The poems collected in this volume speak for themselves. The
obscurities, the straining and tormenting of language in the effort to
find right expression, the immaturities of style and taste, are apparent
on the surface. The imaginative conceptions and the frequent gleam of
imaginative phrasing should be equally apparent. But what does not
appear on the surface is the fine intention, the ardent toil, and the
continual self-criticism which underlay his work. Rosenberg’s aim was,
in his own words, a kind of poetry “where an interesting complexity of
thought is kept in tone and right value to the dominating idea so that
it is understandable and still ungraspable.” The sentence occurs in one
of his letters, and from this point on I wish to let Rosenberg speak for
himself. His letters give a picture both of his mind and character, far
more vivid than anything one could write about him. He very rarely dated
a letter, but the address and internal evidence give a clue to the date.
The first extract is from a letter written, while he was still an
apprentice, to Miss Winifreda Seaton, a friend to whom Mr. Amschewitz
introduced him. Miss Seaton lent him books, encouraged him to write,
discussed art and literature with him, and criticized his poems.
“It is horrible to think that all these hours, when my days are full of
vigour and my hands and soul craving for self-expression, I am bound,
chained to this fiendish mangling-machine, without hope and almost
desire of deliverance, and the days of youth go by.... I have tried to
make some sort of self-adjustment to circumstances by saying, ‘It is all
_experience_’; but, good God! it is _all_ experience, and nothing
else.... I really would like to take up painting seriously; I think I
might do something at that; but poetry—I despair of ever writing
excellent poetry. I can’t look at things in the simple, large way that
great poets do. My mind is so cramped and dulled and fevered, there is
no consistency of purpose, no oneness of aim; the very fibres are torn
apart, and application deadened by the fiendish persistence of the coil
of circumstance.”
At last the apprenticeship is over and Rosenberg writes[1] exulting:
“Congratulate me! I’ve cleared out of the —— shop, I hope for good and
all. I’m free—free to do anything, hang myself or anything except
work.... I’m very optimistic, now that I don’t know what to do, and
everything seems topsy-turvy.”
Footnote 1:
This and the following extracts are from letters to the same
correspondent.
A little later comes the reaction:
“I am out of work. I doubt if I feel the better for it, much as the work
was distasteful, though I expect it’s the hankering thought of the
consequences, pecuniary, etc., that bothers me.... All one’s thoughts
seem to revolve round to one point—death. It is horrible, especially at
night, ‘in the silence of the midnight’; it seems to clutch at your
thought—you can’t breathe. Oh, I think, work, work, any work, only to
stop one thinking.”
But such moods are resisted. At another time he is writing:
“One conceives one’s lot (I suppose it’s the same with all people, no
matter what their condition) to be terribly tragic. You are the victim
of a horrible conspiracy; everything is unfair. The gods have either
forgotten you or made you a sort of scapegoat to bear all the
punishment. I believe, however hard one’s lot is, one ought to try and
accommodate oneself to the conditions; and except in a case of purely
physical pain, I think it can be done. Why not make the very utmost of
our lives?... I’m a practical economist in this respect. I endeavour to
waste nothing.... Waste words! Not to talk is to waste words....
“To most people life is a musical instrument on which they are unable to
play: but in the musician’s hands it becomes a living thing.... The
artist can see beauty everywhere, anywhere....”
In what is perhaps an earlier letter he excuses his neglect of serious
reading by his lack of leisure and the worries that make him crave for
amusing books as an antidote:
“You mustn’t forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the
little education I have had. Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever
put poetry in my way. I don’t think I knew what real poetry was till I
read Keats a couple of years ago. True, I galloped through Byron when I
was about fourteen, but I fancy I read him more for the story than for
the poetry. I used to try to imitate him. Anyway, if I didn’t quite take
to Donne at first, you understand why. Poetical appreciation is only
newly bursting on me. I always enjoyed Shelley and Keats. The ‘Hyperion’
ravished me....
“Whenever I read anything in a great man’s life that pulls him down to
me, my heart always pleads for him, and my mind pictures extenuating
circumstances.
* * * * *
“Have you ever picked up a book that looks like a Bible on the outside,
but is full of poetry or comic within? My Hood is like that, and, I am
afraid, so am I. Whenever I feel inclined to laugh, my visage assumes
the longitude and gravity of a church spire.
* * * * *
“I can’t say I have ever experienced the power of one spirit over
another, except in books, of course, at least in any intense way that
you mean. Unless you mean the interest one awakes in us, and we long to
know more, and none other. I suppose we are all influenced by everybody
we come in contact with, in a subconscious way, if not direct, and
everything that happens to us is experience; but only the few know it.
