The New Age, July 22, 1915

First, I want to welcome Katelyn Kenderish, who has written the first guest post for Poetry of July, 1915. She'll be covering Poetry for Little Review Reviews, giving us a poet's perspective of that journal.

Turning to The New Age: it's been a while since I last posted on this journal. For those of my readers who have been following my progress since the beginning (probably only Katelyn!), you know how interested I've been in Beatrice Hastings' career at The New Age. This career is drawing to a close: Hastings, as Alice Morning, is caught in her own sexism, as her traditionalist and old-fashioned view of femininity is not compatible with the demands of World War One in The New Age. Asked whether she supports the war, she retreats into her gender role: "War is a man’s affair, and I don’t come in at all in the matter of believing in it or not. My part is to nurse or sew or cheer or shut up. If I break out into an opinion it must be blamed on to a false education, or the double-edged licence of the modern woman, or, at its best, the contact with men on service" (276). That's just a sampling. Hastings/Morning's tone is another fault: her emotional and light style can appear flighty and flippant, and incompatible with the demands of the moment (in the eyes of the moment). Her staunch opposition to war-as-such, which she sees as essentially feminine, is an offensive defense, labeling her female critics as unwomanly. But it's not going to work.

While I think Hastings is a brilliant stylist, it is difficult to read these arguments, and they are difficult to categorize. The relationship of femininity to war changes, in an ebb and flow--last night Katelyn wondered if the that women should oppose war categorically would seem so sexist during the Vietnam era. We decided that it was an interesting lens, but also the wrong perspective. Reading Hastings as ahead of or behind her times decontexualizes her in a way that might be worth a moment's provocative thought, but it is more important to try to understand the context in the ways it is available to us now.

After discussing the war, Hastings cites a review of her "Impressions of Paris" that appeared in The Atheneaum. This passage caught  my eye as prophetic: "I like the “Athenaeum,” which will not mind a bit about my bypaths fifty years hence, will even, perhaps, raise an eyebrow at the indiscretion of some publisher’s editor who may suppress them. Not that I would bother to go down all of them twice myself! But then, one doesn’t write Impressions with an eye on Immortality" (277). This is a foreshadowing of the occlusion of Hastings from the literary record, remarkably presciently, unless she was already suspecting that Orage was going to throw her out and keep her down. In fifty years it won't be a publisher's editor who suppresses Hastings, but a scholar: Wallace Martin rarely mentions her in his histories of The New Age. 

Quick Notes:

Paul Selver contributes a poem satirizing, I think, how Rupert Brooke and perhaps Gaudier-Brzeska have been eulogized and praised as heroes for dying in the war, which will ensure their lasting fame. He's right of course. The satire calls out Aldington and Pound by name. Page 268.

R.H.C./Orage reviews some interesting texts in "Readers and Writers": Pound's Noh has appeared in The Drama, a periodical that should probably (with Poetry and Drama) be added to The Modernist Journals Project some day. Orage praises Noh for all but the translations themselves, and theorizes that they are remnants of an ancient mystery cult. He accuses Pound of "eating peas with his knife," which is a funny way to say that he is too slangy. Then, he turns to review an essay in The Yale Review by J.C. Ransom, who I wasn't expecting to see in the MJP. I usually associate him with later modernisms.

The New Age, August 14 1913

This issue of The New Age contains the first protest against anti-Semitism that I have come across in my explorations, "The Folly of Anti-Semitism" by one of the editors (Orage, presumably?), starting on page 449.  It's very disturbing, and very revealing, how much the author has to hedge their position.  The main thrust of the piece is to discredit the Jewish international finance conspiracy theory, and further to discredit the idea that Jews have more money than is proportionate to their population.  So far, so good.  The author also defends Jewish intellectual culture, particularly their left-wing, to which The New Age is (at the moment) claiming alliance. 

But then the bad: there's a lot of very-vintage backpedaling about "intermixture" and "purity of blood and spirit."  This isn't shocking.  I almost wrote about it in my piece on Rebecca West's "At Valladolid," (The New Freewoman, August 1)--but there's a throw-away aside in that story that has the narrator casually say, "We hate the Jews because of their habit of evaluation," going on to explain that Englishfolks are just as bad (67).  Stuck in my craw.  West has the fictioneer's excuse that she's writing characters and not her own views, but it says something about the audience.  I remember  a professor of mine during my undergraduate schooling telling the class that Pound was somewhat of a scapegoat--he was attacked by people who felt guilty for his public airing of their private thoughts.  That seems likely, definitely possible, if not grounds for excuse. 

At any rate, I'm glad The New Age has at least taken steps to combat the more-obviously-bullshit conspiracy theories then current. 


Other moments:

I love it when the journals I read give me a shout-out.  This time, Orage published the financials of The New Age "published, not as an appeal, but as a record for posterity, how soon to arrive I do not know" (458).  They're losing one thousand pounds a year, pretty tough. 

They also review John Gould Fletcher's Fool's Gold.  Remember last New Age, when I was surprised to see him outright panned?  They're just as surprised to really like his second book, going so far as to accuse the publisher of delaying the first one too long.  So he's redeemed.  

Satirical poet P. Selver makes fun of the vogue for villanelles, by writing a crappy one about villanelles.  Ha. 

There's a great surrealist urban short story by Arthur Thorne, "A Modern Metamorphosis," on page 466.  I won't give away what the "organism" is--maybe I should have figured it out sooner, but I was happy when the moment of recognition came. 

Beatrice Hastings, alas, continues "Feminism and Common Sense."  This week's concern: how the decay of English hospitality has made it difficult to marry off daughters.  Complete with totally square anger over dance parties.