Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 62

[Postmark 1 March 1882] Chicago

My dear dear Walt, Swinburne has just written to me to say as follows:

‘I am sincerely interested and gratified by your account of Walt Whitman and the assurance of his kindly and friendly feeling towards me: and I thank you, no less sincerely, for your kindness in sending me word of it. As sincerely can I say, what I shall be freshly obliged to you if you will [– should occasion arise –] assure him of in my name, that I have by no manner of means [either ‘forgotten him’ or] relaxed my admiration of his noblest work – such parts, above all, of his writings, as treat of the noblest subjects, material and spiritual, with which poetry can deal. I have always thought it, and I believe it will hereafter be generally thought, his highest and surely most enviable distinction that he never speaks so well as when he speaks of great matters – liberty, for instance, and death. This of course does not imply that I do – rather it implies that I do not – agree with all his theories or admire all his work in anything like equal measure – a form of admiration which I should by no means desire for myself and am as little prepared to bestow on another: considering it a form of scarcely indirect insult.’

There! You see how you remain in our hearts, and how simply and grandly Swinburne speaks of you, knowing you to be simple and grand yourself.

Will you in return send me for Swinburne a copy of your Essay on Poetry – the pamphlet – with your name and his on it: it would please him so much.

Before I leave America I must see you again. There is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honour so much.

With warm affection, and honourable admiration

OSCAR WILDE