The Egoist, January 1, 1915

Hello readers! I am going to make a concerted effort to return to my journal-reading blog-posting ways this new year. I just got some institutional support for this from UW-Seattle's Simpson Humanities Center, and while that support doesn't kick in until summer, I'm feeling re-energized to write more about what I'm reading in the MJP.

So, it's appropriate that this issue of The Egoist begins with an essay by Dora Marsden that boldly claims the journal's supremacy, their position in the history of art, and that they will one day be studied by foolish scholars (I take a bow). 

"When [brilliant minds] do appear they find their own work, and that work accomplished establishes a new era. After they are gone—these directing minds—minds of a different order—stuffed minds, scholarly minds, begin to disburse their heavy stores upon the lines they have laid down. The stored rubbish then becomes invaluably useful treasure: what was purposeless will become vibrant with purpose. So it will be, long after " THE EGOIST " has become a thing of the past." (1). 

An appropriate epigraph to this project. Intriguingly, this is couched as a response to calls for the journal to die (see later in the above paragraph), but I haven't seen those calls yet. Hopefully I'll be able to dig around for them. It's worth mentioning that the last issue of The Egoist praised The Little Review, Poetry, and Poetry and Drama, to various degrees. 

Marsden then declares war against words--not because they are exploited, but because they have taken on a life of their own. Gradually, accumulating energy a little at a time, words have gone rogue: "By the very virtue of their lost meanings they have attained to the heights and prestige and command... Only by laughter—that gurgle of impishness: by the incorrigibly untutored selfassertiveness of the uninoculated have men saved their souls, half alive, from the complete domination of words" (2). 

Marsden continues relentlessly, moving to a thesis that all philosophical problems are rooted in flawed language, which psychology can dispel. This will occur at the level of grammar. This is a prophecy that would bear more attention. Marsden uses the Imagist dislike of adjectives and Marinetti's Futurist love of infinitives to claim that neither is the real problem: the problem is the substantive, both verb and noun, anything abstract at all: "Every form of the verb indeed save that which is hitched up to the first person singular is a danger to accuracy and expression" (3). 

DM then blasts the separation of "heart and head, intuition and intellect, feeling and knowing," claiming that all knowledge is just a special case of feeling. While applied very differently, much of this reminds me of Pound and Fenollosa and their Chinese Character. There's even a posthumanist moment, presaging Jakob von Uexkull somewhat: The "I" includes the one looking out on a "World " and the entire "World " it looks out on—and this whether "I " be a tree, or a worm, or a reader of

"THE EGOIST." The "I" creates its own world. The world is of it" (3). 

Fascinating, teachable summary of egoism!

Quick notes:

Marsden's "Views and Comments" criticize the cant of the war. They also respond to correspondence from the last issue, including Stephen Byington's response about great men. 

Aldington on the lack of quality in books circa 1914: "IT is somewhat chilling to remember that during the year or more in which I have been writing in this paper, reviewing most often carefully selected books, I have had occasion to notice none which were not ephemeral and merely relatively excellent" (6). This opens a eulogistic praise of John Synge, which (so far) has turned out incorrect in placing him as the central Irish writer of his time. More revealing of Aldington's train of thought than the encomium is, perhaps, the moment when he explains that English readers tend to think of all English literature as great literature, when a lot of it is merely local literature.

Which brings us to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: it continues in this issue.

Ezra Pound praises Spoon River Anthology, published under pseudonym "Webster Ford" (11-12).

In a letter, Huntley Carter calls out those who use evolution as a justification for violence. See last issue's discussion of impersonality in Japanese theater: hopefully I'll circle 'round back to that one sometime.

He also continues his feud with John Cournos.