Barbusse's Le Feu in the Journals

This post is for my collaborators at UW's Modernist Studies Research Cluster--we're preparing to read Henri Barbusse's Le Feu, and I was going to put together a selection of reviews of that work, taken from the Modernist Journals Project. I figured it might be useful for other people gliding through the Web, so here it is for any others that Google might shunt in this direction.

The first reviews I found come in The Egoist, where the able book reviewer Muriel Ciolkowska writes on French literature from wartime Paris. Barbusse's prior novel, L'Enfer, was reviewed by several of the periodicals. That book (which I haven't read) seems to have been a kind of super-decadent parable of a peeping tom in a hotel room... something very different than Le Feu. Ciolkowska reports her fascination with L'Enfer in the February 1917 issue--she also mentions that he has just won the Croix de Guerre elsewhere in that issue. But we're going to look at Le Feu, not L'Enfer. Here's a link to the issue containing her long review--once on the MJP site, click "View PDF" to open the issue.

May, 1917: The Egoist, Muriel Ciolkowska, 55-57. 

Ciolkowska is a very interesting figure in her own right, providing a running commentary on the war's effects on literary Paris--but I'll proceed to her thoughts on Le Feu. Her long review of the book appears in the May 1917 issue, printed just after H.D.'s fantastic poem "Eurydice." The review, beginning on page 55, begins with a translation of Barbusse's army citation, which praises his morality and his courage. Ciolkowska, who loves a hero, does this very much on purpose.

 Ciolkowska is one of my favorite truly obscure writers from the era. Her articles are a running commentary on the war's effects on literary Paris--but I'll proceed to her thoughts on Le Feu. Her long review of the book appears in the May 1917 issue, printed just after H.D.'s fantastic poem "Eurydice." The review, beginning on page 55, begins with a translation of Barbusse's army citation, which praises his morality and his courage. Ciolkowska, who loves a hero, does this very much on purpose—she’s going to talk about the political controversy of Le Feu and does this to get out ahead of any kneejerk reactions against Barbusse’s internationalist views.  Only, I sense that she’s been changed by reading the book, too—her own occasionally jingoistic pro-French nationalism has found itself challenged by this book. It’s telling that she lingers on its form, its politics, and its rejection of the past and tradition; something quintessentially modernist at least in Ciolkowska’s reading of it. On form, she does complain that his use of soldier’s slang makes it difficult to follow. If Ciolkowska has trouble with the French… well, I downloaded the French and the English versions, but I sense that I might end up spending more time with English. But on modernism, what better than this selection she makes from the book:

“‘In a word, the enemy is the past. The perpetrators of war are the traditionalists, steeped in the past… for whom an abuse has the power of law because it has been allowed to take root, who aspire to be guided by the dead and who insist on submitting the passionate, throbbing future and progress to the rule of ghosts and nursery fables.”

Ciolkowska then comments: “Verily the criminals are those who echo, ‘because it was, it must be.’”
It’s a heck of a review, so good that Margaret Anderson reprints the key points (fully cited) in The Little Review next month. That deep questioning on the part of Ciolkowska ends up not being fully resolved: she writes in August (p. 106) that Barbusse concentrates too much on the sacrifices of the lower classes, ignoring those of the upper classes.

Here are a few more reviews, some covered at more, some less length depending on my arbitrary interest in each. I've listed them chronologically, but read Reed/Bryant if you have to pick just one.

August 1917: The Seven Arts, Paul Rosenberg, p. 518-520.

The review in Seven Arts is passionate, emphasizing the revolutionary character of Le Feu and praising it to the skies—it is Euripides for the modern era. This issue of Seven Arts opens with an article by John Reed—a nice coincidence, as I’ll be covering his reading of Le Feu below.

September 1917: The New Age, anonymous (possibly A.R. Orage) p. 453

The New Age takes note of the importance of Le Feu: “This book is not a mere record, it is an apocalypse.” Apocalypse meaning literally, a lifting of the veil. The review is short, but emphasizes (like all of the book’s reviews) the truthful quality of the narrative.

October 1917: The Masses, Louise Bryant and John Reed, p. 5-6

Husband and wife Louise Bryant and John Reed’s account of Le Feu is embedded in an article on the general state of the war, published in the October 1917 issue of the brilliant New York-based socialist magazine, The Masses. This is the penultimate issue of The Masses, just before the journal is shut down due to wartime censorship. The duo is famous for Ten Days that Shook the World and Six Months in Red Russia, accounts of the October Revolution and its aftermath. The date of this issue is somewhat portentous.

