Part 4

To fight and conquer this hindrance to a new culture, this is to fight and conquer death; and since death is death only through man, through his yearning or fear, the triumph of a new culture begins with the triumphal song of life, which knows how to make a festival out of even death. To be sure, Nietzsche did not set his most beautiful man over against his most ugly, but we can yet read between the lines what he conceived the most beautiful man to be. He is the man who has pushed far from him the last vestige and survival of fear and slave-service. He is the man who has learned dying as the great Consummator, victorious, surrounded by men who hope and vow that there shall ever be festival where a man who so dies dedicates himself to the living. Here Zarathustra-Nietzsche intimates a kinship with that other Dying Man Who proclaimed his life’s victorious career in His: “It is finished!” and created on Christianity’s Good Friday a festival of death. Nietzsche speaks of the Hebrew, too early dead, who would have confessed Zarathustra’s doctrine, if he had attained to Zarathustra’s years. It did not occur to Nietzsche that such a confession was not at all needed, because the world had perceived the glad message already which would make a festival out of death and teach men how the most beautiful festival was consecrated. Christian art had opposed to the ugliest man the most beautiful human picture: the head full of wounds and blood, the King in the thorn-crown, who understood dying because he understood living. With this victorious song of death began a new culture, a new heroism of humanity, to which death ceased to be a pale ghost, but which confessed even in death: “as dying, and behold, we live!” Then men ceased to learn dying, and because they made no preaching of life out of dying and no vow to life, death became to them a torturing anxiety and care again; they did not dare name his name; they did not dare frankly look him in the eye. And this cowardice and lie disfigure all their action and passion; they would give to death at least the semblance of life; they would believe in ghostly existence still allotted to all the dead, rather than say to death: “Thou are a messenger of God, a revelation, a witness of life; since thou art good, I will greet thee and bless thee!”

So Zarathustra demanded of his disciples: “Let your dying be no blasphemy of men and earth; my friends, your spirit and your virtue shall still glow in your dying, like the evening red over the earth, or else death has miserably betrayed you.”

Death our will even, our freedom—this is life’s highest meaning! Who but Nietzsche could have thought that? Of course, this is not to throw life away, when it has become hard and heavy to bear. Such a death would be of all the most unfree. It would be a flight, not a deed; it would be a lamentation and a feebleness, not a festival of the soul! But it means that we take up death from the start into the order of our life, as the night which, no less than the day, belongs to man’s full day. It means that we give to life a worth which no death can destroy, which first in death reveals its eternal power. I must die—so laments the slave, who has lived only non-entities even in his life, and has never learned that life is work, creation, consummation. I _will_ die—so speaks the hero, to whom every fight brings the prize of a victory well worth death!—the hero who hazards his life every moment for the highest human good, who knows that he and his life have become a sacrifice from which a better, higher, freer humanity shall gain its life and its strength.

Who is ugly? Who is beautiful? Who is ashamed of his death and falsifies his deadness that it may look like life—who does this, bears death within himself as a power that drags him down, disfigures him in the fullness of that which he would be able to live. But who, in his power to die, proves that he has learned to live, has overcome the ugliest thing in man, cast it out; namely, the fear of death which creates all the lies of life, and all the servility and unfreedom of men—which creates men over whom _das Gewesen_! the dead past, possesses power, so that they can never breathe a joyous breath, can never commit themselves to the living and the growing. But a _beautiful_ culture will also become a _good_ culture because one that is living is at once good and beautiful; the eternal life of God, of whom it is said: There is none good but God alone.

