Published on the 1st of each month

AN INDIVIDUALIST REVIEW

Formerly the NEW FREE WO MAN

No. 10.—VOL. II, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1st, 1915. SIXPENCE.

Editor : HARRIET SHAW WEAVER. Contributing Editor : Assistant Editor : RICHARD ALDINGTON. , DORA MARSDEN, B.A. CONTENTS. PACE PAGE VIEWS AND COMMENTS...... 149 Two POEMS. By Marianne Moore ..... 158 PASSING PARIS. By Madame Ciolkowska .... 151 WOODCUT OF RICHARD ALDINGTON. By Raoul Kristian . 159 FRENCH POEMS. By Charles Grolleau .... 152 "DER STURM." By Alec W. G. Randall . . . .159 TRANSLATIONS OF RUSSIAN FICTION. By M. Montagu-Nathan 152 LAURENT TAILHADE. By Richard Aldington, with woodcut by POEMS AND FRAGMENTS OF SAPPHO. Translated by Edward Raoul Kristian ...... 159 Storer 153 INCONSIDERABLE IMBECILITIES ...... 161 CUBIMPRESSION AND AFTER. By Huntly Carter . . . 155 A PLAYNTYVE BALLADE. By Richard Aldington . . . 161 UNE FEMME EST UN ÉTAT DE NOTRE ÂME . . . 156 To ALEXANDER BERKMAN. By Alice Groff . . . 162 THE GHOSTS OF AN OLD HOUSE. By John Gould Fletcher . 157 CORRESPONDENCE ...... 162

VIEWS AND COMMENTS

BY DORA MARSDEN

IT is probable that Mr. Lloyd George's mind was fixed The presence of a controversy of such a nature at such more upon the "racket and clatter" than the a time allows of one, and only one explanation : a conscription-controversy itself, when he supported his government has been faced with responsibilities which plea for less of the former by a picture of the Govern­ it is too timorous to shoulder. They dare swear by ment intent upon the nice numerical calculation which, the desired ends but tremble to adopt the necessary presumably, was to settle its fate. For, however much means, and to save themselves they call the people such a picture may tend to mitigate the " noise," it into the consultation. It is certain that means which lends darkness rather than light to the controversy appear too drastic for the government to accept re­ itself. The necessity for a jDrompt and systematic sponsibility will be too drastic to win unanimity if laid organizing of the community on a fighting-basis is not before a whole community. So—a controversy : talk : dependent on the number of individuals of military age in war-time, and the outward appearance of a " dis­ —let their number be more or less—who while adamant affected " people while actually there exists the minimum to every verbal threat and persuasion are likely to prove of disaffection. The development of such a situation vulnerable under threat of physical violence. The would damn any government even were no further community at the present time has no choice as to proof of incapacity forthcoming. The consideration whether it shall adopt a fighting-basis or no, and the that they may have sought to exploit an affair of windy question »s to whether society shall shape itself primarily terminology into a semblance of seriousness in order to to accommodate military requirements is not at issue. have in the people a scapegoat ready to offer up should The storm in the tea-cup created by opposition to military matters go seriously wrong would only go to " conscription " turns upon what is scarcely more than prove that they possess the craft which disguises weak­ a point of etiquette in the manner of conducting the work ness rather than strength. A government which under­ of re-organization. The question is whether the stood what constitutes the elements of their strength government responsible for the re-organization from a would have affirmed their claims upon the service of peace to a fighting one are to get on with their business the people at the outset. They would not have condoned in a straightforward manner, or whether they shall even an apparent laying of the subject open to discussion. proceed to obtain the services which every one knows Only when a people is " disaffected " and inclined to they can and must obtain by means of a painful and hold that their place in the State is not worth the cost blarneying rhetoric, a large financial outlay, considerable of maintaining, could a government hold that such a question as conscription is open to debate : and it individual unfairness and a sustained atmopshere of would then be the kind of discussion which a sane upbraiding, uncertainty and unrest. It would be a pity government would fear and shun. if this fact about the nature of conscription, i.e., that it is an affair of etiquette and not of " numbers," " facts," * * * * ' principles " and the like, is not kept clearly in sight ; it should have a soothing influence on minds ready to As it turns out, the war has revealed that there is no leap giddily to visions of revolutions. genuine disaffection among the people. Rarely has * * * * there been shown more whole-hearted unanimity than 150 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

that with which the English people have affirmed that upon whom the onus of decision is laid. Accordingly, the Empire is worth preserving at all costs. Whatever a weak government which thrusts such decisions upon the Government have left undone, the people at least popular opinion, automatically makes newspaper-pro­ have expected and been ready for conscription the prietors the arbiters of the situation, since those who " thing " if not for conscription the " name "—con­ control the avenues by way of which popular opinion scription the " thing " meaning that men are liable for is most affected are controllers of popular opinion. training or military service or connected services when Any powerful group of newspapers finds itself in a and as the Government see fit. And against that, no position to do what the government have run away man in the country has had anything to say by as much from doing : reach a decision. The most powerful as a syllable. The most obdurate of " slackers " ends newspaper-owner by the Government's action is hoisted by saying that t- If they want him they can send for into a position of a dictator, an autocrat, Napoleonic- him," and one must agree that if they cannot send for plotter, what not, since in the modestest gathering some him they don't particularly want him. No one has an one must go through a door first. The less powerful argument against the Government's right to conscribe papers on the other hand, by no means reluctant to services equally, and if the Government had given take a hand in the governing game, and relying on our specific form to such rights as they did to matters such tradition of a Free Press—a tradition based on the as deferment of payments and the like, in the first days sound trite truth that a cat may look at a king, but of the war, they would have passed into effect without forgetful of the equally sound but not so trite truth comment, and practical sense would have recognized that a king may please himself as to the manner of in them a necessary piece of eleventh hour legislation. retorting upon the cat—try to make the most of their Had they done so, a wrangle as to whether a man's position as second in control and by force of suggestion services should be Voluntary or Compulsory would now work up opposition and rebellion. Which is the state appear as sensible as a wrangle over the merits of the of affairs obtaining at the present time and to any voluntary over the compulsory principle in Taxation observant eye what has happened in this instance as a or the Assessment of Punishment for crimes. In fact, consequence of a government foisting its responsibility the enforcement of equal responsibility for military nominally on Popular Opinion but practically on the service forms an exact parallel with the enforcement of Press, forms the completest refutation of all arguments, inhibitions in personal conduct, such as " Thou shalt which would prove the desirability of leaving the not kill " and " Thou shall not steal." Those inhibitions question of national service to popular opinion and are not enforced and made compulsory because we all option. The net results are to divert popular energy detest them : quite a large number of people indeed away from all serious matters and work up strife and refrain from murder, personal violence and theft by heat by concentrating attention on the incidental and preference ; yet they do not on that account work up unimportant. These results the Press by its very form a holy wrath against the laws which make the inhibitions is calculated to achieve. The assertiveness of the more certain by threat of penalties. They welcome the printed page, the hypnotizing influence of daily reference laws rather—and not primarily because they chime in and reiteration can make the mole-hill hide the mountain with our preferences but because they counter the until it becomes a provoking distraction to be reminded tendencies of those who have no such preferences. The that there is any mountain. National service for compulsory regulations which are laws are not in military purposes which at the outset the people re­ antithesis to preferences and voluntary desires ; they cognized as incumbent and in need of being made are intended to put stamina into such preferences as are compulsory, is now beginning to be debated as bitterly considered of first importance : devices for putting as the question of participation in the war would have *' First things First," and safeguarding these from the been had the matter been handed over to popular variation which belongs to all personal moods and opinion ; while the " national need " so-called is sus­ preferences. About a government at any rate which pected of being a fake worked by a party who wish to appears to require to be taught its business in relation acquire merit by the introduction of drastic measure* to such safeguards there is something odd—either to end the war which can be won quite as easily without sinister or imbecile. Apparently this government does them. The " seriousness " of the situation is a pretence : require teaching, and the bandying of argument which a put-up job by " Pessimists " with intent to scare they encourage is for all the world a replica of the " Optimists," and get the better of their arguments. rhetoric used among sentimental anarchists. The Everywhere suspicion and argument, where but for the " clatter and racket " tolerated in connection with the government's " democratic " cowardice, there would first duty of the Government of a Paramount State is a have been single-hearted energy. It is the inevitable faithful copy of the Babel which rises when those gentle consequence of having people in positions which are too believers in the faith that the beginning and end of big for them : questions are thrust for settlement out of things is words congregate together. their pertinent sphere, and those upon whom they are thrust, far from being competent to settle them are themselves put off their balance and plunged into Nor is the " clatter and racket " wholly unintelligible : confusion. One wonders what Cromwell, when he it can be followed, given the clue. The Government cleared the House of Commons and locked the door and having shirked its most serious function, and put its put the key in his pocket, would have had to say to the " advisability " out to debate, the people naturally, are popular press. At his exploit, says history, " Not a not slow to try what they can do with the responsibility dog barked." Perhaps the press like the canine world thus thrust upon them. They promptly begin to put will recognize when it has met a master. up as many " Wills and Won'ts " as children who are consulted about what they shall eat and wear ; though prompted perhaps by the sound English instinct that nothing which is really important is genuinely debatable, they at once switch the discussion on to matters which they know there is no harm and no profit save amuse- READERS ment in discussing. Discussion about matters affecting the Defence of the Realm transforms itself into dis­ cussion upon the merits of the profile or family aspira­ tions of a newspaper proprietor ; while the circumstances which are mere accompaniments—though necessary THE EGOIST

ones of the abandonment of affairs of first importance to popular discussion are worked into the foreground ARE ASKED TO BECOME and transformed into melodramatic " Plots against the People's Freedom." Shirking responsibility for all SUBSCRIBERS important decisions is what constitutes the abdication of governing power which power devolves on those For Terms of Subscription see page 163 October J, 1915 THE EGOIST 151

