The New Age, May 14 1914

This month has been decidedly unproductive in terms of blog posts, for which I apologize. I will try to create short posts for each of the periodicals that I've read but haven't written about yet.

The column “Unedited Opinions” continues from last week. It is still in the form of a Socratic dialog, with one voice generally asking questions and the other answering them. This one is notable for its usage of the metaphor of a catalyst, later employed by T.S. Eliot in “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” In this case, it is purely social: some people are catalysts, who by their mere presence change the behavior of those around them, like a queen bee, Cecil Rhodes, and King Alfred. It’s a little silly. 

Penty writes on "Fabians, Pigeons, and Dogs." This one might interest my friend Vaclav: the satirical argument is that the Fabian plan to assist in the development of humanity was based on Darwin's evolution, but that genetics don't work in a perfectable way. The example is the spaniel. As breeders tried to improve its sense of smell, they inadvertently shortened its legs. So will attempts to evolve humanity.

Walter Sickert writes about the emerging market for modernist art. Scornfully. Interestingly, he makes a comparison between modern art and manure that can only be used to fertilize a field once. Modern art similarly loses its efficacy. This is part of Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant Garde, contemporary and in miniature.

Orage, as R.H.C., writes this about Marinetti's manifesto, printed in the last issue (see above post):

Mr. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto  published in THE NEW AGE last week is, I suppose, in keeping with everything else  in these  pages,  open  to discussion. My view is  that Mr. Marinetti  is  reviving an old quarrel that ought to have drowned and damned by the Flood,-the quarrel of presentation with representation; and that he is on the wrong side of the controversy" (38). He explains that most writers feel inadequacy, but it is internal rather than a frustration with the limits of language. Marinetti, though, throws out the language as if its limits were the problem.  he  mistakes  the whole raison  d’etre  of  literature which is precisely not to present and reproduce, but  to  represent  and  produce." Contrast to Pound is nice here. A fissure between modern art and its articulate critic.

Beatrice Hastings, writing as T.K.L., writes an angry open letter to one Mr. Selfridge, who proposed an alliance between art and commerce, explaining that this would be impossible...

A.E.R. (Randall) writes a review of Freud "On Dreams."

Lastly, in "Pastiche" there is a satire of Marinetti: this note more for my future reference than a helpful one, I fear.

More posts soon! Hopefully I can finish of May before June.