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]