Letter to Clark Ashton Smith

From H. P. Lovecraft

Brooklyn N. Y

December 27, 1925.

Dear CAS:-

Yes - Loveman said that De Casseries (whom I haven't met) was getting in to pretty close & interesting correspondence with you, & I understand that De Casseries & George Sterling have been exchanging affirmative opinions as to the genuine genius of your work. I further told - if I may repeat gossip in the approved small-town fashion - that they agree in preferring your weird, cosmic, Saturn's-ring attitude & mood to your more mundane phases of expression - an opinion in which I concur, not withstanding the high merit & unfailing charm of your amatory verses. What they mean, I take it, is exactly what I have contended - that your supreme gift of vision, the gift that towers above all others & carves out for you a unique place in literature, is that which reveals to you strange shapes beyond the Milkey Way, & portentous patterns in the dark stars about undremt-of spiral nebulae. This gift involves an outlook & attitude that no one has ever had before, (for others can't help linking up their allegedly cosmic vistas with pretty terrestrial considerations) & which probably no one will have again. It is admittedly caviar to the herd - but no less great on that account, & no less to be fostered & developed to its maximum for the benefit of the few who can give it their awed & breathless appreciation...

Moat faithfully & sincerely yrs -
H P L

Selected Letters (Arkham House) 202

Printed from: www.eldritchdark.com/writings/correspondence/92
Printed on: March 28, 2024