New-York tribune., 1919-10-11
An Interview With Dunsanv
Dunsany Comes to Touch Hands With Amer
lea, Which Has Given Him Appreciation

ihey have spoken softly Of this man
whose tales and plays people the outer
darkness, whose gods are forever enjoy
ing their cosmic jests which bring men
to dcrsion. They have said that he is
OF an ancient race, that he lives the life
OF recluse and that he writes with q
quill pen. They would have fixed Lord
Dunsany for US in a poets trance. as
remote as one of his own gods if he
mad not come overseas to call on US. re-
vealing that he is an intensely alive
person with an eager sun-and-wind
tanned look about him. He is large and
clear-eyed and good to look upon. He
has smile which must have been an
utterly delightful grin when he was a
small boy. He has an Irishman's delight
IN talking. The man who met reporters
with such zest, who threw so many
1oot-pounds Of energy to answering
their tired. automatic questions. could
be no recluse. Yet here one fails him
again. To set him so aggressively in
his everyday qualities is to miss him
again-sincc the truth of personality
lies i'll no rigid definition The duality
OF genius-the hundred dedness of
IT. indeed--is set subt,y on Lord Dun
ssny.
approached Dunsany with an un
easy consciousness Of o play, recently
and the Poet" in which he satirized the
tworcnny hlarings Of the press. 4
poet had prepared and tended with
fasting and prayer and work shrine
10 tame, and one morning aw-oi.e to find
that the goddess had, indeed alighted
there She was beautiful and classical
ly oble-looking. But did she proclaim
the striving of his spirit, the beauty Of
his vision to waiting posterity? In a
strong cockney accent she shouted
through window to breathless multi
tude the personal idiosyncrasies, the
vulgar trivialitics by which public
knows its great ones.
That" said Lord Dunsany, smiling
when l reminded him of it, ''is a little
unfair to Fame. l wrote it, you see,
when l was very young man-when,
IN fact, | was unrecognized and had no
fame: 1t is young mans very fine
fourlsh OF disdain. l do want fame
because it means appreciation, and I
want appreciation immensely because it
means making people see what I see. l
have come to America because I want
to touch more closely the people who
have given mo that. They have given
me the most poet can ask for.
We have no real literary or artistic
life in England, because Englishmen
have still a profound distrust for
beauty. Drunkness and drama, long
hair and bad morals-they 20 together
in the English mind. We admire the
man with square jaw, but l have seen
bulldogs with sduarer Jaws. We have
no knowledge Of the holiday Of the
spirit, the incommunicable thing that
can take US further than ships or
trains"
About the cosmogany Of his own Gre
ation-thosc vast, windy kingdoms Of
whose overshadowlrg gods and pitiful
mortals he is creator he is immensely
serious. Curiously enough, instinct as
his books are with the spirit and color
Of the East, it was all built on his
imagination Of it long before he had
been there, when he was q schoolboy
in Kent, in fact. Even now he has not
been to India, though it is that land to
which his fabulous kingdom is most
akin.
81 do hot know whether it is the
stories or the plays for which l care
most. ! began ty writing stories, but
the play form is so much more vivid
ard economical that find it more abb
solbing. First in my love of them
should nut the stories and plays of my
country, Ireland. Then those Of my
own land. Perhaps some one will come
after ! G,E gone and rate the stories as
greater | DO not know. 1t is neither
as a dramntist nor as teller of tales
that l wish to be known. want un-
derstandlng as a poet, of a poets Wis
len of truth and the preciousness of
the spirit before which all the iron and
steel to which we sacrifice so much is
paltry.
81 am fortunate under the aristo-
cratic system that have al inherited
Gee Of land which is my own, to
which | can 90 and be free Of any man
or scheme.
"Not only in essential spirit, but in
the forms, you will find that what
lave written is poetry. Break any line
have written with the free hand of
the vers librist, and you will fnd that