9. By Lord Dunsany (LL 273).
10. HPL never read the final four novels of A Remembrance of Things Past.
11. Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979), actress and author of several books of humor.
12. Otis Skinner, “Sneak Music,” Harper’s 171, No. 6 (November 1935): 748–53.
13. HPL refers to several movies starring Charles Laughton (1899–1962): The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Island of Lost Souls (1933), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), and Les Misérables (1935).
14. Dezsö Kosztolányi (1885–1936), A véres költö (1921); tr. as The Bloody Poet (1927).
15. Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Rosmersholm (1885–86; first American production 1904). HPL saw A Sunny Morning (one-act play) and The Women Have Their Way (two-act play) by Serafin and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero, starring Eva Le Gallienne.
[7] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,
Feby. 10, 1936
Dear White:—
My tardiness in acknowledging yours of Jany. 9 & the interesting issue of The Quill springs from an unfortunate combination of circumstances. First I was crowded to the breaking-point with an accumulation of more tasks than I could possibly perform, & then came down with an attack of grippe—which leaves me still rather shaky & easily fatigued. I am surrounded by mountains of unanswered mail, & have had to shelve or transfer many labours which I ought to perform. Therefore besides being late, this epistle may likewise be very disjointed, stupid, & inadequate.
I enjoyed the Howard Quill1 very much—& can scarcely recall seeing a better student publication. The proportion of really vital & well-written material is surprisingly high, & I certainly congratulate all connected with it. The cover, too, is very harmonious in design & colour. I was very glad to get a first glimpse of Howell Vines’s work, & enjoyed his closeness to the atmosphere & folklore of his native soil.2 That is what important novels grow out of. “Leonard Clintstock”3 also rings true—while “So South the South”4 very justly points out an especially irritating phase of popular literary hokum. “Michaely”5 overdoes ultra-modern mannerisms a trifle, but the author shews that he has an ample fund of images for soberer use later on. Your own story6 is an excellent psychological study—a bit highly coloured, perhaps, but full of the insight which distinguishes the sincere fiction writer. The verse in the magazine includes some splendid stuff—your departing preceptor Mason being especially powerful.7 As you say, “Shakespeare’s Father”8 is highly unusual—indeed, all the verse seems to reach a gratifyingly high level. Your brief columnar lines are very clever!9 Thanks immensely for this delightful glimpse of contemporary university journalism. Hope you’ll do equally well with the future issues—in all of which I wish you the very best of luck.
Your latest bibliothecal additions seem to be as well-chosen as the earlier ones—including several which I lack, & 3 or 4 which I’ve never read. Before long your walls will consist mostly of shelves! Glad you have read “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”10—I must some day. I became acquainted with “The Decline of the West”11 it is one of the most important books of the century. There is certainly a great deal of truth behind Spengler’s central theses—that agricultural cultures are healthier than industrial-commercial cultures, that cultures have or tend to have a natural rise, summit, & decline, & that our existing civilisation is on the down-grade. Mixed with the truth is a great deal of extravagance—as in the attempt to treat a culture as a typical biological organism—but this is characteristic of all philosophic systems. As you remark, the amount of massed erudition which Spengler puts into his work is almost bewildering. Many an ordinarily well-educated man rises from a perusal of “The Decline of the West” with a feeling of helpless ignorance & scholastic humility!
Your postscript12 puts me in rather a difficult position, since I am a most emphatic opponent of the critical attitude it embodies. I have, however, tried to comment (on the other sheet) as best I can—at least explaining my own position, which you will probably deem absurd. My notes on—& tentative changes in—your really excellent poem must be regarded only in the light of suggestions—to be put aside, no doubt, as the biassed dodderings of fossilised & unreceptive old age. They at least illustrate a point of view—& may or may not prove vaguely helpful in one way or another.
Speaking of poetry—here’s an advertisement listing the collected verse of my friend Samuel Loveman, published last month.13 You would probably consider the verse reprehensibly traditional & classical, but I regard it as great stuff. Loveman knows—or at least used to know—your fellow-Donnite Allen Tate.
Glad you had a pleasant Yuletide. We had a tree here—giving quite a momentary illusion of restored childhood. Around New Year’s I visited Long in N.Y.—seeing most of the old group & meeting a number of science-fiction authors (Arthur J. Burks, Otto Binder, &c.) who were new to me. We had several gatherings at various places, & I attended a dinner of the Am. Fiction Guild—where I saw good old Seabury Quinn for the first time since 1931. Long, Morton, Loveman, Talman, Kline, Kleiner, the two Wandrei boys, Leeds, Sterling, Kirk, &c. &c. (some names may be known to you, others not) were on deck, & weird literature received quite a bit of discussion. Fortunately the weather was not as cold as it has since been, & I was not feeling quite as run down.
On two occasions I visited the new Hayden Planetarium of the Am. Museum of Natural History, & found it a highly impressive device. It consists of a round, domed building of 2 storeys, joined at one point to the museum edifice. On the lower floor is a circular hall whose ceiling is a gigantic orrery—shewing the planets revolving around the sun at their proper relative speeds. Above it is another circular hall whose roof is the great dome, & whose edge is made to represent the horizon of N.Y. as seen from Central Park. In the middle of this upper hall is a projector which casts on the concave dome a perfect image of the sky—capable of duplicating the natural apparent motions of the celestial vault, & of depicting the heavens as seen at any hour, in any season, from any latitude, & at any period of history. Other parts of the projector can cast suitably moveable images of the sun, moon, & planets, & diagrammatic arrows & circles for explanatory purposes. The effect is infinitely lifelike—as if one were outdoors beneath the sky. Lectures—different each month (I heard both Dec. & Jan. ones)—are given in connexion with the apparatus. In the annular corridors on each floor are niches containing typical astronomical instruments of all ages—telescopes, transits, celestial globes, armillary spheres, &c.—& cases to display books, meteorites, & other miscellany. Astronomical pictures line the walls, & at the desk may be obtained useful pamphlets, books, planispheres, &c. The institution holds classes in elementary astronomy, & sponsors clubs of amateur observers. Altogether, it is the most complete & active popular astronomical centre imaginable. It seems to be crowded at all hours, attesting a public interest in astronomy which did not exist when I was young.
The latter half of the winter is proving wretchedly cold & snowy hereabouts (I haven’t been out of the house since Jany. 13), & believe that even our generally milder region has suffered somewhat from the universal chill. It surely cheers me to realise that the vernal equinox will be reached in a month & ten days!
All good wishes, & thanks again for the Quill which speaks so well for your editorship!
Yrs most sincerely—
H P L
[P.S.] As an anti-Donnite I fear I can’t be of much real help regarding your verses—but I can at least offer a few concrete suggestions— probably to be rejected at once as the quaint mouthings of an archaic fogy. ¶ In the first place, I think you have rather outdone Donne—or out-Donned Donne!—in deliberate ruggedness. His lines always retained some resemblance to the metres from which they diverged—& I can’t recall that he carried his principles into blank verse—which always needs greater regularity. ¶ Secondly, it seems to me you have gone too far in the use of technical & prosaic terms (infra &c.)—a characteristic fault of this age.
In trying to offer suggestions for improvement, I have endeavoured not to alter the general atmosphere of the poem—which is really excellent. Because of the blank verse medium, I have felt obliged to make the lines closer to iambic pentameter, & in one or two places I have straightened out diction which seemed to me wilfully & unmotivatedly (& therefore inartistically) obscure or inverted. I may have bungled everything—but here are the suggestions to heed or reject at will.
Not sweet, this man: more he implacable:
Unreconciled to sugar of Shakspere,
Or music of the mighty-lined Marlowe
Combined of rare components, he remained
Supple, infrangible, with prism-perception
Of a vast world and of himself in it.
