GLENWAY WESCOTT
401
and feel the life."
Now I'll tell you a mystery, the kind of thing
that makes literary study enthralling. A friend of Miss Moore's
(a nd of mine) has a Xerox copy of her first typed version of this
lecture, dated December 11, 1941; and it has key words handwritten
in the margins, to facilitate her delivery of it to an audience, and,
here and there , certain words of comment. Over the declaration
just quoted- " to see the vision and feel the life" -she mysteriously
wrote "Dismal!" and afterward, in
The Marianne Moore Reader,
removed that sentence, substituted another conclusion.
I may say that I prefer the removed sentence, the "dismal"
sentence, to the substitute thought.
An English critic. otherwise astute, once said of this sincerity
of hers that it was "so unself-conscious and ingrained as to be
beautiful in itself," for its own sake. But did Miss Moore renounce
or avoid self-consciousness? She reveled in it, and (I think) habit–
ual enjoyment is a most intense form of self-knowledge. When
one has delighted in something every time, year after year,
awareness of it must fill one's mind to the brim, except when one
is too young for habit, or unless one is mad, incapable of intro–
spection. Surely, in Miss Moore's case, sane, nonyoung, the
know ledge picked up, the experience registered and retained, the
conclusion come to, intellectual indebtedness to be repaid,
thanksgiving in detail-these are conscious purposes, intentions,
methods. Beauty in her work is a side effect, as a rule; once in a
while, it reaches a peak, a climax, and is obviously poetical-not
often!
I wonder if any of you have had occasion to hear her famous
conversation. When over eighty, she did not venture into social
gatherings as she used to do, and a slight impediment had devel–
oped in the
sound
of her voice; but she still conversed, conversed
ecstatically, whether one understood her or not. Indulging in
another of my large-scale metaphors, I may tell you that I was
often reminded by Miss Moore's talk of the characteristic flight
of a sparrow hawk, positively flinging itself forward and upward,
and shifting its slight weight from side to side; letting itself fall
now and then, voluptuously, to feel the cushioning of the air
under its pale bosom. When I hadn't encountered Miss Moore
for some time, and I happened to see that small predator,
faleo
sparverius,
it prompted me to plan some sort of sociability with
her before long, somewhere, somehow.
If
I remember rightly,
