Read Ebook: The Little Review January 1915 (Vol. 1 No. 10) by Various Anderson Margaret C Editor

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GENERAL. How you echo me! Would it surprise you, my beautiful one, to know that I, like you, was once an anarchist?

MARYA. You!

GENERAL. Yes, I, the bugaboo of the democrats, the great reactionary, the militarist, the apostle of repression, the fortress of the German Empire. I was once a revolutionist, and I plotted to kill your Czar!

MARYA. And yet you failed!

GENERAL. I am in a whimsical mood tonight. Shall I explain to you the paradox?

MARYA. Tell me!

GENERAL. When I was a young chap I was restless, full of that driving spirit all healthy youngsters have. The methodical occupations they gave me in the Fatherland disgusted me. I had money, and I traveled. So I came to Russia and took up with one of your artistic groups in an interior city--I won't tell you which. Believe me, I was fascinated, lifted out of myself! The great, clean spirit of your intellectual anarchists, the daily dangers they thrived on, the nonchalance with which they met death or exile, their daring minds, which ripped the veil from the future, their beautiful art productions--these things carried me to the height of inspiration. They represented the highest human quality of which it was possible to dream.

MARYA . You have known that, too!

GENERAL. Yes, and love along with it. It was a boy-like worship. And when my beloved one went to the scaffold it burned into me a white-hot scar of fearlessness and severity I shall never lose. The love, I see now, was ephemeral; the scar is eternal.

MARYA. And why did you leave them? Why did you leave them?

GENERAL. I had heard of America; I wished to go there and study the freedom we desired to create in Russia.

MARYA. So you went; what then?

GENERAL. I found a country without a hereditary ruler, one rich in opportunity, where all men are theoretically equal before the law. I found a country where even the peasants read and have their magazines, a country without a state church. It was a land won from the wilderness by heroic struggle, whose freedom men had died to create, and whose unity men had died to preserve.

MARYA. Did you not breathe more freely there?

GENERAL. Ah, Marya, that was the tragedy! I suffocated! For it was also a country without a poet, without a musician, without a sculptor, without a philosopher. The cities were run for loot, and the people, in whose power everything lay, could not seize the reins. And business--business--business, everywhere. As I went along the railroads I saw nothing beside the track but dirty wooden shanties in the cities, nothing in the country but ugly advertising signs. What do you think was the best paid and most highly honored profession? Advertising!

MARYA. Are you lying to me!

GENERAL. No, it is the truth. Heroism, the love of beauty, the love of truth--except convenient truth--any sort of high endeavor for its own sake, was laughed at and crushed in those people by the dull weight of prosperity. That whole nation was an ugly monument to the triumph of the commonplace, a stone over the grave of godlike aspiration.

MARYA. But surely they have improved since then?

GENERAL. Do you know why they put up new buildings? Because some millionaire who sells worthless things for five and ten cents wishes to make money renting offices; because some railroad or insurance company wishes to get advertising space in the papers without paying for it. Do you know why the clergymen preach honesty? So that business conditions may not be disturbed! Do you know for what purpose the magazines accept stories and articles? So that they may gain the largest possible public to offer up to their advertising men! Whenever an artist appears, he is either ignored or scoffed at by that bestial monster, the majority! It is like a prehistoric animal taking up the whole earth with his vast bulk, seizing everything beautiful for food with which to stuff his maw, and poisoning the air with the breath of his indigestion.

MARYA. Then let us toast Russia, General!

GENERAL. Would you mind telling me, Marya, how long I have to live? You are surprised? But that does not suit you. You should have known me better than to think I did not know what you would do when I turned my back tonight.

MARYA : About a minute, General.

GENERAL. Then let us use the time well. Now we can be perfectly frank. Why have you--

MARYA. Because I am true to my cause! Because you are the scourge of Germany; you represent everything we hate, every cruelty, every oppression, every evil thing of the past. I have lived for this moment for years!

GENERAL. Ah, you are beautiful! In you is my reward! And do you renounce your love, too?

MARYA. I have loved you--more than I knew how to bear. Do not think I shall live after you. And yet--I had to kill you!

GENERAL. Now I am ready to die. My work is done. I have produced the beauty I desired!

MARYA. You? What do you mean?

GENERAL. You, who know how to kill what you love, can ask that? To produce the rebellion in Germany, to make heroes with the scourge--that has been my life! I, too, have lived for this moment! To be loved by a woman with a flaming soul, a woman who is greater than her love!

MARYA : Stay with me! Come back to me! O Heinrich, Heinrich, I have wronged you!

GENERAL. No, Marya, you would have wronged me if you had not carried your faith to its end. I--I--am the greatest anarchist of you all!

MARYA. Peter, I have killed your master. No, do not be afraid, I shall sit here quietly. Lock me in, if you like, and send for the authorities. Do as I say, at once!

Little Flowers From a Milliner's Box

SADE IVERSON

Reminders

I have been making a little hat; A hat for a little lady. Red and brown leaves edge it, And the crown is like brown moss. If I might, I would say to her: "Pay me nothing, pay me nothing-- I have been paid in full, lady-- I have been paid in memories. Ah, the sweep of the sun-burned meadow Rising above the woodland! Ah, the drift of golden beech-leaves, Fluttering the still hour through! I can hear them falling, softly, Softly, falling on the tawny ground. The nuts, too, are falling, pad-pad, Mischievously on the earth. Never was sky so blue, so deep, So unbearably perfect! I throw up my hands to it, I fling kisses heavenward, To Something, to Somebody, Who made beauty--who made Youth! Take your hat, little lady, Wear it smilingly; It is all sewn with dreams, And looped with memories. Little dead joys, like mists, Float about it invisibly, Making it miraculous. You lack the money to pay for these things. It is I who owe you for the little hat You commissioned, made of red and of brown leaves, With a crown like sun-dried moss In the woods where I once wandered." But I cannot afford to be kind, Or strange, or mad, or merry. She will give me purse-worn bills For the little dream hat, the fairy-sewn hat, And I shall say with formality: "Thank you, madam; I am glad You are pleased with the little hat."

Stale, stale, flat, flat!

Will there never again come a day When I shall be throwing kisses to the sky, Hoping they will reach up to Him Who made beauty, and little golden leaves, And brown nuts falling in the Autumn woods?

Eidolons

I have been looking at the sun-ball, Red as a Japanese lantern Swinging low in the West On a bed of saffron sky. And now I have come into my room With grey and lonely walls all about me, And everywhere I look, behold, Little wonderful bright balls are swinging! My room is gay with them, My wall is dancing. Who could guess this little grey room could be so gay?

Voices

I awake in the night to the sound of voices-- Voices of strangers passing in the street. I cannot hear what they are saying, But it is easy to see that they are happy. Perhaps they have been to a party, Dancing to music--or remembering the birthday Of some one whom they love. I am glad to have heard them, Glad they were laughing. It fretted the silence As the bright balls of a rocket Fret the black sky of night. As for me, I am shut up in silence, Like a fly in odorous amber. No one hails me, no one calls me; No one tells me the day is fair Or wishes me happy dreams.

Sometimes I fall to wondering, What if I should run out onto the street, Crying to some passerby: "I would make a good friend to you! I am one who understands friendship; Try me and see!" Oh, what would happen? Should I be scorned? Oh, silence, silence, You are but a grey bubble, and I could break you With one breath of impatience. Yet I dare not. Something witholds me. Still must I waken In the lonely night-time, Taking joy from the voices of strangers Passing in the street, talking, laughing. Joy? It mocks me like the sound of falling water That tricks the ear of the thirst-mad wretch Dying in the desert.

My desert is Silence! It covers the bleak rotundity of the earth.

Ten Square Feet of Garden

Did you ever see my garden? See my mallow? See my larkspur? My petunias like censers, snowy white and full of honey? And my phlox, a summer snow-bank, and my haughty purple asters?

Did you ever see my flocks and herds, all my little golden creatures? Dusky honey-bees in plenty, golden bumble-bees a few? Have you never seen them feeding on my larkspur and my mallow?

Some day I shall have a fountain, or a tiny pool for lilies. And I'll sit there, hidden safely, all alone and full of fancies, Playing I'm a lovely princess, resting by her carven fountain.

I shall like to be a princess, to have friends and lovers by me! I can praise them, I can chide them, tell them secrets if I like, Flinging back their happy laughter like a handful of clear water.

Oh, my little treasured garden, ten square feet of haunting perfume, Ten square feet of tossing blossoms, all my feoff and own dominion, How I love you, with your old-gold, noisy, honey-bearing herds!

My Friend, the Incurable

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