FIFTH FLOOR WINDOW

SURREALIST ISSUE

<table><tr><td>A PLATE FROM "LA REVE D'UNE JEUNE FILLE"</td><td>by Max Ernst</td></tr><tr><td>NOTES ON DADAISM AND SUPER-REALISM</td><td>H. B. Parkes</td></tr><tr><td>SURREALISM AT THE JULIEN LEVY GALLERIES</td><td>John Becker</td></tr><tr><td>NOTES FOR THE LIVES OF A SAINT</td><td>H. R. Hays</td></tr><tr><td>TIRADE, DIVISION I & II OF NOVEL</td><td>Harvey N. Foster</td></tr><tr><td>VIVA, a note on E. E. CUMMINGS</td><td>Helen Mears</td></tr><tr><td>LEWIS CARROL AND THE MODERNS</td><td>H. R. Hays</td></tr><tr><td>THIS CYCLE, O NOT REPEATED</td><td>Harvey N. Foster</td></tr></table>

Vol. I. No. 3

February, 1932

A plate from "LA REVE D'UNE JEUNE FILLE" by Max Ernst
courtesy of JULIEN LEVY GALLERIES

FIFTH FLOOR WINDOW

EDITORS:

H. R. HAYS
HARVEY N. FOSTER
MARIANNE PARKES

230 EAST HOUSTON ST.
NEW YORK CITY

SURREALIST ISSUE

YALE

# NOTES ON DADAISM AND SUPER-REALISM

H. B. PARKES

Dadaism has hitherto been a movement predominantly French. It was founded in 1916 by Tristan Tzara. The same spirit, somewhat more developed, expressed itself in a school inaugurated in 1924 by a group which contained Breton, Aragon, Soupault and Delteil under the name of Super-realism. Few members of either the Dadaist or Super-realist group remained faithful for long. Both groups tended to express themselves in manifestoes rather than in artistic creation. Their doctrines have influenced a few American writers, notably Cummings and Coates. Super-realist work has been printed in two American magazines, "The Little Review" and "Transition", both now defunct. Dadaism may seem to be a thing of the past. Nevertheless, as even hostile critics like Jacques Riviere admitted, it crystallized very accurately a significant contemporary mood; that mood has no means disappeared. Moreover its importance for literary technique has not been exhausted; it might have a very salutory influence on American prose writing.

## I.

Common sense declares that there is a dualism between mind and matter. Outside the mind are things, alien and perhaps hostile; these things we can never know in themselves; we know only the sensations caused by our contact with them recorded by our physical senses. Man is bombarded by a bewildering multiplicity of sensations; the mind classifies these sensations and arranges them in categories. Gradually it builds up a framework of categories into which all important sensations can be fitted; this framework—to change the metaphor—is equivalent to a complete picture of the external world. Whether the categories of the mind are merely convenient methods of arranging sensation or whether they are prior to, and have an existence independent of, sensation, is one of the oldest of philosophical problems; answers to it vary according to individual temperament.

The mind lives for, and by, activity (not necessarily physical activity) and all activity implies values. Obviously values are prior to, or at least independent from, sensation. Our purpose in classifying sensations is to guide our activity, and appropriate methods of classification will be adopted. There is thus an intimate relation between our values and the picture which we make of the external world.

The function of the artist is to experience and record new sensations; a work of art renders these sensations accessible to other people whose sensibilities are opened along new channels; they become conscious of sensations which they had not formerly perceived. This necessarily alters their picture of the external world. Sometimes they can organize these new sensations into the old picture; more often however, the picture has to be altered. The consequence is that most people are violently hostile to any artist who is a genuine recorder of new sensations; every unfamiliar sensation is an enemy, whether to the ordinary citizen who regards it as immoral or to the artist who enjoys the thrill of the encounter.

In the artist, as in the ordinary person, there is a certain relationship between his values and the categories in which he classifies experience, though the relation is less intimate, hard to define, and sometimes as in Shakespeare and the earlier Tolstoy completely hidden. Racine, for example, was a Catholic, for whom the moral perfection of the individual was the greatest good; he saw life in terms of individuality and explored those experiences which were caused by moral perfection or imperfection. The theme of any particular drama by Racine is so constructed as to illustrate the effects of some particular person's imperfection. Proust, on the other hand, desired a pleasure which was not transitory or dependant on causes beyond his own control; "La Recherche du Temps Perdu" is an examination of the life of an individual, in order to discover where such pleasure can be found.

The last twenty years have seen an unusually strong dissatisfaction with previous values; to a less degree with previous methods of organizing experience. The causes—partly the vulgarization of traditional values, partly a narrowness in the accepted organization, so that many important sensations could not be admitted—need not be discussed here. This dissatisfaction received its most complete expression in Dadaism. Dadaism is a revolt against every existing value and every existing scheme of organization; it is a refusal to apply any organization whatsoever to experience. The literature which expresses this attitude is a medley of images and affective connotations, set together with a careful disregard for every possible principle of arrangement, intellectual or emotional, so that images follow each other as unexpectedly and incongrously as possible; a Dadaist poem is a kaleidoscope in which fragments of our daily life are whirled round in a grotesque dance.

Dadaism is an expression of perplexity; still more it is an expression of hatred. Machine age civilization is particularly hostile to the individual: its demand for precision and punctuality is stifling to his whims and aspirations. The traditional values have been prostituted; his obedience is commanded to despicable slogans. The very existence of man as an innermost unified personality is threatened. The Dadaist therefore treats into his innermost self and from that impregnable refuge thumbs his nose at phenomena. He refuses all action. He will not involve himself as well as his active self must be shielded from the sullifying contact. Mind withdraws from the external world, and reduces it to its primal flux; once again it is a chaos of terrifying, unknown and unknowable objects.

II.

Obviously the Dadaist attitude can not be permanent. Persisted in, it becomes equivalent to suicide. Two Frenchmen, Vache in 1918 and Rigant in 1929, did actually kill themselves, though such an action is, of course, inconsistent with the negations of Dadaism. Moreover, writing, like suicide, is an act; in any act, however trivial, values and a whole cosmology are implicit. If one wishes to suspend judgment, one may acquiesce in the traditional ways of acting, living parasitically on the affirmations of one's predecessors; but literary creation implies a very definite personal decision. Hence the paradox that to write Dadaist literature is to prove oneself no true Dadaist.

The importance of Dadaism is that it is a most convincing proof that life is impossible without some affirmation by the will. By rejecting everything it has shown the necessity of choosing something. After Dadaism we start with a clean sheet; the problem is, what values and mental categories shall we write on it?

The immediate heir of Dadaism is Super-realism. The Super-realists, destroying every accepted value and category as completely as the Dadaists hope, by exploring the world of dreams and the unconscious, to find a new world with new laws; they try to realize a new coherence and a new logic which is not that of everyday life. Their doctrine, says their leader, Andre Breton "tends definitively to ruin all the old psychic mechanisms and to take their place in the solution of the principal problems of life."

