II.

Mr Richard Aldington, the first of the three to be considered, has recently brought together some thirty of his poems in a small volume, entitled _Images_. That this selection does not represent all of Mr Aldington’s work, must be apparent to all who are familiar with it. His long poem, _Childhood_, is not here; nor is his other long poem on the war, which surely deserves mention as being one of the few really humorous war poems ever written. To come to the shorter pieces, surely all admirers of Mr Aldington’s talent must deplore the absence of _Daisy_, _Round Pond_ and _The Poplar_—the latter one of the most beautiful poems he has ever written. But whether Mr Aldington has omitted these pieces from a too severe critical judgment, or whether because they seem to interfere with the unity of his book, the fact remains that they were omitted, but that enough is left to give nearly all sides of his achievement.

Mr Aldington is a sophisticated, a cultivated, even a bookish poet. He has translated Anyte of Tegea, the Latin Poets of the Renaissance, and even that astounding farrago of poetry and buffoonery called Les Chansons de Maldoror. Recently he has given us, in the columns of _The Egoist_, a glimpse at his library which ranges from Euripides, via Apuleius, Hooker and Crowley, to Ford Madox Hueffer! “And is it for this I have laboured?” he cries. “To be the object of derision of some bibliophile looking at his books as cynically and disgustedly as I look at mine?”

No, it is not for this. It is for a handful of strange and satisfying poems that Mr Aldington has laboured. Every artist knows that it takes a great deal of life, an immense amount of experience and appreciation, to make even a little art. Life is like a many-faceted prism. We must walk around it, observe it on every side, see it not as we ourselves would care to see it, but as others have seen it, before we can induce it to show a new side to our efforts, to cast a few rays which it has not already cast before. Matthew Arnold, who was one of the few English critics able to look at literature from the standpoint of its historical development, declared that poetry was a criticism of life. And so it is. The task of a modern poet is not to shut his eyes to the past, but to see the work of the generations that preceded him as an uncompleted structure, the living intention of whose builders is again born in him, and seeks fruition in the additions he can make to it. In this sense Mr Aldington is a modern poet. He is a poet for the well-read, intelligent, cultivated man or woman.

The first poem of his I can remember seeing in print was the one entitled _Choricos_:

The ancient songs Pass deathward mournfully.

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings, Symbols of ancient songs, Mournfully passing Down to the great white surges Watched by none—

And we turn from the Kyprian’s breasts, And we turn from thee, Phoibos Apollon— And we turn from the fiery day, And the lips that were over-sweet; For silently, Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, With purple robe, Searing the grass as with a sudden flame, Death, Thou hast come upon us.

O Death, Thou art the silence of beauty, And we look no more for the morning, We yearn no more for the sun— We kneel before thee; And thou, leaning towards us, Caressingly layest upon us Flowers from thy thin cold hands, And smiling as a chaste woman, Knowing love in her heart, Thou seelest our eyes And the illimitable quietude Comes gently upon us.

There is nothing in all the literature I know which can be safely set beside this poem (of which I have only quoted a few fragments) except a few lines of Leopardi:

In te, Morte, si pose Nostra ignuda natura; Lieto, no, ma sicura Del antico dolor.

Other than that, it is unique. And since it is the fashion to despise a poet because he does not write of aeroplanes and locomotives and socialism, but of the eternal verities of life, death, beauty, irony, let us first of all brush away the shallow assumption that Mr Aldington is an imitator of the classics and that all his work seems a derivation from the Greek.

The mood of the poem from which I have just quoted is not a mood which can be found in any Greek poet, or which any Greek would ever have understood. I have quoted enough to show what that mood is. It is a mood of mutability, of the sadness that arises in us when we see the instability of all earthly things. The first Occidental poet who ever expressed this mood, to my knowledge, was François Villon. In the East, of course, it was felt and expressed much earlier. For one must have seen kingdoms pass away and empires crumble to the dust and “the owl sing his watch-song from the towers of Afrasiab” before one can feel this mood, which Mr Aldington has here so beautifully and poignantly expressed.

