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THE GATE OF KNOWLEDGE "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock."
Published in the International New York, New York, U.S.A. (page 249)
"The Menace of Peace," George D. Herron. (Mitchel Kennerley, 1917.) It is said that many soldiers have lost their minds owing to the war. So have some civilians. But we do not think that George D. Herron is in either group. He raves in a most blasphemous manner about Christ, and he looks every night under his bed for a Jesuit.
The world is indeed hysterical when such delirious cat-calls find a publisher.
Not content with destroying the
German body, he must destroy the “German mind,” another
phantom like his “wicked Pope Benedict” bribed by German
gold, like (I suppose) the Earthquake of San Francisco.
Probably the Flood was started by the Germans to try out
their U-boats. Such alleged partisans of the Allies are
their gravest enemies.
Lord, save us from our friends!
A. Quiller, Jr. [Aleister Crowley]
The Unveiling: a poetic drama in five acts, by Jackson Boyd; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915. Only last month an old and valued friend of mine reviewed the works of Mr. Robert Frost for Pearson’s Magazine. I chanced to call upon him in his sumptuous yet chaste atelier. I found him prone, the prey of a proud melancholy. “Speak, speak!” I cried, impetuously. “I am surpassing glad and sad,” quoth he, “for Io! I have attained my apex, my apogee, my meridian, my asymptote, my climax. I have made the great discovery of my life; now I must pass into the sere and gamboge, a wailing derelict. Yes, my poor brother, Othello’s occupation gone. Never can I pierce further than I have done into the hells of bad verse; never shall I find an intellect more imbecile, a style more wooden, than that of Robert Frost!”
At that precise moment a clarion peal upon the bell broke in upon my gloomy meditations. Two powdered lackeys ushered in the visitor. It was a special messenger from G. P. Putnam’s Sons, his hair flying loose, his garments dusty and disordered with his haste. Yet apparently he had been two years on the way, for he brought a volume published all that time ago.
The volume fell from my friend’s nerveless hand. “Open it!” he sobbed pitifully. I performed the rash act amid loud applause from all present. It was indeed “The Unveiling.” “Be of good cheer,” I shouted, as I scanned the pages, “Whaur’s your Robbie Frost noo?” My friend completely recovered his health and good spirits; but I am perfectly certain that Pearson’s, in holy awe and godly fear of the Society for the Suppression of the English Language, will never allow him to print what he thinks of this book. “Worse than Frost!” he keeps on repeating to himself, in a kind of ecstatic coma. (No further bulletins will be issued.)
A. Quiller, Jr. [Aleister Crowley] |