The Reader Critic
The Editor:We have had cancellations, congratulations, and a lot of indignant letters about Ben Hecht’s “Dregs.” I print two of them below. As it happens, these stories are among the best thingsThe Little Reviewhas printed. With the exception of some of the poetry and two stories of Sherwood Anderson’s, they may be listed as the only “literature” we have published. Some one has compared them to Gorky. But this is not a very accurate judgment. As a reviewer pointed out in the November issue, Gorky could feel his stories, could imagine them deeply, but he could never quite tell them. The supreme virtue of Ben Hecht’s “Dregs” is that he could tell them. That is the art. Of course I have nothing to say to those people who deplore Mr. Hecht’s subject matter and urge me to use some moral judgment in selecting things forThe Little Review.There is no such thing as moral judgment in literature. There should be no such thing in life, but unfortunately—A Sorrowful Friend:The Little Review:Literature, Drama, Music, Art. Which of these four shrines did you intend to desecrate in offering Ben Hecht’s “Dregs”? Or have you added an “unwritten” class to your list, comprehensive enough to include such bold portrayals of viciousness and filth, of licentiousness and lust, as these three degenerate—manifestations!Little Review—howcouldyou do it? You who have hitherto held so bravely to the tenets of beauty and truth in thought and expression, held to them courageously through storms of adverse criticism, consent to print descriptions of the bestial abnormalities of the scum of mankind! Ifyou, who profess to look to a higher, better realization of life, consent to crawl in the gutter with the vermin, what can we expect of the lesser publications?You have polluted an edition of your magazine; it is true that flames will destroy the manuscript, but what of the hideous memory that remains? Take heed—Little Review; remember that cleanliness is akin to godliness and—look to your soul!Florence Kiper Frank, Chicago:May I call your attention to the fact that Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, in his annual review of the year’s fiction, not only lists all the stories printed inThe Little Reviewduring 1915 among those possessing “distinction,” but double-asterisks (verb) the three sketches of Ben Hecht’s published under the title “Dregs.” This in the chaste and genealogical Boston Evening Transcript! And, following to the best of my ability Mr. O’Brien’s rather vague reference to and nebulous listings of the stories to be published in his anthology,The Best Stories of 1915 and Year Book of American Fiction, I can but come to the startled conclusion that Ben Hecht’s three stories are all to be reprinted in the estimable collection. Good for Ben Hecht,The Little Review, and Mr. O’Brien’s catholicity of judgment! Some of us there are who like to have our opinions backed and bolstered by authority. And what more august authority than the printed word of Boston. Some of us—but of course not your insurgents. Perhaps Mr. Hecht will resent congratulations. I tender them, nevertheless—with apologies. Good stuff, Ben Hecht! Do us some—more of them.Sada Cowan, New York:I’m truly grateful to your reviewer who found my play,The State Forbids, “negative as literature.” If he had found it bad architecture or mediocre sculpture I should have been less pleased.Play making, to my mind, is not a form of literature (even though its medium chances to be words) but it is an art of spacing ... focusing ... building. Structure upon structure! Foundation. Ornament. Design. An art as distinct from other forms of word utility as color medium is from plastic art. Drama is related to literature only in so far as all arts are inter-related. No more than this. By drama I mean, of course, plays intended (at least in the writer’s mind) for production. These alone are plays. For one reason or another they may never reach the boards, but they must have lived in the writer’s fantasy as things produced.Desk drawer dramasare not plays.I believe that the hope of the modern drama lies in the artist who can learn to look upon himself as a builder ... amakerand not a writer of plays.And so again I thank your critic whose charity has made me feel that I am on the road which leads to “Somewhere.” Even though at the end of my journey I may not yet have reached the first mile stone.Virginia York, Washington, D. C.:It is published in windy Chicago,The Little Review. Claimed by management, editors and its readers to be the very, very last, last word in prose and poetry; it is sold at fifteen cents a copy. Normal-minded, healthy folk will find it cheap at that price, because normal-minded, healthy folk will find in it fifteen laughs for fifteen cents, despite the fact that it is entirely a serious publication.Years ago an editor sent me to the government hospital for the insane just outside Washington, to