Unfortunately the turmoil of yidds, letts, finns, esthonians, cravats, niberians, nubians, algerians, sweeping along Eighth Avenue in the splendour of their vigorous unwashed animality will not help us. They are the America of tomorrow.... (The good Burn believes in America; the naive English, mad over apiculture, horticulture, arboriculture, herbiculture, agriculture, asparagriculture etc., always believe in America ... until they have seen it.) The turmoil of Yidds, Letts, etc., is “full of promise”, full of vitality. They are the sap of the nation, our heritors, the heritors of our ancient acquisitions. But our job is to turn out good art, that is to produce it, to make a tradition. “My field must be ploughed up, but the country has need of quiet” (La Famille Cardinal). “I admire Epicurus. He was not the dupe of analogies”. Need I give references for all my quotations? This nonsense about art for the many, for the majority. J’en ai soupé. It may be fitting that men should enjoy equal “civic and political rights”, these things are a matter of man’s exterior acts, of exterior contacts. (Macchiavelli believed in democracy: it lay beyond his experience). The arts have nothing to do with this. They are man’s life within himself. The king’s writ does not run there. The voice of the majority is powerless to make me enjoy, or disenjoy, the lines of Catullus. I dispense with a vote without inconvenience; Villon I would not dispense with. Bales are written on the false assumption that you can treat the arts as if they were governed by civic analogies. The two things are not alike, and there is an end to the matter. It is rubbish to say “art for the people lies behind us”. The populace was paid to attend greek drama. It would have gone to cinemas instead, had cinemas then existed. Art begins with the artist. It goes first to the very few; and, next, to the few very idle. Even journalism and advertising can not reverse this law. I have scribbled a very long letter, and not answered half the good William’s diatribe. My regards to Mrs Amelia. Yours, WALTER VILLERANT. ---------- [5] “Imaginary Letters”, by Wyndham Lewis. _The Little Review_ for May. The Children and Judas Robert Alden Sanborn It was dawn upon the fields of Heaven, The dew upon the fence-rail twinkled, And there were seven Stars upon the sky that beamed; And in the grass the cow-bells tinkled, And daisies dreamed, And sweet smells streamed Over the tasselled corn.