“Gloria Gammage”
The story of this title character begins, nicely enough, with an introduction by the narrator. And the narrator is filled with some imagery that may give a fairly decent indication of where the story might be going. But it gets much better a few paragraphs into this short story with a paragraph that a veritable fountain of imagery presenting a portrait of a woman not easily cast aside as boring:
“She had the divine female quality of lending to every latest science or philosophy no matter how mathematical or how austere—a ribald flavour of lubriciousness— with her insidious interest—she at this time was passing round `Bergson’ to her friends—discoursing on it with those luscious eyes searching lovingly over their spiritual persons—that seemed to assure them that being was indeed as they had long suspected—an infinite orgy.”
“Effluvia of decomposition of the Spirit”
In a work titled “Universal Food Machine” there is a section which sports the title quoted above in the subject box. It is almost inconceivable to imagine what is coming just from that subtitle. It is a testament to the eccentricity of this particular author that after reading the opening paragraph of that section is actually is pretty inconceivable to imagine the content of that paragraph being substantially different.
“All evil thought, all cruelty, the paralysed vitality of loneliness, the crushed vibrations of drudgery and the bewilderment induced by enigmatic injustices are broad- cast through our universe and received by the collective human organism. Think not that all the agonies such as for instance those sustained in War end with the dying of the bodies which endured them, for they are “on the air” and like a poison gas enfeeble the survivors.”
Life of the Mind
The entire literary output of Mina Loy might be described as living the life of the mind. Ruthlessly analytical but combined with a drive to put that analysis to the test of creativity, one can well imagine the imagery which introduces a character named Ian Gore as a self-portrait.
“Ian Gore, on inspecting the chambers of his mind, finding himself stronger than anything that had been stored there, proceeded to break up the furniture. He denounced the fabricated truth of organized society as lies; precedents as corpses…The molding of the mind by a laboriously perfected system of education to the loftiest standard established by the human intellect, he objected to as pseudo-classic piffling. As for sportsmanship he defined the ball as the nincompoop’s microcosm, and he doubted the beneficence of killing things that preferred to be alive anyhow.”
Stage Directions
Stage directions for a live performance are notorious going unread, skimmed, altered or otherwise not adhered to. Of course, one can usually do so because dialogue or song lyrics guide the compass of movement. Being the kind of writer she is, however, Loy occasional investment in writing for the stage includes an effort in which the title explains why the stage directions absolutely must be read with scrutiny and adhered to closely: “Crystal Pantomime.”
“High above them a tiny beam of light, supposed to be reflected from the moving crystal, plays fitfully on the black background—as the dancing beam on a ceiling cast from a diamond or mirror reflecting the sun. And attracted to this dancing beam a `creature’” a homunculus with propeller-like wings—as much like a blue bottle or a striped wasp as possible—bumps toward and away from the spot of light. This homunculus must be artificial, his wings whirring just like a fly’s, and the motion of quadrille imitating the to-and-fro darting of a summer morning housefly”
