Evans Donald
Sonnets from the Patagonian
If somehow we can grope our way back to the springs of Beauty all may yet be saved, but it will require the sacrifice of everything we have. For myriads it will mean the offering of their lives, for that is all they possess, and it must be done freely, gladly, with their souls purified, if it is to avail anything. Pride, ambition, selfishness, self-will must go, or we perish blind miserables.
For myself, you know I am willingly in service as a common soldier, although some years beyond conscription age. Ungrudgingly I gave up alcohol – almost a lifelong necessity – and for months I, the Epicurean, have been dispassionately measuring the supposed hardships of war that I might truly understand what a soldier has to undergo. With Beauty in the bloodbeat privation is nothing. What can touch me now except the amusing joy of giving up for the common good? Yet who actually loves humankind less than I? But the subordination idea intrigues me, possesses me, satisfies me. How better can I prove my patent of snobbery and my innate right cordially to dislike my fellowmen?
The social degradation involved in functioning as an enlisted man was and, of course, is the worst of the annoyances. I am neither young enough nor sufficiently democraticto enjoy day after day a below-stairs status. It is a trial, I confess, but I venture to persuade myself that I do all that is required of me with admirable abasement and detachment. Occasionally, indeed, it is capital fun to play the anonymous cipher. I am often urged to obtain a commission. But I cannot quite do that, for would not that be a confession that I hadn't the pluck to stick it out? I must remain as I am. Many of my contemporaries are finding the khaki an easy means of increasing their literary reputations. Wise brothers, ye have chosen your rôles. I prefer mine.
Before you have seen my book through the press I may be dead. With all my heart I hope I shall not come back, for then impersonally I shall have fallen for a cause in which I have no faith. What more distinguished end for an incurable poseur? Have I not been called that? Plant, I beg you, mignonette to encircle my arrowroot fields.
What has all this to do with the Sonnets from the Patagonian? If you will read my words aright they will give the key to my poems, should you, my beloved Hollis, still lack a key. The volume when it first appeared was not liked by divers nice people – it was thought nasty – but none put it down till he had finished it; a terror was on him lest he miss a word. And the terror was the Sword of Beauty which slayeth all. Intrepidity…
But you shall interpret the poems yourself.
DONALD EVANS.
I have broken my engagement to write a preface, but have given you, gentle Reader, the Poet's letter instead.
CORNWALL HOLLIS.