Beatrice Hastings, as Alice Morning, contributes another installment of "Impressions of Paris," and as usual, it is the most interesting piece in this particular issue of The New Age. She dips into the surrealist mode that she used in stories between 1910-13, and which appears only occasionally in "Impressions." I think she's describing the struggles of having a maidservant (remember, Hastings wrote a column on how to live without servants a while back), but she figures her servant as a "patent doll that boils your tea-kettle" (611). It's not Hastings' finest moment, but it gives her space to pivot and reflect on the war and feminism, an intriguing glimpse into the past: " Do not expect any thoughts from me. I am become simply a suffering receptacle of the horrid comedy of things. The battle of a mechanised, over-feminised world against itself leaves me without any other excuse for existence." War, mechanized and over-feminized? One, but not the other, has become a cliche. I believe that for Hastings, feminized is equivalent to emotional, and the nominal manliness of the emotion doesn't exonerate it from being feminine, as opposed to intellectual. It's an old and invalid train of thought, and I wonder what her career would have been like if she had managed to avoid it.
She then pauses to look back at the suffrage movement, seemingly nostalgically:
"Only to think how, two or three years ago, nothing had a banner to its name save the Rights of Women, and now we are thankful to be out of reach of violation and slaughter ! Just when we were on the Point of leading men to Glory, getting the vote and putting everything right- just there and then they went frantic and spoiled it all. And they may very well stay frantic for another thirty years, settling what’s what and who’s who among themselves, while the real question as to who shall decide about vaccinating little Johnnie is left without a man behind it! And here is a case of one of those curious, bungling, partial conditions of Nature: it needs a man even to decide who shall decide. If Papa decide that Mamma shall decide, Mamma will decide; but if Papa decide to decide, Papa will decide."
The men have brushed aside the struggle for women's rights, which has revealed the unshakable patriarchy controlling the system. Hastings, who has been a collaborator with the patriarchy for years now, seems yet to see the tragedy of this system.
Turning abruptly to the lighthearted (and mean-spirited), TNA satirizes The Egoist's announcement of Pound's College of the Arts from last November's Egoist. In a similar announcement, it is dubbed "The College of Tea-hearts," where one can get instruction from Mr. Pound-Cake in the Cake Atelier, among other confectionery's delights. Check it at page 619.
Similarly, intellectual woman artists get satirized in "The Confessions of a Solitary Traveler," nominally by Anastasia Edwardes. It's probably a satire of someone in particular--but who, I'm not sure. She goes to the beach with Dostoyevsky and Hume, but ends up getting seduced by a man who buys her candy. The form, content, and boots lead me to guess that the author is actually Beatrice Hastings.
Quick Notes:
The issue has several anti-American articles. Not allies yet.
"Letters to a Trade Unionist" describes how clerks have shifted their alliance from the management to the proletariat and the unions.
Sol Davis's "The Mad City" is a transparent allegory of the war in Europe, told as a brawl between neighbors. Not that great
"Readers and Writers" complains of a press boycott, accusing the London publishers, except Macmillan, of ceasing to send him books to review. He also praises The Yale Review as the best magazine America has produced.
Llewelyn Powys contributes a story set in British East Africa, titled "Rubbish," about the tragedies of Africans under British colonialism. The story doesn't escape its own racism and sentimentality, but it fits into the genre of abolitionist writing turned to the colonial situation.
Lastly, I noticed a strange letter under the pseudonym "Ignotus Quondam" on why England might be better off losing the war. This is pretty radical, for the time and place.
Showing posts with label World War One. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War One. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
The New Age, Feb 11 1915
This will be a very Hastings-heavy post.
In her "Impressions of Paris" this week, Alice Morning/BH tells about a fire breaking out in her flat--she grabbed a sculpture of a head by Modigliani to some ridicule: the artist thought she was foolish for rating the sculpture above all of her other possessions. That makes this part of her "Impression" a double retort: she's responding to Modigliani, "the value of works of plastic art has to be settled by the critics because, of course, artists seldom know their good work from their bad" (401). She claims that artists revile writers out of vanity, but that they should see critics/writers as their "best friends" because they teach the public how to appreciate their works. It's worth reading.
