Editorials and Announcements
Our Credo
I have lost patience: people are still asking “What does The Little Review stand for?” Since we have been so obscure—or is it that people have been so dull?—I shall try to answer all these plaintive queries in a sentence. May it be sufficient: I cannot “explain” every day why the sunrise seems worth while or, as Mr. Hecht would say, why the brook rises from the rocks.
The Little Review is a magazine that believes in Life for Art’s sake, in the Individual rather than in Incomplete people, in an age of Imagination rather than of Reasonableness; a magazine that believes in Ideas even if they are not Ultimate Conclusions, and values its Ideals so greatly as to live them; a magazine interested in Past, Present, and Future, but particularly in the New Hellenism; a magazine written for Intelligent people who can Feel; whose philosophy is Applied Anarchism, whose policy is a Will to Splendor of Life, and whose function is—to express itself.
Mr. Comstock’s Dismissal
This great blessing comes sooner than we could have expected, and yet, as The Chicago Tribune remarks, it is belated by about forty years. Mr. Comstock has been Post Office Inspector all that time. I remember a few years ago in New York hearing an interesting woman send a group of people into paroxysms by the passionate childish seriousness with which she said, “I wish Anthony Comstock would die!” Now that the government has accomplished this desideratum, it is almost time for it to be congratulated. I wonder how long it will be before this same government can “see its way clear” to suppressing the agent provocateur and letting his victims go free, or—well, never mind: it is beyond hoping.
“Succession”
When one of my friends fails to like Ethel Sidgwick’s Succession I am left in a predicament: on what basis are we henceforth to understand each other? Succession goes so deep into music, into personality, into life that has its foundations in art.... You can explain all the subtleties of your most difficult emotions by referring to how Antoine felt on page so and so. How does one live without Antoine?
The Strike
And God said: “Let there be!” And there was.
And when the modern god, the omnipotent Proletariat, says: “Let there not be!” ...
You say the strike of the Chicago car men is of purely local significance. You crack jokes about the pleasure of walking and about the adventure of jitney-rides. You are calm and complacent, you blind and deaf men and women dancing on a dormant volcano.
You are right. Your complacency is justified. Why fear the million-headed mule who has borne his yoke for centuries? He grumbles?—Oh, it’s a trifle: just fill his flesh-pot, and he will take up anew with bestial delight his eternal task of enriching the few at the expense of his blood and marrow.
But fear the eruption of the volcano! For it will not remain dormant forever. Have we not witnessed the spasmodic awakenings of the giant? Recall the achievement of the Russian proletariat in 1905. Did it not wrest concessions from the obstinate Czar by means of a passive revolution? Recall the general strike in Belgium. Did it not cripple its commerce and industry for months?
The strike of the Chicago car men is pregnant with potentialities. It is a symptom of a refreshing storm. Those who produce everything and possess nothing have slept long in ignorance of their power. But they are slowly awakening. And when they become aware of the magic wand in their hand, whose passive motion can stop the wheels of the universe.... Take heed, O merrymakers at Belshazzar’s feast. Behold the Mene, Tekel, Peres on the wall.
K.
“The Country Walk”
A young Englishman by the name of Edward Storer—I am assuming that he is young and that he is English—has protested effectively against the condition which decrees that a piece of writing, a painting, a sculpture has to be judged as a commodity before it can be judged as a work of art by issuing little four-page leaflets containing portions of his work denied publication by the commercialism of the times. The first, which is called The Country Walk, has some quite uninspired though rather charming prose poems in it. The Lark, for instance:
Out of the young grass and silence you arise, frail bird, spinning upwards to the sky. Faster beat the wings, and shriller is the voice, and soon you are lost in the high blue, so that scarcely can I hear your voice or see the maddened flutterings of your wings.
Then suddenly all is silent, and softly you drop to earth again to rest your aching body against the good brown earth.
The June-July Issue
On account of being so late with our May number we have decided to combine the June and July and thus come out promptly again on the first of the month. Subscriptions will be extended accordingly.
Edgar Lee Masters
In the August issue there will be a new poem by Edgar Lee Masters, author of The Spoon River Anthology, and also a photogravure portrait of the poet which has just been taken by Eugene Hutchinson.
The Submarine
(Translated from the Italian of Luciano Folgore by Anne Simon)
It sinks. In the twilight of the water
the conquered submarine
falls straight to the bottom
and seems like a black corpse
thrown to the coral below,
thrown to the tomb that devours
with liquid joy
the refuse and remains of the old world.
The propellers, devourers of motion,
buzz no more,
the rudder has ceased turning,
the prow no longer points its sharp beak,
but the submarine extends itself
on the viscid bed,
and a multitude of unknown
fish, coral and sea-nettles
try to enter the closed apertures.
And yet once you leaped in the sun
like a sentinel of burnished steel
shining in the distance,
and then rapidly returned to the green gorge
where the sun never reaches,
but where you find
the tremendous task
that is always with you and that whispers courage
in the void of your soul.
And once with your agile metallic prow
you agitated the green water
all around your shining body,
and you did not feel the torments
of the winds nor the black
clouds of the hurricane
that remained like spiteful women
in a corner of the horizon,
with hair dishevelled and the eye eager
to spy below, from the firmament,
the lost, the shipwrecked, the unknown
that have no pilot.
Once from your sonorous sides,
quietly, but vigilant and mad,
the torpedo shot out,
making its track in silence,
and carrying
within its thin body
death, and the infinite
power of dynamite.
As you passed the sharks fled,
as you passed the corals
suspended their tenacious and clumsy work,
and the fish with rapid movement
swam away.
You seemed like an enormous monster
of a fantastic destiny
and yet you are only a light submarine,
a slender ship
that the blow of a beam
could sink, that a whirlpool could submerge
in the abyss.
I do not know your story,
but I will sing your glory
that is part of the desire
of audacious men.
Submarine, Destiny may have willed
you to sink silently,
and remain lost forever in the viscid bed of the sea-weed,
(O submarine, able to challenge the unconsciousness of the seas
and the impotence of the lighthouses,)
but you are alive and strong;
there is no death, but only an appearance
of death that remains. Destiny
newly moulds you
in a long phantom
and you are run, submarine,
by the courage of men
who, in the unfathomable silence of the water,
are piloted
by the will of the strong.
New brothers will arise
and pursue you
because your shining back
carries a banner, not tri-colored,
nor French,
but the only color
that dazzles;
the banner of the battle
that amidst disasters combats
with this ferocious mystery
that is foolishly determined to shut us out
from the doors of Nature.