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INDEX
VOLUME LXXII
PAGE
AIKEN, CONRAD.
ALDIS, MARY
ANDERSON, Sherwood
Aragon, Louis
The Dark City (Fiction)
345
Soliloquy on a Park Bench
601
The Mosque of the Empress (Fiction) 273
I'm a Fool (Fiction)
119
“Madame à sa Tour Monte .
(Fiction).
Up Stream
634
(6
20
.
AUSTIN, MARY
Barney, Natalie CLIFFORD, transla-
tor
87
BECHHOFER, C. E..
BODENHEIM, MAXWELL
Boni, Nell v. L., translator
BUFFET, GABRIELLE
BUNIN, IVAN
BURKE, KENNETH
Butts, MARY
Colum, PADRAIC
398
465
416
.
.
COOMARASWAMY, ANANDA
COPPARD, A. E..
Cowley, MALCOLM
CRANE, CLARKSON
CRAVEN, THOMAS JEWELL
An Evening with M Teste (Fiction) 158
Russian Letter
69
Isolation of Carved Metal
The Beguine Symforosa (Fiction)
365
Guillaume Apollinaire
267
The Gentleman from San Francisco
(Fiction)
47
The Correspondence of Flaubert 147
Fides quaerens Intellectum
527
Heaven's First Law
197
Heroism and Books
92
Portrait of an Arrived Critic (Fiction)
Change (Fiction)
Memoirs of a Midget
A New Dramatic Art .
302
Sea and Sardinia
193
Oriental Dances in America
17
Broadsheet Ballad (Fiction)
235
Bonded Translation
517
The Fall of Soissons (Fiction)
Another Outline of History
208
Love in Smoky Hill (Fiction)
Realism and Robert Henri
George Sand
385
Dublin Letter
298, 619
London Letter
510
An American Aristocrat
305
The Brothers Karamazov
607
Childhood Traits in Whitman
169
The Brothers Karamazov
607
The Burning Beard (Fiction)
259
The Gentleman From San Francisco
(Fiction)
A Study of Language
314
498
1
84
1
.
Croce, BENEDETTO
EGLINTON, JOHN
ELIOT, T. S.
HERRICK, ROBERT
HESSE, HERMANN
Holloway, Emory
Hudson, STEPHEN, translator
KOMROFF, MANUEL
KOTELIANSKY, S. S., translator
47
Kroeber, A. L.


IV
INDEX
PAGE
LAWRENCE, D. H..
LAWRENCE, D. H., translator .
>
47
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell, Amy
MITCHELL, STEWART
.
MOORE, EDWARD
MORTIMER, RAYMOND
POUND, EZRA
Powys, LLEWELYN
Robinson, James Harvey
RosenFELD, PAUL
Russell, BERTRAND
SANTAYANA, GEORGE
SELDES, Gilbert
An Episode (Fiction).
143
The Fox (Fiction).
471, 569
The Gentleman from San Francisco
(Fiction)
The Perfect Tory
412
The Promise of Sherwood Anderson 79
A Bird's Eye View of E. A. Robinson 130
A Century of Shelley
246
Spain From the Air
640
Prague Letter
406
Bombination
630
London Letter
291
Miss Sinclair Again
531
Paris Letter
73, 187, 401, 623
Glimpses of Thomas Hardy
286
The Revolution in Ethical Theory 514
Sherwood Anderson
29
Chinese Civilization and the West
356
Marginal Notes
553
The Art of the Novel
The Best Butter
427
Documents
Duodecimo, 250 pp.
94
Prologue to an Edition
522
“Madame à sa Tour Monte
(Fiction).
Idyll (Fiction)
183
Blood and Irony
310
This Side of Innocence
419
The Poems of H. D.
203
Trivia
242
The Beguine Symforosa (Fiction) 365
A Child's History of the World
422
An Evening With M Teste (Fiction)
158
Achilles
Love's Muenchhausen
642
The Analysis of Mind
97
The Country of Cockayne
493
More Memories
449, 591
318
211
SELDES, GILBERT, translator
20
SELIGMANN, HERBERT J.
SHAW, VIVIAN
SINCLAIR, MAY
SMITH, Logan PEARSALL
TIMMERMANS, Felix
TRUEBLOOD, Charles K.
VALÈRY, PAUL
Van Loon, HENDRIK WILLEM
von LUDASSY, Julius
Watson, John B.
Wright, CUTHBERT
Yeats, William BUTLER
201
.


INDEX
V
VERSE
PAGE
265
.
BODENHEIM, MAXWELL
BYNNER, WITTER
CRANE, HART
CUMMINGS, E. E.
384
Instructions for a Ballet
Donald Evans
Praise for an Urn .
Five Poems
Poem
The Holy Gilde
Napoleon
The Game
Matin
Two Greek Heads
Bloom
Katydids
A Shrine
People's Surroundings
Eighth Canto
Slabs of the Sunburnt West
The Bull
The Jungle
606
Damon, S. Foster .
FLETCHER, JOHN GOULD
GOULD, WALLACE
KREYMBORG, ALFRED
LOWELL, AMY
MITCHELL, STEWART
Moore, MARIANNE
POUND, EZRA
SANDBURG, CARL
Williams, William Carlos
43
354
178
393
463
464
244
492
16
68
588
505
278
156
157
.


VI
INDEX
ART
ARCHIPENKO, ALEXANDER
Benn, Ben
Bloch, ALBERT
Biocн
CARLYLE, SIDNEY D.
CHRISTIAN, GEORGES
CUMMINGS, E. E.
Davis, STUART
De Lanux, EYRE
DEMUTH, CHARLES
FAGGI, Alfeo
FAï, EMANUEL
Gropper, William
Herzog, OSWALD
KOLBE, GEORG
Two Figures
Two Studies
Interior
Street
Two Drawings
La Sainte Russie
Four Line Drawings
James Joyce
A Portrait
Acrobats
Dante
Canal St Martin
Job et ses Amis
Le Jockey
Une Gare
Fox-Trot
Touch
Geniessen
Dancer
Mermaid
Heifer
A Portrait
Female Torso
Kneeling Girl
Mother and Child
Baby's Head
Movement: New York
An Etching
A Line Drawing
Jack Rabbit
Figure Drawing
The Cripple
Strolling Mountebanks
La Carriole de M Juniet
The Fear Forest
Woman in Evergreens
Four Drawings for Woodcuts
Two Wood Carvings
May
May
January
January
April
March
January
June
January
June
· April
February
February
February
February
May
May
January
June
June
June
March
April
April
April
February
February
April
April
May
June
June
June
May
February
February
March
March
KUNIYOSHI, YASUO
LACHAISE, GASTON
LEHMBRUCK, Wilhelm
.
.
.
.
Loy, MINA
MARIN, JOHN
Matisse, Henri
NAGLE, EDWARD P.
Nakian, Reuben
PASCIN, JULES
PICASSO, PABLO
.
ROUSSEAU, HENRI
SPRINCHORN, CARL.
VAN HEEMSKERCK, JACOBA
ZORACH, WILLIAM


INDEX
VII
BOOKS REVIEWED
Authors and Titles
PAGE
ABBOTT, LYMAN. Silhouettes of My Contemporaries
218
ADAMS, SAMUEL HOPKINS. Success
216
AIKEN, CONRAD. Punch: The Immortal Liar
130
ÅLEICHEM, SHALOM. See Shalom Aleichem.
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD. Marching Men.-Poor White.—The Triumph of the Egg.-
Windy McPherson's Son.-Winesburg, Ohio
29, 79
ANGELL, NORMAN. The Fruits of Victory
106
ANONYMOUS. EDEN AND CEDAR Paul, translators. A Young Girl's Diary
325
ANONYMOUS. The Glass of Fashion
328
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME. Alcools.-Le Bestiaire.-Calligrammes.-L'Enchanteur
Pourissant.-La Femme Assise.-Hérésiarque & Cie.-Les Peintres Cubistes.-Le
Poète Assassiné .
267
ATHERTON, GERTRUDE. Sleeping Fires
432
AUTHORS' LEAGUE. My Maiden Effort
539
Ayscough, Florence, translator. Amy Lowell, English versions. Fir-Flower Tablets 517
BALFOUR, ARTHUR JAMES. A Defence of Philosophic Doubt
107
BEEBE, WILLIAM. Edge of the Jungle
106
BEER, THOMAS, The Fair Rewards
432
BEERBOHM, Max. And Even Now
94
BEERBOHM, Max. A Christmas Garland.—The Happy Hypocrite.—More.—Seven
Men.-A Survey.-The Works. Yet Again.-Zuleika Dobson
522
BENCHLEY, Robert. Of All Things!
94
BENÉT, LAURA. Fairy Bread
537
BENNETT, ARNOLD. Mr. Prohack
431
BERESFORD, J. D. The Prisoners of Hartling
535
BERES FORD, J. D. Signs and Wonders
104
BERTRAND, Louis. Flaubert à Paris
BLACK, ALEXANDER. The Latest Thing, and Other Things
BLAKE, W. H., translator. Maria
Chapdelaine, by Louis HÉMON
431
BLOK, ALEXANDER. Scythians.—The Twelve
69
BOJER, Johan. A. R. SHELANDER, translator. God and Woman
323
BOTTOME, PHYLLIS. The Crystal Heart .
324
BOUCHÉ, Louis, and William Yarrow, editors. Robert Henri, His Life and Works 84
BOYD, ERNEST. Ireland's Literary Renaissance.
298
BOYD, ERNEST, translator. The Patrioteer, by Heinrich Mann .
324
BRADFORD, GAMALIEL, American Portraits, 1875-1900
651
BRADLEY, WILLIAM AspenwALL, translator. Decadence and Other Essays on the
Culture of Ideas, by REMY DE GOURMONT
107
BRAILSFORD, Henry Noel. The Russian Workers' Republic
BRAILSFORD, Henry Noel. Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle
246
BRAITHWAITE, WILLIAM STANLEY, editor. Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921 537
BRAWLEY, BENJAMIN. The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States. 435
BRETT-SMITH, H. F., editor. Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry: Shelley's Defence of
Poetry: Browning's Essay on Shelley
217
BRILL, A. A. Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis
651
BROUN, HEYWOOD. Seeing Things at Night
94
Browx, Alice. Louise Imogen Guiney
BUNIN, I. A., MAXIM GORKY, and Alexander Kuprin, Reminiscences of Anton
Chekhov
219
BYELY, ANDREY, Christ Has Arisen
69
Cecil, LADY GWENDOLEN, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury
412
COLBY, FRANK MOORE. The Margin of Hesitation
94
COLERIDGE, HONOURABLE STEPHEN. The Idolatry of Science
435
401
538
.
220
326


VIII
INDEX
PAGE
537, 619
640
538
538
211
Colum, Padraic, editor. Anthology of Irish Verse
COPPARD, A. E. Adam & Eve & Pinch Me .
323
CUMBERLAND, GERALD. The Poisoner
432
H. D. Hymen
203
DE GOURMONT, Remy. Jack Lewis, translator. The Book of Masks
217
DE GOURMONT, Remy. William AspenwAll Bradley, translator. Decadence and
Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas .
107
DE LA MARE, Walter. Memoirs of a Midget.—The Three Mulla-Mulgars
416
Dell, FLOYD. The Briary Bush.-Moon Calf
104
Dewey, John. Human Nature and Conduct
514
Don Marquis. See Marquis, Don.
Dos Passos, John. Rosinante to the Road Again
DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR. The Brothers Karamazov
607
Doughty, Charles Montagu. Travels in Arabia Deserta
193
DRINKWATER, John. Seeds of Time .
DRINKWATER, John. Paul Nash, engravings on wood. Cotswold Characters
Duclaux, MARIE. Victor Hugo
327
DUNSANY, Lord. If
649
EASTMAN, Max. The Sense of Humor
327
Ferber, EDNA. The Girls
104
Faure, Elie. Walter Pach, translator. History of Art (Volume I, Ancient Art) 208
Fergusson, Harvey. The Blood of the Conquerors
216
FILLMORE, Parker. The Laughing Prince
104
FITZGERALD, F. Scott. The Beautiful and Damned.—This Side of Paradise
419
FLAUBERT, Gustave. Aimee McKenzie, translator. The George Sand-Gustave
Flaubert Letters.
218
Foerster-NIETZSCHE, ELIZABETH, editor; Caroline V. Kerr, translator. The
Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence
FORBES, Rosita. The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara
434
Forbes-Robertson, Philippe, and W. L. George. A London Mosaic
219
Fort, Paul. John Strong NEWBERRY, translator. Selected Poems and Ballads of
Paul Fort.
217
Freeman, John. Two Poems
649
Gallienne, Richard Le. See Le Gallienne
GALSWORTHY, John. The Forsyte Saga.—To Let .
103
GARLAND, Hamlin. A Daughter of the Middle Border
535
GARLAND, Hamlin. Main Travelled Roads .
79
Garnett, CONSTANCE, translator. Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories, by Ivan
TURGENEV.
433
George, W. L., and Philippe Forbes-Robertson. A London Mosaic
219
GIDE, ANDRÉ. Lilian Rothermere, translator. Prometheus Illbound
325
GOLDBERG, Isaac, translator and editor. Brazilian Tales .
GORKY, Maxim. Three of Them
GORKY, MAXIM, ALEXANDER Kuprin, and I. A. BUNIN. Reminiscences of Anton
Chekhov
219
Gould, Gerald. The Journey
GOURMONT, REMY DE. See de Gourmont
Graves, CHARLES L. Mr Punch's History of Modern England
106
Graves, Robert. The Pier-Glass
105
GreenBIE, SYDNEY. The Pacific Triangle
219
Gsell, Paul. Les Matinées de la Villa Said: Propos d'Anatole France
187
Guerney, Bernard Guilbert, translator. The Menace of the Mob, by DMITRI
MEREJKOVSKI
539
Gugitz, GUSTAV. Giacomo Casanova und Sein Lebensroman
642
GUNNARSSON, GUNNAR. W. W. Worster, translator. Guest the One-Eyed
HAGEDORN, HERMANN. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands
219
HALDANE, Viscount. The Reign of Relativity .
107
HALL, James Norman, and Charles Bernard Nordhoff. Faery Lands of the South
Seas
Hamilton, Lord Frederick. Here, There and Everywhere .
536
432
538
536
434
328


INDEX
IX
PAGE
.
435
211
211
634
HAMLIN, TALBOT F. The Enjoyment of Architecture
328
HAMSUN, Knut. W. W. Worster, translator. Dreamers
215
HARDY, THOMAS. The Dynasts
130
HARRISON, HENRY SYDNOR. Saint Teresa
648
Hémon, Louis. W. H. BLAKE, translator. Maria Chapdelaine
431
Herbert, SYDNEY. The Fall of Feudalism in France.
539
HERGESHEIMER, Joseph. Cytherea.- Java Head.—The Lay Anthony.-Linda
Condon.-Mountain Blood.- The Three Black Pennys
310
Hudson, W. H. A Shepherd's Life.-A Traveller in Little Things
538, 539
HUTCHINSON, A. S. M. If Winter Comes
103
HUXLEY, ALDOUS. Crome Yellow.–Limbo
630
JARRY, ALFRED. Ubu Roi .
73
Joyce, JAMES. Dubliners.-A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
619
JOYCE, JAMES. Ulysses .
187, 318, 619, 623, 662
KALLEN, HORACE M. Zionism and World Politics .
KELLER, ELIZABETH LEAVITT. Walt Whitman in Mickle Street
326
KERR, CAROLINE V., translator; ELIZABETH FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE, editor. The
Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence
Kuprin, Alexander, Maxim Gorky, and I. A. BUNIN. Reminiscences of Anton
Chekhov
219
LAWRENCE, D. H. Sea and Sardinia
193
LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD, editor. The Le Gallienne Book of English Verse
649
Levy, Oscar, editor; ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI, translator. Selected Letters of Friedrich
Nictzsche
LEWIS, JACK, translator. The Book of Masks, by REMY DE GOURMONT
217
LEWIS, SINCLAIR. Main Street
79
Lewisohn, LUDWIG. Up Stream
Loox, HENDRIK WILLEM Van. See Van Loon.
LOWELL, Amy, English versions. FLORENCE Ayscough, translator. Fir-Flower Tablets 517
LOYD, LADY MARY, translator. Danton, by Louis Madelin .
434
LUBBOCK, Percy. The Craft of Fiction
318
Lucas, E. V. Rose and Rose .
LUDOVICI, ANTHONY M., translator; Oscar Levy, editor. Selected Letters of Friedrich
Nietzsche.
LYNCH, Bohun. Max Beerbohm in Perspective
522
McALMON, ROBERT. A Hasty Bunch
187
MCKENNA, STEPHEN. The Secret Glory
648
McKENNA, STEPHEN. While I Remember
433
McKENZIE, AIMEE, translator. The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters
218
MACAULAY, Rose. Dangerous Ages.
104
MACGOWAN, KENNETH. The Theatre of Tomorrow
340
MACKENZIE, COMPTox. Poor Relations.-Rich Relatives .
216
MADELIN, Louis. Lady Mary LOYD, translator. Danton
434
MANN, HEINRICH. Ernest Boyd, translator. The Patrioteer
324
MARQUIS, Don. Poems and Portraits
538
MASEFIELD, John. Esther and Berenice
649
MASEFIELD, John. King Cole
105
MASTERS, EDGAR LEE. The Open Sea
433
MATTHEWS, BRANDER. Essays on English
MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET. The Trembling of a Leaf
Mencken, H, L. The American Language
327, 342
MEREJKOVSKI, DMITRI. Bernard Guilbert Guerney, translator. The Menace of
the Mob
539
MERRICK, LEONARD. One Man's View
535
METHUEN, A., compiler. Anthology of Modern Verse .
510
Milnes, G. TURQUET-. See Turquet-Milnes.
MIBBEAU, OCTAVE. Calvary
648
MORE, PAUL ELMER. The Religion of Plato
527
MORLEY, CHRISTOPHER, editor. Modern Essays
327
MURRAY, GILBERT. The Problem of Foreign Policy
536
211
328
431
220


X
INDEX
PAGE
2
!
.
211
211
328
536
318
Nash, Paul, engravings on wood. Cotswold Characters, by John DrinkwATER
538
NATHAN, Robert. Autumn
103
Newberry, John Strong, translator. Selected Poems and Ballads of Paul Fort .
217
NEWBOLT, Sir Henry. English Anthology of Prose and Poetry .
342
Nietzsche, ELIZABETH FOERSTER-. See Foerster-Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, FRIEDRICH. ELIZABETH FOERSTER-Nietzsche, editor; CAROLINE V. Kerr,
translator. The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Oscar Levy, editor; Anthony M. Ludovici, translator.
Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche
NORDHOFF, Charles BERNARD, and James Norman Hall. Faery Lands of the South
Seas
434
O'Brien, EDWARD J., editor. The Best Short Stories of 1921
427
0. Henry. C. ALPHONSO SMITH, editor. Selected Stories from 0. Henry
427
ONIONS, Oliver. A Case in Camera.-Grey Youth.—The Tower of Oblivion
324
Orpen, Sir William. An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 .
219
Pach, Walter, translator. History of Art (Volume I, Ancient Art) by Elie FAURE. 208
Passos, John Dos. See Dos Passos.
Paul, Eden and Cedar, translators. Romain Rolland, The Man and His Work, by
Stefan Zweig
92
Paul, Eden and Cedar, translators. A Young Girl's Diary (Anonymous)
'
325
PENNELL, JOSEPH. The Graphic Arts
Perry, Bliss. Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson
305
PHILLPOTTS, EDEN. Pan and the Twins .
Poole, Ernest. Beggars' Gold
323
POUND, Ezra. Poems
87
Proust, Marcel. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
318
RAKOVSKY, G. N. In the Camp of the Whites .
69
REPINGTON, LT.-Col. Charles À Court. After the War
651
RICHARDSON, Dorothy. Pilgrimage .
Robertson, Philippe Forbes-. See Forbes-Robertson.
Robinson, EDWIN ARLINGTON. Collected Poems
130
Robinson, Edwin Meade. Enter Jerry
323
Robinson, JAMES Harvey, The Mind in the Making
ROLLAND, Romain. Colas Breugnon.
92
Ross, EDWARD ALSWORTH. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution
ROTHENSTEIN, William. Twenty-four Portraits
106
ROTHERMERE, Lilian, translator. Prometheus Illbound, by André Gide
325
Russell, BertRAND. The Analysis of Mind
97
Russell, COUNTESS. Vera
324
Sadleir, MICHAEL. Privilege .
324
SALMON, ANDRÉ. La Negrésse du Sacré Coeur
493
SAMUELS, MAURICE. The Outsider
216
Sand, George. Aimee McKenzie, translator. The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert
Letters
218
SANGU, Makato, editor. An Anthology of New English Verse
SAPIR, EDWARD. Language
314
Sentner, David. Cobblestones
537
SEVERINI, GINO. Du Cubisme au Classicisme
651
SHALOM ALEICHEM. Hannah BERMAN, translator. Jewish Children
432
SHELANDER, A. R., nslator. God and Woman, by Johan BOJER .
323
SINCLAIR, May. Life and Death of Harriett Frean.-Mary Olivier. -Mr. Waddington
of Wyck
531
Smith, C. ALPHONSO, editor. Selected Stories from O. Henry
427
SMITH, H. F. BRETT-. See Brett-Smith.
SMITH, Logan PEARSALL. More Trivia .
94
SMYTH, ETHEL. Impressions That Remained.-Streaks of Life
650
SOCIETY OF ARTS AND Sciences. Introduction by Blanche Colton Williams.
0. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921
427
Soskice, Juliet M. Chapters From Childhood
434
Snow, Royall. Igdrasil
433
201
220
649
.


INDEX
XI
650
220
536
PAGE
SPENCE, LEWIS. An Introduction to Mythology
539
STEARNS, HAROLD, editor. Civilization in the United States, An Inquiry by Thirty
Americans
553
STEFANSSON, VILHJALMUR. The Friendly Arctic
STERN, G. B. The China Shop
103
STEWART, Donald OGDEN. A Parody Outline of History
94
STREET, JULIAN. Mysterious Japan
STRIBLING, T. S. Birthright
648
STRUNSKY, SIMEON, Sinbad and His Friends
94
SUVORIN, ALEXEY. The Korniloff Campaign
69
SYMONDS, MARGARET. A Child of the Alps .
TAGORE, RABINDRANATH. The Fugitive.
325
TANNENBAUM, FRANK. The Labor Movement
435
Taylor, Bert Leston. A Penny Whistle
105
Taylor, G. R. STIRLING. Modern English Statesmen
435
THARAUD, J. and J. Tragédie de Ravaillac
401
THOMAS, EDWARD. Collected Poems .
218
TINKER, CHAUNCEY BREWSTER. Young Boswell
650
TOBENKIN, ELIAS. The Road .
535
TOMLINSON, H. M. London River
219
TRAPROCK, WALTER E. The Cruise of the Kawa
94
TRAUT, Elise, translator. Envy, A Tale, by Ernst von WILDENBRUCH
431
TURBYFILL, Mark. The Living Frieze
218
TURGENEV, Ivan. Constance GARNETT, translator. Knock, Knock, Knock and
Other Stories .
433
TURQUET-Milnes, G. Some Modern French Writers
326
UNTERMEYER, Louis, editor. Modern American Poetry
510
Van Loon, Hendrik Willem. The Story of Mankind
von WILDENBRUCH, Ernst. Elise Traut, translator. Envy, A Tale
WAGNER, RICHARD; ELIZABETH FOERSTER-Nietzsche, editor; Caroline V. Kerr,
translator. The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence
Waldo, HAROLD. Stash of the Marsh Country
WALKLEY, A. B. Pastiche and Prejudice
94
WALPOLE, Huch. The Young Enchanted
216
WHARTON, EDITH. The Custom of the Country.- The House of Mirth
419
Wick, Jean, compiler. The Stories Editors Buy and Why
427
WIDDEMER, MARGARET. Cross-Currents.
217
WILDENBRUCH, Ernst von. See von WILDENBRUCH.
WILEY, Hugh. Lady Luck
216
Williams, BLANCHE Colton, introduction. O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories
of 1921, chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences
427
WILLIAMS, OSCAR. The Golden Darkness
105
Williams, William Carlos. Al Que Quiere.-Cora in Hell.-Sour Grapes
197
Williams, William Carlos. Improvisations
197, 215
WOOLF, Virginia. Monday or Tuesday.—The Voyage Out
215
WORSTER, W. W., translator. Dreamers, by Knut HAMSUN .
215
WORSTER, W. W., translator. Guest the One-Eyed, by GUNNAR GUNNARSSON
536
WYLIE, ELINOR. Nets to Catch the Wind
105
Yarrow, William, and Louis Bouché, editors. Robert Henri, His Life and Works . 84
YEATS, William Butler. Four Plays for Dancers
302
YEATS, William BUTLER. Four Years 1887–1891 .
298
ZWEIG, STEFAN. Eden and Cedar Paul, translators. Romain Rolland, The Man
and His Work
92
422
431
211
215


XII
INDEX
MODERN ART
PAGE
108
Loud No-With Exceptions, A
Art-Civic and Otherwise
Burchfield, Charles
Eakins, Thomas.
Kelekian Collection, The
Marin, John
Review
Stieglitz Auction, The
Tennysonian Exhibits
540
437
221
223
329
652
436
224
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
Friends of Music .
Music Guild, The
Ornstein Two-Piece Sonata, The
Prokofieff's Opera, Serge
Saint-Saëns, Camille
Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces
543
655
332
439
225
III
THE THEATRE
444
114
661
230
339
339
660
339
338
548
Back to Methuselah .
Bill of Divorcement, A
Bronx Express, The
Chaliapine, Feodor
Chauve-Souris
Clavilux, The
Creditors
Czarina, The
Deluge, The
Emperor Jones, The
First Year, The
Good Morning Dearie
Hairy Ape, The
He Who Gets Slapped
Idle Inn, The .
Jolson, Al.
Krazy Kat Ballet, The
Liliom .
Madame Pierre
Madras House, The .
Make It Snappy
Music Box Revue
No-Siree! .
Partners Again
Rags
Rose of Stamboul, The
S. S. Tenacity, The
To the Ladies
445
115
548
337
231
445
339
230, 337
445
114
660
115
661
661
445, 661
661
230
445


INDEX
XIII
COMMENT
PAGR
550
551
234
448
"American Valuation”
Authors Club, The
Award, Not a Prize
Buying Contemporary Paintings
Creating a Situation for Artists
Dial Award, The
“... if one is intense'
MacDowell Colony, The
Oliver Optic and Our Background
Review of Sherwood Anderson, A
Russia .
Self-Censorship
Self-Censorship Again
Statue and the Bust-up, The
Ulysses
Valedictory to Politics
Valuable Vested Interest, A
Why We Leave Home
233
116
232
118
342
117
118
446
664
551
662
552
232
663
DEPARTMENTS
Briefer Mention.
Comment .
Dublin Letter
London Letter
Modern Art
Musical Chronicle
Paris Letter
Prague Letter
Russian Letter
Theatre, The .
103, 215, 323, 431, 535, 648
116, 232, 342, 446, 550, 662
298, 619
291, 510
108, 221, 329, 436, 540, 652
111, 225, 332, 439, 543,655
73, 187, 401, 623
406
69
114, 230, 337, 444, 548, 660


B
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OXXIII
22116
3 4 5
15
JANUARY 1922
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
BY THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
THUR
HE first day of the harvest was over, and the men, tired and
stuffed with food, loitered near the stables, smoking and
matching wits. The wheat was ripening fast and Patrick Kilgore
kept two reapers in operation. He managed one machine him-
self; his son, Leo, another; there were two boys from town who
rode the lead-horses, and to accompany each reaper two hired
hands who grouped the bundles into shocks. In addition to the
men were his wife and two daughters, all labouring from dawn
till dusk with a single aim—to get the two hundred acres of grain
cut and stacked while the weather was fair.
Tressa Kilgore came out of the kitchen with a pail in each hand
and went slowly down to the cow-shed. It was past seven o'clock
and the milking had been delayed until she had finished the cook-
ing; her strong body ached, and she walked with a weary, swaying
motion. Still, the work had to be done and she entered the shed,
sat down by a big red cow, freshly calved and capable of more than
two gallons, and proceeded in her task with submissive industry
Her hands jerked up and down in a monotonous rhythm which was
broken at intervals when she paused to wipe the sweat from her
face with the sleeve of her blouse. Outside she could hear the men
talking—their language was not precisely clean, but she was used
to farm life. She listened without attention, automatically giving
ear to the ribald humour.
"Say, that ol' bohunk stood it purty well to-day. I thought
he'd lay down before noon."
"So did I. They usually does.”


