You are to know too - or maybe you are not - how should I say this, to you with whom my acquaintance is so recent - and yet if not to you, to whom- and I have just written, one must keep truth, and this is so central a truth - you are to know then, after all, for I must take my courage in my hands - that your great poem Ragnarôk was the occasion of quite the worst crisis in the life of my simple religious faith, that I have ever experienced, or hope to experience. It was not that anywhere in that poem you attacked the Christian religion - which indeed was not made mention of with complete Poetic Propriety - and moreover you speak never, in your poetry, withyour own voice,orfrom your own heart directly. (Thatyou question isclear - the creator of Pliable, of Lazarus, of the heretic Pelagius is as wise as the serpent about all the most subtle and searching questionings andprobings of the Grounds of our Belief that in our time have been most persistently and unremittingly explored. You know the "ambages and sinuosities" of the Critical Philosophy, as your Augustine says of your Pelage - for whom I have a weakness, for was he not a Breton, as I in part am, and did he not wish sinful men and women to be nobler andfreer than they were?…) I digress wildlyfrom Ragnarôk and its pagan Day of Judgment and its pagan interpretation of the mystery of the Resurrection, and the New Heaven and the New Earth. It seemed to me you were saying "Such Tales men tell and have told - they do not differ, save in emphasis, here and there." Or even "Men tell what they Desire shall be or might be, not what it is divinely, transcendentlydecreed Must Be and Is. " It seemed to me you made Holy Scripture no morethan another Wonder Tale - bydint of such writing, such force of imagining. I confuse myself, I shall not go on, I ask your pardon if what I have said appears incomprehensible to you. I doubted and I admitted Doubts I have had to live with since. Enough of that.
I did not mean to write all this. Can you doubt that I shall be delighted to receiveyour Swammerdam- if as you come to the end of it, you should still have an inclination to make a copy and send it here. -I cannot promise intelligent criticism- but you cannot be in need of that - a receptive and a Thoughtful reading you are assured of. I was most interested in what you tell me of his discovery of the microscope - and his ivory needlesfor examining the minuter Forms of Life. We in this house have done a little work with microscopes and glasses - but We have a very womanly reluctance to take life - you will find no pinned and chloroformed collection Here - only a few upturnedJars housing temporary guests - a largeHouse-spider - and a Moth in chrysalisform - a voracious Worm with many legs which we have been wholly unable to identify and which is Possessed of a Restless Demon - or hatred ofJar-panopticons.
I send two more Poems. Theyform part of a series on Psyche - in modern form - that poor doubting Girl - who took Heavenly Love for a Serpent.
I have not answered yr question about my Fairy Poem. I am deeply flattered - and no less deeply alarmed - that you remember it so - -for I spoke - or affected to speak - idly on the matter, as about something which might be pleasant to Toy with - or pretty to investigate - one of these unoccupied days -
Whereas in verity -I have it in my head to write an epic - or if not an epic, still a Saga or Lay or great mythical Poem - and how can a poor breathless woman with no staying-power and only a Lunar Learning confess such an ambition to the authorof the Ragnarôk? But I have the most curious certaintythat you are to be trusted in this matter - that you will not mock - nor deluge the fairy of the fountain with Cold Water.
Enough. The Poems are enclosed. I have many more on the subject of metamorphosis - one of the problems of our time - and all Times, rightly known. Dear Sir - forgive my excitedprolixity - and send, when you may, if you will, your Swammerdam to edify
Your sincere well-wisher
C. LaMotte
[Enclosed] METAMORPHOSIS
Does the ruffled Silken Flyer
Pause to recall how She-began
Her soft cramped crawling Origins-
Does man
In all his puffed and sparking Glory
Cast back a Thought
To the Speck of Flesh the Story
Began with, from Naught?
But both, in their Creator's terrible keen sight
Lay curled and known through timeless Day and Night
He Form and Life at once and always-Gave
Is still their Animator and their Grave-
PSYCHE
In ancient Tales-the Creatures-helpful were
To taxed and fearful Humans in despair.
The World was One for those Men, which now is
A dissonant Congeries.
The Nation of the Spinster Ants
Their help to sorrowing Psyche brought
Whom cruel Venus set to sort
The mingled grains and seeds of plants.
They brought their feeling Sympathy
To human Task and Trouble.
They brought their Social Huswifery
To Venus-taunting-Muddle-
They sorted-cleaned-and ordered
What lay in-feckless-Heap
That Psyche-all incapable-
Her tryst-with Love-might keep.
Think not-that Man's Approval
Anticipated Kiss
Is Guerdon of our Merit
Or Order's Warrant-Is
The Ants toil for no Master
Sufficient to their Need
The daily commerce of the Nest
The storage of their Seed
They meet-and exchange Messages-
But none to none-bows down
They-like God's thoughts-speak each to each-
Without-external-crown.
Dear Miss LaMotte,
How generous of you, after all, to write so promptly and so fully. I hope my answer is not too precipitate -I would not for the world harass you importunately - but there was so much of interest in what you said that I should like to set my thoughts down whilst they are fresh and clear. Your poems are delightful and original - if we were face to face I should hazard a guess or two at the deeper reaches of riddling allegory in the Psyche- which I have not the courage or effrontery to set down in black and white. You begin so meekly, with your cast-down princess and useful creatures - and end quite the opposite, with a moral dispensation - -from what? is the difficulty - -from monarchy - or the Love of Man - or Eros as opposed to Agape - or the malignity of Venus? Is the social affection of the anthill truly a better thing than the love of men and women? Well, you are to be thejudge - the poem is yours and afine one - and there is enough evidence in human history of topless towers set onfire for apassionate whim - or poor souls enslaved by loveless unions imposed by parental will and the dictates of lineage - or friends slaying each other - Eros is a bad and fickle little godhead - and I have quite talked myself round to your way of thinking, Miss LaMotte, without still wholly knowing what that is.