Part 1
THE LITTLE REVIEW
A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS MAKING NO COMPROMISE WITH THE PUBLIC TASTE
Margaret Anderson Publisher
AUGUST, 1917
Seven Poems: William Butler Yeats Upon a Dying Lady Certain Artists Bring Her Dolls and Drawings She Turns the Dolls’ Faces to the Wall Her Friends Bring Her a Christmas Tree List of Books: Comment by Ezra Pound Passages from Letters of John B. Yeats James Joyce’s Novel Certain Noble Plays of Japan Theatre Muet John Rodker Stark Realism Ezra Pound Verses Iris Barry What the Public Doesn’t Want M. C. A. Orientale Louis Gilmore The Reader Critic
Copyright, 1917, by Margaret Anderson.
Published Monthly MARGARET ANDERSON, Editor EZRA POUND, Foreign Editor 24 West Sixteenth Street
15 Cents a Copy $1.50 a Year
Entered as second-class matter at P. O., New York, N. Y.
THE LITTLE REVIEW
VOL. IV. AUGUST 1917 No. 4
Seven Poems
William Butler Yeats
1 Upon a Dying Lady
With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face. She would not have us sad because she is lying there, And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter lit, Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her, Matching our broken-hearted wit against her wit, Thinking of saints and of Petronius Arbiter.
2 Certain Artists Bring Her Dolls and Drawings
Bring where our Beauty lies A new modelled doll, or drawing With a friend’s or an enemy’s Features, or may be showing Her features when a tress Of dull red hair was flowing Over some silken dress Cut in the Turkish fashion, Or it may be like a boy’s. We have given the world our passion We have naught for death but toys.
3 She Turns the Dolls’ Faces to the Wall
Because to-day is some religious festival They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese, Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall —Pedant in passion, learned in old courtesies, Vehement and witty she had seemed—, the Venetian lady Who had seemed to glide to some intrigue in her red shoes, Her domino, her panniered skirt copied from Longhi, The meditative critic, all are on their toes— Even our Beauty with her Turkish trousers on.
Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.
4
She is playing like a child And penance is the play, Fantastical and wild Because the end of day Shows her that someone soon Will come from the house, and say— Though play is but half done— “Come in and leave the play”.
5
She has not grown uncivil As narrow natures would And called the pleasures evil Happier days thought good; She knows herself a woman No red and white of a face, Or rank, raised from a common Unreckonable race, And how should her heart fail her Or sickness break her will With her dead brother’s valour For an example still.
6
When her soul flies to the predestined dancing-place (I have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made Amid the dreams of youth) let her come face to face, While wondering still to be a shade, with Grania’s shade, All but the perils of the woodland flight forgot, And that made her Dermuid dear, and some old cardinal Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a sunny spot Who had murmured of Giorgione at his latest breath— Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Barhaim all Who lived in shameless joy and laughed into the face of Death.
7 Her Friends Bring Her a Christmas Tree
Pardon, great enemy, Without an angry thought We’ve carried in our tree, And here and there have bought Till all the boughs are gay, And she may look from the bed On pretty things that may Please a fantastic head. Give her a little grace What if a laughing eye Have looked into your face— It is about to die.
List of Books
Comment by Ezra Pound
1
Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats. _Cuala Press, Dundrum, Dublin. 12 shillings._
To begin with one of the more recent; I have already sent a longer review of John Yeats’ letters to _Poetry_ on the ground that this selection from them contains much valuable criticism of the art to which that periodical is “devoted”. I again call attention to the book for its humanism, for its author’s freedom from the disease of the age. It is good, for America in particular, that some even-minded critic, writing in detachment, without thought of publication, should have recorded his meditations. There can be no supposition that he hoped to start a social reform. Carlos Williams wrote a few years ago:
“Nowhere the subtle, everywhere the electric”. Quibblers at once began a wrangle about the subtlety of electricity. We can not massacre the _ergoteur_ wholesale, but we might at least learn to ignore him; to segregate him into such camps as the “New Statesman” and the “New Republic”; to leave him with his system of “graduated grunts” and his critical “apparatus”, his picayune little slot-machine.
John Yeats writes as a man who has refused to be stampeded; he has not been melted into the crowd; the “button-moulder” has not remade him. He praises solitude now and then, but he has not withdrawn himself into a pseudo-Thoreauian wilderness, nor attempted romantesque Borroviana. Lest we “of this generation and decade” imagine that all things began with us, it is well to note that a man over seventy has freed himself from the effects of the “Great Exposition” and of Carlyle and Wordsworth and Arnold—perhaps he never fell under the marasmus.
I have met men even older than Mr. John Yeats, men who remembered the writings of the French eighteenth century. They had endured the drought, and kept a former age’s richness. When I say “remembered the writings of the French eighteenth century,” I mean that they had received the effect of these writings as it were at first hand, they had got it out of the air; there is a later set who took it up as a speciality, almost a fanaticism; they are different. Then there came the bad generation; a generation of sticks. They are what we have had to put up with.
2
James Joyce’s Novel. _The Egoist, London._ _B. W. Huebsch, New York._
_A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ was so well reviewed in the April number of this paper that I might perhaps refrain from further comment. I have indeed little to add, but I would reaffirm all that I have yet said or written of the book, beginning in _The Egoist_, continuing in _The Drama_, etc. Joyce is the best prose writer of my decade. Wyndham Lewis’s _Tarr_ is the only contemporary novel that can compare with _A Portrait_; _Tarr_ being more inventive, more volcanic, and “not so well written.” And that last comparison is perhaps vicious. It would be ridiculous to measure Dostoevsky with the T-Square of Flaubert. Equally with Joyce and Lewis, the two men are so different, the two methods are so different that it is rash to attempt comparisons. Neither can I attempt to predict which will find the greater number of readers; all the readers who matter will certainly read both of the books.
As for Joyce, perhaps Jean de Bosschère will pardon me if I quote from a post card which he wrote me on beginning _A Portrait_. It was, naturally, not intended for publication, but it is interesting to see how a fine piece of English first strikes the critic from the continent.
“Charles Louis Philippe n’a pas fait mieux. Joyce le dépasse par le style qui n’est plus _le_ style. Cette nudité de tout ornement rhétorique, de toute forme idiomatique (malgré la plus stricte sévérité contre le détour ou l’esthétique) et beaucoup d’autres qualités fondamentales font de ce livre la plus sérieuse oeuvre anglaise que j’aie lue. Les soixante premières pages sont incomparables, ...”
The “most serious”, or to translate it more colloquially: “It matters more than any other English book I have read”. De Bosschère has not yet published any criticism of Joyce, but he is not the only established critic who has written to me in praise of _A Portrait ..._ Joyce has had a remarkable “press,” but back of that and much more important is the fact that the critics have praised with conviction, a personal and vital conviction.
3
Certain Noble Plays of Japan. _Cuala Press, Dublin. 12 shillings._
Noh, or Accomplishment. _Knopf, New York, $2.75. Macmillan, London._
The earlier and limited edition of this work of Ernest Fenollosa contains four plays, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats. The larger edition contains fifteen plays and abridgements and all of Fenollosa’s notes concerning the Japanese stage that I have yet been able to prepare for publication. This Japanese stuff has not the solidity, the body, of Rihaku (Li Po). It is not so important as the Chinese work left by Fenollosa, but on the other hand it is infinitely better than Tagore and the back-wash from India. Motokiyo and the fourteenth-century Japanese poets are worth more than Kabir. Fenollosa has given us more than Tagore has. Japan is not a Chinese decadence. Japan “went on with things” after China had quit. And China “quit” fairly early: T’ang is the best of her poetry, and after Sung her art grows steadily weaker.
It would be hard to prove that the Japanese does not attempt (in his art, that is) to die in aromatic pain of the cherry blossom; but his delicacy is not always a weakness. His preoccupation with nuances may set one against him. Where a Chinese poet shows a sort of rugged endurance, the Japanese dramatist presents a fine point of punctilio. He is “romanticist” against the “classical” _and_ poetic matter-of-factness of the Chinese writer. The sense of punctilio is, so far as I can make out, a Japanese characteristic, and a differentiating characteristic, and from it the Japanese poetry obtains a quality of its own.
The poetic sense, almost the sole thing which one can postulate as underlying all great poetry and indispensible to it, is simply the sense of overwhelming emotional values. (For those who must have definitions: Poetry is a verbal statement of emotional values. A poem is an emotional value verbally stated.) In the face of this sense of emotional values there are no national borders. One can not consider Rihaku as a foreigner, one can only consider him human. One can not consider Odysseus, or Hamlet, or Kagekiyo as foreigners, one can only consider them human.
At one point in the Noh plays, namely in the climax of _Kagekiyo_ we find a truly Homeric laughter, and I do not think the final passages of this play will greatly suffer by any comparison the reader will be able to make. If I had found nothing else in Fenollosa’s notes I should have been well paid for the three years I have spent on them.
If I dispraise Tagore now I can only say that I was among the first to praise him before he became a popular fad. The decadence of Tagore may be measured. His first translations were revised by W. B. Yeats; later translations by Evelyn Underhill, facilis et perfacilis descensus, and now they say he has taken to writing in English, a language for which he has no special talent. If his first drafts contained such clichés as “sunshine in my soul”, he was at least conscious at that time of his defects. Praise was rightly given to his first poems because it was demonstrated and demonstrable that they were well done in Bengali, i. e. that they were written in a precise and objective language, and in a metric full of interest and variety. The popular megaphone took up phrases made to define the originals and applied them to the translations. Imagine a criticism of Herrick and Campion applied to a French or German prose translation of these poets, however excellent as a translation in prose! As the vulgarizer hates any form of literary excellence, he was well content with obscuring the real grounds for praise. The unimportant element, that which has made Tagore the prey of religiose nincompoops, might easily have passed without comment. However, it has proved the baccillus of decay. Sir Rabindranath having been raised in a country where the author need not defend himself against blandishment ... I mean the force of the babu press is scarcely enough to turn anyone’s head or his judgement.... Sir Rabindranath is not particularly culpable. His disciples may bear the blame as best they may; along with his publishers. But no old established publishing house cares a damn about literature; and once Tagore had become a commercial property, they could scarcely be expected to care for his literary integrity.
He might still wash and be clean; that is to say there is still time for him to suppress about three fourths of the stuff he has published in English, and retain some sort of literary position.
Another man who stands in peril is Edgar Masters. He did a good job in _The Spoon River Anthology_. What is good in it is good in common with like things in the Greek anthology, Villon and Crabbe: plus Masters’s sense of real people. The work as a whole needs rewriting. The difference between a fine poem and a mediocre one is often only the fact that the good poet could force himself to rewrite. “No appearance of labour?” No, there need be no appearance of labour. I have seen too many early drafts of known and accepted poems not to know the difference between a draft and the final work. Masters must go back and take the gobbetts of magazine cliché out of his later work; he must spend more time on _Spoon River_ if he wants his stuff to last as Crabbe’s _Borough_ has lasted. There is a great gulph between a “successful” book and a book that endures; that endures even a couple of centuries.
I would not at any cost minimize what Edgar Masters has done, but his fight is not yet over.
4
The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, by Arnold Dolmetsch. _Novello, London. W. H. Gray, New York._
Arnold Dolmetsch’s book has been out for some time. No intelligent musician would willingly remain without it. No intelligent musician is wholly without interest in the music of those two centuries. But this book is more than a technical guide to musicians. It is not merely “full of suggestion” for the thorough artist of any sort, but it shows a way whereby the musician and the “intelligent” can once more be brought into touch. If Dolmetsch could be persuaded to write a shilling manual for the instruction of children _and_ of mis-taught elders it might save the world’s ears much torture. Dolmetsch’s initial move was to demonstrate that the music of the old instruments could not be given on the piano; any more than you could give violin music on the piano. His next was to restore the old instruments to us. There is too much intelligence in him and his book adequately to be treated in a paragraph. I am writing of him at greater length in _The Egoist_. His citations from Couperin show the existence of vers libre in early eighteenth-century music. I do not however care unduly to stir up the rather uninteresting discussion as to the archaeology of “free” verse.
5
Prufrock and Other Observations, by T. S. Eliot. _The Egoist, London. One shilling._
The book-buyer can not do better.
Frost tinges the jasper terrace, A fine stork, a black stork sings in the heaven, Autumn is deep in the valley of Hako, The sad monkeys cry out in the midnight, The mountain pathway is lonely.
... The red sun blots on the sky the line of the colour-drenched mountains. The flowers rain in a gust; it is no racking storm that comes over this green moor, which is afloat, as it would seem, in these waves.
Wonderful is the sleeve of the white cloud, whirling such snow here.
—_From “Noh”, by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound._
Theatre Muet
John Rodker
I Interior
Black Curtain.
In one corner the picture of a door.
A man in black tights (so that only his face is seen and the outlines of his body divined) crosses the stage.
He passes through the door.
We follow him because the curtain is raised.
Black room.
Again he crosses the stage and striking a match, lights a gas jet at his own height with great deliberation.
* * * * *
Man goes off unseen.
Three chairs become apparent.
They are in a line—two kitchen chairs—
once white—dirty.
One—old—beautiful—
highly polished.
In the flickering light the three chairs grow
unutterably mournful.
II Hunger
The Celestial Quire.
The lambent sea-green flames that are the celestial quire burn shrilly, striving....
They describe the circle which is Kosmos, swirling shrilly.
When they writhe it is outside three-dimensioned space.
Forever they return in their orbits.
* * * * *
Forever they return in their orbits.
If they writhe at all, it is outside the three-dimensioned spaces.
They do not touch each other. They do not clash with each other.
* * * * *
Nor is there light in Space.
III
A room. Sombre faces of 1, 2, and 4 (women) in profile.
Man (3) with back to audience.
They are seated round a gas fire.
Glow seen through legs and chair legs.
A silent duel in progress between 1 and 3 seated diagonally.
2 and 4, more or less neutral, obscure issue.
* * * * *
Conversation clockwise (need not be materialised).
1. “What shall it be then, Cerise?”
2. “It was a lovely party.”
3. “Pouf” (lights a cigarette).
4. Sighs (blow out smoke).
Silence.
Conversation resumed. Same things more or less. The man’s back becomes inimical, hating 1. His back muscles prepare to spring and so ripple to crouch.
1 trembles, fearful. Tries to talk to show her nonchalance, fails. Her heart beats thud, thud, thud.
2 and 4 neutral, disturb inimic waves.
The man loses his tenseness. Obscurely he collects all his forces for a final overwhelming, but they dissipate among 2 and 4 (neutral). 4 now becomes sympathetic to him and so drains more vitality. 1 stiffens, gathers that 2 is her ally.
Also 4 unconsciously.
Man rises to his feet. For a moment tries to gather vitality through firm feet and twitching fingers.
His shoulders fall, he stumbles out.
Three sighs of relief.
* * * * *
Conversation:
1. What shall it be?
2. Such a lot of men!
* * * * *
Hours later:
1 in bed. Mass of shadow on white sheets.
Cannot sleep, tosses about.
Attack of nerves.
One feels it has gone on for hours.
She seeks relief.
IV To S. E. R.
Man and Woman, face to face. Same height. Woman facing audience.
Woman mad, breathing heavily, whites of eyes showing, striking man in face, once ... twice.
His back is to audience. No muscle of it moves. (Inert—a crumbling block of salt).
Her madness drops. His passivity makes her doubt his reality—then her own.
In the uncertain pause, she is again assured of her reality.
More blows, same effects.
Tears blind her, she dashes them away.
More blows, face distorted.
Still same effects.
The ubiquitous man, appearing and reappearing (real and phantom) before her strained eyes makes them water.
She feels it a weakness—swallows. Another weakness.
Stares dully at the figure before her.
Impotence realised—weeps.
Weeps loudly and slobberingly and hopelessly like a whipped child.
Weeps more loudly yet, more hopelessly: with distorted muscles, copious tears and lengthening and coarsening of upper lip.
Such lack of control is intolerable.
Members of the audience want to strike each other.
Audience Intellectual and otherwise.
A few women weep too, in identical pitch.
It becomes a panic spreading suddenly.
The men leave quickly, swallowing hard.
One man throws a brickbat at the inert back, then another.
Others do the same.
When he sinks stoned, expiring—a yell of exultation rises from the men—long sighs of relief from the women.
“ANTICHRIST”
Outside the Theatre—weeping: fitful, intolerable—mounts from street to street and star to star in festoons of distinguished and unutterable melancholy.
V
1.
Thick twilight. A long row of houses, several storeys high.
All have area railings and steps leading up to the front door.
One light in a top window a third of the way down the block.
A drab yellow light also works through glass of street door.
A woman walks (bent) on the pavement in front of these houses hovering undecidedly, evidently fearful.
Then she draws herself together and climbs the steps leading to the lit door.
She waits shuffling from foot to foot, seeming undecided—(she has rung the bell).
The door opens a little, a wedge of light moves out and a dark figure appears for a moment breaking it. They talk for a few seconds, and both enter. The door shuts. A wedge of darkness passes across the lit panes.
The light works out tranquilly again.
2.
Stairs dimly lit, narrow, carpeted. The figure climbs, climbs, climbs—foreboding, distrust and fear at every point.
3.
A room—walls dark red; small, stuffy, unbearable.
The woman stands uneasily just inside the door—waiting.
The room is full of impending tragedy.
Influences are in the room and in the next room.
Tragedy becomes apparent in the woman’s pose.
She waits.
Nothing happens.
With dramatic suddenness, her body droops—she cringes.
(Nothing, nothing, NOTHING happens).
Curtain—very quietly, like a sigh, so that it is some seconds before audience realises that play is over.
Stark Realism
This Little Pig Went to Market (_A Search for the National Type_)
Ezra Pound
This little American went to Vienna. He said it was “Gawd’s Own City”. He knew all the bath-houses and dance halls. He was there for a week. He never forgot it—No, not even when he became a Captain in the Gt. American Navy and spent six months in Samoa.
This little American went West—to the Middle-West, where he came from. He smoked cigars, for cigarettes are illegal in Indiana, that land where Lew Wallace died, that land of the literary tradition. He ate pie of all sorts, and read the daily papers—especially those of strong local interest. He despised European culture as an indiscriminate whole.
Peace to his ashes.
This little American went to the great city Manhattan. He made two and half dollars per week. He saw the sheeny girls on the East Side who lunch on two cents worth of bread and sausages, and dress with a flash on the remainder. He nearly died of it. Then he got a rise. He made fifteen dollars per week selling insurance. He wore a monocle with a tortoise-shell rim. He dressed up to “Bond St.” No lord in The Row has surpassed him.
He was a damn good fellow.
This little American went to Oxford. He rented Oscar’s late rooms. He talked about the nature of the Beautiful. He swam in the wake of Santyana. He had a great cut glass bowl full of lilies. He believed in Sin. His life was immaculate. He was the last convert to catholicism.