This issue of The New Freewoman begins with a remarkable essay on ecological responsibility, Stephen T. Byington's "On Interference with the Environment." The thesis: "If one person injures another by making the material environment unfit for that other's use, the injury should be regarded on the same level with a direct assault on another's person or on the products of his labour. I say 'material environment,' meaning such things as the air, the water, the hosts of birds and beetles and bacteria, not the social environment."
Rebecca West's review of Granville Barker has the characteristic mix of fin-de-siècle pessimism and double-edged compliments that make it seem like there is no good art being made in 1913. She makes me want to read his play "The Marrying of Anne Leete " because she likes it: "There never was written anything quite like it except Tchekov's Cherry Orchard, which it resembled both in the fastidious hands it laid on the sterile and sentimental governing classes and in its Futurist technique" (128). It's interesting to think of Chekov as a Futurist...
Pound's review of John Gould Fletcher is classic Pound--while not really boosting his friend (who was always frustrated by Pound's self-declared superiority), he manages to make Fletcher come across as a leading poet of English (if not to be compared with the French).
There are a set of poems by Richard Aldington, in the Greco-Imagist fashion. I really do like them for their soft tones--an understated version of what H.D. does so well. Again, that pessimism creeps in at the end of a long prose translation from Moschus: "O Anax Hyperion, golden Apollo, cease thy task of sending mortals light/ and teach this generation not to write" (133). That is also very Poundian, of course--I like Aldington's place in the triad, though. He seems more aware of the repetitiveness of artistic cycles, turning to the Greeks not because they are classic but because they remind him of himself. That's strictly a blog statement, though--I'd have to do some thinking before defending it.
Perhaps most interesting for the purposes of getting a feel for the fractures that exist between my two main journals is the paragraph in Huntley Carter's essay "The Stone Citizen," which takes on The New Age directly. It has given me a few names to research that I hadn't run across before: Samuel Hobson, who Carter says founded Guild Socialism, which he calls "balderdash" (135); Field Marshal Bruce Williams, who sounds VERY familiar (Pound related?), and a "Geddes" who may be this Geddes, but may not. He blames Geddes for the idea that people should be citizens, rather than individuals, "civics" and not "cosmics." That's all very Huntley Carter. He also makes an idenfitication: Romney of TNA is J. M. Kennedy, though the Modernist Journals Project pseudonym database doesn't agree. The similarities in tone between Romney and S. Verdad leads me to agree with Carter, and the MJP admits that it isn't sure who Romney really is. Here's the text: "it has set its handy man J. M. (Julius McCabbage) Kennedy disguised as Romney to reconstruct the British Army with Williams' pale system for pink persons."
Well, we'll see what happens next.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
The New Age, September 18 1913
The most entertaining part of this issue is:
HASTINGS attacking Pound, in a big way. I hope this is just an opening salvo, and knowing BH and EP and The New Age there'll be some more scuffling before it's over. Hastings goes after Pound's recent series of articles on French poetry ("The Approach to Paris") and French avant gardes (covered in earlier posts and continuing in this one) in an article titled "The Way Back to America."
Did I mention that I figured out the penname "Hastings?" Her non-pseudonymous name is"Haigh," so it's "Haigh-stings." And how! In this piece, "The Way Back to America," she goes after Pound, hitting him in every chink of his armor: his elitism, his tendency to declare himself writing for small audiences, his habit of quoting a line of poetry and acting as if its virtues are self-evident, etc. Really he gets raked every time he publishes a piece in TNA. His response to the criticism-thus-far is measured: "I have no inclination to argue about these affairs" (607).
His essay on Romains is very fascinating--I feel like reading Romains, now. The end is gracious and heartfelt: "Whatever we may think of his theories, in whatever paths we may find it useless to follow him, we have here at last the poet, and our best critique is quotation." 'Nuff said.
Carl Bechhofer is displaying his classic cheerio pip pip British Imperial racism in his piece on traveling India. If you're into that sort of vomit, read his piece. I don't know why he lacks the imagination to see that it isn't fun to carry someone else's things over mountains, and that if one can negotiate early payment and go home to one's real work, one might just think that makes sense. Not that I am claiming to understand the motivations of the workers who strand him--just that I understand that they have motivations.
Hastings' translations continue to build her persona, as again she and Orage practice subtle laminations of articles to advance their points. Again she uses translations of the Mahabrata to illustrate current rhetoric: this time she casually retells a legend about a rich but enlightened man who avoided a vicious robbery by explaining to the thief that he understood said thief's superiority over the common herd. Punchline? That the thief was the enlightened man's ego all along.
