EditorialsTHE ESSENTIAL THING.TheLittle Reviewis a magazine of Art and Revolution. If you ask me which it believes in most I shall have to say—Art. Because there is no real revolution unless it is born of the same spirit which produces real art.A man like Bill Haywood doesn’t agree with this. “Why do you ask why some one doesn’t start the revolution?” he says; “don’t you see that we’re in the midst of a revolution now?” No, I don’t see it. I see evolution at work in labor—not revolution. But I see something more than evolution at work in the arts—music, painting, poetry.“... to obtain victory over man and circumstance there is no other way but that of feeding one’s own exaltation and magnifying one’s own dream of beauty or of power.” You can argue that D’Annunzio, who said this, is neither a very great man nor a very great artist. Nevertheless it is what Beethoven did; and it is what Jeanne d’Arc did.... It is what Bill Haywood does; but it is not what most labor leaders do, or what most radicals do. It is not what the laborers themselves do. How horrible it is to realize that when a man is slaving for his very life he can not be selective in what he does, that he has no dream left to magnify, and yet that he must have or perish....This is why I would go to hear John Cowper Powys even if he spoke in such a benighted place as the Hebrew Institute. Boycotts are important, but they will not help a revolution as a dream will. Mr. Powys will help you to find both an exaltation and a dream....“DON’TS FOR CRITICS.”Iwent to a meeting of the Friday Club the other day, where Mary Aldis was to read a very good paper which she called “A Passionate Inquiry into Imagism.” After she had finished, Harriet Monroe rose to defend the poetry of H. D.—poetry which Mrs.Aldis had confessed left her unmoved. Miss Monroe “explained” the miracle of such poetry as H. D’sOreadso that even those who don’t “get” these things ought to have understood. And still—what is the use? I am convinced that the secret and the beauty of the Imagists lies somehowin the look of the words, and that if you have only a feeling for the sounds of words you will never love Imagism. Witter Bynner, who was also there, made an amusing little speech about how the Imagists substitute color for sound, sensation for emotion, and concentrate upon technique instead of upon that for which technique is intended. And then Alice Corbin Henderson had the last word. “After all the discussion about Imagism I am surprised to find that no one really seems to know what it is!... When Mrs. Aldis told me the title of her paper I said that what I should like would be a dispassionate inquiry. She said she didn’t think that possible—apparently it isn’t; but as I was thinking over the many heated criticisms of Imagism and modern poetry that have appeared lately, I began to make a list of Don’ts for the critics.” (They are printed on another page). “Of course, if the critics can’t find out what Imagism is there isn’t any need telling them; though it might be well to point out again that it isn’t a matter of technique: it is a matter of vision.”A TRIBUTE.JeanneD’Orge, who makes her first appearance in print in the present issue, has the semblance of a fountain laced with colored flames.... But you dip a hand in the laced water and—it is chilled and edged. There is a defiant, battered God with many swords beneath her casual flow of words—a God that sometimes suddenly cries out, as at the end of herSealed Package. The poems she has in the present number are part of a series calledThe Torch, in which with sledge-hammer, burning accurateness she paints the emotions of a woman, from childhood to womanhood—a woman who is an utter wistful-lipped pagan.M. B.
Editorials
TheLittle Reviewis a magazine of Art and Revolution. If you ask me which it believes in most I shall have to say—Art. Because there is no real revolution unless it is born of the same spirit which produces real art.
A man like Bill Haywood doesn’t agree with this. “Why do you ask why some one doesn’t start the revolution?” he says; “don’t you see that we’re in the midst of a revolution now?” No, I don’t see it. I see evolution at work in labor—not revolution. But I see something more than evolution at work in the arts—music, painting, poetry.
“... to obtain victory over man and circumstance there is no other way but that of feeding one’s own exaltation and magnifying one’s own dream of beauty or of power.” You can argue that D’Annunzio, who said this, is neither a very great man nor a very great artist. Nevertheless it is what Beethoven did; and it is what Jeanne d’Arc did.... It is what Bill Haywood does; but it is not what most labor leaders do, or what most radicals do. It is not what the laborers themselves do. How horrible it is to realize that when a man is slaving for his very life he can not be selective in what he does, that he has no dream left to magnify, and yet that he must have or perish....
This is why I would go to hear John Cowper Powys even if he spoke in such a benighted place as the Hebrew Institute. Boycotts are important, but they will not help a revolution as a dream will. Mr. Powys will help you to find both an exaltation and a dream....
Iwent to a meeting of the Friday Club the other day, where Mary Aldis was to read a very good paper which she called “A Passionate Inquiry into Imagism.” After she had finished, Harriet Monroe rose to defend the poetry of H. D.—poetry which Mrs.Aldis had confessed left her unmoved. Miss Monroe “explained” the miracle of such poetry as H. D’sOreadso that even those who don’t “get” these things ought to have understood. And still—what is the use? I am convinced that the secret and the beauty of the Imagists lies somehowin the look of the words, and that if you have only a feeling for the sounds of words you will never love Imagism. Witter Bynner, who was also there, made an amusing little speech about how the Imagists substitute color for sound, sensation for emotion, and concentrate upon technique instead of upon that for which technique is intended. And then Alice Corbin Henderson had the last word. “After all the discussion about Imagism I am surprised to find that no one really seems to know what it is!... When Mrs. Aldis told me the title of her paper I said that what I should like would be a dispassionate inquiry. She said she didn’t think that possible—apparently it isn’t; but as I was thinking over the many heated criticisms of Imagism and modern poetry that have appeared lately, I began to make a list of Don’ts for the critics.” (They are printed on another page). “Of course, if the critics can’t find out what Imagism is there isn’t any need telling them; though it might be well to point out again that it isn’t a matter of technique: it is a matter of vision.”
JeanneD’Orge, who makes her first appearance in print in the present issue, has the semblance of a fountain laced with colored flames.... But you dip a hand in the laced water and—it is chilled and edged. There is a defiant, battered God with many swords beneath her casual flow of words—a God that sometimes suddenly cries out, as at the end of herSealed Package. The poems she has in the present number are part of a series calledThe Torch, in which with sledge-hammer, burning accurateness she paints the emotions of a woman, from childhood to womanhood—a woman who is an utter wistful-lipped pagan.
M. B.