The Letter of Lord Chandos Weg we RR 02, Titts is the lester Philp, Lord Chandos, younger tom of the Ear of Bashy wrote to Francis Bacor, Tater'Baron Vera, Viscount St. Alban, aol: ‘ing for his complete candonmen of Htrary ao Erige ‘two years of silence and to write to me thus. It more than kind of you to give to your soliciude shout me, to your perplexity at what appears to you as mental stagnation, the expression of lighines and jest which only ‘great men, convinced ofthe perlousnes af life yet not dis. ‘couraged by it, ean master. You conclude with the aphorism of Hippocrates, “Qui ravi mobo comeps dolores non sentiunt, ss mens aegro- tat” (Those who do not perceive that they are wasted by ser cous liness are sick in mind), and suggest that Tam in need of medicine not only to conquer my malady, but even more, to sharpen my senses for the condition of my inner self. [would fain give you an answer suchas you deserve, fain reveal myself to you entice, bu I do not know how o set about it, Hardly 4o I know whecher Tam stil che same person to-whom yout precious Iter is addressed. Wat tI who, now sicand twenty, at nineteen wrote The New Pars, The Dreams of Daphne, Fpithalomiuon, those pastoals reeling under the splendour Ces i 1S kindof you, my esteemed frien, to condone my“Hugo von Hofmasnsthal of their words—~plays which e divine Queen and sevetl over. indulgent lords and gentlemen are gracious enough still remember? And again, was it I who, at threeand-twenty, be neath the stone arcades of the great Venetian pieza, found in myself that seuctare of Latin pre whose plan and ordee delighted me more than did the monuments of Palladio and Sansovino rising out of the ea? And could 1, if otherwise 1 1m sill the same person, have lst fom my inner insrutble self all traces and scars ofthis creation of my met intensive thinking—lost them so completly chat in your letter now Iying before me the wile of my short treatise stares at me strange and cold? I eould not even comprehend at fst, whet ‘he familiar picture meant, but had to stady it word by word, ts though these Latin terms thas strung together were meet fing my eye forthe frst time. But Iam, after all, that person, and there is thetoric in these questions-—chetoric which is good for women or fr the House of Commons whose power, however, so overrated by ous time, isnot suficient to pene trate into the core of things: But itis my inner self that 1 feel bound t reveal to you-a pecullacty, a vice, a diate of my mind, if you like—if you are to understand that an abyss equally unbridgeable separates me from the literary works Ing seemingly abead of me a fm those behind me: ‘he later having become so strange to me that I hesitate to call chem my propery. [hknow not whether to admite more the wigency of your benevolence or the unbelievable sharpness of your memory, ‘when you real to me the various litle projets I entertained luring those days of rare enthusiasm which we shared to- gether. True, I did plan to describe the fist yeas of the reign of our glrious sovereign, the late Henry VIIL. The papers bequeathed to me by my grandfather, the Duke of Exeter, concerning his negotiations with France and Port= Lise ‘The Lette of Lord Chandos ‘2, offered me some foundation. And aut of Sallust, in those happy, stimulating days, there fowed into me as though trough nevercongested conduit the realization of Form— that deep tue, inner form which can be sensed only beyond the domain of rhetorical tricks: that form of which one can no longec say that it organizes subjectmatter, for it pene- trates it solves it, creating at once both dream and reality, tn interplay of eternal forces, something as marvellous Imusic or algebra. This wat my mott treasured plan ‘Bue what is man that he should make plans! 1 also toyed with other schemes. These, too, your kind Jeter conjures up. ach one, Bloated with a drop of my blood, ances before me like a weary gnat against a sombre wall hereon che bright sun of halcyon days no longer lies wanted to decipher the fables, the mythical tales be- ‘queathed to us by the Ancients in which painters and sel tors found an endless and thoughtless pleasure—decipher them as the hieroglyphs of a see, inexhaustible wisdom ‘whose breath I sometimes seemed tp feel as though from be hind a vei, well remember this plan. Te was founded on I know not what sensual and spiral desire asthe hunted haet craves water, 29 I craved to enter these naked, glitening bodies, these sirens and