Part 5

Finally, I would like to tell of a strange Viennese personality, no dramatist, but just as little a novelist, epic or lyric poet. The name of this man, who cannot be put into any of the ordinary literary compartments, is Peter Altenberg. He thought that most of the things told in dramas of five, or three, or only one act, were superfluous; the essential could be told in three lines as a rule. He wishes to give the extract and the reader might work it out for himself. He only writes very short sketches, apparently perfectly usual things, out of every-day life. But he discovered a little secret, namely, that the ordinary is really the most wonderful. Miracles do not exist any more, but the miraculous is there, everywhere. _Fairy Tales of Life_ he calls one of his books (in which he collects a number of sketches); but he might call them all by the same name. As in Maeterlinck's _Blue Bird_ the wonderful is everywhere, but we have not the eyes to see it. Well, Peter Altenberg has these eyes. His little sketches would seem untranslatable. They might seem, in a different language, perfectly banal little things, not worth the relating,--but suddenly a veil is removed and we see the world and things in a new light.

Peter Altenberg uses the most original style--one might call it a telegram style; it is very abrupt without any endeavor at a connected literary form. He wants, as he says himself, to describe a man in one sentence; an event of the soul on one page; a landscape with one word.

Everybody in Vienna knows Peter Altenberg. He is a poet of the street, who goes around and writes down his little sketches wherever he may be--principally in the cafes.

All the women must love him--for he has sung their praises all his life, like a minnesinger of the Middle Ages.

Editorials

Some Emma Goldman Lectures in Chicago

Beginning October 25, and continuing for three weeks, Miss Goldman is to give a series of new lectures in the Assembly Hall of the Fine Arts Building--an event which has already filled us with the keenest anticipations. There will be three on the war:--_Woman and War_, _War and Christianity_, and _The Sanctity of Property as a Cause of War_. There will be a series on the drama, as the mirror of rebellion against the tyranny of the past:--an introductory one on the significance of art in its relation to life, and others on the new Scandinavian, Italian, German, French, Russian, Yiddish, American, and English drama. These will be given on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, and offer sufficient richness for one season. But there is even more. On Monday and Wednesday nights, at East End Hall on Erie and Clark Streets, Miss Goldman will deliver six general propaganda lectures, all dealing with the labor problem and the sex question. Tickets will be on sale at the office of THE LITTLE REVIEW; at The Radical Book Shop, 817½ North Clark Street; and may be had also from Dr. Reitman, 3547 Ellis Avenue. How interesting it will be to watch that part of the audience which attends the war and the drama talks as perfectly "safe" subjects making its discovery that the lecturer is a woman of simple nobility and sweetness, and that her propaganda is a matter of truth rather than of terror.

The Philistinization of College Students

A very interesting correspondent sends us the sort of letter we should rather have received than any other sort we can conceive of. It is quoted in full on another page of this issue. In it he asks if THE LITTLE REVIEW will not succeed in creating a _Drang und Sturm_ epoch; if it will not "stir the hearts of college men and women--those who have not yet been completely philistinized by their 'vocational guides'; college men and women who in other countries have always been the torch-bearers, the advance-guard and martyrs in the fights for truth and ideals." It was a definite impulse in this direction which gave birth to THE LITTLE REVIEW; and while, after seven months, we cannot hope to have turned the world inside out the way it should be turned, we are sufficiently sanguine to believe that we have made a beginning. We are so close to the _Drang und Sturm_ ourselves that perhaps we cannot see clearly. But we can hope, with that intensity which makes THE LITTLE REVIEW our religion, that these things will come to pass. Incidentally, we believe in colleges on the same general basis that we believe in many other disciplines: it is impossible ever to learn too much on any subject. But we know there is something seriously wrong with the colleges; and a far graver danger than philistinization seems to us to lie in that hysterical confusion of values which causes our college students to see small things as big ones and to let the big ones slip by.

Witter Bynner on the Imagists

In sending us _Apollo Sings_, Mr. Bynner remarks that it is more fun, for the moment to take a classic theme and mix it, with a little Whitman, into an anagram of rhyme than to imitate the Japanese and try to found a school. He goes on: "In spite of several lovely attempts, Pound's chiefly, the rest seeming to me negligible, they've not approached the poetess Chiyo's lines to her dead child:

I wonder how far you have gone today, Chasing after dragonflies--

or Buson's

Granted this dewdrop world is but a dewdrop world, This granted, yet--

I'm ungrateful to look critically toward an attempt to plant in English these little oriental flowers of wonder. If only they would acknowledge the attempt for what it is and not bring it forward with a French name and curious pedantries! Isn't the old name for this sort of poem _Haikai_ or something of that sort? At any rate, there is a name. I ought to know it. And so ought they."

A Rebel Anthology

William D. Haywood, veteran of many labor battles and foremost exponent of the militant unionism in America, is adding to his manifold activities that of compiler and editor. He purposes the formation of an anthology of poems by social rebels, principally of those who have been connected with the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World. In the book will be included poems by Arturo Giovannitti, Covington Hall, Francis Buzzell, George Franklin, Charles Ashleigh, and others. Mr. Haywood wishes to show, by this publication, the spirit of art which is manifesting itself in the working-class movement. He maintains that the heightened consciousness of the workers is beginning to express itself through an adequate and distinctive poetical medium.

New York Letter

GEORGE SOULE.

Eastern publishers have been much amused by the advertising of _The Eyes of the World_ spread over full pages of the recent magazines. The burden of the appeal to the public is, first, that we have been overrun with immoral books; second, that clergymen, editors, and all other forces of decency are powerless to stop the flood; third, that Mr. Harold Bell Wright has sprung to the front as the great leader against the vicious influence of the other writers by the production of his latest novel; and fourth, that the whole battle will be won if the public will step into the nearest bookshop and pay $1.35 net for Mr. Wright's book. From the glowing moral tone of the advertisement one might think it the work of an uplift committee; but in small type at the bottom is a copyright notice bearing the name of the president of Mr. Wright's publishing house. This gentleman is undoubtedly deeply sincere in his admiration of Mr. Wright's work and its influence, but in this case his admiration has led him to a somewhat ingenuous confusion of moral and business motives. It reminds one of the tactics of the billboard advertising men who, when they discovered that billboard advertising was being strongly attacked by those who object to the disfigurement of our countryside, put up a large number of biblical posters to curry favor with simple religious souls--and were afterwards so injudicious as to boast of their cleverness in _Printer's Ink_.

The effectiveness of Mr. Wright's plea is somewhat prejudiced by his own case. His novel sets forth the thesis that in order to make an artistic or literary success it is necessary only to resort to flattery and corruption. But his own novels have for some years been far more popular than those of most competitors. Is it pure perversity that makes his hated rivals reject his obviously successful methods in favor of the despicable ones which he so vehemently attacks?

We wish only that someone with an equal enthusiasm for artistically moral literature would try a similar advertising campaign for a genuine artist. Such advertisements might set forth the facts that the bookshops are being overrun with mediocre novels which make successes by pandering to untruth and public prejudice, that the work of genius is in danger of being choked out by the insincere product of commercial writers, and that the best way to promote the interests of good literature would be to buy in large quantities the novels of John Galsworthy or Romain Rolland! But, alas, such a campaign is impossible in a commercial democracy--it wouldn't pay!

A respectable number of the best publishers have already aroused themselves to the impropriety--or at least to the eventual ineffectiveness--of announcing extreme praises of their own publications even in the critical vein. Surely the book-reading public can't be made to believe that four or five "great novels" are issued every year. Surely they would be grateful for a little genuine information about the books they are asked to buy. And so these publishers have issued for two years a monthly circular entitled _New Books_, which contains descriptions of important new publications without praise of any kind. It would be telling tales out of school to say how carefully the publishers' copy-writers must be watched in order to prevent them from slipping dubious phrases into their notes. Some advertising men seem to have principles against giving any candid information about what they have for sale. But the task has been accomplished so far, and it remains to be seen whether this civilized form of advertising can make much progress against the advertising vandalism which destroys the effectiveness of all publicity by extravagant statements. One begins to suspect that the effort is pitifully Utopian in a state of economic savagery like the present, where every man's attention is more naturally directed to his profits than to the honesty of his work. The chances would be better if the majority of the public knew what intellectual honesty is and really wanted it.

There is hope among the magazines in the form of _The Metropolitan_. That is making a commercial success and is also attempting to publish genuine work--not necessarily "highbrow," but at least genuine. An expert on an important subject recently wished to write a magazine article. The first editor he approached recast the material to suit his own ideas. A second and a third told him that his message was good, but over the heads of the public; they ordered "popular" and ephemeral trivialities. _The Metropolitan_ is the only magazine that wanted him to write, in his own way, what he really had to say. Another writer submitted the outline of an article to a _Metropolitan_ editor. It was on a subject ordinarily considered somewhat "dangerous." The editor said: "That is new, and interesting. It ought to make a good article. You must be careful of only one thing. Be absolutely frank. Don't try to gloss over anything that is a plain matter of fact." Such directness is astounding to one accustomed to the ways of editors.

An editor has recently confessed to me that now for the first time he begins to believe that the popular magazines may have a really good reason for existence, aside from furnishing amusement in hours of train and family boredom. He thinks that the tremendous events in Europe are likely to bring forth literature of worth and quickened emotion which nevertheless cannot wait for book publication, and that so we shall find use for the more ephemeral medium. It certainly is true that the keen public interest in the war is likely to decline even before the war is over. We are bound to experience a reaction in favor of reading matter at the opposite pole of thought.

An incredible rumor that Hearst has bought _The Atlantic Monthly_ is as startling as many of the war headlines which occur when no authentic news is available. In spite of the absurdity of the idea, it has possibilities of momentary amusement. What a retribution to overtake the spinsterly Bostonese journal which tries with such a brown and wren-like conscience to be judiciously radical!

Book Discussion

Two Finds

_Poems_, by George Cronyn. [The Glebe. Albert and Charles Boni, New York.]

I am very sorry indeed that this book arrived when most of our space was pre-empted. I need room for the sort of appreciation that I feel for these poems.

That extraordinary, delightful, and Quixotic institution, _The Glebe_, which insists on publishing stuff on its merits, apart from considerations of popularity, has had divine luck in finding Cronyn,--whoever he is.

For Cronyn is a poet. Not just a versifier, but a poet. His verse has a facility which does not detract from its beauty. I have encountered sheer beauty more often in his book than in any volume of modern poetry that I have read for some time.

Here is a sample:

Clouds

Whence do you come, oh silken shapes, Across the silver sky? We come from where the wind blows And the young stars die.

Why do you move so fast, so fast Across the white moon's breast? The cruel wind is at our heels And we may not rest.

Are you not weary, fleeing shapes, That never cease to flee? The forkéd tree's chained shadows are Less weary than we.

Whither do you go, O shadow-shapes, Across the ghastly sky? We go to where the wind blows And the old stars die.

This is just a short and rather exuberant message to LITTLE REVIEW readers, because I think they really deserve the pleasure of discovering Cronyn for themselves.

* * * * *

_Songs for the New Age_, by James Oppenheim. [The Century Company, New York.]

One of the phenomena of the evolution of man is the constant broadening of consciousness. We become accustomed to the sharing of our feelings with larger and larger numbers of people; our identity with the race,--and even with inanimate things,--becomes increasingly plain to us through both the findings of science and heightened emotional receptivity.

And yet this wider consciousness by no means lessens the value or quality of personality. By a splendid paradox, the more we realize our inseparability with all life the more does our selfhood become accentuated. Thus is achieved the marriage of Democracy and Individualism. We find that, in the end, the cultivation of one is the nourishing of the other. I need hardly mention that I am not alluding to that similacrum of equality: political democracy.

This must be known to appreciate the message of James Oppenheim. For it is pre-eminently as a message that these poems should be treated. They are of essential value as one of the most articulate efforts to translate that which in most people is mute.

There is an unmistakable kinship with Whitman in this work; not merely in the form,--which is here termed "polyrhythmic,"--but in the spirit, without hint of plagiarism or of abject imitation. Also we have the same breezy contempt for the petty trappings of civilization.

Here is an extract from the poem, _Tasting the Earth_, which has beauty as well as truth:

O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me.... It was she with her inexhaustible grief, Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests, And moan of the forsaken seas, It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals, It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man.... It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts, Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers, And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne, And the dreams that have no waking.

My heart became her ancient heart: On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself: Wisdom-giving and somber with the unremitting love of ages....

There was dank soil in my mouth, And bitter sea on my lips, In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.

This is enough to make one grateful to Mr. Oppenheim. But not always plays the cosmic symphony; sometimes the spheric strains relax for a few slender lyrics to a moving-picture lady or for the tender song to Annie, the working-girl. We leave the book with the conception of a manly and impressionable personality with a healthy lust for life, a deep insight into the world-soul and his own soul (which, after all, are the same), and great power to communicate his findings to us through a plastic and peculiarly individual medium.

CHARLES ASHLEIGH.

An American Anarchist

_Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre._ [Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York.]

Into every generation are born certain personalities that have the gift of attracting vast multitudes within their orbit, dominating them, animating them with a single purpose, directing them to a common goal. There are other personalities more richly gifted, of more extended vision, who nevertheless live and die unknown to the greater number of their contemporaries. Aristocrats of the mind, these latter disdain to practice the arts by which popularity is gained and held. They attract, but do not seek to dominate. They persuade, but never command. Their passion is without hysteria; their moral indignation is without personal rancor. They cherish ideals, but harbor no illusions. They will gladly surrender life itself for an idea, but they will not shriek for it. Our popular leaders are not seldom led by those who seem to follow. These others advance alone. If they are followed it is without their solicitation. To say that the individualist writer and lecturer whose collected writings are now before us was such a personality may seem exaggerated praise. If so, I have no apology to offer. I only ask that, until you have read the lectures, poems, stories, and sketches which this book contains you will suspend judgment.

Voltairine de Cleyre belonged to the school of thinkers that has suffered most from the misrepresentations and misunderstanding of the unthinking crowd; the school which numbers among its adherents men like Stirner, Ibsen, and, in some aspects of his teaching, Nietzsche; the school that sees hope of social regeneration only in the sovereignty of the individual and the total abolition of the state. She belonged to it because she was at once logician and poet, with a temperament abnormally rebellious against tyranny and an imagination abnormally responsive to every form of suffering.

It has often been remarked that anarchism takes root most readily in those minds that have endured most oppression. Thus Russia, the home of absolute political despotism, is also the birthplace of Bakunin, Hertzen, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy. In America, where what Mencken calls "the new puritanism" operates more oppressively than political government, it is in behalf of sex freedom that most frequent and vehement protest is heard.

In the case of Voltairine de Cleyre this reaction declared itself neither because of political nor of sexual restraint. It came about in the realm of religion. It began from the moment when, at the age of twelve, the sensitive gifted girl was placed in the hands of a Roman Catholic sisterhood, presumably that her education might be safe. For four years the young Voltairine lived at the convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron at Sarnia, Ontario, heartsick with loneliness, writhing under the padded yoke of conventual discipline, gathering within her soul that flame which was never destined to be quenched save in death. Out of that experience she came with a mind wholly emancipated from the dogmas of religion. Not long afterward she entered upon what promised to be a brilliant career as a secularist lecturer.

That a nature like hers would long confine itself to labor in the barren field of theological controversy was not to have been expected. She was too vital, too human. It is possible that the delicacy of her own health intensified her sense of the world pain. Her sympathies are not alone of the intellect but of the nerves. One feels the nerve torture of an imaginative and poetic invalid in her confession of the reasons which had drawn her to adopt the anarchist propaganda. She pictures herself as standing upon a mighty hill from which she writes:

I saw the roofs of the workshops of the little world. I saw the machines, the things that men had made to ease their burden, the wonderful things, the iron genii, I saw them set their iron teeth in the living flesh of the men who made them; I saw the maimed and crumpled stumps of men go limping away into the night that engulfs the poor, perhaps to be thrown up in the flotsam and jetsam of beggary for a time, perhaps to suicide in some dim corner where the black surge throws its slime. I saw the rose fire of the furnace shining on the blanched face of the man who tended it, and knew surely, as I knew anything in life, that never would a free man feed his blood to the fire like that.

I saw swart bodies, all mangled and crushed, borne from the mouths of the mines to be stowed away in a grave hardly less narrow and dark than that in which the living form had crouched ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day; and I knew that in order that I might be warm--I and you, and those others who never do any dirty work--those men had slaved away in those black graves and been crushed to death at last. I saw beside city streets great heaps of horrible colored earth, and down at the bottom of the trench from which it was thrown, so far down that nothing else was visible, bright gleaming eyes, like a wild animal hunted into its hole. And I knew that free men never chose to labor there, with pick and shovel, in that foul, sewage-soaked earth, in that narrow trench, in that deadly sewer gas ten, eight, even six hours a day. Only slaves would do it.

I saw deep down in the hull of the ocean liner the men who shoveled the coal--burned and seared like paper before the grate; and I knew that "the record" of the beautiful monster, and the pleasure of the ladies who laughed on the deck, were paid for with those withered bodies and souls. I saw the scavenger carts go up and down, drawn by sad brutes and driven by sadder ones; for never a man, a man in full possession of his selfhood, would freely choose to spend all his days in the nauseating stench that forces him to swill alcohol to neutralize it. And I saw in the lead works how men were poisoned, and in the sugar refineries how they went insane; and in the factories how they lost their decency; and in the stores how they learned to lie; and I knew it was slavery made them do all this.

And against such slavery this young Amazon of the spirit (for at this time, 1887, she was only twenty-one) declared a life-long warfare. In so doing she separated herself from those who would otherwise have been her natural allies and cut off those opportunities for worldly success which must in the ordinary course of things have come to her.