2
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
"Usually does! What the hell d'you know about it? You talk
like you'd been raised with 'em. He's the first bohunk I ever seen.”
“There's a whole gang of 'em on the section.”
.
“Get that? On the section! They're all dagos down there.
You're a wise lad—can't tell a bohunk from a dago.”
a
“Shut up.”
A roar of laughter, and then Leo Kilgore spoke up:
“I'll fix him to-morrow. We'll shift him to my binder. I drive
faster 'n the old man. You don't mind changin' with him, do
you, Ed?"
"Certainly not,” answered a long tough lad of twenty.
"And I'll work him to death."
“What's his name, Leo ?”
“You got me. He can't read nor write-can't even spell. John
somethin'. Sounds like Laffter."
“Laffter! Say, boys, that's good. We'll call him Laffter. That
hobo never smiled in his life.”
“And did you see him eat? My God, what an appetite! He
drank five cups o coffee, and filled each one of 'em half full o’
cream.”
It was growing dark when Tressa emerged from the shed. She
took her pails to a bench near the windmill, washed out a number
of jars, strained the milk and carried it down into the cellar. One
more duty and she was at liberty to go to bed: she crossed the
orchard to the hen-houses and fastened the doors of a row of
coops,
each containing a newly hatched brood of white leghorns. She
stopped a moment on the margin of the wheat and sighed. The
day was done at last!
The night was sultry and fascinating. A warm vapour rose
from the fields and spread over the land like smoke, filling the air
with the sweet smells of growing vegetation. It was as if the earth,
suffocating by day under the hot Kansas sun, had breathed a vast
sigh of relief when the molten disk slipped over the horizon, and the
stars came out. A fading red wave still lingered in the west and
was reflected in the haze; and in front of her, rich and motionless
like cloth of gold, lay the ripening wealth of Patrick Kilgore. Not
a sound marred the moist quiet of the yellow wilderness and Tressa
felt a momentary sensation of complete peace. The land was per-
fectly flat; the farm blurred out into a line of high thorny hedges,
a


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
3
on the other side of which reposed more wheat, then the railway,
the Smoky Hill River hidden by cottonwoods, and five miles away
the little town with lights flashing in the windows of the flour mills.
She saw a figure stumbling through the mown sector; it halted and
picked up a sheaf, and then approached. Her father examining
the results of the day's cutting.
"What you standin' out here for, Tress? It'll be growin' late.
Better git to bed."
“All right.”
She waited for him to disappear and then patiently returned to
the house. The men had retired to their bunks in the loft of the
big stable, but as she passed the corn-crib she saw the bohunk
standing in the doorway alone. The other hands could not tolerate
him and his bed was an old mattress thrown under the gable of
the granary amongst pieces of harness, paints, scraps of machinery,
fly-nets, and rubbish of all sorts.
He was hatless and his small peaked head was shaven closely,
and in the twilight his scalp appeared blackened with a smut that
darted down to a point in the middle of his forehead. He wore a
dirty checked cotton shirt with the buttons all gone, and a woolen
undershirt equally soiled; Kilgore had given him a pair of denim
trousers—he had come to the farm ragged beyond decency—and
torn boots of different sizes. He was about thirty years old, mod-
erately tall, with enormous shoulders, and long, thick, shapeless
He looked at Tressa with a steady, serious gaze—with the
simple pathos of an infant that knew little and feared nothing;
his eyes were dark and bulging and his expression as piteous as a
sheep's. He seemed to want to say something but could only stare
with a rigid mute appeal. His loneliness touched her, and a half-
hour later, when she flung herself into bed, she thought of him
again—his bulky form filling the doorway of the granary, his inno-
cent, helpless eyes calling to her, begging her to speak to him.
Nature had not been generous with Tressa Kilgore. Her hair
was straight and scanty, and of a curious dusty-orange hue like
rain-rotted hay. She pulled it back tight from her forehead and
pinned it into a knot on the nape of her neck, with short ends
straggling over her ears. Her face was narrow and mis-shapen, the
cheeks squeezed together in ugly lines; a prominent mole stood out
on her chin and another at the corner of her arid mouth; and her


4
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
nose was unpleasantly long. In the half-lights she had no eyebrows
at all, but in the sunshine two pale yellow streaks were visible; her
eyes were wanting in depth and colour, a soft blue like watery gela-
tine; they were set in shallow sockets and the edges of the lids were
inflamed. But they served her well enough. She had no desire to
read, and besides, the house was destitute of books; she was clumsy
with the needle and sewed little; and was not accustomed to observe
anything closely. Freckles covered her red skin, running down her
back and dotting her throat and arms. Even a sense of humour,
a predominant trait in the Kilgores, had been denied her; but in
physical strength she was exceptional—her large, lumpy figure
was equal to any amount of work, in doors or out, in the blasting
summers and in the fierce windy snows.
No one noticed her, either to admonish or to offer a comforting
suggestion; and the persistent drudgery that had filled most of her
twenty-six years made her appear much older. Tressa took every-
thing as a matter of course: that her father was getting rich did
not concern her—she knew that she was doomed to an unchange-
able destiny, to carry slops to the pigs, to plough, to churn, to cook,
to go to bed when night came, and to get up with the first peep of
dawn. Stupid, shabby, and uncomplaining she had no time for
tears and no spirit for laughter; and it seldom occurred to her that
life was anything but a cycle of toil. During her five years at the
country school she had learned to read and write, and it was no
disappointment when she was withdrawn and her quickly matur-
ing strength applied to the routine of the farm. Agnes, her younger
.
sister, was reasonably good-looking and a fair student, and when
she had been sent to town to the high school Tressa regarded it
as the proper thing to do. A year ago, when Agnes was married to
the proprietor of the Star Grocery, Tressa cooked the wedding sup-
per and washed the dishes; her brother was building a house on the
south forty in preparation for his bride—she would cook and wash
the dishes again. It would be very nice for Leo. She had watched
men come and go; sometimes they stayed a few months; occasion-
ally they remained longer; but not one had smiled on her, or winked
at her with a wicked grin, or pinched her arms, or pushed her aside
with a significant gesture. One look at her vacuous freckled face
and her ugly swaying figure discouraged even the most indiscrimin-
ating male. The only adventure that coloured her life was the


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
5
a
weekly journey to town when the family drove off in the black
carriage to the Church of the Sacred Heart.
The weather continued hot and clear and the harvest went on
with clock-like regularity. Every field in central Kansas presented
the same scene: six great Flemish horses walking slowly along in
the scorching heat; the avaricious clatter of the knives as they slith-
ered through the dry stalks; the insistent discharge of the bundles
which were gathered into comely shocks by two plodding figures;
sunburnt men in straw hats as big as parasols; and here and there
a girl in a blue sun-bonnet trudging over the cut stems with a bucket
of cold water. Patrick Kilgore was happy. Gradually rows of
upright sheaves were supplanting the flowing golden waves; the
wheat was heavy; the quality fine; and his men working harmoni-
ously. Even the bohunk had not weakened—the efforts of the
son to “kill him off” had proved ineffectual; plenty of food and
long periods of sleep had rejuvenated his strength, and the silent
Bohemian was the match for any partner given him. He was
awkward and slow, but imperturbable, and on the whole his be-
haviour was above attack.
Tressa watched him cautiously, peered at him from the kitchen
as he bolted his heavy meals, turned the corner of her colourless
eyes in his direction when she passed him in the driveway, saw him
ascend the ladder at night when he clambered up to his grimy hole
to rest. Sometimes she fancied he returned her furtive gaze, but
reconsidering his glances she construed them to be no more than
the same big-eyed, bovine, wondering stare that he projected on
everyone. It was too much to expect a man to care for her, even
a hobo. Several times the other hired men made him the victim of
their original humour; a nest of yellow jackets was concealed in his
bed, and a little later, when they heard him thrashing about under
the eaves, they laughed themselves sick, but on seeing him issue
from the door with a huge lump on his face and aimlessly wander
to the pump to bathe the swelling, they became suddenly sobered.
His expression was unruffled and he showed no signs of animosity.
Once, when he was drinking from a pipe that emptied into a trough,
his head was rudely shoved into the water; but he remained as
composed as ever, and in a brief time the men ceased to harass him.
It was no fun to fool with a subject that was wholly unresponsive.
Sunday came, and after cutting till four o'clock the men hurried
a


6
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
off to the creek for a swim. To-day the milking could be done
before preparing supper and Tressa went down to the pasture to
drive in the cows. He was leaning against the door-jamb of the
granary; he always stood there with his head slightly tilted upwards
and his eyes fixed dispassionately on something far away.
He
was freshly shaven-one of the men had sold him a razor at an
exorbitant profit—but his beard was so thick and dark that the
roots made a bluish stain on his cheeks and chin. Tressa thought
him very handsome, and as she methodically directed the milk into
the pails her mind dwelt on him continually. He was lonelier than
she was; she, at least, was a part of the life of the farm and not a
stranger—but the bohunk didn't fit in anywhere. A vagrant and
a foreigner, his English limited and ludicrous, he could hope for
no friendship among those uncharitable farmers. Although he was
hard and tireless it pleased her to gather from his humble attitude
and his docile eyes that he was kindly and warm-hearted. Perhaps
he had a wife on the other side, children, too, maybe—he had dis-
closed nothing—or a sweetheart. No, it could not be! Tressa was
certain that he was not a man to leave a girl. What was he dream-
ing about? and why had he travelled so far? For the first time
her heart quickened with a beat that gave her a wavering nervous
thrill of sympathy and affection. Her dull wits brought her to the
conclusion that he was thinking of her.
On her way to the house she followed a path that led her close
to him. He saw her coming and his eyes seemed to reach out and
plead with her for a sign of recognition. She stood still and the
words escaped her with a gasp.
“Tired, John?!
“No,” he muttered, "never tired.”
His thick lips parted and a huge smile spread slowly over his
face, a smile that grew bigger and bigger, that beamed with incom-
municable joy, then stopped, caught her, and caressed her. A rush
of colour mantled her burnt face, and with a sudden bend of the
body she grabbed her pails and ran through the orchard, abashed
and happy.
From that moment life became charged with meaning and excite-
ment. She was well aware of the consequences if Patrick Kilgore
should suspect her of falling in love with a hobo, and she guarded
her actions stubbornly. Small stimulus was needed to stir her


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
7
a
numbed sensibilities into dreams of uncouth delights, and the
most minute display of feeling on the part of the Bohemian was
of tremendous importance. Like a schoolgirl who runs breath-
lessly for blocks to return a farewell salute from her lover, she
would contrive unnecessary errands and useless duties to drink in
his smile or listen to a rough, half-intelligible phrase. She had
been alive but hardly conscious of it. She became a part of the
glad growing earth, and the hot sun that nourished her father's
fields into an oppressive fecundity pulsed in her blood with a restless
fire. She plucked green apples from the trees, bit into them sav-
agely, and was strangely relieved as the acrid juice moistened her
hungry lips; she crunched the tender corn with her feet and
watched the sap ooze out of the fibres and sparkle in the sun; she
lashed her favourite colt with a willow switch until the terrified
animal cried with pain, and then she brought the withe against her
own legs with stinging blows, and screamed with laughter; her
heavy work was performed without effort—all day long she yearned
for the man she loved, the first man that had ever smiled on her.
Two weeks more and the wheat was cut and stacked. The high
school boys had returned to town; three of the men were going
away on the morrow to the western part of the state where the har-
vests were later; the faithful bohunk was retained. He was not
versed in agriculture but he was a handy man about a farm: he was
familiar with machinery, understood forging, could shoe horses, and
do astonishingly clever work in carpentry. It was late Saturday
afternoon and the big farm drowsed in midsummer heat. There was
a picnic supper at Crystal Springs, a mile down the meridian road,
followed by a rustic moonlight dance in which all of the young
people of Smoky Hill township participated. Tressa was alone
in the kitchen ironing; Agnes was going home the next day and
besides her linen she had to smooth out the starched clothes for the
family to wear to mass. She had balanced the board on the sink
and the back of a chair by the window so that she might at all times
be on watch for him. The day was breathless and a number of
plump old hens lay under the rhubarb leaves panting for air; Jerry,
the spaniel pup, was busy digging a hole in the damp shade of the
trumpet-vines beneath the window. She should have chased him
off with a club, but the little dog always called up the bohunk-
both of them had the same brown, candid eyes. She longed to go
a
а


8
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
a
outside and talk with the man: he was carving a pipe out of a
walnut stick, and frequently he looked up from his bench by the
tool-house and seemed to beckon to her. But she did not dare leave
the rinsed garments unironed, and she threw herself into the job
with all her speed. She watched him eat his supper from a bag
allotted him from the picnic supply; he held up a huge piece of
chocolate cake and swallowed it in two mouthfuls. Dusk gathered
and he disappeared into the corn-crib.
Tressa hurried through her work. Her imagination had never
bothered her, but to-night she was agitated by a swarm of reflec-
tions: Leo would be dancing with his girl, and the Donmeyer boys
would be with the MacAuliffe sisters, and Jack Kirtland would be
sneaking into the trees with his arm around Irene Schwartz. She
named all of them. She folded a white shirt, laid it on top of the
pile, turned down the lamp, and went outside. A pale yellow moon
lifted a laughing face over a cluster of stacks and bathed the wide
valley with a clean, beaming flood. She walked cautiously, with
no preconceived plan, but ere long she found herself at his door-
way, her lumpy body shaking nervously. She stepped between the
bins, tiptoed gently over the scattered husks, and stood with both
hands gripping the ladder. A strange patter of words came from
the room above her; first a string of syllables cut off sharply and
dropping, it seemed, like buttons from a thread; then a quick,
huddled group of accents shaped into a moaning cadence. His
voice! So low and plaintive! So sad and seductive! What was
he doing? She planted her foot on the lowermost rung and noise-
lessly mounted the ladder until her head was just above the level
of the hole in the floor. The bohunk was crouched on his knees
by the square aperture in the gable. He held a chain of beads in
his hands, told them again in his queer, pious lilt, and then, twist-
ing the rosary into a little bundle, he thrust it into his pocket.
Tressa's heart thumped against her thick bosom. She wanted him;
she loved him; she had waited years for him.
“Hello, John.”
Her voice trembled.
He rose to his feet with a violent start, and as he faced her his
head struck one of the sloping rafters. She climbed higher and
sat on the floor with her legs dangling over the trap doorway.
“Ah! You come? You here? Hello!”


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
9
-
She crawled across the cluttered room on hands and knees to his
side and Aung her arms about him with a desperate impetuosity.
He brought up his immense hands slowly to her shoulders and
crushed her with a delicious pressure; her starved lips groped for his
big mouth, and the two of them clung together in the yellow light
for a long time, motionless and silent. By and by he began to talk,
struggling assiduously for English words, and in his excited periods
falling back on a mixture of consonantal sounds that beat into
Tressa's ears like notes of some wild music. The poor fellow's
heart softened. For months he had received nothing but cold com-
mands, now in anger, now perfunctorily pleasant, and his eyes
blinked with tears as memories of the old country crowded his
brain. He gave her disconnected impressions of his native land-
tried to assure her he was not despicable.
His name was Hlavka, a common name in the northern province
of Bohemia where he was born. He had people there, miners most
of them, although one branch of the family were foresters. Oh, a
beautiful country! Not flat and boiling hot like this one. Not
dusty and dry-neither were the barns bigger and finer than the
houses. His father's house was small, but nice! With a pretty
pointed roof, and oaken beams, and mortised boards painted in
bright colours. And there were castles on many of the summits!
Bold and solid, of white stone that would last for ever, and high
windows and towers. She had never seen a mountain? Ah, poor
girl! So big and high, and covered with trees! Magnificent oaks
and elms-miles and miles of them on every slope. Here and there
were lakes, clear as glass and very deep. Ach, blue and wonderful!
He had worked in the coal mines. Hard work and not much money.
Some of his kinsmen had emigrated to America, worked in Penn-
sylvania, then gone to, what you call him? Col-or-ado. He had
come to Pennsylvania about a year ago with a band of friends. All
men, all miners. He worked and worked and was on his way to
Col-or-ado. In Kansas City he lost his companion. He was drunk.
Too bad! He knew that. He wandered alone in those big cattle
yards all night. His money was all gone and he had not spent it!
America was a bad country. He had walked from Kansas City.
Sometimes people gave him food; more often they drove him away.
Big dogs that made him run and hide. He was going to his
brother's to dig coal. Maybe they raise beets together. He did not
a


10
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
know. But here—ah, she was a nice girl! He loved her—very
much.
When he mentioned his destination again Tressa shivered with
apprehension, and clawed at his arms, as if he were already set out
on his journey again.
"But
you won't go now, will you? You can always work here.
He answered that he was satisfied to remain on the farm; he was
very happy here—with her; the work was not hard, now that the
wheat was cut—and she was good. He loved her—very much.
“And you will marry me?" she cried out, delivering herself of a
thought that was synonymous with love to her.
He promised, adding that she was strong and would make him a
good woman, and that her father had many lands.
Tressa was unable to formulate a single scheme for effecting the
alliance. For the present it was enough that she had a lover; she
was happy now, unutterably so, and in the fervour of her first love
she constructed images of a little house in the corner acres where
the alfalfa patch was bordered by a strip of timber, and her own
kitchen, and John farming for himself, and by and by children to
Sooner or later she would be married-there was no doubt
of that. She kissed him again till she could no longer breathe;
they pledged secrecy, and she broke away from his heavy grasp and
went off to bed.
Summer sped by quickly. She had never known the time to
glide along so fast. She could scarcely account for a day. Only
hard work could keep her spirits subdued and stabilize the tumult
of love that surged in her strong body. She performed an incred-
ible amount of toil-she preserved more than a hundred jars of
peaches, and as many plums and pears; the cellar shelves were
lined with jellies; she gathered the early apples and turned the
crank of the cider-mill for days at a stretch; she dried green corn
on the roof of the back kitchen; dug the potatoes, and varnished
the woodwork of the entire house. She found few opportunities
to be alone with John: the bohunk was always in the corn rows
ploughing, or putting up hay with Leo. Moreover she was very
wary now. She experienced a joyous guilt when he was near her;
she grew suspicious, imagining the innocent glances of her father
and mother to betoken secret knowledge of her mad attachment.
nurse.


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
11
Her mind ran back perpetually to that intoxicating session in the
granary. She prayed for another such ravishing hour, and at
length she was tortured by unendurable desires to be married, and
resolved to act.
One Sunday morning in the second week of September she pre-
tended to be ill, with a throbbing pain in her back, and her mother
counselled her to remain in bed. She lay still until she heard the
wheels grinding through the ashes in the driveway, and then she
jumped up, dressed, and hurried out to look for him. She caught
sight of him at the lower end of a field—he loved quail, and having
no gun, was setting an ingenious box which he had designed as a
snare. The bohunk heard her call and joined her at the base of
one of those shapely stacks which, before the threshers come, loom
up on the plains like gigantic bee-hives. They sat down with their
backs against the straw, and without losing a second of the precious
time she fell into his arms. The smooth stubble was warm in the
lazy sunshine; miles of it opened before them, level as a floor. Rain
had fallen a few days past and the fall ploughing was in progress. .
The black earth had been turned up round the perimeter of the
field, and the land appeared to be a seamless, yellow carpet with a
dark, pleated border. She closed her eyes, allowing her body to
languish against his massive chest; she opened them and looked
into his broad, olive-complexioned face. The bohunk smiled with
an expression of indolent contentment, and the one raging, crying
idea came to Tressa's lips.
"You will marry me, John?”
He signified his willingness with a prolonged nodding of the
head. He was very obedient. Any time. He said he loved her-
a
a
very much.
She clutched his hands, digging her nails into his callous fingers.
Her world was a sensory kingdom of physical facts: everything
seemed warm and palpable; she could almost squeeze the glowing
atmosphere in her hands; the mellow reaches of stubble struck her
crude fancy as being a vast piece of toasted bread, golden-brown
and crisp and radiating the warm savour of the ovens. She whis-
pered the resemblance to John. He laughed, and she apprised him
of her plans for the marriage.
Sometimes she went alone in the spring-wagon to do the market-


12
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
*
ing. He must watch—she would try and let him know the night
before; he must walk to town and buy a suit of clothes, black ones,
and
put
them on in the back of Stevenson's Store; her father would
let him go—he had not had a day's vacation since he came to the
farm—but he must start early so that nobody would suspect any-
thing. She would be at Crawford's feed-yard at noon with the
team; he must wait for her there, and they would walk to the
court-house and be married.
“Married! O John, think of it!"
She slapped his cheeks affectionately, but the perplexed fellow
rolled his eyes and answered with a puzzled inquiry.
“What that you say? No priest? In my country no priest, no
marry.”
She hastened to clarify his bewildered notions: Tressa was
following her sister's procedure literally-Agnes had been wedded
to a Protestant, and that both families might be propitiated, the
ceremony had first been performed by the probate judge, with a
reinforcing rite the following day by Father Maher. The bohunk
was not particular; it was agreeable to him so long as there was a
marriage.
She would return to the farm the same afternoon and tell her
parents. Her father would be awfully angry; she could not foresay
what he would do. He would swear frightfully; he would threaten
to send her away, but she was sure he would not do that. She was
old enough to run her own house—and her mind was made up.
Nothing could dissuade her now. John must stay in town over
night; she knew of a rooming house near the depot, right on the
road home, where he could get a bed for half a dollar; and by the
next morning the family wrath would have cooled.
"Married! O John, I can't wait!”
She leaped to her feet and ran round the stack. Her lover pur-
sued her, caught her by the waist, pulled her hair, and kissed her on
the neck.
Some weeks later, on a chilly October morning, the bohunk
loitered expectantly by an abandoned shop near the feed-yard. He
did not dare go inside, fearing the old attendant who looked after
the horses. The clothier had sold him a black suit that had been in
stock for years, a heavy garment of a furry texture, much too large
Te


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
13
a
for him, and drooping into bags and wrinkles. A bright little plaid
cap was pitched on the side of his head, and a dazzling green tie
of the permanently knotted variety dangled over his unbuttoned
waistcoat. Tressa drove into the enclosure at half-past eleven, and
they walked down a back street to the court-house. She was too
much disturbed to talk fluently. Her wedding dress was not very
elaborate; a white cotton shirt-waist decorated with inserted pieces
of coarse lace, a grey woolen skirt held together with safety pins
and sagging low in front, and buttoned shoes with the toes newly
daubed with blacking. Her battered hat of brown velvet was
trimmed with a big pink ribbon; she was uncomfortably warm and
carried her shabby cloak over her arm.
She trembled lest someone of her acquaintance might see them;
she knew that the farmers frequently went to the old stone edifice
on mysterious business connected with deeds and mortgages, but
fortunately it was near noon, the house was almost deserted. They
faltered timidly on the steps, but a young Jew attorney, marching
out with a law book under his arm, divined their mission with an
acumen that was terrifying, and directed the couple to the
proper
room. The probate judge, an old man with a bald head and long
curling moustaches, was eating his lunch at a table. One of his
arms was gone, a disability that had kept him uninterruptedly in
office for twenty years; and he was amiable with all visitors.
Tressa was amazed at the simplicity of the transaction. The judge
laughed good-naturedly at her stammering replies and "guessed she
had as good a right to be married as anybody.” He knew Pat Kil-
gore very well-remembered when the other girl had been licensed.
He drew up the certificate, stipulated a fee, the bohunk sadly
handed him a banknote, and the pair were duly and legally pro-
nounced man and wife. It was a glorious relief to get out into the
cool air again, and they hurried up the street, parting at the corner,
John ambling off to a lunch counter, his bride rushing back to sell
the butter and eggs and then to go home.
Tressa drove along the dusty road assailed by sharp forebodings.
The sun was sinking in a veil of smoky clouds and long crimson
streaks slanted over the fields. She was cold and sober now and
she buttoned her heavy cloak under her throat; she scanned the
countryside with a doleful gaze, and as she made out the big red


14
LOVE IN SMOKY HILL
>
stable of the farm her heart stopped with a sickening, startling
accent of fright. Secreted in her bosom was a roll of paper, a docu-
ment with a scroll border witnessing her new condition. Married!
She could not realize it. Her faculties were dazed; she tried to
frame some easy means of breaking the news, but gave it up in
,
despair. Her duties were executed as usual, and being by nature
taciturn, her aching silence was not remarked. How could she tell
them? What would lighten the wretched information? She went
to bed as soon as the dishes were washed and tossed wearily in an
agony of mental awkwardness. She put out the light and waited.
Hours passed and she could not sleep. She heard someone tramp-
ing up the stairs. Leo was just back from town. She called to
him mournfully and he stuck his head into the room and asked
surlily what was wanted. She blurted out the intelligence without
a word of introduction or apology.
"The devil you were,” he scowled. “You're dreamin'. Go on
back to sleep, it's after midnight.
Painfully, and with many repetitions, she pressed the awful
truth upon him, and buried her face in the pillows when she heard
him waking her father and mother. The old man, profane and
sleepy, rushed into the room, followed by his wife and Leo; and the
three infuriated souls pounced on her now in screaming concert,
now in single condemnation, as if by sheer lung-power they could
undo the events of the afternoon. Tressa grew sullen and refused
to admit that she was a fool or crazy or sorry, refused to say any-
thing; and the trio, having exhausted themselves, retreated to
another part of the house to discuss matters.
Next morning the Kilgore family missed church, the first time in
many years. On the side porch sat the father pulling anxiously at
his flaming red beard; to his left Mrs Kilgore, fat and weeping, and
on the lower step the son, cynical and talkative. Two boys from
the adjoining farm, who had come over to encourage Leo to go
squirrel shooting, stood on the brick walk leaning on their guns.
“Of course," remarked the old man, “she ain't really married.”
"She is, too,” interposed the son. “By law she is.”
"I say she ain't,” roared Patrick Kilgore. “Not accordin' to our
way of thinkin'. She has to go to the priest first. But that damned
bohunk! That dirty foreign hobo we've helped along! That-
>


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
15
Tressa, who was sitting by the kitchen stove, heard the remarks
and thrust her palms against her ears. The old man raved until
he was speechless. At length she heard him call out:
"There he comes !"
She came to the door and observed the man she loved strolling
slowly up the driveway. The bohunk eyed the ominous group by
the porch, threw them a welcoming, idiotic grin, and sidled
towards the corn-crib. The old man rose to his feet. Looped to
the wrist of his right arm was one of those sinister whips used for
driving cattle and commonly known as blacksnakes. The Bohe-
mian saw him approaching; his knees began to quake with terror,
and he lunged forwards to the entrance of the stable.
“Come out here,” yelled the farmer.
The victim shrivelled up in front of him.
"You see that road down there?" He pointed to the section
highway. "Now let's see how fast you can kick up the dust.”
He drew his arm back, and in a wide swishing arc dealt the
bohunk a cutting wound on the legs. The poor fellow, maniacal
with pain and fear, started to run. Old Kilgore managed to catch
him with another burning crack before he was out of reach, a
vicious blow that opened the flesh on his outstretched hand.
moment he was flying down the road like a wild animal. The two
visitors let out a peal of laughter.
"Well, that's the end of Tressa's husband,” said one.
“Sure is,” agreed the other.
Old Kilgore was far from laughter, but he was proud and lordly,
having rid the farm of the dirty, foreign menace. Tressa, who had
watched the cruelty from the door, followed the running figure with
her tired eyes until it was only a dancing black speck in the dust
far-off; then she plunged her head into her apron and sobbed con-
vulsively. The old man tramped into the kitchen with the air of a
conqueror and bawled out:
“Dry up. You're not married. Don't you understand nothin'?”
After a while she got up and bathed her face. She remembered
that a chicken had to be cleaned and cooked for the Sunday dinner.
She went out slowly to the pens, caught a fat yellow hen and carried
it over to the chopping-block. She looked up. There was his win-
dow! Her husband's room! That one night rushed back to her,
In a
a
a


16
KATYDIDS
a
the night of ecstasy and love and promises! Up stairs in the bot-
tom drawer of her dresser, hidden in a chemise, was a roll of holy
paper. Her red bosom shook with sorrow.
She swung the axe into the neck of the fowl; the head dropped
off clean; the body fluttered in the dust a moment and was silent.
Her life was just like that.
“Married!” she sighed.
And she went into the house for a pot of boiling water.
KATYDIDS
Shore of Lake Michigan
BY AMY LOWELL
Katydids scraped in the dim trees,
And I thought they were little white skeletons
Playing the fiddle with a pair of finger-bones.
How long is it since Indians walked here,
Stealing along the sands with smooth feet?
How long is it since Indians died here
And the creeping sands scraped them bone from bone?
Dead Indians under the sands, playing their bones against
strings of wampum.
The roots of new, young trees have torn their graves asunder,
But in the branches sit little white skeletons
Rasping a bitter death-dirge through the August night.


