Chapter III: Part 3

As for the plays—I almost forgot I was reviewing them—Wedekind explodes volcanically on the subject he treats, and blows the question mark out of woman. He takes all the crimes a policeman ever heard of, rolls them up in a package of soft warm flesh and labels it “Woman.” He cracks his showman’s whip and calls attention to the texture of her skin and the white meat of her body. And then he sends her forth to ruin, to sweep like a polluted and wreck-strewn wave through life, breaking at last in a dirty crest on a foreign shore and leaving a scum behind her. Are these the worst things Wedekind could find to label woman—incest, butchery, lecherous animalism, bloody business and abandonment? Who but a sick idealist would pick a careless and care-free prostitute as a flaming example of woman at her worst? And is the power to destroy the most terrible power woman possesses?

Wedekind imagines that people idealize sex and hold it a beautiful force. Poor Wedekind, where did he get such an idea? And then he imagines that in reality sex passion is a smashing force that knocks people into each other’s arms, tumbles their heavens, smears their lives. He imagines that men and women love without thought, mate with the irresponsibility of hyenas. And imagining all this Wedekind creates a sort of droll fiend to prove it. Behold her—a creature to confound saints and sinners, to tear the beauty out of men’s souls and dance with muddied feet upon the finery of life. He dangles her before our eyes, naked and glorious—the diseased siren of the ages. And he calls her Lulu, the earth spirit.

He introduces her fresh and joyous and vibrating with tabooed emotions. She is in love with her own beauty. Her body thrills her with its whiteness and its movement. She already has felt its power. Were I in these plays I would as soon think of kissing Lulu as biting a stick of dynamite. But I am not an ideal conception. There are other men—Wedekind digs them up from every corner of life—who fall at her feet and who shoot each other and themselves for the sake of being contaminated by her caresses. Queer men, idealists. They tumble about her, whining, cursing, chanting, forswearing their Gods, their souls and their vanities.

And she tumbles with them, from one precipice down to another, faithful only to her nervous system. Her only virtue is a complete absence of the quality. If only Wedekind had invested her with a single human moral conviction—merely for the sake of completing her diabolically. If only he had made it possible for her to sin against something. But she hasn’t anything to sin against—not a conviction, not a moral. In this country she would be tried for her murders and treasons and sent to an asylum for incomplete people. What she does she does simply. When this hussy kills the father who owned her in order to save herself from his threats and then throws herself laughingly into the arms of the son, she does it all without malice. It is all natural, spontaneous. When she rebukes her own father for making love to her (she tells him he’s getting too old for such tricks), when she murders, deceives and pollutes she hasn’t any feeling of doing wrong, any reaction except one of satisfaction. If this isn’t an ideal I’d like to know what is. If everybody was like she is there would be no sorrow or suffering in the world. We would all be simple animals dashing around, biting each other, drinking from each other’s throats, feeling pain only when our nerves were touched and joy only when our nerves were touched. Wedekind imagines that this state is the true reflection of today. He exaggerates what according to his experience may be a logical prejudice and hurls it brutally behind the footlights and into the bookcase.

Lulu, bedraggled, walking the streets of London in the rain, looking for prey, Lulu wheedling quarters out of ragged sensualists, hiding her father and her lover and the woman who desires her while she “entertains” her victims, Lulu spreading disease, and then Lulu running wildly around the dirty garret in her chemise pursued and killed by a red-eyed, nail-bitten Jack the Ripper—that is the end of woman. Poor Wedekind. What an exaggerated opinion of virtue he must have,—an idealist’s. There is but one more thing. It is Wedekind’s master stroke.

He introduces a note of unselfishness and poetry as a climax. Lulu lies stabbed by the delighted and enthusiastic Ripper. And kneeling before the picture of her in her hey-dey is the “Countess,” the woman who loved her—a homo-sexualist—an irritating creature.

