The Little Review
Since it appears to be my duty to read all the critical journals and dissect their contents for these columns, I can’t in good faith neglect The Little Review. I have just devoured the first issue. What can I say about the superb “announcement”? I agree ardently with it. It needed to be said; the magazine needed to be born. There’s no quarrel between art and life except where one or the other is kept back of the door. Anyone with a keen appreciation of art can’t help appreciating life too, and Mrs. Jones who runs away from her husband can’t fairly stand for “life.” Besides, why should anybody object to a thing because it’s transitorial? Everything is transitorial. It must either grow or perish.
Mr. Wing’s criticism of Mr. Faust is admirable—direct, unpretentious, sound. But you must let me register a slight objection to Dr. Foster’s Nietzsche article. It seems to me there’s just too much enthusiasm to be borne by what he actually says. When I came to the end of that third paragraph on page fifteen I sneaked back to Galsworthy’s letter and found an answering twinkle in its eye. I felt like going up to Dr. Foster with a grin, putting my hand on his shoulder and saying, “My dear man, a candidate for major prophet doesn’t need political speeches. It is really not half so important that we unregenerate should give three cheers for him as that we should live his truth. Won’t you forget a little of this sound and fury and tell us as simply as you can just what it is that you want us to do?”
I went from his article with the impression that here was a man who was very enthusiastic about Mr. Nietzsche. I’m sure that’s not the impression Dr. Foster intended to make. But I have a feeling that pure enthusiasm wasting itself in little geysers is intrinsically ridiculous. Enthusiasm should grow trees and put magic in violets—and that can’t be done with undue quickness, or in any but the most simple way. Nobody cares about the sap except for what it does. And, anyhow, it always makes me savage to be orated at, or told that my soul will be damned if I don’t admit the particular authority of Mr. Jehovah or Mr. Nietzsche or Mr. anybody else.
That’s all by the way, however, and the impression of the magazine as a whole is clear, true, swift. Its impact can’t be forgotten. You haven’t attained your ideal—which is right; but you’ve done so well you’ll have to scratch to keep up the speed,—which is right, too.
M. H. P.