EDITORIAL NOTES
AN interesting exchange of opinions about modern art took place in the Times last month. The art-critic stated that modern English artists were afraid of ugliness; Sir Sidney Colvin replied that so far was this from being the truth "that the prevalent malady of the time, at least among those artists and critics who arrogate to themselves the title of 'modern,' was a much less becoming form of cowardice—namely, the fear of beauty. Because the beauty-blind may be taken in by prettiness, and because a new fashion in critical theory has come over from France (to perish, as I have seen dozens of such theories perish in their day), nothing, in the circles to which I refer, is attempted or applauded which either bears any resemblance to nature or records any predilection of the mind except for what is shrieking and dissonant in colour and jumbled and jarring, like a kind of insane geometry, in form. Of all things such 'modernity' is doubtless doomed soonest to be ancient, or not to give it so honourable a name, at least obsolete, discarded, and unregretted."
That there are many English artists who are in a sense afraid of ugliness, in other words, who will only make pretty imitations of things recognised as beautiful, is not to be denied: it might almost be said that artists may be divided into those who have an unreasonable fear of ugliness and those who have a reprehensible love of it. Many difficult questions are involved in such a discussion: often two disputing parties will be found to be fundamentally in agreement. The Times critic was emphasising the truth that unoriginality is bad; Sir Sidney Colvin the equal truth that bogus originality is bad. But his remarks reminded us of a great many observations we have all recently heard with respect to certain tendencies to be observed in contemporary art or pseudo-art. The elderly and many of the soberer young are alarmed at much that they see painted or published. What does it all mean? they ask. Are the world's artists rushing over a steep place into the sea? Is there some new revelation in what looks at first sight like obscure rubbish? Are these noisy rioters really the young? Do they really hate everything that has ever been considered true? Will the whole of the coming generation be captured by them? Mingled with the dislike there is a great deal of bewilderment. Men doubt themselves. After all, new artistic developments have often been incomprehensible; these things are undeniably incomprehensible, so perhaps they are new artistic developments. Those who are tired of strife shiver, wrap their coats around them, prepare to retire into corners where the cold blast cannot reach them. But we really do not think that they should be so depressed, or that more vigorous men like Sir Sidney Colvin should be so alarmed: a rational diagnosis of the situation dissipates these apparent dangers.
Now we had better begin by premising that in the sphere of the fine arts we are not (these things are never taken for granted) denying the value of modern developments and the possibility of later ones. Not all the technical experiments of modern intellectual artists (akin to experiments in new media) may be fruitful, but at the centre of most movements, however extravagant, may be found an original artist who has either a peculiar way of looking at the world (El Greco is an example) or desires to experiment with some method in order to find out what results may accrue from it. But it is not a good thing to base a theory on the mannerisms of an original artist; it is still worse to build a convention on his unsuccessful experiments; and worst of all, perhaps, for an artist to paint not what he sees as he sees it through the medium of his temperament, but what some philosophical critic, with a distaste for both Nature and humanity, tells him to paint. A painter with intelligence, however, will soon tire of something which produces results which do not interest him; and the painting of foolish pictures by people who desire merely to attract attention is to some extent limited because anything that would deceive anybody involves a good deal of time and trouble. The fine arts will look after themselves; few members of the public will pay large sums for pictures that convey nothing to them. The printed word is in a rather different category. The world is always full of ineffective people who have a desire to write: a thing which can be done at any moment by anyone who has pen, ink, and paper. They also desire to attract attention by their writing. In our time "stunts" for their assistance have been discovered which have never been hit upon before.
The various stunts with which we are now familiar have spread over the whole world with a rapidity that no genuine spiritual movement or technical discovery has ever equalled. Just before the war that vivacious Southerner, Signor Marinetti, introduced us to the type-page, which consisted of capital letters and notes of exclamation tumbled about in apparent confusion. The first large English enterprise of the Futurist-Vorticist-Cubist kind was (though it contained normal patches) the magenta magazine Blast. It succumbed shortly after a hostile critic, consulting his Webster, had discovered the definition: "Blast:—a flatulent disease of sheep." But it died to give place to countless smaller magazines and books containing bewildering designs and extraordinary poems. The drawings and, to the eye which can take in only their typography, the poems are indistinguishable from others which are being published all over the world. The blagueurs attach themselves to anything which will give them publicity. There is something pathetic about the way in which, wherever the political Bolsheviks get into office, they print the verses and cartoons of the artistic anarchists. They don't understand them; all they know is that the bourgeois dislike them; so in Munich last Easter, and (we daresay) in Moscow now, there is an excellent opening for those who, for all anyone would be able to say to the contrary, have only to scratch out the old titles of their interlocked triangles and write underneath "Uprising of Proletariat," or some such thing. The Vorticists and verslibrists exist from Spain to Sweden. We saw this month a most beautifully produced volume from Tiflis. The words, scattered about in the Paris-and-London style, were in Georgian and Russian; but no translation was necessary; when one was supplied, the words and the lack of sense were precisely what we expected. They might have been Italian or English; and in the illustrations, mingled with the parallelograms, could be seen fragments of wasp-waisted "nuts" in opera-hats and shirt fronts, such as never were seen in Tiflis, where their heads are clad with fur. In a recent number of the Monthly Chapbook Mr. Flint, giving specimens of good and bad contemporary verse, quoted one gentleman who begins a poem with:
éo ié iu ié
é é ié io ié
ui ui io iè
aéoé iaoé.
And another poet who writes:
vrron—on—on—on—on—on
vrrr vrrr vrrr
hihihi.
It isn't really serious; but is any of this kind of thing serious? And is this mere noise at bottom sillier than much of the free verse to which some superficial meaning can be attached? We quote from an American review which, as a whole, is sensible and good these lines from a poem called Autumn Night:
The moon is as complacent as a frog.
She sits in the sky like a blind white stone,
And does not even see Love
As she caresses his face
With her contemptuous light.
She reaches her long white shivering fingers into the bowels of men.
*****
She is Death enjoying Life,
Innocently,
Lasciviously.
Of that kind of thing, usually done with a little less force in the images, but always meandering, stupid, and utterly unrhythmical, good American journals have lately been full. It has ceased to be amusing; but we don't think that anybody need be alarmed; nobody can like it, and in the end those who, from restlessness or fear, have pretended to will revolt against a diet of wind and sawdust and return to something more palatable.
For the simple truth is that the trick of incomprehensibility is the best trick that has ever been invented for the benefit of writers who, if they can feel or think, do not know how to translate their thoughts and feelings into the language of art. Twenty years ago the swarm of useless young writers discoursed on common themes in common metres imitatively, after the manner of Tennyson or of Swinburne or of Verlaine. If they favoured dignity and nobility they wrote sonnets beginning:
Under the high invulnerable stars,
or plays like Savonarola Brown's; if Nature was their theme we heard of
The blackbird's descant from the bough.
The virtuous wrote of love in the manner of:
Your brows are calm and virginal,
warming to:
Your mouth is red as red, red roses are.
The sham rake-hells festooned their hectic amours with references to purple breasts, absinthe, Messalina, and Semiramis: the banality was plain to see. But Signor Marinetti and his congeners—we had been gently acclimatised to great obscurity by artists like Mallarmé—provided these poets with a priceless gift. Let rhythm go, let sense go: put down in barbarous sequence any incongruous images that come into your head: even, if you like, put down sheer gibberish: if possible, deceive yourself, and you will deceive others. Produce a work so opaque that it cannot be seen through. The innocents will either wildly protest against these dangerous revolutionaries—a much more pleasing rôle to find oneself in than that of harmless mediocrity—or else they will knit their brows with the reflection "if this young man expresses himself in thoughts too deep for me, why what a very, very, very deep young man this deep young man must be." But we have noticed that most of these dealers in chaos soon tire. Those who have something in them (and any young man is liable to be infected by a current fashion) get through, none the worse: those who have not flag and stop.
In our second number we called attention, as many before us have called attention, to the scandalous state of the American copyright laws whereunder British authors have been put to immense inconvenience and loss, and which have resulted in the early books of almost every important British author being, in America, beyond his control. Since we wrote the American Senate has come to a decision which greatly ameliorates the conditions as they affect books published here since the war. It has been clear that during the war, owing to the delays of mails, it has often been impossible for English publishers and authors to secure American copyright even where American publication could easily be arranged for—copies for deposit could not be got across sufficiently quickly, and the time-limit of thirty days from English publication expired. Under the new decision—which is largely due to the efforts of Major G. H. Putnam—protection is secured for all British books of which the American copyright has been lost during the war. The Act has been amended: friendly alien authors have been given American copyright on works of which copyright lapsed during the war; the concession extends to works issued within fifteen months after the war, whatever the end of the war may be defined to be. During that fifteen months authors may take steps to establish their copyright; after that period, as we understand it, British authors and publishers will have a longer period (i.e., four months) than before in which to secure their rights, provided a complete copy of the English edition has been deposited in the Copyright Office not more than sixty days after publication. We suppose, though we await further information, that the fact that a book, presumed non-copyright, has been published in America during the war will not prevent its being copyrighted; but if this be so what will happen to a pirated edition (assuming such to exist) which was legally permissible before the new amendment?
An important step has been made in the development of the literary relations of the two countries. But these are still far from perfect. It may not be possible to make the domestic copyright laws of the two countries the same, but it should not be impossible for each country to extend to the books of the other a simultaneous and automatic copyright on publication. American books should be automatically copyright here when they appear in America; English books should be automatically copyrighted in America when they appear here. There is room for discussion as to the length of term of copyright to be granted to foreigners; but a basis for mutual agreement would not be difficult to find. We trust that Major Putnam will not flag in the good work, and that English authors will co-operate to the best of their ability.
We printed in our last number a letter from Mr. J. G. Fletcher disputing a statement made by our American correspondent that Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was the only "live" poet now writing in America, and questioning the justice of the praise given to Mr. Lindsay. On the assumption that our readers will be interested, we are publishing in this issue a work by Mr. Lindsay which illustrates his recent manner. It is a poem which presents some difficulties to English readers. It evokes memories of a Presidential campaign long gone past, and some of Mr. Lindsay's political references (not to speak of his presumably mythical animals) will puzzle people; even those English people who vaguely remember who Mark Hanna was will probably not have the ghost of a vision of Altgeld.
A binding case for The London Mercury is being prepared, and will, we hope, be ready when the first volume (of six numbers) is complete. It would be a convenience if readers who are preserving their sets and will desire the official binding (which we can promise will not be an offensive one) would let us know in advance by postcard so that we may have some basis for our first order of cases.
For some time after publication we were obliged to refuse orders for our first number. We have recovered a very few copies, and, as we prefer that they should go to persons who are really anxious to obtain them in order to complete sets, we offer them at 7s. 6d. a copy. Applications will be dealt with in the order in which they are received. No. 2 will shortly follow suit.