The New Age, June 18 1914

An uneasy effect of my work in the periodicals of 1914: the sense of impending doom, the war on the horizon. Articles about foreign and military policy, when incorrect, are terrifying because their theses will soon cost lives--or, more accurately, they indicate the presence of strategic and tactical misconceptions that will cost lives: I’m not claiming that the military formulated policy by reading Romney’s articles in The New Age. His confident declaration that air power is a distraction, and that commanders should be instructed to attack boldly, ring hollow in hindsight. On the other hand, when they are correct they are just as frightening, as S. Verdad’s piece in this issue in which he explains that the British Expeditionary Force won’t be enough to hold the Germans after the (putative at this point) invasion of Belgium. He also predicts that the war will begin in the Near East, between Greece and Turkey, actually—not exactly how things shook out, but close.

Another uneasy effect: that when I read current papers, I scan them for what will become hindsight. The impulse to prophecy is strong, as it was in 1914. How foolish Mr. Brailsford (page 159) looks—claiming that an era of peace will begin circa summer ’14 because at this point there is nothing to gain by conquest. Everything is as exploited as possible, so capitalists won’t bother starting wars. TNA, to be fair, is ridiculing this thesis themselves, and I don’t claim to have a full grasp of his argument.

I will exercise my scholarly privilege, though, and call attention to what is more relevant to my study of  modern aesthetics: this issue contains a transcript of “Vital English Art” by Nevinson, a lecture delivered on June 12, in tandem with one by Marinetti (160). Nevinson’s English Nationalist Futurism at first seems like something TNA would like (and they do print it), but the issue also contains a brutal satire of the whole scene.

Starting with the thing and not the satire of it: Nevinson intriguingly breaks from the Italian insistence on total novelty by pointing out that Futurism is evolutionary, even as it has succeeded its predecessors. Nevinson then lists four essential characteristics of English Futurist art. 1: Art is not representation, it is “a plastic abstraction of an emotion.” This will set up a clash with TNA’s pro-representative bent. 2. “Art must be the expression, intensification and concentration of life” (161). It’s Peter Burger’s thesis in the wild (from Theory of the Avant-Garde). Point 3 follows from point 2: if art is life and the intensification of life, and modern life’s primary characteristic is dynamism and speed, art must become a more intensely dynamic thing than life. The fourth point is that art can and should represent states of mind in the artist.

That’s all well and manifest—but where Nevinson breaks from the genre comes just after. He first explains that paintings aren’t for everyday display: they should be brought out only occasionally, so they can retain their shock value (I think this is important). Then he explains that modern artists must become commodified. They must self-advertise, they must sell to the rich heightened experiences. He might somewhat sink his own ship after that though, when he explains that art shouldn’t last very long (who would invest in that?).

Turning to the satire: Charles Brookfarmer is a long-time writer for TNA, one who provides satire of contemporary meetings in the form of drama. This week, though, he satirizes Nevinson’s lecture (the very one printed in entirety later in the issue). Nevinson is getting the same treatment Pound got at the hands of Hastings earlier this year. Under the title “Futilism: Or, All Cackle and No Osses,” Brookfarmer first paints Nevinson and Marinetti as blowhards. His persona, the student, waits patiently through all this in the hope that he will get to hear the Futurist “noise-tuner” instruments, but alas, they fail to appear. Brookfarmer doesn’t have quite the satirical genius of Hastings, but TNA continues to show its willingness to attack whoever appears in print.

Quick notes:

Alice Morning continues her Paris travelogues. They are well written, and probably deserve to be reread. We need a selected works of Beatrice Hastings.

In the correspondence pages, some guy explains how the women are working to destroy the anti-suffrage movement from within (or at least they are too incompetent to be trusted to assist in the cause). Some Archbishop Gibbs.

Oscar Levy, the rabid Nietzschean, writes in to explain that Nietzshe is not compatible with Stirner, useful as a point of contrast between TNA and The Egoist.

There’s a short silly poem satirizing Futurist fashion on page 152, claiming that the androgynous designs of Leon Bakst don’t damage morals because it’s the difference between sexes that is immoral. Bakst is cool, but I am kind of bewildered that he’d be lumped in with the Futurists (I don’t really know enough about him to comment, though).