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Title: The Little Review, January 1917 (Vol. 3, No. 8)
Editor: Margaret C. Anderson
Release date: June 12, 2025 [eBook #76275]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago, New York: Margaret C. Anderson, 1922
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE REVIEW, JANUARY 1917 (VOL. 3, NO. 8) ***
THE LITTLE REVIEW
Literature Drama Music Art
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
JANUARY, 1917
The Great Emotional Mind Margaret C. Anderson
Chinoiseries Eunice Tietjens
And—— jh.
A Decadent Art!
“What Is Art?”
Little Theatre Atrocities
Moore and More
“A. E.”
Fritz Kreisler, Pianist
H. M. for Art; H—L for Artists
Paint and Personality
Frederic Stuck!
“Huppdiwupp” Retold from the German
The Reader Critic
Published Monthly
15 cents a copy
MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
$1.50 a year
Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago, Ill.
THE LITTLE REVIEW
VOL. III.
JANUARY, 1917
No. 8
Copyright, 1917, by Margaret C. Anderson.
The Great Emotional Mind
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
Every one talks about Art when he wants to be interesting. Whether he
knows anything about it or not makes no difference. You can tell a man
that unless he’s an expert in interstate railway regulation he mustn’t
argue with a man who is. That sounds sensible to him and he will defer
to the expert. But if you tell him that he mustn’t argue with an artist,
not being one himself, he considers your remark insulting.
Some people condemn artists and their ways; some praise their work and
condemn their ways; some imitate their ways and patronize their work;
some believe in their work and discredit the whole scale of values on
which alone such work could be built. The latter seem to be the most
numerous in these days, and they are the most exasperating. But all of
them together act the same way when it comes to talking about Art. If
the artist disagrees with them they are sure he is in the wrong, and if
in their eloquence they have tried to make him out a fool it’s difficult
to understand their rage when the artist says, “Very well, you are not
an artist, why should we be expected to agree?” You can tell a man that
he knows nothing about philology or philosophy or metaphysics or
comparative religions or science or plumbing or gardening, and he will
confess that he doesn’t. As for aesthetics, he can’t deny fast enough
any connection with such a subject, as though it were something beneath
his character. But the moment Art is mentioned the thing seems to have
become personal, and you realize from his angry or injured air that not
to know about Art is a sin instead of a lack, a thing one can be blamed
for, a matter not to be compared to an incapacity for metaphysics or
plumbing, for some mysterious reason.
This is the great emotional mind, holding itself proudly above the
much-maligned lay mind but really only articulating the beloved theories
of them both. The lay mind says: “I don’t know anything about Art but I
know what I like.” The emotional mind says: “I am capable of being moved
profoundly, and what moves me is Art.” Here are the articles of its
faith—every one of them as untrue as education can make them. It
believes:
That beauty is loveliness.
That beauty is art.
That truth is art.
That truth is beauty, beauty truth.
That taste is art.
That reproduction is art.
That technique is form.
That style is form.
That “significant form” is an unstable quantity. (They say: “What is
beautiful to you is ugly to me. Therefore what is art to you is not art
to me. Therefore, how can you say what is art?”)
That there is no distinction between feelings and imagination.
That an emotional experience is the same as an aesthetic experience.
That the fundamental impulse behind art is the search for truth.
That art can be gauged by meaning.
That the capacity to suffer intensely makes art.
That the artist is the interpreter of life.
That the artist paints life as he sees it.
That the artist mirrors the problems of his age.
That art springs from the fever and turmoil of life.
That art is a medium for expressing life.
That art is a criticism of life.
That art is a justification of life.
That art is the release from and the compensation for pain.
That the ideal of the arts is the expression of the human spirit.
That art ministers to our desires.
That the function of art is to make the race happier.
That art will free man from lies and superstitions.
That art is to dissipate reality.
That the social vision implies the creative vision.
That man’s organic necessity to listen to music or be thrilled by poetry
is identical with the art impulse.
That to live fully is the requisite of art.
That intellect is the motive power in creation.
That philosophy, which directs or explains, has some relation to art,
which makes or reveals.
That special insight implies creative power.
That special knowledge means special intelligence.
That one must experience to know.
That facts or fancies belong to art.
That a poetic temperament makes a poet.
That to act with great feeling and passion is to be a great actor.
That to “be Mary Garden in every role she does” is to be a bad actress.
That “the books we read and reread” are those that stand the test of
literature.
That the artist escapes from life into beauty.
That this “escape” is a falsification of life.
That criticism should be sincere and unprejudiced.
That artist and genius are identical terms.
Finally, that art is the expression of the whole man, as even Mr.
Willard Huntington Wright and _The Seven Arts_ believe. It is not. It is
the expression of the thing that man brings into the world with him. His
life is the expression of the whole man. His art is the
carefully-selected expression of his personality.
Chinoiseries
EUNICE TIETJENS
Crepuscule
Like the patter of rain on the crisp leaves of autumn are the tiny
footfalls of the fox-maidens.
Festival of Dragon Boats
On the fifth day of the fifth month the statesman Küh Yuen drowned
himself in the River Mih-lo.
Since then twenty-three centuries have passed, and the mountains wear
away.
Yet every year, on the fifth day of the fifth month, the great Dragon
Boats, gay with flags and gongs, search diligently in the streams
of the Empire for the body of Küh Yuen.
Kang Yi
When Kang Yi had been long dead the Empress decreed upon him
posthumous decapitation, so that he walks forever disgraced among
the shades.
The Dream
When he had tasted in a dream of the Ten Courts of Purgatory, Dr.
Tsêng was humbled in spirit and passed his life in piety among
the foothills.
Poetics
While two ladies of the Imperial harem held before him a screen of
pink silk, and a P’in Concubine knelt with his ink-slab, Li Po,
who was very drunk, wrote an impassioned poem to the moon.
The Son of Heaven
Like this frail and melancholy rain is the memory of the Emperor
Kuang-Hsu, and of his sufferings at the hand of Yehonala.
Yet under heaven was there found no one to avenge him.
Now he has mounted the Dragon and has visited the Nine Springs. His
betrayer sits upon the Dragon Throne.
Yet among the shades may he not take comfort from the presence of his
Pearl Concubine?
Yin and Yang
At the Hour of the Horse avoid raising a roof tree, for by the
trampling of his hoofs it may be beaten down;
And at the Hour of the cunning Rat go not near a soothsayer, for by his
prescience he may mislead the oracle, and the hopes of the
inquirer come to naught.
And——
jh.
_A Decadent Art!_
We have had grand opera in Chicago for several weeks. I am going to
write here of grand opera, not of singing classes.
Grand opera, like a great hand whose fingers are the different arts, is
trying to give us what the closed hand holds. Galli-Curci has undone the
critics for adjectives of praise, has fulfilled the hopes of managers,
and filled the Auditorium with the sleep-walking public. We have had
Muratore with his beautiful voice and his treacle personality. We have
had efficient and awful Wagnerian singers. We have had satisfaction in
our opera. And now comes Mary Garden, so surcharged with life that she
sends a thrill of it before her—Mary Garden who outsings the composer in
her feeling, who outpaints the painter in her acting, who outsculpts the
sculptor with her body. Mary Garden gives us grand opera; she gives what
the closed hand holds.
And so the fight will begin again and the old favorite record will be
put on all the cheap human talking machines: “Of course Mary Garden
can’t sing, but she can act.”