!
ORIENTAL DANCES IN AMERICA
1
BY ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
1
N this country, it is perhaps in dancing, more than in any other
art, that one sees the expression of contemporary and national
feeling. And in this adventure we can recognize at least three dis-
tinct tendencies: on the one hand, the folk-art of the ball-room and
the cabaret, and on the other hand, on the stage, the revival of Greek
movement and the imitation of Oriental art. It is interesting to re-
Hect that of these three, the most artistic, that is to say, the most
definite, conventional, and expressive is the folk art: while the dra-
matic and archaistic forms are actually far more realistic or human
("all too human”) than their supposed prototypes. It is precisely
the same with music: it is the ragtime writer who adheres to definite
conventions, and through these expresses the American spirit of to-
day, while the academic composer substitutes the rhetorical accent
of
prose for the metrical accent of verse, striving after realism by
the use of unusual rhythms and a deliberate disregard of law. Those
who succeed in the deliberately free forms of the dance, or in music,
free
verse, or in the realistic drama, do so by the force of their per-
sonality, rather than by art—it is themselves that they exhibit,
rather than the race, and just because of this we demand the exhibi-
tion of constant novelty. An art like this, as Mr Lethaby would
say, is only one man deep. But the greatest and most enduring art
(the Noh dance of Japan was perfected in the fourteenth century,
and the Indian nautch perhaps in the fifth) has never been devel-
oped in this way: it has arisen when men have felt a need that some
great thing should be clearly and repeatedly expressed in a manner
comprehensible to everyone. In other words, the inspiration of
great art has always been fundamentally religious (in the essential
rather than the formal meaning of the word) and philosophic: under
these conditions, the theme is more important than the artist, and
what we demand is the constantly repeated statement of the same
ideas, until the art achieves a classic perfection. In the end, it is
true, it may become a mere formula, like the Christian Gothic of the
present day: but in this world there is no possible condition of per-


18
A
ORIENTAL DANCES IN AMERICA
:
manence, and those who accept the creation of an art must also ac-
cept its death. An ancient art may be a source of inspiration, it may
guide us in matters of principle—since beauty is independent of time
and place—but it ought not to be regarded as a model for our imita-
tion: and so it is rather the theory than the practice of Oriental art
that has a real significance for us at the present moment. The prac- .
tice (by Western imitators) should be authentic, sensitive, and rare,
like a beautiful museum specimen-Ratan Devi's songs were an ex-
ample of this: but it is the spirit, rather than the form, that should
be our guide to the achievement of ends of our own. The chaotic
character of modern Western art is the symptom of its lack of inner
necessity: we cannot remedy this by borrowing forms. Let us try to
understand the Indian dance from some such point of view as this.
It is the gods who are the primal dancers of the universe: the
ceaseless movement of the world, the speech of every creature with
every other, and the procession of the stars, all these are the gesture,
,
voice, and garments of the Supreme Actor who reveals himself to men
in life itself. It is from the gods, too, that human art is learnt: it
is designed to reveal the true and essential meaning of our life. And
so that kind of dancing is called "cultivated" or "classic" which, like
a poem, has a definite theme, while dances that are merely rhythmic
a
and spectacular are called "popular” or “provincial.” Here we shall
speak only of the cultivated dance: for the folk-dances of any coun-
try, like the folk-songs, explain themselves.
Indian culture, like the old Greek, employs a single name for the
common art of acting and dancing: and this word natya in its ver-
nacular form becomes nautch. Nowadays the old Indian drama
scarcely survives upon the actual stage, nor has it ever been repro-
duced in Europe or America: but authentic Indian acting does sur-
vive in the nautch, where instrumental music, song, and pantomime
are inseparably connected. Here “the song is sustained in the throat,
the theme is demonstrated by the hands, the moods are shown by the
glances, and the metre is marked by the feet”—a set of one or two
hundred bells is worn on each ankle. The construction is
very
defi-
nite—so many movements to so many beats: and more than this,
each gesture has a definite meaning. An Indian handbook of dra-
matic technique consists of a dictionary of gesture: we have twenty-
four movements of the head, forty-four glances, six movements of
the brows, twenty-eight single hands, twenty-four combined hands,
a


1
ANANDA COOMARASWAMY
19
a
and so forth. Each of these gestures, like a word, indicates an emo-
tion, object, idea, or action: so that a sequence of gestures makes a
sentence, and an entire dance tells a story. As we said before, this
gesture language is constructed on metrical patterns, so that the
dance is like a poem with a definite form like a sonnet. By contrast
with this, modern Western acting and impressionistic dancing ex-
hibit the characteristics of prose. In Western art, even in reading
poetry, the meaning, as it were, is underlined: in Oriental art the
audience is trusted to know what are the essential motifs and what
accessory. The expression of emotion is always strictly dominated
by the rhythm: in other words, the art is a conscious utterance, and
is never surrendered to the control of personal feeling. Further,
the Oriental art is never an amusement, never mere decoration.
Neither is it concerned with problems of psychology or conduct or
the criticism of life; it is an office, following the movement of the
world, whereby men may come to understand that every busi-
ness is unstable, and thus attain to full self-consciousness and
spiritual freedom.
a


“MADAME A SA TOUR MONTE ..
>
BY LOUIS ARAGON
Translated from the French by Gilbert Seldes
“LA FROIDE MAJESTÉ
DE LA FEMME STERILE.'
C. B.
FOR
OR the first time in literature, Matisse is not a Russian prin-
cess but a girl with red hair who was born in the Batignolles
—more than twenty years ago, however. Her arms are the long-
est arms in the world, ending in rough sketches of hands so large
that you fancy they were made to support a pensive brow. Hers,
low and fretted at the top by a meagre bang, would hardly justify
the adjective; her eyes devour it, diminish it excessively, seem
to refuse to take any account of anatomy. As she does not wish
to be conspicuous and wants you to believe that the immensity of
her eyes comes from make-up, Matisse lengthens her palpebral
slits with a stroke of black and extends the arches of her eyebrows
to the roots of her hair; to acquit them of devouring her cheeks she
underlines her eyes with soft shadows. By nature her transparent
skin shows the blood underneath, but out of modesty Matisse con-
ceals her circulation under a metallic iridescent paste over which
she powders green, so that her cheeks harmonize agreeably. Her
well-cut, slightly aquiline nose gives a touch of architectural firm-
ness to this countenance. The thin long lips are carmined at the
centre only and so gain an ambiguous effect, for you think you are
seeing two mouths, one little, the other endless, neither of which
ever sings the same tune as the other. Matisse has a horror of
symmetry and therefore has but one ear, protected, shaded, without
a pendant; but on the other side her hair discloses an emerald buckle
by way of compensation. Her strongly modelled jaw grows more
delicate towards the chin. Her body remembers that it was for
her that the expression fausse maigre was invented. Her left hip,
more prominent than the other as a resting place for her fist, no


18162
LOUIS ARAGON
21
doubt, gives a roll to her gait which alone betrays the sensuality
of this reserved creature so little disposed to reveal her solid tem-
perament. The exiguity of her feet is astonishing, until
you
recall
in time to which sex Matisse belongs.
She is fond of strong common perfumes, patchoulis of low
degree, like masks which bring a hundred contemptuous thoughts
in her direction. In this taste, however complicated by modern
intentions, you recognize the atavisms of the eastern or western
harems in which her forbears used to pass their lives watching the
sunlight through the shutters. Emancipated, she still speaks in a
soft artificial voice which contrasts oddly with the freedom of her
manner. She pronounces with great
distinction the vulgar phrases
of fashionable young girls, an outmoded slang which sounds as
false as the dry laugh with which she accompanies the worn out
puns she makes now and then like little social formulas. Nothing
in her conversation would lead you to believe that she has read all
the good authors, nor, for that matter, that in private she prefers
the bad ones. A graduate violinist, she now plays nothing but rag-
.
time and two-steps; classical music makes her yawn. She is gen-
erally supposed to be rich because she has no lover and yet does
not get the consideration due to a woman of social standing. As
the source of her income is unknown she excites curiosity, but only
for a very little while since she offers no food for evil tongues.
Furthermore, she does not appear strange except by comparison.
Alone, in the street, she does not attract a second glance; but in a
crowd she monopolizes attention.
Her clothes are less indecent than eccentric; Matisse does not
dress in the latest fashion but in the one after that. Three months
from now her frock will be worn by all the petites bourgeoises
whom it now disturbs. However, no matter what the rage of the
day may be, two elements in her costume are constant; always light
colours and always long wide gloves caught at the wrist. For
Matisse believes that a woman's clothes must be adapted to her
body; she knows that she has wretched arms and hides them, too
brilliant hair and tones it down. At least she acts as if she thought
and knew these things. She adores lace trimmings and is lavish
with them, especially when they are least in fashion. So that other
women often seem undressed beside her. She speals with a certain
repugnance of a bodice through which you can see the siþtons of


22
.
“MADAME A SA TOUR MONTE
corset-covers or chemises. Lacking information I fancy that under
her dress she wears only a combination in green silk. I can say of
her stockings that they are uninteresting, but of her boots that
Always Matisse's boots,
Coloured with life and fashion,
Cheerfully equivocate
Between the arts and passion.
a
In addition to the emerald which is nothing but green as the
blinds of a house with a tiled roof, Matisse wears two jewels, one
a golden tooth mounted in a pendant, to which she attaches no
symbolic meaning, the other a pretty Browning automatic in To-
ledo steel which she carries in her muff in winter, in her handbag
in summer, and which synthesizes for her the devastating action
of the past. Her handbag contains, besides, the necessary arsenal
for make-up. Also to be found there are a pocket-level, a compass,
a kaleidoscope for her hours of ennui, some red pimentos to deceive
her hunger, and a little scalpel with no other purpose than to make
you think of James Fenimore Cooper.
Matisse's apartment is almost entirely furnished with kitchen
chairs, drawing-tables, and arm-chairs which have the theoretical
form of arm-chairs. You have to look closely to see that they
aren't of white wood at all, but of the most precious materials.
Matisse hates style. “Style,” she says, “is only a convenient
method of getting someone else to judge of the beauty of a piece
of furniture.” Some of her chairs are only intersections of feet,
backs, and bars; others affect the linear aspect of furniture which
is always seen in profile by school children. If Matisse uses electric
light she is not ashamed of it and does not try to hide the bulbs in
the cornices as do all American millionaires in elaborately mounted
films and in the descriptions in Nick Carter. She leaves to mil-
liners and romanticists the ridiculous mania for justifying their
presence by making them come out of a flower or assigning them
a hazardous rôle in a scene from mythology. The electric light
seems to her to be an accessory to the furniture endowed with a
personal beauty:which mußt.not be spoiled by a useless fixture. For
the roořng wikiero che fight must be dimmed, Matisse chooses glazed
bulbs.ard.dresses them in those shades, white inside and green out-


LOUIS ARAGON
23
side, which are used in business offices. She also possesses a lot of
coloured bulbs to replace the usual lights in accordance with the
whim of the moment. In the same spirit, instead of hiding the
radiators in a box or behind the woodwork, Matisse has placed
them in the open, and in her study they run all around the walls
like bookshelves in other houses. She loves these great immobile
and sinuous serpents whose humour, reserved and cold, or com-
municative and ardent, can be regulated by a wooden wheel. In
place of wall-paper she has covered her walls with posters which
cut into one another so that you cannot read a single one through,
so your curiosity is primed and uncertainty lets you dream. Under
the glass table-top she has pretty sketches overlaid with inscriptions
in honour of a storage warehouse, a trunk factory, and the spring
a
mattresses made by S. & Co. The fan lying on the table sings the
praises of some little Breton village, the drinking cup looks exactly
like those you find in the Paris post office stations. Around the
neck of the carafe, over the matchbox, on the calendar, you can
read business addresses. Finally, at night, electric lettering an-
nounces the week's sales in the big department stores.
In this little salon Matisse feels vividly excited by the mani-
festations of human activity about her and her own inactivity
weighs upon her deliciously. She feels the charm of being an ex-
pensive animal and like a cat she closes her eyes and purrs. At
other times she sets herself in harmony with her furnishings, fights
for life, suffers from the advantage which the lighting gives to one
poster on the wall to the prejudice of another; she owns stock in
the enterprise thus compromised; she grows desperate, cries out that
this Mene Tekel Upharsin of a pharmacist is a lie, extinguishes
the lamp, lights another, puts in a bulb which makes the invading
poster turn grey, and triumphs like a captain of industry in the
success of her preferred product. Again, at times, she sticks letters
,
to the partitions until they seem to dance about her in a fantastic
round. On days when her boudoir seems too populous, Matisse
goes into her studio to rest.
The studio is formed by two superimposed suites which Matisse
has united by having the ceiling broken through. You would
fancy yourself in a demolished house; the marks left by the flooring
remain on the walls and you can see the torn wall-paper of the
different rooms. The six windows in two ranks like soldiers look


24
“MADAME A SA TOUR MONTE .
a
of a
down with an air of reproachful melancholy on this interior. On
the upper floor the doors seem absolutely silly opening on a void.
A corner of the lower room is still fitted out like a bar, a shelf for
bottles, adjustable chairs, a counter painted to imitate pink marble
with a zinc top to which counterfeit coins are nailed. Here Matisse
receives the importunate; they are soon unable to bear the desolate
atmosphere of the place any longer and find an excuse to flee. At
night Matisse lights up her demolitions with a single lamp hung
from the beam, immense shadows are projected upon the ceiling, and
Matisse plans novels.
She comes an orphan from the village where her parents were
solid farming folk to the bar in Paris kept by her uncle, her last
living relative, her last hope. Here she is, naïve and pure, helpless
before the desires of wheelwrights and men with terrifying faces.
What will become of her? She reads her fate in the
eyes
poor girl being bullied by her lover. Her uncle arranges to turn
her over to a Russian prince; it is done, but behold The Unknown
who appears and saves her! This mysterious personage, strong,
rich, and handsome, has a secret in his life. When it is known the
novel will be finished. Or perhaps Matisse is a light woman who
has ruined grandees of Spain, driven children to suicide, hurried
bankers into bankruptcy, clerks to theft, students to assassination.
Dressed as a street-walker she comes to seduce the innocent bottle-
washer at a café de barrière. Here the scene becomes realistic and
Matisse suddenly perceives a medal round the young man's neck,
or a birthmark, or some indelible tattooing; it is her son whom she
abandoned one snowy night at the door of a church. After such
an adventure she becomes a nun or more likely goes into the bed-
room.
The bedroom is for rest only; daylight comes in through the
shutters whose slats turn according to the time of day and replace
ungracious blinds which Matisse has had taken down. In this
striped ambiance nothing can disorder the imagination or trouble
the senses, lest the slightest over-excitement should banish that
sleep of which it is the shrine. Nothing more intimate, nothing
more secret than this room; you dare speak only in whispers. The
modest chairs hide their skeletons under sombre draperies of red-
brown or garnet; not a chair, not a stool, shows its wood. Every-


LOUIS ARAGON
25
thing breathes softness and abandon; the skins thrown on the floor
deaden your footfall; no mirror in these arcana reflects a luxurious
object which might trouble Matisse in her sleep like an eye or
might introduce into her dreams the last vision, before she drowses
off, of her too lovely nakedness. The immense bed occupies the
centre of this room like a ship. A calm sea carries it on; when
Matisse lies down she is tempted to recall Morpheus and his myths
(her eyelids are the poppies) and this resting place becomes the
fulfilment of the world. To make the silence more palpable, near
the window, catching the light, a violin lies silent in its mahogany
coffin lined with blue plush, and the bow which shares its resting
place becomes the bond between this lifeless universe and the world
of reality.
You catch sight of the world by leaning out of the window:
roofs of Paris like grey linoleum, irregular chimneys the beauty of
which Matisse could only describe with the Latin word "formosa,”
more sensuous than any praise of ours; studios whose windows let
you guess the play of dust within; bevelled faces of apartment
houses beside which others will be built later; vague lots; in a
courtyard the glass shows a servants' stairway mounting like a
prayer or like a snail; the vast garages where automobiles come
and go, attracted by the capital letters on the facade. The sudden
of a train comments on the scene and one learns the name of
the
quarter: Rome, which links the idea of ancient civilization
with the magic of modern cities.
The bath-room surprises you as you come out of the torpor of
the bedroom. You would think you were coming into an operating
room; everything is neat, shining, geometric, brilliant, incisive.
The visitor's first thought is to estimate the cubic feet of air in the
space. The walls in white enamel, innocent of all covering, cruelly
reflect a light which would neither help a wrinkle to deceive nor
save a grey hair from being pulled out. Admirably glazed, the
apparatus for hydrotherapy and electric massage make you think
of the torture chambers of the Middle Ages. On the dressing table
there is an army of files, orange-sticks, polishers, scissors, curling-
irons, battalions of jars of paint, of colgate, of cold cream, car-
mine for the finger nails, phalanxes of rouge-sticks, rabbits' feet,
hair combs, of all sizes and for all purposes, awaiting the daily
cry


26
.
“MADAME A SA TOUR MONTE .
combat without any visible impatience. Rubber sponges, the tri-
umph of man, are enthroned on the toilet table. The smell of
toothpaste completes the scene.
If by carelessness you accidentally turn the tap handle in the
toilet the wrong way, a trap opens in the ceiling and an iron ladder
descends. Matisse could not bear to have an apartment in which
she could not hide a criminal, conspire against the safety of the
state, or dispose of a corpse. That is why she established this
.
clandestine communication with the next floor, rented as consti-
tuting the upper part of the studio; the other rooms are a hiding
place which need envy nothing in detective stories. The one you
come into first is empty, as if abandoned, in order to throw visitors
off the scent; on the unpainted, unpapered walls workmen have
written their names, done sums, set down reflections on life, and
outlined their ideal woman; on the windows the masons have
scratched in white the symbol of infinity. But the rest of the
apartment is a complete arsenal of detective's accessories; micro-
phones which let you hear conversations on the floor below; dicta-
phones concealed in the desks; photographic apparatus in the chif-
foniers, chairs which fold their arms over any one imprudent enough
to sit down in them; safes in the shape of beds and imitation safes
which ring an alarm when opened or catch the thief in a trap;
sliding panels so you can see what is happening in the next room,
periscopes to watch the actions and gestures of slaters on the roof
(you never can tell when they will try to come down the chimney
like telephone repairmen). There Matisse has gathered the latest
mechanisms for silent killing, swiftly or slowly. She is particu-
larly fond of those which look innocent; there is the curare-ring,
the bearer of which can kill any one whose hand he shakes; there
are the silent compressed-air-pistol, the boomerang which does its
destructive duty and returns intelligently to its master, the vulgar
sandbag, the carbon dioxide apparatus which asphyxiates the pa-
tient in his sleep; the book with poisoned pages which punishes ill-
mannered people for moistening their finger to turn the leaves; the
liquid-air bomb for blowing up safes, electric contrivances which
forbid entrance to the room on pain of death, radium tubes, tubes
with infra-red or ultra-violet rays destroying those on whom they
are played; tubes with coloured rays producing madness, co-aenes-


LOUIS ARAGON
27
thetic, or febrile states; there is finally and above all the great
revolver clock which at the appointed hour kills the detective tied
to the chair in front of it, or rather which does not kill him be-
cause his cousin arrives disguised as a telegraph operator or because
the criminal's daughter falls in love with the fair face of the con-
demned (it is not so astonishing when you realize that her mother
was a good woman) or again because at one minute of three, the
very last second, the house, mined by a devoted assistant or by
fire-worshippers, blows up and hurls into the Hudson, which flows
right below, the interesting hero of these modern epics.
Wrongly would one conclude from the peculiarities of her habi-
tation that Matisse is a romantic; like a good stay-at-home woman
all she wants is that her home should be ready for all eventualities.
In her house you can choke your neighbour, arrange a combine for
the Bourse, negotiate a treaty, read a play, or undermine the min-
istry; nothing will seem out of place, nothing shocking. How-
ever, the mistress of the house has made no provision for amorous
adventures. Just as she does not conceive of eating at home, so
she does not allow any abandon there to too tender sentiments; it
is not only in restaurants that she has her habits. According to
her notions, one possesses a residence to receive friends, to think
alone, to sleep, or again, for she is afflicted with no prejudice, to
display accomplishments. She does not object to having people
read at home, but for herself reserves this occupation for her trips
in the Metro. Matisse formulates her tastes neatly because she
practises them. She never fails to answer the questionnaires which
appear in the magazines: Which are your favourite books? What
was your strongest emotion ? and a thousand other questions, the
puerility of which does not escape her, but which she prides her-
self on being the only one to take seriously. She answers them
with the fervour of a penitent at confession, and this systematic
exploration of herself fills her with comfort. Each time she dis-
covers a new corner of her thoughts which had remained unknown
to her she laughs like a child looking at herself in the mirror for
the first time and registering her discovery. Hereafter she will be
able to say when any one tells her about herself, "Well, what do
you want? That's how I am.'
That's how I am.” For she fears lest someone else
should know her better than herself.


28
“MADAME A SA TOUR MONTE
a
very rich
One day Matisse went to the country; the trees, the ditches, the
roads, the meadows, bored her; she followed a little stream to keep
herself in countenance, but she yawned.
Suddenly she saw a factory rising before her; quickly she ran
to this Paradise Regained and as soon as she got into the yard she
sniffed the good smell of smoke and coal, listened to the whistling,
the grinding of machinery, let herself be elbowed about by the
workmen, closed her eyes and fancied herself back in Paris.
А
presumptuous but
young man who wanted to inspire
Matisse with a passion for himself, gave her, in the belief that a
woman of taste must dote on the fine arts, a genuine Rembrandt
and a bust by Houdon. She gave the painting to her concierge
without telling her its value so that several years later a fortunate
expert discovered it and bought it for a song. As for the bust, she
painted it black because she found that, stained, it resembled one
of her negro grooms.
If Matisse were not so coldly reasonable she would soon domi-
nate the city, as Ninon once upon a time or Sorel to-day; she is
satisfied to live in it.



A PORTRAIT.
BY EYRE DE LANUX


.
1
1
다
​다​.
.
다
​


1
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
BY PAUL ROSENFELD
THESE
mon
THEY pass us every day, a grey and driven throng, the com-
words that are the medium of Sherwood Anderson. In the
thick ranks of the newspapers they go drab and indistinct as miners
trooping by grim factory walls in latest dusk. Men's lips form them
wherever in all the land talk is, but we mark their shapes no more
than we mark those of the individual passengers in the subway press,
the arm and overcoat jumble, each tired night at six. The objects
symbolized by them lie in the range of vision of those who make each
day the city trip to the office and workshop and back flatward again.
They lie in the range of those who ride dully into country towns over
dusty roadways, or work about their barns or in their fields or inside
farm cottages. But the walls of the city thoroughfares do not im-
pinge on us, or on the men who talk, or on the hacks who write. The
earth and board sides and fences and plantations remain in a sullen
murk. And the words that signify the things and their simple quali-
ties remain in millions of voices dreary dead.
Story tellers have come with banner and hallo to lift them out of
Malebolge, to burnish them, to write English, and have washed them
to no more scintillance than has the tired crowd of Christmas shop-
pers in the Chicago loop. Dreiser himself sought to point and sharp-
en them, to set them together as squarely as dominoes are set to-
gether in the backrooms of German saloons. He merely succeeded
in forming a surface like that of water-logged, splintery beams, unfit
for any hardy service. It was only Brontosaurus rex lumbering
through a mesozoic swamp. In American novels, the words re-
mained the dreariest, most degraded of poor individuals. But out of
these fallen creatures, Sherwood Anderson has made the pure poetry
of his tales. He has taken the words surely, has set them firmly end
to end, and underneath his hand there has come to be a surface as
clean and fragrant as that of joyously made things in a fresh young
country. The vocabulary of the simplest folk; words of a primer,
a copy-book quotidianness, form a surface as hard as that of pungent
fresh-planed boards of pine and oak. Into the ordered prose of An-


30
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
derson the delicacy and sweetness of the growing corn, the grittiness
and firmness of black earth sifted by the fingers, the broad-breasted
power
of great labouring horses, has wavered again. The writing
pleases the eye. It pleases the nostrils. It is moist and adhesive to
the touch, like milk.
No rare and precious and technical incrustations have stiffened it.
The slang of the city proletariat has not whipped it into garish and
raging colour. Even in his pictures of life on the farms and in the
towns of Ohio, Anderson is not colloquial. Very rarely some turn
of language lifted from the speech of the Ohio country folk, gives a
curious twist to the ordinary English. The language remains home-
ly sober and spare. The simplest constructions abound. Few ad-
jectives arrest the course of the sentence. At intervals, the succes-
sion of simple periods is broken by a compound sprawling its loose
length. Qualifying clauses are unusual. Very occasionally, some
of the plain massive silver and gold of the King James version shines
when biblical poetry is echoed in the balancing of phrases, in the full
unhurried repetition of words in slightly varied order. But the words
themselves are no longer those that daily sweep by us in dun and
opaque stream. They no longer go bent and grimy in a fog. Contours
are distinct as those of objects bathed in cool morning light. The
words comport themselves with dignity. They are placed so quietly,
so plumbly, so solidly, in order; they are arrayed so nakedly, so four-
squarely; stand so completely for what they are; ring so fully, that
one perceives them bearing themselves as erectly and proudly as sim-
ple healthy folk can bear themselves. Aprons and overalls they still
wear, for they are working-words. But their garments became
starched and fragrant again, when Anderson squared and edged his
tools. They leave us freshened as gingham-clad country girls driving
past in a buggy do. If they are a little old and a little weary, they
hold themselves like certain old folk who wear threadbare shawls and
shiny black trousers, and still make their self-regard felt by their
port.
It is the voice of Anderson's mind that utters itself through the
medium of words. It is the voice of his lean, sinewy mid-American
mind that marshalls the phrases, compels them into patterns. In
this dumb American shoot of the Ohio countryside, a miracle has
begun to declare itself. The man is brother to all the inarticulate
folk produced by a couple of centuries of pioneering in the raw new


PAUL ROSENFELD
31
world. He is the human who has sacrificed, that he might take root
in virgin land, what centuries warmed to life in his forbears across
the Atlantic. He grew in a corn-shipping town of post-Civil War
-
Ohio; grew among people who had forgotten the beauty laboriously
accumulated in Europe; grew ignorant of the fact that beauty made
by human toil existed anywhere on the globe. Around him, too,
everything was quantity, not quality; everything urged to personal
ambition. He lived the days lived by countless other smart little boys
in that meagre civilization; volunteered to fight Spain and typhoid
in Cuba; spent the money gained in soldiering in acquiring a little
education at a fresh-water college; worked in factories, in bicycle-
foundries; set out, driven by the universal goad, to become a success-
ful business man; did become a successful business man. And still,
in Anderson, in this life, one from out the million of dumb uncon-
scious lives, beauty is, as upspringingly as in any stone of Chartres.
The hysterical American mouth with its fictitious tumult and assur-
ance, its rhetorical trumpeting, is set aside in him, disdained. There
is no evasion of the truth in him. There is no pink fog over the truth
of the relationship of men and women in this country. There is no
evasion of self-consciousness by means of an interest centred entire-
ly in the children; no blinding dream that entrance into a house full
of spick furniture and nickled faucets will suddenly make life flow
sweet-coloured and deep; no thankfulness to God that He has made
a universe in which every one, or every one's offspring may climb
to the top of the heap and become rich or a leader of the bar, that
murderer of nascent sympathy. Nor does he speak Main Street in
denigrating Main Street. An element higher than all the land is at
work. The great critical power of the race is articulate; the race is
crying. Fear, tribal fear, in this man has been overcome. He hears
what the other dumb Americans with their protesting voices dare not
hear. At the rear of his brain there murmurs audibly the quivering
liquid flow always in progress in every being. A quiet stream, a
black deep brook of feeling with whispering trickle, faery-like starts
and gushes, is louder in this drawling Yankee than is all the senti-
mental Niagara of dust with its bellowings of the high state of
women in Minneapolis, the efficiency and hygienicness of the cloth-
ing factories in Cleveland, the invigorating struggle for existence
in New York. What Anderson veritably lives in Chicago and suf-
fers and desires, is known to him; what his muddy-streaming com-
a


32
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
a
patriots have done and still are doing to him; what his joys are, and
what his pains. In the land where it is always dusk, and shapes are
indistinct; in the land of the mind, where the most of us this side
the water have with miserable fumbling to grope a wavering way,
Anderson moves, with the sureness and calmness of a sleepwalker.
Wherever he goes, in Chicago, out on the sandy foggy plain with-
out the monster town, in the tiresome burgs where he sells the ideas
of the advertising man, the voice of his spare fledgling mind, the
echo of the inner columnear movement of his being, is heard of him.
It is ever near the surface, ready to spurt. The most ordinary objects
glimpsed from an office-window high in the loop; the most ordinary
sad bits of life seen in the endless avenues, a tree in a backyard, a
layer of smoke, a man picking butts out of the gutter, can start it
making gestures. A cake of cowdung rolled into balls by beetles, a
flock of circling crows, milk turned sour by hot weather, give Ander-
son the clue of a thin grey string, and set him winding through his
drab and his wild days to find the truth of some cardinal experience
and fill himself. The premature decay of buildings in America, the
doleful agedness of things that have never served well and have
grown old without becoming beautiful the brutality of the Chicago
skyline, open to him through a furtive'chink some truth of his own
starved powerful life, his own buried Mississippi Valley, his own
unused empire. Or, the health that is left in the fecund soil of the
continent, in the great watered spread of land, the nourishing life of
forests and plantations, is powerful to make known to him in mad
drunken bursts, his own toughness and cleanness, and healthiness,
Young corn growing like saplings makes rise and quiver deliciously
and soar in him sense of his own resilient freshness, his crass newness
on a new earth. Young corn makes chant in him delight in his own
unbreakable ability to increase for ever in sensitivity, to transmute
the coarse stuff of rough America into delicate spirit-strength, and
become in the easy mid-Western shape ever a healthier, sweeter, finer
creature. Horses trampling through the grain are to him certitude
eternal of the ever-replenishment of the male gentle might that has
descended to him intact through his muscled ancestry and makes
sweet his breast; of the phallic daintiness that all the stupid tangle
and vulgarity of life in the raw commercial centres cannot wear
down in him, and brutalize. A thousand delicate and mighty forms
of nature are there, to pledge and promise him, the man cut loose
from Europe, life abundant.


PAUL ROSENFELD
33
a
For Anderson touches his fellows of the road and Chicago street.
The rigor mortis of the sentimental Yank is relaxing. The man is
sensitive indeed. His arms are stretching open to the world. Not
alone to the world of the boy, the before-puberty world of Huck
Finn. His arms stretch open to the days of the sex-hung man. Life
begins to walk a little joyously, if a little crassly, on Michigan Bou-
levard; because of the smokiness, it wears socks and haberdashery a
trifle exuberant. Walls are noiselessly a-crumble in Anderson. Of
a sudden, he is breast to breast with people, with the strange grey
American types, men and women he has seen the day previously; men
and women, farmers, artisans, shopkeepers he has not glimpsed in the
flesh these five and twenty years. What happens only rarely, in-
stantaneously only, to the most of us, the stretching of a ligament
between another creature's bosom and our own, that happens in
Anderson swiftly, repeatedly, largely. A visage, strange, grey, dun,
floats up out of the dark of his mind. A man is seen doing some-
thing, lying face downward in a field, or fluttering his hands like
birdwings. A woman is seen making a gesture, or walking down the
railway track. The figure may have had its origin in someone long
known, in someone seen but a furtive hour, in someone seen merely
through hearsay. It may have its origin in the dullest, weariest crea-
tures. But suddenly, the poet is become another person. He is
someone who has never before existed, but now, even in a condition of
relative colourlessness, has a life of his own as real as those of the
straphanging men brushed every day in the streetcars. Anderson is
suddenly become a labour leader. He is mad with eagerness to
teach stupid labourers to synchronize their steps, to make them un-
derstand what it is to march in the daily life shoulder to shoulder as
soldiers march, to fill them full with a common stepping god in
whom all find their fulness of power. He is a "queer” man working
in a shabby little store. The more he strives to explain himself, the
more incomprehensible and queer he becomes to his neighbours. He
is Melville Stoner, the little long-nosed bachelor of Out of No-
where Into Nothing. And is ironically resigned to the futility of
seeking to establish a permanent contact with another creature. He
is tired to his marrow with the loneliness of existence. Or, he is a
farm girl mortally stricken in her breast by the insensitiveness and
cowardice of men to whom she turns for expression. Or, the face is
.
that of the lanky, cold-footed inventor who cannot channel his pas-
sion into human beings. To overcome the profound inner inertia, he
a
a
9


34
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
sets himself to doing little definite problems. Machinery is born of
his impotence. And then the inventions break loose of his hands,
and enslave into a drab world the creatures Hugh McVey wanted
to love, and could not reach. Or, it is the face of The Man in the
Brown Coat, who sits all day inside a book-lined room and knows
minutely what Alexander the Great and Ulysses S. Grant did, that
floats up before Anderson. Or, it is merely the figure of the officer
of the law who strolled by swinging his billy as the author left his
office. He is heard muttering to himself his feet ache; seen at night
slowly pulling off his shoes and wriggling his stockinged toes.
Then, it is with Sherwood Anderson as it was with the two farm-
hands of The Untold Lie who suddenly hear themselves each in
the other; hear in the other the voice telling that the assumption
of responsibility to women and children is death, the voice tell-
ing that the assumption of the responsibility is life. In the peo-
ple suddenly known to him through the imagination, Anderson rec-
ognizes the multiple pulls of his own will; hears speak in the men
known the same pulls; hears in those bodies a voice, and in his own
body the self-same murmur. Things long since heard in village
stores, in factories and offices, spark with significance. Memories
appear from nowhere, carry to him the life of a fellow forgotten
long since; and the life against the childhood Ohio background is re-
lieved and sharply drawn. Out of the murky, impenetrable limbo, a
block, an idea, a shape, has been moved, and in the region of faint
grey light stands outlined. What in himself he feared, what he, the
fearful rebel in the Yankee flock, thought his own most special in-
sanity, his own pariah marking, that is suddenly perceived an uni-
versal trait, present everywhere. His loneliness, that he thought a
desolation all his own, is sensed in a million tight, apart bodies. His
boastfulness, lust, self-infatuation, his great weariness, promptings
of the messianic delusion, despair, they are suddenly perceived every-
where; they, and not the outer mask that men wear in each other's
blind sight, are seen the truth. He knows people writhe; sees them,
men and women, so hard and realistic, doing the things he does and
then is frightened; he knows the many mad chanting voices in each
fact-crowded skull. What he is beholding, what he holds in his
hands before him, is himself. It is himself, Sherwood Anderson,
the man who looks like a racing tout and a divine poet, like a movie-
actor and a young priest, like a bartender, a business-man, a hayseed,
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
35
a mama's boy, a satyr, and an old sit-by-the-stove. It is himself as
his father and his mother, as the people who moved about him in
Clyde, Ohio, in his childhood and moved away from him, the many
thousand humble and garish lives he has touched, the men he has
done business with, the women he has taken, have made him.
The floating faces insist he attend upon the voice of the mind,
without, within. They will not let him talk big, and ignore it. His
heart can no longer leap with the remainder of the country's at
thought of the big beautiful business man creating with his strong
mind lots of work for poor people. He can no longer turn from wom-
en in the dream of an irradiant companion, all mother, who takes the
man to her bosom as the nurse the suckling, and gives with crowded
hands, and wants for herself nothing but the privilege of serving in
a great career. It is too late to avoid humankind with the sentimen-
talities of the popular authors, or the self-pitifulness of the Main
Street men, the cohort of little haters. The heads will have nothing
but full entry into lives, even though he perish in the effort of enter-
ing. They want the facts of the relationships of men. It is what he
really knows of the truth, what he really knows of what has hap-
pened to him, what he really knows of what he has done to folk as
. well as what they have done to him, that is demanded of him now.
Anderson has to face himself where Freud and Lawrence, Stieglitz
and Picasso, and every other great artist of the time, have faced
themselves: has had to add a "phallic Chekov" to the group of men
who have been forced by something in an age to remind an age that it
is in the nucleus of sex that all the lights and the confusions have
their centre, and that to the nucleus of sex they all return to further
illuminate or further tangle. New faces mount upward continually;
sit, as he tells us, on the doorsill of his mind; are driven off by the
helplessness of the American artist who has inherited no orientation
in art; return and resist the cold and force him to make the effort to
take them in. New faces mount up that contain more and more copi-
ously the author, more and more copiously humanity, and demand
ever finer eyes and ears.
Out of the unconscious the style arises, the words charged with the
blood and essence of the man. For quite as Anderson hears his own
inner flux through the persons of other men, through materials and
constructions, so, too, he hears it in the language itself. Words, like
corn, like horses themselves, and men, give Anderson pricking sensa-


36
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
al
tions. Strange and unusual words do not have to be summoned. He
hears the thin vocabulary of his inarticulate fellows not only as con-
cepts of concrete objects, but as independent shapes and colours.
Words are bifurcated in his mind; while the one limb rests on the
ground, and remains symbol of the common object by which genera-
tions of English speakers have managed to make themselves and their
offspring survive materially, the other points into blue air, becomes
symbol of the quality of inner life engendered by the material pre-
occupations. Corn is the support of the body on the American prai-
rie; man and beast lean on it; Anderson, born and bred in corn-ship-
ping villages, hears in the word that symbolizes the nourishing stalk
the overtones of all the delicacies and refinements that bodily energy
produces in him. So, too, with the words bowl and coat, that have a
dark and grim resonance in his heart. The necessity of preoccupying
themselves with the production of the simple tools of existence had
a most definite result on life through the relationship of men and
women; and Anderson knows his own life a thing at the base of a
bowl, an immense feeding trough, withheld from contacting the liv-
ing world, by the high rims. He knows that he has within him a
brown coat, that in this conventionally tinted stuff he sits wrapped
all his days, cannot wear bright colours of the mind, cannot get out.
of this felt garment. He knows that when in writing he searches for
touch with his fellows, he feels his way blindly in the dark along a
thick wall, the wall left in men when they broke from their own tra-
ditions, and came into the presence of other men who too had broken
from their traditions, and found no way to contact.
All Anderson's artistry consists in the faithfulness with which he
has laboured to make these overtones sound in his prose, to relate the
simple words so that while remaining symbolic of the outer men, they
give also their inner state. At first, in the two early novels, Windy
McPherson's Son and Marching Men, the word quality was fairly
thin. The author was forced to rely far more on a crude symbolism
of action to manifest his inner music than on his medium itself. Still,
particularly in the latter book, the inner voice was gathering strength.
The language in which the mining town is described in the earlier
chapters communicates something larger than the life of towns of the
sort. It gives powerfully a sense of a grimy, cold, messy state of pas-
sion into which what Waldo Frank has so brightly called the barbaric
tam-tam measure of Beaut McGregor's dream breaks as breaks a


PAUL ROSENFELD
37
a
march rhythm into a sluggish orchestra. In the next book, Wines-
burg, Ohio, however, form obtains fully. The deep within Ander-
son utters itself through the prose. The tiny stories of village life
are like tinted slits of isinglass through which one glimpses vasty
space. The man's feeling for words, present always in him, re-en-
forced one casual day when someone, expecting to produce a raw ha-
ha, showed him the numbers of Camera Work containing Gertrude
Stein's essays on Matisse, Picasso, and Mable Dodge, is here mature.
The visual images, the floating heads, have fleshed themselves, are
automatically realized, by marriage with verbal images that had
risen to meet them, and that contained, in their turn, the tough, spare,
sprawling life in the poet. So this style, even more than the subject
matter, is impregnated with the inarticulate American, the man
whose inner dance is as the dance of a bag of meal. For in these
words, the delicate inner column of Sherwood Anderson has risen
to declare itself, to protest against the ugliness that lamed it down, to
pour its life out into the unnumbered women and men. And, in his
latest work, in the best of the stories in The Triumph of the Egg, and
in the pieces of A New Testament, it works with always simpler
means, begins to manifest itself through a literature that approaches
the condition of poetry, that is more and more a play of word-tim-
bres, a design of overtones, of verbal shapes and colours, a sort of ab-
solute prose.
There has been no fiction in America like this. Small it is indeed
by the mountainous side of the masses of Balzac, with their never-
flagging volumnear swell, their circling wide contact on life, their
beefy hotness. Anderson, to the present, has been most successful in
the smaller forms. The short-stories show him the fine workman
most. The novels, the nouvelles, Out of Nowhere Into Nothing,
wander at times, are broken in sweep by evasions and holes. A many-
sided contact with life is not revealed. The man is not an intellectual
critic of society. His range is a fairly limited one. There is a gentle
weariness through him. And still, his stories are the truest, the
warmest, the most mature, that have sprung out of the Western soil.
One has but to compare these fragile, delicate fictions with those of
the classic novelists, Poe and Hawthorne, to perceive immediately
the reality of his beginning. The two ante-bellum novelists give us
in place of flesh, as Brooks so trenchantly showed, exquisite iri-
descent ghosts. They themselves were turned away from their


38
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
a
day, and filled the vacuums in which they dwelt with sinister
and rainbow-tinted beams. Their people satisfy no lust of life.
Both have only fantasy of a fine quality to offer in its place. And
Dreiser's characters ? Golems, in whose breast the sacred word
has not been thrust. Anderson, on the contrary, expresses us. He
has had, from the first, the power to find through his prose style
protagonists in whom every American could feel himself to pulse.
Sam McPherson is the truest of all Ragged Dicks. The quaint little
mushroom-like heads of Anderson's tales, the uneducated, undigni-
fied village dreamers, with their queer hops and springs, straggly
speech, ineffectual large gestures, they are the little mis-shapen hu-
mans in this towering machine-noisy inhuman land, the aged infants
grown a little screw-loose with inarticulateness. The sounds they
make as they seek to explain themselves to one another, as they rave
and denounce and pray, lie, boast, and weep, might come out of our
own throats. They do come out of our own. The author may
dub
his heads Seth Richmond or Elsie Leander, George Willard or Wing
Biddlebaum; they may be seen ever so fitfully; the stories by ineans
of which Anderson has created them may set them out in mid-Ameri-
can farmland thirty years since. But they are flesh of our flesh and
bone of our bone; and through them, we know ourselves in the roots
of us, in the darkest chambers of the being. We know ourselves in
Anderson as we know ourselves in Whitman. He is about the job of
creating us, freeing us by giving us consciousness of selves.
For Sherwood Anderson is one in whom the power of feeling has
not been broken. He is one in whom the love of the growing green
in men, so mortally injured in the most of us, has found a way of
healing itself of the wounds dealt it by the callous society in which
he sprung. He came, most probably, to suffer from the universal
wrong in the common way. A man and woman, perhaps, whom life
had wounded, bruised in their sensibilities, hurt him in acting on each
other. Or, the passive callousness of the world of outsiders did the
deed, starved the nascent gentleness in the child. The society which
sheltered the growing lad was one becoming rapidly industrialized.
Handicraftsmen remain sensitive more readily than do mechanics.
Their immediate relation to the material in which they work pre-
serves some sort of nervous fluidity in them. But the factory was eat-
ing into rural Ohio during the 'eighties and the early 'nineties. And
there was not, what there still is in rural Europe, the reliquary of the


PAUL ROSENFELD
39
1
passionate past to buttress anything of fine feeling that remained in
the injured boy. No Gothic vault, no painted glass, no soft stone and
nourished earth, were there to thaw the thickening ice. There was
about him only the shoddy work of men disabled as he had been dis-
abled. Indeed, the world might have seemed in conspiracy to make
permanent the wound. A gigantic machinery was in readiness to aid
any and all to make themselves free of their fellows. The anarchical
society, that had come into existence the world over as the growing
differentiations of men made sympathy more difficult, and placed a
price on narcissistic irresponsibility, was there in its extremest form
to welcome another lord of misrule. Everything in raw America
stimulated ugly ambitiousness, exploitations of human beings and of
the soil, sense of rivalry with all men, devastating sense of god-man-
hood The two images that fortify narcissism, the images of the
marvellous mother-woman and of the semi-divine all-powerful
general or business man, that prevent men from finding much in the
woman save the whore, and keep their interests centred on their own
persons, were in the very air given the lad to breathe.
During a period, Anderson seems to have acquiesced, to have gone
the way of all mortified flesh, to have become a smart competing busi-
ness man, and to have lived as alone as only a wounded lover can.
Only a gift of telling stories, and Anderson was famous in Chicago
for his Mama Geigen story long before he commenced to write, re-
mained to prove the old power of sympathy that he had brought with
him into the world not entirely broken. Some toughness, perhaps,
present with all the extreme sensibility, had saved him, given him the
power to recuperate. Or, perhaps, someone near him in his first
years
had guarded him for a while, had stood between him and the all-
present evil sufficiently long to give him headstart. One of the stories
in Winesburg, Ohio, called Mother, is the incorporation of a sense
present in the author of an influence stilly goading him all his days
to live his life and not settle down into cheap ambition, to grow and
to learn; it is perhaps to this influence that the man owes his art.
And Anderson showed he had the power within him to right himself.
Towards his thirty-fifth year, he became sick of soul. He commenced
to feel the state in which he was living as filthy. He began to per-
ceive that his relations with men and with women, through his sunk-
en state, were filthy. He began to perceive that he himself was
giving out poison to others precisely in the same manner that poison


40
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
had been given to him, was still being given to him by his contacts.
Business began to become a bore. Business men, with their self-im-
portance and gosling simplicity, began to become ludicrous. Sud-
denly, it appeared to him that Chicago, the mid-West, all America,
was empty. There were no people. The census reports pro-
claimed tens upon tens of millions of inhabitants. But there were
no people living human lives. There were automatons gyrating
about, repeating sentences written by unconsciously lying reporters
in the newspapers. No one knew the truth. No one knew what
he felt, what the man reading the newspaper next him felt. No one
felt, at all. In all the crowded streets and tenements of the titanic
town, there was the unpeopled waste of the antarctic night.
Sickness of soul took Anderson away from business. Simulta-
neously a channel leading in an equally divergent direction opened
itself for his energies. The gift of story telling began taking an in-
tellectual route. At odd hours, after business, in railway trains,
he began to write. And, lo, in the process of writing, the old wound
began to close. He commenced to touch people again. He com-
menced to enter into lives. The people he met, the people he had
rubbed against, were no longer adamant impenetrable surfaces to
him. They began to open themselves. They began, when he met them
casually, in all the ordinary ways of intercourse, to give him some-
thing nourishing to his sense of beauty, and to take from him some-
thing he needed to bestow. The sense of dirt, of whoring, of infinite
degradation began to pass in his labour. For the business of seeing
people without romanticizing them, of drawing them without put-
ting himself below or above them, but merely by feeling their lives
in all the dwarfishness and prodigious bloom, is to Anderson what it
is to all men, an act of love, and, as love, subconsciously initiated.
The old godhead that shines in the eyes of every new-born child, re-
vives itself through that labour of art. The business of seeing folk
clearly, steadily, wholly, is a mystical marriage with the neighbour.
It is not love of one's image in the partner; it is the love of all men
and women through the body of a spouse. For its motive is the pres-
ervation in another of an intact soul.
It was not a thing, this power of feeling truly, that sprang full
armed in Anderson. It has rather been a gradual growth, a slow, pa-
tient learning. The current of life in the country was against it. The
current swept inside Anderson himself. We see him, at the close of
a
>


PAUL ROSENFELD
41
Windy McPherson's Son, flinch from drawing the relentless line;
loose his contact with life, and return into the fantasy world of the
American imperviousness. Marching Men, in its later passages, dem-
onstrates a faulty sense of women. Even in Poor White, the ten-
dency to stop feeling delicately, to harangue and seek to influence his
readers directly shows at moments its cloven foot. But the artist has
been solidifying steadily in the man. ' In A New Testament he tells
us how each night he "scrubbed the floor" of his upper room. There
are miracles of tender, fragile sensibility in Winesburg, in Poor
White, in the later stories and poems. For, in this second crisis in
Anderson's moral life, there was help at hand. He was no longer
entirely solitary in his struggle with the habits of the country. Crea-
tures able to strengthen him were about. His mind, like the span of
a Gothic arch, in springing upward, met another upspringing span
and found support. It was in the guise of the most powerful outward
bulwark of his mature life that the work of Van Wyck Brooks came
to Sherwood Anderson. In it he encountered another conscious
American who spoke his language. Here was a critic, a polished and
erudite man, who brought him corroboration in his inmost feelings,
and told him that nations had become great, and life burned high,
because men had done what he was labouring to do; and that Amer-
ica had remained grey and terrible and oafish because men could not
within her borders feel the truth. In that voice, Anderson recognized
an America realler than the one that, outside and in, strove to deflect
him and break his touch. What had happened to Whitman, decay
for want of comprehension, was not to happen to him. He was afoot
to so remain. Anderson's pledge to himself, the song to himself as
he goes his rocky road, is recorded in Mid-American Chants. The lit-
tle book is a sort of pilgrim's scrip for those who, in America, are try-
ing to keep their faith in the work of the artist intact. And Ander-
son can begin writing A New Testament, assured that in setting down
the voice of the mind murmurous in him, he is furthering some new
religious life dawning in men.
The new feeling that is in America, it is only an infant. It is no
more than a puny child born in the nadir of the year, a helpless,
naked mite. In all the grey winter of the land, under the leaden im-
measurable vault, it is a nigh invisible fleck. And still, somehow, it
is there, born. You have but to read Anderson, to know it well.
Something is different in us since these stories and novels have com-
a
>


42
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
menced to circulate. Something has changed in the scene outside the
rooms, in the thoroughfares through which we tread, since he began
telling us the railway conductor's daughter walked down the track,
the policeman goes thinking how much his feet hurt him. The peo-
ple in the street, the ever strange, the ever remote, the ever unyield-
ing people in the street, they are come a little out of their drab mist,
are become a little less repellent, less hostile, less remote. They have
departed a little from their official forms, the forms that are imposed
on them by the lie in the brain of all, the Roman lie, with its hier-
archies, positions, offices, principles, duties, laws. You will perceive
it the next time you pass by the Italian grocer on the corner, that for-
merly mealy and uninviting universe. You will perceive it when
next the washerwoman comes with her basket of laundry to the door.
You will perceive it when you pass the blue-coated, sallow-faced law
swinging his club on the corner. They will not know that anything
has happened between you and them. They may believe they see you
with the old eyes. But they do not. In them as in yourself some-
thing has taken place. They have all opened a little, to let you see for
a blinking instant into them. You, who have read Anderson, know it.
They have all turned gentler for a second, and let you perceive inside
their coats, a thing you well know. It is inside the rich fur-collared
coat of the stock-gambler in Wall Street. It is inside the old army
coat of the grey-faced job-hunting Third-Avenue walker. It is in-
side all men and women, that thing that you thought you own alone.
It is you in diverse forms, you suffering and egoistic and lazy, you
wanting to live and give life to others and exuding venom instead.
It is you, dying always by your own hand, always miraculously pro-
ducing again the power to live.
It seems as though the mysterious Third Person, the being who
comes into existence at the moments walls fall between men and men,
and dies when they rebuild themselves again, had been given another
last chance.


FIVE POEMS
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
I
of evident invisibles
exquisite the hovering
at the dark portals
of hurt girl eyes
sincere with wonder
a poise a wounding
a beautiful suppression
the accurate boy mouth
now droops the faun head
now the intimate flower dreams
of parted lips
dim upon the syrinx
II
conversation with my friend is particularly
to enjoy the composed sudden body atop which always quivers the
electric Distinct face haughtily vital clinched in a swoon of
synopsis
1
despite a sadistic modesty his mind is seen frequently finger-
ing the exact beads of a faultless languor when invisibly con-
sult with some delicious image the a little strolling lips and
eyes inwardly crisping
a


44
FIVE POEMS
for my friend, feeling is the sacred and agonizing proximity to
its desire of a doomed impetuous acute sentience whose white-
hot lips however suddenly approached may never quite taste the
wine which their nearness evaporates
to think is the slippery contours of a vase inexpressibly frag-
ile it is for the brain irrevocably frigid to touch a merest
shape, which however slenderly by it caressed will explode and
spill the immediate imperceptible content
my friend's being, out of the spontaneous clumsy trivial acrobat-
ic edgeless gesture of existence, continually whittles keen
careful futile flowers
(isolating with perpetually meticulous concupiscence the bright
large undeniable disease of Life, himself occasionally contrives
an unreal precise intrinsic fragment of actuality),
>
an orchid whose velocity is sculptural
III
it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed
with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds
the genuine apparition of your
smile
(it was through tears always) and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;
moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:


E. E. CUMMINGS
45
one pierced moment whiter than the rest
—turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.
IV
by little accurate saints thickly which tread
the serene nervous light of paradise-
by angelfaces clustered like bright lice
about god's capable dull important head-
by on whom glories whisperingly impinge
(god's pretty mother) but may not confuse
the clever hair nor rout the young mouth whose
lips begin a smile exactly strange-
this painter should have loved my lady.
And by this throat a little suddenly lifted
a
in singing—hands fragile whom almost tire
the sleepshaped lilies—
should my lady's body
with these frail ladies dangerously respire:
impeccable girls in raiment laughter-gifted.
V
who's most afraid of death? thou
art of him
utterly afraid, i love of thee
(beloved) this
and truly i would be
near when his scythe takes crisply the whim


46
FIVE POEMS
of thy smoothness. and mark the fainting
murdered petals. with the caving stem.
But of all most would i be one of them
round the hurt heart which do so frailly cling.
i who am but imperfect in my fear
Or with thy mind against my mind, to hear
nearing our hearts' irrevocable play-
through the mysterious high futile day
an enormous stride
(and drawing thy mouth toward
my mouth, steer our lost bodies carefully downward)


o
A LINE DRAWING. BY E. E. CUMMINGS






S
A LINE DRAWING. BY E. E. CUMMINGS


축
​4
>
4


1
1
1
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
BY IVAN BUNIN
Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and D. H. Lawrence
"WE TO THEE, BABYLON,
THAT MIGHTY CITY!”
-APOCALYPSE.
THE
HE Gentleman from San Francisco—nobody either in Capri or
-
Naples ever remembered his name—was setting out with his
wife and daughter for the Old World, to spend there two years of
pleasure.
He was fully convinced of his right to rest, to enjoy long and com-
fortable travels, and so forth. Because, in the first place, he was
rich, and in the second place, notwithstanding his fifty-eight years,
he was just starting to live. Up to the present he had not lived, but
only existed; quite well, it is true, yet with all his hopes on the fu-
ture
. He had worked incessantly—and the Chinamen whom he em-
ployed by the thousand in his factories knew what that meant. Now
at last he realized that a great deal had been accomplished, and that
he had almost reached the level of those whom he had taken as his
ideals, so he made up his mind to pause for a breathing space. Men
of his class usually began their enjoyments with a trip to Europe,
India, Egypt. He decided to do the same. He wished naturally to
reward himself in the first place for all his years of toil, but he was
quite glad that his wife and daughter should share in his pleasures,
too. True, his wife was not distinguished by any marked suscepti-
bilities
, but then elderly American women are all passionate travel-
lers. As for his daughter, a girl no longer young and somewhat deli-
cate, travel was really necessary for her: leaving aside the question
of health, do not happy meetings often take place in the course of
find oneself sitting next to a multi-millionaire at
table
, or examining frescoes side by side with him.
The itinerary planned by the Gentleman from San Francisco was
extensive. In December and January he hoped to enjoy the sun of
travel? One
may


48
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
cer-
.
southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the sere-
nades of vagrant minstrels, and finally, that which men of his age
are most susceptible to, the love of quite young Neapolitan girls,
even when the love is not altogether disinterestedly given. Carnival
he thought of spending in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that sea-
son gathers the most select society, the precise society on which de-
pends all the blessings of civilization: the fashion in evening dress,
the stability of thrones, the declaration of wars, the prosperity of
hotels; where some devote themselves passionately to automobile
and boat races, others to roulette, others to what is called flirtation,
and others to the shooting of pigeons which beautifully soar from
their pens over emerald lawns, against a background of forget-me-
not sea, instantly to fall, hitting the ground in little white lumps.
The beginning of March he wished to devote to Florence, Passion
Week in Rome to hear the music of the Miserere; his plans also in-
cluded Venice, Paris, bull-fights in Seville, bathing in the British
Isles; then Athens, Constantinople, Egypt, even Japan
tainly on his way home. And everything at the outset went
splendidly.
It was the end of November. Practically all the way to Gibraltar
the voyage passed in icy darkness, varied by storms of wet snow.
Yet the ship travelled well, without much rolling even. The pas-
sengers on board were many, and all people of some importance. The
boat, the famous Atlantis, resembled a most expensive European
hotel with all modern equipments: a night refreshment-bar, Turkish
baths, a newspaper printed on board; so that the days aboard the
liner passed in the most select manner. The passengers rose early, to
the sound of bugles ringing shrilly through the corridors in that grey
twilight hour when day was breaking slowly and sullenly over the
grey-green, watery desert, which rolled heavily in the fog. Clad in
their flannel pyjamas, the gentlemen took coffee, chocolate, or cocoa,
then seated themselves in marble baths, did exercises, thereby whet-
ting their appetite and their sense of well-being, made their toilet
for the day, and proceeded to breakfast. Till eleven o'clock they
were supposed to stroll cheerfully on deck, breathing the cold fresh-
ness of the ocean; or they played table-tennis or other games, that
they might have an appetite for their eleven o'clock refreshment of
sandwiches and bouillon; after which they read their newspaper
with pleasure, and calmly awaited luncheon—which was a still


IVAN BUNIN
49
more varied and nourishing meal than breakfast. The two hours
which followed luncheon were devoted to rest. All the decks were
crowded with reclining-chairs on which lay passengers wrapped in
plaids, looking at the mist-heavy sky or the foamy hillocks which
flashed behind the bows, and dozing sweetly. Till five o'clock, when,
renewed and lively, they were treated to strong, fragrant tea and
sweet cakes. At seven bugle-calls announced a dinner of nine
courses. And now the Gentleman from San Francisco, rubbing his
hands in a rising flush of vital forces, hastened to his state cabin, to
dress.
In the evening, the tiers of the Atlantis yawned in the darkness as
with innumerable fiery eyes, and a multitude of servants in the kitch-
ens, sculleries, wine-cellars, worked with a special frenzy. The ocean
heaving beyond was terrible, but no one thought of it, firmly believ-
ing in the Captain's power over it. The Captain was a ginger-haired
man of monstrous size and weight, apparently always torpid, who
looked in his uniform with broad gold stripes very like a huge idol,
and who rarely emerged from his mysterious chambers to show him-
self to the passengers. Every minute the siren howled from the
bows with hellish moroseness, and screamed with fury, but few din-
ers heard it-it was drowned by the sounds of an excellent string
band, exquisitely and untiringly playing in the huge two-tiered hall
that was decorated with marble and covered with velvet carpets,
flooded with feasts of light from crystal chandeliers and gilded giran-
doles, and crowded with ladies in bare shoulders and jewels, with
men in dinner-jackets, elegant waiters and respectful maîtres-d'hô-
tel, one of whom, he who took the wine-orders only, wore a chain
round his neck like a Lord Mayor. Dinner-jacket and ideal linen
made the Gentleman from San Francisco look much younger. Dry,
of small stature, badly built but strongly made, polished to a glow
and in due measure animated, he sat in the golden-pearly radiance
of this palace, with a bottle of amber Johannisberg at his hand, and
glasses, large and small, of delicate crystal, and a curly bunch of
fresh hyacinths. There was something Mongolian in his yellowish
face with its trimmed silvery moustache, large teeth blazing with
gold, and strong bald head blazing like old ivory. Richly dressed,
but in keeping with her age, sat his wife, a big, broad, quiet woman.
Intricately, but lightly and transparently dressed, with an innocent
immodesty sat his daughter, tall, slim, her magnificent hair splendid-


50
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
ly done, her breath fragrant with violet cachous, and the tenderest
little rosy moles showing near her lip and between her bare, slightly-
powdered shoulder-blades. The dinner lasted two whole hours, to
be followed by dancing in the ball-room, whence the men, including
of course the Gentleman from San Francisco, proceeded to the bar,
where, with their feet cocked up on the tables, they settled the des-
tinies of nations in the course of their political and stock exchange
conversations, smoking meanwhile Havana cigars and drinking
liqueurs till they were crimson in the face, waited on all the while
by negroes in red jackets with eyes like peeled, hard-boiled eggs.
Outside, the ocean heaved in black mountains; the snowstorm hissed
furiously in the clogged cordage; the steamer trembled in every fibre
as she surmounted these watery hills and struggled with the storm,
ploughing through the moving masses which every now and then
reared in front of her, foam-crested. The siren, choked by the fog,
groaned in mortal anguish. The watchmen in the look-out towers
froze with cold, and went mad with their superhuman straining of
attention. As the gloomy and sultry depths of the Inferno, as the
ninth circle, was the submerged womb of the steamer, where gigantic
furnaces roared and dully giggled, devouring with their red-hot
maws mountains of coal cast hoarsely in by men naked to the waist,
bathed in their own corrosive dirty sweat, and lurid with the purple-
red reflection of flame. But in the refreshment bar men jauntily put
their feet up on the tables, showing their patent-leather pumps, and
sipped cognac or other liqueurs and swam in waves of fragrant smoke
as they chatted in well-bred manner. In the dancing hall light and
warmth and joy were poured over everything, couples turned in the
waltz or writhed in the tango, while the music insistently, shameless-
ly-delightfully, with sadness entreated for one, only one thing, one
and the same thing all the time. Amongst this resplendent crowd
was an ambassador, a little dry modest old man; a great millionaire,
clean-shaven, tall, of an indefinite age, looking like a prelate in his
old-fashioned dress-coat; also a famous Spanish author, and an in-
ternational beauty already the least bit faded, of unenviable reputa-
tion; finally an exquisite loving couple, whom everybody watched
curiously because of their unconcealed happiness: he danced only
with her, and sang, with great skill, only to her accompaniment, and
,
everything about them seemed so charming !-and only the Captain
knew that this couple had been engaged by the steamship company
a


IVAN BUNIN
51
a
to play at love for a good salary, and that they had been sailing for
a long time, now on one liner, now on another.
At Gibraltar the sun gladdened them all: it was like early spring.
A new passenger appeared on board, arousing general interest. He
was an hereditary prince of a certain Asiatic state, travelling incog-
nito; a small man, as if made all of wood, though his movements
were alert; broad-faced, in gold-rimmed glasses, a little unpleasant
because of his large black moustache which was sparse and transpar-
ent like that of a corpse; but on the whole inoffensive, simple, mod-
a
est. In the Mediterranean they met once more the breath of winter.
Waves, large and florid as the tail of a peacock, waves with snow-
white crests heaved under the impulse of the tramontana wind, and
came merrily, madly rushing towards the ship, in the bright lustre of
a perfectly clear sky. The next day the sky began to pale, the hori-
zon grew dim, land was approaching: Ischia, Capri could be seen
through the glasses, then Naples herself, looking like pieces of sugar
strewn at the foot of some dove-coloured mass; whilst beyond, vague
and deadly whitened with snow, a range of distant mountains. The
decks were crowded. Many ladies and gentlemen were putting on
light fur-trimmed coats. Noiseless Chinese servant-boys, bandy-
legged, with pitch-black plaits hanging down to their heels, and with
girlish thick eyebrows, unobtrusively came and went, carrying up
the stairways plaids, canes, valises, hand-bags of crocodile-leather,
and never speaking above a whisper. The daughter of the Gentle-
man from San Francisco stood side by side with the prince, who, by
a happy circumstance, had been introduced to her the previous eve-
ning. She had the air of one looking fixedly into the distance to-
wards something which he was pointing out to her, and which he was
explaining, hurriedly, in a reduced voice. Owing to his size, he
looked amongst the rest like a boy. Altogether he was not hand-
some, rather queer, with his spectacles, bowler hat, and English coat,
and then the hair of his sparse moustache just like horse-hair, and the
swarthy, thin skin of his face seeming stretched over his features and
slightly varnished. But the girl listened to him, and was so excited
she did not know what he was saying. Her heart beat with incom-
prehensible rapture because of him, because he was standing next to
her and talking to her, to her alone. Everything, everything about
him was so unusual-his dry hands, his clean skin under which
flowed ancient, royal blood, even his plain but somehow particularly


52
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
tidy European dress; everything was invested with an indefin-
able glamour, with all that was calculated to enthral a young
woman. The Gentleman from San Francisco, wearing for his part
a silk hat and grey spats over patent-leather shoes, kept eyeing the
famous beauty who stood near him, a tall, wonderful figure, blonde,
with her eyes painted according to the latest Parisian fashion, hold-
ing on a silver chain a tiny, cringing, peeled-off little dog, to which
she was addressing herself all the time. And the daughter, feeling
some vague embarrassment, tried not to notice her father.
Like all Americans, he was very liberal with his money when trav-
elling. And like all of them, he believed in the full sincerity and
good-will of those who brought his food and drinks, served him from
morn till night, anticipated his smallest desire, watched over his
cleanliness and rest, carried his things, called the porters, conveyed
his trunks to the hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was during the
voyage, so it ought to be in Naples. Naples grew and drew nearer.
The brass band, shining with the brass of their instruments, had al-
ready assembled on deck. Suddenly they deafened everybody with
the strains of their triumphant rag-time. The giant Captain appeared
in state uniform on the bridge, and like a benign pagan idol waved
his hands to the passengers in a gesture of welcome. And to the Gen-
tleman from San Francisco as well as to every other passenger it
seemed as if for him alone was thundered forth that rag-time march,
so greatly beloved by proud America; for him alone the Captain's
waving hand, welcoming him on his safe arrival. Then when at last
the Atlantis entered port, and veered her many-tiered mass against
the quay that was crowded with expectant people, when the gang-
ways began their rattling-ah, then what a lot of porters and their
assistants in caps with golden galloons, what a lot of all sorts of com-
a
missionaires, whistling boys, and sturdy ragamuffins with packs of
postcards in their hands rushed to meet the Gentleman from San
Francisco with offers of their services! With what amiable con-
tempt he grinned at those ragamuffins as he walked to the automo-
bile of the very same hotel at which the prince would probably put
up, and calmly muttered between his teeth, now in English, now in
Italian—"Go away! Via!"
Life at Naples started immediately in the set routine. Early in
the morning, breakfast in a gloomy dining-room with a draughty
damp wind blowing in from the windows that opened on to a little
а
a
1


IVAN BUNIN
53
stony garden; a cloudy, unpromising day, and a crowd of guides at
the doors of the vestibule. Then the first smiles of a warm, pinky-
coloured sun, and from the high-suspended balcony a view of Vesu-
vius, bathed to the feet in the radiant vapours of the morning sky,
while beyond, over the silvery-pearly ripple of the bay, the subtle
outline of Capri upon the horizon! then nearer, tiny donkeys run-
ning in two-wheeled buggies away below on the sticky embankment,
and detachments of tiny soldiers marching off with cheerful and de-
fiant music.
After this a walk to the taxi-stand, and a slow drive along crowd-
ed, narrow, damp corridors of streets, between high, many-windowed
houses. Visits to deadly-clean museums, smoothly and pleasantly
lighted, but monotonously, as if from the reflection of snow. Or vis-
its to churches, cold, smelling of wax, and always the same thing: a
majestic portal, curtained with a heavy leather curtain; inside, a
huge emptiness, silence, lonely little flames of clustered candles rud-
dying the depths of the interior on some altar decorated with ribbon;
a forlorn old woman amid dark benches, slippery grave-stones un-
der one's feet, and somebody's infallibly famous Descent from the
Cross. Luncheon at one o'clock on San Martino, where quite a num-
ber of the very selectest people gather about midday, and where once
the daughter of the Gentleman from San Francisco became almost
ill with joy, fancying she saw the prince sitting in the hall, although
she knew from the newspapers that he had gone to Rome for a time.
At five o'clock, tea in the hotel, in the smart salon where it was so
warm, with the deep carpets and blazing fires. After which the
thought of dinner—and again the powerful commanding voice of
the gong heard over all the floors, and again strings of ladies, bare-
shouldered, rustling with their silks on the staircases and reflecting
themselves in the mirrors, again the wide-flung, hospitable, palatial
dining-room, the red jackets of musicians on the estrade, the black
flock of waiters around the maître d'hôtel, who with extraordinary
skill was pouring out a thick, roseate soup into soup-plates. The
,
dinners, as usual, were the crowning event of the day. Everyone
dressed as if for a wedding, and so abundant were the dishes, the
wines, the table-waters, sweetmeats, and fruit, that at about eleven
o'clock in the evening the chambermaids would take to every room
rubber hot-water bottles, to warm the stomachs of those who had
dined.


54
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
.
None the less, December of that year was not a success for Naples.
The porters and secretaries were abashed if spoken to about the
weather, only guiltily lifting their shoulders and murmuring that
they could not possibly remember such a season; although this was
not the first year they had had to make such murmurs, or to hint that
"everywhere something terrible is happening.” Unprece-
dented rains and storms on the Riviera, snow in Athens, Etna also
piled with snow and glowing red at night; tourists fleeing from the
cold of Palermo.
The morning sun daily deceived the Nea-
politans. The sky invariably grew grey towards midday, and fine
rain began to fall, falling thicker and colder. The palms of the hotel
approach glistened like wet tin, the city seemed peculiarly dirty
and narrow, the museums excessively dull, the cigar-ends of the fat
cab-men, whose rubber rain-capes flapped like wings in the wind,
seemed insufferably stinking, the energetic cracking of whips over
the ears of thin-necked horses sounded altogether false, and the clack
of the shoes of the signori who cleaned the tram-lines quite horrible,
while the women, walking through the mud, with their black heads
uncovered in the rain, seemed disgustingly short-legged: not to men-
tion the stench and dampness of foul fish which drifted from the
quay where the sea was foaming. The Gentleman and Lady from
San Francisco began to bicker in the mornings; their daughter went
about pale and head-achey, and then roused up again, went into rap-
tures over everything, and was lovely, charming. Charming were
those tender, complicated feelings which had been aroused in her by
the meeting with the plain little man in whose veins ran such special
blood. But after all, does it matter what awakens a maiden soul-
whether it is money, fame, or noble birth? Everybody de-
clared that in Sorrento, or in Capri, it was quite different. There it
was warmer, sunnier, the lemon-trees were in bloom, the morals were
purer, the wine unadulterated. So behold, the family from San
Francisco decided to go with all their trunks to Capri, after which
they would return and settle down in Sorrento: when they had seen
Capri, trodden the stones where stood Tiberius' palaces, visited the
fabulous caves of the Blue Grotto, and listened to the pipers from
the Abruzzi, who wander about the isle during the month of the Na-
tivity singing the praises of the Virgin.
On the day of departure—a very memorable day for the family
from San Francisco—the sun did not come out even in the morning.
a
O
.


IVAN BUNIN
55
a
a
A heavy fog hid Vesuvius to the base, and came greying low over the
leaden heave of the sea, whose waters were concealed from the eye at
a distance of half a mile. Capri was completely invisible, as if it
had never existed on earth. The little steamer that was making for
the island tossed so violently from side to side that the family from
San Francisco lay like stones on the sofas in the miserable saloon of
the tiny boat, their feet wrapped in plaids, and their eyes closed. The
lady, as she thought, suffered worst of all, and several times was
overcome with sickness. It seemed to her she was dying. But the
stewardess who came to and fro with the basin—the stewardess who
had been for years, day in, day out, through heat and cold, tossing
on these waves, and who was still indefatigable, even kind to every-
one-she only smiled. The younger lady from San Francisco was
deathly pale, and held in her teeth a slice of lemon. Now not even
the thought of meeting the prince at Sorrento, where he was due to
arrive by Christmas, could gladden her. The gentleman lay flat on
his back, in a broad overcoat and a flat cap, and did not loosen his
jaws throughout the voyage. His face grew dark, his moustache
white, his head ached furiously. For the last few days, owing to the
bad weather, he had been drinking heavily, and had more than once
admired the "tableaux vivants.” The rain whipped on the rattling
.
window-panes, under which water dripped on to the sofas, the wind
beat the masts with a howl, and at moments, aided by an onrush-
ing wave, laid the little steamer right on its side, whereupon some-
thing would roll noisily away below. At the stopping places, Cas-
tellamare, Sorrento, things were a little better. But even there the
ship heaved frightfully, and the coast with all its precipices, gar-
dens, pines, pink and white hotels, and hazy, curly green mountains
swooped past the window, up and down as if it were on swings. The
boats bumped against the side of the ship, the sailors and passengers
shouted lustily, and somewhere a child, as if crushed to death,
choked itself with screaming. The damp wind blew through the doors,
and outside on the sea, from a reeling boat which showed the flag of
the Hotel Royal, a fellow with guttural French exaggeration yelled
unceasingly: "Rrroy-al! Hotel Rrroy-al !” intending to lure passen-
gers aboard his craft. Then the Gentleman from San Francisco,
feeling, as he ought to have felt, quite an old man, thought with an-
guish and spite of all these “Royals,” “Splendids,” “Excelsiors,”
and of these greedy, good-for-nothing, garlic-stinking fellows called
>


56
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
a
Italians. Once, during a halt, on opening his eyes and rising from
the sofa he saw under the rocky cliff-curtain of the coast a heap of
such miserable stone hovels, all musty and mouldy, stuck on top of
one another by the very water, among the boats, and the rags of all
sorts, tin cans and brown fishing nets, that, remembering that this
was the very Italy he had come to enjoy, he was seized with despair.
At last, in the twilight, the black mass of the island began to
loom nearer, looking as if it were bored through at the base with lit-
tle red lights. The wind grew softer, warmer, more sweet-smelling.
Over the tamed waves, undulating like black oil, there came flowing
golden boa-constrictors of light from the lanterns of the harbour.
Then suddenly the anchor rumbled and fell with a splash
into the water. Furious cries of the boatmen shouting against one
another came from all directions. And a relief was felt at once. The
electric light of the cabin shone brighter, and a desire to eat, drink,
smoke, move, once more made itself felt... Ten minutes later
the family from San Francisco disembarked into a large boat, in a
quarter of an hour they had stepped on to the stones of the quay, and
soon were seated in the bright little car of the funicular railway.
With a buzz they were ascending the slope, past the stakes of the
vineyards and wet, sturdy orange-trees, here and there protected by
straw screens, past the thick glossy foliage and the brilliancy of
orange fruits. Sweetly smells the earth in Italy after rain,
and each of her islands has its own peculiar aroma.
The island of Capri was damp and dark that evening. For the
moment, however, it had revived, and was lighted up here and there
as usual at the hour of the steamer's arrival. At the top of the ascent,
on the little piazza by the funicular station, stood the crowd of those
whose duty it was to receive with propriety the luggage of the Gen-
tleman from San Francisco. There were other arrivals, too, but
none worthy of notice: a few Russians who had settled in Capri, un-
tidy and absent-minded owing to their bookish thoughts, spectacled,
bearded, half buried in the upturned collars of their thick frieze
overcoats. Then a group of long-legged, long-necked, round-headed
German youths in Tirolese costumes, with knapsacks over their
shoulders, needing no assistance, feeling everywhere at home and al-
ways economical in tips. The Gentleman from San Francisco, who
kept quietly apart from both groups, was marked out at once. He


IVAN BUNIN
57
>
а
and his ladies were hastily assisted from the car, men ran in front to
show them the way, and they set off on foot, surrounded by urchins
and by the sturdy Capri women who carry on their heads the luggage
of decent travellers. Across the piazza, that looked like an opera
scene in the light of the electric globe that swung aloft in the damp
wind, clacked the wooden pattens of the women-porters. The gang
of urchins began to whistle to the Gentleman from San Francisco,
and to turn somersaults around him, whilst he, as on the stage,
marched among them towards a mediaeval archway and under hud-
dled houses, behind which led a little, re-echoing lane, past tufts of
palm-trees showing above the flat roofs to the left, and under the
stars in the dark blue sky, upwards towards the shining entrance of
the hotel. : . And again it seemed as if purely in honour of the
guests from San Francisco the damp little town on the rocky little
island of the Mediterranean had revived from its evening stupor;
that their arrival alone had made the hotel proprietor so happy and
hearty, and that for them had been waiting the Chinese gong which
sent its howlings through all the house the moment they crossed the
doorstep.
The sight of the proprietor, a superbly elegant young man with a
polite and exquisite bow, startled for a moment the Gentleman from
San Francisco. In the first flash, he remembered that amid the chaos
of images which had possessed him the previous night in his sleep,
he had seen that very man, to a T the same man, in the same full-
skirted frock-coat and with the same glossy, perfectly smoothed hair.
Startled, he hesitated for a second. But since long, long ago he had
lost the last mustard-seed of any mystical feeling he might ever have
had, his surprise at once faded. He told the curious coincidence of
dream and reality jestingly to his wife and daughter, as they passed
along the hotel corridor. And only his daughter glanced at him with
a little alarm. Her heart suddenly contracted with homesickness,
with such a violent feeling of loneliness in this dark, foreign island,
that she nearly wept. As usual, however, she did not mention her
feelings to her father.
Reuss XVII, a high personage who had spent three whole weeks
on Capri, had just left, and the visitors were installed in the suite
of rooms that he had occupied. To them was assigned the most
beautiful and expert chambermaid, a Belgian with a thin, firm cor-
a


58
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
afgre and
a
watu
che
Sant take
TER
seted figure and a starched cap in the shape of a tiny indented crown.
The most experienced and distinguished-looking footman was placed
at their service, a coal-black, fiery-eyed Sicilian, and also the smart-
est waiter, the small, stout Luigi, a tremendous buffoon, who had
seen a good deal of life. In a minute or two a gentle tap was heard
at the door of the Gentleman from San Francisco, and there stood
the maître d'hôtel, a Frenchman, who had come to ask if the guests
would take dinner, and to report, in case of an answer in the affirma-
tive of which, however, he had small doubt—that this evening
there were Mediterranean lobsters, roast beef, asparagus, pheasants,
et cetera. The floor was still rocking under the feet of the Gentle-
man from San Francisco, so rolled had he been on that wretched,
grubby Italian steamer. Yet with his own hands, calmly, though
clumsily from lack of experience, he closed the window which had
banged at the entrance of the maître d'hôtel, closing out the drifting
smell of distant kitchens and of wet flowers in the garden. Then he
turned and replied with unhurried distinctness, that they would take
dinner, that their table must be farther from the door, in the very
centre of the dining-room, that they would have local wine and
champagne, moderately dry and slightly cooled. To all of which
the maître d'hôtel gave assent in the most varied intonations, which
conveyed that there was not and could not be the faintest question of
the justness of the desires of the Gentleman from San Francisco, and
that everything should be exactly as he wished. At the end he in-
clined his head and politely inquired:
"Is that all, Sir?''
On receiving a lingering “Yes,” he added that Carmela and Giu-
seppe, famous all over Italy and “to all the world of tourists,” were
going to dance the tarantella that evening in the hall.
“I have seen picture-postcards of her,” said the Gentleman from
San Francisco, in a voice expressive of nothing. "And is Giuseppe
her husband ?"
“Her cousin, Sir,” replied the maître d'hôtel.
The Gentleman from San Francisco was silent for a while, think-
ing of something but saying nothing; then he dismissed the man with
a nod of the head. After which he began to make preparations as if
for his wedding. He turned on all the electric lights, and filled the
mirrors with brilliance and reflection of furniture and open trunks.
ICO


IVAN BUNIN
59
He began to shave and wash, ringing the bell every minute, and
down the corridor raced and crossed the impatient ringings from the
rooms of his wife and daughter. Luigi, with the nimbleness peculiar
to certain stout people, making grimaces of horror which brought
tears of laughter to the eyes of chambermaids dashing past with mar-
ble-white pails, turned a cart-wheel to the gentleman's door, and tap-
ping with his knuckles, in a voice of sham timidity and respectful-
ness reduced to idiocy, asked:
“Ha suonato, Signore?”
From behind the door, a slow, grating, offensively polite voice.
"Yes, come in.”
What were the feelings, what were the thoughts of the Gentleman
from San Francisco on that evening so significant to him? He felt
nothing exceptional, since unfortunately everything on this earth is
too simple in appearance. Even had he felt something imminent in
his soul, all the same he would have reasoned that whatever it might
be it could not take place immediately. Besides, as with all who
have just experienced sea-sickness, he was very hungry, and looked
forward with delight to the first spoonful of soup, the first mouthful
of wine. So he performed the customary business of dressing in a
state of excitement which left no room for reflection.
Having shaved, washed, and dexterously arranged several arti-
ficial teeth, standing in front of the mirror, he moistened his silver-
mounted brushes and plastered the remains of his thick pearly hair
on his swarthy yellow skull. He drew on to his strong old body,
with its abdomen protuberant from excessive good-living, his cream-
coloured silk underwear, put black silk socks and patent-leather slip-
pers on his flat-footed feet. He put sleeve-links in the shining cuffs
of his snow-white shirt, and bending forward so that his shirt front
bulged out, he arranged his trousers that were pulled up high by his
silk braces, and began to torture himself catching his collar-stud
under the stiff collar. The floor was still rocking beneath him, the
tips of his fingers hurt, the stud at moments pinched the flabby skin
in the recess under his Adam's apple, but he persisted, and at last,
with eyes all strained and face dove-blue from the over-tight collar
that enclosed his throat, he finished the business and sat down ex-
hausted in front of the pier glass, which reflected the whole of him,
and repeated him in all the other mirrors.


60
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
1
5
“It is awful!” he muttered, dropping his strong, bald head, but
without trying to understand or to know what was awful. Then,
with habitual careful attention examining his gouty-jointed short
fingers and large, convex, almond-shaped finger-nails, he repeated:
“It is awful. ...
As if from a pagan temple shrilly resounded the second gong
through the hotel. The Gentleman from San Francisco got up hasti-
ly, pulled his shirt-collar still tighter with his tie, and his abdomen
tighter with his open waistcoat, settled his cuffs and again examined
himself in the mirror.. “That Carmela, swarthy, with her
enticing eyes, looking like a mulatto in her dazzling-coloured dress,
chiefly orange, she must be an extraordinary dancer-” he was think-
ing. So cheerfully leaving his room and walking on the carpet to
his wife's room, he called to ask if they were nearly ready.
“In five minutes, Dad,”—came the gay voice of the girl from be-
hind the door. "I'm arranging my hair.”
“Right-o!” said the Gentleman from San Francisco.
Imagining to himself her long hair hanging to the floor, he slowly
walked along the corridors and staircases covered with red carpet,
downstairs, looking for the reading-room. The servants he encoun-
tered on the way pressed close to the wall, and he walked past as if
not noticing them. An old lady, late for dinner, already stooping
with age, with milk-white hair and yet décolletée in her pale grey
silk dress, hurried at top speed, funnily, hen-like, and he easily over-
took her. By the glass door of the dining-room, wherein the guests
had already started the meal, he stopped before a little table heaped
with boxes of cigars and cigarettes, and taking a large Manila, threw
three liras on the table. After which he passed along the winter-
terrace, and glanced through an open window. From the darkness
wafted a soft air, and there loomed the top of an old palm-tree that
spread its boughs over the stars, gigantic-seeming, bringing down the
far-off smooth quivering of the sea. ... In the reading-room,
cozy with the shaded reading-lamps, a grey, untidy German, looking
rather like Ibsen in his round silver-rimmed spectacles and mad as-
tonished eyes, stood rustling the newspapers. After coldly eyeing
,
him, the Gentleman from San Francisco seated himself in a deep
leather arm-chair in a corner, by a lamp with a green shade, put on
his pince-nez, and, with a stretch of his neck because of the tightness
a
a


IVAN BUNIN
61
a
of his shirt-collar, obliterated himself behind a newspaper. He
glanced over the headlines, read a few sentences about the never-end-
ing Balkan war, then with a habitual movement turned over the
page of the newspaper—when suddenly the lines blazed
up
before
him in a glassy sheen, his neck swelled, his eyes bulged, and the
pince-nez came flying off his nose. He lunged forward,
wanted to breathe -and rattled wildly. His lower jaw dropped,
and his mouth shone with gold fillings. His head fell swaying on
his shoulder, his shirt-front bulged out basket-like, and all his body,
writhing, with heels scraping up the carpet, slid down to the floor,
struggling desperately with some invisible foe.
If the German had not been in the reading-room, the frightful af-
fair could have been hushed up. Instantly, through obscure pas-
sages the Gentleman from San Francisco could have been hurried
away to some dark corner, and not a single guest would have discov-
ered what he had been up to. But the German dashed out of the
room with a yell, alarming the house and all the diners. Many
sprang up from table, upsetting their chairs, many, pallid, ran to-
wards the reading-room, and in every language it was asked: “What,
what's the matter?” None answered intelligibly, nobody under-
stood, for even to-day people are more surprised at death than at
anything else, and never want to believe it is true. The proprietor
rushed from one guest to another, trying to keep back those who were
hastening up, to soothe them with assurances that it was a mere trifle,
a fainting-fit that had overtaken a certain Gentleman from San
Francisco. . . . But no one heeded him. Many saw how the por-
ters and waiters were tearing off the tie, waistcoat, and rumpled eve-
ning-coat from that same Gentleman, even, for some reason or other,
pulling off his patent evening-shoes from his black-silk, flat-footed
feet. And he was still writhing. He continued to struggle with
death, by no means wanting to yield to that which had so unexpect-
edly and rudely overtaken him. He rolled his head, rattled like one
throttled, and turned up the whites of his eyes as if he were drunk.
When he had been hastily carried into room No. 43, the smallest,
wretchedest, dampest, and coldest room at the end of the bottom cor-
ridor, came running his daughter with her hair all loose, her dressing-
gown flying open, showing her bosoms raised by her corsets: then his
wife, large and heavy and completely dressed for dinner, her mouth


62
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
a
***
a
opened round with terror. But by that time he had already ceased
rolling his head.
In a quarter of an hour the hotel settled down somehow or other.
But the evening was ruined. The guests, returning to the dining-
room, finished their dinner in silence, with a look of injury on their
faces, whilst the proprietor went from one to another shrugging his
shoulders in hopeless and natural irritation, feeling himself guilty
through no fault of his own, assuring everybody that he perfectly
realised “how disagreeable this is,” and giving his word that he
would take “every possible measure within his power” to remove the
trouble. The tarantella had to be cancelled, the superfluous lights
were switched off, most of the guests went to the bar, and soon the
house became so quiet that the ticking of the clock was heard dis-
tinctly in the hall, where the lonely parrot woodenly muttered some-
thing as he bustled himself in his cage preparatory to going to sleep,
and managed to fall asleep at length with his paw absurdly sus-
pended to the upper little perch. ... The Gentleman from San
Francisco lay on a cheap iron bed under coarse blankets on to which
fell a dim light from the obscure electric light against the ceiling. An
ice-bag slid down on his wet, cold forehead; his blue, already lifeless
face grew gradually cold; the hoarse bubbling which came from his
open mouth, where the gleam of gold still showed, grew weak. The
Gentleman from San Francisco rattled no longer, he was no more:
something else lay in his place. His wife, his daughter, the doctor,
and the servants stood and watched him dully. Suddenly that hich
they feared and expected happened. The rattling ceased. And
slowly, slowly under their eyes a pallor spread over the face of the
deceased, his features began to grow thinner, more transparent . .
with a beauty which might have suited him long ago. ...
Entered the proprietor. “Gia, è morto.!” whispered the doctor to
him. The proprietor raised his shoulders, as if it were not his affair.
The wife, on whose cheeks tears were slowly trickling, approached
and timidly asked that the deceased should be taken to his own room.
“Oh, no, madame," hastily replied the proprietor, politely, but
coldly, and not in English, but in French. He was no longer inter-
ested in the trifling sum the guests from San Francisco would leave
at his cash desk. "That is absolutely impossible.” Adding, by way
of explanation, that he valued that suite of rooms highly, and that


IVAN BUNIN
63
should he accede to madame's request, the news would be known all
over Capri and no one would take the suite afterwards.
The young lady, who had glanced at him strangely all the time,
now sat down in a chair and sobbed, with her handkerchief to her
mouth. The elder lady's tears dried at once, her face flared up.
Raising her voice and using her own language she began to insist, un-
able to believe that the respect for them had gone already. The man-
ager cut her short with polite dignity. "If madame does not like the
ways
of the hotel, he dare not detain her.” And he announced deci-
sively that the corpse must be removed at dawn; the police had al-
ready been notified, and an official would arrive presently to attend
to the necessary formalities. "Is it possible to get a plain coffin?”
madame asked.—Unfortunately not! Impossible! And there was
no time to make one. It would have to be arranged somehow. Yes,
the English soda-water came in large strong boxes—if the divisions
were removed
The whole hotel was asleep. The window of No. 43 was open, on
to a corner of the garden where, under a high stone wall ridged with
broken glass, grew a battered banana tree. The light was turned off,
the door locked, the room deserted. The deceased remained in the
darkness, blue stars glanced at him from the black sky, a cricket
started to chirp with sad carelessness in the wall. ... Out in the
dimly-lit corridor two chambermaids were seated in a window-sill,
mending something. Entered Luigi, in slippers, with a heap of
clothes in his hand.
"Pronto?” he asked, in a singing whisper, indicating with his eyes
the dreadful door at the end of the corridor. Then giving a slight
wave thither with his free hand: “Patenza!”—he shouted in a whis-
per, as though sending off a train. The chambermaids, choking with
noiseless laughter, dropped their heads on each other's shoulders.
Tip-toeing, Luigi went to the very door, tapped, and cocking his
head on one side, asked respectfully, in a subdued tone:
"Ha suonato, Signore?”
Then, contracting his throat and shoving out his jaw, he answered
himself in a grating, drawling, mournful voice, which seemed to
come from behind the door:
“Yes, come in.
When the dawn grew white at the window of No. 43, and a damp
.
a


64 THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
wind began rustling the tattered fronds of the banana tree; as the
blue sky of morning lifted and unfolded over Capri, and Monte So-
laro, pure and distinct, grew golden, catching the sun which was ris-
ing beyond the far-off blue mountains of Italy; just as the labourers
who were mending the paths of the islands for the tourists came out
for work, a long box was carried into room No. 43. Soon this box
weighed heavily, and it painfully pressed the knees of the porter who
was carrying it in a one-horse cab down the winding white high-road,
between stone walls and vineyards, down, down the face of Capri to
the sea. The driver, a weakly little fellow with reddened eyes, in a
little old jacket with sleeves too short and bursting boots, kept flog-
ging his wiry small horse that was decorated in Sicilian fashion, its
harness tinkling with busy little bells and fringed with fringes of
scarlet wool, the high saddle-peak gleaming with copper and tufted
with colour, and a yard-long plume nodding from the pony's cropped
head, from between the ears. The cabby had spent the whole night
playing dice in the inn, and was still under the effects of drink.
Silent, he was depressed by his own debauchery and vice: by the fact
that he gambled away to the last farthing all those copper coins with
which his pockets had yesterday been full, in all four liras, forty cen-
tesimi. But the morning was fresh. In such air, with the sea all
around, under the morning sky, headaches evaporate, and man soon
regains his cheerfulness. Moreover, the cabby was cheered up by
this unexpected fare which he was making out of some Gentleman
from San Francisco, who was nodding with his dead head in a box at
the back. The little steamer, which lay like a water-beetle on the
tender bright blueness which brims the bay of Naples, was already
giving the final hoots, and this tooting resounded again cheerily all
over the island. Each contour, each ridge, each rock was so clearly
visible in each direction, it was as if there were no atmosphere at all.
Near the beach the porter in the cab was overtaken by the head por-
ter dashing down in an automobile with the lady and her daughter,
both pale, their eyes swollen with the tears of a sleepless night.
... And in ten minutes the little steamer again churned up the wa-
ter and turned her way back to Sorrento, to Castellamare, bearing
away from Capri for ever the family from San Francisco. . . . And
peace and tranquillity reigned once more on the island.
On that island two thousand years ago lived a man entangled in
.


IVAN BUNIN
65
his own infamous and strange acts, one whose rule for some reason
was spread over millions of people, and who, having lost his head
through the absurdity of such power, and out of fear lest death
should stab him from behind, committed deeds which have es-
tablished him for ever in the memory of mankind: mankind which in
the mass now rules the world just as hideously and incomprehensibly
as he ruled it then. And men come here from all corners of the globe
to look at the ruins of the stone house where that one man lived, on
the brink of one of the steepest cliffs in the island. On this exquisite
morning all who had come to Capri for that purpose were still asleep
in the hotels, although through the streets already trotted little
mouse-coloured donkeys with red saddles, towards the hotel entrances
where they would wait patiently until, after a good sleep and a
square meal, young and old American men and women, German men
and women, would emerge and pile up into the saddles, to be fol-
lowed up the stony paths, yea to the very summit of Monte Tiberio,
by old persistent beggar-women of Capri, with sticks in their sinewy
hands. Quieted by the fact that the dead old Gentleman from San
Francisco, who had intended to be one of the pleasure party but who
had only succeeded in frightening the rest with the reminder of death,
was now being shipped to Naples, the happy tourists still slept
soundly, the island was still quiet, the shops in the little town not yet
open. Only fish and greens were being sold in the tiny piazza, only
simple folks were present, and amongst them, as usual without occu-
pation, the tall old boatman Lorenzo, thorough debauchee and hand-
some figure, famous all over Italy, model for many a picture. He
had already sold for a trifle two lobsters which he had caught in the
night and which were rustling in the apron of the cook of that very
same hotel where the family from San Francisco had spent the night.
And now Lorenzo could stand calmly till evening, with a majestic
air showing off his rags and gazing round, holding his clay pipe with
its long reed mouth-piece in his hand, and letting his scarlet bonnet
slip over one ear. For as a matter of fact he received a salary from
the little town, from the commune which found it profitable to pay
him to stand about and make a picturesque figure-as everybody
knows. . . . Down the precipices of Monte Solaro, down the stony
little stairs cut in the rock of the old Phoenician road, came two
Abruzzi mountaineers, descending from Anacapri. One carried a
a
.


66
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN FRANCISCO
a
a
bagpipe under his leather cloak: a large goat skin with two little
pipes; the other had a sort of wooden flute. They descended, and the
whole land, joyous, was sunny beneath them. They saw the rocky
shoulder-heavings of the island, which lay almost entirely at their
feet, swimming in the fairy blueness of the water. Shining morning
vapours rose over the sea to the east, under a dazzling sun which al-
ready burned hot as it rose higher and higher; and there, far off, the
dimly cerulean masses of Italy, of her near and far mountains still
wavered blue as if in the world's morning, in a beauty no words can
express. . . . Half way down the descent the pipers slackened their
pace. Above the road, in a grotto of the rocky face of Monte Solaro
stood the Mother of God, the sun full upon her, giving her a splen-
dour of snow-white and blue stucco raiment, and royal crown rusty
from all weathers. Meek and merciful, she raised her eyes to heaven,
to the eternal and blessed mansions of her trice-holy Son. The pipers
bared their heads, put their pipes to their lips: and there streamed
forth naïve and meekly-joyous praises to the sun, to the morning, to
Her, Immaculate, who would intercede for all who suffer in this ma-
licious and lovely world, and to Him, born of Her womb among the
caves of Bethlehem, in a lowly shepherd's hut, in the far Judean
land. ..
And the body of the dead old man from San Francisco was return-
ing home, to its grave, to the shores of the New World. Having been
submitted to many humiliations, much human neglect, after a week's
wandering from one warehouse to another, it was carried at last on to
the same renowned vessel which so short a time ago, and with such
honour, had borne him living to the Old World. But now he was to
be hidden far from the knowledge of the voyagers. Closed in a tar-
coated coffin, he was lowered deep into the vessel's dark hold. And
again, again the ship set out on the long voyage. She passed at night
near Capri, and to those who were looking out from the island, sad
seemed the lights of the ship slowly hiding themselves in the sea's
darkness. But there aboard the liner, in the bright halls shining with
lights and marble, gay dancing filled the evening, as usual. ..
The second evening, and the third evening, still they danced, amid
a storm that swept over the ocean, booming like a funeral service,
rolling up mountains of mourning-darkness silvered with foam.
Through the snow the numerous fiery eyes of the ship were hardly


IVAN BUNIN
67
visible to the Devil who watched from the rocks of Gibraltar, from
the stony gateway of two worlds, peering after the vessel as she dis-
appeared into the night and storm. The Devil was huge as a cliff.
But huger still was the liner, many storeyed, many funnelled, created
by the presumption of the New Man with the old heart. The bliz-
zard smote the rigging and the funnels, and whitened the ship with
snow, but she was enduring, firm, majestic—and horrible. On the
topmost deck rose lonely against the snowy whirlwind the cozy and
dim quarters where lay the heavy master of the ship, he who was like
a pagan idol, sunk now in a light, uneasy slumber. Through his sleep
he heard the sombre howl and furious screechings of the siren, muf-
fied by the blizzard. But again he reassured himself in the nearness
of that which stood behind his wall, and was in the last resort incom-
prehensible to him: by the large, apparently armoured cabin which
was now and then filled with a mysterious rumbling, throbbing, and
crackling of blue fires that flared up explosive around the pale face
of the telegraphist who, with a metal hoop fixed on his head, was
eagerly straining to catch the dim voices of vessels which spoke him
from hundreds of miles away. In the depths, in the under-water
womb of the Atlantis, steel glimmered and steam wheezed, and huge
masses of machinery and thousand-ton boilers dripped with water
and oil, as the motion of the ship was steadily cooked in this vast
kitchen heated by hellish furnaces from beneath. Here bubbled in
their awful concentration the powers which were being transmitted
to the keel, down an infinitely long round tunnel lit up and brilliant
like a gigantic gun-barrel, along which slowly, with a regularity
crushing to the human soul, revolved a gigantic shaft, precisely like
a living monster coiling and recoiling its endless length down the
tunnel, sliding on its bed of oil. The middle of the Atlantis, the
warm, luxurious cabins, dining-rooms, halls shed light and joy, buz-
zed with the chatter of an elegant crowd, was fragrant with fresh
flowers, and quivered with the sounds of a string orchestra. And
again amidst that crowd, amidst the brilliance of lights, silks, dia-
monds, and bare feminine shoulders, a slim and supple pair of hired
lovers writhed and at moments convulsively clashed. A sinfully dis-
creet, pretty girl with lowered lashes and hair innocently dressed,
and a tallish young man with black hair looking as if it were glued
on, pale with powder, and wearing the most elegant patent shoes and
>
a


68
A SHRINE
a narrow, long-tailed dress coat: a beau resembling an enormous
leech. And no one knew that this couple had long since grown weary
of shamly tormenting themselves with their beatific love-tortures, to
the sound of bawdy-sad music; nor did any one know of that thing
which lay deep, deep below at the very bottom of the dark hold, near
the gloomy and sultry bowels of the ship that was so gravely over-
coming the darkness, the ocean, the blizzard.
A SHRINE
BY STEWART MITCHELL
Think in what fashion this one man would rise
From cold dust, coffined up against decay,
To find his solitary place a way
For stupid feet and trivial, staring eyes.
These noisy rooks in blue, white-clouded skies
Would have recalled for him all rapt delay
Pleasure occasions death-and judgement day;
His second choice was silence, where he lies.
>
Seas were not made to swim in: shallow streams
Flowing through shadow, dappled with dim light,
These be our playgrounds, as the deep sea teems
Menacing, sullen shapes that haunt the sight-
Now and again divers dive down for dreams
To come up calm from knowledge of its night.



Courtesy of the
Galleries
INTERIOR
BY ALBERT BLOCH






B
Courtesy of the Daniel Galleries
STREET. BY ALBERT BLOCH


.
$


1
RUSSIAN LETTER
December, 1921
rior causes.
a
RUSSIAN
USSIAN literature since the Revolution may be roughly di-
vided into three classes: (1) that produced by the so-called
emigrants who are now living outside Russia in virtually all the
big towns of Western Europe; (2) the work of Russian writers in-
side Bolshevist Russia; and (3) that produced in the parts of Russia
that were at one time or another under Bolshevist government. The
nature of the literature is, in each case, different from the others.
The old tradition of Russian letters is being carried on by the emi-
grants; writers like Merejkovsky, Bunin, Kuprin, Milyukov, and
Balmont are all writing very much as they were before the catas-
trophe. Their work is always interesting but does not call for much
comment at the present moment. More significant are the writings
of such younger men as Alexey Tolstoy. He, almost alone of the
younger Russian writers, has been able to continue his career as a
writer without apparently suffering much interruption from exte-
He writes, one fancies, one or two novels, a few
poems,
and a play or so every year and, curiously enough, he seems to im-
prove as he goes along. His work is already being recognized by
non-Russian critics; his latest play is to be produced in Paris in the
Spring, and his better novels will probably soon appear in English
and French translation.
Before coming to the writers who have remained in Moscow and
Petrograd during the whole of the Revolution, it may be well to deal
with the small but interesting output of books in the anti-Bolshevist
circles. Political literature, being entirely banned inside Soviet
Russia—unless it be pro-Bolshevist, when it usually ceases to be lit-
erature—has survived during the last four years only among the
emigrants and under the anti-Bolshevist régime of Kolchak, Deni-
kin, and others. There histories have been written, or rather pages
from history, which help to illuminate some of the more interesting
portions of that amazingly complex series of events, the Russian
Revolution. Thus the famous Korniloff campaign in the Don coun-
try has been exactly described by Alexey Suvorin in his book, The
a


70
RUSSIAN LETTER
a
Korniloff Campaign, which has now disappeared from circulation
as a result of the Bolshevists' capture of its stock, and in G. N. Ra-
kovsky's In the Camp of the Whites. Similar books have been pub-
lished in Siberia describing the incidents of the Kolchak campaign.
While all anti-Bolshevist, most of the books of this kind are fairly
judicious and critical, and any one who can read Russian has a feast
of interest and instruction in them. An interesting attempt is being
made at the present moment by M Hessen, a well-known Peters-
burg editor in the old days, to collect notes on various phases of the
Revolution which he is publishing in Berlin in serial volumes under
the general title of Archives of the Russian Revolution.
It is natural that most people interested in literature are wonder-
ing more about what is being produced inside Soviet Russia than
about any other phase of contemporary Russian literature. It is
difficult for anybody outside Russia to form a picture of the incred-
ibly chaotic state of life there. One has to imagine life bereft of
every kind of convenience and luxury and to add to this the difficul-
ties of obtaining food, fuel, and lodging, as well as the terrific men-
tal demoralization of the whole country. Life inside Soviet Russia
is a struggle for existence in the literal sense of the words. It is not
as if writers there had been simply reduced to unaccustomed pov-
erty, as has been the case in so many countries of Central Europe.
Worse than this, they have to spend all their days in struggling to
obtain food and shelter for the morrow. In these circumstances it
would be foolish to expect any kind of finished work on a large scale
to come out of Russia. This explains why it is that virtually every-
thing that has been written in Petrograd and Moscow during the last
three years has been fragmentary, hysterical, and, for the most part,
immature. Two highly significant works have emerged, it is true; and
in them not less than in the others are to be seen the traces and effects
of the very qualities which have just been mentioned. I am speak-
ing of Alexander Blok's The Twelve (and perhaps his Scythians)
and Andrey Byely's Christ Has Arisen. The first poem-The Twelve
-has been translated into several European languages and has had
in addition a huge circulation in its own country—so far as any
book has a circulation nowadays in Soviet Russia. It has been harsh-
ly criticized both by the Bolshevists and the anti-Bolshevists as a
false, or at least partly false, presentation of the scenes and atmos-
phere of life in Soviet Russia. When I first came across the poem in


C. E. BECHHOFER
71
the Caucasus two and a half years ago it seemed to me that Blok
had intuitively sensed the real nature of the Russian catastrophe
the medley of brutality and sentimentality, of ideals and violence.
I was very much interested to discover in Moscow a month or so ago
that this opinion was held by the most acute critics I met there. The
"political” significance of Blok's poems—which was never of real
importance to anybody except Russians who have been trained by a
century of bad criticism to look for the political rather than the ar-
tistic merits of any new work of literature—is now no longer com-
mented on; instead, people are beginning to realize that Blok's
curious fanfare of rhymes and rhythms has wonderfully caught the
nature of the time in which he was writing. With the Scythians,
The Twelve represents his last important work; he died in August
of cancer, his death accelerated by under-nourishment.
Andrey Byely's Christ Has Arisen might be described as a projec-
tion of Blok's vision of the revolutionary era; it is a still more fan-
tastic mingling of revolutionary doctrine and Christian teaching.
When one finds the corpse of a railwayman who has been shot in a
riot compared with Christ on the Cross, it is obvious that the subject
demands very delicate treatment if it is to be successful. While
Byely has certainly not succeeded fully in his task he has neverthe-
less made his bizarre idea unobjectionable. There are lines in his
poem that are excellent, but as a whole it takes rank a long way be-
low Blok's masterpiece.
The better known writers of prose inside Russia are necessarily
silent. Nothing by Gorky, Sologub, Artzibashev, Korolenko is be-
ing published. We come now to the younger schools of writers in-
side Bolshevist Russia. It must be said, of course, that in dealing
with literature inside the Soviet frontiers we are treating almost
wholly of verse. Prose cannot be written under present circum-
stances inside Russia; only verse, and extremely unpolished verse at
that, can possibly come out of this chaos. Where we find poems
written in traditional styles, they are the work chiefly of men who,
like Voloshin, had a year or so of comparative peace in some part of
Russia that was in the hands of the anti-Bolshevists. It is true that
there are a few exceptions even to this; Gumilev, who was shot in
August at Petrograd by the Bolshevists, produced during the last
months of his life a volume of verses written with his usual finish
and elegance. More characteristic of the time is, however, the work


72
RUSSIAN LETTER
a
of such hitherto unknown poets as Yessenin, Shershenevich, Kliu-
yev, Mariengov, Mayakovsky, and a few others. With the excep-
tion of Mayakovsky, perhaps, all these young men would probably
deny with much bitterness that they were Bolshevists. In fact, most
of them have at some time or other been imprisoned by Bolshevists,
like most other people in Russia. But it is inevitable that the style
of their work should be regarded as “Bolshevist.” For the most
part it sings the praises of the proletariat and curses the capitalist
and the foreigner. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that these
poets—especially Yessenin-are, strictly speaking, Left Socialist
Revolutionaries rather than Bolshevists, inasmuch as their heroes
are rather the peasants of the villages than the workmen of the
towns. But their work, readable and significant as it usually is, does
not in most cases justify a too careful analysis of their art, opinions,
and ideals.
C. E. BecHHOFER


