Part 2

Have you ever found a definition of aesthetic values that will hold through the whole art miracle? I never have and never expect to. Even in Pater’s _The School of Giorgione_ you are merely told that since all art constantly aspires toward the condition of music, toward that perfect identification of matter and form, the chief function of aesthetic criticism is to estimate the degree in which all the arts approach to musical law. But musical law is constantly changing; and the criterion of the degree to which matter and form become identical will be a sort of sliding scale. And what every one wants to know is how to gauge that scale. Can you think of a single art judgment in the whole realm of aesthetics that you can use as an infallible touchstone; with which you can make a mediocre poet realize why his work is bad instead of good? You can make him realize, by the desperate wildness with which you shriek “It’s not well done”, that something is wrong; but to save your life you can’t convince him that you are talking about anything except your own instinct—as you aren’t; and of course he feels that his instinct may be just as good as yours—which of course it can’t! Suppose you choose one of the best definitions ever thought of,—Mérimée’s “all art is exaggeration _à propos_”; you find that you’re just as badly off as before: by what standard is the _à propos_ measured?

* * * * *

It was in this frame of mind that I heard Leo Ornstein’s music. First he came one night and played for us alone, on our Mason and Hamlin, in a half light and an atmosphere of intense excitement. None of us had decided beforehand that we should want to laugh or hiss or throw things at him, as they did in London two years ago. We expected something beautiful and we got it. He played his _Impressions of the Thames_, which he afterward described as a river of “towers and turrets and stars, of dark rushing water, of bridges and buildings, of desolate muddy banks, and then something which you cannot bear to look at any longer.” I can’t “see” music, so I only know that it was sound which interested and pleased and shook me. Then he played his _Funeral March_, which had something dark and vast in it; then some Ravel, the music of which interested me more than his playing of it; and finally the Schumann _Arabesque_, which he did so beautifully that I thought “Here is a man who plays just as he wants to, and probably comes nearer to what Schumann would have liked than all the strict interpreters with their flawless ‘taste’ have done.” It seemed to me that Ornstein did what he did with it—stretched its slenderness to a lovelier curve—in the interest of the piano; and that is the very best thing anyone can do with written music for the piano, even if the pedagogues can’t beat time to it.

So at the end I was beginning to think: perhaps this is the man who is to bring to the piano that something it still needs.

* * * * *

But the next morning, at his recital, I made an interesting discovery. Ornstein has brought nothing to the piano. He has brought something to the world of music: compositions which show that the piano music is more pliable than we had thought, and interpretations which show an exaggeration _à propos_. To the piano, as an instrument, he has brought what all the others have brought: virtuosity—and in this case a not exceptional virtuosity. This may sound like hair splitting, but it really is not.

Ornstein has done this: he has written some very interesting music, and he plays it as most composers of talent—perhaps of genius—would play their things if they had studied the piano as thoroughly as he. What is there in this to cause hysterics? The fact that it sounds different from the music you have been hearing? But that would seem to be a reason for interest, not merely for mirth. This reaction belongs in the same plane with patriotism and duty:—you laugh at what is strange, you love what is familiar, you obey what has been tested:—the three ready-made emotions, with which you can escape most effectively from art and life. So they howled at Ornstein. Two respectable women sitting near me, who would not have dared—what do I say? who would not have _been able_—to laugh at a minister’s treatise on good and evil or a president’s speech on loyalty to a flag, were so convulsed over Ornstein’s _Impressions of the Thames_ that they moved their seats to the rear of the theatre where they could not be watched,—where they could merely disturb the pianist by their audible snortings. The critics have done the same thing—laughed at Ornstein’s own music and criticised scathingly his manner of playing familiar music. Ornstein’s interest, I am sure, is chiefly in what he has to say, and second in the way he says it. He is a composer-virtuoso. I had hoped he would be a piano-lover. That is the kind of artist I am looking for with more interest than I have for anything else in this world.

As for Ornstein himself, I think he is a sincere person who means to go on doing his work. I sometimes judge the sensitiveness of a nature by the intensity of expression that moves across the cheek-bones. You might look carefully at Ornstein’s face instead of judging him by the fact that his hair falls into his eyes when he plays. Of course he has been indiscreet enough to mention that he does not like Beethoven. Why that is unforgivable I can’t imagine. A man may surely like what he pleases. The high genius of a Mozart or a Haydn is a thing he feels intensely. He admires Chopin deeply as an artist who could do one thing very well and was content to let it go at that. Grieg he thinks is not a worthy mouthpiece for all that Norway has to give a musician. He loves Debussy, but thinks that Ravel is the greater man: “Debussy stands beside a pond and tells you beautifully of all he sees there; Ravel plunges into the pond and gives you the life of it.” Stravinsky and Scriabine are the two he cares for most, as I remember. “Schönberg has worked out his theory before he has worked out his art.” Something of that sort might apply to Ornstein himself, as in the case of his Chopin _Nocturne in E Flat_: I disliked his “exaggeration” in it as much as anything I have ever heard on a piano.

* * * * *

Oh, does no one realize what the unique beauty of a piano is, and that there are secrets of sound in it which have not yet been touched upon?

Nocturne

(_From the French of Paul Verlaine_)

CLARA SHANAFELT

Your soul is like a lovely garden place Where masque and bergamasque move graciously, Playing the lute and dancing, yet of face Half sad beneath their guise of fantasy.

The while they sing in minor key Love conquering, life opportune, They seem to doubt their own felicity— Their song floats faintly upward in the moon,

In the clear moonlight, sad and fair, That makes birds dream where dim boughs sway, And fountains sigh their rapture on the air From marble pools—the tall slim fountain spray.

White Mists[1]

There are grey stone rat-traps on the earth Where human beings are put to die By other human beings. They die hour after hour, a million million times, And still face death....

There is blue air between the clouds and the earth Which they once saw; There are gold stars, And suns that come up red, And trees that turn to purple in the evening— But they cannot remember....

Now their days are bundles of soiled rags, Their nights are stone.... I dare not think of them: It drives me toward the whiteness of insanity.

M. C. A.

[1] _In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail for advocating that “women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.” Some extracts from letters written during her fifteen-day sentence appear on the next page._

Letters from Prison

EMMA GOLDMAN

_Queen’s County Jail, Long Island City, New York. April, 1916._

What am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no misery so appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so humiliated.

Yes, I think the prisoners do love me, at least those who have been thrown in with me. It is so easy to get their love. The least bit of kindness moves them—they are so appreciative. But what can one do for them?

Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s _Justice_ in which some one says to Falder: “No one wishes you harm”? Therein lies the pathos. No one wishes these social victims harm. The Warden and Matron here are exceptionally kind. And yet the harm, the irreparable harm, is done by the very fact that human beings are locked up, robbed of their identity, their self-respect, their self-hood.

Oh, I am not sorry I was sentenced. In fact I am glad. I needed to get to these pariahs who are the butt of all the horrors. It would be well if every rebel were sent to prison for a time; it would fan his smouldering flame of hate of the things that make prisons possible. I am really glad.

* * * * *

... We are awakened at six and unlocked at seven in the morning. Then comes breakfast, of which I have so far eaten only oatmeal with what pretends to be milk. The coffee or tea I have not managed to get down. At seven-thirty we are taken out into the yard. I walk up and down like one possessed, to get the exercise. At eight-thirty we are back, and the women keep themselves busy scribbling; but my girls will not let me do that; I must talk to them. (The Warden, by the way, is reading my _Anarchism_, and the Matron my _Social Significance of the Modern Drama_). In fact, I seem to have more devotion here than on the outside. At eleven we have dinner, and at four in the afternoon supper—which I will describe to you when I come out. Then we are locked up until seven A. M.—fifteen hours, the hardest of all to bear. Do you remember the line in _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: “Each day a year whose days grow old”? To me it is “each night a year whose nights grow long”. I have always loved the night, but jailed nights are ghastly things.

The lights are on until nine P. M., and we can read and write all day—which is a god-send. Also this prison is one of the cleanest in the country.

* * * * *

... What on earth have I done that people should go into such ecstasies? No one raves because you breathe; why rave if you take a determined stand when that means the very breath of life to you? Really I feel embarrassed with all the love and devotion and adulation for so little a thing, so infinitesimal compared with the truly heroic deeds of the great souls. My only consolation is that the fight is not at an end and that I may yet be called upon to do something really great. But for the present it is hardly worth the fuss.

* * * * *

Today is Sunday and we were taken out to the yard for a walk. It was a glorious day, marred only by the monotony of the stripes and the spiritless slouching figures. Yet the sky excluded no one; its glorious blue spread over them all, as if there were no sorrows in all the world and man was never cruel to his kind.

* * * * *

The days pass quickly between the study of my fellow prisoners, my letters, and other writing. The evenings are taken up with reading. But jailed nights are so oppressive. They lie like stone upon your heart. The thoughts, the sobs, the moans that emerge like pale shadows from every human soul. It is stifling. Yet people talk of hell. There is no more threatening thing in all the world than the hell of jailed nights.

* * * * *

Good morning. Another crazing night has gone....

Off The Turnpike

AMY LOWELL

Good ev’nin’, Mis’ Priest. I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye. Yes, it’s all over, All my things is packed And every last one o’ them boxes Is on Bradley’s team Bein’ hauled over to th’ station. No, I ain’t goin’ back agin. I’m stoppin’ over to French’s fer to-night, And goin’ down fust train in th’ mornin’. Yes, it do seem kinder queer Not to be goin’ to see Cherry’s Orchard no more, But Land Sakes! When a change’s comin’, Why, I allus say it can’t come too quick. Now, that’s real kind of you, Your doughnuts is always so tasty. Yes, I’m goin’ to Chicago, To my niece, She’s married to a fine man, hardware business, And doin’ real well, she tells me. Lizzie’s be’n at me to go out ther fer the longest while. She ain’t got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know. She’s rented me a real nice little flat, Same house as hers, And I’m goin’ to try that city livin’ folks say’s so pleasant. Oh, yes, he was real generous, Paid me a sight of money fer the Orchard, I told him ’twouldn’t yield nothin’ but stones, But he ain’t farmin’ it. Lor’, no, Mis’ Priest, He’s jest took it to set and look at the view. Maybe he wouldn’t be so stuck on the view Ef he’d seed it every mornin’ and night for forty year Same’s I have. I dessay it’s pretty enough, But it’s so pressed into me I c’n see’t with my eyes shet. No. I ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, Don’t shet th’ door. I’ll be all right in a minit. But I ain’t a mite sorry to leave that view. Well, maybe ’tis queer to feel so, And maybe ’tisn’t. My! But that tea’s revivin’. Old things ain’t always pleasant things, Mis’ Priest. No, no, I don’t cal’late on comin’ back, That’s why I’d ruther be to Chicago, Boston’s too near. It ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, It’s jest my thoughts. I ain’t sick, only— Mis’ Priest, ef you’ve nothin’ ter take yer time, And have a mind to listen, There’s somethin’ I’d like ter speak about. I ain’t never mentioned it, But I’d like to tell yer ’fore I go. Would yer mind lowerin’ them shades, Fall twilight’s awful grey, And that fire’s real cosy with the shades drawd. Well, I guess folks about here think I’ve be’n dret’ful unsociable. You needn’t say ’taint so, ’cause I know diff’rent. And what’s more, it’s true. Well, the reason is I’ve be’n scared o’ my life. Scared ev’ry minit o’ th’ time, fer eight year. Eight mortal year it is, come next June. It was on the eighteenth of June, Six months after I’d buried my husband That somethin’ happened ter me. Maybe yer’ll mind that afore that I was a cheery body. Hiram was too, Allus liked to ask a neighbor in, And ev’n when he died, Barrin’ low sperrits, I warn’t averse to seein’ nobody. But that eighteenth o’ June changed ev’rythin’. I was doin’ most o’ th’ farmwork myself, With jest a hired boy, Clarence King ’twas, Comin’ in fer an hour or two. Well, that eighteenth June I was goin’ round, Lockin’ up and seein’ to things fore I went to bed. I was jest steppin’ out to th’ barn, Goin’ round outside ’stead of through the shed, ’Cause there was such a sight of moonlight Somehow or another I thought ’twould be pretty outdoors. I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess. I ain’t stuck on em no more. Well, them laylock bushes side o’ th’ house Was real lovely. Glitt’rin’ and shakin’ in the moonlight, And the smell o’ them rose right up And most took my breath away. The colour o’ the spikes was all faded out, They never keep their colour when the moon’s on ’em, But that smell fair ’toxicated me. I was allus partial to a sweet scent, And I went close up t’ th’ bushes So’s to put my face right into a flower. Mis’ Priest, jest’s I got breathin’ in that laylock bloom I saw, layin’ right at my feet, A man’s hand! It was as white’s the side o’ th’ house, And sparklin, like that lum’nous paint they put on gateposts. I screamed right out, I couldn’t help it, And I could hear my scream Goin’ over an’ over In that echo behind th’ barn, Hearin’ it agin an’ agin like that Scared me so, I dar’sn’t scream any more. I jest stood there, And looked at that hand. I thought the echo’d begin to hammer like my heart, But it didn’t. There wus only th’ wind, Sighin’ through the laylock leaves, An’ slappin’ them up agin’ the house. Well, I guess I looked at that hand Most ten minits, An’ it never moved, Jest lay there white as white. After a while I got to thingin’, that o’ course ’Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield. That calmed me some, An’ I commenced to think I’d better git him out From under them laylocks. I planned to drag him inter th’ barn An’ lock him in ther’ till Clarence come in th’ mornin’. I got so mad thinkin’ o’ that all-fired brazen tramp Asleep in my laylocks, I just stooped down and grabbed th’ hand and give it an awful pull. Then I bumped right down settin’ on the ground. Mis’ Priest, ther’ warn’t no body come with the hand. No, it ain’t cold, it’s jest that I can’t bear thinkin’ of it Ev’n now. I’ll take a sip o’ tea. Thank you, Mis’ Priest, that’s better. I’d ruther finish now I’ve begun. Thank you, jest the same. I dropped the hand’s ef it’d be’n red hot ’Stead o’ ice cold. Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass Pantin’. Then I up and run to them laylocks An’ pulled ’em every which way. True as I’m settin’ here, Mis’ Priest, Ther’ warn’t nothin’ ther’. I peeked an’ pryed all about ’em, But ther’ warn’t no man ther’ Neither livin’ nor dead. But the hand was ther’ all right, Upside down, the way I’d dropped it, And glist’ning fit to dazzle yer. I don’t know how I done it, And I don’t know why I done it, But I wanted to get that dre’tful hand out o’ sight. I got in t’ th’ barn, somehow, An’ felt roun’ till I got a spade. I couldn’t stop fer a lantern, Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th’ spade. I had a sight o’ trouble doin’ it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn’t bear Ev’n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off behind the barn, Clost to an old appletree Where you couldn’t see from the house, An’ I buried it, Good an’ deep. I don’t rec’lect nothin’ more o’ that night. Clarence woke me up in th’ mornin’, Hollerin’ for me to come down and set th’ milk. When he’d gone I stole roun’ to the appletree And seed the earth all newly turned Where I left it in my hurry. I did a heap o’ gardenin’ That mornin’. I couldn’t cut no big sods Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted ’em fer, So I got teeny bits o’ turf here and ther,’ And no one couldn’t tell ther’d be’n any diggin’ When I got through. They was awful days after that, Mis’ Priest, I used ter go every mornin’ and poke about them bushes, And up and down the fence, Ter find the body that hand come off of. But I couldn’t never find nothin’. I’d lay awake nights Hearin’ them laylocks blowin’ and whiskin’. Finally I had Clarence cut ’em down An’ make a big bonfire of ’em. I told him the smell made me sick, An’ that warn’t no lie, I can’t a’ bear the smell on ’em now. An no wonder, es you say. I fretted somethin’ awful about that hand. I wondered could it be Hiram’s, But folks don’t rob graveyards hereabouts. Besides Hiram’s hands warn’t that awful, starin’ white. I give up seein’ people, I was afeared I’d say somethin’. You know what folks thought of me Better’n I do, I dessay, But maybe now you’ll see I couldn’t do nothin’ diffrent. But I stuck it out, I warn’t goin’ to be downed By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther’. But that ain’t the worst, Mis’ Priest, Not by a long way. Two years ago Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry’s Orchard. Well, I’d got used to th’ thought of bein’ sort o’ blighted, And I warn’t scared no more. Lived down my fear, I guess. I’d kinder got used t’ the thought o’ that awful night, And I didn’t mope much about it. Only I never went out o’ doors by moonlight; That stuck. Well, when Mr. Densmore’s offer come, I started thinkin’ about the place An’ all the things that had gone on ther’. Thinks I, I guess I’ll go and see where I put the hand. I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by. I knew the place real well, Fer I’d put it right in between two o’ the apple-roots. I don’t know what possessed me, Mis’ Priest, But I kinder wanted to know That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway. It had sorter bothered me, thinkin’ I might ha’ imagined it. I took a mornin’ when the sun was real pleasant and warm, I guessed I wouldn’t jump for a few old bones. But I did jump, somethin’ wicked. Thar warn’t no bones! Thar warn’t nothin’! Not even the gold ring I minded bein’ on the little finger. I don’t know ef there ever was anythin’. I’ve worried myself sick over it. I be’n diggin’ and diggin’ day in and day out Till Clarence ketched me at it. Oh, I knowed real well what you all thought, An’ I ain’t sayin’ you’re not right, But I ain’t goin’ to end in no country ’sylum If I c’n help it. The shiv’rin’ fits come on me sudden like. I know ’em, don’t you trouble. I’ve fretted considerable about the ’sylum, I guess I be’n frettin’ all the time I ain’t be’n diggin’. But anyhow I can’t dig to Chicago, can I? Thank you, Mis’ Priest, I’m better now. I only dropped in in passin’! I’ll jest be steppin’ along to French’s. No, I won’t be seein’ nobody in the mornin’, It’s a pretty early start. Don’t you stand ther’, Mis’ Priest, The wind’ll blow yer lamp out, An’ I c’n see easy, I got aholt o’ the gate now. I ain’t a mite tired, thank you. Goodnight.

Potatoes in a Cellar

R. G.

I am not here to harry institutions, to prod up mummies swathed in red tape and embalmed in routine and respectability, nor am I here to bury the unburied dead.

People say, “Why do you jump on the Art Institute for becoming a trade school? It is only following the tendencies of the times. Art is like everything else.” There you have it!—the whole trouble. There is no consciousness of art, no consciousness that art is beyond all these things—that it is as the sun to the earth, and if it were to fail us we should grow like potatoes in a deep cellar.

It is only when art students say, “This is not what we sought. Where shall we go, what shall we love, what do, to find what we sought?” that the Art Institute is brought into it, and then only to serve as an example of the lack of art consciousness everywhere, and to emphasize the fact that the artist has no place in this land of wasteful virtues.

An artist almost disgraces the family into which he is born, he is pitied a little by outsiders, he is left alone. At last, when he can stand it no longer, he breaks the parent heart, and goes out full of high hope to find his own kind and to keep his own faith. After a short time he finds the art school very much like a factory; he learns to do his piece, when he had thought to create a new beauty, and he finds, too, that he is still an outcast for his beliefs and desires.

More than ninety-nine percent of the students who study art never qualify as artists. We are all born into the world creators. In the interval some wander into by-paths, play nicely upon the piano or violin, do art, or write poetry. Maiden aunts and fond grandmas proclaim them geniuses, all the time praying that they do not become artists. When love comes, they leave the by-paths to fall into lock step on the old worn way.