interview a certain man. As I passed into the building an elderly gentleman of profoundly respectful manner presented me with a neatly-bound pamphlet which he said he had written, edited and illustrated entirely by himself. Examining it later, the cover-page proved to be a mass of meaningless, whirling lines labeled in carefully printed letters, “The Croucher At The Door.” The reading matter was wholly unintelligible.A poet-friend has given me the October number ofThe Little Review. The vers libre poetry in the small magazine might easily be called “The Croucher At The Door” for all the sense to be made of it. In fear and trembling that my own unworthy brain might finally have addled, relatives and friends were invited to peruse the contents of the volume. I thank heaven they could make nothing of it.One contribution entitledCafe Sketches, by Arthur Davison Ficke, is herewith reprinted for the benefit of readers of this page who are denied access, and accompanying the laugh, toThe Little Review. Mr. Ficke, after telling in the first verse that he is in a cafe, surrounded by a “cortege of seven waiters,” mourning for a “boundlessly curious lady,” recites in mournful meanderings:Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on the skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waiting.Base people!How I dislike you!Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be. Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote ofThe Little Review. This is vers libre with a vengeance. “Persons will come out and shake legs. I do not want legs shaken.” Here we have the spirit of the dance! It is quite evident Mr. Ficke does not wish joy to be unconfined.There have been many descriptions of dawn, probably none so unique as “the dawn spilled across the blackness like a scrambled egg on the skillet.” The second verse is short and to the point, but it is much to be thankful for both in point of length and the statement that we are abhorred.In order to restore our thoughts to something sane, to take away from us the taste of such gibberish, consider for a moment the following eight lines by Harriet Howe, recently published inThe Literary Digest. Comparison between the two authors is utterly impossible, totally unnecessary:SUNSET AFTER RAINThe cradle of the valleyIs filled with floating mist,The summits of the mountainsAre veiled in amethyst.The trees spread grateful branchesAbove a smiling sod,For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,All things are praising God.Huntly Carter, London:The letter by C. Smith of Chicago, in the October issue ofThe Little Review, is so phenomenally stupid and so intellectually dishonest that it is almost beneath notice. If I consent to notice it, I do so in order to warn Smithsonian understudies that they will be severely dealt with if they attempt to repeat Smith’s brazen offence of writing to a significant journal and coolly suggesting that a single and relatively unimportant wrong attribution is to be regarded as a fair and honest sample of the whole subject matter of an article occupying several pages and mainly devoted to a metaphysical explanation of the origin and nature of poetry. Furthermore, suggesting that I am applying to a poet (Browning) a rigid test of poetry, seeking to prove his words poetically good or bad by my poetical experience, when as a matter of fact I am offering certain words, some of which are wrongly attributed to Browning, as indisputable evidence that in venting the emotions versifiers find descriptive figures efficacious.No doubt some of the words flaunted by Smith are wrongly attributed to Browning. They are so wrongly attributed that anyone can see they are wrongly attributed. And any “sane, intelligent and decently responsible man” (to use Smith’s yellow press tautology) would have given me an opportunity of saying they are wrongly attributed before venturing to put on silly airs of hypercriticism. Then he would have learnt that the first and third line of the quotation belong oddly enough, to another piece ofpoetry, and have got mixed up with Browning’s stuff in some unaccountable way. I have not the least idea how the mix took place. All I know is that my article was finished off in great haste to catch the mail. It was sent in handscript and not typescript. And there was no time to send me a proof; otherwise the quotation would certainly have been corrected, and the many errors which now appear in my article would have disappeared. I feel I am justified in saying it was not my intention to send the words which have crept into print by the discovery that I have actually written down Browning’s very words. Here is Browning:And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:And straight was a path of gold for him,And the need of a world of men for me.The first line of the verse is missing. The three lines however serve the purpose of my comparison. I had also set down these lines by Browning:One lyric woman in her crocus vest,Woven of sea-wools.I intended to include this with my quotations. For here in my view is a figure as original and precisely felicitous as anything the Imagists have given us.That this dragging in of some wrongly attributed words—so obviously wrong as to deceive no one—for the sole purpose of discrediting an important article is dishonest, is clear from the fact that Smith does not drag in any other quotation from the many given, nor produce any other evidence whatsoever in support of his contention that my article is inept and careless throughout. In fact he has nothing more damaging to offer than his own fatuous statement that he happens “to consider my article an ill-digested congeries of vague views”; which, when one comes to examine it is found to contain a baseless assertion and a clear admission that my article is above and beyond Smith’s head.As to the silliness of Smith’s letter, this may be judged from the following: Smith begins with the generalization that magazines die “whose pages are as a rule careless, inconsidered and inept” (note the repetition and consequent lack of thoroughness). The publications of the capitalist press answer this description. The news sheets, for instance, are rotten with carelessness, inconsideredness and ineptness. They would be rottener if they could. Yet they do not die. On the contrary they sell by the million. If so, thenThe Little Reviewshould sell by the million. But Smith says it will die. And Smith is a careful, serviceable, and accurate man.By way of comparison Smith relieves himself of this matchless composition. “Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would grow useless in which no direction towards any cylinder was given to the indubitable forces generated in the boiler.” What is the precise meaning of this bombastic twaddle? In homely words, it means that a steam engine is (not “would grow”) useless when the steam power developed in its boiler is not utilised in any cylinder. Anyone who examines this analogy will agree with me that Smith is a careful, serviceable, and accurate man.From the general Smith comes to the particular and quotes what he is pleased to call an example of my “ineptitude and carelessness” as an example of the general “ineptitude and carelessness” ofThe Little Review. Without knowing anything as to the circumstances under which the wrongly attributed words found their way into print, without stopping to inquire to what extent I contributed to the mistake, and upon no other evidence whatsoever than the said wrongly attributed words, he proceeds to saddle me with the astounding intention “to obliterate all sense of accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all fidelity to honest statement, and all interest in truth” (which makes four ways of uttering the same inverifiable statement).Finally Smith challenges the editor ofThe Little Reviewto print his ghastly ineptitude. She has taken the short way and done so. It serves Smith right.M. Silverman, Chicago:Your last issue is a failure—with two exceptions, Miss Goldman’s article on “Preparedness” and Mr. Hecht’s letter. Both of them are human, understandable, and sincere. They shout—but do not roar. All the others are ostentatious, plebeian, and lack artistic restraint. They are not beautiful. Theyhollerand produce a sense of heaviness and overexertion. Sympathy and politeness are apparently the cardinal virtues of the highly esteemed editor. Hence this “democratic” hash.To be more specific: Your editorial, “Toward Revolution,” is the acme of nonsense. I tried to take you seriously but I couldn’t. It is pamphletory, and should have no place inThe Little Review.“The Ecstasy of Pain” is a stage hurricane, and, to paraphrase Mr. Goldbeck, it is like Chicago: vast, but not impressive. It lacks artistic touch and symmetrical wholeness. The fourth paragraph is excellent. The rest was unnecessary. The fragmentary mind of Mr. Kaun is phosphorescent, produces tiny sparks which are soon lost in the darkness. Higher mathematics is the best remedy for Mr. Kaun’s mind.“The Spring Recital” is a bore. The author ofThe “Genius”seems to have a mania for torturing the innocent public. I read “The Spring Recital” twice, yes twice; and when I got through with it I felt extremely uncomfortable. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t mean anything to me. I challenge anyone to explain to me: What does this piece of “dramatic” “quatch” mean?All the other articles—well, they are harmless.Woods Dargan, Darlington, S. C.:I enclose a check for $1.50, and ask that you enter my name for one year’s subscription—that is, if you will let one of the rabble creep in. Frankly, I know no more about art (with a capital A or otherwise) than a rabbit. I don’t even know what an “Imagist” is! And for the life of me I cannot understand why the temperamental, fussy gentleman named Alexander S. Kaun should not use a singular verb with a singular noun, just like ordinary people. But when he says, as he does in the first line of the fourth paragraph of his article, “the dearer a person or a thingareto me, etc.,” I know there must be intellectual purpose in it, some esoteric effect that gets to the cultured few but passes over my head; so I bow before the unknown beauty of it, thinking, “Odd, but no doubt it’s all right.”Also, to my untutored mind, the frequent use of profanity in an everyday, conversational way in two or three of the articles is amusing, and makes me wonder. It reminds me of the days when I first took up the art, and used to feel a shudder of delight when I ripped out a good, mouth-filling, “Damn it all to hell!” Perhaps it has lost its charm for me as a literary ornament because I swear so much myself, just as a matter of habit without deriving the oldtime pleasure from it.Other places where these boys put it all over me are in music and Russians. It is one of my secret sorrows that I know I know nothing about music. I like it, but it never occurs to me to fade away and fill an early grave if I hear somebody’s nocturne murdered—that is, if I know it is being murdered, which is highly unlikely. And as to the Russians, old Dostoevsky is my limit so far, but I’m game, and am going in for all the others,—the more gloomy and morbid the better.Then, there’s this Mr. Theodore Dreiser. As we say in this neck of the woods, in our uncouth manner, “He must be a bear-cat.” (By the way, I’d give a lot to know what “demiurge” means in the sense in which it is applied to him. Mr. Masters used it inThe New York Timessome weeks ago, and now I find it again in Mr. Powys’ appreciation. I don’t know what they mean.) Well, I’ve had his book,The “Genius,”for sometime, and mean to read it all as soon as I can get round to it. Perhaps I’ll know what “demiurge” means then—but I doubt it.For all that I have said I would not have you think that I am wholly lacking in soul. I have some things in common with these fellows, for I have no religion or morals, and I enjoy getting drunk, riotously, gloriously drunk, once or twice a year.And now, after telling you at more length than any decent person should what has puzzled me in your Review, permit me to say what I like. The first part of your own contribution, “Life Itself,” strikes me as the real thing. I understand all that, being a common person. For the last part, as I’ve said, I know nothing of art, and life doesn’t mean those things to me, naturally. But I like it. I can, after a fashion, see how itmightmean them. The review of Dreiser by Mr. Powys that I have mentioned already is good writing and good sense. How true it is, I am not yet in a position to guess. Then, Mr. Edgar Masters always writes vividly, deeply. I am glad to add “So We Grew Together” to what I know of his stuff. It is almost as good a portrait and short story as some of the best of the Anthology.That fellow Ben Hecht can write. Personally, I have a sort of leaning toward the dregs, but, as a general thing, I don’t know that there’s much use in writing about them just so. But he’s certainly good. He can write. I never heard of him before, but I shall look out for him in future.For the sake of what I find good I’m willing to put up with what I fail to grasp, and so I look forward to much pleasure and instruction fromThe Little Review. Luck to it. As long as you, Miss Lowell, Mr. Masters, and Mr. Hecht contribute, so long will it be cheap at any price. And, who knows? I may yet learn from my friend Mr. Kaun the hidden beauties of a singular subject with a plural verb.
The Editor:
We have had cancellations, congratulations, and a lot of indignant letters about Ben Hecht’s “Dregs.” I print two of them below. As it happens, these stories are among the best thingsThe Little Reviewhas printed. With the exception of some of the poetry and two stories of Sherwood Anderson’s, they may be listed as the only “literature” we have published. Some one has compared them to Gorky. But this is not a very accurate judgment. As a reviewer pointed out in the November issue, Gorky could feel his stories, could imagine them deeply, but he could never quite tell them. The supreme virtue of Ben Hecht’s “Dregs” is that he could tell them. That is the art. Of course I have nothing to say to those people who deplore Mr. Hecht’s subject matter and urge me to use some moral judgment in selecting things forThe Little Review.There is no such thing as moral judgment in literature. There should be no such thing in life, but unfortunately—
A Sorrowful Friend:
The Little Review:Literature, Drama, Music, Art. Which of these four shrines did you intend to desecrate in offering Ben Hecht’s “Dregs”? Or have you added an “unwritten” class to your list, comprehensive enough to include such bold portrayals of viciousness and filth, of licentiousness and lust, as these three degenerate—manifestations!
