Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

In the year following World War I, a great deal of darker themes became apparent in various poems published in the magazine Coterie. 1920 brough about a new freedom to discuss more sordid topics, as the world had just been affected by a great war. There are many poems that depict images of loss and death quite literally from the battleground, as well as figuratively, (as in lost love, and such); however, several of these poems in particular have something beyond that in common, and that is that they allude to references of music in the poetry.

In the April, 1920 issue, a poet named Conrad Aiken had a set of peoms published which are both reminiscent of life and ponder on death. Both exhibit a strong sense of music within their context. The first poem, "Portrait of One Dead" tells the somber story of a woman caught between life with and without her lover, who had gone for reasons that are unexplained. Her life at both stages is contrasted by a world with music and without: "This is her room: on one side there is music-/ On one side not a sound./ At one step she could move from love to silence..." The halls and the rooms of the house itself are described as "sonorous," the love letters she receives are "fragrant with music," which ignites a sense of reverberance in the reader; one can almost feel the vibrations of the music. The sensation of sound is so prominent, it becomes metaphorical for the girl's life. In the poem she dies, which is best described in the lines, "You do not know how long she clung to the music,/ You did not hear her sing," as if the playing of the music runs parallel to her physical life. The poem that follows directly after, "Coffins", again describes life as music: "We are like music, each voice of it pursuing/ A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,/ Climbing to fire, receeding to hoarse despair." The poem depicts a winter night in a town where death looms, inevitable, to take its inhabitants. Aiken is adament about using music as a metaphor for life. When death is in the eyes of someone, it is as thought the music runs out: "They are blown away like windflung chords of music;/ They drift away; the sudden music has died." It puts music in the light of being merely a span of time; It glissandos, crescendos, carries through the wind and is gone, fleeting, like life. He goes so far as to personify music as "sinister" and "troubled."

These themes are apparent again in the same issue and in later months. Further into the issue, a poem by C. B. Kitchin called "Requiem- July 17th, 1919" alludes to music in its very title. A requiem being a prominent musical piece that is sung as a mass at a funeral or in time of death, the work depicts a gruesome scene of death that disturbs the scenario of a peaceful, quiet night. In the September, 1920 issue, a poem called "An Unreturning Thing," by Gerald Gould describes the death of a child like "the hush before the orchestra begins." These poets not only describe music as an essential factor of life, but it is to them, as though, it is life in itself.

Reading TO DON QUIXOTE the first time around, I was not sure what to take from it. I had never read the novel about Don Quixote and didn't really know the story line. After reading the Cliff Notes about the Novel, I re-read the poem and thought many different things. Could Massingham be comparing himself to the Don? Could Massingham be comparing the depressions that the Don experienced with those that people around him were experiencing? Maybe Massingham experienced those depressions himself? So I decided to Google his name, and didn't find very much. What I did find was that his main subject was of rural English life from pre history to the 20th Century. I did not see anything written about him having a wife or children. I also read that he was unable to finish school because he was ill.

Massingham wrote this poem six months after World War I ended. He starts off the poem with the word "YOU." Obviously, he's addressing the Don throughout the entire poem, but it's possible that there is another audience that he is addressing. I think that there are different "you's" that he is addressing throughout the poem. Firstly, I bellieve that he is talking to the soilders that just came back from fighting in the war. Secondly, there is a change in tone after the first semi-colon and I think that Massingham begins to address you - the reader. And lastly, after the second semi-colon Massingham addresses the Don. In the first line, Massingham speaks to the soilders and says that they have traveled the world and now they are back home. "What is dull, wonted, formal, stale/ Magnificent Has Been." Massingham is trying to say that now that they are back from the war they don't think that their travels and what they saw is magnificent anymore. Now it's not the rest of the world that's magnificent, it's their home town that they are happy to see. Then Massingham begins to speak about the war to the public. I believe that Massingham is taking a more nonchalant approach when addressing the general public. It's as if he's letting the reader know, "hey, by the way this is what's goes on during a war on the battle front." I believe that the last two lines Massingham addresses "the late Don." I believe that Massingham thinks that Don Quixote went to heaven after he passed. It's possible that Massingham thought the Don went through a lot in his life - physically and emotionally - and now he will be at rest in heaven.

Coterie was founded by Chaman Lall, an Oxford University student who also served as editor from the magazine’s inception in 1919 until 1921 when co-founder Russell Green inherited the post.  Having published only five issues over a two and a half year span, Coterie assumes a place amongst a plethora of other early modern magazines whose lifespan was as short as their impact was great.  Notwithstanding, a most superficial view of Coterie will attest to a rather pronounced distinction between that magazine and its historical counterparts.

     Published in its entirety in London by Hendersons, Coterie prided itself in being a magazine that existed with the sole intent of collecting and disseminating purely creative works.  Unlike other little magazines of the period that sought to promulgate certain socio-political views, Coterie assumed an apolitical stance, asserting itself as an outlet for post-World War I and avant-garde poetry and art, especially the works of young, budding writers and artists.  Proof of the magazine’s adherence to this policy lies in the absence of editorials (save in the very last issue) and the arrangement of poems not by like political assertions, but by author.  The prominence of the poetry is highlighted in the stark presentation of a single artist's work on the page, void of any juxtaposition between other writings and artwork.  In this way, the reader confronts each work as an individual entity rather than as a representation of a political or aesthetic ideal. 

Indeed, Coterie represented no one school of thought, but opted to publish poetry and visual artistry that oftentimes were of opposing persuasions.  Examples of this are the magazine’s publication of both abstract and representational art and the inclusion of novice, traditional, and avant-garde materials, sometimes even placed alongside each other.  Additionally, in stark contrast to other turn-of-the-century periodicals that heavily relied on commercial advertisements for survival (a fact that might have determined to some extent who and what they published), Coterie included ads only from “The Bomb Shop,” the magazine’s primary distributor in London.  Furthermore, such advertisements are minimal and are completely absent from the first two issues.  As a result of this refusal to allow Coterie to become laden with commercialist motivations, contributors to the magazine often went unpaid.  Apparently, having one’s work appear in the periodical sufficed as compensation.

Circulation was relatively small, peaking at 1000 for select issues.  It is logical to say that the readership was elite (more so in selectivity than in intellectual acuity), a fact that fails to surprise when one considers the willingness of the magazine’s founder to accept the title, “Coterie,” at the time a term that had come to be associated with artistic snobbery.  In spite of its moderate circulation in London, Coterie enjoyed transatlantic status, gaining both readership and an editorial staff in the United States by the publication of its third issue in December 1919.  Reproduced copies of Coterie can be found in distinguished university libraries across the United States, including those of the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University.  Ironically, none of the searches completed for this paper found copies (original or otherwise) in the United Kingdom.

Tanya Palmer

I noted in general that the magazine changes as the issues progress. The first two issues do not contain any mention of the general editors or editorial staff. However, by the third issue there is mention of the staff, and of a general board of editors. In the first two issues, this seemed to highlight the fact that this was a magazine primairly about the work itself--it is the actual art and content that matters the most. The prominence of the poems themselves are also highlighted in the stark presentation of a single artist's work centered on the page, without any overlapping between different writers and artwork, so the reader confronts each work separately. In the first two issues, there are a few spare pen and ink drawings, but there doesn’t seems to be much of a collaboration between the artwork and poetry, or if there is one, it is confusing. For example, in the 2nd issue, right before the poem “Leda,” by Aldous Huxely, there is a pen and ink drawing of a nude woman by Nina Hamnett who seems to have extremely masculine legs and back, not a young beautiful girl and swan.

Although the magazine's cover changes as the issues progress, and by the second issue there is spare artwork included., The magazine doesn't contain any distracting commercial advertisements, although at the end of the second issue there is a feature for the publisher of the magazine, and bookseller, “The Bomb Shop.”

However, by the third issue, the magazine has already changed its title from being merely a poetry magazine, from being “art, prose and poetry.” Huxley seems to have been a regular contributor, but his prose pieces, such as in the fourth issue seem extremely trashy. His romance piece opens with a reference to his poem Leda from the last issue, but is on nowhere near the level of the poetry. However, it seems that in this magazine, there is a growing emphasis placed on giving the readership the choices to decide on what is fine or not. Perhaps this is why the magazine opened and features a largely absent editorial staff, to place more emphasis on the readers, to allow them into the “Coterie” of deciding what is good taste and what isn’t. The readership was actually quite high for this type of magazine, and averaging about a 1,000 per issue, considering how expensive this journal was to produce and considering that it didn’t include any everyday commercial advertising interspersed between the issues, just literary advertisements and booksellers.

The art included as well in the fourth and fifth issues are more of their own pieces, less of illustrations and more of their own work, as the new title implies.

Rachel Borg