A COLLECTION OF WORK
BY SOME YOUNG AMERI-
CANS — IN CONTRAST
WITH THE WORK OF SOME
YOUNG EUROPEANS : MOST-
LY FRENCH — SURREALISTE
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
EDWARD NAGLE
MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
MALCOLM COWLEY
JOHN BROOKS WHEELWRIGHT
GORHAM B. MUNSON
SLATER BROWN
CHARLES L. DURBORAW
HART CRANE
JOHN RIORDAN
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
GEORGES LIMBOUR
IN
THIS
NUMBER
EMILE MALESPINE
MICHEL LE1RIS
MARCEL ARLAN D
ANDRE HARLAIFvE
ANDRE DESSON
MARX LOEBE
JOSEPH DELTEIL
JACQUES VIOT
HANS ARP
RENE CREVEL
JACQUES BARON
TRISTAN TZARA
G. RIBEMONT DESSAIGNES
REPRODUCTIONS OF PAINTINGS—CONSTRUCTIONS—PHOTOGRAPHY.
S P R I N G-1 9 2 6-S U M M E R
LITTLE REVIEW
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
The Surrealistes: In America there is a prejudice, a disdain
even, for groups, cliques, revolutions, movements, in fact for all
of the tricks that the young Europeans make use of to ward off
blight and boredom.
The Little Review always welcomes these signs of life and
without fear of contagion and not heavily we have published the
work of the entire first line of the foremost artists in Europe.
In fact we have unostentatiously presented all of the new sys-
tems of art to America . . . about twenty Isms, in the last few
years.
Matthew Josephson and Ribemont-Dessaignes have taken up
the case of the Surrealistes in this number of the LITTLE REVIEW.
I shall leave the subject in their hands. I shall merely indicate
later which of the contributors in this number are rightly Sur-
realiste and which belong to some other way of art . . . which
of the Americans in this number belong very loosely to a group,
and which do not.
We are all too serious about art in America ... so serious that
we treat it as we treat the dead . . . with respect and no attempt
at communication. That man who produces works of art is
either treated as a god or as a rather ridiculous and useless
member of society. As long as this attitude obtains there is little
hope for art in America. If groups, cliques, revolutions, move-
ments, tricks will change this we are for groups, cliques, etc.
Georges Limbour, Michel Leiris, Marcel Arland, Andre Desson,
Joseph Delteil, Andre Harlaire, Rene Crevel, Jacques Baron,
Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Louis Marcoussis, Pierre Roy . . .
all belong to the Surrealiste group. Other members of the group
not in this issue but also contributors to the Little Review are
Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault and Paul Eluard.
Tristan Tzara, one of the finest poets in Europe, is world known
as the founder of Dada.
Hans Arp and Hannah Hoch are Dadaists. Arp lives in
Zurich, Hannah Hoch in Berlin. Work can be seen in Little
Review Gallery.
(Continued on page 2)
Spring
1926
Summer
THE LITTLE REVIEW
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CONTENTS
Chapter from the Novel “My Body and Myself” Rene Crevel
Joan Miro Michel Leiris
Interests of 1926 William Carlos Williams
Voyages
Andre Masson
Letter to My Friends
Poems
Realism? Values? Portraits?
Banal Story
Georges Papazoff
Poem
Noces
Poems
Schneethlehem
Reception
Havre-New York
Anthology
“Colors of Life”
In Praise of Violence
Hart Crane
Michel Leiris
Matthew Josephson
Emile Malespine
John Riordan
Ernest Hemingway
Marx Loebe
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Jacques Baron
Hans Arp
Marcel Arland
Joseph Delteil
Malcolm Cowley
Charles Durboraw
G. Ribemont Dessaignes
As One Who Guards Over the Brilliant Capitol
Matthew Josephson
Subway Slater Brown
Paris at One Time
Marcoussis Jacques Viot
Poems Georges Limbour
Inception at the Cross John Brooks Wheelwright
Lux A ndre Desson
In This Age of Hard Trying, Nonchalance
Is Prejudiced Gorham B. Munson
Poems Edward Nagle
The Measure of Ourselves Andre Harlaire
Reproductions of the work of: Joan Miro, Pierre Roy, Louis Marcoussis, Georges
Papazoff, Hannah Hoch, Serge Charchoune, Myron Lechay, Terechovitz, Andre Masson,
L. Tihanyi. Photographs Moholy-Nagy, Caesar Zwaska.
ON SALE ALL FIRST CLASS BOOK STORES
F. B. NEUMAYER: 70 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON
SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY, BRENTANO’S, PARIS
VOL. XII. Telephone: Chelsea 5112 NO. I
Moholy-Nagy is an Hungarian. He is now one of the group at
the Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany.
Matthew Josephson, Malcolm Cowley, Slater Brown, John
Brooks Wheelwright, Gorham Munson have all been more or
less identified with Broom and Secession. Some of them have
appeared in the Little Review and are known to our readers.
Edward Nagle has contributed drawings to the Dial, first ap-
pearance in the LITTLE REVIEW. John Riordan is a newcomer.
Ernest Hemingway: The indications are that Hemingway is
elected to be the big man in American letters.
Hart Crane is well known to the readers of the Little Review
. . . one of our very finest poets.
William Carlos Williams has an International reputation as a
poet. He has the picasso quality of experiment and development.
Myron Lechay is a young American painter now working in
New Orleans . . . has exhibited at the Independents and in
various other general shows.
DONALD
ACTOR
A OHAPTER
FROM A BOOK “MY BODY
AND ME”
THEY EAT early and fast in the little mountain inns.
I was alone at the table.
Here I am alone in my room?
Alone.
I craved this adventure so long and so much that I
often doubted it could ever be. So to-night, my wish at last
fulfilled, I am alone with myself. No bridge is linking me to
others. I have, as the only memories from the best and most
beloved, a flower a picture.
The flower—a rose fast fading in the toothbrush glass.
Yesterday at the same hour, it was flourishing on my coat.
The button-hole was high enough for the rose to caress my face
if I stooped in the least. But each time I was surprised at the
flowery softness. My skin by late afternoon was reminiscent of
carnations. A whole winter, a whole spring had I not persisted
in confusing—happiness with ragged-edge petals, on the noc-
turnal wisdom of a silk congealed into revers?
A whole winter, a whole spring. Yesterday.
In a railroad station, with closed eyes, the flower in a button-
hole condemns one still to believe in rugs, in bare shoulders, in
pearls.
Then I dare not hope that solitude is possible.
Though solitude was all I desired in that theatre where for
months, the red of the velvet on the seats, had become to me the
very colour of boredom. Then I went again, in search of it,
through the streets, at the end of day when the houses were illu-
minating, for new temptations, their shirts of stone, a garment
as complicated as the unreal.
I entered places where they dance, drink—I entered, satu-
rated with alcohol, with jazz, with all that drugs one, and
drugged myself indifferently with what I heard, danced, drank,
but happy to hear, dance and drink, so I could forget that which
had limited but not helped me.
Yes, I remember. Two o’clock in the morning. The bar is
a tiny one. It is quite hot. The door opens. Long live the cool.
Someone says “Hello” to me. A hand pats my shoulder. I am
happy. Not for the voice, not for the hand, but the air that has
3
just entered by surprise, is so cool. I say hello to the coolness,
without in the least needing those words which human creatures
use for their greetings. Alas! the coolness is not the only thing
that took advantage of the door. I had forgotten that which, in
my past, I had learned to call my self. A human creature is
trying its best to remind me. It insists. It kisses me. It is
proper to return politeness for politeness, and so the pretenses
begin again. “Hello spirit clothed in a body.” I like these
words, I repeat them. Spirit is right, I would love to create for
myself the purity of a chess-player, not to renounce with joy, but
to play, to act, to revel in thoughts. No human contact ever
prevented my being lonely, then what is the good of soiling one-
self. Through, with the pleasures (?) of the flesh.
For the third time I repeat: Hello spirit clothed in a body.
And thus I give the measure of a new confidence, to him who
enters.
Alas, misfortune had designed me merely to be present in
a body that believes itself clothed in spirit. A laugh, I get angry
and mark the contrast that exists between that other one and me.
My spirit is clothed in a body, as to thee thy body is clothed with
spirit. I forsee the blow, parry it, receive it anyway. Then I
am not alone any more. It is final. Good day, good night. I
will go and see how the sun gets up in the Bois de Boulogne. I
walked. Chilly shreds of dawn were clinging to the trees. A
little boat, abandoned by man, was fast rusting. Happy in its
solitude. “Alone like me. Alone. Illusion again. It seems
that the other one had followed me: I hear its voice: “It is the
yacht of that actress who was drowned in the Rhine. The yacht
of that actress who was drowned in the Rhine.” Yes, I remem-
ber. Remember. Again forever. He was apparently right,
that teacher of Philosophy of mine, who claimed that the present
did not exist. But this is beside the question. A yacht is aban-
doned on the Seine. Who would dare live in it since an actress
plunged off it, to drown herself in the Rhine, in a night orgy, in
the summer of 1911.
1911. The year of my first communion. A night of orgy,
repeated the cook commenting upon the suicide which easily
might be a murder. In my dreams orgy rhymed with host.
Why was I offered so early these sinful or wretched crea-
tures, to love? I wished the rivers cursed, the canals, through
which had been towed, to the bridge of Suresness, this peniche
the last worldly home of a woman who, in my innocence having
faith in programs and magazines, I believed to be happy. “She
is a queen in our Paris” so liked to say a friend of my mother,
who was fond of splendors.
Then, did she also feel herself miserably free in her solitude
4
amongst others, since caring nothing about the guests, a night of
intoxication, that is to say of courage, she hurled herself into
the water of the Rhine.
Sprite whose side-saddle plumes ruled the age of slit skirts,
I deny the presence of this other one to dedicate my solitude to
you, on this bridge edging the Bois de Boulogne, at dawn of a
June day.
I loved you so, you and the lady with the bare neck.
I love you still, but I must admit that I loved the lady with
the bare neck better.
During my childhood, women displayed their breast only
when going to a ball. In the first half of the year 1914, a lady
citizen of Geneva prophesied that the cataclysms, that were to
deafen my adolescence, would come because of the opening of
the blouses on the Cote d’Azur. As she always wore a tight
chemisette of black silk, her country stayed in margin of all
disaster.
As to the lady with the bare neck, she had anticipated by
several years the fashionable ones of 1914. She too had a bad
reputation. She was the most famous woman in the world, she
was accused of having murdered her husband and her mother.
We secretly bought the newspapers on her account.
To tell the truth, in the eyes of my comrades, the most
fascinating thing in this affair was the name of the valet, an
astounding name sounding like an obscene word said in public.
But no, I cared little about the valet. I liked the lady with the
bare neck and I liked her because she was the lady with the bare
neck. I was fully content with this passion. I deemed it abso-
lute and justified by the one reason which I gave to myself,
ignorant as I was of the law of relativity: this glory of science,
joy of social meetings, torment of hearts.
The lady with the bare neck is the lady with the bare neck
on the wall-paper in the room of my childhood. I would write
this sentence with letters legible only to me. Thus I did away
with ennui.
I was eight and was the only one to take her defense without
exhibitionism, without the hope of a little reward when the
prison gates should open. I was seeing her still as the magazines
revealed her:
She was on the bench of the accused a very fragile little thing
in a bundle of crepe. They pictured her full-face, or her head
turned left or right, pale, her veil stronger than the muscles of
her neck. At other times the grief on her forehead, would carry
to her hands the symbols of her double mourning.
But whatever her movements were, their whole mystery had
only one pivot.
5
Facing my mirror I would imitate the shivers that ended at
the steady base of her clavicles. The judges could not condemn
a woman who had such beautiful twitches between her chin and
shoulders.
After her acquittal, the lady with the bare neck published
her memoirs. Out of respect I refrained from reading them.
She married a foreigner of high descent. I wanted to write to
the husband: “Kiss slowly her whole neck, her beautiful neck.”
I—became a man.
And now it’s early dawn in the Bois de Boulogne.
That other one thinks that the contemplation has lasted long
enough.
I hear. We must return.
It is true, dawn inspires love.
Advance!
At home, I touch this body as I already have had the honor
of touching others, with the sole obsession of getting rid of the
most precise of my desires with no hope of satisfying any of them
or lingering with them, for although I had for a long time be-
lieved myself forced to do this, I have always been ashamed of
these detours which leave man not in an elevating solitude, but
in the deep fog with other men.
So the cry which, by chance escaped from the mouth that
wandered all over my nude body, the cry “kill me” as it
responded to my prayer, that shame alone kept unspoken, was
for my sad secret, both a comfort and an exaltation. For the will
to act whether exerted against a mere sex, the “heads or tails” of
an individual, dressed or undressed, visible or imaginary, a mass,
of a mob, has always seemed to be caused by the sole need to
evade. And certainly if science offered a way to kill oneself if
not entirely pleasant but at least decent and sure, I would have
no more attempted love than those evasions, one of which has
enabled me to know solitude at last, this evening on the moun-
tain.
So to-day it is not any longer from myself, but from others
that I pretend to escape. I had begun by wanting to get lost
through these others, my friends, my foes.
Thus this first haunting vision: their eyes, my own fixed
upon their liquids of different density, never being able to pene-
trate them, to mingle. I love their eyes, vain and candid, for I
wanted to believe that through their transparence I could dis-
cover myself, and besides I had wanted them for so long, with
the certitude that they would avenge me for the insufficient mys-
tery of the mirrors of my childhood! The intention being to
drown myself, Narcissus. Along walls a cold river had refused
to take me. BAKERY, gilded letters proclaimed, and in the
6
mirror a bouquet was fading. The vertical river of the shops
had carried away neither the bits of chaff nor the bits of dream.
So thereafter I decided to put my joy and my grief some-
where else rather than in myself, but such was my folly that on
the sad road, from each creature I met, I asked not just amuse-
ment, nor some exaltation, which I might have touched, thanks
to past loves, but—the absolute.
With difficulty could I find from time to time again, that
little pack of bones, of revelling papillas, of confused ideas and
of clear feelings, that bore my name.
What a fine mirror is a stranger’s eyes!
Well, one day what I saw in transparence and in my eyes this
time, was their eyes, the eyes of the others.