Little Review—howcouldyou do it? You who have hitherto held so bravely to the tenets of beauty and truth in thought and expression, held to them courageously through storms of adverse criticism, consent to print descriptions of the bestial abnormalities of the scum of mankind! Ifyou, who profess to look to a higher, better realization of life, consent to crawl in the gutter with the vermin, what can we expect of the lesser publications?
You have polluted an edition of your magazine; it is true that flames will destroy the manuscript, but what of the hideous memory that remains? Take heed—Little Review; remember that cleanliness is akin to godliness and—look to your soul!
Florence Kiper Frank, Chicago:
May I call your attention to the fact that Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, in his annual review of the year’s fiction, not only lists all the stories printed inThe Little Reviewduring 1915 among those possessing “distinction,” but double-asterisks (verb) the three sketches of Ben Hecht’s published under the title “Dregs.” This in the chaste and genealogical Boston Evening Transcript! And, following to the best of my ability Mr. O’Brien’s rather vague reference to and nebulous listings of the stories to be published in his anthology,The Best Stories of 1915 and Year Book of American Fiction, I can but come to the startled conclusion that Ben Hecht’s three stories are all to be reprinted in the estimable collection. Good for Ben Hecht,The Little Review, and Mr. O’Brien’s catholicity of judgment! Some of us there are who like to have our opinions backed and bolstered by authority. And what more august authority than the printed word of Boston. Some of us—but of course not your insurgents. Perhaps Mr. Hecht will resent congratulations. I tender them, nevertheless—with apologies. Good stuff, Ben Hecht! Do us some—more of them.
Sada Cowan, New York:
I’m truly grateful to your reviewer who found my play,The State Forbids, “negative as literature.” If he had found it bad architecture or mediocre sculpture I should have been less pleased.
Play making, to my mind, is not a form of literature (even though its medium chances to be words) but it is an art of spacing ... focusing ... building. Structure upon structure! Foundation. Ornament. Design. An art as distinct from other forms of word utility as color medium is from plastic art. Drama is related to literature only in so far as all arts are inter-related. No more than this. By drama I mean, of course, plays intended (at least in the writer’s mind) for production. These alone are plays. For one reason or another they may never reach the boards, but they must have lived in the writer’s fantasy as things produced.Desk drawer dramasare not plays.
I believe that the hope of the modern drama lies in the artist who can learn to look upon himself as a builder ... amakerand not a writer of plays.
And so again I thank your critic whose charity has made me feel that I am on the road which leads to “Somewhere.” Even though at the end of my journey I may not yet have reached the first mile stone.
Virginia York, Washington, D. C.:
It is published in windy Chicago,The Little Review. Claimed by management, editors and its readers to be the very, very last, last word in prose and poetry; it is sold at fifteen cents a copy. Normal-minded, healthy folk will find it cheap at that price, because normal-minded, healthy folk will find in it fifteen laughs for fifteen cents, despite the fact that it is entirely a serious publication.
Years ago an editor sent me to the government hospital for the insane just outside Washington, to interview a certain man. As I passed into the building an elderly gentleman of profoundly respectful manner presented me with a neatly-bound pamphlet which he said he had written, edited and illustrated entirely by himself. Examining it later, the cover-page proved to be a mass of meaningless, whirling lines labeled in carefully printed letters, “The Croucher At The Door.” The reading matter was wholly unintelligible.
A poet-friend has given me the October number ofThe Little Review. The vers libre poetry in the small magazine might easily be called “The Croucher At The Door” for all the sense to be made of it. In fear and trembling that my own unworthy brain might finally have addled, relatives and friends were invited to peruse the contents of the volume. I thank heaven they could make nothing of it.
