The Little Review, September 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 6)Various
History
The Little Review, September 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 6)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
Not long ago I wrote you a long, long letter about THE LITTLE REVIEW.
But I didn't send it, because who am I to dogmatize about criticism?
Anyway, I was severe upon you, because I was disappointed. I really
don't think THE LITTLE REVIEW is critical at all. It is exuberantly
uncritical--enthusiastic about the wrong things. But you will probably
get tired of just being enthusiastic after a time, and start in to
criticise. I'm sorry I don't like it better. It has had some good things
in it. What I principally object to is your own editorial attitude.
_Constance Skinner, New York_:
I have just read your first issue and want to send my godspeed to this
magazine that _feels_. I am so sick of callousness and sneers and
flippancy.
Your Paderewski article touches me nearly. Shall I send you a brief
little picture of Paderewski playing one summer morning at Modjeska's
home in St. Ana Canon, California? Her face so fine, so sweet, with the
"so be it" and imperishable sounding memory of broken harp chords, as
she sat by silent and listened and looked across the years to Poland, to
the heart of humanity as she had held it and shaped it in those days of
her own power, ere she picked this starving boy from his attic and said
to Warsaw: "_Ecce homo_." Her husband listening better, because watching
her, to what the long fingers, like lights flashing, were bringing from
the depths. His (the player's) beautiful wife leaning upon the piano,
where he always wished to have her, where he could see her face as he
played. Outside the sloping canyon wall beginning in a rare rioting,
rose garden and reaching to a silver and blue rugged granite where
mountain lions sometimes pace restlessly. A great clump of live oaks,
four monster trees, their size ranging from ninety to one hundred and
twenty feet from bough to bough, roofing with bronze and green leafage
this last retreat of the woman who had been hailed greatest of all in
three countries. Among the roses by the low open windows of the piano
alcove the Polish maid standing, weeping, and the old lame man, her
brother, limping along from his work, taking off his hat and standing
there, too, unashamed of the tears flooding. And when he had finished
playing they came in and caught his hands and kissed them and spoke. The
lame man said: "I was in church, but it was holier. It was a rosary, but
every head was a light." The maid said: "Poland is not dead." This madam
translated to me, and the fire and mist in her eyes--surely the most
wonderful eyes ever made--was something I could not look away from. She
added: "Poland is not dead while Poles can weep. We must bless grief, it
has given us our art."
_H. G. S., Chicago_:
I am going to ask you to please discontinue my subscription to THE
LITTLE REVIEW, as your ideas which you set forth in your leading
articles are so entirely crude and so vastly different from my own that
I do not care to be responsible for its appearance in my home any
longer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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