Grand opera by its very character is outside such simple criticism as
this; it is outside all talk of voice production or singing off key or
distracting the conductor. There is a measurable value in the component
parts of any art, but the test that cannot be analyzed lies in the unity
of these parts. This unity is the principle of Art. But grand opera is a
composite of the arts, and the true test for it should lie in the unity
of the employed arts, not in weighing any part of any one art. People
will rave for days if Mary Garden fails in a note, although the
aesthetic and emotional experience of the whole was unmarred; but the
same people will never be disturbed if Galli-Curci moves about the stage
like a lost cloak-model and breaks up the picture of the whole illusion
by holding her body in positions not possible in human awkwardness; and
is so intent on breathing that she almost forgets to attend to Juliet’s
funeral. So long as she sings according to a fixed standard she need go
no further than a moving-picture screen. And Mary must be decried,
though her performance hold in color like a tapestry and move in rhythm
like a frieze.
When anything is as far from life as sung dialogue it must have a
different treatment than either pure song or pure drama. Decoration
should be the design for opera: a libretto that is a dramatic poem,
music working itself out in a decoration for the poem, scenery a design
of the matter and feeling of the libretto, and actors that can point the
design not in the realistic day-life manner of the drama but with
decorative acting. With this we might have great grand opera. One thing
we have now: the great decorative actress _and_ singer, Mary Garden.
Mary Garden is the biggest thing on our horizon today. To think that
flesh could be so intelligent! She gives as generously of her undraped
body as a Rodin statue; and the audience gives her back their applause,
grudgingly, not knowing the great art of her. To put Rodin into inspired
motion, but to do more than that even—! In the next issue I shall try to
write of all she does,—Mary Garden,
... “This Cyprian
She is a million, million changing things.
She brings more joy than any god; she brings
More pain. I cannot judge her. May it be
An hour of mercy when she looks on me.”
“_What Is Art?_”
When Tagore first gave his lecture on Art in Chicago I was not here, and
all I could read about it or find out about it by asking was that it was
anti-Tolstoyan. But I got the whole truth of it in a sentence when I
asked a pupil of Tagore’s, a young artist, “What does Mr. Tagore say in
his lecture on Art?”
“What does he say? Oh, he just says what it is, this Art.”
Every layman in this country who finds it necessary to establish himself
a critic of Art and artists should hear that lecture and try to
understand it, if only in parts. But I suppose they wouldn’t accept
Tagore’s word for it because he doesn’t take them in on the ground
floor, in the manner of _The Seven Arts_, for instance.
I can’t quote directly, as the lecture is not yet published, but he has
said all the things that one longs to say oneself. He defines the artist
as one who says to the world: “I see you where you are what I am.” Art
is the most personal thing in the world. Man reveals himself and not his
objects in Art. Matter and manner find their harmonics in our
personality. The artist does not particularize through peculiarity,
which is the discord of the unique, but through the personality, which
is its harmony. Art is man’s answer to the “Supreme Person.” Art is
personal and beyond science. So, too, is beauty. Beauty is not a fact
but an expression. “Facts are like wine-cups that carry it.” To all the
confusion and misconceptions about beauty in Art he answers: The
creation of beauty is not the object of Art. Beauty in Art has merely
been an instrument and not its complete and ultimate significance. And
to those who demand teaching or utility in Art there is this answer: The
stage of pure utility is like a state of heat which is dark. When it
surpasses itself it becomes white heat and then it is expressive; and
when man thwarts his desire for delight, wanting to make it into good or
into knowledge, it loses its bloom and healthiness.
Taking up the old controversy of Art for Art’s sake, the fact that the
phrase has fallen into disrepute is a sign of the return of the ideals
of the puritanic age when enjoyment as an end in itself was held to be
sinful. The idea of Art for Art’s sake had its origin in a surplusage of
life, not in asceticism or decadence. When our personality is at its
flood-tide with love or other emotion it longs to express itself for the
sake of expression, and we forget the claims of usefulness and the
thrift of necessity.
After all the fighting and arguing one has to do up and down the world
over what is Art, and Art for Art’s sake, one comes from this lecture
feeling: “He leadeth me beside the still waters; he maketh me to lie
down in green pastures; he restoreth my soul.”
_Little Theatre Atrocities_
Last month the Chicago Little Theatre strayed down into the Playhouse
with _Mrs. Warren’s Profession_. I won’t say anything about the acting,
nor even of Mrs. Warren and her Oak Park vulgarity—Mrs. Warren of
London, Brussels, Budapest! But I can’t let the scenery go by without a
protest.
There is a subtle but definite sense of analogy of line which goes
through all the arts. It is obvious in acting and painting. Why
shouldn’t it be sought in decoration when decoration is dependent upon
words? Bernard Shaw has perhaps but one line—the straight horizontal
line. He cuts through clear and straight—a cross-section of life. He
brings people and all their relations out upon this broad flat plane.
That’s Shaw. I didn’t mind that the text of _Mrs. Warren_ called for
period architecture; it was the insistence on the long perpendicular
line that maddened me. And the color! There, too, was a chance for line.
But—well, who can tell how bad the performance was with the futile
effort of the denying horizontal lines of the play against the asserting
perpendicular lines of the scenery?
_Moore and More_
I have been reading Frank Harris in _Pearson’s_ on George Moore’s _The
Brook Kerith_. What Mr. Harris really does is to jump on George Moore
for not writing a history of the life of Christ—the sociology, biology,
and geology of Jerusalem.
Only in books of information and science does the writer have to
submerge his personality and let the facts have first place. But Mr.
Moore thought he was making a work of art, and here no one will deny the
first right to the personality of the artist. Mr. Harris cavils about
types, landscapes, customs, etc.
Almost the only presentation of Christ outside the Bible has been in
painting. Have those painters “defiled our most sacred spiritual
possessions” who, from the day when Florence knelt in her streets before
Cimabue’s Madonna, have painted every incident in the life of Christ and
of the Holy Family in every setting from an Italian pasture to a Medici
palace, using Italian types, Italian dress, Italian gestures? Has the
great El Greco defiled the Christian religion because he painted Spanish
Christs and saints in tomb-damp colors? Did Michael Angelo dethrone God
because in his _Creation_ he painted him with beard and flowing robe on
his own authority? And the Germans and the Dutch? They must have been
all leagued together to “misrepresent through ignorance,” according to
such critics as Mr. Harris. But who can say that they have not raised
the tradition to a height the old Jews dared not dream?
“_A. E._”
There is a great interest in America just now over A. E.—poet, painter,
mystical teacher, labor leader, economist, and editor. There are
lectures by Colum, reviews of his books, studies of his life, a revival
of the reading of George Moore’s _Salve_ where he is portrayed with such
love, and in January we are to have an exhibition of his paintings
brought from Ireland by a Chicago woman at her own expense and loaned to
the Art Institute. To my knowledge only once before have any of A. E.’s
paintings been seen in Chicago. There were two with the “Cubists.”
The coming exhibitions will have pictures in several manners: a group of
wood interiors where gay young things sport—the trees human and the
girls wild; joyous sea pictures with cockle-gatherers and bathers; and
one frankly symbolic. One is called _Dove-Grey Sands: The Face of
Brooding Love in the Sky_. I love most those close-toned ones in which
he has seemed to paint the very spirit of the air to create his
subject—a painted intuition of mood. Most painters do no more than paint
the nature of the atmosphere to give the mood of their subjects. There
seems to be in all A. E.’s painting a sense of a living divine soul in
all things that make up the universe, and their unity with the soul of
man.
_Fritz Kreisler; Pianist_
Kreisler came and played the piano!—accompanying a young Russian
baritone, de Warlich. It was a lesson for all pianists and accompanists;
but of course they were not there. Very few were there, so excited are
people in Chicago over music.
It was good to see how Kreisler subdued the strength of his own
personality and the sound of the piano and let the boy sing. But he did
more than that: he subdued the authority of a great violinist and let
the piano play.
It would have made you glad to see how he came to the instrument. He
reached out as if he were drawing it to him; with hands and feet at once
he seemed to swing it into place.
_H. M. for Art; H—L for Artists_
At a recent exhibition in the Art Institute a committee granted
honorable mention to Stanislaw Szukalski, the young Polish sculptor, and
it is told that he tore up the H. M. before their faces. He would
undoubtedly have thrown back the thousand-dollar prize to them.
Well, who of them all is able to give him place? Better be free of their
praise for his work if he cannot be free of their criticism for his
personality. The newspapers take it up and call him the eccentric young
sculptor. A citizen may be eccentric—so eccentric that his fellows may
shut him up in an asylum; but that’s a game among themselves. How on
earth can a sculptor be eccentric? It’s a waste of terms. One who
creates as indirectly as through Art must always seem eccentric to
society; but he is not eccentric to life: he creates as an artist: he
exists as an artist.
_Paint and Personality_
The new Arts Club opened its galleries with an exhibition of Sargent and
Dearth—just wild enough contrast for great interest: Sargent resting
back on old methods, expressing himself only in his subjects; Dearth
vitalizing his method with feeling and creating a manner full of
life-stuff to express himself in his peculiar subjects.
Next came an exhibition of Henri, Bellows, and Sloan—a matter of men,
not of manner.
The courtesy with which Mr. Henri treats all his subjects stamps his
technique and his color with that final necessary thing. In Mr. Bellows
the organization stands the test, but Bellows seems to be wanting. Mr.
Sloan, with his humpy line, makes one feel a soul that has never blown
out like an unfurled scroll.
_Frederic Stuck!_
There is an unintentional explanation in the German pronunciation of Mr.
Stock’s name as to why the Orchestra programs never “move on” with new
music or with much variation of the old.
“Huppdiwupp”[1]
He lived on the side of a mountain near a dark pine forest. His house
was built of great pine logs and the cracks were so well plastered with
clay that the wind could never blow in. When it blew very hard the
little house laughed and sent the smoke gaily up the chimney which had
once been a stove pipe. There was only one room in the house, with one
window, but the sun loved the little room and shone in always when the
day was at its height.
Friedel lived here almost alone, for his father was dead and his mother
washed clothes for strangers. With the money she earned every day she
bought bread and a little butter for her boy, and every year trousers or
a coat; but she could not earn enough to send Friedel to school. This
gave him no sorrow, and that they were so poor had no meaning for him.
In the summer he grazed his goat on the mountain-side—a willful goat who
always sought his feed where it was steepest and always ran away; but
Friedel knew that at last he would come back and so he sat quietly by
the brook which sprang zig-zag down the mountain and through the
thickets of slender pines. The pines tried to catch the water but they
were not quick enough; and the little stream leaped down to a great city
which lay not far away in the valley. As it dashed over the bare feet of
the little boy it said, “Come, little Friedel, run with me, run with me
and help turn the great water-wheel of the mill.”
“I’m not so stupid as that,” answered Friedel. “I wouldn’t get a penny
for it. But you will wash away a few shovels of yellow clay for me,
won’t you?”
Out of the clay he made all kinds of curious things: Meckerbart, his
goat, and Hans, the miller’s boy, who always let him ride on his donkey;
or even the donkey himself. And as he worked he thought of nothing but
his work; he saw nothing, heard nothing—not even the blackbird singing
like a flute.
So it was in the summer. But when winter came Friedel sat in the room on
a chair which he had made himself, and in the stove crackled the
fir-wood which he had gathered. At his feet lay Miez, the cat, who was
so old and lazy that she could scarcely make her spinning-sound. When
the clouds would allow it the sun looked in through the window and
wondered over the boy who carved such lovely things. He carved with a
knife which had belonged to his father—a knife so sharp that he could
have cut both hair and beard with it.
It was the day before Christmas and Friedel was working on a
Wonder-Beautiful horse which held one foreleg lifted and threw back his
head proudly. One would not be surprised to hear him neigh the next
moment. With three feet he stood upon a smooth board on which were
wheels so that he could run. He had no saddle but there was a bridle, a
narrow strip of brown leather. As the sun went down Friedel’s work was
finished and his eyes shone with joy. “Now will I ride out, old Miez,”
he said; “will you come with me?”
“No,” said the cat, “it is too cold outside for me and this evening it
will snow; then I couldn’t find my way back home again when you fall off
your steed.”
“Do you really think I shall fall off?”
“Of course,” muttered the cat; “you have no claws: with what will you
hold fast?”
Then the mother came home from work and said, “Lay your knife away,
Friedel. Holy Evening is here, when one must not whittle and carve or
the great Mountain Chopper will come and carry you off.”
“No, mother, when it grows dark two little angels will very softly open
heaven’s door, which is there where the sun is gone down, and the
Christ-child will ride down to earth on a silver white horse and visit
the good children.”
“Yes,” said the woman, and turned away to light some pine chips; then
she opened the cupboard and placed bread and butter upon the table.
Friedel said very thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t he come to us? We have
always been good!”
But the mother sunk her eyes and whispered, “Because we are too poor.
The Christ-child comes only to people who have money and we have none.”
“But that’s a shame,” said the little fellow. And when his mother heard
that she began to cry bitterly. Friedel ran to her, put his head in her
lap and said, “I have a big horse called Huppdiwupp which I will sell. I
shall get much money for him, and then the Christ-child will come.”
When he had said this he took his horse and went out of the room; his
mother, crying softly, did not watch after him; and then, because she
was so very tired, she closed her eyes and sank into a deep sleep.
The little boy opened the door very gently, put his horse outside, got
upon it and cried, “Hü!” But the horse didn’t understand: he was still
too young; and besides he had a hard head and would not run.
“If I only had a whip!” said Friedel; and because he had none he
dismounted and dragged his steed by the bridle behind him.
When the sun had gone down there rose slowly a great cloud mountain, but
the greater part of the sky was still clear. There the dear moon
wandered. She shone brightly but she was no longer full, for she had
given of her light to the young stars as she rose over them. In return
they let her cling to them a little, for it is no small thing to walk
there above much higher than the highest church tower and not grow
dizzy. In all the air a solemn silence ruled; the dark pines stood
motionless; they held their breath, as though they waited for a king to
pass. But the earth trembled softly; she was freezing and she longed for
a soft white covering in which she might wrap herself to sleep. At first
the little boy froze too, but soon he grew warm from running and his
heart beat fast with the desire to sell his precious horse. As he
trotted along he met a fox.
“Where are you going, Friedel?”
“To sell my horse. Will you have him? I hear that you are a rich man and
eat roast goose every day. You should not go on foot.”
“Of course not,” said the fox. “But I see what you hold there is a white
horse. I prefer to ride my own red-brown one.”
“Oh well, pardon,” said Friedel, and went on. Soon he came upon a raven
who wore a heavy black coat and called out in a deep voice: “Trot,
trot!”
“Yes,” answered Friedel, “but he won’t trot, and alas, I have no whip.
But tell me, won’t you buy my horse?”
“I don’t want it,” croaked the raven, very much hurt. “I have wings and
can fly.”
“That’s different,” said Friedel, “I didn’t know that.”
A little farther on he came upon a sparrow and he asked again: “Master
Greyhead, you have so much to do on the streets, won’t you buy my
horse?”
“Yes, if it were only summer,” said the sparrow, “I could make good use
of him; now in winter I find it very difficult to get enough food
together for my own span of horses. But we will go down into the city:
there it’s easy to get rid of a horse like this any day. See how it
shines out there with her thousand lights. Come, I will guide you. I
must visit a few courtyards which are under my care.” Friedel was glad
in his heart, for where could he have found a better guide or one who
knew the world so well?
The street sloped down rapidly. The sparrow and Friedel stepped along
lightly, the horse close upon their heels. “Now you may see how well he
can run, if he only will,” said Friedel; and Master Greyhead said very
calmly: “One must have much patience with such unreasonable animals.”
They went past the water-mill: the great wheel had made a holiday and
was standing still, so the brook had nothing to do and called out to
Friedel:
“Go back home, go back home;
It is cold here outside;
Flowers are gone to bed,
Frogs sleep deep in the mud,
Bats hang in the corners,
Cuckoos sing no more,
Behind the mountain waits the wind—
Back home, go back, dear child!”
“Hear what he’s trying to make you believe,” said the sparrow. “You
mustn’t give heed to him; he is one who is always coming down. He who
would rise in the world must have no fears.”
The boy intended to remember this good advice but as he saw the
brightly-lighted windows of the miller’s house he thought: “Now they sit
within by the warm stove having Christmas.”
It was not long before they were in the city. There stood high houses,
crowded so close together that the street could scarcely pass through,
and the little fellow was afraid. Sometimes his mother had taken him
with her to the city, but that had always been in bright day. He had
never wanted to wander about the streets alone; he would rather be where
the leaves rustled and the birds sang. Now all the windows were bright
and behind the polished panes stood the loveliest things. Along the
footpaths hurried many people, all carrying packages and bundles under
their arms. Fortunately there were no more wagons, so Friedel chose the
street. But even there he was not safe. First a fat woman crossed over
the way; she carried on either side a great pack, puffed like an old
steam engine, and gave him such a shove that he fell to the ground—and
his horse too. But he stood up quickly and helped Huppdiwupp to his
feet. “One mustn’t make anything of that,” said the sparrow; “that
happens every day. But there come some dangerous fellows; we must pass
them very cautiously.”
But this didn’t happen. Three street urchins came along who could see
more with one eye than ten men with two. The first two seized Friedel by
the jacket and the third planted himself impudently in front of the boy
and said: “You wooden-shoe fellow, are you taking your horse to the
blacksmith? You can get it done cheaper here; we’ll shoe him for
nothing.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Friedel, “I wish to sell him.” Then the
three shouted and the boldest one began to talk again: “Listen, you, you
can’t sell your horse; we won’t have it. Give it to me and I won’t tell
that you stole it.” And then he reached out for the bridle and tried to
snatch away from the boy the only thing that he owned. Then the sparrow
whispered: “Take off your wooden shoe and give him one on the head.”
Friedel thought this good advice and followed it. There began a great
battle, and even though there were three of the others they lacked a
weapon and got many blows. Perhaps it might have gone badly with the boy
at the end, but like thunder and lightning a man came between them. He
had a polished helmet on his head and a sword at his side; under his
nose he wore an enormous mustache which always trembled as though in
fear of the frightful words that flew past it. He shouted: “Separate,
you boys! keep the peace or I’ll pepper and salt your backs! Who started
this?”
“He!” cried the three, as one mouth.
“No, they!” peeped the sparrow; but no one heard him.
“You see, Watch Master, he still has his wooden shoe in his hand,” said
the boldest one; “he attacked us with that.”
“Be silent!” thundered the man, “we’ll get the right of this. You, put
on your shoe, and tell me what you want here in the street with the
horse.”
“He has stolen the horse,” said one of the boys.
“No,” said Friedel, very boldly and clearly, “the horse belongs to me; I
made it myself.”
The man couldn’t well believe that and said: “That’s very suspicious.
Follow me, we’ll soon find out.”
So Friedel had to follow him and the bad boys exulted. They gave a howl
of joy and started after; but he with the helmet motioned toward his
sword and they gladly ran away.
The man stalked ahead while Friedel, the sparrow, and Huppdiwupp
followed as fast as their legs would carry them. The poor little fellow
was very disheartened and thought it a bad adventure. But the sparrow
whispered to him: “This is nothing; I can manage it.” At the next corner
he gave Friedel a sign and they swung to the right, unnoticed, while the
man of law went straight ahead, seeing nothing, intent only on his own
steps.
“That’s the way to manage such people,” said the sparrow. “You must
never follow their orders if you wish to be a clever fellow. But wait!
Here we are at the right place. In this old house lives a merchant who
deals in cats and dogs, donkeys and horses. Take a look; his window is
full of them. Go in and try your luck.”
The small boy opened the door, went into the shop, and asked the
merchant: “Here is my horse Huppdiwupp. I want very much to sell him.
Will you take him?”
“Why not?” said the merchant. “What does he cost?”
“A thousand thaler.”
“That’s too dear for me,” said the merchant, and made a very thoughtful
face. “Just look, my horses are much handsomer than yours and even then
much cheaper than a thousand thaler.”
“Yes,” said Friedel, “I believe that. But your horses are dead and mine
is alive. I should know, I made it myself. But tell me, what will you
give me?”
“Half a pfennig.”
“That’s much too little,” said the boy and went quickly out the door.
Huppdiwupp sprang over the threshold, as enraged as he. Little Greyhead
was much annoyed when he heard the story and peeped very distinctly:
“Such a common fellow! It’s a pity I didn’t go in with you, so that I
could have given him a piece of my mind. But wait! See that strange
fellow coming there? Notice how his spider legs bend under him. His body
is so thin that he throws no shadow, and his face looks as though it
were plastered with copper money. Ask him, he is surely a horseman. I
tell you the best horse deals are always made in the street.”
Friedel waited until the man came up and then said, very shyly: “Dear
Sir, won’t you buy my little horse? My mother and I have no money.” But
the man merely said, “Beggar!” and passed on, leaving the three not
knowing what to do.
“Don’t cry,” said the sparrow, who recovered quickest; “that’s the way
with people. I know them from my grain deals.”
“I’m not crying,” said Friedel bravely, but he was as sad at heart as a
horse who has won a race and waits in vain for his rider to pat his
neck. “I shall stay no longer in the city, and I shall have nothing more
to do with these people. I know very well what I must do. Tell me,
Master Greyhead, have you already seen the Christ-child this evening?”
“To be sure. I see him every year. Today he came riding in from the door
of the East and he will go out again at the West door. If you wish to
speak with him we must hurry and reach the bench by the spring where he
will surely pass.”
And now the three went together out of the city. There was no one to be
seen and Friedel’s wooden shoes made klapp, klapp on the hard frozen
road. He pulled his fur cap down over his ears, because he was so cold,
and thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. “Shall I lend you my
handkerchief, Master Greyhead?” he asked. “Out of it you can make some
stockings for your bare legs.”
But the sparrow laughed. “Never mind; even in winter my feet are quite
comfortable. Now look about you—this is the place. Sit down on the bench
and rest, but take care not to go to sleep. Meanwhile I’ll watch and
tell you when the Christ-child comes.”
The little fellow sat down, and the sky grew darker and darker. The
stars put out their lights and the moon disappeared. Then it seemed to
Friedel that the world grew stiller, and he himself grew wearier, and
soon there came fluttering down through the air, very softly, thousands
and thousands of butterflies. They settled on the bare branches of the
trees, and when there was no more room there they sank down on the road
and the ground, covering the whole earth. “They have woven a white
cloth,” said the sparrow; “that is really too bad. But what can one do?
The Christ-child has given away his horse and stockings and shoes and
must not walk on the bare ground. See, there he comes.”
Great heavens, Friedel had fallen asleep. But he had to open his eyes
again. He saw a shimmering light coming nearer and nearer. Then Friedel
stood up and walking was so easy for him, so wonderfully easy, that he
moved toward the light. At last came an angel’s child with long hair and
a blue robe, with nothing in his hands, who went with bare feet and
stepped so lightly that not a trace of him remained in the snow. All the
light which Friedel had seen came from his two eyes, and about his mouth
played a smile as though the Mother Maria had just kissed his lips.
“Are you the Christ-child?” asked Friedel.
“Yes,” answered he, and looked so long at Friedel that a strange warmth
ran through the boy’s whole body.
Then the little fellow took heart and asked fervently: “Dear
Christ-child, people will have nothing to do with me and no one sees my
need. Buy my little horse Huppdiwupp. I have carved him with my own
hand. You cannot go back to heaven on foot. You can pay me what you
will.”
“Oh,” said the Christ-child. “I have no money.”
Friedel was astonished: “No money? And yet you bring such lovely things
to the children? Every year you’ve gone to the rich miller; of course
you have never known where we poor people live.”
“Yes, little boy,” said the Christ-child and smiled so strangely. “How
that comes to be I cannot say. And then you are not poor.”
“But mother says so.”
“Give me your hand. Did you carve that beautiful horse with this hand?”
“Yes.”
“There is a gift in your hand,” said the Christ-child, “which a rich man
cannot buy for a whole sack of gold,” and he stroked his hand and
blessed him. But Friedel was not content and pleaded: “Haven’t you one
more nut in your pocket or at least a fig or a cake?”
Then the Christ-child said sadly: “I really didn’t think of you and I
have given everything away. But if you will lend your little horse
Huppdiwupp to me then you shall see a lovelier Christmas tree than any
child on earth has owned tonight.”
Friedel was satisfied. The Christ-child seated himself on the horse,
took the little boy in his arms, and before them, between the ears of
the horse, Master Greyhead perched himself. And now it was wonderful to
see how the horse grew larger and larger. It was as if wings grew to
him, and he rose slowly up and left the earth beneath. It snowed no
more, the sky had become clear again, and the stars gleamed like
diamonds in the dark hair of a queen. And as they kept rising steadily
higher and higher the heart of the boy rose too. It was wide with joy,
but it was strange that he could not feel it beating. His body was so
light that he felt he could jump to the stars; he could not feel when
his foot touched the neck of the horse. But he thought no more of this
for he was so happy: his own work was bearing him up to the highest
places. Far below he saw meadows and forests which shone whitely up;
there, too, were the mountains and the cliffs stretching up like giants
and yet unable to reach him. From the distance the bells toned very
softly—as if their clappers were wound round with velvet. They were
calling to Holy Festival. Friedel flew higher and higher and the earth
grew as small as the wheel of the water-mill, and even smaller. Finally
they went past the moon who was polishing her lamp which had almost gone
out. She nodded to Friedel very kindly: “Bravo! You’ll soon be able to
fly yourself!”
And then they came into heaven, a place so splendid that one cannot tell
of it. There stood a great palace of transparent blue crystal; in it was
a hall with walls of white marble and a table which gleamed like a
single diamond. Upon this table was a green pine tree and on it hung a
thousand stars: five hundred of them burned with a quiet light, the
other five hundred glittered and flamed like children of the sun.
“Is it not lordly, Master Sparrow?” asked the boy.
The other answered: “Yes, but a full cherry-tree with the fruit showing
dark red through the green—I do not know but what I should prefer that.”
Then the Christ-child led them to the table, for under the pine tree, in
a very simple arm chair, sat the dear God. He was stone old but he
looked about him as kindly as a father looks at his children. Upon his
left knee he rocked a little angel who sang.
“Ah, dear God,” said Friedel very shyly, “now that I am up here I should
like so much to see my father again.”
“I believe he is not here,” said the Christ-child. “He has gone to
another place because he scolded and beat your mother.”
“Oh,” said Friedel, “that doesn’t make any difference. Mother has often
beaten me, but I love her just the same.”
“That’s very different,” said the Christ-child, and the dear God smiled
a very little. Friedel was near to tears but he took heart and said:
“See, dear God, I have brought a beautiful horse with me. His name is
Huppdiwupp. He is without, before the door, for it is too slippery for
him in here, as he has no iron hoofs. But he is no common horse. He has
brought us all up to heaven. The people would not buy my horse. They did
not know what he was worth. The Christ-child has no money, so you take
it and give me for him what I beg you.”
And as Friedel finished the dear God set the little angel on the floor
and it tripped away. Then he stretched out his right hand and drew the
little boy toward him; and Friedel knew that he was to receive his wish.
At ten o’clock a lusty fellow knocked at the window of Friedel’s mother.
“Wash Margaret, get up! It’s I, the miller’s Hans. I found your
youngster down below by the fountain almost frozen to ice.”
How frightened the mother was! But she rubbed her little boy with snow
and he grew slowly warm again. She held him the whole night through and
kept saying, “My poor boy! My poor boy!”
But Friedel stammered, sleepy and snow-drunk: “I am not poor. I can make
the Christ-child out of snow-white stone and he will shine like the
sun.”
The poor woman did not know what to say but she clasped her child with
both arms to keep him warm; for outside the wind had risen and was
slashing the roof.
Finally they both fell asleep, mother and son; and at their right stood
Need and at their left stood Sorrow, watching over them. For these are
the angels of the poor, and whom they lift up they make the Conquerors.
----------
[1] _Retold from the German._
The Reader Critic
“Mutable Emotions”
_Alan Adair, Fovant Camp_:
Yesterday your paper came to me, sent forward from my home. For the last
four months it has come to me through change of camp and bullets, the
delays of censorship, and the uncertainties of civil and military posts.
And each time it has provoked me, and tonight, as I read it in the
flickering obscurity of my hut, it provokes me excessively. For I am a
soldier and my life is the immemorial life of soldiers. That is to say
it is the life of a barbarian; of an antique legionary; of a serf of the
Middle Age; of those that fought before the Arts were born of leisure
and the life of cities. I am a soldier and live according to the ancient
lore of camps: incessant occupation and equally unceasing tedium;
recurring orgies of physical exertion prolonged to the verge of utter
exhaustion; an inexorable discipline that is with classic exactness
termed blind; the constant and elementary hardships of animal existence
experienced in forms unmitigated by any of the devices of civilization;
above all, a complete and almost splendid intellectual vacuity, a
complete and almost splendid indifference to the customary enthusiasms
and inclinations of a life outside the armies: these are the chief
elements that shape the life of a soldier on active service and these
are the influences amongst which, throughout Europe, the men of my years
are coming to maturity. That is why you provoke me, and your paper
provokes me, and your contributors all provoke me when there is talk of
the Arts. Our experiences are alien to each other; and Art is so
completely a matter for man’s inner soul, for that inner soul wherein
distil to essence the labors, sufferings and lusts of a man’s life and
from which the deepest elements of individual character take form and
color. As your quotation from de Gourmont puts it, there is a difference
in our sensibility; and that difference lies in this: that we in Europe
are soldiers. The other influences that separate us in sympathy are
negligible, and spring solely from our different opportunities of
acquaintance with the cults and works of contemporary schools and
artists. But the military influence has turned the city of Art to a
tower of Babel. We who are soldiers no longer understand the tongues
that Art once spoke to us. The old language of unrest, of delicate
eclecticism, of an indecision of taste that hungers by turn for the
remotely archaic and the fantastically modern, is become unintelligible
to us who amid the discipline and adventures of arms are learning new
values for all the sacraments of life.
In a Philistine world, where money was a god indecently obtruded and
death a presence solicitously hidden, it was well enough to seek among
the Arts for spells to dissipate reality. With life secure in our lands
and without imperative desires in our hearts, it was reasonable to find
in contemplation of the creations of man’s love of beauty a satisfaction
of the many dissatisfactions of the spirit. But when a man has seen
death, very clear and huge, straddling the way, and learned to think
patiently of the final extinction; lost many friends; met fear in twenty
shapes, and in the light of an unhoped-for morning felt the fresh,
unshattered joy of living, the Arts, if they do not lose influence, do
at least change in the significance that they have for his soul.
