Part 6

... And everywhere, wherever I go, I see before me His pure visage. "Do you understand my suffering, O Lord?" "I understand, Yeremy, I understand everything. Go your way in peace." I am to Him like a transparent crystal with a tear inside. "You understand, Lord?" "I understand, Yeremy." "Well, and I understand you too." So we live together. He with me, I with him. I am sorry for Him also. When I die, I will transmit my sorrow to Him. "Take it Lord."

In depicting individual sorrow Andreyev approaches Dostoevsky; it is when he raises general, universal questions, that he miserably fails in answering them. The Russian public has "spoiled" him, has crowned him with the title of a genius, when he is only a man of big talent. Unfortunately Andreyev took the flattery of the beast-public seriously; he said to himself: Who knows? Maybe I am, indeed, an Atlas. Let me try and shake the world. And he did try! As a result we have, among his other sore failures, the loudest commonplace--_Life of Man_.

I think it was Maurice Baring, a Russologue and an admirer of the playwright, who defined _Life of Man_ as an algebraic play, with Man standing for _x_ and Fate for _y_. Not the tragedy of a certain life under certain conditions, but Life in general, under all circumstances, was the object of the drama. It is the world-old problem, the futility of man's struggles in the face of blind unreasoning fate that may at any moment overthrow his toy-castles. Perhaps a Goethe might attempt to say something new on that subject, or at least to put it in a new way. With Andreyev the task proved to be not "up to his shoulder," as the Russians say. The annoying pretentiousness of the play appears a hundred times more convex when on the stage. I saw it once in the "symbolized" theatre of Mme. Kommissarzhevskaya in St. Petersburg, and another time in the performance of the Moscow Artistic Theatre. On the first occasion I was bored to death, and pitied the gifted manager, Mr. Meyerhold, in his futile attempt to veil the platitudes of the play in mysticism, to create an atmosphere, a "_Stimmung_." The Moscow people succeeded in emphasizing the ridiculous awkwardness of the drama, the shrill incongruities of the situations and styles,--and I shall ever be grateful to them for the minutes of hearty laughter that they caused me then and which I cannot escape even now, as soon as I recall the harmony between the symbolicized Someone in Gray (sh-sh ...--Fate!) and the super-realistic shrieks of the mother giving birth to a child. The actors did their best, but no miracle could have saved the doomed loud nothingness.

As I have mentioned, Andreyev's "heel of Achilles" demonstrates its vulnerability when he obeys the call of the public and speaks on up-to-date topics. _Life of Man_ was written, evidently, in response to the symbolistic moods that became noticeable among Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. For more than ten years the group of Symbolists, under the leadership of Valery Brusov, had been ridiculed and unrecognized. Then came the reaction: All began to talk symbols; the press, the stage, the art galleries, the public lectures, became symbolistic over night. A torrent of parodies and imitations gushed on the market, and the public did not differentiate between the real and false coins. It became _bon-ton_ to quote Brusov, Balmont, Viacheslav Ivanov, Sollogub; schoolboys declaimed about "the ostrich feathers that wave in my brains," and janitors whined to "the moon, in a white bonnet with embroidery."

_Life of Man_ reaped broad success, a fact that speaks volumes on the taste of the Public. I am sure that in this country Andreyev's play would be a more "paying proposition" for the producer than even "Everywoman." The plaintive philosophy of Job clothed in modern phraseology; Maeterlinckian Fates dancing in a saloon around the drunken Man; symbolization of Destiny and squeals of the new-born Man; quasi-primitiveness turned into wood-cut allegory and melodramatic effects (of course, there occur several deaths: there is not a single play by Andreyev not spiced with two or three natural or unnatural deaths),--is it any wonder that _Life of Man_ vied in popularity with its contemporary, _The Merry Widow_?

No, messrs. stage-managers and publishers, we reject your popular Andreyev.

ALEXANDER S. KAUN.

Horace Traubel's Whitman

_With Walt Whitman in Camden_, by Horace Traubel. [Mitchell Kennerley, New York.]

The wheat that eager work extricates from huge masses of chaff is worth what it costs. _Leaves of Grass_ does not contain all the solid nutrition that stands for Whitman's durable contribution to the literary food supply of America: he added to it substantially by talking to his friend, Horace Traubel, during the poet's residence at Camden, N. J., from 1888 to the end of his life in 1892, and that comrade, who jotted down every word, has scattered the resultant wheat through its own chaff. Three of the eight volumes through which the mixture is to run have been published.

