54
PARTISAN REVIEW
Ortega y Gasset; Vienna, Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Dublin, John Eglin·
ton; London, Raymond Mortimer; Paris, Paul Morand; Russia,
Maxim
Gorki;-active. And Bela Belazs (Hungary}, and Otakar Fisher (Prague),
inactive. Those were days when as Robert Herring has said, things were
opening out, not closing in.
I recall the condensed hut explicit anatomy of duties with which the
office was provided; and despite occasional athletically protesting editorial
reciprocities, the inviolateness-to us-of our "contributing editor·critics,"
Gilbert Seldes (The Theatre}; Henry McBride (Modern Art); Paul Rosen·
feld and then Kenneth Burke (Music}. Even recklessly against the false
good, they surely did represent
The Dial
in "encouraging a tolerance for
fresh experiments and opening the way for a fresh understanding of them."
Rivalling manuscript in its significance, were the letters; those from
certain contributors, indivisible as art from their more impersonal writ·
ings. The effect of vacuum silence and naturalness in a note or two from
D. H. Lawrence, belongs for me with Mabel Dodge Luhan's statement,
"'the inessentials' seemed deadly to him, who knew how to savor a piece of
crusty bread on the side of a hill.''
·
11 Feb 1929
Dear Marianne Moore
c/o Signor G. Orioli
6 Lungarno Corsini
Florence Italy
• • •
T
should have liked to see you in New York-- but how was I to know you
would like to see me! -many people don't.... We are staying here in Bandol near
Marseille a little longer, then going back to Italy- so
will
you write me there,
if
you
get the poems. And many greetings.-
Regarding my statement about the Pensees: there are lines in the book, that are
the outcome of certain hurts and I am not saying that in every case the lines themselves
leave no shadow of hurt, ...
18 April 1929
Dear Marianne Moore
. . . I like the little group you chose-some of my favorites- . . . I think I shall
withdraw that introduction from the book form- so you just keep any part of it you
wish,
&
use it with your group of poems, as you wish. . . .
I knew some of the poems would offend you. But the,n some part of life must
offend you too, and even beauty has its thorns and its nettle-stings and its poppy·
poison. Nothing is without offense,
&
nothing should be: if it is part of life,
&
not
merely abstraction.
We must stay in this island a while, but my address is best c/ G. Orioli.
All good wishes
D. H.
LAWRENCE
And from Paul Valery in reply to a letter about his
Introduction to
the Method of Leonardo da Vinci: Note and Digression, Part I: ...
"I
am
very pleased to hear you have found some spiritual refreshment in a work
which so many readers feel a little too much hard and hitter tasted for
common sense. But lucidity and will of lucidity lead their passionate
lover in crystal abysses deeper than old Erehus... ."
Besides humor in our correspondence, there was satire, as in A.E.'a
reply to a suggestion that it was a long time since he had sent us work,
