What a reduction in the donations for hospitals.
Halt says the practical moralist — would you encourage thriftlessness and idleness — but what has become of thrift in the face of unemployment — and idleness is abnormal — a paralysis of the nervous system resulting from blind education.
As by all the laws of psychology — the equality clamoured for by the socialist is an obvious impossibility — and as such equality is the desire of a type of mind whose experience has been too rude a familiarity with the elemental necessities of life — and therefore with little apprehension of those aesthetic necessities of leisure.
The trend of politics tends towards a levelling down — but what is there impractical in the conception of levelling up—
There may be an inevitable social ladder — and consequently a lowest rung — but it is a matter of merely humane decency that that lowest rung should be shifted higher up.
For surely we have sufficient knowledge to discern that human life constrained to concentrate on the preservation of the body alone — has no value — and the more we shall come to realise that the body is merely an instrument — we shall realise the moral obligation of setting society on such a basis as will provide.
II. War
We speak a great deal about the end of War— We desire the end of War— You will nowhere find an individual who prays for War. Yet War would not come upon us if it were not invoked. By whom is it invoked? It seems impossible that it should be so — and yet it is so— War is not a scourge of destiny which falls upon us independently of our will.
Yet look around us at the peoples of belligerent nations on the eve of hostilities.
One side must surely show some signs — of an atavistic ferocity — but no — save for those — differences that mark the race — and at a long distance disappear leaving the opposing peoples looking so exactly the same—
You will find the same farewells to affection in deference to duty. The same stern-jawed youth facing the same horror — turning his back on the same amenities of life both youths have.
III. Effluvia of decomposition of the Spirit
All evil thought, all cruelty, the paralysed vitality of loneliness, the crushed vibrations of drudgery and the bewilderment induced by enigmatic injustices are broadcast through our universe and received by the collective human organism. Think not that all the agonies such as for instance those sustained in War end with the dying of the bodies which endured them, for they are “on the air” and like a poison gas enfeeble the survivors. The decomposing bodies are buried to avert contagion, but the decomposition of the spirit, impalpable to our senses, is an inconfinable and a lasting corruption.
Yet History reveals our race intent on the manufacture of so dangerous a psychic chemical that the world in the end will succumb to its effluvia if we cannot succeed in evolving an ethical antidote.
Scientists are beginning to experiment with the vibrations of the brain while these and similar vibrations have been known to the mystic from time immemorial to be as effectual as the vibrations of light and sound.
Therefore when Christ commanded us to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us, it was as a primary measure of spiritual hygiene.
We cannot draw a fully wholesome breath from an atmosphere laden with enforced anguish. For suffering of itself is charged with lasting forces of destruction — leaving us a heritage of insecurity and disaster that accumulates affliction, and as an invisible ray, darts out disease and mortal confusion.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Williams has overwhelmed the earlier impressionism of surface with a new impressionism of the structural Entire: his pen a probe.
Analysing, for us, the components — indigenous and historical — of an unwitting majority, he draws unprecedented deductions from Everyman’s impacts which are forever
“kindling his mind (more
than his mind will kindle)”
As an observer Williams’s complete integrity of meditation reaches that ultimate exactitude which alone refreshes poetry with unexpected marriages of words — — — giving his verse the enduring individuality of his
“Chronic hills”
NOTES 1
STORIES
THE AGONY OF THE PARTITION
(6:150)
“The Agony of the Partition” is an incomplete work that includes a clean portion in Loy’s hand, replete with word counts; this section is numbered one. Sections two and three are drawn from additional handwritten fragments. Most of the story is contained in a single archival folder, but some pieces that extend the end of section two were located in a file labelled “Unidentified Fragments” (6:183). It appears that Loy intended to write more about the rooming house that is the focus of “Agony”; a sample additional segment is included for further reference at the end of the editorial notes.
The surname “Bundy” makes a brief appearance here, and is central to “Hush Money,” a story Burke dates as written between 1917 and 1922. Within the notebook containing “Agony” there is a letter drafted by Loy to Harper’s Bazaar, asking if the editors might be interested in publishing her poem, “Aid of the Madonna”. A version of Loy’s poem “Property of Pigeons” is also included. “Aid of the Madonna” was first published in Accent in 1947 and “Property of Pigeons” appeared in Between Worlds in 1961 (Lost LB 209–10).
PAGE 5
The title “The Agony of the Partition” may be “The Agony of the Partition.”—Loy writes it both ways in the manuscript—ed.
PAGE 6
After “heart beat on my” the next page reads:
to be or not to be inserted?
It was evident, as I sat up, alert, that someone in the next room had chosen the spot corresponding to mine, to rest against the partition.
projected on to the stage only
an emotional abstract of
the plot
A contact so ethereal,
“which Mrs. Nome. . decoded” is a later addition, and is followed by “(into language?)”—ed.
All honorifics—“Mrs. Nome and Mrs. Moppet”—are “Mrs” in the original—ed.
“at law without evidence” was “at law argued”
“of any claiming” was “of any especial”
“claiming. I might have been” was “claiming or”
In the margin next to “contact” reads “?”—ed.
“to lean against” was “to lean up against”
After “against” reads: “(the partition?).”—ed.
“hardly registered the passing of a” was “hardly recorded a”
PAGE 7
In the margin, next to “lock, a glimmer of light” reads “OK”—ed.
“converse. After” reads “converse; After”—ed.
“carrot” was likely “carrots”
“orangutan, approached” was “orangutan, approached in a state of august enquiry—”
PAGE 8
“rooms — her critical sneers, her undue familiarity—” reads “rooms. Her critical sneers. Her undue familiarity.”—ed.
After “undue familiarity” was “ ‘And her foul language! You can’t imagine what I’ve been called.’ ”
“ ‘foul language. Do’ ” may be “ ‘foul language: Do’ ”—ed.
After “ ‘servant?’ ” was “And her foul language. ‘Do you allow this woman to treat me like a servant?’ the plaintiff wailed”—in the margin next to this sentence reads “?”—ed.