Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg

by Isaac Rosenberg

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  October-November, 1914

  ‘Hill House’

  43 de Villiers St Cape Town

  DEAR MARSH

  You are very kind to think of me. I see though from the papers your friend is not coming out but is going to hotter places than this. Its a fearful nuisance, this war. I think the safest place is at the front, — we’ll starve or die of suspense, anywhere else.

  I feel very much better in health; I keep a good deal in the open and walk a ?lot. We have had very damp weather and wonderful storms and winds; houses blown over, — the very mountains shaken. We are expecting the fine weather, which I mean to see right through and then come back. I’ve been trying to get pupils to teach, but this war has killed all that. I painted a very interesting girl, which I’m rather pleased with. It’s very quiet and modest and no fireworks. I may send it to the New English if I don’t bring it back myself in time. Also a self portrait, very gay and cocky, which I think will go down very well. I’m waiting for better weather to paint the kaffirs against characteristic landscapes. Also I’ve written poems, of which I’m sending the small ones. By the time you get this things will only have just begun I’m afraid; Europe will have just stepped into its bath of blood. I will be waiting with beautiful drying towels of painted canvas, and precious ointments to smear and heal the soul; and lovely music and poems. But I really hope to have a nice lot of pictures and poems by the time all is settled again; and Europe is repenting of her savageries.

  I know Duncan Grant’s dance and if the one you have is better, it must be very fine indeed. I’ve just written to Cokeham; I hadn’t his address so sent it to Cokeham on Thames. I hope he got it. His brother is very lucky. I also just wrote to Gertler. I really get no privacy here and can’t write or even think. But this coming away has changed me marvellously, and makes me more confident and mature. Here’s a chance to exercise any bloodthirsty and critical propensities.

  This is the last thing I’ve written but I’ve got more, which I may enclose in this letter. What’s become of Currie?

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  From South Africa, late 1914

  DEAR MOTHER — FATHER — AND EVERYBODY.

  I have not read your letters this week as I’ve been staying out at a pretty suburb with a very pretty name, Rondebosch, and with very nice people. It was through my lecture and poems being printed. I went one day to see the lady who is the editor of the paper it was printed in, and there I met a Miss Molteno — who told me how delighted she was with my poems. She asked me to come to Rondebosch where she lives; and there she took me to see some beautiful places, and then asked me whether I’d like to be her guest there for a week or two. She is a sister of the speaker to the House of Parliament here. Her father was famous out here — Sir John Molteno, and she has crowds of relations. Anyway I’m here at Rondebosch having a happy time, you will be glad to hear — I’m anxious to know how you all are and will run down to town about the letters tomorrow, today being Sunday. I’m living like a toff here. Early in the morning coffee is brought to me in bed. My shoes (my only pair) are polished so brightly that the world is pleasantly deceived as to the tragedy that polish covers. I don’t know whether there are snakes or wild animals in my room, but in the morning when I get up and look at the soles of my shoes, every morning I see another hole. I shan’t make your mouths water by describing my wonderful breakfasts — the unimaginable lunches — delicious teas, and colossal dinners. You would say all fibs. I won’t tell of the wonderful flowers that look into my window and the magnificent park that surrounds my room. Of the mountain climbing right to the sheerest top until the town the sea and fields were like little picture postcards lying on the pavement to one looking from the top of the Monument. In a few months I hope to be back in England — I should like to get there for the warm weather — about March or so.

  ISAAC

  1915

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I hope you wont think it too forward of me to try and keep myself in your mind by writing to you, as you promised to buy something of me. I don’t know which of mine you liked best but I could bring them all again when you have more time.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  How’s this for a joke?

  You cleave to my bones,

  Prop and hold in a noose

  One of the lives God loans.

  Sinew of my sinews!

  What will the Lord say

  When I shall nowhere be found

  At the judgement day,

  My life within you being wound?

  To Miss Seaton

  c. Feb 1915

  Do you know Emerson’s poems? I think they are wonderful. ‘Each and All’ I think is deep and beautiful. There is always a kind of beaminess, like a dancing of light in light, in his poems. I do think, though, that he depends too much on inspiration; and though they always have a solid texture of thought, they sometimes seem thin in colour or sensuousness.

  To Miss Seaton. March 1915

  I saw Olive Schreiner last night. She’s an extraordinary woman — full of life. I had a little picture for her from a dear friend of hers in Africa I stayed with while I was there. She was so pleased with my pictures of Kaffirs. Who is your best living English poet? I’ve found somebody miles and miles above everybody — a young man, Lascelles Abercrombie — a mighty poet and brother to Browning.

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MISS SEATON

  Could you let me have the ‘Georgian book’ back, unless you have not finished with it. I want to show somebody some poems there. I do not know whether I lent you Abercrombie’s ‘Olympians’ in New Numbers, will you tell me? The book you lent me of G Bottomley made me buy the second ‘Chambers of Imagery’. The fine things in this are simpler and more harmoniously complete than the first book. I like Bottomley more than any modern poet I have yet come across. I will lend you this book.

  I have been writing better than usual, (I think) lately, but the things are slight — they all have the same atmosphere and I may be able to work them into one, if I can hit on an episode to connect them. When they’re all together I’ll show you them. Trust you’re doing well.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  Do write me exactly what you think of my play.

  DEAR MISS SEATON

  Thanks for copying those things for me. I do wish though you had copied that ‘Marriage of convenience’ — it is more interesting to me than these. I am sending you a thing I copied out years ago from one of our greatest poets and I think one of his best. It is very unlike his usual style, and it is is not by F. Thompson. I am showing you this because I think its a discovery of mine. I don’t like L. Douglas’ sonnets very much. Rossetti never published anything that wasn’t good, but he must have written a good deal very much like those sonnets and burnt them. I like that line “And thy great oak of life a rotten tree”. I will be able to give you your Goethe back when I see you. Its the most interesting autobiography I’ve ever read. It is as much like an autobiography of Shakespeare as one could be. He is the most comprehensive of writers since Shakespeare.

  I met somebody yesterday who is a great friend of G Bottomley. He also thinks he is the best modern poet. He tells me B lives in Yorkshire , has only one lung and writes in great pain. He is a large giant of a fellow but mustn’t exert himself much. He will lend me some of his plays. I have never come across your London poem before. Why do you ask me who wrote it? ‘Truth should have no man’s name’.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  Than
k you for the cheque. I love poetry — but just now the finest poem ever written would not move me as the writing on that cheque. I saw Olive Shreiner last night. She’s an extraordinary woman. Full of go and makes every word live. I think I gave her real pleasure with my kaffir pictures and if I’d done more I’d have given her one.

  If you do find time to read my poems, and I sent them because I think them worth reading, for God’s Sake! don’t say they’re obscure. The idea in the poem I like best I should think is very clear. That we can cheat our malignant fate who has devised a perfect evil for us, by pretending to have as much misery as we can bear, so that it witholds its greater evil, while under that guise of misery there is secret joy. Love — this joy — burns and grows within us trying to push out to that. Eternity without us which is God’s heart. Joy-love, grows in time too vast to be hidden from God under the guise of gloom. Then we find another way of cheating God. Now through the very joy itself. For by this time we have grown into love, which is the rays of that Eternity of which God is the sun. We have become God Himself. Can God hate and do wrong to Himself?

  I think myself the poem is very clear, but if by some foul accident it isn’t, I wonder if you see that idea in it.

  I’ll bring the picture Wed. I want to get the hands and feet a bit more explained.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I’ve done a lovely picture I’d like you to see. Its a girl who sat for Da Vinci, and hasn’t changed a hair, since, in a deep blue gown against a dull crimson ground. If you have time to see it I’d also like Gertler to be there if he can.

  I don’t know whether you’ve shown my things to Abercrombie yet — if you haven’t I’d like you to show these also I enclose, — one of them you have is corrected here.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Spring 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I will bring the picture tomorrow. I think you will like to see it, though if I had a little longer on it it would have been very fine indeed but the model cleared off before I could absolutely finish. I’ve also been working hard at my poems. I’m glad you haven’t shown A. my things. I’ve made that poem quite clear now I think. I’ve a scheme for a little book called ‘Youth’, in three parts.

  1. Faith and fear.

  2. The cynic’s lamp.

  3. Sunfire.

  In the first the idealistic youth believes and aspires towards purity. The poems are: Aspiration. Song of Immortality (which by the way, is absolutely Abercrombie’s idea in the Hymn to Love, and its one of my first poems). Noon in the city. None know the Lord of the House. A girl’s thoughts. Wedded. Midsummer frost.

  In the second, The cynic’s lamp, the youth has become hardened by bitter experience and has no more vague aspirations, he is just sense. The poems are: Love and lust. In Piccadilly. A mood. The cynic’s path. Tess.

  In the third, Change and sunfire, the spiritualizing takes place. He has no more illusions, but life itself becomes transfigured through Imagination, that is, real intimacy — love.

  The poems are: April dawn. If I am fire. Break in by nearer ways. God made blind etc. Do you like the scheme?

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  c. April 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  Don’t you think this is a nice little thing now The one lost I mingle with your bones.

  You steal in subtle noose This starry trust He loans, And in your life I lose.

  What will the Lender say When I shall not be found, Sought at the Judgement Day, Lost — in your being bound?

  I’ve given my things to the printer — he’s doing 16 pages for £2. 10. I know for certain I can get rid of ten. My notion in getting them printed is that I believe some of them are worth reading, and that like money kept from circulating, they would be useless to myself and others, kept to myself. I lose nothing by printing and may even make a little money. If you like you can have my three life drawings for the money if you think they’re worth it. You don’t know how happy you have made me by giving me this chance to print.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  1915, April

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MR SHIFF

  I am always glad to show people my work and if you ever feel inclined to come down and see it, let me know a little beforehand and it will be all right. Buying pictures of me is the last thing in the world I expect people to do, in the best of times, so you needn’t worry about that.

  I believe I was introduced to you as a poet, and as poems are not quite so bulky and weighty, at least outwardly, as pictures, I am sending some.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  On second thoughts I will wait till I’ve printed some in a few weeks.

  1915 May

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MR SCHIFF,

  Thank you for your letter and for what you say. I have already sent my poems to the printer and you will have a copy in about 2 weeks. But I am sending poems I wrote before I was 20 and I leave you to pick out anything good in them.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  It is the only copy I have I shall want it back

  1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I’m doing a nice little thing for Meredith’s ‘Lark ascending’

  Their faces raised Puts on the light of children praised.

  Everybody is in a sort of delirious ecstasy, and all, feeling in the same way, express the same feelings in different ways, according to their natures. I think you’ll like it. I’ll bring others, in case you don’t. I can’t refrain from sending my last poems which I think are much better and clearer than my others.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Unfinished letter to Ezra Pound, c. 1915

  87 Dempsey

  St Stepney E

  DEAR MR POUND

  Thank you very much for sending my things to America. As to your suggestion about the army I think the world has been terribly damaged by certain poets (in fact any poet) being sacrificed in this stupid business. There is certainly a strong temptation to join when you are making no money.

  1915 April

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I left a parcel of pictures for you to see, at the porter’s lodge. Friday. I remember now I did not put your address on as I could not think of the number, so I am rather worried to know whether you got them. There may be somebody else of your name there. If you have, I suppose you have been too busy to see them — my fear that you might be was the reason I never wrote to you first to bother you for replies. I want to cart those things round London to try and sell as I am very low and I took them round to you first, thinking you might like something there. Do drop me a line to say you have them — I dont want them to get lost.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  Late April 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  MY DEAR MARSH

  I am so sorry — what else can I say?

  But he himself has said ‘What is more safe than death?’ For us is the hurt who feel about English literature, and for you who knew him and feel his irreparable loss.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  May 1915

  87 Dempsey St

  Stepney E

  DEAR MARSH

  I am very sorry to have had to disturb you at such a time with pictures. But when one’s only choice is between horrible things you choose the least horrible. First I think of enlisting and trying to get my head blo
wn off, then of getting some manual labour to do — anything — but it seems I’m not fit for anything. Then I took these things to you. You would forgive me if you knew how wretched I was. I am sorry I can give you no more comfort in your own trial but I am going through it too.

  Thank you for your cheque; it will do for paints and I will try and do something you’ll like.

  Yours sincerely

  ISAAC ROSENBERG

  April-May 1915