Throughout his poetry Mr Aldington has frequently given us this emotion of a civilized man, a modern, brought face to face with some beautiful fragment of the past. Thus he cries to a Greek marble:

I am thy brother, Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee, And thou hearest me not.

Surely no one would contend that a Greek could ever have said this! And in some quite recent poems we have the same feeling applied to the Renaissance, and even to modernity:

I turn the page and read: “I dream of silent verses where the rhyme Glides noiseless as an oar.”

The heavy, musty air, the black desks, The bent heads and the rustling noises Vanish— The sun hangs in the cobalt sky The boat drifts over the bare shallows— The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle About the cleft battlements of Can Grande’s castle.

Or take this:

London, (May, 1915)

Glittering leaves Dance in a squall: Above them, bleak immovable clouds.

A church spire Holds up a little brass cock To peck at the blue wheat fields—

A pear tree, a broken white pyramid, In a dingy garden, troubles one With ecstasy— And I am tormented, Obsessed, Along all this beauty. With a vision of ruins, Of walls tumbling into clay.

Such a poet is not what we vulgarly choose to call an optimist. No! Let us admit once for all, Mr Aldington is a pessimist. (So, by the way, were Sophocles and Leopardi and Shakespeare when he wrote _King Lear_, and Mr Thomas Hardy, to mention only a few; but I have never heard they were worse poets for it.) At times he gives us a very bitter dose indeed to swallow, as in his _Childhood_, _Cinema Exit_, or _In the Tube_. Yet he is not devoid of humour, playful and fantastic. Witness _The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time_, the _Interlude_, the _Evening_ (a beautiful grotesque which I am tempted to quote), or for a grimmer note the conclusion of _Lesbia_. He will not admit that life is altogether without compensations. Herein he is honest. He even admits sentiment as a compensation, and he treats it delicately, fastidiously, with an unexpected touch of purely fourteenth-century feeling in the following piece:

After Two Years.

She is all so slight, And tender and white, As a May morning.

She walks without hood At dusk. It is good To hear her sing.

It is God’s will That I shall love her still As he loves Mary. And night and day, I will go forth to pray That she love me.

She is as gold; Lovely, and far more cold. Do thou pray with me, For if I win grace To kiss twice her face God has done well to me.

Altogether an unusual poet. One who never takes up the pen except when he has something individual to say, and whose utterance is at times so varied as to make him almost bafflingly individual. But not a Greek, although he has written finely on Greek themes. A modern? Yes; and not only a modern but, au fond, a Romantic. Remember the conclusion of the beautiful _Night Piece_:

“Very faint and shrill and far away the whistle sounds—more like a wild bird than ever. And all my unsatisfied desires and empty wishes and vague yearnings are set aching by that thin tremulous whistle—the post-horn of the Coach of Romance.”

(_For lack of space, Mr Fletcher’s article will be concluded in the June issue._)

Rossica

ALEXANDER S. KAUN

It is still on—the Russian invasion.

Across the ocean the triumphant Prussian drives a hedge into the heart of Russia. With blood and iron and fire Efficiency celebrates its victory over Nihilism.

And we, the neutrals, the note-writers, attempt to thwart the grand march of Efficiency by delivering shells to the port of Vladivostok. Shells that do not always explode, despite their “moderate” prices.

In exchange we are getting thoughts, ideas. Unobstructed by Krupps or U’s or Zeppelins, they invade our peaceful shores, and intend to stay.

Woe to the Chambers and Herricks and Pooles and Dreisers and McCutcheons and other best sellers! The enemy is raining in torrents, in avalanches. What if the good, good public will be forced to taste the new food. What if after having tasted it they will rebel and demand real meat thereafter, rejecting as indigestible the canned affairs and the oleomargarine surrogates. What if....

No danger, I am assured by my friend who has great faith in the uncorruptible taste of the American public.

Surely no one will accuse the American publishers of being pure idealists or Ford-like fanatics who are ready to squander their hard dollars for propaganda purposes. Surely those gentlemen know their market and adjust the supply to the demand. The extraordinary deluge of Russian literature is evidently a paying proposition.

It is gratifying. We need the injection of new blood into our anemic literature.

