Mabel Frush, Chicago:
You have invited frank criticism, and that is my reason for not writing at first: I could not accept it all. In the first place, regarding Paderewski. Do you never find him a bit over-powering; do you never feel that a trifle more restraint might give greater strength? In Grieg, for instance, does he carry you up into the high places, give you that impression of unlimited space, rugged strength, and wild beauty? Is he not too subjective?
I quite agree with you as regards Chopin and Schumann. There he is satisfying. His interpretations carry a quality that other artists sometimes treat too lightly; forgetting “a man’s reach must exceed his grasp,” and so sacrificing the greater to the lesser in striving for perfection. Impotency is the price of ultra-civilization.
Your comments on temperament are interesting, but I feel you are not quite fair in your comparisons. Is not Paderewski’s genius largely a racial gift? To me all Russian (or Polish) art—both creative and interpretative—possesses the flame of the elemental, that generative quality which marks the difference between technical perfection and living, breathing, throbbing art. Appreciating that “all music is what awakens in you when reminded by the instrument,” he strives for but one thing: an emotional releasement that results in a temperamental orgy which leaves his hearers dazed, lost in the labyrinth of their own emotions.
As for Rupert Brooke’s poetry, I regard him as decadent—at least too much so to be really vital. Perhaps my vision is clouded, but I could as easily conceive of Johnson worshipping at the shrine of Boswell as of Whitman liking Brooke. Now and then he impresses me as being effete, and I can never separate him from a cult, though I do delight in some of his poems.
Mrs. William H. Andrews, Cleveland:
May I put in my little word and wish you all good speed, editor of The Little Review?
You evidently live in the clear blue sky where fresh enthusiasms rush on like white clouds bearing us irresistibly along. Life grows even more vivid under such stimulating courage and pulsing optimism.
The world is indeed wonderful if we but live it passionately, as did Jean Christophe and Antoine, leaping forward, breasting the waves, with music in the soul. My ears are singing with the third movement of Tschaikowsky’s immortal Pathetique, which to me, in larger part, so belies its name.
Hail to The Little Review! May it dart “rose-crowned” along its shining way, emblazoning the path for many of us.