They become not a means for satisfying the inexpressible and vacillating
impulses of the spirit, but a means of satisfying the desires of a whole
man. To have lived and survived as a soldier teaches a man the worth of
his life; and life is desire. To live fully is to desire much and to
have found means for the satisfaction of one’s desires. Art as you speak
of it, as you advertise for it, is not a thing to minister to the
desires of a man. It is a coloring matter to conceal an anaemia of the
spirit, a way of spinning dainty webs across the void of a purposeless
existence. At the best it is an echo for awakening the senses to the
mysteries and subtleties of life, but without power to interpret them
into action. I suspect, it is merely a device to avoid boredom. But for
us, with lives still in hazard, the world holds too many desirable
things for our souls to feel need of an art of this kind.
Art for us is no longer a means for the evocation of emotion; a magic
net cast over all the nude and undesirable body of life. We are too full
of lusts for such an art. We are done with “the brooding East”, with the
Tagores; with the Ajanta caves; with the dun yellows and faded crimsons
of Hindustan. We know ourselves again to be of the European tradition:
the tradition of men who think and act. Our art must serve life. Which
is to say it must serve our wills and desires. For we desire
multitudinous things: loves, travels and insurrections. We have lived
too long as mud in the hands of chance and a military system. Every
fibre of body and soul is athirst. We desire women, horses and dogs, and
wines. We desire adventures that are adventures of the spirit and not
solely a hazard of blood and health. We desire a society reshaped and to
be concerned in that inflaming and organization of the people that alone
can precipitate so vast a change. We are ready to turn again to our old
purposes: to that large movement that will control the fate of all
existing polities and is called Syndicalism, the new Unionism,
Industrial Unionism, Anarchy as latitude or language alters; to our
intentions in Ireland, Catalonia, or among the broken nations of the
Slavs; to the fantastic keenness of a sculpture and a painting become
militant and seeking ever further into the reality of man’s
consciousness and semblance.
But we return to these enthusiasms disciplined by unaccustomed rigors.
We have learned to live directly; to think clearly, to act and have no
doubts. Henceforward, for us Art will be a thing of clear outlines,
simplicity, and practical purpose. It must administer to our desires. It
must be part of our will: that is of our philosophy and lust. It must be
evangelist. It must carry a sword in its cloak. We shall have no use for
the Imagist telling three lines of the passage of some faint tremor of
joy or repugnance. Nor shall we applaud the Vorticist poet jerking in
angular words a cinematograph picture across the mind. We want a verse
with blood in it. We want verse in a hundred manners—aphrodisiac or
insurrectionary, mournful, obscene, or profound. Only we want a verse
that is not trivial and is not cold. Similarly we want plays and essays
and tales. But we want a drama that is less a drama of discussion than
one of action, essays that are shaped to a purpose, stories that show
life untruly, venomous, unfair, eloquent tales that inflame, that
espouse and condemn. We want an art inspired by a love of action. We
want an art that is the evocation of sustained and coherent desire. We
want an art astir with the conscious movement of a soul that wills; an
art of purposes and lusts. For we have ventured our lives and received
them back invigorated by danger: we have learned in hardships the value
of desire and through endurance have discovered how contemptible is an
art of delicate and unsure pleasures, of dilettantism, of varied,
sterile, and mutable emotions.
And such is the Art of your contributors and such the definition of Art
that even the blank pages of your paper imply.
[This is so beautiful an expression of the typical confusions about Art
that I scarcely know where to begin to answer it.
In the first place, you say that the life of war is an artificial life—a
Philistine world. Then why talk about wanting Art in such a world? Art
and Philistinism have never mixed.
In the second place, why did you need to go to war to learn to live
directly, to think clearly, to act and have no doubts? The artist never
has life secure in his hands; he always has an imperative desire in his
heart; and he is always “seeing death, very clear and huge, straddling
the way,” always “thinking of the final extinction,” always “losing many
friends, meeting fear in twenty shapes, and feeling the fresh
unshattered joy of living.” If going to war did these things to you,
then you simply confess that it took war to “quicken” you: but the
artist is born “quickened.” And now that you wish to react against
something, after the quickening, you complain that Art will not receive
your reaction. Why on earth do you insist on going to Art for all those
things you want? If you want blood and lust, go on fighting. If you want
meat, eat meat: don’t try to eat Art. Who ever imagined that Art
administers to men’s desires? When Bernhardt acts for the French
soldiers, are they “too full of lusts for such an Art” or does she
change her immortal Art to meet their desires for “women, horses and
dogs, and wine”?
You say that Art for you is _no longer_ a means for the evocation of
emotion. Remember that the evocation of emotion has _never_ been a test
of Art, any more than Art has been “a magic net cast over all the nude
and undesirable body of life” or “a spell to dissipate reality.” Life
serves life; Art doesn’t do that. Art will never be part of _your_ will:
it is the artist’s will. Your philosophy and lust can be served by the
claims of philosophy and lust. What you call your Art-need will be
served by Art; but only when you have fulfilled your part of the
bargain: since you are not a creator your will must go toward
appreciation—or, first, toward the capacity for appreciation.—_M. C.
A._]
Growing Pains
_Stephan Böchlin, Denver_:
I did enjoy the Greek sketches by Richard Aldington. Some of them are
very beautiful: the first, fourth, and sixteenth especially so. I am
glad that a few of our writers are beginning to see the capacities of
what Baudelaire calls “poetic prose.”
And there is one article, _Paderewski and Tagore_, which gave me much
pleasure. It is an excellent study in contrasts. A score or so of such
impressions would be well worth publishing in a more permanent form.
The rest of this issue left me cold—if I may be pardoned for possessing
standards as exacting as, if somewhat different from, yours. But this is
only saying that nine-tenths of what passes as “art” in America leaves
me cold: and on this I suspect you would heartily agree with me.
I should dearly love to open a discussion with you on “art”. Your views,
as you expressed them here, interested me greatly, and also tantalized
me. I had the feeling that you were eternally trying to catch a flame
between your hands—a flame that eternally eluded you—or burned you into
silence. You left me wondering whether there was any value in trying to
perform this feat: and as I have already told you, I felt that you were
nearest to “understanding” art when you _were_ burned into silence.
As for me, I have no “views” at all. Sometimes I write something—a line,
a phrase, that seems made to live forever. For lack of any other word I
call the result “art”. But I do not know _why_ it is “art”, and I am a
little afraid that if I try to find out I shall lose the gift, such as
it is. It is something like the Medusa-head: one cannot look upon it
direct without being frozen into stone—or, what is worse, into dogma.
You are very fond of the word “miracle”. Your highest praise for
anything is to say of it, “It has the miracle”. But tell me: is it not
in the very nature of a miracle that we cannot tell in what way or how
it will come about—let alone trying to determine within what fixed
conditions it _ought_ to come about? Perhaps I am mistaken, but it has
seemed to me that you have, in your magazine, frequently taken the stand
that this “miracle” has certain fixed qualities, which must be
recognized by all. And my own personal feeling is that there are as many
kinds of miracles as there are faiths: and that every faith whatsoever
can produce a “miracle” which is anything but art—is, indeed, the
rankest form of fanaticism or superstition—to the holders of an opposite
belief.
