One of the many fragments of knowledge that years bring is that man consoles himself readily, often quickly. Krimmie got a job in a Wall Street office as literary secretary to a Hungarian fourflusher, “high in the counsels of the Democratic Party,” to compose superfine notes, commensurable with the calling of the Boss. He had not been there long when he met Dorothy. If Troubadour did not give us anything besides the picture of a person who looked like one of Goya’s ladies, and who had the gentleness of Ruth with the constancy of Penelope, it would still be a precious document. When I think of the many perfect wives of artists that I have known: Mark Twain’s Livy, James Joyce’s Lady; Paderewski’s alter ego, I shall always have a fancy that I have known Dorothy in the quick. One of the first things she did for him after orienting him on life’s pathway was to save for the world his “most quasi-popular composition,” Lima Beans. Then she married him and his days began to lengthen as his heart began to strengthen. They went West, he to intone his poems, and climb Parnassus on the lake; she to pull the strings of his marionettes and to encourage him when his feet slipped on the mountain.
Krimmie’s rejuvenation was more complete than anything Steinach has accomplished. He wrote plays, walked securely amongst the Provincetown Thespians, fraternised intimately with literary arrivistes and puppet-people, encouraged youngsters who were yearning for self-expression and struggling against starvation, earned the good will of the Dial, “now the leading æsthetic periodical of the soil,” and gained the confidence of the young man who was to facilitate him in a long dreamed-of gesture: the founding of an international Magazine of the Arts which would stress the efforts of young Americans. So Krimmie and Dorothy went to Italy and brought forth Broom. Incidentally, they met Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, Gertrude Stein, the mammie of gibberish, and Gordon Craig, the master of marionettes, and others too numerous to mention. Krimmie liked them and they all liked Krimmie, or if they did not, one would never suspect it from Mr. Kreymborg’s book; I fancy they did for obviously he has a genius for friendship. If they did not like Dorothy, good taste has deserted the habitués of the Quarter.
Among the many engaging episodes of their European trip none is more delightful than the description of their encounter with the world’s most famous poetic clown, Signor F. P. Marinetti, unless it be the meeting with the pompous Pound. Marinetti directing his fellow-players, totally oblivious of the vegetables that were hurled at him, insensitive of their obvious decay, deaf to the insults and imprecations that came from every quarter of the theatre, was a man risking his life for a reputation. Mr. Kreymborg knew the habits of the wolf, but he knew little of bears or their garden and he had never visited the Parliament of Italy when the House was in session. Later, when he was informed that the civil warfare which he had witnessed had been arranged by Marinetti in the subtle behalf of publicity—that he always hired a number of desperados to open the attack on the stage, and to arouse the audience to an emulation of activity, he realised that he had had a lesson in finesse. Such lessons are given nowhere in the world better than in Italy.
Krimmie came home a better man. No change was to be discerned in Dorothy on her return. She was the same as when she went: a bit of perfection. Then he published his latest book of poems Less Lonely, which caused some of his friends to fear that it indicated the consecration of approaching middle age. The verses observe too many maxims too carefully; they are too regularly iambic; their plethora of monosyllables cause them to lose the nuance of accent, etc. Others thought they showed the effect of Italian atmosphere so favourable to every form of classicism. He “made up” with Louis Untermeyer; and wrote the story of his own life. For one of these accomplishments, we can never cease to be grateful. It has contributed to our pleasure, our instruction and our welfare. Any one who will read Troubadour will love his fellow man more easily, and more intensely.
Troubadour is an album filled with pictures big and little of people we have known or would like to have known. Some of them are vignettes. Some are life-size portraits, all of them testify to the facile and the tender heart. There are few who have figured in the artistic life of this country in the past twenty years who do not come in for mention or characterisation. They all had to do in some way with the genesis, birth and development of his urge for expression,—an urge which is upon him imperiously and which no one, so far as may be judged from the text, has tried to impede. Indeed one of the striking features of the book is that it reveals no skunner against puritanism, no grouch against democracy, no belief in the existence of a cabal to strangle artistry, no ideas of persecution on the part of the author. The world has treated him fairly enough. If ever there was a writer who had no preparation for writing it was Alfred Kreymborg. What he learned he taught himself. If he had learned the piano or the violin without instruction or direction he would have had no fewer long days or lean nights than he has had.
It is a pity that Alfred Kreymborg could not have gone to Columbia University instead of Æolian Hall. Had he been judiciously advised and properly guided he might have been thrown into currents that would have carried him more quickly to success, as he would have developed his artistic consciousness more smoothly and harmoniously and would the more easily have been able to guess the poet’s secret: to be happy in his heightened power to see and feel.
The era of self-made men is passing; many regret it and amongst them are those who get pleasure from struggle, and happiness from contemplating it. As Mr. Kreymborg says, recalling the days when he first went to Fourteenth Street to the “studio:” “And there was absolutely no joy like it—nothing like it.” Writers and artists have no “corner” on that joy.
Writing in 1833, six years after William Blake, the poet-artist, had gone to immortality, Edward FitzGerald said, “To me there is a particular interest in this man’s writing and drawing, in the strangeness of the constitution of his mind.” That is the interest of William Blake to-day when his poetry fails to thrill or to inspire, and when his highest claim to be considered an artist rests on a series of drawings and engravings called Illustrations to the Book of Job.
William Blake had visual hallucinations. At least, he had the capacity to see the creations of his imagination with the same vividness as if they had been before his eyes, and he maintained that they were before his eyes. He contended that things whose reality cannot be proved, such as angels, people deceased for ages, and buildings demolished for centuries, presented themselves in his visual field. He maintained it with sincerity and determination and he drew what he said he saw. But the fact that a man has hallucinations is not sufficient to label him “insane.” Conduct that is prejudicial to others’ happiness, welfare, and comfort is an essential condition, and none of William Blake’s biographers or commentators has described such conduct. To many psychiatrists like myself, Mr. Bruce’s effort to show that William Blake was sane will undoubtedly seem an unnecessary labor, but a gratifying one, for sympathetic hero handling is a kindly thing to observe.