Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LITTLE REVIEW

_Literature_ _Drama_ _Music_ _Art_

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

APRIL, 1915

Etchings (Not to Be Read Aloud) William Saphier
Mr. Comstock and the Resourceful Police Margaret C. Anderson
Wild Songs Skipwith Cannéll
The Poetry of Paul Fort Richard Aldington
The Subman Alexander S. Kaun
Hunger George Franklin
Poems David O’Neil
Musik or Music? James Whittaker
The Critics’ Catastrophe Herman Schuchert
A Shorn Strindberg Marguerite Swawite
Vers Libre and Advertisements John Gould Fletcher
Extreme Unction Mary Aldis
The Schoolmaster George Burman Foster
My Friend, the Incurable Ibn Gabirol
Gabrilowitsch and the New Standard M. C. A.
Bauer and Casals Herman Schuchert
Book Discussion
John Cowper Powys on Henry James
The Reader Critic

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THE LITTLE REVIEW

Vol. II

APRIL, 1915

No. 2

Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson

Etchings Not to Be Read Aloud

WILLIAM SAPHIER

LIGHTS IN FOG

Weak sparkling assertions
In an opal, opaque atmosphere
Sharp suffering and
Kindly whispering eyes
In a wan, olive grey face.

You mean all to a few
And nothing to the rest.

THE OLD PRIZE FIGHTER

A rosy, I-dare-you nose
On a twisted steel-trellice face,
Just some knotty lumber
Without a hint of flower or fruit.

You tingled many a passion,
But never a single soul.

Mr. Comstock and the Resourceful Police

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

I want to write about so many things this time that I don’t know where to begin. At first I had planned to do five or six pages on the crime of musical criticism in this country—particularly as focused in the critics’ antics with Scriabin’s beautiful _Prometheus_ recently played by the Chicago Symphony. Truly that was an opportunity for the American music critic! He could be as righteously bourgeois as he wished and his readers would credit him with “sanity” and a clear vision; or he could be as ignorantly facetious as he wished and increase his reputation for wit. It didn’t occur to him that there might be something wrong with his imagination rather than with Scriabin’s art. How exciting it would be to find a music critic whose auditory nerves were as sensitive as his visual or gustatory nerves! Surely it’s not asking too much of people engaged in the business of sound that they be able not only to listen but to hear. Well ... there were many other matters I wanted to write of: For instance, the absurdity of our music schools; the pest of writers who begin their sentences “But, however,”; the so-far unnoticed strength of _Sanin_; the fault with George Middleton’s _Criminals_; the antics of the Drama League; the stunning things in _The Egoist_; exaggeration as a possible basis of art; the supremacy of Form; the undefinable standard of those of us who hate standardizations, etc., etc. But for the moment I have found something more important to talk about: Mr. Anthony Comstock.

Of course there is nothing new to say about him—and nothing awful enough. The best thing I’ve heard lately is this: “Anthony Comstock not only doesn’t know anything, but he doesn’t suspect anything.” Francis Hackett can write about Billy Sunday and resist the temptation of invective. Perhaps he’s too much an artist to feel the temptation. I wonder if he could do the same about Anthony Comstock. Certainly I can’t. Even the thought of Billy Sunday’s mammoth sentimentalizations and the 35,135 people who, according to the last reports, had been soothed thereby, fills me with shudders of hopelessness for the eventual education of men. And the thought of Anthony Comstock is ten times more horrible. His latest outrage is well-known by this time—his arrest of William Sanger for giving to a Comstock detective a copy of Mrs. Sanger’s pamphlet, _Family Limitation_. The charge was “circulating obscene literature.” I have seen that pamphlet, read it carefully, and given it to all the people I know well enough to be sure they are not Comstock detectives. There is not an obscene word in it, naturally. Margaret Sanger couldn’t be obscene—she’s a gentle, serious, well-informed woman writing in a way that any high-minded physician might. I have also seen her pamphlet called _English Methods of Birth Control_, which practically duplicates the leaflet (_Hygienic Methods of Family Limitation_) adopted by the Malthusian League of England and is sent “to all persons married or about to be married, who apply for it, in all countries of the world, except to applicants from the United States of America, where the Postal Laws will not allow of its delivery.” These pamphlets tell in simple language all the known methods for the prevention of conception—methods practised everywhere by the educated and the rich and unknown only to the poor and the ignorant who need such knowledge most. Mrs. Sanger says in her preface: “Today, in nearly all countries of the world, most educated people practise some method of limiting their offspring. Educated people are usually able to discuss at leisure the question of contraceptives with the professional men and women of their class, and benefit by the knowledge which science has advanced. The information which this class obtains is usually clean and harmless. In these same countries, however, there is a larger number of people who are kept in ignorance of this knowledge: it is said by physicians who work among these people that as soon as a woman rises out of the lowest stages of ignorance and poverty, her first step is to seek information of some practical means to limit her family. Everywhere the woman of this class seeks for knowledge on this subject. Seldom can she find it, because the medical profession refuses to give it, and because she comes in daily contact with those only who are as ignorant as herself of the subject. The consequence is, she must accept the stray bits of information given by neighbors, relatives, and friends, gathered from sources wholly unreliable and uninformed. She is forced to try everything and take anything, with the result that quackery thrives on her innocence and ignorance is perpetuated.”

The result of this propaganda was Margaret Sanger’s arrest last fall. I’ve forgotten the various steps by which “that blind, heavy, stupid thing we call government” came to its lumbering decision that she ought to spend ten or fifteen years in jail for her efforts to spread this knowledge. But Mrs. Sanger left the country—thank heaven! However, I understand that when she has finished her work of making these pamphlets known she means to come back and face the imprisonment. I pray she doesn’t mean anything of the kind. Why should she go to jail for ten years because we haven’t suppressed Anthony Comstock? Last year his literary supervision was given its first serious jolt when Mitchel Kennerley won the _Hagar Revelly_ suit. But that was not nearly so important as the present issue, because _Hagar Revelly_ was rather negative literature and birth control is one of the milestones by which civilization will measure its progress. The science of eugenics has always seemed to me fundamentally a sentimentalization—something that a man might have conceived in the frame of mind Stevenson was in when he wrote _Olalla_. Because there is no such thing, really, as the scientific restriction of love and passion. These things don’t belong in the realm of science any more than one’s reactions to a sunrise do. But the restriction of the birth-rate does belong there, and science should make this one of its big battles. Many people who used to believe that love was only a means to an end, that procreation was the only justification for cohabitation, now realize that if there is any force in the world that doesn’t _need justification_ it is love. And these people are the ones who refuse to bring children into the world unless they can be born free of disease and stand a chance of being fed and educated and loved. Havelock Ellis sums it up well: “In order to do away with the need for abortion, and to counteract the propaganda in its favor, our main reliance must be placed, on the one hand, on increased foresight in the determination of conception and increased knowledge of the means for preventing conception; and on the other hand, on a better provision by the State for the care of pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, and a practical recognition of the qualified mother’s claim on society. There can be no doubt that in many a charge of criminal abortion the real offence lies at the door of those who failed to exercise their social and professional duty of making known the more natural and harmless methods for preventing conception, or else by their social attitude have made the pregnant woman’s position intolerable.”

But the immediate concern is William Sanger and his trial, which is to take place some time in April, I believe. His friends are trying to raise $500 for legal expenses, and contributions may be sent to Leonard D. Abbott, President of the Free Speech League, 241 East 201st Street, New York City; to the Sanger Fund, _The Masses_ Publishing Company, 87 Greenwich Avenue, New York City; to _Mother Earth_, 20 East 125th Street, New York City, or to _The Little Review_.

