His course 'may be well
indicated
by the change of the last few years ; we found
--
?
--
?
Ezra-Pound-Instigations
"
The nineteenth century had a "letch" for unifications, it believed that, in general, "all is one"; when this doc- trine failed of a sort of pragmatic sanction in rem, it tried to reduce things to the least possible number. True, in the physical world, it did not attempt to use steam and dynamite interchangeably, but, in affairs of the mind, such was the indubitable tendency.
It is, however, a folly to "substitute" character for intelligence and one would rather have been at the Grammar-School of Ashford, in Kent, in 1759, under Stephen Barrett, A. M. , than at Rugby, in 1830, under Dr. Arnold, or, later, under any of his successors. And I give thanks to Zeusocns tot' ialv, that being an Ameri- can, I have escaped the British public school. Mrs. Ward is at liberty to write to the Times as much as she likes, I do not envy her Dr. Arnold for grandfather.
Arnold stands pre-eminent as an "educator," and from him the term has gradually taken its present meaning: "a man with no intellectual interests. "
Mr. Strachey completes his volume with a study of that extraordinarycrank. GeneralGordon. Ittakeshimtwo lines to blast the reputation of Lord Elgin. He does it quietly, but Elgin's name will stink in the memory of the reader. It is difficult to attribute this wholly to the author, for the facts are in connivance with him. But if his irony at times descends to sarcasm, one must balance that with the general quietude of his style. One canbuthopethatthisbookwillnotbehislast; onewould
? IN THE VORTEX 229
welcome a treatment, by him, of The Members of the British Academic Committee, British Publishers, The Asquith Administration.
The religion of Tien Wang mentioned on p. 221 ap- pears to have been as intelligent as any other form of Christianity, and to have had much the same active ef- fects. However, Gordon was appointed to oppose it. Throughout the rest of his life he seems to have been obsessed by the curious medijeval fallacy that the world is vanity and the body but ashes and dust. He fell vic- tim to the exaggerated monotheism of his era. But he'
had the sense to follow his instinct in a period when instincts were not thought quite respectable; this made him an historic figure; it also must have lent him great charm (with perhaps rather picturesque drawbacks). This valuable quality, charm, must have been singularly lacking in Mr. Gladstone.
It is, indeed, difficult to restrain one's growing con- viction that Mr. Gladstone was not all his party had hoped for. Gordon was "difficult," at the time of his last expedition he was perhaps little better than a lunatic, but Gladstone was decidedly unpleasant.
In all of the eminent was the quality of a singularly uncritical era. It was a time when a prominent man could iorm himself on a single volume handed to him by "tradition"; when illiteracy, in the profounder sense of that term, was no drawback to a vast public career. (An era, of course, happily closed. )
I do not know that there is much use enquiring into the causes of the Victorian era, or any good to be got from speculations. Its disease might seem to have been an aggravated form of provincialism. ^Professor Sir Henry Newbolt has recently pointed out that the English
? 230 INSTIGATIONS
public is "interested in politics rather than literature"; this may be a lingering symptom.
If one sought, not perhaps to exonerate, but to explain the Victorian era one might find some contributory cause in Napoleon. That is to say, the Napoleonic wars had made Europe unpleasant, England was sensibly glad to be insular. Geography leaked over into mentality. Eighteenth century thought had indeed got rid of the Bourbons, but later events had shown that eighteenth century thought might be dangerous. England cut off herintellectualcommunicationswiththeContinent. An eraofbigotrysupervened. Wehavesothoroughlyfor- gotten, if we ever knew, the mental conditions preced- ing the Victorian era, save perhaps as they appear in the scribblings of, let us say, Lady Blessington, that we cannot tell whether the mentality of the Victorian reign was an advance or an appalling retrogression. In any casewearegladtobeoutofit . . . irregardlessofwhat wemaybeinto; irregardlessofwhetherthecommunica- tions among intelligent people are but the mirage of a minute Thebaid seen from a chaos wholly insuperable. *
A LIST OF BOOKS
When circumstances have permitted me to lift up my prayer to the gods, of whom there are several, and whose multiplicity has only been forgotten during the less felicitous periods, I have requested for contem- porary use, some system of delayed book reviewing, some system whereby the critic of current things is per- mitted to state that a few books read with pleasure five or six years ago can still be with pleasure perused, and
* "Eminent Victorians," by Lytton Strachey.
? IN THE VORTEX 231
that their claims to status as literature have not been obliterated by half or all of a decade.
GEORGE S. STREET
There was in the nineties, the late nineties and dur- ing the early years of this century, and still is, a writer named George S. Street. He has written some of the best things that have been' thought concerning Lord Byron, he has written them not as a romanticist, not as a Presbyterian, but as a man of good sense. They are worthy of commendation. He has written charm- ingly in criticism of eighteenth century writers, and of the ghosts of an earlier Piccadilly. He has written tales of contemporary life with a suavity, wherefrom the present writer at least has learned a good deal, even if he has not yet put it into scriptorial practice. (I haste to state this indebtedness. )
The writers of moeurs contemporaines are so few, or rather there are so few of them who can be treated under the heading "literature," that the discovery or circula- tion of any such writer is no mean critical action. Mr. Street is "quite as amusing as Stockton," with the infinite difference that Mr. Street has made literature. Essays upon him are not infrequent in volumes of English essays dealing with contemporary authors. My impres- sion is that he is not widely read in America (his pub- lishers will doubtless put me right if this impression is erroneous) ; I can only conclude that the possession of a style, the use of a suave and pellucid English has erected some sort of barrier.
"The Trials of the Bantocks," "The Wise and the Wayward," "The Ghosts of Piccadilly," "Books of Essays," "The Autobiography of a Boy," "Quales Ego,"
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"Miniatures and Moods," are among his works, and in them the rare but intelligent reader may take refuge from the imbecilities of the multitude.
FREDERIC MANNING
In 1910 Mr. Manning published, with the almost de- funct and wholly uncommendable firm of John Murray, "Scenes and Portraits," the opening paragraph of which I can still, I believe, quote from memory.
"When Merodach, King of Uruk, sat down to his meals, he made his enemies his footstool, for be- neath his table he kept an hundred kings with their thumbs and great toes cut off, as signs of his power andclemency. WhenMerodachhadfinishedeating he shook the crumbs from his napkin, and the kings fed themselves with two fingers, and when Merodach observed how painful and difficult this operation was, he praised God for having given thumbs to man.
" 'It is by the absence of things,' he said, 'that we learn their use. Thus if we deprive a man of his eyes we deprive him of sight, and in this man- ner we learn that sight is the function of the eyes. '
"Thus spake Merodach, for he had a scientific mind and was curious of God's handiwork. And when he had finished speaking, his courtiers ap- plauded him. "
Adam is afterwards discovered trespassing in Mero- dach's garden or paradise. The characters of Bagoas, Merodach's high priest, Adam, Eve and the Princess Candace are all admirably presented. The book is divided in six parts: the incident of the Kingdom of
? IN THE VORTEX 233
Uruk, a conversation at the house of Euripides, "A Friend of Paul," a conversation between St. Francis and the Pope, another between Thomas Cromwell and Macchiavelli, and a final encounter between Leo XIII and Renan in Paradise.
This book is not to be neglected by the intelligent reader (avis rarissima, and in what minute ratio to the population I am still unable to discern).
"Others" Anthology for 1917. This last gives, I think, the first adequate presentation of Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, who have, without exaggerated '"nationalism," without waving of banners and general phrases about Columbia gem of the ocean, succeeded in, or fallen into, producing something distinctly American in quality, not merely distinguishable as American by reason of current national faults.
Their work is neither simple, sensuous nor passionate, but as we are no longer governed by the North American Review we need not condemn poems merely because they do not fit some stock phrase or rhetorical criticism.
(For example, an infinitely greater artist than Tenny- son uses six "s's" and one "z" in a single line. It is one of the most musical lines in Provencal and opens a poem especiallycommendedbyDante. Letusleavetherealm of promoted typists who quote the stock phrases of text-books. )
In the verse of Marianne Moore I detect traces of emotion; inthatofMinaLoyIdetectnoemotionwhat- ever. Both of these women are, possibly in unconscious- ness, among the. followers of Jules Laforgue (whose work shows a great deal of emotion) . Or perhaps Rene Ghil is the "influence" in Miss Moore's case. It is pos- sible, as I have written, or intended to write elsewhere, to
? 234 INSTIGATIONS
divide poetry into three sorts: (i) melopoeia, to wit, poetry whicfi moves by its music, whether it be a music in words or an aptitude for, or suggestion of, accom- panying music; (2) imagism, or poetry wherein the feelings of painting and sculpture- are predominant (cer- tain men move in phantasmagoria; the images of their gods, whole countrysides, stretches of hill land and forest, travel with them) ; and there is, thirdly, logopoeia, or poetry that is akin to nothing but language which is a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas and modifications of ideas and characters. Pope and the eighteenth-century writers had in this medium a certain limitedrange. TheintelligenceofLaforgueranthrough the whole gamut of his time. T. S. Eliot has gone on with it. Browning wrote a condensed form of drama, full of things of the senses, scarcely ever pure logopoeia.
One wonders what the devil any one will make of this sort of thing who has not in their wit all the clues. It has none of the stupidity beloved of the "lyric" en- thusiast, and the writer and reader who take refuge in scenery, description of nature, because they are unable to cope with the human. These two contributors to the "Others" Anthology write logopoeia. It is, in their case, the utterance of clever people in despair, or hover- ing upon the brink of that precipice. It is of those who have acceded with Renan "La betise humain6 est la seule chose qui donne une idee de I'infini. " It is a mind cry, more than a heart cry. "Take the world if thou wilt but leave me an asylum for my affection," is not their lamentation, but rather "In the midst of this desolation, give me at least one intelligence to converse with. "
The arid clarity, not without its own beauty, of le temperament de I'Americaine, is in the poems of these, I think, graduates or post-graduates. If they have not
? IN THE VORTEX 235
received B. A. 's or M. A. 's or B. Sc. 's they do not need them.
The point of my praise, for I intend this as praise, even if I do not burst into the phrases of Victor Hugo, is that without any pretences and without clamors about nationality, these girls have written a distinctly national product, they have written something which would not have come out of any other country, and (while I have before now seen a deal of rubbish by both of them) they are, as selected by Mr. Kreymborg, interesting and readable (by me, that is. I am aware that even the poems before me would drive numerous not wholly un- intelligent readers into a fury of rage-out-of-puzzle-
ment. ) Both these poetriae have said a number of things not to be found in the current numbers of Every- body's,theCenturyorMcClure's. "TheEffectualMar- riage," "French Peacock," "My Apish Cousins," have each in its way given me pleasure. Miss Moore has already prewritten her cbunterblast to my criticism in her poem "to a Steam Roller. "
The anthology displays also Mr. Williams' praise- worthy opacity.
THE NEW POETRY
English and French literature have stood in constant need of each other, and it is interesting to note, as con- current but in no way dependent upon the present alli- ance, a new French vitality among our younger writers of poetry. As some of these latter are too new to presuppose the reader's familiarity with them, I quote a few poems before venturing to open a discussion. T. S. Eliot is the most finished, the most composed of these poets; kt us observe his poem "The Hippopota- mus," as it appears in The Little Review.
--.
? 236
INSTIGATIONS The Hippopotamus
The broad backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us. . , . Yet he is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail, Susceptible to nervous shock; While the True Qiurch can never fail For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo's feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir To gather in its dividends.
The potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree,
But fruits of pomegranate and peach Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo's voice Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd. But every week we hear rejoice The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus's day
Is past in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way
The Church can sleep and feed at once
? IN THE VORTEX 237
I saw the potamus take wing Ascending from the damp savannas, And quiring angels round him sing The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean And him shall heavenly arms enfold, Among the saints he shall be seen Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow, By all the martyr'd virgins kist. While the True Church remains below Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
This cold sardonic statement is definitely of the school of Theophile Gautier; as definitely as Eliot's "Conversa- tion Galante" is in the manner of Jules Laforgue. There is a great deal in the rest of Mr. Eliot's poetry which is personal, and in no wise derivative either from the French or from Webster and Tourneur just as there
;
is in "The Hippopotamus" a great deal which is not Theophile Gautier. I quote the two present poems sim- ply to emphasize a certain lineage and certain French virtues and qualities, which are, to put it most mildly, a great and blessed relief after the official dullness and Wordsworthian lignification of the "Georgian" Antholo- gies and their descendants and derivatives as upheld by The New Statesman, that nadir of the planet of hebe- tude, that apogee of the kulturesque.
Conversation Galante*
I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
From "Prufrock. " By T. S. Eliot. Egoist, Ltd.
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INSTIGATIONS
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travelers to their distress. "
She then: "How you digress! "
And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and moonshine, music which we seize To body forth our own vacuity. "
She then: "Does this refer to me? " "Oh no, it is I who am inane. "
"You, madam, are the eternal humorist.
The eternal enemy of the absolute.
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute And----: "Are we then so serious? "
"
Laforgue's influehce or Ghil's or some kindred ten- dency is present in the whimsicalities of Marianne Moore, and of Mina Loy. A verbalism less finished than Eliot's appears in Miss Moore's verses called
Pedantic Literalist
Prince Rupert's drop, paper muslin ghost. White torch "with power to say unkind
Things with kindness and the most Irritating things in the midst of love and
Tears," you invite destruction.
You are like the meditative man With the perfunctory heart; its
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239
Carved cordiality ran
To and fro at first, like an inlaid and royal
Immutable production;
Then afterward "neglected to be Painful" and "deluded him with
Loitering formality,
Doing its duty as if it did not,"
Presenting an obstruction
To the motive that it served. What stood Erectinyouhaswithered. A
Little "palmtree of turned wood"
Informs your once spontaneous core in its
Immutable reduction.
The reader accustomed only to glutinous imitations of Keats, diaphanous dilutations of Shelley, woolly Wordsworthian paraphrases, or swishful Swinburniania will doubtless dart back appalled by Miss Moore's de- partures from custom; custom, that is, as the male or female devotee of Palgravian insularity understands that highlyelasticterm. ThePalgravianwillthenwithdis- appointment discover that his favorite and conventional whine is inapplicable. Miss Moore "rhymes in places. " Her versification does not fit in with preconceived notions of vers litre. It possesses a strophic structure. The elderly Newboltian groans. The all-wool un- bleachedGeorgiansighsominously. Anotherauthorhas been reading French poets, and using words for the communication of thought. Alas, times will not stay anchored.
Mina Loy has been equally subject to something like internationalinfluence; therearelinesinher"Ineffectual
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? 240 INSTIGATIONS
Marriage" perhaps better written than anything I have found in Miss Moore, as, for example:
"So here we might dispense with her Gina being a female
But she was more than that
Being an incipience a correlative an instigation to the reaction of man From the palpable to the transcendent Mollescent irritant of his fantasy
Gina had her use Being useful contentedly conscious
She flowered in Empyrean
From which no well-mated woman ever returns
Sundays a warm light in the parlor From the gritty road on the white wall anybody could see it
Shimmered a composite effigy
Madonna crinolined a man hidden beneath her hoop.