priate, corrupt and destroy it." He applied this theory both to Republicanism and to Roman Catholicism. PASSING PARIS His discovery encouraged his conversion, which took WITH a comprehensive though swift obituary place towards his fortieth year (after his disillusions !). (Un poète français tombé au Champ d'honneur : It was the corollary to a natural tendency, for Péguy's Charles Péguy ; Payot et Cie, Paris, 60c), work was an expression of the primitive in spirit and M. Paul Seippel completes previous studies of the most the archaic in form. But he was not in the slightest monumental of the many French authors sacrificed to sense a pilferer of the past. He confessed to being of the war, notably the more elaborate notice by M. René the fifteenth century and was as honest and original as Johannet published some years ago. In his little the probity and genius of that age exacted from its brochure M. Seippel draws as excellent a portrait as craftsmen. Politically and artistically he was a franc- one could wish of the man, while criticizing his work tireur. His Catholicism was of a rebellious character with concision and judgment. One seldom reads and excluded him from the nationalist body whose monographs as happy, the custom of biographers and adherents comprise many who admit to incredulity in critics generally being to write around rather than the dogmas of the Church while officially supporting it about their subjects. for the sake of the hierarchy and discipline they desire Charles Péguy was a kind of Daniel Defoe. Had he to see restored in their country. lived in the century of that propagandist he would M. Seippel ends his admirable study with the circum­ certainly have got himself into trouble. As it was he stances of Péguy's death, the logical conclusion of his sowed and reaped a plentiful harvest of enemies. part in that life which " is always a battle, where there " I have always taken everything seriously," said he, is always a crusade," as Péguy makes God say, a death " and that has led me far." In days of the past according to his own ideal as expresseel in his poem this habit led to the stake ; in these it leads to unpopu­ " Eve "— larity. But if only you can attain a sufficient measure Happy those who have died for a plot of earth. of it, unpopularity will be as effective in procuring renown as popularity and prove more gratifying ! Happy those who have died in great battles Charles Péguy had the satisfaction of experiencing this Fallen on the ground with face turned to God. . . . Happy those who have died for home and hearth paradox. And the poor honour of the father's house. . . . Péguy was the modern personification of the crusader. Happy those who have died,—they have returned Of this bellicose Christian it has been said : " He puts To the earth and the clay. Happy those who have died in a just war. holy water in his petrol." The result is something Happy the ripe ears, the harvested corn. chaotic, contradictory, picturesque, restless and intense in his practical life, but entirely favourable to his art. —on September 5, 1914, in that famous battle of the The echo of Charles Péguy's propaganda was strictly Marne in which the men of France summoned all and local and temporary, his poetry alone will have a hold just those national qualities of which Péguy himself beyond his time and country. However, it is impossible was at once the portrayer and the portrait. to separate the poet from the pamphleteer, for every line of his work is steeped in his opinions, enthusiasms, * * * * censures and " humanitarian, idealistic, Christianity- It is strange to see M. Henri Albert, the translator of impregnated socialism." Nietzsche's complete works, give the popular and There was a time when he associated his ideas to erroneous rendering of the German word " ehrenvoll " those of different sects and parties, but successive in the last number of the Mercure, and which mis­ disillusions led to the inevitable and nobler isolation. construction has led the world to imagine that Germany Péguy soon learnt that egotisms were not less violent was aspiring to a merely "honourable" peace, instead among the revolutionaries than among the capitalists, of the "peace full of honour" to which it considers and that some of the citizens by whose side he had itself entitled in reality. struggled were no more " souls "—-those " souls " who were to form his " city harmonious "—than the most rapacious financiers. He respected above all what the M. Jacques Copeau has translated, and published average Socialist seems to respect least, namely, labour, with the Nouvelle Revue Française, Mr. Glutton-Brock's and abhorred a"bove all the deliberate bungler (saboteur) : observations on the war.

" We have known the honourableness of work exactly similar to * * * # that which in the Middle Ages governed the hand and the heart," M. Charles Grolleau, whose poetry appears for the wrote the son of the widow who earned the family bread by mending the cane chairs in the Cathedral of Orleans (where Péguy was born first time in England in these pages, has on several in the year 1873). " We have known this care carried out to per­ occasions been the medium of English literature in fection, equal in its entirety, equal down to the smallest detail. . . . France. His translation of Blake's Marriage of Heaven In my childhood I saw cane-chairs mended in exactly the same spirit and with the same love as moved the same people when they and Hell necessarity figures among literary tours de force carved their cathedrals. What is left of all this to-day ? How is and curiosities, and Oscar Wilde has found in him his it that the most laborious people in the world, the only one perhaps most sensitive interpreter, one of the few who is not an who loved work for the sake of work, for the sake of working, has Iscariot ! For M. Grolleau belongs to that group of been turned into a people of deliberate bunglers ; by what means has it been turned into this people who when in the workshop will French erudites in English letters comprising M.Augustin exercise its whole pains not to do a stroke ? " Filon, M. Joseph Aynard, M. Théodore de Wyzewa, M. Edmond Pilon, M. Henry Davray, M. Jacques Péguy, recalls M. Seippel, hard worker of old France Copeau, &c, and among whom the recent death of as he was, shunned no tasks, whatever they were. He M. Robert d'Humières has brought about a most would sweep his little shop opposite the Sorbonne regrettable fissure. (against whose big-bodies he so often directed his M. Grolleau is not introduced here as the representa­ campaigns), and even the pavement in front of his tive of any form of secessionistic departure, but as a shop. He would rise before dawn, leave his little poet of culture and spirituality. The immaterialism of country cottage and take the first train into town. He his conceptions is such as often to escape the mental brought their proofs to his contributors himself, some­ grasp of the reader, who is frequently called upon to times knocking at their doors before they were awake, strain the spheres in which his mind more usually and would then take them to the printers at Suresnes. evolves to reach within touch of the distant and He was naturally ascetic, like unto those mediaeval unworldly domain of M. Grolleau's thought-vision. One monks whose vows of poverty gave them the right to often feels he leaves one far behind him. Like the late speak the truth to their contemporaries. Charles Péguy and André Lafon. Charles Grolleau is a Péguy seems to have thought that reform is only fervent Roman Catholic. As was the first of these he possible through a return to origins. " The beginning is a convert ; unlike the second, rare poet though he [of a movement] is mystic, it renders the idea in its was, he is also a mystic. André Lafon was a worshipper beauty and purity, then follow politics which appro­ after the order of Francis Jammes. M. Grolleau's 152 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

religion is more intellectual and transcends beyond the limited perpetual adoration of creation. His poems veil rather than define revelations of the most intimate TRANSLATIONS OF RUSSIAN character and of whose abstractions verbal expression FICTION can generally offer but the enigma, and seldom the key. Perceiving and creating—and are not perceptions BY M. MONTAGU-NATHAN and creations if not identical allied ?—an independent sphere as this poet does he is, therefore, an independent II in the most essential and elevated sense. By his side ERE the first instalment of this article (voicing a how small appear those who attain freedom merely complaint that ante-War translations of Russian through revolt instead of initiation and how these may classics had been grievously neglected) was in print, envy him the unison he naturally achieves between there appeared, in a weekly Review, two letters whose forms so strict and inspirations so vast and intangible. substance constitutes a timely endorsement of the said To attempt to give it further, that is second-hand, jeremiad. Both were from publishers, and both con­ precision might amount to the profanation by an cerned Goncharof. The first publisher (bless him !) indiscreet and irreverent trespasser of a secret chapel. protested that Goncharof's work is not, as had been held, entirely unknown in England, and expressed a pained MURIEL CIOLKOWSKA. surprise that the introduction of this author some twenty-one years ago, to English readers, by Mrs. Garnett, Mr. Gosse and himself,* should have done so little to popularise the work of the great Russian. The second FRENCH POEMS correspondent announced a translation of " Oblomof," but ignored (either in the English or French sense of that THE following poems have been taken by permission of word) the existence of any other translation of this the author from L'Encens et la Myrrhe, by Charles Grolleau (E. Lethielleux, Paris, 1909) : author. Meanwhile, there has been a demonstration of the SILENCE difficulty of eliciting information as to what translations do exist. The writer of this article learns from the pages POUR me donner à Vous quels mots sauraient Vous of another Review that the " Memoirs of a Physician " plaire ? by Vikenty Smielovich (Veressayef), a work that should Ils se dérobent tous ou demeurent obscurs, appeal to respecters of Stockmann and admirers of Timides et transis, hélas ! encore impurs " Limey " Schutzmacher, is, or has been obtainable D'avoir frôlé jadis les baisers de la terre. in English, and is able to return the compliment by correcting the impression that Lyeskof is " entirely un- Nul ne pourrait enclore ainsi qu'un reliquaire translated " (three of his tales, including the famous Mon amour, ô Seigneur ! si fragile pourtant, " Sealed Angel," having been done by Beatrix L. Et j'ai vu le plus doux même et le plus chantant, Tollemache), and by recalling that Mrs. Voynich long Le plus profond mourir devant votre Mystère. enough ago laid the monoglot under an obligation to her with three stories by Saltikof, one of them, the appendix C'est pourquoi me voici, très pauvre, devant Vous, to his " Pompadours and Pompadouresses." Balbutiant encore et cependant jaloux, There is little need, however, for commentators to 0 Verbe ! d'être un peu l'humble écho de Vous-même. . . exhume these pioneer efforts. The publishers are Et je sens dans mon cœur monter comme la mer, rapidly resurrecting them and re-issuing them as novel­ Plus tendre et plus puissant que les mots de la Chair, ties, endeavouring on occasion to justify the term by Un silence divin qui prie et qui Vous aime. means of a parvenu preface. There is, on the other hand, a need for counsel as to the future. In undertaking a generous issue of contem­ QUIÉTUDE porary Russian literature in an English dress, the pub­ lishers are assuming a rôle which involves certain O COURTS moments d'oubli, légères matinées ! responsibilities. It would be the easiest thing in the world to create a very unfavourable impression of the On descend au jardin où des roses sont nées, Russian Intellectual. If, therefore, the publishers are Rire de l'aube après l'angoisse de la nuit. inclinéd to avoid the labour of ascertaining for themselves what is and what is not the sort of literature calculated Il semble, tant est vague et pénétrant le bruit to improve the present slender intellectual reciprocity De ce chaste réveil du monde qu'on dérange between Briton and Slav, let them merely peruse the La besogne invisible et féerique d'un Ange list of German translations, published with a view to Dont la main de lumière ouvrait câlinement satisfying that section of young Prussia which may Les feuilles et les fleurs, et l'on va, lentement, be conveniently classed as the " Keen-on-Wedekind " Timide, heureux, naïf, l'âme presque pareille set. A ce jardin paisible et doux qui se réveille. One understands that the Russian vogue for the worst kind of decadent fiction has passed away, that the porno­ La brume plane encore et cache l'horizon. graphic orgy which succeeded the twentieth-century Time of Troubles is but an unpleasant memory. One C'est l'heure exquise où, l'aile ouverte, l'oraison concludes at any rate, that the approaching Hun, Cherche, abeille du Ciel, quelle fleur de mystère prophetically invoked by Valéry Briussof, will wage S'ouvre pour son désir au mystique parterre. destruction, for once in a way, where destruction would C'est l'enfance du jour, et sa neuve beauté really be a boon. Far from triumphant, Ham will soon S'offre, vivant miroir, à son Dieu reflété : be vanquished. Et, calme, et s'embaumant de tout ce qu'elle admire, To a wise publisher, solicitous for the progress of Anglo- La prière sur notre bouche est un sourire. Russian relations, a word should suffice. If only the Sanin of Turgenef had remained the sole representative of that particular ilk ! Let the publisher exercise dis­ O minutes d'amour, pourquoi vous envoler ? cretion in his selection from Kuprin ; let him remember Hélas ! quand ils sont purs, nos rêves sont ailés, that Sayitsef should be accorded a preference over Nous voyons leur reflet dans une ombre incertaine, Kamensky, who requires cautious handling, and let him Mais leur troupe joyeuse est déjà très lointaine allow the vernaculous Kouzmin to languish, taboo. Quand nous tendons les mains pour les garder un peu . . . There is scope enough in the field of the classics to keep Et leur geste d'accueil est un geste d'adieu. translators busy for a generation. Considering the CHARLES GROLLEAU. * A Common Story. London : William Heinemann. October 1, 1915 THE EGOIST 153 attention that has been given to Dostoievsky and Turgenef, not to mention Tolstoi, the comparative neglect of Gogol amounts to a phenomenon. POEMS AND FRAGMENTS OF Like Griboiedof, his precursor, whose immortal comedy The Misfortune of being too Clever " was issued last SAPPHO year by Mr. Nutt, he is represented in translation by his dramatic masterpiece, " The Inspector-General." But TRANSLATED BY EDWARD STORER why has the British translator held aloof from the SAPPHO was born in the island of Lesbos about 612 B.C. Her " Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka," and why have we name in her own language is " Psappha." She was a contemporary been made to wait so long for " Mirgorod ? " The of Alkaios and Stesichoros. At some period of her life she was Londoner, instead of puzzling out the plot of Rimsky- exiled from Lesbos. An inscription in the Parian Chronicle says : Korsakof s " A Night in May," might, in happier circum­ " When Aristokles reigned over the Athenians Sappho fled from stances, have been so familiar with Gogol's story that Mitylene and sailed to Sicily." the " cuts," administered by our operatic caterers to But it is through her own poems that we see most clearly into the every work, long or short, would have exasperated, but beauty and tragedy of her life. She is there revealed to us as a would have failed to mystify him. The concert-goer is woman of ardent nature, noble, delicate-minded, and fond of pleasure. pleased with Moussorgsky's very popular " Gopak," That her poems were chiefly love-poems, and love-poems written but he ought to have been in a position to hail it as a to women, is clear even from the mutilated fragments which remain. welcome splash of local colour, the one thing lacking Any other explanation destroys at once their art and their reality. in Roudy Panko's vivid description of a summer's day in Yet sedulous hypocrites are to be found to-day who will wilfully Little Russia. Why were the "Arabesques" passed mistranslate and misconstrue in order to envelope the manners of over, and that incomparable item of nasal lore, " the antiquity in a retrospective and most absurd respectability. Wandering Nose ?" A public worthy of a translation of The grammarians of the old world say there were nine books of Maupassant's " Necklace " might surely have been given Sappho's poems. In addition to the fragments given here there are " The Great-Coat " of Gogol ! extant about another hundred very short fragments, sometimes of one or two words only and the " Song of the Nereids." The biblio­ Again, there is Ostrovsky. In the Edinburgh Review graphy of the subject is vast. In English Dr. Wharton's Sappho is of July 1868, " The Storm " is mentioned as the most the best modern work. There are also excellent modern versions powerful of all his plays. It has been translated by the and exegeses in French, German, and Italian. untiring Mrs. Garnett, but in a prefatorial note Mr. Gosse fears that " the people who like ' farcical comedy ' and social melodrama, and ' musical sketches ' will find LOVE POEMS AND FRAGMENTS ' The Storm ' deep, forbidding, and gloomy." Has " The Storm " ever been staged in London ? Seemingly, I the managers were frightened by Mr. Gosse's forebodings. Why, oh why, Mr. Gosse, did you not say that " The THE ODE TO APHRODITE Storm " is the Epic of the Mother-in-law ? The proto­ RICHLY-THRONED goddess, O deathless Aphrodite, type of the young person in " Press-Cuttings," who Daughter of Zeus, subtle and sacred one, approached a Poet-Laureate—defenceless at a garden- Bear not my spirit down with too much suffering, party—with the invitation, " Write me a sketch, old But rather come to me as sometimes you have come, dear," might then have persuaded her entourage that When my far prayer has reached your divine presence, Ostrovsky, like Shakespeare, deserved to be encouraged. And you have left for me your father's golden house, But the author, whose studies of Moscow merchant Drawn in your chariot shimmering like the dawn ; society might have been expected to appeal to a nation Your fair fleet sparrows to herald you, whose wings, of shop-keepers, remains unknown, and, with this one Luminous still with the glory of heaven, have flashed exception, untranslated. Radiance over earth. Then you have asked me, That there should exist a quite ample supply of trans­ How fared my eager heart and all its strong hopes : lations of such fiction as that of Dmitri Merejkovsky " What would you do with love or have love do with is in the circumstances rather puzzling. Mr. Baring's you ? description of this versatile and erudite litterateur as the Sappho, who treats you cruelly ? She who avoids you equivalent of our Pater, warrants our regarding this row Soon with desire shall burn, your gifts requiting of volumes as indeed a windfall. By virtue of these, Many times, yours to be whether she will or not." Messrs. Constable have earned a place in the front rank Goddess, come once again, free me from longing. of pioneer publishers, and, into the bargain, a medal for Crown me with victory. 0 be my own ally. valour. Aided by Mr Herbert Trench, they have given us the great Trilogy " The Fore-runner," " The Death of the Gods," and " Peter and Alexis." To the same II firm we owe " Tolstoi as Man and Artist," and the comparative study of this author and that of " Crime To ATTHIS and Punishment." The essay on " The Decadence of Atthis has not come back to me : truly I long to die. Modern Literature," and those on Pushkin, Gogol and Many tears she wept at our parting, saying : Korolenko would be of greater service just now, one " Sappho, how sad is our fate. I leave you unwillingly." thinks, than the fourth volume of what one may call To her I answered : " Go on your way happily and Merejkovsky's " Emperor and Galilean Series," namely, Do not forget me, for you know how I love you. " Alexander I." In the promised " Russian Library," But if you should forget, then I will remind you under the editorship of Mr. Graham, we shall hope to see How fair and good were the things we shared together, Epicureanism deferred for a time, and pessimism, too. How by my side you wove many garlands of violets and " Le Russe," says a biographer, " n'as pas de plus vif Sweet-smelling roses, and made of all kinds of flowers plaisir que de se moquer de lut-même." We have heard Delicate necklaces, how many a flask of the finest myrrh far too little of this Russian Laugh. The translators have Such as a king might use you poured on your body, shown us only his tears. How then reclining you sipped the sweet drinks of your choice." III

Peasant Pottery Shop ATTHIS AT SARDIS 41 Devonshire Street, Theobalds Road, W.C. Atthis, whom we both love, Mnasidika, dwells (Close to Southampton Row) Far away in Sardis, but she often turns Interesting British and Continental Hither her thoughts to us and to that beautiful life We lived together when she looked on you : Peasant Pottery on sale : As on some far-famed goddess and Brightly coloured plaited felt Rugs Delighted in your songs especially 154 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

But now among the Lydian women she Shines as sometimes the rosy-fingered moon XV Shines after dark above the stars and pours IN SICILY (?) Over salt sea and myriad-flowered earth her light, I loved you once, Atthis, long ago. While the fair dew is shed upon the roses and Delicate anthrisks and the blossoming melilote. XVI Two FRIENDS How many restless thoughts recall to me Lato and Niobe were the tenderest friends. The sterile Atthis and I long for the slender one. Sadness devours my soul. From far there comes to us XVII The sound of her sharp cry, and it is not COUNSEL Unheard, for night the many-eared carries it To us across the sea that flows between. If you would stay with us, then choose a younger love. A youth like yours is not for the old.

