WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) đ
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It follows that, with all this huge impetuosity, he was a poet who was
rather disinclined by temperament for the âpoetic pains.â What he wrote
in haste he was not always anxious to correct at leisure; and he was
happy about what he wroteâat any rate, until a colder mood supervened
at some later stage of his development.
âIn keeping with this mental restlessness, Sharp was an insatiable
wanderer. No sooner did he reach London than he was intriguing to be
off again. Some of his devices in order to get work done, and to equip
these abrupt expeditions, were as absurd as anything told by Henri
Murger. Thanks to his large and imposing presence, his sanguine air,
his rosy faith in himself, he had a way of overwhelming editors that
was beyond anything, I believe, ever heard of in London, before or
since. On one occasion he went into a publisherâs office, and gave so
alluring an account of a long-meditated book that the publisher gave
him a check for ÂŁ100, although he had not written a word of it.
âThese things illustrate his temperament. He was a romanticist, an
illusionist. He did not see places or men and women as they were;
he did not care to see them so: but he had quite peculiar powers of
assimilating to himself foreign associationsâthe ideas, the colours,
the current allusions, of foreign worlds. In Italy he became an Italian
in spirit; in Algiers, an Arab. On his first visit to Sicily he could
not be happy because of the sense of bloodshed and warfare associated
with the scenes amid which he was staying; he saw bloodstains on the
earth, on every leaf and flower.
âThe same susceptibility marked his intercourse with his fellows. Their
sensations and emotions, their whims, their very words, were apt to
become his, and to be reproduced with an uncanny reality in his own
immediate practice. It was natural, then, that he should be doubly
sensitive to feminine intuitions; that he should be able, even on
occasion, thanks to an extreme concern with womenâs inevitable burdens
and sufferings, to translate, as men are very rarely able to do, their
intimate dialect.â
The description given by Mr. Rhys of William Sharpâs method of work
as characterised by an impetuosity which made him âdisinclined for
the poetic painsâ belonged to one phase of his development. During
the early days of hard work for the bare necessities of life, he had
little time to devote to the writing of poetry or of purely imaginative
work. His literary efforts were directed toward the shaping of his
prose critical writings, toward the controlled exercise of the mental
faculties which belonged to the William Sharpâs side of himself.
From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self would sweep
aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea
that had lain dormant in what he called âthe mind behind the mindâ
would suddenly visualise itself and blot out everything else from
his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great
speed, hardly aware of what or how he wrote, so absorbed was he in the
vision with which for the moment he was identified. In those days he
was unwilling to retouch such writing; for he thought that revision
should be made only under a similar phase of emotion. Consequently
he preferred for the most part to destroy such efforts if the result
seemed quite inadequate, rather than alter them. Later, when that side
of his nature found expression in the Fiona Macleod writingsâwhen those
impulses became more frequent, more reliable, more coherentâhe changed
his attitude toward the question of revision, and desired above all
things to give as beautiful an expression as lay in his power to what
to him were dreams of beauty.
For his critical work, however, he studied and prepared himself
deliberately. He believed that the one method of attaining to a
balanced estimate of our literature is by a comparative study of
foreign contemporary writing.
âThe more interested I became in literature,â he on one occasion
explained to an interviewer, âthe more convinced I grew of the
narrowness of English criticism and of the importance to the English
critic of getting away from the insular point of view. So I decided
that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the
critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers
among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each
nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example,
in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point
of view of a Frenchman. When this task was done I tried to estimate
the literature under consideration from an absolute impersonal and
impartial point of view. Of course, this study took a long time, but it
furnished me material that has been invaluable to me in my work ever
since.â
It was his constant endeavour to understand the underlying motive in
any phase of modern literature; and he believed that âwhat is new in
literature is not so likely to be unfit for critics, as critics are
likely to be unfit for what is new in literature.â Concerning the art
of Criticism he expressed his belief in an unfinished article: âWhen I
speak of Criticism I have in mind not merely the more or less deft use
of commentary or indication, but one of the several ways of literature
and in itself a rare and fine art, the marriage of science that knows,
and of spirit that discerns.â
âThe basis of Criticism is imagination: its spiritual quality is
sympathy: its intellectual distinction is balance.â
The occasion of his visit to Mr. Ernest Rhys was in connection with a
scheme for the publication of two series of cheap re-issues of fine
literatureâa comparatively new venture five-and-twenty years agoâto
be published by Messrs. Walter Scott: _The Camelot Classics_ to be
edited by Ernest Rhys and to consist of selected prose writings, and
_The Canterbury Poets_ to be edited by William Sharp;âEach volume
to be prefaced by a specially written introduction. For the Prose
Series William Sharp prepared De Quinceyâs _Confessions of an Opium
Eater_, and Mrs. Cunninghamâs _Great English Painters_. For a third
seriesâBiographies of _Great Writers_ edited by Eric S. Robertson and
Frank T. Marzial, he wrote his monographs on Shelley in 1887, on Heine
in 1888 and on Browning in 1890.
Meanwhile he contributed a volume from time to time to _The Canterbury
Poets_, among others: Collections of Shakespeareâs Sonnets, Great Odes,
American Sonnets, and his Collection of English Sonnets. In preparing
the Edition of Shakespeareâs Sonnets he consulted Mr. Edward Dowden on
one or two points and received the following reply:
DAVOS PLATZ, Dec. 6, 1885.
DEAR MR. SHARP,
The most welcome gift of your _Songs, Poems and Sonnets_ of Shakespeare
reached me to-night. I have already looked it quickly through, and have
seen enough to know that this volume will be my constant companion in
future upon all my wanderings. Comparisons are odious. So I will not
make a list of the other travelling companions, which your edition of
Shakespeareâs lyrics is destined to supersede.
I will only tell you _why_ yours has the right to supersede them. First
and foremost, it is more scientifically complete.
Secondly, it is invaluable in its preservation of the play-atmosphere,
by such introductory snatches as you insert e. g. on p. 20. Hitherto,
we had often yearned in our Shakespearean anthologies for a whiff of
the play from which the songs were torn. You have given this just where
it was needed, and else not. That is _right_.
Thirdly, the Preface (to my mind at least) is more humanly and humanely
true about Shakespeareâs attitude in the Sonnets than anything which
has yet been written about them.
(I thank you, par parenthĂšse, for âthe _vox humana_ of Hamlet!â) And
apropos of p. 11, I think you might have mentioned François Victor
Hugoâs translation of Shakespeareâs Sonnets. It is a curious piece of
French criticism. But the main thing left upon my mind by this first
cursory perusal is that you are one of those who live (as Goethe has
for ever put it) in â_the whole_.â It is the great thing for modern
criticism to get itself up out of holes and corners, mere personal
proclivities and scholarly niceties, into the large air of nature and
of man.
The critic who does this, has to sacrifice the applause of coteries and
the satisfaction which comes from âdiscoveringâ something and making
for his discovery a following.
But I am sure this is the right line for criticism, and the one which
will ultimately prevail, to the exclusion of more partial ways.
I therefore, who, in my own humble way, have tried as critic to
preserve what Goethe also calls the âabiding relations,â _bleibende
VerhÀltnisse_, feel specially drawn to your work by the seal of
largeness set upon it.
You test Shakespeare in his personal poems as man, from the standpoint
of the whole; and this seems to me eminently scientificâright. In a
minor point, I can tell you, as no one else could, that your critical
instinct is no less _acute_ than generally right. You have quoted
one of my sonnets in the notes. This Sonnet was written, to myself
consciously, under the Shakespearean influence. The influence was
complex, but very potent; and your discernment, your âspottingâ of it,
appears to me that you have the right scentâfiuto (as Italians) flair
(as Frenchmen call that subtle penetration into the recesses of a mind
regulated by style).
Thank you from my heart for this gift, which (I hope, if years enough
are given me) shall wear itself out in the daily service of your friend,
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
In the following letter to Mr. Symonds the Editor explained the
intention of his collected _Sonnets of this Century_:
12: 11: 85.
MY DEAR MR. SYMONDS,
I am shortly going to bring out a Selection of the Best Sonnets of
this Century (including a lengthy Introductory Essay on the Sonnet as
a vehicle of poetic thought, and on its place and history in English
Literature)âand I should certainly regard it as incomplete if your fine
sonnet-work were unrepresented. I am giving an average of _two_ to each
writer of standing, but in your case I have allowed for _five_. This is
both because I have a genuine admiration for your sonnet-work in the
main, and because I think that you have never been done full justice to
as a poetâthough of course you have met with loyal recognition in most
of those quarters where you would most value it....
I have taken great pleasure in the preparation of the little book,
and I think that both poetically and technically it will be found
satisfactory. My main principles in selection have been (1) Structural
correctness. (2) Individuality, with distinct poetic value. (3)
Adequacy of Sonnet-Motive.
I hope that you are hard at workânot neglecting the shyest and dearest
of the musesâ? Is there any chance of your being in London in the late
Spring? I hope so.
Sincerely yours,
WILLIAM SHARP.
In the preparation of the volume he received several interesting
communications from well-known English sonnet writers from which I
select four. The first is from the Irish poet Aubrey de Vere; in the
second Mr. George Meredith answers a question concerning his volume of
sequent poems, _Modern Love_:
CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE,
Dec. 5, 1885.
DEAR MR. SHARP,
... I am much flattered by what you say about my sonnets, and glad
that you like them; but I hope that in selecting so many as five for
your volume you have not displaced sonnets by other authors. Sir R.
Hamiltonâs are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you
are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth
once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and
several of real genius; but that Coleridge, and Sir W. H. Hamilton were
the only men he had known to whom he would apply the term âwonderful.â
Yours faithfully,
AUBREY DE VERE.
BOXHILL, DORKING,
Nov. 12, 1885.
DEAR SIR,
You are at liberty to make your use of the Sonnet you have named. The
Italians allow of 16 lines, under the title of âSonnets with a tail.â
But the lines of âModern Loveâ were not designed for that form.
Yours very truly,
GEORGE MEREDITH.
The third letter is from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton:
THE PINES, PUTNEY HILL,
Jan. 8, 1886.
MY DEAR SHARP,
I sent off the proofs by Wednesday afternoonâs post. I had no idea that
the arrangement of the sonnets would give bother and took care to write
to you to ask. The matter was not at all important, and I shall be
vexed, indeed, if the printers are put to trouble. The printers would,
unless the snow storms interfered, get my verses by Thursday morningâs
_first_ post.
My theory of the
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