The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)Various
General
The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
I am not daring to attempt reply to the statement which inflames me
most, lest I become profane and entirely incoherent. I mean, of course,
the statement that the estimate of four or five thousand living artists
would be too optimistic because that would mean four or five thousand
who “have nothing in common with caterpillars.” That’s a worse libel on
artists than the rest of it is on people. But I’ll try to stop with one
remark and one question. The estimate is entirely too pessimistic; I
positively refuse to believe there are four thousand persons alive who
have or even who think they have “nothing in common” with the great
splendid mass of folks; if there are, the gods have pity on them!
And—has there ever been one single real and great artist, whether of
brush or pen or tone, whose art and whose very greatness was not
absolutely dependent upon and because of the fact that he had, and knew
he had, _everything_ in common with, and indeed included in his being,
the beings of these whom you term “caterpillars”?—these whose life and
living are and always have been and through ages will continue to be the
most worth while content of all art? Of course you reply: _Nietzsche_;
but he was an intellectual and spiritual Rockefeller—not an
artist-in-life.
And Individualism? When _all_ have been set free to use their wings,
then the few may feel free to strive toward the super-butterfly. And
when they arrive, perhaps,—oh, just perhaps—they will find all the other
“caterpillars” there too, and with quite wonderful wings. There are
wings, and wings, and if they but serve to bear us free of the disaster
of meanness and cruelty and snobbishness and injustice, who shall say
they are not super-wings?
_Witter Bynner, Windsor, Vermont_:
I wish I could honor the Imagists as you do. Hueffer wrote _On Heaven_
(not imagistic); and Pound wrote well before he affected a school ...
Pound has a rhythm he can’t kill. But none of them, except Hueffer, says
anything worth mentioning. They build poems around phrases, usually
around adjectives. George Meredith has thousands of imagist poems
incidental to each of his novels. But he knows their use and their
beauty. These people wring tiny beauties dry. I can imagine a good poet
using their methods on occasion, but he wouldn’t be so damn conscious
about it. On the whole, the Imagists strike me as being purveyors of
more or less potent cosmetics, their whole interest being in the
cosmetic itself, not even in its application. Poetry gave signs of
becoming poetry again and of touching life—when these fellows showed up,
to make us all ridiculous.
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