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Bryn Athyn, Pa.January 17th 1936Mr,Morten Smith,

Dear Morten:Mr Aid en was feind enough to let mread the first of your Dialogues en Aesthetics. Itwas very pleasant reading, desrlte the feet tb^t I amunacquainted with the literature of that field.

But the reading ~ - f the paper leaves me withcertain questions as to your exact intent. I am nota logician, and jc the problems that rose in my mindare no^ technical or literary, but pratical. I hopetha you do not mind my writing to you about them.course I heartily Subscribe to the id ea *hsta symbol of unknown or undetermined relationshipscannot have any waning! It is merely an isolated" x" - it mi^ht mean anything. No* have I any objectionto your attack on a system - w h i c h is based (if youare correct) on the identity of the symbol and thethings -^bolisted.(The reason that I wonder whetheryou are corr - c t is "ha" symbolistic writers are aptto speak only suggestively, even when defining their ownpositions I ).But please do not feel offended at my first impres-sion from the brief perusal: that you have tried to ratio-nalize an instinctive antipathy to sentimentalism andto symbolism in Literattr e, by extending yourself on thewider - and more indefensible - front which conflicts^ith all " k i n d s o^ symbolism. Possibly I ha^Te misreadyour concept. I hopeby this letter,to entice you toassure me on that point.Surelv, symbolism a^ such is both real and usual,not to say useful, indispensible. Symbols must haveexisted before words, a n r 1 words became symbols of allthe experiences - cental and physical - a^d the emotions

that, attach themselves to these words. Language, then,be in;? symbolic, t ies to su est the associations; an^ inw o r r ? R anrl phrases a?^ in B t T 9?f t4 references to objectsand situations th^t recall these moods, It rebuilds theof the exr>rience into a "meaning1*.

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The fact that symbols have a m an ing only for thosewho f!spea!c the same language11, i.e.,for those who ar'held in the same bonds of Sympathy or of common experi-ence, does not make that "meaning8 any the less real- for them; even though/ it may differ with each one.So much for symbolism: it certainly expresses ideasin language* P i s * , ^he fact th** a wron? idea can be

expressed in language, only C a l c e s i the mare difficult"or one to see t h a t , any Idea reust be wrong if it cannotbe expressed in language. If you had said that such aninexpressible idea was vague,partial,incompletely per-ceived, - th~n I would a^ree at once. B6t ^wronr-" isa severe word, especially as you ser to hint that every-thing beyond our little sphere of consciousness is "non-exis^ent" J (Or d o n ' t - ym*when you spealc of 'sub-consciousdesires* as non-exl^^ent ?)n the whole i* sounds in places as if youentirely too * i i ch. If you only meant thqt no idea

worthy of the name if it could not "b e plainly stated, -I would a c r a l n agree, from common sense, and even citedoctrine for it I But if you only reant that - why solearned an attach on symbolisticYou can hardly d-ubt that there are cur-e^te oflife - call them instincts or recapitulations or physi-cal processes or what-not - * that arg subconscious, yetlater realized? just 33 hidden ocean currents * n a ydra^ a ship off course. I suppose h^.t you, in lessseverely logical ^o^er;ts,at least, reeo-rni^e that there arehidden "desires" - ^ r predispositions in t V e ^ n i n d which areremnants of so*^e racial inheritance or the forgotten scars

of experiences covered over "b y later thinking: which yetexert an infuence on the "meaning" of a symbol, or upon thechoice of memries that itI am lost whn - o u say tbatffa relationship whichcould not be expressed,could not exist11. Such a statementseems to w i e contradictory even to the elementar^y logicof science, which - I understand - fror? principle neverassumes a broad ne^tive. Experimental proof that a thingdoes not exist, 1 s illogical unless confined to an areaof experience. But is not the fact that BO relationshipcan be fully expressed, especially in words; and th^t is(incidentally) the ^ery reason for "symbolism11, is it not TYour argument moves cautioaly and calmly on. ButI would sny that our lives are too short to convey every-thing to our attention by lo^ic. '"e f^ed our ^Ind also byey^Vols; and w h * t I wonder when I read your pap^r is whethePhllonous still reserves a place for the wider phenomenaof life: for the fact ths t i M R f f l t B i j ! wisdom as well asis covered by m p m l a m A i B g i symbolism?

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*MF J"

I was glad to notice that you exclude from your argumen- aa irrelevant - the eorrespondAagent relations of causeand effect; and confine yotir criticise to the systemof "acquired*1 correspondences, i.e.,the representationsof ideas. Was I right? "one'beless I do not see whysuch ^natural" correspondences should not " b e m a ? * * formallyexempted from your criticism. For here we have a fertilefield of symbols (effects) - w h i c h necessarily can, suresttheir causes. A . sunset does suggest the cause, the earth'srotation, etc,, to every intelligent man. "Even if thecause " b e n&tnown and therefore aa yet inexpressible infactual language, the effect is the potential symbol ofthe eause. There is a"mystic link" between the shame andthe blush, the vord and the thought.May I s u f f r r e e t ( even though e w & i s m f i t i e w f f l m y opinionwas never asked) that your thesis would be stronger ifIts wording * < re re more carefully defined, ^hat is meantIn your thesis by l f expressible", H idea1*, "wrong", s'lan*gtiage" ? It is tooelastlc.I leave out any mention of Swedenborg*s doctrine ofrepresentation and correspondences, since I presume that

you are working this subject out from an experimental angle.Allow me only to say that your former teachers hereare irery interested in your progress, anc 5 from affectionT"ish you well. Personally, let me congratulate you onyour facility in handling an intricate and difficult theme.Tours sincerely,

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Dunster House G 62,Cambridge, Mass.Feb. 5, 1936.

Rev. H. L. Odhner.

Dear Mr, OdhneriYour letter was doubly kind in that it was both frank

and gentle, but I hope that I am grateful most for the frankness, Iknow very little of philosophy, so, from the time that Mr. Alden wrotesaying he had given you the paper, I was especially anxious for yourcriticisms. They arrived just as raid-term examinations were beginning,which is the reason that you have not had an earlier answer, forexaminations are so designed that I have no leisure to think while tak~ing them, and no strength to think afterwards.

Nor is even this an answer in the formal sense. 1 agree with mostof your objections and only hope to explain and modify my opinions intheir light. It is too true that the diction of the essay is inexact, -partly this resulted from carelessness, partly, from haste, partly, frommy unwillingness to be drawn into a discussion of what I was talkingabout. This unwillingness, in turn, resulted from the other fact, whichyou quite accurately remarked, that I was engaged in rationalizing "aninstinctive antipathy to sentimentnlisia and to symbolism in literature,"But I consider the rationalization justified if the result be rational.

I did not, however, mean to attack all symbolism* The word "symbol"is variously understood, and my immediate object, though perhaps I lostsight of it in the scuffle, was to prove that only one interpretation

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II.

(briefly and inaccurately: a sign which occasions the idea of some-thing other than itself) was comprehensible. That other interpretationshave been held, and this especially by the apologists of romantic poetry,I am quite sure. J. Shawcross, for instance, in his exposition of Cole-ridge's theory of the imagination (the introduction to his edition ofthe Biographla Literaria, Oxfords 1907, p. xl*) writes: "the symbol,while remaining distinct from the thing symbolized, is yet in some mys-terious way interpenetrated by its being and partakes of its reality."This position seems to me implicit in all of Coleridge's thought and theroot of his doctrine separating the fancy from the imagination. Foe'scritical theories were derived from Coleridge's, andfrom Foe's, to agreat extent, those of the Symbolists, whom I particularly attacked.That the arguments used in the attack apply equally to all romantic theory,or to transcendental philosophy, need not be pointed out until the testcase is over; it might prejudice the judges. The arguments do not applyto any symbolism which does not confuse the symbol and the object. ThisI tried to make clear at the end of the essay (pp. 28 - 32), but I ar aafraid I did not sufficiently emphasize it.

The ambiguity of the word "symbol" made it difficult for me to drivehome my point without seeming to prove too much, especially since thisambiguity is reinforced by so many others necessary in an idiomatic andderivative speech. 'For instance, you say of language,"in words andphrases and in references to objects and situations that recall thesemoods, it rebuilds the feeling of the experience into a 'meaning'."Now recall may mean 1. call back the actual moods. 2. occasion similarones. 3, arouse memories of the moods, memories which are themselves not

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III.

moods, but thoughts. Each of these Interpretations is held by many con-temporary writers andjlach implies a different aesthetic. Both the first

s

and the second, however, require of literature that it give such anillusion of sensuous or emotional or intellectual experience that weshall seem not to be reading the book, but to be undergoing the ex-perience which is the subject of the book; the third does not require thatwe be made to"undergo"the experience, but that our thoughts about theexperience be placed in their proper relations to our other thoughts.The first and second result at last in the subjection of denotation toconnotation for the purpose of hypnotisms All those poems of whichthe object is primarily word-nainting, all those of which the object is"to create a particular mood", and all those which purport to give th ereader "the joy of discovering the thought as if it were his own" arethe results of one or the other of these theories, degrade poetrv touse it as an opiate, and, I believe, re wrong. The third results 1 mliterature the object of which is not illusion, but truth. Such aliterature has scarcely been known in English, though Pope has shown theDossible delight in the sudden revelation of a truth by the unexpectedapposition of two falsehoods,and Drvden* in his heroic stanzas on thedeath of Cromwell, has shown what sublimity is possible to truth barelyand powerfully stated (but his poem has a few lamentable lapses into "poetry").

The object of my essay was to provide (with those that followed it)a . satisfactory foundation for the theory of such a literature of thought,For this purpose, a formalistic criticism was necessary, that is, it wasnecessary to prove that the literature of illusion was of illusion, that

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IV.

no author could give, in words, the experiences we have outside of books,that the symbol, in brief, was separate and distinct from the thing symbolized.(If you would see what I am opposing, read Yeats1 essays on symbolism in"Ideas of Good and Evil".) I took the statement, "any idea that cannot beexpressed in words is wrong", and the syllogism leading to it, as a con-venient thema&o unify the attack. Substitute for "wrong", if you like,"contains a logical contradiction"; that was what I meant to say, almost,but I do believe that the illogical,(not the unlogical), is immoral.

The chief direction of the attack was thus against the metaphysical,and this direction was the more nearly inevitable because I was endeavoringa theory of aesthetics, of sensations, which all works of art, in the lastanalysis, are. It was necessary to cle^r away all extranaeous theories andto see the simple facts. For the facts, I believe, are simple, A sensationcannot be analyzed,(though its component qualities may be known , . . -in other sensations also, and by comparison and verbal abstraction be dis-cussed separately, its color can never be removed from it and leave it thesame sensation, nor is it perceived as color plus extension plus motion,but as all these things existing simultanaeously and indistinguishably).Any aesthetic which admits Bereson's "profondeurs de la conscience" orKant's dissection of experience is predestined to symbolism, for both ofthose declare that there are parts of experience which we do not experience*(;)and both, though it is not a necessary conclusion, suppose that experienceas we know it, is a mere symbol of truth as we do not know it. But truthis not hidden in the "depths" of experience, like a pearl in the depthsof an oyster; truth is the whole experience, and if the experience is nottrue, what is? Nor is any one truth truer that nay other; truth is anabsolute, and truths differ in endurance, importance, complexity, but notin degree of truthfullness, I would attempt to prove these dogmas if I

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V.

could imagine it would be possible to attack them. Similar, and, indeed,mutually de pen de nt is the statement that it is impossible for a thing tobe both known and unknown (for the statement that one thing is truer thananother is equal to the statement tha^in one thing the truth is known, andin another thing it is known, too, but not known so much). Unknown thingsare inferred to exist, and their nature is hypoth ecat ed, by analogy fromknown things; intact, when the existence of the unknown is contended for,the real o bject of the content ion is something unknown except for the factthat it is like - t h e things we know in existing and so in being able toaffect them as they affect each other. "Existence" is, for us, (and wecannot imagine what it is for someone else) a quality of known things, Ih eword must be defined in terms of experience, and whatever the differencesbetween mythology and science, they bo th speak, and must speak, of the unknownin parables.

(You ques tion particularly the statements that sub-conscious desiresd o not exist and that the cause is not known in the effect; So long asthere is a dualism of "mind" and "matter" I do not believe in the existenceof subconscious desires. Material causes may, as you suggest) predisposethe mind to certain actions* but a material predisposition is by no meansthe same as a desire, and it seems good to me not to confuse them. If therebe a monism of "mind" subconscious desires are, of course, quite possible.A monism of "matter" is, to me, inconceivable. For the final possibility,that both"mind"and "matter" are aspects of a third somewhat, I do not knowenough to dis cuss it,

(I do not beli eve that the cause is known in the effect. Some causemay be, acco rding to our previous knowledge, inferred from the effect,but this is by no means thesame as being known in it. "A sunset", you say,"does suggest the c ause, the earth's rotation, etc.,to every intelligent

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man." In that event ment have been Intelligent only for the past 400 years -Copernicus died, I think, about 1540. By saying that the effect is "thepotential symbol" of the cause, don't you mean that it is not the symbol -yetS But it might be nrgued:"Though the cause is not known in the effect*a cause may be, and Kant has declared it impossible to have an experiencewithout a knowledge of cause and effect, which alone enables us to assemblethe experience." But the statement that a cause, but no particular one, isknownj is merely an hypothecation that event y is to the unknown as event xis to x's-known c^use; it can be reduced, then, to that statement that some-thing preceded y so as to necessitate y's following, and the something isunknown, 'that is: nothing which is known ;is the cause, the c^use, so faras anyone knows is nothing. As for Imraanuel Kant, it is true that the mind,after it reaches childhood at least, arranges experiences in chains ofcause and effect, but to say that it arranges the elements of experience inthis wav is to suppose that there are elements of expereince, that theyexist somewhere independently and canble of being arranged, and, evengranting this, whether R necessarily sub-conscious process is the same asan idea of cause sndj&ffect, or whether an idea of a cause is a knowledge ofthe cause are still pertinent questions, Ksnt was mistaken. His mistakeresults *Vom *H attempted analysis of wht is what it is only so long as itis not analyzedj of what is essentially simplej experience. This is im-pertinent to Kant, but it would be more impertinent to you if I added my -twenty pages of proof,)

I do not believe that nothing exists outside of our narrow circle of.knowledge. I am quite sure that the stars and my garters remain much thesame potential experiences whether I see them or not. Only, I am veryanxious to limit the discussion of aesthetics to the terms of experience,

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and the relationships of reason. You know of old my dislike of mysteryand my coexisting interest in all occult and out of the way knowledge.The combination, I am afraid, will make a strange one in literary criticism,but I am glad, at least, that you enjoyed my essay enough to examine itso closelv. The most important (in my opinion) of your objections! thatlanguage does not express, but suggests, will be one of the subjects ofthe second dialogue - if there ever is a second dialogue. I think I knowan answer, or rather a non obstat, but it would take much too long to ex-plain, and this letter is much too long already. I should, perhaps, apologize

for sen ding you such a small essay on the first provocation, but the diffi-culties you suggested set me to thinking, and, once having undertaken anapoloey, I could not do less than finish it, though it should requireapologies in its turn, I hope, however, that I have not worn out yourpatience, or the welcome of my letters (I assure you they are not all likethis and I hope that you will try another and see for yourself). But nowmy letter is ended and the night is almost ended, too. Away in the distancethe sky is growing purple, and here beside me the radiator is growing warm.The day is about to begin and it is time for me to go to bed. To-morrow I must put away my essay and set to work on an honors thesis,Then there will be divisional:examinations, then final examinations, andthen, perhaos, I may return to the essay, more nearly impartially. In themean time, good-night and, once more, thank yon.