Emasculating Ibsen[2]

Dear Mr. Ibsen: I hope this letter finds you well as it leeves us the same. The reason why I write you is that I seen your play called _Ghosts_ at the Bijou Movie Theater last night and I thought it was so grand that I had to tell you. I thought it was awful the way poor Mr. Alving is always seeing that hand which was pulling his hair out of the past. And it was awful too the way poor Mr. Alving crawled across the floor on his stomich and pulled the poison offn the icebox before he killed himself. The way his poor, dear mother suffered, that was terrible. She was such a strong, brave woman that I cried for her all the time. And The Rev. Manders he was such a real swell minister that my heart was all torn watching him. It ain’t natural for everybody to be so good as ministers because they ain’t got so much time and don’t read the Bible so often. But he was certainly all there when it came to pureness and kindness. But even if the play was awful it was just grand the lesson that it taught. I sent my friend to see it and he thought it was swell. He said the kissing scenes where the terrible Cap. Alving hugs the different ladies was real stuff and that the lesson against the evils of drink was good for the young. This is what I want to write you about, Mr. Ibsen. We’re going to organize a West Side Ibsen Prohibition Club and make you honary president. I wish therefor you will write the club a letter or better if you will write a sequil to the movie play _Ghosts_ we will put it on at the club. I know how hard it is to have movie plays accepted because I have done some myself but if you don’t write the sequil I will write it and send it to the Mutual people who put the first part on. I am certain they will take it because I will make it just so strong and powerful a sermon against the evils of drink as what you did. With best regards and hopes for your future success, I am your friend,

Mobbie Mag.

[2] P.S. For the reader: The wet nurses who minister to the mob have put our old friend Ibsen into diapers and give him to their patients to play with. The cherubic little fellow is kicking up his dimpled heels and thriving well in all the movie houses.

Death

I have always wished to know of death. I have always wondered what became of me when I went back to earth. Today I know.

I have watched a soul die and have heard its pain. Beside it I have stood and listened to its cries. I have watched it sicken and have noted how it struggled.

Life was beautiful to it. There never was so exquisite a soul. It leaped, and burned and danced when it was born. It was so radiant the dark world into which it came grew light.

I have always wished to know of death. Today I know.

It was raining softly and we sat within a room with pictures all about—a woman, fresh and young, and I—and trembled. The beauty and the loveliness of her were dawning in me. And something of myself that had not been took being. I loved. There was nothing as beautiful as her lips. There was nothing as beautiful as her eyes. There was nothing then in all the world as beautiful as she I loved. It was my soul. Restless as a song it reached from day to day to light new moments with its melody. Ever and forever it went singing, “I will live beyond the stars. I will live beyond the mystery of flesh. When the woman who awakened me is turned to dust I will live as now and sing as now.”

I have always wondered what became of me when I went back to earth. Today I know.

It was so precious and so fierce. I loved so. I had but to look on her and taste of immortality.

Beside it I have stood and listened to its cries. I have noted how it struggled. In the night I have repeated its brave words, “Ever and forever.” I have nursed it from her lips. I have given it to feed upon her breast.

It would not live. I loved so, I loved so—and yet I ceased to love.

There is one thing in the world that will not live. There is one thing mortal more than life. It is the beauty of which poets sing. Beauty dies in every moment. It is mortal with the hours. It flashes and it dies. It leaps and dies. It sings and dies.

I loved so and yet I ceased to love.

Her eyes became as nothing. Her lips became as nothing. Her voice became as nothing. Her laughter and her tears, the movement of her body when she walked, the strangeness of her face, the mysteries that made her one apart and glorified her and the radiance that burned in me at her approach—all became as nothing.

Miserable God. False Promiser. I have wished to know of death. I have wondered what became of me when I went back to earth. Today I know.

“The Scavenger.”

Children’s Poems

Alice Oliver Henderson, eight-year-old poet, wrote the following five poems when she was only seven. Her method is to chant them to her mother, Alice Corbin Henderson, who takes them down exactly as they are dictated. Mrs. Henderson thinks their interest lies in the fact that they are the expression of a child’s mind, and so she refuses to change or “improve” them. Besides, it might be difficult to “improve” such lines as “The moon shines against my heart”.... The other poems in the group were written by Percy Mackaye’s children—Arvia’s at the age of ten, and Robin’s at twelve. Mr. Mackaye says that his daughter’s were done while it was still difficult for her to read or write, but that she has always been read aloud to and has learned considerable poetry by heart.

