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 Crisis, July 1916

I'm just starting a fellowship to work on The Crisis this summer, and I'm excited to get to work on that. After a sparse June, I hope to get more posts up, and more promptly--but I bet the fellowship will distract me somewhat. I'll be setting up a component of UW's "Mapping Social Movements" website in its NAACP section, using information from The Crisis.

Transposing text from a magazine into a map poses some challenges--the magazine is at once a series of discrete events and a continuously evolving, living thing. Its life is more the life of the fossil now, perhaps, but I can catch much of the enthusiasm of the journal as it evolves. I want to keep my maps consistent, while also representing its evolution. This is just some prewriting here. I'll get more done soon.

On to the post on the issue:

The defining event of this issue is The Crisis' coverage of the lynching of Jesse Washington, "The Waco Horror," in a supplemental section. This is unusual, as there are only two of these supplements, to my knowledge. The Crisis uses its conventional tactics: graphic photography paired with a spare account of the facts, with moments of bitter irony and editorial comment that yet grant much ethical impetus to the story. This supplement is fascinating--it sets ups its accusation first by a long description of Waco itself, the kind of description that often precedes praise of a community in other sections of The Crisis, setting up the fact that Waco is a thriving, educated, typical town. The fact that the crowd was not drunk or rowdy is emphasized by subtle comments and captions. The Crisis also dwells on the fact that the murder was covered as a "news item" rather than as something more than that, that the media was not living up to its responsibilities. These careful rhetorical settings force the reader to confront that this is not an isolated event, or hysteria, or even mere news.

I'm curious about the development of this piece from the account of a lynching in Temple, Texas in the January issue. The Waco Horror supplement has its own wikipedia page, while the Temple lynching has comparatively little presence online. The Crisis' tactics in the two cases make the coverage of Temple seem like a precursor, and this might be worth a deeper look soon. 

Which brings me back into The Crisis itself. This issue is a deft counterpoint to the supplement, celebrating educational and artistic achievements. The text of the magazine itself reflects on this intellectual heritage in little details--using "yclept" rather than "named" just once, such a small detail, so full of meaning (130).

A couple details I noticed: the "Crime" section was folded into the "Ghetto" section this month. I am curious to see if that continues and if it signals a shift in the coverage of lynching in The Crisis. 

Of particular interest to me is the description of the NAACP's formation of what is essentially a PR department in order to counter the racism of the Associated Press (141-142). 

I was glad to see a graduate of UW-Seattle celebrated in the issue:

The Crisis, April 1916

I'm just jotting down a few thoughts on this issue here, there's so much more to say.

The editorial section contains an account of a lynching in Lee County, Georgia, including a graphic photograph. Here's the take: "What was the real cause back of this wholesale lynching and back of the lynching of six Negroes in Early County, December 30th? The answer is clear: Peonage. Slavery under another name..." (302). A man named C. D. Rivers from Somerville, VA is then quoted, as apparently he wrote a letter to some newspaper to explain why things are so bad in Georgia. Du Bois catches him in his own rhetoric, showing that Rivers' justification of lynching is based on profits, not morals. 

I grew up southeast of Somerville, a town so small it almost doesn't exist now. Just a store on a corner.

This is immediately followed by a supportive letter from Helen Keller, who also sent one hundred dollars along for the NAACP along with it.

I noticed these things, there are many more, with a lean toward coverage of religious affairs due to this being the Easter special issue. There's a new section titled "The Looking Glass," which seems to be halfway between "Along the Color Line" with its news snippets and the long-form essays and articles that appear from time to time. It's an extended digest of news and events.

Last, here's an image of the "automobile phalanx" against segregation in St. Louis.

The Masses, April 1916

The Masses has been one of my favorites among the periodicals that I've been reading for some time now--I appreciated its blend of serious politics and humor. Students like it for the same reasons, and it is a good text for discussions on American politics in the nineteen teens.

So, it's terrible when it is racist.

The author of the poem is one Jane Burr, a pseudonym of Rosalind Guggenheim Winslow. The poem is an utterly demeaning account of her African American nurse. Often when I see racism in The Masses it's possible to figure out why it's there--a political cartoon that tries to use racial stereotypes to undermine the rhetoric of racism, but that instead ends up repeating the stereotypes. That sort of thing. That's bad enough. This poem is worse. I'm not going to quote it here because I don't have the stomach for it.

Max Eastman knows better--how could this poem appear in the same issue as this image, for instance:

The poem is a different kind of slumming, rural slumming, perhaps. It's the sort of thing The Masses should deplore. After all, this is the same journal that campaigned against lynching, enough to get accolades from The Crisis and to infuriate the southern white press. The Masses promotes books by Du Bois, editor of The Crisis, and appeared with Du Bois in The New Review, which was advertised in The Masses, in an ad that set them side by side in a list of contributors (January 1913, page 19, for instance):

The New Review included an essay by Du Bois criticizing the socialist tendency to exclude people of color from the socialist program in February 1913 (here's a link that should open a pdf of that issue of The New Review).

So what gives? The New York Times ran a story on Burr on August 3, 1913. It's the best source about her I've found so far. Here's the lede:

The New York Times holds up this feminist from a privileged background as a curiosity. The article makes much of the fact that she works in an office, because otherwise she'd bake cakes instead of writing poems (Burr/Winslow says this herself). NYT is also somewhat bewildered by the fact that she's married but believes in divorce. They also mention that her husband, Horatio Gates Winslow, was the original editor of The Masses (Eastman took over in December 1912), and that she gives them poems for free (while the NYT has to pay).

So maybe the picture comes into focus a bit. Burr/Winslow is a friend of the magazine. I don't know if the fact that she supports herself via poetry means she has no independent means, but I'm curious if she's also a benefactor of The Masses. So they print her poem. Still doesn't make much sense to me, and I'll see if I can learn more about it. This post isn't really enough of an analysis--as many of these, it's more of an annotation than an argument. I hope I can come back to this some day. And in the meantime, I'll think about what I'm reading and writing, and why I talk about certain texts and not others. I may be belatedly grouchy with The Masses, which at first struck me as misplaced in history--but I think this particular failure feels very recent. 

The Crisis, June 1915

Current events continue to convince me of The Crisis's importance as an object of study. I will teach it for the first time this fall, and hope that it will spark some strong discussion of what has changed, and what hasn't, in race politics over the last century.

The issue contains a powerful open letter by Moorfield Storey, in the editorial section, page 78. While it should be read in full, here's the last paragraph: 

"We appeal to every warm-hearted, high-minded man or woman in this country, and urge them to organize a new anti-slavery movement. We beg them by voice, vote and example to rouse their neighbors and to make our public men feel that their political careers are not to be advanced by yielding to the advocates of discrimination. We must organize our political, our religious, our educational, nay all our forces to the end that our country may be relieved from the influence of all who believe that they help themselves up by keeping others down. Our motto is "All men up" and that spirit must conquer, or terrible disaster awaits the country which we all love."

This issue has another beautiful cover photograph, this time of a young woman. Again, the subject of the photograph isn't a particular person--this is an art photo, by C.M. Battey, who deserves a Wikipedia page. Read about him here, page 71. 

The first thing inside is a full-page advertisement for "A new Book by Dr. Du Bois, The Negro." The link is to the Project Gutenberg edition: I haven't cracked it yet, but hope to look at it soon. Check out the description:

Reminds me of Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," down to the figure of the Negro as one man across space and time. 

Then, the monthly "Along the Color Line," which as usual is an incredible parataxis of events from a range of categories. I count 98 mini-articles! In ten headings! Each is only a paragraph, maybe two, and they contain records of concerts, student strikes, the firing of black postal workers, and the monthly compilation of lynchings and murders. It it always a rush to read: I don't know enough about the history of newspapers to know how unique this paratactic arrangement is, but I am certain that du Bois is a master of letting the record of facts speak for itself. 

Quick Notes:

"Men of the Month" follows, with its usual portraits of successful black men and women, and of allies. Many are obituaries. One is for a white woman who works at Hull House. Others, for a social worker, for a famous New York City caterer, a police sergeant, etc. 

On page 81, there is a response to the sinking of the Lusitania: "European civilization has failed. Its failure did not come with this war but with this war it has been made manifest... This [European superiority, justifying imperialism] was a lie and we know it was a lie. The Great War is the lie unveiled... It is a great privilege in the midst of this frightful catastrophe to belong to a race that can stand before Heaven with clean hands..." See also the section in "Opinions" titled "The Great War," which summarizes recent articles by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, the first about the myth of racial superiority, the second about the imperialist roots of the war. 

The issue contains a long poem by Leslie Pinckney Hill, titled "The Zeitgeist," a blank verse mini-epic about blackness in the context of World War One (I'm oversimplifying here). I think it's pretty cool, much better than many mini-blank-verse-epics that show up in these journals. The opening is almost Yeatsian:

"Before the whirlwind and the thundershock,
The agony of nations, and this wild
Eruption of the passionate will of man,
These tottering bastions of mighty states,
This guillotine of culture, and this new
Unspeakable Golgotha of the Christ,
My heart declares her faith, and, undismayed,
I write her prompting—write it in that poise
Of judgment undisturbed to which our Head
Admonishes the nation..."

