If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were more free, more individual, than their contemporaries, this was the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks forward instead of back; and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences, a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly.
A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist", when in his article on 'Futurism and the Theatre', in 'The Mask', he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics", citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song-dances of the Hopis and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art. It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world.
It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement that it is, I think, important.
Harriet Monroe.