A Mountain of Fire

There was a mountain made of fire, Far in the sea— It was very nice to everybody that lived in that world. Right over in Japan, it was. Where there are very good fighters and painters, And very good little children, And very good minders in that world.

Kathleen

(after seeing _Kathleen ni Houlihan_)

She looked very, very old when she came in. The mother and the father that were in the house. Had one brother in the house, The other one had gone out And got all the England people away For Kathleen, For Kathleen, And then said, _He shall be remembered forever_. She was a young woman when she went out, And she sang when she went out the door.

The moon shines at night When all are in bed, And the dear little birdies sing for you In the morning time to wake you sure.

How lovely the day is— The moon shines against my heart— I love the sweetness of the sky. The beautiful day comes every morning true.

Miss Ungerich’s Japanese Play

Eyes all blackened, lips made beautiful, Lavender under, then red over for the costume, Acted wonderfully with her hands fixed all the time, Bare feet, then on to the floor, She made a thing that was beautiful.

Next was a man with a sword, He acted the same way with her face. Brown—gold costume, then a hat she wore, Then a sort of stick-sword; Then she did moving of hands and killing. She was pretending, but there was only one actor, Miss Ungerich.

The Snow Flakes

In the winter I saw the loveliest sky that you ever saw. It was blue and pink and yellow and orange and white and black and grey. That was the colors of the sky. It pleased me so that I went and sat down. You must think of life and the poor that war makes.

_Done by Alice Oliver Henderson, Miss._

Fire Castles

Fast falling rain and every hill in mist Make even my very saddest thoughts grow sadder, And every sad thought lengthens my long list, As, moaning over old things that make me madder, I sit and sulk over some unkind word And weep as if I had not wept before, And think of words about me I have heard, And with old thoughts grieve over them some more. But soon, if I get up, or sit and gaze, Telling myself stories of joyous thought Before the warm and cheery, singing blaze, Now all my bad thoughts in a trap are caught; And if I gaze at castles in the fire, Then all the while to gladness I grow nigher.

The Unknown Race

O dream, what are you?— A fairy or a sprite, A goddess in the air, Or just a flash of light?

A sudden flash of joy That brightens up my mind, Till wonders I see now Where first I was so blind.

Zephyr

Zephyr—Zephyr—Zephyr! Blow on, blow hard Over hill and over dale! O play in the green trees, leave nothing marred: O blow—O blow—O blow a gale!

Zephyr—Zephyr—Zephyr! Play on, play long! Play and sing in tops of trees, And brush the valley’s airy green hair strong; Dip your head, diving down the leas!

Zephyr—Zephyr—Zephyr, Like a little heifer, Frolic and lie In the field of the sky!

Good-bye, good-bye! Frolic and turn and lie!

_Arvia Mackaye._

The Swimming Pool

O! crystal-clear, transparent water, The cool wind is thy joyous daughter. As I glide through thee, quick and sleek— Oh thou so quiet and so meek!— I feel thy ripples lapping free, And thou dost lie so near to me I see my figure on thy face, Entwined in shadows, linked like lace.

Oh! what art thou? what canst thou be, That dost reflect my visage unto me? I know not what thou seemest to another, But thou to me art as a brother.

To a Turtle

O gallant knight in armour black Blotched with grey and yellow squares, A horny motto’s on thy breast: _Bravery_ it bears.

O turtle, paddling through the grass That skirts the cobwebbed shining lawn! Come tell me true: where journey you This dewy dawn?

I smell a pond, and in it are Young tadpoles, newly hatched and fresh, And larvas of mosquitoes plump And sweet of flesh;

And whirligigs, that streak and dart Like water-lightning underneath The greenish cat-tail spears, that shade The frogspit heath.

And there is oozy, deep, soft mud For me to lie and bask upon, And dine on lizards fat, and sleek Chameleon.

