Thank you for the picture of Grizzly and the cub of him.
Sincerely yours, with best regards to the pretty ever-so-much-better half of you, Ambrose Bierce.
P.S. * * * * * * * * * * *
The Olympia,Washington, D. C.,March 15,1902.
Where are you going to stop? I mean at what stage of development? I presume you have not a "whole lot" of poems really writ, and have not been feeding them to me, the least good first, and not in the order of their production. So it must be that you are advancing at a stupendous rate. This last beats any and all that went before or I am bewitched and befuddled. I dare not trust myself to say what I think of it. In manner it is great, but the greatness of the theme! that is beyond anything.
It is a new field, the broadest yet discovered. To paraphrase Coleridge, a silent sea because no one else has burst into it in full song. True, there have been short incursions across the "border," but only by way of episode. The tremendous phenomena of Astronomy have never had adequate poetic treatment, their meaning adequate expression. You must make it your own domain. You shall be the poet of the skies, the prophet of the suns. Don't fiddle-faddle with such infinitesimal and tiresome trivialities as (for example) the immemorial squabbles of "rich" and "poor" on this "mote in the sun-beam." (Both "classes," when you come to that, are about equally disgusting and unworthy there's not a pin's moral difference between them.) Let them cheat and pick pockets and cut throats to the satisfaction of their base instincts, but do thou regard them not. Moreover, by that great law of change which you so clearly discern, there can be no permanent composition of their nasty strife. "Settle" it how they will another beat of the pendulum and all is as before; and ere another, Man will again be savage, sitting on his naked haunches and gnawing raw bones.
addressed to me I enclose one that I made myself. Of course their publication could not be otherwise than pleasing to me if you care to do it. You need not fear the "splendid weight" expression, and so forth there is nothing "conceited" in the poem. As it was addressed to me, I have not criticised it I can't . And I guess it needs no criticism.
I fear for the other two-thirds of this latest poem. If you descend from Arcturus to Earth, from your nebulae to your neighbors, from Life to lives, from the measureless immensities of space to the petty passions of us poor insects, won't you incur the peril of anti-climax? I doubt if you can touch the "human interest" after those high themes without an awful tumble. I should be sorry to see the poem "peter out," or "soak in." It would be as if Goethe had let his "Prologue in Heaven" expire in a coon song. You have reached the "heights of dream" all right, but how are you to stay there to the end? By the way, you must perfect yourself in Astronomy, or rather get a general knowledge of it, which I fear you lack. Be sure about the pronunciation of astronomical names.
I have read some of Jack London's work and think it clever. Of Whitaker I never before heard, I fear. If London wants to criticise your "Star poem" what's the objection? I should not think, though, from his eulogism of * * *, that he is very critical. * * *
Where are you to place Browning? Among thinkers. In his younger days, when he wrote in English, he stood among the poets. I remember writing once of the thinker: "There's nothing more obscure than Browning except blacking." I'll stand to that.
No, don't take the trouble to send me a copy of these verses: I expect to see them in a book pretty soon. * * *
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
The Olympia,Washington, D. C.,March 31,1902.
I am glad to know that you too have a good opinion of that poem. One should know about one's own work. Most writers think their work good, but good writers know it. Pardon me if I underrated your astronomical knowledge. My belief was based on your use of those names. I never met with the spelling "Betelgeux"; and even if it is correct and picturesque I'd not use it if I were you, for it does not quite speak itself, and you can't afford to jolt the reader's attention from your thought to a matter of pronunciation. In my student days we, I am sure, were taught to say Procy´on. I don't think I've heard it pronounced since, and I've no authority at hand. If you are satisfied with Pro´cyon I suppose it is that. But your pronunciation was Aldeb´aran or your meter very crazy indeed. I asked (with an interrogation point) if it were not Aldeba´ran and I think it is. Fomalhaut I don't know about; I thought it French and masculine. In that case it would, I suppose, be "ho," not "hote."
Don't cut out that stanza, even if "clime" doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with duration. The stanza is good enough to stand a blemish.
"Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim" I was wrong in substituting "that" for "who," not observing that it would make it ambiguous. I merely yielded to a favorite impulse: to say "that" instead of "who," and did not count the cost.