A POEM BY KILE CROOK

## DESIDERATA

To breathe the sweetly natural air
Admixed with certain city fragrance;
To have the proper thing to wear
And feel superior to vagrants;

In humbleness to serve mankind,---
And reap rewards not over humble;
To uphold the Right; to bear in mind
To get from under should Right tumble;

To seek quite frequently for God
Beneath a neatly Gothic steeple;
To give Him subsidy and laud
In company with pleasant people;

To have the minimum of ills;
To love, perchance, and surely marry;
To procreate and pay my bills
And grace some well-kept cemetery.

YALE

Ezra Pound Papers

A STORY BY JANET LEWIS

A CALL

It was ten o'clock in the morning. Millie Hooper was in the kitchen washing dishes. Her husband drove a milk route, and he was asleep now in the front bedroom. Millie always had a late breakfast by herself, and then washed the breakfast and supper dishes. She left the supper dishes to do in the morning because there was not much housework, and unless she had something to do she was apt to feel lonely. They had not been living there long, and she was not acquainted in the neighborhood.

She rubbed her cheek with the back of her hand. Her face was rather white, but the color came up quickly under the skin for a moment where she had rubbed it. The kitchen was cold. The sun was shining, but it was January, and the light was pale. It gave a silvery gloss to the wet new grass. Across the street she could see a few twigsy plum trees, leafless and small, and far away a line of bending eucalyptus.

The house across the street belonged to a woman who worked for the laundry. Her husband was dead, and her mother lived with her to look after the two little children. Millie sometimes saw the children in the yard, little boys they were, with bleached fair hair. She didn't know the woman. The only person she had spoken to so far in this neighborhood was the old Swedish woman who kept the bees.

It was quiet out here. Her husband liked it because he could get a good sleep in the morning.

One of the dogs came up the outside steps and lay down against the screen door. Someone was coming through the yard. She heard a shuffling on the cement at the foot of the steps, and a cautious unfamiliar voice saying, "Old fellow, yes, yes, old fellow." And a woman with a lined serious face appeared behind the screen door. She stared into the room with a sorrowful intensity and said, "I found a pan that I thought maybe the dogs brought over."

"What's that?"

"I say I found a pan that maybe the dogs brought over, between your house and mine. I thought maybe you set it out with scraps for the dogs, and one of them carried it off. It's a good aluminum pan."

Millie shook the greasy soap and water from her fingers and moved toward the door, wiping her hands on a wet dish towel. "I don't know," she said, "won't you come in?"

"Oh, no, I don't want to bother you. I can show you the pan, and if it's yours you'll know it." The stranger unfolded the top of a brown paper bag and took out a square deep pan. Her hands were brown, and the knuckles large. She held two jonquil stems between the third and fourth fingers of her left hand, and the clustering frail blossoms nodded against the dark wool of her cuff. "Is that your pan ?"

"No," said the younger woman slowly. "That's not mine."

"Well, I wondered whose it was. Seeing as it was nearest your house I thought maybe it was yours... I'm sort of afraid of dogs... I heard you were sick. Hope you're better."

"Oh yes thank you. I had a bad spell when we first got here.

"I see. Mrs. Jonson told me as how you were sick, and I was going to come over to see you, but I had troubles of my own then and thought it wouldn't cheer anyone up to see me." She rubbed a heavy forefinger across dry lips, staring across vacant lots to the row of eucalyptus that stood blurred on the wet air, like trees painted on watercolor on wet paper. She said, "I lost my son. So I've got out of the way of being neighborly."

"Yes, Mrs. Jonson told me," said the other woman, leaning against the door jamb. "I'm real sorry."

"My married son and his wife were home over the week end. I thought maybe it would cheer me up, but somehow it didn't. It only makes...to remind me of how it was when Evan was at home." She had not smiled at all, but now she put her head a little to one side, and smiling said, "I saw one of your dogs in the yard the other day with her head stuck in an old coffee can. She'd shake and shake to get it off, and as soon as she'd get it off she'd put her head back into it again." The smile was brief. The features withdrew into their veil of abstraction.

The younger woman said, "Do you notice how it's always the female that's getting ahold of old cans and the like ?"

"Yes. Yes. Well. It's not exactly as if I'd not lost any children before. This boy's brother, Rod, he went up into the mountains on a school expidition - geologising they were. They all got caught in the snow, and Rod got tired. He couldn't keep up with them, and they left him behind and he was frozen to death. I never can understand how they could leave him like that. People tell me they had to - they all might have been lost."

"So then, when Evan died last fall I could hardly feel reconciled. I don't understand the ways of God." She stared off toward the trees again. The straight forehead, the well-arched nose, the firm mouth, gave a beautiful profile. You could hardly see the features when the full face was turned toward you, so hidden were they by the downward heavy lines in the wrinkled skin. She said, "He was not ready to die. He was an interne. He was going to be a doctor. He got scarlet fever at the contagious ward of the children's hospital."

Millie Hooper could not think of a thing to say.

The older woman fumbled with the paper, clumsily putting the pan back in the bag. She said, "Well, it's a nice pan. I could keep it, but I don't need it. I didn't mean to make a call on you. Step by and see me sometime when you're out." She smiled again, as if every muscle in her face were wrenched to set that brief spark in her eye. Millie Hooper said, "I will. Do come again."

The caller nodded and moved down the steps. The dog watched her without moving. She gestured toward him with a forefinger, and went on slowly. At the end of the drive she paused, looking up and down the road, then turned to the right and moved out of view.

Millie Hooper went back to her dishes. When she had rinsed out the dish-towels, she went into the yard to hang them on the wire between the house and the garage. In her neighbor's yard the white chickens were walking about among the green. They were crescents of white, the horns pointing upward, and now and again one horn, the head would dip quickly forward, making of the crescent a curved form for which Millie had no name. When the towels were hung and pinned she sat down on the back steps and spread out her hands to the faint sunlight as if to warm them. The dog, lying on the cement with its chin on its paws, regarded her wisely. She thought of her neighbor, and the conviction came into her mind that she had seen the motions of a soul, like a hand with stiffened muscles opening and shutting by will, slowly. It was a strange thought for Millie Hooper, and it held her quietly, for several moments.

Then she said to the dog, with a shake of her head, "She takes it hard."

D. ULICK SULLIVAN

THE MAN WHO SHOT HIS MOTHER

Scene: A poorly furnished attic room with a large sky
light. There are two doors at the back; one leading to
a narrow hall and the other to a shallow closet. There
are two more doors at the right leading to the bedroom.
There is a table in the center of the room.

Two women are seated on each side of the table. Rosa,
Louis' wife, is still young. She appears drab and plain
and her face is thin and drawn. She is sewing a gaudy
red uniform that belongs to her husband. Nanna, Louis'
mother is a small thin woman with a hard wrinkled face
and sharp eyes. She speaks in a complaining voice.

Nanna: Haven't you finished yet? Tonight's dress re-
hearsal and Louis will have to wear his uniform. You've
been at it for more than an hour.

Rosa: Where's Louis gone?

Nanna: He's gone out to buy an old mattress. I sent
him.

Rosa: A mattress?

Nanna: Yes. It's to put in the closet to stop the
bullets.

Rosa: But Louis isn't going to practice up here?

Nanna: Yes, he is.

Rosa: But why?

Nanna: Because he won't practice anywhere else. Unless
I watch him he won't work at all.

Rosa: But the circus opens tomorrow night.

Nanna: Of course it does. But it will open without
your smart husband if something isn't done. Last night
at the rehearsal he missed the target again and again.

Rosa: But he tries------

Nanna: Bah! The manager said he wanted a sharp shooter,
not a clown.

Rosa: But you always nag at him so.

Nanna: And if I didn't what would happen to us all. You
two are alike---weak and shiftless. But I'll give him
will power. I can twist him around my little finger.

Rosa: I won't listen to all that again.

Nanna: You won't listen? You're a fool, Before I'm
finished I'll make him throw you out into the streets
where you came from.

Rosa: You won't---

Nanna: Oh, I won't? But you're not worth the trouble.
Your poor heart, my daughter!

The door opens and Louis struggles in with an old mat-
tress. He is tall and good looking in a week, insipid
way. He talks in a loud voice.

Louis: I had a devil of a time getting this thing up
the stairs. All this bother!

Nanna: Bother! You talk of bother. Put it in the
closet.

Louis: This is a nuisance. I could practice at the
circus without all this trouble.

Nanna: You know you wouldn't do anything out of my
sight. You will be losing your job the first thing.
They tell me you didn't hit the target more than twice
last night. That's a fine performance. Where is your
gun?

Louis: At the circus.

Nanna: Well, get it. It won't take you more than five
minutes. You're going to spend the afternoon here.

Rosa: But Louis promised to take me to the clinic.

Nanna: That can wait. If Louis loses his job his poor
mother will have to beg. Hurry! What are you waiting
for?

Louis goes out.

Rosa: Why did you send him. You know I must go to the
clinic this afternoon. Dr. Mortini, the heart special-
ist is going to be there today and I ---

Nanna: Stop whining and go yourself.

Rosa: I *will* go.

Nanna: Good. I hope they keep you there.

Rosa: You--- Laugh at me! I hate you. You have made my life a hell, you have killed my life for Louis. Oh, I hate you.

Nanna: That's right. Work yourself into a rage. You won't need a clinic if this keeps up.,

Rosa: And when I'm gone you can have him. You can have him all for yourself. But you won't -----

She pushes her into the closet and shuts the door. Rosa pushes against the door with a great deal of effort and manages to close it. She locks it and walks to the shelf at the left and takes a large target which she hangs on the door. She returns to her chair and takes up her sewing.

Louis enters.

Louis: Where is Nanna?

Rosa does not answer.

Louis: Rosa, where is Nanna?

Rosa: She went out.

Louis, getting a small chair: You don't mind about the clinic?

Rosa: No.

Louis: Do you feel better?

Rosa: Yes. Why don't you begin?

Louis: I think I'll start with the one where I shoot backwards looking in the mirror.

He sits downstage, facing front, with his back to the closed door. He places the gun over his shoulder and finds the target by looking in a small mirror which he holds in his hand. He fires several shots in rapid succession. Rosa sits tensely with her hands clenched at the side of her chair.

JAMES THRALL SOBY

ANDRE DERAIN AND THE FRENCH TRADITION

Derain's reputation in America is great but qualified
by a certain disappointment in his reversion to the French
tradition. He is reproached here for having abandoned
abstract painting and for the unevenness of his work. The
fact that, since the war, he has given up distortion in many
pictures is a fact which does not bother the French for whom
he is an accepted master. In Paris, he is regarded as the
leader of the school opposed to Picasso and the abstraction-
ists, the man who has rescued from decorative sterility the
younger artists who hadn't the genius of Picasso and Braque
to bring to abstract painting. No less a figure than Derain
could have given artists the courage to follow their own
talents in the face of so compelling a prestige as cubism
had. Without Derain, the most revolutionary movement of the
last century, could easily have become an academic necessity
for artists not wishing to be classed as archaic. Without
Derain, the hypothesis that representation was not necessary,
would probably have become, that representation was fatal
to art. It seems possible that from the romantic revival
now starting in Paris with such young men as Berman and
Tchelitchew, men who affirm the importance of the object in
painting, there will emerge several great artists. Certainly,
cubism, having produced three masters, Picasso, Braque, and
Leger, was when Derain gave it up, an inspiration for nothing
but imitation.

To the French, Derain is so well known a personality
that he is not reproached there for the obvious negligence
of some of his work. He has come to be regarded in Paris as
the very type of traditional French painter, devoted to
painting in the complete way in which Renoir was devoted.
Derain is an artist with the temperament of a Gauguin and the
knowledge of a Leonardo. There are many legends about him in
Paris, all agreeing that his culture is astounding and his
indifference to opinion more so. A dealer once told me that
Derain would continue working while buyers were selecting
pictures. "Choose them yourself," he would say. "They buy
them all, good and bad alike." Artistic conscience ends with
his duty toward his finished pictures. If dealers wish to
clean his studio of fragments and experiments, the fault is
with the dealers. In Paris where literary discussion of
painting has become nauseatingly precocious, Derain's atti-
tude is refreshing. He is the artist Georges Rouault longed
for when he said, "Je rêve le role de l'artiste silencieux."

When Derain came to Paris, the Impressionists were
losing influence, and after a short period of experimenting
with broken colour, Derain joined the group of Fauves led by
Matisse in a revolt against the mistiness of Monet and his
followers. Matisse's exhibition of 1906 was the first in the
history of art in which design was deliberately substituted
for representation and Derain did much in the years 1908-1911
to break down the academic prejudice against distortion.

But the violent palette of the Fauves was much better suited to Matisse and Dufy than to Derain, and after a term of inspiration by Gauguin and Van Gogh Derain subdued his coloring into the earth tones which have characterized him ever since. He hadn't as Matisse had, the genius for arranging arabesques of color into satisfying compositions. Thus his famous nude group of about 1909 seems stiff and archaic beside the rhythmical, flowing panels of Matisse. What was important for Derain in the Fauve doctrine was the principle that implied perspective was enough. Rather than resort to chiaroscuro or to excessive modeling, he was content to suggest depth by raising far objects in the picture to the top of the canvas. Once he had renounced the Fauvistic method of design for more solid construction, he was free, being satisfied with the implied perspective, to paint a series of still-lifes which, while deliberately flat, have an elemental strength he has not since equaled.

Cezanne was the inevitable master for him to follow in an effort to get away from the decoration of the Fauves. Derain, before anyone else, appreciated the spatial construction of Cezanne, and it is characteristic of Derain's suspicion of literary dogma that he accepted the whole technique rather than the formula of the "cube, the cone, and the cylinder" which started cubism. He became absorbed with architectural subject matter. Of the Cezanne-inspired pictures, the "Old Bridge" in the Dale Collection is probably the best example. In this picture the arrangement of receding architectural planes is direct from Cezanne, but on the wall of the left foreground traces of the Fauve period linger in broad color patches. During the Cezanne years he was interested in mediaeval mosaics and the combination of influences made the years 1910-1913 the most fertile epoch of his life. For classic severity and strength there are few pictures of our time to equal the landscapes and still-lifes of these years. The period was the climax of his classical development.

Possibly for relief from the classical rigidity of these sources, he turned during these same years to Cimabue and Giotto and was attracted by their warm humanity. The religious simplicity of the Primatives fascinated him. He painted a huge "Last Supper" which now hangs behind the altar of a Chicago church, an incredibly warm and luminous picture. In 1911 he did the "Joueur de Cornemuse", a pastoral landscape in which the architectonic severity of Cezanne is tempered by the lyric naivete of Giotto. Per spective in this picture as in the "Martigues" of the same year was achieved by making the foreground a short hill from which one looks down and into the background. His art grew increasingly complicated. Savage imagery was being revealed to Europe by the craze for negro sculpture. Derain derived much of his metier from a study of fetishes and idols. He had a short lived try at cubism but his essentially French conscience was apparently bothered by the loss of reverence for objects which cubism implied. The War ended his philandering among abstruse sources.

Since the War, Derain has reverted to the French masters. From Corot and Lorraine he has evolved a series of landscapes the best of which are outstanding in our century. The most satisfying one in America is the "Southern France" in the Duncan Phillips collection. It has a clarity, a strength of earth set off by delicate trees which make it an impressive picture. Derain has returned to three dimensional painting, to modeling carefully. There are heads of these late years in which Chardin, Courbet, and Renoir all meet in what is nevertheless Derain's own creation. I am personally most attracted by the portraits in which Derain has consciously sought a smoothness of texture in the paint itself, heads derived from Chardin and Corot. But there have come to this country recently some heads of children done in the bravura methof of Manet which are frequently quite brilliant. In his recent nudes, he is constantly reminiscent of the Baroque and Renaissance masters. They have an affluence of expression which makes one think of the involved baroque designs. But his greatest late pictures may conceivably turn out to be those in which he has returned once more to architecture, though in an utterly different manner. In some of his recent pictures of buildings in landscapes, light and shade are handles with abstract force which coordinates the scenes into lasting and impassive beauty.

POEMS BY HARVEY FOSTER

PORTRAITS

1

we had known her years,
and yet we knew her not at all.
the strangeness persisted

and grew greater. her words
were periods of thought
pregnant with immense ideas

which sometimes stayed and sometimes went
from the narrow space beneath our skulls
in the swift moment.

she shattered the dawn
with words that screamed
against the complacent universe;

of this country, an acidulous line,
american civilization------
three bronze monkeys. see no evil.

hear no evil. speak no evil.
she spoke of evanescent things,
rare silks, perfumes,

strange arts, the magi,
and the forgotten lure
of the sea. as in a mirror

figures merging to disappear,
leaving the impression distant
upon our waxlike minds.

we knew her, and we knew her not.
she was like music, red music
wavering beyond horizons.

2

tenuously prehensile, his mind
straddles the world of aesthetics,
and ex cathedra he delivers

stupendous ultimatums to the world.
the body and the mind,
life and its quest

he strips to the infinite atom.
the peonies of the earth
crawl about his feet. he sees them not.

a miserable living. They perched in a dingy hen coop
on the fourth floor, living on half-rotten food. Her
children were born. Naomi and Vior; then Dan.
But what was it all. She wanted more. something else,
a fullness---what did she want? She opened a dress
making shop; she went t' night school; she attended
lectures, meetings; she worked in the labor movement---
Her husband could never see any sense in her interests.
Why should a woman go to evening school? To meetings?
Talk foolishness! The house! Why doesn't she keep the
house spotless? "Today is a holiday; you ought to
tidy the house. Put on your fine dress and dress the
children. If it's a holiday, let it be a holiday.
Your father was a rabbi. I think I talk practical. "

"I work in the sweat shop; the dust settles in my
lungs. My wind pipe is dry; my throat is parched.
Have tea ready for me when I come home!

"The house isn't tidy. This chair isn't in the
right place. There is a spot on the floor---I'd kiss
your hands and feet if you only kept the house spot-
less. I think I talk practical--- You used to be such
a wonderful house wife."

"Do you want tea? The house isn't spotless? What
are you anyway? I work, too. I earn more than you d
You aren't learned---you hardly make a living. A left
handed misfit, that's what you are, a nagging nuisance."

As Esther walked in the deepening twilight disgust
crowded back into her consciousness. Slime and slime.
He would stand on the street corner, talking to the
neighbors with his straggling gestures. He would stand
in the doorway, day after day, talking about her. They
looked at her as she passed them---she felt their looks-
their clinging slimy looks, she could feel them on her
flesh---green slime that sank in deeper and deeper.
She walked past them, head erect, with the blush of
angered pride. But the slime sank in.

The only one Esther complained to was her sister
Anna in Trenton. She poured out her bitterness to Anna
when she visited her about once a month. But she shut
herself in from all the others. The unbearable outer
touch---something that was sacred beyond seven fences.
She wouldn't speak to him for days; then she would try
to make it up with her. "Why don't you call them into
the bedroom?" she would answer. "Why don't you go
among them naked?" He promised to kiss her hands and
feet and not do it anymore. But after the next quarrel
he was down on the street agian scattering his sorrows
on the winds. She withdrew into her pride, pent up her
bitterness.

Esther walked with tense quick steps, her head bent, staring through the pavement. She still walked on. She had gone straight ahead, passing one street after another, forgetting to turn. She was approaching the railroad station, hurrying, fleeing from something, from nothing, from dark images within.

The yellow station---she doesn't go in---the train comes whistling, roaring---a woman---the woman stands outside the station---the corner of her eye---the corner of her eye watches Esther---but cunningly she looks straight ahead---the shrewd corner of the suspicious eye watches. A brakeman---his gait mocks her---he pretends her---but she knows---his arms swing to and fro, to and fro---his hips move, his shoulders jerk under his blue uniform, to and fro---it means her---

The yellow station. No had she come here? And why? Instead of turning down the side street she had gone straight ahead. Go back. It's foolish. That woman didn't watch her, and the brakeman didn't mock. What puts these ideas into her head? She hurried on.

Her father---instantly she knew it wasn't---her father come back she thought for the fraction of a moment, appalled by the same changed semblance. A black-bearded pale-faced man went by. It seemed that his eyes were dark and glistening.

"You heathen," her father had cried and struck her in the face. She had bought a detective story on Friday and at night, after her parents were asleep, she had lighted the candle in her room and read. Then the door was flung open and her father stood before her. He struck her in the face. "Father, I couldn't help it," she sobbed. "The eye of the Lord does not slumber." he said. Then she had cried all night. It was three sins---three dark sins in one. But she had loved him. It took her breath: her father in the room, the candle flickering, and the night deaf beyond the open door. A year later he was dead.

So at fourteen she was the orphan of the rabbi, the ward of the community. She was called "Queen Esther" - the name her father had given her. If he had lived! But what was the sense of that? Esther hurried on, her father beside her, unseen, incorporeal, a breath out of the past. How far she had strayed from his paths---but in the search of her own pattern, on the trail of her own vision. What had become of her inner firmness, her faith in that ecstatic fullness of time? In his watery voice, and raising wrinkles across his forehead, hef husband would say, "Your father was a rabbi---I think I talk practical" as if it were the last word. He would stand on the street corner, again talking to slimy-eyed people. Why hadn't she left him at that time? She kept postponing it. The children---

the shop---she kept putting it off. Something held her back. "Your father was a rabbi" he used to say.

Then came Marino. He came to board with them and brought in books on anarchism. The two of them sat up late, reading. It was new, it was fascinating, Marino, the olive skinned messenger of the sun. And he told her about Italy, the blue blossom of the earth, the everlasting blue of the sky. Sun, sun, and always sun. She was expanding, forging ahead, She spoke at workers' meetings and standing on a soap box addressed groups on street corners. It was a living period, and Marino read to her late into the night. He told her about the bay of Naples, the smouldering Vesuvius, the everlasting pillar of fire. "You are like the sky in Sorrento. Your eyes are like bowls of flame."

Her husband always went to bed early. He had to workmin the sweat shop. The work wrenched his muscles apart and the air fogged his brain. He had to sleep. Besides, that was all foolishness.

Then came that sudden panic, that ghastly break-- She lay beside Marino, hushed, relaxed, far off. She heard a stifled cry, as from a strangled throat. The anguish of the void came upon her, the terror of dis-solution. She sat up; her husband stood in the door-way with his hand on his heart. They stared at each other. "What's happening here?" "What's happening here?" he stammered. She sat rigidly in the dim light, her body lame in the grip of her panic, staring at the ghostly ridiculous figure in the dark doorway.

Esther stopped and stood on the sidewalk, dis-traught, planted there like a mad thought stiffened into flesh, mangled by invisible lacefations.

People---people---watching again---jostling her significantly. Looks darting in on her, surrounding her, meaningful shoulders---remarks. She hurried away---away from them. Then she jumped off the bed and had locked herself in the bathroom till the morn-ing. Two weeks later she left. She didn't speak to anyone during those miserable two weeks. Her husband stood on the street. Slime, slime and slime. She slipped and floundered. Her vision wavered. "The daughter of a rabbi." She left the store closed for the whole two weeks. She cried when she dressed the children in their holiday clothes--- "You neglect them." he always used to say. "They are neglected, how will they grow up, a child should grow up right. I think I talk practical." Had she neglected them? She took them with her.

Then her last idol. Supreme emancipation! Free-dom! She had confidence in her own strength. She went to live in her sister's house in Trenton---a temporary

concession. She would establish herself. She would provide for her children. Alone. A gardener in her own garden, to plant and weed out---fragrance and color. All her own. She wrote to Marino.

Then came defeat. Blow after blow. Obstacles, frustrations, miscarried plans. She went to work. Long hours, poor pay. She had to share expenses with her sister. No word from Marino. She held out. She borrowed money and opened her own place. She failed. Defeat stood like a wall, impervious, immovable as if directed, managed by unknown powers that set traps, frustrated attempts, built walls, pulled strings, fastened cords, tied her down until she was bound, hand and foot bound, brain bound. Her idols! All had been futile, foolish. Schools, strivings, talking on street corners, Marino, freedom.

Then came hatred. Hatred of allmmen. "They want only one thing" she said to her daughters. "Hate them." The hatred of Marino, of her husband. Her husband, the chew-prattler, the nagger - misfit, who had destroyed her life. She will make him pay. She sent her sister to ask him to support the children. He wanted to see them. After they visited him, he sent some money for a time. Then he stopped. She would have him jailed. She would make him pay. But she still had no work and there were the children.

Then came the Big Sisters. No, they had been in it before, from the beginning, lurking in the background, the concealed power, directing, planning. Surrounding her. Even before she applied to them. No, her thoughts were running astray. No. That was impossible. How could they have done anything before they knew her? Here she was in the park. She would arrange her thoughts calmly on the bench under a tree, surrounded by the quiet darkness, brooded over by the faded dusky sky, twinking stafs, trembling street lights. Still there was something evil in the twinkling and something cunning in the lights.

Mrs. Grüner had suggested that she apply to the Big Sisters for help. Mrs. Grüner, the widow who had been helped by the Big Sisters. Down trodden and bruised, perplexed and weary, Esther applied to them. For advise, for help, for work, for support from her husband. "Mrs. Hale, we have investigated your case thoroughly and have given it careful consideration. We advise you to return to your husband." The anguish of the void, the terror of dissolution, of plunging through space. She began to stammer and gasp. "Do you think---why---I---do you---" "Calm yourself, Mrs. Hale. Collect yourself. It is the right thing before God and man." The Sister visited her again and appealed to her feelings. But it would be hideous. It would be humiliation, self-effacement, suicide. Why had she applied to them! Yet she felt bound to work out her

own salvation with their approval. She had to seek them out. Tossed, torn to get away, she was drawn back, driven to them. She brooded, she meditated. "Anna" she would ask her sister, "shall I go back? What do you say? Shall I go back?" But Anna could not advise her. And the Sister spoke to people who knew Mrs. Hale. To the neighbors, to the grocer, to the people she worked for and to her daughters. "Mother, we shall have to marry when we grow up. Let's go back to father." And the Sisters found all about her past, about her father. The Sister spoke to her urgingly, appealingly. And then came the dark figures; a host of them - "thou shallt" - shapes, stern with a scowl, stern with accusing finger, the words of the Lord on their lips. Against false gods, false idols. Then rose the shadow, scarlet and ink black. The shadow over the battle between casting out and building in, between right and wrong, between what had been and what was to come. She was guilty. Why? What was she guilty of? No. She had no cause to shrink, to wince penitently. "If your sins were red as scarlet---" The shadow, scarlet and ink black, rose, expanded till others could see it. Then did people begin to make remarks about her, cast meaningful glances, cunningly, shrewdly, obviously. But no! She was only upset. She knew that it was a mistake, that her thoughts were only running astray.

Esther sat on the bench surrounded by darkness. Steps, steps, steps. Someone. Someone was coming. Passing by. He turns his head towards her. He watches, and he knows. He passes. He turns his head again. He knows scarlet and ink black. Steps, steps, steps, mocking, grinning. Home! Escape home! Home!

She got up from the bench and hurried away. They knew, they knew. She felt it. How could they? But somehow they did. Intangibly. The evil stars twinkled twinkled. She passed through a lighted street. The evil lights trembled. People. She was marked. They could all read it on her. Her soul was open. They could all read in it. Her sins, her guilt. She tried to cover herself, hide her face, avoid their eyes, shrink, contract her outspread soul. Cover it, hide it. She turned. What was it? No. Inconceivable. Were her thoughts running astrat? She'll go home to rest. To rest up.

There! Under the lamp. An onslaught. An attach of watching. She---the woman who used to stand in the doorway in New York and talk about her. Disguised--- flaming red hair and eyes, looking to the bone--- talks to a man standing beside her---a detective looks, looks to the bone - a detective - ah - she is being followed - she rushes into her house.

"Esther, where have you been so long? I was worried,
where—"

She looks at her sister, silent, her sister—
Anna embraces her. "What's the matter, Esther? Oh,
Esther!"

The Big Sister came to visit Mrs. Hale. She wants
to go out but she stays. The Sister talks - an outflow
of influence - a body binding, body twisting outflow -
an ache in the back - gnawing - pang - tormenting,
wrenching, lacerating --

"Why do you come here to give me an ache in the back?

"But Mrs. Hale—"

"Yes, why? Why?"

The Sister leaves. But the ache stays, wrenches.
Oh, her enemies! She does her house work, brooding, mute.
She does not return to her job.

"Anna, shall I go back to him? Shall I?"

"Esther, I don't know."

Chicken, chicken, chicken - for breakfast, dinner
and supper.

"Mother, why do you always give use chicken to eat? "

Chicken - white meat, pure meat.

"Eat chicken," say voices.

Coffee, coffee, coffee. Black, ink black.

"Drink coffee."

Watching, lurking-men behind corners, passersby,
detectives, voices. But how could it be? It is all false.
A self deception. How could they know her? "hy should they
watch? She weighs, sifts, analyzes. Looks, gestures, al-
lusions, hints - the red-haired women - detectives, voices.
How? Why? What is behind it all? The question drums, in-
sists, reverberates. The body twisting out flow - the
wrenching in the back. "The sisters!" They plan to violate
her, they concentrate upon her. They had lured her on with
Mrs. Gruner. They track her down, surround her, send
influences on her, voices.

"Anna, the Sisters send detectives after me! They
track me down! "

Anna locks - to the bone - body - binding, back-aching outflow.

"You too ate in league with them - you too give me an ache in my back. You and Naomi and Viola! Oh, all my enemies! "

Moods surge up, moods flow back. Days and days. Detectives. Her husband, the chew-prattler, the misfit. The horror of the void. Scarlet and black.

Moods flow back, moods surge up, Ah, he is a good man, self-sacrificing. A letter comes to life, that he wrote long ago. "I am working. I will send you my first savings, and you will come to America, and you will be queen of the house, Queen Esther." The letter shines, it sings. A longing rises to go to him. And guilt, penitence.

Shifting moods for days and days. The chew-prattler, the misfit.

The poor man suffered and endured bitter pain. The children - how he had received them. She sees him on his knees, hugging the children with trembling hands. A broken man - "Oh, my children, my beautiful children."

Longing rises and swells. She is driven, mad, flustered - with the confused noises of her enemies behind her - to him.

"Come to father with me, Dan. We are going back."

The train rattles, whistles, grinds. Back to New York. Back to him. She goes from compartment to compartment.

"Mamma, why do we have to get up again? "

"Don't be afraid, Dan. We'll escape them. We are going back to Daddy."

In the hush of the night, when the street is empty, she enters the old house. She stands, she knocks.

"Who is that?"

She does not answer.

"Daddy!"

The door opens. He. The vivid newness of the old countenance invades her. The same-changed face. The vision is of sobbing intensity. It exults, sobs, it permeates infinitely. The father-god. Here she comes, the reclaimed sinner, exalted in her penitence, tortured by

the exultant joy of her conversion. Here she is bare-
footed, with ashed in her hair, her soul bleeding out
of a thousand rejoicing wounds. Here she is in the
bedlamite ecstacy of her lacerated soul - she speaks
not, thinks not - she know not, answers not - only
pours forth her ineffable emotion in an endless flow
of tears.

"Where is Naomi? Viola? "

She weeps and weeps.

Years. Years and years of ceaseless pursuit, of
planned persecution and torture by her enemies, the
vice-sister-gang and masked evil-doers. Voices have
multiplied and magnetic body-wrenchings and star-shafted
concentrations. Poison lurks in the food, Beaten and
helpless, she withdraws into her room where for days
she writhes on her bed in filth, suffering thirst and
hunger. Her husband comes home and rails at her.

"You lie in bed all the time! You are dirty, you
are filthy. Sit up. I think I talk practical. You
are a pig. The house is dirty. You don't cook. I
think I talk practical. Get up. You won't? Eh? You
won't answer? Eh? You try to spite me? Eh? Good for
nothing! Marino! Eh? You want Marino? I'll give you
Marino!" And he beats and kicks her. But she draws
herself together and is silent, for she knows it is not
he. It is a disguised enemy, a wicked false-shape-taker.
Her husband is kind, self-sacrificing. He and an. But
ah, her daughters, her daughters!

And when hunger gnaws into her flesh deeply, with
pangful unbearable lacerations, alone, she steals down
to the street and buys eggs where nobody knows her.
Seven eggs. But on her way back her enemies surround her,
roll out her soul and trample it with scarlet and ink
black heels. She tries to roll it together, but they
draw it apart with magnetic forces. They send influences
roaring down from the skies in long buzzing shafts that
cross and recross, converge and jointly perforate her.
They send rumbling noises out of the molten guts of the
sky-earth: "Esther-Monkey-Hell-Queen", to broadcast her
humiliation. She hurries back into her house and cooks
the eggs. There, only there, inside it is safe from her
enemies' poison behind the pure white shell. And again
she withdraws.

But voices reach her even in her room. Coarse
laughter.

"Slattern, your place is in the water closet."
Loud whispering. "Now she would like to eat." "Now
she is afraid of poison." Days and days of silent
resignation, of beaten helpless.

But when they catapult swirling dirt-thought-
thought ~ thought into her reeling brain, when they
drill her back with double magnetic daggers of stolen
sunlight, when they fill her throat with smoke-voices,
and claw out her soul with to-blowings of screeching
slanderings and calumniations, when they whore her, when
they put her under the spell of the red wrecking beast -
she rises from her bed, ghastly, horrified.

"What do you want of me? I made peace with you
seven years ago. I atoned seven years ago, "what do you
want of me? I atoned, I returned."

She lies prostrated on the floor and a ghastly light
bursts upon her; all had been her enemies' doing. She
had been innocent. They had led her astray. They had
made her worship idols, stabbed into her soul magenta-
wicked sins. They had tried to plant dissension between
her and her husband, tried to separate them with treach-
erous cunning, to torture them, the all righteous-chosen
ones. And when her husband returned at night, she ap-
proached him humbly, meek as a lamb.

"Poor man, they made you suffer too."

"I'd kiss your hands and feet if you'd only take care
of the house!"

But she weeps and weeps.

The doctor was in the next room... Doctor? A false-
shape-taker, one of her enemies in disguise.

"Ten years," says her husband to him. Her husband?
Another false-shape-taker. But "it's aeons," say the
voices. For aeons has she been suffering, she the
champion, of the righteous, of the truth. Incurably
mad! To be taken to the asylum! She understood it all.

Now they are preparing their final blow, now will
they tear her away from her husband, the all-righteous
one, the father-god, now had their emissary spoken,
now will her tortures be multiplied. She will be !
beset by them, delivered into their hands for unheard
of suffering.

He hath come to dwell within her. He revealeth Him-
self in the uproarious joy of her body, he manifesteth
Himself in the ecstatic swoon of her soul. Golden-white-
star-twinkling voices. A great revelation issueth forth
from Him. Amid thunder and lightening speaketh the Lord
of Hosts, out of the ringing sunlight of His glory.
Verily is she the prophetess, daughter of King David,
the daughter of the Almighty God.

HERBERT S. SCHVARTZ

BIOGRAPHY AND MEANING

A recent interpretative biography of Bach* unwittingly recalls an old aesthetic problem: the relation of an artist's personal experience to his art. For the author, who is a musician, that relation is very simple; Art is an expression of personal experience. Bach was an expressed Protestant, but he was a Pietist at heart, which is to say that he believed in a kingdom of heaven on earth, that he could not reconcile popular oppression with Christianity. Feeling this way about religion (and religion was the focal point of his experience), the composer was obliged to work for officials who used religion to exploit the masses. His music is primarily the expression of this conflict. If Bach had composed only instrumental music, he would have felt no need to disguise what he had to say; the abstractness of music would have taken care of that. But, as it was, he was chiefly engaged in choral music which involved words, and words were dangerous under the circumstance. To communicate Bach's meaning they had to be used symbolically. Accordingly, we must discern the meaning in the symbols which disguise it if we are to understand the composer. The biographer shows how music and words together furnish the key to this symbolism.

Whether these conclusions are justified or not is unimportant to the general problem. It is sufficient that they might be. The relevant question is, granted that the biographical interpretation is corroborated by the music, such corroboration illuminates the composer more than mere biography, does it follow that his music is correspondingly illuminated? Is the relation of art to personal experience so direct that the understanding of one requires knowledge of the other? In a word, must we know Bach's religious conflict in order to understand his music, as the biographer seems to believe?

The answer is a little complicated by the nature of choral music with which the biographer is chiefly concerned. To the extent that the composer is responsible for the arrangement of the words in a chorale, its relation to his life is the relation of a poem to a poet's life: chorale and poem may communicate the same specific doctrinated belief. It is that relation which Mr. Boughton elucidates in the case of Bach. His interpretation is completely verbal. It is irrelevant musically only because it deals with the musician's experience.

*Bach The Master* by Rutland Boughton. Nabers

That he tells us about Bach, Each himself could have told us directly in words, if circumstances had permitted it. But we are not interested in Bach, the writer, His significance is not literary, or religious, but musical.

About the relation between the composer's belief we are told nothing. The "musical realism" which Mr. Boughton sees in sinuous passages which represent the devil, triplets which represent the hovering of angels & etcetera, is, more accurately, musical perversion. It uses the musical idiom for a purpose which is extra-musical. Indeed, without the aid of words, that purpose would never be intelligible. The instrumental music has no such props, and even in music written to words it is highly questionable to identify musical meaning with the hovering of angels and the contortions of devils, admitting that such "realism" was intentional.

And yet, it is undeniable that Bach's music is intimately related to his religious experience. Mr. Boughton neglects that more fundamental (and more important) relationship because in his preoccupation with choral music he ignores the qualities and limitations of musical idiom.

Fundamentally musical expression is emotional. Its substance is the emotional attitude which is communicated by configurations of tone in relation to each other. Musical form is the relationship. It shows at once how these attitudes are coherent and compatible. Music is conceptual, but it is so only in terms of its substance, in the sequence and conclusion of the emotional attitudes.

An emotional attitude is a response which has no intrinsic connection with its stimulus. Consequently, music, which is only concerned with such attitudes, can not communicate any stimuli, physical or conceptual. It may be true that Each was trying to communicate his specific religious belief, as the biographer suggests, but insofar as he was trying to do that, his effort was not musical. This is not to deny the personal importance of the composer's religion, but to insist on the limitations of an idiom. Each, the musician, was willy-nilly working in terms of emotional response to verbalized concepts (when he was concerned with them at all), and not in terms of these concepts. We, the listeners to his music, are willy-nilly apprehending it in terms of a similar response. We don't need to know his ideas to understand his music. In fact, the danger in knowing them is that we may mistake them for the meaning of the music. We can apprehend the emotional attitude of religion, but we can never apprehend Protestantism, or Pietism, in music. Each's musical value is not in the expression of a particular religious creed, but (again when it is at all concerned with that), in the emotion of his conviction, in other emotion related to it, and in an attitude toward experience which the relationship indicates.

This peculiar limitation of musical meaning is less
of a disadvantage that it might seem. It outlews ideas,
as we commonly understand them, but for that very reason
its conceptual communication is more accessible. Of
course it is correspondingly less complete. A great poem
not only presents a satisfactory relationship of emotion:
it establishes a satisfactory relationship between
emotion and verbalized experience. But by its inclusion
of verbalized experience it usually depends on verbal-
ized belief: Dante's Christianity, Milton's Theological
Puritanism, Wordsworth's "nature," &cetera. The read-
er need not accept the belief permanently, but he must
accept it tentatively to understand the poetry.* The
belief is an integral part of the poem, and the reader
who ignores it can not appreciate the poet's experience.
But poetry is not philosophy, and poetic validity does
not depend on valid belief. It is enough to accept the
port's belief in connection with his poem. As with a
musician, we are not interested in the belief, but in its
effect. The poetic idiom includes relationship to
specific verbal concepts: the poetic experience accord-
ingly includes that specific relationship. The musical
idiom avoids such concepts, and accordingly musical
experience requires no tentative belief. Musical exper-
ience is abstracted emotion which appeals to the
abstracted emotion of the listener. In poetry the
validity of the belief is unimportant: in music there
is no sign of any..

And yet, in another sense, music always communicates
belief, music is always conceptual. But, as I have said,
the concept is necessarily in terms of its emotional
substance. It is belief in the sense of an attitude
toward experience, a belief indicated by the relation-
ship of emotion. Thus Bach's belief in this sense is
the unquestionable rightness of life, Beethoven's the
dual necessity of will and resignation, Brahm's the
acknowledgment of futility with the (pathetic) necessity
to strive nevertheless. It is significant that his
attitude toward experience, distinguished from belief
in its religious sense, is also a permanent quality of
important poetry. The reader need not be convinced by
Dante's theology, but if he rejects its more fundamental
dualism, The Divine Comedy is meaningless to him. That
same dualism is communicated in a Beethoven string quart-
et without any reference to theology. Similarly,
Wordsworth's "nature" is more fundamentally an affirma-
tion of the rightness of life, an affirmation which is
more convincing when it comes to us unrationalized in a
Bach suite. It is not necessary to believe in the
revelations of nature to understand Wordsworth, any more
than it is necessary to be a Pietist to understand Bach.
But without the belief in the rightness of life, poet and
composer are incomprehensible.

*Cf. I.A.Richards, *The Principles of Literary Criticism*. The belief communicated by the words in Bach's choral works is to be accented in the same way.

**Some Problems of Musical Criticism** Part II.
Hound and Horn, April, 1931.

The bus rolled up and stopped with a jerk. Jim
fumbled in the ragged lining of his overcoat pocket
for a car check. He fingered it with a feeling of
relief. Small shreds of tobacco caught in his finger
nails. The bus was crowded, he had to stand. His
fingers clutched tightly around the wooden bar that was
fastened to the roof of the bus. His coat sleeve
pulled back leaving his wrist exposed. Jim felt ashamed
of its thinness. He watched all the people sitting
stiffly on each side of the bus. He raised his eyes to
the row of colored advertisements that ran the length
of the bus. Tooth paste, Lucky Strikes, California
Oranges, County Trust Company, Wilkins Moving Vans,
Smith - Dyers and Cleaners.

The bus stopped. The girl in back of him was
thrown against him. The man in front of him stepped
on his foot while trying to balance himself. Auto-
matically Jim wiped his rubber on his trouser leg.
Two people entered the bus. There was an old Italian
woman with a shawl over her head and a black bag under
her arm, muttering to herself, and a young man with a
sharp look and a thin nose. The bus started on its
way again.

Jim could see another bus coming down the avenue.
It splashed water in fine arcs on to the sidewalk.
They were passing a field of short grass stubble, with
snow in patches her and there. Suddenly from the field
a mouse ran quickly across the walk and into the road.
The other bus from downtown came quickly. It struck
the mouse with one of the heavy wheels. There was a
splash of blood. Jim's stomach fell. His throat was
dry and hard. He felt choked. The distance between
the buses spread. Jim looked back and saw the stain
in the road.

"Wee sleekit cowerin' beastie,
That a panic's in thy breastie------

God who watched the sparrow could let this happen.
He raised his eyes to the row of advertisements
with feigned indifference. God was bunk.

The bus stopped. The people pushed and shoved.
Two women forced their way in front of him. Slowly
he made his way toward the door. He dropped his car
check into the box. There was a tinkling sound as it
struck the bell. He got out. The air made him dizzy
after the closeness of the bus. Jim started to cross the
street. A horn tooted loudly. He saw a large black car
coming straight for him. He jumped back. His heart was
pounding. The car passed and he ran across the street.
He looked at the clock on the Congregational Church.
Five minutes to nine. He had to have the mail open
for the boss at nine o'clock. He'd have to hurry. He
honed the boss would be late.

YALE