Lean near to life. 🔊 Lean very near—
nearer. 🔊
Life is web and therein nor warp nor
It is for this I am Catholick in church
and in thought, yet do let swift Mood weave
there what the shuttle of Mood wills. 🔊
These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. 🔊 Then came "Stark: A Conte," about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. 🔊 It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. 🔊 Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I rather thought, in "snap." 🔊 Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata" [spelled in Greek]). 🔊 Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. 🔊 It was rather the substance that eluded me. 🔊 Was there, I wondered, any substance at all? 🔊 It did now occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a fool! 🔊 Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose I was! 🔊 I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. 🔊 I had read L'Après-midi d'un faune without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet Mallarmé, of course, was a master. 🔊 How was I to know that Soames wasn't another? 🔊 There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed, arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden, perhaps, with meanings as deep as Mallarmé's own. 🔊 I awaited his poems with an open mind. 🔊