Chapter I: Front Matter

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR

MAY, 1916

Three Flesh-tints: Ben Hecht
The Incense Burner
The Goldfish in a Bowl
A Nude
“The Compleat Amateur” Harold Bauer
Three Japanese Paintings: Arthur Davison Ficke
Dream of a Chinese Landscape
Dream of a Chinese Rock Promontory
The Golden Symphony
The Struggle Sherwood Anderson
A Mischievous Rhapsody of the
First Recurrence
Poems: Daphne Carr
Welt Schmertz
Prisoners
Leo Ornstein Margaret C. Anderson
Nocturne (from Paul Verlaine) Clara Shanafelt
White Mists M. C. A.
Letters from Prison Emma Goldman
Off the Turnpike Amy Lowell
Potatoes in a Cellar R. G.
New York Letter Allan Ross Macdougall
Amber Monochrome Mark Turbyfill
Three Imagist Poets John Gould Fletcher
Rossica Alexander S. Kaun
The Independent Exhibition Lupo de Braila
The Reader Critic

Published Monthly

15 cents a copy

MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher
Fine Arts Building
CHICAGO

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago

THE LITTLE REVIEW

VOL. III

MAY, 1916

NO. 3

Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson

Three Flesh-tints

BEN HECHT

The Incense Burner

A bending flower rises from its mouth
And sways like the vein of a zephyr.
Threads of moonlight float entangled over it,
Delicate as the breath of a dying woman.
Souls come whispering from its ancient lips,
Laden with thin secrets,
And torn by the long nails of idiot Gods....
Pale dancers arise, whirling listlessly,
Expiring in a writhing languor.
Heavy-lidded eyes crawl out and open vacantly and close....
Dried whisps of water break into blue wings.
A sleeping woman’s arm reaches up and curves into a sigh
And scratches at the air with opalescent claws.
Dead pearls drift in a dead circle—till, quivering,
A slow finger rises, balancing a grey moon on its tip.
And then a severed face squeezes out and lolls to and fro,
Its washed purple lips leering with a grotesque sin.

The Goldfish in a Bowl

A tiny shimmering courtesan
Dressed in red spangles,
Weaves a monotonous thread of painted rubies
Through the stagnant curtains of her room.

Stifling under faint rags,
A dumb enchanted nightingale
Tosses in droll anguish,
Dreaming of the sapphire roses and the crystal fringe and the topaz
silks
That were her lovers.

A Nude

The rich brocade of night,
Sewn with the red dust of roses
And the topaz breath of the sleeping sun
Hangs from the cool ivoried silk of her shoulders.

The winged beacons of her breasts
Gleam with golden moonlight.
And her eyes are like purple bosomed birds
That circle and beat against the azure gloom.

Her nakedness is an opal mirror,
Quivering with splintered images.
Her nakedness is a white kiss.
Burning on the shadowed lips of the night.
Her nakedness is the flowing of ghostly water
Under fierce moons—
The poplar silver of the wind that dances in the gardens at night.

Her nakedness is the golden fabric woven out of bloody grapes
And the dead mists of incense.

“The Compleat Amateur”

or
How Not to be An Artist

HAROLD BAUER

(_No, I cannot write you an article. And I add to this the
expression of my fervent hope that no Amateurs are going to be
allowed to scribble for_ THE LITTLE REVIEW. _Speaking as a
subscriber, I haven’t the least desire to read any of H. Bauer’s
clumsy attempts to express himself in a medium that is foreign to
him. Let him stick to his business.... You must write the article
you have in mind yourself. From the depths of your artistic
intuitions draw forth the material and give away the secrets—which
are no secrets. Moreover, don’t confine yourself to music, much less
to piano playing; take in the whole field of art and call it “The
Compleat Amateur, or, How Not To Be an Artist.” I suggest the
following headings.—Extract from a letter of the Author._)

I. “_Le Style fait l’homme_”

If you want to become an author, give up your life to the study of calligraphy, if a painter, devote yourself to the manufacture of paints and brushes, if a composer, commit to memory the number of notes in every standard classical work, and if a singer or instrumentalist, spend your whole energy in the establishing of a “sound technical foundation.” Emotional expression can then, if desired, be subsequently smeared like treacle on bread over all these different stylistic bases, this operation requiring neither skill nor expression.

II. “_Means to an End_”

The amateur must learn that technique represents an obstacle to be overcome and a set of tools to be acquired. It has nothing to do with expression. Only an imaginative artist like Maeterlinck would suggest that the road along which the student travels towards his destination is in reality a link, a connection joining one with the other—an umbilical cord partaking of the nature and attributes of both traveler and goal. To a perfectly rational person the road is merely a distance to be covered, a separation.

III. _Personality, or, as some authorities have it: Individuality_

This is the greatest asset of the Amateur. An artist is like everybody in the world. The book we read, the picture we see or the music we hear which renders tangible our own dimly-felt thoughts and emotional stirrings shows that we are in reality one with the artist and with the universe of which these expressions are but reflections of unseen and unheard forces. An artist combines the power and responsibilities of the aristocrat with the feelings of an anarchist, he is the guardian of privilege and the destroyer of authority, the leveler of barriers and the creator of the superman, the leader and the servant of humanity and ... the Arch Enemy of the Amateur! The artist is like all humanity, but the Amateur is not like the Artist. The Amateur must hang on for dear life to his precious soul and resist to the last gasp the incursions of any outside force in which he can trace the semblance of his own nature, for if anything gets in something may get out and he won’t be able to sort himself out afterwards. Hence the Amateur must be an Individualist; otherwise he is doomed to extinction. The Amateur’s business is to interpret the universe in terms eternally incomprehensible to anyone but himself, and to compromise with the necessity for intercourse with his fellow-creatures by the adoption of an artificial language which can convey thoughts and feelings of a superficial character, but nothing more.

The tale that points a moral, the picture that suggests a tale, and the music that evokes a picture; these are the vehicles for “personality” and your fine amateur must cultivate the pride that the realization of an exclusive understanding of these things gives. If Hamlet had been an amateur instead of being an artist he would never have suggested that a cloud was like a camel, a weasel, or a whale; he would have pointed out its resemblance to a mathematical calculation or a treatise on political economy, and Polonius would have been far more impressed—for this would have shown Great Individuality.

IV. _The Mission of Amateurism_

A true Amateur must learn the value of success, the immense importance of achievement, the inward meaning of gratified self-conceit. Praise from small minds represents the highest possible attainment of accomplished Amateurism. The object of Amateurishness is, like the puzzle pictures in the daily papers, to present a pretty little problem with a perfectly simple and obvious solution, thus giving effortless pleasure and satisfaction to all concerned.

The opportunities afforded by collective Amateurism for the repression of Art are invaluable and as the study of the subject is within the reach of all, including those who are congenitally afflicted with artistic talent, it devolves upon everyone who holds the opinion that this is the best of all possible worlds, to make it his life’s occupation and aim to be a “compleat amateur”.

Three Japanese Paintings

ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE

I.
Dream of a Chinese Landscape
(_A Screen by Soga Shubun_)

Mists are rolling
Over the grey mountains,
Over the quiet waters
And marshy shores—
Rolling up into valleys
Where pagodas rise,—
Rolling over slopes
Along whose crests
Monasteries dream.
Wild geese soar
Above the marshes
In downward flight—
In flight from unknown shore
To unknown shore.
Over all
Mists are swaying.

The shadowy bridge
And wandering roadway,
The dark gnarled tree by the road
And the pale tree afar,
Are touched with doubtful mists
Or emergent from lifting mists,—
Trembling in mist; born of mist; shadows....
O mountains, shores, and streams!
Beautiful transient illusion!
Mortal world, dream world,
Vanishing into mist, into mist only!