Patience said Gina is an attribute >> And she learned at any hour to offer The dish appropriately delectable
What had Miovanni made of his ego
In his library
What had Gina wondered among the pots and
pans
One never asked the other. "
? IN THE VORTEX 241
These lines are not written as Henry Davray said re- cently in the "Mercure de France," that the last "Geor- gian Anthology" poems are written, i. e. , in search for "sentiments pour les accommoder a leur vocabulaire. " Miss Loy's are distinctly the opposite, they are words set down to convey a definite meaning, and words accom- modated to that meaning, even if they do not copy the mannerisms of the five or six by no means impeccable nineteenth century poets whom the British Poetry Society has decided to imitate.
All this is very pleasing, or very displeasing, accord- ing to the taste of the reader; according to his freedom from, or his bondage to, custom.
Distinct and as different as possible from the orderly statements of Eliot, and from the slightly acid whimsi- calities of these ladies, are the poems of Carlos Williams. If the sinuosities and mental quirks of Misses Moore and Loy are difficult to follow I do not know what is to be said for , some of Mr. Williams' ramifications and abruptnesses. I do not pretend to follow all of his volts, jerks, sulks, balks, outblurts and jump-overs; but for . all his roughness there remains with me the con- viction that there is nothing meaningless in his book, "Al que quiere," not a line. There is whimsicality as we found it in his earlier poems. "The Tempers" (pub- lished by Elkin Mathews), in the verse to "The Coro-
ner's Children," for example. There is distinctness and color, as was shown in his "Postlude," in "Des Im- agistes" ; but there is beyond these qualities the absolute conviction of a man with his feet on the soil, on a soil personally and peculiarly his own. He is rooted. He is at times almost inarticulate, but he is never dry, never without sap in abundance.
His course 'may be well indicated by the change of the last few years ; we found
--
? 242 INSTIGATIONS
him six years ago in "The Postlude," full of a thick and opaque color, full of emotional richness, with a maxi- mum of subjective reality:
POSTLXTOE
Now that I have cooled to you
Let there be gold of tarnished masonry. Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly.
Give me hand for the dances,
Ripples at Philse, in and out.
And lips, my Lesbian,
Wall flowers that once were flame.
Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow.
And our words the arrows To shoot the stars.
Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us.
But you there beside me^
Oh ! how shall I defy you.
Who wound me in the night
With breasts shining like Venus and like Mars ? The night that is shouting Jason
When the loud eaves rattle As with waves above me. Blue at the prow of my desire.
O prayers in the dark! O incense to Poseidon! Calm in Atlantis.
----
? IN THE VORTEX
343
^xora this he has, as some would say, "turned" to a sort of maximum objective reality in
The Old Men
Old men who have studied every leg show
in the city
Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music polished or fleeced skulls that stand before
the whole theatre
in silent attitudes
of attention,
old men who have taken precedence over young men
and even over dark-faced husbands whose minds
are a street with' arc-lights. Solitary old men
for whom we find no excuses .
. .
This is less savage than "Les Assis. " His "Portrait of a Woman in Bed" incites me to a comparison with Rimbaud's picture of an old actress in her "loge. " Not to Rimbaud's disadvantage. I don't know that any, save the wholly initiated into the cult of anti-exoticism, would take Williams' poem for an exotic, but there is
no accounting for what may occur in such cases. Portrait of a Woman in Bed
There's my things drying in the corner;
-- --! --! --! -- !
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INSTIGATIONS
that blue skirt
joined to the gray shirt
I'm sick of trouble! Lift the covers
if you want me
and you'll see
the rest of my clothes though it would be cold lying with nothing on
I won't work
and I've got no cash. What are you going to do about it?
and no jewelry (the crazy fools).
But I've my two eyes and a smooth face and here's this ! look it's high!
There's brains and blood in there
my name's Robitza! Corsets
can go to the devil
and drawers along with them What do I care!
My two boys? I--^they're keen
Let the rich lady care for them
----
? IN THE VORTEX
24S
they'll beat the school
or
let them go to the gutter that ends trouble.
This house is empty isn't it?
Then it's mine
because I need it.
Oh, I won't starve while there's the Bible to make them feed me.
Try to help me
if you want trouble or leave me alone that ends trouble.
The county physician is a damned fool and you
can go to hell!
You could have closed the door when you came in;
do it when you go out.
I'm tired.
This is not a little sermon on slums. 'It conveys more than two dozen or two hundred magazine stories about the comedy of slum-work. As the memoir of a physician, it is keener than Spiess' notes of an advocate in the Genevan law courts. It is more compact than Vildrac's "Auberge," and has not Vildrac's tendency to
? 246 INSTIGATIONS
sentiment. It is a poem that could be translated into French or any other modern language and hold its own with the contemporary product of whatever country one chose.
A PISTINCTION
A journalist has said to me : "We, i. e. we journalists, are like mediums. People go to a spiritist seance and hear what they want to hear. It is the same with a leading article: we write so that the reader will find what he wants to find. "
That is the root of the matter ; there is good journal- ism and bad journalism, and journalism that "looks" like "literature" and literature etc. . . .
But the root of the difference is that in journalism the reader finds what he is looking for, whereas in liter- ature he must find at least a part of what the author intended.
That is why "the first impression of a work of genius" is "nearly always disagreeable. " The public loathe the violence done to their self-conceit whenever any one conveys to them an idea that is his, not their own.
This difference is lasting and profound. Even in the vaguest of poetry, or the vaguest music, where the re- ceiver may, or must make half the beauty he is to receive, there is alin^ys something of the author or composer which must be transmitted.
In journalism or the "bad art," there is no such strain on the public.
THE CLASSICS "ESCAPE"
It is well that the citizen should be acquainted with thelawsofhiscountry. Inearliertimesthelawsofa
? IN THE VORTEX 247
nation were graven upon tablets and set up in the market place. I myself have seen a sign: "Bohemians are not permitted within the precincts of this commune"; but the laws of a great republic are too complex and arcane topermitofthissimpletreatment. Iconfesstohaving been a bad citizen, to just the extent of having been ignorant that at any moment my works might be classed in law's eye with the inventions of the late Dr. Condom.
It is possible that others with only a mild interest in literature may be equally ignorant ; I quote therefore the law:
Section 211 of the United States Criminal Code pro- vides :
"Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character and every arti- cle or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose ; and every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, adver- tisement, or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of the hereinbeforementioned mat- ters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means conception may be prevented or abortion produced, whether sealed or un- sealed; and every letter, packet, or package, or other
? 248
INSTIGATIONS
/
mail matter containing any filthy, vile or indecent thing, device, or substance; any and every paper, writing, ad- vertisement, or representation that any article, instru- ment, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for preventing conception or producing abortion or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, sub- stance, drug, medicine, or thing, is hereby declared to be non-mailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post-office or by any letter carrier. Whoever shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be non-mailable, or shall knowingly take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. "
It is well that the citizens of a country should be aware of its laws.
It is not for me to promulgate obiter dicta ; to say that whatever the cloudiness of its phrasing, this law was obviously designed to prevent the circulation of immoral advertisements, propaganda for secret cures, and slips of paper that are part of the bawdy house business; that it was not designed to prevent the mailing of Dante, Villon, and Catullus. Whatever the subjective attitude of the framers of this legislation, we have fortunately a decision from a learned judge to guide us in its working.
"I have little doubt that numerous really great writ- ings would come under the ban if tests that are fre- quently current were applied, and these approved pub- lications doubtless at times escape only because they
:
? IN THE VORTEX 249
come within the term "classics," which means, for the purpose of the application of the statute, that they are ordinarily immune from interference, because they have the sanction of age and fame and USUALLY APPEAL TO A COMPARATIVELY LIMITED NUMBER OF READERS. "
The capitals are my own.
The gentle reader will picture to himself the state of America IF the classics were widely read; IF these books which in the beginning lifted mankind from sav- agery, and which from A. D. 1400 onward have gradually redeemed us from the darkness of medievalism, should
be read by the millions who now consume Mr. Hearst and the Ladies' Home Journal! ! ! ! ! !
Also there are to be no additions. No living man is to contribute or to attempt to contribute to the classics. Obviously even though he acquire fame before publish- ing, he can not have the sanction of "age. "
Our literature does not fall under an inquisition; it does not bow to an index arranged by a council. It is subject to the taste of one individual.
Our hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants desire their literature sifted for them by one individual selected without any examination of his literary qualificatons.
I can not write of this thing in heat. It is a far too serious matter.
Theclassics"escape. " Theyare"immune""ordinar- ily. " I can but close with the cadences of that blessed little Brother of Christ, San Francesco d'Assisi
!
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INSTIGATIONS
CANTICO DEL SOLE
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
Nunc dimittis. Now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation . . .
Oh well
It troubles my sleep.
Oraviwus
? PART SECOND
? V
OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
(A divagation from Jules Laforgue)
There arose, as from a great ossified sponge, the comic-opera, Florence-Nightingale light-house, with junks beneath it clicking in vesperal meretricious mono- tony; behind them the great cliff obtruded solitary into the oily, poluphloisbious ocean, lifting its confection of pylons ; the poplar rows, sunk yards, Luna Parks, etc. , of the Tetrarchal Palace polished jasper and basalt, funereal undertakerial, lugubrious, blistering in the high- lights under a pale esoteric sun-beat; encrusted, bespat- tered and damascened with cynocephali, sphinxes, wingedbulls,bulbuls,andothersculpturalby-laws. The screech-owls from the jungle could only look out upon the shadowed parts of the sea, which they did without optic inconvenience, so deep was the obscured contagion
of their afforested blackness.
The two extraneous princes went up toward the stable-
yard, gaped at the effulgence of peacocks, glared at the derisive gestures of the horse-cleaners, adumbrated in- sults, sought vainly for a footman or any one to take up their cards.
The tetrarch appeared on a terrace, removing his cere- monial gloves.
The water, sprinkled in the streets in anticipation of the day's parade, dried in little circles of dust. The
253
INSTIGATIONS
tetrarch puffed at his hookah with an exaggeration of dignity; he was disturbed at the presence of princes, he was disturbed by the presence of Jao; he desired to observe his own ruin, the slow deHquescence of his posi- tion, with a fitting detachment and lassitude. Jao had distributed pamphlets, the language was incomprehen- sible; Jaohadbeenstoredinthecellarage,hisfollowing distributed pamphlets.
In the twentieth century of his era the house of Emer- aud Archytypas was about to have its prize bit of fire- works: a war with the other world . . . after so many ages of purely esoteric culture
Jao had declined both the poisoned coffee and the sacred sword of the Samurai, courtesies offered, in this case, to an incomprehensible foreigner. Even now, with a superlation of form, the sacred kriss had been sent to the court executioner, it was no mere eveiy-day imple- ment. The princejs arrived {at this juncture. There sounded from the back alleys the preparatory chirping of choral societies, and the wailing of pink-lemonade sellers. To-morrow the galley would be gone.
Leaning over the syrupy clematis, Emeraud crumbled brioches for the fishes, reminding himself that he had not yet collected the remains of his wits. There was no galvanization known to art, science, industry or the ministrations of sister-souls that would rouse his long since respectable carcass.
Yet at his birth a great tempest had burst above the dynastic manor; credible persons had noticed the light- nings scrolling Alpha and Omega above it; and nothing had happened. He had given up flagellation. He walked daily to the family necropolis : a cool place in the summer. HesummonedtheArrangerofInanities.
254
!
? ;
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 255 II
Strapped, pomaded, gloved, laced; with patulous beards, with their hair parted at the backs of their heads with their cork-screw curls pulled back from their fore- heads to give themselves tone on their medallions; with helmets against one hip ; twirling the musk-balls of their sabres with their disengaged restless fingers, the hyper- borean royalties were admitted. And the great people
received them, in due order: chief mandarins in clump, the librarian of the palace (Conde de las Navas), the Arbiter Elegantium, the Curator major of Symbols, the Examiner of the High Schools, the Supernumerary priest of the Snow Cult, the Administrator of Death, and the Chief Attendant Collector of Death-duties.
Their Highnesses bowed and addressed the Tetrarch: ". . . felicitous wind . . . day so excessively glorious . . . wafted . . . these isles . . . notwithstanding not also whereof . . . basilica far exceeding . . . . Ind, Ormus . . . Miltonesco . . . etc. . . . to say nothing of the seven-stopped barbary organ and the Tedium lauda- mus. . . etc. . . . "
(Lunch was brought in. )
Kallipagous artichokes, a light collation of tunny-fish,
asparagus served 011 pink reeds, eels pearl-gray and dove- gray, gamut and series of compotes and various wines (without alcohol).
Under impulsion of the Arranger of Inanities the pomaded princes next began their inspection of the build- ings. A pneumatic lift hove them upward to the outer rooms of Salome's suite. The lift door clicked on its gilt-brass double expansion-clamps; the procession ad- vanced between rows of wall-facing negresses whose naked shoulder-blades shone like a bronze of oily opacity.
^
? 256 INSTIGATIONS
They entered the hall of majolica, very yellow with thick blue incrustations, glazed images, with flushed and pro- tuberant faces; in the third atrium they came upon a basin of joined ivory, a white bath-sponge, rather large, a pair of very pink slippers. The next room was littered with books bound in white vellum and pink satin; the next with mathematical instruments, hydrostats, sextants, astrolabial discs, the model of a gasolene motor, a nickel- plated donkey engine. . . . They proceeded up metal stairs to the balcony, from which a rustling and swaying and melodiously enmousselined figure, jonquil-colored and delicate, preceded or rather predescended them by dumb-waiter, a route which they were not ready to fol- low. The machine worked for five floors : usage private and not ceremonial.
The pomaded princes stood to attention, bowed with deference and with gallantry. The Arranger ignored the whole incident, ascended the next flight of stairs and began on the telescope:
"^Grand equatorial, 22 yards inner tube length, revolv- able cupola (frescoes in water-tight paint) weight 200,089 kilos, circulating on fourteen steel castors in a groove of chloride of magnesium, 2 minutes for com- plete revolution. The princess can turn it herself. "
The princes allowed their attention to wander, they noted their ship beneath in the harbor, and calculated the drop, they then compared themselves with the bro- caded and depilated denizens of the escort, after which they felt safer. They were led passively into the Small Hall of Perfumes, presented with protochlorine of mer- cury, bismuth regenerators, cantharides, lustral waters guaranteed free from hydrated lead. Were conducted thence to the hanging garden, where the form her- metically enmousselined, the jonquil-colored gauze with
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
257
the pea-sized dark spots on it, disappeared from the opposite slope. Molossian hounds yapping and romping about her.
The trees lifted their skinned-salmon trunks, the heavy blacknesswasbrokenwithasteely,metallicsunshine.
The nineteenth century had a "letch" for unifications, it believed that, in general, "all is one"; when this doc- trine failed of a sort of pragmatic sanction in rem, it tried to reduce things to the least possible number. True, in the physical world, it did not attempt to use steam and dynamite interchangeably, but, in affairs of the mind, such was the indubitable tendency.
It is, however, a folly to "substitute" character for intelligence and one would rather have been at the Grammar-School of Ashford, in Kent, in 1759, under Stephen Barrett, A. M. , than at Rugby, in 1830, under Dr. Arnold, or, later, under any of his successors. And I give thanks to Zeusocns tot' ialv, that being an Ameri- can, I have escaped the British public school. Mrs. Ward is at liberty to write to the Times as much as she likes, I do not envy her Dr. Arnold for grandfather.
Arnold stands pre-eminent as an "educator," and from him the term has gradually taken its present meaning: "a man with no intellectual interests. "
Mr. Strachey completes his volume with a study of that extraordinarycrank. GeneralGordon. Ittakeshimtwo lines to blast the reputation of Lord Elgin. He does it quietly, but Elgin's name will stink in the memory of the reader. It is difficult to attribute this wholly to the author, for the facts are in connivance with him. But if his irony at times descends to sarcasm, one must balance that with the general quietude of his style. One canbuthopethatthisbookwillnotbehislast; onewould
? IN THE VORTEX 229
welcome a treatment, by him, of The Members of the British Academic Committee, British Publishers, The Asquith Administration.
The religion of Tien Wang mentioned on p. 221 ap- pears to have been as intelligent as any other form of Christianity, and to have had much the same active ef- fects. However, Gordon was appointed to oppose it. Throughout the rest of his life he seems to have been obsessed by the curious medijeval fallacy that the world is vanity and the body but ashes and dust. He fell vic- tim to the exaggerated monotheism of his era. But he'
had the sense to follow his instinct in a period when instincts were not thought quite respectable; this made him an historic figure; it also must have lent him great charm (with perhaps rather picturesque drawbacks). This valuable quality, charm, must have been singularly lacking in Mr. Gladstone.
It is, indeed, difficult to restrain one's growing con- viction that Mr. Gladstone was not all his party had hoped for. Gordon was "difficult," at the time of his last expedition he was perhaps little better than a lunatic, but Gladstone was decidedly unpleasant.
In all of the eminent was the quality of a singularly uncritical era. It was a time when a prominent man could iorm himself on a single volume handed to him by "tradition"; when illiteracy, in the profounder sense of that term, was no drawback to a vast public career. (An era, of course, happily closed. )
I do not know that there is much use enquiring into the causes of the Victorian era, or any good to be got from speculations. Its disease might seem to have been an aggravated form of provincialism. ^Professor Sir Henry Newbolt has recently pointed out that the English
? 230 INSTIGATIONS
public is "interested in politics rather than literature"; this may be a lingering symptom.
If one sought, not perhaps to exonerate, but to explain the Victorian era one might find some contributory cause in Napoleon. That is to say, the Napoleonic wars had made Europe unpleasant, England was sensibly glad to be insular. Geography leaked over into mentality. Eighteenth century thought had indeed got rid of the Bourbons, but later events had shown that eighteenth century thought might be dangerous. England cut off herintellectualcommunicationswiththeContinent. An eraofbigotrysupervened. Wehavesothoroughlyfor- gotten, if we ever knew, the mental conditions preced- ing the Victorian era, save perhaps as they appear in the scribblings of, let us say, Lady Blessington, that we cannot tell whether the mentality of the Victorian reign was an advance or an appalling retrogression. In any casewearegladtobeoutofit . . . irregardlessofwhat wemaybeinto; irregardlessofwhetherthecommunica- tions among intelligent people are but the mirage of a minute Thebaid seen from a chaos wholly insuperable. *
A LIST OF BOOKS
When circumstances have permitted me to lift up my prayer to the gods, of whom there are several, and whose multiplicity has only been forgotten during the less felicitous periods, I have requested for contem- porary use, some system of delayed book reviewing, some system whereby the critic of current things is per- mitted to state that a few books read with pleasure five or six years ago can still be with pleasure perused, and
* "Eminent Victorians," by Lytton Strachey.
? IN THE VORTEX 231
that their claims to status as literature have not been obliterated by half or all of a decade.
GEORGE S. STREET
There was in the nineties, the late nineties and dur- ing the early years of this century, and still is, a writer named George S. Street. He has written some of the best things that have been' thought concerning Lord Byron, he has written them not as a romanticist, not as a Presbyterian, but as a man of good sense. They are worthy of commendation. He has written charm- ingly in criticism of eighteenth century writers, and of the ghosts of an earlier Piccadilly. He has written tales of contemporary life with a suavity, wherefrom the present writer at least has learned a good deal, even if he has not yet put it into scriptorial practice. (I haste to state this indebtedness. )
The writers of moeurs contemporaines are so few, or rather there are so few of them who can be treated under the heading "literature," that the discovery or circula- tion of any such writer is no mean critical action. Mr. Street is "quite as amusing as Stockton," with the infinite difference that Mr. Street has made literature. Essays upon him are not infrequent in volumes of English essays dealing with contemporary authors. My impres- sion is that he is not widely read in America (his pub- lishers will doubtless put me right if this impression is erroneous) ; I can only conclude that the possession of a style, the use of a suave and pellucid English has erected some sort of barrier.
"The Trials of the Bantocks," "The Wise and the Wayward," "The Ghosts of Piccadilly," "Books of Essays," "The Autobiography of a Boy," "Quales Ego,"
? 232 INSTIGATIONS
"Miniatures and Moods," are among his works, and in them the rare but intelligent reader may take refuge from the imbecilities of the multitude.
FREDERIC MANNING
In 1910 Mr. Manning published, with the almost de- funct and wholly uncommendable firm of John Murray, "Scenes and Portraits," the opening paragraph of which I can still, I believe, quote from memory.
"When Merodach, King of Uruk, sat down to his meals, he made his enemies his footstool, for be- neath his table he kept an hundred kings with their thumbs and great toes cut off, as signs of his power andclemency. WhenMerodachhadfinishedeating he shook the crumbs from his napkin, and the kings fed themselves with two fingers, and when Merodach observed how painful and difficult this operation was, he praised God for having given thumbs to man.
" 'It is by the absence of things,' he said, 'that we learn their use. Thus if we deprive a man of his eyes we deprive him of sight, and in this man- ner we learn that sight is the function of the eyes. '
"Thus spake Merodach, for he had a scientific mind and was curious of God's handiwork. And when he had finished speaking, his courtiers ap- plauded him. "
Adam is afterwards discovered trespassing in Mero- dach's garden or paradise. The characters of Bagoas, Merodach's high priest, Adam, Eve and the Princess Candace are all admirably presented. The book is divided in six parts: the incident of the Kingdom of
? IN THE VORTEX 233
Uruk, a conversation at the house of Euripides, "A Friend of Paul," a conversation between St. Francis and the Pope, another between Thomas Cromwell and Macchiavelli, and a final encounter between Leo XIII and Renan in Paradise.
This book is not to be neglected by the intelligent reader (avis rarissima, and in what minute ratio to the population I am still unable to discern).
"Others" Anthology for 1917. This last gives, I think, the first adequate presentation of Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, who have, without exaggerated '"nationalism," without waving of banners and general phrases about Columbia gem of the ocean, succeeded in, or fallen into, producing something distinctly American in quality, not merely distinguishable as American by reason of current national faults.
