Communications

(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

With the hope that the clouds of partisanship, so effectively obfuscating the merits of the new Harvard Magazine, have rolled away, the writer takes the liberty of attempting an objective criticism of the new publication and its apparent purposes.

Can there be any doubt that the literary situation at Harvard, as regards undergraduate effort, is badly in need of re-vivification? For several years the Advocate has consistently failed to live up to its splendid traditions and unequalled opportunities. The shades of Aiken, Van Wyck Brooks, Sheldon, Biggers, Hagedorn, Ficke, and others, have hovered in vain. At their best we have had only dilettantism; at their worst puerility; and throughout this period of decadence a continual subservience to the vapid social and political aims of the editors. And by some irony of Fate this paper has lived when the Monthly, which only a few years ago was publishing work of literary value and political interest, found the "going" too hard. The Monthly stood for the best in Harvard. Its editors were ambitious, intellectual, and effective, if at times a trifle exotic. They were able to publish a book of creditable verse; two or three of the former editors now find a ready market for their wares in the pages of the most discriminating publications; their work while here was worth reading. I was an editor of the Advocate.

The appearance of the "red-covered" parody last Wednesday seemed to herald the possibility of a Renaissance, of a literary magazine that might carry on the traditions which the Monthly fostered to even greater heights. The next day the real Harvard Magazine came out. Can I face the more mature judgments of certain members of our English Department and confess to a decided feeling of disappointment on perusing the pages of the new periodical? With the exception of Miss Barbey's sketch, a charming "bit", creating the mood of a dead past much as Hergesheimer does in "Java Head", I failed to find anything in the publication to stir either the intellect or the emotions. There was considerable attempt at originality both in the stories and the poems, which left only the desire to refer the authors to Professor Babbitt's essay on that phase of literary endeavor. One of the stories was interesting only because it was about Russia; the other a clumsy attempt at whimsicality mingled with a certain amount of unredeemed lubricity. The poems suffer in comparison with the work of Hillyer and Damon. The one essay contained much obvious truth, but seemed over weighted by verbosity, pedantry, and didacticism. The editorial page which failed to state the ambitions, purposes, and ideals of the magazine, presented a farrago of misplaced propaganda and flippancy. The theatrical page brought out some interesting points in atrocious English. The reprint from a New York paper served only to make New Yorkers blush.

The policy of the Harvard Magazine as stated, is "to publish the best in Harvard and Radcliffe." Such a prospectus is comprehensive, pretentious, and difficult of fulfillment, but shows the sort of boundless ambition that deserves laudation. Certainly their opportunity is golden, their well advertised inauguration propitious, but it remains to be seen if they can bring back the breath of life to the stagnant literary life of the undergraduate and lift again the torch dropped from the grasp of the dying Monthly.

But their first number must be their low-water mark! WILLIAM C. BOYDEN, JR., 1L.