The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 11

I've done, i' faith. Be any kind of 'ist or 'er that you will, but don't let it get into your ink. n.o.body is calling you to deliver your land from Error's chain. What we want of you is poetry, not politics.

And if you care for fame just have the goodness to consider if any "champion of the poor" has ever obtained it. From the earliest days down to Ma.s.sanielo, Jack Cade and Eugene Debs the leaders and prophets of "the ma.s.ses" have been held unworthy. And with reason too, however much injustice is mixed in with the right of it. Eventually the most conscientious, popular and successful "demagogue" comes into a heritage of infamy. The most brilliant gifts cannot save him. That will be the fate of Edwin Markham if he does not come out o' that, and it will be the fate of George Sterling if he will not be warned.

You think that "the main product of that system" (the "compet.i.tive") "is the love of money." What a case of the cart before the horse! The love of money is not the product, but the root, of the system--not the effect, but the cause. When one man desires to be better off than another he competes with him. You can abolish the system when you can abolish the desire--when you can make man as Nature did _not_ make him, content to be as poor as the poorest. Do away with the desire to excel and you may set up your Socialism at once. But what kind of a race of sloths and slugs will you have?

But, bless me, I shall _never_ have done if I say all that comes to me.

Why, of course my remarks about * * * were facetious--playful. She really is an anarchist, and her sympathies are with criminals, whom she considers the "product" of the laws, but--well, she inherited the diathesis and can no more help it than she can the color of her pretty eyes. But she is a child--and except in so far as her convictions make her impossible they do not count. She would not hurt a fly--not even if, like the toad, it had a precious jewel in its head that it did not work for. But I am speaking of the * * * that _I_ knew. If I did not know that the anarchist leopard's spots "will wash," your words would make me think that she might have changed. It does not matter what women think, if thinking it may be called, and * * * will never be other than lovable.

Lest you have _not_ a copy of the verses 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 s.p.a.ce to the petty pa.s.sions 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 c.o.o.n 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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.]

DEAR STERLING,

I am glad to know that you too have a good opinion of that poem.[6]

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 p.r.o.nunciation. In my student days we, I am sure, were taught to say Procy'on. I don't think I've heard it p.r.o.nounced since, and I've no authority at hand. If you are satisfied with Pro'cyon I suppose it is that. But your p.r.o.nunciation 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."

[6] "The Testimony of the Suns."

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 subst.i.tuting "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.

Don't cut out _any_ stanza--if you can't perfect them let them go imperfect.

"Without or genesis or end."

"Devoid of birth, devoid of end."

These are not so good as

"Without beginning, without end";--I submit them to suggest a way to overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the second "without." I should not like "impend."

Yes, I vote for Orion's _sword_ of suns. "Cimetar" sounds better, but it is more specific--less generic. It is modern--or, rather, less ancient than "sword," and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land.

But "sword"--there were swords before Homer. And I don't think the man who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and yet--"cimetar of suns" is "mighty catchin'."

No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus:

"Not as two erring spheres together grind, With monstrous ruin, in the vast of s.p.a.ce, Destruction born of that malign embrace-- Their hapless peoples all to death consigned--" etc.

I've been a star-gazer all my life--from my habit of being "out late,"

I guess; and the things have always seemed to me _alive_.

The change in the verses _ad meum_, from "_thy_ clearer light" to "_the_ clearer light" may have been made modestly or inadvertently--I don't recollect. It is, of course, no improvement and you may do as you please. I'm uniformly inadvertent, but intermittently modest.

A cla.s.s of stuff that I can't (without "trouble in the office") write my own way I will not write at all. So I'm writing very little of anything but nonsense. * * *

With best regards to Mrs. Sterling and Miss Marian I am

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

Leigh died a year ago this morning. I wish I could stop counting the days.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., April 15, 1902.]

DEAR STERLING,

All right--I only wanted you to be _sure_ about those names of stars; it would never do to be less than sure.

After all our talk (made by me) I guess that stanza would better stand as first written. "Clime"--climate--connotes temperature, weather, and so forth, in ordinary speech, but a poet may make his own definitions, I suppose, and compel the reader to study them out and accept them.

Your misgiving regarding your inability to reach so high a plane again as in this poem is amusing, but has an element of the pathetic. It certainly is a misfortune for a writer to do his _best_ work early; but I fancy you'd better trust your genius and do its bidding whenever the monkey chooses to bite. "The Lord will provide." Of course you have read Stockton's story "His Wife's Deceased Sister." But Stockton gets on very well, despite "The Lady or the Tiger." I've a notion that you'll find other tragedies among the stars if earth doesn't supply you with high enough themes.

Will I write a preface for the book? Why, yes, if you think me competent. Emerson commands us to "hitch our wagon to a star?" and, egad! here's a whole constellation--a universe--of stars to draw mine!

It makes me blink to think of it.

O yes, I'd like well enough to "leave the Journal," but--

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., July 10, 1902.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

If rejection wounded, all writers would bleed at every pore.

Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. Of course I shall be glad to go over your entire body of work again and make suggestions if any occur to me. It will be no trouble--I could not be more profitably employed than in critically reading you, nor more agreeably.

Of course your star poem has one defect--if it is a defect--that limits the circle of understanding and admiring readers--its lack of "_human_ interest." We human insects, as a rule, care for nothing but ourselves, and think that is best which most closely touches such emotions and sentiments as grow out of our relations, the one with another. I don't share the preference, and a few others do not, believing that there are things more interesting than men and women.

The Heavens, for example. But who knows, or cares anything about them--even knows the name of a single constellation? Hardly any one but the professional astronomers--and there are not enough of them to buy your books and give you fame. I should be sorry not to have that poem published--sorry if you did not write more of the kind. But while it may impress and dazzle "the many" it will not win them. They want you to finger their heart-strings and pull the cord that works their arms and legs. So you must finger and pull--too.