Then how could it be that I should not long for the minute
when free from all thought, I could be rid of the very memory?
Thus, toiling by day and playing by night.
Alas! mosaic of pretense that could not hold, the acts of my
daily life separated showing the original illness.
And there were painful surprises in this work and these
fetes.
A singer, when intricate drinks, a good victrola, and a few
scattered desires, through two salons, began to put some magic
into a most banal assembly, asking me what I think of her reper-
toire and I myself excited by a cocktail and two eyes beautiful
enough for me to want to seduce the body to which they belong,
I answering her that she is worth more than her art, anxious
to justify herself in an explanation of her career, and for that
searching out reasons but without succeeding in redeeming her
songs at the end of her wits declares: Yes, I know the little
value of my songs, the little value of all that are here, all those
we must see, but . . . She did not finish. She has just experi-
enced, made me experience that activity which does not endow
man with a lasting oblivion, does not console him as much as
some commanding and sufficient sensation as, for example, the
sensation of grandeur or truth.
This singer and I—very wise, refuse to underestimate our-
selves, above all when we confess.
So she, in spite of the will of the eyes, in spite of the wrinkles
of fear all over her face, where the failure of the make-up
exposes the most secret decompositions, her hands like sick
flowers on her chest of velvet already undermined by lassitude,
her body rebelling against the shock that the spirit commands,
very slowly, with the gravity of one who offers to the court his
last plea, asserts: I go to everything by modest roads.
And I, touched by these mere words, I would like to kneel,
to kiss her footsteps.
7
I repeat: To everything by modest roads. I shall need that
gray light of the mornings, that light which accuses the misery
of the complexions, and that of the thoughts, to ask myself,—
but does she not mistake round-about ways for modest roads? A
singer’s life, is that a modest life for a woman, that everything
attracts? If she learns to despise others she does not get to love
herself a little more or less. She always accepts the false value
of words. And how would she organize herself, without finding
the boundaries of her disease.
She lives with others, goes to others, to all others, to all. And
going to all is not going to everything but on the contrary it is
going to nothing.
RENE CREVEL
From a book “My Body and Me” published by
Simon Kra, Editions du Sagittaire.
JOAN MIRO
A FINGER, AN eyelash, a sexual organ shaped like a
spider, a sinuous line or the echo of a glance, the flax
of thought, the warm savannas of a damp-contoured
1 V mouth, animals or vegetables at nurse, composite
monsters with newspapers for limbs, trees which bear
eyes, crevices in the stone where insects swarm, bark eaten with
mildew in an infinite variety of patterns and colors, numbers
and letters from a copybook, persons reduced to a moustache, the
sharp point of a breast, a pipe’s glow or perhaps the ashes of a
cigar:—in this country of surprising candor the horns of the
moon are a snail’s horns and extravagant tubercles sprout in the
meteoric sky.
The creator of this country has gathered, in the obscure
byways of Reality, the few particles toward which his instincts
drive him as if to the feet of idols. Often a straight line repre-
sents a human being, for in this being he loved only the straight
line; in the same way the bird is represented by a feather, the
swift arrow of his flight or the mark of his talons. Sometimes
of mankind there remains only the mark of a foot on the wet
sand; the sea mingles its waves with the undulations of a bathing
girl; and the spermatic fusion of the sexes is translated only by
a thread.
8
TERRE LA SOUREE BY JOAN MIRO
® \ \
iS\ J
fit" t
S4 .
^t[f ff
. •••
'.................'
LE CHASSEUR
BY JOAN MIRO
SPACE CONSTRUCTION
BY L. TIHANYI
BY MYRON LECHAY
Formerly, the anxious tribes of men would bury their nail-
peelings and their fallen hairs in fear of sorcery; for they
believed that these particles of themselves contained their whole
vital spirit. Later, geologists succeeded in reconstructing the
enormous skeletons of extinct animals from a piece of bone,
buried perhaps for several milennia. Today, there is a new race
of men who, from the double world of flesh and spirit, retain
only the traces, vestiges of structures which a valueless intelli-
gence can never render firm. The slightest notations which they
make are a sufficient witness to their love. Their brains may be
exactly compared to those pictures which the poor adore, pic-
tures made with locks of hair snipped from a whole family of
brides, or fragments of the martyred bones of saints, buried
under ruined cloisters. There is no question of proving, con-
structing. The state of mind is a new fetichism, which demands
nothing but the perfect adhesion of the heart to any sort of
object, free of symbol, but reflecting like the tiniest cell the
infinite harmony of all the universe.
A man like Miro belongs to that sorcerer race whose feats
seem often ridiculous because of their bizarre tone and their air
of coming from somewhere else. A cauliflower or perhaps the
rising sun. His lines are only indications, not a diagram, but
rather the marks by which phenomena can be recognized. In
his canvases, built like the delicate and lacy architecture of cer-
tain insects, Nellie was a lady, will-o’-the-wisp, a woman’s hair,
the windows open on a night peopled with miracles, while
reason is still untangling its threads, in spirals more tenuous than
the smoke of a devotional candle, burned and snuffed out before
a pyramid.
(Translated by Malcolm Cowley)
MIOHEL LEIRI8
9
INTERESTS OF 1926
IN8ANITY OR GENIUS
1
it is spring
and we walk up the filthysweet
worn wooden stairs
to it close by the miniature
bright poplar leaves
at a grimy window
wading—on the boards
of the second floor—
in the clear reflecting smile
of the boyish husband
all sweet compassion for
her injury—and
such is the
celebrated May
2
POEM
Daniel Boone, the father of Kentucky. Col. W. Crawford, the
martyr to Indian revenge. Simon Gerty, the White Savage.
Molly Finney, the beautiful Canadian Captive. Majors Samuel
and John McCullough, patriots and frontiersmen. Lewis Wet-
zel, the Indian killer. Simon Kenton, the intrepid pioneer.
Gen. George R. Clark, that heroic conqueror. Capt. Brady,
the great Indian fighter. Davy Crockett, the hero of the Alamo.
Gen. Sam Houston, the liberator of the Lone Star State. Kit
Carson, the celebrated plainsman and explorer. Gen. Custer,
the hero of Little Big Horn. Buffalo Bill, the tireless rider,
hunter and scout. Wild Bill, the lightning marksman. Cali-
fornia Joe, the scout. Texas Jack, the government scout and
hunter. Captain Jack, the poet scout. Gen. Crook, the con-
queror of the Apaches.
3
STOLEN LETTER
Dear Aunt N.:—
Wowl “a good for nothing—drink and bad women—no
honor—go west” Some charges, must say something, West
Carruth sinking, I stay below as engineer, the others lacking
io
courage. West Nohno 4 long trips to West Africa with a sick
and physically dead chief engineer. I break my leg—he dies—
all hands drunk and criminally neglectful—I take charge with
a useless leg and body filled with fever and bring her home with
credit. Now holding ship for me, also offered post engineer
and dock master’s job at Nigeria—unable however to take either
account this broken leg.
Drink is something that does not bother me—a drink or
two and finish—that is my absolute rule—there have only been
some three times during my life time when I have gone under.
Once at Doc. B’s after coming back from a big party and cele-
bration in Newark, poison home made stuff and then at B’s a
glass of absinth on top. I’ve felt more sorry than I can say for
that. Once in France when because I would never carouse
with the gang they doped a bacardi on me, then left me to stagger
on by myself. But though it took near all night I got safely back
to my ship alone. The other time I can’t remember except in a
foggy uncertain way, I’m certain however that there was an-
other. That is the extent of drink. I’ve got a bottle of Johnny
Walker, black label, right here in my room—for me it will last
six months or a year. I like however to bring it back to my
friends—think perhaps they might appreciate it.
Now for women—yes—I don’t hate them too much—but not
just any woman and never a bad one. Comparing myself with
a lot of men I know I would certainly draw down the grand halo
for purity etc. etc. etc. No joke.
Now what’s next? Go west. Well we’ll see. I had hopes
of taking a run out there this time being as I simply can’t do
any work anyhow. As to staying out there—I can’t see it—that
is to staying in Chicago. As to running vessels on the Mississippi
—well—
Now please write some more and let’s get at the base trouble
of your wonderful attitude. One thing is sure, I never loaf—
with health and able body I couldn’t—not only on my own part
—but the shipping men who know me wouldn’t let me alone.
I’m wanted. How now for your good for nothing—drunkard
—women master and man of no honor. Pray that I may get a
good leg that I may go some more.
Love and kindest wishes B.O.S.
4
TWO FUGITIVE POEMS (1910)
MARTIN AND KATHERINE
Alone today I mounted that steep hill
On which the Wartburg stands. Here Luther dwelt
In a small room one year through, here he spelt
The German Bible out by God’s good will.
The birds piped ti-ti-tu, and as I went
I thought how Katherine von Bora knelt
At Grimma, idle she, waiting to melt
Her surpliced heart in folds less straitly meant.
As now, it was March then: Lo, he’ll fulfill
Today his weighty task! Sing for content
Ye birds! Pipe now! for now ’tis Love’s wing’s bent.
Work sleeps; love wakes; sing and the glad air thrill!
MISERICORDIA
I am frightened Master, quivering with fear
Half nude before the gloom bed, for one
Persephone the moon wrested and won
Against the black leaves and lo, she was here!
And she looked weary and foredone
With heaviness as seeming to have tried
Many welcomes who once more in her ride
Through the green host flees the pursuing sun.
But oh she was strange with me and not near,
Smooth browed as once, but glimpsed me up sliteyed
And vanished silent. There was bitter pride
Writ in her features! Come to me Master!
The gayest of bright flowers
(last year)
could not have foretold how she
the old potbellied woman
with hands on hips
would have this ravenhaired boy
digging furiously beside
the green willow, tossing
the yellow soil with his spade
hammering it cutting it down—
Not work, this but a private
assignation with Spring
the voluptuous conception of
a potful of tomatos
WILLIAM CARL08 WILLIAMS
VOYAGES
i
—And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love:
Take this Sea, whose diapasen knolls
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
(As her demeaners motion well or ill)
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.
And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poincetta meadows of her tides,—
Adagies of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.
Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.
Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
II
Infinite consanguinity it bears—
This tendered theme of you that light
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones,
While ribboned water lanes I wind
Are laved and scattered with no stroke
Wide from your side, whereto this hour
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black swollen gates
That must arrest all distance otherwise,—
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
Your body rocking!
And where death, if shed,
Presumes no carnage, but this single change,—
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
The silken, skilled transmemberment of song;
Permit me voyage, love, into your hands . . .
Ill
Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
Together in one merciless white blade—
The bay estuaries flock the hard sky limite.
—As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
The cables of our sleep, so swiftly filed,
Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
One frozen trackless smile: what words
Gan strangle this deaf moonlight? For me
Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
Gan fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
And changed . . . “There’s
Nothing like this in the world—,” you say,
Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
Too, into that cleft of godless sky
Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.
“—And never to quite understand!” No,
In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
Nothing so flagless as this piracy.
But now
Draw in your head, alone, and too tall here.
Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.
IV
Where icy and bright dungeons lift
Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
And ocean rivers, churning, shift
Green borders under stranger skies,
Constantly as a shell secretes
Its beating leagues of monotone,
Or as many waters trough the sun’s
Red kelson past the capes’ wet stone;
O rivers mingling toward the sky
And harbor of the phoenix’ breast—
My eyes pressed black against the prow,
—Thy derelict and blinded guest
Waiting, afire, what name unspoke
I cannot claim: let thy waves rear
More savage than the death of kings,
Some splintered garland for the seer.
Beyond sirecces harvesting
The solstice thunders crept away,
Like a cliff swinging, or a sail
Flung into April’s inmost day—
Creation’s blithe and petalled word
To the lounged goddess when she rose
Conceding dialogue with eyes
That smile unsearchable repose—
Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
—Unfolded floating dais before
Which rainbows twine continual hair—
Belle Isle, white echo of the ear!
The imaged word, it is, that holds
Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply
Whose accent no farewell can know.
HART CRANE
15
ANDRE MASSON
WHEN A new being, whether intelligent or not,
appears between the crevices of the universe, the
image of the law which rules his birth is present in
his physical structure, a graphic prophet of his
destiny; and as a phenomenon is scientifically repre-
sented by a curve brought back to the axes, the history of this
being is represented by his internal structure and his visible
form, in this material world whose axes of our senses determine
the framework. If on the other hand, a hand sets down on a
surface lines and curves directly coming from the depth of the
being, these lines will be at first the abstract diagrams of the
cerebral movements of their creator, but quickly they will take
flesh, rendered concrete by the force of desire, which demands
that they borrow an earthly appearance like that of an object
known for a long time, to become thus doubly desirable in the
tenderness of the flesh which is now their sign.
The reciprocity of the reactions is so perfect and the oneness
of the man with the curve so complete that one does not know if
this curve has engendered and predestined him or if he is the
one who, on the contrary, in the distracted tension of his love,
projects this shadow of himself purer than his solar shadow, and
this solidity, complete equivalence of exchanges (is it the light
itself which has constructed this edifice or the luminous reflec-
tions emanating from the walls which have converged and mate-
rialized into a single globe of fire?) equal density of elements
all endowed with a sort of stony life, which must be the infinite
existence of another world—these are the principle characteris-
tics of the language of Andre Masson, world of lights and
shadows where gravitates the eternal orb of a human being,
brought back to the axis of the absolute.
When fish move vertically among the cracks of the capitals
of the columns and the winged imprints of birds, the hair, kept
almost horizontal by the wind, becomes the curve showing,
according to the strength of the desire, the variation of the
dominion of man over water, earth, air and fire; along the fila-
ment spurting out from a bursting grenade can be read the story
of genesis and if one follows the contour of a feminine hip, the
story of sensuality. Then the profile of an adorable face traces
the history of the lassitudes of the blood, near a spiral whose
ascension recalls the perpetual screw, which has death for
thread, intelligence for cylinder. But if the flight of birds is a
bad sign, it is because the angle made by their direction and the
eyes of the observer is measured by a malign number. But this
16
FIGURE BY ANDRE MASSON (Property of Paul Eluard)
w
1
BY PIERRE ROY
BY TERECHOVITCZ
—
number, conjurer of wounds, crowds and cursed adventures, we
find everywhere. We see it in filigree, in the hollow of a navel,
in the interior of an empty fruit or on the round plateau of the
scales which estimate the weights of light.
For our earthly spirit is lighted only by the lowest of win-
dows too few to conjure the sorceries and we all rot in a cave like
the drowned, pierced with a million pricks of the needle, little
partial revelations, powerless to satisfy us and capable only of
creating in us the immense desire to annihilate the world called
“real” or to flee forever its lying stars cloistering us in a world
of crystal, like that of Masson—crystal of tears or petrified
charms, cut with sparkling facets, to blind the sky, with the
splendor of transparent armour, which in this region where all
is light, holds the place of haircloth upon our separate bodies
whose looks will remain eternally parallel.
MICHEL LEIRIS
A LETTER TO MY FRIENDS
SUPER-REALISTS. Chameleons, rather! Even as one
begins to scold you the colors change and a new “move-
ment” is under way.
As we billet this new artistic organism in the Little
Review (unalphabetized cyclopedia of the twentieth cen-
tury) word comes that it is no longer among the living. I insist,
however, upon a moment’s time to record my protest against
your somnambulistic literature.
It was with much sinking of the heart that I watched my
friends. . . . After the exquisite uproar of Dada, which was
incontestably a miraculous sideshow for the world, this Super-
realism is the faint, ugly whine of a decrepit engine. In the
winter of 1921-1922 when I met Aragon and Tzara and the
others, I asked them anxiously how they had received Freud and
Psychoanalysis. In their superior Parisian manner they replied
that it was an old thing with them. And beside, the French had
never been very repressed. But something told me that they
had not really sweated and suffered through psychoanalysis
—not as I who at the age of sixteen interpreted the dreams
of my little girl friends and pleaded with them to cast off their
inhibitions. And so a year later I heard of special pilgrimages
to Vienna. When I returned to Paris I burst upon a whole mob
in Paul Eluard’s house engaged in grandiloquent revelations of
their unconscious love or hatred for each other. Then Spiritism
17
and one silly game after another. A new style was invented: by
drinking quantities of beer and writing as fast as you could in
competition with others after three or four hours you were so
dazed that your subconscious began working.
There is a specific issue, however, on which I, (we, if I may
speak for a few others) part company with them. The French
are by nature a race of litterateurs, artists. To write a poem is
easier for instance, than not to write a poem. Therefore art is
become a contemptible thing and the most snobbish and the most
nobly logical way is to commit artistic suicide. If Aragon, who
is a born writer and cannot help writing well, turns up with a
poem every evening, Breton treats him with unstinted displeas-
ure. “You must kill this instinct to write; it is trivial, despic-
able, facile.” Then there is the growing belief that art is by
no means the universal expression for man’s exalted leisure
moments. That in itself is a long story. But why in heaven’s
name should it concern us here? In America we live in storm
cellars or country-retreats. It is bitter to survive; it is bitter
to find ears. We are not naturally a race of writers and artists.
It is still a thrilling struggle to be that here. Stealthily, to have
done something well in the line of our own traditions remains
a secret delight and a social crime. The bleakness of our situa-
tion here compared with the easy brilliance of my friends’ in
Paris (where Doucet the gownmaker collects mss. of Jacques
Baron, aged 17) calls for a reserve of vitality and courage that
is scarcely ever needed there. For this reason, one may be happy
here, although the consuls in the skyscrapers still turn their
thumbs down for us, and our position remains desperate and
precarious enough.
Again the literary production of the super-realists is bastard.
Of what value are these tedious and tepid dreams, these diffuse
poems in prose, these wearisome manifestoes couched in an
habitual imagery and an inverted syntax. They have begun with
logic; let them cast off their literary robes; let them speak rea-
sonably. Their field is the quartier St. Denis, in a barricade.
Revolution, the race-track, the political arena, the stock market.
Sell the French franc until the government falls again and again.
Betray the country! Go over to the Riffs! (*) But no, they
cannot quit being litterateurs. And I find their literature con-
temptible and woefully easy to account for. How pretentious
and literary, after all, is this:
Pour peu que m'y sollicite la fievre, je m’y trouverais plus
dispos qu}en Vhabituelle luddite.
In the several months which have intervened since first writing this protest events have con-
spired to give my words an air of prophecy: news has come recently that the Dadas, alias Super-
realists, have shifted their objectives to political revolution, the majority turning Bolshevist and the
others Fascist. Breton, Aragon and Soupault, who were the founders of LittSrature, have now
taken over Clarfi, the radical weekly, and named it La Guerre CivileI
l8
Mais non: et dans la fievre seule minter esse ce que j’y perds
et son evaluation.
No, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE LITERARY.
LEAVE THAT TO US. We wish to write immortal prose
and verse. Ultimately to be immortal and ponderable.
MATTHEW JO8EPH8ON
DECAPAQE
TU T’ABRUTIS
Tu restes le stylo aux aguets
devant ta feuille de papier blanc
in-quarte raisin verge bouffant
Tu es vide,
tu ne trouveras done pas la forte metafore
qui fore en seton la boite cranienne
Gratte ta chevelure comme une allumette dans la nuit.
Eblouis
A Quoi bon!
J’ai envie de partir a Honolulu
pour faire Tamour avec une hawaienne myxoedemateuse.
Et pourtant!
Je suis las des fesses et de la litterature
Un reve ne tient jamais dans le creux de la main
Plus de peinture, plus de deputes,
Plus de pointure, plus de deputes,
Plus d’armee, plus de frontieres,
Surtout qk: < " 3? .v ’
Les douaniers salissent mes chemises en cellular avec leurs
doigts
ils font une croix sur ma valise et dans mon coeur
Le gendarme consulte les fiches antropometriques
et la conque de mon oreille
il fait le salut militaire au militaire qui m’exaspere
la devant
A 23 aujourd’hui, e’est bas
II faut changer de monnaie et de langue
Desagreable. N’etes vous pas de mon avis?
II n’y a rien de plus dangereux qu’un militaire
et qu’un homme convaincu.
J’ecrirai mon poeme plus tard.
Je. Ca suffit la signature.
EMILE MALE8PINE
•9
BORD DE MER
IES GURSINS dorment barbe bleue
Danse danse le sable est rose
Les vagues d’huile ouvrent leurs yeux
^ le pecheur reste en penitence
ta main est douce comme une mousse
les crevetes sont dans les trous
les sourires sous ta voilette
les mauvaises langues partout
sur la plage sois sage et nage
vite boutonne ton corsage les pigeons sages
sont ceux qui restent a la maison
les belles dames sur la Groisette
filent filent un brin de navette
grosses lunettes mor aux rats
deux fois deux quatre et cetera
c’est cela promenade des anglais
et puis I kiss you s’il vous plait
bout du nez bout des doigts doigt de oour
l’amour se jou a pigeon vole
le bonheur a saute-mouton
et l’ennui au trente et quarante
je vous rend vos automobiles
mais rendez moi mes blancs moutons
EMILE MALE8PINE
REALISM? VALUES?
PORTRAITS?
OING DOWN theatre aisles the time is ripe to close in
from behind—slap! Each arrogance always so fem-
inine that no matter how rough, one makes no impres-
sion without speaking their language. I refer to the
girls. Because on coming into the Automat whom
should I see but Alice bussing the dishes. This could be felt as
distinctly a shock, de-grade, it being understood that, tho not
of richest or oldest stock, position may be attained by neatness
or cleanliness. De-watered the flower, now shewn to be eye-
watering and a bad end was nigh. Could I pass by, together
20
with the ladies of the Metropolitan Opera House, who, gather-
ing their cloaks about them very closely and with hauteur seek
their conveyance with dignity and speed befitting position (dis-
tinguished). My heart directed, but oh my mind poor Alice
was so inefficient a bus-girl. I quickly hastened to the ermine
counter, asking for those articles a modern girl needs. (Of
course this isn’t true, I haven’t any money.) Never the less
Alice soon gathered her cloak very closely and with hauteur,
hastening to a cab, unobserving, sister to scions of wealth in being
incapable of manual or mental function.
I don’t mean this as typical since totally unlike is that little
girl, now sixteen, destined for stardom. Altho of a family no
one of whom were theatrical, she was blessed by a mother of
intelligence who provided for training vocal and dancing, thus
shielding her from the real evils of the show business which
result from lack of equipment rendering the girls susceptible to
dangers and damages of managers and dancing instructors too
obsexed to be human. Knowing one thousand routines—tap,
toe, classical, acrobatic—quick, hastening, eager, her flying feet
had Gracie Georgia skyward tilt on stardom while others wait
below, unrecognized.
i.e. “Stevie”, said Joseph Conrad shyly, “I like your Gen-
eral”; even tho that author had acquired at that date legends of
notoriety and a glow of one destined, it can now appear, to die
young, natheless his energy remains. Tho not by necessity his-
tory, his life in excellent hands assumes the value of a “novel”
of exceptional entertainment value. Stephen indubitably a
dynamo peculiarly stationed in a milieu of awkward, unconti-
nental, romantic character; anxiously he sought explosions, and
without affectation did what he needed to do. However one can
gratifyingly hope that in time advertising will require the ser-
vices of our bright, efficient young men now engaged in social
work for the continent here in the United States. There will
be of course signed work for the best establishments, which can
encourage a “style” employing a fine note of scorn which will
recognize insufficiencies in a “culture” only appreciative, and
prepare to exploit those constants of “energy expenditure” inde-
pendent of stabilized cultural significance. Alternatively these
best brightest may personally display talents if the stage expands
or movies demand. Let us pray. Nothing will be changed.
May, 1926.
JOHN RIORDAN
21
BANAL STORY
SO HE ate an orange, slowly spitting out the seeds. Out-
side the snow was turning to rain. Inside the electric
stove seemed to give no heat and rising from his writ-
ing table he sat down upon the stove. How good it
felt. Here at last was life.
He reached for another orange. Far away in Paris
Mascart had knocked Danny Frush cuckoo in the second
round. Far off in Mesopotamia 21 feet of snow had fallen.
Across the world in distant Australia the English Cricketers
were sharpening up their wickets. There was Romance.
Patrons of the arts and letters have discovered The
Forum, he mused. It is the guide, philosopher and friend
of the thinking minority. Prize short stories — will their
authors write our best sellers of tomorrow?
You will enjoy these warm, homespun, American tales,
bits of real life on the open ranch, in crowded tenement or
comfortable home and all with a healthy undercurrent of
humor.
I must read them, he thought.
His thoughts raced on. Our children’s children—what of
them? Who of them? New means must be discovered to
find room for us under the sun. Shall this be done by war
or can it be done by peaceful methods?
Or will we all have to move to Canada?
Our deepest convictions—will Science upset them? Our
civilization—is it inferior to older orders of things.
And meanwhile in the far off dripping jungles of Yucatan
sounded the chopping of the axes of the gum choppers.
Do we want big men—or do we want them cultured?
Take Joyce. Take President Coolidge. What star must
our college students aim at? There is Jack Britton. There
is Dr. Henry Van Dyke. Gan we reconcile the two? Take
the case of Young Stribling.
And what of our daughters who must make their own
Soundings? Nancy Hawthorne is obliged to make her own
Soundings in the sea of life. Bravely and sensibly she faces
the problems which come to every girl of eighteen.
Are you a girl of eighteen? Take the case of Joan of Arc.
Take the case of Bernard Shaw. Take the case of Betsy
Ross.
Think of these things in 1925—Was there a risque page
in Puritan History? Were there two sides to Pocahontas?
22
Are modern paintings—and poetry—Art? Yes and No.
Take Picasso. Have tramps codes of conduct? Send your
mind adventuring.
There is Romance everywhere. Forum writers talk to
the point, are possessed of humor and wit. But they do not
try to be smart and are never long winded.
Live the full life of the mind exhilarated by new ideas,
intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.
And meanwhile stretched flat on a bed in a darkened
room in his house in Triana, Manuel Garcia Maera lay
with a tube in each lung drowning with the pneumonia. All
the papers in Andalucia devoted special supplements to his
death which had been expected for some days. Men and
boys bought full length colored pictures of him to remem-
ber him by and lost the picture they had of him in their
memories by looking at the lithographs. Bull fighters were
very relieved he was dead because he did always in the bull
ring the things they could only do sometimes. They all
marched in the rain behind his coffin and there were one
hundred and forty-seven bull fighters followed him out to
the cemetery where they buried him in the tomb next to
Joselito. After the funeral everyone sat in the cafes out
of the rain and many colored pictures of Maera were sold
to men who rolled them up and put them away in their
pockets.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
i
u
o
X
X
<
z
z
<
I
>-
ID
23
GEORGES PAPAZOFF
GEORGES PAPAZOFF was born in Bulgaria. His
family, one of the oldest in the country, is covered with
glory; and legends which form part of Bulgarian
folklore have grown up around its more prominent
members. Georges as a boy had little liking for school
life. He had hardly read Robinson Crusoe before he imitated
him—and this in the heart of winter, on an island in a frozen
lake, and for background the virgin forests of the Balkans. He
lived on wild plums which he found beneath the covering of
snow. This bucolic episode lasted as long as a box of matches;
he came home barefoot like the son of a prophet. He began
work on a farm, spending his vacations at the lycee, where his
parents thought they should send him—as was proper for
respectable merchants of a little provincial town. He was their
favourite child. When of age he became a comitadji, taking
advantage of this venture to increase the probabilities of love.
Nevertheless, the shoemaker’s trade attracted him; and then,
after publishing several articles on Russian art, he did not hesi-
tate to fight a duel with the director of the State Bank who
frequented the house of Papazoff’s mistress. He felt himself
insulted, but in reality it was the financier who laid prior claims
on this woman with her eyes as soft as those of a sleeping bird.
The Sofia prefect of police classed the incident by exclaiming,
“Vive la’amour.” Papazoff went into penance, accompanied by
some book of Dostoevsky and a good Mauser—selecting as the
scene of his exploits the independent theatre of Macedonia.
Later he picked himself the profession of architect, which ended
in disaster by his constructing a hangar for Zeppelins at Sofia
which was carried off by some fatherless wind. This was evi-
dence to him that he was destined for a subtler kind of architec-
ture and thus he became what we usually call a painter. His
painting is like the man. We will never know whether his
painting is done to explain his temperament or whether some
pure germ of painting seized his body to find there its incarna-
tion. The bey Billouk, a great friend of his father, summons
him to Constantinople each time the needs of nature become
importunate. In the “Intran” some time back, there was an
advertisement: “Loft to rent (if possible in the Quartier Mont-
parnasse). Address Papazoff, 28 rue Vavin.”
