The Little Review, March 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 1) (2024)

Two Poems

Fritz Schnack

(Translated from the German by William Saphier)

BLOOMING SUNLIGHT

EVENING GIFT

Will Levington Comfort

My enemy has written a book.[1]

This is not man-to-man enmity, but there need be no quibble aboutit. For seventeen years I have studied T. R. as representative of thatAmerica which has consistently betrayed the finer aspirations of our people,shamed the real workman, bewildered the young in millions with noise andshow and shine, and unerringly dimmed for the many the approaches to theReal. He stands today for armament, against all that the New Spirit hasshown us out of the bleeding heart of the world, against the plain fact of thewar as the quickener of spiritual life, and against every dream that was everborn in the human breast out of the loss of the love of self.

You will say, “But why this study of T. R. now? Surely he has receivedhis Thumbs-down even from the crowd, and with a unanimity seldomaccorded a public man still in the flesh.” ... I am not so sure. I wishI could be sure that his latest message would be shut from the receptivity ofthis land, as a door upon an evil draught.

We have managed to clump along with bunglers through the recentdropsical years of peace, but there was never such a need as now for a manof vision and power at the forefront of our affairs. These States sinceAugust have committed atrocities of short-sightedness and triumphs ofselfishness—enough to complicate us for future years. The partisan and themilitarist have already made our neutrality unclean. I would like to besure that their strongest influence has already been encountered.

On our southern borders is war, and our northern border is black withdistrust and the British point of view. From Vancouver to Halifax, thevoice of this hour is, “If Roosevelt were only in the chair at Washington——”The ensuing part of the “if” covers the present issues from Mexicoto Belgium, and the trouble is that Canada knows from England what she iswishing us; at least, in part, the venom and abomination of the saying. Tojudge from the Press of the States there are still many who would inciteafresh the animal efficiency of our country, and who range themselves in thebackground with this master of the low vibration, calling upon us to answerEurope with a similar desolation.

... How many times have you heard it said, “This T. R. is in thecomprehension of the crowd.” This is true. The saddest conviction everforced into the mind of genius of any age is the opaqueness of the surfacewhich the crowd presents to light or loveliness of any kind. And T. R. is inthe comprehension of the bleakest generation which this country has everknown; nor will there ever be another like it, for we are at the end of thenight. That which is about to break is either dawn or doom.

T. R. is still searching for the crowd through the endless folds of itsobliquity. Who shall say that these folds are not endless; that he may notturn over still another fateful, if momentary allegiance, from the bowels ofour materialism?

Enough that he is the voice to-day of the Prussian factor in America,a voice from the throat of the militarists—that curious solution of beef, ironand wine, from which—as Thou seest the Oise and the Aisne and the Vistulaflow red—oh, Lord, deliver us!

I hold the conviction that if the militarists ever get in full cry after thiscountry, we shall lose our Peace and our personality. This is an hour tostand by, and it is only in such an hour that I would venture to study a partythrough the character of its loudest voice. For seventeen years I havewatched T. R. stand for the physical and the obvious. There has beenmore noise about his name in America than about any other, and yet he hasnever risen to a single great moment. And steadily he has mounted higherin the consciousness of T. R. Many of us thought that the crisis was reached,when for a day (a little before the last presidential nominations) the egobroke within him, and those close at hand saw a deranged creature....A troop of us camped beside him in Tampa, and followed the Rough Ridersafield above Santiago. Perhaps he has a certain animal courage—the cheapestutility of the nations—but there is no moral quality to the courage of a manwho would permit himself to be cast into popular approval on a fake....There was a reunion two years afterward of those same Rough Riders inOklahoma. T. R. was there, campaigning on the shoulders of McKinley,much as Dr. Cook did. On the way down through Kansas for two days, weheard him on the back platform of the private coach, at every station wheretwo or three would gather together—pouring the most terrific physical energyinto political bickerings and half-truths, the same at each station—until wedrew the press table as far as possible forward, and bore the oppressive heatwith shut windows rather than that repeated clamor of words. He wouldcome in conqueringly, the black coat damp with sweat.... I rememberthe ruffian exhibition with the cattle—steer-torturing, the brand, the snapof bone, the tightened noose, thud of poor beasts to the ground—all in aframe for him—the hat with the pinned-back brim, waving over all....

No other man has been so mighty to keep the pestiferousness of Americaalive in the minds of medieval Europe. As our representative citizen, he hasromped our yankeeisms and cutenesses from Queenstown to Port Said andaround. And so it has been for seventeen years since that Tampan camp,from party to group, from fame to notoriety, from brute-shooting andaffidavits, to co*cktails and new African rivers furnished with sworn statements,from woman’s suffrage back to bayonetism,—always in the sweatand heft of flesh, unvaryingly the animal man.

They say that if a child is bred and born right, his earlier years passedin hands that start him straight—such a child will return to the beauty of hisinception, if time and the world are permitted to work sufficient misery uponhim; misery being the great corrective. These States of America were bredof a fair dream and born of a singular beauty. The hope of the world todayis that as a nation, we restore the old dream, the old inspiration; not a turningback, for that is against the law, but turning to a finer dimension of that oldpassion which made us a refuge and a brotherhood.

There has been fine living virtue in two recent actions of this government—twobits of high behavior. Through one of these, it seemed that ashaft of light poured down from the fatherland of the future—if day is aheadand not doom. I refer to the return of the Boxer indemnity to China....It was like a fine moment in a busy life, and there was poetry in the answerfrom old Mother China.... There are men who love these States wellenough to hate her many moments of unworthiness. The other figment oftrue national character is the determination of the part of Washington tokeep her promise to Colombia.... I perceived that T. R. has risenagainst that, even since his book setting forth the needs of a new predatoryimpetus for our national life.... To anyone who asks a law to go by,for the good of the country and the rectitude of self, I would say, “Take theside that this man does not, and it will be impossible for you to lose.”

[1] America and the World-War, by Theodore Roosevelt. [Charles Scribner’sSons, New York.]

John Cowper Powys

Sick of war and discussion of war; sick of “first and last things” anddiscussion of them; deafened by the raucous howling of the preachers,and dumb before the fathomless stupidity of the mob, one may totter intothe cool quietness of The Little Theatre just as Heine, scarcely a centuryago, escaped from the madness of the crowd, and in that gallery on the Seinefell at the feet of the armless Goddess! And she smiles at us too—poorunknown strangers—just as she smiled at that famous Wanderer; andthough “she has no arms to help,” it is enough if for a little while one canrest at her feet and forget “the voices of hate.” It was by the incantationshe has never been known to resist that she was drawn here; to rest, after herlong pilgrimage: for here she has found the altar they had lost the secret ofbuilding, and the incense they had forgotten how to burn! O the heavenlyquietness of this place, and the absence, even round about the purlieus of it,of the voices that grate and jar and harrow and murder!

Favete Linguis! Keep the holy silence, good stranger; till thou knowestcompletely on what ground thou standest. “Numen inest!” There is Deityin this sanctuary. Do the children of Gath howl with laughter, and thedaughters of Askalon shake with spleen, that one should speak of Deity inthe Fine Arts Building, and of Altars on Michigan Avenue? Let them putout their tongues—let them spit forth their venom—the stone which theyhave rejected has already become the head-stone of the temple of the Future!

Visit other so-called “Little Theatres,” my friends, and you will understandwhy the Uranian had to make so long a journey. For there is none likethis. They are either—those others—too gaudy and “artistic”; or theyare too shoddy, ramshackle, littered, patchy and “bohemian.” This is theplace; the place where one can draw large even breaths; the place where onecan cool one’s fever; the place where one can drink, as Shelley says, “of deepand liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.”

And it matters not what they are “playing,” this gracious company ofOur Lady’s Servants, or whose liturgical “Use” they honor with theiracceptance. Many are such “hours,” such “offices.” It makes no difference.One Gregorian Harmony brings them into the circle of One Rhythm. Manyand diverse are the offerings they offer up to that great Goddess. Some arewanton and capricious, some grave and solemn, some foreign and exotic,some native-born and natural, some from the market-places of this very city,some from the far-off land of the Goddess’s own engendering; some light asgossamer-seed, from no land at all, but from the kingdom of airy nothings,sans habitation, sans name, sans purpose!

Yes, whatever the words of the “local breviary” we persuade them toadopt to their music, the effect of it upon the listeners is the same. “Razedout” at last are those “written troubles”; “cleansed” at last, of “that perilousstuff,” is the poor “stuff’d bosom”!

Chicago’s Little Theatre is the real “Alsatia”—the authentic “Arcanum”—thetrue “Hesperidean Grove”! And do you ask how it rose, “like aneschalation,” into being—what hands built it—what genius, what magic,still sustains it? What, do you suppose, questioner at the gate, worked thismiracle? What, do you surmise, wrought this spell? Have you really noinkling, in this sphere of the raising of Altars, how such things are done?

Only in one way! There is only one kind of occult adventure—Goethetells us that—by means of which these Euphorions of Beauty grow into life!There must be the creative spirit of Man, giving the thing “Form”; and thecreative spirit of Woman, giving the thing “Color.” Thus we understand.Thus we unravel the mystery. Thus we learn how the impossible happens!Look, inquisitive Stranger, at the Inscription over the entrance to this enchantedretreat. Read the names written upon the door. Do you catch thetrick of it now—do you glimpse the clue? Two names are there—our Faust’sand our Helen’s—and behind those two names lurk the creative genius thatwills, and the creative genius that gives color to what is willed. Thus themiracle is accomplished. And behold—Euphorion! For English “Maurice”and American “Nelly” have that inestimable bond, between the links of whichalone can the true Parnassian Hyacinths put forth their “hushed, cool-rootedflowers” for the delight of gods and men;—I mean agreement of “opinion,”with diversity of “temperament.”

The supremely happy “chance” of the coming together of these two—whynot believe the legend that gives to the very Land of the Muses the spellthat achieved it?—resulted in nothing less than that indescribable synthesisof Man’s Intellect and Woman’s Instinct which is the desire of the ages!So ought human beings to be united. So ought their poor mortal “love,”radiating from Zenith to Nadir, to provoke the return of Saturn, the unbindingof Prometheus, the Vita Nuova for which we all pine!

It is in fact the presence of our “New Helen” as the guiding, balancing,mellowing, sweetening influence, in this enterprise, which has enabled theaustere “Formula” of the Founder to take to itself flesh and blood. For thedirector of the Little Theatre of Chicago is no Dilettante—no Petit-Maîtreof a pompous coterie—no bric-à-brac Virtuoso. Stern and high and cold ishis Ideal; clear and clean-cut the lines that limit it! To reproduce in theheart of the great mad City—the City of the “Middle-West”—the City ofAmerica—that Rhythm and Harmony which Plato felt as the secret of theultimate spheres, is not such a thing worthy of the gift of a man’s life?

