The Little Review, November 1917 (Vol. 4, No. 7)

This November 1917 literary magazine brings together spare, atmospheric poetry, dramatic writing, prose sketches, and a striking selection of visual art. Its opening translations of Li Po’s Chinese poems move from longing and separation to mountain solitude, pairing vivid natural images with intimate emotional states.

The issue then shifts into impressionistic sketches of smoke, animals, heat, clouds, and spiritual emptiness before opening a rural Irish drama in a wild, rocky landscape. In the play’s opening scene, villagers search for Owen Hanrahan, whose encounter with a strange friar appears to have unsettled him and drawn him away from home. Alongside these works are imagined letters, a translated meditation on raised arms, and reproductions of drawings, carvings, engravings, and paintings, creating a varied portrait of the era’s experimental literary and artistic culture.