The silliest, but most interesting, part of this issue of The New Age is Ezra Pound's next "Affirmation," "The Non-Existence of Ireland." In this one, he satirically describes how he can't find any evidence of an actual Ireland as a way to criticize the stall-out of the Celtic Revival. Naturally, James Joyce is an exile, so he doesn't count and is the exception that proves the rule. Pound praises Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, "so far as I know [they are the] only two writers of prose fiction of my decade whom anyone takes in earnest." Intriguing footnote after that: "A critic, whom I respect, frequently quotes a pseudonymous romance--'The Maid's Comedy'[sic]--which I have unfortunately never read." So without reading Hastings, he's willing to give her boosters in TNA the benefit of the doubt that she (pseudonymously) might be on the par of Lawrence and Joyce. And now, forgotten!
BH as Morning notes that she's laid up with influenza and won't be able to contribute anything new for the next few weeks.
"Readers and Writers" this week contains transcribed tidbits of conversations Orage has had recently. Some are very insightful, some not so much, some are revealing outside of their own terms. My favorite of these last: "The modern movement is likely to land us in a series of marital disasters. On the one side, men are aiming at the synthetic man typical of the Renaissance: on the other, women are specializing in fragments. Very soon it will take seven women to balance a man, and polygamy will be talked of. But even a fragment of a woman will insist on the rights of a whole" (457). So, skipping the New Age misogyny at the end of that for now, consider what he's saying: male modernists are synthesizing, while female modernists are fragmenting. That this thesis is even possible shows the stature of women in modernism, but I wish he'd provided examples.
Quick Notes:
The last of Morgan Tud's Three Tales runs today. I still don't know who he is--but I'm feeling more sure that these are satires of Joyce. I will write about them someday, I think...
"An Open Letter to Mr. Stephen Graham" by one Percy Cohen is a nice response to antisemitic tripe about moving all the Jews out of Russia and Poland. Really cool. The New Age is taking on The English Review's implicit bias. The effect is somewhat dulled by C.E. Bechhofer's [sic, but I think this was spelled differently before?] account of anti-foreign and antisemitic bias in Kiev.
"Reviews" covers many recent books. December's Poetry comes in for a drubbing, as does Huntley Carter's book on Max Reinhardt, and new poems Rabindranath Tagore.
Pound responds to the satire of the prisoners from last issue: "His parable of the two prisoners is full of marrow," he says, but as a way to swipe back. Also, a direct reply to BH as AM, in a series of rhetorical questions. Most important are the last two, "Does she find no difference between the direction of my propaganda and that of the destructionists? Who most respects the masterwork of the past, one who battens upon it, cheapening or deadening its effect by a multitude of bad imitations, or one who strives toward a new interpretation of life?" He's calling her out for her bad classical poetry, I think, which is delightful to me.
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
The New Age, October 23 1913
First, politics:
I've been reading George Bornstein's Material Modernism for my PhD exams, and it is really the perfect companion text to my work on this blog. In it, Bornstein examines (for example) Yeats' poems in their original contexts (as much as accessible) and in other editions that have emerged since. His readings of Yeats' "September 1913" have been reminding me to keep an eye on things Irish (like A.E./George Russell's letter last issue) and on labor disputes.
This issue of The New Age begins with a discussion of the Senghenytdd mining disaster. It moves to a more usual topic, the railroad strikes. There's revolution in the air--threats of a massive strike to take place in 1914. Remember that worker's movements have been urged to arm themselves in TNA and The New Freewoman.
The link between armed resistance in Ireland and the possibility for it in England is actually explicit: "The trade unions... though their grievance is of a parallel nature to that of the colonies of Ireland, are even today unaware of its true nature. For them as for these the remedy is Home Rule" (746). See also the poem by Susan Mitchell, "To the Dublin Masters" on page 760, which ends with an unveiled threat of the guillotine. The focus moves back to South Africa, and the editors of TNA wonder whether the armed strikes there will emerge in England. Then more on the lockout in Dublin, which is starving1/3 of the city's population. The desire for a more comprehensive revolution informs The New Age's rejection of a legal minimum wage.
Second, feminism:
Beatrice Hastings reviews a housekeeping guide by Mrs. J. G. Frazer, "First Aid for the Servantless," a book that attempts to show how women don't need house servants. The review is fascinating, though, not for that--but because it stands in as a sort of autobiography of Hastings. She explains her position in the literary world by contrast to her domestic life, continuing her generally anti-feminist approach: "I am a minor poet of the first class. I have never created anything" (759). Hastings' literary ability boils down to the fact that (in her own account) she knows her limitations, many of which are dictated by her gender. Frustrating, revealing.
"Readers and Writers," by Orage presumably, is a take-down of Pound. It hits him right where he's most sensitive when it questions his credentials: "What qualification, may I ask, has Mr. Pound revealed for making a fair estimate of English writing as compared with French?" He also gloats somewhat over having baited EP into an over-emotional response, which I don't think actually happened: Pound has been very reserved about the awful situation he's in (being pilloried in the very journal that is releasing you serially). Pound showed a definite lack of tact (or tactic) but strategic foresight when he slighted the writers of TNA, and of course he ultimately wins the fight (or has for the foreseeable future).
As for pseudonyms and identities, this issue has two delightful plot-thickenings:
J.M. Kennedy replies to "The Writers of the National Guilds Articles" that he hasn't written for TNA for six months and that they have misrepresented his theories. "The Writers" immediately reply, a privilege usually reserved for the editors or the inner-circle of TNA. I imagine that The New Freewoman must be wrong in identifying "Romney" with Kennedy (see earlier discussion). Or it's really getting conspiratorial: could the editors be the "writers?" Orage singled out the "writers" for praise in one of his self-righteous reviews earlier, which he also uses to boost Hastings. Evidence mounts.
Hastings goes after Rebecca West's analysis of Hall Caine's roman a clef that supposedly stars Hastings (see above TNF), saying that her Pages from an Unpublished Novel are NOT autobiographical. Judging by the Stephen Gray biography of Hastings, Hastings is lying (or perhaps Gray repeated West's error? I doubt it). The public image management of Hastings is really fantastic, sort of like Fox News' fake bloggers.
All for now...
I've been reading George Bornstein's Material Modernism for my PhD exams, and it is really the perfect companion text to my work on this blog. In it, Bornstein examines (for example) Yeats' poems in their original contexts (as much as accessible) and in other editions that have emerged since. His readings of Yeats' "September 1913" have been reminding me to keep an eye on things Irish (like A.E./George Russell's letter last issue) and on labor disputes.
This issue of The New Age begins with a discussion of the Senghenytdd mining disaster. It moves to a more usual topic, the railroad strikes. There's revolution in the air--threats of a massive strike to take place in 1914. Remember that worker's movements have been urged to arm themselves in TNA and The New Freewoman.
The link between armed resistance in Ireland and the possibility for it in England is actually explicit: "The trade unions... though their grievance is of a parallel nature to that of the colonies of Ireland, are even today unaware of its true nature. For them as for these the remedy is Home Rule" (746). See also the poem by Susan Mitchell, "To the Dublin Masters" on page 760, which ends with an unveiled threat of the guillotine. The focus moves back to South Africa, and the editors of TNA wonder whether the armed strikes there will emerge in England. Then more on the lockout in Dublin, which is starving1/3 of the city's population. The desire for a more comprehensive revolution informs The New Age's rejection of a legal minimum wage.
Second, feminism:
Beatrice Hastings reviews a housekeeping guide by Mrs. J. G. Frazer, "First Aid for the Servantless," a book that attempts to show how women don't need house servants. The review is fascinating, though, not for that--but because it stands in as a sort of autobiography of Hastings. She explains her position in the literary world by contrast to her domestic life, continuing her generally anti-feminist approach: "I am a minor poet of the first class. I have never created anything" (759). Hastings' literary ability boils down to the fact that (in her own account) she knows her limitations, many of which are dictated by her gender. Frustrating, revealing.
"Readers and Writers," by Orage presumably, is a take-down of Pound. It hits him right where he's most sensitive when it questions his credentials: "What qualification, may I ask, has Mr. Pound revealed for making a fair estimate of English writing as compared with French?" He also gloats somewhat over having baited EP into an over-emotional response, which I don't think actually happened: Pound has been very reserved about the awful situation he's in (being pilloried in the very journal that is releasing you serially). Pound showed a definite lack of tact (or tactic) but strategic foresight when he slighted the writers of TNA, and of course he ultimately wins the fight (or has for the foreseeable future).
As for pseudonyms and identities, this issue has two delightful plot-thickenings:
J.M. Kennedy replies to "The Writers of the National Guilds Articles" that he hasn't written for TNA for six months and that they have misrepresented his theories. "The Writers" immediately reply, a privilege usually reserved for the editors or the inner-circle of TNA. I imagine that The New Freewoman must be wrong in identifying "Romney" with Kennedy (see earlier discussion). Or it's really getting conspiratorial: could the editors be the "writers?" Orage singled out the "writers" for praise in one of his self-righteous reviews earlier, which he also uses to boost Hastings. Evidence mounts.
Hastings goes after Rebecca West's analysis of Hall Caine's roman a clef that supposedly stars Hastings (see above TNF), saying that her Pages from an Unpublished Novel are NOT autobiographical. Judging by the Stephen Gray biography of Hastings, Hastings is lying (or perhaps Gray repeated West's error? I doubt it). The public image management of Hastings is really fantastic, sort of like Fox News' fake bloggers.
All for now...
Friday, October 25, 2013
The New Age, October 16 1913
Here's what's in this issue:
My favorite piece is (I think) a one-off by one Guglielmo Ferraro, entitled "Quantity and Quality." It is about the current tensions rising between Germany and France over France's decision to require "made in X" labels on all imported goods. Here's a sample: "Modern industry has succeeded in multiplying the production of commodities... From the point of view of quantity... we have performed prodigies. But from the point of view of quality, modern industry threatens to make the world one colossal mystery. It so mingles and confuses models with imitations that very soon nobody will be able to tell one from the other." Globalization of commodity production has overwhelmed quality to the point that people have confidence in empty labels: "The blind confidence in certain labels, with which people are reproached, only shows their need of a standard of value by which to judge the quality of things" (721). "Hence it comes that quality is judged by price instead of price by quality. In American journals one already finds advertisements which recommend their goods because they are the most costly." I can vouch for that--look at the car advertisements in a 1913 Scribner's and there are some that use their extra-high cost as a selling point. Ferraro's main point is that quality counts, even if it is invisible, even if it doesn't appear in balance-of-trade calculations. Still true?
Pound wraps up "An Approach to Paris" in this issue, welcome if only so that Beatrice Hastings can stop her mean-spirited lampoons of them (I hope) and get to writing mean-spirited things about something else. EP ends writing about Rimbaud, Paul Fort, and Henri-Martin Barzun, who apparently wrote poems for simultaneous voices (Velvet Underground "Murder Mystery" style). Paul Fort I've encountered in a strange series of translations in a later issue of Poetry, worth a look. I think he's going to come up a lot, judging by the number of hits I got when searching for the poems I'd already read. Weird thing: the translator is John Strong Newberry, but apparently not the paleontologist. A son?
Further notes:
There's been an angry writer named Grant Hervey occasionally contributing about a "young Australia" movement that he represents. He's threatened England with Australian diplomatic independence, not contributing to the Navy, etc. In the "Foreign Affairs" column, S. Verdad replies with this prophetic tidbit (after much hemming and hawing in many directions): "How would they [Hervey and co.] deal with a German-Japanese alliance? That event is at least as likely as the Young Australia movement coming to power" (718). Likely indeed, though not for a while yet...
Romney explains that a grassroots guerilla campaign could paralyze a modern state, and advocates everyone arming themselves if they want to be taken seriously (emulating the Ulster militias).
There's an article about the tyranny of time-clocks at places of employment, including horror at "clock" becoming a verb (clock in, clock out).
A.E.'s "Open Letter to Dublin Employers" is a masterpiece of the genre, calling out the bastards for locking out the workers and threatening them with general rebellion. Phew.
A letter to the editor under "The Plaugue of Advertisements" goes after billboards. "The Dog in Civilization" has a man protesting the population (I swear I accidentally typed "pupulation" just a second ago) density of barking dogs in the city.
That's all for now...
My favorite piece is (I think) a one-off by one Guglielmo Ferraro, entitled "Quantity and Quality." It is about the current tensions rising between Germany and France over France's decision to require "made in X" labels on all imported goods. Here's a sample: "Modern industry has succeeded in multiplying the production of commodities... From the point of view of quantity... we have performed prodigies. But from the point of view of quality, modern industry threatens to make the world one colossal mystery. It so mingles and confuses models with imitations that very soon nobody will be able to tell one from the other." Globalization of commodity production has overwhelmed quality to the point that people have confidence in empty labels: "The blind confidence in certain labels, with which people are reproached, only shows their need of a standard of value by which to judge the quality of things" (721). "Hence it comes that quality is judged by price instead of price by quality. In American journals one already finds advertisements which recommend their goods because they are the most costly." I can vouch for that--look at the car advertisements in a 1913 Scribner's and there are some that use their extra-high cost as a selling point. Ferraro's main point is that quality counts, even if it is invisible, even if it doesn't appear in balance-of-trade calculations. Still true?
Pound wraps up "An Approach to Paris" in this issue, welcome if only so that Beatrice Hastings can stop her mean-spirited lampoons of them (I hope) and get to writing mean-spirited things about something else. EP ends writing about Rimbaud, Paul Fort, and Henri-Martin Barzun, who apparently wrote poems for simultaneous voices (Velvet Underground "Murder Mystery" style). Paul Fort I've encountered in a strange series of translations in a later issue of Poetry, worth a look. I think he's going to come up a lot, judging by the number of hits I got when searching for the poems I'd already read. Weird thing: the translator is John Strong Newberry, but apparently not the paleontologist. A son?
Further notes:
There's been an angry writer named Grant Hervey occasionally contributing about a "young Australia" movement that he represents. He's threatened England with Australian diplomatic independence, not contributing to the Navy, etc. In the "Foreign Affairs" column, S. Verdad replies with this prophetic tidbit (after much hemming and hawing in many directions): "How would they [Hervey and co.] deal with a German-Japanese alliance? That event is at least as likely as the Young Australia movement coming to power" (718). Likely indeed, though not for a while yet...
Romney explains that a grassroots guerilla campaign could paralyze a modern state, and advocates everyone arming themselves if they want to be taken seriously (emulating the Ulster militias).
There's an article about the tyranny of time-clocks at places of employment, including horror at "clock" becoming a verb (clock in, clock out).
A.E.'s "Open Letter to Dublin Employers" is a masterpiece of the genre, calling out the bastards for locking out the workers and threatening them with general rebellion. Phew.
A letter to the editor under "The Plaugue of Advertisements" goes after billboards. "The Dog in Civilization" has a man protesting the population (I swear I accidentally typed "pupulation" just a second ago) density of barking dogs in the city.
That's all for now...
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