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, June 1916

I have a backlog of posts, but good reasons: I spent the last month or so working on a project on The Crisis, which I'll post about soon. These backlog posts will be quick sketches of interesting moments. Some might be more than that. I've been trying to keep up with my reading even as I'm not writing much here, and there were some interesting moments in the June 1916 Egoist. 

Primarily, Marsden's long editorial on the Easter Rising. Marsden illustrates the continuing development of her philosophy of political linguistics by explaining the relative successes and failures of England and Ireland during the rising, finding the roots of the crisis in rhetoric rather than reality. It's a problem of difference:

"Ability to distinguish "cheese from chalk " is the people's criterion of intelligence, and no doubt a scale of intelligence could be drawn up on the basis of the number of distinctions which people can bear in mind at a given moment; and if by some strange fluke a great empire can ignore this fact with impunity and read uniformity where actually there exists difference, lesser powers—rebels and the like—cannot." (82)

Marsden explains that the republicans failed to distinguish between their own situation and that of Ulster. She builds a philosophy of hate, and explains how hate emerges from rhetoric: inflammatory statements are made because, precisely, they are not actions. But they inevitably lead to actions.

"The chrysalis develops into the moth. Beginning in words just because these do not mean action, it ends in the use of words just in order that they shall mean action. The words which in the beginning were excrescences: appendages to men's more serious selves, in the sequel become the main body to which men are the insignificant appendages." (84)

A thought that resonates today. Plain speech is the remedy, according to Marsden, along with ever-finer distinctions and observations. Ironically, many of her more specific arguments seem wrong to me, shaded over by her wartime faith in England's omnipotence. When she generalizes, though, she often hits the mark.

Quick notes:

H.D.'s poem "Sea Gods" immediately follows this notice.

Aldington contributes a prose poem, "The Middle Ages."

Moore contributes "Pedantic Literalist."

Tarr continues, with the spiritually grimy Kriesler meeting Anastasya at a restaurant. The description of the Restaurant Jejune, on page 91, is brilliant.

The Egoist, May 1916

End of the month means a flurry of short posts:

The oddest thing, perhaps, about this issue of The Egoist, is that it doesn't have an editorial at all. Harriet Shaw Weaver had been filling in for Marsden in the role, but this one opens with an essay by Aldington. He also contributes an elegy for Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, "A Life." It's a beautiful, subdued tribute.

The best things, perhaps, are the two poems by Marianne Moore, including one with this amazing title: "You are Like the Realistic Product of an Idealistic Search for Gold at the Foot of the Rainbow."

Quick notes: 

Pound contributes a translation of one of the dialogs of Fontanelle, 

There's a story about the trauma of a young girl who listens to her father beat her mother every night--signed B. Durak, a pseudonym I can't track a the moment.

Tarr continues--this time through, I'm noticing how thoroughly narrated the narrative is. Even the slippages between narrator and character are part of the narration, it seems. Incredibly rich prose, peppered with the occasional false note--or is it salted? 

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, March 1916

A belated post on The Egoist for March! I thought I'd written one, but when working on April I noticed that I hadn't.

The big news here is that Tarr is beginning. Wyndham Lewis' novel opens with a few forerunners here--Ezra Pound's "Meditatio" excoriating the stupidity of the literary public for not liking Lewis and Joyce is one of these. The others are short stories by Lewis himself, "The French Poodle"  and "A Young Soldier." Both are war stories, as is Tarr, at least in that it appeared in The Egoist during the war and will certainly resonate with it. They are themselves a matched pair: "The French Poodle" is about a young soldier attempting to sort through his trauma, and mostly failing. "A Young Soldier" is much shorter, a sketch more than a plotted story, about seeing a soldier who looked like he was born to kill.

Quick Notes:

Harriet Shaw Weaver continues to write the editorials, though Marsden is still on the paper, apparently.

Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell, and H.D. all contribute poems, as does Alice Groff. Leigh Henry writes on Ravel, Huntly Carter on American photography and French cubism. 

Poetry, January 1916

Just a few quick observations on Poetry:

Alice Corbin, here without her married surname "Henderson" that usually appears (if memory serves), contributes a set of poems in dialog with London imagism. She indicates the dialog in a poem, "Music," through an epigraph from Richard Aldington's "Chorikos" from November 1912's Poetry (the second issue, and in the first month of my blog project). Corbin follows Aldington's ode to Persephone with a poem about visiting the grave of Pablo de Sarasate. For H.D., "The Pool" responds to "The Pool," with Corbin's following the pattern established in "Music" by doing a more specific, real-world poem than H.D.'s. This one is an account of Corbin's visit to Nimes, France, and perhaps the ancient Garden of the Fountain there. In the poem, Corbin's younger sister dives into the forbidden pool. This is a metaphor of H.D.'s fearless, innovative poetry. Poetry loves H.D. so much. Here's part of the tribute, sorry for the low image quality (mine, not Corbin's! And for the jokes).

The next poem is a two-part sequence labeled "Apparitions," this one likely going to Ezra Pound, with his "apparitions in the crowd" from "In a Station of the Metro." I might pair "Color Note" with either John Gould Fletcher or Amy Lowell.

I noticed that, according to her Wikipedia bio, Alice Corbin is going to move to Santa Fe this year (1916) to treat her tuberculosis.

Quick Notes:

Pound contributes an obituary for Remy de Gourmont. It contains the germs of Poundian intellectual elitism, already spotted elsewhere in this blog project, but perhaps never so clearly. Translating de Gourmont, he continues:

"Yet the phrase is so plain and simple: 'to permit those who are worth it to write frankly what they think.' That is the end of all rhetoric and of all journalism. By end I do not mean goal, or ambition. I mean that when a nation, or a group of men, or an editor, arrives at the state of mind where he really understands that phrase, rhetoric and journalism are done with. The true aristocracy is founded, permanent and indestructible."

The aristocracy can be incarnated in a single editor, if necessary. This will not end well. A revealing moment, though.

And this note, joyous in its moment, tragic in the light of Seeger's eventual death in July of this year:

This does close a loop for me, though. Alan Seeger's brother, Charles, collected songs that helped fuel the 60s folk revival, and was Pete Seeger's father. That now links back to Poetry, if in a roundabout way. 

The Egoist, January 1916

Something's come between Dora Marsden and the editorial contribution this week--perhaps her ill health? Whatever the reason, we get a rare treat in a full editorial from Harriet Shaw Weaver, usually silent, at this point the force behind what actually gets published in The Egoist. Weaver's essay should probably be required reading in the standard Intro to Theory courses in graduate schools, because it is a theory of theories in the humanities. Weaver's essay doesn't contain as many mind-bending twists as a Marsden piece, but it is a sophisticated look at the way theories come to dominate readers, who rely on their favorite theories to interpret all things, regardless of whether the theory is applicable or not. 

After arguing that theories are properly means to an end, but often become "pets or hobbies" instead, Weaver shows how the indeterminacy of language combines with rhetorical power to tend to channel people to the theories they already know: "And since the weapons of the warfare of beliefs are language, the shifting meanings of words, the fluidity and mistiness of connotation of abstract terms give the protector of any favoured theory his chance... Without consciously going such lengths, the propagandist nevertheless becomes skilful at so manipulating words and phrases as to confuse the issue, and he actually measures his success by his ability finally to create a dilemma from which the only apparent way of escape is by adoption of his theory" (2). Weaver moves from this to a keenly-observed point: the very revelatory power of a theory can lead to it creating obscurity later, as the ease which a theory solves problems can lead to it being applied where it is inappropriate, or even can lead to it being applied to prove contradictory points. 

Weaver uses the above to draw a distinction between The Egoist and its contemporary journals, which are more shaded by political programs and theories: "THE EGOIST is wedded to no belief from which it is unwilling to be divorced." That alone makes it superior to the likes of The New Age. I've added this essay to my syllabus for the class I'm teaching next quarter, and placed it early. There's a lot packed into these two pages, but Shaw's lucid writing makes this accessible enough for a 200 level course, I think (and hope). 

Quick Notes:

Leigh Henry is back to contributing essays on music, albeit from his prison camp in Germany. This week he reviews the Fantasiste poets, and is full of high praise for them. 

John Cournos reviews Fyodor Sologub, and a few satirical stories by Sologub appear in the issue.

Richard Aldington reviews book reviewers very negatively, but delightfully for me bases his criticism on the fact that the public only likes things that are one hundred years old, using Keats as his example of an unpopular poet who is now too popular a century later. 

H.D. contributes "The Cliff Temple." 

F.S. Flint reviews Amy Lowell's translation, Six French Poets. Mostly kindly. 

R.B. Kerr writes in recommending that we read Mother Earth, the journal edited by Emma Goldman. I found a digitization here, maybe I'll take a look at it soon. 

The Egoist, October 1915

The Egoist is replete with interesting material, as usual. I'm currently working on a paper on Dora Marsden, and I really should be spending all my time on it... but here goes.

Speaking of Marsden, she continues her anti-government reading of contemporary politics. The upshot of the month's "Views and Comments" is that the media is misrepresenting the people--that the controversy over conscription is unnecessary because the people support the war, and are willing to do what they need to do to win it.

M. Montagu-Nathan continues a series on problems with the translation of Russian literature into English. He wants more Gogol.

Edward Storer contributes many translations of Sappho, giving his own take on the sort of Greek lyric poets that Aldington has been publishing lately. He cited the Wharton edition as his source, and translated both whole poems and fragments, but corrects Wharton's more prudish reading of the poems with this: "That her poems were chiefly love-poems, and love-poems written to women, is clear even from the mutilated fragments which remain. Any other explanation destroys at once their art and their reality. Yet sedulous hypocrites are to be found to-day who will wilfully mistranslate and misconstrue in order to envelope the manners of antiquity in a retrospective and most absurd respectability." Cool. So are the poems. I have read many translations of Sappho, but in these, the aphoristic epigrams stand out:

The indefatigable Huntly Carter reviews A.J. Eddy's book, "Cubists and Post-Impressionism," an early critical work on those movements. Carter, having been on the scene since Manet and the Post-Impressionists in winter 1910, weighs in quickly and decisively. He accuses Eddy of jumbling up which artist belongs in which school ("Picasso is not a Cubist, but an essentialist." [!!!]) Carter does point out that writing about avant-garde art should be investigated with caution, especially when "painted theories of a school do not agree with the written ones." Intriguingly for me, Carter boils Eddy's theory down to a paraphrase of imagist doctrine (without citing imagism): "the painter is seeking to make an abstraction of the individualising features of a movement experienced by him in a moment of time. In this trifle resides the only possible theory and practice of art." Here Carter is condensing Eddy's reading of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," and this is the first time I've seen Duchamp referenced. Carter has nice things to say about Kandinsky.

Someone signing as "E. H. W." translates Peter Altenberg's story "Une Femme est un Etat de Notre Ame." It's very interesting, a portrait of the emptiness of a young woman's bourgeois life, written in an experimental fashion. It's ambiguous to me on a first reading whether Altenberg is using the relationship with the young man to redeem and transform this life, or whether the relationship and its poetry is also ironized as empty. I lean to the latter. I wonder who "E. H. W." is.

John Gould Fletcher continues Ghosts of an Old House, his southern Gothic serial poem. I'm not into it, but he prophesies my (and your!) reading his poem after his death in this one:

Perhaps the perfect answer to this comes on the same page, facing: Marianne Moore's "Diligence is to Magic as Progress is to Flight," a poem in part about how a poem can escape becoming ephemeral. The other Moore poem is "To a Steam Roller," and both are amazing, but here I'll post just "Diligence" because of my (contrived) attempt to make it a response to Fletcher's anxiety:

I should wrap up this post, and I'll do so with Richard Aldington: he writes about Laurent Tailhade, praising him for his obscene satire. What does this suggest? Yes! Aldington's own attempt at poetic satire follows it. To continue the theme established by Fletcher and Moore: Aldington's satire ends with another accurate prophesy:

And here he is, by Raoul Kristian, who I can't locate online, and that's all for now:

The Egoist, September 1915

Sweet-sadness of the end of many a month's serial story:

I'll be teaching it in a few weeks, for the first time--so it's not like I'm parting ways with The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for long. A note on serialization: this book is poetic enough, and the chapters self-contained enough, that I never felt like I was utterly lost in regard to plot, etc. But on thinking back over the last two years of it, I have trouble remembering what happened--I can recall the plot via the time I read the book-as-book, but as serial, strangely, it seems like a whole different novel. 

Quick Notes:

John Cournos eulogizes Gaudier-Brzeska, drawing a strong contrast between Gaudier-Brzeska's artistic power and motives and that of the Futurists, saying that the Futurists represent things, while G-B interpreted them. 

Richard Aldington contributes a series of short translations from Anyte of Tegea, "one of the great women-poets of Greece."

There's more--Marsden's anti-democratic philosophy, for one--but no more time today. 

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, June 1915

I've mentioned my summer fellowship on here before: I'm working on it a lot, and it's sucking up some of my blogging time. So a short post on The Egoist:

Marsden opens the issue with these lines, which make one think that one isn't going to like what else she's going to say: "Anglo-Saxon intelligence must arrive at an accurate apprehension of the nature of cultures if Anglo-Saxon supremacy is not to be finally and definitely relinquished." This sounds pretty bad taken with the other five sixths of the twentieth century to come. Her overall point is that England has allowed itself to be fooled into believing that morality has a bearing on international affairs, while morality is really just a means to keep the lower classes oppressed. This international morality leads in turn to the rise of Germany. Oddly, this argument is also one for socialism, and the suppression of individuality to the state for the duration of the war. At this point, Marsden seems a shadow of her former self: still arch, still provocative, but I have a feeling that her philosophy can't handle the war.

May Sinclair, famous for inventing the term "stream of consciousness" in The Egoist in 1918, contributes a passionate refutation to Harold Monro's reading of H.D. in the May issue of The Egoist. I love this passage on H.D.'s "Hermes of the Ways":

"If you are sworn to admire nothing but Swinburne, or Rossetti, or Mrs. Browning or Robert Browning and their imitators for ever and ever, you may reject the " Hermes " because there is no " passion " in it.

But why, in Heaven's name, should there be passion in it ? Haven't we had enough of passion and of the sentiment that passed for passion all through the nineteenth century ? We can't hope to escape the inevitable reaction. And isn't it almost time to remind us that there is a beauty of restraint and stillness and flawless clarity?"

My own reading of the poem finds plenty of passion in it, but Sinclair's point is to draw a contrast between it and "sentiment that passed for passion." We agree, though, that "to me, H.D. is the most significant of the Imagists" (88).

Awesome, awesome stuff.

Quick Notes:

 This issue contains a handful of poems, one by Aldington, one by Frances Gregg, one by Helen Hoyt, and one by Anna Wickham. Gregg's is a cool Gothic one about seeing (and maybe more) a ghost at sea. Helen Hoyt's is intense: "The Bullet Speaks to the Poet," a poem written from the perspective of, well, a bullet--but a bullet who resembles a poet in its effects.

Joyces Portrait continues, and seems very much at home here in The Egoist, as usual. It is dazzling.

Aldington reviews a periodical released by Edward Storer, one of the original pre-Poundian imagists, Loose Leaves. It is two pages long! Sounds lovely.

Allen Upward sends a poem to the correspondence pages! I love this. It is his own version of the history of Imagism in Upwardian verse. Some of it is silly, but the upshot is that he claims independence from the movement and that his inspiration was Chinese poetry, not Storer, Flint, and company.

Lastly, the final set of letters: one from Huntly (whose first name I fear I've misspelled for the entire duration of this project) Carter, and a response from Aldington. Carter responds to the Imagists in his usual vitalist Romantic fashion, saying that they see poetry as "an Art" instead of "as Art," and are more interested in form than expression. Aldington's response is materialist, in its way: people need training to become better at art, and studying forms is the equivalent of an athlete's training in poetry. Nice counterpoints that really capture an important contrast in how to read poetry.

Actually lastly: there's a lovely advertisement at the end, a place I'd like to visit:

That's all for now.

The Little Review, May 1915

Sometimes I can feel a post devolving into either a table of contents or a diaphanous simulacrum of the issue, and I feel like a parrotfish of the archive: taking in rich, life-filled coral, and turning it to critical sand that sifts into the abyss. The nature of this project makes some of that inevitable, I guess--the real payoff isn't the blog post, after all, but the immersion itself. They are reflections of reflections of reviews. This is going to be a long one, one of the longest yet.

One thing that helps give things a shape is if I can sense the editors of a particular journal giving the whole issue a certain spin (perhaps an English, in the sense of shooting pool?). This issue of The Little Review has more of an English than the last--it is caught up in the spirit of revolution, and it sees this revolution as a distinctly American phenomenon. It is also a revolution centered on the individual (Anderson is reading The Egoist, after all).

First stop, editor Margaret C. Anderson's editorial, "What Are We Fighting For?" It opens with a response to her article preferring Scriabin to Gabrilowitsch from last issue (which alas I did not comment on in my post, not having enough knowledge of the musical context). This moves into a programmatic moment I've fetched for you here:

I am certain that other scholars of The Little Review and Anderson have commented on this passage before, because it is so perfect. Anderson places herself on the absolute cusp of the new, and a step beyond it.

Here are other important lines to consider:

"There's nothing pompous in saying that the thoughts of only a few people matter. This has always been so and always will be. Every new valuation has come about just that way—championed by a group and then endorsed by a majority long after it has ceased to matter much."

"In each of the future issues of THE LITTLE REVIEW, beginning with June if possible, we shall have a special article attacking current fallacies in the arts or in life—getting down to the foundations. Each one will be written by a person who knows thoroughly what he is talking about, and each will be 'true and memorable,' to use Will Comfort's good phrase."

Finally, if one would like to join in, Anderson solicits articles from expert readers:

"The conditions of acceptance are these : You must know English prose; you must write it as though you are talking instead of writing; you must say quite frankly and in detail the things you would not be allowed to say in the prostituted, subsidized, or uninteresting magazines; and you must be true. This begins our warfare."

While these speak for themselves, I'll make some observations. First, there's an awful lot of talk about true and false here, which makes me think Anderson likes Marsden's work quite a lot but doesn't apply its lessons on the emptiness of truth as a concept and criterion. Note that Anderson expects sweeping changes to emerge from her magazine, but embraces the condition of being an elite avant garde that creates a "new valuation" that will not be immediate accepted. The call for writing "as though you are talking instead of writing" is very cool, and resonates with both Pound's position as "village talker" and Beatrice Hastings' embraced insult when she was called a talker, not a writer (see The Old New Age pamphlet, must-read stuff for Hastings fans). It also distinguishes TLR from The Egoist in that TE doesn't use the language of speech. Also, the title and the final line carry unusual weight in a time of war.

So that's the mission--now I'll look at how this issue attempts to achieve this. As usual, editorial vision cannot (and should not) bring contributors into total coherence. This issue is full of notable, diverse writing.

Will Levington Comfort contributes "America's Ignition," an excited and exciting manifesto about the reconstruction of the world after the war, in which America and the new generation will take a leading part. Comfort believes that the secret to life is avoiding selfishness, and that the current generation will be unselfish because of the vision of the war. This will lead to a renaissance of intuitive thought. He claims that nationalism will end when people realize that the differences among nations are merely part of the great international whole--alas. He claims that the world seeks balance, and that Germany's aggression is an attempt to balance the oversized power of the British Empire. The below paragraph on intuition vs. intellect is worth taking as a whole:

We will cease to "believe in intellect," and instead intuition will provide a more valid way to know.

Anderson reviews lectures by Mother Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and is surprised to prefer Flynn. While appreciating Jones, she writes of Flynn: "I like these I. W. W. people a lot. They are not only offering an efficient program of labor ; they are getting close to a workable philosophy of life. They are even capable of a virtue no working-class organization is supposed to be overburdened with: hardness of thought. As Miss Flynn said : 'Don't pamper yourselves. It's not a sacrifice to fight for your own freedom !'" (18).

Amy Lowell, who appears to be well on her way to capturing Imagism, writes an encomium on Harold Monro and his Poetry Bookshop. It is a little self-aggrandizing, as she relishes in describing herself as the enlightened intellectual causing a stir by being so into books. On the other hand--she models the practices of a reader of poetry and fuses that with the joy of shopping. This may be more of a throwback to the 19th century's obsession with beautiful books of poetry than something new, but it can only help the poets she mentions.

Helen Hoyt contributes a cool memento mori poem in free verse, "Words out of Waking."

Richard Aldington provides an overview of the career of Remy de Gourmont. It feels familiar: I wonder if it is a version of something that appeared in The Egoist. Possibly, or possibly just on a similar topic. I love this: "under his pen mysticism itself appears almost as exact as science" (11).

Nestled within the self conscious avant garde is--a hoax. Sade Iverson, who contributes a long poem, "Who Wants Blue Silk Roses," is really Elia W. Peattie, who is hoaxing Anderson and modern poetry in general (according to the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature). Triangulating modernism via hoaxes is pretty fun: this one seems to think a bohemian lifestyle in the context of the war, rendered in unrhymed verse, can be passable modernism.

John Gould Fletcher contributes an intense post-Whitman prose poem, "America, 1915," in his usual elaborate style.

George Lane pens an extended review of Some Imagist Poets. It's notable for being very harsh on Pound, who is  accused of "jejune maledictions," which the movement has gotten beyond (27). I'll be writing about this at length later, so I'll leave it for now.

Last, an epitaph for Rupert Brooke:

The Little Review, April 1915

Just a quick post on The Little Review. I need to get down a few observations on a few April journals before turning to May...

The strangest and most fun thing, poetically speaking, is John Gould Fletcher's "Vers Libre and Advertisements." In it, Fletcher claims that the ad men of America have been writing the finest free verse around for some time, and includes entertaining examples like this one:

Fletcher's piece is certainly satirical, but I wonder if its flippancy and fun hides real bitterness: an early Imagist, Fletcher's mode of vers libre never quite fit in with the others. He was florid while they were spare, and the critique may not be as self-deprecatory as it seems at first.

Also in poetics: one William Saphier (what a name!) opens the issue with "Etchings (Not to be Read Aloud)," which is pretty cool and unusual, pieces making a claim for their visual value in direct contradiction to their sound value. Unfortunately the move is cooler than the poems.


Quick Notes:

Margaret Anderson's editorial continues her defense of Margaret Sanger, the outlaw advocate for contraception. She attacks Anthony Comstock head-on--no wonder TLR is going to have so much trouble with the law. Her editorial mentions as an aside "the stunning things in The Egoist." 

I noticed how delighted The Little Review is with itself--many pieces are self-referential to the awesomeness of TLR. Among these, "The Critics' Catastrophe," a play about what happens when a London music critic shows up in Chicago to write for TLR. 

Richard Aldington contributes an essay on the poetry of Paul Fort.

George Franklin contributes a strange prose poem, "Hunger."

William S. Braithwaite's anthology of magazine verse gets negatively reviewed--he contributes poetry to The Crisis. 

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...

The Egoist, March 1915

A day late, my post on The Egoist for March: just a few quick notes for myself.

Richard Aldington writes an essay on Ernest Dowson that warms my heart because he was inspired to do so while "turning over old numbers of the Mercure de France" (41). This piece is particularly interesting because of its economic theory of art, lamenting the struggles of his contemporary young poets. I wonder if there's some oblique commentary on Pound in his account of geniuses who are unfit to make a regular living.

Marsden continues her "Truth and Reality" series, with meditations on reality as based in conventions of language. Importantly, she attacks Bergson, who was important to the magazine in 1913. This essay is really interesting, and will get more attention than I'm going to give it right now--in my dissertation.

Harold Munro, after the collapse of Poetry and Drama, has found his way to The Egoist to pen a piece on a poet who died young, James Elroy Flecker, which ends with this sentence: "Few writers have devoted such careful study to their art, and few modern poets realized so truly the necessity for devotion to the art of poetry" (39). Note how, oddly, Munro seems to say that modern poetry is already finished with the past tense of "realized." I wonder if that's a slip, or if there's an implied periodization there.

F.S. Flint contributes a few lines of translation from the Mille Nuits et Une Nuit, presumably from Antoine Galland's edition.

The Egoist prints poems in french by Paul Fort.

Three Chicago journals have taken out a full page ad at the end: Poetry, The Little Review, and Drama. The momentum of American modernism seems to be shifting from New York to Chicago in a hurry.

The Egoist, February 1915.

Another truncated post. Out of gas. Dissertation too much.

Quick notes:

"As the article under the heading 'I Am' in the last issue of THE EGOIST raised all the debatable an insoluble problems in philosophy, we realize that promptness in acknowledging their existence and attempting  to deal with some of them is very desirable..." So begins this month's Egoist. Marden has such a flair for the dramatic, such confidence...

Her essay responds to the correspondence pages. Stephen Byington writes in with his objections, for one.

Portrait of the Artist continues...

Aldington contributes Synthetic Sonnets, funny satires.

Pathetic post, but hey!

Poetry, February 1915

Just quick notes for now, because, dissertation, but I will return to this issue when Pound completes the essay on the Renaissance that he begins in it, and compare that to his recent "Affirmation" on the same topic. Exciting! Well, perhaps not.

Quick Notes:

Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, and Richard Aldington all get printed in this one. Lindsay's poem is kind of painful Chinoiserie, but note how it dovetails with Pound's essay's Chinese thesis.  Aldington's poem to Nijinsky, "Dancers," is notable for the quotation that is its last line: "Mon sembable, mon frere!" So, is the line in The Waste Land an extended quotation of a quotation? I'm having fun picturing Aldington reading The Waste Land for the first time. His A Fool i' the Forest is clearly his attempt at a Waste Land...

Pathetic post! All for now, because I need to do my post on The Egoist before the end of the month. And work on the dissertation!

Poetry, January 1915

This issue of Poetry isn't as well stocked as some from late last year that I haven't gotten around to posting on, but I'm trying to get back on track before backtracking, so, here goes:

My favorite piece is Frances Gregg's poem to H.D.:

Gregg and H.D. were lovers a few years (+100) ago, and I find this poem very sweet in its description of the effect that H.D. poems can have on people.

Quick Notes:

Remy de Gourmont writes about French authors and the war, translated by Richard Aldington.

Alice Corbin Henderson writes scathing criticism of university professors who do not read modern poetry. This is very delightful. She discusses a reading by Vachel Lindsay held at Princeton as a very unusual phenomenon. Page 175, if you are interested in how poetry was institutionalized circa 1915.

There's a kind of measured assassination of German modern poetry, too. I won't go into it here.

Harriet Monroe's own book is reviewed and advertised. The review wonders why she isn't more modern in her own work. See also Richard Aldington's review of the same book in one of last month's Egoists

Lastly, Madison Cawein's death is mourned. You may remember him for his semi-prophetic "Waste Land," covered in a post above.