There's so much more in this issue, but that's all for now...

The Crisis, May 1915

In this issue of The Crisis, I came across this double-column piece on page 45. It is quoted from a Bristol, Tennessee paper, and presented without commentary:

The police were indicted and charged with murder. This story was not posted as a lynching in the space The Crisis reserves for recording that crime (see page 12). It is instead placed as the second-to-last piece in the whole issue, though not, I think, as an afterthought.

It is an example of TC's deft use of secondary materials. Much of TC each month takes place in long lists of events of interest to the readership of the journal, naturally inclining to people of color. The Crisis is powerful in part because it is a voracious record. It is also indelible.

Because of my rudimentary skills, I've had trouble getting the text of each block to be the same size: my apologies. 

The biggest piece of news in this issue is the release of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and is also, to my memory, the first time I've encountered criticism of a specific film in the Modernist Journals Project. The NAACP uses this moment as a chance to display their effective organization, as "Fighting Race Calumny" provides a day-by-day account of the NAACP's actions against the film. The editorial also contains a response to The Clansman, as the film is referred to in the journal. Du Bois, the editor, fulminates against the film, noting that "a number of marvelously good war pictures" precede "the second part... the real 'Clansman.'" This gives credit to Griffith's first half, and Du Bois calls not for the the total suppression of the film, but of its second half. That's a side note, though, to the strong and consistent criticism of the film and the concerted campaign to protest against it.

This issue also contains TC's response to Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo." It is characteristically terse:

"Colored readers may be repelled at first at Lindsay's great poem but it is, in its spirit, a splendid tribute with all its imperfections of spiritual insight. In a private letter Lindsay says:" (18)

There follows a long and rambling letter from Lindsay, making clear his good intentions, which TC at this point, at least, seems to tolerate without accepting them. Notably, he talks about the poem as if it was a painting, and perhaps an impressionist or post-impressionist painting at that. Also notably, he claims it was inspired by Joseph Conrad.

There's much, much more here. But that's all for now--

The Crisis, April 1915

Long overdue: a post on The Crisis. It would take much more than a blog post to do it any justice--but I think a few thoughts would be better than continuing to save it for another day. Hopefully from now on it will join the regular rotation of journals I read and report on here.

One of the first things I notice when working with The Crisis, compared to the London journals I have been reading more frequently, is that it is very beautiful. Here's an image of the cover:

Inside the journal, I searched for who the picture was--but to my eye, the only acknowledgement of it was a line about the cover designer (Richard L. Brown) and that the photograph was "from life." Realizing that one of the goals of the journal is to break the way cultural norms of beauty are laid on racial lines, I think that the anonymity of this woman might in itself be a political statement. She is beautiful, and that is the whole point.

The recurring column "Along the Color Line" is filled with news in many categories that might interest the readers of The Crisis: six pages of double-columned lists of events in music and art, politics, economics, meetings, etc. etc. While these lists hold much information, the last entry, "Courts and Crimes" resonated most strongly with current events, in a terrible way:

Note in particular the two last records. The Crisis records white lynching as well as black, and it record when policemen kill black people in the same space it records lynchings. From later in the same issue, a manifesto of self-defense: "Lynching would cease in short order if the colored people of this country resented the lawless murdering of friends, relatives and compatriots as they should —with the rifle and sword. The ballot will not settle it definitely. Neither will commercial nor intellectual achievement. But mobs do not lynch when they are assured of a come-back. Least of all, would a mob invade a colored district in chase of its victim were there any likelihood of their being received as they should be—with bullets (281)." I noted immediately that this explicitly puts political, intellectual, and economic solutions to lynchings off the table. The only way to meet force, for The Crisis here, is force. A similar doctrine was present in The Egoist with reference to the Ulster volunteers. I'll be interested to see how this develops.

Quick Notes:

The Crisis takes a strong stand for woman's suffrage, page 285. That already puts them ahead of The New Age and The Egoist on that issue, though I do think its realpolitik resonates with Dora Marsden.

William Stanley Braithwaite contributes two poems to the issue. I like "Laughing it Out" as a nugget of productive nihilism:

Meta Warrick Fuller is listed as a finalist for the first Spingarn Medal, which led me to look at some of her sculptures, which are awesome. They remind me of Rodin.

Du Bois himself contributes "The Immediate Program of the American Negro," which is another powerful manifesto, and is worth more attention than I can give it right now.

Charles W. Chestnutt contributes the first half a short story, "Mr. Taylor's Funeral."

I noticed especially the advertisements: such a wealth, compared to the bare pages of the London journals! Here's one I thought was particularly cool for its literary footwear: