ABSTRACT
The author is Djuna Barnes, who, despite her ironies about the somewhat precious “abode,” had by this date already contributed her own Beardsley-like drawings to Rogue. We may see, encapsulated in this tableau, any number of details, though parodic, of Village life and how Rogue was deemed to fit into it, or even lead it on into clearer definition. The desire to single out Loy is significant in this connection, as we today would see in her work the call to a more modernist culture than Rogue is remembered for, if it is remembered at all. For the moment, sitting on its low table, her poetry may not be meant, quite yet, to stand out from the general tone of decadence in the same strong way it does for us with hindsight. It plays very much the same role within the pages of Rogue itself. What I hope to show below for Rogue is something moving beyond the image we have of it as Wildean frivolity, and more precisely an attempt to use decadence as a weapon against American Victorianism. Conscripted into this battle, or skirmish, is a modernism almost entirely produced, in these particular pages, by women, and perhaps their very ability to be modern was sufficiently doubted as to make their commitment appear without great value. Subsequently, I hope an examination of Robert Coady’s more aggressive The Soil will show it differed more in style and tactics than in actual intent, even while it seemed to propose a much more avant-garde idea of the arts. It was determined to undermine Victorianism as it was invested in the arts specifically, whereas Rogue, as a sort of downtown version of Vanity Fair, mocked the whole body of Victorian culture from within and proceeded with more tact. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note right off that, despite their differences, real or perceived, Rogue in its last number and The Soil in its first proposed to publish the same disquieting text by
Gertrude Stein. Both magazines were committed to a break with a culture they felt to be suffocating new feeling, though that culture was supposed to be their own; and as small, independently produced sheets they were able to provoke their class’s opprobrium on the ground, in rapid forays.
