The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
We have as yet received no great number of detailed criticisms or
suggestions for improvement. But there have been some, both in
the Press and in the letters from our correspondents. Some of the
suggestions that have been made we shall adopt; some we shall not;
one or two of the most interesting are based on a misunderstanding.
The most noticeable of these derive from the notion that the LONDON
MERCURY was intended to be an exact analogue of the _Mercure de
France_, and borrowed its title from that excellent paper. We may as
well explain, once and for all, that the similitude with the _Mercure
de France_, happy though it may be, was reached by accident; our own
title was derived directly from the Mercuries which were the earliest
products of the English periodical Press; and for our scheme we are
indebted to no paper, British or foreign. A Scottish critic observes
that "Belgian literature owed its notable capture of Europe largely to
its [the _Mercure's_] whole-hearted welcome, and the new movement in
Germany associated with the names of Rilke and Zweig found its first
foreign recognition in its pages. Moreover, it surveyed the whole field
of human intellectual achievement--philosophy, science, religion--in
its articles.... The name of M. Davray at the foot of a _Mercure_
article has made more than one British writer's reputation in Paris,
and Europe would have been entirely ignorant that there was a new and
rich literature in Spanish-America had not the _Mercure_ discovered
it and blazoned forth its merits." We might, if we would, make some
remark on the detail of this. Rilke is not a major poet; Zweig is an
unimportant, over-exuberant critic who tried, in vain, to persuade the
late Emile Verhaeren that he was a German; the fame of Spanish-American
literature, trumpeted though it may have been by the _Mercure_, has not
yet reached London. But we prefer to concentrate on the more important
point, and that is that our functions, as we conceive them, are not
those of the _Mercure de France_. We have already published letters
from French and American correspondents; we shall shortly publish
letters from Italian, Russian, and German correspondents; we shall
from time to time publish fuller articles about recent developments
in foreign countries. But there _are_ certain limits to our space,
and there _is_ a centre in our plans. It is an admirable thing to
disseminate the works of good Belgian and Spanish-American authors, and
we hope that we shall not overlook anything really important that comes
from any quarter of the globe. But our principal object is to assist
people to read the good English authors of the past, and to stimulate
the popularity of good English authors of the present. There are those
to whom any foreigner, writing in some mysteriously wonderful language,
like French or Polish or Spanish-American, is a portent; but we are not
amongst them. We desire to keep the British public in touch with all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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