Tr. by Kenneth Burke.
MARX LOEBE
24
LE VAISSEAU FANTOME
BY GEORGES PAPAZOFF
PIERROT
PHOTOGRAPH BY MOHOLY-NAGY
1
MASQUE ET MANDOLIN RAISINS ET VIOLON
BY LOUIS MARCOUSSIS
NEW YORK
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAESAR ZWASKA
ANONYMOUS LETTER
cerebral flower faints on the list of the categories of the skies
he is a star a convinced mandarin on a calling card
deserts the physical twofold brilliance which cuts the hour
with its scissors
the spiral ether in the revolving door of respectful salutations
swells the stairways which mister goat is mounting painfully
mustard plasters are also animals with heads and diverse
spectacles of foggy vitality adopted to every circumstance
a cloudy beard surrounds the aureole of nickelplated jesus
who shines in our collective heart a seed in the sliced half
of an apple
jesus a confidential agent
I beg you please to burst the door of x as if
TRISTAN TZARA
NOCES
a Igor Strawtnsky
WHEN THE sun with gold and priceless gold, had
encumbered enough the shops of ardency and
swollen the breasts of the earth, these began to
throw to the sky their food of fire and unfathom-
able depth.
God’s hand feels the pulse of the earth. Even the fearless
the blood whips the music, while ascends from the parents
of the betrothed, the dignified lament. Suckled with vigor,
with the ticking of time and of the passing train, it’s here
that life is cut as the worm and that the child falls in the
column which follows the eternal moaning of the flesh. With-
in each pore of the skin, there is a garden containing all the
beasts of the jungle of anguish.—One must be able to look
with an eye as big as a city upon the glass through which one
dances, takes one’s love out boating, sports about and gam-
bols. From each note it mounts, from the lines of the palm
into trees, it descends from animals to roots, for each note
is big and sees.
Sowing songs over earth’s epidermis
under the tree overloaded with musical symbols
crawling over the calcareous knoll among lizards and tomb-
stones, resinous and chalky sheds, cemetery exuding turpen-
tine devoured by the eager claws set in semi-circle open like
a grin.
25
The hairy breeze will sweep the shores, the molecules and
the horns. And the essence which is wrung from the cloud
and trickles, transforms the whole country into an eye weep-
ing away its mournful destiny in the ocean. On the velvet
of dreams, night aloof, gives birth to a ship.
Morning morning.
Morning of crystal, morning of bread baking, morning of
maddened hives, morning smelling of stables, morning of
squirrels and streamlets of cool brook water. Morning that
smells good, breath suspended from the lips of life.
TRISTAN TZARA
DANS SON CHATEAU DE
PORCELAIN E
N VOUS a egorge pendant que je dormai
C’est le berger Grois-tu vetu de ses etoiles
on vous a egorge vos larmes sont si belles
et les reves Font su ainsi que mes mains jointes
L’hirondelle apportait des mots dans tous les cieux
mais les mots pour ma vie n’ont pas de sens juste
et des fleurs d’infinis que j’ai bu a genoux
et ces hasards d’illusions et de ma vie
Le ciel est constelle du grand art de l’amour
Le ciel est constelle par les yeux de nos femmes
et les nuages sont de purs amours qui meurent
Mais
de ces astres-la
rient les plus ephemeres
Gelle-la de ses dents L’ete les bal cons clairs
et mille liserons dans les vagues de sang
Cueillait la grande etoile de l’amour absolu
O la magie
soudain le matin affole
s’envolait de ses yeux comme une infeodee
au destin surprenant de l’ombre majeste
Les gla’ieuls etalaient leurs ongles de luxure
et les jets d’eau tout nus ombrageaient ma fortune
JACQUES BARON
26
J’AI RENCONTRE
OIGI LA nuit si froide sur les berges Mysteres
A-t-elle quelque soupir
Elle est
etrangement plus belle que la mer
plus livide et plus nue que la plus belle etoile
Gours la rive cours le bruit ainsi que nos malheurs
II est un inconnu Miserable qui rouge
aux baisers ecclatants
Regrets effleureront les fleurs aupres des eaux
Madame marche Silence des troupeaux
Quelque tige eclata pour souligner la jambe
et le satin des cieux eclatera en rouge
JACQUES BARON
SCHNEETHLEHEM
1
MIT SEINER Dampfmaschine treibt
Er Hut um Hut aus seinem Hut
Und stellt sie auf in Ringelreihn
Wie man es mit Soldaten tut.
Dann fiillt er jeden Hut voll Blut
Und reibt sich ein mit Fahnenfett
Sagt Kakadu zum Kakasie
Und steigt Gewehr bei Fuss ins Bett.
2
Durch Gummibander an dem Hut
Schnellt er hiniiber in den Frack
Und blasst damit es niemand hort
Das Muskelhorn in einen Sack.
Das gross Ei der Hexerei
Das laut die Trebertrommel schlagt
Hat ihm das Fenster vollgeklext
Das er vor seinem Schweisstuch tragt.
HAN3 ARP
27
RECEPTION
(Recollection)
THERE IS no true language other than that of the heart.
It is not another speech I envy, not some other than that
which was given me, which I perceive is in myself, and
in which I seek to aquit myself fittingly at all times. It
is so little distorted by impurity, that surely you will not
refuse me your welcome. I ask you to receive me and ask it
without pride and without humility. Will it be permitted me
to come close to you? I have come to you with no clever artifices
nor fine gestures. I have come to you only with what belongs
to me, that which is myself, and I know it is very slight, and
you may well laugh at such unpretentious baggage. And yet I
attempt the path that leads directly to you.
You must not think me too forward. I have no desire to be
seductive and certainly none to educate. There are enough
others to do that without me. Their role is excellent—although
I desire none of it. It is not pride, I feel, it is by no means pride
which directs my words, so much as the need of an indulgent
presence. I am in need of you. I am writing you what I should
never dare to say to you.
And perhaps after I have written it I shall be full of remorse
and confusion. But for this once I am letting myself be guided
by my weakness and by heaven knows what persistent hope of
assuagement, of gentle warmth and human joy. I come toward
you only as a man, and not one of the strongest, and very likely
one of the most uncertain of men.
I should like you to receive me as the peasants do the people
who knock at their door. What freshness in this dwelling place!
The pump drips; the hornets are asleep on the ceiling.—“Would
you mind giving me a glass of water? Outside the place is broil-
ing like a Christmas turkey.—A glass of water? why, we are well
enough off to give you a glass of wine.”
Yes, I should like to move you by these country scenes. They
encourage me, and perhaps they may not displease you either. I
wish you the same fortune among the groups that form in the
summer evenings before the houses which are dead from heat.
And then the air is become so pure that as it glides past your
curtains it seems to come to appease you.—Let us go out, you
say; and you drag your chairs out in front of the door. In the
gathering night the leaves spread themselves and sigh feebly.
28
Truly, it is not so bad to live. The eyes of the women are full
of shadow, but their hearts are soft and turn toward you. Calm
night, neither thy grandeur nor thy silence affright us, so well
dost thou know to soften them with graces and delights when
there will be nothing but the velvet birds that promenade under
the savant stars. Indulgent night, human night, thou hast laid
thyself upon our souls with such softness that they bow gently
and respond likewise with a gesture of welcome. It is this
moment which I have chosen to approach myself, and like a
neighbor with unbottoned vest, and dragging slippers, who from
behind his hedge bids you good evening,—it is thus that I want
to approach you and I know that you will not repulse me.
Do not mind that I speak to you of my little ambitions and
my petty chagrins. For the moment it will be a pleasant grotes-
querie. You know quite well that I wish to speak about all of
us tonight. I regarded you before coming, and each of us with
his mannerisms, his dreams, his habitual tom-tom, seemed like
some monster engulfed in his eternal solitude. But here we are
come together again, and how much it seems to me that we have
created in common a richness of which we certainly did not
know ourselves the depositaries.
God knows, however, how all of us (You and I, I say
naively) are ridiculous, trivial and miserable. Regard this crea-
ture who is always disoriented, who wails over himself, who
adores himself, who abuses himself, and who truly lives neither
for heaven nor earth. He eats, he gesticulates, he makes love,
he sleeps. The worst of it is that he thinks. And what does he
think, the wretch. He thinks of himself incessantly, he thinks
that he thinks; and his thought appears so capital to him that he
desires to disseminate it about him as I am doing now. By good
luck this farce comes to an end, and your nice gentleman is
stretched out, his limbs nicely arranged, his mouth still bab-
bling with fear, in this bit of earth that dared to soil his shoes.
Let him repose in peace! He had not been very happy.
Let him rest in peace. There about the fresh earth that has
just been disturbed, I remark a puff of wind, and the agitation
of confused presences. What! Isn’t it all over! Are not six
feet of earth enough to hide a human animal up to the time of
his final destruction! I hesitate to recognize you, I recognize
you, I rediscover you, with a desire to laugh and console myself,
—thoughts of this man believed dead. Smiles and tears, dis-
quietudes, struggles, hopes, defeats, you who subsist, imponder-
able riches, you whom we receive as our patrimony, whom we
shall keep, whom we shall develope with whatever power we
have, whom we shall transmit in our turn, and who will live the
precarious life of the living.
29
Men of the future, it is you also whom I desire to approach;
it is above all of you whom I solicit a welcome. Do not think
me proud: I am merely accomplishing the task which has been
assigned to me. Feeble as my voice is, perhaps something would
be amiss, if I did not surmount my own weakness. Upon some
night which is like the night I was picturing to you, with this
same friendliness of things, in the heart of just such recollections
as I found myself in, if upon one of our great human evenings,
this voice reach to you and you receive it without disdain—in
whatever place I may be, you shall know that I rejoice.
I should not have put on again such a sumptuous apparel in
order to please you; but one’s garb changes and perhaps, my
words, bare as they are will reach you more easily than more
dazzling words. And if I repress my emotions as much as I
dare, do not accuse me of coldness: others have spoken very well
before me, others will speak too well after me, and I fear much
a vain accent because I do not know how to subdue my voice.
As I speak to you am I not after all in a house which is strange to
me? And if I should speak in loud tones:—“Who is this, you
will say, who thinks he alone is interesting!”—You find nothing
here but one of you.
At least I have done what I could. And if I can do more I
shall do it.
(Tr. by Matthew Josephs on)
MARCEL ARLAN D
HAVRE-NEW YORK
HAVRE IS a city of masts and of rain, inhabitated by
bales of cotton, Brazilians and hygronomes. It holds
the record for fresh water and the record for salt
water. It is at Havre that actresses, poets and mar-
shals go on board.
My friend, Jerome Coeur, walks ahead of me, up the gang
plank. We approach the “Loustic” (Olympic, Titanic, Maj-
estic, Loustic). The sailing is set for six o’clock. The bell on
shore, suspended from the sky by a cordage of sea gulls, already
sounds a long rallying in feathers.
Jerome Coeur sighs:
—“Again a departure to the screech owls!”
30
He was a young man with a warm look, with a cheek of
faience, a planetary eye. Molded in a light grey suit, legs with-
out genuflexions, shoulder extended with rubber, solitary fingers
like cow’s hooves, he longs for fresh blood, the sea air, boxing.
He carries a little trunk full of socks, a lorgnette and New
York.
I hurry behind him, pen in hand.
—“Jerome, what kind of weather is it?”
—“It rains!”
The Loustic frees itself from the rubbish of cables, anchors,
women, from plaits of hemp; molting; suddenly appears smooth
and new, serpent, fish, gelatine. It glides upon a sea with cab-
bages, with a sound of screws, snails and cabin boys. Already,
yonder, the coast of France shades off. A block of houses
becomes an ant hill; a tree, pipe; the estuary, string to cut
butter. An odor of gramineous plants, of cattle, of tar gives up,
and suddenly goes under. A daughter of Caux is plunged in up
to her headdress. Soon the whole of France is only a horizontal
line. And already, the evening breaks this line.
At table we make the acquaintance of our heroine. You of
course thought that sooner or later I was going to pull a woman
out of my box of tricks. Here she is. Marcelle is twenty-one,
she has several sous, the wit of a swallow, a plum coloured dress.
She changes her poodle every time she changes her hat. In
storms she has a muff of white bear. When the wind quiets
down, she slips on colocynth gloves. In short a French woman
like many another: a little eatable heart, a pair of silk stockings
and a powder box. . The rest into the bargain.
Besides all are French on the Loustic. The Dutch, in polder
gloves, are from the lie de France; the Yankees come from
Nice; a Spaniard speaks of Montparnasse; the Brazilians, the
Peruvians are originally from Auvergne; the Swedes come from
Ardeche and the Poles from Picardy. The little boys have an
air of Toulon, the little girls of La Rochelle. A golden Chinese
springs from Roche-Guyon.
They serve French food, measured, luke warm, in the form
of hills, wheat, acacias.
After dinner, upon the bridge, one smokes, one reads, a la
Franqdise. Marcelle reads Marcel (Prevost, what!)
3i
But little by little France recedes to larboard. To starboard
America shows her nose. Marcelle becomes more fantastic, eats
cakes, drinks whiskey. I speak to her with my whole heart, she
speaks to me of the “Metropolitan.”
Herds of bison in the firmament graze on the shore of a river
of Velay. Then all the cows calve, and already the bear of the
Rocky Mountains walks with his step of stone into a clay pipe
canon. A lamb comes up to the threshhold of my pen, then
sneezing disappears into the Cevennes. And here the hog, the
buffalo, and Wall Street. The ocean is iridescent with cod, with
whales. An odor of the Mississippi invades the hatchways.
Little by little the Swedes become Swedish again; the Cubans,
Cuban; the Spaniards, Spanish; the Greeks, Hellenes; the
English, Irish; the French, American. Marcelle puts on a rain
coat; eats corn, bacon; reads the New York Herald with glasses.
She speaks of dollars, of the Mexican Eagle. She walks on the
bridge, cane in hand. She buys a Bible.
As we approach New York, I feel my fantasy turn to Love.
The sky, the water, the currents impregnate my clothing, my
heart. I become more and more pale. I offer Marcelle a cigar
holder, ten Wyoming bonds, Fifth Avenue. Jerome Coeur dis-
pleases me. He swings about, shaves, becomes smooth. I ask
him:
—“Jerome, what kind of weather is it?”
—“It rains!”
Marcelle, Marcelle, today you are mine. Liberty opens her
arms to me. Yours feel Los Angeles, Saint-Louis. Herds of
beavers swim in a stream of cotton, rigid and webbed, like bad
angels. Giraffes lift toward the twenty-eighth story their ser-
pent necks with spectacles. Marcelle gives me her mouth, her
breasts. New York. Odor of iron, of coffee, of publicity, of
Remington, of Rockefeller. New York. Young men of Louisi-
ana, high upon the stilts of thigh bones. Women of silver upon
the pavements of azure. New York. New York.
New York! Everyone descends!
J08EPH DELTEIL
ANTHOLOGY
KENNETH BURKE
I BOUGHT a seed and planted it
a tree sprang up I tended it
through the dry summer watered it
the apples ripened in the fall
I broke the apples open and I found
the bitter ash of days
The garden was rich and blighted
thorns crowded through the wall
I watched an empty calendar
wait
Wait
something is waiting and hidden
magnificent kisses everlasting fame
around the corner of next week between
the edges of two days
Wait only
I shall heap your lap with pears
oranges nectarines and rubies
around your neck a chain of afternoons
your head crowned with forgetfulness
Wait only
a tense man in a narrow house
waiting without memory or hope
asking for much too much expecting nothing
A rain of days like ashes out of the sky
ROBERT M. COATES
Dipping an adroit hand into his hat he found:
Successively, a patent razor, gin, a ukulele, five cigar
bands,, 3-in-l, a jackknife with broken blades, a portable
bathtub and a Sunday Times, as well as freckles, Matisse, an
aeroplane and a white rabbit. The last he gave to the White
Queen, who ran away.
The red-haired man burst into genuine tears, they did
not change to pearls. He went to a dance in Harlem. Sud-
33
denly he held a toy pistol to his head, pulled the trigger and
on a given chord he crumpled to the floor. Was he the
freckled man who died repeating
—I sent her flowers with regrets, flowers regretfully, my
deep regrets and flowers?
HART CRANE
Jesus I saw crossing Times Square
with John the Baptist and they bade me stop
their hands touched mine
Visions from the belly of a bottle
The sea white white
the flower in the sea
the white fire glowing in the flower
and sea and fire and flower one
the world is one, falsehood and truth
one, morning and midnight, flesh and vision
one
I fled along the avenues of night
interminably and One pursued
My bruised arms in His arms nursed
my chest against His bleeding chest
my head limp against his shoulder
MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
Buy 300 steel at the
market buy 300 steel
at the market buy 300
steel
His face melted into the telephone
his lips curved with hello and dreamed
the vulcanized rubber eyes
with a hello there was a lake beneath
the Bowling Green 6000 trees
and hello Bowling Green the noise of waters
under a curdled sky hello
I dove into the lake hello
34
into the lake as green hello
as Mr. Kahn hello hello
as green as Bowling Green
I’ll make a note of it goodbye and rain
suddenly falling down fell steel and copper
lead railways cotton rubber falling
rain steadily falling public utilities
always a good buy
a good I’ll make a note of it
buy goodbye goodbye
GORHAM B. MUN80N
It was an arduous task. He surmounted his intangible
difficulties with precision. The man must be a genius. His
tuition cost a great deal. We went to the museum.
Theory is better than practice. Words are the man. The
man is a window or a door. A battledore or double door.
Out of a door the picador. The door adores the picador the
picador the matador. The matador adores dormice. He
will stay for lunch.
It is probable that he will be punctual punctual
punctual and papa why is the man punctual punctual
punctual because he is punctual punctual. The rain
descends. Gently the rain descends the infinitely
gentle rain the rain gently descending and I am
bored. Manifestations are geometrical not ethical.
MALCOLM COWLEY
Hurry
at a quarter after seven
nothing, at a quarter after eight
nothing, the aim is nothing, the pursuit
hurried
And so he climbed the hill
breathless, reached the summit, found it bare
of memories and galloped down the slope
the Baron asks your company to dinner
hurry
Up other hills to other summits hurried
down other slopes to other vallies hurried
hurry at a quarter after seven
nothing, at a quarter after eight
nothing
WALTER 3. HANKEL
The earth trembled in all its members
cracked open to reveal its secret subways
stones from the cornice shattered at his feet
Manhattan was destroyed by definition
There is nothing human in the death of crowds
human only to climb
a lone man climbing the highest tower climbing
along the shivering ledges (he reached the peak
where rose the flagstaff, clasped it with his arms
climbed)
Whose laughter floats in the air above the city?
and when the tower bends
like a yellow birch in winter, what the burden
hurled from the summit into the arms of the sun?
SEVERAL
They tied our hands with a chain of days
and dimmed our eyes with hoping
and stuffed our ears with praising
our mouths with plenty
We lived by the rivers of silence
the seas of stupefaction
O friends we shall get drunk, dead drunk
go wallowing in the gutter among the stars
I plucked a daisy of the fields
saying
Monday (she loves me not)
Tuesday (she loves me not)
Wednesday (she loves me not)
she loves me tomorrow
The clap of thunder, the noise of falling rain
MALCOLM COWLEY
36
“COLORS OF LIFE”
IN A big wicked city nearly down town where traffic and
human life was jamming and jagging fast and slowly along,
one hot summer day around three in the afternoon there
came walking along the street nearly down town a couple,
husband and wife, who were one and close to three score
years, nearly life’s average end. The woman carried in her
hands an open parasol and a book, the man a hard thumping
cane and a book. They trudged along slowly, these two who
were but one, and came to where two busy streets met and double
crossed. To the end of the walk they went, then into the street
stepped both. Turning around the man removes his hat. With
the open book in his hands, full uplifted eyes dimming unto the
blue sky, his silent thoughts were thought. Closing the book,
the woman opened hers and started to sing and they not being
much noticed until then. Those in hearing distance heard her
voice, some stopped, others looked and others kept on their fast
and slow way. A wonderful mellow voice was being heard.
Some came closer, while others drew closer into a crowd draw-
ing others.
With her mellow voice she drew life and the different grades
of life into a big crowd of life mostly sham. In a big wicked
city nearly down town where traffic and human life was jam-
ming and jagging fast and slowly along.
She stopped singing and spoke to them about the good and
bad ways of us all and telling how to make good better and bad
less. She told things about herself, how she found the right way
and of a girl of her’s who had gone wrong to the bad.
Some sordid ones in the crowd sizzled evil reflections on her
body and soul, and others said kind and good things of and about
her. She knew, even heard such things said while she was busy
talking to the good and bad of life’s life.
Then again her wonderful voice started singing. Few left
and more came into the crowd of life, every one a different world
of life. She stops singing. Then the man limped forward and
told of a wayward boy of his hell-bound. They changed back
and forth speaking and singing to changing odd life of odd life.
Meantime, in a big wicked city nearly down town where traffic
and human life was jamming and jagging fast and slowly along,
street cars passing by fast and slow carrying human life, a crowd
and from them some looked and some others jumped off. Some
in the cars laughed, made fun and idle remarks and some drivers
stopped their dumb beasts, looked and listened. They also said
something, and automobiles stopped, the occupants had their say
then would go on to life’s acts.
37
“Extra, double extra 1! Bloody murder in the big sky lark
hotel. Train wreck. Limiteds collide head on. Hundred
killed.”
People looked out the windows from high and low buildings
at the crowd of life, had their say and a lot at that. The fire
department goes rambling, rumbling by in double gong dinging
and ding gonging scaring fear into humans. “Bow-bow-wow.”
Dog fight in the street, big black and little white dog chewing
each other and little dog licked. “Bow-wow-wow.”
Men passed in and out the saloon on the corner, married,
single, other conditions and classes of life’s graded life’s acts.
Some sober, some drunk, some sane, some insane, some leaning
against the building their thoughts weary of life and afraid of
death. In the alley nearby white and black kids were going it
hot, sweating over the square tumbling dirty bony loaded
marbles. Black kid, “Come seben eleben, for de big water-
mellon, ha, dats it. Come seben eleben again, ha-ha-ha, dats it,
de fat juicy bacon.” White kid, “Come seven eleven for a pint
of booze and a game of pool, come again for a dance with the
gal, a oyster and liquor stew.” Little hungry dirty children,
some homeless, together with little children of plenty and no
want were in the crowd of life.
The hurry-up auto that gives free rides comes along and an
old gray haired dippy dip pinched by a dick gets behind gray
iron bars. Fashionable women of wealth, others of tricky society
fame, good and bad mingled in and out the crowd of life’s
ins and outs. Women all ages, some virtuous others sinners, in
silks, satins, tatters of dirty rags were there in life with life’s life
its acts. Across the street a man drops dead, few minutes later
an automobile runs over and kills a woman and child. Two
street cars collide, another runs off the track across the street into
a dry goods store window, no one hurt, miracle of kind fate.
Uncle Ike down the street grabs hold of a passerby, wants to sell
him a ford, watch, cast off new suit or glass stone, maybe a derby
hat. There is an argument in the store over two cents then a
fight and passerby grabs Ikey’s mothy matted beard and biffs
him a whack on his drooping long nose. Crowds gather inside
and outside, a cop rushes in, another cop does the same, then a
cop rushes out for the hurry-up auto, passerby is pinched.
“Extra, extra, Judge and lawyer fist cuff it out in the City
Hall.” Somebody yells, “Let ’em alone.” “Extra, preacher’s
wife kills self and baby.” The fire department goes by again,
rambling, rumbling in double gong dinging and ding gonging,
false alarm, fireman killed in collision. The big fat cop Mike
on the beat comes by squeezes into the crowd, rubbers around,
squeezes out winking, then cops his coppy beat.
38
“Extra, extra, latest out, comely chorus girl kills married
banker. Read all about it. Rich hot spicy stuff. Extra, extra,
get a extra this one.” People pushing, elbowing, squeezing
through the changing crowd of life to buy the extra hot spicy
rich double life stuff. Two airplanes collide three thousand feet
up, one falls into the street the other on top of a skyscraper. No
one hurt, another modern miracle.
Two pretty blonde women get into a fight and have a regular
hair pulling contest before a big crowd of graded life’s rubber-
necks. Said one, “You’ll go to hell for this, damn you, don’t you
know he’s married?” And the other said, “O, rats, to hell with
it, that’s nothing, I am married too.” Two cops rush up and
rush in and pinch the two blondes with a free auto ride, and soon
another extra is out, another triangle hair pulling contest. Little
Italy the boot black on the corner did a rushing business brush-
ing unfortunate men clean, guilty and innocent, of blonde hairs.
In and out the crowd were giddy girls, freakish dudes, bums,
beggars, drunks, society women, bankers, merchants, junkmen
and icemen this hot day.
In the crowd was an old gray haired crippled woman bent
with age and in her misery, among good and evil the acts of life
mostly double sham. She had by her side a dirty white panting
dog that wandered in among the wandering crowd of life acts
of good and evil mostly sham.
A freakish dude youth with his pretty face blonde girl with
freckles, foggy blue eyes, an artificial form on flimsy loud rags
come walking along the street nearly down town where traffic
and human life was jamming and jagging fast and slowly along,
came to the changing crowd of life, stopped and worked their
way into it alongside the old woman and dirty white panting
dog. Stood there paying no attention to the singing, but rub-
bered around and were talking foolish like two born illfated
fools of lost destiny. The dirty dog rubbed against his creased
white pants, he kicks and curses it, takes his silk handkerchief
wipes the dirt off then his mouth off, turns around and said to
freckles his giddy blonde gal, “Come on, that woman in there
singing is a little bit off and funny. She’s a nut.” His blondy
gal freckles with foggy blue eyes, an artificial form on flimsy
loud rags giggled loud and cruel then said, “That’s so, come on.”
Just then a drunken bum bumped into her and nearly bumped
her down and she said, “Away you old dopey stew or I’ll have
your crazy nibs pinched.”
The freakish stormy dude with his giddy gal was the son of
the old gray haired cripple woman bent with age aside the dirty
white panting dog and the giddy girl with the freakish stormy
dude was the daughter of the woman singing, her mother with
39
the wonderful mellow voice to life its odd acts. The drunken
bum who bumped into her was her dissipated drunken brother
and the wayward son of those with the books, parasol and hard
thumping cane. Life and the changes of life’s acts, mostly sham,
had changed their lives that none knew one another from the
other, deaf to hear, blind to see.
Later newspapers reports unknown man kills self with gas.
Unknown tramp killed riding between clickety click wheels,
the vibrating half inch rods. Unknown woman taken from river
same day, different parts of the country. Three unknowns bones
back to dust started decaying in potters field. Who were these
three with eyes they had and saw not and ears they had and
heard not, and the wages of sin from sham is death.
CHARLES L. DURBORAW
IN PRAISE OF VIOLENCE
NOTHING IS lost sooner than violence (unless it be
collective.) Only when arm in arm with his brothers
has the individual any lasting strength. War or revo-
lution is all right; between two bombs nothing keeps
man from dreaming of his armchair or his cabbages.
But left alone on the tight rope with no one in front or behind,
a grenade in each hand to kill, every minute, it does not last.
A star bursts in the sky and passes in a veil of fleeting brilliance.
The warm deep darkness remains with its nightingale’s songs, its
quilts, its flakes of hope.
An epoch of violence has just ended—we do not mean the
war, but the one which assailed all the moral defenses. How
short a time it lasted! Does one still remember Dadaism, except
to laugh, to scorn and spit?
Dadaism did not last any more than the length of skirts or a
fashionable colour. It may have been the excess of violence
itself that did it, that collective violence itself more remarquable
for submerging every individual. And everyone breaking his
shell, went crowing to war, in search of the Almighty. Putting
on the airs of a general is becoming but only when heading an
army. A general in an autobus is little more handsome than a
bank clerk.
After Dadaism had scattered its parts and its glands to the
four winds, it ceased to draw attention upon its perpetual virility.
Its acquired impetus only enabled it to go on making love.