And there the bright-green, freckled frog My only friend will always be. To him I haste:—To you I bend My jointless knee.

_Robin Mackaye._

Book Discussion

The Books of Poetry

_Irradiations: Sand and Spray, by John Gould Fletcher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company._

There is considerable diversity in Mr. Fletcher’s _Irradiations_, but one soon discovers that he has not encrimsoned himself with the standard passions of poetry. He does not display the usual contortions of love, hate, grief, and fear. Some persons have, therefore, found him aloof, oversubtle, and lacking in emotional force. This intimation that Mr. Fletcher’s art is etiolated is an admission of the reader’s incompleteness. Vitality does not depend on subject; nor is subtlety necessarily weakness. But the notion strangely persists that a poet must clothe his emotions in samite and dance with them around a blood-red fire to the plangent accompaniment of drums and trumpets.

To say that Mr. Fletcher has entwined himself with nature would unfairly give an impression of Wordsworthian insipidity. Yet Mr. Fletcher in many of his poems is a part of the rain, of the sand and wind, of the clouds and sky. But he is never merely descriptive. He has the power of conveying a mood in the terms of nature without intruding himself upon the reader. Let me illustrate with one of the best of his poems which has been much quoted elsewhere:

Flickering of incessant rain On flashing pavements; Sudden scurry of umbrellas; Bending recurved blossoms of the storm.

The winds came clanging and clattering From long white highroads whipping in ribbons up summits; They strew upon the city gusty wafts of apple-blossom, And the rustling of innumerable translucent leaves.

Uneven tinkling, the lazy rain Dripping from the eaves.

Our tread-mill versifiers will shrink and mumble in the presence of Mr. Fletcher’s clean new poetry. They who have inherited the dead mottled skin of old poetic form with its incrustation of ancient allusions, symbols, and yellowed figures, will not feel the alluring freshness of a poem such as this:

It is evening, and the earth Wraps her shoulders in an old blue shawl. Afar there clink the polychrome points of the stars, Indefatigable after all these years! Here upon earth there is life, and then death, Dawn, and later nightfall, Fire, and the quenching of embers: But why should I not remember that my night is dawn in another part of the world, If the idea fits my fancy? Dawns of marvellous light, wakeful, sleepy, weary, dancing dawns; You are rose petals settling through the blue of my evening; I light my pipe to salute you, And sit puffing smoke in the air and never say a word.

In his preface Mr. Fletcher says the use of rhyme is in its essence barbarous; yet he himself uses it not infrequently together with such devices as assonance, onomatopoeia, and alliteration. He is not inconsistent, however, for he admits that rhyme used intelligently will add to the richness of effect. It does:

The wind that drives the fine dry sand Across the strand: The sad wind spinning arabesques With a wrinkled hand.

Labyrinths of shifting sand, The dancing dunes!

I will arise and run with the sand, And gather it greedily in my hand: I will wriggle like a long yellow snake over the beaches. I will lie curled up, sleeping, And the wind shall chase me Far inland.

My breath is the music of the mad wind; Shrill piping, stamping of drunken feet, The fluttering, tattered broidery flung Over the dunes’ steep escarpments.

The fine dry sand that whistles Down the long low beaches.

_Sand and Spray: A Sea-Symphony_ comprises the second part of Mr. Fletcher’s volume. This symphony has much of the movement and variety of music. In manner it resembles many of the “Irradiations,” and it is just as well worth reading.

Certainly there will be many who will not like Mr. Fletcher’s work. Dogs will always bark at a new fragrance.

_Japanese Lyrics, translated by Lafcadio Hearn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company._

Readers of Lafcadio Hearn will recall the many translations of Japanese _haikai_ poetry which are scattered through his writings. Those translations have been collected in the present volume. They are delicate whisps of thought, tantalizingly suggestive, most of them confined to a sentence. Here are some of them:

If with my sleeve I hide the faint fair color of the dawning sun,— then, perhaps, in the morning, my lord will remain.

