This article was first published on April 25, 1968.
The Little Review ran from March, 1914, to May, 1929. In its first numbers it
was probably the worst and the most pretentious literary magazine in
America. Its editor, Margaret Anderson, began by filling her pages with
nonsense; a letter from Galsworthy, coy prose for Alice Meynell and Rupert
Brooke, twenty-five fan-letters in the second number. In the issue for
September, 1914, as a fair example, there was not a single item worth a
second reading; while in the same month Poetry printed Ford Madox Ford,
Sandburg, Robinson’s great poem, “Eros Turannos”, Frost, Fenollosa, Yeats,
and Tagore. But Margaret Anderson had the sense to post a copy of the issue
for January-February, 1916, to Ezra Pound, who replied with polite
encouragement and a hint that The Egoist was worth watching. In November,
1916, Margaret Anderson was joined by Jane Heap, who soldiered on to the
end; Margaret Anderson gave up in 1923.
The immediate result of Pound’s letter was that both editors read Joyce’s
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and became new women. There was no
more talk of Galsworthy or Mrs. Meynell. Pound moved in, directing attention
to the merits of Joyce, Eliot, Henry James, de Gourmont, Wyndham Lewis,
Yeats, and Ford. The Little Review was converted to the new literature: it
became Pound’s voice, in effect, competing with The Egoist and The Dial for
news that was likely to stay news. As long as Pound persisted, his mark was
indisputable: in May, 1917, he became foreign editor, and the magazine
printed Eliot’s “Eel-drop and Appleplex”. Readers accustomed to the prose of
Arthur Davidson Ficke now found themselves coping with Lewis’s Imaginary
Conversations and Pound’s Jodindranath Mawhwor’s Occupation. A reader from
Cambridge, Mass., wrote to the editors:
It seems to me that the last few numbers of the Little Review have been below
your earlier standard—almost below zero. What sympathy can the majority of
readers feel for the foreign editor, Ezra Pound, with his contemptuous
invective against the “vulgus”?
M.C.A. answered, with the fervour of recent conversion:
A contempt for the “vulgus” is the inevitable reaction of any man or woman who
observes the antics of the “flies in the marketplace”.
So the magazine went Pound’s way; printing Eliot’s French poems, a batch of
Yeats from The Wild Swans at Coole, Pound’s review of Joyce’s Portrait. The
October. 1917, issue was held up in the post because of the alleged
obscenity of Lewis’s Cantleman’s Spring Mate. Then in March 1918, on Pound’s
suggestion, the editors published the first chapter of Ulysses, other
chapters to follow. Joyce was Pound’s private jewel, lent to the L.R. for
the good of its soul. In Volume V the Little Review had its great year
(1918-19), printing Joyce, Lewis, Pound, Ford, Stevens, Williams, an entire
issue on James, more Eliot, more Yeats, a de Gourmont issue, stories by
Sherwood Anderson. After the fourth instalment of Ulysses a subscriber,
S.S.B., wrote from Chicago:
Really now: Joyce! What does he think he’s doing? What do you think he is
doing? I swear I’ve read his Ulysses and haven’t found out yet what it’s
about, who is who or where. Each month he’s worse than the last. I consider
myself fairly intelligent. I have read more than most. There are some few
things I expect of a writer. One of them is coherence. Joyce will have to
change his style if he wants to get on.
But by the middle of 1919 Pound had left; Jules Romains became French editor,
at least in theory, and John Rodker sent pieces from London. The magazine
was on the way down. As long as Pound remained, it was propelled by an idea,
the search for good work; if most of that work came from Europe, that was
not Pound’s fault. With Pound gone, the magazine had no governing idea. For
the moment, the lack was concealed by spectacular events: Ulysses was still
running, and after the thirteenth instalment (Leopold Bloom watching Gerty
on Sandymount Strand-: “For this relief much thanks”) the editors were
arrested, the preliminary trial set for October 13, 1920. (In the event, the
gesture led not to gaol but merely to a fine, $50 each on the editorial
ladies.) 6 Volume VIII was virtually a different magazine. One issue was
given to Brancusi, the Little Review was now a quarterly, there was still a
certain amount of good stuff; but the new tone was all Narcissus. The
current names were on show, Stein, Cocteau, Apollinaire, possibly as a
result of Francis Picabia’s influence, but the editors were obviously lost.
They could be forgiven readily because they knew not what they did. One of
the immediate signs of distress was the fuss over Baroness Else von
Freytag-Loringhoven, the frenetic attempt to present her as a major writer.
The only explanation for this madness was that the Baroness was the most
complete imitation of a Dada that the Little Review had ever met. John
Rodker wrote in July-August, 1920:
Paris has had Dada for five years, and we have had Else von
Freytag-Loringhoven for quite two years. But great minds think alike and
great natural truths force themselves into cognition at vastly separated
spots. In Else von Freytag-Loringhoven Paris is mystically united to New
York.
There is no evidence that the editors had the faintest clue to the Baroness’s
procedures, but in a country which had one of everything, a feminine Tristan
Tzara was essential. In the next issue L. Lozowick announced that the
Russians had one, a male, Alexander Krutchenich. Back in Manhattan, the L.R.
printed a long piece by the Baroness. “Thee I Call Hamlet of Wedding-Ring”,
ostensibly a critique of William Carlos Williams’s Kora in Hell. The
editors, let it be said, were doubtful about this piece, perhaps because it
appeared to be prose, and in printing it Margaret Anderson made one of her
classic observations:
The policy of the Little Review has always been: a free stage for the artists.
There are moments when I believe this to be an uninteresting policy.
So the thing was printed; at this distance it hardly calls for comment, it is
not amenable to description. At one point the word “meticulous “is used,
with a footnote: “this word dedicated solely to Marcel Duchamp. Gave it to
me with tongue lilt emanation of spirit—it is he”. Replying to Harriet
Monroe, who suggested in Poetry that the Little Review might consider
dropping the Baroness, Jane Heap retorted:
... we do intend to drop the baroness —right into the middle of the history of
American poetry. . . . When she is dada she is the only one living anywhere
who dresses dada, loves dada, lives dada.
After this, the magazine never recovered its sanity. It still found good work,
but rarely; pieces of Hemingway, Cummings, Hart Crane. The last years were
squandered, bad money thrown after bad, novelties hoarded as if they would
always be new, bright ideas for the Machine Age; anything, glass,
theatre-design, “The Aesthetic of the Machine and Mechanical Introspection
in Art”, Futurism, Open Volume; until the whole enterprise, dying of its own
too much, expired in 1929.
The last issue was entirely commemorative and lugubrious, offering
“Confessions and Letters: More than Fifty of the Foremost Men in the Arts
Tell the Truth about Themselves in this Number”. In fact, few truths were
told; most of the items were diplomatic, unless the participant thought that
this might be the Last Chance. Margaret Anderson explained that she had lost
faith in art; the artist no longer knew what he was doing:
And I can no longer go on publishing a magazine in which no one really knows
what he is talking about.
Jane Heap’s version was even more direct; there were no longer any good
writers and the manufacture of silk purses was impossible:
For years we offered the Little Review as a trial-track for racers. We hoped
to find artists who could run with the great artists of the past or men who
could make new records. But you can’t get race horses from mules.
The next sentence says everything:
We have given space in the Little Review to 23 new systems of art (all now
dead), representing 19 countries. In all of this we have not brought forward
anything approaching a masterpiece except the Ulysses of Mr. Joyce. Ulysses
will have to be the masterpiece of this time.
Ben Hecht shed tears, Gertrude Stein wrote a flurry of gratitude, Gide sent
two letters. Djuna Barnes declined. The Baroness was already dead, but they
printed a piece of suicidal prose. Pound wrote to accuse the editors of
suppressing one of his manuscripts; J.H. answered that she threw it away for
the good of his reputation. Wyndham Lewis sent a photograph. Joyce could
think of nothing he chose to say. Marianne Moore, asked why she went on
living, answered that the surrender of life did not seem to be demanded of
her.
The whole episode is bizarre. Pound was the only participant in the Little
Review who knew what he was doing and had the executive force to do it. The
editorial women were heroines, but at the same time children. Pound was
replaced by Rodker; that is, no replacement could be found. The demise of
the magazine did not leave America entirely bereft; several of the more
serious writers were already welcome in Hound and Horn, Poetry, The
Symposium, and other magazines. Besides, in its later years the Little
Review was so crazy that it was useless to American writers for any
important purposes. By the time it stopped, it was time for it to stop;
perhaps the editors realized this, through their tears. So there is a
certain propriety in its going down with the more resounding and more
notorious Crash: it was always too happy making a noise. In the great days
it was, indeed, great. Even in its bad days it had good moments, as if by
mistake: in Volume X Gertrude Stein wrote of Juan Gris: “he has black
thoughts but he is not sad”. Eliot said in his obituary letter that it was
the only periodical, during those years, in which he cared to appear; a
touching avowal, rendered possible by his choosing to forget Poetry, Others,
and The Egoist. Still, the Little Review was special, while its critical
power lasted. It offered an affront to New York and Chicago, not merely to
Vanity Fair and The Smart Set. It could not topple the skyscrapers in
Manhattan, but it helped to keep the lines of intelligence open in a bad
time. Eliot’s idiom seems appropriate.
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