Reed/Bryant’s reading is actually very similar to Ciolkowska’s—but even more intense, because while Ciolkowska is gradually coming around to Barbusse’s position, The Masses has inhabited it all along. The article explains “ ‘Le Feu,’ by Henri Barbusse… to my mind is the biggest thing next to the Russian revolution that the war has so far produced.” Pretty intense. Reed/Bryant believe that the internationalist, pacifist book reflects the realities of French public opinion—that it is the harbinger to a revolution.
 
February 1918: The Crisis, W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 190.

To oversimplify--at this point, Du Bois was pro-war. He admires the French African troops fighting for France, and admired France's attitude towards them. Rather than reviewing Le Feu, he excerpts a passage praising French African troops. That's very characteristic of his editorial style--he uses quotation rather than commentary whenever possible, and is always willing to let a text stand on its own merits or demerits. Photography has a similar effect--here's an image and caption from May 1917 that illustrates the point (do check out the caption):

I'll leave it at that, for now--there's more, but those are the best I found.  The upshot is that Le Feu had an immediate international impact. It was very highly praised--I only found one letter to The Little Review complaining that it was overrated, and of course Ciolkowska's strange waffling about social class and suffering mentioned above.

The Egoist, July 1916

Still working through The Egoist backlog, things are exciting:

Marsden begins the next phase of her philosophy by broadening her scope and heightening her ambitions, now aiming to change all philosophy forever. I'll try to explain what I think she's trying to do: philosophy is about to have a revolution like the scientific revolution, and Marsden is placing herself at the epicenter. The revolution will be a linguistic turn, one that reads, creates, and investigates symbols from other realms. It will be scientific, analytical, and based in facts--but because of the strong vitalist strain in Marsden, it will be full of life, fully acknowledging that the observer changes the observed, and is changed by it in turn. Here are some tastes:

"The symbols adequate to express the part are inadequate for the expression of the whole. But it is quite otherwise with the powers of the symbols which have grown up for the expression of the whole." (100)

That kind of optimism about the power of language feels very modernist to me, though I often think of it more in the context of poetry than symbols as such (though the gap is small). Echoes of Imagism. Which brings us to this, the climax of the essay:

"For while its agency is the living energy of mind which impregnates with change and growth everything it touches, its manner of activity (which is its distinction) is mind in concentration. The notion that its activity means just a disintegration of a composite whole into its constituent parts and that by analysing a subject we arrive at a predicate which contains merely the sum-total of the parts of the object with which we started fails to appreciate the true features of the observing process, and it is indeed utterly refuted by the growth in the world's multiplicity and richness. Exactly as the tree is not in the seed but— given devotion and care—is capable of being developed out of it, so in analysis: at the outset the subject does not contain the predicate but, given the fertilizing energy of mind, above all in the concentrated strength in which it appears in analysis, then out of the subject can be grown such a wealth of predicates as might beggar the imagination of a magician." (102)

Mind and matter, co-creating.

Marsden's piece, in a fantastic coincidence, is followed by one of my favorite H.D. poems, "Cities." I've written about "Cities" several times, but this is the first time I've seen it in its Egoist form--in the Collected Poems, it contains a different final stanza, one that redeems the horrors of industrial society. This poem doesn't.

And, as if that's not enough, Muriel Ciolkowska contributes a review of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu! It's one of her best pieces yet, containing large tracts translated from the novel, and ending with a reflection on the difficulty and limits of book reviewing. I feel like the book has rubbed off on Ciolkowska's style, at least for the review, as her descriptions seem to mirror what they describe as they meander from metaphor to precision.

In other news from Ciolkowska, she writes an obituary of the incredible Jane Dieulafoy.

Quick Notes:

Aldington contributes a dialog on conscientious objection.

Edward Storer writes in defense of Ireland after last month's editorial, and Marsden writes a very squirrely response, classic Marsden. She fends off Storer's criticism by explaining that he misread her and misunderstood her vocabulary.

Leigh Henry, more commonly in The Egoist for his articles on music, contributes a trio of Imagist-esque poems.

And of course, Tarr continues, with Kriesler and Bertha's convoluted walk to the party.

The Egoist, April 1916

So, I had to get that belated March post up in order to get one ready for April. It's a heck of an issue.

Before turning to the canonical coolness of several of these pieces, a moment from Muriel Ciolkowska's "Passing Paris" that turned into a half hour's exploration of the internet: Ciolkowska informed us about "Mme Poupelet," Jane Poupelet. The wikipedia article's in French--she doesn't have an English page, not yet. This passage caught my attention:

The idea of "our leading woman-sculptor" making dolls of "remarkable qualities" caught Kate's and my imagination. We have yet to locate any of these dolls online, either mentioned or in images. We did find some of her sculptures, like this whimsically chubby cat, apparently sold a couple years back in Rockland, Maine--a town where K used to sell farmer's market produce. Such a small world. Too bad we weren't living in the area and aware of this at the time!

So cute! We probably couldn't have afforded it. Further searches turned up this blog post by Alain Verstichel about her work sculpting prosthetic masks for wounded soldiers. It's also in French, but you should follow the link even if you can't read it to look at the images. From here, I learned that Poupelet worked with American Anna Coleman Ladd building these masks.

Katelyn also turned up this article in Harper's, titled "A Great French Sculpturess," written by Janet Scudder in the April 8, 1916 issue--coincidentally coinciding with the century immersion project of this blog. Scudder's extremely excited about Poupelet--here's a prophecy she makes, though, that might be true, at least most of the time: "Poupelet's name will be forgotten just as the name of the sculptor of the Narcissi is forgotten--that is unimportant."

Then we noticed that April 19th is Poupelet's birthday, which means I have to post this post today instead of worrying it over overnight, the way I often do. Happy 142nd, Mme Poupelet!

In other, more canonical news:

Tarr begins. I read it for my PhD exams, but reading it in this immersion project changes it considerably. Tarr, the character, talks like The New Age, and like The Egoist itself. Tarr's criticism of the world indicts the reader as well as his companions in the artistic Knackfus Quarter. The misogyny reverberates through the women's movements I've seen, and the anti-German sentiment gathers force next to the coverage of the war. Even H.D.'s recent poems of turmoil and initiation seem to be of a piece with Tarr as a piece of The Egoist--the dream of being alone, together, holds these things in an uneasy conversation. Or something like that. Is it a coincidence that it is followed immediately by a letter titled "Second-Rate Supermen" about the German misapplication of Nietzsche? Probably not.

Quick Notes:

Harriet Shaw Weaver's editorial criticizes the worship of wonder, the feeling of wonder, in itself: wonder properly appreciated ends with an inspiration to destroy it through learning. Knowledge is the proper end of wonder, not wonder itself. 

H.D. contributes "The Helmsman," a poem I know from Sea Garden. 

Richard Aldington contributes an understated prose poem about an English town, one about "the perfect book" which resonates with the first chapter of Tarr, and a lineated poem about Italy.

The Egoist, August 1915

A quick post on The Egoist of this month--

For me, the one of the more exciting things in this issue is Marsden's editorial, which appears to be a fusion of Imagism and her philosophy in a discussion of novelty and the new:

"The directing lures in life then are Images : Feelings in prospect : which can magnetize the vital power, first to Attention and thereafter to Action. Prospective Sensations hook into the Imagination. The prospect of growing into a sensation more and more definitely constitutes the paramount "Urge," and action in life is governed by this attitude towards a progressive definiteness in Sensation. The vital instinct is to follow such sensations as offer promise of developing themselves into something new : which said differently, means that life is in its highest condition of well-being when it is enlarging its world to include something new."

I'll have to think on this, but that discussion will probably end up landing in my dissertation, not on this blog.

In a hilariously-titled section, "Periodicals Not Received," The Egoist takes some measured at Wyndham Lewis' second issue of Blast, which I personally found to be fantastic. The Egoist is less convinced, mixing praise and blame (I suspect Aldington is behind this piece). Here's a sample: "Mr. Lewis writes brilliantly and in some cases with truth on his side; but it makes one weep to see a very talented man like Mr. Pound putting his name to such rubbish, even for a joke—the joke is stale" (131). Awesome: The Egoist is already accusing modernism's foremost practitioners of being derivative, facile, and late (a thesis I remember from Rod Rosenquist's Modernism, the Market, and the Institution of the New). The picture muddies again, and delightfully. No comments on Eliot's debut.

Quick Notes:

This issue includes a small set of Imagist poems by Aldington, Fletcher, and Moore. I recognized Moore by feel before reaching her name--even this early, her sound is unique, excellent. One of her poems is to Browning, another to Bernard Shaw, continuing her trend of writing poems dedicated to artistic men.

John Cournos eulogizes Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

James Whitall contributes English translations of Judith Gautier's French translations of Chinese poetry. Some are very charming.

Muriel Ciolkowska's "Passing Paris" of the month includes an essay on Guy-Charles Cros, and three of his poems.

