The New Age, May 20 1915

My laptop's screen has died, which has in turn made it much more difficult for me to keep up with this blog: when I'm at home, I work on my dissertation. When I'm out, now, I read books instead of catching up on blogging. This is probably very good for me in many ways, but is bad for the continuity of my blog work.

The journal that suffers most, naturally, is The New Age, because I have trouble keeping up with the weekly pace. This week, though, is special: this week, I won't be reading the journal on the Modernists Journals Project I love so well. This week, I have the issue in paper. I bought it from a George Gurdjieff bookstore for thirty bucks. Originally sixpence. What price appreciation. Here Penelope and I take a look--though she may be more interested in how the paper would taste than the taste of the paper.

I imagine it would have a good texture in one's beak, though I haven't let Penelope put that to the test. The paper is thick, textured, soft, and has held up incredibly well over the past hundred years. The binding consists of two worn and rusty staples, punched in at an angle that keeps them from being exposed on the spine. It is a simple, clever design.

The most amazing thing, though, is the type. The thick textured paper has clearly been pressed quite hard during printing, as each letter exists in a little hole of itself. The type on each side of a sheet is visible through the paper, both in the shadows of ink and (more dramatically) the negative contours of the letterpress.

There's a big black thumbprint on the back of the journal--presumably left when the ink was still drying. That's just fantastic to see and feel.



Check out the fingerprint! And the raised texture of the text on the opposite side of the page.

Moving to the contents of the journal: reading a weekly for many weeks that have turned into years, I find that it does not become easier to read the entire journal. Instead, it becomes more difficult, as I skip around to my favorite authors and skip others. Having the physical copy, though, settled me down and made me pay close attention to everything that it contained.

First, "Notes of the Week" continues its hard criticism of England's response to the war. It is harshly critical of the business interests that continue to profit off of the war. Apparently, some workers negotiated a profit-sharing initiative with Lord Kitchener, which was then rescinded when the government (weakly) claimed that it had no authority to enforce such demands. The author also attacks the "Northcliffe Press" of the London Times for stoking antagonisms between the English and resident Germans, and for sacrificing humanitarian goals and national interests for selling papers.

Ivor Brown continues his series "Aspects of the Guild Idea." This passage resonated with me:
"The old Socialism brought up its machinery and bade mankind adapt itself; we must adapt our machinery to mankind. Let me take yet another instance, the disre to serve. I belive that the desire to serve the community in a useful way and in an honourable staus is as common as the desire to eat, drink, and marry a wife. The capitalist system has utterly alienated the ideas of service and of industry. The phrase "national servce" has been monopolized by our impudent conscriptionists... [it] has taken on the contagion of the thing it hides. It stinks." Brown suggests that industrial service be made available as an honorable alternative to joining the army under conscription (which hasn't begun just yet).

The sinking of the Lusitania set off riots around England, but The New Age, as represented by C.H. Norman's "Advocatus Diaboli," believes that the tragedy was largely of England's making. His debunking of propaganda is the longest article in the issue. In it he explains that England ordered its ships to fly under false neutral flags and to ram any submarines that they encounter. This meant that the Germans had to respond by attacking neutral vessels, as they warned they would before they did so. Prior to these orders, according to TNA, the Germans would allow merchant vessels to disembark into lifeboats before sinking them. The culpability for the tragedy belongs at least in part to English violations of the conventions of neutrality. He also demonstrates that England was not somehow caught unawares and unprepared for war, by pointing out that England's combined expenditures on the military equaled or exceeded that of Germany. He reminds the audience that England invented poison gas, and fired gas shells at the Boers. This is an interesting reading, but I'm even more impressed by his citations from the British rules of war that effectively prove that England is prepared to commit war crimes as official doctrine. He ends his essay thus: "[t]he ruling classes of Britain and Europe are the real criminal classes; and it is because of the criminal doctrines that they set out in their military and naval hand-books that the world is witnessing the degradation of humanity at a rate which months ago would have seemed impossible."



Quick Notes:

Dr. H.J. Poutsma writes "The South African Situation," a touchy subject because South Africa's recently-subjugated Boers have pro-German sympathies.

Beatrice Hastings continues her "Impressions of Paris," which, as usual, moves from brilliance to offensiveness with great speed.

"Readers and Writers" seems paltry by comparison. R.H.C. attacks H.G. Wells for writing Boon under pseudonym, which is rich, considering that R.H.C. is also a pseudonym.

Aldington's old "Letters from Italy" has been revived by a pseudonymous "L." who reports on a speech by D'Annunzio, calling him "more of a demigod than ever" as he speaks beautiful inspirational beatitudes to the crowds of irredentists. He's also called a "gasbag," though, so take that demigod with the appropriate dash of salt and vinegar.

There are a set of translations of the "Odes of Anacreon" by one Andre B., in English. Could this be THE Andre B., Breton? Probably not--but note that Hastings has been translating Max Jacob, and was later an advocate of automatic writing, and all of a sudden it doesn't seem too strange. [Update: The New Age's Andre B. goes on to write firsthand accounts of trench warfare. It must be another Andre B.]

The Crisis, May 1915

In this issue of The Crisis, I came across this double-column piece on page 45. It is quoted from a Bristol, Tennessee paper, and presented without commentary:

The police were indicted and charged with murder. This story was not posted as a lynching in the space The Crisis reserves for recording that crime (see page 12). It is instead placed as the second-to-last piece in the whole issue, though not, I think, as an afterthought.

It is an example of TC's deft use of secondary materials. Much of TC each month takes place in long lists of events of interest to the readership of the journal, naturally inclining to people of color. The Crisis is powerful in part because it is a voracious record. It is also indelible.

Because of my rudimentary skills, I've had trouble getting the text of each block to be the same size: my apologies. 

The biggest piece of news in this issue is the release of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and is also, to my memory, the first time I've encountered criticism of a specific film in the Modernist Journals Project. The NAACP uses this moment as a chance to display their effective organization, as "Fighting Race Calumny" provides a day-by-day account of the NAACP's actions against the film. The editorial also contains a response to The Clansman, as the film is referred to in the journal. Du Bois, the editor, fulminates against the film, noting that "a number of marvelously good war pictures" precede "the second part... the real 'Clansman.'" This gives credit to Griffith's first half, and Du Bois calls not for the the total suppression of the film, but of its second half. That's a side note, though, to the strong and consistent criticism of the film and the concerted campaign to protest against it.

This issue also contains TC's response to Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo." It is characteristically terse:

"Colored readers may be repelled at first at Lindsay's great poem but it is, in its spirit, a splendid tribute with all its imperfections of spiritual insight. In a private letter Lindsay says:" (18)

There follows a long and rambling letter from Lindsay, making clear his good intentions, which TC at this point, at least, seems to tolerate without accepting them. Notably, he talks about the poem as if it was a painting, and perhaps an impressionist or post-impressionist painting at that. Also notably, he claims it was inspired by Joseph Conrad.

There's much, much more here. But that's all for now--

The Little Review, May 1915

Sometimes I can feel a post devolving into either a table of contents or a diaphanous simulacrum of the issue, and I feel like a parrotfish of the archive: taking in rich, life-filled coral, and turning it to critical sand that sifts into the abyss. The nature of this project makes some of that inevitable, I guess--the real payoff isn't the blog post, after all, but the immersion itself. They are reflections of reflections of reviews. This is going to be a long one, one of the longest yet.

One thing that helps give things a shape is if I can sense the editors of a particular journal giving the whole issue a certain spin (perhaps an English, in the sense of shooting pool?). This issue of The Little Review has more of an English than the last--it is caught up in the spirit of revolution, and it sees this revolution as a distinctly American phenomenon. It is also a revolution centered on the individual (Anderson is reading The Egoist, after all).

First stop, editor Margaret C. Anderson's editorial, "What Are We Fighting For?" It opens with a response to her article preferring Scriabin to Gabrilowitsch from last issue (which alas I did not comment on in my post, not having enough knowledge of the musical context). This moves into a programmatic moment I've fetched for you here:

I am certain that other scholars of The Little Review and Anderson have commented on this passage before, because it is so perfect. Anderson places herself on the absolute cusp of the new, and a step beyond it.

Here are other important lines to consider:

"There's nothing pompous in saying that the thoughts of only a few people matter. This has always been so and always will be. Every new valuation has come about just that way—championed by a group and then endorsed by a majority long after it has ceased to matter much."

"In each of the future issues of THE LITTLE REVIEW, beginning with June if possible, we shall have a special article attacking current fallacies in the arts or in life—getting down to the foundations. Each one will be written by a person who knows thoroughly what he is talking about, and each will be 'true and memorable,' to use Will Comfort's good phrase."

Finally, if one would like to join in, Anderson solicits articles from expert readers:

"The conditions of acceptance are these : You must know English prose; you must write it as though you are talking instead of writing; you must say quite frankly and in detail the things you would not be allowed to say in the prostituted, subsidized, or uninteresting magazines; and you must be true. This begins our warfare."

While these speak for themselves, I'll make some observations. First, there's an awful lot of talk about true and false here, which makes me think Anderson likes Marsden's work quite a lot but doesn't apply its lessons on the emptiness of truth as a concept and criterion. Note that Anderson expects sweeping changes to emerge from her magazine, but embraces the condition of being an elite avant garde that creates a "new valuation" that will not be immediate accepted. The call for writing "as though you are talking instead of writing" is very cool, and resonates with both Pound's position as "village talker" and Beatrice Hastings' embraced insult when she was called a talker, not a writer (see The Old New Age pamphlet, must-read stuff for Hastings fans). It also distinguishes TLR from The Egoist in that TE doesn't use the language of speech. Also, the title and the final line carry unusual weight in a time of war.

