The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Sardonic Arm

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Sardonic ArmThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Sardonic ArmAuthor: Maxwell BodenheimRelease date: August 17, 2019 [eBook #60114]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from images made available by theHathiTrust Digital Library.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SARDONIC ARM ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Sardonic ArmAuthor: Maxwell BodenheimRelease date: August 17, 2019 [eBook #60114]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from images made available by theHathiTrust Digital Library.)

Title: The Sardonic Arm

Author: Maxwell Bodenheim

Release date: August 17, 2019 [eBook #60114]Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from images made available by theHathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SARDONIC ARM ***

SARDONIC ARM Bodenheim.— 1923 COVICI-McGEE CHICAGO

DEDICATED TO MINNA AND FEYDA

—They will meet underdifferent circumstances

If I yield to the remorseful redundancy of a foreword, with its bedraggled battalions of fiercely insinuating words, it is from no mere desire to invite the ridicule of impatient time, or to rail against that host of vacant insincerities which betrays the animations of life. It may be that I do not look upon words as intimidating a fixed content, or beckoning to an inevitable style. It may be that I regard words as flexible lures seducing the essential emptiness of life, with little, false promises—promises of emotional and mental gain and reward; haloes and bludgeons with which a void may attain the mirage of toiling or dancing importance. And perhaps, in the desperate hope of achieving a proper festival of sound, I have summoned words to a reiteration of defeated antics, without in any way attempting to gain those exhausted futilities known as convictions and explanations. And if, through this foreword, I can revel in a pensive obscurity—a veil that must be carefully removed with the reading of poems that follow—I shall feel that I have furnished the exercise of amusement to certain sterile and over-confident rituals of emotion and mind.

The poetic situation in America is, indeed, a blustering and verbose invitation to boredom and a slight, reviling headache. When not engaged in scrubbing the window pane ten times over, lest it prove opaque to an astigmatic public, American poets are discovering, with great glee, the perspiring habits and routines of sex, or naively deifying the local mannerisms of a blithely juvenile country—a lurching, colloquial, fist-swinging melee of milkmen depositing bottles on doorsteps and acquiring dignity in the process; chorus-girls and farmhands telling their troubles in a stilted slang; factory-owners falling in love with their female employees, to the tune of delicate and novel symbolism concerning “a longing to enter the house of her being”; ravings over the strength and poignancy of corn-fields and country-roads—“O, the corn, how it aches!” and “What is better than the patient and sturdy road?”—; much roaring about the importance and hard beauty of mills and factories—crudely smoky boxes of avarice faced by little, kneeling poets.... Ah, the list, when extended, defies amusement. You must leave the theater unless you desire the thankless experience of vomiting.

The commercial cacophony of American lusts and greeds has borrowed a clarinet, a flute, and a saxophone from the admiration of American poets and is one-stepping with thousands of words, after the office and factory have closed for the day, “Swee-et Mama, well your papa’s done gone mad!”—the jerky, leering pandemonium of actual jazz on a polished floor interests me far more than its more proper and adulterated echoes—the glorious American poets of our time.

There are, again, American poets who have turned their eyes to Europe, yes, the fact is apparent—they have turned their eyes to Europe, and they can, on occasion, become cynical animals, discovering seven thousand different ways of describing the contortions that lead to sexual intercourse, and displaying breasts and limbs with an infinite amount of abandoned bravado. Again, they have heard of the European Dadaists, yes, undoubtedly they have heard of the European Dadaists, and they have now reduced the pronoun “I” to “i,” commenced their lines with small letters, and exhibited a brave and startling hatred for commas and separate words. In Europe, this literary revolution holds a distorted incisiveness and many an original thought, heaved up from the catastrophe of words. In America, certain poets, with great gusto, have torn three buttons from their coats and are standing on their heads. Yawning, we turn the page to the greyly psychological school of poets—William James and Havelock Ellis, viewed with ecstasy behind a magnifying glass, while someone provides a blurred replica of Bach’s music.

That tantalizing obscurity of words, luring the nimbleness of mental regard—subtlety—and those deliberate acrobatics that form an original style—both are waiting for the melodrama, comedy and lecture to subside. Alas, what a long waiting is before them—pity these two aristocrats and admire their isolated tenacity. Drop the trivial gift of a tear, also, upon a wilted, elaborate figure thrown into cell number thirty-two and trying to remember that his name was once Intellect. Then deposit the lengthened confession of a sigh upon another drooping form known as Delicate Fantasy—an elusive Liar who ravishes colors without mentioning their names (not the endless blue, green, white, yellow, red, lavender, mauve, pink, brown, cerise, golden, orange, and purple of American Imagists). They have kicked him into the cellar, damn them. Recognize the importance of his bruises. And also, spy, in the loosely naive tumult, an agile, self-possessed pilgrim known as Irony. They have kicked him in the stomach, these symbols of earth triumphant.... And now, you must not look upon these words as a stormy unfolding of conviction and explanation. The American spectacle has aroused a mood; words conceal the essential helplessness; and the lurking emptiness behind life separates into little, curious divisions of sound. The undulations have ended.

The SARDONIC ARM

Agitated child,Listening to the words of clown,Charlatan, blackguard, clergyman,And vainly trying to follow their commandsSimultaneously, with legs and armsSwinging like demented Jehovahs,The plastic shapelessness of mudWaits to receive your castigated fevers.And all the children whose inarticulateHearts smashed together make your body—The burly, waggish roguePaid to dance in your cabarets;The shoulder-shaking girlWho mistakes one shiver for immortality;The roughly earnest gunmanWhose blundering insurrectionClutches a cool device;The man whose eyes are coinsEncased in viscous white;The fox-like politicianLeaping on small prizes in the dark;The farmer, lending his different costumeTo the ox-like patience of earth;The manual laborersWith minds as minute and obscure as bricks,And softly prominent hearts;The factory-girls who try to scoldThe murmur of their soulsWith one hundred slang phrases—All of them will loseTheir imaginary differencesIn the lenient refuge of mud.But their souls, ridiculouslyIgnorant of national boundary-lines,And amused at the physical promiseOr ruin that men extractTortuously from life—Their souls will instigateA more conspicuous conflict.

Conversation in oak trees,Better than the talk of menBecause it ends where they beginFutilely.Ferns, and invasion of moss,Waiting for the conquest of wordsTo dwindle with the yearsAnd find, in the doom of green,A mute and sprightly correction.These trees do not proclaimThat men are fools or geniuses.Their rustling toleranceDoes not seek to intrudeUpon the indifference of time,And it is appropriateThat their leaves should wait to containThe discarded syllablesOf human erudition.I have seen a manGaze upon an oak tree,As one who hates a patient enemy.Sensual desires and mental plotsHad marked his face not tenderly.Combat of envy and prideGained the dilated prize of his eyesAs he looked upon the tree.Then his voice achievedThe solace of admiration.“The leaves are beautiful in Autumn.This oak tree has a pleasant sturdiness.”When confronted by a tree,Or sunset prowling down the hills,The sensual boast of menTrembles with fear and raisesThe shield of adoration.Look upon the oak treeWithout that simulated courageFalsely wrung from soothing sound.The oak tree is a living prisonWhere the thoughts and lusts of menDangle to the whims of windsAnd learn an unexpected tolerance.Seek revenge upon the tree;Dress it in capricious metaphor;Fling your costumes on its frame.Or, better still, realizeThat the oak tree does notDemolish the souls of men.I say that all of natureIs only the mingled womb and tombWith which an ancient illusionPerpetuates the religions that keep it alive.Before I leave the oak treeLaughter captures my lips.Newton, a dry and wavering leaf,Has fallen to the earth.

I have seen a manGaze upon an oak tree,As one who hates a patient enemy.Sensual desires and mental plotsHad marked his face not tenderly.Combat of envy and prideGained the dilated prize of his eyesAs he looked upon the tree.Then his voice achievedThe solace of admiration.“The leaves are beautiful in Autumn.This oak tree has a pleasant sturdiness.”When confronted by a tree,Or sunset prowling down the hills,The sensual boast of menTrembles with fear and raisesThe shield of adoration.

Look upon the oak treeWithout that simulated courageFalsely wrung from soothing sound.The oak tree is a living prisonWhere the thoughts and lusts of menDangle to the whims of windsAnd learn an unexpected tolerance.Seek revenge upon the tree;Dress it in capricious metaphor;Fling your costumes on its frame.Or, better still, realizeThat the oak tree does notDemolish the souls of men.I say that all of natureIs only the mingled womb and tombWith which an ancient illusionPerpetuates the religions that keep it alive.Before I leave the oak treeLaughter captures my lips.Newton, a dry and wavering leaf,Has fallen to the earth.

“Geography locates actual mountains,Rivers, and valleys, while criticsOf literature and artDraw imaginary mapsSmall as the nail of an infant’s thumb.Then nouns and adjectivesAre purchased and arrangedTo magnify and defend the sizeOf exquisite differencesIn altitude, position, and direction.Trivially vociferous,Your geographical criticsDisplay their little maps to menWhose eyes are already convincedOr turned in another direction.”Torban, a scholar from Mars,Dropped his speech and laughed.His laugh was the sound of a mountainEmancipated by humourAnd cavorting over the plains.The mountain fled, but Torban remained,Made gigantic by its aftermath.For size does not reside

In the legs and torsosThat men hug, frightened, or with glee.He said: “Criticism in MarsResembles your hours of sleep.Each night we leave creation;Greet the steeply slanting beds;And turn our large eyes inwardTo a complicated cabaret:Cabaret filled with relieving jigs;Cabaret crammed with irascible magiciansWho persist in spoiling their little tricksBy proclaiming the honesty of their intentions;Cabaret in which malice,Dignified or torrential,Turns creators into beetlesAnd slays them ingeniously;Cabaret in which Erudition,Tempted by emotional coquettes,Swaggers greyly past the footlights;Cabaret in which LustDefends itself with thoughtful monologues,Stopping to expectorateInto metaphysical cuspidors;Cabaret in which the mindScorns the morphine of emotionUntil, exhausted, it is forcedSecretly to indulge in the drug;Cabaret of toothless bickeringsThat lisp like market-womenAt an ancient Fair;Cabaret in which Tolerance and IndifferenceSit on the floor below the banquet-tableAnd wait for crumbs that accidentallySlip from the over-full plates;Cabaret in which LogicSwallows the whiskey of dogmas,Reels to the little bed-chamber,And gradually falls asleep;Cabaret in which qualities,Enlarged and beribboned, engageIn arguments with smaller qualities,Each longing for the other’s size.”Torban paused, and his smile,A thread of quicksilver bettering his face,Encouraged the purpose of my voice.I said: “The cabaret that you describeReminds me of criticism on earth.”He answered: “One difference exists.We go to sleep before we criticize—An excellent antidote for truth and lies!”

