On Himself

Some Verbal Subtleties and Technical Points

Q: I should like to know what exactly the meaning of the word "absolve" is in the following lines from your "Love and Death". I have been puzzled because the ordinary dictionary meanings don't seem to fit in.

But if with price, ah God! what easier! Tears
Dreadful, innumerable I will absolve,
Or pay with anguish through the centuries...

There is another passage a few pages later where the same word is used:

            For late
I saw her mid those pale inhabitants
Whom bodily anguish visits not, but thoughts
Sorrowful and dumb memories absolve,
And martyrdom of scourged hearts quivering.

A: In the second passage it is used in its ordinary sense. "Absolution"

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means release from sins or from debts—the sorrowful thoughts and memories are the penalty or payment which procures the release from the debt which has been accumulated by the sins and errors of human life.

In the first passage "absolve" is used in its Latin and not in its English sense,—"to pay off a debt", but here the sense is stretched a little. Instead of saying "I will pay off with tears", Ruru says: "I will pay off tears" as the price of the absolution. This Latinisation and the inversion of syntactical connections are familiar licences in English poetry—of course, it is incorrect, but a deliberate incorrectness, a violence purposely done to the language in order to produce a poetic effect. The English language, unlike the French and some others, likes, as Stephen Phillips used to say, to have liberties taken with it. But, of course, before one can take these liberties, one must be a master of the language—and, in this case, of the Latin also.

1931

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Q: In my lines—

This heart grew brighter when your breath's proud chill
Flung my disperse life-blood more richly in—

a terminal "d" will at once English that Latin fellow "disperse", but is he really objectionable? At first I had "Drove" instead of "Flung"—so the desire for a less dental rhythm was his raison d'être, but if he seems a trifle weaker than his English Avatar, he can easily be dispensed with now.

A: I don't think "disperse" as an adjective can pass—the dentals are certainly an objection but do not justify this Latin-English neologism.

12-6-1937

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Q: Why should that poor "disperse" be inadmissible

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when English has many such Latin forms—e.g. "consecrate", "dedicate", "intoxicate"? I felt it to be a natural innovation and not against the genius of the language: I discover now from the Standard Dictionary that it is not even a neologism—it is only an obsolete word. I have a substitute ready, however:

Flung my diffuse life-blood more richly in.

But is not "disperse" formed on exactly the same principle as "diffuse"? By the way, does "dispersed" make the line really too dental, now that "Flung" is there and not the original "Drove"?

A: I don't think people use "consecrate", "intoxicate" etc. as adjectives nowadays—at any rate it sounds to me too recherché. Of course, if one chose, this kind of thing might be perpetrated—

O wretched man intoxicate,
Let not thy life be consecrate
    To wine's red yell (spell, if you want to be "poetic").
Else will thy soul be dedicate
    To Hell—

but it is better not to do it. It makes no difference if there are other words like "diffuse" taken from French (not Latin) which have this form and are generally used adjectives. Logic is not the sole basis of linguistic use. I thought at first it was an archaism and there might be some such phrase in old poetry as lids disperse, but as I could not find it even in the Oxford which claims to be exhaustive and omniscient, I concluded it must be a neologism of yours. But archaism or neologism does not matter. "Dispersed life-blood" brings three d's so near together that they collide a little—if they were farther from each other it would not matter—or if they produced some significant or opportune effect. I think "diffuse" will do.

13-6-1937

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Q: What do I find this afternoon? Just read:

            Suddenly
From motionless battalions as outride
A speed disperse of horsemen, from that mass
Of livid menace went a frail light cloud
Rushing through heaven, and behind it streamed
The downpour all in wet and greenish lines.

This is from your own "Urvasie", written in the middle nineties of the last century! Of course it is possible that the printer has omitted a terminal "d"—but is that really the explanation?

A: I dare say I tried to Latinise. But that does not make it a permissible form. If it is obsolete, it must remain obsolete. I thought at first it was an archaism you were trying on, I seemed to remember something of the kind, but as I could find it nowhere I gave up the idea—it was probably my own crime that I remembered.

29-6-1937

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Q: The English reader has digested Carlyle and swallowed Meredith and is not quite unwilling to reJOYCE in even more startling strangenesses of expression at the present day. Will his stomach really turn at the novelty of that phrase which you wouldn't approve: "the voice of a devouring eye"? "The voice of an eye" sounds rather idiotic, but if the adjective "devouring" is added the phrase seems to become effective. "Devouring eye" is then a synecdoche—isolating and emphasising Shakespeare's most remarkable quality, his eager multitudinous sight, and the oral epithet provides a connection with the idea of a voice, thus preventing the catachresis from being too startling. If Milton could give us "blind mouths" and Wordsworth

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Thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, readst the eternal deep,

is there very much to object to in this visioned voice?

A: Can't accept all that. A voice of a devouring eye is even more re-Joycingly mad than a voice of an eye pure and simple. If the English language is to go to the dogs, let it go, but the Joyce cut by the way of Bedlam does not recommend itself to me.

The poetical examples have nothing to do with the matter. Poetry is permitted to be insane—the poet and the madman go together: though even there there are limits. Meredith and Carlyle are tortuous or extravagant in their style only—though they can be perfectly sane when they want. In poetry anything can pass—for instance, my "voice of a tilted nose":

O voice of a tilted nose,
Speak but speak not in prose!

Nose like a blushing rose,
O Joyce of a tilted nose!

That is high poetry, but put it in prose and it sounds insane.

5-5-1935

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Q: In the lines,

O Grace that flowest from the Master's Will,
How fondly thou dost mitigate the power
Of utter summit for our volleyed sake...

What do you think of the turn "our volleyed sake"? Can it pass?

A: "For our valleyed sake" is a locution that offers fascinating possibilities but fails to sound English. One might risk, "Let fall some tears for my unhappy sake" in defiance of grammar or

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humourously, "Oh shed some sweat-drops for my corpulent sake"; but "valleyed sake" carries the principle of the ārṣa prayoga¹ beyond the boundaries of the possible.

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Q: Is there any advantage in changing the phrase—

        as though a press
Of benediction lay on me unseen—

to

        as though the press
Of a benediction lay on me unseen?

A: No, no. The first was immeasurably better. "A press of benediction" is striking and effective; "the press of a benediction" is flat and means nothing. Besides, it is not good English. You can say "a press of affairs", "a press of matter"; you can say "the pressure of this affair", but you cannot say "the press of an affair".

1931

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Q: Here is a sonnet for your judgment. It deals with the massive spiritual light descending into the brain like an inverted pyramid. The final phrase has a historical allusion:

        ...a conscious hill
Down-kindled by some Cheops of the skies
To monument his lordship over death.

You must have heard of Cheops, the Egyptian King who built the Great Pyramid at Gizeh?

A: Of course I have heard of Cheops, but did not expect to hear

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of him again in this context. Don't you think the limiting proper name brings in an excessive touch of intellectual ingenuity, almost as if the poem were built for the sake of this metaphor and not for its subject? I would myself prefer a general term so as to prevent any drop from sublimity, e.g.

Down-sloped by some King-Builder of the skies.

But it is a good sonnet and there is certainly both vision and poetry in it.

25-9-1933

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"Revealed her mateless beauty the true paradise" is not permissible in prose, but it is one of those contracted expressions which are allowed in poetry and it is quite intelligible.

8-10-1934

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Q: In your sonnet "The Human Enigma" occurs the magnificent line:

His heart is a chaos and an empyrean.

But I am much saddened by the fact that the rhythm of these words gets spoiled at the end by a mis-stressing in "empyrean". "Empyrean" is stressed currently in the penultimate syllable, thus: "empyreʹan". Your line puts the stress on the second syllable. It is in the adjective "empyreal" that the second syllable is stressed, but the noun is never stressed that way, so far as I know. Perhaps you have a precedent in the Elizabethans? Or have you deliberately taken liberty with the accentuation? The same mis-stressing occurs also in Book II, Canto 11, of Savitri²: page 270, line 6:

Surprised in their untracked empyrean.

