It has been objected to M. Artzibashef's work that it deals so little
with love and so much with physical necessity. That arises, I fancy,
because his journalistic intention has overridden his artistic purpose.
He has been exasperated into frankness more than moved to truth. He has
desired to lay certain facts of modern existence before the world and
has done so in a form which could gain a hearing, as a pure work of art
probably could not. He has attempted a re-valuation where it is most
needed, where the unhappy Weininger failed. Weininger demanded,
insanely, that humanity should renounce sex and the brutality it
fosters; Artzibashef suggests that the brutishness should be accepted
frankly, cleared of confusion with love, and slowly mastered so that
out of passion love can grow. His book has the noble quality of being
full of the love of life, however loveless. It cannot possibly give the
kind of pleasure sought by those to whom even the Bible is a dirty
book. It is too brutal for that. Books which pander to that mean desire
are of all books the most injurious. But this is not one of them.
GILBERT CANNAN