American essays -- 20th century; Child development; Children; Education
The most perfect bits of writing we have from the group of our greatest
novelists--is either in the form of letters or parts of work inspired
by the influence of a woman's heart--some romantic and one-pointed
outbreathing of their souls to one.... The great creative producers
rarely found steady human companionship in one woman. No flesh was
starry enough to endure their idealisation; the break of their picture
was often the shattering of life itself. Experience forces us all at
last to take our idolatry from that which changes--to continue our
lessons of love toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race seem to have
learned the agony of trying to find all in each other, of trying to
find the universe eye to eye. They realise at once that man and woman
are but the two earth points of a triangle; that they safely may rear
their passions and their transfigurations only to the pure point of
union above....
* * * * *
A man has found something when he cries "Eureka!" He loves something,
when he pours out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the real
workman is to find a form that contains him--a form of expression that
will not maim his dream. It is never the form that has held another,
that has sufficed for another artist. A letter is one way to freedom. A
writer's style should set him free.
The enduring aphorisms and tablets and discourses of the Masters have
been spoken to their beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world,
his occult transcriptions from above the world, come in the form of
personal messages. Great documents of the future shall be written this
way. We write many personal letters. One of my young comrades has the
idea to gather together names of a score of mill-girls in New York or
somewhere, and write her heart to them--less to try to help them, than
to ease her own heart, to tell her love for them. Radiation--that is
happiness. Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full of force
to pour out.
Incandescence is happiness. All expression is happiness. Happiness is
creative. To work, to express, that is to radiate. The object is as
important as the thing that aches to go forth. Choose the form that
sets you free. To each his form.
A tireless woman asked how she might serve. Her lover was lost in
Flanders. We told her to write to the soldiers--to write her heart
out in letters to soldiers--that she would save lives and start great
dreams and bring the gold back to many grey mists--to be Mary the
Mother, the saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men--to love
them through the heart of her beloved. That is what focalisation leads
to--to draw forth the great energies from our souls, to set us free,
first to one, then to the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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