The New Freewoman, October 15 1913

This issue of The New Freewoman has the first rumblings of the transition to The Egoist: the first article, before this issue reserved for the editorial, is Ezra Pound's The Serious Artist.

I love it when authors reference their time--and Ezra Pound's concern with the modern usually means he'll feed my desire. He opens with: "It is curious that one should be asked to rewrite Sidney's 'Defense of Poesie" in the year of grace 1913." He uses the comparison with Sidney to set up his purpose, which is to examine the ethics of art. First he determines that art is necessary because ethics are based on the "nature of man" and "the arts give us a great percentage of the lasting an unassailable data regarding the nature of man, of immaterial man, of man considered as a thinking and sentient creature." Well and good, but this progresses to the evolutionary elitism so characteristic of the year of grace 1913: "From the arts... we learn that certain men are often more akin to certain especial animals than they are to other men of different composition." Ok.

EP goes on to explain that bad art comes when the artist lies, because it ends up spreading a contagion of misapplied knowledge of the nature of man and people end up confused. Expressed in the converse: "Purely and simply... good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. You can be wholly precise in representing a vagueness."

How's this: "Now art never asks anybody to do anything, or to think anything, or to be anything. It exists as trees exist, you can admire, you can sit in the shade, you can pick bananas, you can cut firewood, you can do as you jolly well please."

Art provides data about how men (people?) are different. That's part one of the essay, anyway. Welcome to the front seat of TNF, EP.

Other notes:

Richard Aldington contributes a sort of nasty portrait of English women on a train. I wonder what H.D. makes of his hatred of Englishwomankind.

There's an article entitled "The Conversion of a Specialist" about a doctor who has moved to treat tuberculosis with "vegetables, cereals, and fruits without eggs, milk, cheese, or butter"

Ezra Pound responds to that weird Angel Club thing from last time (the people who were going to found their own country of superior people) by asking him to support artists once the new country is set up. I really wonder what he's make of the MFA.

Elsewhere in the letters-to-the-editor there's plenty of White Slave debunking, always double-edged and uncomfortable...

Ads include one for  EP's Canzoni.

All for now...

The New Freewoman, October 1 1913

The New Freewoman is really hitting its stride. It is full of interesting articles and well-written literature (though the poetry is still hit-or-miss). This issue includes progressive views on environmentalism and what-will-be queer politics, as well as hilarious comments on contemporary literature. Here's a digest of what you'll find:

If you're into modernist literature and want a good belly laugh, turn to page 149 for a hilarious table of reviews. All sorts of famous reviewers are summed up in one sentence, and the reader is supposed to cobble together a book's reception by selecting each review from the database. Featured: Henry James, Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Ezra Pound, Beatrice Hastings, Alfred Noyes, and others who have fallen into more or less obscurity. A sample: 7. "Mr. Ezra Pound says that someone else has praised the book and therefore it must be bad."

The "Chancellor" of the "Angel Club" explains his/her plan to found an intellectual nation somewhere, populated by exceptional people--a Utopia for overmen.  The plan is to seize an island and run it like a giant university/publisher/order of knights (yep). I can't find anything about the ultimate fate of the Angel Club online because too many strip joints are named that for Google to power through them... but I'm curious.

Other quick notes:

Rebecca West reviews books by H.G. Wells and Hall Caine. I will definitely need to Caine's roman-a-clef about Beatrice Hastings, The Woman Thou Gavest Me: West says it is overly sentimental, but fascinating.

"R.A." (Richard Aldington) contributes a letter from an "imaginary poet" in which he defends himself from an American reviewer who claims that he should include more personal experiences in his poetry.

Havelock Ellis is making a splash. Classics as revolutionary--invoking a sexual emancipation. E.B. Lloyd is eloquent in his plea for understanding of sexuality as a spectrum, cites Whitman.

I need to look up Horace Traubel, an American poet who keeps turning up these days.

The advertisements at the end of the issue announce that Pound's Canzoni by Arnaut Daniel has been published! Bon anniversaire.