Their work is neither simple, sensuous nor passionate, but as we are no longer governed by the North American Review we need not condemn poems merely because they do not fit some stock phrase or rhetorical criticism.
(For example, an infinitely greater artist than Tenny- son uses six "s's" and one "z" in a single line. It is one of the most musical lines in Provencal and opens a poem especiallycommendedbyDante. Letusleavetherealm of promoted typists who quote the stock phrases of text-books. )
In the verse of Marianne Moore I detect traces of emotion; inthatofMinaLoyIdetectnoemotionwhat- ever. Both of these women are, possibly in unconscious- ness, among the. followers of Jules Laforgue (whose work shows a great deal of emotion) . Or perhaps Rene Ghil is the "influence" in Miss Moore's case. It is pos- sible, as I have written, or intended to write elsewhere, to
? 234 INSTIGATIONS
divide poetry into three sorts: (i) melopoeia, to wit, poetry whicfi moves by its music, whether it be a music in words or an aptitude for, or suggestion of, accom- panying music; (2) imagism, or poetry wherein the feelings of painting and sculpture- are predominant (cer- tain men move in phantasmagoria; the images of their gods, whole countrysides, stretches of hill land and forest, travel with them) ; and there is, thirdly, logopoeia, or poetry that is akin to nothing but language which is a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas and modifications of ideas and characters. Pope and the eighteenth-century writers had in this medium a certain limitedrange. TheintelligenceofLaforgueranthrough the whole gamut of his time. T. S. Eliot has gone on with it. Browning wrote a condensed form of drama, full of things of the senses, scarcely ever pure logopoeia.
One wonders what the devil any one will make of this sort of thing who has not in their wit all the clues. It has none of the stupidity beloved of the "lyric" en- thusiast, and the writer and reader who take refuge in scenery, description of nature, because they are unable to cope with the human. These two contributors to the "Others" Anthology write logopoeia. It is, in their case, the utterance of clever people in despair, or hover- ing upon the brink of that precipice. It is of those who have acceded with Renan "La betise humain6 est la seule chose qui donne une idee de I'infini. " It is a mind cry, more than a heart cry. "Take the world if thou wilt but leave me an asylum for my affection," is not their lamentation, but rather "In the midst of this desolation, give me at least one intelligence to converse with. "
The arid clarity, not without its own beauty, of le temperament de I'Americaine, is in the poems of these, I think, graduates or post-graduates. If they have not
? IN THE VORTEX 235
received B. A. 's or M. A. 's or B. Sc. 's they do not need them.
The point of my praise, for I intend this as praise, even if I do not burst into the phrases of Victor Hugo, is that without any pretences and without clamors about nationality, these girls have written a distinctly national product, they have written something which would not have come out of any other country, and (while I have before now seen a deal of rubbish by both of them) they are, as selected by Mr. Kreymborg, interesting and readable (by me, that is. I am aware that even the poems before me would drive numerous not wholly un- intelligent readers into a fury of rage-out-of-puzzle-
ment. ) Both these poetriae have said a number of things not to be found in the current numbers of Every- body's,theCenturyorMcClure's. "TheEffectualMar- riage," "French Peacock," "My Apish Cousins," have each in its way given me pleasure. Miss Moore has already prewritten her cbunterblast to my criticism in her poem "to a Steam Roller. "
The anthology displays also Mr. Williams' praise- worthy opacity.
THE NEW POETRY
English and French literature have stood in constant need of each other, and it is interesting to note, as con- current but in no way dependent upon the present alli- ance, a new French vitality among our younger writers of poetry. As some of these latter are too new to presuppose the reader's familiarity with them, I quote a few poems before venturing to open a discussion. T. S. Eliot is the most finished, the most composed of these poets; kt us observe his poem "The Hippopota- mus," as it appears in The Little Review.
--.
? 236
INSTIGATIONS The Hippopotamus
The broad backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us. . , . Yet he is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail, Susceptible to nervous shock; While the True Qiurch can never fail For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo's feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir To gather in its dividends.
The potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree,
But fruits of pomegranate and peach Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo's voice Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd. But every week we hear rejoice The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus's day
Is past in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way
The Church can sleep and feed at once
? IN THE VORTEX 237
I saw the potamus take wing Ascending from the damp savannas, And quiring angels round him sing The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean And him shall heavenly arms enfold, Among the saints he shall be seen Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow, By all the martyr'd virgins kist. While the True Church remains below Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
This cold sardonic statement is definitely of the school of Theophile Gautier; as definitely as Eliot's "Conversa- tion Galante" is in the manner of Jules Laforgue. There is a great deal in the rest of Mr. Eliot's poetry which is personal, and in no wise derivative either from the French or from Webster and Tourneur just as there
;
is in "The Hippopotamus" a great deal which is not Theophile Gautier. I quote the two present poems sim- ply to emphasize a certain lineage and certain French virtues and qualities, which are, to put it most mildly, a great and blessed relief after the official dullness and Wordsworthian lignification of the "Georgian" Antholo- gies and their descendants and derivatives as upheld by The New Statesman, that nadir of the planet of hebe- tude, that apogee of the kulturesque.
Conversation Galante*
I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
From "Prufrock. " By T. S. Eliot. Egoist, Ltd.
--!
? 238
INSTIGATIONS
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travelers to their distress. "
She then: "How you digress! "
And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and moonshine, music which we seize To body forth our own vacuity. "
She then: "Does this refer to me? " "Oh no, it is I who am inane. "
"You, madam, are the eternal humorist.
The eternal enemy of the absolute.
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute And----: "Are we then so serious? "
"
Laforgue's influehce or Ghil's or some kindred ten- dency is present in the whimsicalities of Marianne Moore, and of Mina Loy. A verbalism less finished than Eliot's appears in Miss Moore's verses called
Pedantic Literalist
Prince Rupert's drop, paper muslin ghost. White torch "with power to say unkind
Things with kindness and the most Irritating things in the midst of love and
Tears," you invite destruction.
You are like the meditative man With the perfunctory heart; its
? IN THE VORTEX
239
Carved cordiality ran
To and fro at first, like an inlaid and royal
Immutable production;
Then afterward "neglected to be Painful" and "deluded him with
Loitering formality,
Doing its duty as if it did not,"
Presenting an obstruction
To the motive that it served. What stood Erectinyouhaswithered. A
Little "palmtree of turned wood"
Informs your once spontaneous core in its
Immutable reduction.
The reader accustomed only to glutinous imitations of Keats, diaphanous dilutations of Shelley, woolly Wordsworthian paraphrases, or swishful Swinburniania will doubtless dart back appalled by Miss Moore's de- partures from custom; custom, that is, as the male or female devotee of Palgravian insularity understands that highlyelasticterm. ThePalgravianwillthenwithdis- appointment discover that his favorite and conventional whine is inapplicable. Miss Moore "rhymes in places. " Her versification does not fit in with preconceived notions of vers litre. It possesses a strophic structure. The elderly Newboltian groans. The all-wool un- bleachedGeorgiansighsominously. Anotherauthorhas been reading French poets, and using words for the communication of thought. Alas, times will not stay anchored.
Mina Loy has been equally subject to something like internationalinfluence; therearelinesinher"Ineffectual
--
? 240 INSTIGATIONS
Marriage" perhaps better written than anything I have found in Miss Moore, as, for example:
"So here we might dispense with her Gina being a female
But she was more than that
Being an incipience a correlative an instigation to the reaction of man From the palpable to the transcendent Mollescent irritant of his fantasy
Gina had her use Being useful contentedly conscious
She flowered in Empyrean
From which no well-mated woman ever returns
Sundays a warm light in the parlor From the gritty road on the white wall anybody could see it
Shimmered a composite effigy
Madonna crinolined a man hidden beneath her hoop.
Patience said Gina is an attribute >> And she learned at any hour to offer The dish appropriately delectable
What had Miovanni made of his ego
In his library
What had Gina wondered among the pots and
pans
One never asked the other. "
? IN THE VORTEX 241
These lines are not written as Henry Davray said re- cently in the "Mercure de France," that the last "Geor- gian Anthology" poems are written, i. e. , in search for "sentiments pour les accommoder a leur vocabulaire. " Miss Loy's are distinctly the opposite, they are words set down to convey a definite meaning, and words accom- modated to that meaning, even if they do not copy the mannerisms of the five or six by no means impeccable nineteenth century poets whom the British Poetry Society has decided to imitate.
All this is very pleasing, or very displeasing, accord- ing to the taste of the reader; according to his freedom from, or his bondage to, custom.
Distinct and as different as possible from the orderly statements of Eliot, and from the slightly acid whimsi- calities of these ladies, are the poems of Carlos Williams. If the sinuosities and mental quirks of Misses Moore and Loy are difficult to follow I do not know what is to be said for , some of Mr. Williams' ramifications and abruptnesses. I do not pretend to follow all of his volts, jerks, sulks, balks, outblurts and jump-overs; but for . all his roughness there remains with me the con- viction that there is nothing meaningless in his book, "Al que quiere," not a line. There is whimsicality as we found it in his earlier poems. "The Tempers" (pub- lished by Elkin Mathews), in the verse to "The Coro-
ner's Children," for example. There is distinctness and color, as was shown in his "Postlude," in "Des Im- agistes" ; but there is beyond these qualities the absolute conviction of a man with his feet on the soil, on a soil personally and peculiarly his own. He is rooted. He is at times almost inarticulate, but he is never dry, never without sap in abundance.
His course 'may be well indicated by the change of the last few years ; we found
--
? 242 INSTIGATIONS
him six years ago in "The Postlude," full of a thick and opaque color, full of emotional richness, with a maxi- mum of subjective reality:
POSTLXTOE
Now that I have cooled to you
Let there be gold of tarnished masonry. Temples soothed by the sun to ruin That sleep utterly.
Give me hand for the dances,
Ripples at Philse, in and out.
And lips, my Lesbian,
Wall flowers that once were flame.
Your hair is my Carthage And my arms the bow.
And our words the arrows To shoot the stars.
Who from that misty sea Swarm to destroy us.
But you there beside me^
Oh ! how shall I defy you.
Who wound me in the night
With breasts shining like Venus and like Mars ? The night that is shouting Jason
When the loud eaves rattle As with waves above me. Blue at the prow of my desire.
O prayers in the dark! O incense to Poseidon! Calm in Atlantis.
----
? IN THE VORTEX
343
^xora this he has, as some would say, "turned" to a sort of maximum objective reality in
The Old Men
Old men who have studied every leg show
in the city
Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music polished or fleeced skulls that stand before
the whole theatre
in silent attitudes
of attention,
old men who have taken precedence over young men
and even over dark-faced husbands whose minds
are a street with' arc-lights. Solitary old men
for whom we find no excuses .
. .
This is less savage than "Les Assis. " His "Portrait of a Woman in Bed" incites me to a comparison with Rimbaud's picture of an old actress in her "loge. " Not to Rimbaud's disadvantage. I don't know that any, save the wholly initiated into the cult of anti-exoticism, would take Williams' poem for an exotic, but there is
no accounting for what may occur in such cases. Portrait of a Woman in Bed
There's my things drying in the corner;
-- --! --! --! -- !
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INSTIGATIONS
that blue skirt
joined to the gray shirt
I'm sick of trouble! Lift the covers
if you want me
and you'll see
the rest of my clothes though it would be cold lying with nothing on
I won't work
and I've got no cash. What are you going to do about it?
and no jewelry (the crazy fools).
But I've my two eyes and a smooth face and here's this ! look it's high!
There's brains and blood in there
my name's Robitza! Corsets
can go to the devil
and drawers along with them What do I care!
My two boys? I--^they're keen
Let the rich lady care for them
----
? IN THE VORTEX
24S
they'll beat the school
or
let them go to the gutter that ends trouble.
This house is empty isn't it?
Then it's mine
because I need it.
Oh, I won't starve while there's the Bible to make them feed me.
Try to help me
if you want trouble or leave me alone that ends trouble.
The county physician is a damned fool and you
can go to hell!
You could have closed the door when you came in;
do it when you go out.
I'm tired.
This is not a little sermon on slums. 'It conveys more than two dozen or two hundred magazine stories about the comedy of slum-work. As the memoir of a physician, it is keener than Spiess' notes of an advocate in the Genevan law courts. It is more compact than Vildrac's "Auberge," and has not Vildrac's tendency to
? 246 INSTIGATIONS
sentiment. It is a poem that could be translated into French or any other modern language and hold its own with the contemporary product of whatever country one chose.
A PISTINCTION
A journalist has said to me : "We, i. e. we journalists, are like mediums. People go to a spiritist seance and hear what they want to hear. It is the same with a leading article: we write so that the reader will find what he wants to find. "
That is the root of the matter ; there is good journal- ism and bad journalism, and journalism that "looks" like "literature" and literature etc. . . .
But the root of the difference is that in journalism the reader finds what he is looking for, whereas in liter- ature he must find at least a part of what the author intended.
That is why "the first impression of a work of genius" is "nearly always disagreeable. " The public loathe the violence done to their self-conceit whenever any one conveys to them an idea that is his, not their own.
This difference is lasting and profound. Even in the vaguest of poetry, or the vaguest music, where the re- ceiver may, or must make half the beauty he is to receive, there is alin^ys something of the author or composer which must be transmitted.
In journalism or the "bad art," there is no such strain on the public.
THE CLASSICS "ESCAPE"
It is well that the citizen should be acquainted with thelawsofhiscountry. Inearliertimesthelawsofa
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nation were graven upon tablets and set up in the market place. I myself have seen a sign: "Bohemians are not permitted within the precincts of this commune"; but the laws of a great republic are too complex and arcane topermitofthissimpletreatment. Iconfesstohaving been a bad citizen, to just the extent of having been ignorant that at any moment my works might be classed in law's eye with the inventions of the late Dr. Condom.
It is possible that others with only a mild interest in literature may be equally ignorant ; I quote therefore the law:
Section 211 of the United States Criminal Code pro- vides :
"Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character and every arti- cle or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose ; and every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, adver- tisement, or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of the hereinbeforementioned mat- ters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means conception may be prevented or abortion produced, whether sealed or un- sealed; and every letter, packet, or package, or other
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mail matter containing any filthy, vile or indecent thing, device, or substance; any and every paper, writing, ad- vertisement, or representation that any article, instru- ment, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for preventing conception or producing abortion or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, sub- stance, drug, medicine, or thing, is hereby declared to be non-mailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post-office or by any letter carrier. Whoever shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be non-mailable, or shall knowingly take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. "
It is well that the citizens of a country should be aware of its laws.
It is not for me to promulgate obiter dicta ; to say that whatever the cloudiness of its phrasing, this law was obviously designed to prevent the circulation of immoral advertisements, propaganda for secret cures, and slips of paper that are part of the bawdy house business; that it was not designed to prevent the mailing of Dante, Villon, and Catullus. Whatever the subjective attitude of the framers of this legislation, we have fortunately a decision from a learned judge to guide us in its working.
