The rest of this might be entitled: “An open letter to Vachel Lindsay”, for it is “not so dogmatically set forth” and is mere man-to-man talk.
I have seen most of your suggestions swallowed whole by moving-picture makers.... Your hieroglyphics idea—well, James Oppenheim was an accomplice in that. “On Coming Forth by Day” or your suggestion to use the Book of the Dead—a Chicago woman, the patient, too-patient, beautifully reverent Lou Wall Moore has been working for years on an adaptation of one of the books which, when it does appear on the stage, will have more rhythm and terrible swiftness than ever your moving picture could, the splendor of color, space, height, distance, and most magical of all, the voice:
Priest:
Men pass away since the time of Ra
And the youths come in their stead.
As Ra reappears every morning
And Tum sets in the west,
Men are begetting and women conceiving;
Each nostril inhales once the breeze of the dawn;
But all born of women go down to their places.