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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
die E [Tuesday] [Undated: 30 April 1901]
Dear Gerald.
I have written 80 pp of Orpheus. All lyrics all Nature: not a line of problem or mysticism anywhere. Some is I know good. I have written very fast: most difficult metres—double rhymes and four or five words rhyming and that sort of thing. I never seem to hesitate. On Sunday I was a nervous wreck. Comic opera (save the mark!) cured me.
I have bought a most marvellous ivory Buddha am sitting before it now with joss sticks burning. Do you remember that supreme faint eventide of gems at 14 Trinity Street when I wrote "The incense steams before the Christ" and you worked on the Siegfriedy hermaphrodite?
80 pp. of Orpheus is about 3/4 of Act I or rather scene I. There are some 20 pp. of preliminary matter. Prologue of A.C. invoking Muse and dialogue Calliope giving her son his lyre. This latter in Strophe and anti-strophe with apode.
Do you know (if I can finish) this has never been done before at all? Prometheus is nearest but that has much blank verse—certainly you can't call it all lyrics. And I have 1200 lines already of sheer song. I don't think it will do. I doubt if I can keep it up anyway or if I can whether it won't be mere fireworks. But the idea is tremendous. Don't you stagger. See what a woman I'm getting underlining words! I'm in a frightful nervous state. Going to McGovern-Gardner fight to-night and sail for Sandwich Islands Friday. Christ I wish you were here. Write and tell me everything and above all send K.F.[1] documents I won't have a lyric in me for years.
Wednesday. Lyric mine seems played out now. Anyway today I am doing none.
Write me. A.Crowley c/o Anchold and Marberg Hong Kong China
Ever.
Aleister Crowley.
1—[King's Friend. A play that Crowley was writing. It does not survive. Gerald Yorke.]
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