Some of them are beautiful in their simplicity, like children—unspoiled in their loves and hates, and it is entertainment to behold them; to be with them, yet not of them; to be the arch-snob, of such perfect snobbishness that it is indistinguishable from perfect humility, perfect democracy.
All the mighty ones have been artists in life; like unto children they have walked their ways, so everlastingly sure of themselves that rarely have they been betrayed into petulance by the wobbling of their sense of superiority.
Susan Quackenbush, Portage, Wisconsin:
May one who has read your every issue with joy and enthusiasm be permitted to enter protest against that gross libel on the human race labeled The Artist in Life, in your June number?
Please—oh please—be an artist-in-life, in human life, as well as in sunsets and Paderewskis and Imagism, and see for one creative moment, in “terms of truth and beauty,” the wonderful, aspiring, suffering, loving, smouldering, flaming beautiful souls of that great living, growing, winged group of creations you have called—may the great human God forgive the phrase—a “mass of caterpillars!” Come and see how its soul, and the souls of its separate creations “spring from the rock” just as truly as the brook’s or your own. If they can not yet spring as far, it is because the weight above them is as yet too heavy.
When all the humans look like caterpillars to any one human, the trouble is with that one’s viewpoint. From an aeroplane, even the Himalayas look like anthills. Come down from your remote altitude and lose yourself in the beautiful, glorious psychic of the crowd—be one of them, and see what you will find!
The Little Review proclaims itself bent on the adventure of beauty. Is there any beauty like that of the “sad, sweet music of humanity?” What is the glow of the most gorgeous sunset ever splashed against the western skies beside the glow of the divine in the human which hurls itself upon you—and into you if you will let it—in a thousand beseeching, inviting, intoxicating flames from the midst of any crowd?
But only, of course, if you are in the midst.
Is there any adventure like the “adventure of being human”—and with humans? and of them? Go with Whitman into the heart of humanity—struggle with them—not from far above them—to lift from off their backs the crushing weight of wealth and masters and idle snobs and false gods so that they may get room to spread their wings—for they have wings, and then you will know them as they are, and yourself but as one of them.
If some of them still try to clip the wings of those who have struggled free from the crushing pressure, it is because of the maddening agony of their own atrophying wings. If a few seem even to be unaware of the need for wings, it is because the clamor of more insistent needs—the cries of hungry children, of bruised and broken and unsatisfied men and of suffering and degraded women—has silenced for every shame their own soul’s wing-cry.