40
It so happened that a little piece of Dadaism thought it
could perfectly well invest itself with Sex Quality and fill a
respectable role within the vulva of the mob. The success of
Surrealism is the wedding apparel of this bird of paradise.
They don’t agree any more about Surrealism than they used
to about Dadaism. The same thick swamp subsists. Who is
surrealist, who is not? They know it only at the Central Office—
where everybody is it. Like Dadaism in its time, there remains
the same duplicity among individuals, the same mystification
which is inseparable from all deep outbursts, being after all as
respectable as the latter. A certain appearance of steely vio-
lence, but only an appearance, the call to revolt and the gears
of social revolts complete the analogy.
But is it an analogy? Is it not merely Dadaism going on?
The lacteous appetites of youth, the sufferings of the platter
as we face life ahead of us have replaced however the frenzy of
yesteryear’s embers. One does not repeat such an adventure.
Our rebels of to-day are just suffering from growing pains.
Catholicism in bloom seems to be dipping its wick pretty well
in its candle-wax.
The equivocal depth of this movement streaming with a new
freshness, with the jewels of a poetry paraded somewhat “a la
Jeanne d’Arc” is not without some fragrance of the dark, for-
merly assumed by Dadaism. Its leader will not cling, when the
day comes he will remove the palm of his hand and with a
beautiful crash the dust will change appearance.
In spite of ourselves who, may be, had given too much scope
to our tameness, this example makes us shake our feathers. The
universe has not yet lost under our teeth its taste of hardness.
With too much confidence, we were keeping our eyes closed,
lying on a bed of pumice stones which was without much trouble
transformed into a comfortable sofa. Eyelids of hot steel and
shark lips, lets stop dreaming and go hunting? We care too
much for public opinion, and we blush for looking unfashion-
able to the snobbish eye, so happy are we that the turn of fashion
is for an easy nonchalance.
The strong hands which lead Surrealism will, no doubt, with-
draw, some day, followed by loud laughter. But there may be
then so many clouds of whipped cream that the whole world will
have again put on its white cloak of the centuries of comfort,
in the insipid asphyxy of prudish suns and moons in corsets?
It matters little, after all. It is a question of our pleasure,
which claims to refresh itself in Violence.
G. RIBEMONT DE88AIGNE8
41
v
AS ONE WHO GUARDS OVER
THE BRILLIANT CAPITOL
I LOVE the walk I love the dance the trot
The town in the fog the talk the word
That hangs large above a street. I love
This scored film of mud my boot stirs.
Look this is is my mind and I may give it only
In a lyrical form. I am leaving. Walking away backward
And will telephone you once twice perhaps 3 times.
The indefinite city: “I know only I love my true love!”
■
Gome you don’t know how reasonably I enjoyed
The evening the party pursuing its one state of mind
Conversation.
Today I broached 4 great ventures
Myself director in chief of each.
The campaign will be formidable
The grey gentlemen will listen and slit their purses
The beautiful posters will sing throughout the land
I shall have two telephones always ringing
From behind a tree the tender country lout
Spies the 12 cylinder automobile buttoned
Shiny. The lady mounting at once and driven
Softly softly to the Great White Way
/ had no fear. But you don’t know how brusquely
Interrupting all I rushed uptown to hear
This lady resume. And as the hour grew later
I grew greater and greater!
.
She is the last woman with the Grand Manner stop
In America. Stop—The manner must not stop
I replied. She leaned now a little wearily
Pointing at the frail albino idiot
—Madam I beg you instantly to reclaim
Those monstrous favors to this easy man.
Bestow them on his friend who merits more
Yet asking nothing starves, pines, coughs, sighs,
shivers!—
42
—That moment I could have hewn my right hand off
And cast it into the flame, knowing you would urge
His friend!—
Bah, your man’s a superb jackal.
I’ll chant no more this evening. I’ll be off!
I can go now. Tis no pose in me. I know my sex
I know the way to my home unaided
And the stairs leading to tomorrow morning
I love the flatulent ’bus shaking quailing
And roaring beneath my soles. I am a man
Fit to move with you anywhere; begin a new tale
Forget you; renew a friendship; awake grinning.
I love the walk I love the dance I love the trot
It was not only for words that hang large above a street
“Tone clusters” and all the delicate and strong stuff
I was made rather to give a command clearly
To order a massacre of old men and maids
To direct naval manoeuvers determine sagely
When to retreat when to turn in advance
To give out civil laws to hear testimonials
Receive tithes and genuflections despatch criminals.
Here are implements, wheels, a bench at a window
But oh God, no hands, no eyes, what men!
Gan you work quietly here while I am far away,
Imagining I watch outside as from a window?
As the hour grows later I grow greater and greater
She the last woman with the grand manner is weary
While I have the walk the dance the trot
This scored film of mud my boot stirs.
MATTHEW JO8EPH8ON
THE SUBWAY
IN THE year 1921, it is reported that 639385780 passengers
of both sexes rode on the New York Subways. Although
this figure does not include dead persons, babes in arms, or
public servants of the metropolis (all of whom may ride to
and fro on the subway without expense to themselves) the
figure as it stands is certainly impressive. For if the grand total
43
represents that many individuals, every one of them enjoying
discreet identity; that is to say, if the six million etc. should
differ among themselves in shape, smell, color, and chest meas-
urement, and were to be laid out end to end like paving stones,
the procession or path formed thereby would not only extend
from here to the moon, but I dare say it would extend a con-
siderable distance beyond it. That, indeed, would be an
ASTONISHING SPECTACLE
but as an even more striking illustration of subway efficiency
another graphic measurement might possibly be used. Thus if
all the 639385780 passengers could somehow or other be got
into a mortar, brayed into a pulp of semi-liquid consistency, and
then plastered over the sun, I believe there would be a sufficiency
of the pulp not only to cover the sun, but to such an opaque
depth that not even the tiniest twinkle of light could force its
way through. But
WHAT A TERRIBLE CALAMITY
that would be! For denied its most important source of heat
and light, the world would most certainly freeze. Business
would collapse, stocks fall to unprecedented levels, and with
all its telephones ringing unanswered, the earth would spin for-
ever through the stars, as cold and naked as a door knob. Never-
theless, Mr. Frank Warburg of the Revelation Undergarment
Company, protected from ideas of any such a catastrophe by his
morning newspaper, trotted down the subway steps, deposited
his nickle and leaped
THROUGH THE TURNSTILE
Which act, being pars primo in his morning ritual, Mr. War-
burg thereat hastened with a fixed eye toward an open car door,
and thrusting aside the weaker or less ardent votaries who were
converging toward it, so skilfully employed his elbows as to
thrust himself within and capture the last available seat.
Whereat the gong jangled, the door slithered shut, the train
moved, Mr. Warburg hitched up his trousers, and
WHO’S THAT WAS SHOVING ME?
asked Miss Craig. It was a young man who had lost his balance
and fallen against Miss Craig, a young man in a leghorn hat.
For though every morning and evening the New York Subways
perform a miracle of quantitative transportation (Hannibal
maneuvering his army over the Alps, Xerxes herding his war-
riors over the Hellespont, or Moses engineering the Children
of Israel out of Egypt, performed no vaster feat of transporta-
44
tion than do the officials of the subway twice daily) yet though
the feat may be ever so unparalleled in history, the subway per-
forms its diurnal miracle often at the expense of human comfort,
safety, and at times, even of modesty. For to transport its herds
of passengers the subway must pack them into the cars like so
much breathing meat, and at
A STUPEFYING VELOCITY
project them through the bowels of the metropolis. Thus when
the train lurched forward, the passengers lurched backward,
and upset the young man in the leghorn hat, who in turn had
lurched against Miss Craig, forcing her to tread on Mr. War-
burg’s foot. “Excuse us,” said the young man raising his hat
most politely, and “Certainly. O posolutely!” replied Miss
Craig. Mr. Warburg’s horn rims, however, balefully rose over
the edge of his newspaper, and he said, “Who stepped on my
foot?” But such incidents although occurring with almost pain-
ful regularity are of slight importance, and Miss Craig turning
to her friend Miss Williams and fanning herself the while with
a pretty pink handkerchief, said that it was very overcrowded
in the car. However it is an observation as true as it is useful,
that human beings can suffer in mass much more than they would
ever be able to endure separately. Crushed as they are in the
subway to a jelly of wobbling protoplasm, the discomforts of
overcrowding are overcome by the general resistance of the
group operating as a unit. “Yes. And it’s perfectly suffo-
cating,” Miss Williams agreed, but when Mr. Warburg, having
gloomily stared at Miss Craig for several minutes, disappeared
at last behind his paper and Miss Craig had made a
SAUCY FACE AT HIM
Miss Williams said, “O don’t make me laugh. I’m hot enough
as it is.” A moment later, however, blonde wisps of hair were
fluttering beneath Miss Williams’ hat. For the train now being
projected through the tunnel at a prodigious velocity had
assumed a function similar to that of a plunger in a high pressure
pump. The air thus being compressed by the blunt face of the
speeding train, is forced within through every opening and inter-
stice. This naturally creates a violent circulation of air inside
the cars, which breeze, being augmented by fans playing
draughts of cool air on the heads below them, the heat entails
only a
SLIGHT REDUCTION OF EFFICENCY
among those in transit. “In these hot summer days try Nodoreen.
Harmless. Effective. At all Druggists.” But Miss Craig had
45
hardly finished reading through the advertisement for the second
time when the train reeled round a corner, the flanged jaws of
its wheels screeched, and Miss Craig trying desperately to grab
a strap, dropped her little pink handkerchief. The hankerchief
fluttered down past Mr. Warburg’s newspaper, spread its wings
like a butterfly, and landed gently in his unconscious lap. The
train having taken the curve, and Miss Craig regaining her bal-
ance turned to Miss Williams and said, “Holy Moses 1” Leaving
a blurred trail of lights and spectral faces the train slewed past
Eighteenth street. “What?” said Miss Williams. “Look!”
Miss Craig lowered her eyes. Now if Miss Williams hadn’t
laughed or if their eyes hadn’t met, it might have turned out all
right. The handkerchief might have blown off his lap, or it
might have just slipped onto the floor, or he might have seen it
lying there and passed it up to her if he was gentleman enough.
But he probably was
NOT GENTLEMAN ENOUGH
Miss Williams began giggling, the motion of the train is giggly
anyway, doing her mouth up with a lip stick to make off she
wasn’t laughing, which of course was no use because she lost her
balance and that set them off all over again. And just then that
fat nigger woman saw it lying there, so she began rolling her
eyes trying to hide her big blobber lips with a handkerchief, and
then the man next to Miss Williams saw it, and the young man
who’d fallen over, saw it, and pretty soon everybody in the car
was peeking over their shoulders to take a look at it. Miss Craig
went white and red by turn not daring to look at Miss Williams
for fear she’d scream. And then the man himself began to get
figgety behind his newspaper and the next moment he was star-
ing over it again at Miss Craig. Of course he must have seen
everyone looking in that direction, for he looked down over his
paper and saw it. Or probably he must have just glanced at it,
for he was wearing a baby blue shirt and the handkerchief was
pink. At any rate the difference in color didn’t seem to mean
much to him, for he went behind his paper and when a moment
or two later he coughed and turned to a new page Presto! the
handkerchief had absolutely disappeared. Naturally Miss Craig
and Miss Williams didn’t dare move their eyes one way or the
other, but kept them positively glued to “Nodoreen. Harmless.
Effective.” until finally the train did stop at Canal Street, and
out Miss Craig and Miss Williams wriggled as hard as they
could and then just ran for the exit. As for Mr. Warburg, he
stayed within the shell of his newspaper, and was carried past
his usual station all the way to Rector street. But this is not
extremely unusual in the daily annals of the subway, for occa-
46
sionally through some stroke of fate the conditions surrounding
one unit become so distinct as to strike it off from the rest of the
protoplasm. It thereby attains all the attributes of a discreet
entity, achieves a certain kind of self-sufficiency, and at that
functional moment when by all the laws of organic process it
should detach itself from the mass to proceed in its own par-
ticular direction, the unit, as in this case Mr. Warburg, refuses
to respond to the habitual stimuli, and is carried two or three
stations beyond its accepted destination.
SLATER BROWN
PARIS AT ONE TIME
NAKED AND transparent negroes, taller than the tour
Eiffel, play ball with apricot-coloured cubes . . .
against a cobalt sky.
A typhoon . . . purple-green, whirling ... an
inverted pine-tree. Ah! it is a Christmas tree with all
our gifts upon it. It sways and is sucked into the sea—disap-
pears.
The earth slants up in a plane to the farthest place in the sky.
Open mummy-cases in exact rows ... all the queens of the
world, their heads turned to the left ... lie listening forever to
our words of love ... a smile of unbelief upon their painted
profiles.
The wind gently lifts them from their caskets ... they
become tall plume-pens of many colours . . . emerald, blue,
yellow, black, cerise. They write in the sand, something that
has been forgotten. No one moves them but they continue to
write and slowly the Champs Elysees appears in the foreground
. . . rousseau-like people go walking up and down. A long
line of carrousels slowly fades into place, down the centre of the
avenue . . . from the arch to the concord. They are painted
and golden, but silent and curtained and motionless. All at
once all of the people, walking on the paths and in the groves,
begin to move slowly towards the carrousels . . . when everyone
has disappeared inside the curtains, a silent music begins to
play. The curtains are lifted for a moment . . . there are no
horses, no pigs, or chariots. There are two great spiral blades:
giant augers. The people stand stupidly upon them and wait.
The spirals begin to revolve. They dig themselves rapidly down
into the earth . . . everything disappears. The music too is
under the ground.
47
A pack of red rabbits comes bounding out of a grove at the
right. Their ears back. Their bodies a straight line of speed.
They are stopped in the air. They strain to another leap. They
are compelled to remain motionless. A smile of indifference
points their faces. They slowly change to glistening fish. They
fall into a long line . . . abreast. They close their eyes and
swim towards the river, singing softly in the night.
MARCOUSSIS
IT IS now almost a month since three young cyclists told us
that spring was here. Since that evening when they passed
along the avenues arm in arm, gentle, in beige trousers, I
have seen new signs each day. Yesterday I remembered
that the scenic railways appreciate nougat. Tomorrow the
wise swallow will be changing his swallow-tail for a summer
frock. Today the Opera tottered under its weight of sparrows.
A little later the grey hour came out from the windows to go and
give a lecture to the poor Czech students. This evening all the
glittering signs had a tinge of salmon pink, a ministry had just
fallen. Outside the Deux-Magots before Saint-Germain des
Pres, Marcoussis offered me his pretty aperitif, towns green and
calm in the springtime: the Eiffel Tower and two lemons in a
spoon.
Lovely advertising pencil, O Eiffel Tower, smoke writing in
an English hand on the asbestos of the sky . . . Citroen would
offer any price to make you write “ten horse power.” But for
us, dear, remain a little faithful, shepherdess of May, remember
the wind-mills.
Hope is made from the milk of green lemons. Beautiful
Pharaoh, for whom so many women intercede, spring, keep your
promises. The swallows are flying away and what will return?
A beautiful bird? What sweet beautiful bird? It is called the
“Firmament,” a beautiful many coloured bird above the moun-
tains.
He came ... at every flap of his wings rainbows leaped forth,
great primroses ... in the growing shadows the violets died,
swollen with repentance. A single hydrangea and this was the
earth, overflowering with sweetness.
Marcoussis, in the evening, we have found your guitar,
cracked. Each cord had broken in the heart of the night.
JACQUES VIOT
+8
LA NOBLE FLEUR DE FEU
C’EST UNE fleur brulant le feu
et cultivee par les formats
qui donne cette ardente cendre
qu’est le poivre de Cayenne.
Les amants criminels qui craignent l’armurier
vont plutot, vers le soir, trouver les epicieres
candides, qui leur donnent tout aussi bien qu’aux bonnes
les ingredients du bagne qu’on met dans la cuisine.
Quelle mefiance aviez-vous de ce cruel careme
ou Cayenne incendie ses masques, Infideles,
au vol blanc d’une main qui tout a coup s’allume,
oiseau qui d’un soleil prend le feu dans ses plumes?
Car ces amants afin que meurent
Deux couples d’yeux dans un regard,
vous jettent, 6 plus charmants des yeux,
la cendre d’ou renait le feu.
GEORGE8 LIMBOUR
MUSICIENS EN VOYAGE
LES ANCIENS bandits de Calabre
avaient des fusils a tromblon
chapeau d’artiste, manteau long
Ils se cachaient derriere un arbre
Moi qui voyais sur des images
leurs fusils passant la cachette
croyais entendre le ramage
de joueurs doux de clarinette.
Freres des merles, ces simples jouent
craintive dont palit la joue
ils ne vous couchent en joue
que pour vous jouer un air d’amour
GEORGES LIMBOUR
49
INCEPTION OF THE CROSS
After the Fail
of Lucifer
Michael
who battled well
healed clean
by Gabrael
leans
in the highest sphere
heavily
on his spear.
All
as before:
Dominion
Throne
touching pinion
tip to tip,
zone
infinity.
But radiant choristers
and windy thurifers
groan
and roar
before
Trinity,
out from whose midst drums
the sound of the Name
on whose breath
from an egg of flame
one comes
far
piercing the deep dark
whence fell
the Day-Star
the black that gapes
close at the Son’s place
spattered with grapes
Satan’s space.
Heaven weeps.
The ellipse
of Hell is full
of cool tears
till
the Ineffable
cries,
“Open your eyes.
See
wailing ones
he
is beautiful;
he is an archangel
the cross, skull-shod,
Death is the cross of winged moons
where hangs God.”
JOHN BROOKS WHEELWRIGHT
LUC
UNPUBLI8HED FRAGMENT8
LE DON
THE SUN vibrated upon the vines, clement king, and the
red villages scintillated. O honey. Then came to bathe
in the lava of the stream. Pyx of azure and of gold, for
a god, shining and young, sound of flute and the treach-
erous welcome of the shadow. The sweet torture of this
flame, when one can not be consumed by it and when everything
is akindle with oneself .. . Day too pure.
Luc remarked these things. His thoughts, flying away, made
a little dust. It is at this moment that he realized in himself the
entrance of grace. His heart hesitated a moment. In spite of
himself a fruitful fullness spread through him, like water hurled
from a floodgate. He no longer felt himSelf with precise boun-
daries.
Then Luc was hungry. Hungry, physically hungry.
Hungry in all his five senses. And miracle! this hunger was
marvellously calm and marvellously surfeited. A slight drun-
kenness, tender light, burned within him. His body became
clearer. An emanation of soul: one would say wings.
People passed, who entered a little church. Luc understood
that they came there for another hunger. Then, he had hunger
anew, a hunger more profound, a hunger desperate, and which
almost made him shed tears. Not that he felt himself less happy.
He suffered as from a lack—as if having seen that, he had found
himself diminished. He entered.
LUC TO THE DEMONS
Ah! I see you, demons. This is no longer the earth, this is
not heaven ... is it hell? For purgatory, really, can I believe
in it?
Would it be from gratuitous joy that your little looks gleam,
demons? Or should I look for some malice there? Demons,
dear demons, my friends the demons (but are you really
demons?) tell me, what do these looks mean? I put myself in
your school, demons, a charming school in truth, and since I
have pretended to reduce God to formulas, show me at least the
mistake, for you alone, can know it.
They laugh, they do not hear me. Ah! you are allowed to
laugh. What is it if a man is tempted, who knows himself
tempted—even if he sins? Demons, unfortunate demons. Can
you do without God? (he laughs) No more than I. (He laughs
always), and that is why you are assembled here this evening.
You are reduced to a very little thing, demons..
a mistake in a problem!
You jostle each other with your elbows, I see well, and also
you laugh. Am I mistaken? (He takes his head in his hands.
He seeks) Would it be the contrary then? Would it be when
a man is tempted and knows that he is lost. Temptation or sin,
which damns? Would there be absolute temptation only in
God? (He makes a gesture of doubt and despair.)
Your silence teaches me more about it than I should learn
from it myself I thought I was between two postulates of my
soul, and here they give the choice between Satan and God. But
does one not always choose between Satan and God? I am
seated near my lamp, and my gestures are tranquil—I think;
they are my gestures however which project behind me those
tumultuous figures. In every man are there not consecrated
regions and cursed regions. (His voice chokes, his utterance is
stifled and hurried) One never chooses except within himself,
one never chooses anything but himself, one never chooses.
He throws himself on the ground and weeps.
So slyly the slope of our thoughts is hastened and enlarged.
O God, O Satan, will you pardon my sacriligious tranquillity?
Before me your image: I pretended however to do without you.
52
You were no longer only a decor. What do I say? The medi-
ocre orderers of a mediocre decor. And here there is no longer
a decor. There is nothing but you left, my God, there is nothing
but you—and Satan. Satan, alas, is not, as one imagines, your
reflection.
THE WHARF
But I am in the midst of you, angels and demons of medi-
ation, (for the angels also watch) this beautiful day, and upon
the wharf there are groups of men who play with the sun and
with the shadow. It would be so simple to love you, men, and
see: my heart is already full of this love; but I know that it is
impossible and that one can love only oneself. One self, God—
and who else? This we should never know perhaps. All love
leads to love of oneself, or in part and leads back to it—and love
of oneself, where does it lead? To Satan, to God and to whom
else? This should put an end to the vain ideology in which you
delight, little men, which pretentiously you create each day, and
forget the Creator.
Am I indifferent to you? I wish it. But however my uncer-
tain manner and these questions always without answer surprise
you. “Who is then the one who advances toward the sea and
before whom the sea recedes? It is so easy (is it not) to go upon
the sea without danger: We have excellent boats, etc.” Have
you never seen careless souls walking upon the sea? Faith is
needed but we do without it.
You surround me. You urge me to satisfy your question. I
do not know, I do not know: I would be like a child—to know
still less, especially not to know that I do not know. I astonish
you, you say. As a matter of fact the wisdom of children is
astonishing. You do not understand that one can walk, thus,
without an aim, or with an aim which continually recedes (you
murmur that it is the same thing) And perhaps, I would have
to make only a gesture for the sea to stop, submissive beast,
curving its snowy back. A gesture! You understand, a
gesture.......
I am like a false prophet who eternally delays the miracle
which crowns him king.
ANDRE DE88ON
S3
IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING, NON-
CHALANCE IS PREJUDICED
WHAT T. S. ELIOT wrote is found true: one re-
reads the poems of Marianne Moore many times
“always with exactly the same pleasure and satis-
faction in something quite definite and solid.” If
one is an esthete and an analyst of literary pleasures,
that almost ends matters: one simply goes on to the not easy
business of explaining how Miss Moore gets her effects. The
trouble is, the esthete finds it impossible to grade his pleasures
beyond a certain point. After all, a number of literary artists
are highly skilled and dexterous in the use of their medium. A
number of them have—of one type or another—refined sensi-
bilities, interesting and beguiling temperaments, sharp novel in-
telligences, and each of them grants a special satisfaction to the
attentive reader. But how evaluate these various satisfactions?
They are all alike in that they satisfy one in some given direc-
tion, but the directions are all different, and the esthete, it is
perceived, must base his literary opinions in the final analysis
upon his personal antipathies and preferences.
Yet there is such a thing as major poetry and such a thing as
minor poetry, and it is indisputable that Marianne Moore is not
a major poet but certainly an amazing minor poet. To say that
is to abandon the esthete’s position—without, let us pray, giving
up esthetic perceptiveness. For the esthete there can be only
good, indifferent and bad poetry. But for one who believes that
poetry is not only a glamorous phase of life, but a vital function
of life cooperating with other functions and occupying a definite
place in the whole round of man’s activity, there is a hierarchy
of values to which all good poetry is subject and by which some
poems are esteemed great and others are thought to be of minor
excellence.
What is the distinction between major and minor? It ap-
pears to me that there exists none in detail or craftsmanship but
that it is to be discovered in the pattern in which details are set
and the purpose for which craft is employed. There is a dif-
ference in scope. The effort of the major poet is to be compre-
hensive and precise, whereas the minor poet values precision
alone. There is a difference in purpose. The great poet’s aim
is to see totalities, to treat his experience, to treat life, as a
whole. The minor poet is content with fragments of his experi-
ence, even with the isolated preception.
Hence, the achievement of the minor poet is style and design.
The achievement of the great poet is Form—the microcosmic
54
organism that has style, design, precision and all the other merits
of minor poetry manifesting as characteristics of an essence that
animates them.
Hence again, under poetry is idiosyncratic behavior and
major poetry is the complete presentation of states of being.
It is the “fractional magnificence” of Miss Moore’s poetry,
so perfect and so narrow, that has persuaded me to enter this dis-
cussion of major and minor, and to get out of it and back to the
special pleasure Miss Moore gives, it is needful to state those
limitations that make her so deliberately minor.
There is first the bland assumption that she, as she is, is a
competent observer of facts, proprieties, life and the tissues of
destiny. No doubt occurs to her that while she is an instrument
of observation, she may still be an imperfect instrument, dis-
torting what it sees by failing to relate it to a true pattern—de-
tached but not impartial. The name for the mood that en-
compasses this anti-Socratic assumption—precisely the same anti-
Socratic assumption upon which the majority of modern scien-
tists has proceeded—is complacency.
To be complacent is to disregard as unimportant the fact
that one is conditioned—by one’s private likings and dislikings,
by one’s motives, by the latent context of one’s mind. The scien-
tist is naive in that while he actually does nothing to improve
his psychological equipment to observe, he pretends to im-
personality and objectivity. The poet is naive in that he admits
—when he seems them—his conditions, but then enthusiastically
places a high valuation upon them. Consequently, Miss Moore
is able to inform you that “to be liked by you would be a
calamity” and the object of dislike is dismissed, not examined
and clarified. The statement of one’s dislikes and likes has no
other value than that of giving a self-portrait. Of what? Of
one of the cells of this vast body of mankind passing now so many
ages across the crust of this little planet.
Furthermore, I suspect that the motive which forces upon
Miss Moore an esoteric style, that restricts her choice of ma-
terials, and makes her cling to Victorian proprieties in attitude,
is by no means purely esthetic. It may be something much less
rational, something indeed that looks like self-protectiveness.
As she says:
The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.
Behind the elaborate inconsequence of her stylistic behavior,
the swiftness of her mental movements, so swift that connectives
are dropped out, the complexity of her reconnoitres, the be-
wildering patches of her learning, there peers at moments sim-
plicity, humble and timid, immature and shy, disliking sophisti-
55
cation and “complexity moreover, that has been committed to
darkness, instead of granting itself to be the pestilence that it is.”
But to reach the elements that compose this simplicity, through
what labyrinths one must work, what traps for the inattentive
one must evade!
Her method of forming her poetic conceptions is equally
interesting as a delimitation. On one side there is “the raw
material of poetry in all its rawness”—which in Miss Moore’s
case means records: belles lettres by other writers, government
reports, magazines, bits of conversation, pictures, curios of one
sort or another:
the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician—
nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents and
school-books”; all these phenomena are important.
These things excite Miss Moore. On the other side, there is
poetry conceived as
Not brittle but
Intense—the spectrum, that
Spectacular and nimble animal the fish,
Whose scales turn aside the sun’s sword with their polish.
Miss Moore’s life is spent in taking leaps from one to the other,
from the record to the poem. She is indeed a “literalist of the
imagination” setting “real toads” (her facts) into “imaginary
gardens” (her poems).
A great poet, however, with his own robust magnitudinous
experience so close before him, could not be content with records
as his sources of subject-matter nor could he make a strictly
esthetic effect his entire aim and end. Of Miss Moore, on the
other hand, it can be said by altering one of the quotations in one
of her poems that excitement provides the occasion and self-
protectiveness determines the form. A further distinction to be
noted is that Miss Moore is a person of learning but not, as has
been claimed, a scholar, for scholarship is synthetic and ap-
proaches wholeness.
But leaving these considerations as classifying Miss Moore
but not describing her work for what it is, one is then free to
pay homage to her consummate quality within her sphere. It
is singularly hard to criticise that. Clearly some measure of
her excellence depends upon her cleanliness with words, the
56
thorough way in which she may be said to disinfect and purify
them so that once more they stand out fresh and angular. An-
other modern poet, William Carlos Williams, in the Dial for
May, 1925, gives a good description of this faculty.