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But you certainly do not always stress the noun like the adjective. In Book I, Canto III, line 5 from below on page 25 is the splendid verse:

An empyrean vision saw and knew.

Here the penultimate syllable gets the ictus. May I have some explanation? Perhaps there are acknowledged alternative accentuations and I am just ignorant? I really hope so, for otherwise, while the line from Book II of 'Savitri' can easily take a noun after "empyrean" or get its "empyrean" changed to "empyreal" and then take a noun, the sonnet-line will not have the same absolute grandeur of phrase as now if it is rewritten:

His heart is a chaos and an empyrean's span.

If it is to rhyme with "man", "plan" and "scan" in your sonnet-scheme it must bring in "span"—mustn't it?

A: I find in the Chambers's Dictionary the noun "empyrean" is given two alternative pronunciations, each with a different stress,—the first, "empyreʹan" and secondly, "empyʹrean". Actually in the book the accent seems to fall on the consonant "r" instead of the vowel. That must be a mistake in printing; it is evident that it is meant to fall on the second vowel. If that is so, my variation is justified and needs no further defence. The adjective "empyreal" the dictionary gives as having the same alternative accentuation as the noun, that is to say, either "empyreʹal" with the accent on the long "e" or "empyʹreal" with the accent on the second syllable, but the "e" although unaccented still keeps its long pronunciation. Then? But even if I had no justification from the dictionary and the noun "empyʹrean" were only an Aurobindonian freak and a wilful shifting of the accent, I would refuse to change it; for the rhythm here is an essential part of whatever beauty there is in the line.

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P.S. Your view is supported by the small Oxford Dictionary which, I suppose, gives the present usage, Chambers being an older authority. But Chambers must represent a former usage and I am entitled to revive even a past or archaic form if I choose to do so.

4-8-1949

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Q: As between the forms—"with a view to express" and "with a view to expressing"—the Concise Oxford Dictionary calls the former vulgar.

A: I don't agree with Oxford. Both forms are used. If "to express" is vulgar, "to expressing" is cumbrous and therefore inelegant.

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Q: The Oxford Dictionary seems to leave one no choice as regards counting the number of syllables in the word "vision" and its likes. I quote below some of the words explained as monosyllables in the same way as "rhythm" and "prism":

Fa·shion (-shn)
Passion (pa·shn)
Prison (-zn)
Scission (si·shn)
Trea·son (-ezn)
Vi·sion (-zhn)

As X would say, qu'en dites vous? Chambers's Dictionary makes "vision" a dissyllable, which is quite sensible, but the monosyllabic pronunciation of it deserves to be considered at least a legitimate variant when H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler—the name of Fowler is looked upon as a synonym for authority on the English language—give no other. I don't think I am mistaken in interpreting

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their intention. Take "realm", which they pronounce in brakets as "relm"; now I see no difference as regards syllabification between their intention here and in the instances above.

P.S. I must admit, however, what struck me after typing the preceding. In the preface to the Oxford Dictionary it is said that it has not been thought necessary to mention certain pronunciations which are familiar to the normal reader, such as that of the suffix "-ation" (āshn). Does this mean that a word like "meditation" is to be taken as three syllables only? According to my argument there seems no alternative; and yet the example looks very much like a reductio ad absurdum.

A: You may not have a choice—but I have a choice, which is to pronounce and scan words like vision and passion and similar words as all the poets of the English language (those at least whom I know) have consistently pronounced and scanned them—as dissyllables. If you ask me to scan Shakespeare's line in the following manner to please H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler,

I shall decline without thanks. Shakespeare wrote, if I remember right, "treasons, strategems and spoils"; Shelley, Tennyson, any poet of the English language, I believe would do the same—though I have no books with me to give chapter and verse. I lived in both northern and southern England, but I never heard vision pronounced vizhn, it was always vizhun; treason, of course, is pronounced trez'n, but that does not make it a monosyllable in scansion because there is in these words a very perceptible slurred vowel sound in pronunciation which I represent by the '; in poison also. If realm, helm etc. are taken as monosyllables, that is quite reasonable, for there is no vowel between "l" and "m" and none is heard, slurred or otherwise in pronunciation. The words rhythm and prism are technically monosyllables, because they are so pronounced in French (i.e.

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that part of the word, for there is a mute "e" in French): but in fact most Englishmen take the help of a slurred vowel-sound in pronouncing rhythms and it would be quite permissible to write in English as a blank verse line, "The unheard rhythms that sustain the world".

This is my conviction and not all the Fowlers in the world will take it away from me. I only hope the future lexicographers will not "fowl" the language any more in that direction; otherwise we shall have to write lines like this—

O vizhn! O pashn! m'd'tashn! h'rr'p'lashn!
Why did the infern'l Etern'l und'take creash'n?
Or else, creat'ng, could he not have afford'd
Not to allow the Engl'sh tongue to be Oxford'd?

P.S.I remember a book (Hamerton's? some one else's? I don't remember) in which the contrast was drawn between the English and French languages, that the English tongue tended to throw all the weight on the first or earliest possible syllable and slurred the others, the French did the opposite—so that when an Englishman pretends to say strawberries, what he really says is strawb's. That is the exaggeration of a truth—but all the same there is a limit.

27-9-1934

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Q: Of course a language is not made altogether according to logical rules. Originally, or aboriginally, it came, I suppose, out of the entrails and in spite of all Volapuks and Esperantos natural languages will flourish. But I should like to ask you a few questions suggested by your falling foul of the Fowlers. The poetic pronunciation of words cannot be accepted as a standard for current speech—can it? On your own showing, "treason" and "poison" which are monosyllables in prose or current speech can be scanned as dissyllables in verse; Shelley makes "evening" three syllables and X has used even "realm" as a dissyllable, while the practice of taking

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"precious" and "conscious" to be three syllables is not even noticeable, I believe. All the same, current speech, if your favourite Chambers's Dictionary as well as my dear Concise Oxford is to be believed, insists on "evening", "precious" and "conscious" being dissyllabic and "realm" monosyllabic. I am mentioning this disparity between poetic and current usages not because I wish "meditation" to be robbed of its full length or "vision" to lose half its effect but because it seems to me that Shelley's or Tennyson's or any poet's practice does not in itself prove anything definitely for English as it is spoken. And spoken English, very much more than written English, undergoes change; even the line you quote from Shakespeare was perhaps not scanned in his time as you would do it now, for "meditation"—as surely "passion" and "fashion" also and most probably "vision" as well—was often if not always given its full vowel-value and the fourth foot of the line in question might to an Elizabethan ear have been very naturally an anapaest:

In maiden medita ĭŏn fān free.

When, however, you say that your personal experience in England, both north and south, never recorded a monosyllabic "vision", we are on more solid ground, but the Concise Oxford Dictionary is specially stated to be in its very title as "of Current English": is all its claim to be set at nought? It is after all a responsible compilation and, so far as my impression goes, not unesteemed. If its errors were so glaring as you think, would there not be a general protest? Or is it that English has changed so much in "word of mouth" since your departure from England? This is not an ironical query—I am just wondering.

P.S. Your exclamatory-interrogatory elegiacs illustrating the predicament we should fall into if

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the Fowlers were allowed to spread their nets with impunity were very enjoyable. But I am afraid the tendency of the English language is towards contraction of vowel-sounds, at least terminal ones; and perhaps the Oxford Dictionary has felt the need to monumentalise—clearly and authoritatively—the degree to which this tendency has, in some cases more definitely, in others less but still perceptibly enough, advanced? The vocalised "e" of the suffix "-ed" of the Spenserian days is now often mute; the trisyllabic suffix "-ation" of the "spacious times" has shrunk by one syllable, and "treason" and "poison" and "prison", all having the same second-vowel sound if fully pronounced as in the second syllable of "-ation", are already monosyllables in speech—so, if "passion" and "fashion" which too have lost their Elizabethan characteristic like "meditation" should contract by a natural analogy, carrying all "ation"-suffixed words as well as "vision" and "scission" and the like with them, it would be quite as one might expect. And if current speech once fixes these contractions, they will not always keep outside the pale of poetry. What do you think?

A: Where the devil have I admitted that "treason" and "poison" are monosyllables or that their use as dissyllables is a poetic licence? Will you please quote the words in which I have made that astounding and imbecile admission? I have said distinctly that they are dissyllabic,—like risen, dozen, maiden, garden, laden and a thousand others which nobody (at least before the world went mad) ever dreamed of taking as monosyllables. On my own showing, indeed! After I had even gone to the trouble of explaining at length about the slurred syllable "e" in these words, for the full sound is not given, so that you cannot put it down as pronounced maid-en, you have to indicate the pronunciation as maid'n. But for that to dub maiden a monosyllable and assert that Shakespeare, Shelley and every other poet who scans maiden as a dissyllable was a born fool who did not know the "current" pronunciation or was indulging in a constant poetic licence

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whenever he used the words garden, maiden, widen, sadden etc. is a long flight of imagination. I say that these words are dissyllables and the poets in so scanning them (not as an occasional licence but normally and every time) are much better authorities than any owl—or fowl—of a dictionary-maker in the universe. Of course the poets use licences in lengthening out words occasionally, but these are exceptions; to explain away their normal use of words as a perpetually repeated licence would be a wild wooden-headedness (5 syllables, please). That these words are dissyllables is proved farther by the fact that "saddened", "maidenhood" cannot possibly be anything but respectively dissyllabic and trisyllabic, yet "saddened" could, I suppose, be correctly indicated in a dictionary as pronounced "saddnd". A dictionary indication or a dictionary theory cannot destroy the living facts of the language.

I do not know why you speak of my "favourite" Chambers. Your attachment to Oxford is not balanced by any attachment of mine to Chambers or any other lexicographer. I am not inclined to swear by any particular dictionary as an immaculate virgin authority for pronunciation or a papal Infallible. It was you who quoted Chambers as differing from Oxford, not I. You seem indeed to think that the Fowlers are a sort of double-headed Pope to the British public in all linguistic matters and nobody could dare question their dictates or ukases—only I do so because I am antiquated and am living in India. I take leave to point out to you that this is not yet a universally admitted catholic dogma. The Fowlers indeed seem to claim something of the kind, they make their enunciations with a haughty papal arrogance condemning those who differ from them as outcasts and brushing them aside in a few words or without a mention. But it is not quite like that. What is current English? As far as pronunciation goes, every Englishman knows that for an immense number of words there is no such thing—Englishmen of equal education pronounce them in different ways, sometimes in more than two different ways. "Either"-"neither" is a current pronunciation, so is "eether" "neether". In some words the "th" is pronounced variably as a soft "d" or a soft "t" or as "th"—and so on. If the Oxford pronunciation of "vision" and "meditation" is correct

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current English, then the confusion has much increased since my time, for then at least every body pronounced "vizhun", "meditashun", as I do still and shall go on doing so. Or if the other existed, it must have been confined to uneducated people. But you suggest that my pronunciation is antiquated, English has advanced since then as since Shakespeare. But I must point out that you yourself quote Chambers for "vizhun" and following your example—not out of favouritism—I may quote him for "summation"—"summashun", not "shn". The latest edition of Chambers is dated 1931 and the editors have not thought themselves bound by the decisive change of the English language to change "shun" into "shn". Has the decisive change taken place since 1931? Moreover in the recent dispute about the standard Broadcast pronunciation, the decisions of Bernard Shaw's Committee were furiously disputed—if Fowler and Oxford were papal authorities in England for current speech (it was current speech the Committee was trying to fix through the broadcasts), would it not have been sufficient simply to quote the Oxford in order to produce an awed and crushed silence?

So your P.S. has no solid ground to stand on since there is no "fixed" current speech and Fowler is not its Pope and there is no universal currency of his vizhn of things. Language is not bound by analogy and because "meditatĭŏn" has become "meditashun" it does not follow that it must become "meditashn" and that "tation" is now a monosyllable contrary to all common sense and the privilege of the ear. It might just as well be argued that it will necessarily be clipped farther until the whole word becomes a monosyllable. Language is neither made nor developed in that way—if the English language were so to deprive itself of all beauty by turning vision into vizhn and then into vzhn and all other words into similar horrors, I would hasten to abandon it for Sanskrit or French or Bengali—or even Swahili.

P.S. By the way, one point. Does the Oxford pronounce in cold blood and so many set words that vision, passion (and by logical extension treason, maiden, garden etc.) are mono­syllables? Or is it your inference from "realm" and "prism"?

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If the latter, I would only say, "Beware" of too rigidly logical inferences. If the former, I can only say that Oxford needs some gas from Hitler to save the English mind from its pedants. This quite apart from the currency of vizhns.

20-9-1934

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Q: I am sincerely sorry for mistaking you on an important point. But before my argumentative wooden-headedness gives up the ghost under your sledge-hammer it is bursting to cry a Themistoclean "Strike, but hear". Please try to understand my misunderstanding. What you wrote was: "'Treason' of course is pronounced 'trez'n', but that does not make it a monosyllable in scansion because there is in these words a very perceptible slurred vowel sound in pronunciation which I represent by the '; in 'poison' also." I think it must have been the word "scansion" which led me astray—as if you had meant that these words were non-monosyllabic in poetry only. But am I really misjudging Chambers as well as the Fowlers when I draw the logical inference that, since a dictionary is no dictionary if it does not follow a coherent system and since these people absolutely omit to make any distinction between the indicated scansion of "prism", "realm", "rhythm" etc., and that of "treason" and "poison", they definitely mean us to take all these words as monosyllables? If Chambers who writes "vizhun" but "trezn" and "poizn" just as he writes "relm" and "rithm", intends us to understand that there is some difference between the scansions of the latter pairs he, in my opinion, completely de-dictionaries his work by so illogical an expectation. He and the Fowlers may not say in cold blood and so many set words that "treason" and "poison" are monosyllables but it is their design, in most freezing blood and more eloquently than words can express, that they should fall into the same category as "realm" and "rhythm". Else, what could have prevented them from inventing some such sign as your ' to

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mark the dissimilarity? My sin was to have loved logic not wisely but too well where logicality had been obstreperously announced in flaring capitals on the title page and throughout the whole book by a fixed system of spelling and pronunciation. My Othellolike extremity of love plunged me into abysmal errors, but oh the Iagoistic "motiveless malignity" of lexicographers!

I am grateful to you for disabusing my mind of its trust in these self-appointed Popes. Your contentions I accept: I also see that the beauty of the English language is at stake when these Fowlers and their ilk start their word-clipping business. You could at least turn to Sanskrit or French or Bengali, but I without English would be quieter than the grave.

A: It seemed to me impossible that even the reckless Fowler—reckless in the excess of his learning—should be so audacious as to announce that this large class of words accepted as dissyllables from the beginning of (English) time were really mono­syllables. After all, the lexicographers do not set out to give the number of syllables in a word. Pronunciation is a different matter. Realm cannot be a dissyllable unless you violently make it so, because 1 is a liquid like r and you cannot make a dissyllable of words like "charm", unless you Scotchify the English language and make it char'r'r'm or vulgarise it and make it charrum—and even char'r'r'm is after all a monosyllable. Prism, the ism in Socialism and pessimism, rhythm can be made dissyllabic; but by convention (convention has nothing to do with these things) the ism, rhythm are treated as a single syllable, because of the etymology. But there is absolutely no reason to bring in this convention with treason, poison, garden or maiden (coming from French trahison, poison and some O.E. equivalent of the German garten, madchen). The dictionaries give the same mark of pronunciation for thm, sm and the den (dn) of maiden and son (sn) of treason because they are phonetically the same. The French pronounce rhythme—reethm (I make English sound indications) without anything to help them out in passing from th to m, but the English tongue

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can't do that, there is a very perceptible quarter vowel or one-eighth vowel sound between th and m—if it were not so the plural rhythms would be unpronounceable. I remember in my French class at St. Paul's our teacher (a Frenchman) insisted on our pronouncing ordre in the French way—in his mouth orrdrr; I was the only one who succeeded, the others all made it auder, orrder, audrer, or some such variation. There is the same difference of habit with words like rhythm, and yet conventionally the French treatment is accepted so far as to impose rhythm as a monosyllable. Realm on the other hand is pronounced truly as a monosyllable without the help of any fraction of a vowel.

30-9-1934

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Q: Why have you bucked at my "azure" as a line-ending? And why so late in the day? Twice before I have used the same inversion and it caused no alarm. Simple poetic licence, Sir. If Wordsworth could write

What awful pérspective; while from our sight...

and leave no reverberation of "awful" in the reader's mind, and if Abercrombie boldly come out with

To smite the horny eyes of men
With the renown of our Heaven

and our horny eyes remain unsmitten by his topsyturvy "Heaven"—why, then, I need not feel too shy to shift the accent of "azure" just because of poor me happening to be an Indian. Not that an alternative line getting rid of that word is impossible—quite a fine one can be written with "obscure". But why does this particular inversion shock you? There is nothing un-English or unpoetic about it—so far as I can see, though of course such things should not be done often. What do you say?

Your "through whom" in place of my "wherethrough" in another line is an improvement, but it is

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difficult to reject that word as a legal archaism inadmissible in good poetry. Your remark about "whereas" in my A.E. essay seemed to me just in pointing out the obscurity of connection it introduced between the two parts of my sentence, but the term itself has no stigma on it of obsolescence as does for instance "whenas": in poetry it would be rather prosaic, while "wherethrough" is a special poetic usage as any big dictionary will tell us, and in certain contexts it would be preferable to "through which", just as "whereon", "wherein", and "whereby" would sometimes be better than their ordinary equivalents. I wonder why you have become so ultra-modern: I remember you jibbing also at "from out"—a phrase which has not fallen into desuetude yet, and can be used occasionally even in a common context: e.g. "from out the bed".

A: I can swallow "pérspective" with some difficulty, but if anybody tried to justify by it a line like this (let us say in a poem to Miss Mayo):

O ínspectór, why súggestive of drains?

I would buck. I disapprove totally of Abercrombie's bold wriggle with Heaven, but even he surely never meant to put the accent on the second syllable and pronounce it Hevénn. I absolutely refuse to pronounce "azure" as "azúre". "Perspective" can just be managed by making it practically atonal or unaccented or evenly accented, which comes to the same thing. "Sapphire" can be managed at the end of a line, e.g. "strong sapphire", because "phire" is long and the voice trails over it, but the "ure" of "azure" is more slurred into shortness than trailed out into length as if it were "azyoore".

I didn't suggest that "whereas" was obsolete. It is a perfectly good word in its place, e.g. He pretended the place was empty whereas in reality it was crowded, packed, overflowing; but its use as a loose conjunctive turn which can be conveniently shoved into any hole to keep two sentences together is altogether reprehensible.

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None of these words is obsolete, but "wherethrough" is rhetorically pedantic, just as "whereabout" or "wherewithal" would be. It is no use throwing the dictionary at my head—the dictionary admits many words which poetry refuses to admit. Of course you can drag any word in the dictionary into poetry if you like, e.g.:

My spirit parenthetically wise
Gave me its obiter dictum; à propos
I looked within with weird and brilliant eyes
And found in the pit of my stomach the juste mot.

But all that is possible is not commendable. So if you seek a pretext wherethrough to bring in these heavy visitors I shall buck and seek a means whereby to eject them.

P.S. It is not to the use of "azure" in place of an iamb in the last foot that I object but to your blessed accent on the last syllable. I will even, if you take that sign off, allow you to rhyme "azure" with "pure" and pass it off as an Abercrombiean acrobacy by way of fun. But not otherwise—the accent mark must go.

2-10-1936