The Advance Guard’: A Chapter in the History of the American Little Magazine

Citation preview

THE AXWA8GB GUARD: A GHAPTEE 18 THE HISTOM OF 1HE ASSmOm LITTLE HAGA2IHE

Charles A. Allen

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Deportment of English in the Graduate College of the State University of Iowa

July, 1942

ProQuest N um ber: 10831744

All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The q u a lity of this re p ro d u c tio n is d e p e n d e n t u p o n the q u a lity of the co p y su b m itte d . In the unlikely e v e n t that the a u th o r did not send a c o m p le te m a n u scrip t and there are missing p a g e s, these will be n o te d . Also, if m a te ria l had to be re m o v e d , a n o te will in d ic a te the d e le tio n .

uest P roQ uest 10831744 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). C o p y rig h t of the Dissertation is held by the A uthor. All rights reserved. This work is p ro te cte d a g a in s t u n a u th o rize d co p yin g under Title 17, United States C o d e M icroform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346

Acknowledgements

I should like to express mgr special appreciation to the following persons for their parts in making this thesis possibles Wilbur 1# Schramm, Norman Foerster, Frank Luther Mott and zny wife^Gail*

1 am also indebted to many others,

especially Alfred Kreymborg, Matthew Josephson, Eugene Jolas, Gorham Munson, George Billon, Geraldine Udell, Julius Weis Friend, Donald Davidson, Waldo Frank, Marianne Moore, Harold Loeb, Max Eastman, Martha Foley, John T» Frederick, James Laughlin IF, Paul Engle, Austin Warren, Ernest Sandeen, Bartholow Crawford, John E* Briggs, Robert L* Low, Merton Eapp, Michael Gold and Harrison Thornton*

536898

ii i

Table of Contents

Chapter X

h

Page The Advenes Guard

Esa&sx* A

111

The Little Review

IT

Glebe and Others

T VI Til VIII

XX X XI XXX XXXI

»•****«*•#

si. M s a . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ..........

1

u 31 53

The Seven Arts

62

The Midland

72

The Dial

88

The Double Dealer and Other Southerners

........

Fugitive

,•»•«••••.»

109

•»•*«*«••*

117

Hound and Horn

•••*•••*.*•

141

Transition

••«•«••••••

148

Hew Directions

•»*.*.««

t .«

164

•**

177

Secession and Broom

Appendix X Appendix XX Appendix XXX

99

«*••**»•»«»

184 190

Chapter X The Advance Guard X This la the story of the little magazines, the story of the surprising influence these noncommercial advance guard periodicale have exerted on our literature since 1912* the heat of our little magazines have stood, from 1912 to the present, defiantly in the front ranks of the battle for a better literature* they have helped fight this battle by first presenting such writers as Sherwood Anderson* Imeet Hemingway, William Faulkner, Srsklne Caldwell, T* S. Kllot by first publish# lag, in fact, about SO percent of our most important post-1912 critics, novelists, poets and story-tellers#

Further, they have

introduced and sponsored every noteworthy literary “movement * or “school* that has made Its appearance In America during the past thirty years* ee There have been over 600 little magazines since 1912* Of course many have been pale, haro&esa creatures*

Fewer than 100

of them have taken a decisive part in the battle for modem literature, or have sought persistently to discover good new artists, to promote the early work of talented innovators, or to sponsor literary movements* Many of the 600 magazines have been abortive, "lrrT riT m n T ir r

■, r

:rr r r r v r

n :.

See Appendix X ** A very conservative estimate*

2 some lacking a definable purpose, other® editorial discrimination, and still others plain common sense* Some, such as John Malcolm Brlnnin»s short-lived Prelude, irresponsibly followed the will a* the wisp of novelty for novelty*s sake* X propose to discuss here only a few of the 600* the story, for the most part, is to he that of the valiant, sensible warriors whose primary intention was to print the best of the new artists without regard for the financial or social consequences* Any periodical whose motivating purpose Is first of all to present artistic work by unknown or relatively unknown writers may be called a little magaaine* Little magazines are willing to Ipse money, to court ridicule, to ignore public taste, willing to do almost anything «-» steal, beg, or undress in public — rather than sacrifice their right to print the best of an unknown Faulkner as1 Hemingway* Such periodicals are, therefore, noncommercial by intent, for their altruistic Ideal usually rule® out the hope of money profit. HP doubt little magazine editor® would welcome a circulation of a million or two, but they know that their magazine® will appeal to but a "little* group, generally not more than a thousand persons* to the extent that they are not money-minded, such rvriBwa u Samp*. Bm im . the Southern SgflflW, SfiSESfi lS2i2E» the Xtq* Saskm. ««* th» Vlrrlal. QuarterJ-r MsSSS. w

ha considered

"little*" Yet these excellent quarterlies are not little magazines* Intelligent, dignified, critical representative® of an intelligent, dignified, critical minority, they ere conscious of a serious responsibility which will not permit them the freedom to experiment

3 or to often seek out unknown writers* Manor editors now contend that advance guard is a better name for their magazines than.little*

Coming Into use during the

First World War, the tens did not refer to the size of the maga­ zines, nor to their literary contents, nor to the fact that they usually did not pay for contributions* What the word designated above everything else was a limited group of intelligent readers* to be such a reader one had to understand the aims of the particular schools of literature that the magazines represented, had to be interested in learning about dadaism, vorticisia, ex* pressionisia and surrealism* In a sense, therefore, the word . little is vague and even unfairly derogatory* The commercial publishers — the large publishing houses and the big "quality# magazines — are the rear guard* In a few instances they are the rear guard because their editors are eon* servative in taste, are incapable of Immediately recognizing good new writing! but more frequently the commercial publishers are the rear guard because their editors will accept a writer only after the advance guard has proved that he Is, or can be made, commercially profitable* Whatever the reason for their backwardness, few commercial houses or magazines of the past thirty years can claim the honor of having served the advance guard banner* they have die* covered and sponsored only about 20 percent of our post-1912 writers! they have done nothing to initiate the new literary groups* r r'inr.miimri'.rn.v“r — n r ^

- ■r ■; r , . r r - r r r j - r r - - -

3ee Appendix I*

4 To their credit, however, It may he said that they have ultimately accepted any author, no matter how experimental, alter a period of years — * sometimes a good many years* IX To see the recent little magazines in clear perspective we should remember that there were advance guard magazines before 1912, magazines that were significant because they set a high standard for their descendants* The parent of the American little magazine© was the Dial (1840-44), edited by Margaret Fuller and Balph Waldo Emerson# Because it Would not make a concession to public taste, the Dial never Obtained over three hundred subscribers, despite such famous contributors as Thoreau, Btaersoa, William Ellery Channfng and 1 * Theodore Parker* For fourteen years after the end of the Dial there was no little magazine of any consequence. But by 1850 New fork literati were gathering in the "dim, smoky, confidential atmosphere1* of Pfaff*s beer hole at 653 Broadway, and by October, 1858, New York had Its gg&gdag aggffig. Harary Clapp** Satorday Proas was a weakly printed in a newspaper format which foreshadowed Ben Hecht's famous Chicago literary Times of the early 1920*a* Clapp's review, in its eight years, achieved a record that was to remain unchallenged for over # The history of the Dial has been adequately told several times, especially by Frank Luther Mott in his History of American M m m i n m t 1741*1849, New York, 1930, Fol* I, pp. T^-lO; and by George W* Cooke in his Historical and Biographical Introduction to ifeg, Dial. Cleveland, 1902,

5 half a century*

It was one of the first to sponsor Whitman, it

introduced the young William Doan Howells, and it started Hark Twain on the road to national fame by publishing "The .Jumping FTogU

With hie half dozen weekly pages Clapp won a respect

comparable to that given the Atlantic Monthly, founded a year ■ -a earlier than the Press, late in life William Dean Howells testified that "the young writers throughout the country were ambitious to be seen in it * « * feu* it was very nearly as well for one to be accepted by the Press as to be accepted by the 3 Atlantic"* 'That the spirit of the Saturday Press was remembered we cici be certain,for In the middle *90*s "Brownie" magazines sprang up in every section of the land, most of them attempting to catch the verve and smartness of the Prcsf and most of them failing miserably* let there were a few good ones* Herbert Stone and Ingalls Kimball were young men just out of Harvard when they decided to form their publishing house in Chicago. Their semi~monthly Chap Book, appearing for the

*

first time in 10%, was designed to print the best of European and American writing! it succeeded in capturing such famous Europeans as Maurice Maeterlinck, Anatole France, and Paul Verlaine, and made a hesitant bow to such Americana as Hamlin Garland, Bichard Horsy, Ambrose Bieree, and William Vaughn Moody* Though the magazine was interested in literary merit rather than money, It lacked the necessary enthusiasm for making acquaintance with new authors*

6 In Gelett Burgess1s Lark, a high-spirited magazine which would have no truck with art, polities* economics* or anything that might he labeled serious* there was to he **only the joy of life* no advertisements* no Satire* no criticism* no timeliness* no women contributors'!*

(A few women slipped through the harrier*)

For two

years (1392-97) the fork sang 4 light* irresponsible music* music which we need not condemn* though it made no contribution to our serious literature# It was simply pure zest and nonsense* reflect­ ing one of the more delightful sides of American Viciorlanism* the gift for saucy i^mdence* the Hare for high gaiety,5 Between 1900 and 1913 Edwin Arlington lobinson, Theodore Dreiser* Asy Lowell* Bara Teasdale, Edgar Lee Masters* Ezra Found* Alfred gfeymborg* Vachel Lindsay* Floyd Dell* Van Wyck Brooks* Max Eastman* and Edna St# Vincent Millay were attempting to publish but meeting with only ,scattered acceptances. Both the commercial and non­ commercial publishers were hostile to their work, The little maga­ zines of the first decade of the century neglected their function, Most of them were so pale and nondescript,that they hare been almost forgotten. Only Papyrus (1903-1913) and Moods (1901-1911) rose above the general level; yet they were too timid to be influential. Certainly we can charge the little magazines of the first eleven years of.this century with having almost ees$&etely failed, Even the first year of the Masses (founded in January of 1911) was barren* for net until the early months of 1913 did It become consciously aware of the need for a new literature and decide to help make such a literature possible.

7 This general failure of the magazines, little and com?* mercial, to see the talent of the struggling young writers is something of a aystery* But there is one explanation which, though it contains only the partial truth, is certainly valid,

American

publishing hQd fallen into the hands of a peculiarly smug group of editors. These editors knew exactly what constituted a good poem or novel, and ignored most of the writing which deviated from their formula# To realize what this formula was, one need only remember the commendations given by editors to such poets as Fannie Steams Davis, Margaret Prescott Montague, Florence Converse, and Margaret Sherwood, or the praises given such novelists as Winston Churchill, George Barr McOutcheon, Gertrude Atherton, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Katherine Cecil Thurston, and Booth Tarkington, the people who wrote the best sellers of their day* The editors saved their critical reputation® only by presenting Jack London, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Frank Morris, Upton Sinclair, David Graham Phillips, and William Vaughan Moody# *

in But what interests us here are two undeniable historical

facts; that our literature began to take a new direction in 1913, and that the little magazines came into existence in order to give this new literature a method of publication* lb 1913 Harriet Monroe succeeded in starting her famous £SSl£&* A Magazine of Verse. Floyd Dell and Max Eastman decided to make the Messes a more definitely literary magazine, and the Poetry journal was founded in Boston# These magazines and the many

a others that followed them in 1913 and 1914 were consciously establish­ ed to promote a more forthright literature* Little magazine editors 0

knew that there were already writers such as Robinson, Masters, and Sara Te&sdale, poets with much to say provided they could find a place to publish consistently* The editors suspected that there were many unknowns who could be encouraged to write if they were offered a fair chance of publication* How right the editors were we now know from the record of Poetry. Glebe. Others, the Meases, the Little Bwvlew. and other little magazines* Besides firmly establishing the reputa­ tions of Bdger Lee Masters, lay Lowell, Bdwin Arlington Robinson, Sara Teasdale, and others who had received only the slightest attention before 191®, the little magazines, during their first three years, presented such previously almost unknown names as Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, T# S* Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, John Heed, John Gould Fletcher, Maxwell Bodenhelm and Robert Frost* We can safely estimate that at least 95 percent of our post-191® * poets were introduced by the little magazines* *

*

0

r

£astm °Sam M&» «*«UlUa teto the Midland. the Dial. the Double Dealer. Tftd-tlra. Broom. Seoeeslon. transition. the Hound sad jfem “ »* £SS SteftS^lmg 0

represent a group of little magazines that are typically little, typleally non-commercial, little magazines that have printed what they wished without regard to commercial standards* All of this group, whose stories are here to be told, are famous, though not all are necessarily significant* Broom and accession are not ™

'

lir" T r 'T

rTtnrn"'T"'r 'n'TTmr.inri.L'r t.:i i

See- Appendiac X*

9 Important If regarded in the light of their accomplishment} they are merely interesting* and perhaps representative of a type of zestful but serious-minded innovator that flourished during the *20*s. More Important than Broom or Secession were such excellent little maga­ zines as the Masses, the

the fjy&J&m SSXto

BEBtoS

Schooner, the frontier. the gfflfcfam fc Hevlew and present day Story, magazines whose histories deserve to be written. ur One may speak casually of am Ernest Hemingway's receiving his first half dozen publications in little magazines and thereby gaining a reputation which the commercial publishers were eager to oqplolt* But let tie be more specific. Hemingway publishes his first story in the Double Dealer in 1922. Let us assume that the editor and a few other people read this story and like it. These people talk enthusiastically of the story and perhaps twice as many read the next Hemingway offering.

Boon many admirers are talking — * a snow­

ball is rolling in the little magazine world.

A half dozen little

magazines are printing Hemingway stories and he has several thousand readers.

An obscure, non-commercial press in Paris publishes his

first thin volume, Three Stories and Ten Poems* The snowball rolls into the Scribner^ office. Finally in 1926 comes The Sun Also Rises. A writer has been started on the road to success - - by the little magazines and their readers. Though the best of our writers receive a wide enough acceptance through the little magazines to make them sought after by the conservative periodicals and publishing houses, one cannot

io help wondering what might have happened if these writers had not been offered a little magazine9s encouragement* Many a Hart Crane or Sherwood Anderson might never have been heard from had there been no little magazines) seeing one9a work in print arouses a man9a hope* stimulates further effort* this is what Stephen Vincent Bsnet has in mind when he writes*

"The little magazines* of course* are

absolutely indispensable* They give the beginning writer his first important step — a chance to see how the thing looks in print* And 6 there9s nothing as salutary*19 This* indeed, is the primaxy justi­ fication for the little magazine* There would appear to be seme wisdom in encouraging the work of a young Hemingway or Anderson* Further* as has been suggested* the little magazines have had a great deal to do with the advancing of literary movements* Imagiam, cubism* futurism* expressionism* dadaism* surrealism and vertigralism

all of the important movements came to this country

through tha pages of Poetry, tha Littta Rovlew and transition. Despite their promotion of the beat of the new writers and literary movements* the experimental little magazines have come in for a good deal of caustic ridicule*

The most frequent accusation

is that little magazines do not print good writing* The Little Review and jugs i of the others did publish a great deal of worthless meandering®* but the Little Review also offered many of the more significant pieces of our time. The people who suggest that little magazines do not publish literature might notice the "thanks for permission to reprint1* acknowledgments in the fore-pages of almost any volume of reputable stories* poetry or criticism*

IX Some persons also believe that the little magazine editors have a tendency to favor the “established” little magazine writers over the meritorious unknown, tree enough* Little magazine editors are not free from vanity or oblivious to the desire for prestige. They do favor the **namew writers of their own circle. Yet they do not grant them the same favor© that the commercial editor la likely to give his writers. After all, the little magazine Is not usually paying for its contributions, is not dependent m advertising, and can ignore names to a far greater extent than the commercial publisher* Several Hemingway stories were refused, perhaps unwise­ ly, by little magazine editors in those first days of Hemingway glory. Hostile observers also generally berate the “exhibi­ tionism, ” “pretention,” “adolescence,” or “snobbishness” that some little magazines exhibit.

There can be no doubt that several

litu« magaalnos, ouch as the Little Review. Seoeaaion and Broom. were raucous and ill-bred$ yet we must grant that these magazines also managed to achieve creditable rbcords, and concede, too, that meet of the little magazines have been perfectly well-behaved. All such comment is overshadowed, however, by much more important history.

In 1912, In 1920, in 1930, the little maga­

zines were the innovators, and today, in 1942, they are still the Innovators.

A society needs ever-freah Interpretations and new

writers to make these interpretations. Little magazine editors believe that a Hemingway or a Sandburg or a Faulkner may finally lose his power or die and that younger artists must be constantly encouraged. This is why advance guard editors sought out

12 Bfrakine Caldwell, Albert. Halper and James Farrell In 1929# why they discovered most of the so-called proletarian writers of the f30fs, and why, In these early *40*8, they are still introducing new artists*

13 Footnotes 1) Mott, Frank Luther, History of American Magazines; 1741Vol. I, pp. 702-10. 2) Parry, Albert, Garrets and Pretendera. pp. 21-48. 3) Ibid.. p. 24* 4)

Calkins, Elmo, “The Chap Book,» Colophon. Part 10*

5) Wells, Carolyn, ,rWhat a Lark,n Colophon. Part 8* 6) Benet, Stephen Vinoent, (letter to this writer) •

14 Chapter II

Ess&m AmmternBLSssss. f,To hem great poets there must be great audiences too.” Basse* A W s m t m fi£ ISSSi celebrated its twenty-ninth anniversary in October, 1941# to hundreds of poets and would-be poets, to many friends in all parts of the world, 232 East Erie Street in Chicago still extends a cordial welcome# But Harriet Monroe is gone# Friends miss the sight of her small figure out in a back alley, brewing coffee over an open fire for her tea guests# They miss her presence on festive nights when poets read verses, talk late, and eat handsomely* They miss the fear of being rushed across dangerous boulevards by the tugging hand of Harriet, who always crossed with head bent low, refusing to glance either way# *

#

In was in dune, 1911, that aristocratic Hobart 0* GhatfieldTaylor agreed with hie friend, Harriet Monroe, that the moment was 1 ripe for the establishment of Poetry# A little magazine had been for years a passionate ambition, but Mias Monroe had bided her time, not quite knowing how she might finance such a venture during an extended period* and firmly convinced, previous to 1911, that the

2 But the seeds of

moment for the magazine was not yet propitious*

a new poetry must blow with some not far distant wind, she knew# ¥

*

And she realized that these seeds must be allowed to settle, sprout, and mature# She knew the danger of death for this new poetry when

15 It arrived* knew it all tea wall* There were no magazines in America 3 willing to print serious new versa* Let us glance at the so-called quality magazines for the months immediately previous to Poster*s appearance* What monthly diet was .served by the Atlantic, by Bcrlbnerfa, or by Harpers* the periodi­ cals which most persons thought of as “good* magazines? They carried from two to five verse tidbits a month* generally of a highly vapid character* sentimentally designed by such hucksters as Margaret Prescott Montague* Fannie Stearns Davis* Florence Converse, and Margaret Sherwood*

Almost completely blind to new talent* the Atlantic exhibited

during 1912 only one piece of verse by a person (Amy towel!) new to the American literary scene* Mias Lowell^ fragment must have been a dis­ turbing curiosity to readers who had come to expect quatrains such as ,lViaion% printed in the August* 1912* Issue* As each slipped from the place Where all had walked with me* 1* on each passing face* Saw immortality*^ Harper*8 was publishing the same brand of verse written by the same calibre authors* The month Poetry made its first appearance* Harper*a published a half dozen lines of Anne Brunner, lines completely suggest­ ive of the journal’s poetic tone* «0 WISE AKB 5TK0HGU» 0 Wise and strong beyond all need of mel Why should I dream, now you have flown so high* And 1* earth-bound, could never touch the sky— Why should I dream you needed me? And yet 1 never* looking in your eyes forget * The little lonely child you used to be*

16 John Hall Wheelock was tha only American of ability among the Harperja contributors, and the only representative of the younger writera# One might expect a better record from Scribner*#, and, indeed, we do find Margaret Widdemer once, Arthur Davidson Ficke two times, Sara Teasdale twice, and John Hail Wheeloek once, let thie, too, is a remarkably bare poetic onboard.

It is small wonder that Harriet Monroe was fear­

ful for the fate of the new poetry* But even after Chaifield-Taylor enthusiastically agreed that the time was ripe and suggested a way of attacking the financial problem, Miss Monroe was cautious. She did not immediately rush a magazine to press* That was not her way* Thou# she was intensely eager for the first appearance of Boetay* her sanity kept her desire on leash* She was checked by the clear knowledge that such a periodical, if it were 6 to b u m with more than an ephemeral flame, must be well prepared for* She desired a journal that would print the best the English world had to offer, superior verse not only of 1911 or 1912, but for many years to come* Such a project had to be planned, well thought out* ChatfieldTaylor had suggested the possibility of one hundred Chicagoans subscribing fifty dollars a year for a five year tens*

Coming of a pioneer Chicago

family, intimate with the educated and moneyed strata of Chicago society, Miss Monroe might easily have mustered sufficient financial resources to give her magazine a trial; she could have done it in a fairly short time; and indeed she did, once she put her mind to this portion of her problem* But there were other details that prevented the appearance of ffaetrr for over seventeen months* There were vital problems of economy, Of selling her idea to poets, of encouraging young unknowns to

17 sn

tha vision of a new art closely Integrated with modem life, present­

ing that life in a simple, direct fashion, stripped of all petrified traditions.8 there was nothing hastily conceived in Poetry when it finally made its appearance in October, 1912* Poetry was thrilling from its inception*

Its value to

America and Britain during the past quarter of a century can be scarce* ly overestimated, tor it courageously stimulated. American verse to a height which had been alien atmosphere for many, many a year* In ■Fpetry's case mere figures are indeed meaningless*

To say that it has

promoted the reputation of 9$ per cent of the post-1912 poets; to mention its distinguished criticism of verse; to talk about the numerous yearly prises it has given and encouraged other magazines to give, is almost futile* One must browse slowly through its volumes and discover their full flavor for himself* The first issue of a magazine is likely to be rather shoddy, but Poetry never assumed the necessity of an initial foundering and managed to avoid it* The first thirty-two page sheaf carried Dura Pound's hi# spirited lines to Whistler, a finely nuaneed Mexican sequence by Grace Hassard Conkllng, an unpublished poem of William Vaughn Moody, two pieces by Arthur Davidson Fleke, and the first pub­ lished poems of Helen Dudley and Emilia Stuart Lorimer. A presentable first issue, especially when we consider that Harriet Monroe, in order to protect the name of her magazine from a Boston group, had to 9 bring Poetry out a month or two in advance of her original plan# In November, John Heed made his first poetic appearance with HSangar'*; and Richard Aldington and H* D* were introduced to American readers*

xa A month later Rabindranath Tagore translated hie own work for the first time into English.

In January, 1913, ca*» Vachel Undsay, booming forth

his "General miltam Booth liters into Heaven". February brought George Sterling* July was to see F* 3* Flint and Amy Lowell for the first time in Poetry. From October, 1913, through March, 1914, one finds John Gould Fletcher, Fadraic Oolum, D. H. Lawrence (January, 1914), and Robert Frost (February, 1914) , making their initial American publi­ cations.

Gar! Sandburg made his bow with "Chicago”, printed in March.

With August came Maxwell Bodenheim,s firstf a month later Rupert Brooke was introduced to this country end Eunice Tletjens made her entrance into Poetrys in November of the same year appeared Wallace Stevens. &%ar Lee Masters, having published much, of hie Spoon Elver Anthology in gesdv*s Mirror, appeared in Poetry for February, 1915* Soon there-* after appeared T* S. Eliotts first published poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Frufroek". In May came Marianne Moore and Floyd Dell. Skipping to 1917, we find Poetry bringing James Joyce to this country. Edna St. Vincent Millay was printed in August, and Sherwood Anderson in September. Thus runs the parade of names— Malcolm Cowley and Evelyn Scott in November, 19191 Grace Stone Coates and Elinor Wylie in April, 1931, Elisabeth Roberts and Glenway Wescott a few months later— and

w©

have thrown but a hasty glance at the first ten years.

The fifteen years that followed 1920 were equally brilliant; we find much of the early work of such artists as, to name only a few, * * Tvor Winters, H. L« Davis, Hart Crane, Horace Gregory, George Dillon, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Penn Warren, W* K* Auden, Louis© Bogan, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Spender, Allen Tate, Counts© Cullen,

19 Hlldegarde Planner, Marion Strobel, Joseph Gordon ilacleod, William Sapson, Paul Engle, G* A* Millspaugh, Robert Fitagerald, Itoya Zatnrenska, Muriel mss?***** Edwin Rblf*# Stanly Kunlta, David Schubert, Jeaee Stuart, Merman S4aoleod and g. P* Blackmur. And as one roads theae poets, a U of them heralded to fame by Poetry* many of thorn first printed by Poetry, one is constantly struck with wonder that any single magazine could bo capable of so consistently covering end recognizing the talent of its age* Its alertness to new writers, to new trends, has been little short of phenomenal. While Poetry was doing its work* the quality Journals. were resting in their nest of iiEpervious smugness. Perhaps It would be unfair to eapeeb them to brave the dangers of presenting new talent, but we might reasonably assume that they would print talent after it was discovered*

It was amazing to watch the Atlantic sail serenely

through the poetic revival, content until well past 1922 with its writers of 1913~~Fanni© Stearns Davis, Margaret Prescott Montague, Margaret Gable Brewster, the last of idiom was proudly presented in liny, 191?# with the following ditty* All that thou art, my Mother, 1 would bef And even now, 1 dream that dawn shall rise When one shall, wistful, look into my eyes, . And find therein a light that shines from thee* frue, the All^antic did briefly notice Robert Frost in 1915, two years after

printed him*

A few times it published short Robinson

poems; once it noticed Alice Meynell; yet the record through 1930 falls to show a Sandburg verse, or anything by Lindsay, Eliot, Alding­ ton, Pound, H* D* or any of the other newer poets with the exceptions of John Crowe Hansom, $* Foster Damon, and Archibald MacLeish, all

20 published In the late *3Q*s*

Nor were Harper^a and Scribnerls more

alert# They were steeped with such names as Charles Hansen Towne, Effle Smith, Hortense Flamer, George Woodberry, and Amelia Josephine Barr, though between 1913 and 1913 the editors saw fit to administer small doses of such established English and American writers as John Masefield, Sara Teasdale, Thomas Hardy, and Bliss Carman* Among the works by younger artists in Harper*s was a poem by Amy Lowell, one by William Hose Benet, one by Louis Unfcermeyer* We find Eobinson appear­ ing rather frequently in Scribner1s> however, and three times we dis­ cover Arthur Davidson Fioke there; John Hall Wheelock was published twice in these five years, Any Lowell twice, William Hose Benet once* Hover do we find a trace, between 1913-191B, of the score of other poets whom most sensible persons, by 1917 at least, knew must take their place in American literature*

But let us return to Poetry*

Harriet Monroe was bom in 1360 of a well known Chicago family, educated at the fashionable visitation Academy, Georgetown, District of Columbia*

Her educational and family environment did

much to shear the rougher edges from a somewhat egotistical tempera­ ment* There were moments, especially in her later life, when she tended to ride hastily over opposing opinion, when her selfabsorption drew her farther and farther from personal relationships* But these blemishes must not blind us to the more dominant aspect of her personality* No one can question her directness and sincerity, her discriminating and sensitive taste* In her there was none of the effete tiredness, the well mannered hollowness, which was spring'

i

Ing up among the Chicago elite*

Until her death she maintained a

536898 zostful, intelligent interest in the world about her, with a hope for the future

a willingness to innovate for that future,

living her entire life in Chicago, she any have been stiwlated by the youthful buoyancy of the city. During her mature years Chicago's population jumped from half a Million to over three millions, Svery day brought change.

In these years of great hope and struggle, of

brimaing energy, Chicago was already rapidly becoming the "player V

*

with railroads% the "hog butcher for the world*, dreaming of an art institute, of great universities, of male; even (it must he whisper­ ed!) of becoming the world1a literary capital* True, the new city had much rampageous crudeness, but Harriet Monroe*s selective mind could estimate these elements of her environment* It was the energy, the * ambition, which met have profoundly influenced her and added to the steely determination that was such a prominent part of her character* Feasibly it was

the Chicago exuberance of those years which was

partly

responsible for

her frequent journeys to Egypt or to China, for the

spirit which forced her death in 1936* At the age of seventy-six she decided to explore the Peru Xnca country; the high altitude brought on heart failure#^ This was the woman who founded Poetry* who did so much to encourage the revolution in American verse, and who still dominates the little office at 232 last Erie Street* For not the least of her accomplishments was a selection of able associates, persons such as George Dillon, Morton Zabel, and Geraldine Udell, whose literary taste and business ability bid fair to steer the journal through a j*■ **** *-**•, - * * ■ . second quarter of a century as inspiring as that just*-past# * .. :*• *.

22 There was little of the dilettante in Miss Monroe's personality. Her judgment was thoroughly grounded in a liberal, humanized education,11 She was distinctly not one to be swept from her feet by literary innova­ tion, nor, on the other hand was she one to look at experimenters with suspicious pedantry or condescension. Objectlvists, proletarians and Victorians might hurl their cries of opprobrium at her, and she would weather all of their attacks, confident of her judgment# Indubitably there were few persons in the America of 1912 better qualified to lead the fight for a new poetry, And it was a fight — nerve racking, often bitterly discouraging, from November, 1912, when Ppehrv offered Richard Aldington’s "Chcrlces”, incidentally mentioning imagisra, until well towards the close of 1920, the magazine fought bitterly for the principles of imagism* Between 1912 end 1915 the new movement was the object of much unfavorable comment, comment which broke into a fury of invective upon the publication of the first faagist Anthology in 1915, William KHeyy Leonard’s denunciation, which he managed to organize under four headings, is representative of these adverse Turnings, 1, 2, 3, 4,

TheImaglsta TheXmaglsts TheIraagists Th©Imaglsts

can’t see straight, can’t fed straight, can’t think straight, 1 can’t talk straight* 1*

Today, looking beck on the war years, it is difficult to realize how necessary it was to defiend the modest and at least 2,500 13 year old statements which the i&agists drew up. That literary leaders leaped to a clamorous denunciation against such age-old principles ass nTo use language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the merely decorative word, to present an image, to

23

produce poetry that la hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite®,

14

can be accounted for only by the fact that the nation's verse had been for twenty-five years in a state of cant and doldrura* From the iraagisi manifestos and from the early imagist verse of Sara Found, Aay Lowell, John Gould Fletcher, Hilda Doolittle and William Carlos Williams, we are forced to conclude that imagism represented little that was startling* The imagists simply wished to write a poetry sheared of unessential analysis, rumination and ornament — * to base their verse as firmly as possible on clear, precise Images* Often their work was slight, mere exercising in descriptions, descriptions too often divorced from human experience* Imagism was, therefore, chiefly valuable as a re-assertion of several poetic first principles that had been for some time neglected* the movement was a healthy emphasis, but left us few noteworthy poems* Out of the Imagist movement grew a more profound imagism* today, we still find the precise image, but the image is put to a use that transcends the function of simple description* Eecent poets have discovered that a use of a series of rapid, often dissociated, images may suggest a final meaning, a meaning which cannot be directly ex­ pressed in an image of its own* The surrealist poets are the obvious practitioners of this new imagism, though we need not search far to find it consciously used by more orthodox poets* In mentioning this defense of imagism we cannot neglect the simultaneous contest which Poetry. Glebe, the Little Review, and a few less weH known magazines, conducted for the vers libra exponents* Miss Monroe led the defence, despite the fact that Margaret Anderson

24 was wore flaxy In her advocacy of the poet’s right to work outside established forms and traditional metres. Poetry was more important than either the Glebe or the little Review* however, primarily because Mss Monroe had a greater influence in combating such oft repeated opinions as that of f. S. Eliott *ycrg libre has not even the excuse of a polemic; it is a battle-cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art,* ^ and the less intelligent harangue of the Plains editor against 'Mss Monroe*a defence of free verse. He damned Poetry as a "futile little periodical* for printing Sandburg’s "Chicago", and went on to say, still referring to Sandburg, We have always sympathised with Buskin for the splenetic words about Whistler that were the occasion of the famous suit for libel, and we think that such an effusion as this Sandburg’s] is nothing less ■ ' x6 than an impudent affront to the poetry-loving public. But after such men as Lindsay and Sandburg had crusaded up and down the land, and vers libre had become "smart*, rather than dangerous, and after the lofa and behold*a. the thee*a and thou*a had been routed, and after verse had been stripped of ''eloquence, grandi­ loquence, poetic diction — of all the frills and furbelows which everIV draped, over-ornamented its beauty,* — after this, there were few persons to deny Poetry’s accomplishments.

Harriet Monroe had conducted

a high-spirited, dramatic campaign. Certainly these first ten years were charged with electricity* Chicago was then a literary centre. Those were days when Harry Hansen, Sherwood Anderson, Lindsay, Margaret Anderson, Sandburg, Floyd Dell, Masters, Ben Hecht, and many another gathered at Schlogel’s restaurant on Wells Street to discuss the Little Review* Poetry, new ideas, or

25 Tfl technical innovation. Here was a group with a mutually stimulating purpose. ¥

Shan the fight for firee verse and iaagtsm was finally won, meat of this literary colony began to drift eastward, first to Bow ■*1o York, later and inevitably to Paris; almost everybody left except Harriot Monroe.

If it Is the role of the little magazine to initiate,

to set, as the advance guard for a new movement, then it may be argued that Poetry had served its function, that the natural cycle of the magazine had been completed when the Chicago group moved east* It is not surprising, therefore, to see Poetry beginning to share the spotlight with others* Scores of reputable little maga­ zines, such as Fugitive* began to print good verse, and even the larger quality journals were becoming inoculated with the new spirit* 232 Hast Erie Street could no longer monopolize the public imagina­ tion, even though the journal did continue to discover new poets, even though it maintained its leadership in the magazine parade* Her was it surprising, since Hiss Monroe had a definite preference for simple, direct poetry, that there should come, in time, poets with different views, writers who might be printed with 20 a brave eclecticism, but who could never be taken wholly to heart* The newer poets, when they came in the middle *20*a, had to find other organs than Poetry for the large bulk of their work* Harriet Monroe, r

in many quarters, came gradually to be looked upon not as a rebel, but as a conservative*2^ Objectivists, proletarians, esthetes, members of every group, began to pout because they could not mono­ polize the sixty-odd pages of each number* This H I feeling was only partially allayed by the fact that Hiss Monroe turned over complete

26 Issues to one or another of such groups, the objeetivlsts put forth their poets and critics In February, 1931| the Southern writers were allowed an Issue under the editorship of Allen Tate In May, 1932; proletarians were given a number in 1936* The experimentalists, particularly, publishing a great percentage of their work In such little magazines as the Little Review and transition* claimed that Poetry was not cordial enough towards their writings* Such persons ad Ezra Found and Hart Crane grumbled much, loudly denouncing Poetry* s scepticisn towards many £ their endeavors* (hi the other hand, there were those who raged because the experimentalists were noticed at all* The editor explained why she believed much of their work was valuable, and insisted on the necessity of printing the best of any group — even though it might be tangential to the main stream*22 She recalled the motive of the magasine as announced in the second issues The open door will be the policy of this magesine — * may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample geniusi To this end the editors hope to keep free of entangling alliances with any single class or school* They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, re­ gardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art It Is written* Nor will the magazine promise to limit Its editorial comments to one set of opinions* Without muzzles and braces this is manifestly impossible unless g* all the critical articles are written by one person* The years following Harriet Monroe's death In 1936 have given us some very good Issues of Poetry* George Dillon and Morton Zabel (the latter was editor from Mias Monroe's death until October, 1937) have cordially opened the magazine's door to new talent. We can only mention a few of the new names that have appeared between 1936 and 1961*

Karl Shapiro appears to be the most promising of

27 this younger group that includes Delmore Schwartzi, Gylan Thomas, Richard Bberhart, Ruth Lechlitner, C* A* Millspaugh, Weldon Kees, Paul Goodman, Oscar Williams, Charles Henri Ford, and John Malcolm Brimiln. The publication of the older, more established poets, though not exactly infrequent, is held at a minimum, and those of the older persons who are printed are the ones, such as John Wheelwright, Robert Penn Warren, Louise Began, and R* P. Slaekmtir, who are not as well known as their merit deserves. Poetry is still m advenes guard fighter* To discuss the ideals Poetry fought for **** the contest 24 for the post!* right to proper remuneration, the defence of the 'I^ssqs

and other radical journals when they were victimised by war

hysteria, ^ the help it extended to many little magazines ^

would

require more space than there is room for here* Besides, the story haul been told In Miss Monroe1* A Poet?a Life* let mention of what was perhaps its most difficult and long-standing battle must be made — the perpetual fight of every little magazine — the struggle for finances* Poetry spent between nine and ten thousand dollars annually during Its opening years, always paying for contributions (about ten dollars per page), always making a prompt monthly appearance* Later, when it Increased its leaves from around thirty to ever sixty, its 27 expense account rose to nearly thirteen thousand dollars yearly* Only a little over a third of this necessary money was contributed by guarantors* The rest had to flow from subscriptions, from a modicum #

r '111"

Jyrri,r'TI

r:,'“ 'i r ™ ' ri™

Poetry at various times has reviewed the contents of little magazines and given them publicity through articles.

2d

of advertising, and from gifts. Mss Monroe had supposed that there were 2,500 libraries able to afford her magazine, had thought that there were several thousand cultured Americans who would willingly 23 Spend #1.50 a year for ah alert poetry magazine. She was seriously disappointed, fry as she would, she could never gamer a subscription list of much over 3,000, and usually it was smaller; there was only 1,400 paid circulation after the first slat years.^ But through grim determination, the budget always balanced at year9® end, there were times toward the dose of almost every twelve-month when a cloud of discouragement would descend on the two-room office; it was never definitely certain until the last moment that the magazine could be continued,

Especially during the depression of th© *30*s, doom

appeared imminent. An announcement that the magazine would cease brought a Storm of protest, accompanied by substantial checks from 31 friends* In 1936 a Carnegie fund donated an emergency grant of five thousand dollars* this money was made to last until 1940* New again, in 1941, Foetiy is seriously threatened* This financial problem, always a dread spectre, must be constantly fought* The struggle entails bitter sacrifices on the part of the staff. Everything 32 possible to make the magazine self-supporting has been tried — everything except a lowering of its high standards* Poets of greatness or near greatness are found every year, but never the great audience that Whitman's line on Poetry's cover has always urged. The magazine deserves a great audience, for it begins its thirtieth year with the same high spirit and intelligence that made its past record so brilliant/

29

Footnotes 1) Monroe, Harriet, "These Five Tears, Poetry. Oct., 1917# P* 34* 2)

Hansen, Harry, Midwest Portraits* p. 256*

3)

IfrJtd.. p* 233.

4) Sherwood, Margaret, “Vision," Atlantis Monthly. Aug*, 1912, p. 193* 3)

Brunner, Anne, “0 wise and Strong,11 Harpers. Out*, 1912, p* 674*

6) Monroe, “These Five fears,11 Poetry. Oct., 1917, it* 36-*39.

7)

Ibid... p* 36*

8)

lbid..pp» 36*9*

9)

Hansen* m * sit** p* 239*

10)

(This portrait of Harriet Monroe is based on statements to this writer by George Dillon, Morton 2abel, Geraldine Udell, Paul Bngle, and on Harry Hanson* s comments in Midwest Portraits. Horace Gregory*s “It Couldn't be Done,*1 American Scholar. Spring, 1937, and $* Ichiy© Hayakawa's “Harriet Monroe as Critic,** Studies |n literature. Vol. 11, Ho* 1, pp* 21*6) *

11) Statement to this writer by Geraldine Udell, business manager of Poetry and a close friend of Harriet Monroe)* 12)

Hughes, Glenn, Imagismand tfoe Imagiatg. p* 56*

13)

Ibid*, pp. 3-4.

14}

Ibid., pp* 39-4G.

15)

Ibid*, p. 73.

16)

Monroe, “The Enemies We Have Made," Poetry, May, 1914, p. 63*

17)

Ibid*. “The Mamies We Have Made,** Poetry.Oct., 1923, p. 34#

13)

Hansen,

oit*. pp* 3-13*

30 19) Parry, Albert, Garrets and Pretenders, p# 211* 20) JSonroe, Poetry, Get*, 1920, p* 34* ✓

21)

Ibid.,p.

35.

22)

Ibid..p.

36.

23)

Ibid.. Nov., 19X2. pp. 62-3,

24)

Ibid

25)

Dflc,, 19161 p. X6I,

26) See explanatory footnote on p. 27) (Statement to this writer by Morton Zabel), 28) Monroe, Poetry. Ap», 1932, p* 31. 29)

Ibid.

30)

Ibid,

31)

Ibid..Aug., 1932, p. 272.

32)

Statement to thiswriter by Geraldine Odell, business manager of

Chapter X U The Little Revis* **liaking No Cofl^romlse with the Public Taste" There ape three types of little literary magazines* It may take a considerable time to decide whether a new periodical is to be what Gorham Hanson labeled Broom. *& miscellany of artistic ventures"* It does not take so long to spot the second kind, the "group" or "school'1 magazine* sometimes the very name, such as Partisan Review. may give a hint, but if hot, a little browsing will soon settle the matter* The third type, the personal magazine, usually exudes person1

ality on Its very cover, and can be spotted Immediately*

Let us take

a look at l&rgaret Anderson*® very personal Little Review* In explaining the whirling gyrations- of the Little pevlew we must keep a close eye on the impulsive temperament of the editor* It w i H take a fast eye, for Margaret Anderson was rarely sane in the world*® estimate* Her periodical was madly conceived in Chicago without an idea as to how it might be financed,2 and it was published on sheer will power from March, 1914, through May, 1929* Stories and novels were accepted which the editor knew in advance would mean a Journey to court, a fine, and no publicity* She permeated her review with all the Joyous buoyancy of youth, youth intoxicated with the magnificence of life, with an insatiable thirst to explore* First, it was feminism, Next Lmma Goldman came to Chicago and the magazine became violently anarchist* Then there was imagism and symbolism* Later dadaism, the machine, Brancusi, and a nyrlad of other forces were examined. It was a dynamic magazine, quixotic, sometimes Immature,

32 but always radiating the blue sparks of highly charged feeling. Many were the stars that danced before Margaret Anderson1s vision and moulded the record that is the little Review*a, The editor was always drawn to the “marked", the "unusual", the most advanced of all the advanced, there was to come a time when she could glimpse no further vision of the ^marked" or the "unusual% but we are not quite ready for that story, let us have a look at the beginnings. She was twenty-on© when her inspiration came. She had been in Chicago for several months, writing book reviews for the Dial.** One night Miss Anderson awoke and found life meaningless. Here is the explanation, taken from her autobiography, gy Thirty Tears War, of how life was given meaning and how the Little Review was bora. So it was for the Little Review. X had been curiously depressed all day. In the night I wakened. First precise thoughts I know why X*m depressed *** nothing inspiring is going on. Seconds I demand that life be inspired every moment. Thirds the only way to guarantee this is to have inspired conversation every moment. Fourths most people never get so far as conversation* they haven’t the stamina, and there is no time. Fifths if I had a magazine I could spend my time filling It up with the best conversation the world has to offer* Sixths marvelous idea — 4 salvation* Sevenths decision to do it, Deep sleep. Whether all of this happened so neatly, or whether the explanation Is merely an instance of the editor’s instinct for high drama, is of m iflgaortance* It is important that she suddenly began talking about her marvelous new magazine. She talked so intensely that a young journalist decided to give large monthly portions of his salary for 5 the cause. Immediately she was off to Hew York for advertising,

6

actually collecting about 1450,00.

In a very short time she was

hack in Chicago, established in the Fine Arts Building, and

33 announcing her first issue* Since conversation, inspired conversation, was the sine qua non for her, naturally the Little Review had to be a critical review, printing fiction and poetry only incidentally*

It was a

sort of Spingamish irapressionism which was called for in the first issuei Its (The Little Review's) ambitious aim is to produce criticism of books, music, art, drama, and life that shall be fresh and constructive, and intelligent from the artist's point of view, For the instinct of the artist to distrust criticism is as well founded'as the mother's toward the sterile woman* Mere so, perhapsj for all women have some sort of instinct for motherhood, and all critics haven't an instinct for art* Criticism that is creative — that is our high goal* And criticism is never a merely interpretative function; it is creation; it gives birth! It's not necessary to cite the time-worn illustration of Da Vinci and Pater to prove it* " Following this announcement came the editor's ambitious article about life and art, Paderewski, Galsworthy, William Vaughn Moody, and Kupert Brooke, studded with many "beauties" and "passions11* Floyd Dell ex­ pressed a firm belief that love and work are good for women* Margery Currey and Cornelia Anderson wrote book reviews* Llewellyn Jones, George Burman Foster, George Soule, and Sherwood Anderson contributed articles* Vachel Lindsay told in a poem "Row a Little Girl Danced", EuniceTietjens contributed a verse about sadness,

and Arthur Davidson

Ficke was represented by five poems* In |jy Thirty Tears War Miss Anderson gave a rather unfair estimate of this first issue when she said9 "The first number betrayed nothing but my adolescence* * * What 1 needed was not a magazine but a club room where I could have informed disciples twice a week that nature was wonderful, love beautiful, and

34 art inspired"*5 Far the following four or five months aha stuck by her interest in criticism* During the spring and summer there were many articles on such subjects as "Futurism* and "the Stew Paganism", but as the winter of 19X4 drew on, criticism began to be neglected* Perhaps good criticism was hard to find* At any rat© poets were be­ ginning to appear more and more frequently, ©specially the Imagists who were rapidly capturing Miss Andersen1© devotion* But let us pause over the titles of the critical articles dealing with art which appeared in those early numbers*

"Futurism

and Pseud© Futurism", "The Meaning of Bergsonism", "The derm", (a discussion of the Pre-Raphaelite little magazine), "The Hew Paganism", ■and articles on imagism* The Littje Review*©' editor probably did not realize it, but she was being caught in the flew of m experimental current which stemmed directly from Baudelaire, down through Huysmans, Mallariae, and Rimbaud among the French, through the Pre-Raphaelites, Pater and Wild© among th© English* It was a current that naturally led to imagism* During 1915 and 1916 Miss Anderson fought on th© front lino in th© battle for imagism* She was still defending the imagists in Koven&er, 1916, when her magazine carried sixteen poems by Aldington, but her enthusiasm had been for some months quite apparently on th© wane*

Impatiently she

proclaimed that "The little Review is a magazine that believes in life for Art*s sake"* As early as August, 1916, impatience had generated into a fever of disgust* But let us note Just how complete this nervousness was*

35

X have been realising the ridiculous tragedy of the Little Review* It has been published for over two years without coming near its Ideal* « « Well— *1 wanted'Art in the Little Sgv^gw. there has been a little of it, just a very little* * * It is tragic, I tell you* * * Wow we shall have Art in this magazine or we shall stop publishing it* X donft care where it comes from— America or the South Sea Islands* X donft care whether it is brought by youth or age* I only want the miracle! X loathe compromise, and yet X have been compromising in every Issue by putting in things that were "almost good” or “interesting enough” or “important”* There will be no more of it* If there is only one really beautiful thing for the September number it shall go in and the other pages will be left blank* ” With September came a megasine filled largely with blank leaves*

