A Miscellany (Revised)

by e. e. cummings

  (2)Salad Dressing and an Artichoke.

  Please pale hot, please cover rose, please acre in the red stranger, please butter all the beef-steak with regular feel faces.

  (3)Suppose an Eyes

  * * *

  Go red go red, laugh white.

  Suppose a collapse is rubbed purr, is rubbed purr get.

  Little sales ladies little sales ladies little saddles of mutton.

  Little sales of leather and such beautiful, beautiful, beautiful beautiful.

  The book from which these selections are drawn is unquestionably a proof of great imagination on the part of the authoress, as anyone who tries to imitate her work will discover for himself. Here we see traces of realism, similar to those which made the “Nude Descending a Staircase” so baffling. As far as these “Tender Buttons” are concerned, the sum and substance of criticism is impossible. The unparalleled familiarity of the medium precludes its use for the purpose of aesthetic effect. And here, in their logical conclusion, impressionistic tendencies are reduced to absurdity.

  The question now arises, how much of all this is really Art?

  The answer is: we do not know. The great men of the future will most certainly profit by the experimentation of the present period. An insight into the unbroken chain of artistic development during the last half century disproves the theory that modernism is without foundation; rather we are concerned with a natural unfolding of sound tendencies. That the conclusion is, in a particular case, absurdity, does not in any way impair the value of the experiment, so long as we are dealing with sincere effort. The New Art, maligned though it may be by fakirs and fanatics, will appear in its essential spirit to the unprejudiced critic as a courageous and genuine exploration of untrodden ways.

  A “commencement part,” given by the author at Sanders Theatre on the occasion of his graduation from Harvard, and published in the Harvard Advocate, June 1915.

  GASTON LACHAISE

  To get rid altogether of contemporary “sculpture” is perhaps the surest way of appreciating the achievement of Lachaise. This coup of unadulterated intelligence has already been given by Mr. W. H. Wright in four sentences which I lift from the masterly sixth chapter of Modern Painting—

  “After Michelangelo there was no longer any new inspiration for sculpture. After Cézanne there was no longer any excuse for it. He made us see that painting can present a more solid vision than that of any stone image. Against modern statues we can only bump our heads: in the contemplation of modern painting we can exhaust our intelligences.”

  I say masterly, because so long as the author keeps one or more eyes on Cézanne it must be admitted by any intelligent person that his analysis is unspeakably correct. Were the entire book devoted to a consideration of Cézanne our own task would be confined to proving that Lachaise does not produce “modern statues.” Unfortunately this is not the case. Elsewhere the author remarks that Swinburne brought the rhymed lyric to its highest development. And at one point he mentions that “the aesthetic possibilities of the human form were exhausted by” his old friend Michelangelo, with which it is a trifle difficult to agree. How about the renowned Pablo? Or, to take two far-from-colossal geniuses: Lembrach, in his lean girl at the Armory Show (1913), and Brancusi, in his Princess Bonaparte at the Independent of is it three years past, did something more than exciting. In the first case a super-El Greco-like significance was pitilessly extorted from the human form, in the second the human form was beautifully seduced into a sensual geometry. In his feeling for his material, moreover, Brancusi showed for some time genuine originality. But he reached an impasse very soon. Judging from the recent bumps and buttons at the De Zayas Gallery he is at present as dead as a doornail.

  It must be admitted that Wright is Johnny on the spot when it comes to Paul Manship—a “sound” man, of course, but no slave to the Rodin tradition, nor the Saint Gaudens tradition, nor whatever may have produced those fattish girls helplessly seated on either hand as you enter the Boston Public Library. Manship’s statues, including the enlightened Injun at the Metropolitan, remind one a good deal of the remark (which appeared on the back page of I have forgotten which French funny paper while la guerre was still with us) of one gonzesse to another—“J’ai un bon truc chez les boches. Je leur dis que je suis française; ça prend toujours.” Not that Manship tells us that he is française (gender aside) but that in his sculpture he is always chez les américains, besides having in everything a bon truc, a certain cleverness, a something “fakey.” One wonders whether his winning the Prix de Rome accounts for the fact that in the last analysis Manship is neither a sincere alternative to thinking, nor an appeal to the pure intelligence, but a very ingenious titillation of that well-known element, the highly sophisticated unintelligence. At any rate, he was formerly very popular, just as Nadelman (who appeals less subtly to the H. S. U.) is at present supremely popular. Fundamentally Manship is one of those producers of “modern statues” whom Wright’s four sentences wipe off the earth’s face. His work is, of course, superior to the masterpieces of such people as French, Barnard, Bartlett, the Borglums, and Bela Pratt—in so far as something which is thoroughly dead is superior to something which has never been alive.

  Wright is, after all, correct in his main thesis. We have bumped our heads altogether too often on “modern statues.” Until recently we gave them a bump every time we passed the celebrated Arc de Triomphe at Twenty-third street. And if we have been caught in the modern sculpture section of the Metropolitan we have received gratis such a massage of bumping as probably could not be duplicated in any one place in America. Let us then turn to Lachaise and exhaust our intelligence for a change, assuming that we can boast thereof.

  In the light of contemporary “criticism” this assumption is decidedly daring. Lachaise has, in the past few years, made a large number of artists extremely enthusiastic, and a great many gallery goers very nervous, not to mention the ladies and gentlemen who may have died of anger. But the official “critics,” perhaps realizing the disastrous consequences to “criticism” of a genuine reaction on their part to work of overwhelming aesthetic value, have as it were agreed to risk nothing. An exception which proves the rule is Mr. McBride Of The Sun, who on Sunday (February 17, 1918) said, in the course of some hair-raising platitudes, “I like this statue [The Elevation] immensely,” generously adding, “If the ribald laugh at it and call it a fat woman they may.” In regard to Lachaise’s personality The Dealers In Second-hand Ideas (Strictly guaranteed. Good as new.) are content to quote from the preface which Lachaise wrote for the catalogue of the American sculptors’ show (Bourgeois Galleries, Spring of 1919). As to his work, the consensus of “critical” opinion seems to be that it has “dignity” and is the “buoyant” product of a Frenchman who was born, and came to America.

  This ducking and side-stepping of Lachaise and his work by the “critics” is more than very amusing. It is extremely valuable as drawing a nice line between his personal achievement and contemporary “sculpture.” Like some people who have to have their heads rubbed before they can go to sleep, the “critics” must have theirs bumped before they can go to “criticism.” But in Lachaise (as we shall, it is to be hoped un-“critically,” see) these gentlemen are up against a man who not only refuses to bump their heads for them but demands a profoundly intelligent expenditure of sensitivity.

  “Criticism” or no “criticism,” to attempt an analysis of Lachaise’s personality strikes us as being almost equally futile and impertinent. And yet, given the important negative obscurity in which the “critics” would plunge that significant and essentially positive part of him, a few however random and obvious remarks on the subject may not be wholly without value. Three things Lachaise, to any one who knows him, is and is beyond the shadow of a doubt: inherently naif, fearlessly intelligent, utterly sincere. It is accurate to say that his two greatest hates are the hate of insincerity and the hate of superficiality. That Lachaise is supremely and incorrigibly enthusias
tic about his adopted country would appear (in the light of that country’s treatment of him) perfectly unreasonable, had it not its reverse side, which is the above-mentioned disgust with superficiality and contempt for insincerity—two qualities which he attributes in a high degree to his native land. As his work proves, he has no use for prettiness. This work of his, a crisp and tireless searching for the truths of nature as against the facts of existence, negates Rodin incidentally, as Cézanne’s solid strivings incidentally negate Monet. Temperamentally Lachaise is about as far from the typical Frenchman (more especially from what America likes to believe is the typical Frenchman) as can be imagined; as far, that is, as Cézanne, whose famous hate of contemporary facility and superficiality drove him to a recreation of nature which was at once new and fundamental. Lachaise’s perhaps favourite (French) word is simple. Applied to his work, it means something quite different from, as in Brancusi, a mere economy of form through the elimination of unessentials; it means form which completely expresses itself, form that perfectly tactilizes the beholder, as in the case of an electric machine which, being grasped, will not let the hand let go.

  We confess that in the sumptuousness of certain of his perfectly sensuous exquisitely modulated vaselike nudes we have felt something pleasantly akin to what are known as the least imperfect specimens of Chinese art. This brings up an interesting trait of Lachaise’s character. He believes that the Orient fascinated him at one time to the point of hypnotism and is resolved that the experience shall not be repeated. Significantly in contrast to Gauguin, he turns his eyes to the north. There is one thing which Lachaise would rather do than anything else, and that is to experience the bignesses and whitenesses and silences of the polar regions. His lively interest in Esquimaux drawings and customs stems from this absolutely inherent desire—to negate the myriad with the single, to annihilate the complicatedness and prettinesses and trivialities of Southern civilizations with the enormous, the solitary, the fundamental.

  Lachaise’s work is the absolutely authentic expression of a man very strangely alive.

  Every one has read, and no one has heard him boast, that he “studied at the École des Beaux Arts 1898–1903, exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français 1899, worked with Lalique and Aube 1901,” took various prizes, and so forth. What no one knows, outside his immediate friends, with whom he is preternaturally frank, is Lachaise’s attitude toward triumphs which would have seduced a mind less curiously and originally sensitive. The fact is that he regards them with something between amusement and disgust. This is not a question of modesty, but of direct and fearless thinking—at which, as had been already stated, Lachaise is a past master. Of the man who in his twenties has captured beyond question every trick of academical technique we ordinarily expect that he will amuse himself for a few years at least, if not for the remainder of his life, by the little game which Mr. Huneker has (if we remember correctly) called “exploding firecrackers on the steps of the institute.” If he doesn’t do this, it means (to use the conventional argument against art schools) that in the realization of academical ideals whatever originality the pupil may have had at the outset has been, if not entirely eliminated, at any rate irrevocably diluted. Lachaise’s personality profoundly negates the possibility of self-advertising. As for the instinctive art thesis, his work makes this answer: that the man who by the gods has been fated to express himself will succeed in expressing himself in spite of all schools; that the greatest artist is the man whom no school can kill.

  Even if Lachaise could have enjoyed making chumps of his teachers for the pure fun of the thing, it is safe to say that he would never have done so, any more than his genius would ever have made the mistake which Rodin made, of accepting the technique which it had so easily conquered and with that as a basis proceeding to surpass conventional standards, thereby creating another academy. For a Lachaise, as for a Cézanne, academies hold nothing beyond a knowledge of tools. For this reason both men are intrinsically great geniuses. The significance of their production lies in the fact that it goes not beyond but under conventional art.

  Frequent allusions having been made to “Lachaise’s work,” it is high time that we become specific. Last Spring at Penguin Lachaise had on show, in addition to a bust and an alabaster bas-relief, a thing seventeen inches long which he called The Mountain. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that, to any one genuinely either cognizant or ignorant of Art As She Is Taught, this thing was a distinct shock. Surrounded by a gurly sea of interesting chromatic trash it lay, in colossal isolation: a new and sensual island. Merely to contemplate its perfectly knit enormousness was to admit that analysis of, or conscious thinking on our part about, a supreme aesthetic triumph, is a very pitiful substitute for that sensation which is impossibly the equivalent of what the work itself thinks of us. It is difficult to conceive any finer tribute to The Mountain than the absence of “criticism” which it created. Bust and bas-relief came in for their customary meagre share, but, so far as can be discovered, The Mountain was never once mentioned: which fact may partially, at any rate, excuse the sentences which follow.

  Its completely integrated simplicity proclaims The Mountain to be one of those superlative aesthetic victories which are accidents of the complete intelligence, or the intelligence functioning at intuitional velocity. Its absolute sensual logic as perfectly transcends the merely exact arithmetic of the academies as the rhythm which utters its masses negates those static excrements of deliberate unthought which are the delight of certain would-be “primitives.” Let us as a specimen of the latter take a painter: say Zorach. In being spectators of his work we are charmed, lulled, by the lure of shapes which imitate and we are tempted to say duplicate the early most simple compositions of mankind. Our intelligence is as it were temporarily numbed into inactivity by the work’s “emotional appeal”—but only temporarily, since it is obvious that no art which depends for its recognition upon the casting of a spell on the intelligence can, except in the case of an undeveloped mind, endure beyond a few moments or a few hours at best. The spell wears off, the intelligence rushes in, the work is annihilated. Herein is discovered the secret of that “fakey” feeling with which we are inevitably left by the designs of this unquestionably sincere artist.

  In contrast to this self-consciously attempted naiveté on the part of a twentieth-century adult there is unself-conscious expression, that of the child who has not yet inherited the centuries and the savage whose identity with his environment has not yet become a prey to civilization, which—eminent aestheticians to the contrary—is of the utmost significance to aesthetics. The stories by Harlow Atwood in a recent number of Playboy, which unfortunately caters habitually to the Zorach audience, are a supreme and exquisite example. Two of Denise’s paintings that Lachaise has, which she did before sophistication set in, are another. With Harlow and Denise, A.D. I9—, are the authors respectively of that most amazingly beautiful of all American Indian folk tales, The Man Who Married A Bear, and certain forms and colours out of Africa. All these demand for their complete appreciation that, far from being mere spectators, we allow our intelligences to be digested; and not until this occurs do they cease to excite in us amusement or mépris, and reveal their significance. That is to say, they require of us an intelligent process of the highest order, namely the negation on our part, by thinking, of thinking; whereas in an “art” which emulates naiveté through intelligent processes the case is entirely different. In the work of Zorach and his ilk our role is that of spectator, never anything more. But the inexcusable and spontaneous scribblings which children make on sidewalks, walls, anywhere, preferably with coloured chalk, cannot be grasped until we have accomplished the thorough destruction of the world. By this destruction alone we cease to be spectators of a ludicrous and ineffectual striving and, involving ourselves in a new and fundamental kinesis, become protagonists of the child’s vision.

  To analyze child art in a sentence is to say that houses, trees, smoke, people, etc., a
re depicted not as nouns but as verbs. The more genuine child art is, the more it is, contrary to the belief of those incapable persons who are content merely to admire it, purely depictive. In denying that the child “represents” and substituting for “representation” some desperately overworked word like “expression,” these people are only showing their hostility to the academies, just as when they tell us (which is true) that the bad artist is the representational artist. But, as has been sometimes pointed out, the artist who represents is bad not because he represents: he is bad because he represents something which a camera can represent better. This means that he is depicting something that is second, or rather nth, hand, which a child most distinctly is not. Consequently to appreciate child art we are compelled to undress one by one the soggy nouns whose agglomeration constitutes the mechanism of Normality, and finally to liberate the actual crisp organic squirm—the IS.

  Academies are when everything included in the abstract and therefore peculiarly soggy noun Nature is accepted superficially or as a noun, and as such declined. In this case “art” is technically nothing but an important prepositional connective—Mr. Sargent’s portrait OF Some One, Mr. French’s statue OF something (to take the worst painter and the worst sculptor in America)—between two nouns: an artist and a sitter (if we may make so bold as to say that Grief is it sat for Mr. French). But painting had its Cézanne, whose incredulous and otherwise energetic intelligence resented the doctrine that walking in the wake of some one who is smoking a cigar is vastly superior to smoking the cigar yourself, and by whom the academies, and their important fattish remarks about facts by means of colours, were significantly undermined with minute sculptural shocks of chromatic truth. Insofar as to understand something is, not completely to taste or smell or hear or see or otherwise to touch it, and to believe something is, not completely to understand it, Cézanne was compelled to mis- or disbelieve and to dis- or misunderstand “Nature”; and he disbelieved and misunderstood it at the age of faith and hope so violently and so carefully as to present us with a significant conjugation of the verb which is just as inherently intense as, from the plastic standpoint, declensions and nouns are inherently flabby. Precisely in this sense Cézanne became truly naif—not by superficially contemplating and admiring the art of primitive peoples, but by carefully misbelieving and violently disunderstanding a secondhand world.