I am amused by your attitude toward the spaced sonnet, and by the
docility of Gilder. If I had been your editor I guess you'd have got
back your sonnets. I never liked the space. If the work naturally
divides itself into two parts, as it should, the space is needless; if
not, it is worse than that. The space was the invention of printers of
a comparatively recent period, neither Petrarch nor Dante (as Gilder
points out) knew of it. Every magazine has its own _system_ of
printing, and Gilder's good-natured compliance with your wish, or
rather demand, shows him to be a better fellow, though not a better
poet, than I have thought him to be. As a victory of author over
editor, the incident pleases.
I've not yet been in New York, but expect to go soon. I shall be glad
to meet Hopper if he is there.
Thank you for the article from "Town Talk." It suggests this question:
How many times, and covering a period of how many years, must one's
unexplainable obscurity be pointed out to constitute fame? Not
knowing, I am almost disposed to consider myself the most famous of
authors. I have pretty nearly ceased to be "discovered," but my
notoriety as an obscurian may be said to be worldwide and apparently
everlasting.
The trouble, I fancy, is with our vocabulary--the lack of a word
meaning something intermediate between "popular" and "obscure"--and
the ignorance of writers as to the reading of readers. I seldom meet a
person of education who is not acquainted with some of my work; my
clipping bureau's bills were so heavy that I had to discontinue my
patronage, and Blake tells me that he sells my books at one hundred
dollars a set. Rather amusing all this to one so widely unknown.
I sometimes wonder what you think of Scheff's new book. Does it
perform the promise of the others? In the dedicatory poem it seems to
me that it does, and in some others. As a good Socialist you are bound
to like _that_ poem because of its political-economic-views. I like it
despite them.
"The dome of the Capitol roars
With the shouts of the Caesars of crime"
is great poetry, but it is not true. I am rather familiar with what
goes on in the Capitol--not through the muck-rakers, who pass a few
days here "investigating," and then look into their pockets and write,
but through years of personal observation and personal acquaintance
with the men observed. There are no Caesars of crime, but about a
dozen rascals, all told, mostly very small fellows; I can name them
all. They are without power or influence enough to count in the scheme
of legislation. The really dangerous and mischievous chaps are the
demagogues, friends of the pee-pul. And they do all the "shouting."
Compared with the Congress of our forefathers, the Congress of to-day
is as a flock of angels to an executive body of the Western Federation
of Miners.
When I showed the "dome" to * * * (who had been reading his own
magazine) the tears came into his voice, and I guess his eyes, as he
lamented the decay of civic virtue, "the treason of the Senate," and
the rest of it. He was so affected that I hastened to brace him up
with whiskey. He, too, was "squirming" about "other persons'
troubles," and with about as good reason as you.
I think "the present system" is not "frightful." It is all right--a
natural outgrowth of human needs, limitations and capacities, instinct
with possibilities of growth in goodness, elastic, and progressively
better. Why don't you study humanity as you do the suns--not from the
viewpoint of time, but from that of eternity. The middle ages were
yesterday, Rome and Greece the day before. The individual man is
nothing, as a single star is nothing. If this earth were to take fire
you would smile to think how little it mattered in the scheme of the
universe; all the wailing of the egoist mob would not affect you. Then
why do you squirm at the minute catastrophe of a few thousands or
millions of pismires crushed under the wheels of evolution. Must the
new heavens and the new earth of prophecy and science come in _your_
little instant of life in order that you may not go howling and
damning with Jack London up and down the earth that we happen to have?
Nay, nay, read history to get the long, large view--to learn to think
in centuries and cycles. Keep your eyes off your neighbors and fix
them on the nations. What poetry we shall have when you get, and give
us, The Testimony of the Races!
* * * * *
I peg away at compilation and revision. I'm cutting-about my stuff a
good deal--changing things from one book to another, adding,
subtracting and dividing. Five volumes are ready, and Neale is engaged
in a "prospectus" which he says will make me blush. I'll send it to
you when he has it ready.
Gertrude Atherton is sending me picture-postals of Berchtesgaden and
other scenes of "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter." She found all
the places "exactly as described"--the lakes, mountains, St.
Bartolomae, the cliff-meadow where the edelweiss grows, and so forth.
The photographs are naturally very interesting to me.
Good night.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
[Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C.,
September 12, 1908.]