PARIS LETTER
December, 1921
IF
F the term “letter” at the head of this rubric is to be anything
but a mockery it should imply not only communication but an-
swer. To form any sort of porch, vortex, academia, agora there
must be at least five or six people sufficiently interested in one an-
other's ideas to wish, one need not say, to correct, but to bring them
into some sort of focus; to establish not a foot-rule but some sort of
means of communication, and some understanding of how a given
idea, emitted from the left side of the table (Rome, Paris) may
strike someone seated at the other end or opposite side of the board
(Denver, London, Rio de Janeiro).
Thus “one” is a little surprised to find his Excellenza the Italian
Minister for Education still “going on about” Balzac. “One” had
supposed that Balzac was a local French necessity; that the search
for international literary standards had ceased to find him thereto
pertinent
. “One” observes with approbation that Excellenza Croce
discusses Balzac's art, or lack of it, and not the shape of his bath
robe, herein differing from the present or London école de Ste Beuve.
One offers the suggestion that Croce is indulging in a bit of purely
local propaganda when he compares Balzac to Manzoni in order to
glorify Italian genius. An impartial non-national critic would have
set Manzoni against Flaubert and found the former, I think, infe-
rior
, his chief and perhaps only demerit being that he is rather dull,
though eminently meritorious, unless my wholly untrustworthy
memory is more than on occasion at fault.
Mr Wright is, surely, a little hard on Propertius and Ovid or else
a little careless in his manner of stating a wholly apposite and com-
mendable appreciation of Petronius; and when Señor Santayana
says that he likes to hear and to see what new things people are up
someone in the company should be permitted to wink, to wink
audibly but respectfully, and to cite, perhaps, the Diana of Monte-
to,"
mayor.
If the "Letter” is to show even approximately "where in a man-
ner of speaking” its author or the milieu which he attempts to com-


74
PARIS LETTER
a
municate “has got to” it can hardly confine itself to jottings on the
five or six latest books, even when there are so many in a season;
it
should at least try to dissociate certain ideas moving in the ferment
or sediment beneath or upon current work. For some years "litera-
ture” or at least the "movement” has been more or less regarded as a
sort of parasite on the new painting, magazines if at all renovatory
were usually “magazines of Art and literature," the phrase goes
without needing comment, there is now nothing more to be said
about a Bracque than about a Nicholson picture; an abstract mode,
or several abstract modes have been established and accepted. I
mean that a cubist picture is now an accepted sort of painting, dis-
tinct, as say a flower piece or a Dutch interior is distinct from a
Raphael or Murillo “Holy Family,” or an English "Historic.”
Faced with a given example of any of them, the critic can only say:
this is well or ill executed. The mark of the shop is upon a great
deal of current production; Picasso experiments, but, lately, in the
mode of Michael Agnolo or of Ford Madox Brown. Marie Lauren-
cin's rather "eighteenth century charm persists.
The main interest is not in aesthetics; certain main questions are
up for discussion, among them nationality and monotheism. I mean
that there is a definite issue between internationalist and denational-
ist thought, and a certain number of people believe that it is a calam-
ity to belong to any modern nation whatsoever. I suppose the pres-
ent phase of the discussion began with the heimatlos in Switzerland,
during the war. It is not a matter of being anti-French or anti-Ger-
man or anti-patriotic, it is a question of disapproving fundamentally
of the claims of the modern state. Stephen Decatur's words nobly
reproduced with the morning Paris issue of the Chicago Tribune re-
ferred, let us say, to a group of ideas “my country,” that is to say
the liberty of thirteen colonies and the right to think and act as one
pleased. The modern state has been defined economically as “The
difference between the credit a nation possesses as an aggregate and
the sum of the credits possessed by its individual members”; and
that tough nut the “intellectual” begins to ask himself at what point
this difference in credits has a right to interfere with his thought, his
expression, his liberty, his freedom of movement, et cetera.
Economics are up for discussion not in their technical, Fabian,
phases, but in the wider and more human phases, where they come
into contact with personal liberty, life, the arts themselves, and the


EZRA POUND
75
conditions aiding or limiting their expression. Back of it all is the
Confucian saying "When the Prince shall have called about him all
the artists and savants, his resources will be put to full use.”
I take it these questions are discussed, at least in their philosophic
phases, more freely in France than elsewhere; the French have not
the English hatred of ideas, they have not the English instinct warn-
ing them against the possible material commotions which may pur-
sue the functioning of a given idea, and even if an idea is labeled
"dangerous” the French will go on discussing it, “parcequ'ils sont
trop bavards."
Denationalism is Athens against Sparta, or, better, Athens
against Rome; all empires are in the nature of things a little pom-
pous and ridiculous. Greece, as I think Maine says, never managed
to give laws, for the Greeks were always more interested in the ex-
ception, in Phryne for example, than in the flat average; Athens had
a civilization, Rome had an empire, and the greatest virtue of that
empire was to act as a carrier for Athenian civilization. Athens con-
sisted of an open square, a few groves and porches where men met,
talked ideas to death, but also talked them into form and into
pre-
cision; and where. and so forth... the dream has been
too often attempted or perhaps not sufficiently often ...
the reader may try it for himself.
As for monotheism, it is a philosophic shallowness and frivolity
to accept monotheism as fact, rather than as a perhaps interesting, at
any rate to some temperaments convenient or plausible and to other
temperaments sympathetic or apathetic, hypothesis. Convenit esse
deos, says Ovid, using the plural. Monotheism is unproven, the
Catholic church itself has accepted a paradoxical compromise, and
any philosophy which does not begin with a doubt on this point is,
to put it mildly, presumptuous. In practice monotheistic thought
leads to all sorts of crusades, persecutions, and intolerance. If one is
forced by one's reason to accept this hyper-unity as a probability one
can also accept it as a nuisance, and the moon is twelve miles out of
its course, or else the Paris edition of the Daily Mail is in error; this
latter is, of course, highly improbable.
Above or apart from the economic squabble, the philosophic wa-
vering, the diminishing aesthetic hubbub, there rests the serene
sculpture of Brancusi, known, adored, also unknown.
Rodin, let us say, broke the academic (Florentine Boy) tradition;
0
.
.


76
PARIS LETTER
Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska in England instituted a new concep-
tion, or reintroduced an old conception of, or appreciation of, form;
Brancusi, contemporary of Epstein or somewhat older, is in many es-
sentials in agreement with the best work of Epstein and of Gaudier;
he is distinct from the futurist sculptors, and he is perhaps unique in
the degree of his objection to the “Kolossal,” the rhetorical, the
Mestrovician, the sculpture of nerve-crisis, the sculpture made to be
photographed; and I think I am quite safe in saying that he is unique
among living sculptors in his devotion to and research for an abso-
lute formal beauty. That is a large order, and any general sentence
falls short of real meaning in dealing with a question of plastic.
In writing of work like Brancusi’s for numbers of readers who
have not seen the work itself, one is stumped; the formula for expo-
sition is to proceed from the known to the unknown; and one doesn't
in the least know what is known. A certain number of photos of
modern sculpture of ten or twelve different schools have been repro-
duced in books having a moderate circulation; there are books on
Gaudier, Epstein, and every other modern sculptor of note, save
Brancusi. I doubt if even good photos would emphasize Brancusi's
distinction. For those who know Gaudier's work, let me put it that
Gaudier, killed at twenty-three, never had time to repeat a given
composition; he saw, often, chances of improvement, but never had
time to put them into execution. Brancusi has had, and taken the
time. Gaudier was a genius beyond cavil. From the people I have
taken to Brancusi's studio I have collected reactions, bewilderment,
admiration, admiration not in the banal degree of tolerant dilettant-
ism; “But he is upsetting all the laws of the universe,” or “But it
isn't like work of a human being at all”; some of it is indeed like the
work of a natural force acting with extreme certitude and felicity,
producing the form which is the sort of Platonic quintessence, let
us say the "that which is birdlike in all birds,” oiseau qui chante la
gloire.
Brancusi, in so different a way from Proust, has created a world,
or let us say Proust has created a somewhat stuffy social milieu, and
Brancusi has created an universe, a cielo, a Platonic heaven full of
pure
and essential forms, and a cavern of a studio which is, in a very
old sense, a temple of peace, of stillness, a refuge from the noise of
motor traffic and the current advertisements.
M Jean Saltas in his preface to the new edition of Alfred Jarry's
a
а


EZRA POUND
77
9
Ubu Roi informs us that the work contains “The satiric simplicity of
Aristophanes, the good sense and truculence of Rabelais, and the
lyric fantasy of Shakespeare.” This statement is, to my mind, con-
trary to fact. Jarry's juvenile puppet play, with a wooden Falstaff
cast for a wooden Macbeth, is a work of admirable verve, and in
view of the direction in which theatrical matters have moved or
stayed since 1896, Jarry's letter of that date to Lugné-Poe is ex-
tremely interesting. He recommends:
1. Mask for the principal personage, Ubu..
2. Horse's head in card-board to hang from the neck, as in "l'an-
cien théâtre anglais,” for the two equestrian scenes, all of these de-
tails being in the spirit of the piece, since I wanted to make a "gui-
gnol” (Punch and Judy show).
3. Use of a single décor, or rather a background, suppressing the
raising and lowering of the curtain during the whole act. Someone
in ordinary clothing should come, as in puppet shows, and hang up a
placard stating where the action takes place. (I am quite sure of the
"suggestive” superiority of a written placard to a painted scene.
Neither a painted scene nor a mass of supers will give "The Polish
army on the march through Ukrainia.")
4. Suppression of crowds, which are always bad on the stage, and
are an insult to the intelligence. Thus, one soldier in the review
scene, and one in the hurly-burly where Ubu says "What a mass of
people, what a flight . .
5. Adoption of an "accent” or rather of a special "voice” for the
chief character.
6. Costumes with as little local or chronological colour as possible
(this gives a better idea of something permanent) they should be
modern for preference, since the satire is modern; and sordid, since
the play will then seem more wretched and horrible.
Thus Jarry at the age of twenty-three making suggestions as to
the presentation of the work written by him at, we are told, the age
of fifteen (and possibly emended?). The child psychologist may
compare the suddenness of its transitions to those in The Young
Visiters, and the philosophic critic has admirable opportunity of
discussing the relation of the "created figure” to literature. Mephis-
topheles and Sunny Jim, being figures, also created.


78
PARIS LETTER
The other, or another fundamental problem; that of the relation
of a nation's literature to its life, is presented by a pile of volumes
before me: Cuisinier Moderne; Menus, La Haute Cuisine, et cetera,
by Gustave Garlan, 2 volumes, 5,000 items, 700 observations, 60
planches, 330 desseins, 3d edition in grand folio, 640 pages.
In contrast the modest Guide Culinaire of Escofier, in large quar-
to, 938 pages, 33d thousand, sub-titled an "aide-mémoire.” The
Cuisine Classique of Urbain-Dubois and Emile Bernard, 18th edi-
tion, 996 pages, royal folio. Fleur de la Cuisine Française, quarto,
on art paper, second volume, Cuisine Moderne 1800-1921, offers an-
other six hundred pages. A complete civilization recognizes all the
five senses, and those who deny the power of the written word may
meditate on the relation between the amplitude of these publications
and the gastronomic pre-eminence of the French. These, gentlemen,
are their cook-books.
Ezra Pound


BOOK REVIEWS
THE PROMISE OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON
The TRIUMPH OF THE EGG. By Sherwood Anderson.
In clay by Tennessee Mitchell. 12mo. 269 pages.
B. W. Huebsch, Inc. $2.
SHE
(HERWOOD ANDERSON’S published work now includes
three novels, two volumes of short stories, and one of poems or
chants. It is strikingly alike in substance; it is amazingly un-
even in execution; but it is animated by a singular unity of inten-
tion. It is all a persistent effort to come to close grips with life, to
master it, to force it to give up its secret. It suggests a wrestling
match in which the challenger is thrown again and again, and yet
each time comes back with thews and sinews braced and muscles
hardened to try another fall. In his persistence Mr Anderson is like
Jacob with the angel, crying through the night, "I will not let thee
go except thou bless me.” And like Jacob he waits until the break-
ing of day to triumph: “I have seen God face to face."
Let it be said at once that the morning is not yet. Mr Anderson
has not completely subdued his material to form, has not thoroughly
penetrated it with interpretation. It remains recalcitrant and
opaque. But as his work has progressed he has shown constantly a
firmer grasp on his problem, a more complete conception of the diffi-
culties of approach, and the resources and limitations of his art. In
this respect there is something final about The Triumph of the Egg.
It by no means represents the attainment of the goal, but it marks a
definite accomplishment beyond which the method he has tested may
carry him on the next dash, but which remains for the time being a
sort of "farthest north.”
It is natural to speak of Sherwood Anderson's work in meta-
phors of physical achievement, for his struggle is first of all an ath-
letic one with the crude stuff of life in a material world. Five years
or more ago a former editor of The Dial persuaded him to set
down his thoughts about American literature in a paper called An
a


80
THE PROMISE OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Apology for Crudity, in the light of which his fiction should be
read.
+
“For a long time I have believed that crudity is an inevitable
quality in the production of a really significant present-day Ameri-
can literature. How indeed is one to escape the obvious fact that
there is as yet no native subtlety of thought or living among us?
And if we are a crude and childlike people how can our literature
hope to escape the influence of that fact? Why indeed should we
want it to escape?
“We talk of writers of the old world and the beauty and subtlety
of the work they do. Below me the roaring city lies like a great ani-
inal on the prairies, but we do not run out to the prairies. We stay
in our rooms and talk.
“I know we shall never have an American literature until we re-
turn to faith in ourselves, and to the facing of our limitations. We
must in some way become in ourselves more like our fellows, more
simple and real.”
.
i
This is Mr Anderson's creed. He has tried always to work under
its sanctions. He has made it his first object to see American life as
it is, without illusion. It is a grim spectacle, and he confesses his
inability to see it beautifully.
“As a people we have given ourselves to industrialism, and indus-
trialism is not lovely. If any man can find beauty in an American
factory town I wish he would show me the way. For myself, I can-
not find it. To me, and I am living in industrial life, the whole
thing is as ugly as modern war."
But this reality has interest. We are a crude people, but not dull.
In some strange way the human forms which this life assumes have
a grotesque quality which makes them as fascinating as gargoyles.
Over and over again Mr Anderson has drawn them for us—in
Windy McPherson, in Smoky Pete, in Melville Stoner. And the
reality tempts always with a demand for interpretation: What is
the meaning of it? The answer Mr Anderson seeks from the start-
ing point of the people to whom the reality belongs. Instead of
using it in illustration of themes already conventionalized in old


ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
81
world literature, he tries to let it develop according to its own pat-
tern. Instead of imposing upon it an interpretation from old world
philosophy he tries to draw from it its own meaning.
It is true that Mr Anderson has been influenced by the technical
experiments of his predecessors, but in so far as he has yielded to
them he has failed. His first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, be-
gins with a transcript from middle-Western life so faithful that it
seems autobiographic; but having established a complete ground-
work of reality the author in an endeavour to maintain interest or to
disengage significance has recourse to the romantic formula. The
point is clearly perceptible at which his fact passes over into fiction.
In Marching Men the substance of the book is indubitably experi-
ence, but the material is subordinated to a thesis which is more than
a part of the psychology of the hero. Poor White is the best of the
three novels. Here the realism in which Mr Anderson works so con-
fidently is raised to significance by a symbolism which is so imme-
diate in its process that it seems unpremeditated and unconscious.
But the large sweep and scope of the story somehow carry it beyond
the author's control. Somewhere he loses his grasp on the meaning
of events, the clue to their interpretation, and presents them with an
emphasis which is misplaced, and with a conclusion which is me-
chanical and arbitrary. Winesburg, Ohio revealed Mr Anderson's
true vehicle in the short story. As Mr Garland's Main Travelled
Roads represented the early practice of realism, so Winesburg, Ohio
will be cited as the embodiment of the severity and simplification of
its later mode. The stories reveal by flashes the life, the activity,
the character of the little mid-Western town as completely as the
persistent glare of Mr Sinclair Lewis's searchlight upon Gopher
Prairie. The Triumph of the Egg has, through greater diversity of
material and wider variety of method and style, the same compelling
unity, a unity not geographical, but cosmic.
Of the stories which compose this last volume it is not necessary
to speak in detail. Several of them, including the longest, the nov-
elette, Out of Nowhere Into Nothing, have already appeared in this
magazine and are familiar to its readers. But of the impressive
unity of their appearance in this volume much may be said. They
fall together as if by predetermined arrangement, and answer to
each other like the movements of a symphonie pathétique. They
combine to give a single reading of life, a sense of its immense bur-


82
THE PROMISE OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON
den, its pain, its dreariness, its futile aspiration, its despair. Some-
times the theme is expressed in farce, the failure of a trick, as in The
Egg; sometimes in grim comedy as in War: again in tragedy as in
Brothers. Sometimes it sounds in the thin treble of childhood as in
I Want to Know Why; sometimes in the cracking voice of old age
as in Senility. And this hopelessness is not an interpretation play-
fully or desperately imposed on the phenomena of life from with-
out by thought or reason; it springs implicitly from within; it is
of the essence of being. It is pervading and penetrating, overwhelm-
ing and unescapable. It is as if, to use Cardinal Newman's words,
man were implicated from birth in some "vast aboriginal calamity'';
only instead of placing the fall of man historically in the Garden of
Eden Mr Anderson traces it biologically to the egg.
It is characteristic of Sherwood Anderson's art that, instead of
seeking escape from life and forgetfulness of it, he grapples with it
in an effort to set the tortured spirit free from its servitude to mat-
ter. The Triumph of the Egg represents to the full that contest
with elemental things which leads one to speak of him in terms be-
fitting the wrestler or explorer. And of this struggle of art with na-
ture he is entirely conscious. It gives the head-note to the volume in
verses which under still another figure express so perfectly Mr An-
derson's theory of the function of art towards its material that to
quote them makes further exposition superfluous.
.
“Tales are people who sit on the doorstep of the house of
my
mind.
It is cold outside and they sit waiting.
I look out at a window.
The tales have cold hands,
Their hands are freezing.
A short thickly-built tale arises and threshes his arms about.
His nose is red and he has two gold teeth.
There is an old female tale sitting hunched up in a cloak.
a
Many tales come to sit for a few moments on the doorstep and then
go away.
It is too cold for them outside.


ROBERT MORSS LOVETT
83
The street before the door of the house of my mind is filled with tales.
They murmur and cry out, they are dying of cold and hunger.
I am a helpless man--my hands tremble.
I should be sitting on a bench like a tailor.
I should be weaving warm cloth out of the threads of thought.
The tales should be clothed.
They are freezing on the doorstep of the house of
my
mind.
I am a helpless man-my hands tremble.
I feel in the darkness but cannot find the doorknob.
I look out at a window.
Many tales are dying in the street before the house of my mind.”
a
The futility of art is a part of the futility of life. It is a theme
personal to the artist: and in Mr Anderson's case it is the source of
that lyric strain which recurs like a thread of wistful beauty through-
out his book. The first sketch, The Dumb Man, defines with un-
canny precision the artist's dilemma in the face of his wavering,
elusive, baffling subject matter—and his exasperating impotence.
The last paragraph of Brothers is a lyric cry of the artist's soul. The
Man with the Trumpet hurls in strident notes the defiance of the ar-
tist to his public. All this marks Sherwood Anderson as a thorough-
ly self-conscious as well as conscientious worker in literature. He
will make no compromises with life and no false claims for himself.
He has done with illusions. He has put behind him the conventional
armour of fiction. He engages in his struggle naked and empty-
handed. And in spite of the melancholy scene in which he finds
himself, in spite of the darkness in which he gropes and the dim-
ly discerned horrors which he grasps, he preserves in his enterprise
the faith of the artist, the soul of a poet. It is in this evidence of a
true vocation that one finds in largest measure the promise of Sher-
wood Anderson.
Robert Morss Lovett


REALISM AND ROBERT HENRI
Robert Henri, His Life AND Works. Edited by
William Yarrow and Louis Bouché. 4to. 35 pages. 40
reproductions. Boni and Liveright. $10.
Noche
ONE but the most envious of modern malcontents would at-
tack the editorial judgement which named Robert Henri as the
painter entitled to introduce a new library dedicated exclusively to
American art. We must not forget, in the deluge of strange things
begotten of Cubism, and of other movements not easy to catalogue,
that Mr Henri, too, was once a radical ; that he appeared when the
solemn stagnancy of Innes and Chase reigned unassailed; and that
he brought life and energy and immense enthusiasm to this country
when our art seemed fated to unending dulness. He has not been
denied honours and official recognition-he is represented in the
Luxembourg, and he is well known in Dallas and Kansas City; it is
true that his work is the fruition of the art of yesterday; but we must
remember that he has faced the modern uprising cheerfully, sensible
of his own abilities and consistently giving us the best that is in him,
and that his attitude towards the younger men who have ridiculed
his pictures has been one of commendable tolerance, instead of that
angry recrimination so characteristic of painters as they inevitably
drift into the Academy.
Mr Henri has been a force both for good and for ill in the pictorial
life of America. With his personality and his blithe activity he has
been able to promote the interest of many students and amateurs to
a serious consideration of art. During a long period he was regard-
ed as a man of advanced ideas and rebellious opinions; he had the
qualities of a leader; he established a school and his pupils, now
numerous and productive, were fascinated as much by the engaging
audacity of his convictions as by his technical cunning. His doc-
trine, that of the realist, is sound in so far as it concentrates attention
on the concrete world, and provides the student a tangible point of
departure. Its limitations arise from its lack of depth. Mr Henri's
principle is for the beginner, and particularly the struggling young
American who, in most cases, is totally devoid of cultural equipment,
and who demands the original stimulus of broad surface ideas.


THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN
85
At present realism is a necessity that cannot be over-emphasized.
Something impressive and strengthening by its actuality is impera-
tive in modern art; but ideas clearer, more comprehensive and more
profound than the postulates of Mr Henri must be inculcated upon
the student to carry him beyond his initial concern with objectivity.
A true realism, not a mere presentation of surface aspects, is primari-
ly and intrinsically constructive. Its logical progress is towards a
complete realization of the thickness, the fulness, and the space-
filling character of the forms emotionally stirring to the artist. The
expedients of correct natural tones and the accidents of texture are
imitative devices, and too frequently end in cheapness to be of ser-
vice to a world that clamours for a meaning in pictures. Mr Henri's
methods terminate in illusion, and while it is but just to say that he
is endowed with a sincere vision that is realistic rather than decora-
tive, he fails, in the true artistic sense, to distinguish between real-
ism and appearance.
In the light of aesthetic validity the semi-decorative, non-repre-
sentative painting imported to-day from France is not different from
a conception which makes possible the extension of form into spaces
larger and freer than practicable in sculpture; but in either case the
imagination must intervene to insure a result that is significantly ex-
pressive and beautiful. The genuine artist reconstructs the world,
and a veritable realism is fundamentally an abstraction, and as such
must be appraised in the same terms as the French art just referred
to—both are conceptions and not literal representations. Mr Henri,
first and last a portrait painter, has been occupied with naturalistic
accuracy; he limits himself to one figure and the sitter is delineated
with a love for pigmental sensations; in place of imagination, which
binds the constituents of a picture into a firm synthetic structure, we
find a liberal sentiment in search of types—gipsies, Indians, Irish-
characters attractive to the spectator largely through the adventi-
tious interest of literary illustration. His world is a world of vision
and not of mind.
We have already noted Mr Henri's respectful patience and sym-
pathy with the iconoclastic art emanating from France since the
death of Cézanne. He has found himself, in a measure, dispossessed,
but he has had the wisdom to continue in his own course and not to
undertake problems which his temperamental leanings would make
impossible of solution. In this connection it is a pleasure to call at-
tention to the reciprocal consideration with which he has been treat-
a
a


86
REALISM AND ROBERT HENRI
ed in the text of the monograph. The editors, young men of distinc-
tion in the later tendencies of painting, ambitiously opposed to
practically every tenet that Mr Henri stands for, have been neither
bigoted nor limited, and have presented their subject with justice
and understanding. The biography is complete and satisfactory;
Mr Henri's aims and ideals analysed; his work estimated for what
it successfully accomplishes and not flouted because it does not hap-
pen to be "modern”; and his position in contemporary art stated in
the admirable spirit of fairness.
This volume is important: its appearance marks the beginning of
a new library of art. It takes courage to found a series of books de-
voted to men who are neither dead nor European, and it is gratify-
ing to record that the publishers feel that an audience awaits their
venture. The reviewer, in writing the foreword to the undertaking,
said: “The literature engendered by recent art has been abundant
and often brilliant, but it has been concerned with psychology and
technique, and its specialized dispersions have confused the general
movement. The American public, bewildered by so much theoriz-
ing, has come to regard its own art as an unintelligible imitation of
the French, and its artists as an inhuman class of men blind to the
life surrounding them.” This condition has led to the establish-
ment of the American Art Library:
“Artists of unquestionable accomplishment will first be represent-
ed, followed by the younger men as their work takes maturity. I am
convinced that a succession of monographs will show that modern
American art, while inferior in magnitude, is equal to the European
in variety and interest."
The book is handsomely bound and its general appearance one of
dignity and taste, but the reviewer's copy bears evidence of hasty
printing. A more agreeable type than old De Vinne might have
been used, Bookman, for instance; the text should have been set in
closer for nice spacing and printed on laid book-paper; the engraving
is exceptionally clear, but any one of the newer gravure processes
would have added to its quality, to say nothing of a few reproduc-
tions in colour.
THOMAS JEWELL CRAVEN


ISOLATION OF CARVED METAL
Poems. By Ezra Pound. 8vo. 90 pages. Boni and
Liveright. $2.
T.
HE massive isolation of Ezra Pound has probably not been
surpassed by that of any other poet in any other generation, and
seldom equalled. His latest volume gives final emphasis to his po-
sition. Coolly immersed in the meanings, deeds, designs, lustres,
and peoples of past ages, he regards the present civilization only for
moments, and then with a dryly satirical chuckle. His poetry is
equally separated from the understanding and appreciation of his
generation. The Dadaists dislike his mental coherence, removed
from the monotone of careless humour to which they bow, and the
conservatives feebly attack him, a little frightened at his erudition
and vicious sneer. Between these extremes he must look in vain for
greetings. The radicals among young poets and critics, much con-
cerned with the yearnings and turbulence of their day, or with a
decorative escape from this turmoil, find him too hard, too dryly
aloof. They can take ecstasy from the violently coloured rhetoric
of an Amy Lowell—much ado about blues and reds and greens in
their relation to overworked emotional significances—or from the
chaste miniatures of an H.D., or from the country-lane gossip of a
Robert Frost, but Pound, with a cold fire that darts from the intel-
lect, cannot arouse their desire. He insults the surface importance
of their own time and their noisily confident relation to this impor-
tance; he deals for the most part with past centuries and their con-
trast with the present one; and his style demands a feverish mental
agility on the part of his reader. This combination does not appeal
to a young generation that seeks its wisdom from shallower and more
brightly tinted substances. His opaque isolation is one of carved
metal standing apart from the thin transparencies of a contemporary
world, and this position is sternly disclosed in his latest book of verse.
Homage to Sextus Propertius, in eleven parts, leads off the vol-
ume, but it is the weakest in the collection. Suggested by the Latin
of Propertius, this poem has a wearisome length that obeys no vis-
ible purpose save to indicate Pound's deliberate fondness for the par-
а
а