Ta-ra-ta-ta!The ancient horn is once more bleatingIts ephemeral plea to immortality.Thus announced, the author of the play,Naked, and with a scholar’s faceIll-at-ease above the flesh,Proclaims the purpose of the play.His speech, long and unadorned,Requires this concentrated translation:“Life is a sensual hunterAnd only his trophies are real.These protesting animalsMay sometimes be cleverly scrutinizedBy six or seven intellectsSecreted in the noisy audience.”Ta-ra-ta-ta!The horn resounds, and its echoesAre caught by an uproar of sounds—Excited disciples within the theater.“Down with fantasy!”“Realism and flesh forever!”“No more lies about the soul!”“Give us earth and logic!”“Murder the mountebanks and butterflies!”“Down with metaphor and simile!”The play is about to beginWhen two unfortunate poetsAre discovered in the audience.Morbid, grotesque, and nonchalant,They wear involved, embroidered clothesAnd smoke emotional cigarettes,Flicking the ashes carefullyInto the rage of faces around them.And one poet recommendsA ruffled, satirical vest for the hairy chestOf a broad man seated near him.With cries, in which the earthly illusionMounts its strident throne,The audience expels the two poetsWith ritual of feet and fists.Unperturbed, the poetsStoop to mend their embroidered sleevesTom by the frantic audience.With this important task completed,They stroll away.

“Life is a sensual hunterAnd only his trophies are real.These protesting animalsMay sometimes be cleverly scrutinizedBy six or seven intellectsSecreted in the noisy audience.”

Ta-ra-ta-ta!The horn resounds, and its echoesAre caught by an uproar of sounds—Excited disciples within the theater.“Down with fantasy!”“Realism and flesh forever!”“No more lies about the soul!”“Give us earth and logic!”“Murder the mountebanks and butterflies!”“Down with metaphor and simile!”

The play is about to beginWhen two unfortunate poetsAre discovered in the audience.Morbid, grotesque, and nonchalant,They wear involved, embroidered clothesAnd smoke emotional cigarettes,Flicking the ashes carefullyInto the rage of faces around them.And one poet recommendsA ruffled, satirical vest for the hairy chestOf a broad man seated near him.With cries, in which the earthly illusionMounts its strident throne,The audience expels the two poetsWith ritual of feet and fists.Unperturbed, the poetsStoop to mend their embroidered sleevesTom by the frantic audience.With this important task completed,They stroll away.

Vicious and sincere,The black derby hat flaunts itselfUpon the head of an amateur libertine.The libertine is a nervous rascalAsking too many favorsFrom one spear-point exalted by men,But the black derby hat,Poised and incorruptible,Curves its black no to the senses.To those who cannot see,The black derby hat is only a sugar-bowlTurned upside-down and out of place,Or one of many crownsBestowing their ugly pathosUpon the struggle of a nation,Or the way in which a dreamerPitifully says hello to the stars,Or a symbol of bulky manhoodSwaggering in an ancient trap.But to eyes that can look beyondThe surface rites of AmericaBending over bargain-counters of flesh,The black derby hat is an alabasterSentinel, defending its realmAgainst the pompous indifferenceOf Time, Infinity, and Eternity.The black derby hat is an outline of earth,Bold and abrupt, remainingIndifferent to the desperate commandsOf sex and greed, and he who wears itIs only a helpful accidentBringing publicity to the hat.Uncompromising, the black derby hatSuggests the blunt isolation of intellect,And yet it may have been madeBy some weak serf of emotion.From the contact of incongruitiesLife evolves the more perfect shape,And so, the black derby hat,Gliding through the frantic defeatsOf a city street,Coolly protects its realmAgainst the scarecrow-contemptOf Time, Infinity, and Eternity.

Must I see a gutterIn which the hurried machinationOf water carries bits of apple peelingTo some profound, obscure intelligence?And if the gutter is to meMerely the masterful travel of brownSpeeding with odds and ends of red,To lend importance to a dream,Will this belief decrease my sizeWhen death reproves my inefficient limbs?I walk upon a streetWhere trite deceptions glideCeaselessly.Upon this street the spasmodic revoltOf color refuses to joinThe orderly, substantial lie.Scattered anarchists of color,Thin and incorrupt,Contend against the ponderous devicesOf lust for flesh and gold.With a spiritual savagenessColors bring their lucid treasonTo ancient, shrouded tyrannies.The knitted green of this girl’s sweaterIs a badge releasingA cool republic of desireUnrelated to earth.Her famished opaque faceFeeds on sleek anticipations—Unconscious incongruity.Color alone is real,Waving perpetuallyOver the graves of thought and emotion.From the vaster shapes of colorSmall and involved broods of thought and emotionAre born to scorn their distant mothers.The ruffian dream recedesOver a span of twenty thousand years,And color, awake and supreme,Waits to be once more dividedBy another nightmare dream.If men could see this they might kneelUpon this sidewalk and observeThe importance of apple-peelingsTesting their spirals of redAgainst the thick, brown stream.

