Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Helen Hollis

Tunis

Aug. 30/23

My dear Helen,

93

I turn from singing your praises—in my Autohagiography [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] where you receive your due as the "Serpent Officer" in one of the most important stages of the initiation w[hich] I underwent in America, to recall myself to you in my character as a budding dramatist. You remember how much you like my [illegible] thou it was impossible because I would take only a hour and [illegible] play. Since then I have [illegible] it to expand it to due length and hope to have it finished before the end of the y[ea]r in w[hich] case I shall send it along.

But I am sure that you remember also that I consistently mention your right divine as the one tragic actress in America worth the name and how I deplored and stormed every time that you were cast for any lesser role.

Last spring, I spent some time w[ith] a youth name B.C. [Arthur Booth-Clibborn] grandson of Gen[eral] B[ooth] of the Salvation army collaborating w[ith] him on a play. The original [illegible] was entirely his but practically all the superstructure is mine. I too am responsible for practically the whole of the dialogue.

From the first moment I had you constantly in my mind as the one woman I have ever known who could adequately interpret the leading character Ania Zina. I do not imply that she is a portrait of you—merely that you alone possess the bitter knowledge of understanding Ania's tragedy.

Ania is a truly great woman both by genius and nobility of character, Her tragedy is that she is thrust into an environment where all her virtues combine to destroy her. She cannot believe that those whom she loves are so abjectly worthless.

The publicity value of the play consists in this. It is the first time that the Oedipus Complex has been properly dramatized.

Let me outline the plot.

Act I—The Red Cross quarters of a Russian Army in Siberia during the Japanese War. Ania has become a nurse tho' the darling of the ballet and the wife of a famous colonel. Lying reports of Russian victories constantly arrive from Port Arthur but the truth is revealed by the arrival of 2 Eng[lish]. fugitives from the fallen fortress, and Englishman who dies of exhaustion and his 12 y[ea]r old son. Ania takes the boy into her tent to tend him. She had no child of her own and her maternal instinct goes out wholly to the stranger.

During the whole of this act one riotous scene follows another. The camp is in a constant uproar. The climax comes when a horde of drunken soldiers and camp followers invade the Red Cross quarters headed by her drunken husband.

Alarmed at the insane excitement of the mob Ania puts on a magnificent embroidered robe once given her by the Tsar and taking the boy under her arm, he being dressed in white w[ith] a bandaged head throws open her tent door. The effect is to suggest the appearance of the Virgin and child to the superstitious crowd. They all fall on their faces in speechless adoration just as, for the first time since the opening of the act the various [illegible] are stilled for a moment. It is her apothesis and the curtain falls.

Act 2 brings us to the present day. War and revolution have ruined Ania, word and wisdom [?] and driven her to London where she earns her living as a teacher of dancing. She is surrounded by selfish intriguing scoundrels on the borderland of good society, She is introduced to a wealthy automobile merchant named Merton in her studio.* In the course of the act there is a row in the street caused by a drunken Malay. The other men have cold feet. Merton offers out to tackle the Malay, saying that he understands their psychology having known many in his boyhood. This leads to the mention of Port Arthur and so to a recog. scene between him and Ania. He is the boy of Act I. The climax of the recog. is that he shows a scar on his temple from the wound rec[ieve]d during his flight from Port Arthur. He mentions that the surgeons have warned him that a mere touch on that scar might cause immediate death. The recog. excites Ania intensely. Her maternal impulse reawakens w[ith] 10 fold for her but Merton being now adult the instinct is transformed into irresistible sexual attraction: [illegible] by the incident Merton goes on to face the Malay. Ania, half insane w[ith] sexual enthusiasm writes a prayer to Buddha saying that since a child of her body has been denied her she must find her fulfilment in the love of her spiritual son. The nobility of his character will be the reward of her life.

The other men follow at a safe distance. The men return shouting w[ith] laughter and tell her that M[erton] has been injured and taken to the hospital. Their story is that he tried to get out of the man's way, slipped, fell and sprained his ankle, but she insists that he is a hero and dismisses them contemptuously.

Act III. Ania has contracted a liaison w[ith] Merton whose business is now tottering. His wealth was due to the boom, not to any qualities of his. He is playing fast and loose w[ith] his partner to get money for intrigues w[ith] chorus girls. He has been caught out. His partner is furious. Threatened w[ith] exposure and ruin he plans to black mail a wealthy accomplice of his vices. Ania hearing of all this, is outraged but Merton always succeeds in representing his vileness in a noble light. During the act, increasingly shameful exposures threaten him. The climax comes when he having borrowed Ania's last savings two days earlier is found to have squandered them already. But he gets rid of everybody by Ania and then explains to her that he has sent the money to an old flame of his whom had deceived and left him two years earlier, but learning that she is penniless, pregnant, dying of consumption in a hospital in Vienna, he could not refuse her appeal for funds. This explanation thrills Ania. She thinks he action sublime and falls more deeply in love w[ith] him than ever.

Act IV. Merton has gone out to blackmail his accomplice. Ania expects him to take her to dinner and theatre. While waiting for him she babbles joyfully over his vindication. The bell rings. It is not Merton but the girl whom he told her was in Vienna. She is neither pregnant nor moribund. She assumes that Ania is M[erton]'s mother, pours into here ears the tale of her love for him, his ill-treatment of her and appeals to Ania to help her to get him back. Ania finally disillusioned, is turned to stone. Merton appears gleefully bragging of his success in the blackmail scheme. He then sees the girl and realizes that the game is up. Ania bids him take the girl out w[hich] he does and returning tries every trick in his bag to appease the outraged woman. He finally tries to play on her sexual instincts. This brings her disgust to a climax and she strikes him on the temple. He falls dead. At first she does not realize the fact. Then she goes to the B[ed] R[oom], takes the prayer, reads it aloud—till now, the audience have not been informed of its contents—and tears it slowly into pieces. She goes to he telephone and asks an old friend to come round and take her out to dinner. She acts automatically as if unconscious of what has transpired yet while telephoning is in mortal apprehension lest Merton should get up and try to kiss her. Finally she goes to Merton and discovers that he is dead. The curtain falls upon her standing dazed, repeating "Mother and Son".

If you think it worthwhile please cable me at once to send the MS.** I should explain that I have introduced a great variety of minor incidents all tending to emphasize the main tragedy. The subsidiary characters are very individual and have been drawn w[ith] great power and insight. I need not say that the dialogue is uniformly vivid.

Each of the acts has a style peculiar to itself. Thus Act I is fundamentally a Russian Ballet, Act II a Romantic Comedy, Act III in the mood of Hauptman of Ibsen showing the slow torture of a noble soul by a [illegible] of increasingly humiliating events, to her constantly more desperate efforts to maintain her faith and love, the more crucial the ordeal, the more ecstatic her triumph. Act IV is again totally different in treatment. Here fate strikes a succession of swift irresistible blows smashing one point of her [illegible] after another until she is trampled into an automatically writhing arrival in torment too frightful either to apprehend or to express.

I am convinced that you and you only are broad and deep enough to play Ania. You can play the queenly artist innocent of evil and accepting her supremacy as natural to the poem of life, the dauntless spirit tested by tribulation and issuing from the furnace pure gold without the loss of a single ideal, the soul at bay clinging to love and faith in the teeth of faith like a stag trampling the hounds as they leap at his flanks, and finally smitten to death tearing her tormentors in the throes of dissolution and stumbling blindly to its feet in a ghastly resurrection of the body incapable, of apprehending the horror which has stamped its spirit into the mire of madness.

Do think this over very seriously. I should never be happy till I have proved to America that the image I made of you in my heart represented you truly. For you too fulfillment lies in finding a form in which to express the sublimity, intensity and depth of your soul.

I may tell you that the play has been submitted to one of the reg[ular] B[road]way bosses whose judgment was that while the plot was admirable, the setting attractive, the construction ingenious and the dialogue brilliant it could not be played because the public insists on what he called "attainment". He did not exactly mean that he required the principles to live happy ever after but that their adventures even if ending in disaster ought to prove worth while in some reason or other. The absolute rottenness of Merton and the brutal mangling of Ania seemed to him too ghastly because senselessly cruel. The audience would go home feeling that the hideous malignity of fate was intolerable. The contemplation of so vile a man and so [illegible] a woman would nauseate the audience beyond endurance.

But I do not see that my play is much worse in the respect than John Ferguson and feel quite confident that your public will appreciate it.

93

* In a recess is a life sized Buddha Rupa.

** I shall understand the single word "Ania" and send it by next mail. The cable address is

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