I'm your debtor for two good long letters. You err in thinking your
letters, of whatever length and frequency, can be otherwise than
delightful to me.
No, you had not before sent me Upton Sinclair's article explaining why
American literature is "bourgeois." It is amusingly grotesque. The
political and economical situation has about as much to do with it as
have the direction of our rivers and the prevailing color of our hair.
But it is of the nature of the faddist (and of all faddists the ultra
socialist is the most untamed by sense) to see in everything his
hobby, with its name writ large. He is the humorist of observers. When
Sinclair transiently forgets his gospel of the impossible he can see
well enough.
I note what you say of * * * and know that he did not use to like me,
though I doubt if he ever had any antipathy to you. Six or eight years
ago I tackled him on a particularly mean fling that he had made at me
while I was absent from California. (I think I had not met him
before.) I told him, rather coarsely, what I thought of the matter. He
candidly confessed himself in the wrong, expressed regret and has
ever since, so far as I know, been just and even generous to me. I
think him sincere now, and enclose a letter which seems to show it.
You may return it if you will--I send it mainly because it concerns
your poem. The trouble--our trouble--with * * * is that he has
voluntarily entered into slavery to the traditions and theories of the
magazine trade, which, like those of all trades, are the product of
small men. The big man makes his success by ignoring them. Your
estimate of * * * I'm not disposed to quarrel with, but do think him
pretty square.
* * * * *
Bless you, don't take the trouble to go through the Iliad and Odyssey
to pick out the poetical parts. I grant you they are brief and
infrequent--I mean in the translation. I hold, with Poe, that there
are no long poems--only bursts of poetry in long spinnings of metrical
prose. But even the "recitativo" of the translated Grecian poets has a
charm to one that it may not have to another. I doubt if anyone who
has always loved "the glory that was Greece"--who has been always in
love with its jocund deities, and so forth, can say accurately just
how much of his joy in Homer (for example) is due to love of poetry,
and how much to a renewal of mental youth and young illusions. Some
part of the delight that we get from verse defies analysis and
classification. Only a man without a memory (and memories) could say
just what pleased him in poetry and be sure that it was the poetry
only. For example, I never read the opening lines of the Pope
Iliad--and I don't need the book for much of the first few hundred, I
guess--without seeming to be on a sunny green hill on a cold windy
day, with the bluest of skies above me and billows of pasture below,
running to a clean-cut horizon. There's nothing in the text
warranting that illusion, which is nevertheless to me a _part_ of the
Iliad; a most charming part, too. It all comes of my having first read
the thing under such conditions at the age of about ten. I _remember_
that; but how many times I must be powerfully affected by the poets
_without_ remembering why. If a fellow could cut out all that
extrinsic interest he would be a fool to do so. But he would be a
better critic.
You ought to be happy in the contemplation of a natural, wholesome
life at Carmel Bay--the "prospect pleases," surely. But I fear, I
fear. Maybe you can get a newspaper connection that will bring you in
a small income without compelling you to do violence to your literary
conscience. I doubt if you can get your living out of the ground. But
I shall watch the experiment with sympathetic interest, for it
"appeals" to me. I'm a trifle jaded with age and the urban life, and
maybe if you can succeed in that other sort of thing I could.
* * * * *
As to * * * the Superb. Isn't Sag Harbor somewhere near Saybrook,
Connecticut, at the mouth of the river of that name? I'm going there
for a month with Percival Pollard. Shall leave here about the first of
July. If Sag Harbor is easily accessible from there, and * * * would
care to see me, I'll go and call on her. * * * But maybe I'd fall in
love with her and, being now (alas) eligible, just marry her
alive!--or be turned down by her, to the unspeakable wrecking of my
peace! I'm only a youth--63 on the 24th of this month--and it would be
too bad if I got started wrong in life. But really I don't know about
the good taste of being jocular about * * *. I'm sure she must be a
serious enough maiden, with the sun of a declining race yellow on her
hair. Eva Crawford thinks her most lovable--and Eva has a clear,
considering eye upon you all.
* * * * *
I'm going to send up my canoe to Saybrook and challenge the rollers of
the Sound. Don't you fear--I'm an expert canoeist from boyhood. * * *
Sincerely,
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Washington, D. C.,
December 3, 1905.]