Part 1

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON EDITOR

MAY, 1916

Three Flesh-tints: Ben Hecht The Incense Burner The Goldfish in a Bowl A Nude “The Compleat Amateur” Harold Bauer Three Japanese Paintings: Arthur Davison Ficke Dream of a Chinese Landscape Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory The Golden Symphony The Struggle Sherwood Anderson A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence Poems: Daphne Carr Welt Schmertz Prisoners Leo Ornstein Margaret C. Anderson Nocturne (from Paul Verlaine) Clara Shanafelt White Mists M. C. A. Letters from Prison Emma Goldman Off the Turnpike Amy Lowell Potatoes in a Cellar R. G. New York Letter Allan Ross Macdougall Amber Monochrome Mark Turbyfill Three Imagist Poets John Gould Fletcher Rossica Alexander S. Kaun The Independent Exhibition Lupo de Braila The Reader Critic

Published Monthly

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MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher Fine Arts Building CHICAGO

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Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

THE LITTLE REVIEW

VOL. III

MAY, 1916

NO. 3

Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson

Three Flesh-tints

BEN HECHT

The Incense Burner

A bending flower rises from its mouth And sways like the vein of a zephyr. Threads of moonlight float entangled over it, Delicate as the breath of a dying woman. Souls come whispering from its ancient lips, Laden with thin secrets, And torn by the long nails of idiot Gods.... Pale dancers arise, whirling listlessly, Expiring in a writhing languor. Heavy-lidded eyes crawl out and open vacantly and close.... Dried whisps of water break into blue wings. A sleeping woman’s arm reaches up and curves into a sigh And scratches at the air with opalescent claws. Dead pearls drift in a dead circle—till, quivering, A slow finger rises, balancing a grey moon on its tip. And then a severed face squeezes out and lolls to and fro, Its washed purple lips leering with a grotesque sin.

The Goldfish in a Bowl

A tiny shimmering courtesan Dressed in red spangles, Weaves a monotonous thread of painted rubies Through the stagnant curtains of her room.

Stifling under faint rags, A dumb enchanted nightingale Tosses in droll anguish, Dreaming of the sapphire roses and the crystal fringe and the topaz silks That were her lovers.

A Nude

The rich brocade of night, Sewn with the red dust of roses And the topaz breath of the sleeping sun Hangs from the cool ivoried silk of her shoulders.

The winged beacons of her breasts Gleam with golden moonlight. And her eyes are like purple bosomed birds That circle and beat against the azure gloom.

Her nakedness is an opal mirror, Quivering with splintered images. Her nakedness is a white kiss. Burning on the shadowed lips of the night. Her nakedness is the flowing of ghostly water Under fierce moons— The poplar silver of the wind that dances in the gardens at night.

Her nakedness is the golden fabric woven out of bloody grapes And the dead mists of incense.

“The Compleat Amateur”

or How Not to be An Artist

HAROLD BAUER

(_No, I cannot write you an article. And I add to this the expression of my fervent hope that no Amateurs are going to be allowed to scribble for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW. _Speaking as a subscriber, I haven’t the least desire to read any of H. Bauer’s clumsy attempts to express himself in a medium that is foreign to him. Let him stick to his business.... You must write the article you have in mind yourself. From the depths of your artistic intuitions draw forth the material and give away the secrets—which are no secrets. Moreover, don’t confine yourself to music, much less to piano playing; take in the whole field of art and call it “The Compleat Amateur, or, How Not To Be an Artist.” I suggest the following headings.—Extract from a letter of the Author._)

I. “_Le Style fait l’homme_”

If you want to become an author, give up your life to the study of calligraphy, if a painter, devote yourself to the manufacture of paints and brushes, if a composer, commit to memory the number of notes in every standard classical work, and if a singer or instrumentalist, spend your whole energy in the establishing of a “sound technical foundation.” Emotional expression can then, if desired, be subsequently smeared like treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, this operation requiring neither skill nor expression.

II. “_Means to an End_”

The amateur must learn that technique represents an obstacle to be overcome and a set of tools to be acquired. It has nothing to do with expression. Only an imaginative artist like Maeterlinck would suggest that the road along which the student travels towards his destination is in reality a link, a connection joining one with the other—an umbilical cord partaking of the nature and attributes of both traveler and goal. To a perfectly rational person the road is merely a distance to be covered, a separation.

III. _Personality, or, as some authorities have it: Individuality_

This is the greatest asset of the Amateur. An artist is like everybody in the world. The book we read, the picture we see or the music we hear which renders tangible our own dimly-felt thoughts and emotional stirrings shows that we are in reality one with the artist and with the universe of which these expressions are but reflections of unseen and unheard forces. An artist combines the power and responsibilities of the aristocrat with the feelings of an anarchist, he is the guardian of privilege and the destroyer of authority, the leveler of barriers and the creator of the superman, the leader and the servant of humanity and ... the Arch Enemy of the Amateur! The artist is like all humanity, but the Amateur is not like the Artist. The Amateur must hang on for dear life to his precious soul and resist to the last gasp the incursions of any outside force in which he can trace the semblance of his own nature, for if anything gets in something may get out and he won’t be able to sort himself out afterwards. Hence the Amateur must be an Individualist; otherwise he is doomed to extinction. The Amateur’s business is to interpret the universe in terms eternally incomprehensible to anyone but himself, and to compromise with the necessity for intercourse with his fellow-creatures by the adoption of an artificial language which can convey thoughts and feelings of a superficial character, but nothing more.

The tale that points a moral, the picture that suggests a tale, and the music that evokes a picture; these are the vehicles for “personality” and your fine amateur must cultivate the pride that the realization of an exclusive understanding of these things gives. If Hamlet had been an amateur instead of being an artist he would never have suggested that a cloud was like a camel, a weasel, or a whale; he would have pointed out its resemblance to a mathematical calculation or a treatise on political economy, and Polonius would have been far more impressed—for this would have shown Great Individuality.

IV. _The Mission of Amateurism_

A true Amateur must learn the value of success, the immense importance of achievement, the inward meaning of gratified self-conceit. Praise from small minds represents the highest possible attainment of accomplished Amateurism. The object of Amateurishness is, like the puzzle pictures in the daily papers, to present a pretty little problem with a perfectly simple and obvious solution, thus giving effortless pleasure and satisfaction to all concerned.

The opportunities afforded by collective Amateurism for the repression of Art are invaluable and as the study of the subject is within the reach of all, including those who are congenitally afflicted with artistic talent, it devolves upon everyone who holds the opinion that this is the best of all possible worlds, to make it his life’s occupation and aim to be a “compleat amateur”.

Three Japanese Paintings

ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE

I. Dream of a Chinese Landscape (_A Screen by Soga Shubun_)

Mists are rolling Over the grey mountains, Over the quiet waters And marshy shores— Rolling up into valleys Where pagodas rise,— Rolling over slopes Along whose crests Monasteries dream. Wild geese soar Above the marshes In downward flight— In flight from unknown shore To unknown shore. Over all Mists are swaying.

The shadowy bridge And wandering roadway, The dark gnarled tree by the road And the pale tree afar, Are touched with doubtful mists Or emergent from lifting mists,— Trembling in mist; born of mist; shadows.... O mountains, shores, and streams! Beautiful transient illusion! Mortal world, dream world, Vanishing into mist, into mist only!

II. Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory (_A Screen by Sesshu_)

Across quiet waters, far off, Faint, misty mountains unfold in limitless ranges, Guarding some dream-world,— Some dim and tranquil world of golden pagodas, Lawns and pools, terraces and deep groves, Vermilion palaces, and peacock-haunted gardens.

But that is afar; And the quiet waters lie between.

Here at our feet Rises out of the quiet water Stormily, ridge by ridge, Buttress by buttress, Cliff beyond cliff beyond cliff, The jagged headland.

Here, Gigantic, primeval, Juts the grey promontory. It is bleaker than death, though temples deck it; Starker than ice, though pines bestrew it; Inhuman, though the village at its base Humanly nestles.

With writhing turrets, With dizzy gulfs, With winding abysses And cloven brinks, The rock rises In ripples, in waves, in spires— It rises fiercely, with an appalling passion,— An apparition of dark monstrous life,— And foaming up at last to its highest crest Stands frozen To freeze the blood of generations.

III. The Golden Symphony (_A Screen by Sotatsu_)

Golden clouds, and a golden bridge Lifting in a great arc, swinging in a high arc, Under clouds of gold, over clouds of gold,— From the long slow curve of a golden shore Across wide spaces of dark river!... And behold! a drifting miracle— Behold the long steady advancing prow Of a golden boat, heavier than the sun, Quiet upon the dark river; bearing two lovers In robes of state, intricate, luminous, Upon this dim river—where the great arc Of the bridge from clouds into clouds Swings, from golden shore to golden shore, From the gold earth to the gold heaven.

The Struggle

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

The story came to me from a woman, met on a train. The car was crowded, and I took the seat beside her. There was a man in the offing, who belonged with her,—a slender, girlish figure of a man, in a heavy brown canvas coat such as teamsters wear in the winter. He moved up and down in the aisle of the car, wanting my place by the woman’s side, but I did not know that at the time.

The woman had a heavy face and a thick nose. Something had happened to her. She had been struck a blow or had a fall. Nature could never have made a nose so broad and thick and ugly. She talked to me in very good English. I suspect now that she was temporarily weary of the man in the brown canvas coat, that she had travelled with him for days, perhaps weeks, and was glad of the chance to spend a few hours in the company of some one else.

Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of the night. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It had rained for days and the fields were flooded. In the clear night the moon came out and the scene outside the car-window was strange and in an odd way very beautiful. You get the feeling: the black bare trees standing up in clusters as they do out in that country, the pools of water with the moon reflected and running quickly as it does when the train hurries along, the rattle of the car-trucks, the lights in isolated farmhouses, and occasionally the clustered lights of a town as the train rushed through it into the west.

The woman had just come out of war-ridden Poland, had got out of that stricken land with her husband by God knows what miracles of effort. She made me feel the war, that woman did, and she told me the tale that I want to tell to you.

I don’t remember the beginning of our talk, nor can I tell you of how the strangeness of my mood grew to match her mood, until the story she told became a part of the mystery of the still night outside the car-window and very pregnant with meaning to me.

There was a company of Polish refugees moving along a road in Poland in charge of a German. The German was a man of perhaps fifty, with a beard. As I got him, he was much such a man as might be professor of foreign languages in a college in our country, say at Des Moines, Iowa, or Springfield, Ohio. He would be sturdy and strong of body and given to the eating of rather rank foods, as such men are. Also he would be a fellow of books and in his thinking inclined toward the ranker philosophies. He was dragged into the war because he was a German, and had steeped his soul in the German philosophy of might. Faintly, I fancy, there was another notion in his head that kept bothering him, and so to serve his government with a whole heart he read books that would re-establish his feeling for the strong, terrible thing for which he fought. Because he was past fifty he was not on the battle-line, but was in charge of the refugees, taking them out of their destroyed village to a camp near a railroad where they could be fed.

The refugees were peasants, all except the woman in the American train with me and her mother, an old woman of sixty-five. They had been small land-owners and the others in their party were women who had worked on their estate. Then there was the one man, my companion’s lover, weak in body and with bad eyes.

Along a country road in Poland went this party in charge of the German, who tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in his insistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leader of the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal to go forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and her party gathered about her. Like a stubborn old horse she shook her head and muttered Polish words. “I want to be let alone, that’s what I want. All I want in the world is to be let alone,” she said, over and over; and then the German came up, and putting his hand on her back pushed her along, so that their progress through the dismal night was a constant repetition of the stopping, her muttered words, and his pushing. They hated each other with whole-hearted hatred, that old Polish woman and the German.

The party came to a clump of trees on the bank of a shallow stream. The German took hold of the old woman’s arm and dragged her through the stream while the others followed. Over and over she said the words: “I want to be let alone. All I want in the world is to be let alone.”

In the clump of trees the German started a fire. With incredible efficiency he had it blazing high in a few minutes, taking the matches and even some bits of dry wood from a little rubber-lined pouch carried in his inside coat-pocket. Then he got out tobacco, and, sitting down on the protruding root of a tree, smoked, and stared at the refugees, clustered about the old woman on the opposite side of the fire.

The German went to sleep. That was what started his trouble. He slept for an hour, and when he awoke the refugees were gone. You can imagine him jumping up and tramping heavily back through the shallow stream and along the muddy road to gather his party together again. He would be angry through and through, but he would not be alarmed. It was only a matter, he knew, of going far enough back along the road, as one goes back along a road for strayed cattle.

And then, when the German came up to the party, he and the old woman began to fight. She stopped muttering the words about being let alone and sprang at him. One of her old hands gripped his beard and the other buried itself in the thick skin of his neck.

The struggle in the road lasted a long time. The German was tired and not as strong as he looked, and there was that faint thing in him that kept him from hitting the old woman with his fist. He took hold of her thin shoulders and pushed, and she pulled. The struggle was like a man trying to lift himself by his boot-straps. The two fought and were full of the determination that will not stop fighting, but they were not very strong physically.

And so their two souls began to struggle. The woman in the train made me understand that quite clearly, although it may be difficult to get the sense of it over to you. I had the night and the mystery of the moving train to help me. It was a physical thing, the fight of the two souls in the dim light of the rainy night on that deserted muddy road. The air was full of the struggle, and the refugees gathered about and stood shivering. They shivered with cold and weariness, of course, but also with something else. In the air, everywhere about them, they could feel the vague something going on. The woman said that she would gladly have given her life to have it stopped, or to have some one strike a light, and that her man felt the same way. It was like two winds struggling, she said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and trying vainly to push another cloud out of the sky.

Then the struggle ended and the old woman and the German fell down exhausted in the road. The refugees gathered about and waited. They thought something more was going to happen, knew in fact something more would happen. The feeling they had persisted, you see, and they huddled together and perhaps whimpered a little.

What happened is the whole point of the story. The woman in the train explained it very clearly. She said that the two souls, after struggling, went back into the two bodies, but that the soul of the old woman went into the body of the German and the soul of the German into the body of the old woman.

After that, of course, everything was quite simple. The German sat down by the road and began shaking his head and saying he wanted to be let alone, declared that all he wanted in the world was to be let alone, and the Polish woman took papers out of his pocket and began driving her companions back along the road, driving them harshly and brutally along, and when they grew weary pushing them with her hands.

There was more of the story after that. The woman’s lover, who had been a school-teacher, took the papers and got out of the country, taking his sweetheart with him. But my mind has forgotten the details. I only remember the German sitting by the road and muttering that he wanted to be let alone, and the old tired mother-in-Poland saying the harsh words and forcing her weary companions to march through the night back into their own country.

The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed to judge life.—_Nietzsche._

A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence

I Zarathustra, declare myself! Ye have dulled me with priests; ye have sweetened me with girls; ye have betrayed me with envious anarchists.

Lo, I am not for the preacher, I am not for the woman, I am not for the oppressed! Ye say that by me ye shall save the world; I say that I shall destroy the world!

These things do I hold sacred—my strength, my lust, my joy. These ye shall feed, and die.

Too long have I stood silent in the cackle of my followers. Poultry after my corn! I have said, “Dost thou seek to multiply thyself? Find ciphers!”

I will give you a new law:—Love your enemy, for him ye may destroy. Fear your friend, for he shall steal your raiment.

Dost thou think that my aloofness is thy aloofness? Dost thou flutter upon a ridgepole because I stand upon a mountain? Fool, thou shalt starve unless thou peck the earth.

I say unto the preacher: Stick to the Nazarene; he hath deserved his Golgotha. But who shall make my words a law for me?

I say unto the woman: My scourge is yet upon thee. Dost thou set thyself against myself? I shall ravish thee when I desire thee. Who art thou to pretend manhood? Submit or deny thy life. Serve, or go barren into the earth.

I say unto the poor and lowly: I denied you my pity; now ye think to rob me of my scorn. Paltry ones! Shall I deny myself because of you? Lo, if I delight in riches, I shall take them. My life is not your life; my children are not your children. Cry not at my oppression; ye shall not move me. And if ye mock me with my own words, they shall scorch your tongues; ye shall go to a blacker oppression, ye shall find harder masters—yourselves!

And I say unto the priest, the woman, and the lowly: Touch me not; ye are my enemies! I have declared myself, and ye have not known me. I am life, I am splendor, I am eternity. Ye deny me as ye lay your hands upon me. Remain afar off; then may I be in you. I will keep you slaves; thus only shall I live.

_Also sprach Zarathustra!_

Poems

DAPHNE CARR

Welt Schmertz

I have crushed so many roses That my hands Drip with red fragrance. But I would crush to death against my breast The wind That is raging drunk with the perfume of all flowers.

I have bathed in a hundred cool springs— Still I am burning. I would plunge into the ocean, Diving down and down To find myself Freshly fluid As a wave.

Prisoners

A wind runs through the room, And leaps out of the window. The white curtain springs after Fluttering out. But it is fastened tight inside.

My love kisses me And goes Waving good-bye And laughing. Am I also held fast in this room?

Leo Ornstein

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

Nietzsche thought Wagner was the artist of decadence; Arthur Symons thinks he was a unique genius. Nietzsche regarded him as the great corrupter of music:—“he has made music sick”; Symons says that to find a parallel for Wagner’s achievement we must look back to the Greeks, to the age of Æschylus and Sophocles. Each one proved his point. It’s a bit confusing, and you begin to wonder what Art is.