I walk upon a streetWhere trite deceptions glideCeaselessly.Upon this street the spasmodic revoltOf color refuses to joinThe orderly, substantial lie.Scattered anarchists of color,Thin and incorrupt,Contend against the ponderous devicesOf lust for flesh and gold.With a spiritual savagenessColors bring their lucid treasonTo ancient, shrouded tyrannies.The knitted green of this girl’s sweaterIs a badge releasingA cool republic of desireUnrelated to earth.Her famished opaque faceFeeds on sleek anticipations—Unconscious incongruity.

Color alone is real,Waving perpetuallyOver the graves of thought and emotion.From the vaster shapes of colorSmall and involved broods of thought and emotionAre born to scorn their distant mothers.The ruffian dream recedesOver a span of twenty thousand years,And color, awake and supreme,Waits to be once more dividedBy another nightmare dream.If men could see this they might kneelUpon this sidewalk and observeThe importance of apple-peelingsTesting their spirals of redAgainst the thick, brown stream.

Western men,Your life is a minor rhapsodyFor flute and violin.With sounds, now shrill, now suave,You steal your hymns and frolicsFrom the surface dirt of realismAnd the curves of sensuality.Your feeble mysticismStrains at the task of lifting tablesAnd placing naïve retortsInto the mouths of spirits.Your erudition is the vainGesture of your repentanceGrown over-thin and complex.Western men, you are beggarsDevouring bits of guileTossed from a violent mirage.The contours of a roseBribing the quiet madness of eveningWith cunning promises of red,Are more important than your sweating loveAnd the rushing dreads of your market-places.The contours of a roseWill still arrange their subtle dreamWhen your clever schemes of mudWin the drifting pension of dust.Your charts and diagramsAre merely a ragamuffin’s initialsCut into an ancient gatewayThat guards the invisible meaning of life.

Tomato soup at four A. M.We seemed to sit upon the floorBut, with a feathery discretion,We advised our bodiesTo make the floor a glistening fundamentalFlattened by the walk of centuries.Continuing the advice,We told our bodies to arrangeA variation on the floorAnd give the floor a livingReason for existence.Our bodies, with clandestine movements,Accepted the adviceAnd became the essences of Plato,Almost tempting our fleshTo renounce its weight.Our lifted knees were actorsSimulating treason to our souls,With their prominence of bone.They were interviewedBy elbows that held a light disbelief.Our backs against the cushionsHad disappeared, and we did not moveFor fear that all of usMight rush away through the openings.Our heads were fiercely bent down,As though they felt an ecstasyOf shame at their crudity ...When we returned to the tomato soupIt was an insipid fluid,But we drank it indifferently,And it is also possibleThat an unearthly laughPeered through the crevices of our eyes,Finding no need for sound.

StenographerIntellect,You are an electrical conspiracyBetween the advance guards of soul and mind.Thoughts and spiritual instincts,Profound and unfanatical,Sit plotting against the enmityThat seeks to wall them in separate castles...A thought and a spiritual instinctLink themselves for an instantUpon the face of this stenographer.Unknown to her mind and speechA gleam of intellect contradicts her features,And she spies the jest of her relationTo the droning man beside her.This incredible newsWill be doubted by poets and scientists.