* * * * *

Another thing that must not be forgotten is the “dramatic” attempt to blow up St. Patrick’s Cathedral last month, and all the deep plots to destroy the rich men of that city—what was it the headlines said? Everybody of normal intelligence who read those headlines suspected a police frame-up—which it proved to be. The psychology of the police is something I don’t understand, let alone being able to write about it so that any one else will understand. So I will quote the story of this quite unbelievable crime—police crime, I mean—as it appeared in _The Masses_. (_The Masses_, by the way, is one of the magazines indispensable to the living of an intelligent life). The story is called “Putting One over on Woods”:

When Commissioner Woods took office as head of the New York
police force a year ago, he brought with him some enlightened
ideas about the relation of the police to the public. A week
before a meeting had been held at Union Square which by police
interference had been turned into a bloody riot. A week later
another Union Square meeting took place, with the police under
orders to “let them talk.” The meeting passed off peaceably.

Thus the enlightened views of the new commissioner of police were
vindicated. The right of free speech, and of free opinion, was
conceded as not being a menace to civilization.

But a police force which is enabled to exist and enjoy its
peculiar privileges by virtue of protecting the public against
imaginary dangers, could not see its position undermined in this
way. It was necessary to persuade the public that Socialists,
Anarchists, and I. W. W.’s were plotting murder and destruction.
The public was prone to accept this melodramatic view, but
Commissioner Woods, being an intelligent man, was inclined to be
cynical. So it became necessary to “put one over on Woods.”

They framed it up in the regular police fashion. A clever young
Italian detective named Pulignano, it appears from the evidence,
was promised a raise of salary and a medal if he would engineer a
bomb-plot. Pulignano got hold of two Italian boys—not anarchists
or socialists, but religious fanatics—and urged them on to blow
up St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He planned the deed, bought the
materials of destruction for them, and shamed them when they
wanted to pull out of the plot the night before. The next
morning, at great risk to an innocent public, the bomb was
carried into the cathedral, _lighted_, and then the dozens of
policemen and detectives, disguised as scrubwomen, etc., rushed
in to save civilization.

And Woods fell for it. He swallowed the whole sensational
business. They have got him. He is their dupe, and henceforth
their faithful tool.

Reaction is in the saddle. “All radicals to be expelled from the
city,” says a headline. A card catalogue of I. W. W.
sympathizers. Socialism under the official ban. Free speech
doomed.

So they hope. At the least it means that the fight has for the
lovers of liberty begun again. But one wonders a little about
Arthur Woods. He is on their side now—the apologist of as
infamous and criminal an _agent provocateur_ as ever sent a
foolish boy to the gallows. But will Woods fail to see how he has
been used by the police in this latest attempt to crush freedom
in the interest of a privileged group? Is he as much a fool as
they think?

Giovannitti’s Italian magazine, _Il Fuoco_, states that the bomb was made of caps and gravel—the kind of thing children use on the fourth of July. I know that _Mother Earth_ has started a fund to prevent the two boys from being railroaded. Will there never be an end of these ghastly things?...

As too much light may blind the vision, so too much intellect may
hinder the understanding.

—_Romain Rolland._

Wild Songs

(_From “Monoliths”_)

SKIPWITH CANNELL

IN THE FOREST

I am not alone, for there are eyes
Stealthy and curious,
And they turn to me.
I will shout loudly to the forest,
I will shout and with a sob
Griping my throat I will cower
Quickly
Beneath my cloak.

For the old gods stand silently
Behind the silent trees,
And when I shout they step forth
And I dare not
Look upon their faces.

THE FLOOD TIDE

The red in me
Lives too near my throat.
My heart is choked with blood,
And a rage drives it upward
As the moon drags the flood tide
Raging
Across the marshes.

I will dance
Somberly,
In a ritual
Terrible and soothing;
I will dance that I may not
Tear out his throat
In murder.

THE DANCE

With wide flung arms,
With feet clinging to the earth
I will dance.
My breath sobs in my belly
For an old sorrow that has put out the sun,
An old, furious sorrow ...

I will grin,
I will bare my gums and grin
Like a grey wolf who has come upon a bear.

The Poetry of Paul Fort

RICHARD ALDINGTON

It is said that there are only three honors in the world really worth accepting. The first is that of Pope of Rome, the second Prime Minister of England and the third Prince des Poètes. Monsieur Paul Fort is Prince des poètes, a sort of unofficial title conferred upon him by the affection and admiration of the young poets of Paris. Paul Verlaine, Stephen Mallarmé and Leon Dierx were M. Fort’s successors, and in the ballot which took place when he was elected M. Henry de Régnier was an excellent second.

Paul Fort is indeed a prince of poets, the essence and the type of the poetic personality, princely in the extraordinary generosity with which he scatters largess of poetry and princely in his disdain for any occupation but that of poet. If I were king of England I believe I would ask Paul Fort to be my Prime Minister, but he would refuse, for he has a better and more interesting kingdom of his own. He should have been Grand Vizier to Haroun-al-Raschid, and when the Sultan went to war or to love, when he was idle or busy, vainglorious or craven, happy or sad, wanton or grave, M. Fort, Grand Vizier, would have made a poem to express or correct the Sultan’s mood.

Critics are fond of making epigrams on Paul Fort. They say he is “genius pure and simple”; that he has a nature continually active and awake. It would be simpler to say he is a poet. Everything he lives, everything he sees, everything he hears or smells or touches or experiences is matter for poetry. Everything from Louis XI. to the “joli crottin d’or” goes into his varied subtle rhythms. He is the only living poet who can gracefully introduce his own name into a poem without appearing ridiculous. He is continually interested in himself and notes with pleasure the interest of others:

“Cinq, six, sept, huit enfants me suivent très curieux du long
nez éclairant la cape au noir velours, ‘de ce monsieur tombé de
la lune, avec des yeux de merlan frit!’ dit l’un d’entre eux.”

He writes that in the midst of a poem describing a visit to the village of Coucy-le-Chateau. I have no doubt thousands of other people have been to Coucy-le-Chateau, among them many poets, but Paul Fort is the first to make a poem of it:

Les sires d’autrefois portaient: _Fascé de vair et de
gueules._ Pour supports: _deux lions d’or_. Au cimier: _un
lion issu du même_. — Or voici que, premier, notre gai
souverain, missire le soleil,
porte un écu vivant! “_Sur champ de vert gazon_, Paul Fort couché
près d’une amoureuse Suzon mêle distraitement cent douze
violettes à sa barbe, et Suzon rêve sous sa voilette.”

There you have the “familiar style” over which so many gallons of ink have been shed. Observe how perfectly naturally the author speaks of “Paul Fort”; can you hear Tennyson doing it, or Keats or Francis Thompson or the disciples of Brunetière? One might make a pleasant little literary sketch on poets who possess the familiar style to the extent of using their own names in their verse. Thus, that admirable man, Browning:

And Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here’s a subject made to your hand.

And old Walt:

I, Walt Whitman, a Cosmos, turbulent, fleshly, sensual,
Eating, drinking and breeding.

It is, at least, agreeable to find poets who consider themselves as human beings instead of very inflated, somewhat simian demi-gods. Better a thousand times have desperate vulgarity than the New England pose au Longfellow and Emerson, or the still more horrible old England pose au Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shelley. Heaven preserve me from saying M. Fort is vulgar, but if to hate pomposity and moral pretentiousness be vulgar, then let us be vulgar, as M. Fort is. Better be obscene than a ninny.

Those who have not read M. Fort’s work and who suspect from the foregoing quotations that he is really a prose writer impudently palming off his productions as “sweet poesy,” are asked to read the following poem with attention:

LA RONDE

Si toutes les filles du monde voulaient s’ donner la main,
tout autour de la mer
elles pourraient faire une ronde.

Si tous les gars du monde voulaient bien êtr’ marins, ils
f’raient avec leurs
barques un joli pont sur l’onde.

Alors on pourrait faire une ronde autour du monde, si tous les
gens du monde
voulaient s’ donner la main.