New blood. Not even Gogol is too old for us. No matter that he died in 1852. His _Dead Souls_, _Tarass Bulba_, and just published stories[2] belong to the category of works that do not age in spite of their technical flaws. If you use this perspective, _The Mantle_ will loom up as the peak of Russian realism. “We have all come out of _The Mantle_”, admitted Gogol’s disciple, Dostoevsky. If in that tale we recognize the forerunner of the relentless soul-vivisectionists of the later days, we get in the other stories a glimpse of the mystic Gogol, the poet of Goyaesque witches and devils. Do not read _Viy_ before bed-time lest you go through a heavy nightmare.

It is an enormous leap from Gogol to Korolenko[3], Gorky[4], and Kuprin[5]. These are living authors, although they belong rather to the past century in their motives and modes. Vladimir Korolenko is a writer whose very name causes the heart of every Russian to beat with emotion. Not for the greatness of his art: as an artist he ranks among the lesser. It is the charm of his personality that places him far above all his colleagues. His long years of exile in Siberia, his never-flagging championship of the oppressed classes and races, his tireless encouragement of the young beginners, and his smile, the deep, broad smile that flows like a sunny stream through his writings, have endeared him to his countrymen beyond parallel. Korolenko is the bridge between the heroic, idealistic seventies and the ultra-individualistic moderns. His stories are not idylls, yet they smile; he deals with tragedies, describes horrifying situations, but he bears no ill feeling for the universe, he loves it with all its evils and follies, loves it with that keen understanding which spells forgiveness. Gorky tells us that he owes to Korolenko not only his discovery and introduction to the public, but also his style. I seldom trust an author’s self-criticism. Gorky differs from his alleged teacher in his style as well as in his philosophy. Korolenko is gentle, mild, refined, loving, forgiving. Gorky is rude, loud, hating, revenging. Both have known misery and hardships, both have rubbed shoulders with the humiliated and down-trodden. But Korolenko came out of the crucible with a radiant smile, with universal compassion and sympathy. Gorky neither forgets or forgives. His body and soul shriek out vengeance for man enslaved, maimed, bestialized. Korolenko and his “disciple” both exalt human personality, but the first does so indiscriminatingly, wholesalely, while Gorky glorifies only the strong, proclaims the “beauty of power”, and scorns the weak worms, the lazy adders who are content to stagnate in the mire. Gorky’s philosophy may appeal to us who have drunk from the waters of Zarathustra, but Korolenko’s art is purer, free from preaching, and hence more convincing.

Alexander Kuprin has been hailed as an anarchist, a free-love preacher, a social reformer, a cynic, a retrograde, and what not. He may be all these, or none, or more. Of all the Russian writers he is the only true, unaffected Dionysian. His love for women, for wine, for horses, for nature—in a word, for life, is spontaneous and elemental. None of the hectic morbidity of the consumptive Artzibashev. Kuprin is a healthy artist with an enormous eye. He sees to the bottom the mind of man and animal, of the thief and the intellectual, of the empty military officer and of the street-woman, of the artist and of the gambler, and he makes us see what he sees with a cheerful gracefulness, with no other purpose but the presentation of his sweetheart, life. His novel, _The Duel_, stirred Russian society as a vigorous indictment of militarism, a picture of the dehumanizing garrison life. Kuprin guffawed at that accusation over a glass of vodka, as he is usually drawn by cartoonists. Far be it from him to advocate or condemn. He rejoices in all his heroes, whether they be garrison dummies, or artistic pickpockets (_The Outrage_), or Japanese spies (_Captain Ribnikov_), or petty philistines (_The River of Life_). He floats upon the “river of life”, observes, absorbs, delights, and chuckles at the very fact of his existence. “Even if I were to fall under a railway train, and were left lying on the line with broken and bleeding limbs, and any one were to ask me if life were beautiful, I should none the less, and even by summoning my last remains of strength, answer enthusiastically, ‘Ah, yes, even now life is glorious!’” (_The Duel_).