Most people can only see and hear the noisy sunsets, mountains and
waterfalls; but the delicate greys and hues, the star in the puddle, the
quiet sailing cloud, is nothing to them. Of course, I only mean this
metaphorically, as distinguishing between obvious experiences and the
almost imperceptible. I still have no work to do. I think, if nothing
turns up here, I will go to Africa. I could not endure to live upon my
people; and up till now I have been giving them from what I had managed
to save up when I was at work. It is nearly run out now, and if I am to
do nothing, I would rather do it somewhere else. Besides, I feel so
cramped up here, I can do no drawing, reading, or anything....
“Create our own experience! We can, but we don’t. Very often it’s only
the trouble of a word, and who knows what we miss through not having
spoken? It’s the man with impudence who has more experience than
anybody. He not only varies his own, but makes other people’s his own.
* * * * *
“Do I like music, and what music I like best? I know nothing whatever
about music. Once I heard Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’ at the band;
and—well, I was in heaven. It was a blur of sounds—sweet, fading and
blending. It seemed to draw the sky down, the whole spirit out of me; it
was articulate feeling. The inexpressible in poetry, in painting, was
there expressed. But I have not heard much, and the sensation that gave
me I never had again. I should like very much to be one of the
initiated.
* * * * *
“Some more confidences. I’ve discovered I’m a very bad talker: I find it
difficult to make myself intelligible at times; I can’t remember the
exact word I want, and I think I leave the impression of being a
rambling idiot.”
In 1910 he went to see the wonderful collection of Japanese paintings
lent by Japan to the Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush.
“The thoroughness is astounding. No slipshod, tricky slickness, trusting
to chance effects, but a subtle suggestiveness, and accident that is the
consequence of intention.”
Here are a few sentences from some “Notes on Art”:
“Life stales and dulls; the mind demands noble excitement,
half-apprehended surmises, the eternal desire, the beautiful. It is a
vain belief that Art and Life go hand-in-hand; Art is, as it were,
another planet.
“Mere representation is unreal, is fragmentary. The bone taken from Adam
remains a bone. To create is to apply pulsating rhythmic principles to
the part; a unity, another nature, is created.”
_To Miss Seaton._
“Thanks so much for the Donne. I had just been reading Ben Jonson again,
and from his poem to Donne he must have thought him a giant. I have read
some of the Donne; I have certainly never come across anything so
choke-full of profound meaningful ideas. It would have been very
difficult for him to express something commonplace, if he had to.”
_To Miss Seaton._
“I forgot to ask you to return my poetry, as I mean to work on some [of
the poems]. I agree the emotions are not worth expressing, but I thought
the things had some force, and an idea or so I rather liked. Of course,
I know poetry is a far finer thing than that, but I don’t think the
failure was due to the subject—I had nothing to say about it, that’s
all. Crashaw, I think, is sometimes very sexual in his religious poems,
but it is always new and beautiful. I believe we are apt to fix a
standard (of subject) in poetry. We acknowledge the poetry in subjects
not generally taken as material, but I think we all (at least I do)
prefer the poetical subject—“Kubla Khan,” “The Mistress of Vision,”
“Dream-Tryst”; Poe, Verlaine. Here feeling is separated from intellect;
our senses are not interfered with by what we know of facts: we know
infinity through melody.”
After leaving the Slade School, at a loss for work and anxious about his
health, Rosenberg thought for a time of going to Russia. But it was
difficult for a Jew to get a passport, and he reverted to the African
journey which he had contemplated already some years before.
_To Miss Seaton._
“So I’ve decided on Africa, the climate being very good, and I believe
plenty to do.... I won’t be quite lost in Africa.... I dislike London
for the selfishness it instils into one, which is a reason of the
peculiar feeling of isolation I believe most people have in London. I
hardly know anybody whom I would regret leaving (except, of course, the
natural ties of sentiment with one’s own people); but whether it is that
my nature distrusts people, or is intolerant, or whether my pride or my
backwardness cools people, I have always been alone. Forgive this little
excursion into the forbidden lands of egotism.”
The next letter was written to Mr. Edward Marsh, in the midst of packing
for the voyage to the Cape. Mr. Marsh was interested in Rosenberg both
as an artist and as a poet; he printed one of his poems in “Georgian
Poetry, 1916–1917,” and befriended him in many ways. The letter throws
light on Rosenberg’s use of language in poetry. As the piece referred
to—“Midsummer Frost”—is not in the present selection, it may be given
here:
A July ghost, aghast at the strange winter,
Wonders, at burning noon, all summer-seeming,
How, like a sad thought buried in light [woven] words,
Winter, an alien presence, is ambushed here.
See from the fire-fountained noon there creep
Lazy yellow ardours towards pale evening,
Dragging the sun across the shell of thought;
A web threaded with fading fire;
Futile and fragile lure, a July ghost
Standing with feet of fire on banks of ice,
My frozen heart, the summer cannot reach—
Hidden as a root from air, or star from day,
A frozen pool whereon mirth dances,
Where the shining boys would fish.
_To Edward Marsh_ (1914).
“I believe that all poets who are personal see things genuinely—have
their place. One needn’t be a Shakespeare and yet be quite as
interesting. I have moods when Rossetti satisfies me more than
Shakespeare, and I am sure I have enjoyed some things of Francis
Thompson more than the best of Shakespeare. Yet I never meant to go as
high as these. I know I’ve come across things by people of far inferior
vision that were as important in their results to me. I am not going to
refute your criticisms; in literature I have no judgment, at least for
style. If in reading a thought has expressed itself to me in beautiful
words, my ignorance of grammar, etc., makes me accept that, I should
think you are right mostly, and I may yet work away your chief
objections. You are quite right in the way you read my poems, but I
thought I could use the ‘July Ghost’ to mean the summer, and also an
ambassador of the summer, without interfering with the sense. The ‘shell
of thought’ is man; you realize a shell has an opening, the ‘ardours’;
the sense of heat forms a web; this signifies a sense of summer; the web
again becomes another metaphor, a July Ghost. But, of course, I mean it
for summer right through. I think your suggestion of taking out ‘woven’
is very good.”
The next letter is from Cape Town.
_To Edward Marsh_ (1914).
“I should like you to do me a favour if it’s not putting you to too much
bother. I am in an infernal city by the sea. This city has men in it—and
these men have souls in them—or at least have the passages to souls.
Though they are millions of years behind time, they have yet reached the
stage of evolution that knows ears and eyes. But these passages are
dreadfully clogged up: gold dust, diamond dust, stocks and shares, and
Heaven knows what other flinty muck. Well, I’ve made up my mind to clear
through all this rubbish, but I want your help. Now, I’m going to give a
series of lectures on modern art (I’m sending you the first, which I
gave in great style. I was asked whether the Futurists exhibited at the
Royal Academy). But I want to make the lectures interesting and
intelligible by reproductions or slides. Now, I wonder whether you have
reproductions which you could lend me till I returned or was finished
with them. I want to talk about John, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Innes, the
early Picasso (not the cubistic one), Spencer, Gertler, Lamb, Puvis de
Chavannes, Degas. A book of reproductions of the P.-Impressionists would
do, and I could get them transferred on slides. I hope this would not
put you to any great trouble, but if you could manage to do it you don’t
know how you would help me. Stanley gave me a little job to paint two
babies, which helped me to pay my way for a bit. I expect to get pupils
and kick up a row with my lectures. But nobody seems to have money here,
and not an ounce of interest in Art. The climate’s fine, but the Sun is
a very changeable creature and I can’t come to any sort of understanding
with this golden beast. He pretends to keep quiet for half an hour, and
just as I think, ‘Now I’ve got it,’ the damned thing has frisked about.
There’s a lot of splendid stuff to paint. We are walled in by the sharp
upright mountain and the bay. Across the bay the piled-up mountains of
Africa look lovely and dangerous. It makes one think of savagery and
earthquakes—the elemental lawlessness.”
The next extract is from a letter written in 1915, just after hearing
the news of Rupert Brooke’s death.
_To Miss Seaton._
“Do you know Emerson’s poems? I think they are wonderful. ‘Each and All’
I think is deep and beautiful. There is always a kind of beaminess, like
a dancing of light in light, in his poems. I do think, though, that he
depends too much on inspiration; and though they always have a solid
texture of thought, they sometimes seem thin in colour or sensuousness.”
_To Miss Seaton._
“I saw Olive Schreiner last night. She’s an extraordinary woman—full of
life. I had a little picture for her from a dear friend of hers in
Africa I stayed with while I was there. She was so pleased with my
pictures of Kaffirs. Who is your best living English poet? I’ve found
somebody miles and miles above everybody—a young man, Lascelles
Abercrombie—a mighty poet and brother to Browning.”
Other references in letters show how deep at this time Mr. Abercrombie’s
influence was. Rosenberg calls his “Hymn of Love” the finest poem of our
time.
He has now joined the Army, and writes from Bury St. Edmunds.
_To Edward Marsh_ (1915).
“I have just joined the Bantams, and am down here amongst a horrible
rabble. Falstaff’s scarecrows were nothing to these. Three out of every
four have been scavengers, the fourth is a ticket-of-leave. But that is
nothing; though while I’m waiting for my kit I’m roughing it a bit,
having come down without even a towel. I dry myself with my
pocket-handkerchief. I don’t know whether I will be shifted as soon as I
get my rig-out.”
The next was written in hospital at Bury.
_To Edward Marsh._
“First, not to alarm you by this heading, I must tell you that while
running before the Colonel I started rather excitedly and tripped
myself, coming down pretty heavily in the wet grit, and am in hospital
with both my hands cut. I’ve been here since last Saturday, and expect
to be out by about the beginning of the week. It is a dull kind of life
in the hospital, and I’m very anxious to get out and be doing some rough
kind of work. Mr. Shiff sent me some water-colours, and I amuse myself
with drawing the other invalids. Of course, I must give them what I do,
but I can see heaps of material for pictures here. The landscape, too,
seems decent, though I haven’t seen anything but from the barracks, as
this accident happened pretty near at the start. I hope you were not
annoyed at that fib of mine, but I never dreamt they would trouble to
find out at home. I have managed to persuade my mother that I am for
home service only, though, of course, I have signed on for general
service. I left without saying anything because I was afraid it would
kill my mother or I would be too weak and not go. She seems to have got
over it, though, and as soon as I can get leave I’ll see her, and I hope
it will be well. It is very hard to write here, so you must not expect
interesting letters; there is always behind or through my object some
pressing sense of foreign matter, immediate and not personal, which
hinders and disjoints what would otherwise have coherence and perhaps
weight. I have left all my poems, including a short drama, with a
friend, and I will write to him for them, when I shall send them either
direct to Abercrombie or to you first. I believe in myself more as a
poet than a painter; I think I get more depth into my writing. I have
only taken Donne with me, and don’t feel for poetry much in this
wretched place. There is not a book or paper here; we are not allowed to
stir from the gate, have little to eat, and are not allowed to buy any
if we have money, and are utterly wretched. (I mean the hospital.) If
you could send me some novel or chocolates, you would make me very
happy.”
_To Edward Marsh (from Bury St. Edmunds)._
“I received a letter to-day (sent over a week ago) from Abercrombie, and
I feel very flushed about it. He says no one who tries to write poetry
would help envying some of my writing. Since I wrote you I have had more
mishaps. My feet now are the trouble. Do you know what privates’
military boots are? You are given a whole armourer’s shop to wear; but,
by God! in a few hours my heels were all blistered, and I’ve been
marching and drilling in most horrible pain. I drew three weeks’ pay and
had some money sent me from home, and bought a pair of boots three or
four sizes too large for me, my feet had swelled so. Besides this
trouble I have a little impudent schoolboy pup for an officer, and he
has me marked; he has taken a dislike to me: I don’t know why.”
_To Miss Seaton (from Bury St. Edmunds)._
“Thanks for your letter and your books which they sent me from home. It
is impossible to read as we are, and I don’t expect to get proper
leisure for reading till this rotten affair is over. My feet are pretty
nigh better, and my hands, and I am put down for a Lance-Corporal. The
advantage is, though you have a more responsible position, you are less
likely to be interfered with by the men, and you become an authority. I
expect to be home for four days shortly. I don’t know whether I told you
Lascelles Abercrombie sent me a fine letter about my work, which made me
very bucked. There is nobody living whose praise could have pleased me
so much. I have some pictures at the N.E.A.C., one of which is likely to
be sold.”
_To Edward Marsh (from Bury St. Edmunds)._
“I suppose my troubles are really laughable, but they do irritate at the
moment. Doing coal fatigues and cookhouse work with a torn hand, and
marching ten miles with a clean hole about an inch round in your heel,
and bullies swearing at you, is not very natural. I think when my hands
and feet get better I’ll enjoy it. Nobody thinks of helping you—I mean
those who could. Not till I had been made a thorough cripple an officer
said it was absurd to think of wearing those boots, and told me to soak
them thoroughly in oil to soften them. Thank you for your note; we get
little enough, you know, and I allow half of that to my mother (I rather
fancy she is going to be swindled in this rat-trap affair), so it will
do to get to London with. You must now be the busiest man in England,
and I am sure would hardly have time to read my things; besides, you
won’t like the formlessness of the play. If you like you can send them
to Abercrombie, and read them when you have more time. I don’t think I
told you what he said: ‘A good many of your poems strike me as
experimental and not quite certain of themselves. But, on the other
hand, I always find a vivid and original impulse; and what I like most
in your songs is your ability to make the concealed poetic power in
words come flashing out. Some of your phrases are remarkable; no one who
tries to write poetry would help envying some of them.’ I have asked him
to sit for me—a poet to paint a poet. All this must seem to you like a
blur on the window, or hearing sounds without listening while you are
thinking.”
_To Miss Seaton (from Blackdown Camp, Farnborough)._
“Thanks very much for the bread and biscuits, which I enjoyed very much.
I am in another regiment now, as the old one was smashed up on account
of most of the men being unfit. We that were left have been transferred
here. The food is much better, but conditions are most unsettling. Every
other person is a thief, and in the end you become one yourself, when
you see all your most essential belongings go, which you must replace
somehow. I also got into trouble here the first day. It’s not worth
while detailing what happened and exposing how ridiculous, idiotic, and
meaningless the Army is, and its dreadful bullyisms, and what puny minds
control it. I am trying to get our Passover off, which falls Easter. If
I do I’ll let you know. The bother is that we will be on our ball-firing
then, and also this before-mentioned affair may mess it up. This
ball-firing implies we will be ready for the front. I have been working
on ‘Moses’—in my mind, I mean—and it was through my absent-mindedness
while full of that that I forgot certain orders, and am now undergoing a
rotten and unjust punishment. I’m working a curious plot into it, and of
course, as I can’t work here, I jot little scraps down and will piece it
together the first chance I get.”
The remaining letters are all from France.
_To Miss Seaton_ (1916).
“We made straight for the trenches, but we’ve had vile weather, and I’ve
been wet through for four days and nights. I lost all my socks and
things before I left England, and hadn’t the chance to make it up again,
so I’ve been in trouble, particularly with bad heels; you can’t have the
slightest conception of what such an apparently trivial thing means.
We’ve had shells bursting two yards off, bullets whizzing all over the
show, but all you are aware of is the agony of your heels.... I had a
letter from R. C. Trevelyan, the poet.... He writes: ‘It is a long time
since I have read anything that has impressed me so much as your “Moses”
and some of your short poems....’ He confesses parts are difficult, and
he is not sure whether it’s my fault or his.”
The next letter is the first of a series to Mr. Bottomley, whom he was
only to know by correspondence. He was now for a time working with the
Salvage Corps.
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, June 12, 1916)._
“If you really mean what you say in your letter, there is no need to
tell you how proud I am. I had to read your letter many times before I
could convince myself you were not ‘pulling my leg.’ People are always
telling me my work is promising—incomprehensible, but promising, and all
that sort of thing, and my meekness subsides before the patronizing
knowingness. The first thing I saw of yours was last year in the
Georgian Book, ‘The End of the World.’ I must have worried all London
about it—certainly everybody I know. I had never seen anything like it.
After that I got hold of ‘Chambers of Imagery.’ Mr. Marsh told me of
your plays, but I joined the Army and have never been able to get at
them. It is a great thing to me to be able to tell you now in this way
what marvellous pleasure your work has given me, and what pride that my
work pleases you. I had ideas for a play called ‘Adam and Lilith’ before
I came to France, but I must wait now.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, July 23, 1916)._
“Your letter came to-day with Mr. Trevelyan’s, like two friends to take
me for a picnic. Or rather like friends come to release the convict from
his chains with his innocence in their hands, as one sees in the
twopenny picture palace. You might say, friends come to take you to
church, or the priest to the prisoner. Simple _poetry_,—that is where an
interesting complexity of thought is kept in tone and right value to the
dominating idea so that it is understandable and still ungraspable. I
know it is beyond my reach just now, except, perhaps, in bits. I am
always afraid of being empty. When I get more leisure in more settled
times I will work on a larger scale and give myself room; then I may be
less frustrated in my efforts to be clear, and satisfy myself too. I
think what you say about getting beauty by phrasing of passages rather
than the placing of individual words very fine and very true.”
_To Miss Seaton (written in Hospital, 1916)._
“I was very glad to have your letter and know there is no longer a
mix-up about letters and suchlike. Always the best thing to do is to
answer at once, that is the likeliest way of catching one, for we shift
about so quickly; how long I will stay here I cannot say: it may be a
while or just a bit. I have some Shakespeare: the Comedies and also
‘Macbeth.’ Now I see your argument and cannot deny my treatment of your
criticisms, but have you ever asked yourself why I always am rude to
your criticisms? Now, I intended to show you ——’s letters and why I
value his criticisms. I think anybody can pick holes and find unsound
parts in any work of art; anyone can say Christ’s creed is a slave’s
creed, the Mosaic is a vindictive, savage creed, and so on. It is the
unique and superior, the illuminating qualities one wants to
find—discover the direction of the impulse. Whatever anybody thinks of a
poet he will always know himself: he knows that the most marvellously
expressed idea is still nothing; and it is stupid to think that praise
can do him harm. I know sometimes one cannot exactly define one’s
feelings nor explain reasons for liking and disliking; but there is then
the right of a suspicion that the thing has not been properly understood
or one is prejudiced. It is much my fault if I am not understood, I
know; but I also feel a kind of injustice if my idea is not grasped and
is ignored, and only petty cavilling at form, which I had known all
along was so, is continually knocked into me. I feel quite sure that
form is only a question of time. I am afraid I am more rude than ever,
but I have exaggerated here the difference between your criticisms and
——’s. Ideas of poetry can be very different too. Tennyson thought Burns’
love-songs important, but the ‘Cottar’s S. N.’ poor. Wordsworth thought
the opposite.”
_To Miss Seaton (November 15, 1916; written in Hospital)._
“London may not be the place for poetry to keep healthy in, but
Shakespeare did most of his work there, and Donne, Keats, Milton,
Blake—I think nearly all our big poets. But, after all, that is a matter
of personal likings or otherwise. Most of the French country I have seen
has been devastated by war, torn up—even the woods look ghastly with
their shell-shattered trees; our only recollections of warm and
comfortable feelings are the rare times amongst human villages, which
happened about twice in a year; but who can tell what one will like or
do after the war? If the twentieth century is so awful, tell me what
period you believe most enviable. Even Pater points out the Renaissance
was not an outburst—it was no simultaneous marked impulse of minds
living in a certain period of time—but scattered and isolated.”
_To Edward Marsh (Postmark, January 30, 1917)._
“I think with you that poetry should be definite thought and clear
expressions, however subtle; I don’t think there should be any vagueness
at all, but a sense of something hidden and felt to be there. Now, when
my things fail to be clear, I am sure it is because of the luckless
choice of a word or the failure to introduce a word that would flash my
idea plain, as it is to my own mind. I believe my Amazon poem to be my
best poem. If there is any difficulty, it must be in words here and
there, the changing or elimination of which may make the poem clear. It
has taken me about a year to write; for I have changed and rechanged it
and thought hard over that poem, and striven to get that sense of
inexorableness the human (or unhuman) side of this war has. It even
penetrates behind human life; for the ‘Amazon’ who speaks in the second
half of the poem is imagined to be without her lover yet, while all her
sisters have theirs, the released spirits of the slain earth-men; her
lover yet remains to be released.”
_To Miss Seaton (1916)._
“Many thanks for book and chocolate. Both are being devoured with equal
pleasure. I can’t get quite the delight in Whitman as from one poem of
his I know—‘Captain, my Captain.’ I admire the vigour and independence
of his mind, but his diction is so diffused. Emerson and not Whitman is
America’s poet. You will persist in refusing to see my side of our
little debate on criticism. Everybody has agreed with you about the
faults, and the reason is obvious; the faults are so glaring that nobody
can fail to see them. But how many have seen the beauties? And it is
here more than the other that the true critic shows himself. And I
absolutely disagree that it is blindness or carelessness; it is the
brain succumbing to the herculean attempt to enrich the world of ideas.”
_To Laurence Binyon (1916)._
“It is far, very far, to the British Museum from here (situated as I am,
Siberia is no further and certainly no colder), but not too far for that
tiny mite of myself, my letter, to reach there. Winter has found its way
into the trenches at last, but I will assure you, and leave to your
imagination, the transport of delight with which we welcomed its coming.
Winter is not the least of the horrors of war. I am determined that this
war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting;
that is, if I am lucky enough to come through all right. I will not
leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with
the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will
all refine itself into poetry later on. I have thoughts of a play round
our Jewish hero, Judas Maccabeus. I have much real material here, and
also there is some parallel in the savagery of the invaders then to this
war. I am not decided whether truth of period is a good quality or a
negative one. Flaubert’s ‘Salambo’ proves, perhaps, that it is good. It
decides the tone of the work, though it makes it hard to give the human
side and make it more living. However, it is impossible now to work and
difficult even to think of poetry, one is so cramped intellectually.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (February, 1917)._
“Your letters always give me a strange and large pleasure; and I shall
never think I have written poetry in vain, since it has brought your
friendliness in my way. Now, feeling as I am, cast away and used up, you
don’t know what a letter like yours is to me. Ever since November, when
we first started on our long marches, I have felt weak; but it seems to
be some inscrutable mysterious quality of weakness that defies all
doctors. I have been examined most thoroughly several times by our
doctor, and there seems to be nothing at all wrong with my lungs. I
believe I have strained my abdomen in some way, and I shall know of it
later on. We have had desperate weather, but the poor fellows in the
trenches where there are no dug-outs are the chaps to pity. I am sending
a very slight sketch of a louse-hunt. It may be a bit vague, as I could
not work it out here, but if you can keep it till I get back I can work
on it then. I do believe I could make a fine thing of Judas. Judas as a
character is more magnanimous than Moses, and I believe I could make it
very intense and write a lot from material out here. Thanks very much
for your joining in with me to rout the pest out, but I have tried all
kinds of stuff; if you can think of any preparation you believe
effective I’d be most grateful for it.”
The “louse-hunt” refers to a night scene in which Rosenberg took part,
and which forcibly struck his imagination as a subject for a Goya
picture or for a poem like the “Jolly Beggars”: a barn full of naked
soldiers—Scottish and others—singing, swearing, and laughing, in mad
antics as they pursued the chase.
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, April 8, 1917)._
“All through this winter I have felt most crotchety, all kinds of small
things interfering with my fitness. My hands would get chilblains or bad
boots would make my feet sore; and this aggravating a general
run-down-ness, I have not felt too happy. I have gone less warmly clad
during the winter than through the summer, because of the increased
liveliness on my clothes. I’ve been stung to what we call ‘dumping’ a
great part of my clothing, as I thought it wisest to go cold than lousy.
It may have been this that caused all the crotchetiness. However, we’ve
been in no danger—that is, from shell-fire—for a good long while, though
so very close to most terrible fighting. But as far as houses or sign of
ordinary human living is concerned, we might as well be in the Sahara
Desert. I think I could give some blood-curdling touches if I wished to
tell all I see, of dead buried men blown out of their graves, and more,
but I will spare you all this.”
_To Edward Marsh (Postmark, May, 1917)._
“Regular rhythms I do not like much, but, of course, it depends on where
the stress and accent are laid. I think there is nothing finer than the
vigorous opening to ‘Lycidas’ for music; yet it is regular.... It is
only when we get a bit of a rest and the others might be gambling or
squabbling I do a line or two and continue this way. The weather is
gorgeous now, and we are bivouacked in the fields.”
_To Edward Marsh (1917)._
“I hope you have not yet got my poem, ‘The Amulet,’ I’ve asked my sister
to send you. If you get it, please don’t read it, because it’s the
merest sketch and the best is yet to come. If I am able to carry on with
it, I’ll send you it in a more presentable fashion. I believe I have a
good idea at bottom. It’s a kind of ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’ idea:
some strange race of wanderers have settled in some wild place and are
perishing out for lack of women. The prince of these explores some
country near where the women are most fair. But the natives will not
hear of foreign marriages; and he plots another Rape of the Sabines, but
is trapped in the act.”
_To Edward Marsh (1917)._
“I am now fearfully rushed, but find energy enough to scribble this in
the minute I plunder from my work. I believe I can see the obscurities
in the ‘Daughters,’ but hardly hope to clear them up in France. The
first part, the picture of the Daughters dancing and calling to the
spirits of the slain before their last ones have ceased among the boughs
of the tree of life, I must still work on. In that part obscure the
description of the voice of the Daughter I have not made clear, I see; I
have tried to suggest the wonderful sound of her voice, spiritual and
voluptuous at the same time. The end is an attempt to imagine the
severance of all human relationship and the fading away of human love.
Later on I will try and work on it, because I think it a pity if the
ideas are to be lost for want of work. My ‘Unicorn’ play is stopped
because of my increased toil, and I forget how much or little I told you
of it. I want to do it in one Act, although I think I have a subject
here that could make a gigantic play. I have not the time to write out
the sketch of it as far as it’s gone, though I’d like to know your
criticism of it very much. The most difficult part I shrink from; I
think even Shakespeare might:—the first time Tel, the chief of the
decaying race, sees a woman (who is Lilith, Saul’s wife), and he is
called upon to talk. Saul and Lilith are ordinary folk into whose
ordinary lives the Unicorn bursts. It is to be a play of terror—terror
of hidden things and the fear of the supernatural. But I see no hope of
doing the play while out here. I have a way, when I write, to try and
put myself in the situation, and I make gestures and grimaces.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, July 20, 1917)._
“My sister wrote me of your note, and it made me very glad to feel you
thought in that way about my poem, because I liked it myself above
anything I have yet done. I know my letters are not what they should be;
but I must take any chance I get of writing for fear another chance does
not come, so I write hastily and leave out most I should write about. I
wished to say last time a lot about your poem, but I could think of
nothing that would properly express my great pleasure in it; and I can
think of nothing now. If anything, I think it is too brief—although it
is so rare and compressed and full of hinted matter. I wish I could get
back and read your plays; and if my luck still continues, I shall.
Leaves have commenced with us, but it may be a good while before I get
mine. We are more busy now than when I last wrote, but I generally
manage to knock something up if my brain means to, and I am sketching
out a little play. My great fear is that I may lose what I’ve written,
which can happen here so easily. I send home any bit I write, for
safety, but that can easily get lost in transmission. However, I live in
an immense trust that things will turn out well.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (1917)._
“The other poems I have not yet read, but I will follow on with letters
and shall send the bits of—or rather the bit of—a play I’ve written.
Just now it is interfered with by a punishment I am undergoing for the
offence of being endowed with a poor memory, which continually causes me
trouble and often punishment. I forgot to wear my gas-helmet one day; in
fact, I’ve often forgotten it, but I was noticed one day, and seven
days’ pack drill is the consequence, which I do between the hours of
going up the line and sleep. My memory, always weak, has become worse
since I’ve been out here.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, August 3, 1917)._
“I don’t think I’ll get my play complete for it in time, though it will
hardly take much space, it’s so slight. If I could get home on leave I’d
work at it and get it done, no doubt, but leaves are so chancy. It’s
called ‘The Unicorn.’ Now, it’s about a decaying race who have never
seen a woman; animals take the place of women, but they yearn for
continuity. The chief’s Unicorn breaks away and he goes in chase. The
Unicorn is found by boys outside a city and brought in, and breaks away
again. Saul, who has seen the Unicorn on his way to the city for the
week’s victuals, gives chase in his cart. A storm comes on, the mules
break down, and by the lightning he sees the Unicorn race by; a naked
black like an apparition rises up and easily lifts the wheels from the
rut, and together they ride to Saul’s hut. There Lilith is in great
consternation, having seen the Unicorn and knowing the legend of this
race of men. The emotions of the black (the Chief) are the really
difficult part of my story. Afterwards a host of blacks on horses, like
centaurs and buffaloes, come rushing up, the Unicorn in front. On every
horse is clasped a woman. Lilith faints, Saul stabs himself, the Chief
places Lilith on the Unicorn, and they all race away.”
In the late summer of this year (1917) Rosenberg came to England on
leave.
_To Gordon Bottomley (dated September 21, 1917)._
“The greatest thing of my leave after seeing my mother was your letter
which has just arrived.... I wish I could have seen you, but now I must
go on and hope that things will turn out well, and some happy day will
give me the chance of meeting you.... I am afraid I can do no writing or
reading; I feel so restless here and unanchored. We have lived in such
an elemental way so long, things here don’t look quite right to me
somehow; or it may be the consciousness of my so limited time here for
freedom—so little time to do so many things bewilders me. ‘The Unicorn,’
as will be obvious, is just a basis; its final form will be very
different, I hope.”
On returning to France he was taken ill and sent down the line. The time
in hospital was a relief, especially as his restlessness in England had
prevented writing or reading.
_To Miss Seaton (dated February 14, 1918)._
“We had a rough time in the trenches with the mud, but now we’re out for
a bit of a rest, and I will try and write longer letters. You must know
by now what a rest behind the line means. I can call the evenings—that
is, from tea to lights out—my own; but there is no chance whatever for
seclusion or any hope of writing poetry now. Sometimes I give way and am
appalled at the devastation this life seems to have made in my nature.
It seems to have blunted me. I seem to be powerless to compel my will to
any direction, and all I do is without energy and interest.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (Postmark, February 26, 1918)._
“I wanted to send some bits I wrote for the ‘Unicorn’ while I was in
hospital, and if I find them I’ll enclose them. I tried to work on your
suggestion and divided it into four acts, but since I left the hospital
all the poetry has gone quite out of me. I seem even to forget words,
and I believe if I met anybody with ideas I’d be dumb. No drug could be
more stupefying than our work (to me anyway), and this goes on like that
old torture of water trickling, drop by drop unendingly, on one’s
helplessness.”
_To Gordon Bottomley (Dated, March 7, 1918)._
“I believe our interlude is nearly over, and we may go up the line any
moment now, so I answer your letter straightaway. If only this war were
over our eyes would not be on death so much: it seems to underlie even
our underthoughts. Yet when I have been so near to it as anybody could
be, the idea has never crossed my mind, certainly not so much as when
some lying doctor told me I had consumption. I like to think of myself
as a poet; so what you say, though I know it to be extravagant, gives me
immense pleasure.”
_To Miss Seaton (March 8, 1918)._
“I do not feel that I have much to say, but I do know that unless I
write now it will be a long time before you hear from me again, without
something exceptional happens. It is not very cold now, but I dread the
wet weather, which is keeping off while we are out, and, I fear, saving
itself up for us. We will become like mummies—look warm and lifelike,
but a touch and we crumble to pieces. Did I send you a little poem, ‘The
Burning of the Temple’? I thought it was poor, or rather, difficult in
expression, but G. Bottomley thinks it fine. Was it clear to you? If I
am lucky, and come off undamaged, I mean to put all my innermost
experiences into the ‘Unicorn.’ I want it to symbolize the war and all
the devastating forces let loose by an ambitious and unscrupulous will.
Last summer I wrote pieces for it and had the whole of it planned out,
but since then I’ve had no chance of working on it and it may have gone
quite out of my mind.”
_To Edward Marsh (dated March 28, 1918)._
“I think I wrote you I was about to go up the line again after our
little rest. We are now in the trenches again, and though I feel very
sleepy, I just have a chance to answer your letter, so I will while I
may. It’s really my being lucky enough to bag an inch of candle that
incites me to this pitch of punctual epistolary. I must measure my
letter by the light....”
The date of the postmark on this letter is April 2, when the writer was
already dead.