In these historic days I cannot think of your September issue in other terms than as of a Zeppelin hurling bombs into the enemy’s strongholds. From the first to the last page (yes, even the letters!) I read the copy to an imaginary beating of drums, blasting of trumpets, fluttering of banners. When I reached the last line, I relaxed in nervous expectation of the results of the grandiose charge: Will there be no explosion, no earthquake?
I ask this question in dead earnest. The Little Review has become definite in one point—in its uncompromising warfare against the rotten features of the existing order. In this one issue you have attacked with the fervor of unhesitating youth some of the stanchest fortified dunghills of American life and art. From Armageddon, that merciless bomb into the camp of provincial complacency prevailing in this country, through the execution of academical Grocers, through the venomous Democrat that reveals the beauty of constructive hatred, down to the palpitating letter of the “Boy-Reader” who deals a tender death-blow to the despotic authoritativness of parenthood,—I scent war powder! And with hope and anxiety I put the question once more:
Will there be no response to the call of the clarion? Will your battle-cry not be echoed by young America, who for the first time hear a free unmercenarized word? Will your courageous gospel not stir the hearts of college men and women, those who have not yet been completely philistinized by their “vocational guides”; college men and women who in other countries have always been the torch-bearers, the advance-guard and martyrs in the fights for truth and ideals? Will The Little Review not succeed in creating a Drang und Sturm epoch?
A negative answer would spell a death-verdict for the future of this over-dollarized land.
An Interested Reader, Chicago:
The Little Review bubbles over with enthusiasm and love of life. Here is an instance of a losing fight with life—perhaps it may interest you.
A childhood spent in the slums of a large city—not in the camaraderie spirit of the slums but within the close bounds of a little clean apartment presided over by an aristocratic-notioned mother. Absolute barrenness of childhood experience—not a toy, never even a rag doll, not a tree, not a flower, not a picture of any beauty—a household of petty quarreling and incessant scrubbing and cleaning, and strict adherence to duties. As the child, now grown, thinks back, she knows that there was always a subconscious feeling of revolt. She would often go off for many hours knowing that punishment would follow; she destroyed much that caused tears in her efforts to create, she craved and found affection where life was a little richer.
And then came books—avid, unsystematic reading. But life was never touched intimately and directly from any angle but one of barrenness, pettiness. A routined school course enriched living by a deep and lasting friendship. Continually the inner revolt and the outward conforming dragged along together. And then came a time of complete awakening, of burning whys, with realization of a dual existence and a desire for sincerity in living above all things. Life demands some sort of a medium of expression which has its beginning in childhood experience. A maturing mind just beginning on impressions that should have come in childhood is a sorry spectacle. Its desires are so out of proportion to its human possibilities that it flounders and does nothing. It finds in itself capacities dulled for want of stimulation, it looks on things and sees them out of relation to itself. One grows to despise human beings, to hate living—to see that there is beauty and radiance in the world only for the chosen ones who respond to it intimately and not only through day dreams.
Youth is not always synonymous with love of life; the gutter does not always hold a reflection of the sky, and a conversation or even understanding with one’s parents but seldom solves the problem of soul imprisonment. Breaking the bars of immediate environment is not so wonderful a thing for an independent adult, but how is one to overcome the barriers of a wasted childhood?
C. A. Z., Chicago: