Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven - Novemberday (1924)
Forgotten Poems #33
Novemberday— Gold cold— Dust blue— On poplars— Green metal Death show— Last Leaves.
Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927)
P: The Little Review (1918-21), Broom (1923), The Transatlantic Review (1924), Transition (1927); articles, etc.
After being ignored for many years, Von Freytag-Loringhoven is now recognised as a key artist in the American dada scene. Jane Heap called her the “first American dada.” Marcel Duchamp said of her: “She is not a Futurist: she is the future.” There is even evidence to suggest she was R. Mutt, the artist behind ‘Fountain’, often cited as one of Duchamp’s most groundbreaking works.
Active in the Greenwich Village arts scene in New York from 1913-1923. Moved to Berlin, and then Paris just before her death. Close with poet and illustrator Djuna Barnes who became her editor and biographer, and championed by Ernest Hemingway, who published her work when acting as guest-editor for the August 1924 issue of the The Transatlantic Review (against the wishes of head editor, Ford Maddox Ford).
Barnes, in an unfinished biography from the 1930s: “A woman of genius, alone in the world, frantic... We of this generation remember her when she was in her late 30s. She was one of those ‘characters’, one of the ‘terrors’ of the district which cuts below Minetta Lane and above 18th Street to the west... People were afraid of her because she was undismayed about the facts of life—any of them—all of them.”
Illustration: Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven & Morton Schamberg’s sculpture/photograph ‘God’ (1917).
For Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven by Dick Whyte as difficult as it is to talk infinitively, first waters in which bird-esque horizons bathe— like talking to dust, practice makes imperfect xoxo dw
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An amaxing writer/artist. Unfairly forgotten, enormously creative, ahead of her time as well as being a creature of it. A trailblazer and pioneer: those actively ahead of all of us in every era as the sea of human culture expands. She now is part of that sea, though forgotten she is part of what sustains us now. That is what heartens me about this site. It reminds us of our forgotten great predecessors, their works and the real debt we owe them. The old is made new again. The garland is ever-green.
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