And it is nothing less than a man’s life, and a woman’s too, which isbeing given for this. For such temples are not built without the shedding ofblood. Those who have ears to hear let them hear! As the wise Lady says,who comes from the Isle of the Saints, “The Bridge to the World’s Futurehides within its arches the bodies of the World’s First-Born!” It is not forany “strayed reveller,” however sensitive to what he has seen, to give theword of Initiation to these devoted ones’ long-labored Mystery. MauriceBrowne’s methods may be seen, and the passionate irritability of his over-taskednerves may be teased and rung upon; but the high invisible walls ofthe Citadel he is raising—the “topless towers” of his Ilium—are not for thesearching of the profane. And yet a modest guess may be hazarded as towhere, in our horizon, those towers will grow. They will grow, as all trueclassical ramparts have grown, protecting us from the hordes of vulgarity,out of the ground and soil of inveterate tradition. They will not grow to thetune of the idealization that spurns “reality,” they will grow to the tune ofthe idealization that sifts, selects, winnows, purifies, and heightens “reality.”They will not be built, they are not being built, according to the fierce fanaticismof any particular School or Cult or Pass-word. The sub-soil of theirtradition has been watered by no tears but those of Humanity, and will besown with no harvest but the harvest of Humanity. If they are more Greek,or more Hebraic, than anything else, that is only because to the Greeks andthe Jews rather than to the rest it has been allowed to sweep the unessentialabsolutely aside and return with clear-eyed innocence to the main facts.Maurice Browne is not the slave of Euripides—though, by God! some mightthink so—nor is he the slave of the Bible. It is only that he knows too well—toowell for his peace and the peace of his friends!—that only from thedepths of that one tragic fountain—the naked human heart, my friends—springthe little opal-tinted bubbles that reflect the World!

What has been revealed to our modern Faust in those queer “absencesfrom the Body,”—what has been revealed to him in those hours, when hisnerves find us so hard to bear—what “the Mothers” have really whispered tohim—who were bold enough even to guess? But this much a poor Satyrof the Outer Court may without impertinence divine. For Maurice Brownethe whole world resolves itself into an act of worship. The thing worshipedwe know nothing of, save in the eternal rhythm of life; and the “other worshippers”we know nothing of, save in the music which responds to thatrhythm; but the whole drama—down the long desperate centuries—resolvesitself into nothing less than an attempt to attune to reciprocity those twocadences—the voice of the Unknown World-Priest, intoning through theages, and the voice of the innumerable generations answering! Have I beenable in the remotest degree to indicate why to the good sneering philistineswho mock at all this and ask “what is a Little Theatre but—a Little Theatre”?there may come some day a somewhat ghastly awakening, a somewhatdamning remorse? In that hour—in that “Judgment”—happy will thosecitizens of Chicago be who have prepared the way, and not laid themselvesdown in the way, of the builders of the Abbey of Thelema!

What The Little Theatre is doing is nothing less than a restoration tothe worship of the Eternal Gods of an Institution which has been bastardized,perverted and profaned! Think what the Drama in our days has become!Think what “buyers and sellers” have set up their “tables” in the Lord’sHouse! The Theatre, in our generation, is no more that sacred stage whereLife is purged and winnowed and heightened; and where, out of the Tragedyand Comedy of it, clear triumphant music is made audible. Poetic Dramais extinct. And yet can Life be said to be even approximately mimicked byanything less than poetry? Emotions we have enough of and to spare—emotionsand sensations! But these are not poetry. These are but the heavy,raw, crude, chemical protoplasm of poetry. Thus the only plays of our timewhich are beautiful and successful and true to the life-instinct are Farces.Farces need not be poetical. They represent the kicking up of satyr-heelsround the outer circle of the Dionysian grove. They represent the insurgentrebellion of the humorous mob against all law or rule. And as such they areadmirable. As such they have their place. Indeed they are all that is left ofadmirable in our modern Theatre. They are our only contribution to thisworld-old act of worship—the contribution of beautifully kicking up ourheels! Putting aside Wagner and Strauss and half-a-dozen Latin Opera-Makers,what has our stage got which really answers to the religious exigencyof which I am speaking? Nothing but Farce, nothing but Satyr-heels! Devotedrevivals of Gilbert and Sullivan restore to us our youth once in a longseason and Fanny’s First Play and Pygmalion hit our tired heathen fancy.But for the rest—! Hyperborean morbidities technically adjusted to bourgeoisdrawing-rooms with snow-avalanches muttering at the window, areindeed enough to make unlaid troublesome ghosts of the great psychologicalnames of Ibsen and Strindberg. But psychology, whether it dissect the oldBourgeois Family or the New Feminist Lure, is, after all, only a transitoryanalysis of ephemeral situations. It does not spring from what, in the relationsbetween Man and Woman, is eternal and unchangeable. It does notturn into dramatic poetry the long cry of our common fate. The pathological“macabrism” of Ibsen and Strindberg dissolves like mephitic scum whenthe eternal constellations, under which Job and David and Sophocles wrote,mount up through the deep hushed air. Mr. Browne has an artist’s and anIrishman’s passion for Synge—but he knows better than we could tell himthat gaelic Mythology is not classical Mythology and gaelic poetry is notUniversal poetry. And so we return to the one old Path—the one undyingTradition. We literally return to it. For, after all their lovely and alluringexperiments in a hundred directions, the great work of The Little Theatre—untilMr. Browne writes his own epoch-making Poetic Play—is, as we allconfess, the revival of Euripides. It is here and only here that The LittleTheatre of Chicago rouses itself, through every nerve and vein of its corporatebody, to grand and undistracted reciprocity. And here we are inthe presence of a true Renaissance: a Renaissance as authentic and deep asthat which the fifteenth century stumbled upon. The truth of what I amsaying will be sealed, for the few who understand this “open secret,” by thefact of the instinctive preference displayed, not only by the director but bythe whole company, for The Trojan Women, over the less universal, theless classical, the more modern Medea.

No one who has a real insight into what Poetic Drama means—PoeticDrama the highest of all human Arts—can hesitate for a moment as towhere The Little Theatre rises to a permanent and tradition-making height.It rises to such a height in its performance of The Trojan Women. Andit does so because here and here alone, by reason of the universal natureof the subject—nothing less in fact than the incarnation of World’s Sorrow—everymember of the company is touched and attuned and compelled andtransfigured to the same ultimate Pity.

It is not only of “Ilion” we think, it is not only for “Ilion” we weep, inthose world-deep choruses; we weep for all the sons and daughters of men,doomed by the same doom, who “must endure”—with Argive Helen—“theirgoing hence, even as their coming hither.” The magical Irish “plummet”of Synge does not, cannot, sound much depth;—and before the bowed figuresof those world-mourners, carved as if by the chisel of Pheidias, our pathologicalHyperborean Phantoms go squeaking, bat-like, to oblivion.

When, in the future, Poetic Drama once more attains the position towhich the self-preservative instincts of humanity entitle it, it will be recognizedfor what it is—the true religious focussing of man’s permanent protestagainst Fate—lifted above the dust of all ephemeral questioning. It willthen be seen that in Poetic Drama, rather than in the noblest sacraments ofReligion, the race must find its orchestral unity, the rhythm of its naturaland Tragic breathing. And when this is seen, and the history of the thingwritten, The Chicago Little Theatre, its directors and its company, willreceive (too late, as always, for personal relief) their delayed appreciation.

It would be unjust, in any such tentative anticipation of Time’s verdictas these pages suggest, to praise Maurice Browne at the expense of thosewho so wonderfully work with him. We may have our European blood, ourEuropean Formalism; but, after all, our stage is an American stage, ourcompany an American company. In estimating the actual contribution ofindividual members of the company, to the Idea behind it, it were wise tobe cautious and discreet. Any praise of a particular performer must needsfall a little discordantly when a certain impersonal rhythmic orchestrationis the note of the whole matter. No such faux-pas is risked in the mentionof three names. This “Chicago Renaissance” in which Maurice Browneplays the part of the golden-mouthed Mirandola hath also its young Angelo,“seeking the soul” of light and form and color. The work that has beendone is so much, after all, a matter of technical inspiration, that to omit thename of Raymond Johnson from its annals were to write the history ofFlorence without alluding to Michele. Chicago may indeed regard itself,for all its chaotic tumult, as the Tuscan City of America; for nowhere elseis so pure a flame, of single-hearted devotion to Beauty, burning on this sideof the Atlantic! And with the name of Raymond Johnson, the artist of thecompany, it is necessary to link that of Edward Moseman, its greater actor.It is strange that it should have been left to a wandering European—and yetperhaps not strange!—to make audible the prediction, which all discerningdramatic critics must inevitably be making in their hearts, that in not sovery many years Mr. Moseman will be recognized, from shore to shore, asthe most interesting and most personally-arresting player that this countryhas produced since Booth.

That a genius of his peculiarly idiosyncratic type should have beenmagnetized—against his will—into the “formalism” of the One Tradition, isabout as good an evidence as could be found of the power and conviction ofMaurice Browne’s impersonal Ideal!

The third name I may be allowed to mention, without impertinent intrusioninto orchestral harmonies, is the name of Miss Vera White. I am notnow referring to Miss White’s untiring constructive labor upon what onemight call “the architectural scaffolding” of The Little Theatre’s productions.I am referring to her personal genius as an actress. Nothing more natural,nothing more inevitable, nothing more winning and seductive, than thisgentle actress’s rendering of the wronged mother in Mrs. Ellis’s CornishPlay could be possibly imagined. And the same enchanting qualities ofdirect self-effacing emotion will no doubt be even more irresistible when, ina classic role, she comes to play the Nurse in Medea. Of Ellen Van Volkenburg’sown acting in this classic Renaissance which she is helping her husbandto summon from “the vasty deep,” I cannot speak; for I have onlyseen her in those charming “genre” plays where she loves, mischievouslyenough, to transform herself, like a witch-fairy, into every mortal kind ofdream-person! But I know enough of her to know at least one aspect ofher October-shadowy moods, which will make us tremble before her Medea!

Well! The Euphorion—the child of this encounter of Past and Presenthas yet to grow his full wings. He is still a “Ge-Uranic,” a Child-Angel.But those who have had the fortune of being present at the scene of his highengendering will never forget their privilege. “It is a long way” to theshores of Troas from the shores of our Chicago Lake; but for one wandererat least the great goddess of the Gallery of the Louvre has not worked herspells in vain. Still, with the Elizabethan, we can cry aloud to her throughthe mists of many journeyings: “Her lips suck forth my soul. See whereit flies.”

George Soule

Mrs. Ellis’s Gift to Chicago

Mary Adams Stearns

Love, eugenics, marriage, are not three questions, but merely differentaspects of the one great sex problem, which, according to Mrs. HavelockEllis, must be solved within the hearts and souls of men and women andnot by the acts of any legislative body. Those who braved the wind and therain to hear this well known writer and thinker talk about “Sex andEugenics” were filled with sharp expectancy as she stepped forward to speak—ashort woman about fifty years old, with iron gray hair cut close to herhead, piercing blue eyes, eloquent hands and a low voice, wonderfullymodulated and seemingly as tireless as her poised, vigorous body; yet expectationseldom fulfills the bright dreams it dangles before our eyes. We letourselves be carried away with enthusiasm, and then are hurt because ourvisions lack fulfillment. Some expected too much.