From the charming, lithe, joyous Kuprin I pass reluctantly to a book on the lugubrious “cruel genius”, Dostoevsky[6]. It is deplorable that the publisher who has given us the excellent translation of Dostoevsky by Constance Garnett should throw on the market such a mediocrity as Mr. Soloviev’s work, as if there were not excellent books on the novelist written by Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Veresayev! Mr. Soloviev presents the accepted view of Dostoevsky as the preacher of repentance and atonement, the retrograde, the pillar of church and autocracy. Superficially, the view appears to be correct. Dig deeper into the chaotic, epileptical soul of the author of _Crime and Punishment_, gaze into the abysses of the dual characters of Raskolnikov, Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin, Svidrigailov, the Karamazovs, fling your imagination into the hellish crater of the novelist’s mind, and Mr. Soloviev’s symmetrical structure evaporates like mist. Again I ask, Why are such useless school-exercises reproduced by intelligent publishers? Why should such a fine translator as Mr. Hogarth waste his energy on puerilities?

The same Whys can be applied to another recent publication[7], Doroshevich’s impressions. Doroshevich is the most popular journalist in Russia, a witty, entertaining _feuilletonist_, who employs an original staccato rhythm. But there is no reason under the sun to translate his reportorial impressions of the war fugitives, written for a Moscow daily paper. Their value is purely local. How can we be interested in the management of the Russian relief-points, or their mismanagement? True, at times Doroshevich flashes brilliant impressionistic colors, as in describing the fugitives’ bonfires in the forest. But the rare gems do not justify the journalistic heap.

I am uneasy about these fallacies of the publishers. Few though they are, they may serve the part of a spoonful of vinegar in a pot of honey.

----------

[2] _The Mantle and other stories, by Nikolai Gogol. New York: Frederic A. Stokes._

[3] _Makar’s Dream and other stories, by V. Korolenko. New York: Duffield._

[4] _Twenty-six Men and a Girl, by M. Gorky. New York: Frederic A. Stokes._

[5] _The Duel, by A. Kuprin. New York: Macmillan. The River of Life, by A. Kuprin. Boston: John W. Luce._

[6] _Dostoevsky, by Evgenii Soloviev. New York: Macmillan._

[7] _The Way of the Cross, by Doroshevich. New York: G. P. Putnam._

The Independent Exhibition

LUPO DE BRAILA

The rich aunt with whose aid the Chicago Society of Artists has managed, up to the present, to check all artistic impulses in this city, has lost her magic attraction and power. Her golden smiles and soft pillows have failed lately to captivate and hold. There is a new breed of young artists. They seem to be an energetic lot, and decline to live in the future of promises; and, what is more horrible, they decline to flirt with the rich aunt through the aid of the honorable society.

For many years she was the bubbling liquid within the life-giving bottle. The magic corkscrew was in the safe, the combination known to the initiated few. According to these few, young artists had to go through a certain process of taming and self-effacement before they were gradually given the secret. A certain amount of artistic ignorance plus an ability to pull strings was required of every aspirant. A soft backbone bent by many kicks was also one of the main requirements. “Don’t knock, you’ll break the magic bottle” was their watchword. If you dared to ask questions concerning the sacred duty of the initiated few, you aroused a hatred that took years to melt,—a hatred that seemed impossible in such delicate souls. The few artists who refused to be tamed left the city and have settled in other parts.

And the philanthropic aunt, like all true philanthropists, acquired all she could get and paid the minimum price. The paying was usually accompanied by a lot of pompous actions and was supposed to be received like a first-class iron cross by a common soldier. You see, the young talented artist was actually compelled to bribe the art patron to get to the secret of the combination, and was compelled to listen to all kinds of insults besides. Here are a favorite few: “I have discovered him”; “I helped him to get where he is now”; “If it were not for me....” The artist was also used as a rare orchid at their dinner tables and as Chinese embroidery at unusual occasions. I know one of these patrons who even resorted to threats, when a young and independent sculptor refused to be “discovered.” And such creatures pose as art patrons and connoisseurs, and hold the combination to the life-giving bottle of this city.

As a matter of fact, almost all the prestige and almost all the artistic knowledge possessed by these same patrons was given them by their so-called protegees at starvation prices. However, the patrons are hardly to be blamed for this state of affairs. They were made by well-meaning but mediocre artists whose highest ambitions were foggy imitations of a certain kind of realism practiced abroad when my grandmother’s dolls used up most of her time. The saddest or funniest side of this spectacle is that the patrons have, for the last few years, advanced in understanding beyond the possibilities of the artists who have made them. As you can easily see, a most discouraging and impossible state of affairs. It reached its climax at the last Chicago Artists’ exhibition, when those in control, to use a popular saying, rubbed it in. It was a show of the aged and crippled, and prizes were awarded on the basis of an Old-Age Benefit. It was a slow sickness and positive in retarding all artistic endeavor in this city.

But like a clear and promising path in this dark jungle comes the first International Exhibition of Independent Artists. It is a jury-free exhibition, and every man is allowed to hang two paintings, provided he pays for the space. And it was a strong indictment against the old order. It showed how thoroughly it has managed to kill all originality and individuality in the younger artists. In spite of the fact that it was a jury-free exhibition you could easily see that almost everyone had painted with this little thought in the back of his head: This must please Messrs. Albright, Juergens, and Company. To pick out the few who made a good showing this time would be unfair to the rest. The whole show was conceived and arranged in six weeks, and to me it was more interesting and held more promise than any other show held in this city.

It is a young oak whose knotty branches, like playful fists, shoot in unexpected directions. It grows up near a grey solemn mausoleum. The mausoleum acts as if it does not notice the sturdy youngster; but it knows in its heart, if it has one, that it will soon be hidden in the shadow of this tree’s branches. Virile roots will crack the walls and decay will be the deserved fate.

The Reader Critic

_SHE IS NO FRIEND OF OURS!_

_Arthur Davison Ficke, Davenport, Iowa_:

Will you be so kind as to ask your friend, “Virginia York”, to refrain from re-misprinting for a third time, a bit hacked from my _Café Sketches_? If she finds the poem so interesting, why does she not print it in its entirety, and correctly? Then perhaps her readers could decide just where the joke lies—in the light of “Virginia York’s” Olympian pronouncement that “maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be.” Just because a little learning would be dangerous for her, I shall never disclose to her what the poem _was_ intended to be. Besides, she wouldn’t believe me; for her, a thing has to be either _Lear_ or _Charley’s Aunt_, evidently.

I have harbored doubts as to the value of _vers libre_; but now they are gone. For I see that it does shut out a certain type of mind.

Harriet Dean’s _Pillar_ is admirable! Also Sandburg’s four.

Tell your “sixteen year old boy” that his poem is damn interesting—but to cut out the “only sixteen” and “one could not expect me to know much about poetry” stuff. At sixteen most of us had read all the poetry in existence, and were busy writing epics that were to re-make the world. Tell him to stop being a sixteen-year-old worm, and to get up on his hind legs and bite the stars. Tell him to write arrogantly of this “charming” world he sees. It’s time enough to be humble when one is old.

_THE PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY._

_Daphne and Michael Carr, Columbia, Missouri_:

We have been greatly enraged by reading Mr Charles Zwaska’s article, _An Isaiah without a Christ_, in the April number of THE LITTLE REVIEW. It reminds us of a review of the same book in _Judge_. It ran something like this: “Vachel Lindsey has out a new book on the Art of the Moving Picture. It might be all right, but for the fact that the movie can never be Art.” In just the same sententious way Mr Zwaska seems to be peeved that Lindsay should suggest the possibility of art in a thing which is at present clumsily done. Some one has said that when Miriam led the women of Israel to a dance of rejoicing, all of the women who were too fat or too stiff to dance stood back and deplored the immodesty of their nimble sisters. Perhaps Mr Zwaska is too fat, or too stiff, or too old. I don’t know: may be he is so young that he still creeps and doesn’t think of dancing. For Lindsay has sung out humanly and delightfully a more acceptable ideal of democracy than any American has yet sung. The rest of us would-be artists are creating things that can appeal to a small number. Lindsay is chanting to all America, and all America is listening—we, the artists, as well as the littlest country school-boy.

“Says the swift black horse To the swift white horse: ‘There goes the alarm There goes the alarm. They are hitched, they are off, They are gone in a flash, And they strain at the driver’s iron arm.’”

We shout it when the fire-engines fly down the street. We croon the moon poems together in the evenings, and we chant _The Santa Fé Trail_ as we tramp across country.

Mr Zwaska seems to catch a glimmering of the fact that Lindsay is a rhyming poet, because he is singing to all the people. Why does he not apply this a little farther? Lindsay’s message, as I catch it, is this:

The Moving Picture has in it possibilities of a great art. Furthermore, it is for all America, for every farm boy, for every little dish-washer as well as for every millionaire. Let us make this art as perfect, as inspiring, as possible, since it has a wider influence, be it good, bad, or indifferent, than any other art in the history of humanity. The exquisite Parthenon, Sophocles’s tragedies performed in the theater of Dionysus, were for the Athenians, and for such as could reach Athens. Fortunately, that included a large percentage of the Greeks. But how many Americans, proportionately, can see such wonders as New York has to offer?

When a moving-picture as perfect as the Parthenon has been produced there need be no soul in America who has not seen it.

This being the ideal, we proceed toward its realization. Lindsay points out some means of attaining beauty in the moving-pictures. The producers can, he says, learn from the painters beauties of composition, of symbolism, of mood. Beautiful sculpture can teach the rhythm, the speed, the grace of motion. And architecture will help to interpret big social emotions, such as patriotism and religion in terms of crowds, pageantlike, of landscapes, and, upon occasion, of architecture itself.

But here Mr Zwaska objects. He says that Lindsay is making the moving-picture a parasite on the other arts. I am not going to quote Noah Webster, or Dr Johnson, but it is generally understood that a parasite is an organism that steals its life from its host, weakening the host thereby. Has Mr Lorado Taft, or Mr Frank Lloyd Wright, or Mr Jerome Blum, been robbed of any tittle of artistic ideas, or of artistic technique, or of admiration by Lindsay’s book, or by the producers who have tried so ineffectually to follow his suggestions? I don’t want to quibble with metaphors, but if horticulture is to be the basis of them I should rather say that Lindsay proposes to burbank a wonderful new nectarine art by crossing painting, sculpture, architecture, and pantomime.

At present the difficulty is that there is no one in the producing field with the artistic training, and feeling, and the burning genius withal to produce a wonderful film. Max Reinhardt or Gordon Craig could do it, but even they would be working against the difficulties of a new medium. D’Annunzio did pretty well with _Cabiria_ but——Have you ever read Aeschylus’ _Suppliants_? It was the first and afterwards came _Electra_ and _Œdipus_.

Well, along in his article Mr Zwaska grows boisterous at Lindsay who has, supposedly working on a suggestion from his friend, James Oppenheim, spoken of the possibility of a highly symbolic film production of _The Book of the Dead_. And this because Mrs Moore of Chicago, has worked out beautiful dances, and costumes and libretto for a stage production of the wonderful Nile and Sun myth. Bless Mrs Lou Wall Moore! We love her and her devotion. We have been wonder-struck by the loveliness of her Egyptian costume designs. When she does produce _The Book of the Dead_ we will, Fate permitting, make a pilgrimage from this movie-ridden Missouri town to see it wherever it may he. And I know that we will be rejoiced to be able to do so. But I am sure that dear Mrs Moore would be the last person to object to a film production of _The Book of the Dead_, _IF_ the production be a beautiful one. For, as Lindsay iterates and reiterates, the stage and the moving-pictures _MUST_ be different. Mrs Moore’s production will have “the splendor of color, space, height, distance, and most magical of all, the voice.” And the worthy moving-picture production, when it arrives, will have, in black-and-white symphony, the infinite depths of the sky, waving palm branches, the width of the desert, and above all, beautifully controlled actors, streaming hundreds, directed and co-ordinated as was the Diaghileff corps-de-ballet. And this beauty will travel all over the country, touching, among others, this drama-starved town of Missouri, where we suffer for want of visual beauty.

Mr Zwaska deplores the lack of composition—“moving lines” he calls it—in the moving pictures. He says that he has seen it “only in the flight of gulls (unconscious actors) or in pictures of rivers and trees, and the sea; in short—Nature. But Nature is Nature” wailed Mr Zwaska. And pray, why pervert the facts you bring forth? If the cinematograph can record the beautiful motion of the birds, can it not equally well record the beautiful motion of humans when the producer has learned to direct his actors as M. Fokine directs his dancers? _There_ is room for Art.

Why—why, in the name of all that is lovely, must people howl at any expression of belief in possibilities of a new art? The moving-picture is Shakespearean, Hugoesque, Zolaesque, in its method. We see through it not only Antony and Cleopatra, but the two great hungry struggling groups that each impersonates. We see not only the typical coal-miner and his typical sorrows; we see the mass of his comrades under the same oppression, the same evil conditions. We see better, because more swiftly, than Hugo could paint it with his wonderful vocabulary, Notre Dame de Paris, the symbol, the social motif which embodies in a unity all that the story tries to show of the beauty, the horror, the fate, and the aspirations of the pre-Renaissance, an ever-present condition behind the actors. Are such possibilities to be shoved aside and denied a place among the arts where pageantry is admitted? Is the fact that thousands of bad, atrociously bad, films are turned out to discredit the few well-constructed, symbolic film-plays? Look at our abominable American poster-makers. Does this discredit Mr Blum, whose praises we hear sung?

There is one really vital criticism in Mr Zwaska’s hectic article. That is, upon Lindsay’s “too ruthless a theory” of no music in the movie theater. From the first we shied at that. We are surprised at the author of poems to be read aloud. Another of our admirable countrymen, who qualifies not only as a sociologist, but as a philosopher and a poet, has his say on the subject quite incidentally. I speak of Max Eastman, who, in his _Enjoyment of Poetry_, says, “I have yet to find one in which the reality of the pictures is not enhanced with the beating of an old piano. Nobody notices the piano, nobody remembers what the piano plays, or how badly, but there it is, always keeping up a metre.” The audiences’ “voluntary mind is on the canvas but the music slips all the deeper into their beings, and it makes them live the pictures.” I can well believe Mr Zwaska’s account of the after-midnight picture show. Granted that most picture-show music is terrible, that the electric piano is agonizing, that it is deeply shocking to hear the _Miserere_ when sweet Mary Pickford is acting the Un Bel Di Vedremo scene in Butterfly, the music is far less dreadful than silence, and we talk through it all the same. I do not know a possible remedy, but it is worth the thought of every person interested or disgusted. This is merely one of Vachel Lindsay’s acknowledged “paw paws.”

So here we are at the end of our wrath. And here’s a cheer and a hearty greeting for Lindsay, who is scaling the Pike’s Peak of idealism. And here’s congratulations to Mr Zwaska for directing a few more telescopes at him.

_FOR THE BRAHMINS._

_A Poet, Chicago_:

I am sick of hearing Chicago audiences go into raptures over Brahms. Here is my impression of him as I listened to the last concert of the Chicago Symphony: _Symphony No. 4, E Minor, Opus 98_.

First Movement: Milk and Liver. Second Movement: Bed-bugs crawling over the body of a fat burgher. Occasionally he snorts sonorously (’cellos). Third Movement: Ten-ton joviality—beer, cheese, saurkraut, ham. Grazioso—Ach, du lieber Augustine! The end suggests his Academic: Fourth Movement: a. Hungarian dancing—(Brahms’ only successful field). b. Falls into pompernickel sentimentalism. c. The German policeman (trombones). d. More liver. e. Gas.

_Yours Sylph-fully_:

Please let me “register” my appreciation of your April number. I read the extract from _The Interstate Medical Journal_ with intense purposefulness, have ordered Vance Thompson’s “epoch-making book, _Eat and Grow Thin_”, and begin to feel that I am getting even more than I subscribed for.

Incidentally, didn’t you love Carl Sandburg’s _Gone_? Chick Lorimer! What a name! It makes one almost sorry to be “respectable”, somehow—it’s so full of gayety and courage!

Statement of Ownership, Management, Circulation, Etc., required by the Act of August 24, 1912

of _THE LITTLE REVIEW_ published monthly at _Chicago, Ill._ for April 1st, 1916.

Editor, _Margaret C. Anderson, 834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago_.

Managing Editor, _Same_

Business Manager, _Same_

Publisher, _Same_

Owners: (If a corporation, give its name and the names and addresses of stockholders holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of stock. If not a corporation, give names and addresses of individual owners.)

_Margaret C. Anderson 834 Fine Arts Building, Chicago_

Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders, holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: _None._

_MARGARET C. ANDERSON_,

Sworn to and subscribed before me this _31st_ day of _March, 1916_.

_MITCHELL DAWSON, Notary Public._ (My commission expires _December 20, 1917_.)

ART SCHOOL or ART FACTORY WHICH?

Charles A. Kinney’s story of his fight for individual rights in the Art Institute:

A few of the topics Mr. Kinney will discuss:

The seven cases in the law courts—what they mean to students and faculty.

The Art Student Fellowship organization—why it was forced on the students of the Institute.

Why faculty members were forced to support it on penalty of losing their positions.

Organization and discipline, or art spirit? Which is most essential in an art school?

Student activities—shall the Dean or the students control them?

Art Schools—shall men trained in Business or men trained in Art control them?

What encouragement is there for sincere artists?

When at least half the scholarships are awarded because of influence and favoritism rather than meritorious work?

When faculty members of the Institute have practically no independence?

Mr. Kinney’s article will appear in the June issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.

THE FLAME

A JOURNAL FOR THE NEW AGE

Irwin Granich and Van K. Allison, Editors. 3 Bellingham Place, Boston, Mass.

“The Flame” is to be a monthly journal of revolution, soon to take life. It is to burn against oppression and authority everywhere, and is to be as pure and merciless as the flower of light after which it is named.

We want you to help us make “The Flame.” It is not to be one of those vehicles for the delivery of the vast thoughts of an unrecognized “genius,” but a little forum where every revolutionist of high heart and purpose can speak. We can pay nothing, of course. Cartoons, poems, stories, sketches, tracts, philosophies, news reports—all will be welcomed.

No creed or philosophy will be barred from our columns if only its devotee writes in a beautiful and furious and yes-saying gesture. The editorials will be flavored by the anarchy of the publishers.

THE DRAMA For May Offers Two Plays

REMY DE GOURMONT, whose dramatic work has never been accessible in English. The translation has been made by the celebrated Imagist poet, RICHARD ALDINGTON, who contributes also a skillful critique of de Gourmont’s work. The plays are printed by an authorization given a few weeks before the playwright’s death.

Among the other articles is one by Alexander Bakshy, an associate of the Russian producer, Meyerhold, on The Cinematograph as Art. In this the author shows that the great field open to the “movies” has not even been discovered by the film producer of today.

Mr. Charles Lemmi contributes a brilliant discussion of The Italian Stage of Today, not so much a study of the individual plays as an attempt to analyze and explain the forces in the present-day Italian theatre.

The Hull House Players, an organization of more than local fame, is the subject of a brief history by the founder and director, Laura Dainty Pelham.

Many other articles on the current problems of the drama, reviews and bibliographies complete the number.

736 Marquette Building CHICAGO

Three Dollars Per Year

Two Dollars Per Year to Members of The Drama League of America

Seventy-five Cents Per Copy

PIANO TRIUMPHANT

The artistic outgrowth of forty-five years of constant improvement—a piano conceived to better all that has proven best in others.

GEO. P. BENT GRAND

Could you but compare it with all others, artistically it must be your choice. Each day proves this more true.

Geo. P. Bent Grand, Style “A”—a small Grand, built for the home—your home.

GEO. P. BENT COMPANY

Manufacturers of Artistic Pianos Retailers of Victrolas 214 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago

Transcriber’s Notes

Advertisements were collected at the end of the text.

The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

[p. 3]: ... treacle on bread over all these different stylic bases, this operation requiring ... ... treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, this operation requiring ...

[p. 44]: ... What encouragement is there for sincere artists ... ... What encouragement is there for sincere artists? ...