It is inevitable that inconsequential stuff--sheer nonsense in instances--should find its way into this morbidly complete story of the harvest years of Whitman's life; but it is surprising how much personality and interpretative value lie hidden in some of his most commonplace utterances. A tremendous personality descends to occasional banality because of the inadequacy and commonness of words. It is too much to expect Whitman even to revitalize the vocabulary of a democracy. But great as he was as a cosmic voice, Whitman exhibited and confessed kinship with common clay. In fact, _Leaves of Grass_ could never have grown out of an artificial soil, inoculated with classic cultures; it sprang as the first vegetation upon the surface of a wild, primal clay. Whitman was first of all a big, magnificent animal-man; he was secondarily a powerful poetic instrumentality, giving sound and articulation to the wee sma' voices exhaled by the earth. That is why the essence of his message was an appeal and a challenge to and an expression of democracy. (Of course, I do not mean the institutionalized democracy of politicians, for no Jeffersonian goes to Whitman for solace when his faith is wobbling; I mean the bio-economic democracy that some of us believe in as a part of natural law.)

As a man and as a poet Whitman was simply, daringly, and resolutely himself. He had achieved a large, strong selfhood before Traubel began to Boswellize him, and to that intimate friend he revealed in the languages of pen, tongue, countenance, and silence all the bigness and littleness that a long and intimate relationship could evoke. It would therefore be unfair to ascribe to Whitman all the sapless hay with which these three volumes are padded; it is largely a product of mutual reactions. But in relation to Traubel more than to any other person, Whitman was consistently, habitually, and subconsciously himself, and the result is that this discursive, unedited "story" of the poet's life and work will live as the most personal and valuable revealment of his character. It is the last word about him as a man. Whitman the poet effected his supreme expression in the poem beginning with the words, "I celebrate myself." Other features which give permanent distinction to these volumes are the letters to Whitman from noted men and women in America and Great Britain, and numerous portraits of himself and some of his friends.

Despite the fact that this work is padded with arid minutæ, which I should be the last person to abridge, every page is interesting to readers of Whitman and students of American literature. The first page of the first volume, for example, contains an allusion to Emerson's senility that is worth reading--in Whitman's words. Reading at random in the third volume I found this striking quotation:

Breaking loose is the thing to do: breaking loose, resenting the bonds, opening new ways: but when a fellow breaks loose or starts to or even only thinks he thinks he'll revolt, he should be quite sure he knows what he has undertaken. I expected hell: I got it: nothing that has occurred to me was a surprise.

Turning back a hundred pages I found this:

I have always had an idea that I should some day move off--be alone: finish my life in isolation.

This is the thought of the natural man who would die like a man. One could quote indefinitely from this extraordinary autobiography of the most outstanding figure in American literature.

DEWITT C. WING.

Midstream

_Midstream_, by Will Levington Comfort. [George H. Doran Company, New York.]

A direct, big thing--so simple that almost no one has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. He gives us the story of his own life to the mid-way mark. It is not an autobiography--one of those deferential veilings of truth, a blinding of the spectator by the scattering of fact-dust. After reading it one does not remember clearly the author's various removals from Detroit to other centers of activity; one remembers the vital events in his consciousness, the shames, triumphs, and searchings of his body and soul. Here is a man's life laid absolutely bare.

There is no use in explaining the value of such a book to those who do not admit it. People to whom reserve is more important than truth; people who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything--these will not read _Midstream_ through.

The others will see here a chance to understand. And they will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort's frankness. If a thousand writers should give us such books we should understand better the much-befogged basis of all human problems--"human nature." Every man draws his own conclusions about vital matters from just such introspection as this, whether it be conscious or unconscious. But every man does not have the candor and the hard-won insight of the trained writer.

It would be possible to enter into futile discussions about the "artistic" value of such a book--whether naturalism can give us as fine a work as imagination. Whatever might be the result of such a discussion, Mr. Comfort's book remains interesting, and interest is the first value of any written work. He is neither a Wilde nor a Turgenev, but he is a true writer.

To recapitulate the adventures of the sensitive and often unwholesome boy, the degradations and victories of the young newspaper reporter, the soldier, the war correspondent, the husband, and the writer, would be to undermine the novel itself. If you want to experience them, let Mr. Comfort be the narrator.

It may not be out of place, however, to quote a few of the conclusions, in order to give a taste of the book's direction.

This of man:

A man is clean alone, if he is clean at all.

It isn't being superman to learn to listen to the real self--just the beginnings of manhood proper.

This of publishers and the public:

In many, not all, editorial offices, the producer is paid well and swiftly alone for that which is common, in which plots are pictured, and all but greedy imagination put to death.... I saw that it was not enough for me to get down to the parlance of men, but to leave all hope behind--not only possible intellectual authority--but, by all means, any spiritual in sight; that only frank "down writing" would do.

