The New Freewoman, October 15 1913

This issue of The New Freewoman has the first rumblings of the transition to The Egoist: the first article, before this issue reserved for the editorial, is Ezra Pound's The Serious Artist.

I love it when authors reference their time--and Ezra Pound's concern with the modern usually means he'll feed my desire. He opens with: "It is curious that one should be asked to rewrite Sidney's 'Defense of Poesie" in the year of grace 1913." He uses the comparison with Sidney to set up his purpose, which is to examine the ethics of art. First he determines that art is necessary because ethics are based on the "nature of man" and "the arts give us a great percentage of the lasting an unassailable data regarding the nature of man, of immaterial man, of man considered as a thinking and sentient creature." Well and good, but this progresses to the evolutionary elitism so characteristic of the year of grace 1913: "From the arts... we learn that certain men are often more akin to certain especial animals than they are to other men of different composition." Ok.

EP goes on to explain that bad art comes when the artist lies, because it ends up spreading a contagion of misapplied knowledge of the nature of man and people end up confused. Expressed in the converse: "Purely and simply... good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. You can be wholly precise in representing a vagueness."

How's this: "Now art never asks anybody to do anything, or to think anything, or to be anything. It exists as trees exist, you can admire, you can sit in the shade, you can pick bananas, you can cut firewood, you can do as you jolly well please."

Art provides data about how men (people?) are different. That's part one of the essay, anyway. Welcome to the front seat of TNF, EP.

Other notes:

Richard Aldington contributes a sort of nasty portrait of English women on a train. I wonder what H.D. makes of his hatred of Englishwomankind.

There's an article entitled "The Conversion of a Specialist" about a doctor who has moved to treat tuberculosis with "vegetables, cereals, and fruits without eggs, milk, cheese, or butter"

Ezra Pound responds to that weird Angel Club thing from last time (the people who were going to found their own country of superior people) by asking him to support artists once the new country is set up. I really wonder what he's make of the MFA.

Elsewhere in the letters-to-the-editor there's plenty of White Slave debunking, always double-edged and uncomfortable...

Ads include one for  EP's Canzoni.

All for now...

The New Age, October 16 1913

Here's what's in this issue:

My favorite piece is (I think) a one-off by one Guglielmo Ferraro, entitled "Quantity and Quality." It is about the current tensions rising between Germany and France over France's decision to require "made in X" labels on all imported goods. Here's a sample: "Modern industry has succeeded in multiplying the production of commodities... From the point of view of quantity... we have performed prodigies. But from the point of view of quality, modern industry threatens to make the world one colossal mystery. It so mingles and confuses models with imitations that very soon nobody will be able to tell one from the other." Globalization of commodity production has overwhelmed quality to the point that people have confidence in empty labels: "The blind confidence in certain labels, with which people are reproached, only shows their need of a standard of value by which to judge the quality of things" (721). "Hence it comes that quality is judged by price instead of price by quality. In American journals one already finds advertisements which recommend their goods because they are the most costly." I can vouch for that--look at the car advertisements in a 1913 Scribner's and there are some that use their extra-high cost as a selling point. Ferraro's main point is that quality counts, even if it is invisible, even if it doesn't appear in balance-of-trade calculations. Still true?

Pound wraps up "An Approach to Paris" in this issue, welcome if only so that Beatrice Hastings can stop her mean-spirited lampoons of them (I hope) and get to writing mean-spirited things about something else. EP ends writing about Rimbaud, Paul Fort, and Henri-Martin Barzun, who apparently wrote poems for simultaneous voices (Velvet Underground "Murder Mystery" style). Paul Fort I've encountered in a strange series of translations in a later issue of Poetry, worth a look. I think he's going to come up a lot, judging by the number of hits I got when searching for the poems I'd already read. Weird thing: the translator is John Strong Newberry, but apparently not the paleontologist. A son?

Further notes:

There's been an angry writer named Grant Hervey occasionally contributing about a "young Australia" movement that he represents. He's threatened England with Australian diplomatic independence, not contributing to the Navy, etc. In the "Foreign Affairs" column, S. Verdad replies with this prophetic tidbit (after much hemming and hawing in many directions): "How would they [Hervey and co.] deal with a German-Japanese alliance? That event is at least as likely as the Young Australia movement coming to power" (718). Likely indeed, though not for a while yet...

Romney explains that a grassroots guerilla campaign could paralyze a modern state, and advocates everyone arming themselves if they want to be taken seriously (emulating the Ulster militias).

There's an article about the tyranny of time-clocks at places of employment, including horror at "clock" becoming a verb (clock in, clock out).

A.E.'s "Open Letter to Dublin Employers" is a masterpiece of the genre, calling out the bastards for locking out the workers and threatening them with general rebellion. Phew.