One contribution entitledCafe Sketches, by Arthur Davison Ficke, is herewith reprinted for the benefit of readers of this page who are denied access, and accompanying the laugh, toThe Little Review. Mr. Ficke, after telling in the first verse that he is in a cafe, surrounded by a “cortege of seven waiters,” mourning for a “boundlessly curious lady,” recites in mournful meanderings:
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on the skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waiting.Base people!How I dislike you!
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on the skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waiting.Base people!How I dislike you!
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on the skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waiting.
Presently persons will come out
And shake legs.
I do not want legs shaken.
I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.
I want to see dawn spilled across the blackness
Like a scrambled egg on the skillet;
I want miracles, wonders.
Tidings out of deeps I do not know ...
But I have a horrible suspicion
That neither you
Nor your esteemed consort
Nor I myself
Can ever provide these simple things
For which I am so patiently waiting.
Base people!How I dislike you!
Base people!
How I dislike you!
Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be. Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote ofThe Little Review. This is vers libre with a vengeance. “Persons will come out and shake legs. I do not want legs shaken.” Here we have the spirit of the dance! It is quite evident Mr. Ficke does not wish joy to be unconfined.
There have been many descriptions of dawn, probably none so unique as “the dawn spilled across the blackness like a scrambled egg on the skillet.” The second verse is short and to the point, but it is much to be thankful for both in point of length and the statement that we are abhorred.
In order to restore our thoughts to something sane, to take away from us the taste of such gibberish, consider for a moment the following eight lines by Harriet Howe, recently published inThe Literary Digest. Comparison between the two authors is utterly impossible, totally unnecessary:
The cradle of the valleyIs filled with floating mist,The summits of the mountainsAre veiled in amethyst.The trees spread grateful branchesAbove a smiling sod,For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,All things are praising God.
The cradle of the valleyIs filled with floating mist,The summits of the mountainsAre veiled in amethyst.The trees spread grateful branchesAbove a smiling sod,For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,All things are praising God.
The cradle of the valleyIs filled with floating mist,The summits of the mountainsAre veiled in amethyst.
The cradle of the valley
Is filled with floating mist,
The summits of the mountains
Are veiled in amethyst.
The trees spread grateful branchesAbove a smiling sod,For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,All things are praising God.
The trees spread grateful branches
Above a smiling sod,
For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,
All things are praising God.
Huntly Carter, London:
The letter by C. Smith of Chicago, in the October issue ofThe Little Review, is so phenomenally stupid and so intellectually dishonest that it is almost beneath notice. If I consent to notice it, I do so in order to warn Smithsonian understudies that they will be severely dealt with if they attempt to repeat Smith’s brazen offence of writing to a significant journal and coolly suggesting that a single and relatively unimportant wrong attribution is to be regarded as a fair and honest sample of the whole subject matter of an article occupying several pages and mainly devoted to a metaphysical explanation of the origin and nature of poetry. Furthermore, suggesting that I am applying to a poet (Browning) a rigid test of poetry, seeking to prove his words poetically good or bad by my poetical experience, when as a matter of fact I am offering certain words, some of which are wrongly attributed to Browning, as indisputable evidence that in venting the emotions versifiers find descriptive figures efficacious.
No doubt some of the words flaunted by Smith are wrongly attributed to Browning. They are so wrongly attributed that anyone can see they are wrongly attributed. And any “sane, intelligent and decently responsible man” (to use Smith’s yellow press tautology) would have given me an opportunity of saying they are wrongly attributed before venturing to put on silly airs of hypercriticism. Then he would have learnt that the first and third line of the quotation belong oddly enough, to another piece ofpoetry, and have got mixed up with Browning’s stuff in some unaccountable way. I have not the least idea how the mix took place. All I know is that my article was finished off in great haste to catch the mail. It was sent in handscript and not typescript. And there was no time to send me a proof; otherwise the quotation would certainly have been corrected, and the many errors which now appear in my article would have disappeared. I feel I am justified in saying it was not my intention to send the words which have crept into print by the discovery that I have actually written down Browning’s very words. Here is Browning:
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:And straight was a path of gold for him,And the need of a world of men for me.
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:And straight was a path of gold for him,And the need of a world of men for me.
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:And straight was a path of gold for him,And the need of a world of men for me.
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
The first line of the verse is missing. The three lines however serve the purpose of my comparison. I had also set down these lines by Browning:
One lyric woman in her crocus vest,Woven of sea-wools.
One lyric woman in her crocus vest,Woven of sea-wools.
One lyric woman in her crocus vest,Woven of sea-wools.
One lyric woman in her crocus vest,
Woven of sea-wools.
I intended to include this with my quotations. For here in my view is a figure as original and precisely felicitous as anything the Imagists have given us.
That this dragging in of some wrongly attributed words—so obviously wrong as to deceive no one—for the sole purpose of discrediting an important article is dishonest, is clear from the fact that Smith does not drag in any other quotation from the many given, nor produce any other evidence whatsoever in support of his contention that my article is inept and careless throughout. In fact he has nothing more damaging to offer than his own fatuous statement that he happens “to consider my article an ill-digested congeries of vague views”; which, when one comes to examine it is found to contain a baseless assertion and a clear admission that my article is above and beyond Smith’s head.
As to the silliness of Smith’s letter, this may be judged from the following: Smith begins with the generalization that magazines die “whose pages are as a rule careless, inconsidered and inept” (note the repetition and consequent lack of thoroughness). The publications of the capitalist press answer this description. The news sheets, for instance, are rotten with carelessness, inconsideredness and ineptness. They would be rottener if they could. Yet they do not die. On the contrary they sell by the million. If so, thenThe Little Reviewshould sell by the million. But Smith says it will die. And Smith is a careful, serviceable, and accurate man.
By way of comparison Smith relieves himself of this matchless composition. “Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would grow useless in which no direction towards any cylinder was given to the indubitable forces generated in the boiler.” What is the precise meaning of this bombastic twaddle? In homely words, it means that a steam engine is (not “would grow”) useless when the steam power developed in its boiler is not utilised in any cylinder. Anyone who examines this analogy will agree with me that Smith is a careful, serviceable, and accurate man.
From the general Smith comes to the particular and quotes what he is pleased to call an example of my “ineptitude and carelessness” as an example of the general “ineptitude and carelessness” ofThe Little Review. Without knowing anything as to the circumstances under which the wrongly attributed words found their way into print, without stopping to inquire to what extent I contributed to the mistake, and upon no other evidence whatsoever than the said wrongly attributed words, he proceeds to saddle me with the astounding intention “to obliterate all sense of accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all fidelity to honest statement, and all interest in truth” (which makes four ways of uttering the same inverifiable statement).
Finally Smith challenges the editor ofThe Little Reviewto print his ghastly ineptitude. She has taken the short way and done so. It serves Smith right.
M. Silverman, Chicago:
Your last issue is a failure—with two exceptions, Miss Goldman’s article on “Preparedness” and Mr. Hecht’s letter. Both of them are human, understandable, and sincere. They shout—but do not roar. All the others are ostentatious, plebeian, and lack artistic restraint. They are not beautiful. Theyhollerand produce a sense of heaviness and overexertion. Sympathy and politeness are apparently the cardinal virtues of the highly esteemed editor. Hence this “democratic” hash.
To be more specific: Your editorial, “Toward Revolution,” is the acme of nonsense. I tried to take you seriously but I couldn’t. It is pamphletory, and should have no place inThe Little Review.
“The Ecstasy of Pain” is a stage hurricane, and, to paraphrase Mr. Goldbeck, it is like Chicago: vast, but not impressive. It lacks artistic touch and symmetrical wholeness. The fourth paragraph is excellent. The rest was unnecessary. The fragmentary mind of Mr. Kaun is phosphorescent, produces tiny sparks which are soon lost in the darkness. Higher mathematics is the best remedy for Mr. Kaun’s mind.
