Stuk 203 - Letter from Peter Grant Watson to R. C. Trevelyan

Laity Water, Torrington. - Asks whether Bob could send him an extra copy of the booklet of poems he sent at Christmas ["From the Shiffolds"], as he would like to lend it to friends but his own copy is 'too precious to part with'. Has taken a title for his new book, which should appear in the autumn, from one of Bob's poems, "The Leaves Return", and would like to quote some lines as an epigraph. Wonders whether Bob has read Leismann [sic: Leishman]'s translation of some of Rilke's poems; Rilke 'must have been a most exceptional man, and seems to be writing in [a] new medium' or, as a friend says, is 'writing from the region after death'. Finds his poetry 'wonderfully interesting and stimulating'. He has been 'more crocked up' than he expected by his illness; is not currently working and therefore 'rather at a loss'; supposes it is necessary to 'accept periods of inactivity' as one gets older as well as other things; often thinks of Hardy's "A Wasted Illness". Asks whether Bob has read [L. H.] Myers' book "The Near and the Far"; it is 'far to[o] long and very shapeless', but he thinks it 'very good indeed in parts', and the kind which might appeal to Bob. It deals with the 'very burning question of the authoritarian attitude and opposing attitude of freedom', and though it was written 'before all the present and impending problems were fairly upon us', he thinks it 'discovered the essential conflict within the individual'. Myers is a 'most interesting writer'; does not think the 'pseudo-Indian atmosphere' of the story's setting need hinder appreciation.