The unceremonious self-revealment of a great man, of which I spoke in the beginning, does not always appeal to my aesthetic sense. At times my feeling of delicacy is scalded at the sight of a repulsive negligee. It has painfully irritated me to read Dostoevsky’s letters[5] in the English translation: would that the Russians kept their dirty linen at home. The book reveals a petty tragedy of a great personality; eternal want, indebtedness, whimpering, small jealousy, narrowness, intolerance. We learn how most of his books were written in a hurry, under pressure of need, the author being aware of their inadequacy; we learn of his petty envy towards Turgeniev, his slighting of Tolstoy, his bigoted hatred of everything liberal, European, his sturdy opposition to the revolutionists, his obsequious demeanor before high officials. With the exception of a few bright spots, the pages produce the nauseating effect of a pathological museum. Such a pity. Come, now, friend: _How do you think?_ IBN GABIROL. [4] _Musicians of To-Day_, by Romain Rolland. [Henry Holt Company, New York.] [5] _Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky._ [The Macmillan Company, New York.] A Note on Paroxysm in Poetry EDWARD J. O’BRIEN Paroxysm is the poetic expression of that modern spirit which finds its most notable expression in other arts in the sculpture of Meunier, the polyphonic music of Strauss, the philosophy of Bergson, and the American skyscraper. It is the application of dynamics to poetry. It stands midway between romanticism, which is an escape into the past, and futurism, which is a flight into the future. Paroxysm is deep-rooted in to-day. M. Nicolas Beauduin, its most noteworthy French exemplar, has many noteworthy disciples in France and Germany, and paroxysm is a well-known force in every literature except that of America, where its unconscious expression in life has been most remarkable. Students will find its philosophy set forth and its current phases in literature duly chronicled in M. Beauduin’s quarterly review, _La Vie des Lettres_. It is only possible here to offer a few very brief hints as to its literary aims and materials: It aims to be a synthesis of modern industrial and mechanical effort. It repudiates the ivory tower. It handles the materials of modern life directly, not in symbols. It responds to the roar of factories and trains. The poet is to be “an active lyric,” representing his age. The poet’s vision is the cinematograph of modern life with its continual mechanical transfiguration. It is not sentimental. To art for art’s sake, and art for truth’s sake, it opposes art for life’s sake. It discards personal sensation; it is not ashamed to be “cosmic.” The evolution of poetry is to be as rapid and terrible henceforth as material evolution.