The other side of the retort is to Pound, who has been boosting Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska's sculpture in his "Affirmations" (more on that below). By stating her reading of Modigliani's sculpture, she acts as a counterweight to Pound's opinions: "The whole head smiles in contemplation of knowledge, of madness, of grace and sensibility, of stupidity, of sensuality, of illusions and disillusions--all locked away as matter of perpetual meditation. It is as readable as Ecclesiastes and more consoling, for there is no lugubrious looking-back in this effulgent, unforbidding smile of intelligent equilibrium." She also overtly half-replies to Pound: "I could point out millions of muddles in his articles--but he knows I am handicapped by not being on the spot [London]. He would only patronise my Parisian explorations and warn me, on the pain of his ingratitude, to leave him alone. I will leave him alone, then, the Clusterist." I recently got my hands on a copy of Hastings' The Old New Age, her 1930s exposee of The New Age, in which she claims complete responsibility for getting Pound published there, and even says that the money he was paid came out of her own pocket sometimes. This gets some corroboration in the "ingratitude" referenced above.
For the record, Hastings was probably right about the head being her most valuable possession. The image below is of a Modigliani head that sold for 50+ million dollars. I am not sure if it is the same one referenced in the story (photo from the Wall Street Journal, here's a link).
Interestingly, BH quotes Shaw as a riposte to Pound: "'With the technique of Michael Angelo, they set themselves to produce primitives!' The falsity of modern art is defined there." I wonder how much this points back to Modigliani, too?
She also includes a beautiful war poem by a soldier, titled "The Hours," originally published in Figaro:
I can't identify the author or find anything else about the poem online.
I think I will hold off on writing about Pound's "Affirmation" of the week because it dovetails very nicely with his essay in Poetry: I'll do a combined post on Pound and the Renaissance, Feb 1915. He has, though, also been writing in to the correspondence pages. In this one, he responds to the critics of his column on imagism with a few examples:
He goes on to say that telling the difference between rhetoric and ornamentation and an authentic image is a matter of intelligence. He can feel/see/know the difference, and we should be able to, too.
Quick Notes:
The issue opens with a declaration that the war is a "war of idea," and won't be won by battles or machines. This leads into an argument that the compulsory health insurance act has undermined the spirit of the English common folk...
"Romney"'s weekly "Military Notes" explain that English common folk can't rule, and need proper upper-class officers to boss them around. I don't see this as very New Age-y, so we'll see what next week's correspondence brings in response.
Marmaduke Pickthall's "National Honor and Personal Honor" predict much of what happens to (the legend of, at least) Lawrence of Arabia, explaining that individual Englishmen are trusted in the middle east, but the government isn't, and that's because the government will betray anyone for its own ends.
Morgan Tud continues his "Three Tales" in this issue, and again I'm struck by how modernist they are. This one is a shaggy dog joke, combining Old West imagery with trying to buy pills from a pharmacist. I want to know more about the author! Nothing in the MJP pseudonym database. I suspect Hastings, but the texture is Joyce, and the last was so Irish?
The correspondence section contains an absolutely venomous response to J.M. Kennedy's articles accusing Austin Harrison of selling out Oscar Levy (I think I mentioned this last post?). Harrison replies: "Jew M. Kennedy is a liar and had better go to Germany" (415). Yikes. Kennedy responds calmly, pointing out Harrison is the editor of the English Review, which is owned by Alfred Mond, who would later be a prominent Zionist. Awkward.
Last, a prophecy: "The ridiculous threat of the German Government to blockade England-and an ineffective blockade, which is the only kind Germany can attempt, is contrary to The Hague Convention-is not likely to affect our shipping, but it may likely jeopardise the lives of American travellers on the big liners. Even the American papers have begun to point out facts like this. The best argument we can use in the United States-and we can prove it-is that it will “pay” the Americans to support us," S. Verdad, 396.
