THE OWL
Maribel Vega/Julie Ostrowski
The Owl was edited by the beloved British war poet, Robert Graves (1895-1985). According to the introduction by Matthew R. Vaughn on the Modern Journals website, The Owl is "notable for its purposeful conservatism". At the behest of his father-in-law, the painter Sir William Nicholson, Graves served as literary editor while Nicholson directed the hiring of its illustrators. Nicholson would not only inspire The Owl, but he also subsidized the journal.
The Owl debuted in May 1919, when its editor, Robert Graves, was just twenty-three. Though it ran only two numbers and was briefly re-run as the Winter Owl for a sole issue in 1923, The Owl's significant contributions as experimental and bold as an advocate for political and literary freedom. The Owl was printed by The Westminster press, by Gerard T. Meynell and the Illustrations were printed by F. Vincent Brooks, both located in London.
The Owl's Mission Statement
The Owl's first issue begins with a forward that describes its mission and the kind of audience it hopes to attract:
"It must be understood that The Owl has no politics, leads no new movement and is not even the organ of any particular generation-for that matter sixty seven years separate the oldest and youngest contributors. But we find in common a love of honest work well done, and a distaste for short cuts to popular success. The Owl will come out quarterly or whenever enough suitable material is in the hands of the editors."
In Vaughn's introduction to The Owl, we also learned that Graves' tastes in literature were influenced by his relationships with the Georgian poets, and he rejected the radical literary giants of his day, allying himself with writers who more closely resembled the principles he held to a benchmark of sorts for The Owl.
The elements of design for The Owl figure prominently in our review of its content. It is worth noting that the owl as a symbol "suggests the Georgian's interest in nature and in promoting a more traditional, conservative brand of poetic wisdom." (Introduction, Vaughn)
Sir William Nicholson and his daughter, Nancy, contributed many illustrations for The Owl. Nancy, Robert Graves' wife, was influential in recruiting Pamela Bianco--a 12-year old artistic prodigy whose work was featured in The Owl. "Printed by a method of old-fashioned stone lithography, The Owl's artwork is beautifully reproduced, and, in most cases, vibrantly colored."
For those unfamiliar with "old-fashioned stone lithography", here is a visual example from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Nocturne, 1878" by the American painter, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).
Interestingly, Pamela Bianco went on to have a successful career that spanned nearly eight decades, and her work was celebrated for its sophistication and vibrancy. Below is a link to a review by Time Magazine in 1924 in reference to a presentation given by Miss Bianco at the Knoedler Galleries--this when she was only 17-years old:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,718032,00.html?iid=chix-sphere
A monochrome photograph of the noted "child prodigy" can also be found on the Vanity Fair website:
http://www.condenaststore.com/VanityFair/ProdDetail.aspx?prodId=20241
The Owl's reputation, however, was cemented in its approach to the Georgian poetry movement. Edward Marsh, a publisher of Georgian poetry both before and during the war, schooled Graves in the Georgian school of thought, and Graves in turn promoted the Georgians throughout The Owl's short life span.
Marsh's rejection of modernist poetry would later be seen as the final coffin nail for all forms of Georgian poetry. "In most of the scholarly discourse relating to the Georgians, they are consistently portrayed as falling on the wrong side of the critical debates in Modernism." (Introduction, Vaughn)
Despite the declining popularity of the Georgians at the time of The Owl's first publication, Graves remained aggressive about the work his contributors produced for his magazine. Regardless of the harsh criticism the Georgians suffered at the hands of modernist proponents, the work in The Owl is a feast for the eyes as well as for the intellect.
In a fascinating take on why the Georgians were ridiculed for their love of nature as represented in their poetry is the idea that Georgians were choosing to escape the ugliness of war through the advancement of conservative poetry and art. The exotic, for the Georgian mindset, took on an increasingly important role in the tone and texture of The Owl. This impulse-to escape the crudeness of the modern world-was what essentially drove the Georgian rhetoric in art and literary expression. A deep love of childhood, of the innocence of youth, when one has looked at the world through unbiased eyes, really captures The Owl's essence.
Graves' experiences as a veteran of the first world war colored his perspective on what would be acceptable to print in The Owl. Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and confidant, blasted Graves for avoiding the issue of war in his journal; in response, Graves insisted that he was merely 'happy' and that "worrying about the War is no longer a sacred duty with me." (Introduction, Vaughn)
Graves' personal life was marred by creative and emotional upheaval. The failure of his first marriage to Nancy, in addition to confusion over his sexual orientation and the after-effects of shell shock all served to influence his poetry. Graves may have indeed turned to the solace of soothing images from his childhood as a way of coping with the brutality of war in his editorship of The Owl, but we must concede that his ambitious attempt as editor of this largely eclectic and highly refined journal is something of a minor miracle. As a journal of high literary value, The Owl inevitably shaped Robert Graves' own poetry, largely as a vehicle for his first poetic works. If you are interested in reading more about Robert Graves, please visit:
The Focus of Our Work
Since Owl was limited to three issues, I focused on Vol. 1, Issue I, and Julie focused on Vol. 1, Issue 3. In my research, I concentrated on the illustrations throughout the issue, as well as on some of the poetry. I felt that there was a true correlation between the drawings and the poetry. The illustrations added a significant layer of complexity to the journal and truly made it "pop" with color and life. Julie focused on the Freudian overtones of the play Interchange of Selves. The play explores man's quest for spirituality, and the overarching themes of acceptance and understanding in the face of conflict.
The Owl, May 1919
The Owl appears, at first blush, to be "hand made" in its composition. Just glancing at the front cover, with its colorful presentation and the drawing of an owl, one would assume it to be a journal for young children or adolescents. As one pages through the journal, however, it is clear that this is no ordinary literary endeavor. On page 3 of the first issue of The Owl, for example, each contributor has signed his or her name--names like Thomas Hardy, Max Beerbohm, John Galsworthy, and Siegfried Sassoon.
The first actual piece of writing is a poem by Thomas Hardy, "The Master and The Leaves" followed by "Sonnet" by John Masefield. A few pages later, though, we see a full page illustration of a young woman with flowers arranged through her wavy red hair. The colors are visually striking, and the artwork fits well with the themes of the two poems preceding its placement in the journal. The fanciful arrangement of her hair with flowers, nevertheless, denotes the childlike, whimsical influence of Nicholson, whose work as an illustrator of children's books is clear throughout the pages of The Owl.
The masthead for the Contents page of this issue, for example, is drawn, with the word Contents written in long hand in contrast to the typeset list of authors beneath. As a piece of artwork, it procures a magical feeling in the reader, as if one was about to read a story book to a child. Another example of the whimsical illustrations of Nicholson can be found on p. V of the journal. In a very ornate, yet still very childlike hand, Nicholson's words as he tells the story of "The Pianotuner and the Scorpion".
The story itself seems as if it were written for a child, yet the subject matter (the pianotuner is contemplating suicide) is anything but childish. It is incongruent with the somber mood elicited by the poetry before and after the illustration.
The poetry in The Owl is largely traditional in its subject matter and construction. The presence of the colorful illustrations, some by Nancy Nicholson, lends a luminous texture to the journal, elevating it beyond the constraints of a literary journal to a work worthy of display in a gallery or museum.
To see more of the illustrations from the May 1919 issue, please visit our online video presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFYoGn-_w34
In J.C. Squire's poem, "Song", Squires writes of a love that seems shallow and dependent on the love object's mood swings. "You are my sky/beneath your circling kindness/My meadows all take in the light and grow...."
The writing here fits hand in glove with the naturalism favored by the Georgians. In another poem from the same issue entitled "A Frosty Night", Robert Graves writes in a style reminiscent of another time--it is formal and conservative in tone and subject matter, and is redolent with the imagery for which the Georgians were so ridiculed.
"Mother. Ay, the night was frosty/Coldly gaped the moon;/But the birds seemed twittering/Through green boughs of June...." Graves' employment of traditional rhyme and meter in his poetry is out of synch with the new and experimental poetry of modernists Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Perhaps in his negation of the new, and his preference to the old and established forms, Graves was a revolutionary. In the face of change, he held fast to the surety of the past and injected a new passion for the classical into an evolving cultural paradigm.
The Play's The Thing
We also examined The last issue of The Owl, which contains a mini-play, Interchange of Selves, within its pages. Three characters, Mysticus (who seems to stand for what we now commonly regard as new-age mysticism), Liberalis (a name coming from the Latin for freedom, which present-day usage can now mean apt to change, open to new ways of looking at things, progressive), and Practicus (who at the beginning of the play is the champion of commen sense at the expense of other elements). The play revolves largely around a detailed discussion of the nature of consciousness, human conflict, the nature of evil, and spirituality. It is also a commentary on the idiocy of war, and we know the editor of The Owl was injured in World War I and was described as shell-shocked in the introductory essay to this periodical.
The characters are trying to understand the nature of man. There is an exploration of spirituality and spiritual transcendence as a way to reduce or eliminate conflict. One of the more significant aspects of this play is the way in which the characters exchange their viewpoints and convince one another of various arguments. There is emotional harmony among the characters, even when they disagree.
The play has Freudian overtones. There is an emphasis on dreaming. Liberalis dreams, and thinks dreams are important. "You must resort to dreams," he says. Yet at first he is not taken in my Mysticus, the new-age guy. Liberalis, though he understands the importance of dreams, can't comprehend the spiritual. "We must be liberal and broad in our outlook indeed, but must we be positively unbalanced? he asks, not quite buying the existence of a spiritual world. Other Freudian influences are discussed below.
Practicus, the common-sense guy, is representative of reason and reason's imperviousness to spirituality, as well a rejection of Freudian theory. "But is there any sense in believing that the air and Space are shrieking with spirits [...] Or is it even wise to resort to dreams [...]?" Belief in all this new-age stuff is silly, dreams are silly. But Mysticus, Mr. New Age Man, is adamant about the spiritual and believes that mystical in nature talks to us and demands that we listen.
More of Freud's influence can be found in Liberalis, when he talks about war: "we fought a war: why? To end all war, yet the wonder is not that the war has not ended but that we believe that we could end it by war. We chose our villains, discovered our saints, and built shrines where the fallen and the unfallen heroes were to find their eternal peace; and when all this was neatly done, we started fighting again." This reminds one of Freud's theory on the compulsion to repeat even destructive behaviors because to change course is too much of an energy expenditure. A mode of behavior has sprung up which will continue into perpetuity.
The play overwhelmingly promotes peace and good will. "Why can people never see that it is much better to cooperate and live together in peace than to quarrel and go on quarreling. What does one accomplish by quarrelling? And yet nothing is easier than to live in peace or with goodwill! Do we not all desire it, all need it," asks Practicus. Liberalis of course agrees, remarking: "What after all is life for if not to live in peace?" Liberalis also believes that the only way to understand our conflicts are through dreams, a very Freudian concept.
Not only does the play promote the idea of peace, but it also promotes the idea of being in tune with nature. "We are ruled and dominated for good or evil by other agents and spirits who live unseen in the surrounding air and in space," Mysticus says. The play calls to mind the work of H.G. Wells, particularly The Island of Dr. Moreau, regarding its discussion of the man-as-animal idea as the basis for human conflict. Yet still, Mysticus is optimistic in concluding that man "must seek communion with the higher spirits, endow his soul with their blessings before he can stay the evil and reassert the good." There is a sense that spiritualism is important and that adopting an awareness and intuneness with the spiritual world is a prerequisite for ameliorating conflict. We are all part of the universe; we are all one; we are not fundamentally different from our enemies, Mysticus argues.
Practicus is probably the most changed at the end of the play. "It is a fact, the most gruesome and insistent fact, that caprice turns the wheel of life as reason does," he remarks, seemingly believing now in mystical forces. Yet he is uncomfortable: "all this is beyond my depth. I never dared to plunge into the mysteries of life," he confesses. The play here seems to be touching on how we are all somewhat afraid of the spiritual because we don't fully understand it. Yet practical thinking based on reason is too surface and somehow fails to satisfy.
There is an exploration of the idea that man is both the source of conflict but also the source of resolution.
The final words of the play, that mankind should cease resolving conflicts by force and seek "some stricter and more promising path," as Practicus says, calls to mind a desire for spiritual transcendence to resolve the conflicts of the era, namely war. Also, it's important to note here the idea that each of us has the ability to reason (Practicus) to investigate the spirtitual (Mysticus) and to change our thinking as progress demands of us (Liberalis). This idea inherent is that each of these characters can and should be an aspect of one integrated person, thus the play's title.
The Owl's Early Death
Vaughn's introduction lists a number of reasons why The Owl didn't fly. He notes the high price of the journal, at over 12 shillings per issue, a lack of publicity, the absence of advertising revenue, combined with the youth and inexperience of its editor, all contributed to The Owl's early death.
By utilizing simplistic themes like those found in the natural world, The Owl created a new identity as an eclectic alternative to the sometimes nihilistic modernist writers of the "new". The Owl forged an influential voice that, though drowned out in the noise of competing and increasingly more popular forms of writing, still resonates with readers of poetry, drama and prose at their most distilled, pure form.
