In March 1932, after a two year hiatus due to financial difficulties, transition returns with issue 21 under the complete editorial control of Eugene Jolas. Its new base is in The Hague with Servire Press publishing this and future issues.

The guiding problem of a crisis in reason, material conditions, art, and literature remains at the heart of the new project, but the journal’s new subtitle signals a shift of focus. As “An International Workshop for Orphic Creation”, the journal is reconceived as a “mantic laboratory” aimed at the “revision of all values” and as a means of defending “the hallucinative forces now trodden underfoot” and fostering the “irrational forces” of dreams, accidents, desires, and drives liberated by concrete practices of art making. Much of this new project remains in continuity with the earlier project of creating a new art praxis that would be adequate to the crisis of modernity. What is different is the demand that not only art be transformed, but the material conditions of life itself—both the collective and the individual.

It is therefore well worth the time to read through the many manifestoes and public statements that open each section of this issue.

Cover art is designed by Hans Arp and includes a smaller fold-over section at the foot of the page.

If you would like to view this book in full screen, please click here.

Contents of Issue 21

Eugene Jolas - Preface - 6

Anamyths, Psychographs and Other Prose-Texts

Miguel Angel Asturias (trans. Adam F. Flecker) - Legend of the Tatooed Girl - 8

Samuel Beckett - Sedendo et Quiesciendo - 13

Dorothy Boillotat - Heritage - 21

Bob Brown - Sub-Tropical - 27

White Burnett - Balkan Journey - 37

Ventura Garcia Calderon - The White Llama - 42

Bernard Causton - The Bride of Christ - 46

John Coghlan - The Forsaken Merman - 48

Franz Kafka (trans. Eugene Jolas) - Three Tales - 58

— I. The Married Couple - 58

— II. An Everyday Confusion - 62

— III. The Knock at the Farm-Gate - 63

Marius Lyle - Second Draft of Fear - 65

Henri Michaux (trans. Stuart Gilbert) - Plume’s Vision - 74

Peter Neagoé - The Village Saint - 75

James Oppenheim - Stanner - 82

Edouard Roditi - Mirages - 95

Harold Rosenberg - I Had Myself to Blame - 98

Gertrude Stein - She Bowed to Her Brother - 100

Metanthropological Crisis

Eugene Jolas - Crisis of Man - 106 (responses below)

— Gabriel Audisio - 107

— Gottfried Benn - 107

— Martin Buber - 112

— Whit Burnett - 113

— Leo Frobenius - 115

— Stuart Gilbert - 118

— Richard Huelsenbeck - 121

— Dr. C.G. Jung - 125

— H.L. Mencken - 128

— Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes - 128

— Camille Schuwer - 132

— David Alfaro Siqueiros - 134

— Philippe Soupault - 136

— Gertrude Stein - 136

— Ronald Symond - 137

— Roger Vitrac - 139

— Ewald Wasmuth - 141

Alberto Giacometti - Sculpture

— Sculpture

Poetry Is Vertical

Poetry Is Vertical - 148 - Manifesto signed by:

— Hans Arp, Samuel Beckett, Carl Einstein, Eugene Jolas, Thomas McGreevy, Georges Pelorson, Theo Rutra, James J. Sweeney, Ronald Symond

Hans Arp - Das Tages Gerippe - 150

Joe Bousquet - Reine de Man Silence - 153

Kay Boyle - Glad Day for L.V. - 157

Emily Holmes Coleman - The Shepherd’s Vision - 159

— The Vision - 161

Charles Henri Ford - Spring - 163

Hölderlin - Homeland - 164

— To Heinse - 164

— As Birds - 165

— Greece - 165

— To Know Little - 166

— The Eagle - 167

— Yet When From Self-Inflicted Wounds - 167

— The Next Best - 168

— New World - 168

— To the Madonna - 168

— Fate - 169

— On Fallow Leaf - 169

— Vineyard and Bees - 169

— Klopstock - 170

— From the Abyss - 170

Eugene Jolas - Night Through Night - 171

Thomas McGreevy - Treason of Saint Laurence O’Toole - 178

— Elsa - 180

Georges Pelorson - Isocele - 181

— Plans - 182

Paul Scheerbart - Gesang der Walfische - 184

James Johnson Sweeney - Mole - 188

The Mantic Personality

Hans Arp (trans. Eugene Jolas) - Notes from a Diary - 190

Gottfried Benn (trans. Eugene Jolas) - The Structure of the Personality (Outline of a geology of the ‘I’) - 195

Eugene Jolas - The Case of Goethe - 206

Joseph Karl Stieler - 1828 Portrait (of Goethe)

Carl Einstein (trans. Eugene Jolas) - Obituary: 1832-1932 - 207

Joan Miro - Tête d’Homme

— Femme Assise

Stuart Gilbert - Art and Intuition - 215

Eugene Jolas - Night-Mind and Day-Mind 222

Ludwig Klages (trans. Eugene Jolas) - The Essence of Metaphysics - 224

Camille Schuwer (trans. Maria Jolas) - Hamlet, or the Ghost - 226

Mantic News - 241

Homage to James Joyce

Padraic Colum - Exile they say who do not know… - 246

Stuart Gilbert - 247

Eugene Jolas - 250

Thomas McGreevy - 254

Philippe Soupault - 255

Cesar Abin - Caricature of James Joyce - 256

James Joyce, Translator

— James Stephens - Stephen’s Green - 257

— James Joyce, after James Stephens - Les Verts de Jacques 257

James Joyce, Ad-Writer - 258

Final proof of “Work in Progress” from transition No. 18

Corrections sent with final proof, “Work in Progress” from transition No. 18

James Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabelle: In Basic English - 259

Louis Gillet (trans. Ronald Symond) - Mr. James Joyce and His New Novel - 263

Stuart Gilbert and Oliver St. John Gogarty - The Veritable James Joyce - 273

Laboratory of the Word

Eugene Jolas - Wanted: A New Symbolical Language - 284

Eugene Jolas - Wanted: A New Communicative Language! - 285

Jean Paulhan (trans. Maria Jolas) - Jacob Cow the Pirate, Or If Words Are Signs - 286

Justinus Kerner (trans. Eugene Jolas) - The Inner Language - 299

Raymond Queneau - Words from the Unconscious - 302

Hugo Ball - Clouds - 304

— Cats and Peacocks - 305

Marius Lyle - Scheme for Physical Improvement of Writers Medium - 306

Reno Floppo - The American Language - 311

Reuben T. Taylor - Black Rhythms - 312

Laurence Vail - Gaspar Loot - 318

Kurt Schwitters - lanke tr gj (skerzoo aus meiner soonate in uurlauten)

A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr. - Voks - 321

transition’s Revolution of the Word Dictionary (a neologistic dictionary open to contributions by readers)

Eugene Jolas - For a Revision of Grammar! - 325