Chicago has welcomed Mrs. Ellis warmly, yet within this cordiality therehave been hidden germs of fear, unreasonable hopes, slavish admiration,mental indifference and misunderstanding—it is always so. She is withoutquestion in the foremost ranks of women thinkers, and behind her, tryingmore or less sincerely to gain an understanding of the great truths that sheteaches and upholds, are hordes of women—curious, broad-minded, bigoted,desperate, frightened, sane thinkers, and sentimentalists; women who areeconomic slaves and others who are financially independent. What doesMrs. Ellis mean to each one of them? What message, if any, has she brought?Has she added anything vital and new to our store of sex and eugenicknowledge which is already burdened with much mediocre and even valuelessinformation?

Nothing but death could have kept me away from her lecture in OrchestraHall February 4th—to which after considerable unnecessary hesitationmen were admitted. Although I knew that I was approaching a burningbush I felt it was doomed to be hidden in a cloud of misapprehension, disappointment,and disapproval, and I walked gingerly with my mind open andunprejudiced and alert. I was fully as eager to catch the atmosphere of theaudience, to fathom the thoughts of the thousand odd brains that listened,as I was to see and hear Mrs. Ellis herself.

The lecture was an event. The dignity, the lack of sensationalism,the quiet earnestness of what was said revealed a force at work in the worldas steady and inevitable as the glacier’s erosion of the Swiss hills. Yet thisquality of Mrs. Ellis’s mind is shown in all she writes and is shared by allwho read her pages. Her great gift to Chicago was her personality. Itgleamed through every word she spoke and blazed into a pure white flame,that seemed by its very intensity to create a new heaven and a new earthwhere love shall rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of souls and bodies consumedby a misunderstood and misused passion.

There were well-known and influential women who stayed away fromthe lecture because they were afraid—afraid of the truth. Because in theirblindness they could not see behind the cheap sensationalism of certainnewspapers and understand the spiritual purity for which Mrs. Ellis hasalways stood. Yet their absence showed them not so much cowards aswomen incapable of reaching the great white lights of life.

Then there were women who came to the lecture expecting to beshocked; and they went away disappointed. There were women who camelaughing and gossiping; and they went away still laughing and wonderingwhat all the fuss was about anyway. They could not see anything extraordinary;it was all rather commonplace and not altogether new.

And a few came quietly, knowing that they were to contact a greatearnest and wonderful personality; who above all her broad wisdom standsfor the highest ideals that humanity knows—a little woman with a big mind.These went away thoughtfully, and were satisfied, for they understood.

They felt as well as did Mrs. Ellis herself what could and what couldnot be said on a public platform to a gathering of more than a thousandprejudiced and in some cases antagonistic listeners. They had in their minds,as of course she had also, knowledge of the many scientific volumes that herhusband has written. Those familiar with Havelock Ellis were betterprepared to listen than the others. They were grounded in the facts andscience of sex which has never been disclosed as he has done it, and thosewho have read his pages know that in them he is the complete scientist,weighing, comparing, crediting, and discrediting the facts that have come tohim. In no way are his sex studies propagandic—they are a tremendousreservoir of static power. It has been for his wife and co-worker, she ofindependent mind and high purpose, to take all this vast collection of scientificinformation in her small hands, crush out the sordidness, the misery,the heart-sickening perversions and distortions of human lives and holdingup the bright ideals, fling them out to her listeners in phrases burning withhope for both men and women and faith that true love will make everythingwhole.

She did not pose as a righter of personal grievances or a solver ofprivate woes. The individual was lost in the group; details were submergedin generalities; isolated examples made way for guiding principles. WhenMrs. Ellis said “We must improve our knowledge if we would improve ourmorals” and that there can be no guide to right living except that whichcomes from within, she gave us the key to happiness.

If one might guess, she is a little impatient with laws and quite out ofsympathy with those who, knowing but little themselves, try to bind othersby rules and regulations which often defeat the very ends for which theywere made. “What we want is more eugenics by education, and less eugenicsby legislation” she cried; and what she implied many times was that whenwe come to regard sex love as one of the greatest manifestations of the soul—notone of the offensive expressions of the body—then and then only shallwe have eugenic babies and happy men and women.

Mrs. Ellis referred to the sex function as a “great spiritual enterprise”and said that only through the conflict of ideals can progress be made. With“courage, sanity, and cleanliness” in our hearts we must “cease to regardsex as mere animalism,” and must “forge passion into power.” “The sexfunction is divine fire,” it is “as much an affair of the soul as of the body”and “it is no more disgraceful to function on the sex plane than on thehunger plane or on the thirst plane.” She sees that only in the economic independenceof women can sex relations be righted—love and money must becompletely divorced. Any form of barter, whether lawfully within marriageor unlawfully outside of marriage, is fatal to the free giving of love. Sexlove must exist only where there is affinity—never where there is questionof possession. Only by being economically free can a woman raise herselfabove the rank of a prostitute.

Mrs. Ellis spoke of our changing ideals; that what is normal for theape is gross for the average man and woman, and that what has been acceptedas inevitable by ordinary men and women will be utterly intolerable to thesuper men and women of the near future. “The woman of the future willbe the high priestess of sense, not the victim of sensuality as she now is.”“She will learn to love beautifully and live joyfully.” She referred to theway our bodies have sunk into disrepute ever since Greek times until to thePuritans everything was impure and emphasized the fact that “our bodiesand our souls are not enemies, but mates.”

Mrs. Ellis could not in a lecture of this sort have touched upon specialsexual situations. She was raising the standards of purity, right living, andsanity; she was creating ideals, she was destroying sordidness, she was upholdingthe sanctity of knowledge and holiness of a love that is free to giveor withhold. She was showing women their weakness and pointing outwhere men have been tyrannical; she was creating a divine dissatisfaction inevery soul that heard her. She was the angel fearing to tread where legislativeand police fools rush in and slash about with the sword of reform.

“Create in us clean hearts and our bodies will take care of themselves,”seemed to be her prayer. She showed the goals of happiness and rightliving; revealed that her own life had proved these things and found themgood. Those who went away disappointed were those who expected her tolay down rules and say “This shall you do and that, but not the other thing.”But that is not Mrs. Ellis’s way. She shows us what it is possible to do, butshe distinctly leaves it to every individual to find his or her own way, unhamperedby law, and free to make mistakes if unavoidable. She pointsout that some of the world’s greatest geniuses have been neurotics, as OscarWilde, Michael Angelo, Chopin, Rosa Bonheur, Nietszche. We must makeour own paths by looking within, not trusting to man-made laws and customs.

Those who found the lecture vague and unsatisfactory must increasetheir knowledge, not expect a woman to tell in thirty-five minutes all she haslearned in thirty-five years. Was it not enough for her to confess that wemust engage in the sex relation with a “fine passionateness and spiritualdeviltry”? Was it not enough for her to set up the ideal that the sex functionis the “great spiritual enterprise”? Was it not enough for her to set beforemen and women the highest ideals that the human mind had yet conceived?And was it not enough to look at and to listen to a woman who knowswhereof she speaks and who has lived all that she teaches?

She has found her way through the same clouds of prejudice andprudery that surround us, and to us of Chicago she has given the greatprivilege of sharing with her what she called the proudest moment of herlife and of listening to what, for the first time in her life, she could freelysay. Those looking for cheap sensations will not find them in Mrs. Ellis.Those trying to limit human action by passing laws will receive no help fromher words. Those hampered by conventions and shackled by fear of thetruth must be born again into the beauty and holiness of every side of humanlife before they can even see the heights whereon Mrs. Ellis stands. Letthose who would find happiness for themselves and a happy issue out of thesufferings of the men and women and children and unborn babes, look intotheir own hearts and bravely face what is there.

Women have always run away from anything sexual as unwomanly.She must face her own nature; she must learn that to most women “the seximpulse is the hunger of her soul”; she must study men and find a way toraise them from the errors into which they have fallen. She must cease tobe a prude, and learn to be brave, patient, wise; she must study, read andthink. Nothing is unwomanly save dishonesty, and until women are honestenough and fearless enough to face what is within themselves, neither Mrs.Ellis nor anyone else can help them. Mrs. Ellis is a leader, not a driver, andbecause she has found life good she is an inspiration which no woman canafford to disregard.

Mrs. Ellis’s Failure

Margaret C. Anderson

There was one great fault to be found with Mrs. Ellis’s lecture: it wasnot illuminating. It might have failed in any number of other ways andstill have been a real contribution; but it should not have dared to fall shortin that respect, because Mrs. Ellis came forward in the role of one who hasa message and because she chose a subject upon which one must have amessage or not talk at all. What Mrs. Ellis did is the kind of thing againstwhich our generation has its deepest grudge, and it constitutes a veryspecial case of what we mean when we talk so heatedly about Truth. Wemean nothing startling by that:—simply that quality which some one hashad the good sense to call “releasing.”

A few days before the lecture Mrs. Ellis said that she might as wellcall her talk anything except merely “Sex and Eugenics,” because shemeant to discuss love, spiritually, sex abnormalities, and many other matters.“I have read all my husband’s manuscripts before they were publishedand I know he has never told anything but the truth about sex,” shesaid. “I have waited some thirty years to talk about these things, and Ishall tell the truth as I know it, if I am sent to jail or put out of Chicagofor it.” On another occasion she said that she meant to talk of those peoplewho, through perverted or inverted sexual tendencies, faced the problem ofhaving to turn their abnormality—perhaps their gift of genius, if we understoodthese things better—into creative channels. Because of all this it wasonly natural to expect a message from Mrs. Ellis.

But what actually happened was this: Dr. W. A. Evans opened themeeting by reading a short paper on Havelock Ellis—a paper full ofpompous phrases and of real interest in its utter lack of thought. He gavesome biographical data which everyone knew, told the dates of Mr. Ellis’svarious publications, repeated the chapter titles of one of his less importantworks, and really said nothing at all. Then Mrs. Ellis read a paper whichher husband had written especially for the occasion—the most uninterestingthing that wonderful man has ever written, I am sure. It had a lot ofabstractions about masculinism and feminism, and really said nothing atall. (I use the word “nothing” on a basis of Ideas.) Then Mrs. Ellis readher own paper, which was beautifully written and charmingly delivered, andwhich said nothing at all. She said in brief that there should be no warbetween body and soul, and that Oscar Wilde should have been understoodrather than sent to jail. These things are not ideas; they are common sense.They are all quite simply recognized by thinking people; and most of Mrs.Ellis’s audience was composed of thinking people who wanted her individualphilosophy on these matters. They were not asking her for art butfor thought—not for expression but for meaning. Her failure was of thesort of which prophets are never guilty.