Below, above, beyond, this man; his view
Wide, metasensual; his rugged words
Dimensioned by mind, soul, body—bound
By four stern walls of closely coffined space.
All shining metal, this man’s leaping verse—
The mercury of fluid lyric love
Silver of resonant God-pointing hymn,
Rough ore of youthful satire, grating harsh. . . .
Nor ever sags the bold arc of his flight:
A force centrifugal keeps tautly strung
The thin cool wires of subtle intellect.
Of bright & sudden tangent-thought composed—
This man, light-winged, eccentric of good things:
Body of woman, mind of man, God’s soul—
Long time before his fire shall flicker out,
Yet molder now the canons he defy’d.*
I approach this Donne business with much trepidation, since I am on the other side of the fence. While appreciating the depth, subtlety, & penetration of Dr. Donne, I cannot in any way endorse his manner & medium. He was not primarily a poet—but rather a thinker & minute analyser of human nature. Poetry must be simple, direct, nonintellectual, clothed in symbols & images rather than ideas & statements, & above all limpid & musical—& employing the familiar, traditional words which have had a chance to pick up centuries of halflatent overtones & associations. If it isn’t all this—or largely so—it simply isn’t poetry. It is prose—psychological analysis, philosophy, or what have you—masquerading as poetry but using the appeal & channels of prose. Wilde knew what he was talking about when he pulled that famous mot—“Meredith is a prose Browning, & so was Browning.”14 Donne was the typical product of a decadent age—the petering-out of Elisabethanism. He thought that the poets had said everything that could be said about anything—hence began to experiment with minute analyses & intellectual subtleties which are not really poetry at all. He transferred the atmosphere of the Euphuistic conceit to verse—& founded a whole school of rhyming metaphysicians whose cleverness was enormous, but whose products were not poetry. Of course there was poetic feeling & material in Donne, but his mode of embodying it & his manner of uttering it detracted enormously from its net force. There was no excuse—no real reason—for his harsh & careless diction. Some of his poems are great in spite of it, but none because of it. He simply neglected & rejected one of the most valuable adjuncts to poetic expression. Dryden (who admired him) once very sensibly spoke of the need of translating Donne into English verse.15 For remember this always: harshness, obscurity, verbal inversion, far-fetched allusions, thin-spun conceits, &c. never serve any useful end in themselves. They are a dead weight to be carried by the poetry unfortunate enough to possess them. Donne was on the wrong track—Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, & Keats on the right track. Irrespective of temporary fashions cropping up in ages akin to Donne’s own in decadence, this is what posterity has confirmed & always will confirm in the long run. You’ll live to see the truth reaffirmed—for good taste generally comes back in the end.
I am fully aware of Donne’s present wave of popularity—whose beginning 20 years ago interested me greatly.16 Undoubtedly the restless, unpoetic, over-analytical taste of this jaded & bewildered age—an age upset by the fall of its hereditary illusions through scientific discovery, the reorganisation of its ways of life through mechanical development, & the threat of collapse inherent in its sociological maladjustment—finds a kindred voice in the old metaphysical poet—but that is the fault of the age rather than the virtue of the bard. This age is too scientific & intellectual to be aesthetic, & all the arts exhibit a pitiful sterility which no amount of radical experimentation & extravagance can conceal. Eliot confesses as much in his “Waste Land”. I feel little hesitation in betting that the most recent trends in poetry represent a blind alley—to be rejected in another generation or two in favour of the main line. The wise man, I think, is the one least swayed by fashion. A slave to no one age, but an impartial surveyor of western aesthetics from the beginning.
* * *
*A sentiment with which, in any permanent sense, I basically disagree!
Notes
1. The Howard Quill 8, No. 1 (Winter 1936), edited by Lee White.
2. Howell Vines wrote an article in the issue entitled “In a Novelist’s Notebook” (pp. 1–4).
3. A story by Harold R. Dunnam (p. 8).
4. A story by Hugh Frank Smith (pp. 24–25).
5. A story by Morrison Wood (pp. 4–5).
6. “Out of Sorrow” (pp. 26–27).
7. August H. Mason, “Geography Is Good” (p. 21).
8. A poem by LeRoy Mooney (p. 9).
9. White had contributed a brief humorous poem, “Look at Your Thumb,” in a section entitled “A Page for Woollcott” (p. 23).
10. T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1926).
11. Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918–22; two vols.); tr. as The Decline of the West (1922–26; two vols.). HPL read the first volume no later than February 1927 (SL 2.103).
12. As a postscript to his letter of 9 January, White attached his untitled poem about John Donne:
Not sweet, this man: more he implacable:
Non-reconciled to sugar of Shakspere
Music of Mighty-lined Marlowe
Combined of rare component,
Supple, infrangible, prism-perception
Of a vast world and of himself in it.
Infra-ultra, this man metasensual;
Dimensioned by mind, soul, body
[In margin, HPL has written:]
Don’t drag in scientific jargon.
Simplicity & directness
are what make poetry.
Bound by four walls of coffins.
All metal, verse of this man
Mercury of fluid love lyric
Silver of God-pointing hymn,
Rough ore of youthful satire
Never sagged the arc of his flight:
The centrifugal force keeps taut
The thin cool wires of intellect.
Of bright sudden tangent-thought this man
Eccentric of good things:
Body of woman, mind of man, soul of God:
Long time before flash of his fire shall be dying
Yet molders the canon of his defying.
See HPL’s revised version in the postscript.
13. The Hermaphrodite and Other Poems (Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, 1936; LL 550).
14. The statement is in the first section of Wilde’s The Critic as Artist (1891). HPL quoted this in his “Preface” to John Ravenor Bullen’s White Fire (Athol, MA: The Recluse Press, 1927), which he edited.
15. “Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers, and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression.” Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), dedicated to Charles, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex.
16. Reinterest in Donne can be traced to Edmund Gosse’s The Life and Letters of John Donne (1899; 2 vols.).
[8] [ALS]
66 College St.,
Providence, R.I.,<
br />
July 12, 1936
Dear White:—
Glad to hear from you again—though as the fates would have it, the last few months have been such a nightmare of ill health, congested work, & nervous exhaustion that I could hardly have done justice to an earlier letter had I received one. Even now I fear my reply will seem sadly sketchy & inadequate. I believe I was rather down with grippe when I wrote in February. That was only the beginning of 1936’s disasters! My aunt soon developed a case infinitely worse than mine, so that I was at once reduced to the state of a combined nurse, secretary, butler, market-man & errand-boy. Later the patient had to go to the hospital—but since April 21 she has been back & is steadily recovering. I myself have been miserable. The cold spring kept my energies at a low ebb, & the hopelessly crowded state of my programme nearly reduced me to a nervous breakdown. My aunt’s illness & financial complications made a vacation impossible— so that in general ’36 has been a hell of a year so far! I did obtain a time-extension on the heaviest revision job, but am still uncertain about my ability to get it done.
Glad the novel-notes have been progressing well, & hope the magnum opus will be taking shape ere long. Congratulations on the library! One can get some excellent bargains in the second-hand shops if one knows just where to look. Most of the standard works of literature are to be found on 10¢ & 25¢ counters, so that even a very moderate sum will go a long way unless one is fastidious about the physical appearance of the volumes.
Regarding Donne—I trust I didn’t do him an injustice in my remarks of last winter. His status is surely secure enough, but I was questioning the wisdom of using him too exclusively as a model & inspiration, as some of the moderns are inclined to do. Poetry, after all, must be essentially emotional & imaginative rather than intellectual; & I believe that some of the modernly despised “romantics” were far truer artists—using their medium in the way it was meant to be used—than any of the thinkers who have tried to write philosophy in verse.
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