A letter to the editor under "The Plaugue of Advertisements" goes after billboards. "The Dog in Civilization" has a man protesting the population (I swear I accidentally typed "pupulation" just a second ago) density of barking dogs in the city.

That's all for now...

The New Freewoman, October 1 1913

The New Freewoman is really hitting its stride. It is full of interesting articles and well-written literature (though the poetry is still hit-or-miss). This issue includes progressive views on environmentalism and what-will-be queer politics, as well as hilarious comments on contemporary literature. Here's a digest of what you'll find:

If you're into modernist literature and want a good belly laugh, turn to page 149 for a hilarious table of reviews. All sorts of famous reviewers are summed up in one sentence, and the reader is supposed to cobble together a book's reception by selecting each review from the database. Featured: Henry James, Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Ezra Pound, Beatrice Hastings, Alfred Noyes, and others who have fallen into more or less obscurity. A sample: 7. "Mr. Ezra Pound says that someone else has praised the book and therefore it must be bad."

The "Chancellor" of the "Angel Club" explains his/her plan to found an intellectual nation somewhere, populated by exceptional people--a Utopia for overmen.  The plan is to seize an island and run it like a giant university/publisher/order of knights (yep). I can't find anything about the ultimate fate of the Angel Club online because too many strip joints are named that for Google to power through them... but I'm curious.

Other quick notes:

Rebecca West reviews books by H.G. Wells and Hall Caine. I will definitely need to Caine's roman-a-clef about Beatrice Hastings, The Woman Thou Gavest Me: West says it is overly sentimental, but fascinating.

"R.A." (Richard Aldington) contributes a letter from an "imaginary poet" in which he defends himself from an American reviewer who claims that he should include more personal experiences in his poetry.

Havelock Ellis is making a splash. Classics as revolutionary--invoking a sexual emancipation. E.B. Lloyd is eloquent in his plea for understanding of sexuality as a spectrum, cites Whitman.

I need to look up Horace Traubel, an American poet who keeps turning up these days.

The advertisements at the end of the issue announce that Pound's Canzoni by Arnaut Daniel has been published! Bon anniversaire.

The New Age, October 9 1913

This issue is very similar to the last one. Mostly it is continuations of earlier columns. I’ll probably make this one quick.

Pound quote-of-the-month: “Irritation with the general asininity is a passion common enough in great minds, and sufficiently pardonable to the intelligent, but it is not, after all, the highest of human emotions. And scorn, which is a very fine thing indeed, is not the one thing essential."

That’s from his review of the French poet Jammes—who I must look up and read, if only for the ticklish vertigo of Pound’s declaration that “a man reading Jammes about A.D. 2500 might get a fair idea of our life, the life of A.D. 1913.” Ghostly prospective archive!

Pound made me think of Walter Benjamin again with this one: “Jammes’ work resembles the Musee du Louvre more than the Acropolis; but after all, the highest symbols of national desire and of our present civilization are our great picture galleries.” Reminds me of Henry James’ Adam Verver stocking a museum in “The Golden Bowl.""

In “Readers and Writers” Orage explains that The New Age is being boycotted by the other journals because it is too critical. Paranoia? Truth? “I find it necessary to state that I am not complaining on behalf of this journal.”

The best thing in the whole issue? The caricature of Ezra Pound on the last page.

The Masses, October 1913

I’ve finally made it back to The Masses. This issue is fun and refreshing, a breath of red air after much New Age-ing.

One thing that’s important to them as a periodical: they are much, much better at self-presentation than any of the other (the English) journals. Their attitude is much more playful, even as their non-guild socialism has much more of a connection to actual labor crises. Instead of a huffy elitism, they foster an inclusive but intellectual atmosphere. It makes me wish that The New Age was a monthly, or a bimonthly like The New Freewoman. They seem to work themselves bitter.

The first page of each issue is always great—including their editorial statement (I think I covered that in the first post on The Masses) and a few fun micro-advertisements for the periodical itself. This month includes micro-columns labeled “One Less” and “One More.” “One More” is a boost to The Masses from Harper’s. “One Less” is an angry piece from someone who is getting the magazine by accident (or malice): “I do not want it… I am not in favor of Socialism at all… I stand for God and Country, Christianity and Patriotism, and for Law and Order.” This inclusion comes across as cute and tolerant—The Masses inoculates its audience to opposition by making it small and legible.

My 1913 self lives under a rock: I hadn’t heard about the Thaw murder case! Read more here, and in The Masses, who use Thaw’s escape from prison to undermine the biased justice system more generally.

Perhaps the best extended argument in the issue is under the headings “Towards Plutocracy” and “Toward Feudalism.” Here the editor (Eastman, I believe) attacks labor reform by pointing out that business interests overtly call their philanthropic reforms “a good investment.” It takes a small logical leap to see that the investment only makes sense if it is a more pernicious sort of repression—The Masses is on the case.

Quick notes:

There’s a short essay/story titled “Soap and Water” by Leroy Scott, in which he describes an encounter with a homeless and alcoholic working class woman, and how the encounter surprised him. It’s nice because it seems mostly evenhanded, neither romanticizing nor instrumentalizing (as much as possible) the woman in the story. Well, at least its sentimentality is covert.

There’s a dark Poe’s-“Raven”-esque story about a melancholy young man who talks to Death… punchline in the story.

Louis Untermeyer, the great anthologist and minor poet, contributes a positive review of a play, “The Quandary” by J. Rosett.

“What’s-His-Name” by Eugene Wood is the sort of pointed criticism of the Old Testament God that would go viral on high school liberal facebook these days.

The world according to The Masses is one where socialism is in trouble—“The Worldwide Battle-line” recounts some successes, but the general feeling is one of unease. The biggest threat to international socialism seems to be politics—they get sucked into the system and start compromising. Familiar?

The New Age Oct 2 1913

There's a luxury to posting on an issue of The New Age before the next issue has come out.

This issue, though, makes me feel like I'm seeing double (or triple). The last few issues have been remarkably similar. Each is headlined, for me, by a Pound article about a French poet; followed by Beatrice Hastings attacking him in brutal satire. It happens again here, with Pound turning his attention to Laurent Tailhade, Henri de Regnier, and Tristan Corbiere. Really these mini-essays seem quite nice to me, introductions suitable for a literate but not necessarily fluent audience. I kept thinking about how nice it would be to get an update like this about French poetry today. And Orage does the same durn thing in his essays on German poetry in this issue's incarnation of "Readers and Writers." Hastings lets him off the hook, though.

A telling addition to my growing thesis that their attack on Pound comes from their feeling of being threatened by him: the first article in this issue is about how England has already lost the trade war with America in terms of quantity, but can still retain an edge in quality. Hence the asymmetrical attacks on Pound.

TNA also prints a conciliatory essay by Hilaire Belloc, who they usually are happy to maul. He's quite into guild socialism, but manages to put forth a version that protects private property. I sense a swift and stormy response brewing in the next issue...

Romney seems to think that England and France are about to go to war.

Sometimes TNA does make an accurate prophesy. Check out this one about whether or not corporations are people: "The dehumanizing of industry processed pari passu with its development; the joint stock companies, for example, have produced an employer that has no body, but only a corporation, and that abstraction is closely akin to the economic man... the laws of economics tend to become more imperative, to assume the qualities of inevitability and necessity..."

The New Age September 25 1913

A New Age behind, so my report on this one will be a little quick.

Ezra Pound's latest article on French poetry is on Charles Vildrac, and Beatrice Hastings (under pseudonym T.K.L.) continues to parody him ridiculously. EP seems slow to anger, haughtily ignoring BH's lampoons with only slight references to their existence. BH, or rather TKL, is dazzlingly mean. My favorite is this parody of Pound/F.S. Flint/Imagism in general:

A man sat on the kitchen stove;
it burned him severely.
Good-bye! This is where I live
with
my wife and her domestic... (636)

Even though the content is ridiculous, BH shows that she "gets" imagist rhythms, especially in the shifts between pentameter to free verse--she also manages to make it look as bad as possible, with the "with."

Anthony Ludovici attacks artists for "over-production," comparing them to fast-reproducing but primitive bacteria. Alas, his replacement is more mysticism about how a true artist pours so much of themself into a piece that they'd just die if they made more than a couple, etc. etc. Futurists and Pointillistes and their ilk are just showing off new techniques, not genuine novelty.

Well--I'm going to move on to the current week's issue (1913).

Poetry, September 1913

A quick post on Sept's Poetry.

This one wasn't quite as rich as some have been--the real standout is the essay from Ford Madox Heuffer on impressionism and on poetry in general, which provides a window onto his aesthetics. These in turn help to make sense of the incredible range of style and taste in Poetry and in the other periodicals. Expect hilarious qualified compliments to Pound. Heuffer was able to equate Yeats with Walter de la Mare as poets who he used to think silly, but who he now respects. This makes high-school Tyler Babbie happy because de la Mare was one of the first poets I read on my own, and I'm usually embarrassed to like him these days. Also of note--FMH claims to like futurist poetry, pointing to his own circle's work. I wonder when the term dissociates from the English avant-garde and sticks to the Italians.

Other observations:

The paraphrases from Chinese by Allen Upward are pretty great.

The rest of the crop of poems is the exquisitely rhythmic stuff that Heuffer denigrates in his essay... but I'm starting to think that their age was as much an age of poetry-as-craft as ours. I respect the attention to metrical detail, and see how a lot of people could get really into what seems to me like platitudes in dactyls.