Part 4

Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt—you are wind in our nostrils.

II.

Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you; rivets of gold?

Band of iris-flowers above the waves, you are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds.

H. D. has her limitations, as I said before. They are the most obvious thing about her, except her perfection. But it is so ridiculous to cavil at them, as it would be to deny the loveliness of one of the sea flowers she writes about, because it is not a forest of lofty trees.

To pass from H. D. to Mr. John Gould Fletcher is something in the nature of a shock. It is a good deal like plunging into the ocean from a warm, sunny cliff. One’s ears, and nose, and mouth, are filled with rushing water. One feels in the grasp of an overwhelming power, and one struggles to the surface, breathless, half-drowned, but wholly invigorated.

To drop the figure, these two poems of Mr. Fletcher’s are so full of potentialities, so large in suggestion, that one hardly knows what to say about them. Does _The Blue Symphony_ mean life? I confess I do not know. Is it merely a series of pictures? No, there is a vague undercurrent to the poem which makes that impossible. It is the sort of poem which a mystic might ponder over indefinitely and find new meanings every hour. And yet it is all done with the precision and clearness of the Imagist theory.

It is impossible to give any idea of the poem as a whole by quoting bits of it. But little pieces, even divorced from their context, have that succinct epigrammatic quality which is the stamp of genius. Here are three lines:

I have heard and have seen All the news that has been: Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!

It is evident in this poem that Mr. Fletcher has been much influenced by the Japanese.

And now the lowest pine-branch Is drawn across the disk of the sun.

is absolutely Japanese. But strangely enough it is a technique got from a study of Japanese painting rather than from Japanese poetry.

Mr. Fletcher’s versatility is shown by turning from _The Blue Symphony_, to his other poem, _London Excursion_. Here the note of mysticism of _The Blue Symphony_ is entirely abandoned, and there is no hint of Japanese influence. If _London Excursion_ follows any lead, it is the lead of the new schools of poetry and painting in France. But I will not insult Mr. Fletcher by suggesting that he is, in any way, a disciple of Marinetti and the Futurists. It is nearer the truth to say that he has realized the vividness of some of their methods, and modified them to his own use.

_London Excursion_ is one of the most interesting poems in this volume. It is a poem of a man going into London in the morning by ’bus, spending the day walking about the streets and going into shops, and coming home at night by train. It sounds simple, but it is really the most amazing expression of light, color, and unrelated impressions that one can conceive. This is his impression of a street from his ’bus-top:

Black shapes bending, Taxicabs crush in the crowd.

The tops are each a shining square Shuttles that steadily press through wooly fabric Drooping blossom, Gas-standards over Spray out jingling tumult Of white-hot rays.

Monotonous domes of bowler-hats Vibrate in the heat. Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic, Down the crowded street. The tumult crouches over us, Or suddenly drifts to one side.

Mr. Flint’s work is always delightful. He has a winning way of taking his reader into his confidence. This, and his love of nature, which he paints with real affection, gains our sympathy at once. It must be admitted that none of Mr. Flint’s seven poems quite equal two of his in the first anthology, _London My Beautiful_ and _The Swan_. One feels in these two poems a groping quality, as though the poet were not quite satisfied with them himself. As though the first _élan_ with which he adopted the _vers libre_ medium were passing away, and he were beginning to realize that the form has its limitations.

If there is any truth in this, it is evident, however, that Mr. Flint has not yet made up his mind to try anything else. It would be almost a pity if he did, for few _vers librists_ understand the manipulation of cadence as he does. Perhaps the following is the one of these poems which has most of his characteristic charm:

Lunch

Frail beauty, green, gold and incandescent whiteness, narcissi, daffodils, you have brought me Spring and longing, wistfulness, in your irradiance.

Therefore, I sit here among the people, dreaming, and my heart aches with all the hawthorn blossom, the bees humming, the light wind upon the poplars, and your warmth and your love and your eyes ... they smile and know me.

_Malady_ strikes a stronger note than anything of Mr. Flint’s that I have read before. It is excellent psychology, and steadily, astringently done.

It is this constant change and growth which makes the progress of this little group so interesting to watch. Mr. Flint’s work in the first anthology seemed quite successful and finished. He had done what he had done excellently, and he would go on doing it to the end of the chapter. But here we see Mr. Flint, dissatisfied with mere success, daring a wider horizon. From the point of view of adequacy of technique, his poems suffer, as is natural; but the technique is sure to follow the widened thought, before long. _Malady_ and the poem called _Fragment_ show the direction in which Mr. Flint is moving. His next work will be interesting to see.

Mr. D. H. Lawrence is the best known of the poets in this book, although a newcomer to the anthology. No modern writer is more vigorous than he, and none is more entirely, almost brutally sincere. In Mr. Lawrence’s novels this brutality is sometimes excessively evident, but always one feels that the author inflicts pain upon himself as well as his readers; that he says what he sees and is concerned not to shirk and be a coward for his own comfort.

In his poetry, Mr. Lawrence seems to be more lenient with himself. It is as though he allowed the moralist in him a day out. Not that he ever ceases to be a moralist, really. But he permits himself to lay a slight covering over the stark nakedness of disagreeable facts. This covering is poetry, and very beautiful and original poetry it is.

Green

The sky was apple-green The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green They show, clear like flowers undone, For the first time, now for the first time seen.

Mr. Lawrence has solved the problem of _vers libre_ for himself, by writing in a rhymed metre which usually defies all scansion, but which gives a queer, and most satisfactory effect, of elasticity and strength. For this reason, and for its novelty, Mr. Lawrence’s manner is very interesting, but his matter is still more so. Read _The Mowers_, a common tragedy, but put so newly and strikingly that it comes upon one with all its original force.

_Fireflies in the Corn_ and _A Woman to Her Dead Husband_ are new in subject as well as in presentation, and they have a bald reality about them which I have never met in any other poem. But never once does Mr. Lawrence make the mistake of being only a realist; he never ceases to be a poet. In _Fireflies in the Corn_ there are these lines:

And those bright fireflies wafting in between And over the swaying cornstalks, just above And all their dark-feathered helmets, like little green Stars, come low and wandering here for love Of this dark earth.

The _Ballad of Another Ophelia_ is probably his best poem. In it we see his peculiar style at its very best.

Mr. Lawrence is the singer of truth, the lover of humanity. His inclusion into the Imagist group shows that the school is broad and real enough not to desire to shut itself up in the cupboard of precocity, as in the beginning there was some fear of its doing.

Where Mr. Lawrence gives us the broadest view of Imagism from an English standpoint that this newer, more vital group has offered us, Miss Lowell does the same service for the American side. The qualities that make her work noteworthy are first, a virtuoso command of language that fits itself to the most diverse themes, and second, a sort of fantastic, curious irony that is essentially American. This irony is perhaps at its finest in _The Traveling Bear_ and _The Letter_, but these are too long to quote. I choose instead _Bullion_, which may be taken for a very modern type of love poem, in which love itself becomes a burden:

My thoughts Chink against my ribs And roll about like silver hail-stones. I should like to spill them out, And pour them, all shining, Over you. But my heart is shut upon them And holds them straitly.

Come, You! and open my heart; That my thoughts torment me no longer, But glitter in your hair.

Miss Lowell always looks at things from an angle. Her mind reflects the unusual aspect and that most vividly. As she says of herself:

When night drifts along the streets of the city, And sifts down between the uneven roofs, My mind begins to peek and peer. It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens, And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples, Amid the broken flutings of white pillars. It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair, And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses. How light and laughing my mind is, When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles, And the city is still!

Miss Lowell has the ability which is rare among present-day poets of recognizing that beauty does not belong to an epoch or a period, but is always the same, under whatever strange form it may present itself.

Doubtless her most remarkable poem is that called _The Bombardment_. Whether the technique adopted here by Miss Lowell is destined to work a revolution in verse-writing remains for the future to settle. But here, at least, it perfectly justifies itself. No one should permit, however, a question of technique to obscure the deep tragedy, the splendid humanity, of this poem. War has only one beauty: that of its terrible destructiveness of all beauty. _The Bombardment_ is the best statement of this aspect of war I know. It must be read in its entirety, and so I will not attempt piecemeal quotation of this most fitting conclusion to the volume.

This book is so provocative of thought, the poets in it are so suggestive, each one by him—or herself, that each really requires a separate review. But I have said enough to show what an important volume this little book is. We are told that it is to be an annual, and certainly we shall watch its succeeding appearances with great interest.

It is certainly best to separate an artist so far from his work as not to take him as seriously as his work.—_Nietzsche._

Editorials and Announcements

_The Murder of a Poet_

It is reported that Rupert Brooke died of sun-stroke last month in the Dardanelles. There is nothing to be said in the face of such monster horrors.... And it is also reported that Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson has burned up his production of Shaw’s _Caesar and Cleopatra_, not being able to bear the strain of acting in a play written by his unpatriotic countryman who protested against such horrors.

_Emma Goldman’s Lectures in May_

At a recent meeting of the Chicago Woman’s Club, when all the editors of Chicago magazines explained the virtues of their respective journals, Lucien Cary said, politely but in effect, that THE LITTLE REVIEW was no good. “The only striking thing it has done (beside coming out at all) is to discover Emma Goldman, a nice woman with views less radical than Emerson’s and certainly far less well expressed.” I quote this because it is so exhilarating to catch Mr. Cary in a half-truth—the kind of thing that makes for the confused thinking he is so valiantly in arms against. If THE LITTLE REVIEW had been alive about twenty-five years ago I hope we would have had the sense to discover that a great woman was beginning to work in this country. As it is, we could only try to point out how difficult and how fine has been Emma Goldman’s living of the things Emerson thought it would be good to live. It was not for the people who know their Emerson that we tried it, but for those who have forgotten him, like Mr. Cary.... Since we failed so miserably we shall have to try again. But in the meantime you may hear Emma Goldman herself and discover just how she is helping to make Emerson’s essays livable. She is to lecture for a week in Chicago, in the most delightful lecture room in the city—the Assembly Room in the Fine Arts Building. Her subjects are as follows, at 8:15 in the evening:

_Sunday, May 9_: “Friedrich Nietzsche, the Intellectual Storm Centre of the European War.”

_Monday, May 10_: “Is Man a Varietist or Monogamist”?

_Tuesday, May 11_: “Jealousy” (Its Cause and Possible Cure).

_Wednesday, May 12_: “Social Revolution vs. Social Reform.”

_Thursday, May 13_: “Feminism” (A Critique of the Modern Woman’s Movements).

_Saturday, May 15_: “The Intermediate Sex” (A Study of Homosexuality).

_Sunday, May 16_: “The Limitation of Offspring” (A Discussion of How and Why Small Families Are Desirable).

“_Dionysion_”

One of the most stirring things that has come to this office lately is a small journal with the word “Dionysion” on its cover. It is the first volume of a magazine for the furtherance of Isadora Duncan’s work in America, and the committee that has helped make this rather amazing thing possible includes such names as John W. Alexander, Percy MacKaye, Theodore Dreiser, Will Levington Comfort, Max Eastman, Robert Henri, Edith Wynne Mathison, Julia Culp, Witter Bynner, John Drew, Walter Damrosch, and many others. On the first page is Whitman, then Nietzsche on Dionysian Art, and then Robert Henri with a little article on the new education in which he says: “I was tremendously impressed one day in Isadora Duncan’s studio, by the look in the faces of the children. As they passed by me in the dance I saw great dignity, balance, ease. I was impressed, too, throughout the entire time by the fact that they seemed absolutely secure in their happiness. They appeared to know unconsciously that they would receive a full measure of praise and that in no case would there be blame or punishment. In each little upturned face was a rare look of freedom—the look of people on a higher plane of self-consciousness, an aloofness from the common thought. I saw in their expression the impress of the measures of great music.” And he goes on that “to inspire courage in children, to stimulate them with the work of those who have the courage to create, to make of them frank facers of the emotional problems of life, to start them on the way toward a great constructive life, we must take care not to impose our wisdom and our ignorance on them, but to give them the benefit of the best we have through a frank response to their natural interrogation.” Isadora Duncan’s idea is that “the expression of the modern school of ballet wherein each action is an end, and no movement, pose, or rhythm is successive or can be made to evolve succeeding action, is an expression of degeneration, of living death. All the movements of our modern ballet school are sterile movements because they are unnatural; their purpose is to create the delusion that the law of gravitation does not exist for them.” I know a man from Russia who came to this country knowing only two words of English: “Isadora Duncan.” He had seen Miss Duncan dance once in St. Petersburg and from that moment he looked forward to America as the country of “highest intelligences in the freest bodies.” We may sometime become worthy of this remarkable woman. _Dionysion_ ought to help....

_Isaac Loeb Peretz_

Last month, under the strain of relief work for the Jewish families driven from the war zone, there died in Warsaw a great poet, Isaac Loeb Peretz, almost unknown to the English reader, if we do not count one volume of his _Tales_, issued by the Jewish Publication Society. His poetry, written in Hebrew and in Yiddish, may be compared to that of Heine in its gracefulness, but it bears in addition the melancholy of Polish skies. His sketches in prose and his dramas are too subtle in their profound symbolism to be appreciated by the Jewish masses, who nevertheless, worship him as one of the few great artists who had not gone over to till strange fields, richer and more remunerative. The Jewish stage in America flourishes on Gordin’s melodramas and on cheap farces; the theatrical managers are too business-like to produce such a high play as Peretz’s _Golden Chain_.

_The St. Patrick’s Affair_

Emma Goldman sent me this letter about the two Italian boys, Abarno and Carbone, who have been found guilty of trying to blow up St. Patrick’s Cathedral: “Our efforts for the Italian victims were in vain. They were found guilty, although every bit of evidence brought out how the provocateur induced, urged the act, bought the material, made the bombs, and placed them in the cathedral. But the judge said that an officer has the right to do all this since he does it not out of criminal intent but ‘out of duty.’ Imagine what sort of sentence the boys will get from this cruel machine! I was in court all day until ten that night. I was near a collapse, so terribly had the day impressed me. At midnight they telephoned to tell me of the verdict. The horror of it all to me is the material which Polgnani chose—two typical proletarian slaves, one a boot black, the other a cobbler, both underdeveloped from malnutrition, irresponsible in their youthful inexperience, like two frightened deer driven at bay. To hear the lawyers refer to them as ‘fools,’ ‘degenerates,’ ‘ignoramuses,’ without a sign of protest on their part, almost drove me crazy. I had to restrain myself from pulling them to their feet to cry out against the cruelty and humiliation of it all. Life is terrible....”

_More Censorship_

A book called _Fewer and Better Babies: The Limitation of Offspring by the Prevention of Conception_, by William J. Robinson, has just been published by the Critic and Guide Company of New York. In looking through it I came upon several mysterious blank pages, and then found a foot-note explanation to the effect that the chapters on preventives had been completely eliminated by the censorship: “Not only are we not permitted to mention the safe and harmless methods,” says the poor author; “we cannot even discuss the unsafe and injurious methods.” But it probably won’t be long before Mr. Comstock is suppressed....

The Sermon in the Depths

(_Phosphorescent Gleams of Spiritual Putrefactions_)

BEN HECHT

Since reading the recent translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book which is called _The House of the Dead_[1] I have suffered from a distressing ambition. I would like to go to Russia and there commit some naive atrocity and be sent to a Siberian prison for at least ten years. I have an unpatriotic prejudice and a lack of illusion concerning American criminals or I would commit my atrocity on American soil. They, American criminals, are as a rule a petty lot given to sentimental regrets and griefs and reforms and periodicals. There is nothing which reflects the smugness of a people so much as the manner and temperament of its vice. And the temperament of American vice is more distinctly and monotonously bourgeois than any of its virtues. The American citizen even when about to be hanged is unable to rise above the commonplace reactions “imagined” for his predicament by such authors as belong to the Indiana Society.

I have hunted the American criminal with the police, been present at his confession, watched him at his trial, sat with him in his death cell and listened to him recite psalms and sermonize as the nervous sheriff adjusted the noose around his neck. He is an artificial and uninteresting disappointment. It would be as extreme a punishment to spend ten years in his society behind the bars as to live in a State Street Studio Building or join the Y. M. C. A. for a similar period.

But the “prison that stood at the edge of the fortress grounds close to the fortress wall” and the primitive, debauched children who inhabited it! The swaggering monstrosities that swilled on vodka and wept at the stars. The bestial grotesques who delighted in the murder of infants for the sake of the warm blood that bathed their hands. The filthy saints and nonchalant parricides. The Herculean villains, the irritable gargoyles innocently steeped in insatiable perversion and dripping with infamy. The arrogant, sadistic artists of torture, human as children, with their pitifully crippled souls; praying before the prison ikons, stealing their comrade’s clothes and washing his feet; hating and loving with the simplicity of Pagan gods and the ramified cunning of continental diplomats. The nerveless flagellants, the heartbreaking humorists, the fierce, fanciful executioners. There’s a company for you! A purifying company in the very dregs of its depravities.

They stand alone in literature. Only Christ could have written of them as well as Dostoevsky. Was Dostoevsky dreaming of a new religion when he filled the pages with his human crucifixions? Probably not. But his artistry and his painstaking, searching minute psychology have illumined _The House of the Dead_ so that for him who is not afraid it is as holy and human a source of inspiration as the loving sacrifices of the Nazarene Thaumaturgist.

And yet it is a simple book. There are very few writings so direct and simple, so easy to read and to understand. The terrifying lusts and passions and distorted rages make the mind quiver, but they never mystify. The harrowing morbidities pierce the intelligence like hot lances, but they never blunt or deprave the moral senses. The fierce pathos so exquisitely written, the blood-soaked restraints, the consumptive dying in his iron fetters too weak to support the weight of the little cross on his chest, the wild, inhuman humanness—they sizzle away the nerve cuticles and burn the emotions with a strange fire.

It is the peculiar paradox of reaction. I visited once a Home for Crippled Children and came away happier and cleaner. There the little misshapen bodies and the unconscious holiness of their suffering suddenly revealed to me things I had scoffingly overlooked in the popular words of accepted divines. And it is the same way with the company that writhes through the pages of Dostoevsky’s book. A more material illustration of this paradox is the very rhapsodics I have indulged in to convey what I have read. There are no rhapsodies in the book. There is no “dramatic action” at all in the book. It is the most inactive book I ever have read, barring not certain memoirs and diaries. Nothing happens in the book, yet from its start a demoralized pageant marches thunderingly across the pages, and somehow, by a psychological process it would take Dostoevsky again to reveal, lifts the spirit to heights as lofty as its itinerary is low. As for the style of its writing, there are no secrets in the art for the great Russian. And here he chooses the grim, gripping reiteration, the tragic calm and human poesy of simple words to build up his staggering effects.