THE CONTACT ggjKTffg
Dedicated to the idea that artists need not please
either money-making publishers, or a main street
public.
THE CONTACT PUBLISHING COMPANY
has brought out books which are primarily, if at all,
pornographic, in any case, and which are simply
rather better done than usual productions. At the
present time these books are available for distribu-
tion, direct, or to bookshops.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
SPRING AND ALL
$1.50
MINA LOY
LUNAR BAEDECKER
$1.50
MARSDEN HARTLEY
TWENTY-FIVE POEMS
$1.50
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
2 STORIES & 10 POEMS
$2.00
ROBERT MCALMON
POST-ADOLESCENCE
A COMPANION VOLUME
EACH $3.00
W. BRYHER
TWO SELVES
$2.00
THE CONTACT PUBLISHING COMPANY
12 rue de L’Odeon PARIS, FRANCE
Autumn and Winter
1923-1914
THE LITTLE REVIEW
QUARTERLY JOURNAL
OF ART AND LETTERS
SUBSCRIPTION
YEARLY: $4.00 £1 FOREIGN
SINGLE NUMBER
$1.00
ADMINISTRATION
Margaret ANDERSON jh Ezra POUND
address: 24 east eleventh street, new york
english office: egoist publishing co., 23 adelphi
terrace house, robert street, london w. c. 2.
CONTENTS
Theatre and Music-Hall
Cycle de 5 Crimes
Dada Painting Or the Oil-Eye
Donnez-Moi De Vos Nouvelles
A Man
L’Azur
Chansons
Le Quart D’Une Vie
Naufrage
Which Way?
Comments
Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose (Cont.)
Music
The Esthetics of the Machine (Cont.)
Lignes
Reader Critic
Pierre de Massot
Tristan Tzara
G. Ribemont-Dessaignes
Paul Eluard
Louis Aragon
Jacques Baron
Philippe Soupault
Benjamin Peret
Pierre Reverdy
Rene Crevel
Jh
Mina Loy
E. L. T. Me sens
Fernand Leger
Jacques Rigaut
Man Ray
4 Rayographs
Reproductions of the work of Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Juan Gris,
Robert Delaunay, Andre Masson, Georges Braque, Amedee
Modigliani, Jean Hugo and G. Ribemont-Dessaignes
ON SALE ALL FIRST CLASS BOOK STORES
F. B. NEUMAYER: 70 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON
SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY : PARIS Vie
VOL. IX. Telephone : Stuyvesant 4 3 7 7 NO. 4
THE /TEINERT
---PIANO----
CAROL
ROBINSON
(Foremost American Pianist) WRITES—
If it “takes great audiences to make great poets” . . .
it certainly takes a great piano to make great music:
that piano is The Steinert!
The Steinert Piano, endorsed by leading artists, used in
our foremost music schools and colleges, gains constantly in
favour with the discriminating musical public.
M. STEINERT & SONS
STEINERT HALL BOSTON
U. S. A.
THEATRE AND MUSIC-HALL
To Erik Satie
THE theatre in France, to quote Alphonse Daudet on the
monarchy, is “a great dead old thing.” The music-hall
is a great young thing which is dying. As a matter of
habit and to amuse a friend from the provinces, visiting
in Paris, we still go occasionally to the theatre: Opera;
Gaiete-Lyrique or Ba-ta-Clan. We hear “Padmavati”;
“Chout”; or “T’en fais pas!” Alas, what boredom!
A romantic repertory; conventional gestures; nothing living,
moving, happening, which makes one cry out. Today France
should get the first prize for bad acting. One has only to see,
after a performance of the Cid or of Horace, these gentlemen
of the Comedie-Frangaise, in smoking coats, stomachs sticking
out, congratulating each other in the wings, to be aware of this
agony and to understand at once why it is legitimate to be bored
in an orchestra chair.
Novelty is a microbe which directors, managers, actors, elec-
tricians, stage directors, door keepers, prompters, pursue and
destroy every time that it shows the tip of an ear behind the
curtain. I beg you, make way for the dust, the mummies, the
glory of past centuries. How comfortable it is to talk among
the dead and with what eloquence does Rameses II talk with
M. Millerand!
Before the war, from 1912 until the end of August, 1914, there
was a leap forward, and there were those who wished to drag
the coach out of the mire. Whatever they did, I congratulate
them. Leon Bakst revolutionized the usual conception of cos-
tumes and of stage decoration. Nijinsky’s sensual interpretation
of “l’Apres-Midi d’un Faune” called forth a storm of cat calls.
3
(See the ridiculous article by Gaston Calmette in Figaro.) Igor
Strawinsky gave his “Sacre du Printemps.” Erik Satie already
passed for mad. In the realm of the dance, we were forgetting
Isadora Duncan, that nullity, in our astonishment over the dar-
ing of Valentine de Saint-Point who created “la Metachorie.”
I do not mean by this that the Muse-Pourpre, as this descendant
of Lamartine loved to call himself, invented an entirely new
choregraphy but I cannot deny that we felt a real pleasure in his
attempts and experiments.
It was the famous epoch when Paris revelled in the ridicu-
lous. Cardinal Amette, an archbishop, condemned the tango
in the name of the church. As a reprisal Eve Lavalliere played
in a travesty of this name. Gaby Deslys turned things topsy
turvy. Henry Bataille undressed Yvonne de Bray in “Phalene.”
Madame Caillaux killed Monsieur Calmette. De Max played
the “Salome” of Oscar Wilde. Picasso created cubism. Sarah
Bernhardt was not yet dead nor had she lost a leg.
Since my pen writes this name, I must say exactly what I think
of this tragedienne whose death is deplored by all the world,
whose every visit to America was received with incredible en-
thusiasm. Sarah, against every novelty, was up to her last hour
the principal pivot of a delayed fashion. Actors and actresses
had their eyes fixed upon her alone and as she, for eighty years,
had sung her verse and wept her prose, so all the actors and
actresses sang their verse and wept their prose. It can be said
that a whole generation limped behind this cripple.
Is it not so, Blanche Dufrene, you whom I loved and who
were found hanged in your dressing-room? Is it not so, Moreno?
Jean Vonnel?
On the contrary, the only tragedian who owes nothing to any-
one, who searches, feels, composes his text, knows neither fame
nor success. ... I refer to Edouard de Max. It is true that
the legend which surrounds him discredits him. I am his
friend; I know his home with its burning incense, his old ser-
vant, his sumptuous pyjamas, his silk shirts, his mocking spirit,
his rings, his melancholy, his bracelets, the depth of his eyes.
All this does not prevent me from repeating that he is the only
actor, a hundred cubits above a Mounet-Sully or a Gemier.
4
1
The war came. It has even been called a great war. The
theatre was forgotten and the artists cared for the wounded . . .
I was among those who hoped that this period of jansenism
would purify the stage and would kill forever this romanticism
which horrifies me and which personifies stupidity to me.
American films, sharp as steel, cold like the poles, beautiful
as the tomb passed before our dazzled eyes. The gaze of Wil-
liam Hart pierced our hearts and we loved the calm landscapes
where the hoof of his horse raised clouds of dust.
The inconceivable, the incomparable, the royal Charlie
Chaplin appeared, gros plan net, his two feet turned out and it
was inevitable that he was the comic bomb which would over-
turn the theatre and the music-hall.
Alas, my poor France, country born malicious! You make a
barricade against exoticism, and the great ships which return to
port, loaded with opium and unknown fruits, are phantom boats
which never land. All this is over and it is our players who
influence America. It is time to be on guard and to cry out
as did Louis Aragon five years ago, “Down with the clear
French genius!”
Yes, the theatre is dead, in spite of the efforts of certain ones:
de Max, Ventura, Berthe Bovy, Eve Francis, etc.........And
the music-hall is dying, the supreme hope! It dies, still loaded
with fruit, and already one of its most savoury fruits, the poor
Fortuge, sleeps under the willows of Bagnolet. It dies because
it is not watered but is put under glass. We have enough of
revues where they talk of Poincare, of Sacha Guitry, of Maurice
Rostand, etc.; of revues where ugly nude or semi-nude courte-
sans pass in procession under the baton of the conductor; revues
where there is nothing, nothing, nothing.
Imagination dead. It is really too easy to do always the same
thing and to satisfy the stupid bourgeoisie. The Casino of Paris
is becoming a branch of the Comedie-Francaise; the Folies-
Bergeres, a branch of the Odeon. Who would dare to say to a
counterfeit dancer like Harry Pilcer that he does not dance; to
a counterfeit singer like Mayol that he does not sing; to a coun-
terfeit player like Polaire what she does not act?
5
A
For neither Mistinguett, nor Parisys, nor Gaby Montbreuse,
nor Cora Madon, nor Merindol occupy the place to which they
are entitled. They are known, of course, but for something
quite different. We know that Spinnelly changes her panta-
loons twelve times a day, that Parisys changes her gown eleven
times a day at Deauville and that is all.
Alas!
The legs of Mistinguett, the breasts of Spinelly, the buttocks
of Parisys, the little stomach of Pepee constitute with Marcel
Duchamp’s “Nude Descending the Staircase” the only “poetic”
realm in which I can live.
I have enough of the theatre where art is made!
I have enough of the music-hall where art is made!
I have enough of the cinema where art is made!
I have enough of art of art of art of art of art of art of art
of art.
For the others = merde.
PIERRE DE MASSOT
July, 1923.
CYCLE DE 5 CRIMES
CRIME DISTINGUE
une robe rose de lucioles
gelatine givre dru
cuir
medecin pour les affaires
qui ne marchent pas
boy boy
cria Fimperatrice
la jeune fille
tomba morte
c’etait le boy
CRIME LONG
la morue de laine dans la criniere du lion
laisse des traces et la salive des escargots tapis
le groom laisse des depeches dans toutes les chambres
mais dans la 67eme 2e etage on trouva le monsieur en train de
finir la derniere interruption du hoquet de son age
CRIME SPORTIF
le criminel descend dans un parachute
pour eparpiller les soupcons diriges gracieusement
contre son corps precieux et les bonnes intentions de son visage
spatieux
et accomplit le crime en 12 poses brutales et pittoresques
voila les suites de Famour au cinema ou menent les chemins des
pays homogenes
7
CRIME SOLENNEL
business business dit la jeune apparition
simple constatation pour le portefeuille du commissaire
qui l’aimait
qui le tuait
qui l’enterrait
qui le buvait
qui Fallumait
qui le croyait
et qui Faimait
tant de questions notifiees a Fambassade des etats-unis a Fhotel
crillon
remarques
liquidez vos affaires avant de mourir
tout le monde creve car la mort est breve
la mort est chere mais la vie est bon marche
sur les levres de papier maigre
preparez vos mysteres dans la mare aux allusions
CRIME A VOIR CLAIR
orang et gibbon
lion et chat
puma et chat
rat et souris
monstre au decollete angelique de glacier poli
aux moustaches de brandebourgs et aux jambes en ciseaux
s’introduit dans Fappartement
sirop de groseille par la paille du gosier
que croyez-vous que nous avons trouve le matin?
un jeune homme de 16 ans
allumant la demiere allumette de son sang expirant et compromis
pour Fhomme
8
BY MAN RAY
:
BY MAN RAY
BY MAN RAY
BY MAN RAY
-
pour les singes anthropomorphes
pour les felins
pour le rat et la souris
pour les perroquets
pour la pie le corbeau
pour les rapaces diumes
pour les canards sauvages
pour le paon le faisan
elle est egale
er TRISTAN TZARA
BY MAX ERNST
9
r
DADA PAINTING OR THE OIL-EYE
THE bigwig, reality, is the straw man of tickertape-brains
which daily retails its gallons of philosophy, fire-works,
morals, science, politics and perfumes; he it is who for
the most part supports the vulgar idiots that painters
usually are. Sight is the suction pipe of his material.
Sight is the lowest sense, so low that it should simply be worn
under the sole of one’s boot. It is the enemy of poets. It is true
that poets .... but all the same, after the game of heads and
tails, they are the most suave consolation of our days. The eye
throws the dirt, which it has absorbed from outside, into the
wheels of fantastic imagination and prevents them from turning.
Scarcely has the brain begun to weave charming chains of illogi-
cal and boneless flowers when the hydra springs into one’s eye to
recall one to virtue. It is impossible not to see, except at night or
in a cellar, but it is there that painters decay. Poets can be
blind. Painters can not and yet it is the only condition under
which they would be able to wave from the top of minarets their
peacock plumed hats that should tickle the heart and bowels of
the amateur of amateurs.
The cubists are pale succubae whom grabbing prostitution,
freshly painted with the old putrefaction of aesthetic morgues,
comes to visit. After a few slaps on the behind of the bourgeois
impressionist women, they send off into the sky pretty rockets
of mud and caramels. They are delicious and as prolific as flies,
mice and lice.
The dadaistes are not the sons of the cubists. Some among
them once dipped a finger into the bouillon cube and immedi-
ately put it in their mouths to see what kind of a taste it had.
There is no one who has not sometime in his life taken an emetic.
They are neither sons nor fathers of anyone. No prophets an-
nounced them.
The grumblings of the legal painter put them outside paint-
ing entirely. It seems that only the gorillas and the monkeys
with their blue buttocks have the right to paint, this being the
art of obscene grimaces, palatable or tearful before the thighs,
the apples or the horizons. The dadapainters are outside the
plastic? They would be especially favored if they could escape
10
but the very fact of tracing anything on a piece of paper or a
bit of glass is within the realm of the plastic after all.
But the dada painters have broken with sight. They paint or
design as if they did not see. This thanks to the dexterity of
dada. They have materially speaking neither technique nor
method, of which one can say—Oh, how very dada! Each one
follows his own bent without bothering about dada laws of
colour, form or logic. Dada if you can!
There was once a painter-pope who called himself Papadada,
iand who was sent by Dada; since then one perceives his pop-
valve letting off the steam of a personality like that of an ordinary
great painter: those like Raphael, Rembrandt and Ziem sign
many more pictures than they make. He says not to be dada.
One believes him without difficulty.
Three dadapainters: Arp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst.
Arp in his wood cuts and reliefs is the most free from any
adherence to the visual sense. He is the only one for whom the
eye is not the monkey-face tyrant. At least with him it is a mat-
ter of an eye which has never seen the light nor the world and
which has thrown nothing on the interior screen. He is the
blind painter. It could be said that his hand paints by hearsay.
He who looks enters with him into the harshness of the night.
You walk along a corridor where there is no ray of light.
Doubtless you pass a man or a woman. Sometimes something
sharp penetrates you from a distance without a shock except that
of an unconscious revolt of the useless eye, but you do not know
of what familiarity it is the promontory nor where the inevitable
little wardrobe of sentiments is to be found. So well concealed,
so perfectly absent from the bath-room and pyrotechnic cham-
ber. Arp is Arp.
Man Ray is the subtle chemist of mysteries who sleeps with
the metrical fairies of spirals and steel wool. He invents a new
world and photographs it to prove that it exists. But as the
camera also has an eye, although without a heart, he suppresses
it. It is no longer a question of preserving images in a box; but
of making an astonishing destructive projection of all formal
art which never the less recreates for the love of the external
thing the most unexpected and the most precious relativity of
time and of space. One finds one’s self belonging to many fields
11
of gravitation at the same time where the importance of the
qualities has totally disappeared, where the casuality hardly
touches the spirit, where the objects have ceased to be sultan
postulates accompanied by harems.
Max Ernst holds in his hand a bouquet of flowers. One of the
flowers is a flower, another is a woman’s leg, another a hat, an-
other a young child, another some sea weed, another a little ele-
phant. The poetry germinates and flowers, watered by the
streams where circle the mystic cleaners who polish appearances
and carry in a bag the noble organs destined for digestion. The
poetry flows like a mineral source, rises like a bird’s vapour,
solidifies like a frozen breast. It is impossible to breathe nor-
mally before a picture of Max Ernst, because we have not yet
acquired the complete organism to live in this new medium,
when the bouquet begins to grow out of the little pearl at the end
of the fingers.
Marcel Duchamp is a comet that crosses and attracts the solar
system without our knowing whether it belongs to it or not. It
is in the midst of space on the same road as dada, but with other
seasons, days and nights. It will never pass over the same route
but its light and the trail of its light has been seen. Perhaps we
shall go on seeing it if the universe tips to the same side and we
roll together our glands in our hands. The smile of the heart
desires it.
This is all that I know of the eyes of dada, excuse me for not
being an oculist. Q. RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES
12
BY MAX ERNST
1
i
'
BY HANS ARP
BY HANS ARP
BY JEAN HUGO
First sketch for Bride and Groom in Cocteau’s “Les
Maries de la Tour Eiffel.”
-
DONNEZ-MOI DE VOS NOUVELLES
VEC tes yeux je change comme avec les limes
Et je suit tour a tour et de plomb et de plume:
Une eau mysterieuse et noire qui t’enserre
Ou bien dans tes cbeveux ta legere victoire.
*
Les enfant* jouaient et riaient,
Le soleil amusait les femmes
Et les bommes sortaient de terre
Pour mettre leurs passions
A la portee des astres.
a
Grande Ursule, grande Heloise,
Graves,
Soumises,
Vous n’etes plus pour le plus brave
Mai* pour moi qui ne vous aime pas.
*
Rigueur, con train te, discipline,
Qu’abritent-il* ces mots vulg&ires?
De For, du fer, du plomb,
O! mes aieux.
Moi, je suis un homme avec des yeux et des cheveux,
Avec des mains sans attaches
Et des paroles qui ne persuadent pas.
*
Ma soeur la raison
Est morte sans raison.
Je Faimais beaucoup.
PAUL ELUARD
17
A MAN
HAVING shaken his head with both hands as though he
were playing with dice, the man lets his thoughts
arrange themselves in equilibrium on the nervous
cords of his favorite instincts. “I have always disre-
garded things that came from my mind,” he said with-
out the slightest mocking smile. He looks in his pocket mirror
at his eyes with his eyes, charming coincidence. The little hole
opposite a little hole shows up the fine combination; all is
changed, nothing is changed, it is you? It is I. Boring one, it
is I. In the little hole in capitals of twelve one reads:
IT IS BETTER TO KILL ONE’S FATHER THAN TO
EAT NUTS or all other evidence: I think only by evidence.
Having shaken my head with my two hands I read in the same
apparatus before the fall of the dice, clickyty click. IT IS
BETTER TO EAT ONE’S FATHER THAN TO KILL
NUTS, then a click, the man’s eyes light up as though electri-
cally lighted, his mouth speaks: “For, as to manners, every-
body is so sure of his own point of view that it would be possible
to find as many reformers as there are heads” and doesn’t favor
the least in the world any other possibility.
The little society game distinguishes me from the animals (I
am a sociable animal) thanks to a pretty error which must be
considered: the false movement, effect of light giving freely and
without danger the impression of perpetual revolution, serve it
hot that thought-out reasoning, reasonably reasoning! draw a
line, you have the addition, make your total, the result will show
an increase of my personality, flattering conclusions on life; my
thermal season. The man opens his skull, with the index finger
of his right hand he moves the reluctant counting balls, closes
the box again, then with satisfaction shakes his head without his
hands: noise. Thus morals begin.
First, without other explanation than this invoked evidence
the man denies that there could ever be any answer to a theorem,
and affirms that corollaries are ways of speaking. That which
saves him from the trouble of examining its validity. Do not do
unto others that which you would not wish done unto you and its
analogues. All the cases are exceptions, impossible to be united
18
by a law; the same fact can not present itself other than as itself.
One understands, the man understands why all philosophers
have poured out their life’s blood without giving to morals a
satisfactory foundation: poor dupes of an image, who really be-
lieve the ideas made on the pattern of a house, with a cellar, a
roof and a little weathercock on top. (He who speaks here is
dupe of their dupery since he develops it, prisoner of the absurd
metaphor which invades his mental field).
Secondly, proud of the hole cut in his morality, the man
dresses himself up in it as though it were a skirt and discourses
of what he would like to have done to himself: “I imagine why
I have chosen myself as the interlocutor, preferable to any
novice; it is because I wished to ask no question that could be
easily answered. I should say, therefore, that I am a man, and
like always to be considered one, and above everything else I
discard the idea of any reciprocity as insane, I will never call
anything a man except myself. Therefore, nothing binds me to
a rule of action in connection with ...... I invent my suc-
cessive gestures, without effort or remorse.
Thirdly, fourthly, hundredthly, having shaken up his ideas
without moving his head, like the god of the catachism who
makes but one gesture in order to say that he has no need to make
a gesture, the man discovers the thousand axioms obtained by
mixing his little thought, while shuffling the cards, without
bothering to know if the queen and the jack of the same colour
brought together constitute an incest (category 43 of customs to
be avoided) and the ace of spades with the seven of hearts a
more savoury adventure:
a) man acts only through goodness;
b) goodness begins with the day and never ends;
c) man does to others neither good nor evil but he does
well to believe that he does evil;
d) man believes that he does evil to give himself heart;
e) man has complete liberty of mind;
f) man is a great benefactor of humanity (philanthrop-
isi);
g) man recognizes himself in man and punishes his fel-
low creature through a spirit of justice with the faults
which he discovers in himself;
19
h) man doesn’t care about means;
i) man laughs;
j) man speaks;
k) man is a famous liar;
l) man cannot lie but he extricates himself by generali-
ties;
m) man knows well what is the matter;
n) the question is, man;
o) man expects better of man;
p) he is superior to him;
q) inferior, in any case never equal;
r) man runs no danger;
s) man has no weapon to defend himself;
t) no one attacks him;
u) man would like to descend from the monkey in order
to have a gallery of ancestors;
v) man questions himself as a matter of form;
w) man never questions himself;
x) man does not understand french;
y) man thinks of something else;
z) it is why man thinks of nothing.
So are morals born. Having shaken his hands without his
head, the monsieur who says that he is a man rolls up his cuffs,
and says: “Nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets” and
presto out of nothing comes the donkey guide awaited by the
greater part of the spectators:
DONKEY-GUIDE
One imagines that man, let us call him M to simplify it, has
neither duties nor rights. If we then keep the classification,
rights and duties toward others, himself, his parents, his chil-
dren, his country, his husband or wife, etc., let us understand
that we have in mind only the relations of the dear gentleman
with these different entities without making any judgments in
the matter. We shall, therefore, call them relationships.....
Relations of M and his father and mother:
Today there is no longer material for even a vaudeville sketch
■■■■
20
in the Oedipus story: should any author use it, he would be
hissed off the stage. The same holds true for other stories of this
kind. No one conceals his incestuous loves any longer.
A hundred years ago crimes of passion were punished with
death; under the influence of romanticism they are no longer
dangerous for their perpetrators. In fifty years, under the influ-
ence of DADA, parricides will be acquitted with the congratu-
lations of the jury.
Relations of M and his children:
They vary, according to the mood of the gentleman, from pure
and simple suppression to the meal of Ugolin, who was only a
timid fore runner. There should be a law against respect for
infancy.
The nineteenth century will have tried in vain to establish the
supremacy of youth in the world: the overthrow of its ideas
takes place amid general hilarity (the sanctity of childhood is
now only a joke).
Relations of the man and his neighbour:
M has no neighbour. He cuts up men and puts them in water
to ornament his apartment. He kills as he can at random. He
robs, he rests, he fornicates, he reproaches no one, he breaks
bodies for his pleasure, he has already said that he is good.
Relations of M with himself:
They are the relations of politeness with brusque attacks of
frankness. One sets sail on an uncertain sea: there is no fore-
seeing the mood of the next minute except perhaps there is an
innate horror of blows (and still see the boxers). Has M a self?
He asks himself sometimes without the least anxiety. He will
know in several years his ideas on suicide.
Relations of M with his family, his country, society, the race,
humanity:
They are the relations of humanity, the race, society, country,
family with the M.
Blood relationship is not indispensable for sex relations.
When one has a large intelligence one admits that two compatri-
21
ots can be united for an instant without crime; it is only society
which would be the outcast; if the children of people of the same
race are born albinos the mid-wife laughs; the bestiality is not
avoided, etc., murder does not distinguish one individual from
another: it is always crushing a spider. It is the same story for
other ties.
M recognizes that he is not a reformer but a stage manager:
he is vexed, he passes to another exercise, he dances. Soon his
head turns, eyes motionless, a hundred and eighty degrees, he
sees the depth of his thought, the mercury of the mirror
scratched by use with little black lines until it is transparent, his
lacy association of ideas. The future appears to him combin-
ations of reflections, days uncoiled like tresses. In business
houses the last pleasures of humanity come to an end—hard men
speak. Below the crowd, prey to economic furies, watches. By
wireless comes the idea which will destroy the equilibrium. To
the signal of the clouds a clamor answers, a record of clamor.
What adventure I am giving the world! In my childhood I
enjoyed the history of the sack of Rome by the French. It is that
which has grown in me, dawn risen on the massacre. A marvel-
lous bit of murder! The day when someone will have found the
explosive which will destroy the world, someone will be found
to use it, in spite of laws, century old, dictated by the fear of
this unique event. That is why I think.
LOUIS ARAGON
22
L’AZUR
PRAIRIES de la nuit tardive
ou sont parties les amoureuses
comme tant de venins si doux
Cortege de pleureuses
On voit des coeurs qui s’abreuvent
a l’astre de source chaude
Et puis partir un beau matin
ce sera la route de miel
Partir cueillir Y eglantine
a la levre des bien aimees
Lune
O lune ravin de la nuit
Oeil de delire des seraphins
N’es tu done pas la si belle
deesse O belle-de-nuit
C’est l’ivresse eclatante qui courbe les eclairs.
JACQUES BARON
23
CHANSONS
NE chevre regarde un elephant
un elephant regarde une chevre
il va surement se passer quelque chose
1’elephant voit la chevre
et reciproquement (bis)
et reciproquement (bis)
IES trois freres bleus ont tres peur
Us regardent en Fair
U pleut
^ ils regardent par terre
U n’y a rien
es trois freres bleus ont encore tres peur.
PHILIPPE SOUPAULT
■,..-7":
"""
BY JUAN GRIS
'”"V- ■
srao Mvaf Aa
LE QUART D’UNE VIE
i
Al’interieur
le catalogue vendait des huitres vivantes
qui pleuraient et qui chantaient
sur un air americain
II
Les feuilles qui sont tombees
ont emporte les deux taxis
Les taxis ont renverse les semaphores
Les semaphores tombes
le lait ne coulera plus
car les moustaches tombees
ne repousseront plus
III
Nous sommes plus heureux que la mousse
la mousse n’a pas de cheveux
et nous portons des chapeaux
Pauvres chapeaux aux ailes couvertes de givre
la fumee des cigarettes vous excite
mais le petrole
le petrole sournois qui vide les ostensoirs
est plus leger a vos reins
que les chaines d’aluminium
IV
Croupissez regards des sulamites
II pleut il neige
sous le soleil qui vous deteste
les chiens mangent la merde
les ceinturons s’enrichissent des sabots des vieux chevaux
qui les oreilles percees
le ventre lumineux
vendent leurs chemises aux portes des eglises
sans se soucier des cachalots et des zebres
joli mois d’aout c’est le mois de zebre
25
--------------------- i —
les zebres ont trop bu
bu bu bu et boira
boira qui voudra
mais ce n’est pas moi qui le voudrai
c’est trop laid le cervelet
qui sans sourire court a la chapelle
telephoner aux parfumeurs
V
C’est un jour Saint un jour sacre
un jour sacre a l’hotel
vivent les atlas sous les bateaux.
VI
Plutot que perissent les cannibales
nous demolirons les pianos
nous interdirons les vendanges
nous arreterons les marees
VII
Couverture des etoiles
le vent roule des motocyclettes
II ne croit pas a l’eau salee
et symbolise les aspirations de peuples
comme la guerre
comme les vetements.
VIII
La cavalerie n’est pas loin
et les oscillations non plus
IX
Vers le ciel de juillet
montent les fourrures ovipares
Le serrurier militaire
invente le contrepoint
necessaire a la nourriture des abeilles
26
X
L’elephant sans moteur
naquit sans scandale
Absalon la-main-verte lui sourit
et rangea les lis de ses visieres
sur un poteau
sur une epingle
Guettee par le scorbut
elle sera veuve un jour
XI
Alors de la gouttiere
un membre mal ferine
dont le nom mal brosse
degoulinait sur un poisson
s’enflamma sans degout
sa destinee fut courte comme une sueur
Ma soeur
as-tu vu ma pipe
Ma pipe est morte
et mon grand oeil est sans saveur
BENJAMIN PERET
27
NAUFRAGE
LA nuit dans le metal
et la peau de la mare
qui frissonne au signed
du ciel
plie au coin
ou du vent
qui s’egare
Tout au rond de Fecueil
et des racines sombres
les pierres et les mains
qui se serrent dans F ombre
La le recueil de pluie
et des trous a leur nombre
on reconnait ce front
au timbre matinal
a la lueur des arbres
et tous les bruits du soir
qui s’etouffent au marbre
du parapet d’air noir
Au sommier de la vague
Au creux du bras plie
Une pensee qui sonne
Un cri trop repete
Entre l’abime ouvert
Au cercle releve.
PIERRE REVERDY
28
WHICH WAY?
TWENTY years ago visitors came to Paris for Sarah
Bernhardt, the Sole Marguery and the Eiffel Tower.
Sarah Bernhardt, dead and buried and her clothes sold
at auction; Marguery is only a vulgar eating house
keeper but the Eiffel Tower has not lost a bit of its
prestige. The painter, Delaunay, finds it so fascinating that he
puts it in all of his pictures; the morning paper announces that
a cyclist has descended its stairway; spring before last Jean
Cocteau staged a ballet, a wedding party, whose scene was laid
on the first platform; recently we saw again the bride, the
groomsmen, the maids of honour, the general, who, thanks to a
mirage, after showing us the cyclist of Chatou and the bather
of Trouville, was devoured by a lion. Remarks: this honest
general . . . this brave general ... a child with too big a
head because he wishes to live his life; the wedding party is
photographed and the group is admired by the old picture
dealer. Everyone laughs and the Eiffel Tower is the tower of
Paris as the leaning tower is the tower of Pisa.
But for one comedy ballet which keeps all its gayety how
many works are there in the new manner of 1921 which are
already demode?
The puns on the subsidized theatres and the Academy are no
better than the theatres and the Academy; one laughs at tradi-
tions, but too often the revolutionary spirit only contradicts
itself and seeks different traditions, but traditions all the same;
so many a person has manufactured a bomb to destroy detestable
monuments and then has been content simply to place his bomb
on the mantlepiece, make a thousand copies of it which he puts
on sale like the Venus of Milo in cheap plaster.
In fact men too easily justify themselves in thinking that they
are no longer victims of the political mania and of the deplor-
able party spirit if they have replaced one system by another.
One should denounce the danger of this opportunism, by which
some so-called poets speak of modernism, like merchants of
those creations which make their clients look like twins.
29
Besides a solution is not easy and with a smile Tristan Tzara
remarks “the absence of system is but another system.” But it is
chiefly the lack of power to insist on life without tradition which
condemns us to petty forms of snobism, to petty vices, to the taste
of hysterical women, to sleeping cars and to dynamos, that is to
say, to the worst and most popular type of literature in a century
in which everyone boasts of not being literary. There results an
excessive glory for certain authors (as a matter of fact, I can
think of but one of them, Paul Morand, but the enormity of his
success merits the pain of the plural) who know how to flatter
men and to put into their books such an impersonality that under
the disguise of a false exotism each one thinks that he recognizes
himself, tells his neighbour, who in his turn buys for himself,
at a bargain, that which he finds a flattering portrait of his own
little person. This is “real twentieth century,” people say of
such a work, as if there could possibly be a real twentieth cen-
tury brand of work. As for me if anyone would accept the
challenge I should like to wager and to demonstrate that Homer
was Dada, Sainte Cecilia a famous futurist and Tristan Tzara
under the influence of Aeschylus.
But since it is necessary sometimes to speak seriously, that is
with the help of phrases known to us all, we notice that objects
have no other role than to move the subject, rhythm differs ac-
cording to individuals; certainly the real individual must not
be confounded with the apparent man whom we see at the thea-
tre, on the street; I have said real individual but to avoid all
confusion the better term would be superreal individual.
No one has better described this superreal individual than
Andre Breton. I shall quote from an article of his which ap-
peared in La Revue Litterature in which he treats of super-
realism. “The word superrealism which is not our invention
and which we should have been so well able to abandon to the
vaguest critical vocabulary, is employed by us in a precise sense.
By it we have agreed to indicate a certain automatism which
corresponds fairly well to a dream state, a state which is today
very difficult to place any limits upon. I beg pardon for adding
a personal observation here. In 1919 my attention was fixed
upon the more or less partial phrases which in complete solitude,
at the approach of slumber, become perceptible to the mind
30
without it being possible to discover in them a previous deter-
mination. These phrases, remarkably pictured and with a syn-
tax perfectly correct, have appeared to me to be poetic elements
of the first order. At first I was content merely to hold them,
but later Soupault and I tried to create in ourselves the state in
which they could be produced.”
From the application of this discovery comes a curious book
by Breton and Soupault, “Les Champs Magnetiques.” Having
no right to choose some sentences rather than others, I quote at
random:—“We have been compelled to visit cheap factories of
dreams and shops filled with obscure dramas. There was a mag-
nificent cinema where the roles were taken by old friends. We
lost sight of them and always found them again in the same
place. They gave us rotten dainties and we told them our vague
joys. Their eyes fixed upon us, they spoke; can one really re-
member those ignoble words, their lulling songs? We have
given them our heart which was only a pale song.”
I am often tempted to speak of humanism, of knowledge of
others and of ourselves, a mania for which I ask pardon; truly
lines like these make us feel more, tell us more of certain person-
alities than any novel, even the most advanced. Professor Freud
by the psychoanalytic method tries to uncover that which we
force back into our unconscious. Superrealism claims to open
wide the doors; and because it really does open them, there is no
constraint; these mysterious words arise without affected roman-
ticism, without calculated pose. They have multiple reflections
and it is difficult not to be carried away by their spontaneous and
free current. I mean that superrealism, product of an absolute
intellectual emancipation, distinguishes whomsoever has the
courage of wishing to profit by it. This discipline (discipline,
I could remark, parodying Tzara, because the absence of disci-
pline is but another discipline) is that of the superman whom
Nietzche in spite of his wish did not succeed in finding; its
grandeur can not be denied; far removed from grandiloquence,
it permits all the elements of the superreal individual to sing
each its own song. Philippe Soupault, for example, loves gay-
ety, wishes to amuse himself by the way—
31
“Look at an animal in the white of the eyes
without blushing
without having the air of taking any notice
while squinting if possible
while stamping the foot
while clapping the hands.”
And Tzara asks us—
“You know the calendars of the birds?
How?
365 birds—every day a bird flies away—every hour
a feather falls—every two hours one writes a poem—
one cuts it up with scissors.”
I should like to talk more about this kind of gayety perfect
enough to attain humor. But why group under one heading
individuals of such freedom? And then I should have to de-
vote long pages also to love for I recall the “Coeur a Gaz” by
Tzara, the poems of the youthful Jacques Baron, of Paul
Eluard.
Pardon me if I recite a little of them to myself. First are
the declarations of Oeil, one of the personnages of the “Coeur
a Gaz.” “Clytemnestra, wife of a minister, looked out of the
window; the violincellists passed by in a carriage of Chinese tea,
biting the air and the caresses with open heart. You are beauti-
ful, Clytemnestra, the crystal of your skin awakens the curiosity
of our sexes: you are tender and calm like two metres of white
silk.”
Say with me this poem of Paul Eluard.
IN THE DANCE
“Little childish table
there are women whose eyes are like pieces of sugar
there are serious women like the movements of love and that one
does not surprise
there are women with pale faces
Others like the sky on the eve of a windy day.
1
BY ANDRE MASSON
BY GEORGES BRAQUE
Little gilded table of fete days
there are women of green and dark wood
those who weep;
of dark and green wood
those who laugh.
Little table too low or too high
there are fat women
with slight shadows
there are hollow dresses
dry dresses
dresses that one wears at home and that love never makes go out.
Little table
I do not like the tables upon which I dance,
I didn’t realize it.”
What young people would not wish to murmur this air of
Jacques Baron?
“The flower that I love is charming
like a woman with a tender glance
flown away like a halo
what do you know of our loves
of the week and of the years
my friend the delicious flower.”
Have we the right to judge poets and to roll their names about
in our mouths like chewing gum until the point is reached when
they will no longer wish to say anything? If I state that the
greatest quality of Tzara is humour, I should quickly forget his
varied riches. Indolence makes us list individuals under one
heading that we call a school; but speaking accurately the indi-
vidual is a complex whole and the childish error must not be
made of believing that the states of soul of such or such a one
are always of the same red, green, white or blue, which would
be like believing that negroes are equally black with identical
features.
33
There are not tender poets, lyric poets, tragic poets, there are
poets, and it is even not necessary to say poets but men among
men. These only interest us and not the followers of one school
or another; the little groups keep to their own formulas, become
opportunists and more and more it seems that anxiety alone can
give dignity to men.
Drieu la Rochelle loves his country like a woman; because
his passion is on the alert, it makes a disturbance, is troubled,
questions. After all the boring and stupid books on the war and
the future of the world, he writes “Mesure de la France,” a
song, at once spontaneously subtle and new. Louis Aragon in
his nights of Paris in quest of love runs the whole gamut of sen-
suality. He has no taste for those little perversions which today
are almost the normal, but whether the voluptuous gesture is this
or that, the cry of the happy, wounded, triumphant, despairing
flesh rises full of anguish and of beauty.
All these of whom I have spoken pass in Paris for the mod-
erns. Many try to copy them, seek to discover their formula, to
use it, to make a school. The latter are dangerous because they
are boring; perhaps they give a little foundation to what is
called a reaction. But the word reaction has no precise mean-
ing, it is used as an alibi; one forgets one’s self. Reaction?
There is bound to be the reaction from one thing to another.
Then why force the natural play; when literary theories are
mentioned we should turn our backs.
RENE CREVEL
34
COMMENTS
FRENCH NUMBER. No foreign editor of any kind or
standing on or off our staff is responsible for the contents of this
issue. I am happy to make up a number which is a comprehen-
sive review, of the work itself, of the most energetic most un-
trammelled group of young men working in France today. They
do not belong to any formal group . . . but they all amuse
themselves doing very good work. In a future issue I shall ex-
tend the list to Joseph Delteil, Drieu la Rochelle, Marcel Ar-
land, etc. We will be accused of booming the Dadaists . . .
why not? (except that these men are not Dada). We have
printed more isms than any other ten journals and have never
caught one. Our pages are open to isms, ists, ites ... we have
been after the work, not the name . . . our drooling critics, in
true American fashion, become sea-sick over a name ... we
are enjoying ourselves.
We advise our readers to save this issue of the Little Review
for future reference ... in years to come one of these young
men (at the age of Anatole France) may be given a prize, or
may be printed in the “Dial.” Don’t find yourself in the posi-
tion of the man who cried out when “Waste Land” appeared
. . . “If I could only get hold of some old copies of the Little
Review I could show these people who this Eliot is.”
MENCKEN’S FAREWELL. Someone—everyone is always
e£ging me on t0 write about something that I don’t want to write
about. Hundreds of subjects are suggested, some of them might
be amusing but I am usually finished with them before I am
urged to “go after them” in the Little Review. I am not excited,
to any pitch, either by achievement or defeat—every one seems
to be made of defeat, more or less ... it is not entertaining to
find it out or point it out. Regard my “going after” Dr. Frank
Crane!: a man who admits that he has been scared into optimism
. . . more scares more optimism.
The Barnes Foundation and its first book: “An Approach To
Art,” an educational book for the public. This is not so bad as
a subject, but Mr. Barnes’ approach to art is well, internation-
ally known among the artists. “Mr. Barnes of Philadelphia” is
too good to waste in a short magazine article. Some one will go
into the matter thoroughly and show him up through his own
pathological letters, which he has lavished upon a rather danger-
ous audience.
It is amusing for a few moments to play with the idea of chal-
lenging Mr. Mencken to explain some of his recent statements
and to produce his superior, secret artists.
“Today, it seems to me, the American imagin-
ative writer, whether he be novelist, poet or dra-
matist, is quite as free as he deserves to be. He is
free to depict the life about him precisely as he sees
it, and to interpret it in any manner he pleases.
Our stage is perhaps the freest in the world—not
only to sensations, but also to ideas.”
I doubt whether Mencken has ever been in a position to know
whether the above is true or not, yet he makes the statement quite
easily in his sentimental, halo-adjusting farewell to the Smart
Set. He has never known the creative artist as a fellow artist, but
as a critic and as the hired editor of a commercial magazine: that
gulf could never be explained to any critic, editor or layman
. . . of all the first-raters that I know, I don’t know one who
would just naturally send his best or strongest work to the Smart
Set . . . that is a part of the thing that makes them first-raters.
Somewhere in “Prefaces” Mencken tells just how cagey he has
always been about accepting Mss. . . . “before ever I give any
thought to its artistic merit and suitability is the question
whether its publication will be permitted” . . . does he think
that the artists have been less cagey in sending him their work?
“I have a long list of such things by American authors, well-
devised, well-imagined, well-executed, respectable as human
documents and as works of art, but never to be printed in mine or
any other American magazine.” I should like to see those docu-
ments of wronged American art ... I am willing to wager that
36
they are no better “art,” whatever he calls them, than half the
stuff that pours into this office—nor any more so-called obscene
than teething ring prattle compared to the things we have peace-
ably published. BUT we are not free to publish them nor were
the writers free to write them, as far as America was concerned.
Now that everything is free we will wait impatiently for Mr.
Mencken to release this flood of genius in his new journal. Also
—right here let us take up the herd of perfect “wood-sawing”
artists loose somewhere between here and Chicago, known only
to Mencken. “There is a group which says little and saws wood
. . . they are sophisticated, disillusioned, free from cant . . .
out of this dispersed, ill-defined group, I believe something will
come.” Of course disillusioned, sophisticated, free from can’t
is a pretty poor recipe for the true creative artist, but all sorts of
things are done: cripples’ races, blind juggling, etc. There are
no unknown geniuses, there is no artist anywhere unknown to
other artists . . . this is one of the simplest axioms about the
nature of the artist. If Mr. Mencken can pull artists out of the
middle west he must use the same formula as the magician with
his rabbit. But I am not doubting that they “saw-wood.”
I have never been able to read Mencken except for his slang.
I have found that amusing when he was “whamming” some
second-rate bad thing (has he ever slain a first-rate bad thing?)
but when he endorses I feel much the same delight in his crite-
rion as I feel when a salesperson assures me that “they are the
smartest—I wear them myself.” I should like to know from
some Mencken fan just how many first rank things he has fought
for, how many truly bad he has fought? He has seemed to me
to be oblivious to, or afraid of, first rank men and things. Here
is a list of his “artists,” his white hopes who have slithered off:
Willa Cather, Winston Churchill, Floyd Dell, Hergesheimer,
Harry Fuller, Tarkington and Dreiser; it reads like a catch
problem in a children’s arithmetic—2 muskmelons + 1 cabbage
+ 3 artichokes + 1 potato = how many potatoes?
Mencken was the perfect critic for the Smart Set audience
. . . he has been fighting steadily for fifteen years people who
had no fight in them, who would have believed all he had to say,
at the end of fifteen years ... he himself implies that even Mr.
Sumner believes him. He has done a great work: he has for
37
fifteen years been training the American public to read Vanity
Fair!
ELEANOR DUSE. I hope the pollyannas of art have had a
generous set-back from the recent visit of Duse: those dear peo-
ple who demand that Art be nature and nature art, who call
Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, and Florence Nightingale artists—
registering a smile of inner vacuity that could many times lose
them their lives, if one had not been taught not to kill a happy
oyster. These people have always had a sour word for the “arti-
ficialities” of Bernhardt but “Duse doesn’t act—she is always
natural.” All right, she is still natural, why the moans and
groans? Little Sarah Bernhardt took a day off and perfected
an art of acting which could not be affected by a disaster to the
very instrument with which she worked, an art that out-lived her
life. The instrument does not give out nor wear out—age may
take it or any other destruction, but if art has had it first, art will
have its way with it till the end. The public that went balmily
expectant to see Duse but saw nothing and came away cold was
somewhat bewildered. . . . Kenneth McGowan rescued his
feelings by laying the blame on every opera-house and theatre
in New York. No one seems to be to blame but Nature, and
just for being natural!
EVA GAUTIER. Margaret Anderson always says “natural-
ly” to every statement I may happen to make ... no matter
how original, abnormal, unnatural or untrue. At least she was
quite right when Eva Gautier gave a group of jazz songs on a
formal concert at Aeolian Hall. . . . “Naturally.” I don’t
quite understand why the french are so jazz-mad. “The Six”
are supposed to spend their lives sitting, like a pack of “His
Master’s Voice” hounds, in front of a phonograph playing Black
Swan records. But that is not why it is natural that a french
woman should be the first to introduce jazz into a high-brow
program ... it is Eva Gautier herself. Gautier has introduced
more than seven hundred songs, by new or unknown composers,
to the public. We hope there is a reward for that kind of artistic
energy somewhere: it is not in the box-office. Music critics are
so repulsive with their unrestrained, repetitious ecstacies and
prejudiced mechancetes that one shivers at the thought of mak-
ing the slightest comment on a performer’s work; however I
hope I have conveyed that the program was highly pleasing and
that I am trying to endorse Gautier.
POETS AND MUSIC. On December ninth, in Paris, George
Antheil gave a first audition of his “Two Sonatas for Violin and
Piano.” He was assisted by the American violinist, Olga Rudge.
One number on the program was called “Sujet pour Violin,” by
Ezra Pound. For years Ezra Pound has made a study of an-
cient musics. He has now written an opera to the text of Vil-
lon’s “Testament.” He has engaged the interest of George An-
theil in his opera and together they have transcribed and scored
it for production.
EXHIBITIONS. The Societe Anonyme will hold an exhibi-
tion of the works of Archipenko, at the Kingore Galleries, from
January 20th through February 9th. Archipenko is in New
York at work on important commissions. The Whitney Studio
Club will expose the work of Maurice Becker and Ernest Fiene,
from January 5th through the 20th . . . the Whitney Studio
Galleries will open the first of its six exhibitions, sometime early
in January, exposing the paintings of Charles DeMuth, Walt
Kuhn, H. E. Schnakenberg, Charles Sheeler, Eugene Speicer,
Allen Tucker, Nan Watson. The New Gallery opens a show
on January 8th, which will stay until the end of the month, mod-
ern European, French, German and Russian. The Little Re-
view will expose a group of Rayographs, from January 10th
through February 1st ... in conjunction with these chemical
paintings by Man Ray, we are exposing temperature regulators,
chemical apparatuses, self-aligning ball-bearings and other
“ready-made” art objects.
CONTRIBUTORS. It may interest some of our more human
readers to know that Jacques Baron is the youngest poet in
39
France: seventeen. Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon have
appeared in the Little Review in 1920. Tristan Tzara, the foun-
der of Dada, is a poet of distinction and a leader in all the art-
sports in Europe. G. Ribemont-Dessaignes is the author of
“L’Empereur de Chine.” Paul Eluard, Pierre Reverdy, Benja-
min Peret, Pierre de Massot, Rene Crevel—each deserve a
charming history: a sentence can tell you nothing of these very
special, super-sensitized young men . . . some of them are con-
tributors of “les feuilles libres.” Man Ray is a “modern” Amer-
ican painter living in Paris, Juan Gris and Braque, are called
Cubists. Modigliani is an Italian, who died a few years ago, un-
acknowledged and in poverty, he is now in the ascendant. Hans
Arp is a Dane, but is identified with French and German activi-
ties. Robert Delaunay is an easy painter not in any group.
Andre Masson, twenty-six, is just beginning to attract the atten-
tion of the “knowing.” Max Ernst is a scissors-painter. Jean
Hugo a versatile young artist, is not responsible for being the
great-grand-son of Victor Hugo.—jh.
40
1
V
HUB
m
ANGLO-MONGRELS AND
THE ROSE
ENGLISH ROSE
CONTINUED
EARLY English everlasting
quadrate Rose
paradox—Imperial
trimmed with some travestied flesh
tinted with bloodless duties dewed
with Lipton’s teas
and grimed with crack-packed
herd-housing
petalling
the prim gilt
penetralia
of a lustre scioned
core-crown;
Rose of arrested impulses
self pruned
of the primordial attributes
- A tepid heart inhibiting
with tactful terrorism
the (Blossom) Populous
to mystic incest with its ancestry
establishing
by the divine right of self assertion
the post-conceptional
virginity of Nature
Wiping
it’s pink paralysis
across the dawn of reason
A World-blush
glowing from
a never-setting-sun
Conservative Rose
storage
of British Empire-made pot-pourri
of dry dead men making a sweetened smell
among a shrivelled collectivity
Which august dust
stirred by
the trouser-striped prongs of statesmanship
(whenever politic)
rises upon the puff of press alarum
and whirling itself
deliriously around the unseen
Bolshevik subsides
in ashy circularity
‘a wreath’ upon the unknown
soldier’s grave
And Jehovah strikes,
through the fetish
of the island hedges,
Exodus
who on his holiday
(induced
by the insiduous pink
of Albion’s ideal)
is looking for a rose
And the rose
rises
from the green
of a green lane
rosily-stubborn
and robustly round
Under a pink print
sunbonnet
the village maid
scowls at the heathen
42
Albion
in female form
salutes the alien Exodus
staring so hard—
warms his nostalgia
on her belligerent innocence
- - The maidenhead
drooping her lid
and pouting of her breast
- - forewarns
his amity
Amorphous meeting
in the month of May
This Hebrew
culled by Cupid on a thorn
of the rose
lays siege
to the thick hedgerows
where she blows
on Christian Sundays
She
simpering in her
ideological pink
He
loaded with Mosaic
passions that amass
like money
implores her to take pity
upon him
and come and be a ‘lady in the City’
43
Maiden emotions
bread
on leaves of novels
where anatomical man
has no notion
of offering other than the bended knee
to femininity
and purity
passes in pleasant ways
as the cows graze—
For in those days
when Exodus courted the rose
literature was supposed to elevate us
So the maid with puffy
bosom where Jerusalem
dreams to ease
his head of calculations
in the Zero of ecstasy
and a little huffy
bristles with chastity
For this is the last Judgment
when Jehovah
roars ‘Open your mouth!
and I will tell you what you have been reading’
Exodus had been reading
Proverbs
making sharp distinction
between the harlot
and the Hausfrau arraying
her offspring in scarlet
approving
such as garner good advice like grain
and such as know enough
to come in from the rain - -
44
The would-be
secessionist from Israel’s etiquette
(shielding pliant Jewesses from shame
less glances
And the giving
of just percentages
to matrimonial intermediaries)
is spiritually intrigued
by die Anglo-Saxon phenomenon
of Virginity
delightfully
on its own defensive!
This pouting
pearl beyond price
flouting
the male pretentions
to its impervious surface
Alice the gentile
Exodus the jew
after a few
feverish tiffs
and reparations
chiefly conveyed in exclamations
- - a means of expression
modified by lack of experience -
unite their variance
in marriage
Exodus
Oriental
mad to melt
with something softer than himself
clasps with soothing pledges
his wild rose of the hedges
While she
expecting
the presented knee
of chivalry
repells
the sub-umbilical mystery
of his husbandry
- hysterically
His passionate anticipation
of warming in his arms
his rose to a maturer colouration
which was all of aspiration
the grating upon civilization
of his sensitive organism
had left him
splinters upon an adamite
opposition
of nerves like stalactites
This dying chastity
had rendered up no soul - -
Yet they pursued their congugal
dilemmas as is usual
with people
who know not what they do
but know that what they do
- - is not illegal
Deep in the nevrose
night he
peruses this body
divested of its upholstery
firmly insensitive
in mimicry
of its hypothetical model
a petal
of the English rose
46
An abstracted Ada
in myopic contemplation
of the incontemplatable
compound rosette
of peerless negations
That like other Gods
has never appeared
leaving itself to be inferred
Whereof
it is not seemly
that the one petal
shall apprehend
of the other petals
their conformity
For of this Rose
- wherever it blows
it is certain
that an impenetrable pink curtain
hangs between it and itself
And in metaphysical vagrance
it passes beyond the ken
of men
unless
possessed
of exorbitant incomes
And Then—
merely indicating its presence
by an exotic fragrance
A rose
-that like religions
before
bcoming amateur—
enwraps itself
in esoteric
and exoteric
dimensions
the official
and inofficial
social morale
The outer
classes
accepting the official
of the inner - - -
as a plausible
gymnastic
for disciplining the inofficial
‘flesh and the devil’
to the ap parent impecca
of the Eng - - -
- - - and for
Empire
what form could be superior
to the super-imposed
slivers
of the rose?
The best
is this compressed
all round-and-about-
itself conformation
Never letting out
subliminal infection
from hiatuses
in its sub-roseal skeleton
Its petals hung
with tongues
that under the supervision
of the Board of Education
may never sing in concert -
for some
singing h
flat and some
h sharp ‘The Arch
angels sing H’
bflity
48
-1
There reigns a disproportionate
disharmony
in the English Hanthem
And for further information
re the Rose—
and what it does to the nose
while smelling it
- - See PUNCH
ADA GIVES BIRTH TO OVA
Her face
screwed to the mimic-salacious
grotesquerie of a pain
larger than her intellect
- - - - They pull
A clotty bulk of bifurcate fat
out of her loins
to lie
for a period while performing hands
pour lactoid liquids through
and then mop up beneath it
their golden residue
A breathing baby
mystero-chemico Nemesis
of obscure attractions
(The incontinent
exudes into involuntary
retention
Uncouth conception of the incalculable)
The isolate consciousness
projected from back of time and space
pacing its padded cell
The soul
apprenticed to the butcher business
offers organic wares
to sensibility
A dim inheritor
of this undeniable flesh
The destinies
Genii
of traditional
Israel and of Albion
push on its ominous pillow
its racial birth-rights
(‘Curses for baby
from its godmothers)
Till the least godmother
pipes - - - in her fairy way
“Perhaps you know my name
- - Survival?
Curse till the cows come home
Behold my gift
The Jewish brain!”
So is the mystic absolute
the rose
that grows
from the red flowing
from the flank of Christ
thorned with the computations
of the old
Jehovah’s gender
Where Jesus of Nazareth
becomes one-piece
with Judas Iscariot
in this composite
Anglo-Israelite
Out of a fatted frown
this spirit pokes its eyes
50
its star tipped handy-pandies
darting on the air
Solemn and unsurprised
and clumsily
lapped by insensitive maternity
it lies
waving its brand new feet
and feeds
its mongrel heart on Benger’s food
for infants
MINA LOY
# NOTE:—“Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose” will be published in book form by the Contact Publishing
Company, before another issue of the Little Review can possibly appear. We will not continue the
poem in our next issue but close with the entrance of Esau Penfold.
51
/f — iKwl&f&L.
&U444.&U* trtrfv&iA-fytt
±=i=*
fa
Ff
fF?*
fa
m
3=^
t
11?--- — = £ * T t"1 1 p-P-j-
fe.-t4 —i—t~~ti 1— -t— *=-»—■; ■! -, i t.r Uj rfr n
ytd p 2~pr y tp-H J. V=j=:
rff.f ,
Wp1 1 Ipp^ UJ db^W: [_: Jt;
jpa FfW=f= usa PN
U l.»J J -j—f- 4=J w
m
i
ijj--------j
Mn
m
f
LIGNES
Le rire est le propre de l’imbecile.
Rene DESCARTES
II n’y a pas de fumee sans fil.
Que faut-il pour etre heureux? Un peu d’encrel
Je ne vais jamais a la ligne, c’est mon seul prenom.
Vous croyezl
Voici une femme qui a des Aragons an derriere.
• • • • • •
• • • • 1 • •
Vous vivez sans preuves, echangez vos confiances et riez, les
rieurs seront toujours de l’autre cote.
J’allais vous le dire.
Je n’ai jamais ri qu’en riant, c’est une maladie de la memoire.
JACQUES RIGAUT
54
THE ESTHETICS OF THE MACHINE
MANUFACTURED OBJECTS
ARTISAN AND ARTIST
CONTINUED
THE coming of mechanical beauty, of all these beautiful objects without
any art intention, justifies me in making a rapid revision of old values,
long considered definitive.
The Italian Renaissance (La Joconde, 15th century) is considered by the
entire world as a summit, a height, an ideal to struggle toward. The School of
Fine Arts founds its whole existence upon a servile imitation of this period.
Could there be a more colossal error? The 15th century was a period of almost
total decadence in the plastic realm. It was a period of imitation, of servile
copying of the subject as opposed to the preceding epoch, called Primitive, which
was great and immortal precisely because it invented its own forms and its own
methods.
The Renaissance, not content with taking the means for the end and having
a fixed belief in the fine subject, added two capital errors: the spirit of imitation
and the copying of the fine subject.
The men of the Renaissance, thinking themselves superior to their predecessors,
the Primitives, in imitating natural forms instead of seeking their inner rhythm,
reproduced with complacency on enormous canvases the most striking and theat-
rical gestures and actions of their period. They were victims of the fine subject.
If a subject is beautiful, an object beautiful, a form beautiful it is a value absolute
in itself, rigourous, intangible.
One neither imitates nor copies a beautiful thing, one simply admires it; one
can at the most create by his own talent an equivalent work.
The Renaissance, with its ecstasy for the fine subject, has produced the malady
which we know as the School of Fine Arts. They longed for a thing which is
materially impossible, a beautiful object cannot be copied, cannot be reproduced
in the scientific sense of the word; the banal experience of thirty pupils before
a beautiful object in the same light, at the same time and each one of the thirty
making a different copy is conclusive enough: scientific methods like casting and
photography are no happier in their results. Every manifestation of beauty,
whatever it may be, bears within itself an unknown element which will always
be a mystery to its admirer, as it is already to its creator, who caught between
his conscious and unconscious self is incapable of determining the line between
the two; the objective and the subjective in a continual struggle are so interwoven
that the resulting creation always remains a partial enigma to the artist. The
beautiful machine is the modern fine subject, it also cannot be copied. Although
I tried personally in 1918 to catch in several pictures the equivalence of the
beautiful mechanical object I always carefully avoided making a copy.
The mechanical object, even if it is not completely beautiful, can serve as well
55
as a landscape or a figure as first material for a plastic work. It is a matter of
choice in the beginning; wishing to obtain brilliancy and intensity I should prefer
this material to any other.
I return to the question stated above, that of the situation of the professional
artists confronted with the formidable Renaissance of the artisans of the street
and of the machine. A state of competition is created by the intensive production
of the beautiful object.
Two producers are in existence, will they destroy each other?
The question is this: throughout the world there is a need of indisputable
beauty, which is perhaps just now more of a necessity than ever before because
of the actual hardness of life and of the weakening of religion. When life is
painful the desire for an ideal is engendered. If at the moment there is a frenzy
for physical gratification and for huge spectacles, it is because we seek a compen-
sation for the intense and difficult life we are leading. If these physical gratifica-
tions could be replaced by an appreciation of the plastic beauty which surrounds
us, the individual would function more harmoniously.
I believe that the need for beauty is more general than is realized. Not only
from the child whom I mentioned a little while ago but from all of us comes the
demand for beauty. Three-fourths of the gestures and aspirations of today are
restless with this desire. Here, too, comes in the law of supply and demand; but
the demand at the present moment is addressed especially to the professional
artist, thanks to the prejudice, which I have mentioned, which makes us blind
to the beautiful object manufactured by the artisan, because it is not the work of
the “artist.”
I have just seen the spectacle of “The Fair of Paris,” where invention fairly
springs up at every step, where the effort of execution is prodigious.
I was stupefied to see that all these men who have organized these admirable
panels of detached pieces, these astonishing fantasies of letters and of light, these
powerful costly machines, do not understand, do not feel that they are the real
artists, that they have overturned all the modern plastic ideas. They are com-
pletely ignorant of the plastic quality which they create. Ignorance in such a
case is perhaps salutary, but this vexing question of the unconscious in artistic
creation is a painful drama which will long trouble the seekers of mystery.
Suppose, as I said a little while ago, the immense world of engineers, of work-
men, of merchants, of shop keepers, become aware of the beauty which they manu-
facture and in which they live. The demand for beauty would be almost satisfied
for them; the peasant would be satisfied with his beautiful mowing machine of
many colours and the merchant with his melody of cravats. Why must these
people go into raptures on Sunday over the doubtful pictures in the Louvre and
elsewhere? Why do they go to gaze upon a poor imitation of a landscape hang-
ing on a wall when a beautiful electric meter is at hand which they do not see?
They believe in the hierarchy of the arts, to them an electric meter could never
be beautiful because it was not made for beauty. But the very lack of intention
is one of its great claims to beauty.
I insist that it does not amuse me to make a paradox; I am trying in the clear-
56
cst manner possible and in my modest way to throw a little light upon this curious,
troubling mental state of the majority of human beings.
I hope that a day will come when everyone will finally see this clearly, the
revolutionary day which will be the end of ninety-nine out of every hundred
professional artists, the day which I, a professional artist, shall welcome: the
so-called artistic production is so mediocre, the percentage of beauty so rare
among professionals that the average in the useful production of the artisan is
superior.
Among a hundred pictures are two beautiful? Among a hundred manufac-
tured objects, thirty are beautiful and meet the demand of art, beauty and utility
at the same time.
As for myself, my choice is made, I salute and await the event.
The artisan will regain his place which he should always have kept, for he is
the true creator, he it is who daily, modestly, unconsciously, creates and invents
these handsome objects, these beautiful machines which make us live. His un-
consciousness saves him. The immense majority of professional artists have
become hateful because of their pride and their self consciousness; they are a
blight.
It is always in decadent periods that is seen the hideous hypertrophy of the
individual among the false great artists. (The Renaissance).
Go to one of the exhibitions of machines, for the machine has its annual salons
quite in the manner of the artists, go to the automobile, the aviation show, the
Paris Fair, they are the most beautiful spectacles in the world. Look at our
street shows, “look well at labour,” every time you find the work of an artisan
it is good, every time that it is violated by a professional it is bad.
The manufacturers must never leave their own field and turn to professional
artists, only evil would result. They believe, these fine fellows, that above them
is a group of demi-gods who make admirable things much more beautiful than
theirs, who annually exhibit these immortal masterpieces in the National Salon
or elsewhere. They go there on opening days in frock coats and go into raptures
before these imbeciles who are not worthy to tie their shoe laces. If they could
strangle this stupid prejudice, if they could but realize that theirs are the most
beautiful annual exhibitions of plastic art, they would have confidence in the
admirable men who surround them, the artisans, and they would not go seeking
elsewhere the pretentious incapables who massacre their work. What conclusion
shall we draw from all this? That the artisan is everything, no indeed, beautiful
as their production is I do not wish to make a hierarchy in my turn and I know
that there are works of artists which are superior but they are rare. I know that
these men—few as they are—are capable of rising in their plastic concept to a
height which dominates this first plane of Beauty. These men must be able to
consider the work of the artisan and of nature as first material, must know how
to arrange it, to absorb it, to hold in perfect equilibrium the conscious and sub-
conscious, the objective and subjective.
They must impose upon the world work so dazzling and so sure that it will
dominate the generations to come. Therefore a union between the artisan and
the true artist is much to be desired. To avoid immense waste they should live
57
more closely together, should have more contacts, so that each in his own domain
may benefit thereby. It is up to you who are listening to me to find the way.
The plastic life is terribly dangerous, its ambiguity is perpetual. No standard
is possible, no arbitration tribunal is in existence. I say again, it is for you to
find the way.
Two pictures, not completely identical, were shown to the impressionist painter,
Sisley, and he could not tell which was the false one.
We must live and create in a perpetual agitation, in this continual ambiguity.
The one who handles beautiful things is sometimes quite unaware of them; in
this connection I shall always recall the year when I installed the Autumn Salon
and was fortunate enough to be next to the Aviation Show which was about to
open. Through the partitions I could hear the hammers and the songs of the
mechanics. Although accustomed to these shows, I had never before been so
much impressed. Never had so brutal a contrast confronted me. I passed from
enormous dull gray surfaces, pretentious in their frames, to beautiful metallic
objects, hard, useful, with pure colours, to steel with its infinite variety, with its
play of vermillions and blues. The geometric power of forms dominated all.
The mechanics saw me pass, they knew that they had artists for neighbours and
in their turn they asked permission to see our show; and these good fellows who
had never seen an exhibition of pictures in their lives, who were uncorrupted,
who had been reared close to the first beautiful material fell into ecstasies before
works which I shall not trouble to mention.
I shall always see a sixteen year old urchin, with fire red hair, a new jacket
of bright blue, orange trousers and his hand stained with Prussian blue, gazing
enraptured on the nude women in their gilt frames, not having the slightest sus-
picion that with his modern workman’s clothes, blazing with colours, he literally
killed the Salon, there remained upon the walls only vaporous shadows in old
fashioned frames. This dazzling boy who had the look of having been brought
forth by an agricultural machine was the symbol of the exposition next door, of
the life of tomorrow, when prejudice shall be destroyed, when finally all the
world shall see clearly and the Beauty of the true artisan and of the true artist
shall be released.
FERNAND LEGER
Mayt 1923
58
THE READER CRITIC
CIVILIZATION FOLLOWING OUR FLAG
D. F. H., Honolulu, Hawaii:
YOUR announcement of a younger French Poet’s issue recalls the excellent
Ezra Pound number on the French Moderns: are they passe so soon?
Nevertheless we await with interest every copy of The Little Review,
French or not. Our Fair City is now a cheap copy of cheaper Los Angeles and
all the mainland sends us is soldiers, tourists, movies and politics. Papeete is
closer to Paris than we are and we’re even farther from New York than the
Tahitian’s White governors: as far as our civilized life is concerned.
REQUEST FOR LIGHT
B. S. S., Tuxedo Park, N. Y.:
HOW about giving us a line on the manifestations of the “French spirit,”
other than the poets and painters? There’s Mistinguett, Bernhardt’s
successor in the triumph of spirit over years. The sparkle of the woman
at her age should be analysed. Let jh do it! Then there’s Siki—French to the
Core—a Pan if there ever was one. A natural man let loose in Paris and the
high specialization of the Prize Ring. Even the bad boys playing at Indian and
cowboy at the Algonquin are too shocked by him. A Master in Ironies should
watch him and report the effect of acquired technique (called science by the
pimply-faced gym hangers-on) on his punching powers and spirit. The same
reporter should speculate on the necessity of form, in his own and the fighter’s
craft: the present Siki and early Dempsey—Drieser and Anderson (Sherwood);
Carpentier-William Butler Yeats.
NOW WE KNOW WHAT’S WANTED
SHERWOOD ANDERSON’S cover blurb for Arlie Gelston by Roger
Sergei: “Here is Iowa really writing of Iowa. That is what we want.”
Africans of Africa, musicians of musicians, Secretary Davis, of Labor.
Sergei, or any other writer interest,—as writers first: from or of Iowa, Ohio, or
their environs, later.
MEMO TO BOK PEACE COMMISSION
WE can never have World Peace because we can never have an Inter-
national temperament. Statement attributed to Mary Garden in LOS
ANGELES TIMES.
59
“TRY THIS OVER ON YOUR STEINERT”
Temporary New Yorker'.
I FOUND this in the Times last Sunday: “Henry Cowell, a young Ameri-
can played his own compositions in Vienna ... let us hope they don’t think
all Americans play that way.” jh once asked “how long will composers hold
on to the octave?” Henry Cowell, young, Irish, is the only other I have heard
directly ask the same question. He has asked, thought, and composed beyond it
and now wishes for a new beyond-piano to play. He has been composing since
he was eleven, studied and knows Chinese music, knows American jazz . . .
The Greeks had only five, the Church used the Octave and five, Bach used all,
Beethoven fought three years to get recognition for the use of Octave, five and
three. Is this the period of “revolution” in Art? in Music? Years ago Margaret
Anderson asked the musicians, ask them again, Little Review.
As a point of information Henry Cowell’s Three Irish Legends: The Voice
of Lir, The Hero Sun, The Manaunaum: Dynamic Motion, and Exultation are
published by Breitkopf and Hartel. His unpublished Antinomy is ranked with
the others, as his best.
YOUR
SUBSCRIPTION
*
m
RENEW AT ONCE
YEARLY $4.00
24 EAST ELEVENTH ST., N. Y. C.
60
PLOUGH HARROW MOWER AND RAKE
By A Maine Farmer
1
jgj LiteraryTimes
TE/f YOUR.
MODERNISM
READ THE ONLY
JAZZ-JOURNAL
OP /KEPTICI/M
Take The Times
Yearly Subscription $2.25 644 South Clark Street, Chicago
---------NOTICE---------------
THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE LITTLE REVIEW WILL
CONTAIN REPRODUCTIONS OF THE WORK OF
RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISTS, ITALIANS, DUTCH
AND GERMAN PAINTERS—POEMS, MUSIC, STOR-
IES, COMMENT—
WHITNEY STUDIO CLUB
10 WEST 8th STREET
EXHIBITIONS
OF
PAINTING
AND
THROUGHOUT
THE SEASON
SCULPTURE
Daily 11 A. M. to 10 P. M„
Sunday 3-6 P. M.
I----------------------------------------1
REBELS AND REACTIONARIES
rub shoulders amiably and in perfect harmony in
The Double Deeiiil
Published at New Orleans
which prints good writing by youngsters or greybeards regardless
of school, influence, or tradition. It shares none of the prejudices
of the right wing or the left wing in contemporary literature, but
“deceives them both by speaking the truth.” It prints exhilar-
ating creative and critical material by such writers as
Hart Crane
Djuna Barnes
Louis Gilmore
Carl Van Vechten
Edmund Wilson, Jr.
Arthur Symons
Lord Dunsany
Lafcadio Hearn
Maxwell Bodenheim
Paul Eldridge
and half a hundred others.
Single 25 cents—Year’s subscription. . . . Dollars 2.50
Trial Offer: Five Months.........................Dollars 1.00
Address: 204 Baronne Street, New Orleans, La., U. S. A.
J
THREE MOUNTAINS PRESS
19 rue d’ ANTIN mm—m PARIS (Ie)
INDESCRETIONS of Ezra POUND
WOMEN AND MEN by Ford Madox FORD
ELIMUS by B. C. WINDELER
WITH 12 DESIGNS by D. SHAKESPEAR
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
by William Carlos WILLIAMS
$2 THE VOLUME—SIMPLE AMERICAN CHEQUE
TO APPEAR:
ENGLAND by B. M. G. ADAMS
BLANK by Ernest M. HEMINGWAY
A critical examination of contemporary prose presented
in 6 works of invention.
PLAY WRITING
A professional course in play writing is offered under
the personal supervision of Theodore Ballou Hinckley,
Editor of THE DRAMA, assisted by famous play-
wrights, critics, actors and producers.
This is an unusual opportunity to take a personalized course in play
writing, which is supervised by recognized authorities in drama.
Personalized Criticism of Your Plays
The course covers a year of carefully individualized instruction in dramatic
technique. You will be taken step by step through study courses, books and
practice plays, from the simplest rudiments up to the actual completion of
plays. Your work will receive the individual attention of Mr. Hinckley.
His criticisms will be directed at your specific needs. He will dissect your
plot, your characters, and your dialogue, and give you definite, constructive
criticism and help.
Producers Will Read Your Plays
Throughout the entire course, the aim is toward completion of plays for
professional production and not toward mere amateurish effort. Your plays
will be analyzed by Mr. Hinckley with the idea of production in mind, and
plays of real merit will be brought to the attention of producers. If your
manuscript has the endorsement of THE DRAMA, it will receive a reading
by managers.
Good Plays Earn Big Royalties
There is a great scarcity of good plays. The big royalties for success prove
that there is a very real demand for plays of worth. Lightnin’, The Bat,
The Lion and the Mouse and many others have earned thousands of dollars.
If you have ideas and imagination, you will find the practical dramatic
technique and honest, competent criticism of this course of inestimable value
to you.
Limited Enrollment
Only a limited number of people can enroll, since the work is so carefully
personalized. As a result only the people wha show unusual ability are
admitted to the course. Fill out the coupon and mail it for complete
information at once.
Department of Instruction,
THE DRAMA,
561 Athenaeum Building,
Chicago.
Please send information regarding your personalized course in play
•writing.
Name ................................................................
Street ..............................................................
City ..........................................State.................
EDITIONS DU DIORAMA
3, rue du Cherche-Midi - Paris
7 manifest.es Dada
TRISTAN TZARA
]. Manifesto do M. Antipyriue,
2. Manifeste dada 1918.
3. Proclamation sans pretention.
4. Monsieur Aa l’Antipbilosophe
nous envoie cc manifeste.
5. Dada manifeste sur l'amour
faible et l’amour amer.
Annexe : Comment je suis devenu
charmant, sympathique ct deii-
cieux.
Syllogisme colonial.
L’edition de ce livre Scurieux' enlre tous,
illustre de divers dessins de M.Picabia, comprcn-
dra 300 exemplaires settlement,’ dont
a) 50 ex. sur chine numerotes de Id L au prix de 60 fr.
b) 250 ex. sur vergS pur fil Lafuma, au prix de 20 fr.
AU SANS PAREIL
57, avenue Kleber PARIS
cinema calendrier
du coeur abstrail
maisons
poemes par
tristan tzara
19 bois graves par
arp
Edition de luxe in-4° dcu (20x26)
tirage limitd b 150 exemplaires
sur velin de cuve pur chiffon d’itali*
numdrotds de 1 b 150
et signgs par les auteufd
prix 60 frs.
if you are very weak—if you are very strong—if you are ill—if you
are little—if you are bored—read my books—they will heal you—
you will see that all the world is mad—you will see why logic should
be suppressed—every secret will be revealed to you—my manifestoes
will tell you that nothing is of any importance—that there is neither
good nor evil—that everything is permitted—and that man should
reach out toward nothingness—indifference is the only legal and
effective medicine—indifference without effort, indifference without
importance—twenty centuries of history have served only to demon-
strate the truth of my manifestoes—because truth does not exist—
language is a play for children—morality and the laws of causality
have divided life into fragments for us—under different forms: art—
philosophy — sociology —- politeness — justice — ethnography —
politics—psychology—etc.—if you wish to become men again who
hear with your ears and speak with your mouths—if you wish to know
why one must not take seriously art morality religion politics gram-
mar which were only pastimes in the beginning—simple songs like the
sport of nightingales—read my manifestoes—you can write me that
1 am mad.
Tristan TZARA
The Elsinger Press, 2S0 fVeit 54th Street