Transition (literary journal) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

transition was an experimental literary journal

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

that featured surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, expressionist

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, and Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas

Eugene Jolas

John George Eugene Jolas was a writer, translator and literary critic.-Biography:Eugene Jolas was born in Union City, New Jersey, but grew up in Forbach in Elsass-Lothringen , to which his family returned when he was two years old. He spent periods of his adult life living in both the U.S...

and his wife Maria McDonald

Maria Jolas

Maria Jolas , born Maria McDonald, was one of the founding members of transition in Paris with her husband Eugene Jolas....

and published in Paris. They were later assisted by editors Elliot Paul

Elliot Paul

Elliot Harold Paul , was an American journalist and author.-Biography:Born in Linden, a part of Malden, Massachusetts, Elliot Paul graduated from Malden High School then worked in the U.S...

(April 1927- March 1928), Robert Sage (October 1927-Fall 1928), and James Johnson Sweeney

James Johnson Sweeney

James Johnson Sweeney was a curator, and writer about modern art. From 1935 to 1946, he was curator for the Museum of Modern Art. He was the second director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, from 1952 to 1960...

(June 1936-May 1938).

Origins

The literary journal was intended as an outlet for experimental writing and featured modernist

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

, surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

and other linguistically innovative writing and also contributions by visual artists

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

, critics

Criticism

Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...

, and political activists

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

. It ran until spring 1938. A total of 27 issues were produced. It was distributed primarily through Shakespeare and Company

Shakespeare and Company (bookshop)

Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent bookstores on Paris' Left Bank. The first was opened by Sylvia Beach on 17 November 1919 at 8 rue Dupuytren before moving to larger premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement in 1922. During the 1920s, it was a gathering place for...

, the Paris bookstore run by Sylvia Beach

Sylvia Beach

Sylvia Beach , born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.-Early life:...

.

While it originally almost exclusively featured poetic experimentalists, it later accepted contributions from sculptors, civil rights activists, carvers, critics, and cartoonists. Editors who joined the journal later on were Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert was an English literary scholar and translator. Among his translations into English are works by André Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Georges Simenon, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre...

, Caresse Crosby and Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby was an American heir, a bon vivant, poet, publisher, and for some, epitomized the Lost Generation in American literature. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England, a member of the Boston Brahmin, and the nephew of Jane Norton Grew, the wife of financier J....

Purpose

Published quarterly, transition also featured Surrealist, Expressionist, and Dada

Dada

art. In an introduction to the first issue, Eugene Jolas wrote:

Manifesto

The journal gained notoriety in 1929 when Jolas issued a manifesto about writing. He personally asked writers to sign "The Revolution of the Word Proclamation" which appeared in issue 16/17 of transition. It began:
The Proclamation was signed by Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...

, Whit Burnett

Whit Burnett

Whit Burnett was a writer and writing teacher who founded and edited the literary magazine Story. In the 1940s, Story was an important magazine in that it published the first or early works of many writers who went on to become major authors...

, Hart Crane

Hart Crane

-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...

, Caresse Crosby, Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby

, Martha Foley

Martha Foley

Martha Foley cofounded Story magazine in 1931 with her husband Whit Burnett. She achieved some notoriety by introducing notable authors through the magazine such as J. D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright...

, Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert

, A. Lincoln Gillespie, Leigh Hoffman, Eugene Jolas

Eugene Jolas

, Elliot Paul

Elliot Paul

Elliot Harold Paul , was an American journalist and author.-Biography:Born in Linden, a part of Malden, Massachusetts, Elliot Paul graduated from Malden High School then worked in the U.S...

, Douglas Rigby, Theo Rutra, Robert Sage, Harold J. Salemson, and Laurence Vail.

Featured writers

Transition stories, a 1929 selection by E. Jolas and R. Sage from the first thirteen numbers featured: Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...

, Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle

(Polar Bears and Others), Robert M. Coates (Conversations No. 7), Emily Holmes Coleman (The Wren's Nest), Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos

Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...

, William Closson Emory (Love in the West), Léon-Paul Fargue

Léon-Paul Fargue

Léon-Paul Fargue was a French poet and essayist.He was born in Paris, France on rue Coquilliére. As a poet he was noted for his poetry of atmosphere and detail. His work spanned numerous literary movements...

, Konstantin Fedin

Konstantin Fedin

-Biography:Born in Saratov of humble origins, Fedin studied in Moscow and Germany and was interned there during World War I. After his release he worked as an interpreter in the first Soviet embassy in Berlin...

, Murray Goodwin

Murray Goodwin

Murray William Goodwin is a cricketer who played 19 Tests and 71 One Day Internationals for Zimbabwe. He is a right-handed top order batsman strong on the back-foot and a good cutter and puller of the ball....

, (A Day in the Life of a Robot), Leigh Hoffman (Catastrophe), Eugene Jolas (Walk through Cosmopolis), Matthew Josephson

Matthew Josephson

Matthew Josephson was an American journalist and author of works on nineteenth-century French literature and twentieth-century American economic history.-Biography:...

(Lionel and Camilla), James Joyce (A Muster from Work in Progress), Franz Kafka (The Sentence), Vladimir Lidin, Ralph Manheim

Ralph Manheim

Ralph Frederick Manheim was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian...

(Lustgarten and Christkind), Peter Negoe (Kaleidoscope), Elliot Paul

Elliot Paul

Elliot Harold Paul , was an American journalist and author.-Biography:Born in Linden, a part of Malden, Massachusetts, Elliot Paul graduated from Malden High School then worked in the U.S...

(States of Sea), Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes was a French writer and artist associated with the Dada movement. He was born in Montpellier....

, Robert Sage (Spectral Moorings), Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...

(Revolution), Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault

Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton...

, Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

(As a Wife Has a Cow a Love Story)

Some other artists, authors and works published in transition included Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

(Assumption, For Future Reference), Kay Boyle (Dedicated to Guy Urquhart), H. D. (Gift, Psyche, Dream, No, Socratic), Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

(Jeune Filles en des Belles Poses, The Virgin Corrects the Child Jesus before Three Witnesses), Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert

(The Aeolus Episode in Ulysses, Function of Words, Joyce Thesaurus Minusculus), Juan Gris

Juan Gris

José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life...

(Still Life), Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

(Three Stories, Hills like White Elephants), Franz Kafka (Metamorphosis), Alfred Kreymborg

Alfred Kreymborg

Alfred Francis Kreymborg was an American poet, novelist, playwright, literary editor and anthologist.-Early life and associations:...

(from: Manhattan Anthology), Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

(Petite Fille Lisant), Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism...

(Lover as Fox), Gertrude Stein (An Elucidation, The Life and Death of Juan Gris, Tender Buttons, Made a Mile Away), William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

(The Dead Baby, The Somnambulists, A Note on the Recent Work of James Joyce, Winter, Improvisations, A Voyage to Paraguay).

Also Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

, Bob Brown

Bob Brown

Robert James Brown is an Australian senator, the inaugural Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens and was the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia...

, Kathleen Cannell, Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...

, Hart Crane

Hart Crane

, Abraham Lincoln Gillespie Jr. (on music), Eugene Jolas

Eugene Jolas

(also as Theo Rutra), Robert McAlmon

Robert McAlmon

Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....

, Archibald McLeish Allen Tate

Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...

; Bryher

Bryher

Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...

, Morley Callaghan

Morley Callaghan

Morley Callaghan, was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality.-Biography:...

, Rhys Davies

Rhys Davies

Rhys Davies was a Welsh novelist and short story writer, who wrote in the English language....

, Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

, Robie Macauley

Robie Macauley

Robie Mayhew Macauley was an editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned over 50 years.-Early life:...

, Laura Riding

Laura Riding

Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...

, Ronald Symond

Ronald Symond

Ronald Tudor Symond was born in Liverpool, England in December, 1895, the son of a solicitor Elwy Davies Symond, and died at the age of 51 of a heart attack in London in February, 1947...

, Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

.

Christian Zervos

Christian Zervos

Christian Zervos . French art collector, writer and publisher.Better known as a publisher of books than as an art critic in his own right, Zervos founded the magazine Cahiers d'art in Paris, and ran an art gallery.He was a connoisseur of modern painting in his time, and of Greek art and...

' article Picasso à Dinard was featured in the Spring 1928 issue. No. 26, 1937, with a Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

cover, featured Hans Arp, Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

, Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...

, Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...

, Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

and others.

A third to half the space in the early years of transition was given to translations, some of which done by Maria McDonald Jolas; French writers included: André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

, André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

and the Peruvian Victor Llona

Victor Llona

Victor Llona Gastañeta was a writer and translator, born in Lima in 1886, who died in San Francisco in 1953.-Early years:The Peruvian Victor Marie Llona grew up in Paris were he attended the lycée Janson de Sailly and also a Jesuit college...

; German and Austrian poets and writers included Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists.Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg...

, Carl Einstein

Carl Einstein

Carl Einstein , born Karl Einstein, was an influential German Jewish writer, art historian, and critic.Regarded as one of the first critics to appreciate the development of Cubism, as well as for his work on African art and influence on the European avant-garde, Einstein was a friend and colleague...

, Yvan Goll

Yvan Goll

Yvan Goll, born Isaac Lange , was a French-German poet who was perfectly bilingual and wrote in both French and German...

, Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

, René Schickele

René Schickele

René Schickele was a German-French writer, essayist and translator.-Biography:Schickele was born in Obernai, Alsace, the son of a German vineyard owner and police officer and a French mother. He studied literature, history, science and philosophy...

, August Stramm

August Stramm

August Stramm was a German poet and playwright who is considered one of the first of the expressionists. He also served in the German Army and was killed in action during World War I....

, Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...

; Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Swedish, Yiddish, and Native American texts were also translated.

Perhaps the most famous work to appear in transition was Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

, by James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

. Many segments of the unfinished novel were published under the name of Work in Progress.

Additional reading

McMillan, Dougland. transition: The History of a Literary Era 1927-38. New York: George Brazillier, 1976.
Hoffman, Frederick J. The Little Magazine: a History and a Bibliography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947.
Jolas, Eugene. Man from Babel. Ed. Andreas Kramer and Rainer Rumold. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Transition Stories, Twenty-three Stories from transition. Ed. Eugene Jolas and Robert Sage. New York: W. V. McKee, 1929.

External links

transition Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina. Retrieved October 5, 2005.

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