"I have little doubt that numerous really great writ- ings would come under the ban if tests that are fre- quently current were applied, and these approved pub- lications doubtless at times escape only because they
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come within the term "classics," which means, for the purpose of the application of the statute, that they are ordinarily immune from interference, because they have the sanction of age and fame and USUALLY APPEAL TO A COMPARATIVELY LIMITED NUMBER OF READERS. "
The capitals are my own.
The gentle reader will picture to himself the state of America IF the classics were widely read; IF these books which in the beginning lifted mankind from sav- agery, and which from A. D. 1400 onward have gradually redeemed us from the darkness of medievalism, should
be read by the millions who now consume Mr. Hearst and the Ladies' Home Journal! ! ! ! ! !
Also there are to be no additions. No living man is to contribute or to attempt to contribute to the classics. Obviously even though he acquire fame before publish- ing, he can not have the sanction of "age. "
Our literature does not fall under an inquisition; it does not bow to an index arranged by a council. It is subject to the taste of one individual.
Our hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants desire their literature sifted for them by one individual selected without any examination of his literary qualificatons.
I can not write of this thing in heat. It is a far too serious matter.
Theclassics"escape. " Theyare"immune""ordinar- ily. " I can but close with the cadences of that blessed little Brother of Christ, San Francesco d'Assisi
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CANTICO DEL SOLE
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
Nunc dimittis. Now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation . . .
Oh well
It troubles my sleep.
Oraviwus
? PART SECOND
? V
OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
(A divagation from Jules Laforgue)
There arose, as from a great ossified sponge, the comic-opera, Florence-Nightingale light-house, with junks beneath it clicking in vesperal meretricious mono- tony; behind them the great cliff obtruded solitary into the oily, poluphloisbious ocean, lifting its confection of pylons ; the poplar rows, sunk yards, Luna Parks, etc. , of the Tetrarchal Palace polished jasper and basalt, funereal undertakerial, lugubrious, blistering in the high- lights under a pale esoteric sun-beat; encrusted, bespat- tered and damascened with cynocephali, sphinxes, wingedbulls,bulbuls,andothersculpturalby-laws. The screech-owls from the jungle could only look out upon the shadowed parts of the sea, which they did without optic inconvenience, so deep was the obscured contagion
of their afforested blackness.
The two extraneous princes went up toward the stable-
yard, gaped at the effulgence of peacocks, glared at the derisive gestures of the horse-cleaners, adumbrated in- sults, sought vainly for a footman or any one to take up their cards.
The tetrarch appeared on a terrace, removing his cere- monial gloves.
The water, sprinkled in the streets in anticipation of the day's parade, dried in little circles of dust. The
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tetrarch puffed at his hookah with an exaggeration of dignity; he was disturbed at the presence of princes, he was disturbed by the presence of Jao; he desired to observe his own ruin, the slow deHquescence of his posi- tion, with a fitting detachment and lassitude. Jao had distributed pamphlets, the language was incomprehen- sible; Jaohadbeenstoredinthecellarage,hisfollowing distributed pamphlets.
In the twentieth century of his era the house of Emer- aud Archytypas was about to have its prize bit of fire- works: a war with the other world . . . after so many ages of purely esoteric culture
Jao had declined both the poisoned coffee and the sacred sword of the Samurai, courtesies offered, in this case, to an incomprehensible foreigner. Even now, with a superlation of form, the sacred kriss had been sent to the court executioner, it was no mere eveiy-day imple- ment. The princejs arrived {at this juncture. There sounded from the back alleys the preparatory chirping of choral societies, and the wailing of pink-lemonade sellers. To-morrow the galley would be gone.
Leaning over the syrupy clematis, Emeraud crumbled brioches for the fishes, reminding himself that he had not yet collected the remains of his wits. There was no galvanization known to art, science, industry or the ministrations of sister-souls that would rouse his long since respectable carcass.
Yet at his birth a great tempest had burst above the dynastic manor; credible persons had noticed the light- nings scrolling Alpha and Omega above it; and nothing had happened. He had given up flagellation. He walked daily to the family necropolis : a cool place in the summer. HesummonedtheArrangerofInanities.
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? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 255 II
Strapped, pomaded, gloved, laced; with patulous beards, with their hair parted at the backs of their heads with their cork-screw curls pulled back from their fore- heads to give themselves tone on their medallions; with helmets against one hip ; twirling the musk-balls of their sabres with their disengaged restless fingers, the hyper- borean royalties were admitted. And the great people
received them, in due order: chief mandarins in clump, the librarian of the palace (Conde de las Navas), the Arbiter Elegantium, the Curator major of Symbols, the Examiner of the High Schools, the Supernumerary priest of the Snow Cult, the Administrator of Death, and the Chief Attendant Collector of Death-duties.
Their Highnesses bowed and addressed the Tetrarch: ". . . felicitous wind . . . day so excessively glorious . . . wafted . . . these isles . . . notwithstanding not also whereof . . . basilica far exceeding . . . . Ind, Ormus . . . Miltonesco . . . etc. . . . to say nothing of the seven-stopped barbary organ and the Tedium lauda- mus. . . etc. . . . "
(Lunch was brought in. )
Kallipagous artichokes, a light collation of tunny-fish,
asparagus served 011 pink reeds, eels pearl-gray and dove- gray, gamut and series of compotes and various wines (without alcohol).
Under impulsion of the Arranger of Inanities the pomaded princes next began their inspection of the build- ings. A pneumatic lift hove them upward to the outer rooms of Salome's suite. The lift door clicked on its gilt-brass double expansion-clamps; the procession ad- vanced between rows of wall-facing negresses whose naked shoulder-blades shone like a bronze of oily opacity.
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They entered the hall of majolica, very yellow with thick blue incrustations, glazed images, with flushed and pro- tuberant faces; in the third atrium they came upon a basin of joined ivory, a white bath-sponge, rather large, a pair of very pink slippers. The next room was littered with books bound in white vellum and pink satin; the next with mathematical instruments, hydrostats, sextants, astrolabial discs, the model of a gasolene motor, a nickel- plated donkey engine. . . . They proceeded up metal stairs to the balcony, from which a rustling and swaying and melodiously enmousselined figure, jonquil-colored and delicate, preceded or rather predescended them by dumb-waiter, a route which they were not ready to fol- low. The machine worked for five floors : usage private and not ceremonial.
The pomaded princes stood to attention, bowed with deference and with gallantry. The Arranger ignored the whole incident, ascended the next flight of stairs and began on the telescope:
"^Grand equatorial, 22 yards inner tube length, revolv- able cupola (frescoes in water-tight paint) weight 200,089 kilos, circulating on fourteen steel castors in a groove of chloride of magnesium, 2 minutes for com- plete revolution. The princess can turn it herself. "
The princes allowed their attention to wander, they noted their ship beneath in the harbor, and calculated the drop, they then compared themselves with the bro- caded and depilated denizens of the escort, after which they felt safer. They were led passively into the Small Hall of Perfumes, presented with protochlorine of mer- cury, bismuth regenerators, cantharides, lustral waters guaranteed free from hydrated lead. Were conducted thence to the hanging garden, where the form her- metically enmousselined, the jonquil-colored gauze with
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the pea-sized dark spots on it, disappeared from the opposite slope. Molossian hounds yapping and romping about her.
The trees lifted their skinned-salmon trunks, the heavy blacknesswasbrokenwithasteely,metallicsunshine.