That is said, I don’t know with what truth, to be the most popular of M. Fort’s poems. It certainly was, I am told, in everybody’s mouth in Paris when it was first published—rather as _Dolores_ was in London in the sixties. The cadence of the poem is, of course, obvious and marked, as it should be in a “chanson.” It is rather a good poem to start on, as M. Fort’s way of printing rhymed and accented verse as prose is there forcibly exemplified. M. Fort has not abandoned the Alexandrine; but he is not its slave. Confident in his theory that most poetry is a matter of typography he writes rhymed alexandrines, rhymed vers libres and rhymed and unrhymed prose in exactly the same manner; the effect is curious and charming. It is of course not the very commonplace device of daily newspapers when they want to be funny, but a genuine artistic principle. The effect is very different from that received from a perusal of tedious quatrains written as prose; in the latter case one is disgusted immediately, knowing that no man, not even a paid journalist, is such a fool as to write such stuff in prose; in M. Fort’s case the typographical arrangement prevents the ear becoming fatigued with the stressed rhymes of linear verse and at the same time gives a richness to the apparent prose that no real prose possesses.

For example, this quotation from the Roman de Louis XI., one of Paul Fort’s finest poem-novels.

Comtes, barons, chevaliers, capitaines, tous gentilshommes de
grand façon, et le plus fier, le plus grand, le plus beau,
Charles de Charolais, qui les dépassait tous, entrèrent un beau
matin d’azur pure et de cloches, dans Rouen, la bonne ville, et
c’était doux plaisir de voir briller les casques, les cuirasses
et les housses; les belles housses, de fin drap d’or étaient, et
d’autres de velours, fourrées de pennes d’hermine, et d’autres de
damas, fourrées de zibeline, et d’autres, qui coûtaient moult
cher, d’orfèvrerie; et c’était doux plaisir de voir courir les
pages, les beaux jeunes enfants bien richement vêtus, et le voir
danser, devant les personnages, des hommes en sauvages et de
belles femmes nues, et sautiller autour des chevaux, en cadence,
des nains rouges, roses, verts, et des filles en bergère, et de
voir flotter aux toits les étandards bleus, semés de feux d’or,
rouges, avec un lion noir, qui se mêlaient avec les bannières
toutes blanches, et de voir venir de la cathédrale, sur le
parvis, le clergé violet, venir à la rencontre du roi Louis le
pâle, que représentait un si beau comte, et le ciel bleu passait
dans les clochers à jour, toutes les cloches battaient, de joie
ou de douleur, que les crosses luisaient! que les lances étaient
belles!... et c’était doux plaisir d’aller voir les fontaines
jeter vin, hypocras, dont chacun buvait; et y avait encore trois
belles sirènes, nues sur une estrade, comme Ève au paradis, et
jouaient d’instruments doux, jolis et graves, qui rendaient de
suaves et grandes mélodies; et c’étaient sur le grand pont, sur
la Seine, écuyers lâchant oisels peints en bleu, et dans toute la
ville c’étaient moult plaisances, dont le tout avait coûté moult
finance.

I quote that long passage in full to give a clear notion of M. Fort’s extraordinary fertility and precision in description. It is better than Hugo’s descriptions in _Notre Dame de Paris_, chiefly because it is more natural and familiar.

In this little article I have barely touched the rim of Paul Fort’s work. He is prodigious; he is not one poet, he is twelve, a whole school of poets; he is his own disciples, for none dares to imitate him, just as none dares to imitate Browning. He is the poet who has written everything: Chansons, Romans, Petites Epopées, Lieds, Elégies, Hymnes, Hymnes Héroiques, Eglogues et Idylles, Chants Paniques, Poèmes Marins, Odes et Odelettes, Fantaisies à la Gauloise, Complaintes et Dits, Madrigaux et Romances, Epigrammes à Moi-même. If he has not written plays, he has been a theater director, producing work which delighted literary Paris and annoyed the “boulevardiers”—this at a fabulously early age.

It may interest some readers to know what M. Fort has been doing since the war. He is an inhabitant of Rheims, born opposite the beautiful “cathédrale assassinée”; and he sits in a room at 125 Boulevard St. Germain writing, writing, poems against the invading Germans, poems to cheer on his heroic countrymen, poems mourning friends fallen on the battlefield, poems against H. I. M. the Kaiser, against the Prussian officers, against the “Monstrueux général baron von Plattenberg” (commanding the army which bombarded Rheims), poems to the English, to Joffre, and on the Battle of the Marne. The odd thing is that they are so good. I quote this one, from national vanity:

LA MANIERE[1]

ON meurt: l’Anglais s’élance et le Français le suit.... Il
bondit, le Français!... L’Anglais court apres lui.... L’Anglais
vif le rattrape. Qui, c’est même vaillance. Il me revient un mot,
la fleur des mots guerriers. L’Anglais stoppe, et avec une grâce
de France: “Messieurs de France, à vous de tirer les premiers.”

[1] This poem is printed by permission of M. Fort, from his
periodical, “Poèmes de France,” published fortnightly at 25
centimes the number, 125 Boulevard St. Germain, Paris.

The Subman

Life and Literature in Russia are interdependent forces to such a degree that in approaching a phenomenon, whether in book-form or in reality, we can hardly discern the line of demarcation between cause and effect. If it is true that a number of Russian writers have mirrored actual life in their works, it is more significantly true that many powerful authors have influenced life and have moulded it in accordance with their views and ideas. And it is to be noticed that the less artistic the writers have been, the more obvious has been their tendency to preach and sermonize, the stronger their influence upon the young minds; more than Gogol and Dostoyevsky have such second-rate writers as Chernyshevsky and Stepnyak succeeded in shaping the creeds of their readers. We must remember that literature in Russia, although gagged by bigoted censorship, has been the only medium for expressing and moulding public opinion throughout the past century, and to a great extent this holds true to our very day. Revolutionism, terrorism, socialism, have been propagated through the mouths of novel heroes and heroines for the ardent emulation of the seeking susceptible youth.

The furor produced in Russia by the appearance of Artzibashev’s _Sanin_ some eight years ago has had no parallel even in that country, where a new word in belles-lettres has always taken on the significance of a national event. The importance of this novel is partly due to chronological circumstances—the fact that it came as a luring will o’ the wisp in the post-revolutionary gloom of Russian life. The young generation was on the verge of despondency; the collapse of the Revolution brought to nought the long struggle, the thousands of sacrificed lives, the high aspirations; the Constitution, which had been the ideal of generations, the religion of all pure-minded Russia, had degenerated into a mocking buffonade, the subservient Duma. At such a time Artzibashev steps forward offering the disillusioned youth a new type—the strong, sane Sanin, who derides the altruistic strivings of his compatriots and advocates simple animalistic life, sans principles, sans standards, with the sole aim of satisfying one’s impulses. So strong and timely was the appeal that it immediately created a large following; clubs and societies were formed for the promulgation of the new religion, Sanin’s ideas were hotly discussed from the lecture platform and in the press—in short, such a formidable movement burst forth that the government, which has usually welcomed any sign of deviation from revolutionary thought, became alarmed and withdrew the book from circulation.

But the importance of _Sanin_ has been far more than local. In Germany it was translated and even dramatized, and has created a literature. Even France, oversatiated with pornography, was for a moment stirred at the appearance of the sensational novel, until a new scandal captured the limelight. Finally, with the customary Anglo-Saxon retardation, we have the book in English.[2] The universality of Artzibashev’s appeal is thus evident, and the question arises: What is the underlying force that makes the book arouse interest, admiration, and indignation in various tongues and countries? To my mind, this is the answer: The author, a typical representative of our age, has performed a purely subjective, introspective study—hence he has voiced the ideas of his contemporaries, hence he is so readily understood and appreciated by the children of our civilization.

Francis Hackett, who, when he writes on books, has no equal in this country, has remarked with his usual insight: “It is plain that for himself Artzibashev has made not a man, but a hero, a god.” To this true statement I wish to add that when we humans erect a god, we endow him with those qualities and virtues which we ourselves lack, which to us are but unattainable desiderata. Artzibashev glorifies Sanin because he himself is Sanin’s antipode, the whining, impotent Yourii, whom he paints with obvious disgust. This is no sheer presumption; I have followed the author’s career since his early short stories written in a Tolstoyan, idealistic vein, where he revealed a restless, self-questioning, self-analyzing spirit of the sort that he caricaturizes in Yourii: “Perpetual sighing and groaning, or incessant questionings such as ‘I sneezed just now. Was that the right thing to do? Will it not cause harm to some one? Have I, in sneezing, fulfilled my destiny?’” But the idealist-Artzibashev-Yourii lived not in the clouds, but in the midst of the St. Petersburg Bohème, with the decadent crowd of the restaurant “Vienna”—a life of questionable virtuousness and of dubious hygiene. He conceived the idea of _Sanin_ when he had become almost a physical wreck, forced to spend his time, when not in “Vienna,” in a resort in Crimea. Incapable of enjoying carnal life any longer, yet morbidly craving to empty the cup of sensuous pleasures to the dregs, he creates for himself a fetish, an ideal male, stripped of all human weaknesses, doubtings, and questionings, free of all principles but the principle of professing no principles, living to the full the life of a healthy animal.

In order to accentuate the superiority of his god, Sanin, the author surrounds him with sentimental weaklings, vegetating in a small provincial town, engaged in petty philosophizing and whimpering, bored with one another and with the general ennui of their life, aimlessly pining, striving purposelessly. In such a setting the figure of Sanin naturally looms up as the least boring individual. But try to transfer the hero from this stage of marionettes into real Russian, or, for that matter, into any life full of struggle and love and passion, and what a platitudinous, uninteresting figure he will make! In what he says is nothing strikingly new; his discourses on Christianity or on morality could have been borrowed from any modern rank-and-file radical. As to what he does—well, it is zoology. A witty critic has endeavored to pin to him the label of Superman; what an insult for our hero, who after a feast of vodka, cucumbers, and cheap cigarettes, “undressed and got into bed, where he tried to read _Thus spake Zarathustra_ which he found among Lida’s books” (an interesting detail about the intellectual status of the provincials who read Ibsen, Hamsun, Nietzsche). “But the first few pages were enough to irritate him. Such inflated imagery left him unmoved. He spat, flung the volume aside, and soon fell fast asleep.”

Artzibashev is obviously an erotomaniac. His men and women think of one another only in sexual terms, dream of possessing and being possessed. Broad shoulders, strong muscles, intense virility; ample bosoms, swaying hips, supple bodies—these are the _ne plus ultra_ attractions of his heroes and heroines. Even nature appears to his characters through a pathological prism; under the influence of moonlight or sunshine they dream of nude bodies, white limbs, yielding mates.

I repeat my statement: _Sanin_, or rather Artzibashev, is typical of his age—the age of the oversatiated enervated urbanite, the age of civilization overdeveloped at the expense of culture. You see them in the big cities (perhaps to a lesser degree in this young country), on the streets, among society, among professionals—those over-ripe men and women whose senses have become dull, who are driven by ennui and imbecility to seek the piquant, the bestial, the “healthy.” But the true healthy men and women do not talk health, sex, muscles, virility, for as long as our natural faculties are sound we are hardly aware of them. The healthy, those who are pulsating with life, strive to surpass themselves, strive towards the Superman; it is the pathological, the incapacitated, the withered, who impotently yearn for a retrogradation towards the Subman-Sanin.

[2] _Sanine, by Michael Artzibashef._ [_B. W. Huebsch, New
York._]

There is hardly any danger of the book being persecuted by
Anthony Comstock, for whatever pernicious influence it might have
had has been splendidly neutralized through the wretched
translation which evidently was rendered from the French version,
in its turn a poor translation from the German; this
explains—does it justify—the cosmopolitan transliteration of the
proper names and the numerous nonsensical errors. The publisher
threatens to present the public with Artzibashev’s _Millionaire_;
let us hope that this time the author will be spared the
atrocious mutilation by the hands of the humoristic Percy
Pinkerton.

Hunger

GEORGE FRANKLIN

The moment seems due. Fashion had better take care. Beggars can spit very venomously. Weird-looking jumbles of bones in rags are leering and grinning, jostling and hustling very defiantly. Men are blowing their noses on doorsteps and wearing their hats in church. Hunger is no more passive. Time comes, and with it the fulfillment of every destiny prophesied by a fact. Hunger is sickly till Frenzy quickens it. Hunger has no brain, and does not consider. It curses and swears, is blear-eyed and croaks. It sneers, mocks, jeers, coughs. It spits and throws filth on fine linen. It pours out from cesspool haunts and stinks out the most respectable of neighborhoods. Hunger has no morality—is devoid of all shame. In highest moods hungry knaves will hurl stones, smash windows, pinch, eat, drink, tear down altars, stretch the necks of the Respectable between the head and the shoulders, use guns, laugh, grin, joke, mock, stick grass in mouths of their victims, use pikes, uproot bastiles, and without ceremony lop off heads with every consecutive second of the clock. Hunger startles the world from its slumber, with a shock. Beware, Friends! Hunger is lynx-eyed and sees behind every fact. It sniffs and can smell out anything suspicious. Hunger will hurt no man except he smell or look a little of Tyranny. Does Tyranny wear a powdered wig, talk good French and say “Monsieur”—Hunger looks, sniffs, finds it, and sends its head rolling into a bushel basket. Does it look like a New York banker, have crease in pants, talk grammatical English, wear gold chain, wipe nose with clean handkerchief, wear feathered plumes and fashionable gowns—Hunger noses it out and despatches it without delay. Respectability with its disdain; Education with its stupidity; Fashion with its vanity; Wealth with its luxury; all exhale the same odor to the sniffings of Hunger. When Hunger sniffs, it is time for Fashion to drape itself in rags and give to its body a smell of dung. If Hunger cannot taste food, it will drink blood. There is only one passion stronger than Love—Hatred. Love will Sacrifice, but Hatred will live, though it torture the world with all the machinations of hell. Hatred and Hunger are dogs of the same kennel.... Hunger Hounds, starved, snarling, bloodshot eyes, fangs bared, straining at their chains—Friends, Beware!... Hunger—lean, bony, naked, and grimy—with talons and claws. Hunger with fever and mad. Hunger goaded. Hunger grinning. Hunger in consort with Death. Hunger—hideous, impalpable. Hunger that cannot die. Hunger, blood-smeared, ghastly, and sallow, with rotting teeth. Hunger that spits and leers. Hunger—devilish nightmare to all Tyrannies. Hunger, the fiendish torment of all Fashions and Respectabilities. Hunger without Reason—mad and demoniac. Hunger! Hunger! Hunger! Hunger! Friends, Beware! The moment seems due. Time will fulfill the destiny of a Fact.

To follow the impulses of my heart is my supreme law; what I can
accomplish by obeying my instincts, is what I ought to do. Is
that voice of instinct cursed or blessed? I do not know; but I
yield to it, and never force myself to run counter to my
inclination.

—_Richard Wagner._

Poems

DAVID O’NEIL

APATHY

The bodies of soldiers
Come floating down the river
To the green sea,
Rich in amber,
Waiting to embalm them;
All is splendid silence
In this pageantry of wanton glory
Awed
By the setting sun.

ONE WAY OUT

In this terror of blood-spilling lust,
Why throw it in a ditch,
This boy’s beautiful body,
When his spirit might rise like steam from the soup
And stir the live ones to vengeance?
Disease will deter you?
Ah, but boil it well
And the thought will give it a spice.
Cannibalism, you say?
Why stop when you have gone so far?
He that died
Would rather his body
Gave life to his fellows,
Than be trampled over,
Shot over,
Shoveled like offal away.
Why throw it in a ditch?

VICTORY

I see captured shot-rent flags
Dancing with the wind,
Flying high to glory.
Why not anchor them
With a pyramid of bones,
Those of our own men?
It would tell
Of the price that was paid
To have these flags here,
Whipping in the wind.

OUR SON JACK

Our son Jack,
Wild with life,
Went through
When law and nature
Said, “Go around.”
Thus he died.

THE OAK

Gaunt,
Stripped of leaves,
Death-defiant,
Yet triumphant
In this thought:
There is nothing more to lose.

MOODS AND MOMENTS