As their acquaintance grew, she offered to give Williams syphilis because, she asserted, it would "free his mind for serious art." But as he resisted her overtures, he too soon found himself the brunt of her attacks. On two occasions she came to his home in Rutherford, New Jersey, and accosted him. The first time he received a call (apparently a set-up) to see a sick baby, and when he stepped out to his car, the Baroness appeared and announced, "You must come with me." When he protested, she clobbered him "alongside the neck with all her strength." Matthew Josephson in Life Among the Surrealists elaborates this story and adds some otherwise unsubstantiated dialogue, "'Villiam Carlos Villiams' she cried hoarsely, 'I vant you!'" At the second encounter, Williams was ready for her and punched her in the mouth. As the police dragged her away, she shouted, "What are you in this town? Napoleon?" When Williams came to see her in jail the next day, she promised never to harass him again.
As the aggressiveness of what Pound terms her "principle of non-acquiescence" grew, the Baroness found herself in trouble with authorities. She was, according to some reports, a kleptomaniac, almost by necessity. The outrageous displays of her Dada fashion sense as she paraded around the streets frequently drew the attention of the police. A certain policeman named Officer Campbell often chased her around Washington Square. According to Margaret Anderson, when she was arrested, "she leaped from the patrol wagons with such agility that policemen let her go in admiration." The incitement for most of her trouble with the law was in her weird appearance, by all accounts the most outlandish of all her dadaist mannerisms. Margaret Anderson describes her first meeting with the Baroness thus:
She wore a red Scotch plaid suit with a kilt hanging just below the knees, a bolero jacket with sleeves to the elbows and arms covered with a quantity of ten-cent-store bracelets - silver, gilt, bronze, green and yellow. She wore high white spats with a band of decorative furniture braid around the top. Hanging from her bust were two tea-balls from which the nickel had worn away. On her head was a black velvet tam o'shanter with a feather and several spoons - long ice-cream-soda spoons. She had enormous earrings of tarnished silver and on her hands were many rings, on the little finger high peasant buttons filled with shot. Her hair was the color of a bay horse. (My Thirty Years' War, New York: Covici, Friede, 1930)
Another observer of the times, Allen Churchill, relates that her head was shaved and painted with a "bright vermillion lacquer" (The Improper Bohemians: A Re-creation of Greenwich Village in Its Heyday, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959). In "CAMPING UNDER GLASS: The ghost of Florine Stettheimer, remote and glittering, evokes a period between the wars in a new show at the Whitney" (Time Magazine, September 18, 1995), Robert Hughes recounts, "The Arensbergs had bizarre figures of the Greenwich Village avant-garde like Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, the first New York punkette, who made public appearances with her hair shaved off and her scalp dyed purple." Matthew Josephson recounts having seen her marching around Washington Square,
wearing an inverted coal scuttle for a hat, a vegetable grater as a brooch, long ice-cream spoons for earrings, and metal teaballs attached to her pendulant breasts. Thus adorned and clad in an old fur coat, or simply a Mexican blanket, and very little underneath, she would saunter forth. (Life Among the Surrealists New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962)
Robert Hughes in "Days of Antic Weirdness: A Look Back at Dadaism's Brief, Outrageous Assault on the New York Scene," his review of the Whitney Dadaist exhibition, says
God [i.e., her sculpture, shown above] pales, however, beside the Dada artifact that the Baroness (ne Elsa Plötz in Germany in 1874) became after moving to New York. Slender, long-backed, penniless and as mad as a March hare, she survived as an artists' model. She would be seen visiting the salon of Walter and Louise Arensberg, the city's first Dada collectors, or stalking through Greenwich Village in black lipstick with postage stamps stuck to her cheeks, her head shaved and stained purple, and dozens of metal toys and lead soldiers sewn to her skirts. She was New York's first punk persona 60 years before their time. Some of her delicate, wacky, homemade jewelry survives and is in the Whitney show. The Baroness seems vivid today because of the interest in gender play and "acting out" in the '90s art world, as though she were a very distant great-aunt of feminist performance art. But she remains an irrecuperable figure, faint and weird, like much of the Dada spirit itself.
In one of her own notebooks, the Baroness listed what she wore on a visit to the French embassy in Berlin:
wearing a large wide, sugarcoated birthday cake upon my head with 50 flaming candles lit—I felt just so spunky and afluent! In my ears I wore sugar plums or match boxes—I forget wich. Also I had put on several stamps as beauty marks on my emerald painted cheeks and my eyelashes were made of gilded porcupine quills—rustling coquettishly—at the consul—with several ropes of dried figs dangling round my neck to give him a suck once and again—to entrance him.
Allen Churchill describes her practice of decorating her face with postage stamps and of strolling in the park "with a peach basket for a hat." Churchill claims that the Baroness was often mentioned in the Quill and the Liberator magazines. One of her most provocative public demonstrations may have been at the reception for a famous opera singer, Marguerite d'Alvarez (who is the prototype for Carmen La Tosca in Djuna Barnes' short story, "A Boy Asks a Question of a Lady"):
The Baroness had adorned herself in a trailing bright blue-green dress. She kept the air circulating about her by languidly waving a peacock fan. On her head she wore the lid of a coal scuttle for a hat, strapped on under her chin like a helmet. Two mustard spoons at the side of this gave the effect of feathers. One side of her face was decorated with canceled postage stamps (two-cent American, pink). Her lips were painted black, her face powdered bright yellow.
When the prima donna, already flustered by the goings-on, announced "My art is only for humanity, I sing only for humanity," the Baroness rejoindered in a loud shriek, "I wouldn't lift a leg for humanity." So, at least one high-brow party was up-ended by the Baroness's unseemly "non-acquiescence." Her fashion-sense also seems oddly prescient of our contemporary phenomenon, "punk" fashion, which has maintained a small but dedicated following since the late 1970's.
Djuna Barnes gives the Baroness a cameo appearance in "How the Villagers Amuse Themselves" (a piece of journalism that appeared in New York in 1916:
She alights from a cab with seventy black and purple anklets clanking about her secular feet, a foreign postage stamp—canceled—perched upon her cheek; a wig of purple and gold caught roguishly up with strands from a cable once used to moor importations from far Cathay; red trousers—and catch the subtle, dusty perfume blown back from her—an ancient human notebook on which has been written all the follies of a past generation.
George Biddle, in An American Artist's Story, recounts meeting Elsa in Philadelphia in the spring of 1917, when she approached him to inquire if he needed a model:
With a royal gesture she swept apart the folds of a scarlet raincoat. She stood before me quite naked—or nearly so. Over the nipples of her breasts were two tin tomato cans, fastened with a green string around her back. Between the tomato cans hung a very small bird-cage and within it a crestfallen canary. One arm was covered from wrist to shoulder with celluloid curtain rings, which later she admitted to have pilfered from a furniture display in Wanamaker's. She removed her hat, which had been tastefully but inconspicuously trimmed with gilded carrots, beets, and other vegetables. Her hair was close cropped and dyed vermilion.
Like medieval romance cycles, the stories about the Baroness were endless, tending to draw from each other and to distort and exaggerate as they went along. For instance, Andrew Clearfield, represents the Baroness as "wearing pots, pans, and bits of hardware in lieu of clothing" ("Pound, Paris, and Dada"). However, this statement is not substantiated by any source I have seen, although several writers document her habit of wearing a couple of recycled tomato cans strung together as a brassiere. Allen Churchill's account in The Improper Bohemians resembles George Biddle's story of her "short hair dyed vermilion" but Churchill has her "shaved head... painted with a bright vermillion lacquer."
Williams, at one point in his Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (New York: Random House, 1951), reminisces that "the Little Review was protecting her." Indeed, nearly all the Baroness's published art appeared in the pages of that magazine - for few others would have anything to do with her. After her poems began appearing, readers poured in letters of protest to "The Reader Critic" section. Each letter was usually followed by a bracketed rebuff from "jh" (jane heap). Harriet Monroe, in an editorial in Poetry magazine, lamented the Little Review's lack of taste. Max Bodenheim, with sardonic tongue in cheek, wrote, "It is refreshing to see someone claw aside the veils and rush forth howling, vomiting, and leaping nakedly... in half-articulate frenzy - the sensualist frankly screaming over his flesh" (Letter to The Little Review, November 1919). Djuna Barnes told Hank O'Neal that Anderson "was always drinking perfume and toilet water, and that's why the Baroness put dogshit on her doorstep" (Herrig: Djuna).
In the January 1920 issue of The Little Review the poem titled "Cast-Iron Lover" occasioned an intense debate between Evelyn Scott and "jh" over the Baroness's sanity. Scott believed that she had reached a state "beyond which the vision of delirium melts into the blank of self-enwrapped exaltation of trance." ("The Art of Madness, I") On the other side, "jh" claimed that the Baroness had "created her madness," and had adjusted "every form and aspect of her life to fit this state," and thus showed no evidence of disorder. Furthermore, even if the Baroness were mad, there was "Art in her Madness." ("The Art of Madness, II") The Baroness herself essentially agrees with "jh" but then goes on to complain about costume balls as a manifestation of the death of beauty in America. ("The Art of Madness, III") Finally, in a later issue, John Rodker seems to settle the debate over insanity, pointing out that her poems closely resemble those of other Dadaists (showing parallels to Tristan Tzara). Rodker pronounced on the question of "Art" by labeling the Baroness merely "sentimental." ("'Dada' and Else von Freytag von Loringhoven," The Little Review, July-August 1920)
I cannot help thinking that all the attention she received in the pages of The Little Review fuelled her delusions - and pretensions - about "Art," but ultimately it also fed her despair. For one thing, the editors were growing exasperated with the Baroness's demanding and disturbing behavior. Many of the avant-gardists were departing New York to find a new cultural vortex in Paris. Among them was Margaret Anderson, one of the Baroness's few remaining supporters, who left the editing of The Little Review in the hands of jane heap. After Anderson's exit, the Baroness appeared less and less in the magazine. Then jane heap also moved to Paris.
Times grew worse for the Baroness. Finally in April 1923, with some money given to her by Williams, she bought a ticket home to Germany. Shortly after her arrival there, she learned that her father had disinherited her and left her penniless. She hoped to find peace in Berlin, peace she needed to pursue her art. Instead, what she found was even more desperate poverty in the midst of the German post-war inflation. She was forced to take a job selling newspapers on the streets between 1923 and 1926. She hated this job venomously because it exhausted her and kept her from pursuing her art. Although the details of her life during this period are very sketchy, her state of mind is vividly portrayed in a series of letters to Djuna Barnes. Excerpts from these letters were published by Barnes in the February 1928 issue of transition magazine as "Selections from the Letters of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven." They are at times merely ranting, self-pitying, and entreating. Oddly her prose becomes more lucid as her decline deepens. At their best they present a terribly befuddled and despairing mind trying to bring itself to grips with an incredibly debased reality. Near the end of the sequence, she describes visions of a Sphinxlike spectre descending over her, which she believes is Death attempting to drive her to suicide. Though her delusions intensify, she seems to grow more self-aware. Through it all she persists in her belief that deep within her was "glittering wealth."
In 1926, Barnes and others (the letters allude to "Pauline" and "Fitzi") in Paris made a last-minute rescue attempt. They raised enough money to bring the Baroness from Berlin to Paris and settle her into a flat. She apparently did find peace and companionship once again, but it lasted only a few months. After a lifetime of insomnia and nightmares, she finally slept soundly in her apartment on December 14, 1927. Someone had either entered her room and turned on the gas, or she had turned it on herself, forgotten and fallen asleep. No one really knows exactly what happened. She died, in Barnes's words, as the result of "a stupid joke that had not even the decency of maliciousness."
I do not wish to belabor the point, but in a sense, the Baroness both inverted and reflected back all the absurd pretensions of the twenties artiste. She was a walking grotesque, a lunatic parody of the literati. She herself began to believe the rhetoric others spewed about her, for example, Margaret Anderson's describing her work as "perhaps the best of any woman of our time." Although "Art" may have seemed like serious business, those who goaded the Baroness along - even when, as in Anderson's case, it arose from sympathy - ultimately contributed to her demise. Steven Watson says, in Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde, "Unlike other artists associated with New York Dada, the Baroness did not keep herself at one remove from her art, and nothing she did was mediated by irony." Of all the New York literati, Djuna Barnes alone seems to have "recognized her untutored genius and understood her fanatical commitment to the cause of art."... "Essentially, Elsa's total commitment to art implied a value system... that ultimately could produce a self-consuming artist" (Herring: Djuna).
