The Egoist, June 1915

I've mentioned my summer fellowship on here before: I'm working on it a lot, and it's sucking up some of my blogging time. So a short post on The Egoist:

Marsden opens the issue with these lines, which make one think that one isn't going to like what else she's going to say: "Anglo-Saxon intelligence must arrive at an accurate apprehension of the nature of cultures if Anglo-Saxon supremacy is not to be finally and definitely relinquished." This sounds pretty bad taken with the other five sixths of the twentieth century to come. Her overall point is that England has allowed itself to be fooled into believing that morality has a bearing on international affairs, while morality is really just a means to keep the lower classes oppressed. This international morality leads in turn to the rise of Germany. Oddly, this argument is also one for socialism, and the suppression of individuality to the state for the duration of the war. At this point, Marsden seems a shadow of her former self: still arch, still provocative, but I have a feeling that her philosophy can't handle the war.

May Sinclair, famous for inventing the term "stream of consciousness" in The Egoist in 1918, contributes a passionate refutation to Harold Monro's reading of H.D. in the May issue of The Egoist. I love this passage on H.D.'s "Hermes of the Ways":

"If you are sworn to admire nothing but Swinburne, or Rossetti, or Mrs. Browning or Robert Browning and their imitators for ever and ever, you may reject the " Hermes " because there is no " passion " in it.

But why, in Heaven's name, should there be passion in it ? Haven't we had enough of passion and of the sentiment that passed for passion all through the nineteenth century ? We can't hope to escape the inevitable reaction. And isn't it almost time to remind us that there is a beauty of restraint and stillness and flawless clarity?"

My own reading of the poem finds plenty of passion in it, but Sinclair's point is to draw a contrast between it and "sentiment that passed for passion." We agree, though, that "to me, H.D. is the most significant of the Imagists" (88).

Awesome, awesome stuff.

Quick Notes:

 This issue contains a handful of poems, one by Aldington, one by Frances Gregg, one by Helen Hoyt, and one by Anna Wickham. Gregg's is a cool Gothic one about seeing (and maybe more) a ghost at sea. Helen Hoyt's is intense: "The Bullet Speaks to the Poet," a poem written from the perspective of, well, a bullet--but a bullet who resembles a poet in its effects.

Joyces Portrait continues, and seems very much at home here in The Egoist, as usual. It is dazzling.

Aldington reviews a periodical released by Edward Storer, one of the original pre-Poundian imagists, Loose Leaves. It is two pages long! Sounds lovely.

Allen Upward sends a poem to the correspondence pages! I love this. It is his own version of the history of Imagism in Upwardian verse. Some of it is silly, but the upshot is that he claims independence from the movement and that his inspiration was Chinese poetry, not Storer, Flint, and company.

Lastly, the final set of letters: one from Huntly (whose first name I fear I've misspelled for the entire duration of this project) Carter, and a response from Aldington. Carter responds to the Imagists in his usual vitalist Romantic fashion, saying that they see poetry as "an Art" instead of "as Art," and are more interested in form than expression. Aldington's response is materialist, in its way: people need training to become better at art, and studying forms is the equivalent of an athlete's training in poetry. Nice counterpoints that really capture an important contrast in how to read poetry.

Actually lastly: there's a lovely advertisement at the end, a place I'd like to visit:

That's all for now.

New Age Art Show

Wow, this is cool! Someone's gathered all the visual art reproduced in The New Age and made an Omeka project linking them together. I'll be playing with this...

The New Age, June 17 1915

Ivor Brown's "Aspects of the Guild Idea" of the week is the perfect explanation of why the Guild Socialists are antifeminist (150-151). First, the classic-in-the-internet-age move of agreeing with your foes in principle: "In so far as the Woman’s Movement demanded the right of every one, male or Female, to live his or her own life it was asking for something extremely right and extremely vague." But of course, it's not the principles that are in question here, it's execution: "First of all it ceased to be a philosophy of woman and became a fight for the suffrage." Here's half of the problem. By fighting for suffrage, women were fighting for the wrong thing, because democracy had proven completely hollow: "At the very moment when man, after seventy years of political freedom, had laboriously discovered it to be barren, woman found fruit and virtue in the vote." The second half of the problem is that labor agitation is only as powerful as its ability to constrict the supply of labor, and women entering the workforce would flood the labor market. Brown wants women to wait until after the revolution to demand freedom, because when everyone is embedded in a broken system, moving up one rung will not ultimately be satisfying. Brown makes the case as clearly as anyone has in The New Age. That he is making this case in the middle of the war makes it seem belated.

