The Spectra Hoax [presentation, association]

Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1966. First Edition . Cloth. Fine/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1961. First Edition. Signed by lead hoaxer Witter Bynner [as "Emanuel Morgan"], presented to Kenneth L. Ball, the student who first discovered his identity. Octavo, 158 pp, beige cloth with black and white imprinting, jacket. Fine book in near fine jacket showing trace edgewear. A singular copy of the book about "the hoax" . In the early years of the twentieth century, all of the arts - particularly poetry - were thriving in the midst of a post-industrial-revolution swell of excitement, creativity and new aesthetic "schools"; poetry, for its part, rolled out Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Chorism, and a rogue's gallery of other new poetic genres, each based on its own aesthetic theorizing. Appearing in the midst of this rather joyous and certainly passionate carnival were Emanuel Morgan, expatriate painter-turned-poet reunited with his native Pittsburgh, and his close friends and colleagues, the beautiful Hungarian poet (who wrote in Russian) Anna Knish, and barrister Elijah Hay. In 1916, Morgan and Knish took the poetry world by storm with their Spectrist school of poetry, which was based on three visions of the term - spectra, the task of the artist to perceived beauty in its component colors, rather than as the glorious white light in which it occurs naturally; the reflex vibrations of that same light which occur only within the artist, like the light phenomena in our eyes; and spectre, the yet more difficult task of uncovering the subtle, hidden spirits behind and within beauty. Morgan used regular rhymed stanza in his spectrism offerings, while Knish used only free verse, but they were attempting the same thing. The poetic world was quickly awash in discussion and analysis of the spectrist school; a few thought the intellectual foundation to be a bit pretentiously framed, others thought it strange that there had been no public appearances by the pair or their lawyer colleague Hay; but the fermenting, energetic world of poetry at the time was full of new voices and figures. No one seemed to take much note of the fact that some of the lines seemed a bit nonsensical, others downright humorous. After all, poetry had few rules, even then. Some were suspiscious, however, that many of the poems, especially in the duo's lead vehicle, the publication Spectra, didn't seem to fit, in any clear way, the espoused theory. Some uneasy suspicion about Morgan and Knish - and about poet/lecturers Witter Bynner and Arthur Ficke, who first wrote about them in depth - started to sprout. Finally, in 1918, a young student at the University of Wisconsin, after a lecture by poet Witter Bynner, asked Bynner if it were not true that he was, in fact, Emanuel Morgan, and that Ficke was, in fact, Knish. A bit wearied- even embarrassed - by the hoax by then [and knowing that his underlying goal of lampooning pretentious schools of poetry couldn't be consummated anyway, without revelation] , Bynner confessed all, including the fact that their supportive "briefless barrister", Elijah Hay, was another colleague, Marjorie Allen Seiffert. One of the greatest literary hoaxes in history was at an end. Although the identity of the young challenger is not known with certainty (it was not, Bynner let it be known, Horace Kallen, who at one time claimed the unmasking], there is some feeling that Kenneth L. Ball, to whom this volume was presented and inscribed "with a bow" by Bynner [signing as Emanuel Morgan], was that student. The volume contains the history of the hoax as well as the complete text of the original Spectra. Please feel free to ask questions or request additional scans. - L6