Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  As to “Socialism.” I am something of a Socialist myself; that is, I think that the principle, which has always coexisted with competition, each safeguarding the other, may be advantageously extended. But those who rail against “the competitive system,” and think they suffer from it, really suffer from their own unthrift and incapacity. For the competent and provident it is an ideally perfect system. As the other fellows are not of those who effect permanent reforms, or reforms of any kind, pure Socialism is the dream of a dream.

  But why do I write all this. One’s opinions on such matters are unaffected by reason and instance; they are born of feeling and temperament. There is a Socialist diathesis, as there is an Anarchist diathesis. Could you teach a bulldog to retrieve, or a sheep to fetch and carry? Could you make a “born artist” comprehend a syllogism? As easily persuade a poet that black is not whatever color he loves. Somebody has defined poetry as “glorious nonsense.” It is not an altogether false definition, albeit I consider poetry the flower and fruit of speech and would rather write gloriously than sensibly. But if poets saw things as they are they would write no more poetry.

  Nevertheless, I venture to ask you: Can’t you see in the prosperity of the strong and the adversity of the weak a part of that great beneficent law, “the survival of the fittest”? Don’t you see that such evils as inhere in “the competitive system” are evils only to individuals, but blessings to the race by gradually weeding out the incompetent and their progeny?

  I’ve done, i’ faith. Be any kind of ‘ist or ‘er that you will, but don’t let it get into your ink. Nobody is calling you to deliver your land from Error’s chain. What we want of you is poetry, not politics. And if you care for fame just have the goodness to consider if any “champion of the poor” has ever obtained it. From the earliest days down to Massanielo, Jack Cade and Eugene Debs the leaders and prophets of “the masses” have been held unworthy. And with reason too, however much injustice is mixed in with the right of it. Eventually the most conscientious, popular and successful “demagogue” comes into a heritage of infamy. The most brilliant gifts cannot save him. That will be the fate of Edwin Markham if he does not come out o’ that, and it will be the fate of George Sterling if he will not be warned.

  You think that “the main product of that system” (the “competitive”) “is the love of money.” What a case of the cart before the horse! The love of money is not the product, but the root, of the system — not the effect, but the cause. When one man desires to be better off than another he competes with him. You can abolish the system when you can abolish the desire — when you can make man as Nature did not make him, content to be as poor as the poorest. Do away with the desire to excel and you may set up your Socialism at once. But what kind of a race of sloths and slugs will you have?

  But, bless me, I shall never have done if I say all that comes to me.

  Why, of course my remarks about * * * were facetious — playful. She really is an anarchist, and her sympathies are with criminals, whom she considers the “product” of the laws, but — well, she inherited the diathesis and can no more help it than she can the color of her pretty eyes. But she is a child — and except in so far as her convictions make her impossible they do not count. She would not hurt a fly — not even if, like the toad, it had a precious jewel in its head that it did not work for. But I am speaking of the * * * that I knew. If I did not know that the anarchist leopard’s spots “will wash,” your words would make me think that she might have changed. It does not matter what women think, if thinking it may be called, and * * * will never be other than lovable.

  Lest you have not a copy of the verses addressed to me I enclose one that I made myself. Of course their publication could not be otherwise than pleasing to me if you care to do it. You need not fear the “splendid weight” expression, and so forth — there is nothing “conceited” in the poem. As it was addressed to me, I have not criticised it — I can’t. And I guess it needs no criticism.

  I fear for the other two-thirds of this latest poem. If you descend from Arcturus to Earth, from your nebulae to your neighbors, from Life to lives, from the measureless immensities of space to the petty passions of us poor insects, won’t you incur the peril of anti-climax? I doubt if you can touch the “human interest” after those high themes without an awful tumble. I should be sorry to see the poem “peter out,” or “soak in.” It would be as if Goethe had let his “Prologue in Heaven” expire in a coon song. You have reached the “heights of dream” all right, but how are you to stay there to the end? By the way, you must perfect yourself in Astronomy, or rather get a general knowledge of it, which I fear you lack. Be sure about the pronunciation of astronomical names.

  I have read some of Jack London’s work and think it clever. Of Whitaker I never before heard, I fear. If London wants to criticise your “Star poem” what’s the objection? I should not think, though, from his eulogism of * * *, that he is very critical. * * *

  Where are you to place Browning? Among thinkers. In his younger days, when he wrote in English, he stood among the poets. I remember writing once — of the thinker: “There’s nothing more obscure than Browning except blacking.” I’ll stand to that.

  No, don’t take the trouble to send me a copy of these verses: I expect to see them in a book pretty soon. * * *

  Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., March 31, 1902.]

  DEAR STERLING,

  I am glad to know that you too have a good opinion of that poem.6 One should know about one’s own work. Most writers think their work good, but good writers know it. Pardon me if I underrated your astronomical knowledge. My belief was based on your use of those names. I never met with the spelling “Betelgeux”; and even if it is correct and picturesque I’d not use it if I were you, for it does not quite speak itself, and you can’t afford to jolt the reader’s attention from your thought to a matter of pronunciation. In my student days we, I am sure, were taught to say Procy´on. I don’t think I’ve heard it pronounced since, and I’ve no authority at hand. If you are satisfied with Pro´cyon I suppose it is that. But your pronunciation was Aldeb´aran or your meter very crazy indeed. I asked (with an interrogation point) if it were not Aldeba´ran — and I think it is. Fomalhaut I don’t know about; I thought it French and masculine. In that case it would, I suppose, be “ho,” not “hote.”

  6 “The Testimony of the Suns.”

  Don’t cut out that stanza, even if “clime” doesn’t seem to me to have anything to do with duration. The stanza is good enough to stand a blemish.

  “Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim” — I was wrong in substituting “that” for “who,” not observing that it would make it ambiguous. I merely yielded to a favorite impulse: to say “that” instead of “who,” and did not count the cost.

  Don’t cut out any stanza — if you can’t perfect them let them go imperfect.

  “Without or genesis or end.”

  “Devoid of birth, devoid of end.”

  These are not so good as

  “Without beginning, without end”; — I submit them to suggest a way to overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the second “without.” I should not like “impend.”

  Yes, I vote for Orion’s sword of suns. “Cimetar” sounds better, but it is more specific — less generic. It is modern — or, rather, less ancient than “sword,” and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land. But “sword” — there were swords before Homer. And I don’t think the man who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and yet—”cimetar of suns” is “mighty catchin’.”

  No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus:

  “Not as two erring spheres together grind,

  With monstrous ruin, in the vast of space,

  Destruction born of that malign embrace —


  Their hapless peoples all to death consigned—” etc.

  I’ve been a star-gazer all my life — from my habit of being “out late,” I guess; and the things have always seemed to me alive.

  The change in the verses ad meum, from “thy clearer light” to “the clearer light” may have been made modestly or inadvertently — I don’t recollect. It is, of course, no improvement and you may do as you please. I’m uniformly inadvertent, but intermittently modest.

  * * * * *

  A class of stuff that I can’t (without “trouble in the office”) write my own way I will not write at all. So I’m writing very little of anything but nonsense. * * *

  With best regards to Mrs. Sterling and Miss Marian I am

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  Leigh died a year ago this morning. I wish I could stop counting the days.

  [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., April 15, 1902.]

  DEAR STERLING,

  All right — I only wanted you to be sure about those names of stars; it would never do to be less than sure.

  After all our talk (made by me) I guess that stanza would better stand as first written. “Clime” — climate — connotes temperature, weather, and so forth, in ordinary speech, but a poet may make his own definitions, I suppose, and compel the reader to study them out and accept them.

  Your misgiving regarding your inability to reach so high a plane again as in this poem is amusing, but has an element of the pathetic. It certainly is a misfortune for a writer to do his best work early; but I fancy you’d better trust your genius and do its bidding whenever the monkey chooses to bite. “The Lord will provide.” Of course you have read Stockton’s story “His Wife’s Deceased Sister.” But Stockton gets on very well, despite “The Lady or the Tiger.” I’ve a notion that you’ll find other tragedies among the stars if earth doesn’t supply you with high enough themes.

  Will I write a preface for the book? Why, yes, if you think me competent. Emerson commands us to “hitch our wagon to a star?” and, egad! here’s a whole constellation — a universe — of stars to draw mine! It makes me blink to think of it.

  O yes, I’d like well enough to “leave the Journal,” but —

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., July 10, 1902.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  If rejection wounded, all writers would bleed at every pore. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. Of course I shall be glad to go over your entire body of work again and make suggestions if any occur to me. It will be no trouble — I could not be more profitably employed than in critically reading you, nor more agreeably.

  * * * * *

  Of course your star poem has one defect — if it is a defect — that limits the circle of understanding and admiring readers — its lack of “human interest.” We human insects, as a rule, care for nothing but ourselves, and think that is best which most closely touches such emotions and sentiments as grow out of our relations, the one with another. I don’t share the preference, and a few others do not, believing that there are things more interesting than men and women. The Heavens, for example. But who knows, or cares anything about them — even knows the name of a single constellation? Hardly any one but the professional astronomers — and there are not enough of them to buy your books and give you fame. I should be sorry not to have that poem published — sorry if you did not write more of the kind. But while it may impress and dazzle “the many” it will not win them. They want you to finger their heart-strings and pull the cord that works their arms and legs. So you must finger and pull — too.

  The Château Yquem came all right, and is good. Thank you for it — albeit I’m sorry you feel that you must do things like that. It is very conventional and, I fear, “proper.” However, I remember that you used to do so when you could not by any stretch of imagination have felt that you were under an “obligation.” So I guess it is all right — just your way of reminding me of the old days. Anyhow, the wine is so much better than my own that I’ve never a scruple when drinking it.

  Has “Maid Marian” a photograph of me? — I don’t remember. If not I’ll send her one; I’ve just had some printed from a negative five or six years old. I’ve renounced the photograph habit, as one renounces other habits when age has made them ridiculous — or impossible.

  Send me the typewritten book when you have it complete.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  [Washington, August 19, 1902.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  I suppose you are in Seattle, but this letter will keep till your return.

  I am delighted to know that I am to have “the book” so soon, and will give it my best attention and (if you still desire) some prefatory lines. Think out a good title and I shall myself be hospitable to any suggestion of my dæmon in the matter. He has given me nothing for the star poem yet.

  * * * * *

  You’ll “learn in suffering what you teach in song,” all right; but let us hope the song will be the richer for it. It will be. For that reason I never altogether “pity the sorrows” of a writer — knowing they are good for him. He needs them in his business. I suspect you must have shed a tear or two since I knew you.

  I’m sending you a photograph, but you did not tell me if Maid Marian the Superb already has one — that’s what I asked you, and if you don’t answer I shall ask her.

  * * * * *

  Yes, I am fairly well, and, though not “happy,” content. But I’m dreadfully sorry about Peterson.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  I am about to break up my present establishment and don’t know where my next will be. Better address me “Care N. Y. American and Journal Bureau, Washington, D. C.”

  You see I’m still chained to the oar of yellow journalism, but it is a rather light servitude.

  [Address me at 1321 Yale Street, Washington, D. C., December 20, 1902.]

  DEAR STERLING,

  I fancy you must fear by this time that I did not get the poems, but I did. I’ll get at them, doubtless, after awhile, though a good deal of manuscript — including a couple of novels! — is ahead of them; and one published book of bad poems awaits a particular condemnation.

  I’m a little embarrassed about the preface which I’m to write. I fear you must forego the preface or I the dedication. That kind of “coöperation” doesn’t seem in very good taste: it smacks of “mutual admiration” in the bad sense, and the reviewers would probably call it “log-rolling.” Of course it doesn’t matter too much what the reviewers say, but it matters a lot what the intelligent readers think; and your book will have no others. I really shouldn’t like to write the preface of a book dedicated to me, though I did not think of that at first.

  The difficulty could be easily removed by not dedicating the book to me were it not that that would sacrifice the noble poem with my name atop of it. That poem is itself sufficiently dedicatory if printed by itself in the forepages of the book and labeled “Dedication — To Ambrose Bierce.” I’m sure that vanity has nothing to do, or little to do, with my good opinion of the verses. And, after all, they show that I have said to you all that I could say to the reader in your praise and encouragement. What do you think?

  As to dedicating individual poems to other fellows, I have not the slightest hesitancy in advising you against it. The practice smacks of the amateur and is never, I think, pleasing to anybody but the person so honored. The custom has fallen into “innocuous desuetude” and there appears to be no call for its revival. Pay off your obligations (if such there be) otherwise. You may put it this way if you like: The whole book being dedicated to me, no part of it can be dedicated to another. Or this way: Secure in my exalted position I don’t purpose sharing the throne with rival (and inferior) claimants. They be gam doodled!

  Seriously — but I guess it is serious enough as it stands. It occurs to me that in saying:
“no part of it can be dedicated to another” I might be understood as meaning: “no part of it must be,” etc. No; I mean only that the dedication to another would contradict the dedication to me. The two things are (as a matter of fact) incompatible.

  Well, if you think a short preface by me preferable to the verses with my name, all right; I will cheerfully write it, and that will leave you free to honor your other friends if you care to. But those are great lines, and implying, as they do, all that a set preface could say, it seems to me that they ought to stand.

  * * * * *

  Maid Marian shall have the photograph.

  Sincerely yours,

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  1903.

  [1321 Yale Street, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1903.]

  MY DEAR STERLING,

  You are a brick. You shall do as you will. My chief reluctance is that if it become known, or when it becomes known, there may ensue a suspicion of my honesty in praising you and your book; for critics and readers are not likely to look into the matter of dates. For your sake I should be sorry to have it thought that my commendation was only a log-rolling incident; for myself, I should care nothing about it. This eel is accustomed to skinning.

  It is not the least pleasing of my reflections that my friends have always liked my work — or me — well enough to want to publish my books at their own expense. Everything that I have written could go to the public that way if I would consent. In the two instances in which I did consent they got their money back all right, and I do not doubt that it will be so in this; for if I did not think there was at least a little profit in a book of mine I should not offer it to a publisher. “Shapes of Clay” ought to be published in California, and it would have been long ago if I had not been so lazy and so indisposed to dicker with the publishers. Properly advertised — which no book of mine ever has been — it should sell there if nowhere else. Why, then, do I not put up the money? Well, for one reason, I’ve none to put up. Do you care for the other reasons?