Your last issue is a failure—with two exceptions, Miss Goldman’s article on “Preparedness” and Mr. Hecht’s letter. Both of them are human, understandable, and sincere. They shout—but do not roar. All the others are ostentatious, plebeian, and lack artistic restraint. They are not beautiful. They holler and produce a sense of heaviness and overexertion. Sympathy and politeness are apparently the cardinal virtues of the highly esteemed editor. Hence this “democratic” hash.
To be more specific: Your editorial, “Toward Revolution,” is the acme of nonsense. I tried to take you seriously but I couldn’t. It is pamphletory, and should have no place in The Little Review.
“The Ecstasy of Pain” is a stage hurricane, and, to paraphrase Mr. Goldbeck, it is like Chicago: vast, but not impressive. It lacks artistic touch and symmetrical wholeness. The fourth paragraph is excellent. The rest was unnecessary. The fragmentary mind of Mr. Kaun is phosphorescent, produces tiny sparks which are soon lost in the darkness. Higher mathematics is the best remedy for Mr. Kaun’s mind.
“The Spring Recital” is a bore. The author of The “Genius” seems to have a mania for torturing the innocent public. I read “The Spring Recital” twice, yes twice; and when I got through with it I felt extremely uncomfortable. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t mean anything to me. I challenge anyone to explain to me: What does this piece of “dramatic” “quatch” mean?
All the other articles—well, they are harmless.
Woods Dargan, Darlington, S. C.:
I enclose a check for $1.50, and ask that you enter my name for one year’s subscription—that is, if you will let one of the rabble creep in. Frankly, I know no more about art (with a capital A or otherwise) than a rabbit. I don’t even know what an “Imagist” is! And for the life of me I cannot understand why the temperamental, fussy gentleman named Alexander S. Kaun should not use a singular verb with a singular noun, just like ordinary people. But when he says, as he does in the first line of the fourth paragraph of his article, “the dearer a person or a thing are to me, etc.,” I know there must be intellectual purpose in it, some esoteric effect that gets to the cultured few but passes over my head; so I bow before the unknown beauty of it, thinking, “Odd, but no doubt it’s all right.”
Also, to my untutored mind, the frequent use of profanity in an everyday, conversational way in two or three of the articles is amusing, and makes me wonder. It reminds me of the days when I first took up the art, and used to feel a shudder of delight when I ripped out a good, mouth-filling, “Damn it all to hell!” Perhaps it has lost its charm for me as a literary ornament because I swear so much myself, just as a matter of habit without deriving the oldtime pleasure from it.
Other places where these boys put it all over me are in music and Russians. It is one of my secret sorrows that I know I know nothing about music. I like it, but it never occurs to me to fade away and fill an early grave if I hear somebody’s nocturne murdered—that is, if I know it is being murdered, which is highly unlikely. And as to the Russians, old Dostoevsky is my limit so far, but I’m game, and am going in for all the others,—the more gloomy and morbid the better.