88
ISOLATION OF CARVED METAL
a
a
ticular subject-matter at hand—a fondness which in this instance
-a
lures him into the polishing of many barren details. Since Pound
is noted for the unusual freedom of his translations—a practice that
might be profitably adopted by other translators from the Greek and
Latin-his
poem should be considered as an original creation rising
from the hidden foundation of the original work, and indeed, its
wording carries the unmistakable stamp of his own style and mental
peculiarities. It deals with a Roman's love for a woman, interspersed
with passages in which he comments on Roman and Grecian cus-
toms, morals, politics, and legends. The result, a mixture of infor-
mative volubility and lyrical sensuality, creates a situation in which
each element tends to weaken the other, unless one reads the poem
twice and effects the separation which has been ignored by the origi-
nal text. Considering the poem as two poems, the informative one
in which the lover remonstrates with his background is coldly ver-
bose, while the more lyrical one is compact, pointed. The latter re-
veals a sensuality that is self-possessed even in its moments of great-
est ardour—a quality also peculiar to Pound's unsuggested work-
a sensuality that does not revel with spontaneous blindness, in a
manner so dear to the cheated emotions of most critics, but takes the
mind into its confidence, desiring a detached and satirical under-
standing. In its better parts the poem shows an utter absence of
rhetoric and a hard, agile style that should not be defended if they
have not been detected or appreciated. Criticism should display and
embellish without expostulating to those whose ears are bestowed
upon other matters, for the latter aim is usually futile and always
open to corruption.
Realizing this I shall also avoid an open expostulation with
my-
self in regard to why I do not like Langue D’oc, the next series of
poems in this book. Wittily and candidly, in the enlightened man-
ner of young, modern book-reviewers, I could remonstrate with my-
self for a time and then return to an adroit reiteration of my original
position, but the sport does not move me. Preferring the straight
line, I will state that I do not relish folk-songs and ballads, trans-
lated or originals, when they are not accompanied by actual music,
for their naïve meaning alone on the printed page fails to reward my
mind. Moeurs Contemporaines follows the ballads and atones for
them with its mild, dry humour, its faintly smiling sophistication.
Pound is one of the few men who understand that if you seek to de-


MAXWELL BODENHEIM
89
molish an individual you must do it with an air of abbreviated in-
difference. The sneer, when extended and detailed, always leaves
an impression of frantic animosity that defeats its own purpose.
Pound is a master of the indulgent sneer. Lightly, wearily, he points
to his subjects; grimaces a moment; and strolls away. The result
.
may be unfair to the person criticized, but it is effective.
The attitude is a natural one to Pound and indicative of his lit-
erary isolation from a contemporary world. To him the business-
men, icemen, and housewives, described by American poets and nov-
elists with much detail and emotional gusto, are manikins that bare-
ly succeed in becoming amusing at times. This attitude is accentu-
ated and the reason behind it clarified in the next group of poems,
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts) which is the personal
cry of Pound himself. The second part of the opening shows his
conception of the background against which his carefully carved iso-
lation stands.
“The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace.
"Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!
“The ‘age demanded' chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the 'sculpture' of rhyme.”
А
Neatly, gravely, he sums up the defects and limitations of most
present-day literature and art, and the broader spirit of the world
from which they emerge. In truth, this age “demands” creations
that can be flippant at its own expense without wounding or probing
it too deeply, and also asks for a surface realism—"the mould in
plaster”—and a feverish succession of gestures that can soothe the
prevailing lack of introspective ease. No longer do poets linger over
a


90
ISOLATION OF CARVED METAL
>
their output. Lady Imagists and novelists, much admired by the
younger critics of our day, produce a corpulent volume every year,
and often two, seemingly engaged in emulating the men who turn
out such an alarming abundance of automobiles and collars in a
given period. And this literature, like its more substantial competi-
tors, is apt to be rather monotonous in texture and content. In the
course of his summing-up Pound has written the most condensed and
deftly sardonic account of the war and its causes that has so far ap-
peared. In thirty-three lines he states the essence of everything that
has been written on this subject, compressing the redundant propa-
ganda, realistic horrors, and emotional revolts of all war-poems and
novels and stripping them to their effective skeleton. From a vari-
ety of emotional motives, most of them surface phantoms, men raced
into the strident lies of warfare and then returned to the more pas-
sive lies and trickeries of peaceful existence. Their daring, forti-
tude, and candour exploded with the last roar of the cannons, and
those who were still alive returned to the bland subterfuges that had
been temporarily abandoned. And the end attained by the dead?
Pound answers.
“There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid.
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books."
a
The upheavals and gambles of the present world form a jest to
him, and he seeks to escape them by analysing the perfections and
ardours of past centuries and by turning his eyes inward upon him-
self—"the obscure reveries of the inward gaze.” This latter aim is
the driving-power of the four Cantos that close his volume. At a
first reading, even a careful one, they are apt to appear obscure, and
they will be ignored and derided by those who approach poetry for
mental and emotional caresses, and quick affirmations of judgement,


MAXWELL BODENHEIM
gi
a
and not for extremes in mental exercise. Given a mind that is not
averse to labouring, provided that a kernel lies beneath the hard
shells, you can reach the purpose of these poems. They contain the
subconscious matter deposited by years of reading and observation
in one man's mind, and in their residence in this sub-conscious state
they have blended into the man's mental and emotional prejudices
and undergone a metamorphosis, in which they became his visualiza-
tion and interpretation of past men and events. Legendary heroes,
kings, dukes, queens, soldiers, slaves, they live again as this man
would have them live, and speak words that are partly his and part-
ly their own, in the manner of übermarionnettes. Their fragment-
ary and often tangled existence-quick appearances and vanishings
-is a distinctive feature of the subconscious state that enclosed
them before they were extracted by the poet. The Cantos represent
the nervous attempt of a poet to probe and mould the residue left
by the books and tales that he has absorbed, and to alter it to an in-
dependent creative effect. In places they are far too long, too much
a a mere catalogue of names and countries, but their purpose is a valid
one, and they break into many a passage of hard beauty. They sym-
bolize a quality that rules the work of Ezra Pound—a carved isola-
tion from the men and events immediately surrounding him, and a
return to the fundamentals of past creations and ages. He is, in-
deed, pictured by the last lines of his Seventh Canto:
“Eternal watcher of things,
Of things, of men, of passions.
Eyes floating in dry, dark air';
E biondo, with glass-gray iris, with an even sidefall of hair
The stiff, still features."
>
MAXWELL BODENHEIM


HEROISM AND BOOKS
ROMAIN ROLLAND, The Man And His WORK. By
Stefan Zweig. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul.
Illustrated. 8vo. 377 pages. Thomas Seltzer. $4.
Tden
HE predicament of the reformer is this: That if people sud-
denly take to standing on their heads, he recognizes how egre-
giously silly it is to stand on one's head, how many needless casual-
ties are caused thereby, and most of all, how much better off the
world would be if people stood on their feet. Then he falls to ex-
plaining passionately the functions of the feet. Finally certain peo-
ple are convinced, turn right side up, and for them, at least, the re-
former's value has ceased. He becomes purely a historical turmoil,
while the world, having passed him by, goes about contentedly on
its knees, or its elbows.
In his present volume Stefan Zweig shows plainly that he appre-
ciates this fact even in the case of the reformer he is lionizing. Al-
ready we find him defending certain things of Rolland's on the
ground that they meant so much more when written, owing to their
peculiar adaptability to circumstances which have passed. Rolland
and his work are interpreted here almost exclusively in terms of the
war. Which signifies a tacit assumption on Zweig's part that Rol-
land has a greater historical than artistic importance.
Yet looked at from this standpoint we find that Rolland preached
against the war, and the war came; that he went on preaching, and
the war continued; and that ultimately the war stopped owing to the
defeat of Germany. Certainly, this is not participating in history.
Rolland, as Zweig shows well, was one of the most passionate cham-
pions of common sense during the butchery; but it takes a stupid
world indeed to make common sense wise. Or to praise him merely
for the elevation of his teachings is like praising Wilson for the for-
mulation of his fourteen points. A great statesman is one who, with
all the complications of office, can maintain those principles of de-
cency which are self-evident to any one outside of a madhouse. If
Wilson could have upheld the axiomatic simplicity of his peace pro-
gramme, his historical importance would be enormous.
But as to


KENNETH BURKE
93
.
the value of the points per se, any number of Hillquit's supporters
in New York City could have outlined fourteen better ones.
In like manner, I do not see how Rolland can be assigned any un-
usual significance in history. In the light of his inestimable sin-
cerity, I am discomforted by the brutality of such a statement; yet
I feel that the fact, as a fact in nature, is true.
Manifestly, to judge Rolland as an artist would have meant to
judge the power of his material and the skill of his workmanship,
to judge virtues, in other words, which could have been utilized with
as much value to glorify war as to denounce it. Zweig, however,
turns constantly away from Rolland's methods to rhapsodize on his
message. Then taking Tolstoy's creed that genius lies in the
power
of suffering, he fits Rolland admirably into this definition. I feel a
bit abashed at the suggestion, but still I suggest it: That this em-
phasis on suffering has made more idiots than it has ever made ar-
tists. In Rolland's case it seems to have made an admirable man, a
man of unmistakably heroic proportions, a man who really experi-
enced agonies over the abstract thought of war, and who was as
large in his distress as others have been in their calm. Taking him
as a man, Zweig makes him seem authentically a genius; his most
convincing pages are written about this phase of his hero.
But so far as art is concerned, to quote one especially delicious
artist, André Gide, in a sentence which was applied some years back
to Octave Mirbeau, it takes a great deal of talent to make genius
supportable. And Rolland is seldom talented, unless we except
some parts of Colas Breugnon, a book which, significantly enough,
Zweig rates as his most important work artistically. What he gives,
he pours out upon us: earnestness, bitterness, love of man, what not.
Yet all such qualities are the mere starting point of art. It is in the
resolution of such things that art-values are to be found; and this
resolution might happen to be the modelling of an egg.
Zweig, then, has given us here a great deal more of Rolland as a
great man than as a great artist, which I think is an excellent testi-
mony to Zweig's judgement even under the stress of an egregious
enthusiasm. As to the "world-movements” which Rolland deals
with, I think we are too often inclined to place the writer of univer-
sal history as categorically above the writer of comic opera; obvious-
;
ly, it all depends on the history and the орега.
KENNETH BURKE


DUODECIMO, 250 PP.
Of All Things! By Robert Benchley. Illustrated.
12mo. 234 pages. Henry Holt and Company. $1.75.
Seeing Things At Night. By Heywood Broun. 12mo.
268 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.
SINBAD AND His Friends. By Simeon Strunsky. 12mo.
261 pages. Henry Holt and Company. $1.75.
THE MARGIN OF HESITATION. By Frank Moore Colby.
12mo. 229 pages. Dodd, Mead and Company. $2.
A PARODY OUTLINE OF History. By Donald Ogden
Stewart. Illustrated. 12mo. 230 pages. George H.
Doran Company. $1.50.
The Cruise of the Kawa. By Walter E. Traprock.
Illustrated. 8vo. 146 pages. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.
PastichE AND PREJUDICE. By A. B. Walkley. 12mo.
300 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.
More Trivia. By Logan Pearsall Smith. 16mo. 140
pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $1.60.
AND Even Now. By Max Beerbohm. I2mo. 320
pages. $2. The Same. Limited Edition. $3.50. E. P.
Dutton and Company.
1
ALTE
LL of these writers and their friends have seen the things col-
lected in these volumes subjected to the test of print; with the
possible exception of Mr Beerbohm and Mr Pearsall Smith, about
whose work I cannot be certain, each of them has omitted from his
book some of the things he has published. Yet, with these same ex-
ceptions, I cannot help feeling that much would have been gained if
the authors had been granted exemption from the inexorable law
which decrees that a book, to be a book, must contain about two hun-
dred and fifty duodecimo pages. The first five items in the tabulation
above are the essence of this critical case.
a


GILBERT SELDES
95
>
It is not brevity, but excision, I am asking. Mr Benchley has a
genuine sense of the ridiculous; he passes through the semi-intelli-
gent world of the business office, the city room, the theatre, with an
amused appreciation of its vanities; he takes an absurd pleasure in
his grimaces and horseplay not so much because they make others
laugh but because they are required of him by the pompous stupidi-
ties of civilized existence. Unhappily he has had to fill two hundred
and fifty pages with this sort of thing. In half that number he could
have published all of his parodies, including the Christmas After-
noon, which is very good, From Nine to Five, Football, a few of his
little farces, and all of the pages between the flyleaf and the contents
page. He would have succeeded in omitting all of the distressing
bits quoted by his friends as the best things in the book. Mark
Twain's extravagance was slightly mad; Ward's was frequently ma-
licious. Mr Benchley's extravagance is usually only over-develop-
ment.
Forty-two of Mr Broun's one hundred and twenty-five pages could
well go to his review of H. 3rd. In the remaining pages he would
have room for The Fifty-First Dragon, which he considers his best
work, for Inasmuch, which he used to reprint by request, and for A
Bolt from the Blue with its magnificent opening chord: “John Roach
Straton died and went to his appointed kingdom. .” He could
have omitted most of his essays, and retained all of his excellent
puns, and kept from the immortality of print those startling and en-
dearing artistic judgements which so exactly touch the taste of lit-
erary New York. Mr Broun is at his worst when he is trying to be
witty and at his best when he is writing a straight narrative or setting
down his ideas; for on these occasions his natural humour diverts him
and his sane and agreeably original mind discriminates easily be-
tween the trivial and the significant. He is a moderately sophisti-
cated and intelligent citizen trying to recover his lost innocence,
walking endlessly down dark paths in the hope that he will see a
ghost and will be sufficiently pure in heart to be afraid. He is al-
ways crying for the stars and always clapping his hands for Lionel
Atwill. His loyalty to Cortez is charming.
Mr Strunsky and Mr Colby are both expert at writing things
which later are put into books. The subject of Mr Strunsky's satire
is the first cut above the average (he wrote these papers for The New
York Evening Post) and the subject of Mr Colby's delicacies is
whatever for a moment pretends to be above the average. Both of
>
.
a


96
DUODECIMO, 250 PP.
them, I fear, are slightly obscurantist. They clearly intend to supply
correctives for excessive faith in The New Republic or excessive con-
tempt for Harold W. McChambers; but they are really supplying
ammunition to The Weekly Review (fuit, I know) and to The Book-
man. Fierce and holy indignation exists for neither of them; they
stroll amok, but neither of them resents a decent, gentle spurt of
blood when the dagger is withdrawn. If these books were reduced to
one-half a few dull pages would go. The writing of each is tidy and
clear.
The Cruise of the Kawa and Mr Stewart's parody of everybody
except Mr Wells are entertaining burlesques. I am not impressed by
the identifications of the former and am a little tired of hearing one
paragraph of the latter cited as proof that the book is a great piece of
parody. Both of them are too long. The alertness of mind which
suggested the subject, and in Mr Stewart's case the precision in
which episode and author are combined, are admirable.
To find, in a series of pastiches and occasional pieces reprinted
from a daily paper, a discussion of the technique of Henry James as
lucid, intelligent, and illuminating as the same discussion in Dr
Percy Lubbock's Craft of Fiction, is a little startling. It makes you
wish that Mr Walkley, who is a civilized human being and appre-
hends life intelligently, would not have published in 1921 certain
papers on the cinema which must have been written in 1900, and
would have omitted the laboriously ingenious series of pastiches
which only proves that even the Pickwick Papers might have been
stupid if anyone other than Dickens had written them.
A friend should direct the attention of Mr Pearsall Smith to the
advertisement of his book: "so full of human wisdom, compacted of
grace and humour and whimsicality, and yet wholly in touch with
life and all it holds." With this book, and Mr Beerbohm's And
Even Now, I have arrived at the collections which stand outside the
law of two hundred and fifty pages; not all of their pages are equally
fine, but I would not have missed one of them for a great deal.
GILBERT SELDES


THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
The ANALYSIS OF MIND. By Bertrand Russell. 8vo.
310 pages. The Macmillan Company. $4.50.
AM
MONG his many other distinguished accomplishments Mr
Russell has learned unwittingly to do one thing that has been
the despair of other philosophical writers and that is the way to baf-
fle his critics. His rapid transitions from one scientific field to an-
other can be followed only by the boldest of scholars. His familiar-
ity with mathematics and mathematical logic will keep him from
ever sharing the tea-room popularity of Bergson. He is the one
modern philosophic writer who is as much at home in the principles
underlying physics as in those that are basic to logic, metaphysics,
and philosophy as a whole. English training and background some-
how produce broader philosophical scholars than our American at-
mosphere. The present writer confesses his own inability adequate-
ly to review the present volume. All he can do is to single out bits
of the book which he can understand and which interest him.
In The Analysis of Mind Mr Russell comes into closer contact
with psychology than in any of his previous writings. He shows
quite clearly that he has read much of American psychology. He is
apparently in sympathy with the trend of psychology towards be-
haviourism-indeed behaviourism influences considerably the first
half of his book. Behaviourism, it may be said in passing, is a move-
ment in psychology which started eleven or twelve years ago. Its
primary thesis is that psychology can be studied with accuracy only
by observing what other people do. If its data were all at hand the
behaviourist would be able to tell after watching the individual
what the situation or stimulus is that caused his action (prediction):
whereas if society decreed that the individual or group should act in
a specific way the behaviourist could arrange the situation or stimu-
lus which would bring such action about (control).
Mr Russell states in his preface that his book has grown out of
an attempt to harmonize the behaviourist school of psychology
which, as may be inferred, rejects the whole concept of conscious-
ness, and the recent movement in physics initiated by Einstein and


98
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
other exponents of the theory of relativity. The behaviourist school.
according to Mr Russell, “make psychology increasingly dependent
upon physiology and external observation, and tend to think of mat-
ter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind.” The
physicists, on the other hand, have been making matter less and less
material. “Their world consists of 'events' from which ‘matter' is
derived by logical construction.” Modern physics lends no support
to old-fashioned materialism.
Putting it in terms that most of us can understand, Mr Russell
attempts to answer the world-old question: What is it that charac-
terizes mind as opposed to matter? How is psychology to be distin-
guished from physics? Without attempting at this point to follow
Mr Russell through any of his intricate arguments we find that he
solves the problem, for himself at any rate, by reaching the conclu-
sion that psychological and physical phenomena are distinguished by
the nature of their causal laws.
In the course of reaching this conclusion he modifies our concepts
of both physics and psychology. Sensations for him are not neces-
sarily conscious phenomena at all and are not necessarily psychologi-
cal data, but common both to physics and psychology. The only tru-
ly psychological subject matter is images. The laws of their causa-
tion are different from those underlying sensation and are different
from the laws that govern inert matter.
Up to this point the behaviourist and Mr Russell have travelled a
common road chatting amicably together. Mr Russell suddenly be-
gins to feel that the behaviourist is no longer an adequate companion
and leaves him abruptly. The behaviourist feels no need of images
either for memory or for thought-holding that the faint throat,
chest, and laryngeal movements (movements used in speaking but
too small to cause sound or to be objectively observed) actually con-
stitute thought-recollection, conception, and imagery. In other
words, that these acts differ from tennis playing only by virtue of
the fact that the muscles that are at work are concealed from the ob
servation of the observer. The behaviourist points out that this hy-
pothesis is simpler than any other hitherto advanced that it is ade-
quate to account for all the problems which it is called upon to solve
—that it has some support from experiment while the other views
have not, and is in line with what we know of nervous system activ-
ity. Furthermore this hypothesis avoids the usual break between the


JOHN B. WATSON
99
data of physiology and those of psychology and throws out of count
the very problem that Mr Russell sets himself to solve, namely, the
relation of mind to matter. For behaviourism this problem becomes
a purely artificial problem. In his preface Mr Russell says psychol-
ogy on this basis is materialistic. The behaviourist's answer is that
it does not concern him. The behaviourist and the physicist, so far
as they use scientific methods, work equally under any metaphysical
régime be it idealism, materialism, or realism.
Almost at the point where Mr Russell leaves the broad highway
of the physical sciences he slips rapidly into the old slough of de-
spond -subjectivism—at least so far as his method is concerned.
Thus, when he begins to look for imagery, recollection, memory, be-
lief, and meaning he finds them, of course, because, having made use
of the assumption of the introspectionists, even the self-limited ones
like Mr Russell, he has put these things "under the piano” before he
began to look there. On page 27 he is candid and brave enough to
say after describing what some of the behaviourists say about the
identity of thought and language: “It is humiliating to find how ter-
rib!y adequate this hypothesis turns out to be.” We are deeply dis-
appointed that he finally decided to withdraw from our company
but we feel that his defection is due to the fact that his training and
habits of mind keep him turned to the notion of the image and are
far stronger than any logical need for it on his part. All philosophy,
logic, and epistemology is shot through with this notion. To give it
up means scrapping many if not all of our present philosophical for-
mulations. The destruction seems like vandalism and Mr Russell,
I believe, temporizes by clinging to the image.
If he had been willing to live behaviourism for two years, working
on its hypothesis he would have given us we believe a metaphysical
science that would have included all of the behaviouristic tenets.
This metaphysical task must and will be done by someone—and
preferably by Mr Russell. Had he done this the behaviouristic
school would have been more grateful to him even than they now are
for being the first philosopher to yield them their place in the sun.
Mr Russell has always been progressive enough to change his
views when he felt that a change was in line with progress. Has
something new been discovered about the image (the basis on his
view really of thought, memory, meaning, belief, et cetera) which
has so enhanced its importance that he is willing to set it aside as be-


100
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
a
longing to a purely mental realm with laws all of its own? To an-
swer this let us glance for a moment at how sensations are caused.
On the law of causation of sensations he quotes Stout: “One char-
acteristic mark of what we agree in calling sensation is its mode of
production. It is caused by what we call a stimulus. A stimulus is
always some condition external to the nervous system itself and oper-
ating upon it.” “I think,” says Mr Russell, “that this is the correct
view and that this distinction between images and sensations can be
made by taking account of their causation.” Sensations as we know
come through the sense organs, while images do not. According to
our author we cannot have visual sensations in the dark. Thus sen-
sations have an exciting cause but images do not necessarily. On the
question as to whether they have not a centrally exciting cause
through cortical stimulation (that is through activity initiated in
the brain and not by a sense organ) Mr Russell says this is assuming
more than is necessary because it takes for granted (page 150) that
an image must have a proximate physiological cause. He admits
that this may be true, but he prefers to say that images have mnemic
causes. He illustrates this: if you listen to a man playing the pianola
without looking at him you will have images of his hands on the
keys as if he were playing the piano; if you suddenly look at him
while you are absorbed in the music, you will experience a shock of
surprise when you notice that his hands are not touching the keys.
You are here in the region, so far as the production of images is con-
cerned, of mnemic causation as opposed to ordinary physical causa-
tion. Sensations on the other hand will have only physical causes.
The prevailing school in psychology, the parallelists (Titchener,
Angell, Pillsbury) hold that brain modifications or patterns laid
down by perceptual activity when aroused by whatever means are ac-
companied by appropriate images. Mr Russell is not willing to ad-
mit the necessity of such a hypothesis, at least until the evidence
grows stronger.
The behaviourist at this point would like to register a protest
against Mr Russell's reasoning on the image. He believes that he
can show that what Mr Russell and most psychologists call the
"image" has a definite proximate physical cause as truly as does
“sensation.” While he has not definitely formulated his position on
the image up to now except to deny it in the sense in which it is
sup-
posed to exist, that is, as a centrally aroused process, he has no trou-
ble in finding a means for providing an actual visual stimulus as part
1


JOHN B. WATSON
101
a
a
of the complex of stimuli which arouse a total reaction to an object
not present to the senses. Dunlap, although not a behaviourist, first
pointed to the way by claiming that the so-called visual image is
only an associated eye muscle strain (muscular "sensation”). In
other words, when you are thinking of a definite object (not present
to the senses) which the eye has been trained on, "imaging” it, the eye
muscle adjustment takes place actually (though faintly) as though
you were seeing the object. The behaviourist without giving up his
premises—to the effect that a sense organ stimulus is always present
in any reaction-admits the associated muscular adjustment of
Dunlap and also conditioned reflex eye muscle responses (which
may have a different origin from the associated) and if necessary can
go still further and say that the associated and conditioned reflex
muscular responses in the eye may bring about just enough tension
upon the eyeball, and hence upon the retina, to start faint retinal ac-
tivity. It is well known that phosphenes, rings of light, “stars,"
flashes of light, can be produced by pressure and by electric stimula-
tion of the eye. The behaviourist can go still further and maintain
that in a normal person the retina is a sense organ of such delicate
chemical and physical structure and balance that optical sensory im-
pulses are always passing towards the brain. He might even argue
that centrifugal nerve fibres keep the retina constantly stirred up
and
supplement in this respect the work done by associated eye muscle
responses in causing the arousal of actual retinal impulses.
In other words, on the behaviourist's hypothesis, the cause of the
"image” falls under Mr Russell's definition, quoted from Stout: it
has a perfectly good stimulus external to the nervous system and act-
ing upon it. So if he grants this he must admit that there is no pure-
ly mental world only the world of "sensation” which is common
property both to physics and psychology—the neutral stuff out of
which both are constructed (Holt). This would throw him back
upon his old position, namely that of the realist, since he admits
that he is a realist with respect to sensation.
a
But as we have seen, Mr Russell refuses to admit that there is an
external stimulus in the case of the image. So, far from helping the
behaviourist, he rather has made his road more difficult by throwing
the weight of his undoubted authority on the side of the existence of
this image, which like Banquo's ghost will not submit to a quiet and
permanent burial.
What does Mr Russell mean by mnemic causation, which is a men-


102
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
tal law? Merely that the “burnt child dreads the fire.” In other
words, whenever in order to explain a present reaction (presence of
image, memory, or even where sensation details are filled) you have
to take account of the past history of the organism, you have an ex-
ample of mnemic phenomena. Past occurrences in addition to the
present stimulus and the present ascertainable condition of the or-
ganism enter into the causation of the present response. Given A, B,
and C in the past, together with X now; cause Y now. A, B, and C
are the mnemic cause, whereas X is the present occasion or stimulus.
Recollection is the clearest case of it in man. A present stimulus
leads you to recollect certain occurrences. There is nothing in our
minds when the recollection is not occurring to show that we have
such memories. We say they are latent. The question is sometimes
put in this way: where are our memories of childhood when we are
not actually remembering them? Psychologists hitherto have fallen
back upon the view that when we are seeking a cause for the order
and arrangement of our ideas or images we have to go back to mat-
ter, namely modifications laid down in the nervous system.
Mr Russell admits this may be true but he says it is a pure assump-
tion. If it is true the brain of a man who has seen New York must
differ from that of the man who has only seen pictures of it.
Such a line of argument as Mr Russell uses here is a strange one
to a laboratory man. So far does he carry his hypothesis that he
finally says: "But the evidence seems so far from conclusive that I
do not think we ought to forget the other hypothesis, or to reject en-
tirely the possibility that mnemic causation may be the ultimate ex-
planation of mnemic phenomena.” If Mr Russell means what I
think he means here he is not so far away from Berkeley as he sup-
poses. Possibly a better way to put it is that he is a psychophysical
parallelist with the physiological parallel largely if not entirely sup-
pressed. I say this with some hesitation since the author expressly
denies the usefulness of parallelism.
Everyone who reads the book is impressed by the fact that Mr
Russell's mind is i