The Reader Critic
“CULTURE”Richard Aldington, London:... It is almost impossible to get English people to subscribe to an American literary review. English people are so conservative, so self-satisfied, that it will be years and years and years andyearsbefore they even become aware of the new spirit in America—and then it will be more years and years and years before they will take it seriously and still more years before they willpayto know anything of it. In a sense, you are more fortunate than we are—in England the big circulating libraries have almost stopped the sale of new books, and there is such an amazing mental lassitude that no one ever buys literary and art periodicals. England is well behind the four other great powers—France, Russia, Austria, and Germany. There seems to be a tremendous Renaissance in Russia, but that comes, I think, from their reading French stuff seriously. Have you ever tried to make an English person—I expect it’s the same with Americans—read a new French book, a book which has original ideas? If you haven’t, don’t!... Is Comstock’s successor worse or better? It seems to me—who am down-trodden by a corrupt aristocracy—amazing that the Great Republic (?) should humbly let Comstock sit on its head for forty years; why even in stodgy, money-bagged, hypocritical old England, someone would have arisen—some Shaw—and assassinated him! There is no tyranny for the artist comparable to that of an “enlightened” (God save us) democracy. Notice that Vienna and Petrograd, the two capitals of benighted feudalism, are, at this moment, the two great art centres of the world. Paris has become a provincial town since the war; I don’t believe it will recover—at least not for a decade.TO THE EDITOR, “WHO TENTS—INTENSE!”“Ursus”:How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? To release, to joy, to clout with hilarious freedom is to outguess the crowd. To outguess the crowd is to encourage critical suicide in episodal splendor. The unknowable is not wanted known; to venture is contagion.Man ruts—knowingly, wilfully; slithers in purring abandon so long as steaks fry and pieces of silver rattle in the pocket. When you attempt to stir unthinking recesses, whip at latent possibilities, you prove that you outclass, and he stares fishily from his Mongolian eyes. You seek beauty; the average person tortures it! His father did not diet him upon such. Your creed is not his. Mass brains chemicalize into a common ingredient. Why precipitate? The world wants its filing cabinets to contain regular, trimmed memos.How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? Shall you consecrate yourself to individual newness, to truth, against age-old creeds? Against mountains of odds?Then I congratulate you. You are different—you shall be singular and never plural. Go your way! You may find beauty because of the adventures in seeking it.Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa:Witter Bynner has sent me a copy of his letter to you on the subject of the imagists, with the rubric—“Come at them yourself! Print something about them! The publicmustn’t think itself alone in disliking them!” In spite of our very old friendship,—or perhaps because of it,—he and I have never agreed on any subject under the sun; and now, when I find that the greater part of his letter is just what I should like to say, I am dissuaded from following his suggestion only by the fear that he and I must both be wrong since we are at last in agreement. But I suppose that even an unholy alliance cannot poison a good cause; and I therefore beg you to append this as a footnote to Bynner’s communication.AN OBJECTIONJohn F. Weedon, Chicago:Your menu promises “Literature, Drama, Music, Art,” and as your guest I sat down to enjoy one of those “feasts of reason and flows of soul,—so extremely rare sinceThe Chap Bookwent out of print,—and I was immediately plunged into five or six pages of dyspeptic regurgitation of war dope.I hate the war,—I am sick of the war. It is not, according to my well-worn lexicon, either Literature, Drama, Music, or Art. I came near pitching your magazine into the waste paper basket and getting a drink to take the taste out of my mouth.Really, we caterpillars are tired of the war. Can we not find refuge from it even inThe Little Review, or will you always get the head of Charles the First into your Memorial?However, I admit the picture of Rupert Brooke alone was worth the price of admission; and Ben Hecht,—I don’t know who he is,—I could love like a brother. Lucian Cary is enjoyable, and your stuff is good but a little inclined to be sophomorish. I bet old Dr. Johnson would have insisted that “you define your terms, young man.”Anyhow, as an elderly gentleman with a large family I bow to the superknowledge and exuberance of your youth, and freely admit you are giving full value for the money. But you will cut out the “vaarrr”—von’t you?The following letter, typical of many that come in, expresses much of what we have hoped to do throughThe Little Review.Until I read Mr. Ben Hecht’s article onThe American Familyin the August issue I had not believed that any one in America would have the courage to give expression to the terrible truth about our most prized institution, the family. It is splendid; it is the kind of thing we “struggling daughters” need to keep us from being unselfish once too often.I imagine there are not enough emancipated souls in Chicago who are understanding your work to make a word of sincere appreciation a mere bore.... My social position is such that just a suggestion of the revolutionary things which are “going on inside” would be a matter for intense horror to most of my friends.The Little Reviewis one of the sources from which I am deriving strength to cling to my ideals, and to keep on hoping until school is finished and it is time to strike for freedom.THE “ARTIST IN LIFE”M. Isadore Lyon, Chicago:Please permit me to point out to all the Mrs. Quackenbushes in one that the obviously clear though much misunderstood article,The Artist in Life, so far from being a snobbish self-revelation of pessimism is a clarion feast of optimism; it is the optimistic urge back of it which presupposes peopledopossess latent will power, latent art love back of—deep under—the lethargic brooding sleep of the Mass. It is a strong plea to cease crawling in slumpy illusions and become self-conscious, self-directed beings. I would ask the Quackenbushes to read it from this view point.