IV XVIII The moon has set and the Pleiades Sleep in the bosom of Have gone. Your tender friend. It is midnight ; the hours pass ; and I XIX Sleep alone. I am full of longing and desire. V THE CUPS OF GOLD Come, O Kyprian goddess, come with OTHER POEMS AND FRAGMENTS Delicate rare fingers, mix the I Radiant nectar in the cups of INSCRIPTION Gold. Here is the dust of Timias, who never saw VI Her wedding morning. Unto Persephone's To ANACTORIA Dim couch was Timias borne. All her companions (According to tradition) Cut with new-sharpened knives Their hair for Timias' sake. He seems like a god to me the man who is near you, Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter II That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast. If I but see you for a moment, then all my words BY THE SEASHORE Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire By Pelagon's tomb Meniskos, his father, laid Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see. His oars and net to show us how he died. My ears are full of noise. In all my body I Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched III Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman, Death is evil because But I would dare . . . If it were good, the gods Also would die. VII IV THE MARSH LILY PURPLE EARTH " Sappho, if you are content to remain there no more As the shepherd's naked feet trample the hyacinths will I Upon the mountain-side until they stain the earth. Love you. O rise and shine out upon us. Set free Your glorious strength from your bed, and then, casting V off SLEEP Your Chian robe, wash yourself like the marsh lily by Through apple boughs the sighing winds go softly and The bank of the river. And Kleis will hand to you From the tremulous leaves sleep seems to drip. From your press a saffron robe and a peplum of purple." VI VIII Sweeter than the paktis, more So you hate me now, Atthis, and Golden than gold. Turn towards Andromeda. VII THE KRETAN DANCERS IX The Kretan women dancing with delicate feet before I know that never again will The altar scatter the exquisite bloom of the grass. Look upon the sunlight So wise a maid as you. VIII He who is beautiful is good and soon X He who is good will be beautiful. Who is this country girl with IX Clumsy ankles and rough dresses that Draws you towards her ? KLEIS I have a lovely child, like a flower of gold, Kleis, XI Whom I would not sell for the wealth of all Lydia. Never was prouder X Maid than Erinna. XII As the apple ripening on the bough, the furthermost Love shakes my soul. Bough of all the tree, is never noticed by the gatherers, So do the oak-trees on the mountain Or, being out of reach, is never plucked at all. Shake in the wind. XI XIII THE STARS OF NIGHT Unless it be you love Another than me. The stars of night gathered round the moon will veil their bright XIV Faces when she grows full and lights everything with O my youth, my youth, who has you now ? silver. I shall never know you again. October 1, 1915 THE EGOIST 155

are mostly taken from the verbal and written utterances XII of leading extremists in painting. They are classified THE ADONIA into Pre- and Post-Impressionist, Fauvre, Cubist, O Kytherea, delicate Adonis dies. Futurist, and other groups, for the purpose. Such O what to do now that Adonis dies. painters, it seems, have the bad habit of chattering Beat your breasts, you maids, about definitions and theories. They ignore the fact And rend your garments. that these things are all very well in their place, but attempts by painters to make a verbal living and XIII reputation out of them are wildly ridiculous. Especially THE VISION OF HERMES when the painted theories of a certain school do not . . . said Gongyla : agree with the written ones. We know, as Mr. Eddy "What will you tell your slaves?" "Foremost," I reminds us, that the Italian Futurist painters believe answered, that all the realistic details within a given area should " That Hermes appeared to me. Looking upon him, be crammed into a picture, while the Futurist poet ' Master,' I said, ' I am broken and by the believes in the use of the fewest and most indispensable Goddess no longer take any delight in words run on the famous non-stop system. Under the My riches. I long to die. Gladly I'd take my place circumstances painters should be seen not heard. To In the far dewy field where once long ago you the critic the kind of partnership embodied in Mr. Eddy's Brought Agamemnon, the son of Atreus.' "... book is like enough to afford irritation. He is compelled to disentangle the author's definitions and theories from XIV the painter's, and he is never sure that he is making a NIGHT precise and correct division. Furthermore, he is com­ Night, you who gather in your lovely lap pelled to meet the real difficulty residing in Mr. Eddy's The things the shining dawn flung far and wide, statement that : The ewe-lamb you bring back, the straying goat, Every department of human activity . . . speedily develops its The child you lead unto its mother's side. own jargon and the tendency is for the jargon to become denser and denser and so more and more obscure its subject. XV As anyone may see for himself in the following explanation of Duchamp's " Nude Descending the Stairs," quoted by Mr. Eddy. LEDA " If you paint a girl coming downstairs, on any one step you They say that long ago Leda will not show her moving. If you paint a girl on every step, like Found near the irises Burne-Jones with the ' Golden Stair,' you have a crowd and still no A hidden egg. movement. But if you get the forms down to simplest and most essential, just swaying shoulders and hip and knee, bent head and XVI springy sole—and then show them on every step and between all the steps, passing and always passing one into the next, you give INVOCATION the sense of movement." Divine shell, Your song. Which is one way of making a mouthful of the trifle XVII (verbally speaking) that the painter is seeking to make To A POETESS an abstraction of the individualising features of a O Dika, dress your soft hair and weave garlands of movement experienced by him in a moment of time. fennel for your throat. For the Muses love her who In this trifle resides the only possible theory and practice gives grace to her beauty, and turn from the careless of art. The painter has experienced an art-movement, maid. he has assimilated what he was able according to his motional capacity, and in turn provided that which XVIII others might assimilate according to their motional THE NIGHTINGALE capacity. Or, the theory and practice may be put in Spring's messenger, the sweet-voiced nightingale. the words of the Russian painter whom Mr. Eddy XIX quotes as saying that he likes " Kandinsky's Improvisa­ tions," because in them the painter " has succeeded in HESPERUS conveying to me his own emotions." One can believe Fairest of all the stars. it on turning to the charming examples of Kandinsky's XX colour and design included with the twenty-three A RIVER admirable colour reproductions in this book. Again, the theory and practice have been visited by the Italian Gold pulse flowering on the banks. Futurists. To them, " all that is within the vision, XXI actual or imagined, of painter or sculptor, is a part of the picture or bust." Otherwise, a synthesis of many REPOSE realistic details seen in an instant of time, is sought. I lay my limbs upon a delicate couch. Mr. Eddy comments on the various theories with XXII perfect fairness, and naturally he gets in a word for his own definitions. " Art," says Mr. Eddy, " is delight in I am well dowered by the violet-weaving Muses. thought and symbol," and the proper method of art- production is " first to see, then to dream and then on the morrow to paint." He is describing Miller's method and adds, "this is the method of all the very great art CUBIMPRESSIONISM AND AFTER the world has ever known." If so, then there has not BY HUNTLY CARTER been much " great art " about since Cézanne spent laborious years digging cube roots, " spheres and cones THE subject of Mr. A. J. Eddy's book, " Cubists and cylinders " out of nature instead of flashing revela­ and Post-Impressionism " (Grant Richards, 20s.), tions out of himself. And one may reasonably assume is so full of matter that I find a column short that Van Gogh's attempt to melt a world of solids like enough for the barest examination of the facts. The wax in the fire of his intensity was a humbugging affair. general theme is, all significant painters are impres­ Mr. Eddy falls a victim by the wayside of classifica­ sionists and some are cubimpressionists. The title tion. Picasso is not a cubist, but an essentialist. suggests an ordered development of the theories and Gleizes and Metzinger are not cubists, but fakers. practices of cubists and post-impressionists. This we Fergusson is not a fauvre, but a rhythmist. For the do not get. What we get is a very large number of rest, Mr. Eddy's book is stimulating. It enables the extracts with comments thereon. The author refers, reader to grasp some of the eternal qualities of art somewhere, to his book as "an offhand comment upon expressed by revolutionaries, Cubimpressionist and what is now going on in the world of art." The extracts after. 156 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

poets. So infinitely far from us. And yet they sparkle. Your mother calls—your sisters UNE FEMME EST UN ÉTAT DE A brother comes in like a storm and hurries out into NOTRE AME the unknown life that men lead, leaving behind him in the smoke of his cigarette, something of the freedom Peace and lightness of his existence. WHAT is her life like ? Christina's life, whom Life spins itself away. You let it spin. her aunts call Christa, and who has eyes And loving hearts around you see to the necessities like the crucified ? What is her life like ? of life. Tell me ! Evening. First, she wakes up, pushes back her light brown hair, Light the lamps. goes to the washstand which smells of scented soap When evening comes, and tooth-paste, dips her charming face into the tepid And quiet the world and quiet the heart water, soaps herself, washes the soap off and dries And from the clock upon the wall herself. And so on. You hear the pendulum's loud swing Then breakfast. A trifle weary, she sits there resting That in the daytime made no sound— When once again the sun peeps out from her rest. Forever the same cups, the same His gold light through the window sends. embroidered cloth, the same smell of tea. A comfortable Before sleep comes again at night well-ordered, smoothly running mechanism, this morning Once more do all things live and laugh. life. Therein lies peace for a man's heart. When evening comes." Then she goes here and there, takes a clean hand­ kerchief, looks at it, to see that it has no holes, takes her little gold watch up carefully, opens and shuts So sing the poets, who are so infinitely far from us— boxes, thinking, " What beautiful things I have "... like the stars. tidies a few things, puts them together or spreads them Supper. There is talk—then silence. What news out. She carries her beloved flower-pots outside, is there ? herself, treating them as though they were little children, " Aunt Mary has been here. She thinks Christa handling them gently, with loving care, and cutting off is looking fairly well. In the summer, she advises a faded leaf—no not quite faded, but still a trifle dried us " up—it will no longer be able to suck up water, and yet, ' ' They say Goluchowsky the Minister was at the it takes some away from the others. She then blows theatre yesterday. Did you see him ? " into the dough which has been left to rise and looks " No—what a pity. It would have interested me. at it. Especially as it was a dull audience." All in order she thinks. " What is Goluchowsky Minister of ? " So the morning goes by. " Foreign Affairs. You ought to have known that. What are you thinking about ? Novels ? " Doors are perpetually opening and shutting and everything looks as though it never would be straight. " The way Christa goes on with those flowers of hers ! You ought to marry a gardener, Christa. Flowers at But all at once, everything is bright and clean and Christmas, flowers on your birthday. And all white. you would never know that there had been a long stuffy Coloured ones are much more beautiful. I grant you night. that in the air of a room " The flower-pots are again standing in front of the " What do you mean by the air of a room ? " plate-glass window and look as though there had been a " Why ? What do I mean ? Besides aunt Mary said warm summer shower. that of all the " idées fixes " of the mind, looking after Everything breathes out freshness and health. This flowers was the most practicable. How strangely she mood has been going on for thousands of days. Always expresses herself at times ! " this healthy, fresh orderliness. What time is it ? How will the time pass till midday ? " Good-night, father." " Sleep well, my child." It does pass. And again she goes to the washstand which smells of Then you sit in your place and take the cool table- soap and tooth-paste. napkin. Into the cool bed with its warm coverings. Lovingly the father looks at his little daughter. It Turn out the lights ! is like a rest to his eyes, from a life which weighs on The machinery of the day is at an end. him. This has gone on for thousands of days. It is like His First Visit the watering of the flowers and the sunlight in the room which has been put in order. He walked slowly up and down in the little drawing- If it were not so Christine ? room with the green plants and the silk cushions. But it is ! it is ! And as certain as the night that When Christa came in, he was quite calm, even follows day. nonchalant. As though he were in possession of a quite There is a little talk—there is silence. What news short but quite certain happiness. is there ? Somebody has been here, and she has been " You are there—you—you—you. . . . ! " is the to see some one else. greeting of his heart. But now it is a question of Always the same smell in the dining-room after meals. saying something, Monsieur, of making a little con­ The father drinks his coffee and you can see that he is versation. How far should we get with the language very fond of his little daughter. But how does he look of the heart ? at her ? Does he yearn after her ? Is she like Schubert's He had thought it out—a whole scene, like a dramatist: songs to him ? Does he become a different being and " I sit in a low armchair. She leans for a little against feel himself happy ? Is there perchance a sound of the window, trips up and down, and I impress on my thanksgiving in his heart ? brain each of her charming gentle movements. Then By no means. I say, ' This has been the most beautiful hour of my His attitude is like this : " May you only keep well life.' She doesn't understand this at all. ' It has been and happy and things go on like this in peace." very pleasant,' thinks she. So I picture the visit to No awaken er, no solver of ridelles is he ! myself, quite simply. What should hinder it from He is dumb, weighty life itself. being carried out like this ? " It goes on. Does not stop to reflect. It goes on. The imaginary story was enacted. Of course, like Afternoon. all stories, with little shades and variations. Christa The afternoon passes. was wearing a brooch representing a girl under a laurel The flowers bloom white and green in the window. tree, a bas-relief, modelled in dull grey silver. A carriage goes by and thunders in the distance. " It is like one of Oscar Rothy's, of Paris," said You read a book. Like stars are the works of the the man. October 1, 1915 THE EGOIST 157

