EXPERIMENT: A Manifesto of Young England, 1928- 1931 Two Volumes Vol. 2 of 2 Kirstin L. Donaldson PhD University of York History of Art September 2014 Table of Conents Volume Two Appendix: Full Transcript of Experiment Experiment 1 (November 1928) 261 Experiment 2 (February 1929) 310 Experiment 3 (May 1929) 358 Experiment 4 (November 1929) 406 Experiment 5 (February 1930) 453 Experiment 6 (October 1930) 501 Experiment 7 (Spring 1931) 551 260 EXPERIMENT We are concerned with all the intellectual interests of undergraduates. We do not confine ourselves to the work of English students, nor are we at pains to be littered with the Illustrious Dead and Dying. Our claim has been one of uncompromising independence: therefore not a line in these pages has been written by any but degreeless students or young graduates. It has been our object to gather all and none but the not yet ripe fruits of art, science and philosophy in the university. We did not wish so much that our articles should be sober and guarded as that they should be stimulating and lively and take up a strong line. We were prepared in fact to give ourselves away. But we know that Cambridge is painfully well-balanced just now (a sign, perhaps of anxiety neurosis) and so we were prepared also to find, as the reader will find, rather too guarded and sensible a daring. Perhaps we will ripen into extravagance. Contributions for the second number should be send to W. Empson of Magdalene College. We five are acting on behalf of the contributors, who have entrusted us with this part of the work. We have been asked to say that a volume of “Cambridge Poetry” is being produced by C. J. Saltmarshe, of Magdalene College, to whom contributions should be sent. * - 1 - * 261 POSTWAR The broken glass shocked before the crumpling of the Kaiser's picture: Frau Pfaff saw crackling chips destroying her carpet symmetry: the picture so long clad in custom-sanctity, hung from ineradicable hook. A red-faced young man in a flameblue tie, snorting defiantly against monarchy: no more war. That was nothing: he is a lodger nameless and paying. But that carpet blotch at his feet, that destruction of his – what would Herr Colonel have said coaxed to a second helping he gazes round sternly at wilted Fraulein Teufelmann, uncomfortable Herr Sikurius – but he was killed at Verdun, poor man, and his linen still in the cupboard – lofty Frau Max, and herself clever at presiding: fixing them with his patriotism, glasses to the Kaiser's health, the gardens, bands, illuminations, fat of the land. Clara Teufelmann his vir- ginia creeper, a pest and an adornment – why is she crying? – apoplexy in 1915 before he should see his God in Paris, so then she went elsewhere. He picks up the pieces and speaks hurriedly. “You know how changed things are – one feels strongly – youth in revolt.” Of course things are different now; but still, one remembers Herr Sikurius was so stiff and Frau Max disliked him so, but the Colonel kept the peace: united, Madam, Germany united, firm, invincible, Bismarck, I remember in '71: and mean- while they would fold their napkins for glasses to the Kaiser: blesséd meal ritual with leisure. “Yes, it is hard for us old people to get near new ideas. But I quite” then Frau Max magnificently would pull her shawl about her shoulders and tread out; the stumble to the door handle by Herr Sikurius ever a lame ending; but the Colonel sat on, dabbing a little at his damp moustache, his left hand lying jaggedly on the table cloth ; she would gather the cruets and talk quietly, and perhaps wrinkles at his mouthside would show him smiling a little. All so settled and unchanging, a long timeless period. But in 1914. But in 1914 the Colonel coming in with bottles, champagne, full uniform, flushed and *-- 2 --* 262 restless, Clara Teufelmann in colour for once with roses, clinging eyes smiling, and Herr Sikurius angularly worried – conscription, they got him – Frau Max sublime and confident. That meal broke life … He puts the fragments in the waste paper basket: with that crumpled picture – no – this hand stretched out: let be: things are changed. but the champagne toast, marching troops, Paris engulfed, repeating '71 Madam: but he was too old. They talked so eagerly and sat late, till Frau Max detached A little nervous bow, and he goes out. So lonely now and long dragging. These people nameless and meaningless, to be fed hurriedly and they go out and are busy perhaps while she sees to the linen, the bedrooms husks wrongly inhabited. But it is lunchtime. The staircase steps for Clara, Sikurius, Frau Max, the Colonel; shining smooth oil- cloth they wore down; but now these many light and meaningless feet. The meal ritual; these grey faces dotted round polite and cool, but who are they? He is still embarassed and stands out a little, sitting where the Colonel, steaming soup taureen; Frau Max delicate with her spoon and the Colonel coughing slightly from pepper but now please begin, I must retire for a moment, BASIL WRIGHT * - 3 - * 263 LETTER You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces,” That net-work without fish, that mere Extended idleness, those pointless places Who, being possiblized to bear faces (Pascal's or such as yours) up-buoyed Are even of universes void. I approve, myself, dark spaces between stars; All privacy's their gift; they carry glances Through gulfs; and as for messages (thus Mars' Renown for wisdom their wise tact enhances, Hanged on the thread of radio advances) For messages, they are a wise go-between, And say what they think common-sense has seen. Only, have we space, common-sense in common, A tribe whose life-blood is our sacrament, Physics or metaphysics for your showman, For my physician in this banishment? Too non-Euclidean predicament. Where is that darkness that gives light its place? Or where such darkness as would hide your face? W. EMPSON POEM Buildings and cars are both stright lines perpendiculars meeting where no eye can see cutting one another where the static is left pointing skywards so they meet and diverge merging only in men who move and do not. G. REAVEY * - 4 - * 264 BEAUTY: A PROBLEM AND AN ATTITUDE TO LIFE I What is Beauty? In these words we have the eternal problem of aesthetic science, which gives it an original and undisputed territory beside logic, ethics, and on- tology, the riddle to which every generation, from the time of the great thinkers of Hellas to the experimentalist aesthetician of to-day, has set itself anew, producing results, in appearance at least, flagrantly and irredeemably contradictory, but never losing courage, anthusiasm, determination. It is the object of this article to hazard a solution, and the method employed will be the only method of modern aestheticians – with the solitary and notable exception of B. Croce and his disciples, who allow idealism to override the claims of positive science – I mean the empirical, psychological, method, introduced by the German Fechner, who gave, as it were, a second birth to aesthetic thought. Two individuals rouse our interest, the artist and the spectator, the genius of the creative imagination and the witness of beauty, but these pages are concerned exclusively with the latter. There are immense difficulties in the way of understanding the artist. He is, after all, a rare phenomenon, a curious and exceptional child of nature – in one sense, undoubtedly, a pervert, a monstrous anomaly, in as much as he lives for creation and not for life – and, besides, the evidence he has left us of himself – his own works, his letters, perhaps even an autobiography or the biographical account of a friend – is not only inadequate but too often absolutely unreliable. Further, in addition to not having indispensable material, it is at least doubtful if we ever can have it. The creative imagination is essentially an instinct, a mysterious force dwelling outside the conscious life of the artist, a force whose unforeseen and unforeseeable eruptions produce the sublime works that have dazzled men at all times and in all places. This consideration made the author hesitate before beginning his work on aesthetics. A theory of beauty which ignored the artist is manifestly incomplete, and it is certainly possible that we shall never penetrate * - 5 - * 265 the mystery of his soul, that the inner sanctuary will never be crossed save by the initiates themselves. But, on the other hand, if, as I believe, we are, each of us, a sculptor when we see a figure in bronze or in marble, a painter when we examine a canvas, a poet when we read a lyric or vibrate to the glories of nature, if, as Bosanquet puts it, the attitudes of the spectator us “a faint analogue of the creative rapture of the artist,” we shall not find that the two are separate countries divided by an unnavigable ocean, but that they are, in fact, one and the same country, though we shall only be wandering on the outskirts and the great mountains, the thundering cataracts, the unfathomable lakes, the mysterious valleys of the interior, will remain unexplored. But to drop metaphor. We will first describe the state of mind of the spectator, comparing and contrasting it with others, and then we will try to “fix” the constitutive elements, the essential ingredients, of the aesthetic attitude, distinguishing them sharply from the other sensations, emotions, sentiments, and ideas, that together compose the human personality.