The New Age, Jan 6, 13, 20: Feminine Fables

Breaking the usual procedure of this blog, I'm going to cover three related moments in the first three New Ages of the year: the jumbled, confusing publication of the beginning of "Feminine Fables," a serial story by Beatrice Hastings/Alice Morning that began in the Jan 6 issue, and continues in the Jan 13 and further issues. This is the text that Hastings later blames for breaking her relationship with The New Age.

The jumble: Orage and company accidentally printed the second chapter on the sixth, and the first on the 13th. This is sort of a shame, because I thought the first story was a cool stand-alone satirical tale about a witch transforming an evil spirit into a contemporary woman. The hilarious central trope is the spirit asking the witch for various kinds of beauty that would involve physical transformation her her part, and the witch's squirming that these kinds of transformations are beyond her power. Unfortunately for the witch, the spirit has clippings from the newspapers advertising cosmetics able to effect each of the transformations she desires. This leads the witch to cave in, and she actually pulls it off.

Because of the mixup, we get the reasons for the spirit's presence in the witch's hut on the 13th. The spirit is a Peri, one who has accidentally been locked out of paradise, and who decides to go live among humans instead of dealing with the shame of the situation.

Here's how the story is reported in Hastings' memoir, The Old New Age: 

 "Towards the end of 1915, I had profoundly sensed the war-weariness that might have induced the people to accept any honourable offer of peace. I ceased my weekly "Impressions of Paris", and led away from the pall of inertia; (that soon was converted into ignoble rage by powerful schemers) all around us in a series of lightly satirical tales about an independent Peri, making her deal with various situations where prejudice chains us down when we want to get up. The unstated moral was to "cut through". According to Orage, these tales infuriated people. People were suffering, and there was I writing witty nonsense... Letter after letter complained of my indifference to the public misery... I was seriously damaging the paper... I now regarded the readers as a kind of treacherous, ungrateful, idiotic herd of swine."  (24-25)

By January 20th, there are already signs of the problem: Hastings/Morning writes incredulously, "why do you harbour serpents of readers who write and ask me where is the moral of the fable?"
She continues with a self-destructive self-defense (characteristically!), writing that the stories are more a way to keep herself from pining away, that they should be labeled "for women only" (a reference to Orage's own "Tales for Men Only."

What fascinates me is this: In The Old New Age Hastings writes that the whole fury of the readers is "according to Orage." There's doubt. I also doubt: Orage hasn't printed any of these alleged angry letters yet, and there simply is not enough in the stories themselves to justify outrage. Also, Hastings has done this before both in Impressions of Paris and in the stories about/by Anastasia Edwardes (which I tentatively attribute to Hastings). I'll continue to monitor the situation.

One Quick Note:

Jan 13 has an article by TNA's soldier correspondent North Staffs, advocating that literary men should enlist, and explicitly calling out Clive Bell (Virginia Woolf's pacifist brother in law) as someone who ought to enlist, calling him "a contemptible ass." It gets even more intense.

Poetry, January 1916

Just a few quick observations on Poetry:

Alice Corbin, here without her married surname "Henderson" that usually appears (if memory serves), contributes a set of poems in dialog with London imagism. She indicates the dialog in a poem, "Music," through an epigraph from Richard Aldington's "Chorikos" from November 1912's Poetry (the second issue, and in the first month of my blog project). Corbin follows Aldington's ode to Persephone with a poem about visiting the grave of Pablo de Sarasate. For H.D., "The Pool" responds to "The Pool," with Corbin's following the pattern established in "Music" by doing a more specific, real-world poem than H.D.'s. This one is an account of Corbin's visit to Nimes, France, and perhaps the ancient Garden of the Fountain there. In the poem, Corbin's younger sister dives into the forbidden pool. This is a metaphor of H.D.'s fearless, innovative poetry. Poetry loves H.D. so much. Here's part of the tribute, sorry for the low image quality (mine, not Corbin's! And for the jokes).

The next poem is a two-part sequence labeled "Apparitions," this one likely going to Ezra Pound, with his "apparitions in the crowd" from "In a Station of the Metro." I might pair "Color Note" with either John Gould Fletcher or Amy Lowell.

I noticed that, according to her Wikipedia bio, Alice Corbin is going to move to Santa Fe this year (1916) to treat her tuberculosis.

Quick Notes:

Pound contributes an obituary for Remy de Gourmont. It contains the germs of Poundian intellectual elitism, already spotted elsewhere in this blog project, but perhaps never so clearly. Translating de Gourmont, he continues:

"Yet the phrase is so plain and simple: 'to permit those who are worth it to write frankly what they think.' That is the end of all rhetoric and of all journalism. By end I do not mean goal, or ambition. I mean that when a nation, or a group of men, or an editor, arrives at the state of mind where he really understands that phrase, rhetoric and journalism are done with. The true aristocracy is founded, permanent and indestructible."

The aristocracy can be incarnated in a single editor, if necessary. This will not end well. A revealing moment, though.

And this note, joyous in its moment, tragic in the light of Seeger's eventual death in July of this year:

This does close a loop for me, though. Alan Seeger's brother, Charles, collected songs that helped fuel the 60s folk revival, and was Pete Seeger's father. That now links back to Poetry, if in a roundabout way. 