“Miss Moore gets great pleasure from wiping soiled words
or cutting them clean out, removing the aureoles that have been
pasted about them or taking them bodily from greasy contexts.
For the compositions which Miss Moore intends, each word
should first stand crystal clear with no attachments; not even
an aroma. ...
“With Miss Moore a word is a word most when it is sep-
arated out by science, treated with acid to remove the smudges,
washed, dried, and placed right side up on a clean surface. Now
one may say that this is a word. Now it may be used, and how?
“It may be used not to smear it again with thinking (the
attachments of thought) but in such a way that it will remain
scrupulously itself, clean, perfect, unnicked beside other words
in parade. There must be edges.”
One is glad that Miss Moore does this, for we have been too
long tricked by the “suggestiveness” of poetry, which after all
should be of firmer stuff than a dream. Her careful use of words
blends imperceptibly into her rhythm—a peculiar and new
rhythm about which I agree with T. S. Eliot: it is her most
important contribution. As far as vers libre is concerned, she
has “gone the whole hog including the postage,” to use the trans-
lation of a Russian colloquialism. That is, she gets along with
an utter minimum of rhymes, of assonance, alliteration, master
beats and other versifying devices. She goes out where the waves
are choppiest and the currents cross most dangerously and sharks
are said to be mouthing, and she swims superbly and safely.
Trusting solely to her own gift of metrical invention, she takes
all the dangers and emerges in calm triumph.
Her line runs long and free, or turns brief and swift, as she
wills it. Her strophes breathe quietly and enunciate well: they
uncoil with smooth friction out of each other, undulate as the
way of apprehending the subject undulates, and rise with finality
or settle in tranquility at the conclusion. They are “strict and
stately”, yet they are limber too like “essences of conversations”.
Williams again has said the essential thing about her rhythm.
“It does not interfere with her progress; it is the movement of
the animal, it does not put itself first and ask the other to follow.”
This “movement of the animal” is literally delightful. So
likewise are the bits of freightage carried so nimbly by her
strophes. To illustrate:
There is the lapidic aphorism worthy, had it been carved
then, of being preserved from antiquity. In view of earlier re-
57
marks, I must add that Miss Moore’s occasional violations of the
quoted saying demonstrate that it is even more difficult to observe
it than it is to chisel it.
Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best.
There is wit, unexpected and debonair. Mark also in the
following quotation how buoyantly Miss Moore’s poetry floats
the Latin-derived verbiage.
To popularize the mule, its neat exterior
expressing the principle of accommodation reduced to a
minimum.
There is the selection of the “beautiful fact” and uncontam-
inated precision in recording it.
Black butterflies with blue half circles on their wings.
And there is, best of all, the pure poetic dance.
When the wind is from the east,
the smell is of apples, of hay; the aroma increased and
decreased
as the wind changes;
of rope, of mountain leaves for florists.
In all these felicities one takes delight.
A postscript is called for, since Miss Moore appears in other
literary roles than that of poet. She is a critic and lately she has
become an editor. In both capacities, unfortunately, she is
much less consequential than as a poet.
The critic must be ambitious and Miss Moore is not. She
attempts to make no more than a sensitive impressionistic sketch
of her reading, a sketch that is always liberally studded with
quotations from the author under review, and carries a valuable
sentence or two of acute technical understanding for good meas-
ure. The quotations are ably selected for the object she has in
mind, which is to give the “flavor” of the author. But, after
all, the “flavor” is in the book and each reader of it may garner
his own impressions. The critic must do more than that. At
any rate, he should not be backward about handling ideas.
Marianne Moore, the critic, is still preferable to Miss Moore,
the acting editor of the Dial. What shall I say about that role?
Let us say nothing, but rather ponder on the qualifications of a
first order editor, who is so much rarer than a good poet.
The first order editor must of course be expert in his own
special technic: that of assembling his contributions into an
organism that is reborn at stated intervals. He must include in
himself a critic capable of discerning a variety of values. He
must have elevated standards and a broad outlook. He must be
instigator as well as judge. His magazine must reflect a direc-
ting mind, yet not be warped by his own limitations. His, in
fact must be that impartial free intelligence that so seldom
appears.
f8 GORHAM B. MUN80N
SPRING PSYCHOSIS
SIREN SCREECH—conceived in space a point given
inward outward rotation—whistles—types febrile
diagonals plus ambiguous luminosity—whistles—left
right, right left, ensnares intersecting convoluted cir-
cles, propels incidental enchanted ellipses—whistles—
whistles—thrusts ever hungry edges to the moon—narrower
wider, wider narrower—one to three rectilinears to this—
whistles—youth destitute of papes, flames from flower tested
puberty enchained by manifest doubts in milky adolescence,
farewell youth—ave atque vale—youth
Speed—Cinema extra—Ordinaire—whirring entrails snap
slide backwards, buzzing genitals, incidental short circuits—
Speed—Speed—minus burnt celluloid click click—minus
barber chair dentist fussing brittle teeth
Smoke into the metallic mauve metropolis—New York—
quit ta reve—New—York—by and for steam whistling, mill
churning, trip hammering, rivet retching, piston plying, bell
sounding, electric lightening—blue, red, green, red, blue,
green,—Yellow—X—raying, water flushing, radio sparking,
areoplaning grey hesistancies in continuous repeditive leap
frog through revolving brass glass doors to rainbow smooth
planes—not to taste purple retrospective ashes—with thumb
and index press button to switch out, on, out—city collapses,
an English aluminum picnic cup, But walls a gas grated
mechanical piano room scents a subway elevated street car
odor—insistent telephone, eye reflected from an eye—Oeil
poisson mort—in a mirror—feel furtive coins, insistent tele-
phone, go again
Leap into hat and cane—paint an ivory watch chain on this
Ego’s chest, go once again shadow somersaulting awkward
automaton—play blind man’s buff with fluttering taxicabs,
hear a crass mucker telescoped in a motor horn shout—
“Where’s yuh pants?”—fix shell rims to ogle roller skating
straw virgins moving upper lips in petulant rabbit munches
—Waltz—waltz down the avenue—let psychoanalytical
sychophants search the sun for scars—waltz on to tea—leave
green waistcoated messenger boys with tulips bound in their
hair riding gold velocipides through an arch for tea talk
tosh—
59
Mary Garden is Monna Vanna or Salome, darling Garden
—Polly have a cracker—is divine, sugar two lemon, drunken
Carmen—Nirvana—Cracker Polly—pull them out with fire
tongs
Night swims in through the window myriads of thunder
tossed blue balloons—click—whirr—Ha.
EDWARD NAGLE
NEW ORLEANS SPRING 1925
Mathematics of you
Projected from a street piano
laugh mouth sea hair
Yet what Ho when
corpses in crinolines
corpses in furbelows
Green laughter in moon dust chokes
continuous minuet
And Hells Bells when
night jasimine swirls from purple flesh
C’mon, G’mon in Mister, two dollahs
Always placid yellow child in rose pinafore always
in green night
God may compute the institutional smells
of hotels
But who a cat in pursuit of
a blue jay on a crimson shadowed emerald lawn
pestilence of flower trees
White magnolia, hibiscus, night jasimine,
chameleons scuttle up through moss hairy live oaks
Camelia, pomegranate, poincetta, mimosa,
bourganelia, twisted coral vine
How do you know
New England
Death might not be
the tranquility of a southern Sunday afternoon
lost in a park
Aeroplane
sizzling overhead in static flight from bulging shower
black clouds
60
far from the cathedral timelessly waiting
far from your blue eyes Mary
Mary mother of God
Mary mother of men
where a child with a red balloon attached to a chattering
negress in a pink satin dress
sways and blurs into an avenue of palms flattened on a yel-
low velvet lake that orange beaker white swans weave
patterns of snow light until wet strips of banna plant leaves
hush night
Until the rainsoaked flesh on your bones rot
Liquor winds the clown and being born and being born
American one may say the sneer of an alligator while night
jasimine chokes purple flesh in a bed of writhing cactus is
to the mathematics of you projected from a Street piano
out of New England as when the flesh rots
upon your bones while it hails as when
I am neatly folded away in my grave
the sea will worm the sand always while it snows
please omit flowers
As when the flesh on your bones rot the sea will
laugh mouth
Yes
EDWARD NAGLE
THE MEASURE OF OURSELVES
1ITTLE AS I am appeased by fever, I find myself more at
ease in that state than in one of habitual clarity.
But no: it is only that which I lose and its valuation
which interests me in the state of fever.
Fever, I should say rather, has a certain curiosity for
me. I do not confuse sickness and anxiety here; simply that
which deforms (all morbidity) and the anguish it reveals.
I have prayed fever to take me, I have prayed also that it
spare me. It was not at all in the attitude of vain faltering or
unrealized expectation. Have I not, year after year, permitted
those decorations to imprint themselves upon my soul, and was
it not always some crime, some voyage, some victory?
61
I shall not seek to appear stronger than I am. For I know
well, and man has never been really strong. Shall I make myself
weaker than I am? It would need too great patience. How
malleable I have felt myself, at certain moments, between my
two hands. And a suppleness that did not arouse any fear in me
at all. I should have preferred myself harder, and my perme-
ability to other things less subtle.
The play of imponderables. A smile causes a great hate to
be born, as a word incites a crime. No matter what the effort,
I can never seize exactly the moment which determines a senti-
ment. Or perhaps that is because it is so slight and so dependent
upon the sacrifice (more or less complete) that one makes of one-
self to the world.
And for that matter can we choose from the gamut of pos-
sible emotions (a man encountered). I oscillate a whole friend-
ship between love and hatred. Not that I amuse myself by
clever artifices, but by the most natural currents of our pas-
sions . . . One may love without esteem and this love is colored
by the scorn that kills. If love assumes more and more esteem,
it is not long before some jealousy still more certainly diverts it
into hatred.
(If you take Dostoyeffski for instance, I feel
that for me Svidrigailof is far more human than Sonia, his exas-
perating daughter.)
At the whim of fevers. Must there not be some unexpected
vision for these rhythms which one would have preferred
masked? And yet: I see nothing arbitrary or preciose in that.
Shall I admit having no fear of apparitions at night? I am
terror-stricken by no curiosity, little as its gratuitousness leaves
unsatisfied, and of this most beautiful gem which I should rather
lose at the bottom of the sea than have my life determined by.
II
—“Is it really a new faith,” asked Tertullian, “that we need?”
ARIEL—It is so easy to have a new faith.
I may have faith in yesterday
(in the night I pass tomorrow).
And nothing limits my faith which I create in my
own measure.
I may have new faiths for every moment that I live.
TERTULLIAN—I have seen certain illuminations and
renounced them.
ARIEL—In itself renunciation is measureless, since there is no
resonance in us.
(Febrile resonance and the veins we tear from a
leaf. What does renunciation mean?)
62
TERTULLIAN—Your whiteness is a joy to me, Ariel.
Do you not also feel, (so young) your desire
to recreate a God?
ARIEL—A God? I don’t understand.
TERTULLIAN—Tortured.
We lack the exact values which would serve
us as points of departure.
We lack a point of departure.
What inclination shall we choose? And the
curve that we trace is twisted into a
hyperbola.
ARIEL—I re-create God for myself perpetually.
TERTULLIAN—What were you just saying to me?
Give me your secret and let your peace be
mine.
ARIEL—(shrugging his shoulders) You will never understand.
*
TERTULLIAN—Ariel . . .
ARIEL— (sings)
Ariel sings:
At the lines of departure
is there a fitting enough pardon?
To extract God (and my anticipation)
Only our dead at the marge of the tunnels
Shall deliver the day.
The needle that kills us
Gives up none of its grace:
Suspended azure,
Our butterflies, who wisely crumble.
Is there enough pardon for me
In extracting God of my anticipations.
TERTULLIAN—Ariel . . .
*
ARIEL—1, 2, 3 . . . If I counted to one thousand to do peni-
tence?
TERTULLIAN—Our limits are onerous to those who can feel
them. And not the artificial limits, our
collars, but all those that prick the
body, the play of our flesh, our souls.
Ariel, to cultivate our refinements, and our routine lives, is
not to go beyond the limits, but the contrary; for, if our poten-
63
tialitics (the fair promises) are developed, it must needs shock
the extreme recesses of our natures. Shock them and greet them.
Profoundly: ultimately to submit.
ARIEL—What you say to me, Tertullian, appeals to my heart.
TERTULLIAN—To your heart only?
(Translated by Matthew Josephson)
ANDRE HARLAIRE
VOUS SERRE ... COROIALEMENT
By Serge Charchoune
64
Carey Craft Faess, New yrak t Fhila.
THE FILM ASSOCIATES INC
Montgomery Evans II—director
1 ADVISORY COUNCIL
CHRISTIAN BRINTON JANE HEAP
SHELDON CHENEY LAWRENCE LANGNER
ROBERT J. FLAHERTY GILBERT SELDES
THE FILM ASSOCIATES
HAVE SHOWN
For the first time in America
“OF WHAT ARE THE YOUNG FILMS DREAMING”
By Comte Etienne de Beaumont
“BALLET MECANIQUE”
By Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy
“THE NEW ENCHANTMENT”
Produced by Marcel L’Herbier
Featuring Georgette LeBlanc and Jaques Catelain
“CINDERELLA” UFA Directed by Ludwig Berger
We shall be glad to arrange film showings for Little Theatres throughout
the country. We particularly recommend revivals of early Chaplin pictures,
the Einstein Film, a series of abstract films made by the foremost artists of
Europe. We feel that our aims very closely parallel those of many Little
Theatre Groups and we believe that in working with us they can keep and
extend their audiences. Little Theatres interested please communicate with us.
We wish to establish contacts with independent producers of experi-
mental films. We have secured the first line of European films ... we want
to discover and encourage American artists and producers who have original
and experimental films.
We are preparing a subscription Season for New York, if you love the luminous eye
of the Cinema.—Ten Dollars entitles each subscriber to tickets for five special showings.
No tickets will be sold at the theatre, but a limited number of guest cards can be pur-
chased in advance from our office.
DETACH AND MAIL WITH CHECK
To: THE FILM ASSOCIATES, Inc., 66 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Enclosed find check for $-in payment of--subscriptions
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