The Little Review, February 1915 (Vol. 1, No. 11)

MARGARET C. ANDERSON.

An interesting man said recently that the five qualities which go into the making of the great personality—of the genius, perhaps—are (1) energy, (2) imagination, (3) character, (4) intellect, (5) and charm. I number them because the importance of his remark lies in the fact that he arranged them in just that order. The more you think of it the keener a judgment it seems. I can see only one possible flaw in it—a flaw that would not be corrected, I am certain, by moving number four to the place of number one, but by a reversal of number one and number two. Energy does seem the prime requisite—after you’ve spent a few days with one of those persons who has seething visions and a contempt for concentration. But Imagination!—that gift of the far gods! There is simply no question of its position in the list. It is first by virtue of every brave and beautiful thing that has been accomplished in the world.

Last March we began the publication of THE LITTLE REVIEW. Now, twelve months later, we face the humiliating—or the encouraging—spectacle of being a magazine whose function is not transparent. People are always asking me what we are really trying to do. We have not set forth a policy; we have not identified ourselves with a point of view, except in so far as we have been quite ridiculously appreciative; we have not expounded a philosophy, except in so far as we have been quite outlandishly anarchistic; we have been uncritical, indiscriminate, juvenile, exuberant, chaotic, amateurish, emotional, tiresomely enthusiastic, and a lot of other things which I can’t remember now—all the things that are usually said about faulty new undertakings. The encouraging thing is that they are said most strongly about promising ones.

Of course THE LITTLE REVIEW has done little more than approach the ideal which it has in mind. I am not proud of those limitations mentioned above—(and I am far from being unconscious of them); I am merely glad that they happen to be that particular type of limitation rather than some other. For instance, I should much rather have the limitations of the visionary or the poet or the prophet than those of the pedant or the priest or the “practical” person. Personally, I should much rather get drenched than to go always fortified with an umbrella and overshoes; I should rather see one side of a question violently than to see both sides calmly; I should rather be an extremist than a—well, it’s scarcely a matter of choice: people are either extremists or nonentities; I should far rather sense the big things about a cause or a character even vaguely than to analyze its little qualities quite clearly; in short, I should rather feel a great deal and know a little than feel a little and know a lot. And so all this may serve to express our negative attitude.

But what am I to say about our positive attitude—how possibly express all the things we hope to do? Perhaps I need not try: Oscar Wilde made explanations of such a position superfluous when he said that the worship of beauty is something entirely too splendid to be sane. That is our only attitude. I hope at least half the people who read this will understand that I did not say our platform is merely the worship of beauty. Beauty involves too many elements to be championed lightly. Beauty from the aesthete’s point of view and beauty from the artist’s point of view are two widely different things. I might paraphrase Wilde and say that the new Beauty is the new Hellenism. Certainly I want for THE LITTLE REVIEW, as I want from life, not merely beauty, not merely happiness, but a quality which proceeds from the intensity with which both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain, are present.

This much to start with. Now there are people who complain that within their limited allowance of magazines they are forced to do without THE LITTLE REVIEW because it gives them nothing definite, nothing finished, nothing conclusive. But my idea of a magazine which makes any claim to artistic value is that it should be conducted more or less on the lines of good drama, or good fiction; that it should suggest, not conclude; that it should stimulate to thinking rather than dictate thought. Most magazines have efficient editors and definite editorial policies; that is what’s wrong with them. I have none of the qualifications of the editor; that’s why I think THE LITTLE REVIEW is in good hands. Because the editorial tradition in this country has usurped the place of the literary tradition we have lifted loyalty to policies into the place of loyalty to ideals. A veteran editor—a man of letters—once told me that there were fifty good writers to every good editor in America, and that he would teach me to be the former. He proceeded to illustrate, not by chucking out the poor stuff that was being written for his journal but by showing how it could be stuck in where it wouldn’t be too noticeable! When some manuscript that delighted his soul came in (he was very human and out of sympathy with the crusted “policy” that had somehow grown up around his own magazine) he taught me the “art” of reducing its policy to a state of negativeness that would not be out of harmony with the policy he was supposed to be supporting. Once he received some poetry that was very strong and very beautiful. He treasured it so that he kept it in his desk for months before returning it. It was so beautiful as to be beyond the appreciation of his audience, he was sure; and anyhow his journal had never gone in for publishing poetry—it merely printed reviews of poetry; so what could he do but return it? I used to feel that I was in the midst of some demoniacal scheme for achieving the ultimate futility. And so I think that “policies” are likely to be, or to become, quite damning things. Therefore instead of urging people to read us in the hope of finding what they seek in that direction, it is more honest to say outright that they will probably find less and less of it. Because as “sanity” increases in the world THE LITTLE REVIEW will strive more and more to be splendidly insane: as editors and lecturers continue to compromise in order to get their public, as book-makers continue to print rot in order to make fortunes, as writers continue to follow the market instead of doing their Work, as the public continues to demand vileness and vulgarity and lies, as the intellectuals continue to miss the root of the trouble, THE LITTLE REVIEW will continue to rebel, to tell the truth as we see it, to work for its ideal rather than for a policy. And in the face of new magazines of excellent quality and no personality we shall continue to soar and flash and flame, to be swamped at intervals and scramble to new heights, to be young and fearless and reckless and imaginative—

... chanter Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre, Avoir l’œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre....

—to die for these things if necessary, but to live for them vividly first.

There are other people who argue that we might be hugely successful by being better: that we might borrow a lot of money (they always say this so casually), pay high for contributions, become acutely sophisticated, fill a wide-felt need, etc. Now the first thing we shall do, as soon as we are able to pay our printer’s bills without paroxysms of terror, is to pay for contributions; it is disgusting that writers who do real work don’t make enough out of it to live on at least. But as things are now no one can live by writing unless he writes badly. The only exceptions are cases which emphasize rather than disprove the point. In the meantime a magazine ought to be started for the sole purpose of printing the good things that the best magazines reject. Until we are on our feet and able to pay for stuff we can at least do this. And never, we hope, will we achieve that last emptiness: sophistication.

But there is still another function, and it seems to me very important. I have been reading a new book of Walter Lippmann’s called Drift and Mastery, which has more of the quality known as straight thinking than anything in the political-economic field published for a long time. Mr. Lippmann says this in his preface:

The issues that we face are very different from those of the last century and a half. The difference, I think, might be summed up roughly this way: those who went before inherited a conservatism and overthrew it; we inherit freedom, and have to use it. The sanctity of property, the patriarchal family, hereditary caste, the dogma of sin, obedience to authority,—the rock of ages, in brief, has been blasted for us. Those who are young today are born into a world in which the foundations of the older order survive only as habits or by default. So Americans can carry through their purposes when they have them. If the standpatter is still powerful amongst us it is because we have not learned to use our power, and direct it to fruitful ends. The American conservative, it seems to me, fills the vacuum where democratic purpose should be.

So far as we are concerned, then, the case is made out against absolutism, commercial oligarchy, and unquestioned creeds. The Rebel program is stated. Scientific invention and blind social currents have made the old authority impossible in fact, the artillery fire of the iconoclasts has shattered its prestige. We inherit a rebel tradition. The dominant forces in our world are not the sacredness of property nor the intellectual leadership of the priest; they are not the divinity of the constitution, the glory of the industrial push, Victorian sentiment, New England respectability, the Republican party, or John D. Rockefeller.... In the emerging morality the husband is not regarded as the proprietor of his wife, nor the parents as autocrats over the children.... There is a wide agreement among thinking people that the body is not a filthy thing, and that to implant in a child the sense of sin is a poor preparation for a temperate life.

The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice, but against the chaos of a new freedom.

That is very good reasoning, if you grant the premise—which I do not. I think the old authority is just as apparent as ever; its methods and nature have merely changed. Mr. Lippmann lives among the small minority—the people who have ideas. They represent about one tenth of the population. Of the rest, five tenths have no ideas and the other four tenths have something they call ideas: the rock of ages. It is still there. The new authority is quite as strong as the old, and more insidious because it is more subtle. Young people used to be disinherited when they disagreed with their parents; now they are argued with. The former method left their minds clear; the latter befogs them—and they disinherit themselves. That is the difference. One worked from without in; the other works from within out. Of course it’s much better this way. But this is not the most important problem—this of the old rock of ages. The horrible joke of modern life is that we have been presented with a new rock of ages!