Beschreibung:

SASSOON, Siegfried (1886-1967). Seven autograph letters signed (six with 'SS' monogram, one 'old Mr Sass'), six to Ottoline Morrell, and one to Philip Morrell, Fitz House, Salisbury, and Heytesbury House, Wiltshire, 24 April [?1932], 28 October [1933], 19, 22, 27, 28 November and 4 December 1935; and autograph manuscript 'Summing Up', together 9 pages, 8vo and 1 page, 4to ; envelopes (6) SASSOON'S ATTACK ON MODERNIST POETS: 'if you knew how depressed I got about the utter ineffectiveness of modern poetry to justify its claim to be relevant & necessary!.. anyone can write nonsense and get away with it! '. In his letters to Ottoline of 1935, Sassoon vents his frustration at the style of modern poetry in comparison with his own 'more obvious & "traditional"' work. His tirade is a reaction to being asked by Eliot to contribute to the fund for George Barker (see lot 41) whose Poems were being published by Faber. 'Eliot & his "master" Pound, are largely responsible for the age of nonsense-writing which we live in'. Sassoon refuses to subsidise Barker. As he sees it, whilst he has been striving to 'write clearly & sensibly', Barker in contrast 'writes pretentious virbiage in the style of a pseudo-genius', his prose 'every bit as ludicrous as Amanda Ros... a lot of parodistic Edgar Allen Poe'. Implied is Ottoline's disapproval of his criticisms ('you say I am prejudiced & not open-minded about those young men'), but he begs to be allowed his 'B in my bonnet' - 'I regard all these over-intellectualized verse writers as my natural enemies; & I can't forgive them for being such dreary bores. Poof! I feel quite hot!' Enclosed with the letter of 27 November is 'Summing Up', comprising his notes made in preparation for an address made to the Literary Association of the Bank of England, in which he tried to 'explain the merits of the younger generation'. Sassoon is also pained that Vigils has been largely ignored, the only reviews being 'blind prejudice in support of their false gods - the clever versifiers'. A lively correspondence, on writing memoirs, his exhaustion, on Tennant ('all that bother with Stephen took it out of me terribly'), interspersed with amusing images, 'Aldous,... sitting lengthily in a deck chair on the Garsington lawn... '; 'dear old Willie Yeats annoys me with his mystifications & incantatons about cats & the moon'; and, of 'those younger men' - ' if you knew how I've wrestled with their obscenities and their poems about girls cleaning their teeth into lakes!'. Sassoon condemns the 'excruciating' William Empson, while taking comfort from a review by Edmund Blunden, making this a classic confrontation between the Georgian and Modernist schools. Sassoon's letter to Ottoline of 1933 blames 'such ups & downs as there've been between us since 1916' as 'Creations of my own queerness & cussedness etc'. A touching letter, in which Sassoon values his 'indestructible' friendship with Lady Ottoline which has helped him through previous years, 'we have been better friends than ever before in your room in Gower St - I say all this clumsyness because I am so happy & safe now, & your sharing of my happiness is part of its blessedness'. Written months before his marriage to Hester Gatty, Sassoon wants Ottoline to meet 'this Hester' for the first time, who 'has come like one of the angels & redeemed me from my long purgatory my reward for all the unhappiness & solitude & frustrated love from which I am delivered'. In his letter to Philip, which must have been written in 1932, Sassoon having left Fitz House in October 1931, Sassoon declines to sit for the artist Van Hengelaar, instead proposing that he draw the actor Glen Byam Shaw 'actors are always glad to be immortalized'. Byam Shaw (1904-1986) with whom Sassoon had a relationship and long friendship, had appeared 'memorably' (ODNB) at the Lyceum in 1932 in Max Reinhardt's mime play The Miracle , with Lady Diana Cooper as the Madonna; here Sassoon tells of his return from touri