Chapter III: Part 3

A French critic characterized Russian literature as Heroic. Tragic would perhaps be a happier definition; what has been Russian life, and hence its literature, but a continuous tragedy? Gogol looked into that life and burst into a homeric laughter which ultimately drove him insane; the "repenting nobleman" Turgenyev was devoured by melancholy over his sad heroes and heroines; the "cruel genius" of Dostoyevsky convulsively writhed in contemplation of the "humiliated and offended"; Chekhov, who had begun his career in the gayest humor, turned eventually gloomy and pronounced his diagnosis: Such life is impossible; even Gorky, the chanter of hymns to the proud Man, was crushed and silenced by grim reality, and his scepter of the idol of young Russia passed into the hands of the most pessimistic writer, Andreyev.

O forgive me, my unfortunate people:
Not one gay song have I sung for you yet!

_Frug._

* * * * *

Tutchev found a mysterious beauty in the brightness of autumn evenings:

Wane, enfeeblement, and on all--
That mild smile of decay
Which in sensible creatures we call
Exalted meekness of suffering.

Such was the smile of Anton Chekhov. Run through his works, look at the sad faces of his heroes, listen to the yearning effusions of his women, observe _his_ Nature, his skies and steppes, and your heart will shrink before that smile of fading autumn. He knew and understood Russian life better than any other writer, and keenly felt its tragicness and ... hopelessness. Therefore he did not protest or advocate, did not denounce or propagate, did not shout or curse, as most of his colleagues did: for what is the use? He only smiled, a sad gripping smile that maddens the sensitive reader--a smile of ennui and helplessness characteristic of the Russian "soilless" intellectual. I believe it was this smile, which masqued an abyss of sorrow and pain, that early extinguished Chekhov's life; it is so much easier and more healthful to scream and howl than to smile under torture.

The stories translated by Miss Fell are far not of the best (by the way: why not use a correct transliteration? Why that half-German, half-English "Tchekoff"?). I suspect that the translator endeavored to choose the least typically-Russian sketches in the hope that they would be more "understandable" to the foreign reader; such attempts generally fail to convey the real atmosphere. "If you wish to know the Poet, you must go into the Poet's land," said Goethe. On the whole, however, the book is imbued with the Chekhovian _leit-motif_--the longing, struggling, crippled Russian soul.

Leonid Andreyev is of a dual personality: the artist, and the mouthpiece of society. In his early sketches, in his short stories, and in his greatest achievement, _The Seven Who Were Hanged_, he is the wonderful psychologist, the unveiler of the soul mysteries with an art that approaches that of Maeterlinck. Russian reality, however, is a Moloch clamoring victims; the powerful tragedy of life absorbs and subjugates all individual forces, and it requires great artistic strength to preserve aloofness from the burning problems of the day. Andreyev has witnessed the most appalling epoch in his country's history: disastrous war, revolution, reaction, famine, national demoralization. He has been tempted to interpret the passing events, a perilous path for an artist whose field of observation must lie either in the crystallized past or in the dim future, never in chronicling the floating present. In his stories and plays of that later period, Andreyev revealed such horrors, such gruesome scenes, that we have felt as if we were in a Gallery of Tortures. Horror shrieks, screams, beats upon our senses, maddens us. But the colors are too loud, the medium of tickling our sensations too vulgar. I recall a passage from Merezhkovsky, a description of one of the museums in Florence. There is a head of Dante; the face is calm, almost indifferent, yet one sees at once that it is a face of one who saw hell. In the same room hangs a wax-image of Plague, with hideous details--rotting cadavers with outpouring bowels in which swarm enormous worms. The Sunday-visitors pass by Dante's head yawning, but wistfully crowd at the wax Plague. I confess this scene, at times, makes me draw an analogy with Chekhov and Andreyev.

As a playwright Andreyev has utterly failed; he lacks dramatic constraint and proportion. He puts into the mouths of his actors bombastic phrases, to the delight of the gallery; but there is absolutely too much talking in his plays, with very little drama. The two plays published in the book now before me, _Savva_ and _Life of Man_, have caused more discussion than any of his other plays,--a fact due not to their particular merit, but to their pyrotechnic effects and "understandableness."

Savva, a young man "with a suggestion of the peasant in his looks," has a modest intention to annihilate everything.

Man is to remain, of course. What is in his way is the stupidity
that, piling up for thousands of years, has grown into a
mountain. The modern sages want to build on this mountain, but
that, of course, will lead to nothing but making the mountain
still higher. It is the mountain itself that must be removed. It
must be levelled to its foundation, down to the bare earth.

... Annihilate everything! The old houses, the old cities, the
old literature, the old art.... All the old dress must go. Man
must be stripped bare and left on a naked earth! Then he will
build up a new life. The earth must be denuded; it must be
stripped of its hideous old rags. It deserves to be arrayed in a
king's mantle; but what have they done with it? They have dressed
it in coarse fustian, in convict clothes. They've built cities,
the idiots!

... Believe me, monk, I have been in many cities and in many
lands. Nowhere did I see a free man. I saw only slaves. I saw the
cages in which they live, the beds on which they are born and
die; I saw their hatreds and their loves, their sins and their
good works. And I saw also their amusements, their pitiful
attempts to bring dead joy back to life again. And everything
that I saw bore the stamp of stupidity and unreason. He that is
born wise turns stupid in their midst: he that is born cheerful
hangs himself from boredom and sticks out his tongue at them.
Amidst the flowers of the beautiful earth--you have no idea how
beautiful the earth is, monk--they have erected insane asylums.
And what are they doing with their children? I have never yet
seen parents who do not deserve capital punishment; first because
they begot children, and secondly, because, having begot them,
they did not immediately commit suicide.

Well, how is this _enfant terrible_--the trumpeter of a popularized edition of Schopenhauer, Bakounin, Stirner, Nietzsche, etc., etc.--how is this "bad man" going to carry through his gigantic plans? In a very simple manner: he will destroy the wonder-working ikon of the Saviour, that made the monastery of his native town famous; he will place a bomb behind the ikon, and its explosion will open the eyes of the ignorant believers. A tempest in a cup of water! But hark and tremble:

When we are through with God, we'll go for fellows like him.
There are lots of them--Titian, Shakespeare, Byron. We'll make a
nice pile of the whole lot and pour oil over it. Then we'll burn
their cities.

Monologues, long and pretentious like those quoted, fill up the play to a point of dizziness; yet there are a few oases in that unhappy work, where you find the real Andreyev, the unrivalled painter of sorrow and suffering. Here is, for instance, one of the pilgrims, a man who had killed accidentally his son and has since been wandering from monastery to monastery, fasting, wearing heavy chains, and indulging in all sorts of self-chastisement. The cynical monks give him the cruel nickname of King Herod, which he bears, like his other burdens, with the joy of a martyr. Listen to his unsophisticated talk:

_King Herod_: I am wise. My sorrow has made me so. It is a great
sorrow. There is none greater on earth. I killed my son with my
own hand. Not the hand you are looking at, but the one which
isn't here.

_Savva_: Where is it?

_King Herod_: I burnt it. I held it in the stove and let it burn
up to my elbow.

_Savva_: Did that relieve you?

_King Herod_: No. Fire cannot destroy my grief. It burns with a
heat that is greater than fire.... No, young man, fire is weak.
Spit on it and it is quenched.

Our hero, Savva, is naturally offended, for his motto is _Ignis sanat_, and he is determined to cure the world with fire. The pilgrim calmly rejoinds:

No, boy. Every fire goes out when its time comes. My grief is
great, so great that when I look around me I say to myself: good
heavens, what has become of everything else that's large and
great? Where has it all gone to? The forest is small, the house
is small, the mountain is small, the whole earth is small, a mere
poppy seed. You have to walk cautiously and look out, lest you
reach the end and drop off.

..........

_Speransky_: I feel blue.

_King Herod_: Keep still, keep still, I don't want to listen. You
are suffering? Keep still. I am a man too, brother, so I don't
understand. I'll insult you if you don't look out.

... Here I am with my sorrow. You see what it is--there is no
greater on earth. And yet if God spoke to me and said, "Yeremy, I
will give you the whole earth if you give me your grief," I
wouldn't give it away. I will not give it away, friend. It is
sweeter to me than honey; it is stronger than the strongest
drink. Through it I have learned the truth.

_Savva_: God?

_King Herod_: Christ--that's the one! He alone can understand the
sorrow that is in me. He sees and understands. "Yes, Yeremy, I
see how you suffer." That's all. "I see." And I answer Him: "Yes,
O Lord, behold my sorrow!" That's all. No more is necessary.

_Savva_: What you value in Christ is His suffering...?