You understand, of course, that I am not speaking ex cathedra: I so much
dislike to “make a circle” around my ideas: especially when it is a
question of things as little understood as the reasons for our belief in
immortality—or in beauty.... We seek the beautiful when our sense of the
tragic in life becomes too keen, too poignant, too unendurable: we wish
to _escape_ from this bitter and sardonic realization, to falsify it
somehow, to invest it with qualities that have no existence beyond our
own minds. And the result—each after his own fashion—is beauty.
But “art”? Well: one might say that this ceaseless falsification of life
through the escape into Beauty becomes Art when it compels all men—or
all those men who act as the interpreters of life—to look upon reality
and to see there, as though it had always been there, awaiting our
attention through the ages, just that one particular type of Beauty.
“How strange that we could not see it before!” men will cry, after some
great artist has performed a “miracle” through his passionate
sensitiveness to the spirit of Tragedy.... And so, we rediscover the
meaning of Art....
But I said that I had no “views”—and I immediately give myself the lie.
I have views—one must, I suppose, when one deeply believes in anything.
Let my genuine interest in your efforts to find a needle in this
haystack of American culture-philistinism serve me as a partial buffer
against your impatience with my ideas.
[What do you mean by Beauty?—the idea that education puts upon the minds
of people, meaning lovely, pleasing to the senses and the emotions? That
isn’t Art; it is not necessarily a feature but may be an “instrument” of
Art. What of real Beauty, which surpasses the spirit of joy or tragedy?
_It_ may be “too keen, too poignant, too unendurable” for the mind; but
the soul claims it always. The artist does not falsify or interpret
life: he _creates_ with joy!—even if the joy in the creating is the
surplus of his agony.—_j. h._]
The Blindness of the Social Vision
_Louis Puteklis, Cambridge, Mass._:
When I looked on the empty pages of your September issue, two important
questions arose, along with many minor ones. Not having the time to go
into details I will ask one question: What is _your_ definition of art?
You say: “Art for Art’s sake”; that is only a phrase. But in this world
people have different understandings of art: what is beautiful for one
is ugly for another. What is praised by the capitalist class with its
religious atmosphere is despised by the proletarian class with its
progressive atheism. What is a picture of an angel to an atheist? Such a
product of an artist’s imagination, which perpetuates religious humbug,
is to be condemned without hesitation. What is a poem about the Virgin
worth to a class-conscious worker if his own daughter or sister is
slaving in the sweat shop, is ever in all kinds of danger and
temptations under this glorious capitalistic system? So we cannot say
“Art for Art’s sake,” until we know what is meant by Art.
Moreover, nobody fell down from heaven a master artist. We shall teach
and train them _with patience_, and not with ... “scolding”....
Why is there no encouraging editorial on Art? Thirteen empty pages and
not a word from the pen of the Art-sick Editor? Why was not the whole
magazine a blank, or is only half of it to be devoted to art? What was
the idea, for Art’s sake, in printing the frivolous caricatures of the
Editor? Her ways of spending her leisure moments have scarcely enough of
the universal to stimulate the artistic nature of the readers. I am
glad, of course, that she has fudge for breakfast, but I am sorry for
the thousands that go without bread. Hunger does not produce art nor
does upbraiding....
In looking over the pictures I should judge that in comparison with
others the Editor must be placed among the fortunate ones; the
unhappiness she lays claim to must come from within her own nature.
Again, for whom is _The Little Review_ published? For artists only, or
for all people? I must admit that since I have known _The Little
Review_—for more than a year—it has not always been artistic; many
articles have been artificial only (for the simple reason that there are
not enough real artists in the country to support such a venture). And
as for the general run of readers, they want stories, that, whether
artistic or not, have the ring of real life in them.
There can be no art without social vision, and without definite
ideas—progressive or retrogressive. If _The Little Review_ takes both of
the ways, it can satisfy no class of readers. _Art has ever been the
handmaid of oppression and superstition, even more than of progress: the
church, by music, architecture, oratory, and pictures has held the minds
of men enthralled._ It is sad to think how artists in the past have used
their energies to perpetuate dreamy imaginations, things non-existent.
It is painful to see the artists doing the same thing now.
The free human intellect must and will develop the most beautiful art
there has ever been, but not for Art’s sake,—_for truth’s sake and for
humanity’s sake_. And if _The Little Review_ will take one of the ways,
let her take the progressive one. I appeal to the Editor’s Art-sick
heart to make more definite her policy; to look less on the empty form
and more on the animating _truth_ which agrees with reality and life.
Life is short. Don’t call on the artists already in the grave, but
encourage the genius that lives now and may soon disappear without a
chance of development and self-expression. Be sincere and please don’t
pose. Don’t put Art in a frame and don’t “frame-up” artists.
[What is this you’re telling us about Art? The greatest and freest human
_intellects_ in the past have never created Art. Intellects do not have
aesthetic experiences. (You might as well ask a gas-engine to run a
human being instead of that indefinable force called life.) The
dreamers, the ones of imagination, have the whole vision—the outside and
the inside, and the vision of the two working together with all things.
Why do you want to limit them to one—the social vision? You say that Art
has always been the handmaiden of oppression and superstition, that the
Church has used all forms of Art to hold men to it. True. Let me salute
the far-seeing and mighty wisdom of the Catholic Church that has so
recognized the power of Art. If you who are trying to extend the social
vision could learn that one lesson, what a strength you could add unto
yourselves:—the only strength.
You say “Look less on the empty form and more on the animating truth
which agrees with reality and life.” Form is the only thing that remains
forever: truth changes every day; form gives a thing its truth in Art
and in life. Even the great social movement will have no truth until it
has Form.
And for whom is _The Little Review_ published? God knows.—_j. h._]
So This Is Art!
_“Sue Golden”_:
MURINE AND KOKA-KOLA
I.
The Lamp
Darkness enveloped us. I led her under a street-lamp of wrought iron
from which hung suspended a round white moon which shone upon her unreal
beauty. She turned her hurt eyes away from the hard light, and rested
them upon an electric sign overhead which, flashing in and out, read:
“Don’t tell your age. Murine your eyes.”
Sign, if you are a lie, you must be broken. But if you tell the truth,
you may increase the ecstasy of our manufactured passion.
II.
The Jar
This is a common jar set in the druggist’s window to attract attention.
It is without design, filled with a burning red liquid, flashing
iridescent lights from concealed depths. Near it is another jar filled
with a bright green liquid which leaps like fire whenever the light from
a passing automobile falls upon it.
My soul is like the red jar, burning within itself; yours is like the
green one, attracted by each passing fancy.
III.
After the Orgy
It is morning; the revellers of last night have departed; the music of
the phonograph and the voices of the cabaret singers are silent now. In
the pale light of morning, frayed wisps of paper float up and down the
street; from the brass handle of the saloon door a drenched veil is
hanging; on the floor of the automobile lie scattered hair-pins. Ah,
frail hair-pins, ah, tender veil, how slight you are beside my grief!
Silence and pale dawn, and empty emptiness. Ah, the last silence and the
last heart-ache, and the last nickel, and the last green pickle lying on
the last cold plate on the last free-lunch counter in the world! How sad
it all is!
[Yes, how sad it all is that some minds have to jeer everything in the
world, from Helen’s beauty to Bernhardt’s “wooden leg.”—_jh._]
The Iliad of America
_Daphne Carr, Columbia, Missouri_:
The first number of _Blast_ had among its veins of gold ore and volcanic
deposit a certain precious spot: “American Art When It Appears Will be
Immense.”
That is the way I feel about Sherwood Anderson’s Art as revealed in his
first novel, _Windy McPherson’s Son_. Here is the beginning of our story
telling art, primitive, to be sure, coarse, but a-quiver with that life
whose pulsing reality we are forever eager to touch, to know.
