COKER COLLEGE

HARTSVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

November 24, 1935

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Mr. Cleanth Brooks, Jr., Managing Editor, The Southern Review
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Mr. Brooks:

Following your suggestion, I have combined the two essays "Religion without Poetry" and Fair Weather Religion" into one, about five thousand words long. I have kept what seemed to me the essential things. I hope that you find the resulting essay satisfactory. I have suppressed most of the particular references to Santayana; I haven't suppressed all his ideas, for, to do that would be to suppress the story I'm trying to tell. In fact, I am no longer what is Santayana and what I thought up for myself; but I think it is all true.

As to biographical facts. I was born on a farm in Sumter County, South Carolina, in 1896. After a boyhood spent there, I attended and graduated from the University of South Carolina (in 1916). In 1917 I took a M. A. in psychology from Clark University, Worcester, Mass. Then two years in the army, second and then first lieutenant, Field Artillery, 81st Division, twelve months (inactive) service overseas. Back home, and taught a year in high school. Then farmed one year--the wrong one, 1920, for that was the year the bottom dropped out of the cotton market. With enough of the business of farming to satisfy me, I went back into teaching: three years in the Department of English, University of South Carolina, and ten years now as head of the department of English here at Coker College. During these years I have done about three years of graduate work at Columbia University. I have had work published in The Yales Review, Scribner's, The Forum, The English Journal, and The Churchman; and poems in various small poetry magazines. I am married, and have two daughters, one fifteen and one four. This should be enough for you to get the material about me you wish.

If there are any further minor changes needed in the
essay, I shall be glad to make them.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

September 10, 1936

Mr. Cleanth Brooks, Editor, The Southern Review
Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Mr. Brooks:

I'm writing to inquire about several MSS. of mine, to be
certain that you received them all right. I'm particularly interested in one
because I've apparently lost the original of which Warren said he was sending
you the copy: it's the essay "A World to Live In." He also said he was sending
you the essay "The Art of Worship." I doubted if the latter was suitable for the
Southern Review, but he said he would send it to you. This was about August 14.

The other essay is a critical essay: "Edna St. Vincent Millay: Not Resigned." I sent it to you about July 15. I told Warren I had sent it, and understood from him that the Review had already engaged someone to do an essay on Miss Millay. My essay, therefore, could hardly be considered unless the other essay was not satisfactory. Of course, I hope that somehow you manage to use my Millay essay, but if you cannot use it, I should appreciate your returning it as soon as convenient.

I enjoyed the Writers' Conference very much, especially my
association with the Warrens. Please give them my regards when you see them.
With best wishes, I am,

Hartsville, S.C., Sept. 16, 1936

Dear Mr. Brooks:

When I showed Mr. Warren my essay "The Art of Worship," I told him that I had already submitted it to the editor of Christendom. I have just heard from Dr. Morrison that he would like me to revise it somewhat for Christendom, and am therefore writing you this note in order that you will not bother to consider it further for the Southern Review. I don't imagine it is what you want for the Review anyhow.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

October 11, 1936

Mr. Robert Penn Wafren, Editor, Southern Review
Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Warren:

I was glad to hear from you today, though naturally sorry
that the Southern Review can't use my Millay essay. Still, I
hardly expected you would. By the way, you forgot to enclose the
essay. If you have it, please send it by return mail. If it's lost,
don't worry. I have a copy.

I shall be glad to do some reviewing for you if you have
any books you think I can handle.

I should have acknowledged before this the receipt of your
"Approach to Literature." It's an attractive and I think excellent
book. When I got it I did something I rarely ever do--that is, in
regard to such a collection: I spent almost all the next day--which was
Sunday--reading most of the essays. Naturally I think my essay is
good! it's rather unusual that I should like so much all the others.
Also, I was using your analysis of Frost's "Wood Pile" in class
Friday. The book came too late for a possible adoption this year;
but we will surely consider it next fall. Its material is bound
together much better than such material usually is.