_King Herod_: You mean His crucifixion? No, brother, that
suffering was a trifle. They crucified him--what did that matter?
The important point was that thereby He came to know the truth.
As long as He walked the earth, He was--well--a man, rather a
good man--talking here and there about this and that.... But when
these same fellows carried Him off to the cross and went at Him
with knouts, whips, and lashes, then His eyes were opened. "Aha!"
He said, "so that's what it is!" And He prayed: "I cannot endure
such suffering. I thought it would be a simple crucifixion; but,
O Father in Heaven, what is this?" And the Father said to Him:
"Never mind, never mind, Son! Know the truth, know what it is."
And from then on He fell to sorrowing, and has been sorrowing to
this day.

... And everywhere, wherever I go, I see before me His pure
visage. "Do you understand my suffering, O Lord?" "I understand,
Yeremy, I understand everything. Go your way in peace." I am to
Him like a transparent crystal with a tear inside. "You
understand, Lord?" "I understand, Yeremy." "Well, and I
understand you too." So we live together. He with me, I with him.
I am sorry for Him also. When I die, I will transmit my sorrow to
Him. "Take it Lord."

In depicting individual sorrow Andreyev approaches Dostoevsky; it is when he raises general, universal questions, that he miserably fails in answering them. The Russian public has "spoiled" him, has crowned him with the title of a genius, when he is only a man of big talent. Unfortunately Andreyev took the flattery of the beast-public seriously; he said to himself: Who knows? Maybe I am, indeed, an Atlas. Let me try and shake the world. And he did try! As a result we have, among his other sore failures, the loudest commonplace--_Life of Man_.

I think it was Maurice Baring, a Russologue and an admirer of the playwright, who defined _Life of Man_ as an algebraic play, with Man standing for _x_ and Fate for _y_. Not the tragedy of a certain life under certain conditions, but Life in general, under all circumstances, was the object of the drama. It is the world-old problem, the futility of man's struggles in the face of blind unreasoning fate that may at any moment overthrow his toy-castles. Perhaps a Goethe might attempt to say something new on that subject, or at least to put it in a new way. With Andreyev the task proved to be not "up to his shoulder," as the Russians say. The annoying pretentiousness of the play appears a hundred times more convex when on the stage. I saw it once in the "symbolized" theatre of Mme. Kommissarzhevskaya in St. Petersburg, and another time in the performance of the Moscow Artistic Theatre. On the first occasion I was bored to death, and pitied the gifted manager, Mr. Meyerhold, in his futile attempt to veil the platitudes of the play in mysticism, to create an atmosphere, a "_Stimmung_." The Moscow people succeeded in emphasizing the ridiculous awkwardness of the drama, the shrill incongruities of the situations and styles,--and I shall ever be grateful to them for the minutes of hearty laughter that they caused me then and which I cannot escape even now, as soon as I recall the harmony between the symbolicized Someone in Gray (sh-sh ...--Fate!) and the super-realistic shrieks of the mother giving birth to a child. The actors did their best, but no miracle could have saved the doomed loud nothingness.

As I have mentioned, Andreyev's "heel of Achilles" demonstrates its vulnerability when he obeys the call of the public and speaks on up-to-date topics. _Life of Man_ was written, evidently, in response to the symbolistic moods that became noticeable among Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. For more than ten years the group of Symbolists, under the leadership of Valery Brusov, had been ridiculed and unrecognized. Then came the reaction: All began to talk symbols; the press, the stage, the art galleries, the public lectures, became symbolistic over night. A torrent of parodies and imitations gushed on the market, and the public did not differentiate between the real and false coins. It became _bon-ton_ to quote Brusov, Balmont, Viacheslav Ivanov, Sollogub; schoolboys declaimed about "the ostrich feathers that wave in my brains," and janitors whined to "the moon, in a white bonnet with embroidery."

_Life of Man_ reaped broad success, a fact that speaks volumes on the taste of the Public. I am sure that in this country Andreyev's play would be a more "paying proposition" for the producer than even "Everywoman." The plaintive philosophy of Job clothed in modern phraseology; Maeterlinckian Fates dancing in a saloon around the drunken Man; symbolization of Destiny and squeals of the new-born Man; quasi-primitiveness turned into wood-cut allegory and melodramatic effects (of course, there occur several deaths: there is not a single play by Andreyev not spiced with two or three natural or unnatural deaths),--is it any wonder that _Life of Man_ vied in popularity with its contemporary, _The Merry Widow_?

No, messrs. stage-managers and publishers, we reject your popular Andreyev.

ALEXANDER S. KAUN.

Horace Traubel's Whitman

_With Walt Whitman in Camden_, by Horace Traubel. [Mitchell
Kennerley, New York.]

The wheat that eager work extricates from huge masses of chaff is worth what it costs. _Leaves of Grass_ does not contain all the solid nutrition that stands for Whitman's durable contribution to the literary food supply of America: he added to it substantially by talking to his friend, Horace Traubel, during the poet's residence at Camden, N. J., from 1888 to the end of his life in 1892, and that comrade, who jotted down every word, has scattered the resultant wheat through its own chaff. Three of the eight volumes through which the mixture is to run have been published.

It is inevitable that inconsequential stuff--sheer nonsense in instances--should find its way into this morbidly complete story of the harvest years of Whitman's life; but it is surprising how much personality and interpretative value lie hidden in some of his most commonplace utterances. A tremendous personality descends to occasional banality because of the inadequacy and commonness of words. It is too much to expect Whitman even to revitalize the vocabulary of a democracy. But great as he was as a cosmic voice, Whitman exhibited and confessed kinship with common clay. In fact, _Leaves of Grass_ could never have grown out of an artificial soil, inoculated with classic cultures; it sprang as the first vegetation upon the surface of a wild, primal clay. Whitman was first of all a big, magnificent animal-man; he was secondarily a powerful poetic instrumentality, giving sound and articulation to the wee sma' voices exhaled by the earth. That is why the essence of his message was an appeal and a challenge to and an expression of democracy. (Of course, I do not mean the institutionalized democracy of politicians, for no Jeffersonian goes to Whitman for solace when his faith is wobbling; I mean the bio-economic democracy that some of us believe in as a part of natural law.)

As a man and as a poet Whitman was simply, daringly, and resolutely himself. He had achieved a large, strong selfhood before Traubel began to Boswellize him, and to that intimate friend he revealed in the languages of pen, tongue, countenance, and silence all the bigness and littleness that a long and intimate relationship could evoke. It would therefore be unfair to ascribe to Whitman all the sapless hay with which these three volumes are padded; it is largely a product of mutual reactions. But in relation to Traubel more than to any other person, Whitman was consistently, habitually, and subconsciously himself, and the result is that this discursive, unedited "story" of the poet's life and work will live as the most personal and valuable revealment of his character. It is the last word about him as a man. Whitman the poet effected his supreme expression in the poem beginning with the words, "I celebrate myself." Other features which give permanent distinction to these volumes are the letters to Whitman from noted men and women in America and Great Britain, and numerous portraits of himself and some of his friends.

Despite the fact that this work is padded with arid minutæ, which I should be the last person to abridge, every page is interesting to readers of Whitman and students of American literature. The first page of the first volume, for example, contains an allusion to Emerson's senility that is worth reading--in Whitman's words. Reading at random in the third volume I found this striking quotation:

Breaking loose is the thing to do: breaking loose, resenting the
bonds, opening new ways: but when a fellow breaks loose or starts
to or even only thinks he thinks he'll revolt, he should be quite
sure he knows what he has undertaken. I expected hell: I got it:
nothing that has occurred to me was a surprise.

Turning back a hundred pages I found this:

I have always had an idea that I should some day move off--be
alone: finish my life in isolation.

This is the thought of the natural man who would die like a man. One could quote indefinitely from this extraordinary autobiography of the most outstanding figure in American literature.

DEWITT C. WING.

Midstream

_Midstream_, by Will Levington Comfort. [George H. Doran Company,
New York.]

A direct, big thing--so simple that almost no one has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. He gives us the story of his own life to the mid-way mark. It is not an autobiography--one of those deferential veilings of truth, a blinding of the spectator by the scattering of fact-dust. After reading it one does not remember clearly the author's various removals from Detroit to other centers of activity; one remembers the vital events in his consciousness, the shames, triumphs, and searchings of his body and soul. Here is a man's life laid absolutely bare.

There is no use in explaining the value of such a book to those who do not admit it. People to whom reserve is more important than truth; people who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything--these will not read _Midstream_ through.

The others will see here a chance to understand. And they will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort's frankness. If a thousand writers should give us such books we should understand better the much-befogged basis of all human problems--"human nature." Every man draws his own conclusions about vital matters from just such introspection as this, whether it be conscious or unconscious. But every man does not have the candor and the hard-won insight of the trained writer.

It would be possible to enter into futile discussions about the "artistic" value of such a book--whether naturalism can give us as fine a work as imagination. Whatever might be the result of such a discussion, Mr. Comfort's book remains interesting, and interest is the first value of any written work. He is neither a Wilde nor a Turgenev, but he is a true writer.

To recapitulate the adventures of the sensitive and often unwholesome boy, the degradations and victories of the young newspaper reporter, the soldier, the war correspondent, the husband, and the writer, would be to undermine the novel itself. If you want to experience them, let Mr. Comfort be the narrator.

It may not be out of place, however, to quote a few of the conclusions, in order to give a taste of the book's direction.

This of man:

A man is clean alone, if he is clean at all.

It isn't being superman to learn to listen to the real self--just
the beginnings of manhood proper.

This of publishers and the public:

In many, not all, editorial offices, the producer is paid well
and swiftly alone for that which is common, in which plots are
pictured, and all but greedy imagination put to death.... I saw
that it was not enough for me to get down to the parlance of men,
but to leave all hope behind--not only possible intellectual
authority--but, by all means, any spiritual in sight; that only
frank "down writing" would do.

This of woman's status:

The soul of woman dies if it may not sometimes aspire. A periodic
possession of devils on a man's part will not break the waiting
quiescence of his woman, but the sordid routine of downtown
methods will set her into screaming destruction at the last.

The creature who eight times the year obeys the tradesmen's
instinct for style; who has broken her bearing with centuries of
clothes-bondage, fed her brain upon man's ideas of sex, her body
upon food bought for her and prepared by people whom she does not
respect; who has not yet heard the end of a dollar-discussion
begun when her baby ears first noted sounds; who holds in shame
all that is mighty in her genius, and who has finally accepted as
a mate one of her male familiars--she is a man-made creature, in
whom is buried a woman. She is man's ignorance and effrontery
incarnate--the victim of his mania for material proprieties,
which, from the beginning, have utterly desecrated spiritual
truth.

And this of the future:

By every observation, law and analogy in life, the constructive
purpose at work in the world is toward the end of the increase of
spiritual receptivity in every creature, a continual heightening
vibration toward the key-rhythm.

G. S.

A Defense of the Grotesque

_Sonnets from the Patagonian_, by Donald Evans. [Claire Marie, New
York.]

It has become the fashion, even among intelligent people, to fling tawdry sneers at something not understood--especially the intensely grotesque. The indulgent smile has disappeared, and the little peevish joke has taken its place. Perhaps this is obvious, but some obvious things cannot be made too obvious.

_Sonnets from the Patagonian_ is a type of book which will be almost universally laughed at. Yet it is something like a gold nugget: one must use his mind as a pick with which to isolate streaks of poetry from the coarse rock. The rock is simply grotesqueness. The gold is protesqueness mixed with unconscious simplicity.

I took out my pick one night and started the mental manual-labor. At the end I had extracted six of the most startling, clutching, beautiful lines of verse ever written in English. Perhaps the twisted dreariness of their surroundings made them stand out more vividly, gave them a false value to me. I shall let the reader judge.

And life was just an orchid that was dead.

Her hidden smile was full of little breasts.

Gnawed by the mirage of an opening night.

And a fawn-colored laugh sucks in the night.

And like peach-blossoms blown across the wind,
Her white words made the hour seem cool and kind.

Six lines almost lost in the mirage the poet speaks off, but well worth finding.

M. B.

Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained
through a net-work of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that
robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his
arrogance and self-conceit.--_Emma Goldman._

The Reader Critic

_Emma Goldman, Los Angeles_:

_Readers have a legitimate interest in the truth of critical
articles. We therefore believe they will welcome these comments
by Miss Goldman on the article about herself. If Miss Goldman had
been displeased, we should have printed her letter with equal
frankness._

A Chicago friend sent me THE LITTLE REVIEW for May, which contains your very excellent article on _The Challenge of Emma Goldman_. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you have to say about my work and myself, not because of your sympathetic interpretation but because of your deep grasp of the purpose which is urging my work and permeating my life. I hope you will not mistake it as conceit on my part when I tell you that more has been written about me than perhaps about any other woman in this country, but that most of it has been trash. The only person who came near the fundamental urge in my personality was William Marion Reedy of _The St. Louis Mirror_, who wrote _The Daughter of the Dream_. I do not know whether you have ever seen it, but even his splendid write-up does not compare with yours, because it contains much more flattery than understanding. You can, therefore, imagine my joy in finding that it was a woman who demonstrated so much depth and appreciation of the cardinal principles in my work.

_S. H. G., New York_:

It's getting banal for me to praise the magazine--I'm sorry, but I can't help it. The thing has assumed the nervous importance to me of an emotional experience foreseen and inevitable. And now that I've finished reading the June issue I can truthfully say there isn't a line in it I wouldn't have been poorer without. That couldn't be said of any other magazine ever published.

Your June "leader" is not only true and big, but absolutely timely. The essentially immoral thing should be the thing which does not contribute in some way, however obscure, to the main current. You call it "waste." The reason vice is disgusting is because it turns human stuff off into an inescapable pocket. My idea is a sort of spiritual utilitarianism, you see. Yet without the flat associations of utilitarianism because it recognizes so many things as means to the end--joy and pain and rebellion, for instance.

Dr. Fosters' article is superb! The fallacy of all ethical systems is that they set up an abstract word as a virtue under all conditions. "Unselfishness," for instance. Sometimes a fine virtue--sometimes not, according to circumstances. We must decide, not the rigid word. Almost all present-day fallacies proceed from a failure to recognize the fact that the world is fluid. The individual is worthless except for his dynamic. The static (vice) leads to death; death is merely disorganization of the individual, so that life may be cast in new forms better fitted to proceed.

_W. M., New York_:

I am reading THE LITTLE REVIEW month by month with much interest, and have found many things that gave me pleasure. I admire the intellectual standard. There is plenty of good, earnest thought in each issue. I should like, however, to see a little more of what, for want of a better word, I term "human." THE REVIEW is still in the colder currents of intellectualism. I think it can stand a little more warm feeling, even if you get it in the way of a controversy.

_F. R.-W., New York_:

I am distinctly of the opinion that THE LITTLE REVIEW is worth while. It is one of the very few periodicals I read through from cover to cover. If this can be made to go it will be a greater triumph for the American people than for you. So many magazines of this type have been based upon unsound premises. They have become the vehicle for irrepressible self expression; they have followed freak paths of every variety; they have turned Pegasus into a mechanical hydro-aeroplane and have flattered themselves that, Icarus-like, they were scaling the summits to the sky and endangering their pinions near the sun, when, as a matter of fact, they were plunging through the sloughs below and the only evidence of the sun was its reflection upon the mud by which they were surrounded. With THE LITTLE REVIEW, however, I have a fine sense of clarity.

_F. D., New York_:

Not long ago I wrote you a long, long letter about THE LITTLE REVIEW. But I didn't send it, because who am I to dogmatize about criticism? Anyway, I was severe upon you, because I was disappointed. I really don't think THE LITTLE REVIEW is critical at all. It is exuberantly uncritical--enthusiastic about the wrong things. But you will probably get tired of just being enthusiastic after a time, and start in to criticise. I'm sorry I don't like it better. It has had some good things in it. What I principally object to is your own editorial attitude.

_Constance Skinner, New York_:

I have just read your first issue and want to send my godspeed to this magazine that _feels_. I am so sick of callousness and sneers and flippancy.

Your Paderewski article touches me nearly. Shall I send you a brief little picture of Paderewski playing one summer morning at Modjeska's home in St. Ana Canon, California? Her face so fine, so sweet, with the "so be it" and imperishable sounding memory of broken harp chords, as she sat by silent and listened and looked across the years to Poland, to the heart of humanity as she had held it and shaped it in those days of her own power, ere she picked this starving boy from his attic and said to Warsaw: "_Ecce homo_." Her husband listening better, because watching her, to what the long fingers, like lights flashing, were bringing from the depths. His (the player's) beautiful wife leaning upon the piano, where he always wished to have her, where he could see her face as he played. Outside the sloping canyon wall beginning in a rare rioting, rose garden and reaching to a silver and blue rugged granite where mountain lions sometimes pace restlessly. A great clump of live oaks, four monster trees, their size ranging from ninety to one hundred and twenty feet from bough to bough, roofing with bronze and green leafage this last retreat of the woman who had been hailed greatest of all in three countries. Among the roses by the low open windows of the piano alcove the Polish maid standing, weeping, and the old lame man, her brother, limping along from his work, taking off his hat and standing there, too, unashamed of the tears flooding. And when he had finished playing they came in and caught his hands and kissed them and spoke. The lame man said: "I was in church, but it was holier. It was a rosary, but every head was a light." The maid said: "Poland is not dead." This madam translated to me, and the fire and mist in her eyes--surely the most wonderful eyes ever made--was something I could not look away from. She added: "Poland is not dead while Poles can weep. We must bless grief, it has given us our art."

_H. G. S., Chicago_:

I am going to ask you to please discontinue my subscription to THE LITTLE REVIEW, as your ideas which you set forth in your leading articles are so entirely crude and so vastly different from my own that I do not care to be responsible for its appearance in my home any longer.

[_This reader has the honor of sending in the first cancellation.
We might take his denunciation more seriously if it were not for
our suspicion that what he really meant to say was this: "Your
ideas are entirely crude because so vastly different from my
own."--The Editor._]

_The following is typical of the older generation's response to
the new order. It is a perfectly consistent letter, a perfectly
sincere one, and a perfectly impossible one. But it is not to be
taken so lightly as it deserves: first, because it has all the
poison the younger generation hates most; second, because its
perplexities are perfectly natural ones; and third, because
education, in order really to be effective, must begin upon just
such attitudes. It may be as well to answer at least one of the
writer's arguments by quoting Shaw. In his new preface, in a
chapter called The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness, he says very
neatly: "The difficulty with children is that they need
protection from risks they are too young to understand, and
attacks they can neither avoid nor desist. You may on academic
grounds allow a child to snatch glowing coals from the fire once.
You will not do it twice. The risks of liberty we must let
everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness
are another matter. Not only children but adults need protection
from them." Following the mother's letter is one from a boy which
ought to throw some light on the subject from the young
generation's standpoint._

_Margaret Pixlee, Indianapolis_:

I feel impelled to reply to your article entitled _The Renaissance of Parenthood_. I wonder what could have been the home-life of such a girl as you quote from, that she should write that kind of a letter. Shaw says, "there is nothing so futile or so stupid as to try to control your children." Your opinion that Shaw's ideas are "glorious" shows at once that you have only touched the surface of what motherhood is. Can you honestly believe that a parent is doing his duty if he allows a child to rush in front of a moving automobile attracted by the bright lights, knowing nothing of the danger ahead--which certainly would mean death if the child had its own way? Irrespective of what Shaw or Ellen Key write, it is the parents' absolute duty to train and educate a child until he is capable of using his own reasoning powers. And, too, there is but one way. Principle and Truth with Love and Charity are the only way. Let me here quote from your article on Emma Goldman. If you do not agree with Emma Goldman, you say in effect, let us at least be broadminded and see both sides. But are you doing this? From my point of view, you seem to take the side only of free thinking, and, as you call it, independent thought. There is no independent thought, except doing right. I can see your point of view. As we look about us among the people of the social world, many are indeed selling their children in marriage to some man for the petty consideration of high social position and money. Many times when an engagement is announced the first question is how well off is the man, instead of what are his principles and is he worthy of the girl. These poor children are indeed the offspring of foolish parents, and are to be pitied. If as they advance on life's highway they are given to see what principle means, then is it right to separate and go their own way? We all must develop the spiritual within; but to break loose from home ties, as this girl seems to desire, from selfishness alone, will lead to a worse death than that of being crushed by the automobile. I have admitted that to sell a child in wedlock to a man whose only attraction is a fat bank account and social position is crime of the blackest. But taking the other course is equally as bad, for passionate love is always selfish and soon burns out. Let us consider for one moment a child born out of wedlock. As I understand it, so-called free thinkers consider this right. They disregard the law, and honestly think they have done a fine thing. "All for love and the world well lost." A daughter is born, and from some remote ancestor she inherits a love of the conventional. Can you picture to yourself what the suffering would be to see the daughter you love an outcast always from the things she cares for through what you call the grand passion--nothing more or less than the supreme selfishness of two human beings, no matter what you and the girl you are privileged to quote from "think you believe"? It will not be possible to do the deeds you write about as they are portrayed by free thinkers. Truth will be revealed to your innermost self. You cannot do otherwise than follow the Divine Revelation, which alone leads to real happiness, for all material pleasures are swept away sooner or later.

_A boy reader, Chicago_:

In the preface of his latest _Quintessence of Ibsenism_, Shaw expresses his astonishment that the book changed peoples' minds. He has perhaps by now collected abundant evidence that his books really have changed peoples' minds and whole life courses. What would, perhaps, be more astonishing to him is the fact that the first hearing of one of his plays did it--and without the aid of a preface.

_Fanny's First Play_ started me thinking about family relationship. Long before the play was published, with the lengthy preface on parents and children, the very things he advises were happening. The preface was undoubtedly written after long contemplation of the play--as was my action; proving that the generalizations he makes are not as impossible or absurd as the family egotist so pathetically argues.

I do not doubt that this play, the beginning of my knowledge of Shaw, was the most important event of my youth. It is, of course, most important as a woman's play, but why Margaret Knox's revolt could not be mine I do not see.

The family in which I was being "brought up" was all that Shaw says the present day family is--and worse, for there were also brothers and a sister to aid in the "bringing up." These were all brought up in dutiful submission to mother's influence and father's care. They had "arrived" or gone just as far as they ever thought of going just as I was starting for my goal. Their present condition had received parental commendation; but what I saw, on looking about me, made me shudder--and think. I would find out the reason for their condition and see if their fate was to be mine. Of one thing I was certain:--if "family duty" or "filial piety" were responsible for the state of things I would have none of it--and I said so.

"You'll see--you'll bump your head some day; you'll see what good it does to have foolish visions or dreams; you just do what you're told and you'll be better off. Mother and father know more than you--they're older." All this I had patronizingly handed out to me. Somehow all this was horrible to me--this idea of contemplating a future such as theirs--a colorless life built on "doing what you're told" and not "having foolish dreams." For it struck me as an existence that mocked the very system that was responsible for it. The only thing by which I could judge the worth of the advice was the finished result.

Of course when I presented my case to my parents I was met with that attitude always displayed toward youthful self-assertion. To make my case clear to their somewhat bewildered minds I drew up a list of grievances: there were thirty-three concrete faults in the existing order that must be stamped out or radically changed.

They fell into four groups. Foremost was my education; there were ten in that group:--all as unintelligent and old as thinking that a city grammar school education was enough for any boy. As soon as I was old enough to work it would be useless to educate myself any further. I wouldn't need it any way. It would be wasting time that should be spent in learning a trade. They had decided that the "building line" was the safest to work in and therefore I must become a bricklayer or a carpenter or something that "pays good." That I should have some say as to what I should take up for life they thought foolish--I would only pick out something that wouldn't bring enough salary. "Look at your big brother--he's got a nice steady job as a mailman; he didn't need any extra, expensive schooling."

Next were my religious and spiritual ideals. There were four in that group. They were quite as dogmatic in their "thou must nots" as those in the church ritual they wished us to believe explicitly. Superstition played a big part in the religion they wanted us to believe. Theirs was a Sunday religion, and, not practicing it themselves, it was absurd for them to ask our respect on that score.

Economically they were quite positive that only they were capable of taking care of things. We were not able to spend our own money in a sensible way and were not to be trusted with deciding what should be done with what was saved or earned. As to their ideas on the subject, there were six ways in which I showed them where I differed.

The longest and most significant group was that dealing with the way things were being run in the home. Methods that were retarding my growth--mentally and physically. There were thirteen of them, each with their minor details--such as the one "My Room." Without being meanly selfish I asked for at least a little privacy while studying or at sleep; that the room not be used as a wardrobe for quite the entire family; and that I be allowed to take care of it, as to arrangement, decorations, and airing. Which last word reminds me that their ideas of hygiene were quite antiquated, and must be changed and enlarged upon. Absurd as it may seem, they still insisted that night air was dangerous; that one towel, tooth brush, bar of soap, and brush and comb were enough for one family (those I got for my personal use were immediately appropriated by the rest of the family); that too much bathing is dangerous; and as for swimming, mother heard of a boy drowning with the cramps when she was a girl,--therefor her son must not go near the water; that exercising is "nonsense"; that _menus_ must contain meat and numerous other heavy foods at every meal; and that children, no matter how young, are able to digest whatever adults can. These are a few instances of parental ideas that were useless so far as I was concerned. Was a rebellion necessary? It was in my case and I may as well add that it has already had results--to give the details would, I fear, be getting too personal. I have been so already, perhaps, but it may induce those who called the Preface absurd to read it again.

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Running To Paradise W. B. Yeats
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