Hastings' contribution to "Pastiche" is, as usual, quite excellent. She's much better at prose than poetry, especially when she adopts a surrealist mode. I believe that "Valerie" is Katherine Mansfield, and "Alice" is BH.
Some notes from Orage's "Readers and Writers"
"Students intent on mastery prefer the original sources; and the general reader is of no account" (601). This makes a researcher's heart warm.
Orage then goes after H.G. Wells. My favorite part is when he says that Wells should stick to "scientific romances" but perhaps not, because "the field is exhausted."
Usually I skip John Francis Hope's "Drama" column, but this bears repeating: "Yet we are inundated with plays of the "Who Shall Win Her?" type, as though it mattered to anybody but the poor devil who succeeded... It is true that one can set men and women on the stage, lying, murdering, seducing, and committing suicide all for the sake of sex; but to those who think that this is drama I have nothing to say." Ha!
This issue was particularly rich and I haven't begun to do it justice, but I must skedaddle on because I'm already two days into the next week and I haven't done this month's Poetry or The Masses or the second monthly installment of The New Freewoman. And I feel like I should be broadening to more journals... these first, though.
Monday, September 16, 2013
The New Age, September 11 1913
It's been a few weeks since I read The New Age, always a risky decision. Apparently I've missed out on the first half of an article by Ezra Pound about how English poetry has been nothing but stealing from the French all along.
Naturally, this being TNA, they print his article and then make a frontal attack on it:
"But the best thing that Mr. Pound has yet been able to say of Paris is that it contains a little group of café habitués who imagine themselves to be the only Israelites in a world of Philistines" (573).
Alright--fair enough. But the plot thickens very quickly. TNA has taken on an even more desperate air than it had in the past. Orage, the editor and writer of this particular article, moves directly from putting Pound in his place to chastising his readership for not writing praise for the caricatures by Tomt:
"...there was silence. You cannot imagine, unless you have tried it, what public production under these circumstances means to an artist, be he literary or draughtsman. It is like lecturing to the dumb in a hall of pitch darkness. Riot, I frankly say, would be a better tribute" (574).
The 1913 equivalent of trolling for likes on a friend's Facebook gallery? Note particularly the slipping-in of the literary artist, especially in the context of what comes next. Orage attempts to diagnose the general crappiness of English literature by blaming the authors, reviewers, publishers, and readers in turn--but reserves his most powerful anger for the publishers:
"I have known many obscure writers; c'est mon métier. I know obscure writers to-day who, properly encouraged, could do honour to English literature. I have never known one who, without preliminary jobbery, was approached by a publisher to submit a work for publication. You think, doubtless, that publishers--as it is often said of editors--are "on the look-out" for fresh minds and promising writers. Myth, pure myth! It required a personal 'pull' to procure the publication of the work I referred to the other day as the purest work of genius our brief age has produced."
The rhetorical circuit closes. The crafty craftsmanship of Orage layers obliquely until the real stakes emerge: Pound is wrong because he's too into France to notice English genius, also ignored by publishers, reviewers, and (like the caricatures) readers. This layering of smaller pieces to establish larger positions is extremely characteristic of TNA--it even happens again in this very issue, when Beatrice Hastings launches a multi-pronged response to The New Freewoman and others who disagree with guild socialism--her defense boils down to TNF not understanding them and having silly ideas. I love how the dueling-banjos feel of these two helps them each cast a proper shadow.
Can't dwell on that right now though--I've gotten work as a copyeditor and my assignment has arrived. Not that I ever edit these posts (forgive any errors, plz).
Naturally, this being TNA, they print his article and then make a frontal attack on it:
"But the best thing that Mr. Pound has yet been able to say of Paris is that it contains a little group of café habitués who imagine themselves to be the only Israelites in a world of Philistines" (573).
Alright--fair enough. But the plot thickens very quickly. TNA has taken on an even more desperate air than it had in the past. Orage, the editor and writer of this particular article, moves directly from putting Pound in his place to chastising his readership for not writing praise for the caricatures by Tomt:
"...there was silence. You cannot imagine, unless you have tried it, what public production under these circumstances means to an artist, be he literary or draughtsman. It is like lecturing to the dumb in a hall of pitch darkness. Riot, I frankly say, would be a better tribute" (574).
The 1913 equivalent of trolling for likes on a friend's Facebook gallery? Note particularly the slipping-in of the literary artist, especially in the context of what comes next. Orage attempts to diagnose the general crappiness of English literature by blaming the authors, reviewers, publishers, and readers in turn--but reserves his most powerful anger for the publishers:
"I have known many obscure writers; c'est mon métier. I know obscure writers to-day who, properly encouraged, could do honour to English literature. I have never known one who, without preliminary jobbery, was approached by a publisher to submit a work for publication. You think, doubtless, that publishers--as it is often said of editors--are "on the look-out" for fresh minds and promising writers. Myth, pure myth! It required a personal 'pull' to procure the publication of the work I referred to the other day as the purest work of genius our brief age has produced."
The rhetorical circuit closes. The crafty craftsmanship of Orage layers obliquely until the real stakes emerge: Pound is wrong because he's too into France to notice English genius, also ignored by publishers, reviewers, and (like the caricatures) readers. This layering of smaller pieces to establish larger positions is extremely characteristic of TNA--it even happens again in this very issue, when Beatrice Hastings launches a multi-pronged response to The New Freewoman and others who disagree with guild socialism--her defense boils down to TNF not understanding them and having silly ideas. I love how the dueling-banjos feel of these two helps them each cast a proper shadow.
Can't dwell on that right now though--I've gotten work as a copyeditor and my assignment has arrived. Not that I ever edit these posts (forgive any errors, plz).
Saturday, September 14, 2013
The New Freewoman, September 1 1913
September is the cruelest month for graduate students--but we've come out of our annual move mostly intact in Bellingham, WA. After a bit of a stressful beginning, I hope to get back to writing these posts in a more timely fashion.
I've been reading Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project again--straight through for the first time. I finished convolute "N" a few days ago, which has given me a new impulse for this project. I think I'll try to make it more Arcadian--more presentation, perhaps, less commentary, certainly less retrospect. Naturally there will still be a lot of both because the blog's primary function is still as a scholar's notebook... but I'll give it a try.
"Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say anything. Merely show... the rags, the refuse--these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them" (Benjamin 460). I'm hardly playing with refuse--but at least rags?
With that, I'll turn to Sept 1 1913.
1. "Concerning the Beautiful" By Dora Marsden? Unsigned.
"To read the history of the "Idea of the Beautiful" is the best known way of destroying respect for philosophy.... The reason is clear... [a]n effect is put up as a cause; from the supposed cause, a quality is supposedly abstracted; the supposed abstraction is given a sturdy name and then set free to roam the thin atmosphere of thoughts" ("Concerning the Beautiful, 101).
This in the context of The New Freewoman's general skepticism toward concepts and "thoughts" as opposed to realities. Calling Marsden and co. materialists may have angered them: it would domesticate them. It's worth noting that the essay moves on to figure beauty as an elusive bird, building up an extended metaphor. It also claims that beauty is "repose," a peaceful state of the soul. Like Burke and his sublime/beautiful split, I think. [I was right--see below]
After arguing that beauty is food for the soul, which becomes larger and better integrated through beauty, this gem: "As the intrinsic feature of a food is merely that it feeds, ie. that is can be used up in satisfaction of a need, so in the case of what we call the "beautiful," it is everything which overcomes disparateness in the soul, now being one thing, now another. Sometimes the same thing will fairly regularly answer to the purpose. Sometimes not. All depends on the specific character of the need. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,' sang Keats. Not at all." (101-102). This manages to at once dissipate the power of tastemakers on both sides--the traditionalists and avant-gardists are revealed as part of the same overall experience of soul-feeding. The twist is the NFW's characteristic hint that not all souls are equal, nor do they require the same food--which of course reestablishes their own claim to elite taste. A delicate operation with/of power and confidence.
Beauty must be "sensed, not thought," therefore "effects which primarily belong to a thought-process must be eliminated from the category" (103). The editor lists three "brands" of this ersatz "associative" beautiful: the sublime, the picturesque, and the seductive. The sublime is an "intellect-tainted substitute." The picturesque "intellectualized beauty-fake." The seductive "is merely the evidence of a suitability in the objective means to a definite objective end" (103).
The end of the article, with its catalog of fakes, never really establishes what beauty actually is. Here it seems to contradict the principle established at the start: "The intellectual malaise connected with the sublime the sentimental melancholy of the picturesque, the quickened desires... of the seductive, tend to dispersal rather than to cohesion. They may have their contribution to make to the soul's need. The casting forth of seed is as necessary as the reaping of the grain; but for the 'beautiful,' its function lies in the reaping" (104). So dispersal is admitted as a potential need. This hedging of the beautiful with the shrubbery of the picturesque (and allies) shows that the fear of dissolution is tempered by acknowledgment of its necessity. I wish Marsden(?) had followed up on that--perhaps in future essays?
[I'm afraid that the rest of the issue didn't lend itself as well to sampling with commentary--or I just fell back into my old cataloging habits. Consider the following notes as bookmarks, not finished comments.]
2. "Views and Comments."
Interesting attack on The New Age's guild-socialism, including a takedown of the concept of a "monopoly of labor-power." Followed by half-humorous linking of NA with Pankhursts, and truly Hastings isn't far off.
3. "The Poet's Eye," Ford Madox Heuffer. This is a slightly-changed reprint of the essay from August's Poetry. Transatlantic timeshifts? I'm seeing more and more reprints and arguments across my journals--looking across and inwards already ready for canonization?
4. "In Metre," Ezra Pound. Same review as from Poetry.
5. "The New School" by Imagistes. A nice selection of single poems from Aldington, H.D., Lowell, Cannell, Flint, and Williams. Flint's poem is my favorite. Williams's the best in retrospect, he's very much playing H.D. here, I wonder if the poem is for her.
6. "Domestic Studies in the Year 2000": another science fiction anecdote, this one by E. S. P. Haynes. It's about an old man about to be compulsorily euthanized and his reminisces of the 1913-present.
I've been reading Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project again--straight through for the first time. I finished convolute "N" a few days ago, which has given me a new impulse for this project. I think I'll try to make it more Arcadian--more presentation, perhaps, less commentary, certainly less retrospect. Naturally there will still be a lot of both because the blog's primary function is still as a scholar's notebook... but I'll give it a try.
"Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say anything. Merely show... the rags, the refuse--these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them" (Benjamin 460). I'm hardly playing with refuse--but at least rags?
With that, I'll turn to Sept 1 1913.
1. "Concerning the Beautiful" By Dora Marsden? Unsigned.
"To read the history of the "Idea of the Beautiful" is the best known way of destroying respect for philosophy.... The reason is clear... [a]n effect is put up as a cause; from the supposed cause, a quality is supposedly abstracted; the supposed abstraction is given a sturdy name and then set free to roam the thin atmosphere of thoughts" ("Concerning the Beautiful, 101).
This in the context of The New Freewoman's general skepticism toward concepts and "thoughts" as opposed to realities. Calling Marsden and co. materialists may have angered them: it would domesticate them. It's worth noting that the essay moves on to figure beauty as an elusive bird, building up an extended metaphor. It also claims that beauty is "repose," a peaceful state of the soul. Like Burke and his sublime/beautiful split, I think. [I was right--see below]
After arguing that beauty is food for the soul, which becomes larger and better integrated through beauty, this gem: "As the intrinsic feature of a food is merely that it feeds, ie. that is can be used up in satisfaction of a need, so in the case of what we call the "beautiful," it is everything which overcomes disparateness in the soul, now being one thing, now another. Sometimes the same thing will fairly regularly answer to the purpose. Sometimes not. All depends on the specific character of the need. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,' sang Keats. Not at all." (101-102). This manages to at once dissipate the power of tastemakers on both sides--the traditionalists and avant-gardists are revealed as part of the same overall experience of soul-feeding. The twist is the NFW's characteristic hint that not all souls are equal, nor do they require the same food--which of course reestablishes their own claim to elite taste. A delicate operation with/of power and confidence.
Beauty must be "sensed, not thought," therefore "effects which primarily belong to a thought-process must be eliminated from the category" (103). The editor lists three "brands" of this ersatz "associative" beautiful: the sublime, the picturesque, and the seductive. The sublime is an "intellect-tainted substitute." The picturesque "intellectualized beauty-fake." The seductive "is merely the evidence of a suitability in the objective means to a definite objective end" (103).
The end of the article, with its catalog of fakes, never really establishes what beauty actually is. Here it seems to contradict the principle established at the start: "The intellectual malaise connected with the sublime the sentimental melancholy of the picturesque, the quickened desires... of the seductive, tend to dispersal rather than to cohesion. They may have their contribution to make to the soul's need. The casting forth of seed is as necessary as the reaping of the grain; but for the 'beautiful,' its function lies in the reaping" (104). So dispersal is admitted as a potential need. This hedging of the beautiful with the shrubbery of the picturesque (and allies) shows that the fear of dissolution is tempered by acknowledgment of its necessity. I wish Marsden(?) had followed up on that--perhaps in future essays?
[I'm afraid that the rest of the issue didn't lend itself as well to sampling with commentary--or I just fell back into my old cataloging habits. Consider the following notes as bookmarks, not finished comments.]
2. "Views and Comments."
Interesting attack on The New Age's guild-socialism, including a takedown of the concept of a "monopoly of labor-power." Followed by half-humorous linking of NA with Pankhursts, and truly Hastings isn't far off.
3. "The Poet's Eye," Ford Madox Heuffer. This is a slightly-changed reprint of the essay from August's Poetry. Transatlantic timeshifts? I'm seeing more and more reprints and arguments across my journals--looking across and inwards already ready for canonization?
4. "In Metre," Ezra Pound. Same review as from Poetry.
5. "The New School" by Imagistes. A nice selection of single poems from Aldington, H.D., Lowell, Cannell, Flint, and Williams. Flint's poem is my favorite. Williams's the best in retrospect, he's very much playing H.D. here, I wonder if the poem is for her.
6. "Domestic Studies in the Year 2000": another science fiction anecdote, this one by E. S. P. Haynes. It's about an old man about to be compulsorily euthanized and his reminisces of the 1913-present.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
The New Freewoman, August 15th 1913 (placeholder)
I hope to get back to this one someday--but I don't want to fall too far behind. I read this issue a few weeks ago and it's faint in my memory now. Notably: Rebecca West throws her support behind Imagism by reprinting Pound's Contemporania. Remy de Gourmont beings a longer prose project, "The Horses of Diomedes." Their feminism continues to be relevant: "Views and Comments" discusses the fundamental flaws in arguing that men are motivated by biological lust that they can't be held responsible for having.
Sorry folks. I'll write more about de Gourmont as it continues.
Sorry folks. I'll write more about de Gourmont as it continues.
Poetry, August 1913
Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" appears here--and I'll admit that I think it is softly delightful. You know the one. Maybe I'm more into it than I thought I'd be because I'm sort of on the same path in some of my poetic work: trying to come to grips with the limits of poetry when confronted with the real, natural, phusi-cal world. See if this holds water: read it not as a collection of metaphors that are intended to describe a tree, but as a series of failed attempts to poeticize something that can't be versed. I think that I will never see a poem lovely as a tree, including all the following attempts to put a tree into poetry. The godly sublime is the only greater factor.
Skipwith Cannell has his Poetry debut, perhaps his global debut, in "Poems in Prose and Verse." I am drawn to him because my friend Sarah Higginbotham is a fan. I'll admit that most of these poems don't work for me--like John Gould Fletcher's work, they seem to be trying to be revolutionary by brute force, by escalation of intensity. That said, the poem "Nocturne Triste" is pretty awesome in its scale-shifting. The first line: "The iridescence of sunrise over the ocean gleams on the wings of a fly" ends up being just the first link in what becomes a webbed metaphor with no clear center. The sunrise is in the fly, the peach is like a girl, but the fly is hovering over trash etc. It's really classically Pound-essay-enacting Imagism, following more of the rules than many more famous poems.
Ford Madox Hueffer contributes an incredibly timely essay entitled "Impressionism: Some Speculations." It is a lucid call for poets to write poetry that reflects their own time. It's the pre-Eliot call for a prospective poetry, or even just a poetry of the present: "Modern life is so extraordinary, so hazy, so tenuous, with still so definite and concrete spots in it, that I am forever on the lookout for some poet who will render it with all its values" (181). This essay is like a prophecy--the kind of poetry it asks for becomes the standard. I will teach it next fall because it is so readably rich an articulation of the problem of experimental English poetry in the early 20th. Modern poetry will be poetry of the "Crowd."
And of course, I have to comment on Ezra Pound's review of Jules Romains and the Unanimistes. His criticism is the classic Imagist put-down: Romains, for all his energy, is rhetorical: "very fine and intoxicating rhetoric, no doubt, but as poetry it harks back to the pre-Victorian era, when Shelley set out to propagandize the world" (188). Excellent, right?
I just moved, so I'll be catching up on a bit of a backlog over the coming weeks.
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