This of woman's status:

The soul of woman dies if it may not sometimes aspire. A periodic possession of devils on a man's part will not break the waiting quiescence of his woman, but the sordid routine of downtown methods will set her into screaming destruction at the last.

The creature who eight times the year obeys the tradesmen's instinct for style; who has broken her bearing with centuries of clothes-bondage, fed her brain upon man's ideas of sex, her body upon food bought for her and prepared by people whom she does not respect; who has not yet heard the end of a dollar-discussion begun when her baby ears first noted sounds; who holds in shame all that is mighty in her genius, and who has finally accepted as a mate one of her male familiars--she is a man-made creature, in whom is buried a woman. She is man's ignorance and effrontery incarnate--the victim of his mania for material proprieties, which, from the beginning, have utterly desecrated spiritual truth.

And this of the future:

By every observation, law and analogy in life, the constructive purpose at work in the world is toward the end of the increase of spiritual receptivity in every creature, a continual heightening vibration toward the key-rhythm.

G. S.

A Defense of the Grotesque

_Sonnets from the Patagonian_, by Donald Evans. [Claire Marie, New York.]

It has become the fashion, even among intelligent people, to fling tawdry sneers at something not understood--especially the intensely grotesque. The indulgent smile has disappeared, and the little peevish joke has taken its place. Perhaps this is obvious, but some obvious things cannot be made too obvious.

_Sonnets from the Patagonian_ is a type of book which will be almost universally laughed at. Yet it is something like a gold nugget: one must use his mind as a pick with which to isolate streaks of poetry from the coarse rock. The rock is simply grotesqueness. The gold is protesqueness mixed with unconscious simplicity.

I took out my pick one night and started the mental manual-labor. At the end I had extracted six of the most startling, clutching, beautiful lines of verse ever written in English. Perhaps the twisted dreariness of their surroundings made them stand out more vividly, gave them a false value to me. I shall let the reader judge.

And life was just an orchid that was dead.

Her hidden smile was full of little breasts.

Gnawed by the mirage of an opening night.

And a fawn-colored laugh sucks in the night.

And like peach-blossoms blown across the wind, Her white words made the hour seem cool and kind.

Six lines almost lost in the mirage the poet speaks off, but well worth finding.

M. B.

Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a net-work of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and self-conceit.--_Emma Goldman._

The Reader Critic

_Emma Goldman, Los Angeles_:

_Readers have a legitimate interest in the truth of critical articles. We therefore believe they will welcome these comments by Miss Goldman on the article about herself. If Miss Goldman had been displeased, we should have printed her letter with equal frankness._

A Chicago friend sent me THE LITTLE REVIEW for May, which contains your very excellent article on _The Challenge of Emma Goldman_. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you have to say about my work and myself, not because of your sympathetic interpretation but because of your deep grasp of the purpose which is urging my work and permeating my life. I hope you will not mistake it as conceit on my part when I tell you that more has been written about me than perhaps about any other woman in this country, but that most of it has been trash. The only person who came near the fundamental urge in my personality was William Marion Reedy of _The St. Louis Mirror_, who wrote _The Daughter of the Dream_. I do not know whether you have ever seen it, but even his splendid write-up does not compare with yours, because it contains much more flattery than understanding. You can, therefore, imagine my joy in finding that it was a woman who demonstrated so much depth and appreciation of the cardinal principles in my work.

_S. H. G., New York_:

It's getting banal for me to praise the magazine--I'm sorry, but I can't help it. The thing has assumed the nervous importance to me of an emotional experience foreseen and inevitable. And now that I've finished reading the June issue I can truthfully say there isn't a line in it I wouldn't have been poorer without. That couldn't be said of any other magazine ever published.

Your June "leader" is not only true and big, but absolutely timely. The essentially immoral thing should be the thing which does not contribute in some way, however obscure, to the main current. You call it "waste." The reason vice is disgusting is because it turns human stuff off into an inescapable pocket. My idea is a sort of spiritual utilitarianism, you see. Yet without the flat associations of utilitarianism because it recognizes so many things as means to the end--joy and pain and rebellion, for instance.

Dr. Fosters' article is superb! The fallacy of all ethical systems is that they set up an abstract word as a virtue under all conditions. "Unselfishness," for instance. Sometimes a fine virtue--sometimes not, according to circumstances. We must decide, not the rigid word. Almost all present-day fallacies proceed from a failure to recognize the fact that the world is fluid. The individual is worthless except for his dynamic. The static (vice) leads to death; death is merely disorganization of the individual, so that life may be cast in new forms better fitted to proceed.

_W. M., New York_:

I am reading THE LITTLE REVIEW month by month with much interest, and have found many things that gave me pleasure. I admire the intellectual standard. There is plenty of good, earnest thought in each issue. I should like, however, to see a little more of what, for want of a better word, I term "human." THE REVIEW is still in the colder currents of intellectualism. I think it can stand a little more warm feeling, even if you get it in the way of a controversy.

_F. R.-W., New York_:

I am distinctly of the opinion that THE LITTLE REVIEW is worth while. It is one of the very few periodicals I read through from cover to cover. If this can be made to go it will be a greater triumph for the American people than for you. So many magazines of this type have been based upon unsound premises. They have become the vehicle for irrepressible self expression; they have followed freak paths of every variety; they have turned Pegasus into a mechanical hydro-aeroplane and have flattered themselves that, Icarus-like, they were scaling the summits to the sky and endangering their pinions near the sun, when, as a matter of fact, they were plunging through the sloughs below and the only evidence of the sun was its reflection upon the mud by which they were surrounded. With THE LITTLE REVIEW, however, I have a fine sense of clarity.

_F. D., New York_:

Not long ago I wrote you a long, long letter about THE LITTLE REVIEW. But I didn't send it, because who am I to dogmatize about criticism? Anyway, I was severe upon you, because I was disappointed. I really don't think THE LITTLE REVIEW is critical at all. It is exuberantly uncritical--enthusiastic about the wrong things. But you will probably get tired of just being enthusiastic after a time, and start in to criticise. I'm sorry I don't like it better. It has had some good things in it. What I principally object to is your own editorial attitude.

_Constance Skinner, New York_:

I have just read your first issue and want to send my godspeed to this magazine that _feels_. I am so sick of callousness and sneers and flippancy.

Your Paderewski article touches me nearly. Shall I send you a brief little picture of Paderewski playing one summer morning at Modjeska's home in St. Ana Canon, California? Her face so fine, so sweet, with the "so be it" and imperishable sounding memory of broken harp chords, as she sat by silent and listened and looked across the years to Poland, to the heart of humanity as she had held it and shaped it in those days of her own power, ere she picked this starving boy from his attic and said to Warsaw: "_Ecce homo_." Her husband listening better, because watching her, to what the long fingers, like lights flashing, were bringing from the depths. His (the player's) beautiful wife leaning upon the piano, where he always wished to have her, where he could see her face as he played. Outside the sloping canyon wall beginning in a rare rioting, rose garden and reaching to a silver and blue rugged granite where mountain lions sometimes pace restlessly. A great clump of live oaks, four monster trees, their size ranging from ninety to one hundred and twenty feet from bough to bough, roofing with bronze and green leafage this last retreat of the woman who had been hailed greatest of all in three countries. Among the roses by the low open windows of the piano alcove the Polish maid standing, weeping, and the old lame man, her brother, limping along from his work, taking off his hat and standing there, too, unashamed of the tears flooding. And when he had finished playing they came in and caught his hands and kissed them and spoke. The lame man said: "I was in church, but it was holier. It was a rosary, but every head was a light." The maid said: "Poland is not dead." This madam translated to me, and the fire and mist in her eyes--surely the most wonderful eyes ever made--was something I could not look away from. She added: "Poland is not dead while Poles can weep. We must bless grief, it has given us our art."

_H. G. S., Chicago_:

I am going to ask you to please discontinue my subscription to THE LITTLE REVIEW, as your ideas which you set forth in your leading articles are so entirely crude and so vastly different from my own that I do not care to be responsible for its appearance in my home any longer.

[_This reader has the honor of sending in the first cancellation. We might take his denunciation more seriously if it were not for our suspicion that what he really meant to say was this: "Your ideas are entirely crude because so vastly different from my own."--The Editor._]

_The following is typical of the older generation's response to the new order. It is a perfectly consistent letter, a perfectly sincere one, and a perfectly impossible one. But it is not to be taken so lightly as it deserves: first, because it has all the poison the younger generation hates most; second, because its perplexities are perfectly natural ones; and third, because education, in order really to be effective, must begin upon just such attitudes. It may be as well to answer at least one of the writer's arguments by quoting Shaw. In his new preface, in a chapter called The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness, he says very neatly: "The difficulty with children is that they need protection from risks they are too young to understand, and attacks they can neither avoid nor desist. You may on academic grounds allow a child to snatch glowing coals from the fire once. You will not do it twice. The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter. Not only children but adults need protection from them." Following the mother's letter is one from a boy which ought to throw some light on the subject from the young generation's standpoint._

_Margaret Pixlee, Indianapolis_: