The Shee, as they dance, sing to the old grey world-dwellers,—or Stevens says they do, and I for one believe he knows all there is to know about it ('tis a Leprechaun he has for a friend):
"Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are—ye who live among strangers in the houses of dismay and self-righteousness. Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and be-devilled ye go!... In what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are ye ground between the laws and the customs? Come away! For the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the hill...."
CHAPTER IX
And Then More Villagers
... A meeting place for the few who are struggling ever and ever for an art that will be truly American. An art that is not hidebound by the deadening influences of a decadent Europe, or the result of intellectual theories evolved by those whose only pleasure in existence is to create laws for others to obey ... an art, let us say, that springs out of the emotional depths of creative spirit, courageous and unafraid of rotting power, or limited scope ... an art whose purpose is flaming beauty of creation and nothing else.—Harold Hersey, in The Quill (Greenwich Village).
omeone said today to the author of this book:
"How can you write about the Village? You don't live here. Live here a few years and then perhaps you'll have something to say!"