“I love you, you are the star in my heavens,” she cries purely. I don’t remember whether the Ripper kills her or not. _What a mess!_

B. H.

_Rabindranath Tagore: A Biographical Study, by Ernest Rhys._ _New
York: The Macmillan Company._

Shrill Chicago and thousands of similar examples of Western civilization have more to learn from a book of this sort than can be readily explained. Taking Chicago as fairly representative of the swiftest modernity, one must blush for the city of “I Will” whenever he picks up Ernest Rhys’s keen and quiet study of the talked-about Hindu. The blushes are for the vast herds whose only ventures upon new paths are to trample and set back, whose only ideals center in or near the stomach. In the white light of this book—reflected radiance from a first-magnitude luminary—Chicago and her kind appear as blundering heedless egotists who never listen. Their ears have not developed, their eyes are turned to the ground. “I Will”—what? To grow strong, high-minded, clean of heart, and wise of soul? Anything but this.

Tagore, by his very tolerance and avoidance of condemnation, seems vehemently to remind the thinker of all this—by force of the law of contrast. The clear-eyed Easterner even points out a scant virtue or two in Western civilization, such as the value of mastering materials, which the Westerner himself overlooks when in self-defense; and no blame is placed on the feverish civilizees. Tagore moves in a state of peace which is the very essence of activity, and has no part in the fanatics’ plan which begins with lassitude and ends in stagnation. He is a man of action, forceful, definite, wasting no energy nor sparing the use of it. Modern methods of doing things and “getting there” become mere feeble noises by comparison. This is not the tragedy, that Westerners blunder and fail,—the East has its failures,—but it lies in the fact that America arrogantly chooses not to listen, not to see and learn. A few scattered listeners must catch the harmonies intended for a whole nation, the majority having been sophisticated to extinction. The herds in Chicago and elsewhere will go on indefinitely in their own swaggering way, blind and deaf, sure beyond correction that the chief desirability lies in digestion, decoration, and diversion ... while Rabindranath Tagore and the beautiful element he personifies are ever-present, waiting within reach of all, working out the biggest things in the world, and living the last word of true joy.

Ernest Rhys is very gentle and sparing in making comparisons. He leaves this to his reader, and is mainly occupied with the re-creation of the steady magnetic atmosphere which is a natural attribute of Tagore. The paragraphs devoted to the boys’ school at Bolpur give one a feeling of something lost, at least to those who thirsted through the schools of the U. S. Rhys is successful in giving out an excellent idea of the great man and his works.

HERMAN SCHUCHERT.

Militarism is the German spirit.

Militarism is the self-revelation of German heroism.

Militarism is the heroic spirit raised to the spirit of war. It
is Potsdam and Weimar in their highest combination. It is _Faust_
and _Zarathustra_ and Beethoven’s score in the trenches.

For even the _Eroica_ and the _Egmont_ Overture are nothing but
the truest militarism. And just because all virtues which lend
such a high value to militarism are revealed to the fullest
extent in war, we are filled with militarism, regarding it as
something holy—as the holiest thing on earth—_Werner Zombart_.

Have You Read——?

(_In this column will be given each month a list of current
magazine articles which, as an intelligent being, you will not
want to miss._)

The Imagist Number of _The Egoist_, May 1.

H. D. and Imagism, by May Sinclair. _The Egoist_, June 1.

Redemption and Dostoevsky, by Rebecca West. _The New Republic_, June 5.

Back of Billy Sunday, by John Reed. _The Metropolitan_, May.

The Old Woman’s Money, by James Stephens. _The Century_, May.

Quack Novels and Democracy, by Owen Wister. _The Atlantic_, June.

Can You Read——?

(_In this column will be given each month a resumé of current
cant which, as an intelligent being, you will go far to avoid._)

Fiction reviews by Llewellyn Jones in _The Chicago Evening Post_.

A typical literary judgment from _The Dial_: “But, in the main, his wholesomely harsh utterances ought to be, and must be, in some degree, tonic and bracing and curative.”

An editorial from _The New Republic_, a journal of opinion whose function, we believe, is to circulate ideas:

During the past ten months the German Ambassador at Washington
has done nothing to promote a better understanding between his
own government and nation and the American government and nation.
He is consequently all the more to be congratulated upon his
behavior at a moment of acute and dangerous contention between
the United States and Germany. He has on his own initiative and
perhaps at his own risk intervened on behalf of a possibly
peaceful solution of the differences between the two governments.
He has sought by means of a frank talk with President Wilson to
break through the barrier of misunderstanding which the exchange
of notes was building up between the two governments and to
re-establish a genuine vehicle of communication. The conversation
may not lead to agreement, but at the top of a peculiarly
forbidding crisis it has at least made an agreement seem not
impossible. Everybody who detests war, everybody who hopes that
the friendship between the United States and Germany will not be
involved in the wreckage of the hideous conflict, will be
grateful to Count von Bernstorff for his enterprise.

The Reader Critic

_Mrs. Jean Cowdrey Norton, Hempstead, Long Island_:

Since coming in contact with THE LITTLE REVIEW last December, I have more than enjoyed each issue with your own impulsive, warm-hearted, dauntless personality coming through its pages; and it is for that reason I do not hesitate to ask you for an explanation of a sentence that you wrote in the April number, which led me to subscribe for that horrible output, viz., _The Masses_. You pronounced it indispensable to intelligent living. On that I sent in a subscription, and whereas I am not so awfully stupid I cannot understand how you, who are evidently an artist with high ideals, could possibly have such a magazine on your desk. The cartoons are so untrue, so damnably vulgar,—which good art never is,—the insistent harping on the shadows of life, the exaggerated outlook which tinges the whole paper—quite as one-sided on its side as other papers are on theirs; all of which I know must be in complete contradiction to your self. It fills me with astonishment. We acknowledge with our ever-increasing complex civilization that we must more than ever perhaps help each other; but I don’t just understand which class this perfectly rotten sheet is intended to reach. If it’s the so-called down trodden, they are apt to have so much unhappiness any way I should say a good brace up does more good than harping on injustice in general; as for the class that “does not think,” its inartistic drawings alone would be enough to queer it. When I am down and out—I happen to be a working woman too—I most decidedly _do not_ want to be made more down and out by more woes, that often spring from lack of intelligence, that both rich and poor suffer alike from. You will see I believe in the responsibility of the individual, that you Socialists rather avoid. I do not expect you to answer this letter, but I shall look in THE LITTLE REVIEW for a stray line that will give me some idea of your outlook.

[I have so much to say in answer to this letter, and so little
time to say it that I have asked someone who shares my view to do
it for me. Mr. Davis says it much better than I could, anyhow.
And I must add that I am not a Socialist. I am an Anarchist—which
means, an Individualist; which means everything that people
think it doesn’t mean.—_The Editor._]

_F. Guy Davis, Chicago_:

I will try to indicate very briefly why I think so much of _The Masses_. The group that is getting it out are real students who know the crowd with all its hope and despair, much better than the crowd knows itself. They are interpreting the crowd. The mass would never like _The Masses_. It is too true. It is not got up for them. _The Cosmopolitan_ is the ideal of the mass. _The Masses_ is for the few brave spirits who want to know life as it is, the shadows as well as the flights up into the sunshine. _The Masses_ to my mind has as broad a range of feeling reflected in its pages as any magazine I know of. Humor, tragedy, light, shade, drama, color, yes, and mud too, as you say. But isn’t mud a part of life? In some respects mud is the condition of life. The great need of the sensitive mind of today is contact with the vital life-giving things and ideas which come from the earth. The life of such a mind is like the life of a plant. Its roots must go down beneath the surface or it will die. _The Masses_ to my mind is the spirit of the earth put into magazine form, and to read it understandingly is to put the roots of the soul down into the earth where they should be if a healthy growth is desired. One could get too much of that contact of course, but that is another matter.

