BIB_ID
431021
Accession number
MA 1617.179
Creator
Hake, Thomas Gordon, 1809-1895.
Display Date
London, England, 1887 June 27.
Credit line
Purchased as the gift of Edwin J. Beinecke, 1955.
Description
1 item (10 pages) ; 18.3 x 11.3 cm
Notes
This letter is one of six letters from T.G. Hake to W.E. Henley written from June 20, 1887 to March 21, 1888 (MA 1617.177-183).
Provenance
Purchased as the gift of Edwin J. Beinecke, 1955.
Summary
Concerning Henley's Hospital Sketches; saying "If I had not known you my eyes would have been stretched across your Sketches, in which I at once saw things real, without which there is no poetry. It is through the want of such that the art is all but worn out. Then I saw your realities had a voice, had muscles, nerves and bones, not to mention heart and brain! Perhaps you may begin to see now why I, the metaphysical realist! - like this work of yours. Than you know - with a sort of scientific impertinence, I went in for analyzing your effects, not a very gentlemanly proceeding, because it was to find out where you got them;" analyzing his verse in detail with respect to its meter; adding "I look to seeing the 'Death Song' at your utmost convenience. I do not see why it should crowd anything else out. I should be sorry to say wh. I like least of the parts : I don't think my brains would bear being impannelled on that question, especially if it was to deprive any of the members of a situation - All are characteristic and representative. We have all different ears, from the donkey downwards - so, recognizing this, you will not mind my saying that to my auditory apparatus the whole of your work, in a musical sense only, is not equal to your own model...I may have the opportunity of showing you my ground for this opinion, and you will perhaps say it is not 'terra firma.' I suppose we shall be scattering soon, but nothing is settled. If we move I shall to to St. Johns Woods for a time, but I will tell you more when I know. Probably you are not hurrying the revision of your poems. Though I don't see my claim to your thanks I congratulate myself on receiving them just as if they were deserved!...By the way - in thanking me - haven't you imagination enough to recall how much I owe to you? And can't you take into account the exquisite pleasure I get from so congenial an occupation as reading your most strong and most original work? My theory of your having discovered a model for verse free of terminal rhymes in other than the decasyllabic, by means of rhyme enjambé, is a thing to be considered and pursued. If you should see it as I do and framed your sketches on it anew, it would involve a good many alterations;" setting forth his suggestions for revisions of certain lines; concluding "How you take all this depends on organization. It is new and true to me; quite new though for 20 years I have been working at 'my science of mental acoustics', the study of the harmonious sequence of sounds in speech. Please thank your mother and the other ladies for liking my Ode on that good Queen. Isn't the volume of Voluntaries rather private?"
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