Sherwood’s hero is the typically primitive hero—a brother to Aggamemnon
and Charlemagne, the born leader, the maker of destinies. But Sam
McPherson’s background is not the helmet plumes of the knights or the
nodding heads of the Council of Elders. He is of our time, of our own
middle West, with our well-known background of nodding corn tassels and
steer-fattening farmers, with our stinking, deafening Chicago for a
battleground. For he fights, furiously, and, like Achilles, for the love
of fighting, but not, like Achilles, with the lives of men, but with
their potential lives—foodstuffs—with their time, and their peace of
mind, their happiness, their everything—summed up in money. And, for the
love of the fight he wins. And then, because he is a white American with
twenty centuries of Christianity behind him and not a pagan Aggamemnon
to be satisfied with the mere winning, he turns aside from his victory
and goes seeking an ideal.
So there is our hero, the forever worshiped König-man. But Sam McPherson
is not the glorious part of the book, or the reason that our
grandchildren, and probably our great-great grandchildren will still
keep _Windy McPherson’s Son_ as living words.
Sherwood Anderson has dredged up from the mud of our prairies the same
apalling rhythm of life that Æschylus found in the stone of the
Acropolis. And even as Aeschylus built his rhythm in cedar-wood and
overlaid it with ivory and gold and polished marble and carved it and
set it with jewels balancing his ornaments to the nicety of a hair, and
so finished his symphony to please the blue and white spirit of Hellas,
so Sherwood Anderson has taken his discovery, re-built its same rhythmic
proportions and scooping up grey gravel and sand and concrete rocks from
his own prairie has built his symphony. Will we see the wonder of its
form in spite of its grey surface? Can we feel the force, the
genuineness of Sherwood’s discovery? Can we see the bareness of American
reality and yet shut our eyes to that reality?
“Oh, then this Anderson is a realist”, you say. “We’re getting tired of
them.”
No, he is not a realist. He does not cypher as the realists do, adding
and subtracting cause and effects to reach a hypothetical absolute.
Sherwood Anderson is a primitive, reflecting the immense movements of
the life about him.
Yes, he is cinematagraphic.
He is the American epic, just appeared.
[I read clear through your spasm about Sherwood Anderson and wondered
what was the matter with you until I came upon “He is cinematagraphic.”
Then I saw you knew what you were talking about. You’ve got them all in,
too—it’s as good as a Griffith show: Aggamemnon, Charlemagne, Achilles,
Æschylus, etc.—_jh._]
[_Windy McPherson’s Son_ will never be “living words” for any age
because it was done before Sherwood Anderson had learned to write. In
some of his short stories, done quite recently, he has achieved that
organization known as Form. But _Windy McPherson_ is as devoid of Form,
and consequently of Art, as any of Theodore Dreiser’s catalogues. It
stands as a faithful record of life, touched even with imagination, but
quite untouched by that quality which makes a good story literature. As
Rebecca West would say: it is simply another book coming out of America
teaching the great lesson of style.—_M. C. A._]
Information
_Charles F. Roth, New York_:
That _Paderewski and Tagore_ in the November issue was a delight. But to
be exact violin strings are not made of catgut, but of sheep sinews and
skins. Can’t you hear the bleat of the sheep—the baah of the tender lamb
at times? Can you imagine that such music as Kreisler or Maud Powell
draw forth could come from a cat? No! But from a lamb. Ah yes!
STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT,
CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF
CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912.
Of THE LITTLE REVIEW, published monthly at
Chicago, Ill., for October 1st, 1916.
State of Illinois, County of Cook—ss.
Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State
and county aforesaid, personally appeared C. A.
Zwaska, who, having been duly sworn according
to law, deposes and says that he is the
business manager of THE LITTLE REVIEW, and that
the following is, to the best of his knowledge
and belief, a true statement of the ownership,
management (and if a daily paper, the
circulation), etc., of the aforesaid
publication for the date shown in the above
caption, required by the Act of August 24,
1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and
Regulations, printed on the reverse of this
form, to wit:
1. That the names and addresses of the
publisher, editor, managing editor, and
business managers are:
Publisher, Margaret C. Anderson, Fine Arts
Building; Editor, Margaret C. Anderson, Fine
Arts Building; Managing editor, Margaret C.
Anderson, Fine Arts Building; Business manager,
C. A. Zwaska, Fine Arts Building.
2. That the owners are: (Give names and
addresses of individual owners, or, if a
corporation, give its name and the names and
addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1
per cent or more of the total amount of stock.)
Margaret C. Anderson, Fine Arts Building.
3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and
other security holders owning or holding 1 per
cent or more of total amount of bonds,
mortgages, or other securities are: (If there
are none, so state).
None.
4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving
the names of the owners, stockholders, and
security holders, if any, contain not only the
list of stockholders and security holders as
they appear upon the books of the company but
also in cases where the stockholder or security
holder appears upon the books of the company as
trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the
name of the person or corporation for whom such
trustee is acting, is given: also that the said
two paragraphs contain statements embracing
affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the
circumstances and conditions under which
stockholders and security holders who do not
appear upon the books of the company as
trustee, held stock and securities in a
capacity other than that of a bona fide owner;
and this affiant has no reason to believe that
any other person, association, or corporation
has any interest direct or indirect in the said
stock, bonds, or other securities as so stated
by her.
MARGARET C. ANDERSON.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 16th day
of November, 1916.
(SEAL)
MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public.
(My commission expires December 20, 1917.)
The
Consumer’s
Company
220 South State Street, Chicago
We had hoped to publish the prize poem in this issue, after
having arranged to do so for the last four months. But the poems
are stuck fast with one of the judges, from whom it has been
impossible to extract a verdict.
We promise it definitely for February.
This issue will be officially known as the December-January. (The
usual excuse, explanation, and regret.)
The February issue will contain the most inspired article ever
written about Mary Garden, and will have a deep-purple label in
her honor.
M.A.C.
(Modern Art Collector)
An authoritative magazine published monthly in conjunction with
the national movement instituted for the promotion and
development of Modern Art in this country.
It abounds in beautifully colored plates which are very suitable
for framing. The work of the foremost artists, together with
informative text matter, poster stamp and students’ supplements,
etc., make this portfolio de luxe, an ideal reference
book—something valuable, interesting and exceptional.
Lend your enthusiastic support—write for a copy on approval.
Ten dollars annually. Single copies, one dollar.
SOCIETY OF MODERN ART, INC.,
17 West 38th Street,
New York City
THE EGOIST
An Individualist Review
Present Features
LINGUAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE SCIENCE OF SIGNS: a series of subtle and
illuminating articles working out a new conception of the
function of philosophic inquiry—by Miss Dora Marsden (started in
July number).
Literary criticism, reviews and other prose articles.
Paris chronicle and a series of articles on modern French prose
writers, by Madame Ciolkowska.
DIALOGUES OF FONTENELLE, translated by Mr. Ezra Pound (started in
May number).
TARR, a brilliant modern novel by Mr Wyndham Lewis, leader of the
English “_Vorticist_” group (started in April number).
Poem by young English and American poets, mostly belonging to the
Imagist group.
PUBLISHED MONTHLY
Price Fifteen Cents a Number
Yearly Subscription, One Dollar Sixty Cents
OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET, LONDON, W. C.
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. Some idiosyncratic spelling was not
changed: _Aggamemnon_, _cinematagraphic_. All other changes are shown
here (before/after):
[p. 13]:
... said very thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t he come to us? have
always been ...
... said very thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t he come to us? We
have always been ...
[p. 27]:
... lie scattered hair-pins. Ah, frail hair-pins, ah, tender
vail, how slight you are ...
... lie scattered hair-pins. Ah, frail hair-pins, ah, tender
veil, how slight you are ...
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