“The Spring Recital” is a bore. The author ofThe “Genius”seems to have a mania for torturing the innocent public. I read “The Spring Recital” twice, yes twice; and when I got through with it I felt extremely uncomfortable. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t mean anything to me. I challenge anyone to explain to me: What does this piece of “dramatic” “quatch” mean?
All the other articles—well, they are harmless.
Woods Dargan, Darlington, S. C.:
I enclose a check for $1.50, and ask that you enter my name for one year’s subscription—that is, if you will let one of the rabble creep in. Frankly, I know no more about art (with a capital A or otherwise) than a rabbit. I don’t even know what an “Imagist” is! And for the life of me I cannot understand why the temperamental, fussy gentleman named Alexander S. Kaun should not use a singular verb with a singular noun, just like ordinary people. But when he says, as he does in the first line of the fourth paragraph of his article, “the dearer a person or a thingareto me, etc.,” I know there must be intellectual purpose in it, some esoteric effect that gets to the cultured few but passes over my head; so I bow before the unknown beauty of it, thinking, “Odd, but no doubt it’s all right.”
Also, to my untutored mind, the frequent use of profanity in an everyday, conversational way in two or three of the articles is amusing, and makes me wonder. It reminds me of the days when I first took up the art, and used to feel a shudder of delight when I ripped out a good, mouth-filling, “Damn it all to hell!” Perhaps it has lost its charm for me as a literary ornament because I swear so much myself, just as a matter of habit without deriving the oldtime pleasure from it.
Other places where these boys put it all over me are in music and Russians. It is one of my secret sorrows that I know I know nothing about music. I like it, but it never occurs to me to fade away and fill an early grave if I hear somebody’s nocturne murdered—that is, if I know it is being murdered, which is highly unlikely. And as to the Russians, old Dostoevsky is my limit so far, but I’m game, and am going in for all the others,—the more gloomy and morbid the better.
Then, there’s this Mr. Theodore Dreiser. As we say in this neck of the woods, in our uncouth manner, “He must be a bear-cat.” (By the way, I’d give a lot to know what “demiurge” means in the sense in which it is applied to him. Mr. Masters used it inThe New York Timessome weeks ago, and now I find it again in Mr. Powys’ appreciation. I don’t know what they mean.) Well, I’ve had his book,The “Genius,”for sometime, and mean to read it all as soon as I can get round to it. Perhaps I’ll know what “demiurge” means then—but I doubt it.
For all that I have said I would not have you think that I am wholly lacking in soul. I have some things in common with these fellows, for I have no religion or morals, and I enjoy getting drunk, riotously, gloriously drunk, once or twice a year.
And now, after telling you at more length than any decent person should what has puzzled me in your Review, permit me to say what I like. The first part of your own contribution, “Life Itself,” strikes me as the real thing. I understand all that, being a common person. For the last part, as I’ve said, I know nothing of art, and life doesn’t mean those things to me, naturally. But I like it. I can, after a fashion, see how itmightmean them. The review of Dreiser by Mr. Powys that I have mentioned already is good writing and good sense. How true it is, I am not yet in a position to guess. Then, Mr. Edgar Masters always writes vividly, deeply. I am glad to add “So We Grew Together” to what I know of his stuff. It is almost as good a portrait and short story as some of the best of the Anthology.
That fellow Ben Hecht can write. Personally, I have a sort of leaning toward the dregs, but, as a general thing, I don’t know that there’s much use in writing about them just so. But he’s certainly good. He can write. I never heard of him before, but I shall look out for him in future.
For the sake of what I find good I’m willing to put up with what I fail to grasp, and so I look forward to much pleasure and instruction fromThe Little Review. Luck to it. As long as you, Miss Lowell, Mr. Masters, and Mr. Hecht contribute, so long will it be cheap at any price. And, who knows? I may yet learn from my friend Mr. Kaun the hidden beauties of a singular subject with a plural verb.
The January-February IssueOn account of having no funds during January we have been forced to combine the two issues. Subscriptions will be extended accordingly.
On account of having no funds during January we have been forced to combine the two issues. Subscriptions will be extended accordingly.