hall continue to do by constant publication
and by every other honourable means all that in us lies. Among
these writers is Edward Estlin Cummings.
The Yale Review, in its January issue, commits a breach in that
tradition of courtesy and high-mindedness which we have recog-
nized as belonging to it. Mr Wilbur Cross (I know not through
what lapse of attention) publishes an article by the well-known
London journalist Mr John Middleton Murry (he will be remem-
bered, apart from his recent book reviews in The Dial, as the
husband of the gifted short-story writer, the late Katherine Mans-
field, extracts from whose private journal Mr Cross has also felt
justified, astoundingly, in publishing)—an article entitled Flaubert
and Flaubart, an article in which Mr Cross has permitted his con-
tributor to call Mr Cummings, amongst other things, and three
times, “a fool.” 1
Now this Mr Murry possesses a journal of his own, one which
he issues in London every month, one which he entitles, oddly, The
Adelphi. In the unjoyous pages of this organ Mr Murry has now
for some time been observable amuck. He has been calling names
very freely. (Our London Correspondent, the literary critic of
The New Statesman, Mr Raymond Mortimer, has also had the
honour of being called by Mr Murry “a fool.") Mr Murry is in
England the self-constituted champion of what he calls, I am sorry
to say, by the beautiful name, Romance. We had not previously
associated championship of Romance with the order of breeding
exhibited by this Englishman.
Since he runs thus unmuzzled at home, since he does not come
to us as one seeking liberty from oppression, we do protest—and the
more vigorously—that the editor of a reputable American review
should open his American pages to the sour flood of Billingsgate here
1 Mr Murry, in the same passage, calls Mr James Joyce "a fool," "a
lunatic," and "an egomaniac."


COMMENT
377
loosed by Mr Murry upon the head of one who, whether or not you
are so fortunately endowed as to perceive and to relish his notable
genius, retains anyhow two claims upon the courtesy of Mr Wilbur
Cross: Mr Cummings is a human being; Mr Cummings is an
American citizen.
In order to render his man ridiculous, Mr Murry resorts to the
usual journalistic dodge. He makes Mr Cummings take a position
which is obviously untenable—a position with which the real posi-
tion of Mr Cummings has nothing whatever in common-and, amid
the splash and roar of his own good vulgar British spirits, proceeds
to demonstrate the untenability of this obviously untenable posi-
tion. But of a man who can entitle Flaubert and Cézanne "the
heavenly twins” one awaits one's money's worth in vulgarity; of a
man who can write Cézanne "was not born great" one awaits one's
money's worth in stupidity; of a man who can assert "Ireland
is centuries behind the level of the European consciousness” one does
not await that fair play which has been called English; of a man
who can write the phrase "behind the level” one does not await
precision of thought.
Mr Murry quotes a section from Mr Cummings' prose-poem
about a handorgan and a monkey, which we printed in The Dial in
our issue for April 1922.
.. the children laugh.
But i don't, the crank goes round desperate elves and hopeless
gnomes and frantic fairies gush clumsily from the batter box fatish
and mysterious the flowerstricken sunlight is thickening dizzily is
reeling gently the street and the children and the monkeyandthe-
organ are dancing slowly are tottering up and down in a trembly
mist of atrocious melody .
tiniest dead tunes crawl upon my
face my hair is lousy with mutilated singing microscopic things in
my ears scramble faintly tickling putrescent atomies,
and
i feel
the jerk of the little string! the tiny smiling shabby man is yelling
over the music i understand him i shove my round red hat back on
my head i sit up and blink at you with my solemn eyeswhichnever-
smile"


378
COMMENT
Mr Murry continues, characteristically, as follows:
“The first noticeable thing about it is that the author is trying
desperately to be incomprehensible, and he has considerable diffi-
culty. He uses little ‘i's' for big ones and abolishes stops, strictly
in order to make himself unreadable. Still, he can be read. And
he knows it. So he has to write two lines which are pure nonsense:
'tiniest dead tunes' etc. The comprehensible part is perfectly com-
monplace.”
Discussing in the form of a dialogue (in which we observe that
Mr J. M. Murry fancies himself in the boots of Dr Samuel John-
son) these small "i"'s, Mr Murry, with a fatuity not apposite,
makes Mr Cummings assert:
“i use i because i do not wish to insist upon my personality. In
this poem I am not I, I am merely a sentience my personality is in
abeyance.”
If Mr Murry had been at the trouble to read other poems of Mr
Cummings (a precaution one who terms himself a critic might well
have taken) he would have learned that this use of “i” small is
common to all Mr Cummingspoems, and so, obviously, not here
employed because “In this poem I am not I.”
For the benefit of such readers as have not yet caught on to the
real reason for these small “”s, let me here expose once for all this
patent secret. Mr Cummings, in order to attain those individual
effects which are natural to his genius and art, has, like every other
original artist, developed a technique of his own; the current of
Mr Cummings' personality has, in writing, worn out a channel in-
dividual to itself. We are here concerned with a particular detail
in this personal technique, with a particular turn in this individual
channel. To get over to the reader what he in common with Paul
Cézanne might properly denominate his "petite sensation," he has,
somewhat more summarily and with somewhat less regard for com-
mon usage (or shall we say “civil law?") than has hitherto been
the tradition of poets, commandeered and impressed into his poetic
service typography itself.
He employs punctuation, capitalization, and spacing (both be-


COMMENT
379
tween words and between lines) with more freedom than have other
poets. He regards them merely as means to the expression of his
aesthetic fact. He ignores the limitations of accepted literary
usage, a usage developed largely for the purpose of lucid, logical
reasoning, a purpose which, rightly or wrongly, he does not acknowl-
edge as pertinent to art. He therefore employs capitals, ignoring
English usage, only for emphasis. As in all other languages than
English, so in the idiom of Mr E. E. Cummings, the first person
singular does not, in itself, require a capital.
The remainder of Mr Murry's remarks do not warrant citation.
They exist upon a par with his already quoted sentence: “So he
has to write two lines which are pure nonsense: 'tiniest dead tunes'
etc.” With such a man one does not discuss literature.
Mr Murry himself, addressing his prone victim, closes the en-
counter jauntily—“Good-bye.” The word as here used is
evocative. One sees the round-faced individual with the bowler
hat briskly turning about, and blandly going his way.
I close otherwise. I turn, sombre and deliberate, toward New
Haven, toward that New Haven where as a child I was taught
there dwelt, in grave and courteous marriage, Lux et Veritas. I
repeat the name of a courteous man, Wilbur Cross, and the words
wherewith I do address him are not jaunty:
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of morning!
How are thou cut down to the ground” (morally speaking) “which
didst weaken the nations !"
"
1 What about Pekingese?


COMMUNICATION
MR CRAVEN'S REPLY
“Mr Craven's reply to my criticism of his views seems to me to
go beyond the limits of propriety in the following respects. He
does not content himself with answering the criticisms actually
made, but adds imputations as to motives for which he has no
grounds, and gives his reader a most misleading account of the point
of my criticism. I am not sufficiently certain how far I succeeded
in making my contentions clear to Mr Craven to feel justified in
charging him with deliberate misrepresentation, but in one or two
instances it is quite clear that he has not made the effort which may
properly be expected to see the true context and bearing of what I
had written.
“When Mr Craven calls my criticism of him 'trumped up," he
suggests that I was concerned to make out a case against him irre-
spective of the merits of his argument, and the same charge is
hinted when he raises the question, though he does not explicitly
make the assertion, of malevolence. I first read his articles before
I had any connection with the Bårnes Foundation, and formed my
general judgement of them then, when 'special pleading' was not
even imaginable. So far as there was any concurrence of opinion
between the ‘Polish critic residing in Paris’ and myself, it related
to points of observation which have been current among students
of painting for several years. The fact that Mr Craven can see in
agreement of such a kind only the evidence of collusion and parti
pris shows clearly his inability to keep an open mind where his own
ideas are concerned.
“When I wrote my article I did not know that Mr Craven had
reviewed Vision and Design. I have since read his review. I find
it difficult to believe that anyone would accept his contention that
he had anticipated my criticism of Roger Fry; but in any case, had
I read what he had to say before writing my article, I should have
needed only to word differently the passage about their resemblance.
When Mr Craven says that I 'bewailed his failure to acknowledge
indebtedness to Mr Fry, he puts his own gloss on my words, and
one which I never intended. was in doubt about Mr Craven's


COMMUNICATION
381
own idea of their relationship, and purposely expressed hypo-
thetically what I had to say about his indebtedness. Nothing that
Mr Craven has said alters my conviction that there is a resemblance
between them sufficiently close to expose them to a common criti-
cism. The review in question is highly eulogistic, and nowhere
more so than in the discussion of Mr Fry's conception of 'form':
'He (Mr Fry) shows that any picture worth a moment's considera-
tion is built upon design, and with this truth in mind his argument
drives straight to the unanswerable conclusion, namely, that the
meaning of art lies in its form.' My contention may of course be
wholly mistaken, but Mr Craven's charge that my purpose in dis-
cussing Mr Fry was to make an indirect attack upon him is abso-
lutely without warrant in fact, and I am sure that he can point to
nothing that I said which would give that impression to an un-
prejudiced reader.
“I do not resent Mr Craven's charges either of academicism or of
lack of experience. In differing with anyone in matters of taste,
we inevitably imply that the other party to the debate is following
a mechanical rule, or else that he lacks the sensitiveness and training
that make experience possible. But when he writes of 'laboratory
specialists "accustomed to giving Binet-Simon tests to young chil-
dren,
,”' with the implication that I had supposed or alleged that
laboratory training is a qualification for judgement in matters per-
taining to practical aesthetics, he misrepresents me, and in this
instance I think unpardonably. The quotation from my article
refers to a statement of fact which Mr Fry had made, and which
was susceptible of being objectively checked. My point was that
when writers on aesthetics find it necessary to commit themselves
on matters of psychology, they must be prepared to meet criticism
on the ground they have chosen; Mr Craven has led his readers
to suppose that I made so absurd a claim as that laboratory training
constitutes a preparation for aesthetic criticism.
“Mr Craven's account of my objection to his view is equally
misleading. He asserts that I have defended the use of the con-
ception of form only in its vague general meaning, and that what
I found to complain of was the effort to make it definite and so
practicable. Never for a moment was the question one of definite-
ness, but of an arbitrary and one-sided definiteness. So completely
does Mr Craven distort my thesis that I should feel justified in
charging bad faith if I were sure that he understood what I was


382
COMMUNICATION
driving at. My uncertainty is increased when I read that Mr
Craven is of the opinion that the charge of arbitrary and one-sided
limitation of terms ‘might be urged against every pragmatic
rationale’! Mr Craven then goes on to the charge that because
I object to what seems to me ungrounded exclusiveness in the use
of a term, I am opposed to 'exclusiveness' in general, in the utterly
different sense of 'high standards?! To argue in this fashion is to
confess either to utter inability to do justice to an opponent, or to
having learned logic in the school in which such arguments as the
following carry conviction: Nothing is better than heaven; dry
bread is better than nothing; therefore dry bread is better than
heaven.'
“Finally, the aversion to 'exclusiveness' which, on grounds so
extraordinary, is charged to me, is asserted to spring from an
interest in maintaining the value of pictures as museum-specimens
or as the equivalents of dollars and cents. The point is worth
mentioning only as an illustration of Mr Craven's recklessness of
assertion in matters about which he has, and in the nature of the
case can have, no warrant whatever for what he says. I am not the
curator of the Barnes Foundation; I have not the slightest interest
in the value of canvases considered as material possessions, since
I own none.
“In the foregoing I have avoided all reference to the question at
issue between Mr Craven and myself. Even if I am wrong,
and
he is right in saying that in plastic art form is at its best only when
it is sculptural form, it does not follow that a difference with him
is to be accounted for only by the operation of motives more or less
discreditable. To impute such motives is to be guilty of the public
use of offensive personalities. Had I said of Mr Craven that his
opinions sprang not from his observation and honest reflection, but
from interested propaganda in behalf of some particular artist or
school of artists, I should have laid myself open to the sort of
reply which he has made. But I am sure that in no respect did I
fall short of the respect and courtesy due to one with whom I dif-
fered in opinion, or make any ‘charges' which were not the inevitable
implication of such difference. Under the circumstances Mr
Craven's reply to me seems an offense against the canons of good
manners and good taste in the public print.
"LAURENCE BUERMEYER"


THE THEATRE
Theli
THE theatre as entertainment, not the theatre as a social or
religious force, has always interested me most; it is that
theatre and not the hundred possible others, to which I devote these
comments. I am, therefore, as much surprised as my readers may
be, to find myself thinking of social effects. I cannot help it. I
cannot help wondering what the effect must be on actors, producers,
and spectators when they observe hundreds of thousands of dollars
spent on THE MIRACLE which, essentially, is high-class trash and
is redeemed (so far as it is redeemed) by a few strokes of talent
and genius. A month ago I suggested that the music and the story
were insignificant; to-day, looking back on what was so frequently
called a memorable production, I find that in spite of the talent
and the genius, the whole thing is a distasteful memory. Nearly
fifty thousand dollars is spent weekly by those wishing to see it.
By just so much as public taste is corrupted through the lavish
production of the second rate, it is nourished by beautiful produc-
tion of such a play as Fashion. The second bill at the Province
town dispels all lingering doubt and makes us for ever indebted
to the new directors. The wicked Edgar Allan Poe in 1845 saw
through the play which was always stagey and false; he failed
to give the author credit for a neat turn of phrase and an active wit.
Apart from the fun of producing it as an archaeological curiosity,
FASHION was worth producing for that hard little core or residue of
genuine character which it has.
Nor was there an alternative way to produce it; it has to give us
the interest of the play and the interest of the original production
simultaneously. The producer's obligation was doubly difficult
and it was superbly met. To get fun out of the show was not
quite enough; the means had to be exquisite. Yet it could not be
over-nice; daintiness might have ruined all. The broad gesture,
the elaborated pointing of grimace and of tone, the over-obvious
over-emphasis, were all required. That is why I cannot agree that
any of the principal players over-acted. The critics in New York
are all a little silly on the subject of restraint. That, too, can be


384
THE THEATRE
overdone; and if they tell me that Miss Eames or Miss Blair, Mr
Abel or Mr Ivins, over-acted, I can only reply that by their
standards the beautiful work of Miss Morris, as the sweet and
demure and lily-white governess, was terrible. Actually, of course,
none of these accusations are true. Certain parts had to be broad,
certain ones less so. The whole was a rare satisfaction; I admire
the settings and costumes, the programmes and the footlights; I
admire the perspicacity which introduced and the judgement (Mr
Deems Taylor's) which selected the music. And for the directors
who saw farther than their audiences and made the play not wholly
a joke, yet delightfully funny, nor wholly a curiosity, yet always
cunningly and delicately a work of art-for them admiration
is insufficient. Gratitude is the least one can offer.
1
Just that delicacy is neither called for nor present in BEGGAR
on HORSEBACK which has, instead, an abundant intelligence of
the stage. It is an excellent production in which the tricks follow
so rapidly that the audience is bewildered and bedevilled and
utterly entertained. The play has virtually no emotion; no play
of Kaufman and Connelly has had it, as I recall. Roland Young
hanging on the bars of his cage achieved for a moment a real
poignancy, but the play doesn't need it. To succeed, that is, and
to be entertaining. The satire on business is not savage, partly
because the plight of the young composer has no depth of feeling
in it. It lacks the deep swell of The Bronx Express, for example
,
where a buttonhole-maker was as heroic as King Lear to enlist our
sympathies in a similar nightmare.
But with this reservation, which it would be stupid not to make,
the play is full of rich entertainment. Nothing escapes these alert
young authors, and the present play indicates the advantage
of
giving them an idea of more specific gravity than the ones they have
invented. They are keen and insusceptible to contemporary bunk;
they have wit. Roland Young was good enough in the prelude and
epilogue to the dream; in the main sections where his intelligence
and his gifts were both suited, his performance was delicate and
powerful at once.
GILBERT SELDES


MODERN ART
Tretro
WO shows have attracted crowds; the John Singer Sargent
retrospective in the Grand Central Galleries and the J. M.
Sert decorations at Wildenstein's. The Sargent crowds I take on
hearsay, having been permitted an early private view of the paint-
ings and so not having been obliged to be one of the ten thousand
at the vernissage; but the Sert crowds I saw with my own eyes and
I can certify that they were indeed immense, richly apparelled, and
awaited without by motors, but in the end as completely flabber-
gasted by M Sert's art as though they had not been awaited without
by motors. I mean to go again, of course, to the Sargent rooms,
just as soon as I get my breath, for next to seeing how I take pictures
myself I dearly love to see how others take them. I had taken the
Sargents, the new John Marin water-colours at Montross', the
recently imported Maillol bronzes and Henri Rousseau paintings,
all in one afternoon and found it somewhat of a gulp, consoling my-
self with the reflection that after all my pace in New York could
have been no swifter than the late King Edward's in Paris on the
famous occasion of his doing both salons on the same day with a
state luncheon between. However, of course, King Edward was
not obliged to deduce morals. Well, I shall not deduce many.
Sargent has been out of the public eye for such a long time that
he seems like a new thing. The present collection, chosen in the
main, by the artist himself from his available works, lacks certain
noisily acclaimed portraits, such as the Wertheimer series now in the
National Gallery, the Carmencita, now in the Luxembourg, and the
little Beatrice Goelet, but on the whole makes the case as strong for
Sargent as it can be done upon this side of the water.
And will it have all of its old-time effect? Hardly. The times
manners have changed once again. There is nothing in the at-
mosphere of the age to back Sargent up. The fabric he created for
us still dazzles here and there, but in places it has been worn thin.
Perhaps some of the survivors among the former enthusiasts of
twenty years ago may catch again at the thrill that comes from
seeing a gentleman's gold watch-chain made manifest by three dabs
and


386
MODERN ART
of a brush-but not all. In the long run tricks tire and it is only
the soul that counts, in art as in life.
In the pre-Sargent era, throughout all our land there was a craze
for technique as such—born of the sudden realization that our
cherished Hudson River school of landscapists lacked style—and
it was supposed that certain masters in Europe, and only those of
Europe, could impart the secrets of true painting. The crush of the
’eighties and ’nineties to acquire ton now seems pathetic, for though
the trans-Atlantic lines continue to flourish, the attitude of the
travellers has undergone a change. Then artists were humble, sub-
missive, and dutiful; and Bouguereau, Gérôme, and Bonnat were
listened to, and as far as possible, imitated. Now, students go to
France for the Quat z’Arts ball, for the Café du Dôme, and perhaps,
though not necessarily, for a glance at the Louvre. They have no
definite master in view and no longer hope to join the trade union
that used to sign in the catalogues with pride, “pupil of Juliens,”
"pupil of Piloty,” et cetera. To be a pupil of anybody now damns
rather than crowns. But in Sargent's day it was different. He
had the supreme advantage of having parents who had undertaken
the grand tour, and was actually born abroad upon one of their quests
—and hence, came into the world upon the ground floor, so to
speak, of cosmopolitanism. This gave him an advantage over the
Henry James of thirty years ago that only the Henry Jameses could
appreciate. When he had finished his studies with that arch-
mountebank, Carolus Duran, Sargent was prepared to astonish the
world, and did. Never, in my time, has an artist been so petted
as he. You see, his public was being educated for him by the others,
and from the apparition of that startling but dubious Mme X, down
to the appearance of the tall, thin “Stokeses,” there was never a
question but that with him we had reached the apogee of the arts.
I shall never forget the excitements of those early first appearances.
For days before the public exhibitions rumours that had leaked out
from the jury rooms whetted the appetites of amateurs and when
the chefs-d'oeuvre were finally disclosed the public undissentingly
rose to them. The little Beatrice Goelet was "far and away beyond
the Velasquez Infanta in the Louvre,” which it vaguely resembled;
the Carmencita completely "put the kybosh”—I believe that was
the term—“upon anything that Franz Hals ever did”; et cetera,
et cetera. For the tall, thin Stokeses, doubts leavened the praise;


HENRY MCBRIDE
387
for at that time the terrific tallnesses and thinnesses of El Greco had
not so fully been recognized as great art as later they were, and
the only thought that occurred to the innocents of the 'nineties was
that perhaps Mr Sargent didn't like the Stokeses and was exag-
gerating on purpose. However the public still clung to him. There
was a great desire to be done. To be painted by Sargent distinctly
helped socially and when this was realized the final débâcle could
have been foretold had clever clairvoyants been consulted. There
was a rumour one autumn that Sargent had dashed over from Lon-
don to do sixteen portraits in sixteen weeks for five thousand dol-
lars each. Whether hands were included for the five thousand I
do not know, but I suppose not, for hands were a trial to this artist
and he had frequent agonies over them. Even in the present ex-
hibition hand trouble is everywhere in evidence—and that is one
of the things that makes one smile in thinking of the old-time boast
that at last we had excelled Franz Hals!
But that remark brings me with a jump to the present-day aspects
of Mr Sargent's art and—as the space at my command has a
tendency to evaporate—I fear I must postpone a consideration of
them for another occasion. The present exhibition undoubtedly
invites appraisals, and as a hint of my feeling, which I may elab-
orate later, I must confess that Sargent, though not exactly a God,
is secure enough of a place in the American heaven.
HENRY MCBRIDE