dryads, ehis Narcissus and Proteus, Perseus and Actaeon, I longed to disappear in them and tak out of them with tongues. And I longed for more. I planned to star an Apophihegmata, like chat composed by Julius Case: you will remember that Cicero mentions it ina letter. In it T thought of setting side by side the mast memorable say. {ngs which—while associating withthe learned men and witty women of our time, with unusual people from among the xm. ple folk or with erudite and distinguished personages—I had ‘managed to collet dang my tavels. With these T meant to [32]“Hugo von Hofmannsthal combine the brilliant maxims and reflections from classical and Ialian work, and anything ele of intellectual adomment ‘hat appealed to me in books, is manusipts or conversations; the arrangement, moreover, of particulary beautiful festivals and pageants, swange crimes and cases of madness, descriptions ‘ofthe greatest and most characteristic architeetral monuments fn the Netherlands, in France and Italy, and many ther things. The whole work was to have been entitled Nosce te ips: To sum up: In those day I, in a state of continuous in- toxiction, conceived the whole of existence as one greet units the spiritual and physical worlds seemed to form no contrast, as litle as did courtly and estal conduc, art and batharism, solitude and society in everything I felt the pres ence of Nature, inthe aberrations of insanity as much asin the urmost refinement of the Spanish ceremonial in the oocshness of young peasans no less than in the most deli- cate of allegocies; and in all expeesions of Nature I felt ny- self. When in my hunting lodge T drank the warm foaming alk which an unkempe wench had drained into a wooden pail from the udder ofa beautiful gentle-eyed cow, the sen sation was no diferent from that which I experienced when, seated on a bench built into the window of my study, my 1mind absorbed the sweet and foaming nourishment from & book. The one was like the other: neither was superior to the ‘other, whether in dreamlike celestial quality or in physical in- tensity—and thus it prevailed through the whole expanse of life in ll directions everywhere I was in the centre of i, never suspecting mere appearance: at other times I divined thet all was allegory and that each creature was a Key to all the others; and I fle myself the one capable of seizing each by the handle and unlocking as many of the others as were Cia ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos ready to yield. This explains the tile which T had intended to give to this encyclopedic book. “To a person susepable to such ideas, it might appeae a welldesigned plan of divine Providence that my mind should fall rom such a state of inated arrogance into this extreme cof despondency and feebleness which is now the permanent condition of my inner self. Such religous ideas, however, hhave no power over me: they belong to the eobwebs through ‘which my choughts dart ou ito the void, while the thoughts of « many others ae caght there and come to rest, To me the mysteries of faith have been condenced into a laty alle 007 which arches itself over che Bs of my lifelike a radiant rinbow, ever remote, ever prepared to recede should it occur to me to rush toward ic and wrap myself into the folds of ite mantle, But, my dear fiend, worldly ideas also evade me ina like manner. How shall I try to describe to you these strange spiral torments, ths rebounding ofthe fruit branches above my outstretched hands, this recession of the murmuring ssream from my thisting lip? ‘My case, in short, seis: I ave lost completely the ail- lity think ot speak of anything coherently Ac fis T grew by depres incapable of discussing a lofer ‘or more general subject in terms of which eveyone, Bently and without hesitation is wont to avail hineel. I experienced fan inepliable distaste for so much a¢ uttering the words spirit, soul, o¢ body. I found it impossible to express an opinion on the aats at Court, the events in Paslament, or whatever you wish, This was not motivated by any form of personal deference for you know that my candour borders om Imprudence), but because the abstract terms of which the tongue must svalisalf asa matter of couse in oder to voice [eas]“Hugo vor Hofmannsthal 4 judgment —these terms crumbled in my mouth like mouldy fungi. Thus, one day, while reprimanding my four-year-old laughter, Katherina Pompila for a childish le of which she had been guilty and demonstating to her the necessity of always being tuthful, the ideas seaming into my mind sud- sdenly took on such iidescene colouring, s0 fowed over into ‘one another, that I reeled off che sentence as best I could, as if suddenly overoome by illness. Actually, I did feel mytel ‘growing pale, and with a violent peesure on my forchead I Jefe the child to herself slammed the door behind me, and began to recover to some extent only after a brie gallop over the lonely pasate. Gradually, however, these attacks of anguish spread ike a ‘comoding rust. Even in familiar and humdrum conversation all the opinions which ae generally expresed with eae and sleepwalking assurance became so doubtful that Thad to cease altogether taking part in such talk I lled me with an ine cplicable anger, which T could conceal only with effort, to Thea such things as: This afr has tummed out well or il for ‘his or that person; Sheriff N. is bad, Parson Ta good man; Farmer M. isto be pitied, his sons ace wasters; another isto be envied because his daughtes are thrifty, one family is singin the world, another on the downward path. Al this seemed as indemonstrabl, as mendacious and bellow as could “be, My mind compelled me to view all things occuring in such conversations from an uncanny closeness, AS once, through a magnifying gla, Ihad seen a piece of skin on my. Title finge ook like a eld flo hoes and furrows, so I now peresived human beings and thei ations. Ino longer suc- ‘ceeded in comprehending them with the simplifying eye of habit Forme everything diinerated into pats, those parts ‘again ino parts; no longer would anything lee self be em ‘composed by one idea. Single words Hosted round me; they Esa ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos congealed into eyes which stared at me and into which T was forced to stare bock—whislpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the wid tied to rescue myself fom this plight by secking refuge inthe spiritual world of the Ancients. Plato I avoided, for I ‘headed the perilousness of his imagination. OF them all, Tin tended to concentrate on Seneca and Cicero. Through the harmony of thei clearly defined and orderly ides I hoped to reguin my healeh. But I was wnable to find my way to them. ‘These ideas, I understood them well: Isa their wonderful interplay rise before me like magnificent fountsins upon which played golden balls. Toould hover around them and watch how they plyed, one with the other; but they were concerned only with eachother, and the most profound, most personal quality of my thinking remained excluded from this tmagie cic, In their company T was overcome by a tesble sense of lonelnes; I fel lke someane locked in a garden su rounded by eyeless statues. So once more I escaped into the Since that dine Ihave ben Ieding an existence which I fear you can hardly imagine so lacking in spirit and thought fs its flow: an existence which, i ¢ true, differs litle fom that of my neighbours, my relations, and most of the land- owning nobility of this Kingdom, and which is not wterly bereft of gay and stimulating moments. Ie is not easy for me to indicate wherein these good moments subsist; once agtin words desert me. For it i, indeod, something entirely un- named, even bucly nameable which, at such moments re veals itself to me, fling ike a vessel any casual objet of my daily suroundings with an overflowing fod of higher Ife Teannot expect you to understand me without examples, and 1 must plead your indulgence for this absurdity. pitcher, a Tarow abandoned in a field, a dog in the sun, a neglected [35]Hugo von Hofmannsthal czmetery, a cripple, a peasane’s hut—ll these can become the vee] of my revelation, Each ofthese objects and a thousand others similar, over which the eye usually glides with a natucal indifference, can suddenly, at any moment (which Tam u- ‘erly powerless to evoke), assume for me a character so exalted ‘nd moving that words seem too poor to describe it. Even the cdstinc image of an absent object, in fat, can aoquite the ‘mysterious Function of being filled tothe brim with this silent ‘but suddenly rising flood of divine sensation. Recently, for ‘instance, I had given the order for 4 copious supply of rat poison to be scattered in the milkellars of one of my daiy facms. Towards evening I had gone of fora ride andes you «an imagine, chought no more about it. Ae I wae toting long cover the freshlyploughed land, nothing more alarming in sight than a scared covey of quail and, in the distance, the