_FREE POETS v. FREE VERSE._

[As Mr. Carter suggests in the following letter, reprinted from
_The Egoist_, I hope THE LITTLE REVIEW agree with Mr. Aldington’s
point of view. I hope the latter may be induced to answer Mr.
Carter at length in the same issue.—_The Editor._]

_To the Editor, The Egoist_

Madam,—I notice that in his contribution to the Imagist number of _The Egoist_ Mr. Harold Monro, writing on the history of the Imagist movement, states that the movement owes its origin to the large discovery of “Poetry as _an_ art” [my italics]. He then proceeds to point out that the Imagist verse fails as poetry not because the writers love poetry less, but because they love expression more. Being what it is it would be no better if Tennyson had written it, and no worse if it proved to be by, say, Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Indeed, it is not poetry any more than little Congreve’s tiresome stream of depreciation is comedy, despite what certain hopeless apprentice play critics assert to the contrary. Poetry, I suppose Mr. Monro would say, is not expression but the thing expressed. All this is good and true. But Mr. Monro fails to make one thing quite clear. The Imagists have been mistaken in their very conception of poetry which lives alone by the power to see it as Art and not as “_an art_.” I am convinced that some at least of the Imagists are not without the secret of this power, and if they will be guided by the vision they gain thereby, to the extent of forgetting their literary erudition, it will transform their conception of poetry. The strict literature at which they aim is not proper poetry. In fact, literary technicians do not, as a rule, write poetry for the simple reason that even if they dream the poet’s dream of reality they at once proceed to smother it under literary form. We must look to those rich in poetical experience, and free to express it, for the true expression of poetry. In plain words, “Poetry as _an_ art” (that is, as expression or form) is not the same as Poetry as Art (that is, the thing expressed). The distinction is so big and vital and so necessary to be maintained at this moment, that I propose to consider it in an article in THE LITTLE REVIEW. I hope to prove that what poetry needs nowadays is free poets, not free verse.

HUNTLY CARTER.

[As the nearest available Imagist, perhaps I may be permitted to
comment (without prejudice to the other Imagists) on Mr. Carter’s
letter. I am not quite sure that I know what Mr. Carter means,
but I think he means that it is useless for a man to study
classic quantity and mediaeval rhyme and modern free verse, if he
has no particular impulse or mood to make those studies valuable
as a means of expression. If that is what Mr. Carter means I
agree with him. I will also agree that it is useless to try and
teach a dumb man to lecture or a lame man to break the hundred yards
record. If a man is to lecture, if he is to be an athlete, we take
for granted that in the first case he has ideas and a certain
eloquence, and in the second a good physique and an aptitude for
sprinting. Mr. Carter would be a rotten trainer if he didn’t make
his man diet, take cold baths and long walks and an occasional
sprint; he ought even to make him do a little boxing. I feel,
somehow, that Mr. Carter never went in for violent exercise or
that he relied upon his “Soul-Flow” or “Art-Ebb” to get him
through.

Now poetry is not so very unlike athletics. You may have no aptitude
for it, and then all the training in the world won’t get you in
first; you may shape very well, but if you don’t train you will
be an “also ran.” I believe in having an aptitude and in training
it; Mr. Carter believes in having an aptitude and not training it.

I object to Mr. Carter informing us of the existence of our “of
courses.” We take for granted that a man is sincere, that he has
lots of impulses and that he is “free.” All that is the stuff out
of which poetry is made. The making of it, the “training” is what
we are immediately interested in. We take for granted that we
have the essentials of poetry in us or we should not attempt to
write it. We are now after clarity of form, precision of
expression. Mr. Carter, like the majority of our fellow citizens,
does not value these things; we find them present in every work of
art which is beautiful and permanently interesting; hence our
anxiety to attain by practice that clarity and that precision
which practice alone can give.]

RICHARD ALDINGTON.

If only every Celt will refuse to fight for anything but the
freedom of his own country, the English will soon destroy
themselves altogether, and we shall inherit their language, the
only worthy thing they have, and which their newspapers have not
yet succeeded in debauching and degrading beyond repair. There
are still universities in England. However, they have made it a
crime in England to write good English—for style itself is a form
of truth, being beauty; and truth and beauty are as welcome in
England as detectives in a thieves’ kitchen.—Aleister Crowley in
_The International_.

THE DRAMA

for May Contained This Interesting Material

THE CLASSICAL STAGE OF JAPAN Ernest Fenollosa’s Work on the
Japanese “Noh.” Edited by Ezra Pound.

“Noh” Dramas (from the Fenollosa Manuscript).

