Eugene Jolas envisioned a magazine that would create a transatlantic forum for artists to express themselves. transition was Jolas' refuge for experimental writers. He desired an outlet from which the most diverse and ambitious artists might express themselves independent of criticism. Jolas began his little magazine career with The Double Dealer, which he found restrictive for his grand visions. Jolas created his own creative magazine, transition with the help of his wife, translator and printer Maria Mcdonald. transition combated American rigidity and confinement of political and artistic views. His travels to Paris helped Jolas fuse the spirit of French modernism with the rebellion and innovation of American writers. The first issue, a heavy 150 page magazine, was published in 1927 after a long struggle with foreign printing complications.

The magazine quickly became a "laboratory of the word"-- a place to experiment and gravitate towards new ideas-- for modernists such as James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Alfred Kreymborg, Gertrude Stein, and Muriel Rukeyser (Hoffman 176). This variety exemplifies the complex yet intertwining fields of modernity feature in transition: political writers, Harlem Renaissance voices, works with psychoanalytic qualities, multinational and multilingual works, and other various artistic schools.

transition eventually morphed from a synthesis of expressionistic and surrealistic principles to a more philosophical combination of irrational surrealism and language innovation. Under the Jolas’ new theory and label of vertigralism, transition expanded and slightly shifted its focus, accepting a greater variety of artistic genres. Contributors no longer consisted solely of poetic experimentalists, but other mediums, such as sculptors, civil rights activists, carvers, critics, and cartoonists. The diversity of both form and content found in transition proved successful for more than ten years. During the magazine’s successful run, Jolas created new literary philosophies, fostering and providing inspiration the avant-garde tradition, and produced works that were to become canonical classics.

Compiled by Alice Neumann (Class of '06).