FullReads

Then the advertising. The items of news now peep out at us from between flaming advertisements of the shopmen’s goods, like men on the street hawking their wares, each trying to out-scream the other and making such a Bedlam that our ears are stunned.[6]

[Footnote 6: This fragment is hardly representative of the attitude of Mr. Burroughs toward our worthy dailies, and, could he have expanded the article, it would have had in its entirety a different tone. He lived on the breath of the newspapers; was always eager for legitimate news; and was especially outspoken in admiration of the superb work done by many newspaper correspondents during the World War. Furthermore, he was himself always most approachable and friendly to the reporters, complaining, however, that they often failed to quote him when he took real pains to help them get things straight; while they often insisted on emphasizing sensational aspects, and even put words in his mouth which he never uttered. But the truth is, he valued the high-class newspapers, though regarding even them as a two-edged sword, since their praiseworthy efforts are so vitiated by craze for the sensational.–C. B.]

THE ALPHABET

Until we have stopped to think about it, few of us realize what it means to have an alphabet–the combination of a few straight lines and curves which form our letters. When you have learned these, and how to arrange them into words, you have the key that unlocks all the libraries in the world. An assortment and arrangement of black lines on a white surface! These lines mean nothing in themselves; they are not symbols, nor pictures, nor hieroglyphics, yet the mastery of them is one of the touchstones of civilization. The progress of the race since the dawn of history, or since the art of writing has been invented, has gone forward with leaps and bounds. The prehistoric races, and the barbarous races of our own times, had and have only picture language.

The Chinese have no alphabet. It is said that they are now accepting a phonetic alphabet. The Chinese system of writing comprises more than forty thousand separate symbols, each a different word. It requires the memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and write their language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixty distinct characters that answer to our twenty-four. These characters embrace every verbal sound of the language, and in combination make up every word. The progress of China has been greatly hampered by this want of an alphabet.

Coleridge says about the primary art of writing: “First, there is mere gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,”–the last an evolution from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an alphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than there is of man in a crinoid.

THE REDS OF LITERATURE

A class of young men who seem to look upon themselves as revolutionary poets has arisen, chiefly in Chicago; and they are putting forth the most astonishing stuff in the name of free verse that has probably ever appeared anywhere. In a late number of “Current Opinion,” Carl Sandburg, who, I am told, is their chosen leader, waves his dirty shirt in the face of the public in this fashion:

“My shirt is a token and a symbol more than a cover from sun and rain,
My shirt is a signal and a teller of souls,
I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly
noise, and the people will say, ‘Look at him tear his shirt!’

“I can keep my shirt on,
I can stick around and sing like a little bird, and look ’em all in the
eye and never be fazed,
I can keep my shirt on.”

Does not this resemble poetry about as much as a pile of dirty rags resembles silk or broadcloth? The trick of it seems to be to take flat, unimaginative prose and cut it up in lines of varying length, and often omit the capitals at the beginning of the lines–“shredded prose,” with no “kick” in it at all. These men are the “Reds” of literature. They would reverse or destroy all the recognized rules and standards upon which literature is founded. They show what Bolshevism carried out in the field of poetry, would lead to. One of them who signs himself H. D. writes thus in the “Dial” on “Helios”: