FUTURISM. What do you feel?
LOVE. Very young — very foolish — very warm — very soft — in fact it’s becoming a physical discomfort — the not knowing how to purr.
FUTURISM. Can you remember anything?
LOVE. Nothing whatever.
FUTURISM. Can you realize anything?
LOVE. Nothing but you—
FUTURISM. Now what about the future?
LOVE. The kitten’s growing to be a panther— I’m sure she’s dangerous — Oh, do shut me up in a harem, it’s the only thing I’m fit for — I shall be jealous. But at least when you die, I shall be burnt alive on your corpse.
FUTURISM. Bravo! (playing with her finger tips) And here?
LOVE. Claws. (she tears herself away)
FUTURISM. Where to?
LOVE. I must just go and kill all the other women. Until I do, I can’t feel safe.
FUTURISM. You touch the other women, and I’ll strangle you!
LOVE. Any one of them might become the mother of your children.
FUTURISM. You’re OUT! (slapping his knee triumphantly) It’s infallible — infallible— Did you hear that? (he drags DON JUAN from behind the sofa, half asleep)
DON JUAN. (rubbing his eyes) Of all the elementary old-fashioned fool’s games!
LOVE. (blinking her eyes) It takes you a long way back!
(FUTURISM rushes off.)
DON JUAN. He’s disappointing — too primitive.
LOVE. (enthusiastically) Oh, one of the most amusing creatures I’ve met.
(PROCURESS comes on with DIRECTORS OF THE WORLD BROTHEL.)
NATURE
REALITY (a composite person called WORLD-FLESH-AND-DEVIL they are accompanied by two inspectors)
PURITY
JOY
(The inhabitants of the World Brothel flock round them.)
PURITY. (inspecting) What a mess!
JOY.(inspecting) How very sad!
PROCURESS. (to directors) We haven’t succeeded in balancing accounts yet— You see, it is not yet decided whether the demand creates the supply, or the supply the demand.
REALITY. Cut that! As long as you have them both, they will total up the same.
PROCURESS. There’s been a lot of fuss lately over the pathological and hygienic side.
WORLD-FLESH-AND-DEVIL. Leave it to me to gloss that over — all we have to bear in mind is to keep the surface glittering.
ESSAYS AND COMMENTARY
ALL THE LAUGHS IN ONE SHORT STORY BY McALMON
, and crackled a laugh that came out in sharp hard spurts of metallic sound.
Yoland laughed harshly disdainful.
And she smiled her glistening
mechanically glamorous smile into his eyes
was laughing her unlubricated
laugh, steadily now — —
The jeer and taunt in her weird laugh — –
She laughed a warmer rusty
chortle now
She smiled sphinxly
, and they shrilly shrieked laughter
– voice was higher and more abandoned than usual. It shrieked, but rustily mechanical rather than human. Their jokes could not be heard
because of the laughter,
She gave an inebriated rasp of laughter
– caused the other girls to shriek their shrill hyena laughter again.
Yoland’s cute crackling ripple
sounded more subdued now
because she had laughed too much before — — –
She was overcome with mirth and held her hand over her heart — — — –
she explained — crackling
Their laughter taunted like that of so many hyenas — — jeering and laughing.
Her rusty cackle of laughter sounded and Yoland’s cute, inhuman laugh creaked after him.
Chortling menacingly this time.
Her unlubricated rusty laugh chortled
Her laughter mingled with that of other girls to make hyena noises
Her teeth when she smiled, were the perfection of dentifrice and glistening beauty.
She smiled enigmatically
Though her smile seemed directed at me I knew she wasn’t even looking at me.
– to chortle a low metallic cackle
She chortled cutely again
, and she merely rattled her machine laugh,
again to chortle dry rattling laughter
“I love her laugh.”
Her laugh is cleared of emotions.
BRANCUSI AND THE OCEAN
The interpretation of Brancusi—
the analysis of the elemental.
An art engendered beyond the formidable naked subjectivity—
Here is no abstraction coerced to the domain of form—
Perhaps form arrested at its very inception—
a certain élan of primary embodiment—
has revealed to us the intriguing comparison of elemental form—
evolved by the forces of nature—
and an elemental form whose evolution is submitted to the process of the intellect—
Of a man comparatively young in years — whose concentration — such
sublime and imprecise
the friction of his aesthetic has brought to a white heat of featureless beauty—
the memory and anticipation of aesthetic fulfilment—
and he has got irrefutably that something that every one of them lacks—
the primary investigators of beauty.
At any race he has set a terrible precedent — that will be impossible to eliminate with either fundamental or accessory—
The form on which form is based.
And so elemental — —
that it actually connives with the atmosphere in any attainment of a prolongation of its direction
A song to the eye—
“who” used to take after belle matière—
Brancusi is one of the few moderns — whose art has survived its own impetus — its cosmic reticence — he has got none of that everything else that all his other contemporary sculptors have—
MY CATHOLICK CONFIDANTE
Confirming the near conclusion one sometimes comes to, that for most human beings traditional concepts remain more real than their actual experience, that it is impermissible to contradict tradition — my Catholick confidante, immediately upon describing the staircase fugue, gasped, as might one in regret for having desecrated an altar.
“Oh no! I shouldn’t say that!”
For such, to question tradition is like denying God.
Confiding to me her own anguish she had offered this panic of her neighbour’s as proof that “not she alone — —
– — and listening was like looking through a microscope at a secret world.
She stood out among the working classes as the perfect exemplaire of wife and mother — her home, husband, children were well cared for — her terror of having another child — was financially sound — in her plan one addition to her family would have broken entirely down the civilised condition — to which as practical Idealists they clung.
The only safeguard she could imagine was entire chastity — — — The husband compliant; under stress of his inhibited electric virility — took to drink—
My confidante, finding her ultimation of chastity so unprofitable, with a look of absolute confusion — spoke these words of questioning affirmation—