Fac-simile of an autograph poem by William Sharp
The things first to be done now are
| Books | 1 Finish new Life of Rossetti | |
| 2 Finish Pharais | ||
| 3 Write Nostalgia | ||
| 4 Collaborate in Ivresse | ||
| then, The Brotherhood of Rest | ||
| and, The Comedy of Woman | ||
| and, The Lunes of Youth | ||
(Articles) “The Literary Ideal”: Flemçen: “Tunisia”: “The Province of Constantine”: “The Province of Oran”: “Lyric Japan”: “Chansons D’Amour”: etc. etc.
(Short Stories) “The late Mrs. Pygmalion” etc. etc.”
Vistas was published early in 1894 by Mr. Frank Murray of Derby in “his Regent Series,” of which Frangipani by R. Murray Gilchrist was the first number. The English edition of Vistas is dedicated to Madame Elspeth H. Barzia—an anagram on my name.
In the Dedication to H. W. Alden (author of “God in His World”) in the American edition—which contains an extra ‘Interlude’ entitled “The Whisperer”—the intention of the book is thus explained:
“You asked me what my aim was in those dramatic interludes which, collectively, I call Vistas. I could not well explain: nor can I do so now. All are vistas of the inner life of the human soul, psychic episodes. One or two are directly autopsychical, others are renderings of dramatically conceived impressions of spiritual emotion: to two or three no quotation could be more apt than that of the Spanish novelist, Emilia Pardo Bazàn: ‘Enter with me into the dark zone of the human soul.’ These Vistas were written at intervals: the most intimate in the spiritual sense, so long ago as the spring of 1886, when during recovery from a long and nearly fatal illness ‘Lilith’ came to me as a vision and was withheld in words as soon as I could put pen to paper. Another was written in Rome, after a vain effort to express adequately in a different form the episode of death-menaced and death-haunted love among those remote Scottish wilds where so much of my childhood and boyhood and early youth was spent.... I came upon for the first time ‘La Princesse Maleine’ and ‘L’Intruse.’
“One or two of the Vistas were written in Stuttgart in 1891, others a year or so later in London or elsewhere—all in what is, in somewhat unscholarly fashion, called the Maeterlinckian formula. Almost from the first moment it seemed clear to me that the Belgian poet-dramatist had introduced a new and vital literary form. It was one that many had been seeking—stumblingly, among them, the author of Vistas—but Maurice Maeterlinck wrought the crude material into a form fit for swift and dextrous use, at once subtle and simple. The first which I wrote under this impulse is that entitled ‘Finis.’ The latest or latest but one (’The Whisperer,’ now added to this Edition) seems to me, if I may say so, as distinctively individual as ‘The Passing of Lilith,’ and some, at least of my critics have noticed this in connection with ‘The Lute Player.’ In all but its final form, it embodies a conception that has been with me for many years, ever since boyhood: a living actuality for me, at last expressed, but so inadequately as to make me differ from the distinguished critic who adjudged it the best of the Vistas. To me it is the most obvious failure in the book, though fundamentally, so near and real emotionally.”