In her "Impressions of Paris" this week, Alice Morning/BH tells about a fire breaking out in her flat--she grabbed a sculpture of a head by Modigliani to some ridicule: the artist thought she was foolish for rating the sculpture above all of her other possessions. That makes this part of her "Impression" a double retort: she's responding to Modigliani, "the value of works of plastic art has to be settled by the critics because, of course, artists seldom know their good work from their bad" (401). She claims that artists revile writers out of vanity, but that they should see critics/writers as their "best friends" because they teach the public how to appreciate their works. It's worth reading.
The other side of the retort is to Pound, who has been boosting Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska's sculpture in his "Affirmations" (more on that below). By stating her reading of Modigliani's sculpture, she acts as a counterweight to Pound's opinions: "The whole head smiles in contemplation of knowledge, of madness, of grace and sensibility, of stupidity, of sensuality, of illusions and disillusions--all locked away as matter of perpetual meditation. It is as readable as Ecclesiastes and more consoling, for there is no lugubrious looking-back in this effulgent, unforbidding smile of intelligent equilibrium." She also overtly half-replies to Pound: "I could point out millions of muddles in his articles--but he knows I am handicapped by not being on the spot [London]. He would only patronise my Parisian explorations and warn me, on the pain of his ingratitude, to leave him alone. I will leave him alone, then, the Clusterist." I recently got my hands on a copy of Hastings' The Old New Age, her 1930s exposee of The New Age, in which she claims complete responsibility for getting Pound published there, and even says that the money he was paid came out of her own pocket sometimes. This gets some corroboration in the "ingratitude" referenced above.
For the record, Hastings was probably right about the head being her most valuable possession. The image below is of a Modigliani head that sold for 50+ million dollars. I am not sure if it is the same one referenced in the story (photo from the Wall Street Journal, here's a link).
Interestingly, BH quotes Shaw as a riposte to Pound: "'With the technique of Michael Angelo, they set themselves to produce primitives!' The falsity of modern art is defined there." I wonder how much this points back to Modigliani, too?
She also includes a beautiful war poem by a soldier, titled "The Hours," originally published in Figaro:
I can't identify the author or find anything else about the poem online.
I think I will hold off on writing about Pound's "Affirmation" of the week because it dovetails very nicely with his essay in Poetry: I'll do a combined post on Pound and the Renaissance, Feb 1915. He has, though, also been writing in to the correspondence pages. In this one, he responds to the critics of his column on imagism with a few examples:
Quick Notes:
The issue opens with a declaration that the war is a "war of idea," and won't be won by battles or machines. This leads into an argument that the compulsory health insurance act has undermined the spirit of the English common folk...
"Romney"'s weekly "Military Notes" explain that English common folk can't rule, and need proper upper-class officers to boss them around. I don't see this as very New Age-y, so we'll see what next week's correspondence brings in response.
Marmaduke Pickthall's "National Honor and Personal Honor" predict much of what happens to (the legend of, at least) Lawrence of Arabia, explaining that individual Englishmen are trusted in the middle east, but the government isn't, and that's because the government will betray anyone for its own ends.
Morgan Tud continues his "Three Tales" in this issue, and again I'm struck by how modernist they are. This one is a shaggy dog joke, combining Old West imagery with trying to buy pills from a pharmacist. I want to know more about the author! Nothing in the MJP pseudonym database. I suspect Hastings, but the texture is Joyce, and the last was so Irish?
The correspondence section contains an absolutely venomous response to J.M. Kennedy's articles accusing Austin Harrison of selling out Oscar Levy (I think I mentioned this last post?). Harrison replies: "Jew M. Kennedy is a liar and had better go to Germany" (415). Yikes. Kennedy responds calmly, pointing out Harrison is the editor of the English Review, which is owned by Alfred Mond, who would later be a prominent Zionist. Awkward.
Last, a prophecy: "The ridiculous threat of the German Government to blockade England-and an ineffective blockade, which is the only kind Germany can attempt, is contrary to The Hague Convention-is not likely to affect our shipping, but it may likely jeopardise the lives of American travellers on the big liners. Even the American papers have begun to point out facts like this. The best argument we can use in the United States-and we can prove it-is that it will “pay” the Americans to support us," S. Verdad, 396.
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