Two

pages edified the reader by describing in pen and ink and cartoons the light occupations of the editors on their California sojourn* there was the editor beating at her Mason and Hamlin piano; dane Heap — recently adopted associate editor, and a person who was to play a considerable role in little Review history —

sat astride her broken

down horse; there was a making of fudge and of conversation — all decisive proof that the imagists were incapable of serving the potion that would satisfy* A change was in the offing* But there are still a few things which should be said about the Chicago antics before we follow Stogaret Anderson*® fast changing fancy* Certainly the story of how the magazine was financed during those early years should not be neglected* For though th© Little Review battled strenuously for feminism, anarchism, Ben Hecht and th© imagists, it fought harder to keep alive* Th© drama is an enlightening and amusing commentary on the way of the unsubsidized little magazine*

36

In those early Chicago days Schlogel’s restaurant, the meet­ ing place of the journalistic and literary elite, seethed with Margaret Anderson gossip*

"Where is Margaret?" "What’s she doing now?11 were 10

frequent questions*

A person who inspires such interest, and of

whom are written such high flown eulogies as the following, quoted by Harry Hansen, is likely to find money somehow! She was always exquisite, as if emerging from a scented boudoir, not from a mildewed tent or a camp where frying bacon was scenting the atmosphere* She was always vivid, is yet, and beautiful to look upon, and lively in her mind* There is a sort of high, wind-blown beauty about her| her fluffy hair blows marvelously, her eyes are In lake Michigan9s best blue* And she is valiant, always*1* Gushing perhaps, but significant for an understanding of how the little Review lived* When Miss Anderson spoke In "gasps, gaps, and gestures", 12 she charmed Harriet Dean into donating energy and money, or Eunice 13 Tietjens into giving a diamond ring* "Unknown people asked me to lunch, urged ms to talk about ay ’ideals1, and the next day sent a hundred dollars for the ideals"* ^

Thus the Little Review’s credit

in the first "ecstatic" year or so* Later money did not flow into the coffers so readily, especially after anarchism was adopted* But always she managed to meet the situation* She lived in apartments without furniture, until one cold, April day, when room rent was no longer forth-coming, she piled her oriental rugs on an ancient wagon, moved to the edge of the lake, pitched a tent and lived there until the following November*

During those tenting days the only clothes she

possessed were a hat, a crepe georgette blouse, and a blue tailored suit, but everyone thought her well-groomed, for she had found a new secret of walking* And besides, the blouse could be washed every night in Lake S&chigan*^

37 With the exceptions of the first two or three Issues the magazine never garnered any advertising to speak of* Business men do not advertise In an anarchist magazine• Far over a year the editor sought advertising, her indefatigable energy leading her to attempt a rather clever piece of strategy*

In the June-July, 19X5,

number she ran several pages which night have contained advertise* monte hut did not* Small hexes in the middle of the hack pages carried several amusing announcemento, two of which deserve quoting* Handel Brothers might have taken this page to feature their library furnishings, desk sets, and accessories — of which they are supposed to have the most Interesting assortment in town* 1 learned that on the authority of some one who referred to Handel*# as "the most original and artistic store in Chicago”* If they should advertise those things here X have no doubt the 1,000 Chicago subscribers to the Little Review would overflow their ,store* Carson, Pirte, Scott and Company ought to advertise something, though I don't know Just what* The man 1 Interviewed made such a face when I told him we were "radical” that X haven't had the courage to go back and pester him for the desired full-page* The CarsonPirie attitude toward change of any sort is wellknown — I think they resent,,even having to keep pace with the change in fashions* Of course the Little Review expected to collect on some of these gratuitous mentioning#, and of course it never did* The device of giving a party for the Chicago subscribers, admission 50 cents, was tried only once* The attempt to cajole Little Review readers into ordering their books by mail through the magazine, which was to receive a certain percentage of the sale price of the book, was not very successful* The editors had to print their monthly 60 pages from the money that Margaret Anderson 17 enticed from her friends and enemies, from the meagre 2,000

38 subscribers who paid at first #2*50 a year and later #1*25, and from the savings of tent economy* Only a heroic belief in the necessity for the magazine kept it from sinking. *

¥

And then, in March, 1917, began the Mew fork period* The Little Review lived for five years, Its years of greatness, in two small basement rooms of the old Van Buren house at 31 West 14th

street# The years following 1916 saw a fiery eruption of experimentallsm* The new symbolists were making their first appearances, and Miss Anderson found herself fighting tooth and nail for the right of America to read Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Eliot, and many another symbolist# Also at this time she began her fight for the privilege of presenting to America such literary movements as cubism, futurism, and expressionism, movements that had hitherto received only the slightest notice in this country* Symbolism gave the inner self, and particularly the * * feelings, a more piercing scrutiny than romanticism ever did* The early symbolist saw more of the conplicated and inexplicable in life than the romantic# Such men as Foe, Baudeliare, Huysmans, Rimbaud, Xeats, MaLlarme, and many another used every magic to suggest this complexity of the spirit* The real and the imaginary were confused; fantasy was employed, metaphors were consciously mixed; and often 18 poetry approached music. More recent symbolists have used all of these devices and quite a few more*

Froust, Joyce, Valery, Stein

and T* S. Eliot have found life even more intricate than the earlier Symbolists, largely because of the speculations of Bergson, Freud,

39 and Einstein — Bergson with his conjectures as to the influence of memory on our action, Freud with his ideas concerning the part the subconscious plays in our doings,and Einstein with his insistence on the relativity of our perceptions, Quantum physios has also 19 cast Its shadow on the thinking of the recent symbolist* The new romantic cults that sprang into being between 1900 and 1930 took their eue from symbolism*s radical subjectivism and have carried the ideal of exploring the innermost mind of the individual to a near limit* Futurism was founded by the Italian poet, F, T* Marinetti, whose first manifestos were published in Le Figaro in February of 1909*

Anticipating it® child, dada, futurism set itself firmly to

the task of abolishing the accepted standards, particularly "history, exoticism, love-stories, syntax, punctuation, conjugations, the stage, concerts, verses, colleges, art-galleries, literary critics 20

and professors1*#

Marinetti, like hie dada and surrealist

descendants, called for the revolution of the word, "neologisms, simultaneous and onomatopoeic expression, the substitution of noise 91 for music**# Speed, dynamism, force were the slogans of futurism# It demanded electric flashings, vitality and intensity, and above 22

everything else an expression of the individual ego*

Contemporaneous with futurism came German expressionism and French cubism* Neither cubism nor expressionism sought the frenzied movement so characteristic of futurist work, but these three schools were at one in demanding the personal approach to subjeet matter*

Fable Picasso and his Montmartre group believed

40 the constructive imagination to be constrained by the traditional concept of the need for three-dimensional perspective*

The cubists

wished to forget perspective, to take their glance at three-dimenoional nature, then break it up, and finally rearrange the elements into a world of two-dimensional volumes and planes expressive of a 23a formal and harmonious relationship* There was little cubistic literature, but the movement did strengthen the ideal of self-express­ ion* German expressionism, however,'affected all of the arts*

"We

¥

willtransfora into plastic form live states of the soul, we will jerk *23b your sensibilities into the most acute response", runs an expression­ ist manifesto, and it is suggestive of what such men as Kaiser, Pirandello and the early Sherwood Anderson were attempting when they selected one aspect of a personality and dramatized it by distortion, exaggeration and fantasy*

Always the artistfs vision of the "psychic

state? which he wishes to interpret attests to be "original"* April, 1917, brought .Sara Pound to the Little Review as foreign editor* Pound knew many of the European experimentalists, hod deserted his post as foreign editor for Poetry* and was obviously the best qualified person to find the "beautiful" art which Margaret Anderson sought* Pound wanted an American organ where Joyce, T*$* Eliot, Wyndh&m Lewis, and he could appear whenever they felt like it «— usually about every month. The editor thought this "the most stunning plan that any magazine has had the good fortune to announce for a 24 long, long time"* The experimentalists having been adopted, the periodical began to appear in green, orange, and red covers, each of which heraldedt

Little Review* a Magazine g£ the Arts. Making *

M, Cbaproialse with the Public Taste* Hatred for the "usual", sympathy

with the "unusual", became a fetish for the

SgSteS*

The great event of 191#, and probablyof U k U $ £^Sg.?.g, history* waa the begtoaing of Joyce1® JftttKK* For three years the novel ran in installments, four of which were confiscated and burned by the Post Office department* It was like a burning at the stake as far as ' ' 1 was concerned. The care we had taken to preserve Joyce’s texfc intact; the worry over the bills that accumulated when we had no advance funds; the technique t used on printer, bookbinders, paper houses — tears, prayers, hysterics or rages **- to make them push4ahead without a guarantee of money; the addressing, wrapping, stamping, mailing; the excitement of anticipating the world’s response to the literary masterpiece of our generation* . « ^ and then a notice fromtha Post Office* BUSHED* *“■ Oovernment burnings, newspaper charges that the magazine was a purvey­ or of lascivious literature, a non-recognition on the part of intellectuals of over Joyce,

^

26

all this was but a prelude to the battle

The climax came InDeeember, 1920, when Joha Sumner’s

Society for the Suppression of Vice brought the review before a Special Sessions Court on an obscenity charge. John Quim, able Hew Tork lawyer and patron of the arte, (he had donated $1,600 to the periodical) defended the magazine and lost the verdict* The editors were fined $100* Margaret Anderson insisted on going to Jail rather than, pay the money but her friends dissuaded her. A woman who hated -tEjty^sef paid the $100 and the case ended with disappointingly little publicity*^ But Ulysses was not the only exciting work the magazine printed from 1917 to the end of 1921*

Dorothy Richardson’s frequent

contributions included Interim. Sherwood Anderson sent many of his stories, later to make up the volume Wineaburn. Ford Madox Ford published his jfep and Women. Pound was represented by much of his

42 poetry and practically all of the critical papers which later appeared i

y

In Instigations. there were a good many things by Wysidham Lewis, such as Ifea

M&ak **& gm t i m a U L fiaflm M & *

stories, and

plays came from William B* feats, and there was a single group of 24 reproductions from Brancusi’s sculpture* Mich of the early work of T. 3« Eltot, Ben Heeht, Emanuel Carnevali, William Carlos Williams, Bjnna Barnes, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Waley, John Rodker, Mary Butts, •lean Cocteau, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and Francis Picabla found its way to the Little Review during these five years* Miss Anderson’s pride in her little magazine knew no bounds* well did she knew that there was only one answer to her questions »ja the Little Byview contributing to the mental upkeep of Columbia Gem of the 28 Ocean?’1 The magazine performed an invaluable service to America in those years, since It was one of the few outlets in this country for ideas and techniques which were to profoundly influence much of our later writing* Had it net been for the sacrifices and limitless gusto of Margaret Anderson It is quite likely that the post war American fiction and poetry would have been slower in its experimental course*

llhy idea of a magazine which makes any claim to artistic

value is that * * it should suggest, not concludej that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought,

and it was

precisely this function that made the periodical an important force in American letters* How the Little Review managed to keep sailing during the late teens is a splendid, if sometimes pathetic story which we cannot dwell upon* Harriet Monroe, in reviewing jjjr Thirty Tears War, remarked*

43 One kind of courage they had which this reviewer could never attain «*» the courage to run into debt and print issue after issue without knowing, or Indeed caring, where the money would come from to pay for it. And frequently it didn*t come, and printers and editors alike were perilously near starvation* It was a gallant adventure « the little Review — and all the^audscity and flaming sincerity of youth were in it*30 the magazine was swallowing over $10,000 a year* The editors did, indeed, go without food at times* They mode their own clothes, did 31 their own cooking and scrubbing, even cut their own hair* As in Chicago, they opened a book store in connection with the magaaine, this time not on the mail order plan but a regular shop in the little Review office* There was an appeal in 1920 for #5,000, in the hope that 1,000 persons would contribute #5 apiece*

Once, in desperation,

Margaret picked out the tallest sky-scraper, took the elevator to the top floor and began a canvas of the entire building.

Several endow­

ments were offered, usually with restraining chains} only those gifts 32 were accepted which left the editor a free hand. In one way and another, "real credit*1, Itlss Anderson*s personality, kept the magaaine afloat* The monthly became a quarterly in the autumn of 1921* The handling of mechanical details was becoming a superhuman task* The editors were forcing themselves through the drudgery of reading copy, wrapping, and distributing the periodical twelve times a year* 33 All of this might have been endured* But added to these annoyances was a growing war with the printer, a situation that finally became so unbearable that the editors had to spend days at a time in the 34 print shop goading the printer to his work* Ho doubt it was physically inpoasible for a nervous temperament to stand many fights

44 such as is indicated by the fallowing letter* Dear Miss Anderson* Tomorrow will be a week that I received eopy with money la advance as agreed and was not able to start and will not be able before neat week* It is no use Mss Anderson, to be so nervous* You want always first-lass work oik! X cannot make* Do you not know that we had war? Workingman is now king* If you would pay me three thousand dollars X will not make good work* This is other times* X wrote you about this many times and will not repeat any more* but wish to say if you pay all in advance and two* three hundred per cent more as now, you must not e3qpeet_|ood work ©r on time* X want no responsibility*^ From 1921 on the little Review appeared in & luxurious format* full of bizarre types, printed with inks of many colors* The Autumn* Winter, 1924-4925 issue* with its high quality paper, its elaborate reproductions of Jaun Gris* work, its black, yellow and red head­ ache inks, was a far cry fromthose Issues of the war years when the magazine was printed on a thin, low grade stock, always threaten­ ing to disintegrate at the slightest touch* After the experimental climax in the brilliant works of r

*•

*■

«

«r

Dorothy Hiehardson, Joyce, feats, Proust, and others* came a -

r

*

denouement of dadaism* Dada was born at six p*rc*, February 0, 1916, at the Cafe Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland*

It was largely the work

of Tristram Tzara, a Rouaianian. Dads was conscious of a large disgust with western bourgeois culture and war making* It wanted to destroy the whole cultural structure, beginning with literature and the other arts* The chief attack on letters consisted in writing meaningless sentences, or in composing subjective tales that could be understood 36 only by the author*

45 Miss Anderson migrated from New York to Paris in 1922, some two years after Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, Paul Eluard and Tristan Tzara had founded their review, Litter&ture* By the time Margaret Anderson arrived in Paris Dadaist M i m s k (title Of a dadaist pamphlet) was. on the march, crusading "with all the fists of onefs being in destructive action"*^ against a world of silliness, stuffiness, and brigandage* Xouag m m of talent, most of them Just out of the trenches, were thumbing their noses at the world, not only through their writings but in individual actions* Fervent young dadaist® chased about Parle, interrupting bourgeoise plays, burning popular literary heroes in effigy, denouncing reli­ gion from church yards — * insulting the hated public in every fashion conceivable* Louis Aragon threatened to wreck the offices of Lea Nouvelles Litteralrea if it continued to mention his name, and carried out his threat when he was next mentioned* He terrified critics by threatening beatings if they dared review his books; no 38 one accepted the dare* ¥

the Little Review threw its energy gaily into this fracas, printing much of the work of Guillaume Apollinaire, Trdstam Tzara, Os-Ander®, Louis Gilmore, W*C* Jitro, Louis Grudin, dean Cocteau and others, delighted for a time with the dadaist vision of a new world *r

+

order where the novel, the purposeless, the "marked”, the Mindividual persuing his individual whims, the artist riding hi® hobbyhorse, 39 his dada11, would rule* But dadaism finally bogged down in Its tracks when it began fervidly to embrace that portion of Its manifesto announcing! "Art is a private matter, the artist does it for himself, any work

46 i

40 that can be understood is the product of a journalist”# But even before dado had completely evaporated, surrealism cropped up, carrying a great deal of dada baggage, but also adding a positive note#. Dada’s influence on surrealism was fundamental* Dada had cleared the field for the ideal of absolute self-expression# It had suggested art for the individual*s sake and had set a precedent for breaking with bourgeois cultural ideology* To some extent dada­ ism was also responsible for the surrealists* tendency toward a de~ formalisation of language, though the latter group has never been very radical in this respect* But even with dada, personalised self-expression was confined largely to an exploration of the writer*s conscious mind* Surrealist Andre Breton (once a dadaist) and his followers suddenly (about 1934) assumed the right to explore their subconscious and un­ conscious depths*

It is true that the symbolists had made gestures

in the direction of the subconscious under the influence of Freud and Bergson, but no previous group explored the mind with such purpose and unlimited gusto as the surrealists* Surrealisms — a term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire — shows very little interest in anything in man above the subconscious* Breton1a group attempts to transcend the reality that our sensory equipment reveals to the conscious mind* It is interested in what the subconscious and unconscious do with the patterns formed by the conscious* The deformations, the grotesques, the magical exoticisms, into which the deeper regions transform our ordinary “real” impressions is the proper subject matter of art* The unconscious represents a higher reality* Surrealism sets for Itself the positive

47 program of systematically exploring the innermost man* en exploration which in its opening yesr* was conducted often through the side of automatic writing end hypnosis* Spontaneous images are emphasised, sad the real and the imaginary are contrasted by such leaders as Andre Breton, Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul KLuard, Hebert Demos, Joseph Delteil, Benjamin Peret, and Henry Hichaux in their 43 efforts to free the imagination, to give it a wider working scope* Commander Breton has formulated the clearest and briefest definition of the literary aspects of the movement that has yet been published. We quote from Le Manifesto du Surrealisms. SDHBEALIS1SE, n.a* Automatisms psychique pur par lequel on so propose d'exprimsr, sett verbalemeat, soit par ecrit, soit do touts autre maniOre, le fonctionnement r6el do la pensee. Dietee de la pens6e, en 1 *absence do tout controls exerce par la raison, on dehors de touts preoccupation esthetlque ©u morale* EKCXCL* Philos# Le sorrdaLIsme repose sur la creyance 4 la realite eepei&ewre de certaines formes d1associations negligees jwsqu'a lui^ a la toute->puissance du rove, au jeu desinteressc de la "pensee*: -11 tend a ruiaer definitivemeat tens lee awbres meeanismes payehiques et a so substituer 4 sum dans la rbaoXution dee prlmeipam problemea de la vie.^ It is apparent that here is a fusion of the naturalistic empirical spirit with the romantic longing for the ‘'above*, the jflysterlsue, the supernatural* *

Out of surrealism came vertigralism, which we shall discuss In connection with transition* the Little Review entertained surrealism for two years, but gradually the editors became weary* From the winter of 1926 to May, 1929, the magealne could find no excuse for publication* The white flag of complete surrender wqs finally hauled up* It was with a trace of pomposity that the editors delivered the sword in their 1929

capitulation number. Mss Anderson said in parts • • So I made a magazine exclusively for the vary good artists of the time* Nothing mere simple far m than to be the art arbitrer of the world* 1 still feel the same way — with a rather important exception* As this number will shew, even the artist doesn’t knew what he is talking about* And 1 can m longer go m publishing a magaaine in which m m m really knows what he is talking about* It doesn't interest me*, 1 certainly couldn't live my life today among people who know nothing of ilfe* Xt would be as if some one asked me to live seriously all the redundant human drama that, undeveloped people like to put you through* €(h no.^5 The statement "even the artist doesn't know what he's talking about* refers to a questionnaire which had been circulated to the world's meet prominent artists, asking such questions as* "What do you look forward to?«j

"What is your attitude towards art today?"j

"Why do

you go on living?" Jane Heap expressed herself volubly in that last issuei Few* years we offer«d the Little Review as a trialtrack for racers* We hoped to find artists who could run with the great artists of the past or men who could make new records* But you can't get race horses from mules* X de not believe that the conditions of our life can produce men who can give us masterpieces* Masterpieces are not made from chaos* If there is con­ fusion of life there will confusion of art* This is in no way a criticism of the men who are working in the arts* They can only express what is here to express* We have given space in the Little Review to 23 new systems of art (all now dead}, representing 19 countries* In all of this we have not brought forward anything approaching a masterpiece except the "Dlysses" Of W * Joyce* "blysses" will have to be the master­ piece of this time. But it is toe personal, toe tortured, tee special a document to be a masterpiece In the true sense of the word* Xt is an intense and elaborate expression of Hr* Joyce's dislike of this time*

49 Self-expression is not enoughs experiment id not enoughs the recording of special moment® or eases Is not enough* All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function* They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art***? And so ended the drama* the magazine published only two unsolicited writers in its life and was not much given to discoveries* Ben Hecht, with his tale “life1*, was the first find* Sherwood Anderson wrote criticism from the beginning and his first story Vibrant Life"* came In March, 1916* But we must justify the little Review, not on its discovery record, but on its “service# record*

It was one of the first to enter

the fight for experimental writing, battling for the new movements and for a host of little known writers who were later destined to become leaders of their generation* Further, the magazine was the first to give us m adequate cross-section view of European and American experimentalism, for It explored, at one time or another in Its turbulent life, about every experimental highway and byway* Probably more significant was the influence exerted on the young men of literary inclinations who were first beginning to think of writing between about 1915 mod 1920* the little Review was a potent charmerj its glamour and strangeness fired the imaginations of many & young Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway, often suggesting the roads that they were to travel*

Nor must we forget the spell cast on still

Other young men, the persons who were soon to establish little magas&nes of their own* Broom* Secession* and this C^uayter were in many *

respects patterned after the rebel, combative little Review*

50

There are many reasons for writers, now between forty and fifty years old, to remember gratefully the

Beview. and for

their insistence that it was the best magasine of their youth*

51 i9P$m%£2L X) Munson, Gorham, "How to Baa a little Magazine," Saturday Review of Literature." p* 4* 2) Anderson, Margaret, Jfc Thirty Im w lg£, p. 36. 3) Party, Albert, Garrets £fld Pretenders, p. 199. 4) Andersen, 5)

IbjW,, p.41,

6)

Ibid.. p.43.

thirty Yeara War, p. 35.

i

7) Anderabn, "Announcement," little Review. Mar., 1914* 8}

Anderson,j& thirty YearsWar, p.47*

9)

Anderson,"A HealMagazine,"little

10) Hansen, Harry, H)

Harlow. Aug., 1916* 9* 10s*

Ibid.. p. 105*

12) Andersen, gjr thirty Years War, p. 66. 13)

Ibid.

14)

Ibid.. p.69.

15)

Ibid.. pp. 86*90*

16) Andersen, little §ggj£g» June-July, 1915. 17)

(A conjecture, based on a statement In the June-july, 1915 issue that the magazine had 1000 Chicago subscribers.)

18) Wilson, Edmund, Axel18 Castle, pp. 1*25. 19) Michaud, Regis,

MsslSe pp. xviii-scix*

20)

Ibid.. p.408.

21)

Ibid.

22)

Ibid.

23)

Ibid.. pp. 405-8.

23)

Crayon, Thanes, Modern Art. p. 225.

24)

An4srae«i, "Aanouneeiaenb,"Little

Review* Ap*, 1917*

25)

Andersen, jg; thirty I t m War, p* 175* *

26) J&&., p. 175. 27) Ibid.. pp. 214-21. 22) Anderson, ”211*1 the Little Berieir 8u Dene,” Little Herletr. Autumn, 1922* 29) Andersen, *0w» First Tear," Little Review* Feh*, 1915* 50) itonree, Harriet,

**MF Thirty Tsars War,11 Feetpy* Sept*, 1930*

31) Andersen, Mg fhirty Tsars ^ar« p* 136* 32)

pp* lS7~ae.

33)

Ibid*, p. 157*

34)

&!&*» p* 157*

55) Andersen, Little Review* Mir*, 1920* 36) Michaud, gg» olt** p* 409* 37) Cswlejr, tfaleela, SStiSla MBJS. P* «9.

38)

P. 163.

39) J&&., p. 158. 40) M & > 41} Michaud,

clt»* p* 419*

42) Ibid** pp* 4X9*20* 43) Ibfd,* p, 419* 44) Breton, Andre, Manifests da SinyeallsittSe p. 46* ✓

*

'

*

45) Anderson, editorial, Little H*rlew. Kay, 1929* 46)

Heap, Jena,

"Lest* A Heneieaenoe,” Little Berlew, May, 1929.

Chapter If Glebe and Others *fbe old expressions are with us always, and there are always ethers*11 Alfred Kreymborg, William Carlos Williams, Mara Found -*• these wen are the patron saints of the modern little magasime movement*

They have supported with money, encouragement, and

contributions desens of little aagaaines, and have been associated in seme capacity or ether with nearly every advance guard movement of the past thirty years* Of the three, Kreymberg was the first to enter a little magamime battle fog a new literature* Two years after the establishment of the first influential little magasine of this century, the Masses* and one year after Harriet Monroe founded Pootry> Alfred Krepaborg armed for battle his monthly Glebe* 'The year of Glebe »s beginning was 1913, the year’of its end 1915* tut that same year ssw the birth of Othersf the second of Kr«ymborg*a experimental magazines of poetry* Fifth child of a peer but valiant Hew York Hast Side family, Kreyni>org found time for school, books,' and music* As a shy young man, working for a music company, he wrote —«* stories, novels, and poetry* But he was unable to sell or give away most of *

*

his work* At the time, the quality Journals, yamerfs* Atlantic. and Scribner*8 were publishing little poetry, and when they did print verse they did net wish to present an unknown or unorthodox writer* Experimental writing or fresh ideas could net be tolerated Kreymborg found*

Xt was net long before he saw the need of a

54 X

Baguio* devoted to the work of such young writers as hiosalf.

In 1908 h* thrash* of publishing «u Aaerlcen Quarterly. V

*'

He eellected manuscripts, aubscrIptlons, tod money toward* the ideal before he worked himself into a nervous prostration tod too forced 2 to forgot his project* Hot until five years later* when he found *

*

himself summering with the painters* Sanatel Halperi and Han Ray* *

bath of whom lived in a shaek n m r the village of Grantwood, Sew

Jersey, did Breyaborg fled himself again talking of the need for a little magassiae* lay worked in a Manhattan print ahop where ho managed to-talk hie employer into donating an old press for the prospective magaaine* ^the press was premised* Manuscripts and reproductions were hurriedly gathered* Basra Found heard of the proposed Globf and immediately forwarded a packet from leaden which Included inanuacripte by Found*: James Joyce* Allen Upward, Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford)* R* 0*, Richard Aldington, F* $* Hint, Sklpwith *•

#

C&nnell, Any lowell, and William Carles Williams*^ One fine morning the long awaited press arrived, steed waiting to be unleaded from a truck* As the editors moved toward *

#

it to help with the unloading, the machinery slipped from Its mooring, 4 plunged to the ground, and was damaged beyond repair* Undaunted, Kreynborg hurried off to Hew Terk to look for financial aid* He thought it possible that support for a projected ✓

mngftoHwra might be found in Greenwich Village* Aid was found, and

each other1* writings* Kreyiaborg and M s wife, Christine, had retired to Grantwood, Hew Jersey, after the first Issue of the magazine*

It

¥

was a tedious ride out to Grantwood, but every Sunday the Others

contributors eagerly gathered there to talk shop. They would slip in with a sheaf ef manuscript in one hand, sometimes a bundle of food in the other*

ifementarlly the atmosphere would be a little strained*

Kreymborg tells us In his autobiography# Troubadour* "Like most every ether cultural activity of the new soil, the intercourse of these

people was a novel experience*

They had to approach it warily and grew

up to the art of conversation with a painstaking, self-conscious tempo similar to their development as artists*

It was net a lack of

self-eenfidence which dictated so sty a contact, but a joyous bo* wildermant in the discovery that other men and women were working in

15

a field they themselves felt they had chosen in solitude*"

The

mutual stimulation, the chance to meet the fellows of one** sen Graft, was an invaluable incentive to further accomplishment •

5a ft*©80 rae»tings fcoeaaw iftrt fraspaat In the fall of X$L5 whan ih* Erfl^iite'ga mvod buck Into tha city and aotUod down in a bhrs* rooa ^ai^aiont m Bank Street# Ah any hour of tha day or night a post might son* op- for a chat# -fho editorial room was th© kitchen* and th* Icebox*** tfc* center*2^ ,A«o% the parsons who «ada the Kreyfl&org apartismfc a floating *■ * j&mm w«w SSworeU BwJenhelai, Wlto&w* Cerles aillleaa, WarUm* m o m , eoS Selleee Sfcavea®*' all of whom pa&linhad mseh of their early wo*** in Cfetagw, ‘ W 4)

205,

f p# 205*

9) £ M * » &> 2io«

6) Ibid** p. m * ?} Ifreyroborg, (statement to this writer).

3) Krfiyraborg, Txoubfadoure pp. 218-1?* 1

' *

9} M l * * *>• 220* *

19} Ibid., tv. 222-3. »

#

31}

'

Ibid.. P. 222.

12} Kreynborg, (statement to this writer). 13} Kreynfcorg, Troubadour. p. 235. 34)

Ibid.. |v* 238-45.

41) Ibid., p. 241. *

16)

O'

Ibid.1 p. 248*

1?) Ibid.. p, 256. 48} Ibid.. p. 265* 49) M i* 20} M i., p. 279,

24} M i

IP* 339*31*

'22} J^b^jd,. p. 339* 23) M i * » p. 332.

62

Chapter ?

*Aa Expression of Artists far the Community** Hew Xerk*s Seven Arta flashed across tho literary horizon

for only a ywr, from November# 1916# to October, 1917* la that twelve-month it powerfully stirred American thought and mad* a last* lag name for Itself* Jama* Gppenhelm, tho editor# and his two associates# Waldo Frank and Tan Wyck Brooks# wore tho loading spirits of a group that saw in tho lato toons an awskoning of national self-* consciousness# a restless yearning for a finer vision of destiny than tho land had previously known*^ they saw those evidences of America's coning of ago in the now posts who wore monthly being promoted by and they wears alert enough to see that there wore many young men ~~ as yet all but unknown ~~ eager to express themselves in the

2

drama# tho novel# tho short story# and criticism*

A letter addressed

to these unknowns in the sunnier of 1916 defined, the Seven Arts1 aafeltleua hope of drawing together and synthesising their thought* It is our faith and the faith of many# that wo are living in the first days of a renascent period# a time which means for America the coming of that national eelf-consciouanesA which is the beginning of greatness* In all such epochs the arts oease to be private matters} they become not only the expression of tho national Ufa but a means to its enhancement* Our arts show signs of this change* It is the aim of 32}e Seven Arts to become a channel for the flew of these new tendencies! an expression of our American arts whieh shall be fundamentally an express­ ion of our American life* We have no tradition to continue} we have no school of style to build up. What we ask of the writer is aliply self-expression without regard to

current magazine standards* We should prefer that portion of his work which is done through a Joyous necessity of the writer himself* The Seven Arts will publish stories* short plays# poems# essays# and brief editorials* Such arts as cannot be directly set forth in the magazine will receive expression through critical writing# which# it is hoped# will be no less creative than the fiction and poetry* In this field the aim will be to give vistas and meanings rather than a monthly survey or review} to interpret rather than to catalogue* We hope that creative workers themselves will also set forth their vision and their inspiration* In short# 2}g Seven Arts is not a magazine for artists# but an expression of artists for the eojeminity*^ the high hope was richly rewarded* The result of this appeal brought forth an amazing number of fine writers# men who shortly were to dominate the milieu* The Seven Arts receives the credit for crystallizing in the public consciousness such *

**

American names as Sherwood Anderson# John Bos Passes# Eugene O'Neill# Randolph Bourne# John Reed, Van Wyck Brooks# Waldo Frank# and H* I* Mencken# and the Englishman# D* H. Lawrence and J* P* Beresford# most of whom were printed frequently* Other names were made known through critical discussion*

Ernest Bloch and bee

Omstein wrote on their music and Marsden Hartley on his painting* And various articles by the editors commented on little known European writers who have since become prominent* But before we examine the exciting first nuaiber let us cast a glance at the editors* James Oppenheim was the oldest of the motivating trio# all of whom — as most little magazine editors have been — were under thirty-five*

Born in St* Paul# Minnesota# of financially

well established Jewish parents# young Oppenheim was soon removed

64 to Mew Xork where he lived the remainder of hie life# When he was six years eld his father died, and within a short time the fsally found Itself in straitened circumstances* The hitter odds against which he gained a few years of extension work from Columbia foreshadowed a Ufa of misfortune# The poet was soon forced to write sentimental magassine stories to keep alive* drudgery for a mystically inclined temperament# His serious need for expression had to find release at infrequent intervals until 1916# And so* when he was offered the opportunity of founding the Seven ^rts with Waldo Frank* a joyous hope of release 4 sprang up# The magaslne, richly subsidised by are# A# C. Rankins* removed the haunting spectre of poverty* promised a work which he could ¥

enjoy# end offered a yearly salary of around $5*0QG#^ He took up his duties with gusto* confident in a future which was soon to betray him# Wald© Frank was a eo^founder and the assooiate editor (in reality managing editor) of the aagasine# Frank* well educated* imaginative* and possessor of a good deal of practical newspaper «m» perleaee accumulated after taking a Masters degree at Tale in 1911* was to a large extent responsible for the form and direction of the ? aagasine# Van wyek Brooks (who had not yet become an associate ft

¥

editor}* Kahltl Oibraa* houia Untermeyer* Hebert Frost* Idas Kenton* David Manners* and Hebert Sdaond Jones heartily seconded Oppenheim and Frank in their attespt to build up a aagasine as Ag Expression S£

S M ifefi Community* In the initial issue* as in those to fellow* there was

a primary concern with critioal material# Remain Roland wrote on

11America and the Arts**, Peter Mlnuit examined the status of our archi­ tecture*

"Lazy Verse1* was tlraded against by Oppenheim*

KLpyd Dell

expressed hie thought* an "Shew and Religion", Louis Untermeyer on the *

dance, and Paul Rosenfeld on “The American Composer0* van Wyck Breaks, Waldo Frank, and Allen Upward also arete articles*

Robert Frost, dean

Starr Untermeyer, Kahlil Gibran, and Amy Lowell contributed verse* Stories by Josephine Baker and Berry Benefield, and Louise Driscoll’s one act play, "The Child of God", finished out the Issue of ninetyfive well-printed pages —

a somewhat smaller issue than the later

average of 125 beek«*A*e leaves* the Seven

group came with the purpose of directing the

new spirit towards an objective*

America must slough off Its terrify­

ing preoccupation with material values, react against the emotional sterility, the imaginative barrenness which Edgar Lee Hesters1 Spoon liver Anthology so dearly revealed*3 Hew artists such as Sherwood Anderson In this country, and John Davis Beresford and p* H* Lawrence In England, must develop*

They must be capable of suggesting to an

emotionally starved nation the possibilities of a richer way of life, the need for intuition, and poetic responsiveness*

They mast weld

into the nation’s outlook a vision which would honor the complete man rather than the money*grabblng.man*

9

The Seven Arts was knifed by war chauvinism and #

editorial conflict before It could find many of these artists, but the message was heard and from our vantage point we can see that the magazine profoundly influenced American letters and thought*

66

During the magastne1* year of life there were no fever then two dessm articles, poems, end editorials written by Oppenheim, Frank, and Brooke — all designed to drive hone to the average of 5,000 10 buyers the need for a new national art and life* Though the Amerisen ecene was examined from different angles lay these three men, their writings revealed a elese correspondence of outlook*

Brooks persua­

sively reIterated In his numerous arguments, his central theme that "Our aneestral faith in the individual and what he is able to *

*

accomplish (or, in modem parlance, to *put ever*) as the measure of all things has despoiled us of that instinctive human reverence for those divine reservoirs of collective experience, religion, science, art, philosophy, the self-eubordiaatlag service to which is almost * n the measure of the highest happiness** Frank, the cultured and s

prophetic rebel, found that America needed *abeve all things, spiritual adventure*

It needs to he absorbed in a vital and virile

art*

It needs to be lifted above the harry of details, to be loosed 12 from the fixity of results** Not quite as graceful as his two cohorts when it came to exposition, but just as sincere, Oppenheim aspired *as our fathers* fathers did, for something beyond ourselves,

which we may leva or hate, and to which we may so give ourselves that life acquires an interest, an intensity, a fine rigorous quality that tests us athletically «nd brings all our submerged 13

powers into play* We aspire to be alive in every part of ourselves** #

/

All these men agreed, too, in their hatred of absolute industrialism* *■

Oppenheim expressed their common feeling when he cried, "Human nature has stronger and angrier hungers than an unrelieved industri­ alism can meet! and a race that has gone out time and again to suffer

and to die for Ideas and symbols, for abstract concoctions like •freedam1and •democracy1, for visions like that of the Grail and of God, cannot new be content alone with factory-work, or business, or the flat metallic taste of money1 the call for spiritual revolution was linked with an advocacy of social revolution* the editors were definite socialists and among *

*

the first supporters of the new Russia, though, as frank points out, this support was more lyrical than argumentative* In addition to the heavy salves of Oppenheim, Brooks, and frank there were hard-hitting articles by others who had already so* qmlred some degree of fame* John Dewey wrote *In a time of National hesitation*! H* 1* Mencken in one of his most brilliant moments exposed the Inner thoughts of the super virtuous who had counted the "lend* words in Dreiser* Bertrand Bussell wondered whether national*

ism was moribund* the critic and aesthetieian, Willard Huntington L

Wright (who later became famous as *3*3* Van Dine*), did several pro­ voking articles, and Garl Van Vechten had much to say about music* Dreiser, always ambitious for big things, made a long study of a wide subjectt “Art, life, and America** there was an article on the new artistic stirring in Bpainj the author, a young unknown, signed himself John B* Dos Passes* With the Seven Arts*critical predilections in mind we can thoroughly understand the editors* admiration for the fiction of Lawrence, Andersen, and Beresford* These men may not have been the great artists which the magazine called forf but they were *■

striving in the direction of greatness, probing into man*s emotional make-up as well as into his intellect* Prank, in an appraisal of

6a Anderson, held that his significance lay in the faet "that he suggests at last a presentation of life shot through with the searching color of truth* which is a signal for a native culture"*^ a culture* the author gees ahead to insist* which could never have grown out of a purist intelleetualiam such as dominated Henry dames* For dames was tee much content with shimming the surface of man's intellect*

16

representing this s&mming as the whole man*

Neither Frank nor anyone else in the Seven Arts group claimed Lawrence or Andersen or Beresford as first-rate artists* What the editors did assert was that such writers pointed towards a complete understanding of man* an understanding which would take into account the human belly as w d l as the head — the instincts as well as the conscious reasoning* *

y

Frank made no claim for himself* of course, but he was attempting in his short stories much the same thing as Lawrence* Beresford* and Andersen* ¥

¥

¥

Lawrence* Anderson* Frank* and Beresford were not titans* even in their Seven Arts period* but among the twenty-nine stories printed in the magasine we find ten of great merit written by these four men* There were "Bread Grunts" and "Budd" by Frank) Lawrence's "The Mortal Cell" and "The Thimble**) "Escape"* "Little Town"* and "Powers of the Air" by Beresford) and four of Andersen's powerful ¥

sketches* "Queer"*

¥

¥

"The Thinker"* "Mother"* and "The Untold Lie"*

These were the pieces that were largely responsible for bringing their authors to the American public consciousness*

69

Of the twenty-nine stories printed in the Seven Arts twenty17 eight were considered distinctive toy Edward J* 0‘Brieru A Seven Arts discovery, Frederick Booth, helped build this lapsing record# American letters lost one ef Its most promising young men when Booth *

left Hew fork for Florida, was heard from only a few times after 1920, and finally completely vanished from the literary scene* Bit before we leave the magasine1® short story record let us have a look at its prime novelty, Eugene 0*Neill1a first short stogy, "Tomorrow*#

It is a good tale, despite the rather male-

dramatic structure* a young Scottish hlueblood, Jimmy Anderson, marries an exquisite girl and goes with her and the British to subdue the Beers* his young wife In

Jimmy, returning one day from the interior, finds dellotp with a staff officer, is heart­

broken, deserts his moneyed family, becomes a drunkard, and, after many years of trying to catch again a vision of lifers meaning, ¥

*

commits suicide* To be sure, this is a staid framework, but the deft exploring of the sensitive, complicated Jimmy makes a fine story* 2fr« O’Heill win net allow reprints of "Tomorrow*, and this is tee bad* The tale deserves to be better known* If the Seven Arts could have survived the war hurricane it might have continued indefinitely to urge Its ideal of a new America* But the editors, particularly Oppenheim, stood in violent opposition to Americans participation in the war in France* Oppen­ heim was fiery in his denunciation* Be poured out one vitriolic editorial after another in favor of the American dream of isolation from Continental squabblesi he encouraged John Heed and Randolph Bourne to write a series of articles carrying -such titles as

70 "This Unpopular War"} ha defended the Masses against the espionage act| and finally, so hard hitting was hie attack, he brought down on hie head the hysterical wrath of his magasine’s sponsor, Mrs* ftanklne* Convinced by her "proper" friends that the editors were id pro"*$srnan (they were not), she withdrew her subsidy* "However, we could have gone on,* Waldo Frank has said* "Many wealthy non and women, such as Scofield Thayer who later bought the Dial, urged us to continue and offered substantial help! but the insistence was that In this case Oppenheim should not be the titular editor, but all of us three together* Oppenheim refused to relinquish absolute authority in form* Had on that, the thing foundered* tip friends urged me to go on, without Oppenheim! but the draft and a severe illness prevented me from acting at once

and later on 1

agreed with Brooks that Hhe time had come to write books** l$r Our America (1919) was the first result of that withdrawal from the 19 magaslne field*# Thus the magasine died with its task barely begun* Oppenheim found himse f socially ostracised, rapidly becoming a spiritual and physical wreck* Misfortune was again his tracks} finally in 1932 It completely overtook him in 20 the form of tuberculosis# During his darkened latter life he

dogging

must often have bitten his tongue in irony as he saw the nation return to "normalcy", and fetch out the motto, "two ears in every garage* as the highest ideal of civilisation*

71

1) Oppenheim, Janee, editorial, Seven Arts* Nov#, 1916, p. 52# 2) JCfedijl# «*

«*^)

pp* 52**3*

4) Malane, Deaee, (editor) Mfoionary o f iimarlcaa Biograptor, pp. 46*7* 5) Frank, Itelde, (letter to thle writer).

7) Twite, Dilly, Uvimt Authors# p. 13a* 6) Brooke, Ten W^ck, "Toward e National Culture,11 Sevegf & Her*, 1917, p* 53S* 9) Frank, "Vicarious Fiction,** Seven Arte# Jan*, 1917, p* Frank, (letter to thie writer) * 11) Brooke,

"Toward a National Culture,1* Sevan Arte* Kara, 1917, p*540*

*

«

*

*

12) Frank, "Saerglng Greatness," Seven Artsf Nov*, 1914, p* 73* 0

*

'

'

-

v

13) Oppenheim, James, editorial, ffsvea Aria. Iter*, 1917, p* 505*

15)

Frank, "Soerging Greatness,* p* 73*

17) 0#Brian, Edward J*, Beat Short Stories* (a calculation Baaed on the ratings given in the volumes Ter 1914 and 1917) • Frank, (letter to thie writer)•

20) Malone, Dictionary g£ American SSSS OW # PP. 44-7-

7a Chapter 71 The Midland "We are seeking some euch things as truth and beauty," this we know* the Midland*a enviable record could only have green out of an admirable personality* That personality ie John Towner Frederick* While shill an undergraduate at the State University of Iowa* la Iowa City, Frederick launched hie Midland* ^ Magazine q £ t£e Middle£££&» The editor, In 1$15, wee twenty-three years old, poeeeeeed of a discriminating literary judgment, and of a first-rate reaaoa for startl­ ing a magazine, The reason stemmed from a recognition that eastern commercial periodicals were not giving the best of the young Midwest X writers an opportunity to be read* Harper*afAtlantic, Scribner*a. '

and others were at that time more concerned with name writers than with the sincerity of the fiction they offered their readers* Names drew circulation, circulation advertising, advertising money for the publishers* New writers were, every now and again, printed by the money-making magazines, but they were not likely to be from the Midland, for most seaboard editors were determined on one of two things from a trans-Allegheny writer* Either he must mold the middlemost outlook to conform with that of the Bast, or the midwest soul must be burlesqued for the amusement of the East* In either ease, the writer could not honestly explore the spirit of his native people* He swat either meet the Bast on its own terms, or not write* Frederick believed his country should write, and the Midland was established for those artists who desired to interpret their section

73 2

realistically* *

The magazine* edited by 000 close to the midwest soul*

*

began, then, as a regional magazine* Frederick hid been bora on an Iowa farm, near Geraing, and had Hired meat of hla life there, hie eyes alertly trained on the fourth generation Xewaaa about him* He knew that these people, like their kinsmen east toward the Alleghenies mad west toward the Bookies, might add much to Hie life of the nation a« a whole if their artists could be given an oppeHiunity to write of the mid~American spirit* This conception of a regional periodical started the jgfcllapdi off on am eighteen-year pilgrimage that was to unearth a great *

volume of superior poetry and fiction, to help many a young writer stand on his own feet, and to set a standard of integrity which any little magasime might do well to emulate* The seeds of this regional conception were planted before

It was in 1902, a year after the formation of the great *

United States steel monopoly, that Josi&h Hayee Journeyed to Iowa Glty to deliver a Phi Beta Kappa address of warning against the dangers * of industrial standardisation, entitled "Provincl*. ism#, later in* eorporated in his book, Bacy,jfoeatloqft, Irpvinolalismf and ftthoff American Problems*

In terms of the "higher provincialism" Boyce defined

what we new can cultural regionalism* Bis central contention in this talk was that America, because of new social fereea, lay in danger of losing »lta conscience, its spiritual dignity, its organic lifc*j^ that the country skirted the peril of becoming robotized In its thinking*

Industrialism was fast forcing the people into ¥

acting, and educating themselves to act, in a conventional formula

74 which best suited the desiras at iBduatrlallam. Initiative, originality, *

*

variety of any kind, were being stamped down, America was becoming servile to the Iren demands of the machine drivers* Our thinking, onee completely victimized and forced into the ever so neat philosophy of big business, would result in a race of soft dullards *** easy victim# of mob hysteria, of unthinking action, of faeistic demagogues, :'' Provincialiaia, therefore^ jmiat be cheriehad as on© effectiye instrument:for'thwarting'the possibility of:sterile formula thinking* IbwvAteeee, or regions, with differences, with peculiar cultural patterns, should encourage their indlvidualitiea'in order that the’national mind might not be mesmerized into a deadly, conformity* **&sh your province *

then beyour first social ideal* Cultivate ita young men, and keep them near you* Foster provincial independence* Adorn your surround* Inge with the beauty of art* 4

nation may be served**

Serve faithfully your community that the

thus Boyce*s conception of cultural region­

alism* ‘ ''And now let us look at a section of the opening Midland editorial* Here we can see hew closely Frederick*a purpose Synchronised with Eoycefo views as they were expressed thirteen years before' the laidland*# -founding* • • *Possibly the region between the mountains would gain in variety at least if it retained more of its makers of literature, music, pictures, and more of its other expressions of civilisation* And possibly civilisation itself might be with us a somewhat swift-* or process if expression of its spirit were awe frequent* Scotland is none the worse for Burns and deeit, none the worse that they did not move to London and interpret London themes for London publish* ers*5 Here is a direct outgrowth of Eoyoe*s thinking, first presented in Iowa City, and kept alive there in the quick Intellectual atmosphere

75 Of 0 great state university* Here it the timber from, which the Midland wee built* Hoyee’s warnings had been apt in 1902, but how much nearer had the country relied towards uniformity by 19151 The industrial minded seaboard was more and mere imposing its point of view on the V

rest of the country* and one indication of this* as Frederick clearly saw, was in the Hast** increasing tendency to require commercially expedient standards of midwest authors* These criteria* if they allow* ed one to speak of the Wimeeburgs or of the Nebraska prairie farm at 6 all* required that the treatment be highly distorted* We speak of the I&dlaad>s cultural regionalism* for *

Frederick never fmutilated a positive literary regionalism* He never* like the modem literary regionalist, emphasised the age old truth that the writer who hopes to produce art with wnivereal values had