[Rarebooks] FS: Lengthy Early Letter from Conrad Aiken

[Charles Agvent]

AIKEN, Conrad. AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS). An early four-page 
handwritten letter on one 6-1/4" x 9-7/8" sheet of paper folded into 
fours to American poet Orrick Johns, explaining his comparison of Johns 
to Edwin Arlington Robinson and responding to a comparison of his 1916 
book of poetry, THE JIG OF FORSLIN: A SYMPHONY, to the writing of 
Charles Baudelaire. In part: "I was delighted to get your letter.... As 
to that echo of Robinson, perhaps I should have been more just if I had 
said similarity instead of echo: though even so I did not mean to put 
too much emphasis on the idea. In two or three of your things I felt 
something of Robinson's trick of veiled reference, inuendo, coupled with 
terseness of rhythm: certainly, nothing to worry about! I quite agree 
with you in your feeling about him. I admire rather than like him. I 
imagine that if I were drunk I should call him a Missing Puritan. You 
are the third person to link Forslin with Baudelaire. I don't know 
whether to be provoked or not, because all I know of Baudelaire is 
hearsay. I’ve never read him-- not a solitary thing. So he is what I 
imagine him to be,-- a decadent for decadence’s sake,-- there, I am 
provoked! Because I don't think I belong in that class. The decadent 
stream in FORSLIN is put there merely as one part of a rather complex 
pattern, on the assumption (certainty?) that it is an important element 
in the unrealistic life of homo sapiens.-- I've got three books, some 
antedating FORSLIN, some contemporaneous with it, some subsequent, which 
I expect to get out during the next two years, in the hope of destroying 
any idea that I am a seeker for the merely phosphorescent. I am glad to 
know that you may come east. If you do, and get to Boston or anywhere 
near it, for heaven's sake let me know. Intelligent people are rare now 
in Boston." Lightly creased and toned. About Fine. (#020952)        $1,000

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/020952/conrad-aiken/autograph-letter-signed-als

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