That warm-hearted letter of yours came handy. I can tell you.
No word from Macmillans. It is becoming almost funny. The poor peewees! In the long, of course, delays don't matter. Still, a delay may make a great difference in the affairs of a poet who, unforunately, has to live in the world. And golly, what a world!
Well, it will be all right.
As for the MESSIAH, I am not yet writing on it - do not want to begin so soon. The work I am doing now is of a sort to throw me mroe and more out of the blind ways of this ordinary world; and it is all to the good in my plan for the Messiah. I am realizing some things more clearly than ever before. Had I begun to write the MESSIAH last fall; as I could easily have done. I should have written from the white man's consciousness. There would have been an air of doubt in the poem as to the validity of the Sioux dream. Now there can be no such doubt. They saw a hell of a lot more of life than a man like Coolidge will ever see this side of death. They doubtless misinterpreted what they saw; but they saw. It will be wonderful joy to write that song! Think of the place where Sitting Bull was seen after his death - a huge figure sweeping over the badlands! I itch to get at the poem, and now and then I feel almost compelled to give up what I'm doing and write. It will be beautiful and somehow true. But I will wait until spring is well on.
You bet it means a lot to me that you and Jim feel as you do about the WARS. It's better when you have it all together; and the end is at least worthy of the rest.
I wonder when any of us will see the WARS in print!
How I wish it were possible for us to have a publishing house of our own! We could sell many times more books than Macmillans claim to sell, even many times more than they do sell, for that matter. They are not clever. They feel smart because they have money and sit in fine offices, but it is easy to see where they utterly miss points of strategy. God, what a world! What men for leaders! Hardly a leader opens his mouth without making a jackass of himself. And they are always opening their mouths. At best, they reveal the consciousness of an animal, above that of a cow or horse only in degree, not at all in kind.
Well, this isn't all there is to the world.
I do wish I could slip in and hear you both times in Lincoln. I know you will have bully stuff.
I am holding up the contract for the lectures until I hear from Macmillans. I'm tied up enough as it is. When I answered Latham's last letter, saying that I would sign a contract for the lectures, I made it strong that I needed to know at once what his plans might be. He forwarded the contracts without a word. Poor blind mole!
Yes we'll tour England. Why not? It might be possible in 1927. We'd slip off to Greece - which isn't really far - and we'd lie around there in some lonely place and dream of a time when the ruling class actually believed in values other than those of money. Alas, the Barbarian has won! Not forever, of course, but you and I can not live 50 years more.
Jno.
Best to [?]!
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