Of course, Mrs. Ellis may not wish to be considered a prophet or aphilosopher. Then there should not have been so much talk of offering acompletely new view of sex. She may regard herself as a poet, an interpreter.Very well; then she should have given a substantial vision of afuture state when love in all its aspects is valued and understood. Mrs.Ellis cannot be blamed for the sensational stories in the paper. Her suggestionthat men be admitted to the lecture because they need education inthis field as much as women need it, was made simply and without anythought of sensation. Everybody knows what the press will make of suchmaterial as that. And everybody knows how an organization managedexclusively by women is likely to be twisted into silly, sentimental, or maliciousissues. But Mrs. Ellis can be blamed for that attitude which promisesmore than it has to give, and very seriously blamed for that spirit whichhints that there may be cause for shame where there is no cause. Therehas been something altogether too suggestive of “Did my lecture shockyou?” in Mrs. Ellis’s attitude. These things are not shocking; they arebeautiful or terrible, according as they are understood or misrepresented,but so long as the truth about them is faced squarely they should carry nohint of shock. The only test of an “emerged personality” is its arrival at apoint where it is not shocked by anything human beings may do or be. Youmay be deeply moved or terribly hurt, but you are not merely offended orembarrassed or startled. All that brings things down to such a little scale.I don’t know just why, but Mrs. Ellis’s attitude has reminded me of the manwho advised me not to read Havelock Ellis’s volumes on the psychology ofsex, because after such an experience I could never respect human beingsagain. If he had been ignorant or puritanical his remark wouldn’t havemattered; but he was a rather well-known sexologist and he believed thosebooks to be very valuable! What he meant was that it is “so disillusioning”to know the truth. If Mrs. Ellis were that sort of person these things Iobject to wouldn’t matter in the least. As it is, they matter hugely. Herfailure to assume that knowledge is too important a thing to concern itselfwith people’s pruderies is on a par with the man’s failure to recognize thattruth is never disastrous.

Nearly all the people in Orchestra Hall that night had read Ellis andCarpenter and Weininger and other scientists, and they expected to hearhow far Mrs. Ellis’s personal views coincided or disagreed with theseauthorities. But she had no intention of such elucidation, it seems. Shedidn’t say what she thought about free love, free divorce, social motherhood,birth-control, the sex “morality” of the future, or any of these things.On the other side of the question, in her reference to intermediate types,she didn’t mention hom*osexuality; she had nothing to say about the differencesbetween perversion and inversion, nor did she even hint at Carpenter’ssocial efforts in behalf of the hom*osexualist. What does Mrs. Ellis thinkabout Weininger’s statement that intermediate sexual forms are “normal,not pathological phenomena, in all classes of organisms, and their appearanceis no proof of physical decadence?” Does she agree with him, in his referenceto the idea that inversion is an acquired character and one that hassuperseded normal sexual impulses, when he says, “It might equally besought to prove that the sexual inclination of a normal man for a normalwoman was an unnatural, acquired habit. In the abstract there is no differencebetween the normal and the inverted type. In my view all organismshave both hom*osexuality and heterosexuality.... In spite of allpresent-day clamor about the existence of different rights for different individualities,there is only one law that governs mankind just as there isonly one logic and not several logics. It is in opposition to that law as wellas to the theory of punishment according to which the legal offense, not themoral offense, is punished, that we forbid the hom*osexualist to carry on hispractices whilst we allow the heterosexualist full play, so long as bothavoid open scandal. Speaking from the standpoint of a purer state ofhumanity and of a criminal law untainted by the pedagogic idea of punishmentas a deterrent, the only logical and rational method of treatment forsexual inverts would be to allow them to seek and obtain what they requirewhere they can, that is to say, among other inverts.” It is not enough torepeat that Shakespeare and Michael Angelo and Alexander The Great andRosa Bonheur and Sappho were intermediates: how is this science of thefuture to meet these issues? They move into the realm of the world’s sublimetragedies when one reads the manifesto of a community of such peoplein Germany:—“The rays of sunshine in the night of our existence are sorare that we are responsive and deeply grateful for the least movement, forevery single voice that speaks in our favor in the forum of mankind.” Mrs.Ellis may have thought her audience entirely too unsophisticated, too untutoredin these matters, to admit of specific treatment. But that is allthe greater reason to talk plainly. When you reflect how difficult it is forthe mass to become educated about sex it becomes rather appalling. It isworth your life to get Havelock Ellis’s six volumes from a bookstore or alibrary. You can only do it with a doctor’s certificate or something of thatsort. Even if you ask for Weininger you are taken behind locked doors,forced to swear that you want it out of no “morbid curiosity,” that you willkeep it only a week, and above all that you won’t let anyone else read it.Of course, it is practically impossible to do work of this sort under theauspices of women’s medical leagues or similar organizations. But Mrs.Ellis had dared the impossible. I can’t help comparing her with anotherwoman whose lecture on such a subject would be big, brave, beautiful....I am criticised for having too much about this other woman in TheLittle Review; so “not to mention any names,” as the story goes, I willmerely say that Emma Goldman could never fail in this way.

It is not a question of what could or could not be said on a public platform;it is a question of what should be said. If the findings of scienceare not to be made accessible, we must all find ourselves in the position ofRousseau when he said that the renascence of the arts and sciences hadnot ennobled morals. Isn’t that almost as true now as then? A week ago,as I write, a young man named Roswell Smith was hanged in Chicago forhaving strangled a four-year-old girl. He had no recollection of the murder,and his father’s testimony brought out the fact that the boy had alwaysbeen epileptic. Since he must die for his “crime”—oh, the heart-breakingtragedy of his quiet acceptance of that hellish law!—Smith begged thathe be allowed to die under the knife, so that at least humanity might benefitby an examination of his brain. But, no—he must be hanged: Justicemust be done, the public wrath appeased, the penalty held up to othercriminals, prevention enforced again by methods which don’t prevent! Thegovernor, unwilling to risk public indignation, salved his conscience by thetestimony of one alienist who pronounced Smith “sane.” And so the boypaid the penalty, to the accompaniment of Psalms and readings from theWord—the “Light of the world!” ... And sixty people watched themurder and not a voice was raised in protest. Think of it!—or rather don’tthink of it unless you are willing to lose your mind with horror and shame.

How far have we advanced when things like this can still happenamong us? With us love is just as punishable as murder or robbery.Mrs. Ellis knows the workings of our courts; she knows of boys and girls,men and women, tortured or crucified every day for their love—because itis not expressed according to conventional morality. All this was part ofher responsibility on February 4th; and this is why I say she failed.

Eloise Briton

Richard Aldington

It is the defect of English, and in a lesser degree of American, criticismthat such criticisms as are not merely commercial are doctrinaire. Thecritic, that is to say, comes to judge a work of art not with an open mind butwith a whole horde of prejudices, ignorances, and eruditions which he terms“critical standards.” “A work of art,” you can hear him say, “must be this,must be that, must be the other,” when indeed a work of art may well be nosuch thing. Just now the cry is all for “modernity,” for lyrical outbursts inpraise of machinery, of locomotion, and of violence. And the “critics”obediently fill their minds with these prejudices until at length you discoverthem solemnly declaring that a work of art has no value except it treat ofmachinery, of locomotion or of kindred subjects! I have yet to find thecritic who approaches his job in the right spirit; who asks himself first, Whathas the artist attempted to do?, and then, Has he succeeded? The commercialcritic is of course the more reprehensible; the doctrinaire critic isnevertheless a serious menace to that liberty of the arts of which one cannotbe too jealous. In England especially the doctrinaire critic reigns. Yesterdayit was all Nietzsche; then Bergson; now there is a wild fight between adozen “isms,” combats between traditional imbeciles and revolutionary imbeciles.So that one spends half one’s time becoming an “ist” and the restof the time in getting rid of the title.

The neglect of the poems of the young American poet—H. D.—who isthe subject of this article, is due, I think to the following facts. The author,who apparently possesses a great degree of self-criticism, produces a verysmall bulk of work and most of it is lost in magazines; such work as attainedpublicity was judged, before being read, from its surroundings; the workbeing original, seemed obscure and wantonly destructive of classic Englishmodels (you must remember that there are very, very few people in Englandwho have the faintest idea of what is meant by vers libre); the use of initialsrather frightened people; and the author had no friends among the professionalcritics.

Now America has this advantage over most European countries that itsinhabitants are mostly willing to accept a fresh view of things. The lack ofa “tradition” has advantages as well as disadvantages. An American author,then, is less likely to see things in a conventional way, and is less likely to bedeterred from any novel and personal method of expression. (For in 1911,when H. D. began to write the poems I am considering, vers libre waspractically unheard of outside France.)

If I were asked to define the chief quality of H. D.’s work I should say:“I can only explain it by a paradox; it is a kind of accurate mystery.” AndI should go on to quote the ballad of Sir Patric Spens in which from acloudy, vague, obscure atmosphere, where nothing is precise, where there isno “story,” no obvious relation between the ideas, certain objects stand outvery sharply and clearly with a very keen effect, objects like “the bluid-redwine,” “the braid letter,” the young moon in the old moon’s arms, and theladies with “their fans intil their hands.” And then I should go on to saythat this “accurate mystery” came from the author’s brooding over—notlocomotives and machinery—but little corners of gardens, a bit of astream in some Pennsylvanian meadow, from memories of afternoons alongthe New Jersey coast, or of a bowl of flowers. Curious, mysterious, ratherobscure sort of broodings with startling and very accurate renderings ofdetail. And then I should explain the author’s use of Hellenic terms and ofthe rough unaccented metres of Attic choruses and Melic lyrics—like thosefragments of Alcaeus and Ibycus and Erinna—by pointing out that it is inthose poems—the choruses in the Bacchae, for example—that this particularkind of brooding over nature found its best expression.

Let me quote a portion of a poem to illustrate these qualities: the qualitywhich I have called “accurate mystery,” the quality of brooding over natureand the quality of spontaneous kinship with certain aspects of Hellenicpoetry. I take it that, if one liked to be specifically modern the poem couldbe called “Wind on the New Jersey Coast.” But the author’s innate senseof mystery, of aloofness, just like that of the anonymous author of SirPatric Spens, makes her place the action in some vague, distant place andtime. Though it be contrary to current opinion I hold that the poem gainsby this.

I am not willing to have that poem read quickly and cursorarily, as onereads a column of newspaper print. It must be read with some of the close,intense attention with which it was written. Each word and phrase weremost carefully considered and arranged. The reader must remember thatthe object of such writing is not to convey information but to create in thereader a mood, an emotion, a sense of atmosphere. Mr. Yeats is right whenhe complains that newspapers have spoiled our sense of poetry; we expectpoetry to tell us some piece of news, and indeed poetry has no news to tellanyone. Its object is simply to arouse an emotion, and no emotion is everaroused in a person who skims through a piece of poetry as he skims througha journal.

When I read that poem I have evoked in me a picture—like a pictureof Courbet or Boudin—of a white sea roaring on to yellow sands under abright sky, with the wind sweeping and whistling in the dunes. And I havea feeling that it is a magic sort of picture, of somewhere a great way off,where it would not surprise me to find the image of a god at the cross-roads,with the offerings of simple people about the pedestal. And at the sametime I always remember bathing from some sand-dunes near Rye, in Sussex,on a very windy afternoon, when the sand blinded me and the sharp grasscut my ankles as I ran down to the water.

