Paris, February 17th 1903.

DEAR SIr,

your letter reached me only a few days ago. I want to thank
you for its great and welcome trust. I can hardly say more. I
cannot go into the quality of your verses; for I am too far
removed from every kind of critical intention.2 In making con-
tact with a work of art nothing serves so ill as words of criticism :
the invariable result is more or less happy misunderstandings.
Things are not all so comprehensible and utterable as people
would mostly have us believe ; most events are unutterable, con-
summating themselves in a sphere where word has never trod,
and more unutterable than them all are works of art, whose life
endures by the side of our own that passes away,

Having written this note by way of introduction, may I just
go on to tell you that your verses have no individual quality, but
rather, quiet and hidden tendencies to something personal. I feel
this most clearly in the last poem My Soul. And in the beautiful
poem To Leopardi there is perhaps growing up a kind of relation-
ship with that great and solitary man. All the same, the poems
are not yet anything in themselves, nothing independent, not
even the last one or the one to Leopardi. Your friendly letter
which accompanied them did not fail to explain to me a number
of deficiencies which I felt in reading your verses, without how-
ever being able to give a name to them.

You ask if your verses are good. You ask me. You have
previously asked others. You send them to journals. You com-
pare them with other poems, and you are troubled when certain

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