" I am very fond of it. Why I don't know. " What kind of tree is that ? " "A laurel tree. That combination of the tree of THE GHOSTS OF AN OLD HOUSE fame with the gentle soul of a woman. ..." BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER This delicate little work of art gave him the impetus to raise himself by the strong beat of his wings, into the (Continued) realm of beauty. OLD NURSERY, NOW MY BEDROOM Christa spread out her fine delicate wings and flew with him at a respectful distance. IN the tired face of the mirror She became quite rosy with flying. There is a blue curtain reflected. " Where is he carrying me off to. . . . ?" thought If I could lift the reflection, she. Peer a little beyond, I would see Suddenly he let himself down and looked into her A boy crying sweet eyes. Because his sister is ill in another room She closed her delicate wings together and came down And he has no one to play with : again to earth, saying, " But now you must go." A boy listlessly scattering building blocks, " It has been the most beautiful hour of my life," And crying, said he as in the story. " It has been very pleasant," Because no one will build for him the palace of Fairy thinks she, " like a little journey into the studio of Morgana. Oscar Rothy in Paris. I cannot lift the curtain : I wonder if the brooch is really by him ? " It is stiff and frozen. The young man slowly leaves the little drawing- ATTIC room with the green plants and the silk cushions. Dust hangs clogged so thick " My brooch is a little work of art," says Christa in The air has a dusty taste : the evening, at supper. Spider threads cling to my face, " You see it is by Rothy of Paris," says her father. From the broad pine-beams. " Oh " says the girl and feels quite embarrassed. There is nothing living here, As though he were standing in that quiet house and The house below might be quite empty, announcing " Like one of Rothy's of Paris ! " No sound comes from it. His Poem (after an illness of Christa's). The old broken trunks and boxes, Cracked and dusty pictures, THE CONVALESCENT Legless chairs and shattered tables, Poor child, how much she has suffered. Seem to be crying Fain would she live and kuows not how, Softly in the stillness And so she goes on living away Quiet and healthy, serene and gay. Because no one has brushed them. No one has any use for them, now, In her eyes there lurks a shadow of pain. Yet I often wonder Like the half-dried tear of a child : If these things are really dead : She smiles like one who recovers, now And fain would like, but she knows not bow. If the old trunks never open Letting out grey flapping things at twilight ? Une Femme est un état de notre âme If it is all as safe and dull As it seems ? What is her life like ? Christine's life, whom her aunts call Christa ? What is her life like ? Why then is the stair so steep, Tell me. Why is the doorway always locked, He is the poet of her silent life. She is what there is Why does nobody ever come ? in him. How Nature goes on living day by day, till there comes one and says : " This is what you are ! " THE CALENDAR IN THE ATTIC What is the apple-tree which turns pink in the spring, I wonder how long it has been if no poet sings : " There stands a little apple-tree Since this old calendar hung here, in blossom." With my birthday date upon it, What is it after all ? How should it not blossom when Nothing else—not a word of writing— the spring-time is there ? Not a mark of any hand. There it stands, brown and pink and goes on blossom­ ing. What is it without its singer ? Perhaps it was my father What is its singer without it ? Who left it thus " It gives its bloom. And the poet gives in sweet For me to see. sound, his sensation of this dumb blossoming. In like manner, the woman gives her dumb being. Perhaps my mother And he gives her in sweet sound, the sensation of her Smiled as she saw it : dumbness. But in later years did "not smile. Oh ! poor and speechless woman. What art thou ? Thou in his glance alone thy life shalt see. If I could tear it down Thou art that thing he sings of thee. From the wall Should be not sing, then could'st thou never be ! Somehow " Good-night, father." I would be content. " Sleep well my child ! " But I am afraid, as a little child, to touch it. Then she stands in front of the broad marble wash- stand, which smells of soap and tooth-paste. THE HOOPSKIRT Out of her fair brown hair she makes a little coil. In the night when all are sleeping, And quick—into the cool bed with its warm coverings. Up here a tiny old dame comes tripping, Turn out the lights ! Looking for her lost hoopskirt. The machinery of the day is at an end.

PETER ALTENBERG. My great-grand-aunt—I never saw her— Translated by E. H. W. Her ghost doesn't know me from another, She stalks up the attic stairs angrily.

The dust sets her sneezing and coughing, By the trunk she is limping and hopping, But alas—the trunk is locked. 158 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

What' s an old dame to do anyway, Beneath its roots I often thought treasure was buried : Must stay in a mouldy grave day by day, For the roots had enclosed a circle. Or go to heaven out of style. But when I dug beneath them, In the night when all are snoring, I could only find great black ants The old lady makes a dreadful clatter, That attacked my hands. Going down the attic stairs. When at night I have the nightmare, What was that ? A ghost or a burglar ? I always see the eyes of ants Oh, it was only the wind in the chimney, Swarming from a mouldering box of gold. Yes, and the attic door that slammed. ANOTHER OAK THE YARDSTICK Poison ivy crawls at its root, Yardstick that measured out so many miles of cloth. I dare not approach it, Yardstick that covered me, It has an air of hate. I wonder do you hop of nights Out to the still hill-cemetery, One would say a man had been hanged to its branches, And up and down go measuring It holds them in such a way. A clayey grave for me ? The moon gets tangled in it, THE LITTLE CHAIR A distant steeple seems to bark I know not why, when I saw the little chair, From its belfry to the sky. I suddenly desired to sit in it. I know not why, when I sat in the little chair, Something that no one ever loved, Everything changed, and life came back to me. Is buried here : Some grey shape of deadly hate, I am convinced no one at all has grown up in the house, Crawls on the back fence just beyond. The break that I dreamed, itself was a dream and is broken. Now I remember—once I went Out by the night too near this oak, I will sit in the little chair and wait, And a red cat suddenly leapt Till the others come looking after me. From the dark and clawed my face. (To be continued) And if it is after nightfall they will come, So much the better.

For the little chair holds me as tightly as death ; TWO POEMS And rocking in it, I can hear it whisper strange things. TO A STEAM ROLLER IN THE DARK CORNER THE illustration I brush the dust from this old portrait : Yes, it is the same face, exactly, Is nothing to you without the application. Why does it look at me still with such a look of hate ? You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down Into close conformity, and then walk back and I brush the dust from a heap of magazines ; forth on them. Here there is all what you have written, Sparkling chips of rock All that you struggled long years and went down to Are crushed down to the level of the parent block. darkness for. Were not " impersonal judgment in aesthetic Matters, a metaphysical impossibility," you Oh God, to think what I am writing Will be ever as this ! Might fairly achieve It. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive Oh God, to think that my own face Of one's attending upon you, but to question May some day glare from this dust ! The congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists. THE THREE OAKS

There are three ancient oaks, DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC That grow near to each other. AS PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT They lift their branches WITH an elephant to ride upon—" with rings on her High, as beckoning, fingers and bells on her toes," With outstretched arms, She shall outdistance calamity anywhere she goes. For some one to come and stand Speed is not in her mind inseparable from carpets. Under the canopy of their leaves. Locomotion arose In the shape of an elephant, she clambered up and Once long ago I remember chose As I lay in the very centre, To travel laboriously. So far as magic carpets are Between them : concerned, she knows A rotten branch suddenly fell That although the semblance of speed may attach to Near to me. scarecrows Of aesthetic procedure, the substance of it is embodied I will not go back to those oaks : in such of those Their branches are too black for my liking. Tough-grained animals as have outstripped man's whim to suppose AN OAK Them ephemera, and have earned that fruit of their Hoar mistletoe ability to endure blows, Hangs in clumps Which dubs them prosaic necessities—not curios. To the twisted boughs Of this lonely tree. MARIANNE MOORE. October 1, 1915 THE EGOIST 159

The next poem is from a less-known poet, Paul Bommersheim : POEM The fog draws closer and closer, Its walls grow and overshadow the world, Heavily. And the armies of it creep up nearer and nearer, The last grey branches fall and disappear ; The world sinks slowly away from us, Leaf . . . by . . . leaf.

And now we are alone—in solitary space. This is the hour of the great discovery. We come closer and closer together, And we hold one another by fiery hands, Glowing like stars.