I cannot, of course, tell what sort of an effect such writing has on otherpeople. It may be that I am especially sensitive to it. But let me quoteanother of the author’s poems, conveying a totally different mood.

If you ask me to say precisely what that “means” I could only explain it inthis way. When I read that poem I experience the emotions I should expectto receive if I were lying in a sunny meadow on some hot late Septemberafternoon—somewhere far inland, where there would be a great silencebroken very gently by the rustle of the heavy headed grass and by the stir offalling beech leaves—somewhere so far inland, somewhere so hot, that itwould come as a shock of delighted surprise to think of a “cool god in achamber under Lycia’s far coast.” It does not annoy me that I have neverbeen to Lycia, that I have no more idea who Sitalkas and Argestes were thanwho Sir Patric Spens was; it is all one; I get my impression just the same,which, I take it, is what the author aimed at. And indeed the odd unknownnames give it a very agreeable sense of mystery and of aloofness.

Such are some of the qualities of the work of the young American whohides her identity under the initials H. D. I believe her work is quite unknownin America, though, before the war, I remember seeing some comment on itin a French literary paper. It was in another French review that a criticcomplained that this author was not interested in aeroplanes and factorychimneys. Somehow I feel quite coldly about factory chimneys when I readsudden intense outbursts of poetry like those I have quoted and like this:

Ten Grotesques

Arthur Davison Ficke

I. WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS

II. THE PRUDENT LOVER

III. A POETRY-PARTY

IV. PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED GENTLEMAN

V. PORTRAIT OF THE INCOMPARABLE JOHN COWPERPOWYS, ESQ.

VI. TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON

VII. IN A BAR ROOM

VIII. THE DEVIL AMONG THE TAILORS

IX. THE NEWEST BELIEVER

X. SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL

Huntley Carter

It has been clear to me for some time that a new standard of art criticismis needed to assist the present-day revaluation of Art. A constant examinationof advanced pictures has shown me that the key to revaluationresides in the ultimate effect attained by the new “masters.” In studyingthis effect I have become aware of certain facts. (1) The effect is one ofsolid motion at a greater intensity than is found in actuality. It is solidmotion actually exaggerated. (By solid motion, I mean motion expressedby actual forms.) (2) The greater the intensity the more it tends to obliterateactuality. (3) There is a fluid motion behind phenomena. This motioninforms phenomena but loses its intensity when it becomes phenomenalized.It changes its character from fluid motion to solid motion, as though undergoinga process of conversion similar to that by which water is frozen intoice. (4) The meaning of the attainment of the said effect would thereforeseem to be that solid motion, as expressed by artists, is being melted intofluid motion, as ice is melted into water, and water is, in turn, converted intosteam. Moreover, the solid motion is being melted by the higher intensity ofthe fluid motion. In other words fluid motion is converting solid motioninto its own flow, or that from whence solid motion came. The conclusionis that the quest for intensity is a sign that artists are awakening to a feelingfor fluid motion behind solids.

Perhaps artists are becoming purer mediums. It is conceivable that therevolt against academic formulae and the consequent movement towardsneo-primitivism, have had a refining influence. In ridding artists of certainforms of culture and convention, they have removed inner obstacles to theintense stream-line flow or fluid motion, and have made them accessibleto the motion itself. Hence the present-day pursuit of abstraction in paintingand the tendency of representative forms (i. e.: solids) to disappearfrom the canvas and to be replaced by non-representative forms (i. e.:fluids). As an example I may point to the shadowy forms pursued byKandinsky. It is true that many of Kandinsky’s studies do not containevidence of fluid motion working freely through the artist and tracingits own designs on his canvas. In his earlier studies he certainly expressessolids. He puts down forms which the conventional memory recognizes ashaving a relation to the known, and thereby defeats his own object. But hisrecent studies exhibit a refining away of solids and a larger feeling forfluidity, that leads one to believe the artist is striving for a true dream-likestate in which the fluid motion is left to express itself at its own degree ofintensity. Whether he will ever attain this state is uncertain as yet, especiallyin view of the intellectual attitude of his writings. In Spiritual Harmony, forinstance, he is seen working out a scheme of color thus showing he hopesto produce an effect upon the spectator by the use of a mathematical formula.He has evidently conceived the theory that certain colors are equivalentto certain emotions and by adding or subtracting color he can add or subtractan emotion to or from the spectator. Thus yellow equals joy, but addred to the yellow and the effect will be joy tinged with passion. In this waythe fluid motion actuating Kandinsky is bound to be subjected to theoreticaltreatment instead of being left free to do its own work. The emotion ofjoy in passing through the painter on its way to the spectator will be subjectedto mental checks, with the result that it will be deprived of its greatestvalue in its original intensity.

The study of the aforementioned facts led me in turn to new views onArt, (a) as to the origin and nature of Art, (b) as to the order, intelligibility,and coherence that exist in the natural manifestations of Art, (c) as to thelaw of growth and progression to be applied to art forms, (d) as to theillumination of this law by a proper standard of criticism. Accordingly Icame to see that Art is a potential creative movement in space. It first existsin the fluid motions of the universe and ultimately in a work of art only asthe inevitable and efficient expression of itself through a specially adaptedmedium called the artist. In a metaphysical sense, Art may be said to be aspiritual experience capable of assuming visibility. But it becomes visibleonly by a process of debasem*nt. Apparently, as I have said, the fluidmotion in which Art expresses itself loses its intensity and becomes solidmotion in the process of conversion into a work of art, as applied by allcivilized artists (as far as we know) up to the present day. In fact, it isonly recent years that have witnessed the discovery by the artist of thefluid motion potential in solid motion. Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Goghwere among the first of the moderns to arrive at the point of realizing thispotential character. All three were actively engaged in the refining of solidsand suggesting their potential ultimate fluidity. What they actually did wasthis. They demonstrated that Art is a fluid motion seeking to produce anultimate creative effect upon the spectator through efficient application, andthat fluid motion can only produce its creative effect as fluid motion. Now,largely owing to blindness or wrong direction, artists, with rare exceptions,have hitherto concerned themselves with converting fluid motion into variousforms of solid motion. They have in fact stopped at the expression ofrepresentative forms of nature and human life, apparently unconsciousthat in doing so they were not completing the expression of the art flow,but were stopping at a half-way house, so to speak, where of course themaximum creative effect could not be produced. Before this effect can beproduced it is necessary to complete the journey by reconverting the solidsinto fluid motion. It cannot be said that either Cezanne, Van Gogh, orGauguin completed the magic journey. But if they did not refine away thesolids in their canvases and set them going as fluid motion, if they putdown forms recognizable as houses, men, trees, and so on, they certainlyexhibited such forms undergoing a process of melting. In Van Gogh’scanvases the forms are simply being melted by the fierce internal intensityto which the artist is subjecting them. Van Gogh, perhaps more than anyof his contemporaries, shows us known forms in the act of being convertedinto their original fluid motion. And it is for this reason, I think, VanGogh’s pictures produce a greater creative effect upon the spectator thanany merely representative forms of art. We experience in them a rush ofliberated energy due to the change from solidity to fluidity.

So much for the new conception of the origin and nature of Art. Withregard to the principles by which Art moves towards its ultimate effect, Ibelieve they are analogous to those by which an unseen agency assumesvisibility in natural forms. There is the same order, intelligibility, andcoherence throughout. Corresponding to the invariable order of growth andprogression in a plant as represented by the seed (enclosing the life andunifying principle) stem, branches, leaves and fruit, is the order of ascent,or perhaps it should be descent, by which Art takes concrete form. Firstthere is the initial flow, then the root-point answering to the seed or unifyingprinciple, then follow in turn, lines, planes, and solids. The fruit and thesolids appear to be the culmination of the initial flow, but really they containa potential power of growth in a realizable fluid motion. This abstractmotion has ever since the start been descending and slackening into solidmotion, and its forms have become more and more concrete as they attainedactuality. Behind these actual forms, it is clear, there is the potentiality offurther movement and growth which in our limited state of intelligence weconceive of as realisable only on the original lines. If there is an infinitegrowth and development inherent in actual forms very few persons areaware of it. Indeed most persons are aware only of particular growth. Tothem growth begins with the seed and stops with the fruit or its art expressionas fruit, and the only form of continuation is to be found in repetition.The old process must be repeated from seed to fruit. According to thisview the phenomena of growth as expressed by art-forms is manifestedin a succession of parallel movements and not in one continuous and ever-expandingmovement. Generally speaking, things are transferred to canvasas they appear, particular solids, not infinite fluids as they are. If they havea life principle in them it is carefully concealed, for they suggest no powerof infinite growth. It would seem indeed as though art-expression, duringcivilized times, has reached a deadlock. For it is noticeable that throughoutall the great periods of art-expression, artists have expressed the same things.In the canvases of the old masters a flow of solids manifests itself withdepressing regularity. Time, one might think, would have lifted the soul ofthe artist out of solid space. But, as we know, the feverish desire to expressa too solid world has not grown less till of recent years. It may be dueto this deadlock that art criticism has seldom risen above mediocrity. Howindeed could it reach the highest creative achievement of the critical mind ifworks of art lack the creative principle to be judged? The creative criticcannot possibly build his house of illumination without the essential fundamentalmaterials. And these the artist must provide. He cannot illuminatethe non-existent. And if there are no creative elements to work uponcriticism is bound to fall and remain far below the creative standard. Itwill be uncertain and chaotic in its judgments. History says it is so, and notwithout proof. It shows us that the art judgment of one age has been sufficientto reverse the art judgment of a previous age. Yet Art itself doesnot change. If it is badly expressed at any time it is badly expressed forall time. Therefore the said fluctuating judgment has but one interpretation.It means that the judgment itself is at fault, and much of the art criticismto which art critics have given utterance is worthless. The reason is apparent.Art criticism is not based upon a fundamental principle. There isno established law of art criticism.

Of course I shall be told there is no such law to establish, because itdoes not exist and never will exist. The art critic has been and will continueto be guided by his conscious experience. And as such experience variesfrom age to age, so judgment founded upon it varies also. But a statementso independent of common sense is plainly nonsense. The law to whichI refer is within the critic just as it is within the artist. It does not alwaysoperate because it is not allowed to do so. It is hindered by conscious experience.Actually the law is the artist, and if left to itself it would make anefficient application of itself to produce the highest creative effect of whichfluid motion is capable. Such is the unconscious method of using the law.The artist uses it not because he can or will but because he must. Hispicture producing is a work that can only be done in one way, not by thoughtand reason, not by compulsions and restraints, but through the livingness offree energies left free to find their own expressions through their ownchannels. His starting point, representing the seed of unity, is sensibility,and feeling if left alone will do everything to unite all parts of his vision, tobind and cement them together. The result would remain as an exampleof organic growth not limited to solid space but extended to a higher spaceas far as the emotional impulse in the artist can be expressed by the limitedmeans at his disposal. The question of how far the artist can use solid (thatis, dead) materials, paint brushes, and canvas, to reach a transcendentaleffect (effect of livingness) is one that I must leave for future consideration.

In such a result would be found evidence not only that there is a greatprinciple or law by which art operates and reaches its highest mark humanlypossible, but that it remains constant and true in the sensible artist and canbe traced running through all he does. If further evidence of the existenceof the law is needed I can point to the conscious use of it today by painterswho are seeking to give the facts of ordinary experience a non-representativecharacter, as though belonging to a world of abstraction. We know thatPicasso is busy converting everyday forms of his own contemporary surroundingsinto rhythmic shape from which all clichés have been carefullyeliminated. We know too that other painters following the epoch-makingexample of John D. Fergusson are boldly rhythmising the people and affairsof everyday life as though convinced that the big unified rhythmic design issymbolic of the intense movement by which Art moves and expresses itself.We see in their canvases an obvious attempt to give the widest expansion tothe fundamental rhythm of each subject treated. At first sight it appearsto be a step in the right direction, one leading away from the fallacy orblindness, which led the old masters to turn out wonderful patchworks bygiving each object in their canvases a structural unity of its own. Indeedit looks as though these painters have mastered the secret of binding a compositiontogether by a unified design springing from a central note thatexpands by spontaneous motion till it not only fills the canvas but passesout of it on a very wide sweep, and having order, intelligibility, and coherencein all its parts. It looks as though they have discovered the great law ofcreative organic unity of which I speak. Closer examination of their work,however, reveals it is not so. For one thing their pictures are not growthsfrom small beginnings to great ends, each the successive sweep of one curveexpanding in oneness from a root-point. It is true that the starting point inthem may be feeling, as with the work of the unconscious artist. But as soonas feeling has decided the start, knowledge and reason decide the rest. Theydecide what shapes and colors are to be selected and carefully related to thecentral shape and color. If the character of the subject is zigzag then thecomposition will take a zigzag course. If a sharp curve, then sharp curveswill be gathered from objects surrounding the central one and related to it.In fact the law of association is called in and kept busy throughout. Everythingin a picture is consciously associated just as a builder associates thematerials of a house. Intuition is checked by reason.

So we find one principle being applied alike by conscious and unconsciousmethods. With this difference, that whereas the movement, growthand unity attained by the unconscious method is organic that reached by theconscious method is mechanical. It is the difference between the naturalgrowth of a plant and the artificial manufacture of one. The first is aprocess whereby the life flow organizes itself. The second a process ofeliminating the life flow. The one is mediumistic and spontaneous, the otheris volitional and mechanical.

What, it may be asked, is this principle or law? Briefly it is the law ofspiral growth and progression traceable in all natural phenomena. It is alaw which actuates human nature at its best and which shapes all work donein the finer way. If we wish to see how it operates we cannot do betterthan symbolize it in the form of a motion-curve starting from a point inspace and expanding in ever-widening curves. Thus:

This law may be found completely applied to one picture or it may be tracedrunning through a succession of pictures, each a part of a creative unity, thewhole manifesting the growth and development curve of the artist. In thefirst case the picture would have an organic unity of its own. In it the fluidmotion would be seen coming to fruition from the initial point of feeling toits fullest statement as vision at the highest pressure of fluid expression.Thus:

In the second case, each period of the artist’s work represent a sectionof the development-curve. By placing the sections together it is possible toview his work as a whole and to construct the course of development whichhe has undergone. And we can tell by the widest sweep of the curve preciselywhere he stands and how much he has detached himself from the world ofsolids. Thus:

Needless to say, this motion-curve may be applied as a standard of art-criticism.Indeed it is the business of art critics to experience this curve inthemselves and to apply it to all works of art. So far as I know it has neverbeen applied. When it is it will transform art criticism. For it will enablethe critic to judge whether a work is an inevitable growth of a movementinherent in the artist,—and to value it rightly and fully in its relation to thismovement,—or whether it is merely a bit of clever brain juggling.

I have not time nor space to illustrate in minute detail the truth andimportance of the application of this law to art-forms. But I may take oneconcrete instance of its existence and inevitableness, and of the growth andprogress that result whenever the artist happens to work under its guidance.I have within recent months seen the existence of this law and traced thecourse of its working in the studies of a new and comparatively unknowncomer in the world of painting. Here is a painter, Clarence E. King byname, who is undoubtedly working out his high destiny in terms of Art, atthe bidding of a force to whose direction he is willing to surrender himself.And he surrenders himself not because he has no judgment, no discriminatingsense of his own, but because he believes that the true artist workswithout volition. I know very little about Mr. King’s first experiences, butI can quite imagine that art-expression came to him as a bewildered dream.Perhaps he felt instinctively it was but an imaginary magician’s wand andthe effect it ever sought to produce was far above the limited measure ofthe artist’s dead materials. It was an effect that could only be attained inone way, not by stone, wood, or canvas, but by direct surrender to its livingness.I remember once receiving a letter from Mr. King in which he hintedat some such transcendental vision of Art and indicated its difficulties—bothaesthetic and economic. The latter will be seen to be very real whenI say that Mr. King is a poor man, that he has to engage in a mechanicalform of occupation which constantly opposes him with the dread of losingguidance and his real purpose, and of falling under the subjection of aimsand methods entirely opposed to his own. From the letter I learned that hebegan with a longing to attain the maximum intensity of expression and hehas ever since been impelled irresistibly towards this end. But the path wasnot easy, for it seems he became aware at an early period of the small measureof expression in the painter’s dead materials. He relates how one dayhe took his colors into the sun so that they should rival its livingness. Butwhen he looked at them (in the light of the sun) they were dead. Thenhe bought the most expensive paint, he kept his palette clean, he slept in theopen, watched the sunrise, absorbed its magic, and prepared himself and hismaterials in every way, as he thought, to express the fluid character of theexperience flowing through him. He grappled with powerful feelings andsought to fix them in form. To no purpose. Apparently there was a pointbeyond which paint, like words, could not go. The fault, however, was notaltogether in the materials. The artist too was to blame. He was a boystrenuously striving to transcend representative forms. But in doing sohe neglected one thing. He made no attempt to escape from the illusion ofvolume and solidity contained in solid space. In other words he tried totranscend solids by the process of merely copying solids. He tried to expressthe eternal livingness of a tree by painting an ephemeral tree. This is themeaning underlying the earliest example of his work. It accounts for theexpression of representative forms very slightly raised above actuality. Inthe second example the next upward sweep of the curve is apparent. Thepursuit of the maximum intensity of expression is maintained, with theresult that there is a further escape into fluid motion. And actuality becomesvery much exaggerated as by a hand that feels the stimulating impulse whichthe steadily increasing growth of an unknown power brings with it. Perhapsthe most noticeable characteristic of the second example is the attainment ofa greater freedom of expression. There is in consequence an increase ofintensity, and as intensity is the source of rhythm,—rhythm being but thenatural characteristic of what we call intensity—a greater manifestation ofrhythm. This rhythmic ascent, if I may call it so, marking the growth anddevelopment of intense expression, is continued in the third example. Theillusion of volume and solidity to be found in the other two examples isstill noticeable. But the flow is at a far higher pressure than in actuality,and if the painter is not yet fully afloat on fluid motion, he is certainly movingin the desired direction. He is in fact true to his widening curve.

It is too early to predict what degree of intensity of effect Mr. Kingwill ultimately attain. He is still a young man with an enviable future beforehim. And he approximates more and more towards an unconscious methodof expression. He applies the natural law of growth and progression becausehe must. A time may come when he will take up his pencil and trace apicture as in a trance simply at the bidding of the inner flow called innernecessity. It is certainly hopeful that he has remained up to the present afairly pure medium, having escaped the pollution of conventional art education.He turned to painting at the urge of inner necessity and expressedhimself in intense form and color because such form and color were in himto express. The technical characteristics of his work are really a part ofhimself. He expresses everything with simplicity and freedom because theyare characteristics of his own nature. It should be said that he does not aimto produce the so-called automatic work of art. There is nothing automaticin a fluid force organizing itself by uniting itself to a medium that is reallya part of its own livingness. If the artist’s hands are guided by a mysteriousagency it is not a mechanical process any more than the guiding of a plantinto leaves, blossom, and fruit is one. The artist is really guided by thatwhich is a part of his higher self. He surrenders himself to the guidanceof a spirit which is his own, the spirit of Art. And in doing so he achieveshis highest destiny. For in the complete surrender to Art lies the affirmationof Art.

V.
War Hallucinations

An interview with Mme. Truth

I found her in an obscure corner of a wein-stube which bore the legend:In vino veritas. She beckoned to me appealingly. “Mr. Incurable, will youcome and sit at my table? They all shun me nowadays; to associate withme is considered mauvais ton. But you, I am sure, need not fear for yourreputation....” To be sure, my reputation could not suffer any more,even if I committed patricide; so I went bravely to Madame’s table, andordered Rhine-wine and a neutrality sandwich à la Wilson (caviar andLimburger dressed in petals of French roses); to complete the expression ofmy loyalty to the President, I requested the national hymns of all the belligerents,after which conscience-clearing ordeal I turned to my companion.Her appearance was shocking; not even the clumsy robe of Censor O’Connor’scut could conceal her bruises and many-colored insignia. “Madame,”I gallantly inquired, “whence these atrocities?”

“These are love-tokens from the special war correspondents. Ah, dear,since the death of Tolstoy I have had no true lover. You say, how aboutShaw? Well, George Bernard has championed me daringly, I admit; butI can never tell whether he is in earnest or whether he makes use of me forhis clever jugglery. G. B. S. has made it his profession to say unpopularthings; how could he have overlooked such a rare stunt as telling the truthin time of war? He is so very skilful in the gentle art of making himselfunpleasant to the majority that I am inclined to believe he would readilybetray me for my rival, Mlle. Lie, as soon as she had lost her popularity.As for Maximilian Harden, you see, I am an old flame of his; he has sufferedprison and persecution for my sake, the dear; do you remember the Eilenburgaffair, when Maxie removed the figments from Wilhelm’s bosomfriends, and demonstrated that the “crime” punishable in England with twoyears of Reading Gaol was freely practiced by the august princes of Germany?O, he is a darling, Monsieur; but, between us, he handles me tooroughly, the bulldog. Think of Bismarckian hugs and Kruppesque caresses!You see how hard it is to please me as a lover: I am such a frail sweetheart.”

I protested that I have never had the ambition of becoming her lover,consequently I was in no need of her warning. Mme. Truth felt offended.

“I shall get you yet. Wait till you grow older, when you will declarefrom the house-tops your devotion for me. You do not think objectively,Mr. Incurable, hence your numerous offences against me. With all yourendeavor to appear neutral, your anti-German feelings are transparent. Whydon’t you give ear to me occasionally? Think of a people generally hatedand envied, yet strong, successful, defiant. How can you help admiring theirwonderful achievements in the present war?”

I rejoined that I could admire war as an art; that there was art inNapoleon’s warfare, no matter whether he won or lost, no matter whether itwas St. Bernard or Waterloo; while the Germans are merely good mathematicians,clever technicians; but I prefer Zimbalist’s artistic flaws to theperfect technique of Albert Spalding, the craftsman.

“You are hopelessly incurable, sir. Do you perceive that Germany haswon already? Whatever the outcome of the war, the Germans are the victors.To be hated by all one must accomplish something meritorious. Surelythe Germans will emerge from the struggle forged with self-respect, self-assurance,and contempt for the rest of the world. Surely they will bespared the demoralizing influence of universal sympathy, which is so atrociouslyshowered upon poor Belgium. In their splendid isolation the Teutonswill achieve gigantic things; they may become a race of supermen....”

I hastened to order Moselwine and sauer-kraut.

Shmah Yisroel

There is an inmate in one of the Russian insane asylums at present, aJewish soldier who paces up and down his cell, continually groaning:“Shmah Yisroel.” His story is simple. One night lying in the trencheson the Prussian frontier, he observed an approaching grey figure, obviouslythat of a German soldier. When the figure came close to the trenches, theJew leaped upon his foe and pierced him with the bayonet. The Germanfell, moaning in agony: “Shmah Yisroel.” The two words have beenhaunting the Russian since, until, they say, he lost his reason.

It is a grave symptom for the Jews, when they begin to lose their reasonunder the stress of tragedy; their very existence as a people is imperiled,as soon as they show signs of normality, and fail to endure grief and suffering.For what has kept the Eternal Ahasver so wonderfully alive these twothousand years but his philosophical defiance of seeming reality? “ShmahYisroel,” “Hear, o Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Lord is one,” hasbeen the motto of the nation through the long centuries of persecution, thepillar of fire on its historical Golgotha; it has become the symbol of Judaism,the coat-of-arms of the “Chosen People” who were destined to wander amonggentiles, to teach them the living word, and to be rewarded for the instructionwith hatred and contempt.

“Shmah Yisroel” were the last defiant words of the Palestinian martyrs,when tortured to death by the Syrian Hellenizers of the time of AntiochusEpiphanes, who attempted the apparently easy task of annihilating Judaismby the force of his mighty legions. “Shmah Yisroel” cheerfully cried theRabbis enwrapped in the scrolls of the Law, set afire by the order of EmperorAdrian, “and their souls returned in purity to their Creator,” relates theAgadah. “Shmah Yisroel” was the cry that thundered amidst the blaze ofthe Auto-da-Fe set up by the Spanish Inquisition ad maiorem Dei gloriam.Throughout the ages, humiliated and offended, but inwardly proud, despisingand forgiving those “who knew not what they were doing,” the Jew marchedhis endless road with his Motto as a talisman, as an invulnerable shield.Recently, during the first decade of the twentieth century, the world heardonce more the cries of “Shmah Yisroel” piercing the air of Russia from endto end, when Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by governmentalhooligans in order to quench with the blood of Israel the Revolution.

Neither is the present great trial new for the indestructible people:many battles have been fought, with Jews taking part on both sides. Thereis a popular print in Germany, presenting the Jews of the Kronprinz’s regimentpraying on the day of Atonement before Sedan; a grotesque mass ofwarriors entreating the Lord of peace to grant the world eternal peace. Whatgreater incongruity can be imagined than Jews exterminating one another;what more terrible absurdity, than the descendants of the prophets wagingwar, the descendants of Isaiah who was the first to preach to the nations“to beat their swords into ploughshares”! Yet the life of Israel in the lasttwo thousand years has been a continuous incongruity, an anomaly, amiracle; will this nation collapse under the tragicness of the present situation?

The Russian-Jewish soldier who lost his reason, because he failed tounderstand the “Why” of his having killed his brother, a German-Jewishsoldier, is a grave symptom for the abnormal, supernormal people. Has“Shmah Yisroel” ceased to serve as the all-answering formula, as the justificationof the impossible reality, as the invincible watch-word, as the greatstimulus to live on, to march on, ever forward, into the unknown future?

Bestialization

The other day I received a deserved blow. A letter from the war-zonereached me. Nothing but the handwriting told me that it was written by anold friend of mine, a poet of exquisite sonnets—so rude was the style, sodry and matter-of-fact the tone of my erstwhile elegant correspondent. Shecynically derided my glorification of the war as Europe’s healthful purgatory,and spoke of death and want, cruel prosaic want. Do we ever realizethe actual stultifying, bestializing conditions of the non-combatants underwhizzing shells and roving aeroplanes? We, the calm philosophizers, thecurious spectators and speculators? Do we, neutrals, envisage Death andMurder raging in a bacchanale over the embroiled lands? Of all the warpoems and sermons it was only Eunice Tietjens who perceived the trans-Atlantichorrors in her prophetic Children of War; the rest are cold, laboredwritings. Perhaps our American diplomats, who are anything but diplomatic,will innocently involve this country in the world mess, and our authorswill be given a fair test.

Ibn Gabinol.

George Soule

Now that the New York legislature has decided to submit the questionof woman suffrage to popular vote, we are being bored and sometimeshorrified by the revelations of a battle which most of us get into the habitof thinking was fought and won long ago. That is the trouble with manyradicals. The investigation of new causes comes to mean with them merelya process of personal salvation. A belief attained is taken as a matter ofcourse, as if there were nothing more to be done about it. Even to mentionit seems in bad taste—there are so many more important things, so manymore ecstatic attitudes. And then the world rumbles along to it like someprehistoric monster, and we are caught unaware in the midst of quarrelingwhich seems to us beside the point. Have we not discarded fighting machinery?Have we not thrown our siege guns on the scrap heap? How rudeof the unintelligent to disturb us! We are like the pacificists who thoughtthat war could be abolished by the mere act of willing. We forget thatmankind never wills all at once. We forget that it is sometimes necessaryto sacrifice our energy in the battle for a distressingly old cause. Or elsewe never see the necessity, and damn the naive volunteers with a supercilioussmile of superior enlightenment while we cuddle ourselves in the cotton woolof private emotions. We offer them a new word as a reagent for all theirdifficulties.

Who, for instance, could have imagined that The New York Times,mental yokel though it is, could come out with a two-column editorial articleagainst suffrage on the ground that women are not fitted to vote becausethey do not share men’s economic burdens? It must have been six monthsago at least that The Times published a census report on its back page showingthat 30.6 per cent of all the females in New York over ten years of ageare engaged in gainful occupations. You would think census statistics wouldbe just the thing to attract the eye of that editorial writer. But here theeditorial is, like an unbelievable fossil come to life. If it represented merelya Tory minority we could afford to laugh and wait for its partisans to die.It represents, however, the astute judgment of The Times as to what severalhundred thousand people in New York city really think. The big newspapercannot afford to try leading public opinion. It must agree with as manypeople of buying capacity as possible. And here we are again, face to facewith a blind, stupid majority.

One begins to speculate on what possibility there is for a democracyexcept running about in circles. Everything is apparently arranged so thatthe majority can enforce its immediate will, and its immediate will is alwaysseveral generations behind the wisdom of its best citizens. An enthronedtyrant can be dynamited, but a hydra-headed tyrant in the election boothmust be educated. What a wearisome, unromantic task that is! Many aman who would exultingly give his life in the adventure of assassinationretires to his study before the labor of training a mob. He has neither thestrength of imagination nor the strength of heart necessary to fight his wayinch by inch. Here is a real sacrifice to be made for the future. Here is achance for modern heroes with stuff in them. Here is an opportunity tosubstitute soul-testing labor for amateur theatricals. To leaven stupidity,to work with raw and shouting enthusiasts, to be humble enough to accepteach partial victory, each compromise, and still to fight for the next one—thisis the challenge of faith which proves to us there is still iron in mankind.There is satisfaction in the thought that victories have not becomeeasier. Many a Launcelot would go insane in the trenches.

Everyone is looking for the supremacy of his own pet reform or reactionas a result of the war, and it is banal to indulge in prophecies. Yet it seemsto me there will be a great gain in our understanding if we approach themonster with humility. It has, to be sure, shown us the brutality lurking inmodern civilization. We can easily use it as a text for denouncing politics,commercialism, militarism, and all the other abstractions which representto us the sum of present human failings. Yet why not go a little farther,and blame as well an intellectualism which slides about on the surface ofthings, a species of reform and enthusiasm which does not bite into thesubstance of humanity? Do not our philosophies now appear as futile asthe pedantic dreaming of mediaeval schoolmen and alchemists? Does notour separation of the ideal from the material now seem as vicious as Christianasceticism? What business have we to toy with perfectionist theorieswhen to do so we must ignore what is to-day and what will be to-morrow inthe blood and brain of nearly all human beings? We must make humanbreeding the test of effort. We must admit that the will is powerless withoutthe hands. We must create our social tools to accomplish our social ends.We must forget the false distinctions between emotion and intellect, and useboth for their common purpose. Let us not repudiate machinery because ithas not yet been consciously directed to an end that is worth gaining. Moderncivilization has spent its force developing in opposite directions—toward thebrute and toward the god—and now we are amazed at the contradiction.Our task is to make a synthesis and arrive at man. It will be a task toengage the highest qualities of the poet and the scientist—this job of puttingman’s will in control of his overgrown body. And it will be more fascinatingthan any other work man has ever set himself.

“Alice in Wonderland”

(Fine Arts Theatre)

Judging from this initial production of Alice in Wonderland the newmanagement of the Fine Arts Theatre is going to justify the name of thetheatre and yet compete with the loop theatres in attracting the attentionof the general public. The Players Producing Company has been wise insecuring the services of an exceptionally good professional company underthe direction of Mr. W. H. Gilmore, and they have made an unusually happystart with Miss Gerstenberg’s dramatization of Lewis Carroll’s classic, supplementedby the scenery of Mr. Wm. P. Henderson and the musical settingof Mr. Eric de Lamarter.

At first thought it seems incredible that the subtle comedy of Alice inWonderland could lend itself to the wider stage values; but the dialogueloses nothing—it gains, rather, by the transposition. Some doubt has beenexpressed as to whether Alice is really a children’s classic or an adult classic.On the stage that doubt is resolved—it is both. The children appreciateseeing all the quaint creatures and people that Alice meets in her adventures,and the grown-ups enjoy the humor of the dialogue and the extraordinaryreal unreality of Carroll’s imagination. As a matter of fact the psychologyof Lewis Carroll is amazing! He lived long before Mme. Montessori; yetin his own whimsical fashion he has recorded how absurdly unreal andfantastic the unrelated elements of education must seem to the child mind!The grown-up who does not appreciate the humor of Alice in Wonderlandmust be a very dull person. Both the fun and the dream quality of theoriginal have been carefully emphasized in the production. Mr. Henderson’sscenery is successful in more senses than one. First of all it is beautiful andentirely in the spirit of the play, and, secondly, it does not sacrifice the actorsas so much of the new stage craft has a tendency to do. Although extremelyrich and varied in color, the setting waits for the final complement of theactors in costume before the design is complete. As Mr. Henderson is apainter, rather than a “man of the theatre”—that vague term invented byCraig—he knows how to obtain effects on the stage by color, and does notdepend upon the manipulation of direct lighting—often as imitative andtheatrical as the old style scenery—to create illusion. He obtains the effectof depth or distance on the stage by the tonal quality of his painted drop,rather than by an increased cubic depth which is apt to reduce an actor to thethin and non-existent quality of a paper silhouette. It is well to indicatethese principles, for they are all important in connection with drama thatdepends upon speech, and in his use of these principles Mr. Henderson isprobably the most radical of all the advanced scenic artists.

Altogether Chicago has reason to be proud of this production. Itreveals the fact that Chicago is not without independent artistic initiative,and a full conviction of this fact should lead to interesting developments.Unfortunately in this review it is impossible to speak of the acting in detail,but this is hardly necessary as the critics have given it the stamp of theirapproval. For the professional finish of the performance credit is due toMr. W. H. Gilmore. Little Miss Alice Tobin made an ideal Alice. In factnot one part is mis-cast, and all the actors give the impression that they arehaving the time of their life—which contributes much to the spirit of theentertainment. Mr. De Lamarter’s music has a charming fantastic qualityand great delicacy of imagination. And above all the delightful freshnessof the play is due to Miss Gerstenberg’s good faith in sticking to the textof the original and not attempting to pump into it any extraneous matterwhich might have deteriorated into musical comedy or farce. As it is theplay is a fantasy, and, when successful, as in this case, no form is morecapable of giving lasting enjoyment.

S. H. R.

Music

Samaroff and Claussen

Olga Samaroff is not conspicuous for her bad piano-playing. Thereare a great many others, as prominent as Mme. Samaroff, as popular intheir own way, who make just as much noise when they play—pianists whoseem to exert an odd vigilance lest music enter in for a moment. Mme.Samaroff played Beethoven’s E-flat piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony.This work is unique in its bombast, causing one to blush for the composer.The soloist appeared in an ample gown of scorched orange, withslippers of scarlet, and gave the work its traditional beating. The eye sufferedonly less than the ear.

But the excellent Claussen, taking part in a Wagner program, sweptaway all pettiness. She liberated emotions that Wagner alone can touch,when adequately interpreted. Here is no prima donna, but an artist whosings. Her voice is a brimming-over of loveliness; her emotional powerbecomes inevitable, for she sings in phrases of beauty—a living beauty thatmoves to tears. Hers is an art that pervades and satisfies ... somethingto be treasured.

Vocalists are generally peaco*cks—usually moulting. It is a great eventto discover a singing artist, for when the lack is neither a matter of intelligencenor of intensity, it often happens that the musician uses a voice thatcould never perjure itself as beautiful. Julia Claussen gives a feeling ofutter security. No sensibility is wounded or left asleep.

Samaroff is not to be blamed, individually; although what she representsis not an art, but a menace, for it is always applauded, copied, and taught tothe youth. Sonority and power in tone-masses are never obtained by blowsupon the piano-keys, or by waving the arms over the head. The piano iscapable of infinite shading and many kinds of tone, from mighty chords andfierce tumult to delicate tonal weavings and vague states of calm, from crystallinebrilliance to low-sung intimate melodies; and there are certain artistsnow living who listen closely, hear these strange secrets, and bring them outfor other ears. Olga Samaroff, apparently, like her Chicago audience, isaware chiefly of the difference between loud and soft.

Herman Schuchert.

Book Discussion

A Peter Pan Lover

Young Earnest, by Gilbert Cannan. [D. Appleton and Company, New York]

A man “who is submissive to his emotions is not in power over himself”—sowrote Spinoza; and such a man is René Fourmy, the Peter Pan lover ofGilbert Cannan’s latest novel, who never grew up into the fact that he shouldnot have everything he wanted. After a boyhood and youth of almost unconscioussurrender to environment, he suddenly rebelled against the pretensethat surrounded him and gave himself up as completely to his emotionsas he had hitherto yielded himself to external circ*mstances. He had beeneducated to be a professor and had married an ambitious girl without havingawakened to the meaning of life, love, or passion. His first great disillusionmentcame with his honeymoon, when instead of finding in his bride “thenew wonders and sweet joy” of fulfilled love, they together “attained nothingbut heat, hunger, and distress.”

When he could bear this relationship no longer he fled to London, castin his lot with Ann, a girl of the slums, and became a taxi driver. Here hewas happy for a time because of his savage hunger for real things, no matterif they were degrading. The crude, harsh reality of this life fascinated himuntil he discovered that Ann’s love was no more the fulfillment of his dreamsthan his wife’s had been; only its honesty had made it endurable. When hediscovers that Ann is to have a child—an unwanted, unexpected child thatwill be like a chain binding their two lives—he is driven to a second rebellionand the ultimate rediscovery of his first sweetheart. Ann shows her angerin the vulgar, uncontrolled outbursts natural to such a woman, and finallydisappears to Canada, leaving René free to go to Cathleen. We are givento understand that at last René has attained to the happiness of his lovedream, but nothing Mr. Cannan has told us warrants the belief that he mightnot suddenly discover that Cathleen too falls short of his vision of what reallove should be and start out madly once more in pursuit of he knows notwhat. If he and Cathleen do finish their lives together it is safe to gamblethat it will not be because René has learned to adjust himself to life butbecause he has met his Waterloo in Cathleen, a clever woman who wantedhim and understood how to keep him.

René was a rebel against the conventions which interfered with hishappiness, a dreamer, and a seeker after the Holy Grail of love. His attemptsto find happiness were utterly selfish, yet honest, so that our quarrel is notwith his morals but with his egotism. He never awoke to the responsibilitiesof life, never felt remorse for the sufferings that he caused others, nevergrew up to the consciousness that life was intended for something higherthan the fulfillment of his enthusiastic visions, but blundered into more orless freedom where another man, perhaps equally rebellious but more scrupulous,would quietly maintain his outward equanimity and let conventionalspiders weave their webs all about him.

Quarrels there will be and condemnation arising from Young Earnest,but will they be because readers think Mr. Cannan does not understandwhereof he writes or because he is audacious enough to describe a man whowould not accept shams? We may not like the subject any better than wewould a painting of a maimed or ugly person, yet that objection does notdestroy its art, and art it has, in an unusual degree. Only a skilled writercould depict a man doing sensual things without being a sensualist, andRené was just the opposite of that. All his sins were of the spirit ratherthan of the flesh. His ambition in life was to find happiness at any cost. Hedesired love as many desire money and with as little consideration for others,and although hopelessly at odds with conventional standards and prudishmorals it seems to me that the study of Young Earnest’s efforts to understandlife and his own self is rather a glorious attempt, and that GilbertCannan has been decidedly courageous to try to reduce to printed terms theemotions, aspirations, cravings, and blunders of a young man too honest toaccept deceits, yet too cowardly (or perhaps too brave) to stand by hisblunders. Not a pretty story, of course, but life is seldom pretty when it isfrank, and his stumbling “from one love to another” is not the expression ofsensuality but rather a spiritual attempt to live out the best that was in him.

The book has many passages of beauty, many expressions of keen philosophywhich seem to indicate that the author’s soul belongs to the divineside of life—not to its sordidness. So wonderfully does he reproduce mediocrity,middle-class respectability, and the vital if less commendable phasesof Mitcham Mews that one is led to believe that all of life—from visions toslums—is unfolding to him, and that no matter what his subject, his penwill paint a picture that rings true. One could hardly find a more subtle taskthan has been accomplished in Young Earnest—that of painting a man whowas not a sensualist doing sensual things. That Mr. Cannan knew preciselywhat he was doing is revealed in the words that he puts into the mouth ofone of his characters who describes René as being a man “simply inappropriatein a community of creatures who live by cunning.”

M. A. S.

Nietzsche in Fiction

The Encounter, by Anne Douglas Sedgewick. [The CenturyCompany, New York]

Nietzsche—jealous, dyspeptic, wonderful—lives in these pages so vividlythat the illusion of biography is attained. His dreams, his faults, his fearsstand forth. Light is focussed upon the great thinker. Ludwig Wehlitz, ashe is called in the novel, loves a young and beautiful girl from America—PersisFenamy. He is rivalled in his love by two other Germans, disciples ofhis, but very different personally. Persis, who is a combination of lovelinessand good sense, proves to be a difficult, even impossible, problem for thethree philosophers. Their wooing is the basis of the work.

Such a story achieves originality at one stroke; and it is fair to say thatthe author’s development of this dangerous theme is fully equal to herdaring. She catches the high-lights upon the soul of this curious Titan; sheconstructs the man as he must actually have been, and places him in circ*mstancesof her own arrangement. His imperative genius and his characteristicchildishness work out consistently together. Pedants and long-windedscholars, who know not the poet in their god, will argue that the realNietzsche neither could nor would have waxed passionate over a lovelywoman ... the book is not for them. Anne Douglas Sedgewick seesdeep and imagines clearly, and her findings are authentic. Her lesser people,notably Wehlitz’s untidy Italian friend, Eleanora, and the inscrutable Mrs.Fenamy, are created with the same splendid skill and vision. This writer’srealism is not the vaunted “crude and ruthless” variety; for, although it displayslife in a plain and natural manner, there is in it an intense emotionalquality which always evades the camera or the microscope. The Encounteris altogether worthy.

Herman Schuchert.

Joseph Campbell

Irishry, by Joseph Campbell. [Maunsel and Company, London]

Joseph Campbell holds an enviable position among the present-day Irishbards. His poems are big, vital themes, readable by every intelligent person.In his volume of lyrics—for he possesses to a remarkable degree the enchantedtongue—he takes you into every walk of life in Ireland. And whatgoes in regard to life and occupations in England and Ireland holds good inthis country and elsewhere. He does not shun the pig-killer, the quarry-man,the mid-wife, the unfrocked, or disgraced priest, the blind man, the osierseller, or even the ragman. The characters are not put before you as repugnancepersonified; he makes you sympathize, admire, and even love them.You could call it a drama of characters; each one unfolded being a separateact.

How beautiful is The Shepherd. You can see the stars, and clearlycomprehend the beauty of the simile in which he compares the shepherd tothe man of Chaldea. The picture of the pasture of eld looms forth like amarvelous mosaic or mural painting:

The Shepherd can justly be compared to Sir Richard Lovelace’s ToLucretia on Going to War. They have in common the same metallic sweetness.A companion piece in both strength of beauty and lyrical qualities isThe Mother:

In The Blind Man at the Fair there is a truly masterly imagining of theblind one’s agony.

In The Laborer he reminds one of Whitman in lyrics. Here he speaksof the open roads, the blue hills, the tranquil skies, and the serene heavens.A beautiful passage from The Whelk-Gatherer reads:

What satire, profusely laden with bitter irony is contained in TheOrangeman:

Last, but not least, is The Old Woman: