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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
Marlborough, Kandy, Ceylon.
[Undated: circa September 1901]
Dear Gerald.
You should be starving in the Quartier Latin not getting fat with what Allan [Allan Bennett] would call a "Camel-kneed prayer-monger" in some unknown corner of France. A slut for your mistress, a gamine for your model: a procuress for your landlady and a whore for your spiritual guide. That is the only way to become a great artist.
You set my mind intensely at ease, liking my new work as you do.
I am going to quarrel with one thing: and I am not ashamed to do so: for every body knows that I live with R.B. [Robert Browning].
I do not find a "pungent weight of thought in each sentence" of R.B.'s, not in his best lines, except perhaps the very best. You get this concentrated thought by dropping out articles, auxiliary verbs and such triffles "Why number they the ground?" e.g. "Aischulos bronze-throat eagle-beak at blood". This is very fine. But I find generally he is too diffuse as to his central meaning—too thin—"diluted presentation" a scientist would say: but too concentrated on his own parent theses. And above all you must read him again and again. You know I cannot read Sordello: when I know him from a history book all his characters I shall become able to perhaps. With "Fifene" also, the mental strain is too great: though each paragraph is superb, I cannot read straight through. When I have worked at Fifine in detail till each detail gets familiar, then only shall I for the first time read that poem. Read it with a big R.
You are merely insolent when you say that "of course you knew the correct nomenclature of these metres". Beyond calling one dactyllic another trochaic and so on I know nothing—I doubt if these have names. Surely you know that many of my latest metres are original (Rather "thyme-schemes" than "metres"—sometimes both however).
Tannhäuser. I have sent this to press, correcting or rewriting a great deal, cancelling not a little. I trust you will be as kind as ever—you don't know how grateful I am! do you know anything of silver-and-ivory work?—and keep Kegan Paul on the move. T[annhaüser] is the culmination of that style of my work called introspective: it fittingly concludes the series "Songs of the Spirit" "Soul of Osiris" "Mother's Tragedy"—and "Orpheus" should be the beginning of a new series. (You say nothing of "Alice" [Alice: an Adultery]—I have not got K.F.[1])
I think my Indian trip most appropriately divides my life. Allan MacG [Allan Bennett] has helped me much with T[annhaüser]. We went through it together and discussed. He does not like it at all.
I am not doing much poetry: sticking to occultism and doing really rather well. I've got some sense at last. Your surrounding are hopeless: 'Od 'ild you!
"Argo" [The Argonauts] only needs Act V now. I think by cutting out Act IV altogether and general tinkering you might make this playable—i.e. by the A.D.C. [theatre] instead of a Greek play. This sounds cheek—but it's not such a bad idea. I am sure the average undergrad would rather see a play he can understand. And I don't think drama on absolutely Greek lines has been done yet—at least in the semi-comedy way. And some of Argo is really farce. Dr Verrall [Arthur Woollgar Verrall], my old tutor, is the man to aid us. 'Twould be the crown and crumpet and laurel of my life to be acted by the A.D.C.
I should be back in civilisation with any luck by next September. It's a hell of a long time till then. I don't expect to be able to do any work in the six months or so I am in camp. Nous verrons.
Well: so long!
Ever as Ever.
Aleister Crowley.
P.S. By a proximate mail you shall have haemorrhoids of M.S.S.
A.C.
1—[King's Friend. A play that Crowley was writing. It does not survive. Gerald Yorke.]
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