There is no direct evidence that Ezra Pound ever met the Baroness, but in his capacity as foreign editor of The Little Review, he undoubtedly followed the debates about her. Publically, he shows little sign of interest in, indeed every sign of wishing to avoid, the argument over her "Art" - except once. His one sally into the arena occurs anonymously in the "Brancusi Number" of The Little Review (January-March 1921), in the guise of an announcement of "The Poems of Abel Sanders." In the disguise of this nom de plume Pound addresses his travesty "To Bill Williams and Else von Johann Wolfgang Loringhoven y Fulano" and mockingly imitates the styles both of Williams' Kora in Hell and the Baroness's long, incoherent, Dadaist review titled, "Thee I call 'Hamlet of Wedding-Ring.'" Here is an excerpt from Pound's "poem":
Codsway bugwash
Bill's way backwash
FreytagElse 3/4arf an'arf
Billy Sunday one harf Kaiser Bill one harf
Elseharf Suntag, Billsharf Freitag
Brot with thranen, con plaisir ou con patate pomodoro
Bill dago resisting U.SAgo, Else ditto on the verb
Even here, Pound depicts her as a "resister" in the final line, which perhaps is a faint foreshadowing of Canto XCV. In fact, Pound makes three appearances in the "Brancusi Number":
- First, "a sober introduction to the works of that great formalist" (i.e., Brancusi)
- In the middle of the issue, "a rambling, frequently absurdist essay he apparently wrote to attack misconceptions about his use of the classics" (Andrew Clearfield, "Pound, Paris, and Dada," Paideuma, Spring and Fall 1978)
- Finally, in the dadaist pastiche titled "The Poems of Abel Sanders"
Pound thus seems almost to apologize for the pretensions of his formal pose in the Brancusi article by assuming a dadaist persona in the satire. At any rate, he seems to take none of it seriously, preferring instead to snicker slyly up his sleeve under various pseudonyms.
But in Canto XCV Pound's perception of the Baroness has changed. He not only views her more sympathetically, attributing "a few true things" to her, but he also calls her "Elsa Kassandra" - after the prophetess whose curse was always to speak the truth but never to be believed. Pound implicitly makes the comparison with himself and his situation as he is composing the lines:
driven nuts,
Well, of course, there was a certain strain
on the gal in them days in Manhattan
the principle of non-acquiescence
laid a burden.
Pound himself had been "driven nuts" - driven to a mental breakdown at Pisa and confined at St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the criminally insane. He was perceived by the world not as a prophetic thinker but as a silly and dangerous old crank. Pound, of course, thought of himself as embodying "the principle of non-acquiescence" by virtue of his championing unpopular economic and aesthetic theories. He too paid the price of "a certain strain" when his countrymen threw him into the cage in Pisa and adjudged him mentally incompetent. Perhaps, in his somewhat bemused remembrance of "the old gal," Pound saw a foreshadowing of his own clear and present predicament.
But in another sense Pound seems not to reach this recognition. The Baroness section of Canto XCV opens with the carping line, "The immense cowardice of advertised litterati," which is echoed thirty lines later in "the enormous organized cowardice." This phrase also occurs in a letter Pound wrote to Louis Dudek in January 1955. This was the same time period when Pound would have been finishing the Rock Drill Cantos. In the context of this letter, it is clear that Pound meant the line to refer to his distinction between a "major" and a "minor" poet:
The ENormous organized cowardice. The pretense that basic ethics is mere politics and " unpoetic"/ Minor poets evade, hide , do NOT face / what Dant and Shx/ did / no one supposes Dant uncivic/ Shx/ was SO civic that any amount of tosh has been writ to shove idea that only Bacon, Lord Chancellor cd/ have done it. That is the line between major and minor verse. (Louis Dudek, ed. Dk/ Some Letters of Ezra Pound, Montreal: DC Books, 1974)
Clearly, Pound thinks the distinction between the major and minor poet is defined by the degree of political commitment. Thus Dante and Shakespeare are "major" only in so far as they involve politics with their poetics. In later Cantos Pound nags his contemporaries about their lack of civic passion ("Possum" is, of course, T. S. Eliot, author of "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," the source of the recent Broadway play "Cats"):
But the lot of 'em. Yeats, Possum and Wyndham
had no ground beneath 'em
. . .
Uncle William two months on ten lines of Ronsard
But the salt works. . . (Canto XCVIII)
But the lot of 'em, Yeats, Possum, Old Wyndham
had no ground to stand on
. . .
Yeats two months on a sonnet of Ronsard's. . . (Canto CII)
Pound harps on the same obsessive themes - haranguing his friends for not taking up the cause of social credit, for being on the "wrong side" in World War II, for failing to perceive the true nature of injustice, and finally, for simply not agreeing with Pound. If by some peculiar twist of logic, the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven emerges as a "major figure" by Pound's definition - by virtue of her "principle of non-acquiescence" - then she may at last find her place in the sun.
Appalling Heart
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
City stir——wind on eardrum——
dancewind : herbstained——
flowerstained——silken——rustling——
tripping——swishing——frolicking——
courtesing——careening——brushing——
flowing——lying down——bending——
teasing——kissing : treearms——grass——
limbs——lips.
City stir on eardrum—— .
In night lonely
peers—— :
moon——riding !
pale——with beauty aghast——
too exalted to share !
in space blue——rides she away from mine chest——
illumined strangely——
appalling sister !
Herbstained——flowerstained——
shellscented——seafaring——
foresthunting——junglewise——
desert gazing——
rides heart from chest——
lashing with beauty——
afleet——
across chimney——
tinfoil river——
to meet——
another's dark heart——
Bless mine feet !
Blast
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
Take spoon——scalpel——
Scrape brains clear from you——
how it hurts to be void !
blast flew
over twin hillocks
emeroyd.
singeing——seering satanic stink——
flew——blew——
blushroses !
barren grew——
to you——
annoyed
protruding
sharp :
pointed pyramids
silence——drums——
——sphinx——
I smother——
pranked mother——
from stark things ! ! !
stark kings in rockchamber
mockeye set amber
within mine chest ! ! !
to rest——
no !
ripple——glide——quiver :
Nile
river !
overflow !
hillocks inundated
abated
blush
blushroses !
on twin hillocks
smaragd isle !
awhile——awhile—— !
Moonstone
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
Lake——palegreen——shrouded——
skylake——clouded——shrouded——
yearning——blackblue——
sickness of heart——
pomgranate hue——
sickness of longing——
——! you !
In cloud——nay——ach——shroud——
nay——ach——shroud—— !
of——breast——
sickness of longing
gulps
pomegranate hue
from heart in chest——
palegreen lake in chest !
—— you !
Heart (Dance of Shiva)
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
Around me hovers presence that thou art,
secretely atmosphere draws cloudy——dense——
perfume athwart mine cheekbone swings intense——
smile on mine lip——
I kiss thee——
with mine heart !
Ja——with mine heart——
that can perform fine tricks
since it is housed with wizzardry and art—— !
soul——how enchanted art thou——
by such heart ! !
Ho !——lover far——
Cathedral
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
Why didst thou go away from me?
Say——why?
art not enslaved by balmy wizzardry
out of mine jewelled eye ?
not by mine lips——so softly passionate——
with harnessed strength——
in bridled strain——
musk——amber——myrrh and francincense——
gold——damask——ivory——
mine gothic cathedrál——
is that upbuild in vain
for thee—— ?
the whom I shall desire——
to pray ?
art nor thou worshipper nor devotee ?
Thus stand I desolate——
priest to mine tarnished self——
light tapers stately——upon jadeworsted shelf——
not to decay.
Is It?
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
It is——is it—— ?
heart white sheet !
kiss it
flame beat !
in chest midst
print teeth
bite—— —— ——
this green
ponderous night.
Gihirda's Dance
The Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920)
Nose straight
smile flower
unfolding in sun of love.
Petals : large——sweet
overwhelming cinnamon-scented——almond——sandal——rose-carmine——
tuberose
cheekpale in ray of moon torch
ghosts——with strength of ghosts——enticing as passion in graveyard of flesh dead——
——alive—— ——
remembering.
Hands cupped in greed of tissues parched——
owner's wolfheart—— !
devotion simple as child's suckled——
eyes of god drink out of tankard
of palm mine face's palegold champagne.
Whereas now thine polar-bear's sinister ivorywhite mouth black——
black lips cruel tender pluck
purple black in face white——
Tremble—— ?
not weep—— !
I——thou.
Tombstone——lie I beneath
weight——passionate weight——
pallor—— !
not life shall call
from stoneheaviness'
encompassing weight.
Eyes of god drain from veins cinnamonscented rosedisks carmine:
to blend——
thou——I .
No move—— !
from mine thine cheek not part
dual rock——on Nile——rigid :
Excerpts from "Thee I call 'Hamlet of Wedding-Ring': Criticism of William Carlos William's 'Kora in Hell' and Why. . . Part II
The Little Review, 8 (Autumn 1921)
Knowledge——character——develop together——depend on each other——each in other.
Organism in profundity constructed sound carries seeds of quality.
Bird flies with two wings that is one wing.
Education ——treasure——wealth——needs preparation——slow gradual advancement. Character foundation——pillar arises——to carry light dome——cupola wisdom——root——stem——flower.
Heaviest weight——giant balances graceful easy——pigmy twists crumbles into splinters.
Travel of mind how to arrive at own architecture.
To pilfer——borrow——transplant—— : inner void barrenness.
Transplant cathedral——grown oak——vain toys——wither.
Splendor grafted sudden on unprepared——by generation degree not refined organism——ready for that much at that period——disturbs harmony of cells——balance of structure——instead movement to refinement step to crippledom——cancer——ruin.
Trees——plants : growth——happiness.
instead expansion——freedom——happiness : warp——burden disorder——hate——restricted vitals : hate.
Education thrown sudden on coarsefibred mind——mere trash ! weeds of too high disgrace in soil unprepared——infertile acre barren——disturbed——troubled with husks——possession unjustified——never unfolding flower of knowledge.
Treasure turns tin in shack of paper ! jadeworsted sheep needs treasure in echoing whispering banquet-hall of knightly castle smiling——frowning——with sky——clouds——through ages——aloft.
Education of W. C. trash.
Grafted——thrown into mind sudden——unprepared——unmerited——out of culture.
All America.
Sudden possession of leisure through sudden prosperity hastens ruin.
Gazes into chasm of knowledge——void——frightened——dizzy——lacking architecture.
Unable to serenly——trustingly——knowingly : gaze into depths hallowed——shifts gaze slantwise——shallow——denies depths for own shallowness——imperative command else ramble——capsize——being flat thin structure in illogical conceit that carries punishment as logic ever will punish illogic——to wrong place——world's edge——where swirls draft from sablewings of eagle circling——
——bird giantesque——God.
From rock walls of chasm at world's edge hewn——treasure vascillating in accord with dance——circle——flight of bird——castle——erect——deep——high——founded——smiles——frowns——stands.
Perpetual fear——defiance——lie——by necessity warps structure flimsy——cheaply bedizzened——shabby——before collapse into lath dust :
Sophistication——callowness : narcotics to smother acid burns of cancer——despair of structure. Gayless——tortured——diabolical——flippant——sneers void in W. C.'s particular case pathetically infantile——there are clever devils——beautiful in ruin——castles ruined in culture—— :
Baudelaire :
Organism condemned—— : unfinished flimsy——ageworn——
That hell !
Hell is in life :
Corpse outseeks corpse——dancing partners equal.
Touch of life's body corpses most frenzied dread ! not life fears touch corpse : Life fears nothing——omnipotent.
Life can give life to corpse——
not be in death——nor life——wearing mask of life in dread purgatory Impostors bad conscience——satan shame nursing decay——hate dance of living corpse.
Trepidation——shame——fear——disguised as defiance——yelled in swagger——ice orbed spleen——makes corpses hate grow——delivers to death untimely——unsought.
To touch life——break——dissemble——assemble anew immediate——in glory earned passion dance of molecules——life——Shiva corpse flees doubting resiliency——
that doubt condemns to death in life——to be neither.
In death life——
not death in life.
Perpetual shame no creature endures without hate——splendor points contrast.
Callousness from shame keeps out grief——honesty of surrender——healing emotion wave of utter despair followed instantly by kiss——face earthward——before chasm——in abandon of passionate humbleness——adore——let God take——
oblivious to distortion——ugliness——in ecstasy of mother self——of giving——stabbed by God's beauty.
