The Reader Critic

From James Joyce

James Joyce, Zurich, Switzerland:

I am very glad to hear about the new plans for The Little Review and that you have got together so many good writers as contributors. I hope to send you something very soon—as soon, in fact, as my health allows me to resume work. I am much better however, though I am still under care of the doctor. I wish The Little Review every success.

Approval

Alice Groff, Philadelphia:

Never has The Little Review pleased me, from cover to cover, as in the May number. I cannot imagine finding any one to express me for myself, but Mr. Ezra Pound in his editorial comes the nearest possible to doing this, as far as he goes.

What he says about the Christian religion is delicious in its gentle tolerance; about organized religions, is the last word; about “the formation of thought in clear speech for the use of humanity,” a religion in itself. He utters my whole voice on “codes of propriety” in asserting that “they have no place in the arts.” I would add “nor in life, other than as subject matter.”

His rallying cry to The Egoist stirs my egoist soul to its depth. Ever since I have known this journal I have felt it to be the finest, freest, frankest, bravest avenue of expression in English ever opened to the creative literary mind, in all its variety of faculty, without having the least bias or prejudice as to any one variety. That The Little Review should respond to this rallying cry would add a still deeper and stronger point to my already deep and strong interest in this brave little (?) magazine.

Fear Not

Mrs. O. D. J.:

I have great faith in the artistic life of America and I don’t think Ezra Pound’s notions of it are very healthy. I sincerely hope the trend of it will not emulate the “smart” or dissipated literature which seems to please London and which can hardly come under the head of “good letters.” America must not necessarily be content with jejune flows of words. Really the only half interesting articles that appeared in the May number were Eliot’s and Pound’s—the former because it was about as good as The Smart Set and the latter on account of auld lang syne. My harshness is really flattering because it shows that I expect better things from the “cultured” English.

[We will take this opportunity of answering all those who have verbally or in letters expressed the fear that The Little Review will entirely change its nature and be influenced in the future by its Foreign Editor. I do not want to be flippant, but indeed little faith is shown in us by all those who have known our struggle to be what we believe, and our financial struggle to be at all. Fear not, dear ones. We have learned to be penny wise; we will not be Pound foolish. We agree with Pound in the spirit; if we don’t always agree with him in the letter be sure we will mention it. And Pound didn’t slip up on us unaware. A mutual misery over the situation brought us together.

And you, dear Mrs. O. D. J., what made you think that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were “cultured” English? Because geese are white and float upon water they are not necessarily swans. Pound too seems to have enough faith in “good letters” to spare a little for America and share “cultured” English with her. Healthy? The unhealth is in the artistic life of America; and whatever the ailment, bitter and acid medicine seems necessary to cure it. America must not be content for a great while with the stuff produced here—jejune flows of words about popularizing art, home-town poets and great American novelists, and never-been-abroad painters. This seems to content it well enough now.

But I congratulate you on being able to read The Smart Set as literature. Maybe the audience will after all produce the art. I wonder....]

A Poet’s Opinion

Maxwell Bodenheim, New York:

Ezra Pound writes in his editorial which headed your last number that “the two novels by Joyce and Lewis, and Mr. Eliot’s poems, are not only the most important contributions to English literature of the past three years, but are practically the only works of the time in which the creative element is present, which in any way show invention, or a progress beyond precedent work.”

It is easy to make statements of this kind, but, having made them, a critic should tell us on what he bases his dictum. The trouble with criticism of art, today, is that it isn’t criticism. The critic writes statements of untempered liking or disliking, and does not trouble to support them with detailed reasons. We are simply supposed to take the critic’s word for the matter. I haven’t sufficient belief in the infallibility of Ezra Pound’s mind to require no substantiation of his statements. I have several faults to find with his methods of criticising poetry. He’s a bit too easily swayed by his personal emotions, in that regard. I happen to know that in an article of his, which appeared in Poetry, some time ago he omitted the name of a very good modern American poet, from the “American-Team” he was mentioning, merely because he has a personal dislike for that poet.

He has also, too great a longing to separate poets into arbitrary teams, of best and worst. Poets are either black or white to him—never grey.

In speaking of Harriet Monroe he says that she has conducted her magazine in a spirited manner, considering the fact that she is faced with the practical problem of circulating a magazine in a certain peculiar milieu. But he does not add that those are not the colors in which Miss Monroe, herself, comes forth. If she admitted that she was a practical woman, trying to print as much good poetry as she can, and still gain readers, there would only be the question of whether one believed that compromise is always the only method of assuring the existence of a magazine. But she refuses to admit that she is a serious compromiser. She stands upon a pedestal of utter idealism. Mr. Pound did not mention this aspect.

His claim that Eliot is the only really creative poet brought forth during recent times is absurd. H. D., Fletcher, Marianne Moore, Williams, Michelson at his best, Carl Sandburg, and Wallace Stevens are certainly not inevitably below Eliot in quality of work. Eliot’s work is utterly original, attains moments of delicate satire, and digs into the tangled inner dishonesties of men. But many of the poets I have mentioned are as good in their own way as Eliot is in his, in addition to their being just as original as he. I have not Mr. Pound’s fondness for making lists, so I’m afraid I may have omitted the names of some American poets entitled to mention, even from my own limited view point. But I will say that at least the number of poets I have mentioned are fully the equals of Mr. Pound’s nominee for supreme honors—T. S. Eliot.

[I get very tired of the talk about the establishment of two autocracies of opinion, and the claim that since each is the opinion of a capable brain each has therefore the right to serious artistic consideration. Now it is a fact that one particular kind of brain can put forward this claim and establish its legitimate autocracy. It is the brain that functions aesthetically rather than emotionally. Most artists haven’t this kind. Their work drains their aesthetic reserve—and they usually talk rot about art. There are thousands of examples—such as Beethoven treasuring the worst poetry he could find. There are notable exceptions, such as Leonardo, such as Gaudier-Brzeska. Ezra Pound seems to have this kind of brain. I am not familiar with all his judgments, but those I have read have always been characterized by an aesthetic synthesis which means that he can rightly be called a “critic.”

To this kind of brain things are black and white—which means good or bad of their kind. If by grey you mean that a poet is almost good, then the critic will have to call him black, meaning that he is a bad poet. There is no middle ground. If by grey you mean that he is a grey poet doing good grey work, then the critic will call him white—meaning that he is a good poet—M. C. A.]

Complaint

New York Subscribers:

We have read the first installment of the much-advertised London stuff and our comment is that unless “And ...” and “The Reader Critic” are restored, and at once, we withdraw our moral and financial support.

For the Archeologist

That great journal, The New Republic—I cannot say that great contemporary journal: it is here with us in the flesh, but in the spirit it abides with the Bible, the Koran, the Books of Maroni, and all great and ancient works of prophecy, truth and revelation—that great journal, mentioning even the least of us, spoke thus: “There was The Little Review which began in high spirits, published some interesting experiments and a few achievements, and in the course of three years has sunk to pink covers with purple labels and an issue ecstatically dedicated to Mary Garden.”

When these quaverings of senility reached us we were laid waste and brought to silence. We knew not whether Isaiah or Hosea or Mohamet had spoken.

But now from the archives of The New Republic comes this fragment in the form of a rejection of some Chinese poetry: “Our expert on Chinese poetry does not think that these translations are ... etc.” We feel that we have come upon something of great interest to archeologists and to all our readers who are excited over the Mysteries of History. Is it possible that Li Po himself may be on the staff of The New Republic, now too old to create but still retained on its board of experts?

Mary MacLane’s Criticism

Mary MacLane, Butte, Montana:

All your bits of criticism of my book are true—but didn’t I say them first? Don’t I say I have a conscience? Don’t I say it’s an exasperating book—don’t I say it’s all incongruous? Don’t I tacitly tell you fifty times it is not creative but photographic? I call it a diary of human days: just that. Not artist days nor poet days. Human days must include the teakettle, the smoking chimney and the word Refined. Refined is not my word at all. In my bright lexicon there’s no such word. I use it because I am living human days and perforce encountering such words now and again. Have you the courage, jh, to tell me I am too subtle, too sub-analytic, for you? I set apart the word Refined to show it’s “their” word, not mine. Yet you solemnly take me to task for questioning the “refinement”, the “sincerity,” of my mountain shower-bath emotions. I don’t question anything. I’m saying what “they” do: In “someway the Lesbian” chapter I maintain I doubly prove, not “refute,” my analytic freedom. The book being human days includes the domestic thing. I live in a house and like it. I write as a human being not as an artist. You can’t get away from your tooth-brush. “Human days” includes satyrs and sisters looked at from exactly the same vantage—unless you’re a Christian Endeavor. You write justly, jh, but why label me with that “sexual”? I wrote also of my shoes: I contributed also the theory of Shoes.

[Dear “I Mary MacLane”: All you have to say about my “criticism” of your book sounds just to me. Yes, you said them first and fifty times at least; that’s why I mentioned them at all. I thought perhaps the reason you said them so often was because you hoped it otherwise. Perhaps you are too “subtle,” too “sub-analytic,” too educated for me. I am just a painter. While I know, from the aching of the heart to the sickness of the stomach, what human days must include, I haven’t yet got to the point where I am willing to believe that writing a book doesn’t come under the same laws as painting a picture, sculping, or making music. If subject is not transformed into design by some inevitable quality in the artist then you have not made a book; you have merely helped to clutter up the place. I may be narrow-minded but I can’t quite see any art as a common activity or a household duty, indulged in or performed as an either=or. “I will clean off the snow or paint a picture; I will milk the cow or do a little modelling.” I haven’t been about enough to have found it so in any families; nor have I read enough to have found it so in many families, except perhaps the Da Vinci family.

“Refined is not my word,” you say. I think the book exonerates you; but why your concern with it at all was my point, not my criticism.

As to the label “sexual,” I meant shoes and all,—the whole hereditary attitude, in your case intriguing because neurasthenic.

Sorry: but I did not solemnly take you to task. One must even criticize with joy.—jh.]

From “The Dial”

“A quaint manifestation of editorial ethics crops out in the April issue of The Little Review. It is in connection with a vers libre contest, this being the issue in which the awards are made. There was a regularly constituted board of judges—three people sufficiently competent and sufficiently well known in their field; but the editor has chosen to indulge in some disclosures as to the lack of unanimity amongst her aides and even in some pointed animadversions on their tastes and preferences. Of the first choice of one of them, she says: What is there in the ‘subtle depth of thought’? Almost every kind of person in the world has had this thought. And what is there in the ‘treatment to make it poetry?’ And the poem itself follows. Of the two chosen for prizes by another judge, she observes: ‘These two poems are pretty awful’—and she prints them, with the authors’ names, as before. The third judge plumped for a pair of others—‘provided Richard Aldington wrote them; otherwise not.... If he wrote them they are authentic as well as lovely; but if he did not, so flagrant an imitation ought not to be encouraged.’ A perfectly sound position to take. Here again the poems follow—and they are under a name not Aldington’s. Query: has the judge, whose name is given too, exactly made a friend? Then comes, of course, a succession of poems approved by the editor but ignored by her helpers.... If such a system spreads, the embarrassments and even perils of judgeship will grow. Hereafter few may care to serve as judges, except under stipulations designed to afford some protection. And as for the poor poets themselves, such treatment should act to keep them out of ‘contests’ altogether.”

[Here is the old Dial showing them all up. So there is an American editorial association just like the American Medical Association with all its criminology of professional ethics!

We thought that the idea of that verse libre contest (it wasn’t our idea) was to stimulate interest in and more understanding of free verse, not to offer an operation for judges nor a fee for poets. Taking it simply as a free verse contest, the editor thought the only concern was with free verse. Since when has Art to do with ethics or with taste? If the poets and judges in the contest were as impersonal, direct, and sincere in their attitude toward poetry as the editor, the fussy anxiety of The Dial over their plight is needless. But of course if to serve poetry is to serve yourself there isn’t much point to a contest except the money. On the other hand, if a contest is to be run on the “tastes and preferences” or sensitiveness of the judges then it is clear that the neatest poem chosen by the touchiest judge should win, provided the poet who wrote it was also easily offended and needed the money badly.

“And as for the poor poets” there should be something to keep them out of contests—and also out of any other literary activity.—jh.]

You Do Us Too Much Honor

Louis Puteklis, Cambridge, Mass:

... You see it is a fact that your “art for art’s sake” cannot exist without supporters: nothing is free from economic conditions which are the creators and destroyers of people’s tendencies and deeds.

Although I appreciate your surprising efforts, I must confess that I cannot yet agree with your dictum as to “the two most important radical organs of contemporary literature.” Until you strike your roots deeper you cannot soar so high. As for me, I am in touch already with many other radical magazines in English and in other languages. Radicalism does not consist in vers libre which murmurs about green grass, soft kisses, clinging limbs, ecstasy and faintness, the surprises of passionate intercourse. There is too much of such sensual poetry: Solomon long ago played the changes on that theme. Such poems come perilously near the emanations of diseased sexual appetites. There is neither life nor originality in them. When I read “green grass,” I know that I am close upon “clinging limbs.” Drink deeper of the Pierian fount; don’t disturb the grasshoppers!

I think that The Little Review must scatter more sensible seed in the future and throw away the tares. It will do better, I believe, to take for its province: Literature, Life, Science; all the fine arts are too much for its scope; each has its own organs.

Still The Little Review is doing good. Long life to it and may it do better!

[You see, we said that The Egoist and The Little Review are radical organs of contemporary literature. That’s all: not economic, social, or religious. As we have stated a number of times: since all the arts are from the same source we are not getting out of our province or making our scope too wide by keeping to Art. Your advice about reducing to Literature, Life, Science, is a great compliment to our scope, but—well, for the present we can’t take up such limited and special subjects as Life, or such obvious and untaxing ones as Science.—jh.]