Sotoba Komachi.
Kayoi Komachi.
Suma Genji.
Kumasaka.
Shojo.
Tamura.
Tsunemasa.
Kunasaka.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE CENSORSHIP, by _Thomas H.
Dickinson_

MAURICE MAETERLINCK by _Remy de Gourmont_ Authorized
translation by Richard Aldington.

THE “BOOK OF THE PAGEANT,” AND ITS DEVELOPMENT by _Frank
Chouteau Brown_

ON THE READING OF PLAYS by _Elizabeth R. Hunt_

A PYRAMUS-AND-THISBE PLAY OF SHAKESPEARE’S TIME, with notes
by _Eleanor Prescott Hammond_

THE PUBLISHED PLAY by _Archibald Henderson_

THE THEATRE TODAY—AND TOMORROW, a review, by _Alice Corbin
Henderson_

THE GERMAN STAGE AND ITS ORGANIZATION—Part III, Private
Theatres by _Frank E. Washburn Freund_

ASPECTS OF MODERN DRAMA, a review, by _Lander MacClintock_

THE JAPANESE PLAY OF THE CENTURIES by _Gertrude Emerson_

A SELECTIVE LIST OF ESSAYS AND BOOKS ABOUT THE THEATRE AND
OF PLAYS, published during the first quarter of 1915
compiled by _Frank Chouteau Brown_

THE DRAMA for August will contain Augier’s _Mariage d’Olympe_,
with a foreword by Eugene Brieux; an amusing account of his
experiences with Parsee drama, by George Cecil; a paper on the
_Evolution of the Actor_, by Arthur Pollock; a discussion of
Frank Wedekind, by Frances Fay; a review of the work of the
recent Drama League Convention; a plan for an autumn community
festival; an outline of the nation-wide celebration of the
Shakespeare tercentenary, and an article entitled
_Depersonalizing the Instruments of the Drama_, by Huntly Carter.

_The Drama, a Quarterly_
_$3.00 per year_

_736 Marquette Building_
_Chicago_

The most difficult business in life is to get advertisements for
an “artistic” magazine—particularly for one that has the added
stigma of being a free lance. We will give a commission of $5.00
to every one who secures a full-page “ad” for THE LITTLE REVIEW.
Write for particulars.

On the following pages you will find the “ads” we might have had
in this issue, but haven’t.

Mandel Brothers might have taken this page to feature their
library furnishings, desk sets, and accessories—of which they are
supposed to have the most interesting assortment in town. I
learned that on the authority of some one who referred to
Mandel’s as “the most original and artistic store in Chicago.” If
they should advertise those things here I have no doubt the 1,000
Chicago subscribers to THE LITTLE REVIEW would overflow their
store.

Marshall Field and Company might have used this page—but they
wouldn’t. I have been to see them at least six times. They have a
book department where you can actually find Nietzsche when you
want him without having the clerk say, “We’ll be glad to order
it.” Such a phenomenon ought to be heralded.

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company ought to advertise something,
though I don’t know just what. The man I interviewed made such a
face when I told him we were “radical” that I haven’t had the
courage to go back and pester him for the desired full-page. The
Carson-Pirie attitude toward change of any sort is well-known—I
think they resent even having to keep pace with the change in
fashions.

A. C. McClurg and Company could have used this page to advantage.
They have lots of books to advertise and they ought to want to
advertise them in a Chicago magazine. I am willing to wager that
they will: I plan to interview them once a week until they
succumb.

There is least excuse of all for the Cable Piano Company. They
know what we think of the Mason and Hamlin Piano and they know,
whether they advertise or not, that we will keep on talking about
it whenever we feel like appreciating a beautiful thing—which is
rather often.

This page might have been used very profitably by Mr. Mitchell
Kennerley to announce the publication of a book of poems by
Florence Kiper Frank. I think it is to be out this summer—though
of course I can’t pretend to give the details accurately, not
having been provided with the “ad.” But THE LITTLE REVIEW readers
will want the book nevertheless.

Poetry

A Magazine of Verse

543 Cass Street
Chicago

PADRAIC COLUM, the distinguished Irish poet and lecturer, says:
“POETRY is the best magazine, by far, in the English language. We
have nothing in England or Ireland to compare with it.”

William Marion Reedy, Editor of the St. Louis _Mirror_, says:
“POETRY has been responsible for the Renaissance in that art. You
have done a great service to the children of light in this
country.”

CAN YOU AFFORD TO DO WITHOUT SO IMPORTANT A MAGAZINE?

POETRY publishes the best verse now being written in English, and
its prose section contains brief articles on subjects connected
with the art, also reviews of the new verse.

POETRY has introduced more new poets of importance than all the
other American magazines combined, besides publishing the work of
poets already distinguished.

THE ONLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY TO THIS ART.

SUBSCRIBE AT ONCE. A subscription to POETRY is the best way of
paying interest on your huge debt to the great poets of the past.
It encourages living poets to do for the future what dead poets
have done for modern civilization, for you.

One year—12 numbers—U. S. A., $1.50; Canada, $1.65; foreign,
$1.75 (7 shillings).

POETRY
543 Cass Street, Chicago.

Send POETRY for one year ($1.50 enclosed) beginning .........
.......................................................... to
Name ........................................................
Address .....................................................

RADICAL
BOOK SHOP

Headquarters for the sale of radical literature representing all
phases of libertarian thought in religion, economics, philosophy,
also revolutionary fiction, poetry and drama. All current radical
newspapers and magazines.

Mail orders promptly filled.
Send for catalogue.

817½ North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois

If Civilization, Christianity, Governments, Education, and
Culture have failed to bring peace and well-being to humanity,
isn’t it time for you to listen to the message of Anarchy?

Anarchism and Other Essays

By Emma Goldman

$1.00; postpaid $1.15

With biographical sketch and twelve propaganda lectures showing
the attitude of Anarchism towards social questions—economics,
politics, education, and sex.

The Social Significance of the Modern Drama

By Emma Goldman

$1.00; postpaid $1.15

A critical analysis of the Modern Drama in its relation to the
social and revolutionary tendencies of the age.

Prison Memoirs of An Anarchist

By Alexander Berkman

$1.25; postpaid $1.40

A powerful human document discussing revolutionary psychology and
portraying prison life.

Selected Works

By Voltaireine de Cleyre

$1.00; postpaid $1.15

America’s foremost literary rebel and Anarchist propagandist.
Poems, short stories and essays.

10c a copy

$1.00 a year

Mother Earth Magazine

Anarchist Monthly

FOR SALE BY

Mother Earth Publishing Association
20 East 125th Street, New York, New York

RADICAL
BOOK SHOP

Headquarters for the sale of radical literature representing all
phases of libertarian thought in religion, economics, philosophy,
also revolutionary fiction, poetry and drama. All current radical
newspapers and magazines.

Mail orders promptly filled.
Send for catalogue.

817½ North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois

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.

In the poem _Les Condoléances_, the line _Qu’il est sous les mers_ was moved from the end of the stanza beginning with _“Je n’insiste pas. Je suis venu vite,_ to the end of the stanza beginning with _“Si notre avenir—souffrez que je cache_ where it most likely belongs.

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

[p. 9]:
... seines Nachbarvolkes fühlt, als würs dem eigenen Volk ...
... seines Nachbarvolkes fühlt, als wärs dem eigenen Volk ...

[p. 11]:
... for life, even if it be a fight against the whole world.
“Veder Schlafpulver ...
... for life, even if it be a fight against the whole world.
“Weder Schlafpulver ...

[p. 34]:
... And where shall be the end at last. ...
... And where shall be the end at last? ...

[p. 41]:
... I am such of the artificial inanities of the
drawingroom—the polite ...
... I am sick of the artificial inanities of the
drawingroom—the polite ...

[p. 42]:
... Schoengist nobility. ...
... Schöngeist nobility. ...

[p. 42]:
... rumble bizarrely from the depths of every philosophical
sub-celler they can ...
... rumble bizarrely from the depths of every philosophical
sub-cellar they can ...

[p. 42]:
... I am sick of their kinsmen, of the surgical tongues who
dissect, who who ...
... I am sick of their kinsmen, of the surgical tongues who
dissect, who ...

[p. 54]:
... Huntley Carter. ...
... Huntly Carter. ...