Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

Just thought I would report that there is a large amount of periodical studies and genetic criticism (the study of manuscripts, page proofs, and other avant-texte that go into the making of a published edition of a work) at the annual Summer Joyce conference, this year being held in Buffalo. The University of Buffalo houses the largest and most important collection of Joyce's papers.

Yesterday I saw a panel containing two papers dealing with The Little Review. Amanda Sigler, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia recontextualized the lawsuit brought against the magazine for publishing allegedly obscene sections of Joyce's novel-in-progress, Ulysses. In studying some unpublished letters of John Quinn, a well-known lawyer who defended avant-garde writers and artists against censorship in the U.S., she found references to other materials in Little Review numbers from about March-May 1918 that also alerted the authorities in the Post Office. These include erotic drawings based on Classical iconography and a pseudonymous (and fictional) letter from Ezra Pound, supposedly from a captured German soldier, ordering German soldiers go home and impregnate as many women as possible without moral or legal ramifications. Sigler's findings portray a different understanding of the Little Review lawsuit that actually takes Ulysses out of the center of it, but also highlights the ways in which various pieces in that magazine were questioning and courting censorship laws in a deliberate way.

Nancy Cushing, a doctoral candidate at Penn State, dealt with the imperial and nationalist tensions in romance fiction about South America, shedding new light on the "Nausicaa" episode of Ulysses and the story "Eveline" in Dubliners. She also recontextualized "Nausicaa" in The Little Review to show how various other pieces, as well as a novel by Henry Hudson called The Purple Land (1885), influenced the manner of Joyce's presentation of that motif in his work.

My own presentation performed a genetic reading of the "Wandering Rocks" episode of Ulysses in order to argue for influence from Einstein's special theory of relativity in the space and time relationships between events. I analyzed the fair copy manuscript to suggest evidence of Joyce's thought processes, showing that the most relativistic event-structures had been added in the margins or between the lines after the episode had been fully drafted. I then showed excerpts from articles by Dora Marsden in The Egoist from March to December 1918 that refer to relativity, as well as other examples of fiction and criticism that show an increasing editorial interest in space, time, and the nature of events.

Later this afternoon I'll be attending a presentation on archival preservation of Joyce's manuscripts and letters.

"Portrait de Nos Contemperains," a drawing published in 1896, in Le Petite Journal des Refusees, stands in stark contrast with two other items from the year 1911: an advertisement for Sapolio household cleaner from The Century Magazine, and a poem titled "The Year That's Awa.'" The first shows hints of nonsensical humor, and absurd artwork which was the precursor to Dadaism and Surrealism. The second two examples show much more conventional thoughts just as Modernism was coming into existence--the advertisement gives a sense of women's cultural roles at the time of publication, and the poem shows sentiments that are still alive and well today, but using language that is outdated.

The portrait from 1896, drawn by the editor of the magazine, James Marrion, is fractured by a crucifix shaped object which could also be seen as a window pane, with each square showing one fourth of a man's figure. The result is a pieced together portrait of apparently an anonymous person, and it is surrounded by skeletons which appear to embrace one another vaguely. One skeleton has a long tail, but appears human otherwise. The advertisement for soap is certainly dated when it says that one can not keep house without both a "bright woman" and Sapolio. The statement that the soap will be the "willing servant of bright women everywhere" could suggest the more modern idea of women's empowerment, but is still an old-fashioned idea. The poem published in the first month of the new year in 1911 is surrounded by a few ornamental drawing details, and uses language that might be that of the casual male of the time and place, London, in which it was published. The word soldier is spelled "sodger." The speaker pays honor to the women loved in the past year, and the overall tone is one of a drinking song, or poem in this case, with the line, "Here's to the year that's awa'/ We will drink it in song and in sma'..."

    There are lots of drawings in Rhythm magazine's Volume 2, Number 5, from June of 1912. The cover is a naked woman picking fruit off of a tree surrounded by vaginal looking flowers. The first real page of contents features a nude figure bend over on the ground. Then there are some innocent looking drawings of a village, a big face, The Arc de Triomphe, basic fruit still lifes. But if the cover tells us anything, we should not be surprised to see some breasts. And certainly there is a nude woman, fruit, and tree motif going on in this issue. So should we be surprised by Breast Fruit? Probably not, but I still am. Why, amid plenty of other, tamer still life drawings of fruit are these two pairs of breasts shoved in our faces? It's hard to assume that the likeness is unintentional. I can't think of a single fruit that has such pronounced, uniform nipples. Some citrus fruits could debatably have nipples, but these grow on trees and are never this close together until they are picked. Strangely, for a magazine that seems almost obsessed with trees, this vine comes out of nowhere. These are clearly breasts, and perhaps it is an idealistic dream of the art editor for them to grow on trees.

    Maybe it is one of those presumptions we tend to have that we live in a more progressive, sexually explicit time, but I think it's pretty true. I know people had sex just as much around this time, I read The Sun Also Rises, and I know it was seen in art, as it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years, but apparently it was also in magazines. Obviously these modernist magazines weren't exactly mainstream, but I was still a little surprised to see this in the same issue of Rhythm. The woman is strong, tall, and prominent. Her hair is up, and she is looking down at the man. We do not even see the man's face. He may as well be a big skin blanket. He does not matter, except to add to the suggestiveness of the piece. Despite, or perhaps because of, the strength of the woman this is a tender moment. As far as I can tell this couple has just had sex. Or, is even debatably still engaging in some form of it. Was this drawing surprising to viewers? Was it considered obscene? Was it stared it, or mostly ignored?