transition 22 was published in February 1933 and was edited by Eugene Jolas.

As with transition 21, Jolas organizes this issue around a programmatic effort articulated in the manifesto-style writings that open each section. Calling for a new “Vertigral Age” against the “horizontal age” of “mechanistic utopias” and the narrative power of History, this issue aims to coordinate experimental art and writing practices that take the pre-logical, “pre-historic,” and “primeval strata of life” as a basis for constructing the new. “The Vertigralist Age,” he writes in his opening statement, “wants to give voice to the ineffable silence of the heart. The Vertigralist Age wants to create a primitive grammar, the stammering that approaches the language of God.” (6)

We may quote Jolas in a letter that he quotes at the end of his comments on Joyce’s “Work in Progress”:

“The failure of Surrealism lay precisely in the inability of André Breton and his friends to draw the full consequences from their great experiments. They were unable to see that the expression of the unconscious demanded new means. It was not enough to whirl the unaccustomed realities of the dream-state together. It was essential—and a revolutionary necessity—to express the nocturnal world with a nocturnal language. It was essential to find a means of creating the a-logical grammar which alone can mirror the new dimension…..” (113)

Finally, it should be noted that this issue is key in the development of the magazine for starting a process of historicizing the magazine’s development and reflecting upon it. A bibliography of every piece published in the journal is located at the end, along with reflections from Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, and others.

Cover art by Sophie H. Taeuber-Arp. The cover is slightly cut off on the scan because it was bound so tightly in the book.

Contents of Issue 22

Eugene Jolas - Twilight of the Horizontal Age - 6

Vertigral Documents

Hans Arp - konfiguration - 8

Hugo Ball - Cabaret - 10

Hamilton Basso - Rain on Aspidistra - 11

Joe Bousquet - Salaire de mes yeux - 16

Joe Bousquet - L’amour qui m’a donne des yeux - 17

Eugene Jolas - Lilliotoo’s Voyage - 18

— Night Is - 20

— Intrialogue - 21

— Verbirrupta of the Mountainmen - 22

Georges Pelorson - À Eugene Jolas - 24

— Trois ontogrammes - 31

Theo Rutra - Earthgore - 34

— All Things Are Mine - 35

Camille Schuwer - Nuit faiseuse d’anges - 37

Kurt Schwitters - abloesung - 38

— entspannung - 39

— ganz mitten - 39

Roger Vailland - Dialogue entre deux corsaires - 40

Eugene Jolas and Georges Pelorson - Hysteriette of La Cosmosa - 42

James Joyce: Work in Progress

James Joyce - Continuation of a Work in Progress - 50

Laboratory of the Mystic Logos

Eugene Jolas - The Primal Personality - 78

Stuart Gilbert - DICHTUNG and Diction - 84

Carola Diedion-Welcker - Die Funktion der Sprache in der Heutigen Dichtung - 90

Eugene Jolas - Marginalia to James Joyce’s Work in Progress - 101

Camille Schuwer - Si les noms sont des choses - 106

Friedrich Marcus Huebner (trans. Eugene Jolas) - The Road Through the Word - 110

Max Pulver (trans. Eugene Jolas) - Handwriting and the Symbolic World - 114

transition’s Revolution-of-the-Word Dictionary (continued from issue 21) - 122

Eugene Jolas - Confession About Grammar - 124

— What is the Revolution of Language - 125

— The Interior Dualogue - 126

The New York Times - Gans Coin New Slang Despite ‘Mr. Whiskers’ - 127

Eugene Jolas - Anathema Maranatha - 128

Manticisms (Leyenda) - 129

— Mariano Brull

— Ivan Black

— Theo Rutra

— William Van Wyck - S M Y R S H U M

Vanderpyl - “Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova” (Les lettrines de Lucia Joyce) - 131

Letters to transition - 132

— Marius Lyle

— Alan S.C. Ross

— James Johnson Sweeney

— Ronald Symond

Correspondence About a Case of Plagiarism - 136

Stuart Gilbert - Five Years of Transition - 138

transition Bibliography

(an effort to historicize transition)

Eugene Jolas - Notes on issues I-XXII - 146

Transition Bibliography (alphabetical order) - 147

Reviews of transition 21 - 173

Glossary - 177

A Protest - 179

Notes on transition’s history and objectives - 182

Advertisements - 184