Judge, 1918-04-20 · page 5 of 36
Judge — April 20, 1918 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical story by Percy Waxman mocks the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and American intellectuals who embraced modernist culture. The headline image shows stylized figures representing avant-garde society. The narrative depicts a dinner conversation where the narrator encounters fashionable New York elites discussing obscure modernist figures—Carlos Wonderful's "improvisation," Wyndham Lewis's publications, and Schoenberg's atonal music. The satire suggests these intellectuals mindlessly celebrate incomprehensible avant-garde art without understanding it. "Bunkshevikis" is a pun combining "Bolsheviks" with "bunk"—implying the revolutionary attitudes and artistic experimentation are pretentious nonsense. The 1918 date places this amid anti-Bolshevik sentiment following the Russian Revolution (1917).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Volume 74 J Number 1905 UDGE Founded 1881 “THE HAPPY eMEDIUM” $5.00 a Year Published Weekly New York, Apri 20, 1918 “Someone Woutp Say, ‘Isn’t THE New Improvisation By Carros WonpERFUL?’ AND THEN Someone Erse Woutp Say, ‘Isn’t It? Anp So Like THE “FLUuTINGS OF Yinc Kano” Just Transtatep sy Dippt!’” An Evening with the Bunkshevikis By Percy WaxMANn Illustrations by Aubert HENCKE LAINE had gone to a dinner at the Rogers’ with young Philbrook as I had to stay home to put the fnishing touches to my monograph on “The Disadvantages of a Classical Educa- tion.” About eleven-thirty, she burst into my study, flung her wraps on a chair, and began pacing up and down. “Hello, dear,” I ventured, “did you have a good——”” “John,” she- said, throttling my kindly inquiry, “who are the Imagists?” “Why, my dear, the Im—” I began, but Elaine couldn’t wait. “John,” she thundered forth, “‘who or what are the Vorticists? And why is Ezra Pound no longer lyrical? Is Jacob Epstein decadent? What did Wyndham Lewis publish ‘Blast’ for? And why is Schoenberg’s music colored differently from all other Modernists?” After this outburst Elaine sank dejectedly into a chair, looking the very picture of confused helplessness. “My poor dear girl,” I said, in as soothing a tone of voice as I could summon up, “‘is that the kind of dinner it was?” “John,” she said, sitting bolt upright, “I was never so mortified in my life. I didn’t know the name of a single person, book, movement or cult that was men- tioned. Everybody there seemed so advanced and so interested in all these new-fangled things. One man there mentioned a Modernist named ‘Hermione,’ and when I asked who she was they all laughed.” “Did any one explain who the lady was?” “Yes,” said Elaine, “some Mrs. Thingummy with bobbed hair who does Karma dances said that Her- mione was the heroine of ‘A Winter’s Tale,’ by Mark Donquis. My dear John, the names they mentioned bewildered me.” “Elaine,” I asked, “did they mention very much besides names? Think now,dear. Did any one explain quite thoroughly all about any one person who was mentioned, or all about any one book, or movement, or musical composition?” “No,” she replied thoughtfully. “No one did. It was all a sort of game of battledore and shuttlecock. Someone would say, ‘Isn’t the new Improvisation by Carlos wonderful?’ and then someone else would say, ‘Isn’tit? And so like the ‘“‘Flutings of Ying Kang” just translated by Dippi!’ Then someone else would rave over the ‘Dissonances’ of Rennovitch, and someone else would ask if everybody had seen the ‘Symbols in Color’ comichooks.com]