75.
1925:
Rapid City, Man. 14 December, 1925
Dear Phelps,
Am returning Sherman 's Contemporary
Literature. I like
the book. It anticipates many things which I wished to say;
they now become supererogatory; I could not have said them
with as much erudition. Two points I do not agree with: his
estimate, given by the way, of Flaubert, and, strange to
say, his estimate of Shakespeare. The latter is almost entirely
seen from the point of view of morals. I should have liked
to see him taken as a typical representative of what I call "World-Consciousness";
his greatness explained from that point of view. I admire
greatly the sagacity with which what the French call "le
naturalisme" is linked with romanticism. In my notes for
the new talk on Realism I have done the same for Zola which
Sherman does for Dreiser (whom, of course, I do not know).
There is, to me, something depressing about such books;
that is, it depresses me momentarily. In the long run I am
glad of it: namely to see how I have been burrowing along
with my mole's way when others, because they had better opportunities,
go straight to the goal. What cheers me in the long run,
is the fact that my underground burrow, purely theoretically,
leads me to the same point to which others sail in an aeroplane.
I find that an enlightened scholar after all arrives at the
same judgments at which I arrive by allowing my instincts
free scope. Only what they find as the bird finds the seed
he is looking for, it takes me twenty or thirty years to
discover. That is depressing because I feel again that I
arrive at the point where I might do some good work when
I am ready to hand myself over to the undertaker. However,
I believe that one day I am going to buy the book.
The more I ponder Settlers, the more I deplore that the
book had to be the first one of my novels to appear. There
is another perversity of circumstance. The book is all right,
apart from its "surface faults". But its position in my publications
remains unfortunate. Still, I couldn't help that. I had to
get rid of its obsession.
All the good things that I might have said to Lodge occur
to me now. I am no debater.
Well, so long. I'll see you again some time during the winter,
I suppose. How is Ann? Mrs. Phelps? Yourself?
Yours,
F.P.G.
