Sometimes I _know_ that for the greatest artist there would be no chasm
between what the heart desires and what the mind constructs. Tell me how
to do that in poetry and I’ll give you a dollar. Perhaps it can be done
in music—I don’t know. But in poetry the human heart and the
mathematical soul are always fighting—and so far as I know they have not
yet come to an agreement—not in English poetry, at least. The artist and
the human being never get to be bedfellows. It’s either sickening
humanitarianism or stark designing—the second is the less painful.
Well!—I loathe the world, including Symons and all the arts.
_Ezra Pound, London_:
Thanks for the January-February issue. Your magazine seems to be looking
up. A touch of light in Dawson and Seiffert—though THE LITTLE REVIEW
seems to me rather scrappy and unselective. I thought you started out to
prove Ficke’s belief that the sonnet is “Gawd’s own city.” However, he
seems to have abandoned that church. I still don’t know whether you send
me the magazine in order to encourage me in believing that my camp stool
by Helicon is to be left free from tacks, or whether the paper is sent
to convert me from error.