Alice Morning/Beatrice Hastings continues "Impressions of Paris." I'm most interested in her ongoing skirmish with Arthur Hood. In the last issue Hood had attacked Hastings over her history of the French Revolution. First, BH/AM self-deprecates: "What can it matter what such a scribbler [herself] says about the French Revolution? Yet Mr. Hood attacks me in person as though my words were of importance" (153). Then, she counters with a more detailed rendering of her understanding of the Revolution, and a claim that "nothing is served by comparisons of atrocities."

R.H.C./Orage reviews Stendhal's L'Amour, recommended by Alice Morning in a prior issue. This passage feels to me like a covert love letter to Hastings, who is with Modigliani in Paris at this point. That's speculation--but since there are signs of the ultimate break between TNA and Hastings, perhaps this was a last shot at reconciliation? Especially with its texture of inside jokes: "I am trying to get it translated, possibly to run as a serial in THE NEW AGE--with the editor’s permission!" (150) He is the editor! But could this be a nod to Hastings' former position as secret literary editor, and maybe even a suggestion that she might be the translator? I hope so.

S. Verdad's "Foreign Affairs" contains sharp criticism of the English administration in India, accusing them of unfairness and inflexibility in their dealings with the Indian people (148-9). While that's not a surprise, he divides his palpable frustration on the behalf of the empire, on the one hand, but also on the side of competent Indians who are being shut out from influence by the administration. 

The "National Guildsmen" print this critique of "Marxian dogma": "In reply to several correspondents we may say that we accept an economic interpretation of history, but not the economic interpretation, as if there were none other. Reality being infinite in its aspects, and history being the record of reality, it follows that there are as many interpretations or readings of history as of reality ; and the attempt to reduce them all to the economic is equivalent to the old fallacy of the economists who conceived an 'economic man'" (149). It seems like the angle the Guilds are taking, lately, is that other theories are too narrow, while the Guild theory can embrace many readings of history.

The "Notes of the Week" that begin every issue of The New Age contain a very interesting shift in political allegiance. They call for a general election, and support Lloyd George in the eventuality that it would occur. There are many nice things said about Asquith, as well, even though he'd be the loser in the hypothetical election. Odd--in the past TNA has hated these guys. On research, this will actually happen in 1916.

The New Age, June 10 1915

Normally I don't go back in time to pick up issues that escape me, but I've got a little extra time today, so this will be an extended edition of--

Quick Notes:

Beatrice Hastings' "Impressions of Paris" contains reflections on people she calls "calmatives," the people who suppress panic in cities and in the military. More dramatically, she excoriates airplanes as weapons of war, and prophesies that they will end cites because people will want to spread out to avoid gas bombings!

R.H.C. (Orage) launches an attack on a new literary journal, The Gypsy. I imagine it will be short-lived because I can't find much about it online right now.

This issue also contains an allegorically/satirical story, "The Placard" by Arthur F. Thorn (Beatrice Hastings?). It is an attack on The New Age's arch-nemesis, The Daily Mail. In it, the author accuses Lord Northcliffe of conspiring with the Germans to end the war--at the end of the essay, "Organgrind" (Northcliffe) comes up with his antiwar slogan, "Peace with Honour." Whoa. (134).

In the correspondence section, there's a letter by Ramiro de Maetzu debating luxury with Beatrice Hastings. It has some cool moments: "an article of luxury, like a Louis XV chair, is a kind of myth." I would dwell on this debate more--perhaps in the next post. Which I ought to go write.

The Crisis, June 1915

Current events continue to convince me of The Crisis's importance as an object of study. I will teach it for the first time this fall, and hope that it will spark some strong discussion of what has changed, and what hasn't, in race politics over the last century.

The issue contains a powerful open letter by Moorfield Storey, in the editorial section, page 78. While it should be read in full, here's the last paragraph: 

"We appeal to every warm-hearted, high-minded man or woman in this country, and urge them to organize a new anti-slavery movement. We beg them by voice, vote and example to rouse their neighbors and to make our public men feel that their political careers are not to be advanced by yielding to the advocates of discrimination. We must organize our political, our religious, our educational, nay all our forces to the end that our country may be relieved from the influence of all who believe that they help themselves up by keeping others down. Our motto is "All men up" and that spirit must conquer, or terrible disaster awaits the country which we all love."

This issue has another beautiful cover photograph, this time of a young woman. Again, the subject of the photograph isn't a particular person--this is an art photo, by C.M. Battey, who deserves a Wikipedia page. Read about him here, page 71. 

The first thing inside is a full-page advertisement for "A new Book by Dr. Du Bois, The Negro." The link is to the Project Gutenberg edition: I haven't cracked it yet, but hope to look at it soon. Check out the description:

Reminds me of Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," down to the figure of the Negro as one man across space and time. 

Then, the monthly "Along the Color Line," which as usual is an incredible parataxis of events from a range of categories. I count 98 mini-articles! In ten headings! Each is only a paragraph, maybe two, and they contain records of concerts, student strikes, the firing of black postal workers, and the monthly compilation of lynchings and murders. It it always a rush to read: I don't know enough about the history of newspapers to know how unique this paratactic arrangement is, but I am certain that du Bois is a master of letting the record of facts speak for itself. 

Quick Notes:

"Men of the Month" follows, with its usual portraits of successful black men and women, and of allies. Many are obituaries. One is for a white woman who works at Hull House. Others, for a social worker, for a famous New York City caterer, a police sergeant, etc. 

On page 81, there is a response to the sinking of the Lusitania: "European civilization has failed. Its failure did not come with this war but with this war it has been made manifest... This [European superiority, justifying imperialism] was a lie and we know it was a lie. The Great War is the lie unveiled... It is a great privilege in the midst of this frightful catastrophe to belong to a race that can stand before Heaven with clean hands..." See also the section in "Opinions" titled "The Great War," which summarizes recent articles by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, the first about the myth of racial superiority, the second about the imperialist roots of the war. 

The issue contains a long poem by Leslie Pinckney Hill, titled "The Zeitgeist," a blank verse mini-epic about blackness in the context of World War One (I'm oversimplifying here). I think it's pretty cool, much better than many mini-blank-verse-epics that show up in these journals. The opening is almost Yeatsian:

"Before the whirlwind and the thundershock,
The agony of nations, and this wild
Eruption of the passionate will of man,
These tottering bastions of mighty states,
This guillotine of culture, and this new
Unspeakable Golgotha of the Christ,
My heart declares her faith, and, undismayed,
I write her prompting—write it in that poise
Of judgment undisturbed to which our Head
Admonishes the nation..."

There's so much more in this issue, but that's all for now...

The New Age, June 3 1915

Notes and highlights from this issue:

From "Notes of the Week," an explanation of why England needs to avoid conscription. I think I've written about this before: they've been arguing against conscription for some time now. The reason: if capitalism won't end soon, England's going to need to be able to kick butt on land, because submarines are ruining its naval advantage:

"If, indeed, we could assure ourselves that the present war would end war, something might conceivably be said for adopting a temporary measure of desperation in the certainty that no precedent would be created by it. But unfortunately this is not likely to be the case. On the contrary, as far as we can see, and in the continued postponement of the destruction of Capitalism, the need for military efficiency in England will be greater in the future than ever before." (97-98)

Note that The New Age has no illusions about a "war to end all wars." Their objection to conscription is that it will play into the hands of big business, the real enemy. If you can conscript in wartime, why not in peace? Etc.

One theme of the week's "Notes" that gets taken up again in the later column "Towards National Guilds" is that the capitalists have formed what is essentially a super-coherent blackleg-proof union of the owners of production (102).

Alice Morning/BH continues her "Impressions of Paris," this time describing wounded soldiers in Paris and continuing her campaign against war photography. Then she pivots into a critique of de Maetzu's own critique of luxuries--she argues that luxury is culturally and individually relative, so that a beer is not a luxury in a land rich in beers, and might be a need to someone who relies on alcohol (Beethoven is her example).

More importantly for her story: dark clouds gathering in the correspondence pages. I know from my research that "Impressions" are going to get her in trouble because of their flippant treatment of the war. I feel bad for missing a few issues that contained the beginnings of this, and will go back to catch them in my own reading. Arthur Hood writes that Hastings has besmirched the reputation of French Revolution revolutionary Danton, and hits her hard with this: "We can endure the meanderings of Miss Alice Morning when she writes of ants, influenza, and midinettes, although these subjects are not extraordinarily interesting; it is a different matter to pass a careless judgment on mighty occurences in a nations’ history; to attempt this, without willfully insulting the dead, a wide outlook and a more spiritual insight are required" (119). I can't imagine Morning/Hastings off The New Age and, for all her considerable faults, I'm not looking forward to it.


Quick Notes:

Marmaduke Pickthall returns, this time explaining the systems of local government in Turkey, especially the system of election by acclaim rather than by, well, election. Prominent men are cheered into office and shouted out of it. Unfortunately, Turkey has been tricked out of this system by its attempt to apply English law and democracy to its own internal government, creating all kinds of problems. I have no idea if this is true, but contemporary examples of Western powers trying to impose democracy around the world resonate. (103)

Ivor Brown contributes a piece on socialism, but his first novel gets an awful review. I had a student write a paper on Jane Austen, and it turns out that Brown became an Austen scholar (among other things I'm sure).

"Pastiche" contains an interesting, if nasty, satirical story by pseudonym "X." titled "Whit-Monday," in which sentences rigorously constructed in linear fashion describe a kind of Virginia Woolvian London park scene, meant to be grotesque, but coming out ugly.

Gaudier-Brzeska

"And if the accursed Germans succeed in damaging Gaudier-Brzeska they will have done more harm to art than they have by the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, for a building once made and recorded can, with some care, be remade, but the uncreated forms of a man of genius cannot be set forth by another." (Ezra Pound, Feb 4 1915, The New Age)

4 October 1891- 5 June 1915

The Egoist, May 1915

In May, The Egoist hosted a special issue on Imagism, now without the terminal -e of Imagisme. It is epic. It contains articles on F.S. Flint, Ezra Pound, H.D., John Gould Fletcher, D.H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell. It has an essay on the history of Imagism by F.S. Flint, and criticism of Imagism by Harold Monro. As an act of canon formation, it is notable for how it downplays Pound's position in the movement. Critics went a long time before rediscovering that Pound was not as single-handedly responsible for the movement as he can sometimes appear.

I wanted to write a post on this issue, but it is too much. Check out the table of contents:

This is must-read material for scholars, fans, and enemies of Imagism. Apologies for not being quite up to the task of posting on eight or so essays, and a set of poems. I'll be teaching this in the fall and into the future, no doubt. 

Before realizing that there was just too much to cover in a blog post, I finished my section on F.S. Flint's first essay, "The History of Imagism." I'll post it because I managed to ferret out one of his obscure epigraphs. 

It upends completely the standard narrative of imagism, and clearly sets out this intent with an epigraph from Tacitus' Agricola, which translates to:

"And so matters, which as being still not accurately known my predecessors embellished with their eloquence, shall now be related on the evidence of facts."

The second epigraph is harder to track: "Chi compra Manfredi?" or, "Who will buy Manfred?" John Addington Symonds wrote about this in Renaissance in Italy, which I take as Flint's source. Here's an excerpt:

"Our knowledge of the earliest Italo-Provencal poetry is vague, owing to the lack of genuine Sicilian monuments. We can only trace faint indications of a progress toward greater freedom and more spontaneous inspiration, as the 'courtly makers' yielded to the singers of the people. The battle of Benevento extinguished at one blow both the hopes of the Suabian dynasty and the development of Sicilian poetry. When Manfred's body had been borne naked on a donkey form the battle-field to his nameless grave, amid the cries of "Chi compra Manfredi? a foreign troubador, Amerigo di Peguilhan, composed his lament..." (27)

The context in Symonds explains why Flint places this here: the death of Manfred ended a developing poetic that was transplanted to northern Italy, which became famous for its innovations, while the true innovators were forgotten. Clever, Flint.

Flint gives the credit to Hulme, who is currently "in the trenches of Ypres," claiming that they founded a "Poet's Club" in 1908, to impress women. Pound didn't show up until 1909 (by a printer's error, it is 7909 in the text!). Flint is clearly upset by Pound's conquest of the term. I wonder how the poetic justice of Amy Lowell's theft of the movement felt for Flint. Intriguingly, Flint implies that he did not write the contribution to the March 1913 Poetry text published under his name and which contained the three rules of Imagism. After a few more barbs at Pound, Flint stops.

The Masses, May 1915

This post is just an apologetic placeholder: I am close to the end of my academic quarter and really need to be working on this dissertation chapter and grading papers. 

This month's Egoist is the epic Imagist special. Once school is over I'll go pick it up again. It deserves some careful attention.

As does this issue of The Masses, alas. I'm just going to post this awesome image of Isadora Duncan, dancing at age 37, from the back cover: