The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 4, 1928, Page 7

Prat / Se | Laudun or Vauquelin de la Fresnay, f and Harrington and Puttenham, all U ters for tragedy, while Jonson spe- . MR. V. F. CALVERTON’S y | “ORIGINAL” WRITINGS : i By H. M. WICKS. | {)NE of our readers still labors under the illusion that a certain Vv. F. H Calverton has contributed something to the “sociological interpretation of | literature” and seems anxious to find a pretext to defend the Baltimore writer. We are in receipt of the following delirious epistle, berating us for } some imaginary crime: \ Mr. H. M. Wicks \ The DAILY WORKER. \ Sir:—Having observedyour attacks upon V. F. Calverton it was with considerable amusement that I read your recent review of George Arliss’ “Shylock” in which you stated that most of Shakes- peare’s plays have for their chief roles royalty or nobility. I think Calverton at least should be given credit for having first pointed out the sociological basis of literature. Why should you quarrel with him when he takes the same position that you do— and did it before you did. I would like a reply to this in the near future. If you evade a reply it will convince me that you are not honest enough to admit your own inability to do so. Dr. H, Feldman. New York, Jan, 24. e . ° Lae letter is a sample of the profound erudition of the whole tribe of those who as a part of the general reactionary drive against the advanced section of labor, set themselves up as hyper-criiies of the revolutionary move- ment and reveals a total incapacity to understand plain English printed in black and white. The indignant doctor misquotes my review of the Arliss presentation of “The Merchant of Venice.” But that is of no importance. What interests me is that he labors under the illusion that. Calverton is an original thinker who has contributed something new to society. I take it that Dr. Feldman refers to Calverton’s book “The Newer Spirit,” which he modestly called “a sociological criticism of literature” and more especially refers to that particular part of the book dealing with the transition from the feudal tragedies to the domestic drama of the bourgeoisie. Qn one or two occasions I have aroused the ire of some of the handful of “Modern Quarterly” fans, by branding its editor, Calverton, a plagiarist. Dr. Feldman, if he were informed on the literature covering the subject Calverton endeavored to deal with, would not come to the defense of such a palpable fraud. Even the slightest acquaintance with such literature would safeguard him from the predicament in which he now finds himself. For the benefit of Dr. Feldman, who tries to impugn my honesty, and imagines that I am unable to reply to his defense of Calverton, I take this opportunity to prove by parallelling a part of Calverton’s work with that of William H. Hudson’s little known work called “A Quiet Cor- ner in a Library” that my charges of literary thievery against Calverton are fully justified. I will further prove that he who takes Cal- verton seriously only exposes his own ignorance. A person who contributes anything to sociological investigation, no matter how meagre his contribu- tion may be, is entitled to some consideration, but Calverton, while pretend- ing to be a profound thinker, steals most of his stuff from other authors and then proves that he hasn’t even the mental capacity to understand what the men he steals from are talking about. As to the originality of Calverton on the special question raised by the comical Dr, Feldman, I submit the following parallel. The reader should carefully study this unsurpassed example of plain thievery and crude fakery and then draw his own conclusions about the calibre of a person who resorts to such things: WM. H. HUDSON.® (“Quiet Corner in a Library”) “I have said that the London Merchant represented a deliberate rupture with a long standing stage tradition.... It was the tradition that tragedy must of necessity be aristocratic in its theme and char- acters....It was the domestic drama—the drama of middle class people and ordinary social life. (p. 126). “Where Italian humanists led the way it was natural that the French classicists should follow, and if we turn to Pellitier or Rosnard, to De > V. F. CALVERTO! (‘The Newer Spirit”) “Until the eighteenth century, when the bourgeois class had ac- quired sufficient power to exert a permanent influence upon social conceptions, the attitude toward tragedy was uniformly feudal and aristocratic....Tragedy could be concerned only with noble charac- ters (p. 25). “The Italian humanists in no case dissented from the aristocratic the- ory of tragedy (p. 26). “Tf, for a moment, we consider the writings of that French classicist, Abbe d’Ambignac, we shall dis- cover an explicit statement of this attitude....The other French classi- cists were equally firm in this atti- tude. Pellitier, Rosnard, de Lau- dun, Vauquelin de la Fresnay, Pelet de la Mesnardiere, each supported the aristocratic theory of tragedy, ... Voltaire, a radical in so many things...was certain that tragedy required characters elevated above the common level” (pp. 25-26). to Pelet de la Mesnardiere or, most important of all, to the Abbe d’Aubignac, it is only to find the same conception reproduced with unvarying uniformity (p. 129). “Voltaire, strongly conservative in this as in so many other ways, stoutly maintained that tragedy re- quires characters raised above the common plane” (p, 129). *Not the naturalist, but a former professor of English at Leland Stan- | iord University. cE will be observed in the above that Calverton only mentions those who were mentioned in Hudson’s book. The crudity of his reference to Vol- taire “a radical in so many things” as compared with the reference of Hud- son needs no comment. In the following parallel it will be noticed that no names appear other than those mentioned by Hudson, which is an additional proof of the plagiarism. Why does Calverton not mention the names of the “Italian humanists?” Simply because Hudson does not do so and Calverton is too mentally lazy even to conceal some of the more brazen of his plagiarisms. [If he really tried to become familiar with any serious subject he would not have time to hash so many alleged books. HUDSON. The German pseudo-classicists— men like Opitz and Gottsched— merely echoed the opinions of their French masters... .(p. 180.) “But what about England?...In the great age of the romantic drama Gosson and Stubbes, Webbe CALVERTON. The German pseudo-classicists, Opitz and Gottsched...were in avowed agreement with the classi- cist attitude. (p. 26.) “Do we discover dissenting voices in England at the time?...For tragedy only the great can be char- acters; the ‘dignity of persons,’ to employ the phrase of Ben Jonson used in this reference, is a neces- sity if tragedy is to possess ele- ments of the sublime. Such was the avowed attitude of Stubbes, Putten- ham, Gossen, Webbe, and Harring- ton....Rymer contended that trag- edy ‘required not only what is na- tural, but what is great (noble) in nature.’ (p. 28.) “...in Dryden’s words, ‘tragedy as we know is wont to image to vs the minds and fortunes of noble persons, and in those of Congreve, tragedy ‘distinguishes itself from Vulgar poetry by the dignity of its characters,’” (p. 28.) On p. 84 Calverton snitches again from Hudson and says, “It (the London Merchant) was acted by a number of famous actors and ac- tresses; among whom were Charles Kemble, Mrs. Siddons and Sir Hen- _! ry Irving.” STEAD of frankly admitting that all of the above is taken from Hud- son, Calverton tries to create the impression that it is his own work, result of careful study and analysis of the authors mentioned. In a comical footnote, the Baltimore mountebank. mentions the name of Hudson, among a whole list of other authors (p. 29, “The Newer Spirit”), but observe that Hudson and others from whom he pilfered did not coordinate the facts, and adds that “The coordination is what is significant.” The above evidences of brazen plagiarism is probably considered by Calverton a good example of “coordination.” But other people who know something about literature and sociology call it something else. I ONLY mention Calverton here because of the fact that a few of the | “Modern Quarterly” fans persist in writing flippant and idiotic defenses of their hero and leader. {t is impossible to “take such a freak seriously. From revolutionists familiar with the theory of the movement, his efforts evoke only raucous and derisive laughter—in the vernacular of Broadway, “the merry ha! ha!” In Chicago and points west—the horse laugh. asserted in so many words that the | great are the only proper charac- cifically included “dignity of per- sons” among its fundamental re- quirements... .‘Tragedy,’ writes Ry- met, ‘requires not only what is na- tural but what is great in nature.’ (pp. 180-131.) “‘Tragedy, a8 we know,’ says Dryden, ‘is wont to image to us the minds and misfortunes of noble per- gons.’... Tragedy, according to Cos- grave, ‘distinguishes itself from vulgar poetry by tne dignity of its characters.’ (pp. 131-132.) On pp. 121-122 Hudson explains that the London Merchant was act- ed by some of the “greatest. actors and actresses,” including Charles Kemble, Mrs, Siddons and Sir Hen- ry Irving.” WILLIAM GROPPER Unser Gropper!” DIE GOLDENE MEDINEH, (The Golden Land). By William Gropper With an introduction by Mailech Epstein. Freiheit Publishing Asso- ciation. $1.50. APPROACH the task of reviewing this book of drawings and cartoons by William Gropper with senses un- sharpened (and unspoiled?) by spe- cial technical knowledge of the subtle- ties of art. Perhaps this is presump- tuous. But I want to consider a bool in which so much of the flesh and blood of the life around us is con- tained not from the exalted eminences of formal criticism, but from the view- point of a flesh and blood person who stands on the ground with thousands of other flesh and blood persons, par- ticipating in that life so rich in ironies, tragedies, triumphs and de- feats—a life arrested and transfigured in the pages of a book by the glow- ing imagination and understanding of genius. How do I know that this is genius? I don’t know and can’t prove it. I merely look at these drawings of Gropper’s as thousands of cloakmak- ers, furriers and other workers looked at them when they first appeared in the “Freiheit,” Yiddish language or- gan of the Workers (Communist) Party, and intuitively I sense'in them the surge of an inexorable creative force, the leap of an imagination that is disciplined yet free, the play of ar intelligence that is aware of socia! forces and social implications. And I assume that this is genius, * * 8 In an extensive introduction to “Die Goldene Medineh” (The Golden Land, a colloquial Yiddish epithet for the United States), Mailech Epstein, edi- tor of the “Freiheit,” traces the de- velopment of the political cartoon in recent years and particularly the part it played in Russia during the revo- lution and the civil wars. The “Frei- heit” was the first Yiddish working class paper to introduce the political cartoon and William Gropper was it: first staff artist. And perhaps of greatest interest to those who have watched the work of Gropper are the bits of biographical] information con- cerning him that Comrade Epstein gives. Born on the East Side about thirty years ago, poverty and fear. the starved hunted life of a Jewish immigrant family, filled and blighted his childhood years. At the age of twelve he was already working as a dishwasher in a cheap restaurant and spending all his leisure time making pictures. Seven years pass and William Gropper is the staff cartoonist of the New York Tribune at a salary of $150 a week and with something of a reputation. At that time, though he had been reared in a working class family, Gropper was almost entirely ignorant of the revolutionary labor movement. During his years on the East Side his art had so absorbed him that he had reared out of it a sort of ivory tower in the gutter. , But Gropper’s instincts and sympathies remained sure. One day in 1918, dur- ing the war hysteria, his editor sent him to the I. W. W. headquarters to make a few drawings of the “terrible ved bomb-throwers.” The editor didn’t know that he was sending Gropper permanently into the ranks of revclutionary labor. Gropper be- gan drawing for the “Liberator” and “Revoluti Age,” the organ of the left wing in the soe! party---and lost his job on the “ bune.” His farne was growing. it ed bourgeois critics were hi as one of the greatest of living Amer- ican ecaricaturists and comparing hi: with the foremost Eurepean masters Yet this praise and the adulation of the radical intellectuals didn’t conten! him. He stili had no contact with the masses of the working class from whom. he had aprung and lia so man: radical intellectuals he was merely drifting. Until three or four years ago, when he joined the staff of the “Freiheit” as regular cartoonist and began taking his chance with the res’ of the staff on getting paid wheneve> the business office had any money. { was an experiment both for the “Frei- heit” and for Gropper. It need hard!y be said that the experiment ha: proved unusually successful and Bil! Gropper has become one of the mos popular and powerful propagandist- of the class struggle. ee “Unser Gropper” (Our Gropper) This is what he has become to th: thousands of Jewish workers who ar: the readers of the “Freiheit.” Prac tically all the drawings in this volume were first printed in our Party’s Yid- dish language daily and many of them have also appeared in The DAILY WORKER, The book, which is octave size, has been beautifully printed anc bound, and the price is ridiculousl; low. It contains the entire range of BOOK REVIEWS and COMMENT: Gropper’s Cartoons, *Boston”’ T= first installment of Upton Sin- clair’s “Boston,” a novel about Sacco and Vanzetti which appears in the February issue of “The Bookman,” is as a _ whole rather disappoint- ing. Most of it is extremely senti- mental, often just maudlin. Sinclair thus far has described part of the general New England plutocra- tie background, and has devoted several pages to Plymouth, Mass., where Vanzetti worked for a time in the cordage mills. “Boston,” characterized by Sinclair as a contemporary historical novel, takes up 32 pages in the magazine. There is a sharp, ironic description of the death and funeral of Josiah Quincy Thornwell, twice governor of| the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, leading manufacturer and philan- Upton Snelair | the incredibly fluid, versatile art which is Gropper’s. In most of the drawings we see Gropper the satirist, pouring his nimble acid scorn on the betrayers and exploiters both within and without the labor movement jeering at their stupiditiés’ ane ay p| crisy. The future may choose to éover | with oblivion the names of Morris Sigman and Abraham Cahan, but their feces will gape from these carica- tures until doomsday. A single draw- ing of Cahan at the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem—and Gropper has laid bare all the hollyroller duplicity, the care- ful treachery of this eminent socialist and father of Yiddish yellow journal- ism. And Sigman’s punyness, his ob- sequious dependence on his masters, for all his valiant exterior, have not escaped. They lie impaled, contempt- ible and absurd. Drawings such as these are not dependent for their | effectiveness on the written word.) Their meaning is clear to all genuine- ly revolutionary workers, whatever language they may speak. In the final section of the book we see a less familiar Gropper— Gropper the lyric poet, tender, ironic, tragic, the lover of the poor and<ex- ploited. His style changes. Instead } of the bold, hard geometric lines, we | find softness, ‘a wavering delicacy and reticence. He draws a tramp sleeping on a park bench—lines that | end nowhere; intimations, shadows— the eloquent epitome of all the deso- lation of the forgotten and foresaken, the dregs of a too beneficent capital- ism. A gaunt tired woman, with a puny child at her side and a starveling baby in her arms, stands reading a poster: “Don’t Delay. Take a Trip to Florida, the Land of Eternal Summer....” se 8 | “Unser Gropper.” He is now in So- viet Russia, where he is drawing for the “Pravda” and other Soviet papers. Before Gropper left, the Jewish work- ers of New York gathered en masse to bid him farewell. He is their tem- porary gift to the workers’ and peas- | ants’ republic. He will return, doubt- | less with new inspiration. His is a} growing art. His eyes and mind and heart will see—and his pencil will | speak, every eclass-conscious worker can un- derstand. A speech that is a weapon end a battlecry. —A.,B. MAGIL. readers Many of our readers like | to get the DAILY WORKER | | at their newsstands or news- | | dealers, and for various rea- | | sons cannot get it. | We.ask our readers to speak with their newsdealer, fill out the coupon, and send it in to us, so that we will be able to make the necessary | | arrangements, to have it de- livered regularly, | CIRCULATION DEPT. DAILY WORKER, 33 First 8t. New York City. My newsdealer 18 ......+.2+++ (name) No. of copies . THE DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1928 Page Seven Ludwig’s ‘Napoleon thropist, for twenty years a member of the republican state committee, ete. The background for the first chapter is a description of the great man’s household with its intrigues and domestic ramifications. In the present installment, compar: EMIL LUDWIG ’. Sinclair’s ‘Boston’ | litical issues to face as Jews, our entire problem here is how to safe- guard our spiritua)] life in this in- dustrial civilization.” | | The Class War only thing of interest in the current jissue of “The Bookman,” which was | | tively little is found relating to Van-| zetti’s life in Plymouth. (Sacco, of | course, has not yet appeared on the} scene.) | . ° LS | Sinclair’s novel is practically the| featured in the current issue International Labor Defense. This magazine has become one of the m exciting working class periodicals the United States. In the Februar issue there is ar article, “The Pe of Death,” by anuel Gomez, U.S. secretary of the All-America Anti-Imperialist Leag he Acquittal of co and C recently purchased by Seward Col-| lins, a young liberal who was ve active during the height of the agita- tion to save Sacco and Vanzetti. F. a number of years it had been prac-jrillo,” by James P. Cannon, n tically a house-organ for Doran &|secretary of the I. L. D.; “Stri Co., (recently merged into Doubleday..| Notes from the Coal Fields,” by T. J Page & Co.) under the editorship of] O’Flaherty. There is also “Tom John Farrar, an amiable, uncritical! | young man addicted to lecturing o1 books before inland women’s clubs. | Under Burton Roscoe the magazine has become only slightly more in-| teresting. | Inasmuch as “Boston” will probably | soon be available for about two dol-|dino, and in revolutionary China. lars, and since “The Bookman” sells at fifty cents an issue, it seems rath-| The announcement is just made er practical to wait until the novel|that the Workers Library, Inc., 43 E. is out in book form. |125th St., is to become the distributor Mooney at San Quentin,” by Jin Tully, reprinted from “The American Mercury.” The present issue has some unusu- ally striking photographs of striking coal miners, imprisoned wk in Nicaragua is conspicuously | “The Labor Defender,” the organ of | class-war | prisoners, soldiers in the army of San-| stuff. And it will be’ a speech that || Who Are Chosen? ae MENORAH JOURNAL, organ | of the Jewish liberal bourgeois- intellectuals, has just been changed from a bi-monthly to a monthly. The first issue under the new editorial policy contains several articles of i terest. The magazine as a whole, however, retains its air of academic aloofness, its most biting scourgings being necessarily confined to playful parodies on the Professional Jew. The outstanding characteristic of the magazine is the absence of vitality. * *# @ The present issue contains three articles of interest: “Is Babbitt’s Case Hopeless?” by Charles A. Beard; “From Versailles to Zurich,” by Her- |. bert Solow; and “The Flying Litvak,” by Louis Berg. The last is a bril- liantly satirical portrait of that comic- hero, Charles A. Levine. Beard apparently dashed off his piece in a hurry, for it is full of silly Here is his prescription for the modern employer: “Hope for him, if there is any, lies in introducing sincerity, thought, beauty, and great- | ness of spirit into his own work here and now—the business of build- ing, making, and distributing. . .” * *# «© The editor, in a special holiday an- | nouncement inaugurating the maga- zine as a monthly, makes a declara- tion which reveals unmistakably the class for which the magazine speaks: “If the problems in Eastern Europe and Palestine are pre-dom- inantly economic-political, the prob- lems of our present and future in America are essentially religious. In other words, since our place in | American life is secure, since we have no special economic and po- | |of “Minor Music,” by Henry Reich, Jr. |Much of Reich’s work has appeared jin The DAILY WORKER. —SENDER GARLIN. Portrait of a Junker BISMARCK: The Story of a Fighter, | by Emil Ludwig. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Little, Brown & Co. $5. EMIL LUDWIG, when attacked by *4 New York’s bright metropolitan re porters, listed as the three greatest \1iving men Einstein, Shaw and Pres- }ident Masaryk of Czechslovakia. Lud- wig’s selection of subjects for bio- graphical studies has been much more happy. In Napoleon and Bismarck, Lud- wig selected dramatic personalities living in particularly dramatic per- iods of world history. “Napoleon” deals with the rich setting of the French revoluvion; “Bismarck,” with | dle class struggie sor the unification cf Germany. the Revolution of 1848 and the mid- | | Bismarck, altho he startea nis poll- | tical ¢ as a savage eneiny of the for unification, was astute its equally savage and ruthless leader when he reahzed |that the consolidation of Germany. | really pursued a policy of “blood and iron,” forging |the German empire out of the lives | moven jenough to bec |was inevitable. He ef workers killed in the wars with Austria and France, In his struggle against the awaken- ing working class, Bismarck was | equally ruthless. He was shrewd enough to see the tremendous powes of the working class movement and ‘ts threat to the interests he repre sented. When’ Kaiser William II, fearing the outbreak of strikes and riota, op posed more severe anti-socialist lawa, Bismarck said: “We and they will im evitably come to blows, so the sooner the better! You will never be able to kill socialism by a policy of reform; some day or other you will be com+ pelled to kill it with bullets.” For the petit bourgeoisie, he had the greatest contempt. His attitude was reflected in his paper, “Kreuz- zeitung,” which, in reference to |Bismareck and Lassalle declared: \“These are real men: whereas the \liberals have at their disposal neither bayonets, nor fists, nor the charm of genius.” Apart from the rich historical set- |ting (with which the life of Bismarck is inextricably bound), the growth of the man makes a fascinating story. |Ludwig brings out Bismarck’s devel- opment not by editorial comment, bits by a skillful arrangement of fact. —H. F. B. Wankel & | |All kinds of Tools and Devoe Paints and Mazda Lamps Electricians, Mechanics, and Carpenters, etc. Son 1573 Third Ave. (Bet. 88-89th) New York City. Wholesale and Retail Hardware Store OPEN DAILY from 8A. M. to 8 P.M. SATURDAYS to 10 P. M. Supplies for Plumbers, THE HAMMER—JEWISH COMMU ‘ MONTHLY SUNDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 12 — MECCA TEMPLE, 55th Street & 7th Avenue TOSCHA SEIDEL . B. TZAIMACH .. NINA GORDONI R. WENDORF A. PECKER and others in the dramatization of PROGRAM: li and Yoel By M. J. OLGIN Violin Genius | 75c to $2.20 Moscow “‘Habima” Actor TICKETS in the office of THE HAMMER, 30 Union Sq. N.Y. C. Soprano rr TeaRtt?