You ask me to bid your magazine good speed; and so far as I have any right, I do indeed. It seems you are setting out to watch the street of Life from a high balcony, where at all events the air should be fresh and sunrise sometimes visible. I hope you will decide to sleep out there under the stars, for what kills most literary effort is the hothouse air of temples, clubs, and coteries, that, never changed, breeds in us by turn febrility and torpor. Enthusiasms are more convincing from those who have not told their loves too often. And criticism more poignant from one who has been up at dawn, seen for himself and put down his impression before he goes on ’Change. There is a saying of de Maupassant about a writer sitting down before an object until he has seen it in the way that he alone can see it, seen it with the part of him which makes him This man and not That. For the creative artist and the creative critic there is no rule, I think, so golden. And I did seem to notice in America that there was a good deal of space and not much time; and that without too much danger of becoming “Yogis” people might perhaps sit down a little longer in front of things than they seemed to do. But I noticed too a great energy and hope. These will be your servants to carry through what will not, surely, be just an exploit or adventure, but a true and long comradeship with effort that is worth befriending.
So all good fortune!
Very faithfully yours,
John Galsworthy.
Five Japanese Prints
Arthur Davison Ficke
I KIYONOBU SPEAKS
The actor on his little stage
Struts with a mimic rage.—
Across my page
My passion in his form shall tower from age to age.