BROOM

AN INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS PUBLISHED BY HAROLD A. LOEB,
EDITOR, HAROLD A. LOEB. ASSOCIATE EDITOR, MATTHEW JOSEPHSON. AMERICAN EDITOR, LOLA RIDGE.

NOVEMBER, 1922

APPEARS MONTHLY

VOL. 3. NO 4.

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Page</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>COVER DESIGN — (WOODCUT) — LADISLAS MEDGYES</td><td>—</td></tr><tr><td>PHOTOGRAPHS — PAUL STRAND</td><td>(FRONTISPIECE AND FACING) 256, 272</td></tr><tr><td>WHEN ALL IS ENDED — LOUIS ARAGON</td><td>241</td></tr><tr><td>VALUTA — MALCOLM COWLEY</td><td>250</td></tr><tr><td>WOODCUT — GONTCHAROVA</td><td>249, 251</td></tr><tr><td>PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE NEW GOD — PAUL STRAND</td><td>252</td></tr><tr><td>APOCALYPTIC HARVEST — YVOR WINTERS</td><td>259</td></tr><tr><td>STAVROGIN'S CONFESSION — FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKI</td><td>260</td></tr><tr><td>ON ENGLISH AND FRENCH FICTION — ARTHUR SYMONS</td><td>273</td></tr><tr><td>MACABRE — CREMATORIUM — JAMES DALY</td><td>284, 285</td></tr><tr><td>THE LAY OF MALDOROR — COMTE DE LAUTREAMONT</td><td>286</td></tr><tr><td>THE FLOWER-SPHYNX — HANS ARP</td><td>302</td></tr><tr><td>THE GREAT AMERICAN BILLPOSTER — MATTHEW JOSEPHSON</td><td>304</td></tr></tbody></table>

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Entered as Second Class matter at the Post Office at New York, N. Y. April 22, 1922 under the Act of March 3, 1879.

HEADQUARTERS, SCHICKLERSTRASSE 5, BERLIN, GERMANY

NEW YORK OFFICE, THREE EAST NINTH STREET.

LONDON OFFICE, CECIL PALMER, OAKLEY HOUSE, 15-18 Bloomsbury St., W. C. I.

THE GREAT AMERICAN BILLPOSTER

The art of a people is a two-edged sword: it spring from the moods and virtues of that people; and it works secretly and mightily to mould the virtues of that people. But we have learned recently to extend the meaning of "art", inasmuch as modern man expresses himself in a far greater variety of manners than did prehistoric or classical man. An ethnological study of a group such as the Americans (of the United States of America) could no longer restrict itself to its politics, sculpture, and mythology; for, thanks to the aggressive application of the arts to new inventions, we find that the automobile is on the road to becoming a thing of beauty and that the advertisements contain the fables of this people. We would, thus, be obliged to observe the motion picture, the sports, the machinery, and many other aspects of the group's behaviour in order to really know its culture.

The prospect of human activities in America is such a rich twisted bottomless thing that it is all we can do to segregate a few aspects of these activities, which, studied in an intensive, localized manner, may yield conclusions applying to our problems.

It has been complained that America lacks an indigenous art, that Americans are not autochthonous enough, that they are a babel of different races. But in reality, America is a milieu, as Professor Santayanna has called it, a distinct "situation," and "Americanism the expression of a present material environment," so that "the immigrants at once feel themselves and actually become typical Americans, more instinct with an aggressive Americanism than the natives of Cape Cod or the poor whites of the South."¹ The difficulty can be found precisely among those Thirty Americans (intellectuals) who contributed to "Civilization in the United States." It has not been perceived by them that there is an informed "material environment" moulding and launching the American type. "Outdoor advertising," they cry, "should be removed from sight with all possible haste."² That they would abolish the billposter is ample proof of their failure to understand the unaffected beauty and wisdom of the American milieu.

¹ Marginal Notes on Civilization in the United States, by G. Santayanna, Dial, June, 1922.

² Civilization in the United States, An Inquiry by Thirty Americans, edited by Harold Stearns (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.)

