Thebaid was alive with them—the scum of Rome and
Alexandria, annoying us holy men at our devotions.
THE MINISTER. Do you still identify yourself with earthly beliefs?
THE MONK. A phase! A phase! In the presence and thought of materiality I
seem to partake of it.
THE FIRST EGYPTIAN. And I! A sound observation!
THE THIRD EGYPTIAN. The lure of life! It has never lost its charm for
me.
THE MINISTER (to himself). Nor for me.
THE FAWN (cavorting near, his kex to his lips, piping vigorously). Heavy
dolts! Little they know of joy except to stare at it.
THE MINISTER (indicating the fawn). And this animal—to profane a temple!
THE MONK (mischievously). And do you still cling to earthly notions of
sanctity?
THE MINISTER. I hold as I have said, that there must be some power that
explains us.
THE TWELVE HAMA-DRYADS (dancing and singing):
Round and round a dozen times,
Three times up and three times down,
Catch a shadow circlewise,
Fill it full of thistledown.
Fill it up and then away—
How can stupid mortals know
All the gladness of our play—
Where the dew wet odours blow,
Round and round and round we go!
THE BUM (spinning near). This is glorious! Gee!
FIRST EGYPTIAN (unconscious of anything save the charm of the rhythm).
Sweet vibrations these. But not our ancient harmonies. In our time they
were different.
SECOND EGYPTIAN. Our day! Our day! Endless memories of days. Oh, for an
hour of sealed illusion!
THE BOY LOVER. Isn’t it perfect!
THE GIRL. Divine! It’s like a dream and I want to cry.
THE THIRD EGYPTIAN. The harmony! The harmony! (He points_ _to the boy
and girl. The three approach and stand before the lovers, viewing them
with envious eyes). In ancient Egypt—on the banks of the Nile—how keen
was this thrill of existence. How much greater is their reality than
ours. And all because of their faith in it.
(The minister and the monk approach).
THE ORGANIST (finishing with a flourish). Well, there’s the end of my
work tonight. (He closes various stops, begins to gather up his music
and turn out the lights. The dryads and nymphs flood out of the windows,
followed by the fawns, the hags, and the wastrels. The green-eyed bum
starts to go, but pauses, looking back wistfully. The Egyptians, fading
from their presence as such, appear only as pale flames of blue).
MRS. STILLWATER. Now that was lovely, wasn’t it?
MRS. PENCE. Charming, very charming!
THE BOY. Don’t you love Wagner?
THE GIRL. I do! I do! (In the shadows they embrace and kiss).
THE ORGANIST (wearily as he bustles down the stairs). Why should I play
any more for four people? It is nine o’clock. A half hour is enough. At
least I can find a little comfort at the Crystal Garden. (He thinks of
an immense beer place, and shrugs his shoulders the while. The old
doorman, hearing him go out, prepares to put out the lights).
MRS. STILLWATER (rising). I do believe it’s over.
MRS. PENCE. Well, there are so few you can scarcely blame him.
THE BUM (gloomily). Now I gotta find somepin’ else.
THE CHURCH CAT (prowling toward the organ loft in the dark of the closed
church). Now for one more try at that mouse.
FINIS.
Editorials and Announcement
_Powys at the Hebrew Institute_
On page 43 there is announcement of a series of lectures by John Cowper
Powys. I can hear him now on the philosophical basis of democracy: “My
dear friends, the philosophical basis of democracy is individualism”! As
to the Nietzsche and Dostoevsky lecture, you may count upon it being one
of the memorable occasions of your life.
_The Foreigner in America_
Mary Antin is talking all through the country of the wonderful things
America does for the foreigner. These things are not true.
I went the other night to an affair given by a Norwegian woman and her
husband before a gathering of Chicago’s representative intellectuals.
The woman was Borgny Hammer, an actress of tremendous power from the
National Theatre, Christiania. Mme. Hammer plays Ibsen so well that
there is not much chance of her playing it very often. On this
particular evening she gave some Björnson things and talked with naive
fervor of Norway as compared with this commercialized land. Her
intensity was so authentic and so beautiful and so moving that it became
almost pitiable in that stiff, self-contained room. Mme. Hammer could be
playing _Ghosts_ and _Master Builder_ and _Beyond Human Power_, could be
giving nightly inspiration to thousands of unimaginative Americans if
America was able to offer the foreigner one tenth of what the foreigner
brings to America.
Not long ago the Hebrew Institute of Chicago refused its platform to
Alexander Berkman who was to speak there on the Schmidt and Caplan case.
Some one who sympathized with the action of the directors explained to
me that it was a wise move on their part because the foreigners,
especially the Russian Jews, are so easily inflamed. Thank heaven they
are! If only something could be done to inflame the American. Well—there
is always the flag....
_The Russian Class_
The group for the study of Russian literature will have a preliminary
meeting in room 612 Fine Arts Building on Friday, January 14, 1916, at 8
p. m. All interested are invited.
The Illusions of “The Art Student”
There has made its appearance in this city of ours a new magazine, _The
Art Student_. Its desire, according to the editor’s announcement, is to
“help establish a bond of understanding between the American student of
the allied arts and the public.”
This aim is commendable and deserves the co-operation of everybody
unselfishly interested in the promotion of American art.
The reason for this publication at the present time is also given in
that announcement. It says there: “With all Europe at war and its art
centers crippled, it is not only America’s opportunity, but her duty, to
preserve and promote art in its various forms.”
I am afraid the youthful enthusiasm of _The Art Student_ is the cause
both of this exaggeration as concerns Europe and the illusion as
concerns America.
We have heard much and read more about America’s opportunity these last
fourteen months. First it was the trade fields deserted by the warring
nations in South America and the Orient; then it was the sea routes
closed to the second biggest merchant fleet of the world—the opportunity
for an American merchant marine; and now it is our opportunity in the
field of Art!
What has become of the first illusions of which our papers and magazines
were full? England expanded her commerce in South America, having forced
for the time being her German rival from that field of hottest
competition, and Japan practically monopolized the commerce of China.
England increases her merchant fleet by capering American ships, and the
Pacific Mail retires voluntarily from the Pacific ocean.
That is the result of our boasted opportunity in the realm of trade and
commerce. Why? Because we underestimated others and because we talked
about our own foreign methods instead of changing our own and acting.
And now in Art we are doing exactly the same thing. We point with horror
to the war that cripples European art and acclaim loudly the superiority
of our civilization.
Gentlemen, you are all wrong. Art is not crippled in Europe through the
war! Inter arma silent musae! The arts are silent, they sleep. Silence
and sleep we all understand are good things. The first helps us to
concentrate and find ourselves, the latter gives us new strength.
And that is the worst that the war does to Art in Europe. Art is at
present less active, a self-imposed inactivity, owing to circumstances;
not crippled, a result of direct unartistic influences.
European Art is free of such crippling influences. Art schools are not
run by local millionaires, galleries not governed by rich manufacturers,
academy instructors not selected by wealthy trustees with the sole idea
that their insignificance will insure submittance to the layman rule!
Is Sir Thomas Lipton president of the Royal Academy? No! Is Herr von
Krupp president of the Duesseldorf Academy? No! Do they make bankers and
brewers directors and trustees of art institutions in Paris or Munich?
No! Do they in St. Petersburg or Vienna? No! Do they in Berlin or Rome?
No! Do they in Brussels or Madrid? No!
_Do they in America? Yes!_
Do they in England, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, or Australia invite
their best painters and sculptors to teach in their academies? Yes! _Do
they in America? No!_ Do they in England, France, Russia, Italy,
Germany, or Austria select these teachers from mediocrities who will be
sure not to revolt against the incompetent decisions of a layman board
of trustees? They don’t!
_Do they in America? They do!_
What is “city beautiful” in Europe? It is a fact! _What is it in
America? It is a “slogan.”_
No, gentlemen, you need not be worried about European Art! War is not
inartistic. Money is! A general staff in war time can destroy what art
has created! Our system of millionaire trustees is preventing Art from
creating!
War in Europe can kill artists, it cannot kill art.
In America we kill art and our artists escape to Europe.
—_Garnerin._
The Theatre
“Grotesques”
Cloyd Head—Maurice Browne: comparatively misty names, far below the
golden monolith at whose base is carefully engraved the word—Granville
Barker. Mr. Barker resurrects Greek tragedies and Shakespeare plays and
produces them acceptably; Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne have evolved an
absolutely new stage method and draped it about a poetic concept.
Therefore Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne will probably be heralded and
worshipped ten years from now, at the earliest. They must pay the
penalty of originality and the ability of appreciating it.
In _Grotesques_ recently produced at the Chicago Little Theatre, for the
first time, actors posed as black and white marionettes in a series of
decorations created by Fate, masquerading as a sardonic artist. The idea
of Fate moving human beings together as one shuffles a pack of cards is
old. But the portraying of this shuffling through conventional
decorations with the actors giving the jerking semblance of puppets, and
with Fate personified, directly addressing the audience, is sparklingly
new. Capulchard, the artist, has made a decoration symbolizing the
background of life—an utterly simple picture composed of a
conventionalized black and white wave effect, a black sky, a round white
moon, stiff white trees, an owl on one of their branches, and a
lotus-flower. From his marionette boxes at both sides of the decoration
he drags forth his puppets—man motif, woman motif, crone motif, sprite
motif, girl motif, and carelessly waves them into various poses, the
main incidents of their lives. But they gradually become aware of him,
they begin to speak out of their lines, to burst into tiny rebellions
which he controls with difficulty. They show increasing determination to
mar his series of decorations. Finally in a moment of sublime defiance,
headed by the man-motif, they slash their strings. The result—Death.
Capulchard carelessly erases the decoration—it has served its purpose.
I shall probably fully drain _Grotesques_ after slowly reading it again
and again. But even now, Cloyd Head’s huge child whose face is like the
pointed petals of sun-flowers, has aroused a little cluster of reactions
within me. To sharply visualise the play, you need not see the actual
black and white of the decoration, and the über-marionettes who move
stiffly through it. The words of the play themselves are black and
white: you feel them as an inextricable part of the picture: there is
something in their staccato rising and falling that suggests light and
darkness evenly spread upon a canvass. Something in the even placing and
sounding of phrases like this:
Who am I that come,
Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?
A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.
I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
It is not easily explained. It is a feeling that can only come to one
after repeated reading of the play.
A second reaction comes to one while loitering with the images in their
jerking procession. Each image, with its absolute minimum of words, has
two clear virtues—the expression of emotion half-human and half
artificial, and the concentration of just enough of this emotion to
produce an illusion of the whole. Consider this speech of the sprite
motif:
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite
enters—oh, ho!
Dance, crinkled stream!
Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.
(_Blows_) ... Begone.
(_Reflectively_) It is night.
(_Bowing_) Madame Owl.
Hoot! To-whoo!
An actual sprite-soul in life would babble, would use more extravagant
phrasing. In this sprite passage, just enough of the babbling and
exuberance has been given, to suggest the essence of it; just enough
words have been given, to suggest the steady motion of the invisible
strings. These qualities run throughout the speeches of all the
über-marionettes.
Book Discussion
_Plays for Small Stages, by Mary Aldis. New York: Duffield and
Company._
These plays are among those acted by the Lake Forest Players, and,
written especially for them, they exemplify certain qualities of drama
and stage-craft which are of special value in amateur production. First
of all they are real in situation. Two of the five, _Mrs. Pat and the
Law_ and _Extreme Unction_, deal with slum life, but with phases of it
which the amateur can study at first hand, and is, indeed, the better
for studying. The juxtaposition in both types of the submerged tenth and
the reachers of helping hands suggests that the plays have in fact,
grown out of such study. The former sketch is done with a brilliancy of
Irish humor and fancy that reminds the reader of Lady Gregory’s best.
The latter is the grim tragedy of a dying prostitute—a situation
relieved first by the mordant irony of the conventional religious
pouncet-box of the well-meaning lady visitor, and later by the
sympathetic imagination of the physician. A third play, _The Drama
Class_, presents with broad humor an occasion familiar to all uplifters
of the drama in regions which on the “culture map” are lightly
shaded—the discussion of a modern European play by a woman’s club. _The
Letter_ and _Temperament_ represent the maladjustments of monogamy—the
one with tragic emphasis, the other in pure farce. The point should be
noted, however, that all five are plays of situation, static rather than
dynamic, expository and revealing rather than developing—the type most
suited to the dimensions of the one-act play, and made familiar by the
playwrights of the Abbey and Manchester Theatres. As Mrs. Aldis says in
her preface, speaking of the general policy of the Lake Forest Players:
“In selecting plays we have departed radically from the amateur
tradition of resuscitating ‘plays with a punch,’ which have fared well
in the hands of professionals. In the established tricks of the trade,
of course the amateur cannot compete with the professional.” In writing
as well as in selecting plays for amateur performance Mrs. Aldis has
wisely preferred truth of situation to the “punch.”
In the second place Mrs. Aldis has made her characters speak the
language of life rather than that of the stage. This trait again fits
her plays for amateur production, especially in a small theatre where
effects can be gained without the emphasis of stage talk. Working as she
says for a small stage Mrs. Aldis has been able to reproduce with
striking fidelity not only the vocabulary but the movement, the rhythm,
even the intonations of human speech. This kind of naturalism is of
great importance in the drama of situation. The words in which Mrs.
Aldis calls attention to this connection, and to the possibilities of
artistic success in amateur acting depending thereon might have occurred
in Maeterlinck’s essay _The Drama in Daily Life_. “We seek,” she says,
“plays in which the mental attitude and the interplay of character are
more important than the physical action. Here, if anywhere, lies the
amateur’s opportunity. So we are not afraid of plays with little action
and much talk.... It is in talk, low and intense, gay and railing,
bitter and despairing as the case may be, that we moderns carry on the
drama of life, the foundation of the drama of the stage.”
—_Robert M. Lovett._
_The State Forbids: A Play in One Act, by Sada Cowan. New York:
Mitchell Kennerley._
The mother speaks: “The State won’t let us women help ourselves. We
_must_ have children whether we want them or not, and then the State
comes and takes them from us. It doesn’t ask. It commands. We’ve got to
give them up. [_Shrilly_] I’ve got to give my boy. [_Again shrilly_]
What are we, we women? Just cattle. Breeding animals ... without a
voice! Dumb—powerless! Oh, the State! The State commands! and the State
forbids! Damn the State!”
It is to appear in vaudeville. Like _War-Brides_ it is woman propaganda;
but here the emphasis is on Birth Control. Like _War-Brides_ it is
negative as literature, but the woman speeches make smashing vaudeville.