This ambition is not unknown elsewhere. It is a common belief with those who dislike civilization, that if we smash all the old categories and reduce things to their primal flux, we shall be able to build them into new and dazzling shapes; it can be traced, for example, in Lawrence; it was Rimbaud's guiding motive up to the time when he abandoned poetry. It has led some to adopt the cause of revolution, believing that a changed social structure will necessarily result in a changed mode of thought.

Our attitude to this belief seems to depend mostly on our philosophical sympathies, though it is not immediately obvious which philosophical attitude lends most support to Super-realism. Breton and Aragon claim Plato and Berkeley as precursors. Idealism however implies that the structure of the human mind is rigid and unalterable; if ideas are real, then man can only accept them—unless he prefers to go insane; so that new ways of thinking are impossible. Those who adhere to medieval realism or modern idealism will therefore return to tradition; they will consider any necessary change in our habits of thought to be merely a further revelation of the pre-existing universals. Nominalism on the other hand is wholly compatible with Super-realism. Regarding the external world as ultimately unintelligible, it considers our ideas and universals to be merely convenient ways of arranging phenomena, lacking objective validity. Theoretically, therefore, it might be possible to smash all the accepted categories and rearrange phenomena in wholly new combinations. No system would comprehend the whole of experience; but new categories might be at least as adequate as those which we have used hitherto, and they would reveal phenomena and

relationships of which at present we are ignorant.

Postwar French literature has been chiefly a search for answers to the problem stated by Dadaism. Those who have not accepted Super-realism have experimented with affirmations of three different kinds. They have asserted an uncompromising individualism, accepting their instinctive desires and disciplining themselves to realize them; they have identified themselves with a group—race, state or proletariat; or they have surrendered to the Church. The first solution—which seems also to have been Rimbaud's—is preached by "humanists" like Ramon Fernandez, and worshippers of the body like de Montherlant and Jean Prevost. In the second group we find royalists of the Maurras school, and communists like Bloch and Berl. In the third the pupils of Jacques Maritain. There do not seem to be other ways of escape available elsewhere.

This search for a first principle is the characteristic modern problem. It is worth noting that the effect of Dadaism is to strengthen the arguments of the Church. In the past the enemies of Catholicism, owing to an incomplete self-examination, claimed that religion was alone in requiring an affirmation; one might accept progress or the satisfaction of instinct or scientific truth as a basis for activity without any act of faith. Dadaism has shown that every value is arbitrary. Of the more rival doctrines, however, Catholicism alone admits that an affirmation is necessary and explains how we come to find ourselves in this predicament.

### III.

The kind of literature which we write depends ultimately on our philosophical and moral beliefs. Super-realists create a dream or fairy-tale world. If, on the other hand, we accept Fernandez's "humanism of action" we think in terms of human individuality and write about rivalries and moral choices. The triumph of communism will mean that the group will replace the individual as the unit of literary observation and mob emotion will become the main theme of literature.

There are, however, certain literary problems, connected only very distantly with values, which Super-realism has illuminated and may perhaps help to solve.

Contemporary English and American prose is dull. English novels, skilfully constructed but rarely recording any new experience, are exhausting because of their emotional tenseness, their carefully calculated suspense. American literature gives too much prominence to gangsters, adolescents, and other human animals of little intrinsic interest. Dadaism, when the images are crisp and clearcut and the justapositions unexpected, comes as a pleasant change. Pure Dadaism aims mostly at the humor of the incongrous; but the more elaborate Super-realist writing achieves a delicate phantasy and lyricism. It has the gay impossibility of a dream experienced shortly before waking when the dreamer is become conscious that the phantasms are unreal. It is of value, also in restoring something contents that they lose the greyness which centuries of careless use have given them.

This kind of writing, is of course, closely akin, in effect, though not in purpose, to the fairy tale; it can be enjoyed as pure entertainment in the same spirit, even if we reject the philosophy behind it. But it can also be of value to American literature when it takes a step forward.

The themes of the modern American novelist are the result of his naturalistic preconceptions. Naturalism is the literary expression of the nineteenth century religion of progress; it thinks primarily in terms of society rather than of the individual, of the average rather than the significant, of the material rather than the spiritual. Obviously its most perfect literary expression in the sociological treatise; it is interested in scarcely anything that can not be measured, counted and reduced to statistics, and hence has no genuine need for art, which records the imponderables.

Acceptance of communism will presumably entail further developments of naturalism; but those who prefer either humanism (to be carefully distinguished from the Boston moralism of the American Humanists) or Catholicism will be interested in a wholly different series of experiences. To the individualist Clyde Griffiths and Harry Trotter and the characters in John Herrmann's "Engagement" are of no significance; they tell us much about the society in which we happen to be living but nothing about the nature of man. The individualist is interested in moral decisions, intricacies of character, the subconscious; in the most fully developed members of the species. He is not concerned with the ways of earning a living, rents and wages, sexual customs, the average inhabitant of some particular city.

In the past it was possible to illustrate character by exhibiting it in conflict with society. The great tragedians demonstrated the effects of moral choice by showing how society destroyed the sinful or rebellious individual; only rarely, as with Dante (the "Inferno" is tragic in spirit) did they exhibit man in conflict with God. This kind of writing was possible because society stood for certain ideals and moral laws. At the present day, however, the problems caused by man's relationship to society are uninteresting; they are almost wholly economic and involve only the most superficial qualities of human character. Loyalties and idealism are no longer embodied in institutions; moral decisions are not necessitated by the rival claims of objective systems of law or social organisms. Writers, therefore, who are interested in man as an individual are compelled to pursue him into those depths of character which are not touched by his life in society. It is here that Super-realist technique is of value; the Super-realists are interested in the same depths of character, though with a different motive, and their imagery is intended to make concrete and communicable that innermost soul which is not touched by life in society. The two most important novelists now writing in English, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, are intent on the same task. Parts of "Ulysses" and still more "Work in Progress" have obvious affinities with Super-realist writing. Mrs. Woolf, after a conservative beginning ("Night and Day"), discovered that the soul of the individual could not be defined by realistic methods ("Jacob's Room" is a monologue on the theme that realistic description can tell us nothing about human character), and is now attempting by streams of imagery to render those recesSES of character which are stirred only rarely by contact with other people.

American prose will become more interesting when it abandons specific social problems, eschews naturalism and follows Joyce and Mrs. Woolf in the effort to define with concrete images the soul of the individual. In course of time tragedy will no doubt return, though it will presumably deal with a conflict with God or with nature, not with society; character can be defined most completely only by exhibiting it in action, and especially in a conflict with a superior power made inevitable by its own defects or peculiarities.

The need of the moment, however, is to turn our attention away from man in contemporary society towards man in isolation. Only after we have explored more deeply the soul of man shall we be able to exhibit it in terms of conflict; the immediate task is description. For this, the experiments of Super-realism have shown the way towards a successful technique.

## SURREALISME

### The Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery

JOHN BECKER

Joseph Cornell's drawing on the catalogue of the current exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery depicts a baker's boy blowing on a trumpet. The rigid tube of the trumpet has been trasformed into a kind of flour-sack horn whose lyric folds, waving on the wind, open to the magic word, surrealisme. Turn the cover of the catalogue and you find a quotation from Andre Breton's *Manifesto* which defines surrealisme; it is the 're-solution of two states (in appearance so contradictory), dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, "Surrealite".' In other words, beyond the reality of the physical world and its conscious mental concept there is a deeper or higher or hyper-reality which draws from the subconscious and unconscious (collectively called 'dream' by Monsieur Breton). The subconscious is the realm of things which are not apparent but which we once knew and for some reason have forgotten or rejected; this realm is most tangible in dreams. The unconscious is of an even deeper strata; to its domain belong the desires, fears and compulsions, not of individual composition, but phylogenetic, the heritage of mysteries common to the race and to the earth. It is with the help of this word mysteries that we are able to approach an understanding of that aspect of literary and psychological painting which we call surrealisme and to differentiate it from other groups of contemporary painters with which it has so much in common. For surely the mental concept in painting is not an innovation of any of our contemporaries, no matter how ingeniously they may improvise with combinations of impressionism, cubism and surrealisme; and although the graphic representation of mysteries is as old as the Chaldaic ciphers arranged around the constellations, it is the contemporary consciousness of the mysteries, call it Freudian consciousness if you will, that distinguishes the surrealiste group.

I do not know what prompted Mr. Levy's selection for his current exhibition. It is likely that some of the paintings which he would have shown were inaccessible: perhaps others were thrust upon him; perhaps the intereclecticism of the surrealiste group with other schools of contemporary painters makes a cleaner distinction impossible. At any rate, no matter the cause, there are omissions and confusions. There is no painting by Miro, the sometime leader of the surrealiste movement. Nor is there a painting by either Chirico or Andre Masson, and this last omission is to be lamented. By way of confusion, the seventeenth century Dutch landscape, called Ambiguous Subject because viewed horizontally it is a landscape and vertically it is a portrait, is both novel and charming but it is not surrealisme. The canvas by A. Everett Austin is, like Leger, clean and clear and altogether modern, but also like Leger, its abstract composition has no surrealiste content. The paintings of Herbert Bayer are

likewise devoid of surrealiste imagination; they are indeed remarkably un-
poetic statements of physical reality. Max Ewing's clay statues of Muriel
Draper, with their electric light bulbs in breasts, street lamps and head-
gear, are ingenious and first-rate caricatures, but wit and deft execution
is not alone the surrealiste equation. And so on. It is easy enough to
weave a fine maze of subtle distinctions.

It is of considerably greater importance to organize an exhibition, part-
icularly a good exhibition such as the present one at the Julien Levy Gallery;
and if I object, and I believe rightly, to the inclusion of many artists under
the heading surrealiste, I can nevertheless offer no better title for the
exhibition. Picasso, I suppose, is surrealiste as he is everything else—the
two small oils exhibited are unfortunately not of his best. The one paint-
ing by Pierre Roy is good enough, but it lacks that mystery of complete
precision which the finest paintings by Roy have. Salvador Dali I do not
like. He is a good painter and he gets a remarkable sheen to his canvas,
but he is vulgar and vulgarity is only at a premium when it is healthy.
There are two delicate and exciting drawings by Cocteau, Scene d'
Orphee and Heurtebise rest suspendu en l'air—
which is exactly what Heurtebise is doing. The two drawings by Charles
Howard are certain in execution, but in this unfortunate competitive era
artistry is not enough; one has to be either first or best. The drawings
by Mr. Howard are straight Cocteau-Lurcat and they are therefore damned
even if Mr. Howard has never heard of these artists—which is unlikely
Tabard has a fine photomontage of a nude woman, in luminous white, im-
posed against the night of a city street. There is also a fine montage by
George Lynes, a portrait of a head, apparently taken through hands which
are clasped over the nose and eyes. Other entrants are Man Ray, Moholy
Nagy, Paul Gaulois and Jean Viollier. Max Ernst is the artist correctly
featured in the exhibition. Of the five paintings by Ernst, two are the best
that I have ever seen. In one of them, Le Soleil en 1900, the
sun is caught (seemingly at exactly the moment when the new century
is born), a colored globe tangent to the diagonal lines of the unreal earth.
In the other paintings, Oiseaux de Nuit, two small bright balls
of color, as delicate as the feathers of baby birds, pulsate against some
hard striated substance like mother-of-pearl; the shells rest in two pools,
one is of chartreuse yellow, the other vermillion; the background of the
painting is grey. I do not know if Ernst is a great painter or a great poet;
I know he is great something. There are several papier-colle plates from his
visions in black magic, the two miraculous volumes, Femmes 100
Tetes and Reved'une petite fille qui voulut
entrer au Carmel. One of these plates bears the inscription:
'Marceline: "D'ou venez vous, celeste epoux?" Le celeste fiance: "Je sors
du nom d'une constellation. J'ai franchi cinq horizons. Je ne suis pas
une bete feroce. Je suis le produit d'un cerveau tres estime."'

Note.—The editors regret the necessity of being obliged to reproduce
the French quotations without accentual markings.

NOTES FOR THE LIVES OF A SAINT

H. R. HAYS

such breakages in transit
are the stuff and not the shine

to build the higher comedy
to complicate divine

completion and disproof

Galahad consults the talking flowers

the first answered

translate me

I burn

and the second

dust mixed with glittering fragments

and the forgotten one

posted

to the day after the end

thus he was continued after a fashion
fed to the lions
but regained thru an apocryphal miracle

stocks fell rapidly
and the stenographers wept when the male film star died

electricity became a well-known drink
warranted to develop the bust and shoulders
for there were no young poets born that year

sere and grinning
fear and cathedrals
rhapsody
in a lottery
while the germ filled

then
the news turned terrible
the antennae wailed in the wind
what had come out of space
neither walking nor flying
presenting enormous credentials
and denying
all that had been

WAS REVEALED
THEY SCRAMBLED ON HANDS AND KNEES
TORE OFF HATS AND EYEGLASSES
THE LIGHT SCORCHING
THE SHELLS CLASPED IN AN EDGED EMBRACE

the following day dawned clear and cool
with a faint sea breeze

TIRADE

A NOVEL BY HARVEY FOSTER

Vito lifted a lovely pair of silk pajamas from the dark stained bag of rhinoceros skin and flung them on the bed preparatory to cleaning the grime from his body after a long day at the steel mill. The fish swim in continuous circles through the grass sword of the weary winter park. The sun rose. It was hot on the Sahara and Julie subdued the passion she felt for the black short whiskered sheik that rode on the camel. She didn't know whether sheiks were black or not. And the question of whiskers? This day it is and being it is. Dark circles of sweat looped under Vito's arms and the grass was dark circled from the edge of the white spray of the oyster lamp out. The oyster struggled out from his shell: dashed back in again with a cry of rage, only to be caught by that dexterous fisherman Jules Galleatot, and devoured three hours later with much gusto by the diabolically rich Mrs. Garter. Love is the queer quality of a holy emotion lacking religion, bending certain arteries dilated and causing a mild eruption of blood extending: wearing on certain tissues of the brain with the assiduity of a knife having perpetual motion. Now Mrs. Garter had a daughter. It was this way. Mr. Garter felt love and stretched too far This is not a story for children, neither is it smutty nor dirty. We do all these things. Vito could spit and the mucous from his mouth sometimes had little black dust specks in it. Father Cambrian had ambitions to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, but York would do as well.

Fool snow fell, falling in great white lumps to stick wetly and form
little cotton balls on the edges of derbies and ordinary felt hats. Feeling
the lack of a high plug silk hat. Splattering into the sea with the defiance
of candle dipped into water. Wax runs circular in motion over the deep
raised edges of the water. Who can lie about the reservoir? Or tell a lie
about the fishes at the sandy bottom. They are convicted of sex. Fishes
tremble and shake at the malicious hatred of the liars. They extend their
gills fanwise singing a defeatist philosophy in broken air bubbles. They
pretend that they are Humanists.

The little white line above the end of Vito's finger is the tip of the
fingernail and it is filled with soap. Shadow the soapdish. It has com-
mitted a murder. Julie smiles at the soapdish and tells Mrs. Garter the
story of an otherwise useful life. And I taught the savages about Jesus.
Period. So and Mrs. Tannebaum bought the whole Louis XVI suite, genuine,
for forty-three hundred dollars and her husband congratulated her on per-

ceptive cortice, pupil, and iris. We are disappointed. The sheik is on the
Sohara, and Julie talks to Mrs. Garter with a voice full of lilacs. Vinegar
blossoms guily to the thick greasy smell of lilacs. Father Cambrian takes
a pinch of snuff and sneezes at the Cardinal. For the moment he has lost
his chance of Bishop. Change coat. Canterbury does not sing to the Car-
dinal and the Pope can only manage three kinds of Gregorian Chants.
Torse of Vito broken by the two darkish brown circles radiating tiny hairs.
This belongs to the classification, muscles: Vigourous music. Jules wan-
ders along the shore in his high rubber boots, black, shiny, and slimy, sea-
weed and salt water. Vacancies of mind bring before him the picture of a
polite young lady delivering lollipops to the elite of the kingdom. Bonnets
in the dining car and orders Chateau Haut Brion much to the disgust of
the brandy drinking Mrs. Garter. Mrs. Garter is the victim of the soapdish.

Halcyon movements of the interior of the peritoneum are considered
by the very, vurry, lowbrow, to be vulgar. But Mrs. Garter is above all
niente. Discovered by Julie in the back of a cheap Webster's Dictionary,
year nineteen hundred and twenty six. Hark, and the great Hotel rose in
all its splendour and bowed before the lady, obsequious to the nth degree.
Coloratura sopranos sina at La Scala and diamonds around the fat necks
glitter at the thought of the coming debut at the Metropolitan. And she
married her chauffeur and spent three days in a cabin up york state be-
fore the divorce. Of course it was necessary. Father Cambrian had not
functioned the divine proceedings and the chauffeur disliked the high C's.
Carillia Arshcan, most divine of singers, the human nightingale. And Mr.
Hastow wrote on opera for her. Harstow the noted modernist! Ex press,
packed in dry ice! Strawberries for the Empress of Gandhu. Yonder elm
passionate love cry of Hiawatha to the skyscraper dwellers. A question of
kidney there is no doubt. Lakes fell and Julie didn't mind the feeling of
the coolness of silver water against her thighs. Martyred to the lost cause
of burning pickles before they are thoroughly pickled. O the wasted brine.
Let us bury ourselves deep in the brine with Jules. Electra the pet centi-
lice of Mrs. Garter can play six pianolas at the same time. The magnif-

Tempus fugit O latinist! Go bow thy head to the practices of Greece.
This was in the early ages when the cantos had not delivered the ship-

This was in the early ages when the cantos had not delivered the ship-
destroying, city-destroying message of good will to all the cities who
shouldered upon themselves the terrible burden of the omnipotent com-
munity chest. And three thousand gold doubloons were buried off Panama
by the greatest of all the pirates, not to be discovered until one-hundred-
fifty years later, by Mrs. Garter on her twenty-first tour of the world.
Added to the great wealth she already had, she discovered that she

was now wealthy enough to buy the long white strings of spaghetti, that
she had always longed for. Wagnerian music drifted scorchingly against

the purple soul of Carillia as she raised her voice immortally, in the im-
mortal duet. It was soon forgotten: Lampreys slink through the dreams
of the young seller-of-lollipops-to-the-elite. She is polite and she is Mrs.
Garter's daughter. Denouement! Pretzels and beer, chestnut blossoms
falling and a boy's blond head sprawled drunkenly over the marble table
top. It is and it is not. Love for that boy. Countermanded. Cancelled.
The brokers sit around the ticker while the purple aphrodisiac figures coddle
the sharp brains till they almost believe. Over them hangs the sword of
Mrs. Garter's enormous holdings. Supposing she should unload. Jargon
of business, not biological. Trade marks are sewed into the back of gar-
ments, and Vito's muscles show beautifully through the silk pajamas. This
is Vito. The ballet of the steel mill, shot flame fire, silk pajamas. Julie
covers her eyes with one hand. She does not see her sheik and decides to
hunt whales. Thor she blows!!! Politeness is called Noel. Mrs. Garter's
sense of humour is mingled with the smoke of a long black cheroot. Ig-
norance is bliss. Ignorance resolves itself around the platitude of know-
ledge; both symbolical of vacuity. Antithesis of wisdom. Father Cambrian
vowed that he would never let the cursed drink pass his lips again and
paused for breath, gulping down a glass of gin. His bed dog, a great dane
could play Hamlet to perfection. Astounding, frightfully, so.

November, eleven, nineteen eighteen. Portrait of the world safe for
democracy like an old slut in a green wrapper not forgiving. These loved
ones who have died. Mrs. Garter was the epitome of cynicism. She cried
in the moving pictures. All her tenderness was for soldiers. She opened
a speakeasy so they could get their drinks. Must wear French-Shriner
shoes. The good Father Cambrian always said a prayer at the opening of
each bottle of vintage wine. Seldom can the red queen move. She protects
the king. Beware he will be in check. O my son! Movie plot number
twenty six. Vito has a beautiful back but Mrs. Garter is gathered lumps
of fat and Julia's eyes are red and filled with sand. Two ends. The brokers
do not care; they have flung caution to the wind and sold short on one-
million-two-hundred-twenty-six-thousand-four-hundred-ninety-six shares of
the Consolidated Railroad of Northeastern Delaware. Pretza Pringle does
not know this as she rides in the luxurious pullman. She powders her nose
with a dirty puff, and scratches her chin. All this time her brokers have
been buying and she has cornered the market. Wealthiest woman in
America would exchange all her wealth to be just one little movie star.
Jules digs six oysters, dreaming of the polite young lady. Noel Garter is
tired of selling lollipops; she sells dope to young really vivacious ladies in
the follies. The lesbian cries herself to sleep every night with the aromatic
song. Love, bitter sweet.

Shadow the corners of houses. Watch out for that maniac, the
soapdish.

Vito stretches his length on the bed. Opals inanimate laugh at the
ludicrous position of Jules as he digs oysters. Rage the oysters
and they dare not cry out at the figure they see upon a cross through the
green emerald depths of the sea.

Empty the head of all the tiny responses, return to the quality of golden
shoebuttons shining in the sun. Mrs. Garter does not care for the wind

beaten complexion of the sheik hunting Julie. You can get a complexion
brush at the Five and Ten. It is good for one's philosophy to read dime
novels and sit on chewing gum. Realize every little unsung song. Harstow
orchestrates a ballet for the radicals. Antithesis again, green instead of
red. Purpose relies on the good order. Plus is. Less being greater is not.
Where O where does the sun shine in glorious clouds banked with the sweet
scent of lavender. The blond boy raises his eyelids looking out at Vito,
smiling with a gentle smile of drunkenness. Brushes the chestnut blossoms
from his hair. Tristram shake the chestnut flowers from your eyes. Mrs.
Garter counts a big roll of brand new one dollar bills and she sings Hallelu-
jah in a voice filled with cracked cornet notes. The great Carillia warbles
grand opera. It becomes a thing of splendour and a joy forever. Vito
closes his eyes against the hypnotic gaze of Jules. Lying in each others
arms staring. Mrs. Garter thinks for a moment of chauffeurs and then
covers her fingernails with a sapphire blue polish.

Great house of always jewels. Sapphires, amethysts, emeralds, rubies,
and the rose of Sharon blossoms in no other desert but this. Heart strings
run along with the percussion instruments of the African savages. Brutality
rises in the polite Noel and she is no longer polite. She takes the good
Father Cambrian by the nose and with a razor slices his cheek. How far
is far and close to the table is a green lamp. Tristram smiles wearily and
asks the cadaverous waiter for a check. The sun squares black on the
sawdust covered floor and silver clinks against marble. Mrs. Tannenbaum's
hair falls behind her ears in rigid blond ringlets. There is no light now
on the sea. Vito lets his hands caress the moon shining silverly in the
mirror. The house looks upon the sea and each purple wave breaks against
the olive green shore. Cochineal turns the ink scarlet. Peter Gregory
waves his hand to the departing travelers as the boat steams out of the
harbour. Julie walks down the Boulevard Haussmann her heels clicking
against the walks. The old sailor sends up a cloud of rank rancid smoke
from his old corncob. O merry, merry, merry, and Alexander Wintress
came to Boston so that he might understand the true motives of harlots.
Shall we go to the dining room and hear Major Chessby speak of the three
wonders of the secret world? Not being, because the world is flat.

Monkeys scream wildly at the professional golfers from their iron
cages. Bananas have yellow skins, rather thick, and the inside flesh is
this; sweet and cream coloured, bananas and cream, cut and a tiny black
star at the center. The scarlet macaw flies across a vast cathedral of
blackened hanging trees.

Vito and Tristram blend their voices in sharp precision and progress to
the unknown dimension where they have tea with a lady in a pink gown.
It is a vision. Gold swarm the bees humming and one a little bit more
brave than the rest stings Mrs. Garter. A scream and a tug at the right
lobe of an ear. Jules confesses all the sins before the good Father Com-
brian. A sin and an aphrodisiac and Father Cambrian moves uneasily.
Where did you. Tomorrow was yesterday and the sun set rising; cold winds
blew the sun from the red heavens to the bottom of a wave tip sharpened
sea. Horrible and horrible and Mrs. Tannenbaum enjoyed lounging in the
exquisite furniture and made ugly faces at all the expensive artistes.

Holy and holy and the incense was fragrant and the scent drove them
back on the immemorial journey.

Pretza Pringle lights the match. Before scratched, a blue tip with
a white high light, and a black band beneath. Flare. She is not convicted
of sex. We poured into the porcelain pitcher all that we knew about death
and mixed a delicious cocktail. Have a drink. Mrs. Garter turned the
corner sliding her great bulk across the floor and laughed hysterically at
the mountings of her maid. Gatria Raynor closed her eyes in the brilliant
glare of the lights and said lazily. Her publicity manager caught the public
and startled them with the seventeenth report of her engagement. The
man was not a man, he was. So be it. Further than all this is the dish-
towel. The soapdish schemed warily, and betrayed the lady to an ever-
lasting doom. Harstow contrived from all this a melody and played pinochle
with the germans. Tristram ran slender fingers through his thick blond
hair. Vito kissed his and strode down twenty stairs and went to the steel
mill. Mrs. Garter was convinced. The negroes were tried, found guilty,
and electrocuted at three o'clock in the morning much to the sadistic de-
light of Mrs. Tannenbaum. Sic semper tyrannis.

Oranges blossom in the crystal dishes of Noel.

Carillia aspires to another chauffeur. Publicity is as bad as it is good.

Pencils, paper, and things. Mostly things.

Battledore and shuttlecock is an interesting game. But the censors
have prohibited the people from playing it. In our closet we play it private-
ly. We, Mrs. Tannenbaum and Mrs. Garter. Six million people danced
in the great park at Berlin and went to the Hofbrau afterwards to watch
Tristram drinking blond beer. Stalactites of flexible hair waving in the
great rushing wind. Orchard street is the center of all things and all things
do not center there. Around the corner, and Mrs. Garter went on an errand
of mercy. Sister Gabrielle told Father Cambrian the secret of reproduc-
tion and he had her buried alive for malicious knowledge. The greatest
country in the world passed a law saying that there should be and always
there should be, forever and always a method and a means of contracep-
tion. The intaglio method. We presented the empress with three cameos
as she was blind and had studied under the famous Wanda Puy.

The apples commenced to think, and they voted that they should be
members of a congress and they were. They passed a law saying that they
should not be plucked and that there should be plenty of fertilizer. The
stock market reacted. Noel swam in the deep waves, and the lakes rose
around Julie. Silver thighs caressed and Jules taught the polite one how
to swim.

Little caves of coral at the bottom of the ocean sweated and builded
houses for the spawning fishes. Vito raised his arms, muscles contracted
to a ball as hard as steel is hard. This was in the steel mill. Balancing
a rod of iron he winked half naked as he was at Mrs. Tannenbaum whose
husband owned the mills, and she fainted with a lusty thrill. Tristram
whirled the propeller and started the long journey through space. At rapid
speed backwards he achieved a certain distinction at being welcomed in
a Napoleonic empire and making love to the stupid second empress. But
having read too much and knowing that such things must be flew back to

the present, to the arms of his carnivorous beloved. The world mourned
Sister Gabrielle, and in a far heaven she thumbed her nose at singing
angels. Sharp angles rectangular, constructed the city. Mrs. Garter
kneeled stiffly every Saturday night after taking her bath thanked his good-
ness that she had not drowned. Immediately she retired, but first, ah
pleasure, she swallowed an oyster. Love, bitter sweet. Pretza Pringle held
the fate of a nation in her hands that cold December night when she
threatened to sell wheat short. But the statisticians found that she was
wrong. Jules sang in a deep voice as his boat drifted across the bay, and,
coming back in a high tenuous voice he recited the lyrics of Shelley. Ten-
nyson looked upon the king in Buckingham Palazzo. Father Cambrian
wrote an essay on the thirty-nine ways, for there are thirty nine, in which
a man may be converted. On the road to Damascus Julie discovered her
sheik and the man committed suicide. Her eyes frightened with a too
red gleam. Tristram smoked diffidently a long white cigarette. A single
blond hair fell into his beer glass and the congress voted that each beer
glass must be supplied with a mesh strainer. Such is a universal day when
night is not night.

There are many. But not too many. The terror stricken cows
stampeded and ran lickity-split down the declivity of glare ice. Psychology
gripped the mob and they all shouted. Mrs. Garter trembled in her boots
at their menacing cries and she and Mrs. Tannenbaum and Pretza of the
dirty puff paid six million dollars to have them shot. Vito slipped into the
silk pajamas with great sadness and wondered why Tristram had not arrived.
The time of arrivals belongs. It is right. Ecstacy sharpens against a dull
bone of pain and the sky blazes with the fiery streamers of a heart.

Contracts made and figures in endless black 'n white columns. The
aisle of the church is tabloid and Jules cannot enter but Father Cambrian
gives out passes three times a week to advertisers. Carillia warbles in the
choir on Tuesday evenings to the most pompous rich. No novelty is this.
It ends at noon, and with anxious eyes Carillia punctuates her loose music
with one eye on the clock. The song ends. The sun sets at noon. The
stars come out. Noel eclipses the dark Julie's emeralds with her cold white
diamonds. Stones. An amethyst rests in the hollow beneath Harstow's
clavicle. Left, right, left, right, leftright, leftright, leftright, the soldiers
march. Faust waves a hand effeminately to the diamond horseshoe. The
applaudience rises and cheers.

Force.

Spinning in endless circles of slow gold the fishes glide between the
green slimy reeds. Cacophonous sounds are emitted by the six pianolas
and Vito has a nightmare. Silk pajamas flutter in the breeze of Father
Cambrian's sneeze.

DIVISION 2

Back to that older world we sing the song,
and older and further the moon rises.
The back aches.
The shadows fall across the empty tables and the stars
gleam and twinkle and a mist
settles solitary, a single cloud encompassing
nothing.

Meteors announce the birth of kings.
And the king was born and all the world waited,
working, and the workmen shook the sweat
from their foreheads and they looked.
They saw.
Sky covered with a white flare brilliant
and the light shining across the desert,
purple shadows clear in the coldness,
snow hissing in the heat. Begin O not begin
and to forget again the music that approached,
that heralded the coming. Begin O not begin
the flowers spring from the desert floor
and patch the brown with green. The fishes glide
loops of gold, circled and spiralled.

Today and tomorrow
tomorrow and forever. The voice spoke and said,
"This is!" It was silent thereafter and our hearts
were puzzled. We knew and we knew not the question.
O and for very. Little time flies back to the country
of the shapely pyramids and the crow flies north,
meets the wind
strikes the snow
perishes beneath the blanket. Fooled.
At Strasbourg on the high great cross
we struggled, exchanged kisses for kisses
and swore before Almighty God.
The question. Asked? Tear from this
immortal ear the ticking of the clock,
beware.

Forever and a day the violin
is only this: a violin with throbbing strings.
A flute will not be here, toosharp,
shrill, to strike upon nerves that were not meant
for iron. Syllables sound
and the sibilant tones they make awake the sleepers
who have not dreamed! In vain, in vain,
endlessly.

## Moves
progresses with precision and order,
and the house of cards falls about our ears.

Tumults surge against our lives
break and bend, force us to recognize
their force. Strip the hair from our heads.
Tonsured and in cowl. We sigh.
Die and are born; this is the proper
measure of things. Not born to die.
Nor shall we die to be born but in this minute
question and live. The rockets hum against
the darkness, light up the estuary, shine upon
the rats nibbling garbage on the wharves.
The ship sails. Its sails are red in sunlight,
the mast strides across the waves
proudly like a woman who has carried children
and delivered them.

This is our day.
And I?

Who am I? The figure slinking behind
the old posts of a forgotten rain swept fence?
The woman fat with years and greasy food
counting her diamonds? The two men who love,
each the other with fear in their hearts?
The girl riddled and abused with obscene sex?
The man upon the shore, asking,
will you be fishers of men? The woman
who sees the Trinity in love? or all of these,
or none? A great shadow without substance walking,
questing, a scavenger of evil? Hell driven to earth
with a bloody mouth?

Sever the ten cords that make our lives, or the twelve.
We have no disciples to follow us, no men to look
at us, no rain to kiss our foreheads, nor
wind to sweep our hair. We are lonely. Straighten
out the crooked thought, burn the black papers
upon which no word is written. Turn, destroy;
turn again, return, and do this thing
that must be done. Construct.
The scar is greater than the wound,
gaping like an ugly red fruit cut
before these eyes with a dull knife
ragged and bleeding. Sometimes the harsh
sound of the saw penetrates
and the mosquitos stop their humming. Forgotten

the sun, and forgotten the heat,
the fire, in the coolness of wet sand
smothered in ice. Trail across the floor
supine like the trail of a velvet woman's
velvet gown. Seduce
the mannequin. Shatter her complacency
with a cigarette poised slightly above
your muddy ideas of love. Travel the untravelled
road; seek the answer to the first
answer of the question. Imbibe the heated
brass of spanish wines, sharpen wit against
the terror of the Azores.

If it is not God then what is
God and what is not? You let no logic
twine about these false ideas, rather,
spill a mean and shrivelled emotion
thinly across the table to the others.
Smile and regurgitate.

Plasticity is the erection of the fern.
Spores create a million bastards.
Bravo!

Arcturus bends in icy heat
to destroy the cowshed. And in this
a heart.
Mice daintily pick the crumbs
from the bread box, and drop their dung
upon the floor.

That was an orotund day and all the ladies
danced on nimble feet
to the music of minutes
and jotas.

VIVA — E. E. CUMMINGS

HELEN MEARS

e. e. cummings has the misfortune to fall between two poetic attitudes; the first, that of the average reader who likes simple and homely truths in a simple and obvious rhythm, the second that held by the young intellectual who puts esotericism at a premium and marks each new star as it tips the horizon only to snuff it out as soon as it becomes more visible to the average eye. To the first cummings' typographical unorthodoxy is an enraging incomprehensibility. Even the man who would not expect to understand a scientific work without some knowledge of its technical symbols, demands of poetry first that it communicate and means by that, it should communicate directly without the slightest mental effort on his part. The second group acknowledges the reasonableness of cummings' effort to make words say what he means rather than what stalely they have meant in another context, grants him a high order of talent, but quarrels with what they term his "adolescent emotions", the artificiality of his symbols, and suggests that the surprises he achieves by technique cover a paucity of ideas.

It is suprising that such typographical devices and phoneticisms as he may choose to adopt should blind his critics to the content of his verse. Can those who see in Faulkner's bitter novels the expression of an attitude toward society, fail to recognize in poems xvii, xxx, xxvii, xxvii, xvi, xxvii, xii, and many others in Viva more than an adolescent preoccupation with typography? Do they fail to recognize the same passion, intensified by compression, which permeated the ENORMOUS ROOM, in the war poems of the present volume?

cummings' sharp anger represents an uncompromising refusal to allow science and machinery to take the mystery out of simple human relations—
> "The best of my brain is less than
> your eyelid's flutter which says
> we are for each other..."

He, more than any contemporary poet, catches the wonder in the commonplace, a reality which is the essence, the underlying significance of natural processes. Those who would dismiss him for frivolity should reread the stately sonnet beginning —
> structure, miraculous challenge, devout am
> upward deep most invincible unthing...
for a profession of faith which should command the respect of the most determinedly solemn reader.

Editor's note — A suggestion of instinctive feeling for the rhetorical tendencies of the English language is indicated by certain parallels between the vocabulary of Cummings and that of Reginald Pecock. Cummings has kneelingly, lookingly, uncarefully, unthing, Pecock (1395-1460) followingly, unspeedful, undepartably, undeadly.

H. R. H.

LEWIS CARROL AND THE MODERNS

H. R. HAYS

Unquestionably the psychological point of view is largely responsible for a new appreciation of the complexity of verbal symbols, but one figure in the nineteenth century stands out as a happy accident, one of those sports which unpredictably anticipate the course of events, and this figure is Lewis Carrol. Carrol the treacly romantic poet, Carrol the mathematician or Carrol the somewhat heavy parodist seems curiously remote from the freakish all the poems that ever were invented and a good many that haven't been wit who set off psychological dynamite, whose reverberations still continue in contemporary literature but as Humpty Dumpy asserted, "I can explain invented yet", it may be that his creator dimly sensed the importance of his own work.

Styles have a way of turning into literary straitjackets. Although words must from their very nature be living things changing in quality as the human mind evolves and assuming new relationships to express new concepts, the conservative element in the human organism acts as a brake inhibiting freedom of association. The Elizabethans came to language with a fresh viewpoint, practically creating it as they went along. Since they were pioneers and explorers, the beauty of their trouvailles remains as a positive achievement. Succeeding ages, however, brought with them conservatism and pseudo-classicism. Even the romantics for all their revolt were too little interested in technique to do much for style. It remained for the radicals of the twentieth century to rediscover the adventure of words. Certain parallels between Carrol's work and theirs are worth examining.

It will be convenient to divide nonsense into three elements, jabberwocky, verbal clash, clash of idea and treat them separately. These may be considered as terms of rhetoric describing devices now receiving emphasis which have not before been adequately described.

JABBERWOCKY.

Jabberwocky is simply word coining. In the poem of the same name there is perhaps fifty per cent of invented words. The skeleton of the narrative is preserved by enough simple structural words while the rest are invented nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs which adhere to the usual character of English grammar but which stand for unknown or implied referents. The effect is that of reading a foreign language with a partial knowledge of the vocabulary. One is continually startled and impressed with words for

words' sake. All the emotional possibilities of words sans specific referent are stressed. Of the wholly invented terms, vorpal is a good example. It is impressive sounding and looking but the only hint of its meaning is its position modifying blade. Hence it is vague and general but other writers, attracted by its physical qualities, continuing its usage would speedily give it a number of other contexts which would gradually create the mixture of vagueness and precision which any standard word possesses. This is significant in the light of theories concerning clarity and precision which have resulted from imagist dogmas.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy."

wrote Carrol and in the June Transition of 1929 we find the following line by Theo. Rutra.

"The morrowlei loors in the meaves".

Rutra, as a signer of the Revolution of the Word, which appeared in the same issue, is attempting an even higher percentage of jabberwocky than Carrol himself.

A second type of neologism is the portmanteau word.

"That will do very well", said Alice: "And slithy?"

"Well, slithy means lithe and slimy. Lithe is the same as active. You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed in one word..."

This blending of two words has the value of freshness for the siamese result has distinctly new qualities. It is perhaps not wholly original with Carrol. In HUMPHREY CLINKER, Smollett makes his illiterate housemaid deform words in such a way that two are suggested at the same time. Cruperal is meant for corporal but also of course suggests crupper, but Smollett is merely interested in broad farce; it was Carrol who pointed the way to using it as a stylistic device.

Of the moderns James Joyce, in his later work is the most distinguished writer who continues to develop the method. The WORK IN PROGRESS is a mosaic of seventeen or more languages for Joyce not only combines two English words but extends the device to the point where a word from a foreign language is deformed so as to suggest an English one at the same time retaining a shadow of its former self. A fragment of the TALES TOLD OF SHEM AND SHAUN begins

"The Gracehoper was always jigging a jog, hoppy, on akkant of his joyicyny.... or, if not, he was always making ungraceful overtures to Floh and Bienie and Vespertilla to commence insects with him...."

Here some of the more obvious examples are gracehoper with its parody relation to grasshopper, hoppy combining the idea of hopping about with the word happy and Floh a cross between the German word for flea and the English abbreviation for Flora.

The Revolution of the Word was perhaps only a flash in the pan, a byblow of James Joyce but one other poet has experimented with neologism as the following from e. e. cummings' book VIVA attests,

"bingbongwhom chewchoo
laugh dingle nails personally
bung loamhome picpac

obviously scratches tomorrowlobs".

It contains both portmanteau words and pure inventions and is probably intended as pure burlesque.

The work of Leon-Paul Fargue in France and Hans Arp in Germany shows that this stylistic tendency is not confined to English. How fruitful it can continue to be remains highly controversial. The writer who finds ordinary words unsatisfactory is rather suggestive of the workman who blames his tools. Word coining is a natural process in isolated instances; words grow when they are needed, flung into circulation by a wit, a scientist or a clown. Even Carrol invented them with discretion and of his coinings only "chortle" is widely accepted. The attempt to create a whole new artistic language in defiance of the slow biologic process is a task which only a genius of the first magnitude can attempt and while the WORK IN PROGRESS may justify itself as a dictionary for the literary artists of the future, writers of a minor order who are apeing the master merely commit literary suicide. Esperanto and the history of dialects are sufficient practical warning.

## WORD CLASH

In The Hunting of the Snark there are few invented words but a number of cases where ordinary unrelated ones are brought together.

"You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue
You condense it with locusts and tape:

Still keeping one principal object in view—
To preserve its symmetrical shape."

Here, the idea of boiling in sawdust and salting in glue presents a curious conflict, the mind strives to form the image, doesn't quite succed yet feels it ought to and is finally impressed by the shock of the combined ideas. This is the principle of the metaphor carried to further lengths. In the metaphor, words with ordinarily no relation but certain similarity in their contexts are brought together. The clash of their union provokes response as the attempt is made to relate them on various levels of consciousness. Carrol's incongruities are nearly always of idea but of the moderns cummings uses word clash, a development or rather a closer knit application of the principle implied by Carrol.

"The lean and definite houses
are troubled, A sharp blue day
fills with peacefully leaping air..."

Boiling in sawdust is not far from coupling the adjective leaping with air. If one may charm it with smiles and soap and threaten its life with a railwayshare one can easily imagine how

"(the new moon
fills abruptly with sudden silver
these torn pockets of lame and begging color)"

Carrol's context is jocular, that of cummings romantic, so that the results differ cummings points his own attitude in another poem.

"Dogs
bark
children

play
ing
Are
in the beautifual nonsense of twilight."

This sums up the difference between them, the former employing tricks casually out of mere high spirits the latter to hide or partly reveal romantic sentiment.

Edith Sitwell, too, employs similarly unexpected combinations.
"And you shall skip like my lamb-tailed river...."
"Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
hangs limp, turns the milks weak mind."
though here it is merely a daring metaphor.

The attempt to combine words in new ways is of course beyond cavil. Change in any case implies new combinations of constant elements. And in this way literature is quite normally keeping pace with the times. Even the imagists, stimulated by french symbolism, sought to extend the metaphor. A far more important current implicit in the tendency to work for surprise and discord by casting off the usual bonds of logic, is what might be termed idea clash.

## IDEA CLASH.

Word clash and idea clash are hard to separate. Carrol, properly speaking used only the latter. It is possible to bring words together in unusual ways to express commonplace ideas, tinkering as it were with the mechanics of language. It is also possible to use words simply in order to create the wildest discord and unexpected fantasy, to loosen the joints of the imagination itself. Both spring from the same procedure but the latter is far more revolutionary and significant.

Any number of examples may be cited from the HUNTING OF THE SNARK. The whole plan and conception of the Snark hunt, the utterly ridiculous crew, the lace-making Beaver, the blank map. Nothing happens as it should logically in life, every fresh incident is an associate shock. The two Alice books are essentially the same with their defiance of the laws of nature, with their caterpillars smoking hookahs, talking flowers, vanishing cheshire cats and so on.

In this unhooking of logic is anticipated Dada and Surrealism. Dada denied the validity of any realities.

A manifesto begins: "Dada is our intensity which erects inconsequential bayonets the sumatral head of the German baby; Dada is life without slippers or parallel..."

Fertilized by psychoanalysis Dada was transformed into surrealism utilizing both word and idea clash and making of automatic writing or, in other words, complete freedom of association the most important part of its program.

Andre Breton quotes Pierre Reverdy in the "Manifeste du Surrealisme" as follows—

"The image is a pure creation of the spirit.

It can only be born, not of a comparison, but of the juxtaposition of two realities more or less distant.

The farther apart and truer the juxtaposed realities are, the stronger the image will be—the more emotive power and poetic reality it will have..."

YALE

Note. Louis Aragon, one of the chief surrealists, translated The Hunting of the Snark in 1929. In the third issue of the magazine SURREALISME, 1931, appears an article by Aragon on Carrol pointing out spiritual affinities with surrealism.

in English cummings again is the most typical representative of the non-logical imagination. He has undoubtedly been influenced by the contemporary French surrealists but it is interesting to note certain similarities with Carrol.

"While playing with a box of peppermints, which his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Fitzroy of 96 Hoover Ave., Flatbush, had given their little son Frank Jr. to keep him quiet the infant in some unaccountable manner set fire to forty-one persons of whom thirty-nine were burnt to ashes. A chinese Mi Wong, who exercises the profession of laundryman at 686 868 Street and Signor Alhambra, a millionaire Brazilian coffee planter who refused to be interviewed and is stopping at the Ritz, are the survivors. Havoc resulted when one of the betterliked members of the young married set, whose identity the authorities refused to divulge, kissed Tony Crack, iceman, on the spur of the moment, receiving concussion of the brain with black eyes."

Now compare with Carrol's incongruous crew.

The crew was complete: it included a Boots
A maker of bonnets and hoods—

A barrister, brought to arrange their disputes—
And a Broker to value their goods.

A Billiard marker whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share—

But a Banker engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace at the bow

And often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck
Though none of them quite knew how.

The stylistic principle of a motley crowd strung together in foolish ways is essentially the same.

These are enough examples to indicate what germs of modernism are inherent in Carrol's work. Perhaps he represents an unconscious revolt against the smugness of his own time, certainly when the muscles of his mind were loosened by a frivolous point of view he attained a freedom of association which is necessary for experiments in expression and stumbled upon methods which are now used seriously by contemporary writers. And this is only rediscovering what those other pioneers, the Elizabethans, had already hit upon in the seventeenth century.

In scenes of macabre lyricism Webster employs a crew of madmen—

"4th madman: I have paired the divells nayles forty times, roasted them in raven's eggs and cur'd agues with them.

"3rd madman. Get me three hundred milch bats, to make possets to procure sleepe.

"4th Madman, All the college may throw their caps at me: I have made a soape-boyler costive; it was my masterpiece..."

All of which suggests that the words nonsense and imagination are symbols for a plasticity in thinking and expression which make change and rearrangement possible. Similarly classical dogmas of criticism are always imposed from the outside and must be regarded with suspicion when their negative tenets grow too rigorous.

## THIS CYCLE, O NOT REPEATED

### HARVEY FOSTER

The late red sun decends sudden;

The raised horizons change to cloud; the light
Lessens; from west the shapely shadow stalks
Cautiously questing. Where lies the knowledge
That we do not know?

This is the dying
Season of year, when ripe seed scatters,
Dry leaves blow, and ripe fruit falls
Through frosty air.

But shall the ripe fruit fall?
Or leave the fruit upon the bough, withering, dying?
Torn from root to freeze in darker wind
Than cloud? freeze and sour? contaminate
The stranger fruit of later year?

Finished is the fructial cycle,
Motion stilled. Is this the moment
To be left alone? inviolate? bereft?
Sere upon the tree, swept by lonely wind,
No longer richness, glucous thickness rotting
White flesh and firm. This,
Is what? Age broken in age?

Gaze upon these other faces
Laid in silence in the frame,
Laid away. They have kept their silence
In the way of abundance.

These gathered years
Are harvested, and this day,
As the fruit so shall I fall.

## ANTHOLOGIE

Revue Mensuelle D'Art Et Litterature
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EXHIBITION OF SCULPTURE
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## CLAY

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SHORT STORIES — POETRY

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— By —

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## JULIEN LEVY GALLERIES
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PHOTOGRAPHS — PAINTINGS
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