MUSICAL CHRONICLE
ORLIN is no dancer and the Swedes aren't great dancers. We
that it is the truth herself who issues full-armed from the mouths
of people when people insist that they didn't like the Swedish ballet
because Borlin is no dancer and the Swedes cannot do great dancing.
People are mistaken. They did nothing of the kind. For we
happened to attend a performance of the ballet on the Century roof
after the management had gone to Canossa, abjured the acrid
modern musics, and put on the divertissement which Europe has
outgrown, but America desires. There we saw Strandin whirl the
kind of Anitra's Dance which interrupts the ecstasy of the moving
pictures; while to the strains of Berlioz, Borlin mimed a warrior
threatening with a pasteboard sword one of the mildest of cheeses.
And the applause of multitudes was loud and riotous. Anitra had
to lean her seductive leans da capo, and wave her little chiffon
trailers; Borlin was a hit at last; and the school of the ballet which
practised a few leaps before the curtain made states of satisfaction
bloom like golden-glow in August. No, people are mistaken when
they say they didn't like the Swedes because Borlin and the Swedes
are not great dancers. People are still a little unimaginative.
And, Gods, the pleasant minutes their unimaginative humours
made them to forgo! The Swedes have truly a number of excellent
acts. The Honegger ballet, for example, is all of a piece in decora-
tion, choreography, and music; and the score is the most respectable
production pervenient to date from the work-table of the young
six-man. It puts one in repentant mood. If its idiom is not the
purest and the orchestration a trifle conservative, the piece stands
nevertheless homogeneous, fuent, and genuine, and admirably exo
pressive of the idea of the skating-rink ballet. The material is cold
,
joyless, and angular in good style. It gives the whirr of the skates
on the ice and the rasp of the mechanical joints. And at the
climax, when the lady goes to pieces between the two men and the
madman carries her, fainting, off, the mood is lyrical like a dribbling
sunset over arctic endless frozen fields. And Les Vierges Folles flows
with the charming profanity known only to believing souls, while
F


PAUL ROSENFELD
389
Within the Quota is very good burlesque indeed. Gerald Murphy
invented a classic parody of the quality of American life in the back-
drop; and Cole Porter's music brings a talented and original humor-
ist to light. The snoring of New York with the horns of taxi-dom
faintly blowing; the fatigued and exaggerated suggestiveness of
the jazz-baby's undulations; and the finale, when the orchestra be-
comes an electric piano, and the trumpet sobs with soulfulness,
would be creditable to any living musician, and give one great hopes
for this new composer. And Porter's success would have been more
universal had he instrumentated his music himself. But he turned
it over to Charles Koechlin, and Koechlin made Debussy out of it:
very charming, but not in character; and so Porter went without
some of his just deserts. And to-day any student of music can learn
to orchestrate competently. A composer who does not know his
instruments, to-day, is nobody at all.
But we are overindulgent with what needs no indulgence, and
underindulgent with what is experimental and daring and pathfind-
ing. Hence the Swedish Ballet met with emptiness and succumbed
to a state of divertissement, and Anitra scattered attar of Third-
avenue Arabia, and Borlin massacred Gruyère. No doubt, the man-
agement was badly advised. They should have sandwiched their
more daring pieces with pretty things like the Alfven ballet, and
El Greco, which no cultivated person can afford not to find anything
but just like Greco. They should have brought a proper orchestra,
and not left thirty odd men to do the work of sixty. Above all,
they should have bought up their house three weeks in advance, and
let speculators charge several dollars in excess of the box-office
prices. These three precautions could not but have helped make a
success of the season. New York would have crowded to lay down
its dollars and been vastly edified. At least, the Century would
not have seated people taking advantage of the failure of the enter-
prise; and filling the place, as they always fill the houses of experi-
mental and aristocratic shows which have not succeeded with the
public, with mouthings of superiority and shallow ridicule.
Felicitations on the discovery of a method cannot be denied
Henry Cowell; and in an age of small technical innovations he cuts
a not unrespectable figure. Those tone-clusters of his, sounds pro-
duced on the pianoforte with the side of the hand, the fist and the


390
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
lower arm, extend the scope of the instrument, and offer some new
possibilities to composition. Concordances of many close-lying
notes have been used by Leo Ornstein since ever he wrote his Dwarf
Suite; and Percy Grainger calls for tones struck from the strings
inside the box of the piano in one of the Nutshell movements;
but it has been left for the young Californian to demonstrate com-
pletely the quality of sound to be produced on concert grands by
the deliberate application to the keyboard of muscles other than
those of the finger-tips, and by the application of the fingers to
wires themselves. New lovely rolling sounds occur in all of the
pieces of Cowell which employ the new method of tone-production:
Dynamic Motion, Antinomy, and The Voice of Lir in particular.
The Piece for Piano with Strings has a fine dead quality of resonance
not to be produced on any harpsichord. And it seems probable that
writers for the pianoforte will profit by his experiments and enlarge
the expressivity of the instrument. It is even possible that Cowell's
method
may find itself applied to the music of the past; that pas-
sages of Beethoven sonatas will be treated by it, and brought to
greater effectiveness. The limitation of the applicability is very
strict, nevertheless. Because of the nature of the muscles used in
producing the tone-clusters, it is probable that these will lend them-
selves to effective usage only under the conditions of very moderate
tempi. The controlling muscles are relatively cumbrous. It was
evident that Cowell could only manage them under retarded con-
ditions of time.
Meanwhile, the discovery of a method constitutes Cowell's chief
claim on renown. His musical inventiveness is less developed than
his technical. Those of his pieces which do not employ the clusters
-and To Olive is the best of these exhibit a musical helplessness
and suffer from monotonous repetitions of small phrases. Those
which do employ them when they are not pathetically MacDowell-
esque run dangerously close to constituting literal transcriptions of
nature. Naturalism is the general characteristic of the work of
people whose primary interest is the development of a new method
or a new instrument. Still, Cowell is not devoid of musical gifts.
The people who called for straight-jackets had better be calling for
ears, for themselves.
Paul ROSENFELD






du German
WOMAN WITH GOLDFISH.
BY HENRI MATISSE



VI
THE
DIAL
VI
IV
OXXII
ДО
MAY 1924
ELIZA IN CHAINS
BY E. M. FORSTER
I
is over three months since her dear ones at Blackheath have
had any news from Eliza Fay', the married sister who went to
seek her fortune in the East. Their anxiety is extreme. Her last
letter-bearing the date November 4th, 1779—was written at sea.
Pious yet lively, like all her letters, it gave them a vivid account
of the voyage from Suez, described the Captain, the insufficient
food, the uncomfortable cabin, the defects of her husband, and
the advantages of religion, and it severely satirized the other
passengers. She had never seen such odious creatures as the other
passengers. Thankful she was that in a few hours she would see
them no more. A Mr Hare was the worst—a barrister with weak
white eyes and a tireless tongue, who was jealous of the Fays be-
cause they too hoped to make money in India out of the law. But
Mr and Mrs Tulloh were almost as horrible as Mr Hare—the man
so vulgar, the woman so depraved, and never happy unless she was
the centre of attention. Fortunately the voyage was over. Fare-
well confinement! The coast of Malabar was in sight, the sea
calmer, her appetite better than ever, and her next would be dated
from Bengal.
And then this terrible silence.
And when the letter does arrive, what oh, what are their feelings!
It is more like a parcel than a letter, fifteen thousand words long-
but one glance at the opening paragraph is enough. Eliza is in
prison.
"I have described her Egyptian adventures in Pharos and Pharillon.


392
ELIZA IN CHAINS
“Calicut, 12th February, 1780.
“My dear Friends,
"It was my determination never to write to you, during the state
of dreadful Captivity in which we have long been held, but having
hopes of a release, think I may venture to give you some account of
our sufferings, which have been extreme, both in body and mind,
for a period of fifteen weeks, which we have spent in wretched
confinement, totally in the power of Barbarians. .
“I must premise that, such is the harrassing confusion of my mind,
and the weakness of my nerves, that I can merely offer you a simple
statement of facts, and even that must necessarily be incorrect, for
incessant anxiety and constant anticipation of more intolerable
evils have totally unhinged my faculties. God knows whether I
may ever recover them; at present all is confused and clouded.
Anxieties about Mr Fay's capacities and prospects had long been
as so many daggers piercing my vitals, and now even were the
most brilliant success to crown our future views, never could I
know comfort, till the blessed moment arrive when I shall clasp you
all to my fond heart without fear of a future separation: except
by that stroke, to which we must all submit, and which has been
suspended over my head as by a single hair.
“But I forget that all this while you are impatient to hear how
we fell into so distressing a situation; take then the particulars.”
And starting with "the (to me ever memorable) 5th November"
she unfolds her particularsma tale of muddledom and misery that
can have few parallels, even in the annals of Anglo-India. None
of the actors are important, few of them are otherwise known to
history, but the knots they tied themselves into are far more
amazing and complicated than the exploits of princes and queens.
A prince was in the background—Hyder Ali of Mysore—"that
fell tyger” as she calls him. When the innocent ship reached
Calicut, intending to stop only a few hours there, Hyder Ali was
more or less at war with the English, but the passengers did not
know this, nor was he quite sure of it himself, being still less at
war rather than more. The Governor of Calicut was also not quite
sure; indeed during the whole of the three months an Oriental
haze prevailed. Leaning over the bulwarks, its passengers gazed
nervously at the shore. Why was the English flag not flying on
the factory? Why did the natives row out in their little boats


E. M. FORSTER
393
and shout so savagely? Everyone asked these questions, no one
could answer them. Mrs Tulloh was the only person to take a
cheerful view; she hoped there would be a fight, she cried, she
loved a fight, it was the next best thing to a shipwreck, and she
had her chair carried on to deck in order to get a good view of the
carnage. Such behaviour was repugnant to Eliza who went below,
“not feeling myself inclined to brave horrors of this nature, for
the mere love of exhibition,” and prepared to tend the wounded.
The Danish Consul came on board, with the news that his English
colleague had fled, furniture and all, and he invited the
passengers
to put themselves under the protection of Denmark, until the status
of the ship was settled, and she was allowed to proceed.
And now the quarrels of the voyage out bore their fruit. What-
ever the other passengers did, Eliza and her husband always did
the reverse—so that when Mr Hare and the Tullohs went on shore
they naturally stopped on board. Five days passed, ominous and
lonely. Over in the Danish Factory, the captain was fighting duels
with the passengers, who demanded their fares back because he
did not continue the voyage to Bengal. The natives grew bolder
and tried to climb on deck out of their little boats. "Pho,” said
Mr Fay, “it is impossible they should mean any harm; are we
not under the protection of the Danish flag?” But Mr Fay was
wrong; indeed he was never right; error was the only constant ele-
ment in his character. They did mean harm.
“You must not be alarmed,' said he a few minutes later.
'I have news to tell you :-we are to have a hundred and fifty
sepoys on board to night.' 'Sepoys; for what?' 'Why the English
are coming to attack Calicut, and our Captain has promised the
governor his assistance, who has sent these troops for our defence.'
'Oh, Mr F-' replied I, 'this is a very improbable story, for God's
sake suffer them not to enter the ship if you can avoid, otherwise
we are ruined.' However, being nearly destitute of Arms and
Ammunition, what could we do but recommend ourselves to the
Divine Providence, which I may truly say was never more earnestly
solicited by me.”
The sepoys were under an Englishman, who had the title of
Captain and the features of a crow: a disgusting fellow named
Ayres. He had begun life as a saddler's apprentice, and con-


394
ELIZA IN CHAINS
tinued it as a highwayman; he was now in Hyder Ali's service,
and claimed the ship for his government, since all the Europeans
on shore were quarrelling and could not decide to whom it be-
longed. His men (Moplahs, no doubt) began to loot, rushing
hither and thither through the vessel, while the wind rose and the
darkness came on. About midnight they came to the door of the
Fays' cabin and smashed and tore at the woodwork, and brandished
their scimitars and yelled “Ao, ao”—the Hindustani for "come,”
a word which Eliza now heard for the first time, and which "made
an impression on me that is indescribable: I can never hear it pro-
nounced on the most common occasion without trembling!” Mr
Fay replied that his wife was asleep, and the sepoys believed him
for a time, as sepoys would, though they continued to shriek “Ao"
and batter the panels. It occurred to one of them at last that the
noise must have awoken the lady, and he cried out in broken English
that he would murder her immediately unless she let him in.
Mr Fay drew his sword at this, and swore that he would run the
first man through the body who should presume to enter his wife's
apartment; his words and gestures were both very fine. Death
seemed inevitable, death rather than dishonour, and no doubt if the
Fays had embraced it they would have received higher marks from
historians. But they were minor characters, they did not want to
die, and sheathing their sword they began to collect their posses-
sions. They would have to join Mr Hare and the Tullohs in the
Danish Factory after all. It was humiliating, but what else could
one do?
Unable to get at their boxes, which were in the gangway where
savages sat upon them, they desperately gathered together a few
valuables, and prepared to run the gauntlet.
“Expecting a strict search and being desirous of rescuing some-
thing out of the general wreck, Mr Fay contrived to conceal our
watches in my hair, having first stopped their going by sticking
pins in their wheels; and the little money we possessed and what
small articles I could take without exciting suspicion were con-
cealed about my person. Thus equipped, I crawled out, bent
double with fever, and in an instant the cabin was filled with
sepoys. I must here pause and entreat my dear sister to imagine
herself in my situation at that dreadful moment; for no language
can I find that would do justice to my feelings.


E. M. FORSTER
395
“But when I came on deck, the scene which presented itself would
have appalled the stoutest heart; mine already weakened by grief
and apprehension could not withstand it. A sudden burst of tears
alone saved me from fainting. The poor sailors were so distracted
that many of them could scarcely be restrained from jumping
overboard to escape slavery ;—sometimes crying for their wages
and asking their officers to pay them; who incapable of affording
any consolation walked about like men bereft of reason; no wonder,
since this fatal event would, to say the least, occasion them the
loss of twelve months pay, exclusive of their private ventures.”
Worse was to follow. The abominable Ayres ordered them to
go on shore at once, without clothes or bedding, and when they
were down in the boat the sepoys had the impertinence to throw
fireworks at Eliza: "several half extinguished Blue Lights, the
smoke of which from the rancid oil and the abominable rags
used in their composition almost stifled me.” The rain drenched
her, the wind buffeted, the surf grew so high that the boat could
not land, and she was obliged to transfer in mid-harbour into a
canoe "scarcely bigger than a butcher's tray.” From that re-
ceptacle, she was emptied violently upon the coast of Malabar,
and so great was the shock of her arrival that a pin fell out of a
watch in her hair. The sound of the ticking nearly drove her crazy.
But the watch stopped again in a moment, for like herself it was
drenched with the salt water. “Compare,” she says to her dear
ones, “compare this account with the many flattering conversations
we have held together on the subject of my arrival in India. What
a difference!"
Yes, what a difference. The expression is not too strong. India
ought anyhow to be sunny, and full of elephants. She lay on
streaming wet sand, under a tempestuous dawn, her boxes lost,
her boat lost; her goose of a husband lay beside her, and before they
could stagger to their feet they were arrested.
II
Safe in the Danish Factory, the other passengers paid little
attention to the Fays' misfortunes, and it was not till the after-
noon that Mr Hare strolled round to condole. Meanwhile several
additional disasters had occurred. They had been dragged into


396
ELIZA IN CHAINS
the presence of the Governor of Calicut who had contemplated
them for an hour without speaking, and finally muttered into his
hookah that they were to be imprisoned in the deserted English
Factory-a place without chairs, tables, or any beds except the
floor. They were hurried there through the rain, amid the jeers of
the populace. They fell asleep out of exhaustion, on a heap of
rubbish, and awoke to find venomous reptiles all around them, “per-
haps a hundred scorpions and centipedes. . . . Had I moved
hand or foot what might have been the consequences ?” When they
had reached the climax of misery Mr Hare was announced, and
made a long speech. He pointed out to them how excessively
foolish they had been to stop upon the ship, because now everyone
suspected them—Orientals are naturally suspicious and the Danish
Consul himself had thought it strange. They would lose their
luggage and probably be detained for weeks. He continued in a
lighter vein:
“Endeavouring to turn our situation into ridicule, he offered
to convey letters from us to Bengal; pretended to be in raptures
with the fine view of the Sea from our Veranda which I hinted
to him he might still have time to admire at his leisure, though
he affected to be certain of leaving Calicut in a few hours. At
length he concluded by advising me to address a tender memorial
to Hyder Ally, whose general character for gallantry would not
admit of his refusing any request made by a fair lady. This was
wonderfully witty in the speaker's opinion, as you may conceive
how fair the lady in question looked. How a man could break a
jest on a creature so bowed down by affliction, I know not; but I
envy not his feelings.”
Mr Hare then withdrew, and hatched a hideous plot; he sugº
gested to Ayres the renegade that the Fays should be sent up coun-
try and fed upon dry rice: "he will then be soon glad to enlist, I
warrant you, the person in question not being of sufficient im-
portance for the English to reclaim him solemnly: especially as
he came out without leave.” The plot failed; indeed Mr Hare's
confidences ultimately led to his own downfall. For, anxious to
impress the ex-highwayman, he boasted of his wealth and im-
portance. Not for nothing had Ayres the appearance of a crow,


E. M. FORSTER
397
He listened to the description of the valuable luggage that re-
mained on board, and he bided his time.
The Fays possessed about twenty-five pounds in sequins. They
durst not keep money on them, lest they were searched; where
then should it be concealed ? Mr Fay had an idea, and of course
it miscarried. When the visitor had retired, he took the watches
out of his wife's hair, also the sequins, took the watches and the
money, and stuffed the lot into an old glove, which he hid in a
"snug place” on the verandah. The plan seemed sensible; but it
reckoned without the Indian climate. During the night the
verandah was twitched off the house by a monsoon and completely
disappeared. It had flown like a magic pavilion in the arms of a
jinn. The catastrophe was so unexpected and from the English
standpoint so preposterous that Mr Fay collapsed. His wife
pulled herself together, and began to think. She calculated the
direction of the wind, and it struck her that if she could get round
to the other side of the house, the treasure might be recovered.
Many sepoys were on guard, but they kept together, as sepoys will,
partly to make a good show when the Governor passed, and partly
for the sake of company. When they were not looking, and when
Mr Fay was completely absorbed by his misfortune, she stole off
and opened a back door. There was the flying verandah at rest
in a little garden. The grass was high and wet, but she waded
about, and in the midst of a deep tuft she found the glove, intact.
What joy! But joy is ever followed by sorrow. She was so de-
lighted with the garden, and so fond of fresh air that next day
she took a walk in it for pleasure, was detected by the sentinel, and
hurt herself against the door in the hurry of her retreat. She grew
so unwell that even Captain Ayres pitied her. Her reflections
became melancholy. Why was she imprisoned? On what charge?
What harm had she done to Hyder Ally? And why, oh, why, had
she ever left Blackheath? Yet she could not help being interested
in India; it was an odious country, but a fascinating one, and in
the depths of woe she still retained two priceless possessions: her
belief in providence and her command of the epistolary style.
Providence took action after ten days' delay. Mr Hare, Mr
and Mrs Tulloh, and the other passengers were dramatically dashed
to the ground. They were arrested—the Danish Consul vainly
protesting—they were marched with the usual contumely through


398
ELIZA IN CHAINS
the streets of Calicut, and they were flung into the arms, or must
we say the talons, of Mrs Fay.
“God forbid that I should generally speaking be capable of
rejoicing in the miseries of my fellow creatures, even when they
merit punishment, but I must own (blame me if you will) that for
a short time I did feel satisfaction in this stroke of retributive
justice. It was certainly a curious sight to behold them, after all
their airs of superiority, reduced to take up their residence with us.”
Providence was still a moral rather than a practical force. The
arrival of the other passengers, however delightful to witness,
increased the discomfort at the English Factory, and the disputes
were continuous. “Ah, my dear sister” (she writes) “I was at
this time ill enough to be laid upon a sick bed and carefully nursed,
yet
I was thankful for such food as I should once have loathed
and I still continued to lie on my rattan couch, without a pillow
or any covering except my clothes, and surrounded by people
whom my very heart sickened to behold.” And the weather re-
mained appalling. Storms of rain and wind shook the house and
danced the ship up and down in the bay. The Governor of Calicut
could be seen walking on the beach, "anxiously watching the vessel,
praying to Mahomet, and from time to time casting up the sand
towards Heaven,” for if she was wrecked he would be punished
by Hyder Ali. All the luggage remained aboard, and the other
passengers, less hardened to the blows of Fate, hoped to regain
their belongings when the sea calmed. Eliza knew better. She
awaited the dénouement with cynicism.
By the time the boxes were landed at the custom house, every-
one, including the Governor, had forgotten whether there was a
war with England or not. The passengers were guilty of some
crime or other, that was all that he remembered, and Ayres had
told him they were very rich. He ordered them to unpack every-
thing in his presence. The Fays had nothing to unpack. What
the sepoys had not stolen the water had spoilt. But Hare and
the Tullohs, who had kept most of their stuff in the hold, had
the pleasure of seeing it again for a few moments. Which articles,
the Governor inquired, did they claim as “personal”? If they
answered calmly, the article was sometimes handed over to them,


E. M. FORSTER
399
if they showed emotion, it was always confiscated. When Mr
Hare's turn arrived, he was in a ludicrous state. “Not a single
toothpick case, knife, or knee buckle was produced but what he
declared had been received as a pledge of friendship from different
relations; parents, brothers, sisters, male and female cousins to the
utmost verge of propinquity, all put in their claims, while Eliza
like a disembodied and avenging spirit watched his pangs.
She
particularly relished the tragedy of the Venetian fiddle strings.
Poor Mr Hare (for he is poor by this time) appears to have been
musical, and when the packet of strings appeared, he burst out
to Tulloh, who did the interpreting: "For heaven's sake, my dear
friend, oh, for heaven's sake endeavour to preserve this parcel for
me, for should it be taken I am an undone man for I shall never be
able to replace the contents; let them take my clothes, my law
books, every thing except this.” The governor ordered the packet
to be opened, and thought the owner had gone mad. And a shriek
of despair arose from Hare, for “the remorseless waves (which are
neither respecters of persons or things) had pervaded this in-
valuable treasure, and rendered it wholly useless.” And the violin,
for which the strings were intended, was in even worse plight, for
one of the soldiers had stamped through it. “I leave you to form
what ideas you may think proper on the subject of the extravagant
sorrow such a character was likely to exhibit, and pass on to matter
more interesting.” So will we, for she is going a little too far.
III
All this time Mr Fay had in his pocket a letter of introduction
to one of the leading merchants of Calicut. Why he did not pres-
ent it at once is a mystery, but then so is most human conduct.
When he and his wife were reduced to the last extremity of misery,
and their fellow passengers levelled with them in the dust, this
introduction occurred to his mind. It was to a Jew, and perhaps
this had deterred him, for according to Eliza, "the Children of Israel
often evince more acuteness than delicacy in their transactions."
He applied to Captain Ayres for permission to go out and deliver it,
and Ayres (for no one acts consistently) was sympathetic, spoke
well of old Isaac, and bade him god-speed. The merchant received
him kindly, and sent Mrs Fay a little present "which in our situa-


400
ELIZA IN CHAINS
tion was truly valuable, consisting of a catty [sic] of fine tea,
a tea pot, and a tea kettle.” The present caused yet another quarrel
in the Factory, for “although these things were expressly sent to
me, yet Mrs Tulloh and her party seized the kettle and forcibly
kept it, so that I was forced to make tea by boiling it in my pot.”
The intercourse with Isaac went no further for a time, but it was
a comfort to know that there was one righteous man in that cruel
and insane city, and if the ladies had not quarrelled over a tea
kettle, they would have found something else.
An interval elapses.
"I will here by way of relaxation transcribe a few passages
from my Journal, as nothing happened for some time worthy of a
particular recital:-reserving to myself, however, the option of
resuming the narrative style whenever I shall deem it necessary.
“'230 November, 1779.-Mrs Tulloh being taken ill of a fever,
application was made to the governor for medicines, but this
happening to be a high festival, he, like the Pharisees in Scripture,
refuses to profane it by doing good.—Should the woman die in
the interim, what cares he?'
“(25th November.—The governor sent fifty rupees to pay our
debts, all of which Tulloh kept. Mem. the lady is better.'
30th November.--I have now a lamentable tale to relate. We
were this morning hurried away at a moment's warning to the Fort,
and crowded together in a dark place scarcely twenty feet square,
swarming with rats, and almost suffocating for want of air. Mr
and Mrs Tulloh secured a small room for themselves, but my
hus-
band and I were obliged to pass the night among our companions in
misery-rats continually gnawing the feet of my couch, whose
perpetual squeaking would have prevented sleep had our harrassing
reflections permitted us to court its approach.
) )
And, resuming her narrative style, she goes on to describe a loft
up above, which she thought would be better than the common
room, but which proved to be worse, for there were bats in it as
well as rats. Her husband again collapsed, and shrieked in the
night that he was being attacked by evil spirits; she could not help
laughing," for however much she suffers she never loses her sense
of the ludicrous, and it is this, that gives distinction to her char-
acter, and rescued her from oblivion.


E. M. FORSTER
401
The passengers had been transferred to the Fort in order to
release the sepoys who were guarding the Factory. Some war
or other seemed probable. Robbed of everything, they were be-
coming an expense to the Governor, as the entries in Mrs Fay's
Journal show. The law of diminishing returns was at work,
and since he did not intend to kill them, he was faced with the
desirability of letting them go. Hare and Company got pass-
ports with a little difficulty, and on December 16th set out in
palanquins for Seringapatam. They took with them all they could
loot out of the common stock, and though they left the tea kettle
behind, it was because their servant forgot it. The Fays, instead
of rejoicing in their departure, were much upset—for human nature
begins to go queer after a month in prison. To do whatever Mr
Hare did instead of what he didn't do, was now their aim; to be
left alone seemed the supreme evil. Claiming an audience with the
Governor, Mr Fay demanded passports, and because they were not
ready became hysterical and attempted to hit his tormentor off the
bolster where he squatted. Naturally he remained unpopular;
indeed it is clear that much of the Fays' troubles in the East pro-
ceeded from their own rudeness and ill-breeding. No passports
could be granted now; the Governor remarked with dignity that
the man was mad, and must remain in prison.
“26th December.—A very melancholy day passed yesterday-
for your sakes as well as my own let me hasten to escape by
skipping over the dangerous season of Christmas.”
Thus runs the sad little entry; then the narrative style is
resumed. Since passports were withheld, they determined to escape
by bribing, and had Eliza been alone she would have succeeded,
but Mr Fay bribed the wrong people. The money came from the
English Governor of Tellicherry, who had heard of their plight,
and sent them a considerable sum, which they promptly mis-
applied. They got into touch with two Portugese Pereira, who
was one of Ayres' officers, and Father Ricardo, a priest. The
Father said it was perfectly easy to leave Calicut; one merely
walked down to the beach, and got into a smuggler's sloop, and for
a consideration he would arrange this. And Pereira undertook to
let them out of the prison. The attempt was fixed for January
15th, and at first all went well,


402
ELIZA IN CHAINS
.
"When it grew dark, Mr F put on a sailor's dress and I equipped
myself in a nankeen jacket, a pair of long striped trousers, a man's
nightcap, and over that a mighty smart hat with a pair of Mr F's
shoes tied on my feet and a stick in my hand. In this dress
Mr F declared that I was the very image of my dear father, which
highly gratified me. . . . I had tied the clothes we took off in a
handkerchief; with that in one hand and brandishing my stick in
the other, I boldly sallied forth.”
She must have looked fine, but when she reached the shore
no smugglers awaited her. The priest had played her false. They
slunk back to prison, and had a terrific row with Pereira. He
persuaded them to try a second time; again they disbursed money
and were fooled, and disliking their complaints he went and de-
nounced them to Ayres. Pereira seems the worst of the villains.
But he too is a muddler, or he would be out of the focus of the
story. When denouncing them, he got the date wrong. Ayres
replied, “But that evening was my Birthday, and Fay sat with me
over a bottle of wine, you are a fool.” They were saved, but they
meddled with smugglers no more.
And now good old Isaac the Jew began to bestir himself. We,
living a hundred and fifty years after, wonder why he did not do
something at once, but probably old Isaac knew what he was
about; he resided at Calicut under Hyder Ali, and we do not.
Moreover, we always expect the past to be more efficient and logical
than the present; we simplify it, draw morals from the simplifica-
tion, and call the outcome history. Eliza's letters are not history.
They describe what happened-a very different matter. Old
Isaac does not descend like a God from a Machine; he is just a
benevolent dodderer, who manages something at last. In the be-
ginning of February he secures an interview with the Governor
(why did he not do this three months before ?) and gets leave to
send away the Fays in one of his boats to Cochin, where they have
a splendid reception from his two wives, banquet amid gold plate
and silver spittoons, and proceed at their leisure to Bengal. Their
troubles disappear as mysteriously as they came; the Oriental
haze vanishes, and we see, with an equal shock of surprise, the
sun. Mrs Fay's next letter (dated from Cochin) is a great con-
trast to its enormous predecessor. It is a little paean of joy, a


E. M. FORSTER
403
lyric outpour, and the utmost resources of the English language are
strained to do old Isaac proud.
“In whatever part of the world and in whatever circumstances
my lot may be cast; whether we shall have the happiness to reach
in safety the place to which all our hopes and wishes tend, or are
doomed again to experience the anxieties and sufferings of
captivity; whether I shall pass the remainder of my days in the
sunshine of prosperity, or exposed to the chilling blasts of ad-
versity, the name of Isaac the Jew will ever be associated with the
happiest recollection of my life; and while my heart continues to
beat and warm blood animates my mortal frame, no distance of
time and space can efface from my mind the grateful remembrance
of what we owe to this most worthy of men.
"Oh, my dear sister! how can I in the overflowing of a grateful
heart do otherwise than lament that the name of this once dis-
tinguished people should have become a term of reproach! Exiled
from the land promised to the seed of Abraham, they are despised
and rejected by every nation in the world. Under such circum-
stances of mortifying contempt and invidious segregation it is no
wonder that occasionally they are disposed to take advantage of
those from whom they have endured so much, and it gives me there-
fore peculiar pleasure to record their good deeds, and to proclaim
my
limited circle that a Franco and an Isaac are to be found
among the posterity of Jacob.
"These sentiments are not overstrained, but the genuine effusion
of a thankful heart; as such receive them.”
in
She also gives her dear ones a little more information about the
other actors. The Governor of Calicut, Ayres, Pereira, and Father
Ricardo, all came before long to the violent ends they merited,
while as for Mrs Tulloh, “She has now seen enough, poor woman,
to satisfy her taste for adventures, for I am informed that her party
took fifteen days to reach Seringapatam, and was then imprisoned
twelve days more in a shed.” As for Mr Fay, she brings him safely
round to Calcutta, and she sets him up as a barrister there, but in
a year or two she has to take a step that is regrettable rather than
surprising: she comes back without him to Blackheath.


HENRI MATISSE
BY THOMAS CRAVEN
TAN
HE brilliant artistry of Henri Matisse was comprehensively
presented in a recent exhibition at the galleries of Joseph
Brummer. This exhibition, with one exception, revealed the com-
plete personality of one of the most distinguished painters of
modern times; had La Danse aux Capucines of Living Art been
included—the large canvas originally conceived as part of a
frieze—we should have seen all that is significant in the impulses
of the Frenchman's life. These pictures gave me, first and last,
the rare and exhilarating impression of unity; in truth, so pro-
nounced was this impression, that it seemed that no canvas could
have been taken away without damage to the rest of the collection.
In most exhibitions, both of past and present artists, we are con-
scious of the various influences at work on the struggling painter,
of the presence of many personalities; at the Brummer Galleries
we were confronted with but a single temperament, the serene and
poetic mind of Henri Matisse. The unity I have spoken of did
not arise from any similarity of theme or uniformity of subject-
matter; it was the subtle and imaginative quality of an original
approach to nature, of a thorough consistency of mood, and the
lyric tranquillity of a man who has found great joy in creative
labour.
It is characteristic of Matisse, now in his middle fifties, that
throughout his many experiences—his student days with Moreau,
his affection for Monet, Redon, and later for Cézanne, his visits
to Africa, and his trials as a teacher-he has allowed nothing to
corrupt the inherent poetry of his talent, or to lead him into fixed
and doctrinaire methods; and any criticism ignoring this char-
acteristic must necessarily be illiberal and incomplete. The poetic
vision of Matisse is rich and plastic; the grace of his draughtsman-
ship masterly and inimitable. He alone, of all living modernists,
encloses his sensuous visions within the boundaries of pure design.
It is a wise beauty that he gives us, firmly tempered and perfectly
poised. In his work we feel the gaiety and colour of life, and the


THOMAS CRAVEN
405
enthusiasm which springs from health, conviction, and extraor-
dinary fluency of expression. To a sophisticated curiosity that is
never merely clever or mechanistically striking, he has added a
remarkable gift for unexpected combinations of balancing colours,
and a perception of linear rhythms which is, perhaps, his greatest
charm. I hardly need say that the lyric character of his pictures
has nothing in common with Impressionism; nor has his poetry
any relation to the literary aspirations of the English sentimental-
ists. Artists like Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts, endowed with
British inventiveness, strove to translate their literary dreams into
paint; they were subservient to the physical beauty of the model;
they gathered together the properties of legend and balladry, and
produced what is, after all, only a high form of illustration.
Matisse's poetry is supremely pictorial, an inseparable element
aesthetically important because it helps to fuse his direct experi-
ences into coherent patterns.
Matisse is a great artist—not so profound in purpose, I think,
as Courbet, Delacroix, and Cézanne, not a composer of the care-
fully resolved structural sequences of the old Florentines, but in
his own way unrivalled. Active in several media, he is primarily
a painter of decorations, and in this capacity has contributed to
art an original and amazing form of expression. To differen-
tiate the living character of his unique canvases from the static
lifelessness of other modernists aiming at decoration, we may say,
in general terms, that his work possesses a soul. More specifically,
it exemplifies a direct contact with the living model, and a pro-
digious ease in expressing that contact. By transferring the ele-
ments of genre-painting to the field of decoration, Matisse has
created a type of form hitherto unknown to art. The charm of
fruits, colours, and buoyant nudes has been converted into plastic
silhouettes which might be enlarged or diminished without alter-
ing their intrinsic appeal. Even the smaller pieces, distinctly
genre in their approach, have a spatial fulness and a simplicity of
mass which suggest murals and ancient book illuminations. The
strict adherence to natural types, that is, to the simple, every-day
character of the model, is so startling an innovation in a decorative
style that one is fairly carried away by it. On the other hand, the
inventiveness which has always been associated with decorative
painting, whether flat or recessive, is conspicuously absent. In its


406
HENRI MATISSE
place we have what seems to be a genius for arrangement and pro-
portioning; in fact the whole decorative scheme of Matisse's pic-
tures depends upon a sort of re-proportioning of objects.
The intellectual designer who has been trained in classic methods,
who has inherited the complex, tectonic planning of the Floren-
tine spirit, moulds our visible world into an abstract conception,
and when his composition demands it, is capable of laying violent
hands upon nature. The frank acceptance of objectivity is swept
aside by knowledge, precise intentions, and accumulated observa-
tion; his art is aloof, and as often as not, sombre and tinged with
an over-stressed idealism. We discover none of this in Matisse.
Everything he touches bears the stamp of ease and joy. But we
must not conclude, on this account, that his work is lacking in
design. In all his moods, from the Persian inclinations to the
later more naturalistic tendencies, his certainty of spacing and his
sharp sense of linear rhythm are wonderfully effective. Design
of this sort is not the result of the analysis and organization of
planes, as in the case of Cézanne, but of a ready shifting of the
proportions of silhouettes. Nature in such a process is not recon-
structed, but simply re-seen, rendered, we might say, in terms of
pattern. The curve of a woman's back or hips is expanded or
shortened to meet the exigencies of given spaces; the natural
aspect of a scene, either landscape or interior, is not materially
altered, but skilfully distributed for the sake of a balanced expres-
sion. As a consequence the liveliness and spontaneity of direct
experience are exquisitely preserved. We behold no grim trans-
formation of nature to serve an ideal purpose, no dramatic
sequences born of a powerful imagination; on the contrary we
find knowledge and aesthetic taste at the command of a joyous
response to nature. The secret of these decorative motifs is, after
a little reflection, quite obvious: the artist who simply changes
the proportions of silhouettes in order to achieve balance without
sacrificing the original character of a scene, is necessarily limited
to a structure in two dimensions. The depth of Matisse's canvases
is entirely associational. We have then, in brief, nature, le monde
visible, of Gautier, presented in terms of flat coloured spaces
through the guidance of impeccable tact. This is the Frenchman
as I understand him in the exhibition at the Brummer Galleries.



SCRAPPED ENGINES.
BY CHARLES BURCHFIELD





SWAN SONG ARRANGED FOR TWO PIANOS
BY R. ELLSWORTH LARSSON
what ancient secrets
grimace
beyond these hills
these barren mountains
and the wasted valleys
swimming in corrosive shadows
what sound of welling water
or distant mutter
of the slow
inevitable
worms
1
-The taste
of dust
is on thy lips
beloved
oh let
the subtle contours
of thy words
impress upon my mind
some faint design
(soon
a sudden blare
of tulips
will shatter the brittle theme
of spring
and summer
struggle from the womb
of rigid hills)


408
SWAN SONG ARRANGED FOR TWO PIANOS
let the dim realities
of thine arms
evoke some fleeting
perfect image
against the darkness
of Cremona violins
-The taste of dust
is on thy lips
beloved
(and dust
will settle in the shadows
when autumn
mournfully dances
to a crazy prelude
beaten
on muffled drums)
oh let thy sudden smile
caress mine aching eyes
let thy delicate smile
erect some momentary grandeur
between me
and the overwhelming darkness
so I may mould
my lips
into some feeble sign
of ultimate derision
1


THE GODS
BY ELIE FAURE
Translated From the French by Walter Pach
RELIGION, or rather a somewhat formless mass of beliefs
which accumulated, ranged themselves side by side, and
often fused, had endured for fifty centuries. It peopled the valley
of an African river with temples, tombs, avenues of colossi,
pylons, pyramids, and obelisks, as if life and death had had no
other function than that of demonstrating the truth and the con-
structive power of those beliefs, around which all social and domes-
tic and political and military life was arranged. An art as
categorical as it was subtle, in which the spirit of finesse and the
geometrical spirit are merged, fills the vast space of the oasis and
of the desert and five thousand years of history, which is practically
unknown to us save for the testimony left by this art; it fills this
space and time with a species of musical rhythm which is unin-
terrupted and which bears, on the surface of its wave, an inex-
haustible freshness of impressions, of sensations, and of sentiments
as vibrant as the life in the murmur of the dawn, as firm as the
logic in the still voice of the mind. The soul of man circulates in
the combining forms of the gods, aside from whom men cannot
conceive the labours of the fields and the river, the universal
symbolism which sets the hawks soaring in the formidable light,
which builds a monstrous temple in order to lay within its darkest
centre the mummy of a crocodile, and causes to arise, stone by stone,
a mountain of granite which fixes the co-ordinates of the unanimous
movement of the heavens.
Another religion, during five centuries, covered the reddish
promontories which enter the waves like the prow of a ship, with
small, harmonious temples that seem to be constructed both upon
the scale of the visible universe and that of pure intelligence, and,
without effort, to reconcile in an eternal balance all the contradic-
tions of the moral and the social life, antagonistic divinities,
warring interests, and struggling factions. Here, in the whole


410
THE GODS
monument as in its slightest detail, in the statue of the god as in
the frieze and the metope where the adventure of the City is spread
forth, there was discovered a harmony—which seems to have been
immediately accepted and defined for all time—between the real
elements of the most concrete world and the idealistic and gen-
eralizing tendencies of the mind, between the least dissimulated
sensuality, on one hand, and reason on the other—the type of reason
most stubborn in defending its conquests—between the most fleet-
ing movement of the animated surface of the forms and the most
permanent laws of their inner structure, which little by little deter-
mines our spiritual edifice. The flanks and the arms of the gods
were exposed to the swords of men, the breasts and thighs of the
goddesses plunged, side by side with those of the women, into the
clear streams bordered by laurel woods. Through the statue, and
in the statue indeed, man was god, and god was man.
Another religion, one that is immemorial and that still lives,
might rather be called a confused mingling of a hundred pro-
found myths thrown up together by a tide, as the sea when it
ebbs leaves upon the beach dead fish, jellyfish still alive, flowers
of the sea, and a coating of salt—this religion hollowed out,
sculptured, and modelled mountains; sometimes, for a century or
more, it led four or five generations to penetrate a mass of granite
in order that they might live there, love, be born, and die there, and
each day cause innumerable forms to blossom there, forms where
scenes of copulation and of the lives of the apostles are found
side by side. Another religion, issuing from this one like a
glowing child from a delirium of passion, covered all of eastern
Asia and the islands in the dazzling seas of the Orient with
prodigious edifices which the wild beasts, the birds, and the reptiles
invaded from top to bottom as if in the trunks, the branches, the
leaves, the corollas, and the pollen which grow there and fly as in
a whirlwind, they recognized the odours and the green darkness of
their native forest. As the Brahmins brought out of the rock,
rumps in movement, the thousand divine arms bearing the lotus
or the axe, quiet breasts, and eyelids heavy with sleep, incessant
sublimations of the animal instincts in man, the Buddhists
sculptured flight, sculptured the dance, sculptured the swaying
and the very coolness of the palm, the murmurs, spasms, sighs,
and perfumes. And if Brahma, the inexhaustible matrix, wel.
comes, in his four flat faces, the deep flood of material life which


ELIE FAURE
411
rushes in from every side to participate in modelling his forehead,
in causing his nostrils to dilate, his mouth to tremble, and his
eyes to be bathed with somnolent voluptuousness, the robe of
Buddha, between his knees, seems a chiselled cup where the light
comes to sleep. The confused universe is present wherever man is,
even if the form of man is alone upon the rock. Man is present
wherever the confused universe is, even if the carved vegetations
and waters represent no more than the feverish bogs and forests
which he has not been able to traverse.
And though that other religion, proscribing the image of every
living and moving thing, the better to isolate itself in the con-
templation of the invisible, covered the deserts with fragile cupolas,
and with minarets shooting up like cries of ecstasy, its whole
spiritual movement turning and expanding, and sweeping along
in its vortex something of the odour of roses, something of the
coloured palpitation seen on the breasts of doves; and although
still another religion, on the contrary, piled up in the disorder of a
single tottering mass all possible forms, especially those of death-
claws and fangs, empty eye-sockets, and the teeth and tongues of
snakes—in one case as in the other the idea of a divinity active and
present everywhere governs the agreement of man with that re-
ligion, in an exaltation which the multitude feels and which it
translates into a language which stirs us by its unanimity. It is
the same spectacle in the Occident and in the Orient, when
Christian Europe, between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries,
suddenly acquires consciousness of this spiritual unity which
it has conquered from the chaos of sensation and from the
tragedy of History, through some chosen race which seems destined
to offer its moral image to the future, under the splendid ap-
pearances of a material image in which man, even when most
heavily bound down by animalism and his divine vision of life, is
to recognize himself for an hour. Is there any need to evoke,
under the imbricated vaults and the sturdy pillars amassed to the
orbit of the spheres above a golden background, the gleaming
mosaics in which slender forms are elongated, where immense eyes
open, concealing in their depths a complicated and sensual mysticism
around which are lights that seem to tell of danger, blue flies and
green flies over sleeping waters, putrefaction, and poisons hidden
under the luxuriance of flowers? Is there any need, above all,
to recall the vast efflorescence which carried upward, over the pave-


412
THE GODS
ment of the cities of certain provinces of France, as if sprouting
from that very pavement itself and from the surrounding country:
side, clear forests, murmuring waters, the produce of the kitchen
garden, grape vines on the slope of the hills, so many beasts, so
many vegetables, so many leafy vines, and so many familiar
countenances, a fervent throng, escort for the pillars in their swift
ascent, and for soaring vaults which cradle in heaven the courage
of man as they render his works divine?
If, from the Andes to the Himalayas, from the Pacific to the
oases of Africa, and from the Nile to the North Sea, one tries to
seize at a single glance the universal plastic poem in those mani-
festations of man through which he has most constantly and
magnificently defined himself, one finds it connected almost every-
where with a mystical support which is the more impressive because
it translates almost everywhere a unanimous sentiment. Art seems
never to have attained summits comparable to those which it has
mounted, almost always at a single bound, in concert with religion,
which then mingles with it in so close and familiar a manner that
it is impossible to separate one from the other without annihilating
both by the same stroke.
And yet, if one penetrates more deeply into this mystery of
aesthetics which is so poignant—as poignant as the birth, the hesita-
tions, and the decline of love—how many facts leap forth suddenly
before the anxious investigator and oppose themselves to that too-
simplifying conception which connects the development of art with
the development of faith, and which affirms without hesitation
that art does not develop, or languishes, or falls as soon as faith is
lacking, or oscillates or weakens! Hellenic art at its decline, and
Hellenistic art almost in its entirety, even and perhaps especially
in their most arresting manifestations—beautiful goddesses wholly
nude who are no longer any more than women at their toilet, from
whom all the heroic fervour has disappeared, innumerable statuettes
of courtesans and of women of the world, tormented portraits of
poets or thinkers, and dances upon the vintage are only a transition
(sensual, familiar, and full of regrets and of promises) between
the unity of Paganism in its death-struggle and the presentiment
of a new mysticism which is nowhere formulated. During three
or four centuries, in this nervous, restless, and often erotic art which


ELIE FAURE
413
flowers on all the shores of the European, African, and Asiatic
Mediterranean, it is practically impossible to find any trace what-
soever of religious sentiment. The same phenomenon, at the mo-
ment of the second Renaissance, when Italy, with da Vinci and the
Roman school, conquered the Platonist evasion which attempted
in the fifteenth century, to hold Christianity to an enervated and
morbid form which its mystico-sensual character was, on the con-
trary, to sweep forth beyond the borders of Christianity, in order
to launch the modern world upon unexplored paths: Venice peoples
the palaces and churches alike with the most magnificent forms
that painting has realized in the reciprocal, close, and continuing
exchange of colourations and reflections—the waters, the lands, the
skies, and their animal and vegetable multitude contributing the
most powerful of their voices to the choir of the senses, which
mounts from all the races to affirm their taking possession of the
poetic universe. All religious sentiment had disappeared from
these forms, to such an extent that nude goddesses were to be seen
in the sanctuaries and that, in banquet halls, swarms of angels and
holy families covered the walls.
In Italy as in Greece, the religion, which was iconolatrous and
visual before all else, scarcely perceived the progressive substitu-
tion of one idol for another idol. The idol retained the same name,
and its apparent forms change only insensibly from one generation
to the other in the proportion that its inner life matured and rose,
like the juice of a fruit, from its depths towards its surface, to
burst forth and spread over it in full expansion. In other places,
in the east of Europe, and especially in the north, the process was
quite a different one. At Byzantium, in the eighth and in the ninth
centuries, the Church and the Emperor tried to break the idol and to
push Christianity back into the invisible interior of abstract
mystical sentiment, as, in the same periods, Islam was covering the
conquered lands with edifices, where no human figure, no silhouette
of an animal, and no leaf of a tree ornamented the capitals and
the altars. And it is precisely at the hour when poor and stiff forms,
enveloped at every point in the matrix of the most rigid dogma, are
appearing timidly upon the profiles of the temples, which had been
practically bare until then, that St Bernard, in the following
terms, anathematizes the still lean and quite confused budding of
the popular belief which is to submerge the edifice and at the same


414
THE GODS
time lift it up: "... So manifold and so astounding does the
variety of the forms appear everywhere, that the monk is tempted
to study the marbles far more than the books and to meditate upon
these figures far more than upon the law of God.” The monk was,
moreover, to lose his unique privilege of building and decorating
the church; he was to leave to the corporations which were being
formed so solidly within the frame of the commune the business
of erecting and ornamenting the religious monument, under the
same conditions and according to the same principles as the civic
monument.
It seems therefore that the aesthetic apogee of Western
Christianity, between the end of the eleventh and the end of the
thirteenth centuries, in its ensemble, and despite the symbolic mean-
ing of the ritualistic formulas for architecture and for images,
was a kind of confused protest of the instincts of a devout people
against the original commands of a mysticism which the con-
cilia and the bishops were maintaining as well as they could.
Christianity, by its incessant appeal to love, had caused to accumu-
late so much vigour of imagination which, at the same time, it re-
pressed by multiple prohibitions, that the unanimous desire to give
expression to this vigour in the immensely varied and nuanced forms
of the hundred thousand living or inert objects which make up
our universe was to burst out with the power of a flame constrained
by a volcanic crust. We must not forget that the founders of the
Church, St Paul the Jew and St Augustine, were explicitly and
fiercely iconophobes, and that Jesus himself, a Jew, in all his
universal tenderness, had never appealed to the image in order to
stir the hearts of men. The immense concentration upon them-
selves which, in the earliest consciences, had marked the birth of
the new religion, necessarily implied the misunderstanding of nat-
ural forms or even disgust. for them. They could not reappear,
first at Byzantium, then in Italy, and finally in France, save as
concrete symbols of the life of the feelings and of the expansive
imagination seeking, outside of their contact with the forgotten
universe, to express in the tumult and the fever of enthusiasm, the
healthiest, the most animal, and the most fecund of all the in-
stincts. The Christian paradise and the Christian myth were so
real and so beautiful to the candour of the people that it had to
appeal to the innumerable forms and the marvellous colours of the


ELIE FAURE
415
world to glorify them. The grapes of the vine and the salads of
the market, the sparkle of the seas, the purpled gold of the skies
in the autumn forest, and all the occupations which, in the fields,
bring forth bread from the earth and, in cities, manufacture wood
into troughs and iron into tools, overran the monument carrying
man in his completion nearer to the work of God. It is the fault
neither of St Paul nor of St Augustine nor of St Bernard, but per-
haps a little bit that of Jesus, if man, thanks to this very orgy of the
senses, was, while studying God's work, to forget God himself.
For the cathedral, dying of the excess which had brought it to
birth, but at the same time awakening the objective curiosity of
certain minds in the multitude, crushed full-blown Christianity
in its fall.
At all events, a miraculous equilibrium had here, for a century,
been able to maintain itself—between the abstract religion born in
the brains of the Prophets modelled by the desert, and the love of
charming forms which characterize the soil in Western Europe-
the powerful idea of a universal symbolism expressing the unity
of the soul by the multiplicity of the aspects of this soil. It main-
tained itself, in the heart of a people as distant as the land on
which it dwells both from Catholic paganism (forgetful of the
Christian law in order to imagine the poem of form as an ex-
pression complete in itself—independent of the pretexts which in-
spire it) and from Protestant puritanism, forgetful, in order to
return to that law, of the immense variety and the immense charm
of the forms in which the theatre of England, and Germanic paint-
ing and engraving, and the Nibelungen had, however, found their
nourishment. Here, consequently, there occurred a phenomenon
the reverse of that which in Italy wrested form from religion. Puri-
tanism wrested religion from form. It has been believed, it has
been said, that Rembrandt and German music express the Prot-
estantism of the North. The whole of Dutch painting, and be-
fore all and above all the whole of Rembrandt's painting, are an
instinctive and probably unconscious protest against the iconoclasm
of the Beggars. They are the pious transporting of the image from
the church into the house. The whole of German music, with that
of Beethoven in the front rank, appears, after two centuries of
frightful religious carnage, as a secret revenge of the spirit-pro-
tected by the hermeticism of musical language-against puri-


416
THE GODS
tanical fury, and the return to the abstractions and to the original
prohibitions condemned in advance in the North by Shakespeare,
by Dürer, by the chorale of Luther himself, fed with meat and beer,
joyous and barbaric, as, with song, he led the crowd forth to battle.
Protestantism and Catholicism are more or less happy means of
governing, more or less durable and more or less suited to the peo-
ples who adopt them, and the one did not will German music any
more than the other willed the ogival church of the provinces of
Northern France. As to Christianity in its primitive purity, there
was needed a profound and prolonged contact with the souls of
peoples formed by their soil and their mysterious atavism, their
joys, their food, and their misfortune, for it to be transformed in
the intimacy of those souls to the point of expression, an expres-
sion which was accomplished in the same idolatry against whose use
and abuse earlier Christianity had been born as a protest.
But there is more to be said. Very much is lacking before we
can find the highest and purest tension of the religious spirit co-
inciding everywhere with the highest and purest expression of the
aesthetic sentiment of one people. The examples of this are in-
numerable, from Egyptian polytheism to the modern monotheisms,
from the religion of Brahma to Greek anthropomorphism. In
Egypt, for example, the religion, ritualized and hierarchized by a
powerful priesthood, does not really exist until after the great in-
vasions, that is to say during the artistic decadence of the New
Empire. The rudimentary fetishism, multiform and rather con-
fused, of the Ancient and Middle Empire, saw the birth of the
finest works of Egypt, the majority of which, moreover, are not
at all religious in character. It is the epoch which extends from
the great pyramids to the great temple of Karnak, that of those
innumerable hypogea decorated with frescos of vermilion and of
emerald in which the gesture is so pure that it seems to express the
silence; it is the epoch of those seated scribes and of those march-
ing statues of wood, beside which everything else seems dead. In
Greece, before the eighth century, at a time when the Doric order
has not yet plunged its powerful roots into the ground, and when
a few formless wooden dolls and a few poor earthen vases express
the beliefs and the primitive needs, religion is much more firm
than at the times when the Peloponnesus and Sicily are covering
themselves with sturdy temples which seem like squatting beasts.


ELIE FAURE
417
Nearly a thousand years before the first mountains of India re-
ceive into their entrails a people of painters and of sculptors,
Brahmanism exists; and Brahmanism is still active, as living as ever
in the depth of men's souls, when four or five centuries have passed
since Hindu art lost that vast mobility full of searchings and mur-
murings, which make one think of the sea. The petty practices of
Chinese fetishism, surviving the mystic crisis of Buddhism and
floating upon a great depth of tolerance and of moderation in
religious sentiment, did not prevent the sculptors from erecting on
the desert, avenues of warriors and of monsters so majestic that
they seem contemporaries of the most ancient solitude. Islam,
which is as robust as ever in the faith of the people—or which was
so, at all events, less than a century ago—has, for five hundred
years, been without the secret of the mysterious life which the
geometrical formulas chilled in the arabesque, and the secret of the
fantastic lightness of their construction. Moreover the Arab, its
creator and its propagator, has himself constructed nothing. He
delegated that task to the conquered peoples, who were artists and
producers already in their past, and who contributed, in serving
him, their natural genius, perhaps their desire to please the master,
and the freshness of a sentiment renewed upon contact with an
unknown myth. Hindus, Egyptians, Persians, and Berbers made
of Islam their faith. And the Turk, despite his faith, has not
known how to build.
These eclipses, these hesitations, and these silences are perhaps
more striking in Christianity than elsewhere. Outside of Italy
and especially of France-outside of Flanders and of Spain at
times, of Germany to a small extent, I dare not say of England-
this religion which persists for eighteen hundred years has not
produced a truly specific efflorescence, of a living and multiform
style, innovating and conquering each day and in all places, save
during four centuries at most. Christian art had disappeared from
Italy even before the fall of the free city, and from France when
the Commune gave way. In the most fervent periods, the fifteenth
century for example, when the drama of the time was sweeping into
all souls like a torrent, when it was without trace of bewildered
mysticism, when the religion of Jesus was less disputed than at
the period when it was joyously mounting everywhere above the
countryside and the cities by means of a thousand towers and spires
trembling in the sound of the bells, it was no longer, in its imagery,


418
THE GODS
any more than a tormented and complicated thing whose supports
were falling away, whose inner structure was becoming dislocated,
and whose profiles were disappearing under the profusion of the
ornament. In Spain, during the most Catholic centuries, when the
Reformation had caused fanaticism to arise, and when the soldiers,
their rosaries on their wrists, carried the cross and torture into the
whole of the West, and later, when, to prevent the touching of a
poor idol in the niche of an old pillar, a whole city let itself be
slaughtered, man after man, woman after woman, and let house
after house be burned or torn down, the great forms of art-
Velasquez and Goya—are almost completely secular, by no means
mystical, in any event.
event. The only mystic, the only man who gives
that sensation of supernatural realism which is Spanish Christianity
- living cadavers dressed in purple and in iron under the sepulchral
lamp, cold ashes, livid lips, and the narrow idea arising to a great
height—is not a Spaniard, but a semi-pagan from the Orient whom
the people call “el Greco.”
Certain forms of Christianity itself, some issuing from the
Catholicism of Rome, others from Byzantine orthodoxy, and others
again, it is true, from iconoclastic puritanism, have had no more
than an insignificant plastic expression, a non-existent one at times.
Polish or Prussian or Hungarian or Austrian or Russian or Jugo-
Slav art has not really passed the popular stage, Hispano-Ameri-
canism has not even attained it, the Eastern rite has not renounced
the Byzantine icon indefinitely repeated, and American Quakerism
and, in its train, the multitude of religious sects of that vigorous
people have, for long, preserved silence, a silence which their at-
tempts at Europeanizing have broken with unfortunate effect. It
is no new phenomenon, moreover, which we see in this. Old re-
ligions have remained silent. That of Iran, for example, so pure
from the moral point of view and upon which there was grafted
without being penetrated by it, a hybrid, heraldic and monarchical
art, which drew all of its elements from Assyria, from Egypt, from
Greece, and from India—and which never took root in the soil.
That of a neighbouring region, Chaldea, and Assyria especially,
whose direct and terrible art developed almost entirely outside the
religious spirit, the myth inspiring only certain composite mon-
sters whose cruel character emphasizes the violence of the habitual
sources of inspiration-hunting, war, tortures, executioners, vic-
tims, vultures upon carrion, and men and lions in combat. That


ELIE FAURE
419
of Rome, while very sincere and vigorous, has a plastic expression
which is only imitation and repetition of older forms, whereas
an admirable civic architecture—of circuses, theatres, roads, and
aqueducts—affirms the grandeur and the permanence of an inten-
tion in which there appears no trace, however fugitive, of a re-
ligious sentiment. This architecture, moreover, develops when
the mythology has reached a completely anarchical stage, at the
moment when paganism is at its death-struggle, when Christianity
is stammering, and when the new cults of Asia, tottering and
jostling one another, are confusedly invading the Latin world,
which lets them do their will: an admirable maintenance of the
unity and of the majesty of the mind advancing alone—for utili-
tarian purposes, to be sure—like a ship upon the waves.
However, let us state the fact. Something is lacking in that
art, as also in Greek art especially after Pheidias, in Japanese art
which develops almost exclusively outside of religion, and in Eu-
ropean art since the sixteenth century, if one sets to one side the
heroic souls who have possessed a sufficient constancy and con-
tinuity of effort to hold up the columns of the temple and to main-
tain in themselves a religion surviving the decline of pure
faith—Michael Angelo, da Vinci, the symphonists of Venice,
Rubens, Poussin, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Watteau, Goya, Dela-
croix, and some others. But even then an immense sadness hovers
over their solitude. In reality, at the hour when for once—for
once only in the historical development of a group—the sudden
maturing of the religious sentiment coincides with the loftiest mo-
ment of energy in this group, something supernatural appears, not
falling from God upon man, but arising from man to God. Faith
has always been equal to itself, doubtless, since the time when
formulated and ritualized religion collected all hearts into a com-
mon belief. But something unforeseen has taken place. Historical
forces have acted for centuries, by chance most often, designating
one people rather than another, because its geographical position
is favourable to its fecundation, because the drama of war or of
politics is more terrible here than elsewhere and more valiantly
accepted, and because above all, a particular genius which it gets
from its soil and from its secret atavisms has formed it for this
tôle, and because, suddenly, in a great broad current of enthu-
siasm, it has hurled its belief, like a virile seed, into the womb of
the universe. Such is the crisis of love in the great races, such


420
THE GODS
their organic virility; and during its hour their mystic strength,
multiplied by this same virility, seeks and finds its nourishment.
It is from the greatest moment of energy, not from the greatest
moment of faith, that there issues forth the greatest moment of
creation of the species. From the eleventh to the fifteenth century
in France, the civil or military edifice is equal in value to the
religious edifice. The most beautiful cathedral of the North is
not superior in quality, from the point of view of structure, to the
Valentré Bridge at Cahors or to the Palace of the Popes at Avignon.
Whether the species reaches its faith before its apogee of power or
after it, if spiritual energy has departed, art, the expression of that
spiritual energy, will depart likewise from the species, to disperse
itself amongst chosen individuals and to concentrate itself wholly
in certain superior brains.
That which creates art, in a word, is the meeting of virility and
of love. It is natural that, up to now, the great religions should
have been the pretext for this creation. But they have not always
furnished it, and there is no reason whatever why new mysticisms,
free from dogma, should not come, in the future, to favour that
meeting. The Italian Renaissance, wedding with nature for a
second time in the enthusiasm of consciousness, offers the ad-
mirable spectacle of a crisis of love analogous with the one I speak
of. Perhaps the first contact of Egyptian energy with the
prodigious and still unexplored world of forms at a time when the
Egyptian religion was yet stammering, perhaps the monumental
statuary of the Chinese after the disappearance of Buddhism, and
perhaps the ferocious art of Assyria, are in themselves, despite their
secular character, miracles which one may compare with the
fecundation of a great religious sentiment by an exceptional energy
of a national or specific order. However, it is not doubtful that
up to now the most powerful unity of that sudden sweep toward
the spiritual conquest of the very body of the universe, that burst
of energy which carries along together the mystic enthusiasm and
the virility of a people or of a race—the one element, moreover,
animated by the other—it is not doubtful, I say, that up to now
this has almost always and almost everywhere manifested itself
under the visible and sensible appearances of religion.
To be concluded


TWO POEMS
BY ELIZABETH J. COATSWORTH
THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION
Daintily the women of Syracuse
Hold their perfume bottles to their noses
And peer down into the quarries.
They are fine women to look at
With eyes that can pick out a sail among running breakers,
Knowing as well as the men all the good points of a horse,
Why such a team failed at the Olympic games
And such another won by a chariot length-
Trained also in poetry and drama, with a provincial enthusiasm,
And showing a tendency to play the grand lady,
Be carried hither and thither in their litters,
School their strong hill-born limbs to a pretended languor,
And force themselves to faint
upon
occasion.
Daintily the women of Syracuse
Hold their perfume bottles to their noses
And peer down into the quarries.
A great many of the prisoners are still alive-
Those over there are probably only sleeping;
The dead they seem to have piled up together.
The keen clear eyes of the Syracusan women
Take in the details, how the men hold themselves,
What elegance they show even in starving.
To the Athenians, they in turn seem goddesses,
Against the sky on the straight quarry walls,
Those tall, poised women, infinitely far,
Arouse their pride. They do not ask for pity:
It is enough they have an audience
To whom to play their final act of death.


422
TWO POEMS
Daintily the women of Syracuse
Hold their perfume bottles to their noses
And peer down into the quarries.
DEDICATED TO HER HIGHNESS
The Queen of Sheba was a true romantic
Her imagination being touched, she prepared a caravan,
Marshalled her servants, loaded her dromedaries
With spices and gold
And with precious stones,
And so set off, a queen leaving her kingdom
To follow an adventure of the mind.
Paltry-spirited persons, reasoning from Solomon's known tendencies,
And thinking that, as she admired him
She must have loved him,
Have underestimated the quest,
And deducted from it the entire line of the Abyssinian kings.
But her real interest in him was intellectual.
She probed relentlessly the profundity of his mind
With questions she had evolved in the long days of meditation
On her swaying dromedary,
Among the noises and confusion of the march.
It was the story of his wisdom that had stirred her from her
kingdom,
It was to test it that she had made her dangerous wayfaring.
His prosperity, and his House of the Cedars of Lebanon,
With its throne flanked by golden lions and its shields of gold,
His stables and his chariots, the pillars embossed with lilies and
pomegranates,
The numbers of his servants and the orderliness of his household
These things proved to her that from understanding comes peace,
And from peace, beauty. They were the justification of knowledge.
So-having found the truth of travellers' tales-
She gave praise with the warm courtesy of a queen,
Presented and received gifts as was the custom,
And took her departure once more into the mythical depths of
Sheba,
A sovereign in state, surrounded by her servants.



Courtesy of the Wildenstein Gallerics
BY ROCKWELL KENT
NEW ENGLAND.






Courtesy of the Phillips Memorial Gallery
VOYAGERS.
BY ROCKWELL KENT





DEATH IN VENICE
BY THOMAS MANN
Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke
V
URING his fourth week at the Lido Gustav von Aschenbach
Dumade several usinise o biservations touching on the world
about him. First, it seemed to him that as the season progressed
the number of guests at the hotel was diminishing rather than
increasing; and German especially seemed to be dropping away,
so that finally he heard nothing but foreign sounds at table and
on the beach. Then one day in conversation with the barber,
whom he visited often, he caught a word which startled him. The
man had mentioned a German family that left soon after their
arrival; he added glibly and flatteringly, “But you are staying,
sir. You have no fear of the plague.” Aschenbach looked at him.
“The plague ?” he repeated. The gossiper was silent, made out
as though busy with other things, ignored the question. When it
was put more insistently, he declared that he knew nothing, and
with embarrassing volubility he tried to change the subject.
That was about noon. In the afternoon there was a calm, and
Aschenbach rode to Venice under an intense sun. For he was
driven by a mania to follow the Polish children whom he had seen
with their governess taking the road to the steamer pier. He did
not find the idol at San Marco. But while sitting over his tea
at his little round iron table on the shady side of the square,
he suddenly detected a peculiar odour in the air which, it seemed
to him now, he had noticed for days without being cons
onsciously
aware of it. The smell was sweetish and drug-like, suggesting
sickness, and wounds, and a suspicious cleanliness. He tested
and examined it thoughtfully, finished his luncheon, and left the
square on the side opposite the church. The smell was stronger
where the street narrowed. On the corners printed posters were
hung, giving municipal warnings against certain diseases of the
gastric system liable to occur at this season, against the eating of


424
DEATH IN VENICE
oysters and clams, and also against the water of the canals. The
euphemistic nature of the announcement was palpable. Groups
of people had collected in silence on the bridges and squares; and
the foreigner stood among them, scenting and investigating.
At a little shop he inquired about the fatal smell, asking the
proprietor, who was leaning against his door surrounded by coral
chains and imitation amethyst jewellery. The man measured
him with heavy eyes, and brightened up hastily. "A matter of
precaution, sir!” he answered with a gesture. “A regulation of
the police which must be taken for what it is worth. This weather
is oppressive, the sirocco is not good for the health. In short, you
understand—an exaggerated prudence perhaps." Aschenbach
thanked him and went on. Also on the steamer back to the Lido
he caught the smell of the disinfectant.
Returning to the hotel, he went immediately to the periodical
stand in the lobby and ran through the papers. He found nothing
in the foreign language press.
The domestic press spoke of
rumours, produced hazy statistics, repeated official denials and
questioned their truthfulness. This explained the departure of the
German and Austrian guests. Obviously, the subjects of the other
nations knew nothing, suspected nothing, were not yet uneasy.
“To keep it quiet!” Aschenbach thought angrily, as he threw the
papers back on the table. “To keep that quiet!" But at the same
moment he was filled with satisfaction over the adventure that
was to befall the world about him. For passion, like crime, is
not suited to the secure daily rounds of order and well-being;
and every slackening in thc bourgeois structure, every disorder
and affliction of the world, must be held welcome, since they bring
with them a vague promise of advantage. So Aschenbach felt
a dark contentment with what was taking place, under cover of
the authorities, in the dirty alleys of Venice. This wicked secret
of the city was welded with his own secret, and he too was involved
in keeping it hidden. For in his infatuation he cared about nothing
but the possibility of Tadzio's leaving, and he realized with some-
thing like terror that he would not know how to go on living if
this occurred.
Lately he had not been relying simply on good luck and the
daily routine for his chances to be near the boy and look at him.
He pursued him, stalked him. On Sundays, for instance, the
Poles never appeared on the beach. He guessed that they must


THOMAS MANN
425
be attending mass at San Marco. He hurried there; and stepping
from the heat of the square into the golden twilight of the church,
he found the boy he was hunting, bowed over a prie-dieu, praying.
Then he stood in the background, on the cracked mosaic floor,
with people on all sides kneeling, murmuring, and making the
sign of the cross. And the compact grandeur of this oriental temple
weighed heavily on his senses. In front, the richly ornamented
priest was conducting the office, moving about and singing; incense
poured forth, clouding the weak little flame of the candle on the
altar—and with the sweet, stuffy sacrificial odour another seemed
to commingle faintly: the smell of the infested city. But through
the smoke and the sparkle Aschenbach saw how the boy there
in front turned his head, hunted him out, and looked at him.
When the crowd was streaming out through the opened portals
into the brilliant square with its swarms of pigeons, the lover hid
in the vestibule; he kept under cover, he lay in wait. He saw the
Poles quit the church, saw how the children took ceremonious leave
of their mother, and how she turned towards the Piazzetta on her
way home. He made sure that the boy, the nunlike sisters, and
the governess took the road to the right through the gateway of
the clock tower and into the Merceria. And after giving them a
slight start, he followed, followed them furtively on their walk
through Venice. He had to stand still when they stopped, had
to take flight in shops and courts to let them pass when they
turned back. He lost them; hot and exhausted, he hunted them
over bridges and down dirty blind-alleys—and he underwent
minutes of deadly agony when suddenly he saw them coming
towards him in a narrow passage where escape was impossible.
Yet it could not be said that he suffered. He was drunk, and his
steps followed the promptings of the demon who delights in tread-
ing human reason and dignity under foot.
In one place Tadzio and his companions took a gondola; and
shortly after they had pushed off from the shore, Aschenbach, who
had hidden behind some structure, a well, while they were climbing
in, now did the same. He spoke in a hurried undertone as he
directed the rower, with the promise of a generous tip, to follow
unnoticed and at a distance that gondola which was just round-
ing the corner. And he thrilled when the man, with the roguish
willingness of an accomplice, assured him in the same tone that
his wishes would be carried out, carried out faithfully.


426
DEATH IN VENICE
Leaning back against the soft black cushions, he rocked and
glided towards the other black-beaked craft where his passion was
drawing him. At times it escaped; then he felt worried and
uneasy. But his pilot, as though skilled in such commissions, was
always able through sly manoeuvres, speedy diagonals and short-
cuts, to bring the quest into view again. The air was quiet and
smelly, the sun burned down strong through the slate-coloured
mist. Water slapped against the wood and stone. The call of
the gondolier, half warning, half greeting, was answered with
a strange obedience far away in the silence of the labyrinth. White
and purple umbels with the scent of almonds hung down from
little elevated gardens over crumbling walls. Arabian window-
casings were outlined through the murkiness. The marble steps
of a church descended into the water; a beggar squatted there,
protesting his misery, holding out his hat, and showing the whites
of his eyes as though he were blind. An antiquarian in front of
his den fawned on the passer-by and invited him to stop in the
hopes of swindling him. That was Venice, the flatteringly and
suspiciously beautiful—this city, half legend, half snare for
strangers; in its foul air art once flourished gluttonously, and had
suggested to its musicians seductive notes which cradle and lull.
The adventurer felt as though his eyes were taking in this same
luxury, as though his ears were being won by just such melodies.
He recalled too that the city was diseased and was concealing
this through greed—and he peered more eagerly after the retreat-
ing gondola.
Thus, in his infatuation, he wanted simply to pursue uninter-
rupted the object that aroused him, to dream of it when it was
not there, and, after the fashion of lovers, to speak softly to its
mere outline. Loneliness, strangeness, and the joy of a deep be-
lated intoxication encouraged him and prompted him to accept
even the remotest things without reserve or shame with the result
that as he returned late in the evening from Venice, he stopped on
the second floor of the hotel before the door of the boy's room,
laid his head in utter drunkenness against the hinge of the door,
and for a long time could not drag himself away despite the danger
of being caught and embarrassed in such a mad situation.
Yet there were still moments of relief when he came partly
to his senses. "Where to!” he would think, alarmed. "Where
to!” Like every man whose natural abilities stimulate an aristo-


THOMAS MANN
427
cratic interest in his ancestry, he was accustomed to think of his
forbears in connexion with the accomplishments and successes of
his life, to assure himself of their approval, their satisfaction, their
undeniable respect. He thought of them now, entangled as he
was in such an illicit experience, caught in such exotic transgres-
sions. He thought of their characteristic rigidity of principle,
their scrupulous masculinity—and he smiled dejectedly. What
would they say? But then, what would they have said to his whole
life, which was almost degenerate in its departure from theirs,
this life under the bane of artma life against which he himself
had once issued such youthful mockeries out of loyalty to his
fathers, but which at bottom had been so much like theirs !
He too had served, he too had been a soldier and a warrior like
many of them—for art was a war, a destructive battle, and one
was not equal to it for long these days. A life of self-conquest and
of in-spite-ofs, a rigid, sober, and unyielding life which he had
formed into the symbol of a delicate and timely heroism. He
might well call it masculine, or brave; and it almost seemed as
though the Eros mastering him were somehow peculiarly adapted
and inclined to such a life. Had not this Eros stood in high
repute among the bravest of peoples; was it not true that pre-
cisely through bravery he had flourished in their cities ? Numerous
war heroes of antiquity had willingly borne his yoke, for nothing
was deemed a disgrace which the god imposed; and acts which
would have been rebuked as the sign of cowardice if they had been
done for other purposes-prostrations, oaths, entreaties, abjectness
-such things did not bring shame upon the lover, but rather he
reaped praise for them.
In this way his infatuation determined the course of his thoughts,
in this way he tried to uphold himself, to preserve his respect.
But at the same time, selfish and calculating, he turned his atten-
tion to the unclean transactions here in Venice, this adventure of
the outer world which conspired darkly with his own and which
fed his passion with vague lawless hopes.
Bent on getting reliable news of the condition and
progress
of the pestilence, he ransacked the local papers in the city cafés,
as they had been missing from the reading table of the hotel lobby
for several days now. Statements alternated with disavowals.
The number of the sick and dead was supposed to reach twenty,
forty, or even a hundred and more—and immediately afterwards


428
DEATH IN VENICE
every instance of the plague would be either flatly denied or
attributed to completely isolated cases which had crept in from
the outside. There were scattered admonitions, protests against
the dangerous conduct of foreign authorities. Certainty was im-
possible. Nevertheless the lone man felt especially entitled to
participate in the secret; and although he was excluded, he de-
rived a grotesque satisfaction from putting embarrassing questions
to those who did know, and as they were pledged to silence, forcing
them into deliberate lies. One day at breakfast in the large
dining-hall he entered into a conversation with the manager, that
softly-treading little man in the French frock coat who was moving
amiably and solicitously about among the diners and had stopped
at Aschenbach's table for a few passing words. Just why, the
guest asked negligently and casually, had disinfectants become so
prevalent in Venice recently? "It has to do,” was the evasive
answer, "with a police regulation, and is intended to prevent any
inconveniences or disturbances to the public health which might
result from the exceptionally warm and threatening weather.”
“The police are to be congratulated,” Aschenbach answered;
and after the exchange of a few remarks on the weather, the man-
ager left.
Yet that same day, in the evening, after dinner, it happened
that a little band of strolling singers from the city gave a per-
formance in the front garden of the hotel. Two men and two
women, they stood by the iron post of an arc-lamp and turned
their whitened faces up towards the large terrace where the guests
were enjoying this folk-recital over their coffee and cooling drinks.
The hotel personnel, bell boys, waiters, and clerks from the office,
could be seen listening by the doors of the vestibule. The Russian
family, eager and precise in their amusements, had had wicker
chairs placed in the garden in order to be nearer the performers;
and they were sitting here in an appreciative semi-circle. Behind
the ladies and gentlemen, in her turban-like kerchief, stood the
old slave.
Mandolin, guitar, harmonica, and a squeaky violin were re-
sponding to the touch of the virtuoso beggars. Instrumental
numbers alternated with songs, as when the younger of the women,
with a sharp trembling voice, joined with the sweetly falsetto
tenor in a languishing love duet. But the real talent and leader
of the group was undoubtedly the other of the two men, the one


THOMAS MANN
429
with the guitar. He was a kind of buffo baritone, with not much
of a voice, although he did have a gift for pantomime, and a
remarkable comic energy. Often, with his large instrument under
his arm, he would leave the rest of the group and, still acting,
would intrude on the platform, where his antics were rewarded with
encouraging laughter. Especially the Russians in their seats down
front seemed to be enchanted with so much southern mobility, and
their applause incited him to let himself out more and more boldly
and assertively.
Aschenbach sat on the balustrade, cooling his lips now and
then with a mixture of pomegranate juice and soda which glowed
ruby red in his glass in front of him. His nerves took in the
miserable notes, the vulgar crooning melodies; for passion lames
the sense of discrimination, and surrenders in all seriousness to
appeals which, in sober moments, are either humorously allowed
for or rejected with annoyance. At the clown's antics his features
had twisted into a set painful smile. He sat there relaxed, although
inwardly he was intensely awake; for six paces from him Tadzio
was leaning against the stone hand-rail.
In the white belted coat which he often wore at meal times,
he was standing in a position of spontaneous and inborn grace-
fulness, his left forearm on the railing, feet crossed, the right hand
on a supporting hip; and he looked down at the street-singers with
an expression which was hardly a smile, but only an aloof curiosity,
a polite amiability. Often he would stand erect and, expanding
his chest, would draw the white smock down under his leather
belt with a beautiful gesture. And then too, the aging man
observed with a tumult of fright and triumph how he would often
turn his head over the left shoulder in the direction of his admirer,
carefully and hesitatingly, or even with abruptness as though to
attack by surprise. He did not meet Aschenbach's eyes, for a
mean precaution compelled the transgressor to keep from staring
at him: in the background of the terrace the women who guarded
Tadzio were sitting, and things had reached a point where the
lover had to fear that he might be noticed and suspected. Yes, he
had often observed with a kind of numbness how, when Tadzio was
near him, on the beach, in the hotel lobby, in the Piazza San Marco,
they called him back, they were set on keeping him at a distance
and this wounded him frightfully, causing his pride unknown
tortures which his conscience would not permit him to evade.


430
DEATH IN VENICE
Meanwhile the guitar-player had begun a solo to his own ac-
companiment, a street-ballad popular throughout Italy. It had
several strophes, and the entire company joined each time in the
refrain, all singing and playing, while he managed to give a plastic
and dramatic twist to the performance. Of slight build, with
thin and impoverished features, he stood on the gravel, apart from
his companions, in an attitude of insolent bravado, his shabby felt
hat on the back of his head so that a bunch of his red hair jutted
out from under the brim. And to the thrumming of the strings
he flung his jokes up at the terrace in a penetrating recitative;
while the veins were swelling on his forehead from the exertion of
his performance. He did not seem of Venetian stock, but rather
of the race of Neapolitan comedians, half pimp, half entertainer,
brutal and audacious, dangerous and amusing. His song was stupid
enough so far as the words went; but in his mouth, by his gestures,
the movements of his body, his way of blinking significantly and
letting the tongue play across his lips, it acquired something am-
biguous, something vaguely repulsive. In addition to the cus-
tomary civilian dress, he was wearing a sport shirt; and his skinny
neck protruded above the soft collar, baring a noticeably large and
active Adam's-apple. He was pale and snub-nosed. It was hard
to fix an age to his beardless features, which seemed furrowed with
grimaces and depravity; and the two wrinkles standing arrogantly,
harshly, almost savagely between his reddish eyebrows were
strangely suited to the smirk on his mobile lips. Yet what really
prompted the lonely man to pay him keen attention was the
observation that the questionable figure seemed also to provide its
own questionable atmosphere. For each time they came to the
refrain the singer, amid buffoonery and familiar handshakes, began
a grotesque circular march which brought him immediately beneath
Aschenbach's place; and each time this happened there blew up
to the terrace from his clothes and body a strong carbolic smell.
After the song was ended, he began collecting money. He
started with the Russians, who were evidently willing to spend,
and then came up the stairs. Up here he showed himself just as
humble as he had been bold during the performance. Cringing and
bowing, he stole about among the tables, and a smile of obsequious
cunning exposed his strong teeth, while the two wrinkles still
stood ominously between his red eyebrows. This singular character
collecting money to live on—they eyed him with a curiosity and


THOMAS MANN
431
a kind of repugnance, they tossed coins into his felt hat with the
tips of their fingers, and were careful not to touch him. The elim-
ination of the physical distance between the comedian and the
audience, no matter how great the enjoyment may have been,
always causes a certain uneasiness. He felt it, and tried to excuse
it by grovelling. He came up to Aschenbach, and along with him
the smell, which no one else seemed concerned about.
“Listen!” the recluse said in an undertone, almost mechanically.
“They are disinfecting Venice. Why?”
Why?” The jester answered
hoarsely, “On account of the police. That is a precaution, sir,
with such heat, and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It is
not good for the health.” He spoke as though astonished that any
one could ask such things, and demonstrated with his open hand
how oppressive the sirocco was. “Then there is no plague in
Venice?” Aschenbach asked quietly, between his teeth. The clown's
muscular features fell into a grimace of comical embarrassment.
"A plague? What kind of plague? Perhaps our police are a
plague ? You like to joke! A plague! Of all things! A pre-
cautionary measure, you understand! A police regulation against
the effects of the oppressive weather.” He gesticulated. “Very
well,” Aschenbach said several times curtly and quietly; and he
quickly dropped an unduly large coin into the hat. Then with
his eyes he signalled the man to leave. He obeyed, smirking and
bowing. But he had not reached the stairs before two hotel em-
ployees threw themselves upon him, and with their faces close to
his began a whispered cross-examination. He shrugged his shoul-
ders; he gave assurances, he swore that he had kept quiet—that
was evident. He was released, and he returned to the garden;
then after a short conference with his companions, he stepped out
once more for a final song of thanks and leave-taking.
It was a rousing song which the recluse never recalled having
heard before, a “big number” in incomprehensible dialect, with a
laugh refrain in which the troupe joined regularly at the tops of
their voices. At this point both the words and the accompaniment
of the instruments stopped, with nothing left but a laugh which
was somehow arranged rhythmically although very naturally done
-and the soloist especially showed great talent in giving it a
most deceptive vitality. At the renewal of his professional distance
from the audience he had recovered all his boldness again, and the
artificial laugh that he directed up towards the terrace was derisive.


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Even before the end of the articulate portion of the strophe, he
seemed to struggle against an irresistible tickling. He gulped, his
voice trembled, he pressed his hand over his mouth, he contorted
his shoulders; and at the proper moment the ungovernable laugh
broke out of him, burst into such real cackles that it was infectious
and communicated itself to the audience, so that on the terrace
also an unfounded hilarity, living off itself alone, started up.
But
this seemed to double the singer's exuberance. He bent his knees,
he slapped his thighs, he nearly split himself; he no longer laughed,
he shrieked. He pointed up with his finger, as though nothing
were more comic than the laughing guests there, and finally every
one in the garden and on the verandah was laughing, even to the
waiters, bell boys, and house-servants in the doorways.
Aschenbach was no longer resting in his chair; he sat upright
,
as if attempting to defend himself, or to escape. But the laughter,
the whiffs of the hospital smell, and the boy's nearness combined
to put him into a trance that held his mind and his senses hope-
lessly captive. In the general movement and distraction he ven-
tured to glance across at Tadzio, and as he did so he dared observe
that the boy, in reply to his glance, was equally serious, much as
though he had modelled his conduct and expression after those of
one man, and the prevalent mood had no effect on him since this
one man was not part of it. This portentous childish obedience
had something so disarming and overpowering about it that the
grey-haired man could hardly restrain himself from burying his
face in his hands. It had also seemed to him that Tadzio's occa.
sional stretching and quick breathing indicated a complaint
, a
congestion, of the lungs. “He is sickly, he will probably not grow
old,” he thought repeatedly with that positiveness which is often
a peculiar relief to desire and passion. And along with pure
tude he had a feeling of rakish gratification.
Meanwhile the Venetians had ended and were leaving. Applause
accompanied them, and their leader did not miss the opportunity
to cover his retreat with further jests. His bows, the kisses he
blew, were laughed at-and so he doubled them. When his com-
panions were already gone, he acted as though he had hurt himself
by backing into a lamp-post, and he crept through the gate seem-
ingly crippled with pain. Then he suddenly threw off the mask
of comic hard luck, stood upright, hurried away jauntily, stuck
out his tongue insolently at the guests on the terrace, and slipped
solici
E


THOMAS MANN
433
into the darkness. The company was breaking up; Tadzio had
been missing from the balustrade for some time. But, to the dis-
pleasure of the waiters, the lonely man sat for a long while over
the remains of his pomegranate drink. Night advanced. Time
was crumbling. In the house of his parents many years back there
had been an hour glass—of a sudden he saw the fragile and ex-
pressive instrument again, as though it were standing in front of
him. Fine and noiseless the rust-red sand was running through
the glass neck; and since it was getting low in the upper half, a
speedy little vortex had been formed there.
As early as the following day, in the afternoon, he had made
new progress in his obstinate baiting of the people he met-and
this time he had all possible success. He walked from the Piazza
of St Mark's into the English travelling bureau located there;
and after changing some money at the cash desk, he put on the
expression of a distrustful foreigner and launched his fatal ques-
tion at the attendant clerk. He was a Britisher; he wore a woollen
suit, and was still young, with close-set eyes, and had that char-
acteristic stolid reliability which is so peculiarly and strikingly
appealing in the tricky, nimble-witted South. He began, “No
reason for alarm, sir. A regulation without any serious significance. .
Such measures are often taken to anticipate the unhealthy effects
of the heat and the sirocco ... But as he raised his blue eyes,
he met the stare of the foreigner, a tired and somewhat unhappy
stare focussed on his lips with a touch of scorn. Then the English-
man blushed. “At least,” he continued in an emotional under-
tone, “that is the official explanation which people here are con-
tent to accept. I will admit that there is something more behind
it.” And then in his frank and leisurely manner he told the truth.
For several years now Indian cholera had shown a heightened
tendency to spread and migrate. Hatched in the warm swamps
of the Ganges delta, rising with the noxious breath of that lux-
uriant, unfit primitive world and island wilderness which is shunned
by humans and where the tiger crouches in the bamboo thickets,
the plague had raged continuously and with unusual strength in
Hindustan, had reached eastwards to China, westwards to Afghan-
istan and Persia, and following the chief caravan routes, had
carried its terrors to Astrachan, and even to Moscow. But while
Europe was trembling lest the spectre continue its advance from
there across the country, it had been transported over the sea by


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DEATH IN VENICE
Syrian merchantmen, and had turned up almost simultaneously
in several Mediterranean ports, had raised its head in Toulon and
Malaga, had showed its mask several times in Palermo and Naples,
and seemed permanently entrenched through Calabria and Apulia.
The north of the peninsula had been spared. Yet in the middle of
this May in Venice the frightful vibrions were found on one and
the same day in the blackish wasted bodies of a cabin boy and a
woman who sold greengroceries. The cases were kept secret. But
within a week there were ten, twenty, thirty more, and in various
sections. A man from the Austrian provinces who had made a
pleasure trip to Venice for a few days, returned to his home town
and died with unmistakable symptoms—and that is how the first
reports of the pestilence in the lagoon city got into the German
newspapers. The Venetian authorities answered that the city's
health conditions had never been better, and took the most neces-
sary preventive measures. But probably the food supply had been
infected. Denied and glossed over, death was eating its way along
the narrow streets, and its dissemination was especially favoured
by the premature summer heat which made the water of the canals
lukewarm. Yes, it seemed as though the plague had got renewed
strength, as though the tenacity and fruitfulness of its stimuli had
doubled. Cases of recovery were rare. Out of a hundred attacks,
eighty were fatal, and in the most horrible manner. For the plague
moved with utter savagery, and often showed that most dangerous
form, which is called "the drying.” Water from the blood vessels
collected in pockets, and the blood was unable to carry this off.
Within a few hours the victim was parched, his blood became as
thick as glue, and he stifled amid cramps and hoarse groans. Lucky
for him if, as sometimes happened, the attack took the form of a
light discomfiture followed by a profound coma from which he
seldom or never awakened. At the beginning of June the pest-
house of the Ospedale Civico had quietly filled; there was not much
room left in the two orphan asylums, and a frightfully active com-
merce was kept up between the wharf of the Fondamenta Nuove
and San Michele, the burial island. But there was the fear of a
general drop in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in the
public gardens was to be considered, along with the heavy losses
which in case of panic or unfavourable rumours, would threaten
business, the hotels, the entire elaborate system for exploiting for-
eigners—and as these considerations evidently carried more weight


THOMAS MANN
435
than love of truth or respect for international agreements, the city
authorities upheld obstinately their policy of silence and denial.
The chief health officer had resigned from his post in indignation,
and been promptly replaced by a more tractable personality.
The people knew this; and the corruption of their superiors, to-
gether with the predominating insecurity, the exceptional condition
into which the prevalence of death had plunged the city, induced
a certain demoralization of the lower classes, encouraging shady
and anti-social impulses which manifested themselves in licence,
profligacy, and a rising crime wave. Contrary to custom, many
drunkards were seen in the evenings; it was said that at night
nasty mobs made the streets unsafe. Burglaries and even murders
became frequent, for it had already been proved on two occasions
that persons who had presumably fallen victim to the plague
had in reality been dispatched with poison by their own relatives.
And professional debauchery assumed abnormal and obtrusive pro-
portions such as had never been known here before, and to an extent
which is usually found only in the southern parts of the country
and in the Orient.
The Englishman pronounced the final verdict on these facts.
"You would do well,” he concluded, “to leave to-day rather than
to-morrow. It cannot be much more than a couple of days before
a quarantine zone is declared.” “Thank you,” Aschenbach said,
and left the office.
The square lay sunless and stilling. Unsuspecting foreigners
sat in front of the cafés, or stood among the pigeons in front of
the church and watched the swarms of birds flapping their wings,
crowding one another, and pecking at grains of corn offered them
in open palms. The recluse was feverishly excited, triumphant in
his possession of the truth. But it had left him with a bad taste
in his mouth, and a weird horror in his heart. As he walked
up and down the flagstones of the gorgeous court he was weighing
an action which would meet the situation and would absolve him.
This evening after dinner he could approach the woman with the
pearls and make her a speech; he had figured it out word for word:
"Permit a foreigner, madam, to give you some useful advice, a
warning, which is being withheld from you through self-interest.
Leave immediately with Tadzio and your daughters! Venice is
full of the plague.” Then he could lay a farewell hand on the
head of this tool of a mocking divinity, turn away, and flee this


436
DEATH IN VENICE
morass. But he felt at the same time that he was very far from
seriously desiring such a move. He would retract it, would dis-
engage himself from it. . . . But when we are distracted we
loathe most the thought of retracing our steps. He recalled a
white building, ornamented with inscriptions which glistened in
the evening and in whose transparent mysticism his mind's eye
had lost itself—and then that strange wanderer's form which had
awakened in the aging man the roving hankerings of youth after the
foreign and the remote. And the thought of return, the thought
of prudence and soberness, effort, mastery, disgusted him to such
an extent that his face was distorted with an expression of physical
nausea. “It must be kept silent!” he whispered heavily. And:
“I will keep silent!” The consciousness of his share in the facts
and the guilt intoxicated him, much as a little wine intoxicates
a tired brain. The picture of the diseased and neglected city hov-
ering desolately before him aroused vague hopes beyond the bounds
of reason, but with an egregious sweetness. What was the scant
happiness he had dreamed of a moment ago, compared with these
expectations? What were art and virtue worth to him, over
against the advantages of chaos? He kept silent, and remained
in Venice.
This same night he had a frightful dream, if one can designate
as a dream a bodily and mental experience which occurred to him
in the deepest sleep, completely independent of him, and with a
physical realness, although he never saw himself present or moving
about among the incidents; but their stage rather was his soul
itself, and they broke in from without, trampling down his resist-
ance-a profound and spiritual resistance—by sheer force; and
when they had passed through, they left his substance, the culture
of his lifetime, crushed and annihilated behind them.
It began with anguish, anguish and desire, and a frightened
curiosity as to what was coming. It was night, and his senses were
on the watch. From far off a grumble, an uproar, was approach-
ing, a jumble of noises. Clanking, blaring, and dull thunder, with
shrill shouts and a definite whine in a long drawn out u-sound-
all this was sweetly, ominously interspersed and dominated by the
deep cooing of wickedly persistent flutes which charmed the bowels
in a shamelessly penetrative manner. But he knew one word; it
was veiled, and yet would name what was approaching: “The
foreign god!” Vaporous fire began to glow; then he recognized


THOMAS MANN
437
mountains like those about his summer house. And in the scattered
light, from high up in the woods, among tree trunks and crumbling
moss-grown rocks-people, beasts, a throng, a raging mob plunged
twisting and whirling downwards, and made the hill swarm with
bodies, flames, tumult, and a riotous round dance.
Women,
tripped by over-long fur draperies which hung from their waists,
were holding up tambourines and beating on them, their groaning
heads flung back. Others swung sparking firebrands and bare
daggers, or wore hissing snakes about the middle of their bodies,
or shrieking held their breasts in their two hands. Men with
horns on their foreheads, shaggy-haired, girded with hides, bent
back their necks and raised their arms and thighs, clashed brass
cymbals and beat furiously at kettledrums, while smooth boys
prodded he-goats with wreathed sticks, climbing on their horns
and falling off with shouts when they bounded. And the bacchantes
wailed the word with the soft consonants and the drawn out u-sound,
at once sweet and savage, like nothing ever heard before. In one
place it rang out as though piped into the air by stags, and it was
echoed in another by many voices, in wild triumph—with it they
incited one another to dance and to Aing out their arms and legs,
and it was never silent. But everything was pierced and dom-
inated by the deep coaxing flute. He who was fighting against
this experience—did it not coax him too with its shameless penetra-
tion, into the feast and the excesses of the extreme sacrifice? His
repugnance, his fear, were keen—he was honourably set on defend-
ing himself to the very last against the barbarian, the foe to intel-
lectual poise and dignity. But the noise, the howling, multiplied
by the resonant walls of the hills, grew, took the upper hand,
swelled to a fury of rapture. Odours oppressed the senses, the
pungent smell of the bucks, the scent of moist bodies, and a waft
of stagnant water, with another smell, something familiar, the
smell of wounds and prevalent disease. At the beating of the
drum his heart fluttered, his head was spinning, he was caught in
a frenzy, in a blinding deafening lewdness—and he yearned to
join the ranks of the god. The obscene symbol, huge, wooden, was
uncovered and raised up; then they howled the magic word with
more abandon. Foaming at the mouth, they raged, teased one
another with ruttish gestures and caressing hands; laughing and
groaning, they stuck the goads into one another's flesh and
licked the blood from their limbs. But the dreamer now was with


438
DEATH IN VENICE
them, in them, and he belonged to the foreign god. Yes, they were
he himself, as they hurled themselves biting and tearing upon the
animals, got entangled in steaming rags, and fell in promiscuous
unions on the torn moss, in sacrifice to their god. And his soul
tasted the unchastity and fury of decay.
When he awakened from the affliction of this dream he was un-
nerved, shattered, and hopelessly under the power of the demon.
He no longer avoided the inquisitive glances of other people; he
did not care if he was exciting their suspicions. And as a matter of
fact they were fleeing, travelling elsewhere. Numerous bathing
houses stood empty, the occupants of the dining-hall became more
and more scattered, and in the city now one rarely saw a foreigner.
The truth seemed to have leaked out; the panic, despite the reticence
of those whose interests were involved, seemed no longer avoidable.
But the woman with the pearls remained with her family, either
because the rumours had not yet reached her, or because she was
too proud and fearless to heed them. Tadzio remained. And to
Aschenbach, in his infatuation, it seemed at times as though flight
and death might remove all the disturbing elements of life around
them, and he stay here alone with the boy. Yes, by the sea in the
forenoon when his eyes rested heavily, irresponsibly, unwaver-
ingly on the thing he coveted, or when, as the day was ending, he
followed shamelessly after him through streets where the hideous
death lurked in secret-at such times the atrocious seemed to him
rich in possibilities, and laws of morality had dropped away.
Like any lover, he wanted to please; and he felt a bitter anguis
lest it might not be possible. He added bright youthful details to
his dress, he put on jewels, and used perfumes. During the day
he often spent much time over his toilet, and came to the table
strikingly dressed, excited, and in suspense. In the light of the
sweet youthfulness which had done this to him, he detested his
aging body. The sight of his grey hair, his sharp features, plunged
him into shame and hopelessness. It induced him to attempt re-
juvenating his body and appearance. He often visited the hotel
barber.
Beneath the barber's apron, leaning back in the chair under the
gossiper's expert hands, he winced to observe his reflection in the
mirror.
“Grey,” he said, making a wry face.
“A little," the man answered. “Due entirely to a slight neglect,


THOMAS MANN
439
an indifference to outward things, which is conceivable in people
of importance, but it is not exactly praiseworthy. And all the
less so since such persons are above prejudice in matters of nature
or art. If the moral objections of certain people to the art of
cosmetics were to be logically extended to the care of the teeth,
they would give no slight offence. And after all, we are just
as old as we feel, and under some circumstances grey hair would
actually stand for more of an untruth than the despised correction.
In your case, sir, you are entitled to the natural colour of your hair.
Will you permit me simply to return what belongs to you?”
"How is that?” Aschenbach asked.
Then the orator washed his client's hair with two kinds of water,
one clear and one dark, and it was as black as in youth. Following
this, he curled it with irons into soft waves, stepped back, and
eyed his work.
"All that is left now,” he said, "would be to freshen up the skin
a little.”
And like someone who cannot finish, cannot satisfy himself, he
passed with quickening energy from one manipulation to another.
Aschenbach rested comfortably, incapable of resistance, or rather
his hopes aroused by what was taking place. In the glass he saw
his brows arch more evenly and decisively. His eyes became
longer; their brilliance was heightened by a light touching-up of
the lids. A little lower, where the skin had been a leatherish brown,
he saw a delicate crimson tint grow beneath a deft application of
colour. His lips, bloodless a little while past, became full, and as
red as raspberries. The furrows in the cheeks and about the mouth,
the wrinkles of the eyes, disappeared beneath lotions and cream.
With a knocking heart he beheld a blossoming youth. Finally
the beauty specialist declared himself content, after the manner of
such people, by obsequiously thanking the man he had been serving.
“A trifling assistance,” he said, as he applied one parting touch.
"Now the gentleman can fall in love unhesitatingly.” He walked
away, fascinated; he was happy as in a dream, timid and be-
wildered. His necktie was red, his broad-brimmed straw hat was
trimmed with a variegated band.
A tepid storm wind had risen. It was raining sparsely and at
intervals, but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell
of things rotting. All around him he heard a fluttering, pattering,
and swishing; and under the fever of his cosmetics it seemed to him


440
DEATH IN VENICE
as though evil wind-spirits were haunting the place, impure sea
birds which rooted and gnawed at the food of the condemned
and befouled it with their droppings. For the sultriness destroyed
his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself that the foods were
poisoned with contaminating substances. Tracking the boy one
afternoon, Aschenbach had plunged deep into the tangled centre
of the diseased city. He was becoming uncertain of where he was,
since the alleys, waterways, bridges, and little squares of the
labyrinth were all so much alike, and he was no longer even sure
of directions. He was absorbed with the problem of keeping the
pursued figure in sight. And, driven to disgraceful subterfuges,
flattening himself against walls, hiding behind the backs of other
people, for a long time he did not notice the weariness, the ex-
haustion, with which emotion and the continual suspense had taxed
his mind and his body. Tadzio walked behind his companions.
He always allowed the governess and the nunlike sisters to precede
him in the narrow places; and loitering behind alone, he would
turn his head occasionally to look over his shoulder and make sure
by a glance of his peculiarly dark-grey eyes that his admirer was
following. He saw him, and did not betray him. Drunk with the
knowledge of this, lured forward by those eyes, led meekly by his
passion, the lover stole after his unseemly hope—but finally he
was cheated and lost sight of him. The Poles had crossed a short
arching bridge; the height of the curve hid them from the
pur-
suer, and when he himself had arrived there he no longer saw
them. He hunted for them vainly in three directions, straight
ahead and to either side along the narrow dirty wharf. In the end
he was so tired and unnerved that he had to give up the search.
His head was on fire, his body was covered with a sticky sweat,
his knees trembled. He could no longer endure the thirst that
was torturing him, and he looked around for some immediate
relief. From a little vegetable store he bought some fruit-straw-
berries, soft and overly ripe—and he ate them as he walked. A
very charming, forsaken little square opened up before him. He
recognized it; here he had made his frustrated plans for flight
weeks ago. He let himself sink down on the steps of the cistern
in the middle of the square, and laid his head against the stone
cylinder. It was quiet; grass was growing up through the pave
ment; refuse was scattered about. Among the weather-beaten,
unusually tall houses surrounding him there was one like a palace,


THOMAS MANN
441
with little lion-covered balconies, and Gothic windows with blank
emptiness behind them. On the ground floor of another house
was a .
drug store. Warm gusts of wind occasionally carried the
smell of carbolic acid.
He sat there, he, the master, the artist of dignity, the author of
The Wretch, a work which had, in such accurate symbols, renounced
vagabondage and the depths of misery, had denied all sympathy
with the engulfed, and had cast out the outcast; the man who
had arrived and, victor over his own knowledge, had outgrown all
irony and acclimatized himself to the obligations of public confi-
dence; whose reputation was official, whose name had been knighted,
and on whose style boys were urged to pattern themselves—he sat
there. His eyelids were shut; only now and then a mocking uneasy
side-glance slipped out from beneath them. And his loose lips,
set off by the cosmetics, formed isolated words of the strange
dream-logic created by his half-slumbering brain.
“For beauty, Phaedrus, mark me, beauty alone is both divine
and visible at once; and thus it is the road of the sensuous; it is,
little Phaedrus, the road of the artist to the spiritual. But do you
now believe, my dear, that they can ever attain wisdom and true
human dignity for whom the road to the spiritual leads through
the senses? Or do you believe rather (I leave the choice to you)
that this is a pleasant but perilous road, a really wrong and sinful
road, which necessarily leads astray? For you must know that we
poets cannot take the road of beauty without having Eros join
us and set himself up as our leader. Indeed, we may even be heroes
after our fashion, and hardened warriors, though we be like women,
for passion is our exaltation, and our desire must remain love
that is our pleasure and our disgrace. You now see, do you not,
that we poets cannot be wise and dignified? That we necessarily
go astray, necessarily remain lascivious, and adventurers in emo-
tion? The mastery of our style is all lies and foolishness, our
renown and honour are a farce, the confidence of the masses
in us is highly ridiculous, and the training of the public and
of youth through art is a precarious undertaking which should be
forbidden. For how indeed could he be a fit instructor who is
born with a natural leaning towards the precipice? We might
well disavow it and reach after dignity, but wherever we turn
it attracts us. Let us, say, renounce the dissolvent of knowledge,
since knowledge, Phaedrus, has no dignity or strength. It is aware,


442
DEATH IN VENICE
it understands and pardons, but without reserve and form. It
feels sympathy with the precipice, it is the precipice. This then
we abandon with firmness, and from now on our efforts matter
only by their yield of beauty, or in other words, simplicity, great-
ness, and new rigour, form, and a second type of openness. But
form and openness, Phaedrus, lead to intoxication and to desire,
lead the noble perhaps into sinister revels of emotion which his own
beautiful rigour rejects as infamous, lead to the precipice, yes they
too lead to the precipice. They lead us poets there, I say, since we
cannot force ourselves, since we can merely let ourselves out. And
now I am going, Phaedrus. You stay here; and when you no
longer see me, then you go too.”
A few days later, as Gustav von Aschenbach was not feeling
well, he left the beach hotel at a later hour in the morning than
usual. He had to fight against certain attacks of vertigo which
were only partially physical and were accompanied by a pro-
nounced malaise, a feeling of bafflement and hopelessness—while
he was not certain whether this had to do with conditions outside
him or with his own nature. In the lobby he noticed a large pile
of luggage ready for shipment; he asked the door-keeper who it was
that was leaving, and heard in answer the Polish title which he had
learned secretly. He accepted this without any alteration of his
sunken features, with that curt elevation of the head by which one
acknowledges something he does not need to know. Then he asked,
“When?” The answer was, “After lunch.” He nodded, and
went to the beach.
It was not very inviting. Rippling patches of rain retreated
across the wide flat water separating the beach from the first
long sand-bank. An air of autumn, of things past their prime,
seemed to lie over the pleasure spot which had once been so alive
with colour and was now almost abandoned. The sand was no
longer kept clean. A camera, seemingly without an owner, stood
on its tripod by the edge of the sea; and a black cloth thrown over
it was flapping noisily in the wind.
Tadzio, with the three or four companions still left, was moving
about to the right in front of his family's cabin. And midway
between the sea and the row of bathing houses, lying back in his
chair with a robe over his knees, Aschenbach looked at him once
more. The game, which was not being supervised since the women


THOMAS MANN
443
were probably occupied with preparations for the journey, seemed
to have no rules, and it was degenerating. The stocky boy with
the sleek black hair who was called Jaschu had been angered and
blinded by sand flung in his face. He forced Tadzio into a wrestling
match which quickly ended in the fall of the beauty, who was
weaker. But as though in the hour of parting the servile feelings
of the inferior had turned to merciless brutality and were trying
to get vengeance for a long period of slavery, the victor did not
let go of the boy underneath, but knelt on his back and pressed
his face so persistently into the sand that Tadzio, already breathless
from the struggle, was in danger of strangling. His attempts to
shake off the weight were fitful; for moments they stopped entirely
and were resumed again as mere twitchings. Enraged, Aschenbach
was about to spring to the rescue, when the torturer finally released
his victim. Tadzio, very pale, raised himself halfway and sat
motionless for several minutes, resting on one arm, with rumpled
hair and glowering eyes. Then he stood up completely, and moved
slowly away. They called him, cheerfully at first, then anxiously
and imploringly; he did not listen. The swarthy boy, who seemed
to regret his excesses immediately afterwards, caught up with him
and tried to placate him. A movement of the shoulder put him at
his distance. Tadzio went down obliquely to the water. He was
barefoot, and wore his striped linen suit with the red bow.
He lingered on the edge of the water with his head down,
drawing figures in the wet sand with one toe; then he went into
the shallows, which did not cover his knees in the deepest place,
crossed them leisurely, and arrived at the sand-bank. He stood
there a moment, his face turned to the open sea; soon after, he
began stepping slowly to the left along the narrow stretch of
exposed ground. Separated from the mainland by the expanse of
water, separated from his companions by a proud moodiness, he
moved along, a strongly isolated and unrelated figure with flutter-
ing hair—placed out there in the sea, the wind, against the vague
mists. He stopped once more to look around. And suddenly, as
though at some recollection, some impulse, with one hand on his
hip he turned the upper part of his body in a beautiful twist which
began from the base—and he looked over his shoulder towards the
shore. The watcher sat there, as he had sat once before when for
the first time these twilight-grey eyes had turned at the doorway
and met his own. His head, against the back of the chair, had


444
LULLABY
slowly followed the movements of the boy walking yonder. Now,
simultaneously with this glance it rose and sank on his breast,
so that his eyes looked out from underneath, while his face took on
the loose, inwardly relaxed expression of deep sleep. But it seemed
to him as though the pale and lovely lure out there were smiling
to him, nodding to him; as though, removing his hand from his
hip, he were signalling to come out, were vaguely guiding towards
egregious promises. And, as often before, he stood up to follow
him.
Some minutes passed before any one hurried to the aid of the
man who had collapsed into one corner of his chair. He was
brought to his room. And on the same day a respectfully shocked
world received the news of his death.
The End
LULLABY
BY JOHN COWPER POWYS
So the boughs tap on the door you've shut,
In the darkness shaking?
So the drops drip from the water-butt,
Like a heart that's breaking?
Comb your hair till it's smooth and neat,
Blow out the candle, fold your gown,
Shroud yourself in your cold cold sheet
And lay you down.
Let the trees moan, let the drops fall-
When a man's love is dead
A girl must turn her face to the wall,
Away from him, away from all,
With a sheet about her head!



ni
LA PROMENADE EN VOITURE.
BY HERMINE DAVID






睡
​15
有
​A PARIS WINDOW.
BY HERMINE DAVID






04
mm
LA TERRACE.
BY HERMINE DAVID





ROMAIN ROLLAND AFTER THE WAR
BY STEFAN ZWEIG
THE
HE heroes of Romain Rolland's novels are never really
isolated figures. His true subject is always a collectivity, an
entire generation. So that Rolland, like Balzac and Zola among
his predecessors, like Marcel Proust and Martin du Gard among his
successors, needs more than one of the traditionally novel-lengthed
volumes to express such powerful visions. He always needs a cycle
to encompass a whole life-process, which is what the Greek word
cycle itself signifies. His first attempt was in the drama. Twenty
years ago he wanted to write ten tragedies depicting the French
Revolution in its rise, crisis, and fall; he wanted to grasp as a
single unit that entire generation, with all the ideas and con-
tradictions in character which it manifested from 1792 until the
triumph of Napoleon. This Théâtre de la Révolution was never
completed. But he did finish Jean Christophe: the story of a differ-
ent generation, one contemporaneous to him and already past his-
tory for us who are younger, the generation of Germany and France
between the two wars of 1870 and 1914. And history has shown
how accurately by this choice of theme he has touched on the most
burning problem of our age, the European problem. During the
war he devoted himself more to the times and its ills than to
matters of art and form. And it is only now, after laying down in
art, as it were, the tragic realization of those war years, that he
returns with a vast new novel cycle. It is called L’Ame
Enchantée, and the first volume, Annette et Sylvie, has just
appeared.
But the artist merely seems to alter his problems: in reality every
poet retains some one fundamental problem which moves him and
which he develops again and again in changing forms, under chang-
ing circumstances, by what are apparently contradictory figures.
In all his works, both the artistic and the polemical, Rolland's
fundamental problem remains the same: the problem of the free
man, the homme libre, who holds his ego, his personality, his self-
earned beliefs staunchly in opposition to the world, the times, and


446
ROMAIN ROLLAND AFTER THE WAR
mankind. To preserve one's freedom, in Rolland's sense, is to
fight unceasingly against the world; and to suffer for such freedom
without relinquishing it constitutes for him the only genuine
heroism on earth. The men of the Revolution fight for their
freedom as for their personal ideas, so that each is victorious after
his own manner, Danton differently from Robespierre, Saint-Just,
or Marat. They seem to be enemies of one another, and they are
enemies, since each wants to misuse his personal idea of freedom to
enslave the others; they fall, each a victim of the world and each
a victor in his own cause. Similarly Jean Christophe struggles for
freedom in the sphere of art, Olivier for freedom in the sphere of
justice; and even that seemingly quite ordinary middle-class Colas
Breugnon finds his strength solely in the feeling of his inde-
pendence from princes and counts, from poverty and fate, through
an inner stability, through the clarity and genuineness of his nature.
Again, Clerambault fights for the independence of his idea of
humanity over against the militaristic madness of a whole epoch;
he too triumphs, though despised and conquered, for he remains
l'un contre tous, the one against the many, the eternal rebel, like
all harbingers and prophets. For some deep revolutionary vein is
common to all Rolland's heroes.
This motif of inner freedom is also the theme of Romain Rol-
land's new novel. This time however it is not a man who is fight-
ing for freedom, but a free woman, the representative of a new
coming era whose destiny bears upon our own time, upon the world
war, and beyond it to the present hour. Jean Christophe dies
before the war; his character was a presentiment and a prophecy of
the frightful catastrophe. His friendship with Olivier was almost
a philosophic attempt to keep the two countries Germany and
France united in affection. The heroine of this new novel no
longer lives under a clouded sky with lightning flashes in the
distance, but in the midst of the storm, in the tumbling chaos of
Europe.
A woman's battle for freedom must necessarily be different from
a man's. The man has his work, some belief, conviction, or idea, to
defend against the world. The woman defends herself, her life,
her mind, her feelings, defends them against unseen powers, against
cupidity, against custom, against the invisible restrictions which are
opposed to her free development in this civilized, moralistic, and
Christian world. Thus, the problem contains unsuspected


STEFAN ZWEIG
447
potentialities; it is more intimate, to be sure, but this does not
make a simple, nameless, anonymous woman's struggle in defence
of her personality any the less important than that of the artist
defending some work, the politician some idea, the scientist some
conviction.
Only the first volume, Annette et Sylvie, the prelude to this
massively proportioned work, has appeared at present. It is like
a delicate andante which is frequently interrupted by a gentle
scherzo. But towards the end we already feel the approach, the
rumbling clash of passionate excitement, the tragic ascent into the
profoundly symphonic (for like all his works, this great novel of
Romain Rolland's is built on musical principles). Annette, who
is a good, middle-class girl, intact and mediocre, learns after the
death of her father that he has left an illegitimate daughter, in
poor circumstances. More from an instinctive curiosity, but also
from a feeling of duty, she decides to visit her. In this she has
already destroyed an initial restriction, an invisible law which
was shackling her. Almost unconsciously, she has made her first
step towards freedom. In Sylvie she becomes acquainted with a
new form of freedom; not the noblest form, but yet the very pure,
clear, spontaneous freedom of the submerged proletarian classes.
The young girl does as she likes, gives herself to a lover if she is
so inclined; she lives outside of society, and thus has the natural
security of an almost animal existence; she is cheerful, carefree,
with unhampered impulses, open in her speech, untroubled in her
actions. All this is foreign to the middle-class girl, but alluring.
Magically attracted by this new element of freedom, she comes
nearer to her sister, who refuses with a sure instinct to be trans-
planted into a bourgeois atmosphere; and from this first contact
Annette, despite all rivalries and petty conflicts, becomes aware of
what a vast possession freedom is. And when a young man with
whom she is in love, of bourgeois family, approaches her and wants
to marry her in the usual bourgeois fashion and make her his life
companion, some deep presentiment warns her that this entering
into marriage would also be a loss of the precious thing which she
has just been on the verge of grasping-namely, her personal free-
dom. She discusses this with her fiancé, and asks him whether he
is willing, after marriage, to leave her a part of her nature, the
most secret and intangible part, her freedom; he must not ask her
to subject herself completely and without reserve to his will.


448
ROMAIN ROLLAND AFTER THE WAR
“This desire, the most profound yearning of my life, is probably
not easy to express," she tells him, “because it is not precise enough
and is too far-reaching. It has to do with a right demanded by
the living soul, the right to develop, to change.” She requires
that some ultimate part of herself must not become subordinate to
him, not be lost completely in the solidarity of marriage. Here we
are strongly reminded of Goethe's remarkable epigram, written in
one of his letters: “My heart is an open city which any one can
enter; but somewhere inside there is a closed citadel, and here no
one dare penetrate." This citadel, this last mysterious reach of
her freedom, she wishes to preserve in order to be true to her love in
a higher sense than in the disintegration and surrender demanded
by marriage. Now the fiancé, completely entangled in his
bourgeois attitudes, misunderstands this yearning, and thinks (since
he has no feeling for the profoundest elements of love) that she
does not love him. So the engagement is broken; but after it is
broken she shows in a wonderful and truly heroic manner that if
she cannot give her soul completely to the man she loves, she can
give her body. She abandons herself to him in the flesh, and then
leaves him; he is perplexed, for it is the tragedy of mediocrity that
it cannot understand greatness. Here a most daring step has been
taken, away from the bourgeois world and into a free, bold
existence of her own. She has given up the quiet secure world
which she was accustomed to, and must now go her way through
the world alone or even more than alone, for the fruits of that
surrender is a child, an illegitimate child, which she must now lead
beside her in the struggle for herself, for the truest, most essential
part of her life.
Rolland takes his heroine through this first step in the prelude,
Annette et Sylvie. Psychologically, in the delicacy of feeling, the
fineness of the transitions, this work is equal to the best volumes
of Jean Christophe. But so far it still lacks that richness of char-
acterization which gives his other novels their sea roar, their cur-
rent and fulness, their symphonies. It is only a promise, an open-
ing chord, a single incident. And the next volumes, presumably,
will bring with them that plastic fulness which differentiates Rol-
land's novels so gratifyingly from the psychological monographs
of most contemporary writers.



DRESSING-ROOM.
Property of Jack Tarcher
BY JAMES CHAPIN





PARIS LETTER
April, 1924
Tiete
THIS very month of December will have deprived French
letters of Barrès and Raymond Radiguet. We burn our
life at both ends. Here, we had a national funeral; there, a modest
interment followed by a few friends. Death fell on both extremes,
and the most tragic stroke was not the one against the man of
sixty, who had already given us all the fruit of his labours.
I had not seen Barrès since the beginning of the summer; and
at the time of our last meeting (when he brought to light some
very curious memories of Oscar Wilde and his last stay in Paris)
I found him troubled about his health and future. Behind a con-
ventional smile, I detected the anguish which made him so much
resemble Pascal on his death-bed. “I begin to feel pressed by
time,” he said about this period. And he wrote also to Derème:
“I am surfeited with myself, and have ceased to take any interest
in my ways of feeling, which no longer give me anything but
annoyance, and which have imprisoned me for sixty years."
His ways of feeling! Le Culte du Moi, 1889; the first egotist
novels, Sous l'Oeil des Barbares, Un Homme Libre!, L'Ennemi
des Lois; all those early books which he renounced so soon, how
obviously they belonged to the generation preceding ours, and
how much we found them still to our taste. His name was
resounding the day I was born. Indeed they were responsible for
a good portion of the pleasure we found in the works of Gide: Les
Cahiers d'André Walter, Le Voyage d’Urien, and Paludes !
All the so-called constructive work of Barrès before the war
and concerning the war, which he put above everything, has never
satisfied us.
In it we never found the strange and nervous grace
of his first books, that nihilism curbed by the purest of form. The
stern method of audacious thinking for which he had searched as
far afield as Ignatius de Loyola, in order to place it at the service of
liberty and even anarchy, delighted us. (“Toute licence," he
wrote then, "sauf contre l'amour.”)
When La Plume opened its Enquête sur l’Anarchie, Barrès
cited Kropotkin and declared truth could be found only in a moral-


450
PARIS LETTER
ity without obligation or sanction, an assertion which enraptured
every adolescent. But he failed to make his life conform to these
principles. Once he was well mixed up in politics, his work, Les
Frontières de l'Est, La Colline Inspirée, Le Jardin sur l’Oronte,
Le Génie du Rhin, became artificial, and though always marked
by the extreme intelligence and distinction of his mind, receded
farther and farther from the qualities which had first captivated
us. We did not withdraw our literary admiration from him, but
our faith. I wrote quite baldly, in 1921, in the N.R.F., that it was
depressing to see so disciplined a mind coming to a stop in moral
conclusions which contradicted its own enunciated principles. I
met him later, and he did not take me to task. We found a neutral
meeting place in other subjects. But it was only a relative under-
standing.
Barrès once said: “I am from Lorraine, but it is more than likely
that if one looked farther back for my family he would find it
originating among Jews from the Midi.” In this connexion one
may well quote from his L'Ennemi des Lois: "These Jews, excluded
from feudalism and from the legal systems preceding our time,
retain none of their prejudices. ... They are totally preoccupied
with the distinction between the possible and the impossible. They
weigh forces. Thus they escape the larger part of our occasions
for error. Hence their logical faculty, and their marvellous dex-
terity in the conduct of life; hence also, on another side, their
dominant rôle in the psychical revolution which is preparing.”
Barrès was a pure intellectual, a hero and a victim of reason
and sensuality. There lay his triumph and his limitation. A
dilettante casting himself into politics and action by an excess of
will, for thirty years he warped his life and a part of his work.
He was an essayist and an admirable manipulator of ideas. "In
politics,” the socialist paper L'Humanité wrote of Barrès just
before his death, "he has not created a party, any more than in
literature new images or characters.” Certainly Barrès was neither
a novelist nor a poet. His was a very old and exquisite spirit.
Nevertheless, this fragile thinker will remain one of the rarest and
most delicate French links connecting the nineteenth century with
that hard, affirmative, and brutal one we now find ourselves in,
for which he was never intended.
I have already spoken in The Dial of Radiguet, in connexion
with his first novel, Le Diable au Corps, which received last year


PAUL MORAND
451
Le Prix du Nouveau Monde. Dying at twenty, Radiguet leaves
an unpublished novel, Le Bal du Comte d'Orgel, and several
slender volumes of poems. I met him just after the war at a ball
at Poiret's. It was a fourteenth of July night; Poiret had opened
his great chests full of coloured wigs, magician's robes, and bizarre
ornaments, and each of us after arraying himself in these, walked
about dancing and singing, under the influence of an intoxication
at once patriotic and dionysiac. I was struck by the taciturn pose
of a figure of Kwanon, disguising a boy of seventeen, who regarded
us with a frozen and scornful smile. I asked Cécile Sorel his name.
It was Radiguet. This extraordinary little person lived his life in
three years with an unheard-of intensity. But his soul preceded
his body. At the point where the latter was celebrating youth with
excess, the former had already arrived at sureness and repose. Sur-
rounded by Cocteau, Picasso, Brancusi, the Six Musicians, the fol-
lowers of Apollinaire, the Dadaists, all those whom the troubled
after-war days numbered as Seekers and Innovators, Radiguet never
for a moment allowed himself to be influenced. He had nothing
but contempt for all this agitation, and from the start discovered
his literary formula in a direction the opposite of theirs. He stuck
to the position which he had taken up beside Stendhal and Mal-
herbe without renouncing one of our concentrated exasperations,
the conquests and audacities of our age. But touching form, sacri-
lege became repugnant to him; the more so because at bottom he
was profoundly influenced by Rimbaud. None of the younger
writers discovered himself more completely than he in the glow of
Les Illuminations; but when he took up the pen, all the frenzies,
all the uncontrolled elements of violence, crystallized in a perfect
poem or an ordered novel, in which the graces of the first half of the
seventeenth century were mingled with the austerities of the second.
He came to the end of his life well in advance of the Age, whose
tired wings could barely follow him. Even with such slight
literary baggage, and with his life so soon cut short, Radiguet,
more than any other victim of that sincerity to which all our young
writers lay claim, will have an important place in the years 1918-
1924, significant years in the history of the tragic sense of life,
as Unamuno would say, the one thing after all which counts in
literature.
PAUL MORAND


BOOK REVIEWS
E. M. FORSTER
HOWARDS END. By E. M. Forster. 12mo. 293
pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50.
PHAROS AND PHARILLON. By E. M. Forster. 12mo.
119 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50.
THE CELESTIAL OMNIBUS AND OTHER STORIES. By
E.M.Forster. 12mo. 164 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.
F POLITE. and distinguished is the solitude of Mr Forster in
the clatter of English letters. Within its security he stands
alone, no giant prophet in a wilderness, not even a chef d'école,
but urbanely, tranquilly, unmistakably unique. His solitary
figure evokes (does it?) one of those discreetly elegant little houses
lingering still on the outward fringes of London, modest country
manors hardly a century ago, but encompassed now and for ever-
more by the hosts of, it is said, desirable villas. O and alas! All
too obviously are those villas kept in touch with the conveniences
of a metropolis by clanging tram-cars and scarlet buses, and,
spiritually, by all the communistical apparatus of gramophones
and broadcasting and circulating libraries. But somehow, in the
general and miserable barbarism, the Forsterian manor remains
inviolate, tinged perhaps with the delicately regretful melancholy
of the virgin, but self-possessed, integral, and in the best sense
familiar. Passing within, one is aware that here at least, behind
those curving bay-windows, there live books which will never
return strapped and ticketed to their library, and music that is
still played (yes) by hand, that it is still possible in summer to
take one's tea (China, of course) outside under the Araucaria, and
look southward towards Surrey and the Dorking Gap. Here the
Times brings its news of the encroaching world and the tiny
Auctuations of the more gilt-edged stocks; and although one cannot


HAMISH MILES
453
help being aware of these tram-cars lunging past on the roadway
outside, even their roar is held back from a too damaging irrup-
tion into the Schumann sonatas, or, when the rector calls, the tea-
table talk of the parish, or the plans for Easter at Assisi, by that
lofty wall, topped with sherds of broken glass, which Grandfather
so far-sightedly had strengthened and heightened, about the year
of the Great Exhibition.
But the peculiar and endearing virtue of Mr Forster is simply
this: that he is consummately civilized.
Alarming enigma! So far is this quality to seek among our
novelists, that the fact of its existence has confounded half of
Mr Forster's critics, however much it has delighted his inarticulate
admirers. Only watch his reviewers: with what anxious enthu-
siasm they have hastened to heap upon his slightly deprecating
figure the very dearest jewels of their little thesaurus: charm,
of course, and subtlety and insight, a beauty wild and strange,
and wit—and a hundred more have been proffered. In vain. The
enigma remains. When we feel that a writer is being adequately
served by the bestowal of these amiable, decorative comments,
we may wonder whether the bedizened one is anything more than
a nine-days' marvel. But when (the case is rarer) their apt pro-
fusion leaves him still naked and unexplained, may we not be
fairly certain that the content of his writing is of some stuff
richer than at first sight appears?
For Mr Forster's work, I would make that claim. Epithets
leave it undescribed. Admittedly: no giant, no innovator, no
But the fact remains that somehow—by virtue, I would
urge, of the peculiarly civilized quality pervading all his work
---Mr Forster is left standing alone among the English writers of
our generation. Observe that none of the superficialities or voguish
manners of "civilized” writing are here in question at all. The
virtue of Mr Forster is no painstaking sophistication of wit or
intellect. Nor is it the elaborated urbanity of a Beerbohm. It
is neither exotic nor saugrenu. It rests never on any glyptic
cunning in words: on the contrary, his style is simple and direct
with the trim, intuitive precision of Jane Austen. Its roots are
deeper, springing from an intrinsic richness of human experience,
a delicate sensibility to humane values.
The critical key, I think, is hidden in Howards End Hardly
seer.


454
E. M. FORSTER
hidden, perhaps; for one guiding phrase stands as motto to that
rarely accomplished example of the modern novel. But Howards
End contains so much of the essential quality of Mr Forster's
work that its own clue is bound, to some extent, to guide one also
through his writings as a whole. Recall the phrase in question:
Margaret Schlegel is determined to find her way to Henry Wilcox,
and make him find her; and “it was hard-going in the roads of
Mr Wilcox's soul”:
“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift
of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent
in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That
was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the
passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen
at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and
the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either,
will die.
“Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the
form of a good 'talking.' By quiet indications the bridge would
be built and span their lives with beauty."
Only connect!
It is this idea which alone can produce, out of long conflict of
elements, that rare amalgam of inward and outward experience
of which the truly integral and civilized life must after all be
composed. It is the grand negation of all the cheap, ready-made,
"outlined,” standardized "culture” of our age (recall, in this
novel too, the victim of that, the pitiable character of the clerkling,
Leonard Bast). And in it lies the secret of that unity of vision
and coherence of beauty which mark indubitably the creations of
the true artist in writing, which are, as I believe, the assay-marks
of Mr Forster's peculiar virtue, a developed consistency of temper
and sensibility
In other passages too he has brought out its implications. Earlier
in Howards End, for instance, comes an allied passage which, par-
ticularly with regard to another branch of his imaginative work,
is illuminating:
"To Margaret this Couter) life was to remain a real force.


HAMISH MILES
455
She could not despise it, as Helen and Tibby affected to do. It
fostered such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues
of the second rank, no doubt, but they had formed our civilization.
They form character, too; Margaret could not doubt it: they keep
the soul from becoming sloppy. How dare Schlegels despise
Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world?
“ 'Don't brood too much,' she wrote to Helen, ‘on the superiority
of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is medieval.
Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them.''
And in the half-dozen stories which make up The Celestial
Omnibus, the seen and the unseen, gentlemen and demigods, are
merged with a certainty and cunning of touch that leaves Mr
Forster, with this one volume (plus a single story, The Song of the
Siren, published separately) almost unrivalled in the genre. It is
needless to comment on them. In themselves, they are complete
and self-explanatory. They spring from a rare intimacy with
that great pagan emotion which was too suddenly stilled when
Thamus the mariner heard, over the Aegean, the false cry that a
god was dead. In essence, they are more than the neat triflings
of a story-writer with a taste for classical mythology; it would be
wrong to be deceived by their air of polite and humorous detach-
ment. “How suddenly,” said Nietzsche, “the wilderness of our
exhausted culture changes when the Dionysian magic touches it!
A hurricane seizes all that is decrepit and decaying, collapsed and
stunted-wraps it whirling into a red cloud of dust, and carries it
like a vulture into the air ..." And so on, tumultuously. In
the sudden clarity of the “Dionysian magic,” Nietzsche found the
birth of Tragedy: in the touch of Pan upon the staleness and
lethargy of our etiolated modern minds, Mr Forster has seen a
birth of finer life and deeper understanding. Thank God, he is
far too agreeable a writer to say so, heavily, there, like that: but
the best of his stories slip almost imperceptibly into one's con-
sciousness, like poems, lingering, and evoking greater images than,
in their modesty, they ventured to present.
Pharos and Pharillon is an indefinable little book, except in
so far as its subject is Alexandria, Ancient and Modern, but unmis-
takably Forster, a distillation of a tenderly ironic spirit. In one
of its all-too fragmentary essays, there comes a sudden enchanting


456
E. M. FORSTER
glimpse, at an Alexandrian street-corner, of a “gentleman in a
straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the
universe.” Actually, it is the figure of Mr C. P. Cavafy, a con-
temporary Demotic poet of the city, yet somehow-remove that
straw hat, and animate (but slightly) that immobility . . . is
this not Mr Forster himself? He likewise has this divine gift of
being able to stand at a slight angle to the universe; and from
the peculiar perspective which he thus enjoys, emerges this
exquisitely amusing series of dissolving views. The inclination
varies, ever so slightly, magnetically perhaps in some obscure, incal-
culable way, but the effect is a delicious foreshortening of the
history of Alexandria into an ironic, wrong-end-of-the-telescope
miniature of much else. Pharos is neither a work of humour nor
a work of history, but it indicates a possible form (sketched already,
it is true, by Anatole France) invaluable to a charitable compre-
hension of civilization, its rise and fall. In the mud of Alexandria
lies hid so much of the death of the ancient world and the slow
parturition of the new, the mingling of West and East, Christian
and Moslem and Hebrew, wars of Arianism, Monophysism,
Monotheletism, what not. (Two thousand years hence, New York
may have taken on the historic significance of Alexandria, the
legendary memory of Woolworth or the Statue of Liberty its sym-
bolic Pharos, for ever lost and unexplained.) In such a history,
perspective could be found only in the vast rhythms of a Gibbon,
or by abbreviation into that lesser form of proportion styled
humour. Writing elsewhere of Alexandria, Mr Forster quotes the
saying of Plotinus, that “to any vision must be brought an eye
adapted to what is to be seen.” Wherein lies the secret of the
truly civilized traveller, as indeed of the novelist. Only connect.
Not to contrast, but to reconcile. . . . Mr Forster is happy
in his understanding of sympathetic and coherent vision. Plunged
into the peculiar lucidity of this mind, the most dully familiar
persons and things must always emerge transformed, admirable,
glittering, crystalline, comical and lovely and real, and magical
as the rameau de Salzbourg.
HAMISH MILES


TRANSLATING THE UNTRANSLATABLE
JAPANESE POETRY. An Historical Essay with Two
Hundred and Thirty Translations. By Curtis Hidden
Page. Illustrated. 8vo. 180 pages. Houghton Mif-
flin Company. $5.
THE TEMPLE and Other Poems. Translated From the
Chinese by Arthur Waley. 8vo. 150 pages. Alfred
A. Knopf. $2.
THE
HE report given us by the fortunate few who can read Japa-
nese poetry in the original is that the charm of the art lies in
its exaggerated power of suggestion through omission. This very
element is one of the walls that shut out the Western reader.
"Heavily falls the rain on the hat I stole from a scare-crow" is,
as I recollect, a translation by Lafcadio Hearn of a Japanese poem;
and though as a translation it leaves nothing to be desired, the
foreign reader will probably miss the whole point unless he already
knows that this poem was written in a literary competition, on a
stated theme the theme being— "Try to express in three lines the
emotion of recklessly miserable poverty and ultimate down-and-
out-ness.'
The barrier of the language is an equally formidable one. If
we grant that it is practically impossible to translate French or
German poetry into English, then to translate Japanese poetry
into any Western language is inconceivable. Fatal difficulties arise
from the fact that the two languages have not a single element in
common, and that the very essence of Japanese poetry lies in
getting peculiar trick-effects out of unique verbal idioms that have
no parallel with us. All attempts to translate Japanese lyrics are
foredoomed: they are like an attempt to express an odour in terms
of a mathematical formula.
Further, the intense condensation of Japanese poetry presents to
the translator a dilemma, either horn of which is disastrous. If
he imitates the Japanese brevity, he is quite unintelligible: if he ex-


458
TRANSLATING THE UNTRANSLATABLE
pands and explains, he loses all trace of the distinctive quality of
the original.
Mr Page has chosen the second of these two unavoidable evils:
he expands his original. Quotation will show exactly how he has
proceeded. He says:
"Take first the literal rendering of one of the simpler ones, a
poem that is familiar to all Japanese:
'First-snow as-to
That also man-of child
Barrel-pick-up.'
"Here is the translation:
‘Through winter's first of many bitter snows
See where the shivering rag-picker goes-
He, too, a son of man.'
“There are ten words in the original; in the translation nineteen;
three or four of them might have been omitted, but they help to
give a flavour really present in the original; and while rag-picker
is not quite literal, it gives in English an equivalent expression.
That is about as near as one ought to come, in imitating the
condensation of these Japanese masterpieces. Anything like such
extreme use of condensation and ellipsis, in English, would most
often be artificial and unnatural—and therefore false to the original,
in which it is rarely so; thus it would wholly misrepresent the
Japanese poem, even when it did not result in producing a mere
enigma. In such cases, as has been well said, 'a closely literal
translation may fail to translate, and faith unfaithful make one
truly false.' »
puts
9
This makes quite clear what is Mr Page's ideal; as he it
elsewhere, it is "the creating of an equivalent poem in English."
O Lancelot! pursuing the one thing that cannot be! . . . Yet
since Mr Page's translations are always fuent, sometimes vivid,
and occasionally charged with emotion, we had better be grateful


ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
459
for the glimpse of the sealed book of Japanese poetry which he
opens to us.
As “an historical essay,” Mr Page’s volume can be recommended
without all these reservations. It will bring to the Western reader
the first comprehensive history of Japanese poetry that has ever
been offered him. And he will get, thrown in for good measure,
an extremely interesting interpretation of this alien art, as seen
through the eyes of a sensitive enthusiast. .
Turning now to Mr Waley's new volume, one finds a more com-
plete achievement. Perhaps these longer Chinese forms lend them-
selves more readily to translation.
The Temple continues the series of Mr Waley's benefactions.
As usual, his long preface devotes itself to historical material that
is a little dull: but the poetical translations which follow are
vivid, exciting, and doubtless quite as accurate as translations from
the Chinese can ever be. Mr Waley moves freely in English verse,
yet he never gives the reader the uncomfortable impression that
these are poems written by an Englishman on Chinese themes. He
merely makes one forget that these are translations; and then pro-
ceeds to convey a flavour, difficult to define, that seems authentically
Chinese. Mr Waley's successors will perhaps find that details of
his renderings can be corrected. It is doubtful, however, that they
will be able to improve upon his manner, or upon the general
effect he produces. The reader is likely to end with a frightful
suspicion that some of these translations—The Wangsun, for
example, are much more to our taste than the originals would be.
The Wangsun is really too incredibly beautiful! One reads and
rereads it with a growing conviction that, whatever it may be in
the Chinese, the translation is a great English poem. And The
Bones of Chuang Tzu is almost equally fine.
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE


IMMERSION
A Book. By Djuna Barnes. Illustrated. 12mo. 223
pages. Boni and Liveright. $2.50.
HOME considerable time past, when reviewing a book in The
Dial, I had occasion to speak of immersion-in-life with a
somewhat categorical disapproval. Since then, this has lain on
the conscience. For though I still feel that the book belittled was
an inferior one, and inferior precisely because of its patient and
dutiful immersion in life, it has seemed that the category itself
should be revised. For in art a category can be degraded or justi-
fied by the individual instance exemplifying it.
The reading of Miss Barnes' book makes the revision imperative.
The author of these stories, plays, poems, and drawings is
undoubtedly immersed—and to such an extent that if you
have
the modern interest in the mechanics of writing you must wonder
how eager her preoccupations must have been to have made her
miss so much. Yet her pages have a force, an ingenuity, which rises
purely from the intensity of her message.
Miss Barnes seems to have seized upon the form nearest to
hand, the one-acter, and to have shaped all her subjects to this
simple mould. To wit: there is a situation, this situation is fol-
lowed by a general jog-trot of plot for so long, and then, with only
two or three hundred words to go, the author seizes a knife or a
pistol, or stages an incestuous kiss, or something similar—in short,
unwinds the rest of her plot with a snap, and the story is over.
If one is looking for an astute and concentrated method of
writing, then, one will not find it in any of Miss Barnes' para-
graphs. There are no interior designs, no "functioning" sentences.
The occasional shame-faced attempts at an epigram are nearly
always painful. So that we must situate the appeal of this book
precisely in the vigour of her attitudes, in her immersion. Nor
are these attitudes themselves unimpeachable. A great deal is
weak Russian, a great deal is old stuff; Miss Barnes'
vamps,
for
instance, are almost as pat as movie vamps.
I spoke of a force or ingenuity rising purely from the intensity
of her message. The opening of her story Oscar is a good example


KENNETH BURKE
461
of what I mean. It begins with four descriptions: a place, a
woman, a man, another man. A priori it should be safe to say that
a story should not begin with such a Walter Scott sameness. Yet
these very pages have a swift stride. Of one of the men:
"He smelled very strongly of horses, and was proud of it. He
pretended a fondness for all that goes under hide or hair, but a
collie bitch, known for her gentleness, snapped at him and bit him.
He invariably carried a leather thong, braided at the base for a
handle, and would stand for hours talking, with his legs apart,
whirling this contrived whip, and, looking out of the corner of his
eyes would pull his moustache, waiting to see which of the ladies
would draw in her feet.”
The other descriptions are equally firm. The effect is probably
gained by the fact that the descriptions themselves are plots.
Another instance of how Miss Barnes can produce results by the
sheer earnestness of her conception is in the dialogue, To the Dogs.
Gheid Storm, a direct and unsubtle young man, comes to Helena
Hucksteppe "in the mountains of Cornwall-on-Hudson" to offer
her himself. She proves, to the satisfaction of him and the reader,
that he could not make things very interesting for this advanced
and rather vampish lady. Time and again he puts out a statement,
and her answer is designed to kill it; thus, a topic is exhausted by
his sentence and her reply—yet Miss Barnes manages, along with
this effect, to keep up the illusion of continuity in the dialogue.
In A Book the will to tragedy is maintained with a sureness
which is very rarely met with in contemporary writing. And if
the author does not convince us that her stories carry very far
beyond themselves, she does make us feel that this little corner of
experience she is dealing with is handled with the adequate reac-
tions. By which I mean that we can accept the fatalities of her
stories, and perhaps even feel that the last bit of plot unwinding
with its snap really belonged to the texture of her subject. In her
drawings this will to tragedy is equally convincing. Her portraits
seem to possess that strained attitude in living which goldfish have
when sucking air at the surface of a bowl. Her poetry, again,
carries the same vein. At best it is hot, tight, and sullen. The
whole, put into one book, produces a very satisfactory programme.
KENNETH Burke


AN ATTEMPT TO CONVERT KENTUCKY
THE HUMANIZING OF KNOWLEDGE.
By James
Harvey Robinson. 12mo.
119 pages. George H.
Doran Company. $1.50.
Thas
HE world was considerably amused by the recent attempt to
pass through the Kentucky Legislature a bill making it illegal
to teach that Kentuckians are descended from monkeys. For my
part, if it had been my lot to live in that state, I should have met
the situation by a preface to all my books, saying: "Nothing af-
firmed about Man in this volume is to be held applicable to the
inhabitants of Kentucky, whose transcendent wisdom and virtue
prove them to have sprung from a special creation.” Mr Robinson
is more ambitious; he attempts to persuade the Kentuckians that
it is worth while to listen to what science has to say about them,
and at the same time he shows men of science how to set about
the task. All that he says is admirable, and I hope scientific
teachers and writers will pay attention to it. He points out the evils
resulting from excessive specialization, the folly of pretending that
this or that science does not run counter to popular prejudice,
the insincerity caused by the fact that most men of science in
America live on charity bestowed by ignorant and predatory mil-
lionaires, and the harm done by the hostility to popularization on
the part of specialists incapable of literary form. It is impossible
to disagree with a single word in the book.
Nevertheless, some unworthy Old Adam in me rebels as I turn
the pages. I feel that I would rather be put to death by the Philis-
tines than argue with them. The artist is traditionally permitted
to take an aristocratic attitude; Whistler's attitude towards those
who decried his pictures is thought quite in order. But the man of
science is expected to be humble and solemn. He is expected to
argue that, although he thinks our ancestors had tails, he ought to
be tolerated because he increases our material comfort or helps us
to kill our enemies in war. The result is that he comes to be kept
in a sort of isolation ward; he is allowed to whisper to the War
Office what he has discovered about poison gases, but is subtly im-


BERTRAND RUSSELL
463
peded when he tries to tell the public what he thinks about the
origin of life or the connexion of morals with superstition. One
may say, broadly, that those achievements of science which the
man in the street thinks beneficial are in fact harmful, while the
real benefits to be derived from science appear to the man in the
street to be noxious heresies. For this reason, any defence of
science before the bar of public opinion is likely to be either in-
effective or insincere. The basis of the difficulty is economic. A
man of science cherishes two objects: first, to secure an adequate
income; secondly, to advance science. Unless he is fairly stupid,
those two objects are incompatible. If Darwin had not had a
comfortable private fortune, he would have had to hold his tongue
or starve. American universities may at this moment be full of
mute inglorious Darwins, whose children would starve if they did
their work honestly. The result is that, although Science is revolu-
tionary, the men of science are almost all timid conservatives. They
think that science flourishes under the present system of pluto-
cratic patronage; the fact is that the men of science flourish on
condition of treachery to their subject. There is no issue from this
situation so long as they remain the slaves of herd instinct.
In America, for various reasons, herd instinct is stronger than
in any other civilized country; very few people venture to act
frankly and freely on their own impulses and their own judgement
of what is worth while, without regard to the opinions of neigh-
bours. It does not matter to a French artist that most Frenchmen
are Philistines, because he lives among artists and ignores the world
at large. But America is all of a piece: an artist or man of science
is expected to commend himself to all and sundry, not only to his
own kind. This seems to show a lack of pride and self-reliance, with-
out which great achievement is scarcely possible. No society can
flourish long without a leaven of rebels—that is to say, of men who
pursue some aim regardless of public approval or disapproval. The
men of science ought to be among the rebels, since science is incom-
patible with the beliefs which inspire education. But they will not
(with rare exceptions) be among the rebels, so long as they can
live comfortably in the world as it is. It would seem to follow
that the best hope of improvement consists in increasing the hatred
of science in the governing classes. If Mr Bryan could be success-
ful all over the world in initiating a revival of religious persecution,


464
AN ATTEMPT TO CONVERT KENTUCKY
the effect on science would be excellent. Science would ally itself
with the socialists, who would soon become irresistible from a mili-
tary point of view. Of course their victory would be succeeded by
a new orthodoxy, just as stifling as the old. But the period of the
combat might be splendid, like the period when science was fight-
ing the Catholic Church. And the new orthodoxy would be more
easily upset than the old, because it would not have the prestige of
antiquity or the hypnotic strength derived from early education.
Therefore on the whole there is reason to rejoice in the efforts of the
fundamentalists, because they do more than any one else to bring
down the crazy old structure they are endeavouring to strengthen.
BERTRAND RUSSELL


BRIEFER MENTION
The Mother, by Grazia Deledda (12mo, 239 pages; Macmillan: $2)
takes the strands of a familiar conflict-a young priest torn between
ecclesiastical vows and love for a woman—and weaves them into a
tragedy of such compact and moving reality that the theme loses its
staleness. The struggle, in this case, centres around the priest's mother,
who lifts herself like a symbolic barrier between the man and his desire.
Against a vivid and picturesque Sardinian background, the author stages
her novel of emotional intensity-sharp and vivid and swift in action.
It is a powerful piece of writing.
SILBERMANN, by Jacques De Lacretelle, translated from the French by
Brian Lunn (12mo, 191 pages; Boni & Liveright: $2). The persecution
of a Jewish school-boy in France. Silbermann is too cock-sure to be
wholly pitiable, but neither is any justification to be made for his assailants,
who temper injustice with their parents' brutal prejudices. The narrator
at times pushes his fine feelings almost to the border of the maudlin, but
such notes become dissonances depending on the pitch set by each reader.
His surrender on the last page saves the book's face as realism and adds
weight to its cause. A clear statement of a confused problem, its merit
is in reflecting and not in illuminating it.
THE SHADOW OF THE Cross, by Jean and Jérôme Tharaud, translated by
Frances Delanoy Little (12 mo, 224 pages; Knopf: $2.50). The brothers
Tharaud have received the Prix de Goncourt; their resemblance and their
inferiority to Gautier and Loti might be analysed profitably. Perhaps this
study of Hungarian Jewry, a deft arrangement of sordid, pathetic, and
pretty details, does not distort the facts; but if it is a scrupulous picture,
one is deceived as one would be if a genuine miracle were enacted on the
stage. One cannot free one's enjoyment from a sense of extreme artifice.
They may be called sensational writers, since their method is to intensify
every emotional value in their material. Instead of a design they have a
system, and the result is magnificent journalism. The translation is honest
if not subtle.
UNDERTOW, by Henry K. Marks (12mo, 337 pages; Harper: $2) is the
study of a wan little family driven severally to impotence, despair, and
ruin by a bullying father. The gradual addiction to drugs of a seventeen-
year-old boy, fearful and ailing from birth, is narrated with something of
the force and sincerity of The Hand of The Potter, and with none of its
art. The author knows much about the obscure depths of human nature
and has an unusually wide sympathy. He has set in motion half-a-dozen
lifelike people, making us see them through their reactions to a plot ably
conceived to dramatize them. Yet the book is not convincing. It is the
able first statement of a theme rather than a finished work.


466
BRIEFER MENTION
A House Full OF PEOPLE, by E. and M. Scharten Antink (12mo, 349 pages;
Small Maynard: $2.50) lays a deft and discerning finger upon the inter-
woven threads of many lives; the pattern of existence as it unfolds in a
Parisian rooming house presents itself as a microcosm of human hopes
and loves. The narrative, for all its intricacy, proceeds with a certain
Dutch orderliness; the characters are seen like jars arranged upon pantry
shelves. This is not to imply, however, that the novel is lacking in warmth
or richness. There is, in fact, a fine quality of aliveness in the book, which
kindles even the minor figures with reality.
The THOUSAND AND First Night, by Grant Overton (12mo, 331 pages ;
Doran: $2) is a piece of romantic embroidery, in which the design is
rather too intricate to be entirely serviceable. One admires the neatness of
the stitches—the threads of plot and characterization are most accurately
disposed, yet there is a disconcerting lack of glamour in the finished
work. The pattern, and not the reality, remains uppermost in the mind.
Handled in the form of a story within a story, the elements are smoothly
linked, but fail to coalesce. In the world which Mr Overton has created,
one finds conditions similar to those which confront the black cat stalking
across the pages : "Novelty abounds; nothing (quite correctly) is assumed
to be as it has been before and every sharpened sense must constantly be
employed subtly to differentiate the thing which is to-day from the
thing, apparently the same, that was yesterday.” Intent upon such
traceries, the reader loses more than the author gains.
My CRYSTAL BALL, by Elizabeth Marbury (illus., 8vo, 355 pages; Boni &
Liveright: $3.50) may be set down at once among the few outstanding
autobiographies of the year; it is a fascinating record of indomitable
activity, of canny business sense, of worldwide acquaintance, of theatrical
history in the making. Miss Marbury writes as she works, with an
abounding vitality; she is a healthy specimen of feminism—without the
nerves. Her reminiscences of people are sharp yet kindly; her impressions
are stimulating and well seasoned with Yankee shrewdness. At sixty-
seven, she retains the buoyancy of youth and writes like one on the
threshold of life.
DOG AND Duck, by Arthur Machen (12mo, 225 pages; Knopf: $2.50).
These notes on English traditions, which appeared originally in The
Lyons Mail, would enrich any periodical; but in the form of a book, they
are less satisfactory. A collection of casual observations rests heavily upon
the personality of the author; so perhaps it is not impertinent to remark that
Mr Machen is sometimes complacent and often cross. His style has been
praised as a paragon of grace; even in this unimportant volume, the prose
is fluent and lucid, subtly combining homeliness and elegance. He lauds,
with a slightly loquacious pomp, the pleasures of food and drink, and abuses,
a little too vociferously, Puritans, sober radicals, and scientists. A con-
summate artist would not mar so many of his pages with hysterical asser-
tions of this type: "psycho-analysis . . . turns the whole world of waking
and dreaming into a peculiarly putrid and silly form of nightmare
nastiness."


BRIEFER MENTION
467
AMARANTH AND ASPHODEL: Poems from the Greek Anthology done into
English verse by A. J. Butler (16mo, 277 pages; Houghton Mifflin:
$2.50). The preface contains a letter of praise from Walter Pater,
which leads one to realize that these translations are in the
purest tradition
of the Aesthetic Movement. “The beauty of a statue, a coin or a flower,”
says Mr Butler, “is the same thing as the beauty of a phrase," and in
accordance with his maxim he does not so much speak words as arrange
them, like flowers or stones, into a pleasing design. Generally his render-
ing of the Greek is decorative and faithful. It was originally published
forty years ago, but most of the first edition was destroyed by fire, and
never being reissued had become a collector's rarity.
ULUG BEG, An Epic Poem, Comic in Intention, in VII Cantos, by Autolycus
(12mo, 292 pages; Knopf: $2.50). Autolycus resembles a sophisticated
English writer who has offered homage to Peacock and the Latin satirists,
and the sincerest flattery to Mr Eliot; if one's attribution is correct, Ulug
Beg is his least successful book. It is an imitation of Don Juan, a bur-
lesque of Oriental romance, a rag-bag of sarcastic remarks, written in
ottava rima, plainly less difficult than prose. Unfortunately, almost every
rhyme involves a clumsy inversion or a vague word. The mongrel style
dims the brilliance of an elegant, witty, and never sluggish intelligence.
The numerous, rather defiant acknowledgements of failure have the effect
certainly not intended, of an appeal for sympathy. Autolycus might have
been as vigorous as his model; pretentious archaism, and cynical careless-
ness, and the lack of concentration in any one mood, spoil his work. The
self-conscious satirist has taken refuge in fancy dress; he wields an imita-
tion rapier; and his sardonic beauty is beneath a mask.
REJUVENATION, by George F. Corners (12mo, 112 pages; Seltzer: $1.50).
“Simply, clearly—so clearly that anyone can understand it-George F.
Corners has set forth the facts of Rejuvenation.” The author is as
honest as Steinach himself, and is always cautious in discussing how much
has been accomplished in the study of glands and the highly modern
process of manufacturing synthetic personality. The book should be of
solid informative value to laymen who wish to learn more about Dr
Steinach's experiments with the gonads than could be gleaned from casual
newspaper
stories.
DARKER PHASES OF THE SOUTH, by Frank Tannenbaum (12mo, 203 pages;
Putman: $2) is a first-hand and a first-rate inquiry into aspects of the
South's unwanted worries: the Klan, the mill towns, the single crop, farm
tenancy, and the horrifying convict system. Mr Tannenbaum is not
dispassionate, yet he is reasonable and properly speaking-humane. He
holds it absurd to seek a solution of the race problem as a whole. He
holds it equally absurd to hope for its dissolution, but thinks perhaps the
negro migration North and West may make a national concern out of a
sectional bugbear, on the one hand, while European immigrants settling
in the South may give it something else to worry about, and dilute the
present intensity of feeling. His research material is presented with tact
and clarity.


468
BRIEFER MENTION
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY, by William Steckel, Ph.D., trans-
lated by Dr James S. Van Teslaar (12mo, 155 pages; Moffat Yard:
2.50). Dr Steckel is the ideal practitioner-patient, restrained, and
lucid. His new book is like a clinic; the patient is expected to profit
by remarks to attendant doctors upon the technique and dangers of
psychotherapy, no less than by what is addressed to him. Unlike Freud
and Jung, he has a single aim, to make men well; and he looks toward
neither philosophy nor mythology. Health is normality; he seeks to fit
his patient for ordinary life, for the world as it is, a scene of rivalry, com-
promise, and platitude. He seems to encourage the acceptance of con-
ventional ethics, without glowing conviction, but because they are an
aspect of "reality," which the neurotic evades; he tries to lead an anomalous
life, and is enfeebled. This point in his theory must be disquieting to the
artist. Dr Steckel is curiously cold toward his reader-patient, like other
doctors who offer not merely alleviation, but cure; for those who “drink
of his fountain" morbidity is at an end; therefore persistence in illness is
sheer obstinacy. In so far as it has been accepted, psychoanalysis has
made condemnation impossible; it may undermine pity.
CRYSTALIZING Public OPINION, by Edward L. Bernays (8vo, 218 pages;
Boni & Liveright: $3). "The fatal metaphor of progress," says Chesterton,
"which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real
idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us." He might have
listed another “fatal metaphor”—publicity, which means putting things in
front of us. It is the larger aspects of this activity which concern Mr
Bernays; he summarizes impressively the function of the modern glorified
press agent—the public relations counsel. There is drama in it-how the
hair-net makers fought bobbed hair, how the raisin growers recruited their
iron hordes, how the packers—"realizing that hearty breakfasts were
dietetically sound, suggested that a physician undertake a survey to make
this medical truth articulate”—brought home the bacon. The book delves
into psychology, ethics, salesmanship; it undertakes to show, in effect, how
people may be divided into groups, how groups may be reduced to herds.
And with herds to play with, what may not the shepherd accomplish?
ADOLESCENT INTERESTS: A Study