Part 5

We all know what impatience with “peo-pul” is. In the hush of a great flash of dramatic power from the stage, they giggle, and it would be good to fasten your fingers in the pulpy throat of one. They applaud idiotic vaudeville, and it would be glorious to arise, automatic in hand, and slay and slay.

That is your distrust of yourself—we all have it as much as we deserve it.

“So I belong to this species!” you say.

I do not hate my dog when he seeks out carrion. I wash him with strong soap and try to explain him. I feel quite sure—most of the time—that I have come a little further than he has.

“Peo-pul” are even more interesting than dogs, when taken individually. We even have more in common with them than with other animals.

Some of them are beautiful in their simplicity, like children—unspoiled in their loves and hates, and it is entertainment to behold them; to be with them, yet not of them; to be the arch-snob, of such perfect snobbishness that it is indistinguishable from perfect humility, perfect democracy.

All the mighty ones have been artists in life; like unto children they have walked their ways, so everlastingly sure of themselves that rarely have they been betrayed into petulance by the wobbling of their sense of superiority.

_Susan Quackenbush, Portage, Wisconsin_:

May one who has read your every issue with joy and enthusiasm be permitted to enter protest against that gross libel on the human race labeled _The Artist in Life_, in your June number?

Please—oh please—_be_ an artist-in-life, in human life, as well as in sunsets and Paderewskis and Imagism, and see for one creative moment, in “terms of truth and beauty,” the wonderful, aspiring, suffering, loving, smouldering, flaming beautiful souls of that great living, growing, winged group of creations you have called—may the great human God forgive the phrase—a “mass of caterpillars!” Come and see how its soul, and the souls of its separate creations “spring from the rock” just as truly as the brook’s or your own. If they can not _yet_ spring as far, it is because the weight above them is as yet too heavy.

When all the humans look like caterpillars to any one human, the trouble is with that one’s viewpoint. From an aeroplane, even the Himalayas look like anthills. Come down from your remote altitude and lose yourself in the beautiful, glorious psychic of the crowd—be one of them, and see what you will find!

THE LITTLE REVIEW proclaims itself bent on the adventure of beauty. Is there any beauty like that of the “sad, sweet music of humanity?” What is the glow of the most gorgeous sunset ever splashed against the western skies beside the glow of the divine in the human which hurls itself upon you—and _into_ you if you will let it—in a thousand beseeching, inviting, intoxicating flames from the midst of any crowd?

But only, of course, if you are _in_ the midst.

Is there any adventure like the “adventure of being human”—and _with_ humans? and _of_ them? Go with Whitman into the heart of humanity—struggle _with_ them—not from far above them—to lift from off their backs the crushing weight of wealth and masters and idle snobs and false gods so that they may get _room_ to spread their wings—for they _have_ wings, and then you will know them as they are, and yourself but as one of them.

If some of them still try to clip the wings of those who have struggled free from the crushing pressure, it is because of the maddening agony of their own atrophying wings. If a few seem even to be unaware of the need for wings, it is because the clamor of more insistent needs—the cries of hungry children, of bruised and broken and unsatisfied men and of suffering and degraded women—has silenced for every shame their own soul’s wing-cry.

But I think that you will find that those who perform the wing-clipping are the other butterflies whom money or position or callousness has set above the people—not those who are really of the crowd. They of the crowd _love_ wings, and those who truly use them.

I am not daring to attempt reply to the statement which inflames me most, lest I become profane and entirely incoherent. I mean, of course, the statement that the estimate of four or five thousand living artists would be too optimistic because that would mean four or five thousand who “have nothing in common with caterpillars.” That’s a worse libel on artists than the rest of it is on people. But I’ll try to stop with one remark and one question. The estimate is entirely too pessimistic; I positively refuse to believe there are four thousand persons alive who have or even who think they have “nothing in common” with the great splendid mass of folks; if there are, the gods have pity on them! And—has there ever been one single real and great artist, whether of brush or pen or tone, whose art and whose very greatness was not absolutely dependent upon and because of the fact that he had, and knew he had, _everything_ in common with, and indeed included in his being, the beings of these whom you term “caterpillars”?—these whose life and living are and always have been and through ages will continue to be the most worth while content of all art? Of course you reply: _Nietzsche_; but he was an intellectual and spiritual Rockefeller—not an artist-in-life.

And Individualism? When _all_ have been set free to use their wings, then the few may feel free to strive toward the super-butterfly. And when they arrive, perhaps,—oh, just perhaps—they will find all the other “caterpillars” there too, and with quite wonderful wings. There are wings, and wings, and if they but serve to bear us free of the disaster of meanness and cruelty and snobbishness and injustice, who shall say they are not super-wings?

_Witter Bynner, Windsor, Vermont_:

I wish I could honor the Imagists as you do. Hueffer wrote _On Heaven_ (not imagistic); and Pound wrote well before he affected a school ... Pound has a rhythm he can’t kill. But none of them, except Hueffer, says anything worth mentioning. They build poems around phrases, usually around adjectives. George Meredith has thousands of imagist poems incidental to each of his novels. But he knows their use and their beauty. These people wring tiny beauties dry. I can imagine a good poet using their methods on occasion, but he wouldn’t be so damn conscious about it. On the whole, the Imagists strike me as being purveyors of more or less potent cosmetics, their whole interest being in the cosmetic itself, not even in its application. Poetry gave signs of becoming poetry again and of touching life—when these fellows showed up, to make us all ridiculous.

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Nietzsche, by Anna Strunsky Walling. _The New Review_, August 1.

The Uninteresting War, by Max Eastman. _The Masses_, September.

Our Friend, the Enemy, by Alice Corbin Henderson. _Poetry_, August.

Books and Things, by Walter Lippman. _The New Republic_, August 7.

Morality and the Movies, by Floyd Dell. _The New Review_, August 15.

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The Meaning of It, by H. C. _The New Republic_, August 7.

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The “Free” Poets, by Michael Monahan. _The Phoenix_, September.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. Duplicate advertisements were removed.

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

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

[p. 4]: ... scandal-monging newspapers, out of the malicious after-dinner gossip of ... ... scandal-mongering newspapers, out of the malicious after-dinner gossip of ...

[p. 7]: ... For the sun shifts through the shade. ... ... For the sun sifts through the shade. ...

[p. 13]: ... affects his own pocket. And the masses of labor who do feel themselve and ... ... affects his own pocket. And the masses of labor who do feel themselves and ...

[p. 20]: ... Sappho, Sappho, long ago the dust of earth mingled with the dust of they dear limbs, ... ... Sappho, Sappho, long ago the dust of earth mingled with the dust of thy dear limbs, ...

[p. 29]: ... Unquestioning our desserts; ... ... Unquestioning our deserts; ...

[p. 32]: ... said Zarathustra, with a brazen voice, “thou are the murderer of God!... ... ... said Zarathustra, with a brazen voice, “thou art the murderer of God!... ...