Item 204 - Letter from Peter Grant Watson to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item: typed with autograph corrections and signature

Laity Water, Torrington. - Thanks Bob for sending a second copy [of "From the Shiffolds", see 17/203]; has two friends he wants to lend it to 'in succession'. Bob is right to say it is a 'difficult time to feel creative in'; human live is a 'frightful and appauling [sic] prospect'. Asks if Bob has seen a book he recently read which 'throws a little light': "The Fear of Freedom" by Elrich [sic: Erich] Fromm, which he discusses in detail. It shows that 'the sado-masochistic symbiosis... is not only peculiar to Germans, but is lurking in all of us' and that 'further repression is not the cure for people who have lost their power to spontaneous action'; finds it most interesting that 'the Germans themselves have anticipated and lamented over the course of their national development', such as Holderlin, Heine and Nietzche; feels that 'super-human daimons are stirring, and like Saturn are devouring their own children'; asks Bob if he knows Rubens' picture on that theme. However, 'poets still write', and he often finds that old poems 'retain all the wonder' they had in his youth; thinks Meredith and Whitman 'just as charged with wisdom as ever they did', and that there are 'ways of real emancipation' for individuals. Would much like to see Bob's essays ["Windfalls"], and thanks him for offering to send them. Is sending the book to which his "The Leaves Return" is a sequel.