Of course I’m enthusiastic about “Faustus and Helen” now! Who wouldn’t be after your comments. However,--when it comes to the last section--I think I shall not attempt to make it the paragon of SPEED that I thought of. I think it needs more sheer weight than such a motive would provide. Beyond this I have only the surety that it is, of course, to include a comment on the world war--and be Promethean in mood. What made the first part of my poem so good was the extreme amount of time, work and thought put on it. The following is my beginning of the last part--at present: --/--/ How neatly here is violence clothed in pathos! --/--/ 109: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] _Thursday_ Dear Gorham: --/--/ My vacation has given me the time to read _Rahab_ and finish _Ulysses_. _Rahab_ is a beautiful book. It has a synthetic beauty that is more evident than the lyric note behind _Ulysses_. It contains beautiful language--Frank is a real artist--no doubt about that and of course way beyond Anderson when it comes to craft. My only doubt about _Rahab_ comes in with the question, as yet undecided, as to whether or not there isn’t a slight touch of sentimentality attached to Frank’s “mysticism.” Certainly the man is not a _realist_--certainly he is sincere. There is also this question--Fanny’s later development, so far as I can see, does not put her far enough beyond her initial appreciation of life at the time she is deserted by her husband to warrant the stress on that thesis which Frank evidently intends as the _motif_ of the book. As a picture of crucifixion the book is superb--but, after all, what tangible gain has Fanny got out of it except an attitude that Butler outlines in some such words as I believe I have repeated to you: “No one has ever begun to really appreciate life, or lived, until he has recognized the background of life as essentially Tragedy.” It is from this platform of perception that I conceive every artist as beginning his work. Does Frank consider Fanny’s course as complete where he leaves her at the end of _Rahab_--or isn’t there still something more to be said? The reason I pose this question is because Stephen Daedalus has already gone as far as Fanny before _Ulysses_ begins. The _Portrait_ took him beyond where Fanny sits at the end of _Rahab_. Of course it would stretch reality a great deal, probably, to take Fanny Dirk any further--but, in my mind, it is just this stubborn impossibility (however nonresponsible Frank may be) that makes my judgment of _Rahab_ suffer in the light of _Ulysses_. Perhaps I am unfair and “all off.” Both books, however, have a strong ethical and Nietzschean basis and reading them at the same time as I have, I am irresistibly drawn into comparisons. Frank is so young that he has lots of time to benefit by Joyce and even go further--although I doubt if such will will be done for a hundred years or more. The point is--after all--I am interested in Frank and thank you for putting me out of prejudice.