Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2423

Exchange of letters between Heath (carbon dated October 22, 1955) and E. Merrill Root, 120 S.W. 8th Street, Richmond, Indiana,

October 29, 1955

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Root:                        October 22, 1955

 

I am again enthused by you. Your review of Gordon Harrison’s book in the September FREEMAN is only another example of your marvelous poetic imagination adorning and energizing a crystal clear rationality. It would be a great thing, amid all the current foggy emotionalism, if you exhibited only the operation upon human affairs of an incisive, well balanced mind, but it is a greater thing to have it united with a luminous, poetic imagination springing from esthetic sensibilities. (Pardon me for going purple; I am ordinarily almost allergic to it, but we all must have our lapses when the provocation is severe.)

 

     I have enjoyed your Ulysses to Penelope very much — had difficulty in getting extra copies through the usual channels — and would like to see more of your poetic work, which of course must be harder to publish and circulate even than your prose material.

 

     Are you in good standing with your academic associates? I would like to know if there are any colleges where creative inspiration can find a happy home.

 

     Take a look at my little “Inspiration of Beauty” for what it may be worth.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

SH/m

ENC: “Inspiration of Beauty”

     “Trojan Horse of ‘Land Reform’”             /Scroll down/

___________________________________

 

 

Dear Mr. Heath:                       October 29, 1955

Again I am indebted to you for winged words of true appreciation, and also for your own fine, rare, original art. I feel shame that I did not write you long ago, when you wrote me and sent your own fine work; it was a time, however, when I had gone East for a “free” year of the most intense work of my life — on my present tome, just out, COLLECTIVISM ON THE CAMPUS. I found that work made me, as Dante says of his incomparably greater work, “lean.” I was so weighted and whole-seas-under that I had no time for the amenities and grace notes of life, or the friends whose spirits are nearest mine. Do forgive me.

     I am delighted that you liked my review. I had felt that it was very good; but not one single word (except Helen Cartier’s, the review editor of THE FREEMAN, who is always most appreciative) had come to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It is a dreadful vacuum of loneliness in which to move, and wait, and wonder. Then your fine and gracious word. “Thanks” is too pallid a term.

     I’m so glad, too, that you liked ULYSSES. I am to have a new volume — OUT OF OUR WINTER — sometime this fall, to be published by the same firm under a new name — The Golden Quill Press, Francistown, New Hampshire. I hope and believe it is my best. I discovered this firm literally by God’s Providence; they believe in me, publish me, and do so at their own risk and my royalty’ I don’t make anything; but so far they haven’t lost anything.

     Academically, I am and always have been a bird among fish, or a fish among birds (look at it as you will)’ I don’t take to profess­ors (I have only an A.B.); and even my good friends among them look at me as an odd being. Now with my exposé of their hypnosis with collect­ivism, I live dangerously (as Nietzsche bade us do) and marvel at mere survival. Earlham is the best college I know; our president is all for me; I have good friends. But, at best, I am an alien. At Amherst, the late George Whicher — who was my early teacher and encouraged me to write — blasted my FRANK HARRIS, and said that, since I criticized profs, I should not be one but resign.

 

     Your own latest work, like all your work, is true vintage, true beauty that (as Shakespeare puts it) “Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on. … True beauty, truly blent …”

     Your “The Inspiration of Beauty” is wise and sound and finely written. Such insight, such feeling of the essence behind and yet within the appearance, is (as you know) rare in this day; and as precious as it is rare. How much is it per copy? I may be able to use about 18 in an evening class I am teaching. It is wonderful doctrine for students today; and for the few of us who are lonely in the waste lands of today’s superficialities, profound and living. Thanks for it, and also for the other booklet.

 

     I enclose an announcement of my latest prose book, just to show you what I have been wrestling with, night and day, for the last two years. The academic world in general will hate me for it today, but will thank me for it in ten years. The Saturday Evening Post had an editorial on it (issue of October 29th).

     Again, many thanks for your fine letter. It is good to know that a friend and fellow poet is working too and to such gracious ends.

 

Most cordially yours,

 

/s/ E. Merrill Root