We wonder whether it is the importance of its idea or its evident value
as a thriller and shocker which prompts its production.
The Reader Critic
_Ben Hecht, Chicago_:
I congratulate you on the roseate misconceptions of “Life Itself.” Long
live your fancies—mine didn’t. The perfumes of Araby are short-lived in
a slop-jar.
I envy you your dogmatic naïveté until I remember something I thought of
long ago:—that ideals are for the weak; that people who live on fancies
starve for lack of sorrow, shrivel for lack of cynicism, and finally die
of inhibition.
I remember, in a discussion on art the other evening, your crying out
about “the eternal standard” and I feeling it was true but not knowing
what it meant. I know now. It meant nothing. It is just another fancy.
Vive la divinité!
Remember what Homo Sapiens discovered: the limitations of the
infinite—of his brain. They are as nothing to the limitations of our
Gods.
_GOD’S GARDEN—THE WORLD_
(_Yes, this still happens. We get hordes of such letters._)
I feel sure that at heart your idea of freedom is right, but I do not
believe that you altogether understand how to carry it out.
To get at the bottom of things—you want to be just a natural, normal
human being. You want to live, to grow, to expand like a flower. How
then is this most easily accomplished? Simply this, to be what nature or
God or the power back of the universe intended for you to be. What then
is your place in the universe, and what is your relation to it? You are
by God’s grace a woman; then the greatest thing you can do is to be a
woman. But what does it mean to be a woman? To love, to create, to
protect, to uplift, and to purify. What do these words mean? You can
love the out-of-doors, you can love books, music, art, people, all the
world, everything your heart desires. All that you love you can create
by writing, by making things grow, by building and constructing. You can
protect by being a mother to all those weaker than yourself who need
your help. You can uplift and purify by inspiring all you meet with
goodness and high ideals.
Yes, you say, but how can I be free to do these things when I am
hampered and bound by conventionalities and surroundings? No one is
bound down who knows that freedom comes from within, not from without.
The girl in the factory, the girl in college, the girl in her own home,
or the girl out of doors can be just as free as she makes up her mind to
be. Freedom is not a matter of clothes or environment.
As to conventionalities—most of them have been formed because time and
culture have taught us to have regard for our fellow beings. There is
nothing immorally wrong in a man going to the opera in his shirt sleeves
but it might not be agreeable to the gentleman seated next to him. Then
the psychology of the close relationship between thoughts and
actions—free thoughts result in free actions, likewise carelessness in
our habits of daily life make careless thinking. I believe in keeping
your own individuality above all things if you can back up your ideas by
good reasons; but you will find that there is a reason for most
conventionalities that can’t be overthrown. If we were not an integral
part of a whole we could do just as we pleased because no one would be
affected and no one would care; but everything we do, every move we
make, affects some part of the whole, and that is why we care and why
everybody cares.
Stick to your idea of freedom and of being natural, but be careful how
you apply it and of its effect on others. Whatever is good and helpful
will live and what is not good will die.
Remember, too, that this is America, 1915, not Greece, B. C. 400.
Do not think I mean to be critical for I love you just the same as I
love everybody and all things in God’s garden, the world, so much so
that I want you to fully understand what it means to be a real woman.
WAR LETTERS
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CHALLENGE. By Louis Untermeyer. “No other contemporary poet has
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SONGS FOR THE NEW AGE. By James Oppenheim. “A rousing volume,
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AND PIPPA DANCES. By Gerhart Hauptmann. A mystical tale of the
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IN CHAINS (“Les Tenailles”). By Paul Hervieu. In three acts. A
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SONGS OF LOVE AND REBELLION. Covington Hall’s best and finest
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RENAISSANCE. By Holger Drachman. A melodrama. Dealing with studio
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THE MADMAN DIVINE. By Jose Echegaray. Prose drama in four acts.
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TO THE STARS. By Leonid Andreyieff. Four acts. A glimpse of young
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PHANTASMS. By Roberto Bracco. A drama in four acts, translated by
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THE HIDDEN SPRING. By Roberto Bracco. A drama in four acts,
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THE DRAMA LEAGUE SERIES. A series of modern plays, published for
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THE THIEF. By Henry Bernstein. (Just Out).
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THE TRAIL OF THE TORCH. By Paul Hervieu.
MY LADY’S DRESS. By Edward Knoblauch.
A WOMAN’S WAY. By Thompson Buchanan.
THE APOSTLE. By Paul Hyacinthe Loyson.
Each of the above books 82c, postpaid.
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THE TROJAN WOMEN. Translated by Gilbert Murray. Send 85c.
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ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE. By Gilbert Murray. Send $2.10.
EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE. By Gilbert Murray. Send 75c.
GENERAL
VAGRANT MEMORIES. By William Winter. Illustrated. The famous
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THE NEARING CASE. By Lightner Witmer. A complete account of the
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THE ART OF THE MOVING PICTURE. By Vachel Lindsay. Send $1.60.