Stenographer

Intellect,You are an electrical conspiracyBetween the advance guards of soul and mind.Thoughts and spiritual instincts,Profound and unfanatical,Sit plotting against the enmityThat seeks to wall them in separate castles...A thought and a spiritual instinctLink themselves for an instantUpon the face of this stenographer.Unknown to her mind and speechA gleam of intellect contradicts her features,And she spies the jest of her relationTo the droning man beside her.

This incredible newsWill be doubted by poets and scientists.

WaitressMusicians and carpentersMeet upon your trays of food:Aesthetics and the fleshPlay their little joke upon dogma,Urged by the rhythm of your hands.Your rouged cheeks slip unnoticedThrough the sexless turmoil.The rituals are hastenedLest they become self-conscious...I stop you and remark:“The sylvan story of your hairIs damaged by your rhinestone comb.May I remove it?” Then you stare.The fact that you have beenGreeted by something other than a winkAlmost causes you to think.You walk away, holding an emotionThat skims the lips of many adjectives.Confused, uncertain, scornful—With none of them fused together.

Waitress

Musicians and carpentersMeet upon your trays of food:Aesthetics and the fleshPlay their little joke upon dogma,Urged by the rhythm of your hands.Your rouged cheeks slip unnoticedThrough the sexless turmoil.The rituals are hastenedLest they become self-conscious...I stop you and remark:“The sylvan story of your hairIs damaged by your rhinestone comb.May I remove it?” Then you stare.The fact that you have beenGreeted by something other than a winkAlmost causes you to think.You walk away, holding an emotionThat skims the lips of many adjectives.Confused, uncertain, scornful—With none of them fused together.

Shop-GirlYellow roses in your black hairHold the significanceOf stifled mystics defying Time.Yellow roses in your black hairCan become to certain eyesThe trivial details of emotion.Yellow roses in your black hairOften embarrass passing philosophersWho suddenly realizeThat they have been furtively snatching at color and light.Shop-girl, in the midst of your frolic,Take this portrait without surprise.Portraits are merely pretexts.

Shop-Girl

Yellow roses in your black hairHold the significanceOf stifled mystics defying Time.Yellow roses in your black hairCan become to certain eyesThe trivial details of emotion.Yellow roses in your black hairOften embarrass passing philosophersWho suddenly realizeThat they have been furtively snatching at color and light.

Shop-girl, in the midst of your frolic,Take this portrait without surprise.Portraits are merely pretexts.

ManicuristMaudlin, hurt, morose,Tender, angry, remote,Whimsical, frigid, impatient—Compel these adjectives to becomeFriendly to each otherAnd let them stumble in unisonBeneath the muscular trouble of life.The careful Boss who sends them onHolds one eye of bitternessAnd another of sentimentality,Closing each one on different occasions.The careful Boss may be your soul,Tired manicurist, amazingThe fragrant barber-shopWith words of valiant prose.Ferretti, the mildly dying barber,Loves his bald head with one fingerAnd whispers, “She’s crazy, I fire her tomorrow.When customer ask her to eat with himShe laugh and tell him she no careTo pay too much for indigestion.She’s crazy. I fire her tomorrow.”Ferretti does not knowThat souls are not entirely unconcernedWith straining for effects.

Manicurist

Maudlin, hurt, morose,Tender, angry, remote,Whimsical, frigid, impatient—Compel these adjectives to becomeFriendly to each otherAnd let them stumble in unisonBeneath the muscular trouble of life.The careful Boss who sends them onHolds one eye of bitternessAnd another of sentimentality,Closing each one on different occasions.The careful Boss may be your soul,Tired manicurist, amazingThe fragrant barber-shopWith words of valiant prose.Ferretti, the mildly dying barber,Loves his bald head with one fingerAnd whispers, “She’s crazy, I fire her tomorrow.When customer ask her to eat with himShe laugh and tell him she no careTo pay too much for indigestion.She’s crazy. I fire her tomorrow.”

Ferretti does not knowThat souls are not entirely unconcernedWith straining for effects.

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