Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (91 page)

"Life
is
web,
and
therein
nor
warp
nor
woof
is,
but
web
only.

"It
is
for
this I
am
CathoJick
in
church
and
in
thought,
yet
do
let
switt
Mood
weave
there
what
the
shuttle
of
Mood
wills."

These
were
the
opening
phrases
of
the
preface,
but
those
which followed
were
less
easy
to
understand.
Then
came
"Stark:
A
Conte,"
about
a
midinette
who,
so
far
as
I
could
gather,
murdered,
or
was about
to
murder,
a
mannequin.
It
was
rather
like
a
story
by
Catulle Mendès
in
which
the
translator
had
either
skipped
or
cut
out
every alternate
sentence.
Next,
a
dialogue
between
Pan
and
St.
Ursula— lacking,
I
felt,
in
"snap."
Next,
some
aphorisms
(entitled
àopicriJuiTa)
.
Throughout,
in
fact,
there
was
a
great
variety
of
form;
and
the
forms had
evidently
been
wrought
with
much
care.
It
was
rather
the
substance
that
eluded
me.
Was
there,
I
wondered,
any
substance
at
all? It
did
now
occur
to
me:
suppose
Enoch
Soames
was
a
fool!
Up cropped
a
rival
hypothesis:
suppose
J
was!
I
inclined
to
give
Soames the
benefit
of
the
doubt.
I
had
read
"L'Après-midi
d'un
Faune"
without
extracting
a
glimmer
of
meaning.
Yet
Mallarmé
—of
course— was
a
Master.
How
was
I
to
know
that
Soames
wasn't
another? There
was
a
sort
of
music
in
his
prose,
not
indeed
arresting,
but perhaps,
I
thought,
haunting,
and
laden
perhaps
with
meanings as
deep
as
Mallarmé's
own.
I
awaited
his
poems
with
an
open
mind.

And
I
looked
forward
to
them
with
positive
impatience
after
I
had had
a
second
meeting
with
him.
This
was
on
an
evening
in
January.
Going
into
the
aforesaid
domino
room,
I
passed
a
table
at
which sat
a
pale
man
with
an
open
book
before
him.
He
looked
from
his book
to
me,
and
I
looked
back
over
my
shoulder
with
a
vague
sense that
I
ought
to
have
recognised
him.
I
returned
to
pay
my
respects. After
exchanging
a
few
words,
I
said
with
a
glance
to
the
open
book, "I
see
I
am
interrupting
you,"
and
was
about
to
pass
on,
but
"I prefer,"
Soames
replied
in
his
toneless
voice,
"to
be
interrupted," and
I
obeyed
his
gesture
that
I
should
sit
down.

I
asked
him
if
he
often
read
here.
"Yes;
things
of
this
kind
I
read here,"
he
answered,
indicating
the
title
of
his
book—"The
Poems of
Shelley."

"Anything
that
you
really"—and
I
was
going
to
say
"admire?"
But I
cautiously
left
my
sentence
unfinished,
and
was
glad
that
I
had
done so,
for
he
said,
with
unwonted
emphasis,
"Anything
second-rate."

I
had
read
little
of
Shelley,
but
"Of
course,"
I
murmured,
"he's very
uneven."