Richard Aldington, London:
... It is almost impossible to get English people to subscribe to an American literary review. English people are so conservative, so self-satisfied, that it will be years and years and years andyearsbefore they even become aware of the new spirit in America—and then it will be more years and years and years before they will take it seriously and still more years before they willpayto know anything of it. In a sense, you are more fortunate than we are—in England the big circulating libraries have almost stopped the sale of new books, and there is such an amazing mental lassitude that no one ever buys literary and art periodicals. England is well behind the four other great powers—France, Russia, Austria, and Germany. There seems to be a tremendous Renaissance in Russia, but that comes, I think, from their reading French stuff seriously. Have you ever tried to make an English person—I expect it’s the same with Americans—read a new French book, a book which has original ideas? If you haven’t, don’t!
... Is Comstock’s successor worse or better? It seems to me—who am down-trodden by a corrupt aristocracy—amazing that the Great Republic (?) should humbly let Comstock sit on its head for forty years; why even in stodgy, money-bagged, hypocritical old England, someone would have arisen—some Shaw—and assassinated him! There is no tyranny for the artist comparable to that of an “enlightened” (God save us) democracy. Notice that Vienna and Petrograd, the two capitals of benighted feudalism, are, at this moment, the two great art centres of the world. Paris has become a provincial town since the war; I don’t believe it will recover—at least not for a decade.
“Ursus”:
How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? To release, to joy, to clout with hilarious freedom is to outguess the crowd. To outguess the crowd is to encourage critical suicide in episodal splendor. The unknowable is not wanted known; to venture is contagion.
Man ruts—knowingly, wilfully; slithers in purring abandon so long as steaks fry and pieces of silver rattle in the pocket. When you attempt to stir unthinking recesses, whip at latent possibilities, you prove that you outclass, and he stares fishily from his Mongolian eyes. You seek beauty; the average person tortures it! His father did not diet him upon such. Your creed is not his. Mass brains chemicalize into a common ingredient. Why precipitate? The world wants its filing cabinets to contain regular, trimmed memos.
How dare you seek the adventure of beauty? Shall you consecrate yourself to individual newness, to truth, against age-old creeds? Against mountains of odds?
Then I congratulate you. You are different—you shall be singular and never plural. Go your way! You may find beauty because of the adventures in seeking it.
Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa:
Witter Bynner has sent me a copy of his letter to you on the subject of the imagists, with the rubric—“Come at them yourself! Print something about them! The publicmustn’t think itself alone in disliking them!” In spite of our very old friendship,—or perhaps because of it,—he and I have never agreed on any subject under the sun; and now, when I find that the greater part of his letter is just what I should like to say, I am dissuaded from following his suggestion only by the fear that he and I must both be wrong since we are at last in agreement. But I suppose that even an unholy alliance cannot poison a good cause; and I therefore beg you to append this as a footnote to Bynner’s communication.
John F. Weedon, Chicago:
Your menu promises “Literature, Drama, Music, Art,” and as your guest I sat down to enjoy one of those “feasts of reason and flows of soul,—so extremely rare sinceThe Chap Bookwent out of print,—and I was immediately plunged into five or six pages of dyspeptic regurgitation of war dope.
I hate the war,—I am sick of the war. It is not, according to my well-worn lexicon, either Literature, Drama, Music, or Art. I came near pitching your magazine into the waste paper basket and getting a drink to take the taste out of my mouth.
Really, we caterpillars are tired of the war. Can we not find refuge from it even inThe Little Review, or will you always get the head of Charles the First into your Memorial?
However, I admit the picture of Rupert Brooke alone was worth the price of admission; and Ben Hecht,—I don’t know who he is,—I could love like a brother. Lucian Cary is enjoyable, and your stuff is good but a little inclined to be sophomorish. I bet old Dr. Johnson would have insisted that “you define your terms, young man.”
Anyhow, as an elderly gentleman with a large family I bow to the superknowledge and exuberance of your youth, and freely admit you are giving full value for the money. But you will cut out the “vaarrr”—von’t you?
The following letter, typical of many that come in, expresses much of what we have hoped to do throughThe Little Review.
Until I read Mr. Ben Hecht’s article onThe American Familyin the August issue I had not believed that any one in America would have the courage to give expression to the terrible truth about our most prized institution, the family. It is splendid; it is the kind of thing we “struggling daughters” need to keep us from being unselfish once too often.
I imagine there are not enough emancipated souls in Chicago who are understanding your work to make a word of sincere appreciation a mere bore.... My social position is such that just a suggestion of the revolutionary things which are “going on inside” would be a matter for intense horror to most of my friends.The Little Reviewis one of the sources from which I am deriving strength to cling to my ideals, and to keep on hoping until school is finished and it is time to strike for freedom.
M. Isadore Lyon, Chicago:
Please permit me to point out to all the Mrs. Quackenbushes in one that the obviously clear though much misunderstood article,The Artist in Life, so far from being a snobbish self-revelation of pessimism is a clarion feast of optimism; it is the optimistic urge back of it which presupposes peopledopossess latent will power, latent art love back of—deep under—the lethargic brooding sleep of the Mass. It is a strong plea to cease crawling in slumpy illusions and become self-conscious, self-directed beings. I would ask the Quackenbushes to read it from this view point.