The New Age, November 13 1913

My readings of The New Age have reached a point where I'm more interested in how the journal conceives of itself and its contents than in its contents themselves. You may recall how Pound was savagely satirized by Beatrice Hastings (as T.K.L.) while he printed his essays on French avant garde poetry. This week's New Age includes a gem of an explanation, one that is further confirming my developing thesis about the magazine (more on that soon). I will quote the relevant passage at some length:

"Was it right, I have been asked, for The New Age to allow "T.K.L." to "mimick" Mr. Pound's articles on Parisian writers while these were still being published? My own answer is, Yes, and with more reasons than I can set down." Here Orage (as R.H.C.) explains that they publish Belloc's criticism of Guild Socialism, and nobody thinks it is odd, so "Why, then, should it be thought strange to publish Mr. Pound's articles and to subject them to criticisms while they were still before our readers? But Mr. Pound, it may be said, was not attacking The New Age, he was only defending certain tendencies in French poetry. This view assumes too readily the eclecticism of The New Age which is much more apparent than real." [Note: this is an incredible admission, as it lifts the veil between the lamination of articles and opinions and the reader, and perhaps the quotation marks around "T.K.L." are a significant admission of pseudonimity] "We have, as discerning readers know, as serious and well-considered a 'propaganda' in literature as in economics or politics. Why should it be supposed that the economic writers are jealous to maintain their views and to discredit their perversions or antitheses; and the critics of literature be indifferent? It will be found, if we all live long enough, that every part of The New Age hangs together; and that the literature we despise is associated with the economics we hate as the literature we love is associated with the form of society we would assist in creating. Mr. Pound--I say it with all respect--is an enemy of The New Age. His criticisms may not be, like Mr. Belloc's, direct and personal, but by the oblique or the tacit, it is even more, in my view, inimical. For such as read the duel between Mr. Pound and "T.K.L." was a debate of extraordinary intensity. The weapons on neither side were arguments, for the debate was on the plane of imagination, not reason..." (51).

I have a feeling that this passage will form the kernel of an article, or something, that I've been considering for a while now. I'll take a page from Orage and say that I've referenced my idea before, and for such as read my blog, it should be pretty obvious...

To return to content:

There's a characteristic conflation of aesthetic and moral development in the first article, the political "Notes of the Week" by the editors. In it t(he)y blame the philistine upper classes, that instead of offering charity should "let it be by devoting themselves to the spreading of ideas, good taste, and good manners by example." Hardly a call to revolution, but the stakes rise later in the article, which claims that the organization of labor is "more important nationally than the German Navy to-day or the Napoleonic armies of the day before yesterday." While the Labour Party doesn't collapse the way The New Age predicts, and trade unions don't abandon the political process, I wonder how this statement will look at 200 years hence, rather than the 100 we've got.

Harold Lister contributes a piece fusing the nature-vs-nurture argument with socialism, in that he believes the environment is more important than heredity (against eugenics), and goes on to use that as proof that everyone's general ugliness proves that the environment is awful. He blames coal, hopes that the guild system will set things right so we can be beautiful again.

There's an odd speculative column about miners demanding a living wage in 1917, which of course is four years away... by "Recorder."

Hastings contributes a kafakesque short story about being hauled before a morality court. Published under pseudonym Alice Morning.

All for now, there's a lot more in there, but I have to do some other work!