Remembering Close Up, 1927-1933

ELT 43 : 4 2000 stands knowledge as a dynamic process of bestowing meaning to the text and sharing private research with other scholars. In this sense, readers of Pilgrimage can donate their own meaning to the text. Such was the idea of Dorothy Richardson as presented in her unpublished manuscript article "Authors and Readers": "For the reader is so very much more than a result, an appendage, so to speak, of the author. [...] Readers are far too modest. Always they regard themselves as recipients, never as donors" (Quoted in Joanne Louise Winning, "Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage as Archive of the Self." Diss. Birbeck College, University of London , 1996, 52.) Therefore, we should welcome Thomson's Notes on Pilgrimage, which enters into the panorama of scholarship on Richardson as an authoritative contribution for future scholars. Thomson's research was mentioned with high respect and admiration by the delegates of the conference "Dorothy Richardson and Modernism," held at Queen Mary and Westfield College (University of London) on the 11 June of 1999. In the context of this conference, mainly featuring postmodern readings of Richardson's work, Thomson's new book represents a rigorous and thorough study of Pilgrimage that steers away from some of the most recent feminist interpretations of the novel, which have tended to overlook the multiple historical and literary references of this thirteen-volume novel. Calling attention to these issues is the task of Notes on Pilgrimage, which enriches and facilitates both the critic and the general reader's comprehension of the allusions and references of Richardson's text. MarÃ-a Francisca Llantada DÃ-az _______________University of Santiago de Compostela Remembering Close Up, 1927-1933 Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism. James Donald, Anne Friedberg and Laura Marcus, eds. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. χ + 341 pp. Paper $19.95 THE TIMING of this anthology's appearance is opportune. These selections from Close Up, a pioneer magazine of film art, edited 1927-1933 by H.D.'s close associates, Kenneth Macpherson and Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), have until now been available only from collections in film library archives. As the subtitle, Cinema and Modernism, indicates, the new volume contributes to current reconsideration of modernism's beginnings and ongoing sequel. The three editors argue persuasively for cinema's impact upon mindwork in intellectual/artis480 BOOK REVIEWS tic/literary circles early in the twentieth century, leading to present-day discussion of the "cultural, aesthetic, and social consequences of technological media." Their own electronic collaboration across the Atlantic— Anne Friedberg in the United States, James Donald and Laura Marcus in England—demonstrates the creative advantages of wireless communicability . The Close Up materials offer lively and stimulating entrance into an international forum of passionate interchange between pioneer filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, W. I. Pudovkin, G. W. Pabst, and literary figures that include Macpherson, Bryher, H.D., as well as novelist Dorothy Richardson, Robert Herring (who wrote on film for Life and Letters Today), Gertrude Stein (two prose pieces), and other commentators such as the psychoanalyst Hanns Sachs. Close Up was a self-styled avant-garde magazine devoted to the consideration of film as a "high" art form. The silent cinema's freedom from language barriers offered political potential for world communion, as though the original curse of Babel might at last be exorcised through a visual Esperanto. At times, their words sound evangelical: "Light speaks ... Light is our friend and our god. Let us be worthy of it," writes H.D. in an essay on "Cinema and the Classics" (August 1927). Violation (or enhancement) of the silent film viewing experience by sound annexation is examined by the magazine's contributors on a scale of reactions from repugnance to delight. Dorothy Richardson invites enrichment by musical soundtrack, but declares against spoken dialogue: "No spoken film will ever be able to hold a candle to silent drama, will ever be so 'speaking'" (September 1929). The magazine's sense of ambitious purpose announces itself (July 1929) in an advertisement for bound copies which are to be "Reference Books for the Future." Indeed, as the contents of this anthology prove, they were right. During 1927 to 1933, H.D., Macpherson and Bryher lived and worked together in...