So that's the mission--now I'll look at how this issue attempts to achieve this. As usual, editorial vision cannot (and should not) bring contributors into total coherence. This issue is full of notable, diverse writing.

Will Levington Comfort contributes "America's Ignition," an excited and exciting manifesto about the reconstruction of the world after the war, in which America and the new generation will take a leading part. Comfort believes that the secret to life is avoiding selfishness, and that the current generation will be unselfish because of the vision of the war. This will lead to a renaissance of intuitive thought. He claims that nationalism will end when people realize that the differences among nations are merely part of the great international whole--alas. He claims that the world seeks balance, and that Germany's aggression is an attempt to balance the oversized power of the British Empire. The below paragraph on intuition vs. intellect is worth taking as a whole:

We will cease to "believe in intellect," and instead intuition will provide a more valid way to know.

Anderson reviews lectures by Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and is surprised to prefer Flynn. While appreciating Jones, she writes of Flynn: "I like these I. W. W. people a lot. They are not only offering an efficient program of labor ; they are getting close to a workable philosophy of life. They are even capable of a virtue no working-class organization is supposed to be overburdened with: hardness of thought. As Miss Flynn said : 'Don't pamper yourselves. It's not a sacrifice to fight for your own freedom !'" (18).

Amy Lowell, who appears to be well on her way to capturing Imagism, writes an encomium on Harold Monro and his Poetry Bookshop. It is a little self-aggrandizing, as she relishes in describing herself as the enlightened intellectual causing a stir by being so into books. On the other hand--she models the practices of a reader of poetry and fuses that with the joy of shopping. This may be more of a throwback to the 19th century's obsession with beautiful books of poetry than something new, but it can only help the poets she mentions.

Helen Hoyt contributes a cool memento mori poem in free verse, "Words out of Waking."

Richard Aldington provides an overview of the career of Remy de Gourmont. It feels familiar: I wonder if it is a version of something that appeared in The Egoist. Possibly, or possibly just on a similar topic. I love this: "under his pen mysticism itself appears almost as exact as science" (11).

Nestled within the self conscious avant garde is--a hoax. Sade Iverson, who contributes a long poem, "Who Wants Blue Silk Roses," is really Elia W. Peattie, who is hoaxing Anderson and modern poetry in general (according to the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature). Triangulating modernism via hoaxes is pretty fun: this one seems to think a bohemian lifestyle in the context of the war, rendered in unrhymed verse, can be passable modernism.

John Gould Fletcher contributes an intense post-Whitman prose poem, "America, 1915," in his usual elaborate style.

George Lane pens an extended review of Some Imagist Poets. It's notable for being very harsh on Pound, who is  accused of "jejune maledictions," which the movement has gotten beyond (27). I'll be writing about this at length later, so I'll leave it for now.

Last, an epitaph for Rupert Brooke:

The Little Review, April 1915

Just a quick post on The Little Review. I need to get down a few observations on a few April journals before turning to May...

The strangest and most fun thing, poetically speaking, is John Gould Fletcher's "Vers Libre and Advertisements." In it, Fletcher claims that the ad men of America have been writing the finest free verse around for some time, and includes entertaining examples like this one:

Fletcher's piece is certainly satirical, but I wonder if its flippancy and fun hides real bitterness: an early Imagist, Fletcher's mode of vers libre never quite fit in with the others. He was florid while they were spare, and the critique may not be as self-deprecatory as it seems at first.

Also in poetics: one William Saphier (what a name!) opens the issue with "Etchings (Not to be Read Aloud)," which is pretty cool and unusual, pieces making a claim for their visual value in direct contradiction to their sound value. Unfortunately the move is cooler than the poems.


Quick Notes:

Margaret Anderson's editorial continues her defense of Margaret Sanger, the outlaw advocate for contraception. She attacks Anthony Comstock head-on--no wonder TLR is going to have so much trouble with the law. Her editorial mentions as an aside "the stunning things in The Egoist." 

I noticed how delighted The Little Review is with itself--many pieces are self-referential to the awesomeness of TLR. Among these, "The Critics' Catastrophe," a play about what happens when a London music critic shows up in Chicago to write for TLR. 

Richard Aldington contributes an essay on the poetry of Paul Fort.

George Franklin contributes a strange prose poem, "Hunger."

William S. Braithwaite's anthology of magazine verse gets negatively reviewed--he contributes poetry to The Crisis.