Perched upon the temple-bell, the butterfly sleeps: Even while sleeping, its dream is of play—ah, the butterfly of the grass!

Many insects there are that call from the dawn to evening, Crying “I love! I love!”—but the Firefly’s silent passion, Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing. Even such is my love ....

The following poem, says the editor, was written more than eleven hundred years ago on the death of the poet’s little son:

As he is so young, he cannot know the way. .... To the messenger of the Underworld I will give a bribe, and entreat him, saying: “Do thou kindly take the little one upon thy back along the road.”

Some discerning persons have asserted that “Imagism” is derived from _haikai_ or _hokku_ poetry. We shall leave to them the pleasant futility of discussing that theory. They may eventually discover that they are building on the shaky premise that “Imagism” exists other than as a clever word.

_The Winnowing Fan, by Laurance Binyon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company._

My dears, we will tie _vers libre_ in the garden. Then let us go into the parlor where Mr. Laurence Binyon will pour tea; it will have sugar in it. Mr. Binyon will read to you from his latest book _The Winnowing Fan_. He is a gentleman of taste and culture who is vexed at the Germans. He is meticulously metrical and counts his syllables. He will say nothing unexpected.... If _vers libre_ howls in the garden, you may throw rhymes at him.

_Mitchell Dawson._

Have You Read—?

(_In this column will be given each month a list of current magazine articles which, as an intelligent being, you will not want to miss._)

Shadows of Revolt, by Inez Haynes Gilmore. _The Masses_, July.

Redemption and Dostoevsky, by Rebecca West. _The New Republic_, July 12.

The State of the War, by Arthur Bullard. _The Masses_, August.

Serbia Between Battles, by John Reed. _The Metropolitan_, August.

Richard Aldington’s lucid account of the Imagists and their history in _Greenwich Village_, July 15.

Almost any of the editorials in _Harper’s Weekly_.

Can You Read—?

(_In this column will be given each month a resume of current cant which, as an intelligent being, you will go far to avoid._)

The reactions of the two Chestertons in _The New Witness_.

Midsummer fiction issues of _The Century_ or _Scribner’s_ or _Harper’s_.

_The Continent_ on Edgar Lee Masters’ _Spoon River Anthology_: “Each poem is in the nature of a confession, philosophical or satirical, telling secrets of human nature, good or bad—mostly bad. Because of its novelty and originality the book has attracted attention far and wide.... His attitude toward religious believers is a wrong one, and readers may well wonder at the scarcity of sincere, sensible Christians in Spoon River.”

The Reader Critic

_Lee J. Smits, Detroit_:

We are disgusted and impatient with “peo-pul” just to the extent that our realization of superiority fails us. That impatient attitude reminds me of the ordinary attitude of the white toward the black. The white man is not sure of himself; history and biology do not give him sufficient support. So he bullies negroes at every opportunity. Some men even are impelled to contend for their superiority by abusing dogs.

The sense of superiority abides in all living things of necessity, else no form of life would stand out against any other. Wild creatures never need argue, each with himself, as to his place in the world. His right to exist and to express himself is paramount in the animal’s soul. Only man ever doubts.

Really “peo-pul” do not doubt. They with the artist’s mark on them do the doubting. When it is very faint, their doubting asserts itself in strange ways and the crude egoism thereof revolts us. “Peo-pul” crawl along self-satisfied.

And why do you ask so much of artists? Why is it so important that they should use their strength in vain strivings to make butterflies of worms never destined to be butterflies or to amuse other artists who should be able to amuse themselves? If they get joy out of creating and preaching, let them preach and create—let them soar. If they get joy out of being, out of exultant living and watching, let them live, and do not scold.

The most beautiful butterfly I ever saw (some kind of “Emperor”) merely rested on a lump of mud in the forest shade and very languidly moved his wings. That is all he did while I looked at him. He knew that he could fly, I knew that he could fly, and he either knew that I knew or else he didn’t care.