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GLIMPSES OF THE COSMOS. A Mental Autobiography. By Lester F.
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EVERYMAN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA is the cure for inefficiency. It is the
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SHATTUCK’S PARLIAMENTARY ANSWERS. By Harriette R. Shattuck.
Alphabetically arranged for all questions likely to arise in
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EAT AND GROW THIN. By Vance Thompson. A collection of the
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FORTY THOUSAND QUOTATIONS. By Charles Noel Douglas. These 40,000
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DRINK AND BE SOBER. By Vance Thompson. The author has studied the
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THE CRY FOR JUSTICE. An anthology of the literature of social
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MY CHILDHOOD. By Maxim Gorky. The autobiography of the famous
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SCHOOLS OF TOMORROW. By John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey. The most
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AFFIRMATIONS. By Havelock Ellis. A discussion of some of the
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LITERATURE
COMPLETE WORKS. Maurice Maeterlinck. The Essays, 10 vols., per
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volumes. Limp green leather, flexible cover, thin paper, gilt
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INTERPRETATIONS OF LITERATURE. By Lafcadio Hearn. A remarkable
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BERNARD SHAW: A Critical Study. By P. P. Howe. Send $2.15.
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THE PATH OF GLORY. By Anatole France. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth. An
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THE PILLAR OF FIRE: A Profane Baccalaureate. By Seymour Deming.
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IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS. By James Huneker. A collection of essays
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INTERPRETATIONS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. By Lafcadio Hearn. Two
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IDEALS AND REALITIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Prince Kropotkin.
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FICTION
THE TURMOIL. By Booth Tarkington. A beautiful story of young love
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SET OF SIX. By Joseph Conrad. Short stories. Scribner. Send
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AN ANARCHIST WOMAN. By H. Hapgood. This extraordinary novel
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THE HARBOR. By Ernest Poole. A novel of remarkable power and
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MAXIM GORKY. Twenty-six and One and other stories from the
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SANINE. By Artzibashef. The sensational Russian novel now
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A FAR COUNTRY. Winston Churchill’s new novel is another realistic
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BOON—THE MIND OF THE RACE. Was it written by H. G. Wells? He now
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NEVER TOLD TALES. Presents in the form of fiction, in language
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PAN’S GARDEN. By Algernon Blackwood. Send $1.60.
THE CROCK OF GOLD. By James Stephens. Send $1.60.
THE INVISIBLE EVENT. By J. D. Beresford. Jacob Stahl, writer and
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OSCAR WILDE’S WORKS. Ravenna edition. Red limp leather. Sold
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THE RAT-PIT. By Patrick MacGill. A novel by the navvy-poet who
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THE AMETHYST RING. By Anatole France. Translated by B. Drillien.
$1.85 postpaid.
CRAINQUEBILLE. By Anatole France. Translated by Winifred Stevens.
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VIOLETTE OF PERE LACHAISE. By Anna Strunsky Walling. Records the
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THE “GENIUS.” By Theodore Dreiser. Send $1.60.
JERUSALEM. By Selma Lagerlof. Translated by Velma Swanston. The
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The story tells of their awakening, of the tremendous social and
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BREAKING-POINT. By Michael Artzibashef. A comprehensive picture
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RUSSIAN SILHOUETTES. By Anton Tchekoff. Translated by Marian
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THE FREELANDS. By John Galsworthy. Gives a large and vivid
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FIDELITY. Susan Glaspell’s greatest novel. The author calls it
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FOMA GORDEYEFF. By Maxim Gorky. Send $1.10.
THE RAGGED-TROUSERED PHILANTHROPIST. By Robert Tressall. A
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RED FLEECE. By Will Levington Comfort. A story of the Russian
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and how they risk execution by preaching peace even in the
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He is our American Artsibacheff; one of the very few American
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THE STAR ROVER. By Jack London. Frontispiece in colors by Jay
Hambidge. A man unjustly accused of murder is sentenced to
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THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT. By H. G. Wells. Tells the story of the
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SEXOLOGY
Here is the great sex book of the day: Forel’s THE SEXUAL
QUESTION. A scientific, psychological, hygienic, legal and
sociological work for the cultured classes. By Europe’s foremost
nerve specialist. Chapter on “love and other irradiations of the
sexual appetite” a profound revelation of human emotions.
Degeneracy exposed. Birth control discussed. Should be in the
hands of all dealing with domestic relations. Medical edition
$5.50. Same book, cheaper binding, now $1.60.
Painful childbirth in this age of scientific progress is
unnecessary. THE TRUTH ABOUT TWILIGHT SLEEP, by Hanna Rion (Mrs.
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presenting with authority and deep human interest the impartial
and conclusive evidence of a personal investigation of the
Freiburg method of painless childbirth. Send $1.62.
FREUD’S THEORIES OF THE NEUROSES. By Dr. E. Hitschmann. A brief
and clear summary of Freud’s theories. Price, $2.
PLAIN FACTS ABOUT A GREAT EVIL. By Christobel Pankhurst. One of
the strongest and frankest books ever written, depicting the
dangers of promiscuity in men. This book was once suppressed by
Anthony Comstock. Send (paper) 60c, (cloth) $1.10.
SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN. By Dr. E. Heinrich Kisch (Prague). An
epitome of the subject. Sold only to physicians, jurists,
clergymen and educators. Send $5.50.
KRAFFT-EBING’S PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS. Only authorized English
translation of 12th German Edition. By F. J. Rebman. Sold only to
physicians, jurists, clergymen and educators. Price, $4.35.
Special thin paper edition, $1.60.
THE SMALL FAMILY SYSTEM: IS IT IMMORAL OR INJURIOUS? By Dr. C. V.
Drysdale. The question of birth control cannot be intelligently
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MAN AND WOMAN. By Dr. Havelock Ellis, the foremost authority on
sexual characteristics. A new (5th) edition. Send $1.60.
A new book by Dr. Robinson: THE LIMITATION OF OFFSPRING BY THE
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WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW. By Margaret Sanger. Send 55 cents.
WHAT EVERY MOTHER SHOULD KNOW. By Margaret Sanger. Send 30 cents.
THE THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS. By Dr. C. Jung. A concise statement
of the present aspects of the psychoanalytic hypotheses. Price,
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SELECTED PAPERS ON HYSTERIA AND OTHER PSYCHONEUROSES. By Prof. S.
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THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO SEXUAL THEORY. By John C. Van Dyke. Fully
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THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO SEXUAL THEORY. By Prof. Sigmund Freud. The
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FUNCTIONAL PERIODICITY. An experimental study of the mental and
motor abilities of women during menstruation by Leta Stetter
Hollingworth. Cloth, $1.15. Paper, 85c.
ART
MICHAEL ANGELO. By Romain Rolland. Twenty-two full-page
illustrations. A critical and illuminating exposition of the
genius of Michael Angelo. $2.65, postpaid.
INTERIOR DECORATION: ITS PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE. By Frank Alvah
Parsons. Illustrated. $3.25, postpaid.
THE BARBIZON PAINTERS. By Arthur Hoeber. One hundred
illustrations in sepia, reproducing characteristic work of the
school. $1.90, postpaid.
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE. By Arthur Elson. Illustrated.
Gives in outline a general musical education, the evolution and
history of music, the lives and works of the great composers, the
various musical forms and their analysis, the instruments and
their use, and several special topics. $3.75, postpaid.
MODERN PAINTING: ITS TENDENCY AND MEANING. By Willard Huntington
Wright, author of “What Nietzsche Taught,” etc. Four color plates
and 24 illustrations. “Modern Painting” gives—for the first time
in any language—a clear, compact review of all the important
activities of modern art which began with Delacroix and ended
only with the war. Send $2.75.
THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. By A. J. Anderson. Photogravure
frontispiece and 16 illustrations in half-tone. Sets forth the
great artist as a man so profoundly interested in and closely
allied with every movement of his age that he might be called an
incarnation of the Renaissance. $3.95, postpaid.
THE COLOUR OF PARIS. By Lucien Descaves. Large 8vo. New edition,
with 60 illustrations printed in four colors from paintings by
the Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino. By the members of the
Academy Goncourt under the general editorship of M. Lucien
Descaves. Send $3.30.
SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY
CAUSES AND CURES OF CRIME. A popular study of criminology from
the bio-social viewpoint. By Thomas Speed Mosby, former Pardon
Attorney, State of Missouri, member American Institute of
Criminal Law and Criminology, etc. 356 pages, with 100 original
illustrations. Price, $2.15, postpaid.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION. By G. T. W. Patrick. A notable and
unusually interesting volume explaining the importance of sports,
laughter, profanity, the use of alcohol and even war as
furnishing needed relaxation to the higher nerve centres. Send
88c.
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. By Dr. C. G. Jung, of the
University of Zurich. Translated by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D., of
the Neurological Department of Cornell University and the New
York Post-Graduate Medical School. This remarkable work does for
psychology what the theory of evolution did for biology; and
promises an equally profound change in the thought of mankind. A
very important book. Large 8vo. Send $4.40.
SOCIALIZED GERMANY. By Frederic C. Howe, author of “The Modern
City and Its Problems,” etc., etc.; Commissioner of Immigration
at the Port of New York. “The real peril to the other powers of
western civilization lies in the fact that Germany is more
intelligently organized than the rest of the world.” This book is
a frank attempt to explain this efficiency. $1.00, postpaid.
SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS OF TODAY. Illustrated. By T. W. Corbin. The
modern uses of explosives, electricity, and the most interesting
kinds of chemicals are revealed to young and old. Send $1.60.
THE HUNTING WASPS. By J. Henri Fabre. 12mo. Bound in uniform
style with the other books by the same author. In the same
exquisite vein as “The Life of the Spider,” “The Life of the
Fly,” etc. Send $1.60.
