DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I might one of these days get a job in Loochoo, when
the country becomes richer,--and explore ghostology. The ghost-business
must be simply immense: it must be immense anywhere that the dead are
better housed than the living. Of old I felt sure that if the Egyptian
demotic texts were translated, the ghostly side of that literature would
be amazing--for just the same reason. Well, they have been translated;
and the ghost-stories are without parallel. Assyrian ghostology is also
very awful; but we don't know much about their necropoles,--for whatever
those were, they were of perishable stuff.
As I told the Houghton firm I had a volume of philosophical fairy-tales
in mind, and wanted to read Andersen again, they sent me four volumes;
... the old charm comes back with tenfold force, and makes me despair.
How great the art of the man!--the immense volume of fancy,--the magical
simplicity--the astounding force of compression! This isn't mere
literary art; it is a soul photographed and phonographed and put, like
electricity, in storage. To write like Andersen, one must be Andersen.
But the fountain of his inspiration is unexhausted, and I hope to gain
by drinking from it. I read, and let the result set up disturbances
interiorly. Disturbances emotional I need. I have had no sensations
since leaving Kyūshū.