ch, do you understand? Say to
her: 'Madam, he hates warmed beer, he hates you yourself, because
last night he drank iced and burning wine and was unfaithful to
you. He found a whore and he would return to her.' Ah,
man,” Karel passed at once from the solemn dictatorial voice to a
passionate half-audible tone, “it was dreadful at this girl's. If you
could only see the misery! Good God, man, what conditions! Her
feet were wet and cold as ice. It was impossible to warm them. I
must return there because of all the misery. If you could only see
how she lives! It can't be altered by charity, either, you see she
spends it all on drink. But someone should be with her.
“Karel,” said Vojtech, hoarsely.
"Wait, don't interrupt.” Karel defended himself, “It's not only
that. That's only an unimportant thing. I didn't think about


KAREL CAPEK
527
a
.
.
.
women at all at the beginning. But tell me, Vojtech, tell me, can
a man return to the pillows and the warm curtains after seeing
such misery? You know our home, Vojtech, I'd choke there with
shame and disgust. My wife couldn't understand that. I know
she is good; please be silent, at least about this. I didn't want to
begin with that; it's only an example, and it happened after ..."
"After what ?"
“After I had made a decision. Wait, you don't know anything
at all yet. Everything began quite differently. It began
when I was still an official at the office
in short, in short,
there was a row in the office.
And I,” terribly excited,
Karel struck the table with his palm, “I was in the right, and that
was enough.”
"What kind of a row was it ?” Vojtech asked carefully.
"Oh, it was nothing, a mere stupidity. Nothing worth talking
about. Only such an impulse, you see. But a man feels quite trod-
den on and can't defend himself. As though you were a dish-cloth.
So I remained in the office, and went through the books and files,
and see, I was proved to be in the right. Someone else must have
made the mistake, but who? It is quite strange how little it mat-
ters to me now; but at the moment I was wriggling like a worm and
had decided to kill myself.”
“Karel !” Vojtech cried.
"You, you must be silent,” Karel ordered as though drunk, point-
ing a trembling finger at him, "you are also like this. All the eve-
ning I tramped the streets. I wouldn't go home. I condemned
myself. I was tired and only longed to get drunk. I found a cer-
tain vinarna, you know the kind—but such a place. I never saw
anything like it, music and girls, and so much dirt-amazing. I
have forgotten for the moment who was sitting with me there. One
had terrible sore fingers, her nails were dropping off. Perhaps it
was from some venereal disease, do you
think so ?"
"Why do you ask ?”
“Because she drank steadily from my glass. I couldn't prevent
her. But now it's all the same to me. Then there was someone I
spoke to the whole evening; I've no idea who it was. It seemed to
me that they had all come there just as I had, the men and the pros-
titutes, all of them. Perhaps they will all commit suicide because
they are so unhappy, and that's the reason they went there. It


528
THE INJURED ONE
seemed to me that I had something in common with them, but in
some other deeper sense than, for instance, with the men in my
office. It was as though I perhaps would have to sell matches and
be old and lousy in the place of that match-seller; or that my own
nails might drop off painfully; or that I might prostitute myself;
or steal in the night as they do. Just imagine, Vojtech, for in-
stance, this thought. It came into my head that as I was sitting
there the end of the world had come outside, and that nothing re-
mained but that vinarna and the people in it; prostitutes, drunk-
ards, street-singers, thieves, diseased people, and that they alone
were mankind. That there were neither churches nor palaces,
neither philosophy nor art, neither fame nor states, but only those
twenty outcasts. Can you imagine such a thing ?”
“But tell me more.”
“Hm. There's nothing more. I only thought of what I should
do in such a case. For instance, what should I do with all
, my files,
my position, and my knowledge? Indeed, man, none of these
things would give pleasure to any of them, nor could I directly rep-
resent the nobility or the rejection of Man. It would be neither an
example nor a picture of anything. If I were to play the harp or
weep,
it would be a hundred or a thousand times better, do you un-
derstand what I mean?"
“Yes.”
“So you see, Vojtech, that's why I've come to you, because I
knew that you'd understand. It has made my life quite clear to me.
I lived uselessly. Even for me, even for me, it was all for nothing.
Perhaps it was useful for the State; but the State is only something
official . . . the State, perhaps, is the duty on wine, but it is
neither the wine nor the vinarna, neither the scabby drunkard nor
the diseased waitress. These are the facts, do you understand?
Man must follow the facts and not only give orders.
In
short, it became loathsome for me at once. Really, Vojtech, an
official is a man who obeys and forces other men to obey also, and
that is all he does. A higher official, as I was, doesn't know at all
whether men are ill or what is the matter with them. Disease, mis-
ery, and ugliness must be seen, otherwise you know nothing. But
if you could only see it, and always see it, and do nothing else, even
that in itself would be a great service to mankind. You are made
unhappy, mad, and ill by it, and that is more, much more than if
.


KAREL CAPEK
529
you are merely sitting, sound and happy among the cushions. And
that's how it is.”
At that moment Vojtech found it extremely pleasant only to lis-
ten. Completely muffled up, with his knees under his chin, squat-
ting in a woollen blanket, he was like a child who is as much
charmed by the voice and gestures as by the words of the speaker.
“Go on, further," he asked.
“Further," Karel pondered, "what was there further? When
I'd decided not to return to the office again it made me very happy.
The idea of killing myself had already gone. On the contrary, I
saw that I should begin afresh, that it is the beginning of a new
life. That was such an amazing feeling, and life had never seemed
so beautiful to me. I walked through the town again, not thinking
at all about what I ought to do. But everywhere around me and
even behind the walls of the houses I felt something quite new.
And just because it was so beautiful for me I recognized that I had
reached something both splendid and true. Certainly, Vojtech, in-
spiration is the greatest happiness. It cannot be expressed. It is
just as though you are talking to God; or as if your mind were sud-
denly to comprehend the whole universe, the earth, the stars, man-
kind, and even the people of the past. Such is this happiness.
Afterwards this girl met me and invited me home; and I went to
see if that amazing, that supernatural beauty, could endure in
such such horror. And Vojtech, would you believe it?
By degrees I became freer. When I saw her misery it was as
though I had received wings. If to-day I could see all the horror
and misery in the world I should be still happier and more certain
of myself. I must recognize many more things because it makes a
man free. Are you asleep?"
“I'm not asleep.”
“The more a man sees of misery the more he has in common with
the world of men. I have found the feeling of unity. It is not alto-
gether sympathy. It is enlightenment and ecstasy; not regret, but
enthusiasm. You yourself ... (thus he preached, standing,
his hand outstretched, possessed completely by the drunkenness
which had previously been overcome by the ecstasy) "you
yourself see every pain then and discover every disease and degra-
dation and feel that it is your own. You yourself are poor and
miserable, thief and prostitute, drunkard and despairing. You are
.
.


530
THE INJURED ONE
what you see.
And then you only long to carry all misery and
every disease, to take all the rejection upon yourself; you desire
and thirst after this to satisfy yourself. You will not give to
charity because that will not wipe out old wrongs;
but
you
will be
poor yourself. You yourself must be equally poor to wipe them
out. You must be diseased, drunk, pursued, insulted, muddied,
and morally low. You must reach the heights. You must reach
the highest heights. Enough, you knew enough. Forget all. Now
you must learn. But Vojtech," turning suddenly with extraordi-
nary kindness, "you want to go to bed, don't you?”
“No. Not at all,” Vojtech assured him, eagerly.
“Go and lie down. I must write something. Go and sleep,
please, you would only be in my way.”
"No, Karel,” said Vojtech, "I shall not sleep; but you can write.
I shall only lie down so that I shan't be in your way; but after-
wards I have something to tell you."
“That's all right, only sleep,” repeated Karel, and sat down at
the table, burying his head in his hands.
Stretched out quietly on the bed Vojtech fell to thinking about
what he should say to his brother. He was puzzled and
yet
full of
pity. He searched for some peculiarly kind words that would be like
bright glances. Careful words like those we use to a sick person.
Something with which he could both please and repay. With half-
closed eyes he looked at his brother. He was bending over the
table as though he were studying. He always used to study so hard
and stubbornly. He always used to have such passionate pleasures
which he would overcome by studying. He was so ambitious and
yet so rash. The young drinker who stopped drinking altogether
one day because he had decided to do so. Or he would decide to
get up at five o'clock in the morning. Then he would get up and
study while Vojtech, voluptuous and warmth-loving as a cat,
snored between the blankets. "Vojtech, Vojtech, get up, it's seven
o'clock.” Vojtech pretends not to hear. But meanwhile he hears
the scratching of a pen on paper, and is rather pleased that some
living being is so near to him. For nothing in the world would he
He did not wish to interrupt his dream. But it is
not really a dream (Vojtech smiled) it actually happened to me
when I was perhaps in the Fourth Class: some boys of the Seventh
Class, Karel's school-chums, took me into a vinarna-let me see,
eyes.
open his


KAREL CAPEK
531
.
.
.
it was Kislinger and Dostalek, but he's dead. . . Now Vojtech
hears a woman singing: “And I am Esmeralda, the true daughter
of the South, Esmeralda, Esmeralda ." He likes it, but he is
afraid that they will turn him out, and makes himself small so that
no one should see him. He hides himself behind the table and only
looks at the girl who is serving the wine. With upraised arms she
arranges her hair and sings softly. Now she speaks to someone,
bending down to his face, kneeling, with one knee on the chair,
look, a red garter under the other knee. Vojtech does not know
what to do with his eyes. He is ashamed of them, and only
watches, jealously. And now she sees me, my God! Now
she comes straight over to him, lurching a little, leans right across
the table, and looks at him, very intently, with mysterious flashing
eyes. She is humming a love-song, and laughs, quietly and kindly.
Vojtech feels her damp breath on his lips and is on the point of
weeping with shame and love.
He would like to say something, but he does not know what; nor
does she. Therefore she only whispers the love-song and gazes into
his eyes with a very intimate, clear look. What did she want from
a
me? Why did she say nothing? Actually there are no boys here
any more, only Karel, sitting and writing on foolscap paper, saying
to himself: now you must study. Vojtech pretends to hear nothing,
study what you like, he thinks, only let me sleep now.
When Vojtech awoke it was broad daylight. He was puzzled to
find himself lying in bed, half-dressed, then he remembered a little
and looked for Karel. Karel lay on the sofa, sleeping. His cheeks
drooped, tired to the point of pain, and he seemed aged. Then Voj-
tech, silently, in order not to awaken him, searched for what he had
written. He found a letter in a sealed envelope, tore it open, and
a
read:
a
“Dear Sir,
Owing to my illness I resign my position and request my release
without pension.
X. X., late Councillor"
Vojtech shook his head and searched further. In the waste-paper
basket there were several crushed, cancelled, and torn pieces of pa-
per. He opened them and read:


532
THE INJURED ONE
“Dear Sir,
Please compare the file which was taken from me with the en-
closure B3, volume M23, with the dictation of the Minister in the
same place, and also with the copy of the letter from the 17.9. in
the same place, to make sure that the wrong decision which was
taken was not my fault, but that I received incorrect material from
that document. You can see yourself, although you are so young,
that the Minister wrongly—”
a
And here the letter was crossed in evident anger and crushed. The
next paper had apparently to carry the beginning of some essay;
there was only: “If you want to become a philosopher you must—"
Even this paper was crushed and torn, perhaps after his long
sleeplessness. Vojtech put all the poor papers together carefully,
and with a quivering, pitying pain, looked at his sleeping brother.
You see, he is already grey about the temples; his eyes are swollen,
and he seems to be ill. Vojtech gazed at him thoughtfully; then
he silently finished his dressing, locked the door behind him, and
ran to his brother's office. He had some acquaintances there, and it
was easy for him to discover what had happened yesterday.
In the afternoon the Minister had come rushing into the Depart-
ment, almost beside himself with rage. “It is a wretched thing,"
he shouted, the moment he entered the door, “whoever has done
this is either a fool or a dishonest person.” He did not say it in so
many words, but he hinted at it, still worse. “And who did this?”
he shouted, waving a document. Everyone shook with fear. Then
Karel said: “It is my file," and wanted to defend himself. "Be
silent, sir,” roared the Minister, as he tore the document and threw
it on to the table of the youngest official in the Department, his
favourite: “Correct it, sir.” And he slammed the door behind
him. Everyone remained as if they were petrified. Karel, pale
and apparently as mechanical as a doll, closed his desk, and de-
parted without a word. At five o'clock he returned and worked
while all the others went home. After all no one really believed
that he had made such a mistake; but he did not wish to speak to
any one.
Then Vojtech, almost with force, penetrated to the Minister, a
terrible, explosive man; and in half an hour he appeared in the
doorway, red, exhausted, but with triumphant eyes. The Minister


KAREL CAPEK
533
.
.
himself even accompanied him to the door to shake his hand again.
Vojtech rushed home, and found Karel sitting frowning on the
sofa, slack with fatigue, and encompassed within a ring of his own
thoughts.
“Karel,” he announced triumphantly, “you ought to go to your
Minister.”
“I will not go,” said Karel, absently.
"You will go,
because because he will apologize to you.
He begs you to go to him so that he may express his sorrow, and his
confidence in you. And his esteem.” Vojtech remembered, hastily,
the words already prepared.
“Why did you go there?” Karel asked with some heaviness. "It
is quite useless. I will not do that, and I will
I will have
peace, Vojtech. I feel so much better. Leave me alone, please. I
am concerned with things much more important
There was a discordant silence. Vojtech, in despair, bit his
nails.
“And what then, te i me, do you really wish to do?” he asked
finally.
“I don't know,” said Karel, with disgust, beginning to pace up
and down the room.
Someone rang the bell. It was a chauffeur.
“The Minister has sent his car for the Councillor,” he announced
at the door.
Karel made a sudden movement and searched the eyes of his
brother suspiciously: is it not a pre-arranged comedy? But he only
saw naïve surprise.
Then something absurdly emotional flooded him, an emotion
which overpowers a man when he receives small trifles, unexpect-
edly. Tears came into his eyes. He flushed and turned to the win-
dow. Just below gleamed the body of a beautiful car.
“Very well then,” he said, hesitatingly, “I'll go.”
And then began suddenly to hurry. Even Vojtech helped him
hurriedly and in confusion, so that they had scarcely time to say
good-bye to each other.
When Vojtech stepped to the window the street was already
empty; and because he felt desolate and a little sad, he went to an-
nounce to Karel's wife the news that her husband would return.
a
a


REVERIE
BY EDWIN MUIR
The dark road journeys to the darkening sky,
The twilight settles like a circling pool,
The railway bridge is lifted up on high,
And the unerring lines are beautiful.
A soldier and his girl in casual walk
Pass heavily, their garments creased with woe,
Like stiff slow-labouring statues; yet they talk
In peace and gather comfort as they go.
In the small cabin by the railway-side
A lonely concertina by some priest
Of guileless joy is played; its sound goes
wide
Like the blunt brumming of a vague-voiced beast.
I stand, and thin-toned anguish frets my heart
Over the cabin-boy who all the night
Sits in his thoughtless paradise apart
And in his lonely monologue finds delight;
And over these two who, in half-dumb talk,
With broken gestures and half-shapen speech,
In unintelligible rapture walk,
Too far for vain and longing thought to reach.
Oh, why should fading form and falling sound
Such sculptured shapes of deep division take?
Why do we walk with muted footsteps round
In this strong trance called life from which none wake?
Whither do these blind-journeying lovers go?
What does he wait, the boy with idle hands?


EDWIN MUIR
535
And I who stand in idle questioning so?
We walk all four in strange and different lands.
These lovers never will return again;
That sound has died long since within the gloam.
Why do I wait still with my foolish pain?
All, all at last must take their sorrow home.


SALAMANCA
BY ROGER FRY
PE
EOPLE, i. e. people without motors, do not, I believe, go very
,
frequently to Salamanca. Even commercial travellers, so one
of them told me, funked it because of the quite peculiar cussedness
of its railway communications. Still every other day a goods train
condescends to trail behind it a few decrepit carriages from Medina
del Campo which is the general junction for Spain west of Madrid.
It attaches such importance to this feat that it starts to time what-
ever may have happened to the Madrid-Paris express. On the day
I tried the connexion the express engine had broken down so hope-
lessly on the inclines of the Guadarrama pass that it only arrived
in time for a very hurried scramble into the goods train. But hav-
ing once started punctually the train gives up any further effort and
only just manages an average of ten miles an hour across the abso-
lutely bare waste of slightly undulating plain which stretches over
this part of Castile. One small cluster of Mediterranean pines
raises its long bare trunks out of the baked yellow earth at the sta-
tion of Caspio and for the rest nothing; nothing to break the
evenness of the surface and no apparent reason why there should be
stations or villages and nothing to show how any one supports life
there. A sort of cart track of indefinite outline and great width
wanders vaguely across the plain and now and then the train over-
takes—it does overtake, but not with éclat—the ubiquitous Spanish
donkey trotting steadily along beneath a load as big as itself, its
two saddle baskets on either side and a huge peasant behind on its
haunches. Where they can be going and why, seems in this wilder-
ness utterly unimaginable. And so it goes on hour after hour for
four hours; it is only forty miles even then, but it seems much
longer. The long monotony of those hours have their effect and
their recompense when behind a final undulation of the brown soil
there suddenly appears the vision of Salamanca, a whole row of
towers and domes for as yet the houses are hidden. It is like a
more grandiose Oxford—curiously like in the proportion of dome
tower-only all dark umber-coloured stone rising against the



SPANISH SCENE.
BY ROGER FRY





ROGER FRY
537
a
glare of the horizon over the dark umber ridge of the land. The
train creeps down a valley and one is in Salamanca or rather near
it, for no Spanish train ever goes to the town indicated in the guide,
but near enough for the ramshackle Hotel Omnibuses just to get to
where the train stops in the outlying desert.
Salamanca is perhaps the most miraculous of these Castilian
cities, its raison d'être seems entirely problematical. What natural
and economic forces made this particular spot, where the barren,
treeless plain slopes down to the bed of the Tormes, the centre of
learning for Spain, the intermediary for all Europe of Arabic sci-
ence and Western thought and a great, and in some ways sumptu-
ous city? What products of the earth, got by what toil of man,
where the earth seems completely barren and man completely idle,
provided the money to build so extensively and so elaborately?
For Salamanca is a city where Plateresque and Baroque fancy have
impressed their wildest dreams on the rich surface of the stone.
Salamanca begins bravely enough at the top of its slope with the
Calle de Zamora which sets out wide and regular in its lines toward
the great central Plaza Mayor, but before it gets there it gives up
in despair, divides into many small, winding, intricate lanes which
finally trickle feebly under the colonnade of the square. The par-
ticular one I usually go down is all barbers' shops on one side,
always empty and gaping for customers, and on the other a big
blank wall of lovely stone and a dull Renaissance church door.
This is the establishment of the Hijas de Jesus (Daughters of
Jesus) of which every town seems to possess one. These particular
Hijas seem to me to have a poor time of it. Their church is the
only one in Salamanca that ever is open at any convenient hours
and is always nearly full, but the Hijas don't go into it. They sit
up somewhere behind a grille and drone out in their childish treble
interminable bad hymn tunes-it must be a sort of perpetual Sun-
day afternoon of the old-fashioned kind in there. Sunday indeed
is the one day when they do appear in the streets walking with
guttering candles behind a procession of the Host and listening to
music as bad as their own, but played by a military band. I sup-
pose the balance of things in Salamanca is trimmed by the Hijos
de Trabajo (Sons of Labour) whose institute I saw, but never one
of the actual sons to my knowledge, nor any one else recognizably
related to "Labour."
>


538
SALAMANCA
The Plaza Mayor is, to quote Baedeker, "the finest city square in
Spain.” It is a Spanish version of the Place Stanislas at Nancy,
but instead of the pale grey French stone cut into refined and cal-
culated elegance, it is all of the warm golden colour of Salamanca
stone, and its proportions are not so nicely adjusted and, though the
same elevation is maintained all round the square, the Spanish arch-
itects could not achieve symmetry, and façades are broken where its
streets happen to enter. It is of a kind of heavy Rococo style
which in reality is hardly changed from Churriguerra's seventeenth
century Town Hall at one side. But then Churriguerra’s Baroque
is already half way to Rococo.
The main street recovers its composure soon after the Plaza
Mayor and runs straight to the Cathedral. This is Hontanon's
second masterpiece, and like the cathedral of Segovia is splendidly
planned for its situation; rising from the sloping edge of the hill
with a tremendous face (I speak of the side elevation) of orange
masonry before at an incredible height the ornate window of the
transept breaks it. The system of rectangular boxes which his
Renaissance training caused him to give to the general shape is here
less frittered away with crochets and pinnacles than it is at Segovia
and as regards the outside it is certainly superior.
Wherever, as in the West Front or round the North Door, the
use of sculpture is indicated, it is of course of an incredible intricacy
and multiplicity, with elaborate arabesques of animals chasing one
another along cornices and in the hollows of mouldings. The carv-
ing is wonderfully sharp and precise and of great technical bril-
liancy—the Spaniards of the sixteenth century must have got up
earlier than they do now to have carved such vast areas of stone
with so incredibly minute and rich a sculptured surface. In effect
it is the creation of a surface that is aimed at. The sculptures
could hardly be meant to be looked at as sculpture, as, for instance,
most of the French Gothic sculpture can be, even though it fits
also into a general decorative scheme. In these Plateresque churches
both scale and quantity defeat the searching eye. The scale because
each individual form is so minute—the quantity because a whole
façade may be covered with them.
The real meaning of this sculpture then is the creation of a richly
varied surface, however little conscious of this the artist may have
been.


ROGER FRY
539
a
The fact is the Spaniards could never get quit of their Moorish
antecedents and perhaps no people have ever had so exquisite a
sensibility for surface as the Arabs—so marvellous a sense of how
to play one kind of surface against another. But then until the
fourteenth century when their art went to pieces they preserved
their fine tact—they knew how to keep their rich surfaces precious
-how to give them value by the opposition of large unbroken and
massive surfaces. Think of the Mesopotamian pottery of the eighth,
ninth, and tenth centuries. The animal form that fills the centre
of the bowl or plate is drawn with large blunt outlines and then
the interstices may be filled with the minutest intricacies—these
will count, none the less, as just another surface, and the eye grasps
at once the interplay of the two.
Then again the Arabs knew how to make the relief of a rich sur-
face incredibly delicate, using only the shallowest relief, i. e., the
weakest contrasts of light and shade, or, if it was painting, only
the finest strokes or the fainter colours.
And finally they knew that it was worse than wasted labour to
use forms of real objects, animals or men, merely to create a sur-
face. They knew, as the Byzantines had already discovered, that
that can be done even better by merely geometric or meaningless
shapes, by mere dots and dashes and rounds and crosses.
Now the Spaniards when they came to work on their own, had
in their minds the Mudéjar traditions, but not the Mudéjar artist's
tact. They used Gothic and Renaissance forms to produce the rich
surfaces of the Arab geometrics. Now this produces a certain want
a
of ease. One feels that one might, perhaps one ought, to look at
each of these animals biting the tail of the next, at all these nude,
putti, and floral interweavings and it requires an effort to say to
oneself that they have no meaning except as so much variegation
of surface, that they are no more than the rustications on classic
coins.
Then again in their desire to astonish the Plateresque designers
cut their stone far too deeply so that the contrast of carved and
plain surfaces is too violent.
But Hontanon merits the tourists' gratitude as much for what he
so piously left as for what he built. For he left the little Old
Cathedral standing under the shadow of his new and towering
structure. It is a simple and well-planned twelfth century build-


540
SALAMANCA
a
a
ing with scarcely a moulding or ornament except on its richly cut,
fantastically designed capitals.
Out of the cloister there lead many chapels filled with twelfth
and early thirteenth century tombs. The sculptor's tradition here
has something peculiar and fascinating—an almost clumsy massive-
ness in the forms which heightens the archaic dignity of the gesture
and expression of these recumbent kings and princes. Nowhere
else did I get so high an opinion of Spanish plastique of this period
—and then it was quite distinct from the French, lacking its ele-
gance of finish, but with a sombre dramatic
power
which is very im-
pressive.
But Salamanca means most of all the University. One enters
through a great Plateresque gateway not unlike a glorified version
of the gateway of St Johns at Cambridge. Inside is a large two-
storeyed cloister very plain except for the complicated honey-comb-
ing of a rich Artesonado ceiling in the upper storey. On the ground
floor are the entrances to the class rooms, one of them the vast dark
thirteenth century cellar in which Fray Luis de Leon lectured. It
was to him that Salamanca owed its greatest European reputation
and his lecture room has been piously preserved with its original
benches and desks. These are hardly more than tree trunks with
one side flattened and are by now inscribed with the initials and
dates of whole centuries of students.
I have at least one defect as a traveller, I am curiously insensitive
to the sentimental association of objects. Caesar's razor-strop
would leave me cold and I would not cross a street to see all Napo-
leon's knick-knacks; but somehow I felt a sentimental thrill at the
sight of this class room. Perhaps it is that in the whole of human
history no adventure seems to me so thrilling as this of the desperate
voyage after truth in the face of grudging nature and hostile man.
How risky this adventure was we may judge from the story of
Fray Luis de Leon himself. The charge of heresy was always so
easy to bring and so hard to refute that so striking a figure could
hardly fail to be the object of attack. Consequently he found him-
self one day transferred from his professional chair at Salamanca to
the Inquisition prison at Valladolid. There he spent five years of
meditation before the Inquisitors were able to detect his innocence.
A pleasant story is told of his return. He had been wont every
day to resume his previous lecture, beginning with the words: “We
a


ROGER FRY
541
.
.
were saying yesterday.” When after five years' absence he found
himself once more in the chair in that same cavernous class room,
without troubling to allude to the interruption he began: “We
were saying yesterday
I was with the usual party of casual tourists that is herded round
such places by the porter. They were nondescript Spanish bour-
geois—for the Spaniards take a pride in seeing their own country-
and wandered round with the usual expression of boredom which
they were carefully repressing from consciousness, but among them
was a young man who had the unmistakable look of understanding
what he saw. I was intrigued and guessed at his nationality and
business. French I decided, that look being less unusual on French
faces than on any others, but presently he spoke to the porter in
such fluent Spanish that I decided against it knowing how unwill-
ingly the French learn any language but their own. He must, I
decided, be a Spanish intellectal and I was the more intrigued. It
would be so interesting to know the characteristics of that variety
of the species. I saw at once that he had recognized me as clearly
as I had him and faint telegraphic messages passed between us as
we were jostled with the herd from lecture room to chapel, and
from chapel to library, but I was far too much ashamed of my
Spanish to make a move, besides I foresaw that we should meet
again. And naturally we did so one evening at a café, and inevit-
ably drifted into conversation, for I had been wrong about his Span-
ish-of course he was a Frenchman and an Ecole-normalien at that,
and therefore could learn anything. He was learned as only a
Frenchman can be about Spanish architecture. I mean that his
knowledge was both wide in range and precise in detail and yet it
had not submerged his sensibility. His researches had led him to
a state of extreme scepticism about almost all the accepted dates of
early Spanish architecture. He would have none of Wamba's
Visigothic walls at Toledo: Mudéjar might be of almost any date;
and in general he took from me the few pegs on which I had pro-
visionally hung my vague map of the developments of early Span-
ish art.
I passed a delightful evening unlearning the little I
thought I knew, and we parted, for he was off to Plasencia early
the next morning and wanted me to go with him, but I had already
become enamoured of Ciudad Rodrigo on the strength of vague re-
ports, and it was impossible to combine the two.


542
SALAMANCA
1
One might suppose that in Salamanca at least, if only in Sala-
manca out of all Spain, learning would predominate and for once
the Church might take a subordinate place, but that would be to
reckon without the Jesuits. If the University was to be for free
learning they would counter it with their own special brand and so
arose the Jesuit College which, as Baedeker drily remarks, "covers
an area of 23,900 square yards.” And there it is, a great barrack-
like affair and so much the vastest building in the town that every-
where it dominates the view. By its side the discreet little Uni-
versity building might be a mere annexe. Baedeker tells one no
more about the Jesuits. He will not take you in to the really rather
magnificent Baroque chapel and he gives you no hint that inside
the main door there is one of the loveliest cloisters in Spain. For
Baedeker it is of the wrong period, being quite late Baroque, almost
eighteenth century I daresay, but how lovely with the clean relief
of its great disengaged pilasters whose arches each frame a circular
opening and below that a rectangular. Something in the ingenuity
of the invention and the clear logic of the proportions brings to
mind the delicious fantasy of Wren's fountain quadrangle at
Hampton Court, only instead of lawn and fountain one great
heavily moulded wellhead sits in the middle of the paved rectangle.
But the Jesuits are not the only religious to settle in Salamanca
-there is another large college of the "Irish nobles" (de los nobiles
Irlandeses). Except for the austere beauty of its one cloister the
Jesuits' is a grim place, but the Irish nobles have done themselves
well. They sit on a hill a little apart from the town and their
court is an inviting spacious grassy place enclosed on all sides by
a two-storeyed cloister of simple, but very delicate, late Gothic
design. Their chapel is of the same date and its architect adopted
Hontanon's genial idea of a Gothic interior with dome. I guess
it to be a little later than the Cathedral, for the Renaissance forms
are more clearly marked and even the mouldings of the arches
approximate to Classic forms. Indeed this Church and the very
similar, though larger, one of S. Esteban provoke one to wonder
why the peculiar and ingenious compromise which Hontanon had
hit upon, did not develop to its ultimate logical conclusion.
Why, having got so far, no one ever built a classic building with
pointed arches. Why they did not try the possibility of keeping
the great structural facilities for vaulting of the pointed arch. Per-
a


ROGER FRY
543
haps it was a right aesthetic instinct which made them go back to
the circular arch which is no doubt a more agreeable shape and one
that it is easier to harmonize with upright and horizontal lines, but
I wish it had been tried once. These two churches come so near to
that idea and both are such spacious and impressive interiors in
spite of their bastard style that one longs to see what they would
be without their ungainly admixture of late Gothic detail.
Behind the Cathedral a network of steep narrow lanes begins
(one is the Calle del Silencio—nearly as good a name as the “Calle
di Vida y Muerte”—the street of life and death). Through these
y
one can thread a way to where the remains of the city wall front
the Tormes. It is delightful down here, a few groups of poplars
cluster on islets, and sheltering the mill houses and the Roman
bridge stretches arch after arch interminably across the clear shal-
low waters and the wide expanses of shingle to the parched brown
and yellow uplands which rise gently from the further bank. It is
well to cross the bridge at evening, partly because the setting sun
casts long shadows on the shingle and lights the orange stonework
of the Cathedral tower; partly because from all the country round
there straggle in thousands and thousands of sheep and goats,
driven down to the water side to drink and there to spend the night
in the dry river bed. The air is loud with the chorus of their in-
numerable bleatings. Herds of swine too come down and a stray
pig will gallopade wildly about with the swineherds after him with
long whips, his shrill squeals answering their gruff objurgations. A
pleasant and lively place enough if a gusty wind doesn't bring
clouds of dust in with the sheep from the bare uplands.
One may stroll up the river bank and recross by the blatant new
bridge and so along to the Vega where a little Romanesque cloister
lies securely imbedded in a great modern hospital or asylum amid
market gardens and vague terrains, and so skirt the edge of the
town, where sickly acacia trees are aligned in dust to make a new
park, and where little new suburban houses wander aimlessly, the
side streets leading nowhere as they do at Ealing or Acton, only
here it is so much more definitely nowhere, since one knows that if
one went on there would be forty miles of bare land before you
got to Medina del Campo, and if you didn't hit that, for God
knows how many more.


THE LEHUA TREES
BY PADRAIC COLUM
Not in a grove where each tree loses its presence, not singly do
Lehua trees grow; they are Lehua trees only when they grow as I
saw them growing in Kapoho, on Hawaii.
Where I had seen them before they were mingled with other
trees or they grew singly, a tree here and a tree there, and looking
them I had marvelled that the poets of Hawaii had emblemed
their warriors as Lehua trees.
upon
But in Kapoho, on Hawaii, they stand upon lava rock and on
lava crust; some like mighty champions, like Kamehameha, like
Umi, stand on high places, upon the mounds and rocks of lava.
All stand in ranks as if all the warriors of the Eight Islands stood
spear-ready upon that lava waste.
With branches from the ground they grow. From top to bottom
the blossoms show themselves—not blossoms, but the precious orna-
ments that the warrior decks himself with.
The blossoms show themselves amongst the leaves; they are the
scarlet birds, the lost i-i-wi birds of Hawaii come back to hide and
to show themselves in the trees beloved of Hiiaka.
They stand upon the lava waste, upon black rocks and amongst
black shingles; rank on rank they stand, like warriors erect to watch
the red glow of the volcano.
I saw your lava-mounting trees, and I marvelled no more that
your poets, Hawaii, had emblemed your warriors as Lehua trees.
They have departed, the warriors whom these trees well emblemed.
Honey for the birds of heaven, wreaths of red for girls to deck
their lovers with, these your Lehua trees bring out of your fire-
formed rock, Hawaii.


莎
​/
Gropath
A LINE SYNCOPATION. BY WILLIAM GROPPER





Groepen
A LINE SYNCOPATION. BY WILLIAM GROPPER





RANDOLPH BOURNE
BY PAUL ROSENFELD
Boica wa
at war.
OURNE was the great bearer of moral authority while Amer-
He was our banner man of values in the
general collapse. Round him, during those hateful years, there
crashed, one after another, the ruins of intellectual directorships.
Philosophers, educators, “socialists, college professors, new-repub-
licans, practitioners of literature,” the great majority of those who
had thought themselves interpreters of the country's effort for
larger life, made haste to overturn the values they had once de-
fended. Liberal journals pretended that the war-technique anni-
hilating those values was indeed the expression of them. Every-
where were men rationalizing in diverse fashions their own con-
sentment in the course destined to pervert the better will of the
country, to bring Europe to final disaster and America to the brink
of demoralization. Bourne stepped without pompousness into the
place left vacant by the universal recalcitrancy. Amid the dissolv-
ing minds his stood like a rock in the ocean. The external pressures
so baleful to the great host of intellectuals succeeded only in knead-
ing his rebellious spirit surer an hundredfold in itself than it had
previously been. They summoned it into increased aggressiveness
and doggedness; concentrated the whole of this powerful little man
in a single resistant ironic point. His fine boy's head, cleared by
the discipline of his pragmatist masters, became a powerful dialec-
tical machine. Out of it, amid the shooting fires, there came the
high act of the sort from which the other pragmatists and intellec-
tuals to a man recoiled: the formulation, couched in the very terms
of the present crisis and expressed with an incisiveness perhaps
never excelled by any of his countrymen, of the creative will of
American men.
Bourne knew his enemy. He knew with what power among his
compatriots he had affair. He could not deceive himself into see-
ing the American participation in the European war as evil merely,
as certain of the pacifists saw it, because it necessitated further
carnage of men; no more than he could deceive himself into seeing


546
RANDOLPH BOURNE
a
that participation, as many of the liberal hopeful compromised in-
tellectuals permitted themselves to perceive it, in the attractive
shape of a nice trained doggy who would go fetch the world out
the water and deposit it gently in their laps and there let them re-
fashion it at their good pleasure. His sense of reality was deeper.
Before the government decided a state of war he had guessed what
nigger lay concealed in the woodpile of belligerency. He had
done his uttermost to dissuade the new-republicans from letting
themselves be used slyly by the Administration as decoys for lib-
eral opinion. He had opposed the repressing, illiberal, reactionary
movement, which was sliding the country into the trenches, with
a new statement of the democratic ideal of a community of beings
each one constituting a religion to himself. In the statement, he had
rejected colonialism, bastard Anglo-Saxondom, and the cheap melt-
ing-pot American in favour of a transnational America; an America
itself a world-federation in miniature possessed of a culture that
was "a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many
threads of all sizes and colors.” The weeks which followed on the
opening of hostilities merely corroborated his most sinister intui-
tions. The surge toward education, toward the release of the ca-
pacities for more impassioned living which had once thrilled the
mind of the nation did not, he knew, express itself through forms
as malevolent as those which began to crop up on every side like
spearheads sown. The soldiers who tried to lynch Max Eastman
proved only too well that “current patriotism was not a product of
the will to remake the world.” The American house itself was afire.
Behind the war, using the war as an instrument of aggression,
was the obscure force which has kept the human being in ignorance
and in a condition of servitude through the centuries, periodically
recalling him to his bestial past and making him to destroy the
capital of self-reliance assembled for him by years of comparative
freedom. War was the "health of the state." War was the vital-
ization of herd attitudes. The mystical form made healthy by war,
the imago of the father projected onto the cultural group, had al-
ways been the instrument whereby the resources of communities
had been exploited for the benefit of classes. And the capture of a
community by the privileged classes had invariably resulted in the
spread, in the interests of privilege, of a universal passive resistance
to "the effort of reason and the adventure of beauty.” America was
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
547
at war, therefore, with its own forces of spiritual release; with
whatever outstreaming generous forces the breasts of its people
still contained. It thought it was coming to the rescue of liberty;
for its leaders said it was going to make the world a safe place.
But it was deceived. In going to war, it had itself been captured
by the ancient tyrannies of the old world: nationalism, patriotism,
militarism, state-mysticism, formulas by means of which the hu-
man spirit had been held in an undeveloped, dependent, childish
condition, and in the bonds of an animal past.
The dreary war years and the drearier after world of war, a shat-
tered European life and an American harried by frights and intol-
erances and mob-fanaticisms, were about Bourne in those early
weeks as though there were no time. Experience made him clair-
voyant. Experience made him discover, under the disguises they
wore, the forces which repress and withhold the human spirit from
fresh, quick, significant forms of cultural expression; to scent out
their presence with the instinct of the animal wary of the beasts
that exist by preying on its kind. For he himself, all his short life,
had been in mortal conflict with the shrinking dissipating powers
of fear and hate and whatever else dissuades the spirit from its
trials of strength. He had come into the dead becalmment of
American life. And like the others of his group and time he had
suffered in dumb blindness year long from the curious inertia of it.
The teeming world had been a great parching emptiness around
him. The "bright" bustling activity of American civilization did
not exist for him. It was merely a kind of thin surface; and under-
neath the hammering and speeding and quiver of electric wires
there lay, still as an Atlantis at the bottom of an oceanic valley, a
world hardened in a dull, ugly shape. And, for all the bright com-
mercial expansion, each year seemed to harden it the more. The
earth was noisy and broken with meaningless, endless, directionless
activity. Iron ribs of buildings were being lifted at a thousand
points into the air amid the metallic pecking of the steel-riveter;
every year there were hundreds of new factories, skyscrapers, lofts,
stores, hotels, garages, flats. The trains and ferries and tunnels
leading into Manhattan were thick black every morning with
crowds streaming into the city to work; and every night the wave
swept back during hours across the Jersey suburbs, and spilt itself
in thick-set leagues of houses; and every year there were new hun-
a


548
RANDOLPH BOURNE
dreds of thousands of young men and women beginning to go to
work. Children were sprouting everywhere like grass from top-
soil; into New York Bay the immigrant ships were bearing every
month their cargos of able bodies; there was a perpetual move-
ment upward of general financial condition, a rising tide of bank
deposits, bathtubs, sanitary plumbing, shined shoes, college educa-
tions. Nevertheless, strangely, the air was motionless and heavy
and stagnant like the air in windless close August nights. No cur-
rent of wind broke through the glassy calm and set the body breath
ing. Everything-friends, neighbours, classmates—was curiously
pressing life downward into inertia; bearing down toward the me-
diocre existing form of it; patting the world of good-enough with
the vigour of new lives. Every year, new hordes of youth came to
fortify it with their blood; to fit themselves willingly into the dull
form of it and let it grow mightier through them, and become in
turn emblems of it in the forms of sales managers, bank cashiers,
smart story writers, insurance brokers, automobile mechanics, ad-
vertising wizards; all admirably adjusted to the immoral, untight-
ened thing which existed. There was always a position in some
.
business house drawing like a magnet. And behind that, there was
always a neat approved two-family home, and behind that, a neat
approved girl of the sort the family would like. There had seemed
no way.
More richly almost than any other member of his generation in
the land, he had stored within him that principle of growth against
which the self-repression of a community, its passive resistance to
"the effort of reason and the adventure of beauty” wages a silent
incessant war of attrition. Bourne was a cripple; he was the son
of unfine, conventional, immobile American society; but the seeds
of fineness burned in him, and made him a wedge of crimson into
the dun, the timorousness, the cheap self-satisfaction of his com-
munity. The whole of him was directed towards development.
The first time one saw the man, one saw, perhaps, the crippled
frame, the poor twisted ear, and shrank involuntarily from them.
They were gone the second time; gone never again to obtrude.
Only the long sensitive Gothic face remained; the fine musician's
hands with their delightful language; the joyous, youthful, certain
dance of the mind. One knew, and women knew it no less posi-
tively than did men, that through the appearance of this being a


PAUL ROSENFELD
549
great vacancy in American life, perhaps never until the moment of
Bourne's coming more than partially seen, had been filled. During
prep-school days, in college, during the first contacts with mature
life one had looked hopefully over many a spotless collar, under
many a smart straw hat, been drawn by many a sincerity and purity
of spirit, and then invariably stood baffled a little and bewildered;
but for what one had groped, and why one had been disappointed,
and what it was American life seemed to lack, that one never quite
clearly knew till Bourne commenced to move through the world.
Only then was there set before one where it could be perceived the
fact that what one had been groping for so comically, and what
America was poor for the want of, was the young American who
desired not things, but high experience, and who was capable of
taking the jumbled objects of American civilization and converting
them into nutriment for the spirit. For the man, and the thirst
for high experience, and love, and art, and impassioned living, and
the capacity for converting the raw of life into wisdom and hu-
manity; embodiments of a shadowy dream, were here.
He was the democratic individual in America; the youth of a
beautiful, unrealized, ever-imminent plane of existence sprung in
a society banked against that plane. He was the young being
having need of living from his own centre, finding himself in a
land terrorized by the conventions; bourgeois conventions giving
themselves out for the laws of the universe, and proclaiming them-
selves from every pulpit and school-platform. In a society full of
external and assumed principles, he was the man who produces his
own principles from out of himself; and cleaves along a single and
unswerving line in all his expressions, not because of external con-
victions of right and wrong, but because of some powerful and
clarified impulsion deep in himself. Part of a civilization of outer
frenetic movement and inner rigidity, he wanted from the world
not external movement, nor external symbols of power and domin-
ion over the persons of others, but emotion, the beauty of a rich,
fecund, mature personality, the growth of the power to receive high
aristocratic pleasure from the simplest common stuffs of existence.
And from that society, he wanted men and women living from
their own centres no differently than he from his: for the reason
that their truthfulness to themselves would strengthen his own
truthfulness to himself, and reveal his own mind the better to him.


550
RANDOLPH BOURNE
Alongside of himself, he wanted people developing infinite varie-
ties of character, expanding in directions perhaps contrary to his
own, for the reason that to such people he could give life, and from
them get it in exchange, and through the intercourse grow the
larger in himself.
Hence, he had had to suffer long the punishment of hostile in-
difference and subtle humiliation his environment deals out to
rebels such as he. He had had to suffer long from the profoundest
loneliness and helplessness; the want of any corroboration of his
vague struggling feelings; the want of any insight into his own
condition; the want of the immense encouragement which comes
from finding a fellow-journeyer. People were afraid of growing
and of those who grew. Had but some voice, some book, come at
the time and told young Randolph Bourne that his terrible discom-
fort resulted from the inertia of American civilization, from the
resistance of lower-middle-class life to the life of ideas and of spir-
itual distinction; told him that he suffered because something with-
in him was attempting to start an evolution toward fineness against
the weight of society organized for business only, he might not
have lost the years of his youth spent in ineffectual groping. He
might have found his own way much earlier. But during the nine-
teen-hundreds, there were no such voices and no such books. There
was a thin movement of social uplift. But there was no movement
toward spiritual growth; no movement toward a new form of so-
ciety flowing from the soul. Literature was playing the procurer.
Literature was pretending the universal dun was colour of roses;
pretending that the stagnation was movement upward into the
sunny blue. Literature was content in being mediocre: in being
part of the mediocre immobile form. There were no people. There
were no individuals in America. The men who were to make that
new literature of rebellion and democratic idealism were them-
selves, like Bourne himself, trying to co-ordinate their faculties in
motion. So, the first twenty-three years of Bourne's life went in
dazed wandering. The next five or six, better directed though they
were, were passed in a half-ignorance of what it was that repressed,
and what it was that drove. Bourne felt himself alone at Colum-
bia. He felt himself alone while travelling in Europe as the Gilder
Scholar for 1913. It was only during the last four years of his life
that he met on the common meeting ground the men who were


PAUL ROSENFELD
551
trying to go his way, and through them felt himself right and knew
what the seed in himself was trying to realize. But Bourne was
filled with the Lord Spring. His being had thrust outside the form
of existence led around him a sort of lodestone, a sort of star of
intenser richer living. And the projected values, vague though
they must perforce have been, mere faintly shimmering asteroids,
nevertheless had drawn him counter to the current of society and
towards the life of wisdom and of art. They had made him go
hunt whatever material for growth this world afforded; made him
create out of the raw an environment in which the youth and appe-
tite for high adventure stored within him could breathe and come
to ever fresher burgeoning. It was difficult for Bourne to make his
way unaided to the university; and, at the conclusion of high-
schooling he took first the position of secretary to some moneyed
drearies; then of musical proof-reader in a pianola-record factory;
then of accompanist to a toreador singing-master in Carnegie Stu-
dios who euchred him of his pay. And still, in his twenty-third
year, he reached Columbia, and used Columbia. He became per-
haps the most distinguished of all John Dewey's pupils. In learn-
ing to write, he developed a technique of expressing past experience
and present desire in combination, thus at once making room in
himself for deeper experience and greater desire, and forcing the
world to sustain him in his unconventional manner of living. His
first book, a defence of his own budding principle called Youth
and Life, was published while he was still a junior. His poor body
notwithstanding, he found his way to the places where gardens
grow about women. With his inappeasable appetite for the per-
sonal, he found his way to young women and men in Columbia, in
Greenwich Village, in the offices of magazines and advertising
companies, who were being thrust forward much as he; some of
them queer people enough: beautiful hysterical girls, half-poets,
founders of ideal communities, composers who composed in obso-
lete styles, old children, helpless radicals; almost abortive efforts
of life to maintain itself on a more spiritual plane who, neverthe-
less, were far more generously human than the folk better adjusted
to the American scene. And from them he learned, too. Through
them, he came to feel his own enthusiasms and ideals more in-
tensely. Like "Mon Amie,” the girl with whom he used to go
walking during his months in Paris, they all brought him, to some


552
RANDOLPH BOURNE
a
degree, a greater sense of the loveliness of “luminous understanding,
personal verve, light of expression, the feeling of ideas and the
thinking of emotions, deathless loyalty which betrays only at the
clutch of some deeper loyalty.” They all brought him himself.
In the last years given him he was touching life at a multitude
of points. By virtue of the talisman he bore in him, he seemed to
find his way with ease to the movements which, dissimilar though
they seemed to be, nevertheless were each to some extent moved by
the principle active in himself. He discovered new educational ex-
periments; new pathfindings in philosophy and literature; new
flights in politics and musical art. To the problems of each field he
seemed to bring the whole sum of his former experience, his deep
intuition and sure sense of fact, sharp comprehension, quick imagin-
ativeness, and pleasure in the sensuous. And through this liberal
delivery, the reports of his discoveries, whether they assumed the
shape of a description of the schools in Gary or of a review of a
novel, of a whimsical account of friends, children, teachers, or a
serious discussion of the future of American culture, became, al-
most always, experiments in themselves, new theories of facts, new
keen images of reality. Bourne could speak with equal sureness,
humanity, lightness on a dozen different topics; and his talk itself,
like his book-reviewing, was a sort of adventure. Through each
subject, Bourne seemed to touch the living, fluid principle; even
politics became life when he tossed it on his mobile hands. One
miniature but nevertheless perfectly authentic salon, at the very
least, was started about his person; and persisted, in New York it-
self, while he was there to talk brilliantly and provoke good talk
with his sharp ironical mind. It languished only with his death.
Just as he could enter the gates of a dozen distinct media of ex-
pression, so too, he seemed to be able to express himself with per-
fect ease through several of them. Very few of his friends did not
have the delight of coming in on him some morning, and hearing
him, his language precise with wisdom and delicate irony, talk off
some article, some of his priceless replies to Dewey, some one of his
finest bits of logic, even while he was engaged in the seemingly
effortless act of composition; and then seeing him step over to his
upright piano and begin playing Bach or Ravel or Scriabine.
Bourne could, how quietly! charm a dinner table, from his chair
where he throned like a little pope, with his brilliant political
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
553
speculation; and then going to the keyboard continue offering in a
different medium, and through his broad palms and flexible wrists,
the entertainment begun by his ratiocinations.
Towards the very close of his short hey-day, each of the many
manifestations of life seemed to provide him with a subject for
aristocratic pleasures. Not even his long depression over the war,
or the doors which were slammed in his face because of his stand
on American participation, or the cowardice of some of his radical
collaborators, or other and more personal vexations, could dull the
enjoyment. Life was a feast which began with breakfast and the
latest broadsides of journalistic self-delivery. It was a feast which
continued well into the night, so long as but a human being was
near. Even while he went about carrying all the woes of all the
friends being shipped off to army camps, and was being watched
as a suspicious person because he and two ladies had taken a walk-
ing trip along the shore of Buzzard's Bay in the midst of a sub-
marine scare, he could still laugh at the muckers of the New York
Tribune with their “Who's Who in Traitors,” no less than at the
organs of liberal opinion with their “symposiums of eloquent ideal-
ism, their appealing harbingers of a cosmically efficacious and well-
bred war.” He had the rare gift of being able to pick up a news-
paper or weekly and open it directly to the spot where the most
naïve and absurd line of the issue was to be found. Breakfast was
scarcely begun before Bourne had found at least one line to make
the day go brightly. He even enjoyed himself, poor devil, as he
lay a-choking to death and unable to inhale the oxygen conducted
to his mouth. An eggnog was brought to him at his mumbled re-
quest; and as soon as he saw the saffron liquid, he began exclaim-
ing with pleasure over its gorgeous hue. It was in keeping with
his career that his last uttered syllables should register a delight of
the eye.
From out this life, the broad flaunt of humanist colours in the
crisis of war grew like fruit from roots and trunk and branch. In
intercourse, in literature, Bourne had long been bearing witness to
the glory of the life of wisdom. And still, so clarified was his vis-
ion of human values in the collapse of April, so male the power,
so sure the means of expressing them, that sometimes the man of
The Seven Arts essays seems a being apart from the author of
Youth and Life, and Education and Living; even from parts of


554
RANDOLPH BOURNE
The History of a Literary Radical. The steps taken before the
moment when Bourne became spokesman of moral authority were
taken on the ground. Those taken from the hour when America
went to war sound from the high bridge where men of stature
march. There were only three or four; and then the reverberations
ceased. But we know the clang of the stride; and from whence
such clangours carry. A man of power had suddenly been co-or-
dinated in powerful complete release. The rhythm of The Seven
Arts essays is freer, stronger, lighter by far than that underlying
anything previously written by Bourne. Vanished is every trace of
the gingerly Atlantic Monthly style, with its mincingness of
per-
sons perpetually afeared of stepping on eggs, vestiges of which still
weave through Youth and Life. Vanished is the somewhat thin
and colourless, if serviceable style, of The New Republic essays. A
spirit has come out of America and stood in the place held at other
times by the great humanists. Shod with irony and gay satiric
laughter, humble weapons of those who combat with the intellect
the beef of humanity, the sappy protagonist youth once again
breathes, over a locked and chaotic and mechanized humanity, the
sense of the scope and the possibility of life. This is no longer a
“Defense of Irony.” The soul has entered into iron indeed. It has
taken the language of its opponents, their solemn phrases, their
mouthings of democracy and liberty and conscience and love, and,
tilting them just a little out of plumb, shown in what manner these
words conceal from their users their own conduct. In these bright
sentences, lyrical with lucid thought, there shine like a rising sun
the forces of spiritual release, widening the horizon so piteously
shrunken by the war-morale, and filling it again with colours and
blooms and significances.
Passion accepted the challenge. Passion gave it back again.
Passion for liberty said “No”; said it louder and more angrily
than it had said it before the challenge came. All along the line,
“Yes” was hastily being substituted for “No.” Softly, subtly, in-
sinuatingly, the crisis was stepping up to men, and asking them
whether they could not reconsider their language, now that the
stream was coursing contrary to them. And the majority of them
changed, noble freemen! and for the best of reasons, of course. It
was all like William James and the Philippine business. It was
wrong to annex the islands before they were actually annexed. But


PAUL ROSENFELD
555
once they were taken, then, for some reason, it did not seem so
wrong a thing at all. For, the “Yes” of America to the democratic
ideal, to liberty of individual development, to freedom from an-
cient tyrannies, in the most of cases, had never been given from the
centre of the being. It had been an assent given to something for
the reason that this something existed, or seemed to exist, or seemed
destined to exist. And now, since the stream commenced flowing
away from this thing; since militarism, nationalism, patriotism,
state mysticism, were coming to stand in its place, assent to the
successor came quite as readily. No principles stood like steel gir-
ders in a conflagration. But in a few noble men and women, the
crisis encountered a resistant force; in one man, at the very least, a
force so intense that, like Greek fire, it flamed the fiercer for the
water hurled upon it. In Bourne it came upon a passionate love of
the image of freedom. It came upon a being given up entirely in
passion for freedom for growth for himself and other people; in
desire for free play to all the world, the five continents and seven
seas, to expand human nature in numberless and even conflicting
directions. It came in Bourne upon one Anglo-Saxon American, at
least, who was not as yet ready to renounce the Englishman's heri-
tage of liberty; an Anglo-Saxon American in whom there still burnt
high the faith in the variations of character through self-reliance
and perfection by standards voluntarily assumed that had once
made the rebellions against the authority of Archbishop Laud and
against the Divine Right of King George III. This passion so
“nineteenth-century,” as Bourne himself used ruefully to say,
would not drop its arms since the battle was commencing to go
against it, and fall to dreaming of an international congress of
young radicals to follow upon the war when the liberal forces were
going down in defeat. It was aggressive, being intense; sum-
moned itself to ever greater effort since the house was afire at all
corners. It defended, it glorified, it tried to summon men back to
their allegiance to its object. In the midst of the mêlée, like the
passion of a great European contemporary, it asserted in proud
faithfulness, its ideal. The war had brought into play another of
these beings who in defending their cause defended that of every
man.
The age-old desire for the release of the capacities for impas-
sioned living pent in the human frame, which spoke through Ran-


556
RANDOLPH BOURNE
dolph Bourne during the war-time, was never caught by him and
held in the shape of a formal statement of the democratic ideal.
He died six weeks after the armistice; and throughout the greater
part of the bitter months he was midmost, and not above the battle.
It was only after The Seven Arts perished that Bourne, cut off
from every channel of publicity, gave up his attempt to bring in-
fluence to bear on current events; and, going to work in the field of
theory, made his deadly wonderful analysis of the State. Hence,
most of his fighting was done on the practical level. The articles
contributed by him to The Seven Arts were, for the most part,
defences of what remained of the democratic machinery thrown
up at single points of the fray. They were attempts made to save
what remained of the democratic attitude through sharp pitiless
analyses of the situation created by the failure of the intellec-
tuals and of the administration to control the ruin-bringing war-
technique. Through these brilliant sardonic pictures, Bourne was
trying to call to their colours the forces which had once made for
democracy; to rouse the intellectuals from the herd-attitudes into
which they had collapsed; to try and re-channel the interest of the
country into a national educational service from which the herd's
need of a military victory had debouched it. The War and the In-
tellectuals was a call for mind; rejection of the pragmatist intel-
lectuals with whom Bourne had previously been associated, for
their failure to create a programme for America; demand for intel-
lectuals, who could hold the authorities to a war, "gallantly played,
with insistent care for democratic values at home, and unequivocal
alliance with democratic elements abroad for a peace that shall
promise more than a mere union of benevolent imperialisms.” Twi-
light of Idols formulated Bourne's reasons for discarding pragmat-
ism and all philosophy of intelligent control which does not begin
with values and ideals—in time of stress permitting values to be
subordinated to pure technique. Below the Battle was the descrip-
tion of the spiritual state of a friend of Bourne's, a young violinist
drafted for military service. Through the texture, there runs, it is
true, like the red thread through the rope-work of the British fleet,
the glorification of the allure of “fresh and true ideas, free specu-
lation, artistic vigour, cultural styles, intelligence suffused by feel-
ing and feeling given fibre and outline by intelligence"; lodestars
which draw the individual onward to completion. It is true that
a
a


PAUL ROSENFELD
557
all through the writing, we are shown as on a stage, the combat
of two forces existing in the world to-day, the one making for the
democratic community of free men, the other making against it.
The free, self-reliant, self-determined individual is set over against
the herd-individual, subject to the herd authorities and orthodox-
ies, and hemmed round with principles which are worthless in mo-
ments of crisis for the reason that they are external. The life of
art and wisdom is opposed to the life of domination over the per-
sons of others. The clear feeling and seeing which flows from life
lived from the centre within, is opposed to the muddled feeling and
thinking of men who have never dared trust their intuitions and
live their passions out; the intellect which does not dread suspense
and is not drugged with fatigue, to that which is in haste to crys-
tallize, to find its little theory of the universe and then disregard
whatever will not fit into it. Yet, what the specific ideal of life
for which the author is fighting is, we are not explicitly told.
Bourne had no time.
Nevertheless, not anything written by any of the new Americans
makes more real than do these fighting papers, the sense of the dem-
ocratic community of people, developed by standards voluntarily
assumed and perfected by completest self-reliance, towards which
the best minds among those who built the country have moved.
The rhythm of these writings brings it again, the sense of men
free of the orthodoxies and authorities of state and church, of priv-
ilege and radicalism alike; brings it as the breeze in May trans-
ports, elusively and yet unmistakably, the breath of unfolding
landscapes. It flutters from every dancing line as the rag of a
standard tied to a pikehead might flutter in a battle; unnoticed per-
haps of the wielder of the weapon, but flaunted by every motion of
the staff. It is not a man alone that is speaking. Rather, it is a
plane of being demonstrating itself through the substance of words.
The light of reason seems to flow from out a beautiful unrealized
world, and to make that hidden sphere more real and visible by its
tremulous presence; what is expressed here calls to fresher life de-
sire for that city of the soul wherever the desire is latent. What
is expressed seems to build a brave high place of stately colonnades
a
and to extend wide and sunshot spaces around us here in the grim
jumble of hard lines and shrieking metal and sombre driven hordes.
For, it gives joyous sanction to all in man which moves toward
a


558
RANDOLPH BOURNE
freedom from ancient shackling tyrannies; it calls forth in beauty
what the established order beats down and attends with pain. For
it gives it high right not merely through an emotional appeal,
but through coldest, clearest logic. It hails it health and sanity
and wisdom through proof that the life of art and wisdom is
the most practical of lives in a strictly practical world; that “in-
terest in creatively enhancing personal and artistic life, interest in
the creation of cultural values”; makes for greater sureness of ob-
servation and clarity of vision than interest devoted entirely to the
problem of material increase. For Bourne was a man interested in
more impassioned living for himself and others, a man who lived
through art, a man disgusted with the continual frustrations and
aridities of American life, apologist and exponent both of self-
reliant humanity; and Bourne was right about the war; right from
the first. This philosophical temperament was not one of those
who, like the greater number of our practical young political think-
ers, had to wait for Versailles to know that we were “like brave pas-
sengers who had set out for the Isles of the Blest only to find that
the first mate had gone insane and jumped overboard, the rudder
come loose and dropped to the bottom of the sea, and the captain
and pilot were lying dead drunk under the wheel.” The Collapse
of American Strategy, written directly after the President's call for
“Force, Force to the uttermost,” gave warning that the dead weight
of the war-technique was carrying the country entirely away from
the purpose for which the war-technique allegedly was being em-
ployed; gave warning we were "a rudderless nation, to be exploited
as the Allies wished, politically and materially, and towed, to their
aggrandizement, in any direction they might desire”; and showed
Woodrow Wilson well on the road which led to his eventual mis-
erable failure. And Bourne became righter with every hour. Like
a gigantic shadow thrown upon a wall behind the chunky little
cripple, the war corroborated him at every point, and gave truth to
his words scarcely after they were uttered. It is difficult to believe
to-day he was writing in the summer of 1917, and not of 1920 or
1921, so accurate were his prophecies. The heresies of yesterday
,
are become the bromides of to-day.
They were rapidly becoming banalities before Bourne died.
Nevertheless, he failed of his immediate objective. He was not
interested in being right for the mere pleasure of being right, but in


PAUL ROSENFELD
559
rescuing his freeman's heritage and the democratic future from the
hands of the mob. And the politicians, the unprincipled people,
the yes-and-no people, carried the day. Probably, Woodrow Wil-
son never heard of his foremost critic. If any one of his advisors
had his attention drawn to certain articles published in an obscure
highbrow review in New York, he probably came swiftly, in the
manner of the war-mind, to the conclusion that Bourne's name was
really “Rudolph Braun” or perhaps "Randdorff Boerne.” The
public of action in America does not take heed of what the public
of theory is saying, particularly when the public of theory happens
to be truly theoretical and consequently truly practical. So 1776
finally receded to 1917. Liberty became universal compulsory ser-
vice in defence of republican monarchy. Democracy became pres-
sure downward and backward; the ancient herd-attitudes; forceful
suppression of minorities; compulsion of thought; betrayal of the
liberal elements in Europe; a league of capitalistic imperialisms;
starvation of millions of people in the east of Europe; the decay of
Occidental civilization; the capture of American institutions by a
fascistic mob. And 1917 receded to 1923. Bourne only saw the
commencement of the fulfilment of his bitter prophecies. Even in
the December of 1917, in the midst of the black death, the fearful
reactionary current was only swollen to half the size it has since
gained. There was still more of a will to the change of spirit and
of organization throughout the country then, than there is at pres-
ent. There was still more of a fund of good-will and courageous
thought in circulation. But since, the forces which have kept the
human being in ignorance and in a condition of servitude have
waxed fat on the energies of men. Every obscurantism has taken
courage. Every inertia has felt itself justified. They can do any-
.
thing they wish with us. We are become like a herd of cows.
And yet, Bourne snatched a victory from the very maw of defeat.
He is more visible to us to-day than he was while he was alive. He
seems to have left behind him some immortal part that walks about
the earth much as he used himself to walk. At innumerable cor-
ners of life we seem to glimpse advancing toward us the quaint lit-
tle figure in its long black cloak. When he died, we knew that per-
haps the strongest mind of the entire younger generation in Amer-
ica had gone. But in the few years that have elapsed since that
December day, Bourne's figure has grown to a far greater stature.


560
RANDOLPH BOURNE
To-day, already, we know him for one of the rarest, freest, sweetest
spirits that have ever come out of this land. We see the size of
him plainly in the bitter moments in which we realize how vacant
the scene has become since he quit it. There is so grey a death in
the many fields to which he brought the light of his own clear na-
ture! He was a humanist; and the men left us are sociologists,
political thinkers, professors, and critics. We see the size of him,
too, in happier moments; in some of those flashes in which, with a
far surmise, we know what it is to be a free spirit; what it is to
live for an idea, to "write in favor of that which the great interests
of the world are against,” to work toward "the enhancement of
personal and artistic life and the creation of cultural values.” For
he was the artist-fighter in the drab American streets. It is certain,
then, that his figure will stretch as the years go by, and become
ever more generally visible. His fame and future are with the
cycles of life.
For despite the mediocre world which would not heed him, he
remained true to the spirit in him. He succeeded thoroughly in
expressing to his time the far community of which he was a mem-
ber. In his person, therefore, he has lent the world another image,
another symbol and banner whereby the unborn thing which filled
him, wherever and in whomsoever it grows, can come to greater
consciousness, and therefore greater courage of itself, and be pressed
onward toward birth. And, some day, the spring will come again
to men.


TWO POEMS
BY AMY LOWELL
SULTRY
To those who can see them, there are eyes:
Leopard eyes of marigolds crouching above red earth,
Bulging eyes of fruits and rubies in the heavily-hanging trees,
of queasy cupids staring from the gloom of myrtles.
I came here for solitude
And I am plucked at by a host of
eyes.
Broken eyes
a
A peacock spreads his tail on the balustrade
And every eye is a mood of green malice,
A challenge and a fear.
A hornet flashes above geraniums,
Spying upon me in a trick of cunning.
And Hermes,
Hermes the implacable,
Points at me with a fractured arm.
a
Vengeful god of smooth, imperishable loveliness,
You are more savage than the goat-legged Pan,
Than the crocodile of carven yew-wood.
Fisherman of men's eyes,
You catch them on a three-pronged spear:
Your youth, your manhood,
The reticence of your everlasting revelation.
I too am become a cunning eye
Seeking you past your time-gnawed surface,
Seeking you back to hyacinths upon a dropping hill,
Where legend drowses in a glaze of sea.
Yours are the eyes of a bull and a panther,
For all that they are chiseled out and the sockets empty.
You-perfectly imperfect,


562
TWO POEMS
Clothed in a garden,
In innumerable gardens,
Borrowing the eyes of fruits and flowers,
And mine also, cold, impossible god,
So that I stare back at myself
And see myself with loathing.
A quince-tree flings a crooked shadow-
My shadow, tortured out of semblance,
Bewildered in quince boughs.
His shadow is clear as a scissored silhouette.
Heat twinkles and the eyes glare.
And I, of the mingled shadow,
I glare
And see nothing.
TIME'S ACRE
Beat, beat, with your soft, grey feet,
Tear at the cold, rough stone.
His grave is here, but it's many a year
Since the grass on it was mown.
His ears are crumbled to bitter dust,
His eyes are a hollow bone.
Your twisting hair is bright and fair,
But he is under a stone.
Go back again to your own wide tomb,
Leave him in peace within
His grave that is narrow and shallow and small,
There is no room for two between either wall,
And the walls are caving in.
There are nests of worms in the underground,
And the grass-roots wind across,
Like a counterpane to keep out the rain
Is the green-eyed, clutching moss.


AMY LOWELL
563
Go back to your tomb a mile away,
Go back through the still bronze door.
The arms which are carven upon its front
Are there as they were before.
No trace of escutcheon is on this stone,
And burdocks have pushed it awry,
And the flowers on tiptoe out of his mouth
Are staring into the sky.
Over his grave is a moan of wind,
And hemlock-trees bow down,
And a hemlock cone lies on the stone
a
Stained with smoke from the town.
What have you to do in this dismal place
By a dingy, broken stone?
He has no hands and he has no face,
And bone cannot wed with bone.
You took his flesh and you took his heart,
But his bones are his own to keep.
Knuckle and straight, he has them all
Down in the gravel deep.
Perhaps he laughs with his hard grey mouth,
Perhaps he shouts with glee,
And cuddles his bones up one by one,
And wishes that you could see.
Perhaps he plays jackstones with his bones,
And bets how long you will stay.
He knows all about those bright bronze doors
Waiting a mile away.
For you in the flesh teased him in the flesh
And would not let him be,
Till
you teased him out of his flesh for good
And into Eternity.


564
TWO POEMS
But what is fire to a living man
Is nothing at all to a bone.
He lies at ease in the cold and the mould,
And he lies at ease alone.
He will be part of the earth in time,
You will be only dust,
And
your carven door will be nothing more
Than a heap of eating rust.
So much for your azure fleur-de-lis,
And your cross in a chevron d'or.
He will be lilies in a morning breeze
At the foot of a sycamore.
The world goes round, and the world goes round,
And who knows what may come out of the ground
When a man is planted under a mound.



THE GREY BOA. BY MARIE VAN VORST






LONDON PRIDE.
BY MARIE VAN VORST


1
1


THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke
IT
a
а
T was a warm evening in May when Kläre Heil reappeared for
the first time as Queen of the Night. The circumstance which
had kept the singer away from the opera for almost two months
was a matter of common knowledge. Prince Richard Bedenbruck
had been injured in a fall from his horse on the fifteenth of March,
and after an illness of a few hours during which time Kläre had
never left his side—had died in her arms. Kläre's anguish had been
so intense that at first they feared for her life, later for her mind,
and until recently, for her voice. This last fear proved to be quite
as unfounded as the other two. As she came before the public she
received a friendly and expectant greeting; but after the first great
a
aria her more intimate friends could accept the felicitations of her
more distant acquaintances. In the fourth gallery the childish red
face of little Fräulein Fanny Ringeiser beamed with happiness, and
the habitués of the upper rows smiled to their comrade sympathet-
ically. They all knew that Fanny, although she was nothing more
than the daughter of a Mariahilf haberdasher, belonged to the
popular prima donna's closer circle, that she had frequently been in-
vited to her house for tea, and had secretly been in love with the
dead Prince. Between acts Fanny explained to her friends that
Kläre had got the idea from the Baron von Leisenbohg of selecting
the Queen of the Night for her first appearance, feeling that the
dark costume would correspond most closely to her mood.
As to the Baron, he took his orchestra seat-first row centre, on
the aisle as usual—and acknowledged the greetings of his acquaint-
ances with an amiable but almost painful smile. To-day various
memories were running through his head. He had met Kläre about
eight years ago. At that time he was providing for the artistic edu-
cation of a slender young lady with red hair and was attending an
evening performance at the Eisenstein Singing School where his


566 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
protégée as Mignon was making her first public appearance. The
same evening he saw and heard Kläre, who sang Philine in the same
scene. He was then twenty-five years old, unattached, and godless.
He simply forgot about Mignon, obtained an introduction through
Frau Natalie Eisenstein to Philine, and declared to her that his
heart, his influence, and his position were at her service. At that
time Kläre was living with her mother, the widow of a higher post-
al official; and she was in love with a young medical student with
whom she frequently drank tea and chatted in his room in the Alser-
vorstadt. She was deaf to the Baron's stormy courtship, but with
her disposition softened by Leisenbohg's attentions she became the
mistress of the student. The Baron, to whom she made no secret
of this fact, returned to his auburn protégée, but kept up his ac-
quaintanceship with Kläre. On every holiday that furnished the
slightest opportunity he sent her flowers and bon-bons, and he
would pay an occasional formal call at the house of the postal of-
ficial's widow.
In the fall Kläre took up her first engagement in Detmold. The
Baron von Leisenbohg—at that time still an official in the ministry
-used his first Christmas holidays to visit Kläre at her new place
of residence. He knew that the student had become a doctor and
had married in September, and he took hope. But Kläre, upright
as ever, informed the Baron immediately after their meeting that
in the meanwhile she had entered on tender relations with the tenor
of the Hoftheater, with the result that Leisenbohg could take away
no other memories of Detmold than a platonic stroll through the
city park and a supper in the theatre restaurant in company with
several colleagues of both sexes. Nevertheless he repeated his trip
to Detmold several times, rejoiced in his aesthetic concern for
Kläre's considerable progress, and, further, hoped for the next sea-
son, for which the tenor was already contracted in Hamburg. But
this year he was again disappointed, since Kläre had felt herself
obliged to grant the petitions of a wholesale merchant of Dutch
descent, by the name of Louis Verhajen.
When, in her third season, Kläre was called to a place in the
Dresden Hoftheater, in spite of his youth the Baron threw over a
very promising political career and moved to Dresden. Now he
spent each evening with Kläre and her mother, who had acquired a


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
567
perfectly lovely innocence in all matters concerning her daughter
and he took new hope. But unfortunately the Dutchman
had the unpleasant habit of announcing in every letter that he
would arrive the next day, assuring his mistress that she was sur-
rounded by an army of spies, and incidentally threatening her with
the most painful forms of death in the event of her being unfaith-
ful to him. But as he never did come, and Kläre began falling
gradually into a state of extreme nervousness, Leisenbohg resolved
to end the matter at all costs, and left Detmold to carry on his
transactions in person. To his astonishment the Dutchman de-
clared that he had sent these threatening love-letters to her purely
out of gallantry, and that as a matter of fact nothing would be
more agreeable to him than to be freed of all further responsibility.
Elated, Leisenbohg came back to Dresden and told Kläre of the
pleasant outcome of the interview. She thanked him cordially, but
the first thrust at further tenderness was parried with an abrupt-
ness which took the Baron by surprise. After a few brief and
searching questions she finally confessed to him that during his
absence no less than Prince Kajetan himself had conceived a vio-
lent passion for her and had sworn to do himself some harm if he
was not heard. It was only natural that she had ultimately been
forced to give in, so as to avoid throwing the reigning house and the
country at large into unspeakable misery.
With a reasonably broken heart Leisenbohg left the city and re-
turned to Vienna. Here he began using his influence, and his con-
tinuous efforts were responsible to no small degree for the offer
which Kläre received to sing in opera in Vienna the next year.
After a very successful appearance as guest star she began her en-
gagement in October, and the splendid flowers from the Baron
she found in her dressing-room on the evening of her first appear-
ance, seemed to express both supplication and hope. But the kind
protector who waited for her in agitation following the perform-
ance was to learn that once more he had come too late. The blond
rehearsal director—who was also of no small importance as a song
writer—with whom she had been studying these last weeks had
been granted privileges by her which she could not have infringed
upon for anything in the world.
Since then seven years had passed. The director was followed
by Herr Klemens von Rhodewyl, the dashing gentleman rider;


568 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
a
a
Herr von Rhodewyl by the bandmaster Vincenz Klaudi, who fre-
quently joined so loudly in the operas he conducted that one could
not hear the singers; the bandmaster by Count von Alban-Rattony,
a man who had gambled away his Hungarian estate at cards and
later won back a castle in lower Austria; the Count by Herr Edgar
Wilhelm, author of ballet-texts, which he paid handsome prices to
have set to music, of tragedies for which he hired the Jantschtheater
to produce, and of poems which he had printed in the most beauti-
ful type, in the stupidest, most select paper of the capital; Herr
Edgar Wilhelm was followed by a gentleman named Amandus
Meier, who was nothing except nineteen years old and very pretty,
and who had nothing but a fox-terrier that could stand on its head;
and after Herr Meier came the most elegant man of the monarchy,
Prince Richard Bedenbruck.
Kläre had never treated her affairs as a secret. At all times she
kept a simple bourgeois house, except that every once in a while
there was a change of masters. She was unusually favoured by the
public. Higher circles were pleased that she went to mass every
Sunday, confessed twice a month, wore on her bosom as an amulet
a picture of the Madonna blessed by the Pope, and never went to
bed without saying her prayers. There was seldom a charity bazaar
in which she was not one of the saleswomen; and ladies of the
aristocracy as well as those of the Jewish financial circles were de-
lighted if they could offer their wares in the same booth with
Kläre. She always had a winning smile for those youthful en-
thusiasts who hovered about the stage door. The flowers which
were lavished upon her she distributed among this patient throng;
and once when the flowers had been left behind in her dressing-
room she said in the snappy Viennese which suited her so well,
“My soul if I haven't left the salad up there in my room. Come
around to-morrow afternoon, kids, if you want to come in on it.”
Then she got into her cab, stuck her head out of the window, and
shouted, “There's a coffee in it, too.”
Fanny Ringeiser had belonged to the few who found the courage
to accept this invitation. Kläre dropped into a light conversation
with her, asked as affably as an arch-duchess about her family rela-
tions, and was so taken in by the chatter of this fresh and vigorous
girl that she pressed her to come back again soon. Fanny accepted


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
569
her offer, and soon succeeded in winning a respected place in the
house of the artist; and she maintained this position by keeping
her distance in spite of Kläre's freedom with her. In the course of
years Fanny received any number of proposals, mostly from among
young sons of manufacturers in the Mariahilf section, with whom
she usually danced at balls. But she refused them all, since with
unswerving regularity she persisted in falling in love with whoever
was Kläre's lover at the time.
For over three years Kläre had been true to Prince Bedenbruck,
but with a deeper passion than she had loved his predecessors; and
although Leisenbohg had never quite abandoned hope in spite of
all his disappointments, he began seriously wondering whether the
happiness he had longed for for ten years would never bloom.
Always, when he saw someone beginning to slip out of favour, he
would take leave of his other darling in order to be prepared at any
moment and for all contingencies. He had done the same after the
sudden death of Prince Richard; but for the first time it was more
through habit than conviction. For Kläre's pain seemed so im-
moderate, that it was everyone's opinion she would shut herself
off now for all time from the joys of this life. Every day she rode
out to the cemetery and laid flowers on the grave of the departed.
She lost all interest in bright-coloured clothing, and locked up her
jewellery in the most out-of-the-way corner of her writing-desk. It
required earnest pleading to dissuade her from leaving the
stage
for
ever.
After her first reappearance, which had come off so brilliantly,
her external life, at least, took its usual course. The former circle
of more removed friends reassembled. The musical critic Bernhard
Feuerstein appeared, with either spinach or tomato spots on his vest
according to yesterday's bill of fare, and grumbled-much to
Kläre's undisguised delight-over colleagues, male and female, and
director. As to Lucius and Christian, the two cousins of Prince
Richard from the other line of Bedenbrucks, she suffered herself
to be courted as formerly in the most uncompromising and respect-
able style. A gentleman of the French embassy and a young Bohe-
mian virtuoso at the piano were introduced to her, and on the tenth
of June she went to the races again for the first time. But as Prince
Lucius, who had a turn for poetry, expressed it, only her mind was
awake; her heart was still sunk in slumber. Yes, if one of her


570 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
younger or elder friends ventured the slightest hint that there was
anything like tenderness or passion in the world, the last trace of a
smile vanished from her face, she stared dully before her, and oc-
casionally she would lift her hand as though to ward off something,
a gesture which seemed to apply to all men, and for all time.
Then it happened in the latter half of June that a singer from
the north by the name of Sigurd Olse sang Tristan. His voice was
clear and powerful, if not especially noble; he was of an almost
superhumanly large build, and with a certain inclination to ful-
ness; at times when in repose his face would be quite without dis-
tinction, but as soon as he began singing his steel-grey eyes would
light up with a mysterious inner fire, and with his voice and his
glance he seemed to sweep all away with him—especially women.
a
parents, who
Kläre sat with her unoccupied colleagues in the company's box.
She alone seemed to remain unmoved. The next morning Sigurd
Olse was introduced to her in the director's office. She spoke a
few friendly, but almost cool words to him about yesterday's per-
formance. The same afternoon he paid her a visit, without waiting
to be invited. Baron Leisenbohg and Fanny Ringeiser were pres-
ent. Sigurd drank tea with them. He told of his
.
lived in a little Norwegian fishing village; he told of the remark-
able discovery of his talent by a travelling Englishman who had
landed in a white yacht in a remote fjord; he told of his wife, an
Italian, who had died on the Atlantic Ocean during their honey-
moon and had been lowered into the sea. After he had left, the
others remained for a long time plunged in silence. Fanny was ex-
amining with great care her empty tea-cup; Kläre had sat down at
the piano and was resting her arms on the closed cover; the Baron
was silently and anxiously immersed in the problem of why, dur-
ing the account of Sigurd's wedding trip, Kläre had neglected that
peculiar gesture with which since the death of the Prince she had
brushed aside all hints of some further passionate or tender rela-
tions on this earth.
As further starring parts Sigurd sang Siegfried and Lohengrin.
Each time Kläre sat unmoved in her box. But the singer, who as-
sociated with hardly any one but the Norwegian ambassador, ap-
peared every afternoon at Kläre's, seldom failing to meet Fräulein
Fanny Ringeiser there, and never failing to meet the Baron.


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
571
On the twenty-seventh of June as Tristan he made his last ap-
pearance. Kläre sat unmoved in the company's box. The follow-
ing morning she drove with Fanny to the cemetery and laid an
enormous wreath on the Prince's grave. The same evening she gave
a party in honour of the singer, who was to leave Vienna the day
after.
The circle of friends was completely assembled. Everyone was
aware of the passion which Sigurd had conceived for Kläre. As
usual, he spoke quite volubly and with agitation. Among other
things he told how during his voyage here on the ship an Arabian
woman married to a Russian grand-duke had prophesied from the
lines of his hands that he was soon to go through the most fatal
period of his life. He trusted wholly in this prophecy, and super-
stition seemed with him to be something deeper than a mere method
of making himself interesting. He also spoke of the generally well-
known fact that last year, immediately after his landing in New
York where he was to fill an engagement as visiting star, on that
very day, yes, on that very hour, although he had to pay a severe
penalty, he had taken another ship back to Europe; and all this
simply because on the wharf a black cat had run between his legs.
He certainly had every reason to believe in such secret relationships
between incomprehensible signs and the fate of man. One even-
ing at Covent Garden in London, before going on the stage he had
neglected to murmur a certain little charm handed down by his
grandmother
and his voice had suddenly failed him. One
night in a dream a winged angel had appeared before him in rose-
coloured tights, announcing to him the death of his favourite bar-
ber
and sure enough, the next morning it was discovered
that this poor devil had hanged himself. Further, he always car-
ried with him a short but very significant letter which had been
given to him in a spiritualist séance in Brussels by the spirit of the
dead singer Cornelia Lujan; it contained in fluent Portuguese the
prediction that he was destined to become the greatest singer of the
old and the new world. He told all these things to-day; and as
the spirit-letter, written on rose-coloured paper of the house of
Glienwood, was passed from hand to hand, an undercurrent passed
through the entire room. But Kläre herself scarcely altered her ex-
pression, and merely nodded her head indifferently now and then.
Nevertheless Leisenbohg's unrest attained a high intensity. To his
a
.


572 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
sharpened eye the signs of approaching danger became clearer. To
begin, Sigurd, like all of Kläre's previous lovers, had formed a pro-
nounced attachment to him during supper, had invited him to his
place on the fjord at Molde, and finally brought in the "I say,
old
fellow!” and the “Listen, old boy!” In addition, Fanny Ringeiser
would tremble all over whenever Sigurd addressed a word to her,
she would become alternately white and red when he looked at her
with his large steel-grey eyes, and when he spoke of his imminent
departure she began crying softly. But even now Kläre remained
calm and serious. She scarcely returned Sigurd's singeing glances,
she spoke with no more vivacity to him than to the others; and
when he finally kissed her hand and looked upon her with eyes
which seemed to beg, to promise, to despair, her own remained
clouded and her features unmoved. Leisenbohg observed all this
with distrust and anxiety. But when the evening was over and
everyone was going, the Baron experienced something unexpected.
He was last to reach Kläre's hand at parting; but when, like the
others, he was about to go on, she held his hand tightly and whis-
pered to him, “Come back again.” He wondered if he had not
heard right. But she pressed his hand again, and with her lips al-
most to his ear she repeated, “Come back again; I shall expect you
in an hour."
Almost in a swoon, he went along with the others. With Fanny
he accompanied Sigurd to the hotel, and as if from a great distance
listened to his ravings about Kläre. Then he led Fanny Ringeiser
through the quiet streets in the soft coolness of the night to Maria-
hilf, and from behind a cloud he saw the stupid tears roll down
across her red, childish cheeks. Then he took a cab back to Kläre's.
He saw a light glimmering through the curtains of her bedroom;
he saw her shadow glide by; her head appeared at the edge of the
curtain and nodded to him. He had not dreamed that she was wait-
ing for him.
a
The next morning Baron von Leisenbohg went for a ride in the
Prater. He felt happy and young. It seemed to him that some
deeper meaning lay in this belated fulfilment of his yearning. His
experiences of last night had been the most marvellous surprise, and
yet they were hardly more than the heightening and necessary
culmination of his previous relationship with Kläre. He felt now


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
573
.
.
.
that it could not have happened otherwise, and made plans for the
immediate and distant future. “How long will she remain on the
stage?” he thought. “Perhaps four or five years. Then, but not
sooner, I will marry her. We will live together in the country, not
far from Vienna, in St Veit, perhaps, or in Lainz. I shall buy a
small house there, or else have one built according to her own ideas.
We shall live pretty much in retirement, but frequently take long
trips
to Spain, Egypt, India
In this manner
he went on dreaming to himself, letting his horse out as he crossed
the meadows by the Heustadl. Then he trotted back through the
Hauptallee, and at the Praterstern took his seat in his carriage. He
stopped in at Fossatti's and sent Kläre a bouquet of splendid dark
roses. He had breakfast alone as usual in his rooms on the Schwar-
zenbergplatz, and after his meal lay down on the divan. He was
filled with a strong yearning for Kläre. What had all the other
women meant to him? They had been a distraction, nothing more.
And he foresaw the day when Kläre likewise would say to him,
“What were they all to me? You are the only man, and the first
man, whom I have loved.”
And lying on the divan, with
eyes closed, he let the whole string of them glide by.
Cer-
tainly, she had loved no one before him, and had always loved him,
perhaps, in each of the others!
The Baron dressed, and then started on the well known way to
her house slowly, as though to enjoy for a few seconds longer the
anticipation of their meeting. There were a good many prome-
naders on the Ring, but the season was noticeably nearing its close.
And Leisenbohg was glad that summer was here; he would travel
with Kläre, see the ocean or the mountains with her
and
he had to hold himself in check, to keep from shouting aloud in his
enthusiasm.
He halted in front of her house and looked up at her windows.
The light of the afternoon sun was reflected in them and nearly
blinded him. He mounted the two flights to her apartment, and
rang. No one came to let him in. He rang again. No one came.
Leisenbohg now noticed that a padlock had been put on the door.
What could that mean? Was he in the wrong place? She did not
have a card on the door, but on the door adjoining he read as usual,
"Oberstleutnant von Jeleskowits.” Undeniably he was standing
in front of her apartment, and it was locked up. He hurried down
.
a
.


574 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
the stairs, and tore open the door to the janitor's apartment. The
janitress was sitting on a bed in the semi-darkness. A child was
looking up from the basement to the street; another was blowing
a meaningless tune on a comb. “Is Fräulein Heil not at home?"
asked the Baron. The woman stood up. “No, Herr Baron, Fräu-
lein Heil has left town
."
“What!” the Baron shouted. “But of course," he added imme-
diately, “she left at about three o'clock, didn't she?”
"No, Herr Baron, the Fräulein left about eight this morning.”
"And where to?
Or that is, did she go directly to-
he said haphazardly, "did she go directly to Dresden ?”
“No, Herr Baron; she left no address. She said that she would
write where she is."
“So, yes, yes, quite so. Naturally
many thanks." He
turned away and came up on the street again. He could not help
looking back at the house. How differently the evening sun was
reflected in the windows now. The heavy melancholy mugginess
.
of a summer evening lay over the city. Kläre was gone!
Why?
She had fled from him?
What was
the meaning of that?
He thought at first of going to the
opera. But he remembered that the season was closing the day
after to-morrow, and that for the last couple of days Kläre had
nothing to do there.
So he went to 76 Mariahilferstrasse where the Ringeisers lived.
An old cook came to the door, and examined this tony visitor with
some distrust. He had the cook call Frau Ringeiser. “Is Fräulein
Fanny at home ?” he asked with an excitement that he could not
master.
“How's that?” Frau Ringeiser asked sharply.
The Baron introduced himself.
“Oh, quite so," said Frau Ringeiser. "Would the Herr Baron
mind stepping in ?”
He stepped into the hall and asked again, “Is Fräulein Fanny
not at home ?"
“If the Herr Baron would just step a little farther.” Leisenbohg
had to follow her, and found himself in a low half-dark room with
blue-velvet furniture, and windows hung with rep curtains of the
same colour. "No," Frau Ringeiser said; "our Fanny is not at
home. Fräulein has taken her along on her vacation.”
a


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
575
.
“Where?” the Baron asked, staring at a photograph of Kläre
which stood in a narrow gold frame on the piano.
“Where? That I don't know,” said Frau Ringeiser. “About
eight o'clock this morning Fräulein Heil was here in person and
begged me to let Fanny go along with her. Well, she just asked so
beautifully—I simply couldn't say no.”
"But where
where!” Leisenbohg insisted.
“That I really couldn't say. Fanny is to telegraph me as soon
as Fräulein Heil makes up her mind where she is going to stay. Per-
haps as early as to-morrow morning, or the morning after.”
“So,” Leisenbohg said, letting himself sink down on a little cane-
bottomed stool in front of the piano. He was silent a few seconds;
then he arose suddenly, held out his hand to Frau Ringeiser, begged
her forgiveness for the trouble he had caused her, and slowly de-
scended the dark stairway of the old house.
He shook his head. She had been very cautious, to be sure
much more cautious than necessary. For she might have
known that he would not have been importunate.
"Where shall we go, Herr Baron?” the driver asked, and Leisen-
bohg noticed that he had been sitting in the open carriage for quite
a while simply staring in front of him. Following a sudden im-
pulse he answered, “To the Hotel Bristol.”
Sigurd Olse had not yet left. He sent word that the Baron
should be asked to come up to his room, received him warmly, and
suggested that they spend the last evening of his stay in Vienna
together. Leisenbohg had already been deeply affected by the fact
that Sigurd Olse was still in Vienna; and this added amiability
touched him to tears. Sigurd immediately began speaking of Kläre.
He begged Leisenbohg to tell him as much of her as he could, for
he knew perfectly that her oldest and dearest friend stood before
him in the person of the Baron. So Leisenbohg sat down on a trunk
and talked of Kläre. It was soothing to him that he could discuss
her.
He told the singer nearly everything, with the ex-
ception of certain facts which he felt bound as a gentleman to leave
unspoken. Sigurd listened, and seemed to be charmed.
At supper the singer invited his friend to leave Vienna with him
this very evening and accompany him to his estate at Molde. The
Baron was strangely moved. He did not accept for the present,
but promised to visit him in the course of the summer.
.


576
THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
was a ruse
They went to the station together. “Perhaps you will consider
me a fool,” Sigurd said, “but I would like to pass her windows just
once more.” Leisenbohg looked at him furtively. Perhaps this
or was it the final proof that the singer was
beyond suspicion? When they reached Kläre's Sigurd threw a kiss
toward the locked windows. Then he said, “Remember me to her.”
Leisenbohg nodded; “I shall tell her when she returns.”
Sigurd looked at him in surprise.
“She is gone already,” Leisenbohg appended. “She left early
this morning—without saying good-bye—but that is the usual thing
with her,” he added the lie.
“Gone,” Sigurd repeated, and fell to thinking. They were both
silent.
Before the train pulled out they embraced each other like old
friends.
That night the Baron cried in bed, something which had not oc-
curred to him since childhood. The one hour of pleasure that he
had spent with Kläre seemed beaten upon by dismal storms. He
felt that her eyes last night had gleamed like mad. Now he had
it all straight. He had heeded her call too promptly. The shadow
of Prince Bedenbruck still held her under its influence, and Leisen-
bohg felt that he had finally possessed Kläre only to lose her for
ever.
For a few days he went around Vienna at a loss what to do with
his days and nights. Newspapers, whist, riding
all these
previous ways of spending his time now meant absolutely nothing
to him. He felt that his whole existence depended on Kläre for its
meaning, and that even his affairs with other women had been
simply the reflection of his passion for Kläre. The city seemed
covered by a continual grey mist. When he spoke to people their
voices were subdued; and they stared at him strangely, even traitor-
ously. One evening he drove to the station and half-mechanically
bought a ticket to Ischl. He ran into acquaintances there who in-
quired innocently after Kläre; his answers were irritated and im-
polite, with the result that he was obliged to fight a duel with a
gentleman who did not concern him in the least. He stood up
lethargically, heard the bullet whistle by his ear, shot into the air,
and left Ischl half an hour after the duel. He went to the Tyrol,
!


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
577
a
a
а
the Engadine, the Bernese Oberland, the Lake of Geneva; rowed,
took walks, climbed mountains, slept once in an Alpine herdsman's
hut, and, in short, managed to live each day knowing as little of
the day past as of the day following.
One morning he received a forwarded telegram. He opened it
with trembling fingers, and read, “If you are my friend keep your
promise and come to me immediately. For I am in need of a friend.
Sigurd Olse.” Leisenbohg did not doubt for a moment but that the
contents of this telegram had something to do with Kläre. He
packed as hurriedly as possible and left Aix, where he happened to
be at the time, at the earliest opportunity. He went straight
through Munich to Hamburg and took the boat which would bring
him to Molde via Stavanger; he arrived one clear summer evening.
It had seemed as though the journey would never end. He re-
mained totally impervious to the scenery.
Also, he had been unable lately to recall Kläre's singing, or even
her features. But when he saw Sigurd standing on the shore, dressed
in white flannels and with a white cap, it seemed as though he had
seen him only last evening. And in spite of his agitation he smiled
from the deck in answer to Sigurd's greeting, and remained quite
composed as he walked down the gangway.
“I thank you a thousand times for answering my call,” Sigurd
said. And then he added simply, “It is all over with me.”
The Baron observed him critically. Sigurd looked very pale and
the hair about his temples had become noticeably grey. He was
carrying on his arm a dull green plaid.
"What is the matter? What has happened?” Leisenbohg asked,
smiling stiffly.
“You shall learn everything,” Sigurd said. It struck the Baron
that Sigurd's voice was not so full as it used to be. They went
along the beautiful sea-drive in a small, narrow carriage. Both
were silent. Leisenbohg did not dare to ask. He kept staring out
at the water. It was nearly still; he got the peculiar notion of
counting the waves, but found that this was impossible. Then he
looked up at the sky, and it seemed as though the stars were slowly
falling. Finally it occurred to him that a singer was in this world
somewhere; Kläre Heil by name—but that was not greatly im-
portant. There was a jolt, and the carriage stopped before a plain
white house surrounded by green. They took dinner on a verandah


578 THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
.
.
.
facing the sea. They were waited on by a stolid-faced servant
whose expression became positively ominous when he was pouring
the wine. About them lay the brilliant northern night.
"Well?” Leisenbohg asked, as a sudden wave of impatience came
over him.
“I am a lost man,” Sigurd said, staring in front of him.
“How do you mean?” Leisenbohg asked tonelessly. “And how
can I help you ?” he added mechanically.
"Not much. I have no idea.” And he gazed over the table-
I
cloth, over the banisters, the garden, the trellis, the street, the sea
into nothing.
Leisenbohg became inwardly paralyzed.
All sorts of
thoughts shot through him.
What could have happened?
Was Kläre dead?
Had Sigurd murdered her?
Yet no, that was impossible.
There he was, sit-
ting in front of him.
But why did he not go on?
And suddenly, oppressed with an egregious anxiety, Leisenbohg
groaned, “Where is Kläre ?”
The singer turned towards him slowly. His somewhat heavy
face lit up; he seemed to be smiling-unless it was the effect of the
moonlight. In any case Leisenbhg found at this moment that the
man who was sitting opposite him, leaning back with both hands
in his pockets, his legs stretched out beneath the table, and this
veiled expression on his face, resembled nothing in the world more
closely than a Pierrot. The green plaid was hanging on the banis-
ter, and seemed to the Baron at this moment like a dear old friend.
But what did this ridiculous plaid have to do with him? Perhaps
he was dreaming?
He was in Molde. Strangely enough.
If he had been wise he would simply have telegraphed the
singer from Aix, “What is wrong? What do you want of me,
Pierrot ?" And he suddenly repeated his previous question, al-
though more politely and with more patience, “Where is Kläre ?”
The singer nodded several times. “To be sure, the whole thing
involves her. Are
Leisenbohg nodded. He felt a slight chill. A warm wind was
blowing in from the sea. “I am your friend. What do you want
of me?"
“Do you remember the evening we last saw each other, Baron?
“
We had supper together at the Bristol and you went with me to
the station.”
.
you my friend?"


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
579
Leisenbohg nodded again.
“Of course you could not have suspected that Kläre Heil was
leaving Vienna in the same train with me.
Leisenbohg let his head sink heavily on his breast.
"I did not suspect it any more than you,” Sigurd continued. "I
did not see Kläre until the next morning when we had stopped for
breakfast. She was sitting over her coffee in the dining-room with
Fanny Ringeiser. From the way she acted I thought that we had
met purely by chance. It was not by chance."
“Go on,” the Baron said, observing the green plaid as it swayed
gently.
“She confessed to me later that it was not by chance. From this
morning on we remained together, Kläre, Fanny, and I. We put up
at one of your charming little Austrian lakes. We took a lonely
house between water and forest, secluded from the rest of human-
ity. We were very happy.”
He spoke so slowly that Leisenbohg nearly went mad.
“What did he bring me here for?” he thought. "What does he
want of me? Did she confess to him? What does that have to
do with him? Why is he staring into my face so steadily? Why
am I sitting here in Molde on a verandah with a Pierrot? Isn't it
Ι
a
merely a dream, after all? Perhaps I am sleeping in Kläre's arms?
Perhaps this is the same night?”—And involuntarily he strained
his eyes wide open.
“Will you avenge me?” Sigurd asked suddenly.
“Avenge?
What for? What has happened ?” the
Baron asked; and he heard his own words as though they came
from a distance.
“Because she has ruined me. Because I am lost.”
“Explain to me, finally,” Leisenbohg said in a hard dry voice.
“Fanny Ringeiser was with us,” Sigurd continued. "She is a
nice girl, don't
“Yes, she is a nice girl,” Leisenbohg answered, and suddenly saw
in front of him the half-dark room with the blue velvet furniture
and the rep curtains, where he had talked with Fanny's mother
hundreds of years ago.
“And she is quite a stupid girl, don't you think ?” '
“I think so," the Baron replied.
"I know so,” Sigurd said. “She did not suspect how happy we
were.” And he was silent for a long while.
a
you think?"


580
THE FATE OF THE BARON VON LEISENBOHG
“Go on,” Leisenbohg said, and waited.
“One morning Kläre was still asleep,” Sigurd began again. “She
always used to sleep quite late into the morning. But I was taking
a walk in the forest. Suddenly Fanny came running up behind
me. “You must get away, Herr Olse, before it is too late. Hurry
away from here; you are in great danger!” Strangely enough, at
first she would say nothing more to me. But I insisted, and soon
learned what sort of danger, according to her, was threatening me.
Ah! She thought that I could still be saved, or else she certainly
would have said nothing to me about it!”
The green plaid on the banisters was inflated like a sail; the
lamp on the table flickered a little.
"What did Fanny tell you ?” Leisenbohg asked.
“Do you remember the evening,” Sigurd asked, "when we were
all guests at Kläre's house? That same morning Kläre had gone
to the cemetery with Fanny; and by the Prince's grave she con-
fessed the hideous thing to her friend."
“The hideous thing?” the Baron was trembling.
“Yes. You know how the Prince died? He fell from his horse
and lived for about an hour afterwards."
“I know.”
“No one was with him except Kläre.”
"I know.”
"He would not see any one but her. And while he was dying he
made a curse."
"A curse ?"
"A curse.—'Kläre,' the Prince said, 'do not forget me. I would
have no rest in the grave if you forgot me.'—'I will never forget
you,' Kläre answered.—'Swear to me that you will never forget
me.'—'I swear.'—'Kläre, I love you, and I must die!'”
“I am speaking,” Sigurd said, “and I am speaking for Fanny,
and Fanny is speaking for Kläre, and Kläre is speaking for the
Prince. Don't you understand me?” '
Leisenbohg listened with taut nerves. It seemed to him as though
he could hear the voice of the dead Prince coming up out of the
thrice-sealed coffin and ringing through the night.
'Kläre, I love you, and I must die! You are so young, and I
And someone else will come after me.
I know it; that's what will happen.—Someone else will hold you
in his arms and be happy with you.
He shall not-he
1
must die.
.


ARTHUR SCHNITZLER
581
.
.
.
.
.
O
dare not-he dare not!
I curse him. Do you hear,
Kläre? I curse him!
The first man who kisses these
lips, who embraces this body after me-may his soul rot in Hell!
Kläre, Heaven hears the curse of a dying man.
Take care for yourself—take care for him.
He is des-
tined for Hell! In madness, misery, and death! Woe! Woe!
Woe!'"
Sigurd, out of whose mouth the voice of the dead Prince had re-
sounded, had arisen. He was standing there, large and stout in
his white flannels, looking off into the clean night. The green
plaid sank from the banisters into the garden. The Baron felt him-
self freezing horribly. It was as though his body was becoming
rigid. He wanted to cry out, but when he opened his mouth no
sound came. At this moment he was in the little room of Mme
Eisenstein, the music teacher—where he had seen Kläre for the first
time. A Pierrot was standing on the stage declaiming, “With this
curse on his lips Prince Bedenbruck died, and
listen
the wretch in whose arms she lay, the victim on whom the
curse will be fulfilled, is I!
I!
I!
Then the stage collapsed with a loud crash, and sank before
Leisenbohg's eyes into the sea. But he, without a word, fell over
backwards in his chair-like a marionette.
Sigurd sprang up, calling for help. Two servants came, picked
up the unconscious man and laid him in an armchair which was
standing off to one side of the table. One of them ran for a doctor;
the other brought water and vinegar. Sigurd rubbed the Baron's
forehead and temples, but he remained motionless. Then the doctor
arrived and began his examination. It did not last long. At the
end he said, “This gentleman is dead!"
Sigurd Olse was very agitated. He asked the doctor to make
all necessary arrangements, and left the terrace. He passed through
the drawing-room, went up stairs to his own bedroom, made a light,
and wrote hastily:
.
.
.
O
.
.
a
“Kläre! I found your telegram at Molde, where I had fled im-
inediately. I will confess that I did not believe you; I thought
that you were trying to quiet me with a lie. Forgive me I am no
longer in doubt. The Baron von Leisenbohg was here. I sent for
him. I asked him no questions; for as a man of honour he would
have had to lie to me. I had an ingenious idea. I told him of the


582
MAJESTY WALKS IN THE GARDEN: SPAIN
dead Prince's curse. The effect was amazing: the Baron fell back
in his chair and died on the spot.”
Sigurd stopped writing. He became very serious and seemed to
be thinking. Then he placed himself in the middle of the room and
raised his voice in song. At first it was a bit timid and veiled; but
it gradually grew in volume, finally becoming as powerful as
though it were echoing back from the waves.-A contented smile
passed over Sigurd's features. He drew a deep breath. He went
to the writing-table again and added to his message:
“Dearest Kläre! Forgive me everything is lovely again. I
shall be with you in three days
MAJESTY WALKS IN THE GARDEN: SPAIN
BY ELIZABETH J. COATSWORTH
All in black, among black cypresses,
All in black, white-faced as hoar-frost is,
With heavy scarlet lips, the king walks slowly
Down the hedged paths, bending his long cold face
Over the rosary trickling through his fingers.
All in black, moving so sombrely
Among the cypresses, with the small white Christ
In agony, between his cruel fingers
All in black, pacing down gravelled walks,
His heavy scarlet lips ceaselessly moving,
The king awaits the hour of his appointment
With his new mistress,
Sombrely, slowly,
Marking the minutes by his trickling prayers,
His trickling prayers that focus on the cross
White as the body of his latest love.
All in black, between black cypresses,
All in black, the king awaits the hour.



adoph Orkest dan
VIENNESE COFFEE HOUSE. BY ADOLPH DEHN


1



Aloth Dobrin, then
VIENNESE CABARET. BY ADOLPH DEHN


r
1


PARIS LETTER
September-October, 1923
ARIS will be the only thing missing from this Paris Letter.
Where is Paris? Among those houses with closed shutters
(those dear shutters which make us to feel sad abroad without
knowing why, until the day we become aware that what we miss
are the shutters, the window's wings). In the deserted Champs
Elysées auto-cars run by the American Express Company stop in
front of the Grand Palais—which makes us regret that France isn't
a country of earthquakes—a guide gets up on the seat and threat-
ens the monument with his finger, in a foreign tongue. Thirty-
three travellers with eye-glasses listen to him in consternation, and
the auto-car continues toward the Invalides. We hear no more the
courteous articulated idiom, rich in nasal and metallic tones, which
is called the French language. It is summer in Paris.
Along the Lido I happily rediscovered a goodly section of Paris.
In the cave of the hotel on the Adriatic, transformed into a medi-
aeval tavern in the style of the Place Pigalle, a certain number of
my "acquaintances” whom I am accustomed to see, fully dressed,
if not in respectable places, at least at the Boeuf sur le Toit or, in
Montparnasse, at the Caméléon, were lunching naked, with Turk-
ish towel dressing-gowns wrapped around their sunburnt torsos. I
was quite tired for I had spent a good part of the night in a vain
search for one of your editors; but he had not returned to his hotel
(which explains a letter I received in Constantinople from him
fifteen days later, asking me "why don't you write some Venetian
nights?” Thank Heaven I escaped that sombre reef). I wanted
to lunch alone. But Mrs G. A- saw me and invited me to her
table. She was dressed in white stockings, the upper half of a pair
of pyjamas, and a yellow parasol across her shoulder like a shot-
gun. The lower half of the same pyjamas (which smelled of cold
.
opium) she had lent to one of her friends whose dark glasses pre-
vented me from seeing her eyes, but whose mouth was so red that
I found everything she said most intelligent. She asked me what
I thought of the art of portraiture in Venetian painting.


584
PARIS LETTER
"Do you believe, Monsieur, as dear B. B., I mean Berenson, says
in his Venetian Painters, that the origin of the portrait is to be
found in 'the longing for the perpetuation of one's fame' ?”
“No one comes to Venice for that, nowadays, Madam,” I an-
swered.
As the conversation gave signs of being redoubtable, I drew a
rose out of my pocket; not a rose, but between two rose covers, like
dry petals, forty-five pages of the most tender, the most secret, and
the most gracious poetry, the new volume by Jean Cocteau, called
Plain-Chant.
"J'ai peine à soutenir le poids d'or des musées
cet immense vaisseau
(impossible to find a quotation more pat)
"...
Combien me parle plus que leur bouches usées
l'oeuvre de Picasso."
My opponent was not to be put off by this.
"Your Picasso upsets me by his continual experiments. Tell
me
Decidedly Fate was good to me. I drew out of my pocket an
interview with Picasso which I had just received:
"I try to paint what I have found,” said the Master of the rue
la Boëtie, “not what I have sought. In art intentions count for
little. There is a Spanish proverb that love proves itself by acts,
not by reasons."
I put on the accent of Malaga as I read the last phrases, and
pressed the lady's hand so significantly that I was permitted to fin-
ish my lunch in peace.
Our boat left Venice the same night. It was anchored two steps
away from the Dogana, with its golden bull as weathercock. Eleven
o'clock sounded; above St Giorgio Maggiore rose the moon, en-
veloped in German-style clouds playing The Tales of Hoffman. I
couldn't see why we did not raise the anchor and was beginning to
wonder whether the beautiful voyage which my hostess had prom-
ised me wasn't simply a motionless navigation opposite the Doge's
Palace, when a strange cortège debouched from the entrance of the


PAUL MORAND
585
Grand Canal. It was an enormous bark full of light and sound,
followed by a thousand gondolas and resembling those embarca-
tions by which the Venetians transport their fruits, especially their
water-melons which look like severed Moorish heads. All these
people were coming to serenade us farewell music from Venice to
one who had given it so much of animation. All the boats ranged
themselves around our vessel. From under the lanterns and the
branches of acacia, to the accompaniment of false notes on a piano
from a private dining-room, came first one, then many “of those
beautiful Italian voices which dramatize even pleasure,” I said,
pastiching Stendhal. Two smoking candles guttered under the sea-
breeze and spotted the Scarlatti score. The gondolas sparkled
with polished prows and the lights of their red or green lanterns;
the gondoliers, flat on their stomachs, were fast asleep; in the shad-
ows were studied poses, mechanical dinner-jackets, and fugitive
beautiful shoulders. Then, as natives go aboard steamers with the
first or last gifts from dry land, everybody hailed us, came on board,
drank our whole supply of champagne, wished us bon voyage, and
brightened what is always so dark, a departure, even a departure
for Greece.
We had brought with us Pausanias, Herodotus, Procopius, but I
need not say that we read none of them. Books were not lacking;
"launched without a compass on the ocean of books" as Baudelaire
says, we found a priceless guide—the map of the Republic of
Letters by M André Lang which appeared in the Annales in July
and made a furor in Paris. In the book, that redoubtable country
is traversed by a black stream called Style. All the reefs and sand-
banks which make navigation perilous in the streets of Paris are
here charted. Each street bears the name of an author; I was happy
to find my own plotted quite straight, in an airy district, not very
noisy in spite of the railway-station nearby—because it is the Sta-
tion of the Nouvelle Revue Française, from which the trains depart
most discreetly. The map was precious to us, and when we had no
further need of it, we put it into a sealed bottle, and cast it into
the sea.
The aridity of the Albanian coast made me want to read Le Blé
en Herbe, by Colette; the fresh title attracted me. It is a tender
summer-novel, warm, human, sensual in style, disjointed like words
of love, compact as an adventure. Of a quite different charm is


586
PARIS LETTER
the new book by Madame de Noailles, Les Innocentes. We were
approaching Greece and the atmosphere of these stories became
more limpid, more direct, like the art of the most Mediterranean of
our women of genius. These eighteen stories have a theme in com-
mon: the defense of women, those eternal victims. Men are not
allowed the right to reply and stand without an advocate before
the requisitory; they appear only as a series of interrogation points.
(My dialogues with Mme de Noailles were always limited to that,
anyhow.) But if, at last, the men should make answer, should
justify themselves? Suppose someone wrote a book called Les Lo-
nocents? When I was young and read the Love Letters of a Portu-
guese Nun, the Correspondence of Mlle de Lespinasse, I was less
struck by these passionate cries than by the implacable silence of
the men to whom they were uttered. Were you mute with joy, or
terror, or indifference, you beautiful phantoms, Chamilly, or you,
Chevalier de Guibert ? No doubt you were hangmen: what would
be left of you if you had given your mistresses nothing but joy?
I had also on board the New Anthology of Twentieth Century
Poetry which M R. de la Vaissière has just issued (Crès). Before
Corfu, when the Milky Way was like a widespread smudge of tal-
cum we read, under the green and red lights, to starboard and to
port, Apollinaire, Zoulet, Salmon, Vildrac, their luminous and se-
cret images shooting like stars across the August sky: for each new
poetic image we should have been allowed to make a wish. But
there were missing, and we regretted, the names of Valery Larbaud,
Cendrars, Fargue, Reverdy, and Drieu la Rochelle, from this excel-
lent anthology
I awoke one morning at Cephalonia. We were in Greece. The
blue of the Greek flag reminded me of the cover of Joyce's Ulysses,
which, I was told, he wanted to have the same colour. I landed
to buy a flag to send him, but I found none. The island which
lay before me, like a bow on the sea, was, I was told by the chief
of police, no other than Ithaca. He explained that all of Homer's
descriptions of Ithaca do not correspond to the island now so called,
but to Cephalonia. How to distinguish the truth from local pride?
Perhaps some day Ireland will find herself robbed by other isles of
the honour or having given birth to Joyce?
I returned to Paris reconciled to white marble. My heart was
full of hatred for the bluish sugar out of which are made our statues


PAUL MORAND
587
and the effigies in the campi santi of Italy. But it must be con-
fessed that the quarries of Pentelicus furnished Greek artists with
a prodigiously living, gifted material, changing with every hour. .
The Acropolis is like a nude woman whom one loves in the summer
sun, thinking how much more one will love her by firelight in win-
ter. The Greeks did not have to travel ten miles to find the ma-
terial which was best adapted to their genius. However true it is
that real artists always have to hand the materials they deserve,
the best of all remains the Athenian sky.
"A brighter Hellas rears its mountains from waves serener far"
says Shelley. I took along the new life of Shelley which André
Maurois has just published in the form-far less disagreeable than
one had first suspected, even quite pleasant, in fact-of a novel
(Ariel). What is striking in his Shelley is the constant influence
of the French Revolution on this strayed son of the gentry. No
more in 1789 than to-day was France gifted in propaganda in the
modern, scientific, Germanic sense of the word. The people made
fanatical by our national upheaval came to us of their own accord.
I need not tell Americans that. Now propaganda consists in mak-
ing people swallow a dose they do not want; and I believe that
if, in 1792, we had organized the diffusion of our ideas abroad,
and especially if in England we had spread them with precision,
had shown intellectuals, politicians, whigs, the radical petite bour-
geoisie, that they could not hate the new doctrines because they
were the doctrines of their own thinkers—then Pitt could not have
maintained himself in power and the face of the world would have
been changed.
To return to the Maurois' agreeable story, Shelley appears like
Rimbaud, an Angel on Earth—"enchanted child, born in a world
unchildlike,” Francis Thompson marvellously writes. Like all the
Angels, in default of adaptation, he sows ruin about him, defeats,
suicides, death to those whom he loves. Byron, the false demon,
drunk with worldly snobbism and literary success which made him
look down upon his contemporaries was, on the contrary, adored
while Shelley was ignored and despised.
My next letter will contain a picture of the literary return to
Paris which will, I trust, be not uninteresting—if one may judge
by the number of important works already announced.
PAUL MORAND


PRAGUE LETTER
November, 1923
THERE is in Prague, especially in the Czech theatrical life, a
brisk interaction between the domestic and the foreign. Held
within narrow bounds for years, often nourished on outside influ-
ences, our theatre was as good as cut off from Europe during the
world war; it now enters upon a new phase, and is minded to be
not only a receiver, but also a giver, in the activities of modern art.
The public at large knows the names of the highly gifted Capek
brothers, who have also secured fitting attention from American
audiences; further, people abroad are well aware that Prague has
done much worth watching in the field of contemporary dramaturgy,
and particularly in the most modern methods of stage management.
Now, building upon the Prague reports which Mr P. Beaumont
Wadsworth has furnished to readers of The Dial, it would be ap-
propriate to project on a larger scale a picture of our present-day
theatre and our aesthetic interests.
To epitomize the most recent developments of our theatre: just
as October 28, 1918 (the day on which the American slogan of the
self-determination of small peoples became an actuality for
Czecho-Slovakia) is of decisive significance in the national and po-
litical life of the Czechs, similarly the date of this declaration of
independence will also play an essential role in the history of our
artistic progress, and precisely in the sense that if we are not mak-
ing an actual change of rôle, we have nevertheless increased our ob-
ligations and heightened our aims. Up to the end of the world war
the latent content of Czech drama (which in this respect was quite
similar to the Irish) was determined by the struggle for national
independence; so that the concept of “nation,” the dream of a fu-
ture state, could be utilized as leading character or principal theme
to reconcile the requirements of national consciousness with the
Bohemian's deeply-rooted humanitarian impulses. But with the
fulfilment of a dream hundreds of years old, with the realization of
our constitutional projects, new and greater demands have been
placed upon the national life and, above all, on its parallel in the


OTOKAR FISCHER
589
art of words and the drama. With the result that we see the Czech
theatre of most recent years endeavouring to illuminate and evalu-
ate the new cultural factor of the mother country's inclusion in the
list of Europe's national entities, and at the same time to bring
some kind of synthetic and dramatic formula to bear on the chaos
of the post-war period. And besides realistic or semi-lyric and sa-
tiric attempts to put on the stage the life of the Siberian legions or
the fall of the Austrian military power, or the hopes and perils of
the liberated home-land, the signature of the times was to be seen
in the fact that national problems had been displaced by social
ones. The real dramatis personae was no longer the Czech people,
but contemporary society; not simply the fashions of Europe, but
Europe itself; not the nation, but the world and humanity.
This found its expression also in the selection of the foreign rep-
ertoire, in which field there was precisely as much love of experi-
ment, as the term "experiment” can ordinarily be applied to desig-
nate the most daring and successful enterprises of our theatre. Ver-
haerens' social tragedy, Les Aubes (never produced before except in
Russia) and Kraszynski's Godless Comedy (never played except in
Poland, the country of origin) distinguished the repertoire of the
daring stage-manager, K. H. Hilar; Romain Rolland's historical
dramas, revolutionary pieces by Büchner and others, Galsworthy's
humanitarian plays, attempts at a new style in the stage manage-
ment of crowds, were outstanding symptoms in the last four or five
seasons; and especially we must consider the efforts which were
made here to find some new type of social tragedy or comedy. There
was, for instance, the broadly limned Hussite tragedy by Arno
Dvorak, in which the intention was to give not merely a chronicle-
like chain of events, but neither more nor less than a "tragedy of
the people.” (Incidentally, the conception proved to be more
powerful than the execution.) Then a young expressionist, Jan
Bartos, came forward with caricatures of modern society. Then
the ideologist Stanislav Lom attempted to express in a simplified
version the development of the state or the struggles of the race.
Then the leader of the younger generation, F. K. Salda, wrote a
tragedy, The Hosts, and followed this with a play on the theme
of the eternal revolution in life and customs. Further, there is
ferment in the sphere of Moravian literature. The passion for
style is evident in Leo Blatny and others; while Gungen and


590
PRAGUE LETTER
Jängsters show a predilection for treating in the drama not merely
this or that individual, but some entire collectivity, a class, a peo-
ple, a period. Up to now this tendency has been realized most ef-
fectively by Karel Capek who followed an intimate comedy of love
with his high-powered and gripping Robot tragedy, and then in
collaboration with his brother Josef, who has attempted the col-
lective drama in his Land of Many Names, wrote the well-known
comedy of the insect world.
Yet in spite of the great emphasis on social and socialistic prob-
lems, the opposite pole, the traditional drama of strongly pro-
nounced individualism, has not been abandoned. The protagonist
of modern drama in Bohemia, Jaroslav Hilbert, who composed
among other things a drama of discovery called Columbus, was and
still remains individualistic. Individualistic, or even aristocratic
and decadent, are the themes and analyses of Jaroslav Maria and
others. Also, the cult of the strong relentless personality which
aspires to the superman of Nietzsche is defended by Frantirck
Zavriel in his dramas of contemporary life. The contrasting ele-
ments of this age are most intensely sharpened in our theatrical
life: for instance the battle which is now facing our public as to
whether a pessimistic and violently antisocialistic play should or
should not be presented on the stage of the national theatre. The
dramatist and politician Viktor Dyk is distinguished by a keen
national-mindedness; we should also mention the national dramas
of Jir Mahen and the dramatized histories of the old master of his-
torical fiction, Alois Jirasek.
Somewhat aside from the hot battle of ideas and parties, there
is a list of theatrically effective plays which have as their subject
the eternally recurring song of the human heart: here dramatists
like Frantirck Langer and Frana Sramek should be named—but
these authors also have given evidence by their previous works how
closely their products touch on the vital nerve of our times, and
how much our theatre is linked with the general experiences of pres-
ent (and future) Europe. Bohemia has often been spoken of as the
"heart of Europe”; and in this “heart” there is one point which re-
acts as intensively as possible to the vacillations and hopes of the
times. In this middle country (but not middling, let us hope!)
there is a kind of sun dial on which the position of the world's sun
can be read. This fine and delicately sensitive instrument is the
a


OTOKAR FISCHER
591
complicated adjustment of our theatre. A survey of our actors (in
whose ranks a painful gap has been made by the death of the great
mime, Eduard Vojan); a review of our leading stage directors; an
examination of the prospective foreign plays in the newly an-
nounced repertoires—all this should provide further testimony for
our basic assertion that there is a brisk interaction between the
domestic and the foreign.
In our foreign repertoire during the last season (to speak at pres-
ent only of Anglo-Saxon literature) we have gone back to Mar-
lowe's Edward II, and attempted to recover Shelly's Cenci; now
Beaumont and Fletcher (Wit Without Money) and Byron (on the
occasion of his centennial) are to be produced—not to mention the
achievements of contemporary England and America, among which
we expect much of O'Neill's first appearance here (Emperor Jones
or The Hairy Ape). Incidentally, Mr C. E. Bechhofer, who in-
troduced the American dramatist in England, is also well acquaint-
ed with the Czech theatre. But the extent and the height of the
aspirations of the local stage are best indicated by the manner in
which the Czech theatres cling to Shakespeare, who always remains
with us the most popular dramatist, and is part of the steady reper-
toire not only of the leading stages, but also of the smaller ones.
Jaroslav Kvapil still is the most convincing interpreter of Shake-
speare. In the year 1916 he undertook a vast Shakespeare cycle,
which he is now supplementing by the production of several rarely-
played pieces. In addition to Cymbeline, he has had an especially
remarkable success with Troilus and Cressida. Also, he is prepar-
ing for a kind of revival of his former Shakespeare productions. A
pupil and successor of the Munich Künstlertheater, allied with the
dramaturgy of Eugen Kilian and the stage-directing of Reinhardt,
Kvapil has his artistic counterpart in Karel H. Hilar who, previ-
ously connected with Jessner in Berlin, has also attempted in stag-
ing Shakespeare to apply the principles of expressionistic stage-
craft, and in this way has presented Coriolanus and The Tempest,
and recently also As You Like It, although without taking the posi-
tion of his "senior” rival. The rivalry of these two stage-directors
displays a good part of Prague's theatrical life: Kvapil's tasteful
harmony in lights, lines, and tones—Hilar's self-willed storming
and stressing; Kvapil's finely shaded lyricism-Hilar's dynamic
theatrics which calls for works by Grabbe or Hebbel, but also knows
а


592
1
PRAGUE LETTER
how to bring out new qualities in French classicism (Molière or
Corneille's Le Cid); in Kvapil the danger of the sweetly and triv-
ially idyllic—in Hilar the danger of a noisy, angular mannerism;
in Kvapil a flood of tried and delicate traditions—in Hilar, in spite
of all crudenesses, a glimpse into the future, a will to stride for-
ward into a still unknown and barely guessed-at territory.
We stand on the threshhold of a new theatrical season, and for
the time being we can enjoy a production of Lysistrata which has
been put on with modest means, but much industry. We are
standing, it is to be hoped, before new expressions of a fruitful
competitive battle between collectivism and belief in the personal-
ity, between tradition and modernity, between the purport of ideas
and the problems of form. In all these points the Czech theatrical
life touches on tendencies which are to be observed in the other
spheres of our literature: in criticism, the lyric, and the novel.
The present state of lyric poetry is interesting and is probably
also nearing a crisis. The sensualist and erotic, the ideological poet
of cosmopolitan schooling, the extensive translator, Jaroslav Urch-
licky, has left his disciples as a most valuable legacy the instru-
ment of a richly resounding poetic language. The lyric masters of
the generation of the Nineties, Otakar Bréfina and Antonia Sova,
have admitted Czech poetry to new depths, have extended its scope
to social problems and mystical insight. Among the younger con-
temporary lyric artists, a numerous group is gathered about the
former anarchist and present champion of communistic ideas, Stan-
islav K. Neumann, who is unfolding a programme of so-called
"civilized”
poetry, and in a free rhythm that often verges close on
to prose sings the facts of ordinary life: the humming of telegraph
wires, the swinging and churning of factory machines, but also his
collectivistic expectations, and his violent love-hunger. Otakar
Theer, who died young, and who was another theorizer and prac-
titioner of vers libre, made the lyric serve for ethical problems. Yet
in a succession of first books, among which the intimate and social
ballads of Jiri Wolker are especially prominent, a turn away from
individualistic ethics and national ideals is noticeable: the culmi-
nation of the social tendency is not marked by this or that adven-
turous débutant, but by the ripe and logical thinker, Josef Hora.
Sharply opposed to him is a writer already named as a dramatist,
а
a


OTOKAR FISCHER
593
Viktor Dyk, with his epigrammatically pointed comments and
broadsides, his lyrically felt and national-minded marginal notes
to current politics, his laconic yet deeply romantic emotionalism.
Rudolf Medek has secured a reputation as a crier in the battle, as
a poet of soldier songs, and now of love songs. The paradoxically
.
tragic situation of the people in the midst of the world war has
been expressed most strikingly by the richly tuned writer of elegies,
Karel Toman, and the author of simple nature lyrics, Petr Kricka;
while Frana Sramek, who was also touched on in the paragraphs on
the theatre, has, by his delicately perfumed impressionistic varia-
tions on the themes of love and youth, secured for himself an all
too unstinting adherence and discipleship among the present gen-
eration of lyrists.
In the lyric too there is seething and ferment. Here also strenu-
ous trials and experiments are being made; the search prevails for
a new form to fit a new life content, or for some way of adapting
the traditional rigid song form, with its musical inspiration and
its pronouncedly strophic arrangement, to the powerful content
which is continually rising about us, but which comes even more
persistently from the depths of the inner life, crying for expres-
sion and bidding fair to enrich not only the national culture, but
the culture of Europe as well.
OTOKAR FISCHER


BOOK REVIEWS
MARIANNE MOORE
12mo.
POEMs. By Marianne Moore.
24 pages.
The Egoist Press, London.
MARRIAGE (Manikin Number 3). By Marianne
Moore. 16mo. 20 pages. Monroe Wheeler. $0.25.
Ther
years ago Miss Moore's book of Poems—so far as I know
only book—was published in London by The Egoist Press;
and I then undertook to review it for The Dial. This promise, for
one reason after another, I never fulfilled. Now another poem has
appeared, Marriage, published by Manikin, printed apparently in
Germany, and with a parenthetical introduction by Mr Glenway
Wescott. Meanwhile I have read Miss Moore's poems a good
many times, and always with exactly the same pleasure, and satis-
faction in something quite definite and solid. Because of a promise
a
which, because of the long delay, may be considered as having been
broken, and because I can only, at the moment, think of five con-
temporary poets-English, Irish, American, French, and German-
whose work excites me as much as, or more than, Miss Moore's, I
find myself compelled to say something about them. Not that there
is much that is usefully said about any new work of art-I do not
rate criticism so highly; but one ought, in honesty, to publish one's
beliefs.
Mr Wescott has, in fact, written a good introduction; I only
think that his distinction between proletariat art and aristocratic
art is an artificial and unimportant distinction with dangerous con-
sequences. So far as a proletariat art is art at all, it is the same
thing in essence as aristocratic art; but in general, and at the present
time, the middle-class art (which is what I believe Mr Wescott to
have in mind when he speaks of proletariat art (the proletariat is
middle class in America) is much more artificial than anything else;


T. S. ELIOT
595
a
a
it plays with sham ideas, sham emotions, and even sham sensations.
On the other hand a real aristocracy is essentially of the same blood
as the people over whom it rules: a real aristocracy is not a Balten-
land aristocracy of foreign race. This apparently purely political
definition applies to art as well: fine art is the refinement, not the
antithesis, of popular art. Miss Moore's poetry may not seem to
confirm this statement. I agree with Mr Wescott that it is "aristo-
cratic,” in that it can only please a very small number of people.
But it is not, or not wholly, aristocratic in the Baltenland sense. I
see in it at least three elements: a quite new rhythm, which I think
is the most valuable thing; a peculiar and brilliant and rather
satirical use of what is not, as material, an "aristocratic” language
at all, but simply the curious jargon produced in America by uni-
versal university education—that jargon which makes it impossible
for Americans to talk for half an hour without using the terms of
psychoanalysis, and which has introduced "moron” as more forci-
ble than “idiot”; and finally an almost primitive simplicity of
phrase. There may be more. Up to the present time Miss Moore
has concerned herself with practising and perfecting a given forma-
tion of elements; it will depend, I think, on her ability to shatter
this formation and painfully reconstruct, whether Miss Moore
makes another invention equal in merit to the first.
Rhythm, of course, is a highly personal matter; it is not a verse-
form. It is always the real pattern in the carpet, the scheme of
organization of thought, feeling, and vocabulary, the way in which
everything comes together. It is very uncommon. What is certain
is that Miss Moore's poems always read very well aloud. That
quality is something which no system of scansion can define. It is
not separable from the use of words, in Miss Moore's case the con-
scious and complete appreciation of every word, and in relation to
every other word, as it goes by. I think that Those Various Scal-
pels is an excellent example for study. Here the rhythm depends
partly upon the transformation-changes from one image to another,
so that the second image is superposed before the first has quite
faded, and upon the dexterity of change of vocabulary from one
image to another. “Snow sown by tearing winds on the cordage of
disabled ships:" has that Latin, epigrammatic succinctness, laconic
austerity, which leaps out unexpectedly (altogether in Talisman).


596
MARIANNE MOORE
"your raised hand
an ambiguous signature:"
is a distinct shift of manner; it is not an image, but the indication
of a fulness of meaning which is unnecessary to pursue.
"blood on the stone floors of French châteaux, with
regard to which guides are so affirmative:”
a
is a satirical (consciously or unconsciously it does not matter) re-
finement of that pleasantry (not flippancy, which is something with
a more definite purpose) of speech which characterizes the Amer-
ican language, that pleasantry, uneasy, solemn, or self-conscious,
which inspires both the jargon of the laboratory and the slang of
the comic strip. Miss Moore works this uneasy language of stereo-
types—as of a whole people playing uncomfortably at clenches and
clevelandisms—with impeccable skill into her pattern. She uses
words like "fractional," "vertical,” “infinitesimal,” “astringently";
phrases like "excessive popularity," "a liability rather than an
asset," "mask of profundity," "vestibule of experience," "dimin-
ished vitality,” “arrested prosperity.” If this were all, Miss Moore
would be no different from her imitators. The merit consists in the
combination, in the other point of view which Miss Moore possesses
at the same time. What her imitators cannot get are the swift dis-
solving images, like the mussel shell
>
"opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan"
and phrases like
"the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp
rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”
“Truth is no Apollo
Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over it if it likes.”
or a magnificence of phrase like


T. S. ELIOT
597
“I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
than it is dim"
(how like Valery's “entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes” or like
his "eternellement, Eternellement le bout mordre").
And also they cannot imitate her animals and birds
"the parrakeet-
destroying
bark and portions of the food it could not eat."
Mr Wescott, if he agrees with all or even with a part of what
I have written, will probably consider it as an affirmation of his
belief in a kind of “aristocratic” art drawing no sustenance from
the soil. “An aristocratic art, emulating the condition of ritual.”
But of course all art emulates the condition of ritual. That is what
it comes from and to that it must always return for nourishment.
And nothing belongs more properly to the people than ritual-or
indeed than aristocracy itself, a popular invention to serve popular
needs. (I suppose the Ku Klux Klan is a popular ritual—as popu-
lar as a ritual can be in a country where there are only variations
within the middle class.) Miss Moore's relation to the soil is not a
simple one, or rather it is to various soils—to that of Latium and
to that of Attica I believe (or at least to that of the Aegean lit-
toral) as well as most positively to the soil (well top-dressed) of
America. There are several reasons (buried in this essay) why
Miss Moore's poetry is almost completely neglected in England, be-
side the simple reason that it is too good, “in this age of hard striv-
ing,” to be appreciated anywhere.
And there is one final, and “magnificent” compliment: Miss
Moore's poetry is as “feminine” as Christina Rossetti's, one never
forgets that it is written by a woman; but with both one never
thinks of this particularity as anything but a positive virtue.
T. S. Eliot


MRS SCOTT'S ESCAPADE
ESCAPADE. By Evelyn Scott. 8vo. 286 pages. Thomas
Seltzer. $3.
I
9)
N America where there are no Rebecca Wests, May Sinclairs, or
Virginia Woolfs, one is forced to make a place for so able a
writer as Evelyn Scott although this astringent author lacks the
depth of passion and richness of texture of Miss West, the succinct
ironic detachment of Miss Sinclair, and the vigorous culture of Mrs
Woolf. Hers is an almost surgically incisive craftsmanship com-
bined with an infinite capacity for defiance and a certain tense
receptivity to the changing cadences of weather and scene. We
have now to add to her two novels and her short book of poems a
fragment of her autobiography.
Driven from a bourgeois group, decorously shuttered in conven-
tional codes, she and her intrepid companion establish themselves
in a remote part of Brazil where the days pass either in "a bright-
ness of being that blankly illumines the hours" or else in barren
misery. We are instructed in the pangs of childbirth, endure an
ensuing obstetrical operation from which no details are spared, and
are finally deposited with the two haggard lovers, their baby, an
unfortunate relative named Nannette, and a black servant in a spot
far more remote from comforts and companionship than the last
spot which we had supposed the very most remote and uncomfort-
able in existence. The ensuing narrative is one which would melt
the heart of even a Squire Shandy though so often emitted in a
shrewish key. It is not our sympathies with the actual situation
that are ever called in question. But we long for some observation
either more simple or more profound. We weary of Evelyn Scott's
reiterated allusions to the contours and habits of her body. This
surely is not a sensitive young girl in her early twenties bewildered
and artless who is writing of her distress, but a clever nervously
alert sophisticated woman tilting at the wooden sentinels of prej.
udice with the vicious little rapier of her neatly turned epigrams;
a young woman thoroughly au courant with modern authors from
D. H. Lawrence to James Joyce and one who sees a fading experi-
a


ALYSE GREGORY
599
.
ence, bitter though it undoubtedly was, through an acquired literary
medium.
There is a curious lack of fusion which one comes to recognize
as studied in Evelyn Scott's style. Miniature typhoons of staccato
sentences are continually whirled up from the main stream of her
story interrupting its continuity. “Frogs bark. Stark white moon.
Eternal peace. Blind house. Earth gives up radiance.” One can
of course construct a picture from loose fragments of coloured glass,
but at the same time one prefers to see them in an integrated har-
mony that demands no such artificial manipulation. It is often,
too, in the midst of her most lyrical expressions that she uses this
clipped phrasing so popular at the present time.
It is interesting to note that over and over again the author's
similes revert to various metal substances almost as if she were at-
tempting to rid herself of something hard and unyielding in her
own breast, thrusting it recurrently away from her into the land-
scape only to have it reappear with a slight change of phrasing in
each succeeding page. This is carried sometimes to a point of ab-
surdity—“the blueness of a heaven that was angry like a stone,'
"trees go black with an iron slowness," "heavy metal sobs," "stiff
wind like shredded iron.” But one might continue indefinitely.
The adventure ends with a sudden fantastic episode, out of
which, fighting against ennui, one struggles to construct a lucid
meaning and fails. If the digression had been more amusing, its
drift somewhat more boldly implied, the author could have af-
forded to laugh with cunning satisfaction over the perplexity of her
critics. But such is obviously not the case.
In laying down this delightfully bound and printed book with its
attractive yellow jacket one is gratified to know that, like black
acid projected from a glittering white-blooded fish, Evelyn Scott's
corroding hatred of stuffiness and injustice has been loosed in such
a very stuffy and unjust world. Where love ceases to instruct, hate
at least rouses to defence. But art is after all a matter somewhat
outside these querulous and stormy considerations.
ALYSE GREGORY


AN HISTORICAL NOVEL
The CONQUERED. By Naomi Mitchison. 12mo. 377
pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.
а
Then
HE writing of a first-rate historical novel demands not only a
thorough knowledge of the selected period, but also consider-
able imaginative power, and, most important of all, a high order of
literary tact. It is extremely doubtful whether Mrs Mitchison is
sufficiently endowed with the two latter qualifications.
Her book, The Conquered, is concerned with the subjection of
Gaul by Julius Caesar and the plot of her story has to do with the
friendship that springs up between the Roman officer, Titus, and
his servant the enslaved Gaul, Meromic—a friendship pregnant
with the kind of drama which inevitably rises out of a conflict be-
tween patriotism and a personal relationship.
In spite of the book's historic accuracy one's illusion of reality
is continually being unsettled by the obtrusion of this or that word
of modern association. So much is this the case that, for the first
time, one comes to appreciate how invaluable can be, on occasions,
the old-fashioned device of using archaic language in this sort of
writing. For example, when Mrs Mitchison causes Meromic and
Fiommar to indulge in the following dialogue one feels one's sense
of the appropriate thoroughly outraged. In historic fiction the
mere suspicion of jocosity is dangerous and when it is suggestive of
any modern variety of facetiousness all but fatal. The two barbar-
ians have been enjoying a swim near their favourite Crabland.
“ 'I shan't be able to do this when I'm married!' sighed Fiom-
mar, putting on her clothes.
“ 'Oh, do stop about being married! the brother answered. 'It's
,
not that a bit, it's getting old. Uncle's not married, but he never
goes swimming about—I wish he did!'
"It conjured up, for both of them the infinitely ludicrous picture
of the Druid uncle swimming very solemnly and completely in long
white robes, with his mistletoe wreath just the tiniest bit on one


LLEWELYN POWYS
601
side. 'Singing hymns' suggested Fiommar; ‘and excommunicating
the sharks,' added her brother."
But it would be unfair to leave the impression that the average
level of Mrs Mitchison's writing is as vulgar and silly as this. On
occasions she can do far better, as for instance when she so happily
puts us in touch with the rude hilarity of the Gallic rabble who
have treacherously taken Titus prisoner while he is buying grain.
“One of them rode up with a sack of corn across his horse's back
behind, a bag of gold in front; he shouted, 'I've been marketing
with the Romans!' »
That is excellent. As we read it we know it is just what might
have happened. Indeed this art of plausibly reconstructing the
mood and atmosphere of the dead past is a most subtle one.
Strangely enough any attempt at exact realism almost inevitably
destroys the sense of reality, the best effects being won, it would
seem, by vagueness and omission. The simple allusion to Fiommar
"putting on her clothes” reveals an injudicious use of words; still
more, perhaps, is this so when we are told that the "blood was sticky
on her dress.” In both cases more uncertain words should surely
have been selected, words that would have left the imagination free
from too familiar associations.
However, in those backgrounds of her story which reflect certain
aspects of nature, where infallibility is as a rule assumed, her work
is often marred by inaccuracy of observation. Lerrys, the Gaul, is
led to a Druidical Grove in Britain to take a false oath, but one's
conviction as to the reality of the scene is in no way increased by
being told that the "foxgloves rocked in the breeze” when any one
who is familiar with the woods of England in the late summer
knows that these particular flowers have long passed their time of
blooming by the latter end of August. In the same way our sense
of the reality of Meromic's journey from France to Italy is decided-
ly diminished by the information that “Overhead the new, bright
stars crowded the sky.” In so short a migration southward it would
require an extremely punctilious astronomical observer to note any
difference in the constellations at all.


602
AN HISTORIC NOVEL
After the manner of Salammbo much of the book consists in de-
scriptions of the sanguinary brutalities of the age; so much so, in
fact, that one comes to feel at last that the obvious bias of the
author towards sentimentality is mitigated by more interesting pro-
clivities.
Walter Pater in his portrayal of Cornelius has shown us how
wearisome imaginary young Romans can be when they are dis-
tinguished for goodness and nice feeling and in her concluding
chapter Mrs Mitchison fairly lets herself go in describing the felic-
itous domesticity of the Titus ménage. For certain readers the
value of The Conquered may be fairly gauged by the following
quotation:
“He had come in late one day, after being out since daybreak,
and found his wife cutting long branches of oleander from the tall
bushes where the evening sun still rested. Under an arbutus tree
by the edge of the stream his two children were playing with their
nurse and maid: he heard their high little voices across the lawn
and smiled. Aemilia came to him with her arms full of branches.
'Where have you been today?'
'I went over and had din-
ner with Lerrys.
I found Coisha in the kitchen making
some of those delicious little cakes of hers; you never give me any-
thing half so good!'
“She laughed 'You know you only like them because they're
Gallic; if I made them and said they were Greek you'd think noth-
ing of them! I suppose the baby's beginning to walk now?!”
LLEWELYN Powys
.


SIN
THE ROAD TO CALVARY. By Alexey Tolstoy. 12mo.
451 pages. Boni and Liveright. $2.50.
THE
na
HE obsession of certain types of intellect by sin deserves a
study it has never received. One might expect to find it con-
fined largely to men whose thinking was formulated before the de-
velopment of the jungle of theories and observed facts which we
call psychology, but Alexey Tolstoy offers a modern instance. He
is overwhelmingly conscious of the sinful impulses in men's hearts,
and the clear case he presents for the suggested study is not com-
plicated by any discernible traces of the mystic or puritan. Rather
he seems a weary, cynical man-about-town who, knowing all the
vices well enough to label them, returns in the old age of his spirit
to a delighted, open-mouthed contemplation of virtue. In assay-
ing sin and virtue, it must be added, he is strictly orthodox, seeing
morals rather as code of thou shalt nots let down on a scroll from
heaven, than as an evolution of taboos and rules of conduct, chang-
ing not a little from one century to another.
Yet as a perfect specimen of an intellect concerned with sin one
flaw may be found—his desire to prove the main thesis of his book.
To him the Revolution is not the product of long accruing, intoler-
able social injustice, but a retribution for the sinful personal lives
of Russian people in general and in particular of the Russian intel-
lectuals, who in their degenerate and pitiable condition even flirted
fatuously with the ideas of the pimply, womanish, thievish, and
otherwise execrable revolutionaries.
For in addition to being the work of a man of letters with some
claims on our attention, this is a refugee's lament, thrown together
in almost frantic haste to tell the world what it should believe.
Evidently the haste increased as the book proceeded. Some of the
first scenes, and particularly those in which his straw-stuffed intel.
lectuals huff and puff and blow the house down, are reasonably
vivid, reminding the reader of the typical popular story satirizing
the Greenwich Village of a few years ago. Later the scenes are


604
SIN
9
indicated rather than realized and the reader is able to differentiate
various characters chiefly because they wear names.
Except that they both cover a large canvas, this book bears no
vaguest resemblance to War and Peace. Nor is Alexey to be com-
pared with Lyof Tolstoy. If one must seek analogies he is a very
sick Dostoevsky suffering for the moment under the hallucination
that he is Rasputin. It is to be expected that the imitator of a
great master should lack his art. In addition Alexey Tolstoy seems
to have missed the essential fact that no matter how fantastic Dos-
toevsky's episodes may be they are "directly referable to the funda-
mental operations of the spirit.” Thus the nightmare delusion
which causes Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment to see a shriv-
elled prostitute in the face of a fresh young girl, is a stroke of
genius, while the midnight attempt of Bezsonov, the decadent poet,
to break into the room of Dasha, the chaste heroine of The Road
to Calvary, is
melodrama.
L'homme moyen sensuel, like the Teliegin of the book, sees little
but the surfaces of life. The great thinker clarifies. Numerous
hybrids occupy the middle ground between these two extremes and
among them there emerge occasionally, emotional, obscure, grop-
ing intellects which peer into many dark corners and stir up seem-
ingly clear waters. For some reason their heaving, laborious efforts
at the interpretation of life are clogged and sterile. They seem al-
most to be swamped by their own profundity. The work of such
an intellect, complex and intriguing, this is nevertheless a muddy
book, although the reader abandons reluctantly his hope, cherished
for the first hundred pages or so, that it is going to take up the
story of the Russian people where it was dropped by Chekhov and
Gorki.
pure
ALICE BEAL PARSONS


THE INFLAMMABLE SLAV
DOSTOEVSKY: LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES. Trans-
lated from the Russian by S. S. Koteliansky and J.
Middleton Murry. 8vo. 286 pages. Alfred A. Knopf.
$2.50.
TH
HIS fresh collection of Dostoevsky's letters which, with the
permission of the present Russian government, has now been
released for translation adds no new facts to our knowledge of the
life of this writer. Besides eight letters sent from Geneva and
Dresden to A. N. Maikov, already the recipient of many of the
most interesting of Dostoevsky's letters in an earlier volume (1914)
there are several to Pobiedonszev, one of unusual interest written
on the eve of his banishment to Siberia to his brother, and a num-
ber to his wife from Moscow, where he had gone for the famous
Pushkin celebration. The volume also includes a fragment of his
wife's reminiscences taken from her memoirs, which, it is under-
stood, are to be published in their entirety at a later date, thus mak-
ing of somewhat dubious wisdom the appearance of the present
chapter.
Once more we see him in these letters—the perturbed, inflam-
mable, and extreme Slav, so simple, so easily disarmed, so gener-
ously credulous—driven mad by poverty—writing, destroying in
despair, and again flinging off page after page at breakneck speed,
goaded on by accumulating debts which no amount of industry
seems ever to diminish. “All the money I have is 30 francs; every-
thing to the very last rag, mine and my wife's, has been pawned.
,
My debts are urgent, pressing, immediate .” he writes to
his friend, and after his death his wife plaintively remarks "Indeed,
until the very end of his life Fiodor Mihailovich had not written a
single novel with which he was satisfied himself; and the cause of
this was our debts."
Protruding nervously, distractedly even, is his familiar dislike
of everything foreign, his apprehensive nostalgia for Russia. “A
writer should not leave his country for a long time, he should live
.
.
1


боб
THE INFLAMMABLE SLAV
one life with her; otherwise he is lost," or "It is better for me to sit
in the debtor's prison in Russia than to remain abroad.”
The simplicity and mildness of his wife's portion of the book,
her reiterated devotion, and pat little assurances of her obedience
and loyalty might almost be termed prosaic. Yet now and then
she describes with an engaging archness certain incidents of her
and her husband's life together. In commenting on his well-known
attacks of jealousy she shows him to us driven to a frenzy of re-
sentment by a timorous admirer who devoted his attentions exclu-
sively to her merely as a means of securing favour in the eyes of the
famous author. Dostoevsky, like a character in one of his own
novels, finally gives a crashing blow to a nearby table, breaking a
glass and nearly upsetting a lighted lamp, seizes his coat, flings
himself out of the door, and starts running distractedly up the
road while after him follows his loyal and exasperated wife calling
loudly “Fedya, Fedya, are you mad? Where are you running?"
Indeed, one sees traces of this same riding suspicion in his anxious
and touchingly delicate letters to her from Moscow. “My lovely,
dearest, darling Anya," one of them begins, and ends “I keep on
having very bad dreams, nightmares about your being unfaithful to
me with others.” Even his exhilaration over the spectacular part
he is to play in the great celebration is overshadowed by his eager-
ness to return to his family in the cramped, shabby rooms, where
every morning new creditors sit angrily on the rickety rented chairs,
ooms where hours of anguish and joy so strangely intermingle.
Fresh proof of his resentment toward Turgenev is revealed,
“Turgenev has only clacquers, but my people have true enthusi-
asm.' That the temporary embrace which passed between the two
on the crest of Dostoevsky's overwhelming triumph was but a mo-
mentary lowering of hostilities is already well enough known.
One regrets in the translation of this material the use of certain
verbal vulgarities usually associated with the insincerity and lack
of taste of the English middle classes, and the presence of these
seriously interferes with the strength and dignity of the original
text, as for instance "seedy," "smithereens," "awful lot,” to men-
tion only a few.
As with Dostoevsky's novels so in reading over the present col-
lection one's critical faculties forgo their habitual vigilance, and
one is lost in speculation over the mysterious qualities of a person-


ALYSE GREGORY
607
ality so strangely limited and yet so inexplicably without boun-
daries. His belief in orthodoxy, his ardent nationalism, his fidelity
to the Tzar, here once more so clearly discernible, must have been
deeply inimical to many of the atheistical and cynical youth who
received his words as if they were the only words of truth in all
Russia, who marched blindly behind his banner, and wept at the
very mention of his name. The old rigid concepts of right and
wrong withered at his lightest touch, and he could create from some
magical depth in himself a whole singular thickly peopled universe
where were violated at every turn the sacred and accepted canons
of art; and still our sympathy and attention instead of flagging re-
main more and more penetrated, all the safe little partitions of our
habitual judgements shattered, as in a trance we expose ourselves to
this new and passionately extreme world. Is it then to be won-
dered at that the other great obliterator of modern false values,
Friederich Nietzsche himself, could write “He (Dostoevsky) be-
longs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier even than the
discovery of Stendhal”?
Alyse GREGORY


MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
The Shepherd's Pipe. By Arthur Schnitzler. 10mo.
169 pages. Nicholas L. Brown. $1.50.
TH
HE ordinary observer is a phrase ill-favoured in most eyes, be-
cause people have linked the essentially revolting trio; ordi-
nary, common, and vulgar in an overwhelming slur. The ordinary
observer is not always the ultimate criterion of all creative effort.
There are works of cabalistic appeal to which the ordinary observer
can never do justice, but they are, by their very nature, eternally
esoteric, and sleep well on library shelves. The ordinary observer
is an intelligent, decently educated person who demands that a
book exhibit some excuse for his reading it.
The ordinary observer is perhaps faintly at a loss in regard to
Arthur Schnitzler. He has the cabalistic appeal; he cannot be
classified, being a little of everything from realist to symbolist to
romanticist. He lies thwart the canons of the schools, helping him-
self impartially. Now the ordinary observer knows that it is a seri-
ous mistake to suppose that rules are hampering things. Even
Boileau, who was very near being hampered by them, knew better,
and proposed that hypothesis more important than all his alex.
andrines; rules are a short cut to excellence. Arthur Schnitzler
.
happens to be one of those people who attain excellence inevitably,
and short cuts do not interest him. The ordinary observer realizes
that, but he realizes just as acutely that Schnitzler's work has flaws,
brutal and exasperating flaws. A quotation from The Shepherd's
Pipe indicates their nature:
"Suddenly melodious sounds became disengaged from the silence
of the valley which lay gray in the dawn. Dionysia opened her
.
eyes and listened, her expression which had been relaxed in despair-
ing weariness assumed new life. Erasmus noticed it, and immedi-
ately released Dionysia from his embrace.
“ 'Do you recognise the sound that is rising to us? he asked,
'They are the notes of a shepherd's pipe. And see, without wishing
to confess it to yourself and without being really quite aware of it,


CUTHBERT WRIGHT
609
curiosity stirs you who a moment ago sought death, to discover
whose lips touch the pipe from which those sounds rise.
There is no co-operation between the writer and his characters.
The second paragraph is distressing in its expatiation; the reader
knows what Erasmus tells Dionysia before he tells it; he is a martyr
to a curious sort of reality (for it is undeniably reality) a vividness
of such sort as to defy analysis even as it defys synthesis. That
much may be said in defence of one who needs no defence. It is
his privilege to indulge in the obvious, and his power is unimpaired
by weakness which would well-nigh wreck another writer.
Keen wit, linked to this indescribable and inimitable gift, can
well save Schnitzler. His stories are not good; the disjointed and
rather clumsily contrived wanderings of Dionysia, the trivially in-
cidental tale of The Murderer, the petty affair of the blind brother,
are neither clever nor compelling. Oddly enough, it takes a good
deal of thought to realize this. They are written in such a way that
they become tremendously important. Dionysia as the symbol of
Woman—she is highly Viennese in her capacity for adultery—is
conducted through assorted aspects of life with a cleverness which
actually fascinates; it is the sort of amazing skill which one is con-
scious of in a marksman who can spin quarters with one hand and
put revolver bullets into them with the other, it is hopelessly in-
imitable. The ordinary observer cannot escape a reverent admira-
tion for Schnitzler.
Chiefly it is his absolute command of the art of making reality
which places him surely in the ambiguous class called geniuses.
That is no matter of voluminous and insanely accurate note books
of a Goncourt; it results only in truth to life, a not over interesting
thing in many cases. Schnitzler's characters are not copies of actual
types, they are actual types. Alfred in The Murderer is nothing
more than an amazingly intricate psychological study; he doesn't
exist. But Schnitzler creates him much in the manner of God creat-
ing Adam; he breathes on the dust. It does not at all matter that
Alfred is an impossible character in trivial circumstances; he is
made not only possible, but probable and even necessary, and what
he does becomes of the highest importance, all by a mere act of
arbitrary creation on the author's part. This is very difficult to ex-
plain if it can be explained at all; it doesn't happen once in a hun-


610
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
a
dred years of writing; there are no terms to cover it and it is realiz-
able only in the reading. It is enough to make the ordinary obser-
ver correctly sceptical, even as he will be blindingly convinced, and
the critic is in a fair way to become a salesman.
Unfortunately there can be no money back guarantee. The
editor in his introduction points out the fact that Schnitzler's phil-
osophy is not pleasant, all the more not pleasant because he can
endow what he chooses to create with a crushing convincingness.
There is a monotone of pessimism which pervades his work and
which will prevent it from capturing a large audience. Like the
traveller in the story of The Blind Geronimo, life appears unex-
plained, inexplicable, precipitating tragedy with flawless noncha-
lance. The ordinary observer, who will be filled with a holy joy by
the sheer niceness and powerful excellence of The Blind Geronimo,
will be at the same time reluctant to accept the dejecting doctrine
which is Schnitzler's offering to later reflection. He is intelligent
enough to estimate the best of all possible worlds accurately, but
he is wise enough to dislike such breath-taking emphasis on the un-
avoidable. He is also wise enough to know that such an impertin-
ence as mediocre Continental philosophy cannot affect his sincere
appreciation of ability which must be universally recognized. So
while the ordinary observer is not going to like The Shepherd's Pipe
and Other Stories as well as Casanova's Homecoming, he is going
to understand the genius of Arthur Schnitzler very much better,
and no one can do that without admiration.
CUTABERT WRIGHT


BRIEFER MENTION
THE BACK Seat, by G. B. Stern (12mo, 240 pages; Knopf: $2) is a neat,
satirical comedy of family life, or of that substitute for family life which
a popular actress and her husband and daughters can achieve. On the
surface it is a very successful compromise that Leonora and her stay-at-
home husband have instituted, but the surface cracks and the daughters
insist on growing up and annexing such properties of their mother as stage
careers, a lover, and the popular favour. The back seat itself shifts its
position, and is occupied by various members of the family in turn.
Leonora is, however, the livest and strongest of the family, and despite a
temporary eclipse emerges triumphantly in the foreground again, while
Robert retreats to the back seat to count over the years before his Leonora
shall retire from the stage and make him comfortable. The child Sally
ought to be broadcasted for the benefit of all child psychologists. Her
"Narcissus complex" is—to the reader-a new sort of farce, delightfully
funny, and convincing as well.
JANE–OUR STRANGER, by Mary Borden (12mo, 353 pages; Knopf: $2.50)
depicts the ineffectual dent made in the adamantine composite of pre-war
Parisian aristocracy by a wealthy, strong, naïvely moral American woman.
The first half of the book reaches descriptive tentacles about the plot and
renders thoughtfully and suavely the overtones of French social culture.
The latter half, narrated by Jane herself, releases the action with dramatic
objectivity. The effect of the novel is that of a painting in flat colours
done by a hand that knows how to give design to unusual flexibilities of
style and to convey an impression of substance by outlines.
BUNK, by W. E. Woodward (12mo, 370 pages; Harper: $2) is a laudable
try at keeping three bright-hued balls in the air at the same time. One is
satire, another is fiction, and the third is philosophy. It's a good trick, if
you can do it; Mr Woodward isn't quite agile enough. Just when he
works up to the applause, he drops one of the balls, and the spectators-
having seen H. G. Wells put over the same act years ago on the big time—
walk out on him.
TANTALUS, by Dorothy Easton (12mo, 297 pages; Knopf: $2.50) traces
the revitalization of a middle-aged English vicar, habituated to an outworn
creed, through his love affair with a young French governess. The sub-
tleties necessary to lend distinction to a not unusual story are discriminat-
ingly chosen and placed with admirable casualness where they are least
looked for and yet most effective. The nature background, which gives
the keynote to the emotional development, is painted in with reticent words
that somehow are fresh and evocative. In spite of breathless sentences
and meaningless exclamation marks a spontaneity is conveyed that is de-
lightful in itself and particularly appropriate to a book written about the
spirit of youth.


612
BRIEFER MENTION
a
The Sun FIELD, by Heywood Broun (12mo, 204 pages; Putnam: $2) is
an essayist's second, and less successful, attempt at fiction. The essays
which were shot whole into the thin fabric of The Boy Grew Older are
here more skilfully crumbled in by way of dialogues which are hardly
conversations. The theme is sound: a ball player's life entangled with
that of a bluestocking and their effects one on the other. But a faint air
of artificiality hangs over the ball field as it does over the editorial sanctum
of “say, The New Republic" and the names of living people and the street
numbers one recognizes stare out of the pages like living eyes behind paper
masks. Earlier Mr Broun broke all the rules and wrote an entertainingly
bad novel ; in this one he actually achieves dulness, chiefly because his in-
terest in players and in pedants never quite becomes creative.
GRAVEN IMAGE, by Margaret Widdemer (12mo, 319 pages; Harcourt, Brace:
$2) is the work of a conventional and confused mind striving for clarity
and freedom of outlook, but attaining neither. The theme is the vicious-
ness of family pride, which, based upon fictitious virtue and strengthened
by aggressiveness, is an imposition on all who come in contact with it.
But the counter-theme, the triumph of family solidarity that is tolerant,
obscures the moral issue. The emotions of the characters are reiterated
until they are meaningless and escape the reader's realization. And as a
conclusive, if comparatively superficial, evidence of the uncertainty of the
author's mind, the syntax is loose and the writing of indifferent quality.
A LIGHTER OF FLAMES, by William S. Hart (12mo, 246 pages; Crowell: $2)
is—as they say in the advertisements—"not a movie," but there is every
reason why it should be, and ample grounds for suspecting that it is even
now being cut up into reels. Most of the sub-titles can be lifted from the
text without embellishment, and all the action can be shouted through a
megaphone by any literate young man with the visor of his cap worn be-
hind. The picture star has romanced about Patrick Henry in a narrative
more flowery than the prize-winning float in a Pasadena parade. Every
phrase is a studio orchid; every page a still.
Robert E. Lee, by John Drinkwater (12mo, 128 pages; Houghton Mifflin:
$1.50) recreates the atmosphere of the southern side of the Civil War very
charmingly. Lee is presented as a soldier with a creed which would make
a socialist gasp, but which steadies its owner in his choice of sides in the
war, and makes possible his simple, brave devotion to a cause. A group
of Virginian youths, “the flower of the south” lend atmosphere, and lighten
the sombre situation, until the final tragedy extinguishes even their bravery
of wit. Mr Drinkwater has been unusually successful in this play, and
in his Abraham Lincoln in seizing not merely the spirit of the days of se-
cession, but in bringing out the quality of the great leaders of both north
and south. He realizes the hero worship which an American would have
wrapped about both Lincoln and Lee, and without partaking of it, he still
maintains an air of reverence, and displays in his drawing of their charac-
ters, those qualities which have made worship possible. He has not been so
successful with the southern idiom, which, in this play, is undeniably Brit-
ish in certain details.


BRIEFER MENTION
613
GALIMATHIAS, by Matthew Josephson (8vo, 46 pages ; Broom: $1). To dis-
cover fresh idioms; to regard familiar objects in the light of another
poetry; to be personal and new: these qualities are praised in theory and
until they are attained. For Galimathias they procured only a brief chorus
of ridicule, justified in small part by the fact that it has the defects of its
qualities. Often it tortures the language needlessly. It has gusto, how-
ever, and a satisfying loud rhetoric and movement as fine as a Swiss
watch. The critics who damned the book most briefly, even, out of their
irritation with new forms of beauty, should have been able to appreciate
the cadence of a phrase like, "The white foam of the long cataract which
from beginning to end is not the colour of water."
SECOND CONTEMPORARY VERSE ANTHOLOGY, edited by Charles Wharton
Stork (12mo, 208 pages; Dutton : $3) consists of poems selected from the
last three years' issue of Mr Stork's magazine, prefaced by an article on
the aims of the magazine, and the editor's definition of poetry. “I believe
in this anthology,” Mr Stork states, “because I have had so little to do
with its making." And yet he has surely had as much to do with its mak-
ing as can be done by an editor who sets a premium on certain qualities in
poetry and gives them the freedom of his magazine. The qualities here
encouraged are simplicity, direct appeal, "humanism,” “as opposed to the
egotism of the futurists.” Some of the verse thus selected is of very high
rank. In rather a large per cent of the rest, picturesqueness and form are
more prominent than intensity of feeling. There is such a thing as trying
too hard to be universal, but at least there are poems enough in the one
hundred thirty-nine of this anthology to please several tastes.
SOME ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF Jesus, by George Berguer, translated by
Eleanor and Van Wyck Brooks (8vo, 332 pages; Harcourt, Brace: $4) is
an attempt to turn psychoanalysis to the services of religion. Christ's ap-
peal is situated in the fact that his own life was a parallel in actuality to
the various myths and legends exemplifying the "Oedipus complex," and
thus he "translated into life the secular dream of the peoples.” By an em-
phasis on psychological rather than historico-empirical truth, the author is
able to preserve the miracles even in the act of explaining them away. His
distinction between spiritual truth and the degeneration of such truth into
material fictions, and his examination into the laws underlying such degen-
eration no doubt call for an enormous amount of skill, so that the book,
while it contains bits of subtle exegesis, does not suffer from vagueness and
shiftiness of approach.
DAMAGED Souls, by Gamaliel Bradford (12mo, 385 pages; Houghton Miff-
lin: $3). This is a gallery of psychological portraits of men prominent in
American public life. The portraits rely on many documents and letters
for details, the virtues of each man being dwelt upon by way of proof that
he was merely damaged, not lost. The author feels that the common char-
acteristic of the group is lack of analysis of their own motives and natures,
coupled with limitless discussion and explanation of their conduct. The
book is interesting, and on the whole, more than average fair in its conclu-
sions.


614
BRIEFER MENTION
THE CHILD At Home, by Cynthia Asquith (12mo, 278 pages; Scribner:
$1.75) might be described as a conservative manual for mothers who have
no need to consider the economic aspects of their maternal relations; it in-
dicates—with not too much condescension-how they can "get on” with
their children, maintain the proper social and intellectual contacts, and
that sort of thing. Lady Asquith recommends reading a Shakespeare play
aloud as "an excellent family occupation"; also, in having the little one's
picture taken for the precious album, it is a "waste of money to go to a
cheap photographer.”
As I Like It, by William Lyon Phelps (12mo, 236 pages; Scribner: $2).
In this volume of random opinions gathered up from Scribner's Magazine,
we see Mr Phelps discuss very patiently whether or not This Freedom is a
greater book than If Winter Comes; we learn of his delight in reading
Christopher Morley; and we watch while, with simple impregnability, he
informs us that he is both a Puritan and a Rotarian. One is always a bit
disarmed by Mr Phelps, he writes with such tolerance and good nature,
indeed he possesses any number of sterling qualities--even has them
printed, as it were, on his business cards like a telephone number. In this
volume Mr Phelps' opinions range anywhere from the bluntly wrong to
the bluntly right, it doesn't much matter which.
RACE AND NATIONAL SOLIDARITY, by Charles Conant Josey (12mo, 227
pages; Scribner: $2.50) is an argument for the intensification of group
consciousness on the part of the white race and for a policy of deliberate
exploitation designed to insure its world dominance. This thesis is theo
retically more rational than the ideal of internationalism inveighed against;
but it is even less empirical. The author successfully deflates illusory
ethical values sanctified by democracy. He is less sound in his reasoning
about politics and economics, and does not take the possibly very active de-
velopment of the subject-races into consideration. The book lacks the
trenchant dryness that makes for clarity and force in an argument; too
much of it is in the form of a pedagogical peroration.
BUILDING THE AMERICAN NATION, by Nicholas Murray Butler (12mo, 374
pages; Scribner : $2.50). In this series of lectures, written to be delivered
in England, Mr Butler sketches in strictly orthodox fashion an outline of
American history from the beginnings of colonial federation up to the
present. The author succeeds in implicating his facts very smoothly with
the portraits and policies of leading American statesmen. On reading the
pages on the revolution, we see how admirably fitted Mr Butler was for
his diplomatic task of interpreting America to England, for he insists that
all the faculties which the colonies possessed for revolution were in the
direct line of English tradition. The somewhat difficult problem of Jef.
ferson is handled with equal ingenuity. If the book adds nothing to
American history, at any rate the review of the facts is clearly and ear-
nestly performed.


COMMENT
GR
RYLL GRANGE, by the author of Headlong Hall, is no
masterpiece, but it is full of nearly everything and reading
it for no accountable reason we have discovered in it texts for two
discourses. One of Peacock's bêtes noirs, it would appear, were the
Pantopragmatists, those who fancied that by reducing all
knowledge to easily assimilatable terms, they could make all
humanity virtuous and wise. The process has gone on, and with
no snobbish desire to save any portion of art or science for ourselves
we must confess our feeling that some of the pantopragmatists have
done their work ill. They have made their large section of the life
of the mind easy; but they haven't cared enough for it to make it
noble. We doubt even whether they have made it interesting.
Books for children, if we may add our word to the annual dis-
cussion, are still superior in one way—they have to be interesting.
Perhaps entertaining is the better word—for entertainment is true
nourishment, and only a small mind conceives entertainment as
trivial. Children are not yet dragooned into reading, and many
books published for them are delicately conceived and presented
with allurement. Theirs are long, long thoughts, and they know
where to take their fun.
The second, graver, matter is suggested by the structure of Gryll
Grange. It is a series of conversations about everything; an Aristo-
phanic comedy is produced and nine love affairs (seven, however,
at one blow) are consummated in the course of these endless talks,
full of allusions and citations from all the learned tongues. It is
in a society based on leisure that this occurs; it is also in a society
which knew what to do with leisure.
From that to the texture of our actual lives is a long step. We
fight bitterly for our leisure and, gaining it, fret it away in the
search of such a society as will nourish it and make it fruitful.
Because earnest artists flee vulgar society, they are occasionally
compelled to be solitary, and there is seldom the free communica-
tion between workers in the seven arts which the workers in each
require for sanity and for a little happiness.


616
COMMENT
We have heard that a society capable of satisfying the necessi-
ties of artists exists abroad. It seems so to us indeed; in Paris, for
example, where an American is outside the quarrels of groups and
individuals, it seems to him that painters and poets and musicians
and critics can meet, without forming rigid groups, and interchange
ideas and even half-ideas.
We do not see such a free interchange in America. In New York
one must be "grouped” or not exist. And the intellectual poverty,
the thinness, of some of the artists whose natural gifts are great is
due in part to this. Mr Van Wyck Brooks has traced in his essays
on James a few steps in the passage of a genius who needed an in-
tellectual web more varied, more cunningly and more lovingly
wrought than our own. One can anticipate the conclusion that
flight from America is inadvisable; for many it is impossible; and
the deep damnation which seems to threaten Europe is not reassur-
ing for its own future, not to speak of its capacity to offer anything
to a stranger. We must try once more at home for this association
of creative minds, we must find for ourselves the means and the
method to bring them into fructifying contact.


THE THEATRE
ON
N the eve of Signora Duse's appearance it would be natural to
write about acting—and it would be simple, too, if the cur-
rent season gave that art honour except in the breach. I do not
mean that there are no satisfactory performances; nor that there are
many unsuccessful attempts at great acting. What I mean is that
on the strict and legitimate stage the effort to act is rapidly disap-
pearing. I have never seen Duse; but even if every report about her
excellence were misleading, there could be no question of her inten-
tion, of her style. She is, by every account, an actress; and the
necessity to be an actress, or an actor, is one of those compulsions
which civilization, or something, has considerably relaxed. Its
place has been taken by the opportunity to be attractive, or a “per-
sonality,” or a character.
In the case of Miss Ann Harding the talent for acting is genuine,
and it is only a question whether she will be able to resist much
more dangerous direction than she received in TARNISH. (By direc-
tion I mean also the lack of it.) Too frequently the projected
character slipped into something else—the remembered way in
which some other actress imitated a still more distant progenitor in
a similar scene. The play was exceptionally interesting for one
thing, a matter of capital importance—that the interplay of two
human beings (the father and the mother) entangled a third, and
actually were the “forces” which created the situation. Neither
the plot nor the theme was so good; but an internal rightness held
the play together and should have taught the director to prevent
Miss Harding from ever falling out of character.
The Swan is a great satisfaction, and as far as Mr David Bur-
ton is responsible for it, he is responsible for the nearest thing to an
unmixed delight I have seen this season. Miss Hilda Spong has
been quite unintelligently criticized for over-acting. She is simply
a perfect baroque, wholly in the tone of one side, the comic side,
of the play. I have never seen Miss Le Gallienne play so well-
although I wonder whether she does not err in the other extreme.


618
THE THEATRE
It is all too tragic, too seriously conceived, too consciously the great
young actress who can do second-rate poetic drama. She has a cer-
tain gift for comedy which she suppresses, in the interest not of the
myth she creates, not of the character, but of herself. There is an-
other flaw in the piece, and that may be the fault of the audience.
The highest comic moment is when Mr Merivale, as the Prince,
kisses the tutor-a precise parallel to the highest dramatic moment,
an act earlier, when the Princess does it. The second kiss was ac-
cepted as being also dramatic; it should be pure comedy.
I should be happy to believe that every player in every piece re-
quired the director to announce, at the beginning, what the style of
the piece was, and that every audience required all the players to be
in that style. Galsworthy's Windows and Molnar's Launzi were
both directed without any such integral conception of the style of
the play, and the disastrous failure of the latter was the result. It
was a psychological drama in which the external events after the
first act meant nothing, and it seemed all played for these events.
If WINDOWS turn out a success—it will not be the first time The
Theatre Guild has Shaw to thank.
a
I had the good fortune to see The Ziegfeld FOLLIES after time
and pressure of time had eliminated most of its excrescences. In
the thirty-odd remaining numbers there are still some dreadfully
soft spots, rapturously acknowledged by the audience (as is the
Garden of Kama in the GREENWICH VILLAGE Follies by an audi-
ence which underrates the fine macabre work of the Two Briants
and the other excellent acrobats there). Even apart from these
spots Mr Ziegfeld's offering is not enough of a climax to be a fare-
well. For one thing there isn't enough humour, nor are there
enough good songs. The best song was introduced for Miss Ann
Pennington and is, I think, by Louis A. Hirsch. Miss Pennington
and Eddie Cantor substituted for Bert Wheeler, and he must be
very good indeed to require both of them as a makeweight. They
cheered up and jazzed up the piece considerably. Miss Brice by a
wise decision cut out all her sentimental songs and scenes, and some
of her comic ones are in her highest vein. Edna Leedom and Linda
are the other high spots—not to speak of the high swinging of an
attractive chorus.
G. S.


MODERN ART
I
HAVE a suspicion now that gendarmes were dotted more
thickly about the entrance of the little Théâtre Michel the
night of the modern art "evening” than the apparently innocent
programme of music and recitations warranted. Certainly they
were called for and were of great use just as soon as the proceed-
ings got under way, but I wonder now how they came to be so con-
veniently there. Did young Mr Tzara, who was the author of sev-
eral of the poems and also of the little dramatic sketch a portion of
which we almost heard later on, tip them off, thinking it might add
to the fun? And did the commissioner of police in detailing his
men for the job instruct them to go easy? The psychology of those
police gets me. There was such an uproar, you see, and seething-
mob stuff, and flashing police clubs, and villains carried struggling
over the heads of the audience and forcibly propelled through the
door, and yet when all was over, no one went to jail, and no one
had been hurt, not even a scratch. I puzzle over this the more
since Mr Tzara threatens to translate the scene of his activities to
New York and actually contemplates an "evening" here. Could
our highly sensitized policemen stand it, do you suppose? And go
away nicely at the end merely shrugging their shoulders at "these
artists”? As Mrs Asquith said when the reporters became too tu-
multuous with their questions, “I wonder !”
The Théâtre Michel evening failed a trifle I thought from being
over managed. There must be an uproar, of course, and scandal-
ized upholders of virtue must protest shriekingly against the licence
that comes to them from the stage, but in arranging for this Mr
Tzara secured more shriekers than things to be shrieked at. His
bravi were so impetuous and unrestrained that at the very first
line of the very first poem they shrieked themselves, the police aid-
ing, out of the theatre. Young Mr de Massot had a tiny poem each
line of which said that somebody died upon the field of honour.
He began, “Madame Sarah Bernhardt est morte sur le champ
d'honneur," and immediately the bravi shouted "Thank God” and
otherwise misbehaved themselves. By the time two or three well-
known people had died sur le champ d'honneur in Mr de Massot's
a
a


620
MODERN ART
a
poem the whole house was standing upon its feet and two of the
interrupters had actually mounted the stage to strike Mr de Mas-
sot, the one with a fist upon the cheek and the other with a walking
stick
upon
the shoulders. There was only time to get in about two
resounding whacks before the agents de police bore the intruders, as
I said, amid much flashing of police clubs, over the heads of the
audience to the exit. Then the hale reader went on in absolute
silence to tell us who the others were who had died upon the field of
honour, and for half an hour or three-quarters, there was a boresome,
respectable silence for everything on the programme, even for Man
Ray's quite terribly-insulting-to-our-intelligence moving picture.
But by the time the dramatic offering of Mr Tzara was reached,
the belligerent bravi had somehow crept back into the purlieus of
the Théâtre Michel and were there to shout and to mount upon the
stage and to finally stop the performance. They were undoubtedly
the same bravi and the query is to me, how did they fix it up with
those gendarmes so to re-enter the arena like that. What took place
between them and the police outside? Did the police say, "Now
will you promise to be good if we let you go in again ?" and did they
promise, or what? At any rate it is possible to envy Paris her
police system. We have nothing like it here. I had to explain to
Mr Tzara that we martyrize the first person who does anything in
America and that our martyrdoms are not amusing and do not nec-
essarily lead to much. I cited the Gorki incident for him of the
hectoring Gorki received because of the lady who came with him
and who was not Madame Gorki. I explained that now half
Greenwich Village lives with ladies who hate the term Madame
with a Queen Victorian hatred and that at present Gorki could
pass unmolested from Boston to Hollywood. Mr Tzara seemed to
think the amount of preparation our public requires for an idea
formidable. He was somewhat sad and unsmiling as he talked of
the evening at the Théâtre Michel. He appeared to be conscious
that there had been something of a formula about it and that an
effort in a new country and under new conditions might help the
cause. I said as little about our police as I conscientiously could,
but nevertheless I fear I said enough to disturb him. If Mr Tzara
does not have an "evening” soon in the Sheridan Square Theatre I
suppose I shall be to blame.
Mr Erik Satie, whom I met at Braque's, was not too much elated


HENRY MCBRIDE
621
by his share in the Théâtre Michel entertainment, either, although
his share had been above reproach and had soothed savage and
gentle alike. The Braque studio, which, alas, Braque is soon to
quit, is charming. It is over the hill in Montmartre, but still so
high that the view from the roof terrasse on the seventh floor would
do admirably for Louise's Pa, in the opera, to curse.
I spied by chance yesterday in the Kraushaar window something
that gave me great pleasure—a small, gilt-bronze statuette of a
costumed female figure by Gaston Lachaise. The pleasure was the
more in that I was meeting an old friend—I had seen the figure in
the clay a year or two ago and had often wondered what had be-
come of it. There is perhaps no harm in telling that Mrs Bertram
Hartman posed for it though Lachaise in the end carried it beyond
the portrait stage in which I first saw it. I had gone to call upon
the Lachaises late one Sunday afternoon and blundered upon the
pose which had evidently been undertaken impromptu. Lachaise
and Mrs Hartman and young Mr Nagel, who was there, assured
me that I was not interrupting and that it really was too dark
for further work and that if I would but enter I should have
a cup of tea. Now the Lachaise establishment is famous for the
excellence of the tea it dispenses, but it is, naturally, Madame
Lachaise who looks after this end. She had gone calling somewhere
and Lachaise explained that his own technique in tea-making was
somewhat wobbly, but, with a look of desperate resolve, he would
do his best. He did do his best and his best was not bad and
Madame Lachaise, who came in just as our festivities got under
way, expressed no special disapproval though insisting with
perhaps a shade of firmness that all present should come in again
the following Sunday for another cup of tea. The second Sunday's
tea was, of course, superb, but—so perverse is human nature—both
teas registered with equal firmness upon my brain and I shall
never see the charming and poetic little bronze without thinking
of two pleasant Sunday afternoons.
Archipenko, the extraordinary Russian sculptor, has come to
town, is already ensconced in a studio, and intends to seek pupils.
Of this, undoubtedly, there will be more anon.
a
HENRY MCBRIDE


MUSICAL CHRONICLE
TWO
Wo miserable performances took place the fifteenth and six-
teenth of October. But that is not news. News is never that
a dog goes mad and bites a man, but only that a man goes mad and
bites a dog; and three hundred odd singers and players wading
under the direction of Mr Bodanzky through a lengthy work de-
void of all value, and the Philadelphia Orchestra muffling a Bee-
thoven symphony under the baton of Mr Stokowsky, are events
quite as banal as spasms of canine frenzy. If these concerts justify
any mention whatsoever, it is merely because of certain comments
passed on them in one of the morning newspapers; having set forth
to draw the picture of a machine, we cannot in fairness leave off
before having limned all its component parts.
The Pfitzner "romantic cantata,” premier offering of our own
little society for the appreciation of corpses, is a classical work of
impotence. Men full of something to sing have not to play upon
their audiences' sympathies through extra-musical means. But this
manoeuvre seems habitual with Pfitzner. Some years since, when
Busoni wrote Towards a New Aesthetic of Music, and demon-
strated the logic of not twenty-four, but of one hundred and three
gamuts, Pfitzner sought to discredit the theory, not by refuting
Busoni on musical ground, but with talk of “We Germans do not
need new scales”; “Wälscher Tand," et cetera. And the “roman-
tic composer” is still playing, a trifle overmuch, that particular
scale. His cantata he labels Von Deutscher Seele. Himself he calls
a romantic composer; and the audience is assured that this choral
piece, like all other of his works, “was created from an inner ne-
cessity which is really only a higher play-impulse.” Throughout the
composition, sourness tries to arrive at milk by making the gesture
of golden-heartedness. And, of course, the goods are mysteriously
derailed somewhere en route. A true romanticist would not to-day
be found attempting to write "romantic” music. There is not a fresh
and expressive note in the long work. Throats, instruments, sound
unending emptiness. First you wonder what is suddenly the matter
with yourself. Later, you wonder what is, and has for a long while
been, the matter with Pfitzner.—And the Seventh Symphony under


PAUL ROSENFELD
623
9
Mr Stokowsky was flat, stale, full of the most ridiculous exaggera-
tions of forte and piano. The tone of the orchestra was stringy
heavy and coarse throughout. The marvellous interstellar introduc-
tion was almost rhythmless. A terrible want of fineness was at play
all the while.—But this is not what we came to say. What we have
to say has to do neither with Mr Bodanzky's delicious genius for
the inferior; nor with the insensibility of Mr Stokowsky. It has to
do merely with the reports of the two concerts published by a cer-
tain critic, Mr X-
Mr X-'s report of the Pfitzner perpetration was marvellously
'
evasive. He found the music "Impressive”-and added “that is
the best one can say of most of the work," as though attributing
impressiveness to a work were not doing a very great deal. Else-
where, he called it "a mixture of good and bad,” and then hastened
to add “Pfitzner is at his best when he is working within limita-
tions,” by which almost Goethean phrase Mr X— signified that
“by far the most significant music in the score is that which is set
to words. [The) choral writing is solid and idiomatic, and he [the
composer) usually contrives to say his say through this medium
with uncommon expressiveness and terseness. Perhaps the best bit
of music in the score—is a lovely a capella setting" et cetera. Mr
X-also liked "his imitative moments, although pretty literal”;
finding that "oboes and clarinets crow with diverting roosterish-
ness at the line Wenn der Hahn kracht auf dem Dache, and a
passage descriptive of the stars rising over the sea is pricked out
with a cheerful array of bright string pizzicati and little jets of
woodwind fire.” However, “Mr Pfitzner is not Wagner,” and so
on, all along the top of the fence. But if Mr X—'s piece on
the Bodanzky evening was a perfect evasion, his piece on the eve-
ning of the Philadelphia Orchestra was just as uncritical. Our
friend found it difficult to write about the concert "for the simple
reason that a couple of handsprings and three rousing cheers are
about the most comprehensive expression of opinion” he found he
could think of at the moment. “No orchestra in the world could
possibly be as good as Mr Stokowski's sounded” that night. “The
tone of the orchestra seemed pure molten gold most of the time, the
sort of playing that would make any music sound well, let alone
Schubert and Bach and Beethoven, and its response to the conduc-
tor was as perfect as its tone."


624
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
The musical life of a place like New York is not a portion of the
veritable body of existence. It is more something detached from
the reality, a sort of shadow-day. The concert people do not make
music with what they live outside the concert hall. That, never
enters it. A vital criticism, however, would stomach no such
shadowy music. It would demand a whole of life for the concert
The critic no less than the performer is the champion of
values. If the performer brings the meat to market, the critic sees
to it that the meat is fresh. It is his work to insist that the stand-
ards of life remain undegraded. But the critic, to have a sense of
values, must bring his sensibility with him into the hall; and the
critics typified by Mr X— seem persistently to check their sen-
sibilities outside with the umbrellas and overshoes, and to bring to
play on the performances a quality of intelligence which they
would not dare apply to any other business of life. They, too, fall
into the pattern of the music-people. Hence, any one who so
wishes can insult the public with empty music and empty playing.
For someone in the press is sure next morning to pat him on the
back as though he had done a worthy deed.
room.
Paul ROSENFELD


x?puІ





INDEX
VOLUME LXXV
sode .
I
296
.
.
PAGE
AGARD, WALTER .
Aristide Maillol.
365
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD
The Man's Story (Fiction)
247
BROOKS, VAN WYCK .
Henry James: The American Scene 29
Henry James: An International Epi-
225
BURKE, KENNETH, translator
The Fate of the Baron von Leisenbohg
(Fiction)
565
German Art After the War
CAPEK, KAREL
The Injured One (Fiction)
521
CHUKOVSKY, K.
Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyeo . 463
COUPERUS, Louis
The Princess Chalcondylas (Fiction) 334
Cowley, MALCOLM
Phantasus
196
Properties .
CRAM, RALPH ADAMS
Pro Vita Monastica
288
CRAVEN, THOMAS
An Aesthetic Prophecy
87
Imitation Again
192
Lust and Hate
395
Croce, BENEDETTO
Walter Scott
325
De Mattos, ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA, trans-
lator
The Princess Chalcondylas
334
EGLINTON, JOHN
Dublin Letter .
179
ELIOT, T.S.
Marianne Moore .
594
Ulysses, Order, and Myth
,
FISCHER, OTOKAR
Prague Letter .
588
FREEMAN, JOHN
The Gold Coast (Fiction)
123
FRY, ROGER
Salamanca
536
The Wertheimer Portraits
443
GARNETT, DAVID
Jacob's Room
83
GREGORY, ALYSE
Artist or Nun
484
The Inflammable Slao
Sherwood Anderson
243
Mrs Scott's Escapade
HAMSUN, KNUT.
On the Island (Fiction)
209
HOLDING, ELISABETH SANXAY
Miss Flotsam and Mr Jetsam
(Fiction)
447
HUDSON, W. H..
Letters.
417
HYDE, LAWRENCE, translator
Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyeo . 463
KEARNEY, PATRICK
The Case of the Fairy Photographs. 91
KOMROFF, MANUEL .
A Moscow Rehearsal (Fiction)
339
.
.
.
480
.
605
598
.
.
.
.
.


IV
INDEX
498
376
•
.
.
.
PAGE
LIVINGSTON, ARTHUR, translator
The Man With the Flower in His
Mouth
313
Lovett, ROBERT MORSS
The Squire in Politics
391
MANN, THOMAS
German Letter.
369
MEIER-GRAEFE, JULIUS
German Art After the War
MORAND, PAUL
Paris Letter
173, 473, 583
MOORE, GEORGE
The Apostle
43
George Moore and Granville Barker 135
George Moore and John Freeman
341
MOORE, MARIANNE .
An Eagle in the Ring
Gentle Sorcery.
293
MORTIMER, RAYMOND
London Letter
73
The Memoirs of M de Charlus
PARSONS, ALICE BEAL
Sin.
603
PIRANDELLO, LUIGI .
The Man With the Flower in His
Mouth
313
Powys, John COWPER
The Philosopher Kwang
430
Powys, LLEWELYN
An Historical Novel .
600
Matthew Prior
265
ROSENFELD, PAUL
Randolph Bourne.
545
RUSSELL, BERTRAND
Leisure and Mechanism
105
Life as an Art
487
A New System of Philosophy 278
SANTAYANA, G..
A Long Way Round to Nirvana
435
SAPIR, EDWARD
Mr Housman's Last Poems .
192
SCHNITZLER, ARTHUR
The Fate of the Baron oon Leisenbohg
(Fiction)
565
SELDES, GILBERT
Before a Picture by Picasso
406
The Demoniac in the American
Theatre .
303
Shorter and Better Stories
184
Toujours Jazz
151
Mr Wells' Ancients
285
TOOMER, JEAN
Waldo Frank's Holiday
383
von HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo
Vienna Letter
271
WADSWORTH, P. BEAUMONT, translator The Injured One
521
Prague Letter
79
WESCOTT, GLENWAY.
The First Book of Mary Butts 282
WILKINSON, LOUIS
Sir James Barrie
167
WILSON, EDMUND
The Anatomy of War
93
Late Violets from the Nineties 387
The Mantuan.
492
WOOLF, VIRGINIA
Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street
(Fiction)
WORSTER, W. W., translator
On the Island
209
WRIGHT, CUTHBERT.
Much Ado About Nothing
608
Yeats, WILLIAM BUTLER
An Autobiographical Fragment. 13
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
20
.
.
.


INDEX
V
VERSE
PAGE
ALDINGTON, RICHARD
BARNES, DJUNA
COATSWORTH, ELIZABETH J.
.
.
.
.
COLUM, PADRAIC
KREYMBORG, ALFRED
Exile
First Communion
Desert Horizon
Majesty Walks in the Garden
Rain: St Augustine
The Lehua Trees .
City Chap.
Crocus
Hermit Thrush
The Lines of Her Wary Body
Neighbours.
Robin.
Song Sparrow
Swallows
Sultry .
Time's Acre
Reverie.
Country Sunday
In Central Park
Poem.
Named Flamingo
Three Poems
The Crystal Sun
The Precincts of February
He Wove His Nest in the Portico.
Proud .
323
166
150
582
442
544
461
224
460
19
460
461
462
462
561
562
534
134
134
28
264
170
363
72
333
332
LOWELL, AMY
.
.
MUIR, EDWIN
NAUMBURG, MARGARET
.
.
POORE, DUDLEY.
WESCOTT, GLENWAY.
WILLIAMS, WILLIAM Carlos
WINTERS, Yvor.
.
WRYNN, ANTHONY
.
.


VI
INDEX
ART
.
BONNARD, PIERRE
CORINTH, Lovis
Davis, STUART
DEHN, ADOLPH
DeRAIN, ANDRÉ
Fry, ROGER.
GALANIS, D.
GEDDES, NORMAN-Bel
GROPPER, WILLIAM
HALLER, HERMANN
HOFER, CARL
LAURENCIN, MARIE
MAILLOL, ARISTIDE
.
.
.
.
.
MATISSE, HENRI.
A Painting
July
Dancers
July
A Drawing
August
Students in the Borghese Gardens,
Rome
September
Viennese Cabaret .
December
Viennese Coffee House December
Women Praying in St Apollinare
Nuovo, Ravenna
September
La Cour
August
Spanish Scene
December
Three Woodcuts
November
Two Brush Drawings
· July
Two Line Syncopations
December
Marie Laurencin .
August
Women by the Sea
• July
Le Citron
August
Adolescence
October
Flora
October
Girl
October
Bonheur de Vivre .
November
Ciel Nuageux
October
Negro Sculpture
September
Paysage
August
The Bullfight
September
La Comtesse E. de Beaumont November
H. G. Wells
September
A Drawing
September
A Linoleum Cut
September
Asher Wertheimer
November
Essie, Ruby, and Ferdinand,
Children of Asher Wertheimer November
Hylda Wertheimer
November
Le Cirque
December
Nude
October
Two Drawings
July
Three Drawings
August
The Grey Boa.
December
London Pride
December
Fons Vitae
. October
The Mandarin
October
Ganymede
July
A Drawing
October
PAHOUIN
PANSAERS, CLÉMENT
Picasso, PABLO
ROBINSON, BOARDMAN
RYCHTARIK, W. R.
SARGENT, John Singer.
SEURAT, Georges
SOMMER, WILLIAM
.
SPRINCHORN, CARL
VAN VORST, MARIE .
.
von HUHN, RUDOLF.
VON MARÉES, HANS.
ZORACH, WILLIAM


INDEX
VII
BOOKS REVIEWED
Authors and Titles
.
.
.
98
96
.
.
.
.
202
398
613
98
PAGE
Adcock, A. ST. JOHN. E. O. HOPPÉ, illustrator. Gods of Modern Grub Street 509
ANDERSON, RASMUS B., translator. Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century, by
GEORG BRANDES.
ANONYMOUS. The Enchanted April
ANONYMOUS. Grey Towers
399
ARCHER, WILLIAM. The Old Drama and the New
99
ARMSTRONG, Martin. The Puppet Show
301
ASQUITH, CYNTHIA. The Child at Home
614
AYSCOUGH, John. Dobachi
507
BEALBY, J. T., translator. Weird Tales, by E. T. W. HOFFMANN
506
BEERBOHM, Max, introduction. Men of letters, by Dixon SCOTT
509
Belloc, Hilaire. The Modern Traveller
400
BenavenTE, Jacinto. JOHN GARRETT UNDERHILL, translator. Plays: Third Series 97
Berguer, George. Eleanor and Van Wyck BROOKS, translators. Some Aspects of
the Life of Jesus
613
Bibesco, ELIZABETH. Balloons
300
BJÖRKMAN, EDWIN. Gates of Life
97
Bodenheim, Maxwell. The Sardonic Arm
BORDEN, Mary. Jane-Our Strange
611
BOTTOME, Phyllis. The Victim, and The Worm
Boyd, THOMAS. Through the Wheat
93
BRADFORD, Gamaliel. Damaged Souls
Brandes, Georg. Rasmus B. ANDERSON, translator. Creative Spirits of the Nine-
teenth Century
BROOKS, Eleanor and Van Wyck, translators. Some Aspects of the Life of Jesus,
by George BERGUER
Broun, Heywood. The Sun Field
612
Butler, Howard Russell. Painter and Space, or The Third Dimension in Graphic Art 192
Butler, Nicholas MURRAY. Building the American Nation.
614
UTTS, Mary. Speed the Ploi and Other Stories
282
CANFIELD, DOROTHY. Raw Material.
401
Cannan, Gilbert. Annette and Bennett
299
CATHER, Willa. April Twilights.
Chekhov, Anton. Constance Garnett, translator. Love and Other Stories
96
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses
Classen, E., translator. Downstream, by Sigfrid Siwertz.
Clews, Henry, JR. Mumbo Jumbo.
302
CoatswORTH, ELIZABETH J. Fox Footprints
400
CUTLER, Carl GORDON and Stephen C. Pepper. Modern Colour
302
Davis, FANNIE STEARNS. The Ancient Beautiful Things
de GOURMONT, Remy. C. SARTORIS, translator. The Horses of Di des.
DE MONTESQUIOU, Robert. Les Pas Effacés. Mémoires de Robert de Montesquiou. 376
Deutsch, Babette and AVRAHM YARMOLINSKY, translators. Contemporary German
Poetry .
196
Doran, Carl Van. See Van Doran.
DostoevsKY, FYODOR. S. S. KoteLIANSKY and J. MIDDLETON MURRY, translators.
Dostoevsky: Letters and Reminiscences
605
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Coming of the Fairies
DRINKWATER, John. Preludes
DRINKWATER, John. Robert E. Lee.
612
Dukes, Ashley, translator. The Machine Wreckers, by Ernst TOLLER
401
DUNSANY, LORD. Plays of Near and Far
613
400
.
508
200
507
398
91
202
201


VIII
INDEX
.
PAGE
611
302
487
387
99
202
492
383
201
506
301
401
391
96
300
97
.
299
400
98
203
612
399
506
509
.
EASTON, DOROTHY. Tantalus.
Ellis, Don Carlos and Laura THORNBOROUGH. Motion Pictures in Education
ELLIS, HAVELOCK. The Dance of Life
FIRBANK, RONALD. The Flower Beneath the Foot.
FISHER, DOROTHY CANFIELD, translator. Life of Christ, by GIOVANNI PAPINI
FOSTER, JEANNE Robert. Rock-Flower
FRANK, TENNEY. Virgil: A Biography
FRANK, WALDO. Holiday
GALSWORTHY, JOHN. The Burning Spear
GALSWORTHY, Joan. Captures
GALSWORTHY, John. Loyalties
GALSWORTHY, John. Windows
GARDINER, A. G. The Life of Sir William Harcourt
GARNETT, CONSTANCE, translator. Love and Other Stories, by ANTON CHEKHOV
Gerould, KATHERINE FULLERTON. Conquistador .
GIBBS, Philip. The Middle of the Road
GOURMONT, REMY DE. See de Gourmont.
GREENE, ANNE BosWORTH. The Lone Winter
GRUDIN, Louis. Charlatan
Guerney, B. GUILBERT, translator. Sulamith, by ALEXANDRE KUPRIN.
HARDY, ARTHUR SHERBURNE. Things Remembered
Hart, William S. A Lighter of Flames
Hecht, Ben. The Florentine Dagger
HOFFMANN, E. T. W. J. T. Beally, translator. Weird Tales
· Hoppé, E. O., illustrator. Gods of Modern Grub Street, by A. St. John ADCOCK
Housman, A. E. Last Poems-A Shropshire Lad .
Housman, Laurence. Moonshine and Clover: A Doorway in Fairyland
Hudson, STEPHEN. Prince Hempseed
Johns, ORRICK. Blindfold .
JORDAN-SMITH, Paul. Cables of Cobweb
Josephson, Matthew. Galimathias
Josey, Charles CONANT. Race and National Solidarity
Joyce, James. Ulysses.
KEMP, HARRY. The Love-Rogue.
KoteLIANSKY, S. S. and J. MIDDLETON MURRY, translators. Dostoevsky: Letters and
Reminiscences.
KREYMBORG, Alfred. Puppet Plays.
KUPRIN, ALEXANDRE. B. Guilbert GUERNEY, translator. Sulamith
LINDSAY, Vachel. Collected Poems .
LINDSAY, Vachel. Going to the Sun.
LUBBOCK, Percy. Roman Pictures
McGraw, JOHN J. My Thirty Years in Baseball
McKenna, STEPHEN. Soliloquy
MACKAIL, J. W. Virgil and His Meaning to the World of To-day
MacORLAN, Pierre. Malice
Mallarmé, Camille. The House of the Enemy
Mansfield, KATHERINE. The Dove's Nest.
Marks, JEANETTE. The Sun Chaser.
Masefield, John. The Dream and Other Poems
MASTERS, EDGAR Lee. Skeeters Kirby
MERRICK, LEONARD. To Tell You the Truth
Mernell, ALICE. The Poems of Alice Meynell.
MITCHISON, Naomi. The Conquered.
Monahan, Michael. An Attic Dreamer
Montague, C. E. Disenchantment
MONTESQUIOU, ROBERT DE. See de Montesquiou.
Moore, Marianne. Marriage (Manikin Number 3).- Poems
MURRY, J. MIDDLETON and S. S. KOTELIANSKY, translators. Dostoevsky: Letters and
Reminiscences.
188
293
96
300
200
613
614
480
400
.
605
.
201
98
498
202
508
203
200
492
506
301
484
508
507
98
96
202
600
99
301
594
605


INDEX
IX
203
.
.
201
506
278
398
608
PAGE
MYERS, L. H. The Orissers
97
Nevill, Ralph. Yesterday and To-day
203
Niles, Blair. Casual Wanderings in Ecuador .
Norris, Charles Gilman. Bread
507
O'Brien, EDWARD J. The Advance of the American Short Story
184
O'BRIEN, EDWARD J., editor. The Best Short Stories of 1922.
184
O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD Prize STORIES OF 1922. Chosen by the SOCIETY OF ARTS
AND SCIENCES. Introduction by BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS
184
OVERTON, GRANT. Island of the Innocent
96
OXFORD POETRY–1921. OXFORD POETRY-1922
301
PAPINI, GIOVANNI. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, translator. Life of Christ
99
PEPPER, STEPHEN C. and Carl GORDON CUTLER. Modern Colour
302
PHELPS, WILLIAM Lyon. As I Like It
614
Phelps, William Lyon. Some Makers of American Literature
508
PHILLPOTTS, Eden. Black, White and Brindled.—Children of Men .
399
Pitkin, Walter B., editor. As We Are .
184
Powys, John Cowper. Psychoanalysis and Morality
401
Powys, LLEWELYN. Thirteen Worthies
508
Powys, T. F. The Left Leg
395
Russell, John. In Dark Places .
201
Sackville-West, V. Challenge
Sackville-West, V. Grey Wethers
SANTAYANA, George. Scepticism and Animal Faith. Introduction to a System of
Philosophy
Sartoris, C., translator. The Horses of Diomedes, by Remy de GOURMONT
SchnitzLER, ARThur. The Shepherd's Pipe.
Schreiner, Olive. Stories, Dreams, and Allegories
299
Scott, C. Kay. Sinbad
200
Scott, Dixon. Max Beerbohm, introduction. Men of letters.
509
Scott, Evelyn. Escapade.
SEDGWICK, Henry Dwight. Pro Vita Monastica
SHAKESPEAR, D., illustrator. Elimus: A Story, by B. C. WINDELER
SHERMAN, Stuart P. The Genius of America
SINGMASTER, ELSIE. The Hidden Road .
300
Sitwell, Sacheverell. The Hundred and One Harlequins
SIWERTZ, SIGFRID. E. CLASSEN, translator. Downstream
SMITH, Paul JORDAN-. See Jordan-Smith.
Snow, Wilbert. Maine Coast
Society of Arts and Sciences, editors. Blanche COLTON Williams, introduction.
0. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1922
184
STERN, G. B. The Back Seat .
611
STORK, Charles Wharton, editor and translator. Modern Swedish Masterpieces 399
STORK, CHARLES WHARTON, editor. Second Contemporary Verse Anthology
SUDERMANN, HERMANN. The Book of My Youth
203
SULLIVAN, EDMUND J. Line
302
Tenison, E. M. Louise Imogen Guiney
302
THORNBOROUGH, LAURA and Don Carlos Ellis. Motion Pictures in Education
302
TOLLER, Ernst. Ashley Dukes, translator. The Machine Wreckers.
401
Tolstoy, Alexey. The Road to Calvary
603
TORMAY, Cecile. An Outlaw's Diary: Revolution
507
UNDERHILL, John GARRETT, translator. Plays: Third Series, by JACINTO BENAVENTE
Van Doren, Carl. The Roving Critic .
301
Van Vechten, Carl, The Blind Bow-Boy .
387
Walston, Sir Charles. Harmonism and Conscious Evolution
509
Watson, E. L. Grant. The Desert Horizon
299
Wells, H. G. Men Like Gods
285
WERNER, M. R. Barnum
99
West, V. SACKVILLE-. See Sackville-West.
WIDDEMER, MARGARET. Graven Image .
612
.
.
598
288
398
98
296
200
98
613
.
.
.
97
.


X
INDEX
PAGE
Williams, Blanche Colton, introduction. O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories
of 1922. SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, editors
Williams, Frank Backus. The Law of City Planning and Zoning .
WINDELER, B. C. D. SHAKESPEAR, illustrator. Elimus: A Story.
WOODWARD, W. E. Bunk
WOOLF, VIRGINIA. Jacob's Room.
WRIGHT, WILLARD HUNTINGTON. The Future of Painting
YARMOLINSKY, AVRahm and BABETTE Deutsch, translators. Contemporary German
Poetry.
184
401
398
611
83
87
196


INDEX
XI
COMMENT
.
.
Decadence or Classicism
Function of Criticism, The .
Greek Spirit is With Us, The
On Reading Gryll Grange
Prizes and Publicity .
Seven Arts or “Skyscraper Primitives"
PAGE
103
402
S10
615
206
311
THE THEATRE
.
204
512
513
IOI
405
513
100
617
309
.
512, 618
Aren't We All.
Casanova
Children of the Moon, The
Circus
Country Wife, The
Crainquebille.
Devil's Disciple, The.
Duse, Leonora
Fashions of 1924 .
Greenwich Village Follies
Helen of Troy.
In Love with Love
Italian Marionettes
Launzi
Love for Love,
Lullaby, The
Music Box Review
Poppy
Rivals, The
Romeo and Juliet.
Sally
Savoy, Bert
School for Scandal, The .
Seventh Heaven
Swan, The.
Tarnish
To the Ladies.
Tweedles
Vanities of 1923
Williams and Wolfus.
Windows
Winter Garden
You and I.
Zeno
Ziegfeld Follies
•
204
404
513
618
405
513
512
512
404
100
204
205
404
310
617
617
204
404
309
102
618
204
100
512
.
204, 618
MODERN ART
Décor of Juan Gris, The.
Lachaise, Gaston.
M Pascin Entertains Mr McBride
Théâtre Michel Evening, The
515
621
515
619
.


XII
INDEX
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
.
Jazz
Morning Newspapers on Music, The
Sessions, Roger Huntington. Music for The Black Maskers
PAGE
518
622
413
.
MISCELLANEOUS MENTION
480
.
413
178
474
9
163
76
622
148
303
478
410
585
4
420
479
586
178
586
Aldington's, Richard, criticism of Ulysses .
Andreyev, Leonid. The Black Maskers
Aragon, Louis. Les Aventures de Télémaque
Bal des Quat z' Arts.
Beckmann, Max .
Bell's, Clive, Plus de Jazz
Bequest to the National Gallery, A
Beethoven, Ludwig van. Seventh Symphony
Bernhardt, Sarah.
Brice, Fanny
Champsaur, Félicien. Ouha Roi des Singes
Chaplin, Charlie
Colette. Le Blé en Herbe
Corinth, Lovis
Crabbe's, George, Grave
Daumier, Honoré.
de la Vaissiere, R. New Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
Delteil, Joseph. Sur la Fleuve Amour
de Noailles, la Comtesse. Les Innocentes
Desclée, Aimée
Dramas of Karel and Joseph Capek, The.
Eliot, Sam Jr..
English Theatre, The
Fausset, Hugh l’Anson. Tennyson; A Modern Portrait
Freeman, R. Austin. Social Decay and Regeneration
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure-Principle
Halévy, Ludovic .
Hermant, Abel. Le Cycle de Lord Chelsea
Highbrow and Lowbrow.
Hofer, Carl
Hunt, Leigh. Autobiography
Jacob, Max. Filibuth ou la Montre en Or
Jolson, Al.
Joyce, James. Ulysses
Klee, Hans
Kokoschka, Oscar
Kreh biel, Henry Edward. Afro-American Folksongs
Lang, André. Map of the Republic of Letters
Lehmbruck, Wilhelm.
Lom, Stanislav. The Upheaval
Loti, Pierre
MacOrlan, Pierre. Malice.
Marc, Franz
Maurois, André. Ariel .
Muller, Max. Sacred Books of the East .
National Theatre for England, A
Nicolson, Harold. Tennyson; Aspects of His Life, Character and Poetry
147
79
413
73
77
112
.
436
148
178
408
9
On
425
177
303
85
9
7
153
585
5
81
475
178
8
587
430
139
77


INDEX
XIII
.
Opera in Germany
Pan-European Weather .
Pfitzner, Hans. Von Deutscher Seele
Phoenix Society, The
Preetorius, Emil
Prix du Nouveau Monde
Proust, Marcel
Radiguet, Raymond. Le Diable au Corps
Rath Brothers
Reinhardt-Theater, The.
Rivers, W. H. R. Instinct and the Unconscious
Roussel, Albert. Padmavati
Seyler, Athene
Strawinsky, Igor. Noces
Symons, Arthur
Theatre in Germany, The
Traherne's Poems
Van Gogh, Vincent
von Marées, Hans
Walter, Bruno
Wharton, Edith. The Custom of the Country
Wright, S. MacDonald .
Yellow Book Era, The
PAGE
369
271
622
144
369
176, 476
380
178, 476
409
371
117
474
145
474
14
371
.
418
7
3
369
425
90
388
DEPARTMENTS
.
.
.
Briefer Mention
Comment .
Dublin Letter
German Letter
London Letter
Modern Art
Musical Chronicle
Paris Letter
Prague Letter.
Theatre, The .
Vienna Letter
96, 200, 299,398, 506, 611
103, 206, 311, 402, 510, 615
179
369
73
515,619
413, 518, 622
173, 473, 583
79, 588
100, 204, 309, 404, 512,617
.
271











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