Excerpt from The Dream of Gerontius

There are two manuscripts of the poem. The first, with repetitions, corrections, and erasures, is on fifty-two scraps of paper, some specimens of which are here given. This first rough draft, of considerable interest as showing the method of working, is thus referred to in a letter of Cardinal Newman to Mr. Allies, dated II October, 1865: - On the 17th of January last it came into my head to write it, I really cannot tell how. And I wrote on till it was finished on small bits of paper, and I could no more write anything else by willing it than I could fly. These were probably for the waste-paper basket.

The second manuscript, a fair copy on foolscap with further corrections and erasures, is dated at the top 17 January, 1865, and concludes with the date 7 February, 1865, so that the Dream, consisting of 875 lines, as numbered in pencil by the author at every fifth line, took twenty-two days in the writing. The author seems to have been fairly possessed with, and carried along by his subject to a completion, in spite of necessary interruption of every kind, whereas in the case of Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' one interruption was fatal to further progress.

In the fair copy, 'Help, Lord' a hymn, written in 1857, is inserted after Psalm ixxxix (xc), said by the Souls in Purgatory; and a second translation of the Psalm is pasted over the first. The omission of the hymn is indicated by a pencil-line down the centre. Amidst the variants, it will be readily conceded that the authors choice is always the best, which cannot be allowed of some final alterations of other great poets.

The ten lines beginning -

The eager spirit has darted from my hold

and ending with -

Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God

appear to have been an afterthought. They are not in their place, but are given (with their context repeated) on the last page following the conclusion of the poem.

A copy of the Dream, not holographic, now in the British Museum, was sent with autograph corrections to Fr. Coleridge, S.J., Editor of the Month, and appeared in two portions, in successive numbers of that periodical (April, May, 1865).

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Dream of Gerontius (Classic Reprint) (Cardinal Newman)