Saturday, March 17, 2012

The New For Parrots ~ Words Fail

from A Third Of Life by Perriton Maxwell, 1921

from Cosmopolitan, 1906
 

The News For Parrots ~ How Long Can A Queer Artist Fool The Public?

A Dialogue In Black
by Merriam Bliss             from The Black Book Vol 1, 1895

EARLY every night it is the custom of Papa Quotation Mark to take his son little Query Mark on his knee and expound the wonders of the universe and the stern necessity of keeping abreast of the times. It was during one of these harmless seances that the following conversation anent the so-called "new art" took place:

Little Query Mark: "Papa, who is the funny artist that makes black pictures with white spots in them, for the English magazines?"

Mr. Mark "Oh, you mean Aubrey Beardsley, do you not, my son?"

Little Query Mark: "Yes, I guess so. Does he live in an insane asylum, Papa?"

Mr. Mark: "Oh, no my son. He lives in a comfortable flat and has a fat bank account and a fine studio."

Little Query Mark: "Does he really mean to do such queer things or are they accidents?"

Mr. Mark: "He takes himself very seriously my son and so do a lot of other odd people. His pictures are made intentionally queer."

Little Q. M. "But papa, why does he make funny ladies with thick lips and draw them with black spider waists and big feet? Does he see folks in that way?"

Mr. M. "Nay, nay, my son he sees people just as you and I see them."

Little Q. M. "Then why does he draw nightmares in black and white if he knows better."

Mr. M. "Because my son he has found out that people are very gullible and will think a thing is great if it is too silly to have any meaning. Besides it is much more easy to throw a brush filled with ink at a piece of white paper and call it an 'art poster' than to carefully draw
a design that means something."

Little Q. M. "Papa, does anybody really, truly like Mr. Beardsley's work?"

Mr. M. "They pretend to, my son. It's the proper thing to take sides with a popular fad."

Little Q. M. "Is Mr. Beardsley a popular fad, papa?"

Mr. M. "Yes, my son, and so are his-his-his~were you going to ask another question my son?"

Little Q. M. "Yes papa. Does any other artist imitate Mr. Beardsley's stuff?"

Mr. M. "Only a million other artists imitate Mr. Beardsley's work my boy."

Little Q. M. "Is it wrong to copy Mr. Beardsley's style, papa."

Mr. M. "Decidedly wrong my son. It is a crime, and ought to be punishable with death."

Little Q. M. "Why is it a crime to imitate Mr. Beardsley's work papa?"

Mr. M. "Because the crazy things of the wretched copyists drives good artists to drink my child."

Little Q. M. "What sort of art do they call Mr. Beardsley's work papa?"

Mr. M. "They don't call it art my son; they call it rubbish."

Little Q. M. "Can anybody do the kind of work that Mr. Beardsley does papa?"

Mr. M. "Oh, no, my son. Only a very ill or weak minded person who has never learned to draw can do the real thing."

Little Q. M. "Mr. Beardsley and his million imitators will be very rich next year won't they papa."

Mr. M. "Not on your silhouette my son. They will be at the bottom of the tureen of popular contempt."

Little Q. M. "How long can a queer artist fool the public, papa?"

Mr. M. "Until the public takes a tumble to itself, my son."

Little Q. M. "Papa what do the critics say about the Beardsley things?"

Mr. M. "One critic says:

You can bet your bottom dollar
We're on to the Beardsley caper,
A little brush, a pot of ink
And lots of empty paper."

Little Q. M. "Papa when does..."

Mr. M. "It's time to go to bed my son."

Beardsley is the chief apostle of the grotesque. He lives by his affectation and to his posing, personally and in his art, there is no end. A shining example of his verbal posturing was displayed in a recent interview. "In what spirit do you receive the criticisms lavished upon your work?" queried the scribe.  "I suffer my critics gladly," he replied, a touch of hardness coming over his face; "their inconsistencies and futile hypocrisies fill me with amusement. The British public, or rather, those who make their laws in the press or the platform, will forgive anything to a French artist, nothing to his English comrade. Thus they go into raptures over a most brutally realistic, though admirable, work by Lautrec, and hide their faces before more innocent art contributions to the English periodicals. They alone have discovered the Unmentionable. The critic desires to produce not criticism but copy and abuse trips glibly off his pen."

Then came a theatrical pause while this too clever youth eyed the Interviewer to see the effect of his Indirect Insult.

Friday, March 16, 2012

The News For Parrots ~ Always With The Djuna























THE YELLOW JAR

White butterflies are creeping near
    This yellow jar where rose-leaves lie,
Like simple nuns in gowns of fear,
    Like humor and like tragedy.

And down they steal with throbbing wing
    Across the pool of shadows, where
That other bowl of dust is king
    With blossoms past, with tear, with prayer.

One was the rose you brought, and one
   Was you. The symbol lied—it seemed
You were the summit of the sun;
    Now you are less than that you dreamed. 
 
In life we loved you, and in death
   There is devotion for you, too; 
Only the witless human breath
   Is mourning for the death in you.
   
Yet what of you, I wonder, stands
   Without the stillness of the room,
Beyond the reach of rising hands,
    Still smiling at this china tomb!
White butterflies are creeping past
    The jar of death, the yellow jar;
For butterflies are not the last
    To sense things are not as they are!

                                                                              Djuna Barnes 


Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The News For Parrots ~ Djuna Barnes Interviews A Dancer on his Draper

A Philosopher Among Russian Dancers
Bruno's weekly: Volume 2, 1915

An Interview with Adolf Bohm.

THE tumult and the shouting dies, the press-men and the veils depart—and what is left?—Some cosmetic errors, the sound of the stretching of the arch of multitudinous feet and Adolf Bohm.
He it is who has discovered himself next to Najinski, now that Najinski has gone. He is the pampered, over-familiar Le Negre, of the chosing of that top-heavy though attractive high-hipped Zobeide. He, who is Chef guerrier of Le Prince Igor, not forgotten in Les Sylphides and still on view in La Princess Enchantee and Soleil Du Nuit.
He comes through the melieu of the Ballet with the smiles of the man who suffers in three languages.
"Bakst --ah, there you have not only the savage, you have also the artist. I have often thought, how dreadful to be the picture—you know what I mean? No? I shall explain. Notice the eye of the connoisseur of arts, then imagine yourself their goal. See? It is so with the costume. Therefore, I say, how dreadful to be the picture but how still more lamentable to be the costume.
"Bakst is a successful organ; he has a keen appetite, a nose for cafes, a delightful sense of humor, an impressive style of flirting. His advances are of a marked and successful nature, considering his natural inborn plainness. Of his retreats one might say they are masterly. He sails a boat and drinks tea with graceful repugnance.
"He has however one fault—ah, an immense trifle—his head-gear the hoods, the turbans, the what-nots that he conceives for the heads of his disciples—Beautiful? Yes, as only ugly and vulgar things are,—but—"
He paused knocking his gold cigarette case upon his palm 
"But my friend Leon forgets that in the classic arts the feet should have pre-eminence.
"Is Bakst new, is his art the art of the creator? Often I am asked that, very often I hear others asked that. There is an answer. The tragedy of man—there had been a past; the tragedy of nature—there will be a future.
"Without your yesterdays all would be great today. No, of course, Bakst is not new. Egypt may have been builded on the dust of an older Egypt, Rome may have fallen once again on Rome.
"In Russia there are other Russians—better perhaps, and also, perhaps not. Bakst happened to come when he was needed, when the world was ready for him.
"It is harder, I admit, to become known for what one has not done than for what one has. Bakst took the easiest way, he became known for what he did. Not for his restraint, but for his vigor. One can say of him what Wilde said of Hall Cain—he creates at the top of his voice.
"Therefore it is that one should not say Bakst dares, one should say Bakst dares again.
"Some of his designs are purely graphic. From the mind, for the paper. These are the kinds I have reference to, when I say how painful to be the costume. I have had to outrage Bakst, because Bakst has outraged me.
"He invents, say, something he considered decorative, but imagine trying to dance entangled with all the intricacies of Bakst's mind.
"Well, we have made our concessions each to the other" he added.
When I asked him if America could appreciate Russian art he answered:
"You are not asked to understand Russia. You are asked to feel. One does not understand death, one only reacts to it."
I said that the whole production had struck most of us as art under the skin. "A matter," I added, "of gastric acoustics, arteries and undressing or over-dressing," also concluding, "but only of the kind we lament because that savage sharpness, that peasant betterness and vitality given us so richly in the literature of the Russian and in the Russian history, is missing.
"In other words they seem to be economizing on perspiration." I finished.
"He has fallen into the estate of the man who forgets that destruction is more necessary than construction. The rich perversity of a decaying flower is only transcribable in the still richer, still more perverse flare of the decaying art. The happier midways of life and death. The conception that feeds on itself,—that is the most beautiful and the most destructive. Bakst has forgotten, it seems to me, and has instead tried to make something too new, and in consequence has made it too raw. Wounds are all very well but only in that they bleed. Bakst is a wound in which the arteries refuse their waters."
Bohm shook his head "Yes and no, as the peasant says. I admit that he is not always simple. That is what I tried to point out just a few minutes ago. It is his insincerity that sometimes gets in his way, nevertheless his art is a fine thing and the world is coming to know that, and then there will be others.
"Now let me say something that touches America. You want too many doctors. Only people who go around with the assurance given by medicins could expurgate so freely your books and shave down to so fine a point, your arts. When you have ceased to have stomach troubles you will not mind the hard and healthy spleen of the children of L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune."
Djuna Barnes.
Whoever will be free, must make himself free: freedom is no fairy's gift to fall into any man's lap.
Friedrich Nietzsche 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 
 

The News For Parrots ~ Sex Is The Androgyne

 Sex,

From the German of Stanislav Przybyszewsky

By Guido Bruno

IN the beginning there was sex. . . .

 Out of the voice box of the human being sex tore the first long-stretched sounds, it directed them to the tact of the pulsing heart, it formed them into rhythm and melody, it shaped them into the neighing, howling and growling of pain, into the snarling and grinning of hatred, into the murmuring and whispering of love, into the smuttered, heaven-high joyful shouts of gladness of the organism and of ecstasy:

Sex gave birth to the world:

And sex diffused itself with super-power into the muscles of the human body; it handed man the club as it came upon him to destroy his rival in the contest for his mate, it increased his powers unto the indefinite when he had to protect the life of his mate and of his brood. It helped him to clear forests, to tear apart the womb of the earth, to direct into new beds rivers and lakes, to subdue seas and to conquer mountains; sex awakened the brain from its slumber, forcing it into incomprehensible suffering and into the labors of never-heard-of work and into cunning and into the sly betraying with which he stole the fire from the gods and into audacious daring so that he mounted the Pelian upon the Ossa, and so that he broke open the doors of the kingdom of heaven.

Sex gave birth to the deed.

And sex forced its way into the heart of man. If filled it out completely. It awaked in man the desire to see everybody as happy as sex itself was in its sacred elevation of happiness. It incended in him the powerful wish to play music for the whole world to a joy-dance, so that everybody might become self-conscious in blissful play and might join in the great sacred hymn of life. To the tables of richest banquets did it invite all, and therefore sex created pity and consolidation, it created father and mother, brother and sister, it united the human sex through bonds of blood and of friendship. But at the same time it became the origin of revenge fulness and of inordinate desire of murder and of crime; it separated and crushed to every wind the seed of the Abel, of the Seth and of the Cain. . . .

And so created sex the family, the clan, the nation. And then it tore open widely its eyes and looked back with inexpressible longing and looked far, far back towards its divine origin.

Millions and millions of years had it been staring into the sacred fire whose lustre meant life to all worlds and all animals on which it lived.

Sex craved for divinity!

And it expanded the chest of man with fervent longing, it saturated his heart with the sweet poison of weakness and of trust, it stole one beam after another from out of the aboriginal fire until it had incended in the soul of man a heart-flame through which it started to dissolve and to diffuse completely and forgot its own self-subsisting ego.

In the love!

And there came to pass the miracle: Amorphos Hyle united with the Logos!

The Holy Spirit descended upon sex and thus sex created —love.

And now the bars broken down and the doors of the human soul opened wide to the stars, to the heavens, to the sun; the beams of mercy and the most incomprehensible wonders sprouted suddenly from invisible origins; a thousand unknown feelings, comprehensions and perceptions expanded the human soul, expanded it to the bigness of the divine being; the arms were stretched out toward never-thought-of worlds; it bowed the knees before gruesome mysterious powers and man rooted up dust in terror, in trembling and in reverence; hidden forebodings became certainties and the certainty did hide in the deep, unlit darkness of the unknown—the unknown which was so indefinitely near. Mindful of its divine origin, sex nestled in the heart of man with the glad tidings:

Sex was the first one to talk to man of God! The superpower of sex grew with love and the consciousness of its divinity.

A hot stream poured out into the darkest hiding places and the most secret faults of the soul; it illuminated the darkest abysses with the sunny glow of light; it inflamed rocks so that they were glowing in blazing flames; it reorganized the worlds and created them in new shapes and in new forms. All instincts were directed into its broad bed; all forebodings, all lust and all pain, hatred and the blessed ascension of man to heaven, the whole life's struggle of a boundless and unrestrained soul, and it carried the foaming waves to the opposite shore and threw them down at the feet of God so that He might rejoice in his image.

And thus sex became the confidant of God and carried Him glad messages of how man had been drawn nearer to HIM through Art .

Sex gave birth to Art .

And so sex is the Androgyne, "father-mother" of all that is, that was, that will be: the powerful original fountain of might of eternal strength, of enthusiasm and intoxication, of the most sacred attempt to storm the heavens and of the gravest most detestable Fall of Man, of the highest virtue and of the most devilish crime. There is no power that can compare itself with sex, and as such it is the extreme beauty and the only link uniting us with the Absolute, because there it originated and to thence will it return

It is the hot gulf which melts the ice and which fructifies the earth, creating an Eden or a hell for the generation of men.

It is that ocean which encircles the whole universe, embracing it with loving arms. It is the one pledge and the one certainty of the divine in man.

~~~~~~~~~
from Greenwich Village Vol 2







Monday, March 12, 2012

The News For Parrots ~ Gender Enfeathered

A short story, Groping, by Helen R. Hull in The Seven Arts, 1917, tells of one "outside the pale, a queer, awkward girl."

"A whiff of air as the door behind her opened to admit a passenger caught her nostrils, and she slipped into the night before. Half guiltily she lingered a moment at the verge of definite recalling. Was it wicked, when it was so beautiful? Even if it was! Slowly she let herself down into the pool of memory, amazed that she could thrill so at things cool over night. Through the memories came, somehow, the last glance Mary had given her, and swift, uncalled pictures of Clark, the boy with whom she went occasionally to dances. The car's jerk as it swung into a switch aroused her, and she hurried off and up the short block to her home, whipping on an air of great nonchalance as she ran up the steps."

Hull has an amazing article the same year in The Psychoanalytic Review called The Long Handicap.

"It is interesting to observe some of the idiosyncrasies of the very modern woman who is intent upon setting herself free; they follow closely Adler's theories of compensation. The sense of inferiority to the man tends to rouse the opposite impulse of agressiveness, self-assertiveness, the will to be superior. This finds expression in the adoption of some of the incidental male perquisites—and may account for some of the delight in cigarettes, in cocktails, in short hair, in masculinized attire. On the other hand, it is easy to explain the activities of the anti-feminists in similar terms. In their case, the minderwertigkeit seeks its compensation in an idealizing of the very causes for the feeling. Instead of adopting and following certain masculine ideals, they seek the satisfaction of the child who gains approval through ready obedience. They exalt the attributes on which the social judgment of inferiority rests. They "make a cult of their weakness.""