SCHOOLS OF TOMORROW. By John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey. Illustrated.
A study of a number of the schools of this country which are
using advanced methods of experimenting with new ideas in the
teaching and management of children. The practical methods are
described and the spirit which informs them is analyzed and
discussed. Send $1.60.
THE RHYTHM OF LIFE. By Charles Brodie Patterson. A discussion of
harmony in music and color, and its influence on thought and
character. $1.60, postpaid.
THE FAITHFUL. By John Masefield. A three-act tragedy founded on a
famous legend of Japan. $1.35, postpaid.
INCOME. By Scott Nearing. An economic value is created amounting
to, say, $100. What part of that is returned to the laborer, what
part to the manager, what part to the property owner? This
problem the author discusses in detail, after which the other
issues to which it leads are presented. Send $1.25.
THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY. By Gilbert Murray. An account of the
greatest system of organized thought that the mind of man had
built up in the Graeco-Roman world before the coming of
Christianity. Dr. Murray exercises his rare faculty for making
himself clear and interesting. Send 82c.
A MESSAGE TO THE MIDDLE CLASS. By Seymour Deming. A clarion call
so radical that it may well provoke a great tumult of discussion
and quicken a deep and perhaps sinister impulse to act. Send 60c.
DRIFT AND MASTERY. An attempt to diagnose the current unrest. By
Walter Lippmann. Send $1.60.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. By H. G. Wells. A confession of Faith and
a Rule of Life. Send $1.60.
THE SOCIALISTS AND THE WAR. By William English Walling. No
Socialist can adequately discuss the war without the knowledge
that this remarkable new book holds. 512 pages. Complete
documentary statement of the position of the Socialists of all
countries. Send $1.50.
DREAMS AND MYTHS. By Dr. Karl Abraham. A lucid presentation of
Freud’s theory of dreams. A study in comparative mythology from
the standpoint of dream psychology. Price, $1.25.
WHAT WOMEN WANT. By Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale. $1.35 net;
postage, 10c.
ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? A collection of clever woman suffrage verses.
The best since Mrs. Gilman. Geo. H. Doran Co. Send 75c.
HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE. By “Him.”
Illustrated by Mary Wilson Preston. Send 60c.
ON DREAMS. By Prof. Sigmund Freud. Authorized English translation
by Dr. M. D. Eder. Introduction by Prof. W. Leslie Mackenzie.
This classic now obtainable for $1.10.
MODERN WOMEN. By Gustav Kobbe. Terse, pithy, highly dramatic
studies in the overwrought feminism of the day. A clever book.
Send $1.10.
GOTHAM BOOK SOCIETY
Marlen E. Pew, Gen. Mgr., Dept. K, 142 West 23rd St., New York
“You Can Get Any Book on Any Subject”
We do with Talking Machines what Ford did with Autos
YOU ASK WHY THIS
BEAUTIFUL, LARGE SIZE
TALKING MACHINE
SELLS FOR ONLY
$10
Size 15¾ inches at base: 8½ high. Ask for oak or mahogany finish.
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Edison, Victor, Columbia and other disc records, 10 and 12
inches. Worm gear motor. Threaded winding shaft. Plays 2 ten-inch
records with one winding—Tone controlling door. Neat and solidly
made.
If you have never been willing to spend $25 for a talking machine
this is your chance.
The MUSIGRAPH is as large, good-looking, right-sounding as
machines selling for $25.
How do we do it? Here’s the answer: Gigantic profits have been
made from $25 machines because of patent right monopoly. Millions
have gone for advertising $25 machines, and these millions came
back from the public. The attempt is to make $25 the standard
price. It’s too much.
The trust price game is broken. Here is a machine which gives
perfect satisfaction (guaranteed) for only $10. It will fill your
home with dancing, good music, fun and happiness. Money back if
it isn’t as represented. MUSIGRAPHS are selling by the thousands.
People who can afford it buy showy autos, but common-sense people
gladly ride Fords—both get over the ground. Same way with talking
machines, only the MUSIGRAPH looks and works like the high-priced
instruments.
WHAT BETTER CHRISTMAS GIFT CAN YOU THINK OF? Musigraphs play any
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We are advertising these big bargain machines through our
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GUARANTEE.
This machine is as represented, both as to materials and
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represented send it back immediately and
Get your money back.
Address MUSIGRAPH, Dept. K
Distributors Advertising Service (Inc.)
142 West 23rd Street, New York City
FINE ARTS THEATRE
For TWO WEEKS, Beginning
January 17, 1916
TWO PRODUCTIONS
by
THE CHICAGO PLAYERS
with
MME. BORGNY HAMMER
EVENINGS
“AGNETE”
by
AMALIE SKRAM
(First Time in English)
SPECIAL MATINEES
“THERESE RAQUIN”
by
EMILE ZOLA
Prices 25c to $1.50
CLARENCE THOMAS
Manager
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The Song of the Lark
By WILLA SIBERT CATHER
The story of a prima donna’s career. “A story of something better
than suggestiveness and charm—a thing finished, sound and
noble.”—_The Nation._
“A distinct improvement on her previous novels, ‘O Pioneers,’ and
‘Alexander’s Bridge.’”—_New York Herald._ $1.40 net.
David Penstephen
By RICHARD PRYCE
David is the most lovable of all the author’s creations, a boy
who grew to manhood under conditions that might have warped a
soul less noble. $1.35 net.
The Little Book of American Poets
Edited by JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE
This book, a companion volume to “The Little Book of Modern
Verse,” gives a bird’s-eye view of the 19th century, beginning
with Philip Freneau and ending with the period of Madison Cawein,
Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey. 140 poets are represented, and
the book includes 230 poems. Cloth, $1.25 net; limp leather,
$1.75 net.
The Log of a Noncombatant
By HORACE GREEN
An absorbing narrative of the adventures and experiences of an
American correspondent and dispatch bearer who saw fighting both
with the Germans and Allies and who, as messenger for the
American Embassy at Berlin, had exceptional opportunities for a
glimpse behind the scenes in war-time Germany. Illustrated. $1.25
net.
The Greatest of Literary Problems
By JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER
This work meets a long-felt need for a complete presentation of
the Bacon-Shakespeare question, and will prove as useful to
students of Shakespeare as of Bacon. It presents an exhaustive
review of Shakespearean authors from Rowe to Lee, as well as a
bibliography covering all printed works upon the subject in
English, French, German, Spanish, Scandinavian, Italian, and
Russian, articles in periodical literature, and a wealth of
illustrations of great value to students and collectors.
Illustrated. 8vo. $5.00.
Red Wine of Roussillon
By WILLIAM LINDSEY
“A really good romantic drama, one of the best that has been
produced in a generation.... Compact and well made, developing
swiftly and logically a tragic love story of uncommon
interest.... Genuinely poetic.... A remarkable work, both in the
literary and dramatic sense.”—_The Nation._ $1.25 net.
Affirmations
By HAVELOCK ELLIS
A discussion of some of the fundamental questions of life and
morality as expressed in, or suggested by, literature. The
subjects of the first five studies are Nietzsche, Zola, Huysmans,
Casanova and St. Francis of Assisi. $1.75 net.
The New Poetry Series
This series aims to produce artistic and inexpensive editions of
representative contemporary verse.
The new volumes added this fall are:—
Stillwater Pastorals and Other Poems
By PAUL SHIVELL. With a Preface by BLISS PERRY.
The Cloister: A Verse Drama
By EMILE VERHAEREN.
Interflow
By GEOFFREY C. FABER.
Afternoons of April
By GRACE HAZARD CONKLING.
Each, boards, 75 cents net
4 Park St.
Boston
16 E. 40th St.
New York
Houghton Mifflin Co.
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.
The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here
(before/after):
[p. 11]:
... the war, Carl Liebknecht, the one brave public man in Germany
now, ...
... the war, Karl Liebknecht, the one brave public man in Germany
now, ...
[p. 16]:
... Hevae, ad te supiramus gementes et flentes.” ...
... Hevae, ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes.” ...
[p. 16]:
... shed a chatoyant green light on the poodles of blood. ...
... shed a chatoyant green light on the puddles of blood. ...
[p. 26]:
... What, finally, is Homo Sapiens? Who is this writter-fellow,
Falk, with ...
... What, finally, is Homo Sapiens? Who is this writer-fellow,
Falk, with ...
[p. 29]:
... The Girl. Oh yes, or Solvieg’s Lied. Isn’t it dim here. ...
... The Girl. Oh yes, or Solveig’s Lied. Isn’t it dim here. ...
[p. 31]:
... his brow, improvises a few bars, interpreting also a small
portion of the ...
... his brow, improvises a few bars, interpolating also a small
portion of the ...
[p. 32]:
... take it, and these three Egyptians—how they strut! They
give themselves ...
... take it, and these three Egyptians—how they strut! They
give themselves airs ...
[p. 33]:
... (He and the priest forget their quondom materiality for a
moment and ...
... (He and the priest forget their quondam materiality for a
moment and ...
[p. 34]:
... The Fawn (cavorting near, his key to his lips, piping
vigorously). ...
... The Fawn (cavorting near, his kex to his lips, piping
vigorously). ...
[p. 36]:
... Americans if America had was able to offer the foreigner one
tenth ...
... Americans if America was able to offer the foreigner one
tenth ...
[p. 38]:
... academy instructiors not selected by wealthy trustees with
the sole idea ...
... academy instructors not selected by wealthy trustees with the
sole idea ...
[p. 38]:
... make bankers and brewers directiors and trustees of art
institutions in ...
... make bankers and brewers directors and trustees of art
institutions in ...
[p. 42]:
... Vivi le divinité! ...
... Vive la divinité! ...
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Little Review, December 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 9)" ***
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