Moment creative :
Distortion ugliness vanishes not believed in.
Are in mind——drug shapes——nightmares of somnolence of callousness.
Dreams of corpses——unreal——
not in life——hate : life love.
"Art may be the supreme hypocrisy of an information cultured (!) people——without contact——justifiable perhaps——(that would not be!) if it becomes at last actually the way sensitive people live" (How!)
But : and how "information cultured"——maybe your topdrawer——dome celebration ? do you already live justifiable——in sensitiveness——art-soaked sponge ?
Art no mechanical toy ! is life as life purposeful machine ! palpitating brain.
Hypocrisy stored up through ages !
Rembrandt hypocrite——Shakespeare——Goethe !
O give me hypocrite who life——act——with sense behind passionate blood——who believe——do ! deluge of wrath pour upon those jabbering uncreative joyless sincere nobodys that write, potter, live, are uninteresting for force of honesty ! Sure ! can't help it !
Jackassy——nincompoop——cocky——bastard soul——can hypocrisy inform——ever ! is hypocrisy quality——negates——creates ?
Hypocrisy——void——hypocrisy not virile——cannot live.
Nothing ever is——has been supreme about hypocrisy !
Ppyramids hypocrisy ?
Agh——pah ! Carlos Williams——you wobbly-legged business satchel-carrying little louse !
You do make me laugh healthy belly laugh :
Tortured child——that is obliged in soul's estimate for that expensive education's sake to exhibit "intellect" ! wrestle with dolls——lifesized of most complex mechanism !
Cannot ! they crush you ! square chest——spit blood——cause consumption !
Give it up——not your calling——mind muscles flabby——unprepared of simple parentage.
With rag dolls toy gradually improving to moderately priced pets leave mechanisms intricate for selected children of nobility in toyland.
Art to you hypocrisy——for is your hypocrisy!
Entirely out of balance you !
Does art affect thus ?
Result : balance.
Not must leave bad memory——carry such !
Feeling of something exquisite——extraordinary——great——joyful——to be proud of——carry into age——no matter what happened——no matter what subject——will linger——must ! or individual unfit to indulge !
Art——strength——joy conveys joy—— to strong.
Gentleman in Europe carries intoxication as gentleman !——never loses balance——in deepest abandon of gayety——numbed senses——subconsciously breeding tells how far to go——when to retire.
Abstinence : lack of confidence in breeding——training :——debility.
In Europe to see man drunk quickest way to decide caste : plebian——bourgeois——gentleman.
We——ah ! do not need prohibition——possessing ! tradition——selection——pride
Thus carries artist intoxication of feeling——expresses in sound color shape (words) as artist.
Never losing balance——in deepest abandon——highest excitement——breeding of artist in blood——subconsciously tells how far to go——we becoming sober to criticise in cold blood.
Retires when becomes inexpressive——inarticulate——
silence——
death.
ELSE VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN
Baroness von Freytag Letter to Margaret Anderson and jane heap (posthumous)
The Little Review, 13 (1929)
Introduction
This letter was written from Berlin, where the baroness had gone in 1923 to find ease and the leisure to write. She found poverty and desperation : to keep alive she sold newspapers in the streets. She came to Paris in 1926 where, a few months later, she died tragically and alone.
My heart is abode of terror and a snake——they stare at each other, always, even when asleep I carry it around, I harbour it like embryo in womb——it grows. Is it the spiritual cancer that I am to die of ? My mother perished from physical disease. She waited too long. Am I to wait too long ? Suicide is more decent ! I am not afraid of death. Ah not ! It is my home——sweet——as I always said——since long——since I have become wise. Yet I am scared——like snake victim. I feel it not belonging to me——not my way——but where is my way ! See, maybe I will get acquainted with it, gradually it will stroke me, as nice and familiar, even petting me and it will be my door to home. I am buried alive——I fear bed for spectre shape enters with me——there it has leisure to torture, tweak, pommel me, weaken my heart, pounding on it, pounding, pounding, pounding, until I sleep in faint. In morning it is stiff, heavy in me——even for suicide one has to arrange, to go up, to lie down forewer (sic.
You will love, even over my possible destruction, as over this letter——which would be sin if it were not written in holy purpose——irrepressible anguishcry——as Christ's in Gethsemane (I understand that now !) But I never, never thought I were Christ. I hate Christ——that is I did hate him——that is I was suspicious, perhaps because he is my fate. I hate myself as Christ ! So did he ! Can one tremble, writhe in Gethsemane ? I am shadow-heavy. Yet I love the earth still. . . . . .Consider me a fish that is left on bonedry beach by crazy time's tide. Put me into the sea again. I will swim again. . .to bring my mother's noble, precious, highly painful bought blood to houour. I can be Raskolnikow from absolute angle, for I am optimist by nature, not melancholic pessamist as he is.
I have just discovered that I am not, and why I am not made for suicide——unless it could be done gaily——victoriously——with flourish, I think that is death in battle, or tournament——self-destruction by God——but to act God is weakness and will be punished and can never be strong——gay. He punishes his weakness in members weak, he is terrible. ——I am dead already. Death cannot commit suicide. I am safe. . .
I need, for a few quiet hours——human sympathy——talk——love——in my terrible plight——because it is terrific. No joy, no light, not the satisfaction of the pride of my faculties——my art that carries me. I am beset by great multitudes of small worries——I almost despise myself for the trouble I make and the trouble that troubles me. But what shall I do ? I am stunned nearly to exhaustion. Forgive me, but I am mourning destruction of high quality——as I know myself to be——to do my art——to live humanly decent——but it is not in your power, I know. I am poor and deserted——if I had not to stand the experience of my person——my country is slowly wearing me to rags——body and spirit. . . .many ants can kill the strongest, proudest life it it is fettered to ant heap——as I am to life in Germany——to life——to terrible poverty and its obligations——one may perish on a formality——winter approaching——rain, hail——cold,——I on the streets——freezing——to boot, in such weather people do not buy. I wish you would give me some time for comfort——once ! Stroke my hands——and give me "cheer up." Talk with me, listen to me. I am human, and I am not newspaper seller ! I have no more time——must go to sell——I should like to laugh with you——to be gay, I can be that ! It is my nature——that sounds ghastly now. . .that is the tragedy——I still feel deep in me glittering wealth. . .
Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven
The Art of Madness I, by Evelyn Scott
The Little Review, 6 (December 1919)
Let me hasten to aid "jh" in relieving the readers of the Little Review of the awful misapprehension that she and I agree.
To come to a unanimous conclusion in any discussion it is necessary that the parties to it begin with a common understanding of the word values employed by each. Otherwise each artues in his own tongue and there is no hope of bridging their disagreement. I fear this is the present case. Art to "jh", for instance, appears to be something too sacred for analysis, else why should she be shocked by a recognition of the fact that the psychological idiosyncricies inate in the artist and so beyond the despotism of will modify and distinguish the quality of his work.
"In the case of Else von Freytag-Loringhoven I am not talking of mania and disease, of numbed sensibilities . . . . hers is a willed state," says "jh". I concede it to be true that in no effort in which self-consciousness of any sort persists is the will absolutely in abeyance, and the beginning of madness is rarely an absolute state. To express life in words is to juggle with the poison that lies in the very medium, for language was primarily an attempt to arrest experience and so enslave life and do it to death that man might no more fear it. The artist often courts the speech of the madman because he desires the emotion he has ensnared to escape the petrification of intellectualization, but there is a point at which the will weakens beneath the onrush of forces it has itself loosed. Amidst flashes of insight like fire in the rain perception dims and is finally extinguished in the blindness of pure sensation. Else von Freytag-Loringhoven, in my opinion, has walked perilously near ( if she has not passed over the edge) beyond which teh vision of delirium melts into the blank self-enwrapped exaltation of trance.
Margaret Anderson is good enough to inform me that through the careless of the printer "jh" was misquoted in her reply to me in the last issue, so that "working" should be supplemented for "evoking", in which case I quote "jh" as follows:
"The artist working his consciousness at a high power on some piece of difficult work appears to have become callous and stupid or a wild man to the layman." For the sake of "jh" I am sorry that the correction must be made, as by this alteration in her satement a word of vague applicability is supplemented for one of clear connotation. One must now inquire in what manner and under what circumstances the artist is able to "work" his consciousness.
A man may be working a sewing machine or a plow or, in the vernacular of the day, he may be working a woman. In each case an initiation of will is required. The point at issue is to decide wherein lies the difference in the relation which the man holds to the sewing machine and the plow, and to the woman. In one case we have the will acting without limitations other than those which inhere in the quality of metal. The man may mar the machine and destroy the plow and even then he can collect the mutilated parts and reconstruct them to their original use. But over the woman he has not an equal sphere of dominance. By suggestions of fear or benevolence he may temporarily put one or more of her powers at his disposal, but she will continue to exist under her own condition which he has not created and cannot re-create. It would seem that only in this sense can the consciousness be "worked", for it is distinguishable from the will while existing on unalterable terms. One bends to one's uses the thing one can not break and the most literal word to express this act is the word which "jh", unfortunately, did not use,——evocation.
I did not anywhere make a statement which would contradict the supposition that the madness of the artist in question was evoked as is often the madness of the religious ecstatic, only that the features of madness were in her worl. Synthesis looses the will. One may evoke a god, a muse, or a madness, but to speak of conditioned disorder would be to contradict oneself, and I certainly believe that Else von Freytag-Loringhoven is powerless to condition the disorder she has evoked.——EVELYN SCOTT.
The Art of Madness II, by jh (jane heap)
The Little Review, 6 (December 1919)
It does not seem necessary to flaunt and flourish as much as Miss Scott does in such a simple discussion. This is no controversy. There is no need of agreement or unanimous conclusion in any discussion or argument, and when two such different minds meet there is not even the possibility of a common understanding of word values: word values come from personal values.
"Art to jh appears to be something too sacred for analysis." . . . I fear not sacred enough. I write more about Art than anyone in the country, wasting time and energy that might be put into my proper work as an artist. It is all too foolish. The Baroness von Freytag will think us feeble minded.
But now let us see who is talking about what? It all started from a statement of mine: "No one has yet done much about the Art of Madness." Then Miss Scott jumped in and talked about the madness in the Art of von Freytag——not the Art in her Madness. I never thought of discussing those pasychological peculiarities in the artist which are beyond the reach of the will. Haven't those things been recognized and summed up even by laymen in "artists are born not made?"
Words do not mean so many things to me as they do to Miss Scott. Consciousness does not mean the sum of ungovernable, dispersed faculties. Consciousness means complete being. So I am not talking of a state in which the consciousness is only kept from being nothing by a weak and tottering will, but of one in which the will is so powerful that it creates the being——the state of consciousness it desires. When I speak of disease I mean disorder. When a person has created a state of consciousness which is madness and adjusts (designs and executes) every form and aspect of her life to fit this state there is no disorder anywhere: there is therefore no disease. There can be no legitimate standard for valuing the order of sanity higher than the order of madness, except a moral one.
Now I will try to answer Miss Scott's problem of working and evoking. I did not use the word evoke because it is an unknown and unnecessary word to me. Evoking comes in the class with rain-making, etc. If one has the power to evoke he has more power than the evoked.
It is perhaps not necessary for the artist to make any outward sign that he has had his specialized creative experience, but it is customary and human and we are speaking of these signs (works of art). After the æsthetic intuition of Beauty there is a simultaneous mental and emotional conception,——the complete vision and creation of this beauty : the internal expression : the experience of the creative impulse. But if the artist wishes to show other men that he has had this experience,——first he wills: intends unconditionally; then he must not choose with his mind but with his consciousness the subject matter which will best communicate his experience; and then by deliberate and intense activity of his consciousness he must produce the forms, colours, rhythm of his invention.
Miss Scott has information, knowledge and words. All that she says is true but it does not make sense because it does not fit this discussion. Unless I had tried to begin my discussion far beyond the cause which may be pathological and the effect which is not . . . beyond the support of knowledge and evidence and academic definition. . . I should feel that I had offered an affront and an insult to Else von Freytag-Loringhoven.——jh.
The Art of Madness III, by Else von Freytag-Loringhoven
The Little Review, 6 (December 1919)
"jh" understands me wonderfully——perfectly. Don't I say in "The Cast-Iron Lover" : "look full of laughter——look full of motion——look full of dizziness—— insanity !——which makes steady and sane !——maketh steady and sane thine body !"
Is it not necessary for emotions to come out——is it not necessary for emotional people to be like insane sometimes ?——to be more sane and steady and strong than other, weaker people, after that ? Is it not wonderful to be able to control that then, that emotion, which otherwise would throttle you ?——but take it by the neck and make Art out of it ? and be free ?——that is, the master ? Only such things——done that way are Art ! It is Goethe's art ! He knew that too !——he too had to do it: "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt——weiss was ich leide" . . . That is just as insane as my "Cast-Iron Lover" (and would have been too sentimental if Goethe had not been such a strong artist); and my "Cast-Iron Lover" is not an iota more insane nor less art !
Perhaps the America people need to be told it——Europeans wouldn't; no people who read books like the Little Review.
Another thing : haven't all highcultured emotional people——[which always means artistic people, as high culture is only possible with emotional people, therefore Americans can never have it and the Germans will——I mean—— : high culture—— ! that——what the French can't hold any longer for their blood has become thin——the teutons will take it and flow it with blood——strength——tell the Americans that in nations of high culture it even was a public custom, as it is still——for instance in the mardi gras——or "Fasching"——and in old Greece in the feast of Dionysus ("die Dionysien" as we learned it in Germany), and always will be——because it has to be——like a steam nozzle on a tea kettle—— to be insane, for a time, to be very sane and steady and strong and relieved after it? Because Americans do not need that——they should not give constume balls ! They do not know what it is for——the reason for them——to let yourself go—— ! That is why it is such a mournful heartbreaking affair in America. Europeans like myself cannot understand why they put on these constumes ( they are silly enough——without inner sense ! ); but why they do it anyway and stay up all night and move around when they are not different as if they were in their beds——so——why not rather go to bed——instead of giving this mournful spectacle of intended gaiety !——when there is no gaiety to be relieved, or insanity, or anything to be let go——let loose ! It is all a make-believe. Everything emotional in America becomes a mere show and make-believe ! No necessity——no blood behind ! They——their needs——did not create it. They monkeyed it after Europe——as they do everything except business——even marriage——and it is just such an empty show at make believe, without anything to let go——let loose ! They have not found out the sense——and never will ! They ought not to marry——they ought not to make love——to shame the word even——how much more the sense——and the action.
Americans are trained to invest money, are said to take even desperate chances on that, yet never do they invest beauty nor take desperate chances on that. With money they try to buy beauty——after it has died——famishing——with grimace. Beauty is ever dead in America."——ELSE von FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN.
Primary
* = Reprinted in Margaret C. Anderson, Ed., The Little Review Anthology.
* "Mefk Maru Mustir Daas." Little Review, 5 (December 1918), p. 41.
"Moving-Picture and Prayer." Little Review, 6 (May 1919), pp. 71-72.
"King Adam." Little Review, 6 (May 1919), p. 73.
"Mineself——Minesoul——and——Mine——Cast-Iron Lover." Little Review, 6 (September 1919), pp. [3]-11.
"Budda." Little Review, 6 (January 1920), pp. 18-20.
"Father !" Little Review, 6 (January 1920), pp. 20-21.
* "The Art of Madness, III." Little Review, 6 (January 1920), pp. 28-29.
"Irrender König (an Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven)." Little Review, 6 (March 1920), p. 10.
"Klink——Hratzvenga (Deathwail) Narin——Tzarissamanili (He is dead !)." Little Review, 6 (March 1920), pp. 11-12.
"Holy Skirts." Little Review, 7 (July-August 1920), pp. [28]-29.
"Marie Ida Sequence." Little Review, 7 (July-August 1920), pp. 29-30.
* "The Modest Woman." Little Review, 7 (July-August 1920), pp. 37-40.
* "Appalling Heart." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. [47].
"Blast." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 48.
"Moonstone." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 49.
"Heart (Dance of Shiva)." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 49.
"Cathedral." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 50.
"Is It?" Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 50.
"Gihidra's Dance." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), pp. 51-52.
"Das Finstere Meer (an Vater)." Little Review, 7 (September-December 1920), p. 52.
"Thee I Call 'Hamlet of Wedding-Ring': Criticism of William Carlos William's (sic 'Kora in Hell' and Why. . . Part I." Little Review, 7 (January-March 1921), pp. 48-60. "Part II." Little Review, 8 (Autumn 1921), pp. 108-111.
* "Affectionate." Little Review, 9 (Winter 1922), p. 40.
"The Independents." Little Review, 9 (Winter 1922), p. 47.
"Circle." Broom, 4 (January 1923), p. 128.
"Cafe du Dome." transition, 7 (October 1927), p. 134.
"X-Ray." transition, 7 (October 1927), p. 135.
Posthumous
* [Letter to Margaret Anderson and jane heap], Little Review, 13 (1929), pp. 34-35.
"Selections from the Letters of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven" [to Djuna Barnes]; [Foreword by Djuna Barnes]. transition, 11 (February 1928), pp. 19-30.
"Ostentatious," "Westward," "Eastward:," "Agog." transition, 16-17 (June 1929), p. 24.
Rothenberg, Jerome and Joris, Pierre, Eds. The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Volume One: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude, University of California Press, 1995 (ISBN 0-520-07227-8), reprints "Affectionate," "Holy Skirts."
A Dozen Cocktails-- Please, by The Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, published in Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity, MIT Press: 2002.
"A Long Satirical Poem About Her Stormy Affair With Ernst Hardt," by The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, ca. 1896-1898, E-Edited in the Original German with Parallel English Translation by Gaby Divay and Jan Horner, November 2000, Revised and translated June/July 2001.
"A Long Satirical Poem About Her Acquaintance and Marriage with August Endell," by The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, ca. 1896-1898, E-Edited in the Original German with Parallel English Translation by Gaby Divay and Jan Horner, November 2000, Revised and translated June/July 2001.
She (c. 1924), Thunder and Lightening (c. 1912), Analytical Chemistry of Progeny (c. 1919), and Cosmic Chemistry, by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Translated from the German by Irene Gammel.
Secondary
Beginning in October 1919 and continuing through 1920, many letters appeared in "The Reader Critic" section of The Little Review, nearly all of them protesting her appearance in the magazine. I am not listing these separately, but recommend the reader go read them him/herself, along with the other primary source material.
Anderson, Margaret C. My Thirty Years' War. New York: Covici, Freide Publishers, 1930.
Anderson, Margaret C., Ed. The Little Review Anthology. New York: Horizon Press, 1953.
Biddle, George. An American Artist's Story. Boston: Little, Brown, 1939.
Bodenheim, Maxwell. [Letter]. Little Review, 6 (November 1919), p. 64.
Bodenheim, Maxwell. "The March Number." Little Review, 6 (April 1920), p. 61.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996.
Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians: A Re-creation of Greenwich Village in Its Heyday. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959.
Divay, Gaby. "Fanny Essler's Poems: Felix Paul Greve's or Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's?" Arachne, Vol. I, No. 2, 1994.
Gammel, Irene. Baroness Else: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
Gammel, Irene. "German Extravagance Confronts American Modernism: The Poetics of Baroness Else." Pioneering North America: Mediators of European Literature and Culture, Ed. Klaus Martens. Literaturverlag Münster, 1999.
Gammel, Irene. "Breaking the Bonds of Discretion: Baroness Elsa and the Female Sexual Confession." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 14:1 (Spring 1995), pp. 149-166.
Gammel, Irene. "'No Woman Lover': Baroness Elsa's Intimate Biography." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 20:3 (September-December 1993), pp. 451-467.
Gammel, Irene. "'She Strips Naked': The Poetry of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven." Essay from The Literary Review, (Spring 2003).
* "jh" [jane heap]. "The Art of Madness, II." Little Review, 6 (January 1920), pp. 27-28.
Herring, Phillip. Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. New York: Viking, Penguin Books, 1995.
Hjartarson, Paul and Spettigue, Douglas O., Eds. Baroness Elsa: The Autobiography of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Ottawa: Oberon, 1992.
Hughes, Robert. "Days of Antic Weirdness: A Look Back at Dadaism's Brief, Outrageous Assault on the New York Scene." Time Magazine, January 27, 1997.
Hughes, Robert. "CAMPING UNDER GLASS: The ghost of Florine Stettheimer, remote and glittering, evokes a period between the wars in a new show at the Whitney." Time Magazine, September 18, 1995.
Josephson, Matthew. Life Among the Surrealists. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962.
Kuenzli, Ruedi. Lectures on "Elsa, New York, and Dada, or About American Plumbing," starring Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, University of Iowa, April 11, 1997.
Loeb, Harold. The Way It Was. New York: Criterion, 1959.
Martens, Klaus. "Frederick Philip Grove in Kentucky: Spartanic Preparations An Exploration,", July 6, 1999. On Frederick Philip Grove and Elsa in Sparta, KY.
Martens, Klaus. "Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: Theatrical Beginnings,", December 2001; July 2002. On Elsa's experiences as a chorus girl and actress in Berlin and Cottbus, Germany.
Naumann, Francis and Venn, Beth, eds. Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York, New York: Whitney/Abrams, 1966.
Naumann, Francis. New York Dada 1915-23, New York: Whitney/Abrams, 1994. (See especially Section 6, "The Arensberg Circle," and within it "Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven," pp. 168-175.)
Palmer, Cynthia, and Horowitz, Michael, Eds. Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women's Writings on the Drug Experience.(ISBN 0688013872) New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.1982).
[Pound, Ezra]. "The Poems of Abel Sanders." Little Review, 7 (January-March 1921), p. 111.
* Rodker, John, "'Dada' and Else von Freytag von Loringhoven." Little Review, 7 (July-August 1920), pp. 33-36.
* Scott, Evelyn. "The Art of Madness." Little Review, 6 (December 1919), pp. 48-49 [with reply by "jh," p. 49].
* Scott, Evelyn. "The Art of Madness, I." Little Review, 6 (January 1920), pp. [25]-27.
Williams, William Carlos. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams. New York: Random House, 1951. Chapter titled "The Baroness."
Watson, Steven. Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991.
University of Maryland Literary Manuscripts. Two large holdings of literary manuscripts are especially significant, the papers of the American writers Katherine Anne Porter (1890- 1980) and Djuna Barnes (1892-1982). Both the Katherine Anne Porter collection and the Djuna Barnes collection consist of personal correspondence, typescripts, clippings, photographs, memorabilia, and the authors' personal libraries --plus, in the case of the Djuna Barnes collection, her original artwork. There are numerous smaller collections of literary manuscripts, such as the papers of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Laura Riding Jackson, Edward Lucie Smith, Seymour Lawrence, and Ottoline Morrell. Available also are small holdings of manuscripts of major modern British and American writers, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and others.
On Ezra Pound
Clearfield, Andrew. "Pound, Paris, and Dada." Paideuma, 7 (Spring and Fall, 1978), pp. 113-140.
Dudek, Louis, ed. Dk/ Some Letters of Ezra Pound. Montreal: DC Books, 1974.
Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, 1973.
On Frederick Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve
University of Manitoba -- "Frederick Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve in Context", September 30-October 2, 1998, Suggested Topics:
- FPG's Lives in Europe and North America
- FPG's Works & Translations
- Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (FPG's "wife", 1903-11) & Dada
- Comparative Approaches to Art & Literature
Divay, Gaby. "Ein skandalöses Paar: F. P. Greve/Grove and Else von Freytag-Loringhoven," invited lecture, German-Canadian Studies Program, University of Winnipeg, January 1996.
ELSE BARONESS VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN (FPG's "wife", 1903-1911): Berlin, Italy, Dachau,
Munich, Wollerau, Paris-Plage, Pittsburgh, Sparta, Ky., New York, Paris; contribution to New York Dada & The Little Review, Broom, etc.; relations with M. Behmer, M. Lechter, E. Hardt, A. Endell, R. Schmitz; Man Ray, M. Duchamp, Dj. Barnes, B. Abbott, W. C. Williams, H. Crane; memories of FPG in her autobiography, letters and poems; reflections of Else in FPG's Fanny Essler (1905) and Settlers of the Marsh (1925); their jointly created "Fanny Essler" poems (1904/5), etc.
The FPG (Frederick Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve) Research Endowment Fund
To support, expand, and promote the Archives' FPG source and research collections which include F. P. Grove's Papers, Photograph Collection, the F. P. Grove Library, a good many of F. P. Greve's German translations, and the autobiography of dadaist Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven; the research documents of Douglas O. Spettigue, Margaret Stobie, and Gaby Divay; and numerous related materials in various formats (theses, video- and audiotapes, microforms).
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