Richard Aldington praises Eugene Demolder's La Route d'Emeraude, calling Demolder an imagist.

A.W.G. Randall writes about Rilke at length as the most popular poet in modern Germany--I think this might be the first time I've spotted Rilke during this project. He's praised, though Randall thinks his mystical works aren't his best. He includes a translation of a poem, "Pont du Carrousel," which seems like (another) proto-mini-Waste Land with its underworldly bridge and blind but sublime protagonist. Very cool (page 127).

The same page contains the launch of the Poets' Translation Series, chapbooks of classics, one of which I'm fortunate enough to own in real life. Maybe I'll do a post on it, later...

The Egoist, April 1915

The Egoist in April, 1915:

Marianne Moore makes her Egoist debut, with her poems appearing just after those of a forgotten modernist, Richard Butler Glaenzer--who has the tragic fate of not yet having a wikipedia page. His poems are cool, though. More on that in a second, after more on Moore's two short poems.

The first is dedicated to Gordon Craig, modernist director:

I can almost see the last line as the very very first draft of her much-drafted poem "Poetry." Note the careful rhymes, the way that meaning enjambs from line to line, the very-slant rhymes of "wake" and "retrospect." It's very interesting that the dedication is part of the first line. This poem makes me think of my late teacher, Herb Blau, who I wish I could show this to--I have a feeling he would have identified with Moore's portrait of Craig.

The second poem, "To the Soul of 'Progress,'" doesn't fit neatly on to a page and would look kind of weird on the blog here, but it is certainly worth a look in the pdf of the journal. On the level of content (or discontent), the poem is about how war can emerge from the desire for progress. It fits perfectly with the Egoist's skepticism. It also has an extremely tight and unusual rhyme scheme, a prevision of "The Fish." She seems to be channeling Yeats in a certain stanza that contains clapping wings and a tumult...

Returning to Glaenzer: his poems are about his hatred of cities, contrasted Imagistically with his love of Bermuda--and then, there's also a poem about an Antoinette. His poems are powered more by raw Whitmano-Futurist energy than intricacies, but I noticed that they are attempting to fuse that kind of dynamism with imagist technique, which feels odd in the context of how imagism is understood retrospect-ively, but actually makes a lot of sense in following the journals.

Huntley Carter contributes a piece that has a few interesting points--titled "The Curve of Individualism," it contains several points that are made stridently, then hedged back, so take this summary with its own hedging. First, he claims that Futurist art predicted the war. Then he explains that their art reveals the fundamental inequality of humans, and Carter postulates that one could create a chart in which "the height of the curve above the base line will represent the varying value of human beings" (59). He jumps from this to review Theodore A. Cook's The Curves of Life, which finds that the perfect spiral is that basis for biology and art, a claim Carter appreciates but qualifies with Cook's own "nothing which is alive is ever simply mathematical." This might mitigate the brutality of charting human worth somewhat? Maybe? Because he comes to a philosophy of difference:

"Advance (progress we call it) resides in differences freely expressed. If human beings are to move significantly in any direction they must not be tied up in inseparable bundles, called groups, guilds, and communities. Each must belong wholly to himself or herself. Each must be free to feel, act and choose a path of his or her own. The social or artificial restraint of differences in human beings is slowly but inevitably making for the destruction of the human soul" (60).

Note the pointed critique of The New Age's Guild Socialism.

So much more to do, but I will stop here for today after my customary

Quick Notes:

Marsden continues "Truth and Reality," and it is amazing. Too much to review on a blog, I will hopefully be devoting a chapter of my dissertation to Marsden. For now, this nugget: "The two terms 'real' and 'Reality' are very near to being the expression of opposites: real—the sign attached to a thing whose potentialities have been proved to be like to another's, and Reality—the name of a nominal " something " which has never yet existed and which, should '"it " ever achieve existence, would become degraded into Appearance and thereby cease to be part of Reality" (51). 

Richard Aldington contributes an essay on "Decadence and Dynamism" which in turn continues his own literary researches. He finds that most new art can be considered either decadent or dynamic, and that investigating the decadent, one finds that dynamism is merely intensified decadence. He reads Huysmans' A Rebors to make most of his points, and is probably one of few people who read enough obscure Latin to pronounce judgment on Des Esseintes' classical criticism (Aldington thinks it is brilliant).

Portrait continues...

Frank Denver reviews a modernist art show, praises Epstein, and declares that there isn't much good art around in those days.

"Fighting Paris" declares that it will return to its old title, "Passing Paris," as things are back to normal in the capital. I wonder if that will stick.

That's all for now...