LAURENT TAILHADE

By RICHARD ALDINGTON THERE are reasons for presuming that the poetry of M. Laurent Tailhade will not be widely read, in England ; he is a satirist ; his work is not vast in bulk ; and his French is not easy. The English nation is too gentlemanly to admire satire; it is also too prosperous. Punch entirely reflects the national taste in this respect, and we are all un­ willing to welcome anything more bitter, more disdainful, or more obscene. The three qualities of bitterness, disdain and obscenity are essential to satiric writing— bitterness, which is a hatred of stupidity ; disdain, which RICHARD ALDINGTON BY RAOUL KRISTIAN denounces its hatreds ; obscenity, which satire uses to vilify its victims, to revolt us from meanness. On the whole the English do not like such writing, and fail "DER STURM " to observe its value. Schools may admit the works of Aristophanes and Juvenal—with omissions—scholars By ALEC W. G. RANDALL dig into Petronius and Filelfo, poets admire Rabelais, but the English suspicion of satire prevents its proper THOSE who believe that Art, like Religion, should appreciation. We may commend the mild scoldings be international, will be glad to know that of Swift and Pope, but satire in its real sense is entirely certain periodicals and certain groups of left to the more emotionalized Latins. young artists in Germany and Austria have steadily The power of M. Laurent Tailhade is his Latin quality. refused to submerge themselves in the welter of chau­ He may elect Aristophanes as his master—his great vinism which seems to have covered the Central Empires book is called " Poèmes Aristophanesques "—but his —and not those alone. The older generation of writers true kin is Catullus and Martial, the fierce Latin epigram­ and artists seems at least to have acquiesced in a large matists, whose works lack neither bitterness, disdain, measure ; Richard Dehmel is apparently writing one nor obscenity. Rabelais is the true follower of Aristo­ war poem per day ; Richard Strauss intends out- phanes. Aristophanes is diffuse, turgid, Cyclopean ; Wagnering Wagner in a grand new Kaiser-marseh. But and so is Rabelais. Catullus and Martial are con­ even among the established writers, the classics, so to centrated, clear, orderly ; and so is M. Laurent Tailhade. speak, there are remarkable exceptions ; Arthur He delights in formal accented verse, in artificial Schnitzler has appealed to reason against Lissauer's metrical constructions, like the ballade and the sonnet. Hymn of Hate, and Stefan Georg's periodical, Blatter His language, like that of Villon, is allusive and topical, für die Kunst has resolved on a noble indifference to the but is used with Villon's sparseness and clarity. Perhaps European madness. Other periodicals adopting this Villon and Verlaine of all French writers have influenced policy are Die Weissen Blätter and Der Sturm. The him most. For them there was no playing with hatreds first is a paper run by young artists and poets ; the second or loves ; they are not of those " who were neither is more distinctively an advanced art periodical, though rebels nor yet of God's side, but for themselves alone " ; its literary contents are by no means insignificant. they saw things clearly and made their choice—erro­ Most people are familiar with its Cubist or Futurist neously perhaps—but made it, and M. Tailhade is with front page. It corresponds, I suppose, to the Egoist them in this. He knows his likes and his dislikes in London and Les Soirées de Paris in Paris. Artists perfectly well ; he is not in the least afraid to voice like Kandinsky and Severini have contributed to it ; his hatreds, and his speech is violent and direct. He Guillaume Apollinaire has written criticism for it ; calls a fool a fool, and if metrical exigencies permit he René Schickele, one of the best known of the younger adds an opprobrious adjective. poets of Germany, has published several poems in Der Sturm. Here is one of them—a little model of simplicity This forbidding prelude is intended as some sort of a and for that reason hard to render. preparation for the " Poèmes Aristophanesques," and not as a warning against them. It also means that I regard M. Tailhade's " Poèmes Aristophanesques " as PRAISE OF MY LOVER (LOBSPEUCH) by far the most valuable part of his work. The " Poèmes How shall I know Elegiques," beautiful as some of them are, I omit as Whether it is you not of vital interest to English readers. The latter T love most ? poems are valuable to those deeply interested in the And yet I am sure Symboliste movement ; but it was the " Poèmes Aristo­ It is you phanesques "—and especially that section entitled " Au Who gives me most joy. Pays du Mufle "—which inspired a great living French­ man to write that M. Tailhade is one of the truest glories Gladness comes From pure strength ; of contemporary French literature. Naturally it is not It is kindled in my very blood. easy to present such an author adequately and agreeably, Then what maturity you have— the more so since the difficulty of the French necessitates, Your skin, your hair. a close study on the part of the foreigner. The very sound of your step. 160 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

The " Poèmes Aristophanesques " are divided into You have seen M. Tailhade satirizing the gens urf several sections, with characteristic titles, like " In the by imitating them ; in " Vendredi-Saint " we have an Land of the Mugs (Mufle)," " Eighteen Familiar Ballades ironic picture of the stupid, and the hypocritical to Exasperate the Mugs," " Certain Variations to Dis­ religious : please Divers Folk." "Le Mufle," "the Mugs," the Trop de merluche et des lentilles copieuses— bourgeois, are M. Tailhade's chief butt, though he uses Seule réfection tolérée aux croyants— literary and political satire with the same freedom. In Enjolivent de certains rots édifiants his " Ballade Prémonitoire," set at the head of his book, La constipation des personnes pieuses. he invokes his quatorzaines and his ballade, saying, And so on—the hooded nuns getting into the omnibuses, the mournful air of the shops, the fat curates and the Vous effarez le Mufle ivre de cant ; Ce que j'écris n'est pas pour ces charognes. nasty little boys going to Sunday School, and—last irony of all—before these people who do not detect The English slang word " cant " will explain best to its irony a man is putting up an enormous poster :

English readers the nature of the qualities which most Concert spirituel à Tivoli Vaux-Hall. arouse M. Tailhade's wrath. Thousands of pleasant people in Paris have endured the horrors of " Vendredi-Saint," and probably thou­ sands have rebelled, but M. Laurent Tailhade was needed to fix the mood for ever in fourteen contemptuous lines. A superficial glance at these poems may send a reader away faintly annoyed with their writer, but the closer one studies them the more apparent are M. Tailhade's satiric ability and Latin concentration of disdain, his fine injustice. " Pécuchet tient la mappemonde," says he somewhere, and privately determines that even if Pécuchet does keep the map of the world he shall be shown up as the ridiculous, canting, pretentious person that he is. This bourgeois age—how some of us writhe beneath its vulgarity, daily afflicted with its nauseous pretences, its " popular preachers," its " books for the billion," its degrading morale. We live in a time— perhaps not so much worse than other times, but with everything on so much larger a scale—when nothing is desired except the stupid sensualities, which mas­ querade as " improvements " or " comfort." And more than the age of Tiberius, more than that of Francois I, the age needs to be told impolitely and unpleasantly of its loathsome qualities. M. Tailhade has begun this task, which others must finish ; he has mocked in fierce or obscene phrases the character of the omnipotent bourgeois ; he has told him emphatically just how small an animal he is. And who will wonder that the omnipo­ tent bourgeois does not praise the works of M. Tailhade, will not, probably, open to him the door above which is written, " Aux grands hommes la Patrie récon- LAURENT TAILHADE BY RAOUL KRISTIAN naisante," and tosses him aside with a " what-a-wicked- man " sort of expression. Nearly every one of the poems in " Au Pays du M. Tailhade is not sectarian in his denunciations. Mufle "is a chef-d'œuvre of irony and scorn, sometimes In " Vendredi-Saint " he derides the cant of the church ; frivolous, sometimes merety contemptuous, but always in " Sur Champ d'Or " he is just as wroth—not wroth, effective. Take the first : infinitely amused—with the ridiculous atheism of the small shopkeeper and his class. Si tu veux, prenons un fiacre Vert comme un chant de hautbois. Certes, Monsieur Benoist approuve les gens qui Nous ferons le simulacre Ont lu Voltaire et sont aux Jésuites adverses. Des gens urf (" bloods ") qui vont au Bois. Il pense. Il est idoine (apt) aux longues controverses. Il déprise le moine et le thériaki. Les taillis sont pleins de sources Fraîches sous les parasols ; Viens ! nous risquerons aux courses Même il fut orateur d'une Loge Ecossaise. Quelques pieces de cent sols (sous). Il pense ; there is along journey among books to travel Allons-nous-en ! L'Ombre est douce, before finding another example of such swift irony. Le ciel est bleu ; sur la mousse And the erudite Monsieur Benoist, who " thinks " so Polyte (the " johnnies ") mâche du veau. &c. originally, actually permits—he is so broad-minded— Apart from the admirable fooling of the poem by his daughter to communicate ! But then " sa legitime itself, it is a most amusing parody of Victor Hugo's croit en Dieu," and there is wine at eighty centimes the " Un peu de Musique " : litre to be drunk in commemoration of this august event. Si tu veux, faisons un rêve. Montons sur deux palefrois ; Or Benoist, qui s'émeche et tourne au calotin, Tu m'emmènes, je t'enlève. Montre quelque plaisir d'avoir vu, ce matin, L'oiseau chante dans les bois. &c. L*hymen du Fils Unique et de sa " demoiselle."

After Hugo's pompous romanticism this blague of Tail­ This poem is quoted in " Le Livre des Masques," with hade's is extraordinarily ludicrous. And even Gautier the remark that it deserves to be learnt by heart ; it is not spared. We all can remember " Les Arthurs qui has a deadly raillery for the uneducated " atheist " who vont au bois " in the poem about the obelisk. " Si tu has not the courage of his doubt when it comes to the veux, prenons un fiacre "—I suppose this would be called test- of traversing conventions. a " quartier " song ; at any rate, it has most of the In every one of the poems in " Au Pays du Mufle " impudence and gaiety which are considered the exclusive some sottise, some " cant " is pilloried, or some ignorant possession of the " students." pretension exposed. Though the characters are essen- October 1, 1915 THE EG01ST 161 tially particular and metropolitan, the types to which . . . the river Earn runs out into the Firth of Tay. they belong are as universal as the bourgeois " civiliza­ tion " which touches every part of the world. The heart of the peasant, above all the heart of the petite femme de M. Tailhade's political and literary satire is somewhat province. . . . (Culture.) more special. The poems on L'Affaire Dreyfus are a municipium . . . civitas . . . comitatus . . . conjuratio . . . contadi little confusing to anyone but a Frenchman, but the . . . privilégia . . . Grandi Vassalli. . . Populus. . . . (More culture.) section of the poems, called " A travers les Groins," contains some verses which are amusing enough, whether Why, for instance, do we hear nothing . . . of the perilous journeys the literary allusions are taken or not. In " Candidats of their merchants to the Fairs of Champagne, nothing of the Caorsini à l'Immortalité " he sneers at the whole crowd of false senesi in England, nothing of the campsores domini papœ, and next to nothing of the Arti ? (Still more culture.) poets :

Les symbolistes, les simplistes, les romans, We do not think we have ever read anything to equal it even in Ceux qui riments à soixante ans leurs pucelages Italian. (Supremest culture. ) Et ceux dont les neurasthéniques mucilages Pour Monsieur de Vogué sont emplies d'agrément ; . . . the pre-eminently Parisian talent of M. Abel Hermant.

Frémine plus hideux que les têtes de l'Hydre, ... in the masculine qualities lying at the root of both there is an Et Vicaire pochard comme une pomme à cidre. affinity bstween literature and journalism. (Obviously—in (he Times. Et ceux qui font des vers pour les cafés de nuit : This provocative statement . . . Tous veulent sur leur'front le diadème esthète. Ces palmes dont la fleur améthyste leur duit But a poem carries transports. . . . (We commend this discovery Et l'orgueil des festins \ douze francs par tête. toH.M. War Office.)

M. Tailhade has a high ideal of literature ; he does Just as we were, to have left enough, and, curiously, to have dis­ not seek the diadème esthete himself, and knows well carded enough, is the proof of Mr. Faber's art. how to appreciate at their worth those who cultivate They surrender that indefinable thing, personality, that inex­ the arts with no higher ambition than to act as hero plicable thing, poetry. in " banquets at twelve francs a head." In his writings he has no other motive than to present what he believes It is always tempting to confront the past with the present. to be the truth ; however harsh his satire is, it is always deserved. During the time that he was writing his . . . gathered them by force and cunning beneath his banner for skits on the literary men of his period, M. Tailhade bloody onslaught, and to glut the lust of gain. fought a great many duels with people who were For Attila and Wilhelm, any pretext might serve for war . . . aggrieved by his poems. On April 4, 1894, he was badly injured by the explosion of a bomb in a restaurant Aetius and Joffre alike for the moment were too subtle to guess the where he was dining. Since then M. Tailhade has given brute simplicity of the hostile design . . . up his personal satire and has taken to prose. " They are works of an admirable style, of a turned and mannered . . . the Visigoths, even as the Americans of to-day . . . eloquence, unique products of eloquence. M. Tailhade there shows himself as in his first verses, an indefatigable In the field of biography many notable memoirs . . . orator." The religious aspect of the war . . .

. . . the land of Holmes and Lowell and of Emerson himself.

... so rich and fruitful a mind as that of Mr. Glover . . . INCONSIDERABLE IMBECILITIES As a poet should, she reports visions. . . . But she is, perhaps, happiest when her thought is most clear cut, as in the fancy beginning (From.one number of the Times Literary Supplement) Like a swallow seems my Love, THE Times Literary Supplement has become duller Thus would I her semblance pruv. than ever ; even the lush fatuity of sentimental pedantry has now subsided into degenerated (This is but a meagre choice ; many rare and fragrant dulness ; but however curious, as it were, and, true, we fruits of style and thought remain to be culled from give a few of these jewels " of purest ray serene," even this, &c, &c, &c.) though, as it were, we cannot explain their origin save haply on the hypothesis that we " 'spects they growed." You recognise the style ? Then, here goes.

" There are few thinking people but realise . . . great war . . . death-agony . . . old order . . . birth-travail. Amid the present A PLAYNTYVE BALLADE darkness and confusion men peer . . . neglected records of the past ... if haply . . . this war of the nations . . . (Etc, for two and a half columns.) This is a remarkable book which all should read. . . . WHEN Sappho sang " In the Isles of Greece," When Ibycus founded a new free verse, It is extremely difficult for a Russian to obtain a true notion of our And Pindarus spun his golden fleece passions. ... As yet, however, struggles the twelfth hour of the Of words that were golden and keen and terse ; night.—STEPHEN GRAHAM. What said the critics—race perverse— " These fellows have no more bones than a squid, One passage, at least, of which more anon . . . it is a classic study of the forces which we must either destroy or perish. . . . The race of poets grows worse and worse : Why don't they write as Homer did ? " She gives us a book which bears on every page the stamp of literal truth. Virgil snivelled of delicate bees— Where are these gorgeous daggers now ? That was great, for it filled his purse— But the world grew sick with a strange disease The morals and tempers of the Company's servants left something Which the Christians claimed they were sent to to be desired. . . . (This does not refer to the Amalgamated Press Co.) disperse ; They invented rhymes and rhythms diverse, In the present crash of worlds . . . In queer acrostics their God they hid : Sir James Wilson's friends in Strathearn have kept their old Quoth the critics : " Poetry's on its hearse, grammar unim pared. (Good news for the Allies.) Why in hell don't they write as Virgil did ? " 162 THE EGOIST October 1, 1915

The devil take 'em, gabbling geese, see that the Ego is a basic element in evolution that continually May he take 'em cunningly in reverse, creates itself anew in larger and more highly evolved organization, from the jelly-fish to the most complex social unities. Plague 'em with boils and bees and fleas, The social instinct is as " intense " as any other instinct in the In a seething cauldron their heads immerse ! Ego, and belongs quite as definitely to its " self-chosen passions and Pot-bellied pedlars, hear them rehearse interests." And a social ego—moved by a common social instinct The old gibes, false as a Brummagum quid : into absolute unity of will by a social image that magnetizes the vital power of such unity, is a collective " will to will," capable of following " The Imagists' faults are like thorns on furze, with the intensest passion its specialized image into " definiteness of Why, WHY don't they write as Tennyson did ? " sensation," " the new thing," " pleasure," and what not. The exercise of charm as well as of physical force is as legitimately consistent with " instinct," " vital impulsion," " passionate urge " ENVOY in the will to an end of a group (a social ego), as of a human Prince, in the nineteen ninety three individual. When the young men pen a rebellious screed, The " will to will "—which is the life of the ego, in whatever form—involves the will to remove all obstacles to the attainment Their critics will boom like the booming seas : of the end desired ; and this is as much an " instinct " in government " Now why don't they write as the Imagists did ? " (and also in anarchism so called) as in love. Hence physical force, flattery, nagging, charm, love, are all only' RICHARD ALDINGTON different forms of governing—dominating others, in our " will toward will," for the sake of sensation, the new thing, pleasure, etc. ; and the exercise of all of these is as perfectly legitimate on the social as it is on the individual scale. ALICE GROFF. TO ALEXANDER BERKMAN A CORRECTION You are an anarchist, you say, To the Editor, THE EGOIST. You repudiate government. MADAM,—The point seems immaterial on the face of it, in reality it is one of many common errors for which a nation has long suffered You repudiate man-made law. and continues to suffer : would Mr. Montagu-Nathan bear in mind that Nijinski is a Polish and Aryan name and should, therefore, not What is government ? be spelt with a final " y." The will of the most powerful social ego C. M. To a desired end. WORD-WORSHIP AND COMPULSION To the Editor, THE EGOIST. What is man-made law ? MADAM,—Miss Marsden often reminds me of Rousseau and his The means of this social ego Contrat Social. She has the same habit of personifying abstractions To this desired end. and then telling stories about them as historic facts. " The Appre- ciatory System is extremely intelligent "and she relates its deeds as if it was a poodle, whereas it is only two words denoting a thought of What is anarchy ? Miss Marsden's about the habits of an indefinite number of undefined The will of a social ego persons. "Ina verbalized world it is the precise purpose of words to undermine instinctive assessments," says Miss Marsden, and no To a desired end. doubt she uses them for that purpose herself : but I protest against such purpose being called precise. It deprives the words of what Anarchy is government little preciseness they had when used (as they oftenest are) in clumsy When such social ego efforts to express one's own " individual assessments." Becomes the most powerful social ego As I do not share Miss Marsden's faith in the power of Words to dissolve the self (my own self being quite insoluble in her Words), I And attains this end. do not object to her using them in any sense she likes, provided she tells me what these senses are (at least as long as there are any un­ Anarchy is government—man-made law, tyranny, disputed words left to do it with). So I accept " should " as meaning While repudiating government, man-made law, tyranny. " is adapted to A's purpose as B sees it " (though it might almost as well mean " seventy-five millimetres ") ; and I won't even dissect the phrase " one has to coerce oneself," though it seems to me self- You are an anarchist, you say ? contradictory. "But I do object to Miss Marsden's definitions of ALICE GROFF democracy and conscription in THE EGOIST of August 1. Democracy is certainly not " a method of sparing the pride of the tyrannized by politeness." The tyrannized in this case are minorities, especially minorities of one. No one who speaks on acts in the name of demo­ cracy ever uses any politeness towards such, any more than other CORRESPONDENCE -ocracies do. Indeed democracy uses less, because " customary mode of behaviour " is usually mistaken for " principle " (a mistake " THE WILL TO WILL " which Miss Marsden herself expressly and deliberately makes) ; To the Editor, THE EGOIST. hence the majority sincerely believes the minority have bad MADAM.—I cannot fail to be gratified that Miss Marsden in her principles. " The good of the community " is the pet formula of editorial " The Gentle Art of Appreciation " brings her philosophy democracy, and gives the excuse for such a piece of tyranny as con­ almost to the point of mine, as set forth most briefly in my letters scription. to THE EGOIST—" An Epidemic of Law" (March 2, 1914), " Miss Miss Marsden. seeking an egoistic excuse for conscription, says Marsden and Anarchism " (October 15, 1914), " The Egoist's Employ­ "it is against no one's interest to be as efficient in self-defence as ment of Words" (February 1, 1915), and " Miss Marsden on the possible." Each man or woman is the best judge of his own interest. ' I ' " (March 1, 1915). The particular kind of self-defence he prefers may be very different Miss Marsden strips the philosophy of Nietzsche of its sophistry from the military kind. If I had learned to be an efficient torpedo- in showing that the " Will to Power " is simply the will toward discharger, it would not help me much when my feud with the Mob any desired end, and that power is willed simply as a means of reached bursting-point, for I would most likely have no torpedo. attaining such end. and is not necessarily an end in itself. Miss Marsden forgets that the chief of all wars, the one to which all In mv letter " An Epidemic of Law " I have shown that law is others are but as means to an end, is that of the individual against only such means (of power) toward any desired social end—that it the mob. When that war reaches the killing stage, the mob is sure is simply the instinctive expression of the will of a group towards to win, as of course it always does win. What the individual can such end, and that the social ego instinctively uses the same means to hope for is to delay his defeat. The bearing of this on the European get power toward any desired end that the individual ego does, viz. War is that the delay is usually longer in Britain than in Germanv. flattery, love, charm, nagging, physical violence, and what not. Britain chastises minorities with whips, Germany does it with scor­ I agree with Miss Marsden that the lures of the will " are Images pions. Miss Marsden wants to welcome the biggest and most deadly which can magnetize the vital power first to attention, then scorpion. Conscription, thereby extinguishing the most rational to action " ; but am annoyed at her ignorance as to the very essence motive for patriotism. Yah ! Pro-German ! of modern scientific psychology, manifested in her assertion that of C. HARPUR. " this phenomenon . . . psychology reveals little trace." NENTHEAD, CUMBERLAND. August 21, 1915. Miss Marsden analyses well the methods and processes of the will P.S.—The scorpion would not sting me. I am fifty and son-less. toward the attainment of its end in following passionately the lure And as an enumerator in the National Register, I don't think it of life through loss of the world, and even of life itself, for the indi­ would sting any of my near neighbours ; their boys have nearly all vidual ego. But why should images not be the " Supreme Good." enlisted. " A True Table of Values," " The holding together of communities under an " " Art of Living," " A Science of Society " ? DEMOCRACY AND MOVEMENTS Why should not " the intense form of feeling," " the new thing," To the Editor. THE EGOIST. " pleasure." etc., all have as definite and intense a part in the larger MADAM.—Miss Marsden's attitude to democracy is very despairing. social experience as in the smaller individual one ? Because " it has arrived and no longer has its way to fight " it Here is where Miss Marsden always falls into sophistry. She fails should not be " discussed in the propagandist spirit," and " decriers to realize what the Ego really is. She persists in restricting the are out of date." Well, then, let us be out-of-date, for I at least can no name to an individual organism only. She steadfastly refuses to more accept democracy philosophically than I could toothache. October 1, 1915 THE EGOIST 163

Miss Marsden says democracy is only one way by which the governing few disguise their rule. It does not much matter to the small minorities who express their views in THE EGOIST whether the THE POETS' TRANSLATION 15 million people who worry and bully them are acting spontaneously or are string-pulled by fifteen mysterious " Paramount Interests " in SERIES the background. A discussion in Belgium now whether Prussian brutality is due to the Slav element or the Teutonic element in THE object of the editors of this series is to present Prussian blood, would have the same kind of Academic interest. But Miss Marsden wants practice to be guided by mere matters a number of translations of Greek and Latin of wording. Those who are anxious to " re-adjust democracy " (and poetry and prose, especially of those authors who I suppose also those who are anxious to abolish it) must " use are less frequently given in English. different arguments according as they are addressing Governors or This literature has too long been the property of pedagogues, Governed." Now Governors and Governed mean strong and weak. And since Miss Marsden insists so much on this verbal distinction, philologists, and professors. Its human qualities have been one must point out that everybody is both. There is no boundary obscured by the wranglings of grammarians, who love it line. Let us take alphabetic order to represent strength. Then M principally because to them it is so safe and so dead. is stronger than N but weaker than L. Y is a " governor " to Z, a THE POETS' TRANSLATION SERIES will appear first " governed " to every one else. Further to baffle Miss Marsden's simple classification, the order varies continually, so that in certain in "The Egoist" (starting September 1st) and will then be relations V can defy A, or B has to cringe to S. reprinted and issued as small pamphlets, simple and in­ Miss Marsden's definition of a Movement as a form of mental stand­ expensive, so that none will buy except to read. The still is true enough, and I ought to know, for I am a member of a good translations will be done by poets whose interest in their many faddist societies both in Manchester and London. But some authors will be neither conventional nor frigid. The trans­ kinds of standstill are essential to movement ; for instance you can't lators will take no concern with glosses, notes, or any of invade without entrenching. Miss Marsden's over-estimate of Martyrs and Leaders, for example, the apparatus with which learning smothers beauty. They seems to be an entrenchment. But she has sat in this particular will endeavour to give the words of these Greek and Latin trench about two years now ; it is time she advanced. She thinks authors as simply and as clearly as may be. Where the they " fall just short of the intellectual clearness which would enable text is confused, they will use the most characteristic them to direct their energies to purposes of their own." But they ham purposes of their own, namely converting the Jews, or spelling version ; where obscure, they will interpret. reform, or whatever the fad is. It looks almost as if Miss Marsden The first six pamphlets, when bound together, will form had fallen into the vulgar error of thinking this kind of purpose less a small collection of unhackneyed poetry, too long buried " selfish " than the purposes of the would-be Napoleon or millionaire. under the dust of pedantic scholarship. They range over a In fact it is more so ; the faddist aims direct at his purpose, the would-be Napoleon aims at a valuable tool which is so difficult of period of two thousand years of literature—a proof of the access that he will probably never have time to use it for a real pur­ amazing vitality of the Hellenic tradition. pose. If this venture has the success its promotors look for, I can hardly believe Miss Marsden really made such a mistake, when other similar and possibly larger pamphlets will be issued. I look at the pile of EGOISTS on my shelves and reflect how much energy she has devoted to a purpose which is unmistakably a Belief 1. (Ready September) The complete poems (25) of Anyte or cause (and a very bad cause too). I am not going to insult her by of Tegea, now brought together in English for the first time : saying her exertions are unselfish, but I protest she ought not to translated by Richard Aldington. (8 pages) 2d. net (2 1/2d , accuse other faddists of being; so. The fad is the self. I have about post free). twenty, and I can't detect a scrap of unselfishness in any of them, 2. (Ready October) An entirely new version of the poems especially not in the anti-Marsden one ! September 16. 1915. CALDWELL HARPUR. and new fragments, together with the more important of the old fragments, of Sappho : translated by Edward Storer. (12 pages) 4d. net (4 1/2 d. post free). 3. (Ready November) Choruses from the " Iphigeneia in BACK NUMBERS Aulis " of Euripides : translated by H. D. OF 4. A choice of the Latin poetry of the Italian Renaissance, The New Freewoman and The Egoist many now translated for the first time, by Richard Aldington. 5. The Poems of Leonidas of Tarentum, now collected CONTAINING —and many translated for the first time in English : by Remy de Gourmont's novel, "The Horses of Diomedes " (Aug. James Whitall. 15th, 1913—March 1st, 1914), and James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man " (Feb. 2nd, 1914—Sep. 1st, 1915). 6. The " Mosella " of Ausonius, translated by F. S. Flint. Unobtainable Elsewhere. All the pamphlets—except the first—will be twelve or six­ Containing also prose by : Dora Marsden, Richard Aldington, teen pages long and cost 4d. net ; 4 1/2 d. post free. The Peter Altenburg (translated), H. Gaudier-Brzeska, Huntly series of six 2s. net post free. The pamphlets will be issued Carter, Madame Ciolkowska, John Cournos, F. S. Flint, Remy monthly. de Gourmont (translated), Frances Gregg, Leigh Henry (music), Ford Madox Hueffer, R. W. Kauffman, Comte de Leautreamont To be obtained from : The Egoist, Oakley House, Blooms­ (translated), Wyndham Lewis, Harold Monro, M. Montegu- bury Street, W.C, or from Richard Aldington, 7 Christ Nathan (music), Ezra Pound, Benjamin Tucker, Allen Upward, Church Place, Hampstead, N.W. Rebecca West, and many others. Poetry by: Richard Aldington, Skipwith Cannell, H.D., John Gould Fletcher, F. S. Flint, Robert Frost, Paul Fort (in French), D. H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, J Rodker, May NOTICE Sinclair, W. C. Williams, and others both English and French. To be obtained from the Publishing Office: OAKLEY HOUSE. BLOOMSBUPY The Editor is always glad to consider outside STREET, LONDON, W.C. Price 6 1/2 d per copy (post) free) ; U.S.A. 15 cents. contributions, and they will be returned if ac­ companied by a stamped envelope. Contributions from abroad must be accompanied by English EDITORIAL. stamps or international coupons. No responsibility Letters, &c., intended for the Editor of THE EGOIST can be accepted for MSS. lost in transit. should be addressed to Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.

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THE LITTLE REVIEW A Really Different Magazine Literature, Drama, Music, Art The Phoenix MICHAEL MONAHAN, Editor MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Editor ATLANTA Constitution :— The new monthly that has been called " the most unique THE PHOENIX is Literature. journal in existence." The Argonaut : — THE LITTLE REVIEW is a magazine that believes All discerning persons read THE PHOENIX. in Life for Art's sake, in the Individual rather than in NEW YORK Evening Post : — Very much alive, witty, honest, and frequently very Incomplete People, in an Age of Imagination rather than Irish. of Reasonableness ; a magazine interested in Past, ROCHESTER Post Express:— Present, and Future, but particularly in the New To our thinking quite the most satisfying periodical Hellenism ; a magazine written for Intelligent People of its kind. who can Feel, whose philosophy is Applied Anarchism, TROY Times :— Covers the field of literature and life with conjoined whose policy is a Will to Splendour of Life, and whose frankness and keenness that are captivating. function is—to express itself. SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle :— As full of paradox as Bernard Shaw, but whatever One Year, U.S.A., $1.50 ; Canada, $1.65 ; his faults, he is never dull.

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