I meant to speak to you about this next matter before I
left Boulder, but I forgot to do so. If you're applying for a
Guggenheim fellowship this year that lets you out. If you're not,
do you mind my giving your name as that of one of my sponsors?
If you don't care to be bothered, or if you don't think you know me
well enough, don't hesitate to refuse this request. I doubt if I
have much chance; I've already turned forty. I understand that
the Guggenheim fellowships usually stop at the point at which life
begins! But I will apply, and then go on with my work.

You asked about other material. I doubt if I have anything on hand that would suit you. I do have an essay on manners, called "Our Larger Language", fairly brief now, I believe about 2,000 words, though it was cut in its present form from a longer essay. I think the main idea is good; but I'm also pretty certain that the development is not at all as comprehensive as you like it. But, for that matter, I don't know who has time to print an essay on manners nowadays. Still, if you want to see it, I shall send it.

I had a delightful time at Boulder. I think you and
Cina did most to make it so. My kindest regards to you both.
Remember me to Pasinetti when you write. Don't forget that you are
coming to South Carolina, and to visit us, in the spring.

COKER COLLEGE

HARTSVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

February 4, 1937

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Robert Penn Warren, Editor, The Southern Review
Baton R'duge, La.

Dear Warren:

You may have seen the enclosed story at Boulder, and therefore
may know immediately that you cannot use it in the Southern Review. But since
you may not have, I am sending it for you to examine. It's aged in the wood
by now: New York being the wood. Martha Foley took it back from Boulder for
Whit to O.K.; and now after a season in New York it comes back to me with
Miss Foley's comment that, unfortunately, Whit thought the device of the
cross spoils what is otherwise good writing. I only wish Whit could have
made up his mind months ago. Well, the same device may spoil it for you and
Brooks. If you don't want it, send it back.

I'm working on an essay that you may be interested in,
the relation of economic and spiritual freedom. I've done several other
things, rather short, two to three thousand words, that you'd hardly care for.
The Christian Century is taking one. There's a chance you might be interested
in one of them: "Our Kingdom for a Hobby-Horse", 2,000 words, a discussion
of the religious values of leisure (and work), which I wrote in continuation
of a discussion in the December Forum. Naturally I sent it to Leach, but he
returned it. If it sounds interesting to you, I will be glad to send it.

I don't know what your relation to the Mississippi is, but
I hope you don't get flooded this week--or any time. By the way, I wish you
and Cina would come to see us spring holidays. Our spring holidays are March
25 to April 1; but that doesn't make any difference. I never have any classes
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I teach half-time, and I'm going to quit
it entirely as soon as I can. What's the use to have an ante-belium house and
not live in it!

Kindest regards to you both.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

March 4, 1937

Mr. Robert Penn Warren
Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Warren:

I have recently finished Huxley's "Eyeless in Gaza", and
have been much interested by his technical device of non-chronological
chapters. After having written up the book this morning for my own files,
I thought that possibly the Southern Review might be interested either
in a review of the book, or in an article on Huxley. The chances of your
being interested in a review of the book are slight; and I certainly don't
intend making a study of Huxley unless some journal has expressed at least
a slight interest: I have too many other things to do; and half of Huxley's
books I don't know at all, and don't have them available here. In order to
suggest what you might expect if I did something on Huxley for you, I'm going
to copy below that part of my notes on "Eyeless in Gaza" which have to do
with Huxley's handling of time in that book. Here goes:

Many of these remarks suggest, of course, the peculiar technique
of the book. This is realistic in a new sense. Of course the book is
realistic in the sense that any reader of Huxley expects: the wide and
muddy ramblings of shell-shocked minds (yet the odor is always that of an
operating room; I should say, of a hospital: antiseptic: anybody who is hurt
by reading this book is certainly intent upon being hurt). But there is a
realism beyond all this, and to me new. The peculiar arrangement of the
chronology-- chapter dated August 30, 1933, preceding, for instance, the
chapter dated April 2, 1903--results finally in the introduction of the
characters into our knowledge as they are introduced in life: we come to
feel about the characters as we come to feel about people in life: through
many widely-spaced appearances, they have come slowly into our knowledge,
and have become solid, three-dimensional people. Furthermore, an event often
recalls and makes clear another event of years before which had been at
that time misunderstood or not understood at all. This is the method of
life; and this is the method of Huxley in this book. The result is highly
realistic; not in the sense that any given detail is photographic--though
Huxley is highly realistic in this sense also--but in the sense that our
method of learning about life and people is very much the same in the book as
in the world. The impression of the book suggests to me a new kind of
picture. In this picture there is a background, and there are people, the
characters in the story, placed against this background. As I look at the
picture, it gains depth, or to put it the other way the characters seem,
rather jerkily perhaps, and not all together, but now one now another,
to come out from the picture, become three-dimensional; thus becoming all
the time more elongated in space--space as depth, not space as breadth. This
is Spengler's sense of space, turned around. Life in the book is a
kind of space-time continuum: happenings in time become a sort of happening
in space. In the old story, to which we are accustomed, with its fairly
orderly movement of plot, the main character--and with him usually the

sense of the story--seems in a way to move across our field of vision
(if you think of the story as a picture); only, as we read, we tend
to lose ourselves in this movement and to be swept along ourselves;
we retain perhaps some sense of whence we have come and whither we are
going, but we are in the main going on a destined way with the story.
After the story is over, we might chart its action as a gesture across
space in front of us.

Now this method of realizing "Eyeless in Gaze" suggests
the chief weakness of the book: instead of being picked up by the story
and carried along with is; instead, that is, of experiencing the story
aesthetically; we stand off and observe the story; observe, exactly,
the characters take on depth, body; observe scientifically the growth
of human life.

That is to say, the book expresses artistically our method
of knowing people; it does not express artistically the meaning ((a
meaning, I hasten to add for the benefit of all intellectuals)) of life.
Huxley tells us what life is, mainly in those interspersed essays; all that
he shows us--proves aesthetically--is our method of understanding or exper-
iencing it. He is therefore sacrificing interpretation to impressions.
For my part, I feel that there is a movement in life comparable to that
sense of movement, of going somewhere, that I have in myself; that all
men have in themselves; I think that we all believe this; have to be-
lieve it to go on living; I think that art intensifies this feeling. The
great art is that which makes the world move with me or makes me move with
the world; though it makes men and women, and our method of knowing them,
realistic enough to convince us of its authenticity, it subordinates all
that to the undercurrent that sweeps both us and them along together.
Huxley is still too much the scientist; the scientist who manages to observe
life itself, the biologist; and too little the artist who knows himself,
and therefore us, one with life.

"And now", as Kusta Ben Luka said to his friend the Caliph,
my utmost mystery is out"--or at least you have the germ, or the skeleton,
of the idea. If it interests you for the Southern Review, tell me what
you want. If not, try it on your freshmen--they probably have more sense than
your seniors.

Sorry you can't come to South Carolina in the spring. It's a
good state, though backward--perhaps because backward. Kindest regards.

33

Hartsville, S.C.

May 3, 1937

Dear Warren:

Can you tell me anything yet about my article
on freedom I sent you five or six weeks ago? I suppose you
got it all right. Davison says you won't be back at Boulder
this summer--Houghton Mifflin pressing for the novel. Well,
I'm pressing too now. Perhaps the pressures will equalize,
and you'll be just where you were--wherever that was. I re-
member you said you were very busy. I have a hunch you and
Brooks stay too busy--and in Louisiana too. It's a shame.
Doesn't the atmosphere have any effect upon you? Come to
South Carolina and rest a hundred years. kindest regards to
all.

As ever,

COKER COLLEGE

HARTSVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

June 6, 1937

Mr. Robert Penn Warren, Editor, The Southern Review
Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Warren:

I am enclosing the essay on economic and spiritual freedom, reduced to about 6,000 words. I hope this version is suitable. I cut the two parts on communism, the first because the material there presented had already been presented indirectly and by implication in the preceding section on private property for use, the second because the argument was complete without it. I also omitted the section dealing with the generally tragic nature of life and how our modern world would deny this fact. Then I cut out about a thousand words in the remaining parts. I shall perhaps try to rework and use elsewhere the three complete sections I omitted. I can do this without repeating unduly the material in the essay I am sending you.

I also tried to improve my use of quotations, but I don't know that I have had much success. If you don't like my use in any instance, it will probably be all right to drop the quotation. That's what I have done in several cases. In other cases I have introduced the material differently. The truth is, I don't quite know what your criticism is. I have a feeling that many, if not most, of my quotations are not strictly justifiable. To a degree I quote (I think) because of lack of belief in my own argument. There is some modesty involved here, some laziness, and some inability to think. I do think that my many references to Berdyaev are perhaps to be justified on the ground that he is an important contemporary thinker who is not perhaps generally known. But--jn brief--I hope you find the entire revision satisfactory.

I must hurry home to dinner. We're having fried chicken. I don't say that we in South Carolina can beat you in Louisiana--or Kentucky--at that game; but we can give you a run for the money. My kindest regards to yourself, your wife, and Brooks.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Mayesville, South Carolina

October 4, 1937

Dear Warren:

Since you already have my article on freedom, I don't know that there is any chance of your accepting the enclosed story, even though you might like it. But I'm sending it anyhow.

Do you know yet when you will use the article on freedom? I haven't yet received the current issue, so don't know whether there is any mention of it there or not. Is your autumn issue late, or did your business manager fail to change my address from Hartsville to Mayesville? If the magazine was sent to Hartsville, I will get it when I go there on Thursday. But please ask the business manager to change my address from Hartsville to Mayesville.

We moved here, to my old community, four weeks ago. At present we are living with my brother, but will move into my house as soon as the present tenant leaves. That may be as soon as November 1, or as late as January 1. I spent most of the money I could get--I mean borrow--this summer repairing the house. House in the country with lights, water, etc. I drive over to Hartsville every Thursday, speak to the student body on the poetry of life---I would!--and teach a class in American literature. Then back home for another week.

I have an article in Scribner's prize contest. Got one back quickly from Harper's prize contest on The American Way. Evidently I don't know what the American way is. Well, I'm not the only one. Now I'm spending most of my time trying to figure out what--if anything--the church can do today. I don't know that you care, but I understand that Brooks does. I once saw a letter of his to that effect in the Christian Century. If he knows, I wish he'd tell me.

Did you finish your novel this summer? Hope you at least got a long ways with it. And how is Cinina? (I hope that spelling's right.) The year since Boulder has passed, like all years now, very rapidly. Even at that, however, Boulder seems very far away.

Kindest regards, as ever.

Mayesville, South Carolina

May 25, 1938

Mr. Cleanth Brooks, Jr.
The Southern Review
Baton Rouge, La.

Dear Brooks:

Since you kept my article on spiritual and economic freedom five
months, I felt justified in keeping it seven! No, as a matter of fact, I didn't
care to condense it further, both because I felt it might be clearer the way
it was and because when I get a thing out of my mind I'm done with it and
am not interested in threshing it over. But I tried several magazines and
found that the article as it stood suited none of them. I have therefore
condensed it as you suggested in your letter of last October, and am returning
it to you. Of course, by now you may be like Samuel Johnson was in regard
to Lord Chesterfield's approval after the completion of the dictionary!
If so, this is your occasion to immortalize yourself in a reply such as
Samuel Johnson wrote. But of course Johnson had Chesterfield as an
inspiration.

If you still have a place for the article, I hope you will find
it satisfactory as it is.

My regards to both you and Warren. Come to South Carolina some time
and come to see me.

<table><tr><td>THIS SIDE OF CARD IS FOR ADDRESS</td></tr></table>

Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, Jr.

THE SOUTHERN REVIEW

Baton Rouge, La.