The Egoist, January 1916

Something's come between Dora Marsden and the editorial contribution this week--perhaps her ill health? Whatever the reason, we get a rare treat in a full editorial from Harriet Shaw Weaver, usually silent, at this point the force behind what actually gets published in The Egoist. Weaver's essay should probably be required reading in the standard Intro to Theory courses in graduate schools, because it is a theory of theories in the humanities. Weaver's essay doesn't contain as many mind-bending twists as a Marsden piece, but it is a sophisticated look at the way theories come to dominate readers, who rely on their favorite theories to interpret all things, regardless of whether the theory is applicable or not. 

After arguing that theories are properly means to an end, but often become "pets or hobbies" instead, Weaver shows how the indeterminacy of language combines with rhetorical power to tend to channel people to the theories they already know: "And since the weapons of the warfare of beliefs are language, the shifting meanings of words, the fluidity and mistiness of connotation of abstract terms give the protector of any favoured theory his chance... Without consciously going such lengths, the propagandist nevertheless becomes skilful at so manipulating words and phrases as to confuse the issue, and he actually measures his success by his ability finally to create a dilemma from which the only apparent way of escape is by adoption of his theory" (2). Weaver moves from this to a keenly-observed point: the very revelatory power of a theory can lead to it creating obscurity later, as the ease which a theory solves problems can lead to it being applied where it is inappropriate, or even can lead to it being applied to prove contradictory points. 

Weaver uses the above to draw a distinction between The Egoist and its contemporary journals, which are more shaded by political programs and theories: "THE EGOIST is wedded to no belief from which it is unwilling to be divorced." That alone makes it superior to the likes of The New Age. I've added this essay to my syllabus for the class I'm teaching next quarter, and placed it early. There's a lot packed into these two pages, but Shaw's lucid writing makes this accessible enough for a 200 level course, I think (and hope). 

Quick Notes:

Leigh Henry is back to contributing essays on music, albeit from his prison camp in Germany. This week he reviews the Fantasiste poets, and is full of high praise for them. 

John Cournos reviews Fyodor Sologub, and a few satirical stories by Sologub appear in the issue.

Richard Aldington reviews book reviewers very negatively, but delightfully for me bases his criticism on the fact that the public only likes things that are one hundred years old, using Keats as his example of an unpopular poet who is now too popular a century later. 

H.D. contributes "The Cliff Temple." 

F.S. Flint reviews Amy Lowell's translation, Six French Poets. Mostly kindly. 

R.B. Kerr writes in recommending that we read Mother Earth, the journal edited by Emma Goldman. I found a digitization here, maybe I'll take a look at it soon. 

The Crisis, January 1916

This issue of The Crisis is, as usual, an incredible read. I am glad to announce that I've gotten a summer fellowship to do a project on The Crisis through the Simpson Center for the Humanities here at UW-Seattle, so I'll have the time and space to do more in-depth work with it this summer. That makes it a little easier to skip so much of it now. 

In my ongoing attempt to understand W.E.B. DuBois' editorial practices, I was very excited to find him explaining his process for accepting or rejecting work for the journal in an editorial labeled "Our Policy" on page 134. He reveals that his method is entirely shaped by the magazine's relationship with its readership: "PERSONS who send us clipping contributions and pictures often assume or seem to assume that the acceptance or rejection of articles is purely a personal matter between them and the editor. They forget the Third Person, the Reader." He goes on to explain that his own feelings on a piece are always measured in relation to the reader, even when printing things that are difficult to read: 

"If the editor likes the manuscript this is not sufficient reason for publishing it. He must ask : Will the readers like it? If the answer is "yes"—the manuscript is accepted; if it is "no"—then there comes the greater and more difficult question: How far is this something which the readers ought to read despite their likes? How far is it something that they should be educated up to or become intelligent about or aroused over? How far will publication now and in this form induce them to read what they are not willing to read?"

DuBois uses this editorial to split the difference between two kinds of criticism the magazine has received, as he explains that some readers complain that the journal has too much of a political agenda, and others that it has too much entertainment mixed into its politics. That this editorial statement is framed by a photo of a Hatian fighter killed by American troops during the US occupation of Haiti on the one hand, and an account of racially motivated arson on the other, enhances the power of his stated willingness to put before readers things they will not like for educational purposes. 

His editorial practices are on full display in another section of the journal: a collection of obituaries for Booker T. Washington, clipped out of papers from all across the country (they start on page 122). It's an amazing portrait of Washington--DuBois contributed his own obituary of Washington in the December issue (if I'm recalling that correctly), but this is an entirely different kind of tribute. By showing Washington from so many angles DuBois shows how powerful Washington's impact was while taking himself out of the picture--though he does crop up in several of the obituaries themselves as Washington's militant foil. 

Quick notes:

Football appears in The Crisis, with in-depth coverage of games held between black colleges.

The "Letter Box" contains much correspondence, both in praise and dispraise (but mostly praise) of The Crisis. 

I learned about several artists I hadn't heard of before (and apologies to my teachers if I have, but had forgotten!): Jupiter Hammon and Ira Aldridge stood out, among others. 

An aside:

It's been a while since my last post, and I missed the third birthday of the blog. Heading into year four of what I'd originally conceived of as a ten year project, I am again inspired by my readings in the archive and my good luck to have access to it. Here's hoping I reach the halfway mark this November.