"The poetic sensibility of Danko, so far as one can get at it across traditions, is absolutely different from the European and also the Asiatic. We are familiar so far with negro art only in the form of negro sculpture. "He who has visited the ethnographic collections of the Trocadero at Paris or the Museum of Leida, or even, to stay in Italy, the Museo Kircheriano of Rome or that of Anthropology in Florence, will have seen, in the African cases, puppets of carved wood which are called vaguely fetishes and are studied only from the ethnographic aspect. "However, he who observes them well and in a disinterested spirit, looking at them as works of art and not as pieces for the school-room, will find that they have a character, a style, an individual physiogomy. They are, mostly, little figures, carved in a summary and crude manner, but in which there is a magnificent and in a certain sense the most modern stylization of the human figure. Negro art, like the ancient Egyptian, is at the same time synthetic and realistic, and he who is acquainted with the most recent efforts in the painting of the advance guard will find that there has been a real and peculiar influence of negro sculpture upon the latest European paintings. Not for nothing does Pablo Picasso, the creator of cubism, keep in his house a few of these fetishes. "The poetry of Danko, as far as a parallelism is possible in two arts of such a different nature, resembles a little the sculpture of his anonymous racial brothers. He does not lose himself in minute descriptions, in diversions of style, in decorations, in visual counterpoint. In describing a night of heat he says: the point of the yellow moon bathed in the zinc sea'. It is enough. Of a woman: 'the sole of her foot marvelled at her lightness'. Of the elephant: 'the rosy flower of the trunk raised itself above the immobility of the wrinkled column'. The sun for him is 'the golden fist of the sky' and the beloved 'two white eyes stretched out toward me, kissing me before the lips'." V. The notion of a parallelism between Danko's poetry and the art of the African fetish-carver finds some support in the proof sheets of "Natural Songs"the only surviving fragments of that book. But these songs except "HoHo! Boli Boys" already quoted are so natural that they are unpublishable in America. The fire which destroyed the whole edition of that book may not have been wholly accidental. The scuff-scuff of Comstockian sneakers in the alleyway or heavy breathing at the key-hole has thrown even private publishers into panic before. But there is no depravity or vicious license in these songs; only a shocking innocence of our taboos. The manuscript poems which I found show Danko thrusting this way and that for an expression in English which would satisfy him. He has naturally changed since Papini wrote of him in 1916. His love songs are less harsh: NAGULI GIRL. Girl, Naguli girl, I see you in the sword-grass shivering'; moon-fingers at your breasts, agonim on your head and the red stripe of blood berries across your cheeks. Girl, girl, Naguli girl, I hear your heart like a love-drum beating. Come nearer, nearer, Naguli girl! In the far hills And an interesting fragment from the copy-book shows another vein: The cricket cries; the year changes; the pepper-bush by the road-side Of Danko himself we have no trace. "Bush-singer, jungle-walker", he has slipped through the white man's jungle or hides somewhere in its monstrous shadows. The Emperor's Archangel has vanished too. They are lost like whispers in the night. One or a pairthey merge; and I see a fantastic figure in colored robes sitting in a touring-car on Thirty-fifth Street pounding out the rhythm of a new song. My Littleness By LOUREINE A. ABER Two pinholes in the curtain.... My eyes; Two weeds flapping forlornly in a field of corn. ... And in the distance like a foghorn blowing.... I am no bigger than mountains, Or mightier than stars, The sphinx smells of me familiarly, Daisies touch lips with me.... I shall be dust soon. The Carol of the Cockroaches By LELAND DAVIS When Adam was a shadow, a thought, and a plan That God went a-brooding on a-building of the world, And in the Garden, on the lawn, in the corn, dew-pearled, Now Cain He foresaw the Sodom and Gomorrah, And he paused in his phantasy, He laid aside the clay. And God He bowed His head, and I wot He was in sorrow! Then God spieth Innocence! There at his feet were they, The cockroaches, wee ones, spry little wee Cockroaches, homeless, awaiting you and me! Ere Man was the cockroach! the cockroach of many, Though Cain He foresaw and Sodom and Gomorrah, Ere Man was the cockroach! And Sing Deo Gracias! For God He fell to thumping (And I wot He was in sorrow)— And God He fell to thumping at the lump that Adam was, For cockroaches, wee ones, spry little wee Cockroaches, homeless, awaiting you and me! W The Bastard By ANTON CHEKHOV Translated by Jean Culner HILE out on his evening walk, Professor Miguev, Doctor of Scientific Didactics, D.C.L., M.A., L.L.D., stopped by a telegraph pole and deeply sighed. He shifted Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" to one hand and Hegel's "Logic" to the other, and stood musing. It was on this very spot, a week ago, that, as he was returning from his customary evening walk, Agnes, the former servant girl in his home, stole up behind him and said, her eyes sparkling with malevolence: "You just wait, Mister! I'll get even with you! I'll show you how to seduce innocent girls.... Your wife'll know all about this! And I'll go to court! And you'll get the child!...." Then she demanded that he deposit in the bank in her name, no less than five thousand roubles, which was impossible for him to do. Recalling this, Miguev sighed again and again, and most wholeheartedly berated himself for having yielded to a momentary diversion which had now got him into such a mess and such mental uneasiness. Upon reaching his villa, Miguev sat down for a while on the doorstep. It was just ten o'clock, a small slice of moon peeped from behind the clouds. There wasn't a soul in sight; the old people had gone to bed, and the youngsters were out walking in the grove by the sea. He searched his pockets for a match, and then his elbow came in contact with something soft, yielding....He glanced down and his face became distorted with horror, as if he had seen a reptile. On the doorstep, close to the door, lay a bundle. In it something of an elongated shape lay wrapped up; the eminent doctor, thrusting his hand into a corner left slightly agape, sensed something warm, damp....In deathly terror he sprang to his feet and quickly stared about him, like a convict watching a chance to escape... "She did it then, the slut!" he said through his teeth, clenching his fists and taring down at the bundle. "God! here it lies: the....the bastard!...." What should he Fright, shame and fury rendered him speechless. do now? What would his wife say if she found out? colleagues say? And His Excellency, the boss, would call him in, slap him on the belly, give vent to his peculiar little giggle, and say: "Ha-ha! Congratulations! 'In the beary gray hairs and in the guts the devil himself' hey, you rascal you?" The whole of the summer colony would discover his secret and respectable mothers of respectable families would show him the door....As for the newspapers: the illegitimate children of eminent professors are a sweet morsel indeed; and in this notorious way his, Miguev's, name would be spread all over the country.... One of the windows was open. He could hear his wife setting the table for supper. Somewhere nearby Ermolai, the janitor, was fingering a resentful mandolin which throbbed and wailed in reply....The....the thing in the bundle had but to wake up, to squeal-and the secret would be out. Miguev became aware of an urgent desire to be on the move. "Quickly, quickly," he muttered to himself. "While nobody's looking! I'll take it and drop it at somebody else's door...." Miguev took up the bundle and, with a moderate, measured gait, so as not to appear any more suspicious than might any learned man wandering down the street at night, put his feet carefully down the length of the street.... "A remarkably nasty predicament," he thought, endeavoring the while to capture an indifferent, and even bored, expression. "Carting a newborn babe down the street....God, if anyone sees me and catches on, I'm done for.... Here, I'll put it at this door....Or perhaps I'd better not, the windows are open and someone may see me. What the devil! Aha....I know! I'll bring him to Mielkin's, the department store owner....He's wealthy and pretty good-hearted; he might welcome the kid...." And so Miguev decided to play Santa Claus out of season, although Mielkin's villa lay on the very outskirts of the resort, quite a distance away. "If only he'll keep quiet, and not bawl or try to fall out," thought Miguev, fingering the bundle anxiously. For some reason he was sure the infant was a boy. "This certainly is something I didn't expect! Under my arm, like a package of sausages, I am carrying-a human being.... A human being with feelings like everyone else's....with a soul....If all goes well, and the Mielkins adopt him, he might come to amount to something....He might even become an eminent professor, a leader of armies, a great writer....Anything may happen! And here am I, carrying him under my arm, like a pair of worn out shoes going to the shoemaker's-and in about thirty or forty years I may have to salute him, to mind my P's and Q's when I address him!" He turned into a narrow, deserted alley. The fences on either side cast thick shadows across the hollow-sounding sidewalk. And suddenly Miguev began to feel that he was engaged in an act both criminal and inhuman. "See here," he thought, "This sort of thing is essentially caddish and savage....After all, what has the miserable child done, to be thus peddled from door to door....Is it his fault he was born? Has he done anyone any harm? What scoundrels we are....We like to make the bed, but |