ret sun sinking over the undulating fields, chere suddenly Teomed up before me the vision of that cella, resounding ‘with the deathstruggle of a mob of rats I felt everything within me: che cool, musty aie of the celle filled with the sweet and pungent reek of poison, and the yelling of the deatsries beaking against the mouldering walls; the vain convulsions of those convoluted bodies as they tear about in confusion and despair; their frenzied search for escape, and. the grimace of icy rage when a couple collide with one an- other ata bocked-up crevice. But why seek agnn for words hich Ihave fresworn! You remember, my fiend, the won ecful description in Livy ofthe hours preceding the destruc- tion of Alba Longa: wien the crowds stray aimlesly through the streets which they are to see no more». . when they bid farewell to the stones beneath thet fet. Tessure you, my fiend, I carried this vision within me, and the vision of burning Carthage, too; but there was more, something more divine, more Besta; and it was the Present, the fullest, mest, 1136] ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos cated Present. ‘There was a mother, surrounded by her young in ther agony of death; but er guze was cast neither toward the dying noc upon the merciless walls of stone, but into the oid or through the void into Infinity, accompanying this gaze with a gnashing of teethl—A slave struck with help- less toe standing near the pewfying Niohe must have ex petienced what [experienced when, within me, the sul of this animal bred is teth to its monstous fat. Forgive this description, bu do not chink that it was pity fel. For if you did, my example would have been poorly chosen, Ie was far moce and far less than pity: an immense sympathy, a flowing over into chese cxeatuees, of @ feeling that an aura of life and death, of deam and wakefulnes, had owed for a moment into them—but whence? Foe what had 5 odo with pity, o with any comprehensible concatenation of human though when, on anecher evening, on Binding be ‘each « nut tuee a half lle pitcher which a gardener boy had Jefe thee, and the pitcher and the water ini, darkened by the shadow ofthe tee, and a bel swimming om the surface from shore to shore—when this combination of tridls sent though me such a shudder at the presence of the Infinite, a shudder running from the roots of my hair to the marcow of ny heel? What was it that made me want to break into words hich, T know, were Tto find them, would force t theie knees thre cherubim in whom I do not belive? What made sme tun lenly away from this place? Even now, after weeks, catching sigh of tat nuttree, I pas i by with ashy sielong glance, for I am loath to dispel the memory of the miracle hovering there round the trunk, Toth to seare away the celestial shudders that sll linge about the shrubbery in this neighbourhood! In thee moments an insignificant ereture— dog, arat, a beetle ripped appletree, a lane winding over the hill, amosecovered stone, mean more to me than the most, balHugo von Hofmann eau, abundoned misses of the hapist night. These rmte and, on econ, inanimate creatures re tad ae wih ich an abundance, such a peesece of le, that yp tnchancd eye cn fe nothing in sgh vid of He. Excry ahing thr ex, crething I can tenembey, eveyhing touched upon by my confused hough has a measing Eves ny own heaves, the general tipor of may bal eon scque a meaning I experience in and end me's Bl, needing interplay andl among the object playing ola cocci tre het ont no hh Teas To, the, iis though my body casas of noughe but cies which give me the Ley t eveything or sf could oer Jno a ew and hope elaionship ith he whl of exe ce if only we begin think wih the Bear. A sno, owe eve ath suange enchantnent falls eam me, End ol confused: wherein this brmony transcending te and hee tke world consid, and ow it made ivelf known tome T could pee insenuble word idem Leu sy oy thing rece alot the nner movements ef my nests ‘eangetion of my Hed ‘Apart rm thse ange xcurences, which, fide, hately Ino wheter o ascribe to the mind ce he bay lives ie of Barly belie vet, an hve dieu in concealing fom my wife hi ines Sgoatin, anf my savant the lnetene wtevith I cameras the alae of my esate. The god and strict edveaon which Tone to ty lt futher and th el habit ef leatng no hour of he dey une ace he nly things it seems tome, whi help me Iain wards the outer world the sc and the dg nied appearance appropriate t my class and my pen Tan ebuling wig of my bose and a capable of convening ecasinally with che achiect eomcemng te popes of is work Tedminser my ett, end ny tans C8 ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos and employees may find me, perhaps, somewhat more taciturn Dut no less benevolent than of yore. None of them, sanding ‘with doffed eap befoe the dor of his house while I ride by cof an evening, will have any idea that my glance, which he ‘is wont respedfully to catch, glides with longing over the rickety boards undee which he searches for earthworms for fishingbaie; tha ic plunges through the laced window into the stuffy chamber where, in a comer, the low bed with its chequered linen seems forever to be waiting for someone to die or another to be Born; tat my eye lingers long upon the ‘ugly puppies or upon a cat stealing tealily among the owerpots; and that it seeks among all the poor and clumsy objects of a peasants life forthe one whose insignificant form, ‘whose unnoticed beng, whose mute existence, can become the source ofthat mysterious, wordless, and boundless ecstsy, Fr my unnamed blissful feeling i sooner brought about by a distant lonely shepherd’ fre than by the vision of a stacry sky, sooner by the chizpng of the last dying cricket when the autumn wind chases wintry clouds acrss the deseted ids than by the mejesc Booming of an organ. And in iy mind Teompate myself fom time to time with the orator Crassus, of whom i is repoctad tha he grew so excessively ensmoured of a tame lampreya dumb, apathetic, ed-eyed fish in his ornamental pond—that it became the tlk of the town; and when one day in the Senate Domitius seproached him for having shed tears over che death of thie fh, attempting thereby to make him appear a fol, Crassus answered, “Thus hhave T done over the death of my fsh as you have over the death of nether yout frst nor your second wife" 1 lnow not how oft this Crassus with his lamprey enters my mind as 2 mieroced image of my Self, elected aos the abyss of centuries. But not on acount ofthe answer he gave Domitus. The answer Brought the laughs on his side, andthe CssHugo von Hofmannsthal whole alli turned into a jest I, however, am deeply affected bythe afar, which would have emsined the same even had DDomitia shed biter tears of sorow over his wives. Foe there would sill have been Crasus, shedding tears over his lam- py. And about this figure, ute ridiculous and contempt ble in the midst of a world governing senate discussing the ros seriou subjects, I fel compelled by a mysterious poet to reflect n a manner which he moment I atempe to express ‘tin words, sekes me as supremely foals, [Now and then at night the image of this Crasus is ry bra, like a pliner round which everthing fetes, ‘throbs, nd bol is hen that I elas though I myself were aout to ferment, to eflerveice, to foam and to sparkle. And the wiole thing isa ind of fevesh thinking, But thinking fn a medium moe immediate, more liguid, more glowing than words. I to, forms whilpools, but ofa srt that do not seem ead, the whinpols of langusge inate ays, but ‘nto myself and ino the deepest womb of peace. Thave woubled you exesvely, my dear frend, with this cetended description of an inexplicable condion which is ‘wont asa rl, remain locked up in me. ‘Yu were kind enough to expres your dstisfacton that 10 book writen by me reaches you any moze, “to compensate for the los of our relationship.” Reading that, T felt, with a certainty not ently bereft of a ecling of socom, that neither {nthe coming year nor inthe following nor in all the years ofthis my life hal write a book, whether in English or in Latin; and this for an odd and embarrassing reason which rust lave tothe boundless superiority of your mind to place inthe realm of physical and spiritual values spread out hac: roniously bloc your unprjudied ee: to wit cause the Janguage in which I might be able noc only to write but 10 think either Latin nor English, neither Hlian nor Spanish, sae ‘The Letter of Lord Chandos Int a language none of whose words is known to me, a lan- guage in which inanimate things speak to me and wherein I srayone day have to justify myself befoe an unknown judge Fain had T the power to compeess in this, presumably my last, ese to Francs Bacon all the love andl gratitude, all the ‘unmeasured admiration, which I harbour in my heart forthe ‘greatest benefactor of my mind, for the fremest Englishman ‘of my day, and which T shall harbour therein until death Drea it asunder. This 2 August, 0.603 PHI. CHANDOS Cand