Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/366

302 American reads out a manifesto he is about to issue to the Latin Quarter; it proposes to establish a communistic colony of artists in Virginia, and there is a footnote to explain why he selects Virginia. "Art has never flourished twice in the same place. Art has never flourished in Virginia."

Dauthenday who has some reputation as a poet, explains that his poems are without verbs as the verb is the root of all evil in the world. He wishes for an art where all things are immovable, as though the clouds should be made of marble. I turn over the page of one of his books which he shows me, and find there is a poem in dramatic form, but when I ask if he hopes to have it played he says—"It could only be played by actors before a black marble wall, with masks in their hands. They must not wear the masks for that would not express my scorn for reality."

I go to the first performance of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi with the Rhymer who had been so attractive to the girl in the bicycling costume. The audience shake their fists at one another, and the Rhymer whispers to me "There are often duels after these performances," and he explains to me what is happening on the stage. The Players are supposed to be dolls, toys, marionettes, and now they are all hopping like wooden frogs, and I can see for myself that the chief personage, who is some kind of King, carries for Sceptre a brush of the kind that we use to clean a closet. Feeling bound to support the most spirited party, we have shouted for the play, but that night at the Hotel Corneille I am very sad, for comedy, objectivity, has displayed its growing power once more. I say "After Stéphane Mallarmé, after Paul Verlaine, after our own verse, after Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm—after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible? After us the Savage God."