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America will never enjoy an indigenous art, if, led by its Intellectuals, it adopts approved European methods of living or painting or writing. Poetry in America which imitates British romanticism is as sterile as that which imitates French symbolism is bastard. The prose in America which seeks to emulate the correct cold objectivity of a Flaubert or the ironic naturalism of a Turgenieff takes an equally false direction. An indigenous art is a permanent contribution to the world's knowledge, and an artist whose works are charged with the virtues peculiar to his milieu is an event of the first importance.

It is time to examine our home products sympathetically, to judge if they are not sprouting with an authentic beauty that justifies their outlandish departures from the past or from previous European traditions. (I say "previous" advisedly, because the Old World is become fearfully americanized, what of the "telephone, the trolley-car, the department store and the advertising press," and an American who loves these things is conscious in Europe of a painful nostalgia, whereby the material environment of his country becomes highly tangible and provocative through its very distance from him.)

The problem is, thus, to silence for the moment, the anguished voices of the Thirty Americans and to plunge hardily into that effervescent revolving cacophonous milieu (which not so remotely resembles the Purgatory of Dante), where the Billposters enunciate their wisdom, the Cinema transports us, the newspapers intone their gaudy jargon; where athletes play upon the frenetic passions of baseball crowds, and sky-scrapers rise lyrically to the exotic rhythms of jazz bands which upon waking up we find to be nothing but the drilling of pneumatic hammers on steel girders. We must have poets who have dared the lightning, who come to us out of the heart of this chimera; novelists who express for us its mad humor.

A stranger, nearing the port of New York for the first time and peering anxiously toward this fabulous city, would perceive, as the first indications of its culture and personality, gigantic incandescent messages shooting fitfully over the dark waters: COLGATES ... HECKER'S FLOUR .. AMERICAN SUGAR REFINERY. These solemn auguries of America, passing in brilliant illuminations across the sea, would serve as a majestic prelude to the strange music of this people. Thereafter, in every walk, in every ride in the subway, in every talk with a friend, some meaningful legend, some Open Sesame (as 571) would be thundering softly in the back of his brain.

5

305

There is an uproarious self-assertion, fantastic, audacious, rabelaisian,
if you will, in the following bald statement:

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES

GLORIFIES THE AMERICAN GIRL.

A strong social sense is also to be noted; the suburban wife again, and
her love of a rather standard refinement, a rather uniform loveliness:

SAMPLER INVITES YOU.

— to an altogether unusual experience in sweets

— to a candy package which reflects the quaint odd beauty of
the cross-stitch work of long ago.

The advertisements in newspapers and magazines having over a
hundred thousand circulation reflect the national temperament with great
clairvoyance. The selection of the above specimens was designed to be
suggestive rather exhaustive, reflecting only a few facets of the composite
American type. They came about as the fulfillment of a practical need in
business; they were "successful" advertisements by virtue of their immediacy
to the public pulse, and thus compose a faithful record of the national tastes,
the changing philosophy, the hopes and fears of a people; they compose,
in fact, the "folklore" of modern times.

II.

The most striking conclusion drawn from a study of specimen adver-
tisements is that the American business man, in the short daily time at his
disposal, reads the most daring and ingenuous literature of the age. The
particular restrictions of this medium make for extraordinary ingenuity in
the "copy writer;" the call for vigor of style, conviction, and interest, are
probably more stimulating by far toward creating beautiful conceptions than
an intensive course in Victorian poetry at Harvard University. The terse
vivid slang of the people has been swiftly transmitted to this class of writers,
along with a willingness to depart from syntax, to venture sentence forms
and word constructions which are at times breath-taking, if anything, and
in all cases far more arresting and provocative than 99 per cent of the stuff
that passes for poetry in our specialized magazines. They are a most

309

amiable band of poets, without the piffle of the teacup type, their hair closely trimmed, their shoes thought-inspiring. All design on immortality, on seats in the Academy, all schemes for hoodwinking posterity, have been renounced by them in favor of ample salaries and smoothly running motorcars.

The need for dealing with definite facts, for writing a little poem about an automobile tire or a pair of stockings, lends their work an exotic flavor — exotic, I say, only when viewed externally and objectively, since it is a perfectly indigenous product. Outside of these accidents, their motives, i. e., to sell a story or a belief, to the public, with burning sincerity and vigor of style, closely parallel those of the old minnesingers, or of Shakespeare and Molière, immensely successful "copy-writers" in their day.

Let us consider for a moment Keats' adroit line:

## The beaded bubbles winking at the brim

and also consider the anonymous genius who wrote:

### MEATY MARROWY OXTAIL JOINTS

The motives of these two young men — I take it that the contemporary poet is also young and bears a sensitive and wistful spirit beneath the mask of his closely trimmed hair and his Hart Schaffner Marx suit — the motives are superficially different, since the latter was written for the glorification of Campbell's soup and the former for that of Psyche, but they both arrive at the same end, a line of pure poetry, by the same mental processes. Save that the advertising writer being immune from the blighting attacks of some contemporary Edinburgh Review (surely the Atlantic Monthly would never pay him such unseemly and cruel attentions) can proceed with the utmost freedom in his choice of form or diction to such modern flights as:

> "The velvety clutch responds to the merest pressure . . . the pliant but positive gears engage silently at a touch of the convenient control . . . the compensating spring suspension cushions the car gently over ridge and rut as it clings to its course unwaveringly."

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The rhythm of prose is one of the most intricate problems in all the arts. Here a man has sounded most intriguing and mysterious tempos with a lightness and felicity that is only rarely attained by recognized masters of prose fiction. Simply lovely work. "The pliant but positive gears engage silently..." is a profound utterance, reverberant with meanings and shadows.

At times some anonymous master of prosody bursts into perfect metrical verses, which send the glory of his product ringing and echoing through forty-eight states.

AN HOUR A DAY IN A TWIN SIX
IS LITERALLY A DIFFERENT KIND OF AN HOUR OR A DAY

or an alexandrine like this:

THEIRS IS A TYPE AND KIND OF ENJOYMENT SET APART.

Or they may be at times roguishly paradoxical and nonsensical:

## Frigidaire Adds the Fine Touch to Hospitality

referring fancifully to a refrigerator which keeps food fresh and dry at the same time. Nor do these pioneers hesitate to tamper with the traditional orthography in their quest for new and astonishing effects:

OLFERS should think
first of comfort & servis
The Bretton Woods givs
both and joins with them
a jaunty yet conservativ style
tuch — Soft smokt horse-hide
vamps, calfskin strip saddls
flexibl rubber disk soles

311

The craftmanship of this example is excellent, beginning with the statement of a general principle and ending in a perfect triumph of precisions. The same process can be noted in the following:

VENICE at her best was French, so Paris only borrows from her own for the new Venetian silhouette. Like a little glimpse of Venice at her carnival time come frocks of soft crêpe silks or chiffon velvet fitted slimly to the waistline and flaring in every direction below; taffeta dinner or evening frocks with frilled basques; also frocks of Chéruit wool twill with circular skirts.

The language of modern poetry becomes thus enriched by the use of technical expressions and names which have attained significance in America. One must work more cnunningly in devising a poem, arranging its typography and its stance, than did our predecessors. And when it is remembered that these men must produce new aspects of the same subject constantly and freshly, the formidable intellects at work can be sensed. It is a thrilling business, a fascinating genre, and it is easy to see *why our literature is so impoverished and where the creative genius has all gone*.

Contemporary American writing is at a very uncertain point in its career, bewildered for ways to follow. If our younger writers tend to become more sensitive to the particular qualities in their material environment, one might well imagine their giving and taking fresh stimulus and novelty of the literature of the billposter. What new devices and surprises might come of merely appreciating, for instance, the possibilities of the salesmanship principle for the technique of writing. The advertising columns in America are as "armies with banners."

MATTHEW JOSEPHSON.

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