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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sunglowâundisturbed by any sounds save the soft sighing of the sea far
below, the fluttering of a young goatherd with his black flock on a
steep across a near ravine, and the occasional passing of a muleteer or
of a mountaineer with his wine-panierâd donkeys. A vast sweep of sea is
before us and beneath. To the left, under the almond boughs, are the
broad straits which divide Sicily from Calabriaâin front, the limitless
reach of the Greek seaâto the right, below, the craggy heights and Monte
Acropoli of Taorminaâand, beyond, the vast slope of snow-clad Etna....
I have just been reading (for the hundredth time) in Theocritus. How
doubly lovely he is, read on the spot. That young shepherd fluting away
to his goats at this moment might be Daphnis himself. Three books are
never far from here: Theocritus, the Greek Anthology, and the Homeric
Hymns. I loved them before: now they are in my blood.
Legend has it that near this very spot Pythagoras used to come and
dream. How strange to think that one can thus come in touch with two of
the greatest men of antiquityâfor within reach from here (a pilgrimage
to be made from Syracuse) is the grave of Ăschylus. Perhaps it was here
that Pythagoras learned the secret of that music (for here both the
sea-wind and the hill-wind can be heard in magic meeting) by which one
dayâas told in Iamblicusâhe cured a young man of Taormina (Tauromenion)
who had become mad as a wild beast, with love. Pythagoras, it is said,
played an antique air upon his flute, and the madness went from the
youth....
I shall never forget the journey across Sicily. I forget if I told you
in my letter that it had been one of my dreams since youth to read the
Homeric Hymns and Theocritus in Sicilyâand it has been fulfilled: even
to the unlikeliest, which was to read the great Hymn to Demeter at Enna
itself. And that I didâin that wild and remote mountain-land. Enna is
now called Castrogiovanniâbut all else is unchangedâthough the great
temples to Demeter and Persephone are laid low. It was a wonderful
mental experience to read that Hymn on the very spot where Demeter went
seekingâtorch in hand, and wind-blown blue peplos about herâher ravished
daughter, the beautiful Pherephata or Persephone. However, I have
already told you all about thatâand the strange coincidence of the two
white doves, (which Elizabeth witnessed at the moment I exclaimed) and
about our wonderful sunset-arrival in Greek Tauromenion....
To the same friend he described our visit to Syracuse:
CASA POLITI,
STRADA DIONYSIO,
7th Feb.,:01.
... I must send you at least a brief line from Syracuseâthat marvellous
âGlory of Hellasâ where ancient Athens fell in ruin, alas, when Nicias
lost here the whole army and navy and Demosthenes surrendered by the
banks of the Anapusâthe Syracuse of Theocritus you love so wellâthe
Syracuse where Pindar heard some of his noblest odes sung, where Plato
discoursed with his disciples of New Hellas, where (long before) the
Argonauts had passed after hearing the Sirens singing by this fatal
shore, and near where Ulysses derided Polyphemusâand where Ăschylus
lived so long and died.
It seems almost incredible when one is in the beautiful little Greek
Theatre up on the rising ground behind modern Syracuse to believe that
so many of the greatest plays of the greatest Greek tragedians (many
unknown to us even by name) were given here under the direction of
Ăschylus himself. And now I must tell you of a piece of extraordinary
good fortune. Yesterday turned out the superbest of this yearâa real
late Spring day, with the fields full of purple irises and asphodels and
innumerable flowers, and the swallows swooping beneath the multitudes
of flowering almonds. We spent an unforgettable dayâfirst going to the
Castle of ancient Euryalosâperhaps the most wonderful I have ever known.
Then, in the evening, I heard that today a special choral performance
was to be given in the beautiful hillside Greek Theatre in honour of
the visit of Prince Tommaso (Duke of Genoa, the late Kingâs brother,
and Admiral of the Fleet). Imagine our delight! And _what_ a day it has
beenâthe ancient Ăschylean theatre crammed once more on all its tiers
with thousands of Syracusans, so that not a spare seat was leftâwhile
three hundred young voices sang a version of one of the choral sections
of âThe Suppliantsâ of Ăschylusâwith it il Principe on a scarlet dais
where once the tyrant Dionysius sat! Over head the deep blue sky, and
beyond, the deep blue Ionian sea. It was all too wonderful....
While we were at Taormina the news came of the death of Queen Victoria.
An impressive memorial service was arranged by Mr. Albert Stopford,
an English resident there, and held in the English Chapel of Sta.
Caterina.
To attend it the Hon. Alexander Nelson Hood came from the âNelson
propertyâ of Bronte where he was wintering with his father, Viscount
Bridport, Duke of Bronte, who for forty years had been personal Lord in
Waiting to the Queen. To the son we were introduced by Mr. Stopford;
and a day or two later we started on our first visit to that strange
beautiful Duchy on Ătna, that was to mean so much to us.
Greatly we enjoyed the experienceâthe journey in the little
Circum-Ătnean train along the great shoulder of Etna, with its
picturesque little towns and its great stretches of devastating lava;
the first sight of the Castle of Maniaceâin its shallow tree-clad
valley of the Simeto flanked by great solemn hillsâas we turned down
the winding hill-road from the great lava plateau where the station
of Maletto stands; the time-worn quadrangular convent-castle with its
Norman chapel, and its great Iona cross carved in lava erected in the
court-yard to the memory of Nelson; the many interesting relics of
Nelson within the castle, such as his Will signed Nelson and Bronte on
each page, medals, many fine line engravings of the battles in which
he, and also Admiral Hood, took part; the beautiful Italian garden, and
wild glen gardens beyond. No less charming was the kindly welcome given
to us by the fine, hale old Courtier whoâwhen his son one afternoon
had taken my husband for a drive to see the hill-town of Bronte,
and the magnificent views of and from Ătna, with its crowning cover
of snowâtold me, as we sat in the comfortable central hall before a
blazing log fire, many reminiscences of the beloved Queen he had served
so long.
In the spring we returned to England, through Italy; and from
Florence, where we took rooms for a month, F. M. wrote to an unknown
correspondent:
18th March, 1901.
MY DEAR UNKNOWN FRIEND,
You must forgive a tardy reply to your welcome letter, but I have been
ill, and am not yet strong. Your writing to me has made me happy. One
gets many letters: some leave one indifferent; some interest; a few
are like dear and familiar voices speaking in a new way, or as from an
obscure shore. Yours is of the last. I am glad to know that something in
what I have written has coloured anew your own thought, or deepened the
subtle music that you yourself hearâfor no one finds the colour of life
and the music of the spirit unless he or she already perceive the one
and love the other. Somewhere in one of my booksâI think in the latest,
_The Divine Adventure_, but at the moment cannot rememberâI say that I
no longer ask of a book, is it clever, or striking, or is it well done,
or even is it beautiful, butâout of how deep a life does it come. That
is the most searching test. And that is why I am grateful when one like
yourself writes to tell me that intimate thought and emotion deeply felt
have reached some other and kindred spirit....
I am writing to you from Florence. You know it, perhaps? The pale
green Arno, the cream-white, irregular, green-blinded, time-stained
houses opposite, the tall cypresses of the Palatine garden beyond, the
dove-grey sky, all seem to breathe one sigh ... _La Pace! LâOblio!_
But thenâlife has made those words âPeace,â âForgetfulness,â very sweet
for me. Perhaps for you this vague breath of another Florence than that
which Baedeker described might have some more joyous interpretation. I
hope so....
You are right in what you say, about the gulf between kindred natures
being less wide than it seems. But do not speak of the spiritual life as
âanother lifeâ: there is no âotherâ life: what we mean by that is with
us now. The great misconception of Death is that it is the only door to
another world.
Your friend,
FIONA MACLEOD.
[Illustration: IL CASTELLO DI MANIACE, BRONTE, SICILY
From a photograph taken by the Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood]
The October number of _The Fortnightly Review_ contained a series of
poems by F. M. entitled âThe Ivory Gate,â and at the same time an
American edition of _From the Hills of Dream_âaltered from the original
issueâwas published by Mr. T. Mosher, to whom the poet wrote concerning
the last section of the English Edition:
12th Nov., 1901.
DEAR MR. MOSHER,
What a lovely book _Mimes_ is! It is a pleasure to look at it, to handle
The simple beauty of the cover-design charms me. And the contents... yes, these are beautiful, too.
I think the translation has been finely made, but there are a few slips
in interpretative translation, and (as perhaps is inevitable) a lapse
ever and again from the subtle harmony, the peculiar musical undulant
rhythm of the original. In a _creative_ translation, the faintest jar
can destroy the illusion: and more than once I was rudely reminded that
a foreigner mixt this far-carried honey and myrrh. Yet this is only âa
counsel of perfection,â by one who perhaps dwells overmuch upon the
ideal of a flawless raiment for beautiful thought or dream. Nor would
I seem ungracious to a translator who has so finely achieved a task
almost as difficult as that set to Liban by Oisin in the Land of the
Ever-Living, when he bade her take a wave from the shore and a green
blade from the grass and a leaf from a tree and the breath of the wind
and a manâs sigh and a womanâs thought, and out of them all make an air
that would be like the single song of a bird. Do you wish to tempt me?
Tempt me then with a proposal as to âThe Silence of Amor,â to be brought
out as Mimes is!
The short prose-poems would have to be materially added to, of course:
and the additions would for the most part individually be longer than
the short pieces you know....
Sincerely yours,
FIONA MACLEOD.
In sending a copy of the American edition of _From the Hills of Dream_
to Mr. Yeats, the author explained that, though it contained new
material,
... there will be much in it familiar to you. But even here there are
changes which are recreativeâas, for example, in the instance of âThe
Moon-Child,â where one or two touches and an added quatrain have made a
poem of what was merely poetic.
The first 10 poems are those which are in the current October
_Fortnightly Review_. But when these are reprinted in a forthcoming
volume of new verse ... it will also contain some of the 40 ânewâ poems
now included in this American edition, and the chief contents will be
the re-modelled and re-written poetic drama _The Immortal Hour_, and
with it many of the notes to which I alluded when I wrote last to you.
In the present little volume it was not found possible to include the
lengthy, intimate, and somewhat esoteric notes: among which I account of
most interest for you those pertinent to the occult myths embodied in
_The Immortal Hour_.
You will see, however, that one or two dedicatory pagesâintended for the
later English new bookâhave here found a sectional place: and will, I
hope, please you.
Believe me,
Your friend truly,
M.
Mr. Yeats replied:
18 WOBURN BUILDINGS,
LONDON, Saturday.
MY DEAR MISS MACLEOD,
I have been a long while about thanking you for your book of poems, but
I have been shifting from Dublin to London and very busy about various
thingsâtoo busy for any quiet reading. I have been running hither and
thither seeing people about one thing and another. But now I am back
in my rooms and have got things straight enough to settle down at last
to my usual routine. Yesterday I began arranging under their various
heads some hitherto unsorted folk-stories on which I am about to work,
and today I have been busy over your book. I never like your poetry as
well as your prose, but here and always you are a wonderful writer of
myths. They seem your natural method of expressions.
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